Page 32 of The Naga Inventor's Clever Mate

It was really dark, and I had a hard time making out much else beyond the cables. It did look a little similar to what Vrash had shown us, only there were no purple lights or the blue-and-red glow from the evil robot to guide us. “There,” Artek exclaimed, and he jabbed a claw at the screen, tapping the surface over an odd, bulbous shape. Horror filled me when I could make out more of the round shapes now that I’d seen the first. At least a dozen, and none of them blinked purple. Those were the cleaning bots, but where was Vrash?

I had the answer a moment later when Corin managed to make the camera pan to the left. More cleaning bots were lined up along the narrow path, their round shapes a dull silver in the gloom. Then came a weird dip in the heavy cable bundles, and on that was a spindly set of legs; I recognized them as the spider legs of a repair bot. On it sat a lumpy shape, lopsided, without a hint of a spark or light. “Did Vrash overload himself when he attacked the cleaning bots?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Corin said, “but he’s not in control of anything now. I don’t think it’s a trick…” He started to rise from the seat with a groan, a hand shooting to his chest. Artek immediately clamped a hand down on his shoulder and pressed him back into the seat. “I have to retrieve the core and get Triff!” Corin said fiercely, but the Shaman shook his head.

“Not in this state. You nearly died, Corin. Guide me through it. You can do that, can’t you?” the Shaman said, already moving toward the vent and sliding his tail toward the hole. I flung myself out of Corin's embracing tail before I could think better of my plan. I didn't even think about how rude it was when I snatched up the Shaman's pointy tail and jerked it back.

“No! You need to stay here and heal Corin. Who’ll take care of him and the pregnant women if you get hurt? You’re too important.” I ignored Corin’s angry snarl as he yelled that I was even more important, and flung myself on my belly to crawl into the small tunnel. He was wrong, and he knew it. The two of them were crucial to Haven. I was not. It was only a tiny tunnel, and some turned-off bots. I could do this.

I heard them moving behind me—Artek and Corin clashing, maybe—but I didn’t look back. I just thanked my lucky stars that I was small and that I’d managed a terrifying crawl through the dark like this once before. I should have brought a flashlight; that would have been better. Or maybe not. Maybe it was better that I couldn’t see if there were alien bugs down here with me.

***

Corin

My body was horrifyingly weak, and Artek managed to wrestle me into the seat in front of the control hub with embarrassing ease. “It’s too late. She’s already crawled in. Help her from here!” the Shaman directed me. I didn’t want to listen to his sensible words; all my instincts told me to crawl after Min-Ji, to snatch her by the ankle and yank her to safety. But he was right. She had already gone in and hadn’t gotten zapped. Now, I could best help her from here.

My brave mate, so afraid of bugs and the darkness inside those small tunnels, faced that fear head-on so she could rescue Triff. Rescue all of us from Vrash, though maybe the little bot had sacrificed himself to defeat the Revenant. If so, we owed it to him to repair him, to bring him back. I vowed that I would.

“Sit still and tell me what is going on,” Artek ordered. I knew what he was doing, but it was working. I focused my attention on the view on the screen. On the dark shapes of deactivated cleaning bots and a hopefully equally inactive Vrash. I couldn’t speak to Min-Ji. I only had the view, but I could reroute power from that area and prevent the bot from turning back on. My fingers flew as I did that, and Artek worked with his healing device over my chest, repairing the damage to my heart that the shock had caused.

“I can see her,” I breathed when I saw her pale face appear out of the dark, her slender fingers searching along the floor. “To the left of you,” I murmured when it appeared that she couldn’t see very well. By touch, she located Vrash’s remains, and I knew she’d screamed when her hand brushed the spindly leg of the repair bot it was attached to. I couldn’t quite make out what she was doing, but I thought that maybe she was fumbling around the many inactive cleaning bots. Was she trying to find Triff? I couldn’t tell him apart from the rest now that he was turned off. It was his behavior that made him stand out.

I shuddered in relief when I realized she was retreating, crawling backward because the space was so tight. She had Vrash’s head, as I couldn’t see it on the feed anymore. That meant the danger was over. Vrash could not control anything if he was not attached to the system. I pushed Artek’s hand away, interrupting the healing process, but it was more important to hurry to the small tunnel and assist my mate.

