“Barelius is closer and has what we need,” the Commander answered. “Time is short.”
“One moment,” Sam said, and gestured for the connection to be cut. He looked at Gabriel. “Is this guy’s name on the Last Defender’s list?”
Gabriel had the list filed in his head. “No. And you notice he’s a commander. Where’s the captain? Can we afford to let them heal Verina Leriss to make another planet-killer?”
“Are you suggesting we blast them out of space when they’ve asked for safe passage?” Sam frowned at him. “Not a great PR moment for Rescue.”
“Let them go,” Rayna said from the open hatch leading on to the bridge. She and Lana joined Gabriel and Sam at the conn. “There’s another way to make sure Doctor Leriss never works again. Ardis is already busy exposing the Last Defenders to the Minertsan government. That may explain why a mere commander is in charge of the Atar.”
Sam grinned. “Let’s just test that theory,” he said, and, signaling to Patel, turned back to the screen. “Doctor Verina Leriss is wanted as a war criminal for her actions on the planet of Saltiss. We demand you hand her over.”
The Commander inclined his head. “I assure you, Captain, Doctor Leriss will be held accountable for her crimes before a Court of Judgment on Minertsa as soon as she is recovered.”
Sam shared a glance with Rayna and nodded. “Commander, you have our safe passage to seek medical care for your scientist. Good luck.”
The Gray commander bowed. “Thank you, Captain. We are indebted.”
The viewscreen went dark.
Sam stood and led his Rescue team to the sensor station. “Do we need to send a team dirtside, Mo?”
The Pataran straightened from his screen and shook his head. “No, Cap. There was an initial smaller explosion, then a series of larger ones. Now there’s nothing left but rubble, even at a depth of 2000 meters. No EM signatures, temps still higher than any nanocircuits could stand.”
Everyone looked to Gabriel, who searched without success for psi evidence of the creature as far and wide as he could. He checked with Trevyn, who confirmed what he felt. Nothing would arise from the ruins of the Gray experiment at T7.
“There’s no need for us to stay,” Gabriel said at last. “The creature is dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
A loud cra-a-ck! echoed through the distant woods, followed by the howls of a man in agony. Happy scrambled to his feet and woofed, his ears pricked at the unusual sounds.
Charlie started to the window, but Javin held her back. “Stay away from the doors and windows! Take the old man and get in the back of the hallway. You’ll be protected there.”
Charlie didn’t think; she just did what she’d been told and wheeled Del toward the back bedrooms over his protests. “We’re trapped like veers in a vent back here,” he spat. “Kid’s gonna get us killed.”
“That sounded like an explosive, Del,” she argued. “We need to keep away from the windows.”
But Happy seemed to agree with Del. He was at the front door, whining to be let out.
Charlie called to him. “Happy! Get away from there! Come!” Reluctantly, he left off and joined them in the hall.
Javin had been talking to his men. “Nils has been hurt. He needs help. Stay here—for Portal’s sake don’t go outside! Rafe can’t be far.”
She whipped around to stare at him. “What? But—”
But the big man was gone. Charlie gripped the stun gun in her sweating hand, trying to breathe around a growing sense of the unreal. How could she be the last line of defense for this helpless old man?
“I’m a nurse for God’s sake, not The Transporter!” And where was her own private Jason Stratham right now, anyway?
Del put a hand on her arm. She turned to look down at him.
And found him grinning. “That’s right, honey. A kickass nurse! Let that bastard come!”
Her laughter was cut short by another sharp explosion in the woods. She and Del shared worried looks.
“Closer,” he said.
She nodded. “At the head of the driveway, maybe. On the ridge.”
Happy paced in the limited space of the hallway, whining. The air was thick and stale with their fear. The sweat was rolling down Charlie’s back now.
“Zouk won’t come in after us,” Del said. “He won’t need to if he’s using explosive drones.”
“What do you mean?” She could barely get the words out.
“What do you think I mean?” The old man’s expression showed every battle he’d ever fought—and lost. “This place is a bonfire just waiting for a light.”
