Hell, Lee even blamed it for Shelley’s death and the destruction of Nix V. So what if Earth Gov ships had been the ones that actually fired the nukes? If that thing hadn’t drawn them to Nix V to begin with, they never would have set in motion the events that led to Shelley’s death and the price the colony had paid for their presence. Blaming the monster was a dang sight better than blaming himself for not staying and dying with Shelley when Earth Gov had come after them.
Strider sat in the fields outside the colony’s walls. The Brute was there, too, though a good distance away from it. Lee could see that something was wrong straight off. Strider’s main power was offline and the dim, red glow of her emergency lights leaked out the hole in her hull where her rear door had once been. Something had torn it off the ship, ripping its way inside. Lee knew exactly what that something was…well, close enough. And it was about to get some long-overdue fragging payback for the hell it had brought to him and his.
Slowing his pace toward the ship, Lee took a breath, steadying himself. He was in as good a shape as he could be for his age, but the run had taken its toll on him. Besides, charging wildly into the ship was an amateur move. Lee had spent almost his entire adult life as a professional monster hunter, and he would be damned if he made such a stupid and foolish mistake. Catching his breath, Lee stared at Strider. His gut told him the monster was still aboard the ship, waiting for him and Miranda to come to it.
Taking aim at the hole where the ship’s door had been, Lee called out, “I’m here, you bastard! You can come the frag on out here if you want!”
The shadows inside the ship’s bay moved. Lee watched as a darkness deeper than the night surrounding it emerged from the doorway. The monster was huge. It easily stood nine feet tall, if not more, and had to hunch over in order to make its way out of the ship. Its feet thudded onto the ground outside Strider as its yellow, glowing eyes looked him over.
“You are not the one,” the monster snarled in an almost-human, rage-filled feminine voice.
“Wow,” Lee mocked the monster. “So you can talk, huh?”
“But I can smell her on you. You belong to her,” the monster continued.
“Whether I’m the one you’re looking for or not doesn’t matter,” Lee smiled at the monster, “I’m the one who’s going to send you back to whatever hell you crawled out of.”
The monster laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Try me,” Lee urged the monster.
Lee and the monster stared at each other. The monster eyed the old man closely, appraising him carefully, before it began to stride across the field toward him. Lee held his ground, allowing the monster to come to him. If the thing wanted him to run, it was going to be sorely disappointed.
The monster’s pace increased, growing into an outright charge. Lee continued to wait on it. Only when the monster was within mere feet of him did the old man make his move. The monster was surely expecting him to take a shot at it with the sniper rifle he held. In its current form, not even such a high-powered weapon could do much to it. That wasn’t the old man’s plan at all, though.
Atop the barrel of his rifle was mounted something that resembled a bizarre scope. Lee activated it. A beam of concentrated light erupted from the scope at the monster. It howled as the light burned into its body. The beam sliced through the monster’s arms as it brought them up to try to block the beam that had burnt a hole through its chest. Its arms were severed by the beam where it met them. They didn’t fall away from its body, but simply dissipated like smoke, blending and drifting into the darkness of the night around it.
“Yeah, you mother…” Lee cackled. “I upgraded.”
The monster’s arms grew back as it reeled away from the old man and the deadly weapon he wielded. Lee pressed his attack, switching over to using his actual rifle. It boomed as the old sniper put a round directly into the monster’s forehead. There was loud thunk as the round struck and jerked the monster’s head back atop its neck. Lee fired again, twice, putting two more rounds into the monster’s head. One slammed into the side of its skull as the monster staggered. The other punched into its jaw, dislocating it in the monster’s weakened state.
The monster reared up to its full height with a fierce roar that echoed across the fields. Lee sprang forward, activating the light mounted on his rifle’s barrel again. He targeted the monster’s legs and cut its left one out from under it. The monster swiveled on its remaining leg, trying not to fall over. It failed. Its massive body thudded onto the ground as Lee raced to stand over it.
