Star Brigade: The Supremacy (SB3)

by C. C. Ekeke

  Most of those words Sam could laugh off, except the truth about how badly the CoE assignment had gone. She balled up her fists and got in Addison’s face, emphasizing her minor but clear height advantage. Sam itched to teach this vile piece of flotsam some manners…until she caught Addison’s gleeful look while subtly centering her stance, as if bracing for an attack.

  This splashed cold water on Sam’s rage. She wants me to erupt. That would give Addison ammo to run to Habraum or another UComm higher-up in his absence.

  The little bitch has balls, Sam grudgingly admitted. Luckily, she was a master at this sort of game. “You’re calling me obvious.” Her tone became lightly amused, arms wisely folded behind her back. “Like how you follow Habraum and Marguliese around with that moon-eyed fangirl act. It’s been your MO since Union Virtua Command, no? Kissing the right senior officers’ asses. Then scurrying about bringing them dead rabbits until you get a pat on the head and maybe a seat at the grownups’ table?”

  Sam jerked up, reaching an epiphany. “Wait, you pulled that shtick with Jovian Ivers. No wonder you snagged that undercover assignment you keep lording over everyone. Especially when at the time, you had no field experience and less than a year on Star Brigade.”

  Addison rolled her eyes, still insufferably smug. “I worked my ass off for that assignment.”

  Sam looked at her sideways. “I bet you worked your ass off. Then again, Ivers did like his protégés young, ambitious, and beddable…sorry,” she snorted at the deliberate slipup, “I mean biddable.”

  That vaporized Addison’s smugness. “Shut up! My relationship with Ivers wasn’t like that.”

  “Maybe not,” Sam shrugged innocently and pressed deeper, “but we both know what you want from your relationship with Habraum. I mean, he’s the Brigadier Executive Officer. Makes sense why you trained so hard during those Cobalt Trials that Habraum ran?” Sam teased, “To secure your spot, and I don’t mean just on my CT.”

  The blue glow from the HLHG suite walls highlighted the horror on Addison’s face. That reaction, along with the data her source had provided, confirmed Sam’s suspicions.

  “Captain Nwosu is my mentor,” Addison protested shakily. She clearly sensed the trap closing in around her. “He challenges and inspires me—”

  Sam guffawed at the pitiful retort. “I doubt that he challenged you to try seducing him two months ago.” She leaned in for the kill, speaking just above a throaty whisper, “Looks like, despite all that brains and talent, you’re just a scared little girl who needs a sugar daddy to succeed.”

  “Shut your mouth!” Addison’s fist lashed out, cracking Sam across the jaw and dropping her to one knee.

  Ouch. Sam tasted blood in her mouth while standing back up. A dull ache spread across the right side of her face. Still, she couldn’t decide what felt more satisfying: the color draining from Addison’s coppery skin or putting the loathsome tech in her place. “Insubordination and assaulting a superior officer.” Sam wiped the trickling blood from her lip with an unhurried thumb. “Clearly you’re not as smart as you think everyone thinks you are.”

  Addison visibly shrank, knowing she was screwed. So Sam decided to exploit the opportunity.

  “All that data you gathered from the Children of Earth, you’re gonna analyze every byte, until you find something to get our mission back on track. Because if you can’t, then what use are you to this CT?”

  Addison gawked. “That’s a year’s worth of data!”

  “Better get started then. Cause the thing is,” Sam edged closer, “I own you.” The cat-quick jab snapped Addison’s head back, followed up by an open palm slap to spin her viciously around.

  With Raichoudry dazed and on the floor, Sam basked in the moment. “Sorry. Must be my bad temper.”

  After reaching her quarters, a quick shower of breezy sanitizing waves wiped Sam clean. As she threw on an olive kurthon hoodie and matching sweatpants, wrestled her messy blonde hair up in a knot, striking Addison suddenly felt like no great victory. It had been petty and immature. Be a better leader tomorrow.

  She then listened to Khrome’s brief transmission for the fourth time. Knowing CT-1 was safe alleviated Sam’s mood somewhat after days of silence.

  Any CT-2 bullshit could wait until tomorrow. All Sam wanted now was to see her daughter.

