Duric: A Science Fiction Romance (Trident Alliance Mail Order Brides Book 2)

by Athena Storm

  Kicking and howling to stay afloat, I wedge my back against the rock face as the three sopping ogres press in upon me.

  “Hedge her in, but bring her up alive. We need her.”

  My eyes flash up the distance to see Martek’s hateful stare scorching down at me. I’m stifled by the crush of three struggling Odex, crowding fast around me as a rope is fed down. Struggling against the inevitable is fruitless and the best I can hope to do is go completely limp and make their job difficult.

  An assault of scratches and stabs dive into my flesh as the struggling monsters fumble me into the lariat, which begins the indelicate process of hauling my carcass to the brim. Only as I rise above their heads to the brainless behemoths awake to their peril. No rope is coming back down to haul them up. Who would pull it?

  Amid piteous squeals, a symphony of scrapes fills the air as they flail in a desperate attempt to dig their nails into the stones. Anything that might gain them purchase to climb back to safety.

  “Your dedication to the Coalition and heroism will be remembered, my friends.”

  The words ring hollow, and a terse three blasts silence the scrapes and yelps as blood darkens the water receding below me. It’s nearly impossible to pity the brutes feeding me into danger, but as I see their floating carrion whisked away by the current, it’s hard to blame them too much. How could their rudimentary minds conceive that there is no honor among the wicked?

  Scuttered back up onto the turf, my soaking body is thrown at the feet of Martek, who grips my face in his broad, graceless fingers.

  “You have courage, human,” his three yellow eyes search mine, “It will be hard to break you.” His scaly face closes in until our noses brush. “But. We will.”

  With a shove, he drops me to the ground and turns to stride away.

  “Bring her.”

  The remaining Odex yank me into the air and bundle me bodily onto their shoulders. The open sky above me disappears into a wash of branches as they haul me deeper into the forest.

  The pungent smell of smoke and electrical fire fills my nostrils. With it, come floods of memories. Mason, charred and broken in the Operations center of our ship. Yeats, tangled in his chair, blue eyes staring into nothing. Riggs trying desperately to breathe as life slipped past his lips.

  Rachel. Her arms reaching out to me as though there were any way to will her back from the eternal emptiness that pulled her from this life. Memories barely days old seem like lifetimes ago. It’s impossible to think that less than a week ago I was roasting my rat faced little colleague over the virtues of conflict. Even more impossible to comprehend how I could ever have felt that the Alliance and the Coalition were opposite sides of the same coin.

  Craning my neck, I can see the twisted hull of the Coalition ship, half buried in the soil where it blazed from the sky. The world goes dim as I’m dragged in out of the sunlight and passed into the belly of the enemy. A warren of flickering passages drift by as my ghastly captors jostle me into the heart of the ship.

  “Bind her.”

  In the cavern of broken equipment, Martek seems to truly come into his own. He nearly doubles in size, resplendent in his wretched power.

  Stuffed into what looks like a technician’s chair, heavy straps bind me in place, digging into my skin and cutting my breath short. My head is cinched in place and the only thing I can do is stare straight ahead. In the sickly, white-blue light humming from the handful of working fixtures, I see Martek sizing me up.

  “First thing’s first,” he mutters, closing on me and tearing open the front of my top so that my breasts spill free and the chilled air whistles against my sternum. Taking a long moment to feast his eyes, he looks up to my face.

  “I’d always wondered.”

  My stomach churns again at the invasion.

  “Ready the systems for interrogation.”

  There are a series of clicks, then a low hum winds up and shudders through the walls around us. The sound of jostling cables rises behind me, and the clatter of metal dragging across the floor. When his face reappears again, he is very close.

  “Your friend has been a party to this before,” he whispers to me, jabbing a series of plugs into the station by my seat. “He was wise to jump. You were wise too – just not as lucky.”

  He places the edge of a long needle against my chest, just to the left of my sternum, and presses it into me. The initial stab steals my breath, and he sinks it nearly two inches into me. As the pain crackles through my system, he rubs his rough hands across my breasts, pawing at me.

