by James Warner
CARYN
INTERSTELLAR ARCHAEOLOGIST
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• Caryn Cannel who provided the name for Caryn.
• Anita Moore who provided excellent editing including grammar and scene correcting.
• LRH® for instructing me how to learn to write.
• Annie, Rachel, Alycia, Karla and Sabrina whose beauty inspired me.
• The McDowell women who, once created, incessantly bugged me to tell their stories.
• My Cover Designer and Art Director Ariel Hales whose imagination matches my own.
A family of women with the blood of Scottish warrio r queens running hot in their veins are selected and manipulated by aliens from a far off galaxy to become a deadly weapon. Their unique genetic qualities make them capable of awesome abilities – if they can survive the forging and tempering that tests each of them to the brink of destruction.
It all starts some thousand years in our future with
CARYN
CYNTHIA
COLLEEN
KYLA
SORCHA
ALEXANDRA
FIONA
DEENA
HEATHER
SAUNDRA
CARYN READERS’ COMMENTS:
How did you think up all this stuff?
Katya J.
Your book kept me up too late at night!
Jessica R.
I loved the story.
Linda F.
A brilliant space opera romance. Give me more!
Anita M.
Table of Contents
Chapter 0. – 19th Mission
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 0. – 19th Mission
My First Mate Bob and I were running through the lush green jungle under heavy fire. My ship Sassy had her force field protecting our lander, but we were still too far from it. I nicknamed my ship Sassy because sometimes she gave me a lot of backtalk. The three Pirate thugs were hot on our tails and their ship overhead was bombarding Sassy.
“Sassy, come over here and protect us, dammit!”
“I can’t Captain. I’m being fired on and if I move they’ll destroy the lander and your way off the planet,” my ship answered me back. She had her own problems.
My worn leather tote bag, cracked and dirty from years of holding the dark gray Ancient Artifacts, weighed me down, slowing my escape through the jungle to the lander and safety. Bob and I had found the ancient gears in a cave near a ruin a mile away from the lander, up in some foothills.
“Hurry up, Bob, we haven’t got all day!” I yelled.
He was about six meters behind me and beginning to tire. The Pirates could tell and they were yelling in a language I didn’t speak, redoubling their efforts to catch us.
“Captain, I think…” Bob started to say and then I heard a gurgle and a thump. I turned to see if he had been caught. He was nowhere to be seen. As I turned back to the lander and safety one of the Pirate blasts hit me in the thigh, but he was too far away and it only stung. The Pirates were yelling even more loudly, then suddenly they became deathly quiet. I turned toward them again to return fire and watched in amazement, my blaster drawn and ready to fight, as all three of them began running as fast as they could away from where Bob had disappeared.
“Ha!” I yelled at them. “Cowards!”
“Bob! Where the hell are you?” I called, beginning to step toward where I thought he was in the bushes.
Just then there was a blood-curdling scream, much louder than a human voice could possibly make and out from the shrubbery shot an eight foot long six legged monster with a four foot long spiked tail and a snout two feet long full of razor sharp teeth, moving at an incredible speed – after the Pirates!
The Pirates were firing at it wildly as they ran away, probably antagonizing it more. I saw the beast take a swipe at one of them and saw its claws slice through muscle and bone and nearly sever her in two at the waist, blood spurting all over. But it didn’t stop.
I crouched down and crawled through the sharp jungle plant leaves, cutting my hands and arms where they weren’t protected by my Archaeologist khakis. I slowly approached where Bob should have been.
When I got to Bob I saw why I had heard the gurgle. The front of his body was ripped open from his throat to his groin and his guts were spilled in a bloody mess all over the ground. He was as dead as could be. I threw up.
After I got over the shaking I picked up his body and carried it, oozing blood and guts all over my uniform, back to the lander. I hoped the beast wouldn’t return to finish off its kill and start on me.
“Sassy, thanks for protecting the lander. Is the
Pirate ship gone now?”
“Yes, Captain. They picked up the two remaining men and left us to deal with the local fauna. I had them severely outgunned anyway.”
“All right. I’m going to need a ‘droid to help me get Bob into the specimen tank.” I hated the smell of the anti-everything spray I had to put on my arm and leg wounds.
“How did those hills end up in red and white stripes for miles?” I thought, staring out the main viewport as we took off.
“Sassy, do a geological scan of those hills where we found the Artifacts.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry for your loss, sir.”
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Chapter 1.
Finally we arrived at our base world and the
silvery clouds glistened from the heat of the Type M-1 (Sol-like) star as Sassy and I glided back through the atmosphere. The Admiralty star base was on the world Hamarabus, many light years from Earth. The low rumble of initial atmospheric contact that subtly vibrated the ship was replaced by a soft white noise as we dove deeper and deeper into the pastel blue and white sky. The viewscreen burst into color from a rainbow of superheated air around the ship atomizing the atmospheric water molecules of the cloud cover over the western end of the continent.
