Nascent Decay (The Goddess of Decay Book 1) (2 page)

“Just hold our position guys, we don’t want to provoke anything here,” said Sergeant Bryson.

“What the fuck. They just shut down our gravity well” said Ian in an aggravated tone. “Fuck them, they can’t do that shit.”

“Shit man, they just did. What the hell, man, what the fucking hell,” Mason’s voice was panicked.

Rhylie didn’t realize they were actually being serious until she began to float from her seat, drifting, as the ship’s artificial gravity began to fade. She panicked, reaching out to grab something. Anything. Her left hand frantically found the lip of the simulation pod she had been sitting in.

“Rhylie, I told you to get to the cryostasis pod. Why are you still in the rec?” Sergeant Bryson said irritably. “Go! Now! NOW!” His tone was authoritative and demanding, and she obeyed him immediately this time.

She pushed herself from the simulation pod, drifting across the rec room, towards the corridor that led to the cryostasis pods. She was glad she had taken those zero gravity training courses now.

“I…I think they’re going to try to board us, Sergeant,” Ian said, his usually deep and confident voice beginning to break with concern. “With that…thing…growing out of the side. Whatever it is.”

Rhylie began to pull herself down the corridor using the handles on the wall. Her palms were sweaty, but she focused, hand over hand, one by one, as she made her way down the hall. Gravity wells were always experiencing some sort of failure, and there had been such handles installed into every ship just for those types of emergencies.

Her heart felt as though it were going to hammer through her chest, but she forced herself to remain calm. Freaking out now wouldn’t help anyway. Hopefully there would be plenty of time for that later.

A small part of her still held out hope that they were only playing a joke on her, as some sort of hazing initiation. She really didn’t care much for it, if they were. It would be a cruel way to welcome her to the crew.

A soft thump reverberated through the hull of the ship as Rhylie pulled herself into the cryostasis room.

“They’ve synced up, Sir,” Mason said. “Ship sensors indicate bay doors will be breached in less than 30 seconds.” Rhylie pushed away from the doorway and floated across the small room to one of the pods.

“Rhylie, get in a pod. Get in a pod, NOW!” Sergeant Bryson’s voice sounded every bit as desperate as she felt. Her heartbeat was pounding in her ears like an ocean surf when she strapped herself into the pod. The door slid shut with a soft hiss.

The last thing she heard before she was put in cryostasis was Sergeant Bryson’s voice over the com device.

“Stasis Eject Pod Three. Destination Earth.”

The Chamber

Rhylie began to awaken from cryostasis before the door on the pod slid open. She had been dreaming forever it seemed, sometimes lucidly, but often in a wildly incoherent fashion. Dreams of her memories, dreams of her fantasies, dreams of life and death and everything in between. Her mouth felt cold and dry, like a smooth polished stone. Her tongue was wooden, rough, and splintered as she dragged it across the roof of her mouth.

The cryostasis pod was currently testing variables in the external environment, as well as monitoring her vital signs as it slowly brought her out of dormancy. She could see shapes on the other side of the door, humanoid silhouettes moving just beyond the portal window. The world inside of her pod was silent and still, like a grave.

Her vision was blurring in and out, and she felt icy cold, all the way down to the blood sluggishly coursing through her veins. Her heart was beginning to pump strongly, albeit intermittently, as it resumed functioning. She fumbled clumsily with the manual restraints that bound her inside the pod. Her fingers nor the buckles would work properly.

The pod door slid open with a hiss, and bright, sterile light flooded in, blinding her. The silhouettes hovering above her darkened further in contrast, obscuring their features. She brought her hands up to cover her face and felt something prodding at her sides. Rhylie shut her eyes tightly as her body shivered with involuntary chills.

She could hear a series of odd, whispering clicks that had a strange sort of elegance. It was almost musical, like the wind rustling through dry leaves. It took her a moment to realize that it was coming from the silhouettes above her. They were speaking to one another in some sort of strange and unknown language. Rhylie was fluent in three languages herself, but she had never heard anything like this.

