Page 26 of A Mate for Vasek
Had the pirates hit something? Were they even now floating in outer space, completely powerless and slowly leaking oxygen, sitting ducks for the pirates? She imagined a crew much like the one that had joined Kotch’s company marching in, weapons drawn, then reminded herself that Kotch had gotten lucky. The ones who’d taken the job had been bad as pirates. The ones who were good at the job were probably much worse.
What if they were the mutated ones she’d heard of?
There was a scratching noise outside the transport door, and she froze. It was pitch black, and she couldn’t see a thing. The door opened.
“Dawn?”
Dawn huffed out a breath of relief at Vasek’s voice. “I’m here.” She reached toward the sound of his voice, and he met her, pulling her into his arms. God, did it feel good to know she wasn’t alone! She clung to his strong shoulders, burying her face into his chest.
“Are you hurt?”
She tried to assess her body. She was so pumped full of adrenaline that she probably wouldn’t even know if she were hurt. “I… I don’t think so.”
“Good. We have to get moving.”
Moving? Where would they go? Did the shuttle have a secret escape pod she didn’t know about?
He moved, releasing her. She immediately felt totally alone.
“Come on. We need to go on foot.”
On foot? Did that mean we were not in space anymore? She didn’t remember landing. She didn’t remember much of anything other than being tossed around like chicken in a shake and bake. She’d gone full-on ragdoll mode since she’d read somewhere that it would increase her odds of survival. Wherever she’d read that, it must have been correct because she was still alive, and she didn’t have a concussion that she knew of. She also managed not to puke, which was a miracle.
“Hurry. We need to grab supplies and go. It’s almost dawn.” It took her a moment to realize what he meant. Why was morning bad? Wasn’t the nighttime worse?
“I can’t see in the dark,” she said, reaching her hand out toward where his voice had last come from.
“Fuck. Stay here.”
She did. It wasn’t like she could do anything else. There was a sound of things being moved around like he was searching for something before a warm glow filled the shuttle outside. Dawn was carefully getting herself out of the transport as he approached with a lantern. It wasn’t just the transport that had tilted, but the entire shuttle. Sudden vertigo had her fighting the bile rising in her throat, and she had to close her eyes.
Collecting all their supplies while tilted like a pinball machine proved to be a challenge, but soon Vasek managed to get a preloaded bag out from the back of the transport and stuff it with extra packs of water and food for her. How convenient that he already had a bug-out bag ready. It made Dawn wonder how often he got into pickles like this.
For extra protection, he’d insisted she tie a pair of his shorts onto her hips. There was no way they would stay up on their own, and on her, they might as well be capris. He also dug out some self-adhesive bandages and had her wrap the exposed part of her calves with them. These would’ve come in handy back on New Rhea, but it wasn’t like she could’ve said, “Hey Vasek, can I wear a pair of your shorts and borrow some bandages so I can escape while your back is turned?”
But the most surprising of all was the sheer number of weapons the medic strapped to his body. There was his blaster in a holster attached to his belt, a knife tucked into his boot, another knife on his belt, and a scythe-like thing across his back.
He strapped the lantern onto her body since she was the one who needed it to see, then opened the shuttle’s door.
They were perched precariously in the branches of a tree, or perhaps trees, high off the ground. Dawn stared out into the jungle canopy in dismay. They were so high off the ground that she couldn’t see the forest floor because the ambient glow of her lantern couldn’t even reach it. If she looked too closely, she got queasy again.
“This is good.” Vasek sounded genuinely pleased.
Was this guy serious?
“How is this good? We’ll never make it to the ground.”
“The most deadly predators in these jungles hunt on the forest floor, and they hunt mainly during dawn and dusk. We are safe up here,” he explained as he helped her out onto a solid branch that was nearly as wide as a sidewalk.
Huh, if all the branches were like this, it wouldn’t be too bad.
The first thing Dawn noticed was just how humid it was. The air felt moist against her skin. The second was the smell of soil and decay. The first she could do without, but she kind of enjoyed the second. It had a quality that reminded her of Earth in a way that the forests of New Rhea hadn’t. The trees were all giant. Absolute units. Each branch was as big as a trunk back in the forest they’d left just recently.
Everything was green. Even the bark under her feet was covered with a layer of mossy carpeting, and a fern-like plant growing from the crook of the nearest tree branch was almost as tall as her. This was a primordial jungle in every sense of the word.
Had Earth looked like this once?
Vasek squinted at the ship. “Yes. This is ideal. It will be very difficult for the pirates to magnetize to this shuttle in thisposition. Even cutting into it would be difficult if they wanted to salvage what is inside. And by then, help would be here.”
