Star Brigade: Odysseys - An Anthology (6 page)

The slight and slender doctor was folded in half and lifted clean off her feet. V’Korram
felt
Cortés’s ribs creak on impact, heard her cry out as they both hit the HLHG suite floor. The momentum sent the pair skidding.

A heartbeat later, V’Korram had Cortés pinned and completely powerless. One hand clenched around her throat, another hand held down her right arm, while his knee trapped her left arm.

He glared down to see her gaping up at him in wide-eyed terror. By the pained way she sucked in breaths, his tackle had left a mark.

She didn’t struggle. Good. The doctor knew when she was beaten. Without her fingers clasped together to emit her sonic blasts, Cortés was helpless…and they both knew it.

“Dead…dead…DEAD,” V’Korram spared no ounce of disdain in his deep-throated growl. “Were this a real fight, I’d have gutted you from head to heel already.”

The threat sent a shudder through Cortés’s body. Seeing a potential teammate so helpless and breakable, it thoroughly sickened V’Korram. In what universe would Cortés ever be on a Star Brigade combat team? What were Nwosu and Sam thinking?

“Know what I believe? I believe you are weak, that you are a liability.” V’Korram tightened his grip around her neck, pressed his thumb into the juncture between her chin and windpipe. He considered Cortés’s slender throat and how easily his claws could slice open its delicate flesh. One pop of his thumb nail and she’d bleed out right here in the HLHG Suite. The doctor’s lips parted and out came a choked
yip
. The sound of her quickening heartbeat was the only sound in V’Korram’s world.

“You have no combat experience, pitiful hand-to-hand skills, and not one iota of fortitude outside a Medcenter.”

After that truth, V’Korram felt every muscle in the doctor’s willowy frame stiffen beneath him. Just like in the training sessions, Cortés’s terror had paralyzed her completely. V’Korram fought the urge to shrink back in disgust.
Why am I wasting time on this useless creature?
But the Kintarian already knew the answer. He did this not just for the Brigade, but for Cortés’s safety. Despite her incompetence, she was innocent. She didn’t deserve to die, or worse, have that innocence ruined. Star Brigade could spell the end of her, and vice versa given the unit’s weakened state. He should have let Cortés up at this point, but she needed to learn her place. And it wasn’t with Star Brigade.

“The smartest thing you can do is leave,” V’Korram continued, his voice growing harsher and darker. “Return to whatever overpaid medcenter job you left and
never
look back.”

The human’s short, shallow breaths grew shorter still with V’Korram’s grip on her throat. Her eyes were squeezed shut. V’Korram leaned in close, like a lover, until their lips were almost brushing each other’s. At this proximity, her scent flooded his nose, a bizarrely dizzying scent, fueled by body heat and fear. Despite his overwhelming need to be rid of this weakling, a delicious jolt ran through him.

Not victory or hatred, but a sensation that no human had ever triggered in him.

The Kintarian grimaced, forcing himself to ignore whatever that was, and dropped his growl to a whisper. “Stay with Star Brigade, and at best you’ll get only yourself killed on a live op. At worst…other Brigadiers will die breaking formation to rescue you.”

Cortés’s heartbeat hitched, or was that V’Korram’s own, as he finally seemed to be getting through to her? Maybe the Kintarian could save Cortés from ruin or death, if she had brains enough to listen. “Is that what you want? To have others die because of your incompetence?” The Kintarian stopped and frowned in unsettled confusion. Needles pricked at his ears, growing in size and discomfort…

The noise started at a barely audible vibration, climbing sharply up to a skull-splitting whine that drowned out everything and anything.

V’Korram roared and jerked his whole body back in agony, slamming both hands over his ears. Yet the whine cut through his fingers, a million white-hot blades slicing into his brain.

The Kintarian didn’t remember falling onto his side, but there he lay, curled up in fetal position, unable to hear anything but the ear-piercing drone…powerless to think or move. The pain was everywhere, obliterating V’Korram utterly.

Suddenly Liliana Cortés stood over him, eyes wide and trembling all over, but not with fear. That high-pitched sound radiated
off
the slender doctor in waves—hostile, hateful vibrations. How did she do this without using her hands?  V’Korram couldn’t figure it out, since thinking had become such an agony.

The ear-splitting whine abruptly cut out. After a long moment, V’Korram uncurled his long body slowly and dropped both hands from his ears, wincing as he tried rising up on all fours. His ears were still ringing, the world still spinning round and round in crooked circles. He staggered sideways and looked up at Cortés, only to freeze.

