Dragonstar Destiny (13 page)

Behind them, the forest seemed to explode.

The hot, heavy air had been shattered like a sheet of glass by the cry of the female tyrannosaurus, and now, the stand of ginkgos and palms beyond the nest also blew apart in a fury of advancing flesh. Looking up, Kate saw the mother slash through the trees like a berserk construction crane. Thrashing its giant, turret-like head from side to side, the, female strode forward, straddling the nest between its impossibly thick legs.

Visigoth and the other Warriors had broken ranks at first sight of the female, and, still half-shocked, Kate felt herself being pulled along by Phineas. Heedlessly they crashed through the underbrush, but, looking back, Kate caught a photographic glimpse of the mother, bending her immense bulk low over the nest, using her snout to nudge the now-limp bodies of her young. In that instant of recognition, Kate swore she could see true suffering and pain in the eyes of the beast.

It was a terrible image she would always remember.

And suddenly the rex was pulling herself up to her full height of
almost ten meters, her broad chest heaving as her lung bellowed out a cry of frustration and revenge. Her jaws snapped open and shut, as torrents of saliva ran like rain from her mouth. Then she paused to pick up the scent of the killers.

Blind panic flashed like lunatic neon right behind Kate’s eyes. Her thoughts were fragmented, her movements, automatic and unplanned. We’re going to die, she thought. It was the single cogent notion in her head. Phineas continued pulling her along as they crashed and thudded madly through the forest. She could not sustain the breakneck pace. Her legs were like rubber, and there was a fiery pain in her right side.

Behind them, the forest was being ripped apart, the sound of its destruction chasing them down.

“It’s a hell of a fix they’ve put us in now,” said Phineas. “Goddamned Iizards!”

“Where are they?” she asked.

“Who the hell knows!”

The tyrannosaur bellowed again, and Kate looked back over her shoulder. The shadowed bulk of the great beast loomed over them like a tall building—a building that moved and with incredible agility. It seemed that it could cover the distance separating them in several more long, bounding strides.

Up ahead, another clearing revealed itself, and as they entered it, Kate saw what had become of the Saurian Warriors. Two of them had climbed into the spreading limbs of cycad trees while Visigoth and the two others had fanned out on the opposite side of the clearing. All of them had their crossbows aimed at the region behind and above Kate and Phineas.

“Hurry up!” he said. “If I can get past the clearing in time, I can get set up for a couple of shots.”

She ran as hard as she could. While her body was crying out that it could take no more punishment, her mind kicked in the override controls and pushed things a little further. A blowtorch burned through the right side of her waist and her lungs heaved without rhythm. Her eyes blurred and burned from the salty sweat which leaked into their corners, but she kept her legs moving. Phineas had never let go his grip, and the vise-like pinch of his hand was a comforting, inspiring kind of pain.

She was going to make it, dammit ... !

The undergrowth of the forest beyond the clearing became a haven, a goal to reach and be finally safe. She kept in sight, and tried not to think of the eating machine at her heels.

But she looked back instinctively in time to see the carnosaur emerge from the trees. The creature paused for an instant, tilting her great head and studying the field as a gamester might survey a playing board.

That pause was all Phineas needed. He tugged her along and together they flung themselves headfirst into the brush. The Saurian Warriors also used that freeze-frame instant to launch their feeble attack. Screaming out in unison, all five launched their bows. Three of the squaves struck the thick, crusty hide of the rex’s hind legs. The impact was not enough to penetrate the calloused flesh and the squaves fell harmlessly to the loamy soil. But the remaining two entered the softer, more vulnerable flesh of the rex’s underbelly, instantly chewing and gnawing and rending their way into the body cavity.

The rex was quick to react, screaming in pain and renewed anger. With a quick dip of her head, her heavy, shovel-like jaws plucked away one of the squaves with amazing delicacy. And then, with a move like a karate kick-fighter, the beast leaped into the air and used her left hind leg to scrape across her belly, dislodging and killing the remaining squave.

