Hotbloods 6: Allies

“She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” Stone’s voice came from the cockpit entrance.

I turned to see him standing in the doorway with Lauren coming up after him, a smile playing on his lips, his manner just as calm and easy as always. Xiphio followed close behind, carrying plates of food—presumably for himself and Lauren, as part of some romantic breakfast. The sight of it irked me a bit, knowing my actual boyfriend had run off with the dish I’d brought him, with no hope of a romantic meal together.

“How come the planet glows like that?” I asked, focusing on Stone.

“Same reason this does.” He lifted his arm, showing off the bracelet.

I frowned at his vagueness. “So, all the inhabitants of Glossa use the same technology your bracelet uses?”

He shook his head, chuckling. “Nah, Ri, the inhabitants are the technology.”

“I don’t follow.”

“This bracelet on me wrist ain’t a piece of jewelry, like ye all presumed,” he explained, moving over to the windshield to get a better view. “It’s a livin’, breathin’ critter called a nudus, and I’m mighty grateful to ‘ave found it.”

“That thing is alive?” I gasped, glancing at the glowing blue accessory. It didn’t look alive. Then again, the universe was full of surprises—sentience seemed to take a million different forms out here. Why should I be shocked that one could be worn?

Stone nodded, flashing me a disapproving look. “It is, but ye shouldn’t call it a ‘thing.’ How’d ye like it if I called you a thing?” he chided playfully. “I bought this ‘ere nudus on the darkstar market in exchange for some love bugs I’d managed to get me hands on—make ye stay all night, if ye catch me drift.”

I blushed. “I catch your drift.”

“No idea how this fella managed to get his mitts on this nudus, since ye can’t land on Glossa without one,” he went on, amused with himself. “Anyway, I don’t usually go in fer the trafficking of critters, but this seller couldn’t wear it himself, and I had me a bit of knowledge over what it could do, so we struck us a deal. I didn’t have to offer many of me love bugs for it, neither.”

“How come the seller couldn’t wear it? Surely, you just strap it on your wrist and off you go?”

It was Lauren who answered. “Nudus are, basically, parasites that bond to a host in a symbiotic fashion. They let the host use their shielding powers in exchange for extracting necessary nutrients from the host’s body,” she explained. “The thing is, they’re pretty picky creatures—they choose their hosts carefully, so not everyone can wear one.”

These things were getting more interesting by the second, though I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of something clinging to my wrist, sucking the nutrients out of me. Stone clearly had a much stronger stomach than I did; he barely seemed to notice his.

“What do you mean they ‘choose’ their hosts?” These nudus didn’t seem very sentient to me.

“The nudus live to protect. It’s the core value that drives their existence,” Lauren replied, her eyes twinkling with the thrill of getting to talk about them. “It’s why they prefer to choose hosts who don’t have violence in their hearts. They stick to the purest of souls.”

I flashed a dubious look at Stone. “So, how did he end up with one?”

“Stone is one of the most honorable and kind-hearted people I’ve ever known. Everyone who knows him properly says the same thing,” she said, without missing a beat. “It’s no wonder the nudus trusted him enough to latch on.”

Stone glanced at her, a grin spreading across his face. “I was gonna say it were just blind luck,” he murmured bashfully while Xiphio looked on with obvious jealousy, still holding the plates of food in his hands.

“Perhaps, Miss Lauren, we ought to sit down and eat before our breakfast gets cold,” he said.

Lauren turned to him as though she’d only just remembered he was there. “Sorry, Xiphio, of course. My mind’s all over the place today.”

They wandered over to one of the tables by the front window, with Stone watching as subtly as he could. I felt bad for him, especially as he’d been visibly thrilled a moment ago. That kind of compliment didn’t come easily from anyone, but to hear it from Lauren must have meant the world to him.

As I leveled my gaze toward Glossa, a thought came to me. If these nudus were responsible for forging a shield around Glossa, then perhaps they could do the same thing for another planet.

“Could we use these nudus as a shield for Earth?”

Stone inhaled sharply, as though he was about to tell me my repairs would cost a fortune. “That’d be tough, Ri. It’s like Ren says—these critters don’t just join themselves with anyone,” he replied. “They’re proper picky about whom they want fer a host. Plus, fer a job like that, the wearers would have to wear a bunch of nudus at once. It’d suck the life outta them, more o’ less.”

“It’d kill them?”

“Nah, but they’d feel like they wanted to be dead. It’d suck all the juice outta them.”

Lauren nodded, distracted once again from her food. “Not to mention the fact that it would only be a temporary solution,” she said. “If the shield is blue and hazy like this one, which I presume it would be, it might block or filter out some of the wavelengths of light that come from the sun, which might cause some problems on the surface. There’d be no way of knowing how it would affect Earth until the shield was actually up, but you can bet it won’t be a permanent fix—our atmosphere could never adapt in time.”

Stone smiled at her. “She can’t get enough o’ learning about critters and things, can she? I think she read every book I had on ‘em within a couple hours.”

“Knowledge is power,” she fired back, grinning.

“Well, the temporary thing shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” I interjected. “All we really need to do is prevent Gianne from landing on Earth’s soil so we can destroy her fleet in the safety of space, without having to worry about human casualties. So, that means we only need to keep the shield up while we stop her from landing on the planet’s surface. After that, we can take it down, or put some up here and there if debris becomes a problem.”

Lauren gave a tentative shrug. “I guess that could work.”

I nodded eagerly. “I say the nudus are worth a try.”

“I say ye use whatever ye can get yer mitts on, if you’re wantin’ to defeat that coldblood queen,” Stone added, a contented smirk curving up the corners of his mouth. He could see that Xiphio was annoyed by the attention he’d managed to divert, and the two of them stared at one another in a silent standoff while Lauren remained blissfully unaware. Soon enough, I knew she was going to have to make a choice, even if she didn’t realize it yet.

“Hey, isn’t that your ship?” I announced, pointing through the windshield at a vessel floating beyond the atmosphere of Glossa. It looked pretty beat up, even more so than the last time, but whether that was general wear and tear or the sign of more dangerous troubles, I didn’t know. Stone didn’t seem too bothered by the way it looked, though I guessed beauty was in the eye of the beholder.

“Ah, there she is!” he cooed. “I’ve missed the old bird.”

Ronad looked up at him. “You want me to patch a message through?”

“If ye could, pal.”

Ronad’s hands moved across the controls, and a screen flickered to life on top of the dashboard as the speakers crackled. A moment later, Alfa’s face appeared on the monitor, his feline eyes peering into the camera, clearly trying to pick out a friendly face. As soon as he saw Stone, a fanged grin lit up his panther-like features.

“Stone, my man!” he cried. “Swish ship you got there! Who’d you nick that naughty little number off?”

“Never you mind who I nabbed it off. A good thief never kisses an’ tells. Ye weren’t gettin’ worried about me, were ye?” Stone teased.