Deviation (25 page)

Another large, yellow flower bloomed in a thicket of brush and she dove for it, rolling to a sitting position as she gasped for breath. Back pressed to a log, Kate shut her eyes and coached her body into cooperating. When the slam of her heart finally lessened she realized that she still couldn't hear Myron. She couldn't hear anything beyond the lazy creak of branches overhead.

Kate turned, keeping low and hidden, to peer over the log.

At first there was nothing. No shouting, no rustling of leaves.

And then, to her immense relief, came the report of gunfire in the distance. It sounded as though it was coming closer and Kate began to search for something. Anything. The last thing Hedric would expect was an ambush from her. But time was severely limited and the only thing she could find was a hefty branch sunk halfway in mud.

A soft
woof
from just behind her sent a rocket of fear down her spine. It was so close she felt it rustle the hair at the back of her neck. And it was warm.

Terribly warm.

Kate froze as another sound sent every instinct she had roaring to life.

Mars or not. Alien or genetically altered or whatever, Kate recognized a growl when she heard one.

The log in front of her began to move, the yellow flower coming into sudden focus. Not a flower, she realized. A cluster of vibrant yellow spikes that looked absolutely deadly as she began to make out its true form.

The log was really a tail, her mind registered. The spikes were at the end of it. And the head ...

Another soft woof at the back of her neck and it growled again.

Kate had nothing. No weapon, no knowledge that she could remember; nothing to combat whatever massive beast was preparing to make her dinner. She knew it was big, though. Anything with a tail the size of a felled tree had to be substantial. She had the sense, that indefinable, instinctual sense that it was about to pounce. Or bite. The knowing of it sent a quiver of fear through her body and put every little hair she had to standing stiff. Her mind went blessedly blank and she found that she could move again.

Kate dove to the right, directly over the creature's tail. Only she'd forgotten the whole Martian gravity thing and found her descent excruciatingly slow. It roared and something sharp raked across her back, tearing through layers of robes and space suit. Pain seared into her skin and she gasped, ducking her body as the ground finally got close.

"Kate!" Myron's voice called out just as she hit the dirt.

She rolled over her shoulder, tucking her body in a well-practiced roll that would have made her instructors proud. Every damned inch of her flayed back pounded pain into her as she curled over pebbles and fallen brush, but she forced herself to finish the roll until she popped up onto her feet again. At the same moment she heard the hum-crack of a weapon, but didn't have time to breathe her relief. The tail crashed down in front of her, barring her escape route.

More shots rang out, and even in her dazed state she could tell this was from more than one weapon.

Whirling to the left, Kate caught sight of Myron, Hedric and Jellison, their animosity for each other apparently put on hold as they all dealt with the Martian creature. Her back ached but she battled her mind into functioning. She had to get clear of the creature.

Its tail suddenly swept toward her, so fast she didn't have time to blink. She swiveled to the left, desperately trying to avoid the yellow spikes at the end, but the trunk of the tail caught her in the legs anyway and she was flipped off her feet. Kate saw a blur of yellow as the tail came again, while she was still airborne, and pounded full-force into her solar plexus. She slammed into the ground again, sharp lights peppering her vision.

It held her there with its tail and Kate was forced to finally look at it.

It was reptilian, the head and facial structure of a komodo dragon. Only it was massive, towering over her by a good eight feet. And it had sporadic patches of flesh and fur, as though the genetic alterations that had been done might have included some sort of mammal. Kate wasn't a scientist and her mind couldn't locate what sort of beast she was looking at. She defied even Reesa to know its damned name, author or not.

Three rounds struck it at its midsection and the creature staggered back. Within a breath it had righted itself and let out a terrible scream that made her skin crawl.

It looked, Kate thought with horrified clarity, like the love child between Grendel and the Swamp Thing.

Another barrage of weapons fire forced it to lift its tail again. Kate rolled to the left and scrambled to her feet. Her vision swam with dizzy pain, but she spotted when the massive head swung toward her. She ducked, smelled something rotting in its breath as it tried to bite her, and stumbled over a rock. Its teeth gnashed together, unnervingly close, just before she heard a weapon go off in front of her. She didn't have time to look up. The ground trembled under her feet as the creature was forced to step back and then she launched herself up, charging forward with all her might.

