Abiogenesis (13 page)

"Neutron," Dalia gasped, staring down at her hands, expecting them to disintegrate before her eyes.

When she looked up again, she saw Reuel’s eyes were trained upon the ceiling, as if he could see through it. "The shield won’t take many hits like that," he said grimly. Turning, he strode to the door.

Dalia stared at him, too stunned to assimilate what he’d just said. A shield?

He paused at the door and turned to look at her. Swallowing with an effort, he pulled the key from his pocket and tossed it to her. "Give me your word, Dalia. If this goes badly, don’t let them take you. Don’t give yourself up. There’s a craft hidden in a cave north of here. Take it and find a safe place to raise our child."

Dalia blinked at him uncomprehendingly. "What about you? Come with me. We can go now."

He shook his head.

"You can’t fight them! You’ve got nothing to fight them with!"

A grim smile curled his lips. "You’d be surprised."

Dalia stamped her foot angrily. "Damn it, Reuel! This is a hell of a time to decide to make war! Let’s just go! We can arm ourselves, set a trap, and have the advantage!"

He studied her a long moment and she saw relief in his eyes that thoroughly confused her. "This is the trap, Dalia."

She gaped at him, but as he turned to go, she rushed after him. Grasping his wrist, she tugged on it until he stopped. When he did, she flung herself against him, holding tightly to him. "Be careful."

He peeled her loose and set her away from him, but caught her woebegone face between his palms and dropped a quick kiss on her lips. "I love you."

Chapter Thirteen

Sheer terror washed over Dalia as his words echoed hollowly through her mind.

He was going to die. He knew he was going to die or he would never have said that to her. Frantically, she looked around for the key. She’d been too stunned by everything that had happened within the past few moments to more than register the fact that he’d tossed it to her. She couldn’t even remember catching it.

Had she caught it? Or had it landed on the floor, or the cot? Whirling, she headed back into the room. Just as she reached the doorway, however, two neutron bombs exploded overhead in quick succession. The concussion knocked her off her feet. Around her, the hut shuddered and began caving in. She covered her head, huddling in the door jam, hoping it was stronger than the rest of the hut had been. When the debris settled, she looked around her and found the quickest route out of the wreckage.

The morning sun was just cresting the horizon, throwing blood-red light over the compound. Above her, she saw it gleaming off of the domed force field that encompassed the entire compound.

She hadn’t noticed it before because it hadn’t been there.

Reuel had said this was the trap. She should have known! That was why everything had looked so thrown together and impermanent! That was why Reuel had said they would ‘wait’. He hadn’t been talking about the baby, not then, anyway. They were waiting for the company’s militia. They’d known they would be followed.

Which meant that Reuel had known she was carrying another locator.

He’d been testing her, trying to find out if she was aware of it, and the fact that she’d been transmitting information to the company from the moment he’d picked her up.

Fury washed through her. She felt like choking him.

Damn the man anyway! He’d used her ... again!

Angrily, she glanced around for sight of him. The huts they’d built were piles of debris now. What caught her attention, however, were the cannons emerging from belowground ... and the three squads of cyborgs kneeling in battle formation behind them.

As she watched, a company craft appeared on the horizon, heading straight for them. Her heart leapt into her throat. They were going to have to drop the shield to fire on it and whoever was manning that ship knew it.

As small as the neutron bombs were that were used for localized battle, one would turn this entire compound into a pile of smoldering dust.

They were all mad!

They were all going to die.

She braced herself, knowing she didn’t have enough time to run. As the craft shot over the palisade wall, the cyborg manning the largest of the cannons opened fire. White blue snakes of light shot upward like long, gnarled fingers, straight through the field, grabbing the craft. The craft dropped like a rock, bounced when it struck the field and began sliding along the curvature. The force field flickered and the craft dropped through, slamming into the ground with the sound of grinding metal.

Dalia was too stunned to move. As she watched, a squad of cyborgs leapt to their feet and charged the downed craft. Even as they reached it, a squad of rogue hunters stumbled out, stunned, bleeding, but struggling to form up.

