Lily looked down on the gift she had brought to give him. It was true. Ravex'ton's life would have broken most men. He deserved another chance. And he only had her to help him.

  She had said some things to him that now made her cringe when she thought about them. He was a sensitive soul, she had known that from the start. And still she had attacked his deepest beliefs and made him feel silly. She'd gotten on her high horse and talked about fucking ethics. And then she'd left him in a huff. Just taken off in her modern shuttle and gone back to her spaceship and her life of leisure. She had misjudged herself. She wasn't just socially awkward. She was downright mean. She might as well have sent him straight to the Fire Planet herself.

  She may not be able to fix this. But she could try.

  She walked towards the tribe's shuttle. “Help me get it started?”

  28

  - Ravex'ton -

  He had walked as fast as he could, and his breath was rasping in his throat when he got home. He drank a whole pail of water and wiped his lips. Then he grinned. Everything was clear to him now. The future. His life. And above all, Lily. His Mahan.

  He had been looking for the wrong thing. The world hadn't changed. He had. Traditions weren't important, he saw that now. Only improvement mattered. Making things better. Change. She had known that. And she had made him see it. She was his Mahan, and the clarity of it was so overwhelming it made him want to laugh.

  He had changed. Completely. He realized that traditions could not govern the Ytter tribe. He would do whatever he could to make the tribe better. He would defy the Council at every turn. He would make this village the best on Acerex! The Warrior Trials by Fire would end and be replaced by Trials here, in the Freeze. It would still be a hard Trial, but the casualties would be much lower. The whole planet would be watching. They would see how the Ytter warriors were still the toughest ones, even if they no longer went to the Fire Planet. Soon, they would all have their Trials here.

  He would get more of Lily's shield generators and force fields and ban the Freeze from a large area around the village. There would still be huge areas, much larger, where the Freeze would still be allowed to descend. But they would secure enough land for themselves to thrive.

  Would Lily forgive him? Maybe not. If not, he'd live out his life without his Mahan. It would hurt, but he would handle it. Even so, it would be immeasurably better with her.

  He had to know. He had to catch her before she went home to her planet. Though he would follow her there if he had to.

  He ran outside. But the tribe's shuttle was gone, and the lone shuttle standing on the pad was of a different model, much newer and larger.

  He went over to the nearest tent. “Ugriek?”

  The warrior came out. “Ah. I wondered where you had gone.”

  “You did? Why? And where is the shuttle?”

  “I wondered because the alien ambassador returned, and I thought maybe you'd want to see her. The shuttle is wherever she flew it.”

  Ravex'ton scratched his head. “She flew it? Our shuttle?”

  “Yes. The alien was met by your mother, and then she took our shuttle somewhere. Alone. I thought perhaps it was a test of some kind, to see if it worked after the repairs.”

  Ravex'ton marched to Iruena's tent and entered. A vague worry was starting in the pit of his stomach.

  His mother was there, sewing something. “The lost son returns,” she said and continued her work. “After hours of unexplained absence.”

  “Was Lily here?”

  She peered up at him. “Good evening to you, too. The alien? She may have been.”

  “Ugriek said she had been here, and that she talked to you. Then she took our shuttle.”

  “Oh, that. Yes, yes. She came in that ostentatious thing, and then she lowered herself to switch over to our humble conveyance. So gracious, the aliens. We must be thankful to them.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Oh, where do aliens go usually go? The stars, I suppose.”

  She was stalling. She was much more nervous than she seemed, that was clear to him. Never before had he seen her act this way towards him. To others, sure. He had seen that. She was keeping something from him. Something important.

  He took a step closer, towering over her and blocking the light. “Where did she go?”

  “How can I be expected to keep track of aliens and their strange comings and goings? They do what they want. Mostly they want us dead. Just like this one did.”

  Ravex'ton's worry was quickly turning to fear. “What do you mean?”

  “Aliens always want us dead. Why should these be any different? They're smart, I grant them that. Very smart. They realize that the best way to destroy someone is to make them destroy themselves. With outlander technology, for instance. Entertainment devices. Things that heal. Things that make us soft. Things that make us weak. Things that make us destroy ourselves. They have already tricked our king. But they will not trick the Ytter tribe.”

  Her voice was unsteady. She spoke from a deep conviction, with large, sincere eyes, and that scared him more than anything. He bent over her and took her needle from her fingers, then pushed it into a wooden beam with his bare finger until it had disappeared into the hardwood.

  “Where. Did. She. Go.”

  She looked up at him, and now there was fear in her eyes. “She wanted our deaths. I simply sent her to her own.”

  “Where?”

  There was a smirk on his mother's face that made him want to punch her. He clenched his fists.

  “Bosh.”

  A ton of ice settled in his stomach. “You sent her to the Fire Planet?”

  “I did. She'll meet her alien death there. The shuttle can get there, but not further and not back. It doesn't have the range for it. We'll be rid of her. Once and for all. Rid of the aliens and their devilish machines. And you will be rid of that little demon. I knew it from the moment she came here.

