The hologram turned off. Ozzy dropped it on the table. “What he didn’t say was that before the colony ships had left, over two-thirds of Earth’s population was murdered by the Dunrakee slime. And of the one-third remaining, only a tenth of them survived to call Mars their new home. Are you okay, Jozi?”
“Have you ever cried so hard that you feel like you are drowning, that sensation of trying to hold back the tears and not sob but feel as if your lungs are going to burst and you have to suck in air rapidly to stay conscious?”
“Every time I think of losing my Lily-bug, my family. Why do you ask?”
“Family. I can remember nights when I would stare out the window watching the stars twinkling in the dark sky. I would pick the brightest one out and talk to it as if I were talking to my mom or dad. I would wish on that star to give me a sign. . .or to send me a family I could call my own. And every day I would wake up hoping that wish had been granted. Obviously, it never was, but I still hoped and wished.”
Ozzy remained quiet, not sure how to respond.
“To this day, I still hope and wish for a family. Being in the MMP gave me a sense of belonging, and I felt I made a difference. When that was stripped from me, well, you know how I felt.
“I also saw something in you, Ozzy, and how far you will go to protect Lily. Originally, I wasn’t happy with Robert making me keep tabs on you, but after spending time with you and fighting alongside you, I feel a part of something.”
Jozi put her hand on Ozzy’s shoulder, then patted it. “Let’s look for the crystal sphere.”
Ozzy pushed aside a broken chair at the edge of the kitchen and rounded a corner. He stopped abruptly. He spotted a hole in the floor thriving with bugs, many he’d never seen before and couldn’t identify. “Let’s look here last.”
He went into another room. A bed full of dirt and chunks of falling ceiling was inside. A dresser butted up next to the bed in the tiny, cramped room.
A red dress was on the ground with holes and pine needles strewn over it.
“What’s that on the dresser?”
Ozzy saw it too. It wasn’t a sphere but was indeed a large crystal. “It’s a purple amethyst cluster.” It was huge, the size of an old Earth bowling ball, and much bigger than the crystal sphere.
This crystal, however, wasn’t round.
“It’s not it, is it?” asked Jozi.
Ozzy huffed. “Not at all. We’ll follow the map on the holopad to the other crystalline energy signature.” Ozzy crossed his arms and furrowed his brow. “Where the hell is Zeld?”
Jozi grabbed onto Ozzy’s arm. “Oh no.”
Ozzy shook his head, knowing why Jozi was worried. “She’d be insane to leave us. She’s all about money, and she wouldn’t get paid if she went on her own. She’s with us until she gets the auric credits.” Ozzy knew this well because he was the same way.
“I hope you’re right. She has the holopad.”
A tinge of doubt seeped into him. He hurried through the kitchen and out the doorway. He raced around the outside of the house, ran past an old tire with long grass poking through the round hole and by a rusty swing set.
He slapped his thighs. “Mars, I’m stupid.” Zeld was nowhere to be found. “She went to find the crystal sphere without us.”
That’s why Ozzy liked to do things alone. He didn’t have to deal with other personalities, and especially personalities as volatile and unpredictable as Zeld.
Jozi walked around from the other side of the shack. “We’ll follow her tracks.”
“Do you see any?”
“Not yet, but she isn’t a ghost. I’ll find them.”
A small shrub jostled at the edge of the woods.
“That has to be her,” said Ozzy.
A fern shook and out rolled two small animals. They had brown fur and were grunting. They gnawed on each other’s heads. It was easy to see they were playing.
Ozzy cocked his head to the side. “Those are…” He snapped his fingers, trying to remember. “Bears. Yeah, baby bears.” He thought for a few more seconds. “There is something about the mother and the baby bears.” He tapped his teeth with his fingertips, trying to remember. “What is it exactly?”
Heavy rustling filled the area. A tree trembled. A bush shivered. Something big was coming.
Finally, Ozzy remembered: mother bears protect their cubs.
He shot Jozi a worried look. “Let’s get out of here.”
