“It does kind of look like a T-rex,” Mom murmured and K realized she’d spoken the words aloud.
“What is he waiting for?” she muttered, staring at the giant saurian which dwarfed even Boone’s big frame. Its scaly skin was a deep, purply-blue and its teeth, when it opened its mouth, were as long as her forearm.
“I don’t know.” Mom sounded tense. “Shoot it, Boone,” she urged, as though his blurred figure on the screen could hear her. “Hurry up.”
* * * * *
“Shoot it!” Loki said, nudging him. “Come on, Boone, stop playing around.”
“I’m not playing,” Boone growled, wishing he could take his eyes off the immense mountain of saurian flesh long enough to elbow his annoying pilot in the ribs. Loki was only making it harder to concentrate—as though it wasn’t hard enough already. The blast of pheromones Sweetie was emitting made him feel like he was going to climb out of his skin and a constant stream of erotic images was trying to take over his mind. He was in mortal danger but it seemed like his brain was more interested in replaying every porn vid he’d ever seen as a horny adolescent than saving his ass. Great, he thought angrily, trying to regain some control. No wonder Abrahams wanted someone else to do this—it’s fucking impossible to concentrate around this damn animal.
“Shoot it!” Loki begged. “I swear to Goddess, Boone, I’m either going to come in my pants or shit them in another minute and I don’t know which. So shoot it.”
“Lower your voice—Abrahams said she spoke Standard, remember?” Boone hissed. “And anyway, I’m trying to shoot but the trigger seems to be stuck.”
“Stuck?” Loki squeaked. “I thought you tried it out already.”
“I did—you saw me do it,” Boone snapped. “But for some reason it’s not working like it was in the lab.”
Sweetie, who had been eyeing them with obvious interest, lowered her massive head with a snort. Boone was not encouraged to see that from the blunt base of her skull to the tip of her murderously sharp front teeth, her head was as long as he was tall. Not used to feeling like the smallest kid on the block, he thought, gritting his teeth when his mind wanted to show him a sexy porn star with K’s face and a killer body instead of the sentient eating machine in front of him. It’s no fun, is it?
Not that he was going to have much time to dislike the new feeling if the trigger didn’t hurry up and unstick. What the hell was wrong with the damn thing? He worked it frantically but it stayed stubbornly stuck in the half-cocked position, refusing to move even a fraction of an inch.
“Okay, to hell with the stunner, I’m going to blast it.” Loki drew the oversized pulse pistol and aimed with one trembling hand at the giant beast.
“No, Loki, you idiot!” Boone protested. “Look in her eyes—she’s smart enough to know exactly what you’re doing and besides, a weapon that size is only going to piss her off.”
“I don’t—” Loki began and then the saurian roared.
* * * * *
It was a deafening sound, even over the viewscreen. K had studied vids of Earth-that-was and the saurian’s deep, bellowing claxon seemed to draw notes from a lion’s roar, a steam train’s whistle and the warning call of a massive ship’s foghorn. The descending notes, filled with rage and hunger, sent a shiver down her back. For the first time, on contemplating a combat situation, she felt genuine fear instead of the cool nothingness of Purity. It was a horrible, clammy feeling that made her stomach tense and the palms of her hands sweat. Yet she knew what she had to do.
“My suit.” She turned to Mom and gripped the other woman by the arm, heedless of contamination. “My suit, bring it to me!”
“What?” Mom frowned. “Listen, young lady, don’t you think you’re jumping the gun just a little? Boone told me not to give it to you unless he died and he’s not dead yet.”
“But he will be if someone doesn’t go help him.” K shook her impatiently. “Didn’t you hear Boone say the trigger was stuck? And Loki is no help—I knew he wouldn’t be. All they’ve got between them and that angry saurian is a malfunctioning stunner and a pulse pistol calibrated for Earth-normal humans.”
Mom frowned. “I still don’t see—”
“My gauntlets!” K shook her again. “They can bore a hole through solid plasti-steel. “Forget about the suit—just bring me the gauntlets.”
