Retribution (Relic Wars Book 2) by Max Carver

Author:Max Carver [Carver, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-10T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Eric found the shower and locker room for the veterinary center's medical staff. The place was sizable; he supposed it would require a lot of veterinarians and support staff to care for exotic species from so many different planets.

He stripped out of his boots and armor, setting them aside to clean them, and then his blood-soaked coveralls and underclothes, which he tossed into the bathroom trash bin.

The water came out in a slow, warm trickle, and he used a packet of soap-shampoo flakes from a dispenser. He tried to hurry, remembering what the doctor had said about not wasting water.

Footsteps approached as he worked a clump of dried worm gore out of his hair. Eric turned to look; it was a group shower room, and he'd hoped to have no company here.

“We need to talk, little brother,” Abel said, appearing in the archway that led out of the showers to the locker area.

“Does it have to be right this second? Can it wait three minutes?”

“I heard about Caldera. I was worried about you.”

“Sure.”

“Seriously. I was glad to hear you'd survived. How did you manage it?”

“Barely.” Eric hurried to finish as quickly as he could, but there were clots of worm gore sticking to his face. Acid burns had left open holes in his hands and his cheek; he could feel the water flushing through them. “We happened to be underground. The worms probably took out the town above with bombardment. Caldera was just a small mining colony. No military defense at all.”

“But you made it.”

“We were fortunate. And we had some heavy equipment. I even had a high-end exoskeleton, for a while.” Eric missed it now, standing there with his withered legs enclosed in his clunky braces, just a weak human being with a semi-functional body. “And the asteroid-cutter we stole had some pretty heavy defenses. Because of pirates, I guess.”

“I saw the images Bah transmitted,” Abel said. “Impressive ship. It looked like a real beast.”

“It's slow, but tough. But like I said, it was just fortune. Or providence, watching out for us.” Resigned to the fact that his brother wasn't going to leave him alone, Eric turned off the shower and clomped across the tile floor to take a towel from the rack.

“Why are you here, Eric?”

“Because God spoke and the universe came into being.”

“Yeah.” Abel shook his head. “Why are you on this colony? You and your ridiculously big ship and your ragtag crew? Valentine Gate at Caldera led to better options than this. You could have gone to Aspiration. Or Palmyra. Or even turned back at Mobius Gate, and headed for any number of—”

“We're here for the same reason as you and your people. Get samples of those alien worms to that guy everyone says is some kind of genius geneticist. If we'd known he was already working on it, we could have just gone home.”

“Is that where you're planning to go next, then? Home?”

Eric hesitated, thinking of how Iris wanted him to accompany her until they delivered the relic mask safely to the Antikytheran Society.

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