Page 9 of Fallen from the Stars

The only jungles she’d ever seen had been holographic projections — a few in her childhood, mostly from Earth shops that tried to use such images to lure in customers, and again in her IDC basic training. Her instructors had covered several potential biomes in rapid succession but had never gone into much detail for any of them.

This was her first experience in a place like this. Her youth had been concrete, steel, and glass, most of it stained with age and centuries of graffiti. There weren’t many forests left on Old Earth, and slum dwellers like Theo certainly didn’t get to visit them.

The vegetation grew denser as she moved away from the sea, shifting from long, soft grass to thick clumps of broad-leafed plants before leading to trees. She was surrounded by countless shades of green, violet, and brown, occasionally broken by bright flashes of red, yellow, orange, pink, and blue — the petals of strange flowers and growths amidst the foliage. The leaves rustled in the gentle wind flowing off the sea.

The strong scents of vegetation and moist earth overpowered the briny aroma from the beach. Everything smelled sorich, soalive, so unlike the scents to which she was accustomed. The stale, recycled air of most interstellar ships had become so familiar to her that this natural air was almost too much to take in, its ever-shifting scents too complex for her nose.

She ran her fingertips over the velvety surface of a large leaf, collecting the dew drops gathered upon it. Kane bathed her hand in soft light when she lifted it to the floating orb.

“Safe,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean anything about the groundwater, if there is any to be found.”

“I’m sure there is,” she said, rubbing the moisture between her thumb and forefinger. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and she tilted her head to one side, listening. “Are you mapping our route?”

“Do you take me for some sort of amateur, Theodora Velenti?”

Theo grinned and continued forward. “Bare minimum budget and all that.”

“I suppose I leftmyselfopen for that one.”

“That you did.”

“We are being stalked,” Kane said through their neural link.

“I know,” she whispered.

“Youalsoknow that you do not need to reply to me aloud, Theo. It isn’t exactly discrete for you to be speaking to yourself all the time.”

She clenched her jaw and pressed her lips together. Communicating with Kane in her mind required more concentration than speaking did.

Is it him? she sent through the link.

“I believe so, but I cannot say for certain. He seems to have some sort of camouflage that is obscuring visual identification, and he is out of my scanner’s range.”

We’ll wait and see what he does.

“Is that a wise choice, Theo?”

Just keep watching him. He hasn’t done anything to hurt me yet, but that doesn’t mean he won’t.

Vasil crept through the foliage, wondering how land animals made passing through it silently seem so simple a task. Though he kept the movements of his tentacles slow and deliberate, he couldn’t avoid making some noise. He only hoped it matched the other jungle sounds well enough that Theo wouldn’t notice.

His skin changed along with the surrounding plants, matching their coloration and mimicking their texture, but it seemed to matter little — despite her steady, cautious pace, Theo didn’t look toward him at all. He supposed her constant conversation with Kane was a boon for him in this situation; the more they talked, the less likely she was to hear Vasil’s clumsy attempts at stealth.

The uneven ground, littered with rotting leaves and poking sticks, wasn’t kind to the relatively soft undersides of his tentacles. He tasted dirt, vegetation, and countless other flavors he had no desire to explore further through his suction cups. Though he’d accompanied the human, Randall, and several other kraken into the jungle near The Watch on a few occasions to hunt and forage, Vasil had never grown fully used to the feel of the jungle floor.

Theo came to a halt up ahead. Vasil pressed himself against a tree trunk and peered around it to watch her.

Shecertainlywasn’t from Halora. As though falling out of the sky wasn’t enough proof, everything about her was different from the other humans he’d met thus far. The way she pronounced words was just a touchoff, she had a computer embedded inside her body, and her clothing…

The people of The Watch typically wore simple clothes, all hand-made and well-worn, much of it loose and seemingly comfortable. Theo’s clothing resembled the diving suits from the Facility far more closely than anything the humans of Halora wore on a regular basis. Her clothing seemed to be a single piece, made from a material he couldn’t identify. Her torso and thighs were clad in white, while the fabric on her lower legs, arms, and shoulders was black with gray accents. Some sort of metal symbol was pinned on her chest, near the collar of her suit, and there were white numbers printed on each shoulder.

The more he looked at her clothing, the more certain he was that he’d seensomethinglike it before, but he couldn’t make the connection.

She suddenly bent forward, giving him a full view of her curved backside. Vasil’s claws sank into the bark. Desire blazed through him as he stared at her, and his cock stirred. Startled, he dropped a hand to press over his slit. He hadn’t felt arousal — hadn’t felt much ofanything— since before he’d been taken prisoner by the human hunters two years ago.

Why now? Whyher?

He clenched his teeth as, unbidden, his eyes roamed down her legs and up to her backside again. He’d not mated with anyone in a long while, but he knew the anatomy of human females allowed positions that were impossible when two kraken came together. How would those positions change the experience? How would shefeel?

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