Paradise 21 (7 page)

Barliss walked over to the bodies sprawled in the sand. Triumph overpowered his heart. Kicking one over, he bent down to look at the creature he’d defeated with one click of the trigger.

Crude animal hide covered its face, except for the eyes, which were hidden behind some kind of bone mask. Barliss pulled the mask up, wiping his fingers on his pants as if the corpse were diseased. Black eyes framed in scales striped with vermilion and yellow stared blankly up at him. A two-pronged, purple-black tongue hung from its mouth, dangling between two ivory teeth, venom dripping at the tips.

“By god, these bastards are ugly.” Barliss lifted his head away in disgust. As he began to turn back to the hovercraft, a glint of silver caught his eye. Tied around the creature’s neck on a thin rope rested a diamond.

Barliss fell to his knees, the orange sand grinding into his navy uniform. It wasn’t any diamond. He pushed aside the hides the creature was wearing to get a better look. The jewel was a five-karat, emerald-cut, champagne-colored diamond ring, framed by two gray pearls on either side. Barliss tore the crude string and held the ring up to catch the blazing sun. Unquestionably, he held his family heirloom in his fingertips, a ring that had been passed to him by his grandmother, from her grandmother before.

Only a day ago, the ring had claimed a place on Aries’ third finger.

The brazen woman may have gotten herself killed. The need for revenge rose, choking him worse than the stinking sand of this desert planet.

…

“Ouch.” Aries yanked her arm away from Striker.

Striker raised an eyebrow. “I can’t help you if you keep squirming around.” He put down the flurometric pliers and picked up the electromagnetic screwdriver.

“Why don’t you fry the thing and be done with it?” Although Aries liked the feeling of her arm resting in Striker’s large palm, she wanted the locator off her like a prisoner wanted to shed a protonic restraint.

“I have to be careful because it’s rigged to alert the mainframe if the seal is broken. You don’t want your shipmates joining us down here for coffee, do you?”

“No, I don’t.” Aries sighed. The thought of coffee appealed to her. She’d known once she climbed in the escape pod there’d be no more early morning cups of freshly brewed Joe. It had been a small price to pay for freedom. But if she didn’t have to pay it…“You don’t, by any chance, have coffee down here, do you?”

They were perched on rather large pedestals surrounding a white table that seemed to be made from a combination of ivory and glass. Aries stared at the smooth, shell-like walls. She hadn’t thought there was much of anything on this ship until Striker had surprised her a few moments ago and pushed on a glass panel set in the wall. The glass had fallen back and a shelf had appeared with more mechanical devices. As if he didn’t have enough tools to pry at her locator.

“Nope, although I’d enjoy some, too.” There was a wistful gleam in his smoky eyes. He’d managed to break open the latch on the circuit board above her wrist. He poked around for the right circuit to fry.

“What is this place, anyway?”

Striker shrugged, his eyes never leaving the circuits. “I told you. Crashed spaceship.”

“Who flew it? The writing doesn’t look like any language I’ve ever seen. These…chairs, if that’s what you call them, are too large for humans.”

“Yeah, ironically, it’s probably one of the greatest finds in the history of mankind. Too bad the owners are long gone.”

Aries suddenly felt as though she was trespassing. She didn’t want to be stuck in a battle between an Outlander and an alien race with technology far superior to her own. “How, exactly did you get this ship, and what did you do to the owners?”

Striker stopped fidgeting with the tools. He slid off the pedestal and walked toward one of the walls. After scratching a long line in the segment above his head with his fingernail, a panel the size of a window separated from the smooth surface and moved forward several inches. The panel flashed, pixels materializing in static fuzz. It was some type of screen, like the monitor of a computer, but more three-dimensional than anything humans made.

“I’ve accessed their memory cards. Here’s what I found.” Striker grinned, looking boyish and manly at the same time. “It will answer your questions while I figure out this locator.”

He winked as he climbed on the pedestal beside her. Maybe he did enjoy her company? Turning her head to hide her warm cheeks, Aries watched the screen as the pixels took shape into misty wisps of white clouds.

