Chapter Three

The following morning, day three of their planetfall, Rachel was sitting at the desk in her cabin, taking advantage of the ship’s shielding to transcribe her notes from the previous day into her personal computer while drinking coffee and munching on the sorry excuse for a fruit muffin that she’d snagged from the mess hall earlier. She’d gone there intending to sit down to a hot breakfast, only to find her shipmates gathered around one of the big tables, poring over a paper map and making plans for the new day’s exploration…without her. An unexpected pang of loneliness had hit her like a fist to the gut, and her hunger had evaporated. Not wanting anyone to notice, she’d grabbed the muffin and coffee as if that had been her purpose all along, and then she’d returned to her cabin to work.

She’d just finished typing her notes and was reading them over to make certain she hadn’t missed anything, when the intercom came to life and Ripper’s dulcet tones ordered her to the mess hall for the day’s briefing. She stared at the small speaker over her bed, half convinced she’d misheard. If there’d been briefings on the previous days, she’d never been included.

“What the hell does she want now?” Rachel muttered. She considered ignoring the order altogether, but knowing Ripper, she’d just keep squawking until Rachel showed up. It was easier simply to get it out of the way.

She saved her notes and sent a copy off to her home computer as a backup. It wouldn’t go anywhere as long as they remained on the planet, but the message packet would transmit at the first beacon they encountered after leaving, whether she was onboard or not. She frowned. Of course, she’d be onboard when they left Harp. Why wouldn’t she be?

Shaking away the odd thought, she stood and checked her appearance in the mirror, tucked her notebook into her pocket, and headed for the mess hall.

This should be fun.

“About time you got here, Fortier. When I give an order, I expect a prompt response.”

Rachel was tempted to point out that she was not, in fact, in Ripper’s chain of command. But it wasn’t worth the argument, so she simply gave her a blank look and took a seat at the table, smiling her thanks at the crew members who scooted over to make room for her.

Ripper scowled at her. “Time to earn your pay, Fortier. We’re going to bag one of those big cats today, and you’re coming with us.”

The bottom dropped out of Rachel’s stomach. “Bag a cat,” she repeated. “Dr. Wolfrum’s briefing indicated that the specific mission of this expedition was to study the cats in place. That means we tranq and tag, take some baseline readings, and then release.” Though, even as she spoke the words, she knew that wasn’t what they meant to do.

“Have you seen those fuckers?” one of guys demanded. His name was Frank White, and he was the one member of the crew—apart from Ripper—who’d been hostile to her from the very beginning. She only knew his name because it was stitched above the pocket on his shirt, as if he needed the reminder. None of the other guys had that kind of identifier.

She gave him a curious look. “I did see one, actually. Up close and personal. He’s a beautiful animal.”

White snorted. “Yeah, he’ll make a beautiful fucking rug.”

“You’re planning on killing him?” she asked calmly, although she was feeling anything but calm.

“Of course not,” Ripper snapped, giving White a shut-the-fuck-up glare. “These animals are far too valuable to kill.”

Rachel shifted her gaze to the commander. Too valuable. She was right about that. A cat like the one she’d seen yesterday could be sold for a small fortune to private collectors and zoos. But she wasn’t on this mission to capture and sell animals, and that sure as hell wasn’t what Wolfrum had told her was going to happen. And where the fuck was Wolfrum anyway? “Have you heard from Dr. Wolfrum yet?” she asked quietly. “Will he be joining us on this hunt?”

“Wolfrum’s scouting out more locations for us. These cats live in family groupings, but they’re hard to pin down.” Ripper didn’t meet her eyes, focusing instead on the computer in front of her.

Rachel’s thoughts were spinning like crazy, trying to come up with some way of derailing this obscene venture that they expected her to take part in. Were they out of their minds? And was Ripper telling the truth about Wolfrum knowing this was a hunt? If so, he was violating every tenet of the scientific method. He’d be kicked out of the Science Academy for this, stripped of his honors. Was that why he was keeping his distance? Plausible deniability? Something she wouldn’t have if she went along with this farce. She swallowed hard, trying not to throw up. This was why Wolfrum, with all of his honors and prestige, had recruited her so completely out of the blue—without knowing her, without a single prior conversation. Her presence gave the expedition the imprimatur of academia, not only because of her, but because of her family’s academic connections. Her parents’ and grandparents’ names carried significant weight in scientific circles, and Rachel had fallen right into his scheme.

