“What’d you do with Slate and Vince?” I ask.

“Those two meatheads? They’re alive for now. If your blue boyfriend back there manages to find them in this weather, they might live a while. But you’ll all be dead eventually. Have you seen the maps? This place is as remote as remote gets. If those wolf-things don’t get you, exposure will, and if exposure doesn’t, then you’ll run out of supplies long before you find your way to the nearest semblance of civilization—if you can even call it that way out here.”

We’ve only been walking for a few minutes, but I already miss the weight of Vohx’s eyes on me. The farther we get from him, the greater the ache in my chest, until it starts to hurt almost physically. I trudge in front of Richards through the snow, the blaster brushing against the fabric of my coat every few steps. He isn’t the most coordinated, and I worry that he will slip and squeeze the trigger.

“It’s never going to work,” I tell him. “Have you even considered Paulson? He’ll see just the two of us and know something’s wrong.”

The words make his steps slow, which is what I wanted. I let myself slip into a controlled fall that I hope looks real enough. Richards has already stumbled several times on the icy ground, and he does nothing to show suspicion as he holds out a hand to pull me to my feet. The blaster is still trained on me, and I move carefully, showcasing my utter harmlessness as I allow him to help me up. I grip his sleeve, and smile as the ice crystals on my fingertips transfer to the fabric. I’m on my feet now, and still holding on. I focus harder, and the crystals continue. He notices the stiffness of his coat and tries to brush off the forming ice, obviously mistaking it as snow that has accumulated there. I can tell the exact moment that the ice makes its way onto his skin. He yells, panics, and drops the blaster onto the snow. He tries to pull free, but I do not let him go. The ice makes his joints freeze up, traveling over his wrist, up his arm, and into his shoulder.

“How are you doing that?” he nearly screams. “What’s wrong with you?” He jerks away with his entire body, falling into the spot my own body had just made in the deep snow. He does seem to notice that he has dropped the gun, until I pick it up, too busy trying to massage the feeling back into his arms, already cold hands having trouble thawing the ice. “Fucking freak,” he says.

I grasp the gun, turn the dial carefully, purposefully, to stun. “Been called much worse,” I say, and pull the trigger.

We are standing so close that the force of the blast makes him skid backward in the snow, leaving a prominent path. I stare at him for a moment, making certain he is lying still and ignoring the nursing instincts that urge me to check his vitals before leaving. I turn away from him, eyes finding the two sets of tracks we left in the snow.

Vohx will be waiting.

We hadn’t come far, though my legs already ached a bit from walking through the snow all day. Fortunately, the tracks were easy to follow. The snow continues to fall, and perhaps I would not have been able to follow them so easily without the activation of my Velorian DNA. Eventually, they become impossible for even me to see. I walk in the direction of the moon, in the direction my feet want to take me, and in the direction that the tug in my chest leads me.

I find Vohx attempting to make his way down the mountain, the remnants of our group around him, all lying unmoving, save for Darwin who still makes pained noises, though he is somehow managing to put pressure on his wound. He seems to sense the moment that I am within sight, and I see his shoulders droop a bit in relief, see the white of his teeth against his ice-blue skin as he smiles. I do not waste the rest of my dwindling energy on sprinting to him, but I do find myself walking much faster, the worry in my chest abating as I count the forms around him. There are four, which means he found the soldiers. When I reach him, I drag him down into a kiss that feels like drowning, heedless of Darwin witnessing it. The embrace he draws me into once our lips part does not last nearly as long as I need it to, but I understand the need for urgency.

“You’re unhurt?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” I say, and hold up my fingers, letting the ice grow. “I’ve learned a few tricks. He’s stunned, so we shouldn’t have trouble beating him to the ship. How badly are the others faring?”

I look down as he speaks, eyes moving to Vince first. He lies still, but his breathing is steady, and the wound in his shoulder does not look bad at all. The real danger is the scrape on his head, which means he must have struck it on something when he fell, hopefully ice and not rock—rock would be hard enough to result in a fracture. My eyes move next to Slate, and something tears in my chest when I see that he isn’t breathing. I drop to my knees immediately and prepare to begin providing compressions.

