“I won’t. I won’t,” Rhylie said desperately. “Just please don’t hurt him.” She put her hands up for effect. Jessica nodded her head once, keeping her eyes locked on Rhylie.
“Bart, Adam, take her to the holding cells,” Jessica said, her voice cold and serious. “We’re keeping this one up here with us. If you so much as look at someone wrong, I’ll blow his fucking brains out.”
*
Rhylie sat on the lone bunk in the holding cell, which was nothing more than a hastily converted sleeping quarters. The ARC was a reconnaissance craft, and didn’t actually have anywhere to lock up prisoners. She wondered who had to give up their bunk for her.
She passed the time by playing with her abilities under the watchful eye of Bart. She couldn’t help but to show off a little, once she saw how uncomfortable it seemed to make him.
“What the hell happened to you, Private?” he asked incredulously as her hand burst into flame and then extinguished. She couldn’t get it to work as well as Rahve had.
“I don’t want to talk about it now,” she said coldly. “You have to warn the Council.”
“I don’t have to do anything but sit here and watch your weirdo-ass do magic tricks,” he said with a snarky tone. She turned to give him a cold glare, and he shifted uneasily underneath her stare. She turned her head to look away.
Out of everyone on this Outpost, she liked him the least, and right now that was a dangerous situation for him to be in. She took a little comfort knowing she could probably kill him silently, without the others even realizing it. But it would be best to let them give Isaar some sort of medical attention first. If he dies, they all die, she thought.
“Are you even human anymore?” Bart asked. Rhylie gave a half-hearted shrug in response. The question caught her off-guard, but she recovered quickly.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said flatly as dozens of tiny needles blossomed across the back of her hand. “None of this is going to matter if we don’t act soon.”
The door opened, and Adam stuck his head in.
“Two more Outposts have been destroyed,” he said. “We’ve been put on high alert. At the first sign of an alien craft, we’re to abandon the post. Resistance has been useless.” He cast a quick glance to Rhylie.
“It’s just going to keep happening,” Rhylie said without looking up at either of them.
“Why?” asked Bart. “Why are they attacking us?”
“Because we stepped out of our backyard,” Rhylie said, as if it were that simple. Maybe it was. “Isaar could tell you more.”
“Is that what its name is?” asked Bart snidely.
“He,” said Rhylie coldly, “saved my fucking life.” Bart snorted.
“Some life. I’d rather be dead than a weirdo freak,” he said. She snapped her head up to look at him, her eyes intense with frigid anger.
“So would I,” she said tersely.
“Then why don’t you…you know?” asked Bart. “I probably would.” He shrugged his shoulders. And everyone would probably be better off if you did, she thought bitterly.
“Because my life isn’t the only one at stake here, you selfish prick,” she said coldly. Before Bart could respond, Ramirez and Jessica appeared in the doorway.
“Bart, Adam, go watch the alien. We need to speak with Private Underhill,” Ramirez said.
“Yes sir,” they said in unison and left. It rubbed Rhylie the wrong way. It reminded her of Timmy and Polly in the Chamber.
“I need to show you something,” Ramirez said, his face pale. He held out a small disc. A hologram sprang from it. It was Vorcia. “Do you know her?” Rhylie’s eyes widened in horror at the sight of her.
“Y-yes,” Rhylie stammered. “I-” She struggled to find the words as her mouth continued to work soundlessly.
“Don’t,” Ramirez said. “Just listen.” He placed his finger on a small dot on the surface.
“Greetings, Humans, from the Siirocian Empire,” Vorcia began. “I am Empress Vorcia LaCretian Alaan, and I seek to extend to you a treatise of peace if you comply.” Her voice was sweet and musical, lilting. It made Rhylie want to claw her eyes out. “If you graciously and humbly submit yourselves to the Siirocian Empire, swearing allegiance to myself, the attacks will cease, and your civilization will be granted immunity. You will be welcomed amongst the Galactic Community.” The dulcet tones of her voice suddenly took a steely turn. “If not, you will be destroyed, your race will be wiped out, as well as your home system and star. You have no hope of resisting us. We will be victorious.” Vorcia smiled, barely. “I await your response. You have 72 of your hours to comply.” The hologram vanished.
