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The transmission came through just past the edge of known space, little more than a wisp of corrupted data pulsing against a sea of static.
It was fragile—barely a blip—but Ug knew the moment it appeared on the console screen that it wasn’t just noise. It was a signature he hadn’t seen in years.
Krite DNA.
“Pulling the coordinates,” Lee’s voice crackled softly through the intercom.
He stood behind Ug at the nav-station, his tall form steady, arms folded across his chest in quiet concentration.
The pale light from the screen threw long shadows over his angular features, his default face—a human mask he’d worn since their earliest missions—unchanged despite the years. Still sharp-eyed. Still unreadable.
But Ug knew better. He had known Lee long before either of them took humanoid forms. Before emotion had names. Before silence felt heavy.
“That signal’s old,” Lee said, frowning. “Buried under a dozen years of decay.”
Ug turned slightly toward him. “Doesn’t matter. It’s active. That means something’s down there.”
Lee leaned closer to the display, studying the jagged terrain of the planet below—an unnamed,
unregistered world choked in dense atmosphere and half-dead orbit. “There hasn’t been Krite activity logged in this sector in over a decade. We would’ve heard.”
“Maybe.” Ug paused. “Or maybe someone didn’t want us to.”
The silence that followed was a familiar one—sharp, not awkward. One built over years of shared missions and unspoken things. Outside the ship’s viewports, the planet loomed like a bruise in space. Blue-green swirls covered most of its surface, but faint outlines of structures peeked through the fog and tree canopy.
An old colony, by the looks of it. Long abandoned.
Lee stepped back from the console and picked up his rifle without a word.
Ug followed suit.
They landed near the edge of the colony ruins, where half-submerged buildings jutted up from the overgrowth like broken teeth.
The air was thick, damp with decay and moss, the kind that crept into armor joints and muted the echo of their footsteps. Old metal moaned in the wind. Trees pushed up through shattered floors. Jungle vines hung down like skeletal fingers.
“Definitely Earth-colony tech,” Lee said as he scanned a collapsed structure. “Early design. Civilian-grade. No defensive grid.”
“No wonder they didn’t last,” Ug muttered, crouching beside a rusted crate where old medkits had long since been picked clean. “This wasn’t a military outpost.”
“Maybe a terraform attempt. Or a failed mining camp.” Lee moved ahead, brushing aside the vines with one hand. “No logs. No distress beacons. Just that genetic ping.”
“And bones.” Ug kicked aside a broken metal plate, revealing the remnants of a decomposed skeleton beneath. “Not all of them human.”
Lee crouched beside him, his expression unreadable. “Krite bite marks.”
Ug nodded grimly. “Looks recent.”
Lee stood slowly, eyes sweeping the shadows between the crumbling walls. “Then something’s still here.”
They moved together without speaking, rifles at the ready, each step falling into rhythm like muscle memory. They had hunted side by side for years—more years than most species lived. There were no orders between them anymore. No need.
Still, something about this place made Ug uneasy.
Maybe it was the way the quiet pressed in on them. Or how the trees seemed to grow thicker the farther they went, the foliage swallowing the light and softening every sound. Or maybe it was the way Lee glanced back at him every so often—like he could feel it too.
They passed through the remnants of what had once been a communications hub. The antenna spire had snapped in half, its top buried beneath moss and vines. Scratched metal. Old bloodstains. Scorch marks.
Krite territory.
Lee stopped, holding up a fist. Ug halted beside him, rifle raised. Lee knelt, pressing gloved fingers to the ground. Dirt disturbed. Crushed under something heavy. His fingers paused at a shallow groove—a Krite trail. Fresh.
Ug scanned the area slowly. “How many?”
“Could’ve been just one,” Lee said, rising to his feet again. “Doesn’t mean it still is.”
Ug gave a short nod, then paused. “Lee.”
Lee looked at him. The wind stirred a strand of hair loose beneath his helmet.