If Kate had not seen the dance-like maneuver, she wouldn’t have believed it possible. The female tyrannosaur was quick beyond all imagining.

While the Saurian Warriors were still reloading their bows, the rex dropped her head and charged them. Phineas took aim with the heavy assault rifle, unleashing a clip of explosive bullets in a blur. But the beast was too quick for his first salvo, having already moved inside the range of his aim. In an eye-flash, her great jaws descended and snapped up the nearest Warrior. There was a glimpse of his legs, a jerk of her head, and the saurian was a small lump working its way down her throat. Ignoring her quick meal, the rex crashed forward into the nearest cycad tree. The concussion of her great body shook loose the two Saurian bowmen, and they dropped from the branches like pieces of ripe fruit.

In an instant she lashed out with one of her massive hind claws and raked the nearest felled Warrior into a smear of red pulp, It happened so fast Kate wasn’t sure what she had seen until the image burned in her mind like the retinal print of strobe. The second Warrior leaped up and raced headlong between the rex’s legs, jamming his pike upward into the soft, genital region. It appeared to be a practiced maneuver, and the carnosaur bellowed in pain.

Visigoth and the other remaining Saurian launched new squaves into the rex’s underbelly, then charged out of the bush with pikes raised. She reacted by back-stepping with a nimble half-jump and a dip of her head. The Saurian between her legs, suddenly exposed, looked up in time to see her heavy jaws envelop him and close with the finality of a bank vault’s door.

Phineas had aimed his rifle at the beast but had not yet fired a shot.

“What’re you waiting for!” Kate screamed, hanging on his shoulder.

“They’re in the way! Damned lizards!”

But this proved to be only a temporary problem. After seeing the third of his small platoon wiped out, Visigoth barked out the order to retreat. Miraculously he and his single Warrior were able to dodge the next vicious swipe of the rex and duck into the edge of the forest, running as fast as they could.

Phineas seized the moment and opened up with the Heckler & Koch. Its ratcheting report was a counterpoint to the constant bellow of the rex. The first volley of explosive slugs ripped into her nearest hind leg, shredding it into a bright pink mist right down to the giant gleaming bone. The beast shrieked in agony and she spun toward the fury of her newest attacker. Her eyes were wide and yellow, glazed with madness and exquisite pain. Tilting her head to the side, she bent down to examine her slayers.

As Phineas slammed home another clip into the chamber, Kate could feel the wash of the beast’s breath, a dank wind smelling of blood and decay. The nightmare head dropped lower still as the rex staggered forward, crippled by the first magazine of ammo, but still driven to its instinctive task of killing and eating.

“Get back!” Phineas was crying as he unleashed the second clip.

The slugs stitched a solid line up the rex’s neck, into her open maw, and into the granite-hard skull. The C-4 explosive bullets opened up the beast like a coroner’s blade; they shattered the bones in the skull and jellied the brain.

Abruptly the rex straightened up, became rigid, then convulsed violently as its nervous system short-circuited. Kate felt Phineas tugging on her arm, but she was transfixed by the sight of the monstrous killer as it began a brief, obscene dance of death. Throwing back her head, the beast’s jaws sagged open as blood and spume frothed up her throat. She turned in one great circle, thrashing her tail and pistoning her hind legs in one final paroxysm, before pitching forward as though in slow motion.

“Look out!” Phineas was screaming, as though from a great distance, even though she knew he was right beside her.

Kate felt herself being pulled backward with a snap of her neck. Looking up, she saw the body of the rex covering the whole of the sky. As she moved, the beast’s falling trajectory seemed to be following her, slowly descending to crush her like a bug.

There came the sound of snapping limbs and branches and the thunderous
whump
of impact. Something scraped her shoulder, hard enough to throw her to the ground. Her head hit something hard, and that’s when the darkness came.

* * *

When she opened her eyes, there was a bright light to her left. A dull, throbbing pain seemed to be capering behind her right eye. There was nothing but darkness beyond the glare of the single lamp.

