“We’ve got all night,” I say, before I realize that I have little idea how much time has passed since the guard tossed in the water and locked the door. It has likely been hours already.
Tess seems to have the same realization. Her face drops a bit before she notices me watching. She quickly schools it into something more confident instead. “Relax,” she says. “We’ve gotten ourselves out of worse scrapes than this. But whatever the plan is, there’s no talk about selfless, sacrificial bullshit. We’ll let them take us to the hideout, and we’ll find out what we can. But in the end, we get out of this together or not at all.”
Quiet settles between us for a few long moments, both our brains churning with ideas and worries alike. Tess, as she has often done in the past, and will likely always do, breaks the tension with a quick burst of laughter. “Getting you back in your armor is going to be an ordeal.”
She helps me rise to my feet, gives me a short, sweet kiss, and picks up the first piece.
9
Tessie
The passage of time is hard to gauge in such a place, but there is enough time to form the shadow of a plan, and several offshoots of the plan for contingencies, by the time the ship rattles to a halt and the guard rips open our door. I’m standing closer to Jari; we’d left our previous position of sitting so that the guards would not have the chance to haul us to our feet. We step carefully apart when they enter, gesturing with blasters and speaking angrily and impatiently. I experience a sudden surge of happiness that no one has thought to remove my translator implant, as such things often happen to captives. This would be a thousand times more frightening and disconcerting if Jari were the only one who knew what they were saying.
It is difficult to resist the urge to fight, to strike out at the cultists as they lead us from the room and into the corridors of the ship. I promised Jari though, and while I don’t normally place much stock in promises, things are a bit different now. The rest of the cult members wait in front of the ramp, complaining vocally about how much time the pilot is taking to open it. It is not an area of the ship I have been to as of yet. In the large docking bay, where most people would keep a shuttle or a craft for exploring the surface of a planet, an array of large, unlabeled crates are stacked. I see nothing that would give away their contents. As a civilian, I likely wouldn’t have the bravery nor the interest to ask about such a thing, and it is important that they continue to see me as nothing more than a frightened animal, only capable of fighting when cornered and threatened.
I keep up the charade as best I can, trying not to show a suspicious amount of interest. I keep my eyes down, avoiding accidental eye contact with any of the Velorian cultists or their alien partners. I also keep carefully close to Jari. I tell myself it is for the convenience of getting his attention if necessary and to drive home the point that I am merely his frightened, useless, human mate who is greatly regretting her decision to tag along on a military operation. In reality though, I take a certain comfort from having him close enough to touch that has nothing to do with the part I am playing. Jari has always made me feel safe, even when any sense of comfort I derive from his presence is completely irrational. As the gates open, a blast of heat smacks me straight in the face, stealing my breath unexpectedly, the way the hot air of an oven attacks you when you lean to close to retrieve the food inside. I have a brief, distant flash of the fires of the Mahdi where we met—that fruitless disaster relief mission made one thousand times more difficult by the rivalry between the Federation forces and the Velorian military. I think of burning buildings and screams reaching my ears even through my helmet and of Jari walking in front of me through it all, unwavering as he led his squad through it. His strength had leant me the courage to lead my own. I lean closer to him as we stare out into the stark landscape in front of us.
I have years of practice at reading Jari’s facial expressions, and he is wearing a funny one as we are shoved onto the ramp and prodded down it. I raise one hand to shade my eyes as I squint into the sunlight. There is an array of grey rock and loose, sandy dirt that is a variation of the black color. In spots, it looks almost like glass, reflecting the harsh sunlight beating down on us from above. It reminds me of the volcanic rock I have seen on a few planets, but I see nothing in the immediate vicinity that could be a volcano, at least not with my human eyes. The heat is stifling enough to give me an immediate headache, mouth drying out in an instant. I have never known such heat without a specially made space suit to protect me from it, and I am grateful when I see the door of a building in front of us, angled into a rocky hillside and assumedly leading deep beneath the ground. In the distance, I can just barely see a thin line of green that marks the edge of a forest of some sort.
This certainly makes the concept of escape more challenging. Running will hardly do me much good if I die before I make it to a survivable temperature. Managing to steal a ship is our other option, but that will be tough going as well.
“What is it?” I ask Jari, as the door to the hideout opens and the cultists line up to head inside. “Where are we?”
The end of a blaster prods painfully into my back for being stupid enough to speak. I wince, waiting for the jolt of a stunning shot, but the trigger is never pulled and the pain never arrives.
“Home,” he answers.
The blasters prod again, making both us flinch. We step forward and into the darkened hallway that awaits.
I have never been to the fire-side of Veloria. I spent my leave with Jari on the ice-side once, for the festival that celebrated the end of the Xzerg wars. Jari had to talk me out of signing up for one of the sparring matches in the square; we’d gone to watch the effigy burn instead and then camped in the cold tundra, where Jari had spoken of the fire side with such reverence that I regretted not having enough time to extend my visit by a few days. It must seem like the worst sort of insult to him that such evil is taking place in his backyard. I brush my arm against his as we walk, trying to offer comfort without risking incurring someone’s wrath for speaking out of turn.
