A sudden impact on the shielding crate knocked Rhonda down. As she fell, she saw the projectile bouncing away and sizzling in the snow. Cole still held the crate above their heads and offered her a hand to get up. Accepting his help, Rhonda rose to her feet and smiled then realized that Cole couldn’t see her face through the darkened visor. “Thanks. You have good reflexes.”
“Let’s keep going.”
More soldiers raised their crates above their heads for protection as more scalding rocks fell from the dark cloud. Geysers of hissing steam spouted all around them, heating the atmosphere for a few seconds, then the steam froze in mid air and broke into pieces of ice that crunched under the thick boots.
An earth tremor prompted Rhonda to drop down and hug the icy ground. Cole threw aside the crate that bounced a few meters away and joined her in the snow. The crater roiled and released more black smoke as if to compete with the quake. Looking up, Rhonda saw a tongue of lava gushing over the rim. Now it rushed down the slope toward them.
“Move!" Cole grabbed Rhonda’s hand and leapt to the side.
Jumping with him in a giant step, Rhonda collapsed on the snow four meters away from the trajectory of the lava flow. Quite a leap.
Just above them on the slope, the rebel soldiers scurried away to escape the fiery river snaking downhill. The swift lava glowed like fire as it rushed past them in a hiss of steam, scorching the area where they had been lying seconds ago.
The temperature must have risen around them, but Rhonda realized the insulated gear might work against extreme heat as well as cold. Good thing her visor didn’t fog up or frost, or she would be completely blind.
The sudden melting of ice and the rising temperature created swirling streams that cascaded downhill. As the ground shook, a deep rift opened, separating Rhonda and Cole from the rest of the company. Rhonda thought of jumping across it to join the others, but the gap widened so fast, she realized she wouldn’t make it. With foreboding, she watched the rebel soldiers getting farther and farther as the opposite side of the rift moved away.
She looked at Cole, lying next to her, but she couldn’t see his face through his darkened visor. “What are we going to do?”
Cole waved reassuringly. “We’ll just have to find our own way to the ship,” he said through the respirator.
Unable to stand on the moving ice, Rhonda watched from the edge, as the wide fissure now filled with swirling water. A flushing sound made her look up. A roaring waterfall tumbled down the hill from a large hole in the mountainside. Bewildered and scared, Rhonda crawled on all fours, retreating as fast as she could away from the forming lake. Cole moved alongside her on his hands and knees.
Once at a safer distance from the edge of the cliff above the churning waters, Rhonda turned back and saw the rebel soldiers on the other side of the rising lake, scrambling for higher ground. Their numbers had dwindled.
Glancing higher up the slope, Rhonda saw a huge lava flow, almost a kilometer wide, descending quickly upon the soldiers. Caught between the lava and the lake, some rebels jumped into the swirling water. Others waited, as if paralyzed by fear. The quick flowing lava picked them up, screaming and flailing, onto the burning carpet that dropped them into the lake, where they disappeared.
But the lake was filling fast and all the lava pouring into it made the water level rise quickly. A bank of snow and ice broke from the edge and fell in.
“Watch out for the tidal wave!” Cole hurried away from the lake.
Taking giant steps, Rhonda ran after him. She hoped some soldiers would surface. But after she and Cole reached a safe distance from the shore, a glance at the lake told her none of the unfortunate rebels had emerged from the stormy waters. A large wave washed over the rugged shores. When it receded back into the lake, leaving the shore strewn with steaming rocks, Rhonda saw no sign of the unfortunate rebels.
Rhonda thought she should grieve for these courageous soldiers, but the shock and the enormity of the event left her unable to feel. Her eyes remained dry.
Cole pulled on her sleeve. “We have to go.”
He was right. They had to hurry if they didn’t want to meet the same fate. The weapon crate that had served as shield against projectiles now lay at the bottom of the lake. Only speed could increase their chances of reaching the ship safely.
The constant vibrations pummeling the ground threatened Rhonda’s precarious balance. She fell several times, so did Cole. Each time, they helped each other up. Dodging the lava rocks falling at random around them, they advanced relentlessly in the general direction of the landing platform.
