Beauty and the Fleet (Intergalactic Fairy Tales Book 2)

by Robert McKay

  Every cycle of her mantra was answered: "We are Anthrak."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Beatrix had been confined in a lot of ways in her life. She had been locked away in an orphanage, cramped in a berth in outer space, and imprisoned in Colarian ships, cells, and hospital beds. None of them compared to this. Not only was she cut off from movement, she couldn't even sense her body, and she was denied her thoughts. But if there was one lesson she'd learned in prisons, it was this: endure. If she could hold on long enough, something would change. All she had to do was hold onto her sense of self and eventually, she would have a chance at freedom.

  "I am Beatrix," she repeated for what felt like the millionth time. Before she could finish the rest of her mantra of self, a wall of fur and muscle collided with her body at unhealthy speed. Her first thought was to be happy that she had a body again. Her second thought was a resounding yowl of pain.

  She tumbled to the floor of the bedroom. Her scream was cut short due to lack of air. The leech had launched Arryn's body straight into her midsection, causing the blue orb to go flying across the room. The lack of Anthrak thoughts left a void in her mind, and mother nature hates a vacuum. A tumble of thoughts cascaded through her brain at lightning speed, bringing plenty of adrenaline along with them. The combination was a heady mixture that had her body acting before her rational thoughts could catch up. A knee thrust up to catch Arryn's chin. He hadn't thought his tackle through in his desperation to get her. His head snapped back and, surprisingly, his grip loosened.

  Still gasping for breath, Beatrix clawed out from beneath the behemoth and dragged herself toward the door. She had to find Woolly. She remembered that now. Everything would be fine if she could just find Woolly. If he didn't help her, at least he would kill her, and that would be a lot better than what this leech had planned. She clambered to her feet and grabbed one of the heavy wooden chairs. The leech had just pulled itself up to a knee when she smashed it in the back of the head. A strange pang of guilt washed over her for the hurt she had caused Arryn. He would live, though. Another part of her wanted to change that; keep beating him until he was a bloody pile of pulp on the floor. Even that part of her was confused though, as to whether it was out of mercy for what Arryn suffered at the hands of the Anthrak, or as revenge for her father.

  On her flight back to Nedra she would have a lot of stuff to work out. Her head swam with excitement at the idea that escape might be possible. She hit Arryn one more time with the chair to be certain that he would be down for a minute and bolted out the door. She could live with the guilt if it meant leaving this place and taking her friends with her.

  Beatrix flew down the hallway lined with bedroom doors, out the sitting room, and into the hall filled with photos of a happy family that didn't exist any more. There was a guard barreling toward her, death on two legs. He didn't have time to raise his gun, their combined speed eating up the distance between them too quickly. The guard, used to taking on large opponents in contests of strength, lowered his shoulder to prepare for impact, expecting his vastly superior weight to win the day. Beatrix knew better. She slipped into a slide, her right leg raised off the floor just enough to hit him at his center of gravity. His momentum carried the guard over her and tumbling down the hallway. Beatrix pulled herself to her feet with nothing more than a bruised arm where the guard's gun had grazed her.

  Before the guard could recover, Beatrix was out of the hall and back into the kitchen. She threw the glass container of juice she'd left on the counter at the closed door she'd just come through. It shattered with a satisfying crash, leaving glass shards and slippery juice on the floor. There was a wooden block holding knives on the counter, so she snatched the largest, just in case.

  A few seconds later, she was down the other hall and practically falling down the stairs to the wine cellar in her haste. She was lucky not to stab herself. Unfortunately, that's where her luck ran out. When she reached the grey door at the back of the cellar, she realized she had no plan to get through it. It was solid steel and locked. The only key she knew of was in Arryn's pocket and she was definitely not going back up there. She could practically hear Pillow Dave mocking her lack of a plan in his snide voice.