12
Earth • Ancient Athapaskan Land, California
A bear twice the size of Ozzy, and most likely ten times as strong, burst through the forest and into the clearing. Ozzy backed up, fumbling with the rifle around his shoulder but wasn’t able to grab it.
Jozi went to one knee, eyeing the beast in her rifle’s sights. “Don’t move, Ozzy.”
He put his hands up, making himself look taller. He’d heard that worked from an animal docuvid. He hoped the narrator was correct. “I’m not letting her eat me alive, Jozi.”
The bear rose on her back legs and roared. Slobber dripped from her mouth and fell from her sharp, yellow-stained teeth.
The growl pierced through Ozzy’s heart like a dagger. He shrunk back in terror. This animal was enormous.
The bear dropped to all fours and shifted from side to side, wagging its head and neck. It chuffed and grunted loudly.
Her cub-children retreated, moving behind her.
She plodded forward—Ozzy was in her sights.
“Jozi? You can shoot now.”
Jozi shook her head. “I have a clean shot, but I’m only taking it if she means to kill you.”
Ozzy’s eyes went wide. “What?” Ozzy took another step back.
Jozi closed one eye and touched the trigger with her index finger. “Not yet.”
“Are you nuts? Shoot the damn thing.”
Ozzy took an even bigger step backward and accidentally bounced against the house. He couldn’t move back any farther if he wanted to. And he really wanted to.
“We kill it and we might as well kill the babies. They depend on her. I’m not willing to be the cause of them having to fend for themselves. They’ll die.”
“Are you willing to let it kill me?”
The bear lunged.
Wapooh!
The beast yelped. It turned to see what bit it in the ass. It didn’t see anything and turned to face Ozzy again. It stood on its back legs, taking a limping step forward and growling louder.
More saliva dripped from its mouth.
The bear landed on all fours and rushed Ozzy.
Ozzy unholstered his gun and took a shot. The blast singed the side of the bear, slowing it momentarily. Nothing seemed to kill this thing. “You gotta be kidding me.”
Wapooh!
Jozi took a second shot.
The bear whined and fell on its side. It stirred and got up just as quickly as it fell.
Ozzy eyed a tree. “Shoot it in the damn head, Jozi.”
“I’m not getting a clear shot to do so,” she hollered.
Ozzy holstered his gun and raced to the tree and leaped, grabbing hold of a branch. He pulled himself up as the bear rushed toward him.
Ozzy moved from limb to limb, climbing higher. “Mars damn you, Jozi, shoot.”
A tree across the way shook, and needles fell to the ground like rain. “I’m in a tree for a better shot.”
Ozzy looked down, his eyebrows raised. The bear was looking up at him and scratching the bark with her claws. “Do you have a clear shot of it now?”
The tree Jozi was in trembled. “Hold on. I’m getting in position.”
Ozzy unstrapped his rifle from around his shoulder and leaned against a branch. He held the rifle out in front of him and moved a lever on the photon magazine. He upped the charge. This bear’s skin was thick. It wasn’t like shooting a Dunrakee or one of Mort Wildly’s crew. A more powerfully charged shot was needed in order to take down this monstrosity.
He pointed his rifle and screwed up his
face, his forehead creasing. “Where did it go?”
“I don’t think they can climb. It must have hurried off somewhere.”
Ozzy rubbed his chin. “Did you see where she went off to?”
“That’s a negative. I’m still getting in position.”
Ozzy exhaled loudly and shook the fear out of him the best he could. Holy Mars, this planet was nuts. “Earth is wilder than I imagined.” He felt a breeze on his skin and closed his eyes and inhaled, trying to calm himself.
Earth was also more beautiful and cleaner and fresher than he could have ever pictured. “I’m giving myself five minutes and then coming down. Let’s get out of here as fast as we can. I don’t want that grown bear to follow us.”
He exhaled. The coast was clear, and to make things even better, here the oxygen was real and not man-made as in the Martian cities, so he felt more alive with each breath. He couldn’t help but smile. His people’s home—Earth—was the most incredible planet in the solar system.
