Kreisha and Southam turned to look at him.
“Does this person have a name?” the captain thundered.
“Yes, sorry…Catkins, how the hell am I supposed to…? Aha…Got it. Yes, the name is Trooper Adony Zaydok.”
Kreisha fell onto her side, consumed with laughter. “Looks like they finally caught up with you, Zaydok. What did you do? Screw the vice marshal’s daughter?”
Zaydok looked around the bombed-out space, searching desperately for a reason to believe he was dreaming this. It couldn’t be real, but the dust and dirt, the smell of stale sweat on the inside of his gas suit, the details were too precise for him to be dreaming.
His earpiece chimed, indicating a new private connection. “What the fuck is this about, Zaydok?” the Iron Lady roared. “And don’t even think of holding back on me.”
“I don’t know, First Sergeant. I have no idea.”
* * * * *
Chapter Six: Adony Zaydok
“You know, you’d be less intimidating if you let me in on both sides of your conversation rather than hulking in your armor like silent assassins. I mean, you do want something from me, I take it. Maybe if you didn’t act like such jerks, I could give it to you?”
The one in the Legion helm turned their head to stare at Zaydok through their opaque visor.
The other one—the Human female who seemed to be in charge—wore a half-enclosed helmet that allowed Zaydok to see her icy stare and edgy face tattoo.
Eight of these silent soldiers had dropped out of the ship. Zaydok still didn’t know who they were, but they acted like military, and one of them had the helm and railgun of a legionary. Two teams of three had split off from the group, headed into the burning city with mission parameters no one felt like sharing with Zaydok. The remaining pair had escorted him to the Temple of the Third Coming and led him up the tower that had miraculously remained undamaged. From the summit, they surveyed the area.
Zaydok had come willingly. It wasn’t only that the Iron Lady had told him to. Whoever they were, these people had shot up the Panhandler artillery and taken out some of the ISD diehards. They hadn’t fired on the Militia. Not yet. So they had to be the good guys. Right?
Now he wasn’t so sure.
The soldier in the legionary helm flicked its seals and removed it.
Zaydok gasped. He’d assumed the soldier was Human, but he had an angular face with a chin like a granite spike. Plump worms of flesh swept back over its head. If he hadn’t heard the rumors about the Kurlei, he would have dismissed them as alien dreadlocks, except…he shuddered. Some people said the Kurlei could shove those head lumps through your mind and wrench out any information they wanted, leaving you a gibbering husk.
“He’s right, sir,” the Kurlei said. His voice had a strange, crystalline quality. Not fragile like a spun glass ornament, but crystalline like a cut diamond axe head, stained with blood.
“Very well,” the woman said.
A few seconds later, a man’s voice projected from a speaker in her armor. “That’s a negative, boss. Right species, right gender, I think, but she’s not registering any superpowers. And now you want me to just let her go. It doesn’t feel right.”
“They are your orders, Sergeant,” the woman replied.
“Right you are, then. Okay, squid. Off you pop. Oww! Ungrateful, sodding little bint. We’re letting your ugly ass live.”
“Keep it professional,” the woman said, though she was smiling. “You’re on show, Sergeant Arunsen.”
“On show? Oh, you mean Target-1. Hey, if you’re listening, Trooper Zaydok, you’re in good hands. Lieutenant Hjon is the finest Militia officer you never had.”
“You…You’re Lily Hjon?” Zaydok’s jaw dropped.
“Lieutenant Lily Hjon,” she replied. The assurance deserted her face. “Which of the many stories about me have you heard, Trooper?”
In Terran Standard Years, Zaydok was only 19, but he’d already witnessed several occasions where a fellow trooper had stopped waging the endless fight to survive and yielded to their fate. He’d seen a brother stay behind to cover a bugout, knowing they would be flanked, so they could buy their comrades a little time. The look that had come over a sister’s face in the instant before she’d fallen on a grenade that would’ve wiped out the squad.
He’d never believed he, too, would yield to his fate, nor that he would trade his life for such a meaningless gesture, but he’d tell Lily Hjon exactly what he thought of her, and damn the consequences.
He sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and considered the HC2 blaster Hjon was carrying and the Kurlei’s PA-71. All Zaydok had with him was the pistol holstered at his hip.
His outbreath carried with it any hope of fighting his way out.
He shrugged off his gas suit, glad to be rid of the fetid outfit.
The uniform underneath stank just as much, but he was proud to wear it. He stood in front of Hjon and felt a glimmer of satisfaction when the woman’s gaze fell to the Militia hammer patch on his shoulder. Her face pinched in what he decided was an expression of guilt.
“I know who you are, Hjon.” He took a deep breath and stood proud. “You’re a damned traitor.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“No. It’s quite simple. You fired upon your fellow troopers at Eiylah-Bremah.”
“For the record, they fired on me first, and they were following illegal orders. I fired over their heads to drive them away until they rushed me. It was me or them. The real traitors are the corrupt senior Militia officers who sully our honor every damned day by monetizing their commands.”
Zaydok couldn’t hold her gaze and looked away. What was this battle for Pirna other than a vile attempt to cover up the lie of the fictitious Reserve Corps?
He steeled his spirits and nodded at the Kurlei. “What’s your story, Legionary? You a traitor, too?”
The legionary winced. “I don’t think I am. Officially, I’m missing in action. Last time I looked, anyway, though that’s supposed to be getting sorted. Unofficially, I’m either an enemy of the Federation, or a special ops hero of the Legion. Depends which faction you’re talking to.”
Talking of factions…Zaydok looked from Hjon to the Kurlei and back again. One Legion, the other Militia. The two military traditions were like fire and water, like beer and wine, distinct entities that could never be mixed without dire consequences. Always had been. “How can you two be working together?”
“We’re something new,” said Hjon.
“What the Federation needs,” the Kurlei added. “We’re Chimera Company.”
The alien spoke with pride, but he wasn’t convincing. The ex-jack must have been sipping grade-1 nut juice.
“Sybutu,” a new voice said over Hjon’s speaker. This man spoke with the clipped style of a legionary. “I’ve secured the target, sir.”
“Don’t hurt her,” Hjon told him.
“Understood. Going to be difficult, though. She’s a little…uncooperative.”
“Captain says to try. Those are our orders. Inform Arunsen and bring her in.”
“Copy that, Lieutenant. Sybutu, out.”
“The other…interviewee will be here shortly,” the Kurlei informed Zaydok. “Please remain patient. The explanation will be easier if we do it for both of you together.”
“Who’s the other victim?”
“We’re not going to hurt you. We need to have a conversation. After that, you’ll be free to walk away.”
“You owe us that much, Trooper,” the traitor lieutenant snapped.
Zaydok didn’t owe the bitch anything, but the pilot of the strange horned ship was another matter. He moved to the tower window and looked out over Pirna’s devastation while he waited.
A few minutes later, his fellow interviewee was brought in, kicking and biting, though her escorts in their muscle-enhancing armor ignored her struggles.
She was a Xhiunerite, a squid woman, in a ripped and patched Panhandler uniform.
<
br /> He shivered, taking on a repeat dose of the mad panic he’d felt when the man on the horned aerospace ship had spoken his name over the radio. Then, the shock had sent his guts tingling. This time it was stronger, and it wasn’t his name. It was something more profound about himself that he saw echoed in this squid.
Specifically, in her tentacles.
Xhiunerites had a ring of sensory tentacles around the crown of their heads that ended in eyes. Usually they hung down like a flicked-up bob, but this agitated squid had hers waving erect like an angry patch of cyclopean vipers.
Markings like purple lightning bolts ran down the length of the appendages, pulsing like throbbing veins, but they weren’t carrying blood, and they weren’t tattoos, either.
Zaydok knew that for sure, because those exact same markings covered his thighs, and he bet they were pulsing the same way.
He’d always been ashamed of his legs. He’d laugh his markings off as a bad tattoo or simply hide himself. Despite the craziness he’d witnessed in his short life, he’d never in a million years imagined his freakish legs would be some kind of military asset.