“Be careful,” Ug said.
Lee’s expression softened—just slightly. “You always say that.”
“And you never listen.”
A rare smile tugged at the edge of Lee’s mouth. “Still here, aren’t I?”
Ug said nothing, but his fingers tightened just slightly around the grip of his rifle.
They moved on.
The Krite struck without warning.
One moment, the ruins were silent. The next, a blur of black fur and razor teeth launched from the underbrush with an ear-splitting shriek. Ug fired instinctively, but the shot went wide, and the creature slammed into Lee, jaws latching onto his side in a spray of blood.
Lee shouted, stumbling back, and shot point-blank into the Krite’s skull. The thing exploded into gore and charred fur, its body falling twitching to the ground.
“Lee!” Ug was already at his side, catching him as he collapsed against the base of a rotting support beam.
Lee gritted his teeth, breath coming fast. “It got through the armor.”
Ug dragged him into cover, heart pounding as he yanked open the damaged plates. The bite had gone deep—teeth puncturing through to the ribs. Blood soaked the inner layers, dark and slick, and the edges of the wound were already darkening with toxin. Krite venom.
Ug didn’t hesitate. He slammed a field injector into Lee’s side, the hiss of pressure audible over Lee’s quiet groan.
“Stay awake,” Ug said, cradling Lee’s face in one hand. His fingers brushed across too-cold skin. “You hear me?”
Lee’s eyes fluttered open. “Don’t… baby me,” he murmured, even as his hand gripped Ug’s wrist weakly.
“You were nearly gutted,” Ug snapped. “I think I’ve earned the right.”
Lee gave the faintest huff of breath that might have been a laugh. “You always this gentle?”
Ug didn’t answer. He was already unpacking the med-gel, slathering it into the wound with quick, practiced motions. Lee hissed in pain, muscles clenching beneath him, but didn’t pull away. Ug’s hand lingered—just a moment longer than necessary.
“You should’ve stayed behind,” Ug murmured.
Lee’s eyes met his. “If I had, you’d be dead.”
Ug stopped. His hand was still on Lee’s chest.
“You always do that,” Lee whispered.
“Do what?”
“Throw yourself in front of me like I’m made of glass.”
“You’re not,” Ug said. “But I am.”
Lee blinked, confusion flickering across his features.
“You?”
Ug looked away.
“I’ve lost everything else,” he said, voice low. “I won’t lose you too.”
The silence between them this time wasn’t sharp—it was heavy. Slow. Like the gravity of something that had been orbiting them for years was finally crashing down.
Lee’s breathing had slowed, but his fingers curled into Ug’s sleeve. “You know,” he said hoarsely, “we never really talk about what’s left. After the war. After all of it.”
“Because there’s nothing left,” Ug replied.
Lee’s hand tightened on his arm.
“There’s us,” he said.
And Ug couldn’t bring himself to deny it.
The forest swallowed them.
Ug moved fast but careful, one arm wrapped around Lee’s waist, the other gripping his rifle tight against the weight of the silence pressing in from all sides.
Each step was a struggle over roots and broken metal, crumbling colony walls overtaken by moss and clawed vines. The light was fading fast beneath the dense canopy, and behind them, the path of blood they left gleamed dark and wet under the alien sky.
Lee’s weight dragged against Ug’s side, heavier with each step. He wasn’t unconscious—but close. His breath rasped unevenly, pain flaring sharp in his every inhale. Still, he didn’t complain. He never did. Lee bore pain like he bore everything else: with a clenched jaw and that endless, quiet pride.
Ug hated it.
“Just hold on,” he muttered, not sure if he was talking to Lee or himself.
They found cover in the shell of what had once been a storage hub, partially collapsed but still standing on the far edge of the colony ruins. The thick outer walls, now overgrown with roots and vines, formed a kind of natural camouflage, and inside, the air was dry and cool. It would have to do.
