“Choose your leaves carefully,” Kulluk advised after her.
Tart amusement kicked up a corner of her mouth.
Thanks, Sergeant.
She performed the requirements her body demanded, favoured a biodegradable wipe over available leaves, and waited while Dexter carried out his necessary tasks. He begged a scratch and a cuddle before slipping beneath her shirt and nestling under her breasts. His tiny, suctioning feet gripped her through the stretch shirt moulding her ribs. A cool, gentle breeze rustled through the wood and drifted the perfume of nature to her.
This is such a lovely place. Damn the Bluthen to hell and gone.
She checked her clothing and Dexter’s inconspicuousness, then headed back to the shed. Over the mountains, the leading rays of sunrise streaked the sky in pink and gold.
“Miss Sandrea?”
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“They won’t reacquire you.”
She met his direct gaze with appreciation, and a spark of comradeship lightened her mood. “Thank you, Sergeant. I appreciate that.”
Movement behind him dragged her eyes from his face. She blinked. Ragnon loped toward them, dirt and . . . hmmm . . . muck streaked his clothes and face. Then she got a whiff of him.
“What the devil have you been up to?”
He grinned. “Planting that tracer tag on something small, fast, and”—he wiped at a scratch on his neck—“of a rather mean temperament. Getting it on the furry little bugger wasn’t so hard, activating the damn thing afterward was the challenge.”
“Thank you. It means a lot, what everybody has done for me.” She paused and tried not to breathe too deeply. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Rag’, but do you mind keeping downwind?”
“Aw, does this mean I don’t get a hug?”
She grinned at him. “You’re damn right you don’t.”
Dexter wriggled from her torso into a baggy sleeve.
From behind her, Eugen’s suspicious voice stabbed. “What was that?”
Oh shit.
She turned. His gaze narrowed on her sleeve. T’Hargen stood by his side.
“What was what?” she asked with a valiant attempt to project innocence.
“Your arm moved.”
“It quite often does,” she admitted earnestly.
A muscle twitched in Eugen’s clamped jaw. He stepped toward her, a hand lifted.
She took a hasty step back. “Don’t even think about it, Eugen,” she warned.
He halted, blinked.
God, she wanted so much to rush into his arms.
Dexter’s feet shuffled around toward the front of her torso. She grabbed the edges of her over-shirt and scrunched them together. He scurried up between her breast and arm then nosed out from under the shirt at her neck.
T’Hargen gasped.
“What is it?” Eugen demanded.
“Dangerous. Extremely dangerous.”
She speared T’Hargen a malevolent glare.
“Did you know about this?” Eugen threatened Kulluk.
“No, sir.”
“Nobody was aware of it when I met Dexter,” she informed Eugen with iron-plated calm.
Controlled wrath stormed across his features and he eyed Dexter with extreme antagonism.
“And after?” he demanded.
She clamped her lips together.
“I was aware afterwards.”
Her heart sank and she turned to Kendril walking in from the field. The glower Eugen bent on her friend lit up every one of Sandrea’s defence senses.
Looks like the shit just well and truly hit the fan.
“And when, precisely, did you become aware Miss Fairbairn harboured dangerous wildlife, Corporal?”
The skin on Sandrea’s neck shivered to the cold foreboding of his tone.
“When the creature attacked a Bluthen that was attempting to waylay us, Sir,” Kendril replied with steady composure.
Admiration for her friend’s courage in the face of grave danger flashed through her.
“And when”—Eugen continued to rumble—“were you planning on advising me of this?”
“My apologies, General—”
“I asked the corporal to keep her silence,” she interrupted.
“I’m well aware this infraction does not settle entirely on Corporal Shrenkner’s shoulders, Sandrea,” Eugen growled between clenched teeth.
“Good,” she declared, not intimidated by the very angry, very large, very powerful man before her. A fury equal to his slammed into her constraint, and she planted her hands on her hips. “I’ll remember that next time you want me to smell something.”
She latched onto his forearm and dragged him into the yellow-grassed meadow away from the squad. T’Hargen followed.
“If you bust her I’ll, I’ll . . . You owe me Eugen, big time. And you owe her.”
Eugen bent his frame and thrust his grim face into hers.
Dexter hissed.
Eugen’s gaze didn’t so much as flicker in his direction. “I will not allow interference in military conduct—”
“You don’t have authority over me.”
Dexter’s tail wrapped around her neck and he stretched out under her chin.
“She is magnificent, Mhartak,” T’Hargen drawled with apparent admiration from the sidelines.
What?
Sandrea watched her own anger at this intrusion notch up another couple of levels in Eugen’s face. A growl rose from his rigid throat.
“No wonder you keep her,” T’Hargen continued conversationally. “But tell me, don’t you damage her? All that soft skin and those curves, mmmmm, makes you just want to sink your teeth in.”
Anger, frustration, fear, confusion, all crashed together and blew what control Sandrea had. In one fluid motion, she planted a hand on T’Hargen’s shoulder and, with all the angst she felt toward Eugen and their unresolved situation plus every ounce of chi she could focus, shoved. He stumbled back. A breeze drifted by her heated face and she snatched in a harsh breath. Alarm ripped across her nerves at the scent of Bluthen. She tore T’Hargen’s rifle from of his lax grip and shouldered it.