Yet here he was, snatched out of a battle by this Chimera Company.
What insanity was this?
* * * * *
Chapter Seven: Adony Zaydok
Phantom, In Orbit Around 21-Gionesse
“Well?” the Zhoogene pressed. The half-Zhoogene.
Zan Fey smiled at him.
Ever since Chimera Company had taken Zaydok and the squid girl aboard Phantom, it had been smiles all the way. Light refreshments, too, and even a rest room with actual plumbing and hot water. And the plush seats in the lounge where he was now sitting made it the most luxurious starship compartment he’d ever seen.
The drinks had stopped coming. Zan Fey’s smile had grown brittle.
He sensed Chimera Company’s welcome was about to run out.
“Last chance,” Zan Fey told them.
Her smile was fighting a rearguard action, but her eyes had already grown hard, and they were eyes it was difficult to look away from, marbled as they were in turquoise and magenta. She wasn’t merely mixed species; she was a freak in other ways, too.
A freak like him.
Like the rebel squiddie.
Kreyenish Zee, her name was.
Zaydok broke his gaze with Zan Fey and looked across at the purple-freak squid girl sitting beside him on the cushions. Well, not so much sitting as perched with such reluctance that her butt barely touched the fabric, as if she were pants down and squatting over the corpse-choked Yavitri River.
She glared back at him with an eye stalk.
Her other eyes were glaring in every direction, surveying the devils who’d dragged her to this hell.
She believed nothing she’d been told, trusted no one, had treated them all with absolute contempt, and made it clear they were all irredeemable in her eyes, dire enemies of the Panhandler idea of progress. She clung tightly to the religious comfort of her ideology and waited for the monsters to begin her torture in earnest.
Zaydok envied Kreyenish Zee’s ideological religion. The only thing he believed in was surviving from one day to the next.
And that was what he was going to do here.
“Zaydok!” Zan Fey snapped, anger open on her face. “Kreyenish Zee refuses to aid us. Will you join us or return to a pointless little war that will soon be forgotten, its wounded despised, and its fallen unmarked? Choose now.”
Arunsen was standing nearby on the carpeted floor. Zaydok wasn’t looking his way, but the man’s presence loomed large. The bearded bear reminded him of his squad sergeant. He wanted to like the man, but anyone who followed the traitor Hjon was a fool, or worse.
Zaydok stood. “I want nothing to do with you.”
Kreyenish Zee turned all her eye tentacles on him. “Coward!”
He chuckled. The Xhiunerite resembled a minor sea monster, but she had a prim, feminine voice. If she were Human, he’d probably find her hot when she was angry, which seemed to be most of the time.
“Go suck on your tentacles, squid freak.”
He laughed even deeper at her horrified reaction. He would throw worse insults at his friends a hundred times before breakfast, and they’d give as good back. It was just what you did. But this squid? If he’d plucked the tentacles off baby Xhiunerites with red-hot pincers, she couldn’t have looked more appalled.
He’d probably violated a speech prohibition or some such. The Panhandlers were big on telling people what they were allowed to say.
“If you two want to start your own private war,” Zan Fey said, “you can do it on your own time. You’ve wasted enough of ours, and time is running out.”
“Why?” the squid asked. “Why is it running out?”
Zan Fey raised a golden eyebrow. “Now she speaks! You should have asked earlier. I’m through with you, little girl.”
Zee snapped all her eye tentacles in Zan Fey’s direction and fired a volley of coherent hatred.
Purple lightning bolts flashed along her tentacles.
Back in the city, Arunsen had talked of superpowers, and he hadn’t been joking. Zaydok tensed, fearing what Zee was about to do.
Surprisingly, the Zhoogene flinched too, at the same moment he had.
But no magic bolts shot from anyone’s appendages. Kreyenish Zee was just a regular ball of loathing.
“Get rid of them,” Zan Fey said and strode out.
The squid swallowed hard. She stopped breathing, paralyzed by fear.