“Oh, my God!” Her mind raced, teetering on the edge of panic. Those drones could find them any second, whether Rafe got to Zouk or not. And if Rafe didn’t find Zouk first, the assassin would be waiting for them if they did find a way out of the burning house.
But she would be damned if she gave up without a fight. She left the false safety of the hall and ran for the kitchen. Under the sink was a fire extinguisher. She grabbed it and dodged her way back through the great room, shooing Happy in front of her.
She was a step away from the hall when deafening thunder broke all around her. Lightning flashed and stole her sight. The world flipped upside down. Pain rolled over her. And the darkness swept up to take her under.
From the woods at the back of the cabin, Rafe couldn’t see what had happened. He could only hear the shattering of glass, the splintering of wood, the shriek of tortured metal as the ED went off around the side of the house. He ran for the back door, knowing Zouk would be watching, praying he would be at the front.
But the blue stream of laze fire melted the mud at his feet the second he emerged from the cover of the trees. He shot back as he stumbled across the yard, and the arc of fire chasing him went wide. He made the porch. One more stream of laze fire sizzled past his head. He returned it, with no hope of hitting his attacker, hidden in the trees at an angle that allowed him to see both front and back of the house. The laze fire let up, and Rafe slipped inside.
Smoke filled the house—the explosion had set one corner of the great room on fire. Happy was howling and yipping—in pain or in fear, Rafe couldn’t tell. He’d never heard the animal make those sounds. And he was pawing at something in the center of the room . . .
“Charlie!” He ran and dropped beside her fallen body.
Del was there, out of his chair on the floor, fumbling with a heavy red cylinder, coughing, tears rolling down his face. “Help me, Rafe, I”ve almost got this thing to work!”
Rafe ignored him to bend over Charlie. She was bloodied and unconscious, but not seriously injured. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks.
“Charlie, come on. Wake up, now, beautiful.”
She came around and started coughing. “Rafe?” Happy butted in and licked her face as if he’d feared he might never see her again.
“Come on, we gotta get out of here. Can you walk?”
She sat up, holding her head. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Hey, shit-for-brains!” Del smacked him on the arm. He held up a pin.“You’re gonna have to manage this thing. We’ll never make it out of here without it!” The fire was spreading fast, closing off any chance of exiting through the back bedrooms. The front door was no option; Zouk and his laze rifle would have a clear shot at them on the front porch.
He took the cylinder from Del and looked it over. “This is fire control?”
Charlie nodded, barely able to speak now for coughing. “The pin’s out, now squeeze the handle.”
The fire was beyond anything this little device could manage, Rafe knew, but maybe it would give him a few seconds to get Del to the porch. “Charlie, you and Happy get to the back door, but don’t go outside yet. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He looked her over. “You have a weapon?”
She gave him a shaky grin and pulled a stun gun from her waistband. “Never leave home without it.”
“Good girl. Now go, and keep your head down.”
She scrambled for the kitchen and the back door. Happy danced uncertainly for a moment in confusion, afraid of the fire and smoke, before she called him. Then he sprinted to her side.
Flames shot through the billowing black smoke, feeding off the log walls and the overstuffed furniture. Rafe and Del were nearly surrounded by the hungry blaze now, their exit to the kitchen threatened, and the oxygen, even at the floor, was getting thin. Every breath was searing torture, even for Rafe. The old man was almost done.
Rafe raised himself to his knees to point the fire control nozzle at the fire blocking their getaway. A white cloud of suppressing chemicals blasted out of the cylinder as he squeezed the handle and pushed back the flames for a brief time. He grabbed Del under the shoulders and hauled him through the kitchen to the back door where the heat and the smoke were less intense. He stood to beat back the flames with the device once again, hoping to gain a little more time.
But Zouk was still watching. A blue streak of laze fire just missed Rafe’s shoulder, shattering the kitchen window to burn through the far wall. Rafe threw himself on the floor and crawled to join the others at the back door.
