The Galactic Sentinel: Ultimate Edition: 4 Books with 2000+ Pages of Highly Entertaining Sci-Fi Space Adventure

by Killian Carter

  She regarded it curiously. “Isn’t that a bit…old fashioned?”

  “The Council like to keep things above board,” Burly explained in a kind tone. “Make sure we keep our records nice and tidy.”

  Samity chuckled. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation, girl.”

  “Oh, I understand, but it seems like you still haven’t figured out that you aren’t getting shit from me.”

  Samity rose from his seat and pounded the table. “Why be so stubborn?”

  Burley pulled him out of the way and the human fell back into his seat, his moustache swinging like a pair of fox tails.

  “Listen,” the Varg said gently, though Clio detected a slight tremor. “You’ve been convicted of treason. Millions aboard the Sentinel will watch you and your friends hang tomorrow.”

  Clio shook her head, almost wincing at the creek in her neck.

  “Forget about it,” Samity said, standing abruptly and making his way to Clio. “We won’t get anything from this bitch. Let’s get her out of here and bring in the next one.”

  Burly raised his hand and Samity froze.

  “This is your last chance, Terran,” the Varg said, barely containing his anger this time. The clipboard screeched as he pushed it under Clio’s chin.

  She sighed and her shoulders dropped forward in defeat. “You promise I can waltz on out of here alive if I sign?”

  A glimmer of hope shone in the Varg’s stony eyes and he glanced at Samity, who seemed somewhat disappointed.

  Burly nodded. “Declare your colleagues as Chimera accomplices and you walk.”

  She sighed again and nodded. “Okay.”

  Burly looked to Samity, and the Terran operated his SIG, unlocking Clio’s left restraint with a harsh bleep.

  She lifted the pen from the clipboard, holding its tip above the paper, ready to scribble her name on the dotted line. Before the nib touched the sheet, she twisted her arm in a flash, slamming the pen into Samity’s thigh.

  The screaming officer grabbed his leg, his bulging eyes making him look even more comical. Clio couldn’t stop herself from laughing.

  Burley finally snapped and reached across the table, his bony knuckles smashing into her temple.

  She slumped against the table in a daze, aware that one hand was still free. She tried to push herself up and saw Samity reach for her out of the corner of her eye, a stunner in-hand.

  The electricity numbed her body, sending her limbs into wild and uncontrollable spasms, her one free limb thrashing about of its own accord.

  Another harsh bleep sounded, and both hands were unlocked as the room spun. Someone threw her to the floor. Clio tried to get back up, but another jolt sent her body dancing, her fingers twisting at unnatural angles as her head bounced off the cold tiles. She struggled to crane her head to watch Samity speak into his SIG as he leaned on the table for support.

  “Get your asses in here, boys.” His voice quivered as he looked down at her. “We’ll beat the confession out of you, you fucking bitch!”

  Footsteps sounded in the doorway, and three more SenSec officers entered the room.

  “Teach the bitch another lesson,” Samity shrieked.

  Clio rolled onto her side in time to see the first kick. It struck her chest like a hammer, knocking the wind out of her. She gasped helplessly for air, wondering if a lung had been punctured. The relentless wave of stomping followed. One black boot after another struck hard. Despite her best efforts not to give them the pleasure, she cried out, but no amount of pleading made it stop. Finally, a heavy boot caught her in the ear, sending the interrogation room into a spin.

  Clio came to, the side of her face against a rough surface, her body pulled tightly into the fetal position. She couldn’t open her right eyelid all the way. Though it had been a while, she knew it had been swollen shut. Wherever the SenSec guards had left her, it was dark, save for a sliver of light cutting through a seam in a door. The line of light cast a faint glow where it fell, but the room was otherwise obscured by shadow.

  She tried to get up, and every inch of bone and muscle screamed in objection. She braced herself and rolled onto her back, moaning in pain. Even breathing hurt. She lifted a shaking arm, reaching for the light and felt a solid surface. A wall.

