by Abel, Regine
As if in slow motion, I watched with horror its speared-limb plunge into Dread’s back and pierce through his chest. Dread stiffened, his lips parted in shock.
“NOOOOO!” Bane screamed as his brother fell to his knees before collapsing to his side.
Bane rushed to Dread while we killed off the remaining Drones. Once done, we shifted out of battle form.
“Fight! Fight, Brother!” Bane pleaded. Shifting out of his battle form, he retrieved a small tube from his weapon’s belt and poured some sealant gel over the gaping wound.
But even from where I stood, I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Dread peered at his brother and gave him a wavering, pained smile, before going still. Bane’s face contorted with pain, before he schooled his features. He took in three deep breaths, then closed his brother’s eyes and caressed the small rhinoceros beetle horn that adorned his head. Just at that instant, a circular shield appeared next to Dread’s remains. We all recoiled at the empty sphere. I recognized it as Liena’s shield.
But why is it…?
And then Dread’s soul coalesced within. He looked at his hands, then at his body, before gingerly reaching for the energy sphere that sheltered him. He stared in awe as his palm caressed the shimmering surface.
“Brother!” Bane whispered, rising to his feet. He gaped at the phenomenon, disbelieving. “How?” His head snapped towards Liena. “You! You are doing this!”
I felt torn. Part of me hated that the hybrids and the Scelks now knew of the Asian’s ability. Worse still, that they knew before half the Coalition was even informed. But the other half of me was grateful that she’d saved him, even if temporarily. However, what baffled me was that Dread’s soul had been invisible to any of us except Liena who’d managed to shield him.
“Do you have Shells or Soulcatchers?” Liena asked.
“We have Shells, but they are too far,” Bane said. “We weren’t supposed to be here this long.”
“How far?” I asked.
“One parsec,” Bane said, putting his hand to the shield. “How long will this last?”
“As long as I maintain it,” Liena said.
“I’m dying,” Chaos said, while Tabitha crouched next to him. “I’m going to Portal back to my Shell. Torment, your unit must escort the Janaurians females out of the village right away before more Kryptids show up. Raven, ask Ayana for help with the hybrid, then get our women back to the shuttle.”
“Acknowledged,” I said, before refocusing on Bane. “There might be a solution to that problem. Hang on.”
I reached out to Ayana and quickly explained what had happened before sharing with her Dread’s psychic signature. I could feel her joy through our mind-link that her suspicions about Bane being on our side appeared to be confirmed. She quickly updated Legion. I smiled when she relayed that he’d given a fairly reluctant blessing. I couldn’t blame him for hating that his mate was mind-linking with a hybrid he had never personally met and still held reservations as to his intentions and motives.
“Have your people revive his Shell and then communicate its signature to Ayana,” I told Bane.
His eyes widened, then his face took on a focused expression. “She’s on Khepri!” he exclaimed, looking confused.
“Go on,” I said, while the elevator took off with Wrath’s and Torment’s units, accompanying the Janaurians out of the building.
A few seconds went by, no doubt due to the delay in reviving the Shell. Moments later, Dread’s soul appeared to be sucked into a vortex and vanished. The shield collapsed.
The tension in Bane’s broad shoulders increased slightly before fading away. The shadow of a disbelieving smile stretched his lips. “Little Ayana… I knew there was more to her than met the eye.” He turned to face my mate. “I am in your debt, Liena.”
I stiffened. “How do you know her name?” I demanded.
Bane gave me a mocking smile. I wanted to smack him. “Chaos’s woman said it earlier.”
“I’m not his woman,” Tabitha snapped.
To my surprise, that seemed to please Bane. It struck me as interesting, now remembering how he had frowned at her crouching caringly by Chaos’s body before he died.
“Consider it repayment for saving Tabitha on that liveship,” Liena said.
Bane’s gaze returned to Tabitha, an expression I couldn’t decipher fleeting over his features. “I need no repayment for saving her. But thank you.”
One of the Scelks spoke urgently to Bane who nodded his head.
