Alien Salvation (16 page)

At his side, Lindsey was dwarfed in his
chest and back armor that reached to her knees. The added
protection made her awkward and she’d protested wearing it, but to
Japohn’s relief, Bacoj had backed him up in insisting she be as
protected as possible. Not that she’d need it, if all went
according to plan. And if things went awry … well, he’d fall before
letting a Tragoom anywhere near her.

His fingers touched the oval of tiny
indentations now permanently pressed into his utility belt. He had
to survive this night just to find out how the hell that had
happened. There’d been no opportunity to question Vax, who’d looked
entirely too full of himself when Japohn had discovered it.
Lindsey’s face had flamed red, something she only seemed to do when
sex was involved. Japohn smothered a grin. The thought of her
biting on his belt to muffle screams of sensual relish was
delightful. He wondered what he could do to make her mark his skin
in such a way.

Enough. He had to concentrate on the
task at hand, not to mention Lindsey’s fighting instincts now that
she wasn’t in an erotic submissive thrall. The girl worried him.
Protective of others to an alarming degree, he had no doubt she’d
risk her life to save anyone in danger. Including him. He’d have to
play to her instinct to defend her parents.

“No save me in trouble,” he whispered
to her. “Protect parents first. Fight go bad, take all back to
camp.”

Lindsey glanced at her parents and
nodded, though her lips thinned in a frown. She knew what he was up
to. No fool, his little Lindsey.

“All right, all right. No heroics. Just
don’t get yourself killed, you big brute.”

She glared at him, and Japohn resisted
the urge to kiss her pretty lips until she got that soft, yielding
look in her eyes. Her grumpy concern for his welfare touched him
every bit as much as the way she’d given him pleasure the day
before with no thought for her own. Somehow she’d seen past his
angry, brutish exterior enough to care what happened to him. At
least that’s what his instincts told him.

Japohn allowed himself the luxury of
touching Lindsey’s soft chestnut hair. “I go. Listen for
signal.”

She nodded, and he was off, skulking up
the hill that stood between the group and the warehouse where Dee
Dee’s embattled friends hid.

Japohn scented the Tragoom well before
he saw it. The sharp, rancid odor was every bit as repugnant as he
remembered. Foul to sight and smell, Tragooms had few allies
outside of their own kind. Not surprising, considering they had a
nasty habit of raping and eating anything that stood still long
enough for them to catch.

Bacoj had done a flyover earlier, using
the shuttle’s heat sensors to pick up the enemy’s whereabouts. He’d
detected seven Tragooms in total, all spaced evenly around the
large building where the Earthers were trapped. The warehouse and
surrounding buildings, part of what Lindsey called an ‘industrial
park’, sat in a shallow depression in the landscape, the hills on
either side barely big enough to be called such. Still, they rose
just enough to give the Tragooms an advantage when it came to
keeping an eye on their food supply. The Earthers had been
effectively corralled. Dee Dee had only escaped because the
Tragooms had been occupied with grabbing two of her weaker
companions for their morning feast.

Japohn moved silently among the bushes
and thick tufts of sawgrass, keeping low to the ground. Being so
big had always been more of a hindrance than help. He had trained
long and hard to offset his body’s bulk so that he could move with
quiet, swift dexterity. The intense preparation had saved his life
too many times to keep count.

The stench of Tragoom sharpened, and he
slowed his approach. A snuffling grunt a few feet ahead alerted him
to his quarry. Japohn crept closer, and the Tragoom came into
view.

The creature was slightly taller than
the average Earther, built so stout it seemed like a breathing
boulder. Pointed ears on top of its head swiveled this way and
that, listening to the night sounds of the nearby swamp. Tiny, mean
eyes, reflecting white in the glow of the rising moon, stared
blindly to Japohn’s left. Tragooms didn’t have very good eyesight,
a disadvantage Japohn had capitalized on more than once. Thick
tusks curled from its lipless mouth to bracket its round, elongated
snout. Dee Dee had called the Tragooms ‘pigheads’. Having looked up
an image of the Earther animal in the shuttle’s database, Japohn
thought she’d been unnecessarily insulting to pigs.

