But how long had it been since she’d last had a chance to nurture anything, or anyone?
“Easy, girl. That’s it. You’ve been shoved around and beaten all your life. Now you get to see what a beautiful thing you’ve been missing. Come on, easy as you like. You can trust me. Trust me, lovely Danai. Take the hay from my hands.” Slowly, Varinia lifted half the bundle on her flat palms and held it out. Careful not to make any sudden moves. “Here you go,” she whispered without flinching as the mare reared and neighed and began zigzagging back and forth, back and forth, ever watchful, ever mistrustful. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Cautious, wide-eyed approaches. Incremental. Head bowed. Nostrils flared. Wanting, learning to trust perhaps for the first time. A desire punctuated by wild and vicious aversions, as though her shadow was winning a tug of war with her warmer angels. Subtle and uncharted, the mind of a horse. A gentle field of intuitions. One had to tread lightly and know where. Not trample, not flatten with aggression.
“It’s all right. Hear my voice. Come as close as you like. That’s it. There’ll be no threats here, no reprisals. You don’t know where you are, probably never have, but it’s safe here and you can roam all you want. You like this food? There’s plenty more where it came from. I’ve left bits for you on the rocks ’til now, but it’s time for you to come in and make some new friends. Here you are, just one bite…from my hands…”
Only a few feet away now, the mare’s nasal breaths were audible and nostalgic, her protestations less harsh and less frequent. Hunger and trust were a potent combination. She was inches away now. Varinia softened her voice to her most maternal whisper, to coax and gladden, hoping for a miraculous meeting of Darwinian minds a thousand light-years—
A slight ground tremor gathered momentum and in moments grew to an angry rumble. Danai bolted. End of session. The donkeys’ brays and a clattering of pots drew Varinia’s attention back toward the campsite.
The vats…uncovered!
She dropped everything and raced to save the soropholic acid before it spilled. The rumbling increased as she neared the tents, and the mine entrance…
Oh God.
Had something horrific happened inside? While she’d idled, playing horse whisperer…had Clay and Lyssa…?
She shut her eyes bitterly and with both hands gripped the back of her head. A torrid dust cloud billowed out of the mine entrance, which could mean only one thing.
Every miner’s worst nightmare.
A cave-in.
Clay? The idea of losing him hacked away at her heart. It was unendurable until she snatched up the nearest oxygen mask and, clamping it into place, braved the impenetrably thick, stifling dust. At the far end of the passageway, she stopped at a fallen boulder twice her size. She felt around its edges, but there was no way past. No way through. And worst of all…no cries for help from the other side.
A sickening caw hurtled round the massive tomb.
“Go! They’ve seen us.” Clay hooked his fingers over the grave’s base and heaved himself forward. The scurrying creatures, having fanned out from the center of the rose light, now about-turned and converged on him and Lyssa. The bastards’ pairs of clawed legs moved in sync, like a gallop, their long, muscular arms anchoring them with crazy agility. How could they move so fast through zero-g?
Lyssa kept an unswerving pace and focus right beside him, head bowed, holding to the line of graves that led directly to the aliens’ bright exit. Not far now. Twenty meters? But Christ, the things were heading them off.
“Faster,” he urged. “Ramp it up or we’ll never get there.”
Lyssa hissed and spat expletives, her pursed lips often millimeters above the coarse rock. He’d never seen a woman so determined in his life. He had an extra gear but he daren’t pull away from her. Not now. Not ever. He’d rip apart anything that tried to take her.
Clattering claws and ear-splitting screeches met from all sides. A few meters past the final grave, red light poured in through a large circular opening in the ceiling. Similar to the drainage ports in the vertical wall he’d climbed outside, but narrower. He gripped the edge, hooked himself inside it. Lyssa snatched his arm and he righted her. A tangle of scrabbling black limbs reached in after them but the bastards seemed to have blocked each other off. Only one of them could fit through at a time, and each wanted to be the first.
