Nascent Decay (The Goddess of Decay Book 1) (18 page)

“You would put that…
thing’s
…life over all of ours?!?” Bart responded angrily, his Russian accent coming out. “You are not even human anymore, if you ever were. You are some kind of
monster
.” Rhylie balled her right hand into a tight fist.

“Enough, both of you” said Ramirez tersely. A circle of white light had appeared on the center of the mess hall table. He pressed his finger to a glowing dot beside of it. A hologram sprang up, over the table, of the United Allied Council. There were ten of them behind a long, curved table, but the figures were too small for Rhylie to make much detail out.

“This is Captain B Class Mark Alejandro Ramirez of Outpost Beta V-9,” Ramirez said. “We are receiving your transmission.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said one of the figures, a man with dark skin. “I am Marcus Sall, Pharaoh of Egypt, Emperor of Africa. I will be leading most of the questioning.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ramirez.

“Which one is Private Underhill?” Marcus asked.

“I am, sir,” Rhylie said, raising her hand halfway.

“We’ve heard some unbelievable things about you, Private. Forgive us if we are skeptical of some of them,” Marcus said.

“They’re all true, sir,” said Rhylie.
And then some
, she thought.

“I see. And where is the alien?” Marcus asked.

“He is being held in another part of the Outpost, sir,” Ramirez said. “We had some conflict taking them into custody and thought it best to keep him separated.”

“Do their stories match up, Captain?” Marcus asked.

“Yes, sir, they do. And then we received the message we sent to you soon after they arrived,” Ramirez said.

“Private Underhill, do you know this…Empress Vorcia?” asked Marcus.

“Yes, sir,” said Rhylie. “Unfortunately I do. But Isaar could tell you more.”

“Who is Isaar?” asked Marcus.

“He’s the one who came with me. He risked his life to rescue me from Vorcia when he could have just killed me,” Rhylie said. “It is very important to me that he remain alive and unharmed, sir.”

“We’ll see that he does, Private. He may be very important in our discussions over the next three days. Bring him in the room, Captain,” said Marcus.

“I’m not sure that’s the best-” said Ramirez.

“That is an order, Captain,” said Marcus.

“Yes, sir,” came the response. Ramirez nodded his head at Bart.

“This…Isaar, rescued you?” asked Marcus. “What were they doing with you Private?”

“She was…using me, sir. Experimenting on me. She used footage of my emotional breakdowns as propaganda to gather public support to go to war with us,” said Rhylie. “Breakdowns that she drove me to. Vorcia won’t stop until she wipes us out. She offers us peace, but I don’t think she has any intention giving it to us. She wants to exterminate us completely.” The council broke into murmurs for a moment.

“You don’t believe she can be trusted, Private?” Marcus asked as Isaar was brought into the room by Meili. She gave Rhylie a strange look. Isaar’s hands were unbound and he was shirtless, a medical patch over his lower left abdomen. He was more muscular than Rhylie would have thought him to be, but it was lean, tight muscle. He didn’t appear to have any body fat. Oddly enough, he had no bellybutton. Instead he had what looked like a wide slit across his abdomen, almost as if you could reach down into it. She stared at it in amazement for a moment. She’d have to ask him about it later, but for now she was just glad he was okay.

“I know she can’t,” said Rhylie, after she tore her eyes away from Isaar. It felt strange to be attracted to someone in that way now. It was distant and detached, as though it was just outside of her emotional capabilities.

“Rhylie has been through a lot, sir,” said Isaar uncertainly.

“Is this the alien?” asked Marcus. “Zoom in on him. What is your name?”

“My name is Isaar De Le G’rato, sir,” he said unceremoniously.

“And you have come with Private Underhill suggesting that we should prepare to wage war against these Siirocians?” Marcus asked.

“I have not come to tell you what you should do, sir,” said Isaar. “Only to warn you that no matter what, war is coming.”
Wounds that will not heal.
The words kept repeating in Rhylie’s mind. She just couldn’t keep them out.

“Are you declaring war on us?” asked one of the other council members indignantly. His Eastern European accent was thick, far thicker than Bart’s.

“No, I-” began Isaar, but he was cut off. Rhylie had never seen him flustered, but the remark had obviously caught him off guard.