“She’s lying,” said Rhylie numbly. “She’s going to kill us all anyway.” She looked up at Ramirez. “What’s the Council planning to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Ramirez. “It doesn’t look like they have much of a choice.”
“We always have a choice,” said Rhylie. “Even when we think we don’t.” She frowned. “So they’re going to submit.”
“I don’t know,” said Ramirez again.
“They are,” said Rhylie softly. “That’s what I did.” Ramirez gave her a strange look.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I-” she started and then her brow furrowed. “It’s a long story, and I need to speak with the Council.”
“You’re going to get your wish,” said Ramirez. “They’ve scheduled a meeting with you in the central chamber.”
Rhylie frowned again at the word.
20
Rhylie was escorted back to the central chamber. Isaar and Meili were nowhere to be seen. The pool of Isaar’s blood looked as though it had been hastily mopped up, mostly just smearing it around. They had done a piss-poor job of it, she could still see streaks of it spread across the metal flooring. She hoped that they were treating him well, for their own sake.
“Have a seat, Private,” said Ramirez. She could tell that he was used to giving orders, but she was getting tired of taking them.
“My name is Rhylie,” she responded, remaining standing.
“My name is Rhylie, sir,” Bart said. She gave him an eat-shit-and-die look over her shoulder. She cut her attention immediately back to Captain Ramirez.
“With all due respect, after everything I’ve been through, and the way you have treated myself and our guest, I’m assuming I am no longer a member of the United Armed Forces,” Rhylie said. “If I’ve been discharged, I would like to know. If not, I am certainly used to being treated at least a little more respectfully by the UAF.” Bart snorted derisively.
“You and your friend are lucky to be alive if you ask me,” he said in a dry, mocking tone. “I still think we should execute both of you just to be safe. We do not know what the hell you are, or what the hell he is.” Rhylie struggled to keep her anger in check. It was growing increasingly difficult. She reminded herself that there was more at stake here than her and Bart.
“If Isaar hadn’t offered to accompany me, I’d have you all begging for mercy,” she replied as coolly as she could muster. Ramirez narrowed his eyes, regarding her coldly. “And if anything happens to him, I will hold all of you accountable. Every single damned one.”
“You would put that…thing’s…life over all of ours?!?” Bart responded angrily, his Russian accent coming out. “You are not even human anymore, if you ever were. You are some kind of monster.” Rhylie balled her right hand into a tight fist.
“Enough, both of you” said Ramirez tersely. A circle of white light had appeared on the center of the mess hall table. He pressed his finger to a glowing dot beside of it. A hologram sprang up, over the table, of the United Allied Council. There were ten of them behind a long, curved table, but the figures were too small for Rhylie to make much detail out.
“This is Captain B Class Mark Alejandro Ramirez of Outpost Beta V-9,” Ramirez said. “We are receiving your transmission.”
“Thank you, Captain,” said one of the figures, a ma
n with dark skin. “I am Marcus Sall, Pharaoh of Egypt, Emperor of Africa. I will be leading most of the questioning.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ramirez.
“Which one is Private Underhill?” Marcus asked.
“I am, sir,” Rhylie said, raising her hand halfway.
“We’ve heard some unbelievable things about you, Private. Forgive us if we are skeptical of some of them,” Marcus said.
“They’re all true, sir,” said Rhylie. And then some, she thought.
“I see. And where is the alien?” Marcus asked.
“He is being held in another part of the Outpost, sir,” Ramirez said. “We had some conflict taking them into custody and thought it best to keep him separated.”
“Do their stories match up, Captain?” Marcus asked.
“Yes, sir, they do. And then we received the message we sent to you soon after they arrived,” Ramirez said.
“Private Underhill, do you know this…Empress Vorcia?” asked Marcus.
