Any Port In A War: An Alien Galactic Military Science Fiction Adventure (Enemy of my Enemy Book 1)

by Tim Marquitz

  Mama was dying.

  Taj bit back a sob as she grabbed the old Gran’s cold, trembling hand. It felt like ice. “I’m here, Mama. I’m here.”

  Mama Merr’s eyes rolled to the side slowly, like fish swimming upstream, until they locked on Taj at long last. “Child,” the old queen muttered, the word barely more than a ragged whisper.

  “I’m here,” Taj repeated, fighting to keep from repeating herself again, unsure of what else to say. “I-I—”

  Mama squeezed her hand, and though Taj barely felt it, the effort drew her up short. She went silent, grateful for the reprieve that kept her from spewing the waterfall of thoughts and feelings that crowded her throat and battled her tongue in order to be spat out.

  “We-we’ve little time, child,” Mama told her, each word brittle. “Listen to me now li-like you never have before.”

  It took all of Taj’s willpower to keep from blubbering. Instead, she gave a shallow nod of deference, letting the old queen speak her last words without interruption. And as Mama licked her lips and summoned the strength to speak, Taj felt the tunnels shrink around her, the darkness creeping closer as her people rallied behind her, crowding in to listen.

  Their breaths wafted warm over Taj, making her ears twitch and her tail to thwap. She tucked it in instinctively to keep it from being stepped on, but her gaze never left Mama’s eyes. She encouraged her with a bitter smile, battling the sadness waiting to swoop down and carry her away.

  “Our people will…will be yours to lead very soon, my child,” she said, the sentiment mimicking what Beaux had told her before he sealed the hatch to his fate.

  The words struck Taj like a physical blow, and she collapsed onto her tail, her legs trembling too hard to support her any longer. Both of her parents—as she could think of them as nothing other—dying so soon after one another was a wound she could feel being carved into her heart, one that would never fully mend.

  Both wanted her to lead the last of their people. It was clearly something they had discussed at length among themselves without Taj’s knowledge, and it was an honor she couldn’t remotely begin to appreciate at that moment. Right then, the declaration was salt in that same, gaping wound.

  “For now, y-you must help Gran Beaux do what…what must be done to stop this in-invasion, t-to help our people recover.”

  Taj bit her tongue to keep from telling Mama the truth, that the love of her life, Beaux, was dead, and Mama was on her way to meet him on the other side, Rowl willing.

  Taj’s tail stiffened, poofing at her dishonesty and disgust with herself, and she was grateful then for the darkness that encroached, keeping the tell-tale sign of her lie from Mama. She’d never been able to lie to the old woman, and she lamented the fact that she had to now.

  “I will,” Taj managed to spit out, snapping her mouth shut right after to hold back anything else that might slip free.

  Mama smiled and gave another squeeze of her hand. Taj could feel her strength oozing away. “See our people safe, child, and…and know, n-now and forever, you are…are loved.”

  With the last of her strength, Mama Merr pulled Taj’s hand to her mouth and kissed it. Her final breath warmed the fur on the back of her paw, stirring it with its passage, and then there was nothing more but still, silent emptiness.

  Taj crumpled onto Mama and let loose a howl that rattled her ribs, the tears and recriminations overwhelming her as though she herself had been the one to die. She barely heard the muffled sobs of those around her as the gravity of Mama’s passing fell over her, a funerary shroud of cold black despair.

  And then she heard nothing, caught up in the tsunami of sadness that washed the wreck of her away.

  Many hours later, when at last Taj could draw a breath not tinged with tears, she had crept away from Mama’s stiffening body that was now wrapped in cloth and laid in reverence for all to say their farewells. Taj found a quiet alcove away from the mass of traffic mourning their lost leader. The crew had followed Taj and, quite uncharacteristically, held their silence as she struggled with her feelings.

  She knew they, too, felt the loss as sharply as she did, hence their clustered quiet, but she couldn’t think beyond herself right then. Too many people had died, and her head spun with it all. Guilty as she felt, she simply couldn’t bring herself to commiserate with the others right then.

