Her Cyborg Warriors by Grace Goodwin

Author:Grace Goodwin [Goodwin, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KSA Publishers

9

Mikki, Planet Valuri, The Beach

* * *

The twisting torment of the transporting to another world left me doubled over, gasping for air.

“That stinks,” I complained to Rachel, who stood next to me in a similar condition. She smacked me on the shoulder through the thick protection of the space suit I was wearing and grinned.

“Never get used to it, but it beats spending ten hours cramped in coach on an airplane back home.”

“True.” I stood and looked out over the new horizon of an alien world and forgot that two seconds ago I’d felt like I was dying, my chest squeezed and my head pounding as if it was about to explode. “Wow.”

“Right?” Rachel was already moving toward the water, directing one of the six large warriors to position her lab and sampling equipment that had transported with us. Everyone but Rachel was covered head to toe in the same black and gray space suit with cool, Star Trek inspired helmets. Since Rachel was with medical, her suit was dark green. Rachel had said this was their first visit to the planet, even though they’d been monitoring and testing for weeks. The data had come back that the planet was habitable, meaning the oxygen levels could sustain life—thus, the plants and greenery I could see beyond the beach.

Protocol—Surnen wasn’t the only one who followed the rules—dictated we wear full life support until a crew could confirm we wouldn’t drop dead from some random gas or imbalance. I was used to being in a bikini on a beach, not covered from head to toe.

It was midday, a small reddish-orange disk hovering directly overhead. I couldn’t gauge the temperature, not with the space suit on, but it looked pleasant. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure what a nice day looked like in this place, but to me, it was beautiful. Coral, rose and soft yellows filled the sky, making the clouds glow like cotton candy. The sky wasn’t blue, not like Earth, but the color I’d only ever seen just before the sun rose, when the sky was more pink than blue.

Through the space helmet, I glanced down at the sand, for it was the thick, movable stuff that made my feet sink with every step. Joy rippled through me, and I was shocked to feel tears streaking down my face as longing for this—the water, the sand, the open sky—welled up in me like a tsunami of emotion. I thought I’d made peace with never seeing the ocean again.

I’d been wrong. So, so wrong. Grief at the loss felt like a dormant volcano suddenly about to erupt.

“Mate, are you well?” Surnen’s voice came through my comms, and I shrugged off the melancholy swamping me. I was familiar with the deep-water masks from scuba, but they’d never had communications built in. Hearing someone clearly, as if they were right next to me instead of on a different planet, was cool but unfamiliar.

He must have felt my pain through the collars. Damn things.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.