The flickering light turns out to be a fire blazing in a clearing and she makes out two shadows huddled in front of it. As she breaks into the clearing, Porter and
Sanchez turn, their faces, lit garishly like wicked elves. Their dull eyes grow lustful and they rise to their feet with churlish grins. They lope toward her as she approaches them, not breaking her stride.
Genevieve cracks her whip and the men halt in brief hesitation. Porter grunts out, “Look at those fucking tits, Sanchez! Take her, man! Suck ‘em. Bite those juicy nipples off!”
Drooling, Sanchez catapults himself at her and she spreads her arms out in invitation. He pushes his face into the deep cleavage of her huge breasts then slobbers on her right breast, teeth clamping painfully, biting hard. She flicks her whip. It snaps around his legs like the tendril of a creeper and she wrenches him off his feet with a quick motion of her wrist. He yelps, letting go of her bleeding nipple, and falls on his butt. She steps on his neck with her foot. He stares at her, eyes bulging, and she pushes down hard, strangling him mercilessly.
Porter charges her with a knife. She stomps hard on Sanchez, hearing a bone-wrenching crack, and leaps in the air like a cat, slicing out with her leg. It strikes Porter’s face and he falls backwards onto his rump with a grunt of surprise. His eyes
widen as she slithers over to him and leans over his crotch. She rips his shorts open and fondles his balls.
He sucks in his breath and growls victoriously. “Suck it!” he commands. “Suck my big fucker, cunt!”
She obliges, taking his dripping penis in her mouth. Porter sighs in ecstasy and shudders. He drives his slimy penis down her throat in violent thrusts then sends a blaze of pain down her back with the first cut of his knife.
Sparks of white light strobe in front of her eyes. She bites down hard, through flesh and bone, to his bellow of pain. Blood running down her chin, she spits out the penis she’s bitten right off, seizes the knife clutched in his shaking hand and drives it into his chest
—
Bragg shook her violently by the shoulder and she jerked awake. “Dubois! Watch your driving!” They’d strayed off course and had dipped awfully close to the tops of the
vishnas
.
Genevieve wiped away the sweat dripping into her eyes and stabbed corrections to her settings. The ship soared up back on course. She slouched back and sullenly watched the dawn break ahead as the
Chimera
sped toward the
Atlantis II
.
“Jesus,” Bragg muttered. “Stay awake, Dubois.”
What a nightmare! She shook her head to clear it from the creepy dream and focused on her task. Determined to go through with the desperate plan she’d conceived over hours of flight, Genevieve went over every option again. She was convinced that she’d sought out every angle and kept arriving at the same conclusion. There was no other way. She couldn’t let Bragg reach the ancient Atlantean ship. If her plan was successful, the crystals might survive but if they were destroyed, so be it
—
at least Bragg wouldn’t get them. He’d be dead. Like her.
Checking telemetry, she estimated they were about fifty kilometres from the ancient ship and closing in fast. Bragg stopped pacing the bridge and finally succumbed to exhaustion and boredom. He settled in one of the chairs and was snoring within minutes. It was the moment she’d been waiting for because it gave her the chance to do more than pilot the ship. Leaving the controls on automatic, Genevieve quietly rose from her chair and padded silently to the engineering console beside her. She voided the fuel transfer grids, then reconfigured and locked the plasma coils of the impeller engines.
Almost instantly, the ship jolted and lurched. She rushed back to her chair as Bragg practically fell off his and jerked awake.
“What the Hell!” He yelled. Genevieve smiled savagely, not bothering to turn. They’d reached the point of no return. The crash was inevitable. Bragg lunged for her and seized her arm, forcing her to turn around. “What’s going on?” he shrieked in a panicked voice.
She gave him an evil grin. “We’re crashing, that’s what.”
“Well, do something!”
She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. The jungle rushed toward them. She didn’t even brace for the impact.
“Shit!” Bragg scrambled to a chair and fumbled with his crash-webbing.
A terrific jar threw Genevieve off her chair. A thunderous boom and the squeal of tearing metal pounded her ears. She was flung this way and that like a rag doll, grunting with each hard impact. Then her head smacked into something and she blacked out.