Until Phineas Kemp leaned forward, the orange glow of the bulb illuminated half of his face. He smiled and slowly lifted her to a sitting position, steadying her against his chest. She felt dizzy, disoriented, but the firm strength of his embrace was reviving her quickly. The pain began to subside.

“Well, I think you’re going to make it, lady ...”

“What happened?”

“When mom took a tumble, what was left of her head missed you by a couple of centimeters. Just caught your jumpsuit and pulled you down. You hit your head on a tree trunk of something. You’ve been out cold.”

“Where are we? Are we safe?” Kate looked around, but could not yet focus on the dim shadows beyond the single pool of light from his lamp.

“We’re back in the cave ...”

“What?” Her heart jumped as she realized they were still out in the Preserve, and it was definitely dark now.

“Take it easy. Nothing’s going to bother us in here.”

“But why? How ...?”

Phineas smiled, gave her a comforting squeeze on the arm. “When the tyrannosaurus went down, her carcass started attracting scavengers immediately. We had to get out of there before the place was overrun ...”

“Oh God” was all she could whisper.

“So I picked you up and carried you back here. It was the closest, and definitely the safest.”

“You carried me?”

“We would’ve never made it to the gate,” he continued. “I radioed the Council, told them what happened. They’re going to send the OTV out in the morning.”

“What about Visigoth?”

Phineas shrugged. “Last I saw, he was beating cheeks into the forest. He hadn’t gotten back to Hakkarh when I was on the horn ...”

“I hope he makes it,” she said. “Did you see the way they stood up to the rex?”

Phineas nodded, grinned. “Yeah, those guys are either very brave or very crazy.”

“Like you,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Very brave to save me like you did ...” Kate smiled and sat up straight. She touched the edge of his jaw. “Or very crazy to think you’d be safe spending the night in a cave ... with
me
.”

Phineas swallowed, but said nothing. He seemed a bit shocked by her forwardness, but not displeased.

“You mean I’m
not
safe?” he asked finally.

Kate began unbuttoning the top of her jumpsuit. “That depends,” she said, “upon what you mean by ‘safe,’ doesn’t it?”

PHINEAS
sat in the back deck of the terrain vehicle with Kate. In the front of the cab sat Mikaela Lindstrom with James Barkham at the controls. Barkham, knowing the exact location of the cave entrance, had volunteered to come after them. Each time Phineas looked up at Mikaela, he saw a special light burning in her eyes. It was the light of
knowledge,
of certainty.

When the OTV had pulled up to the cave that morning, and Mikaela first opened the bubble to regard the bedraggled pair after a night in the wild, Phineas knew that Mikaela had
known
immediately.

It was as though he had been wearing a cheap sign around his neck, or maybe even stuck to his forehead, which proclaimed: I gave Kate a good pranging last night!

He wasn’t sure what she was feeling, or how she planned to deal with it. Outwardly her face revealed no emotions whatsoever. She had asked a raft of concerned questions when they first boarded the vehicle, and had seemed curious to see the tyrannosaur’s nest, even though it had been picked fairly clean by scavengers by the time Phineas directed them past it. Yes, outwardly Mikaela was acting as though nothing had happened, as though nothing were different.

Only her eyes betrayed her.

She probably thought he was feeling quite good about the whole thing, but on that score she would be wrong. Just when Phineas thought that he might be starting to truly understand the dynamics of his relationships with women, Kate Ennis managed to foul things up again.

Here he was, finally realizing that not only was it possible to have women as close friends but it was desirable as well. In fact, he had considered Kate a close friend, and had been feeling good about the way he had adjusted to that kind of bond between them. Then he has to go and save her silly life, and they get to play marooned-on-a-desert-island for the night, and everything goes flying down the crapper.

Last night, after they’d made love, he felt like he was drunk on a heady aphrodisiac. He couldn’t think of anything but green-eyed Kate. Long-legged Kate. The Kate who wanted him all for herself. And then after they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, he didn’t have to think about it, either. And it hadn’t been difficult to avoid the implications of the whole thing when she woke him up this morning for round two ...

