by Andi Feron
“She’s under my command. What does this mean? Will she be alright?” I tried to sound like a commander receiving report on his subordinate, but I was having trouble keeping my voice steady. I hadn’t even gotten to tell her how much I’d missed her.
“She overused her ability and will need to rest for a few days, but she should be fine,” the medic gave me the report as he finished recording Allie’s vitals.
I tried to keep my relief invisible as I watched them take her on the stretcher back to camp. Admiral Calinger thanked me for the support of my team and told me that we were ordered back to Saturn base. I was more than a little thrilled at the thought of us going back to Dr. Monroe. Having a doctor look her over would reassure me the medics were correct in their prognosis.
The need for stealth was diminished, which allowed Admiral Calinger to have a transport take us back to our ship and avoid the thirty-kilometer hike back. The team was pretty worn out so I was glad for the relief. Allie didn’t stir. I kept watching her chest rise and fall. Colin, one of my soldiers, walked over as I wrapped a blanket over Allie and strapped her into the medical bed.
Colin said, “She brought me back, you know. I had been wounded in the head, and she replaced my brain matter like it was clay she was shaping. I owe her. I’ll sit here and watch her as we head back if you are okay with that, sir.”
I nodded. Talon’s eyes were locked on Allie. He was a tough soldier and had seen many battles. He was chiseled perfectly and could have made a GQ magazine cover. His six-foot-five-inch frame towered him over most everyone, but he held a soft spot for his sister. He had wanted her safe for as long as I could recall. I knew that he would prefer to be next to her, but I needed his tracking skills at the helm to ensure that the fold back went as planned. Seraphine caught us both looking at Allie.
“She’ll be okay. She’s not going to end up like Helen.” Seraphine put her hand on Talon’s arm, and he grabbed her hand. Neither of them elaborated on who Helen was, but they both grew sad at the mentioning of her.
Talon pulled Seraphine to face him and kissed the top of her head. She moved in closer, and they wrapped their arms around each other. I had forgotten they were married and wondered how Allie was coping with that knowledge. Within hours we were back at Saturn base where a medical team met us as we gave status reports ahead of time. The protocol was to have medical waiting for any unconscious arrival. I would have a debriefing, but I first made sure Allie was settled in sickbay.
Dr. Monroe reported that she would be fine and would wake up in a few days. She needed to regenerate her energy. Healers absorbed energy differently than any other ability, and it acted more like a battery. When the battery was used up, it needed to be recharged. I left Allie to sleep. I would check on her again after the debriefing.
Chapter Twelve
Talon-May 25, 2013
A deep sleep left Allie trapped. Jasper was confident she would be fine and needed time to recharge. I checked on her in sickbay frequently, and John stopped by a lot too, hoping she was awake. This entire thing was new to him. The council put him through intense training and expected him to lead an elite team out of the gate. To me, he was still a boy, and this burden was unfair to him.
I felt awful that John had been brought into this at all. I never guessed that the council wanted him as well. The will of the council often didn’t make sense, but I was sure that if we could see pieces of the future we might do some unusual things as well.
He was a tier-seven empath. The odds that two level-sevens were best friends and brought in together were astronomical, about as strange as Lucius and Seraphine being brought in together. This made me wonder how far back the council had been arranging our lives. I went home and found Seraphine was in the kitchen making dinner. I took a deep breath, taking in the scent of freshly baked rolls and fried chicken.
“Smells amazing, babe.” I kissed her.
She went back to fixing mashed potatoes. “How’s Allie today?”
“Still sleeping. Four days now. Jasper says her vitals are stable and she could wake up any time, but it could also be awhile. She brought back eight people and healed around twenty more. I didn’t even know that was possible.”
“That’s amazing! No wonder she needs a nap.”
“They’re talking about making our team permanent. I’m not sure how I feel about Allie being out there fighting with me.”
“It sounds like we need her, and besides, then you can keep an eye on her,” Seraphine said.
“I guess that’s true. They’ve made John the leader of the team. Rumor has it that the council has planned the position for him since he was a young boy.”
“Doesn’t the council do that to everyone?”
“I’m beginning to think they do.”
I wasn’t sure how much of a distraction Allie on my team would be, but the council never seemed to care if there were relationships paired in a team. They put us where they wanted, no matter the outside factors. Hearing the stats during debriefing left me stunned. I now knew why the price tag on Allie was so high.
Lucius was most likely basking in his reward for recruiting her. Seraphine refused any compensation, and she had only helped him because of what Jerap had shown her. I couldn’t blame her; if things had been reversed, there was very little I wouldn’t have done to keep her safe.
Our team would have a mission in the morning—a treaty negotiation for a species with a unique problem. The species promised if we could fix their problem, they would sign an alliance with the Loctorians. They were lending us Kais in Allie’s absence. The young boy with mischievous ambition had grown into a man, and like Allie, he was a healer. He was a tier-six, which meant he could fix a few of us before wearing out.
