Slipdrift (VayneLine)
Page 5
“We’ve got to go,” I told him; he nodded, but we had no idea where.
Go out, right, two doors down. Hurry! – Unknown commanded us.
We nodded to each other, turning right at the door and sprinting down the hallway as a guard yelled “Stop!” far after he had already tried shooting at us.
I pushed through the door and my heart froze at what awaited for us. Looking back to the moment, I should have seen it coming. The one remaining person of this nightmare that had trapped me: the female Aelisha.
“No…” I staggered backwards, as her attractive face held a dark smirk across it. “No…” I started to turn around, to run away from the fox-eared female, desperate to go anywhere but this trap.
Idiot! I am the one who has been helping you! We need to leave immediately!
I turned around, my mouth dropping open. Her!? ‘Unknown’ was her?!
“Come on!” The black-haired man grabbed my arm, and the jerk was enough to make me run towards her and the door out to the night sky.
“Start talking, Aelisha!” I yelled to the woman who was slanted far forward as her ‘run’ looked more like a lope.
“Ti ort nu….” My nanites synched with her natural language and started translating. “I’m an agent of the Aelisha sent to investigate claims of a black market in slave death games. I have enough evidence, and I’m saving you two as further evidence. That is, if you agree to help,” she slowed her lope with her last statement.
A shot exploded a bit to my right from a security team scrambled for us. “Yeah, just keep going!”
“Don’t worry, we’ll help!” my Solarian ally ‘Sword’ agreed.
It was clear we were on a high dock given I could not see any land around us, but the problem was there was no ship anywhere here either. My heart was going impossibly fast, and my brain was convinced there was no way I was going to get out of this alive. I could not stop my thoughts being consumed that from one wild situation to the next that at any moment this crazy dream would come to a deadly end.
“We are going to have to jump…now!” At the edge of the platform she crouched strangely and launched straight out into the dark air, her arms spread wide as if she would take to the sky. I staggered for only a moment, and followed her blindly, spreading my arms in case somehow we actually would start flying.
“Shit!” I cried, and it rapidly became obvious I was only falling through the sky, strangely hyper-aware of some lights down by an ocean reflecting the two moons of the planet. What a stupid ending after everything I had been through: jumping to my death while the spectators watched. Only I hit something hard not that far down from the jump, and rolled from the surprise.
One strong hand gripped my shoulder and drug me into a room. The bright lights and predictable construction instantly registered as a star ship.
“You had… a ship… here?” ‘Sword’ asked in punctuated breaths.
She nodded before answering, “Cloaked and ready.”
“Well… let’s get… out of… here,” ‘Sword’ gasped out.
My chest heaved in and out; I did not think I could even phrase a sentence.
After a moment, the burning desire outweighed my exhaustion. “Where are…we…going…?”
“As soon as we hit the grav line of this planet I am jumping us out. I am going to rendezvous with Aelisha Battle Bridge, Aeleaon. After your assistance you will be free to leave.”
“Doesn’t matter…I just…want… to see…”
“Feylon.” She said my girlfriend’s name so simply, it didn’t even sound suggested, which implied she knew it beforehand.
“How…?”
She gave me a sly grin, which I had to admit was pretty sexy with the little sway of her tail. “That scratch I gave both of you?” I looked to him, holding up my hand; he lifted his forearm with a deep cut on it. “I implanted some nanites to co-opt your security systems so I could actually communicate with the two of you. As I result I was able to access your memories as well.”
I felt pretty violated, but it was put at ease when she said, “As a favor for helping me with this case I already contacted her, told her you were safe, and arranged for her to be on the Battle Bridge when we get there.”
I breathed a long sigh, and coughed from my dry throat before it turned into a long laugh. I had made it. And the two most important people in making that happen… I didn’t even know their names. I looked at the two of them and smiled. I think we all liked it better that way.
“She’s a cute girl,” the Aelisha I had been calling ‘Unknown’ said as her hips kipped out slightly to one side, “but don’t forget me.”
“Don’t worry, I will not forget either of you.”
We had gone high enough that we reached the planet’s horizon as the dual stars’ light had just burst above, releasing a stream of light across the darkness. It had been so, so long since I’d seen real light.
Damn it was beautiful. For the first time in a long time my tears, which had once been of despair, were now tears of happiness.
Afterword
I sincerely hope you enjoyed this story. This represents one of my first stories I have sent out into the wide world of the internet. I have been writing for a long time and finally took the plunge. It has been a major work in progress getting my website up and running to have a place readers can come to so they can read more beyond the story and learn about the vast, expansive universe I envision and will be bringing to life with all these stories.
Slipdrift was written during a yearlong break away from the main book ‘VayneLine’ and it along with the next seven stories were a self-challenge to write complex plots in a novella form. Each story takes place in the same universe, so the goal was to have a self-contained story that stood on its own, but also expanded the lore. Slipdrift was an action romp that unlike most of the other stories did not have much in the way of philosophy or any sort of spirituality/metaphysics. I wanted to do a pure survival-type story with some suspense and a little intrigue.
Visit Vayneline.com for more information on this story, and all other stories in the VayneLine universe. I plan on being very active with any readers, and I hope to have a base of loyal fans that enjoy the deep, complicated stories as well as having an author that is ‘hands on’ with his readers. If you have any comments or questions about this story or others, do not hesitate to visit the site, or email me at vayneline@mail.com
-Eric