Tempted by Celestial Bodies

Chapter 6

chapter six

The default setting of a Central-issued stun gun could knock a grown man out for an hour. Vela had adjusted hers to keep ’em down for three. After listening to Kalis’s lackeys bicker beyond the door for several minutes, it became obvious they intended to linger until their leader shook off his stupor.

“Holding hands in the dark is romantic and all,” Fyn’s whisper tickled Vela’s ear, “but we should probably search for another exit.”

Vela released the Wanderling’s arm, grateful the darkness hid her flushed face. The shiver of excitement she felt at the brush of his breath unnerved her. “Are you suggesting we feel our way to safety?”

“Only for a moment.” Fyn placed a hand on her shoulder to guide her through the shadows, and she felt along the walls in an attempt to keep her bearings. Rough stone scraped beneath her glove, and the tangs of mildew and moss grew stronger with each step, sure signs they’d left the Visitor’s Center behind.

After a few twists and turns, Fyn withdrew his hand. Light flooded Vela’s vision, blindingly bright. She blinked the blear away to find that he’d shifted again, this time to a Pherenese man with pale lilac skin and fiber-optic hair. Males of the species were far smaller than their feminine counterparts, but Fyn still dwarfed Vela in both height and heft. He was not about to make himself easy to capture.

He tossed prismatic tresses over his shoulder. “In case you doubted my ability to brighten a room.”

“Pity this isn’t a room,” Vela replied flatly, scanning their stony surroundings. The tunnel stretching out before them was too irregular to have been bored mechanically, though the lack of fresh claw marks and scat hinted at old age. “We’re in an abandoned burrow, or at least the neglected wing of a warren. Probably the work of a rock gnawer or an anglerbeast.”

“Good thing the architect’s long gone. Neither option sounds particularly friendly.”

They weren’t herbivores, that was certain. “Don’t let your guard down just yet.” Vela scraped her boot on the ground, smearing a serpentine trail of soil. “Deserted dens often attract squatters of the toothy variety.”

“So you’re saying I should keep close?” Fyn looped an arm around her waist and pulled her flush against his chest—an act that, bizarrely, threw off the rhythm of her pulse.

She slipped away with a startled scowl. “I’m saying you should keep quiet .”

“Shame.” He pouted. “Here, I thought you’d have follow-up questions about the job.”

The nerves on this one. “Why ask about a job I’m unwilling to take?”

“Curiosity.”

He had her there. “I’ll get the details from Central after the interrogation.” She stepped aside to wave the Wanderling forward. “For now, I insist you walk ahead of me. For the obvious reasons.”

It was hard to identify eyerolling in people without pupils, but Fyn somehow made it obvious. To his credit, he obeyed without much fuss. Vela followed as he wound through the tunnel, keeping well within the cast of his prismatic hair. They marched along in blessed silence for some time before he froze in place, arms splayed in an obnoxiously protective manner.

“There’s something up there,” he breathed.

Vela peered around him to see lights twinkling in the darkness—long strings of them, tangled together like noodles. Elated, she ducked beneath Fyn’s arm. A heartbeat after she arrived at the edge of a hollow, his light spilled past her to fall on a nest of slumbering sky eels.

“Wait here,” she whispered, tiptoeing forward.

“Wouldn’t dream of following,” came the bewildered reply.

Upon locating a juvenile eel, nearly two meters long, Vela crouched for a closer look. The creature was even more magnificent in reality than the illustrations—smog gray and sleek as an oil spill, with pockets of phosphorescence pulsing from gills to tail. A short, crimson dorsal ridge ran the length of its spine, and tiny pectoral fins of the same hue sprouted from its sides.

“Unlike most Marisian species, sky eels don’t possess gas bladders,” she explained. “They take flight when the miasma is at its densest, but during low tides, they’re forced to settle down in whatever shelter they can find before they enter stasis.” She removed a glove and stroked the creature’s side. “The scales are smooth and hard as quartz flecks, just as Xathar described them.”

A faint chuckle echoed off the cavern walls. Vela glanced up to see Fyn hovering beside her. His smile, though crooked as ever, was soft as silk. “It’s a rare pleasure to observe someone truly in their element.”

“Hunting is my element,” Vela hissed, surprised by her own terse tone. Fyn’s observation had warmed her, yet her response was frigid. She breathed deeply and tried again. “This is simply an interest. Some people are interested in baking. Some are interested in rock collecting. I’m interested in any resilient creature that thrives in seemingly unlivable circumstances.”

