Coletti Warlords: Reality Bites (8 page)

“He was wrong.” Jaylan busily punched icons and watched a stream of information scroll across the monitor.

A mechanical voice suddenly declared, “Warning! Pressure breach in the aft compartment. All passengers don emergency spacesuits.”

“Spacesuits? Does this pile of junk have any?”

“Look in the storage bin.”

Duh. Talk about being a muzzy-brained idiot. Swinging my chair around, I pried the lid off. A lone spacesuit was stuffed inside. “Crap. There’s only one.”

“Put it on,” Jaylan commanded. His attention never wavered from the console.

“What about you?”

“My battle suit will protect me.”

“If you haven’t noticed, you’re still naked, sugar.” My gaze roved over his nicely muscled chest. All mine.

Jaylan leaned over and planted a melt-your-panties kiss on my still-swollen mouth. “And you’re mine.”

“Yeah, until death do us part. Which might be anytime now. If we survive this, I want to talk to Pops.”

“Done.” Bending down, Jaylan picked up his battle suit and thrust his legs inside.

He had one fine ass. Tight. Bitable.

He shot me a heated glance as he pulled on his boots. “You can nibble on me anytime you want.”

“Sweet-cheeks, you and chocolate are running neck and neck.”

He strapped on his weapons belt. “Good to know.”

The floor suddenly pitched against my feet. “Whoa!”

The aft compartment door bulged outward, and the escaping air whistled loudly.

“Gotta say, you really know how to show a girl a good time,” I babbled nervously.

Snagging the spacesuit, Jaylan practically stuffed me in it and snapped the helmet over my head. “Strap in.”

The suit shrank to fit me, and I shivered at the weird crawling sensation. “Yuck, the air in this thing smells like old gym socks.”

“The alternative is suffocation.”

“You left out my lungs exploding like an overinflated balloon.”

“Sit down and strap in before the hull ruptures,” Jaylan growled.

“Yes, sir.” I took a few tottering steps. “Jeez, have you ever tried walking in one of these? It’s like being sealed in plastic wrap.”

“Sit your ass down. Now!”

Someone was being a cranky butt. On the bright side, his grasp of English cuss words was improving. I looked around for my backpack and sighed in relief when I spotted it next to the storage bin. There was no way in hell I was leaving it behind. The pack had my chocolate and other goodies we would need to survive.

I picked it up and frowned. Would it fit over the suit? Contorting like a gymnast, I managed to slide the straps over my shoulders, but the thick gloves made it almost impossible to fasten the clasp. My respect for astronauts rose. They always made it look so easy.

The ship pitched radically.

Staggering off balance, I slammed helmet-first into the console and landed at Jaylan’s feet.

“You don’t need the damned backpack,” Jaylan snapped, putting me into the other chair.

“Yes, I do. Attila the Hun has nothing on me if I don’t have my chocolate.”

“Chocolate will be the death of you.”

“No. Crashing this pile of junk will be the death of me.” I fumbled with the harness. Dammit! I couldn’t get it to latch. My gloves were too stiff.

“We aren’t crashing.” Jaylan leaned over and fastened it.

The shuttle’s metal wall groaned and popped ominously.

“You sure about that?”

The interior lights flickered and died. A loud
click
sounded, and a harsh glare filled the cabin, glazing everything with a cold, unearthly light.

My insides were a tangled mess of raw nerves. “Is the ship going to blow?”

“Given enough time, but we won’t die today. Gansu is inhabitable.”

Gansu? Why did the planet sound so familiar? I sifted through the information Zarek had implanted, and groaned. One word described Gansu. Hostile. It seemed every living creature on the hellish world would try to eat you. The terrain was either boggy swamp or bone-dry desert.

The swamp was full of all sorts of nasty critters and bloodsucking insects that could drain you dry in a matter of seconds. Darn, I only had one itty-bitty can of bug spray with me.

The desert was populated with fun things like quicksand, poisonous snakes, man-eating trees, and what looked like spotted saber-toothed tigers.

A glowing yellow planet filled the view screen. Gansu, a world nobody wanted.

I tapped an icon, and an ocean of lemon-colored sand spread out before me on the monitor. A few thorny blue trees dotted the landscape. As the shuttle flew west, thick gray clouds billowed up.

My attention was caught by a blinking red light on the control panel. Oh goody, the shields were failing. “Any way this piece of crap will hold together long enough for us to land?”

