recognizes her as the older lady with the silent husband.
“I ran all the way here,” she cries and flaps her hands wildly, blowing air at her eyes to dry the presence of tears.
“What’s the matter?” Bartin stands up.
“It’s Fossam. He’s gone. Missing. Disappeared.”
And then she bursts out in fresh tears. Lynne awkwardly pats her on the back, seeing as how the lady is now clinging to her.
“Start from the beginning,” Bartin commands wearily.
“My husband and I were at campsite four. We decided to have breakfast with Fossam, but when we arrived, he was gone. All of his things were still there, but he was gone.”
“He went for a leak?” Myrha suggests.
“You are particularly enamored with that theory,” Lynne says wryly.
“We waited for him for an hour,” the lady says stubbornly.
Myrha shrugs, “Okay, a dump then.”
“His things were trashed!”
“He had a temper?”
Lynne’s trying to stop from laughing. The lady looks like she’s ready to strangle Myrha.
“Think of what might have happened! He might have been eaten by something.”
“There aren’t large animals on the surface of this planet,” Lynne says.
Bartin nods in confirmation.
“Well, as far as we know anyway,” Myrha grins, a touch sadistically.
The lady lets out a wail. Bartin cuts her off before she can completely fall apart.
“Where’s your husband?” Bartin asks.
“Karry’s at the campsite. He can’t walk well, gets tried.”
“You left him there?” Myrha asks.
“Well he wanted to be there in case Fossam returned. And just because he can’t walk, doesn’t mean he can’t fight. He’s got a weapon.”
“Okay, listen, I want you to sit, get a drink, and calm down. We’ll go to the campsite for Karry and keep a lookout for Fossam, all right?” Bartin says.
She nods and collapses in a chair.
Myrha sighs and guesses breakfast is over. It’s going to be one of those days. She can tell.
It’s definitely one of those days. They get to the campsite and find Karry missing. His weapon lies crushed at the edge of the campsite.
“It looks like something dragged him off,” Lynne observes.
The underbrush is trampled and drops of blood litter the ground.
“This is fucked up,” Myrha announces. Just in case anyone really doubted.
“We need weapons,” Bartin concludes darkly.
“Yeah, because that worked out for Karry so well.”
“We’re not going to follow these tracks unless we’re armed.”
Myrha thinks being armed is a great idea. Following the tracks? Not so much.
“I really want to get off this planet,” she says conversationally.
Bartin leads them back to the hotel and decides to try and place another communication to the port to signal for help. The captain, still sleeping, doesn’t stir as Bartin grimly tries to send a message. Myrha’s pretty sure the utiphone is broken, but no one seems ready to believe that.
“I can’t in good conscience let you back out there,” he says after his failed attempt.
Lynne, of course, is in ‘investigation mode’ and wants to follow the tracks.
They still haven’t told the lady yet that her husband is missing. And probably dead. Like Fossam and Spinner.
“You’re my guests and your safety is my priority. We should stay at the hotel and let the authorities handle this.”
“Except that they haven’t been able to receive our messages,” Lynne points out.
“Hey, I am all for not going out there with substandard weapons,” Myrha says.
All Bartin has in his arsenal are a few old HeatWaves, and Myrha takes one even though she’s not sure it can actually function. Still, having a blood boiling machine in her hands gives her a sense of security. However false it may be.
In the end, as Bartin is hotel-owner, he is elected to tell the lady (“her name is Gerdie”) what has befallen her husband. Myrha and Lynne stay far away from that scene.
“A sabotaged shuttle. Defective equipment. Missing guests. A rampaging beast. This is like…a horror story.”
Lynne nods, “Our situation does bear similarity to that of a classic horror tale.”
That doesn’t exactly make Myrha feel any better. She feels especially sick to her stomach when she hears Gerdie’s scream of disbelief.
There are a few guests still staying in the hotel and Bartin forbids them to leave. As for the guests still out on the campsites, he grumbles to himself and says he’ll go fetch them. Myrha thinks that’s a really bad idea.
“You’ll die,” she says, “you should let them fend for themselves.”
He ignores her warnings.
