Shadow Corps

by Justin Sloan

  HADRIAN’S SHIP: SICK BAY

  Napalm, as they had nicknamed him in the great wars against the Old Ones, bent over the girl’s bed and called out for Hadrian.

  When the old Magi stuck his head in the doorway, still in his salt-and-peppered haired form, Napalm nodded at the girl and said, “You told me to let you know when she awoke.”

  Hadrian entered, ran his hands in the air a foot above Samantha’s body, and then nodded. “She’ll need to eat, when she’s up. Send her to the showers, and—”

  “I’m no one’s babysitter,” Napalm said. “You get to teach me your way, you don’t get to be my boss.”

  Hadrian shook his head. “You have more to learn than I thought. See to it.”

  With that, the Magi was off, leaving Napalm alone with the girl. Son of a bitch.

  He went over to the small desk and sat, staring at the lamp. After a bored moment, he reached over and placed his hand on the bulb, absorbing its energy until it started flickering.

  “Don’t…” Samantha said, sitting with a hand to her head. “It’s annoying as hell.”

  He turned to her, lifted his hand, and let the energy flow back to the lamp so that the light flared steady again.

  “What are you?”

  He smirked, but just shook his head at the idea that there were still those in the universe who didn’t know about him and his kind. So many spoke the common tongue, the language adapted by Hadrian and the Elders, spread out through the allies. Her language. And yet, she didn’t even know he existed.

  “Fine.” She looked up at him, staring. “How the hell’d you do that, anyway?”

  He shrugged. “How does the human body heal on its own? Not all races have that power, you see. My people thrive on energy, and using that same energy can heal, much like you…but only if the energy is around.”

  It riled him that they had chosen her for this training, and especially for the mission to follow. He didn’t know much about it yet, but had a feeling they weren’t up here just to load bullets or charge plasma blasters.

  This was going to get dirty, and someone had brought in a teenage girl. Judging by her build, which wasn’t bad for a human, she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen.

  Clearing her throat, Samantha gave him a Can I help you? look, and he realized he must have been staring.

  “You hungry?” he asked. “I’m going that way, and don’t mind if you tag along.”

  “I could eat.”

  “Earthers always can,” he said with a chuckle as they left the room and headed down the white, sterile hall.

  She frowned in a way that reminded him how young she looked. “Are we…moving? It doesn’t feel like we’re moving.”

  “Hadrian’s powers go beyond explosions and fancy swordplay,” the man replied. “He’s set up the ship with counter-points that turn ten gravities of flight speed into the equivalent of floating along in a hot air balloon, as far as our bodies are concerned.”

  “And…that accounts for the artificial gravity?”

  “Look at you, Miss Fast Learner.” He chuckled. “Good. We need fast learners on this ship.”

  Not much of what he had told her made sense, but she knew enough to know that travel in space on any ship other than Hadrian’s would likely feel very different.

  “So, what’s your story?”

  “I don’t got one. My life isn’t a damn story, it’s a series of people dying, me getting revenge, and struggling to survive. You want to call that a story, I’d say it’s a horror story, but I sure as hell ain’t sharing it with you.”

  He blinked, totally taken aback, and liking it. “You’ve got more spark than I would’ve thought, kid.”

  “Ooh, you’re impressed. Now I can die in peace.” She smirked.

  “Sassy… Just remember, a little sass is cute. But the amount you’re putting off? It gets old real fast.”

  “I’ll be sure to jot that down in my notebook, along with all the other opinions of yours I don’t care about.”

  He laughed. “Okay, not old yet. And for the record, I don’t find you attractive.”

  “What? Where the hell did that come from?”

  He gestured back to the room. “I could tell you thought I was checking you out. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

  She frowned, then rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Maybe most women you meet think you’re checking them out. I always assume someone’s judging whether they could take me in a fight. Guess what? Answer’s usually a big, fat N.O.”

