Page 26 of Monstrous Baby
“Holly’s specialty is ancient flora, especially how plants were incorporated into cultures and rituals,” I explained. “Lohr could get you an exact analysis if you’d like.”
Her eyes lit up even more. “Really? Yeah, that’d be great. I’d love to have a sample pod and maybe a cutting to take back home.” She grimaced, her shoulders falling. “Well. If we ever do get to go home.”
“If you want to go home?—”
“No,” she cut in quickly, meeting my gaze. “I’m a little homesick, that’s all. Even if I wasn’t learning so much about Guatemalan forests, I’d want to stay and learn more about the dyni.” She laughed, shaking her head ruefully. “I didn’t even know aliens were real.”
Kroktl huffed out an amused sigh as he squatted beside my chair. He pulled my plate closer to him—so he could more easily feed me. I opened my mouth to protest but he simply said, “You’re not eating quickly enough.”
“We’ve got a lot to talk about.” Though my stomach chose to growl so loudly that Holly smothered a giggle. Rolling my eyes, I opened my mouth and took the offered bite of delicate white, flaky fish. Expertly prepared and seasoned, as delicious as everything we’d eaten, as if ordered from a five-star restaurant. Rizan ordered all our meals from a nearby town, but it hadn’t really connected in my head that we must be close to a well-populated area. “You said you’d been into town? What’s it like?”
“We’ve been going into Livingston almost every day,” Dr. Snyder said. “I pick up any available newspapers and go into some of the local bars and gathering places to listen for anything unusual. We were going to walk but Rizan managed to get us a rental car.”
:Which is absolutely bugged, along with his phone and laptop.: Standing near the sliding glass doors, Rizan ruffed up the feathers on his shoulders.:Nothing electronic will get past my monitoring, and I’m also recording exactly where he’s been and when.:
I flashed a smile at him. “No sightings that might be other squads?”
“Not yet.” He clicked his beak with disappointment. “I’m listening on all channels, and we’re plugged into the local population as well.”
Kroktl gave me another few bites while my mind hopped around like a game of hot potato. “Were you able to track the squad that attacked us at the cave?”
He rumbled, a low sound of displeasure. “No.”
In that single word, I felt all his frustration. His instincts warred between protecting me—and scouting out the area for himself. “You should go and see.”
He gave me another bite of roasted potatoes. “You can’t get rid of me that easily, baby.”
I started to roll my eyes again, but instead the rosemary and crispy skins on the potatoes made my eyes close in bliss. “I’m not trying to get rid of you and you know it.”
“I’m still scanning the surrounding area for both movement and ozone spikes,” Rizan said. “Other than local lifeforms, there’s no trace of another squad.”
“But they could have simply jumped to a new location, right?”
“Highly probable, in fact. They must have jumped off planet or out of range. Other than the brief spikes associated with abductions, I haven’t noted anything that might be squad activity.”
“Could they be masking their jumps like Axxol does?”
Speaking of the devil, Axxol strode into the room with a furious, hard stride as if I’d demanded his royal presence. “Doubtful.”
Cocking my head, I gave him a challenging look that made his eyes narrow into sapphire slits. “Why not? And don’t say it’s because you’re just that good.”
“I am that good.” He flashed his teeth in a glittering, wide smile. “There aren’t any other BGR+ pilots, which means none of them are as free-thinking as me. They do what they’re programmed to do and that’s it.”
“And HQ wouldn’t update their programming once they noted how you were cloaking yourself?”
His nose twitched as if he’d smelled something rotten—or highly intriguing. For a predator, probably both. “There’s no fucking way they know how I’m cloaking my jumps. I only thought of it because Rizan was using Earth interference to block the other squad’s comms.”
“But—”
“You don’t realize how rare all of this is,” Lohr broke in, though he kept his tone gentle, his voice’s low timbre soothing. “Every move a squad makes is predetermined by their programming. Dynosauros has been operating for millennia. Our strategies have been honed and perfected across a million missions. Even more importantly, after each and every mission, we’re analyzed by the best minds and programs in the universe to make us even better.”
“Right,” I nodded. “The very same programming that prompted using interference to mask your movements.”
“No, it’s not the same at all.” Rizan stepped closer, his feathers fluffed up around his shoulders and neck, brilliant and glittering like fine emeralds. “The parameters changed when Axxol broke up the squad. We wereforcedto adapt in order to survive, which began to modify our programming. Then Kroktl called us to you, and everything changed, even the way we interface with each other. We’re irreparably changed forever. We adapted in ways HQ could never predict.”
“I was changing before I even came here,” Kroktl rumbled deep and low, making the water in my glass shimmer. “I didn’t know it then, baby, but I was changing for you.”
Aw. But I still couldn’t shake the nagging sense of dread. “HQ won’t sit around waiting for us to make a mistake. They’re doing something. We have to figure out what it is, and we can’t relyon the assumption that they haven’t figured out anything about how you’re changing.”