“Oh!” Mom spared one last glance at the desperate scene on the viewscreen and raced from the room. In half a minute she was back, holding the two familiar black plasma gauntlets gingerly in one hand, as though they were poisonous snakes that might bite.
She wasn’t far off in that assumption, K thought with some satisfaction as she strapped the weaponry on. The gauntlets covered her entire forearms from the base of her thumb to the crook of her elbow. Just feeling them against her skin gave K a thrill.
Then their needles dug into her arms and she felt a rush of fear at the stabbing pain. Be calm, K commanded herself. Feel nothing. The gauntlets didn’t inject anything as the skinsuit did—they simply needed a neural connection to her in order to work properly. But could she work them properly, now that she was contaminated? Only a fourth class Paladin could manage the delicate and dangerous weapons and the black around her eyes had receded considerably, putting her back years in her training.
K felt a stab of self doubt, sharper than the needles piercing her forearms, as she reached for the once-familiar link she’d had to her weapons. Before when she’d worn the gauntlets she had controlled them from a state of absolute peace and calm. Now her mind was in chaos and the semi-sentient weapons seemed to sense that. I will control them. I must, she told herself grimly. She looked at Mom. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
The other woman didn’t have to be asked twice. “Come on!” She led the way out to the Rough Terrain Vehicle, a small four wheeler kept for exploring alien planets, which was stored near the hatch of the ship. Grabbing the controls, she slung herself into the driver’s seat with surprising agility.
K took the passenger’s seat, relieved that Mom was driving. She didn’t think she could have trusted herself to steer straight with the chaos going on inside her brain at the moment. She still felt dizzy and weak but she forced herself to sit up straight as Mom started the small but tough vehicle and they roared down the landing plank and into the arid Minotaur climate.
K only hoped they were on time. Now that they were outside the ship, she could hear the angry roaring of the hungry saurian first hand, unfiltered by the viewscreen and Sweetie sounded very, very angry.
Chapter Twelve
So this is how it ends, Boone thought as Sweetie took her first snap at them. He dodged quickly to one side and Loki squealed and dodged to the other, both of them barely avoiding the glistening dagger-like teeth. The teeth in question clicked loudly on empty air and Sweetie snorted angrily. Boone had a feeling she was just playing with them at this point—like a hungry cat with a couple of luckless mice. In a minute she was going to tire of her little pastime and then it was going to be all over with.
He cast a glance over his shoulder, wondering if there was any way to escape. Abrahams and a few other townsfolk from the settlement were watching avidly from behind the thirty-foot electrified perimeter fence but no one was rushing to their aid or opening the door in the fence, for that matter. Apparently they weren’t taking any risks that Sweetie might want seconds after she finished Boone and Loki off.
“Abrahams?” he shouted, trying to back slowly away from the angry saurian as he spoke. “Trigger’s jammed on your damn stunner. Little help here?”
The geneticist shouted something that Boone didn’t catch.
“What?”
“He said, ‘reason with her.’” Loki looked positively green with fear. They’d been in some tight spots together but Boone had never seen his friend so panicked.
“Reason with her. Great,” Boone muttered. He wished he could think of words that might soothe the savage saurian but his thoughts were still occupied with erotic i
mages, a by-product of the crazy pheromones Sweetie was giving off. The effect was that one half of his mind was screaming, We’re going to die! while the other half was thinking he was so hard he could fuck a hole through a concrete wall.
“Goddess, this is insane,” Loki moaned as they both backed slowly away from the angry Sweetie. “I’m about to bite it and all I can think about is the last time I went to the baths in Rigillian. There were these two guys there—no, three, there were three—and they had this super sized bottle of passion lube. Anyway, they turned me over and—”
“Stop it, Loki, I’m trying to think!” Boone snapped. “Sweetie,” he said, turning his attention to the huge saurian and trying to make his voice calm. “Come on now, darlin’, you don’t want to do this,” he told her.
Sweetie snorted and lowered her head again so that one dinner-plate sized eye was staring directly into Boone’s face. He stared back at her, trying not to lose the blinking contest. Looking at her immense face, he wondered absently if this was how some of the smaller littles felt when they first encountered one of his kind.
