Within moments an array of orange arrows popped up in my field of vision, hovering in a gradually curving line over the sites where I had placed the perimeter of stakes. I leaned forward and ran, speeding across the terrain in great, bounding strides. It was a strange sensation since I was used to being less than two meters tall, strange to eat up the distance with the legs of a nine-foot-tall armored titan. I was thankful for it, nonetheless, and before long I was at the first of the series static manipulators, I had to readjust. Barbas projected instructions into my field of vision, one at a time, and I worked quickly, using the array of micromanipulators fitted into the index finger and thumb of my suits left gauntlet. The adjustment work seemed to take a minor epoch, and all the while the howling wind became louder, more insistent. We didn't have much time.
"It's good! Go!" Barbas snapped, and I jumped to my feet immediately, taking a short skipping step to avoid the machine I had just recalibrated. I ran to the next one and repeated the process, which seemed to go more quickly, then I stood and ran to the next, and the next, and the next. All the while I determinedly ignored the environmental hazard warnings that had begun to flash to the far left of my HUD. I worked this way for what must have only been fifteen minutes. It felt like an eternity, each step taken before a darker, angrier sky, each hurried repair job punctuated by a little beep to let me know that the temperature had dropped another fifteen degrees Celsius. And then, I was at the final stake, and I found myself slowed by a growing wind. Every movement was hindered by a gathering force that pushed and shoved and tugged at me, and my actions became rough and sloppy. I was forced to restart that calibration twice before I finally managed to get it right, shifting the instruments into the right configuration before snapping shut the protective cowling. I'd done it. I breathed out a sigh of satisfaction and relief, straightening up, and froze. I could no longer make out the horizon. Instead, there was a storm rushing toward me on the teeth of the shrieking and it was like nothing I had ever seen before.
The storm was piled hundreds of meters into the sky, in a towering, pillar of bulbous, seething black clouds, lit from within by a nearly continuous strobe of luminescent green. Hissing sheets of lime-tinted lightning blasted the ice beneath its towering bulk, and with every flash, I saw boulder-sized chunks of ice flung high into the air. It hurtled towards me with a ground-shaking roar of cascading thunder, and for a moment I just stood there, transfixed. My body was paralyzed, not by fear, but by overwhelming awe at the spectacle of incoming doom. Barbas was screaming something in my ear, but I didn’t hear him. I just couldn’t process the scale what I was seeing. I doubted very much that our machine, grand as it was, could possibly create something to rival this thing.
“JOANNA.” Barbas’ voice boomed directly into my skull, actually setting my ears to ringing by some kind of subconscious reflex. I snapped out of my trance. I didn’t know how long I’d been standing there, but the vast, alien stormwall was approaching, carrying a cloud of flesh-shredding ice and debris in its wake. I needed to get to shelter or I would die, armor or no armor. I opened my mouth to reply to Barbas, but something out there, in the direction of the incoming storm, caught my eye. I turned back towards the onrushing darkness, and I saw something impossible.
Someone was walking towards me from beneath the storm, her pace unhurried, her movements unconcerned, and her body utterly naked to the wind and the cold. She seemed unaffected by the temperatures, which should have made her skin freeze solid within seconds. She looked human, after a fashion- with two legs, two arms, a symmetrical head with two eyes- and she was even beautiful. In the same way a long distance runner or a gymnast would be. She was all slim lines and understated but perfect curves. She moved with the sure-footed grace of a dancer. Her skin was very nearly translucent, as her hair was. Both refracted the bright streaks of lightning behind her into an aura of other-worldly green. Her canted eyes were dark, all the way through, and at this distance, I couldn't tell what the iris was, and what was the pupil. The storm was coming, and I needed to get to shelter, but this…
“Barbas,” I whispered into my helmet mic, unsure why I felt the need to lower my voice. “Are you seeing this? Is she real?”
