The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (25 page)

“Tiana, I’ve never seen markings like that on a rescue ship. I don’t think it’s a Galactic Alliance vessel.”

“Maybe it’s an Arcadian rescue ship. This planet is not part of the Alliance.”

“Tiana, stay here and I’ll go investigate.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“It’s too dangerous. Please let me keep you safe. We don’t know who they are or what they want.”

“That’s precisely why you need me to be by your side. You’re not the only one with a genius IQ. Two people can defend themselves better than one.”

Derek’s long-tamped-down anger erupted as he faced her.

“Just once! Just once, can you please just do as I say, stay within the safety of the trees, and let me go find out whether or not those in the ship are friends or foes? Why must you always have the last word? Why must you always make the final decision on anything that we do? Just this once, can you stay put and let me take care of the situation?”

“I am so sick and tired of you telling me to relax. Have you any idea in the time that I’ve known you how many times you’ve told me to relax? Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, I don’t want to be told what to do by you or any other man? Is the male ego so fragile that it simply can’t handle not being in charge? I can take perfectly good care of myself, thank you very much. Every time I have yielded myself and relied on a man he’s let me down. Have you any idea what betrayal feels like?”

“You can look me in the eye and ask me that? We barely escaped from Melinda with our lives, so yes, as a matter of fact I do know what betrayal feels like! But I’m not going to give up on and judge all of humanity by the actions of a few people who were out to use me or who may not have appreciated all that I had to offer them!”

Tiana and Derek, out of steam from yelling at each other, stared at one another trying to figure out where this left them.

“You two sure are loud,” they heard a voice say from behind them.

Tiana stood unmoving, shocked as she recognized her ex-husband’s voice, and then his form, as he stood between them and the strange craft, pointing a disruptor at them.

“Well, darling? Don’t look so surprised to see your husband. Have you missed me? Come give me a kiss,” he sneered.

“Tom, as a matter of fact, no, I haven’t missed you. And with regards to you being my husband, guess what, you’re not. And, oh, by the way, meet my new husband, Derek, who is twice, if not three times, the man you could ever dream of being, and I mean that in all aspects of being a man.”

Tom gave up a loud laugh. “This does complicate things a little, you claiming to be married. However, it does explain why the two of you were so busy fighting that you didn’t hear me sneak up on you. You never could hold your own in a logical argument. Your tempestuous tongue was always running amok.”

“What do you mean this complicates things?” Tiana asked trying to change the subject away from their loud fighting.

“Well, Miss ‘I think I know it all,’ you don’t! You are blissfully ignorant of what’s been happening right in front of you. Oh, this is sweet.”

“Tell you what, Tom, since you are the man with all the answers, why don’t you enlighten my new husband and me?” she asked, putting her arms around Derek.

Raising his disruptor and aiming it at Derek’s chest, Tom ordered, “Let’s keep those hands where I can see them, shall we?”

Tiana took her hands off Derek and brought them back down to her knees.

“The Terrilian super race is planning another ethnic cleansing of all inferior beings on their world and this time they are taking steps to insure success. They know it and Galactic Alliance Intelligence knows it. That’s why the Alliance has been building up its military presence in the Omicron quadrant. What the Alliance doesn’t realize is that the nano-bots used in building the stations in this quadrant had their programming slightly modified by yours truly.”

Tom paused and took an arrogant bow showing the pride he took in his traitorous work.

“Besides carrying out their normal construction functions, these nanos were programmed to create thousands of small unnoticeable pockets within the interior walls of the stations. These pockets house trillions of dormant anti-matter seeking nano-bots, the product of my ingenuity. These nanos can be activated remotely, and once activated, will seek and make their way to the anti-matter reactors powering up each station. The nanos are, of course, made of matter. You can guess what will happen when the two meet.”

Tiana shook her head at his egotistical blithering. “And I, along with the only other truly qualified people, had to be eliminated to clear the way for you to become the project manager for the new station project so that you could sabotage it in the same way you did all the others. What I don’t understand is where Derek’s Portable People project comes in?”

