Paradise 21 (6 page)

She squinted her eyes. “Who are you?”

The man extended his hand. “The name’s Striker.”

Aries reached out and let his hand envelop hers. His fingers were rough and warm to the touch. Bizarrely, the skin felt more like hardened leather. How did a man’s hands get that way?

“And you are?” he prompted her.

“Aries Ryder.”

“Well, Aries, how is it you came to be in this little slice of heaven?”

Aries looked away. “My escape pod crashed.” She wasn’t about to share all of the details. He might try to contact the
New Dawn
, if he didn’t like living on this desert planet.

“What happened to your mother ship?”

She thought about all the possible demises of a deep space transport vessels, things like asteroids, a loss of fuel, or a busted engine, but couldn’t bring herself to make anything up. He looked like the kind of guy who would want to fix any problem she posed. “The ship is fine. Everyone on board is doing peachy.”

Surprise flashed across Striker’s face. “Won’t they come looking for you?” He nodded at her arm. “That looks like some kind of locator device.”

Aries frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “It is. If I can’t get rid of it, they’ll come. I know it for a fact.”

Excitement flashed in his features. “Great. We have to get you back out on the surface so they can find you.”

Her heart skidded. “What do you mean, back on the surface? Isn’t this a spaceship?”

Striker looked amused. “You think this ancient hunk of junk is flying right now, as we speak?”

He laughed, but Aries could only stand, dumbfounded.

“This ship crashed here years ago. It’s buried underneath several feet of sand,” he explained.

Aries’ heart dropped to her stomach. “You mean to tell me we’re still on Sahara 354?”

“Yup.”

“We’re not in space, flying away?”

“That’s right. We’d better get you up there before your shipmates think you’re dead.”

He moved to take her arm, but Aries stepped back and put up her hands defensively. “No, you don’t understand. I crashed here
on purpose
. To get away from them.”

Striker shook his head as if to rid his ears of her words. “Hold on, little lady. You’re saying you left your cozy spaceship and crashed on this godforsaken planet
intentionally?
”

Aries looked down. “Yes.”

Striker folded his arms across his chest. “Then, there’s no hope for saving you. You really are crazy.”

“Hey, that’s not fair.”

“I hate to tell you this, but with the sand monsters, the raiders, the desert heat and no water for miles on end, this isn’t the place to settle down and raise a family.”

“That’s exactly what I don’t want. That’s what I’m running from.”

Her confession seemed to leave Striker astonished. He stood there, mute and looking confused, with his lips parted in an unspoken question.

“You can’t turn me over to them,” she begged. “You don’t understand what it’s like. You can’t imagine how awful it is, how life is nothing but obedience, what it’s like to only be valued for your DNA.” She turned away, ready to escape yet another ship.

“Hold on and calm down.” He grasped her arm before she could walk away. “Exactly who are you? What kind of ship did you abandon? I’m all ears.”

Aries took a deep breath and recited the words directly from the Guide. “I’m a Lifer: a sixth generation colonist bequeathed to a computer-designated mate to propagate the species for the next generation, furthering our bloodlines until the colony reaches a paradise planet 200 years away.”

“You’re telling me you’re from one of those wacko communal transport ships, running from an arranged marriage?”

“Yes.” She spat out her words. “Any wasteland of a planet is better than that.”

Striker’s face softened, his dark brows rising. “Jeez, why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? Although you picked one hell of a planet to land on, I get it.”

“So you’re not going to turn me in?”

Striker waved her fear off like swatting a fly. “Nah.”

She sighed and let her shoulders sag. At least someone was on her side. No one had shared her burden, ever. She hadn’t had anyone to confide in, not since Tria had died.

He stepped very close to her, his eyes looking directly into hers. “But are you sure this is what you want?”

It was the first time anyone had ever asked what she wanted. She could barely believe it.

Aries stared right into his gaze, her face inches from his. She’d never leaned that close to a man on purpose, but his expression drew her in. “More certain than anything else that’s ever happened in my life.”

Striker paused as if he considered closing the distance between them. Aries’ heart quickened. She felt his warm breath on her lips. Would he kiss her like the Lifers did at the end of the wedding ceremony? Excitement fluttered in her chest like a thousand butterflies startled into flight.

Striker blinked and gestured down the passageway to the chamber where she’d slept. “Come on, I’ll find a way to get that locator off without triggering an alarm.”

Barliss hated the heat. Heat made him sweat, and sweat was seen as a sign of weakness among Lifers. He couldn’t allow his lower officers to see his vulnerability.

His father’s voice resonated in his head. “Suck in your gut and pull up your pants. A general never shows signs of slovenliness in front of his troops.” He’d always seemed to disappoint the old man, as if Barliss were responsible for his recessive genes.

Barliss stiffened, brushing a grain of sand from his camouflaged uniform. He’d gotten the last laugh and proven his old man wrong. Even though his father was genetically superior, he’d never made it as far up the chain of command as Barliss already had. Barliss had tested low for emotional intelligence, but he’d climbed farther in forty years than his father had in sixty. While he received direct orders from the commander, his father drowned in the bureaucracy, filing life-system reports.

Barliss shook his head in disgust. Although the old man loyally followed the Guide, he didn’t have the stomach for politics. He chose poorly with his colleagues and allies. Barliss knew the type of people to gravitate toward: not the do-gooders trying to make the colony a better place, but to those with a penchant for power. He’d become their right-hand man, and they’d rewarded him for it.

Ironically, his greatest prize, Aries Ryder, had developed into his biggest embarrassment. The bitterness tasted sour on his tongue. Barliss spat onto the ground. He wished he could curse the entire desert in a similar fashion.

