Star Brigade: Odysseys - An Anthology (10 page)

The Thulican broke into a huge smile. “On 3.” He turned toward the open shuttle hatch. “And don’t worry about the shuttle, Liliana,” he said right as Liliana opened her mouth. “The autopilot will close the door once we jump, and the craft will be waiting for us after our jump.” That quelled some of Liliana’s nausea as she faced the open hatch. She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled as Khrome began his count.

“3!” he shouted.

Liliana’s eyes snapped open. Khrome crouched down and leaped out the shuttle. And to her own surprise, she followed right after—eyes closed, of course. The doctor floated, like in a zero-gravity chamber. But she knew better. Around 50,000 feet of sky separated her and the surface of Terra Sollus. That number plummeted fast as she dropped at 140 mph. Her eyes stayed closed. Again she could see that viewscreen from years past, the unending, sickening, sparkling expanse of inky black.
Everything and nothing.

An all-encompassing terror seized the doctor by the throat like it had fifteen years ago. And the memories came rushing back at gale-force intensity.

Tomás crazed and shimmering and shrieking…

Mama choking and gasping for air…

Papa trying desperately to right their spiraling shuttlecraft…

Liliana screamed loudly. No Khrome, no Star Brigade existed in her closed-off sight. Nothing save a weightless nose-dive that she had willingly agreed to.

Her spacesuit
would
malfunction. And the last thing she heard would be her own cowardly scream.

“LILY!”

Liliana stopped screaming. Khrome’s voice shouted into her helmet’s speaker, piercing through the fog of fear.
I’m not on that shuttle,
she told herself.

“OPEN YOUR EYES!” Liliana hesitantly complied. Khrome floated right in front of her, falling at the same speed. The Thulican’s stocky physique was silhouetted beautifully against a golden sky of cottony clouds, silvery skin gleaming. Under different circumstances Liliana might have laughed at how his burly limbs splayed out clumsily to accommodate their rapid descent.

Seeing Khrome beside her like he had promised, wearing his big, goofy grin—Liliana felt safe as she plummeted.

He reached out. “Take my hands!” Liliana fought against the pummeling winds and put her dainty gloved hands in the Thulican’s giant ones.

Focusing on Khrome, Liliana began to regain more of her faculties. The Thulican watched her with round yellow eyes, still smiling. Knowing Khrome wouldn’t let go, her fear faded slowly. It gave way to a sensation that the doctor had experienced when either solving a patient’s malady or making a discovery by way of research.

The euphoria jolted her from head to toes and back again.

Suddenly, everything went white. Khrome disappeared from sight. Liliana shrieked, but his hands still firmly held hers. She tightened her grip just in case. In no time, the Thulican reappeared, shimmering under the sunlight.

“We just passed through Terra Sollus’s main cloud layer at 34,000 feet up,” Khrome orated. “I’ll let you know once we’re about to land.”

Liliana tensed up, not knowing what to suspect.

“Look down!”

Underneath the helmet her eyes narrowed. Just when she had gotten comfortable with plunging from 50,000 feet up, Khrome has the gall to ask her to look straight down.

Sensing her hesitation, Khrome smiled more broadly. “Trust me, Lily. As a scientist, you’ll hate yourself for not looking down.”

Liliana whispered a prayer to the Trinitarian God for strength, and then glanced down. Her body flinched away for an instant. Before long, Liliana could not look away.

Below lay Terra Sollus, her place of birth. The oceans appeared so blue, so undisturbed. Liliana peered down at the continents she had studied on 3D globes as a youngster, all of them a mix of verdant green and brownish rock just like she remembered. Intermingled with those colors were ferroment and metal patches of extensive city-states visible from even this far up. A polygonal stretch of sandy country, landlocked on all sides save its western coast caught the doctor’s eye. Once she saw two rivers intersecting before reaching that coast, Liliana easily recognized the country, Nahrain, where they planned to land. Looking west gave view to the curve of the globe, its whole side dressed in a patchwork blanket of clouds.

