The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (26 page)

Taking the well-worn path, Tiana helped a limping and bleeding Derek along. As they stepped around a bend on the forest floor, an unfamiliar noise in the brush startled the lovers.

“Well, if it isn’t the happy couple that just won’t die,” Tom calmly stated, slithering out from the cover of the jungle like a serpent in Tiana’s and Derek’s private Eden.

Turning around, they saw him, bloody from the wound Derek had inflicted, aiming his weapon directly at them. The anger and hatred in his eyes glowed like the very fires of hell.

Seething at the humiliation and pain he had experienced, Tom ordered, “Tiana, come here.”

“Tiana, stop. He’s insane.” Derek placed himself in front of her.

Tom’s response was a single shot that blew off a piece of Derek’s already burnt and aching upper thigh. The leg, no longer able to support his weight, collapsed, sending him sprawling to the ground.

“Tiana, darling,” Tom, in an eerily caressing voice, directed his attention at her. “Please come here or I may feel compelled to put another hole into him.”

Hesitating to put herself anywhere in close proximity to the foul, manipulative bastard, Tiana searched for an escape.

Tom roared, “Come here, you bitch,” as he aimed his disruptor and shook it at Derek.

Seeing no other choice, Tiana complied. Grabbing her by the hair, Tom pulled her closer to him, sticking the barrel of his disruptor underneath her chin and holding her head back.

“Derek, I’m going to give you the privilege of dying second. I want you to savor my destruction of your beloved, inch by bloody inch.”

Derek struggled to stand up and come to Tiana’s aid, but all he got for his efforts was another carefully placed shot just a little under where the first one had gone, burning off another patch of flesh. The agonizing pain sent him back down to the ground.

“Stay down and watch!” Tom yelled at Derek. Still dragging Tiana by the hair, he viciously kicked the fallen man in the ribs. The feral look in Tom’s eyes was now one of insanity mixed with hatred, as he turned it on Tiana.

“You bitch! You gloated over your career and rubbed it in my face for our entire marriage. I could have done all that you did and better. They just wouldn’t give me a chance! Why you and why not me? Huh? Can you answer that one question? Daddy’s little girl, favored from birth. Did you spread your legs to open up doors, huh? I even got you pregnant to give you the baby you always whined about, hoping you would stay home like a good little mother, but you couldn’t even do that right, and what happened? You got a bloody promotion.”

“Tom.” Trying to calm him down, Tiana slipped her elbow through his open arms. “Let’s be objective about this. Perhaps we can help each other. Derek and I don’t love each other. Our marriage is a business transaction, nothing more. He needed to marry me in order to stay out of prison. It’s got to do with some silly frontier planet law. Being the insipid female sucker that you know I am, I agreed to help him.”

“I’ll make you a deal. How about I have the marriage to Derek annulled when we return to civilization, you and I remarry, and we collect my father’s inheritance. If you’ll agree to get me pregnant, giving me the baby that I long for, you can keep all of the inheritance. I don’t need any of it anyway. Derek will go to prison as he was meant to all along, getting him out of the way, you wouldn’t have to wait on the courts to probate my father’s will before you get your money and I’ll finally get the child I want. Besides, I’d rather you be the father of my child than Derek. You seem to have a little more common sense than Derek does. Knowing when to throw your lot in with the Terrilians was pure genius. It’s a win-win all the way around. Except for Derek of course.”

“I must admit, your proposal intrigues me. We could kill Derek and do the same thing. Why does he have to live?”

“Think about it. If you kill him and we deliver the body to the authorities, the laser burns would be a clear indication of foul play and you and I would be the primary suspects. If we don’t deliver the body to the authorities, then you and I would have to wait to remarry until he is officially declared dead. That could take longer than probate court.”

“Shut up, you stupid slut. What kind of an idiot do you take me for?” Tom screamed.

Gee, are there different kinds to pick from?

“I’ll take my chances and wait,” he continued. “I want you dead, your poor excuse for a husband eliminated, my money and Katia in my bed.”

Finally calming, Tom laughed sarcastically. “Once you’ve had a Terrilian woman I’m afraid there is just no going back.”

