Striker’s hand traveled down her arm to her hand. He squeezed it, sending a blush of warmth through her body. “You’ll feel better if you eat something. It’ll be delicious. Let’s go.”
Aries followed him, her emotions running on high. Was he flirting? She squashed the thought. How could she possibly be attracted to a space pirate? An exiled, unsuccessful one at that.
“You see,” Striker began, as they climbed the steps to the next floor, “I’ve been down here for five long, lonely years. I’ve had a lot of time to watch their home videos. When it’s the only channel on and you’re all by yourself, your face sticks to the screen like you’re hooked on a daytime soap opera. You find yourself wanting to learn more.”
“A soap opera?”
Striker grinned. “They didn’t let you see those on the New Dawn, huh?”
“They censored any videos from old Earth that weren’t pertinent to the Guide.”
“Of course.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are. It makes perfect sense. Why would they show you a world where you got to choose a mate? That’d provoke mutiny right then and there.”
Aries knew what Striker alluded to. She’d heard rumors about the history of old Earth and how people used to be able to choose whom they married. Necessity dictated their lives now. She wasn’t about to go off the subject, though. “So what did you learn?” Aries panted to keep up. Striker was in better shape than she was. She’d worked out on the New Dawn every day, but it hadn’t prepared her for the change in gravity, the extreme heat, or such a gorgeous man.
“That they’re a lot like us. Except no war, no violence, no hatred. Only peace.”
Tria’s cynicism toward mankind came back to her. “I find that hard to believe. How can a species be so perfect?”
“Maybe you should ask how our species can be so flawed.”
“This, coming from a pirate?”
Striker laughed. “Under the circumstances, you can consider me to be reformed.”
Aries wasn’t sure how to answer that, so she brought the subject back to her beloved biology. “These eggs came from a planet that must have had humidity. That means there are water droplets in the air itself.”
“I know what humidity is. What’s your point?”
“Even if you brought the eggs out, they’d never hatch in the desert. The conditions wouldn’t be right for them.”
Striker stopped in mid-stride and turned toward her with a glint in his eyes. “Who said anything about a desert?”
Aries gestured vaguely toward the roof of the craft and the desert sands above them. “What else is there?”
“I plan to get off this barren rock. I’ve been fixing up this ship from scattered pieces in the desert and all I need are a few more parts. I’m going to fly back to Outpost Omega, the spaceport you talked of, twenty-one parsecs away. Before my fickle crew ditched me on this pitiful excuse for a planet, I’d found a wormhole to another galaxy, one with a sun much like the one Earth had. Are you following me?”
Aries found herself leaning in, listening to each word with interest. She nodded. “Go on.”
“There’s a moon that has oceans, forests, anything you need to sustain a decent population. I named it Refuge. I hid the coordinates aboard my ship. I plan to reclaim my map, relay the coordinates to everyone suffering at Outpost Omega, and travel there. When I land, I’ll bring out the eggs. If they hatch, I’ll be continuing a long-lost species. If they don’t, at least I tried. I figure it’ll be payment for taking their ship.”
He smiled. “But I hope they hatch. Such a peaceful race doesn’t deserve to go extinct. Maybe they could teach us something.”
“You’ve been here for five years. What if your crew found the map? What if they’re already there?”
Striker leaned on the wall and crossed one boot over another. “Impossible.” He looked so self-satisfied, Aries almost laughed. “The coordinates are hidden in the darkest, farthest recesses of the ship, encoded in three different languages with mathematical enigmas to solve to break the seal. My crew is probably still docked at the port as we speak, scanning the ship in vain for that map.”
“You’re going to take this ship to go find that ship. Wow, that’s quite a plan.”
Striker leaned toward her. “The question is: do you want in? You’re an Outlander now. No one can make the decision for you. Do you want to stay here, or do you want to find Refuge with me?”
Her first instinct was alarmingly clear: go with Striker, wherever that may be. The engineer training died hard, however. She couldn’t factor a man she’d just met into the equation. Her logic wouldn’t let her.
Aries considered her options while chewing her lower lip. She had nowhere else to go, but the pirate-run spaceport sounded more dangerous than the lizards and worms of this desert planet. On the other hand, the ethereal images of pale angels and their eggs haunted her, pulling on her heartstrings. A part of her believed her own redemption lay in saving the dying race. Maybe then she’d feel as though her life had purpose, although she’d harmed the New Dawn’s genetic mission by leaving. Plus, she could finally live out her dreams of being a biologist, studying the greatest find in all mankind: an alien civilization more advanced than their own. All combined, Striker’s plan made for quite a journey, with a paradise moon at the end.
Really, the option of staying with the most interesting and attractive man she’d ever met wasn’t clouding her judgment.
“All right.” Aries looked him in the eye. “Count me in.”
Chapter Eight
Coordinates
Aries stared at a scorpion as large as her forearm. It rested on a gigantic porcelain plate shaped like a clam. The legs sprawled out in a strange garnishing around a cracked shell. Its antennae drooped, dark eyes staring blankly at her fork.
“This is dinner?”
“Think of it as lobster.” Striker smiled and dusted his own with a granular substance. “You’re going to love it.”
