Supreme Leader of Anstractor: A Sci-Fantasy Space Adventure (The New Phase Book 3) (8 page)

“No, Connie, not at all. You’re Commander MEC’s executive officer, and I have the utmost respect for you,” she lied.

“Then why do you take full advantage of every chance you get to embarrass me?” Connie pressed, and Phimanila wondered if the crack in her voice was due to her being truly upset over this, or if it was just the way she sounded when she was angry.

“Are we off the record here, Connie?” she asked, her caramel-colored pupils taking on an intensity that Connie had never seen before.

“If we weren’t I would have asked you out there, Phim,” she replied, switching her tone to one of informality in order to solidify the point that they were off the record.

“Okay then, I’ll just say it. You questioned the Commander’s orders right in front of all of us, and you knew you messed up and tried to correct it. For some reason, you assume that correcting your hiccups should always involve throwing me into the thrusters of a revved up fighter. I don’t appreciate it. You outrank me and have a direct line to Commander Cilas, yet you have always felt that we’re in a competition. What the hell is your problem?” Phimanila said, confused as to why her voice cracked similarly even though she felt calm on the inside.

“We’re supposed to be friends, Phimanila. We lived together for ten years as cadets, yet you don’t ever talk to me. You join in on the jokes behind my—”

“No, I don’t!” Phimanila interrupted.

“Yes, Phimanila, yes, you do,” her voice was a hoarse whisper now, and her large black eyes were fighting back tears. “Don’t think that I don’t know, you backstabbing little
cruta
. If you hate me so much, why come in here and pretend that you are so innocent in all of this? Just tell me I suck, tell me that I’m a
schtill
XO, and that Rend should airlock me and put you in my place as his second. That’s what you think, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you want?”

Phimanila stared at Connie with a mixture of pity and embarrassment, and she didn’t know what to do. The soldier in her wanted to stomp down, slap her hard, and remind her of the war, of her responsibility, and of her position. But she was still the tiny tomboy who had helped this pretty girl fend off bullies back when they were cadets learning how to fire a pistol. She stepped in and hugged Connie, and the tall woman melted into her arms and sobbed into her shoulder.

“Do you think he will forgive me, Phim? Do you think I can ever be in good graces with him again after this?” she asked after what felt like fifteen minutes of crying.

“I think that for being the second to Cilas, you aren’t paying close enough attention, Connie. That man respects the hell out of you and he expected you to object, which is why he answered you the way he did. You were chosen for a reason. He knows that he is rash, and plays a lot of things by instinct. You are supposed to offer a side of logic to the Commander, Connie, not just stand there and relay his orders to me and the rest of the guys on the bridge. We can hear him as well as you can.”

She backed away from Constance and used her thumbs to wipe the remnants of tears away from her face. “Take a deep breath,” she ordered, and Connie did so several times.

“When I found out about you talking behind my back I tried to hate you,” she said evenly. “I felt hurt and betrayed, but I had no one to talk to about it.”

“Of course you didn’t. You pushed us all away when you decided that you needed that stamp of galactic approval on your lapel,” Phimanila countered. “Look, they were just jokes. I never meant anything malicious, Connie. Maker, you’re like a
thyping
sister or something. How can I hate you enough to spread bad rumors? Seriously, you’re being extra sensitive because you freaking pushed me away, man.”

“I told you that I cannot have a relationship, Phim.”

“So it’s all or nothing? I merely suggested that we step things up between us but you made it more than clear that you’re not interested. I was fine with that; you’re my oldest friend. You took it as some sort of line that I crossed to become your enemy. Want to talk about hurt? Imagine what that
schtill
did to my head last year.”

“I’m so sorry, Phimanila, for everything. That was not what I wanted, and I never rejected you outright. If you can recall, I said that I wasn’t ready. It was just bad coincidence with the timing, and I deal with things through seclusion – you know that more than anyone else. I’m sorry, so let’s forget all of this and just go back to being friends, please?”