Tiana looked at Derek. Her eyes were burning with anger and jealousy. Was that true? Were Terrilian women better in bed than Earth women? She saw his look change from one of despair to calm resignation.

Why was he so calm? Did he know something she didn’t? Wasn’t he going to contradict Tom’s statement and defend her abilities in the bedroom?

What did it matter? She knew her life was about to end. Her only comfort was that she wouldn’t have to see Derek die.

But why did he look so damn calm? Obviously the thought of watching her die wasn’t as disturbing to him as the reverse was to her.

Her question was quickly answered by a sharp crunching sound directly behind her followed by a guttural growl. She felt her ex-husband’s arms relax around her as the disruptor dropped to the ground, followed by Tom himself. As she turned around and looked, the horror of what had taken place in just a fraction of a second sank in. Most of Tom’s head was gone. Bitten off. Severed. As her gaze wandered back up she saw the fiercest and deadliest face she had ever seen in her life with blood, Tom’s blood, dripping from its mouth. The animal stepped up to her as she prepared to be mutilated in the same way, and gently licked her.

“Bob! You’re not dead!” she exclaimed as she hugged the giant animal’s neck and scratched him lovingly behind the ears as tears flowed down her cheeks. “I am so glad you’re okay.”

“At the risk of making this all about me,” Derek said, “I have been shot four times, have had two chunks of flesh blasted off, probably have a couple of broken ribs and I’m bleeding to death. Could I have a little help here? A little skin regeneration would probably be a good idea right about now.”

“Derek, I am so sorry! I was just so happy to see Bob. He must have been knocked out when the disruptor blast hit the rocks. Here, let me help you up.”

Helping him to his feet, Tiana placed one arm around Derek’s waist and draped one of his arms over her shoulders for support. Together, with Bob following, they made it to the shuttle. As they stepped inside, Tiana turned to look at Bob. For a short few seconds their eyes locked. During these few precious moments, the gap between human and beast was closed. There was a wealth of understanding and feelings shared between the two of them. It was time to part, but it was okay. They understood one another. As if saying goodbye, Bob howled once at her, turned around and headed back into the woods, his debt to Derek and Tiana paid in full.

* * * *

“Derek, can you fly this thing?”

“I think so. Unless it has some kind of DNA recognition security device attached like Tom’s disruptor.”

Tiana settled Derek into the pilot’s seat and buckled him in.

“I’ll start the engines and try to figure out where we are, so that we can then, hopefully, figure out where we want to go.”

Tiana looked down at Derek’s leg. It looked bad. The charred skin was still oozing blood.

“Derek, you get things figured out while I go find a medical kit.”

Derek grimaced in pain as he familiarized himself with the controls.

Tiana quickly found the kit. Taking it up front and opening it, much to her relief, she found a skin regenerator inside. She had not been looking forward to sewing scout stitches.

Taking out some scissors, she finished removing what remained of the left leg of his pants, and proceeded to treat his wounds.

“Okay … that really, really, hurts,” Derek complained as Tiana poured disinfectant into both of his leg wounds.

“Not as much as it’s going to hurt in a minute. I’ve got to cut off the charred edges of skin before I can start regenerating healthy skin over the wound.” Realizing that appealing to Derek’s protective nature was key to keeping his mind otherwise occupied, she said, “Derek, why don’t you reconfigure the ship’s transponder so Katia can’t locate us? I fear that once the engines are powered up she’ll know it and will be looking for the shuttle. If she hails us we won’t be able to fake our way out of it.”

Setting to her task, Tiana prayed that she could patch Derek up without fainting.

After the dead skin had been removed, she cycled the skin regenerator on and began the process of stimulating the skin around the edges of the wounds to a high rate of cellular reproduction. Within minutes, new healthy skin had formed over the wounds, making the leg whole. He’d be a little sore for a while, but he would at least have full mobility.

Derek focused his amazing abilities on the Terrilian craft and had the engines powering up in no time.

Turning her attention to the two burns he had suffered earlier, Tiana had Derek as good as new before the shuttle’s liftoff.

