Van dropped back again as they entered the building and even though she couldn’t see where he was looking because of his visor, she could feel that his eyes were on her.
He explained, seemingly to her alone, his attention always with her, about the rooms they were passing through. This complex had been the stronghold of Varka on this planet many years ago. They hadn’t used it since Lyra had withdrawn and it had returned to Varkan hands. There was a corridor and steps leading downwards that Van went straight past without explaining. She knew why. There was only one place that he wouldn’t want to take her or her comrades. The cells. She could read his silence as clearly as her captain and first officer would be able to. They had held many Lyrans in this complex once and even though Varka Two had returned to Varka over fifty years ago, there were still those that would have had kin held in those cells.
If they had ever caught her uncle, they would have held him here and tortured him for information. While that thought disturbed her, it didn’t change her feelings towards the Varkans. That time was long over and peace had long reigned between their species. Lyrans had captured Varkans too and tortured them. She took a deep breath and told herself that was the face of war.
It was a face that she hoped to never see.
They came out into a long wide room. The lights above were dim but it was bright enough for her to see that Heavy Armour suits lined the walls. She had never seen one in real life but had read all about them. She walked over to the nearest suit and ran her hands over the bulky black frame, shaped reminiscent of muscles, and down the arms. The sleek black helmet stared lifelessly down at her. It was incredible. If a soldier were to wear this, they would be well protected but completely unhindered by the suit. In fact, judging by the complex array of pistons and fluid tubes, the soldier would be able to move faster and with more strength than they normally had. The metal was cool under her fingers. Varkan steel. There was nothing stronger in the galaxy. Van would look incredible in it.
Her exploration halted when she remembered that a Heavy Armour had taken her uncle Remi’s arm and years later a Heavy Armour had almost killed him and his friend, Jericho, during the insurgence.
“Is something the matter?” Van said close to her elbow and Amerii shook her head. He touched her cheek, the caress soothing but unsettling at the same time. She tried to push the thoughts out of her mind but couldn’t. “Terrible things happen in wars, Amerii. Varka and Lyra have moved into an era of peace. No longer will these weapons hurt those of our kin.”
Her brow furrowed and she leaned into his touch, trying to find the comfort in it and his words.
“It’s just... were you here?”
She wished she could see his eyes as she looked up at him. She wanted to be able to read his feelings in them. She needed to see if he was being honest with her.
“For the eighty-seventh and the one-hundred-and-twelfth combats... the ones in which your uncle was involved?”
She didn’t know if that was what the Varkans had called them but nodded.
“No. I was on Varka Prime with Regis. I have been here once in my lifetime and that was to eradicate the Wraiths.”
The knowledge that he hadn’t been here slaughtering Lyrans didn’t comfort her as much as she had thought it would. Her eyes darted about his visor, trying to see through it to his eyes.
“Van?” she said in a small trembling voice.
“Amerii... I have never fought a Lyran. Neither has Regis. It does not mean that we were not involved though. Just as you have never fought a Varkan, you have been involved by blood in those fights.”
Amerii frowned. He was right. How could she feel such negativity towards Van and the Varkans because of what had happened to Lyrans when it had been Lyrans who had instigated the war and had attempted to take Varka Two from its rightful owners? She had absolutely no right to feel this way.
“I’m sorry,” Amerii said and closed her eyes when he stroked her cheek, his touch light and warm. “It’s a little overwhelming.”
“I would rather you had remained on the ship,” he said on a sigh and she looked up at him again. “I do not like you being down here. I do not trust your captain’s ability to protect you.”
She smiled at Van. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her captain and the first officer staring at them. She stepped back, remembering her place and not wanting to be reprimanded. Her behaviour was far from how it should be. She was here as a lieutenant of the Lyran Imperial Army, not a love-struck woman with her man.
“You seemed very interested in the Heavy Armour,” Van said, his voice a bare whisper.
A blush crept onto her cheeks and she turned her back on her captain so he didn’t see. Van moved closer to her, coming to stand slightly behind her, half of his body against hers. Her blush deepened. He leaned down and whispered into her ear.
“Would you like to see me in one?”
His rifle pressed against her back as he leaned in and stroked her neck with his free hand. Her eyes half-closed, fixed on the Heavy Armour as her mind raced to imagine him in it. He really would look incredible.
