Chapter 3 Lyra
lyra
Better the Devil You Know
“Ada, I need you up and running now!” I shout, vaulting a fallen tree and ducking a plasma blast perilously close to my head.
The two Void Stalkers tailing me are faster on open ground, but their long tails are more of a hindrance in the thick brush, which gives me the advantage in the trees.
I just have to loop back through the forest, get to my ship, and hope that the criminally hot but lawful pain-in-my-ass doesn’t put up a fuss when I take off without him.
You were offline, Ada states. Systems will reboot in eight minutes.
“I don’t have eight minutes! I have two Void Stalkers breathing down my neck and a Xylothian ranger determined to hand me to the Feds if I survive. Boot it into high gear and warm up those guns,” I yell.
You were offline, Ada repeats.
My lungs scream for more oxygen as I run and fire blindly behind me. I’m not expecting to hit anything, but am nevertheless disappointed when I don’t.
“Do I detect a note of peevishness? Yeah, I was offline. That goody-two-shoes ranger knocked me out and took my helmet. I didn’t do it on purpose. I’m still alive and kicking—for now. But I definitely won’t be if you don’t stoke those fires and get me out of here!” I huff.
Apology accepted. Critical systems can launch at minimum energy capacity. Estimated time to takeoff: four minutes.
“Now that’s more like it!” I say, but my relief is short-lived.
Directly ahead is a huge clearing that sprawls out like my doom before me.
I veer sharply left, trying to stay beneath the thick foliage.
I can hear the soft rush of the river in the distance—not the light babbling of lazy water over smooth stones, but the powerful roar of churning rapids.
As the trees thin out closer to the riverbank, I see the source of the sound—I’m standing at the top of a massive waterfall that cascades down over three tiers of incredibly jagged rock.
But there, just at the bottom of the first tier, is a small pool that looks clear and deep.
I duck another plasma blast from the screeching Void Stalkers on my heels, and a truly horrible idea takes root in my head.
There’s no way I’m going to outrun them long enough to double back through the trees and get to my ship.
I might try to stand my ground and fight, but that’s ill advised, considering there are two of them and I’m already beyond exhausted.
Despair threatens to pull me under—I don’t have the idol, I’ve got a ranger and Void Stalkers on my ass, and my ship might as well be on the other side of the planet.
No. I’m close! I’m closer than I was yesterday! It’s not time to give up yet—I have to try to lose these fuckers somehow.
The deadly waterfall looms and my feet sink into the thick mud of the riverbank. Sensing what I’m about to do, the Void Stalkers shout something I interpret to be very profane.
“Hold on, Ada—we’re going for a swim!” I shout.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I take a deep breath and jump over the first tier of the waterfall, praying to all the stars I miss the rocks and land in the deep center of the pool.
For one heart-stopping second, my whirling mind is blessedly silent as I fall, and all I sense is the coolness of the mist dampening my clothes.
I plunge into frigid water, narrowly missing a boulder that manages to scrape my thigh all the way up to my ass.
Pain engulfs my leg, made worse by the cold sting of the water.
The pounding of the falls pushes me down and I struggle against the current, kicking back toward the cliffside and the jutting rocks that might shield me from the Void Stalkers.
If they think I jumped to my death, so much the better.
They can spend however long they want searching for my body at the bottom of the falls, and by the time they realize it isn’t there, I’ll be long gone.
Hope helps buoy me to the surface and I suck in a breath.
I can’t hear anything above the roar of the water, but I don’t think they’d wait long before heading down to the bottom of the falls.
I wait for what feels like an eternity, but is probably closer to five minutes.
By the time I feel comfortable making a move toward the rocky riverbank on the other side, the freezing water has numbed my limbs and my joints ache in protest. Poking my head cautiously through the brush, I hurry back up the way I came, scrabbling over rocks and trying to keep a low profile in case another group of Void Stalkers shows up as reinforcements.
“Ada, I’m en route. What’s your status?” I ask, nearing my landing site.
Standing by.
“Great. Any, uh, Xylothian goody-two-shoes show up yet?”
Negative.
“Hm. Maybe I should go back to his campsite. I wonder if he ran afoul of the Void Stalkers, or if more showed up.” Dread skitters up my spine.
I certainly don’t care about the ranger, despite his eye-popping hotness.
