The transport latched onto the airlock located at the side of the space bridge. A holographic display next to the exit displayed the status of the airlock, showing it was pressurized. It vanished from view as the doors lifted open, Noylarlie saw a small hallway with a sliding door at the end that led into the interior of the space bridge. She pushed her body through the airlock, turning her head back to see where Jerut stood. He was still on the transport, the coward. She glided her fingers across a nearby terminal and the doors slid open, giving her access to the main corridor.
The corridor was long and dark, red lights on the walls providing the only source of lighting. Three men floating in the weightless environment made their way to Noylarlie as she emerged from the airlock. She recognized one as the administrator to whom she had just spoken. The trio wore uniforms similar to those in the military, all armed with plasma rifles. Good chance everyone here is armed. Jerut should consider having a few of them transferred to his command.
“Welcome, Archmage. I am Administrator Yix,” he said with open arms. “So I am to understand you require one of my psionics?”
“Yes, let’s make this quick and easy for everyone, OK?” Noylarlie said.
“As you wish,” said Yix. “Follow me.” He spun in the opposite direction and made his way down the corridor. The two men with him followed suit with Noylarlie trailing behind.
“May I ask why you need to take one of our team members?” Yix asked later.
“It’s classified.” She smirked. It felt good to be the one with power in a conversation.
“I ask because, as I said earlier, the removal of a psi will leave us unable to do our jobs here.”
“How many psionics do you have right now?” she asked.
“Twenty,” he replied.
“You can operate at nineteen—not very effectively, but it will work until you get a replacement.” Not that she had any knowledge of new psionics coming out to space bridge duty.
They continued floating through the corridor, passing nearby elevators that led to the main command center up top and maintenance shafts below. A large sliding door revealed itself from the darkness at the end of the corridor.
“This leads to the cryo stasis chambers where our psi team is resting,” Yix said.
“The psionic I’m looking for goes by the name Whigli.” She approached the face of the door.
“The newest one, and the strongest of our group here,” said Yix. His fingers dashed across the door control panel.
The doors opened, giving them access to a room with cargo containers chained to the ground—not a cryo pod in sight. Two armed men from inside the room leaped up from their hiding spot behind the containers, aiming their rifles forward. Noylarlie suspected one of two things—she had walked into a mutiny in progress, or they had a problem specifically with her. The humming sound of two plasma rifles powering up was heard behind her. They have a problem with me.
“I’m sorry, Archmage. I waited years for the empire to send new recruits so the older Psis here can retire from this place and live a normal life.”
“Nothing’s ever easy,” she mumbled to herself.
“Whigli is powerful, however. We could run this place with seventeen with him here.” Yix’s withered hand clutched her left shoulder. “And eight or less if you joined us.”
“You know there’s a destroyer in orbit that would disapprove of this,” she retorted.
“There’s no habitable planets in this system—just miners and explorers. They won’t shoot this place down, as the next space bridge will take them decades to reach,” said Yix.
“Cute, you have us all figured out.”
Yix continued. “Jerut won’t send his forces in. There’s a reason only you came. This I know for a fact.”
This has to be a joke, she thought. She was an Archmage after all. People were supposed to fear her presence, not laugh, point guns at her, and order her to space bridge duty.
Yix nodded to the two men in front of her. “Take her away,” he ordered.
Unbelievable. But sure enough, one of the two reached his hand out to grab her. It stopped just inches before her arm as his fingers were being bent backward in the direction they weren’t supposed to go—Noylarlie’s psionic power was at work. The man screamed before being launched backward with a telekinetic push. His back collided with the edge of one of the containers in the room, shattering his spinal cord and sending his body spiraling in zero gravity along with his rifle. A blue aura surrounded Noylarlie afterward, and she conjured a protective force field around her as she figured the next move for them would be to start shooting. She was right.
Three bursts of bright green light came at her from the remaining gunmen. Each shot was absorbed by her force field, creating a dazzling display of green and blue splashes of bright light. She remained floating with no harm to her body, her cybernetic implants glowing as the force field continued to block balls of hot plasma.
The rifle from the now-paralyzed rifleman was adrift. Noylarlie glared at it for a few seconds, commanding it to do her bidding. It came to a full stop and aimed itself at the last rifleman in front of her, firing two shots to the back of his head, leaving a smoking stump on the top of his neck.
Now she had to deal with the three behind her. They became two as Yix turned to flee down the corridor into one of the elevators they had passed earlier. The two other riflemen fell back, now realizing her force field wasn’t going to shatter after a barrage of repeated shots—unlike most psionics.
She closed her eyes to focus, extending both arms out. One arm pointed at the rifleman on the left, and the other at the one on the right. Seconds later her implants glowed orange, and a brilliant flash of light radiated from her arms, launching a ball of white fire from each hand, hitting the two men square in the chest. Their bodies soared backward toward the airlock. By the time they hit the wall at the end, only a burning pair of legs and ash remained spinning about. Her gaze switched focus to the elevator off to the side after grinning at the aftermath of her sorcery.