All Phimanila heard was “I never rejected you outright,” and threw caution to the wind. She stepped in and took Connie’s waist into her hands and kissed her softly on the lips. Time stopped as she expected her once-friend to push her off violently and admonish her for taking advantage of the situation, but there was no rejection; not in her body language and not in her actions. Constance ITO had gone limp, and this surrender, this trust and release from a woman that she had known to be an ice queen, sent shivers down her body to the point where her toes actually curled.

She moved in deeper, tasting the smooth, oily lipstick mixed with a million emotions and raw unbridled lust begging her to go all the way, that there may not be another chance, that she should crack Constance open and consume her very soul. Her mind couldn’t focus; it was all butterflies, heat, and smooth, tanned flesh. They were in the aftermath of a battle that should have taken their lives, and they had been off the bridge for over fifteen minutes now, but none of this was evident.

Phimanila reached down but Connie stopped her, and their heated breathing was like a fuel pipe that had been split in half and forced apart at its strongest point.

“My head is spinning,” Connie said, and tried to fix her uniform.

“I’m sorry I—” Phimanila began, but Connie placed her finger on her mouth to silence her, took her head inside of her strong hands and planted a hard kiss on her lips.

“If we weren’t on duty at a crucial hour, I would say,
thype
it, let’s make up for lost time,” Connie said. “But we’ve been gone awhile, and pretty soon someone will come to see if we’ve killed one another, or something else. I should be thanking you, Phim. You have no idea how much I needed to know that you still cared about me.” She could barely talk through her heavy breathing.

“Calm down, Connie, long breaths. You need your voice ready to command, and … you’re welcome. I was beginning to think that I had lost you.”

R
AFIAN woke up with a start, looking around confused with his surroundings. He lay half-buried in a mountain of sand, and the sun seemed closer than it ever did. He was on the ground in what could best be described as a graveyard for starships. There were half-buried spaceships everywhere, and they looked as if they had been there for centuries.

He pulled himself from out of the sand and slowly rose to his feet. His episode with the Makers was still fresh in his mind but everything that had led up to that moment was hard for him to remember. He recalled the Geralos hovering above Zallus, and he remembered flying into their midst along with Yuth, Camille, and Tayden. It was after the attack that things got murky, and he wondered if he had somehow died and was in limbo before his cloning.

What if the cloner was destroyed and I am stuck in this nightmare forever
, he thought. This made him anxious so he quickly forced it out of his mind. Thoughts of oblivion had a way of immobilizing an individual, and the last thing he needed was to sit still while the Geralos raided his city.

He tried to walk but found it painful. This prompted him to scan his body for wounds but he found none beyond the scars of his past. He pushed past the pain to observe the closest of the ships. It was an old Vestalian Classic like the one Camille flew back when they were on
Helysian
. It had been hit with a kinetic missile of some sort and this was evidenced by the hole in its port side, which was dented in and charred.

Rafian walked up to it and touched the rusted metal. “You were someone’s pride back when you were in action, weren’t you?” he mused. He then climbed inside of the cockpit and sat on the plasteel seat.
This is a first generation
, he thought.
This has to be well over 300 years old
.

He pulled himself out of the ship and scanned the desert horizon. Ships were strewn about all over the place, and in the distance a massive destroyer lay dormant like a metallic beached whale. “Where am I?” he whispered and started walking in the direction of the destroyer. The proximity of the sun and the wispy white clouds clued him in that this was not Vestalia. His comm was missing and so was his jacket. Whomever had done this to him had only left him his Phaser pants and boots, and the tank top that would normally be worn beneath the shirt.

Two hours in, his throat was burning and the sun hadn’t seemed to move. There were still ships around him so he slipped inside a newer model of cruiser. His hope was to find the water supply. If that was damaged he would still be out of the sun and that was a positive, even if there was no water.

The cruiser was a good choice for respite. The interior was still intact and the damage—if you could call it that—had been to its FTL drive, which would have meant that it could still fly but only within a limited system. Rafian climbed below the flight panel and tugged at a tube. It broke after several tries and he put to his mouth. The oily, wet goodness of the coolant went down his throat and he drank until he felt as if his stomach would burst.