  “No?” He chuckled to himself, wondering how a girl like her could ever hope to try and hold her own in a fight against him. But he decided not to press the issue, for now. There’d be plenty of room for that later.

  They reached the mess hall and he pointed her in the right direction, then stood with arms crossed watching her find her way around.

  “Something bothering you, Napalm?” A woman’s voice came from behind him, and he turned.

  “Just observing.”

  Carma. She was a Jaxite, a planet of same-sex procreators. Napalm had spent some time studying their culture when they had been asked to interfere in the Jaxite civil war. Males against females, as often happened on that planet, as neither sex needed the other.

  She was also the sexiest woman he had ever met.

  “You don’t like the new girl?” Carma asked.

  “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?” he scoffed, certain Carma would see his point. It took all his focus not to be distracted by her curves, the way her blue and red robes wrapped about her body like silk.

  “I’m not following,” Carma said, stepping closer. Her scent was like mint with a hint of vanilla.

  “We have Kwan, another Earther—a damn Republic of Korea Marine,” Napalm explained. “A ROK Marine, they call them, and everyone on Earth knows how hard-core they are. Then you and me, so what the hell do we need this teenage drama queen up in here for?”

  “You don’t know she’s a drama queen,” Carma argued. “In fact, judging by your reaction, I’d have to argue that the drama queen’s standing right next to me.”

  “Go screw yourself,” he replied. “I hear your kind specialize in that.”

  She turned her violet eyes on him and he felt his blood rushing to his cheeks. Quickly, he turned to walk off.

  “Don’t be ashamed,” she called after him.

  He stopped and glared back. “Of what?”

  She smirked and let her eyes drop to his crotch for a moment. “Most male species have a similar response to my presence. I’m not offended, really. More… flattered.”

  “Great, you’re welcome for the compliment.” He rolled his fiery eyes and walked off, hoping to run into Hadrian.

  After a few minutes, he found him on the space deck. Hadrian stood in his ceremonial robes, looking like the deformed man who Napalm assumed most closely resembled his true form. Hadrian shifted form often, and it could be annoying.

  Taking a spot next to him at the window, the two watched as a long, silver transport ship began to dock on their ship’s landing pad.

  “What’s up with the little girl?” Napalm asked.

  “It’s good to see you already questioning my decisions, Areck.”

  Napalm turned to face him, the scars on his face creasing with his amused smile.

  “Napalm, sir. That name’s no longer part of me.”

  “Ah, true soldier through and through.” Hadrian nodded, eyeing him like a father would. “That’s why you were appealing to the cause.”

  “And the girl?”

  Hadrian laughed. “Trust me, you’ll be thanking her for saving your life by the time this is all over with.”

  Napalm frowned, wanting to argue that point, but not wanting to give more offense than he already had by asking. The light flickered around him, and Hadrian raised an eyebrow.

  “My choice unsettles you so?” Hadrian asked.

  The frustration was boiling over. “These can’t be your choices! You
’ve brought the she-bot seductress here and a little girl. If these are your choices, we’re doomed. The universe is doomed!”

  “You’ll have to learn to control your temper, at some point.”

  Napalm hung his head, still seething. “Yes, I know. Forgive me.”

  “Don’t forget, I also brought you, Kwan, and… this one.” He gestured to the space ship docking outside the window.

  “And who is that?”

  “You’ll see soon enough. The point is, the five of you will be the keys to our survival. I would say trust me, but you really have no choice in the matter.”

  Napalm nodded, hands folded behind his back, and watched as the doors to the silver transport ship opened. His heart clenched as he caught sight of the emerging passenger, and he took a step back.

  “A… Dexolitiatite!”

  “Relax,” Hadrian said. “This one’s on our side.”

  3

  HADRIAN’S SHIP: THE MESS HALL

  Samantha had just found herself a plate of stir-fried vegetables and what looked like chicken, pleased to see they had such food in this place. She was still pretty clueless about what exactly was happening, but was happy to put something in her belly.