  It was all too personal, too raw for her to reach out and offer them her support like she knew she should. It was too brittle, too weak to sustain herself, let alone the others. She had to see her way clear before she could see anything else.

  A few hours must have passed since she’d crawled away. It was only when Grady wobbled up, clearing phlegm from his throat to get their attention that Taj lifted her head. It was only then that she could truly comprehend the sorrow of her friends.

  She sniffed, as if waking for the first time in ages, and reached out to them. The crew entwined shaking fingers as the elder Tom stood patiently, leaning against the wall to keep from swaying too much. His pipe hung from parted lips, teeth gnawing at the stem. Taj caught a hint of nip in the still smoking embers.

  Lina pressed her head onto Taj’s shoulder, quiet whimpers reverberating between them. Cabe inched in close and wrapped a long arm about them both, pulling them in tight. Torbon sat on the other side, giving them the tiniest bit of space, but Taj would have none of it.

  She grabbed a handful of his fur, ignoring his sharp hiss, and pulled him into the others. She felt his resistance waver and fall away almost immediately, and she offered him the brightest smile she could muster.

  It barely wiggled her lips, but when she saw him return it, his no more defined than her own, it set loose a soothing balm into her bloodstream, a sad peace settling over, a somber realization striking home.

  For all Taj had lost that day, she still had so much.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Grady told them, the sour expression on his face telling them he was anything but sorry, “but much as I wish we weren’t here mourning Merr, tragedy that it is, we ain’t out the woods yet. We need to—”

  “What the gack? You don’t get to tell us what we—” Cabe shouted, pulling his legs beneath him, readying to pounce, but Taj tightened her grip on him and held him in place, heading off his outburst before it could fully erupt.

  “No, Cabe,” Taj cut in, “he’s right.” She clambered to her feet, reluctantly peeling away from her mourning crew, but keeping some part of her body touching each, her hand settling on Cabe’s shoulder. “We don’t have time for this, for fighting among ourselves.”

  “Bloody Rowl, Taj!” Cabe rose to his feet despite her restraining hand, his chest puffed out. “We just lost Mama, right after we lost Beaux. You can’t expect us to run off and—”

  Taj leaned in and planted a kiss right on Cabe’s mouth, silencing him outright. He gasped and stumbled back, and Taj took the opportunity to continue.

  “This is exactly the time our expectations should be the highest, Cabe,” she told him, casting her gaze across the others and receiving a nod from old Grady. “Much as I want to crawl into a hole and cry until I drown myself, now is not the time for it. Our people,” she glanced over at Torbon, “our families, are in danger. Whatever tears we have to shed can wait, but our families can’t.”

  Cabe growled and punched the wall, kicking up a small cloud of dust. She could see his eyes gleaming through the haze, and though there was fury there, fires illuminating his brown eyes, she could see reason seeping in and taking hold.

  He spit a mouthful of nip juice onto the floor and shook his head, but he went quiet, still, his defiance shifting to a sullen calm. She turned and gave Grady a thankful nod for his nudge, and the old Tom returned a careful smile and spun about, hobbling off without another word.

  “What do you want to do,” Lina asked.

  “I already told you what I want,” Taj answered, “but since I can’t cry myself into oblivion and wish everything back to normal, we need to do more than t
hat.”

  “What do you suggest.” Torbon slunk against the wall, pulling Lina along with him. She gave in without complaint. The two cradled each other, narrow, tired eyes watching Taj. Cabe continued to stand rigid, but his gaze remained steady on the group.

  “Honestly?” Taj asked. “I’m not really sure what to do yet, I’m so damn tired.”

  She looked at the others and saw the same expression on their faces that she imagined was plastered across her own: a bone-numbing weariness each fought to keep at bay. It was clearly a losing battle.

  “We need to sleep, to rest and recharge, if only for a few hours.” Taj gestured toward the tunnel ceiling. “The sun is well into the sky by now, and the aliens will be out and about, ready for us, waiting. We need the cover of darkness, shadows, if we’re to succeed.”

  “And if they kill more of our people while we’re asleep?” Torbon asked, and though he didn’t mention her by name, it was clear he meant Jadie.

