by April Zyon
Evernight Publishing ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2015 April Zyon
ISBN: 978-1-77233-305-3
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Jessica Ruth
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To my editor, Jessica Ruth, thank you for all that you have taught me during this editing process. You are truly a gem.
To my readers, this one's for you.
ADIRA’S MATE
Space Wars, 1
April Zyon
Copyright © 2015
Chapter One
The voices were getting closer. “…can see with this one here. Designated C-12, this prisoner is a Craegin female. We’re unsure of her age, but guess it to be around twenty or so years upon capture.”
“How long have you had her here?”
“She was our first successful capture. She’s been here for six years now. Our research involving her was highly instrumental in ensuring an easier capture of our other subjects. Keeping her alive was a struggle, though. Our world’s atmosphere affects the Craegins oddly. We’ve been able to get close to a reasonable facsimile of their world’s atmosphere, though. It’s not precise, so it keeps them weak, not all bad in our opinion.”
“Not at all, Doctor. This is very impressive, as have been all your reports over the last few years. We’ve learned more through your experimentation on these vile creatures than in any conflict. Do you think we could use our atmosphere as a weapon?”
“Perhaps one day, Vice-Admiral, but at this time we’re still unclear as to what on our world causes the reaction. We know their world is darker than ours, of course. They circle a red dwarf while we are circling a white. Their eyes don’t like the additional light our world has, so that’s always something to consider. They are used to a much darker climate. In the light of our world they are practically blinded.”
“I had read that in one of your reports. Unfortunately we’ve yet to come up with a way of using it effectively. They are technologically more advanced than we are, so we need something of a long-range weapon to regain the balance.”
“Perfectly understandable, Vice-Admiral. If you’ll come this way I’ll show you some of the things we’ve been testing on our prisoners. I think you’ll particularly like the…”
The voices faded off down a corridor. Now that the Craegin being held captive against the laws of the Imarian people had been shown off, the zoo tour would go on to other fun parts.
Rubbing at his eyes, Fintan Daykin let out a breath. He’d lost track of the days he’d been on the Imarian home world. He knew for a fact they were on an island off one of their main continents. The only way on or off the island was either by one of their watercraft or in one of their crawlers. If he could get to one of the little shuttle crafts, he might have a prayer of getting off the island and even off the planet.
Not that they were going to let him just walk out of there. No, he knew they had another round of torture disguised as testing for the afternoon. The guards had been all too happy to share that news with him. According to the one, Fin was in for a world of pain. A fact that didn’t surprise him in the least.
Since his arrival he’d been poked, prodded, electrocuted, had items shoved places no item should ever go, and of course had hands of all sorts touching his entire body. If not for the fact that they drugged him to move him between his cell and the room for the testing, he’d have found a way to kill them all. On the plus side he was building up a pretty good resistance to their vile concoctions. He didn’t know what that would mean to him in the long run, but right then it gave him hope that he might be able to break free one day soon.
He’d prefer immediately, but wasn’t about to hold his breath on that hope. Not when he was already having trouble breathing on the hellish Imarian world. The air grated into his lungs, making them hurt with every breath. They were pumping something into his cell, though, something that eased that pain, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
How a Craegin female had endured six years of such hell, he’d never know. But she was undoubtedly the stronger of the two of them. Then again he also knew if you were to endure something long enough you could grow accustomed to it. Fin could only hope he didn’t stick around long enough to become accustomed to the thin, brackish Imarian air. Oh what he wouldn’t give to take in a deep lungful of Craegin air. Thick, humid, and so very fragrant.
The sound of the lock on his cell door turning yanked him from his musings. Bracing himself, he flinched at the dart that hit him. He yanked it from his leg, but the drug was already speeding through his system.
“Time for the doctors to play with you again, Craegin freak.”
Fin may have made a slightly impossible physical suggestion, but he truly couldn’t be sure. Not with how the world was fading out around the edges, turning black. Then the floor rushed up to meet his face.
****
He woke up naked and strapped down to one of the examination tables. Easing his lids up, Fintan took stock of where he was. Not one of the observation rooms, thankfully. Only those in the room with him would be witness to his humiliation.
Fin could see, and feel, a number of leads attached to him. Including on places nothing of the sort should ever be placed. It took every ounce of his training not to flinch at the feeling of a sticky pad on his ball sack, and whatever the fuck was wrapped around his cock. He knew now he really wasn’t going to have all that great of a day.
“All right, we’re set here. Give him the serum, and let’s wake him up. We have a long afternoon of testing to get done so we can include these latest findings in the packet for the vice-admiral before he leaves today.”
A sharp stick in his arm. He counted in his head for a time before giving a low, sluggish-sounding groan.
“Get on the monitoring equipment. We need to see how much juice he can take before we start on the pain testing.”
