She slowly struggled up on one elbow, trying to get herself upright. Her head felt strange, sort of fuzzy. What had happened to her? Had she fallen down? Hit her head? She remembered looking up and seeing the crabs climbing the rock wall above her. Charline had shot at them, and bits of them had spattered on her. Then nothing.
Reaching up to touch her face, her fingers met bits of a gooey substance. Bits of fleshy matter still clung to her cheeks and hair. She pushed back an urge to retch. There wasn’t time for that right now. They were still in trouble. Linda figured she could fall apart later if she wanted to. Ideally right after taking a bath.
“You’re awake!” Charline said.
“Yeah,” Linda said turning to face her friend. Charline was laying on the floor of the cave next to her. “What happened?”
“I was hoping you might tell me. You just fell over,” Charline said. “Oh! You mean the smoke? I set off a claymore mine. Ought to have bought us a little breathing room, at least.”
She staggered slowly to her feet. Linda tried to follow her up, but was too dizzy to stand at first. She kept feeling like she as floating, or drifting. Like she was surrounded by water. She made it as far as one knee and then flopped back over on her butt.
“Ouch!” Linda exclaimed. The landing hurt, but even the pain seemed distant, like it was through a haze. Part of that was the ringing in her ears left over from the explosion, but the other part? She felt strangely detached from herself.
“You OK?” Charline asked. She reached down a hand to pull Linda to her feet. “It looks like we took them down.”
Linda accepted the hand and allowed her friend to help her up. She was still woozy, but she was standing. Through the haze still floating through the cave, she saw that what Charline said was true. The mine’s explosion had devastated the wave of crabs and other scuttling beings that were attacking the cave. Shattered bits of shell and goo where spread all over the floor, walls, and ceiling. The place was a mess of mushed sea creature. A few of the animals were wounded, still switching or feebly crawling across the floor. But the invasion seemed to be over for the moment.
“That seems to have done them in,” Charline said. She brushed her hands together, smiling. “A job well done. Andy will be thrilled that the claymore practice paid off.”
“You blew them all up,” Linda said. For some reason that she couldn’t define, she wasn’t feeling happy about that. If anything she felt…sad. Which was strange. They were alien critters, sure, and she hated the loss of life. But why this sense of grief?
“It looks like I made a mess of you, too,” Charline said. She flicked a bit of shell out of Linda’s hair, then reached up to brush a drying bit of crustacean slime from her cheek. “You’re covered with goop.”
Charline’s fingers brushed Linda’s cheek, and it was all she could do to hold back a gasp. It was like there was an electric current running down those fingers, tracing lines along her skin as they brushed clear a little patch of debris. Every single emotion and hidden desire she had ever felt about anyone came bubbling to the surface all at once. It was like someone was picking over the memories attached to that sort of gentle touch, analyzing each one.
The result enflamed her. It was like being hit with a wall of all of the attraction she’d ever felt in her life, bundled into one moment and thrown at her with force. Charline’s fingers tried to brush loose another bit of something from her neck. This one was stuck fast. Charline’s nails tried to dig in at the edge of it, and clipped the skin of Linda’s neck instead.
The touch of those nails threw the last bits of her self control out the window. Linda reached up with both hands, wrapping them around Charline’s head. Then she leaned in and kissed her.
The kiss didn’t last long, but it seemed to do the trick. It took Charline’s breath away, anyway. Linda smiled at the shocked look on her friend’s face.
“Wh-what?” Charline asked.
Her mouth was still so tantalizingly close that Linda wanted to go for another kiss, but she stopped herself cold. The surge of attraction was already fading. It was being replaced by the grief she’d felt earlier - the sadness for the death and destruction Charline had wrought. Now those feelings were back, magnified many times over.
Linda reeled from the weight of this new emotion. It was overwhelming, especially right on the heels of a different strong feeling. She wanted it all to stop. She had to make it stop. She would do anything to make it stop.
With a start, she realized what she needed to do to end the feeling. She had to take the samples of her bacteria and throw them into the ocean. Only then would she be free.
Twenty-Four
Beth heard Dan’s message come over her radio. She just wasn’t listening. There was no way she was giving up on him this easily. The Naga were about to blow up the hangar? Fine. She’d blast her way out of the hangar and fly through the station if she had to, in order to get to him. If the corridors weren’t wide enough for the Satori she’d just enlarge them with the railguns until it worked.
“I am detecting a massive buildup of energy beneath the hangar floor,” Majel said.
“Some sort of weapon?” Beth replied.
“Likely the one Dan warned us about. If the scan readings are right, it will obliterate this section of the station.”
Beth didn’t reply. She was watching the railguns rain destruction down on the hangar wall. She’d punched through in more than one place, tearing huge rents in the wall. Another few shots and maybe she could fly the ship into the space beyond.
“Beth, we need to go,” Majel said. Her cool voice cut through the fog of Beth’s fury a little.
“Not without Dan,” she said.
“We’ll get the rest of the team and come back for him. It’s the best bet. For us and for him. My scanners are detecting another hangar on the other side of that wall. We can’t fly the ship to Dan, and you can’t fight all the Naga on this station alone.”