Clay used his fingertips to gain momentum along the tunnel. A bizarre doggie-paddle swimming stroke over rock, in midair. Any hint of unevenness in the cylinder became one more hand-hold, one more lifeline. The red pyro glow remained brilliant, near-blinding in the arteries of the rock. His shoulders and wrists and fingers began to ache. No sooner did Lyssa insist, “We’re nearly there, five more meters,” when the clattering and squealing resumed at their heels.
The pyro fell away suddenly. Clay wasn’t ready for the fall. A welcome back to gravity left him reeling on flat, translucent beige stone. Lyssa tumbled on top of him. No pain, only disorientation. He couldn’t remember if they were on the ceiling looking down, or on the floor looking up. Lyssa leaped to her feet.
“Get with it!” She yanked him up by his belt. “We’re going this way, right now.”
His head felt like a slinky spilling onto his shoulder. Stars peppered his vision and he staggered, as if his left side weighed ten times more than his right. She clasped his hand and pulled him after her, cursing under her breath. After about a dozen steps Clay reclaimed a measure of balance. Dizziness stirred the beige walls and floor into a creamy maelstrom, but he obeyed Lyssa’s guidance, conscious of the clattering about to spill out of zero-g at any moment.
“You son of a bitch. That’s daylight.” She led him into a narrow gap to the left between the sides of two parallel arches. “Now we have a chance, you alien pieces of shit.”
It was a little cooler out here. Quieter. Lavender ocean beneath the roof of a miniature temple structure beyond the arches gave him hope. The more he focused on it, the more his dizziness subsided. He draped an arm over Lyssa’s shoulder. She returned the favor. Then a cloud drifted into view, and he realized that wasn’t the ocean but the sky. They’d climbed to the plateau itself, into the heart of the deserted alien city.
The clickety-click of clawed limbs grew fainter until he could hear only his and Lyssa’s heavy breathing. When that softened, the whuwh, whuwh of a persistent passing breeze reigned over their forgotten nook in this eerie megalopolis.
Chapter Sixteen
Born Nebula
After setting their oxygen masks down, Clay sank back into Lyssa’s warm embrace. He kissed her forehead, nestled his head on her quivering shoulder. The constant chill breeze shot through their open pores. He couldn’t fathom how such a precarious situation could feel so serene, so empty. Hazy silver light reflected off sister moons between two cruciform towers high in the mountains. What mysteries lay among the peaks and forgotten architectural curios? Was the zero-g tomb unique, a feat of technology, or did the mountains themselves hold a gravity-defying secret, some rare property inherent to pyrofluvium under certain conditions?
“So how do we get down? It’s such a long way.” Lyssa’s tired, blasé question had an uncharacteristic tinge of resignation, as though she’d put the onus on him to get them out. He didn’t like it. If trouble found them, and it might at any moment, he needed her on her toes and pissed off, not brooding.
“Either we find another passageway…” he said, “or we jump.” The latter, though reckless and incredibly dangerous, excited him. And it was bound to rub Lyssa the wrong way.
“That’s not funny.”
“No, but it’d be quick. None of this sneaking about, hoping we don’t get ambushed around every turn. These passages might be crawling with hostiles.”
“But jumping? Jesus Christ. You sure you got your bearings back? We’d never even clear the beach.”
“Maybe not near the campsite, no. But some of these cliffs jut out more than others. And if it’s high tide?”
“And if it’s low tide?” Lyssa pulled away from him. “I thought I was supposed to be the reckless one. You’re out of freaking orbit.”
“Yeah? Where’s your master plan, then, tomb raider? Leave it in your other bra?”
“Kiss my ass. You’d be tomb-fucked if it wasn’t for me, you limp dick…” She leaped to her feet, pursed her lips and made ready to stomp on him.
Shielding himself, Clay shot up. “Now we’re ready. I need you like this. You’re a pain in the ass but there’s no one I’d rather have pissed off at my side in a tight spot. Okay?”
“Whatever.”
“Still going to kick me?”
She helped him up, tapped his shin with the toe of her boot. “We get out of this, I’ll pay you back, don’t worry.”
“Deal.” Clay peered down the passage they’d escaped through. No sign of life. “Okay, we stay low, keep hidden, use the outer structures. We’re looking for any kind of opening for a staircase in the plateau, preferably close to the cliff edge.”