  Exiting her home office, Sam headed for Tharydane’s room. “We’ll get takeout from Hollusphere,” she muttered. Once inside the vacant bedroom, Sam remembered. “Oh.”

  She and Tharyn hadn’t spoken since their awful, stupid fight yesterday. It had prompted the Korvenite to spend last night with Lethe—her other guardian.

  All these failings the past few days twisted like white-hot knives in Sam’s belly. She collapsed against a wall in Tharyn’s bedroom, sliding to a seat with a tortured sigh.

  Tonight Sam had no strength left to feel anger…or anything else.

  Chapter 50

  Liliana Cortes sat perched on the upper-level steps of the pyramid, arms wrapped around her long legs. The cool night air cleared her head, calmed her nerves. But it did not clear the doctor’s shame. Lily’s abrupt exit had no doubt offended Kyas’argiid, leaving Captain Nwosu to explain the alleged slight.

  Hearing the iokkas scream as it burned...and the stench. Ugh. Quud ritual or not, Lily found it vile. A Quud warrior from the gathering hovered near the complex’s entrance. Of course, the high chief wouldn’t let a guest wander unsupervised. Lily planned to sit until she felt more settled and less ashamed.

  “Cortes?”

  The doctor turned when she heard her name, and sighed. Out of the complex egress came the stony frame of Byzlar. He approached slowly, passing the guard watching her. “The Captain was going to come, but I offered instead. You alright?”

  Lily put on a tight, thin-lipped smile. “I’m fine, Vaas. It was just the smell of that iokkas.”

  Byzlar plopped down beside her. “I’m confused.” His frown resembled a jutted crease of rock.

  Lily sucked in a deep breath, preparing to shoo him off politely. She had no interest in company right now.

  The Aesonite turned. “How can somebody who took out countless jusha beasts with ease suddenly get all light-headed by one little animal sacrifice?”

  That caused Liliana to throw back her head and genuinely laugh, which echoed across the cityscape. “That iokkas wasn’t trying to rip my throat out.”

  Byzlar shrugged. “True.”

  Liliana rested the side of her head on her right knee. “Was Kyas’argiid offended?”

  Byzlar shook his head. “No one besides Mhir’ujiid minded much.”

  Liliana changed the subject to a topic she dreaded bringing up. “How are you?”

  Byzlar winced. “Better than a few orvs ago.” He turned his upper body to face her directly, and Liliana reflexively stiffened—anticipating his forthcoming blame for not saving the corporal.

  It never came. “I know you did everything you could,” he said. “It was Ghuj’aega who killed him.” When the Aesonite spoke Ghuj’aega’s name, hatred imprinted itself on his wedge-shaped, stony face.

  Lily returned her attention to Qiidr Ol-Chaeda’s far-reaching sprawl. The main plaza was nearly empty, a fraction of glowstones illuminating the few Quud still milling about. Among the panorama of towering pyramids, some were dotted with small, bright squares of light, signaling the Quud inside. Qos’s moonlight needled through the billows, highlighting several structures below. Aside from a soft gust, the quiet was absolute. So much that Liliana heard ringing in her ears. The doctor breathed in deeply, feeling worlds better. Byzlar said nothing, which was just what she needed.

  “Can you believe this?” she asked after some time.

  Byzlar shook his head, gazing upon the ancient city. “What?”

  Lily drew both arms from around her legs. “Eight months ago, I was doing patient care on Terra Sollus, bored to death and petrified at the thought of space travel. This is so not where I expected to be.”
r />   Byzlar wrinkled his nose. “At least you got to follow in your mother’s footsteps, right?”

  Lily chuckled at how wrong he was. “Unintentionally. I wanted to be an aerospace engineer.”

  A baffled Byzlar leaned back, amused. “Really?”

  Lily smiled with fond nostalgia. “Until I was fourteen. My cousin Ella and I were going to open up our own spacecraft-repair shop when we got old enough. She’d be the pilot, I’d be the engineer.”

  Byzlar sat up, intrigued by this revelation. “What changed?”

  “So much…” Lily almost stopped there. But in such an amazing place, any falsity felt wrong. “My older brother,” she began with a sad smile. “Tomás could have been anything he wanted. Anything. He was that smart.” It had been so long since she’d spoken about her sibling; it was like putting on old slippers, still safe and warm despite the wear and tear.

