"We won't hurt you," a man said.
"We're just here to talk."
Etty stepped closer to Kaelyn and took her hand.
"I'll look after you, Kaelyn," she whispered.
"Talk!" Kaelyn said. "Who are you? What do you want?"
The tall man approached her. His pale, gaunt face twisted into a smile. His sunglasses still hid his eyes.
"I'm here to deliver a message from my boss," he said to Kaelyn. "You are to end your involvement in the anti-war movement."
Kaelyn snorted. "Why would I do that?"
The man's smile never faded. "This is a dangerous game, Kaelyn. You don't want to end up like your friend Lizzy."
Kaelyn's heart burst into a gallop. "I thought Lizzy Pascal committed suicide."
"I can neither confirm nor deny that information," said the tall man. "Be careful, Kaelyn Williams. This is our first and final warning."
The men left the hill, returned to their cars, and drove away.
The two young women remained alone on the hilltop. Kaelyn collapsed onto the bench, trembling.
She knew two things.
These men murdered Lizzy. And I will not be silenced.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Unleashed
Maria ran down the corridors of Mother's Womb, her heart galloping.
I killed him. I killed General Ward. And I'm trapped in a space station filled with his soldiers.
The station was rotating slowly, but as Maria ran, it seemed to spin madly around her. She swayed, pushed herself off a bulkhead, kept running. A few soldiers paused and stared.
"Hey, you!" somebody said. "What are you doing?"
Maria kept running. She was the only Bahayan in this Earthling station, and she wore a flowery summer dress while everyone else wore uniforms. She stood out here like a frog in a bowl of apples. Any moment now, they would find the dead general. They would know it was her.
She must find the hangar. A shuttle. A way out.
"Hey there, girl!" a soldier said. "You all right?"
His friend laughed. "A bargirl from the planet. One of the general's toys, I think. Better let her be. Hey, they got a bar down there called the Bottoms Up, you won't believe the girls. Beautiful! Next time we get shore leave, I'll…"
Maria kept running, and the soldiers' voices faded. She was lost. This station was huge—the size of a city. Any second now, the alarms would blare.
I'm doomed, she thought. They'll catch me. They'll kill me.
But she had done her job. She had recorded the general. He had confessed it all: that he had killed millions, Bahayans and Earthlings alike, for nothing. For mere sport.
If I die in Mother's Womb, you better pick up the transmission, Pippi and Charlie. You better send it to Earth. This can end the war.
Maria only prayed she would live long enough to see it.
Alarms blared.
Red lights flashed.
Maria's heart nearly stopped.
They found his body, she knew.
Soldiers ran down the corridor. Doors were slamming shut everywhere. The portholes went dark. The station was going into lockdown.
My baby and I are going to die.
She took a shaky breath.
They're going to torture me before death.
She could see again David in the tunnels, chained, burned with irons. Maria trembled and cold sweat washed her.
But I'm not dead yet.
She reached into her pocket, and she pulled out Crisanto. He shone on her palm.
"Crisanto, you have friends here on this station. Fellow Santelmos. I'm lost. Can you sense them?"
If I can find the zoo, I'll remember the rest of the way, she thought.
Crisanto bobbed vigorously, then began flying down the corridor. Maria ran after him.
A barricade was descending ahead like a garage door, ready to seal off the corridor. Crisanto zipped through. Maria ran, rolled, and slipped under the hatch just before it slammed shut.
Crisanto kept streaking forward, and Maria followed, running through dark halls and flashing red lights, and the klaxons kept blaring.
And then they were there. At the menagerie. From here, Maria remembered the way out. She knew where the shuttle hangar was.
But she would never make it. The soldiers were running everywhere. She heard their boots echoing, their voices calling out.
"The general is dead!"
"Ward is dead!"
Any second now, those soldiers would realize Maria was the killer. If they weren't hunting her already.
No, I'll never reach the hangar alive, she thought.