Then the corner of Sweetie’s immense mouth turned up and Boone could have sworn she was smiling. But not a happy, nice-to-meet-you kind of smile. No, the expression on her reptilian face seemed much more menacing than that. Boone wished that Abrahams had given her the power of speech but he was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking even though she couldn’t say it out loud—Oh yes, I do want to do this and you’re about to be lunch.
“Sweetie,” he said again but she only snorted and took another snap at them. Boone gasped and barely jumped back in time to avoid her foot-long teeth.
“Fuck this reasoning shit,” he heard Loki say in a trembling voice.
“Loki, n—!” he started to say but the coughing echo of his pulse pistol being discharged drowned his words.
There was a blast of energy and Sweetie lifted her head and bellowed in pain. Boone saw a streak of black appear on her scaly, purplish-blue hide but it was clear no real damage had been done. Loki might as well have tried to take down a tank with a handgun.
“Loki,” he growled. “That was fucking stupid. You’re only making her angrier!”
“Well what am I supposed to do?” Loki demanded. “Talk sweetly to her and sing her a damn lullaby?”
“Better than pissing her off.” Boone worked at the trigger of the stunner again but it was still frozen in place. Piece of shit! He would be better off throwing the heavy weapon at Sweetie and making a run for it. Except for the fact that she could outpace him in two steps and cut him in half with one bite, that was.
Sweetie roared again and then lowered her head. There was a murderous glint in her eyes and Boone had the feeling she was through playing cat and mouse. Now it was supper time.
“Run, Loki,” he muttered, his mouth dry with fear. “Get away while you can—I’m the bigger target. She’ll go for me.”
“I can’t—” Loki began and then Sweetie charged forward, her mouth open for the killing bite.
One chance, Boone thought as that hot, gaping maw came for him. Abandoning all attempts to work the trigger, he shoved the stunner between Sweetie’s razor sharp teeth, wedging it as far back as he could between her molars. His arm scraped against the jagged edges of her fangs but he barely felt the pain in the adrenaline rush of fear.
She bellowed angrily and raised her head, shaking it from side to side, trying to dislodge the obstruction. Boone couldn’t help thinking that the big, bulky stunner looked like a toothpick in her immense mouth. For a moment he hoped it would hold her until he and Loki could get away…then there was a metallic crunching sound and shards of metal mixed with bloody drool came raining down to the ground at their feet.
So much for that. We’re going to die, Boone thought, looking up as the giant saurian lowered its head and charged at him. I’m sorry, Shayla, sorry I didn’t get to you. But it wasn’t his little sister’s face that came to his mind now that his last moments were at hand—strangely enough, it was K’s. He wished he had kissed her, kissed those soft, lush lips before he left. Before he said goodbye for the last—
A hollow roar as loud as Sweetie’s bellow suddenly split the air. Boone glanced over his shoulder to see that a large smoking hole had suddenly appeared in the electrified perimeter fence. And coming through it at full tilt were Mom and K, riding the RTV they kept for exploration on hostile planets.
“Get back!” K’s voice rang out and she stood up in the vehicle, her legs spread wide for balance as it bumped and swayed over the rocky ground. “Get back, Boone, I’m going to blast it!”
“No!” Abrahams was suddenly through the fence as well, running to catch up with the RTV. “No, don’t kill her! She’s just confused.”
Looking at the angry saurian again, Boone didn’t see a bit of confusion in those huge, rage-filled eyes. Sweetie knew exactly what she was doing, he was sure of it. She was a killer by nature and just because Abrahams had given her intelligence, it didn’t mean she wanted to be anything else. She wanted to kill—wanted to render them all into so many quivering chunks of meat and gulp them, wet and steaming, down her gullet.
Then K stretched out her arms and the roar filled the air again as pulsing jets of pure green energy arrowed over his head and struck the angry saurian.