We arrived on the planet, and it was the most unique planet I’d seen to date. There was a strange, thin layer on the outside and very few bodies of water. Those two factors caused the planet to look like the land was in a giant bubble. The layer almost worked as a shield. Various locations would soften at certain times, allowing ships to land and take off.
John briefed us on our mission, “We are negotiating an alliance with a species called Ogdoanians. Their capital has been overrun by a large populous of creatures called Tarniske. They have agreed to carry out the alliance if we can take care of their pest problems.”
“So we’re basically exterminators now,” Gabriel said.
John continued, “We are today. We need the alliance to take this sector out of Khalbytian control. The Ogdoanians have tried extermination, but the Tarniske are a hardy breed and have survived any attempt thrown at them. That’s where we come in. We are to use our abilities to exterminate as many as possible. The Loctorians have discovered a frequency that will attract the Tarniske to our location. From there, we do the rest.”
“What did these creatures do to warrant mass extinction?” Lila asked.
“They take children from their beds at night as a food source and spread disease. They wreak havoc on the grain factories and destroy livelihoods. We’re basically taking care of an out of control pest problem. They’ve already tried relocation attempts, but the Tarniske return stronger and in greater numbers. The council discussed moving them to a new planet, but it has been determined that any planet they would be sent to would be ravaged by their destructive ways,” John clarified.
We landed on the planet and were warmly welcomed by the Ogdoanians’ ambassador. Ogdoanians were around four to five feet tall with small yellow eyes. Their ears, noses, and mouths were a third of the size of a human’s. They had dark grey skin that had creases in it throughout. Their hands and fingers were long, and their arms were about half the length of a human’s. They had short legs that explained their stature because their body size was comparable to ours.
A mass dome had been created for us to lure the creatures from all over the capitol. We left one entrance in which the Tarniske would flow through, then I would go into tracker mode and make sure all were present. Once that w
as confirmed, we would be in for the rodent battle.
We played the frequency and transmitted it through the city, leading the alien pests in masses to our location. The ground shook and giant rat looking creatures poured in. I estimated them to be three feet long, with pointed pink noses and large ears. Their bodies were tan, and they had two hairless orange tails extending from behind them. Their large teeth protruded out the top front of their mouths.
Ten minutes in and the city was emptied of Tarniske. Deron latched the gate, and we set to work. I diced through the creatures; the high-pitched sound they transmitted made me want to cover my ears, but I kept slicing them apart. John and Seraphine willed them to destroy each other. Kais was touching them, and they would collapse dead by reversing his healing touch.
A new recruit was placed with us by the name of Colin. I didn’t know if he had an ability because he was using conventional weapons as his choice for destruction. My hacker buddy Morgan was on our team now as well. He was proving himself useful for more than technology as he was also a skilled fighter.
Gabriel had his own spin on hand-to-hand combat. He was camouflaged, and none of the Tarniske saw him coming. We were about halfway through when the space rats began climbing up the sides of the dome and dropping on us from above. As I cut through two at once, one leapt on my back and bit hard into my shoulder. I could tell from the sounds of my teammates that we were all being bit.
We kept fighting, ignoring the pain of teeth embedded in our skin. I knifed the one that was biting me and kept going. We cleared them out, and I tracked the dome to make sure we hadn’t missed any. I confirmed that the Tarniske were all dead. We had killed hundreds of the creatures and bore the lashes to prove it. Kais healed each one of us, and it was as though we were never in battle.
Once we exited the dome, the Ogdoanians set the Tarniske bodies on fire. John went to meet the ambassador and other officials to seal the deal. He returned after a couple hours to let us know that he’d been successful. We returned to Saturn base and found that securing the alliance earned us a week off.
*
When we got back to base, Allie was still sleeping. At least she was safe, was all I could think to not worry about her. Almost two weeks into her sleeping, I went to see her. Before I walked into the room, I heard John’s voice and hesitated. He was talking to her, even though she was still sound asleep.
“You missed an epic rat battle, but I think you’d probably be glad you slept through that one. I remember when that mouse ran across our feet in the barn, that one time, I didn’t think I was going to get you to come down from the loft. I thought I might have to move us both in there and figure out how to heat it in the winter.
“Allie, I’ve missed you. If you could wake up soon, that would be great. Dr. Monroe keeps insisting you will, but every day that passes, I wonder more and more. Without you, there’s really not much worth fighting for, so wake up so I can see the reason I’m now a soldier.”
He turned to leave, and I walked in as though I arrived at that moment.
“Hey, John, how’s it going?”
“I guess alright, for being catapulted into an alien war and having my best friend in a coma for two weeks.”
“She’ll wake up.”
“That’s what they say.” He turned and left.
I sat in the chair next to Allie’s bed and read my book aloud to her. Allie loved books, and I thought maybe it would jar her awake. After a little bit, I found myself nodding off to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Althea- May 30, 2013
My brain felt full of cement that had hardened into a perfect mold of my cranium. I let out a slight moan before opening my eyes. They seemed to have caught shards of the mind cement as well. The blurry images corrected into my usual vision, and I saw Talon asleep in a chair, seemingly to guard me. He held a book in his right hand, and it was loosening from his grasp, about to plop on the floor.
