Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier. by Doug Dandridge Page B

when
he needed all of his senses.
    The lizard went
slack in midair, while Matthew felt numbness come over him, his vision going
from blurry to black in an instant.  He felt his legs go out from under him as
he fell.  The next thing he felt was his head hitting the deck, and then nothing.
    “You OK, son?”
asked Timothy, as Matthew came to in a fog.
    “What,
happened?”
    “I stunned the
lizard, but you were in the line of fire.  I’m sorry, nephew, but it was a
choice between stunning you, or letting the little hellion take out your eyes.”
    “Thanks for
making the right choice,” said Matthew, shaking his head.  “Did you harvest the
lizard?”
    “Of course,”
said his Uncle with a smile.  “We’re not going to pass up a bag of Imperials
like that.”
    “Where are we?”
    “We’re heading
back to the homestead.  I don’t think you sustained any kind of lasting harm,
but I still would like your dad to check you out.”
    Matthew sat up
and nodded.  Concussions were still fairly common.  The effects of concussions
lasting beyond the quarter hour or so it took nanites to repair the damage were
almost unheard of.  But Matthew could see the logic of getting him back to the
homestead, especially since his uncle had just harvested a week’s worth of
valuable biologicals in a morning.
    It took a couple
of hours through the winding streams and rivers of the Swamp before his uncle’s
dock came into view, well concealed from the air under some heavy foliage, his
father and mother waiting on it for him.
    “Are you OK?”
asked his mother in a worried voice as the boat tied up to the dock.
    “He’s fine,”
said Timothy.  “He just caught the full load of a sonic.  He’ll be fine.”
    “I wish you
wouldn’t go out into that green hell,” complained Fara, sending a glare
Timothy's way.
    “I wanted him to
go out with my brother,” said Tobias, coming forward and running a portable
scanner over Matthew’s head, then grunting in satisfaction when nothing came up
on the three dimensional image of his son’s brain.  “He needs to refamiliarize
himself with that, green hell, did you call it?  Because in a few days that
might be his only refuge.”
    “And I wish you
and mom would find someplace else to stay,” Matthew told his dad as his mom
wrapped him in her arms.  “I hate the idea of you both being around me when
these people might be hunting me.”
    “And what about
me?” asked Timothy with a smile.
    “Hell, I’m more
worried about the hit men getting within weapons range of you,” said his dad
with a laugh.  The laugh cut off, and he looked at Timothy with a serious
expression.  “I really appreciate this, big brother.  You’ll never know how
much.”
    “You’re family,”
said Timothy with a smile.  “One thing I learned in the Army, is nothing is
more important that family.  We’ll get him through this.”
    “They’re never
going to give up, you know,” said Matthew, a tear coming to his eye.  “I am so
sorry I got all of us into this mess.”
    “We’ll just have
to see about making them give up,” said Timothy, a feral gleam in his eye.  “I
just might be able to make them forget about you.”
    “And how do you
plan to do that, big brother?” asked Tobias.
    “I might just be
able to call in some favors,” said the former Ranger.
    “They’re too
powerful,” said Matthew.
    “Son, these
scumbags don’t know what powerful is.  But they’re going to find out, in the
little bit of time they have.”
    *     *     *
    “Time for you to
get off, Constable,” said Claude Deveroix, looking into the frightened eyes of
Farrell.  The side door to the combat aircar was open, and Deveroix glanced
again at the roiling waters below, and the score of giant carnotropes that were
milling around and disturbing the normally quiet surface.  One of the giant
creatures, that looked like a much larger version of a lizard that lived in the
interior desert of the