Ellis made no move to stand up.
“If I have to ask again, someone else will die,” the alien said, his hand already glowing with another ball of energy.
Tyra used her ARCs to find Ellis cowering behind the holo table. She glared in his direction, and General Graves hoisted him up by the collar of his white ceremonial robes. “Here he is.”
The alien licked a set of perfectly straight white teeth with a black tongue and grinned. “Amazing how quickly you will turn on each other, isn’t it?”
Councilor Ellis struggled free of the General’s grasp and planted his mag boots firmly on the deck. Taking a moment to straighten his robes, he walked around the holo table to face the aliens.
“What do you want?”
“You three,” he wagged a long index finger tipped with a sharp golden claw to indicate Stavos, Graves, Ellis. “I will commune with you.” As he said that, two more aliens stepped through the swirling clouds of smoke and debris in the entrance of the bridge. They were identical copies, complete with matching gray robes and glowing golden crowns.
“Commune?” Ellis asked, his eyes skipping from one alien clone to the next. “What does that mean?”
All three spoke as one, “Come here and we will show you.”
Chapter 13
Astralis
Lucien watched King Faro hold the young boy above his head, kicking and screaming, impervious to the those kicks. The boy’s parents snapped out of their shock and began beating the alien with their fists. In response, the alien grabbed the boy’s mother in his free hand and held her up by her throat.
“Touch me again, and she dies,” King Faro warned, nodding to the father.
Both he and his son subsided, and the alien directed his attention to the Marines standing in the entrance of the shelter. “Well? Are you going to leave, or should I start killing?”
Lucien ran through the list of options in his head. Stun weapons did nothing, and it took heavy weapons fire to overwhelm the Faros’ personal shields. With this one surrounded by civilians, the Marines couldn’t risk bringing that kind of firepower to bear. They had no choice.
“Fall back,” one of the remaining two Marine sergeants said. He flicked a quick glance at Lucien, as if to ask, what’s he want with you?
But Lucien was still wondering the same thing. Why had he and his children been singled out? As the Marines left, Lucien’s gaze strayed to the back of the stage. His whole body itched with the urge to run after his children.
The doors to the concert hall slid shut with a swish, and King Faro said, “Looks like it’s just the two of us again. Have you made up your mind yet?”
Lucien’s head snapped around and he glared up at the alien king. “You’re not holding my children hostage anymore, so you can’t make me choose between them and a room full of strangers.”
“I am holding someone else’s child,” the alien pointed out. “But you’re right, it’s not the same thing.” King Faro released the boy and his mother with a shrug, and the father hurried to pull them back down to their seats.
“We will wait until Hassan recovers them.”
Lucien glanced back to the stage, and he took a quick step in that direction, unable to help himself.
“No,” King Faro said. “Let’s see how Brak does on his own. One on one is a fair fight, wouldn’t you say?”
Brak. The alien knew his name, too. Buy time, just buy time, keep him talking, distracted... Lucien thought. Maybe the Marines would come up with something.
Lucien turned to gaze up at the alien once more. “You want a fair fight? Deactivate your shield and face me yourself. No weapons. Hand-to-hand only.”
“I fear that wouldn’t last very long...” King Faro said, and the corners of his mouth drooped in an exaggerated frown.
Lucien was about to argue with more false bravado, but the alien grabbed the back of the seat in front of him and casually ripped the whole thing free of its bolts. The chair floated up in front of him, its occupant still clutching his seat and looking terrified.
“Strength alone isn’t enough to determine the outcome of a fight,” Lucien argued.
“No?” the alien replied. “When your face caves in under my fist, you may have trouble supporting that argument...” King Faro trailed off with a frown. His glowing eyes slid away, and the crowd gasped.
Lucien followed the alien’s gaze to the stage and saw that the black-robed alien, Hassan, had returned. One hand still held his shimmering sword, dragging it behind him, the tip sizzling across the stage, while his other hand, and arm, were missing at the shoulder. He stumbled across the stage with black blood gushing from his open shoulder socket like party streamers. The alien staggered twice and shook his head. It said something in a sibilant language of hisses and sneers.
