by James McEwan
Amanda set the cup down and leaned forward, “Now that is interesting. Play it again please.” Captain Hunter replayed the footage for her to review it. “And you say that you believed that she was right there with you?”
“Yes, Sir, I would swear she was right there I could even feel her little body against mine when I hugged her. I’m telling you, Sir, she may have a new power. She may have the ability to create mind projections,” he explained.
“And you are sure there were no hallucinogenic compounds used on you?” Amanda asked.
“Completely sure, Sir, I thought of that once I saw the security footage and had my blood tested. It came back clean. Also, Sir, we searched every inch of the perimeter walls and found no signs of a breach. No alarms, no evidence of anyone one coming or going except for the Eden, Sir,” he reported.
It was just then that it donned on her that Ruby never goes anywhere without Archie, “Captain where is Archie?”
“We believe she ordered him to smuggle her on board the Eden, Sir,” he said as he showed more security footage of Archie carrying a box big enough hide Ruby in right past two Marines and right up the loading ramp. “As you can see, Sir, Archie walked right past those two Marines completely unnoticed, and when I interviewed the two men both claim that they never saw or heard Archie. It appears that not only can she place images into minds she can make herself or anything she wants to appear invisible. It’s as if she just edited Archie out of their minds,” he said as the image changed back to his face.
“And I take it Archie never returned from the Eden?” She asked as she was coming to the same conclusion that he had.
“No, Sir, he didn’t. We tried to contact the Eden, but she didn’t answer coms,” he added.
“No, they wouldn’t. They were under orders to go radio silent. I can’t believe I just saw them off not more than a few hours ago myself. I wish you would have reported this earlier, I could have had words with Eve about where Ruby was on the Eden and why she didn’t report it to St. Claire the second she set foot on board,” Amanda said as an angry tone crept into her voice.
“I’m sorry, Sir, but it was a few hours before we discovered her missing and then we had to investigate before contacting you. I knew you wouldn’t be happy with the information, but I felt that contacting you without any answers,” Captain Hunter paused. “Well, I thought was a bad idea, however if I had known, I would have.”
Amanda cut him off, “I know Captain. You had no idea and you did right by coming to me with as much information as you could. Thank you Captain and good work, I will take it from here. Hayes out,” She said and cut the communication.
On the other side of the world Captain Hunter let out a sigh of relief. He turned to his second in command, “I guess you won’t get my job after all.”
Amanda slipped at her tea and thought about all the new information. Colonel Chavez set down her own tea and said, “I feel bad for Thad and the twins.”
Not sure where she was going with the comment Amanda asked, “Why?”
“If Ruby can sneak past the best trained security Marines in the universe, and she is doing it now, just think of how much of a problem it is going to be when she is a teenager,” Chavez said.
“Thanks for adding to my nightmares,” Amanda said.
The two women looked at each other and laughed even though deep down Amanda was worried.
Chapter 20
After a decent night’s sleep and a good breakfast, Freya left the dining room and headed for the stairs. She was going to check to see if the storm had abated when she was stopped dead in her tracks. She was greeted by several heavily armed, and what she could only guess, men.
The men were covered head to toe in the same style of desert robes they had found amongst the supplies. Their faces were covered with some kind of breathing mask and a dark tinted visor that wrapped around their eyes. Freya drank up every little detail. She noticed that their hands were covered with gloves and with what looked like micro armor plates. Despite their raggedy appearance these people meant business. Their weapons were also draped in rags most likely to help protect them from the fine sand and helped camouflage them.
Freya quickly sized up the situation. The room was small and cluttered and even though she was out numbered she knew she could take them. However, the question that lingered in her mind was could she cover the distance between them before they could shoot her. She decided she did not want to find out and instead smiled and said, “Good morning.”
The man in the middle lowered his weapon and began to remove the wrappings from his head. Freya stood there and watched as the man carefully unwound the rags. It wasn’t just a breathing mask it was a full helmet. The man pushed two releases one on both sides of the helmet, there was a small hiss as the helmet’s seal was broken. The face plate lifted up and Freya could see that she had guessed right. It was a human male. His face was well weathered and he looked to be in his mid to late fifties. He lifted the helmet off his head and tucked it under his arm. Then he locked eyes with Freya and said, “Good morning, and just who might you be and what might you be doing in my refuge?”
Not wanting to give away any information that would get them turned back over to the Ralnai, Freya replied, “Just a traveler who was lost in the storm and got lucky and found your place here and took shelter. I hope that it was okay to do so?”
“Does this traveler have a name?” he asked.
At first she wanted to give him a fake name, but then she thought better of it. He didn’t know that she wasn’t alone and she had no way to let the others in on the lie and he didn’t look like the type of man that liked to be lied too. So she told him her real first name only. She also noticed that the other people standing next to him had not lowered their weapons and it was still an extremely tense situation.
He was looking her up and down and by the look in his eye he was trying to figure out what to do with her when Lex walked up behind Freya. She was looking down at a tablet she had found. It contained an inventory of the cache. “Hey Freya, it says here that there are weapons here. We should find them and arm up,” she said. She nearly walked into Freya before she looked up. When she did she saw the men and the guns, “Oh,” was all she said.