“You sure you don’t fancy jumping? I’ve got dibs on your magic lunchbox.” She tapped his rucksack containing the shrink carrier.
“Hey, the jumping was only for—”
Before he could finish, Lyssa rushed out ahead of him, crouching low, toward the Acropolis structure. A cat burglar in her prime. He followed for a few steps, then stopped, remembering the oxygen masks. If they did make it back, they might need those.
“Move it.” Lyssa thrust her arm out to the right, across the city’s edge.
He snatched up the masks and pelted toward her. He only caught glimpses of the plateau through archways and columns, but it had definitely darkened. Just like the prelude to the energy blast.
Lyssa inched onto her toes as he approached. At her starting blocks. She insisted, “No time for the stairs. First overhang we find, we jump.” Her terrified glance over her shoulder spun him, too.
The plateau writhed with the dark surge of a hundred jostling creatures. The first shrieks fed his sprint to the cliff’s edge. He stumbled but luckily regained his footing.
Lyssa was already overlooking the drop. A quick shake of the head and she raced off again, questing for a feasible platform from which to leap. Would the aliens follow? Or would they have their own way down? They weren’t gaining, that was for sure. Lightning crawlers in zero-g, but only in comparison to his and Lyssa’s hampered climb, and here they were second best.
“Anything?” he shouted.
“Maybe a promontory, another kilometer or so.”
“That’s our play.”
They set off again, at a more venerable pace this time—their pursuers appeared to have reached top speed and weren’t gaining. Every now and then, from the corner of his eye Clay glimpsed more monsters filing up from the cliff’s edge…and more, closer and closer. How were they scaling such sheer walls? Was there some kind of ladder? Creepers? Something he hadn’t noticed when he’d looked up from the beach?
He veered to the edge, held his breath and peered down. Hundreds of meters. His toes and stomach tingled. Surf crashing ashore was nothing more than a tiny, scrawled chalk line shimmering in a heat haze. Nothing about the rock seemed unusual or even vaguely climbable.
An ear-splitting caw made him jump. A moment later he was on his back, kicking against a muscular limb hooked around his ankle. No use—he couldn’t shake it loose. He leaned forward to grab it but without hand or footholds, he couldn’t check his momentum. The creature clung for dear life, and with a tremendous yank pulled him over the edge.
Lyssa’s cries of, “Clay. Clay,” flooded the sucked-out hollow that was his stomach in midair. Sheer death loomed. Straight down. No wings. The monster tried to toss him free but Clay grasped at its arm, its bristly legs, the squidgy pipes squirming from its shell-like torso. He gripped a pipe and squeezed. The creature squealed, flapped against the rock with only its arm and a couple of spindly legs holding it onto the rock.
He tried to scramble up his foe, to gain a hold of the summit. Whenever he relaxed his grip on the hot pipe, the creature struggled insanely. He had no time. The cacophony of caws and shrieks grew feverish from above, like the crash-landing of a poultry shuttle. In a desperate lunge he grasped the bastard’s uppermost claw, tore to supplant its grip. Fingertips versus claw tips. It lost them both their anchor. The creature’s arm-joint clicked and went limp. “No!” One last convulsion and the thing lost its hold, spilling them both from the cliff.
A soft whump, like kite fabric buffeted by a gust, jerked them into a spin. Clay let go of his enemy’s arm and lashed both his arms and legs around its shell. Wind gushed up his nostrils, raked his ears, but the beach still lay a good distance below. How? He glanced up. The monster’s arms were outstretched, and two fans of membrane-like skin, rudimentary wings, had peeled out from the side-pockets of its torso. Some sort of underwater gliding utility? Not enough to save a hurtful landing, but enough to give him a chance.
The creature didn’t struggle during the fall. Its trunk head receded into the top of its shell, and the only effort it seemed to expend was in holding its wingspan taut. Clay unwrapped his legs and readied to jump off before they landed.
Right, here we go…
A loud splash farther up the beach didn’t register at first. Not until he’d let go and heard his name screamed from that direction.
He crumpled onto the sand. Shards shot up his legs. They throbbed. A wingless arm lunged for his face. He ducked and rolled aside, then made straight for the white wake in the ocean.