The scene began to move, like a movie on the
New Dawn
, the camera apparently soaring above a world of rolling moss-green hills and dense forests. The air was clear and clean, unlike the smog-choked scenes of the dying Earth she’d seen in her classes. Crimson light filtered down from the clouds, illuminating patches of trees in a ruddy glow. As the scene continued, the greenery gave way to gleaming cathedral-type steeples, spiraling in silver-lined twists to prick the sunset-colored sky. The buildings were too thin and elongated to be human-made. She wondered what device had recorded this magnificent display as the aerial view descended to the alien city below, resting on the balcony of an impossibly high tower. Strings of white fabric reached toward the sky like strands of jellyfish, blowing in a light wind. The camera focused on the room inside, and it took a minute for the lens to react to the change in light.

“Wait until you see what they look like.”

Striker’s sudden comment made Aries jump as he brought her back to reality. Her gaze settled on him as he bent his head over his work. She noticed the way his hair curled at the base of his neck, and how the back of his shirt dropped enough for her to see the indent of his broad shoulder blades.

A flash of light brought her attention back to the screen. The tower room pulsed inside with the same sapphire light of the spaceship, illuminating smooth, blue-white walls, an ivory floor, and glass-like structures. A bed of feathers rested above an ivory platform carved with strange, geometric symbols. Aries squinted her eyes, trying to see further in. A lump squirmed in the middle of the plumes.

The camera, if that was what it was, focused on the bed. A white-haired head peered out of the feathers, flashing an opal-skinned face with pearlescent eyes. The creature twitched a slight nose, with flaring nostrils. Lips that looked like they’d been carved from a mollusk shell moved in an “o” shape.

Aries gasped. “Angels. They look like angels.”

“Well, that’s one way to see it. I always thought they looked more like mermaids with wings.”

“They can fly?” The scene suddenly made more sense. It must have been taken by an alien gliding in the sky.

The creature in the bed radiated pale light, casting a luminescent glow through the room to the far reaches of the cavernous ceiling. The pulsing light weakened with each beat. Although its features were foreign to Aries, she could sense a great sadness accompanied by a weariness or fatigue.

“What’s wrong with it?” She felt like a small child watching a tragic, age-old fairy tale. Part of her didn’t want to know the end.

“Keep watching.” Striker poked around with an electromagnetic screwdriver. “The memory-vision will tell you better than I can.”

The creature raised an arm, long as an arrow, and pointed with branch-like fingers across the room. The tip of its finger, sharp as a pin and oily-white like the inside of a conch shell, shook slightly, as if from exhaustion or old age.

The vision turned, and the camera-holder paced the length of the room, past a hole in the ceiling filtering the diaphanous red sunlight. Nestled into impressions in the ivory floor were speckled eggs the size of a fat man’s belly.

A hand much like the skinny-boned creature in the bed reached out and dusted off the top of the closest egg, sending motes of glitter shimmering in the pale rays of red sun.

“They won’t hatch,” Striker explained with a sigh. “I’ve seen hundreds of these visions, and they all show eggs left to gather dust.”

“You mean their race is dying out?” All of a sudden, her situation seemed inconsequential. The injustice of her own pathetic lack of choices had consumed her, but the universe held tragedies much more profound. Here she was, running from her duty to maintain the propagation of her own species, when another race lay dying with no offspring.

“That’s it, Aries. You’re free.”

Striker’s words barely registered. Aries rubbed her wrist absentmindedly, still staring at the glistening eggs on the screen. The camera hadn’t moved in several minutes. Perhaps the alien had placed it down by the eggs.

“Aries?”

She blinked back tears. How could she tell him the vision made her seem small and selfish? She shook her head, unable to speak.

Striker’s voice was soft and emotional. “I’m sorry. I thought it would answer your questions, but instead it upset you.”

“How long has this ship been stranded?”

