by Maia Starr
“Revenge? Nothing like a petty pastime. Why not focus on your little operation down here?”
“That’s what I brought you here to talk to you about,” Parra said, folding his hands on top of the wooden block that served as his desk. He smiled sternly at me, and another wave of presentiment washed over me. “To be honest, I feel like I should thank you. Without that little altercation of ours, the Raither military might never have taken me very seriously. But since they do, I was able to truly find my calling and understand my passions. I may never have found peace within myself if I hadn’t gone down the path I was truly meant to travel.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Do not pin the evil of your deeds onto me,” I growled. “The fight may have been a catalyst, but it was your choices that killed those Raither soldiers. It had nothing to do with me!”
Parra chuckled and shook his head slowly. “I am not interested in arguing semantics with you, Commander. I am here to ask you to join my cause. It is your only chance of survival. I could use a Raither with your talents on my team. The ones I managed to recruit are close to useless. You surely know that.”
“What makes you think I would help you?” I asked. There had to be some sort of catch to his proposal.
“Only the fact that you have no other choice. That, and you and I are a lot alike. I know that you despise the other Raithers. I can see it in your eyes. I always knew that. That’s why I never held you responsible for the way that the Raither army treated me. And I don’t think that you should either. They had a choice. They could have shown compassion for young and lost souls, but they didn’t. Not to either one of us. And that is on them.”
“Well, what good is it to join you anyway? I could just as easily escape your dungeon and find my way back to Yala. Why would I stay trapped on this hell planet just to help you? What good would that do?”
“I see that you aren’t thinking ahead,” Parra said, grinning at me. “You are always such a brash and impulsive creature. It’s shocking that they gave you the honors that they did. But I suppose that having your brute strength and stubborn nature was an asset to the Army. But I see that you are not at the rank I left you in. What happened there?”
I glowered and looked away. It was true. I hated everything about my planet and my race. As much as I wanted to find myself in a position where I could actually be happy, it was impossible. Even if I was given my rank back, the darkness of the attack I had made on the others would always loom over my head. I would never be one of them again. And I have never felt like one of them to begin with.
“It is just as I thought,” Parra said, chuckling to himself. “You despise the Raithers just as I do. And you have just as much reason as I do to want to take them out.”
“And how do you plan to do that being stuck on Hexa?” I scoffed. “You know that the Raithers have the most impressive army known in the universe. They aren’t just going to roll over and let you win. You will be destroyed, along with anybody stupid enough to join your forsaken cause.”
Parra’s face hardened now, and I felt another chill surge through me. I knew that it was playing with fire to challenge him, but what else was I supposed to do? I wasn’t going to agree to join a lost cause. Especially not with someone as ruthless as Parra had turned out to be.
“Actually, that isn’t true. We have an entire planet full of the most fearsome monsters known throughout the galaxy. Even throughout the universe. Everybody on this planet wants their revenge against the Resha Federation. All we have to do is recruit them and promise them their freedom. With that freedom, we will do wonderful things.”
I snorted. Wonderful things, indeed. The creatures that were imprisoned here were total monsters. There was no way that contributing to their freedom was going to do any good. And although I despised the planet Yala, I did not want to have anything to do with its downfall either. Sure, they were disgusting and materialistic in their ways, but that did not mean that they deserved a death sentence. They rarely harmed anybody who was not directly threatening them. They might not know very much about how to deal with the trauma associated with abandonment and losing one’s parents, but it was not a sin enough to condemn them.
“I honestly do not believe that the powers of your army, even combined with the forces of others throughout the universe that want to take Yala down, will be enough to destroy them. Even if you come close, the Resha Federation will surely bring their own allies into the fight, and you will find yourselves right back in this prison. And there will be nobody to help you this time. It is possible that you will even be executed. I am not going to throw myself in the line of fire, even if you want me to believe that I have no other choice.”
Parra stared at me, his eyes round and hateful. “So that is the way it is,” he said with a low nod. I had a feeling that I had done the wrong thing. Perhaps just pretending to be part of his vision would have allowed me more freedom and the opportunity to help the human escape.
And yet, I could not allow myself to compromise my values for escape. Parra had never been a friend to me, and I could not fathom allowing him to believe that friendship, or even a simple alliance, would ever be possible.
“I am sorry that it has to be this way,” Parra said. But his eyes betrayed the truth. He had been anticipating my answer. “But it is not you who is going to suffer for this. It is going to be the human. And she will have you to thank.”
And with that, Parra summoned the guards, and I was removed from the office. My heart sank as I considered what it meant that the human was going to be suffering all on my account. Though I hated the thought of it, there was nothing I could do as I was marched down the dark corridor, my mind reeling from the altercation. I had to find a way out of this mess. And fast.
Chapter 6
Dr. Lila Andrews
When Zern didn’t come back, I found myself feeling extremely nervous. I had expected him to be gone a while, but when it came time for nightfall, and he still wasn’t back, I knew something was wrong.
