Unexpected Commander: Unexpected Series Book 3

by Stone, Layla

  Cami kept her eyes on the phosephenite and her back to the ball. The chamber slowly decreased in size. Each second the sphere turned, Yelena’s heart felt as if it were being squeezed.

  The proximity was coming up, and her lungs couldn’t take in air. To her shame, she didn’t look away, she watched the entire thing. It happened fast, but she knew the red splatter was her only friend and another innocent miner.

  And, unlike last time, her mind didn’t turn numb. Her body instantly rioted against what she was seeing. The back of her neck tingled. Unlike the Terrans like Cami, who leaked water from their eyes, Yelena’s race let out bursts of energy whenever they were distressed.

  Everything from her head to her feet felt as heavy as stone. She couldn’t move. To her shame, she didn’t process who else had been in the ball of death.

  The guard let go of her shoulder and slipped his hand under her arm to pull her up.

  The leader sliced his hand through the air. “Everyone follow your guards to your cave, and then you will be excused to get your food. After that, it’s back to your cave, and I don’t want to hear a word out of anyone.”

  The guard escorted Yelena back to her quarters. Moving on autopilot, she sat on her bed. Slowly, the other ladies and the Sennite filed in, and it wasn’t until they were all in and time had passed that it really hit Yelena—her friend was never going to sit next to her again.

  She would never share another story, or food, or warmth.

  Yelena didn’t venture out when it was time to eat. She couldn’t move. After her cave mates had eaten, they returned and huddled around her. Without saying anything, they touched her arms and her legs as if trying to comfort her. But they weren’t. They were making it worse.

  The next day, one of the females found Yelena in the shed.

  “I heard what you did. That you saved someone from breaking their skull.”

  Yelena didn’t respond.

  “It wasn’t your fault. It was natural to help him, and no one would have been able to stop themselves. All the guys are talking about it. The male who you saved wanted to thank you but was worried you would be angry with him. I told him you weren’t the kind to get angry.”

  Yelena wanted to agree, she wasn’t angry at him, but her mouth didn’t move, and she remained silent.

  “I know you’re sad, but Cami was getting old.”

  At that, Yelena closed her mind to hearing. Cami wasn’t feeble. She was still young enough to work and to talk with and to be around. Her best friend was not something to just be thrown away.

  “Look, you don’t need to go mute. I feel bad, too. One of the errants was from me, too.”

  Yelena didn’t care because she was the one who’d broken fifty. This was all her fault, and she wasn’t going to excuse it away.

  “Okay, fine. If you don’t want to talk, I get it, but just know that everyone knows it’s not your fault. No one is mad at you.”

  Giving her honorary sister her back, Yelena went back to checking the compressors and pressure gauges. And for the rest of her time in the mines, she never spoke to another person. She never broke proximity during work or after.

  And then, one day, it was time to leave the caves and move to the top, where large cages waited for her to be transported to the next mine. After the past nine months, everyone knew to leave her alone. No one bothered to speak to her or try to offer her kind words because she never responded.

  But all that changed when she was curled up in the cage, head tucked, eyes closed, ignoring some conversation between two people. At first, she thought they were Flourgs like her, which was why she had been ignoring them. But then a male said, “Are they glowing?”

  Yelena lifted her head, her gaze slamming into the pale face of a Yunkin. His eyes zeroed in on hers, and the depth of them called to her. His white Federation jacket was stained from his blood. He looked massive and yet instead of being threatening like the leader of the mine was, this male looked like a warrior. It was the way he lifted his head and held her gaze that made her unable to stay quiet. She needed to speak to the warrior. “You’re not imagining it.”

  He spoke back, and his voice tickled her blood. Bringing it to life for the first time in months. “How are you glowing?”

  Until he asked that.

  Lying her head back down, she thought about how everything had happened. The words came out as easily as she breathed. “We were turned into Flourgs, or at least that’s what the female called us.”

  “What female?” the warrior’s green-scaled friend asked.

