“Let’s go!” she snapped, kicking at the release for the door. The damn thing looked fried, but there was enough power for it to spark. It wobbled and trembled, then slid open. The sand was blindingly bright, the diamond-like shards casting endless prisms straight into her corneas.
“Dee! Take lead,” she called. “We need to run!” Crash landing could mean miles from the safety of the caves.
After that, there wasn’t breath for talking. Running through shifting, powered diamonds was hard work. Lanie’s legs cramped after only minutes, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t cry even though terror kept trying to break free as tears. Any break in stride could be the end of them.
The sky wasn’t turquoise and the sun wasn’t orange, but the heat was just as intense as Paradise Colony’s six-month summers. The moon’s pearl-grey clouds obscured everything in a haze, allowing just enough light to glint off the sand. It felt like being cooked in tinfoil.
The heavy rasp of Paul’s breathing worried Lanie, but he didn’t slow them down or complain. After all they’d been through, he was just as much a survivor as she was, and he knew what was at stake.
“Almost there!” Dee panted.
She heard something then, something new. Something terrifying. A roar—it shook the sand around her, scattering it so she had a hard time running in a straight line. She knew—knew—it wasn’t an animal making that hair-raising sound. No. Nothing alive could be so chilling.
…but nature?
Lanie learned at an early age to appreciate how capricious, how cruel nature could be. It didn’t seem to matter what planet, or moon, she was on.
Dee slipped, and Lanie thought it was because of the shifting sand and the roaring coming up on them, but the woman fell completely away. One second she was there, the next she wasn’t. She was gone, down under the shifting sands.
“Dee!” Paul screamed. He put extra energy into his running and skidded to a stop just before where she’d disappeared. “Dee! Can you hear me?”
A muffled squeak from somewhere down in the black chasm gaping from the sands was their only response. Lanie peered down, feeling panicked. “This has to be the caves, Paul. There’s nothing else around here.”
And yet, it looked like a death trap. A fucking tomb.
The roar hadn’t politely waited for them to figure their shit out. It was louder, and the glance Lanie threw over her shoulder did nothing to comfort her. The maw of the oncoming storm was close. Too close. The remains of their wrecked transpo were long gone, hidden by a white curtain. At least, it looked like a curtain. The sand poured straight down from the clouds, as if the moon literally rained shattered diamonds, and the full force of it was coming right at them.
Possible death trap versus definite death trap.
Lanie looked at Paul. “You first, Drama Queen.”
His face paled, but there was no resistance when she gently pushed him to the edge. His feet, legs, and torso disappeared into the darkness, and then he was only holding on with his white-knuckled fingers. “There better be a gay bar in heaven,” he muttered before letting go.
A laugh choked Lanie as she teetered on the ledge. The roar behind her was imminent. She didn’t have to look to know she was seconds from being ripped apart by the diamond fingers of the moon’s tempest.
With a last breath, she jumped.
Chapter 2
The fall was bumpy—rocks scraped and bruised Lanie’s elbows, knees, and butt. A hard grunt escaped when she hit the bottom, her legs shooting out so that her tailbone took the full brunt of impact. Ouch.
“Lanie?” Dee hurried over. “Are you okay?”
Lanie groaned and rolled to her side. No, she definitely was not okay. Her back and legs were numb, her tailbone throbbing. But she refused to unload all of that on Dee—it wasn’t her crewmate’s fault. Instead, she blew out a gusty sigh. “I hate this moon.”
“Me, too,” Paul said. “I was looking forward to a heavenly parade of drunk hotties.”
“I wish I was drunk,” Dee whispered. “I ’bout had a heart attack while falling down here, and a shot of tequila would mellow me right out.”
“We don’t have time to even fantasize about drinking.” Lanie couldn’t suppress a wince while getting to her feet. When her bare toes met grit, she looked down in surprise; ragged bits of her boots were hanging together by threads. Damn diamond sand. “We’re trapped somewhere in a cave system we know nothing about with aliens we know nothing about. We need to get away from this entrance in case flying diamond shards find a way down here, and then we need to brainstorm solutions so we can get on with the mission.”
