“Do you have room to grow?”

  “Yes, I am in a gel pack right now, but I can expand to the full height of my previous body.”

  “Do you have the memories of your previous body?”

  “Not yet. They might come, they might not.”

  “Green Archer, what do you think immortality means?”

  “That is a heavy topic for this time of night.”

  Winera grinned. “This is space, it is always night.”

  Laughter spilled through the speakers. “Excellent point. Well, put your feet up. This is a long one.”

  Winera settled in and had an in-depth philosophical conversation with a spaceship. It had the feeling of the first of many to come.

  Archer had assured her that she could land her own body just fine, so Winera headed to the belly of the ship to wake Hyl. She knocked on his door and waited.

  Undressed with his hair wild, he opened the door to her. “Are we landing?”

  She put on her best panicked expression. “Oh stars! The ship is going down and I don’t know what to do.”

  He blinked his huge dark eyes. “There isn’t…you can just ask…damn!”

  She snickered as he turned and grabbed his bodysuit in one hand, running for the pilot’s seat, stark naked.

  He glanced back at her, and when he tried to sit in the seat, Smudge bit him in the ass.

  Winera howled with laughter as she swept Smudge up in her arms.

  Hyl was flicking buttons and controls but nothing was changing their trajectory. They were heading nose first toward the atmosphere.

  Winera had to sit in the navigator station. He was actually panicking now and she was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.

  Tears were running down her cheeks, and it was the sizzle against her skin that sobered her a little. “Let him off the hook, Archer.”

  The ship evened out and a giggle ran through the ship. “Hyl, you should see your face.”

  He blinked and ran his hand through his hair. “This was a joke?”

  Winera nodded. “And revenge for not telling me about the ship being sentient. The Green Archer and I had a long conversation last night.”

  “Did you talk about me?”

  “Only in passing. We talked about her and her prospects for the future.”

  He stood there, blinking and still naked with his suit in his hand.

  She reached behind her head into the cubby and handed him a cup of caf. “Drink this and put your clothing on. We will be having company soon, or rather, we will be the company.”

  He looked down and his cheeks darkened. “Right. Clothing.”

  “In your hand.”

  “Right.”

  She sighed. “Drink the caf, it is cool enough.”

  He slugged down the caf, handed her the cup and sat to pull on his bodysuit. The caffeine worked on him immediately. Even his hair seemed more awake.

  When he had worked the suit to his waist, Winera sighed quietly in disappointment. It had truly been an inspiring view.

  “There is a parcel for you in your quarters. A new suit to suit your station, so to speak.”

  “Really?” Winera loved new clothing. She rarely indulged herself; she preferred to keep her funds where they would do the most good.

  She put Smudge down and scampered off to her quarters. The bodysuit was amazing. It had a small card with it. Designed by Udell, Made by Morganti.

  Grinning, Winera put the suit on. The upper body was blocked checks in black and white, the rest of the suit was in a vibrant purple that was both fireproof and flattering.

  She felt the change in angle of descent and smoothed the seals closed. Working with quick motions, she pulled her hair up into a tail on top of her head. The waves cascaded down to her shoulders, and she made a face at herself in the mirror.

  With Smudge at her heels, she returned to the command deck and she settled into her seat.

  “Your suit has com units and it has been specially treated to withstand the heat that you produce. You look lovely.”

  “Thank you, but I prefer striking. Flowers are lovely but they are rarely useful in everyday life.”

  He grinned and settled his hands on the controls. “You have been hanging out with the wrong flowers.”

  Winera had no idea how to respond to that.

  Chapter Five

  Her first steps on Ratusha were tentative, but as the gates of the nearby city opened and a slow vehicle approached, Winera thought that they might just be in the right place.

  The Green Archer opened a side panel to display an open conference room in which to greet the approaching figures.

  The tumble of people was the right mix for the project she had been summoned for. Several scientists and the obligatory politician or public relations officer came forward.

  The small beings with orange skin and green hair were in a tizzy. The researchers were native to Ratusha and something in their development had to have provided their striking colouration.

  Hyl stepped forward and nodded to those assembled. “Good afternoon. I am Guardsman Hyl and this is Scorcher Eckerhart. We are here to work on your problem.”

  The public relations officer walked toward them with a tense posture. “Just the two of you?”

  “That is all you get in an emergency. Now, we need the specifications and the location of the insects in question. Please, come into our situation room.” Hyl waved his hand toward the ship.

  Winera had to admit that it was effective. It put them squarely in control of the situation, which seemed to relieve the researchers.

  The insects had been altered to consume pollen in allergen-rich areas, but they escaped when a student removed a restrictor bar that kept the royal beetles in place. He didn’t know what it was, so he simply pulled it off while he was feeding the beetles. They were out of the facility and in their natural habitat in two hours.

  The genetic alterations had increased their size and appetites by tenfold. They would eat themselves out of their original meadow and into the countryside in a matter of hours if they weren’t stopped.