  The mess hall wasn’t all that different from what she had seen in the cafeteria in her school, before the Syndicate alien forces had invaded.

  It had been a weird time back then, she thought to herself as she found a table and began to eat. When you’re ten and told there’s an alien invasion coming in two years, you live a very different lifestyle. Everyone had been on a big kick of saying they were all going to die. It had scared the hell out of her and her friends, but seemed to give some of the other kids an excuse to just give up. Lots of her friends even stopped going to school, and their parents didn’t seem to care.

  But Samantha stayed busy, teaching herself how to fight and watching survival videos on the global net. Then, when it really happened, the others all fell apart, but not her.

  Being assigned to the squad with Dan had given her a chance to use what she had learned. And she grew up on that squad, from a young girl to the soldier she was now.

  But Dan had met her when she was only twelve, and he had a hard time seeing her as anything other than that little girl.

  That had been one strike against her.

  Now she was here, somewhere else in the universe… far away from home. Her chances of getting anywhere with Dan were looking slimmer by the minute.

  A bite of the chicken made her feel better though, because it was the best damn chicken she had ever had. Her grandmother had raised her after her mom went to join the Marines, and while that had stung, her grandmother had always made this amazing butter chicken with lemon and basil. This chicken brought Samantha back to those days, but to be honest, as good a cook as her grandmother was, this food was on a whole new level.

  Her bench shook slightly as someone sat down at the other end of the table. Samantha looked up to see a grizzled soldier wearing all black, special ops clothes. The patch with his name said Kwan, and she guessed he was from the Chinese or Korean military, or maybe global command.

  A glance down at her LRR cammies made her feel a little less than inadequate. But that wasn’t fair, she told herself. Sure, she was still only sixteen and not exactly classical-military trained, but she’d killed more Syndicate, and people, for that matter, than most grown soldiers.

  Kwan nodded once to her and returned to his meal.

  Embarrassed to have been caught staring, she looked straight ahead, took another bite, and then nearly choked.

  The doors had just opened, and in walked death itself. The thing wore long black robes that trailed behind it, floating in a wind that didn’t exist. A hood covered its head so that all she could see inside was darkness, even in the harsh lighting of the mess hall.

  “Got ourselves a Dexolitiatite, it’d seem,” a woman said, sliding into the booth across from Samantha and blocking her view. “That, or we’re under siege.”

  Samantha’s shock at the black-robed figure switched to awkwardness at the sight of the woman next to her. She was beautiful, and in her silken robes, she couldn’t imagine any man not looking at her without desire. And then they would look at Samantha, comparisons would be made, and Sam would be found wanting.

  Samantha adjusted her sitting position, trying to straighten her posture. The woman’s violet eyes seemed to see right through her efforts at composure. “A, um, what?”

  “Hadrian already told me about him,” the woman replied. “Dex, for short. Their type don’t really have names, but that’s what Hadrian called him since it’s easier to refer to him. I go by Carma.”

  “Samantha.”

  Carma nodded as if she already knew that, then leaned in, revealing way too much cleavage in the process. “I’ll tell you a secret, Samantha. Would you like that?”

  She wasn’t sure she would, but felt compelled to nod.

  “The rest of them, me included, we’ve got nothing on you.”

  Frowning at that, Sam shook her head. “I don’t buy that for a sec.”

  Carma laughed. “You’ll see. I mean, sure, you could fail. You could be killed in the first five minutes. But I sense things about people, and from what I can tell, you’re going to blow us all out of the water.”

  “Hadrian came calling,” Samantha protested. “That’s all I know.”

  “Hadrian beckoned all of us, dear.” Carma turned to watch Dex glide across the floor. “And I imagine he knows what he’s doing.”

  Carma turned back to stare at her, and Samantha was relieved when the doors opened and Hadrian walked in. As he walked, his form changed. First he was the man he had been with Samantha, then the shape of a deformed gentleman. Moving deeper into the mess hall, he shifted to a being of mostly light, then a beautiful woman.