They didn’t get the chance. Before they could draw more than a ragged breath, the cyborgs fell upon them, beating any who refused to lay down their weapon into submission.

The discharge of the strange cannon brought Dalia’s attention back to the cannons once more and she saw two more company craft shoot over the palisade and into the line of fire. "What is that thing?" she muttered. She’d thought it must be a neutron cannon, or perhaps a laser. Whatever it was, it had drained the propulsion from the craft as suddenly as if they’d flipped the off switch on the engine.

The two remaining cannons fired almost simultaneously. The first hit its target head on and that craft dropped, smashing into the force field. The second cannon missed its target entirely. That craft veered away, but she could see it was losing altitude fast. Even as the craft that had been struck dead on dropped through the force field and slammed into the ground, the third craft hit the trees beyond the palisade and exploded, sending shrapnel in every direction.

The effect was devastating. Debris shot through the opening before the force field could be reactivated, cutting down cyborg and rogue hunter alike. The distraction also cost them in domination of the field of battle. The squad of rogue hunters who piled out of the second ship was prepared for battle before the second squad of cyborgs could reach them. The hunters who’d been subdued, began struggling to free themselves to join the second squad.

As Dalia watched, Reuel leapt from the firing pad of the largest cannon and charged toward the fray, the final squad of cyborgs on his heels.

Dalia never consciously made the decision to join them. Her gaze followed Reuel and her heart and body followed. She was in the thick of the fight before she even realized that she had charged forward to help.

She was also completely unarmed.

It dawned upon her about the same moment that Reuel turned and caught a glimpse of her. Immediately distracted, he surged toward her. Dalia stared at him disbelievingly, but in the next moment, movement just to one side of him caught her attention and her gaze moved from Reuel to the man beside him. The hunter caught Reuel on the side of his jaw with the butt of his gun. Reuel’s head jerked sideways at the impact and his body followed, flying toward the ground.

"No!" Dalia screamed, surging forward even as the hunter flipped his gun, switching ends and drawing a bead on Reuel, who was still struggling to rise. Launching herself at the man, she landed in the middle of his back. He staggered, but he was easily as big as Reuel and barely registered her attack. Locking her legs around his waist before he could toss her off, Dalia flipped the chain of the manacle around his neck, looped it once and pulled it taut. He gagged, bent forward belatedly to throw her over his head, and she tightened her legs around him.

He clawed at the chain, swung backwards, trying to knock her off. Despite her efforts to dodge him, he caught her along the jaw with the edge of his fist. Blackness swarmed at the edges of her vision, but she held on, pulling tautly at the chain until, finally, he dropped to his knees. When he did, she released her grip on his waist and kneed him in the back.

Someone caught her arm as the hunter fell face first onto the ground. She tried to shrug the hand off, gritting her teeth as she concentrated on choking the life out of the man. He caught her hair, jerking her head back. "Stop it, Dalia!"

She stared at Reuel blankly, but she didn’t slacken her grip.

He caught her wrists. "We want captives, not dead men!"

The fight went out of her and she dropped her arms weakly. "He would’ve killed you."

Shaking his head, Reuel pulled her off of the unconscious man and hauled her away from the battle. He’d dragged her all the way back to the pile of rubble that had been her prison cell for the past three days before the shock wore off of Dalia enough for her to realize that he was furious as she had never seen him in all the weeks she’d known him. He surveyed the debris for several moments before he turned to look at her. She almost took a step back at the look in his eyes. "You gave me your word," he ground out.

Dalia blinked at him uncomprehendingly. "What?"
"I asked you to give me your word that you would protect my child, that you would leave if things went badly."

"Your child?" Dalia echoed, feeling dread seep into her.

His lips twisted. "Mine. If you had cared anything about it at all, you would not have joined the battle, without even a means of protecting yourself."

