The Zone

by Barbara Karmazin

  The blasts had stopped. For now. This battle wasn’t over. Most likely, both sides were regrouping for yet another assault.

  Derek flashed a grim smile. With his blue-black skin, dark shipsuit and buzz cut scalp, he blended into the shadows easily. “Bad night. Huh?”

  Marcus sagged against a dome and shook his head. Sweat had plastered his blond ringlets to his scalp. “Just another party night in the Zone.”

  Garian grinned, scooped his dreadlocks together with his hand and tied them back into a bushy ponytail. He jerked his chin to the left. “Turf battle between two drug lords. Free clinic’s in that direction. We have a little bit of competition tonight. According to the bartender in the last bar I scoped out, one of the drug lords lost his entire medical team.”

  Three moons skipped in and out of the clouds. Their overlapping shadows dappled the ground and cast alternating stripes across Garian’s golden-brown skin and dark eyes. The lighting gave him the appearance of a magical creature.

  Axel curled his hands into fists and shook his head. “Great. That’s just what I wanted to hear. This means both sides are actively seeking out new med-techs. One side wants to replace their lost techs. The other side wants to kill them before his enemy snags them. We better move fast and get out before we get crushed in the middle of this dirtsider turf war.”

  He dusted his tunic and checked his pants and boots to make sure he looked halfway presentable instead of desperate. If they were lucky, the clinic would be one of the twenty-four hour ones. “We better get there first and do some fast talking before the drug lords show up and fight over the pieces.”

  Marcus lifted his left hand and peered at the blood dripping from it. He wiped his hand across his tunic and examined it again. “False alarm. That was someone else’s blood. I hope the med-tech is a woman. As much as I like you guys, adding a woman to the crew would be a nice change of pace.”

  Axel rolled his eyes. “Think with your brains instead of your cocks. I don’t care if this tech is male, female or herm, or what his or her sexual preference is as long as we have one with the right medical qualifications on our roster by lift-off tomorrow.”

  Chapter Three

  When Jeresa stepped out of the sanitary cubicle, four strange men rushed inside the foyer. Star and Gem braced themselves in front of the inner door. The hair on their backs rose and both dogs growled. The men stopped and carefully showed their empty hands to the dogs.

  Jeresa frowned. All four men were wearing plain dark gray shipsuits over black boots. They had identical holographic ship patches on their right sleeves. Spacers? Why were they here? Spacers had their own med-techs. They didn’t need the clinic’s limited services, and if they were shopping for cheap meds, they were out of luck. This wasn’t a pharmaceutical outlet. The only painkillers on site were temporary anesthetic gel tubes.

  She pulled up the images and data from the foyer’s passive scanner screens. No hidden weaponry. The tall, lean, light-skinned one with black hair limped over to the bench. The scan highlighted titanium alloy from mid-thigh to toe for both of his legs. A double amputee, he’d chosen the fast and dirty option of prosthetic limbs instead of undergoing the time and expense of full-limb regeneration.

  The other three men knelt on the foyer floor and showed the dogs their empty hands.

  Brilliant gouts of multi-colored lights flared a half-mile away above rounded domes clustered outside the dump. The ground rumbled and shook under her feet. Did she have a home to return to or had it been destroyed in the latest turf war?

  Bleeep!

  Jeresa jumped and spun around at the sudden buzz from the vidphone on the wall behind her. Her supervisor’s number blinked in the ID box. She slapped the receiver on and positioned herself in front of the vidcam lens. “Sir?”

  An unfamiliar face loomed on the screen, a woman with snow-white hair, smooth pale skin and cruel silver-blue eyes. The woman looked Jeresa over from head to toe.

  Jeresa gulped and stood very still. Sprawled in a pool of blood on the floor behind the strange woman was her supervisor’s lifeless body with his neck twisted into an unnatural angle.

  The woman consulted a holographic listing of employees superimposed on the screen. “Name?”

  Jeresa gulped and contemplated lying. But that would probably cause her even more problems if worse came to worst. “Jeresa Lynnwold.”

