Page 62 of Lost in Barbarian Space

It felt like a laser blast to her heart. She didn’t want to be gone, and she didn’t want him to exile himself to die.

She hugged him closer. Then, over his shoulder, she spotted something in the ice wall.

“Colm, look.” She pulled back.

He turned and together they stared at the object frozen into the ice. They moved closer, and Honor pressed a hand to the icy surface.

“It’s a cockpit chair.” She looked up at him. “It’s a chair from a starship, and it looks old. It has to be from the Valhalla.”

“We must be close.” He stared at the artifact. “I want to find this ship, Honor. For Kavon, for my people.”

She nodded. “Then let’s find it.”

Colm watched Honor pull on her clothes and then search around in the backpack. She held up a small tool.

“It’s a laser cutter.” She pressed a button on it and a beam of orange light shot out. She turned, and pressed it toward the ice.

He watched in awe as she cut a huge chunk of ice from the wall. She reached in, melting the ice around the artifact. Then she set the laser cutter away.

He stepped forward and gently eased the chair from the ice. He set it down on the floor, and she set about examining it.

“Well, it looks like it was wrenched out of the cockpit, and it definitely looks Terran.” She scraped away some ice, then gasped. “Look.”

There was an image on the fabric of the chair. A circle with crossed swords…and the word Valhalla beneath it.

She smiled. “It’s from the ship. The rest of the wreck has to be really close.”

“Then we’ll keep searching.”

She stood, dusting off her hands. “Colm…the reason you don’t want to mate, it’s because of the nanami sickness?”

He touched her, gently pushing her hair back behind her ear. He wished things could be different. “If I could have a bondmate, it would be you.”

She looked up at him wordlessly, and the look in her eyes filled his chest with heat.

“Honor.”

She closed her eyes and pressed her face to his chest. “God, Colm. You’ve twisted me up inside. I never wanted a man, and certainly not a stubborn barbarian warrior.”

He pulled her close. Yes, neither of them had been looking for the other.

An echo of noise reached him. He tilted his head, cautiously letting his nanami expand his senses. He didn’t hear anything else, and thought he must’ve imagined it. But then he heard it again.

Honor lifted her head. “I think that⁠—”

“Shh, Honor.”

She went quiet, and he strained to hear more. It was a strange noise. Harsh. Unlike anything he’d heard in the ice caves.

And it was getting closer.

“We have to move.”

“The beasts again?”

He shook his head. She didn’t waste time with more questions. Colm pulled his knife from its sheath and cut the logo off the seat.

“Colm,” she whispered. “The astro-archeologists will have a fit.”