The muzzle pointed dead centre of Eugen’s forehead. He didn’t flinch. She bared her teeth and growled, “Duck.”
He dropped to a squat.
She aimed, fired, and eased the rifle down.
Eugen was immediately in her face. “This conversation is not over,” he promised. “Sergeant! How many?”
“Just the one Bluthen, Sir,” Kulluk replied from amongst the trees.
“Corporal,” he bellowed.
“Sir!”
“Bring the Gailling. Provide him with what relief you can. And Corporal?”
“Sir?”
“Watch him like a terrorhawk.”
“She is magnificent, Mhartak.”
Mhartak ignored his brother’s comment. With easy strength his long strides covered the steep, uphill tumble of rocks and boulders that lay between two folds of treed land.
“She’d make a great mate,” T’Hargen prodded.
“Stop trying to bait me,” he growled.
“She really gets under your skin, doesn’t she?” His brother’s tone pitched with amused wonder. “You and I had some epic barneys, but I’ve never seen you that riled.”
Though a short distance behind the remainder of the troop, Mhartak kept his voice low. “Is that the reason behind the lurid comments you made?”
“I was trying to distract the focus of your passion, er, passionate anger.” T’Hargen grinned at him. “That caped lizard was not happy with you. I’ve seen what they can do. You do not want to get it offside.”
“How the hell am I to get it a
way from her?”
T’Hargen shook his head. “I doubt you are.” He shrugged. “They seem quite fond of each other. You’ll probably just have to get used to it.”
Mhartak huffed out an enormous breath of potential capitulation, his hungry eyes locked on Sandrea’s form as Kulluk helped her scramble over a large rock.
“Is she yours?” T’Hargen asked.
He grimaced. “I had hoped so.”
“But?”
“But I have done something to upset her.”
“Such as?”
He shook his head slowly from side-to-side. “I am not entirely certain.”
For the first time in ten years Mhartak heard his brother laugh, even if it was muffled behind a hand. He allowed sheepish chagrin to filter over his features, consciously permitting his brother to witness his unguarded emotions. T’Hargen punched a fist against his shoulder and muttered, “You always were a brave bastard.”
Sandrea glanced back as the sound of T’Hargen’s laughter carried to her.
Are they trying to give our position away?
Shut up, cranky bitch. Just because you aren’t feeling the warm touch of jocularity doesn’t mean somebody else can’t.
She drew in a long breath of fresh air and let her sympathetic gaze rest on the laboured progress of the Gailling. Distress for his situation settled like hard porridge in her stomach. She knew what he’d been through. Kendril’s quiet, concerned voice drew her from her morose thoughts.
“How are you doing?”
She stared at her friend, stunned by the sudden clarity of knowledge that shone bright in her mind. Impossibly far from home, the odds of getting back shared between Buckley’s and none, alienated by her skin from every being she encountered, she realized she had a real chance of a life out here.
Kendril wasn’t just trying to be friendly, she really had become a friend. She ran her gaze over the rest of the squad and knew that whatever the situation she could rely on any and all of them. With or without Eugen Mhartak, she had a future here.
She definitely preferred with, and she would fight tooth and nail for them to become a couple. But if that didn’t transpire, well, it was reassuring to know she still believed in herself. Wherever she ended up, she could still stand on her own two feet—captain her own ship so to speak. Completely and utterly different did not have to equate to completely and utterly alone.
Self-confidence brightened her spirit. She straightened her shoulders and moved forward with a lighter step, then smiled at Kendril. “Actually, I’m not doing too bad.”
An unobtrusive noise slipped into her ears. Dread slithered icy fingers around her heart. Alarm stiffened her body, and she strained to isolate the sound from the quiet cadence of the forest.
“Do you hear that?” she hissed.
Kendril tilted her head to one side. “Yes. I don’t recognize it.”
A hum, like that of high voltage wires, pulsed with soft menace through the air.
Sandrea’s mind shied away from identifying the cause, but her body proved not so unwilling and absconded, with alacrity.
Chapter 13
“In Caverns Deep . . .”
Mhartak frowned at Sandrea’s sudden headlong rush back toward him and T’Hargen.
She’ll injure herself if she maintains that ungainly speed.
He leapt to intercept her. A brief glint of sunlight on metal at the crest of the gully diverted his focus. A large, spherical, metal object hovered over the rocks, then descended toward them.
What in the name of g’Nel is that?
He speared his concerned and questioning gaze back to Sandrea. The sheer, unreasoning terror stamped on her face froze his marrow. With absolute certainty he knew she had faced this mechanical monstrosity before.
The Bluthen interface?
She dodged around his seeking arm.
“Sandrea!”
Her manic retreat continued unabated. The muted drone of the machine intensified as it glided inexorably toward them. He signalled Kulluk to strike, then leapt after Sandrea. His heart winced as she fell and scrambled with the awkward speed of panic over the abrasive surface of the boulders. Sounds of laser-fire resonated through the gully.
