Abandoned Read online

  DAW BOOKS PROUDLY PRESENTS THE SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS OF W. MICHAEL GEAR:

  The Donovan Series

  Outpost

  Abandoned

  Pariah*

  The Spider Trilogy

  The Warriors of Spider

  The Way of Spider

  The Web of Spider

  The Forbidden Borders Trilogy

  Requiem for the Conqueror

  Relic of Empire

  Countermeasures

  *

  Starstrike

  *

  The Artifact

  *Coming soon from DAW Books

  Copyright © 2018 by W. Michael Gear.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Jacket art by Steve Stone.

  Jacket design by G-Force Design.

  Book designed by Fine Design.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1807.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780756413422

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  Version_1

  TO

  RED CANYON JAKE

  SHETLAND SHEEPDOG EXTRAORDINAIRE

  AND MY

  BEST FRIEND, BUDDY, AND PAL.

  Contents

  Also by Michael Gear

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not be possible without the encouragement and enthusiasm of the good people at DAW Books. My thanks to Sheila Gilbert, Betsy Wollheim, and the remarkable team at DAW.

  To my beloved Kathleen O’Neal Gear I extend my love, appreciation, and gratitude. Every day that I wake up with her in my life is a miracle.

  Finally to Theresa Hulongbayan and the ever-effervescent Facebook Gear Fan Club: book series First North Americans, I thank you all for the support, enthusiasm, and encouragement. You remain a constant reminder that nothing is as pitiful as an author without readers!

  1

  Like a weary Hercules, Mark Talbot hunched in his battle armor. He perched on the rounded stone outcrop deep in the forest and stared up at the night sky. A combat-hardened Corporate Marine private—supposedly the toughest of the tough—he fixed tired eyes on the patterns and swirls of stars. Wondrous stars. A sparkling, frosty hoar that glittered against the soot-black sky.

  God, he wished he was out there.

  He took a deep breath, caught the rank odor rising from inside his armor, and wrinkled his nose. He stank like shit in a toilet. He had lost count of the days that he and Shin had been living in their protective gear. Thirty? Forty? Hard to tell since he’d left his personal com back on the doomed aircar. Somewhere along the line, one day had merged into another and they’d lost count.

  Propped back in the shadow of the rocks, Shin gasped in pain. More than a week had passed since the slimy leech thing had bored its way into her foot. After weeks in armor, Shin had wanted a bath. They both had. They’d drawn lots. She’d won.

  At the pool of clear water they’d found, she had stripped off her armor and waded out. Splashing and scrubbing, she’d laughed, squirted water at him as he stood guard and swapped banter.

  The squishy creature had waited until Shin stepped out on the muddy bank. She’d been too busy drying her hair to notice when the thing came wiggling out of the mud. Didn’t feel it until it pierced her skin. Had barely had time to look down before it had burrowed into the bottom of her foot. Even as she shrieked it was inching its way under the skin of her ankle and deep into her calf.

  Looking back, he should have amputated her leg at the knee. She’d screamed at him not to. Said it would have been a death sentence. Pleaded that the thing would probably emerge on its own. That it probably couldn’t survive in a human.

  He should have done a lot of things differently.

  That was Donovan.

  A person did a lot of looking back on Donovan.

  Talbot tensed as a strange, piercing whistle sounded from the forest. Massive trees surrounded Mark’s stone outcrop; they rose up in a black wall. Trees on Donovan were like nothing he’d seen on Earth. These were giants, four and five hundred feet tall; high overhead the triangular b
ranches interlocked, and the leaves were huge. Walking beneath them was like traveling through an immense cavern. And the roots, they were the worst of all. Tarry too long in one spot and they’d slither out of the ground, seek to wrap around a foot, ankle or calf. Get caught by the roots and within an hour they would completely engulf a person to the point that not even powered combat armor could break free.

  Safety could only be found on one of the stone outcrops. Chunks of bedrock, they jutted up like islands in the ocean of forest. Talbot and Shin had made their way north, traveling from outcrop to outcrop. For whatever reason, the roots avoided solid rock.

  The weird, piercing whistle sounded in the forest again. This was something new. Yet another horror in Donovan’s endless parade of terrifying creatures and plants, no doubt.