“Trapped,” the old man muttered. “I told that young fool!”
Charlie looked at Rafe. “Javin! Where is he?”
He started to explain that his comm was out, but an exchange of laze fire in the trees just out of their line of sight answered her question. “Right where he’s supposed to be.” He moved to stand beside the screen door. “Stay here as long as you can. There’s a little left in that cylinder.” He met his father’s gaze, saw the old man nod back.
“Rafe.” Charlie looked up at him as though she’d stop him, but all she said was, “Be careful.”
Something about the way she was looking at him made his heart twist in his chest. He didn’t have words for that kind of feeling, or time to think of them. He just nodded and turned to check out the door.
The laze rifles were still exchanging fire in the woods off to his left. There was a good chance they could slip out while Zouk was engaged with Javin. He opened the screen door a crack—and Happy shot out, bounding off the porch and into the woods so fast he was gone from view in less than two seconds.
Charlie gave a little cry of despair. “Happy!” She stood and looked to Rafe.
He shook his head. “I can’t see him.”
“The fire is freaking him out.” Her voice shook. She was terrified and trying not to show it. “I don’t think he’ll run far.”
“Come on. We have to move while we can,” Rafe said. He started to reach for Del.
But she put a hand on his shoulder. “I can get us out of here. You have a bad guy to take care of.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she gave him a push. “Go.”
He slipped out the door and clumped down the porch steps, then limped as fast as he could across the yard and into the woods. He wasn’t fast, and his thigh burned with any effort now. He’d healed a little, but he wasn’t nearly at full fighting capability. He could only hope Zouk was so preoccupied by Javin’s fire that he wouldn’t be watching his six.
Rafe moved from tree to tree, sticking to the stark shadows, growing closer to the source of the intermittent bursts of laze fire erupting in the woods. When the rifles whined, he lurched forward; when they stopped, he stopped, until at last he pulled up behind a big oak.
Zouk was in sight, flattened behind a tree-topped hummock. Firing. Waiting. Firing again.
Rafe’s position wasn’t ideal. Several trees blocked his shot. He’d have to move again to get a clear aim at Zouk. He waited, sweat dripping down his back despite the cold.
Zouk raised his rifle. Rafe prepared to step out. As Zouk took his shot, Rafe moved, but his bad leg betrayed him, and he stumbled, snapping branches hidden beneath the snow. Zouk turned, a grin on his face, Rafe already in his sights.
Then something moved in the woods to Rafe’s right, crashing through the underbrush and fallen leaves. From the edge of the line of trees that marked his territory, came a vicious growl and a series of snarling barks—Happy.
Zouk turned to look—a nanosecond that allowed Rafe to raise his weapon and fire. Zouk went down in a sprawl on the forest floor. Rafe hadn’t planned on giving the assassin a chance for a long life on a distant prison planet. The laze rifle had been set on kill, and the hit was center mass. But just to be sure he knelt by the body and felt for a pulse. Zouk wouldn’t be getting up. Ever.
Javin caught up to him as Rafe started back through the woods. “You get the ptark?”
“Yeah, the fucker’s dead.” Rafe was panting now, stumbling and lurching as his bad leg kept impeding his progress. “The cabin’s on fire. Charlie needs help. Don’t wait for me. Go on.”
Javin ran ahead just as they came up on Happy, still barking his alarm near the edge of the woods. “Good boy, Happy,” Rafe told him. “We got him. Come on, let’s go find your mom.” The dog left off and followed as Rafe kept putting one foot in front of the other. They’ll be okay, he insisted to himself. Charlie will be okay.
And when he finally burst through the trees onto the square of patchy snow in the back yard, he saw that it was true. Despite the flames licking up three sides of the cabin, Charlie had hoisted Del’s arm over her shoulder and carried him out into the yard. Javin was taking him from her now, picking him up to carry him further away from the burning house.
