Supreme Leader of Anstractor: A Sci-Fantasy Space Adventure (The New Phase Book 3) (5 page)

Clenching her fists and standing defiantly, she reached into the nothingness of her mind and willed herself to connect with Rafian, an exercise she had only been able to do once before.

“I hope you can hear me, Raf, it’s your
ru
—your
rurit
, your Tayden. I did a foolish thing trying to jump, and it would kill me if we lost you because of it. Please hear me, Raf. You’re my oldest Jumper brother and bunkmate. It isn’t time for you to leave yet.”

She tightened her muscles and held her breath, but there was no feeling, no response, just the sound of laser fire in the background, along with a number of explosions. If Tayden had been herself and not a desperate woman tugging at straws to find her friend, she would have realized there was fighting going on within the city. The telltale noises were mild annoyances to her mental reaching, however, and she clenched her muscles even tighter and squeezed her eyes even more.

“Damn it, Rafian! I was able to pull you back when we lost you before and I’ll be damned if I can’t pull you back again,” she said as she probed with her mind looking for a sign.

When nothing came to Tayden Lark, she decided that it was time to get herself acclimated with the present tense. There were Geralos in the city, and the few Phaser recruits were fighting them with no help. She moved to run back inside to collect her las-sword but then Aurora hopped down from the top of the stairs and landed in front of her.

“Everything okay, Tay? We saw the light, but you’re crying and I heard Marian shouting downstairs.”

“We’re okay, Aury, but things are a mess. I’m crying because it’s all my fault, and Marian is yelling because she’s trying to make sure that everyone is okay.”

Aurora hissed through her teeth and crossed her arms. “Look, I know that I come off as some sort of bubbly, innocent cheerleader for my brother, but I was a decorated intelligence officer of the
Helysian
. I can spot a lie a mile away, and I’ve sent hundreds of little bratty cadets to the brig for trying me. You’re lying to me and it’s unnecessary. Rafian can’t die. You guys do that cloning thing … so where the hell is he?”

Tayden shook her head and forced a smile. Aurora was the best at catching people off guard when they underestimated her. She knew what the woman was capable of, but she needed to get downstairs to grab her sword, and Aurora was in the way.

“He’s not picking up his comm; that’s the big panic,” Tayden said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to central command to take the lead in defending our city.”

“THE LIZARDS ARE HERE?” Aurora asked and looked around frantically.

“Yes, so get upstairs, soldier,” Tayden mocked. “You may be an officer, but you’re a new mom, and that baby needs you safely out of the way of the brain-biters.”

Once Aurora was gone, Tayden got on her comm and summoned Marika Tsuno. The assassin had been extremely quiet since returning from Luca with Marian, but she assumed that it was due to her spending time with Val Tracker. She asked the Phaser to meet her in the command center and then trotted down the stairs to where Marian, Frank, and Dott were looking over a map of the city.

“Reports are saying that a number of the lizards have died due to the atmosphere,” Frank said to her as soon as she entered. She smiled at him and he returned it, a rare gift that he only reserved for the woman that held his heart.

“I don’t know why you two continue with the façade,” Marian said under her breath, and Tayden turned a bright shade of red and stopped in her tracks. “We’ve known you two were together since the day we took that trip to meet with the leaders on Meluvia. Frank, Tay, this isn’t the military. Phasers are expected to be with Phasers, so stop with the
thyping
act and just come out in the open with it.”

Realizing that in her grief Marian was trying to pick a fight, Tayden tried to remain quiet but as the air grew more uncomfortable she couldn’t help herself. “It’s not easy for me, okay?” she said quickly, cutting off Frank, who was moving in to deny everything. “I know that you guys know, but military protocol has been embedded in my DNA. It’s not something that is easy to get past. I love Frank, and I am his, yes … but kissing him in public, holding hands, that sort of thing – it just, it just feels odd!”

“Well, you two make a beautiful couple,” Dott offered, hoping that Tayden would not scream at her for being in her business.

“Thanks Dott, that means a lot,” she said. She strolled forward to peer at the map and quickly move past the discussion. “Any word on how we’re going to get our Phasers home?”

“Camille has a crystal but she wants to hang out on
Helysian
for a day to see if they are okay there,” Dott said. “Yuth is taking some time and will fly back here as soon as he is needed.”

“What about Rafian? Have we heard anything?” Tayden asked, and the three Phasers shook their heads negatively. Tayden felt a lump grow in the back of her throat and she swallowed hard against it. “What about the kids, Erlaine and the other two?”

