by Lace, Lisa
Rev didn't hear what Jaal replied, but Bris nodded as if Jaal could see him.
The first mate yelled, "Come on," motioned with his arms, and picked up the pace. Grenta and Rev could do nothing but follow. Behind them, a group of miners had made it past the barricade of corpses and were pursuing them in their truck. It wouldn’t be long before they caught up.
The loud thrum of a ship filled the air. When Rev looked up, he saw the transport descending slowly.
Abruptly, the transport dropped to the ground, the hatch opened, and the gangplank extended. Bris, Rev, and Grenta hurried into the ship. As soon as they were on board, Jaal lifted off, leaving the gangplank and hatch dangling, rising only high enough so the miners couldn’t reach them.
Grenta sunk to the floor of the transport, clutching his chest. The ride was rocky, and Rev had to hang on to a grab bar to keep from getting tossed to the deck himself. When he looked out a hatch window, he saw that Jaal kept the ship close to the ground.
The transport stopped roughly, and Jaal came out of the pilot's cabin with a scowl on his face.
"What the fuck happened, Bris? Cax?" He glared at the two men.
"That other Terran," said Grenta, still breathless, "her conversion broke down amazingly fast."
"That is not an excuse. Where is the money?"
"They kept putting us off. They wanted to party first," said Bris.
"What! How many kinds of idiot are you? Did you at least see any money?"
The captain could deduce the answer by looking at the men's faces.
"Fuck!" Jaal kicked the bulkhead. He set his jaw and stared at the three men.
"Then we'll go get it. We didn't come all this way to get cheated."
"But, Captain—" said Bris.
"No ‘but, Captain’!" said Jaal. "I'm not leaving here without my money, and if that means killing every last one of these blue bastards, then that's what we'll do."
Rev turned his head away. This was not good, not good at all. He imagined that Jaal would order them to hit the miners’ camp hard. The men on this ship would not care who they had to kill, but Rev couldn't do it. He was a licensed space cop, and he would lose his chance to retrieve Tracy. This loss of life went against everything he believed in.
Jaal stared at Rev carefully. "Do you have a problem with this, Cax?"
"Yes," said Rev. "We aren't likely to get more business if we start killing our clients."
"Our business is cooked if word gets out that we are selling counterfeit wives."
"What makes you think people aren't suspicious now? These miners were very reluctant to give us money. They were waiting to see if the goods were bogus, and their suspicions were confirmed by Grenta's sloppy work."
"My sloppy work?" protested Grenta. "You were right there next to me. Everything was done using the normal procedure."
"Maybe you overestimated the Terrans’ compatibility with the conversion process. The first one was a failure, and the second one failed within a few hours."
Rev realized he was fighting a losing battle. He hoped that, at a minimum, he would be able to stop the abduction of women from Earth. Whether he could figure out a way to save the miners and their captive wives was another problem altogether.
"Enough," said Jaal holding up his hands. "Arguing won't solve our problems. The way I see it, these miners are going to report us at the first opportunity. That is, if we let them. We're going in after them, and we'll leave no witnesses. Understood?"
Rev turned to Jaal.
"I understand, but you are wrong, Jaal."
The older man's eyes grew wide, and he stepped forward and backhanded Rev, sending him to deck.
Rev knew his disguise had failed when the feeling of crackling electricity on his skin ceased. He also knew he was in deep shit.
Jaal looked at the stranger on the floor. "Who the fuck are you?" hissed Jaal.
Bris stood. "Obviously not a friend. I thought you were acting a little weird. Now we know why."
In a second, Jaal and Bris were on him. Bris kicked Rev in the head while Jaal kicked him in the ribs. Blow after blow, they pounded him. He was dazed, in pain, and powerless to stop the brutal rain of punishment.
"Where the fuck is Cax?" demanded Jaal.
Blood was pouring out his mouth. Rev couldn't answer even if he wanted to.
"Enough," Grenta said. "He's got to be a fucking tracker, sure enough. Who else would infiltrate us?"
"You're right, Grenta. It's time to take out the trash."
"What do you want to do, Captain?" said Bris.
"We're far enough away from the miners’ camp, and he's torn up good. We'll let the sun and sand take care of the rest."
The hatch opened, and Rev felt the sucking of the air through the hatch and the bright sun on his skin.
"Goodbye, tracker, whoever the fuck you are," said Bris.
Rev was hauled to his feet and tossed out the hatch. He tumbled, his chest and face burning. His training kicked in instinctively, and he held out his arms and put his legs together to try and control his descent. If he was lucky, he might survive the fall with only a few broken bones. He bent his knees and prepared to roll when he hit the ground.
He landed with a hard crash, and pain racked his body.
Rev couldn't move, and the sand burned any patch of skin not covered with clothing. He had survived the landing but not by much. The hard reality was that he wouldn't survive his injuries without protection and supplies.
"I'm so sorry, my Tracy," he mumbled. "I couldn't keep my promise to you."