“Hivemind?” Paul suggested. “They picked up the caves from the ship; maybe they can lead us where we need to go.”
Lanie frowned. “No…I’m about out of energy after crashing, running, and then tumbling down into this alien Wonderland.” The hivemind was a mental energy vacuum. Go in weak, and it left you stumbling worse than a drunkard when you came out. Right after mutating from the damn alien virus, several of the Paradise Colony survivors almost died from hivemind exhaustion. It had taken a while to figure out the newly-acquired skill.
“Me too,” Dee told Paul, looking apologetic for her tiredness.
“We can’t just blunder around down here, you guys! It’s probably a maze of tunnels, and we’re short on time. You both need to put on your Big Girl Panties.”
Lanie glanced over at Dee. By silent communication, they came to a quick agreement; within seconds, Paul was on his back with them standing over him. “Care to say that again, Drama Queen?” Lanie asked.
He grimaced and rubbed at his bum. “Did you have to shove me? Really? And stop calling me that—you got pissy when I nicknamed Carol. It’s not fair.”
“Maybe if you weren’t being a jackass, she’d stop.” Dee shoved him with the toe of her boot. “It’s not fun when you’re the brunt of the joke, is it?” The redhead’s sass was a little out of character, especially considering she was besties with Paul, but Lanie appreciated not having to issue such blunt rebuke for once.
“Fine, fine. I won’t call the jinx a jinx anymore,” he grumbled. “But we really do need to hivemind.”
“If we were in danger, they’d reach out to us,” Dee argued. “We’re fine for now, as long as we move away from the storm.”
Paul kept grumbling, but he didn’t actually say another word as they hiked farther into the cave. The absolute darkness was creepy, but their camping gear included little stones that acted as flashlights; like with most alien stuff, they were familiar in a I’ve-seen-that-before kind of way, even if they had no idea what the doohickeys were called…or how they worked.
“Do these have a name?” Dee asked. “They’re so pretty.”
They were pretty, the light from within pulsing a swirling mix of blue and yellow. It gave the appearance of being alive, though they weren’t actually sentient. Smooth as river rock, the palm-size stones could easily be mistaken for ornamental. No doubt a piece or two would eventually end up in jewelry if they all survived the mission.
“A lightstone?” Paul suggested, seeming to have gotten over being put in his place for his jackassery.
Dee made a face. “That’s such a boring name for such a pretty thing.”
Lanie silently agreed, but she was paying more attention to the cave walls than her companions. The composite was much different than what she’d worked with on Paradise. Even the samples from Utopia and Earth hadn’t been quite so…brilliant. The lightstones—for lack of a better name—lit up the cave with ease; the walls appeared to be made of solid glass. Or diamond. The effect of light on the imperfect, refracting surface was disorienting and enchanting.
“Amazing,” she muttered.
Paul and Dee kept up their conversation, but Lanie went into full scientist mode. Her rough hands explored the walls for a minute before she dropped down to study the floors. Oddly enough, there was debris. Some of the diamond sand, but also…bone?
It se
emed more than just marooned aliens lived in the caves.
“Guys,” she called out. Neither seemed to hear, the debate between starstone and lightstone going strong. “Hey guys!” she yelled, finally getting their attention. “Be on guard. I’ve found remains.”
Dee looked scared. “Like, something dead?”
Lanie didn’t fault the other woman for being afraid. None of them had a military background, and after all the violence they’d seen, not a single Paradin wanted to encounter anything but a peaceful, old-age death ever again. But facts were facts. “Yes, though it seems to have been here quite a while. Just bits of bone.”
Paul withdrew a knife from a sheath on his leg. He’d developed quite a knack with it since the invasion, and it showed in his easy, competent grip. “We’re far enough from the entrance that we can rest for a bit. Then we need to hivemind. I know you’re tired, but it’s necessary.”
Lanie nodded. “An hour?”
