Star Brigade: Odysseys - An Anthology

by C. C. Ekeke

  She had checked in on each CT-1 member after the Alorum incident—even Marguliese. Most of the team was coping just fine, except for Liliana and Honaa. The Rothorid had holed up in his quarters, refusing to see anyone. Sam would try again with him tomorrow.

  Liliana was easier to engage. The doctor had been hiding in her Medcenter office barely holding it together, all the excuse Sam needed to suggest a few drinks to calm both their nerves.

  It’s the least I can do for the Brigadier who saved my life. “I never got to say thank you for what you did on Alorum,” Sam admitted after Liliana had finished her superluminal. She wasn’t the only grateful Brigadier, but V’Korram would never tell the doctor that. “We’d all be dead if not for you, lovey.”

  As expected, Liliana shooed away the praise. “I have Khrome, Marguliese and Captain Nwosu to thank for that,” the doctor was now blushing. “But you more than anyone, Sam, for believing in me the whole time…and those extra training sessions these last few weeks.”

  That remark filled Sam with more gratitude than Liliana could ever know. Of course, her default response was a snide wisecrack—specifically at the expense of Habraum’s pet Cybernarr—all to win a cheap laugh out of the doctor.

  But Sam held her tongue. Liliana didn’t need that now. She needed to recognize her incredible inner fortitude and embrace it. “Give yourself some credit, Lily,” she reached out and gave the doctor a tender pat on the cheek. “We just provided the tools. You’re the one who did the work to get this far.”

  “Well, I’m not there yet. I thought…” the doctor reclined back, folding both hands behind her head. Liliana’s pixie cropped hair looked as black as her shirt under the dim lights and no longer spiked. Sam noted the slight but noticeable growth these last few weeks. She liked it better this length.

  “I thought we were all going to die,” the doctor admitted in a rush.

  “Same here,” Sam admitted easily. She leaned over the bar counter, finishing off her drink. “That was as close a call as it could get.”

  The doctor propped an elbow on the bar counter, scrutinizing her teammate through narrowed eyes. “Yet you’re very le zen about the whole thing.”

  Despite Sam’s devil-may-care attitude, the strange fear kept on buzzing inside her stomach. Masking her true feelings came as easy as breathing, given the countless times she’d stared death in the face and lived to laugh about it. But the Alorum incident…that had rattled Sam, as much as it clearly did Liliana.

  Suddenly, all she wanted was to speak to the doctor like a true friend. Sam longed to admit how terrified almost losing another combat team had made her. Every cell in Sam’s body burned to confess over the rush of emotions that had coursed through her when the Retributionaries were about to kill CT-1.

  Then there was that devastating look of longing, or whatever that was, she and Habraum had shared when the end seemed certain.

  And afterward in the Cerc’s office, every moment between them so open and honest and raw…

  Yeah, like Liliana wants to hear about my drama, she scolded, regaining some much-needed resolve and making those pesky feelings go dead as easily as if it were breathing.

  “Two things help after a mission like that,” Sam raised her glass, putting on her mischievously lopsided grin. “A few good drinks or a good fuck…usually both.”

  From the corner of her eye, Sam caught Solrao perking up and ignored the overeager Ibrisian.

  Liliana turned her head from side to side, taking stock of Pilot Pub’s occupancy. Her gaze landed on the tanked PLADECO pilot right as he tumbled out of his seat. She wrinkled her nose in disapproval. “Think I’ll settle for another drink.”

  Sam gestured for Solrao’s attention, pointing at her own and then Lily’s cups. “Two more.”

  “Make mine a small one…” Liliana quickly pointed out, and then caught Sam’s barefaced scorn. “A large one,” the doctor amended with a laugh.

  Solrao returned in no time with their drink orders. “You two look like you’ve been through it,” she declared in her usual sleepy-sounding Ibrisi accent. “Hard mission?”

  “That’s an understatement,” Liliana muttered after thanking the Ibrisian for her drink.

  Much to Sam’s displeasure, the ex-pilot didn’t look ready to depart yet. “And yea, yea I know you can’t officially confirm this,” Solrao leaned in all conspiratorial-like. The blood-red limbic rings in her eyes rapidly narrowed and then widened, narrowed and then widened, the telltale sign of an Ibrisian’s interest. “I’m guessing your mission had to do with whatever went down on Alorum? Am I warm?”