Vohx’s hand on my shoulder stops me before I can fall into the familiar rhythm of movement. “Stacy,” he says, carefully. “He was dead when I found him. The shot was straight to his neck.” My eyes move up, to where the blast had bored through muscle and vein. It is only then that I notice the spots of blood on the snow around us, brilliant red against the white. “It was quick,” Vohx said. “Though it was likely more an accident than any skill on Richards’ part.”

“What was Richards thinking?”

“Money and hatred are two good motivators,” Vohx answers. “The man has both.” He nods to the men on the ground surrounding us. “Let’s get them to the medbay. Then, we’ll see what can be done with Richards.”

It seems a good enough plan, and it is the only one we have. We make certain that the plants are still intact and salvageable before we begin the journey back. It would be horrible to leave empty-handed after so much strife. Vohx carries all four men with care, including Slate, while I carry the containers holding the flowers, arms laden with their weight. I could likely have taken at least one of the men with my newfound strength, but Vohx hefts them up onto his broad shoulders and begins walking before I can say so. We trudge together through the blinding snow.

It takes me nearly half an hour to make certain that the men were stable enough to be left under Paulson’s care. He only has the same rudimentary first aid training that most pilots are given, but if all goes well, the three still living men shouldn’t even awaken before Vohx and I return. I gave them as much medication as was safe, then stitched and bandaged the wounds that didn’t need further attention. Darwin was worse off than the rest of them, and would likely need a follow-up surgery of some sort to correct the damage the blaster had done internally.

“Never liked the man,” Paulson grumbles, on his way back to the medbay, where he will watch over the men until Vohx and I return. “If I were you, I’d leave him out there. He doesn’t deserve a ride home.”

“Maybe not,” Stacy says. “But if we don’t at least try to find him, we’re no better. Besides, with all our testimonies, there’s no way he won’t end up in prison.”

Paulson grunts unhappily but doesn’t argue. “With any luck it will be a nasty one. Watch each other’s backs, and don’t take too long. The sooner we get these plants home, the more lives we’ll save. And they’re worth a lot more than Richards’.”

He watches us from the ramp as we head back into the snow. The weather has lightened a bit. Snow still falls, but it is a scatter of flurries now, rather than the near blizzard that had eclipsed us before.

“Sometimes there are lulls in the storm,” Vohx warns. “Be prepared for it to return at any moment. And be vigilant. Richards may very well expect us to return.”

“You don’t think he’ll try to steal the ship from Paulson, do you?”

“Unless he goes quite far out of his way, he’d have to cross our path to make it there,” Vohx says, but then he smiles sharply. “Part of me hopes he does. The pilot seems like he would enjoy the opportunity to shoot him.”

My laugh seems out of place, and I feel guilty for letting it out when there is a dead man lying on a table in the medbay. Vohx catches the drop in my expression and reaches for my hand. I only need one free to hold my blaster, so I let him keep it for a while.

Richards is not where I left him, but I hardly expect him to be. After our encounter with the Xzerg on X24, he was the first to wake up from the stunning ray. The tracks we find look uneven, as though he stumbled dizzily for quite a while before he got the hang of walking again. There are even several spots where it looks as though he fell. The tracks lead us to what looks to be a cave. It’s hard to see at first, just a blur that could easily be a simple discoloration on the ice wall of the mountain, but as we close in, the footsteps disappear and their final destination is obvious.

“You are just as capable as I am,” Vohx says. “But I would be better able to concentrate if you allow me to lead the way.”

Vohx has far more experience shooting at moving targets, and I don’t take the suggestion as an insult. “You’re the mercenary,” I say with a nod. He gives my hand a squeeze and steps inside. It is immediately warmer with walls on each side to break the wind. The path is narrow at first, with no room for me to walk next to Vohx even if I chose to. The small space and the strange echoing sounds contribute to paranoia, and I find myself looking backward every few steps, sure that I’ve heard something directly behind us. Around the next corner, firelight waits, casting strange, monstrous looking shapes on the walls. Richards sits in the center of a large chamber, a hastily built, weak looking fire in front of him, between us. The cave surrounds him on all sides but one. To his left, there is a large opening, much more accessible than the tiny corridor of ice that Vohx and I squeezed through. It looks large enough to allow the entrance of a great bear or some other creature with large claws and sharp teeth. I shudder to think what makes its home here.

