Citation Series 1: Naero's War: The Annexation War

by Mason Elliott

  Naero flipped end-over-end and used the momentum to hurl a stun dagger into another foe. The shock charge went off and the assassin stiffened and floated.

  A Marine cut loose with his assault rifle and cut the stunned female assassin into two bloody pieces.

  Right before the shooter got knifed in the back from behind, by another Hevangian who just phazed in.

  The deadly shokkog point jutted out of the dying Marine corporal’s broad chest.

  The corporal blinked once at the poison blazing through him.

  Then his face froze in death.

  Naero, Hayden, and his remaining Marines found themselves outnumbered and fighting for their very lives in that tight hold.

  She lost sight of Admiral Sandusky.

  Then she felt the ship preparing to go into jump.

  If they left that sector–and rendezvoused at some enemy staging area–all of them were good as dead.

  Naero pushed off the hull again and muscled her way forward with raw strength. She kept spinning, kicking, and punching foes out of her way. She used elbows and knees to crush and shatter bones.

  On her port side, stood the compartment containing the small ship’s power core.

  On her starboard side, stood the compartment containing the jump drive.

  Naero’s hands flashed.

  Every explosive device she had left hit that damn jump drive.

  She deflected off the ceiling and sped back out of the way as her devices cooked off.

  She dragged two Marines back with her, one of them Hayden.

  The stolen courier lurched into jump, just as its jump drive exploded. The air all around them went blinding, white-hot, filled with burning fragments and plasma.

  Not to mention the shock waves of the blast.

  32

  The jump drive blast killed or wounded everyone in the hold. No one escaped damage or injury, including Naero.

  Shrapnel sprayed everywhere.

  Naero winced in agony from several serious burn and shrapnel wounds, distributed across her body.

  Spacer smartblood and her nanosuit strained to stop the bleeding and close off the damage.

  The hull of the courier struggled to seal itself against the many punctures and ruptures patterned out from the shattered jump drive.

  The power core next to it was damaged also, but held together for the time being. Emergency shielding prevented the deadly radiation and energy core forces from cooking off completely.

  At least for now.

  Dead and wounded floated and bounced around everywhere within the hold.

  Faces and eyes stared, milked over pale in death. Some bodies had faces and entire heads ripped or burned off, along with other body parts.

  Blood, entrails, and other bodily fluids and contents boiled around freely from the corpses and the seriously wounded.

  Like her, any of the others who survived–whether friend or foe–struggled just to twitch or even move, after the intense explosion.

  Naero caught her breath, despite painful damage to her right chest and one lung. Her left leg felt numb.

  Something else was wrong with the ship. She could tell. The superstructure groaned and screamed as if gigantic hands or claws were attempting to tear it apart like a loaf of bread.

  Then she knew, as if things weren’t bad enough.

  The explosion right at the point of jump had caused a misjump—extremely dangerous.

  The small courier careened out of control, spinning and smashing its way through jump space.

  They could be tossed out anywhere, in any direction, within several parsecs.

  The could come out on either side of the frontline of the war.

  Or they could be torn apart and obliterated. Just random, scorched debris, spitting out from jump into normal space.

  They could emerge any second, anywhere at random in the nearby vicinity, or they could tumble through jump space for days out of control, while the stress forces on their ship only increased.

  She covered her mouth with both hands suddenly.

  Admiral Sandusky floated right below her. Dead.

  A severed Hevangian arm still clutched a bloody shokkog, the poison dagger had stabbed into the shredded rescue bag several times. The bag and everything nearby had also been shredded and torn apart, by the explosion she had caused.

  At least Sandusky had been stunned before he died.

  It was a wonder any of them still lived.

  Somehow, in her dazed state, Naero stumbled upon Leftenant Hayden, by dumb luck.

  He looked all right, overall. Nothing missing, no major wounds. Perhaps his shield had held up to the blast.

  But his armored helmet was cracked and seriously deformed.

  Through his splintered visor, Naero could see a head wound and possible concussion, blood had streamed down over his face. She hit him up with some advanced healing meds that worked well in conjunction with Spacer smartblood.

  His flickering suit signs said that he was still alive and with strong vitals, just knocked out. Most likely from being slammed into the hull of the hold by the explosion.

  Any Hevangian she came to got two in the chest and one in the head.

  Just to be sure–Naero wasn’t taking any chances.

  Especially, not in her reduced condition.

  She kept moving, staggering, bouncing around, trying to anchor herself, ignoring her own wounds and agony as she did so. She checked one floating body after the next.

  She located five other surviving Marines, and did her best to stabilize and secure them beside their leader.

  Who now groaned and tossed his head, blinking in pain.

  The last Marine she worked on was in bad shape.

  A very young Marine, with short green hair and dark eyes. He smiled weakly at her, and tried to make some smartass comment. Naero did her best to help him, but she was close to passing out by that time herself.

  He took hold of her left hand and would not let go.

  She finally had to pull her hand away to help him.

  His wounds were simply too many and too severe.

  Naero couldn’t close them all off fast enough.

  The poor guy bled to death in her very hands, while she struggled both to save him, and stay conscious herself.