  The woman turned sideways and pulled up another holo screen. Jeresa’s basic stats, education credits and latest performance evaluation scrolled up. The woman turned back to the vidphone screen and nodded. “You’ll do. We’ll treat you right.”

  Two men carrying blaster rifles strolled into the room behind the woman. Gang tattoos had turned their faces into snarling gargoyle masks. The woman snapped her fingers at the men and jerked her thumb at Jeresa’s image on her screen. “Go. Get her. Don’t mess up this time. I want this one alive.”

  Jeresa slapped her hand down on the cut-off switch. She was worse than dead now. The woman in her supervisor’s office wasn’t a detective investigating his murder. She was Deathangel, the most powerful drug lord in the Zone.

  If Jeresa didn’t get out within the next thirty minutes, she’d spend the rest of her life with an explosive collar around her neck providing medical services for Deathangel’s syndicate. She couldn’t go home, not with Deathangel’s men on her trail. She needed a place to hide. But where? No one in the Zone would dare hide her.

  Gem’s growly voice broke through Jeresa’s panicked thoughts. “Good mens here.”

  Jeresa froze and mentally reviewed her original instructions to Gem word for word. “Guard foyer. Allow no one out of foyer until I return to desk.” It wasn’t the dogs’ fault. Gem and Star had waited until she returned to the desk before they allowed four strange men into the empty clinic. They’d followed her orders exactly.

  Jeresa squared her shoulders, turned around and aimed her best drop-dead glare at the four spacers. “Get the hell out of my clinic. I did a preliminary scan when you stepped into the foyer. You have no injuries and no reason to be here.”

  Axel licked his lips.

  Her name was Jeresa Lynnwold. She was in deep trouble right now with one of the local drug lords. He knew that much from what he’d seen and overheard of her vidphone conversation.

  She held her ground and returned his stare with gorgeous, frightened amber eyes and ordered him and his crew to leave the premises. Her golden skin looked soft and smooth, like satin. Medium height with long, chocolate-brown curls pulled back into a tight braid, she looked twenty-five, maybe twenty-eight Terra standard years old. A loose, oversized blue tunic and pants covered her from neck to feet but failed to conceal the lush curves of her breasts and hips.

  Talk. I need to reassure her, convince her to join my crew. Think. Open my mouth. Say something. Anything. Keep her from kicking us out.

  Axel glared at Garian, his communications specialist. Garian could speak, read and write fluently in eight Terran languages and three alien languages. Why wasn’t he talking? Why wasn’t he communicating?

  Jeresa gasped.

  Axel spun around.

  Jeresa stared past him, her eyes black with horror. She slammed her hands palms down in the exact center of the desk.

  A subsonic crackle lifted the hairs on the back of his neck.

  He dove over the desk, wrapped his arms around her and crashed to the floor sideways. Sharp pain seared through his right shoulder. A split second later, the rest of his crew landed on top knocking the wind from him and the woman he held against his chest.

  The blaster bolt had congealed into a fireball that splashed on the wall above them. A sheet of shattered glass rained down upon the floor in flakes and shards. His brain caught up with his body and congratulated him for remembering to duck in time.

  Whoomp!

  A ten-foot by thirty-foot sheet of six-inch thick titanium slid down from the ceiling and sealed the lobby. Hissing splashes told them that more blaster bolts were hitting the
other side of that barrier.

  Excellent reflexes on her part.

  As soon as Jeresa spotted armed attackers running toward them, she’d slapped her hands down on the desk’s alarm system and deployed the clinic’s defensive shields.

  The air sizzled furnace-hot with a greasy, metallic aftertaste. The clinic’s emergency fire control system kicked in. A siren wailed in a high-pitched discordance that hurt his ears. Billows of sticky, white fire-suppressant foam poured down from the ceiling ports.

  One of the dogs screamed, “Mommy! I hurt!”

  The young woman rolled out of his grasp, scrambled to her knees and crawled to the white dog with one black paw. Blood poured from a piece of glass embedded in the dog’s shoulder. Axel half-crawled and half-slid through the coagulating foam after her.