They’re all sort of miserable cooped up in the hotel. Gerdie is continuously crying in the vends room and the captain blinks blearily at the news, before laboring over the utiphone again. Myrha thinks that’s a hopeless cause, but maybe like Lynne, he just needs a focus. Myrha’s not going to be the one to steal that from him. So she gets him something to eat and leaves him to it.
The other guests get as much food as possible from the vends and then barricade themselves in their rooms. Myrha decides to do the same, and puts the extra food in her travel kit. She packs it up and Lynne watches her with an interested eye.
“Why are you putting everything away?”
“In case we need to get out of here quick.”
Lynne doesn’t say anything else, so Myrha peeks out the window to see the sun on the horizon, sinking slowly. She watches it for a while, the sky and ocean turning dark. Only one lone figure staggers back from the jungle: Bounty Hunter.
“It’s night. Only one person has returned.”
“Then we must assume the worst,” Lynne says.
“This doesn’t seem so much rampaging animal as it does evil radioactive army. I mean, it’s kind of a big deal to take out a handful of guests in a single night.”
“I highly doubt there is an ‘evil army’ in Lieval’s jungle.”
“Whatever.”
Myrha abandons the window and curls up in her bed. She hugs the pillow tight, but she doesn’t feel like she can sleep. Lynne gets up to turn off the lights. She can go into hibernation mode no matter if it’s light or dark, but she knows Myrha needs the darkness. Even if she hates it.
“Maybe we can leave the light on tonight. Or leave the curtains open,” she says.
“You no longer find it comfortable to sleep in the dark?”
“I’m scared out of my fucking mind! Of course not. If some evil radioactive army comes marching in, I want to be able to see them and kick their asses.”
“There is no evil radioactive army.”
“Shut up. Fear isn’t something you can fight with logic.”
“Apparently not,” is Lynne’s dry reply.
Myrha folds her arms and stares crossly at the ceiling.
“If it reassures you,” Lynne says quietly, “my strength is such that I should be able to overpower any animal that may attack us in the night.”
“What about an evil army?”
“I shall endeavor to do my best to protect you,” Lynne says in a deep tone. Only slightly snarky.
“Well you can’t do it from way over there,” Myrha says, “Come over here.”
Her face flames as she pats her bed. By Jupiter’s moons, she’s done stuff kinkier than this; it shouldn’t be making her blush!
“You wish to share a bed?”
Lynne sounds puzzled, and Myrha thinks that this is definitely not in any of her programming.
“Yeah, come on. This will make it a lot easier for you to protect me. Don’t you want to do your job to the best of your ability?”
Lynne’s comforter rustles as she climbs out of her cot.
“You are really that afraid?”
??
?This isn’t just motivated by fear; it’s a practical move as well.”
She pauses.
“Also, you’re pretty hot. So this isn’t exactly a hardship.”
Lynne laughs and the bed dips as she sits on it, and then brings up her legs. Thumpa-thumpa, Myhra can hear her heart race and she sternly tells it ‘no, this is not something to get excited over’. Except that she has a hot, and apparently dangerous, lady in her bed. That is definitely exciting.
Lynne doesn’t give off body heat, although Myrha bets she lets off some heat somewhere because she’s a machine; and instead of breath, Myrha can hear her tiny tickings and whirrings.
She places a hand on Lynne’s wrist. She has no hair. But her skin still feels soft.
“Thanks,” is all she says.
“Anything for a guest,” Lynne pauses, and then continues smarmily, “especially a likeable, attractive one such as you.”
“Did you just throw my words back in my face?”
She can’t see Lynne’s expression, but she’s pretty damn sure she’s smiling like the smug little robot that she is.
“I hate you,” Myrha laments.
“Go to sleep, Myhra.”
And with a sultry command like that, who is she to ignore it?
She is definitely glad that she asked Lynne to sleep in her bed, and not just because she got to get close to a sexy woman. Myrha has a distant, happy thought that Lynne was wrong about the culprit being an animal. That doesn’t make being right any easier, though. An army may not exactly be after them, but Myrha was pretty spot-on about the radioactive part.
So when Fossam bursts through the door and attacks them, he gets a face full of Lynne’s fist; apparently Lynne didn’t go into hibernation mode. Myrha is kind of touched.
She’s also pretty terrified.
“What the fuck?” she shouts.
Fossam staggers back and into the light from the smashed door; she can see a huge, messy hole where his eye is