I wrapped my arm around her and she just melted into my arms. “Becca I’m sorry, if there was a way the doctor would have found one by now. I think you’re stuck with that symbiote for the long run.”
If their cells weren’t completely joined then it seemed reasonable that there was a better chance of symbiote and host being separated. I’d had this faint hope that we’d be able to rid ourselves of him by doing so, but Khala’s pronouncement that our new friend had completed the bonding process had shot that prospect to bits. Now Becca was stuck, just like Lily and me and there was nothing I or anyone else could do about it.
Chapter Six
I leapt up the side of the chamber walls, zooming across the surface of the rock in great leaps that seemed to defy the laws of gravity. I jumped into the center of the ceiling. I crouched and looked down at all the rangers and my fellow resistance members then pushed against the surface under my feet and went plummeting back down toward the ground. I did a back flip just before hitting the surface and landed on my feet.
“Damn,” I said with a shake of my head as I looked about the small chamber.
Raylen’s men had been taken off guard by my trip up the side of the wall, but it had only been enough to keep them off me for a few seconds. The others would be no help as they were all busy. Even Lily, who was finally getting a real chance to flex her muscles, was having trouble keeping them at bay. God there were so damn many of them! I waited the rangers out and when the first of them came tearing across the chamber floor I ducked as he swung the butt of his rifle at me and I slammed my fist into his stomach as hard as I could.
He went flying back and toppled into three of friends. His body armor had absorbed most of the impact, but my attack was powerful enough to leave him dazed for several seconds. His companions, on the other hand, were back up on their feet in an instant. Say what you would about the rangers, but they were a damned tough lot. Lily and I had them beat by a landslide, but still it was pretty impressive. Their armor was of a type created during the war and had been designed specifically to fight the Qharr. It was capable of absorbing a lot of kinetic energy, but there was only so much it could do against K’tetch-enhanced strength. Which was why he had been thrown away from me instead of shrugging it off as he had with some of my less-powerful attacks.
The other three rangers came speeding toward me and I braced myself for their attacks. The second and third raised their rifles as clubs and I let the blows come as I held out my open palm which impacted the first’s shoulder, and sent him spinning away. He collapsed to his knees and I hit him across the chest with a round house kick. He went down and stayed down, and I turned to take on his two friends who had been joined by the ranger who’d gone soaring a moment before.
I ducked when one of the rangers, a lanky woman who had a shock of short red hair done up in a pixie cut, and spun around diving at another who I only realized was Neada after I’d gotten a good look into her eyes. Of course, that didn’t stop me from sending her tumbling down on her ass, but I did feel bad about it. Pretty soon she was down for the count and I jumped up to my feet dealing a blow against fire-hair’s chest before she wilted under the force of my attacks.
Then it was just me and the last ranger. He looked fresh-faced and I doubted he was old enough to have reached twenty five years. Which meant I probably only had four or five years on him, but there was some quality about him that I couldn’t quite name made him seem much younger. He pounced at me, and I grabbed him by the arm and sent him hurtling away from me. He bounced back and was ready to pounce on me when Rayland suddenly called a halt to the fighting.
My opponent let out a deep breath and smiled at me. “That’s pretty damn impressive. The Major told us what you were capable of, but I don’t think I would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“I have to admit sometimes even I’m surprised by the things I can do.” I shrugged brushing my hair out of my eyes. I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from saying any more. No one among the nesters knew about the K’teth save Bueller and Rayland and it had been decided that it would be best if the general nester populous was kept in the dark. Even the rangers weren’t in the know, but that hadn’t stopped them from speculating about Lily and my appearance or our abilities. At the moment the presiding theory was that we were victims of genetic experimentation at the hands of Qharr scientists.
“Name’s Jake by the way,” the ranger said scratching the back of his head.
“Lexa.”
“Yeah, um, so listen. You wanna grab a drink or something. My cousin makes this…well it’s pretty terrible moonshine to be honest, but it’s about the best you can get arou–”
“She’s spoken for.” Lily appeared and put her arm around me adopting an almost comically possessive posture.
“Oh, oh, well, sorry, that was… unexpected. Well, it was a pleasure,” he said then quickly fled his cheeks burning bright red.
Lily pulled away then frowned watching him disappear. “That was awkward. You know I caught one the ranger’s sneaking glances at my ass when he thought I didn’t notice. It was… weird.”
“I know the feeling,” I muttered, pulling her close and kissed her.
I admit that I had an ulterior motive for doing this. I had this hope that if the rangers saw us displaying our affection, that it might help stave off any would be admirers. While Lily had been a little slower to develop a figure, she’d grown into it quite nicely and I could hardly keep my eyes off her whenever she was around. Still neither one of us had much experience with this sort of thing. I had received more than enough attention for my own liking, but only two men had been very forward in their interest, one of whom I’d slept with then found out he was a traitor and the other had was a dirty philander who was married to my sister and tried to rape me. I didn’t exactly have a very good track record when it came to turning men down. Well, the more reasonable ones anyway…
I guess our little smooch wasn’t enough for Lily because once we broke apart she pulled me in close again kissing me with a lot more tongue than I was accustomed to. When we finally did break, I was left feeling breathless and I wanted nothing more at that moment to make dirty passionate love to her. Unfortunately, we had an audience. I had a feeling that such a public act would have the exact opposite effect that I wanted.