He always wanted to take his family and escape to Europa, but this visit to Earth cemented it. He was definitely coming back to Earth after he ripped apart every Dunrakee on this planet via the Ark.
If he survived.
A growl and scratching sounds pulled Ozzy out of his thoughts.
“Ozzy, watch out,” shouted Jozi.
His tree shook, and he looked at the ground on the other side. His heart about stopped when he saw her. “Oh shit, Jozi. The bear can climb.”
He quickly turned and brought his rifle into shooting position. The rifle slammed against a tree limb and slipped from his hands and careened toward the ground, bouncing off several branches. He instinctively went to grab it and lost his footing and dropped several meters before he caught himself on a limb.
The tree jostled violently, and his legs swung.
The bear climbed higher, its eyes boring down on its prey.
“Drop, Ozzy, drop,” yelled Jozi.
Ozzy glanced down. “It’s like twenty-five or thirty meters. Hell no, I’m not dropping.”
If he did, he’d die.
Or worse, break both of his legs and then slowly die by the bear’s teeth.
He pulled himself onto the next branch.
The bear lunged at him, slicing her claws through the air and barely missing Ozzy.
“Oh Mars,” said Ozzy, gathering himself and placing both feet on a branch. He pulled out his sidearm. The bear was only a few meters away.
The bear grunted and lurched for him. Ozzy aimed and pulled the trigger.
13
Earth • Ancient Athapaskan Land, California
His branch broke, and the shot went wide. Ozzy flailed his arms, and the gun went flying. He dropped several meters and grabbed for a branch.
His hands slipped through the pine needles. He gasped and yelled, “Jozi.”
Crack!
He hit a limb.
Crack!
He hit another branch and flipped over, his stomach slamming into yet another limb.
He yelped in pain and flipped, landing on the forest floor with a sickening thud.
Wapooh!
A shot echoed through the forest.
The tree from where he fell shuddered. Needles streamed down, and a big log the shape of an animal broke through the branches like a boulder careening down a mountainside.
The ground vibrated when the bear hit, and dust shot up and clouded on impact.
The bear lay motionless yet was breathing. She stood on all fours and backed up, her eyes darting left and right, her head doing the same. She moaned and turned, ambling toward a thicket of brush, and a thin line of blood streaked on the ground, dripping from somewhere on the animal.
The cubs followed her, and they disappeared through the bushes, the sound from their paws carrying away the further they went.
Ozzy sat up, rubbing his back and thanking his lucky stars Jozi was a damned good shot.
Jozi climbed down to her trees lowest branch and leaped the rest of the way to the ground. She jogged to Ozzy, her hair wet from perspiration and her brilliant blue eyes filled with worry. She clutched the pendant around her neck, one with a child, mother, and father carved into it. It was something her father had made and gave her before her parents had died. “Are you okay?”
Ozzy nodded. “I’m alright. We have to get out of here before that bear comes back.”
“I called Gragas.”
Ozzy gave Jozi a double take. One, how? Two, why? Three, when? The Galactic Knight already said helping Ozzy with finding the crystal sphere and killing Gragas’s own race—the Dunrakee—wasn’t something he was going to help with.
And quite understandable since Ozzy was going to commit genocide on Gragas’s people.
Again, Karma was a bitch.
“What are you talking about?” Ozzy asked.
“Gragas gave me an emergency beacon. I panicked when the bear was attacking you. I’d never seen anything so big. It was a dumb move, I know.” She showed Ozzy her sleeve and tugged on it to reveal her forearm. A thin bracelet was wrapped around her wrist. A light blinked on the bracelet.
“So, Gragas is on his way?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
He extended his hand. “Help me up.”
She grabbed hold and helped him to a standing position. “Most importantly, we need to find the holopad that Zeld has.”
Ozzy glanced around the clearing and to the edge of the never-ending forest that surrounded them. “I guess we follow the yellow brick road?”