The squadron leader approached as the search and rescue team pegged tents into the sand. Barliss greeted him formally with a salute. “Awaiting your report, Skyman.”

The man looked a generation younger than he was, with his eyes still full of naivety. Although his inexperience irked Barliss, at least this skyman would be easy to control. “Our scanners show pieces of metal on the horizon, sir.”

Eagerness rippled through him. “Which direction?”

“Just beyond those dunes.”

“Any sign of the locator?”

The subordinate flinched. “No, Lieutenant. The scattered metal is at the exact coordinates last sent from Miss Ryder’s locator, though.”

Barliss glanced at the man’s identification tag. “Very well, Smith. Inform the search teams. We’ll set out on an expedition immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

Smith darted to the men propping up tents. The heat sizzled around Barliss. His impatience grew like a bad infection as he waited for Smith to return. Each second that passed gave Aries more time to escape. He walked in his usual commanding stride to the tents and spied Smith helping three others hold the nylon tarp down with pegs.

“Smith?”

He looked up while holding the nylon down. “Yes, sir.”

Barliss growled under his breath. “I ordered you to assemble a rescue team.”

“Copy, sir. As per regulation 658, section B, we must set up these operations tents first to establish a safe base camp for the rescue team.”

“No, we don’t.” He spoke as if talking to a three-year-old. “You need to get off your ass and check out those coordinates!”

“What about the team, sir?”

“They can set up the tents when we get back. They’ll just have to tough it out for now. No one’s going to die of sunburn.” At least not right away. Skin cancer took time to develop, and he’d have Aries before any of his team needed a break.

His voice rumbled in his chest. “Get going!”

“Yes, sir.” As Smith trotted off, Barliss gazed over the sand dunes at the hazy horizon. Putting the subordinate in his place pacified him somewhat, but he couldn’t shake the feeling Aries had outwitted him. More and more, he found himself craving revenge. Once he found her, he’d teach her not to run away. He’d show her who had the power in their relationship.

Moments later, a hovercraft buzzed behind him. On his way to inform the teams, the skyman had sent the search and rescue vessel his way, complete with supplies. It was none too soon. Barliss didn’t want to be left alone with his brooding thoughts.

The pilot saluted him as he stood on the open-air deck of the hovercraft, awaiting further orders.

Smith trudged over the sand, carrying a backpack overflowing with water bottles, batteries and gadgets. “I trust everything is in order, sir?”

Barliss noted the appropriate bootlicking in Smith’s tone. The skyman was scrambling to make up for his earlier mistake, yet if he truly wanted the lieutenant’s favor, he should have followed his orders in the first place. Was he really the best of what the
New Dawn
could offer?

Smith gestured to the pilot. “Langston’s going to fly us to the location, sir.”

“Very well.” Barliss nodded, slight as a blink of an eye. “Let’s get moving.”

The hovercraft lifted, spreading waves of sand out like a fan. Barliss held on tightly as the vessel propelled itself forward. Blowing sand stung his freshly shaven face as they moved at high speed, but he ignored the pain as he searched the horizon.

It took a sizzling fifteen minutes to reach the site of the strewn metal. Except for the presence of the debris, the terrain looked like the hovercraft hadn’t gone anywhere. Everything on the hellish planet looked the same.

Smith hopped out first, whipping out his metal detector to prove his findings. Barliss was second on the ground. His boots sunk in the sand as he gained his footing. The pilot stayed in the hovercraft. Langston backed away from the site to reduce the spray of sand.

“Right here, sir.” Smith waved the device over a heap of orange granules. The metal detector beeped.

Barliss nodded, but not in approval, only as a command. “Check it out.”

Smith got down on his hands and knees and dug into the mound. He pulled up a rectangular metal box filled with grit. Turning it upside down, he poured out the sand, then dusted off the cover panel.

“It’s a water locator, sir. One of ours.”

Barliss stumbled over, cursing as the sand sucked at the soles of his boots. “How do you know?”

“It’s inscribed with our symbol, sir.”

Barliss leaned down and ran his fingers over the scratched metal. Indeed, the symbol of the seventeenth-century ship was as clear as the replica on his lieutenant’s lapel pin and the embroidered insignia on the right breast of his uniform. It was one of their devices, and it was wrecked beyond repair.

“We still haven’t found her locator, sir.” Smith spoke in a soft voice.

Barliss turned away, clutching the broken metal in his hand. “Keep looking, Skyman. I’m going to get water.”

“Yes, sir.”

Barliss approached the hovercraft, feeling as though the sand sucked at each step he took. The pull of gravity and the heat threatened his composure, and he fought them like an enemy, pushing his boots through the sand.

Without warning, the sand erupted at his feet like fireworks. Six creatures leaped from the soil and surrounded him and Smith, blocking off their path to the hovercraft.

“Sir,” Smith’s voice wavered.

“Stay still.”

As the creatures held up their spears, Barliss reached for the laser in the holster at his side. He’d had enough of this godforsaken planet, a planet that exposed his weaknesses and had swallowed his bride-to-be whole.

“We shouldn’t interfere with the indigenous people.” Smith recited the Guide’s rule, as if Barliss weren’t already an expert.

“Just shut up!”

As the leader came forward, Barliss drew his gun and fired, sending the creature sprawling backward into the sand. The others scrambled into their holes like rats, hissing a warning sound. As they retreated, Barliss kept shooting, downing three more for sport before the rest could get away.

Pleased with his aim, Barliss looked to Smith for accolades, but the man didn’t seem to admire his conquest. He covered his head with both hands, wincing at the carnage.
Poor guy’s got marshmallows for guts.