“Make sure you are securely strapped in,” Derek warned.

“Well, yes, of course, that’s standard operating procedure when flying one of these little crafts.” Tiana stared at Derek, wondering why he even mentioned it.

“Good. I’m setting into motion a plan that will fool Katia into believing that the shuttle and its occupants have been destroyed.”

“Derek? What are you going to do?”

“You’ll see,” he said as the shuttle’s engines propelled it off the ground. “It’ll be fun!”

Within seconds, and before Tiana could question Derek about his plan, the shuttle had quickly risen to an altitude of a thousand feet and he shut off the engines.

“Derek, what are you doing?” There was a distinct note of panic in her voice as their upward momentum slowed

“Relax, it’ll be fun.”

“Don’t tell me to relax, you overgrown, cerebrally challenged mongrel! Start the damn engines, or so help me I will rip out your nuts, cut them up into chum and feed them to the fish in the lake before we hit the ground.”

Derek just smiled.
Why did this man have to be so darn infuriating
?

As expected, the shuttle started dropping to the ground and gaining speed. Tiana’s stomach felt like it had made its way up her esophagus and was intimately getting to know her tonsils. She watched the altimeter quickly starting to run out of numbers. As it signaled an altitude of just thirty feet off the ground, the engines roared to life, shooting the craft straight forward and across the lake. Behind them she heard a loud explosion rock the ground. Derek continued flying the shuttle at about thirty feet off the ground, maneuvering around patches of forest, trying to blend into the terrain as much as possible.

“What just happened?”

“I just faked our deaths. We took off transmitting the shuttle’s normal identification signature. After we reached an altitude of a thousand feet, I pretended like we lost power and crashed to the ground. To make the accident more believable, I jettisoned the ship’s transponder and blew it up with a plasma blast and simultaneously flew away from the area at a low altitude to avoid detection. To a ship in orbit it will look exactly like we lost power and crashed. When they scan for survivors they’ll find the four corpses we left behind scattered around as if they had ejected and died anyway. Katia will assume that we blew up with the ship.”

“Did you consider, even for the tiniest fraction of a second, that it might have been a good idea to let me know the plan before you executed it?”

“Where’s the thrill in that?”

Tiana stopped for a moment to analyze Derek’s question. Something was totally out of place, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She had never been a thrill seeker. She had always been a city girl completely spoiled by the modern conveniences to be found there. She had always enjoyed the quiet routines she had created for herself. Knowing her temperament, she ought to be fuming mad at Derek for scaring her the way he had. She should be working on severing his testicles as she had so eloquently promised. Yet she wasn’t feeling or doing any of that. Derek was right. It had been fun. It had been thrilling to drop straight down 970 feet, and cheat death at the last minute. The big oaf was right. She had actually let go for the first time in her life and enjoyed herself.

Tiana watched Derek as he set a course for the spaceport on Arivet, switched on the autopilot and leaned back in his chair. They were on their way back to civilization, yet her heart felt heavy and sad. What would the future bring for her and Derek’s relationship as their need for one another all but disappeared after he was exonerated?

“Arivet Space Control, this is shuttle
Hotiana
requesting clearance for landing,” Derek announced over the comm system.

Shuttle Hotiana? Hot Tiana?

Tiana caught the smug look on her husband’s face. She raised a haughty eyebrow in an expression of irritated amusement.

“Well, we have to call ourselves something,” Derek responded to her unspoken question as he continued working away on the craft’s main computer console. Whatever it was he was doing, he had been at it for the better part of an hour.

“
Hotiana
shuttle, you are cleared to land on docking pad 83-C.”

“Acknowledged Space Control,” Derek responded.

“Derek, how is it that they’re letting us land with no questions asked? We have no flight plan filed and we’re not even transmitting an identification signal.”

Derek just smiled at his wife knowing he had just updated Arivet’s central computer system. Not only did they now have a flight plan on record, but, their arrival had been pre-registered and they had already been cleared through customs, avoiding the lengthy disembarking procedure they would have otherwise faced.

“Nevermind, I don’t want to know.” Now she knew what he had been occupied doing for the last sixty minutes.