by Ramy Vance
“Apparently, what we saw wasn’t a meteor. It was one of the Dark One’s ships. A cargo ship, it turns out. They use them to pick people up for their slave colonies.”
Abby had heard of those ships. The colonies as well. Creon had told her how he had escaped from the Dark One’s ore mines. He’d been picked up on a ship just like the one Anabelle had described.
“They were abducting humans?” Abby asked.
Anabelle nodded wearily. “They’ve been doing it for years. More than half of the stories humans tell each other about alien abductions are actually the Dark One. No one knows why humans, though. They never end up in the labor camps. They just disappear.”
A chill went down Abby’s back. She’d never spent much time thinking about aliens before, but the idea of the Dark One just picking people up as he saw fit was disturbing.
Blackwell came over to Abby and Anabelle. “Just in from Myrddin. Told him about the whole tracking and outer space problem,” he said. “He suggested that you bump up the frequency to your tracker by seven-point-three percent and bounce it off of the satellite array he’s set up in the atmosphere.”
Abby did a double-take as she realized the extent of Myrddin’s network. “Uh, okay, I’ll give it a try,” she said. Then she patched into Myrddin’s satellite system and reconfigured her drone to the frequency he had suggested. “Oh, there it is.”
Abby brought up a hologram of the location of the shape. She didn’t recognize any of the star systems displayed on the map. “Okay, so that’s where it is. Now, what are we going to do?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Abby and Anabelle returned to HQ. The ride back was quiet. Though the mission had been a success, an air of disappointment hung over everyone. Maybe it had to do with watching a group of humans being abducted.
It was hard to celebrate after that.
The reality of abductions was a little difficult for Abby to wrap her head around. She’d spent more time than she’d be proud to admit reading about aliens and the different theories on what they could be.
Her favorite had been the theory that aliens were actually fourth- or fifth-dimensional beings who hacked human brains to help humanity realize that humans should collectively chill. Abby had never suspected that aliens were an invading force of fantasy characters.
If she thought about it, Abby wasn’t sure which one sounded more ridiculous.
When SWARMMT arrived back at HQ, Blackwell and the other recruits headed to the barracks. Abby was preparing to head to her own room when Anabelle stopped her. “You and I aren’t done yet,” Anabelle said.
Abby looked up at Anabelle, caught off-guard by the elf’s surreal beauty. “Uh…what’s left?”
“We’re finding those humans. We can’t just leave them out there. You and Creon get together and find a way to magnify that signal.”
“I already used all of Myrddin’s satellites, and that barely did anything.”
Anabelle and Abby walked through HQ, heading to the R&D labs. Abby called the elevator as the elf continued talking. “Yeah, I know, but that was just Myrddin’s suggestion. Doesn’t mean that it’s the best one. The dude’s a wizard, not a tech genius.”
Abby blushed and stared at her feet. “I’m not a genius,” she murmured bashfully. The elevator slid open, and she entered quickly.
“Call it what you want. You’re pretty damn smart. So, don’t quit on this one. We have an obligation to help those humans.”
Abby hadn’t expected Anabelle to be so dedicated to rescuing a random group of humans. She’d heard the elf mutter and grumble about her human agents. Abby had assumed Anabelle was slightly xenophobic. “So, what do you get out of helping out some stranger?”
Anabelle winced at Abby’s words as if she’d been physically cut by them. “What do you mean, what do I get out of it?”
“Pa used to say nobody sticks their neck out for no reason, knowing it might get snapped. Just curious, I guess. I like you a lot, but you don’t seem like the kinda person tripping over your own feet to be doing favors.”
Anabelle’s face softened at Abby’s words. “Okay, I see what you mean. This isn’t a favor. This is my job. We fight the Dark One. That fight takes on different forms all the time. Sometimes it’s stabbing an orc. Other times, it’s blowing up a supply depot. Other times, it’s rescuing humans to keep them from a labor camp. All of it is a fight. Some are just flashier than others.”
