Cleon Moon (12 page)

“This won’t take long,” Yumi said. “They’re growing close together. This is an amazing find. Do you see what lush, vibrant specimens these are?”

A bead of some pus or ichor dripped off the squashed rim of one of the mushrooms.

“Vibrant, yeah,” Alisa said. “Are those the orgasmic ones?” She had a hard time imagining something so ugly being turned into a pleasure drug.

Mica raised her eyebrows at the adjective. “Aren’t you having enough trouble in bed without adding in another element?” She glanced at Alisa’s wrist.

Alisa flushed. “They’re not for
me
. Or anyone on the ship.”

Despite her words, Alisa glanced toward Leonidas, curious if such a compound might somehow bypass his cyborg circuitry, but it had sounded like he hadn’t had much luck with drugs of any kind.

“Yumi said they can be made into a valuable drug that could pay for upgrades to the ship,” Alisa said. “Or perhaps an increase in her chicken flock.”

Technically, Yumi hadn’t said what she would use the money for if she created and sold the drug.

“Is it a legal drug?” Mica asked.

“I haven’t seen a list of what’s legal and what isn’t since the Alliance took over, and we are, as you may have noticed, pretty far from their influence right now.”

“So an
illegal
drug,” Mica said.

“I doubt anything is illegal on this moon.”

“Comforting.”

Alisa suspected Mica would not truly object if drugs bought her equipment upgrades for the engine room, especially if some shiny new tools came in the shopping bag. After all, she’d taken Tomich’s gift easily enough, without worrying that it had essentially been given in trade for that stolen orb.

Yumi hummed a ditty as she sliced mushrooms off, nestled them in some special wrappers, and tucked them away.

“After you’re done building Doc’s booby traps, you may have to create a lab for her,” Alisa said. She had no idea what was involved in turning an ugly, pus-leaking mushroom into a high-quality drug, but she imagined counters full of beakers, burbling glass apparatuses, and centrifuges.

“Too late,” Mica said.

Alisa raised her eyebrows.

“Haven’t you been in her cabin lately? I don’t know where she got everything, but she’s got an elaborate setup in there. In addition to all the things growing in pots and hanging wall gardens.”

“Huh. Do you think the presence of a chemistry lab will make it harder or easier to rent that cabin space to a future passenger?”

“Depends on whether she leaves behind some of her more appealing compounds,” Mica said.

The clamor of screeching dinosaurs faded, leaving the forest in silence, save for the faint running of water somewhere nearby. Alisa shifted uneasily in her seat. As much as the noise had been worrying her nerves, the cessation alarmed her even more.

“Trouble coming,” Leonidas said quietly, gazing toward the forest lining the far end of the lake, the end they had not traveled through yet. Thick mist gathered there, wrapping around—and obscuring—the bottoms of the fungal stalks.

Abelardus frowned at him, then looked in the same direction. Alisa did not see anything yet, but she did not doubt Leonidas’s enhanced senses.

“Do we run?” she asked. “Or stay and fight? The bikes should be faster than anything on foot, right?”

Alisa thought of those groups of people on the videos. Even though she had faith in Leonidas’s abilities, it concerned her that she hadn’t seen anyone
winning
their battles against the creatures. Those scaly hides had seemed impervious to the blazers the men and women had carried.

“We can’t leave
now
,” Yumi said. “I’ve only collected half the patch.”

Two towering creatures came into sight, stalking through the mist on two legs. They were the Tyrannosaurus rex lookalikes, and there was little doubt regarding their path. They headed along the shoreline, straight toward Alisa’s group.

“Yumi,” Alisa said, “get back on your bike. Abelardus, can we circle back around the other end of the lake and avoid them?”

Would the creatures
let
her group avoid them? Even though they did not appear to be running, they were covering ground quickly. Already, Alisa could make out more details of their scaled gray hides, the muscles in their massive haunches, and the maws full of fangs that were visible as they ran.

Abelardus was not listening to her. He and Leonidas had moved their bikes in front of the women’s, to head off the dinosaurs.

“I don’t think our stalwart road companions are interested in running,” Mica said, pulling a canister out of her satchel.

Alisa sighed. “The dinosaurs are worth money, apparently. Maybe more than Yumi’s future drugs. Leonidas mentioned hunting some.”