The beam of light from his rifle raked over the monster from its groin to the bottom of its throat. The monster thrashed about and squealed in intense pain as the old man continued to burn away at it with the light. Without warning, the monster erupted in an explosion of darkness that engulfed Lee, blocking out the starlight above and the distant lights coming from Harold’s Colony. Even the concentrated light weapon on his rifle stopped working within the cloud of darkness. Then as suddenly as it had appeared, the darkness was gone.
The old man found himself standing over the naked body of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his long years of traveling the fringe worlds. Her skin was pale, almost as white as snow. Red hair spilled from her head over her where she lay. She was young in appearance. No more than twenty or so standard years old, from the look of her. Her body was toned and shapely, filled out in all the right places. Curled up into a ball, she seemed so vulnerable and helpless. She made Lee think of a child who had wandered into the night, gotten lost, and had fallen asleep in the grass. The beam of his light no longer burned her. Lee had fought shape shifters before, but this beautiful little girl lying in front of him rattled the old hunter. He drew back from her as she stirred on the ground.
Keeping his rifle aimed at the girl, Lee, despite his better judgment, waited to see what she would do upon awakening. Desire for her rose inside him. It was more than just a natural male response to the sight of such an attractive, naked young woman. There was a supernatural, psychic edge to the feeling the old man had to struggle against. The compulsion to drop his weapon and sweep her up into his arms was nearly overwhelming. Lee forced himself to think of Shelley. He let the anger and pain of her pointless death flow through him. It gave him the strength he needed to resist the girl.
She opened her eyes. They were a bright shade of green, vibrant and full of life. The old man recognized the pain in them as if he were looking into a mirror. The girl had lost someone she loved. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. And that loss defined her, consumed her.
“Go on, old man,” the girl spoke in the voice of an angel as she looked up the barrel of his rifle. “Pull the trigger.”
Her willingness to die threw Lee off his game. It shocked him. He had her dead to rights. Pulling the trigger of his rifle and ending her seemed like such a simple thing, but it wasn’t. His hesitation cost him dearly.
The girl leaped up, grabbing his rifle by its barrel, and the old man squeezed the trigger—too late. His rifle boomed, but the girl had jerked it aside, and his shot buried itself in the dirt and grass. Lee heard the groaning and squealing of twisting metal as she bent the barrel of his rifle back and then ripped the weapon from his grasp. She flung it into the night as her green eyes flashed red. Seeing that was enough to tear Lee out of the trance-like state he had been in.
He brought up an elbow that met the girl’s chin as she pounced at him. Lee’s blow knocked her away from him, but hitting her felt like hitting the armored hull of a starship. His elbow nearly shattered from the impact, and he reeled backward, clutching it. His elbow was badly bruised, but he could deal with the pain. The girl was back on her feet, impossibly fast, and coming at him again. Lee’s hands dove beneath the jacket he wore, drawing the two pistols holstered there. They spun on his fingers as he brought them to bear on the girl. Firing in rapid succession, the old man gasped as the girl dodged his bullets with cat-like grace, dancing and twisting away from them
. She ran for Strider and bounded up the side of the ship’s hull, jumping on top of it.
“Come on, old man,” the girl giggled at him, “is that the best you’ve got?”
“I’m just getting started, honey!” Lee yelled, putting on a display of bravado, though in truth the old man knew he was overmatched.
The girl jumped from atop the ship into the field as Lee took another series of shots at her. They sliced through the space where she had been standing atop the ship. The barrels of his pistols swept after her as the girl moved, but always the bullets were too slow to touch her. Laughing as she went, the girl ran in a half circle around him before changing her course to come directly at him as his pistols clicked empty. Cursing, Lee realized there was no time to reload.
Like a feral animal, her lips parted in a snarl, the girl plowed into him. Her nails grew, extending into claws that slashed into the flesh of his shoulders and chest. Lee went on the offensive, accepting the wounds she gave him to snatch her by one of her arms. Using the girl’s own momentum against her, the old man yanked her down, smashing her into the dirt. One of his heavy boots lashed out to strike her in the throat. It was a dirty move, but Lee was desperate.