Ug kicked aside a rotting support strut and lowered Lee down onto the least-damaged section of floor. He went slow, careful, adjusting his grip until Lee was resting upright against the wall, his body trembling beneath the battered plates of armor. His skin was too pale. Sweat dampened his brow.
Ug dropped to one knee and immediately unlatched Lee’s chest plate. It took effort—dried blood had already glued part of the outer layer to his undersuit. Lee hissed but didn’t flinch. He was barely clinging to the edge of consciousness.
“Lee,” Ug said, his voice low and sharp. “Talk to me. Stay with me.”
Lee’s eyes fluttered open, pupils unfocused. “Still here.”
Ug’s throat tightened. “Good. That’s good.”
He peeled back the rest of the armor and froze.
The bite was worse than he thought. Punctures deep enough to reach bone, a mess of torn flesh and blackened tissue spreading outward in angry, toxic veins. Krite venom. Already metabolizing too fast for their suppressants to fully keep up.
Ug didn’t speak. He just worked—cleaning the wound with the remaining sterilizer, applying a double dose of med-gel, and setting a field injector directly above the worst of the bite. The hiss of pressure was followed by a sharp intake of breath from Lee.
His body arched slightly, hand curling into a fist.
“I know,” Ug muttered. “I know it burns. Just let it take.”
Lee blinked slowly, pupils dilating and shrinking with the chemical surge. His gaze locked on Ug—not the usual flat, analytical stare, but something rawer. Something scraped open.
“Hurts less,” he murmured. “When you’re touching me.”
Ug’s hands stilled.
The words hung there between them, unacknowledged and yet impossibly loud. Lee wasn’t lucid—not fully. His mind was slipping in and out of awareness, the venom affecting cognition, but that didn’t make it untrue.
Ug reached up and brushed his knuckles lightly against Lee’s jaw, then across his brow, wiping away the sweat.
“Then I’ll keep touching you,” he said softly.
For the next hour, Ug didn’t leave his side.
He set a proximity alarm at the broken entrance and reinforced it with an old storage panel. Then he sat cross-legged beside Lee and watched. Monitored every breath, every tremor. His hands stayed busy—adjusting the temp-wrap around Lee’s chest, reapplying pressure to the worst of the wound, occasionally offering him water he barely had the strength to swallow.
Lee drifted in and out. Sometimes he murmured things—half-formed sentences, memories that didn’t belong to the moment.
“Zeta-twelve… the gas storm…”
Ug leaned in. “I remember.”
“You were covered in ash,” Lee mumbled. “Tried to look intimidating.”
Ug allowed himself the smallest smile. “I was intimidating.”
“You had soot on your nose.”
“You laughed at me.”
Lee’s lips twitched faintly. “I did.”
Silence stretched. Then:
“You broke into the rig,” Lee said, eyes distant. “Tore off the roof. Risked everything.”
Ug’s voice was low. “You would’ve done the same.”
“You didn’t hesitate.”
Ug looked down at his hands—at the blood, the dried med-gel, the trembling curl of Lee’s fingers near his own.
“I didn’t think,” he admitted. “I couldn’t. I just knew you were in there. And I knew I wouldn’t leave without you.”
Lee was quiet for a long time.
Then, voice hoarse: “That’s… incredibly romantic.”
Ug looked up sharply.
Lee’s eyes met his. Clear now. Awake. The fever hadn’t broken, but the clarity in his gaze cut through the room like light through a storm.
“You’re lucid,” Ug said, half-relieved, half-guarded.
Lee blinked once, slow. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t mean it.”
Ug sat still, breathing like something dangerous was pressing against his ribs. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll believe you.”
Lee’s gaze didn’t falter.
“Good.”
It was a simple word. But the force of it hit harder than any blast they’d ever survived together.
Ug exhaled slowly and looked away, the tension in his shoulders not loosening so much as shifting. Becoming something heavier. Realer.