He passed out and never noticed the shadow creeping over his body.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tracy saw the spaceship hovering. She saw them toss a body out of the open hatch. With a hitch in her throat, she watched the body fall to the unforgiving sand. The body landed, sand spraying up around it. Once the sand settled it was easy to see some details of the body against the red sand. Where it wasn’t clothed, it was green.
With a sigh and a huff, she pushed her feet against the shifting sand. She worked her way to the humanoid, whose arms and legs were askew. The body had several wounds dripping dark brown blood. His face was marred by black marks in his skin. Tracy watched his torso carefully and saw, to her relief, that his chest rose and fell. Anger and compassion curled around her heart. She had faced death twice in the span of a twenty-four hours, and that didn't do any good for a woman's mood.
There he is, she thought. The green bastard who got me into this mess.
He groaned, and her heart melted.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tracy assumed the brownish stuff oozing from the wounds on Rev’s hulking green frame was blood, although it didn't look like any blood she'd seen before. And then, of course, there was the whole green skin thing.
When she had first seen him, he looked different. Human, at least. His skin had been a deep brown, and his well-defined chest and arm muscles had strained his t-shirt. He’d had dark hair and caramel eyes that had captivated her.
Tracy didn't know exactly how he changed, but he was definitely not the man she had sucked off in an alley and fucked furiously while he’d held her captive on the spaceship. The man who’d claimed her as his mate was not who he’d said he was.
He let out a moan.
Whatever he had done in the past, it didn't matter right now. She couldn't leave him there alone to die.
"Rev, are you awake?"
He groaned some more, and Tracy got the message. He wasn't going to be any help. She had to get him out of there somehow.
She took out the parachute, and with a snap of her wrist it fluttered free of the cords that bound it together. She smoothed it out the best she could, and with a grunt, she rolled Rev onto it and grabbed the hem. Tracy brought the edges around her waist and tied them off.
She gave the makeshift carrier a quick tug. Heavy, but moveable.
With a sigh, she started towards the rock outcropping she had left hours before, dragging
Rev's unconscious body behind her.
Tracy really didn't want to go back there after her encounter with the alien crab, but there weren't a lot of options. Rev was in no condition to withstand the brutal sun, and she wasn't sure how long until nightfall.
Since she didn't happen to be an astrophysicist, she knew next to nothing about alien planets. She had paid some attention during the astronomy class she took in college for an easy A. One thing she remembered was that the length of the day varied on different planets depending on their rate of rotation. A day on another planet might be only be a few Earth hours’ long. Nightfall here definitely seemed to happen quickly compared to Earth.
The only thing she knew for sure was that it was scorching hot whenever the sun was up.
Although she felt lighter than she did at home, pulling Rev was still a lot of work. When she had dragged his body up one of the sand dunes she’d started thinking about all the days at the gym she’d missed. Tracy wished she had gone to every one of them instead of just thinking about going.
If I ever get back to Earth, I'm going to work out regularly four times a week.
Tracy was getting tired quickly, and her labored breathing made her lungs work overtime. One foot after the other, her mind drifted back to a marching chant from her youth.
Left.
Left.
I had a good job when I left.
First they hired me, then they fired me, then by golly, I left my wife with forty-two kids on the edge of starvation with only gingerbread left.
Left.
As an adult, Tracy thought it was a gruesome song. It was a terrible thing to have kids chant over and over on hikes. Today, she was particularly irked by it.
She didn't even have gingerbread.
* * *
Tracy's back felt like it was on fire from the combination of sun and exertion. Dragging Rev was becoming more difficult, and she needed to take a break.
Nearby, the wind had etched a depression into the sand. It was shallow, but it faced away from the sun. She figured she could find a way to put the parachute up over the opening and make a tent to shield them from the afternoon sun. She did not want to find a deeper cave and encounter another land crab.
She rolled Rev into the hollow and fished through the pockets of her suit for a fresh water packet. Tracy had intended to keep them for an emergency, but Rev needed it now. She knelt beside him and lifted his head to her knees.
"Hey, big guy," she said. She dribbled some water on his lips.
At first he just lay there, but as she sprinkled water on his face, he tossed his head back and forth.
"Stop that, Tev," he said, batting her hands away. She felt his skin, and it was burning. This was not good. He was delirious, either from heat stroke or a fever. He needed liquids.
She forced open his mouth and trickled more water in. His tongue lapped at the liquid. Tracy sighed with relief. All she had to do was keep giving him water until he came around.
Right?
Tracy gave him a little more water, but she needed to get the parachute up before much longer. There was a ridge on top of the depression. She scrambled to the top, dragging the parachute behind her. There were plenty of rocks in the sand, and she was able to weigh down the top of the parachute with them, letting the parachute dangle down like a shower curtain.
If only they had included tent poles in the survival suit, that would have been something. When they made it out alive, she would suggest it to the manufacturers.
She slid back to the floor of the recess and used some more rocks to secure the parachute to the ground. At first, Tracy wasn't sure if this would work, but she hit on the idea of pulling out the cords that ran through the chute and tying them around the rocks. Tracy scooted back into the depression and sat next to Rev.
