AREST HEARD YELLING and the sounds of a struggle, but he couldn’t force his eyes open. Not until Stella let out a yip of pain and he heard her stumble. Rock crumbled down to the floor and the telltale stench of a laser blast filled the room.

An android stood in the doorway and pointed the rifle towards Stella. “Please move away. The beast must be subdued.”

She stepped in front of him. “You can’t have him. Just let us go.”

Arest’s heart thudded, fear and anxiety that hadn’t penetrated during his fight with that monster rolling over him as the android threatened Stella. He forced himself up, stifling the moan of pain that tried to tear out of his throat.

The android realized that he was up before Stella did and his eyes shifted to him. He readjusted his rifle and aimed over Stella’s shoulder towards him. Arest stepped to the side, moving away from her so she didn’t risk being hit.

Stella stiffened, but she didn’t look back. “You said you weren’t allowed to hurt him.”

“A stun will cause no permanent damage. Please step further aside.” The android’s voice held no emotion, just a mildly pleasant tone as he threatened Arest’s woman and worked to send Arest back into hell.

“You can’t have him,” she said. A long silence fell while the android didn’t respond. Stella rocked forward on her feet, swaying but not stepping. “I’ll kill you before I let you have him.”

It wasn’t a convincing lie, and that had nothing to do with the kisses they’d shared. But androids couldn’t discern truth from lie or most human emotions. And this one was no different. The rifle swung Stella’s way. “Remain where you are or I shall be forced to fire.” Stella moved her hands up and kept swaying.

Maybe it was the blood loss, but Arest couldn’t make out what she was doing. What good would it do if they both ended up shot? “He did what he needed to do,” she said. “So let him go.”

“Negative.”

The android’s orders couldn’t be so easily countermanded, but he appreciated that Stella tried. But he wouldn’t let her die, or get stunned, for him. He stepped forward and Stella reached out and gripped him. “Wait,” she snapped.

The rifle wavered between them. Stella stepped closer to the android, keeping her hand in front of her. “Are you authorized to hurt humans? People?”

“Threats to the facility must be contained.” He raised the gun and pointed it at her.

“Now!” Stella yelled as she dropped to the ground and rolled, the android’s gaze, and aim, following her as he shot.

Arest sprung on battered muscles, tackling the robot down to the ground and ripping into him, tearing cords and wiring until with a mechanical puff of smoke, it collapsed. Still not satisfied, he ripped the thing’s head off and threw it to the other side of the room. He didn’t know where its processor and sensors were stored, but even a self-repair circuit would have trouble fixing that quickly.

Stella groaned and rolled over, eyes bright when she saw him get close. “You’re amazing,” she said, smiling on a wince.

Arest growled. “Not. Safe.” He scooped her up and clutched her to him, his heart hammering as thoughts of what could have happened if the android had been a little faster or she had been a little slower cascaded through his mind. “You. Need. To. Be. Safe.” The words didn’t come easy, but he needed her to know.

Stella clutched his arms. “I am, with you.”

But she wasn’t. Neither of them were so long as they were stuck down here. Arest carried her through the door that the android had come through and closed it behind him using a panel on the wall. For a moment, Stella tried to protest his hold, saying something about bleeding and injuries, but so long as he could walk, he could hold onto her. Her protests subsided and she guided him along the path she’d taken from the control room.

Their luck held and the door remained open and the screens functioning. He put Stella down in one of the seats and took the other for himself, growling when she immediately shot up and ran for the wall. But she came back bearing a box and knelt in front of him. “I’m okay,” she promised. “You saved me.” She reached in and pulled out a pot of bright blue liquid. He couldn’t make out the name on the label, but he recognized the scent: regen gel, the all-purpose medical gel that could heal most wounds in hours or days rather than weeks and months.

She slathered it on his back and he hissed as it stung, whatever magic chemicals it contained working together to begin healing and sealing his wounds while he sat, still bleeding. Stella cursed when she came to the tear in his leg, the wound so bad that he couldn’t even feel it. The dark of his pants had disguised the worst of the blood loss, but he could feel exactly how bad it was when the gel burned all the way up to his hip.

“You’re going to be okay, got that?” It was more of an order than a question. “You don’t get to leave me after all the shit we just went through back there.”

Arest reached down and gripped her wrist before she could slather him in any more of the cream. “Mine,” he said.

Stella smiled and bent down to kiss his hand. “Yours.”

***

SHE WISHED SHE COULD dare to think that they were out of the woods. But Arest’s eyes were unfocused and even with the regen gel and bandages, blood seeped out of his many, many cuts.

Her heart hurt and she couldn’t make herself let go of his hand, which made working at the functioning computer station a bit difficult. Stella didn’t care. The android was out of commission and the monster lay dead. More trouble would be coming soon, but for now they were as safe as they could expect to be.

