Star Brigade: Resurgent (Star Brigade Book 1) (47 page)

Dēvatā Gāisǐ de
– Earthborn swearword for
goddamn it
, a fusion of Mandarin and Hindi.

Earthborn
– a term that describes humans native to the planet Earth, Terra Sollus and their respective colonies.

Gadh
uā
– Earthborn swearword for
asshole
, a fusion of Mandarin and Hindi.

GUPR
– The Galactic Union of Planetary Republics, a star-spanning hyperpower located in the Milky Way.

Imperium Common Tongue
– The main language spoken within the Kedri Imperium by Kedri and some non-Kedri.

JSOG
– UComm Joint Special Operations Group

Korcei
– The native tongue of the Korvenite species.

Macrom
– Union unit of time

Maicào
– Earthborn swearword for
motherfucker
, a fusion of Mandarin and Hindi.

Martianborn
– a term that describes humans native to the planet Mars and its respective colonies.

Maximum
– the blanket term used for sentient beings exhibiting abilities beyond the normal potential of their species.

Nanoclic
– Union unit of time

Orv
– Union unit of time

PLADECO –
Union Command
Planetary Defense Corps, the arm of Union Command tasked for the non-aerospace defense of Union memberworlds.

Port Speak
– A verbal and non-verbal dialect used mainly at interplanetary spaceports that includes a mix of several foreign dialects, including Standard.

Rogguts
– A Cercidalean expression that conveys surprise or annoyance.

Sprout
– Cercidalean slang for a child or young person.

Standard Speak
– The main language spoken within Union Space. Bears a strong resemblance to the Old Earth dialect of English.

Star Brigade
– Strategic Assault & Reconnaissance Brigade,
an Beta-Tier JSOG unit.

Stormborn
– a term that describes humans native to the planet Pogoll and its respective colonies.

Tatt
shǐ
– Earthborn swearword for
shit
, a fusion of
Mandarin and Hindi.

Transmat
– Transmaterialization, or teleporting matter across vast distances.

TriTran
– 3-Dimensional Transponder used for hologram communications.

T
ROJAN
–  The Space Marine Tactical Reconnaissance Operations and Infiltration Regiment, an Alpha-Tier JSOG unit.

UComm
– Union Command Armada, the Galactic Union’s military arm.

UIB
– Union Intelligence Bureau, the agency which heads the Galactic Union’s intelligence community.

PREY
     A Short Story

“This is a terrible idea,” Ella Valdés grumbled under her breath. She sat alone, at a puny corner booth in the putrid and crammed Hugrask’s Hostellaris. To a casual observer, Ella was just another human prospector nursing a drink after a long day of unsuccessful mining beneath Bimnorii’s sand dunes. That’s how Ella preferred it, or else her job would become much harder.

As usual, Bimnorii was an ungodly oven, even at the end of the day. Noriida Major’s sunset cast a deep crimson glow over the mishmash of buildings that made up Rimhara, Bimnorii’s largest city-state.

Tonight, Ella had opted to wear only a snug, black armorweave vest over a dark tank top, a sleek khaki utility belt over kurthahide and obsidian nanoclothe pants, along with dark, knee-high buckle combat boots. She carried a smaller pulse pistol tucked in her pants underneath the vest. A larger, more visible firearm would draw the worst kind of heat in a place as dangerous as Rimhara, which was why she prepped hidden weapons in each slim forearm-length gauntlet.

Ella wiped away the sweat beading on her brow, silently cursing Bimnorii’s dry heat. Even with a temperature controller embedded in her clothes and coolers positioned all over this hostellaris, she could feel her light olive skin desiccating in protest. The human patted down her neck with a sodden napkin for probably the fortieth time in the past orv, observing any potential threats with beady, dark eyes.

As small as Hugrask’s Hostellaris looked on the outside, this place really packed in a crowd. Under the dim blue lights, yellowish clouds pumped incessantly from the long pipes of patrons getting high on bimweed, coalescing into a greenish miasma. That made Ella nauseous when she focused on it too long.