“It seems that the bears have come home,” Freya said to Lex.
The man who seemed to be in charge didn’t seem to understand her statement, “Bears?” he asked.
“It’s a reference to an old child’s story,” Freya explained.
“I see,” he said flatly. “Just how many travelers are there with you?”
“There are total of five of us.” Freya answered.
He looked towards Lex and addressed her directly, “I suggest that you go round up your companions and bring them here immediately. Please do not try anything or I will kill your friend.” Lex nodded her head in agreement and understanding and turned to get the others. Freya was no longer worried if he was going to be a friend or foe for he had just answered that question for her.
“My name is Yiska Yanisin and you and your friends are now my property. Do as you are told and you will not be harmed. Resist in anyway and you will taste death. I am the prophet of the divine, and his laws decree you, a woman must submit to me and serve me as I see fit, as all women are to submit to the prophet,” he said as he grabbed Freya by her jaw and turned her face from side to side inspecting her.
Freya wanted to make a smartass remark. She refrained because her experience had taught her that some people have no sense of humor and since this man was a religious nut, he probably wouldn’t take kindly to any kind of remark, she stayed silent. She knew that Thad was not far behind them so it was in her best interest to stay alive and wait for the reckoning that would come.
Lex rounded everyone else up and brought them to the already crowded entry room. Rod was walking a little better now. The healing gel they found and applied to his leg was working on helping him to heal quickly. After a good week of treatment he would be fully
healed, but they didn’t have a week.
They were given helmets and were instructed to put them on and cover them like the others. Then they were marched outside. The storm had passed and the heat of the day was just starting to come. At first they were not sure why they were given the helmets so no one complained about it. The visor kept the sun from hurting their eyes and the mask filtered out the fine grains of sand that was always flying around in the air. Even Commander Cotton Paw had dressed herself in the same attire. Even though the helmet was too big and didn’t seal right, she still found a great benefit from it as did she from the clothing. Normally she wouldn’t have soiled herself with clothing, but in this case the robes helped to insulate her from the harsh sun. The clothing also seemed to trap any moister and acted like a cooling unit.
Outside they found that the men that had entered the refuge were only the tip of the iceberg. Outside they could see a large caravan of strange looking animals. They looked like long haired pigs, more like boars than pigs, except they were massive. Their backs stood at least six feet in the air and they were so wide that instead of a saddle they had what was best described as a bench. On the bench sat a driver that held a set of leather reins. The reins were attached to ornate silver caps. Caps that were mounted with screws to the beasts tusks.
Their hands were bound in front of them and then they were helped up one to a beast. They sat next to the driver and then the other rider that had been on the beasts climbed up and stood behind them. The riders strapped the prisoners to the bench seat and stood with guns aimed at their back.
Once Yanisin was satisfied that the prisoners were secure, he left them to oversee the loading of supplies from the cache. A job that took the better part of an hour. After it was done he mounted the lead beast and waived his arms. The helmets were equipped with coms and they crackled with Yanisin’s voice giving the command, “Move out.”
The column lurched ahead and the twins shared the thought wondering why they couldn’t seem to catch a break. The lumbering beasts started moving slowly at first, but after a few minutes they started to run and at a break neck pace. It was then that it clicked. This was why they were all wearing the helmets. The sand cloud the beasts were kicking up was like being back in the sand storm.
On the other side of the desert sands Thad was woken by the grumbling of his stomach. He sat up and stretched. It was then that he remembered that he hadn’t eaten since he had left the Gemini. He would have rendered up a breakfast for himself if the DDSD hadn’t been smashed beyond repair on the fall through the trees.
Thad crawled out of his shelter and looked around, but found nothing that he trusted he could eat. He pushed the hunger out of his mind and took off his armor. He removed the black undershirt and tore it into on long strip. He then put his armor back on before wrapping his head and face. He covered everything except a small strip across his eyes. He wasn’t too keen on breathing through his own sweat soaked shirt, but it was better than breathing the fine sand and exposing his face to the scorching sun.
The Ralnai were no longer jamming the coms but Thad was too far from anyone or anything to make contact. Not that there was anyone other than Eve that he wanted to contact anyway. Every so often he could pick up a bit of a transmission here and there, but they were all in Ralnai and because the Ralnai didn’t use the translator boxes when they spoke to each other Thad had no idea what they were talking about. He really didn’t care as long as they weren’t looking for him. Thad picked up the only weapon that he had left; his force sword. He magnetized the hard point on the back plate of his armor and attached the sword to his back and set off into the desert.
It was hot and the soft sand made it hard to walk, but none of this deterred Thad. Having spent the last few years of his life living in a desert, he almost felt at home in the heat. While the desert of Nome was mostly a hard packed waste land, this desert was a sea of sand dunes. Thad pushed on going deeper and deeper into the sands of the desert. He stopped at the top of a large dune to look around. Overhead he watched as a ship flew by. By the looks of the ships course it was heading for the spaceport at the town. This ship was an old federation scout ship, Medjay class if he remembered right. This one looked to be heavily modified, at least as much as he could see. He paid it no more notice and turned back to his trek across the sand.