She was pointing her clasped fingers at him, like a gun. Her oval-shaped face was an unforgiving mask as she uttered, “Dead.”

White rings of concentrated sonic energy hammered V’Korram in the chest, sending him flying. The ground quickly rushed up to smack him hard on the back.  He lay there for a time, back smarting, ears ringing, bones rattling, muscles trembling. Everything except breathing hurt. He dared to lift his head up, no matter how much his neck muscles burned in protest. Cortés was favoring her abdomen as she limped away with long, hasty strides.

“
Stupid
human,” he snarled after her. “You’re making a mistake not listening to me.”

Cortés stopped in her tracks, but didn’t turn around. She inhaled a labored breath. “If I leave Star Brigade, it won’t be because you told me to,” the doctor replied, the false firmness in her tone unable to mask an undercurrent of panic. She resumed her retreat without looking back.

As soon as the door hissed shut behind her, V’Korram let his head fall back, unable to hold it up any longer.

Under much different settings, V’Korram might’ve respected her perseverance. But he had too much fury, too much physical pain.

Hollus had become his home, and Star Brigade his calling. After losing everything on Kintare, V’Korram didn’t think he’d ever know either again. And now some weak-willed, untested doctor was set to ruin it all. V’Korram gazed up at the neon blue ceiling, heart racing at light speed, and released a pained sigh. “Star Brigade is doomed.”

“Now what does that mean?” Khal asked in a voice sounding like melted butter. He was stroking the cheek of the female companion sitting across from him.

The slender, high-breasted beauty tittered and glanced at the floor. “That means, me like your kiss,” she cooed the Standard Tongue, with the staccato drawl of a Hommodus native. The Nnaxan referred to the movements of the two thick, worm-like craniowhisks that jutted out of her forehead and spilled down past her chest. Right now they were trembling with visible arousal. Under the rose-colored illuminations of the bar they were in, the absurdly named
Red Bar
, the Nnaxan’s sky-blue skin took on a lavender complexion. She held a half-empty drink in her upper left hand and caressed Khal’s forearm with her lower hands. Their table resided on the second tier of
Red Bar
, away from tonight’s large and boisterous crowd.

Red Bar
, stupid name notwithstanding, was one of the most upscale and popular bars on Jefferson, a gas mining city-station that neighbored Hollus Maddrone within Zeid. The emerald gas giant was a Terra Sollus/Earth colony, hence why all of its thirteen city-stations bore names of renowned leaders from long-dead Old Earth. Khal only visited any of the city-stations for their healthy array of casinos and bars. 
Red Bar
was Khal’s favorite. He always killed it here with the ladies. Tonight was no exception. The Nahraini had no clue what his current companion’s name was, but figured he’d ask after bedding her.

Khal wasn’t much of a drinker, having only consumed one shot of black dwarf tonight. He did, however, feel drunk on the presence of his current company, a Nnaxan stunner he’d struck gold with not ten macroms ago. She couldn’t have been older than early to mid-twenties. Girls that age were never much of a challenge for Khal, which allowed him to get creative in his pickup tactics. His angle for getting between her long and lovely legs was to feign curiosity on reading the subtle movements of her craniowhisks—by way of tactile stimulation. Nnaxan always communicated both verbally and with their craniowhisks, usually saying much more with the latter than with words.

So far, so good.
Khal ran a hand through his well-coifed mop of black hair and snuck in a quick kiss to her throat. The Nnaxan giggled again, her craniowhisks rippling like slithering snakes.

“And that?” Khal asked, his voice teasing.

The Hommodus native eyed him with an exquisite, shy smile. “Me thinking you are sly too much.”

That made them both laugh.

On
Red Bar
’s sprawling first floor, patrons from all over the Union collided in a swaying and shimmying throng of discordant rhythm. The one thing these beings shared was an enslavement to the catchy astropop dance tunes blaring in the foreground.
Red Bar’s
second-floor balcony slowly rotated like a planet orbiting a sun, ringed by floating tabletops similar to the one where he and his Nnaxan companion stood. Each tabletop came above stomach-level, surrounded by parties of two or more patrons deep in raucous celebration.  Khal drank in the scenery with a smile.

Every Brigadier had gotten the day off. It would have been too easy for Khal to stay on Hollus and hit up his pet analyst Genesis Delgado for a quickie. But he needed a break from the sterile walls of Hollus Maddrone and all those irritating would-be Brigadiers. Hollus and Zeid’s woodsy forest moon, Atlas, were all Khal had seen for the past three and a half weeks.