Once he had his fill, he tied the tube but kept the panel off in case he needed to drink from it again. Most ships used a variation of H2O to cool their engines. There were other properties inside of the liquid that he would regret when it came time to urinate, but necessity could not afford discrimination, and the pain he would experience was worth the sustenance that the coolant afforded.

Rafian tinkered with the controls and tried to get the power to come on. This became an exercise in futility since the crystals that powered it had been removed. He sat inside the hot ship for over an hour before deciding that he should keep moving.

* * *

“Laern, this is your last chance. What were you doing with a Geralos downstairs?” Tayden asked the young Phaser as she paced the dark room impatiently.

“She had me at gunpoint—”

“No!” Marika interrupted. “No, you’ve tried that line, you traitorous piece of
schtill
. You were talking to it and laughing when I caught you. AND you were speaking in its language. Tayden, do we not have a flobot down there recording the patients? Why don’t you just run it to see how he got out of his tank?”

Laern’s eyes grew wide when she said this and Maes Van Senthyn—the Geralos that occupied his mind—knew that if those recordings were played he would be killed immediately. He searched his mind for a distraction, something to delay Marika’s suggestions so that he could find a way to escape. “Aren’t we under attack?” he tried.

“Your army has been routed, traitor. Open your filthy mouth again without mine or the commander’s permission and I will cut you open. Tayden, flobot?”

Tayden Lark nodded, then shot a look of disappointment at Laern. “I vouched for you and you continue to make things hard,” she said to him. “If you’re guilty in even the smallest way, you better hope that Rafian doesn’t find out about it.” She touched Marika on her lower back and the women left the room, leaving him to hang by his hands in the empty interrogation room.

“Marika, are you certain?” Tayden asked as they climbed the angled walkway up to the holding cells beneath the Phaser agency.

“What’s with you guys and your loyalty to that recruit? First I have Val, who damn near sabotaged my attempt to arrest him when I killed the lizard. Then here you are asking me a third time if I’m certain. Do you think I make it a habit of second-guessing members of our order? Do you forget that I was a member of a much harsher guild of specialists for most of my life? I have no—”

“Come on, Marika, it isn’t—”

“No, let me finish, Tayden, because I’ve had it up to here with you all defending him. He was a hero, I get it, but so were we, a thousand times over. He managed to stick with Vallen during the Crak-Ti massacre; I don’t take that away from him. But the Geralos corrupt minds. They’ve done it for centuries. Just because that boy calls himself a Phaser does not mean that his mind is strong enough to avoid corruption.”

Tayden Lark looked visibly sick and she stopped and turned to Marika to face her.

“I’m sorry, Marika, but I recruited him. I took a chance on him since his records were marginal, but I saw a lot of potential and we needed Phasers. For me to hear that I promoted a weak-minded man into our ranks is the ultimate failure. Maybe I’m not ready for that and that is why I keep on asking. Laern has had a spotty record even here in the Phaser agency.
Schtill
, I’ve already caused us to lose the Supreme Commander, for this to be—”

“Did you hear that?” Marika asked, placing her hand on the commander’s chest. She pushed away from Tayden and ran back to the door of the cells to gain the hatch that would lead back to where Laern was hanging. “
THYPE
!” she screamed with frustration and Tayden ran after to see what happened.

When she got back inside the room, Laern was nowhere to be seen. The chains that had held him had somehow been undone, and a vent high in the corner of the wall had been opened to allow his escape. She looked over at Marika, wide-eyed, expecting her ire, but Marika merely shook her head to show her disappointment. As Tayden fired up her comm to warn the rest of the compound, Marika Tsuno sprinted to the wall, bounced off of it towards the vent, and pulled herself up to pursue the traitor.

She was inside and pulling herself through as she tracked his sweat. This wasn’t the first time she’d gone after a mark through a tight crawlspace. She was the tiniest of her assassin’s guild, and many of the marks that had been assigned to her had been experts of espionage and escaping. She had pulled herself through drains, catacombs, and caves. It was always an exercise of mental fortitude, and she had hoped that her days of crawling would be over when she accepted Rafian’s invitation to be a Phaser.