Protective passion blazed through his veins as he chased after this woman who meant everything to him. He jumped down the twelve-foot face of a boulder, his thighs absorbing the hard shock of landing. Giant strides thrust him over rock and brush and he gained on her.
Dexter clung to her neck emitting short, sharp barks. Weapons fire continued to echo down the valley. Through the tall, slim, red trunks of the woodland, he glimpsed the sharp bank of a gulch. Anxiety wrenched his gut. In the present state Sandrea was in she’d run off the side of a cliff just to escape the mechanical demon that pursued. Frantic need roared at him for greater effort, but he’d already deployed every ounce of energy, technique, and brute strength he could muster. He reached out. Her flying hair brushed his fingers.
The ground fell away in a sudden decline and she shot ahead of him. His heart convulsed then shrank in horror at the sight of flowing water. He lunged forward, his reaching fingers a heartbeat from success, then Sandrea plummeted away from him.
No!
His spirit quailed at the thought of losing her. He slammed the heel of his palm into the quick release of his armour. It shed from his body and he leapt after Sandrea into the unknown.
Fear solidified in a painful lump his chest. Cold water grasped his clothing, then slithered across his skin. An intense shudder of disgust and horror wrenched through his body from head to toes. His boots slammed into a bed of pebbles and he stiffened his body to stand in the waist-deep water oozing around him. Unreasoning fear wrestled with his self-control, trying to dictate his actions. Dread wailed in a white noise roar for him to retreat.
Sandrea’s welfare blazed through his need to flee this soul-consuming terror and he focused every ounce of willpower into wresting command of himself. Not three feet away she thrashed in the current. He clamped his teeth together and took a stride through the resistance of the hideous water. Revulsion crawled across his skin. He braced his feet and grabbed Sandrea’s flailing form. She came up fighting and he fielded her wild swings, hating the evidence of desperate fear, the depraved, merciless torment that pushed her beyond reason.
He trapped her against his torso and with gentle strength dominated the witless struggles of her body. Dexter sprang to his shoulder, soft, emotive barks vibrating from him. Mhartak prayed he would not have to employ violence to force the return of Sandrea’s senses.
Shocked awareness flared through Sandrea when the sensation of a warm, hard body pressed to hers conflicted so violently with what her crazed mind predicted. A familiar scent infused her mind.
“Eugen!” she gasped. Her brain snatched at reality. Cold water dripped down her face and clung to her lashes. Her wet clothes dragged against her body, the strong flow of a stream pushed against her.
“You followed me into water!” Joy slid in a sweet fire through her heart and mind. She stared at him in wonder. The hard set to his features reflected the ferocity of his inner turmoil, and her stomach clenched in heartfelt empathy.
Astonishment widened her eyes as she caught sight of Dexter, planted firmly on Eugen’s chest, then the drone of approaching peril accompanied by laser fire tripped into her hearing. Against the security of Eugen’s embrace, fear and loathing crashed in a futile assault on her reason.
Eugen cast a glance behind him and the grim line of his mouth compressed further. The unyielding embrace of his arms loosened about her while his strong fingers wrapped around her upper arm and he urged her through the current toward the curve of a sandy beach. They scrambled from the water and raced into the dark opening of a cavern. One disheartening glance behind her made her lift her k
nees higher and faster. Following the light path Eugen’s torch cut through the gloom, she charged side-by-side with him into the deeper recesses of the cave.
They dashed around stalagmites and leapt across smooth slabs of bedrock. Hope that the cavern would taper enough to halt the pursuit of the contraption swamped Sandrea’s aversion of restricted spaces. The floor slanted down, the walls closed in, but not enough. She hurtled down the slope, torchlight reflecting off the mirror-still surface of water.
“Do not stop,” Eugen ordered from behind.
She splashed knee-deep into the icy pond. Half a dozen steps saw her to the other side. The track dived down, its smooth surface weaved this way then that. The cave walls narrowed with a sudden, sheer angle. She flew into a narrow crack and glanced back. Eugen turned his broad shoulders sideways and followed. She scrambled through the crevice, rough walls grabbed at her clothing and hammered her elbows. Her feet stumbled on a rock and she fell to her hands and knees. Impact jarred up her arms and legs. Gulping air, she lifted her head and stared through the dimly lit gloom at an open space.
Good God, what is that dreadful smell?
She hauled herself upright and winced. Her knees ached with uncomfortable vigour as though they’d come into close and painful contact with a sledgehammer. A cavern echoed their ragged breathing. She pulled out her torch and examined her hands. Blood seeped from gouges slicing her palms.
What the fuck is that God-awful smell?
“Are you injured, Sandrea?” Eugen asked.
“No, thank you. You?”
“That apparatus may be too large to negotiate this fissure, but there may be troops associated with it. We should keep moving.”
She turned to him and searched his face for a sign his actions were of a personal nature, hoping he would take just a moment to make some sort of connection with her.
His features remained blank and he made no move toward her. She swallowed her emotional need and swung the torch in a wide arc. Dexter landed with a soft thump on her shoulder and rubbed the side of his head against her cheek. She stroked his back and assured him with a soft murmur.
Alien, Mine Page 21