Forsaken Realms (Bounty Hunters United Book 1) (14 page)

“I’m not ready to put my clothes on. Can we risk a quick swim in the pool?”

He appeared hesitant.

“A quick dip?”

“All right.” A big smile burst across his face.

She reached for her bra and panties.

“Leave them.” While grabbing her hand he leaped off the bed and pulled her to the mouth of the cave.

The cool mist of the waterfall made her skin pebble.

“Hold on!” She tried to wriggle free of his grip. “I’m not one of those people who likes to jump into cold water. I have to start slow, one foot at a time.”

He released her hand and bolted past her, charging under the falls, shouting a war cry. A second later, he dove into the pool, making a tremendous splash. “Oh!” Syan surfaced with a gasp. “It is cold.”

“Ha! I warned you.” She laughed as she carefully navigated her way around the rocks and waterfall. Syan was already paddling in the middle of the pool on his back with his black hair flowing around him. He looked so striking against the vibrant blue tones of the pool. She stepped onto the muddy bank and inched her way into the water, sucking in a deep breath. Soon she stood in cool water to her waist and cupped her hands to get a long drink.

He circled toward her, swimming silently, submerged like a crocodile with only his eyes hovering above the waterline.

“What are you doing?” she asked in alarm.

Syan surfaced as he sped toward her. “Finding out if you’re ticklish.”

Knowing she was terribly ticklish she bolted. “No!” Gemmina burst into motion, trying to reach the water’s edge before he grabbed her. Stumbling forward, she lurched onto the bank, laughing and struggling not to slip on the wet clay. Syan grabbed her from behind, lifted her to his chest and spun in a dizzying circle.

“Stop!” she squealed. “Put me down, I don’t want to be tickled.”

Covering her throat in kisses, he also gave her a playful nip. “Maybe we should return to the cave,” he said softly. “I want you again.”

With a gentle hand, she slicked his wet hair from his face. “Wouldn’t it be nice if this was our place and we had nothing to worry about?”

His expression sobered. “I know you are a loner, Gemmina, but do you think you might enjoy sharing a home someday with someone?”

“Someone?”

“Could you picture yourself sharing your life with me?”

Her breath caught. This was dangerous ground. She had no business answering this question, especially under the influence of a claim bite. It was madness, but she wanted important things said before reason stomped them flat. “Given a little time, I think I could.”

A big grin ignited his face as he set her down. “Now I will tickle you.”

“Forget it!”

Twisting free, she darted across the muddy bank with Syan in close pursuit. A shallow pit dug into the damp ground brought her to an abrupt halt with arms flailing.

“Look!”

He stopped to examine the spot where he had buried yesterday’s fish scraps. The wet earth had been savagely clawed and giant paw prints peppered the ground. “A syan was here.”

From the look of the tracks, the animal was huge with a long stride. The tiny hairs on her neck stood. The blast sticks were in the cave. They were completely vulnerable in the open. What the hell had she been thinking to stop and play in a place like this?

A loud whir rose in the distance. The silvery glint of a patrol craft came into view. It flew in a lazy zigzag above the jungle canopy, scanning the ground.

“Quick, get inside the cave! We need our gear.” She sprinted along the bank and ducked under the waterfall. As soon as she reached her clothing, she scrambled to pull it on with shaking hands. “Fill the canteens, and make sure your blast stick is on its highest setting. If we coordinate our fire, we might be able to make a dent in the skin of that patrol craft and bring it down.”

Syan dressed with a somber expression on his face. “I have not been doing a good job of looking after you.”

With brisk efficiency she deflated the mattress and returned it to the pack. In a flash, she was fastening the straps of her boots. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Your welfare is my responsibility. I bit you. Your judgment and senses are impaired.”

“Do I seem impaired to you right now? I ran like a rabbit and was the first one inside the cave.” She grabbed a blast stick and a pack. “I’m ready to rock and roll.”

He looked confused. “I thought it was time to defend ourselves? What does a rolling rock refer to?”

“On Earth it’s a type of music that never seems to go out of style.”

“We are being hunted by patrol craft and a predator with large fangs. We do not have time for music.”

A long sigh whistled past her lips. “I’ll explain later.”

