“They got us sick. On purpose?” The bastards. Not only was she to spend the rest of her life barefoot and pregnant, but the aliens had infected her with a virus. Could her day get any better? Water splashed underfoot, and mud sucked at her boots. The pungent odor of mold and decomposing vegetation assaulted her senses. Nell blew her bangs out of her eyes. Yes, trekking through an alien swamp was an improvement. God definitely had a twisted sense of humor.
“Look at it from their perspective.” Alejandro’s words reminded her of other things wrong with this world. “We were billions and multiplied like cockroaches.”
Nell straightened at the comparison. So she wanted a baby, that wasn’t wrong. Especially, if he had blue almond-shaped eyes and… Anger swelled inside her head. Dang it. She’d have to do a better job of policing her thoughts. She paused at the edge of the forest, staring at the pine tree-like boughs blocking her path. “Isn’t that exactly what they want us to do, here, in Paradise Lost?”
Alejandro walked around her and pushed the slender branch aside. Gray-green needles rained to the ground and crunched underfoot as he strode into the shadows. “Yes, but we’ll create a better race. A hybrid of human and Skaperian. The best of us and them.”
Oh joy! In addition to turning her into a remote controlled human, changing her DNA so she didn’t age, an alien Easter bunny had laid eggs in her basket. The sarcasm rattled around her head and bumped into the idea of just staying put or getting ‘accidentally’ separated from him in the woods. Her traitorous body moved forward and she knew there would be no separating her from Alejandro. She shivered at the cool temperature under the canopy.
“Did you say something?”
A red bird darted in front of them and underneath the needles something rustled. Ugh, she hoped there weren't rats. Or something worse.
“No.” Nell adjusted the straps on her shoulders. How had she gotten so bruised? Beijing would know. Plus, he would offer to carry her burden. Just his touch and—
“Stop thinking about him.” Alejandro pivoted on his heel. His eyes seemed to glow under the dim forest, and fury twisted his blunt features.
Pain seared her skull. Dropping to the soft ground, she clutched her head.
“You are mine, Nell Stafford.” Alejandro stomped to meet her. He grasped her injured hand and squeezed. Red spotted the white bandage. “Mine and I won’t allow any infidelity, not even in your thoughts.”
She gasped at the throbbing that threatened to shatter her and tried to pull her hand free. More agony rewarded her efforts. “Stop it!”
“Why do you make me hurt you? Do you think I enjoy it? Do you?” He tossed her hand aside, but the pain continued like a thousand paper cuts slicing right through nerves.
“Yes!” she hissed, curling into a fetal position on the ground. If only he’d hit, kicked or punched her, then she’d have something to fight. But this torture was in her head. Her fingers dug into the base of her skull. If she could find that brain controller, she’d rip it out with her bare hands.
“Pleasure or pain, Nell. Your behavior will dictate which, not mine.” His boots appeared in front of her eyes. “I’m not the bad guy here. You are.”
“You kidnapped me.” A fresh wave of pain joined the heap of old. Her lungs burned. Her skin felt as if an army of ants munched on her. But none of it was real.
“I think you need to be reset.” Alejandro smoothed her hair back. “You’ve lost sight of what’s at stake. We’re the Adam and Eve of a new civilization and I won’t fail because of you.”
Trapped inside her head, Nell watched as a wall of blackness approached. It would take her memories of Beijing; erase them as if he’d never been part of her life. As the darkness hit, she clung to his smile, and the happiness he gave her.
***
Nell awoke to the sound of swearing. Her heart leapt at the masculine voice and she opened her eyes. A crackling fire sent sparks into the night sky. Two moons hung like sugar cookies in the darkness and stars glittered on a velvet background. A sense of home cloaked her. She pushed her hair back and glanced at the man seated on a fallen log across from her. Alejandro. His name gave her a moment of disquiet but it quickly faded. “Where are we?”
“The temple. Or what’s left of it.” He frowned while the golden light danced over his blunt features.