“We’re not built for this,” he said finally. “We don’t even know what this is.”
Lee’s fingers twitched. His hand lifted and hovered, uncertain for a moment, before resting lightly—deliberately—over Ug’s.
“We don’t have to name it,” he said.
Ug looked down at their hands. At the way their fingers barely touched, but that contact still burned straight through him.
“You never let yourself be touched,” Ug said, voice rough. “Not like this. Not for comfort. Not even for triage.”
Lee didn’t let go.
“I do now.”
Ug turned his hand and enclosed Lee’s fingers in his own.
The touch was quiet. Steady. Not desperate—but certain. And years in the making.
Night on the planet was darker than space.
No moons, no stars—just the dense canopy above and the low hum of wind through metal and leaves. The air outside turned cold, sharp with damp and decay, but inside the shelter, their warmth held close.
Ug kept Lee near. Propped upright against his side now, one arm wrapped lightly around his shoulders—not restraining, just steady. His palm rested across Lee’s sternum, rising and falling with each breath. He could feel the tremors when they came. He could feel the heartbeat, slow and unsteady.
He had carried Lee through battlefields, dragged him out of explosions, rebuilt his body from fractured data after digital collapses. But nothing had ever felt as fragile as this moment.
“You’re still with me?” Ug asked quietly.
Lee’s voice was softer. “I’m here.”
“You’re stabilizing,” Ug murmured. “Venom’s breaking down.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m relieved.”
Lee’s head tipped lightly against Ug’s shoulder. Not asleep. Not fully. But resting. Allowing rest.
Ug let his hand drift up to his shoulder, brushing across the edge of his collarbone where skin met armor. His fingers paused, then stayed—warm and steady.
“How long have we been doing this?” Lee asked, almost to himself.
“Too long.”
“Not long enough,” Lee countered.
Ug’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Lee shifted slightly, wincing, “I didn’t realize how much time we wasted. Not saying things.”
Ug didn’t answer for a while. Just sat there, his thumb moving slowly across Lee’s shoulder, grounding them both.
Finally: “I didn’t say it because I didn’t want to lose you.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does,” Ug said. “If I said something… if it changed everything between us… and then I lost you anyway…” He trailed off. “I couldn’t survive that.”
Lee’s voice was low. Tired. But resolute. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Ug closed his eyes.
“Promise?”
Lee leaned into him, not with his body, but with the weight of everything they’d never allowed themselves before. All the years of side-glances, the wordless understandings, the too-quick retractions when hands brushed in tight quarters.
“Promise,” Lee said.
And Ug held him closer.
Lee woke to the scent of metal and moss, heat pressed against his side.
At first, he thought he’d slipped again—into one of the many half-dreams that had plagued the fever, stitched together with smoke and the echo of Ug’s voice. But then he registered the weight of an arm around his shoulders. The subtle rise and fall of a chest. The steady rhythm of breathing not his own.
And the warmth. Real, solid, undeniably there.
Ug.
Lee shifted slightly, testing his limbs. His ribs still ached. The punctures on his side screamed when he moved, but he could breathe. Think. Speak.
Ug stirred beside him. “You’re awake.”
Lee looked at him—really looked—and felt that same strange pull in his chest, that weightless drop he'd felt too many times before and tried to ignore. But not now.
“Didn’t mean to fall asleep,” Lee muttered, voice rough from disuse.
“You needed it,” Ug said. “Your fever broke a few hours ago.”
“You stayed.”
“Of course.”
A silence passed between them—one that was no longer filled with all the things they couldn’t say, but instead, with everything that had been said already.
Lee looked down, and noticed Ug’s hand still resting against his chest. Not holding. Just there.
Anchoring.
He let it stay.
“I remember everything,” Lee said softly. “What I said. What you said.”
Ug didn’t pull away. “Good.”
Their eyes met again, and in that quiet, there was something new—peace, maybe. Or the beginning of it.
