by Zoë Archer
But when he scaled the side of a towering cliff and then caught Celene’s admiring gaze once he reached the top…energy surged through him. This dense jungle could go on for hundreds of thousands of geomiles, and it wouldn’t matter. Which was fortunate. It seemed that the jungle truly did stretch on for hundreds of thousands of geomiles.
They moved on further into the rainforest. As they entered a small glade pierced by sunlight, unease tightened along the back of his neck.
She must have felt a similar disquiet, for they both held still, heads tilted as they listened.
“Hear that?” she whispered.
“Complete silence.” None of the avian life squawked. The animals fell mute. Even the insects’ droning quieted.
Nils and Celene’s gazes met, pinned together by mutual understanding. Silence meant danger. Close by.
Her blaster found its way into her hand instantly. He also reached for his. As he did so, the underbrush exploded.
A massive animal leaped toward them. He had a fleeting impression of thickly muscled haunches, giant claws, and two snarling heads filled with black teeth. A huge canine-like beast, with a ruff of spikes surrounding each head, and more spikes on its lashing tail. It made a sound like a human scream, chilling his blood. But he couldn’t be frozen into inaction. The animal charged.
He and Celene leaped aside, narrowly missing the beast’s claws and double mouths. He rolled as the beast wheeled toward him to take another swipe. Ripples of air stirred as its claws struck out. He kept himself low, dodging the talons.
A plasma blast dug into the animal’s side. It snarled and spun around to face Celene, who stood with her plasma blaster aimed at the beast. She fired several more times at it, but its thick, leathery hide absorbed most of the impact, leaving only charred marks rather than deep wounds. Growling, the animal crouched, then bounded toward her.
She stood, caught between two huge tree roots too high to climb. There was nowhere for her to run. Instead of crumpling into a protective ball, she braced her legs wide and made ready to grapple with the beast.
Fierce warrior she might be, but Celene did not have claws or massive fangs. And her uniform provided minimal protection. She’d be ripped apart.
He acted without thought. He took off running after the creature, gaining momentum, and then, muscles coiling and releasing, jumped onto the animal’s back. He looped his arm around one of its necks, gripping his wrist with his other hand to lock himself tight.
The ruff of spikes tore through his uniform and pierced his skin. Bucking and writhing beneath him, the creature fought to shake him off. He wouldn’t let go. He tightened his hold on the neck, hoping it had a standard respiratory system that would suffer from having its air supply diminished.
Above the animal’s snarls, he heard Celene cursing. As he continued to press on the beast’s windpipe, he caught glimpses of her struggling to take aim with her blaster. Yet she didn’t fire.
“Take the shot,” he shouted. “Aim for one of the heads.”
“And maybe hit you? Pass!”
Yet if anyone could make a difficult shot, she would be the one. “Do it,” he yelled. “I trust you.”
As the beast grew weaker, its movements less powerful, Celene dropped to one knee. She braced her arm. Nils could sense her centering herself, drawing and holding a breath. And then she fired.
He didn’t wince. But the beast roared as plasma fire caught it just under one of its eyes. It gave its head a mighty shake, and his hold broke. He flew off the animal and landed with a thud in a stand of bracken. Celene appeared at his side immediately.
“Did I hit you?” she asked, pulling him up.
“Didn’t even damage my shave.” Though he tried to speak with bravado, his heart pounded and his head spun.
He and Celene watched as the beast staggered from the blast. It appeared stunned, wounded, but alive. For a moment, both heads stared at them balefully, though the head that had taken the plasma blast drooped lower. He tensed, and felt Celene do the same. Injured animals were almost as dangerous as those guarding their young.
After a few heartbeats, the creature let out twin howls, then loped off back into the underbrush.
He and Celene stood motionless, waiting. Neither of them spoke or moved. Not until the sounds of the jungle resumed, replacing eerie silence with welcome clamor. Slowly, he lowered himself back onto the ground, his legs stretching out in front of him. He let out a long breath.
