Synnamon’s gasp drew his attention away from the strange weapon to the girl holding it. Not a girl, he realized quickly, but a full-fledged woman. More than that too, he supposed, given that she had a hardened look to her that spoke of both incredible physical and mental conditioning.
“Point that rifle at me and you’ll find out just how fast an arrow is,” she said.
Jeremy nodded, lowering the rifle slowly then slinging it behind his back as further proof he had no intentions of crossing her. The muscles in her body were flexed holding the bowstring taut. Each careful step she took showed muscles moving beneath her skin, muscles that Jeremy doubted he even had. She wasn’t grossly large by any stretch, just lean and very powerful looking. He found himself intimidated even as a small part of him was aroused.
“Are you one of the crash survivors?” Synnamon asked. The question shook Jeremy out of the fugue of admiration he’d fallen into.
“What gave it away?” She smirked.
“The authentic leather outfit.” It was authentic, Jeremy realized with a start. He’d been so focused on how well built the woman was he’d almost failed to realize her clothing — probably because she had so little of it. Just a short leather skirt, some sandals or boots that were tied just below her knees, and a loose fitting leather vest with laces in the front displaying her midriff and cleavage. Aside from that she had her bow, a leather sack across her back with more arrows in it, a knife tucked into one boot, and another knife tied to her waist.
She relaxed the tension on the string but left the arrow nocked. Glancing past them towards the clearing and the destroyed settlement she gave a brief nod. “I saw what happened. You pissed off a Megasaur. Biggest meat eater we’ve seen around here so far.”
“Megasaur? Like a dinosaur?” Jeremy blurted out.
She shrugged. “None of us know, but it sounds like the kind of stuff we’d heard about when Earth was still young and a nice place to live.”
“Who are you? Where are you from?” Dr. Rice asked
“I’m Kira. Through those mountains in a valley. Smaller animals there, but it’s jungle and not any safer. We set up camp inland from where we crashed and it turned out to be as good a place as anywhere.” She paused. “We can keep playing this question and answer game or we can get somewhere safer. I don’t know where the Megasaur went, it just kind of disappeared. Maybe your Marines hurt it enough that it died. There’ll be other predators sure to come. Scavengers mostly, but no less deadly.”
“Is there any place safe?” Jeremy asked. He glanced around, wondering if maybe the monster that had attacked them really was dead. It had seemed so large and so terrifying he wasn’t sure it could be killed.
“Safe? No, but you’ve been here long enough to feel the changes.”
“Changes?” Jeremy asked. He and Synnamon glanced at each other. He was glad to see she was as confused as he was.
“You feel better, don’t you? Sleep less, see clearer, things are easier to hear or smell? Not getting as tired from working as you used to? Injuries healing faster, even old scars and aches disappearing?”
Synnamon gasped. Jeremy glanced at her, then paused to consider Kira’s words. He’d just run a mile or so from the colony to where they were resting and he hadn’t felt winded at all. He looked down at himself and noticed, for the first time, that his own arms looked stronger than they had before. Maybe not bigger, but better defined.
“My foot doesn’t hurt as much as it did,” Synnamon said. She reached out to gently touch it, then sucked in some air quickly. “Okay, still broken though.”
Kira came forward and knelt down on one knee in front of her. Jeremy watched her take Synnamon’s foot in her hands and gently manipulate it. His boss hissed at the pain but otherwise stayed silent. He looked up just enough to feel his own breath catch in his throat. Kira’s very short skirt had risen up on her forward leg and showed an extremely inappropriate amount of skin. Not quite enough, from his angle. He considered kneeling down to offer some help in hopes of improving his line of sight.
Jeremy shifted nervously on his feet, glancing around quickly, then looked back in hopes of fulfilling his sudden voyeuristic desires. Kira shook her head and glanced up at Dr. Rice. “A break’s a break. This place is incredible, but it’s not magic.”
She nodded and Kira rose up, then offered her hand to her to help her to her feet. Synnamon rose up, favoring her good leg, and turned quickly to grab on to Jeremy to help her keep her balance. “Thank you. I’d like to come with you, but I need to go back. I have projects I need to see. Supplies maybe — that Megasaur can’t have destroyed everything. And survivors, there must be other survivors! Corporal Kate, she was here with us, did you see her? She went to look for others-“
“Lance Corporal Kate.” He felt annoyed at himself even as he corrected her. Did it really matter whether she had the right rank or not? It mattered to Fiona, he supposed, and because Fiona had trusted him and become his friend, it mattered to him. “And I agree, there must be supplies we can take. We need to contact the Explorer, let them know what happened. They can send down help. You guys can be rescued!”
Kira’s eyes narrowed. She looked up at the sky, squinting to protect them from the bright light. “We need to be quick. What are your names? We’ll have to carry her. And whatever happens, you do what I tell you to, okay?”
Jeremy and Synnamon looked at each other before returning their gaze to her. They nodded. “I’m Jeremy, this is Synnamon.”
“Synnamon?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes.” Jeremy failed to fight the smirk that curled his lip up. Kira’s tone had the same implication that had entered his own thoughts when he’d first met Dr. Rice.
“Spicy, I like it,” Kira said. She winked at the wounded doctor and stepped past them to stare across the grassy plane. “Think you can carry her, Jeremy?”
Jeremy nodded. He wasn’t sure how, but now that Kira had brought attention to how much better he felt, it seemed like nothing was impossible. “Climb on my back.”
“Oh, and one more thing,” Kira said. She turned her head to stare at them. He realized Kira was looking at him specifically even as Synnamon was wrapping her arms around his neck and preparing to wrap her legs around his waist. “The longer you’re here the more refined things get. Take me, I can smell things you wouldn’t imagine. I know Dr. Rice is having her cycle right now, for example. And I can even smell pheromones. You know, physical signs of emotions like fear or happiness or… lust.”
Chapter 11
Jeremy’s back ached and his lungs felt like he’d tried breathing on the sun by the time they reached the ruins. He let Synnamon climb down and, after a staggering step, collapsed. Groaning, he pulled himself into a sitting position and gasped for several long moments.
“You know how to make a lady feel good about her weight,” Dr. Rice quipped.
He thought about giving her finger, then decided against it. There was too much at stake and raising his arm would take too much effort. Instead he shook his head and offered a grunt.
“You’ve been eating rations, haven’t you?” Kira asked.
Jeremy grunted again. He knew he couldn’t speak coherently so he didn’t want to bother trying. Synammon came to his rescue. “Yes, why? We’ve been running tests on the local flora and fauna and it seems safe, but there are many unidentified compounds in it. I-”
“It changes you,” Kira interrupted. “Something about this place gets inside of you and makes you different. Better. More alive. The water seems to do the most, but maybe that’s because water’s in everything and it passes through our bodies the fastest.” She shrugged. “Whatever it is, once you start you can’t stop.”
“It’s an addiction?” Jeremy looked up to see the alarmed look on Dr. Rice’s face after she asked her question.
“Sort of,” Kira said. She looked around, studying them compound, then turned back to them. “I don’t know what it is or how it works, I just know how I feel. That and after we saved some other people who crashed after we did, they brought a bunch of their food from their ship. Some of us tried it and it made us sick. Everything on this planet is built to survive, even the planet itself.”