  “Better?”

  Thick, blue tar is smeared onto a series of metal disks, and he places one in the center of my forehead, and one on each temple. Affixing an apparatus to the shoulder of the chair, I can feel a prick of cold metal entering my left ear. Another blinding flash of pain gives way to the unspeakable discomfort of feeling the slender probe dive into my flesh until it lodges against the bone somewhere above my jawbone.

  “Now then,” Martek begins, grazing my breasts again, “there are any number of things I would like to ask you. But,” one of his hands rides deep between my legs, “we need to be sure you will answer faithfully.”

  With each new assault, my instinct lashes out, only to be cowed by the terrible scraping of bone in my head, and the tugging of viscera near my heart.

  Focus, Daphne. You’ve had training to navigate trauma. Pick a point in the room and fixate on it. Memorize every detail. Will yourself into insensibility.

  If I could render up my life now, I would. If it were possible to unclench the balled fist that wraps around our consciousness and roots it in our bodies, I would release it now and sail off into the unknown. I would leave this greasy, vicious tyrant to pound at my inert body and demand answers he would never receive.

  But I am not so lucky. So, the best I can hope for is to grit my teeth against the pain and wait until my body gives out.

  Twenty-Eight

  Duric

  The jungle at night, even with the gas giant reflecting the sun’s rays, is so dark as to be on the cusp of ineffably black. This makes movement under the best of circumstances a difficult labor.

  Factor in that I’m nearly seven feet tall and bulky with shoulder ridges and it becomes an even greater challenge. Stepping through the jungle while striving to make not even the slightest whisper of sound? That’s nearly impossible.

  But I don’t let that stop me. Nearly impossible just means that it’s possible. As I’ve said before, I’m trained for command and starship combat as my primary focus. However, all Vakutan who enter the military engage in several months of commando training. So I know a few tricks, like stepping in places where I’m unlikely to make noise, and walking toe to heel to minimize the impact my footfalls make.

  My progress is maddeningly slow, but I have to be cautious as I trail the pair of Odex ahead of me. Even though they are gaining ground on me, the foolish brutes are loud and careless. They snap branches, bend over grasses, and trample through mud without a second thought about the easy to follow trail they leave behind. Probably without a first thought, either. Odex are not brilliant.

  It takes all of my discipline and self control not to just charge out at them and beat them senseless, then demand of them where Daphne is. I’ve been marching through the jungle all day and well into the night. Martek has had plenty of time to torment her, and that’s probably exactly what he’s doing.

  The thought of my dear human woman being in his yellow clawed clutches fills me with horror. But I know that she’s strong, much stronger than she appears. Hold on, Daphne. Please hold on.

  Hunting Odex presents a major problem in that their olfactory senses are incredibly keen. It has been postulated that they could detect a single drop of sweat in the cargo bay of the Alliance’s biggest battle cruiser. The solution is to approach from upwind, but with the moon’s ever shifting weather patterns it’s hard to predict which way it will come from.

  Fortunately for me, the Odex aren�
��t exactly on high alert. From what I could puzzle out from the little I recognize of their brutish, ugly tongue, it seems that Martek believes me to be dead. So they’re not exactly expecting company to begin with, and given that Odex are not known for future planning or foresight my odds are better than they had been.

  Toe to heel. Duck low under that thin, brittle branch which could snap and alert my prey. Step over the muddy patch to avoid squishing my way into detection. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

  Fortune smiles. The Odex don’t suspect a thing as I creep up to a clearing where they’ve set up a crude outpost. The hairy brutes aren’t the sharpest sapient species in the galaxy, but they’re handy with wood craft. They have constructed a twenty foot high tower, the purpose of which I surmise is to get signals out past the intense magnetic field at ground level.

  So this is a signal outpost. These idiots, clambering up their rickety ladder, are probably about to make a report to Martek.

