“Any requests?” I ask.
They both stare at me, tight-lipped.
I speak into the recorder again. “Final report: the human females are healthy. They will make it on Darkstar with exosuit therapy. They have had limited contact with major human settlements, though they may be able to provide us with certain information about conditions on Mars.”
Kara is narrowing her eyes at me. It kills me to see her suffering like this. Her eyes should always be happy and full of joy– they should never look like this. Raius and Senka have not given me anything to work with. I’d need to kill them both to turn the ship around, but I don’t have so much as a blade. Even if I had a plasma rifle and snuck up on them while they slept, their biosuits would kill me before I could even pull the trigger.
“My brother will decide what to do with you,” I say, in a gloating voice. “He’s become High Commander in my absence, and he has no love for humans.”
Their mouths drop open, and their eyes widen.
“I’ll have a place at his side,” I say. “So don’t cross me.”
The corners of Kara’s mouth go up, but she bites her lip to kill the smile.
I nod, and turn away.
At least I gave them something. They now know I have an in with High Command. They know they have some kind of chance.
9 Kara
We become weightless again as the ship begins docking with the Marauder’s High Command ship. I know from the history books that the original ships from the Marauder fleet– the ships that can travel at a fraction of the speed of light between stars– are massive. They are larger than humanity’s biggest habitats– larger than the floating cities of Venus– huge skyscraper-like ships that were capable of sailing from star to star, powered by antimatter.
Darkstar has only two of these ships remaining, all in orbit around Darkstar itself. Our tiny ship entering the High Command ship would be like a mosquito being swallowed up by a dinosaur.
The door opens, and I hold my breath, hoping to see Kain again. Even if he’s pretending to be an asshole and shouting at me, it will still be wonderful to see him.
But it’s not Kain, it’s Raius.
Felicia and I are floating around the room, basking in the relief of zero-g after such a prolonged period of 1.5gs.
“We’re going to bring you to a shuttle,” he says. “You’ll report directly to Darkstar. To the prison colony.”
“When?” I ask.
“Now. Follow me.”
We frown.
“I’m not asking twice,” Raius says.
Felicia and I kick off the wall and float toward the door. We grab hold of it and pull ourselves through.
I catch sight of Kain talking to Senka through an open door. He’s laughing, but only with his mouth. HIs eyes look strained and sad. I hope that Raius or Senka can’t see through him like I can.
His ears twitch, and he turns to look at me. His whole face lights up when he sees me– but only for a brief moment– but then he forces himself to look away.
Damn it. Why couldn’t I have met him under different circumstances? What if he fails and I never see him again?
Raius shuts the door, and he’s cut off from me. “This way.”
He pulls us through the airlock, which is wide open, and we float out into a huge hangar. The hangar alone is bigger than any ship I’ve ever been on, and I know it’s only a small fraction of the whole ship. There is a cable with handholds, and we follow Raius by gripping onto the handholds. He hits a switch, and the cable starts to move. We are pulled across the hangar toward a small shuttle.
Raius stops the cables when we reach the shuttle, and another Marauder salutes him.
“Take these two down to the prison colony. They are weak and will need exosuits to be at all productive. They are otherwise healthy.”
The Marauder salutes Raius again, and Raius turns his back to us, like trash he’s just discarded.
We’re brought into the shuttle, and the Marauder– who looks like he’s pushing 70 years old– smiles at us. “I’m Bala. Welcome to my shuttle. Down to Darkstar we go! You ready?”
“Not really,” Felicia says.
“The exosuits will help,” he says, strapping into his pilot’s seat.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Why do they have someone like you piloting a shuttle like this? Can’t a computer do it?”
He gives a bitter laugh. “I used to be High Command. Until Adus purged us.”
“So he let the old members of High Command live?” I ask.
“Only those who begged for their lives,” Bala says, frowning. “I owe a lot of shame debt for that, but at least I’m still alive. You can’t get revenge if you’re dead.”
“Adus is Kain’s brother?” I ask.
His ears perk up. “How do you know that name?”
“Kain was on the ship with us,” I say. “With Raius and Senka.”
“I see,” he says. “How did he treat you?”
My mind races. I don’t know if I can trust this man. He seems too sympathetic. Like it could be a trap.
“Like shit,” I say. “You’ve all treated me like shit. We’re fed gruel, and you’re shuttling us to a prison colony.”
Bala shakes his head. “I wanted to kill you all for a long, long time. But it’s too late for that, the damage is done. Most of us just wanted to see another generation of Marauders travel on to the stars. We wanted to see our old lifestyle back again...we don’t have to destroy everything here to accomplish that.”
“So fight back,” Felicia says.
“We’re old,” Bala says. “And Adus is young. We’d need a strong leader who isn’t an old fart to oppose Adus.”
Kain.
Felicia raises a finger, but I elbow her.
She gives me a pissed-off look, but holds her tongue.
Bala starts up the shuttle, and after a few minutes I feel gravity taking hold of us.
“I didn’t feel any vibration as we entered,” Felicia says.
“No atmosphere on Darkstar,” Bala says. “Just a lot of gravity.”