The pilot of the ship noticed the one life form on his scanner; he took one look at it and dismissed it as uninteresting. Little did he know that it was the man he was hunting, not St. Claire as he had been dispatched to find, but the man who had been wreaking havoc across the Ralnai Empire. The pilot of the ship was the Nekton bounty hunter Horota.
Armed with nothing more than his force sword and determination Thad continued to march on. He walked for the better part of the day before he came close enough to see the ridge line the others had gone to. While his advance genetics gave him an advantage over the regular human, the desert was a cruel foe and Thad knew it was winning this fight. If he didn’t find water soon he would last maybe a day, or a day a half, longer than a regular human. He knew that the clock was ticking and there seemed to be no end to this dune sea. That thought made him chuckle and smile. He also thought that if he was lost on an ocean he would be in the same situation; lost, with no relief in sight, and without any water.
Thad was so lost in his thoughts that he missed the hand that was sticking out of the sand. He didn't see the fingers that were sticking straight up. They caught him about ankle level and he tripped. He landed face first in the hot soft sand, and once he rolled over, and brushed the sand from his eyes. He noticed the few female fingers that were just there sticking out of the sand. “What the Hell?” Thad said out loud shocked at seeing a hand sticking out of the sand. He crawled over to the hand and started to dig. He had just uncovered the forearm, when it moved and grabbed his arm. Thad, who was not normally one to panic or startle easily, was caught way off guard. The sudden motion of the hand grabbing his arm was more than enough to rattle Thad's cage and he let out a loud yelp. It was actually more a girly screaming sound then a manly yelp. He was just happy that no one was around to witness it, even stopping for a moment to look around to see if anyone had heard him.
The hand had a steel-like grip on his arm. So he did the only thing he could think of. He pulled. It took a lot of effort, but as he pulled so did the hand and arm which it was attached to and for the second time today, Thad was surprised, but this time he was pleasantly surprised. Eve, with the help of Thad, emerged from the sandy grave in which she had been lying.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Thad said as he helped her to her feet.
“Thaddeus,” Eve said as she wiped the sand from her face.
“Care to explain?”
“Long story, but I found the girls and they shouldn’t be too far ahead of me. We were heading for that ridgeline when the sandstorm hit us. The static electricity the storm was generating was playing havoc with my systems and the only way for me to be safe was to shut down and hide in the sand,” Eve explained.
“Okay, that at least explains your sand nap. Now, let’s see if we can catch up, shall we?” Thad said just before setting off in the direction of the massive bone ridge. Eve fell in behind him still trying to shake sand from her clothing.
Chapter 21
Horota, the Nekton bounty hunter landed his ship at the spaceport, and before he departed, he donned armor that also acted as a bio suit. It included a helmet with a dark visor. He needed the suit not for the bio protection as this planet was similar to his home world. He needed it to hide his features and his scent. The Ralnai allow some races to walk freely among them but the Nektons were not one of them. Any Nekton that was unlucky enough or stupid enough to enter Ralnai space found themselves slaves, or worse, dead. He knew the risks and that was why he demanded an extremely high price for this mission.
Horota put the helmet on and sealed it. He took his two pistols off the table and placed them in the holsters that were strapped to h
is thighs. He covered everything with a brown hooded cloak. He drew the hood over the helmet and pulled it down as low as it would go. He then stepped in to the ships airlock. The five foot tall bounty hunter left the safety of his ship and headed out to collect the head of his target Dominic St. Claire.
Horota made his way through the city making inquiries and showing the hologram of St. Claire. No one recalled seeing St. Claire but they were happy enough to talk about the man who blew up the slave market and most of that part of town. He was starting to believe that maybe he was chasing the wrong man and this mystery man in black may be a new player.
After a few hours of searching Horota found himself at Lars’s Arms, Ammo, and Supplies. Lars saw him coming and was on him the second he entered the little shop, “Welcome to Lars’s Arms, Ammo, and Supplies. If you got the cash Lars has the goods. Lars will sell you just about anything, but Lars doesn’t rent pigs.”
Horota was a little confused by the strange Eli that stood before him, “Pigs?” he asked.
“Never mind that, what can Lars do for you?”
“I’m looking for information and I’m willing to pay,” Horota said as he dropped a small bar of pure gold. Gold, was one of the rarer elements in the universe and so it was always good currency.
“Lars sees, and what kind of information can old Lars provide for you?”
“Do you always refer to yourself in the third person?” Horota asked finding it a little annoying.
Lars shrugged his shoulders, “It’s a thing.”
“Anyway, I’m looking for any information on this man in black that blew up the slave market.”
“That chap? What do you want to know?” Lars asked.
“Anything you can tell me about him. Like maybe a name or something helpful.”
“Sorry, this is a no names kind of business and for that matter Lars doesn't ask a lot of questions either. With that being said Lars does have security footage for the right price.”
