It would either hold her, or . . .
Everything let loose in a spray of fluid. In that weightless instant she felt herself fall. The quetzal’s head was down there. Just below.
71
Trish was in the lead as she and Katsuro rounded the corner onto Tal’s dark street. As the marine flashed his shoulder lights to illuminate the scene, it looked like the quetzal was digging its way under a huge front-end loader.
At that instant, the bucket dropped, edge down, to trap the beast. Fantastic colors burst and flared across its hide. Panicked, the quetzal was thrashing, rocking the heavy loader back and forth; the long body whipped this way and that.
Even as Trish pulled up and took aim, the monster gave one last mighty heave. She heard the snap. Then the quetzal stilled, quivering, patterns of crazy color rolling across its hide like waves.
Trish settled the sights forward of the shoulders and triggered the gun. The report split the night, recoil rocked her back.
A second later, Katsuro’s rifle boomed.
The quetzal’s body jumped under the impacts as the explosive bullets tore it apart inside.
The tail was still shivering reflexively when Trish took a breath, aimed, and put a second round at the junction of the shoulders.
“That should have severed the nerve cord,” she told Katsuro.
“Fuck me,” the marine said through an awed whisper. “That’s what a quetzal looks like?”
“There you go, Private. Welcome to Donovan,” Trish said warily as she stepped wide to get a side view of the thing. “Tal?” she called. “You all right?”
Nothing.
Trish sucked a breath into her run-starved lungs. “Oh, God, Tal. Tell me you’re not halfway down that thing’s throat.”
Swallowing hard, she stepped closer, finger hanging in the air above the trigger. Katsuro’s light glared on the quetzal where its neck was pinioned to the dirt by the sharp bucket edge.
“Lot of steel pushing down.” Katsuro shook his head.
“Yeah, that last thrashing? The way it went still? Probably broke its neck before I could shoot it in two.”
Trish took another step. “Tal?”
She’d never seen the like. A quetzal trapped like this. It almost looked like the loader was trying to devour the beast.
“Katsuro? You watch this thing. If it so much as twitches, shoot it again.” She set her rifle to the side and eased up to the big tire. Pulling her flashlight, she flicked it on and peered into the gap behind the big bucket.
At first, what she saw didn’t make any sense. “Tal? My God! Did that thing just puke you back up? You’re all covered with gut juice and spit!”
Talina—gasping and trembling—sat next to the triangular head with its broad jaws agape, the tongue partially extended. The three eyes, set in their triangular pattern atop the skull, were fixed.
Talina looked like a drowned rat. Her entire body was covered in fluid that gleamed in the light. Tal blinked, eyes wide. “Trish? That you?”
“Yeah. It’s all right, Tal. You’re safe. It’s dead.”
“So . . . close. Die now. That’s what it said.”
“Who said? The quetzal?”
Talina nodded, her hair a soaked mass of black that plastered to her head. Her skin shone, wet and dripping.
“It swallowed you?”
Tal blinked, absently wiped at the liquid. “So . . . close.”
“Hang on. We’ll need to get jacks, something to lift this bucket to get you out of there.”
Talina snorted, as if amused. “No. I’m all right.”
“Tal, you sure? It’s like you’re dazed . . . not all here. You get hit in the head?”
“What a fucking day.”
Through the gap above the tire Trish watched her friend slap the quetzal’s head, use her feet to shove it out of the way, and then flatten herself, wiggle under the axle, and crawl wearily out from beneath the loader.
Trish hesitated, then offered her a hand, feeling the slick fluid as it slathered onto her palm and fingers. “What is this stuff?” She pulled a wobbly Talina to her feet. “Gut juice? It’s like, not eating your skin off or anything, is it?”
“Relax, Trish. It’s hydraulic fluid. And, God, is Montoya gonna be pissed when he learns I cut the lines.”
Shig’s voice came in through Trish’s com. “What’s the status out there, people?”
Trish accessed her com. “Quetzal’s dead. Tal’s shaken, but slimy. Final score, loader one, quetzal zero.”
“You need a cart? Anyone hurt?”
Talina, her hands and legs still quivering from either fear or exhaustion, said, “Yeah, Cap’s in pretty bad shape. Make sure Raya has the surgery ready. Get that cart here ASAP, Shig. Minutes could count.”
Talina signed off, staring absently at the colors fading on the quetzal’s hide.
“How did it know to pick your house?”
“It’s a mate, brother, spouse, whatever, to the one I killed that day in the canyon. It came here for revenge, Trish.”
“You know how crazy that sounds?”
Talina nodded, eyes focused on something only she could see. “It knew when it found my house. Call it scent, taste, whatever. It kept Cap alive to use as a human shield. And then it lay in wait.”
“No shit?”
“Oh, you have no idea.” Talina wiped at a trickle of hydraulic fluid as it ran down her cheek. “The nightmares have just started.”
72
The gentle hand on Kalico’s shoulder brought her awake. Her back and butt ached, and her legs had gone to sleep. She blinked her eyes open, realized her head rested on an arm, the arm on a table.