“Klemise died,” Marian said quietly. “I’ve made arrangements to have his name added to the memorial wall, and I set up a time to notify his family.”

“I’ll take care of it, Rhee, if there’s no chance at cloning him. I
thyping
blew us up, so it should be me to make that call.”

Marian shrugged solemnly and continued, “The others are helping to patrol Zallus. We have them running the grid, looking for any lizards that are sneaking around.”

Tayden turned away from the map and faced them. She looked as if she had aged ten years since the incident. “I’m going to find Rafian and bring him home, Marian, I realize that my words don’t mean squat. I just want you to know that I’m on it, and nothing will take me away from that mission.”

Marian stared at her stoically. Her eyes revealed the pain that she fought against, but her body stood stiff, her hands on her hips as if she were ready to defend herself.

Tayden said, “Marika and Val will be meeting us down here. It sounds like they have a big announcement that they want to share with the rest of us.”

Upon hearing this, Marian smiled and tried to hide it, but Frank saw it and raised an eyebrow. “Marian knows something and she isn’t sharing,” he teased, and Marian looked over at him with her eyes wide.

“I might, Frank OTA, but I’m not sharing,
schtill
!” she barked at him, but kept her smile to let him know that she was still teasing. He looked at her as if her beauty intoxicated him, then he forced his eyes over to Tayden in order to break the spell.

“This will be nice,” Tayden said. “It will be good to finally have most of our Phasers back here inside of the command center. It is the way I imagined this place would be, back when we had it built, but we have all had so many issues to deal with that we got scattered all over the galaxy. Now I’ve gone and added to our separation, and a young Phaser has lost his life in the mix.”

“Come on, Tayden, quit with the self-pity,
schtill
,” Frank said. “It’s countering your intent and you’re not making it easier. We know that you’ll do what is needed to get everyone back.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t shake this guilt. But you know what? Once we destroy the Geralos I’m dictating vacation. You all can fight me on it, but its happening, one way or another.”

“I know you want us here, Tay, but when that day comes, I’m dragging my husband back to Luca away from this
schtill
. This place is nothing but trouble for him and he can’t get a break. Our vacation will be in a cottage deep within the forests of Tyhera, where we’ll
thype
our brains out and stay drunk on Talalulan wine.”

The thought of this seemed to lighten Marian’s mood, and Tayden felt more encouraged to bring the Phaser home.

M
AES VAN SENTHYN opened his eyes expecting to see the lush fields of
Zeron
, the afterlife, but what he saw instead was a distorted reality filled with wires, tubes, and bubbles that escaped from his mouth when he tried to speak. He gathered that he was in some sort of tank, but couldn’t understand how it was that he was still alive, and why the humans would have preserved his body instead of incinerating it.

He made to try for the glass, and realized that he could not move. He looked down and the sight of the mangled piece of meat that was his body frightened him like he had never been frightened before. He had only glanced, but the glance was enough to let him know that he could not look at it, not for any amount of time; the sight of it had hurt him.

It would have hurt anyone, especially after a lifetime of training and careful maintenance that was meant to put him above all enemies. When he had been discovered and beaten to the point of disability he had taken to outfitting his body parts with cybernetic enhancements. He hadn’t allowed himself to lament the loss of his body then, but now it came to him like a hot wave, and though the tears he shed only added to the liquid that he was submerged in, he could feel the burn of them, regardless.

A knock on the glass snapped him to attention, and from what he could make out there was someone standing by the tank staring in at him.
Could that be a Geralos?
he thought, and the greenish palms that were placed against the glass confirmed it. One of his kind must have slipped in, found his near-corpse, and thrown him into one of the recovery tanks the humans used for their warriors.

He didn’t know whether to feel angry or elated at the second chance. Rafian VCA had dealt him a series of deadly cuts, and though he denied him the
il ad ach tchi
(warrior’s death) and expected him to suffer in a dishonorable passing, it was a death from a greater warrior, nonetheless.

Maes was annoyed. He had been an unmatched sword master before Rafian, and now that he lived, the chances of another superior warrior finding him to kill him was a dream. He sneered at his savior but then he could hear her voice coming through some sort of speaker on the tank.

“Great one, you are still with us,” she said. “Do not try to speak, your mouth has been damaged.”

Maes nodded his head and tried to get a better look at her.
What would she expect me to do with no body and a missing jaw? Give council about the Phasers?
he thought. He saw her move away from the glass to touch a panel. She began to move her hands around rapidly on the screen.