  Yelena didn’t want to speak the name. But she had come this far, she had to finish it. “A Numan named Veeda.” Hoping they would stop asking questions, Yelena closed her eyes.

  “Interesting story,” the male said—it almost sounded like a put-down. “Would have been a better one if you knew why she created you. For fun, or for a particular purpose.”

  Picking up her head, Yelena was astounded that someone would say that to her. No longer pulled in by memories of the past, she felt her body stiffen, come alive with irritation. This time, she was ready to tell the Yunkin warrior exactly what he wanted to know—and spare no pleasantries. “Lobosh is a phosephenite mine. We were designed like this so our core temperatures are lower, and the light we emit doesn’t give off heat. Phosephenite is sensitive to heat and will explode if the temperature rises above ninety-one degrees.”

  The green-scaled female pointed at her clothes. “Is that phosephenite?”

  Yelena stopped herself from wiping the dirt from her shirt. “No. Phosephenite appears as a rock with green, blue, and purple lines running through it.”

  The warrior spoke again. “How old were you when you were brought to the mine?”

  “Twenty-six,” Yelena answered.

  “You don’t look a day over it.”

  She was an Allus, that was expected. But maybe he’d never seen one of her kind before. He certainly hadn’t taken his eyes off her. So, she informed him. “Alluses don’t age quickly.” They lived for about three hundred and fifty years.

  But then the male said, “Neither do I.”

  Yelena didn’t have a response to that.

  The green lady spoke again. “Are you held in these cages until it’s time to work?”

  “Our mine was closed down. These guys say they have a buyer for us.” Absently, she wondered what would happen to the two captives in front of her. They didn’t glow, and they wouldn’t be able to work in a temperature-sensitive mine.

  The two strangers looked at each other. Yelena should have glanced away, but she couldn’t. She wondered if they were mates. It seemed like they knew each other very well. But then the male stared back at Yelena, interest in his expression. “How many Flourgs are in this hangar, girl?”

  Yelena answered. “Two thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-five. And my name is Yelena.” She added the last part because she hoped he wouldn’t call her girl again. But afraid he might be upset with her assertion, she turned her head away, looking at nothing and everything all at once.

  That was the last thing she said before her world changed once more.

  3

  Guilt’s Captive – Two Months After Being Rescued

  Yelena was in the elevator, holding a vent filter and headed to the docking bay. When the doors opened, she stepped out and noticed that the level was brighter than usual. To her right, she saw hundreds of former slaves slowly stepping into a galleon ship destined for Lotus Adaamas. No one made the males and females stand exactly five feet apart; nevertheless, that’s exactly what they did. Heads down and silent, they shuffled forward as if they were still slaves back in the mines of Brica. Yelena’s stomach sank as she remembered the loss of her friend.

  Turning her head, she moved along the wall, heading to the third-level vent. With each step, she couldn’t shake the thought of what might have happened if she hadn’t made a mistake that got her friend, Cami, killed. Would Cami have begged to return to her homeworld? Would she be
with the others heading to Lotus Adaamas? And if so, would Yelena be with her in line, headed for the planet, as well?

  All those questions rattled in her mind, but the answers didn’t matter. Because the reality was: Cami was dead. She would never talk to her brother Decoud or find out what had happened to her dog.

  The loss stung, and Yelena’s back tingled again with the distress of remembering her past. She couldn’t look at another Flourg and not think of her friend. She couldn’t stand to be around them because she couldn’t let go of her failure.

  Fifty miserable years. Yelena had existed in the mines for half a century, but those years were nothing compared to the minutes that passed as she watched the ball shrink with her friend inside. She’d never thought a single memory could cut so deeply, could keep her up at night and choke off the air in her lungs every time she was pulled back into the moment.

  Exhaling, Yelena shook herself from her thoughts, knowing that if she didn’t force herself to stop, she would fall back into the abyss of guilt, and it would suck her in again. When she really took in her surroundings, she didn’t recognize where she was. She found that she had passed the vent by at least a hundred feet.