“We must depart. We’ve already been here too long,” Bane said. “The village is rigged to blow. We’re running a disruptor to prevent the Kryptids from setting it off right away. Get out. You have thirty minutes.”
“Why destroy it at all?” Liena asked.
“The entire village is a tomb with multiple buildings turned into Breeding Swamps. No one would want to live in this. Furthermore, my brother and I have bled all over this place,” Bane said looking at the wounds covering his body. “We cannot allow the General to find Dragon DNA here.”
“Dragon?” Tabitha asked. “Is that how you identify?”
He gave her a strange look. “How do you see me, Soulcatcher?”
An odd silence hung between them. I shifted my vision and was struck by the dark pink of Tabitha’s aura—a shade she hadn’t displayed in seven years.
“Like a mystery,” Tabitha whispered at last.
Bane’s barely-there smile softened his features. He nodded then turned around, marching towards the elevator. To my utter frustration, I couldn’t read his aura—like all those sharing Gomenzi Dragon blood, he had no doubt learned how to repress its display.
“Get in, if you want out,” Bane said.
As one, we navigated our way around the mounds of dead Drones and entered the elevator. Bane ordered the elevator up in his clicking language then stared straight ahead at the door in a ‘I’ve got nothing else to say’ attitude. The cabin came to a stop on the ground floor. The doors parted to reveal, in front of the guard station, the carnage of piles of dead Kryptids.
“Good job,” I said to Wrath’s unit, although Torment’s team had also done their share.
They nodded with a certain smugness.
“You have thirty minutes to leave the radius of the village,” Bane reminded us in a stern voice. “Get going.”
I wanted to snap at his bossy attitude, but he had a point. “Until next time, Dragon,” I said with a bit of a taunt.
His small mandibles twitched. I couldn’t say if amusement, annoyance, or a mix of both had caused it. “Until next time, Trueborn,” he said with heavy sarcasm.
His gaze dropped to Liena’s hand in mine before rising back up to her face. His expression softened, and he gave her a respectful nod. My mate gave him a timid smile then followed me out of the lift, shadowed by the rest of our teams. As the elevator’s doors closed, Bane’s gaze weighed heavily on us.
“Everyone, back to the shuttle, double-time,” I ordered.
With half the Warriors in front, the other half in the back and our women in the middle, we raced back to our ships.
Epilogue
Liena
We didn’t immediately return to Khepri. With the Coalition fleet only a couple of days away, we remained on Janaur to monitor the situation and ensure none of the Scelk parasites had survived. The population hailed us as heroes, but their resentment towards the Coalition ran deep. Bane’s well-founded rant about our lack of support towards the Janaurians for years had not escaped the females held captive in the Gathering Hall. There would be a lot of damage control and relationship mending to be done here. The question was whether the allied worlds would acknowledge that, however primitive the Janaurians may be, they deserved an apology.
We had provided the Coalition with sufficient proof that the situation was now under control for them to call off the attack. Upon my return to Khepri, I would further study the Scelk parasite removed from Hepon, as well as the scans and samples I had gathered from
the Janaurian population. The lack of a proper lab on Janaur or on board the ship impeded my work. Hopefully, we could use what little I could manage to derive more efficient ways to counter future, similar parasitic attacks, understand what traits allowed the Janaurians to broadcast psychic powers the way they had for the Scelks, and figure out what type of experiments the General had performed to transform the innocuous Scelk bugs into these lethal parasites.
By the time the Coalition arrived, half of the fleet had peeled off to chase after the Kryptid ships that had been headed towards the general area of the Rings of Janaur. While Doom, himself, would return home with us for a couple of weeks, his unit would remain in the region for the next couple of months to ensure the safety of the Janaurians as well as to supervise the set up of a surveillance system that would alert the Coalition of any further attacks on the locals by the Kryptids. We doubted the bugs would return to harass them. Their already low population had been half-decimated by the executions and experiments. With us having a method to counter their power and, worse still, with the Scelks turning on the Kryptids, we doubted the General would try bringing them back into the fold.