“Great one, I am going to ask you to perform the
schlain
ritual. I am sorry, it is the only way,” she said, looking back at him with what he read as regret in her eyes.

The
schlain
ritual, she said, the forbidden act of giving over one’s mind to that of another vessel. It was a skill learned and mastered by only the top priests of the temple, high level royalty, wealthy politicians, and, of course, spies, of which he was the greatest. She was asking him to become an abomination.

“There are no bodies here that will take your powerful mind, lord, but … but there is a human in stasis here. I know that it is a disgusting thought but he is in recovery, vacant, and would easily be taken if you would have another chance at revenge.”

The woman stopped her gesturing and walked over to the glass. She looked him in the eye and kept the stare even though Maes knew it would have been difficult given the amount of respect she had for him. He considered his choices. He could stay in the tank and slowly heal until one of the Phasers found him and finished the job of killing him, or he could do as she said and become one of them. It would be the ultimate disguise for a spy, a true takeover without the fear of the skin rotting, the accent changing, or suspicion.

The Geralos that he was made him shudder at the thought of it. On
Helysian
he had spent a lifetime with the humans, working with them, listening to them, and making love to them. The last bit of that thought made him want to retch. Did he have it in him to go through with that again? Would it be pleasant now that he would genetically become human, or would it still give him nightmares?

The warrior inside of him grinned at the opportunity. If the body was as young and strong as the other Phasers he would be more than a match for Rafian VCA. He could get the Supreme Leader alone, call him out, and duel him properly instead of the defeat he’d suffered while lying half-dead next to a burned-out ship.

His eyes rolled back in his head and he found himself on that familiar mental plane that would lead to the psychic connection needed for the takeover.

Inside of the psychic plane that Maes took to complete the ritual, the ground was a muted grey that dusted up wherever his feet—now whole in this alternate reality—would step. The horizon was shapeless, a line of black shadow that merged into a pink sky littered with loose, whimsical black clouds and flying creatures. The only other forms on this plane were shadowy things off in the distance. He knew that these were the Phasers, strong of mind and ready for one such as him to try and invade their mind.

Next to him, not fifteen paces away, was a man seated on the ground with his chin on his knees rocking back and forth. He looked like a child awaiting punishment after some sort of discovery had been made by his parents. This had to be his host, and Maes strolled over to him and reached for his head.

When his hand passed through the figure it felt wonderful, and Maes let his hand linger there for a time, loving the feeling of life that sent electricity throughout his entire body. He walked forward and sat within the shadow, taking on the same pose and letting the electricity consume him to the point where it felt as if every part of his body was in ecstasy.

The merging completed and everything went bright. Maes, now human and awake, opened his eyes and found that he was inside another tank. The water tickled his nose, and he felt the strange sensation of its harsh properties being forced down into his lungs and then out again through his nostrils. His eyes could only see a blurry version of the outside of the tank and he immediately missed his own Geralos eyes.

But he felt strong, and he moved around to test this and it felt good. When he kicked his arms and legs he noticed that one of his arms was stronger than the other. He wanted to look down, to see what his whole body looked like, but the memory of what he had seen earlier frightened him and it took him several attempts to glance down at it.

If the female Geralos that stood watching the floating body of what used to be Laern Cobo—now Maes Van Senthyn—had been less composed she would have bust out laughing. Here in front of her was the greatest spymaster of the Geralos military in the body of a human, floating around in a tank but fascinated with the size of his own—

Maes Van Senthyn looked up quickly when he felt eyes on him and remembered that his rescuer was still in the vicinity. He swam to the top of the tank, tried to push open the lid, and then gestured to her to get him out. She nodded obediently and went back to the panel. After several slides and pushes of objects on the hovering display, she finally managed to activate the right mechanism and the liquid started to drain slowly from his tank.

When the water was only as high as his torso, Maes’s lungs rebelled against the forced oxygen he was trying to breathe. The pain inside his chest was worse than anything he had ever felt and he fell to his knees and plunged his face into the diminishing liquid, sucking in as much as he could manage. This, of course, was futile and before long he was rolling around on the bottom of the tank, vomiting pink liquid and screaming in pain at the torture tearing up his chest.

This lasted for five long minutes.

When he could open his eyes and enjoy the air that now worked its way in and out of his lungs, he saw that the Geralos woman was an older officer. She had on a pilot’s mask and an air-filter mechanism on her back, and she was handing him a towel and the clothes of a Phaser. He snatched the towel and did his best to dry himself before slipping on a 3B suit. When he was finished he walked over to a mirror and examined the face that looked back at him.

