by E L Strife
A strong arm circled her waist. She felt herself levitate around a corner into an adjacent corridor. Bracing her shoulders, Bennett calmly pressed her back to the wall, setting her toes on the ground. She gasped when his body formed to hers like a shield. The beat of her exhausted heart couldn’t compensate for the rush of adrenaline, rendering her lightheaded and seeing spots.
His fingertip was warm and rough when it pressed to her lips. He tilted the tip toward the hall, a warning in his steady, amber gaze.
Shadows moved through their recent location. Atana couldn’t understand Imara’s shredded words at that distance, but the tone suggested it wasn’t good.
Flashes of green fire burst in her periphery, growing brighter every second. Shepherds shouted, filling the cold passageway to her right with reverberating blasts. Wincing, she fought to sort the voices through the barrage of crackling shots. There were too many active guns to count.
Bennett locked around her, the lime light sharpening his contours in the darkness. He looked to the confrontation, unblinking despite the pounding waves from e-rifles.
Not wanting the others to fight alone, Atana grabbed his sides to shove him out of her way. She could make do with only fist and foot.
Bennett was planted like a boulder.
His resonant voice cut through the mess of auditory signals blurring in her Ether. Use those nocturnal eyes of yours and watch our backs for me?
She cautiously turned her head and scanned the empty corridor, too weary and stunned at being caught off guard to object. What are we up against?
Verros with a herd of Linoans on their six. Bennett inspected her from the side as the shepherds took out the multiplying shadows with rapid fire. Tanner appeared beside Cutter, climbing over bodies to continue their assault. You really didn’t know?
The stiffness in her neck permitted only a single shake of her head. I’m crashing, Jameson. I pushed too hard, hit my wall with all this. She drew a circle in the air with an unsteady finger, not pulling her eyes off task. Burning, shields, explosions—
After one last green strobe, the gunshots stopped. White rays of light hopped over the downed bodies from flashlights. Shepherds waded back through, returning to their original course.
The creases of irritation on Bennett’s face softened. “You need to rest on the ride home.”
Atana could feel it in her trembling legs. “I don’t think my body’s going to give me a choice.”
A shepherd called out that the hall was clear.
One of Bennett’s warm hands pressed to the small of her back, and they rejoined the others. “I will stay up and monitor the crews, check in on what they learned while you sleep.”
She would never admit it to another soul, but his constant need to touch her, protect her, was growing comforting. After more than a decade among the shepherds, she had finally found someone as dedicated to them and the mission as she was. His methods were just more personal.
Azure pushed his way through the clustered sergeants. “Atana!”
When his frantic eyes met hers, his brawny shoulders lifted and fell, the e-rifle in his hands hanging to the side opposite Kios. To anyone else, Azure’s ever-knitted brows would have been taken as anger. The subtle upward twitch of his cheeks and increased glow of his eyes said he’d acknowledged she was safe and had moved on to concern over her weakening state. Azure could read through her walls.
He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Let me carry you. Imara can take Kios.”
Her spine went rigid, listening to the shepherds resituating gear and muttering to one another around them. If she was conscious, she would bear her own weight and lead by example. They didn’t need to fuel any more potential rumors. “Why are the Verros attacking now?”
The rejection in his eyes quickly masked over in a hardened glower. “That was the last known group. I don’t know why they were working with Linoans. Linétens and Linoans hate each other.”
“Not Enii,” Imara mumbled behind them. Everyone turned to look where she knelt over a lifeless body. “She was Verros, yes, but like Kylo, lost her mate to Linoans. She is Dagganak, not Linéten. Was.” Rising to her feet, her hands curled up into tight fists. “Felt guilty for her decision to join them and convinced her small faction to follow her then led them across a Linoan main path to us.”
“Why?” Atana asked.
Tears glimmered in the light of Imara’s indigo eyes when she looked over at them. “Because you have effective weapons, can take out many Linoans at once. None of us are to be in the halls outside designated routes for delivering crops, fixing hydro-pumps, the essentials. Either we die, they die, or both. You’ve swayed the odds in our favor.”