Instead, she raced through the menagerie. She approached the glass enclosure that contained the other Santelmos. They were still hovering inside, barely glowing at all.
Maria pounded the glass. It wouldn't break. She slammed against it again and again, but the pane merely wobbled.
Finally little Crisanto slid into the keyhole. The lock shone, then clicked.
"You could have tried that before I nearly dislocated my shoulder," Maria muttered.
The glass pane slid open, and the trapped Santelmos emerged.
They were the same size as Crisanto, but dimmer, weaker. Maria could easily see their stingy little limbs, growing like hairs from the central bulb. They were like neurons the size of dandelion puffs, their light fading.
"Open the locks across the menagerie," she told them. "Free every being here."
The little balls of light flashed from enclosure to enclosure. Locks glowed one after another, then clicked open.
The aliens emerged.
* * * * *
Maria ran from the menagerie, and a thousand aliens followed
They crawled, ran, slithered, flew. They opened jaws full of teeth. They snapped beaks. They wiggled mandibles. They howled. They squawked. They hissed. They lashed their tentacles. Some were no larger than Crisanto. Others barely squeezed through the corridors.
A few soldiers were marching down the hall.
They saw the wave of aliens, turned on their heels, and fled.
Maria kept running until she reached a sealed hatch. The hallway was locked down.
She stepped aside, and the aliens pounded into the hatch again and again. Horns, hooves, and armored heads shattered the barrier. Shards of plastic and metal flew everywhere. The tidal wave of aliens gushed onward.
They smashed through doors. They sent soldiers fleeing. They were only moments away from the hangar when guards in full battlesuits raced toward them, assault rifles raised.
Maria skidded to a halt.
The corridor seemed to close in around her.
She stared at the muzzles pointing her way.
Her heart pounded. But she had stared death in the eyes before, and she would not retreat.
She stood facing the guards. Behind her, her aliens gathered, an army of horns and fangs and claws and tentacles, of scales and feathers and light. Maria stood at their lead, and she pointed ahead at the guards.
"Tear those Earthlings down."
The bullets rang out. And the aliens swarmed.
Bullets slammed into aliens. They shattered scales, pierced lumpy skin, severed tentacles and eyes stalks. Aliens bled, hissed, wailed. But they kept charging.
Claws tore a soldier apart. Jaws clamped down on another man. Tentacles lifted one soldier and slammed him against the deck again and again, shattering his armor, his bones. Spiky tails lashed, sweeping out legs. Fleshy blobs wrapped around soldiers, digesting uniform and flesh alike. All the curiosities now became terrors. The prisoners became warriors. With horn, claw, and fang, with venom and fury, the aliens tore their captors down.
Maria stood within this storm of blood and scales, of ripping flesh and shattering bones. She stood still, a thin smile on her face. The fury swirled around her, yet none of these lashing claws, whipping tails, or snapping jaws harmed her. The aliens attacked with howling vengeance, but not a single talon nor spike scratched Maria. She stood in the
eye of the tornado, cherished and protected.
When it was over, when the storm died down, she found a corridor awash with blood and strewn with human and alien remains.
Many of these aliens, captive for years, had fallen. But they had fallen free. They had taken down every guard who had tried to hold them back.
Maria led the survivors onward. Crisanto hovered over her shoulder, free to shine in the open. And he shone brighter than ever.
They barged into the hangar bay. Tentacled aliens. Scaly aliens. Blobby aliens. Aliens of light, of stone, of shimmering colors. They clattered, scraped, and slithered between shuttles and starfighters.
A few mechanics were still here. They fled and hid behind crates.
Maria could not fit everyone into a shuttle, she realized. She faced a horrible choice. Who to save. Who to leave behind. A soldier's choice.
The klaxons were still blaring. Any moment now, more guards would run into the hangar.
So Maria made her choice.
