by T. L Smith
Instead I just whispered to him. “I’m in control now, for good, but I need you alive. I’ve given up everything and everyone else, but not you. You understand me, Mister? I’m not going to lose you too.” I squeezed his hand, holding tight. “I need you. So fight.” I wanted to say a million other things, but couldn’t. I hated the power this fear had over me, refusing me the ability to tell him what I truly felt. All I could do was hold his hand tight, let him feel me with him.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The doctor gave me ten minutes, but the nurses tossed in a few more, before firmly making me leave. I was led to the doctor’s office and she rose from her desk, still looking exhausted, but a little lighter of spirit. “Ms. Ghiya, please have a seat.” She came around her desk and poured a glass of water, waiting until I was seated. “I know you feel awful, probably worn out by now, so I won’t keep you long.”
“Yes, Dr. Arroza, it’s been a horrible day.” The water was cold and refreshing. “You’re going to tell me about Col. Everett’s recovery plan.”
“Good, a positive attitude. Keep it up. We’ve seen worse and gotten the patients through it.” She reached back across her desk and tapped computer commands, a hologram materializing next to her. “You saw the injury and were told how serious it was.”
Her fingers played over the display. The holographic chest opened up. “We repaired the damaged artery and restored necessary blood flow, but there’s a great deal more reconstruction required. We harvested tissues to start growing bone and muscle, but it will take some time, even with Collective technology.”
“I’m not expecting miracles overnight, but how long is ‘some time’? When are you going to let him wake up?” My stomach twisted around with the reconstruction images.
Seeing my discomfort, Dr. Arroza turned the computer off. “He needs to stay in an induced coma as long as that shoulder structure is unstable. You know all too well how EH take to being bedridden, so we need to make sure nothing interferes with his immediate care. Once the shoulder is stable, we’ll let him wake up, but don’t count on it for at least a week.” She shook her head as I grimaced. “As tough as these guys are, reconstruction will be painful. We’re looking at a few months and multiple surgeries, then physical therapy.”
“Wow, that won’t go over well.” I couldn’t help what came out of my mouth. “Bed rest is like putting a big dog in a small cage. You’re going to get bit.”
“Tell me about it. I’ve been at this for years.” She scoffed. “That’s why induced comas are magic for EH. They get crazy, we put them out.” She smiled and stood. “Col. Everett is in good hands, but now we have to take care of you. I can see you’re drained and can probably predict your habits. You won’t sleep, worrying about him or this mission.”
She reached into her pocket at the same time as she picked up my glass of water. Her hand uncurled with two pills. “As ship’s doctor, I’m ordering you to take them.”
My whole body tensed up. “You forget, I’m not military.” As tired as I was, I couldn’t think of being knocked out. “I have to be ready to respond to whatever happens.”
“Take the pills or I’ll get something stronger. Commander Gardner already authorized force, if necessary.” She pushed them at me, her eyes fixed onto mine, her threat serious. “Eight hours. That’s all I’m asking.” She leaned forward. “Cooperate or I’ll refuse visitations.”
I didn’t need to read her mind to see how serious she was. Gardner put her here because she had experience with EH. She knew how to avoid being compelled, and how to trigger compliance. Everett was my trigger. Annoyed, I took the pills and ignored the water. With her continued glare I swallowed them and opened my mouth to prove it. “There.” I rose, hiding how tired I really was. “I’ll be back when this wears off.”
“No sooner than ten hours, then once every twelve hours, for now.” She put the glass aside and moved out of my way. “The nurses already received orders on when and how long. Afterwards, you report to me so I can see how you’re doing. Being his lifemate, it’s important to his recovery that you remain well. Now you better go, before the meds kick in.”
I took her tough dismissal seriously. I barely reached my room and climbed into the warmth of my bed before the pills started working. I pulled Everett’s favorite pillow to me. It smelled of his skin, a faint comfort, but all I had.
* * * * *
Eight hours was how long the doctor said the pills would last, but I woke up almost twelve hours later, rested and alert, and still in control. Sharmila remained quiet.
My first concern was Everett and no one stopped me when I arrived to see him. I held his hand, talking to him, letting him know I was waiting for him. I kept how worried I was buried, as well as my deepest emotions. I needed him, and not just because we were bonded lifemates. I needed only him.
When the nurses finally made me leave, I visited other wounded soldiers. Sharmila had refused to expose herself to them, something I couldn’t fight through with her, until now. Many were wounded as bad, or worse than Everett. They put my duty into perspective, before I returned to the tasks of war. We had to win this war, which couldn’t be done remaining here.
The rest of my day was spent with Gardner, Huracid and the EH appointed to take Everett’s place. There evacuations of stasis pods would take time. A team of linguists studied the equipment, trying to break the language code. A med-tech team found a way to tap into the pods and started analysis on the bodies within. Body chemistry labs would identify the necessary environments when we awakened them. In time we would try to get them home, if there was one to return to. Until then, we’d take them back to the Orb.
I knew that Gardner used Everett’s injury, while Huracid used the evacuations, as delay tactics. But I knew they couldn’t put off our duty for long. I was lucky to get another day before being forced in front of the Collective.
