Tripp pointed to a spot on the projection, right on the edge of one of the oceans. “Our drop point’s about here, so our challenge is bound to be in the area. Could be up the cliff, or in the sea caverns in the cliffs. It looks like there’s jungle not very far away, with ruins full of treasures and traps, not to mention giant spider-bats and other critters that think we’re snack-sized.”
“I’m not sure about giant spider-bats—they probably require the big guns—but the ground-bound stuff I’ve got covered.” She smiled. “As long as it’s not too huge. I’m a good hunter but I’m not bringing down a Mandragorian holifant on my own. Which is why we have all the weapons. I call the laserpack.”
“If you can carry it, sure.” He’d be surprised if she could. She was stronger than she looked, but the laserpack—basically a portable lasercannon—was scaled for someone his size. He didn’t think the rig could adjust down enough to fit her even if she could handle the weight. No problem. She’d try it, realize it wouldn’t work, and pass it on to him. She was proud and stubborn, but smart. Definitely the brain of Team Supernova, where he was the brawn.
Hopefully, since she was the brain, she’d be smart enough to listen if he yelled “Get down!” or “Shoot that!”
Even “Get back to the ship and leave me here to bleed out.” Not that he had any plan for things to get that far, but if he met some dire fate in a place where they couldn’t be transported to safety—it didn’t work if you were in a cave, for instance, and Sparky might not be able to pick them out if they were surrounded by many other life-forms—he’d try to make sure she got out.
Great. More morbid thoughts. What was worrying him so much anyway? Contestants had braved Altaria and survived before—at least most of them had. So could he and Sarr’ma. But first they had to get started on this idiocy. The faster they got done, the faster they could leave. Not just so they could move on to the next leg of the race.
But so he could stop mentally calculating all the ways you could die on Altaria.
All the ways Sarr’ma could die here.
Right. Get moving. If he thought about it for much longer, he’d lock Sarr’ma in a storage room and try to take on Altaria alone.
*
The transport-wooziness hadn’t passed when Sarr’ma sensed danger.
This planet was not right on some fundamental level. It smelled clean and rich with life. It looked spectacular, the kind of place rich people paid extravagant sums to vacation at. They’d ported onto a black sand beach. Blue-green waves crashed onto it, a constant roar. A lush jungle spilled almost down to the beach. The shoreline was flat here, but to the north, startling white cliffs jutted up to graze a sky the same blue-green as the water.
It was the most terrifying place she’d ever been. Scratch that. The most terrifying place she’d ever imagined.
Even if she’d come here completely unprepared, she’d know this place was wrong. It was too still, as if the planet itself held its breath. The stillness of a wild place when a large predator stalked through, one big enough to intimidate a felinoid.
If Rahal were here, he’d say he was the predator everything instinctively feared, and maybe it would be true. He’d be afraid, though. He was cocky and brave, but he wasn’t stupid, so he’d be inwardly terrified. He’d still win.
She’d like to pretend it was true for her, but she knew the truth: she was a good hunter, but she’d hunted only small game. Her instincts were sharp enough to warn of danger, her senses keen enough to read beyond the stillness and smell other creatures were nearby and afraid. But she didn’t know if they’d remind her body how to stalk, pounce, and kill when her life and Tripp’s depended on it. Marling good thing they had blasters and a laserpack.
Many of the scents of this planet were unfamiliar and she could neither hear nor see a threat, but something was watching. It made her want to curl up in a ball, or climb one of those ridiculously tall trees, or better yet, get Sparky to port them both out now and stars take the race. Wouldn’t be so awful to settle down in this galaxy if it meant staying alive.
No. She was Mrrwr’wrn. A predator. A smallish one, and half-tame, an urban university student who happened to have claws but mostly used her hunting skills to stalk other racers and pounce on the lead. But she was smart, and armed, and she had all her toys. And Tripp. Must not forget Tripp. She wasn’t sure what his skills would be in a wilderness-survival situation with things that wanted to eat them, but large, cool-headed, and able to shoot were a good start in pretty much any clusterfuck of a situation.