Chapter Twenty-Three
She awoke to her own moaning. Her whole body ached from having been thrown about the
Chimera
and colliding into metalloid structures as the ship bounced on the ground. She lay on the floor, face down, in a silence that told her that the ship had done its deed. They’d crashed and somehow, miraculously, she wasn’t dead. In fact, she thought as she inspected herself, she was only minimally injured. Mostly bruises, she figured, except for one injury. Again, it was her leg. The earlier gash had ripped open. Blood had soaked her flight suit through a large tear. Her ankle throbbed and she thought she might have sprained it. She tasted and smelled blood in the back of her throat as it trickled out of her nose and down her throat from having been struck in the face as she was thrown about.
God! If she’d survived—she spun around and a large hand jerked her the other way. She sucked in air. Bragg.
“Looking for me?” he roared, then gruffly lifted her onto her feet, squeezing her like a vice. “You fucking stupid bitch!” He struck her several times on the head and shook her. When he finally stopped, leaving her ears ringing, he growled, “I woke up long before you did, flygirl. But I was snug in the crash webbing… unlike you. You’re a mess.” She knew her face was covered in blood from her nosebleed. But, unlike her, he seemed uninjured. Then she noticed a long gash on his left leg that bled onto his hiking boot.
“That was a very dumb thing you did, Dubois,” he snarled. “You’re going to pay for it, damn it. But right now we have a journey to take. I’ve already checked the crystals. They’re fine, no thanks to your precious little stunt.” He shook her violently and she gasped involuntarily. “I’ve got the flame crystal and what we need to run the
Atlantis II
in my backpack. We’re only half a day’s walk from it. So here’s the plan, flygirl, and listen up. Once we get there, you get the alien ship going and this time if you try any stunts, I’ll shoot your pretty little face right off. You’ll fly us to the Great Crystal where we’ll load it in and pick up Sanchez and Porter, who have hopefully survived the night.” He waggled his finger at her. “If you do everything right, I might let you live. You can do what you want on this shithouse of a planet with these naked savages. But if you do one thing wrong…” he let the rest trail off suggestively, permitting her to imagine the possibilities. “Now, let’s go!”
He pushed her gruffly down the hallway to the exit and opened the hatch. A hot wind, carrying with it the moist scent of
vishna
, howled into their faces. Shifting iridescent yellow and green vegetation shuddered in the clearing carved out by the
Chimera
. Genevieve limped out, her hair tossing in the wind. She grabbed her hair in her hand to keep it from whipping into her face and looked up. Clouds the colour of carbon scudded overhead. A storm was brewing.
Bragg checked his pocket GPS then pointed brusquely to his right. “That way. About ten kilometres.” He pushed her and followed, ignoring her limp.
Before she made it out of the clearing, the storm clouds blocked the sun and unleashed large raindrops that instantly soaked them. A strong gust stirred up loose vegetation and stung her face with missals of rain. The wind and rain lashed at the canopy above and roared on the vegetation. Genevieve hastened into the dark shelter of the jungle. Beneath the canopy the ground steamed and a mist rose like wisps of low cloud. The constant drumming of the rain on the trees drowned out most of the other jungle sounds. It took awhile but eventually the rain penetrated the jungle canopy and sheets of water fell on them.
“Shit!” Bragg complained, face dripping. “It’s a fucking monsoon.”
They pressed on through tangles of coiling root and vine on the slippery jungle floor. She heard Bragg struggling behind her. He seized in shallow breaths between shudders. The
vishna
was taking its toll, she thought, feeling her own periodic tremors. The rain probably didn’t help, she reflected. It likely brought down and stirred up the potent
vishna
perfumes in the canopy and on the ground. This was likely his first experience with the
vishna
essence and she had no idea how he would react.
Her leg flamed with every step. To make matters worse, they were descending a fairly steep ravine into more lowland. When they’d reached the valley floor that stank like a dead skunk she found herself walking in standing water. She confirmed her suspicion by spotting the occasional swamp palm.