"I don't know," he said, his voice tinged with anxiety. "I don't know what that is. She's there, I can see her, you can see her, but she's not registering on any of our sensors." He seemed to gather himself because his voice became much steadier as he continued, "But if you stay out here any longer, you're going to die. I have to bring up our storm if we're to survive this, and our storm wall will kill you just as dead as that one in front of you. It's going to hit us in just over a minute."
I raised a hand towards the woman walking out of the storm. She mirrored my gesture. I smiled, forgetting that it was unlikely that she could make out my expression through my armor's faceplate. I took a hesitant step forward and stretched my hand out to the strange figure. Again, she mirrored me, one hand reaching forward tome- and then, without a moment's warning, the woman lunged towards me, fast as a viper. I took a bounding step back, opening up a couple meters of space between us. With mingled astonishment and fear, I watched as the woman turned her missed strike into a spinning motion and slammed her fist down into the hard glacial surface beneath us. A glittering, crystalline layer of ice spiraled up her planted right arm, before my eyes, crossing her shoulders and surging down over her chest and towards her hips. The ice was so deep a blue as if it were almost black. As it grew, it segmented, changing from a rigid crust into a flexible set of armor, not unlike my own. A spiked helm grew up around the expressionless, heart-shaped face, which was quickly followed by a grotesque mask that forcibly reminded me of the Oni demons from old Japanese legends. The frozen features scowled in the nightmare face, and you could only see the woman's eyes They looked like deep pools of shadow, even deeper than the ones in her armor. The warrior stood, and as if it had been hidden there specifically for her use, a spear rose from the ground, made of the same black ice as her armor. It looked like it had been ripped out of the coldest, darkest nightmare. So dark that it seemed to devour the brilliance of the incoming storm. The armored warrior spoke, and despite the oncoming tempest, I could hear the unfamiliar language perfectly, as if we were standing in a silent room. Her words echoed on the rushing wind and seemed to grow. Before I knew it, we were engulfed in the storm wall.
Barbas was yelling to me, bypassing the illusion of the radio, directly into my mind, but I couldn’t stop to listen. Everything was happening too fast. There was a confusion of movement, frozen into random still frames by the teeth-rattling explosions of lightning strikes, all around me and the ice-bound warrior woman. FLASH BOOM! I was barely dodging aside from her attacks, sure that somehow, even my armor would do little to stop the point of that cold black spear. Another flurry of movement and then FLASH BOOM! We were close together for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes. Almost an intimate distance as I seized the edge of her frozen pauldron and slammed my fist down toward her armored skull. FLASH BOOM! This time, the thunder stroke was close, very close, and all sound turned into a monotone ringing in my ears, as my opponent and I were hurled apart in a shower of sparks and shards of ice. The sudden silence gave me the chance to focus on Barbas' words for a moment, and then they blasted into my thoughts, nuclear-hot and sharp as burning knives in my brain. “JOANNA! RUN!”
A directional indicator lit up neon red in my HUD.I pushed myself to my feet, focused on the red triangle in my vision and sprinted. I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears, and despite my helmet's environmental controls, the air tasted like my own sweat. I ran for all I was worth, unable to see in the storm around me. Suddenly my hearing returned again, and somehow the storm had gotten even louder. The explosion of lightning was almost a constant blasting thunder, and all I could see was random flashes of movement interspersed with afterimages and shadows- like a violent rave burning deep into my eyes. The ground shook beneath my feet, and the blast of ice shards against me sounded li
ke iron rain against a battered tin roof. I couldn't tell which was forward, or which way was back. All I could see clearly was the burning certainty of the red triangle leading me to salvation. I stumbled, I wavered, I continued running through the storm.