Afterward, when they dressed and waited for the OTV, he tried to talk to her about it, to analyze what had happened and what it all meant, but she kept shutting him down. Kate hadn’t wanted to face it, to talk about what had taken place. “Not now, Phineas,” she had said. “Not yet. I have to sort things out.”

She
had to sort things out? Christ, what about
me!

And what about Mikaela? Would she confront him? Maybe. Would he tell her the truth? He wouldn’t want to lie to her, but what the hell
would
he do?

Rely on spontaneity, he decided.

Dammit! This was crazy. Here they all were in the middle of a prime fix, hurtling through hyperspace to an unknown location, and all he could think about was how to manage the women in his life ...

It was truly insane.

Barkham had been talking, but Phineas hadn’t been listening. Suddenly he was aware that he was being addressed directly, and he looked up at the driver.

“ ... the farm, eh, Colonel?”

“I’m sorry, Jim, what was that again?” He cleared his throat.

“I was just asking you if after seeing Visigoth running off into the night, you probably figured he’d bought the farm ... you know, gotten his ticket punched?”

Phineas grinned. “Oh yeah, right. He put up a hell of a fight with just those silly weapons they carry, though.”

Barkham chuckled, brandishing his super-white teeth. “Yeah, I’ll tell you he caused quite a stir among his caste-mates when he came strolling up to the gate this morning!”

“He’s a tough son of a bitch. I’m glad he made it.”

“He wanted to come back out and get you. Says you saved his life,” said Mikaela. Her voice was even and as natural as could be.

“I’m flattered,” said Phineas.

Mikaela smiled. “I’m sure it feels good to be a hero again,” she said without looking back.

Phineas said nothing. He gazed out at the passing landscape, daring not to look at either Mikaela or Kate, who had been very quiet during the entire trip. Phineas thought that was a very coy way to handle things. He found her silence worse than the imaginary sign hanging around his neck.

* * *

Immediately upon returning to the Enclave, Phineas and Kate met with the Council and went through a thorough debriefing of the mission. Bob Jakes was pleased with its success, and announced that his people would try to locate Takamura with radiosensors, despite the heavy shielding separating the Preserve from the control-section.

The Council decided to call a general assembly of all the survivors so that an announcement could be made about Takamura’s efforts. Phineas didn’t think it was such fantastic news, but he agreed with the Council’s Chair, Joy Davison, who believed that the news would be a good morale booster.

Joy had been correct. After the assembly was recessed, a spontaneous party broke out under the large tent. Everyone was in a festive mood, and you could just sense the subtle suggestions of renewed hope running through them.

Someone had handed Phineas a cup of wine and he was sipping it, slowly. Mikaela stood by his side, watching one of the engineers strum on a guitar. Others, including Kate, were dancing and clapping their hands as he sang a popular song.

“It’s good to see this,” she said. “Usually there is an undercurrent of despair, of resignation.”

“Hope springs eternal, isn’t that what they say?”

Mikaela turned and faced him, saying nothing. It was the first time they had been able to speak privately since he’d returned.

He smiled, put his arms around her. Her eyes were focused tightly on his. “You haven’t told me how glad you are to see me ... or that you were worried about me ... or that you love me.”

“Neither have you,” she said.

“Hey, this is the first chance we’ve had to talk. Give me a break!” He smiled and tried to appear nonchalant, but he thought he sounded like a bad actor reciting lines.

“So talk,” she said. There was not the hint of a smile on her pretty Scandinavian face. Her blue eyes stared at him with frosted clarity.

“I love you, Mikaela,” he said, meaning it, but feeling a hollow sensation in his gut.

“Do
you?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He knew what was coming, and decided that maybe a good offense would be the best defense.

“Oh, I don’t know ... maybe I should not have said it.” Mikaela did a half-turn away from him, looked back, then out to where Kate Ennis was dancing with the others. She made sure he noticed.

Phineas smiled. “I don’t believe it—my enlightened, rational scientist from Sweden is jealous!”

“Does it really surprise you?” She moved closer to him.

“No, I suppose not,” he said. “I guess we’re all a bit jealous when you come right down to it.”

