by C. C. Ekeke
The target practice mech, V’Korram recalled, remembering with a cringe how much those low-level blasts stung when one didn’t dodge in time. Either Nwosu or Sam must have suggested this for Cortés’s training.
The doctor, focused on her robotic opponent, hadn’t noticed V’Korram entering. She should’ve sensed me the moment I arrived, the Kintarian critiqued. A good soldier is mindful of their surroundings.
Cortés remained crouched and waiting, eyes tracking her aerial target, hands clasped like a pistol. The sound of her heart pitter-pattering with dread filled the Kintarian’s heightened hearing.
The mechanoid fired. Cortés dove to the left, barely dodging the put-put of pulse blasts striking her last location.
She twisted her slender frame quickly…almost expertly, firing off white rings of sonic energy in a sweeping blast. A high-pitched whine that most species wouldn’t have heard stabbed at V’Korram’s eardrums. He flinched only for a moment, until the sonic blast ended.
The sphere-like mechanoid tried zipping away, only to fly into the full force of Cortés’s sonic burst. It dropped like a stone, hitting the floor with a loud clank!
The doctor stood up, more surprised than V’Korram that she’d struck her target without getting struck. “Yes!” she pumped her fists in genuine triumph.
At least she’s working hard to improve, a voice in V’Korram’s head considered. But he refused to accept such little steps. On his supply runs to Korvenite internment camps with Sam, she had cryptically alluded to how the Brigade didn’t have several months to train new field operatives. Several weeks felt more accurate.
V’Korram snorted, folding his arms and leaning casually against the wall near the entrance. From what he’d seen of Cortés, the Kintarian doubted she’d last a month. It behooved him and Star Brigade to expedite that eventual departure.
At that moment, Cortés turned, saw V’Korram and recoiled. Her ovular features ran the gamut of shock, embarrassment, fear and anger in a heartbeat. “What are you doing in here?” she demanded, keeping as much trembling panic out of her voice as possible.
V’Korram tossed back his long, stringy mane again, his green-flecked eyes trained on Cortés. “Watching you.”
By her peevish glare and the way the nostrils of her long nose flared, Cortés clearly had no interest in an audience. She pointed a dainty finger at the exit. Gods, those hands looked like a hydrospray spurt could break them. “Then watch in the ObDeck.”
The Kintarian almost laughed. Her fury was as threatening as a kitten’s. “View’s better here. Or should I say…more entertaining.” He fought back laughter, barely. Don’t laugh, that will do you no favors.
“Fine.” The doctor stuck her nose up in the air huffily. “I’ll leave.” She then marched all graceful and stiff-shouldered toward the HLHG suite exit.
V’Korram’s smile became a scowl. That wasn’t the reaction he’d hoped for. Need another approach to show her why she doesn’t belong. She had almost passed the Kintarian, when he stepped in Cortés’s path with one stride. He stood almost a foot taller than the doctor. Compared to her willowy frame, V’Korram was a solid wall of lithe muscle. “Want real practice? Try a living target.”
She backpedaled immediately, staring up at him in disbelief. “You?”
The Kintarian bristled at the dumb question. “See any other living sentients in here?”
The doctor looked skeptical, pursing her lips in that peculiar way of hers. So V’Korram sweetened the pot. “You get the chance to try hitting me.”
And Cortés was sold.
The Kintarian went a considerable distance from her, dropping to a crouch. “Begin,” he growled out.
The doctor quickly raised her pointed fingers to chest level and fired. V’Korram effortlessly leapt and somersaulted over the first blast. Sharp contempt filled him while casually sidestepping the second attack.
The Kintarian juked left then right, zigzagging his massive self with practiced ease around the barrage of bright white sonic bursts. The doctor’s uncertain aim did nothing to stop him from getting closer and closer, until V’Korram was right in front of her.
Too easy. His left hand swept upward, breaking apart her clasped fingers, his right hand catching her by the throat. V’Korram stood up, holding a gasping Cortés off the ground one-handed, her long legs flailing uselessly in the air. His fingers, so long, wrapped around her whole neck.
“Dead,” the Kintarian sneered, showing sharp teeth. He opened his hand and dropped her to the ground on her behind. She sat there staring off at nothing, the color drained from her face.
“Again,” V’Korram snapped, jolting the doctor out of her shock.