Then the alarm at the doorway flickered red.
Ug was on his feet in a second, gun in hand. Lee winced and pushed himself upright, slower, stiffer, but functional. He retrieved his rifle from where it leaned against the wall, breath shallow but steady.
Ug glanced back at him. “Can you fight?”
“I can stand.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Lee managed a smirk. “I’ll be fine. Just cover me if I start bleeding dramatically.”
Ug didn’t return the smile, but the look in his eyes said enough. I will.
The motion outside grew louder—skittering through the underbrush, fast and low. The familiar chitter and snarl of Krites.
More than one.
Ug took position at the broken doorway, scanning through the scope. “Three targets. Maybe four. Moving erratically.”
Lee joined him, shoulder to shoulder, his presence as familiar as the weapon in Ug’s hand.
“Guess they want their planet back,” Lee muttered.
“They’ll have to go through us.”
It wasn’t bravado. Just truth.
They moved together without thinking, as they always had. A unit. A single living weapon honed over years. Ug’s fire was steady and ruthless—blasting the first Krite apart in a single burst. Lee, despite his injuries, covered their flank, dropping another with a shot through its eye.
The third got closer.
It tore through the doorway in a blur, jaws wide, rows of teeth dripping. Ug stepped in front of Lee without hesitation, shielding him with his body as he fired point-blank.
It exploded into black ichor.
Lee coughed at the mess. “You’re going to need a bath.”
Ug glanced over his shoulder. “You’re the one covered in venom.”
The fourth creature didn’t come. Or if it did, it slunk away, understanding too late that the ambush had failed.
Silence returned. Thick and humming.
Ug lowered his weapon slowly.
Lee leaned against the doorway, breathing hard, one hand gripping his ribs. “I’m okay.”
Ug reached for him anyway. Gentle. Intentional. He placed a hand against Lee’s side, testing for deeper wounds. Then slid that hand up, resting it against the side of his face, thumb brushing along the sharp line of his cheekbone.
“Don’t do that again,” Ug said.
“Get bitten? I’ll try.”
“No. Get between me and death.”
Lee stared at him. “I wasn’t going to let it take you.”
“You’re all I have,” Ug said quietly. “All I want.”
Lee’s breath caught.
They stood in the open doorway, the forest breathing around them, ash still floating through the canopy from Ug’s last shot.
Then slowly—without hesitation—Lee reached out and placed his hand over Ug’s chest.
Not on the armor.
On him.
“I know we don’t do this,” he said. “Whatever this is. But I want to.”
Ug’s hand slid down to cup the side of his neck, thumb just beneath his jaw, the pressure steady and grounding.
“We’re not human,” he said. “We don’t love like they do.”
Lee leaned into the touch. “Then let’s love how we do.”
That broke something open in Ug. Something wordless. Something that had lived dormant beneath years of war and orders and silence.
He stepped forward. Closed the space between them.
And pulled Lee into his arms.
It wasn’t a kiss. It wasn’t tentative or trembling. It was solid—an embrace built from memory and grief and ache. Ug’s arms wrapped around Lee’s back, pulling him in as if to shield him from everything, even now. Lee folded into him just as fiercely, one arm around his neck, the other gripping his shoulder like he was anchoring himself there.
Their heads rested together. Foreheads touching. No words. No movement. Just them.
Alive. Together.
Still here.
Later, after clearing the last of the signal’s interference and setting a beacon for extraction, they sat side by side at the colony’s edge, overlooking what remained.
The forest had begun reclaiming the ruins in earnest. The morning light cut through in shards, breaking across the vines and the bones of steel beams.
Lee rested his head against Ug’s shoulder. Ug didn’t move.
After a long time, Lee whispered, “What do we do now?”
Ug looked down at him.
“We stop pretending we’re alone.”
Lee didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes and leaned in closer.
And for the first time in their long, war-streaked history, the silence between them didn’t ache.
It simply was.
And that was enough.