The command center of the space bridge was quite wide. It consisted of two sections. A lower level was littered with computer terminals displaying information regarding the space bridge network. Above those terminals was a massive window with the blackness of space and the green gas giant in the distance. The upper level was a large balcony-like structure attached to the back wall. Up there computer systems were dedicated to the status of the space bridge and its psionic crew. Just below this upper deck was the entrance to the elevator and behind it a very upset Archmage.
The doors swung open as Noylarlie floated forward…into two plasma swords from both sides of the entrance, hammering against her impermeable psionic force field. Waves of blue energy splashed around the area of the field they hit. Her reflexes guided her sight to the left and right. There were two warriors clearly waiting to ambush her. They weren’t making any progress, but they continued to push as if they could slowly slice through her protection.
She turned her head to the adversary on the left, looked at him for a few seconds through the blue waves of light before her, and smiled. “Kill yourself,” she said.
His arms pulled the sword away, and his hands trembled with terror. He was no longer in control of his actions. His hands guided his own blade through his belly, spewing out orbs of blood from the exit wound. His screams of pain were music to her ears but only for a brief moment. Her glowing orange hand rose up to the front of his neck. “You scream too much,” she said and then incinerated his neck with a small white fireball.
More blood flooded into the weightless nightmare. The last warrior yanked his blade back in an attempt to slash again. She yanked his arm off instead, just by thinking about it. Her mind commanded the severed arm to wave hello in front of his face before making it gouge out his eyes, creating a tunnel to his brain. Leaning her head forward, she wondered what else she could do to add to his suffering. Oh yes, the claws on the hand of the severed arm weren’t
deployed. They were now, digging farther into his brain. Much better, she thought with a delightful smile.
Yix stood at the end of the center, and Noylarlie focused her attention on him. She saw fear in his eyes as well as the crews’ as they looked on at the carnage. She felt control, pleasure, and stress release—she was an unstable killing machine. A blue light briefly appeared below her, her body was weightless no more as a personnel psionic gravity field materialized below her. She stepped forward toward Yix, her hand forward. She snapped her fingers, and his spine snapped at the same time.
“Please, please, I made a mistake,” he begged.
She stopped in front of his floating body. Only his arms and neck could move. Despite this, his body moved up a few meters in the air via her psionic grip. “I asked you for something,” she said.
“Yes, Whigli—take him!” he cried.
She turned around to address the rest of the crew, who watched from the upper deck. “To reiterate, I am Archmage Noylarlie Atonement!” Her voice was full of anger. “If I want something from you, you will give it to me.” Her mind commanded the sword from the eye-gouged warrior to float toward her. It stopped just before her, and then its blade tilted upward to the ceiling. “If you anger me, disobey me, fight me, or support people who do any of the above, I will take your fucking life away.” Yix’s screaming body now hovered above her.
Yix’s legs spread apart, and he was slowly lowered and skewered on the sword in front of her. His screams flooded the entire command center, carrying the sound of gurgling blood as the blade passed up through his throat. The edge poked out the top of his head, and there was no more screaming after that. She levitated his body to the top of the ceiling, leaving behind a trail of floating orbs of blood while the surviving crew gave Noylarlie their devotion and obedience.
The entrance to the transport swung open, enabling Noylarlie to finish her trek through the airlock with a new guest. She floated in, carrying Whigli’s weightless body. He was motionless but alive, most likely due to exhaustion from participating in sending a ship through the last time the bridge was used. After crossing through into the transport, she let go of him and allowed zero gravity to do its thing. As the doors closed, Jerut got up from his seat and approached her with a glowing smile. She gave him a smile back, a fake one, followed by a sucker punch to the face, sending him flying backward.
The pilot turned his head, having heard the punch, and shouted, “Sir!”
Noylarlie’s hand was aimed right at the pilot, and the cybernetics on her arms glowed. The pilot fell in line and did nothing more.
“Stand down. Both of you!” ordered Jerut.
“You knew. You sent me in there knowing they would attack!” she yelled.
Jerut looked at her. She was still aiming her psionic-charged arm at the pilot. “Noylarlie, if you fire and miss, you’ll blow us all into space.”
She hesitated for a moment. Yes, he was right. But at the same time, lowering her arm wound gave him the satisfaction of being in control. Fuck that. Her arm switched positions, taking aim at him. “Any other secrets I should be aware of, Jerut?”
“Yes, I admit we provoked him when Whigli was discovered to be here. And, yes, it was our intention for you to go in alone.” He got up from where he had fallen back. “Anyone can claim to be an Archmage out here in deep space, but only a real one will have a reputation to back it up. You now have one, which extends beyond Paryo.” Whigli’s resting body had been adrift too long. Jerut grabbed and lowered him to a nearby seat, placing a seat belt on him. “Yix was also…an issue to my associates. I wanted him dealt with,” he added and then signaled to the petrified pilot to dismount and leave as she lowered her glowing arm.