  With his final step, he settled into a mixture of them all, and seemed to glow faintly.

  The others turned to him, waiting patiently as he stood at the front of the room where the ceiling rose to form a dome.

  “You’re all wondering what this is,” Hadrian announced. With a grand gesture to the dome, the lights went out and forms appeared, shining above him like little lights.

  No, not lights, Samantha realized—planets. Hadrian walked beneath them and then pointed to a cluster. “We’re here, in what Earth won’t discover for another fifty years or so…if Earth is still around. The rest of you will know this area as Entono Fos Prime, but I call it home.”

  “We’re going to your planet?” Carma asked, voice hushed with excitement.

  Hadrian slowly shook his head. “That would be… quite impossible. But we are going to the next planet over, where I and several others have agreed to train you. To teach you so that you will have a chance of defending our universe against… this.” He pointed back up at the dome, and where there had been planets, images flashed. Massive spaceships with lasers firing, others exploding. Giant mechs swooping down on planets, aliens bursting out of egg-shaped metallic transports. And fierce, black eyes on creatures of almost pure white, staring at them.

  With a wave of his hand, Hadrian cast aside the images and the lights came back on.

  “The hell was that?” Samantha gasped. Too many of those images resembled the ones she had in her dreams, the ones that had started back in her first year of fighting the Syndicate. It seemed so long ago.

  “What you just saw, everyone,” Hadrian walked out among them now, “was what you will be going up against. Each of your planets—well, almost each,” he corrected with a glance toward Dex, “is defending itself in some way as we speak. I know most of you want to be there on your own planets, helping to win the war. Well, let me assure you that if we don’t succeed up here, your worlds will never stand a chance. The enemy is bigger, badder, and more terrifying than you could ever imagine. Believe me, I know from experience.”

  A deep sorrow fell over him, and for a moment images appeared again on the dome. Blurry figures, running, mo
uths open in silent screams. An explosion. Nothing left.

  The woman across from Samantha leaned in and whispered, “Dex is a defector.”

  Sam shot her a curious look.

  “His whole planet fights for the other side, except for him,” the woman continued. “If they ever found him, woo-wee… let’s just say…it’d be bad.”

  Samantha’s brow furrowed. “Wouldn’t it be bad for any of us if we defected and were caught?”

  The woman thought about that, then shrugged. “True. You’re a smart one.”

  Hadrian lifted his head again, and silence returned, everyone waiting for his next words.

  “I have only one question for you all at this point. There’s no time to waste. You’re already here, so it’s a bit late, but… Do you accept? Will you stand with the others in this room, stand against the tyrannical forces that mean to destroy everything we hold dear?”

  Samantha was the first to stand. “Hell yes.”

  The others looked at her as she stood tall, hands at her side. She was ready for this. As far as she was concerned, this was what she was born for.

  Hadrian glanced around the room, and the rest followed one at a time, declaring their commitment in their own languages. It amazed Samantha how far ahead the rest of the universe was compared to Earth.

  When everyone had voiced their commitment, Hadrian smiled and nodded. “Then we have chosen wisely. The ship will be leaving the gate shortly, where we will touch down on…”

  His words trailed off as his eyes moved to the massive window that took up one side of the mess hall. A bright light, purple and turquoise, was forming between five metallic objects. Suddenly the light shot out, illuminating the entire area between the points. Pure darkness formed in its center, and then something started to appear.

  “Everyone, to their rooms, the rest, to your battlestations!” Hadrian shouted. “We’ve waited too long as it is.”

  They all stood and began to move, but not before Samantha caught another glimpse of the thing coming through the gate. First came long, pointed objects that could have been rock or old bronze, followed by a massive shape. Her breath caught as she realized they were horns, and the shape a head. Its yellow eyes glowed brightly, cut with black slits along the middle, and as it emerged from the gate, its mouth opened to reveal rows upon rows of sharp teeth.