Authors: Bernadette Gardner
Icarus Rising (3 page)
Icarus Rising
by Bernadette Gardner
Caleb felt it. The slim needle pierced flesh and muscle that
had only moments ago belonged to a separate being. He
screamed again as ice flowed from the injection site, numbing
the wing and that entire side of his body.
Someone sat on his legs, and he couldn't imagine why
until he began to convulse. His body heaved against the half-
dozen people now holding him down. Each movement
stripped his nerves raw as though he were being flayed alive.
The sand under him felt like a million diamond-hard
blades. The salt breeze stung his eyes like acid.
A gentle caress on his thigh brought him instantly aware in
a different way. A surge of desire spread through him,
tightening his abdominals as female hands slid over his skin.
Pain became pleasure so intense he moaned and shifted his
hips toward the sensual touch. He smelled her arousal, a
willing mate so close he could see her, yet his eyes refused to
focus. His brain told him he needed her to complete him. He
needed her body wrapped around his, eager to receive the
seed that drew up inside his cock, and pulsed to a shuddering
orgasm... Hot semen spewed over his belly and his legs and
in his ear Zara's sweet voice whispered to him.
The violent release left him temporarily weak and light
headed. His body ached all over from the exertion brought
about by no more than her fingers brushing the taut muscles
of his leg.
Oh God. Oh God. He'd just come in front of every single
member of the research team.
"We'll take care of you. You'll be all right. We'll make it
stop."
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He wanted her. He wanted her so badly that he would die
without her. "I nee ... I need..."
"Give him air. Let him talk. Caleb, what are you feeling?"
Danson's voice grated like screeching turbines in his ears. He
snarled a response, and some of the hands clamped over his
limbs loosened their grip.
Something in the back of his mind told him it was time to
fly. Being held against the ground was unconscionable
torture. He had to get away. A burst of raw power erupted
from somewhere in his ravaged brain, clearing the numbness
from the left side of this body. For an instant he was
invincible.
He tore at the hands clutching him and heaved himself up
on shaky legs. Figures crowded around him, Icarian and
human. They blurred together in one homogeneous threat.
Only Jidar was smiling.
Caleb spread his wings.
His wings
. They'd always been his,
and they always would be. He crouched, and before anyone
could make a move to stop him he launched himself into the
air. The alien part of his brain rejoiced.
"We are free!"
"We are finally free,"
he agreed.
"And they will never
control us again."
He circled the beach once, swooping low just to hear the
startled exclamations of those assembled. Some scattered,
others ducked. The Icarians only stared, expressions of
triumph and curiosity blending on their faces. At the edge of
the crowd, though, one figure stood alone.
Tears glistened on Zara's face as she pressed two fingers
to her lips and raised them into the wind.
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He wanted her. And when he returned, he would finally
have her, but for now he had to go as far away as he could or
risk taking revenge on the people who had tried to kill him.
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Icarus Rising
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"I postulate the ejaculation was a response to
overstimulation of the limbic system and a direct hit to the
left anterior cingulated cortex. As stated in my earlier
research, the symbion uses its siphon both to ingest spinal
fluid from the host and to inject a complex mixture of its
supercharged hormones—" Dr. Danson stopped speaking
abruptly as soon as his roving gaze caught Zara's.
She'd just come in from the beach, exhausted and wet
from running through the surf, scanning the horizon for signs
of the Icarians who had all taken off in pursuit of Caleb. Her
hair was plastered to her face like a net of salt-encrusted
rope, and her legs wobbled from too many hours trudging
through the sand.
She glared at Danson. "The ejaculation?
That's
what you're
concerned about?" She flung an arm toward the window of
Danson's lab, which overlooked the spot where the bonding
ritual had taken place. "Your experiment just brutalized a
man's nervous system. He could be dead for all we know, and
you're in here calmly recording your observations about his
ejaculation
?"
"
Doctor
Abbott." Danson set down his hand-held recorder
and placed his hands in front of him on his desk. "You of all
people should understand the risks that were involved in this
undertaking. Weren't you brought here specifically to help
prepare Dr. Faulkner for the possibility that the joining might
have an unfavorable outcome?"
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Zara seethed. "Don't tell me my job,
Doctor
." She
emphasized the title just as he had, sarcasm dripping like
venom from her words.
Since the moment Caleb had screamed in pain, her heart
had been firmly lodged at the base of her throat. She couldn't
swallow, could barely take a deep breath around the sharp
ache of fear that constricted her chest. She'd been prepared
to give Caleb up to science, to the Icarians for the future of
their race. She hadn't allowed herself to consider she might
lose him to death.
Danson rose and came around the corner of his desk, his
expression softening. "Zara, I'm aware you're upset by what
happened. We all are, but we can't let it stop us from doing
what needs to be done. I have to record every detail of the
ritual, and I need to be prepared to deal with whatever
injuries Caleb may have sustained."
"Assuming he survived."
"I have every confidence he's still alive."
"Maybe, but is he functional? I saw his eyes, Ray. He was
gone. He didn't recognize us. He looked ... like a caged
animal, terrified and in agony. Who knows what he'll do to
himself."
"Jidar will find him, and we'll deal with whatever effects
the joining has had on him."