Tripp looked at the display pad that worked with his com-unit. “Great. We’ve got an underwater challenge, retrieving a treasure off a sunken ocean-going vessel.” His voice was heavily laden with sarcasm.
Sarr’ma inwardly jumped at the sound of his deep voice rumbling through the weighted silence. She thought she’d managed to hide it, though. She had to hide it, be predator, not prey. Their survival might depend on being able to convince something that they were the most badass things on a notoriously dangerous planet. “Does it specifically say that we have to go into the water?” She scooted closer, leaned over to look at the display. She could have pulled out her own, but she wanted that closeness, the warmth of his body. It was hot here, a temperature that under other circumstances would have made her want to curl up and take a nap. But instead she was chilled.
Tripp slipped his arm around her waist. It wasn’t sexual, and for once she couldn’t care that it wasn’t. He felt the danger too, even if he couldn’t pinpoint the source of his uneasiness.
She forced herself to look at the com. Make a plan. Rock the challenge. Then make like a rocket and take off. Right.
Good thing the challenge rules were laid out in simple language using bullet points. It took her only a glance to figure out what she needed to know. “Thank the stars! Nothing says we have to get wet, just that we have to collect the archaic compass from the wrecked ship and get it back to the Supernova. And I already know how we’re going to do that—from dry land.”
Tripp must have wondered about the crate she’d had ported down with them. Must have wondered even more when she opened it to reveal one of the maintenance ’bots from the ship. “What the…What’s that going to do?”
“I made a few modifications,” she said, resisting the urge to explain them in detail because this wasn’t the time to bounce and brag about her creation. “Standard maintenance ’bots are waterproof and submersible because they’re used in all kinds of settings, including regen tanks and underwater installations. They can manipulate tools and machinery, or they wouldn’t be much good for maintenance. And the ones on the Supernova are connected to Sparky. Sparky controls them and they send Sparky a constant stream of data.”
Tripp looked both confused and impressed. “Tell me you didn’t hack Sparky. I’m sure that’s against some term of that huge-ass contract.”
She thought about telling him she had. Having him snap at her would get her adrenaline going for a specific, safe, and pleasantly dumb reason, rather than this unspecified but all too realistic dread.
But the truth was even more outrageous in some ways. “Better yet, I convinced Sparky that allowing me to modify the ’bot and feed the controls and the vid-feed through our coms and display pads was a logical and wise course of action. I may or may not have mentioned that if we both got killed, Sparky would be stranded with the ship and it might not be worth Octiron’s while to retrieve the ship.”
“Have I told you today you’re devious and brilliant?”
She bounced, purring. “No, but thank you. Of course, you should wait to compliment me until we’re sure it works. I didn’t have a chance to field-test it.”
“I have faith. Or maybe it’s a need to cling to anything that’ll keep us from having to dive into that…” Tripp gestured at the water. “I can’t swim.” Then he smiled.
He didn’t grin. He smiled with his eyes and a little quirk of his lips, barely turning up at the corners. Although the
shift in his face was subtle, crinkles formed near his dark eyes and around his mouth.
The first few times she’d seen it, Sarr’ma hadn’t thought it was a sorry excuse for a smile, the kind you attempted when you were miserable but didn’t want the people around you to know it.
Now she thought the way it lit up his serious, solid face was cosmic. Either he actually had been miserable at first or she’d learned how to appreciate that subtle expression of joy.
A whir of wings split the quiet. Sarr’ma raised a hand and Tripp fell silent. Sarr’ma pointed. A small flock of brilliantly colored flying creatures that looked part fish and part lizard, but winged like bats, had burst from the water and were flying further away from land. Sunlight glinted off their iridescent scales so they looked surrounded by rainbows.
They might be venomous or ravenous. Possibly both, based on this planet’s reputation. But since they were heading out to sea, Sarr’ma could appreciate their wild beauty.