  Haisha. Damn it!

  Naero sobbed and drifted to one side, too dizzy to get back up.

  She passed out for a bit–hard to tell for how long.

  She wasn’t sure.

  When her eyes flickered open again, they did so to pain.

  Leftenant Hayden yanked a big chunk of nasty-looking shrapnel out of her left thigh.

  It hurt like blazes.

  Her leg wound instantly bubbled and boiled with blood.

  Hayden sealed it off and closed the wound quickly and expertly.

  Naero was impressed, despite the pain that made her want to punch him.

  Zhen couldn’t have done a better job.

  He only fixed one other wound on her upper right arm. He told her the rest had stopped bleeding, and should be all right, given time. He gave her a dose of the same meds she’d hit him up with.

  The he put two enemy machine pistols in her hands and propped her up, adjacent to the far hatch.

  The hatch that led to the courier’s small bridge. Most likely one or two chairs, for either a single pilot, or a pilot and co-pilot.

  Naero flopped her aching head to one side and stared at Hayden, lifting the pistols weakly.

  She could hardly hold them up, let alone hit anything.

  “What are these for?” she asked.

  Hayden reached back over and activated her backup personal shield.

  “Think about it.” He jerked a thumb back. “Someone might be piloting this ship, still. Keep an eye on that hatch. Blast the living shit out of anyone who comes through it. I have to check on the others, but it looks like you’ve stabilized them all just fine.”

  Naero swallowed hard.

  “I…I lost the ki
d…with the green hair.”

  “Private First Class Donovan? Yeah. I saw that, N. Not your fault.”

  She wiped her face. “Doesn’t feel like not my fault. I caused the jump drive to go off.”

  “And a good thing you did. All of us would be captured and looking forward to Hevangian torture teams, or simply shot in the head by now. You did the right thing.”

  Naero smiled, sensing a little of her strength returning.

  Hayden double-checked his people and their wounds.

  A booted foot out of nowhere kicked him right in the face, stunning him.

  The Hevangian leader phazed in right between them.

  Naero tried to raise her pistols.

  Too slow.

  The leader booted her in the chest and smashed her against the hull.

  She gasped for air and dropped both guns.

  The Hevangian Leader grinned, his face oozing with phaze disease over his skull bones. Terrible scars crisscrossing his face beneath that.

  He snarled and gloated at the both of them.

  “You stinking, bloody spacks! You think yourselves so cunning and resourceful. Always messing things up. Always causing mayhem!”

  He drew his shokkog, the poison just streaming off the blade in rivulets.

  “Now we have time to play. Poison for the good leftenant–my shokkog shoved through his eyes and into his brain. Death to your helpless wounded, that goes without saying. But you…I have not had a pretty spack whore like you to toy with, my dear. Not for a very long while.”

  He glared down at her with eager, unbridled lust.

  “I’m going to use your own blades on you, my dear. I’m going to enjoy slowly, slowly, slowly cutting…and slicing…and sawing you in half…length-wise. From your gash all the way up to your pretty white throat. Now, how does that sound?”

  “Screw that…and you,” Naero told him.

  Hayden tried to lunge forward.

  The leader booted him to one side, leaned over him, and raised the poison dagger to stab forward.

  With her last remaining strength, Naero plucked up her machine pistols where they fell and jammed them up into the leader’s buttocks from behind and below.

  She pulled both triggers, aiming the muzzles of both blasting guns up into the leader’s jerking body cavity.

  The exploding rounds caused the Hevangians torso to jiggle obscenely and then disintegrate. His head, neck, and part of one shoulder flopped gory to one side.

  She completely gutted him, with gunfire.

  Naero fell back, completely spent.

  Hayden staggered to his feet, grabbed a stray weapon, and went to secure the rest of the ship before they did anything else.

  He returned shortly. “Good, the leader was the last of them.”

  Except for the cargo hold, and an extremely small crew cabin, the courier did not have many amenities. It could carry passengers in the hold, but basically it was a one or two person ship at best.

  They still had no way of knowing how long they would be stuck in jump space.

  They rested, floating around with the wounded and the dead.

  “Mist shower,” Naero finally insisted, pulling herself up and forward. “We can’t do much else until we come out of jump and see where we’re at. We don’t have gravitics, but all the other systems are holding steady. So I’m going to bathe. And I will kill anyone who tries to stop me.”

  Hayden raised both hands, and then brought them to his aching skull.

  “Go right ahead. I’m going to float right here and pass out with my guys.”

  He proceeded to do so.

  The ship kept shaking and jerking around without warning, battered within jump space.

  Naero floated against and patted the hull.

  “Just hold together, baby. Just keep it together until we make it out.”

  Naero stripped down and slipped into the tiniest mist showers she had ever seen on any ship.

  She was small, and even she had to slip in sideways and squeeze in.

  Did they really recruit pygmies to be courier pilots and crew? It boggled the mind.

  She collapsed on the floor and let the mist wash and wave over her in gentle, cleansing pulses.

  So good. So relaxing.

