in admission without looking over his shoulder into the face of the male who looked just a little too much like him, except that Rokan had green eyes.
“I heard a rumor,” Rokan said, his voice dipping out as he stuck his head into the cooling unit, no doubt looking for something to drink.
“What rumor?” Kyro asked absentmindedly, his eyes still focused on the feed before him.
“Heard there may be more humans on that desert planet. Heard that some brothers think a stasis hold must have fallen when Reku5 destroyed the Tasqal ship.”
Kyro didn’t reply. Rokan was right. It was a rumor. Reku5, his team, didn’t have solid evidence there were any other human slaves apart from the five human females they’d rescued. But they weren’t positive that was the case.
There could be others.
It would be strange for the Tasqals to only abduct five beings from a planet so far away.
“When Reku5 destroyed the slave carrier...if any stasis holds ejected, they’d have certainly landed on Muk.” Rokan spoke as he popped out a cool drink from the cooling unit. Kyro could hear the fizz of the beverage even from where he sat.
He and the rest of Reku5 were waiting on clearance to return to planet Muk and conduct a search. If a stasis hold filled with humans had fallen to the planet somewhere, it would be covered by sand. That gave them some time to find it before the Tasqals did.
“The Mukkians are searching. We will have to go there ourselves to search as well, eventually,” Kyro explained, twirling his writing instrument in his hand. In the background, he heard Rokan close the cooling unit with a hard thud.
“Eventually...” Rokan walked over to where Kyro sat and leaned against the table, his back to the data screens as he crossed his arms, drink in hand.
Tall. Lean. Gray. Bald. Glancing up at Rokan was almost like looking in the mirror.
They’d done well basing their appearance off the Borxclan for all Borxclan looked similar.
“If it was up to my unit,” Rokan continued, “we’d be back on the planet already, searching for those victims.” Rokan took a sip and Kyro resisted the urge to tell him to remove the liquid from so close to his screens.
“The humans would not like being called ‘victims,’” he said instead. His voice, even to himself, sounded far away as if he was deep in his own head. “They are an independent species...a very...thought-provoking species.”
Rokan grunted. “Tell me. You have met the humans. Did you find any of them thought-provoking?”
The question made Kyro pause and his thoughts immediately went to one specific human who had been rescued along with the others.
Evren, they called her.
He wondered what she was doing at the moment. Unlike the other human females, like him, she was alone. The other four had his brothers as mates.
She had no one.
She was different from the other humans too, he’d noticed.
Something about her had reminded him of himself. In the days he’d spent on planet Muk guiding her to safety, he’d studied everything about her.
A week later, and she was still vivid in his mind.
Rokan’s snort cut through his thoughts. “Your silence speaks volumes, brother. They are victims. It would be foolish of them to think they are something they are not.”
He couldn’t disagree or agree.
Rokan spoke the truth but perhaps the humans were not to be judged so quickly. After all, he knew more about the humans than anyone else on the base.
He had been reading their comedy shows.
“Look,” Rokan lowered his voice, “if you ever want to head to Muk, I can get clearance. I’d do it alone, but we could go scout together.”
Kyro lifted his gaze to meet Rokan’s. For him to suggest such a thing...
Was Rokan just bored? Or was he lonely too?
“What do you say?” Rokan’s question hung in the air as Kyro adjusted his gaze to look out the window.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea.
He had nothing to do for the next few days except analyze data and he had been intending to go to the central hexagon to provide his assistance.
Heading to the desert planet, Muk, would at least give him something to do...help him shake some of this loneliness he was feeling—which, for some reason, had become more pronounced since that mission where they’d rescued those humans.
Still gazing out the window that looked out into the street below, Kyro nodded.
“That would probably be a goo...” his voice trailed off as soon as he saw her.
The human he’d just been thinking