Striker shrugged. “The bodies of the pilot and crew were mummified by the desert when I found the craft. The span of time could have been centuries, or millennia. I’m not sure.”

“So that’s it? That’s the end of their race?”

“Maybe they found a planet where the eggs could hatch,” Striker answered, as if he’d already thought the question through. “Maybe this ship is the only one that didn’t make it.”

“Or maybe it was their last hope.”

He surprised her by taking her hand. “Come on. I’ve got to show you what the belly of the ship holds.”

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

Barliss slipped the engagement ring in his pocket and turned back to Smith with a frown. “It’s nothing. Ugly bastards, that’s all.”

If they had sufficient evidence of Aries’ death, the commander would call off the mission. Barliss wasn’t ready to come to terms with the fact she might get her way, even if that meant dying to avoid their ceremony, and he might never get revenge. This ring wasn’t true evidence of her death. From what he knew of her test scores and reasoning skills, Aries wasn’t an impulsive gambler. She would have planned ahead and come prepared. Heck, knowing now what kind of deception she was capable of, she might have sweet-talked these stupid lizard men into being her slaves.

Barliss promised himself he’d find her, dead or alive. He couldn’t sleep at night, not knowing if she’d outsmarted him or perished of her own accord. He wasn’t going to leave this filthy sand hole without her, even if it meant he had to drive his rescue team harder than they’d ever been driven before.

A wail erupted over the dunes like the high-pitched screech of the hovercraft’s engines in overdrive. Except the planet had no technological devices. This noise had to be creature-made.

“Come on, Skyman. We’ve got to get going.”

The pilot in the hovercraft looked up, only now realizing their search party had encountered native life-forms. Barliss curbed the urge to give him the finger before waving him over. He settled for a curt signal. The vessel’s engines revved and it sped toward them.

Barliss grabbed Smith’s arm and yanked him up. No one was going to die while he was on duty, not even a bleeding heart like Smith. He wanted the commander to see spectacular reports. Nothing else.

“What about the other metal readings, sir?”

Barliss silently cursed the man’s lack of battle instincts. “We need to go back for reinforcements. Stronger weaponry. There’s no telling what monstrosity made that sound.”

As the hovercraft pulled alongside them, the ground burst open and the land vomited grit. A worm the size of a building broke through, raining sand on their shoulders, nearly burying Smith in the process.

“Come on.” Barliss dragged Smith to the craft, hefting him up to the rim and throwing his feet over. As the worm swung its head down, he jumped, dodging the assault. Behind him, Langston fired a laser at its throat. The beast screeched again, whether in frustration or pain, Barliss didn’t care. He took advantage of the beast’s injury to jump into the hovercraft. “Go, go, go!”

“Yes, sir.” Langston kicked the craft into optimum speed and they took off, churning up sand, which seemed to confuse the worm. They were meters away within minutes.

“Whoa.” Smith finally found his tongue. “What with the sun, the lizards, and now these death worms, there’s no way a person could survive here.”

“Shut up, Skyman.” Barliss was quick to correct him. “You forget as an engineer, Aries Ryder was trained to work in different environments under all sorts of pressures. You’re overreacting, soldier.”

He eyed Langston as the man drove the craft. The pilot didn’t seem as fazed by the attack. Barliss ignored the stronger man and turned back to Smith. “It’s a good thing I’m sending the report to the commander and not you, or we’d all be shipped out of here tomorrow, leaving a floundering young woman to fend for herself and abandoning a great part of our genetic DNA. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Smith’s gaze fell to the floor. “Sorry, sir.” His face flushed red.

Barliss gleaned no satisfaction from beating someone with no backbone. He sat back and watched the sun as it set on the horizon. Behind him the first sun began to rise, casting a strange yellow-red glow.

At camp, he’d dig up that old bottle of wheat beer brewed by his friends on the
New Dawn
, another perk of knowing the right people. Although it was his last one, he needed it. The situation with the sandworm had scraped too close to tragedy. He’d choose a new team tomorrow, hopefully a few men with spines.