Leonidas looked back at her, his eyes gleaming with anticipation. Yes, he wanted a battle. Maybe he wanted something bigger than drones to take his aggressions out on.

Alisa backed her bike up against two of the giant stalks so nothing would be able to attack her from behind while the men were fighting. She did not have any delusions about being much help with her Etcher, especially when she could not grip the handlebars well with her injured left wrist. Yumi climbed onto her bike and hovered next to her. Mica stood up on the rails, her grenade—or whatever that was—ready.

Leonidas fired as soon as the creatures came within range. The crimson blazer bolts streaked away, landing squarely on one dinosaur’s thick throat. It kept coming. Leonidas kept firing, trying different targets. One bolt took the creature in the eye, and its head whipped back. It roared so loudly, the earth seemed to shudder.

Abelardus lifted his staff. At first, nothing happened, but then the second dinosaur flew backward, smashing into one of the towering fungal stalks.

Though it landed hard, it picked itself up, roared, and continued its charge. The one Leonidas had struck in the eye kept coming too. Its massive leg muscles bunched, and it sprang across a pool and toward the men. Leonidas charged forward on his bike, like a jouster rushing to meet his foe with a lance. But Leonidas had a rifle, not a lance. Not that his weapon mattered. Often, he seemed to prefer the raw power he had with only his armored hands.

Alisa was not surprised when he swerved to avoid the creature, then leaped onto his seat and used it as a springboard. He landed on the dinosaur’s back as it twisted, that massive maw snapping at him. He punched it square in the snout, the force making the creature’s head jerk to the side. Leonidas took advantage, straddling it and grabbing its scaled neck. That neck was so large that he couldn’t get his arms all the way around it. How would he break it like that?

The second dinosaur had reached Abelardus. Unlike Leonidas, whose helmet filtered the toxic air, Abelardus and the others had to worry about losing their flimsier breathing masks in a fight.

Alisa lifted her Etcher, waiting for the creature to get closer. She could hit an eye if she had the time to aim.

Abelardus did not appear worried about the approaching dinosaur, even though it was larger than the one Leonidas wrestled with, looming three times as tall as he was. He held his staff out with both hands, his eyes intent on the creature, concentrating. The dinosaur stopped a few meters from him, as if it had run into an invisible wall. It threw its head back and roared.

Mica lifted her arm, preparing to throw her weapon.

“Wait,” Alisa blurted, grabbing her wrist. “It could bounce off and hit Abelardus.”

She had no idea how the Starseer energy shield worked, whether it would repel in both directions, like a wall, or if it wrapped solely around Abelardus. If it
was
like a wall stretching between Abelardus and the dinosaur, Alisa and Mica would not be able to hit the creature from their position.

“You say that like it’s a problem,” Mica said, but she did lower her arm.

Alisa started to respond, but a premonition made her glance around the thick gray stalk behind her. She did not see anything or hear anything. Still, her instincts screamed of danger. She looked up as a shadow fell over her, and the talons of a diving pterodactyl filled her vision.

She flung herself sideways off her bike, fearing she would be far too slow. But blazer fire slammed into one of those outstretched limbs, and the dinosaur screeched, yanking its leg up to its body. Alisa hit the mud as the creature, distracted by the sniper, slammed into her bike.

Her mask was pushed askew, and she caught a whiff of foul, sulfurous air. She hurried to shove it back into place, even as she tried to climb to her feet. Pain jolted from her wrist when she put weight on it.

Fortunately, the dinosaur did not spring at her. She glimpsed red armor leaping through the air as she moved farther away from the thrashing creature. Its other set of talons had crunched through the bike casing and gotten caught in the engine. It dragged the vehicle several feet before Leonidas leaped onto the winged dinosaur, taking it down like a wrestler on the mat.

Alisa found her feet, but she was almost knocked over again as man and creature thrashed about on the ground.

“More of them,” Mica barked. She lifted her explosive again as four more pterodactyls sailed down from the gray sky.

Alisa put her back to a stalk and found her balance—and her gun. She picked out the rearmost creature, the one farthest from the ground. It was angling for Yumi. The thing had tiny, beady eyes, and she took the time to brace her hand and make sure her grip was steady. Her wrist protested mildly, but she held it there, firing three times in rapid succession.

