Maddi made her own call to a shuttle service operator, using the Safe Room communications, requesting they send a charter to the ranch as soon as possible. She expected Kit would go back on her word when she found Ethan’s body, and would come looking for her sooner than tomorrow. She wasn’t going to drive away this time.
When Maddi was notified by the pilot that the shuttle was descending from sub orbit, only ten minutes away, the massive door of the Safe Room unlocked and started to move. The electric motor and gears powering the multi-ton mass pulled it slowly open. It had been a futile hour for Brethard, trying to convince Maddi that the ripper had truly departed. She refused to release the manual safety lock until her ride was almost there.
Brethard was aware that Maddi had stayed busy, sending household robots around all three floors and then outside, to confirm on her monitors, via their cameras, that the ripper and its shuttle were gone. Men working on cleanups tasks instead of standing guard should have been proof enough. Instead, she demanded that lookouts be posted for Kit’s possible return, and her father acceded, as he always had for her.
The excessive caution wasn’t for her seeming fear of the ripper. She had betrayed her father, and was unsure what his reception would be when she made her exit. She wanted all the men upstairs and busy, out of the way.
She walked slowly and contrite looking out of the vault, her hands clasped behind her, that pretty head partly downturned with a tearful expression on her face. Unexpectedly, her father wasn’t waiting for her with forgiving open arms. Instead, he acted distant, standing over at the base of the enclosed staircase that led up to the first floor. It was as if he were simply confirming she was really coming out, to get into a shuttle and leave him yet again.
She managed to squeeze out a tear. “Daddy, I’m sorry. I was afraid. I’m still afraid, and I want to fly over to our property on Queensland. Once I know that monster has left the planet, or it’s dead, I’ll come back home, I promise.”
Brethard shook his head, a sad smile showing. “Maddi, I’ll give you the old Queensland house, and my first ranch. It’s small, but it’s yours. Stay there, and don’t bother coming back here, unless it’s to run your whorehouse. You are truly your mother’s daughter. You always have been, and I couldn’t see that.” He shrugged.
“I saved you from her you know. She never wanted a child. Sharing me with you wasn’t what she wanted. I made her having my child a condition she had to meet. I don’t mean she didn’t want me to divert some of my affection for her to you, because she was ambivalent about my affection. She knew I’d eventually make you my heir. I became convinced you would have a fatal accident someday, if I didn’t watch over you. I was prepared to send her away, and now I’m sending you away.”
He turned, ready to go up the steps, but paused, looking over his shoulder. “I loved her, and I’ve loved you. It’s been hard, knowing it wasn’t reciprocated, but I hoped you felt some measure of genuine affection for me. I don't think you do. Goodbye Maddi.” He didn’t use his usual term of endearment, baby. Shoulders slumped in sorrow he looked up the stairs, placing his foot on the first step.
Five rapid blasts sounded in the confined basement area. Reflected off the steel sides of the Safe Room, they were nearly ear shattering. Brethard jerked, and stiffened his back.
Maddi screamed, “Damn you. I deserve it all.”
There was something wrong. Her dad didn’t fly forward, falling face down on the steps, as Ethan had done with only a single shot. She had used both hands to steady the .45, which she had held behind her. There was gun smoke, of course, but that drifted. There was something else hazy and gray looking, but fixed in space, spread across her father’s back and head.
When he turned around, she realized there were five impact stars, suspended in the air in front of him. A shift in perception instantly explained the impossible vision for her. A narrow panel of clear plazsteel covered the opening at the bottom of the steps, slightly in front of her father.
Brethard drew a pistol from his shoulder holster, and as Maddi resumed firing frantically at the plazsteel, he fired three shots from around one edge, striking her twice in the upper torso. Her gun fell from her hands as she unbelievingly clutched at the blood that started to well from her chest, staggering back a step. She went to her knees, and looked at her father in disbelief.