Rafian. She thought of the tall, dark figure who had snuck into her room while she slept that fated day. He had slipped through the guild, killed several of its members, and found her to make his offer. They had become many things since that day and she regretted none of it. But now he was missing, and she wondered if she would ever get the chance to tell him how she truly felt.

Their connection had been one of silent understanding, two killers that operated out of instinct more than words. Now as she crawled she thought about how grateful she was to him for bringing her in to the Phasers and introducing her to Marian. Her life had a meaning now that went past blood, money, and a killer’s notoriety. She felt as if she had a family, and a lover/sister who cared for her beyond rank, duty, and membership.

She and Marian had crossed the line on many things when they had gone to Luca, and she wanted to let Rafian know. She wanted him to hear it and accept it so that she wouldn’t have to keep any secrets from him. The VCAs were the only people who knew who the real Marika Tsuno was. They accepted her, flaws and all, and she had shared every part of herself with them. Now there was a traitor threatening to hurt the new family that she loved so much, and she would not rest until she stopped him.

Her tracking brought her to the exit vent and she peered down it carefully before sliding through. It was the kitchen area of the jail, and she followed his tracks, which took her out and around to the same slope that led up to the agency. She climbed the halls, opened the door, and slid past the healing tanks to the cloning area where—

Marika’s heart sank when she saw the cloners, or what used to be the cloners as they were now damaged beyond recognition from what she could only assume was some sort of blunt weapon. She quickened her pace and turned on her comm, calling for Marian who answered immediately.

“Rhee, we have a situation.”

“I heard …”

“Well, the
cruta’s
out and he’s wrecked our cloners, so things are about as scary as they can get for us right about now.”

“Our cloners?
Thype
! Are you joking? Find that bastard. I am putting every single Phaser and marine on his trail right now.”

* * *

After a day of walking through the arid desert, Rafian VCA saw a green outline on the horizon. At first he thought that it was his imagination, but he needed it to be real, so he decided against scavenging the starship to pushing on towards the green line.

The sun had gone down and the temperature dropped so he quickened his pace while taking an occasional swig from the bottle of coolant that he had taken for the journey. He felt broken, dirty, and exhausted, but in the back of his mind he knew that stopping would be suicide so he pressed on towards the green.

Overhead, a number of alien birds had begun to circle. Rafian assumed that these birds were not used to living creatures surviving in the desert and were holding out in case he toppled over dead, at which time they could swoop in to feast. It was either that or the birds were predators waiting for an opportunity. He had no las-sword or pistol so he hoped that his former assumption was the one that would be true.

Still he kept on walking and the birds kept on circling until he was walking along through the blackest of nights. With no weapons and no place for cover, Rafian began to regret his choice to keep on walking instead of sleeping inside the husk of the starship. His legs were numb and the night air was the type of cold that demanded all of his attention, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.

Rafian hit a wall of exhaustion but looked up at the starry sky, hoping that if he stopped, the birds—or whatever they were—would not swoop in to attack him. He slowed to a stop and they were on him; not birds like he assumed they were, but a form of flying catlike creature with razor claws and leathery skin that extended into wings.

He swung his fists at them since his legs wouldn’t cooperate, but they kept on diving in at him, swiping pieces of skin as they did. He caught one by the wings and broke them violently, and then hurled the wounded creature to the floor. The others doubled their efforts but Rafian fought valiantly, and when the cats saw that their numbers were dwindling they took to the air to circle him from a distance.

Rafian felt his consciousness going and though he could die and clone—which would be the quickest way back to Zallus—something inside of him warned him not to attempt it. The need to live overtook the weakness of giving up and he looked towards the horizon and jumped, teleporting in the way he had learned to do without using the crystals.

The world went dark and became a blurry version of itself. He appeared at the edge of a lush garden, and in the distance he saw the lights of a city. A number of vessels were hovering above it, their lights illuminating the gardens and the desert around it. Rafian thought that he would be safe that close to civilization so he crawled to a grassy clearing bordered by beautiful white flowers and rolled onto his back to catch his breath.