  For the most part he and Shin had grown used to the sounds, the constant chirring, clicking, singing, and chiming of the wildlife. He didn’t know if any of the creatures even had names—though some must have been cataloged by Donovan’s colonists over the colony’s thirty-year existence.

  The house-cat-sized, four-winged fliers were the worst peril, but they couldn’t penetrate armor when they swarmed him and Shin. Then there were the sort of dinosaurian bipedal monsters; the smaller clawed creatures; the leechlike sucky things that had burrowed into Shin and slipped out of the mud to try and pierce his armored feet and ankles; and the list went on. Vine-like hanging predators would swing out, only to scrape along his impregnable and slick-sided armor. The firehose-thick snake creatures that whipped sideways to tangle around his feet might not be able to penetrate his protective shell, but they’d trip him. And falling was always precarious because of the roots.

  That was another thing about Donovan; the damn plants moved. One way or another, everything on Donovan would try and kill you. As Garcia had found out, and Shin, dear Shin, was even now experiencing.

  “You all right?” he asked, annoyed by the hypocrisy of the salutation.

  “One of the things is wiggling in my stomach, Mark. I feel . . . like I want to throw up. But it’s . . . numb. I’m . . . falling, spinning. Endless damn vertigo. God, so . . . sick.”

  She’d told him that there were several now, eating their way through her body. Either the first had divided, or there had been more than just that one that had gotten under her skin.

  Talbot leaned his head back and imagined himself flying off his solitary stone perch and soaring up, up into the night sky. Burning his way out of the gravity well. Past atmosphere into the vacuum. Then on beyond the orbit of Donovan’s moon. Out away from the star they called Capella. Clear out to the inversion point.

  He closed his eyes, let the fantasy possess him as he floated there in space. As if in a trance, he would clap his hands, invert symmetry. Godlike, he’d pop out of the universe and navigate his way back the Solar System some thirty light-years distant.

  Home. Blessed, wonderful home.

  What he’d give to walk the avenues of Transluna, to peer into the shops, walk into a food stand and eat sausage, donuts, tacos, red beans and rice, Szechuan shrimp, couscous, chocolate cake. Or anything for that matter. Home food.

  But when he opened his eyes, it was to stare up at the alien sky that had become too familiar. No Orion, no Coal Sack, or Big Dipper. Just the whiter, brighter smear of the Milky Way, and clusters of stars for which he had no names.

  The servos whined in the night as Talbot resettled himself atop the stony outcrop. He checked his charge: barely twenty percent. Come morning he’d have to clean the voltaics. Take enough time to let Capella recharge the power pack. Fact was the suits wouldn’t take a full charge anymore.

  One of the night creatures flew past in a whisper of wing beats. The dark form blotted the stars as it slowed, circled, and decided he and Shin weren’t food.

  Shin made a deep-throated gargling sound, kicked her left leg out, and tensed. He waited out the spasms, then asked, “I could end it. Want me to?”

  She swallowed hard, kept panting for breath. Had there been light he would have seen the sweat pouring down her round, brown face. The terrified quivering of her eyes as they jerked about in their sockets.

  “Maybe.” She sucked another frantic breath. “Can’t feel a thing below my chest.”

  Nothing had prepared them for Donovan. It was one thing to read that the planet was dangerous. Another to have its jaws snapped shut around you.

  “We were screwed the moment we lifted off from Port Authority,” Talbot whispered to the night.

  “What the hell were we thinking?” Shin asked.

  “Garcia’s idea.” He smiled bitterly. “I still remember how he looked at us over the rim of that beer mug in the tavern. ‘Do you really want to space back to Solar System without going out there?’ Remember, Shin? That look in his eyes?”

  She tensed so quickly her armor clattered on the underlying stone. When she finally managed to relax and catch her breath, she said, “Yeah. And he was the first to die. Walked under that droopy looking tree. With the big floppy leaves and all the weird vines.”

  “And the vine wasn’t a vine at all,” Talbot finished, remembering how Garcia had tried to bat one of the hanging “vines” to one side only to have it whip back and shoot into the gap between Garcia’s collar and his neck. Even as Garcia screamed he was being lifted. Lifted! Heavy combat armor and all, right up into the tree.

  “How did that thing do that?” Talbot asked.