And then I was through. The darkness parted like a curtain before me, and the wind dropped away to a roaring thunder behind me. Caught off guard by the sudden lack of pressure, I tripped and fell heavily, crashing to the ice with my face first. For a moment, I just lay there, breathing hard, bewildered and amazed that I was still alive. Then, the stomp of heavy footsteps drew my attention, and I scrambled to my feet, remembering the warrior and her icy suit of armor. Sure enough, she emerged from the storm wall, in a more dignified manner than my stumble and spread-eagled fall. She was not unscathed. Her helm was missing, and despite her poise I watched her put a hand to her side where a half-meter shard of ordinary ice had found a crease between two of her dark armor plates and pierced her. The jagged shard gleamed bright blue and slick with what I presumed to be her blood. Several of the plates of her armor showed bright white cracks, and they seemed to leak light into the unnaturally still air. The same white-green one as the lightning crashed inside the whirling storm wall. She leveled her spear at me. Her hands were steady despite her wounds. I raised my arms in a defensive posture, feeling utterly inadequate. My weapons training had lasted a little bit more than a week with a rifle, and a few days with a pistol. I had been in street fights before, but the most I knew of armed combat was which end of the knife to stick in- and I didn’t have a knife. That was it. Not even a week on an alien moon, and I was going to die by a spear. I wondered how many other Formers had died this way on their worlds. How many others met natives we didn’t think existed- didn’t think could exist, and how many were slain by weapons that had gone out of vogue on Earth more than two-thousand years ago? The warrior woman, even though she was visibly breathing hard cause of the pain, took a firm step forward with her spear pointing perfectly at the level of my throat.
A sensation rippled up my spine as if someone was reading over my shoulder. My hair on the back of my neck, would have stood on end if they hadn't been surgically burned away, long ago, with the rest of my hair.. Gently, intimately, Barbas whispered in my ear. "Relax, Joanna, I've got this." And then my body moved- I moved- in ways I had never moved before. My hands straightened, like blades, followed commands I wasn’t sending - commands I had never sent. My whole body was moving, taking a stance I didn’t know, perched on one leg, the other crooked before me, ready and poised. My arms were raised in front of me, held slightly forward, posing both a defense and a threat simultaneously. One of them, the one extended further, beckoned to the ice-bound warrior with an insolent little wave of the fingers.
She rushed to me, driving a straight thrust to my throat, but I was already moving. I was twisting, still on one leg, to avoid the strike by the width of one of my fingers. Then the leg I had raised before me, lashed out and up with terrible force while my armor’s enhanced strength synced perfectly with the movement. My steel toe met my foe’s left elbow perfectly, precisely, with exact calculated force. The plate of icy armor there shattered into glowing shards. I felt the limb break and bend the wrong way with a crunching sensation that was both satisfying and revolting at the same time. The warrior screamed, the sound passed even through my suit’s audial buffers. As her lips parted, I was shocked to see a mouth full of carnivore teeth, fanged like the jaws of a bear. She tried to leap away from me, slashing backhand with her spear in her good hand’s grip, but my body, acting utterly without consulting me, turned in a smooth arc. With both of my feet planted, I seized the haft of the spear mid-strike before it was more than halfway toward my face. My abdominal muscles flexed, my hips twisted, and I ripped the spear out of the warrior’s weakened grip, grasping it firmly with both of my hands. The cold in the weapon was like nothing I had ever experienced. The threat of frostbite seemed to strike right from the moment I got it in my hands. My body ignored it and continued with the motion despite the pain that crawled. I brought the haft of the spear down against my armored thigh, and broke it in half. I threw both halves of the weapon aside, while the armored palms of my hands were gusting steam from where they had touched it. The warrior woman staggered backwards, with a look of panic in her eyes.
Barbas’ voice sounded in my ears. “Joanna, you may wish to close your eyes for this,” he said, gently. My right hand raised before me, stretched out to the strange, warrior woman. A gun formed in my grip, rapidly assembled by the Fabricator’s nanites from the stores of metal I had buried in the ice. It was the exact same modern revolver that Barbas had made for me the day that I had met him in my dreams. The same revolver that had been in my grip, on Earth, so long ago, and had sank into my grasp with a reassuring weight. My finger tightened and my arm flicked the aim of the weapon into line with the warrior’s head. The hammer twitched and began to move. I squeezed my eyes shut. There was a distant CRACK, and the gun bucked in my hand. When I opened my eyes, the warrior woman lay crumpled on the ground. Her strange, black armor was already cracking and disappearing into a haze of sublimating ice, shrouding her corpse in a shimmering burial shroud of refreezing vapor. I staggered and backed away from her. I moved towards the great Storm Engine we had erected, and found a small, boxy shelter waiting for me at its base. The door opened and I stumbled inside, putting my back against the wall and sinking to the floor.