Dee and Paul nodded. They all grouped together against the wall, not needing to discuss sitting close. The comfort of having each other’s backs was nice, and Lanie drifted off in only seconds.
***
“Wake up!” Paul hissed, shaking Lanie hard enough to knock her over. “I hear something.”
It took a minute for her to absorb the rude awakening and get her bearings. The moon. The cave. Bones. And now a possible threat. Lanie pulled her own knife from the sleeve on her forearm. It was smaller than Paul’s blade, but she was just as practiced with it.
Shuffling came from farther down the tunnel they were camped in, muffled enough to almost fade into the background as static from being underground. Almost. The lightstones refracted enough to give them a wide radius, but beyond that was still black as pitch.
“Fuck,” Paul muttered. The tension pouring off him gave Lanie goosebumps. Their instincts were honed, and he was strung tight between fight or flight.
Lanie glanced at Dee to gauge her reaction. The woman was trembling, but her hand was steady on her blaster. As the best shot of all Paradise’s survivors, Dee was one of very few allowed to carry such a weapon. Lanie sent up a quick prayer, thanking whoever listened for putting her in Dee’s transpo.
But even with an expert marksman ready to defend their lives, it was wasteful to aim at inky, unyielding darkness. Lanie sighed and then glanced down at her lightstone. Or starstone, as Dee wanted to name it. Beautiful as it was, the little thing might save their lives…she’d steal Paul’s to replace her own later.
A quick snap of her wrist, and the light raced toward whatever was watching them. The diamond walls glittered brilliantly, flashing rainbow-colored cheer through the tense cave. And then the dizzying refraction stopped, the lightstone caught tight in a milk-white alien’s nimble grip.
“Fuck,” Paul muttered again.
“At least we’re not lost,” Dee whispered.
Lanie didn’t say anything. She was caught in the gaze of the masculine creature staring back at her. Though there were three crowding the tunnel, none of them rushed forward. None appeared aggressive or violent. But there was no doubt that the aliens were all alpha-male, the one gaze-locked with her the most alpha of them all. He had big horns that spiked from either side of his forehead like thick trunks, each about the size of her forearm. The middle of his face, where a human’s nose should be, was dominated by a stubby, inch-long horn…it looked like his nostrils sat beneath that, thin slits barely visible in the shadow of his foreign features.
It was the look in his eyes, however, that gave her pause: lust. A primal kind of need that she did not want directed her way—he looked way too much like some of the invading aliens who’d enslaved her.
They all stared at each other for long moments, the three aliens seeming just as curious as the three humans. It was tense and silent, but Lanie didn’t sense an immediate threat.
Still, the fact that Lanie was reminded of the aliens who’d stormed her home was unnerving, and adrenaline flooded her. Her heart missed a beat. These creatures—or some just like them—had brought the terrible virus to Paradise. The devastation of that disease would give Lanie nightmares for the rest of her life, and the mutations from it would forever change the survivors and their future children.
No, she reminded herself. Don’t be stupid. These are not the same aliens. They’ve been trapped here this whole time.
Lanie swallowed her fear. “Hello,” she greeted. All three of the pale aliens jerked back in shock. Apparently, Lanie speaking their language was not something they’d expected. That wasn’t surprising, considering that their guttural, rough language would have been impossible to decipher before the invasion.
However, it was now imprinted on all Paradins thanks to Melissa. On top of surviving the plague and being able to join hivemind, Melissa was also the recipient of another mutation; one she couldn’t shut off. Any pattern was open to her—a deluge of constant, unending information. Once she’d figured out alien-speak, she’d logged into the hivemind and figuratively dropped it onto them, unloading it into everyone’s mind. Now it was there, always on the tip of their tongues. Unlike with a naturally-developed vocabulary, there was no way to distinguish between the two languages or when they were using one versus the other.
Melissa’s gift had helped them escape and would hopefully help them gain allies.
“We’re survivors from the colony your species attacked…we’ve come to find you.” All three of the big lugs narrowed their eyes, as if she’d threatened them. “We’re hoping you can help us.”
