Xander Read online

  “DuPrie, you’re up,” Viljoen called out. “I need a quick in and out to know what we’re up against.”

  Saskia nodded. A combination of spliced squid DNA and technological advancements in combat suits rendered her practically invisible seconds later. She became impossible to track once she moved away, blending with the ruddy red and brown rocky terrain all around them.

  After Viljoen split the whole team into two groups, mixing medical personnel between them, he assigned each a search pattern while they waited for word from their scout.

  “The place is a ghost town.” Saskia reported over the comm. “I’m seeing no signs of life. We’re safe to go in.”

  A haunting atmosphere hung thick in the air. They passed empty gardens and silent buildings, the orderly sweep through the peaceful settlement eventually discovering homes with smashed furniture, ransacked closets, and empty pantries. Abandoned toys littered the streets and vegetable carts rotted beneath the sun in the village square. The group split to cover more ground, each commander taking his share of marines and combat medics.

  “What happened in the western pasture?” Abernathy, one of the marines with Viljoen, questioned over the commlink.

  “Maybe the livestock began to cannibalize? Villagers appear to be gone and there’s no one here to feed them,” Fairchild replied.

  A waist high fence portioned a great space beside the village. Beyond the wooden structure, remnants of several mauled livestock carcasses cooked beneath the midday sun. They might have been a variant of cow native to the nearby planet.

  Abernathy shook his head. “Those are herbivores, Fairchild. They won’t cannibalize. Something else did that.”

  “Doctor,” Thandie said in a low voice, tone urgent. “Don’t move. Nobody move.”

  Xander took her advice at face value and froze. Scanning his field of vision, he scrutinized every detail of their surroundings. The dwindling sun reflected light off a glossy softball-sized eye two yards to his left.

  The rest of the mottled red and gray creature came into view. Like Saskia, its skin mimicked the rough stone surface of the rocky ground.

  Don’t move? What else am I supposed to do? I can’t very well wait for it to eat me, he thought. One adjustment of his shotgun muzzle would place the creature on the receiving end of military retribution, at least. He swung his firearm toward the monster and discharged the shell, point blank, into its chest. It shook off the shot and lunged. The carrion scent of its breath blasted his face.

  At the same time, Thandie slammed into Xander and took him down to the ground, despite him outweighing her by more than a hundred pounds. Something sharp scraped past his cheek and left searing heat in its wake. One second later, and it would have been worse than a graze, beyond what even his Lexar genes could help put back together.

  The feral creature appeared to be as large as a horse when his eyes focused on it again. Hard to track, it lunged left and right, snarling and feinting as the marines opened fire.

  Thandie leapt to her feet and put her rifle to her shoulder. “God, that thing is ugly.”

  Xander lurched to his feet and leveled his shotgun at the beast. The weapon bucked against his shoulder, then the shot deflected off the creature’s tough skin.

  So much for our reliable eye. Instinct placed him in front of Thandie—he didn’t know when he moved, only that suddenly, he was there, shielding her and taking on the creature. He pumped the firearm and blasted it again, hobbling its foreleg at point-blank range. It recovered swiftly and lunged with the intact front leg, its claws open and ready to strike.

  Xander danced back, faster than it. Lexar genes were good for something, after all. The second shot crippled its remaining forelimb, though it appeared unhindered, doggedly pursuing them by bounding on its powerful hind legs.

  “Down, Commander!” Thandie cried.

  As Xander dropped to one knee, the sniper aimed her rifle over his shoulder and fired. The creature’s eye socket exploded in a spray of blood and gore. Dead, it crashed to the ground, though one of its claws twitched a death rhythm against the dusty ground and saliva drooled from its open mouth in a slimy puddle.

  “Holy shit, we’ve got more of them, guys! Two more on your six,” Saskia reported.

  “Man down!” Fairchild cried through the comm. “Lopez needs immediate surgical assistance.”

  “Rogers, this would be the time to provide that aerial support you mentioned,” Xander barked into the frequency.