  Every time she'd been in there, two guards kept watch. There was no way to know if Woolly was one of them, but she was out of time. She'd have to take her chances. Beatrix banged the door with her fist, but the tiny clang was barely enough for her to notice and she might need the bones in her hand unbroken once the door opened. The knife handle wasn't much louder. The cellar around her was full of dusty bottles, but she didn't want to do to herself what she'd done to the guard upstairs because she was going to be in a hurry on the way out. Finally, she spotted a small wooden wine rack on the floor. Four of its six slots held bottles. She dumped them on the floor with a clatter, set her knife down and slammed it into the door with a resounding thud.

  After the fourth hit, the door flew outward and clipped her wine rack, knocking it out of her hands. A guard she didn't recognize with reddish-brown fur loomed before her, the barrel of his gun looking about the size of a baseball bat. In her wild flight from the bedroom, she hadn't thought about what would happen if Woolly wasn't on guard in the prison. She'd never found out where the guards went when they were off duty and she wasn't likely to make it out of the building alive if she didn't have him with her. She stood there gaping for a terror inducing half-second before lunging toward her knife on the floor. No sooner had she turned back, the guard crumpled to the floor. Woolly stood behind him. The butt of his weapon was still raised from having hit the other guard in the back of the head. He ignored her large knife completely.

  "Let's go," he said in a surprisingly soft voice. His eyes no longer shot daggers at her. He wasn't happy to see her, but at least he didn't look like he was going to shoot her. Probably.

  "I'm not leaving without my friends," said Beatrix, keenly aware that she had no real means to stop him if he wanted to get by her.

  "Fine," said Woolly turning back to the second door that led to the prison cells. "But they would be safer here until we can return for them. They all might die on the way out of this place."

  "Then that's a choice they'll have to make for themselves," said Beatrix, certain that none of them would choose to stay behind.

  "And if they slow us down, I'll shoot them myself," he rasped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Her friends were free in a matter of moments. There were a few hushed questions and objections. A glare from both Beatrix and Woolly ended them abruptly. When all was said and done, nobody wanted to stay behind. It didn't take them long to make it out of the house, but it felt like forever with the threat of being discovered looming. There was no telling when the leech would regain consciousness. There were two guards posted at the front door. Beatrix resisted the urge to dive for cover because Woolly didn't hesitate. He simply walked up to them, stood silently for a moment, and they turned and walked away. Before her contact with the Anthrak orb Beatrix wouldn't have been able to believe it. Now she understood that the idea of deception among their own was a foreign concept. Nothing could be hidden long-term because once an individual linked with the Quorum all of their deceitful thoughts would be spread to all the other Anthrak.

  In the short term though, it allowed one man to walk up with five prisoners and spout off complete lies without them being questioned. At least that's what Beatrix assumed happened in their silent communication. It wouldn't work for long, but for now it was all they needed.

  Woolly led them along the building in a tight group, his gun at the ready, directing them with single words when necessary, but mostly just grunting. His lack of verbal communication and subversive behavior must have been what kept him from being discovered and having his symbiont replaced like Josh, so Beatrix wouldn't complain. She just wished she had some idea what the plan was.

  Her mind was on high alert, but that didn't stop her from thinking about what would become of Arryn
. He was locked in the grey prison of the Anthrak consciousness. She didn't want to leave him there to suffer. That was no way to repay him for what he'd done. Sadly, she couldn't think of a better solution.

  Beatrix padded along behind Woolly, constantly glancing over her shoulder to make sure her friends were behind her. Torch took up the rear, of course, protector that he was. She couldn't stop her thoughts from drifting back to Josh, or rather Arryn. Her mind was still reeling from the effects of the Anthrak orb. Having her mind blend with the Anthrak had been the most oppressive feeling of her life. Even thinking about it made her skin crawl. The Leothen were helpless victims of the Anthrak, just as the Nedrans were, only they couldn't fight for themselves any more.

