The leap of the cyber-spliced alpha hung frozen in the emerald beam of Beacon Delta-4 like a framed portrait of impending slaughter. One hundred and fifty pounds of mutated, irradiated muscle, jagged scarred hide, and high-pressure silver-steel jaws dropped directly toward Toby Mallow’s throat. Toby’s boots skidded backward in the loose salt scree. His fingers shook wildly against the cold steel receiver of his service pistol, his breath catching in his throat as the beast’s rancid, chemical-soaked breath washed over his face.
Arthur Vance was thirty yards away on the central narrow high walkway, his carbine swinging toward the vector. But two leaping hyenas blocked his sightline. That forced him to fire through their lunging bodies. Valerie was racking an empty shotgun chamber. Her fingers wildly grabbed fresh copper slugs from her bandolier.
There was no time for an ordinary moving defense.
Then, space folded.
There was no sound, no flash of light, and no physical shifted weight of air. From her watching basket atop Titus’s cargo harness, Vesper simply ceased to exist in her physical map points.
A fraction of a heartbeat later, a sleek, rust-tabby dark shape reappeared three feet in front of the leaping alpha, hovering in mid-air with impossible, zero-gravity poise.