When I pulled her free by her ankle, my chest aching from the strain, she beamed at me with a relieved smile. “I got him!” she said, and I didn’t need to look to know which "he" she was talking about. Cradled against her chest was a silver half-orb, and the cleaning disk she exposed to me had a broken crack, held together by string—my improvised repair from before. It was definitely Triff.

I pulled her into my arms, my chest aching for different reasons. I was proud of my mate. I was happy that it was over, and sad that Triff had fallen because of Vrash’s will to survive eon’s past his lifetime. “Let me see him,” I said, and she opened her arms, and let the bot fall into her lap.

“Can you fix him?” she asked, her voice trembling. I hugged her tighter, ignoring the dead Vrash she'd tossed to the floor without any care, and focused only on the two beings that mattered most to me in this world. My mate and, damn it, the best bot on the planet. I had to make this right, but with all the scorched metal and fried circuits… it wasn’t looking good.

I barely paid attention to Artek as he finished healing me with his handheld device and checked over Min-Ji to be safe. I didn’t care when he announced that he’d take Vrash and dispose of him for good. When Iave and Zathar entered the control hub with their mates, Min-Ji talked to them, but I just held my mate tight and tried my best to salvage what I could of our little robot friend.

“Come on,” Min-Ji said eventually. “Your apartment is a better place for this. You’ve got time, Corin. As much as I’d want it, it doesn’t have to be now.” She gave me a watery smile. “We won. Triff won the battle for us. Let’s celebrate that.”

My clever mate was wise too. I rose with her in my arms, Triff held carefully between us. And then we went to face our happy Clanspeople as they reclaimed our home. My Haven, which we’d saved, together.

Epilogue

Corin

I’d snuck out of my apartment after claiming my mate for the first time in my nest last night. I hadn’t wanted to leave her warmth, to linger in the moment, but she was not the only one who needed me. She was not the only oneIneeded, as I’d come to learn.

Once, I would have told everyone that I was a loner, that I didn’t need anyone besides my two best friends, some relics to tinker with, and a good hunt to get the blood pumping. But I had learned many things in the past few days: I needed my mate. She completed me, and she made me feel proud of the male I had become. I had needed to heal the bonds with the Shamans, to learn what my place was in their hierarchy. And to discover that I knew many things and that I wasn’t any less for never finishing my official training.

I also needed one stubborn little robot at my side, as annoyed as I’d been with his insistent presence at first. Triff was part of my family, like Min-Ji, and nothing and no one could stop me from having all of it. Not a vengeful Queen, nor a Revenant.

After we’d celebrated our reclaiming of Haven last night with the whole Clan, I’d conceived a crazy plan. What if what the Revenant had done was possible for Triff too? What if I took his core and placed it in a new body? And what if I didn’t trap Triff in a body too small for his big personality, but one that would allow him to really follow me everywhere?

That’s why I’d snuck out last night and enlisted Zeidon and my friend's help to locate what I needed. Iave had been grumpy when I’d urged him from his nest, but they had all come with me to search the tunnels below Ahoshaga. I wanted to wake Min-Ji to a working Triff and see her smile with happiness, but now my heart was pounding with fear that it wouldn’t work.

“You got this, Corin,” Zathar said as he helped me arrange Triff’s new form onto my work table. “I know this will work. But wake her. She’ll want to be there for both of you.” Wiser words had never been spoken. Min-Ji would want to be included in this plan. He was right, and she should be there when Triff woke up.

He left my chambers, the door whispering shut on his tail. I turned to the room with my nest and discovered that Min-Ji had huddled into a small ball at the center, furs piled high on top of her to stay warm. I also discovered that she was clutching the small amethyst core that held all of Triff’s memories and his code. She clutched it tightly to her chest, as if she were afraid to let it go.

She woke slowly, her lashes blinking sleepily over her soft brown eyes. “Come, my sweet mate,” I urged, picking her up in my arms and bundling her, furs and all, tightly against my chest. “I've got a surprise for you.”

Of course, Min-Ji’s first reaction at seeing the deactivated body of a Slithrazer Revenant was to squeak in surprise, one hand flinging around my neck and clutching tightly. “Are you crazy? That thing nearly killed you last time…” I laughed because she was giving it a very suspicious once-over, but the hound-like Revenant was well and truly inactive. Zeidon and I had devised a way to zap it and shut it down without harming it permanently, and it had worked perfectly.

---