Full Metal Heroine: A Military Space Opera Adventure (Lady Hellgate Book 2)

by Greg Dragon

  “We have four, but don’t you worry about that,” Cilas said. “One of us is worth twenty soldiers, so you can say we have eighty men.”

  “That’s not enough,” the voice said, followed by a small chuckle and words from a language she didn’t understand. When she could see what was going on, it was the last thing that she expected. There was a clearing beneath the open sky and an assortment of rocks lined up in patterns.

  Cilas, Quentin and Raileo were on their knees, speaking with a slender old man with tattoos on every inch of his thin, wrinkled up flesh. He wore a loin cloth, and nothing more, but around his neck was an assortment of jewels. “Hello young lady,” he said without looking at her. “Come join us in this talk. Maybe you’re the one with sense, eh?”

  “What’s going on, Rend?” she said hesitantly, as she walked over towards the men. It was odd to find this old man all by himself, so she scanned the trees and bushes for any signs.

  “This is Ati Lars,” Cilas said cheerfully. “We sort of used his temple to sleep last night.”

  “We didn’t mean it, Mr. Lars,” she said as she sat down next to Raileo. “We lost our camp, and it was night, so we were desperate and needed shelter.”

  “Why do you speak to me as if I’m some ignorant savage who lives in the forest with the animals?” he said. “Is it because of the loin cloth and the way I keep my hair?”

  “Well … yeah, you have to admit, you do look the part,” Helga joked.

  “I was governor to the Seti district for thirty years. Yet with one glance you would reduce me to—”

  “Look, Ati Lars, we’re sorry,” Cilas said quickly. “Ate, here, she’s a joker, so don’t take her words seriously, she means no offense. Now, you were saying that you can point us to the camp.”

  “I was, but there are only four of you, and one is a young fool,” he said, staring at Helga.

  What’s with this old man? she thought, biting her tongue to not tell him about himself. “Let me worry about that,” Cilas said. “Trust me, you won’t be feeding your enemies willing victims. What you’ve found sleeping in your temple are specially trained operators who are experts in odds like this.”

  “You here for the Vestalian?” the old man said, growing serious.

  “This Vestalian, does he look like us? Strong, shaved, and geared up for anything?” Cilas said.

  “Yes, he is very much like you, but I haven’t seen him in months. I think he is living with that wicked militia that uses our beaches to practice death. They are parasites who leech from the villages, prey on the young, and plot all manner of wickedness on the people of our country. I asked how many you were because even with your skill, you are taking on an army that has stopped every attempt at driving them out.”

  “We’re not here to drive them out, Ati. We’re here to remove the source that keeps them armed and able to win those skirmishes. Alliance weapons, meant for intergalactic warfare, that’s what they are using, and why your local armies are losing. We pull out Wolf and their supplies dwindle to nothing. In time their ammunition will all be gone, and you all can move in and take them. How does that sound to you, Governor?”

  “Monk, I am no longer a part of the leadership,” Ati Lars corrected him. “So, you’re here for the Vestalian, and killing him will stop the influx of weapons into our country? Am I hearing you right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll do more than show you where the vermin lives, I will draw you a map to their camp,” he said excitedly.

  “How are you feeling, Ate?” Quentin said as Cilas and the old man went over to a large, black rock.

  “Rested, thank you very much,” she said, wondering if it was sarcasm or the beginning of a joke.

  “The lieutenant was upset with himself for giving you first watch. Odam warned us that you would be exhausted, and he allowed you to swap when you weren’t really capable. Last night when you slept, I climbed up there and took my watch on the big limb on that tree. With only one set of eyes, it’s better to get the bird’s eye view. That way, you could get the rest you needed and I could make sure the camp stayed secure. Everything worked out, ma’am, don’t you worry. I’m hoping by now the poison is all out of your system?”

  “It better be, I’m tired of the schtill. It’s not just the poison making me worthless, it’s the very thought of that thing grabbing my hand.”