Trudging to them, Imara paused by Azure, her head down. “Enii called privately to me on approach. Pelamiit simkrat.” In a huff, she made her way to the front of the pack, and the teams continued on to the dock.
Azure met Bennett’s questioning stare, a begrudging edge to his words. “Suicide to regain her family’s honor.”
Bennett’s hand slid up Atana’s back as if sensing her disappointment. “We don’t need to lose any more potential fighters.”
Azure shrugged, taking to Atana’s unguarded side, Kios clinging to his neck. “Many species have such traditions and moral obligations.”
“Command’s not going to like merging with such brash, unruly soldiers again.”
“They will or will be forced to with the Kyras coming,” Azure said in heated defense.
Bennett opened his mouth to retaliate, but Atana cut their argument off with a wave. “It doesn’t matter who approves of what. The three of us have to stick together and work with what we have right now. We know how bad it is here and on Earth. We know more of what’s coming than anyone.”
“That isn’t much,” Bennett countered.
She massaged her aching temples, wishing the headache would fade, knowing rest was her only solution. It always felt like wasted time, hours she could spend building or fixing something—or killing the enemy. Atana hated sleep, only permitting it to take her by force. “And we’re it, so we can’t let Command or Verros or anyone fray what little control we have right now.”
The collector’s dropped ramp appeared through an airlock, several perimeter guards standing alongside. Imara, not much taller than Josie, squeezed between the loading shepherds. She stopped before Azure. “Orders?”
He rested his free hand on her shoulder and his forehead to hers. “Martiisa Imara, sim dak grekrat zi mitron vey ahna.”
“What?” She slid back a step, breaking their connection.
Azure’s arm fell to his side. “It is your turn to lead. I trust you.”
She spluttered and froze as they passed, boarding the vessel.
Atana noted the woman’s attentiveness to Azure, fear and doubt clouding her eyes. “We’ll be in contact soon.”
Imara swallowed with a terse nod but offered no verbal response.
Climbing the ramp with heavy legs, Atana felt Bennett’s hands guide her around the bodies of shepherds strapped to the floor. She wanted to push him away, tell him she could walk on her own but didn’t have the energy.
Azure had belted Kios in the seat behind the copilot and was already prepping the collector for launch. The ramp closed up, hiding Imara and the other guards from view. Red lights illuminated the ceiling and floor of the fuselage and the pilot’s controls up front, casting out over the crews.
“I will watch while you rest.” Bennett steadied her as she sank into the stiff cushions beside Azure.
Relief flooded Atana’s body, letting her eyelids droop. Hearing a clack and feeling its vibration over her chest, her eyes flew open again, and she looked down, blood rushing through her ears. Her harness was latched over her shoulders and hips.
She checked on Kios behind her. He appeared much smaller in the large, Linoan seat. Bennett had an arm hooked around him, supporting the sleeping boy while talking softly with Cutter in the back.
The
engines hummed louder, and the seat pushed against her body. Stars glittered to life through the windows as they launched out of Agutra. Azure tapped a series of pale-red oval buttons, brightening them. The collector banked, and Earth’s colors appeared before them.
Suanoan plasma pulses had burrowed into her planet multiple times, waking volcanoes, punching holes in the land and sea. Seeing Earth intact, quieted her last begging concern. Everything was cooling now, leaving only a haze of clouds around the destruction.
She had two weeks to come up with a plan, gather forces, and build adequate weapons. Maybe less. Probably less. Atana would count on it.
For the moment, everyone was safe.
A large hand slid into hers. She tracked up the gray arm to vibrant eyes. Azure’s expression brimmed with unfathomable gratitude, but his jaw was set in determination, his mouth a firm line of concern.
The tides of exhaustion were strengthening. Squeezing his fingers, she felt them slip away with the last of her energy.
