by Adam Carter
Alive and relatively safe, however, I was hardly complaining about the soreness of my cheek. Taking pains to keep the main body of the jets before me, I peered out to see the dinosaurs had set to pacing. It would buy me perhaps a few minutes, but I could not remain within the jets indefinitely.
Looking about, my mind forced itself to make sense of the situation lest there was some way out. Each jet was a single-seater craft, and there was far too much space around me for it to have been but a single vehicle. In their fight against the dinosaurs, I could only imagine the security people’s fighters had been tossed through the air and that the explosion had been caused by the collision of each craft with the others. Certainly Taylor would have landed correctly, so the damage must have been done afterwards.
Of course, none of that helped me any.
I screamed as the dead metal juddered about me. Looking up, I could see one of the dinosaurs trying to worry the metal loose with the side of its head. For a moment I wondered why it did not seize the metal in its powerful jaws, but figured no predator would intentionally risk damaging its fangs.
Keeping low, I frantically scrabbled through the metal, searching for something I could use and fearful I would find only the mangled and half-eaten remains of Captain Taylor’s co-workers. My hands found a seat from one of the jets, but the most I could have hoped for from that would have been a handful of loose change. Above me the monster continued to roar, angry that it could not complete the simple task of finding its meal in the maze of tortured metal.
A single shot sounded through the air and I pulled myself up to peer through a gap. Iris Arowana stood in the dried-up lagoon, alone, her legs parted in a stance which suggested she was intending to take root. In her hands she held Taylor’s rifle, although of Taylor there was no sign. She stood a great many paces from the dinosaurs, but I had myself witnessed how quickly those beasts could close such a gap.
“Arowana, get out of there.”
“Gordon, do you trust me yet?”
“What? No.”
“Oh.”
I reasoned she had been after an entirely different answer. As the dinosaurs turned their attention towards her, however, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“When I say run,” she said, “I want you to run towards me as fast as you can.”
“What?”
“Back to trust, Gordon.”
I grumbled that she never called me Gordon, but with four titanic predators bearing down on us she could have called me Princess if she could get me out alive.
One of the dinosaurs hung back while the other three circled Arowana. I could not believe what she was doing, how she was so calm while doing it and precisely what she hoped to achieve through any of it.
Raising the rifle to her shoulder, she pointed the weapon straight at me. “Now,” she said. “Run.”
Whatever her plan was, I already hated it. Barrelling out from my cover, I ran towards her and the dinosaurs, already deciding my ex-wife would love Arowana if they ever met: here was a woman doing her utmost to kill me. I had made it halfway towards Arowana when she fired a single shot, the bullet streaking so close past my face that my eardrums vibrated in shock.
Behind me came an immense explosion which told me the earlier carnage had not been complete. Somehow Arowana had managed to pinpoint the exact spot upon which she could trigger a secondary explosion. The blast propelled me forward and I collided with her. She caught me but was already running, the dinosaurs having paused to assess the new threat. The one which had hung back was caught in the new inferno and was screaming as the flames bit into it. The poor beast charged across the rocky plain, engulfed in flames and entirely ignorant of where they had sprung from so suddenly. The other three looked on, their indecision taking their minds off the two of us.
We ran for all we were worth, making it to the edge of the basin in seconds. Arowana bounded up in one stride but I slipped once more as I tried to hurry. Reaching down, she veritably tugged me to the top, and there we continued to run until we collapsed beneath a rocky overhang where Taylor had been left bleeding.
Leaning my back against the mountain, I fought to regain my breath, but my lungs were raw and my throat parched. I could not see around corners but could hear the daspletosauri bellowing in rage and confusion.
“They’ll be after us soon enough,” Arowana said, her chest heaving with the exertion of the run but her face lit with the joy of adrenalin. “I think Captain Taylor riled them up a bit.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I said.
“Just a bit. Erin, can you walk?”
Taylor winced. “I can dance if it would get me out of here in one piece. You have a ride?”
“Sorry, someone shot us out of the air.”
“That would have been me,” Taylor huffed. “All right, only have myself to blame.” Struggling to get to her feet, she leaned on a makeshift cane she had found from somewhere and began to hobble away. After she had gone a few paces she looked over her shoulder and said, “Ahead of you two now.”
I looked questioningly to Arowana, who only shrugged.
“I know,” she said. “But at least we saved her.”
“I didn’t mean her,” I said. “You came back for me.”
“Of course I came back for you. I wasn’t going to leave you there.”
“Why not? Because I had your gun? Because I was holding them off and you wanted to return the favour?”
“For the same reason I wanted to rescue Erin. Because you’re a human being, and so am I. Where is my gun, by the way?”
“Oh. It ran out. I think I dropped it.”
“Last time I lend you anything.”
I smiled, but shook the feeling away. I was on Ceres because she had kidnapped me, and fraternising with my captor would do me no good at all. Arowana walked after Taylor, overtaking her to scout the area ahead. I remained by the wall for several more moments, watching them both, watching Arowana in particular. It occurred to me not for the first time that I had no idea who she was. However, I was at last beginning to wish I knew more about her.