After another twenty minutes I feel vibrations as Bala activates the landing thrusters and slowly brings us down to the surface. From the front window, I can see what looks like the most desolate city I’ve ever seen. It’s made up of all low, wide buildings illuminated by floodlights. The ground is smooth, but all around the floodlit space are jagged mountains and ridges.
“Welcome to your new home,” Bala says. “You want my advice?”
Neither of us say anything.
“Well…,” he says. “I’ll give it to you anyway. If you meet a Marauder who treats you like you are a human rather than an animal...beg him to claim you. You might actually end up liking him.”
Felicia crosses her arms and huffs. “Are you trying to say--?”
Bala laughs. “Ah, not me! I’m too old for that. And I don’t care for human women anyway. All I’m trying to say is that you do not want to be on labor detail. It’s no way to live.”
“Thanks for the advice, Bala,” I say.
“No problem,” he says.
He hits a button, and the shuttle doors open wide.
It seems we’ve landed inside a building.
“Time for you two to get off,” he says.
We both stand up– slowly– the gravity is higher than it was on the ship to Darkstar.
“Jesus,” Felicia says.
“Just think how strong we’ll get–”
“Stop it,” she says.
We walk slowly down the ramp, and Bala waves goodbye to us.
“At least not everyone on Darkstar are assholes,” Felicia says.
“I don’t know,” I say, whispering. “I get the feeling they don’t trust Kain, and they’re trying to figure out if he’s still on their side. Don’t you find it suspicious that the first Darkstar Marauder we meet is smiling and talking about how he wishes they had a strong leader who didn’t want to blow up Earth?”
“You sound pr
etty paranoid,” Felicia says.
“I think we have to be paranoid to make it here,” I say.
“Well,” Felicia says, “I’m going to rope me one of those nice Marauders and get him to claim me.”
“Seriously?” I ask.
“I am not built for manual labor.”
“We both ran a mining ship!” I say, throwing up my hands.
“Yeah,” Felicia says. “But we got to keep the money. I can power through it if I know it’s all going to profit me. But I’m not going to do manual labor in exchange for bags of gruel.”
I roll my eyes. “Then let Kain claim you. You won’t have to–”
“No,” Felicia says, whispering, “he’s yours.”
I roll my eyes.
“Seriously,” Felicia says, “I’ve seen the way you two look at each other. I’m not going to mess that up for you.”
I shake my head and smile. “I think you just really do want to find your own Marauder. Sounds like you’ve got purple fever to me.”
“Shut up,” Felicia says.
Another Marauder approaches us. “Follow me.”
He turns around and starts walking away. We try to keep up with him, but it’s impossible.
The shuttle starts to lift off behind us, and I see the entire ceiling opening up.
“How does the air stay in?” I ask.
The Marauder slows down and turns to face us. “Try to walk fast. And don’t waste your breath talking to me.”
He turns back around, and we follow as best we can.
He brings us through a hallway, and finally to a smaller room filled with machinery.
“Each of you go stand on the footprints.”
The ground is cold, grey metal, and there’s a long line of footprints painted in bright yellow.
“How do we know this isn’t the recycler?” Felicia asks me in a low whisper. “What if this is where we die?”
“It’s not the recycler!” the Marauder shouts. “Now fucking do it. You’re wasting my time.”
“Of course he’d say that,” Felicia says.
“If this were the recycler,” the Marauder says, “I’d kill you right now to shut you up. Now move!”
I step onto the footprints first, hoping Felicia will follow my lead before this asshole does decide to kill us.
Green lasers begin to shoot out and move all across my body.
I raise an arm, and the Marauder shouts, “Stay still!”
He moves toward Felicia, and he grabs her shoulders, lifts her up, and plops her down onto the footprints as the lasers continue to scan me.
After several moments, metal arms burst out of the wall.
One of the arms grabs me by the waist, and then another pair grabs my ankles.
Machinery starts to snap closed against my legs, and it works slowly up my body. As the machinery reaches my torso, the arms that held my legs secure release me and grab tightly around my shoulders.
After two or three minutes, the arms let go entirely, but I’m covered by thin lines of metal– tracing my bones.
I take a step, and I feel almost as if I’m on normal Earth gravity. I look at my arm, then touch the metal with my finger. I can barely feel it, so I rotate my arm until I can see my elbow. There’s a small metal sphere embedded onto my elbow, and the metal lines from my forearm and shoulder connect to it.
“Tell her it is fine,” the Marauder grunts at me.
I look up and see that Felicia has jumped off her footprints and is backing away.
“Felicia,” I say. “It’s an exosuit. The gravity isn’t painful anymore. I can move normally.”
“How do I know that’s my sister talking?” Felicia asks. “How do I know those machines aren’t controlling you now?”
“Come on,” I say. “You sound like our parents now. Why would they put a bunch of visible machinery onto my body in plain view of you if they were going to--?”
“Okay,” Felicia says. “Fine, I’ll do it.”
She hobbles over to the footprints and stands on them.
“Fucking finally,” the Marauder says, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.
I watch as the machinery snaps the exosuit onto Felicia, and when it’s done, she smiles. “Wow! You should have told me.” She takes three quick steps, then jumps up and down, smiling.