  “That thing was a tad bit freaky, wasn’t it?”

  “The stuff of nightmares, Tutt.”

  “Well rest easy, Ate, because according to Odam, once you’ve survived a brovila, you have their mark. None will dare attack you again because they’ll recognize it within your system. He said that as children, their parents get them stung on purpose. This way their bodies will be marked and they can play without worry that they’ll be attacked.”

  “You know, it’s just like you to find something positive about a bony worm bite,” Helga said, and Quentin smiled and touched his lips. “By the way, which one of you found this old man, and how do we know that we can trust him?”

  “He found us, actually. The lieutenant and Lei were on watch while we were asleep, and I woke up to this old man staring down at me. Grabbed my knife and would have gutted him just then, except, Ate, I will not lie to you, he floated out of range of my swing, as if he was wearing a PAS suit.”

  “Floated?”

  “Floated. Never seen anyone move like that in my life. He walked out and spoke to the lieutenant, and then we were all invited out here. He explained a bit of his history, but I’ll give you the quick version: he’s been everywhere and done everything … it’s pretty amazing, really. He retired and came down here to the Zolen region where he lives with his wife ... I forgot her name. He adopted her religion, and now he walks these sacred woods every morning. What he hadn’t counted on was Alliance being here, says he once sat on the council, can you believe that? This old man gave his life to the fight against the Geralos, and then came down here to rest only to run into the rebels.”

  “That’s a shame,” Raileo said. “Guess he wasn’t counting on Wolf and the four of us wrecking his retirement plans. We really just slept at a place he and his followers consider holy, and we fought in an area that is forbidden for any citizen to even visit. I’m surprised he agreed to help us, considering everything we’ve done.”

  “Good thing he recognizes ignorance as ignorance,” Helga said, “or he may have—”

  “Looks like we have a map,” Cilas announced, and Helga exchanged glances with Quentin and Raileo. “Grab your gear and let’s head out. We have a lot of distance to cover to make up for last night.”

  “Something doesn’t feel right about this,” Raileo said, and Helga was forced to agree. “That attack on our camp, the weirdos that followed us from the village, and now we have this old guy willing to play our guide. If I can see the potential ambush, why not the lieutenant?”

  “He does,” Helga said, shaking her head at him. “Cilas sniffs these things out, it is why he’s alive after ten plus missions. As Nighthawks, he is our head, and our duty as a team is to trust him as our leader.”

  “My trust has never faltered, ma’am, but I wonder who among us is being tracked. The way we landed and camped, no one should have been able to sneak up on us. I may be new to all of this, but the lieutenant and the sarge are not. Yet our camp has been disrupted twice in one night and I’m wondering if this so-called monk is leading us into a trap.”

  “I’m prone to agree,” Helga said after giving his words some thought. “And I bet Cilas feels the same way. I’ve been feeling like a little fish, swimming around while the anglers watch from up high. They could have a reaper drone buzzing around, capturing vids, or one of has been tagged. Did either of you take something from the village? That would be the source of our tracker, to be honest.”

  “A tracker, from the village?” Quentin said. “I don’t recall any of us taking anything.”

  “We’re not being tra
cked,” Cilas said, walking up so quietly that he startled Helga. He turned and gave the old man a salute, holding it with respect. Ati Lars returned the gesture, and that was when Helga realized why Cilas trusted him. Ati Lars was a former Alliance council member and as a serviceman it was his duty to afford him this respect. Helga and the other two Nighthawks followed his lead and saluted the old man and held it. Ati Lars scanned their faces, giving each a warm smile but when he got to Helga Ate, he froze.

  “You have pain in those dark eyes of yours, and it will destroy you if you keep on ignoring it,” he said. “Your jokes are not the remedy, nor is playing at being like your lieutenant. There is a journey you must take, Ate, is it? Only you can embark on it, but you must face it if you are to survive. The past has a way of holding us frightened of what has already happened, and if you don’t release this hold, it will bring trouble in the future.”