Had I cared to look as our flight path neared the lush planet, I would have seen green, brown, gray, lavender and white sliding beneath the ship on the surface far below. But I was in a dim funk – I had lost yet another man on expedition. And although the Admiralty understood we were all somewhat expendable when it came to exploring new worlds, I felt I had a particularly marked record for losing crewmen (six so far on nine missions). I refused to believe the obviously whitewashed reports that cleansed me from blame. I knew I was jinxed. And again I was alone, lonely and horny.
“Captain, I’m sure you will be exonerated by the review board. It wasn’t your fault. Your First Mate was slow returning to the lander,” Sassy encouraged me over our comm link that was embedded in my head by my left ear. I didn’t reply. I knew she was just trying to cheer me up.
The set of Ancient Artifact gears we had found was now carefully packed in the ship’s cargo bay in a sealed plasteel box. This was the “great discovery” we had made on this trip, over which a firefight with a group of alien Pirates had left me cut and bruised and my First Mate dead. It might bring me financial gain, but I was not at all sure it was worth the life of a good man. What would be done with them? Build some indestructible giant clock?
Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate the financial rewards I get when I return with something Ancient tha
t can be identified within the parameters of our own technology. But was it worth the toll in men and machines spent to gather the broken junk? It’s a good thing they didn’t ask me.
I took a much-needed hot shower as I suffered through the shakes of the end of my adrenalin rush and washed his blood out of my blonde hair and the left over vomit from my mouth.
When the maintenance crew took my First Mate, Captain Robert Thomas, from the species preservation stasis tank and put him in a body bag, I followed them out of the ship to the white Red
Cross wagon. His body would be carried, what was left of it, to the base crematorium next to the Chapel and ultimately put in an urn and taken to wherever his family wanted. He would get a funeral with full honors, his right as a member of the elite Scoutship Program.
“Lost another one, Captain?” the smart-ass wagon driver asked.
“Shut up,” I said, in no mood to make light of a good man’s death, especially not my crewmate’s. “What an insensitive ass,” I thought looking at him with hooded eyes. I knew I was notorious for losing First Mates, but this was not the time to joke about it. I had liked Bob and the two-month return to base with him in the stasis tank had been awful for me and Sassy. There was far too much time for me to ruminate about what happened and what I might have done differently.
The funeral took place that afternoon and was a military affair, perfunctory and official. It was holo’d so his family, many light years away on Earth, could watch it. During the funeral service I wore my white dress uniform. I had put a wreath of colorful native flowers on the plain dark blue wooden casket with the Admiralty insignia in gold on the top. Our Commandant, Harry Haroldson, had given the eulogy because I was in no state to be able to say anything. My tears were quiet – I had been through this scene before, but I’d never get used to it.I sat in the second row with Captain Budd and Captain Rowan, two other Scoutship captains currently at the base, and their First Mates Ron and Louise, whose last names I didn’t know. The four base chaplains: Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish, were seated in front of us in religious attire. Harry was officiating, as Bob had been an atheist. That was a religious viewpoint I could never rationalize for myself – the parts of the universe I had seen were far too beautiful to have been a random happenstance. I daydreamed about the colorful rainbow atmosphere effects of our arrival.
After I put the flowers on the casket and returned to my seat, I pretty much zoned out, thinking of the last time I had seen Bob alive. The sky was clear reminding me of his blue eyes sparkling when playing poker, giving away his hand. The temperature was like springtime. It had started out to be a beautiful day.
I couldn’t help it; I relived that scene in all its gory detail.
His death was chance, an accident, the kind of thing that happens all too often on alien worlds. But as I stared at the pew in front of me, the rich brown wood’s natural grain and beauty was lost on me as the image of Bob’s bloody mangled body stayed in my mind throughout the rest of the service.
After the funeral Harry cornered me in the chapel’s mahogany paneled lobby. “Captain - Caryn, why don’t you take a few days in town and come back when you feel more up to it? Your ship can finish the report.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, not really registering much of anything. His sharp eyes however saw through me and the emotional pain I was still feeling.
I left the base and walked through the red rose garden to my suite in Officer Country: an apartment complex that all the single officers lived in. I had a nicely decorated pad with pastel walls and chrome and leather furnishings with deep cerulean blue wall to wall carpet. Native flowers were kept up by the housekeeping service, a collection of daffodils decorating my dining and reading tables. I could have afforded the luxury of a suite at the Hotel Hamarabus because I was wealthy from all my Artifact discoveries, but I put most of my money into Sassy. The rooms in Officer Country were free, courtesy of the Scoutship program.