"And if his mind is destroyed?" Zara's jaw clenched as she
bit the words out. How could she handle seeing Caleb reduced
to nothing more than a mindless body? How could she deal
with her own failure to talk him out of giving up his humanity
for Danson's experiment?
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"I won't jump to any conclusions, Zara. Right now, we
need to concentrate on Caleb's physical state. I have no
doubt you will need to work with him extensively to get him
to fully adjust, but—"
Zara held up a hand. "Don't patronize me, Ray. If Caleb
has suffered a psychotic break because of the overdose of
symbion hormones, my services won't be needed. There
won't be anything left of his mind to work with."
Danson sighed. "Can we just wait and see? I expect Jidar
and Namara to return with Caleb any moment. There will be
plenty to keep us all busy, so why don't you ... get cleaned
up, have something to eat and try to remain calm?"
The sound Caleb had made before he sprang off the beach
into the air plagued Zara's mind. It had been a cry of
desperation, and she wished she could make that same sound
now. Words alone could never communicate to Danson the
depth of her outrage at his cavalier attitude. He'd assured
them all the bonding would be safe.
"This wasn't supposed to happen, Ray. Tell me you didn't
know this would happen."
Shock widened Danson's eyes for a moment. "No. I didn't
know. I swear it. When I first came here ten years ago, I
witnessed hundreds of Icarian bondings during their last
mating cycle. They do this to their
children
for God's sake.
Ten year olds accept symbions and they stand up and fly
away, perfectly sane, perfectly happy. All my research tells
me it should be no different for a human."
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Zara wanted to argue. She wanted to blame Danson for
this tragedy, but how could she dispute a decade of research?
"I'm sorry, Ray. I didn't mean—"
A commotion filled the end of the corridor outside Danson's
lab and Zara abandoned her apology to lean out of the
doorway for a look. A number of human staff members had
crowded around Jidar's broad form as the Icarian leader made
his way in from the beach. Without further thought for
Danson, Zara launched herself down the corridor and came to
a skidding halt on the damp tile floor in front of Jidar.
She'd never addressed the leader directly before, but now,
all her self-consciousness faded away. In this moment she no
longer harbored an irrational fear of the winged giant, only
what he had to say frightened her. "Did you find him?"
Jidar hung his head. Up until now, the proud Icarian had
never admitted defeat in anything. It curdled Zara's stomach
to see his massive shoulders slump. "There are dozens of us
in the sky. No one has spotted him."
"Could he have drowned?" someone asked.
"The symbion would float with its wings spread on top of
the water for some time. We would have seen him if he'd
gone down on the water. He's probably found an aerie to hide
in."
Cold despair crept up Zara's spine, and when the sensation
reached her jaw she shivered. Icarus's ocean was huge. It
covered more than eighty-five percent of the planet's surface
and was freckled with millions of tiny columnar islands upon
which the Icarians built their aeries. Even calculating the
farthest distance a newly joined adult symbion could fly in a
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few hours, that left hundreds of square kilometers to search,
encompassing dozens of islands and the treacherous volcanic
rocks that surrounded them.
"What if we activate our emergency beacon? Our supply
ship from Sierra Station could be here in a day and they could
do a global scan from space."
All eyes turned to Zara. Mark Walden, the research
station's supply chief, shook his head. "This isn't a colony-
wide emergency."
"Yes it is." Zara didn't want to argue with Mark or anyone
else. She just wanted Caleb back safely, and if the Icarians
couldn't find him with an aerial search, they had to widen
their parameters. After all, the flight from Sierra Station,
which orbited between Icarus and its sister world Daedalus,
wasn't that long.
Behind Jidar, Namara strolled into the station, ocean water
dripping from her wing tips and her eyelashes. She put a
hand on her husband's shoulder for support. "I'm sorry. Our
search to the south has turned up nothing. Word has gone
out to the islands in that sector and another search party will
take off shortly."
Zara backed up until her heels touched the corridor wall.
She leaned back and closed her eyes, trying to draw strength
from the building the same way Namara seemed to draw
strength from Jidar. "What else can we do?"
"A beacon..." Jidar contemplated her suggestion.
Mark spoke up immediately. "With respect, emergency
protocol states we cannot—"
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Icarus Rising
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Jidar cut the chief's protest off with a wave of his hand.
"Not to summon a ship. The light beacon at the eastern end
of your island ... turn it on. It may attract Caleb when night
falls. It will give him a point of reference."
"I'll do it." Zara pushed her way through the assembled
crowd and burst into the rapidly cooling evening air. The sun
would set within the hour. If the tiny fog light installed by the
first human colonists on Icarus could help Caleb get home
safely, she'd stand guard all night to keep it shining for him.
She'd do anything, anything at all but stand around and wait
for his broken body to wash ashore on alien wings.
The rush of air beneath his wings reminded him of his first
attempt at skydiving. He'd been terrified by the prospect of
launching himself out of an atmospheric shuttle on Juno, but
he'd heard his friends rave about the amazing view while
falling through that planet's multi-colored cloud layers.
That
had been falling, he recalled. The uncontrolled decent
from such a great height had left him breathless and
exhilarated, unable to form a coherent thought.
This was different. This was flying. Higher and higher his
sentient wings had dragged him through Icarus's humid air