  With that he walked up and rested a wrinkled hand on her shoulder. He was former Alliance, alright, it was the universal gesture of understanding, and she didn’t know why but she reached up and touched his hand. She wanted to cry, although she couldn’t understand why. This was a stranger, but he had read her as if he had been with her back on Dyn.

  The words he spoke were similar to the advice from both Cilas and Quentin. Everyone wanted her to go to a psych, to either remove the trauma or learn to live with it. She had chosen the third choice, which was to deal with it on her own, but she was ill prepared to fight her demons, and now there was this stranger who could see it in her eyes.

  “Thank you,” she managed, and he reached up and touched her ear.

  “If you all live, come and see me. I live north of a town named Yalease,” he said. “Everyone knows me and where I live. We would love to have you all for dinner. I can tell you about the true culture of this land, and you can tell me what new mischief my friends in the Galactic Alliance are up to.”

  They parted ways and Cilas led them out to what appeared to be a path. Their stumbling about the evening before had made it invisible amongst the rocks and shrubs, but now with the suns pushing light through the trees, they could see it clearly, a path leading north.

  “You really ought to work on that inside voice of yours, Ray,” Cilas said. “We heard every bit of your conspiracy theory, which could have proven fatal if Ati Lars was really our enemy.”

  “Thype,” Raileo whispered. “Sorry about that, Lieutenant.”

  “It all worked out but remember what I said. From now until we’re back in space, you let me do the talking.”

  15

  The feeling of movement within the ship, combined with the strange noises coming from the bulkhead, rocked Tasmin Rose to a deep sleep as she lay on her makeshift bunk thinking about her family. Typically, ships were built to make this movement unnoticeable, but the assault ship, Corfist, was due a tune-up and some repairs.

  Due to its condition, which the pilot and engineers kept to themselves, the now loose interior compartments that housed the Marines rocked against the spiraling hull, making it noisier than intended. The loud drone made Tasmin miss the comms coming in from Sergeant Arc.

  She was deep in the land of dreams, her body recovering from the excitement earlier. It had been late when she was in the shower, and after escaping, she hadn’t eaten much or slept. After speaking to the Sergeant, she had sat at the table, thinking. Her life had been disrupted in time with her becoming an adult, and she was wondering if this was the maker’s test.

  All her life, her mother had spoken on how the maker had a place in the galaxy beyond for those who suffered and persevered. It was religious nonsense, according to her father, but lacking any honor, she knew that he wouldn’t understand. Now that fortune had shown itself, and gotten her a team of Marines, she wondered if this was her time to prove that she deserved favor in the next life.

  Future Tasmin could be the captain of a starship, or a wealthy diplomat on a planet like Genese. The thought had made her anxious, and she was ready to do whatever was needed, but then the tiredness took over and she dragged her body from the table over to the bed. Lying down on that soft cushion knocked her out instantly.

  Her sleep was deep, snores competing with the growling of the engine as her young hands gripped the tablet tightly, the video on its surface playing to no audience. The comms chirped over and over, but not loud enough to beat the tablet where a pair of lovers argued against an old Vestalian setting.

  When Tasmin finally woke up, it was to a living nightmare, where she was weightless, floating, with vertigo settling in. She closed her eyes and rubbed at them hard, thinking it was a dream. But then the ship shook and gravity returned, causing her to slam into the deck.

  Her head was throbbing, and she reached up to touch her forehead to see if she was bleeding. What’s going on, she thought, feeling confused, and her eyes fell on the flashing light of the comms, indicating she had missed a call.

  There was activity in the passageway and she could hear it plainly through the door. Boots on metal, running this way and that, and another thumping which sounded like gunshots, but she put that out of her mind, since it didn’t make sense.

  Even if they were in a fight, the shots would not be onboard the ship. Naval warfare was a lengthy game of resource shifting and maneuvering. This was what she had learned from her Uncle Hardin, who was an Alliance pilot before being discharged and forced to live on the hub.