My eyes take a moment to adjust to the darkness waiting inside. The walls appear to be hewn straight into the dark stone that covers most of the landscape outside. The temperature immediately drops a few dozen degrees by my guess, but it is still warm enough to raise sweat on my skin. There are tables filled with weapons beyond counting, and more Velorians than I hoped to see. There are aliens here also, and I find myself remembering what I overheard in the marketplace, about unrest in Veloria having many benefits for many people. There will always be someone who profits when blood is spilled.
As we walk, I pay less attention to the people we pass and more to what they’re doing. In addition to the array of weaponry, I spot the plans of a building tacked to a wall. We are walking too quickly for me to scan any of the words, but I do not like what it entails. Building plans usually mean a plot to infiltrate or storm a place, or else the intention to blow said place up. We round the corner, and I hear a Velorian and an alien who’s species I cannot discern discussing planets amiable to slavery and the unfairness of their docking fees. We pass another room filled with weapons, but this one is much more disconcerting, containing all the makings of a powerful explosive in addition to the selection of blasters and blades. Jari and I both pause at this, our eyes drawn there involuntarily, before the cultist at our back hisses something that makes our feet move once more. I don’t hear the distinct words, only the menacing tone. It is enough.
We come to a stop in a room that looks more like a garden-variety office than the torture chamber I was expecting. I try my hardest not to allow this to trick me into letting my guard down, but I feel myself relax a smidge regardless.
There are two chairs waiting for us. As we did on the spaceship, Jari and I look at them with skepticism. This time though, I allow myself to walk around and sit. All either of us has eaten is the small bit of meat tossed into our cell last night. My stomach is a constant ache and my limbs are weak and trembling. It
will take a serious surge of adrenaline for me to do what’s needed to get us both out of here, and in the meantime, I don’t plan on wasting any energy. Jari watches me, sighs a bit with disappointment, and then sits as well. He will not leave me to look weak alone.
I hope for a moment that they might leave us to wait here without a guard, but of course one stands in the doorway, facing inward, and stealing any chance I might have had of swiping something useful. We sit for a moment, just Jari and I in the too-hot room below the boiling surface of the fire-side of Veloria.
“Are you alright?” he asks, softly.
“No,” I answer, deciding to be honest for once. My deteriorating condition is beginning to alarm me. We’ve scarcely been away from the comfort of the climate controlled smuggling ship for more than fifteen minutes, and already I am beginning to feel lightheaded. “I don’t know how you stand it.”
Jari shrugs. “I don’t feel it. None of us do.” He watches me with growing concern, and looks as though he would like to reach for my hand. In answer, I scoot my chair a tad closer to him and place my hand on his thigh. It is too warm, like everything else, but the contact is a comfort to both of us, and looking weak is part of my plan to achieve invisibility.
“Move aside,” a voice says. I turn back in time to see the guard do so. Seldyn steps inside, followed by another, far more intimidating figure. While Seldyn seems to enjoy cruelty, his eyes are always lit up and laughing. This Velorian is different, and his eyes, to me, look dead. They are empty of everything but cold calculation and I know immediately that if we attempt escape and do not make it, we will die in an unpleasant way.
“This is the Velorian officer?” the other asks.
Seldyn nods. “That’s the one, sir. And,” he pauses for dramatic effect. “This is his mate.”
This has to be the cult leader if Seldyn is calling him ‘sir.’ I do not bother turning around and pretending that I am not watching them. He is a fire Velorian, but with lighter, more muted skin than I am used to seeing. It is tan like desert sand, rather than the more vibrant colors sported by Jari’s men and other soldiers I have met. I suppose I really haven’t met many Velorians, all things considered, but with their small population and isolated ways, I have likely seen a larger sample size than most other humans.
The leader makes noise of amusement and crosses the room. He places the desk between us and sits in the chair behind it as though it is a throne. It surprises me that he doesn’t stand, as that would place him in a more intimidating position. It’s almost frightening in itself, to meet someone so sure of their own power that they feel no need to show it off.
“Jari,” the leader says. He pauses, and smirks. “I had little part in the disaster that occurred in the Capitol city earlier this year. But I’m told this is the second time you’ve been our guest.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Jari answers.
The leader looks oddly pleased at that response, as though he had expected to a get a rise out of Jari easily and is impressed that he resisted the urge to give a more combative answer. To be honest, I’m a bit impressed myself. Fire Velorians aren’t exactly known for being as stoic and hard to rattle as their ice counterparts. They are more likely to have a volatile reaction to a threat or a perceived insult. Granted, Jari has better control than most, but after three days of no food and a constant thrumming background fear based in the fact that we could technically be killed at any moment, I am surprised he hasn’t snapped at something.
“And this—” He looks right at me, eyes lifting mine up. “—is your mate, I’m told.”
“My name’s Tess,” I say, quietly, but with a trace of bravery. I try to sound as though it’s taken me a while to muster the strength to speak.
The leader nods. “Yes,” he says. “I’m told you struggled quite a bit. Strong for a human.”
His gaze returns to Jari then, as though I’m scarcely worth a glance. It will be his loss, that decision. I already have the ghost of an idea in my brain.