“It’s actually quite simple. I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out yourselves. The portable holographic people Derek was going to design weren’t meant to be maids, nannies or butlers as the request for proposal had suggested. The Galactic Alliance wanted holographic soldiers. Think of it, an army of holograms that you can mass produce and send out to battle without worry or concern that they could be killed. Every mission could be a suicide mission without losing a single human life. The Terrilians didn’t like that idea at all.”

“It would explain the odd design of my space station,” Tiana admitted. “Plenty of storage for the small holographic devices, plenty of combat training space, but very few facilities for real people, since it would take very few real people to run the computers that would control this army of soldiers who never have to eat, drink, sleep or use the toilet.”

“Very good,” Tom sarcastically complemented her. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”

“Tom, I am appalled! What possessed you to betray your own people and become part of this plot?”

“As far as betrayal, I didn’t betray anybody. What the Terrilians do on their planet is their business and Earth should stay out of it. As for my motivation, it was wealth!”

“That’s it? Money? No cause or passion? Just money?”

“I’m afraid not. Just the money I’m being paid and, well,” he smiled at Tiana, “your money. I shouldn’t have too hard of a time convincing the courts that I’m your closest relative with regards to your estate. That’s why I went off planet during our court date.”

“My money? My estate? I am comfortable, but I am not rich. In case you haven’t noticed, I still have to work for a living.”

“True, but you are about to inherit a small fortune.”

“My father wasn’t wealthy either.”

“On the contrary, yes, he was, he just never told you. I intercepted and edited the communication from his Legal-Bot to you regarding the terms of his will. You thought he had left you a pittance. In reality, he left you a fortune.”

“That’s impossible. He was a university professor, a researcher. He didn’t have that much money.”

“You don’t know much about your father’s research do you? Oops, I forgot, that information is classified. Your father was the Alliance’s top weapons expert. That’s why the Terrilians needed him dead. Through you I found out his private yacht’s itinerary and flight plan and frankly, made quite a hefty sum from selling the information to the Terrilians.”

Tiana felt a wave of nausea overcome her.

“My father died because I leaked his itinerary to you and you sold it,” she said, looking horrified. “You son of a bitch!” She started for him in full fury.

Derek grabbed her shoulder and stopped her attack before it happened. “Tiana, darlin’, it wasn’t your fault,” Derek stated adamantly. “You had no idea this slime was selling your father and our planet out to the enemy. It is reasonable for you to have trusted your husband. Let’s just quiet down and sort this out.” Derek stroked her back, effectively communicating to her to reserve an offensive attack for the right moment. Patience and cunning was the key to getting out of this scrape and outwitting the self-absorbed buffoon she was once married to.

“Just because something is reasonable does not mean it is also smart,” Tom gloated. “Now, after you and hubby here are dead, I will be your sole heir by virtue of the fact that even though you are no longer my wife, intergalactic law says that I am still your husband since I never divorced you. Don’t you just love legal technicalities?”

“Mr. Houser,” they heard an annoyed, uniformed soldier yell from the shuttle, “please complete your mission and let’s get a move on.”

Tom recognized him as the flight engineer who had questioned his authority earlier.

“Damn Terrilians are always in such a hurry,” Tom stated quietly to Tiana and Derek, making sure he was not overheard by the soldier. “They never take the time to enjoy their work. With them, it’s always about efficiency.

“I’m not ready to go yet,” he yelled back to the soldier.

“The
Cerberus
has requested our immediate return. Finish them off or we will and you will be left behind!”

Anger surging through his body, Tom took his eyes off Derek and Tiana and looked over his shoulder toward the impatient soldier.

* * * *

“Who the hell do you think — ” was as far as his demand got.

Knowing this was the one second he needed, Derek took advantage of the momentary distraction and jumped forward, knocking Tom on his back. Grabbing the disruptor with Tom’s hand still on it, he aimed it at the soldier standing at the shuttle’s door and fired, cleanly piercing the Terrilian’s genetically superior heart. He then twisted the disruptor out of Tom’s hand and brought it down hard upon the side of his head, knocking him unconscious.