“Ivan, that is enough,” said Marcus. “We’ll have to discuss this further. For now I want both Private Underhill and Isaar to remain at Outpost Beta V-9 until further notice.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ramirez. The transmission went dark.

“You heard the man,” said Ramirez. “If you promise to play nice, we’ll all stay right here and wait for them. I’m pretty sure they’ll have us send you to Mars as soon as they’re done bullshitting each other.” The thought of going home to Mars was both too good to believe, and too frightening to think about.

“We need to leave sooner than that,” said Isaar. He looked worried.

“We have our orders,” said Ramirez. “We have to stay put.”

“How many other outposts received that feed from Vorcia?” asked Isaar. There was a long silence.

“None that I know of,” said Meili.

“She knows we are here,” said Isaar. “Or she realized that we would head for the closest settlement…” He closed his eyes. “She’s probably monitoring all of your audio channels. She probably heard us initiate contact with you.”

“What?” said Rhylie. She felt numb.

“I brought us straight to the first place they are going to look. She knows we are alive-” said Isaar, but he was cut short when the walls shook violently, followed by a tilting motion.

The ground beneath them suddenly pitched upwards, violently, slamming everyone brutally against the floor or table and chairs. It was like being hit with a brick wall. Rhylie was the first to recover, pushing herself up quickly. The rest were stunned or winded. One of them was screaming, but she couldn’t tell who in the confusion.

“We have to get out of here!” she screamed. Everyone was struggling to stand or climbing unsteadily to their feet, except for Adam, who lay on the floor, holding his leg and screaming in pain. His right foot hung at an awkward angle and was flopping slightly. It looked bad. The room shook again, but this time everyone was prepared for it and grabbed for the table, or chairs. Adam just howled louder as he slid across the floor and into the fixed seats around the table. “I’ll get Adam. Everyone go go go!”

She made her way over to him and lifted him up in her arms. A soft thud reverberated through the walls of the Outpost, and the floors shifted again. The room tipped at an awkward angle, causing everyone to slide down the floor. There was a rocking sensation as the room swayed back and forth unsteadily beneath their feet for a few long moments, but it gradually settled. It stayed that way, cocked askew, with the wall now underneath them. She managed to stand back up, cradling Adam as he struggled to fight back the pain.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Isaar.

“Everyone to the ARC now!” shouted Ramirez.

Rhylie turned, cradling Adam in her arms, only to see a pair of Siirocian soldiers dropping down through the portal that lead to the docking platforms. She turned and set Adam back down.

“Someone get him,” she yelled, and turned to face the Siirocians. She lashed out at them, her arms forming into long tendrils that wove their way past Isaar and Meili towards the soldiers. Meili ducked reflexively as they shot by her head and wrapped around the soldiers’ necks, lifting them effortlessly off the ground. She constricted the tendrils, crushing their throats easily and breaking their necks. It was over in an instant, and she let them drop like broken dolls. Her legs elongated, stretching her way up and into the portal that lead to the docking platform.

She made her way upwards, through the corridor as though she were some sort of human spider, pulling herself along the handholds on the wall by extending her arms ahead of herself. She killed the two soldiers she encountered on their way down in the same fashion she had dispatched the others. They barely even slowed her down. She let their bodies slide down the corridor to the central chamber below, and kept climbing.

When she thrust her head through the open portal and looked around, she realized the entire asteroid had been brought into a massive landing bay. The docking port was several stories in the air, and from the elevated position she could see the entire bay. There were Siirocian ships lining the far side of the bay. Between the outpost and the ships was a wide stretch of open floor with a few utility carts scattered around. The outpost itself was surrounded by dozens of soldiers and some sort of scaffolding was erecting itself up the face of it as though it were an mechanical centipede unfolding itself.

Around the bay, catwalks were extending themselves out from the loading platforms on the walls, building bridges to connect with the docking portal on the Outpost. Some were climbing the face of the asteroid using utility cables and magnetic body lifts.
That must have been how the others had made it in so quickly
, she thought. There were no signs of the ARC or Isaar’s ship.