  I decide to let them. Once they announce the all clear, it’s time to make my move. Eying the wooden ladder, I realize there’s no way I can climb it silently. It creaked and crackled the whole time they were scampering up its length. That leaves me with two options.

  One, I could wait for them to come back down for their next patrol. But that would leave Daphne in Martek’s clutches for even longer, perhaps hours.

  Two, I could climb a nearby towering triangle tree and leap the ten feet from its closest branch onto the top of the tower. Risky, even if I make the jump, because then I’ll still have two Odex to deal with in a space too small to maneuver.

  Logically, I should just wait. But I can’t do that to Daphne. When I was not much more than a stripling, the training mission I was leading fell into a Coalition ambush. My crew were killed to a man. Me, I wasn’t so lucky.

  The Shorcu interrogator had orange scales and was a big bulky for his kind. He spoke to me most politely, even when he was shoving wires under my skin or applying electric shocks to, as he put it, ‘prime the pump’ for my eventual tearful confession of everything he wanted to know.

  I resisted, of course, most stubborn even for a Vakutan of my age. But their methods are insidious. Physical torture is just one tool in their box. They also have a way of using machines to interpret brain waves of their captives, effectively reading their minds though from what I understand the process is chaotic and next to useless for finding specific information, such as the code for security clearance.

  However, it is quite efficient at giving them another handle on you. The Shorcu interrogator discovered that I feared to never see my mother again, and he used this fact against me. He claimed, and through my red fog of agony I believed him, that he could track her down and assassinate her if I didn’t talk.

  I wound up telling that monster everything I knew, and was even volunteering information he never asked for, when an Alliance strike team attacked the ship and rescued me.

  It’s an experience I will never forget, and I struggle to live it down every day. I won’t stand for Daphne suffering the same fate any longer than I must.

  Climbing the tree silently would be difficult, but I don’t have to bother. A nearby colony of the tusked reptiles which nearly killed me are engaging in some sort of mating or other behavior that has them hooting louder than a battle cruiser at take off. The Odex settle in and begin devouring their rations, which many believe are made of blood and bone meal of the victims they choose not to enslave.

  I creep out onto the long, thick branch, about ten feet above their tower. It’s going to be a hell of a jump, but I think I can make it. Coiling my body like a spring, I plant my feet firmly on the branch, using a knobby protrusion where a limb has snapped off for traction. Then I launch myself through the dark, humid jungle night. For a moment I think I’m not going to make it, but then my momentum carries me over the low safety railing on their tower. With a growl on my lips, I tackle the nearest Odex and plant my ridged skull right between his eyes.

  The Odex doesn’t cry out, but just kind of shudders and pitches right off the tower. His mate reaches for his ax, but my khaffi is quicker. I take him under the chin with the hook, driving it up into his feeble brain. The Odex’s eyes roll back into its head, and it slumps to the floor of the tower.

  I examine their communication devices, but they don’t have enough signal strength to go more than a mile or two. My heart pounds in excitement. That means the Coalition base can’t be far away.

  From my eagle eye perch, I examine the jungle, and am just able to make out a path of fallen trees in the gloom. That must be where the Odex ship came in for its crash landing. If their ship survived atmospheric entry, then they might still be using it for shelter and other purposes even if it can no longer fly.

  Getting down from the tower proves much easier than getting into it. I strip the small, hand held slug throwers from the Odex corpses and stuff them in my belt. Not very powerful ordinance, and only six shots a piece, but I need all of the help I can get to assault the Coalition base.

  At last, I reach the trail of downed trees, a wide swatch torn through the jungle. The acrid smell of leaking starship fuel stings my nostrils. I find a small pool of it gathered in the cupped fronds of a stout, short tree.

  The fuel isn’t a pure liquid, but more of a slurry. It’s highly volatile, but only if an electrical charge is run through it. Even open flame cannot ignite Coalition feul.

  I eye the short range communicators taken from my Odex victims and grin. The beginnings of a plan are forming in my mind, one that could give me just the edge I need to rescue Daphne and send that sickly yellow Shorcu back to his ancestors.

