The Siege of Sirius

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Chevallier’s voice transmitted to his communicator. He ignored it, the voice, the lady in the water in front of him wanted him to disregard the critical situation Chevallier and the Captain were in. The lady in the water lifted her soaking arm up, she wanted him to hold her hand as she guided him into the ocean. A task he didn’t hesitate to do after he took off his combat armor.

  A second woman rose up from the waters next to Kingston, she too had an irresistible allure to her body. Everything about it was—perfect—a work of art. The droplets of water that dripped off her breasts, her chestnut brown hair resting along her back, travelling down to and across her fishlike lower body.

  Both Kingston and McDowell had stripped out of their gear and watched as it sank to the bottom of the waters. Kingston made the first plunge and leaped into the arms of the second water lady. She embraced and passionately kissed him and telepathically assured him everything would be alright. It was McDowell’s turn. His fascination focused on the first water-lady and he trusted her implicitly, allowing his body to enter her sensual hold. Her soft wet lips kissed the sides of his neck and down to his chest. He felt her drag him further out into the deeper parts of the ocean, he didn’t realize how far out they had gone, her kisses were an experience he had never felt before, enhanced by a strange psionic link she created between her mind and his. He looked back and saw Pierce standing alone, the two ladies assured him that their sister was coming for him next.

  Pierce’s vanished from sight as McDowell’s body was forced underwater. He was still able to breathe, a psionic force field covered him and the lady that found him fascinating. Their passionate play continued as they sank lower, the purple hue from the barrier became the only source of light within the dark ocean realm. It wasn’t until he felt her nipples slide across his chest that he realized she had taken his uniform off.

  He sensed that she needed him alive for what was going to come next via the psionic bound she created between the two. She assured him it was OK and not to resist. He assured her he wouldn’t, she was too beautiful, and he was too roused and hard to say no.

  Long tendrils grew out from the center of her back where her spine was. There were four of them, maybe five, and they raised high above her head as the ends faced McDowell. She began to kiss him again, this time much more aggressively. Her tongue entered his mouth, her left hand held onto his shoulder while the right stroked his shaft. Her body pressed hard against his, moving up and down while her tail slowly wrapped around his legs.

  The intensity of her lustful actions drew his attention away from the tendrils that sprouted out of her back, and the fact that the tips of them had become razor-sharp. Their foreheads pressed against each other as her sultry eyes gazed into his. One last look before her tendrils slithered behind him and impaled his body. He sensed the pain and possible fatal trauma his body was enduring. But the gaze she shot him, it was paralyzing. She was controlling his body’s natural need for self-preservation while genetic material was leeched away from him, into her tendrils, then into her.

  She moaned erotically, and while her body shivered with pleasure and ecstasy, the psionic barrier shutdown. Seconds later their bodies were truly submerged in the warm water around them. McDowell was drowning while his blood squirted out from the gaping holes on his back. With the last bit of life he had left in his body, he turned to see what had become of Kingston. The lady that had taken him performed the same move on his naked body. She removed the impaling tendrils out from his back, then ejected his drowning body into the abyss below.

  McDowell’s partner did the same seconds later with a smile on her face.

  14 FOSTER

  Architect’s ship

  Interstellar space

  May 21, 2050, 00:32 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Captain Foster’s head and back pulsated with pain.

  She felt as if she had run face first into a brick wall as her eyes slowly opened. She saw what appeared to be the floor of where she had been resting. It was a dark, shiny, metallic alloy, along with the rest of the walls and ceiling. Windows along the sides revealed the stars and blackness of space. A large door was sealed shut ahead that led further into the ship while the oval dormant wormhole that no doubt brought them aboard was behind them.

  This wasn’t the first time Foster saw this chamber. The aliens . . . rather the Architect’s soldiers that attacked them back at Sirius B and at Poniga city exited via a wormhole that linked to a room like this.

  She pushed herself up and looked around, Poniga were skulking about, the same ones that had been chained up and gathered by the Architect’s men. The middle of the room they were in had a glass floor which Foster stepped across seeing the stars of space. Then it hit her, she stepped across it, there was gravity. Yet the stars weren’t moving suggesting the ship didn’t use rotating habitat rings, a shipboard psionic was probably generating gravity elsewhere she figured.

  Her weapon and EAD were missing, probably taken by her captors, wherever they were. She continued to search through the room amongst the sad, weeping Poniga. Some of them clearly had passed away during the struggle as their lifeless bodies rested on the floor, their robes charred by laser fire. In the four corners of the room were the Architect’s laser cannon grunt troopers.

  Perhaps there was a jail break attempt I missed when I was out cold? She thought.

  From time to time the Poniga would try to speak to her in their language, a language she couldn’t reply to. The tone of their voices was sympathetic, as if they were sorry for getting her dragged into the mess, Eisila and Mavron especially. Mavron motioned for Foster to approach her as he sat with his sister in the corner. He held something in his hands, something that radiated light, he wanted her to look at it.