  “Dang,” she said to herself.

  “Dang what?” a voice asked from behind her. Yelena twirled to see who it was. The cyborg, Sands, was standing there, cleaning his cybernetic hand with a red rag.

  Tapping her head, she answered. “I got lost in my thoughts and passed the vent I needed to get to.”

  Yellow writing flitted across Sands’ eyes for a second, then he said, “You’re working on the third-level vent?”

  She nodded, realizing that the letters must have been the current work orders. The ship was in constant need of maintenance to keep it running. Her time in the mines had given her fifty years of experience working with airflow, compressors, and generators. She was a perfect fit for one of the jobs that had not been filled on the Garna star carrier when she was rescued a month ago.

  “When you’re done, check the outflow tube in aquaponics. I noticed that the pressure reduced over the past few hours.”

  Sands was head of engineering and Yelena’s new boss. He also had an uncanny ability to know what needed to be worked on before an alert even came through the onboard system. Yelena didn’t know how a cyborg mind worked, but she assumed it must be incredibly efficient.

  “I’ll be done in a bit, and then I’ll head over to see Dol.”

  “All right. Thanks.” Sands finished cleaning his metal hand and then stuffed the rag into his back pocket. He turned to leave but hesitated. “I’ve ordered an air filter for aquaponics. When it gets here, I’ll let you know to install it. I’ve gotten a few complaints about the fishy smell in the hall. Not to mention, it’s being sucked into the air vents and flowing into a few officers’ cabins.”

  Yelena wondered if he’d mentioned the officer cabins because she was staying in one illegally. She was a FAVII, the lowest rank in the Federation. She should have been in the berthing rooms on level three. Instead, she had a room to herself on level seven. When Sands didn’t add to his comment, she quickly confirmed, “I’ll get it installed as soon as it arrives.”

  “Good.”

  This time, Sands did leave, and she followed her path back to the vent that needed her attention. It was a quick swap-out and took less than twenty minutes. Regrettably, that meant she would have to see the Flourgs again on her way back to the elevator.

  This time as she passed, she didn’t look up from the metal floor in front of her.

  Inside her ecosystems division, she slipped the old filter into a cleaning solution to let it soak. When she got back from aquaponics, she would wash it off and then store it with the other filters for use later.

  Yelena grabbed a few tools and headed for aquaponics across the hall. The double doors slid back right before she walked in. Dol was on a ladder above his tanks, working on the water filter.

  His head turned to her, and she smiled. “Hi, Dol. I came to check on one of your outflow valves.”

  Dol smiled back. “You can check on anything you need.”

  “Thanks.”

  The doors behind her opened, and then she heard, “There you are.” Yelena didn’t have to turn around to know who that voice belonged to. It was the green female from the cages on Brica. Her name was Vivra.

  Yelena turned. “Hi.”

  “Hi. You weren’t answering my messages, so I decided to come and look for you.”

  Yelena pulled out her Minky pad and tapped the screen, activating it. There were four unopened messages from Vivra. “Sorry. What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing, unless you want to join me and Pax down on Lotus Adaamas for some fun.”

  Lotus Adaamas. Truthfully, Yelena didn’t want to go down there. She didn’t want to run into all the Flourgs that were going to be there. But she also didn’t want to miss out on time with Vivra. Vivra had almost died on Brica. Actually, she might have died but was resuscitated. Yelena had those memories keeping her up at night, too.

  “Sure, what kind of fun did you have in mind?”

  “Well, I don’t know if it’s your thing, but I will be going to the spa and then catching up with Pax and the others at a bar he picked out.”

  Yelena didn’t care what she did. “It all sounds fine to me. Just tell me if you want me to go with you or Pax.”

  Pax was Vivra’s mate. He was also a Red Demon. And as much as Yelena didn’t want to trust him because of what he was, she would never forget how he had looked when he found Vivra’s bloody body. Yelena had watched the whole thing and knew that he wasn’t a heartless male.