  “We’re good, Solrao. Thank you,” Sam replied sharply, her taut smile saying, Back the fuck off.

  Solrao took the hint and retreated to the other end of the bar, sulking. Sam watched her go, glowering. Indulging the needy Ibrisian a few weeks ago had been stupid. I should cut her off for good.

  Solrao’s hovering didn’t go unnoticed. “Uh…which one of us does she wanna sleep with?” Liliana inquired, observing the Ibrisian with far too much curiosity.

  “Why, you interested?” Sam joked. God, please don’t be.

  “Nooo,” Lily shook her head, dead serious. “Something about her just screams too much baggage.”

  Sam nodded and continued nursing her drink. Smart girl.

  As they continued talking, Liliana’s silence on the Korvenite internment camps became glaringly obvious. Given how much the Alorum location had upset the doctor, Sam left that asteroid mine alone. So she broached another topic. “When you were flying the Phaeton by yourself, what did you feel…beside fear?”

  Liliana frowned at her, confused. “Not sure what you mea—”

  “Yeah, you do,” Sam interjected briskly, searching the doctor’s face. “And the answer scares the shit out of you, way more than Maelstrom’s ambush did.”

  Even under the bad halolights, she saw Liliana turn bone white.

  Christ, this girl had no poker face. Sam needed to work with her on that. At least her suspicions were dead on. “Now,” she continued in low and huskier tones, “what else did you feel?”

  “I…” Liliana looked like she’d rather be anywhere else. Then she seemed to calm, her eyes going vacant. “My blood was singing,” she admitted, soft and trembling. Discovering this hidden aspect of herself was a clear jolt to her system. “The risks, the impossible odds… Even at one point, V’Korram got knocked out and I was alone, I’ve never felt so alive…so powerful.”

  A sister in arms. Sam tried not to smile, but pride had rendered her poker face as transparent as Lily’s. At the Brigade all-hands where Habraum made his return, she had seen a glimpse of that steel within the doctor. But when Liliana had stepped out of Phaeton’s cockpit after rescuing them from Alorum, eyes ablaze with fear and fire and focus, Sam knew she was Star Brigade material through and through.

  “On a mission like that when the odds seem insurmountable and death’s coming at you from every turn?” Sam shook her head wistfully, jostling loose a few locks of hair. The familiar thrill she got from each and every field mission, nothing topped it. “Gets in your blood, like a drug.”

  Liliana shuddered. Clearly that kind of addiction didn’t agree with her. “After all this time, can you imagine your life any other way?”

  If Sam had been asked this question eight years ago, the answer would have been a resounding, ‘yes.’ Settle down somewhere on Terra Sollus, find a mind-numbingly boring civilian job, marry an adequate male, start a family—the expected things that normal sentient beings were supposed to do.

  But that was eight years ago. Today, Sam sucked down more of her drink and shrugged. “Nah!”

  The two humans burst out laughing, breaking the tension. They clinked their glasses with big smiles in a toast to surviving. Sam loved seeing Liliana not so uptight and timid. While she wasn’t drunk, her growing ease in demeanor and posture became obvious.

  And of course, just as she was becoming more fun and relaxed, Liliana called it
a night. “Got some lab work to get through,” she countered despite Sam’s protests, rising from her bar stool. “More research on the overproduction of xenotrophin.”

  “Ah,” Sam nodded, needing no further explanation. Knowing the personal obligation behind Lily’s research, how could she keep the doctor away from that?

  “But I can put it off till tomorrow,” Lily added hesitantly, “if you need me to stick around.”

  Don’t go. Stay a little longer, Sam wanted to say. For some reason the thought of being left to her own devices tonight chilled her from head to heel. “Please,” she instead waved Liliana off lightheartedly. “Go be brilliant.”

  “Luminal!” The doctor’s relief was palpable. “We’ll both get sloshed up next time, mamita.”

  Sam leaned away in mock distaste. “So you think this is gonna become ‘our thing’ now, Ensign?”