An internal heat flooded her. He was hers, this good-looking man. All hers. Her palms itched to touch him, to run her hands over his bare skin. She pushed aside the coarse blanket and rose to her feet. A cold wind cut through her shirt and she shivered. Alejandro would keep her warm. She walked toward him. Something crunched underfoot. Nell looked down.
Empty eye sockets stared up at her from a bleached white skull. She glanced at the slender arch of ribs and the marble size hand bones. Everywhere she looked, skeletal remains peeked through the nubby vegetation.
Nell screamed.
“Shh. They’re dead.” Alejandro rushed to her side, folded her into his embrace and ran a comforting hand up and down her back. “They can’t hurt you.”
His assurances calmed her racing heart. She rubbed her cheek against his soft uniform and allowed his warmth to fill her. A small voice shrieked in outrage, but quickly fell silent. Alejandro loved her, and she him. “Who were they?”
“The rest of my harem.” His sigh stirred her hair while his hands crept under her shirt to caress the small of her back. “I don’t understand it. It’s like they’ve been dead for decades.”
The answer whispered across her consciousness but was gone before she could grasp it. She shivered as Alejandro continued to explore her bare skin. If she didn’t know better, she’d think his touch repulsed her. But she did know better. This was Alejandro and she was his.
He kissed her temple, then her cheek before gently nipping her earlobe. “I think it’s time I got to know my mate better, don’t you? Our new civilization needs us now more than ever.”
She smiled at his use of our. He was a good man and kind too. She ran her tongue along his jaw as an aching need built within her. “Of course.”
She reached for his shirt, but he backed away, shaking a finger at her.
“Strip for me, Nell.”
If it gave him pleasure, how could she refuse? Anticipation coursed through her as she reached for her shirt’s hem. White flashed in her peripheral vision. Why was her hand bandaged? The thought disappeared in the face of his wants and she lifted the shirt.
A part of Nell recoiled and was shunted into isolated thoughts. Without any hesitation in her actions, she recognized where she’d been sent. Around her were the remains of her soul and free will. I’m the real Nell, not this Stepford Wife parody.
The real Nell watched her shirt sail into the night and felt her fingers reach for the button at her waistband. The brain controller hadn’t erased everything. And if it couldn’t do that, then maybe she could seize control of her body once more. She would need only seconds.
At the first opportunity, she would end this farce of a life.
Permanently.
The enemy is never more dangerous then when cornered.
Fortunately, his desperation will provide a means to
exploit the situation and triumph.
Syn-En Vade Mecum
Chapter Twenty
On the bridge around Bei, voices ebbed and flowed as four of his most experienced and trusted officers sought a means to defeat their enemy. He closed his eyes and watched the destruction of the two Beagle ships replay across his eyelids. Light pulsed from the artillery battery on the larger moon, and he winced as splinter-like projectiles punctured the hull of the dart-shaped ship. Seconds before the explosion, the thirty man crew bailed out an airlock. The blast wave hurtled them toward the Mole’s brown lunar surface, while laser beams incinerated pieces of the scattering debris. He stopped the recall.
What was he missing?
Gritting his teeth, Bei opened his eyes. Ten minutes since the first attack and they were still picking over th
eir options. This was not the Syn-En way. He and his men knew how to respond to every situation. It was their purpose in life.
Of course, they’d never battled ET before.
And then there was Nell.
His hands trembled before his cerebral interface steadied them. Never had the stakes been this high. For him. For his men. Was she well? Shaking his head, Bei concentrated. The sooner they took out that defense array, the sooner he’d rescue her.
“Status.” His voice echoed around the circular bridge while his gaze landed on XO Penig.
The older man hunched over the keyboard. His face looked sickly in the green glow of the helm’s built-in monitor. A hologram of their part of the solar system crowded the deck. “Nebula ships Io and Europa are finished gathering Helium-3 and are on course to join the fleet.”
Two saucer-shaped craft spun past the large gas giant at the edge of the solar system and headed toward the glittering hulls of the fleet. Bei walked through the fifth planet from the sun and focused on the three lines representing the Syn-En ships. “Have you prioritized the evacuation?”