She opened the hatch on one shuttle—a boxy, military vessel, the largest she could find. And like Noah, she began loading aliens into her ark. A small furry alien. A rolling scaly ball. A squirming mollusk with many tentacles. The floating Santelmos. A feathery alien with a long purple beak.
But others, the larger aliens, she had to leave behind. They would have to drown in the flood.
They seemed to understand. They looked at her. They knew. And they accepted. They were intelligent, but they were no pilots. They could not fly in the other shuttles. They would remain and they would die and they forgave her.
Maria closed the shuttle's hatch and sat in the cockpit. She fired up the engines.
Guards burst into the hangar. Maria saw them in the rearview monitor.
She stared through the windshield at the airlock. Its doors were closed.
The guards opened fire. Bullets pinged against the shuttle's stern.
Maria took a deep breath. She saw a joystick to her right with red buttons. It was labeled ROTARY CANNON.
She opened fire.
A machine gun extended from the shuttle's prow. Bullets pounded the airlock doors.
The guards behind the shuttle kept firing. Their bullets dented the shuttle's hull. But the engines were still purring. And the cannon was still firing. The airlock doors crumpled under the hailstorm of bullets, exposing space.
Maria shoved the throttle. The shuttle roared forward, barreled through the mangled doors, and shot into space.
* * * * *
The stars spread before her, a dizzying panoply. Warships hovered, and shuttles and starfighters zipped back and forth. For a moment Maria didn't know left from right, up from down. Messages were racing across the HUD, but Maria couldn't read that fast in English. She didn't need to. She knew enough to lower her prow, and she saw Bahay below.
Her control panel flared with light.
A voice emerged from the shuttle's speakers.
"Attention rogue shuttle! This is Bahay One Station Control. Return to docking bay G-4, or we will open fire."
Maria had never cursed in her life. But right now she blurted out a loud and vehement "Fuck!"
She glanced into the rearview monitor. Three starfighters emerged from the space station, bolting like horses from stables.
A year ago, I was a rice farmer, Maria thought. Now I'm flying a space shuttle full of aliens, and starfighters are chasing me. How the hell did I end up here? This must be a dream. Just a dream…
The three starfighters streaked across space toward her.
"Retract your cannon and return to docking bay!" boomed the voice from her speakers. "Or we will—"
Maria spun the shuttle toward them. And she opened fire.
She had killed before. She would kill again.
Her bullets pounded one starfighter. The vessel careened and slammed into the starfighter beside it. Flames engulfed them both.
Maria cried out in terror and triumph.
The third starfighter unleashed a storm of bullets.
Maria was already flying upward. The bullets streaked below. She charged toward Mother's Womb, then swerved around it, placing the station between her and the enemy.
But she had only flown once before. She was clumsy. Her shuttle banged against the side of the space station. Sparks flew. Paneling tore off the station and tumbled through space. Maria cursed and steadied her shuttle, flying onward, increasing her thrust.
Come on, I survived Mindao traffic, she thought. This is nothing.
She checked her rearview monitor. She couldn't see the other starfighter anymore. But she knew it was pursuing.
There!
Maria saw it!
As she kept zooming around the station, it appeared behind her—the enemy starfighter, fast on her heel.
Its bullets flew.
Maria shoved down the throttle, yawed right, and nudged herself closer to the space station.
Once more—this time intentionally—she scraped her shuttle against the station's hull.
More paneling tore free. Sheets of metal fluttered like shrapnel. The barrage slammed into the pursuing starfighter, shattered its canopy, and knocked the vessel into a tailspin. The starfighter tumbled into deep space, engine sputtering.
Maria breathed a sigh of relief, but that relief was short lived. Orange lights flashed across her control panel. Her hull was dented. A warning lit up: FUEL LEAK DETECTED.
I won't survive another assault, she thought.
She whipped around the station again, then dived toward the planet.
She wasn't far. It only took a moment to reach the sky. But it was the longest moment of her life.