  The first few seconds of panic had burned away all fear and left only cold intellect behind. Star crouched beside Gem, whining and licking Gem’s paw. Jeresa rested her hand on Gem’s shoulder. “I’m here, baby. It will hurt a little when Mommy pulls it out. Don’t move. Promise?”

  Gem flattened her ears and panted. “I promise. Don’t move even if I hurts.”

  The four strange men knelt on the other side of Gem. Not young men. Older men with concerned faces and faint starbursts of laugh lines at the corners of their eyes.

  Globs of foam clung to their hair and clothes. More foam soaked up the blood draining out of Gem and turned it into a pink slush. Jeresa tore a scrap of cloth from the bottom of her tunic, wrapped it around her hand, grabbed the shard of glass, pulled it out of Gem’s fur and tossed it aside with a flick of her wrist. Bright red blood gushed from the wound. It gaped open like an angry red mouth against Gem’s white fur.

  Jeresa pulled the flaps of skin together. The tall man, the one with the prosthetic legs and gentle hazel eyes, rested his hands over the cut and pressed hard to stop the bleeding.

  Jeresa pushed herself to her feet. The spacer with caramel skin and reddish dreadlocks tied back in a ponytail knelt beside Star and Gem, stroked their muzzles and whispered soothing words of comfort.

  Jeresa said with quiet patience, “Mommy be right back. Help doggie. Get medicine. Make hurt go away.”

  The other two spacers rose to their feet. One was a lean Viking with gray streaks in his short, curly blond hair. His face was friendly and easygoing with a crooked nose and lopsided dimple. The other shorter guy’s skin was so black it almost looked blue-black. Superbly toned muscles rippled with every move he made. Both men followed Jeresa into the next room.

  Slapping her hand against the palm locks, she opened the supply panels and yanked out multi-colored gel tubes filled with disinfectants, liquid sealant and anesthetic. While she selected the tubes she wanted for Gem, the two spacers peeled their tunics over their heads. They shoved the rest of the gel tubes, med scanners and other portable devices into their tunics and used the sleeves to tie their newly requisitioned supplies into secure bundles.

  Jeresa froze with her heart in her throat. Looters. They came here to loot the clinic. The men stopped and stared at her with quizzical expressions on their faces.

  Gem whimpered and cried out. “Mommy! I hurt.”

  Jeresa shoved past them and hurried to Gem’s side. She’d worry about their intentions later. Gem was more important than a few missing supplies and surgical tools.

  The dog rolled her head sideways, gazed at her with absolute love and said, “Mommy help.”

  “Yes, baby. Lie still now.” Jeresa twisted the cap from the disinfectant, squeezed a blob on her hands and hurriedly cleaned them. She squeezed a larger glob of disinfectant over the spacer’s hands while he continued to apply pressure to Gem’s wound. The liquid melted over his hands and ran down Gem’s fur, diluting and washing away the blood and foam. Not the best way to clean the wound but it would have to do for now.

  The black man twisted the cap from the wound sealant tube.

  Jeresa accepted the open tube. Carefully pinching the flaps of Gem’s blood-drenched skin and fur together, she squeezed the sealant in a thick white line over the six and a half-inch long gash. The fluid dried on contact into a hard, transparent scab. As long as Gem didn’t exert herself, the temporary sealant should hold until the wound healed.

  Gem whined and panted, “Hurt. Hurt. Mommy, help please. Stop hurt.”

  “Mommy will help. Be a brave girl now.” Jeresa accepted the uncapped tube of anesthetic from the blond spacer and squeezed a thick layer of pink gel over the sealant. She handed the tube back and counted slowly to twenty. That should be sufficient time for the gel to absorb through the dog’s fur and skin and numb her shoulder.

  …seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…

  Gem’s panting eased. She banged her tail on the floor. “Hurt gone. Good mens help Mommy.”

  Jeresa risked a glance over her shoulder at the glowing red blotch growing brighter and brighter across the emergency titanium alloy shield barely ten feet away. She licked her suddenly dry lips. “How much longer will it hold?”

  The black man sat back on his heels. He studied the wall, then shrugged. “My best guess is about five more minutes to blast a hole through. After that, we have a minute or two leeway because they have to wait for the metal to cool down before they can climb inside without burning their clothes off.”