The haze did little to obscure such a disreputable gathering of smugglers, space pirates and overall lowlifes from every ass end of the known cosmos. Three hulking Kedri mercenaries, obvious by their scaly blue hides, bright mohawk-mullet manes and heavy, overarched brows sat in a bigger corner booth next to hers. They spoke in the raucous Kedri Common Tongue, downing hard syrupy liquor in pails the size of Ella’s head.

Numerous mercenaries and bounty hunters swaggered through the crowd like kings of the universe, making sure their weapons were visible enough to ward off would-be troublemakers. Somewhere else, a verbal argument between a Cressonish and a Kintarian kept fading in and out of the general roar.

A pair of Nnaxan females, their craniowhisks trembling lustily and tumbling down to their asses, weaved through the dense crowd with what they considered their sexiest sashays, catching the attention of many drunk and lonely males. Phrynes were the Nnaxans’ official titles, but to Ella they were straight up prostitutes. The whores purposely avoided the far left of the hostellaris, where many rowdy patrons hollered at some performance Ella couldn’t see.

Searing melodies of string instruments reached above the noisy tumult, a total contradiction to the grimy watering hole with its heaving press of patrons. The ugly clash of yowling and gargled dialects always seemed to teeter dangerously toward physical conflict. Ella could taste the constant threat of violence beneath the surface just waiting to erupt. But she knew the simmering menace was endemic on Bimnorii, no matter which part of this hellhole she’d been on. Ella had heard cryptic asides and angry snippets of some gruesome bloodbath in Rimhara’s sister city-state, Ymedes. As soon as Ella confirmed whatever happened in Ymedes didn’t mess with her job, she tuned out the gruesome specifics.

Dangerous surroundings aside, Ella wasn’t afraid, just alert…and angry. She hated fucking Bimnorii and its never-ending fucking desert. But since taking up the bounty hunter trade, Ella kept finding herself back on this dried-out
tattshi
ball. It was like some sand-covered magnet that kept drawing her back no matter how far she traveled away from it.

The reason for her latest visit was the same as always—a job.

This latest one involved hunting quarry from a seldom seen species. After Ella and Jaellyn’s fruitless two weeks of searching several worlds in the Lawless Regions, a reliable, yet very expensive contact had tipped them off to a member of this elusive species surfacing on Bimnorii. She scanned the crowd more times than she could count, toying idly with wavy, raven-black hair pulled into a sleek ponytail at the nape of her neck. According to their contact, the quarry frequented this hostellaris. Yet, in the past two orvs, Ella had seen nothing resembling the beast in the holoimage she and her partner had received.

“You’ve said how bad my idea is three times already,” snapped a clipped voice on Ella’s concealed earcom. That would be Jaellyn, her bounty-hunting partner, waiting somewhere outside of Hugrask’s for Ella to lure their target into the open.

“I’m repeating that to make sure you know,” Ella hissed under her breath, but the hostellaris music and uproar was so loud, no one would hear her anyway. “We could get nothing, or I could get killed.”

“I
won’t
let that happen,” Jaellyn stated with sternness that Ella found comforting. The Tarkathian continued, “Unless you have a better idea on luring out our mark, then by all means, state it.”

Ella had no comeback for that. She could almost picture Jaellyn’s smug look. “That’s what I thought, silly human,” the Tarkathian stated. “And
stop
rolling your eyes.”

Ella, in mid-eye roll, scowled and continued nursing her reddish Rimhara Bitter Sour, wishing for a stronger drink. Now was one of those times Ella almost forgot her partner was younger than her—as in thirteen years old, and trained since birth to hunt in a culture deeming that acceptable.

There was a parting in the crowd, and at the main bar sat the target—an osvowraith. It was a mirror image of the hologram she and Jaellyn had seen before taking this job: rail-thin humanoid, seemingly composed of all sharp angles. Its lengthy nose, pointed like a blunt sword edge, with a deathly pallor obvious even under the dim lights. Oily black dreadlocks from the rear of its head fell down to its lower back. Ella still couldn’t believe that
this
being could pose a threat to anyone. According to their contact, male and female osvowraiths look pretty much the same, so Ella referred to the target as ‘It.’