It was impossible to sleep with me worrying about him, so it was almost a relief when late in the night, a Bardan barged through the door and looked at me by the collar of my shirt from where I was tossing and turning on the floor.
“It is time to put you to some good use,” he said, glowering at me and showing me toward the doorway. “Everybody is hard at work but you.”
I frowned, concerned by the implication that the humans had been left working all throughout the night. I guess I had assumed that they would be returned to their cell at a reasonable hour. But they weren’t.
“Come, they need you.”
It wasn’t as if I had a choice, and I went with the Bardan through the dark corridors until he led me to a tunnel that I hadn’t even noticed before. There was a low humming noise reverberating through the corridor, and I felt a nervous wave of fear surged through me.
When we arrived, I stopped, startled. Phoebe was standing there, a black robe covering most of her features. The majority of the other humans were there as well, wearing similar robes.
“The others have been behaving, master,” Phoebe said, fixing a sensual grin on the Bardan. “We decided to let them sleep. The three who have not joined us yet will still make great workers. They do not have to bear your children. We will do so, and gladly.”
I gaped in shock as Phoebe lifted the robe and exposed her jutting, and very pregnant, abdomen. She rubbed it lovingly and smiled again at the Bardan, a sickening, saccharine grin that made me nearly throw up right then and there. So they had volunteered for this? Did they think it was some kind of honor? Or were they really that desperate to escape? Either way, it was giving me the creeps, and I tried to back away and leave the cavern.
“Not so fast, human. This is your place now. It is time to get you initiated. Come, and stand in the center of the circle. The females will ensure that you are prepared for the following with a ceremony.”
“A what?”
I was shoved forward, horrified n
ot only by the situation, but also by the thought of once brilliant women being reduced to singing superstitious chants summoning forces in the universe that, as far as any rational mind was concerned, were pure and utter bullshit.
“Grab her!” Phoebe shouted.
I yelped in surprise when the cold hands of three other women gripped me, and I was being held still as Phoebe grinned at me. I gaped at her, sure now that the evil gleam in her eye had been there just as I had suspected it had was when I had initially been taken away from the tunnel by the Bardan.
“You are going to honor the Bardan’s request, whether you like it or not. These men are of a superior intellect to those of us from Earth, so I don’t expect you to understand. But this is for your own good. If you want to survive this and make the universe a better place, then you will allow your body to become an incubation center. Their army will ultimately take over the universe anyway. We might as well embrace it.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but before I could speak, Phoebe turned away from me and gave a loud cry, and the women stood in a circle around me and began swaying their hips and chanting ominously. The Bardan was grinning, and I could see his eyes glowing eerily through the cavern.
“Now it is time for you to become one with the Bardan’s goals.”
I was frozen in fear as the room began to reverberate with the sounds of their chanting, and I knew that I was about to be in some big trouble.
***
The ceremony seems to take hours, but in truth, I knew that it had only been maybe fifteen minutes. Either way, it was too long. Especially for a scientific mind like my own to tolerate.
I couldn’t believe that the women I had been working with side-by-side for so long, who had seemed to understand the world just as I had, would find themselves falling prey to superstitious and irrational beliefs simply because they thought it was more convenient that way. I could understand that desperation could change a person, but going this far and turning against another human was inexcusable.
When it was over, the Bardan dismissed the women back to their cell, and Phoebe went along with them, acting as their leader. I suppose it was pretty clever in a way. The Bardans had found a way to control the humans without having to actually do anything themselves. All they had to do was pull the strings of the one human who seemed to have the utmost faith in their schemes.
Now, I was left alone with the Bardan, whose eyes were glittering with malicious intent. I tried to run after the other women, hoping against hope that maybe I would be allowed to leave and return to the cell with the other humans. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to be the case, and the Bardan gripped me by the back of the neck, preventing me from moving forward any further.
“And just where do you think you are going to go? You have already proven yourself unfit to mingle with your own race. They don’t want you there. We have a different plan for you.”
I yelped in surprise and fear as the Bardan shoved me ahead of himself, and once again, I found myself walking down the terrifying black labyrinths of their tunnel system.
“So what are you guys doing with all these tunnels anyway?” I mumbled. “It isn’t going to do you any good. What if you encounter more of those freaky magma worm things? You’re basically just making it easy for them to find you.”
“That is none of your concern, human,” the Bardan said, stopping abruptly and opening the door to a new cell. My thoughts were on Zern, and I found myself fearing the worst. What was going to happen to me? And what had happened to him? Where was he? Have they already gotten rid of him? It wouldn’t surprise me. There seemed to be nothing but hard feelings between them.
“Well, it’s not going to work. Whatever you’re planning is stupid and shortsighted. Even if Phoebe and everybody else thinks that you’re going to be doing something wonderful, we both know that that’s not the way it’s going to work. If your plans were that smart, you wouldn’t be here on Hexa in the first place.”
