Chapter Seven
Rory stared down at the smashed droid and couldn’t hold in his expletive of frustration. “Fuck me,” he growled out between clenched teeth. Not only had the droid not been operable, it was beyond repair. He’d had hopes to manually drive it back to their craft and fix whatever the malfunction had been, but even the simple mechanics of wheels were lost on the thing. With much fear at the thought of spontaneous werewolfism—or whatever—he’d had to go out and manually retrieve the small droid.
Now, he stared down at it with a sinking feeling in his gut. “It’s beyond repair.”
Natalie knelt before the poor, deceased droid and gingerly touched a section where bolts were literally falling off of it. “What do you think happened?”
Rory shrugged. “I’d like to say lunar rocks, but I can’t be certain.” He flinched. “The damage almost looks … manmade. Alien-made. Whatever you want to call it.”
Natalie’s head whipped up in astonishment. “You think an alien smashed your droid?”
He frowned. “Moon rocks or a competing country with a droid up here of their own are the more likely culprits, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.”
She gawked at him, jaw dropped. “That is an alarming thought. Very alarming. We’re out here all alone, so far away from home. If we were to encounter anything—”
“I’d turn into a werewolf and eat it,” he said in hopes of lightening the mood with a joke. The tittering laugh in response was a good sign. “I’m more worried about fixing that camera pod than running into alien life forms. I was out there for two minutes and thirteen seconds to get the droid. An agonizing two minutes and thirteen seconds where I thought my body was going to rip itself into pieces. Do you know how long it is going to take me to fix that camera and try to salvage any footage on it?”
There’d been ‘live’ feed on Earth, but it had suddenly become scrambled and nearly impossible to see. No one knew what had happened to the camera pod. Even further review of the footage gave their superiors little to go on. The hope was that it had caught something, anything, that hadn’t been visible in the feed. Had it been the connection? Was there more on the camera’s internal drive? At the very least, he had to get the pod opened so he could get to the camera and remove the drive.
Natalie’s expression turned grim at his statement. They both knew it could be hours for him to do all of this. Hours of him being exposed to direct contact—or as direct as anyone got—to the moon. The ramifications could be deadly.
“I need you out there,” he said softly, beseechingly. It had never been part of the plan for her to leave the vehicle. She was onboard to take care of the ship. That was where her talents resided. But he couldn’t do this without her. He knew that more solidly than his own name. The call of the moon had been nearly too much for him in his few moments of exposure. He had felt his body attempting to morph, trying to become one with the beast within. If he didn’t have her out there with him to steady him, he would never make it home in one piece.
Natalie immediately nodded, setting his mind at ease. “Of course.” She reached out and took his hand. “We’re a team. I would never leave you out there to do this on your own. Even before we… Well, even then, I wouldn’t have left you on your own. Like I said, we’re a team.”
He covered her hand with his free one. “We’re a team,” he agreed. “We can do this.” He hated the thought of putting her life in danger. He’d toyed with the idea of telling her to forget the camera pod, for them to tell their superiors to consider it a loss. Before he’d even voiced it, he knew this wasn’t an option. They’d both worked their entire lives for this trip, and he knew neither one of them was willing to flush away this opportunity. Danger was a part of space travel. There was always that potential for disaster. They would both regret it if they didn’t give one hundred percent on this mission, because if they failed, they would not get a second chance.
Even so…
“If things start to look like they’re turning for the worse out there, I want you to get in this ship and go home. I want you to protect yourself. I want to know that you made it back safely. As long as that happens, I can die happy. Okay?”
Natalie withdrew her hand. “Don’t talk like that. You’re going to be fine.” She took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. “We’re going to be fine. I promise you.”
He wanted to advise her against promises she couldn’t keep, but decided to keep that opinion to himself. He couldn’t afford to think negatively. He had a job to do. It was time for him to put aside everything else other than getting that job done. Besides, this was his dream! Werewolf genetics be damned. He was going to step out onto the surface of the moon, and he was going to relish every minute of it.
Leaning forward, he pressed his lips gently to hers before sitting back and giving her an almost eager look. “Let’s suit up, sweetheart.”