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  Time passed.

  What delays them? Why haven’t they found Bree yet? Why haven’t the patrols returned? Restless, and attempting to ignore her rising agitation, she circumnavigated the shuttle several times then paused to scan her surroundings for about the hundredth time. A flash caught her attention. She squinted into the setting sun, trying to see through the haze, but the light had disappeared.

  She must have imagined it. She yawned widely and tracked the progress of a shadow as it streaked over the ground. Sherise jerked out of her heat induced stupor and snapped her gaze skywards.

  An enormous creature flew high above the shuttle. The setting sun reflected so brightly off its metallic feathers her eyes hurt.

  Armour? Was that possible? She shaded her face. With each swift flap of its massive wings the creature sped further away, heading rapidly in the direction of the ruins. Bree had told her earlier that her former home lay in the very heart of the wrecked city.

  She bounded into the shuttle and asked, ‘Anything?’

  ‘Negative.’ The pilot’s face was flushed and Sherise didn’t blame him. With the main power source switched off to conserve energy it was as hot as Zirsk inside the cramped cabin.

  He slapped his hand against the consol. ‘I cannot raise the Captain or the other patrol team either.’

  Our signals must be jammed. But by who? And by what? ‘I’m going to climb to the top of that mound. Perhaps I will gain sight of the crew. Remain here and for Cercis’s sake, get a message out.’ She rushed back to the hatch where she paused, thinking about that savage beak and the curving claws on the creature’s four legs, before scrambling over to her seat where she retrieved her medie satchel.

  Every sense she possessed screamed that her friend was in danger. Maybe she’d investigate a bit further than the mound. She slung the long straps of her bag around her neck and over one shoulder, snatching a stunner from the rack. She paused to activate her personal locator within the wide metal bracelet around her wrist (not that any others appeared to be working) and exited the shuttle.

  Sherise shaded her eyes with one hand, staring towards the horizon where the last rays of the sun stretched across the brutal land like the begging hands of the dying.

  The shadows lengthened, making pockets of darkness where danger could prowl undetected.

  She turned her back on the shuttle and safety.

  Somewhere out there in this alien world was the one person who had stood side-by-side with her during those endless, dark days on Gazood, where they’d vowed to protect each other no matter what.

  And Sherise intended to find her.

  Chapter 6

  With each step Bree took, her heart thudded a little faster, a little louder. By the time her instincts led her onto San Sebastian Drive, the noise in her ears rivalled the roar of the Pacific Ocean that once, long ago, had pounded against the shores of her country of birth. Her tight chest and short gasping breaths made her wonder whether she was about to have a heart attack.

  It wouldn’t surprise her. In fact, nothing much these days surprised her.

  She pressed her hand against her rib cage, worked through her panic attack. She should never have rushed off from the crashed shuttle, but the call of home was too great for her heart to ignore.

  The dream of returning home to her family had kept her sane during her imprisonment on Gazood. Now, to be so close and not visit the site? No, she couldn’t do it. With the shuttle inoperative, there’d been nothing to do but wait for rescue. But she wasn’t going to sit around. Thirty minutes to her old home then back again.

  Easy.

  She needed to do this, even knowing her family were dead and gone years ago. She still couldn’t shake the urge to see if, somehow, they’d left her a message.

  Who would have imagined her decision to volunteer to be a colonist on another planet would lead her here; to another time? Life had dealt her a crap hand ever since she and the others had been betrayed by traders. Sold to some Darkon nutter on a personal crusade to save his race, they’d been incarcerated in a research chamber until, by a miracle manufactured by a few other inmates, they escaped. She had spent roughly six months on the run, ever terrified of being sent back to that horrific place, learning all she could about the alien world she found herself in, doing anything and everything to survive. Then, when it was safe to raise her head, wham-o, she was a prisoner again. Except this time, she was sent to the planet, Gazood.

  The only bright spot in the following four years of misery was her friendship with Sherise. Together they had fought off predators, starvation, sadistic guards, freezing cold, broiling heat; and death. In doing so they had forged a bond closer than blood.

  Her heartbeat steadied, leaving nausea in its wake. Bree paused, pushed aside the satchel she always wore when leaving a ship and rubbed the sharp ache in her side. She placed a hand over her eyes and squinted in the harsh sunlight. Was that the ruins of Ms Rooney’s fountain? The woman who had different male callers depending on the night of the week? Bree well remembered how their neighbour had commissioned a stone statue of what she had called, ‘woman dominating man’; i.e. a naked woman sitting astride the back of a naked man on his hands and knees. Considered an insult to moral integrity by every outraged citizen on the block and even the subject of a council meeting, the twenty foot high monstrosity had dominated the respectable middle-class street for years.

  Personally, given Ms Rooney’s dubious night-time activities, it could have been worse. Now, the fountain was reduced to a pile of concrete rubble, half swallowed by raggedy vines with spiky grey leaves.

  She walked closer and stared down at what remained of the female statue: a pair of enormous boobs. Somehow, that seemed a fitting legacy.

  Way to go, Ms Rooney.

