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The subtle sound of cracking made her freeze. On instinct she looked down, but the sound hadn’t come from the ground beneath her. She spun in time to see the pilot lurching forward, his boot buried in the broken crust. Time seemed to slow. This was it. She was about to be rid of one of the bastards. Her heart was in her throat as the reptile slammed into the ground. Then anxiously she waited. Another second passed, then another, and her brow furrowed when the ground didn’t collapse beneath the reptile.

Damn it to hell!She scowled in disappointment as the pilot cursed and scrambled to his feet.

The stupid reptile had merely stepped too close to the hot spring, breaking the crust at the edge.

“Stop squawking so much and pay attention,” Spiny hissed at his companion and started walking again.

Of course, the scaly assholes would have dumb luck in Hell.She sighed as she continued forward.

“Don’t get discouraged, there's still a long way to go,” she mumbled to herself, refusing to be despondent.

Payim quo Desero

“Nothing!” Payim growled.

He reached the string of canyons but saw nothing of the other cruiser.

I should’ve overtaken them by now.He’d certainly been flying fast enough.

He glared across the canyon and again scanned the landscape. There was a flicker of a silhouette indicating the Jurou Biljana base beyond the gorge, but no sign of anything swiftly approaching it, then again, he’d yet to pick up the cruiser in any of his scans.

There’s no way they could’ve made it this far.

He swung the vessel around, lowered the altitude and started retracing his path. He’d missed something, somewhere.

Elena

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.Elena closed her eyes and groaned in exasperation as they came to the end of the hot springs.

The reptiles managed to reach the geyser flats with barely a scratch.

Why won’t you just die already?She glared at the pair then Spiny looked her way and her scowl quickly shifted to a saccharine smile.

“Don’t bare your ugly blunt teeth at me,” Spiny hissed, his scaly tail lashing the air.

“I hate when they do that,” the pilot groused.

Her eyes narrowed on them as she clamped her lips shut.

“Which way now?” Spiny jabbed a clawed hand toward the erupting geysers.

This area was new to her. She didn’t have the pattern of eruptions memorized like she did on her side of the mountain.

“Give me a minute. I have to study the bursts,” she snapped back, before she could think better of it.

She was miserably hot and sopping wet from all the steam in the air, when she should’ve been getting off this fucking planet with Payim. That was more than infuriating, but then the reptiles’ constant arguing and refusal to die twisted the proverbial knife in the gut, threatening to push her over the edge. Except, just because the pair hadn’t tried to kill her in the last few hours, she couldn’t forget they were still dangerous and armed.

“Hmpf,” Spiny merely grunted and turned back to the pilot.

She blinked, slightly surprised he didn’t bite her head off for her terse response. Apparently being surly with each other was normal conversation for the reptiles.

Whatever.She turned back to the geysers.

There wasn’t a strong breeze here like there was closer to the coast, and the mist lingered, obscuring the view across the entire flats. She saw enough. It was like Swiss cheese out there.

This is what the Vegas fountain show in Hell looks like.This place truly earned its name.

There was no way around, so there was no use bitching about it. She’d just have to tackle this in chunks. Elena pulled some charcoal from her bag and focused on the four geysers directly in their path. If they could make it past them, there was a large swath of barren land where they could take a breather before tackling the next boiling fountains.