“Damn it,” I muttered, clambering back to my feet. This was how all my troubles with the ex had begun. That was a route I did not even want to contemplate again.
The roar of dinosaurs back in the basin spurred me on. Wherever we were going, so long as it was away from them I would be happy.
Away from where I had saved Iris Arowana’s life and where she in turn had risked everything to save mine right back.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Another rasher of bacon, Miss Arowana?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
“A spot more tea?”
“Capital.”
Captain Taylor was on the bed, resting or asleep I had no idea, while Arowana and I sat at the table, the sparkling antique tea set sitting before us, our plates practically empty now, save for dredges of sauce from our beans or crumbs from our fried bread.
If anyone a few hours earlier had described the scene to me I would have assumed them to have been describing a mirage, but we were honestly and truly sitting in a log house, eating a fry-up and drinking expensive tea. The house had more comforts than this, for although it was formed of only two rooms (the second room consisting of little more than a shower and a toilet), we enjoyed more than just the tea. There was a working kitchen, a well-stocked freezer, enough cooking utensils to suggest whoever had built the house had a variety of tastes, a single large bed and enough extra sheets to accommodate guests.
There was even a window, but it would not have been glass in the frame. At the very least I expected it to be some form of thin, transparent titanium. The small house may have looked pleasant from the inside, but the log effect of its exterior was deceptive: behind the logs, like paranoid insulation, lay enough metal to keep out a tank. Ceres tended to provide creatures with far more power than tanks, yet for the moment we had high hopes of it keeping us alive.
“Whoe
ver owns this place,” I said, “has great taste in tea.”
“Stop pretending to be a tea connoisseur.”
“I’m not pretending to be anything, I’m just saying he liked his tea.”
“Or she.”
“You find fault with everything I say, don’t you?”
“Not everything.”
“There you go again.”
“Oh, so even when I’m telling you I think you’re right some of the time, I’m still in the wrong.”
“What makes you think I care whether you think I’m right?”
The pleasant mood was spoiled and Arowana set down her china cup. She ate her bacon, though; refusing to eat would have been foolish. I purposefully poured myself another cup of tea, angry with myself for having started another argument. Arowana had kidnapped me and Taylor had tried to kill me, but I still felt bad for upsetting her. The frustrating thing was the sheer ridiculousness of feeling bad about that.
“Is this the place we’ve been looking for?” I asked, if only to break the silence.
“This shack? No, this is just a staging post.”
“Then you know who put this here?”
“Not personally. There’s nothing here to indicate which government was involved and the kitchen’s stocked with food from enough cultures for us not to be able to tell the nationality.”
“But you know about these staging posts?”
“Only through logic. If you were looking to spend any time on Ceres you’d want to make sure there were safe houses scattered about. Maybe our government set this up, maybe someone else’s. Whoever put it here, it doesn’t stop random people from making use of it.”
“Somehow I never would have thought of Ceres and random people in the same sentence before.”
“Ground experience changes your perspective.”
“You’re talking like a soldier now. Does this mean with Captain Beretta here we’ll be ‘yes ma’amming’ everything?”
“Yes ma’amming?”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Just wondering when you’re going to stop being an idiot.”
I got to my feet and walked over to the window, sick of the sight of the woman. Arowana continued to sit there in a huff and neither of us said anything more. I had never known anyone able to rile me up as easily as Iris Arowana and even the thought that she was equally furious did nothing to calm me. So instead I stared out at the rocks and pretended I was keeping an eye out for dinosaurs.
“How are you two even still alive?” Taylor asked. She had propped herself up on an elbow and still looked exhausted.
“I thought you were sleeping,” I said.
“You joking? With your loud courtship ritual?”
“You can shut up, too,” Arowana snapped. I said something similar and we both stopped talking, each of us going red. Taylor smirked, which only made matters worse.
“Well,” Taylor said, “thanks for saving my life. I should get that out of the way first.”
“At least you’re polite,” I said. “Look, I had nothing to do with the theft. Arowana kidnapped me, forced me to come here. I was happy at work, I’m not a criminal.”
“We’re all criminals,” Taylor said. “Ceres is quarantined.”
“But you were ordered to come here.”
“And if I was ordered to shoot children? I’d still be a criminal.”
“That’s … completely different.”
“But essentially the same.” She struggled to rise to a sitting position. “For what it’s worth, I figured you weren’t an accomplice, Hawthorn. While we were in the air I had your psych-profile forwarded to my jet. You’re a screwed-up guy, Hawthorn, but you don’t even know what’s going on here.”
“Story of my life. So, you going to tell me what’s in the case?”
“Case?”
“The bio-tech. Tell me about it.”