The kick knocked the girl back as she was trying to rise up. Lee knew it would have crushed the windpipe of a normal human, but the girl was anything but human. Lee kicked at her again, but she caught his leg, jerking it out from under him, and he thudded onto the dirt next to her. She dove at him from where she lay, trying to get on top of him and pin him to the ground. Lee stopped her by ramming the butt of his right pistol into her face. The blow kept her away, but didn’t even bloody her.
However soft and beautiful her skin appeared to be, it wasn’t. Her flesh was like some sort of supernatural armor. The girl shook her head as if to clear it, while Lee used the moment to roll away from her and spring to his feet. His empty pistols were still clutched in his hands, and he ejected their spent magazines. If she allowed him another second, he hoped to get at least one of them reloaded. She didn’t give him the chance, though. The girl was on him again in an instant, claws digging into the flesh of his arms as she grabbed hold of them.
Lee cried out, screaming in pain, as the girl snapped the bones in his arms effortlessly. His pistols fell from hands he could no longer feel. The girl still held onto his arms tightly and yanked them away from his torso. Blood flew as flesh ripped, and bone gave way to monstrous strength. A new pain surged through the old man’s chest as his heart pounded against his ribs.
He sank to his knees before the girl, staring up into her fierce, but somehow still alluring, green eyes. It was hard from him to breathe. His body was giving up the fight, and his heart failing. Lee knew he was not only in shock but having a heart attack.
“Miranda will…” he croaked.
The girl snorted. “Miranda will die just as you are now, old man.”
Helpless to do anything but finish dying, Lee struggled to keep breathing as the girl moved to embrace him. Her body was warm and soft against his own as she held him tight.
In his ear, the girl whispered, “May you burn in the fires of your race’s hell knowing that you gave it your all, old man, and you still weren’t capable of saving those you love.”
Lee’s heart stopped beating, and his eyes rolled up to show only the whites as death took him. The girl held him in her arms a moment longer before gently lying his body back on the ground. She stared down at it in triumph, a smile upon her lips. Then that smile turned to rage, and she stomped on the old man’s skull, splattering it over the dirt and grass where he lay.
* * * * *
Chapter 46
Miranda came running out of the gates of Harold’s Colony in time to see the girl smash Lee’s skull to a pulp beneath the heel of her bare foot.
“Lee!” Miranda screamed as she raced toward the naked young redhead that had just killed the man who had raised her. Anger filled her, and Miranda drew her sword and pushed her body harder, legs pumping beneath her, as she increased her speed across the field.
The young redhead reached down and plucked something from the old man’s body. The girl hurled it into the open bay of Strider. Miranda barely had time to realize the thing the girl had thrown was a grenade. It bounced across the bay of the ship, landing next to a crate of munitions. The ensuing explosion sent out a shockwave that met Miranda as she ran toward it.
The force of the blast knocked her backward, sending her bouncing and rolling across the grass of the field, as the secondary explosions detonated inside Strider before an even more massive one blew the ship completely apart. Flames leaped up toward the dark sky above, and debris spun outward from Strider like shrapnel. Miranda’s helmet grew outward from the cowl of her armor, engulfing her head the instant before a piece of it smacked into her face. The piece of debris sparked against her face plate as it ricocheted away.
Miranda heard and felt more pieces of the ship pounding into her armor, but none of them did any real damage. She had closed her eyes against the harsh, blinding light of the explosion that had claimed Strider. When she opened them, the redheaded girl was gone. There was no sign of her anywhere in the fields. But Miranda heard a cold, cruel voice inside her head.
“You took my son from me, little girl,” the voice told her, “and now I’ve taken your family and ship. When you’ve had time to suffer and endure that loss, I will return, for there is yet blood to be settled between us.”
