And that was just what was discovered in the short few months Phylarlie’s team had been studying the Draconian remains. There was a lot more to learn, especially when she uncovered data files related to psionic engineering, and the possibly it had of seeing Hashmedai regain the power to create psionic personnel.
She had to take a seat in the manor’s front foyer upon her arrival back, pondering the future that laid ahead for her. The future that laid ahead for her and Lisette. Phylarlie needed her expertise to make this happen, that meant not returning to Earth-controlled space, at least not for a few more years, avoiding the Terran Legion’s lynch squads in the process. She was okay with that. Would Lisette be okay with a move across the stars and walking away from her training? She had her doubts it was going to be a simple yes.
The two needed to sit down and talk about it. This was a path Avearan had to share with the woman she loved. It was a concept Phylarlie didn’t seem to grasp when she told her why she had to step away and talk with Lisette further. Of course not, Phylarlie had her harem, there was no one partner for her, just a group of men and women that participated in mass orgies whenever she demanded to have one.
When the anxiety and emotions faded, Avearan went for her wrist terminal, and called Lisette’s HNI. She waited for her to pick up, while she went over in her head how to approach the topic, not to mention explain why she was gone all day without notice. She frowned at that thought. Couples should always communicate where each other are, so they don’t get worried.
And getting worried is the exact feeling Avearan got hit with, when her terminal unveiled that Lisette couldn’t be reached. She was just asleep she told herself, and tried to wake her with a telepathic message, silence was the result. Sleeping through an HNI notification was one thing, you could program them to ignore all messages when you slept. But telepathic voices? Those were more intrusive, especially with the level of power Avearan had. She expected the worst and climbed the staircase, arriving at the floor their room was on.
The door was ajar, something Lisette wouldn’t have done. There was the sound of movement coming from the room, it was promising. Lisette must have forgotten to shut it. Avearan peeked through the space in between the door and its frame, just to make sure she wasn’t walking into something she couldn’t walk out of.
Metallic sounding footsteps clanked on the carpeted floor, there were three of them. Three Hashmedai in full armor and arm-mounted plasma shields moved around, searching through Lisette and Avearan’s bags, peeking into the closets and murmuring silent words to each other. Nothing that fit Lisette’s description could be seen. Avearan had a feeling the three guardians might have played a role in that—
Her wrist terminal beeped. The sound made them cease their activities and look for the source. It beeped again. Avearan had to flee, quickly, as the three guards were moving to the door fast. She stormed past a number of servants, taking cover behind a wall at the nearest intersection, and then checked her terminal.
Phylarlie’s hologram appeared, floating above her wrist. “Where are you?” she asked.
Avearan placed her finger to her lips, making a soft shushing noise. “I’m in your place of residence,” Avearan whispered.
“Which part exactly? This is important,” Phylarlie’s hologram whispered back.
“Nearest intersection hall by our room.”
“Fuck.”
Avearan peeked around the corner. The armored guards stopped the servants she passed, questioning them. She couldn’t hear the words that were exchanged, but the finger of one servant pointed in the direction Avearan ran. The three guards nodded, wrapped their hands around the hilt of their holstered plasma swords, and quickly followed the path she had taken.
Avearan found herself on the move again, hoping she didn’t run out of hallways to power walk through. “You are making me regret coming here.” Avearan said.
“Take a peek into the halls,” Phylarlie said. “What do you see?”
“I already did, and saw things I don’t like, Phylarlie.”
“Enter the room on the right.” Avearan did so, opening and shutting a door that led into a vacant dining hall. The holographic light from her wrist terminal and her glowing eyes were the only sources of light. “Standby and don’t move!”
She lowered her arm when the communication link was cut, then backed away from the door, expecting the three armored guards to burst in. A surge of blue light flashed, Phylarlie materialized out from a psionic jump port behind her. The darkness in the room didn’t return as expected when the jump port was completed. There was a hue of green light that emitted behind her, and from that green light she felt a wave of searing heat. Phylarlie held a plasma dagger in her hand. It brought back memories of their first encounter back on Morutrin Prime, when Phylarlie was sent to assassinate her.
Guess she’s here to finish the job.
The best Avearan could do was create a weak psionic barrier to protect herself and minimize the damage from the starting blows. After that, it was using smaller barriers and telekinesis to slow blood loss and force damaged organs and blood vessels to work despite taking major damage. This was under the assumption panic and fear didn’t break her concentration.
Phylarlie made the first move. She wrapped her arm around Avearan’s frame, holding onto her from behind, tight. She braced herself for what would she assumed will come next, multiple close-range stabs to the back.
Something else happened instead.
Their bodies became doused in blue light and then vanished, restoring the room back to its original vacant and darkened state.
The light generated by Phylarlie’s jump port faded. The two women appeared inside Phylarlie’s bedroom, a room made for one person, but large enough to fit ten to fifteen people inside comfortably. Well-maintained carpets were below them, and a wide window looking out into the arctic tundra beyond was positioned behind Phylarlie’s canopy bed.