Abby considered the elf’s words, rolling them around in her head, and saw how they related to her own campaign of revenge. The elevator arrived at her floor with a bing. She stepped out. “All right, I’ll see what I can do.”
Anabelle thought about giving Abby a hug or a high five or something humans found comforting…something to lift her spirits. But in the end, she didn’t know what to do. Anything over the top wouldn’t be received well, and at a loss of what to do, she hit the button for her floor and the elevator doors shut, leaving Abby alone with her thoughts and anxieties.
There hadn’t been any doubt in Anabelle’s voice. She must have assumed Abby was capable of taking care of finding her tracking device. Abby was used to people believing in her abilities, but this was on a whole other level. Even Abby’s parents had still managed to treat Abby like a child. Abby had never complained. It felt good to know that there were people in charge, people you could trust and rely on.
Now Abby was the person who was being relied on. Someone’s life depended on her. That was a lot of pressure to put on a seventeen-year-old.
Creon was sitting in the lab, tinkering with an exoskeleton, one of Abby’s smaller drones flying around him, occasionally helping. He looked up from his work when he saw Abby. “Hey, how’s it going?”
Abby fell into her chair as she sighed. “You know anything ‘bout improving tracking frequencies?”
Creon took off his goggles as he leaned back in his chair. “A reasonable amount. Why do you ask?”
“Got a tracker stuck on an orcish ship. Damn thing went straight to space, then disappeared. So, I’m more than a little at a loss right now.”
Creon nodded, then reached out and grabbed the drone floating around him. “It’s far away now. We have to amp the signal to find it.”
“Do we have the tech or power?”
Creon shrugged before getting out of his chair and hobbling over toward the holoprojector. “Don’t know. Let’s find out.”
The goblin hadn’t missed a beat, Abby noticed. He was ready to start dreaming up ways to work around a problem. Abby admired that quality. If there was one thing she wanted to learn from her time with Creon, it would be how to approach problems the way he did.
Abby left her seat and joined Creon at the holoprojector. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
Almost fifteen hours later, Abby and Creon succeeded. Twenty-six cups of coffee, two very heated shouting matches, and a set of tears flowing like a waterfall from Creon were all it took to figure out how to boost the tracker’s signal.
Both of them were exhausted, but there was no time to rest. Abby called Anabelle as soon as both she and Creon verified that they were receiving a signal from the tracker.
Anabelle was in the lab within ten minutes. “What are we working with now?”
Abby yawned and almost fell out of her chair. Creon managed to prop her up with his foot before she slid backward.
“Gods, you two look like shit,” Anabelle said as she waited for either one to answer her.
When it became apparent that Abby and Creon might be too sleep-deprived to know what was happening around them, Anabelle went to the holoprojector and began to go through their notes. None of it made sense to her. Some of the notes were in goblin, and others were in a shorthand that could only be Abby’s.
“Okay, guys, you gotta tell me something.” She sighed. “Like, where are they?”
“Not in our solar system,” Creon said. “They activated a Gate or some sort of warp drive and got themselves into Middang3ard space. Then they lande
d on the orc homeworld.”
“How do they have that kind of technology?” Anabelle muttered.
“Guess the Dark One is even more tooled up than we thought,” Creon offered.
“So are we,” Abby said, suddenly snapping awake. She leapt to her feet, ran over to the holoprojector, flipped a switch, and turned it on. “So are we. We broke down one of the other trackers. Reverse-engineered the frequency. Set up a couple of dummies on them satellites. Then we, uh, I’m not sure about what we did after that, but we have audio and video now.”
“Let me see what you have.”
Abby hit a couple of commands on her computer, and the holoprojector displayed what the tracker saw. A row of humans was chained to the walls. Orcs walked back and forth, talking to each other.
“Can you turn it up?” Anabelle asked.
Abby grabbed a pair of headphones and handed them over. Anabelle listened intently for a few seconds before she grabbed her chest. “They’re taking them to the Arena,” she said with a gasp.