Letting out another groan, he rolled his head slightly. He’d been right. This was not going to be a good day.
****
When he woke next, he was being dragged through a hallway back to his cell. His entire muscular structure was still twitching from the massive amounts of electricity they’d pumped through his body. Fin had to hide a flinch at the memory of when they’d focused all that through only one part, one very sensitive part, of his anatomy. He hadn’t been able to hold in the scream of pain then, but he seriously doubted if his superiors would ever fault him for that.
Slowly he licked his lips as he tried to gain his bearings. The lights were dimmed, which meant it was after sunset on the planet. The night shift of guards would be on, good. That meant fewer of them to have to get through in his present weakened condition. He just needed the right moment, and a burst of energy, to take these two Imarians down.
One man stumbled with a curse. “Hold up. He’s bloody heavy,” the guy muttered. “Let’s put him down for a second. I think I wrenched my shoulder.”
They dropped him to the floor without any warning. Biting his tongue, he held the grunt of pain in. Holy hell did his body hurt. Flashes were coming to him of what had happened after the electrical treatments had ended. Blades, shallow cuts, burning, ice, so much pain wracking through his body.
“You okay?” the other guard asked.
“Yeah,
I think so. I may need to get that cute little intern to give me a massage, though,” the first guy said.
“Still seeing her?”
“Hell yeah, did you see the tits on her? They’re much better without that nasty smock covering them up.”
“How is she in bed?”
“A wild woman. And the way she can suck a cock, damn, it’s unreal.”
All right then, that was more information than he had needed to know. Taking a few deep breaths, he let his anger build. When they reached for him again he let them haul him back up, using that momentum to regain his feet, and punched the first guy in the nose. As he howled, holding on to his face, Fin went after the second guy fast.
He wasn’t going to play by any rules either. He fought dirty, especially when he could already feel his strength beginning to wane once more. Knee to the balls, fist the throat. Whipping around to guard number one, he threw a fist into the guy’s throat to silence his high-pitched whining.
With a hand to the wall, he took a moment to regain his breath. He was in much worse condition than he’d thought. But he couldn’t stop now, not when freedom was only feet away. Quickly he grabbed up the guards one at a time and hid them in a supply closet. He collected their weapons and got changed into a pair of the medical scrubs kept in the storage closet. Pulling on one of the lab coats, he stuffed the weapons into the pockets. Fin froze for a moment; he thought that he heard a sound. His hand moved to the weapon once more, his ears listening to every single sound in the area surrounding him. The dim lighting in the area was working against him. While he might see better than most, the abuse that his body had suffered was enough that it was creating issues for him to focus in the dangerous halls of his enemies.
Map, he needed one of the maps. Finally Fin spotted a map hanging on one of the walls, his stupid enemies having to have maps to get around their own facilities. He made his way to it quickly, keeping an eye out for any of the cameras. Thankfully there weren’t any down in the areas surrounding the cells. In the cells there were four each, and in the areas around the exam and surgical bays. But from what he could tell, there weren’t any in the halls leading to and from, which was odd, considering the size and scope of the facility. Soon he had his path mapped out in his head. He only hoped he wasn’t mistaken, that there weren’t any cameras in the halls. It was the only unknown he had to deal with since the only time he’d ever traveled these halls was when he’d been under the influence of heavy sedatives.
Better dead while trying to escape than cut into little bits on a sterile table, to his way of thinking. Either way he’d be free and no longer under their control. Maybe he’d get lucky and he could kill a few of them on the way out.
Chapter Two
She was walking through the halls of the facility on her home world when she received the news. She stared at the data pad in complete disbelief. It simply wasn’t possible that the facility she had put together, one that had been created to study disease, was doing what the anonymous sender was saying. It simply wasn’t possible. She would know. Right?
Then again in the back of her mind Adira had always known but had chosen not to acknowledge the situation. She had heard rumors for the last half cycle that the military had captured and were testing Craegins, but that was something she would never sign off on as the head of the Medical Ministries. No, she would never allow any being to be tortured, because that was how she saw the way these men had wanted to test the Craegin. It had all been presented to her as hypothetical and she had shot it down before their presentation was even over. Now, however…now she had a feeling that she would have to face the facts.
Rubbing her temples, Adira hurried back to her offices so she could pull up the reports that came to her from the facility. What she read made her sick. There was nothing that stated there was torture happening, nothing to hint at the truth of what they had turned her facility into. No, instead the reports were boring and plain. Scrubbed of anything that might cause her to bat a lash, the reports read as the smoke screen that she was now certain that they were. It was because of how plain and boring the reports were that had her suspicions rising and her intuition kicking her ass, proverbially speaking of course.