  They passed through a lush garden and looped around a large swimming pool when a ship identical to the one that had brought them there came into view. The house was still easily seen. At least the windows and doors were; the rest blended into the sky around it. They must have taken a circuitous route to avoid patrols. There were two Colarian soldiers standing attention at the foot of the open ramp in the rear, their guns held at an angle in front of them.

  Immediately upon stepping into their view, the two soldiers opened fire. "What the hell, Woolly?" shouted Beatrix as they all ducked and ran for shelter behind a small shed next to the pool.

  "Someone from the house must have beaten us here," said Woolly, firing a couple of rounds to keep the guards from approaching. "We figured they would take longer to figure out where we were going."

  The soldiers continued to lay down fire, peppering the side of the shed with rounds. Woolly fired back at them. When Beatrix took a second to glance around the opposite side of the shed, she saw the soldiers had taken up shelter just inside the aircraft. Nobody was likely to hit anyone from this distance with good cover.

  Beatrix walked back over to Woolly and shouted at him between shots. "They're just trying to delay us until backup arrives. They know they only have to keep us off the ship. If we stay here, we're as good as dead or captured."

  "Agreed," said Woolly, taking time to really aim a few shots, and catching a load of splinters in his face when a bullet ripped into the shed just above his head. "But we can't just run at them through all of this open space."

  Beatrix scanned around for options, but there was nowhere good to go. Between them and the aircraft was about a hundred meters of open field. There was no reasonable way to circle around. The only real option they had was to retreat toward the house and that wouldn't do them any good.

  Suddenly, the booming cough of the soldiers' guns stopped. Woolly stopped firing as well. His back went rigid. Before Beatrix could move to peek around the corner she heard a sharp voice echo across the open space.

  "Beatrix," called Arryn's leech. "Come out here alone and we may consider giving you and your friends another chance at being blessed with a Partner, rather than being put to death."

  She'd heard that euphemism before. He was offering to give them another chance to let symbionts take over their bodies. Beatrix shuddered involuntarily. This leech obviously didn't have full access to what Arryn knew of her, otherwise that wouldn't have been a bargaining tactic. It probably would have went the other way around.

  Against her better judgment, Beatrix peeked around the corner. Arryn's body stood in the middle of the clearing, his dark fur gleaming in the sunlight. He radiated strength and confidence. He held no weapons; his arms were crossed before him. If he feared Woolly shooting him, he didn't show it. From what Beatrix could see of Woolly, his shoulders slumped in defeat, there was nothing to fear.

  "What are you doing?" asked Torch, his mouth hanging open as he gawked at Woolly. "Shoot him and the rest of them will fall apart long enough for us to get on the ship."

  "He can't shoot him; he's his friend," Beatrix explained.

  "Then give me the gun," said Hands. He reached up and rubbed the scar on his forehead and then held out his hand toward Woolly's gun. "I've got no such problem."

  "Touch my weapon monkey-man, and I'll take the offending arm off and beat you to death with it." His lip turned up in a snarl.

  "Back off, Hands," said Beatrix, stepping between them. "Nobody is going to shoot him."

  "And just why the hell not?" asked Hands, his eyes flashing with anger. "He took us all prisoner and then tried to put those...things on us."

  "Because he's the reason that we were able to escape in the first place," said Beatrix, carefully keeping her rising anger in check. It wasn't his fault that he didn't understand the full extent of what was going on. If she'd been locked up in her cell the whole time, she wouldn't have either. She would have been first in line to put one through Arryn's head, probably two or three just to be sure.

  "That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense," retorted Hands, taking a step to move around her toward Woolly. Beatrix stepped with him, blocking the way. "You've lost your mind."

  "No," said Pickle. "This isn't what madness looks like. Let her talk."

  While Beatrix wasn't exactly sure what Pickle knew about madness, Hands backed down. Beatrix looked around the corner of the shed. The leech seemed content to wait, so she turned back to her friends. She owed them an explanation if she was going to ask them to risk their lives the way she intended. "Everything we know about the Colarians is wrong."

