ALPHA by Catherine Asaro

Author:Catherine Asaro
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 1416520813
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2006-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

The island had no landing field, no town, not even the sparkling sand dunes of their imaginary paradise. But it did have a strip of gravelly beach large enough for Alpha to land. Thomas didn't know if she could manage the unstable surface, but after they jounced and lurched for several tense moments, the aircraft settled to a stop.

Alpha pushed up the canopy and climbed out, leaving him in the jet while she looked for help. She was only gone ten minutes, but it took Thomas that long to unfasten his harness. Pain clenched his head, neck, and chest, and nausea plagued him.

Alpha climbed back up to the cockpit. "No hospital."

"Doctors?" he asked.

"No one. Nothing. The best I found was a shack. Abandoned."

"Hell," Thomas muttered.

"You can lie down in the shack." She looked him over where he sagged in his seat. "Can you get out of the Banshee?"

"I'll manage." Slowly, measuring every movement, he dragged himself out of his seat. "How far do we have to go?"

"I got there in hardly a minute. But I run fast."

Thomas tried not to think of the walk. He knew he couldn't make it that far. Better not to think at all.

With Alpha's assistance, he climbed down from the Banshee. As he slumped against the jet, she surveyed the area. She looked like a cross between a thug and a rock singer in her black clothes, with the EL-38 over her shoulder and its ammunition across her chest. Pieces of equipment hung from her belt and she had the defibrillator carrier over her other shoulder, with his cane stuck through the loop on one strap.

The early morning sky had clouded, leaving a grey overcast that dampened the day. The beach stretched about half a kilometer to both the north and south, and ended in either direction at rocky tongues of land that curved into the ocean. Waves rolled onto the beach in monotonous green swells and petered out among tide pools. Inland about a hundred meters, a ridge hunched up, crowned by trees. No sign of civilization showed anywhere. Thomas wondered dully how Alpha planned to refuel the Banshee.

She handed him his cane. "Shall we go?"

Thomas just stared at the broomhandle. He didn't feel as if he could go anywhere, but he desired someplace warm and dry to lie down even more than he desired to stay put. So he limped onto the rocky sand. He managed to plod along for about thirty seconds, leaning on his cane; then he stopped and gracelessly let himself down to sit on the beach. His breathing came in labored gulps.

Alpha crouched next to him. "I can carry you."

He squinted at her. "That would be humiliating."

"If I were a transportation cart instead of a biomech forma, you wouldn't be embarrassed."

"I don't care what you call yourself, you're a woman, not a machine, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let a woman carry me."

She sat down with one knee up and her elbow resting on it. "We could just stay here.

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