That night I wore a black catsuit with black heels when I went into town to get good and drunk, the outfit matching my dark mood. I wasn’t thinking about my dead Mate. I was starting to put it behind me. The nights on Hamarabus this time of year were warm and I didn’t need a coat. The bars across the highway from the base were always happy to cater to returning Scoutship Captains, because we had a reputation as free spenders, carousers and generally entertaining for the patrons. I was not in that kind of mood, though.
At the bar I ran into Betty, one of the maintenance crew for the Silver Hornet, an attractive young lieutenant with rich dark hair, an adorable smile and almond shaped brown eyes.
“Hi Caryn. What a bummer! Let me buy you a
drink,” she said. That was all I needed to get going. We didn’t bother with rank off the base and all we girls tended to be very chummy.
The bar was all wood and red leather. It was called the Cock’s Crow (pun intended) and there were always a lot of young single men around, sensing a varied and richly stocked feeding ground. There was a small dance floor and canned music. The place was pleasantly crowded on a Friday night. My black cat suit and matching heels pushed my height to over six feet and hid none of my voluptuous and well-muscled figure. I had curled my blonde hair in a popular style that reminded me of a pilot’s helmet. I danced and drank, too much of both, trying to forget the funeral, trying to fill the hole left by my dead crewman.
I remember stumbling on the dance floor at one point later in the evening and being caught by a nice looking man who I think I was dancing with. He held me tight, kissed me too much and led me out of the bar for some fresh air. I had no idea who he was, but I must have passed out in his arms, because the next thing I remember was the sun shining through a small window in a bedroom and that same handsome man I’d never seen before last night draped all over me. We were both naked, so I assumed there had been sex involved. I was sore and I felt anger beginning to burn. I looked around the room and recognized the size, shape and décor. It was my own bedroom. The fury was really beginning to boil inside me at this stranger. I realized I hadn’t had that much to drink. He must have slipped me something – this was a classic case of date rape!
I quickly turned my head to look at the man’s face, whipping my hair into his eyes which were right next to mine. His eyes were open and there was a very slight smile on his lips. Kind of cocky, smug, I thought as I tried to decide how to kill him. He seemed to be ignorant of the doom in my eyes.
“What’s your name?” I asked coldly.
“Jeff. What’s yours?”
“Caryn,” I said. We stared at each other for a few more moments. I was gathering my thoughts, now deciding whether to kill him for raping me or just get him out. Maybe I still was under the effects of the drug. I saw my catsuit lying ripped in shreds at the end of my bed and that was it – my blood frothed. He leered and began to grope between my legs and my anger won out over civility. I rolled and put all my weight and leverage into my left arm as I punched him in the face. I kicked him in the groin as he tried to get out of bed, swearing at me. He fell to the floor, on his knees, grabbing his balls and groaning. I whip-kicked him in the face and he fell over backwards, groaning louder in pain. As I slid out of bed I stomped on his kidney and he passed out. I strode to the door, opened it and grabbed him by the hair. Laughing and swearing, I threw him out and down the stairs to the entrance landing. He didn’t have a chance and blood flowed from several scrapes from the concrete stairway.
He hadn’t even had the decency to remove my catsuit carefully!
I threw on his black synthetic button down collar shirt and called base security.
“Hello. May I help you Captain McDowell?” the operator/dispatcher said in the video hookup. I must have looked terrible but she kept her professional demeanor. I was panting hard, even now barely containing my fury.
“Yes. There’s a naked stranger lying in front of my apartment. He raped me and I threw him down the stairs. I’m going to the base MD for tests right now, if your people n
eed to talk to me.”
Very well, Captain. Security is on the way.”
I hung up and put on some shoes and underpants and a flower patterned dress. I secured and left the apartment, stepping over the still unconscious man at the building entrance, dropping his shirt over his groin.
My doctor, Doctor Wren, was a short, pert native of Hamarabus’ early settlement. She was of oriental stock and was extremely attractive for a 50-year-old woman. She clucked at me like a mother hen as she took samples of the rapist’s sperm still in me. There was so much he had apparently done it twice while I was unconscious.
“My, my, Captain. This guy really filled you up. There will be no problem getting his DNA from these samples. What a beast!” she commiserated with me.
“I’m going to evacuate (evacuate?”) all the sperm now, this will feel weird but won’t hurt you. You’ve been hurt enough dear girl,” the doctor reassured me and then removed all the sperm with some kind of vacuum instrument that sounded like a dentist’s drill.
“Doctor, it’s about time for my annual shot. Can you do that now?”