Her captain cleared his throat.
“Will all of the Heavy Armour suits be removed?”
Van stepped away from her and she gathered herself while he walked along the row of suits.
“We will leave them here. The weaponry they carry has been modified since the war. It was altered to be effective against Wraiths.”
Amerii looked at the armour that she was still standing in front of. It held a large assault rifle. She had thought it was just a regular laser rifle. It looked no different to the one Van held, only a lot larger.
She realised that the one she held was just a smaller version of his rifle. They were all anti-Wraith weapons.
“We will continue our tour this way,” Van said and walked ahead of them. She looked at the armour for a few seconds more, curious as to how it would feel to wear one, and then followed the group.
At the other end of the room, bright light filtered in through open doors. Van paused and looked back at her.
“The garden here is beautiful and I am certain that it could be altered to grow food for the soldiers.”
She came to a halt just behind her captain and peered through the bright open space, trying to make out the garden beyond.
Something moved.
Her fingers tensed against her gun, but when she didn’t see anything move again, she decided that it was probably just the light and her focusing too hard on trying to see what was out there.
“When we have briefly toured the garden, we will—” Van went rigid and then turned, his gun coming up fast.
Before Amerii could even shout his name, three incredibly tall white figures had appeared and disappeared.
Van was gone.
****
Chapter 8
Amerii ran to the end of the room and out into the garden. She couldn’t see Van or the white figures anywhere. She turned on the spot, her breathing fast as her heart thundered against her chest. They had taken him.
Wraiths.
A Varkan commander would be valuable to them but there was no knowing what they would do to him.
She had to get him back.
She ran back into the room, passing her captain and the first officer, and looked around her.
“Lieutenant Amerii, what are you doing?” her captain said.
Her eyes fixed on the Heavy Armour suits.
“We must go after them,” Amerii said, out of breath as her body trembled with the adrenaline.
“How?”
She didn’t know. Her hands shook against her gun and she cursed the tears that threatened to fill her eyes. She was a princess of Lyra. This wasn’t time to be weak. It was time to be strong and prove to herself and her captain that she was capable of great things.
Two Varkan officers came rushing in, their speed incredible as they ran towards her. They halted barely three feet from her and lifted their visors. It was
the two who had accompanied her on the shuttle from her vessel to the Varkan ship.
They glared at the far end of the room.
“Wraiths have Commander Aeris. We must get him back,” she said and they nodded. She looked at the Heavy Armour and ran over to one of the suits. “These work, yes?”
They nodded again.
“Good,” she said and began opening it, prising the two sides of the heavily armoured chest apart.
“Lieutenant Amerii, what do you think you are doing?” her captain said, his voice stern. “This is a Varkan matter.”
She turned on him. “It happened in our base station. It is as much a Lyran matter. Unless you want to be the one to tell Emperor Varka that his attendant has gone missing and we did nothing to rescue him?”
He paled. “Attendant?”
She nodded and frowned. “Not only an attendant but a close friend of Regis’s... and my...” She pulled the collar of her armoured suit down to reveal the marks on her throat. The two Varkans bowed their heads. Her captain’s eyes shot wide. “My mate. As a subject of Lyra, you will follow my orders and step aside.”
Before he could respond, she clambered into the Heavy Armour. It closed around her, sealing her in. The helmet covered her head. She slid her arms into the suit’s and flexed her hands, seeing the robotic suit’s hands move in perfect synch with hers.
“Can you even work that thing?” the first officer said.
“If you’d paid the remotest bit of attention to me you would know that I’m as skilled with technology as my mother and as headstrong in battles as my father.” She scowled at him and then moved her foot forward. The Heavy Armour’s foot landed with a loud thud on the floor, the whining sound of the parts moving like music to her ears.
The two Varkans suited up and she nodded in thanks to them for their assistance. They would know this planet better than she did and could probably give her a few pointers about the suit. She was good with technology but reading Varkan was beyond her. Not that she was about to admit that within earshot of her captain.
Amerii stomped past her captain and first officer, building to a steady run that sounded like thunder. The suit responded beautifully to every move. She didn’t even have to exert much effort to make it run faster than she ever could.