Despite the gruesome scene, Lucien felt relief spreading in his chest. Brak had somehow gotten the better of Hassan.
“I am disappointed to hear that,” King Faro said, replying in Versal—for my benefit? Lucien wondered. He glanced back at King Faro in time to see the alien leap over the rows of seats and sail down to the stage, propelled by some unseen means—grav boosters? Lucien wondered as the alien king touched down in front of Hassan. The king drew a shimmering blade of his own from a scabbard on his back, and Hassan growled out something else, looking suddenly frightened. The king swung his sword, and Hassan lifted his to parry, but weakly. A sizzle of energy sparked, and Hassan’s blade bounced away, flying out of his hand, while King Faro’s blade sailed on to slice Hassan’s head off.
“Mercy? Death is your mercy,” the king said as the head floated away, its glowing green eyes wide and staring as the light slowly faded from them.
Silence rang, and King Faro rounded on Lucien. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back.” With that, he vanished from the stage in a blur of gray robes, moving impossibly fast.
Frek that, Lucien thought, and sprinted after him. Upon reaching the chest-high stage, he deactivated his mag boots, jumped, and activated them again, touching down on top of the stage. His rifle whipped around his neck, throwing him off balance and rocking him back on his heels. He shrugged out of the strap and let the weapon drift free. It was next to useless anyway. Instead, he cast about for Hassan’s shimmering sword. He found it drifting at the edge of the stage, and ran to catch it.
The blade was almost invisible, and no longer shimmering, but as Lucien’s hand wrapped around the hilt, it hummed to life, vibrating against his palm.
It was strange in an age of high technology to be reduced to melee weapons, but Lucien didn’t have time to wonder about it. He ran backstage, using his helmet’s sensors to track King Faro’s cool heat signature through walls and doors.... Lucien ran past audio equipment, through a make-up room, and on down a hall past private dressing rooms. He turned sharply at the end of the corridor and started down another one. King Faro stood in front of a shut door at the end. Lucien slowed his approach, realizing it might not be the best strategy to charge.
“You refused to make your choice,” the alien said as Lucien drew near. “So I’m going to make it for you.” With that, he turned and opened the door, revealing at least five squads of Marine bots and their sergeants. King Faro rushed them.
Anticipating the Marines’ reaction, Lucien took cover, plastering himself to the wall as they fired a blinding, deafening volley of lasers and cannons.
The alien king glowed brightly as his shield deflected everything. He ran through the ranks, sword flashing. Severed bits of bots went drifting out above the chaos, and the alien ran on, unfettered.
The weapons fire abruptly ceased as King Faro burst out the other side of the Marines’ formation. As soon as that happened, Lucien lunged out of cover, giving chase once more. Up ahead he saw that all of the Marines had turned to face the rear now, weapons tracking, but none of them firing.
As Lucien drew near, a familiar, hissing roar reached his ears. Metal arms and legs were a forest, blocking his view, but he managed to
steal glimpses of Brak’s naked gray bulk streaking out and slamming into the alien king.
There was a brief struggle before Brak went spinning away, clutching a gash in his side, and hissing in pain. King Faro sailed on, heading for a group of corpsmen attending to a familiar pair of young girls.
“No!” Lucien ran as fast as he could, but there was no way he would reach them in time. His mind raged: Why aren’t the Marines firing!? But he knew why. They couldn’t shoot without risking the lives they were trying to save.
Lucien hit the ranks of Marine bots, forced to slow down as he waded through their rigid, unyielding lines. “Get out of the way!” he screamed. He was caught in one of those feet stuck-in-molasses nightmares where no matter how fast he tried to run, he couldn’t go faster than a crawl.
One of the corpsmen stepped between Lucien’s children and the alien. King Faro stopped and swung his sword, lopping off the corpsman’s head.
Atara screamed, and Theola stared wordlessly.