She dropped down beside him, muttering more curses. Some of them were words he’d only heard Ensign Skiren use, colorful remnants of her life as a smuggler. But now the celebrated Lieutenant Celene Jur swore like the worst Smoke Quadrant pirate, and her face was ashen.
“Thanks,” he managed, then winced when she landed a hard punch to his arm.
“You fucking dwaas,” she snarled. “Playing the damned hero like some lunc for brains.”
Nils did not know for certain what a lunc was, but he doubted the comparison was flattering. “You’d prefer I cower in the shadows while that thing turned you into its nightmeal?”
“I could have handled it,” she shot back.
He raised a brow. “At what point? When it had you cornered and your blaster fire bounced off its hide?”
She unleashed another barrage of cursing before subsiding into tense silence. At last, she said, “You worried the hells out of me.”
“Same here. But we survived.” In truth, he felt extremely close to tearing up several of the gigantic trees with his bare hands, having seen her face down a mortal threat. Yet he forced himself to take comfort in his own words. They both lived. Even that animal, whatever it was, survived to hunt another day.
“Next time that thing sees some humanoid prey,” she said with a tiny smile, “it’ll probably reconsider.”
“Today’s been educational for everyone.” He glanced down at himself. “I’ve learned that the spines on that animal can go right through fabric and into flesh.”
Hissing in alarm, she pulled the medi-kit from her pack. She crouched beside him and carefully peeled back his uniform, exposing his lacerated skin.
“Any numbness, any tingling, dizziness or shortness of breath?” She dabbed heal salve on the wounds, a frown of worry creasing her forehead. “The spines could have had venom on them.”
He tested his hands and feet, then focused on a large, translucent flower quivering on a nearby fallen tree. “No double vision. Limbs seem to be working fine.”
She pressed a metal vial into his hand. “Drink that. It contains a universal antidote.”
“Only for things 8th Wing has already encountered.”
Her hard stare showed that she wouldn’t allow him to argue. Given that the antidote couldn’t actively hurt him, he swallowed it, then allowed himself the momentary pleasure of watching her fuss over him. All 8th Wing members had to learn some field doctoring, but her movements were deft, experienced.
“You’ve done this before,” he noted as she wrapped synth bandages around his torso. As soon as she finished securing them, the bandages formed an impenetrable seal, keeping dirt and microbes out of his wounds. They could only be removed by application of a subsonic frequency, ensuring that injuries had long-lasting, sterile environments.
“A time or two,” she agreed. “Remind me to show you the scar on my thigh. Doctored that wound myself.”
While he didn’t relish the thought of her being hurt, his mind snagged on the image of her thigh, muscled and golden.
“I’d very much like to see that.”
His husky words actually coaxed a blush in her cheeks. “Should have gone easy on the heal salve,” she murmured. “That way you could have a few sexy scars to show the women on base.”
“I don’t want any of them to see my scars,” he said quietly. “Only you.”
She looked up from her work, her silver eyes wide. For a moment, he regretted his words. They revealed too much, left him open to potential ridicule or hurt. He debated wheth
er or not to retract them, mutter something about a joke, or being light-headed from blood loss. But, hells, he had just wrestled with an enormous two-headed canine. He didn’t need to retreat. Not with Celene. She’d been unflinchingly honest with him. He could do the same.
Finally, after many long moments of silence during which Nils died and returned to life several times, she gave him a soft, unhurried smile. “We can compare scars.”
Chapter Nine
“Night is falling.”
She glanced up at the sky, barely visible through the thick covering of leaves and branches. A moon appeared in the darkening sky, a small golden disk. It had served as their shelter as Nils had modified the Phantom—where she and Nils had come so frustratingly close to making love. Now the moon was a distant sphere that shyly peered through the canopy.
On the forest floor, dusk was already settling, richly green. As the heat began to retreat, sounds of life increased, thousands of creatures calling to one another.