  Byzlar could clearly see the gloom settling over her. “What happened?”

  Lily’s smile grew harder to maintain as memories kept bubbling to the surface. “Tomás was...is a maximum, like me. His abilities manifested when he was fifteen and I was twelve. The manifestation, along with the excess Xenoprophin his body produced, was too much. My parents took him to every maximum specialist. They even flew him to Bal-Dobra to see if a Kudoban could suppress his powers, at least until he was old enough to control them. Nothing helped. His condition got so bad that...”

  Lily couldn’t pretend to smile now. Even years later, it took all her resolve to steady herself as every detail of Tomás’s self-destruction rushed through her mind in a twisted slideshow. Her shoulders slumped as she succumbed to the flood of her past.

  “Tomás’s powers drove him insane. He’s in a special facility that keeps him drugged up to suppress his abilities.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, marshalling the strength to finish. “I decided to become a xenobiologist after Tommy was committed... To help him and other maximums.”

  “Liliana, I’m so sorry.”

  The doctor opened her eyes to see Byzlar’s wide, sympathetic eyes shining like opals. She turned away, not needing or wanting it. “We should go back—” Something in the night sky stole the words from Lily’s mouth.

  A massive camke swooped past their line of sight, a reptilian bird with leathery green and purple skin, and no feathers save for a thick, whitish tuft on its forehead. This camke, indigenous to Faroor, was the biggest Liliana had ever seen. But she might have been more excited if the creature didn’t seem frozen in mid-flight, as if someone had hit the “pause” button.

  “Vaas, are you seeing this?” There was no response. Liliana turned to the Aesonite, finding him frozen in place. She frowned and snapped her fingers in his face. Not even a blink.

  Dread washed over Liliana as she swiveled toward the Quud warrior watching them. He stood motionless, a ropy holo-manikin. Thasque all over again. “Dulce Madre!” Lily fretted.

  Suddenly, the air felt boiling hot. Lily whipped her head back to the frozen camke and gaped.

  The camke vanished, as had Qiidr Ol-Chaeda, Vaas Byzlar, and the Qiidr Mountains. Lily found herself sitting on cracked, wet earth, surrounded by several tall, flat-topped cone geysers spilling over with steaming rivulets. She sprang to her feet. The cone geysers resembled mini cylindrical buttes, issuing billows of white fog in every direction.

  Did I doze off? Lily recalled feeling tired, but not to the point of passing out in mid-conversation.

  She spun about to seek out anything familiar, and found nothing. “Hello?” Lily called out. Sizzling steam and a steady murmur of water muffled her voice. She wiped sweat from her brow in surprise.

  As far as Liliana could see through the fog, the ground was covered in spidery cracks filled with steaming water. Herope’s pink morning light from the east was nearly washed out by Qos’s silvery sphere burning at the sky’s zenith.

  Gazing at the radiance, Lily nearly tripped over something while turning a corner.

  Lying on the ground at her feet…was her in full Star Brigade uniform.

  She stopped and gasped. The doctor’s own brown eyes stared up lifelessly, her own neck broken, as evidenced by the unnatural position of the corpse’s head.

  It took considerable effort for the doctor to focus on anything else. Beyond her body lay several mutilated Ghebrekh corpses that were dismembered, crushed, or sliced up. The handiwork of her fellow Star Brigadiers was obvious. Lily was beyond dazed, but somehow forced herself to walk and discover what this grisly scene meant. Among the dead Ghebrekh were Star Brigade’s remaining TerraTrooper support. Specialist Byzlar, skull bashed; and Sergeant Fiyan with her throat slit, a strange stillness on her features.

  The condensation and sweat drenching Liliana became afterthoughts as she trekked onward and found Khal slumped to her left against the side of a cone geyser, also in uniform. Beautiful even in death, she had to admit, a smoking hole sizzled on his chest. Next to him, warped chunks of an ice structure gushed out an odd ocean-blue liquid, the chilly shards melting under the harsh swelter. What was left of Tyris, blown apart?

  The roar of a geyser’s expulsion startled Lily. Two other geysers sprayed massive jets into the sky.

  During this, a woeful yowl caught her ear. Liliana tore her eyes away from her slaughtered teammates. An adorable feline cub scampered between two of the narrower geysers.