  She curled up in a tight ball and drifted off again on the mist shower floor.

  She woke when the ship hit a patch of terrible jump space turbulence.

  It knocked the ship around violently.

  Naero smashed into first the ceiling of the mist shower, and then back down into the floor.

  She floated, gasped, and bled anew, from fresh wounds and old wounds that re-opened, including the serious gash on her thigh.

  She started to black out.

  Naero feared she might bleed to death, naked on the mist shower floor, her lifeblood slowly seeping and running down the drain.

  And she was too weak to stop it.

  A voice murmured and call to her through a dizzy haze.

  Strong hands pulled her out.

  Someone weakly struggled to tend her wounds again.

  Then she felt stout arms curl around her protectively.

  Both of them passed out, floating above the floor, but wedged under the tiny sleeping panel, holding one another.

  *

  Naero came to, warm and safe.

  Her head still hurt and her body ached in several places, but as long as she didn’t attempt to move or even blink her eyelashes, for the moment, she felt all right.

  Then the ship lurched, groaned, and jerked around again in jump space, causing her eyes to pop open wide in fresh, sharp, stabbing pain.

  She finally realized that she lay curled up in Leftenant Hayden’s powerful arms, pulled close to his broad, bare chest.

  When she turned her ear, she could easily hear his mighty heart thundering. He breathed at peace.

  Apparently he had stripped down–to tend to several of his own shrapnel wounds on his torso, shoulders, and arms–while she was busy in the shower. He had clearly removed several bloody pieces of shrapnel from those various wounds. The shrapnel from the blast had penetrated even his combat armor.

  Yet he had new wounds to his head, and the right side of his face was bruised and swollen. Blood had streamed down over his eyes again.

  When the ship hit that patch of jump space turbulence, Hayden must have been tossed about and re-injured as well, just as she was.

  When he called to her, and she did not answer, he came and pulled her out, and closed her wounds off again. He barely finished doing so, before they both passed out together.

  Haisha, he was in fact a very handsome young man, barely three or four years older than herself. And a fine warrior, whom she greatly respected.

  She could do much worse than wake up naked in his arms.

  He had most likely saved her life–again–by not letting her bleed to death as she lay helpless, even though he was injured again himself.

  She got up and got some stuff to clean the blood off him and check his wounds, although his breathing and heart rate all seemed fine.

  Most Spacers simply needed time to rest and let their bodies heal, as rapidly as they did.

  But maybe she should put some clothes back on, before he woke up.

  Yeah, that was probably a great idea.

  But before she did so, she could not help leaning over him and caressing his chiseled face with the light touch of her fingertips.

  She could not resist a sudden, wicked urge to press her lips against his.

  And of course at that moment, the ship jerked violently again, and Hayden’s eyes flashed open in startled surprise.

  Naero pulled back slightly and smiled. She felt no shame.

  Slight embarrassment, perhaps, but no shame.

  Hayden seemed more embarrassed that she did.

  “Uh…Naero? Are you all right? I hit my head and you got hurt in the shower. I stopped your bleeding again, before I blacked out.”

  Naero giggled and snuggled
down with him again, rubbing her cheek and her long dark hair against his chest.

  “You saved me, Jeremiah. You saved my life again, and we woke up, holding each other close. I like that…you holding me. It’s very nice. I don’t have a problem with it. In fact, I say let’s do it some more.”

  She tried to pull his arms around her again.

  But this time he resisted, and actually pulled away from her.

  “I’m sorry, Naero. You don’t understand. I can’t do that.”

  Naero grinned. “We haven’t done anything…yet.”

  “And we’re not going to.”

  Hayden backed away and held up his hands, looking very nervous. The cramped quarters of the miniscule cabin made it all super awkward.

  In the end, Hayden backed down the hall like a crab.

  Naero continued to smile and slowly came toward him, not unlike a female panther, stalking her prey.

  “You know, a little snuggling might not be so bad?”

  She saw Hayden swallow hard, considering all of it for a split instant.

  Then he shook his head, violently in denial.

  “Naero…I’m sorry–I’m married. I have a wife. A little boy, and a baby girl on the way. I…can’t.”

  Naero froze.

  Dammit. Married. Haisha! Just her luck.

  A great guy, and he was already taken.

  Crap. Crap. Crap!

  She sat back, clearly disappointed.

  Naero crossed arms and legs in front of her, and let her long dark, shimmering hair cascade and cloak over herself.

  “I’m sorry too, Jeremiah. Honestly. I didn’t know. Now I feel like a total idiot.”

  He sighed heavily and then nodded. “Don’t. It’s okay. It’s not like it came up. We passed out and woke up together…at a very awkward time. Both of us were…hurt and vulnerable. We’re both human.”

  He sighed heavily in relief once more, failing to notice that Naero was doing her best not to pout like a frustrated child.

  He sighed with relief again, rubbing his face. “I’m just glad we stopped, and that you understand. Nothing against you, Naero. In fact, you are…extremely beautiful.”

  Yeah, for all the good that did her.

  “But I love my wife and my kids, and I…I–”

  Of course he did. Haisha. Please…please just shut up.