The osvowraith sat hunched over on a floating stool, coiled like a snake. Its entire attention was fixated on the performance happening to Ella’s far left. In its clawed fingers was a round cup of an untouched fizzy, yellow-orange, a tongue-burning Solar Scorcher by the look of it.

After finding out that osvowraiths weren’t just nightmarish bedtime stories, Ella had almost fallen over with laughter. Apparently, osvowraiths were energy parasites that drain the life out of other sentient beings for sustenance. Even when seeing graphic images of osvowraith victims, all pallid and speckled from head to toe with eerie glowing suck marks, Ella just couldn’t see this scrawny thing as a threat. Now she noted the osvowraith’s laser-like focus on whatever was on the stage—a hunter tracking its prey.

“I see him,” muttered Ella, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder. The bounty hunter seriously had doubts about taking this job, especially when their data broker, Xubes, said the client was some human supremacist paramilitary group. “Why the hell do they need us?” a baffled Ella had asked.

“You two, even though you’ve done quite well recently, are much lower profile than the more known bounty hunters,” Xubes had explained. “And you come cheap.”

As low-priced as Ella and Jaellyn’s services were, the compensation had been way too good to pass up. If the first half of the payment was any indication, this job was triple their usual take for a grab ‘n’ bag based on the target’s rarity. Plus Ella and Jaellyn were in serious need of some real currency for better weapons, foodstuff with actual taste, and, of course, new ship parts. Ella had been able to patch up lots of nagging issues and leaks with their ship thanks to her techie knowhow. But it was only a matter of time before one such issue became serious enough to leave her and Jaellyn stranded in the middle of the Black.

Ella downed the last of her drink and rose from her seat. Amidst the dim and stifling atmosphere, quite a few heads turned when she weaved through the crowd. Ella owed that interest to her near five-foot-ten inches in height. She had always been on the more full-figured side—unlike her skinny-like-a-stick cousin, Ana Lucia. But a subtle sway of the hips here, a sensual half-smirk there and Ella could draw her fair share of male attention.

As she neared her quarry, Ella noticed where the concentration of Hugrask’s crowd resided. One look told her why the hostellaris was so packed.

The stage on the far left belonged to a scantily clad near-human girl, her long, violet hair done up in intricate and elegant braids. The chalk-white humanoid was a petite little thing. Her heart-shaped face remained focused and blissful, despite the audience’s lewd catcalls and whistles. On that stage, she danced a slow and seductive dance, waving her arms hypnotically to the song’s alien string-heavy tempo. Her hips shook and shivered to the melodies, as if independent of her body. Gliding across the stage like an ice-skater in slow motion, the girl’s presence filled the entire hostellaris.

Ella stopped and stared, mesmerized. The music, like the dancer, was Korvenite in origin, wreathing her every movement flawlessly, a beautiful fiery union between song and dance. Ella had never heard or seen Korvenite music performed when she lived on Terra Sollus. It had been forbidden in the Valdés household. Clearly she had been missing out. The performance was like nothing Ella had ever seen. Yet the passion…the fire of this Korvenite’s seductive dance, felt so like an old dance style Ella’s home country of Navarre had inherited from a long-dead Old Earth country. The Korvenite’s eyes, black sclera housing gold irises, lanced into Ella’s brain, blotting out every coherent thought…

“Has the osvowraith exited yet?” Jaellyn interjected, a welcome stab of daylight through Ella’s mental fog.

“Not yet,” Ella murmured clumsily.
Whoa!
She tore her eyes away from the performance, shaking her head to clear it. That Korvenite was putting out some serious psychic…
something
. No wonder the girl had the osvowraith’s undivided attention. All her telepathic mojo must look like an all-you-can-eat buffet sign. Ella, now clearheaded, took a good look.