He looked even sadder now. “Your mother didn’t die in a riding accident like I told you when you were five. I broke her neck when I learned, from a man she hired, that she was devising a plan to kill you and make it look like an accident. She had wanted to be my only heir, and didn’t want you as competition. I said you were your mother’s daughter. Kit showed me some of your thoughts, which she sensed through that door as she asked you her final question. She saw that you had decided to kill me when you came out, before I could write you out of my will. I wouldn’t have done that, and I wasn’t convinced, not until you tried to shoot me in the back, the same way you did Ethan. You weren’t going to chance using one shot this time. Too much money is involved, and you were making damned certain I would die.”
Slipping to her side on the floor, she pleaded to change his mind, pain evident as her bullet pierced lungs made breathing difficult, drawing short breaths. “Daddy…, Kit lied to you… She wants me dead… ‘cause I killed the man… she called brother... She’d say anything to hurt me… for his death.”
“No. Ethan may not be dead. He wasn’t when you dumped him anyway. Kit saw in your mind that he was still slowly bleeding fresh blood two hours after you shot him. That means his heart was beating slowly. She rushed off to try to save him before he bleeds to death.”
“Save me, daddy…. get me to a med lab…. shuttle is here…, it can take me... I’ll bleed out.”
His sadness remained, but he felt little pity. “Kit recognized what you are and what you would do and she sensed my own resolve. I’m a survivor, and you would always be a threat to me, as long as I have money. I’m not giving up my wealth so I’m giving up you, as I did your mother. Goodbye Maddi.”
He turned and walked up the steps, ignoring her weakening cries, shutting and locking the heavy door at the top. This part of the household mess was one he’d need to clean up for himself, privately.
Chapter 6: Friends in Need
Why is everything blurry? He thought. I’m cold on the front, hot on my butt, and my head is splitting. Where in hell am I?
The cold on the front of his body, he realized, was due to his partial immersion in water, only inches from his face, seen through some branches that were digging into his chin. The rippling and flowing cool water, only inches away, probably accounted for his inability to focus his eyes at first. The shock of the cold water was what had aroused him from intermittent dreams and odd random thoughts, as if still half in a sleep state.
He flexed his fingers and toes carefully, and discovered several things. He could move them, and his feet were in the water, his left hand was apparently dry and on some branches, and his dangling right arm was wet and his fingers were touching a sandy or muddy substance. Holding his aching head still, he rolled his eyes to the side and saw he was in sunlight, with the bright orb about halfway above the horizon. Whether setting or rising he didn’t know, nor could he guess what time it was, or how long he’d been here. He didn’t know where he’d been today, or for perhaps for several days. His aching head prevented him from thinking clearly, and he was thirsty.
At least he had a solution for thirst. He cupped his hand, wriggling his fingers to rid them of mud and sand, then scooped water to lift to his mouth. He spilled his scoop of water from muscle shaking, which startled him, to find he felt so weak, a sensation he’d only experienced once before in his young life. That was when he’d been wounded in a battle against a grounded Krall clanship, using a captured mini-tank, and had the turret blown off, nearly killing him. His aching head now must be a clue as to what had happened to him, but he didn’t have any recollection.
He repeated
his water scoop, and managed to get a sip of the refreshing stuff, but was frustrated when it tasted like soap, and he spit it out. The next sip, and the several after that were much better, and the odd taste of soap dwindled. If the taste wasn’t from the water, the source must have been in his mouth. Why would he have soap in his mouth? He didn’t have that answer, and his recent past was a blank.
His butt and back were hot in the sun, and he didn’t feel any clothing. He seemed to be naked, partly suspended in air only inches above a shallow stream. Shallow because his right hand touched bottom at the end of his arm, but his toes did not touch at the end of his horizontally extended legs. If there were branches around his face, he must be laying on more of them. He was proud of his deductions, and embarrassed because he didn’t know why he was naked in the first place, with a sunburned ass.
Suddenly his attention was drawn by something else. Sniffing! From right above him, it seemed. He inhaled entirely through his nose, his first deep breath since becoming aware of his surroundings. His ripper-derived sense of smell detected more than the water, bushes, and a fragrance of flowers nearby.