Working at the station next to Penig, Captain Amazon Petersburg finger-combed her black hair out of her eyes. “Once refueling has finished, our first priority will be our people in the life pods.”
The fuel would keep the engines running, but not the people. Thanks to the Beagles’ destruction, the already low food rations had dwindled to sixty-five days. Even if the Syn-En went hungry, and the civilians ate only two meals a day, the children couldn’t afford to miss a meal. They had to land on Terra Dos. Bei ran his hands over the strings of white life pods bobbing like pearls on crushed, black velvet. “Do they have enough power to land on Terra Dos?”
Penig’s nimble fingers danced across the keyboard, and a small data stream bubbled from the helm. “Yes, but only if they can get there in two hours.”
Time started to count down inside Bei’s head. He would lose men if this trip went on too much longer. Joining his officers at the helm, he touched the green and blue planet. Terra Dos. It enlarged to a sphere encapsulating the hub. “Any sign of civilization?”
Captain Petersburg shook her head. “Only two probes have made it past the array. But we’ve managed to do a high altitude scan of the Northern hemisphere. So far, we’ve found no cities, villages or energy signals.”
XO Penig tightened the view to a rectangular continent. Snow-capped, jagged mountains and verdant patches encroached upon yellow meadows. “There are plenty of herd animals, fowl and fish, but I can’t find any evidence of predators. Except this one.”
The image zoomed in on the Starflight shuttle. Nell. Bei clasped his trembling hands behind his back. The hatch was open and the hull read only blue in the infrared spectrum. The ship had been deserted. Where had Bastard taken her? He glanced at his XO.
The older man shook his head and frowned. “We’ll track them once we get dirt side.”
Bei focused on his grim-faced Chief of security. Four of his ships had been destroyed. The attacks should have provided enough information to formulate a defense. Now. He was sick of wasting time. “What do we know about the array?”
Chief Rome folded his arms across his chest and glared at the hologram of the large, brown moon. “Those damn munitions boxes are impervious to EMP blasts and are surrounded by an energy field that can deflect our cannons and projectiles.”
Shang’hai tugged on the white fiber optic cables dangling from her nape. “The Beagles’ crew is ten kilometers from landing on the moon. Once they’re on the ground, they might be able to inject a virus and shut the boxes down.”
Penig tapped on the keyboard and brought up a belt of glowing white jewels on the Mole’s belly. “Each one seems to be self-contained. No central power station to knock them out. We’d have to do it one at a time.”
Time was something they didn’t have, and there were too damn many of those bunkers. Bei’s thoughts flickered back to the scout ship’s destruction. Something didn’t sit right with the explosion. “In order to mount a good defense, each would have to communicate with the others. Shang’hai formulate a virus to shut them down.”
Her short pink hair quivered on top of her head. “How do we know ET even speaks in binary code?”
Bei refused to let go of his theory for lack of facts. “Bastard communicated with us. Get with Doc. He’ll have copies of the virus and code used to shut down our men.”
“Aye, sir.” Her brown almond-shaped eyes went black as she entered the WA to retrieve the information. “Once I know ET’s handwriting, I should be able to forge his signature. They’ll never know the virus isn’t part of their software.”
“Do it.” Bei glanced at the little white moon hunkering down beside its sister. He increased magnification on the wreckage and the twenty-five Syn-En Ghost Force speeding across its surface. “Any sign that they armed the smaller moon?”
Captain Petersburg smiled. When she pointed, the image of the small moon zoomed in on a pale square in a crater. Although boxy like the crashed alien ships, it seemed smaller and not as buried. “They did, but it doesn’t seem to be active. I’ve deployed a team to pick it apart. We’ll know their weaknesses soon.”
“Good.” Bei stared at the approaching strike team, not really seeing them. “In the meantime, the fleet will sneak around the back, using the planet to shield us.”
Their altered course appeared in an arch of dotted lines on the bridge. The new arrival time of the life pods was one hour, forty-five minutes. His men couldn’t afford another delay. Bei shunted his new orders through the WA.
Chief frowned and stepped through the two moons to stare at the new trajectory. “We have no idea of weapons range.”