But, aside from a few young swamp palms, saplings and draping lianas, the area was eerily devoid of lower canopy trees. Only the enormously girthed
vishnas
occupied this area, like great columns in a gloomy cathedral. It was as though a fire had swept through recently, taking out all but the thick-barked
vishna
trees. Without realizing it, she slowed her pace and swallowed with discomfort.
“Come on!” Bragg caught up and pushed her forward.
She stumbled ahead, then caught sight of the telltale flash of blue, the blue of the genital tree. But, oh, God! Genevieve halted with a sharp inhale and brought her hands to her mouth. The tree had ensnared a victim, Irena!
Genevieve’s face tightened and her nose flared as she stared at what was left of the naked archaeologist. Every orifice on her shriveled body leaked dried black blood. She hung stiff and quite dead, with eyes fixed open, in her most preferred sexual position, mouth sucking one “cock” and her vagina wrapped in a death embrace around the other.
“Jesus shit!” Bragg spat out in disgust. “She died fucking some alien plant! Jeeesus! This place is like Hell!”
Genevieve pondered how Irena had realized her fantasy. She’d been royally fucked by a blue alien with two penises. Only it wasn’t a man and turned out to be more than a match for her. Genevieve tore her gaze from the grizzly sight and limped on with dread toward the deeper swamp.
The rain abated, leaving a drifting mist that hung like giant spider webs lurking over the dark water. Genevieve recognized the bright red stinger bushes when her hand brushed lightly against one and she instantly felt the hairs lodge in her hand like shards of glass. Noticing several other bushes, she steered them through the thicket and to her cruel satisfaction, heard Bragg suddenly jerk and swear profusely.
Genevieve saw several
fika
trees ahead of them, on the edge of the deeper swamp further on. In sudden morbid inspiration, a flicker of a wry smile tugged at her lips. When she reached the first
fika
tree, she reached up and picked a gourd from its branch then stumbled, giving in to the pain of her ankle, and let herself fall with a splat on her behind. It hadn’t been difficult to do. She was close to exhaustion and her leg throbbed with a pulsing ache. She could only guess what the swamp water was doing to Bragg’s gash on his leg. Whatever it was doing, he didn’t complain.
“What the hell are you doing?” he growled impatiently, poking her with his rifle. “Get up.”
“I’m hungry,” she replied, studying him. Neither of them had slept for over twenty-four hours. His face was lined with exhaustion and his eyes were slightly glazed with the effects of the
vishna
drug. The rain had picked up again with a constant drumming hiss. It beaded on his forehead and ran down to his chin and dripped off his nose onto his muscular chest. It got caught in his wiry chest hairs. As she cast her gaze downward she noticed that black muck and the green floating plants had migrated up his leg past his injury. He was imbibing
vishna
toxins big time.
“I’m hot and my ankle hurts,” she said then rose slowly to her feet and stared at him, eyes blinking off the rain. She peeled off her flight suit. A brisk inspection revealed what she’d feared
—
her wound was raw with infection.
“What’re you doing?” he said, voice rising in pitch.
“I’m undressing,” she snapped back. “What do you think I’m doing?” She stepped lithely out of the soaked garment and flung it down on the soaked ground. The rain felt refreshing on her naked body as she turned and, ignoring the flaming pain in her leg, sashayed like a model toward the deep swamp. She held the unripe gourd like a prize.
Who would succumb first? He was taking in the swamp water through his cut just as she was taking it in through hers.
She heard his hitching breaths and knew he was trembling as she was. It was now or never, she thought, feeling a shudder convulse through her as she neared a second
fika
tree. She frantically searched the shallow water for ripe fallen gourds. There was one! Seizing in a long inhale, she bent down from the waist over the water with her butt pointed invitingly toward him and languished there as though still looking. Her heart pounded as she sensed him watch with growing excitement. She heard him panting suddenly, as he dumped his pack and dropped his shorts then splashed toward her in great awkward steps. She braced for the onslaught and he was suddenly there, paws mauling her breasts and penis grinding into her from behind. She gasped as he pushed in, groaning in deep pleasure. His fantasy. How could he refuse it? How could she stand it? For the prize, she told herself, and desperately hoped he would buy into the whole thing.