by Justin Sloan
“Though with the numbers you say they have, that might not matter,” Carma pointed out.
“Very true.” He used the wall to help him as he knelt, feeling around the ground. “We enter here.”
Samantha frowned, wondering what he meant, but a moment later she found out. He lifted his hand, then began to push down as if there were an obstacle in his way. Energy waves shot out, pulsating around the rock beneath him. And then the rocks were being ground away, leaving a large hole in the floor. As the rocks fell below, Hadrian latched onto them with his powers and then lowered them gently so as to not make too much noise.
“Neat trick,” Carma teased. “Ever use it to make holes in the women’s shower area? I thought I saw that eye of yours peeking in once…”
Hadrian turned to her with his one good eye—a part of his natural form—and just shook his head.
It almost made Samantha laugh, in spite of their surroundings. She stifled it, however, and simply took joy in the way Carma’s cheeks were blushing so obviously, even in the dark.
“Get in there, find out the best way to release them, and let’s get to it,” Hadrian said, addressing Carma. “Move fast, no questions.”
She gave him a confused look, but then lowered herself down and swung to safety. As Samantha and the others followed, shooting sounded from somewhere not far off. The other group must have been discovered.
“Go!” Hadrian commanded.
But Carma was staring at him, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed like she was pissed. Samantha did a double take. Yup, totally pissed.
“These are men,” she stated.
“Very observant,” Hadrian replied.
“Men from my planet are not exactly the same as my people, as you led me to believe. I didn’t sign on to come here and rescue men. Need I remind you that we’re at war with these bastards?”
Hadrian breathed out heavily from his nose, clearly agitated at this. “They are being drained of their energy, their powers, and being used to manipulate the war in favor of the Great Deceivers. Even if these weren’t your people—which they are, your wars be damned—you would have an obligation to do exactly as I say and end this.”
Carma opened her mouth, closed it, licked her lips, and then grumbled.
“That’s your response?” Hadrian asked. “We all have to deal with situations here, as part of this team. If this is a problem for you, recognize it, woman up, and get the job done.”
Again fury flashed across Carma’s face, but this time she spun on her heels and stomped over to the first man. She quickly assessed the situation, then sighed.
“I’ll need some time. If we just yank them out, it could be fatal.”
“Time isn’t something we have a lot of,” Ferder said from the doorway. “A group of Scrapulent is headed here right now, along with several fighters that seem to be wearing heavy body armor. You know if they’re wearing heavy armor, they certainly have heavy weaponry too.”
“Well, the other group likely needs us to pull some heat off of them anyway,” Samantha said, checking her blaster rifle and then placing the butt end at her shoulder. She kept the barrel aimed down, but ready to be lifted. “Let’s kill us some mind-intruding sons of bitches.”
She was the first to move for the door, sending a series of blasts at the enemy. As they’d expected, the heavy armor-wearing ones took the lead, shields deflecting the blasts. The rest took up positions behind them, returning fire instantly, while the Scrapulent stepped back, focusing their attention on their comrades.
“How many of these guys are only fighting for the enemy because their minds are being messed with?” Samantha asked between blasts.
“Safe to say a good percentage of them,” Hadrian replied, motioning Ferder over to Samantha’s side to help lay down fire. “But right now they’re trying to kill you. Switch to stun mode if you want. Or just blow the place up. It’s harsh, but it’s your life or theirs.”
Samantha switched her gun to stun mode. It wasn’t that she couldn’t stomach killing—she had certainly done her fair share—but that didn’t mean she needed to do any more than was necessary for the mission.
Right now they just needed to rescue the groups they were fighting to get out of there, and then flee like crazy.
Samantha glanced over her shoulder to see that Carma had freed the first man, and was leaning him gently against a wall. The care with which she did this made Samantha wonder if the woman wasn’t as anti-men as she put on. She remembered the strange incident with the Acome, when she had caught Carma with a man—and a few other people. Yep, definitely no hating there.
As Samantha was about to let loose with another round of shots, one of the men’s eyes snapped back to normal. He paused for a moment, then lunged for Carma.
Hadrian was there in an instant, slamming the man back with a force that shook the wall.
“She’s not the enemy here!” Hadrian pulled the man forward and pointed at Carma. “If not for her, you all would be stuck here, drained until you have nothing left. Do you understand?”
The man’s eyes were wild, dancing between Hadrian and Carma, but then he nodded and relaxed.
He started going on about images. They had made him see things, as if it were the women from his world that were doing this, but now that his mind was clearing, he knew it wasn’t true. More mind manipulation.
“We’ll be out of here soon enough,” Hadrian stated, helping the man back down to where he had been sitting, leaning against the wall. “This can all be discussed further once I have you on my ship and we’re on our way to getting you to safety.”
“We—we’re going home?” the man asked.
Hadrian nodded, which sent a surge of excitement through Samantha. Seeing Carma’s home was something she had always thought sounded like an exotic adventure. Ignoring the whole civil war between the sexes, of course.
More shooting sounded outside, followed by the grinding of mechs moving across the stone floor and a massive amount of firepower being unleashed.
We’re right outside, Dex communicated. Could use help.