Rhonda breathed heavily into the respirator, thankful for the fact that she didn’t have to inhale the ashes that now fell around them like a thick veil. The combination of steam and smoke obscured her vision.
Walking in a gray fog, Rhonda couldn’t see more than a meter in front of her. Without a compad for guidance, they would get lost. She stopped, disoriented. Now she couldn’t see even her hands in front of her face.
Cole nudged her forward. “Wipe your visor with your sleeve.”
Surprised, Rhonda did. She realized the ash had accumulated and clung to the clear material. Now she could see again.
“We can’t stop here. We have to move out of this cloud.”
Rhonda felt lost. “But we could be going in the wrong direction!”
“No the mountain slope is still to our right. Just keep going.”
Shutting out the fear, Rhonda hurried alongside Cole. She didn’t want to think of what might come down that mountain at anytime.
He grabbed her thick-gloved hand. “Better stay close or we’ll get separated. In this soup we’d never find each other again.”
Slightly reassured by Cole’s grip through the glove, Rhonda wondered whether they would ever get off of this infernal planet. How could they possibly see a ship in this murk? To make it worse, ash kept accumulating on her visor, and she had to keep wiping it off with her sleeve. “We could get fifty meters from the ship and not even see it!”
“We’ll just have to hope for the best.”
Rhonda knew they couldn’t give up or they’d die for sure. But they didn’t have much time. At that rate of degradation, the planet had almost reached critical stage, and it wouldn’t be long before the conditions worsened. Within a few hours, the frozen planet would become an inferno, burning up the oxygen of its atmosphere. Then all life on it would perish.
As she plodded along, the vibration under her feet intensified. She looked up at Cole but couldn’t see his face through the dusty visor.
She clutched his sleeve just as he stumbled. Another rift split the ground at their feet. Cole fell away from her. Losing balance, Rhonda dropped to the ice and hung on to him. But Cole kept slipping down the edge of the opening abyss, taking her with him. Worse, she could not hang on to him very long. She felt her glove slipping!
She reached with her other hand. “Grab it,” she yelled, hoping he could hear her above the furious roar of the dying planet, all the time searching for a better anchor for her feet on the uneven ice.
As Cole dangled above the abyss, struggling to grasp her other hand, Rhonda looked down. A mistake. Down below, in the dizzying depths, a lake of incandescent lava swirled ominously. Pockets of gas ignited and whooshed around its edges like the many breaths of a raging dragon. The heat from the flames threatened to melt Rhonda’s visor, but without it her skin would surely blister, and the fiery glare might blind her forever.
Cole looked faint through the dusty visor, as if he couldn’t sustain the effort. He seemed unable to reach with his other hand. Was he in pain? Rhonda thought about his recent surgery. Had the energy pills worn off again? This time, she didn’t have anymore left.
So Rhonda gripped his arm with both hands, as hard as she could. Her foot found a small hole in the ice and she wedged it there for anchor. Fortunately the low gravity made Cole much lighter than his weight in standard gravity.
Careful not to jolt him too
much, Rhonda started to sway Cole gently from side to side, like a pendulum. When he swayed high enough, she threw him over the rim in a wide arc to the side. He landed smoothly next to her, and she quickly pulled him away from the ledge. He held his arm close to his body as if in pain.
“Are you all right? Does you arm hurt? Your chest?”
A nervous laugh escaped Cole’s respirator. “I’ll be fine. Just a little dizzy.”
Rhonda didn’t know how to break the news, so she just told him. “The last pills you took are wearing off. You have to be very careful now. Without medication, you are fragile, like a normal recovering patient.”
“Perfect timing." The irony in Cole’s comment didn’t escape Rhonda. So close to their goal, this was indeed the wrong time for him to lose his strength.
As she helped Cole up, a stormy wind rose and threatened to blow them away like flimsy foil. Rhonda shoved Cole behind a boulder, readjusted her glove and held onto the rock while keeping a firm grip on Cole’s good arm.
When the windstorm relented, most of the ash had cleared, affording them a decent view of the scenery ahead.