  Stopping in the path of felled trees, I drop down to my knees and bow my head reverently.

  “Ancestors, please protect the human woman Daphne. Guard her body and her mind from the predations of my enemies. And thank you, for this opportunity for revenge and a chance to prove my mettle.”

  Then I rise, khaffi stick in one hand and an Odex pistol in the other. I’m going to save Daphne, and if I have to wade through an ocean of Odex blood to do it, then so be it.

  Twenty-Nine

  Daphne

  White hot pain shatters my body. My jaw is clenched so tightly, it seems like my teeth are going to splinter against each other. Every muscle constricts and jerks under my skin.

  Then the wave passes and I drop limp in the chair, the probe in my head the only tiny sizzle of sensation I have left.

  “Anything?”

  The Shorku technician hunched over the monitors clicks his tongue.

  “We have a smart one. Degrees. Useless in the field. She’s proud.”

  “But what about the Alliance? How strong is her IHC connection to their cause?”

  “Indeterminate at this juncture.”

  Martek snorts, “Establish more pathways.”

  The technician slinks out of my sight while Martek looms over me, his puckered face alive with the wicked joy of inflicting pain.

  “You know,” he licks his lips, “we can extract what we want to know from you. Wrench every ounce of data from your mind and leave the wasted shell behind. Or you can live.”

  A scaly grip pins my forearm and I stain my eyes down to see the technician sinking the needled end of a long cable into the flesh between my thumb and forefinger. It rises into me, then tugs at my skin as he lets the cable slap to the floor.

  Hearing his listless feet shuffle around me, I know my other hand is about to get the same treatment.

  “If you answer our questions, this whole process will be far simpler.”

  “I can’t move my jaw.” The words spit through my teeth, and Martek’s eyes flicker at the prospect of an easy victory. He nods to the technician, “Rusk.”

  A firm hand clamps haphazardly across my face, pressing my nose down and covering my eyes. The metal lodged in my head gives one last crunching scrape against bone, then traces a long line of relief as it draws out of my ear and clatters to the table behind me. The hand pu
lls back, and I gulp in a hard breath through my gaping jaw.

  “Now,” Martek leans against my seat, “what can you offer me?”

  My silence hangs in the air, and his smug attitude sours into true danger. Crouching over the controls himself, Martek pulls at a dial and my hands begin to quiver, then spasm uncontrollably. It takes all my will not to give him the satisfaction of a scream, but one is searing the inside of my chest.

  “Well,” comes his throaty, snarling chuckle, “Did your father ever forgive you before he died?”

  Horror spreads its icy blanket across the inside of my ribs, cloaking my heart with its chill. It has to be a bluff. There’s no way. It’s impossible to do what he’s doing.

  “I imagine he didn’t, did he Daphne? Military men can be so hard.”

  Unable to master my will, tears begin to pearl down my face.

  “Is that why you detest fighting so much? Why you protect yourself with learning and self-importance? Letting that Vakutan brute do your fighting for you?”

  Duric’s face cuts into my mind, darkening my heart and forcing more tears out of me. I see him skittering down the crags, wrestling against those two monsters before disappearing into the churning flood. How I wish I had been dragged after him. Sucked into oblivion to escape this torment.

  At the panel, a short crackling draws Martek’s attention. He and Rusk peer at the monitor, then the Commander wheels on me, gleaming with delight.

  “You naughty little thing. Falling for a Vakutan, eh?” Spitting out a derisive snort, he sidles closer to me, “That wouldn’t have made Daddy very proud, would it? Willingly giving up your precious little body to some grubby alien brute, like some perverted little whore? Worse – human prostitutes wouldn’t deign to fuck a beast like that. You degenerate little slut.”

  His face is very near mine now, and I’m aching to fling my hands up and tear out his eyes. To dig my thumbs into his mouth and pull until his horrid face splits up the middle. All I can do is tug at my restraints until I feel the back of his fingers dust at my exposed nipple.