She heard the other men firing from somewhere on her right, but kept her focus locked on where Myron lingered at the edge of the jungle. He didn't fire again, not until she'd gotten to his side. Then he fired three times, turned and grabbed her elbow.

"Run!" He yelled.

They took off together, leaving Hedric and the others to deal with the Martian beast.

***

Hedric saw Myron retreat with the girl and for an insane moment considered pursuing. It was Jellison who gave him focus, shooting five more times at the Dromodus and giving the pilot sufficient time to run. Most of Hedric wanted to argue with his soldier, cursing Myron to a dinner date with the Martian dragon, but somehow he knew that would be a bad idea. So instead he aimed his R413 and took up the fight.

The dragon growled and charged.

Reverberating tremors rumbled under his feet as it ran for him and he fired again.

Freeman showed up just at his left, cursing and lifting his weapon for the creature. But it had momentum behind its two ton mass and wouldn't be stopping. Hedric held his ground, waiting. He knew he'd only have a second to leap out of the way without getting hit. If he moved too soon the Dromodus would have time to redirect. If he moved too late he'd be barreled through, likely caught by its teeth and chomped into dinner.

There was a slight chance that he could die before the bite. Sometimes the dragon was known to smash its prey against the ground several times to prevent escape.

He thought of Mesa. He could almost feel the sleek, cool brush of her hair in his hands. He could smell her, soft and clean. He could see her, supple mouth swollen from his affection, her smooth, feminine face clouded with lustful longing. There was the light touch of bed linen all around them and her voice - finally her voice - sultrily murmuring his name.

Several shots fired from Freeman and Jellison's positions and the vision vanished. The feel of her hair was replaced with the solid, cold contours of his weapon. Her voice was lost in the rageful howl of the beast as it charged past the shots aimed at it.

Hedric shouted back at it and prepared for the jump of his life.

But he hesitated. The beast was far larger than he'd anticipated, its muscled legs pounding so hard into the moist dirt that he had to brace himself from the aftershocks. Its leathery, reptilian tail crashed into several trees. He spotted Jellison leaping out of the way, the spiky end of its tail missing his soldier by a hairsbreadth. Hedric tried to aim for the back of its throat, but missed, hitting it somewhere in the jaw instead.

If the creature hadn't had so much momentum behind it, Hedric knew it would have stopped right then. But it couldn't. Hedric glared at the massive form barreling down at him and tried to resign himself to the fact that he was about to get crushed.

Freeman knocked him over, sending Hedric sprawling to the left just before the Dromodus reached them. Hedric hit the ground hard, something sharp piercing through his left elbow.

Hedric's body got mostly clear of the warpath. He felt the solid smack of the dragon's clawed foot trip against his own legs. Freeman's weapon sounded several more times before a thunderous crash rent through the jungle. It was followed by the mingled snap of bones and branches as the Dromodus slammed into Freeman. Creature and man fell through the brush, disappearing down a ravine.

Hedric stared at the chaotic movement, immobile and in aching pain. A substantially sized twig had impaled the soft part of his elbow. Panting, he wished he'd put on his full combat suit before confronting Myron. At least then he wouldn't have broken anything. His right leg throbbed to sudden life as he rolled to his knees. An instant later Jellison was at his side. The soldier yanked him up, flung him bodily over his shoulder and began to retreat.

"Freeman," Hedric wheezed.

Jellison ignored him.

It was just as well, he thought dimly. There wasn't a chance Freeman had survived. The Dromodus, on the other hand, would likely be wounded but not mortally harmed. Jellison was right to get them out of there. The only thing worse than a Dromodus, was a pissed off Dromodus.

"What the hell?" Keats said as they reached the crash site.

Jellison lowered Hedric onto the gang plank of the ship. He was breathing hard, but still capable of functioning. He jerked his head toward Keats as though to ask what should be done with the engineer and Hedric, battered and tired, squinted down at the scrawny man in question.