  Winera wrinkled her nose at the image of the beetles. They were huge. Each was the size of her palm and they had pincers and pollen collectors that looked vicious. What fun.

  She checked out the physical tolerances with two of the scientists and nodded. “I will get to work if no one else minds.”

  “Go ahead, Scorcher. Keep in touch in case anything goes wrong.”

  Winera went to the back of what had been their cargo area and now was a situation room. She got the standing skimmer and carried it out to the edge of the ship. With a wink at Smudge, hiding under the table, she headed off to the meadow and stream just two kilometres away.

  The addition of the water was a tricky thing. She would have to work on localizing the bugs first and corralling them in before they could get into the stream.

  She wasn’t sure that she would know the spot until she came over a hill and saw it. “Oh, yes. That’s it.”

  Their pollen consumption had driven them to ravenous hunger. They had eaten nearly everything in the hollow, and she was lucky that she had timed it the way she had.

  Winera parked the skimmer, walked to the edge of the consumed area and sent a wall of heat around the insects, pushing them into the centre. As quickly as she could, she flashed heat and they expired and then exploded, one by one.

  The smell of scorched bug was not something she was going to treasure, but as she let the fire consume the insects, she did feel a wave of remorse. They didn’t want to be destroyers, they just wanted to eat and make little beetles.

  With the surface bugs destroyed, it was time to work on the colony holes. Breathing deeply, she poured fire through the holes and another wave of beetles came running to the surface. The royal beetles squealed and carried their eggs as they tried to get to safety. The basic instinct of anything, genetically engineered or not, was to protect the next generation. They did try, but she burned them all.

  Once there was no sign of life, she went for a walk through the ashes and carapaces. She flashed heat at every fragment until there was nothing left but dust.

  Winera stood in the centre of the devastation and opened her mind to the heat signatures in the area. Bugs were hot but there was nothing. She had taken care of the error and left ashes in its wake.

  In a final triple check, she poured heat into the ground under her and killed all plants, roots and bacteria to a ten-foot depth.

  Her job was done.

  Hyl spoke from behind her. “If you are done with your job, I will begin mine.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Good. I am very curious.”

  She walked out of the burn site and sat next to her skimmer at the top of the hill.

  Hyl made his way to the edge of the scorched earth and he plunged his fingers into the greenery just on the edge.

  Winera watched as the green spread down toward the stream, covering the proof of the insect massacre with native species. Flowers bloomed in a riot of colour, and when the hollow was seamlessly green once again, he pulled his fingers from the ground.

  Winera slowly applauded as he returned to her side. “That is impressive. I destroy it and you rebuilt it. Very nice.”

  He was sweating. “You did a very good job of killing everything in the area. I had to reach quite a bit to find the correct species.”

  “I am excellent at my job.”

  “You certainly are. Well, we should head back to the ship. Smudge was anxious when you went off without him.”

  “He will have to get used to it. I have no idea what the locals would make of him, but I don’t want him to end up in their labs. I don’t really trust them after what I just had to do.”

  “Fair enough.” He smiled weakly. “Job well done.”

  “Wow, you look like hell. I think you are turning purple. Let’s get you back to the ship.” Winera coaxed him onto his skimmer and remained close to him while he flew back to the ship.

  He confirmed the destruction of the insects with images of Winera’s scorch, with a few strokes on a keypad.

  One of the scientists asked, “How deep did you take the burn?”

  “Ten feet. There were no heat indicators remaining for eggs, beetles or larva.”

  The scientists sighed in relief.

  The public relations officer looked around. “That is all you had to do?”

  Winera grinned, “If you think that it is easy, you do it.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “If you think that it is so easy, you can do it next time. We can put Ratusha on a do-not-respond list and you can handle your own screw ups.” She was always a little terse after a scorch.

  The footage of her scorch was over, and now, the feed shifted to Hyl’s replanting of the hollow.

  “Do that on your own. I dare you.” She snickered, and Smudge hopped over to rub against her legs.

  One of the scientists stared at Smudge with a calculating eye. “What is that?”

  “Smudge. He is a sentient companion and consultant. Touch him and you will be pulling back a scorched stump.”

  Hyl was sipping a cup of caf and looking better. “Scorcher Eckerhart, I can take it from here. You go on and get some refreshment.”

  She scooped up Smudge and headed through the splayed-open cargo bay and into the ship. The galley was indeed full of welcome treats, so she indulged a little.

  She brewed a pot of herbal tea and offered Smudge his pick of the cookies. Once her little tea party was ready, she sat with him on her lap and dunked the cookies one by one, offering them to him to nibble before she ate the rest.

  Having a pet had been something that she had missed. It was more than the companionship; it was the contact with a warm, living being that trusted her not to turn it into a torch. She had missed that feeling. Even at Thoola, there was always the risk of overheating her companions. She had to be on guard all the time.

