Prime Obsession (12 page)

* * * *

Wulf’s personal star cruiser, same day

“Galactic Alliance Military Command hailing
Galanti II.
”

“Caradoc, here.” Wulf wondered what the Alliance wanted with him. The only radio communications he’d had in the time he’d left Tooh 10 were from his family or Maren and the Admiral with his proposal on shared command for Wulf and Melina.

“Wulf, this is Admiral Nelson. We just got a coded distress call from Obam IV.

Captain Dmitros sent it.” The Admiral paused and Wulf’s stomach clenched in fear. “Uh, Wulf, the scientific expedition has been attacked. By Antareans. We’re sending the closest Alliance battle-cruiser, it’s about two standard days away. You’re closer by more than a day. We thought you should know what you’re heading into.”

“She’s alive—you’re sure?” Wulf asked, his throat so constricted he could barely get the words out.

“She was as of a half standard hour ago. She is the only survivor. She gave no indication of her condition. All other attempts to raise her have failed.” The Admiral sighed. “She’s been trained by the best. She’ll go to ground and take out as many of them as she can. Trust in her, Wulf.”

“I’ll get Melina out of there. I’ll update status in ten standard hours. My crew will coordinate with the responding Alliance ship.”

“That would be the
Leonidas.
Commander Nowicki will shave every second he can off the trip. He’s pushing at full warp speed now.”

“I’m sure he is. I hope to have Melina on my ship and en route to Cejuru Prime well before he reaches Obam IV. He and the
Galanti
can handle the aftermath and cover our tail.”

“Good luck, Wulf.” Admiral Nelson signed off.

Wulf shoved his burning rage into the deepest part of him. Right now, he needed a cool head. He had to get to Melina as quickly as possible. Later, he’d tap into his wrath and kill every blessed Antarean that had dared to threaten his mate. Not one of the devil’s bastards would leave the planet.

Obam IV, twenty-plus standard hours post-attack

The rock wall at her back was cold and damp, the ground beneath her equally so.

Hardness aside, it still felt like the softest couch to her tired, aching body. This was the first time Mel had rested since the Antareans had landed and begun their search for survivors. For her.

Taking a drink from a bottle of water, she closed her eyes. With a shaky hand, she massaged her dirty, aching forehead. The rhythmic pounding behind her eyes would not end soon. All her senses were wide open, and had been since the attack on the planet.

Until she had either killed all the Antareans, they left, or rescue arrived, she’d have to bear the pain. As long as she was open to the emotions of an approaching enemy, she could outrun and hide from them.

The pseudo-reptilians’ emotions were primitive, but pronounced. Hatred was always the easiest emotion to read in most species. It also caused a bitch of a headache.

For now, no one was near. She could afford to take a short rest.

Mel mentally took stock of her efforts over the last twenty standard hours. She’d left the relative safety of the catacombs on several seek-and-destroy missions. Figuring that the Antarean ship had a full complement of crew at one hundred, she’d already managed to take out twenty percent of the scaly, slit-eyed bastards.

Satisfaction temporarily muffled her aches and pain like a warm woolen blanket. At this rate, she might be able to take out half before help arrived.

So far, the enemy hadn’t caught sight of her. Odds were her luck would eventually run out. She’d canted the percentages toward her side of the graph by varying the catacomb accesses she used to launch her attacks. Right now, the raiders probably thought there was more than one survivor. It was all a matter of time before her keep-them-defensive strategy failed and they decided to hit the catacombs in an all-out-assault.

She laughed silently. That would be a mistake on their part. In the catacombs, many of them would find death. She’d activated all the ancient Prime traps that still worked, which were the majority. The Prime had built their fortifications to last.

What the Prime claimed, they kept.

A telling point and one which turned her thoughts to the imprinting between Wulf and her. His body, more correctly, his neuro-sensory functions, had claimed her as a child. In his mind, she was his. She knew he wouldn’t rest until he had her in his sight and under his protection once more.

Now, whether she’d remain there or not depended upon his approach. She’d been serious when she’d left the message with Admiral Nelson about wooing.

Ansu bhau
! Who was she kidding? She could never be apart from him again. Her mind, body and soul reached for him even now. Oh, man, she hurt! Inside and out. The cuts, bruises and muscle pulls would go away with time and rest, but the fiery ache in her gut and loins, the emptiness in her mind and heart, would only be salved when Wulf arrived.