“Damn,” Samantha shouted as she moved for the door. “Hadrian, you’ve got to get the jump point set up here. We’ll get the others here, deal?”
He nodded. “I’ll work fast. You do the same.”
She nodded and waved for Ferder and the others to join, and then they were charging out. Samantha saw the battle as a prime opportunity to practice using whatever powers and upgrades they had in their arsenals.
She ran along a wall, shooting at the back of a line of mechs in a massive, hanger-style room. They were all laying down fire on a group at the far side, which she assumed to be her friends.
Suddenly, part of the wall moved!
With it came a piercing pain in her side, and as she fell she was jerked back by something still clinging to her. No, not clinging to her, she realized, actually in her. A robotic snake tail had punctured her, and she now saw the upper body of a nude, muscular woman attached to the snake in a way that, oddly, reminded her of a mermaid. Not the nice, fun mermaids, but the kind Samantha had loved to draw as a child—evil, as any half-fish half-human was likely to be.
Samantha aimed at the woman and prepared to fire, but her finger wouldn’t move. Dex was slashing through shields, moving to reach her side, and Ferder was opening fire, not having yet seen Samantha, but she felt it all vanish in a blur. Her mind was like goo, sloshing around, and the woman’s face was all she could see—smiling evilly with broken jewels where her eyes should be. Then suddenly she had morphed into an image of beauty, and Samantha had a feeling she was only seeing what the woman wanted her to see.
“Ah, Samantha…” the woman said, moving around her seductively. The fighting nearby vanished, replaced with silk sheets of various colors that hung down around them and blew with a gentle breeze. “If you only knew how hard we’ve been searching for you, and here you are. A gift, presented at my doorstep. Your father misses you so much. Why don’t you
join us? Leave those others behind, those confused, tortured souls. They have it all wrong, you see. With us you’d be put above all else, praised for the beautiful specimen that you are.”
She moved close to Samantha, smiling and caressing her cheek, pressing her body against her in a way that, had she been a boy or into females, might have been something more than it was. For a moment, Samantha felt the temptation to leave it all behind—all the smoke and blood and dying.
And then there was the small part of her mind that was holding out, that insisted this woman was a horrific, half-mechanical snake, and that they were in the heat of battle.
Her friends needed her. She had to break out of this.
Her body would not respond to her commands, so her mind was her only weapon. Lucky for her, that wasn’t a problem. Latching onto the direction of where she had last seen the far wall, though now it was only flowing curtains, she tried to grab it with her mind and pull herself toward it.
A wrenching pain shot through her body. For a moment she was back in the battle, blasters shooting red and green in every direction, glimpses of her friends through the smoke, battling huge mechs.
Then it was all gone again and the woman was there, furious purple eyes glaring at her. “You can’t escape me! You worthless piece of—”
Again she pulled, harder this time, latching her mental magic onto the wall, the ceiling, the floor, even the mechs she had just spotted as her energy took hold. The pain was an unthinkable tearing that left her breathless as she collapsed on the floor and blood spewed from her side.
Someone was shouting her name, and then Ferder was there, shooting at the snake woman. Her tail slammed the gun from his hands and then she was on him, blaring light shining from the shards in her eyes and directly into Ferder’s face. He jerked backward, screaming. Another mind trick, Samantha figured. Fighting through her pain and lack of energy, Samantha drew her sword and lunged, plunging it into the tail so that it sent electricity surging through the lady.
She watched as the creature twisted and smoked, and then Dex was there, landing past three mechs as they exploded behind him, charging the snake lady.
She hissed at them, glanced at Samantha one last time as if debating her next move, and then retreated as Napalm and the others came hurrying over.
“Samantha, oh my…” Napalm put a hand to his mouth.
Kwan didn’t hesitate, scooping her up into his arms and running towards the jump Hadrian had set up. She was vaguely aware of Hadrian shouting for them, that it was time. Carma was pulling a screaming Ferder after them, though she wasn’t sure what had happened to him.
Her body was warm, tingling. Every part of her screamed out, her side starting to go numb. Then Hadrian was there, and he was guiding the purple-skinned Shadow Worlds people through the jump point, then the men of Carma’s people, and then her and Kwan while the others continued to shoot.
The last thing she heard before disappearing through the jump point was, “Get out of here, I’m going to send this place to hell!” And then Napalm was the only one there, the rest charging after her as the whole place shook.
The sound of an explosion started, but then Samantha was gone. Darkness surrounded her. Cold. A gasp for air… and then she was lying on the floor of the jump chamber, Dex with his robes wrapped around her while Hadrian prepared to destroy the gate.
Napalm rolled out through the gate to join them, but something was clutched to him. Dex was up in a flash, his sword stabbing through the torso of a Scrapulent. He separated it from the spider body that continued moving on its own until Agathe and Voira had blasted it full of holes.
The Scrapulent man’s torso reached for Hadrian, but he reached down and broke its neck before tossing it back into the gate. He made sweeping hand gestures and muttered foreign words under his breath, ancient words that the translators couldn’t comprehend, and then the gate was gone.