Lifting her head slightly, Liliana could see the southernmost tip of New Europe on Terra Sollus’s northern horizon, juxtaposed against the massive fiery blaze of Rynn. Even though she couldn’t get a solid look at her home country of Navarre due to the glare, just knowing where it lay was enough. This was Terra Sollus, her homeworld, in a way she had never experienced before. Liliana looked up at Khrome, full of wonder.

The Thulican guffawed. “Told ya!”

At around 11,000 feet, Liliana now recognized the Persian Republic at its northern borders and the nation of Kaladdea at its southern borders. The sky around them brightened into a cloudless baby blue, as now they were far beneath Terra Sollus’s atmosphere on its dayside.

At around 6,000 feet up, she clearly spotted the unending crisscrossing hovercar lanes above Nahrain, but Khrome and she were nowhere near them. Khrome called out, “Your spacesuit’s gravity repulsors are about to kick in. I’m gonna let go of you soon.” The doctor stared back at her Thulican teammate, utterly confused. Holding onto Khrome had given her courage, so she didn’t immediately release his mitt-sized hands. But knowing she had to for safety reasons, Liliana breathed in deeply and let go, waiting for the fear and nausea.

Nothing happened. Liliana blinked in shock. Khrome guffawed, right before shooting straight up into the air. Upon triggering his flight abilities, the Thulican floated the rest of the way down. Liliana, all alone, looked beneath her. Nahrain’s cities, deserts and rivers grew larger and larger—no longer the size of kiddy toys. Before she could process it all, an invisible wall of force jarred Liliana, pushing her into an upright position. In short order, her plummet slowed considerably. Liliana smiled, recognizing the work of her spacesuit’s gravity repulsors.

“Say it,” shouted Khrome. He drifted into view, arms spread out in typical swaggering fashion. “When you got problems you want fixed, who do you call?”

“I am NOT calling you Khrome-Daddy!” Liliana laughed, adjusting herself to this new, slower descent. Several macroms later, the duo floated onto a rolling expanse of reddish sand—Nahrain’s Arabian Desert. Khrome landed expertly at the base of a steep sand dune. He righted himself and looked up towards Liliana, who of course landed at the top of said sand dune. After losing her footing, she tumbled the whole way down. Clouds of red dust marked her long topple, as did Khrome’s boisterous laughter.

She finally came to a halt at the bottom of the dune and lay still for several moments. Khrome walked up and gently yanked Liliana to her feet.

“You okay?” he asked, still giggling.

The doctor stared back, speechless. She quickly unlatched her helmet, yanking it off. Her skin tingled at the breeze of Terra Sollus’s fresh and unprocessed air.

“That was AMAZING!” she shrieked, her words echoing across the Arabian Desert. Then Liliana began laughing and crying at once, all the while hopping around with glee. She felt invincible, as if she could take on the entire galaxy. “Can we do it again?”

Khrome guffawed. “Unfortunately, not today. Practice is in like six orvs. Sometime soon, if you want.”

“
I want!
” she said in a hoarse voice. “Thank you!” Liliana threw her arms around Khrome’s thick neck.

“No problem,” the Thulican chuckled. When she pulled away, the Thulican looked up at her with his large, round yellow eyes. “After we finish training, let’s hit up one of Zeid’s moons.”

Liliana nodded vigorously. “You’re a good friend, Khrome.”

“Yeah, I know,” he shrugged leisurely. Liliana giggled. The Khrome that Liliana knew and adored was back. She spun about and took in the windswept landscape around her. “We should get back to Hollus.” In the far east, beyond a rolling sea of dunes, she spotted the sparkling spacescrapers of Bayn, Nahrain’s capital city-state. Then she looked skyward and felt a stab of confusion. “Is the Unionjack going to land anytime soon?” she asked. “I don’t see it approaching.”

“That’s because we’re going to it,” she heard Khrome say.

Liliana whirled on him and saw an impish grin. “You’re kidding!!”

“I kid not,” he replied. “Strap that helmet back on. I’m taking you for a ride!” 