“Look." Rhonda couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice as she pointed to a flat area in the distance, less than a kilometer away. Poised like a dark tortoise on its four landing pods, it was the mercenary ship. “They must be waiting for us! We’ve got to hurry.”
Cole grunted as he set his body in motion.
Rhonda wiped the thick curtain of ashes covering his visor. “Can you make it?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
But she did. With the ship in sight, however, Rhonda dared to hope all would be well, and it gave her new strength. The way to the ship looked ridden with crevices and lava-flows, but she could almost taste safety. She set a slow pace while keeping a close eye on Cole.
When they came upon a deep but relatively narrow fissure that barred their path, Rhonda saw no way around it. She feared for Cole as she asked, “Can you jump across?”
Cole nodded.
Although she knew she could easily make the jump in low gravity, she didn’t trust Cole’s strength right now. “Are you sure?”
Cole walked away from the rift as if measuring his steps. Was he going to run for momentum? Rhonda held her breath. Dear God, watch over us.
When she saw him run in long steps then fly over the gap, she forgot to breathe. Her heart beat faster and joy filled her chest when she realized he’d landed safely on the other side. Exhilarated by Cole’s performance, she decided to take momentum as well.
She discovered she could take giant steps and she leapt high over the abyss, landing far beyond her mark on safe ground. Relieved, she laughed but noticed that Cole hadn’t moved.
“Cole?”
He seemed transfixed, staring away from the ship.
Rhonda followed the direction of his gaze, and her heart stuck in her throat.
A group of people, not all human, rushed toward them at great speed. Unencumbered by insulated gear, they hopped and leapt and ran in long steps. Rhonda saw no soldiers or mercenaries among them, no guards in uniforms either. Then she realized with horror that they wore prison colors, red, yellow, and aqua. “Convicts?”
Not just any convicts. As they approached, Rhonda pulled out her phaser and saw Cole do the same, although slowly. At the head of the group, the unmistakable gray gargoyle face of Tomar stretched into a repulsive grin.
Rhonda pulled the trigger, but the clumsy gloves made her miss her target, exploding the snow far from the mark. Cole looked barely able to stand on his legs. Would he faint? Dear God, Not now!
As Rhonda struggled to peel off her gloves so she could use her weapon effectively, the knowledge that Tomar was so resilient to phase fire, added to her nervousness. He also had numbers on his side. Rhonda counted nine convicts with stern determination on their humanoid faces.
The shape-shifter leapt and now stood only a meter away. “Could this be Captain Riggeur and his Alendresis bitch? What a happy coincidence!" Tomar’s crooked smile revealed three sets of dagger-sharp fangs. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
Chapter Seventeen
Frozen surface of Zurin Five
Cole’s body had chosen a fine time to betray him. The damned energy pills had run out too soon. He peeled off his gloves with trembling hands then grasped his phaser and aimed at the shape-shifter. His fingers jittered so much, he had to grab the weapon with both hands in an attempt to steady it. Cole fired. The shot pulverized a protruding chunk of ice far beyond his target. The next shot missed again. Feeling useless in this weakened condition, he couldn’t even hold on to the phaser that slipped from his clumsy fingers and fell to the snow without a sound.
Tomar laughed at Cole’s unsuccessful attempts. His gang surrounded the shape-shifter and the two guards, forming a wide circle out of reach. Some convicts brandished sharpened pipes, ready to throw them like spears while others swung shorter makeshift weapons and blades in anticipation for the fight. One big burly man in red overalls even wielded a home-made axe.
Rhonda aimed her weapon at the shape-shifter. Why didn’t she fire? Had the extreme temperatures affected the mechanism? Did her fingers cramp from the cold?
Tomar sprouted a whip-like tentacle that cracked and snatched the phaser from her grasp.
“You’ll pay for this!” Rhonda yelled through the respirator, cradling her wounded hand.
Cole, behind her, felt light-headed. He shook uncontrollably and the adrenalin coursing through his spine didn’t help enough. As he crouched to retrieve his phaser, he lost his balance and fell on his knee, effectively covering the weapon.