Whigli was in the infirmary for observation and to rest upon the transport’s arrival to the destroyer. Noylarlie and Jerut floated about at the back section of the infirmary, waiting for Whigli to be in a position to speak. She was curious to catch up with him. As much as she hated to admit it, he was currently the closest thing she had to a friend. Yeah, there was Chidorli, but what were the chances the two would cross paths again in the vastness of deep space? Jerut wanted to have a few words with Whigli as well, though his intentions weren’t clear. The last few hours had proven to her that Jerut wasn’t just some ship captain but something much more. The two hadn’t said a whole lot since they had boarded. She supposed now would be the best time to confront him before the destroyer journeyed across the space bridge.
“You mentioned associates earlier,” she said.
Another one of his mysteries. He didn’t exactly go into detail. “Indeed, I did.”
She crossed her arms. “Care to explain who they are?”
“Well—”
“Stop, if you’re going to say ‘classified.’ I want to know everything. Archmages should be in the loop if they are to be the will of the empress.”
“Can’t say much,” he said. “Our current setting isn’t a good place to talk about this.” Fair point—random doctors could hear, as flight recorders were located in every area of the ship. “But there’s a task that would greatly please my associates if you wish to know more about them.”
“By all means, please continue.” She was intrigued.
“The Morutrin system.” Her right eyebrow raised. “That’s all I can say for now,” said Jerut. Jerut received a transmission from the main bridge, a holographic display appearing and showing a bridge officer from the destroyer.
“We are ready to head back to Paryo now, sir,” said the officer.
“Excellent. How long will this take?” asked Jerut.
The officer replied, “With the space bridge operating with one less psi, three months.”
Noylarlie’s expression got bitter with the news of the travel time. “Figured as much,” said Jerut. “Take us through when ready.”
The hologram vanished, ending the communication. “Three months?” Noylarlie said in a frustrating manner.
“A flight through space would take us at least two hundred years,” Jerut explained.
“The transport ship going through the space bridge would be faster, even with its limitations,” she said.
“The reason that space bridge is allowing this ship to pass is because you’re onboard,” he said. “If I sent you back with the transport, this ship will be stuck here while we argue with the crew of that space bridge.”
Looks like Akeia will have to spend the next three months commanding his female servants to pleasure him. She released a loud growl at the thought.
Chapter 7
William Steward adjusted his necktie one last time, then turned toward the two individuals sitting on the middle couch of the White House’s Oval Office. “Let’s write a new chapter in human history.”
“Are you sure about this, Mr. President?” Chief of Staff David Tanner also wore a black suit and tie.
President Steward looked at him and paused for a moment, reflecting on the last day—aliens landing on the White House lawn, requesting to speak with him, while he sat back in an underground bunker, expecting the worst. That’s not a good first impression to show Earth’s new guests. The president’s advisers expressed great concern about allowing these aliens to speak with him face to face, reasoning that they could be carrying off-world diseases or have secret malicious intentions. The advisers’ concerns were noted, but the president figured if the aliens were here to fight, they could have done so easily from their mother ship in orbit. As for diseases? They had already stepped off their ship, so if they were contagious, it was too late. End of the day, he was the president of the United States, and he was ready to make history by inviting aliens into the Oval Office to chat. Yes, he was sure about this. “They have a message, and clearly ‘come in peace’ as the cliché goes,” he said.
Mariana Salamanca, director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, spoke next. “I think we can forgo a few rules in a situation like this.” She was jet-lagged from her flight from Europe to Was
hington.
In the past, people had made jokes about the UNOOSA director representing Earth during an alien contact, and now it was actually happening.
The three stood and watched the entrance to the Oval Office shortly after the go-ahead was given for their new guests to come in. When the door opened, four extraterrestrial guests walked in, and ready to begin historic talks. Hopefully the press conference later doesn’t give them the impression that humans are all noisy people who need to know what others are doing, the president thought.
All four were in, and Steward gave the go-ahead to shut the door shut—this was to be a private meeting. The press would get their interviews and photo ops afterward. The three gazed forth, looking in shock at a lizard man with scales on the back of his neck, a younger woman with similar features, and another woman who looked like some kind of anamorphic fox with horns and humanoid features. Guess it’s safe to say they’re not all from the same world, surmised the president, so this could be very well humanity’s first contact with three different alien races. Three!
Steward stepped forward, offering his hand to shake, but the three men just stared at his extended hand, puzzled expressions on their faces. The young lady with them seemed to be the only one who offered a hand. Handshakes are an Earth-only custom by the looks, the president thought.
“It’s an honor to have all four of you here today,” he said. “I am William Steward, president of the United States of America.”Salamanca stepped forward, brushing back her short black hair. “This is Mariana Salamanca, director of the UNOOSA, and this gentleman here is my chief of staff, David Tanner.”
The young woman spoke, the only one who could speak English…and French apparently. “My name is Ary Odelea.” She seemed very nervous, so the president smiled to show her there was nothing to be afraid of. Probably should have done that from the start. “This is General Ary Hilemei, Commander Mil Gengei, and…uh…Second Class Ranger Za Xyniea.” She pointed her trembling hand at each of them as she gave introductions.
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