“It’s noisier than Lawaai City,” she said above the din. Citizens of that megalopolis had to wear protective ear coverings every time they stepped outside their enormous buildings.
Nils glowered up at a particularly noisy reptile, chattering as it flew by on leathery wings. “Getting some sleep tonight will prove a challenge.”
“I’m so tired, I could sleep in the middle of the plasma blaster range.” Another admission of weakness, yet she knew now that if there was anyone to whom she could be fully honest, it would be Nils. He didn’t expect her to be anything other than herself.
And as he turned his gaze to hers, she saw empathy and understanding. Warmth filled her.
“Time to make camp,” he said. “If it’ll help you sleep, I can shoot my plasma blaster every ten seconds.”
“Such consideration.”
He made an old-fashioned bow, the kind one might see in a history vid, and she chuckled. As they pushed deeper into the jungle, searching for a good spot for their encampment, she marveled at the transformations they’d both undergone over the course of the mission. Only a solar week ago, she would’ve shrugged off the suggestion that she could find a comfortable camaraderie with anyone, let alone someone from NerdWorks. Yet here she was, in the middle of an alien jungle, danger pressing in on every side, a treacherous objective ahead, and she felt…content.
Perhaps not fully content. The hunger for vengeance still pushed her onward. Marek had to pay for his treachery—preferably with his life.
And there was another, very different appetite not yet sated. As the shadows gathered on the forest floor, she took advantage of the dusk to watch Nils. He’d left off the top of his uniform in deference to the heat and the bandages, so she had tantalizing images of his muscular torso and arms. The tribal tattoo-like markings over his back seemed to dance in the twilight. Dirt streaked his arms, and a smudge marked the crest of one high cheekbone.
He stopped now in a small clearing. She stood beside him and followed his gaze to one of the soaring trees.
“Maybe we should to take shelter in one of these,” he said. “Get off the forest floor and out of the way of potential predators.”
She stepped closer to the tree he indicated. “Someone’s beaten us to it.” She waved him over, and when he did, he let out a surprised hiss.
Insects swarmed all over the tree trunk. Some of them had markings that camouflaged their presence, making them look like bark, and others were tiny, but here and there were bugs the size of Celene’s palm, and their numerous legs made scratching, tapping sounds on the trunk. Each tree seemed to be an entire civilization, containing thousands, if not millions, of insects.
“We make camp in the trees,” she said, “we might wake up tomorrow to find our bones picked clean.”
“If our bones are picked clean, wouldn’t that presume that we’ve died, and so couldn’t possibly wake up?”
She rolled her eyes. “You aren’t always so literal.”
“Only when I’m trying to provoke you.”
“Once again, you’re an overachiever.” Turning away from the tree and its bug-laden trunk, she surveyed the clearing critically. “We could build a shelter, but there are insects on the ground too.” She didn’t fear insects or arachnids, but the thought of serving as a bug highway proved less than restful.
Nils edged toward a clump of plants. He bent his long body, peering closely at the broad-bladed grasses. “This might serve as a solution.”
Night was falling quickly, so she turned on her lys-lamp, clipped to the strap of her pack, and used its illumination to see what he indicated. As she and Nils had entered the clearing, they’d walked through the grasses, snapping some of the stems. Thick blue sap oozed out of the broken plants and onto the ground.
The insects on the ground avoided the sap.
They deliberately went out of their way to keep from contacting it, scuttling away as soon as they sensed its presence. It gave off a faint, vegetal scent, but nothing noxious or unpleasant. Whatever it was within the sap the insects did not like, it had no effect on her or Nils.
“A natural barrier.” She took a sonic blade from her pack and cut more of the grasses. She smeared the sap on the earth. Immediately, all the nearby insects darted off.
In silent agreement, she and Nils cut down armfuls of the grass. Working together, they proscribed a two-meter circle on the jungle floor using the sap. They were careful to keep the sticky substance from contacting their skin, in case there was an unpleasant reaction. When they were finished, they had a decent-sized space entirely free of insects, like an island in a sea of bugs.