She had about three seconds to do so. Then a fish roughly the size of a family flyer leaped out of the water, opened its mouth, and snapped down on all but one of the fish-lizards. The one survivor doubled its speed and fled.
Right. Someone was going to have to keep watch. “Let me see your pad for a sec.”
With a tight-lipped expression that suggested that he wanted to argue but couldn’t put the words together, Tripp handed over the device. She finally pulled out her own and touched the two together. “You have the control app and the vid-feed for the ’bot. Know anything about controlling ’bots? Especially getting them to do delicate tasks remotely?”
When Tripp hesitated to answer, she figured she’d have to take the controls and let Tripp deal with watching her back. She’d trust him for that under most circumstances, but this place might require her instincts and speed more than his brawn.
Ideally, they’d work together on both guiding the ’bot and watching for danger, but that wasn’t an option.
Then he nodded. “I’ve done it a lot,” he said—not blithely as if he were spitting out the lie he figured she needed to hear, but calmly and quietly, his voice low. “Plenty of ’bots used in mining.”
“Thank the stars! It’s all yours. I can build them, but I’m not great at guiding them remotely—takes too much patience. And one of us should stand guard.”
*
For a design student, Sarr’ma certainly liked ’bots. But what did he know? She specialized in low-G work; ’bots might come in handy in those conditions and someone as curious as she was would want to figure out her mechanical helpers.
He only hoped the thing worked right.
And that her urge to stand guard was nothing more than nerves. It felt wrong to have her watch his back but the last thing he wanted to right now was argue.
She had claws. And he was great at guiding ’bots. It would be fine.
It took a couple of tries to get the ’bot into the water as he got used to controls that weren’t exactly intuitive. (Maybe they were to Sarr’ma. Her mind worked in mysterious ways. But at first they seemed too fast and sensitive, and not arranged in what he thought was a logical fashion.) Once he figured it out, and found the setting to modify them to work with his human reflexes, he got the ’bot strolling across the ocean floor toward the coordinates provided by Octiron.
Much easier than guiding a mining ’bot through a maze of narrow tunnels, watching for its sensors to detect signs of ore. The way was so open it was almost too easy, and he struggled not to get distracted by intriguing sea creatures captured by the vid-feed.
And struggled even harder not to get distracted by Sarr’ma. Every few minutes she’d stride over and peer over his shoulder—not that she couldn’t follow along on her own com, but maybe she enjoyed watching him handle her creation, proving it worked.
Every time she drew close, he held his breath. The muggy heat was making them both sweat, but while he must be getting rank, a sweaty Sarr’ma smelled like sex on legs. Sweet and spicy and musky all at once, that smell went straight to his cock. Men would die smiling for one sniff of her. But not him.
He needed to live, and not only for the usual reasons—to save Zel, and because dying for a cause wasn’t nearly as satisfying as beating your enemies at their own game—but because he had to be alive to have a chance of holding Sarr’ma again. Screw common sense. It needed to happen as soon as they got back to the ship, if not here on the beach.
Every time she and that ought-to-be-illegal aphrodisiac scent moved off, he was able to focus again. And when that happened, he’d notice once again that she seemed to be on high alert—tail slightly puffed, ears following the slightest noise—and her movements were different than usual. Not that bounce he’d come to love, but a silent, controlled glide punctuated by stretches of stillness so profound she almost blended into the scenery despite being all the wrong colors. She was wearing the laserpack, its weight seemingly not an issue, but the only weapons she had at the ready were her claws.
Something was out there, or she wanted to be sure they’d have warning if something was.
The bouncy child he’d worried about looked right at home prowling a perimeter from the beach where he was to the edge of the dark jungle that hugged the shore.
Might be overconfidence again, but she had pulled off ninety percent of the improbable things she’d tried to do so far. And she had those claws. You didn’t have claws like that if you, or at least your ancestors, didn’t hunt big game.