Now she had to get out of it somehow. She would not be party to the capture of these spectacular animals, to caging them up and putting them on display. The very idea was sickening—to take them away from this endless forest, drag them halfway across the galaxy, and shove them into an enclosure a tiny fraction of the place where they’d been born. Not to mention the loss of their family group. They probably wouldn’t survive a year.

But then a new, horrible, thought occurred to Rachel, making her even sicker. They wouldn’t need the original animals to survive. They could simply use them to breed new ones who’d never know anything but captivity.

This couldn’t be permitted to happen. It wouldn’t be. Not on her watch.

“How many animals do you plan on taking?” she inquired, her cool exterior giving away none of her thoughts.

“Just one today.” Ripper eyed her carefully, clearly having expected more of a protest. “There’s a big golden beast that’s been following us around. He keeps his distance, and I suspect that when we do see him, it’s only because he lets us. But we can deal with that.”

Rachel tilted her head. “How?”

Frank White barked a laugh. “You’ll see, princess.”

She raised her eyes to study his face. He was a handsome man, but there was a cruel edge to his smile that gave his words an ominous quality.

“When do we leave?”

“Fifteen minutes. We rally at the belly hatch.”

Rachel stood. “I’ll be there.” It didn’t take her long to get ready once she got back to her cabin. She’d already checked and restocked her backpack the night before, determined to go out again today and not to let that big cat scare her away this time. Though for all his growling, she’d never gotten a sense of real danger from him. That might be a case of wishful thinking on her part, but she trusted her instincts. Unfortunately, it no longer brought her any comfort. She was more afraid for the cat than of him, worried that his curiosity could be the thing that got him caught if he interacted with her shipmates the same way he had with her.

Shipmates. What a joke. She had nothing in common with Ripper and her gang. She’d known all along that they weren’t researchers, but she hadn’t expected this.

A sudden, loud banging on her door jerked her to her feet.

“Fortier, get your ass in gear.” Ripper. Of course.

Rachel did a final check of her weapons then shouldered her pack and headed out, determined to sabotage this hunt, no matter what it cost her.

…

Aidan watched from his position high above the ship as the ramp came down and the soldiers appeared for their daily march. Their actions still puzzled him. They hadn’t done anything but stomp around on the previous two days. Unlike the woman, there’d been no notebooks, no photographs, and no real curiosity, either. In fact, they hadn’t seemed to pay much attention to their surroundings at all. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought they were still trying to adapt to the gravity and atmosphere of a new planet, except that Harp’s gravity and atmosphere were almost identical to that of Earth.

So what was their purpose on Harp? There had to be one. They were far too disciplined and orderly to engage in repeated, daily marches for no reason. Were they waiting for allies to arrive? More invaders planning to sneak onto the planet? There were those among the United Earth Fleet who’d been unhappy with the decision to designate Harp a closed planet. Was this new invasion the beginning of a takeover by rebellious elements of the fleet?

Aidan stirred restlessly. He needed to get a message to Rhodry back in the capital, but he couldn’t leave yet. Not until he had more information.

The last of the soldiers marched down the ramp, but it didn’t close as it had on the previous days. Instead, the woman appeared, trailing behind the others and looking unhappy to be there. She had her weapons and her backpack with her as before, but though she was with the group, it was clear that she wasn’t with them.

The ramp began to close almost before she took the final step to the ground. The sudden movement surprised her, and she cast an angry look at the female in command of the soldiers. That one curled her lip, snapped out an order, and then turned and walked away without waiting for a response. Aidan’s dark-haired lovely watched her go, and for a minute he thought she was staying behind again, but then she settled her pack more securely on her back and hurried after the others.

He found it all very curious, but at least today he wouldn’t have to choose between protecting the woman or following the soldiers. Moving in absolute silence, he turned to follow the group, sticking to the treetops, invisible from the ground. The smaller animals in the forest around him barely noted his passage. They knew he wasn’t hunting, or at least not hunting them, which was all they cared about. So there was no telltale reaction from them to give away his position as he crept along the crisscrossed branches high above, his path much clearer than the one his prey had to take on the ground.