He took the same crouched stance as before, albeit a little closer. Cortés took a deep breath, trying and failing to steady herself. She then settled into a less stiff posture…
V’Korram pounced, not giving her time to prepare. Conflict waits for no one.
To his surprise and chagrin, Liliana hurriedly snapped up her pointed fingers and fired right as he reached her.
The Kintarian danced away just in time, and had to backflip over a pair of wide sonic bursts. The doctor pressed him much faster now and with more confidence, shooting off sound blast after white ringed sound blast.
V’Korram weaved and bobbed from side to side, pounced and slid, barely avoiding each rattling burst of white sonic rings. This time he couldn’t get close enough. Cortés had created a perimeter around her person from all angles, effectively keeping V’Korram at bay.
Not bad, he had to admit, split jumping over another blast. On a positive note, the Kintarian realized her attacks weren’t needling his ears so much.
And then he spotted the doctor’s attack pattern. Cortés never fired lower than waist level—his waist level. Which means…
V’Korram went low on all fours and charged. Cortés dropped her aim to compensate… an instant too late.
The Kintarian rammed his shoulder, full-speed, into her stomach.
The slight and slender doctor was folded in half and lifted clean off her feet. V’Korram felt Cortés’s ribs creak on impact, heard her cry out as they both hit the HLHG suite floor. The momentum sent the pair skidding.
A heartbeat later, V’Korram had Cortés pinned and completely powerless. One hand clenched around her throat, another hand held down her right arm, while his knee trapped her left arm.
He glared down to see her gaping up at him in wide-eyed terror. By the pained way she sucked in breaths, his tackle had left a mark.
She didn’t struggle. Good. The doctor knew when she was beaten. Without her fingers clasped together to emit her sonic blasts, Cortés was helpless…and they both knew it.
“Dead…dead…DEAD,” V’Korram spared no ounce of disdain in his deep-throated growl. “Were this a real fight, I’d have gutted you from head to heel already.”
The threat sent a shudder through Cortés’s body. Seeing a potential teammate so helpless and breakable, it thoroughly sickened V’Korram. In what universe would Cortés ever be on a Star Brigade combat team? What were Nwosu and Sam thinking?
“Know what I believe? I believe you are weak, that you are a liability.” V’Korram tightened his grip around her neck, pressed his thumb into the juncture between her chin and windpipe. He considered Cortés’s slender throat and how easily his claws could slice open its delicate flesh. One pop of his thumb nail and she’d bleed out right here in the HLHG Suite. The doctor’s lips parted and out came a choked yip. The sound of her quickening heartbeat was the only sound in V’Korram’s world.
“You have no combat experience, pitiful hand-to-hand skills, and not one iota of fortitude outside a Medcenter.”
After that truth, V’Korram felt every muscle in the doctor’s willowy frame stiffen beneath him. Just like in the training sessions, Cortés’s terror had paralyzed her completely. V’Korram fought the urge to shrink back in disgust. Why am I wasting time on this useless creature? But the Kintarian already knew
the answer. He did this not just for the Brigade, but for Cortés’s safety. Despite her incompetence, she was innocent. She didn’t deserve to die, or worse, have that innocence ruined. Star Brigade could spell the end of her, and vice versa given the unit’s weakened state. He should have let Cortés up at this point, but she needed to learn her place. And it wasn’t with Star Brigade.
“The smartest thing you can do is leave,” V’Korram continued, his voice growing harsher and darker. “Return to whatever overpaid medcenter job you left and never look back.”
The human’s short, shallow breaths grew shorter still with V’Korram’s grip on her throat. Her eyes were squeezed shut. V’Korram leaned in close, like a lover, until their lips were almost brushing each other’s. At this proximity, her scent flooded his nose, a bizarrely dizzying scent, fueled by body heat and fear. Despite his overwhelming need to be rid of this weakling, a delicious jolt ran through him.
Not victory or hatred, but a sensation that no human had ever triggered in him.
The Kintarian grimaced, forcing himself to ignore whatever that was, and dropped his growl to a whisper. “Stay with Star Brigade, and at best you’ll get only yourself killed on a live op. At worst…other Brigadiers will die breaking formation to rescue you.”