The alpha-alpha relaxed. “How do you speak the trade language? We thought your world was isolated,” he said, a pair of fangs flashing as he spoke. He looked to Lanie, as if he’d decided she was in charge of the ragtag little group. She straightened her shoulders and dredged up every last bit of her battered confidence by renaming the ‘alpha-alpha’ alien something less intimidating. Something like…Mr. Horny. All puns intended.
Now she just had to talk to him without giggling like a hysterical crazy person. “Um, well, that’s a bit of a story involving a virus, death, and new superpowers.” She threw in the ‘superpowers’ bit to give humans an added edge; no need for the big aliens to think they could easily scoop them up as slaves like their invading counterparts.
“You survived the virus?” he asked, moving a step closer.
She opened her mouth to respond but then closed it. The question wasn’t as simple as it seemed, not when she’d lost part of herself to the disease.
“Run, Lanie! Don’t let them touch you!” her mother screamed, already surrounded by the infected colonists. They’d been fiddling with experiments in the green house, unaware of danger, until they’d heard screams. They’d run to help, and now Lanie wished they’d run the other way.
But Lanie couldn’t just leave—there was nothing, absolutely nothing—that would make her abandon her mother. She let out a war cry, her throat raw with fear and rage, and used a gardening hoe to chop her way through friends and longtime neighbors. Blood flew as she hacked and cut, the warmth coating her but unable to thaw her icy panic. The foul smell was outdone only by the coppery taste as she continued to scream…and scream…
Old Mrs. Lewis turned on Lanie, her wrinkled face scrunched into a mask of wild, desperate hunger. Despite the woman’s double-hip replacement and near blindness, she’d attacked with enough vigor to waylay Lanie. By the time the age-spotted hands had stopped trying to claw their way into fresh meat, Lanie’s mother had been torn apart.
Brandon had saved her from becoming the next victim; Lanie just stood there, too grief-stricken to flee once she’d seen the mess the infected mob had made. Lanie’s best friend, gone. Her only living relative, dead. The kindest woman to ever grace Paradise, devoured.
Brandon had put her over his shoulder and run…
Paul sighed, breaking her out of the memory. “It’s not that simple—I wish it was that simple. Guess it depends on your definition of ‘survive’.”
Lanie
shook off her lingering guilt and got her head back in the moment. She stepped away from her crewmates, hoping to appeal to whatever empathy Mr. Horny had. “Less than one percent of our population survived, and we’re not, uh…” Lanie bit her lip. Normal wasn’t the right word. None of this was normal—she was talking to fucking aliens. “We’re not like other humans anymore.”
“We’re mutated,” Dee supplied, her voice subdued. “We’re infected, but it didn’t warp us like it warped the other colonists.”
The aliens appeared shocked, and they exchanged long glances with each other. When the Mr. Horny spoke again, it was with resignation. “Our brethren…?”
“Your brethren are raging dickholes,” Paul spat. His fists clenched, his face taking on the hopeless rage so many of the survivors endured. Family gone, home destroyed. There was no going back.
Mr. Horny didn’t argue. His eyes shifted between Paul and Dee as if trying to figure something out. But then his gaze settled back on her, and Lanie felt his lust build again. A short burst of butterfly wings tickled her insides before she shut it down. There was no time for that—attraction to a morally ambiguous alien was a plain-ole bad idea. Grade-A stupid, actually.
“I think you should meet the rest of our people. They’ll want to hear your tale, and then we can discuss whatever it is you want from us.” The two pale aliens behind Mr. Horny nodded, though they stayed back in the shadows. It was impossible to make out their faces or features.
Lanie let out a long breath. She was nervous—they were outnumbered and vulnerable to the aliens—but she nodded. “Lead the way.”
Chapter 3
Lanie turned to grab her bags, keeping her blade loose and ready in her hand. She met Paul and Dee’s gaze, knowing they were just as anxious as she was. Before she could think of anything encouraging to say, Paul linked up to the hivemind.
Lanie's Choice: Survivors of Paradise Book 1 Page 2