Blood streamed from the lifeless body, held erect and swaying on its feet by the zero-G environment. King Faro shoved it aside, and reached for Atara with a glowing palm.
The Marine bots belatedly parted ranks, and Lucien broke free. He pounded across the deck, teeth gritted, eyes wide with rage and horror, unable to do anything but watch as King Faro wrapped his glowing palm around Atara’s face like a squid and lifted her off the deck. Atara’s feet dangled, and her muffled screams stabbed Lucien’s ears repeatedly. He ran faster still, every second a lifetime while Atara suffered.
As he drew near, Lucien thrust out his stolen sword, using his momentum to put some weight behind the weapon. The sword sunk up to its hilt in the alien’s back, but King Faro didn’t release his daughter, or even cry out in pain.
Shoving off from the blue-skinned monster, Lucien screamed and ran him through again and again until black blood streamed from half a dozen slits in the alien’s gray robes. But still the alien wouldn’t let his daughter go. To his horror, Lucien saw one of the gashes in the alien’s blue skin seal up before his eyes.
He swept the sword down through the alien’s knees, and was gratified to see both legs severed and the alien king drifting free in a gushing stream of black blood. Heal that, you frekking kakard! Lucien thought. But the alien king clung to Atara as if his life depended on it, and Atara’s muffled cries were ominously silent now.
Desperate, Lucien reached up and pulled the alien down to eye-level with him. He stared into those glowing blue eyes, their depths inscrutable. “How’s this for a choice,” he said as he ran the sword across the alien’s throat with all his strength. The blade flashed clean through, and the alien’s mouth popped open in a silent scream as the light left his eyes and his head drifted free in a torrent of black blood that splashed Lucien’s helmet. He grimaced and shoved the body away from him, wiping the blood on his sleeve. Then he whirled around to find Atara drifting peacefully behind him, her eyes shut and a serene expression on her face.
“Atara!” Lucien dropped the sword and reached for his daughter, pulling her face down to his. When she didn’t react, he slapped her cheek. “Wake up!”
Still nothing.
A navy corpsman appeared beside them and ran a scanner over Atara’s body with a flickering blue fan of light.
“She’s alive... but comatose,” the corpsman declared. “We need to get her to hospital.” He turned and snapped his fingers at another corpsman, a young woman. Her uniform was splashed crimson with blood from the one who’d been killed in front of them. She shook herself out of an apparent state of frozen terror, but made no move to assist.
Lucien saw why a second later. Theola stood beside her, clutching the woman’s hand in a tiny fist. Lucien ran to his other little girl. He dropped to his haunches in front of her, about to fold Theola into a big hug—
But she screamed in terror and ducked behind the woman’s legs.
Lucien blinked and whirled around, expecting to see another blue-skinned alien standing behind him, but there was nothing there.
The woman holding his daughter’s hand spoke in a trembling voice: “She’s afraid of you, sir.”
Lucien turned back to her, his brow furrowed in shock. “Me?”
Black alien blood still smeared his faceplate, reminding him why his daughter might be afraid. Theola watched him with huge eyes, peeking between the woman’s legs. Covered in Faro blood, he must have looked like another monster to Theola, maybe even more terrifying than the one who’d grabbed her sister.
A lump rose in Lucien’s throat as he stood. “Look after them please, ma’am. I need to go wash up.”
The female corpsman nodded woodenly as Lucien turned away. His whole body shivered with fury as he stalked back to the concert hall. Seeing the terror in his one-year-old’s eyes, and knowing she was afraid of him, had hurt more than any injury the Faros could have inflicted. Add to that the psychological damage of what she’d witnessed, and whatever the frek they’d done to Atara...
Lucien shook his head, and his hands balled into fists. He’d make the Faros pay if it was the last thing he did.
Chapter 14
Astralis
“Come,” the trio of identical blue-skinned aliens intoned in a single loud voice.
“And if we refuse?” Chief Councilor Ellis asked. He drew himself up and puffed out his chest, trying to look defiant, but to Tyra he looked like a boy pretending to be a solider.