  "What does that mean?" asked Gadget. He looked tired beyond belief. They all did. Prison life had worn away at them.

  "I don't have time for a long explanation, so I'm just going to give you the important bits and you're going to have to trust me about the rest." She looked to each of them. They all nodded, if a bit hesitantly. She had rescued them, but first she had left them. "The biggest thing you need to know is that the symbionts aren't really symbionts. They are mind-controlling leeches who hitch a ride on other species so that they can experience the sights and sounds of the world in a way their limited bodies couldn't otherwise. They aren't just dumb creatures that enhance their host's body in exchange for nutrients."

  "Wait," said Torch, holding up a hand, his brow wrinkled in confusion. "Are you saying the Colarians convinced you they are victims?"

  "No, I'm saying that I figured out that the Colarians aren't really a people. What we call Colarians are truly Leothen and the symbionts are the Anthrak. Look at Woolly there and you'll notice that one of the bands of flesh that should connect the symbiont to his forehead is missing." Her friends all turned as one to regard their unlikely savior. He looked decidedly uncomfortable for a moment and then went back to looking hostile. "I did the same to the Colarian that killed my father. One of you take a look out there at him and tell me what you see."

  Hands did the honors and came back with a scowl on his face. "It has two bands of flesh on its forehead again. So what?"

  "That just happened," said Beatrix. "Now he's completely under their control again. When he only had one connection to his head, he could break free of their control and even work against them in limited ways. He is how I knew that Woolly here would help us. He must have gotten discovered and they removed his old symbiont and replaced it. Now he's back under their thumb. He's a prisoner just as surely as all of us were."

  The men all looked back and forth at one another with varying levels of skepticism showing on their faces. Pickle, on the other hand, looked horrified. "You mean, that we've been killing all of these innocent people who have had their minds taken over?"

  "There isn't anything innocent about Colarians," grumbled Gadget. "They were trying to kill us just as hard as we were trying to kill them."

  Beatrix ignored his comment, knowing that it came from past grief and that she would have said the same not very long ago. "I touched a glowing orb just before I came to free you all. It confirmed everything I just told you. The symbionts, the Anthrak, are a hive mind, like ants, or bees. They can communicate telepathically over short distances. They use the orbs to connect back to the main hive and sync their thoughts. They don't even think of themselves as individual bei
ngs. I touched their collective and was almost destroyed by it in the time it took me to fall to the ground. Trust me when I say that I know what I'm talking about."

  As she was talking, she watched the eyebrows of the men creep higher and higher up their foreheads. Hands frowned and rubbed at the scars on his forehead. Beatrix could tell she'd come uncomfortably close to describing his experience with the Anthrak. Torch, always the quickest on the uptake and the last one to speak, stepped forward. "I guess we're all going to have to hope that if there is a god out there, he understands that we were just trying to defend ourselves when we have to answer for what we've done." Hands and Gadget nodded in agreement, looking a little green around the gills. Beatrix sighed in relief.

  "So, if we're not going to kill any Colarians, how the hell are we getting out of here?" asked Hands.

  "There are no such things as Colarians. Only Anthrak and Leothen. I won't kill any Leothen, but I've got no problem taking out the Anthrak," said Beatrix, a gleam in her eye.

  "I know that look," said Torch, giving her a grin. "That means you have a stupid plan."

  "You mean a brilliant plan," said Beatrix.

  "No, I always say what I mean," said Torch. He shook his head and wiped a hand over his face. "Just because they usually work, doesn't mean they're any less stupid."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  "We knew you couldn't resist a chance at getting your own Partner," said the leech, his smile looking all wrong on Arryn's face. He'd never looked that self-satisfied with his other symbiont. It was hard not to show her concern for Arryn. Since she'd touched the orb, it felt wrong to call him Josh. He'd gone through an ordeal that defied description to hang onto his name, the least she could do was respect it.