Outlanders 22 Dragon Eye by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Philboyd's eyes blinked rapidly, like the wings of a butterfly in the throes of heatstroke. In fitful jerks, he turned his head, gaping at the transparent dome, the lighted display boards and then at the puddle of Megaera's blood on the floor. When his eyes fixed on her severed head they widened, narrowed, then closed altogether.

The door rumbled shut, and the lock solenoids caught loudly. Philboyd jumped, bleating wordlessly in fear. Trying to avoid tramping through the blood, he nearly collided with Grant, who put out his hands and steadied him.

Philboyd was a tall man, a little over six feet, long limbed and lanky of build. He wore a faded green, zippered coverall. Blond-white hair was swept back from a receding hairline. He wore black-rimmed eyeglasses. The light lenses showed a spiderweb pattern of cracks. His cheeks appeared to be pitted with the sort of scars associated with chronic teenage acne. Staring at Grant, then at Kane and Brigid, Philboyd husked out, "You're alive. All of you are alive. I didn't expect it"

"Yeah," Grant agreed. "We're alive and so are you. And we didn't expect you and now we want to know why you're here. We left you at the mining complex."

Philboyd swallowed hard, his Adam's apple rising and falling. He wiped at the sheen of sweat on his face and winced when his fingers encountered a purple welt on his forehead. "That's where those soldiers of Saladin and his bunch—found me. They must have backtracked the heat emissions of my flitter-gig and—"

He broke off and exclaimed, "My flitter-gig! Where is it?"

"It's on the far side of the Sea of Ice," Kane said. "And it's very broken. Sorry."

Philboyd began blinking again, this time in an obvious effort to hold back tears. The flitter-gig was the astrophysicist's pet name for one of the three of the TAW out of the fleet of ten that had once been part of the Manitius colony's stock. Finding it in a salvage yard, he had repaired and customized it, referring to it as a classic, one of the secret prototypes made back in the 1990s. Grant, Kane and Brigid had used it to fly to the Great Chasm, but it had crash-landed on the edge of the Mare Frigoris.

Addressing the other two people, Brigid said, "I presume you know each other. My name is Baptiste. This is Kane. You've met Grant. You must be Nora and Cleve."

Nora nodded, raking her hair out of her eyes. Cleve grunted. "Yeah, we know each other. Philboyd was our department supervisor on the project, back in the old days when we still pulled pay." His lips twisted beneath his whiskers in a poor attempt at a smirk of superiority. "But we didn't need Phil old boy when we put the DEVIL control nexus back online."

Philboyd spun, eyes gleaming with a wild, incredulous light. He started to say something to Cleve, then shouldered Brigid aside so he could lean over the display consoles. In a strangulated voice, he said, "Oh, my dear God.

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