“Feel a kinship, do you?”

Vela hadn’t thought of it that way. Her interest in xenozoology far predated the events that nudged her toward a nomadic existence, though it had certainly piqued in the decades since.

But none of that was Fyn’s business.

“Let’s get going.” Vela stood, dusting soil from her knees. “If the eels found this place, we can’t be far from the surface.”

They tiptoed carefully through the nest and into a tunnel on the opposite side, where the air smelled fresher and roots wove through the walls. A pit yawned open in Vela’s stomach at the sight of so much loose soil, doubling in depth when a light appeared ahead of them, strong and bright as neon.

“We must be near a ranger’s station!” Fyn exclaimed, breaking into a sprint.

Against her every instinct, Vela gave chase. She caught up with Fyn right as he slipped between the widespread jaws of an anglerbeast. A wet tongue squelched beneath his heel, startling him still. Vela grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to safety just before the creature’s fangs crashed inward.

The anglerbeast bellowed, pelting them with spittle and spoiled-shrimp breath. Its bioluminescent lure bobbed wildly, reflected in its massive, milky eyes, as it struggled forward on limbs too squat to lift its belly from the ground. Vela and Fyn sprinted back toward the eel nest as it lurched along behind them with astounding speed. A fang snagged on Vela’s jumpsuit, barely grazing her leg. The seam tore from ankle to knee when Fyn pulled her into a fissure, but she lost no skin to the bite.

A luminous lure dangled inches from Vela’s nose as the anglerbeast clawed at the stoney crevice. Fyn tugged her deeper into darkness, dimming his radiant hair to dull mauve. Bedrock scraped their shoulders for several meters before the gap widened only to end in a wall of sheer limestone. At least there was space enough for two to settle side-by-side, which is exactly what they’d be doing until the creature lost interest.

“We’re going to be here a while.” Fyn didn’t sound disappointed. “There’s one sure way to pass the time.”

Vela went rigid. The Wanderling’s charms were undeniably appealing, but she would not allow him to manipulate her. “You’d better not be implying what I think you’re implying…”

“I was only suggesting we pick our game up where we left it.” He elbowed her side. “I believe it’s my turn to ask something.”

“You’re serious?” She shook her head only to realize it was bursting with questions she desperately wanted answers to. “We’ve got nothing to drink, so you’d better be honest.”

“Of the two of us, do you really think I’m the guarded one?”

“Is that your official question?”

“Far from it.” Fyn’s smile hiked up one cheek. “Mere interest or not, you looked far happier studying those sky eels than you have throughout this entire hunt, and don’t get me started on the encyclopedia. Why in the galaxies would you waste time as a bounty hound when you have such a palpable passion for nature?”

Vela didn’t have to answer. Her stun gun wasn’t quite strong enough to faze a thousand-pound anglerbeast, but it would easily knock Fyn out for a while. Then again, she’d agreed to the terms, and playing along hurt nothing, and a foolish part of her wanted to tell him. Or someone, at any rate.

“I can’t remember a time I didn’t love animals—the stranger, the better.” She fixed her gaze on the now-distant glow of one such creature. “My mom made a name for herself as a naturalist back on Phaunos. She was always more interested in fundraising than field work, but I devoured every textbook in her study. It was my greatest dream to explore the deserts of Haset. Most researchers flee the harsh conditions after a few weeks, but a Phaunid could weather the sandstorms with relative ease. Can you even imagine the undiscovered species skittering through those dunes?” A smile found her lips only to wither away. “Mom said it would be a waste of time. Apparently, donors care little for sand fleas and scavenger rats.”

“Strange opinion for a scientist to hold. I don’t suppose she ever took you into the field…”

“Her colleagues did.” Vela warmed at the memory of Marcas helping her sift trilodile eggs from estuarine silt. “Mom had far too many hands to shake to bother holding mine, claimed it was her wit and winning smile that kept the cupboards stocked. That was probably the only truth she ever told me.” She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, feeling suddenly small. “Turns out, she tricked her way into the Naturalist’s Society with a fake degree and some plagiarized papers. After securing twenty million in research grants, she vanished without a trace. No less than three species of river snail went extinct as a result.”

“She left you behind?” The cocky smile fell right off Fyn’s face. “Just like that?”

Vela shrugged half-heartedly. “It wasn’t like she was really there before.”