She jerked herself upright, staring at the drool spot on her black sleeve. The conference room, the map now rolled up and gone, the table bare, met her disoriented daze.
A cold cup of coffee sat by her elbow, the surface scummy, a ring around the inside of the cup.
“Supervisor?” Yvette Dushane asked. “Come on. I’ve got a room for you. Maybe not the sort of bed you’re used to, but it will beat the hell out of that chair.”
“My marines?”
“Over at Tal’s looking at the quetzal.”
“They got it?”
“Tal did, actually. But that’s a story for tomorrow.”
Kalico managed to stand, and made a face as the circulation returned to her legs.
“I should get back to the shuttle.”
“Gate’s locked till morning.” Dushane arched an eyebrow. “You’re dead on your feet. How long since you’ve had a good night’s sleep?”
“Damned if I remember.” She rubbed her face.
“Come on.”
I must be out of my mind.
Kalico’s first steps were mincing as she followed Dushane down the hall and out into the night. The cool air, the half-moon midway up in the eastern sky, the distant trill of the invertebrates, all seemed to partially rejuvenate her.
The dome Dushane led her to was indeed close, fortunately, because Kalico’s thoughts were filled with cobwebs. That vague feeling that she had to do something kept slipping past her memory.
“Who’s place is this?”
“Mine,” Dushane told her. At Kalico’s hesitation, the woman added, “Or what? You figuring to rent one of Inga’s beds over the distillery? At least with me you’ll have privacy.”
“You don’t even like me.”
“No shit. But we can talk about it in the morning.”
Not surprisingly, Dushane’s small dome had a homey look with lace curtains, tasteful furniture that had to be of local manufacture, and a library full of antique bound books. The throw rug had a quaint appeal and was made of what looked like strips of braided cloth.
The guest bedroom had been furnished with the barest of necessities: bed
, storage chests, wardrobe, and a curtain over the window.
“I should go back,” Kalico protested one last time.
“It’s the middle of the night, Supervisor. There’s nothing that can’t wait. And you’re dead on your feet.”
Kalico settled herself on the bed. Not exactly the high tech, interactive mattress she was used to. Still . . .
She glanced up, eyes feeling hot and gritty. “You know, I was going to execute you.”
“Yeah, fancy that.” Dushane gave her a smile, flicked off the lights, and closed the door.
“God, they’re all lunatics. Every last one.”
She swung her feet up, dropped her head on the pillow. “Just a couple of hours,” she promised herself. “Get up at dawn and finally make a decision.”
She didn’t remember drifting off.
That night, the nightmares didn’t come.
73
Water spread in a V-shaped wake as the bow of the canoe sliced across the smooth surface. Clouds made patterns in the Minnesota sky overhead. Max’s paddle dripped water as he stroked in time with his father. Dad sat behind, in the back of the canoe, and periodically used his paddle to steer as they passed through the narrow channel separating the chain of lakes.
So peaceful.
The next instant Max was floating, hanging in black space, as he gently corrected attitude on his suit to keep him oriented toward the distant sun. Nothing in life had prepared him for the sensations of freefall, the tickle in the gut, the weightless joy. He might not have been part of the universe, disconnected from it, a mote of reality in the infinity of Creation.
Some part of him wanted to float that way forever, convinced that he made his own eternity.
Images tumbled through him. Basic training. He’d thrived on the physical challenges, enjoyed pushing his body because he was better than the others.
And he’d hated advanced training, the classroom sessions, that—despite the implants—had left him feeling challenged and inferior. He’d always been a physical guy. The intricacies of combined weapons synchronization, multiforce tactical operations, and multiple-unit drone coordination and movement hadn’t clicked for him.
All of which pretty much limited him to a field commission. Company command. That was as high as he was going to go in the Marines.
In the mirror of his dreams, he saw himself reflected, that “fuck you” smile on his lips. The one he adopted when he didn’t give a shit because he knew the “system” had pigeonholed him. That he’d become a cog in the great military machine. That it detailed him and his marines to a specific job. As heedless about employing him to subdue an incipient rebellion as it was to use a core drill to sample the mineral content of an asteroid.
That’s who I was.
Until Donovan. Until Talina Perez.
His dreams filled with her high-cheekboned face, the otherworldly glint in her dark eyes. Her delicious lips bent in a smile for him, the flashing of her white teeth. Her hips swayed in that captivating way she walked. Capella’s sunlight highlighted blue tints in her raven-black hair.
He could feel her in his arms, substantial, warm, and solid. All woman, that one. Daring and hard, she’d faced him toe-to-toe. Taken him into her own embrace. His soul warmed at the memory of her body against his as they made love, how she’d gasped and trembled at that magic moment.
I love her. With all of my body and soul . . .
A distant pain intruded. A sense of wrongness that clawed at the misty margins of his dream.
Three eyes in a triangular pattern burned in the darkness.
Pain.
Fear.
Helplessness.
His trinity of terror.
Cap gasped as the dream faded and that sense of wrongness slipped up around his consciousness.
“Got to warn Tal,” he heard himself whisper. The pain intensified as if someone were twisting a dial.
“He’s coming out of it,” a voice said from somewhere just above him.