Zaydok felt an infinitesimal sliver of sympathy for her. Relax, you stupid thing. They’re not about to kill us.
Kreyenish Zee snapped her gaze to him. She looked astonished, and not the horrified kind. The surprised kind.
“What did you say?” she asked him in a demure voice.
He shook his head. He hadn’t said anything. Not out loud.
“Everyone, calm down,” Arunsen said. He sounded like a gruff uncle. A kindly one. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
“Am I a prisoner?” Zee asked.
Zaydok felt Arunsen roll his eyes.
“We’ve already been through this,” the sergeant said, patience strained but still holding for the moment. “No. The captain says you’re to join us volunteers, or not at all.”
“I don’t want to join,” she replied.
“Yeah.” Arunsen shook his head. “I already got that.”
Damned stupid waste of time, Arunsen thought. Should’ve asked the boy on the battlefield and not wasted our time with the fucking rebel at all.
Kreyenish Zee winced at Arunsen’s view of her.
“We’ll drop you off a klick apart,” the big man said, “so you don’t murder yourselves.”
What the hell just happened? the squid wondered.
Zaydok wouldn’t mind an explanation, too. He’d always been good at reading people but…this was insane. Had he actually read Arunsen’s mind?
No. Not possible. He was crushingly fatigued, and these Chimera Company apes had claimed to be looking for people with special abilities. They’d planted that idea in his mind. All he’d really been doing was interpreting Arunsen’s body language.
So why had the squid flinched at precisely the right moment?
Arunsen took all this in, chuckling into his beard. “A shame. You two would have been hilarious together.”
“Captain to all hands,” a man’s voice said out of the bulkhead, “and tentacles. Brace for a hard burn in 10.”
Zaydok didn’t know what to do.
Arunsen did. He was a big man, but he moved fast. He grabbed Zaydok and Zee, throwing them into alcoves and strapping them in. He was running for a third of these mini acceleration stations when he was thrown back against the bulkhead where they’d been sitting, the impact cushioned by the…well, cushions.
“Orion’s arse!” Arunsen exclaimed. “Captain must be really pushing her hard.”
A shock wave took them, flinging the starship like a toy an
d ringing her hull like an untuned bell.
For a few seconds, up and down were too mixed to know what was happening.
Then Zaydok’s environment steadied.
He had a bruise coming up where the strap had bitten across his chest.
Arunsen was sitting up, rubbing his head, but he’d be all right.
So would Zee, but she was in pain. Rivers of hurt ran down her spine.
“I don’t understand,” he said to her. “How did your back get injured?”
“Chronic spinal compression,” she replied with a grimace. “I’ve been on painkillers for weeks. It’s not good for my kind to spend so long out of water.”
Zaydok almost told her he was sorry.
She didn’t deserve his sympathy, but he felt it anyway, just kept it quiet.
He noted her lack of surprise that he knew of her pain.
As for Arunsen, Zaydok got the feeling he’d seen this all before.
“Sorry about the bumpy,” the captain said over the PA. “You can all see the visual. Now hear the audio edition.”
The captain was replaced by a woman’s voice, scratchy with static. “…response to the counter-progressive betrayal. Sometimes the old must be purged in the purity of fire to make room for the new. Purity is strength! Let the immolation of Pirna stand testament to that.”
“What…?” Zee said. “What have they done?”
But Zaydok could tell she already knew.
Arunsen activated a holo-display at the center of the lounge. It showed a mushroom cloud over the fiery corpse of Pirna.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll set you down a safe distance away—safe from the city, and safely separated from each other.”
Zaydok and Zee looked at each other as they released themselves from the acceleration alcoves. Both realized they were thinking the same thing.
“What would be the point?” Zaydok asked Arunsen. “My comrades were my only family. All dead. Besides, the Militia would only shoot me as a deserter.”
“The Rebellion would treat me as a deserter, too,” the squid said. “I would be made to publicly confess my crimes, and then they would shoot me. Or worse.”
Hold the Line (Chimera Company Book 5) Page 5