She opened her eyes and spread her fingers apart to peer through them at the two figures standing above her. They were both intently examining her, one of them groping her and prodding her lower abdomen with some sort of silver rod. The other one was feeling on her breasts with a small, flat disc. But something wasn’t quite right.

They were both utterly bald, and there was a gritty texture to their skin, as though it were peeling or flaking away. She squirmed beneath their touch as their hands became rougher on her. The whispered clicks became harsher, less eloquent. Demanding. The rustling melody became a sinister hissing, the clicking took on a more abrasive tone.

She squinted through her fingers at them, doing her best to focus on them. Everything was a faded black and white, colors were washed out and muted. The gritty texture of their skin became tiny, intricate scales that covered an otherwise beautiful face. She thought they were wearing some sort of mask, until she noticed their eyes.

The eyes, like their faces, were almost-human in their shape, but they were wider, and piercing. Doll-like. Lifeless. The tall one had deep green eyes that rippled like moss, split vertically with a serrated black slit. The scales that covered the face and body were a pale, soft green with brown and yellow streaks that resembled camouflage. Their noses weren’t quite human either, they were little more than smooth humps that protruded just enough to provide shelter for their nostrils. Still, there was something strangely beautiful about both of them, although their bodies were completely androgynous. The female did not have breasts, and the male was only slightly larger than her.

Rhylie shut her eyes tightly and clenched her hands.
It’s only a dream,
she thought.
Or a hallucination
. She was just having difficulty waking up from cryostasis, or perhaps having a reaction to the process. Everything was going to be fine in just a minute. But the groping only got rougher, and the hands were getting uncomfortably close to places she didn’t want to be touched.

“Stop,” she said as she squirmed underneath their invasive manipulations. They paused for a moment, and the whispering clicks resumed. She felt something cold on her throat, and flinched away instinctively, opening her eyes.

The shorter silhouette was bent over her, blocking the light. She could see its face perfectly now, colors and hues beginning to flourish amidst the gray frost of her vision. It looked feminine, with fine, delicate features and vibrant red eyes that were dappled like crushed velvet, split by a clean black slit in the center. The scales that covered her were mottled, forming a patchwork of blood red diamonds over a black background, with a vertical row of three diamonds on each cheek.

Rhylie was frozen with shock, transfixed, as the feminine one seemed to coo at her in their strange language, turning random scrapings of leaves over gravel into something that was almost soothing. She couldn’t tell if she was trying to comfort her, or mocking her.

Mason would enjoy this
, she thought to herself in a detached sort of way.

There was a flow of movement behind the two silhouettes, and she noticed for the first time that there were others in the room with them. The strange being with the red eyes began stroking her forehead while whispering softly. It
was
trying to comfort her, she realized, but the hands were rough and dry, and its lifeless eyes just stared at her, unblinking.
Like a snake’s eyes
, she thought. She turned her head instinctively away from its touch, closing her eyes. The other one snorted derisively and said something in a decidedly mocking tone. It made Rhylie feel uncomfortable and vulnerable.

She felt their hands upon her again, holding her down, with sharp fingernails digging into her skin through her uniform. She could hear murmurs from the crowd gathered behind them, speaking to one another as they began working to release her from the pod. The short female was gentle, but the tall male was pulling on her roughly, as though irritated.

Her head swam as she slid free from the cryostasis pod, falling to her hands and knees. She struggled weakly to stand, but one of them wrenched her up by the hair and held her, dangling, at arm’s length. She reached up reflexively to grab its wrist and forearm to steady herself. The muscles felt like rocks beneath the scaly skin. Those dead green eyes studied her intently as she struggled to balance herself on her tiptoes.