He checked the coordinates that scrolled at the bottom of the vid-feed. The ’bot was getting close. Wouldn’t be long now. Finding the item would be tough. It could be anywhere on the wrecked vessel, and the pictures they’d been sent were of a similar artifact, not the one they were looking for—which Octiron wasn’t entirely sure was there. Getting it back safely would be a challenging bit of ’bot-control. But then they could hail Sparky and, after a few nauseating seconds, they’d be back on the ship.
And then he could see about getting Sarr’ma naked. They’d both been careful to avoid falling into bed again, but there’d been a few kisses that let him know Sarr’ma was playing it safe for the same reason he was. They were both volatile and they were confined to a small racing yacht, having to work together. But once they pulled this off…
INCOMING! splashed across his feed, a text-com from Sarr’ma. He wished to stars he didn’t know what she meant but he did.
At the same time, an unfortunately loud com from Sparky blasted into his earpiece and probably a five-hundred-meter radius around it. “Stop the ’bot! This area’s riddled with mines.”
He stopped the ’bot in its tracks. Thank the stars he realized right away the AI meant hidden explosive devices, not his former places of employment. And thank the stars he’d decided to make the ’bot crawl along the bottom instead of “swim.” Easier to stop it that way. “Mark the mines on the feed,” he started to say, but he didn’t get to finish.
Something roared, far too close for comfort. He tucked the pad into his jacket pocket, grabbed his blaster, and jumped to his feet.
He wanted to run away. Any sensible person would. Instead he ran toward it, because Sarr’ma was too brave for her own good and not sensible at all.
Which was one of her charms sometimes, but not at the moment.
Something exploded through the undergrowth at the edge of the forest. The thing was so weird and so larfing huge his eyes and brain refused to work in concert. He saw it as a cluster of disjointed impressions. Dark brown quills sticking out of leathery green hide. Lots of teeth. A body with six legs. Barbed tail. And again the teeth. It threw its head back and roared again.
Sarr’ma answered with a scream—of defiance, not terror, her own version of a roar.
The beast lunged at her.
He and Sarr’ma began to fire at once.
Chapter Fifteen
THE LASERPACK HADN’T seemed heavy on her back, but when she transferred it into her arms, the weight threw her off balance. Sarr’ma�
�s first shot went wild. A towering tree behind the creature lost a huge branch, which made the ground shake as it crashed down—unfortunately not on top of whatever the marling stars that thing was. The animal jumped into the air, less like it was frightened than like it wanted to attack the sound.
Then it hit the ground and sprang forward toward them. She backpedaled, trying to aim and stay on her feet at the same time, her usual agility hampered by the weight of her weapon and by needing focus on the enemy rather than on where she was going.
The thing was wounded—Tripp must be responsible for the gash on its left flank. Not enough to slow it down much. Tripp’s second shot left its right middle leg dragging. If she could get off a good shot with her more powerful weapon, she might be able to finish it.
Big if. It wasn’t her first time using something similar to this laserpack, but there was a big difference between destroying targets for play at the university’s testing range and trying to shoot something so it wouldn’t eat you and then move on to your friend. Not to mention the portable lasercannons she’d used at home were prototypes for a local manufacturer, so they were scaled for Mrrwr’wrn—smaller, with a different center of gravity, and more toys than serious weapons.
She planted her feet, took aim, shot again. Laser weapons didn’t have recoil like old-fashioned bolt guns, but she knew the weight was affecting her balance and tried to compensate.
The thing’s tail vaporized into a fine greenish mist that made her cough. Somewhere to her left, Tripp was also hacking. Great, the barb had must have been venom-laced—hopefully it wouldn’t do much damage to their lungs.
She was still breathing, so she’d worry about venom later. Tripp had shot twice while she fired that last messy shot, blowing an ear off one time, missing the next because Sarr’ma’s shot hit and the beast had staggered. As she aimed, he shot two more times. Supposedly you couldn’t see a blaster shot coming, but this animal managed to dodge the narrow, focused beams.
Explode: Team Supernova (The Great Space Race) Page 11