The Bardan fixed a dark glare upon me and then slammed the door to the cell shut. I could hear his heavy footfalls as he walked away, and I found myself filled with more dread than I had been since my capture. They were going to try to get me to incubate one of their freaky alligator babies. How in the hell was I supposed to get out of this one?
I couldn’t stomach the thought of being forced to breed with a Bardan. It would be the most violating thing that ever happened to me in my life. I couldn’t let that happen. It was almost as if I was being punished. Had they found out that Zern and I had…?
The thought horrified me, and I immediately set to work trying to plot my escape. The walls were made of the same material that we had been mining before. They didn’t realize that I had managed to pilfer one of the shards of metal that I had found while I was digging and had planned to find a way to use it as a weapon. Zern had kept the knife that I had stolen from Parra’s quarters. Otherwise, I would’ve been able to use that as a way to dig myself out.
Fortunately, I had a strong mind and quickly fashioned the piece of metal into a tool that I was able to use in order to unlock the door’s strange mechanisms. I had to work fast. There was no telling when the Bardan would return, and whether or not he would come with reinforcements. I had to protect myself, no matter the cost. And so, I let my mind go on autopilot so that I could escape this horrible situation once and for all.
***
It took an eternity, or so it seemed, but I soon found myself pushing through the silt of the doorway. I hadn’t been able to unlock it necessarily, but I was able to pry apart the lock and disassemble the intricate brickwork that had bound me to the hollow crevice of rock. By the time I was finished, I was filthy and miserable, but more than that, I was scared.
When I emerged into the dark tunnel, I had no way of knowing which direction would be the safest for me to travel. I could go back the way I had come, and risk running into another Bardan, or worse, the entire group of humans who would immediately tell them about my presence, or I could turn and go into the unknown.
I let my mind to weigh the options for only a brief moment and then turned on my heel to run in the opposite direction from the way I had come. I couldn’t help but be afraid of encountering another magma worm, but it was a risk that I had no choice but to take. Zern was in trouble, and the only way to get us out of this mess was to take risks. I couldn’t believe that I had gotten us in this situation just because I wanted to rescue the other humans. They had completely turned on me, and as far as I was concerned, totally deserved whatever fate they had coming to them.
I stopped running suddenly when I saw a light begin to flicker at the end of the tunnel. Somebody was up ahead, and there was no way of knowing just what it was that I was going to encounter.
I walked cautiously forward, gripping my piece of metal tightly in my hand. If nothing else, I would be able to protect myself at least a little bit.
“Come forward, child,” a deep, spooky voice rang out to me.
Fear curdled in my chest, but I couldn’t help but do as the voice commanded. It wasn’t that it seemed unfriendly, but it was definitely something that I hadn’t expected. I knew that wasn’t the voice of a Raither or a Bardan, and I was worried that maybe I was being tricked. Still, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from following the strange voice.
“You are a human,” the voice said. I looked around, frowning. At first, I didn’t see anybody, even though the area was lit up. And then I saw what appeared to be a speaking rock. It had soulful eyes and a serious disposition, and on its chest was a small fixture that put out light in front of it, wherever it turned.
“Yes, but I’m afraid I don’t know what you are.”
“Oh, I am a native of this planet. One of only a few of the ancients that are left. We keep to the underground, but I found this tunnel curious, so I thought I would explore. Where have you come from?”
I really didn’t want to trust this creature, and yet some part of me was compelled to step forward.
“I have been wrongfully imprisoned, and now I am in great danger,” I said, taking the greatest chance I had ever taken. “Can you help me?”
“My name all is Shen,” the creature said with a gentle bow. “And I am at your service.”
Chapter 7
Captain Zern Krechan
I was getting tired of these dark rooms in Parra’s prison. Everything about it was making me feel agitated and restless. I wanted to fight, and yet, I knew that I was at a disadvantage. How was I supposed to get out of this without some sort of miracle? Being trapped infuriated me.
“Zern, are you in there?”
And now I was hallucinating too. That was just great.
“Answer me if you are, or we are going to leave you here.”
I sat up and went to the door, now fully aware of Lila standing outside. She had been consuming my thoughts all this time, and I was unbelievably glad to know that she was all right.
“I’m here, but you should be getting yourself out of this place. It’s dangerous.”
“He’s in there,” Lila said, completely ignoring everything I said. In a few short moments, the doorway to my small cell had been forced open, and Lila was standing outside the room, smiling at me. “This is Shen. Shen, this is Zern. Now we have to get out of here. They will be back anytime now.”
I was shocked to encounter my very first Olpa. The Olpa were an ancient race, thought to be extinct by most in the universe. They had been rumored to live in the center of many planets, much like the magma worms. The difference was that they were a peaceful and wise species, who kept to themselves and remained neutral in all affairs unless personally affected. Apparently, Parra’s vast tunnel system was starting to affect them. It was the first glimmer of hope that I had had for quite a while.
“There is no time for formalities,” I said. “We need to find our way out of here. Olpa, can you show us the way?”