  Bree drew in a deep, slow breath. The smell was different to what she remembered. Fresher, cleaner, no pollution clogged her throat or caused her lungs to wheeze the way it used to, before she’d departed Earth as a colonist. She wiped her sweaty palms over the threadbare cotton of her cargo pants.

  She swivelled. There, that allotment, that jungle of fallen masonry, rotting timber posts choked by vines and waist-high weeds half swallowed by dirt and rubble was home.

  Or what used to be home.

  How long had her family remained here? Had they stayed, waiting and hoping that one day she would walk through their front door? Or had they left the memories behind and sought a new life elsewhere?

  She would never know.

  She didn’t even know whether they had been caught up in the madness that had changed this planet forever, whether they had died during the war that had erupted. All she could cling to was the hope they’d escaped the city and found safety elsewhere.

  Life sure does suck.

  With her legs shaking, Bree stumbled across the road. Her gaze remained fixed on the ruins and she saw nothing else as her world shrank to encompass what remained of her past. Nothing lay before her but memories.

  They came quick, flicking across her mind so fast she hardly had time to register one before the next popped into her head. Her parents surrounded by piles of boxes and cartons, raising plastic cups full of champagne as they toasted their arrival and the new job that had brought them from the other side of the world. Her brothers chasing her down the drive, whooping and brandishing homemade bows and arrows, Blue-dog yapping at their heels. She remembered the feel of the plastic water pistol in her hand as she took aim and squirted in defence, the sick feeling in her belly that first day in a strange school and the relief when a group of girls had smiled and extended their hands in friendship. Late nights watching re-runs with her family, munching on popcorn. The night her father almost burnt down the house when the cooker got out of control. And last, the day when she had set off for the job of a lifetime, feeling like she was about to be part of something tremendous … and never returned home.

  Now she was back, her feet following in the footsteps of her memories as she clambered over wh
at had once been a house. Her mind more in the past than the present, she wandered the small suburban block, oblivious to the sinking sun. She scrambled over a large mound of broken concrete, intertwined with thistles and knee-high, thorny bushes and found herself staring at an ancient white oak that towered high above her. Wow. Could this be the seedling her father had brought back from that conference in Florida? For weeks he had talked of how much lumber the tree would yield for his new hobby of making wooden toys.

  She walked over and placed a trembling hand on the blackened trunk, probing the scaly fissures with her fingertips while she stared up into the labyrinth of leafless branches. Each Christmas she had spent hours with her mother painting and decorating the fallen acorns. Now the branches were barren. No rustle of leaves from the breeze stirred the brittle twigs.

  There was nothing here.

  Bree shuffled around in a slow circle, taking in what little remained of the crumbling ruins, an example of how nature had conquered what was once the dominance of man. Whatever she had hoped to find had turned to dust.

  She really was alone.

  ***

  Sherise jogged down the rutted road, glad that she’d taken the time to change into a thigh-length tunic and a pair of sturdy boots. When she’d climbed the mound, her heart had sunk at the sight of the ruined city spread out like broken bones in the dirt. She’d told herself, just a little bit further and before she knew it, she’d scrabbled down the other side of the mound and headed off. She knew where she was going; she was following the direction the flying creature had taken, even though it was a foolish thing to do.

  If Bree is in danger, I must help her.

  The rhythmic thuds of her boots hitting the hard surface reverberated off the walls of the buildings that lined both sides of the street. The hollow sound reminded her of how alone she was in the ruins of this once huge city. The craven desire to run back to the relative sanctuary provided by the shuttle played havoc with her determination.

  But the memory of the prison planet intruded.

  A place of fear and death, where a bond had been forged through cycles of misery … The memories still haunted her every waking moment. A place where so many had died from lack of food, clean water and even shelter from the harsh elements for which Gazood was notorious. A place where Sherise and Bree had guarded each other’s backs.

  Sherise peered over her shoulder, her breath swelling and choking her throat until it expelled from her lips so loudly that she cringed. Certain she’d heard a pebble rattling over stone.

  But no snarling, acid-drooling creature rushed from the shadows with the intention to devour her whole—like the draptiles the guards on Gazood had used to hunt the prisoners for sport.

  All was quiet.

  She increased her pace, running as fast as possible in the fading light.

  Warmth no longer rose from the ground. Despite being on the move, she shivered. Chill stiffened her bones, pricking at her throat. The skin on her face was icy and the tip of her nose ached. She blew on her fingers and her breath formed into a white cloud in front of her. The Quinnie’s compu had warned the temperatures at night fell to freezing point, perhaps lower. How long before that happened? She had yet to locate her friend and every step she took increased the length of time it would take to return to the shuttle.

  And there was no sign of the other shuttle’s crew. She could only hope that Kondo and his men had located Bree and were on their way back to the crash site.

  Sherise tried to recall everything Bree had told her about her home while they’d waited together in the Quinnie’s departure bay. Several blocks on the right of the playing field … Blocks, if she remembered correctly, meant a segment of buildings within the boundaries of roads. A tall, brownstone building with its own patch of dirt out the back … fascinating, if a little hard to visualise and make sense of in what remained of the city. She huffed out a breath in exasperation. And had not Bree also mentioned her home being built in the shadow of the Imperial?