  Gunfire echoed across the square and the comm chatter revealed the other team faced similar assault. Mirroring his earlier gesture, Thandie squeezed Xander’s shoulder before she moved away.

  “Lopez is hurt. Go, I’ll cover you,” she informed him.

  But how could he leave her?

  He had to. It was his job. He strangled the crushing drive to become her protector and sprinted across the wide lane. A lithe form twisted around, lunging in his direction. Before it became necessary to raise his own weapon, rifle fire peppered it. Thandie covered his flank while he dashed toward the downed man.

  Four barbed spines protruded from Lopez’s leg, but their presence kept the bleeding to a minimum. Xander dropped to one knee beside him and tore open his equipment pack. A thin trickle of blood dribbled down his numbed cheek, and he closed his eyes to steady his head.

  He shook off the feeling and dove into his bag.

  Saskia and Chang took cover nearby and concentrated their fire on a third beast.

  As the shuttle swept overhead in a low pass, strategically placed detonations from the rockskipper scared off the remaining creature, forcing it to rear back and expose its softer underbelly. Xander filled it with scatter rounds. The pulse of battle pounded in his veins as he ejected the charge and slammed another into the weapon.

  “More incoming from the mountain range,” Rogers announced. “I’ll keep them off you.”

  “What are they?” Viljoen demanded. “Four have us penned by the corral.”

  “They’re only wargs. I thought you had it covered,” Rogers said.

  Viljoen didn’t sound amused. “What the hell is a warg?”

  “They’re predatory mountain dogs. Like wolves. Native to Loki 4, but probably domesticated and brought here by the settlers for hunting. By the way, try not to let one gore you. There’s a neurotoxin on the tusks, and it’ll put you down on your ass,” Rogers said.

  Viljoen’s brusque voice filled the comm channel. “Get these things off our asses, Rogers, then scare off the rest.”

  By the time things settled, Xander had cleansed Lopez’s leg, staunched the blood flow, and took the marine’s blood sample. His vision swam in and out, but he blinked it away and glanced down at the results.

  “Fairchild!”

  “I’m on it.” She knelt down beside Lopez and administered an anti-toxin from her kit. Within seconds, the man’s color returned and his wheezing breaths eased.

  “You’re a lifesaver, Fairchild. I knew I wanted you on this team for a reason.”

  “Thank you.” Her quick smile dimmed and her gaze settled on his bleeding cheek. “Your turn, Commander.”

  “I’m good,” Xander insisted. “Save your injections for the people who need it.”

  “But your face—”

  “It’s just a scratch. I feel fine.”

  After an uncertain look, she closed up her kit. By that time, the others were moving in on their position. No one else required an antidote

  Viljoen eyed him. “You good to continue, Vargas?”

  “I’m good.” Xander shook it off and rose to his feet as Thandie arrived, too stubborn to let her see him in a moment of weakness.

  “No offense, sir, but I saw you take a tusk to the cheek.”

  Viljoen glanced at him. “That true?”

  “I’m good,” Xander repeated. “Do I look like I’ve been affected by a neurotoxin?”

  “True. All right then. Fairchild, you stay behind and help Lopez to the rockskipper. I’ll take my team th
rough the west buildings as planned. We’ll meet up on the northern strip.”

  They swept through the village, occasionally picking off a straggling warg that came bounding from cover. Rogers covered them from above with his rifle. Occasionally, he hit one.

  “Next time, we leave Kruger in the shuttle, too. I see why that kid is the pilot.” Xander muttered over the comm.

  Viljoen grunted something that sounded like agreement.

  “Hey! I’m doing the best I can while piloting a bloody hovercraft.”

  A nervous chuckle passed over the divided squad. They reported to each other over the wireless commlink, pointing out the signs of ambushes and assaults. Bullet holes marked a few wooden market stalls, and blood stained the stone walls.

  Their continued search in the stifling heat turned up few answers, and even more empty buildings.

