Morgan's Choice (33 page)

She was a challenge, a game. The
unattainable. He would play with her until he became bored. And
then he would move on to the next challenge, or maybe he’d catch
some of those women who threw themselves at him. Maybe not so long
ago she could have played that game, too, used him up for his great
body and great sex. Like Coreb or some of the other boyfriends of
the past. But Ravindra had pierced the armor plating that protected
her heart. Another strike and it would shatter. Best to patch up
what she could.

She looked at the table top between them.
“Look, it was a mistake. I’d had too much to drink. I never should
have let it happen. It was stupid. I’m sorry.” Every word was true.
But she would remember that brief encounter forever.

He frowned, eyes narrowed. “What are you
saying?”

“
I’m saying it won’t happen again.
Srimana
.” Her
heart was a lump in her chest.

His lips tightened and then he was on his
feet, skirting the table, reaching out a hand to her.
“
Suri
…
Morgan—”

A distant sound, a foreign intrusion in the
jungle night. Morgan enhanced her hearing. Oh shit. Double shit.
She leapt up. “A copter. Coming down the river, if I’m any
judge.”

He scowled. “Get dressed, quickly,” he said,
grabbing for his jacket. He snatched up the clasp and shoved it in
his pocket while Morgan pulled on her boots.

The copter had shaped to land, hovering above
the tavern, landing thrusters roaring, by the time they were
dressed.

“Over the balcony.” He swung over the rail in
one graceful movement and climbed down the support pole.

She followed more slowly, heart thudding
with a mixture of frustration, resentment and nerves. The ground
seemed a long way down. Ravindra leapt the last remaining meter and
stood looking up at her.
Enough of this girlish twittering, get on with
it.
She scrambled over
the balcony rail and clutched the support with both hands. Feeling
with her feet, she walked herself down until she was low enough to
jump. She staggered, weariness fighting with adrenalin.

Chapter
Thirty-Nine

Lakshmi swung out of the copter casting a
glance over the building in front of her. They called this a
tavern? Nothing more than a few walls and a roof. Best get it over
with. Then she could get on back to civilization.

She strode up the path to the bar,
ignoring the stares of the locals. The barman straightened. Wary
yellow eyes fixed on her face for a moment then slid away.
“
Hai
Suri
?”

“I’m looking for strangers. A tall man with
blue eyes with a woman. She might have strange, light colored skin,
but she’d certainly have silvery eyes.”

The fellow bobbed at her. “A tall
man,
Hai
Suri
. Not blue
eyes.”

A woman as wrinkled as he was edged over to
stand next to the man. “She have silvery eyes.”

Ah. Selwood, at least. Lakshmi grabbed the
man’s shirt, dragged him toward her over the benchtop. “Where are
they?”

He raised a hand. “Upstairs,
Hai
Suri
. We know
nothing.”

Lakshmi let him go and whirled. “Get
them.”

Three men were already running up the stairs,
boots clattering on the wooden risers.

****

The copter’s engines were winding down.

“
This might be our chance, if they’re
careless. They can’t know we’re here.” Ravindra ran, swift and
agile, to the corner of the building, weapon in hand. Morgan
followed as fast as her aching muscles allowed and crouched behind
him.

Lakshmi alighted and strode up the path,
three men at her heels. The pilot stayed with the copter while the
other two men covered the corners of the building. As soon as they
moved one of those men would see them.

“Can you stop it taking off?” He murmured the
words.

She concentrated. The copter had a computer
system that could connect to a satellite, so she could connect to
it. The machine would have a fault diagnosis routine. A check of
the database to find the error codes. She sent an error. A light
flashed in the cockpit, stark and bright in the darkness.
“Done.”

“Wait.” He fired the pistol and ran. The man
in front of him crashed backwards, a hole in his chest. A blue bolt
of energy lanced through the night from the other side of the
building but Ravindra was already gone. He’d rolled and fired,
accurate and deadly, before the man had time to try again. Two
down.

“Now.”

Morgan raced after him, heart in mouth,
expecting a bolt in her back any minute. Lakshmi’s shrill shriek
followed her. He was already at the copter. The pilot managed to
fire once before Ravindra hauled him out and shot him. Morgan leapt
into the pilot’s seat and cleared the error code. The copter lifted
off before Ravindra was completely inside. He fired a few shots at
the remaining soldiers before Morgan dodged the machine behind the
trees.

****

Lakshmi screamed as the copter soared away.
This wasn’t over yet. She’d ring the base, ring Asbarthi, get
reinforcements. If that wasn’t Unwyn, then who was he? What other
man had the bitch persuaded to help her?

She pulled out her
sanvad
. At last, a signal.

Asbarthi answered almost straight away.
“Lakshmi? Where are you?”

“A hovel in the jungle. Riverport, they call
it. Huh. I almost had them, but now they’ve stolen my copter and
escaped.”

“Who escaped?”

She stared at the
sanvad
. Who did he think? “Selwood and some other
fellow. Not Unwyn.”

“Not Unwyn.” He sounded thoughtful. “Do you
know what he looked like?”

“I’ll find out.”

Leaving the three soldiers to tend their
companions she charged back into the hovel and turned on the fellow
behind the bar. He quivered, as well he might. “The man. What did
he look like?”

“Tall. Short hair. A scar on his face.” The
barman drew a finger down his face to illustrate. Not blue
eyes.”

Huh. Not anybody she recognized. “Tall,
short hair, scar on his face,” she said to Asbarthi.

“
Mala
. Ravindra.” Asbarthi snarled the words. Most
unlike him to swear, too.

Lakshmi gaped at the
sanvad
. “Ravindra? Are you crazy?”

“
I gave him the scar. A down-payment. And I
cut his
coti
off. He has
escaped. She must have helped him. Stay there, Lakshmi. I’m on my
way.”