Richards has one arm wrapped tightly around his body, while the other feeds the flickering fire pieces of wood from a pile that is dangerously low. Our footsteps, even as silent as we could make them, are loud in the silent cave. He looks up as soon as we enter the chamber.

“If you wanted to kill me,” he begins, “you could have just left.”

“That’s not why we’re here,” I say. I look to Vohx, hoping the explanation will mean more coming from the person who hadn’t shot him.

“We came to lead you back to the ship, so that you can face whatever justice waits on your home planet. It would be dishonorable of us to leave you here without giving you a chance,” he explains.

Richards huffs a bitter laugh. “Velorians and your fucking honor,” he says. “As if that makes you any better than the animals you are. You’re not human and you never will be. May as well stop pretending.”

The argument would be easy to refute, if I wanted to. Many species of aliens are much older than humans. It was stupid to pretend they were emulating us with their behavior. But it is not so much the ignorance of the words that hurts as it is tone in which he says them, filled with mindless hate. He looks to me, then, eyes narrowing further says, “You’re no better. It’s no wonder you were able to pull that magic trick with the ice. You slept with it didn’t you?” He looks to Vohx with still more disgust. “Your so-called powers are just the alien equivalent of an STD.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I begin, but then I pause when I realize that Vohx’s eyes have narrowed, his tail twitching, nostrils flared out; the only visible signs of his anger are subtle, but I find that I can almost feel it, as though it has permeated the air between us. He looks past Richards, out the large opening in the cave, and his lips form a thin smile.

“Don’t waste your breath on him, Stacy. He isn’t worth the trouble.”

Looking at him, I’m red-faced and practically frothing at the mouth but feel that Vohx is right. Richards is pathetic, and my words, however careful, will not change his mind. I grip Vohx’s hand again, feeling myself calm as soon as my skin brushes his.

“If you don’t want to put yourself in the hands of such disgusting creatures,” I say, “Then we’ll be on our way.”

“On Veloria,” Vohx says, still looking through the opening, “we respect all life and all nature.”

I am confused at his choice of words for only a moment before my senses pick up on the approach of something huge in the distance, its fur barely visible against the icy white of the landscape. There is no reasoning with him, and there is no fighting that. I give Vohx’s hand a tug and lead him back toward the small crack we entered from, safely in the other direction of the incoming creature.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Richards’ voice calls after us. His footsteps do not follow and neither of us calls an answer back.

“What was that?” I ask, as Vohx and I pick up the pace, running as quickly as we can on the slick surface of the cave floor.

Vohx holds his answer until we are back beneath the open sky. “A queen waelef,” he answers. “The leader of their great pack.”

I feel no remorse as we turn away and begin the walk back to the ship, but I do feel a clinging sadness. Halfway there, I hear a sound on the wind that might be a scream.

Paulson is waiting in the medbay, with the still unconscious members of the rest of their team. “Went about as well as I thought it would,” he remarks, when he sees us alone. “Let’s get the hell off this rock,” he says. “No offense.”

One side of Vohx’s mouth turns up as the pilot leaves the room. I busy myself with checking the vitals of the three men, relieved to find that none of them are in danger for the moment, not even Darwin. I strap them all down, so that whatever maneuvers Paulson puts the ship through will not knock their bodies from the stretchers, and then sit down on the only bench in the room with Vohx, leaning into his side.

“They are still well?” he asks.

I nod. “They should all be fine, so long as we don’t make any pit-stops on our way.” He feels warmer against me than he would have last night. I wonder if my very blood has changed to match his, and I find that I won’t mind if it has. His fingers are the wrong size to lace with my own small ones, but I squeeze his hand anyway as the ship lifts off, the interior vibrating. “Have you ever seen Earth?” I ask.

His mouth remains set, but there is light in his eyes. “Not personally, no,” he says. “Though I have reason to believe that my ancestors have.”