Miranda lay in the grass of the field watching what was left of Strider burn. She was still staring at the remains of the ship that had been her home for so many years, when Anna and two armed colonial security guards came running up to her. Miranda could hear Anna yelling at her, but her mind was unable to process what her childhood friend was shouting. She felt the hands of the guards helping her to her feet, and instinctively found her balance to stay there when they released her, but she wasn’t in the field with them and Anna. Her mind was far away, lost in memories of those who had been taken from her by the monster.
“Miranda!” Anna yelled into her face. “Snap out of it, damn it!”
Turning her head away from the burning ship, Miranda looked into the eyes of her friend to see the fear and pity mingled inside them. Somewhere nearby, the engine of a ship came howling to life. The monster’s black ship had been sitting, cloaked, on the far side of the field, and it rose upward now, streaking away into the night sky. The weapons of the two guards with Anna barked and cracked as they took shots at it before the black ship disappeared into the darkness above.
“This isn’t over,” Miranda heard herself say. “Not by a long shot.”
Seeing that Miranda was still shaky on her feet, Anna reached out to steady her.
“What?” Anna asked. “What’s not over?”
Miranda shook herself free of Anna’s hand and stormed away from her friend toward The Brute. Anna and her men made no attempt to stop her as she went, but Miranda could hear Anna calling after her. She ignored Anna’s cries. Miranda entered The Brute, sealing its rear hatch behind her, and headed straight for the ship’s pilot compartment. She half sat, half fell into its pilot seat. Strapping herself in, Miranda brought The Brute’s engines online. Outside the ship, Anna and the guards ran to escape the blast of its takeoff as The Brute left the surface of Tanatos IV and soared upward toward the black.
* * * * *
Chapter 47
During their time on Tanatos IV, Brook had been obsessed with the black ship. She had worked hard to find out exactly what it was, scouring any records she could access, Earth Gov or otherwise, for information about it. That search had borne no fruit, but it wasn’t all Brook had spent her time on. Brook had come up with a way to tracking the black ship, should they ever run into it.
Miranda activated the program Brook had designed and uploaded to The Brute’s systems as she chased the black ship across the emptiness of space. Its engines were spiraling up to create a portal into Void Space, but that didn’t matter. Brook�
�s program would tell Miranda exactly where the small black ship was heading, and she would be able to follow it wherever it ran to.
The black ship made the leap into Void Space, and The Brute went after it. Combat for ships of their size was impossible in Void Space. All Miranda could do was follow the black ship and wait. She didn’t plan on engaging it, anyway. She wanted to find the monster’s home and face it there. It couldn’t be allowed to escape again.
With her course laid in and the chase begun, Miranda’s numbness slipped away from her. Tears welled up in her eyes and slid over the curves of her cheeks. Her body shook with sobs as she gave in to the emotion of her loss. The old man was dead. Joe was dead. Brook was dead. Even Strider was lost to her. Miranda was alone now. For the first time in her life, there was no one for her to turn to. The words the monster had projected into her thoughts played themselves over and over inside her mind as she tried to figure out what the creature had meant by them.
Clearly she had hurt the thing long ago, taken away its son, and set it upon the quest for vengeance that had cost her so much. She knew now why the monster was after her. Along with its words, the monster had projected an image of its son into her mind, too. Its son was the very first monster Miranda had slain, the one that had killed her father, along with Claus Wulf and his crew. That bastard thing had deserved to die. She felt no guilt about it. And if its mother wanted a piece of her because of it, then blood would be settled with blood.
A light flashed on the pilot console in front of Miranda, telling her The Brute had just dropped out of Void Space, its jump completed. She looked up through its forward window and saw the black ship heading for a planet in the system they had entered. The planet wasn’t much larger than a small moon. It was a gloomy shade of blue, and The Brute’s sensor readings told Miranda that most of the planet’s surface was water. Not what she had expected, but then she really hadn’t known what to expect at all. The black ship dove downward through the planet’s atmosphere, with The Brute hot on its tail.
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