The imprinting was strong. She couldn’t deny it existed, no matter how much the rational part of her brain tried. The
gemate
connection reminded her of its needs and wants every single second—and had done so since she’d stepped off the
Galanti
and left Wulf behind.

A low, guttural moan came from deep within her throat. She rubbed an impatient hand across her aching breasts and perked nipples and then pulled the damp crotch of her pants away from her overly sensitized folds. Never having been one to cater to her sexuality, she now had a new respect for her female Prime ancestors. One had to hope that once she and Wulf had come to terms about their future partnership and actually consummated the physical relationship, the drive toward sexual completion would die down to manageable levels.

Forcing thoughts of naked limbs tangled on cool, clean sheets to the primitive part of her brain where it belonged, Mel concentrated on surviving. She reexamined her current situation. The next major offensive? Taking out the Antarean ship. The scaly-skinned bastards would not leave this planet. She’d die before she let them escape justice. If she didn’t kill them all, she wanted them stranded on this planet so the Alliance could come in and finish the process.

A loud crash echoed down the tunnel followed by foul shouts. Then a wave of vile-smelling hatred blasted her senses like a photon torpedo.

With a shudder, she ratcheted back her senses. She swallowed the bile that threatened to erupt every time she smelled an Antarean and took a swig of water to erase the taste. After several calming breaths, she widened her sensory probe in small increments so as not to overwhelm her already throbbing head.

The projected energy of the enemy’s feelings was strong, almost overpowering. At least two … no, four, Antareans were near. And they weren’t happy. They were furious.

Two of them were weakening.

Must have hit a trap.
Her lips twisted in a fierce smile.

“Let’s party, lizards,” she muttered.

Standing, she climbed the rock wall using hidden hand holds disguised as decorative symbols carved into the granite. At the top, she reached a passageway shielded from the lower tunnel by a waist-high curtain wall. On all fours, she crawled in the direction she’d felt the Antareans’ presence, near a pretty nasty trap approximately one hundred meters away from her former resting place.

As she crawled, she once again marveled at the ingenuity of the ancient Prime warrior-explorers and the fortifications they’d left on every planet they visited. Every Prime site she’d ever worked on or visited with her parents had similar curtain walls, traps, hidden tunnels, and rooms. The construction was superficially crude, but the underlying technology—air filtration and water purification systems, lights, and other improvements—was evidence of their brilliance. Better yet, the installations still functioned after many, many centuries.

Through her hands-on familiarity with her parents’ research, Mel had the advantage over the Antareans. She knew the turf, they didn’t
.

Thanks, Mama. Papa.

The Antareans entering the catacombs were under a death warrant, whether by a Prime trap or her hand.

A carved marking on the curtain wall indicated she was above the trap. The noises from approximately six meters down confirmed it. A painful hissing reached her ears.

The smell of Antarean blood, metallic and fetid, wafted on the gentle currents of the subterranean ventilation system. Once again she mastered her innate revulsion at the smell; it was so thick she could taste it. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as if she could erase the nauseating flavor. She couldn’t. Only time and distance would banish the foul sensations.

A keening wail and more hisses pulled her back into the moment. She sensed anger.

Apprehension. Fear. Resignation.

Mel put her eye to a slit in the wall. Trapped under a fall of sharp, jagged metal bars were two Antareans. Several of the bars had skewered the large pseudo-lizards in multiple places on their thick-skinned bodies. Pulling the bars out was not an option. The bars contained viciously sharp barbs angled such that they would rip out organs if removed. Eventually, the victims would either bleed to death or die of thirst. And what was better yet—they knew it.

Two other Antareans stared at their dying comrades. They couldn’t leave; they were caught between the triggered trap and a wall that had sprung into place behind them when their buddies had fallen into the snare.

Without knowledge of the catacomb’s secrets, they’d never find their way out.

She imagined them envisioning a slow and lingering death from thirst and hunger.

Fortunately for them, she was in the mood to kill Antarean butchers today. Yep, it would be just like shooting rats in a box.

She pulled the Prime-designed dart pistol to do the job. For all intents and purposes, her laser hand weapon was useless against Antareans. Their skin was just like the Erians, their distant cousins in lizard-ness, thick and leathery. It took a much stronger laser blast, such as one from a laser cannon, to penetrate the Antarean derma. And even when a laser managed to penetrate the less thick areas of their bodies, such as a tongue, the reptile-like races could eventually regenerate damaged body parts.