  Footsteps echoed from outside a large door, they got louder as they neared it causing Mavron to panic and cancel whatever he had hoped to reveal to Foster. The doorway slithered open and overlord soldiers barged in yelling and screaming at the Poniga, pointing their spears at them in a threatening manner.

  The overlords pushed and shoved their way past the Poniga clearing a way to Foster, Eisila, and Mavron. The sharp tips of their weapons hovered before their faces. Eisila, Mavron, and the overlords exchanged heated words back and forth resulting in the overlords brutally pushing the two siblings aside and directing their focus toward Foster.

  Foster’s hands rose up in surrender while the overlords continued to yell at her. “Sorry, hun, I don’t speak asshole.”

  The dead grunt soldiers scattered about the room began to rise up to their feet making everyone cower in fear as the overlords continued to yell more questions at Foster, questions she didn’t understand. It frustrated them to the point one of them bashed her face with its Bronze Age like shield. The blow sent her flying backward onto the floor and turned her headache into a migraine.

  A small boy began to scream as he saw Foster fall. Foster kept her head to the ceiling for she knew the soldiers weren’t a fan of crying children. Several thumps and whacks came moments later followed by yelling and then laughter from the soldiers before they left. Whatever they did, it silenced the terrorized boy instantly. Mavron and Eisila helped Foster slowly get back to her feet as she tried her best to ignore the pain in her head and back. The grunt soldiers that had rose up from the dead, fell back down dead as their overlords left the room.

  There’s a connection between those two types of soldiers, she thought. Mind control perhaps?

  The mother of the boy cried out as she looked down to her unresponsive offspring. Several Poniga limped toward the downed child then quickly turned away in disgust and anger. Foster pushed past Mavron and Eisila and moved to see what had happen to the child, doing everything she could to prevent the pain in her body from growing stronger from the sudden movements.

  She ran her hands over the body of the child checking for vital signs. He wasn’t breathing, nor was there a pulse. Well, no pulse she could detect, Poniga might look human but their insides coul
d be different. Think, think, think, how can I figure out where their pulse would be? Foster began to randomly touch the Poniga in the places one would find a human pulse. As it turned out they had a pulse where humans have one, therefore the boy on the floor had lost his heartbeat, probably due to the beating.

  Foster took a deep breath and recalled her first aid training, her hands moved down to perform chest compressions on the unresponsive child, hoping that CPR was a technique that would work on their species.

  It did.

  Life came back into the badly beaten and bloody boy after a few coughs. The Poniga along with the child’s mother looked at Foster in shock. Given how primitive their species was, Foster suspected they saw her as a magical healer rather than a human with basic first aid knowledge.

  The mother spoke to her in a grateful and tearful manner. “Uh, you’re welcome,” Foster said.

  Hours had passed when Foster found herself waking up having fallen asleep with the rest of the Poniga. A risky mistake considering she might have had a concussion. She shuffled next to the windows and gazed out into the cold vacuum of space. The faint light from Sirius B could be seen below, while metallic egg-shaped ships flew next to them in formation. There were hundreds of them from what she saw.

  She began to examine the dead grunts on the floor. Their weapons were mounted onto their bodies, no way was she going to take it without cutting into their armor. The grunts showed signs of intense battle damage to their armor, one particular soldier had a hole the size of a basketball in the middle of his chest, and as she recalled, he was one of the few that had risen when the overlords arrived. Undead soldiers? That’d be the perfect army, can’t kill what’s already dead.

  An alarm started to blare while dark blue lights from the ceiling started to flash. The sleeping Poniga were woken by the noise and huddled around their loved ones. One of them shouted toward Foster as if they were trying to warn her that someone or something was behind her. Foster spun around and saw the wormhole. Its lights activated as energy began to charge through it as it powered.

  Three spear-wielding soldiers barged into the room yelling, panicking at the sight of the wormhole. Whatever was about to happen it didn’t sound like it was planned by them. Foster hunkered down with Mavron and Eisila and waited for the situation to play out, so that should an opportunity arise, they could improvise and form an escape plan on the fly.

  15 CHEVALLIER

  Lake shoreline

  SA-115, Sirius A system

  May 21, 2050, 00:41 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Chevallier eyed the open wormhole sitting in the lake ahead of her. She double-checked her instruments and confirmed that McDowell’s signal had come from whatever world the wormhole connected to. She hid behind a large rock on the beach as she heard someone wading through the waters next to the gate.

  The wading sounds stopped, and she took a quick peek around the rock. What she saw caused her to hold onto her rifle tightly, and she started to take deep breaths. There was a woman swimming through the waters next to the wormhole. She looked like a mermaid, one that shamelessly didn’t cover up her chest.

  Next to the woman was none other than Norauk who gratefully accepted a fistful of shimmering jewels. The mermaid swam through the lake and into the wormhole seconds before it closed. Chevallier’s instruments stopped receiving McDowell’s signal. She needed to get back to that world. She needed to find out what happened to the rest of her team, because as it stood, she was alone now that the captain was missing.