Her visual translator made quick work of decoding what the controls on the screen said, and when she found the message log, she cursed.

Arest’s fingers squeezed around hers.

“The Keeper sent a message out to his operators. The reply just came in. It seems that the storm has messed with video comms, but written messages can get through just fine. They’re sending in a team.”

Arest slid closer and peered at the screen, but a moment later, he looked back at her. “No translator,” he said, waving to his face.

“It says that an extraction and clean up team is coming to take care of the problem. We need to get out of here before they do.” She didn’t mention that she didn’t know how to get him off planet. She hoped that someone in the civilian fleet would help her, but her hopes had been tested in the last day and she didn’t know if she could count on anyone anymore. Anyone except Arest.

But his face had lost its color and his eyes widened. He pulled her up. “Not safe. Clean up bad.”

Stella pulled her hand free and sat back down. “How bad? That sounds like they’re getting rid of the monster back there?” Not that she wanted to meet anyone employed by Arest’s handlers, but a clean up crew didn’t sound half as bad as an extraction team.

He shook his head. “Clean up witnesses.”

Shit. “We should still have a little time. Let me find us a way out of here. Or a place to hide.” She brought up the feed from outside and saw howling winds and snow that would come up to her waist. Not ideal, but they’d make do.

And finally something went their way.

“Aha! Got it.” She punched both hands up and leaned back, glee splashed across her face. “There’s a hover car in a garage on the roof. It should be able to handle the snow as long as the wind doesn’t get much worse.”

Arest smiled with her and pulled her back up. They ran, following the path she’d found. An elevator, discreetly hidden in the stone, took them up and up and up until a bell dinged and the doors opened to a freezing cold and mostly empty garage. But the hover car was right where it was supposed to be.

“We need to find keys or an ignition code.” She hadn’t seen anything on the comp system. She and Arest split up, looking for an office or a storage box that might have the keys.

A few minutes later, she heard metal groan and smash and Arest called her over. He held up a set of small metallic squares, each with what might be a control chip of some kind embedded on them. They didn’t look much like keys to her, but he pointed to the metal box and she saw that they’d been hanging under a car-shaped icon.

Good enough.

Arest tossed them to her and she found the driver’s seat. It didn’t look much like a car did back home, but they didn’t need to go far.

Arest slid into the seat beside her. “The Keeper said there was a city close by,” she said. “I think our best bet is to head there. Our other choice is the crash site. It’ll be crawling in security forces and they’ll have a lot of questions. What do you think?”

He thought for a moment before nodding. “City.”

Now she only had to figure out how to drive a car on an unfamiliar planet to a place she’d never been. Piece of cake. But as soon as she started the car, it was. A holocontrol system appeared in front of her with forward, backward, left, right, gas, and brake clearly marked by her translator. A map appeared on the holodisplay, a path to the city already indicated.

“That must be the default instruction,” she guessed, “or it’s the last place the car went.”

Arest didn’t say anything.

Stella followed the path, mindful of the hover. Snow piled high on the ground around them, completely obscuring any road, but the system was strong enough to keep going strong. In the distance, she spotted lights and a blinking tower just visible beyond a high hill. Little dwellings sprouted up alongside the road, buildings that might have been houses and shops.

Unlike Earth, the buildings here were cylindrical and topped with domes. The windows were all circles and everything was white, though that might have been the snow. She didn’t see any of the people who lived here and wondered if they’d look like humans or something else. Given the shape of the car, she’d bet humanoid at least.

As they pulled into the center of town, her question was answered. The Keeper hadn’t been built to appear human—he looked much like the people she spotted inside of what looked like a restaurant. Their skin had a greenish hue and their eyes were overlarge. Though she couldn’t see them up close, she assumed that like the Keeper, they were all too smooth to pass for human.

But humanoid was good. That meant they could find clothes that fit and food that probably wouldn’t kill them. And her heart lifted even further when she spotted a sigil on the outside of a tall building. “That’s a Royal Oscavian bank.”

Arest followed her gaze and then looked back at her, eyebrows raised.

“It’s the most widespread banking conglomerate in the galaxy. All civilian fleet employees are required to keep an account with them. We have money.”

Arest nodded, but his expression had grown tight and lines bracketed his mouth.

Stella reached out and grabbed his hand. “It’s going to be okay. How does this sound for a plan. I’m going to find us a hotel. Then you’ll sneak into my room, we get some rest. And then I’ll get in touch with my people and find us a way home.”

He looked out the window for several moments before nodding once. This time Stella thought he was silent not because words failed him, but because he didn’t want to voice his doubts with her plan.

He could have all the doubts he wanted, but they were getting away. And as soon as she had him in her room, she wasn’t going to let him get much sleep.