Building a shelter took a little more time, and called upon both Nils’s text learning and her own memories of camping on her homeworld. Of course, when she’d camped, she and her family had used habitat-pods, not relying on bushcraft to provide shelter. But the principles seemed to be the same. She and Nils now cut down branches and huge leaves, and, after making sure no creatures clung to them, they built themselves a raised platform with a canopy.
“What are you doing?” she asked, planting her hands on her hips.
He held up the long, thin vines he twisted. “The vines act as a pulley, attached to this branch. I’ve fastened these leaves to the branch.” The leaves stuck out like spokes from the branch, which he propped between the posts of the canopy. He tied the vines to one end of the branch, then tugged on them. As he pulled, the branch turned, and the attached leaves stirred currents of air. Creating a fan.
Amazed at his ingenuity, she still felt compelled to ask, “Are we going to have to pull that all night?”
“No!” He shook his head at her ridiculousness. Rummaging in his pack, he produced a handful of metal pieces. Within moments, he fashioned them into a small motor. He attached the other end of the vine pulley to the device. He flicked a switch and the motor hummed to life, pulling on the vines, which, in turn rotated the branch with the leaves.
“It’s not the Pavami Emperor’s palace.” He surveyed his handiwork. “But it should keep the temperature down. A little, anyway.”
She stalked around the raised platform toward Nils. He could only stand there, a startled look on his face, as she took hold of the back of his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. It didn’t take long for him to recover, however, and he returned the kiss with avid intensity, wrapping his arms around her waist.
They were rough with each other, aggressive, as if the jungle had seeped into their blood and they became as fierce as the place itself. It was almost a contest of wills, strength to strength, mouths plundering, their tongues stroking each other, lapping up their essences.
She lost track of time, of place, and only when she pulled back, gasping, did she regain sense. Still, it was difficult to do so when his gaze burned and his hands held her tightly.
“Ought to make rudimentary devices more often,” he said, his voice a hard rasp.
“Just imagine what might happen if you build something truly elaborate.”
His
smile unfolded in sensuous promise. “My imagination is extremely active.”
“Let’s finish making camp before full darkness hits. Then you can show me just how imaginative you can be.”
Slowly, they broke apart, busying themselves with the final adjustments to their encampment. A cooking fire was ultimately rejected, in case the light attracted unwanted attention, and with heavy sighs they both ate more sustenance-paks, washed down hastily with more water. Several nutrient capsules formed the rest of their meal, ensuring that they received the proper nourishment after the long, demanding day.
Tomorrow would be even longer, and not simply demanding, but treacherous. The thought weighed heavy on her. It must’ve done the same with Nils, for they both ate their meals and swallowed their capsules in silence. Sitting on their improvised platform, her legs drawn up, arms braced on her knees, she stared out into the darkening jungle. Life teemed all around, from the rustling foliage to the avian cries to the deeper, distant growls of larger animals on the hunt. None of these creatures knew or cared what brought her and Nils to their homeworld. None recognized that tomorrow might be the last day of the humans’ lives.
Oddly, this strengthened her. Everything continued on, regardless of what happened to her. Even the fight against PRAXIS would continue—though maybe not as long as she would’ve wanted. Nothing existed beyond thousands of solar years. Civilizations would die; new ones would emerge. Truth and fact blew away like so much cosmic dust. Permanence was impermanent.
“Where’ve you gone?” Nils asked softly, breaking her thoughts.
“Thinking about the ruins of Volod Rey,” she murmured. “I’ve seen them. They’re half-buried in crystalline sands. At one time, the queens of that planet thought their empire would last until the end of time. Time pushed forward. The queens and their mighty cities were no more, Volod Rey populated by archeologists, not inhabitants.”
She ran her fingers back and forth over the platform. Though she and Nils had built it strong, the jungle would reclaim it within a matter of days.