Taylor raised her eyebrows and glanced at Arowana. “Mr Hawthorn, it’s very doubtful the two of us are getting out of this alive. Me, because I’m wounded; you, because you’re nobody. Your only chance to survive is to work with me, to trust me, and to not ask too many questions. The more you know, the more reason certain people won’t want you staying alive.”
“Oh great, it’s one of those scenarios.”
Arowana stirred. “At least we’re agreed not to tell him anything. How far away do you reckon we are from the tower?”
“Tower?” I asked. “What tower?”
Taylor laughed. “I should have figured that was where you were headed. If I’d known that, I would have met you there. Maybe General Garland will have figured it out and will be there anyway. Who knows, Hawthorn, maybe we’ll both survive this yet.”
They were hardly the most comforting words I had ever heard.
“There an answer in there?” Arowana asked. “Erin, your best chance to live is to get to that tower, as well. From there, you could signal Securitarn, so long as they’re still up there. Signals from Ceres aren’t that good, but they’ll probably have powerful transmitters there.”
“How do you know signals from Ceres aren’t good?” I asked.
“Just accept I’m well-versed in everything. Erin.”
“Fine,” Taylor said with an exaggerated sigh. “We’ll go to the base together. It’s not far, actually. Once we get there, though, you’re coming back with me.”
“Would like to see you make me do that. The only reason I’m not leaving you here, Erin, is because you wouldn’t survive.”
“She would,” I said. “If we got to this base, tower, whatever, we could send a message and Securitarn could pick her up. She’d be all right.”
“She wouldn’t stay here,” Arowana said. “She’d follow us out and in her condition she’d be picked off by some roving dinosaur.”
“Again you’re looking after me,” Taylor said. “How sweet.”
I could not tell whether it was hatred or love between the two women. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know. “What’s at this tower, then?” I asked. “Surely it’s safe for me to know that much, at least.”
“No idea,” Taylor said. “Never been there.”
“Is it one of ours?” I asked.
Taylor laughed. “Depends how you define ours. Securitarn is an independent security firm. We’re not affiliated to any specific government, or, if you looked at it the other way, we’re affiliated to them all. No, the base wasn’t constructed by Securitarn, but it wouldn’t do you any good to know which government was behind it.”
“She doesn’t know,” Arowana said. “Just as no one knows who built this shack we’re in right now. So many people have been down to Ceres and done so many things that people lose track. And, of course, they lie about it, it being illegal and all.”
“I don’t like this world,” I said.
“Not mad about it, either.”
“How long are we going to stay here?” Taylor asked.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Ants in your pants?”
“If there were,” she replied, “they’d probably be as lethal as everything else on this world.”
Arowana began to put away the tea things. “I’d love to stay here ‘til you’re well enough to tie to a chair and abandon, but by then another search party will have been down and they’d have found us. The sooner we get moving, the more chance we have of making it to the base before they send anyone else.”
“What I don’t get,” I said, “is why Securitarn’s behaving like a country. It’s a security firm, yet they’re sending people out to kill us. Security firms don’t have the right to kill people.”
“Political semantics,” Taylor said. “Technically Securitarn’s not answerable to any government. For tax purposes we have our headquarters on Ganymede, but most of our staff have never even been there. You ever been to Ganymede, Hawthorn?”
“Yeah, I live there.”
“There’s always one, isn’t there?”
I narrowed my eyes at her condesc
ending expression. “You know, there are guys in engineering who’d fantasise about being stuck on a prehistoric dinosaur world with two women, but I can honestly say I’ve never hated life more than right now.”
“Such a charmer,” Arowana said. “Come give me a hand.”
I watched her walk to the kitchen area with the tea set. “What are you doing?”
“We are washing up.”
“Why?”
“Because someone else may one day pass this way and they won’t want to walk into a pigsty.”
“If anyone else does come this way, they’ll be here illegally as well. Who cares what they think?”
“I care.”
She glared at me, daring me to argue. It was not worth the effort, so I surrendered. Arowana washed and I dried, putting everything back in the cupboards precisely where we had found them. During that time we did not argue, did not speak at all in fact. We simply worked together until the task was done, at which point I awaited a snarky comment. I could see in her eyes she was expecting much the same from me. With a mild grunt, we both accepted the other was not going to give any abuse. It was an awkward moment, where all our prepared reactions counted for nothing.
“I’m a little worried,” Taylor said. “I kind of need to use the toilet but I’m afraid if I step out for five minutes I might come back to find the two of you rolling around on the bed.”
“Take a shower,” Arowana said drily. “I guarantee we’ll keep our hands to ourselves.”
Shaking her head, Taylor disappeared into the other room. I looked at Arowana, Arowana looked at me. Neither of us said anything and I suddenly felt a strong desire to be running away from dinosaurs.
“This is silly,” she said at last. “We can’t even talk to each other here.”
“We don’t have anything to say. You kidnapped me.”
“Stop harping on about that.”
“I’ve barely mentioned it.”
“I can see in your eyes you never stop thinking about it. It’s a safeguard, a barrier you’ve erected to keep yourself angry at me.”