“Cap?” Tal’s voice—like an angelic relief—asked softly.
“Quetzal,” he croaked. “Got to warn you.”
“I got it, Cap. It’s dead.”
Dead? He shivered, the pain eating through him like acid. The thing was still holding him, its claws fastened in his flesh.
The image replayed: Tal stepping in the door of her house. The claws tightening, ripping deeper into his shoulders and back to stifle his urge to call out.
“Dear God,” he whispered, the wetness of tears on his tightly clamped eyelids.
“It’s all right, Cap,” Talina told him, her soothing voice next to his ear.
He blinked, vision watery and out of focus.
“Caught me by surprise.”
“I know.” Talina’s face swam into view, and she used a cloth to sponge his eyes. “You did good, Cap. You got my pistol. Those shots you took, that saved us both. Distracted it. Gave me the chance I needed.”
Shots? He struggled with vague memories of crawling to where Tal’s pistol had been kicked his way in the scuffle. Had he really grasped it? Was that real, or his desperate imagination?
“I shot it?”
“Just before it whacked you with its tail. Raya says it’s a wonder you could even stand given the amount of blood you’d lost and as torn up as your back was.”
He either imagined or remembered the pistol bucking in his hands, and a losing struggle to hold it steady, to find a sight picture.
And then . . .
“It hit me, didn’t it?” He swallowed hard. “After that . . .”
“Hit you with its tail, Cap. Smacked you into the wall, broke you up pretty badly.”
He blinked again, struggling to focus on the hazy ceiling overhead. “What’s that thing? Up there? Big and round?”
Talina glanced up. “That’s a light, Cap. Raya uses it for surgery.” She hesitated, glanced questioningly at someone out of sight, then said, “You’ve been hurt. You’re in the hospital. You’ve got broken bones. Internal injuries. Raya’s got the bleeding stopped. I came to tell you to get well.”
He heard her voice break as she added, “And . . . that I love you and need you to get better.”
“I love you, too,” he whispered. Light made a halo around her head, shining in her hair and shadowing her face.
“Cap?” Talina told him bravely, “Raya’s going to send you back to the dream now. Remember what I told you?”
“You love me. I have to get better.”
He felt her lips on his, warm and tender. Tried to respond to them, but things were growing hazy. He was floating again. Down through the gray mist toward his vacuum suit and the freefall. Dropping back to being a mote in the wonder of Creation.
Talina loves me.
All of existence faded in comparison to that.
74
“It’s serious.” Raya Turnienko sat with her butt hitched up on her desk corner, a cup of coffee in her right hand, the elbow cradled with her left. As she talked, she swung her left foot where it hung free of the floor.
Talina sat in Raya’s office chair where it had been pulled out from behind the woman’s desk. Outside, a gentle rain spattered on the roof and ran in trickles down the window.
Talina fought an expression of distaste as the quetzal curled inside. Piece of shit.
Raya continued, “The broken legs and pelvis, the liver, spleen, and kidney, those will heal. Same thing with the lacerations. I’ve managed to suture the worst of the damage. Thank God we’ve got the antibiotics to kill the infection that was bound to follow. I’ll take the drains out in a week or so if there are no complications.”
A beat as her dark eyes hardened. “But, Tal, you do understand, there’s nothing I can do about the spine. Not here. Not with these facilities.”
“The med lab on Turalon?” Which mean
t she’d have to steal the shuttle.
“Best they could do is stabilize him until they made it back to Solar System.” Raya took a deep breath. “Talina? When Cap hit that wall his lower thoracic vertebrae were severely . . . well, think of the bones as crushed jelly. And the three fractured cervical vertebrae aren’t much better.”
Tal leaned forward, dropping her head into her hands. “So, what you’re telling me . . .”
“When I dial back the drugs, he’s got feeling in his hands, Tal. That’s a good sign. I’ve got him in chemical paralysis. I was able to position and pin the fragments of cervical vertebrae, and I’ve got the inflammation under control to relieve pressure on the spinal cord in his neck. Whether he’ll have use of his upper body? That I won’t know until after the cervical fractures begin to form callus and start to knit. Until then I can’t risk him moving and screwing it all up.”
Talina took a deep breath, trying to soothe the sick feeling in her gut. “This is going to kill him.”
“The miracle is that he made it this far. Not only did that thing beat the hell out of him and rip the ever-loving shit out of his back, it bounced him off your counter and nearly threw him through your wall.”
“So, what’s next?”
“One day at a time, Talina.” Raya studied her thoughtfully. “You up for this? It’s going to be a long road ahead. If he makes it, it will be because he finds the will to live. That means he’s got to have something, someone, to live for.”
“I’m in. Raya, the guy saved my life. And had he not bought me the time to kill the thing, who knows how many more it would have taken before we stopped it? This whole fucking town owes him.”
Raya nodded, seeming to come to a conclusion. “I just wanted you to know the extent of the damage.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Talina stood, winced, and rubbed her neck muscles. “Cap’s wasn’t the only neck that took a beating. Quetzal tongues are tough as leather, let me tell you.”
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