"Dromodus," Hedric said.

Keats' eyes widened in horror and he glanced at the jungle. "Where are the others?"

"Freeman's dead."

"What about Myron and Kate?"

Hedric felt his eye twitch. "The hell if I know."

He turned and started limping onto the ship. He glanced back at Keats, who stood gaping at the jungle. For once, the engineer did not argue. In fact, Alexander Keats seemed bereft of any sort of speech. The man had a sense of self-preservation after all.

"
Scientists learned the hard way that men cannot undergo the same robotic and cybernetic surgeries that our Genetically Altered females can. Test subjects in Outpost 9 on Mars were overcome by dementia earlier today. Scientists believe the tragic results are attributed to the high levels of testosterone in the male genome."
- A.P. July 17, 2297

Reesa hated poker. She hated chess just as much. And now that she thought about it, she really hated all strategy games in existence. When push came to shove, Reesa was just a plain control freak. She enjoyed writing because she knew everything that all of her characters were doing and what they intended to do in the future. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that said something about her general character but she really didn't give a damn.

Not now anyway.

Not while walking through the highly militaristic corridors of the Novo Femina Citadel. Not while heading toward the largest gamble she'd ever made in her life.

Matthew walked beside her, calm as ever, as though they weren't walking straight into the lion's den. Many robed women wandered through the place, all of them holding a weapon and all of them staring at her. That alone was surprising. While some women were permitted to learn defense for survival purposes, it wasn't normal for so many to be armed.

Mesa had been trained by Hedric, a sort of relationship builder for the two of them when they had first married. And since they had opted to let Mesa stay on board it turned out to be for the best.

There was no menace directed at her, not yet anyway, but the silent gazes were unsettling anyway. It was almost reverent, the way they watched her, which gave her a deep foreboding in the marrow of her bones.

Matt seemed to sense her discomfort because he took her hand and tucked it into his elbow, debonair style, like they were in some Turner Classic Movie. It was such an unexpected, gallant move that Reesa smiled. He smiled back, gave her a roguish wink and led her into the central-most chamber of the Citadel.

Reesa felt immediately swallowed up by the vacuous room. Its vaulted ceilings and sleekly curved walls resembled the main galley of a luxury cruise ship. Only instead of plush, comfortable decorations and appealing carpets there was only metal. Metal and the occasional tapestry baring the Novo Femina heraldry of a Phoenix.

Matt stopped their progression just inside the chamber and leaned to her ear. "Everything is fine," he whispered.

Reesa nodded.

It was code.

Her mind filtered through all of the instructions that Matthew had laid out for her before they docked with the Citadel. She was to go nowhere alone, even if the Priestess demanded it. Matt was to be in her line of sight at all times. They could only speak in code because several of the women had heightened audio from surgically implanted robotics, including Celeocia Prosser. If she felt an overwhelming amount of stress she was to signal to him and he would take her home.

Home.

Her mind was a little fuzzy, but the image that word brought to mind wasn't what she'd been expecting. She should have thought of her apartment, or her boat. Possibly the Barnes & Noble three blocks from her complex. But certainly not Scotland bay beach. Borden's beach. That, she thought, was too bizarre for words. She hardly knew the man. And at the same time, she intimately knew him. It was all so complicated that she forgot where she was for a moment.

She'd stopped seeing Jake when she looked at him, which bothered her on some level. The lines between fiction and reality were blurred to the point that she kept forgetting she wasn't writing. This wasn't a daydream and she wasn't trying to build the plot of her next book, it was impossible and real at the same time. Matthew was solid under her fingers. The sound of his boots clicking against the metal floor matched her footsteps, with no echo or distortion.

Confused, she finally remembered that 'everything is fine' meant that the Fomorri had infiltrated the Citadel and were hunting for Kate. And now it was her job to keep Celeocia occupied until her friend had been located and delivered to the Io. Reesa took a deep breath and focused on the woman in the middle of the room.