  Liliana froze. “I…no.” Suddenly she was alarmed and stammering. “That’s not…I wasn’t—”

  Sam let out a loud and bawdy laugh. “Christ on a comet, you’re so easy it’s not even a challenge! Of course there’ll be a next time!”

  The doctor slapped her hard on the arm. “Pundeja,” she hissed, smiling again. “Thanks for the drinks…and the talk.” The doctor leaned in, wrapping her slim arms around Sam. “Just what I needed.”

  “Anytime, sweets,” Sam returned the embrace with an extra squeeze. “Love ya from the bottom of my bottom.”

  When Liliana pulled away, Sam found her no longer smiling. The doctor’s face was lined with concern. “We have to find Maelstrom, Samantha,” she stated in a quiet, urgent tone only Sam could hear. “We have to stop him.”

  Sam nodded, rubbing Liliana’s back like a doting parent. “I know. And when we find him, we kill him.” Liliana’s features hardened, but Sam didn’t care how coldblooded that sounded. Maelstrom signed his death warrant the moment he’d hurt her Star Brigade family.

  “Good,” the doctor decided, a flat and final response.

  Sam watched her go with raised eyebrows, surprised and a little concerned by the glint of satisfaction in the doctor’s eyes.

  A few macroms after Liliana left, Sam motioned Solrao over again to order herself a nice big bottle filled with what looked like liquid gold. But to Sam, a bottle of hellburner trumped liquid gold.

  More customers arrived, thankfully drawing Solrao away again. Sam turned around on her stool to face away from the bar counter, slumping back against it. She downed a lengthy swallow from her bottle. The thick liquor tasted bitter, salty, electric and honeyed all at once. She winced and immediately took another long pull. Nice.

  Today had almost been another Beridaas, with Sam rendered just as powerless to save her teammates. CT-1 with all those young Brigadiers—even Habraum’s pet Cybernarr—had all nearly been killed by Maelstrom.

  Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, the thoughts and fears and disappointments began to pile up like stones weighing on her chest.

  Any hope Sam had of helping the Korvenites in the internment camps, exposing their deplorable living conditions—definitely killed by Maelstrom.

  Hunting Maelstrom down while the trail was hot, ending him before he broke into another internment camp or killed more innocents—stupidly stalled by Union Command.

  Sam bristled and tossed the bottle back again, draining more of it. All that tasted bitterer in her mouth than this hellburner. And the welcome haze of drunkenness wasn’t kicking in fast enough. On days like this, when life clobbered over and over a being with gale force, Sam really hated having such a high fucking alcohol tolerance.

  Her first instinct was going to Habraum, her rock…her harbor. After what happened on Alorum, just the thought of being around him again made her insides feel so fluttery, yet ache so deeply, the discomfort was near acute. A few orvs ago in Habraum’s office when they spoke briefly, that same sensation had nearly overwhelmed her.

  A grin tugged at Sam’s lips. After all these years, those feelings just wouldn’t die. A talk with her favorite Cerc would make Sam feel safe again and expel her worries.

  Her smile widened, showing teeth. Habraum should be in his quarters now, maybe eating dinner…

  …with Jeremy. Sam’s smile curdled. The reminder was a hard punch to the gut.

  No, I can’t intrude tonight. It would be selfish, especially given the Cerc’s struggles to balance Star Brigade with being a good dad to Jerm. She flinched away from the sharp disappointment and sighed, taking another pull of liquor.

  She studied the bottle in her right hand, resting it on her right thigh. Jesus, it’s empty already?

  Then Sam noticed the liquor finally beginning to work its sweet magic, making her senses go tipsy and muddying up her thoughts. Won’t be enough, she already knew.

  Sam dared a glance at Solrao. The lanky Ibrisian stood all the way at the other end of the bar, leaning forward to chat up two swarthy and strapping crimsonborn. By their outfits the two looked like freighter pilots. Out of the question, Sam decided with a quick head shake, dismissing all three options. Both Cercs looked too much like Braum. And Rae’s gotten too clingy anyway.

  Solrao caught Sam’s lingering gaze, and with a smirk the Ibrisian nodded her head toward someone in the increasingly crowded bar.

  Sam turned away and surveyed the area that Solrao just indicated and Liliana had earlier so reductively dismissed.