Chapter
Forty

“So, Admiral. Where to now? And before you
ask, the main thing I need is sleep. I’m running on empty right
about now.”

Morgan sagged in the seat, her eyes dull
and underscored with dark shadows. That last sprint had done for
her. Damn Lakshmi to every pit of hell. She should have been in his
arms, not charging off on yet another chase. At least, after he’d
changed her mind. What had happened there in the room? He could
smell her and then… Women. Later; he’d think about it
later.

“
Follow the river downstream. We’ll set
down somewhere and work it out from there. But stay low, as low as
you can. Can you prevent them from tracking this
machine?”

“If I turn off all the comms.”

“Do that.” Lakshmi would call for
reinforcements, fresh machines, fresh legs. They would have to
disappear for a while.

“
Srimana
.” She flicked a few switches but kept the local
tracking system running.

The river gleamed, a silver ribbon in the
light of a gibbous moon, winding its way through dark forest. The
machine tracked at a meter above the water’s surface around an S
bend. He searched the screen. Somewhere not too far from the sea,
where they could set down.

The river began to split, breaking up into
narrow tributaries. Morgan slowed the copter down, weaving between
the encroaching trees.

“There.” He jabbed a finger at the screen.
The river wound around a massive, flat rock, itself overhung by
trees, before it gurgled its way through a rapids.

Morgan turned the copter around, and set down
on the outcrop. He climbed out as the engines shut down. Twenty
meters away the river rushed around the impeding rock, wet and
glistening, before the water tumbled on into darkness. Twenty or so
klicks to the sea. It would have to do.

He checked the vehicle for emergency
equipment while she slumped in the seat. A pack contained a
lantern, rations, flares, a shelter.

“Morgan.”

Her eyelids opened a crack.

“Put this machine on auto-pilot, aim it that
way,” he waved a hand across the river, “and have it crash in the
jungle a long way from here.”

That woke her. Her jaw dropped. “But—”

“They’ll be looking for it. I want them to
find it. Then they’ll have to search for bodies.”

She nodded, her sort of ‘yes’. After a few
moments she climbed down. The machine rose, creating a temporary
breeze that fluttered his clothes and hair. Then it tilted and
forged off, the hum of the engines fading as it flew.

He slid an arm around her and helped her
toward the trees, pushing through the thick undergrowth along the
edge into the darkness beyond, the lantern’s beam a welcome path.
While she sat with her back against a tree he placed the shelter
pod in a clear space and activated the trigger. The shell flipped
out and expanded, a two-man igloo. He had to wake her to get her to
crawl through the entrance. She collapsed.

He settled her as best he could. She’d been
asleep before she’d lain down. So much for his long-anticipated
reunion with her. He fastened the entrance and lay down next to
her. The shelter wouldn’t keep out a determined predator but he
needed sleep, too. He’d done things in the last few days he hadn’t
done in years. Just as well he kept up his fitness and his weapons
skills. His scar had begun to ache, probably an infection, a common
enough occurrence in climates like these.

It was all such a colossal waste of time,
trapped in the midst of one little planet’s internal politics when
out there the
Yogina
menace
grew.

She sighed, stirring in her sleep. What had
he said? What had he done? He’d watched her face change, as if
she’d raised shields to keep him out. Was that yet another
unexpected talent? When she kissed him in the cave he could have
had her then, on the spot. Perhaps he should have. He would have to
win her, all over again.

Sleep beckoned. He closed his eyes, the
noises of the jungle night an unlikely lullaby.

****

Ravindra awoke to the whistles, chirps,
grunts and howls that drifted in from outside, the jungle starting
a new day. Morgan still slept, her chest rising and falling, one
arm flung out. He’d never seen her so vulnerable, long lashes
draped over soft gold cheeks, a few strands of hair straggling over
her ear. Damn it. She should have been nestled against his chest.
Ah well. He crawled out of the shelter and stood, stretching his
back. The rapids chattered beyond the curtain of undergrowth. High
above his head branches interleaved to form a thick canopy. Vines
hung down in festoons, almost as though they’d be put there
deliberately to decorate the dimness. He couldn’t see more than a
few meters into the trees on either side. Anything could be in
there and he’d never know. A whole new experience. He’d never spent
much time in real jungle. They’d have to walk but with a bit of
luck, by the time they got to the base, the searchers would have
given up.

He took the chance to pee behind a tree.
When he returned to the shelter Morgan had appeared, stretching her
back as he had, her breasts straining the material of the blue
shirt she wore. She saw him looking and crossed her arms over her
waist. Shutting him out. She looked much better; her eyes were
bright and the bags under them had gone but the shields were up.
Words hovered behind his lips.
Morgan, I love you. Don’t do this to
me
. But now was not the
time.

“
Well, here we are,” she said. “What
now,
Srimana
?”

“We head for the base.” He assumed his
military persona and pulled a map tablet out of the emergency kit.
“This is where we are, by the river. And this is where we want to
go. A good hundred klicks. So about two and a half to three
days.”

“Uh huh. Food?”

“Rations. We have two water bottles.”

She stared at him, silver eyes gleaming.
“Have you done anything like this before?”

“No. Have you?” Space was his home ground.
And hers. The infinite darkness with its stars and nebulae and
endless distances. Not like this claustrophobic stuffiness.
Humidity clung to his skin but no breeze penetrated down here to
cool his body.

She huffed a sigh and grinned. “Isn’t this
fun? Well, come on, Admiral. Break out breakfast.”

A ration bar each. He set the shelter to
deflate and repacked the emergency kit while she topped up the two
water bottles at the river.

Before they set off, she lifted her head,
listening. “Three ships, going slow. A long way away, over the
river.”

At a guess the ploy had worked. It would buy
them time. “Good luck to them.”