  She would seduce you. Seduce the greatest warrior in the Ytter tribe. Then you would become chief and she would transform our village to an alien colony. Run and owned by aliens. While the Ytter tribe would be their slaves. Weak and soft. Only fit to be servants.”

  “Why did she agree to go?” His lips felt numb and he had trouble forming the words.

  “I said that you had gone there because you had never completed your own Trials and now you wanted to make up for it.” She cackled. “Ravex'ton! The greatest warrior in the tribe! Not completed the Trials! Oh, it was the most wonderful idea. Truly inspired. It just came to me, there and then. And she believed it! She doesn't know you at all. She wouldn't know a great warrior if he fell on her.”

  Ravex'ton was stunned. A red fog descended on him. In his mind he saw a vision of how he could place his hands around Iruena's neck and squeeze the life out of her. This is now murder happens, a calm part of his mind said. And he knew that it was true. He could murder his mother now. Easily, with no regret. And he would have, if he didn't have more pressing things to do.

  He staggered out into the snow.

  “She's dead by now,” his mother screeched after him. “It's useless! She can never hurt us again! No more aliens will come! They know we're figured them out!”

  But he knew it couldn't be true. She couldn't be dead yet. He hadn't been gone that long. At worst, Lily was a couple of hours ahead of him. If he could get that other shuttle to work, he might catch up with her.

  He started running.

  29

  - Lily -

  She squeezed the handholds. Shit. Here she was again, riding an automatic shuttle down through the atmosphere of a planet. This air was just as shaky as the one on Acerex. And the old shuttle rattled much more.

  The Fire Planet was ahead of her, and she shuddered involuntarily. The Fire was clearly visible on the night side, a jagged line of bright yellow light against the blackness around it. It never went out, and travelled around the planet's single, circular continent in an eternal cycle that governed all the life on the planet.

  The little moon Gideo was in orbit, a tiny dot hanging in space. The base where Lily and Harper and Charlotte and Ava had worked before Harper was kidnapped had a new crew now. Monitoring the Fire Planet was still important for scientists, and the Acerex Kingdom allowed Earth to keep an eye on their sacred planet. It was a different solar system, but the star that the planet orbited was the closest one to the Acerex.

  The shuttle had worked fine, and Iruena had shown her how to activate the sensors that would look for any sign of human life. If Ravex'ton's plan of going through the Warrior Trials would make any sense at all, then he would be close to the Fire. She would fly along the Fire on the side of it where the forests and jungles were unburned and dripping with flammable materials, just waiting for the blaze. The sensors would scan for humans. It was automatic, Iruena had said. She would be safe.

  The planet loomed ever larger outside her viewscreen. Shit. She had never ever wanted to come back to this terrible place. When she found Ravex'ton, she'd give him a piece of her mind. And if he didn't want to come back with her, then she had no idea what to do. She had left her taser in the other shuttle, but she had the little alien bow he'd given her. Maybe she would shoot him with it and hurt him so bad that he had to realize that he could never complete his Trials. Then she could take him to Gideo Station and give him some actual medical care.

  She tried to make herself angry about his stupid act. It was either that or be scared out of her mind of being here again. On what had to be the deadliest planet in the universe, the one the young untested warriors only called Death before they were sent there.

  The shuttle went lower, perfectly controlled, and started the scan from a high altitude. The Fire seemed very close, but at least it wasn't an Inferno Year like last time, and the blaze was not as huge or wild. But it was wild enough.

  She tried to look away from it, but the dancing flames had a hypnotic effect and pulled her gaze to them.

  The shuttle kept a safe distance, and she could see the scanning equipment work to separate the extremely rich and vigorous wildlife from what could be a human. But an Acerex warrior would stand out. The only animals here that were about the same size were the firebirds that looked like dragons and the hergs, the mirror-skinned predators that were as large as horses and much more lethal than even the ulges around Ravex'ton's village.

  Her carefully stoked anger petered out and the fear gradually took over. What would happen when she found him? He would only have been here for a few hours. He would probably be pretty fired up and eager to finish his Trials. How crazy had he gone? Would it be enough for him to see her here? Would that get him to give up this insane idea? If not, there was a good chance he didn't love her that much after all. She wasn't his Mahan. Stars, how stupid was she to come here?

  She took some deep breaths. It was okay. She was safe in the shuttle. She could contact Gideo Station if something went wrong. This was something she was prepared to do for someone she loved.

  And she did love him. Like she hadn't loved anyone before. With all her heart.

  He had risked his life for her, too. More than once. It was fair.

  The shuttle reached the shore where the continent plunged into the toxic ocean and the fire ended. Then it turned around and continued scanning the other way. That would take a long time, Lily realized. It was a large continent, and the shuttle was only moving about as fast as an airliner on Earth. Three hours, probably. But she would find him before then.

  A red light lit up on the panel, followed by another one. A buzzing sound reverberated through the cabin. It didn't sound good.

  “Shit.”

  She couldn't decipher the Acerex text on the lights, but she knew it couldn't be that Ravex'ton had been found. That she would have seen on the screen. And they used red to indicate danger, too. This was bad news. It couldn't be out of charge, could it? But that was what it looked like.