  Norauk’s drenched body made it back to the beach and began to walk back toward the forest, eying his reward of jewels with glee and awe. Chevallier kept her eye on him and stealthily followed behind him, doing everything in her power to resist all out killing him. Norauk after all had traveled with her team now he was returning alone. Their signals were coming from another planet and neither of them was replying to her communications when the wormhole had been opened.

  He had done something. She wanted to do something to him in return.

  She double-checked the surroundings around her with her motion detector. It was just the two of them walking. Then later, it was just her, standing above his body after the butt of her rifle smashed against the back of his head.

  “Where is my team?!” Chevallier demanded as she aimed at his face.

  “Oh, this is unexpected,” Norauk said, rubbing the back of his head where she had struck him.

  “What did you do? Out with it now, you rat!”

  “Please, don’t shoot! I had no choice.” Norauk pointed at the wormhole in the lake behind them. “Undine, they offer great rewards to people that provide them with mates.”

  “You traded my people for profit?” Chevallier’s finger came close to the trigger. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you now!”

  “It was important!”

  “How is this important?”

  “Profits!” Norauk showed Chevallier the jewels he had clenched in his free hand. “Look at all of this! You have any idea how hard it is to get men out here? There’s a reason it’s illegal for men to not have wives, single men are always lured to the sea temptresses. A loving wife and children keeps them in the cities, and cuts into my profits.”

  Chevallier groaned having processed that Norauk was clearly concerned with one thing, material possessions and would gladly trade in the lives of others for his own gain.

  I wonder if his entire species is like this . . .

  “Ask for a refund, I want them back. Now.”

  “I can’t—”

  Chevallier pushed the barrel of her rifle into his forehead.

  “You don’t understand!” Norauk yelled. “Mating with the Undine is fatal; two of them have already met their ends.”

  “Two . . . goddamnit! Where is the other?”

  “A third took him as I got payment, she maybe pleasuring herself right now with him.”

  Chevallier put her rifle away and grabbed Norauk, flinging his small body onto the beach via the enhanced strength her combat armor gave her. His reward of jewels scattered and rained down into the wet sand as his body tumbled, rolled, and came to.

  She pointed at the dormant wormhole. “Open that shit up!”

  “But—”

  “Now!” She took her rifle back into her hands, and aimed it at his face.

  “It’s not a good—” She fired two shots, the slugs hit inches away from his feet sending plumes of sand upward. “OK, OK, I will open it, yes, yes, I will.”

  Norauk’s furry hands trembled as he stepped back into the shallow section of the lake while Chevallier followed behind, her rifle being the factor that ensured he held up his end of the new bargain she offered him. She saw his reward in the sand below, and she rapidly scooped it up with one free hand, placing it inside her side storage container. Blood money.

  They waded through the water toward the gate, creating small ripples in their wake. A tiny holographic interface appeared as Norauk reached over to interact with it. Seconds later the gate hummed, glowed, and reopened, connecting to what appeared to be an ocean on another planet judging by the location of the Sirius stars in the skies.

  Chevallier went to check her instruments to see if she could reestablish a lock with McDowell’s signal. That was until she was jumped from behind.

  She didn’t get a chance to see where her attacker had come from or how they had managed to avoid being detected by her motion sensors. Norauk screamed like an exotic animal and ran away, oblivious that his reward was no longer in his possession as Chevallier tried to fight of the attacker that had appeared from the waters behind her.

  The struggle continued, Chevallier noticed her shield power quickly drain as the attacker laid into her.

  80%

  40%

  0%

  Fuck me!

  Alarms in her suit blared, notifying her that her shields were down, while she felt a second force grab her rifle and toss it into the water, a force that was stronger than her a
rmored grip on it, that force was telekinetic. She was having a bout with a psionic.

  The wrestling between the two caused wave upon wave of water to splash around them and eventually led to Chevallier being dragged down into the waters of the lake below. She managed to get a glimpse of the attacker, a man, half-human half-fish and all psionic minus the cybernetic upgrades. A brawny merman. It was of the same species she saw earlier, there must have been a second that stayed behind in the water and swam behind the two as they entered.

  Her helmet came loose as it wrapped its massively long tail around her body, restricting her movement and keeping her head below the water. With her helmet ajar from her suit, water quickly gushed in. It was only a matter of time before her face was fully submerged. Chevallier needed a way out, and fast. She found it; rather it was there the whole time.

  Slowly, Chevallier managed to break her arms from the deathly grip of the creature's tail. Her body was still bound but not for long as the enhanced strength her suit endowed her with had just enough power to grab hold of the long tail wrapped around her and squeeze hard. Hard enough to make the creature groan in pain and release its grip, its physical grip at least. Its follow-up psionic attack was another story.

  Chevallier stood, bringing her head above the surface of the rippling lake, and backpedaled to create distance from her attacker. She felt her body become numb and forcibly drawn in closer to the creature, only to get knocked back hard via a vicious slap from its tail. It was like a game of baseball, only she was the ball and its tail was the bat. Whatever psionic powers it had it was limited to telekinesis and draining her shield’s power, which now that she thought about it, was a new skill that neither Hashmedai nor Radiance psionics had.