The Tragoom’s mottled gray skin looked
blotched in the moonlight. It wore armor that had been cobbled
together from other species’ body protection. Japohn knew whatever
spaceship it had arrived in would have been constructed from other
races’

technology as well. Tragooms were not
about innovation; they preferred to use whatever they could
scavenge or steal.

Japohn silently unsheathed his thinnest
knife, a long blade as slim as Lindsey’s smallest finger. Tragoom
hides were thick with bulky swaths of muscle beneath, encasing most
of their vital organs in hard-to-penetrate flesh. Only three spots
on the vicious creatures’ bodies were vulnerable to blades.
Japohn’s current quarry had two of those areas covered; a Joshadan
breastplate protected the soft spot just below the heart, and an
Arlish codpiece shielded its vulnerable genitals.

The light breeze that kept the muggy
night from being unbearable suddenly shifted, and the Tragoom’s
large nostrils flared. Its ears swiveled forward as it turned its
ugly face towards Japohn, scenting the Kalquorian’s
presence.

Japohn ran and sprang, his leap
covering half the distance to his enemy. Another lunge, and he was
on the surprised Tragoom, his knife sinking into the brute’s eye
and the brain beyond. The Tragoom went down without a cry, its
thick legs kicking a few times before stilling.

That was no fun. Japohn disliked
surprise attacks, preferring the heat and strain of a real fight,
thick with blood and pain. Oh well. At least he hadn’t gotten much
of the Tragoom’s stench on himself.

He looked around to make sure none of
the dead creature’s fellow nasties had been alerted to the scuffle.
His gaze took in the building ahead, one of a group of structures
dotting the paved landscape. Dee Dee had described the blacktop as
a parking lot, and derelict vehicles scattered here and there.
Nothing moved out there, and he saw no hint of life from the
warehouse either.

Detecting nothing threatening
approaching, he whistled low to signal his ragtag team. They crept
up the slight incline toward him, Lindsey in the lead. When they
reached him, they looked down at the dead Tragoom, clear even to
weaker Earther eyes in the moonlight. Dee Dee looked grimly
pleased. Tara and Aaron exchanged an uncomfortable glance. Vax
grinned at Japohn, his nod approving.

Lindsey made a small sound that Japohn
thought might be a nervous giggle. “Stick an apple in its mouth,
and we can have a luau,” she whispered, her voice a mere breath
carried to him on the breeze.

Japohn brought their focus back to the
task at hand by signaling for attention. “Careful. Silent. Follow
plan.”

They nodded as one. In single file,
they followed him down the hill, across the parking lot and up to
the warehouse. The small noises the Earthers made as they walked
would be masked by the high-pitched singing of peepers he thought.
Their biggest danger lay in the breeze carrying their scents to the
Tragooms.

Dee Dee moved to the front of the
group, loudly scratching ragged fingernails against the gray steel
door in a pattern of three quick scratches, followed by two slower
ones, then three faster again. Japohn heard hushed conversation
from within the building.

Voices rose and fell as what sounded
like an argument broke out. Finally he detected the stealthy sounds
of something heavy being slid away on the other side. The doorknob
turned and a slit of darkness appeared at the doorjamb as it
opened.

Dee Dee whispered, “It’s me. I brought
help.”

The thin frightened face of a man
appeared. “Dee Dee?”

“Yeah. There’s a Kalquorian clan here
to get you out.”

Japohn winced as excited chatter burst
from the room.

“Keep quiet!” Lindsey ordered in a
quiet but commanding voice.

Except for hushed weeping, the refugees
complied. The door widened to show the group of terrified Earthers
clustered beyond it. A quick head count of the men, women and
children gave Japohn the number of eleven. Dee Dee had said they’d
started off with a colony of almost thirty before the Tragooms had
found them. There’d been fifteen when she’d escaped this
morning.

“Two at time,” he whispered. “We take
you safety.”