There was a sour musty odor, from something else, which seemed almost familiar. It came to him, with a chill that caused a certain exposed sphincter to tighten. On Haven, a habitable planet in the same system with his home world, there were wolf analogues, given the unfortunate name of werewolves. This smell was similar to one of those animals, when it was wet or had been running.
Stinky, as Ethan named him, was quickly joined by a couple of friends, as the sniffing increased in proportion to the new odors. Swell, he thought, Smelly and Flatulent are also here. Like Haven werewolves, these animals also appeared to roam in packs, and sometime in small scout groups seeking prey for the pack. He remembered where he was. Chisholm has range wolves!
This had better be a scouting party, he hoped. A full pack would severely test his unarmed capability even if he were healthy. Weak and naked, these three might make a meal of him. Playing dead wouldn’t work, because he was obviously fresh meat to them, and from the traces from their breath that he could smell, they obviously weren’t fussy eaters. If he moved, they might leap on him, if he didn’t move they might creep down to him, and then leap.
That made him wonder; how were they poised above him? They wouldn’t be above him in the same tree or brushwood that suspended him. This was a flowing creek, which had banks, so that’s where they were, at the top of a bank, and he was caught in underbrush lower down the bank. He didn’t see that deducing this helped him a lot, because even if smell proved they clearly didn’t prefer cleanliness, a free meal in shallow water wouldn’t hold them back.
He tried to Comtap Kit, or Bandit for nearby help, then the long-range tachyon modulated link. He sensed nothing via his Comtap, which meant he was on his own here.
Ethan made a concerted mental effort to sense all of his body, to assess what he might be able to do, once the wolves decided to attack. He decided that his feet and legs were functional, as were both his arms and hands. His trunk felt normal, other than being too cold where he was half in the water from lower chest down, and too hot from summer sun exposure on his back, from head down to the backs of his thighs.
There was a steady pain at the back of his head, and an aching sensation when he moved his eyes, which led him to decide he had suffered a concussion, probably from a sharp blow. His loss of recent memory was a supporting factor for that conclusion, because the last thing he remembered… He had been headed to Brethard House!
That’s why Kit wasn’t with him. She’d gone hunting and exploring. Something had happened to him while he was on his own. And which evidently involved him getting voluntarily naked first, because it was damned unlikely a Chisolm raised cowboy had undressed him if he’d been knocked unconscious. The men here were uncommonly sensitive to always appearing manly, whatever that meant. Considering what Brethard House was, and where he had been eager to do his own exploring, his state of undress offered a partial solution to that mystery. Again, not of any help to him now.
Rocks or dirt clods bounced down into the water on his left, confirming that the sniffers were on the edge of a stream bank, and seeking a way down to the meat dangling over the water. It occurred to Ethan that range wolves, hated by cattlemen, farmers and sheepherders alike, might fear humans, and exercise caution before approaching a representative of an enemy that often shot and killed some of them.
It wouldn’t be long now, and Ethan toyed with the idea of shouting “BANG” to frighten them. Only the word wasn’t the same as the sound of a gunshot, and they would jump back once, and then realize their “dead” meat was alive, and might try to escape. Having ripper genes, and being raised with one in his home, he knew nothing stimulated a predator more than prey trying to escape.
He risked turning his head slowly, first to the left, to see the near bank, under the branches that held him. The movement brought pain to the back of his head as something pulled at his scalp, and he felt dizzy. He didn’t know about the blood-matted hair that adhered to the back of his neck, and tugged at the edge of the bullet wound as his head rotated.
There were only some exposed roots at the water’s edge, and the red mud and clay of the side of the stream. The creek bank was too steep and too close for him to look up at the wolves without turning his face up to them. He could hear them trying to find a safe way down the drop, and testing the spindly branches higher up for possible support. Not brilliant animals, since they could simply climb down into the creek somewhere else, and then wade in ten inches of slowly flowing water to their prey.
