Alien Skin Market by Lizzy Bequin

CHAPTER 39: VAUL

“Merciful Goddess,” Tristn groaned when he saw the gorge that lay before them.

Jrayk’s reaction was different. Rather than invoking the Goddess, a string of expletives spilled from his lips as he cursed the planet, the jungle, their luck, the bastard Daggoth, and just about anything else he could think of. His crude words seemed to fall right into the misty ravine below them, echoing back and forth between the sheer stone walls.

As for Vaul, he just reacted with grim silence.

They had not been traveling long, less than a quarter of a span.

Before leaving the ship, they had quickly filled three large rucksacks with supplies—food, clothing, medicine. They had armed themselves too. Vaul and Tristn both carried energy rifles, while Jrayk wore his favorite pistol on his hip. Vaul also carried a long machete, which he used to help slash a path for them through the jungle. After that, they had set out. They hadn’t even bothered to tend to their various cuts and bruises. There wasn’t time. They would live.

Up to now, they had been running as fast as their powerful Raksha legs would carry them, but the uneven terrain and dense jungle foliage forced them to move slower than Vaul would have liked. But it was not as slow as it could have been. Luckily, they were aided by the swath of destruction left by Rawn. The creature had crashed a pretty good path through the jungle, leaving a trail of cracked branches and trampled underbrush that was easy to follow.

Incredibly, Rawn somehow seemed to know exactly where he was going. As a navigator, Vaul had an excellent sense of direction. He was sure they were heading the right way, directly toward the location where they’d seen the escape pod going down.

But now that path had reached a dead end, at the lip of the impassable ravine.

Rawn’s tracks led right up to the edge.

Jrayk toed the rim of the precipice and leaned over as far as he could, stretching his tail out behind himself for a counterbalance. The captain’s body was still covered in orange blood and bruises, and one eye was still badly swollen. With his good eye, he peered over the edge, and his ears went flat.

“Did the shaggy bastard really jump?” Jrayk asked.

Tristn and Vaul both scanned the ground, looking for some spoor that might indicate Rawn had swerved at the last minute, but there was none. His tracks ran right up to the edge of the cliff, showing no signs of slowing.

“It would appear so,” the doctor said solemnly.

“Void.”

Vaul joined the captain in looking over the edge, leaning out as far as his aching muscles would allow. Goddess, he was in bad shape after that crash, but he had barely felt it until now. He was too worried about Maureen’s fate. And now they had lost Rawn too. Vaul would make sure Daggoth paid for this when they finally caught up with the bastard.

Below, the deepest part of the ravine was obscured by mist, so Vaul could not actually see Rawn’s body down there. For the briefest of blips, he allowed himself the hope that Rawn had actually managed to jump all the way across, but…

No. There was no way.

Rawn, in his single-minded devotion to Maureen, must have charged right over the edge without realizing what he was doing.

In a perverse way, Vaul admired that final act. He understood it. His own primal instincts were urging him to do the same thing. It was only his ability for rational thought, the result of his highly evolved cerebral cortex, which kept him from following in Rawn’s primitive footsteps. Vaul understood the importance of keeping himself alive in order to save Maureen.

His intelligence afforded him other concepts as well; foremost among them, guilt. He had failed to protect Maureen, and now he was going to lose her, just as he had lost his family all those cycles before.

There was nothing he could have done to save his family, of course. They had been taken by the Jrukharri plague, which was something far beyond his control.

But Maureen’s capture absolutely was his own fault. If Daggoth really had been aboard their ship—and Vaul had to believe he had been—then Vaul should have known. He should have been more vigilant while refueling at Betnt Koarth. He should have checked every quink of the ship afterward. He should have done everything, everything in his power to protect their precious human cargo.

He only hoped there was still time to set things right.

“Muck,” Jrayk said. “We can’t stand here all day mourning Rawn, the poor crazy bastard. Look, the sun is already getting low. It’s gonna be dark soon.”

Vaul nodded, and Tristn adjusted his glasses, a new pair to replace the ones which had been cracked in the crash.

“Right,” the doctor said. “Well, seeing as how we can’t jump over this gorge, and as the walls are too steep for climbing without proper equipment, we’re going to have to find a way around it.”

“Void it all,” Jrayk growled. “That could take us days.”

“I see no other choice. So…which way?”

“Right,” Vaul said, pointing.

No one objected to that random decision—why would they, after all?—and the band of battered Raksha rescuers set off to the right, racing along the edge of the ravine, in search of some way across.