Free Blood of Denebria (Star Sojourner Book 4) by Jean Kilczer Page B

chances were we'd still have the other one for a quick escape, if need be.
    Joe and Chancey took off their socks and wrapped them around the shiny metal rings of their stinglers. Reika slipped a ring off her finger and shoved it deep into her pocket. With eyes like saucers, we didn't know how acute was the BEMs' vision, but we weren't taking any chances. We rubbed the sap of bushes on our clothing to hide our alien smell, and dirt from under the top layer of sand. We chewed pieces of the bitter root to cover the smell of our breath, which might hold a trace of our native food.
    Joe ordered Wolfie, then Bat, then Reika to walk ahead in single file since they had the Warrior systems and
eyes in the dark,
as Reika had said. Joe, me, and Chancey followed, with Huff bringing up the rear so his splayed feet could cover our tracks.
    “Let's go!” Joe ordered and strode forward.
    “I have a thought,” Huff said to me. “My four paws can all walk the ground at the same time.”
    “Good idea, Huff,” I told him. “It will look more like a…well, an…”
    “An animal of the desert.”
    “Well, yes.”
    He sighed. “I yearn for the ice and the cold seas of my keepworld, Jules friend. Yearn I for the snowfolks of my kind.” He lowered his head. “My own Kresthaven.”
    I patted his shoulder as he went to all fours. “I know, Huff.”
    “I am a stranger here among a strange world.”
    “You're my friend.”
    He rubbed his head against my arm. “You have my liver, Terran Jules.”
    I restrained a chuckle. “And you have mine, my good Vegan friend Huff.” I scratched between his shoulders, scraped off a parasite and gave it to him.
    “Thank you,” he said and ate it.
    As we approached the perimeter of the BEM camp, the dark structures took form.
    I lay on my belly in the damp sand of a shallow dried stream bed with Wolfie beside me. The high moons rimmed a huddle of rough-hewn BEM structures, ruddy and leaning, with dark round holes for windows, probably built from desert materials after they'd landed. There was no central structure, as you'd expect in a human military compound. No headquarters that I could discern. Here, the hive-mind ruled, with Bountiful probably giving the orders. Did she have sisters on Denebria, all producing offspring?
    “Are you in place?” Wolfie said into his helmet mic. I knew he was talking to Reika and Bat.
    “Where are they?” I asked.
    “They took cover behind a line of brush.”
    East of the buildings, shuttles and land craft stood on their pads, their hulls glistening in rows of strung lights that swayed in the night wind on the spacefield.
    To the left of the compound, a fence stretched into darkness. Within the lights thrown by the structures, I saw tall, narrow shapes. Smaller ones moved among them. A mournful wail sent a chill to my bones. “Oh my God! Denebrian slaves.” There were no great herds of herbivores on the planet, from the research I'd done before coming here. What were Bountiful and the other BEMS living on? Joe said they liked real meat. Were they already capturing and slaughtering Denebrians for food, even before they launched the main assault? I pressed a hand against my mouth. “Jesus and Vishnu,” I muttered. “I think they're using them as food.”
    Wolfie nodded without expression and opened his backpack. “I'm sending in a ground sensor,” he said into his mic. “Should give us a comprehensive view of the lay.” He took out a small unit on wheels, flipped a switch and set it on the ground above the stream bed. The vehicle moved silently over sand, rocks, and around a dried branch as Wolfie guided it toward the compound with a hand-held remote. He snapped the helmet display over his eyes and peered through it.
    “Are you looking for a way in?” I asked.
    He nodded.
    I closed my eyes and tried for a light probe, calculated to touch sleeping minds without waking them. I recoiled as I encountered a familiar awareness, a sense of duty that dragged his