Candlelit chandeliers hung from the ceiling above the two, casting their orange flickering light on their bodies. Phylarlie released her grip on Avearan and powered down the plasma dagger. Avearan’s shocked face tilted to Phylarlie, who retreated back to a dressing table with a large holo mirror floating above it, placing the dagger into it.
“Well, shit,” Avearan mumbled to her. “What’s with the dagger?”
“Wasn’t sure if I’d get to you in time.”
“Lisette wasn’t in our room—”
“Stay quiet,” Phylarlie coldly cut in.
“We need to find her!”
“It’s too late; they’ve probably started to spread out.”
Avearan ran her hands through her hair, half-tempted to pull it out in frustration. She hissed loudly, making Phylarlie’s irritated face look at her.
“Shut up, seriously,” Phylarlie spat. “A taskforce like that entering my manor without notice isn’t a group you want to hide from only to be caught.”
“What do they want? Where did they come from?”
“Can you let me do my job and protect you?”
“Protect me? Lisette needs protection, now,” Avearan said. “Are you going to at least answer my question?”
“You said so yourself,” Phylarlie calmly spoke. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”
“They came for me, didn’t they?”
“Someone here must have recognized who you really were and sent word to the Empire.”
“If it’s me they wanted, then why take Lisette?”
Phylarlie shrugged her words off, walking to the corner of her room, picking up a servant uniform that was lying on the floor. Her lips twisted when she thought of various reasons why a servant would have stripped out of her uniform, in Phylarlie’s room, then leave without it.
Phylarlie handed the red skirt and blouse to Avearan. “Put this on.”
Her arms crossed, unimpressed. “Why? So that I can be your fucking servant?”
“Yes,” Phylarlie said, forcing the outfit
into her hands. “Until I can figure out what’s going on and get you someplace safe—”
Avearan hissed, tossing the uniform on the floor between the two.
“Have it your way, then,” Phylarlie said, walking away. “I’m not losing my head to sneak you out of here.”
She looked down at the servant uniform on the floor with a grimacing glare while the battle of logic and emotion raged within herself. Logic wanted her to pick up the outfit and go with whatever Phylarlie had planned. Emotion wanted her to risk it all, and charge back into the manor, searching for Lisette no matter the cost.
Logic won the battle.
She stripped naked, exchanging her attire for the uniform. Phylarlie watched with a smirk. The glow of the candles above illumined Avearan’s pert breasts, slim and fit waist, and scarred body, left behind by her old cybernetics.
“Better?” Avearan asked.
Phylarlie approached, walking circles around Avearan with crossed arms and glowing eyes, looking at her exposed legs, moving up to her hips then arms. “It’s a start; we’ll need to do something about your scars, however.” A lock of Avearan’s hair was pulled toward Phylarlie’s face. “And this . . .”
She beckoned Avearan to follow her and sit at her dressing table in front of the holo mirror. A pair of hair trimming shears entered Phylarlie’s hand, while her free one held a fistful of Avearan’s long, shiny hair.
Evidently, Phylarlie had a hidden talent, hair stylist.
35 Peiun
High rise apartment
Gravity City, Morutrin Prime, Morutrin system
October 16, 2118, 01:04 SST (Sol Standard Time)
The thick, dark curtains obscured the flashes of lightning caused by the rainstorm outside. Sarah and Peiun were lucky to have missed the start of the thunderstorm, having forced their captive prisoner from the streets to let them into his place of dwelling.
Sarah was in the kitchen, searching through the storage cupboards. She never explained why she strode in there after tying up the man, whom revealed his name to be Cody. It was one of two things she was able to extract from him. His spits, cursing, racist remarks directed to Peiun, and laughter was the other.
The sound of a glass bottle tapped the surface of the countertops within the kitchen. Sarah’s voice followed next. “Hey, Peiun get over here.”
He entered the kitchen, all cabinet doors were opened, its contents within were left in a mess. Sarah pointed at what she had been searching for, a bottle containing a strong human alcoholic beverage.
She pried off the bottle’s cap, drinking directly from it. “Closer man,” she said after pulling the bottle away from her lips, beckoning to him.
“Is this really the time to be celebrating?”
Sarah pointed a finger at Peiun’s topless body, and the many wounds on it from their crash landing. “Let me disinfect that.”
He braced himself as she dosed his back with the beverage. The stinging pain that flared from his wounds made his teeth grit for a moment. Her hands wiping the wounds clean, made him forget about pain. Or was it the perverse smile that appeared on her face, when it came time to disinfect the cut on his chest? She took another drink from the bottle, before handing it him.
“Your turn,” she said, peeling the top of her dress away from her body, and unveiling a number of lacerations hidden under it.
He grinned as she placed her exposed back at him, and then followed her lead, drinking from the bottle before dumping its contents onto her back, and wiping the wounds clean. She didn’t flinch. Her tolerance for pain was impressive, so was the texture of her skin. He had to force himself to pull away from her once he was done.
She exchanged the bottle in his hands with a pack of ice. It wasn’t for his wounds, though it did feel nice when he rubbed it over them. The ice was to help lower his temperature. He was a Hashmedai in an apartment built to suit the needs of a human. It was hot.