  “No wonder the Donovanians call it a nightmare,” Shin whispered. “We couldn’t even get a fix on him up there. Couldn’t put him out of his misery.”

  Talbot made a face in the night. Word was that a nightmare devoured its victim alive. Sent shoots inside a person’s body to slowly digest him from the inside out. Like the things inside Shin’s body were doing to her.

  They’d flown south from Port Authority in their jury-rigged aircar. Traveled just over six hundred kilometers, deep into the forest beyond the southern extent of the Wind Mountains, and set down in what looked like a clearing in the trees.

  As they leapt out, they’d noticed the thick root mat squirming under the aircar. Wiggling roots. Wow. That was new.

  Didn’t matter. They’d been too busy bragging about being the first humans to ever set foot on that spot. Laughing, staring around at the universe of huge trees rising up to majestic heights around them. Odd trees, with triangular branches, weirdly shaped green, turquoise, teal, and lime-colored leaves.

  Not to mention the noise: a cacophony of singing, clicking, rattling harmonics.

  And they’d started their circle, clambering over the root mat. They proceeded with their helmets hung on belt clips, sniffing and remarking at the exotic perfumed odors. They carried their rifles at the ready. Each had his heads-up display monitoring for movement, heat signatures, and any threat.

  But damn, the whole place was alive. Flashes of gaudy color flickered among the branches as Donovan’s peculiar Technicolor creatures vanished in pell-mell flight.

  “Wish we could go back, Shin. Slap ourselves silly before we jury-rigged that aircar and flew south.”

  “I’d be happy . . .”—she sucked a pained breath—“to be put on report. Scrubbing toilets never . . .” Again she tensed and grunted in pain.

  “Looked so good?” he finished for her.

  He thought back to Garcia. How they had shot futilely up into the branches. If they stepped underneath, the whipping tentacles would try and catch them. And if they stood still, the roots would inexorably begin to feel their way up and around their armored feet. And all the while, high in the tree, they could hear Garcia screaming.

  “I keep seeing the aircar,” Shin said through shallow breaths. “Remember, when we got back. It was just a thick ball of roots. What stupid . . .” She stiffened, groaned.

  “Can’t believe we left our coms in the aircar,” Talbot whispered. “What a bunch
of fools.”

  “It’s the smart way to do it,” Garcia had assured them. “Can’t disobey an order if we’re not around where we can hear it, right?”

  “Must have been an equipment malfunction,” Shin had joked.

  The massive woody strands had crushed the aircar as if it were a foam cup.

  Mark Talbot stared out at the night, his heart like a leaden anchor in his chest. At least twenty days had passed, and probably more, since he and Shin last heard a shuttle, which meant Turalon had long since spaced for the Solar System.

  As far as Talbot knew, it was just him, Shin, and Donovan.

  God help them.

  The odd rattle in Shin’s throat made him turn. “Shin?”

  Nothing.

  He shifted, raised his thumb light, and flicked it on. Shin’s almond eyes were wide, sightless, the pupils fixed. Her mouth hung open, caught in a silent scream. Threads of her black hair shifted with the breeze.

  A mouse-sized bulge appeared under Shin’s skin where her neck cleared the armor. Horrified, Talbot watched it make its slow way up and around under her jaw. He tried to imagine what it would feel like to have something eating out the inside of his tongue.

  God, I can’t stand this.

  “Good bye, old friend,” he whispered. Weary to the soul, he stood, grabbed Shin’s booted foot, and rolled her unceremoniously down the steep slope. Her armor clattered hollowly as it bounced its way down the rocks and into the forest below.

  No way was he going to sleep next to her corpse when those things might slip out and take a try at him.

  Tilting his head back, he looked up at the stars again.

  I am alone.

  2

  “Supervisor?” Lieutenant Deb Spiro’s voice brought Kalico Aguila awake. Kalico blinked, sat up, and as she did the lights illuminated her personal quarters.

  Such as they were.

  Once—back before she’d been abandoned on Donovan—Kalico would have considered the notion that she’d actually sleep in such squalor to be a bad joke. She’d lived like a god, a Corporate Supervisor, privy to the inner workings of the Board. A contender for an eventual seat and the honored title of Boardmember. Powerful people feared her for her political skills and her ruthless ambition.