Gun flashes, a white-hot explosion, fire and smoke and blood everywhere—in every color, coated the hoods over her eyes before she finally succumbed to the blackness of sleep.
Chapter 9
GOLDEN BEAMS filtered through the trees on the mountains of Home Station’s private island, casting sparkles through the windows of the ship. Atana rubbed the sleep from her eyes as Azure set the Linoan collector down in the meadow atop the concealed headquarters.
The sweetness of warm grasses on the salty breeze was a welcomed change to the stale, recirculated scent of death on Agutra. Shepherds hurried up the ramp to assist with offloading the injured.
Bennett stood and rested a hand to her shoulder, eyes begging.
“When the others are off,” she asserted.
After a brief smile, he spun, helping another shepherd up.
Slipping between the pilots’ seats, Azure followed.
Atana twisted around to watch. No one in the course of universal history had been this fortunate after encountering the Suanoa.
A female sniper struggled to lift her end of a stretcher. In the fabric swung a man, chiseled from dark granite and three times her size. Jogging down the ramp, Azure eased her leaner form to the side and took over. Together, they hustled out after Bennett and the others.
Behind Atana, Kios clung to his harness, body stiff with shock. He had been quiet since they’d left the Jesiar fields. Natural sunlight exposed to her what Agutra’s artificial light did not. His face was the paleness of gypsum, his gaze deep set and distant like someone in so much pain they’d given up fighting it.
“Food soon, okay?” she reassured him, patting his knee.
The boy appeared to swallow but made no further attempt at movement.
A shepherd in the meadow shouted up at her. “Command wants this hidden in the main hanger. C bay has been cleared.”
“Understood.” She waved Azure back into his seat.
Azure sat sideways with a slowness that made her look. He peered down the interior cavity to the dropped ramp where the last shepherds were wearily stumbling out. “There are no words for this day. Too many thousands of years and lives gone.” He didn’t blink, hovering his eyes over every free soul below. “What I saw, what we fought for, is so much more than any of us can grasp.”
Reaching for his face, Atana ran a tender thumb over his smooth chin. “I won’t forget.”
He nuzzled into her palm. “Sahara, I—”
The team started up the ramp again, wristbands flashing with an incoming message. Atana yanked her hand back.
“I need a report,” Bennett said, rubbing his bare forearm.
Josie scrolled through the text on her screen. “Satellite feed shows a group of civilians banded together with illegal weapons and took out a Linoan collector in Sahara Sand Zone Two. We have the shortest lag-time to assist. Others are prepping now. They want us to take the collector there if we have enough fuel, or whatever this thing uses.”
“Solar.” Azure checked the power gauges and gave Atana a terse nod.
“They’re not worried about the fact we’re in a collector?” Josie looked up at Bennett.
He lifted a shoulder. “We’ll just have to set down at a safe distance.”
Kios blinked slowly.
“Wait.” Atana unclipped Kios from the seat behind her, picked him up, and ran to the last shepherd walking away from the ramp, a man with a bandaged arm. “Sergeant Tesol, I need you to take Kios to Rio in S.S.O., immediately.”
The shepherd slung his e-rifle over his shoulder and took the boy with his good arm. “Yes, ma’am.”
“No one else. He needs a complete evaluation and food. Please take yourself to the infirmary after. I fear you won’t be able to get in later.”
“Yes, Sergeant Atana.”
Kios grabbed a hand full of Atana’s frayed dress. Tesol stopped. Atana stumbled on her feet.
The boy’s eyes glossed with tears as he broke his silence. “Sahara!”
She took a breath and squeezed his hands, peeling them from her. “Rio is my Healer. You must trust me. This is safer for you than where we’re going.”
“No,” he whined as Tesol carried him toward the elevator. “Sahara, don’t leave me!”
Pangs of regret welled in her throat, cementing her feet to the sloped deck. It wasn’t until Bennett appeared above her that she remembered the time she was wasting.