  “Not a single child. Usually in a raid, someone gets away to hide in a closet or a basement storeroom,” Xander muttered as the group met at the city hall’s stone-carved steps. “At least one.”

  “Have you witnessed that often?” Chang asked.

  The commanders glanced at each other, but Viljoen spoke first. “Not recently, but a few years ago during the war with the ASR, my team found a little girl hiding with her mother in the closet. We almost left her behind, too. She was playing dead under the corpse.”

  Abernathy groaned. “Shit. That’s awful.”

  “We’re performing vital scans in every room we enter. There’s nothing here so far,” Xander spoke up. “We’ll spread out and continue to sweep toward the outlying farms.”

  Ten minutes later, Davis called the commanders to a large house bordering the central square. She met them inside, her face solemn and pale.

  “We found six corpses, sir. All were killed execution style with a single bullet to the back of the head,” the medic informed them. “One of them is the governor.”

  Viljoen swore and stopped on the threshold, grimacing. “What a stench.”

  The bloated bodies formed a haphazard line across the middle of the floor in a large office. “These corpses are several days… ripe,” Davis muttered. She removed masks from her kit for the members of the assault squad who’d come unprepared.

  Xander hastily placed his filtered mask over his nose and mouth. His enhanced sense of smell took offense to the odor of rotting corpse. “Could it be pirates? The homes were also looted.”

  “Pirates aren’t usually murderers, too. They rob and dash.”

  “Could be slavers. The city hall indicated this settlement’s documented population is 594 people,” Abernathy said. “That makes 588 unaccounted for individuals.”

  “Slavers wouldn’t trouble themselves with looting,” Xander said. “An adult human male goes for five thousand quid on the market. Ten if we’re doing our bloody jobs and they’re unable to meet the current demand.”

  “Would take a pretty big ship, too, abducting that many people.” Thandie chimed in. “Most slave rings I’ve come across in the past were small operations. Fifty people taken at most, but usually more like ten.”

  “Two ships.” Saskia stepped into the room without acknowledging the dead bodies splayed out on the floor. “I followed rover tracks out to the canyons. Based on the ground marks, I’d say they had two ships land out of sight.”

  “That’s more info than we had before,” Viljoen said. “All right, we’ll take the bodies onboard with us. Maybe you can learn more from them in your medical labs.”

  Xander cleared his throat. “In every old horror movie I’ve ever watched set in our era, taking corpses aboard a ship is a recipe for disaster. We’ll examine them here, Commander.”

  “He doesn’t want chest-busters.” Thandie bit back her grin. “Can’t say I blame him.”

  Xander winked at her. “Damn straight. We brought mobile scanners with us. We’ll make this quick.”

  He and the rest of the medical crew ran basic scans over the corpses without finding any clues, underlying diseases, parasites, or trauma. Even forensic examinations failed to yield anything pertinent and lacked any useful physical evidence about the perpetrators.

  And then he found one different from the others. “Here. He’s the only one who lacks an exit wound. And the point of entry is also cauterized.”

  “Yeah, so?” Viljoen asked. “What’s that mean?”

  “This is typical of bullets prior to the Lexar Annexation forty-nine years ago. A combustible round,” Thandie explained.

  Xander raised both brows at her.

  God. She was gorgeous and she knew her gun rounds. Somehow, that made her double attractive.

  Viljoen thoughtfully stroked his closely groomed goatee. “Means we’re probably working with space pirates then.”

  “We found the rest of the colonists,” Lopez reported over the comm. “The school gym is packed full of bodies. Fairchild’s preliminary scans indicate there are no survivors.”

  “I thought we ordered you back to the shuttle,” Viljoen said.

  “Sorry about that, sir. We spotted the building on the way to meet up with Rogers and had a look.”

  “We’re on our way.”

  The numbers in the school gymnasium totaled one hundred and sixty-two in all. Xander went from body to body, checking for signs of life before taking a DNA sample to compare against the registry on file for the colony.

  “Loki 4 is home to an unusually large number of psychics among their population. Since these people are overflow from the planet, some of them should have the same traits,” Fairchild pointed out.