“The marine tank cracked the generation before mine.” Aries stabbed the carapace with a knife and it crunched. “I’ve never tasted anything from the sea.”
“Well this isn’t from the sea.” He raised his eyebrow and his eyes teased. “It’s from the desert. Our favorite place.”
“Hmm.” Aries plucked out the antennae. “Did you have lobster on the space station?”
Striker split the shell of his meal into two pieces. “Far from it. Just stacks of old videos of life back on Earth. We watched them like prisoners dreaming of a promised land.”
“The people of the New Dawn didn’t want us watching too much of Earth’s memories.” Aries pulled off a small leg and dangled it above her plate before setting it aside. “The Guide says dwelling on the past only brings more sadness.”
“I always thought it would keep us from making the same mistakes.”
Aries nodded. “The fact that they were regulated drew me in. I stayed up late many nights, watching videos from the ship’s memory bank.”
She pulled a piece of white meat from underneath the carapace. Holding it up, she examined it and wrinkled her nose.
“Go on.” He stopped, crossed his arms, and watched.
Striker had probably prepared this meal a thousand times in his five-year exile with no one to share it. The thought nudged her heart, and she found herself wanting to try it for his sake. She popped it in her mouth. “Hey, this isn’t bad.”
“Better than the gruel served at Outpost Omega.”
Aries worked out another piece of meat, stabbing it with the pointy utensil. “They don’t have gardens there?”
“Most of the fresh plants died long ago. Now the pirates survive on recycled matter produced by the food generators.”
“That’s awful.” Aries sickened at the thought of eating old food. “Those poor people.”
“I’m not sure poor is the right word.” Striker narrowed his eyes. “They’re more desperate than anything else.”
<
br /> Aries could understand desperation. She nodded, chewing another piece. “What are your former crewmates like?”
Striker paused before digging into the scorpion’s claw with a little too much force. “Hopefully you won’t ever meet them to find out.”
“Why?”
His eyes darkened, and Aries glimpsed deeper emotions beneath his nonchalant façade. “Like you said, they’re in it for their own good. Even if that means abandoning their captain.”
Although he hadn’t told her anything she wanted to know, Aries decided not to press the subject. “I’m sorry. No one should have to go through—”
“I’m over it.” Striker stabbed another piece of meat. “Now, let’s go over our situation and see if we can get out of here.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out an unusual-looking palm screen. “To restart the ship, I need a part of the exterior processor. It must have broken off on impact and skidded across the desert. It could be anywhere, covered by hundreds of years of sandstorms. This map shows all of the places I’ve searched for it.”
Aries studied the map of dunes and valleys around the ship. Xs marked Striker’s excavation sites. He’d scoured every area within miles of the crash. “Wow, you’ve been busy.”
“Let me put it this way: I don’t want to stay any longer than necessary.”
Aries ran her finger over the map, thinking. “Do you know what the processor is made of?”
Striker shrugged. “Probably the same material as the rest of this ship.”
Aries brought out her life-form locator. “I have an idea.” She held it up to the wall, waiting for the substance to register. The device beeped, and the screen glowed with a string of numbers.
“What’s it saying?” Striker rose and stood beside her, his body heat warming her shoulder.
“It’s just what I thought. This ship is made of a mutated form of calcium carbonate: living matter. The mitochondrial genetic analysis likens it to a seashell from the Earth’s oceans. It registers on my life-form locator as an uncategorized form of coral.”
“Does that mean you can use the locator to find the missing processor?”
“You bet it does.” She flashed a cool smile, but inside she beamed with pride.
Striker looked at her like she’d been named the New Dawn’s new commander. “I can’t believe it. You’ve solved our problem.”
Aries’ smile spread. She’d never felt more appreciated in her entire life. Barliss had always downplayed her ideas, then stolen them for his own when he’d thought she’d forgotten. Slimy bastard!
“Come on. Let’s go to the surface and test it out.”
Striker ushered them down a corridor to a raised platform. Using his fingernail, he traced a hieroglyph, and the walls closed around them on all sides. Aries ran her hand over a series of concentric circles rippling out, the image reminding her of the infinity of deep space, and how one action could affect everything in the universe in some crazy, unpredictable way.
After Striker traced the geometric patterns in a certain order on the wall, the platform lifted.
Aries stared at Striker, steadying herself with one hand on the ivory. “How did you figure it out?”
“I had my fair share of time.”
A hatch opened above their heads and the sun and sand streamed in. She breathed deeply. It felt good to be back in the open air. Seconds later, she stood atop the ivory ship, feeling as though she rode the back of a giant torpedo. The tip protruded from the sand, glistening in the rays of sun like a white bone of the gods. Etched in the hull were more intricate designs. A series of blue orbs running down the sides pulsed with a faint light like a distant heartbeat.
“I don’t want to stay out here too long.” Striker searched the sand dunes, squinting until appealing crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. “Too much attention from sandworms and raiders will draw your crew right to us. The raiders and worms can’t get in this ship, but I bet the colonists would find a way.”
The image of Barliss with his laser gun haunted her mind. “Agreed. I need a few moments to adjust the parameters.” Aries’ slender fingers flitted over the device, typing in new coordinates and scanning the area.