Standing before them, I remembered my father speaking about the ‘elephant in the room’. I refrained from using the colloquialism in this group. Instead I focused on the dead Punitraq’s hologram. “These are the creatures we found aboard the ships. Judging from what we found, they’re cannibalistic and the captives were being used as food. At least some of them. There has to be other motives for abducting so many people, so many species.”
The hologram showed what Everett had called ‘autopsy’ rooms. I didn’t need telepathy to know the members of the Collective fully understood what had happened in those rooms. They listened as I confirmed Sharmila’s order, to allow several of the smaller ships to escape. Their few ships limped home, barely able to make L4. It gave us time.
Time to fully map the suspect solar system they seemed enroute to. Time for the next wave of recruits to catch up. It was one thing to attack a fleet, an entire world was something else altogether.
It was time I needed. Time for Everett to stabilize. I couldn’t go into battle without him, even if he was confined to a hospital bed. I needed to feel him with me in my soul. I needed to feel his heart was still mine after Sharmila had ravaged our bond.
The enemy travelling at L4 gave us time, but we had to be ahead of them, not lagging behind. Gardner and the other commanders needed direct information on our targets. I needed information on our enemy, not just the ancient tidbits from Sharmila and the Elders.
There was only one way to get that information.
I got a week of recovery for me, two more surgeries for Everett, and a fresh influx of ships and soldiers. But new data from our scout ships told me time was up. We launched the fleet to the coordinates of a twin solar system. We arrived far ahead of the wounded Punitraq ships and parked our fleet a distance outside the system. Gardner took three ships in closer, orbiting on the opposite side of one of those suns.
We launched probes to survey the many planets and their moons, but focused on two planets with highly unnatural energy sources. It was time to get answers the Elders couldn’t provide us. Information we didn’t have from our encounters in battle.
Did they know what happened to their fleet? What weapons would we face when we attacked their planets? Why did they attack so many worlds, destroying them, taking their people captive? We had to think beyond our imaginations, expect the worst, and be prepared for great losses.
I took my place on the bridge, trying desperately to ignore Everett’s empty space next to me. I’d sat with him earlier in the morning. His shoulder was stable and they lifted the coma, but his medications were so strong it made little difference. Except I could feel him in there again. He felt me too, but was too drugged to communicate.
Now I stood on the bridge, every station manned, but alone. I buried my aching heart deeper. I had a job to do.
This close in-system, we couldn’t travel FTL, but Elder tech had the ability to leap short distances at near-light. So we were ready to leap into orbit before the enemy could launch an offensive. Until then, this sun would keep us masked while we sent out our probes.
We had at least a day to gather information before the Punitraq’s hobbled ships broke out of light. Then we’d launch the next phase of this ancient war.
The thought of war caused bands of guilt and fear to tighten up in my guts. We wouldn’t be up against a fleet of warships, but an entire civilization. Even with everything we’d seen, the concept of exterminating them grated against every moral lesson ingrained in my soul. My soul, not hers.
Sharmila whispered warnings to keep my guard up, to remember what the Punitraq were capable of. She reminded me of the thousands of victims in stasis pods. Of the thousands we’d killed not knowing they were aboard the ships. Someplace they wouldn’t have been, except for the Punitraq. It was a guilt we’d all carry, but one my soldiers didn’t need to feel from me. I closed my thoughts to everyone.
I closed my thoughts off from the enemy too. This close to the source of their power, I couldn’t risk them identifying me, or rather Sharmila. No one, not even my own commanders could know what I was planning. Not until I did it.
So I sat silently observing, watching logistics zoom in on passing planets, many as hostile looking as the creatures this system spawned, but our drones found them uninhabited. The drones focused on the original targets. The first radiated a low level of advancement, nearly primitive emissions, nothing capable of what we had seen, but nothing could be overlooked. The last thing we needed was to be hit from behind because we discounted a threat.
Gardner ordered drones into a low orbit around the first world, homing in on the strongest energy sources. The whole bridge waited in silence.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The first images we received were of a world nearly as decimated as the planets the Punitraq attacked. Maybe their own people had been their first victims. The thought crossed my mind, then played out in reality for everyone to see.
This world was inhabited, but technology seemed limited to factories emitting toxic smog. Thick green clouds blew out over slum cities. Ramshackle buildings crammed up around factories. What might have once been roads were worn down to dirt pathways between tottering shacks piled one upon the other.
The drones picked up environmentals. Temperatures were insufferably hot and dry. Then we saw the inhabitants living in that heat. As hardened as my heart had become after Everett was struck down, the images of the population cut through my shell. Everyone on the bridges of my ships watched as uniformed Punitraq violently gathered up their own people. They used weapons to drive them in a forced march to the factories.
We watched the violence turn to sickening brutality when one poor soul fell. The guards ignored him, instead continued to push the slaves over the fallen man. He tried to stand, to fall back into the lines, but couldn’t. As his group stumbled over him, a guard finally pulled him from under their feet. Instead of leaving him behind on that torturous road, we watched as the slave was beaten to death.