When she attached and pressurized the helmet, Khrome scooped her up in his arms as easily as sheet paper. Liliana wrapped her arms around Khrome’s neck, heartbeat thundering. Only this time, it wasn’t from fear. “Let’s go already!”

Khrome smirked at her right before squatting down. Liliana could sense a building rumble beneath the Thulican, an upsurge of power about to erupt.

And suddenly he rocketed skyward. Liliana whooped loudly, holding on tightly to Khrome. As they ascended, Liliana swiveled her head all around, taking in as much as the helmet visor would allow. Nahrain’s immense dune sea below quickly shrank into a modest stretch of lesser ripples. And those ripples rapidly shrank into numerous tiny creases across the country’s blocky expanse. Khrome rose further up, and now the curve of Terra Sollus’s dayside came into Liliana’s line of sight again—magnificent and dazzling.

Right now Liliana Cortés wanted to cry, this time for joy.

“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 a 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 to nurse her reddish Rimhara Bitter Sour, wishing for a stronger drink. Now was one of those times that Ella almost forgot her partner was much 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.

Under layers of makeup and barely there clothing, this Korvenite was a child writhing and dancing for unruly adults, some old enough to be grandparents.

“
Gods
, how old is that Korvie?” Ella mumbled, rather unsettled. The
tattshi
she’d witnessed since leaving Galactic Union borders never ceased to shock her.

“I made my first kill when I turned seven,” Jaellyn remarked in a disdainful tone. “The Korvenite can dance at any age she chooses.”

Ella snorted and kept moving. “Excuse me for not being raised ‘Tarkathian-style,’ Jae.”

Jaellyn muttered something in her native Tarkathian that sounded distinctly like an expletive.

Ella glanced again at the Korvenite and then at the osvowraith, whose unblinking gaze never wavered once.

All-you-can-eat buffet…

A queer dread chilled Ella. The Korvie was its next victim.

“MOVE.” A towering Nubrideen hulk of muscle shouldered forward past Ella, almost knocking the human off her feet. Too rattled to be angry, Ella quickly regained her footing and line of sight. The string instrumental music had stopped, replaced by boisterous applause from the packed-in crowd. The Korvenite smiled glowingly and took a deep bow. Was the performance over? Ella turned to the bar.

The osvowraith looked ready to spring from its seat, the Solar Scorcher drink still untouched. From a strategic outlook, this actually worked in her favor; while the osvowraith found its evening meal, Ella and Jaellyn would catch it off guard. Boom. Easy grab. Easy pay.

Any other coldblooded bounty hunter would have killed for such an easy scenario. Jaellyn definitely wouldn’t hesitate using the Korvie as bait, but that was Jaellyn. On many a time in previous jobs Ella had followed her head instead of her heart, sticking with a cardinal rule in bounty hunting: innocents killed during a job are collateral damage and nothing more.

Besides, it’s a fucking Korvenite. Why should I care?
Still, Ella couldn’t wrap her head around the sight of that Korvenite kid spasming as the osvowraith drained her dry…a life ending before it even had a chance to be lived....

And in that moment, Ella made her choice. She pushed her way urgently toward the osvowraith.

“Ella?” Jaellyn asked in the earcom. “What’s happening?”

“Confirming target. Standby.” Ella ignored the irate objections and forcefully closed the distance between her prey. Now Ella’s fear began to rise, not for the Korvie, but for herself. Other patrons were chatting and drinking and arguing over mining sites, totally oblivious to the osvowraith’s true nature. Ella reached into a pouch on her utility belt, rubbing her fingers in the fine nanotech powder inside.

The osvowraith moved to get up, raising the Solar Scorcher to its lipless mouth…

….until Ella snatched the drink from the beast’s hand and drained it in one long pull. She almost gagged. The liquid seared down her throat like liquid fire. Ella sucked in a needed breath to cool her mouth. “Couldn’t let such a fine drink go to waste,” she winked sassily, shoving the empty glass back in the stunned osvowraith’s hand. With a quick brush of her thumb, the powder was spread across the osvowraith’s bony knuckles. She dared a glance at her prey.