On the day of our departure, Hepon, his parents, and a few of the villagers came to our vessel bearing various, simple gifts, from local delicacies, to decorative, artisanal items. But for me, specifically, a stunning mini-collection of three most unusual, colorful seashells. Being amphibian creatures, the Janaurians had dove deep into the neighboring lake to recover them for me. Hepon told me the first shell had been a special request from Raven who’d told the villagers of my love for them. The second had been a personal gift from Hepon, and the third and largest one, found in too dangerous an area for him to hunt in, was a gift from the rest of the village. The heartfelt gratitude of the Janaurians for us simply doing the right thing brought tears to my eyes. Now more than ever, I understood what kept the Warriors going, battle after battle: saving lives, protecting those in need, and bringing hope to those in despair.
We finally landed back on Khepri nearly two weeks after our encounter with Bane. It seemed like all of the Vanguard had gathered inside the docking bay to welcome us like heroes. While I received an insane amount of praise and accolades, the emotional reunion between Raven, his father, and his mother nearly had me in tears. I couldn’t imagine what she must have gone through fearing for the lives of both her son and her mate. The Warriors and Doom, too, made a show of teasing Raven for finally having earned himself a few scars and surviving a raid without losing a Shell. But beneath it, I felt the fatherly love each of them bore Raven, their first trueborn.
Although I officially joined the Vanguard as the first Shield, I still wasn’t certain if missions were for me. I lacked the ‘badass gene’ Tabitha and the other women demonstrated. But then again, my expertise in medicine, biochemistry, and genetics had proven invaluable in this mission. Thankfully, Legion didn’t pressure me into field work. With Victoria handing me the torch of leading the Vanguard’s biomedical research, the odds of me going traipsing around the galaxy battling evil had significantly reduced. Even though the position was an honor—for which I was indeed perfectly qualified—I knew that Legion wanted to keep Dr. Xi’s great-granddaughter safely tucked away at HQ. Unlike Raven, who still chafed at being overly protected by the Warriors, I didn’t mind being coddled. In truth, the selfish part of me felt relieved that Raven’s duty as principal psychic trainer on Khepri usually kept him away from danger as well.
While there were no short-term plans for me to go back on a mission, like every female in the Vanguard, I had to join the mandatory weapons and combat training so that any of us would always be battle ready should the need arise.
My fellow Asian sisters of the Vanguard had been working their tails off training with our legendary determination and hunger for excellence. In the month we’d been gone for the Rings of Janaur mission, the women had grown by leaps and bounds, many of them ready to join units in the field. The limited range of our abilities remained an issue, be it for Soulcatchers, Portals, or Shields. Ayana remained the only psychic female unhindered by range. I hoped in time, my research on the Janaurians would help us increase ours as well, if only a little.
Like he had done with Ayana and the Portals, Raven engaged my services to help him revamp the psychic training program for Shields. But escaping from mind traps was also added to the curriculum for psychics and Warriors alike. I enjoyed working with Raven on updating the training programs. In truth, I simply enjoyed doing anything with him. He had swept me off my feet, broken the chains that kept me from living, and allowed me to soar to levels of happiness I never believed possible.
A month after our return to Khepri, an unlabeled package was delivered to me. It contained six vials of an amber colored liquid and a single sentence on an unsigned note.
“Please accept this little gift in repayment of my debt.”
I squealed with delight when a quick scan revealed the vials contained pure samples of the neural disrupting drugs used against us by the Kryptids. Within three weeks of receiving Bane’s gift—and I didn’t doubt for a minute he’d been the sender as a thank you to me for saving his brother—I finally managed to create a stable antidote that didn’t mess with the women. I didn’t have the psychic range to mind-speak my thanks to him, but Ayana did the honors.
