Page 1 of Tempting Jupiter
Chapter One
TheRenegade
EarthAllianceBetaSector
2210.146
Jupiter had heard of the fiery afterlife the humans called Hell, but he’d never expected to end up there. It wasn’t that his soul wasn’t black enough; he just didn’t think the humans would allow an Arena Dog entry.
Flat on his back, muscles turned to molten metal, he battled the fogginess in his brain.
Flames crackled around him, eating their way closer. A chemical tinge burned his nose and turned his stomach. The heat of the flames intensified until one side of his body crawled with sizzling prickles. He tried to roll away from the danger, but his efforts gained him nothing.
He forced his eyes open. His heartbeat hammered against his chest and his gaze raked over the room. The smoke gathering overhead hung close to his face. Apparently, Hell had low ceilings.
A loud pop outside his visual range focused his mind like the air-shot at the beginning of an arena match. With the added clarity, he realized a restraint stretched across his chest, holding him in place. An attempt to dislodge it with his right hand brought a sinking realization. His right arm wasn’t moving and he couldn’t feel his fingers. That would have raised his heart rate if it hadn’t already been beating too fast to count.
The flames licked closer. Was he being set on fire as a special punishment, or was this just the usual hellish welcome to new residents of the afterlife? He laughed at the thought, then coughed violently when he sucked in a lungful of smoke. Suffocating spasms seized control of his body. The memory of Seneca, the last time he’d seen his pack brother, formed in his mind. When he closed his eyes he could still see the pale blush of Seneca’s lips, blood splattered across his face, etched lines of pain bracketing his mouth, and regret glazing his eyes. Jupiter’s lungs burned. His body ached. And the sure knowledge that he was to blame for Seneca’s injury made Jupiter contemplate surrendering to the flames.
But he’d never been one to quit.
He was alive, despite injuries that had been more extensive than Seneca’s. He wouldn’t give up hope that Seneca might also live.
Jupiter glared down at the restraint. His eyes stung from the smoke and he blinked in an attempt to focus. He pushed against the material with his left hand and found it stretchy and thin. It clearly wasn’t meant to prevent him from getting free, but it might be meant to keep him from rolling out of the strange bed in his drugged stupor. Yeah, his system had definitely been pumped full of drugs. The pounding at the base of his skull and the jittery twinge of his muscles left no doubt. He flicked out the claws on his good hand and the material fell away in a shredded heap. Rolling to his side, he tried to get a look around, but didn’t recognize a single thing. He swung his legs over the edge only to double over in pain. His left hand shot to the throbbing ache in his middle. A soft square of flex-bandage clung to his skin. One quick look told him someone had patched him up with a stark white bandage.
A door to his right… and down… whooshed open and the flames jumped higher, licking the ceiling like a viper tasting the air for prey.Whoa, Jupiter’s brain complained as it registered that his feet were dangling a meter above the floor. He looked down, judging the distance. A sharp bark drew his spinning head back up, and he was jumping down to the floor before his brain had a chance to engage.
An unfamiliar Arena Dog stood in the doorway. “Fire suppression is offline.” The Dog had the tall, broad, more than human build, wide face and pointed ears of their kind, but he was dressed more like a human. The Dog threw a white canister toward Jupiter. He tried to reach out to catch it, but his damn right arm failed him again. The cylinder hit him in the chest and he cradled it against his torso.
The Dog who’d thrown it grabbed another and held it in front of his body. “Point the nozzle at the flames and press the red button!” He had to shout to be heard over the noise of the fire and something mechanical grinding metal against metal in the distance.
Jupiter struggled to work the fire canister without the use of his better hand, but somehow he managed. A blue powder sprayed out, dousing the flames as it bubbled and expanded wherever it landed. It changed the stench of the fumes—no less vile—but it dulled the burning in his lungs.
“What’s happening?” Jupiter choked out the words. He still had no idea where he was and he wanted answers. He stood in an aisle with two beds like the one he’d crawled out of, stacked one above the other on each side. Across the aisle, both beds had been empty and were now blackened with soot beneath the blue skin of the suppressant. He jogged farther along the row and doused more of the flames.
The other Dog followed, shouting to Jupiter as they worked. “You’re onboard a resistance transport. We snuck you off-planet and were trying to get you to our haven.”
“We’re not on Roma?” He’d known Roma was only one of many planets and that the arena spectators came from other worlds, but the idea of being anywhere else seemed implausible.
“No.” The other Dog answered over the last of the dying flames. “We’re in a transport vessel.”
The Dog tossed his canister to the floor and barked for Jupiter to follow back the way he’d come. “We have to keep the attacking ship’s crew from boarding us long enough for the pilot and the mechanic to make the repairs and get us moving again.”
Jupiter had never heard of the resistance or been aboard a ship of any kind, but he was used to adapting to unexpected situations. He followed the man, but as he approached the bunk he’d vacated moments before, he spotted the still form on the one below. The Dog’s ice white hair had been twisted into a single rope and pulled over one shoulder. His long lashes rested against his cheeks. Bandages wrapped his torso. “Seneca!”
He dropped to his knees and pressed his ear to his pack brother’s chest.
The stranger shoved at his shoulder. “We have to go.”
Relief flooded through Jupiter at the faint rise and fall of the chest beneath his ear. Seneca’s heart beat strong and steady. Jupiter looked up to meet the gaze of the Dog who was still trying to get him to move. “He’s alive.”
The Dog nodded. “He’s deeply sedated. He’s smaller, lower body mass. It’ll take him longer to come around.”
Jupiter wanted to stay with Seneca, to wait for his lavender eyes to open, but he understood they were in danger and had an enemy to fight. He lurched to his feet and sprinted after the Dog, knowing the best thing he could do for Sen was to keep whatever danger approached from reaching his slumbering body. They thundered along a narrow corridor of dull metal walls and grated floors that shook beneath their weight.
The Dog ahead of him slapped a palm against a panel next to a door and it slid open. Jupiter followed him into a narrow space that led to a larger room. He caught a flash of a console full of lights and screens before two men trudged through what appeared to be an external hatch and right into their path. Jupiter had a split second to identify the uniformed men as humans carrying burst weapons. He dived low as the miniature explosion of the guns blasted over his head.
The other Dog collapsed to the floor beside him. Most of his chest was so much bloody meat and the only thing keeping his head attached was a fragile column of charred bones. Jupiter had been the instrument of too much death to be shocked by the gore. He bunched his leg muscles and lunged toward the two men still standing in the hatchway. He kept low, aiming for their legs. One of the men had angled his body away from Jupiter and shot his burst-gun in the direction of the lit panels. The other man had fired at Jupiter, singeing the decking where he’d been standing only seconds before.