Jozi gave him an odd expression. Obviously, she had never heard of the term.
He dismissed his statement. “Never mind.”
A rumble filled the sky, and Ozzy instinctively ducked. Jozi did as well. Dunrakee ships were patrolling the area, most likely looking for them.
“Get into the forest,” she yelled.
Ozzy dipped his head in agreement and fled into the thick brush and trees.
Overhead, a Dunrakee security ship flew by, slowly moving over the forest canopy. It slowed and hovered almost directly over Ozzy and Jozi.
“Don’t move,” she ordered.
Ozzy stood still. He was next to a small tree with white bark and golden leaves.
A loud beep pierced the area. The craft moved on, blasting forward at an incredible speed.
“What was that beep?” Jozi asked.
“They must have detected our shots and are zeroing in on our location.”
Jozi’s face turned pale. “Do you think they spotted us?”
Ozzy shrugged. “Probably, which means they’ll send a band of grunts after us shortly.” Yet, he knew practically nothing about Earth; where he was going, what dangers lurked around any and every corner, and what the terrain was like just a few kilometers east or west. This mission was worse than rat dung but would be worse had this planet not been extraordinary beyond belief. If he could only get the crystal sphere, everything would be over for the Dunrakee in the blink of an eye.
An engine thundered through the sky, and a second ship flew by and slowed down about a kilometer beyond their location. Another loud beep sounded. The ship sped up and disappeared from view.
Another craft boomed the heavens. Ozzy backed up from the loud sound. The ship blurred across the sky and dipped low, going in for a dive about a kilometer in the distance.
Something dropped from its belly.
Krakow!
An explosion rocked the ground not too far away. An eruption cloud rose into the sky and above the treetops.
Ozzy and Jozi looked at each other.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.
He nodded. “They found Zeld.”
Jozi stood. “Let’s go.”
14
Earth • Ancient Athapaskan Land, California
Ozzy trekked forward, heading toward the explosion and the rising fire and smoke. It was unwise, but they needed the map more than anything to find the crystal sphere.
> He pushed away a tree limb and hurried around a boulder. Jozi was behind him.
She went to one knee, leaning against the rock. “Get down.”
“Why?” he whispered, though he ducked under an umbrella of tall brush, trusting her judgment.
She pointed across the way and to a figure positioned in a tree. Smoke twirled toward the sky behind the bubble-head, though some distance off. “That’s a Dunrakee.”
Ozzy squinted his eyes and saw a gun, but nothing else. It was pointed diagonally toward the ground.
A ship’s booster cracked across the firmament. Ozzy glanced at the sky. A starfighter was coming in for a strafing run and heading for the tree.
The tree jostled, and the grunt and his rifle disappeared. Whoever was in that tree was moving fast and fleeing from the incoming craft.
That wasn’t a Dunrakee. That was Zeld.
The starfighter blared louder the closer it came, and Ozzy hugged against the shrubs he was hiding next to.
Zoota! Zoota!
Photon bolts expelled from the starfighter’s wings and slammed against the trees and the ground, sending dirt into the air and slicing branches in half like a machete through grass.
The tree Zeld was in burst into flames. A loud clap filled the air, and the tree shook, then tipped. More cracking and wood snapping pierced the forest. The tree fell and hammered the ground when it hit.
The starfighter pulled up and flew toward the horizon.
Ozzy blinked rapidly, his mouth agape. If that were indeed Zeld, then no way she made it out alive. And no way did that holopad make it, either.
The smell of burning wood wafted to Ozzy’s nostrils, and the sound of a crackling fire crept to his ears. What he remembered from old history lessons was that Earth’s forests had many fires, and those fires grew long and wide—and spread quickly.
They had to leave this area as fast as possible.
“Holy Mars,” said Jozi, her eyes wide.
“What?”
She dashed out from the rock and down a small incline and toward Zeld’s downed tree. She stopped at the edge of the burning plants and branches.
Martian Quadrilogy Box Set Page 66