Striker stepped from the platform onto the sand and began climbing a nearby dune. He pulled out a pair of binoculars from his coat and kept watch. “How did you think of using the life-form locator?”
She stayed at the hatch’s opening, nervous to leave the protection of the ship. “I was an engineer back on the New Dawn, in charge of the life-support systems.”
“Wow.” Striker’s lowered his binoculars a bit. He looked over them to her. “Impressive.”
Aries waved his comment away, although she enjoyed his admiration. “I tested highest in those skill sets.” Her voice grew melancholy, and her fingers paused over the touchscreen. “Secretly, I wanted to be a biologist. I read all I could about the natural world. My parents called me a dreamer because the things I studied were all dead.”
“They wouldn’t let you choose your own profession?”
“Ha! On the New Dawn you have little choice, out of necessity.” Aries went back to her calculations. “Wait! The locator is picking up something beyond those mountains to the North. It’s an exact match to the ship, approximately one meter long and a half meter wide.”
Striker slid down the dune and jumped back onto the platform to peer over her shoulder at the screen. “That’s it, all right. It’s exactly where I feared it would be, the only place I didn’t dare to look.”
“Why?” Aries tore her gaze from the device to study Striker’s face. She’d never heard fear taint his voice before and it made her stomach flip.
“That’s the raiders’ main den.”
Chapter Nine
Red Dawn
The sound of drills filled the air as the mining excavation began in full force. Barliss roamed the perimeter of the site, enjoying the clamor as much as a Wagnerian opera as his crews tore into the sand. The New Dawn had dropped a line of empty metal barrels, and they sat like beached whales along the plateau, waiting to be filled with lithium. The canisters reminded Barliss of the pictures from history books, chronicling the fate of sea life as the oceans dried up on Earth. He’d never felt sorry for them, like the others in his class. He saw it as Darwin’s theory of evolution, where the more adaptable species survived.
Gleaning lithium from the desert planet made Barliss’ spirits rise, as the scent of opportunity filled the air with its metallic reek. The colonists would gouge a gaping crater where the extraction cut into the terrain, and he hoped more than a few of those sandworms and lizard men fell in.
Smith scurried around the other side of the mining operations, calculating coordinates on his palm-sized mineral locator. Barliss welcomed Smith’s whining about the destructive extraction procedures. The longer Smith prevented the operation from going forward, the more time Barliss had to find Aries.
As he slid down the sand dune, the diamond point of her ring pricked and scratched his inner thigh. He shoved his hand into his pocket and pushed the ring around until it no longer irked him. He didn’t need any more reminders of his failure to control the woman.
Annoyed, he waded through mounds of windblown sand to reach the main operation’s headquarters in the center tent. At least walking in this sand against this gravity gave him a constant workout. He’d be even angrier if his abs gained an ounce of flab from this hellish desert vacation. Flexing his muscles to make sure they still hardened in all the right places, he slapped open the tent flap and slipped in.
Langston looked up from a table of maps, navigational charts, and handheld devices. “Greetings, Lieutenant Barliss.”
Barliss nodded at his new second-in-command. He followed orders right down to every word, much better than Smith. “Do you have anything to report?”
Langston shifted some papers. “I started where Smith left off. There’s not a lot here, just a whole ton of sand.”
He smir
ked, but Barliss didn’t find his comment amusing. “Did you find anything new?”
“It looks as though there are three major reptilian colonies in the area.” He pointed to sections of the map. “The first is a mile away, the second is over that ridge, and the largest one is over here, six miles from our camp. That’s a bustling lizard metropolis.”
Barliss leaned down to scan the areas. “You think she’s in one of them?”
Langston brushed the ever-present grains of sand off the map. “There’s nowhere else for her to go. I scanned the area and there are no metal structures of any kind. Over here is a strange form of living coral, but nothing man-made.”
Barliss squinted. His finger traced the region of the map where the coral manifested. “Nothing humanoid?”
“No, sir.”
Barliss tapped his finger on the table for a moment, then pointed to the reptilian colonies. “We’ll start with this one, the closest one. From there, we’ll work toward the second site, and then if we still don’t find any trace of her, we’ll pay a visit to lizard central.”
Langston blinked as if confused. “What do you want us to do, sir? Ask them if they saw a five-foot, five-inch woman on foot?”
“No, you fool. We’re going to blast them all. Exterminate the entire colony. That’s the only way we’ll know if they’re hiding her.”
Langston shifted his stance, leaning slightly away from the maps. Barliss could tell he didn’t like the idea. Now he’d know what Langston was made of. Would the skyman follow orders, or stick to his principles?
Langston swallowed and met him eye-to-eye. “Yes, sir. I’ll form a team. We can leave as early as the second sunrise.”
Barliss placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard. “That’s my man. Meet you at the hoverships after dinner.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.” He saluted and stood as straight as a laser’s trajectory, waiting for further orders or for Barliss to leave.
“Make sure to charge all the lasers we’ve got.” Barliss walked toward the tent flaps and lifted one up. The sun glared in. “We’re gonna have a lizard bake.”
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