Darla struggled hard against the Gs but her body was simply no match for the abrupt pressure forcing all the blood from her head. She caught a final, brief glimpse of gold-rimmed eyes staring at her curiously in the dim light.
Then she slipped into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Darla didn’t know how long she’d been out, but when she came to, it was abrupt. She jerked up, smacking herself against Heydar’s rock-solid chest in the process. He looked down at her calmly and moved aside, rising to his feet and towering over her.
“We have arrived,” he said, his voice low and rumbling in the silence of the downed craft. “In one piece, I would add.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” she replied with as much snark as someone who just narrowly avoided a fiery demise could muster.
The emergency lights were still on, but Darla noted there was an additional source of illumination. Daylight. The hull had been breached at some point in their crash landing. That meant the air she was breathing was alien air.
She sucked in her breath and held it in a panic, her eyes wide with fear. Heydar chuckled.
“Do not fear, little one. If this was a hostile atmosphere we would have met our end long before now.”
He stepped to the compartment door and pulled hard, his girthy arms flexing hard, the muscles rippling from the effort. His forearms were massive and his fingers lengthy and strong, but despite his strength-enhancing tattoos, the door nevertheless refused to budge.
“Hmm,” he muttered, stepping back and pulling open the panel beside it.
The formerly hidden seam was now visible as the metal had buckled from the impact of their landing, and the internals were unlike anything Darla had ever seen before. No wires anywhere, for one, and nothing that remotely resembled any sort of tech she had ever come across.
“Are we stuck in here?” she asked.
“Not necessarily,” he said, then carefully opened the little pouch of tattoo implements on his hip, withdrawing a fine tipped needle.
Carefully, he pressed it to what seemed like any of the other utterly alien bits in the panel. Satisfied it was in place, he gently pushed it in deeper, penetrating the Raxxian tech until it was fully inserted. Slowly, he wiggled it in place, testing the resistance against his hand. A little grin crept onto his face.
“Be ready to move,” he said quietly, his eyes on the door as he pulled the tool out slowly, the tip grazing the upper indentation he’d inserted it into. The lights flickered a moment, brightening bit by bit, then without further warning the door slid open, straining hard against the warped frame.
He tucked the needle back into its case, not taking his eyes off the opening, then stepped towards it, muscles tense and ready for a fight. Heydar set foot outside, the sun illuminating his skin far more than the artificial light ever had. Darla felt her breath catch in her throat. In the sun’s warm light he was absolutely radiant.
What’s more, his tattoos seemed to gently pulse under his skin, absorbing the energy from the sun’s rays. He turned back to his companion, his shoulders relaxing slightly. The gold rims around his violet irises were gleaming in the sunlight.
“It is safe to come out. But watch your step. The landing made something of a mess.”
Darla pushed up to her feet and clamored out of the ship onto the upturned soil. He had certainly gotten the mess thing accurate. Clumps of dirt and rocks were mixed with fallen trees where the segment of the Raxxian ship they had been in somehow managed to land without breaking apart. It seemed the emergency deceleration system had worked. They’d survived. Living to see another day.
All they needed now was to stay that way.
“This way,” Heydar instructed, leading her from the wreck along a narrow strip of relatively passable soil.
Darla followed in a daze, knowing she should be freaking out but having short-circuited her panic response over the last day. One thing was for certain, she was glad she’d switched to her trainers after the party. Had she been abducted in heels, this would have been an utterly miserable experience. More so than it already was, anyway.
They walked for a minute then stopped. Darla turned back and looked at the piece of ship, seeing the alien tech from the outside for the first time where it lay amid the shattered trees and their scattered burgundy leaves.
The compartment was scorched to hell and back, with big chunks melted away. The bottom had blown out the ground where it landed, its thrusters using every last bit of power to stop their descent. As Heydar had said before things had gone utterly tits up, the ship had broken into multiple segments as intended, each designed to keep its cargo intact. That much she could tell from the relatively uniform edges of the section.
How many of the others had managed to land in one piece, and where, for that matter, was anyone’s guess. In any case, being treated as cattle had very likely resulted in their survival. The lack of windows and central location had allowed this piece to survive the attack. It sucked being an abductee, but at least this one thing had gone her way.
“Say what you will about those Raxxians, but they built a pretty solid ship,” she mused, a hint of adrenaline trickling back into her shocked system at the thought of the brutal aliens.
“A terrible race, but yes, they do possess ample skill both in design and construction. Better than most, in fact.”
“Then why did it crash? I’d think they’d be ready for attacks if that’s the case.”
Heydar shook his head. “The Grommix have been fighting the Raxxians a long, long time. They have learned their weaknesses and know how best to exploit them. In this case, they managed to disable the craft by targeting the drive systems and command center while layering focused attacks on crucial linkage systems.”
“How do you know? You were locked in with the rest of us.”
“Because it is what I would have done. That, and the flow of Grommix pulse ram energy flowed into the deeper elements of the ship. Clearly, they forced the shielding to fail and exploited the weak spot to break the connection points. Look there. Do you see the scorch marks?” he asked, pointing with his elongated digit.
Darla looked where he was pointing. “The whole thing is scorched.”
“No, look closer,” he said, leaning in and resting his forearm on her shoulder so her eyes lined up with his pointing finger. The heat of him was distracting, but he achieved his goal. She actually did see what he was talking about now.
“The dented part, where the metal looks pushed in rather than melted off.”
“Precisely.”
“But why so precise? Why not blast away?”
Heydar stood tall and surveyed the area around them once more. “Because this appears to have been a rescue attempt.”
He turned and started walking. Darla hurried to catch up to him.
“Hang on. What do you mean, a rescue attempt?”
“I mean exactly that. The Raxxians are well known for taking prisoners of war. If the Grommix learned the location of one of their officers aboard this vessel, it is quite possible they thought a rescue attempt would be worth the risk.”
Now it was Darla’s turn to look around. Another alien race could very possibly be lurking around out there, and she had no idea if they were friendly. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all of that, still held true, but what if you were no more than a snack to them?