For a moment Boone thought that the glowing green plasma which had jetted from K’s weapons was only going to make Sweetie even angrier. It coated her scaly hide like greenish slime, not appearing to have any effect.
Then the plasma began to eat its way inward.
Sweetie bellowed again and this time Boone heard a note of pain in her deep voice. Her seemingly invulnerable, purple-blue scales began to show small reddish-black pits under the iridescent slime. Sweetie turned her head to the wounded side, snapping angrily at the pain, trying to make it stop.
But there was no stopping the flowing plasma—it had an appetite every bit as voracious as the rampaging saurian’s. The green substance ate inward relentlessly until the small pits became gaping wounds, showing Boone a lot more of the inside of saurian anatomy than he’d ever wanted to see. Glistening muscles and organs and gleaming white bones were revealed as the plasma worked deeper, spreading destruction as it went.
With a crash like a huge tree falling, Sweetie sank to her knees. Her cries of pain were deafening as she tossed her head, bloody slaver spraying from her snapping jaws.
“Shoot her again, K!” Boone heard himself shouting. “She’s in too much pain. Put her out of her misery!”
K was still swaying as she stood, though Mom had brought the RTV to a screeching halt right in front of the fallen creature. “I’ll try.” Her face was paper-pale and her eyes looked huge with fatigue or shock—he couldn’t tell which. “I’ll try, Boone, but I don’t know how much longer I can…can control them.”
“Control who? What are you talking about?” Boone ran toward her as she took aim again.
“No! No, wait!” Abrahams voice, coming from behind, sounded panicked. “I can help her, I know I can. If you’ll just—”
With a coughing roar, K fired the strange weapons strapped to her wrists, cutting him off. Another blast of green plasma jetted from her wrists, this time coating Sweetie’s massive head and face.
The saurian shrieked—an ear-splitting screech that made Boone feel like his eardrums were going to shatter. She tossed her head but the plasma clung to her like glue, eating its way into her eyes, stripping the skin from her bony, oversized skull. Boone jumped back as she thrashed, her massive tail barely missing him.
“Out of the way!” he shouted, motioning frantically for Mom to back up the RTV. “Get out of the way!”
Mom nodded once and threw the small vehicle into reverse. K lost her balance and fell, slumping into the passenger seat in a way that worried Boone. But he was too busy getting out of the way of the saurian death throes to do anything about it at the moment. Gods, would it never end?
Sweetie shrieked and writhed as
the plasma ate into her. Her earsplitting moans filled the air, broadcasting her agony to the entire settlement. Finally, just when he thought her suffering would never end, Boone saw one of her huge eyes collapse in on itself. The plasma poured into the empty socket and found her genetically altered brain. With one final shudder and a last, hissing shriek, the mountainous reptile lay still.
Boone let out a shaky sigh of relief. Sweetie had been intent on eating him but watching her die in such a horrible way made him feel sick. Nothing remained of the sentient saurian now but a steaming pile of once-living meat and the thick, pheromone reek which still hung heavy in the air despite Sweetie’s death.
“Oh my God—what have you done? What have you done?” Abrahams rushed past Boone, his normally serene face a mask of grief. “My daughter! My baby!”
“Abrahams, I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “That stuff is lethal. It’ll eat through anyth—”
“Boone!” The fear in Mom’s voice made him whirl around to see what was wrong. “It’s K.” She was leaning over the Paladin, still slumped in the passenger seat, unmoving. “Help me, Boone—she won’t wake up!”
Boone’s heart was suddenly in his throat. Not K! Oh, God, please, no! Though he had known her less than a solar month and they were sworn enemies—or at least, she had sworn to be his—the thought of losing K was suddenly more than he could bear.
He raced to the RTV where Mom was still bent over the slim, unmoving figure. “Are there any injuries? Did she hurt herself somehow? Get any of that green stuff on her?” Rapidly he examined her, taking her pulse, leaning down to listen to her breathing. It was quick and shallow and her heart was pounding hard, as though she’d just accomplished some incredibly strenuous physical task.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Mom sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “She said something about her gauntlets being harder to control but that’s all.”