  What, by Cercis’s cloak, was an Imperial?

  But perhaps the building would not be that difficult to find. She stopped and pushed strands of her hair to cover her numb ears. Once more, she searched the sky, now a pale wash of colour that ebbed into grey then black where stars twinkled like the cold, blinking eyes of a host of predators.

  She released her stunner from its holster on her hip and, with effort, stifled her nightmares.

  There. The flying creature.

  An ominous shape merged into the encroaching night. Close to the fire ravaged remains of immense towering structures and still near enough for her to follow.

  If she dared.

  The stunner began to slip through her damp grasp. She tightened her fingers on the butt.

  Her breath whistled in and out and a slow burn in her thighs caused her legs to tremble with effort. Her gait became uneven and choppy. She’d never been a fan of keeping fit and had attended the minimum exercise routine during the journey to Earth. She stumbled, regained her balanced, and pushed ahead.

  Useless now, to wish she had tried to outrun the voices of guilt in the training rooms instead of feasting in the mess.

  The flying creature, its wings stretched into graceful arcs, swept around a corner and disappeared from sight.

  Sherise slowed, then stopped. Heart pounding, blood pulsing hot, her breaths short and gulping … it appeared to take forever for her body to steady. She pressed her hand against the ache in her side and listened.

  Silence.

  She spun round and with a careful thoroughness scrutinised her surroundings.

  Nothing stirred.

  No wind whistled through the gaps of buildings or swept nosily down narrow lanes. No leaves or weeds whispered with movement. Then why did the feeling persist that someone or something watched?

  In one slick, furtive flick of her finger, she activated the stunner. Taking another glance around, she turned away from the hostile, hunched edifices with their rows upon rows of square empty holes. With her left hand she activated a switch on the band of her stunner and scanned her surroundings searching for heat signatures.

  For a second a thin ribbon of red flared on the 3D image flickering above the stunner, then disappeared.

  Nothing? Or something?

  Either way, she needed to keep moving forward. She took a road to her left, certain she saw the skeletal outlines of trees etched against the darkening sky behind the small buildings in front of her. Perhaps the trees signified the football field. With luck, her friend’s old home shouldn’t be too much further.

  Every so often she passed strange rusting shells of what she took to be primitive vehicles almost buried under weeds and vines. Some bore evidence of crippling damage caused by fire, or possibly explosions. Yet others were intact, doors left opened, giving the impression of being abandoned in a hurry.

  She sniffed and dabbed a cold hand under her damp nose. The city appeared devoid of human life, its people long since disintegrated into dust. Those who survived would have fallen prey to hunger, disease or conscienceless criminals.

  The scene before her eyes was a painful reminder of the long war her own people had experienced. So many had died and for what? A Bracken’s lust for power. He should have been dealt with some other way, before he’d gained such influence in her world and let leash such terrible devastation. In her view, war provided no solutions, only grief and pain.

  She, for one, would not travel that path again.

  The single storey structures, which were surprisingly intact given the passage of time, lay behind her. Here the buildings appeared joined together to form one long wall, like a tall barricade confining the edge of the road. At regular intervals, short flights of steps led up to doors, some little more than strands of rotting timber.

  Not too far ahead the road branched off to the right and swung out in a narrow semicircle around a rock-edged pond where a broken statue of a man stood. Sherise sprinted the last few yards. She stopped an
d stared at the statue. Although his head was missing, his armour was easily discerned. She smiled. Above his hand he brandished a long curved dagger.

  This must be the Imperial.

  The roof of the building which fronted the road was formed low in gradient and each end curled upwards. Standing on top of two stone pillars either side of the entrance were matching statues. The creatures, with long forked tails and sharp spikes running along their spines, were suddenly painted in a bright splash of gold as the last rays of sunlight flickered over the earth. She shuddered at the sight, hoping no such creature existed on this planet.

  Bree’s home should not be too far away.

  But if that was the case, where was she? And what of Kondo? Where were his men?

  Sherise cast a wary glance at the thick shadows consuming the landscape. Pushing back her sleeve, she scrutinised the metal bracelet which extended from her wrist to a little below her elbow. She tapped a sequence into the small panel on her forearm. An instant later, a small hologram appeared, beamed up from a tiny green light on the panel.

  Full darkness in less than a quarter of a rone.

  She tried sending another message through her personal comms. White noise crackled. By the stars, why couldn’t she get through to anyone?

  She scowled and searched the sky until she found the pale gleam of a moon starting to climb above the buildings. At least she would have some light. Huffing out an agitated breath she performed another sweep of her surroundings, again searching for heat signatures.

  And found two.

  Her heart jolted, then pounded into a beat that rivalled the roar of a shuttle’s engines departing a planet’s atmosphere. Sweat formed into cold droplets on her forehead. Someone or something watched!

  With burning eyes, she stared at the holographic display, willing the intel to change. But it remained the same. None of the heat signatures registered as Bree or Relic warlords. They were static, as if they lay in wait.

  Except … She looked closer. That one was moving.