  “What are you getting at?” Thandie asked. She worked to move the bodies into neatly laid out rows with the assistance of her fellow marines.

  “Well, I’ve scanned almost everyone in the room and not a single one is registered as a psychic.”

  Xander glanced up from his readout. “I haven’t noted any cybernetics among the victims either. Statistically speaking, we should have had at least a handful by now, even if they are from a green planet.”

  “So we have slavers taking their choice of cyborgs and psychics now?” The frustration in Viljoen’s voice carried over the comm.

  “Seems like it. Kids, too. Not a single body under the age of thirteen among the rest,” Fairchild added.

  “Then this was more than a common raid,” Xander said. “It was a culling.”

  Chapter Five

  From his medical station near the airlock, Xander observed the endless sea of crewmen awaiting their chance to exit the Jemison. Liberty days were a rare but pleasant breath of fresh air, enjoyed by everyone granted a couple days’ respite from their duties.

  Except for medical. Being a member of the medical department only meant there was a dramatic increase in work before they had their break, due to frequent changes in immunization requirements. He’d spent hours inoculating crewmen.

  Not that Xander planned to leave the ship for more than a quick visit to the market so he could restock his preferred sweets.

  “You plan to come along on your first liberty with the Jemison? After that business on the lunar colony, you certainly deserve it.” Ethan grinned at him.

  “Try it some other time, Bishop. I don’t want to go.”

  “Oh, come on. How will I draw the ladies without my best wingman?”

  “You can drink yourself into a pit of despair without me present. You’ve always been a magnet for all the pretty girls eager to find a sugar daddy. Unbeknownst to them, you’re as cheap as it gets.”

  “When’s the last time you slept with a woman, huh?” Ethan’s expression softened. “It’s been a while, mate. You’ll feel better once you get back in the game and—”

  “Listen, I don’t need to get laid.” Even if every time he spotted Thandie in the passageways, he couldn’t think of anything else. Time hadn’t eased his desire for her, if anything, it wound the tension even more until he wondered how much longer he could endure before losing his mind.

  Ethan’s touched Xander’s
shoulder. “I’m sorry, but I am telling—not asking you—to enjoy freedom from your responsibilities for a while. I don’t care if you spend it drinking, not-shagging, or reading in a cafe. Just get the fuck out of here.”

  Xander exhaled. Ethan had always been a good friend. The best friend he could ask for despite the decade gap in their ages and differing authority aboard the ship. He still remembered Ethan’s words from the day Xander finally summoned the nerve to ask him why he cared about a scrawny, underfed kid like him.

  “You remind me of my brother,” Ethan had said. “He ran away to find a job on another planet when I left for the Royal Navy. Fell out of touch with the rest of us. So I guess I always hoped that someone out there was looking after him like this.”

  Xander hoped so, too. Sometimes it was difficult to believe they were serving aboard the same vessel again for the second time.

  “All right, you win this time. I need a few to get out of my scrubs.”

  “Don’t be late!” Ethan called behind him.

  “Wouldn’t dream of making you wait, sexy.” Xander rolled his eyes and pushed his way through the thinning medical bay crowd.

  The flashing lights and pulsing beat provided the perfect atmosphere for the crowd down on the dance floor. Xander sat at a table on the balcony overlooking the writhing mass of half-naked youngsters shimmying to the hypnotic noise. He shook his head and quietly nursed his drink.

  Techno clubs and loud bars weren’t his usual scene, but Ethan appeared to be enjoying himself. The commodore had a woman on each side.

  “Evening, Commander,” Gareth spoke up, dropping into the seat to Xander’s right.

  “Chief Lockhart, are your migraines any better?”

  “Aye, sir. Whatever you did fixed me right as rain again.”

  “I’m glad. I know I’m a cyberware doc, but I’ve learned some tricks for people with your predisposition toward them. Feel free to come in anytime your usual pain relief isn’t cutting the mustard.”