Fyn took a moment to gather his words, but they spilled out in a jumble. “That’s awful, really, but I fail to see what it has to do with your career. Your mother faked an interest in xenozoology, but yours is obviously real. You shouldn’t cast aside your passion for?—”

“I didn’t cast anything aside,” Vela snapped. “I simply got a new passion: hunting down self-absorbed reprobates who see fit to take what doesn’t belong to them.”

“So, thanks to one woman’s actions, you think all outlaws are slime mold?”

“Let me guess: you consider yourself an outlier.” Vela laughed coldly, though she was beginning to suspect the same. “Since it’s my turn, I might as well pluck the obvious fruit. You mentioned the stolen zenna wasn’t yours to spend. Care to elaborate?”

Fyn grinned like he’d been anticipating that very question. Which was probably the case. “How much do you know about Seriville Senior Services?”

“The basics. They’re responsible for housing over seventy million individuals. The brochures promise top-notch amenities and all-hours care staff, and there’s not a single lawsuit or code violation to contest those claims.”

“Strange, isn’t it?” he asked. “It’s hard to find a local diner without a flood of customer complaints, but a business that large is squeaky clean?”

“Maybe they’re just meticulous.”

“The best thieves are,” Fyn replied with a bitter snort. “The CEOs of non-profits seldom make the broadcasts, so few know Hal Seriville lives in grander luxury than the princes of some planets. Three mansions, a villa in Avalonus, more household staff than a five-star hotel—none of which can be attributed to wages or grants.”

“He’s not misusing company funds?” Vela blinked. “Doesn’t sound like a thief to me.”

Fyn raised a finger, begging patience. “The Consortium keeps a close watch on anything they distribute. If Seriville misplaced a single government zenna, he’d find himself faced with at least a dozen audits. Bequeathals are another matter.”

A decent theory, but not without weakness. “If the company was leeching assets from their residents, an estate lawyer would have caught on by now.”

“Only if the company broke a law, which, technically, they haven’t.” A muscle in Fyn’s jaw twitched. “Their contracts give them the right to cut off communication with any relatives they deem abusive or otherwise harmful to their residents’ health. Records indicate they’ve played that card on no less than 10,000 occasions in the past three decades. Tell me, if Junior and Missy stop visiting out of the blue, abandoning Granny Dearest to the care of kindly strangers, who do you think will be cut from the will? More importantly, who will be added?”

Vela’s stomach did a cartwheel. If Fyn’s accusation was true, Seriville Services hadn’t only stolen money from their residents, they’d stolen precious final moments from their loved ones. “That’s a very big, very convenient claim. Do you really expect me to take your word for it?”

“Not at all.” Fyn tapped Vela’s wrist console. “Check your contacts, and you’ll find a new entry for one Ms. Anyta Longsworth.”

Vela pulled away. “Any chance you’ll ever make a point without invading my privacy?”

“She was the first person I interviewed before taking this job,” Fyn continued, unfazed. “I’m here to return some of the funds Seriville stole. It won’t make up for the time she lost with her mother, but it’ll pay the rent, perhaps put her kids through school. Hear her out, and if you’re still not convinced, I’ll let you cuff me. I might even let you turn me in.”

Vela chose to ignore the bit about the cuffs. “It’s a dangerous game, recruiting a bounty hound to your cause.”

“If you haven’t picked up on it, I’m fond of games.” Fyn chuckled. “This job is too big for one person to pull off, and it’s too important to abandon. I need someone clever, intuitive, and kind to help me see it through.” He placed a hand on Vela’s shoulder, which somehow made her light-headed. The Camdian Violet of con artists, indeed. “We haven’t known each other long, but I’m positive we’d partner well.”

“In business,” Vela clarified, nervously shrugging his hand away.

“My mind was hovering far above the gutter, I assure you.” Fyn winked. “I would hate to get between you and your amber-eyed oaf. At least, not while your stun-gun is pointed his direction.”

To think, Vela’s stomach had just settled. “Kalis was a mistake.”

“A distant mistake you’re ready and eager to move on from?”

“Why so curious?” Vela asked, though the answer didn’t matter. Even if Fyn’s tale was true, she needed to arrest him. Didn’t she?

For some reason, the thought made her chest tighten.

“Never mind. I’m exhausted, and I’m not the only one.” She nodded toward the anglerbeast, which was finally beginning to settle down. “If we’re quiet, it might grow bored and leave.”

For some time after, the only sound was the whisper of clothing against stone as Fyn and Vela both attempted to get comfortable. Eventually, most of him wound up pressed against her, probably by accident.

If she’d complained, he would have given her space.

So she didn’t.