  Archer spoke quietly. “Congratulations on the successful scorch. Too bad that they have another batch of those beetles in the research facility.”

  “Wow. They are that stupid?”

  “Apparently. They hatched the eggs that were in the lab. I have been running through their laboratory records. It makes for some very creepy reading.”

  Winera rubbed the back of her neck. “Let me know if there is anything to be concerned about.”

  “Nothing immediate, but this isn’t the last time we will be called out here. They are a disaster waiting to happen.”

  “Thanks for the update. Did you want a proper name?”

  “Green Archer is fine.”

  “And yet it lacks a certain something. You sound like a Gwenda to me. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Gwenda. It has a feminine ring to it.”

  She chuckled and scratched Smudge’s head. “That it does. My third sister is named Gwenda.”

  “You named me after your sister?”

  “Well, yes and no. I would consider you to be Gwenda Archer. Gwenda is a favoured girl’s name on Loshosh. I grew up with a lot of Gwendas that I was not related to.”

  “I will think it over.”

  “Do that. Calling you Green is out of the question.”

  A low chuckle ran through the ship. “Fair enough.”

  Winera drank her tea and ate her biscuits with only a little attention to the world around her. The fatigue of the after-burn was setting in and she could only pretend to be perky for so long.

  She snapped out of her doze when the ship shifted around her.

  “Sorry, Winera. I just got a new order for you, so we need to get under way. It is two systems over and lives are at stake.”

  The sounds were the ship contracting back into a sealed vessel.

  Hyl appeared in the doorway and nodded, “You had better strap in. We have an in-system jump authorization. We have to move.”

  Smudge hopped to the floor and Winera settled the cups and plates in the recycler. They made their way to the cockpit, and the moment that Winera strapped in, the Green Archer took off.

  Smudge jumped onto her lap, and she held him as the ship levitated and then jetted off, forcing them back into their seats.

  They really were in a hurry.

  Chapter Six

  “Smudge needs his own seat.”

  “I agree. The designers who included space for him in your room never counted on him joining you in the flight centre.” Hyl sighed in relief as they exited the atmosphere.

  “I am guessing not.” She stroked Smudge, and he huffed lightly as the weight of the gravity press was lifted from him.

  “I will send a note to Udell. They will arrange something for him.”

  “Good. He is part of this crew now. Any decision on the name yet?” She lifted her head and addressed the last portion to the air.

  “Let’s get you down in time to save the poor buggers freezing to death. I can always find a name later.”

  Winera blinked. “Buggers?”

  Hyl chuckled. “She spent a lot of time with Stellar Storm. She has a particularly odd turn of phrase.”

  “Stellar Storm has a perfectly direct turn of phrase. I like it. You never have to guess what she is thinking.” The ship spoke in a completely prim and proper tone.

  Hyl grinned and threw Winera a wink.

  “We have one hour of travel and then we are going to jump. I am just putting distance between myself and the sun.” The Green Archer was acting all snooty.

  Winera leaned back and watched the stars change position relative to the ship as they zipped along. “Do we have a file?”

  “We have a request and the news vids.”

  “Put them up. I need to know why it was us that got the call.” She settled in as the front screen polarized and the news vids began to play.

  A nervous administrator was featured below, sweating and swallowing in agitation. “This is a distress call sent to the Sector Guard. We have twenty students encapsulated by a glacier and no way to get them out without killing them. They are freezing to death and we can’t get in to them.”

  The images above the administrator were chilling, to say the least. A crumpled mass of ice half a kilometre long led into a solid sheet of frozen water. Vid crews were hovering around, and it led Winera to ask one vital question. “Hyl? If I am going to be on news vids, I really need to know, how is my hair?”

  The news vids hadn’t done the collapse justice. It was amazing that anyone had survived at all.

  Hyl had agreed on her course of action. It would be the easiest method to extract everyone safely without risking another collapse. It was dangerous, but Winera was sure she could manage it.

  She buckled the wrapped pack designed to travel with her. She hoped that it would take the heat, because she was going to have to pour it on.

  She was going to have to dangle from the shuttle over the crowds for a few minutes to gather what heat she could. Winera had stowed what she could from the entry into the atmosphere. If she didn’t have enough energy banked, it was going to come from her, so she really hoped that she had sufficient power to burn through the ice.

  “I solved your power problem. How do you feel about being dangled over an active volcano?” The ship was curious.

  “I am more enthusiastic about that than about cruising over a crowd. I will shout when I am hot enough and you can drop me at the designated coordinates. Right?”

  “Affirmative. Be safe. We are approaching now. Please get into position.”

  The winch that she was attached to would slowly lower her to a distance of half a mile. It would let the ship remain safe while she got what she could to power phase two.

  Winera walked to the hatch and opened it. She braced herself in the opening and looked down. It was quite the distance. This was the only part of the process she hated, though it had never been this extreme before.

  The wide crater smouldered and she felt the waves of heat.

 

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