“Lyssa.”
She’d made a helluva leap! The cliff overhang high above her wasn’t of much account, so she had to have hurled herself and hoped for the best. Crazy tomb raider. Watching her scramble out of the rough breakers unharmed made him realize nothing was impossible. They’d both just survived an incredible fall.
“Some honeymoon.” Fathoms of seawater spilled from her as she ran.
Her levity dropped with a dip of her head and a hunching of her shoulders. Sun and shadow blinked rapidly at him. He looked up. A blizzard of winged shapes filled the sky, many halfway down the cliff already, more leaping off the plateau as he watched. A menagerie of whumps and shrieks beat down on the beach. Heading back to the camp was now out—the bastards would land en masse right on top of them. Which left…
“Lyssa, behind you.”
A large crustacean somersaulted in the surf, and in midflip clicked its spindly legs together with a bizarre rhythm. Lyssa doubled her sprint away. The creature was merely the spearhead of a monstrous horde. They emerged in ominous formation, bent low in unison, before the lead beast halted. At this point all the others—at least forty—sprang upright behind it and thrust their pincers in Lyssa’s direction.
“That’s it.” She backed into him. “We’re trapped. We have to fight our way out.”
No shit. But the horror of being overrun and hacked apart piece by piece was not one he could share, not with Lyssa. She’d pledged her love to him and he wasn’t about to let her down when it mattered most.
The whumps grew louder above like a vast tarpaulin Big Top flapping in a gale, the shrieks like buckling metal. Clay hustled the rucksack off his shoulders and delved inside. The shrink carrier’s fabric gave a little as he pressed his thumbs against the invisible magnetic shield protecting the seams. Not just yet. He didn’t know the radius or the exact duration of his surprise. Wait until more of these bastards get close.
Still running, Lyssa shouted something he couldn’t hear through a shriek overhead. She rammed her finger up into the air. “Get out of the way!”
Claws thrashed about his face from above. He ducked, lost his footing. The falling monster snatched the carrier from his hands and tossed it away against the cliff. Christ. At least ten gliding enemies swooped in and landed between him and his weapon.
Incensed, he grabbed the nearest monster by its arm and wing sheath and rammed it head-first into the sand. Two more leaped on him, their pincers c
utting into his shoulders. It hurt like hell. He shook one off. Three more attacked his legs, slashing and biting, their war-like caws muffled beneath monstrous writhing limbs. Clay lunged to ground, knee-first, crushing the chest-pipes of two enemies. They squealed and let go, but three times their number rushed in instead.
With a huge effort he slammed two trunk heads together, then bit a hole in one. Salt and vinegary acid assaulted his tongue and nostrils, making him cough. He kicked and kicked but still the creatures piled in. One lanced its hind leg into his midriff, drawing a spurt of blood.
This first shock of pain not dampened by his adrenaline forced him to sit up and scream, “You bastards—get off me. I’ll kill the fucking lot of you.”
Still they muscled in, their chalk-on-blackboard screeches deafening. Their claws tearing his legs and back to shreds.
A scream louder than all the creatures’ combined made him fight even harder. Through a flurry of claws he discerned Lyssa’s boots and her long white legs. She darted this way and that, drawing and deflecting enemies with incredible rapidity. Most of the bastards attacking Clay suddenly desisted and tore after her instead. He seized the opportunity, snapped the arm off one. Another fell under his swinging punch.
“Try me!” She stood her ground, a lifeless monster slumped over her left shoulder, a lethal rock shard clasped in her right hand. “I’ve got your general. Come and get him.”
The last beast scurried away from Clay. Though gouged and badly slashed, his legs felt worse than they really were. At least he could stand, with a struggle. His back, sides and shoulders flamed and stung. Red raw.
An incredible stalemate now gripped the beach.
Lyssa had taken a hostage, the large creature that had spearheaded the marine landing. Hundreds of beasts scurried around her, forming attentive throngs no less than ten feet away from both her and Clay, as though this single prisoner-taking had called a ceasefire to the hostilities.
Sparks in Cosmic Dust Page 16