The two of them hiked back inside, and Azure closed the ramp, promptly lifting the collector into the sky.
She slumped into the copilot’s seat, tucking her knees up to her chest. Kios’s cries were so pure and innocent. They clawed their little fingers deep into her heart. Prickles shot through her body, not in a physical sense but something she could only describe as spiritual tearing.
“Rio will take good care of him,” Bennett consoled, taking his seat behind her.
The cabin darkened at Azure’s command, to the harsh blood-light from the pilot’s interfaces in front of her and the sunlight through the window. Kios will be fine. Marra il tiisa.
Her bare toes curled in frustration over the edge of the cushion. Strong or not, he has lost one family already.
Atana did her best to refocus on what was pertinent—the meet-and-greet between civilians and Linoans. They were fast approaching a potential catastrophe. She surveyed the walls of the dim ship once more for artillery to use in a confrontation.
“No Arc-bows or other weapons on a collector,” Azure stated off-hand while following Tanner’s verbal directions to the crash site.
“Can you hear everything?” She picked at a loose strand on her brown dress, a knot in its fibrous texture.
“You,” he paused, “can never block me out, not with what we are.” He checked each of the screens before him, giving her only a quick glance. “I will remind you of things, over time.”
The team was stuck with what they had and her with more questions than answers. Azure’s obvious disappointment over their personal situation wasn’t helping. She needed stability, parameters she understood—and remembered.
Atana closed her eyes, imagining her life before the invasion. Her mocha skin faded through the gray, her hair restoring to its deep mahogany waves.
Azure’s lips unsealed, his gaze lingering a moment on her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, unable to acknowledge the rejection she knew he wore on his face. “I know Xahu’ré are proud of their stripes. But here, because I can hide, I must.”
Chapter 10
THE COLLECTOR BANKED as Azure steered them between two razorback dunes. Plumes of smoke billowed up into the distant sky above amber sand.
Cutter controlled the deep urge in his lungs to sigh from the weary hammering in his chest. From his position behind Azure in the pilot’s guard box, he could see Atana meditating in her copilot’s seat. Bennett had stared at the back of her head for nearing fifteen solid minutes after she’d changed color on a whim.
Across the aisle from Cutter, Tanner’s
multi-colored eyes patrolled the approaching scene with a disconnect he hadn’t seen before.
“You good?” Cutter asked.
“Yeah.” Tanner bounced a knee and picked at a callus on his palm. “Just processing.”
Extending a fist between them, Cutter lowered his voice. “Don’t burden your mind with the things you can’t control.”
“Clear head, clean shot, I know.” Tanner’s lips curled inward for a moment before he bumped Cutter’s fist with his own, confirming his ready status. “Do you think they’re safe up there without us?”
Azure tapped a flashing indicator above the main screen. “I would not leave if I did not believe Imara capable of protecting our people.” Atana directed him to an open area out in the rolling hills. He glanced back at the crew. “We are almost there.”
Azure had informed them of the innocent lives still sleeping in the belly of the ship they were in. Cutter, chosen by the team and being the least affected by serum withdrawal, called in to Command. They had discussed the risk and the string of recommendations from Azure on what the collectors would need to dock and unload civilians.
Cutter’s calm façade was holding, for the most part.
The humming tingle in his fingertips was no longer a distraction. He looked down to the marred shotgun between his hands. Everything he touched sent a different frequency of vibrations singing through his mind. They weren’t sound waves. This was something else.
At first thought, he considered his arms asleep. The lack of pain when he curled his fists suggested otherwise. He had tried willing the sensation away, blocking it, switching thoughts, picking up another object. Nothing was working. It had gradually set in over the last few days, making it easier to tolerate, but he wondered when, if ever, it would plateau.
He preferred it stop.
The voice of a Dispatcher rattled over Cutter’s wristband. “Four helo Med-Evacs on your six, twenty minutes out.”
Cutter tapped the mic button, sending a pulse up through his finger. “Copy. Setting down in three.”