  “What the—” she questioned in shaky tones. Even through the mist, she knew the cub was Kintarian, probably no older than six months by its large, green-flecked eyes. Yet that cub’s gaze held so much sorrow… looking so familiar.

  The cub darted past Liliana into the humid fog behind her. Its identity dawned on her then, nearly dropping the doctor to her knees. “No,” she declared loudly, “impossible.”

  “It is, Liliana Cortes.”

  Lily spun with narrowed eyes toward the ghostly murmur of a voice.

  “You again?” Liliana threw up her hands in parts infuriation, confusion, and resigned fear. Several feet away stood the gigantic snow-white hamster from downtown Thasque, wearing the same blacker-than-night cloak that obscured its whole body, minus its face.

  “Where did you take me? Why are you showing me this? Better yet, who are you?!”

  The rodent stood unaffected by her outburst and the muggy heat. “Walk with me.” It glided past Liliana, barely moving whatever lower limbs were beneath his trailing cloak. Seeing no other choice, she followed. Up close, it amazed her how huge this being was. Despite the muggy steam, Lily felt an unshakeable chill.

  “To answer one of your queries,” it spoke with ethereal calm, “I represent a long-lived species known as the ‘Particulates,’ watching younger races from afar as they mature.”

  Liliana gave her escort a sidelong glare, hearing but not believing.

  The ‘Particulate’ didn’t even blink at her mistrust. “You asked.” It stopped and pointed. “Look.”

  Another corpse lay before them, a shriveled geriatric husk looking up at the sky. So aged was the corpse that Lily wouldn’t have known him if not for his white, green, and gold armor.

  Recognition was a cold, icy slap to Lily’s face. Seeing her commanding officer unnaturally aged to death gutted Lily wide open.

  And there was more. Ghuj’aega stood several metrids away, his indigo skin and angular white tattoos visible. Around him were the shredded pieces of something both organic and robotic. A yellowish synthetic blood saturated the spacious gap between the geysers flanking his current position.

  Lily allowed her grief-weary eyes to travel across cybernetic remains and a severed head with wet, red hair. Marguliese! Her cerulean eyes lifeless, golden features sliced open to expose cybernetic innards.

  Unable to digest another teammate’s apparent death, she numbly turned back to Ghuj’aega. The terrorist was centering his stance as something silvery hurtled at him. The Ghebrekh grinned cruelly, raising both hands overhead, forming a crackling bolt of red energy—waiting… The silvery mass was almos
t upon him when Ghuj’aega savagely speared downward on the projectile.

  His blow struck home, pinning the mass to the cracked earth. Ghuj’aega’s attacker crashed and spasmed, belching out bright reddish energy from its eyes and mouth.

  Liliana knew that armored, dying being instantly, and it nearly broke her apart. “KHROME!!”

  Horrified, the doctor pointed her fingers at Ghuj’aega and fired rings of concussive sound—that passed through the Ghebrekh leader as if he were a ghost.

  “What??” Liliana stared at her hands in distress. Again, her powers had failed her.

  Ghuj’aega smirked triumphantly, never noticing Lily or the Particulate.

  Liliana’s mind was a mess. She didn’t know what to think or feel about all this death. The doctor vaguely felt massive fur-covered paws resting on her shoulders.

  “This happens tomorrow...if you are killed,” the Particulate behind her spoke as if these events had already occurred. “Star Brigade obviously gets distracted and is beaten by Ghuj’aega.

  “Ghuj’aega can see past and future paths,” he continued, “which is why he could evade others who have pursued him. Your gifts prevent him from fully seeing his future with Star Brigade. If you die, his vision will be restored. And he will defeat your team.”

  Liliana shook off the Particulate’s paws and faced it. “You don’t know that,” she shot back.

  The Particulate was unmoved as Qos’s glow brightened. “I do. What you saw is a possible future.”

  Lily glanced skeptically over her shoulder at Ghuj’aega. “Why can’t anyone see us?”

  “Because we are a spatial fraction out of sync,” said the Particulate.

  Lily opened her mouth to counter his counter, and realized she had nothing. “Oh.” She looked at her sopping clothing. The Particulate, of course, wasn’t even damp. “No one can see us, but I’m soaked?!”