It took a moment for the shock to clear, and then Ferder was screaming. He was on his knees, clutching his eyes.
“I can’t see, I can’t see!” he said between screams.
“Dex!” Hadrian shouted, motioning for Ferder.
Dex swept in and wrapped the Eliolation in his cloak, then pulled him down the hallways to bring him to the medical bay. Samantha watched him go, the realization that Ferder might have actually been blinded hitting her like a boot to the face. So many times they had gone in guns blazing, and left unscathed. They had been lucky so far.
She looked at the others there—the men from Carma’s people, lacking in energy and lying or sitting on the floor, the purple shadow people against a wall, yellow eyes confused. She turned to her Shadow Corps team. Half were looking at her and Hadrian for the next move, the others staring after Dex and Ferder, worry creasing their foreheads.
“Everyone, follow me,” Hadrian said, limping toward the doorway. “I will debrief everyone in the mess hall, where we’ll get you fed, then those of you who need it off to sickbay.”
Samantha started to move, then stumbled as the pain shot through her side again. Napalm was there a moment later to help her up. Others helped those who needed it, and soon they were all working their way out to the mess hall.
They were a sorry bunch, Samantha thought. But it didn’t discourage her. If anything, the thought made her even more determined.
Whoever that snake lady was, and all those other S.O.Bs who had fired on her, she was going to track them down and see that they got what was coming to them.
For now, she just needed to keep the pressure on her wound and… oh, damn, the room was spinning.
“Hadrian,” Napalm was calling out, though it was all a blur and his voice sounded muffled. “I’m getting Samantha to sickbay too. She’s in bad shape.”
That was the last thing she heard before the pain shot through her and she faded out of consciousness.
14
The Noraldian
The fact that Samantha had to be rushed to the med bay was disconcerting for Hadrian, but he couldn’t let it show. He had to keep up a strong face, and control his changing forms around these outsiders, so as not to scare them off. Since he had been in his natural form—an elderly man with scarring on one side of his face—he stayed like that as he stood before them.
“You all must be wondering what has happened,” he started. “To understand that, I must first ask you how you ended up there, and where there was, exactly.”
One of the purple-skinned people from the Shadow Worlds grunted and leaned forward. “How is it you don’t know?”
Hadrian smiled at that. “We used jump points to reach you, after following back an operative on the planet Earth. You are familiar with the Solar system?”
Most of them nodded.
“It seems the Scrapulent, led by Saraleigh, had set up a jump point to Earth with the help of Karstrack, now dead. It was a simple mind manipulation game. While humans are generally immune to this, unless in direct contact with a Scrapulent, the Scrapulent powers were enhanced by the energy being sucked away from you,” he motioned to the men of Carma’s planet, then turned back to the purple-skinned group. “But what you Shadows were doing there, I have no idea.”
The Shadow who had spoken nodded his head. “The pieces of the puzzle seem to fit well, then. You say you have no idea, but I see a glimmer in your eyes, and I think you have a guess. That guess is most likely correct. Shadows have been pillaging ships and using tech to create new machines for many years. It only stands that an outside force would want such weapons, and try to enslave us to get them.”
“So you were helping to make these massive mechs and ships we saw? These space stations and technological monsters?”
“Correct.”
“How did they get to you?” Hadrian asked. “The Shadows are known to be quite… elusive.”
“Unless one of our own betrays us,” the Shadow replied. “It seems Captain Praks is no longer in league with the Shadows, but has gone over to the side of the Old Gods.”
> “The Old Gods?” Voira asked, who was sitting with the rest of the Shadow Corps at a rear table.
“What their people have termed the Great Deceivers,” Hadrian explained. “Their name varies greatly across the universe.” Turning back to the Shadow, he found his mouth dry as he thought about what the man had just said. “You’re sure it was Captain Praks?”
The Shadow simply nodded.
When Hadrian glanced over at Voira, he saw that she was frowning.
“Even I’ve heard of him,” she admitted.
“He was one of ours,” one of the men from Carma’s world said, glancing back at Carma. “Actually, the women of our people have yet to accept this, but he left long ago.”
“His actions against us started the current wars,” Carma explained. “If all this is true, then we have killed each other for far too long without reason.”
“And yet,” the man countered, “you women continue to call us liars, continue to assault our homes.”
Carma licked her lips, glared, and then nodded. “I hate to admit it, but… based on recent testimony, I’m one of few who might be inclined to believe you.”
The men began to mumble among themselves.
Hadrian held up his hand for silence. “From what I understand, Captain Praks left your kind long ago, and has been leading a band of miscreants from among the Shadow Worlds. So to believe that he no longer is associated with any of your kind is not a stretch.” He turned to Carma. “When we arrive on your planet, can we trust you to lead talks of unification?”
She stared at him, mouth hanging open. The men shifted in their seats.
“Was I not clear?” he asked.
“Perfectly clear,” she replied. “But you spoke of the impossible. Our kind will never get along. Will never unify.”
“You will, because otherwise the enemy has an advantage, and we will not allow the enemy this. Am I mistaken? Would you and your people prefer to side with the Great Deceivers? Because if you stay broken as you are, you might as well.”