Javin brought Del in his direction, while Happy closed the distance to Charlie and ran back with her. Where Rafe stood at the edge of the woods was as good a place as any to shelter from the flames consuming the cabin. They should call the local fire department to keep the fire from spreading into the woods. They should find Zouk’s vehicle and take Del and Nils to Charlie’s place, then come back and bury Zouk. But all of that could wait another minute.
He held out his arms for Charlie, and she ran straight to them. She was shaking as he caught her, maybe even crying with relief, he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter either that Happy was leaning on them hard enough to nearly knock him over. She was here now. They were safe. And he was never going to let her go.
“I’ve got you, Charlie,” he whispered. “It’s over.”
EPILOGUE
Winter had finally given up its hold on the mountains. The sourwood and the wild cherry showed yellow and white through the blushing red oaks and naked hickory on the slopes. The meadow above the jumble of boulders on Rafe’s upper ten acres was green with new grass. And the breeze blowing across the ridge was warm and smelled of freshly-turned earth.
“You know we have 50 people showing up at the house in a few hours,” Charlie said as she followed Rafe and a boisterous Happy down into the field from the ridge road. She told herself Louise, her father and her gaggle of old friends from Asheville had everything under control, but they hadn’t planned on the bride playing hooky.
He looked back in surprise. “How did we come up with that many people?”
“I had friends and family before you showed up, you know,” she answered with a laugh. “Then Rayna and Sam, Lana and Gabriel, Javin, the Thorson twins—I told them they could bring dates from the ship—and—”
“Never mind.” He smiled at her. “Just as long as we’re married at the end of it.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she told him, stepping close and looking up at him. “I’m not about to let you slip away.”
Rafe grabbed her hand and led her a little further along, his gait smooth now that his leg had fully healed. “This won’t take long. I want to ask you something.”
He came to a stop in the middle of the field and pulled her under his arm. She snuggled close to take in the view. It was early enough that the valley was still sleeping under a blanket of white, swirling mist, though the sun was bright and warm on the mountain tops. Early wildflowers nestled in the young grass of the meadow, fodder for the baby bunnies now scattering in terror from a bounding Belgian shepherd.
Rafe watched him with a smile on his
face. “Slavering beast.”
She breathed deep. “It really is beautiful up here.”
“Yeah. I thought it would make a good place for a house.” He looked down at her. “What do you think?”
Charlie stared back at him. “You want to build a house? Here?”
He smiled. “No. I want us to build a house here. One big enough to accommodate the Old Man. And, I don’t know, maybe some kids? I love your little cabin, but you have to admit it’s been cramped the last few weeks. And since the Feds have arrested Hal Davis, and I'm the new sheriff of the county—”
“Kids?” Charlie couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “You never said you wanted kids.”
He pulled back. “You don’t want them? We don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just thought now that the Old Man is doing so much better—”
“Stop.” She put both arms around his neck and held him close. “I do. Oh, I so want kids with you, Rafe.” She kissed him and smiled. “You’re right. Del’s tests show a solid 30 percent improvement—that should give us some good years ahead with him. And a house here? That sounds just about perfect, Sheriff.”
He relaxed, his grin returning twice as bright. “Good. Then there’s only one thing left to do, beautiful.” He took her by the hand and started walking back up the slope of their mountain, Happy leaving off his rabbit chase to fall in with them. “Let’s go get married.”
With the spring sun on her shoulders and the mountain warm beneath her feet, Charlie believed there was nothing in the whole world—no, the whole inhabited galaxy—she’d rather do.
The End
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community of talent to “birth” a book. Thanks as always to my sharp-eyed editor Deborah Kreiser-Francis and to my wonderful cover artist Jessica Hildreth. Thanks to Naomi Davis, Colleen O’felein and the other hard-working elves at Inklings Literary who stepped in to work their magic when it was needed most. Thank you, especially, to my longtime friend Beki Weight Groenwald for her expert insight on dog behavior. Happy would not be the dog he is today without her disciplined training—of his creator!
Not Fade Away: Interstellar Rescue Series Book 4 Page 35