The patrol craft swooped overhead so low that its engines were easily heard even above the roar of the waterfall.

Syan froze. “Their scanners must have sensed movement in this area.”

She adjusted her pack straps with shaking fingers. “Hopefully the waterfall will distract them.”

“If we get lucky, they’ll waste their morning tracking the syan.”

They waited in cautious silence as the craft finished combing the area and flew over a distant ridge. To be safe, they remained in the cave until the rising tension forced her to speak.

“Let’s move. Grab a tube of protein paste and eat it on the march. I’m already sick of being chased by these bastards. I’m ready to sneak up on Naveen’s compound and get this over with. It’s their turn to be scared of me.”

“I’m glad I’m not on your bad side.” He dug into the pack, found a tube of protein paste and tossed it to her. Gallantly, he reached for her pack. “I’ll carry that. We’ll travel faster.”

Reluctantly, she handed the pack over. “Are you sure?”

Both packs were slung over his shoulders, and he motioned for her to follow. “We are at least a full day’s hike from the compound.”

It was a relief to have him carry her pack. “My tracking instincts say farther, but we’ll have to see.”

His lip curled. “What do your tracking instincts tell you about the syan?”

“Let me take a look around the pool. I’m surprised I didn’t get a sense of its presence last night and wake up.” They exited the cave. She paused on the muddy bank to sniff the air. “I don’t smell a big cat in the area, which is odd. It fed here. You would think it would want to mark its territory, but I’m not familiar with animals from your part of the galaxy.”

“You’re right. A syan is very cunning. It doesn’t leave many clues to where it has been.”

Her sideways glances were quick and tense. “Besides being big, hungry, and terrifyingly stealthy, what am I looking for?”

“A syan has a long boney tail it can use like a whip, large padded paws with claws as long as your hand covered in fur for silence as it stalks, and a moss-green coat with dark green stripes.”

“Natural camouflage green-on-green, terrific. The cat has every advantage in the jungle.”

“Don’t forget, I’m a syan too. I have my tricks also.”

“We’re going to need them today.”

They climbed out of the ravine and headed toward a dense growth of jungle.

Gemmina scrambled over the ravine’s rocks fast. “Hurry. I don’t like being out in the open. I was thinking we should start formulating a battle plan. What are we going to do once we reach the compound? There’re only two of us versus an army of Jason Naveen clones. We can’t do this by brute force alone.”

He shook his head. “There is no army.”

“Am I using the wrong word? I meant Jason’s Naveen’s private security force. There seemed to be an unlimited number of cloned soldiers ready to do his bidding.”

“Naveen wants you to think that but actual matters are different.”

“What are you talking about? I saw them. Jason Naveen has cloned himself. A few of them roughed you up pretty good, remember? Those are the guys I’m talking about.”

“I know who you are talking about, but there is no army. The only security Naveen has is the handful of men you saw.”

“No, you must be mistaken. Jason Naveen can’t run this entire planetoid on a skeleton crew. I’ve heard rumors for years that he surrounds himself with his own private army for protection.”

Syan took long, fast strides that were challenging to keep pace with. “Perhaps that’s what he wants people to believe, and it may have been true at one time, but it is a lie now. I was held captive inside the compound for days, perhaps weeks while he decided what should be done with me. I saw no more than six clones who were functional and several very sickly clones who seemed to be suffering from severe health issues. But even the functional clones had problems. They would appear to be fine and then they would visibly age and become incapacitated within hours. They rotated in shifts, several would work while their brothers received medical attention.”

“I saw Jason Naveen go through something horrific as well. So all is not well in paradise.” Her boots became caked with damp earth as they marched uphill. “I’ve been trying to piece this together, but I can’t seem to figure it out—why did you confront Jason Naveen alone?”

“I had to. I am the standing ambassador. The rest of the Kironian council was away in other sectors.”

“What did Naveen have to say for himself?”

“A lot of things. Naveen was eager to sign a treaty with Kiron and compensate for the injury and death he caused on Sarna. I wanted him to sign a legal document admitting to what he’d done-regardless of his reasons. That’s when I got my nasty surprise. I was kidnapped and treated like a lab animal. It became clear to me Naveen had another agenda to fulfill.”