  She dragged her body forward, soldiering through the agony, and eventually rested her back against a smooth metal panel. The cold seeped through her subarmor, soothing the burning muscles in her back. Her legs stretched out before her, the door a dozen feet to her right, the line of light cutting across her ankles. At least they didn’t get my legs.

  Her legs did hurt but nowhere near as bad as her upper body. She was relieved to find that all her fingers still worked, though she could barely move her left wrist.

  Clio gently touched her face with her right. Her cheeks felt twice as big as they should have, her skin numb yet somehow simultaneously tender.

  Her aching fingers traced a line over a deep gash in her bottom lip. Blood trickled down her chin and she held her left forearm against it as she investigated the injuries further. Her right eyebrow sported a similar cut but had stopped bleeding.

  It had been a long time since she had taken such a beating. Her chest and back ached as she sobbed. Clio gritted her teeth as she drew a deep breath, steeling herself. She fought back the tide of self-pity and wiped away her snot and tears, careful not to press her puffy eyes too hard.

  Something scuffled ahead, and her hairs stood on end.

  “You’re alive?” an eager voice whispered in the dark. “I barely felt a pulse when they first threw you in. Thought you were as good as dead.”

  Clio’s heart thumped in her ears, not that she could have done anything against a threat in her current state. A blurred outline moved in the shadows beyond the strip of light, but she couldn’t make out what it was. “Who’s there?”

  Whoever it was scuttled slowly, as though dragging something hard against the concrete floor. The shapes in the shadows merged into a large form as a twisted Shanti male leaning on a makeshift walking-stick hobbled into the light. “Name’s Alvar.”

  His broken nose twitched. A dirty bandage obscured half of his head. The part of his face Clio could see looked as bad as hers felt, but his yellow eye caught the light and seemed to shine with some life regardless. He limped a step closer, groaning as he moved, the light revealing clothing stained and caked with old blood. He wore what once must have been a medical overall.

  “You’re a doctor?” Clio croaked, her throat as sore as the rest of her body.

  He looked down at his tattered rags. “I guess you could say I was a kind of doctor. I’m…or rather was…a department manager at Bionama Labs.”

  Clio remembered that Booster had been treated there. “What are you doing in here?”

  “My employers turned out to be…less than ideal,” Alvar said coughing into the back of his hand. “They wanted me to…do something questionable to a patient and I refused. I’ve been stuck in here ever since.”

  “Sounds dark,” she said, her voice getting weaker. Clio yawed and felt dizzy all of a sudden. “Why am I so tired?”

  “Don’t fall asleep,” Alvar warned. “You might never wake up again.”

  “Sounds good to me,” she said drifting off into a warm and comfortable darkness.

  Alvar muttered a curse, his words sounding discordant and distant. “I’d hate to know what they did to you. They’ve done terrible things to me too, and all because of a damn monkey.”

  Clio’s eyes opened instantly, and awareness forced its way into her head like a cold knife. “You know Booster?” she shrieked with surprise, her words bouncing around the hollow box of a room.

  Alvar’s eye went wide with fear and he drew close, pressing a finger against her lips. “Hush.”

  His finger tasted of salty metal, but she hadn’t the strength to do anything about it. “Fine. Remove your finger.”

  “Keep your voice down in case they’re listening,”
he said, obeying and looking nervously at the door. “How do you know that name?”

  “I gave it to him. Booster and I…left Colony 115 together. In fact, if not for him I wouldn’t…have made it.” Every word became a greater struggle.

  Alvar looked into the darkness absently as he thought. “Yes, of course,” he muttered. “He mentioned friends, but he never elaborated…never spoke much, even after recalibrating his L-virus.”

  Clio wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, but her nostrils flared as she drew a breath and realization dawned.

  “Monkey…Man,” Clio said, hardly able to believe it. “You gave…our friend…his new arm.”

  Alvar nodded. “How is he?”

  “I don’t…know,” Clio said, her chin touching her chest. “I saw him before they…took me. I hope he’s…okay.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine. He seemed to have a way of getting himself in and out of trouble.”