The soldiers followed the same pattern as previous days, marching in a near straight line across the clearing from where their ship had landed, heading for the deeper forest on the other side. Aidan swallowed a laugh when he heard one of the men complain about the fact that they were forced to break a new trail “every damned day,” because the Green responded so quickly to the damage they caused with their blundering ways. And it was true. There should have been the beginnings of a beaten down path through the long grasses after two days of the Earthers coming and going over the same track, but it took much longer than that for a trail to form on Harp.

He took note of the soldiers’ trajectory and raced ahead, so he was waiting when they reentered the forest. If they followed their previous pattern, they’d stop just short of the tree line for a water break. When they did, Aidan watched, feeling a bit smug, but he was much more interested in the fact that the dark-haired woman rested apart from the others. She didn’t huddle outside the tree line, either, but walked in among the thick trunks, her fingers trailing over the bark and coming perilously close to a large insect whose hard shell blended into the bark and was covered in a very dangerous fuzz. Some people died from a simple touch. Others only developed a stinging and bloody rash, but everyone was affected to some degree. She seemed to anticipate the danger, however, lifting her hand a moment before she would have touched the insect, and he saw that she wore those thin gloves again. Even still, she let her fingers skim just above the waxy white flowers of a twisting vine, before walking a few more steps to sit on a fallen log, where she pulled out her canteen and took a long draught.

Aidan’s attention skipped back to the soldiers when they stood and checked their gear, preparing to continue their march. They stowed canteens, checked straps, and…he frowned. What were they—?

Before he could finish the thought, the forest had become a war zone, as every soldier pulled an old-style automatic weapon and began firing.

…

Rachel screamed, not understanding what was happening. She dropped to the ground and looked around wildly, searching for the threat that had triggered such a violent reaction, some horrible beast bearing down on them in unstoppable fury. But there was nothing. It was almost as if Ripper’s gang was simply shooting up the forest for kicks. But she didn’t believe it. Ripper was much too by-the-book, and her people too disciplined, to do something like that. But then, what were they doing? And where the hell did they get those weapons?

Her first instinct was to jump up and demand that they stop shooting. But some instinct—or maybe it was her growing understanding of the kind of people they were—had her hugging the ground, her ears covered as she yelled at them to stop. Their weapons were projectile, and so didn’t interact with the planet’s magnetic field, but that didn’t make them any less deadly. They were sub-machine guns, loaded with huge drum magazines, firing round after round, tearing up the forest and killing who knew how many animals.

She noticed Ripper standing only a few feet away, not firing, but staring up at the treetops and occasionally directing the men’s fire in a certain direction. Crouching low to the ground, Rachel ran over and kicked out, plowing a foot into the commander’s thigh and knocking her to one knee.

“You have to stop this!” she screamed over the sound of automatic fire. “They’re killing everything in sight.”

Ripper’s face was only inches away, distorted in rage at Rachel’s attack. She raised one arm and backhanded Rachel with the full force of her muscular body, throwing Rachel against the same log she’d been sitting on before everything went to hell. She lay there, struggling to catch her breath, staring in horror at the devastation, and convinced she was never going to make it back to the ship alive. She only hoped her final message got through to her family so that her death would have served some purpose.

Dark spots danced in front of her eyes, and she struggled to stay conscious. If they didn’t kill her outright, they’d leave her here for the scavengers, maybe even that big cat she’d seen. But, no, she knew better than that. He was an alpha predator, maybe even the top of the food chain on Harp. Scavenging was beneath him.

As if she’d conjured him from her thoughts, an enormous roar shook the forest, rattling the trees and shocking even Ripper and her men into stillness. But only for a moment, as a golden blur flew from out of nowhere, an avenging demon with raking claws and a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth. He swiped at the first man as he flew by, breaking his neck with a giant paw, before grabbing a second man and closing those fearsome teeth over the back of his neck, snapping his spine with an audible crunch.

The soldiers all turned their guns on him, but he was already gone, swinging up into the trees with incredible speed, only to leap down and attack a third man before the soldiers were even aware of what he was doing. The man went down screaming, his arm torn nearly off and his neck ripped open, pumping arterial blood onto the green forest floor.

Everyone was shouting now, hoarse cries of terror and fury as they spun about, searching for the ravening beast. They were spraying ammo wildly, and yet…

For all the gunfire and all the terrified shouts, there was a purpose to what the surviving shooters were doing. They weren’t shooting into the forest any longer, not even trying to track the giant cat. Instead, they were firing almost straight up, almost as if they were afraid to hit him.