“Yes, sir,” said Rhylie. “Unfortunately I do. But Isaar could tell you more.”
“Who is Isaar?” asked Marcus.
“He’s the one who came with me. He risked his life to rescue me from Vorcia when he could have just killed me,” Rhylie said. “It is very important to me that he remain alive and unharmed, sir.”
“We’ll see that he does, Private. He may be very important in our discussions over the next three days. Bring him in the room, Captain,” said Marcus.
“I’m not sure that’s the best-” said Ramirez.
“That is an order, Captain,” said Marcus.
“Yes, sir,” came the response. Ramirez nodded his head at Bart.
“This…Isaar, rescued you?” asked Marcus. “What were they doing with you Private?”
“She was…using me, sir. Experimenting on me. She used footage of my emotional breakdowns as propaganda to gather public support to go to war with us,” said Rhylie. “Breakdowns that she drove me to. Vorcia won’t stop until she wipes us out. She offers us peace, but I don’t think she has any intention giving it to us. She wants to exterminate us completely.” The council broke into murmurs for a moment.
“You don’t believe she can be trusted, Private?” Marcus asked as Isaar was brought into the room by Meili. She gave Rhylie a strange look. Isaar’s hands were unbound and he was shirtless, a medical patch over his lower left abdomen. He was more muscular than Rhylie would have thought him to be, but it was lean, tight muscle. He didn’t appear to have any body fat. Oddly enough, he had no bellybutton. Instead he had what looked like a wide slit across his abdomen, almost as if you could reach down into it. She stared at it in amazement for a moment. She’d have to ask him about it later, but for now she was just glad he was okay.
“I know she can’t,” said Rhylie, after she tore her eyes away from Isaar. It felt strange to be attracted to someone in that way now. It was distant and detached, as though it was just outside of her emotional capabilities.
“Rhylie has been through a lot, sir,” said Isaar uncertainly.
“Is this the alien?” asked Marcus. “Zoom in on him. What is your name?”
“My name is Isaar De Le G’rato, sir,” he said unceremoniously.
“And you have come with Private Underhill suggesting that we should prepare to wage war against these Siirocians?” Marcus asked.
“I have not come to tell you what you should do, sir,” said Isaar. “Only to warn you that no matter what, war is coming.” Wounds that will not heal. The words kept repeating in Rhylie’s mind. She just couldn’t keep them out.
“Are you declaring war on us?” asked one of the other council members indignantly. His Eastern European accent was thick, far thicker than Bart’s.
“No, I-” began Isaar, but he was cut off. Rhylie had never seen him flustered, but the remark had obviously caught him off guard.
“Ivan, that is enough,” said Marcus. “We’ll have to discuss this further. For now I want both Private Underhill and Isaar to remain at Outpost Beta V-9 until further notice.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ramirez. The transmission went dark.
“You heard the man,” said Ramirez. “If you promise to play nice, we’ll all stay right here and wait for them. I’m pretty sure they’ll have us send you to Mars as soon as they’re done bullshitting each other.” The thought of going home to Mars was both too good to believe, and too frightening to think about.
“We need to leave sooner than that,” said Isaar. He looked worried.
“We have our orders,” said Ramirez. “We have to stay put.”
“How many other outposts received that feed from Vorcia?” asked Isaar. There was a long silence.
“None that I know of,” said Meili.
“She knows we are here,” said Isaar. “Or she realized that we would head for the closest settlement…” He closed his eyes. “She’s probably monitoring all of your audio channels. She probably heard us initiate contact with you.”
“What?” said Rhylie. She felt numb.
“I brought us straight to the first place they are going to look. She knows we are alive-” said Isaar, but he was cut short when the walls shook violently, followed by a tilting motion.
The ground beneath them suddenly pitched upwards, violently, slamming everyone brutally against the floor or table and chairs. It was like being hit with a brick wall. Rhylie was the first to recover, pushing herself up quickly. The rest were stunned or winded. One of them was screaming, but she couldn’t tell who in the confusion.