  Clio nodded ever so slightly, the room moving with her. “Sounds…about right.”

  “I’d sure like to meet him again one day, but I didn’t dare in case I was followed. My superiors showed a keen interest when I learned what he was.”

  “I was told…that he’s a puck?” Clio’s tongue felt heavier with every word.

  “Yes, I thought so too. However, further investigation showed that, although he is of the same species, he is rarer still. I thought I’d found an older subspecies. I was very excited to share the discovery with my peers, but things went south pretty fast after I told my supervisor.”

  “What…happened?”

  “The news made it to senior management, and the next thing I know, I have two SenSec officers breathing down my neck. They wanted to take our little friend…said they would transfer him to a better facility…that they would take good care of him. But something just didn’t feel right, so I broke him out before they arrived…made him run away.” Alvar took a breath. “I’m glad he got away.”

  “What did they…want?”

  “I don’t know why they were interested in our friend, but they went to a lot of trouble to find out where he went. They’ve been trying to get me to give them a lead. I truly had no idea where he went, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying.” His voice faltered.

  Clio’s headache started to worsen, and she struggled even more to stay conscious. “You didn’t suspect he would return…to me?”

  “By the time he ended up in my care, his registration details had been lost,” Alvar explained. “It happens all the time. I thought he was a walk in or a stray. We get those a lot, but I didn’t know we had monkeys on the Sentinel, so of course I checked him out, fixed his arm, ran some tests.”

  “He didn’t…mention any of this…just the arm.” Clio thought about how dangerous it had been to be walking around with Booster out in the open. If those searching had spotted him…

  “He probably didn’t want to bother you about it.” Alvar shrugged. “Or he didn’t understand the situation. The scar tissue I found on his brain has probably affected his comprehension and memory. I wanted to try the lab regen chamber, but before I could apply, well…things got out of hand.”

  “Regen chamber? What kind of…labs are they? I was told it was…for animal care.”

  “Bionama takes care of animals and pets from time to time, but we specialize in animal testing.” Alvar looked concerned all of a sudden and glanced at the door again. “The strange thing is, I dug around in the system and learned that our primary corporate shareholder was Xerocorp Labs. At Bionama, we take good care of our animals, give them good lives, better than they would ever have elsewhere. But Xerocorp Labs aren’t exactly known for their ethical practices.”

  Clio cast her mind back to the Xerocorp Lab facility on Colony 115. “Chimera…must own them across the board,” she muttered.

  “Chimera?” he asked, rolling the word off his tongue with a low purr.

  Clio wanted to answer him, but the darkness beckoned again, only more urgently than before.

  “Wait! Open your eyes,” Alvar all but shouted, though his words seemed strangely dulled. “You haven’t even given me your name.”

  “Evans…Confederation Fleet pilot.” She looked around at the thickening darkness.

  “How did you end up in here?”

  If Clio still had the will to thank him for trying to keep her awake, she would have done so, but she couldn’t manage another word.

  She felt her body jerk. Alvar must have been trying to jolt her awake again, but Clio knew it wasn’t going to work this time.

  The Shanti spoke louder regardless. “You know, I’m not sure where we are. I was out cold too when they brought me in, but if I had to guess, I’d say we aren’t far from SenSec station.”

  Despite his raised voice, someone turned the volume down. Clio wanted to shout at whoever it was. She wanted to hear Monkey Man speak. She wanted to hear more about Booster.

  “If I listen hard enough, I can hear the traffic going by outside……..”

  31

  Evacuation

  An orderly assisted Grimshaw onto the roof of the medical facility. From the surrounding buildings, he guessed they were just outside Sentinel City’s urban center, in a part of town he didn’t recognize, not that he had gotten to know much of the Sentinel since his arrival. His duties had confined him to Sentinel Square and the immediate vicinity with the odd trip to Levels Two and Three.