  The shuttle stopped its scan and rose sharply into the air, then banked and flew through the thick curtain of smoke, over the Fire and into the lands that had just been burned black. Then it set its nose down and dived towards the ground, while more red and orange lights came on and more warning alarms sounded. The shuttle leveled off and continued for a few minutes, slower and slower, until it softly stopped in mid-air, hovered and then landed with perfect softness. The engines spun down and the silence became deafening.

  “I don't believe this,” Lily seethed, trying to keep the panic at bay. “Every damn time.”

  Well, at least this shuttle hadn't crashed, exactly. It had settled down well enough.

  It was daytime, but it still seemed strangely dark. She stretched her neck and looked outside. It was as if it had snowed ashes. Everything was burned black. Just coal black plains and little hills for as long as she could see. Gray specks of ash fell slowly down and started building up on the shuttle's windshield. The Fire had passed here recently, maybe less than a day ago.

  That could be bad news, too. It meant that the Fire was still pretty close. But she had to try. She had nothing left to lose right now.

  She was able to identify the radio, because she had been in Acerex shuttles before and had seen pilots use them. After a little fiddling with it, she realized that all she could hear was terrible static. As she had feared, the Fire was still too close. It was the largest blaze in the galaxy, probably, and its wild chemical processes created a whole lot of radiation, even radio waves that interfered with everything.

  But at least the Fire was moving away from her. It would not be back for many months. In that time, all she had to do was survive. And the static would get weaker as the Fire burned its way into the distance. She could contact Gideo Station and they could come rescue her in a couple of days, at most. Because this shuttle was definitely not going anywhere.

  She placed her head against the headrest and clenched her eyes shut. Tears of panic were burning behind the lids and her throat was closing up.

  Fuck. Stranded again. How many times would she have to learn the lesson that she and shuttles and alien planets just didn't mix?

  After this, she would definitely just go home to Earth and stay. If she would ever get out of this pinch.

  But at least she could get away. The radio still worked, the Fire was moving away from her, and if this shuttle resembled any she had ever seen before, then there would be emergency rations stashed inside. Even it there weren't, she could handle a couple of days here.

  For Ravex'ton, it could be different. He was on the other side of the Fire, running from it, because that was how the Trials worked. The stolen shuttle he had used could still be okay, because he would need a way to leave the planet again if he ever survived his improvised Trials. Had he even planned to get away again? Or was this just an elaborate suicide?

  Lily knew that survivors of disasters often felt guilty afterwards if many others had died but they had not. Probably Ravex'ton's guilt of cheating on his Trials had overpowered him.

  So damn weird. He hadn't seemed exactly racked with guilt to her. He had been too confident for that, his smile too easy and too radiant for anyone but a man with a clear conscience. Had he really cheated?

  The other warriors seemed to respect him so much. If it was an open secret that he had never passed his Trials, wouldn't a tribe that placed so much value on their warrior skills and honor despise him pretty openly?

  Shit. She only had Iruena's word that he'd come here. And now that she had time to think about it, it didn't make sense. It was too reckless a thing to do. Dammit, had she been tricked? A heavy weight settled in her stomach. If she had been guilted into coming here ...

  No one knew she was here. Only Iruena. And Lily had a feeling she could expect no help from her- she reflexively snapped her head around to look out the window. There was movement.

  In the sky, big birds were circling. They were coming closer and closer, elegantly diving and levelling off ever lower. They had long, flowing tails and four legs. And they were big, easily the size of a shuttle.

  She watched with rising fear. Then one of them landed on the roof of the shuttle with a resounding bang, and the whole craft rocked on its stubby legs.

  Lily yelped and grabbed on to the handholds beside her seat. Then a large head ducked down below the roofline and an eye peered in through the windshield. It was a big eye. Big and yellow.

  Lily pushed herself back in her seat. Harper had talked about the firebirds that were pretty close to what Earthlings usually called dragons. They were probably the deadliest animal on the Fire Planet. And here were four of them now.

  30

  - Ravex'ton -

  The alien shuttle was much more advanced than the tribe's old piece of surplus from the military transport section, and he had received all the instructions he needed from the Friendship when he had radioed them and told them what had happened. But the Earthling ship was on the other side of the planet, and it would take their rescue ships much longer to reach the Fire Planet than it would take for him. Hours longer, probably. And with Lily alone and stranded, every minute counted. No, every second.

  Everyone had tried to contact her, but she must already be in transit to the next solar system and a radio message would just take much too long to reach her. She hadn't contacted her own friendly mothership on the way out, probably afraid of upsetting the Acerex if they knew that she was going to the sacred Fire Planet.

  He banged on the shuttle's wall in frustration. She was too good for this world! Iruena had tricked her shamefully, the way only a truly good and honest person can get tricked: by thinking they can save someone.

  He had a white-hot anger in the pit of his stomach, and there it would simmer until he would see his mother again. She had to pay. And if anything had happened to Lily, anything at all ...

  He chased the thought away. The most terrible images of everything that could happen to Lily on that planet came unbidden to mind. It was too painful.

 

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