  He had told her that any animal could lean into the trigger of a ship’s cannon, deploying torpedoes and trace lasers, but the true test of star fighting was knowing when to shunt your shields and overload your weapons. If they were fighting right now, then what she was hearing didn’t make any sense, since it sounded as if the fighting was taking place right outside her door.

  Tasmin scrambled to her feet and looked around desperately. She noticed that one of the crates below her makeshift bed was on its side with the handle facing out. She was hyperventilating now, her mind dominated by negative outcomes. Clutching the front of her shirt, she pulled open the container and crawled inside to lie on her side as her pulse became thunder in her ears.

  The crate was just big enough to accommodate her size, though she had to bend her legs at a thirty-degree angle. She pulled the lid down to close it but left the latch facing out to keep it cracked. It was a small gap but big enough for her to watch the door and breathe.

  Once inside and comfortable enough, she covered her mouth and shut her eyes. The next few minutes she spent working at bringing her anxiety down, and once she was breathing evenly, she stared out at the door.

  It sounded as if the struggle outside was becoming more desperate, and she could make out screams amid the loud banging sounds. She clutched her shirt tighter against her fear. Then the door flew in, followed by a Marine who struck the bulkhead hard and slid lifeless to the floor.

  A hulking figure in a dark spacesuit stepped in after the dead man and looked around. In his hand was a sword that was unlike any that Tasmin had ever seen. She had always prided herself on knowing Vestalia’s history and had seen just about every edged weapon ever made. None of them favored the one in front of her now with its sleek black surface and glowing, vibrating edge.

  What is that? She mouthed the words, since the sword was both frightening and fascinating, but then a shot found the man’s back, and he spun around to face his attacker. Then when the sword struck it didn’t just cut but burned a gash through the armor of the woman that attacked him.

  Tasmin dared not move after seeing this formidable figure. The only thing on her mind was a wish that he would not stop to search the compartment. If this monster represented what the Marines now fought, then she was not going to survive. She wondered how they’d boarded the ship, and where he’d found that weapon, which she assumed was some sort of alien technology.

  A silence followed, unsettling, and too long to indicate anything good. Tasmin stared out at the passageway, fighting against the urge to sneak out, her
instincts begging her to wait for at least another thirty minutes.

  She kept thinking about the beast that had burst through the door and trying to reason what it was. Her first assumption was that it was a pirate. Someone from Syr was on the inside of the attack and radioed back to his fellows that the Aqnaqak Marines were on the prowl. Now the pirates, knowing the futility in running from the Alliance, circled back to make the first strike.

  No, that’s absurd, she reasoned, remembering that strange sword and how it cut through everything. Were these the lizards of legend and nightmares, the Geralos devils that preyed on humans?

  The thought of being this close to the Geralos sent icy spikes through Tasmin’s blood stream. She dared not move now, not if it was the brain-eating lizards on the ship. The moment they learned she was there, she would be shipped off to one of their farms.

  She recalled Carly Ipan, an old woman that would visit her school, telling tales of her time as an Alliance soldier and warning of the horrors that were beyond the hub. One of her stories dealt with a friend of hers being captured by the lizards, and how she’d returned with a hole in her head and babbling rubbish before collapsing.

  For weeks after hearing that tale, Tasmin could not sleep, and now as she recalled the horror of that story, she shrunk back into her hiding hole, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “Is she in there?” she heard a voice say, and although it was human, she dared not hope that it was one of the Marines.

  “She has to be in here. That bastard broke down the door but Bo-Lance dropped him as soon as he came back out. The girl wasn’t with him, and I don’t see her body in here,” a gruff voice said, and Tasmin opened her eyes to see a Marine shifting her crate table to peer behind it.

  “I’m here,” she managed, pushing open the crate, and the familiar face of Sergeant Codi Arc stepped through the open door to approach her. She rolled out onto her hands and knees and he pulled up short to help her up.