Paradise 21 (10 page)

“Does that mean you can use the locator to find the missing processor?”

“You bet it does.” She flashed a cool smile, but inside she beamed with pride.

Striker looked at her like she’d been named the
New Dawn
’s new commander. “I can’t believe it. You’ve solved our problem.”

Aries’ smile spread. She’d never felt more appreciated in her entire life. Barliss had always downplayed her ideas, then stolen them for his own when he’d thought she’d forgotten.
Slimy bastard!

“Come on. Let’s go to the surface and test it out.”

Striker ushered them down a corridor to a raised platform. Using his fingernail, he traced a hieroglyph, and the walls closed around them on all sides. Aries ran her hand over a series of concentric circles rippling out, the image reminding her of the infinity of deep space, and how one action could affect everything in the universe in some crazy, unpredictable way.

After Striker traced the geometric patterns in a certain order on the wall, the platform lifted.

Aries stared at Striker, steadying herself with one hand on the ivory. “How did you figure it out?”

“I had my fair share of time.”

A hatch opened above their heads and the sun and sand streamed in. She breathed deeply. It felt good to be back in the open air. Seconds later, she stood atop the ivory ship, feeling as though she rode the back of a giant torpedo. The tip protruded from the sand, glistening in the rays of sun like a white bone of the gods. Etched in the hull were more intricate designs. A series of blue orbs running down the sides pulsed with a faint light like a distant heartbeat.

“I don’t want to stay out here too long.” Striker searched the sand dunes, squinting until appealing crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. “Too much attention from sandworms and raiders will draw your crew right to us. The raiders and worms can’t get in this ship, but I bet the colonists would find a way.”

The image of Barliss with his laser gun haunted her mind. “Agreed. I need a few moments to adjust the parameters.” Aries’ slender fingers flitted over the device, typing in new coordinates and scanning the area.

Striker stepped from the platform onto the sand and began climbing a nearby dune. He pulled out a pair of binoculars from his coat and kept watch. “How did you think of using the life-form locator?”

She stayed at the hatch’s opening, nervous to leave the protection of the ship. “I was an engineer back on the
New Dawn
, in charge of the life-support systems.”

“Wow.” Striker’s lowered his binoculars a bit. He looked over them to her. “Impressive.”

Aries waved his comment away, although she enjoyed his admiration. “I tested highest in those skill sets.” Her voice grew melancholy, and her fingers paused over the touchscreen. “Secretly, I wanted to be a biologist. I read all I could about the natural world. My parents called me a dreamer because the things I studied were all dead.”

“They wouldn’t let you choose your own profession?”

“Ha! On the
New Dawn
you have little choice, out of necessity.” Aries went back to her calculations. “Wait! The locator is picking up something beyond those mountains to the North. It’s an exact match to the ship, approximately one meter long and a half meter wide.”

Striker slid down the dune and jumped back onto the platform to peer over her shoulder at the screen. “That’s it, all right. It’s exactly where I feared it would be, the only place I didn’t dare to look.”

“Why?” Aries tore her gaze from the device to study Striker’s face. She’d never heard fear taint his voice before and it made her stomach flip.

“That’s the raiders’ main den.”

The sound of drills filled the air as the mining excavation began in full force. Barliss roamed the perimeter of the site, enjoying the clamor as much as a Wagnerian opera as his crews tore into the sand. The
New Dawn
had dropped a line of empty metal barrels, and they sat like beached whales along the plateau, waiting to be filled with lithium. The canisters reminded Barliss of the pictures from history books, chronicling the fate of sea life as the oceans dried up on Earth. He’d never felt sorry for them, like the others in his class. He saw it as Darwin’s theory of evolution, where the more adaptable species survived.

Gleaning lithium from the desert planet made Barliss’ spirits rise, as the scent of opportunity filled the air with its metallic reek. The colonists would gouge a gaping crater where the extraction cut into the terrain, and he hoped more than a few of those sandworms and lizard men fell in.

Smith scurried around the other side of the mining operations, calculating coordinates on his palm-sized mineral locator. Barliss welcomed Smith’s whining about the destructive extraction procedures. The longer Smith prevented the operation from going forward, the more time Barliss had to find Aries.

As he slid down the sand dune, the diamond point of her ring pricked and scratched his inner thigh. He shoved his hand into his pocket and pushed the ring around until it no longer irked him. He didn’t need any more reminders of his failure to control the woman.

Annoyed, he waded through mounds of windblown sand to reach the main operation’s headquarters in the center tent. At least walking in this sand against this gravity gave him a constant workout. He’d be even angrier if his abs gained an ounce of flab from this hellish desert vacation. Flexing his muscles to make sure they still hardened in all the right places, he slapped open the tent flap and slipped in.

Langston looked up from a table of maps, navigational charts, and handheld devices. “Greetings, Lieutenant Barliss.”

Barliss nodded at his new second-in-command. He followed orders right down to every word, much better than Smith. “Do you have anything to report?”

Langston shifted some papers. “I started where Smith left off. There’s not a lot here, just a whole ton of sand.”

He smirked, but Barliss didn’t find his comment amusing. “Did you find anything new?”

“It looks as though there are three major reptilian colonies in the area.” He pointed to sections of the map. “The first is a mile away, the second is over that ridge, and the largest one is over here, six miles from our camp. That’s a bustling lizard metropolis.”

Barliss leaned down to scan the areas. “You think she’s in one of them?”

Langston brushed the ever-present grains of sand off the map. “There’s nowhere else for her to go. I scanned the area and there are no metal structures of any kind. Over here is a strange form of living coral, but nothing man-made.”