Her shuttle plunged through the air with a fountain of fire.
Maria screamed. An enormous force was shoving her against her backrest, flattening her face against her skull, tugging her cheeks into a grin. Her stomach did back flips. She couldn't breathe.
Too fast. I'm going too fast. I'm going to die.
Warning flashed across the HUD, but Maria could barely see. Blackness spread around her. It was like staring down a dark tunnel. The darkness kept closing in, claiming her.
She floated in the murk.
Lights. Lights floated around her. They were pounding her.
She woke up with a gasp. Crisanto and his fellow Santelmos were bumping into her, flaring with light.
I passed out, she realized.
The shuttle was still tumbling through the sky, but the fire was gone. Maria gripped the joystick and wrestled it.
The ground was racing up toward her.
And in the rearview monitor, she saw them.
More starfighters. Five of them. Plunging through the clouds toward her.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!"
Maria shoved down the throttle. Her engines roared. Fire blazed from her exhaust pipes. She plunged toward the surface at dizzying speed. She saw water. A cluster of islands. One of the islands was a battleground; missiles flew back and forth, leaving thin trails.
But Maria had her own battle up here to worry about. The pursuing starfighters fired their machine guns. Bullets pounded her shuttle.
One of her engines burst into flames, and Maria screamed.
Her shuttle spun madly. She was going down fast, leaving a corkscrew of smoke. The aliens who filled the shuttle wailed, rumbled, and squealed.
She tugged on the joystick. It wobbled like a loose tooth. The enemy starfighters swooped after her. She tried to face them, to open fire, but she could barely control her flight.
The battle was raging below, closer now.
She could see them on the surface. Soldiers. Missiles. Bombs. Blood and fire across the island.
Her shuttle was tumbling toward the battlefield. The enemy starfighters flanked her, and—
A missile streaked from below.
One of the pursuing starfighters exploded.
More missiles rose, and Maria winced.
More of the starfighters burst into flame.
&nb
sp; Shrapnel slammed into Maria's shuttle, tossing it into a tailspin. Fire spread through the cabin. Aliens screamed. Her engine died, and she was falling fast.
The ground raced up to meet her.
Maria closed her eyes.
I'm still alive.
The aliens howled, wept, burned, died. The shuttle cracked open. A few of the smaller aliens tumbled into the sky. The fire and wind roared.
So I still fight.
"Crisanto, come to me. Santelmos, be with me."
The glowing orbs of light hovered around her.
Maria left her seat, ran through the shuttle, and kicked open the hatch.
She leaped from the burning shuttle into the sky.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Fallen Angel
Maria fell through the sky.
Her shuttle crashed and burned. The battlefield blazed below, missiles streaking back and forth. Smoke and fire cloaked the world.
She fell like an angel cast from heaven. She fell, a secret confession in her ear.
She fell toward the fire.
But she did not fall alone.
Crisanto dived toward her, a tiny puff of light. With spidery limbs, he clutched her shoulder, tugging the strap of her dress.
Another Santelmo followed, no larger, and caught her second shoulder. Then a third Santelmo, a fourth, and soon dozens were holding her. All those she had freed from captivity. They held her in the air.
Individually, each was small and weak. Together they let her fly.
Maria glided above the battlefield, wreathed in glowing light. A missile streaked beside her. A shell exploded nearby. Bullets whistled. Then the men below noticed her. They pointed and cried out. Both Earthlings and Bahayans ceased their fire and gazed.
"An angel!" somebody cried. "An angel flies above us, brothers! We butcher one another, and an angel falls from the sky!"
An angel? Maria thought. I killed two men in the jungle. And I killed a man in his bedroom. I seduced a general and betrayed my husband. If I'm an angel, I'm a fallen one. I've become an angel of war, the destroyer of worlds.
Yes, she was a fighter in this war. Her hands were bloodstained, and her soul was forever tarnished.
Earthling's War (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 3) Page 22