No slave attempted to stop them. Maybe death was the only relief from the misery of their lives. From the hell of this world.
I adjourned to my war-room before I lost control of my emotions. These people were not all vicious enemies. Clearly many were as much victims as the captives in the stasis tubes. I knew none of the Collective would agree to their extermination and said this out loud to Sharmila and the Elders. “This is not what we agreed to. I won’t do it!”
“You have to! You know what they will do if not destroyed once and for all.” Sharmila’s voice rang loud in my head, the pressure of her will rising against mine.
“Don’t even think about it.” I pushed her back firmly, painfully. “I’ll never let you take control of my will again, so back off, or else.” I gave her a taste of what I’d do, then sat at the table and buried my eyes in my palms. I couldn’t rub the images out of my mind. “As leader of the Collective, we refuse to kill innocent people.”
“They are Punitraq. They ravaged countless worlds in my time and have done the same now.” Her rage boiled, but she resisted her urges. “They’ve exhausted compassion. They have to be prevented from rising ever again. The only way to achieve that is to destroy these worlds, and every world they have taken root upon.”
“NO! There’s something wrong with this picture, with those people. I’m not ordering offensives until I know all the facts.” I cut her thought off and tapped at the com link giving me direct contact to all the commanders. “I’m calling a meeting in two hours to discuss the information we’re receiving from the drones.”
I activated my screens to resume watching the drone videos. From the privacy of my war room I manipulated the visuals, getting in close on the structures, getting in closer on the peoples’ faces. Those of the soldiers made my skin crawl, their viciousness scarred into their flesh. However, the faces of the slaves held none of the repulsiveness, only tragedy.
Anyone could see they lived a cruel, merciless life. How could Sharmila not see this? I ignored her attempts to get my attention. I couldn’t kill these people and the EH wouldn’t either. There had to be answers we didn’t have and they had to lie on the other planet, the one radiating energies of a modern world.
As those drones dropped into lower orbits we’d get real-time information, not ancient warped memories. But it would still only be images. I turned my chair to look out into the darkness, at the planets we spied on from a safe distance. In minutes we’d receive video on this next world, but there was only one way to know the truth. Only I could get to the truth.
Sharmila being in control for so long opened talents I didn’t know I had, including ones she tried to keep from me. I knew exactly how to accomplish what I wanted, and focused on the other Punitraq world.
Carrying out my plan was as easy as breathing. In my mind I became a drone, traveling across the expanse, but faster than any drone. I plunged through their atmosphere, down towards their planet. But to truly see I needed physical eyes. For this I had to find a simple soul. If they subjugated one planet, it was likely they did the same thing here. A slave was a perfect target. To find one shouldn’t be difficult. I had only to seek the emotion of hopelessness.
It didn’t take long, feeling the emptiness of space being filled with conscious thoughts, the sensation of other beings. I kept my guard up, but sought the emotions of a possible host. Immediately I felt a heavy sadness and latched on. I’d need to incorporate myself into this mind, but remain unnoticed as neuro-patterns aligned.
After a few moments, visual sensations trickled into my mind, but I had to sort out alien thought processes. I had to keep those emotions from distorting what I could see.
Slowly the images became clear. I wasn’t surprised by the contrast between the first world and this one. Here streets were wide and clear, the buildings on either side tall and uncluttered. It could have been a human city, except too austere. I saw no color or beauty.
The person I accompanied stopped and I felt the weight of a heavy burden shift achingly from one shoulder to another. In that pause I caught a glimpse of the sky. It was an odd violet, but clear and unpollu
ted.
A sound roared overhead and the creature’s head jerked up higher, long enough for me to see some type of aircraft flicker between the buildings. The creature cringed with fear, a familiar fear. The eyes quickly returned to the ground, wishing to remain unseen. Before I was limited to only peripheral vision again, I saw a different creature. A brief, but shocking glimpse.
The fear of my host prevented me from urging a second look. I could probably compel obedience, but this much fear had a reason. I needed another encounter, one possessing a wider perspective. I started to break away from this contact, part of my attention returning to the room I occupied. My screens displayed the industrially sterile world I’d just seen, but our drones were drawn to the strongest sources of energy.
Energy from technology and people placed higher up the social ladder. I let go of my host and stretched myself further, opening myself to search for the signals luring our drones. In my real body, the hair on my arms stood on end as I felt energy surges rush through me, swirling all around me like a whirlwind.
If I let go I could get carried away on those currents. I calmed the urge and concentrated on the waves. I was drawn to one current, a sense of power different than the others. I followed the trail, soaring over the city. Suddenly I saw my destination. I could see without a host.
A flicker of my soul soared over the city, drawn like a moth to a flame towards spiraled towers. In this somber city there was beauty after all. The towers were sculpted of stone, but the sharp edges were worn smooth by wind, rain and time. Still, they shone bright. Beckoning me.
With nothing to stop me, I spun like a leaf among and through the towers, spellbound by the artistry. I almost forgot that beneath this magical beauty was a machine bent on death and destruction. Remembering the truth broke the spell, but not the allure.