“You were kidnapped? That makes no sense. With the Kironian political sequester in place, why would he cause even more trouble for himself?”

“I don’t know, but I plan to kill him for what he’s done.”

“You still might get that chance. What do you think he wanted with Sarna?”

A dismissive wave of his hand. “Naveen wanted all of this. Everything you see. Sarna has been a stable, life-filled planet for billions of years. It attained a rare state of balance. Jason Naveen wants to live forever with his DNA in perfect balance as well, but it doesn’t look like he’s achieved it.”

Revulsion shivered up her spine. “It’s weird, but when you said that, I got a strong mental image of someone I used to know in New Mumbai.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. I don’t want to waste time thinking about him. What about the men and women of Sarna? You called them a grandparent culture. Are they physically like you?”

Syan glanced over his shoulder. “Do you mean do they look Kironian? No, the people of Sarna are a separate race of humanoid, far smaller with scaly gray-green skin.” Syan formed an image in his mind of stout, almost reptilian-looking creatures with froglike faces.

“Oh.” She recoiled. “Based on Jason Naveen’s current appearance, I don’t think he’d choose to clone himself in the image of a Sarnaian.”

“Naveen liked Sarna enough that he was inspired to set up shop, clone, and destroy large sectors of the planet.”

“And the Sarnaians are the perfect victims to toy with. Lots of virgin real estate and no technology to retaliate with, and no real contact with other worlds.”

His answer was emphatic. “The Sarnaians do have real contact as you called it. I am their ambassador and they telepathically warned me all was not well.”

The march uphill drained her of the little energy she had awoken with. “Why destroy Sarna? I don’t understand that part.”

“I am not sure, but I believe it was an accident. Perhaps it was an experiment in accelerating the life processes of a Sarna, which are already exceptionally fast. I suspect Jason Naveen was playing God with a new technology that forces DNA to replicate far faster than is safely possible.”

“What do you mean? Do the cells of living things replicate too fast and die of exhaustion?”

“No, living things become so unstable they implode at the cellular level.”

“They collapse?”

“Yes.”

“One of Jason Naveen’s security guards showed me a scanned image of blackened bodies. I could barely tell what they were. The guard said you did it—that you turned some sort of energy weapon on a tribal village and watched them burn.”

He paused and allowed her to catch up. “Do you still believe I am guilty?”

“No, of course not.”

“I think Jason Naveen and his team killed those people and scorched the jungle.”

“Why?”

“To obliterate the experiments that went wrong. My guess is the Sarnaians in that scanned image, and all the life around them were already dead or dying when it got blasted. I think Jason Naveen was trying to keep his hideous experiments a secret.”

She stroked her hand against her arm. “That gave me the chills. I used to think Jason Naveen was greedy and eccentric. Now I think he’s a monster.”

Progress slowed as they headed deeper into the jungle. A somber sense of claustrophobia hung over this sector of the planetoid. This place felt like a forsaken realm that no one would willingly choose to occupy. Here, the interwoven vines were so dense they seemed to have formed a huge inverted basket that blotted out the sky. The shadows swallowed the daylight and only the rare spot of sunlight on fallen leaf litter reached the forest floor. There appeared to be more dead leaves on the ground than there were live on the branches. When Syan struck a grayish clump of brush with the machete it cracked with a brittle
snap
.

Gemmina walked behind as Syan cleared a path through the tangle. The task dragged. She squinted at a sun that barely shone on them and saw that a good portion of morning had fled. An odd sense of lethargy invaded every cell of her body and left her wishing for a nap. “This section of jungle doesn’t feel very lively. I haven’t heard a single bird or even an insect. It’s hard to describe, but this place feels like a void. It doesn’t smell very nice either.”

Syan wrinkled his nose. “It doesn’t.”

“It’s so dim here we can’t solar charge our blast sticks. We’ll have to pray we won’t need them.”

He stopped to examine a piece of twisted brown vine. “Something is wrong with this plant. It’s dry in the center and not holding moisture.” His glanced upward. “It’s also grown monstrously large. On Sarna, bava vine does not overgrow and choke itself like this.”