I gasped as the ship began spinning and twisting in a rapid vertical drop. “Forget I asked.”

Jaylan’s fingers flew across the console. The emergency backup systems came online, and the roar of the engines became deafening.

G-forces slammed me back against the seat. My teeth clenched as the shaking grew worse.

Stressed metal shrieked and began to buckle.

“C’mon, big guy, don’t let us crash.”

The warlord flashed me a fierce smile.

He was enjoying this?

The ship’s violent descent began to slow and level off.

Maybe we wouldn’t die today.

A piece of the fuselage broke away, leaving a ragged hole edged with twisted metal and ripped cabling. We were so dead.

Hurricane-strength winds poured into the shuttle. A horrific, grinding screech tore at my already fragile control, and I watched in dread as another jagged hole appeared in the metal. Oh fuck!

His fangs bared in a feral snarl, Jaylan gave the console a hard whack. The navigation computer flickered to life. A radar map appeared briefly on the screen.

Pop!
Systems shorted out in a spray of sparks. Oh God, the engines were dead, and so were we.

“Take my hand,”
Jaylan commanded.

I grabbed it.
“You’ve got a plan?”

“I am Coletti.”
He released my harness and yanked me onto his lap.
“We teleport to the surface.”

“What? But…isn’t that a wee bit dangerous?”

“We stay. We die.”
There was a fleeting instant of blackness, and we were sitting on the enormous skull of some long-dead creature.

A feeble sun peered through the thick clouds. Wisps of mist swirled around bony black trees that protruded from the slimy mud. Rackety croaks and the buzz of a million bugs filled the air.

“Yay. I get to honeymoon in the swamp of a thousand deaths.”

Jaylan drawled in annoyance, “Does that mouth ever stop?”

“Nope. It’s part of my charm.”

He snorted.

A high-pitched bellowing roar echoed around the swamp. The tree branches jiggled wildly.

I shot to my feet. What kind of critter made
that
noise? I blinked. Was I seeing things, or were the trees really moving? Oh ick. Zillions of red, long-legged spiders scurried down the trunks. They probably thought we were dinner. “What are the chances of us getting out of here in one piece?” I raised my hand. “So help me God, if you say
‘I am Coletti’
one more time, I gonna bust you one.”

“A warlord is always prepared to defend his mate.” Jaylan’s predatory gaze locked on a ripple in the scummy yellow water.

“Good answer, pookie.”

A bulky, elongated head rose out of the sludge. The creature opened its jaws, exposing needle-sharp teeth.

Jaylan pulled his laser pistol. “Stay close to me.”

“Not going to be a problem, boss.”

Out of nowhere, a spiny, gray barracuda fish thingy popped up behind jaws.
Snap!
Bodies thrashed in the water and churned it into foam.

My radar went to DEFCON 1. “Oh hell!” An enormous cloud of armored orange insects descended on us.

Jaylan’s battle suit glowed brightly as the bugs committed hari-kari on the energy field.

My helmet was immediately covered with a swarm of insects that looked like a cross between a mosquito and a cockroach. The little fiends seemed determined to eat their way through my spacesuit. “Get us out of here.”

Wrapping an arm around me, Jaylan teleported us again and again and again.

Each time, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the residents of this hellhole: a pop-eyed fish jumped out of the water. A shapeless mass of rotten flesh seethed with stub-headed worms. A hideous cousin of a crocodile lunged at us.

A million times later, we popped in on a small island of stone.

“Hey! We lost our hitchhikers.”

“For now.” An angry determination etched into his features, Jaylan punched icons on his bracelet.

“The cavalry isn’t coming, is it?” I looked down and took a quick step back. The sluggish water was clotted with writhing clumps of splotchy red slime. Ewww. Spider eggs.

“Not in time.” His black brows knitted together, Jaylan asked, “How much air do you have left?”

One glance at the readout, and I knew my bacon was cooked. “Ten minutes, then the bugs get to chow down on me.”

More of the armored fiends swarmed us.

“Shit!” I swatted frantically at them, but they just kept coming. Out of sheer desperation, I slid my backpack off and yanked out a skunk bomb.

Jaylan took one look at it and nodded. “We’re out of options.”

I hit the timer and tossed it. “Die, suckers!”

Bang!
A cloud of skunk spray enveloped us. When it cleared, thousands of dead and dying insects littered the small island. I did a happy dance. “I rock. Yes, I do.”