  The airbus engines whirred to life, blowing a steady breeze across the landing bay as Aegi Order personnel assisted patients in various conditions into the rear cabin. Andrews stood to one side, reading a compad while barking orders.

  To an untrained eye, the vehicle would appear as any other civilian transport, but Grimshaw noted the heavy armor plating, especially along the bottom, and the oversized engines.

  The orderly supported him as they bypassed the line and reached the command cabin.

  “Thanks, I’ve got it from here,” he told the Shanti.

  “Yes, sir.” The orderly nodded and made his way toward the line to assist the remaining evacuees.

  Grimshaw had insisted that he was well enough to walk on his own, but Andrews wasn’t having any of it. She had a lot more fire than he remembered.

  Conflict does that to some people, he thought. They usually end up being the survivors. He tried to recall an old saying one of his superiors had frequently used…Conflict kills the weak but strengthens the strong.

  Grimshaw wasn’t sure which side of the fence he fell on, but after his intense treatment was still feeling very weak.

  He winced as he pulled himself into the command cabin. Doctor Roshi was already there, working on a compad of his own, no doubt ensuring things were going as planned.

  He offered Grimshaw a brief glance and a curt nod. “Good evening, my friend. I trust you’re well.”

  “As well as I can hope to be.” Grimshaw tried not to make a show of his discomfort when harnessing himself into his seat. His body ached, his legs wobbled, and his right arm was still numb and all but useless. “I could do with more pain meds.”

  “There’s only so much the Terran body can take,” Roshi said without looking up from his compad again. “We’ll review your meds when we get on board the North Star.”

  Grimshaw mumbled his discontent, but he had to admire the doctor’s optimism. Even with the element of surprise, and what remained of Straiya’s agents planted among SenSec, the operation was a major risk, but it was their only real option. If they remained on the Sentinel, they would be discovered sooner or later and given the death sentence anyway.

  “How was it getting into your TEK?” Doctor Roshi asked.

  “Fine,” Grimshaw lied. Without pain meds, squeezing into his armor highlighted every ache in his body. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I could use my damned right arm.”

  “I see you haven’t brought most of your weapons. Very wise.”

  “With one hand, they’ll only weigh me down. I left them with the administra
tor. She assured me the rest of my equipment would make it into the cargo hold.” He tapped the blaster at his hip. “My left arm hurts like hell too, but this will have to do.”

  Roshi raised his voice in conjunction with the raise of the vehicle’s roaring engines. “If everything goes according to plan, you shouldn’t be needing that.”

  “Since when does anything ever go according to plan,” Grimshaw countered.

  The engines whirred louder still, and the airbus jerked as though it was getting ready to move. “They’ve removed the clamps. We’ll be ready to leave shortly.”

  Andrews climbed into the cabin and pulled the door shut behind her, quietening some of the noise outside. “Everyone’s on board,” she told Roshi, as if trying to ignore Grimshaw.

  He knew why.

  “What about my idea?” Grimshaw asked Andrews as she belted herself in across from him, the buckles clicking against her field operations TEK.

  “I’ve given it some thought and decided it’s too risky.”

  “Too risky?” Grimshaw said, trying not to sound overly frustrated and failing on account of the pain. “This operation is one big ball of risk.”

  “Which is why we can’t add any more variables,” she pressed. “There are already too many moving parts.”

  Grimshaw could see why Straiya had placed Andrews in charge and not Roshi. The Shanti doctor was a more senior medical professional, but Andrews had some experience on the battle field and knew how to say no.

  The airbus jolted as it lifted into the air. It accelerated upward before slowing and banking sharply, the buildings of the outer city turning in the door window.

  Grimshaw gritted his teeth as the harness cut into his shoulder and rubbed the back of his head. “Have you even read my notes? Even if we make it off the Sentinel, we won’t get far without Faye’s help. We need her to play Chimera and the Council at their own game.”

  “I’m not interested in playing games, Grimshaw.” She made a point of not using his Aegi or Confederation title to highlight who had most authority. “We have sick people on this bus, and Straiya’s order was to go straight to the waypoint.”