Even if I hadn’t been the one doing all those things, I had just killed someone. Someone who was trying to kill you, said a little voice in my thoughts. And she’s not the first person you’ve killed. Remember the Law of the Jungle. Even in this frozen hell, it still applies. It wasn't Barbas. Those were my own thoughts, coming out of my memories, wearing the voice of someone long dead. Someone I had tried to forget. Someone I had watched die. The exhaustion of the last sixteen hours of work started to hit. I felt pain and deep muscle ache everywhere. My body felt energized but sore and empty of strength, all at once. Something behind my eyes seized me by the brain stem, dragging me down into sleep. My eyes slammed shut while the sound of the revolver echoed in my ears. It was as if every shot was a nail put on a coffin lid. One nail for each remembered shot. Bang. Bang. Darkness.
…
I opened my eyes to the by-now familiar environment of the cabin by the lake, lying on my back in the wide bed. I was wearing jeans and a peach-hued buttoned blouse. I felt long curly hair on my shoulders like the ones I had before. Before I lost them in the Former preparations. They were fanned out around me in a cascade of midnight tresses. I smiled at the feeling of having hair again, and I ran my fingers through the tumbling curls. My hair had never been this perfect, like warm silk, but this was my dream world, and right now, it seemed more real than the icy, violent hell that I had just left. I could smell the summer heat in the humid air, the thick scent of warm forest drifting in through the open window over the dresser. The curtains fluttering to the babbling tune of the birds out there, the lapping of the lake on the shore, the incessant creaking melody of the cicadas. I lay there, comfortable in my skin and the light clothing, relaxed in the sounds and scents of a lazy summer afternoon, enjoying the cloud-soft expanse of the mattress beneath me. I didn’t drift off to sleep so much as I lay in a trance of relaxation for once, only stirred to the sound of Barbas coming through the back door of the cottage.
I propped myself up on one elbow as he came around the corner from the hall and appeared in the bedroom door. He was truly a beautiful man, literally a creature of my dreams; wearing a pair of work trousers and a sweaty t-shirt with the logo of some band I didn’t recognize, fading across his chest. He stripped off the leather work gloves head been wearing, and threw them into a laundry basket in the corner. He crossed to the dresser to find a towel with to wipe his sweaty face. The motion spiked up his russet hair, making him look even wilder.
“‘Bas,” I teased. “Did you get yourself all dirtied up just for me?”
Barbas smirked. “Not entirely.” He eyed me where I lay on the bed, with his eyes lingering on the neck of my blouse. I remembered then that not all of the buttons had been done, and I was undoubtedly giving him a pretty decent view. He cleared his throat and gestured toward the laundry basket with a tilt of his head. “I was working in the garden while you rested. I figured you needed some time to yourself. Today was a very long and hard day.”
I frowned, tilting my head to one side, curious. “Isn’t the garden imaginary? Why would you need to work on it at all? Shouldn’t the flowers just grow when you want them too?” I gestured to the sweaty towel in his hand. “And shouldn’t you be able to just decide that the sun doesn’t bother you? You made all this, after all.”
Barbas wiped his face again, threw the towel after the gloves, hitting the wicker laundry basket not-quite squarely, so that part of the sweaty cloth hung over the side. He shrugged. “Sure, I made this place at first, but it’s your dream world. The sun is hot because you know the sun should be hot. Flowers grow the way they grow because that’s what they’re supposed to do. If you punched the wall of the cabin, you’d probably break your hand. The wine in the kitchen is sweet, but not too sweet, and the bed is quite comfortable.” He gestured about him in an arc. “Reality is subjective, Joanna. It’s what you make of it. And this?” He knocked lightly on the walls of the cabin. “This is where I live. It’s as real to me as that frozen shithole out there is to you.”
Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3) Page 33