“Did you think you could escape a Monack?" Tomar’s cold tone betrayed his rage. “I don’t appreciate being left to die while you plan to escape on your ship." He motioned to the dark vessel, poised on the snow in full view of them all, only three hundred meters away. “We trapped the soldiers inside the Garrison, and now we’ll kill you, too. This ship will be ours, and you are not invited to come along.”
Apparently unaffected by the rare oxygen, the radical temperatures, or the low gravity, Tomar, unhindered by bulky gear, seemed to relish his obvious advantage. His mixed crew of over a dozen sturdy humanoids, each more repulsive and wicked than the next, also looked at home despite the harsh conditions. Tomar had chosen his gang from the most adaptable races populating the prison. Nothing more dangerous than a smart convict.
Cole had to protect Rhonda. While Tomar focused on her, Cole discreetly retrieved the phaser on which he had fallen. Knowing he couldn’t fire the weapon successfully, in a desperate maneuver, he rose and stumbled toward Tomar as if to rush him. Tomar sidestepped, letting Cole roll harmlessly in the snow.
The convicts surrounding them laughed heartily at the uneven contest. How could Rhonda possibly fight them all? So close to their goal and yet in such peril. Cole had to give Rhonda the phaser cradled in his hands before he dropped it again.
Pretending to blunder toward Tomar who sidestepped again as expected, Cole rolled and landed at Rhonda’s feet. He handed her the phaser.
Rhonda snatched the weapon and fired in quick succession around the circle. Three convicts fell. Tomar stopped laughing and uttered a piercing screech that hurt Cole’s ears even through the thick hood of his parka.
Still trembling, Cole fumbled with the hilt of the yataghan blade buried inside his uniform boot under the insulated footwear. The short sword seemed stuck inside, resisting his pull. Finally the blade came free just as the remaining convicts, rage on their hateful faces, yelled and charged the two guards. Tomar pounced on Rhonda.
Ignoring the pain that pulsed in his chest and the cold paralyzing his fingers, Cole rolled into Tomar’s legs, slicing with the deadly yataghan. Tomar yelled and let go of Rhonda. Phase fire exploded and Cole saw one more convict fall, but Tomar had already recovered from the gash inflicted on his leg.
Rhonda now fought several assailants, but Cole had Tomar’s attention.
&nbs
p; Remembering that shape-shifters had no bones and were most vulnerable to slicing in many pieces, Cole wielded the yataghan blade in wide arcs all around him like a clumsy windmill. The effort almost made him faint, and he breathed heavily in his respirator. He didn’t care whether or not he made it off the planet alive, but he desperately wanted Rhonda to survive.
Tomar’s sharp claws swiped down and shredded Cole’s insulated parka, letting frigid air inside his clothes, freezing his back. The next strike tore off Cole’s respirator, and he felt the icy air scorching his lungs. The sudden brightness blinded him, and the lack of oxygen made him feel dizzy.
From the corner of his eye, Cole saw Rhonda fighting effectively with smart blocks and kicks that sent the convicts flying. She repelled the closest convicts and fired on more distant targets. Remaining one step ahead of her attackers, she took advantage of the low gravity. She learned fast.
Just as the third swipe of Tomar’s claws threatened to slash Cole in two, phase fire erupted from Rhonda’s weapon and Tomar stumbled back, but he recovered with incredible speed and moved swiftly before Rhonda could fire again.
At that moment, the earth moved under Cole’s feet. As he fell, he saw Rhonda and the convicts fall to the ice. Rhonda had lost her respirator and her phaser lay in the snow next to her. She breathed heavily. Wild locks escaped her hood, and bloody scrapes smudged her cheeks flushed by the effort.
The volcano rumbled and the loud vibration shaking the ice rippled through Cole’s body. Taking heart in the fact that the quake allowed him and Rhonda to catch their breath, Cole gazed upon the waiting ship. So close...
The quake seemed to last forever as the ground kept moving up and down and side to side. Cole felt as if he rode a life-raft tumbled by a storm. Ten meters away, a wide crevice opened, like the one he’d almost fallen into earlier.
When the tremor finally subsided, Cole scrambled toward the gaping fissure, pretending to retreat from the fight. As expected, Tomar caught up with him and barred his way.
Alien Lockdown Page 21