The super-charged dart gun sent titanium-tipped poison darts deep into the lizard-races’ dense bodies. It was the perfect weapon. Thank God, her parents had managed to get one for the dig. Their past experiences with the Antarean raids in this sector would save her from fighting hand-to-hand.

She stood up and shot both Antareans, one in the throat and one in the torso. The quick-acting poison released immediately as the darts burrowed into the bodies. The two had just enough time to look up and see her before they fell on top of their more slowly dying comrades.

Her kill tally was up to twenty-four—and counting.

Dropping behind the belly-high wall, she set off in the direction from which the four had come. The safest way to play this game was to keep moving, force the enemy to fall into the traps, and take out any survivors.

Her biggest obstacles?

She had a finite number of the poison darts, considerably less than the remaining number of Antareans. Every shot would have to count.

Also, she’d need to sleep soon. Cat naps wouldn’t hold her for long. She’d eventually need REM sleep. At this point, she’d been up for about thirty standard hours.

The longest she’d ever gone without true sleep was seventy-two standard hours during survival training. Wulf or the Alliance would be here long before she collapsed—she hoped.

Finding another observation slit in the curtain wall at the junction of two tunnels, both of which were equipped with death traps, she sat down, her back to the cool rock wall. As earlier, she allowed her senses to roam, alert for the enemy’s approach. She pulled the water bottle from her pack along with a dehydrated fruit-and-nut bar. She took a drink and forced herself to eat, even though she had no appetite. It was important to keep her metabolism revved; she needed to be fully fueled so that she could fight at a moment’s notice.

Closing her eyes, she prepared for a short nap.

Pain shot through her body, jerking her away from the wall.

She grasped her right hip and massaged a nagging, burning pain. Had she been shot?

No, she’d had no close calls. Did she hit the hip on a sharp rock? Much more likely.

Dammit, she couldn’t afford any injuries if she wished to stay ahead of the Antareans.

She looked down. No obvious tears or blood. Must be a bruise.

The pain flared once more, causing her to gasp. This time the sharp ache echoed in her heart and then her head.

The sensation was a strong, rhythmic pulse. Her body heated. Her gut churned with nausea. Shivers of awareness tripped up her spine and triggered a latent memory.

“
At last
!” her body seemed to say.

Working through the multitude of sensations, Mel peeled down the two layers of material that covered her right hip to confirm what everything primal in her already acknowledged.

Her
gemate
marking glowed. Swirled. Sparked with incandescence. Just as it had when Wulf first touched it on the
Galanti.
Just as his rage reached out to her as she’d sped away from him on the
Leonidas
.

He was close. He was angry.
Very
angry. The roiling rage she’d sensed he could produce had erupted with a vengeance. Her mind’s eye viewed the Antareans fleeing him and his weapons. He’d seen the domes; he thought she was dead. How she knew this she wasn’t sure, but she was.

Now that she realized the pain she felt was his, she worked on getting it under control. Her body and senses had been wide open and searching for him ever since she’d left the
Galanti;
by narrowing that part of her that was connected to Wulf she was able to lessen the impact of his emotions while still monitoring them.

Could he read her just as she read him? Possibly. More than likely—if his own strong feelings didn’t override them.

She had to try to reach him. The manuscripts her papa had given her had said something about battle-mates having some level of telepathy. She hoped they were correct and not some fantastical legend.

Wulf, I live.

Nothing.

Wulf, I—am—alive. Safe. Calm down. Your emotions are causing me pain.

She concentrated so hard on her message she felt she might burst a blood vessel.

His angry heat turned to icy shock and just as quickly was replaced with a blinding happiness. Reining in his widely vacillating emotions, he sent her what she needed—

soothing, almost sensual, warmth. It was as if he’d reached out and enveloped her within protective arms.

She sank against the rock wall. He’d gotten her message. She smiled the first real smile she’d had in days.

Gemate lubha. I’m coming. Stay safe.

Then a surge of energy infused each and every cell in her body. Her heart sped up.

Steely resolve steadied her nerves—and Wulf’s.

Her Prime warrior readied himself to kill Antareans. To find her.

Re-energized by Wulf’s nearness, this would be an excellent opportunity for her to set the explosives on the Antarean ship while he distracted and harried the enemy on the ground.