As he and Tiana ran back into the forest, disruptor fire from the shuttle exploded around them. Turning around as he ran, just long enough to aim and fire, Derek squeezed the trigger and watched as absolutely nothing happened. As he had feared, the disruptor was keyed to its owner’s DNA. It would not work for anyone else. Tossing the weapon aside, Derek and Tiana vanished into the woods with the remaining two Terrilians on their trail.

The two soldiers came to a fork on the game trail.

“You take the left branch and I’ll take the right,” the pilot ordered as they split up.

Shortly after splitting up from the gunner, the pilot stopped to see if he could see footprints or some sign of which way Derek and Tiana had gone. He found and followed some relatively new prints that led down the trail —until they abruptly disappeared.

Confused, the Terrilian looked around and searched the area, but to no avail.

People don’t just disappear into thin air,
he thought.
They have to be here somewhere, unless, they backtracked over their own tracks.

Coming to this realization, he started following the footprints back. Unbeknownst to him, predatory eyes were stalking him. Eyes that were taking in his every move, waiting for the perfect time to pounce on its prey.

* * * *

Derek had hunted and survived out here for weeks. He was not going to let the most careless prey in the universe, a humanoid, get the best of him. He waited patiently until the unsuspecting Terrilian was directly under the branch he and Tiana were comfortably perched on. Allowing himself to simply drop down onto his prey, knife in hand, Derek wrapped his left arm around the man’s neck while he casually, as he had done many times before to much more keen, rapid and strong prey, plunged his knife into the man’s heart, killing him before he had a chance to hit the ground.

“Freeze!” He heard the other Terrilian soldier yell as he stood up and off the pilot’s corpse.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” he demanded of Derek as he slowly approached him.

Taking a few steps back, Derek responded, “She’s my wife not my girlfriend.”

“I don’t care if she’s your great-grandmother. Where the hell is she? You and I both know that I am going to kill you. If you tell me where she is I’ll kill you both quickly. If you don’t, I’ll kill the two of you by frying individual body parts with my disruptor until you die. I don’t have much time, so be smart and make it easy on yourself. Where is she?”

Derek backed up a little more. He was trapped in the middle of the game trail with foliage too thick to escape into on both sides. He didn’t mind facing death, but what would become of Tiana? He couldn’t leave her at the mercy of this mutant fanatic.

“We split up, I took this side of the fork and she took the other one.”

He watched the Terrilian make an adjustment to the disruptor and fire it. He felt the flesh on his upper left arm sear as if it had been set on fire.

The Terrilian took a few more steps forward and Derek took a few more steps back. Tree branches hung relatively low over the trail.
If I can just position this guy where Tiana can distract him long enough …

“Where is she?”

“We split up. I don’t know where she is.”

Once more the disruptor hummed, this time searing a patch of flesh on his upper thigh. Derek was in sheer agony as he dropped to the ground, writhing in pain.

“Where is she?” he repeated the question, this time pointing the disruptor at Derek’s groin.

Derek was quickly trying to craft a believable lie that might save his favorite organ, when Tiana, as silent as the angel of death, dropped down on the unsuspecting gunner’s back and, wrapping both arms around his neck and head, broke the man’s neck with one swift twist. As the genetically superior soldier dropped to the ground at her feet, Derek looked at her with pride and reverence.

“Where did you learn that move?”

“Never mind that, Derek, are you okay? I just married you, I wasn’t about to let him burn off the family jewels.”

“My arm and leg hurt like there’s no tomorrow, but I’m okay and still alive, thanks to you. What do you say we commandeer the shuttle and go have dinner somewhere civilized?”

* * * *

Tiana’s personal Eden was slipping away. She felt tightness in her chest and a longing to return to the tree house, but Derek was hurt and Tom was out there somewhere. They needed to get to the shuttle before Tom did and get Derek’s wounds treated.