“Is this one considered handsome by the humans?” he mused, and the woman walked around to the side of the mirror and regarded him.

“It’s hard to tell with these soft skins, my lord. Forgive my words but all I see when I look at you is a disgusting human that I should be eating.”

Maes looked over at her and grinned proudly. He was thinking the same thing when he first saw himself but then a wave of surprise came over him. He recognized the face as one of the last Phasers that had tried to fight him prior to losing Meluvia. He considered the irony and found it fitting. Wouldn’t it be glorious to use this body, this identity that was no doubt seen as some sort of hero, as a pawn to bring about the reclamation of Vestalia? He backed up and made a sweeping gesture of thanks to the Makers, and the female Geralos did the same.

“What is your name, officer? I would like to know how to address my future partner in the destruction of the human race,” he said.

“I am Lasae Almont, lord, second officer to—”

“To me,” Maes interrupted, his human face so strange in the way it looked speaking their language that Lasae could barely contain herself. “You want no part of our military, Lasae. They are blind, weak, and fat from all the Rilas fruit. I will need you to return and inform them of what I am and what I intend to do. Find Ari Groatrath of the Crak-Ti Corps; he is the only one I will speak to besides yourself, and he will know what to do.”

“How will I get there, lord? How am I to leave this human place to get back to our world?”

Maes looked at her quizzically, wondering why she was asking such a stupid question. She had to have come in with a raiding party, right? The signal he sent up to the general would have brought in the cavalry; all she had to do was fly back out.

“Are you here by yourself, Lasae?”

“It was strange, I came in with the raiders. We were to retake Zynec Prime from the humans, but something happened to us up there. They had suicidal pilots who flew into our fleet while we hovered and caused a chain reaction that destroyed us all … But we got teleported somehow, and I found myself down here, counting my blessings that I had kept my mask on when they attacked.”

“That is part of their power, Lasae; that is what these Phasers can do, which makes them difficult to kill.” He paused suddenly and his eyes flicked one way and then another, like an ancient machine calculating a decision through a series of algorithms. “So they got one up on you, eh, and you ended up down here? Surviving due to your discipline and not much more. I wonder how you got teleported. The Phasers have that power but what you describe sounds almost accidental.”

Lasae looked around quickly, as if she heard something, and then focused on Maes Van Senthyn. “There were many of us. Some have gone off to kill as many humans as they can, and others have gone looking for a ship to escape in. I came upon this place and saw where they had you. I have a background in the medical sciences, so I did what I could to bring you out of the comatose state you were in.”

“You did well, Lasae. When I am successful our people will owe you the glorious debt.”

Her face lit up with pleasant surprise and Maes could see the ambition reflected across her face at the prospect. For a spy of her rank to be given the immortal blessings of the ancestors was the greatest honor.

Lasae was smiling but she was mildly annoyed by Maes Van Senthyn’s arrogance. She had expected him to be grateful and promise her the life debt, but even if he didn’t she had expected him to be a little bit nicer to her than he was being. The Geralos-turned-human had come out of his screaming to bark orders at her, question her bravery, and wonder at her intelligence. She wondered if she had made a terrible mistake in saving him.

As if seeing that his savior had grown tired of his posturing, Maes saluted and then touched her shoulder in the gesture of gratitude. She forgave him instantly when he did this even though it repulsed her to have a human touch her place of honor.

Maes Van Senthyn walked to the tank that had his lifeless and soulless body and motioned her over. He asked her to drain the fluid as she had done with his tank, and he watched the entire sequence until the wet corpse was on the floor of the glass tank. He unlocked a hatch and dragged it out, and then looked over at Lasae, who looked like she was about to vomit.

“The place where they kept me imprisoned; show it to me, Lasae. We must delay their realization of what happened here as long as possible,”

Lasae nodded and led him out the door to a dark corridor, which seemed to take them deeper into the underground of the facility. He hoisted the body up by the underarms and walked so that it was suspended in front of him and the water was dripping away from his body. Lasae touched a panel and then another. They were in another place filled of tanks, but these held no water and were surrounded by chairs.

They placed the body of the former Maes Van Senthyn in the preservation tank that he was originally in and used the towel to wipe up the water marks as they retraced their steps.

“These Phasers, they are sloppy for being masters of espionage and combat,” Lasae said as they walked through the hallway, wiping up the puddles. “I have been here for over four hours and not one of them has come to check on their comrade.”