“Also, this drone tracker has speakers. We can speak to them,” said Abby.
“And say what?”
“I dunno, comfort them?”
Anabelle shook her head. “Until we have a plan, let’s not give them hope. Best to stay hidden for now.”
She handed back the headphones as Abby asked, “What’s the Arena?”
“Some orc blood sport from back in the day. The Dark One revamped it when he took over the orcs. It used to be a fight to the death between warriors and monsters. Now orcs just pick up a bunch of civilians, shove them in a cage with a dozen monsters, and watch the unlucky bastards get ripped to shreds. There’s no competition. No fight. They just watch a slaughter.” Anabelle paced the floor, scratching the back of her head. “We’re not going to be able to save any of them…not from this distance…you know…fuck it, let’s broadcast it.”
Abby shook her head, not quite understanding what Anabelle was saying. “What do you mean by broadcast it?”
“Myrddin wants to create awareness for the war. Me waving an orc’s head didn’t work. Maybe this will. Let’s broadcast a human getting slaughtered by this fucked up game. That’ll get people on our side.”
“That’s fucked up. You want to broadcast someone dying?”
Anabelle sat on one of the chairs, her eyebrows furrowed and dark as she folded her hands and rested her chin on her fingers. “Exactly. No one is going to be able to ignore that. Creon, patch us into as many televisions and computers you can. You know the drill.”
Creon nodded as he swung over to his computer and started working.
Abby watched Anabelle, uncertain of how she should feel about what the elf was doing. There was still a lot she didn’t understand about Annabelle.
Shackled, bound, and blindfolded, Terra was led down several hallways, ramps, stairs, and off the ship. Wherever they were taking her, it was far. Then she could hear the roar of a crowd. It was deafening. Guess the folks love the games, Terra thought.
Suddenly, she was halted. Her blindfold was pulled off, and her shackles detached. One of the three orcs who had led Terra there handed her a rusty mace. “Is this all that I get?” Terra asked.
The orc shoved Terra toward the steel gate ahead of her. “We don’t waste the good shit on meat,” the orc said. “Hopefully, your death is more glorious than your pointless life.”
“Well, fuck you too!” Terra shouted at the orcs as they walked off. Then she turned her attention to the sounds coming from the other side of the gate.
The gates slid up and opened. Terra strode awkwardly out into the arena.
It was exactly as she had imagined. The arena was built in a fashion similar to the ancient Greek Colosseum, an open pit surrounded by stands for spectators. And the stands were full. There was hardly an empty seat to be found. The stands were filled with orcs, trolls, and goblins, all screaming their lungs out.
Terra spun around, overwhelmed by what she was facing. It had dawned on her that all of these creatures had gathered to watch her fight. In their minds, probably die. “I’m not going out like that,” she muttered.
Across the arena, another set of steel gates opened. An eight-foot troll emerged from the darkness of its cage. The troll’s fur was grayed and was missing massive chunks where the skin was scarred. The troll carried no weapons.
Terra froze. She didn’t know what to do. All around her, the crowd was screaming.
The troll was a different story. It charged Terra, who barely lifted her mace in time to brace herself for the attack. That didn’t matter to the troll, though. He simply grabbed her by the wrist and flung her across the arena.
She hit a wall with a heavy thud and fell to the ground. Fuck, that hurt, she thought as she pushed herself to her feet. Wait a minute, that should have killed me. How the fuck did that not kill me?
Terra took a quick mental stock of how she felt. Her ribs were annoyed at most. She wasn’t out of breath. It almost felt like a child had tried to punch her in the chest. “Well, this is interesting,” she said to herself. “Guess if I’m going to die, might as well live it up while I can.”
She tossed her mace to the side and cracked her knuckles.
The crowd in the stands went wild. Goblins and orcs jumped to their feet, screaming with enthusiasm. An announcer’s voice broke through the noise, shouting, “And it looks like Not-a-male has discarded their mace! They must want to die!”