Barliss squinted. His finger traced the region of the map where the coral manifested. “Nothing humanoid?”

“No, sir.”

Barliss tapped his finger on the table for a moment, then pointed to the reptilian colonies. “We’ll start with this one, the closest one. From there, we’ll work toward the second site, and then if we still don’t find any trace of her, we’ll pay a visit to lizard central.”

Langston blinked as if confused. “What do you want us to do, sir? Ask them if they saw a five-foot, five-inch woman on foot?”

“No, you fool. We’re going to blast them all. Exterminate the entire colony. That’s the only way we’ll know if they’re hiding her.”

Langston shifted his stance, leaning slightly away from the maps. Barliss could tell he didn’t like the idea. Now he’d know what Langston was made of. Would the skyman follow orders, or stick to his principles?

Langston swallowed and met him eye-to-eye. “Yes, sir. I’ll form a team. We can leave as early as the second sunrise.”

Barliss placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard. “That’s my man. Meet you at the hoverships after dinner.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” He saluted and stood as straight as a laser’s trajectory, waiting for further orders or for Barliss to leave.

“Make sure to charge all the lasers we’ve got.” Barliss walked toward the tent flaps and lifted one up. The sun glared in. “We’re gonna have a lizard bake.”

…

Alien arms lifted the speckled egg to the dim sunlight trickling in from a hole in the rock-crusted ceiling. Her feather-light robes flowed down her arms, revealing white skin striped with blue and purple veins. The egg shuddered in the diaphanous red-tinged light as if it longed to break open, but the shell didn’t crack. She caressed the curve of the shell with her pencil-sharp fingers, the tips making gentle scratching noises against the smooth casing.

A smear of movement blurred in a corner of the room. The camera panned toward it, looking over the egg cradled in the thin arms of the alien making the memory-vision. Another creature glided from the balcony into the room. The visitor fluffed his wings in an intimidating array, causing her to tighten her arms around the egg. He stood taller and had more muscular arms, with brightly colored feathers pointing up on his shoulders. She stepped back and the visitor pursued her. His arms reached out like long tree branches. He tugged the egg from her slender fingers and tucked it under his arm. She fell to the floor, loose feathers fluttering over the vision.

As he flew over the balcony, she rose and followed him, gliding down to a coral ship resting in the town square. The sun shone fainter than in the previous vision, cluttered by blotches of black, a red orb splotched with ink stains. A ship sat in the center of the high, arched structures on a bed of porcelain. Tall and slender aliens stepped in a line, each one carrying a single egg.

“Addicting, isn’t it?”

Aries jerked away from the screen. She was sitting on the floor, so she smacked her face against his knee. Mesmerized by the screen, she hadn’t seen him come in.

“It’s so sad. I don’t know why the eggs don’t hatch.”

He pointed to the sky in the moving picture. “I think it’s got something to do with that dying sun.”

“You think it’s dying?”

Striker stepped closer to the screen, as if he could see the image more clearly. Aries had tried it herself, but the pixels looked fuzzy up close, distorting the picture.

“At first I thought their planet circled close to a weak sun,” he said, “but now I’m starting to think the star was swollen.”

A sense of dread seeped in the pit of Aries’ stomach. She stared at the scarlet sphere as if it were a disease. “A red giant?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my. To think, the people on Earth destroyed the planet half a billion years before our sun could burn all its hydrogen, yet here’s a species that outlasted their sun.”

“Or went with it.” Striker looked around, as if their spirits still inhabited the ship.

“I’m not going to let the last of those eggs die. Not if I have a say in the matter.” Aries stood up, her voice resolute. “Come on, let’s get a move on and retrieve that control processor.”

Striker didn’t move. “What if your crew decides to go looking for you?”

“What if they look here?” Aries shot back. “I won’t be free from them until the
New Dawn
, or I, leave this planet.” She flicked her eyebrows. “I bet they’re not going anywhere soon. That means we have to.”

Aries watched as he mulled over her words.

“All right.” He sighed. “It’s going to be dangerous.”

Aries nudged him with her elbow. “You know me, I plunge into danger.”

Striker flashed a smile. “More like danger finds you.”

“You found me,” Aries countered, stepping close enough to search the green flecks in his irises. “What does that make you? Dangerous?”

“I don’t know.” Striker turned away. His fingers brushed against the hieroglyphs, and the screen flickered out. “Stupid.”

Aries’ heart tugged with him as he pulled away. She grabbed his sleeve. “Striker, wait.”

He turned toward her with a glimmering interest in his gaze. He’d tricked her. He was playing hard to get. “But I’m staying with you all the same.”

His thumb trailed along her cheek, then rested on her chin. His fingers opened and she melted into the palm of his hand, allowing him to touch her like no man ever had. His hand traveled to the back of her neck and he leaned down, brushing her lips with his own.

Was this the mysterious “love” everyone on the
New Dawn
whispered about? It had to be. Aries ached from inside. She pressed into his kiss, wanting to be closer. Her body leaned into his and she felt his lean muscles against her chest. His body radiated heat, warming the front of her uniform.

Striker pulled back and her body screamed for more. He looked confused and lost, as if the kiss had taken him somewhere he hadn’t expected to go. Aries gazed up in expectation, but he tore his gaze away, turning to his tools on the pedestal.

“We must prepare.”

…

The second sun rose as they set out across the vast sea of dunes. Aries drew out her life-form locator and held it up to the sky. Sure enough, the blinking green light flickered on, registering the coral that matched the ship. She pointed with her other hand. “Due north.”

Striker spoke through a scarf wrapped around his head and mouth. “It will take two days on foot.”

“Are you sure we have enough provisions?” Aries eyed the bag on Striker’s back.