Once she was back in her private office she began to pour through the files and chewed her lower lip as she did so. She didn’t like this, at all. She was the head of the Medical Ministries and for one of her facilities to be used for these crimes was too much for her to bear. It simply couldn’t be true. Her fingers tightened around the sheaf of papers. There would be only one way to figure it out. She would go to the facility in question and see for herself.
Picking up her phone, she called for a crawler. It was more than past time for her to visit the facility. Once the crawler was arranged, she put in a call to her brother. When she was put through to his video cache she put in a message to him, asking him bluntly if he knew what was happening at Facility 98-3. She then turned, grabbed her personal bag as well as her medical and communications kit, and headed off to meet the crawler.
****
Facility 98-3 on the Imarian Homeworld, Planet Traxa in the Imarian system, four hours later…
Adira Lora was anything but superstitious. She didn’t believe that their immortal enemies, the Craegin, were the very devils that the Imarian government tried to make them out to be. Adira had a feeling that the Imarians and the Craegin were far more alike than anyone wanted to admit to. She had, after all, read the ancient documents that stated that at one time their worlds were one, so very long ago.
As she walked through the halls, her heels made a distinct click-click-clack, the sound a constant staccato on the floor as she moved. The light lavender lab coat that covered the black dress was crisp and fresh. She was nervous, but there was good reason. She had seen the prisoners of war that her people had in custody and were using to experiment on. It was too much. She was utterly stunned at what her people had done. This atrocity was far too much. She needed to get to her brother; he would help her. She might be the head of their Medical Ministry but he had the might of the War Ministry at his back.
Pressing her fingers to her belly once more, her hand shaking viciously, she could again see what she had done. What would cause her to be killed at the first possible opportunity.
Turning once more, she started up a darkened hall but didn’t think a thing about the lights being out, didn’t think about the fact that there should be guards on this hall. She was too lost in her thoughts for that. Swallowing hard, she rubbed at her forehead as she walked and saw the blood on her palm again.
“By the spirits,” she whispered and felt sick all over again. She had killed a man. Not only had she killed a man but she had killed a military officer. Sure, he deserved it, but she killed him. Dead. “Why would he have to do that?” she mumbled as she thought of the young officer whose head she had just bashed in.
Adira was so lost in thought that she made a wrong turn and instead of heading for the communications hub, she was headed into the maximum security wing. “I couldn’t let him rape her, though. No one deserves that.” The Craegin woman was an innocent. When Adira had walked in and saw what was happening she simply reacted and, well, she killed him. At least, in that moment she had thought the woman was innocent. “My brother will kill me,” she said under her breath in dread. That was if the guards left on the planet didn’t get to her first. Putting her hand to the wall, she felt another wave of nausea rolling through her, not only because she had killed a man but what the Craegin woman had revealed afterward.
“Spirits,” she whispered once more, wiping a hand over her brow. The woman had gleefully told Adira how she had gladly became a lover to the scientists that were part of this facility. How she was given herself freely to them and how they had made life easier for her. What had made her even sicker was the fact that the woman had even helped the men capture a Craegin man.
“I can’t believe that someone would do that to their own people. This isn’t good,” she s
aid again, then stopped dead in the center of the hallway. “What in the world?” she asked as she turned around, her breath coming in a small mist of air. Why were the lights off in the corridor? Where were the guards? She shivered and rubbed her arms that prickled in unease, a sense of foreboding racing up and down her spine.
****
The soft scuff of shoes had alerted him to the fact he was no longer alone in the hallway. Fin had killed the lights so he was able to see better. The Imarians liked things too bright for his light sensitive eyes to work well. Squinting as he stumbled around wasn’t going to be beneficial to his escape.
Easing into a doorway that was offset from the hall, he listened to the voice coming closer. At first he wasn’t sure if it was male or female. Soon, though, he caught the scent of the person approaching. Most definitely female, Imarian female.
He slipped one of the laser pistols from the pocket of his borrowed lab coat. Maybe he’d found his ticket out of this hell hole. The map was only getting him so far. He desperately needed someone that knew where the guards patrolled, and where the blasted cameras were. He was weakening quickly from the blood loss through the multiple cuts the Imarian torturers had inflicted on him. Fin knew time was getting away from him and if he didn’t get free soon, they’d end up discovering his unconscious body in the hall come morning.
He really didn’t want that to happen. Who knew what his captors would inflict upon him for his escape attempt. Come on, get a little closer. The female had paused in the hallway. He could just make out the sleeve of her lab coat, but not a lot else given where he’d hidden.
When she eased forward another step he forced himself to relax. Another step brought her closer. She looked confused as she glanced up and down the hallway. A look of annoyance flitted over her face before she took two determined steps. Obviously she’d been about to head off to chew someone out over the lights.