“I did tell you,” I say, “but you didn’t listen.”
“All right,” the Marauder says. “Looks like you’re both ready for hard labor. Come on.”
10 Kain
I watch as the shuttle takes Kara down to Darkstar.
I need a biosuit, and I need it fast.
I’ll need to claim Kara as soon as possible, before someone else does. Even if Kara doesn’t agree to be claimed, it will be an issue if I try to claim her after another Marauder does.
I’ll lose standing with Marauders like Raius by making a claim as one of my first actions, but it’s a risk I’ll have to take.
“He’s ready to see you,” Raius says.
I turn from the window. We’ve almost rotated away from Darkstar now. The ship is constantly spinning to create artificial gravity. Only the hangar in the center is free from the artificial gravity.
I walk into the High Commander’s office. My brother Adus’s office.
Adus is standing up, and he grins wide when he sees me.
We were not allowed to visit him while he was imprisoned. I haven’t seen him in over a decade.
“Adus,” I say.
“Kain!” He smiles wider, and he grabs hold of my forearm.
I grab his forearm, and we squeeze. He pulls me into him and hugs me.
I hug him back, and he looks down at me.
“You’re all grown up,” he says.
“And you’re getting old,” I say, grinning.
He’s twelve years older than me. He doesn’t really look old, but he’s clearly past his prime.
“Good thing I’ve got the youngest Marauder left on my side, then!” He smiles. “You are on my side? Right?”
“I hope so,” I say.
“You agree that we cannot let the humans live?” he asks me.
“Of course I agree.”
“Then we’re on the same side! The older generation was getting soft, losing touch with their roots.”
“Not our father,” I say. “He followed your orders until his last breath.”
“Good,” Adus says. “I’m glad to hear that. I was worried he may have disobeyed my order, and that’s why everything fell apart on Atlantis. Tell me, what happened?”
I’ve been preparing for this moment ever since I heard Adus was in charge. I don’t want to give him valuable intel, but if I try to withhold information that he already knows, he’ll know I’m a spy. The most valuable intel is probably that the Atlanteans still live, and that my friend Ramses met with them face to face.
I can deny this much, but I cannot deny that our father’s old books proved useful. Atlantis projects a field that shuts down all advanced technology– including biosuits– yet both our father and Ramses had functioning biosuits on Atlantis. As much as I’d like to withhold this piece of information, it’s likely that Adus already knows it.
“A peacekeeper from Venus–”
“Aegus’s son,” Adus says.
“Yes. Ramses, son of Aegus,” I confirm. “Harmony brought him into her plot. She wanted our new generation of Marauder to come from strong stock, so she brought Ramses in as the father, and then a local cop as the mother–”
“I know this part,” Adus says, waving his hand, “But what happened on Atlantis?”
“It was going according to plan,” I say. “We followed Ramses there, found out how to safely land there, and we set up camp. We captured the woman after she was pregnant, and–”
“Back up,” Adus says. “How did you capture her? Shouldn’t Ramses have died?”
I remember what happened. I shot Ramses several times, but I let him live. I wanted to see if the Atlanteans really s
till lived, and I suspected they’d save him. They did.
“I grabbed her while Ramses was out hunting,” I say.
“You were afraid to fight him?” Adus asks me.
“No,” I say. “We fought later. I won. But his cousin landed with a full legion of Martian soldiers, and Ramses had a bioglove.”
“Yes,” Adus says. “I thought so, I knew our father somehow made his biosuit function on Atlantis, so I knew they must have had at least something like this...it makes sense.”
“I don’t know how our father activated his–”
“I do,” Adus says. “Those books. Did you get a look at them?”
“No,” I say. “They were destroyed in the attack, and father never shared them with me.”
“We’ll have to go there ourselves,” Adus says. “I suspect the Atlanteans are still alive, though it’s just a suspicion. If they are, though, it’s worth the trip and the risk.”
I nod.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“The world looks dead,” I say. “But there’s a lot we don’t understand.”
“Yes,” he says. “Well, Kain, I’m busy, but we’ll have to get a drink later tonight. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”
“Yes,” I say. “There’s one thing. I brought two human females with me. With your permission, I want to claim one of them.”
This is a big risk. If Adus shares Rius’s feelings, I’ll lose a lot of ground with him. But I suspect he doesn’t, because if Adus is fully in charge, then Rius wouldn’t have so begrudgingly taken the prisoners with him. Adus must have a soft spot for human women.
I watch his face, but it stays cold and neutral for a long moment.
I feel my heart thumping and my chest tighten. Did I misread the situation? Maybe he–
Then a wide smile creeps across his face. “Of course!” he says. “I heard they are sisters? You can claim the one you like, but since we are brothers, maybe I should take a good look at the other one.”
I read him right– he likes human women– but this is bad.
I force a laugh and a wry smile, hoping he’ll be too busy to take a trip down to Darkstar. And maybe by the time he does, I’ll be long gone with Kara and Felicia.
“Anyway,” Adus says, “it must be a sign that you’ve come back to us at this very moment. I know exactly what you are to do.”
Marauder Kain: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars Book 5) Page 5