During that stretch of time, Khal’s life had been nothing but endurance drills, hand-to-hand combat workouts, offensive ability exercises, environmental survival training, and team field simulations. Wake up, run that gauntlet while finding time to keep in shape and perform his duties in Brigade Intelligence. Day after day, week after week he had pushed himself harder than everyone. Khal was certain his spot on the new Star Brigade combat team was a lock, not just because of his amazing performance during training.

His superior officer had dangled the combat team carrot in front of Khal since his Brigade tenure began. That was the major reason why Khal had helped her oust Lt. Col. Nyell and Major Azohl’ozyma, both gutless turncoats planning to dismantle Star Brigade in exchange for promotions in other UComm divisions.

Since then, Khal had spent the last year at his superior’s beck and call, keeping her secrets and assisting in many of her off-the-books side missions. And while Khal knew his boss already had informants all over Hollus Maddrone and its satellite outpost Cobalt Waystation, his own harem of contacts kept feeding him additional intel on the non-Star Brigade inner workings which she continued to find useful.

Khal’s actions had produced benefits far too amazing for words, but his true goal was placement on a Star Brigade combat team. His superior had promised that and more, cunningly nurturing those ambitions for the past year.
She lied to me
,
again
, Khal seethed. And he fell for it. Again.

No
, he told himself firmly. Khal refused to let that injustice poison his current mood, not when he was doing so well with this scrumptious Nnaxan.

“Are you troubled, sir?” Khal, realizing he had zoned out, turned to see the Nnaxan girl watching him warily. Her craniowhisks wavered in a slow, concerned manner.

“No,” Khal smirked, “it’s nothing that’ll take my mind off you.” He leaned in again and nibbled on one of her tiny ears, earning a delighted squeal out of the Nnaxan. Her fleshy craniowhisks began to ripple from root to tip in a slow, pulsing manner.

Got her now.
“Now what’s that mean?” Khal whispered in his sexiest voice.

“There you are!” an angry human voice demanded before the Nnaxan could answer.

Khal grimaced and turned slowly. His eyes nearly popped out.

Under the red-tinted lights, he glimpsed an earthborn female about average height standing behind him. Her dress—short-sleeved, black and button down with chest pockets and a thigh-length skirt—honestly looked like someone had poured her into it with that insane body of hers. Her complexion looked sun-kissed and smooth as silk, her hair butter-blonde and tumbling past her shoulders in glossy sheets. And that stunning face, those big russet eyes… Khal knew her at a glance.

His superior officer, Sam D’Urso.

It took him back to the first time they’d met over two years ago during his time at the Union Intelligence Bureau Training Academy. Sam had sashayed into his life with that naughty lopsided grin and more curves than a winding river, offering him a better outlet for his abilities than the UIB could ever provide. Khal had been mesmerized from the start.

Yet tonight, Sam was the last being Khal wanted to see.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed through gritted teeth.

“I should ask you the same thing, ‘sweetie,’” his superior officer snapped. “Is
this
what a night out with the boys entails?”

Khal straightened up, alarmed. He didn’t bother wondering how Sam had found him. What troubled him more was this jealous girlfriend act. And they hadn’t even spoken before he came to Red Bar tonight.
What the hell is she playing at?

“Me sorry?” The Nnaxan girl looked from Sam to Khal, confused and with her lower set of hands on her hips. “But you are who?”

“His betrothed!” Sam angled an accusing glare at Khal. “Whom he proposed to last week.”

“What?
No!
” Khal gaped at his boss in horror. Bad enough that she didn’t place him on the new combat team. Now she had to mess with his easily-earned prospect? The Nahraini turned to the now enraged Nnaxan with desperate pleas. “No, she’s not my fiancée. She’s lying. Look, I—”

The Nnaxan girl hauled off and slapped him, with both right hands. Khal staggered back, the left side of his face stinging fiercely.

Disgust quickly surmounted desire, and both the Nnaxan’s craniowhisks rippled in a threatening way that made Khal cringe.

The girl stormed off through the crowd, and Sam openly guffawed. “My understanding of Nnaxanese is a bit rusty, but I think that meant something like ‘die by way of meteor strike.’”

Khal held his still-smarting cheek tenderly and moved to pursue the Nnaxan, but Sam placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Sorry for the cock-block. We need to talk.”

Khal shrugged her off and rounded the table. “What do you
want
?”

“Sex,” Sam purred huskily, as if the answer were obvious. She leaned over the table, lips perfectly pouted, giving Khal an unhindered view of her abundant cleavage.