Beth wanted to come up with a good retort, but she couldn’t think of one. As much as she hated to admit it, Majel was right. If she went out there to fetch Dan she’d be shot, or captured herself. She needed the rest of the team.
“Damn it, I can’t just abandon him,” Beth said.
“You’re not. You’re bringing him the help he needs. I’ll signal to him that we will be back,” Majel said.
Then the AI took control of the ship. Beth could feel that the controls had stopped responding to her, but she didn’t object this time. Her face was wet. Damn the man for getting under her skin and then staying there.
Majel swung the ship’s nose away from the inside of the station and focused fire on the outer wall instead. The hangar doors might be closed - the Naga wanted to trap them in here for the fireworks. But as Beth watched the railguns fired carefully placed salvos at key points on the hangar doors. The top door tumbled away, pushed outside into space by the rush of air evacuating the hangar.
“Hang on, this is going to be close,” Majel said.
“Close for what?” Beth asked. She didn’t hear the reply, if Majel made one. The roar of the explosion bursting around them drowned out all sound. Majel fired the main thrusters on maximum. The force of the sudden acceleration slammed Beth back into the chair despite the ship’s inertial dampening. She gasped for breath as the Satori shot out of the fire spewing from the floor and leaped forward into the gap Majel’s shots had created in the doors.
It was going to be incredibly close. Beth was glad it wasn’t her hands on the controls anymore. She was fairly sure she’d have piloted the ship into the wall and ended up like a bug on a windshield. The explosive force buffeted the ship, bouncing her around as the ship burst out of the station and into the relative calm of space. Trailing fire, they sped away from the station.
“Activating cloaking device,” Majel said.
The Naga would send fighters after them, but they could both outrun and hide from the fighters without too much trouble. The hard part would be getting back
in, now that they were out.
“Head to the surface,” Beth said. “We need to get the rest of the team back together for this.”
She wished there was some way to signal the others, to let them know what had happened. Was John even aware the Satori was gone? If he was, he’d be frantic with worry. Without the ship the team might end up stranded on this world for good. It was a scary thought.
If she’d hesitated even a little longer, the ship would have been lost in that explosion for sure.
“Majel, you knew that explosion would destroy the ship, didn’t you?” Beth asked. Her voice was quiet. She was deep in thought as she asked.
“Yes.”
“Which would have stranded the entire team here.”
“Yes,” Majel said again.
“You took over the controls there, at the end. Why didn’t you just do it as soon as you knew the threat was real?” Beth asked.
There was a brief pause before Majel answered. If the AI was a human, Beth would have thought she was gathering her thoughts before replying. For a computer, the delay seemed very long.
“Would John have shoved you out of the way and taken over, if it was him there instead of me?” Majel asked.
“Well, no, he knows I would have socked him if he tried something like that,” Beth replied. “But I wasn’t really being rational back there.”
It hurt her to admit that. Rationality was one of her strong points. Being able to think through problems and come to a logical conclusion was crucial to her sense of who she was. It was something that had always bothered her about Dan, because he was able to make her act in ways that were entirely illogical. Somehow, he got past her walls without even really trying. It sucked, sometimes. It was wonderful, others.
“Would you ever have trusted me again, if I’d done that?” Majel asked. “Would any of you? You’re a team. I’m on the team, but I’m not really like the rest of you. Not really. Having power to do something, even if I know it is right, doesn’t mean I should use that power to force the rest of you to do that thing. Otherwise we’re not a team.”
Beth thought about that for a long moment. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”
“Me, as well,” Majel said.
Twenty-Five
Charline took a deep breath, blinking. Her heart was beating a little faster than it ought to be. That kiss…! Linda hadn’t just been giving her a quick peck on the cheek. She could feel the heat of the emotion behind it. The feeling took her aback. Where had that come from? She hadn’t seen Linda looking at her…that way…before. The whole thing felt totally out of the blue.
Linda was walking away from her now. She knew she ought to say something. Had she hurt the other woman’s feelings by not already talking? She really didn’t know what to say. Linda was poking in some of the crates now, fiddling with some of the canisters from her lab. Probably trying to distract herself from a moment that had been more than a little embarrassing for both of them.
She looked out over the cave, half expecting to see another rush of sea creatures coming her way. But it was over. Either they’d run out of crawling creatures to send, or they’d been driven off by the mine. Whichever it was, she’d take it. She only hoped that the others were still safe under the ocean. They had the Satori there to cover them, which ought to be enough. But this attack had seemed to directed, so focused. It had to be the Cyanauts driving the assault. That boded ill for John’s diplomatic effort.
Charline turned back toward Linda. “What are you looking for?”
She didn’t reply, continuing to rummage through the lab equipment instead. There was an odd almost desperate feel to how she was searching. Like she was looking for the one thing that could save her. But the danger was over, wasn’t it? Charline looked back at the mouth of the cave, but no new threat was looming.
“Linda, it’s OK,” Charline said, taking a few steps toward her. “I think we’re safe for now.”