“What happened out there, Phineas?”

He looked at her, and found that he had to look away. A bad sign, that.

“Do you mean did we get it on? Isn’t that what you mean to ask?”

“Phineas, you don’t have to get so testy.”

“Oh, I don’t? Well, thanks for your permission, madame.”

“It doesn’t really matter—” she began.

“But you still want to know, don’t you?”

He could feel his blood getting up. They hadn’t had a good fight in weeks, and he found he was in the mood for a skirmish. He still didn’t know if he would cop to doing it or not.

“Phineas, it’s not like that,” said Mikaela. “It’s just that a woman
knows
when another woman is after their man. And I know Kate Ennis wouldn’t let an opportunity like last night go by without making her play.”

He smiled. “And yet, you say it doesn’t matter. Now, what the hell does
that
mean?”

“I mean realistically, rationally, sex is no big deal, is it? Two people, getting together, that’s all.” Mikaela looked into his eyes again. She was easing up, softening.
“We
have more than just sex, don’t we?”

“Of course we do.”

“Well, that’s what I mean when I say it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. I feel secure in the knowledge that we have a multidimensional relationship.”

“We do indeed,” he said, hoping that she had decided to drop the whole issue.

“But,” she said, “just to satisfy my curiosity, I
still
want to know what happened last night!”

“You will never cease to amaze me, Mikaela.” She had him disarmed now, and he was confused. He had no conception of how she might react if he told her the truth.

“You’re stalling,” she said.

Phineas exhaled slowly. “All right, I’ll tell you exactly what happened.’”

“You will?” She seemed surprised.

“”Well, it was about ten minutes getting back to the cave entrance, and it was getting dark by then. Kate was still out like a light, and—”

“Phineas, I don’t want a minute-to-minute accounting. I
know
she woke up and batted those big green eyes at you ... I want to know what you
did
about it!”

He shook his head, grinned.

“Well, if you must know, I—”

He never completed the sentence. A ship-quake was coming on, but more violent than anything yet experienced. A sound like rolling thunder across a vast plain hammered the air. It ran on as though it would be endless, and the hull shook violently. Nearby Saurian buildings resonated from the monstrous vibrations which rippled through the great ship’s hull. Phineas remembered Takamura’s analysis and feared that the whole vessel might be breaking up.

The merriment of an instant before vanished, and people started running in all directions. There were cries of panic punctuated by voices of reason and calm, trying to keep order to things. Taking Mikaela’s hand, Phineas pulled her out toward the open space of the market boulevard where there was less chance of something falling on them. He found himself seeking out Kate in the churning crowd, but she had disappeared in the rush of human traffic.

“What’s happening?” yelled Mikaela above the din.

“Not sure! It’s different from the other quakes.”

“Let’s go to Jakes’s tent,” she said.

“If it’s still there ...”

They ran into the open boulevard and headed for the large vendor’s tent where Bob Jakes had sequestered all the surviving lab equipment. The tent served as a kind of clearing house for all the various sciences represented and a headquarters for any kind of instrument analysis needed. Just as they reached the entrance, the vibrations ceased, the terrible sounds diminished to nothing.

The sudden stillness seemed as freaky as the chaos had been. Phineas was merely grateful that the gigantic hull had not split like a bean pod, spilling them all out into the null-space of the universe ripped inside out. Just what they needed ...

“Is it over?’ asked Mikaela, hanging on his arm.

“I think so.”

“What was it?”

“That’s what we came here for,” said Phineas. “Let’s see what Bob can tell us.”

A tactical trooper cleared them for entrance into the area (probably because of Mikaela’s position on the Ruling Council, he thought later), and they joined a crowd of other science types who had gathered around one of Bob Jakes’s workbenches. The chief physicist stood in the center of the pack, nervously cleaning his twentieth-century spectacles with the hem of his lab coat. He nodded as he saw Mikaela and Phineas approach and join the others.

“We’ve just gotten some data off the scanners,” he said in a voice full of choked emotion. “We’ve jumped back into real space.”