“Shit,” her escort growled, then fired again.Divvd divvd divvd.
Her eyes froze on the viewer. It seemed impossible, but Iax dodged out of the line of fire. The shots hit her outpost, first near the entrance,then their quarters, turning it into a smoking pile of rubble. Her stomach swooped, then rose in her throat.
But Iax was running, still alive.
He spun abruptly. A shot pulsed from Sawyer’s discarded weapon.
Tuvvd.It hit the hull, and the ship listed to the left. Wynn braced her hand against the bulkhead. It wasn’t enough to keep her balance. The world upended, and she fell to the side and rolled. She didn’t know which way was up. She braced herself against the deck when her gaze landed on the main terminal at the front of the ship.
The control panel glowed red with warnings. Lights flashed.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Sawyer righted them, then tracked toward where Iax stood in front of the greenhouse, the ship’s engines purring as it tilted.
Another weapons lock, and weapons surged.Divvd. Divvd.Divvd. Divvd.
He fired continuously. She couldn’t see Iax within the torrent, but her greenhouse shattered into a million pieces. Shards, and green, and metal, and dirt.
“Stop!” she screamed. “Please stop!” She dove at Sawyer again.
His hand shot out and landed dead center on her chest. Wynn struggled, trying to free herself from his grip, then her entire body shook. Her vision hazed to black.
He’d used a shocker on her. She wondered why it surprised her.
Out of the corner of her eye, the ship tilted, and so did her world.
Then her vision blackened to nothing.
Chapter twenty-three
The doctor’s limp body dropped to the floor. He hadn’t killed her, didn’t have orders to do soyet, but he didn’t have time to check her vitals to see if the two stuns and falls had done any permanent damage.
Carver had bigger things to worry about.
Somehow, with only one shot, that motherfucker had disabled key systems. He shouldn’t have even been able to punch through his shields, but his ship didn’t seem to know that. He shouldn’t have been able to fire his bio-coded weapon at all.
The cruiser whined in distress, as shrill as the doctor’s screams had been moments ago. The ship lurched, something wrong with the altitude controls. It wouldn’t allow him to ascend any higher than what they already flew. The terrain tipped at an angle as he tried to level out the ship.
The outpost lay in a smoldering mess of metal composite and broken computer terminals. Greenery and transparent aluminum stuck out atodd angles where the greenhouse once stood, the plants now exposed to the elements.
He couldn’t see the Calypson fucker anymore. If he’d somehow eluded an entire barrage of weapons, then this planet—hell, the entire system—was in serious shit.
Carver’s scans showed heat patches where the building burned, but besides the smoldering innards, nothing else moved. He didn’t trust the scans. He’d shot the guy in the head, and he’d somehow survived.
For good measure, Carver cracked off a few more shots, leveling any area that stood higher than a meter. Then he waited again.
While he continued to scan, Carver ran diagnostics, trying to figure out what the fucker hit to unbalance his ship. A readout scrolled across his PALM and helmet’s interface, each detail worse than the last. But the last item on the list was the most tragic. The ship was no longer space-worthy.
“Fuck!” He smashed his hand on the controls.
There was no way he could fix all the issues on his own, not when the clock on his orders kept on ticking. And he couldn’t wait for help with that storm about to blanket this entire region for days.
His eyes jumped to the tether in the distance. The clouds and snow almost obscured it completely, but it was there, connecting the research community to the orbiting station. Unless another ship materialized in the next minute, it might be their only option to get off world.
He returned his attention to the destroyed building, scanning and waiting. When nothing moved but flames, he tapped the controls, and accelerated away from the destroyed outpost, heading straight toward the tether.
The sun disappeared the farther they traveled from the wreckage. The wind picked up, battering against the hull of the ship. Then the snow started. It coated the ground in a layer of white, hiding the ice that had formed across its barren surface. Nothing during his time here had changed his views on this waste of a rock.