  The crowd was rather lacking in potential, until her gaze landed on a carroty-complexioned Nnaxan. He sat alone three tables to Sam’s left, minding his own business, while nursing what looked like a BBT.

  Sam gave him a quick, but thorough, onceover. Private military contractor pilot by the uniform. Tall and well-made in physique, a handsomely chiseled face for a Nnaxan, with a perfectly overarched brow, and a quartet of thick, fleshy craniowhisks spilling down his shoulders—each which Sam had a sudden desire to lick from root to tip.

  And four hands, Sam gloated, her lips parting slightly. Hope he knows what to do with them all. She set her empty bottle on the bar counter with a clunk, and then lurched up from her stool with as much sensual grace as she could muster.

  …an orv later they were on a beaten-up bed inside his small frigate ship, entwined under the dim red glow of halolights. Sam was on top and unclothed, a low and steadily rising moan in her throat, riding the Nnaxan ferociously.

  His hands were touching all the right spots on Sam’s body, fondling her senseless. This one had some dangerous fingers. She arched her back, curtains of disheveled blond hair tumbling down her shoulders.

  If the Nnaxan had given out his name, Sam hadn’t cared enough to remember it. Only her need mattered, feeling his coarse flesh against hers, the overwhelming desire to burn away that nagging ache and the memories of today—even if just for tonight. Exactly what she needed.

  Samaritan

  At first glance, the apartment was gorgeous. Two stories of aquamarine-walled luxury on the upper floors of a posh residential complex in Terra Sollus’s Sheffield city-state.

  That included unrestricted views showcasing Sheffield’s dazzling forest of spacescrapers and the Avalon River below winding through the downtown corridor. The apartment’s curved architecture surrounded a tube-shaped forcefield housing a massive saltwater tank. The circular pool on the second floor served as the tank’s opening, reaching down to the first floor like an oversized middle pillar. The water tank oozed ripples of pale cerulean light throughout the unlit apartment.

  However, the intruder sneaking through its corridors had little interest in those aesthetics.

  The human/cybernetic hybrid known only as Darkstar crept past the brilliant glow of the water tank, exposing a broad-shouldered building of a humanoid at six-foot-seven. His cobalt-blue body armor, essentially a second skin of weaponized cyber organics, was etched with circular dull grey patterns. The sleeveless overcoat he wore was black as night, flowing just past his knees, ideal for hiding a variety of weapons and tools.

  It had taken some doing,
but Darkstar had finally found ways to circumvent the advanced Vigilance-Tech watching over city-states like Sheffield, allowing him to breach this complex unnoticed. He searched high and low over the apartment’s furniture, focusing on anything that might look ordinary in a Galdorian’s residence on a non-oceanic world. That might hold the proof he was looking for.

  Hojkoddi Nolo, the apartment owner, was out this evening and would not return for another 4.5 orvs.

  What better time to conduct a covert and uninterrupted search?

  Darkstar scrutinized every coral sculpture with chalky colors and shapes fanning outward in contorted veins, examining them down to the minute cracks and chips. He ran his fingers along those aquamarine walls, scanning the technology behind them that powered this apartment’s systems and protocols.

  Nothing. Not in the walls, the sculptures, the angular tables and chairs, or the holoimages.

  He shook his head in frustration, causing his long ponytail of thick copper braids to jostle from side to side. Had he arrived at the wrong address or wrong time?

  No, my intel is sound, Darkstar reminded himself. A pricey yet trustworthy data broker had tied several disappearances to Hojkoddi Nolo through an intricate web of smuggling rings. Initially the connection to Hojkoddi Nolo made no sense at the surface level, and none of these disappearances were of anyone notable. More to the point, it had baffled Darkstar why a Galdorian restaurant owner would adopt this sudden fondness for abducting others?

  Until he had discovered one unshakeable fact—each abductee had either dined or had a blood relative dine at one of the Galdorian’s many restaurants over the last four months. And half of these abductees happened to be unregistered maximums.

  Darkstar had seen this intricate pattern of abductions before: twelve members of a certain species captured, half might exhibit a recessive genetic trait, other times a third or a quarter or an eighth of the abductees would have a near vestigial genetic trait. Most likely, they would breed each group in a controlled and accelerated environment together to see which genetic trait thrived.