"I saved your life!" Dalia exclaimed, too stunned that he was attacking her even to feel any indignation.

Something flickered in his eyes, but his anger didn’t abate. "You risked my life! You distracted me in the heat of battle. If you had done as I asked, if you’d done as you had given me your word you would, you wouldn’t have been there to start with.

"Have you no conception of how fragile the life is that you carry? Or does it simply not matter to you?"

Dalia stared at him, feeling horror wash over her in a cold tide as a dozen images flickered through her mind of past battles she’d engaged in, the blows she’d taken, the wounds. Almost any one of those could have meant the death of her baby.

As badly as she wanted to dispute his hurtful remarks, she couldn’t. He was right. She hadn’t thought about the baby. She had acted, just as she had always acted, as if she was no more than a mindless machine behaving as programmed, without any ability to make her own judgments, her own decisions.

And not once had she thought about the tiny life inside of her. What kind of mother would she be if she thoughtlessly endangered the life of her child?

She should have done what he’d said she must do, or at least stayed as far away from the fighting, and danger, as she possibly could. She hadn’t given him her word. She’d been too worried about him even then to consider what he was saying, but it hardly mattered. The baby was completely and utterly dependent upon her now merely to sustain life. If she’d sustained a mortal blow, it, too, would have died.

He was right about the other, as well, she realized. She had distracted him. He’d asked her to promise she would protect the child and then she’d joined the battle, distracted him, and almost gotten him killed.

Guilt fell over her shoulders, crushing the air from her lungs. She found she couldn’t sustain the look in his eyes any longer and dropped her gaze to her hands. He grasped her chin, forcing her to look at him. "Is that your answer? Nothing?"

What was she supposed to say? It did matter, but how could she argue that it did after what she’d done? Or should she just agree that her actions were sufficient in themselves to prove that, whatever else she felt about it, she was too used to thinking only of herself, and for herself, to consider the possible consequences? "I can’t see that there’s anything to say," she managed finally.

If anything, it seemed her response only made him angrier. Grasping her arm, he walked her across the compound to the group of cyborgs that was rounding up the hunters. "Put her with the rest of them. When you’ve secured them in the hold, look for survivors. The craft went down slow enough some of them might have bailed."

The cyborg he’d spoken to took her arm, glancing from her to Reuel with a puzzled frown. "You’re going after the other craft?"

Reuel nodded grimly. "We can’t afford to let them get back to the company. If we’re not back by the time you’ve finished here, leave. We’ll see you when we get back to Mordal."

Although Dalia nerved herself to look at him, hoping that his anger had abated, he didn’t so much as glance at her before he left. She supposed she should’ve been relieved that he hadn’t looked at her again considering the look in is eyes before. Instead, it only made the guilt weigh more heavily upon her.

After a few moments, the cyborg led her toward an enormous cargo ship that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Surprise briefly filtered through her misery, but it dimmed almost as quickly. Obviously the whole compound had been nothing more than a stage above the real compound. She’d been carefully placed far enough from where they were making their preparations to keep her from seeing what they were doing, to keep her from knowing that the handful of cyborgs she’d seen were only a fraction of the number actually here.

It seemed indisputable that Reuel had not only known she had another locator, but he’d believed she was a part of the company’s plan to discover the rebel compound. Otherwise there would have been no reason to make sure she didn’t know what the plan was.

She frowned at that, wondering when the company had decided she would be more useful in leading them to the rebels than dead. She didn’t believe that the attempt on her life had been faked, but it was possible it had. The company was devious if nothing else and Reuel said they had discovered his plant weeks before they discovered that she’d conceived.

It made sense now that she considered all the pieces. Whether they managed to get any information out of the cyborg they’d caught or not, they had to know something was up and that it involved her. Once they had discovered that she had been successfully impregnated, they’d have to know that that made her invaluable to the cyborgs. All they had to do was make her run for her life, make sure it was on all the open channels that they were hunting her down to kill her and wait for the cyborgs to pick her up and take her back to the colony.