And stars, is he hot! He fills out that stupid khaki uniform nicely, and something in my gut had fluttered when I came to and stared into those big emerald eyes set off by void-dark lashes.
His wavy brown hair shimmers green in the light like a beetle’s iridescent shell, and his freckled brown skin darkens to a near purple when he’s flustered, reminding me of a cephalopod from Earth displaying its emotions with color-changing chromatophores all over its body.
It took incredible strength for me to not rip his clothes off to see if the colorful, flickering passions skate across his skin everywhere.
It's too bad he plans to turn me in—he’d be a welcome libidinous distraction on my flight out of here.
Still, if the Void Stalkers have gotten to him…
I hate to think of them stealing the Solar Mother idol I worked so hard to acquire.
The Void Stalkers will hand it over to Brill, and I’ll lose my leverage.
On the other hand, if I bail on the score now, maybe the Xylothian boy scout won’t feel compelled to chase after me and hand me over to the Feds. Hmm. Risk facing the Feds again or miss out on a chance to buy my freedom?
The gentle, comforting hum of Ada’s engines makes the decision easy.
This Xylothian jungle is a little too hot for me in more ways than one.
Besides, I’m sure the ranger will put the statue back inside the temple and I can always come back in the near future and steal it again.
If I end up in front of the Feds, it will be hard to plan a return trip from the inside of an interplanetary penitentiary.
“Open the outer bay and lower the ramp for me, will you, Ada? I’m keen on getting out of here post haste,” I grunt, dragging my weary limbs into the clearing where she’s parked and idling. The second sun is high in the sky now, blanketing the rainforest in oppressive heat once more.
“Lyra Phoenix!”
The guttural hack of a Void Stalker’s voice breaches the buzzing chatter of rainforest fauna. I don’t need to turn around to know who it is—the filthy, shark-toothed bastard, Kraxis. My hand is immediately on the gun at my hip, but the rasping laugh suggests it won’t do me any good.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. I’d hate for your carelessness to cost another life,” he says. “Turn around—slowly, if you don’t mind. Don’t try anything hasty.”
I do as he asks, anxiety twisting my insides in knots.
As I suspected, Kraxis has a plasma pistol pressed into the temple of the Xylothian ranger.
I school my expression in a mask of uncaring dismissal, and while that isn’t too far from the truth, I’m not a monster.
I don’t want to see his brains splattered all over the ground.
“What have you found there, Kraxis? A new boyfriend?”
Orion’s eyes flash with anger and Kraxis’s reptilian lips curl in disgust.
“Your accomplice, Phoenix. Caught in your camp with the bodies of two dead Void Stalkers nearby. Brill won’t be happy about that, you know. He’ll probably want to add it to the debt you’ve accrued,” Kraxis sneers.
Ah, two dead stalkers. So, Orion had the guts to finish one off, after all—not that Kraxis needs to know that. I don’t want to entangle myself with the ranger any more than I already have.
“He’s a Xylothian ranger, shit-for-brains,” I say with a laugh. “He didn’t have anything to do with them. He probably stumbled onto my camp after I led your other friends through this stars-forsaken jungle.”
Kraxis blinks stupidly. “I thought all the Xylothians were extinct.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got your gun aimed at one’s head, so that’s probably incorrect.”
“That changes things,” Kraxis says, eyeing Orion’s massive six-foot-eight frame with interest.
I sigh, not bothering to mask my exasperation and irritation.
“Look, it’s not my fault if Brill can’t manage the details.
If he’s fencing relics from a not-so-dead race of aliens, that’s his problem.
My contract is settled as soon as I deliver the Solar Mother idol to him and my slate is wiped clean—you hear?
Clean. That means you useless fucks stop hounding me every time you think I’m running out on a score or not delivering fast enough. ”
“Brill knows you were going to betray him, Phoenix. He found out about the buyer on Epsilon-6. You were going to take the idol to someone else, even when you knew it was rightfully his,” Kraxis growls, turning his attention from Orion back to me.
I can see pure rage igniting in Orion’s eyes and I know he’s about to argue Brill’s alleged ownership of the idol.
He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.
“First of all, that’s insane. Why would I sell the idol to anyone when all I’ve been doing is working to get out from under Brill’s thumb? I want my freedom as much as that shitbag doesn’t want to give it to me.” My father always told me the best way to sell a lie was to inject it with some truth.
Kraxis hisses at the disparaging words.