He held her there, semi-suspended, his face showing no emotion, no compassion. He looked her up and down slowly as though trying to decide whether to keep her or throw her away. When he took his eyes off of her for a moment, she kicked at him hard, catching him in the stomach with her boot. He let go of her and doubled over in pain, screeching and wheezing. She tried to back away but he recovered quickly and lunged for her, seizing her by the throat with his long, spindly arm. They had seemed so slow, and meticulous. His lightning quick movement caught her off guard. He squeezed, cutting her air off, and stopping just short of breaking her neck. The other one seemed to be imploring with him, begging him to cease, but those cold eyes just stared at her as he slowly strangled her to death.

She grabbed his wrist with her right hand and fumbled at her waist for her utility device. She couldn’t find it. She could see the blood pounding in her vision, and darkness was beginning to waver around the fringes. Suddenly her hand found the utility device. It was almost as if someone had placed it there for her.

“Blade,” Rhylie managed to croak out, and a short, silvery beam of light slid forth from the device in her hand. She lashed out, swiping wildly at the thing that held her. He let go of her throat and stepped back, unharmed.

She fell backwards, landing on her ass. Pain shot through her tailbone as it bore the brunt of the impact. The thing hovered over her, screeching something that she couldn’t understand. When he bent over to take the utility device from her hand, she instinctively plunged it into his chest and swiped downward with it.

It cut through the scaly flesh and bone far more easily than it did titanium alloy. He stepped back from her with a shocked expression on his face that somehow failed to touch his eyes. He put a hand up to his chest, and it came back dripping with blood. He fell backwards, crumpling to the floor in a heap of violent spasms. He began trying to push himself away from her, his legs kicking uselessly beneath him. A long trail of dark red blood smeared the sterile white floor behind him as he struggled to pull himself away from her, his innards spilling from the gaping slit in his torso. The shrieks he made were horrific, a cacophony of pain and terror.

She stared at him in amazed horror, a prisoner of the gruesome scene playing out before her. She dropped her utility device, and it clattered on the floor beside her as the blade vanished. Her mouth worked soundlessly as the others in the room scrambled to get away from her.

The feminine alien rushed to him, dropping to her knees and cradling him in her arms as the spasms began to subside. She shrieked frantically as she rocked back and forth, holding his head to her chest as blood began to pool around them on the floor. She sounded pitiful, wailing mournfully with a raspy sort of sobbing howl.

A round door swirled open behind the two aliens, and several larger humanoids rushed into the room, pushing their way through the others to get closer to Rhylie. The door swirled shut behind them, vanishing. In their hands were long, slender black rods, and they were dressed from head to toe in dull gray outfits with faceless, reflective visors.

She looked around herself in panic, for the first time taking a good look at the room she was in. She needed a way to escape, but there didn’t appear to be any. It was a wide room, with a low ceiling and gently rounded walls. She couldn’t tell where the bright, sterile light was originating from. It seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere.

Against the walls were clean white tables, with what appeared to be several dozen translucent video and monitoring screens hovering above them in an odd assortment, resembling a patchwork quilt. She could see herself on several of them. The images on them were three dimensional, as if she could reach into one of them and touch herself, but vanished when viewed from the side. There didn’t seem to be any other way out than through the vanishing door the soldiers had used to enter.

She raised her left hand between herself and the troops to show that she was unarmed, and realized it was covered in dark red blood. Her hands trembled violently as she fumbled to wipe them off on her jacket.

The guards began to advance on her with their slender black rods, and she pushed herself backwards, trying to crawl away from them the same way the alien had tried to crawl away from her. Her legs still weren’t working well, and they flailed uselessly as she tried to push herself across the floor.

She had just reached the cryostasis pod when she felt a jolt on her back, between her shoulder blades. All sensation and control fled her body as she collapsed forward, sliding lifelessly down the side of the pod.

She was lifted up between two of the guards, still fully conscious and aware of what was going on around her. Her head lolled uncontrollably as they turned and marched through the door with her. Slumping forward, all she could do was watch the floor as they carried her down a brightly lit corridor to another, smaller room and laid her down on a table.

One of the things spoke, a barking rasp that was more abrasive than either of the two in the previous room had been. The clicks were sharp and grating. Harsh. The other one produced a small device that generated a hooked blade, similar to her own multi-tool.