Home > Alien Mercenary's Destiny(3)

Alien Mercenary's Destiny(3)
Author: Mina Carter

She shoved him off her, and he flopped lifelessly to the ground. Dead then. Thank vaark. Rolling to her feet, she was across the dimly lit corridor in a heartbeat. The last Krynassis had the mercenary pinned up against the wall, fist pulled back to deliver the final blow. She winced at the state the Lathar was in. Even if the scale-head didn’t finish him off, she doubted he’d last long. He was done for.

“How about you pick on someone your own size, asshole?” she snarled, lashing out before the clutch fighter could launch the blow.

Her claws sliced up and under, ravaging the soft flesh on the underside of his wrist and forearm. He hadn’t even had time to raise scales. His howl of pain filled the corridor as he dropped his victim and turned on her. The arm with the sliced wrist was useless, so he lashed out with the other and tried to force her back. But she was having none of it. Even bloody and bruised, she was still more than a match for him.

“Not so much fun when it’s one on one. Is it?” she demanded, circling him like the predator she was. Out of the corner of her eye, the mercenary slid to a little heap at the bottom of the wall.

The scale-head just hissed in rage and charged her. No tactics, just brute force. Waiting until the last moment, she stepped to the side and clotheslined him with a hard, armored arm. He went down like a sack of potatoes, a look of stunned astonishment on his face as he scrabbled at the ruins of his throat. The flesh was punctured and mangled, huge holes pouring blood onto the sands below.

Surprised, Zad looked at her arm. Her scale armor was still raised, but where the scales had been smooth before, now they weren’t. The battle spikes of a queen decorated the ridges, gobbets of flesh from the dying scale-head at her feet still impaled.

The only time a female—no a queen—displayed spikes was when she met a male who was compatible as a consort. And with a consort at her side, a queen’s power was magnified a hundred-fold. She blinked and looked at the Lathar bleeding out against the wall. He was a consort?

“Vaark, no you fucking don’t. You will not die on me. You hear me?” she murmured, slamming her hands down over the worst of his wounds as she shouted, hoping to get the attention of other fighters in the corridors. “Hey! Some help here!”

 

 

2

 

 

“Seriously, I’m not even sure how he’s still alive. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

Being a doctor himself, albeit not from the medical profession, Eric Archer knew the tones of a fellow professional when he heard one, and this one sounded worried.

“Is there anything you can do for him? Any… treatment? Anything that’ll give him a chance?”

Another voice, male again, asked the question. Must be family, Eric decided, not bothering to open his eyes. It didn’t seem important to him at the moment, not when he was floating in a contented dark sea free from pain.

There would be pain. He knew that and he was prepared for it. He’d chosen this surgery to rid him of needing glasses, but he was well aware that there would be discomfort. The doctors had advised him against having both eyes done at the same time, but that was irrelevant. His intellect was superior, and he could deal with a little discomfort. Mind over matter and all that, and, if he did say so himself, his mind was definitely above average. After all, not many of his contemporaries had triple specialties like he did.

But there was no sense in poking the bear before he had to. The longer he could lie here, content as he listened to the doctors discuss another patient, was time he didn’t have to deal with any… unpleasantness.

Although, hell, the man’s surgery must have gone really wrong for them to be discussing experimental treatments to give him a chance. As far as he knew Ashfield Clinic only dealt in cosmetic surgeries. So what had happened… had the patient suffered some kind of reaction to an implant or to the anesthesia? It was the only thing he could think of.

“There is one. A retro-gene therapy…” The doctor’s voice rang with wariness. “It’s dangerous but it might give him a chance.”

“Do it,” the other guy ordered.

His voice sounded familiar but Eric couldn’t figure out why. He’d traveled to the clinic so he wouldn’t meet anyone he knew. His contemporaries would realize he’d had work done, but that was very different from them actually seeing him in a hospital gown with his ass out. Seeing him weak.

“I’m not telling his sister we let him die on the table. Do what you need to.”

Oh man, the poor guy… Eric’s sympathy for his fellow patient scattered as the comforting darkness rose up once more to claim him. He surrendered to it. When he woke up, his eyes would be fixed and he could get back to work.

 

 

Eric woke up in the Sprite’s tiny medical bay.

It wasn’t like the labs he was used to. For one, it was much smaller, even though it had two full medical beds and an auto-unit crammed into the small space. It also had the scorch marks from where Zero and Talent had apparently blown it up a couple of weeks ago.

He frowned as he looked at the tiled ceiling. He knew all that, remembered being told about the explosion, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember why he was in here. The last thing he remembered was the attack on the pits. He… and he gasped as he tried to sit upright.

“Hey, handsome,” a soft feminine voice said as a hand on his shoulder pinned him into place. “You might want to stay lying down. You were in a fight. Took some real nasty injuries.”

“I was…” he asked in confusion as he looked up into the face of an angel.

The woman bending over him was beautiful. Tall and dark haired with haunting features, he took one look at her and couldn’t look away.

“You were.” She smiled.

“That was you. Wasn’t it?” he asked in a whisper, his voice rough as though he hadn’t used it for a while. “The screams I heard.”

She smiled that mysterious half smile again. “Yes. And you came to my rescue. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he muttered, exhaustion washing over him.

He should stay awake, ask her name… talk to Talent and find out what was wrong with him, but instead his head dropped back to the pillow and his eyes fluttered closed.

The last thing he remembered as the darkness closed in was the gentle brush of her fingers over his cheek and her soft voice in his ear.

“I’ll be here when you wake up, Eric.”

The trouble was, he had absolutely no idea who she was.

 

 

The next time Eric woke up, Talent was shining a light into his eyes.

“What the fuck?” he exclaimed, squinting as he pushed the guy’s hand away. “Seriously? All this advanced medical technology and you have to half blind me?”

The medic moved back, watching him with an implacable expression that must have been genetically bred into doctors or something.

“I was checking your pupil reaction,” he explained, but Eric waved him off.

“Yes, yes, I get the theory. Can’t you just scan me or something?” he grumbled.

“Why would I do that when a simple test would suffice?” Talent raised an eyebrow but snapped the penlight off and slid it away in a pocket. Like the rest of the Warborne, he wore a tactical rig rather than the white coat humans were used to seeing on their doctors. “It doesn’t matter, though. I can see your cognitive function is just fine.”

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