  Taj swallowed the bile that rose into the back of her throat at the thought of him being right and gave herself a moment to let the bitterness drain away. “We’ve already discussed my thoughts on this, Torbon. And as much as I feel for what you’re going through, we have to believe this Captain Vort will stay true to his word, at least until tonight’s gathering.”

  Torbon snarled. “So, we’re supposed to trust this piece of gackspit to keep his word?” His hackles rose, the fur about his neck thickening in menace.

  Taj shook her head. “Trust? No, but he wants this over as quickly as we do,” she said, jabbing a claw in Torbon’s direction. “He gains nothing but resentment and more defiance if he goes against his word on this. No,” she went on, “he needs us to surrender, to give in to him. Whatever he wants here has his full attention, or he wouldn’t waste his time threatening. He doesn’t want to have to deal with us, which is why he came in guns blazing right away. Vort planned to take us out from the start, and only our perseverance kept that from happening. He hadn’t expected that.”

  “And now that we’ve become a thorn in his side, rest in peace, little windrider, he’s not prepared to pull his efforts away from his true goal and chase after us,” Cabe mumbled, clearly starting to wrap his head around what Taj was getting at.

  “He’s not confident he can take us all out without it impacting his real purpose,” Lina said.

  “Exactly,” Taj confirmed, rubbing at her temples, massaging her brain to keep her sluggish thoughts flowing. “As soon as he figures out where the rest of us are, which he’s clearly having a hard time accomplishing, that’s when you can expect he’ll make a determined run at us. Until then, he’s herding cats.” She chuckled at her own joke, laughing until she’d dragged the others along.

  “That was bad,” Torbon told her, shaking his head after a few moments, catching his breath.

  “Right?” Lina agreed. Cabe grinned in agreeance.

  “Anyway,” Taj started again once they’d caught their collective breath. “Right now, he’s playing a waiting game, using our people against us, setting traps like he has at the barn because his focus is split.”

  “What’s there?” Cabe asked. “You never did tell us what you saw.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a little crazy since then,” she admitted and felt herself starting to get dragged down again, but she shrugged the melancholy aside. “He’s hidden the shuttle we knocked over in the southernmost barn, and he’s got round-the-clock crews onboard, watching the scanners in case we mass up and try and free the prisoners.”

  “There’s no way they can pick up one or two of us, though,” Torbon said, his eyes lighting up. “Their scanners can’t be that sensitive.”

  “They aren’t,” she agreed. “I overheard the men saying exactly that, and I’m certain it was just them running their mouths and letting the info slip, not some master plan of deception to lure us in a few at a time.”

  “We can use that!” Torbon went to jump to his feet, but Lina clung to him and held him down.

  “We can, but later,” Taj told him, reinforcing Lina’s hold with a raised palm.

  “Yeah, there are still a bunch of soldiers on watch there. While one or two of us could sneak over there and not be detected by the scanners, the men would see us, for sure,” Cabe told them, clearly processing his thoughts aloud more so than actually joining the discussion. “Still, this is something we need to think on and see how it helps us, and what we can do with the information.”

  Torbon snarled, but he relented a moment later, sinking into Lina’s grasp. “Yeah, I can see that being a problem. As long as the soldiers are outside the barn like they are, they’ll shoot everyone in the back, even if we sneak people out a couple at a time. There are simply too many eyes out there now.”

  Taj nodded. “Especially since the last of their shuttles is patrolling nearby. It will spot us from the air even if the other’s sensors don’t.”

  “We need to take out both of the shuttles,” Cabe suggested, “though I’m not sure how we’d manage that. We don’t have much in the way of explosives. We could probably grab a couple of those grenades from the soldiers. I’m sure there are some lying about, but I doubt they’d even scratch the paint on those ships. They’re meant for deep space and inter-atmospheric transport.”

  He sighed. “They’re built sturdy. The only reason we managed to do so much damage with the Thorn was that the shuttles had their hatches open, allowing the extra fuel we strapped to the wings to get inside, past the armor to the more sensitive equipment.”