One woman knelt on the floor, clutching
two tiny waifs to her emaciated body. “Both my children come with
me,” she insisted. “You’re not separating us.”

Aaron stepped forward. “I’ll carry one,
you carry the other.” He held out his arms.

After a reluctant moment, the woman
nodded and lifted a shivering girl child, allowing him to cradle
her. Japohn saw him wince as his back bent a little more than
before, but he made no complaint. The Nobek decided Aaron would get
another dose of their rapidly depleting supply of pain inhibitor
tonight.

The mother hefted a slightly larger
wide-eyed boy. At Japohn’s nod, they hurried across the parking
lot, their shoes softly pat-patting on the surface. The Nobek
watched and waited until they disappeared over the small hill. He
nodded to two more women, and they left under Tara’s
guidance.

The evacuation went like clockwork. The
hole in the corral left by the now dead Tragoom had made all the
difference. But just as Japohn thought they’d not need Bacoj at
all, a high grating scream cut through the night. Lindsey and the
two remaining refugees froze in the doorway.

“What was that?” Lindsey quavered, her
eyes wide.

Japohn had his percussion blaster out,
his gaze picking up lumbering figures crossing the pavement towards
them. “Tragooms know Earthers escaping.” In Kalquorian he said,
“We’ve been detected, Bacoj!”

The Dramok’s voice sounded over his
open com unit. “On my way.”

Japohn gave Lindsey a little push. “Go
Lindsey.”

“Like hell I will.” She had her own
blaster out, standing in front of the two Earther men who cowered
like rabbits.

Furious terror for her safety made
Japohn slap the back of her head as if she were a rebellious
youngling. “You go now!”

Lindsey staggered at the blow but stuck
her lower lip out in obstinate resolve. “I’m not leaving you. Now
stop hitting me and tell me what direction to shoot in. I can’t see
them yet.”

The racing Tragooms, four of them now,
were already too close for Lindsey and the others to get away.
Japohn growled. “We live, I punish hard. Real punish. You no sit
for days.”

Her face paled a little at that, but
she didn’t waver for a second. Stubborn Earther female! Still, he
couldn’t help the grudging respect he felt for her.

* * * *

In the darkened cockpit, the shuttle’s
low hum was interrupted by intermittent sputters and coughs. Bacoj
flew to the warehouse that had been the survivors’ refuge before
the Tragooms turned it into a trap. The warm bodies of those below
were easily seen by the thermal scanner as he hovered overhead: two
yellow-orange blobs hurrying around the sides of the building to
join the four racing across the parking lot towards the white-hot
figure that was Japohn and the three red Earther forms with
him.

Bacoj had firm control over the anger
that had erupted when Japohn couldn’t convince Lindsey to run for
safety. Japohn’s com had been left open for easy communication, and
he’d heard the whole exchange. When the Nobek had promised her
severe punishment, Bacoj’s first thought was, you’ll get your turn
after I deal with her. His fear for her welfare was choking,
feeding his fury at her stubborn refusal to carry out her team
leader’s orders.

He had to clan Lindsey now. Such a
willful, spirited girl needed three firm mates to keep her out of
trouble.

The Tragooms were getting close, and
Bacoj saw the flares of percussion blasters as Japohn and Lindsey
fired on their attackers. One Tragoom went down before Bacoj set
off the stun wave. An electronic buzz sounded as he pressed the
button.

Bodies below collapsed where they
stood, and he relaxed in his seat. His plan had worked better than
he’d hoped, even with Lindsey’s overprotectiveness of Japohn. The
thought of the tiny Earther defending the hulking Nobek made Bacoj
laugh out loud now that the danger was over. She was something
else, all right. She’d keep the clan on their toes.

You’re ours, my lovely Lindsey. If I
have to argue with Japohn and Vax for a hundred years, you’ll join
my clan.

Somehow, he didn’t think there’d be any
objections from his Nobek and Imdiko.

Bacoj set the shuttle down on the
parking lot and reminded himself to get back to the business of
killing off the stunned Tragooms. Then he could retrieve Japohn and
the Earthers. Especially his soon-to-be mate.