“We have to get out of here!” she screamed. Everyone was struggling to stand or climbing unsteadily to their feet, except for Adam, who lay on the floor, holding his leg and screaming in pain. His right foot hung at an awkward angle and was flopping slightly. It looked bad. The room shook again, but this time everyone was prepared for it and grabbed for the table, or chairs. Adam just howled louder as he slid across the floor and into the fixed seats around the table. “I’ll get Adam. Everyone go go go!”
She made her way over to him and lifted him up in her arms. A soft thud reverberated through the walls of the Outpost, and the floors shifted again. The room tipped at an awkward angle, causing everyone to slide down the floor. There was a rocking sensation as the room swayed back and forth unsteadily beneath their feet for a few long moments, but it gradually settled. It stayed that way, cocked askew, with the wall now underneath them. She managed to stand back up, cradling Adam as he struggled to fight back the pain.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Isaar.
“Everyone to the ARC now!” shouted Ramirez.
Rhylie turned, cradling Adam in her arms, only to see a pair of Siirocian soldiers dropping down through the portal that lead to the docking platforms. She turned and set Adam back down.
“Someone get him,” she yelled, and turned to face the Siirocians. She lashed out at them, her arms forming into long tendrils that wove their way past Isaar and Meili towards the soldiers. Meili ducked reflexively as they shot by her head and wrapped around the soldiers’ necks, lifting them effortlessly off the ground. She constricted the tendrils, crushing their throats easily and breaking their necks. It was over in an instant, and she let them drop like broken dolls. Her legs elongated, stretching her way up and into the portal that lead to the docking platform.
She made her way upwards, through the corridor as though she were some sort of human spider, pulling herself along the handholds on the wall by extending her arms ahead of herself. She killed the two soldiers she encountered on their way down in the same fashion she had dispatched the others. They barely even slowed her down. She let their bodies slide down the corridor to the central chamber below, and kept climbing.
When she thrust her head through the open portal and looked around, she realized the entire asteroid had been brought into a massive landing bay. The docking port was several stories in the air, and from the elevated position she could see the entire bay. There were Siirocian ships lining the f
ar side of the bay. Between the outpost and the ships was a wide stretch of open floor with a few utility carts scattered around. The outpost itself was surrounded by dozens of soldiers and some sort of scaffolding was erecting itself up the face of it as though it were an mechanical centipede unfolding itself.
Around the bay, catwalks were extending themselves out from the loading platforms on the walls, building bridges to connect with the docking portal on the Outpost. Some were climbing the face of the asteroid using utility cables and magnetic body lifts. That must have been how the others had made it in so quickly, she thought. There were no signs of the ARC or Isaar’s ship.
The soldiers saw her as soon as she stood up on the lip of the portal and opened fire on her. She shielded her head instinctively and dropped back down the corridor to the group. Bart was just now adjusting the buckles on a rescue harness so he could attempt to carry Adam out on his back. The rest seemed to be in a daze, still confused. Isaar was standing and holding his side, grimacing in pain.
“We’re in deep shit,” she said.
“What is it?” asked Isaar.
“We’re in some kind of…landing bay. We’re surrounded,” she said. Isaar looked over at the bodies of the dead Siirocians.
“If you can cover us or cause a distraction while we get to a ship, I can fly us out of here,” he said.
“I didn’t see either of our ships,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to them.”
“It does not matter,” Isaar replied. “I can fly anything the Siirocians have.”
“What about Adam?” Meili asked as she attached a brace to his ankle. She pressed a button and it formed into a rigid boot that encased his foot.
“Leave me,” he grunted piteously. “You’ll never get me out of here.” He was sweating profusely, and even more pale than he had been before.
“We’re not leaving you here,” said Ramirez.
“You can’t make it up that corridor with me, Captain,” said Adam. “Just leave me. They’ll never take me alive.” He pulled his gun from his holster. Rhylie frowned deeply. She was not going to leave anyone behind.
Nascent Decay (The Goddess of Decay Book 1) Page 14