Penig clasped his bald head between his hands as his eyes went black. “We should be able to get the life pods down, but the rest of the fleet can’t land. Only the Starflights are Astroterrian. They’ll have to evacuate the ships, and we don’t know if their engines can survive the stress of that many back-to-back atmospheric entries.”
Bei double checked the XO’s calculations. With two shuttles, it would take thirty-six days to get his men dirt side. But with three… Bastard had deserted the Starflight. Once his team went over it to look for booby-traps, they could use it and cut the evacuation time by a third.
With a tap on her keyboard, Captain Petersburg expanded the holographic projection of Terra Dos, the ghostly white moon and her large, brown twin, Mole. “Ghost will be moving out from behind Mole in about six hours. Her weapons might then go hot and reduce our safety window.”
On cue, the two satellites advanced along their predicted orbits. Time fell away on the clock. In twenty-four hours, Ghost emerged from her darker sister’s shadow. Her defense array switched on and green lines sprayed over Terra Dos’s surface, extended to the space beyond and cut through the fringe of the stopped fleet.
The moons continued on their opposing orbits until they bookended the planet. Green lines formed an effective net over the world. The clock and time lapse projection froze at twelve days, six hours and two minutes.
“In twelve days, the array could conceivable cover ninety-nine percent of Terra Dos’s surface. And that’s not taking into account if any defenses are on this one.” The captain pointed to the third planet whose circular orbit now approached Terra Dos. “Who knows what waits us there.”
“Send a squadron of Beagles to do a sweep.” Bei glanced from Terra Dos to her moons and the new ruby marble spinning toward them.
Penig’s blue eyes darkened. “Beagles away.”
On the curving wall of the bridge, four dart-like ships broke away from the fleet. A yellow dashed line headed toward the red planet. The motion triggered a thought in Bei’s mind. Sweeping aside the projection of the planets and moons from the helm’s hologram, he opened the image of the attack. The projectiles burrowed into the Beagle’s side, red lines glowed from the seams in her hull, and then she burst apart. Bei overlaid size and speed information on the scat
tered pieces. A millisecond later, lasers shot from the surface and targeted four of the larger chunks of debris. “Did you see that?”
Penig folded his arms across his chest. “We’re damn lucky our people got out when they did.”
“No. Look.” Bei replayed the events from the disintegration forward. He paused the replay as the lasers cut into the large chunks.
Chief Rome settled his thumb in the cleft in his chin. “It took out the fuselage and part of the nose after the initial hit. Could ET’s defense array be mass and speed specific?”
Shang’hai nodded and leaned closer. “According to this, each target exceeded Earth’s escape velocity. And look here.” She pointed to a curved piece of hull. “This untouched piece has the mass but its speed was zero-niner-seven of escape velocity.”
Chief Rome set his hands edge on the smooth helm. “Makes sense, if you’re trying to stop people from leaving a quarantined planet.”
“The mass requirement would cover any vessel capable of carrying a person.” Bei smiled at his officers. Despite the artificial gravity, he felt light on his feet. “I think we may have found the array’s Achilles’ heel.”
Shang’hai’s brown eyes changed to black. “I could alter the mass and velocity threshold to stop the array from targeting us. The defense network could come in handy, if ET ever got wind of us trespassers.”
Bei weighed his options. While the array could be a considerable asset, he needed his people dirt side hours ago. “Write the virus, first. If you can, alter ET’s software but do what it takes to neutralize those weapons.”
Shang’hai nodded and turned her back to him, no doubt to concentrate.
With a wave of her copper-colored hands, Captain Petersburg resurrected Ghost’s hologram. “Admiral, Ghost Force is approaching the target. ETA in five minutes.”
Bei watched as the image tightened. Puffs of white powder rose from under the boots of the Syn-En taking point and blended with his uniform. “Chief, prepare the probes. I want a narrower range of speed and mass to help Shang’hai find ET’s targeting subroutine. Penig, prep Starflight 1. Volunteers only. As soon as the Beagles report in, I want to begin evacuating our people. Shang’hai, when can I expect the virus?”
The Syn-En Solution Page 29