The thickness in my mind made it difficult to recall why I was in what appeared to be a hospital room. There was an IV stuck in my left arm and a rather uncomfortable catheter between my legs. A blood pressure cuff was wrapped around my right arm, and a thin tube stuck in my nose. There were wires stuck on my chest that led to monitors reading my heart rate and oxygen levels.
Images seeped like damp sand in a funnel. Aliens, healing touch, so much carnage restored. This had all been a dream. I was pretty sure that there was nothing realistic about what my mind was telling me I was a part of.
I ripped off the blood pressure cuff, trying to free myself one wire at a time. Talon jumped up as I worked the sticky patches off of my chest. My machines started beeping, and a nurse ran in. She saw that I was awake before pausing the alarms and leaving the room.
“How you holding up, kiddo?” Talon stood beside me.
I cleared my throat, but it came out tired and raspy. “Been better.”
“You did well. Healed many and brought back several. We barely lost anyone.”
I started to recall the battle as the memories pushed through the sludge in my mind. “People died?” I couldn’t comprehend his words.
“You couldn’t be everywhere, Allie. Casualties are expected, but we only lost five thanks to you. That is extremely low for a battle of that magnitude.”
I turned to look at the wall. Five lives lost was considered a victory, but to me it seemed horrendous.
“I’ll leave you to get some rest. But trust me, you did well. We’ll talk later.”
Talon left, and the nurse came back with Jasper.
He shined a light in my eyes and asked me a couple questions. “Ms. Cooper, I was beginning to worry about you, but I see that was premature. You’ve been sleeping for a couple weeks now.”
I gasped. “A couple weeks? From healing?”
“Yes, it would seem you did not pace yourself well and completely burned out your healing receptors. We still don’t fully understand the process, but the place where the energy originates from, that allows you to heal, is in a sensitive part of the brain and can easily short circuit if overused. It’s similar to a breaker given too much power. You overworked yours.”
“I didn’t have much choice. There was destruction everywhere. I turned, and so quickly, people were gone. Still, we lost five. I didn’t get to them.”
“You did more than I’ve ever seen before. We’ve sent healers into battle before. Some don’t return, but most can keep a few from going critical. There has only been one close to your level, but that was long ago. I know you don’t see it as a success, but you far exceeded anyone’s expectations. The council will hold tightly to you.”
“Tell the story of success to the families of those lost,” I mumbled.
“Loss is a part of war. The loss would have been much greater without you. Honor the memories of those willing to be lost rather than holding regret for not being able to save them.”
I listened to Jasper’s words, but I still felt incompetent. Jasper told me that I was good to head back to my quarters, but he would still like me to rest for the next week before taking on anything else. The nurse released me from the rest of my tubes and wires.
Jasper insisted a nurse wheel me back to my quarters. My legs were a little wobbly but the nurse helped me over to my couch before leaving. I began reading a copy of Lord of the Flies that I had found in the base bookstore a few weeks back.
I made it thirty pages in when my door buzzed. I ignored it and continued to read. The door buzzed again and I put the book down, annoyed. I pushed the button to open the door and saw John standing there fully uniformed.
“Can I help you, sir?” The question staggered weirdly out of my mouth.
“Can I come in?”
I nodded and closed the door behind him, offering him the chair across from my brown suede couch. He sat and glanced at the floor, then up at me. This felt too formal. So much had happened to us, and it made me sad. I wanted very much to get my best friend back.
“How are y
ou?” John asked.
“I’m good. Took a nice nap, and now I’m onto reading and relaxing my mess of a self for a bit. Can I get you some tea?” I was acting like he was any company.
“No, I’m fine. Talon told me you were awake. I wanted to see how you were for myself. Allie, I’ve missed you.”
“I wouldn’t know. You barely said two words to me when you saw me last. And that mind thing you did without warning. You telepathic?”
“I’m a tier-seven empath. It translates into more than reading emotions. I have many mind tricks. It helps with giving individual commands.”
“Why didn’t you talk to me more? More than just giving me orders.”
“I’m sorry. I wanted to get finished with the mission. I’m here now. I want you back again. We need you for the team.”
This was a commander wanting to be sure that he had a healer for his team, not a best friend checking to make sure that I’d recovered.
“I’ll be fine whenever you want to use me again,” I snapped harsher than I intended. I stood to open my door and show John out.
He got up and turned to face me. “I came to see how you were. I hope you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. I’ll see you at the next mission.”
“Wait. Gabriel and I are doing some bowling later with a couple other people. Thought maybe you could come. Nineteen hundred hours.”
“Perhaps.” With that, I shut the door and returned to my novel.
I made it three chapters when there was another knock at my door. I was never getting through this book. I opened the door to find Seraphine standing there. I resisted the urge to slam it in her face. I let her inside, and we sat across from each other silently awkward for a few minutes.
“Tea or coffee? I have some Moxie too, that took a bit of effort to ship in from Maine. You know what that is right? Seeing as you never grew up in California and lived in Maine.” I narrowed my eyes, waiting for her to take in what I was communicating.