  The first man grabbed her hands. “I’m the captain of the independent freighter Nebula. These men are my crew and family. Is there another exit?”

  Jeresa pulled her hands away and folded them in her lap to keep them from shaking too much. She sucked in a deep breath, exhaled and squared her shoulders. Droplets of metal dripped from the glowing spot in the clinic’s shield, landed on the floor and hissed into flames. She was running out of choices. “Deal first.”

  “What kind of deal?” Their leader shifted his weight on his prosthetic legs and quirked an inquiring eyebrow.

  “I need a place to hide with my dogs until this drug war cools down. I’ll pay you.” With what she had no idea but she damn well wasn’t going to let them know how broke she really was. To hell with her debts. She’d pay these spacers every credit she owned if they got her out alive.

  He shook his head.

  Her heart slammed into her chest. Didn’t he believe her? What did he, what did they, want from her?

  He lifted his hand. “We’ll help you escape and guard your back. In return, you join my crew as our new med-tech. We leave tomorrow.”

  She risked a second, longer look at the wall. The red glow was turning into a pure, eye-searing white. Ripples of heat shimmered in front of the glowing spot. What choice did she have? She could stay here and take a chance on surviving tonight’s turf battle between the drug lords or go off planet with four male spacers who had laugh lines around their eyes. More importantly, Gem and Star trusted them. Hopefully that meant they were honest men and not trying to run a sex trade scam on her.

  Whoa. Hell of a thing to sit here and make a deal with guys whose names she didn’t even know. What if it was a scam? Well, she’d figure a way out of that after they escaped from the clinic.

  Jeresa lifted her chin. “Names please. I’m Jeresa.”

  Why did they look so relieved?

  Oh yeah, right. Rival drug gangs were trying to burn their way in with blasters. Of course they looked relieved. They wanted to get out of the clinic alive just as much as she did. Two years of struggling to survive in the Zone had warped her mind and made her suspect everyone’s motives.

  The black guy. “Derek.”

  The Viking look-alike. “Marcus.”

  The dreadlocked mixed race guy. “Garian.”

  Their leader smiled and touched the captain’s bars on his shoulder. “My name is Axel.”

  She held her hand out. “My dogs go with me.”

  Axel took her hand. “Deal.”

  Then the other three spacers clasped their hands over hers and his. “Deal!”

  Star sat on her haunches and drummed her tail on the floor. Gem stru
ggled to her feet and wobbled slightly before she said, “Mommy find good mens.”

  Chapter Four

  The escape tunnel under the clinic was crude with a packed dirt floor and walls. Half of the lights had burned out. At least it went in a straight line. Faint yells and bangs behind them meant their pursuers had located the entrance and were trying to bypass the palmlock.

  “How much farther?” one of the spacers yelled.

  Jeresa looked over her shoulder. “I don’t know. This is my first time down here.” The yells behind them got louder. She turned and ran.

  The access shaft was straight ahead. The door at the base was a lighted rectangle.

  There was a dull thump behind them. A blast of overheated air rushed along the tunnel and slammed into her back with a sullen roar. The entire length of the tunnel blazed with a deep-red light.

  Jeresa slapped her hand on the palmlock. The door for the access shaft slid open and stopped halfway. It didn’t matter. She turned sideways and squeezed herself past the opening. Axel turned sideways. Derek held out his hands. By holding onto the dog from both ends, they snaked themselves through the narrow slit without dropping their burden.

  Garian and Marcus slid through next.

  A ladder.

  She clambered to the top, pushed the metal grate aside, climbed out and dropped to her knees. Overlapping light from Luma’s three moons dappled the grimy concrete where she crouched behind the dubious shelter of a scorched and crumpled ground car.

  Moving with exquisite care, the spacers hustled up the ladder and passed the dogs between them to safety. The ground shook. Another plasma blast in the tunnel -- much closer this time. Super-heated air and acrid, black smoke boiled from the access shaft. Axel grabbed her arm, pulled her to her feet and they ran.