  “This is more of a you-need-to-decide kind of thing. But you don’t have to choose now. You can decide when we get there. I’m going to go up and change. We’re all going to meet in the cargo bay in two hours.”

  In two hours, the Flourgs would hopefully be gone. “Sounds good. I’ll see you then.”

  “Great.” Vivra spun around and walked out of the division. Yelena returned to her job and tried to put the visit to Adaamas out of her mind for the next two hours.

  4

  Memories

  Yon’s Minky pinged with an incoming call from the captain. Touching the screen with his left index finger, he accepted the transmission. “Captain.”

  “I’m headed down to Lotus Adaamas. Going to see my sister.”

  Adelia. Yon remembered Rannn’s sister’s name and that she had been adopted. He didn’t remember hearing Rannn say that she was living on Adaamas, though. “You want me to fly you down?” Yon offered. He used to be the primary pilot and had always taken Rannn to the planets he visited.

  “No, I’m going down with Sasha and Sci. Going to make sure everything’s okay with Adelia.”

  Yon sat up straighter. Sasha had taken his job as the Garna’s primary pilot. He didn’t like being replaced, even if that meant he had been promoted. And he didn’t like Sasha, not really. Though mostly on principle because she had not earned her spot. The female hadn’t trained at the academy. She didn’t put in the time an experienced primary pilot should. But Rannn said she had natural talent.

  She could have all the talent in the galaxy. Yon still would have picked someone with experience over her. But Rannn was the captain, and he said Sasha was there to stay.

  Yon respected Rannn enough to refrain from expressing his displeasure at the change in routine. “All right, I’ll see you when you get back.”

  “I’ll be in my office all day tomorrow. Stop in. I’ll show you what I’ve been working on.”

  “Will do.”

  Just as Yon was about to disconnect the call, Rannn asked, “Are you going down later?”

  Yon didn’t want to. He never wanted to step foot on the planet again.

  “Your mother lives there, right?” Rannn asked, knowing the answer.

  “She does.” But she hadn’t responded to any of Yon’s messages, so going to see her only to find her in a drug-induced fog wasn
’t worth the trip. Yon waited to see if Rannn would ask anything else but, thankfully, his friend and captain ended with, “See you tomorrow.”

  The call terminated, and Yon let out a relieved breath, allowing his head to fall back against the chair. The beautiful were taken advantage of, used, and abused on Lotus Adaamas. His mother had left Yunkin to visit Adaamas and had ended up pregnant and dishonored. She’d had a fiancé when she vacationed. But when she returned and her parents found out that she was pregnant, by a Demon no less, she was exiled.

  Yon’s mother had told him that she went back to try and find his father. But it was too late, he was gone, and she had to find a way to live. Yon wanted to feel sympathy for his mother, for all the things she’d endured to raise him. But every time he thought back to his childhood, he remembered cleaning his own clothes and finding scraps or begging for food from his neighbors. His mother didn’t even care if he was around when she did her drugs or had sex.

  A shudder crept over Yon’s skin. He was too close to his old life.

  He got up from his desk, walked over to the small cooler, and grabbed a pouch of water, then broke the seal and drank the contents. He needed to go into the training room, hit the bags. He couldn’t sit in his office any longer.

  His Minky screen pinged. Yon was tempted to let it ring, but habit forced him to see who it was. Pax.

  Pax had already sent a message asking if Yon wanted to go down to Lotus Adaamas and join his party. The note remained in his inbox, unanswered because Yon wasn’t going down. He didn’t like loud music or rooms full of people. All those things made him even more irritable than he usually was. Even so, he would endure the planet if Pax needed Yon’s help. Maybe something had gone wrong, and he was calling for backup.

  Yon accepted the voice call. “Pax.”

  “Hey, we’re all here, waiting for you. We’ve decided that the last one to the club will buy a round of drinks.”