Tracy hoped being out of the sun would help lower his temperature, but beads of sweat still lined his brow, and his breathing was ragged. On the other hand, Rev had only been in the shade for a few minutes. Tracy pulled out another water container and gave him more liquid to drink.
"Leave me alone, Tev," he croaked. "Father is going to be very angry."
This wasn't good. He was still delirious. She realized his wounds could be infected from being dragged across the desert. She took out something that she hoped was a medical kit from her suit and examined the contents.
There were some pads soaked in some kind of liquid. That looked about right. She ripped open the pack and started cleaning the visible wounds. Some of the blood she cleaned off Rev was a different color.
Good for you, Tracy thought. You killed them right back after they got you.
She cleaned him up as much as she could, and she found that his wounds were already scabbed over. There was no oozing around them that indicated infection. That was a relief.
She picked up the medical kit again and looked for anything else that might help Rev recover. There was a stick with a waxy substance. Tracy put some on his lips. This would be small comfort for Rev, but his lips were cracked. Hopefully it wouldn't interfere with his physiology.
Rev licked his lips. "Thirsty," he croaked.
Tracy gave him more water, growing more concerned by the minute. She was in the middle of nowhere with a sick alien and no help around her. She looked again through the packages. There was some writing on them, which would be fantastic if she could read alien.
Then she remembered her talking space helmet.
"I need some help here. This guy is in pain, and I'm afraid he is going to die. What do I have that can help him?"
One of the medical packages contains a broad-spectrum antibiotic lozenge. To administer, place the entire package as it is wrapped under the tongue. Do not let it slip out while it dissolves.
Tracy rummaged through the medical kid until she found the item singled out by the helmet. "Okay, you," she said. "Open up." She pressed Rev's cheeks between her hands and slipped the lozenge under his tongue.
He tossed his head, groaning, and Tracy struggled to keep his mouth shut and his head still. He finally relaxed and became very still. Tracy became frightened that she’d poisoned him.
"Why isn't he moving?"
The lozenge contains antibacterial agents, antiviral agents, and medical nanobots. A mild sedative is included to calm the patient.
Whew. That was great. He was off to la la land, and she had no idea how long it would last. If there were any more mild sedatives around, she would have taken one herself.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tracy took out a food ration and started eating it. She drank the water from her suit, saving the packs of water for Rev. She didn't take her eyes off him. He was still out of it, but when she placed her hand on his head, he felt cooler than before. He was breathing easier, which was also good news.
Still, she wondered if there was more she could do for him. She needed his help to get off this damn planet!
She was exhausted and every muscle in her body ached. The events of the past couple days piled on her. The jump, the land crab, and hauling Rev across the sand; it was more than a girl should have to do. She'd been tired before, some days delivering multiple paper routes in the morning before facing a day of paperwork and meetings. There was even a stretch where she’d worked eighty-hour weeks. None of that compared to being abducted by aliens.
She looked at Rev again, his face as peaceful as a child's. She wished she could feel that carefree, but her present circumstances prevented that.
The day got hotter, and the air didn't move well under the chute. Tracy leaned her head against a rock and closed her eyes. Just for a second. I'll let myself rest for just a second.
* * *
Rev woke up confused and disoriented. He didn’t think he’d ever been this thirsty. Something smelled good. He looked around trying to get his bearings, and then he realized what scent wafted to his nostrils.
His mate!
Nothing had ever looked as good to Rev as the sight of her lying next to him. He didn't
know how she’d found him, but she was here. He held back the urge to kiss her.
Obviously, Tracy had had a rough day. She looked exhausted.
He scanned his surroundings, noting with some pride that she had figured out to use the jump chute as a covering. The emergency kit was spread out on the sand. He picked up a spent tube and a wrapper. Good, she had given him some medicine. How she’d figured out to give it to him, he didn't know, but if she hadn’t, he'd be worse off than he was.
She had also used the skin balm. On his lips, but it still protected him. She was pretty resourceful for a human. Except for some deep bruises, he didn't feel that bad.
How long had he been out?
He tried to stretch his arms, and he was rewarded with a punishing tear of pain through his side. Clearly, he was lucky to be doing this well.
Rev looked at Tracy again. Her face was bright pink. Was that a sunburn? When she woke, he would spread some skin balm on her face. That was going to hurt.
While he waited for Tracy to wake up, he reviewed what had happened to him. The last thing he remembered was Jaal and Bris beating him, and then they had shoved him out of the hatch. Fortunately, the transport wasn't that far from the ground. The landing was hard, but he didn't seem to have any broken bones.
He definitely had some bruising though. That would take time for the medical nanobots to heal. It might even take the rest of the day. He was going to be recovering forever!
But then again, where did they have to go?
That was the biggest problem. How were they going to get out of there? Getting off the planet to a more civilized place was a puzzle. He could try the miners, but they weren't too happy that their wives were genetic creations, and they might have some hard feelings from being shot at.
He remembered Quam's face when he found out that his 'wife' wasn't Staukub at all.
Wait a second. Hadn't Jaal decided to kill everyone in the miners’ camp? Rev didn't know if the captain had followed through on that, so he couldn’t be sure what they would find if he and Tracy were to go there.