Khal gaped back in a daze, pulse quickening, loins stiffening, that Nnaxan girl already forgotten. Sam’s gaze had scorched away the fog of his anger. Khal recalled his last ‘reward’ for an off-the-books task.
She’s never pity-fucked me before,
he considered, leaning in closer.
Oh well.

Sam threw her head back and laughed loudly…mockingly.

That wiped the sex-glazed look right off Khal’s face. An embarrassed flush crept up his neck and he jerked back furiously.

“Not tonight,” Sam straightened up and grinned suggestively grin, beckoning him toward Red Bar’s exit. “Let’s go talk.”

Khal stayed put and kept the table between them, partly to wait for his ‘excitement’ to go down. “About what?” he asked, not caring how rude he sounded.

Sam arched an eyebrow. “You
know
what.” Clearly an open discussion about Star Brigade amongst civilians wasn’t an option.

“You and Nwosu made your decision,” Khal countered stubbornly. He cast an uninterested stare over Red Bar’s swelling patronage. “What’s there to talk about?”

“Plenty,” Sam ran both hands through her hair. “Like your future.”

“You mean the lack thereof?”

Sam’s smile withered like a leaf kissed by frost. “Christ on a
goddamn
comet. Get over your man-period and come here!” She grabbed her subordinate by the arm and marched him toward the bar’s exit. Khal would not have taken this humiliation from anyone else. Yet even though he had half a foot on Sam in height, her wrath was a terrifying force when roused. So Khal held his tongue and let himself be led away.

Once they were safely inside Khal’s personal shuttlecraft cargo bay, in one of Jefferson’s parking structures, he finally unloaded his frustration on Sam.

“Why?” he demanded curtly. Khal was past caring that she outranked him. “
Why
wasn’t I selected for the new combat team?”

Sam had seated herself in a booth taking up most of the cargo hold’s right-side wall. “You’re not ready,” she said without hesitation.

The blunt reply stung worse than that Nnaxan bimbo’s slap. Khal sat down heavily next to her. “After all the shit I’ve done for you. The side missions, helping you oust Azohl’ozyma and Nyell, yet you have the gall to tell me I’m not ready?”

“Yes,” Sam twirled locks of blonde between her fingers, as casual as if discussing the weather. “You’ve mastered the basics of your telekinesis, but you’re lazy about moving beyond that. And you don’t support your teammates well on the field with your abilities.
And
your bragging is pissing off the other recruits.”

“It’s not bragging if it’s the truth,” Khal scowled. “Besides, Khrome brags all the time.”

“Khrome’s funny,” Sam made a face. “You’re
not
, pretty boy.”

Khal clenched his teeth, intensely hating when she called him that. He couldn’t let this injustice stand, not after hedging all his bets on becoming an important player in Star Brigade. And it all started with snagging his spot on a combat team. “Khrome and Tyris getting spots, I understand. Even that psycho Kintarian of yours makes some twisted degree of sense. But you and Nwosu have a really skewed view of combat-ready to pick that useless doctor chick over me.”

“Lily is green, yes,” Sam nodded coolly, not remotely perturbed by his critique. “She also possesses a special set of skills that you don’t. Does it make sense to bring two intel officers on the same team, when we needed a full-fledged doctor?”

“No.” Khal remembered this Dr. Cortés, the one with the killer aim who passed that little test Nwosu set up during last month’s all-hands. During the weeks of training, Khal had caught Cortés stealing looks at him more than a few times.
She wants me, not that I blame her.
He was used to females from all different species gazing at him. The doctor was cute enough, but nothing extraordinary. Her legs, though, were amazing, going on for light years.

Legs or no legs, everyone knew how terrible Cortés was. Khal had heard about her freak-out during a field mission simulation two days ago. And rumor had it Cortés also was terrified of space travel.
Yet she lucked her way onto the combat team because she’s a doctor.
Knowing that irked Khal even more.

“I should have never left the UIB for this waste of time,” he spat, folding his arms and turning away from Sam sullenly. “I could’ve been an active field agent by now, if I’d stayed with the agency—”

“Let me tell you what your future would be with UIB,” Sam cut in sharply. She didn’t yell, but her voice and face conveyed a cold, petrifying rage. “You
might
be a desk jockey or you may even be an active field agent in a few months. But most likely, they trot you out for a few high-profile missions only. But the majority of the time, you’re probably a lab rat, poked and prodded, testing your abilities to the point of agony, never seeing daylight again. They’d even deny you sex,” she added pointedly, making Khal flinch. “All because of your maximal powers.