The soldiers saw her as soon as she stood up on the lip of the portal and opened fire on her. She shielded her head instinctively and dropped back down the corridor to the group. Bart was just now adjusting the buckles on a rescue harness so he could attempt to carry Adam out on his back. The rest seemed to be in a daze, still confused. Isaar was standing and holding his side, grimacing in pain.

“We’re in deep shit,” she said.

“What is it?” asked Isaar.

“We’re in some kind of…landing bay. We’re surrounded,” she said. Isaar looked over at the bodies of the dead Siirocians.

“If you can cover us or cause a distraction while we get to a ship, I can fly us out of here,” he said.

“I didn’t see either of our ships,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to them.”

“It does not matter,” Isaar replied. “I can fly anything the Siirocians have.”

“What about Adam?” Meili asked as she attached a brace to his ankle. She pressed a button and it formed into a rigid boot that encased his foot.

“Leave me,” he grunted piteously. “You’ll never get me out of here.” He was sweating profusely, and even more pale than he had been before.

“We’re not leaving you here,” said Ramirez.

“You can’t make it up that corridor with me, Captain,” said Adam. “Just leave me. They’ll never take me alive.” He pulled his gun from his holster. Rhylie frowned deeply. She was not going to leave anyone behind.

“We can use the lift devices they used to get in here with,” said Isaar, eyeing the four dead bodies on the floor. “We just need one more. Can you toss another Siirocian down here, Rhylie? Preferably deceased.” Rhylie nodded. There were probably more on their way inside already.

“I sure can. I’ll come back for you too, Adam, if Bart can’t carry you out of here,” she said. Bart started to say something, but noises coming from the corridor caught everyone’s attention. Rhylie stretched herself up and into it, pulling her way through it by the handholds on the wall.

She cleared the corridor, letting several bodies slide down it, and erupted from the top in a fury. She formed her fingers into long, slender blades and began slicing through the Siirocian soldiers that had managed to climb up to the docking portal. There was nothing they could do to her could hurt her, or stop her. She was absorbed by her lust for vengeance, consumed by it. She saw Vorcia in the visage of every faceless visor of the Siirocians she viciously mangled, eviscerated, or crushed. Strangely, she had never felt more at peace; existence had never seemed so tranquil. It was as though she were dreaming. She moved so effortlessly; she was so much stronger, faster, and more lethal than them. She was the Alpha, and they didn’t even register on the scale.

She lashed out at those that had made it to the top of the scaffolding, sending a sweeping spray of fine, barbed tendrils at them that shredded their skin as they lashed through their soft, scaly flesh. The ones that survived the first lash got another, and then another until they toppled from the scaffolding to the floor below. Their shots were absorbed by her body and ricocheted harmlessly off her head, but they kept coming, more and more of them.

She dropped down, amidst them at the top of the scaffolding without thinking, and was swarmed by them. She was operating on a primal level where there was only reflex and reaction, a brazen, vibrant world devoid of cognizant thought. Dozens of hands grabbed at her and began dragging her away from the asteroid, trying to pull her down to the floor. It angered her. She didn’t enjoy being touched as she once had. She flared up, her entire body becoming white hot in an instant, save for her head. It still remained gray and cool, insulating her from the brutal heat.

She realized it was the anger within Rahve that had spurred his ability. The hands released her and the mob withdrew from her with a unified shriek. The scaffolding collapsed beneath her as she melted through it, and her and dozens of soldiers tumbled into a heap of bodies and twisted metal alloy on the floor. The ones that landed underneath her quickly pulled themselves from beneath the pile and scrambled away from her, howling and screaming in agony as strips of burnt skin sloughed from their bodies.

She pushed herself up from the pile of charred flesh and bone beneath her, remnants of those who did not escape. Rhylie stared at them silently from behind the gray featureless visor that hid her face. Her skin was glowing white, and waves of heat were rolling off of her body. She stood there, between them and the asteroid.

They formed a circle around her as even more soldiers began filling the landing bay. She began to grow hotter and hotter, forcing them to retreat, step by step from the raging inferno emanating from her. The floor began to feel slippery beneath her. Looking down she saw that both of her feet had actually melted into the floor. She pulled them out, the molten alloy sucking at them as though it were mud, and took a step towards the soldiers around her. They fell back from her as she pulled her other foot free and took another step, then another, leaving a trail of smeared footprints behind her in the floor.