Rachel saw the danger and shouted a warning, hoping the beast would understand and flee before it was too late. But he couldn’t hear her above the frantic gunfire, or maybe he didn’t understand human words.

The cat attacked again, appearing from out of nowhere, to land on Ripper’s back, bearing her to the ground with his weight, closing his teeth over her head and leaping back into the trees, dragging her with him as if she weighed nothing at all. But he never made it. Alone, he was nearly invisible, a ghost among the branches. With Ripper’s body in tow, he was too visible and almost all of Ripper’s surviving men abruptly switched weapons, dropping their deadly automatics and pulling tranquilizer guns, all targeting the great golden beast. Dart after dart struck the giant cat, and Rachel recognized the darts they were using. They were specially made, designed for only the biggest and most dangerous animals.

The great cat seemed to recognize the danger at last. It dropped Ripper’s body and leaped for the highest branches, but the tranqs had already gone to work, dulling his senses and slowing his reaction times, making his formerly graceful movements awkward and sluggish. He froze for a single, long moment, one paw reaching for the next branch, and then he fell.

Rachel cried out as the beautiful creature crashed bonelessly from branch after branch, finally falling with a heavy thump onto the forest floor. Grabbing her backpack, she scrambled to his side, no longer worried about whether Ripper’s men wanted to kill her. The cat would die if she didn’t do something quickly. The overdose of heavy-duty tranquilizer would shut down his heart, or, with him lying face down the way he was, his own weight would crush his lungs and he’d suffocate.

She knelt next to him and began yanking the darts out of his hide, her anger growing with each one she pulled. They’d clearly wanted the animal alive—why else use tranqs instead of bullets? But they’d used so many that he might die anyway.

“Help me,” she demanded, struggling to roll the heavy animal onto his side.

“Fuck that,” one of the men growled.

“He’ll die if I don’t move him, and I don’t think you want that,” she snapped, still yanking darts as she shoved her shoulder under the cat and tried get him onto his side.

“Do it,” a rough voice ordered. She looked up to see Frank White giving her a hard stare. “He’s worth nothing to us dead.”

Rachel wanted to be shocked, but she wasn’t. Once she’d recognized Wolfrum’s deceit for what it was, she’d lost the ability to be shocked by anything about this mission.

One of the men dropped to his knees next to her, while two others each grabbed one of the cat’s legs on the left side. One of them gave a count and they all pushed and pulled in unison, turning the cat onto its side.

“You’d better stop that fucking animal from dying, Fortier,” White growled. “He’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

Rachel nodded wordlessly. Like she needed him to tell her that.

She reached into her backpack for a bottle of water. Opening it, she poured some into the cat’s mouth, to keep his tongue and gums moist. Next, she pulled out every syringe in her stash, and filled them to the brim with antidote for the tranq. She needed to counteract the effects right away, before—

“What are you doing?” White demanded.

She glanced up at him. “You’ve overdosed him. He’ll die if I don’t counteract the tranquilizer.”

“Fuck that. He killed three of my men without breaking a sweat, and we might still lose Ripper. I don’t want him coming around until he’s secured onboard.”

She stared at him then. Secured onboard? They must have prepared for this. Of course, they had. Which meant there was a cage, maybe more than one, designed to hold this very powerful animal. No wonder they’d kept her on the margins of the shipboard routines. They hadn’t wanted her to see evidence of their true plans.

“Do you want him dead?” she asked flatly.

White glared at her, his mouth pinched tight with anger and maybe a little fear. “Keep him alive, but under. And remember, you’ll be the first one he kills if he comes to.”

She didn’t bother to respond, but she put half the loaded syringes back into her pack. She’d need them later, because she had no intention of permitting them to leave Harp with this animal in a cage. She was going to do everything in her power to see to it that Wolfrum’s hunters were shut down cold. No more animals were going to be captured on Harp, even if she had to hike to the city on her own to be sure the proper authorities knew what was going on.

Unfortunately, her best chance of achieving all of that was to go along for now.

She stroked a hand over the cat’s silky, golden fur, and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “I’m going to get you out of this, baby. Don’t you worry.”