“My name is Dengar, and I am the leader of this group.” He pauses for a moment, his introduction given, but his eyes continue to drift between Jari and I. “It’s been happening more and more,” he says. “Our kind mating outside of our species. It’s always been a possibility, but it was quite the rarity. It’s just one of the many signs that our society is beginning to crumble.”
Jari snorts. There is no other way to describe the sound of derision that he makes. “Or it’s a sign of our society moving outward, making progress, forging bonds with new peoples.”
The leader’s eyes narrow and he scoffs in return. “I suppose the two of you are well-mated then. My men tell me you were tracking them in hopes of gaining prisoners or information. Is this correct?”
“Correct,” Jari says.
“We can’t have word of our whereabouts getting out. You realize this. If Velorian military finds out our exact location, we’ll have to start from scratch. We’ve nearly had to do that once already. It was only the fact that Wylt, the founder of our group, was so meticulous with what information she allowed to leak that allowed us to survive. You see that I can’t afford to be any less meticulous?”
Behind him, my eyes focus in on a map. It appears to be of Veloria and the surrounding planets, and it is dotted with marks of red, a stream of numbers beside each. I do my best to memorize the planets, to pick a line of numbers in a promising location and try my best to commit it to memory. I hope Jari has the forethought to ignore the bait that Dengar is throwing out and do the same, but he appears to have gotten caught up in the conversation. I want to tell him there’s no arguing with insanity, but Dengar is a member of his own species, of his own culture even, and I can understand the impulse to try even if I have no wish to replicate it.
“Surely,” Jari begins. “You can’t think the answer to our problems is to revert to the way we behaved in past generations. We’ve progressed.”
“I think the Xzerg deserve to pay for all they did to us, for the civilians they slaughtered.”
I cannot keep my mouth shut. “We’ve all done our fair share of slaughtering. Read a fucking history book.” It perhaps breaks the mold of my fake identity, but I’ve never claimed to be a decent spy. It does not necessarily paint me as a bounty hunter or a soldier, but it does reveal that I am not quite so frightened as I’ve been putting on.
He stares at me, the least bit of anger now visible in his previously empty eyes. “You’ve seen the explosives massed on our base I assume?”
Neither of us chooses to answer.
He smiles. “They will write what we do to the Xzerg tomorrow in the history books. Their children will burn, just as our did.”
The words are like a gut punch, like the feeling of falling without a net awaiting you. I think of the knife in my boot, still undiscovered and waiting for the right moment. There is little distance between us now, and he seems distracted enough by his plans of slaughter that there is a chance that I could reach him. There is a smaller chance that I could manage to drive the knife through his thick Velorian skin, into just the right place to kill him. But it is still a chance, and I’m beginning to wonder if it is the last one we will be offered.
I weigh my options, trying to do so quickly, before the opportunity vanishes. To kill Dengar or to attempt it is to guarantee Jari’s death, which concerns me more than the possibility of my own. Killing him would destroy the root of the problem, but it seems that there are any number of dedicated cultists willing and ready to step in and condone the murder of innocents in his stead. In addition to these compelling arguments, there is the fact that killing the leader will likely not be enough to stop the attack.
I let my eyes drift away from Dengar’s jugular, and uncross my leg from the position I’ve been keeping that would allow me to reach the knife most easily. Jari watches, giving me a slight nod of agreement, and I realize that he knows me so well that he has been privy to my internal struggle via my facial expression and the shifting of my eye
s.
The heat in the room is making my legs stick to the seat through my spacesuit. I already feel as though my body weight has dropped simply from sweating. My head aches and my stomach churns from more than the thought of civilians being bombed to settle a grudge that most Velorians were doing their best to put behind them. The ghost of a plan grows more defined.
The real leader has been speaking to Jari, lost in another rant, but I’ve missed most of the words thanks to the steadily growing roaring in my ears. The leader stands up, gestures for the guard to come retrieve us. Jari stands and I stand with him, slowly, and with great concentration. My brain feels as though it is beginning to cook, and perhaps it is. I remember something about 108 degrees, but I cannot recall what it is—perhaps it is the temperature at which the contents of one’s head begin to boil. From the feel of the dry air scorching my lungs, I would hazard a guess that it is quite a bit hotter. As we are herded to the door, the leader speaks again.
“You’re a good friend of the prince, I hear. I wonder what things you could tell us."
I turn back with a snarl on my face, the knife heavy in my boot, and my head filled with the thought of Jari screaming, or of me screaming while Jari watches, trying to keep his secrets behind his clenched teeth. The guard grabs me before I can get anywhere, hand curling hard around the bone of my arm, cutting off the flow of blood. I do not allow myself to fall often and it is difficult to let go. I make my muscles go slack as strings and turn into dead weight in his arms. My eyelids slam shut on the world, and I can hear Jari’s voice in the black.
My plan is no longer a ghost, and as the guard clutches me awkwardly to him, trying to hold me aloft with too little notice to have caught me properly, my hands slip into his pocket and curl around cold, key-shaped metal.
10
Jari
Primal Planet Captive: SciFi Alien Fated Romance Page 8