In the five months that followed, I settled in my new life on Khepri and lifted the ban on mental communication with others. I’d feared a relapse after Hepon’s Scelk had mind-trapped me, but that day, I’d truly conquered my fears and broken the last shred of a hold Silas still had on me. Tabitha and I grew even closer as friends. Oddly enough, I suspected it was in large part due to me saving Dread. Something had shifted in her. While she continued to be cold and distant with most people, the bitterness that had tainted her normal, happier disposition had faded away. I didn’t know what had caused it, but we all welcomed the shift. Hopefully, she was finally on the mend from her heartbreak over Rage.
This morning, all of Khepri buzzed with excitement; Ayana had given birth to a healthy little baby Xian Warrior who was given the name Phoenix. Although the Warriors couldn’t have daughters and the child always came out looking like a Xian with the golden skin, the scales, bone spikes, and overlarge eyes without any whites, their offspring could still inherit some of the mother’s traits such as facial features. Little Phoenix was the spitted image of his father except for his mother’s bud nose and cleft chin. The boy was a gorgeous baby with endless curiosity and an easy smile. Such cuteness overload should have been illegal. Needless to say Legion spent all day chasing off over-eager Warriors dying to meet the latest addition to their ranks; the first new birth in three years.
Although Xian Warriors didn’t follow any form of religion, many of the women did. And thus, Raven and Shereen became Phoenix’s godparents. It had shocked me to find out the mischievous Shereen and Ayana were best friends, having met on the shuttle from Earth to Khepri on their way to join the Vanguard. The upside of being Raven’s mate meant I got to see the newborn before everyone else. But above all, I got to see the most beautiful thing in the world: my mate with a tiny little Warrior cradled in his arms.
“Stop speaking googly gibberish to my son,” Ayana said with a frown, staring at Raven cooing at Phoenix.
“He likes it,” Raven argued, his eyes never straying from the little boy’s face.
We were all sitting on the shaggy carpet in the living area of Legion’s posh penthouse, Phoenix lying on his back, and Raven hovering over him. Between two nonsensical phrases he spoke to Phoenix, Raven would press his mouth to the baby’s bulging belly and blow on it, wresting bouts of giggles from the child.
“Speak to him normally, or I will find him a better godfather. Chaos feels a little miffed,” Ayana threatened, only half-jokingly.
Raven made a face at her, his displeasure evident. I chuckled at his pouty reaction, and even more when he glared at me, unhappy at my failure to side with him.
&nbs
p; “Your mother is a party pooper,” Raven said to Phoenix who responded with a broad, toothless grin.
“And his father is an even bigger one,” said Legion, from the entrance.
His voice startled me. I’d been so lost in watching my mate play with the boy that I hadn’t heard him return from a brief meeting he’d been forced to attend.
“We all knew that,” Raven said with a smirk, “but who have you caused grief to this time? More Warriors wanting to see your son?”
“No,” Legion said, looking smug. “I haven’t done anything yet, but I’m about to take my son back from a Warrior who has hogged him long enough for one day.”
Raven’s crestfallen expression had Ayana, Legion, and me bursting with laugher. Even little Phoenix joined in. With undisguised reluctance, Raven let Legion pick up the little boy who immediately reached with his tiny, pudgy hands for his father’s lips, pulling them as if he wanted to tear them off. Legion chuckled while pretending to bite his son’s hand.
“Let’s go, my love. Time to give them some private family time,” I mind-spoke to Raven.
“Okay,” he said. But even through the mind-link, I could feel his sadness at walking away.
Raven rose to his feet and extended a hand to help me up. I gladly took it and pressed myself against him as we gazed at the little boy.
“We’re heading out,” I said.
Ayana smiled. Although she wouldn’t have pushed us to leave, her eyes didn’t hide her gratefulness that we’d understood they would now want some intimacy. In her case, I suspected she would also want to rest a little.
“Goodbye, little prince. You be a good boy,” I said before leaning over and kissing Phoenix’s scaly forehead.
He smiled and touched my face. His consciousness brushed against mine, timid, delicate, and innocent. No clear thought came through from his young mind, just happiness so pure it melted me from the inside out.