“Then we kill everyone on the bridge,” the aliens replied. “Your choice.”
Tyra watched from the sidelines as Admiral Stavos stepped forward. “You can start with me.”
“All three,” the aliens replied.
Ellis glanced to General Graves and then to Admiral Stavos, his eyes pleading. Graves walked over to him with a tight smile, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll go together,” Graves said, and pushed Ellis along in front of him.
Admiral Stavos kept pace beside them, and Tyra watched in horror as the leaders of Astralis approached the alien clones to commune with them—whatever that meant.
They stopped in front of the aliens, each of them facing off with a different clone, and then the aliens raised glowing palms in front of their human counterparts’ faces.
Graves arched an eyebrow at this, his eyes squinting into the light. “If you’re expecting a high-five, you’re about to be disappointed.”
“Shut u—” Ellis began, but he was abruptly cut off as some unseen force yanked him face-first into the alien’s palm. Graves and Stavos were also yanked forward, and glowing alien hands wrapped around each of their faces like luminous squid.
Ellis gave a muffled scream, and one of the bridge crew gasped. Murmurs of concern rose from the crew, and the comms officer rose halfway out of his chair, his hand on his sidearm.
“Wait!” Tyra said. She listened with growing apprehension to Ellis’s muffled screams, but she thought it noteworthy that neither Graves nor Stavos were screaming. If they were in pain or danger, surely they’d at least grunt, or call out orders to the crew. All three of the Faros stared fixedly ahead, unblinking and unmoving.
Adrenaline sent sparks shooting through Tyra’s nerves, urging her to act, while cold beads of sweat slipped down her spine. “What are you doing to them?” she demanded.
No reply.
She felt for her sidearm with a clammy hand, and cold metal kissed her fingertips. With the aliens so utterly distracted, this might be their only chance to take them by surprise...
Then she remembered that six aliens had made it to the bridge. That meant that these three had to have another three guarding their backs. Tyra caught a meaningful look from the comms officer, and she realized she wasn’t the only one thinking about attacking. She gave her head a slight shake.
At best they had six crewmen with a clear shot right now, and none of them was as heavily armed or armored as the Marines who’d been defending the bridge. Opening fire with nothing but pistols would be suicide—not to mention they�
��d probably kill their leaders in the process.
The sound of weapons fire reached the bridge, and Tyra’s breath caught in her throat. Should she dive back into cover, or remain standing?
The three Faros in front of her made no move to turn and face the threat, but the weapons fire grew louder and more insistent. Explosions boomed and roared. Acrid smoke gushed in.
The aliens appeared to snap out of their reverie, and finally they released Astralis’s leaders. Tyra couldn’t tell if it was because of the fight going on behind them, or because they’d just finished whatever they were doing.
Stavos, Graves, and Ellis stood statuesque on the deck, swaying in zero-G, pinned in place by their mag-boots. Their backs were turned to her, but Tyra suspected their eyes were shut, and they were asleep. She had a feeling that they’d just been subjected to the Faros’ equivalent of a mind probe.
Tyra sucked in a breath and shook her head, wondering what to do. The three Faros turned to leave, their backs clearly exposed, offering tempting targets.
The ship’s gunnery chief jumped up from his chair, sidearm out. “Open fire!” he yelled, and pulled the trigger three times fast. Bolts of red-hot plasma shrieked out and slammed into one of the aliens—
To no effect. That same alien whirled around and launched a blinding ball of energy plasma from his palm. It hit the gunnery chief and exploded with a blast of heat that sent him flying over the railing to join the other dead crewman floating near the viewscreens.
No one else tried anything, and the aliens raced off the bridge. Tyra waited until they were gone before checking on Ellis and the others. She rounded their backs to face them, only to find exactly what she’d expected—eyes shut, faces expressionless, relaxed in sleep. They looked so peaceful that they might even be dead.
Fear stabbed Tyra’s heart, and she reached up to check Ellis’s pulse. The ship’s science officer joined her and checked Stavos’s life signs with a handheld scanner.
Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies) Page 33