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I thought I'd put up a new excerpt from the book for today's post:
On the beach, there was chaos. An eel,
easily two feet in diameter and eight feet long, lay convulsing on the sand,
Red’s hunting knife buried to the hilt in one eye. The crewman had the medkit
open beside him and was struggling to staunch the blood flow from Sharmali’s
lower leg, while she lay on a red-stained towel and moaned. Callina was
standing beside them, trying to help. The other men and women milled on the
beach nearby, drinking and talking in too loud voices. As Meg headed for the
injured passenger, the Primary intercepted her.
“Miss
Antille, I demand to know how something like this could happen.” Purple in the
face, he waved a hand at Sharmali. “I paid top dollar, if not an exorbitant
price, for a safe, enjoyable cruise for myself and my guests, and now the poor
girl’s had her foot eaten!” He was so upset he was spitting.
“On
behalf of the Line, I certainly apologize, sir. We do everything we can to
ensure the safety of our guests under all circumstances, but if she swam beyond
the sonic barrier—”
“She
was standing in three inches of water right next to me,” Finchon said. “That
monster could have just as easily gotten my foot.”
“The
barrier’s off,” Red informed her, not glancing up from his task. “Can you argue
with him later? I need your help.”
Meg
ran to his side, the Primary matching her step for step, yelling at her about
lawsuits and refunds. She tried to stem the tide of his vitriol so she could
concentrate. “Sir, please, let us assist Sharmali, and then I’ll be happy to
discuss the legalities.”
Trever,
the retired pro athlete, came forward and took his host by the arm, shoving a
drink into his hand and drawing him aside. Meg took a deep breath of relief and
knelt beside Red. “What do you want me to do?”
“Apply
pressure to the wound for a minute while I see what antivenom we’ve got.”
Gulping
against her nausea, Meg set her hand on the makeshift bandages and pressed
hard. “You said the barrier was off?”
“Must
be. There was more than one of these things right in the shallows at the beach.
We were lucky no one else got attacked. I got her out of the water as fast as I
could so the blood wouldn’t attract other predators.” He sat on his heels, frowning,
holding an inject. “This is only a generic. Will it work on eel venom?”
“It’s
all we’ve got on the shuttle. It’ll have to hold her until we get to the ship’s
sick bay.”
As
he gave Sharmali the inject, Meg eyed the wound with deep misgiving. The
woman’s leg was definitely swelling and there were ugly purple streaks
advancing toward her knee. “This is my fault,” she said.
“How
do you figure?” Red applied a light tourniquet.
“I
should have known if the ranger station was closed, the barriers might be shut
off, but I didn’t check.”
“Well,
keep your voice down, the Primary is pissed off enough right now. Don’t add
fuel to his fire. We’d better get her to the shuttle and hustle offplanet, to
the ship. What did you find out?” He turned to take more towels from Callina
with a murmured thanks and wrapped the oversize, gaily colored fabric around Sharmali.
“She’s going into shock, gotta keep her warm.”
“Drewson
said he hadn’t heard anything. I called the ship myself, but we got
interrupted. Signal failed or something.” Meg rose as he did, admiring the
smooth manner in which Red lifted the injured woman, not jostling her.
“We’ll
know soon enough.” He shifted Sharmali to lie more comfortably against his
chest and walked away as if her weight was nothing to him. “Guess it’s our turn
to leave the equipment behind, at least temporarily.”
“Oh,
Lords of Space, of course.” Meg grabbed the cleaning supplies bag, since the
blasters were in there, thankfully unneeded. She detoured to flip the switch
turning off the power grid, dropped the bag inside the nearest robo’s storage
cavity to leave her hands free, and then caught up to the guests at the base of
the walkway leading to the landing pad.
The
rumble of the shuttle’s engines caught her by surprise. How could Drewson
possibly know about the emergency? As she decided he must have checked the beach-facing
vidscreens for some reason, the tenor of the sound changed from warmup to full
power. In disbelief, she saw the shuttle rising from the pad.
“What
the seven hells is he doing?” Red yelled.
The story:
Meg Antille works long hours on the charter cruise ship Far Horizon so she can send credits home to her family. Working hard to earn a promotion to a better post (and better pay), Meg has no time for romance.
Former Special Forces soldier Red Thomsill only took the berth on the Far Horizon in hopes of getting to know Meg better, but so far she’s kept him at a polite distance. A scheduled stopover on the idyllic beach of a nature preserve planet may be his last chance to impress the girl.
But when one of the passengers is attacked by a wild animal it becomes clear that conditions on the lushly forested Dantaralon aren’t as advertised – the ranger station is deserted, the defensive perimeter is down…and then the Far Horizon’s shuttle abruptly leaves without any of them.
Marooned on the dangerous outback world, romance is the least of their concerns, and yet Meg and Red cannot help being drawn to each other once they see how well they work together. But can they survive long enough to see their romance through? Or will the wild alien planet defeat them, ending their romance and their lives before anything can really begin?
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