“Well, I just got word from our Dexagarmetrax friend,” Rayland approached glancing back at Jake, grinning from ear to ear. “Seems he’s cracked that code the ERF sent us.”
Us? I grimaced and folded my arms across my chest. Where did he get off acting like he was part of the group? I still wasn’t convinced he could be trusted, but I needed to play ball. So I gritted my teeth and dropped my hands. “Best news I’ve heard all week. He still in the infirmary?”
“No, Mom finally managed to herd him out. He’s back at your place.”
I nodded. “Right, well… Lily and I will head back and talk with him. I’m sure the rest of the crew could use something to eat, that was a pretty good workout.”
“Right, I’ll have Neada show them into the mess… I can escort you to back to the house and have something brought over for us to eat.”
I almost said something, but then bit my tongue. I didn’t want Rayland to tag along with us at all, but I doubted he’d take no for answer. If I were in Bueller’s shoes I would never let a potential security risk like me or Lily walk around in my home unwatched. Besides if I let the nester’s keep guard there was no way they’d be able to point their fingers at me if anything went awry.
“That’d be good.”
“Vakrexid, apologizes. It should not have taken me so long, but it was much more complicated than Vakrexid had originally assumed. You see, in early life Pyrpygym had a rare language processing disorder, similar to one that occurs in your species known as dyslexia, which caused him to write characters in reverse order. Because our scientists learned how to cure this disorder when he was still ver
y young, it is not a fact that is well known. Which is why Vakrexid had not thought of it!”
“That’s why none of it made any sense then it was backwards?” Lily asked.
“No, Vakrexid reversed the order of the numbers, then applied the formula then reversed the results. Vakrexid tried several different permutations and this is the only one that turned up coherent results.”
“So then what is it?” Rayland asked. “What do all those numbers mean?”
“They are coordinates, followed by a date and a time,” Vakrexid replied.
“And how do we know that they’re correct? I mean it’s not like they really gave us a set of directions,” Lily asked frowning as she stared at the doctor.
“How do we even know we can trust this message? If the Earth Reclamation Fleet was compromised the Qharr could have sent this message to bait us,” Rayland glanced at the doctor an uncharacteristic frown marring his face. “Where exactly are these coordinates?”
Vakrexid produced a small tablet computer and held it out to Rayland. “New Anaheim.”
“A-and the date?” I asked.
“August thirtieth at 22:13.” Vakrexid replied tooting absently as thrummed his fingers against the table.
“Whoever sent that message did their homework. New Anaheim is my place of birth and as for the date and time that’s my birthday. I was born on August thirtieth, in twenty-two thirteen. They must want us to meet them, but can we risk it? Those dates were a matter of public record before the invasion.”
“Vakrexid believes this information is genuine,” the doctor said. “With the exception of Mara no human would have the necessary knowledge. Since she is dead only one of my kind, in particular a clan-mate, could have been able to encrypt the message in such a way that Vakrexid would know how to decrypt it. The Qharr do not have any form of contact with my people. It is most unlikely that they would be able to compose such a message when only a handful of my people, all of them my relatives, could do so.”
“I don’t care what you say I still don’t like it.” Rayland shook his head.
“Maybe there’s another way,” I said. “If we showed up early we could set up an ambush. We could spring any traps before they were set.”
“I’ll discuss it with Bueller. In the mean time I think it’s best if we kept this between the four of us. There’s no telling what would happen if this sort of information got out… especially if it got into the hands of your symbiote friend. I have difficulty just believe this Khala and Dyssa can be trusted. The fact that your symbiotes don’t get along with your sister’s introduces an unstable element.”
I didn’t like keeping things from my sister, but I understood Rayland’s logic and as much as I hated to admit it I agreed that it was better to be cautious. An uncomfortable silence followed and it wasn’t broken until the nester cooks arrived with our meal that it was broken.
Chapter Seven
To say that I was nervous was an understatement, but at least it kept my mind off my conflicted self-reflection. We were waiting outside the council chambers and never before this point had the weight of leadership weighed me down than that moment. I didn’t have any idea what to say, but that was only part of it. I wasn’t just representing myself; I was representing the entire resistance, the few of us that were left.
The building, like every other nester structure that I had entered was a blocky and unattractive affair that had very obviously been built to serve a purpose and not provide eye candy. I wrapped my arm around Lily’s shoulders and pulled her close. She smiled and set her head on my shoulder.
Lily and I shared a seat, Becca and Farris sat on a bench opposite us, getting far too cozy with each other for my tastes, and the doctor had remained standing at his own insistence with closed eyes and remained almost unnaturally still.
“You’re going to do fine,” she whispered in my ear just before the massive set of unadorned double doors creaked open.
Rayland poked his head through.”They’re ready for you.”