The first bullet found its target, one of those beady eyes. As Yumi ducked for cover behind her bike, the pterodactyl’s head whipped back. The motion upset its trajectory, and it landed several feet from them, rolling and slamming into the base of a fungal stalk. Its wings flapped frantically, but it kept jerking its head around, and it did not rise again.

As Alisa prepared to fire again, an explosion ripped through the air.

Tiny pieces of something slammed into her chest, and she staggered back, imagining shrapnel. But a glance down showed bits of guts and blood.

“Mica,” she groaned, spotting two pterodactyls with their bodies blown up, one missing its head entirely.

“You’re welcome,” Mica said.

Alisa’s comm beeped from deep within a pocket. She ignored it, searching the sky and the area around them for further threats.

Leonidas finished off his pterodactyl and stood up. One of the T-rexes lay unmoving in the shallows of the lake. Another was up to its waist in a pool of mud, fighting feebly to escape. The quick-mud at work.

Another pterodactyl hung suspended in the air over the lake, frozen like a statue. Its eyes were open, but it could not move; it merely hung there, wings outstretched, defying gravity. Off to the side, Abelardus stood with his staff pointed at it. He moved the tip in a quick motion, and a snap came from the pterodactyl. It tumbled to the ground, a wing twitching but nothing else moving. Its neck was broken.

Abelardus lowered his staff and wiped sweat from his brow. Somehow, Alisa found his way of dealing with enemies more chilling than Leonidas’s raw power. Muscle and sinew, she understood. Breaking a neck with one’s mind? She shivered to imagine Jelena with the ability to do such things someday.

Alisa’s comm beeped again. She snorted and fumbled to find it while trying not to look at the carnage spread out around them. Those camera operators would be disappointed that they hadn’t managed to record the battle. Leonidas and Abelardus might have made for great ratings. She doubted her own display would have entertained anyone.

“Can I help you, Beck?” she asked when she saw who it was.

“Hello, Captain. Just wanted to let you know that I’m heading out for the meeting. I shined my boots and my helmet, and I look good.”

“Glad to hear it.” Alisa flicked dinosaur guts off her jacket.

“If I have to wrestle with this other fellow to get the job, what’s the lowest you want to go?”

“It would be worth the trip for ten thousand.” Assuming she found Jelena here among the Starseers. If she didn’t, Alisa would hate to delay for weeks to deliver cargo, no matter what the price. Already, she was shuddering to think of her daughter living out here among these insane predators.

“I’ll try to get the twenty,” Beck said. “How’s your journey going? You find the Starseers yet? Or—what?”

Alejandro’s voice sounded in the background, but Alisa could not make out the words. Leonidas had turned to listen to the conversation, and he walked closer now.

“Uhm,” Beck said, “someone was knocking at the hatch. Someone in a black robe.”

A tendril of unease wormed through Alisa’s belly.

“Any idea who that is?” she asked, the words more for Abelardus than Beck.

“The camera caught him, but he kept his hood low to hide his face,” Beck said. “Or her face. Doc’s worried it’s a staff thief.”

“Nobody should know about the staff.”

“One of my people would be able to feel its power from a great distance,” Abelardus said.

“
How
great a distance?” Alisa scowled at this new information. Shouldn’t he have warned her of that before? That she had a beacon glowing on the nose of her ship?

“I can sense it from here.”

“So ten miles?”

“At least. Maybe fifty.”

Alisa grimaced. “Have you been in contact with anyone? Invited any of your people to visit?”

“I sent a message to the leader of the outpost to let her know we’re coming,” Abelardus said, “but she didn’t respond. I still haven’t heard from Durant.”

“Your people don’t seem to want to talk to you.”

“I’m trying not to take it personally.”

“Fifty miles,” she said, wondering how many Starseers lived in Terra Jhero. “Does that mean every Starseer at this outpost we’re visiting knows it’s here?”

“Possibly.”

Wonderful.

“They will sense that a powerful artifact is near,” Abelardus said. “They won’t necessarily know what it is.”

“Is the Starseer still there, Beck?” Alisa asked.

“No. We pretended we weren’t home, and he went away.”

“Keep your eye out on the way to the meeting.” She was tempted to tell him not to go at all, but he wanted to make contact with the chef even more than Yumi wanted to collect disgusting mushrooms. He might sneak out even if she told him to stay put. At least he was wearing his armor. “Avoid people in robes.”