With their wounds taken care of, the two returned to their captive prisoner, Cody, smelling like the beverage they dosed their bodies with. He assertively pointed out they wasted one of his drinks. She assertively throat-punched him and demand he answer a list of questions.
Cody’s laughter brought forth a number of human torture techniques, delivered by Sarah. His body was cut and poked with eating utensils heated from the stove. His teeth were pulled with a rusted wrench from his tool box, ending with his head being dunked into the bathtub full of water.
Cody didn’t break. He was no normal human civilian, but rather one trained to resist interrogations and torture. Sarah’s questions about what became of her sister, Chloe, what the Terran Legion was planning, how much influence it had within EISS, and how long had Durendal been secretly a member of it, went unanswered.
Sarah dragged Cody’s wet and blood-soaked body back into the living room. She tied him back to the chair, then raged and cursed raising her arms up.
Cody laughed, unveiling the number of missing teeth in his red soaked mouth. “What’s wrong, babe?” Cody said. “Ready to give up?”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Peiun said to Sarah.
She wiped the frustration away from her face. “Fuck this guy, seriously.”
Peiun stepped forward, looking at Cody’s bound body from head to toe. “Allow me to try using an Imperial technique?”
“Do what you want,” Sarah said, taking a seat on the couch as a thunderbolt roared. “I don’t care at this point, just get him to talk.”
“Our methods are . . . harsh,” Peiun said.
“You have my permission to use them,” Sarah said. “This fucking asshole gave up his last chance to walk away from this.”
“Very well,” he said, grabbing Sarah’s pistol off the coffee table.
He pulled up a chair and sat in front of Cody. Keeping the pistol in his hand, Peiun said to Cody. “She has grown aggravated with your defiance.”
“That alien-loving bitch threw in the towel, eh? Ha! Do your worst, I’ve told Radiance Whisper agents where to go and survived Imperial gulags. You two ain’t got shit on them.”
“Gulag? My people don’t take prisoners.”
“Unless you need information from them, then you do.”
“And they die regardless if they give it up or not,” Peiun said. “Most of the time we do it with a memory recorder, provided they can remember.”
“Or are trained to resist it,” Cody spat. “Go ahead, use your memory recorder, I dare you.”
“Unfortunately, that’s aboard my ship in orbit, and I do not have the time to take you there.”
“Please, my people will find and fuck you up before you get that chance.” Peiun powered the pistol on, and its soft humming noise confirmed its internal systems were in operation. Cody looked the weapon Peiun held and laughed. “Gonna shoot me now? You know you’ll never get info from a dead body.”
“I beg to differ.”
He pointed the pistol at Cody’s forehead.
A single projectile hurled Cody’s body violently backward, while still bound to the chair. Red mist spread everywhere from the back of his head, most of it ended up dripping down from the wall where it had splattered.
Sarah and Peiun stood over Cody’s body examining the gaping hole in his head, and the look of shock on his face capturing the moment the projectile was fired.
She crossed her arms. “As much as I hated him, he’s right; he’s no good to us dead.”
He returned her pistol back into her hands, freeing his for what came next. Peiun sunk his fingers into the hole in Cody’s head, fiddling around on the inside, past his skull like a doctor performing brain surgery. His HNI performed a quick scan of the hole. He’ll need more space to move around. He took the pistol back from Sarah, and shot three low velocity rounds into Cody’s head, turning the original small hole, into a massive maw big enough to stick his hand through. And that he did, and reached deep inside of Cody’s head, ripping away at his brains until he found his HNI, and yanked it out.
She didn’t flinch.
“As I said . . . our methods are harsh.”
She plugged the data crystal into a small portable analyzer she had with her, placing it on the coffee table. A holo screen flashed on above the device, with a small progress bar that inched its way from left to right.
“It’s going to take hours to decrypt these files,” Sarah said.
Peiun stood next to her, watching the numbers that flashed on the holo screen. “I take it he wasn’t using civilian HNI?”
“Nope, this was military shit,” she said, tapping the screen, bring up additional windows. “But now that’s its broken away from its main parts, we’ll be able to get what’s inside.”
The two left the device to work in peace and made themselves at home in Cody’s place. His food, drinks, showers, and clothing were utilized by the two. The drinks especially, what remained of the alcoholic beverage they had used earlier ended up inside them. Laughter and war stories were exchanged between the two. That intoxicated conversation somehow ended up changing to the kiss they shared.
Sarah became a different woman. He wasn’t sure if it was the beverage making her that way, or it was making him see her like that. She grinned happily looking up at him, running her fingers up and down his body.
“Hmm, abs,” she said when they neared his chiseled abs.
“Yes?”
She stroked his pecs next. “Chest.”
He nodded. “Indeed.”
“Fuck it.”
Peiun experienced his third kiss in life, this time it was one with a woman whom shredded her attire and pulled his pants off. He was hard, and her hands holding onto his hardness confirmed it to her. It made her giggle.
Unsanctioned Reprisal Page 32