  “We need to steal one then,” Torbon muttered, licking his lips.

  “Good luck with that.” Cabe grinned. “Same problem: no way to get inside the stupid thing unless we’re there exactly when they change crews. Even then, we’ll be outnumbered and outgunned. All the aliens have to do is yell to bring dozens more soldiers down on our heads since we can’t go in more than two at a time. And even if we manage to get by all that, we’re not even sure we can fly the damn things.”

  Torbon slumped against the wall, rubbing at his eye. “Rowl, but I hate this.”

  “We all do, Torbon,” Taj told him.

  “There has to be something we can do,” Torbon moaned.

  “I’m sure there is,” she agreed, “but none of us are gonna think of it as worn out as we are. Like I said earlier, we need to sleep a little, let our heads settle, then maybe eat something. After that, we’ll have the night draped over us again, our wits about us, and we can better put all the pieces of this puzzle together.”

  Cabe and Lina muttered their agreement, and even Torbon conceded after a while, slinking down even lower and pulling Lina tighter against him. He yawned loudly, almost comically, not even bothering to cover his mouth as his eyeteeth gleamed in the gloom.

  “Yeah, let’s sleep for a bit,” he said. “Jadie will be okay for now.” Without another word, his chin slumped, and quiet snores sputtered out.

  Lina was out next, with Cabe coming over and settling in beside Taj before passing out a moment later. Taj sighed, thoughts of Beaux and Mama nipping at her, and rested her head against Cabe’s cheek. There was no resisting the warmth and comfort any longer.

  She fell asleep to the lullaby of his twitching whiskers tickling her eyelids.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The world swayed and danced, a great rumble echoing through the shallow tunnel of awareness that had begun to creep past Taj’s unconsciousness. She clasped at the cold floor and felt her claws scrape against stone.

  Cabe gasped somewhere in the gloom, and Taj’s eyes fluttered as sleep was swept away. She bolted upright with a choked hiss as dream and reality collided, adrenaline setting her nerves alight.

  “What the gack?” she muttered, blinking the sleep from her eyes. “You guys feel that?”

  The question hung in the air unanswered as the world shimmied once more and she lost her balance, stumbling into the wall. The impact knocked the last of her weariness from her, and she growled, her vision drawing into fo
cus.

  She saw Cabe, not more than a meter from her, scrambling to his feet, eyes wide and uncertain. Lina was nearby. She clung to the wall as dust glittered like stars in the early morning dawn of the tunnel. Then a bustle of footsteps snatched her attention from her friends. A small queen, barely half Taj’s height, careened into the room, feet slipping across the stone.

  “The aliens have broken into the tunnels! They’ve found us!”

  Taj clasped her heart. It felt as if it exploded, spattering her ribs with ragged chunks of terror. “They what?” It was if the words wouldn’t come together in any coherent order in her head, even though she’d heard the little cat clearly.

  Fortunately, Lina had more of her wits about her than Taj.

  “Where?” the engineer asked.

  “Northeast corner, up around the pens.”

  Taj stiffened. Right where I saw them last night, she remembered. Her thoughts whirled, though the more she thought about it, the less it seemed to make sense. There wasn’t a hatch up that way. Then how could they—

  “Gather our people near the desert exit,” she told the little cat, brushing the thought away. It would do her no good to speculate. “Get them ready to run if the aliens get past us.” She checked to make sure her bolt pistol was still secure in her holster and bolted off down the tunnel, calling back to her crew. “Come on!”

  The others followed an instant later, and Taj let out a grim mrowl, her imagination stoking the embers of her fear. She’d known it was only a matter of time until the aliens found their way into the tunnels, but she hadn’t been ready for it.

  From the start, despite knowing her fellow Furlorians were being tortured, she’d hoped and prayed the alien invaders would never find their way to the secret hideout under the earth, but that hope had been shattered.

  She ran on, footsteps pattering down the long corridors. As far as she was from the location where the aliens had supposedly broken into the tunnels, there was no way they could hear her yet, so she ran on without hesitation, clasping her pistol. The closer she came, the more her heart drummed a dirge against her ribs.