“It is a very effective weapon.”

“Ya think?” The air in my suit was becoming toxic. I released my helmet and pulled it off. Ugh. The stench of rotted vegetation vied with skunk. Skunk won.

The energy field surrounding Jaylan vanished. He choked, and his eyes began to water. “That smell is enough to drop a Gourman at a hundred paces.”

Gourman? I searched Zarek’s data. Oh. A Gourman resembled a prehistoric werewolf. “And you wanted me to leave my backpack behind.”

“An error in judgment.” He picked up my pack and rummaged through it.

Sweat stung my eyes and rolled down my face. The humidity didn’t seem to affect Jaylan. Lucky him. His battle suit probably kept him cool. Jeez. All I wanted was a big glass of iced tea and some serious time in an air-conditioned room.

“Condoms?” Jaylan looked more than a bit pissed.

“I’m a Girl Scout. We’re always prepared.” I wiggled out of the suit. My plan of getting Derek in the sack had certainly gone up in smoke.

“Who is Derek?” The question was a growl.

“Don’t even go there, you man-whore. You’ve boinked over two thousand women.”

“A warrior has his needs.”

“You’re right; we do.”

The snot wad tossed my condoms in the swamp and grabbed the bag with my chocolate cookies. “Who is Derek?”

My temper roared to life. Just when I was starting to like him, he turned into a total dick. I quickly grabbed my backpack. “You ruin my cookies, and I’ll rip your balls off. Oh wait, you don’t have any.”

Jaylan held the bag over the murky water. “Tell me about Derek.”

“He’s one hell of a soldier, and at the time I was attracted to him. Then you came along, and that all changed. You’re it, buddy, for better or worse.” I held out my hand. “Now give me my chocolate before I hurt you.”

“Good answer.” He placed the bag in my hand.

I zipped the cookies into a waterproof pouch. “Just remember, you have to sleep sometime, and paybacks are a bitch.”

He grinned. “Another challenge?”

A ropy pink tentacle suddenly wrapped around Jaylan’s neck, and he went airborne.

“Holy Mother of God!” Floating overhead was a mutant octopus with wings. The monstrosity was trying to eat my guy. I pulled my pistol. It was a dead whatever. Dammit, I couldn’t get a clear shot. It kept bobbing up and down, throwing Jaylan this way and that.

Jaylan pried at the tentacle choking him, and every time it tried to take a bite out of him, he’d punched the crap out of the thing’s eye.
“Shoot the eye.”

“I’ll hit you.”

“Shoot it before it crushes my neck.”

“Okay, but no whining if you get a bullet hole or two.”
I fired twice. One bullet hit the freak above the eye. The other struck the tentacle clutching Jaylan’s throat. It slipped off him and hung limply.

Jaylan agilely avoided the mutant’s snapping jaws. Bracing his feet against its skull, he yanked his laser pistol from the holster and fired repeatedly. Severed tentacles fell into the swamp.

What, no sword?
“Oh lookie, you do know how to use a laser pistol.”

His fangs bared in a fierce snarl, he shot it dead in the eye.

With a banshee-like wail, the creature released Jaylan, and he hit the water with a loud splash.

Images flashed across my mind. I’ll be damned. The mutant octopus was full of air bladders. No wonder it could float. I ducked the flailing tentacles and emptied my gun into the quivering pink flesh.

A series of loud
pops
sounded as the bladders ruptured. The monster deflated rapidly, zooming wildly over the swamp before crashing into a tree. Barely thirty seconds later, its carcass was covered by thousands of the armored insects.

Four sets of serrated pinchers rose out of the slimy muck.

I slid another clip into my gun and yelled mentally,
“Get out of the water. Now!”

Jaylan appeared on the island, covered in red slime. He took two staggering steps before collapsing under the weight of the wiggling horde of eggs.

“Oh my God!” I rushed toward him, fear knotting my chest.

“Stay. Back.”
Jaylan tapped an icon on his bracelet. A bright green glow enveloped him, and presto, the slimy spider eggs were incinerated. He sucked in a rasping breath.

“Don’t you dare get dead on me.”

His smile was all predator. “Colettis are very hard to kill.”

The knot in my chest loosened. They were almost impossible to kill. “How do we get out of this hellhole?”

“We teleport.” Fatigue lining his face, Jaylan rose to his feet and held out his hand.