I nodded, then took Lily’s hand and stepped through the door, Farris and Becca remained sitting, they had not been invited to this meeting. Becca, because of her symbiote and Farris because Rayland had advised Bueller of their relationship. The doctor trailed, opening his eyes and lurching into the chamber with a suddenness that was starling. Rayland closed the door behind us and I gritted my teeth and fought down the sudden urge to make a break for it.
After traveling through a short hallway we entered directly into a small circular chamber, which had a raised platform, ringed with seats, and was just high enough to force us to crane our necks in order to look upon those seated above. There were nine of them counting Bueller, but the platform was large enough to have supported at least double that many.
“My friends,” Bueller pronounced using his cane to prop himself up so that he could overlook the entire room. “You all know why we have gathered. Friends from the resistance have come to us seeking shelter and now they need our help.”
“Our help?” A tall willowy man, with small flat nose, glanced down at us, with cold eyes. “It seems to me that we’ve already given them enough of that.”
“Representative Dahl,” Bueller chided pounding his cane against the floor producing a loud resounding thud. “You will have time to speak when I open the floor for discussion.”
“Of course, president.” Dahl gave a smile that was all teeth and reminded me of a predator ready to pounce and bowed his head.
Bueller cleared his throat then continued. “Many of us are not acquainted so I believe it would behoove me to give you an opportunity to familiarize you one with another. He started by naming each member of the resistance and then held his hand out to each representative offering up an introduction. He started with Lancaster Dahl, the disagreeable fellow from before, who had a thin jaw and permanent scowl on his face, next was Jokeb Schmit a short man who wore a calculating expression that was hard to read, then came Jacklyn Estevez an aging woman who might once have been considered beautiful decades ago, Jeremiah Krane a man who couldn’t have been much older than myself, Arianne Le Fonte a strikingly attractive woman with flowing auburn hair, Rena Kinkaid who had an easy smile and a friendly demeanor, Della Everly a severe-looking woman with studied our group with keen eyes, and finally Minka Dubcek an eccentric looking woman who had her hair done up in a bun and was fur sweater that was so old and worn that clumps of hair looked to have fallen off.
After the introductions Bueller looked about the room. “Today, we take an important step forward. It was been more than twenty-four years since our world was taken from us. Rather than fight against the invaders we have chosen to cower in our caves and let others fight and die in our place. This was an act born of fear and desperation, but we can no longer afford to stand idly by. They come to us with renewed hope and a new purpose. They have made contact with a remnant of the UED Fleet calling itself the Earth Reclamation Fleet and hope to collaborate with them to formulate a plan to retake our world. The floor is now open for discussion.”
“You speak pretty words, President Bueller, but let’s not sidestep what must be everyone’s biggest concern. These resistance fighters you’ve allowed within our midst, must be commended for their bravery in fighting the gray-skins, but surely you cannot be so blind as to trust when at least three of their number have allowed themselves to infested by these K’teth creatures,” said Jokeb who glared at Lily and me with undisguised contempt.
“Infested. I may very much coming to loath that word,” Khala said appearing beside me.
‘I’m not too fond of it myself, but look at it this way,’ I thought as I glanced at her with a shrug. ‘At least he didn’t call you a parasite.’
“Look.” I stepped forward, meeting Jokeb’s gaze. “You have every reason to be suspicious. To be honest, if I were in your position I’d feel the same way, but we’ll need to put our suspicions and doubts aside if we’re going to work together,” I shuddered spinning around so tha
t I could get a good look at all the representatives.
“Believe me, my symbiote has done things to me that are beyond disturbing, but she’s had several opportunities to betray me… to betray the resistance and she has never once done so. I sincerely believe that she wants to be free from the Qharr just like you and me. Lily and I have powers and strength far beyond an ordinary human don’t let that go to waste. I want to fight those bastards, they’ve killed… far too many of the people I care about.”
Kaya’s name had been on the tip of my tongue, but I every time I uttered it I found it was all I could do from breaking down which was about the last thing I could afford to do at that moment. She was always on my mind, and it was hard enough just thinking about her, but at least when I did I could keep my feelings from showing on my face. I may have looked calm on the surface, but inside I was a mess. It wasn’t just because of Kaya, but everything else too.
“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Jokeb replied narrowing his eyes and I shook my head to clear my thoughts as his squirrelly little eyes studied me. “At least as far as the human host is concerned. The problem is how can we know which one of you is actually speaking?”
“This is annoying,” Dyssa said her imaginary form leaning against that of her mother’s. “How can we ever hope to convince your people of our intentions when we are continually met with suspicion?”
‘Can you really, blame them?’ Lily asked. For a moment I actually thought she was speaking aloud until I saw her face and realized her lips were not moving. ‘It’s not like you’ve given them a reason to trust you.’
“The question is… will we ever be able to do enough to convince them?” Khala asked.
‘Either way we have an agreement. Unless you plan on going back on your word,’ I said folding my arms across my chest as I stared at her with raised eyebrows.
“Never!” Khala and Dyssa both yelled in unison.
“Let’s say for a moment that these, symbiotes, can in fact be trusted. What of the third one? How can we be sure it won’t betray us?” Lancaster said leaning over the edge of the platform so that he could look me directly in the eyes.
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