She blocked out the sound of the crowd. The way she used to during rugby. Then she sprinted toward the troll. He was the only other person who seemed to be taking this fight seriously. He braced for the attack.
Terra flung herself through the air, tackling the troll. They both hit the ground, rolling over each other, both trying to get to their feet first. Together, they rose, their hands locked. The crowd was quiet now. Not a murmur in it all. Everyone’s attention was on the fight.
The troll dug his feet into the ground and tried to swing Terra to the side.
She pivoted on her foot, shifting her weight to the other side and leaned back, pulling the troll toward her. She brought her knee up as he fell forward, ramming it into his head, breaking his jaw. As the troll stumbled back, Terra slipped behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck.
He reached up and clawed at Terra’s face, trying to gouge out her eyes. It was only a matter of time until he succeeded. His arms were long enough. This had to end soon.
Terra closed her eyes and tried not to think too much about what she was going to do. She grabbed the troll’s jaw with one hand and rested the other on the back of his neck. Then she twisted with all of her strength, strength she had never had on Earth. Seemed that wherever she’d been taken, the place made her stronger.
The troll struggled, but Terra didn’t stop twisting. She was strong. Stronger than she had ever been in her entire life. And she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, she was stronger than this troll.
Terra let out a scream of pure rage and snapped the troll’s neck. She dropped his body as the crowd watched in silence.
Out in the crowd, an old troll got to his feet. He let out a roar that echoed through the arena, then he clapped. Soon the entire arena was filled with the roaring and clapping of goblins, orcs, and trolls. Chants of “Not-a-male” rose louder and louder.
Terra stepped over the body of the troll, a smile crossing her face. Maybe this isn’t going to be too bad, she thought.
Chapter Twenty-Three
HQ’s lounge was a small, private affair. Dim, red lights illuminated the sparse chairs and tables in the lounge. There rarely was a bartender. Instead, each table had been enchanted to magically provide a drink at the press of a button—one of Myrddin’s prouder accomplishments.
The wizard swore the magical program could make a Whiskey Sour better than any bartender across the nine realms. Anabelle barely spent any time in the lounge, but when she did stop by, she couldn’t disagree with Myrddin.
She sat there now, nursing a Mosc
ow Mule. It was the only human cocktail she could stomach. Drinking elvish wine didn’t sound appealing at all. Too many memories, too many stories. A stiff drink that could take care of that problem was a better choice.
The Mule kicked hard. Anabelle grimaced at the burn in her throat and stomach, but she pushed on.
The door to the lounge swung open, and Roy walked through. His perfect posture had always caught Anabelle’s eye. The man looked like he’d spent his entire childhood standing against a wall. It was impossible to imagine him as anything other than some form of military.
Roy sat at Anabelle’s table and looked over the menu. He knocked twice on the table, and an aged whiskey on the rocks appeared in front of him. He took a sip and gagged. “You’d think it’d be hard to mess up a whiskey neat,” he grumbled. “And yet, every time, this spell sneaks one ice cube into my drink. Almost a waste of good whiskey.”
“Isn’t it a little early for you to be drinking?”
Roy tossed back the shot of whiskey and ordered another. “It’s late someplace in one of these realms. Besides, I’m not here to get tossed. Just wanted to pay you a compliment. Your plan worked.”
Anabelle didn’t meet Roy’s eyes. Instead, she watched her finger circle the rim of her copper cup. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“You don’t have to play coy.”
Roy turned on the television set across from their table. CNN was broadcasting Terra’s fight on a loop, the two analysts giving commentary. Roy flipped to another station. Pretty much the same thing. He ran through a dozen more channels. It was all anyone was talking about.
Anabelle tried to look surprised. “Why do you think I would—”
“Because I’m not stupid. And it wasn’t a bad idea. Myrddin is pissed off, obviously, but people are on board.”
Roy changed the channel again. This time, people were marching in the streets, holding signs that said, “Free Terra!” or “Abduct us and we’ll kick your ass!”