Ethan slowly rotated his head to the right, the sharp scalp pain repeating its tug, and looked at the right bank of the creek, about twenty feet away. He saw this was a place where the watercourse curved, cutting into a hillside where he was. On the the opposite bank was a smooth and gradual slope, leading up to a grove of crooked trunked trees, near the high water mark of past flash floods, with a spread of branches that were high enough for a man on horseback to ride under, if bending down slightly.
It appeared the depth of the water deepened some near the middle, but perhaps only thigh deep. He wouldn’t be able to swim away from them or try to drown them one at a time. If he could make it to the trees ahead of them, and manage to climb into the higher branches, he had a chance to kick or hit at them to keep them from following. But as dizzy as he felt, rapid movement might make that impractical, and they could catch him. He recalled from pictures that they had long legs, as runners that wore down fleeing native prey. They would catch him in his weakened state, and might be able to climb a tree anyway.
He needed a weapon, and just as he heard a crashing sound through branches closer to his feet, which shook the intertwined branches supporting his weight, he spotted some possibilities, left by past water flow as it receded, on the far bank. He slipped off the branches holding him, with scratches suffered as they fought to keep him in their embrace.
The shock of the cold water on his sunburned back drove his mind to a greater sense of awareness than it had held a moment ago, and stirred the flow of blood in his high metabolism body. His head went under water for a brief moment, and the immersion helped to clear his mind, even as it softened the blood-matted hair.
He looked over his shoulder, and saw a brown, rangy built animal with the long legs of a runner, splashing its front legs to pull free of the branches encumbering its back legs. Its medium length hair, where still dry, bushed out to make it seem heavier and larger than it was. The wet and compressed hair looked almost black, revealing a thinner but muscular body, with a long face dominated by tooth-filled jaws, which was open and lifted to the sky, issuing what seemed to be a too high-pitched howl for a wolf-like creature. It was the call to join the chase, for the rest of the pack, wherever the bulk of the hunters were located.
The other two scouts were headed for a lower part of the creek bank, downstream, to enter the water where there were no bushes. They didn’t want to
be entangled, as was the bolder one of the three. That gave Ethan more time, as he rose to shaky legs and angled across and upstream from the wolf closest to him. He rightly judged that his longer legs would move him better against the flow of thigh deep water than for a range wolf, with the deeper water pushing at its chest.
He needed the extra time to pick through the potential weapons in the driftwood on the other bank. A heavy club would do damage, but that weapon might not serve him well if he made his way into the trees, and then couldn’t swing it among those tangled branches.
The lightheaded weakness he was feeling was sapping his speed and strength. When he saw blood running off his shoulder after looking back once, and saw it drip down the back of a thigh, he knew he’d suffered a head wound in the back, and he may have bled for some time while unconscious. If the wound had been clotted before, the water and activity had caused it to open and bleed again. That would sap his energy sooner, and spur his chasers on with greater eagerness when they sensed he was injured.
He slipped on greasy feeling wet clay on the sloping bank, as he left the water, and caught himself with one hand. He felt less coordinated than a Kobani toddler, children that rarely fell down or misjudged distances or balance.
He’d been born with clone modes in the early days of gene development, providing improved strength and endurance, but he didn’t acquire use of the genes for Kobani reaction speed, and superconducting nerves, until he was seventeen, when the carbon fiber muscles and nanotube-reinforced bones were painfully grown, in his first of their major modifications. Ethan could remember his clumsy and slow years before that, and envied the physical accomplishments of the first generation of infants born with the full suite of gene mods.
He felt more awkward today than he had at sixteen. Barely more capable than a Normal. His thinking speed appeared the same to him, but his sense of balance was off, obviously related to his dizziness and difficulty in focusing his normally ultra-sharp ripper vision. The amazing eye-hand coordination relied on those abilities, and the blow he must have suffered, put him at risk in this fight.
Koban Universe 2: Have Genes, Will Travel Page 24