She wanted to ask about the kiss, but with Linda already so disturbed it seemed like a bad time. Charline laid a hand on her shoulder, hoping to calm her down. Linda shrugged the hand off. Charline backed away. What was going on with her? First the kiss, then the cold shoulder?
Charline was about to say something to that effect when she noticed a fleck of the goo that had dripped on Linda’s cheek. It was a greenish color, and pulsed a little like it was moving. It was a Cyanaut, it had to be. How many of the things had dropped on her from above amidst the debris? How many more managed to crawl onto her while she was on the ground?
The things were telepathic. One was enough to control a small animal, from what she’d seen today. How many would it take to control the mind of a human?
“We need to get you cleaned up,” Charline said. She put her hand back on Linda’s shoulder, more firmly this time. Her other hand reached for a flashlight laying discarded on top of a storage box. If it came down to it, she could knock Linda out and peel the damned things from her body.
Linda turned, holding something up and smiling. It was a tube - a vial marked with red biohazard tags. That had to be her bacteria, one of the samples she’d brought with her.
“I thought they were all broken by the blast,” Linda said. “Thank god, there’s still one left.”
Vial in hand, she started toward the front of the cave. What was she going to do? Or what did the Cyanauts want her to do, rather? Was she going to toss the sample into the ocean? They’d gone to great lengths to ensure that they didn’t contaminate anything. Why would the Cyanauts want their ocean infected? It made no sense to her. But she couldn’t let them use Linda like this.
“Not happening,” Charline said. She swung the flashlight at Linda’s head.
Linda ducked under the blow, her arm coming up to catch Charline’s in a scooping block that redirected the motion. Out of control, Charline spun sideways and smacked into the wall of the cave. Since when had Linda been so fast, or so strong?
Charline shook her head to clear the stars from her eyes. She’d hit the wall harder than she’d thought. Linda was continuing toward the mouth of the cave, not paying any attention to her at all. She rushed toward her unprotected back with the flashlight raised for another swing, but Linda sidestepped like she had eyes in the back of her head and then fired off a punch into her ribs that took her breath away.
She sagged to the floor, fighting to catch her breath. How had Linda seen her coming so easily? She looked around the cave floor, realization dawning. That muck of dead an injured crustaceans must still have some live Cyanauts mixed in. They were reporting everything to each other. In a sense, Linda did have eyes in the back of her head right now.
“Linda, stop!” Charline gasped out.
There was no sign she heard her at all. She walked to the front of the cave, uncorked the vial, and threw the liquid from inside it out into the ocean. Where the fluid struck the waves the water seethed, rising in a heavy foam. There had to be scores of creatures under the water, all of them infecting themselves with the bacteria. From there they’d be able to spread the thing wherever they wanted.
But why? They’d taken such great pains to ensure that the bacteria wasn’t spread here without testing it first. These creatures had alien physiologies, hell, the entire ecosystem was still one big unknown. Introducing an engineered contagion like this could work very well, or it might be an ecological disaster. There was no way to know without the testing they’d been trying to accomplish.
She hoped it worked well for them. If it didn’t, they had dug their own grave, as far as she was concerned. The Satori’s team had made every effort to protect them from this stuff, so that they could test it before loosing it on an alien world where the side effects might be hard to predict. Whatever came next, they’d done it to themselves.
While Charline staggered back to her feet, Linda took another step forward. Her feet were on the shoreline now. She stood there for another moment like she was listening to something that Charline couldn’t hear. Then she took a
nother step out, and another. Linda was knee deep in the water before Charline realized that she had no intention of stopping. They were walking her out into the ocean.
“No, you don’t,” she said. She gave chase, running to catch up with Linda before she vanished beneath the waves entirely. She was waist deep by the time Charline was close enough to do anything, and it was too late by then for anything but the most desperate moves. Linda was out-fighting her in hand to hand, so Charline simply threw herself through the air at Linda, tackling her and crashing them both through the surf.
Linda’s hands beat at her as she struggled to get free from Charline’s grip. She held fast, keeping them both beneath the water. She’d taken a deep breath before taking the leap. Linda hadn’t. Suddenly Linda went limp, relaxing beneath her. Charline held her down another moment, lungs burning with the effort of holding her breath and body sore from the pummeling Linda had just given her. She had to be certain that her friend was actually unconscious, that it wasn’t just a ruse. She’d never get a second shot at this.
Then she burst up from the water, dragging Linda with her. It took all of her strength to get them both back on the shore. Linda wasn’t breathing. She must have inhaled water down there during the struggle. Charline rolled her over on her belly and pounded her back.
“Come on,” she said. “Breathe!”
For a long moment she thought that she’d killed her friend while trying to save her. It crushed her inside, that she had accidentally hurt someone she cared about. But it had been the only thing she could think to do. She hammered in another blow, and Linda coughed, spitting out sea water and sucking in a ragged breath.
“Oh, thank god,” Charline said. She rolled the other woman over, checking her face and neck for signs of the Cyanauts. They seemed to have left. Maybe that was why they had been taking her into the water - they wanted to return to their home.
Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library Page 52