The two Varkan officers passed her and she spotted a hole in the barrier ahead. She squeezed through it after them and followed their lead as they flanked her.
“Where would they have taken him?” she said over the intercom.
“North Sector has always had high Wraith activity. The shield from here to there and over that sector is low since the area hasn’t been used in almost a century,” came the reply and the one to her right nodded.
She took a deep breath, shouldered her rifle and ran as fast as she could towards the area now flashing on the map in the bottom right corner of the red screen in front of her. The landscape took up the rest of the screen. Overlaid onto it were diagnostics of the terrain and atmospheric readings.
Dust rose around her as she ran, her focus fixed on the distance, on the buildings that shimmered in the heat haze.
She had to get to Van.
She had to save the man she loved.
***
The ground slammed into Van’s face, smashing his black visor. Or did he slam into the ground? Everything that had happened over the past few minutes had been a blur, a whirlwind of colours and sounds that had disorientated him.
“Commander Aeris,” a thin voice echoed in his head.
Van blinked his eyes open and tried to focus. Bright light burnt his eyes. The sun. He could feel it on his face, strong and searing. He squinted up at it. It filtered in through a hole in a ceiling and wall. Where was he? His eyes watered as he tried to assess his surroundings. The building was old, dilapidated. The North Sector?
“It has been a long time since our paths have crossed,” the voice continued in his head.
Cruskin.
“A Lyran curse... they truly have tamed the mighty Varkans with their female.”
His thoughts shifted to Amerii. Would she be safe back at the complex? Did the Wraiths have her too?
“Another Lyran female? This one the victor over your own heart?”
Van cursed in Varkan this time, in the old language that Wraiths had never been able to understand. He despised them and their way of being able to invade minds. No thought was safe, not unless he constantly thought in the old language and that wasn’t possible. Instinct made him think in the Varkan language that he had been raised with.
“Perhaps we should have taken her.” The echoing voice held a note of amusement.
The Wraith meant to provoke him but instead had given him a clear indication that Amerii was safe, or at least she wasn’t here.
Van tried to get onto his knees. Before he could manage it, something was around his throat. Hauled off the ground and suspended by his neck, he stared up at the Wraith who had captured him.
The ethereal white figure stood at least a male taller than himself, his humanoid-shaped body shifting with the breeze but his grip as solid as stone.
The face shimmered in and out of focus, long and thin, trailing away in a wave of white that danced like hair in wind. Empty dark eyes shifted into sharp relief, a wide hollow smile following. As it moved into the light, the rest of the Wraith’s face came into focus and Van’s eyes settled on the deep groove in his neck.
J’nir kis’kl reatlnnfir.
Only this Wraith was worthy of the strongest Varkan curse.
It was little wonder the Wraith had mentioned that their paths had crossed many moons ago.
Van had been the commander of the fleet that had wiped the remaining Wraiths off the face of Varka Two almost a century ago. Those Wraiths had included this male’s family. A Wraith commander.
He had thought that he had killed him too.
The Wraith’s grip on Van’s throat tightened. He choked and tried to grasp at the burning hot ribbons of smoke that held him. His fingers passed straight through. Van cursed again. This was why he hated Wraiths. While they could touch you, it was almost impossible to touch them. That was the reason Varkans had made weapons that would disintegrate their particles.
“What do you want with me?” Van said in a strained voice.
The face above him shifted to reveal a wide grin. He could see straight through his mouth to the blinding sky beyond. His eyes stung and he longed for his visor. He could show no weakness though. Wraiths fed off weakness.
Regardless of the pain it caused him, he let his bloodlust take control, his eyes brightening and the world brightening with them. He growled at the Wraith.
The Wraith’s smile widened.
“I want to kill you. I desire to avenge my kind by destroying you and every disgusting creature in that facility.”
Van snapped, violence surging through him at the thought of the Wraiths touching Amerii. He growled again, his teeth sharpening as he lost all control. He wouldn’t let them touch her. He lashed out with his claws, cutting through the Wraith’s arm in a desperate attempt to escape. The pale smoke shifted and then regrouped. Van struggled, flailing his legs and scratching at the Wraith.
“It seems we have determined our first target. A love for a love, Commander Aeris,” the Wraith said coolly.
Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Commander Page 9