Cortés’s heartbeat hitched, or was that V’Korram’s own, as he finally seemed to be getting through to her? Maybe the Kintarian could save Cortés from ruin or death, if she had brains enough to listen. “Is that what you want? To have others die because of your incompetence?” The Kintarian stopped and frowned in unsettled confusion. Needles pricked at his ears, growing in size and discomfort…
The noise started at a barely audible vibration, climbing sharply up to a skull-splitting whine that drowned out everything and anything.
V’Korram roared and jerked his whole body back in agony, slamming both hands over his ears. Yet the whine cut through his fingers, a million white-hot blades slicing into his brain.
The Kintarian didn’t remember falling onto his side, but there he lay, curled up in fetal position, unable to hear anything but the ear-piercing drone…powerless to think or move. The pain was everywhere, obliterating V’Korram utterly.
Suddenly Liliana Cortés stood over him, eyes wide and trembling all over, but not with fear. That high-pitched sound radiated off the slender doctor in waves—hostile, hateful vibrations. How did she do this without using her hands? V’Korram couldn’t figure it out, since thinking had become such an agony.
The ear-splitting whine abruptly cut out. After a long moment, V’Korram uncurled his long body slowly and dropped both hands from his ears, wincing as he tried rising up on all fours. His ears were still ringing, the world still spinning round and round in crooked circles. He staggered sideways and looked up at Cortés, only to freeze.
She was pointing her clasped fingers at him, like a gun. Her oval-shaped face was an unforgiving mask as she uttered, “Dead.”
White rings of concentrated sonic energy hammered V’Korram in the chest, sending him flying. The ground quickly rushed up to smack him hard on the back. He lay there for a time, back smarting, ears ringing, bones rattling, muscles trembling. Everything except breathing hurt. He dared to lift his head up, no matter how much his neck muscles burned in protest. Cortés was favoring her abdomen as she limped away with long, hasty strides.
“Stupid human,” he snarled after her. “You’re making a mistake not listening to me.”
Cortés stopped in her tracks, but didn’t turn around. She inhaled a labored breath. “If I leave Star Brigade, it won’t be because you told me to,” the doctor replied, the false firmness in her tone unable to mask an undercurrent of panic. She resumed her retreat without looking back.
As soon as the door hissed shut behind her, V’Korram let his head fall back, unable to hold it up any longer.
Under much different settings, V’Korram might’ve respected her perseverance. But he had too much fury, too much physical pain.
Hollus had become his home, and Star Brigade his calling. After losing everything on Kintare, V’Korram didn’t think he’d ever know either again. And now some weak-willed, untested doctor was set to ruin it all. V’Korram gazed up at the neon blue ceiling, heart racing at light speed, and released a pained sigh. “Star Brigade is doomed.”
Disciple
“Now what does that mean?” Khal asked in a voice sounding like melted butter. He was stroking the cheek of the female companion sitting across from him.
The slender, high-breasted beauty tittered and glanced at the floor. “That means, me like your kiss,” she cooed the Standard Tongue, with the staccato drawl of a Hommodus native. The Nnaxan referred to the movements of the two thick, worm-like craniowhisks that jutted out of her forehead and spilled down past her chest. Right now they were trembling with visible arousal. Under the rose-colored illuminations of the bar they were in, the absurdly named Red Bar, the Nnaxan’s sky-blue skin took on a lavender complexion. She held a half-empty drink in her upper left hand and caressed Khal’s forearm with her lower hands. Their table resided on the second tier of Red Bar, away from tonight’s large and boisterous crowd.
Red Bar, stupid name notwithstanding, was one of the most upscale and popular bars on Jefferson, a gas mining city-station that neighbored Hollus Maddrone within Zeid. The emerald gas giant was a Terra Sollus/Earth colony, hence why all of its thirteen city-stations bore names of renowned leaders from long-dead Old Earth. Khal only visited any of the city-stations for their healthy array of casinos and bars. Red Bar was Khal’s favorite. He always killed it here with the ladies. Tonight was no exception. The Nahraini had no clue what his current companion’s name was, but figured he’d ask after bedding her.
Khal wasn’t much of a drinker, having only consumed one shot of black dwarf tonight. He did, however, feel drunk on the presence of his current company, a Nnaxan stunner he’d struck gold with not ten macroms ago. She couldn’t have been older than early to mid-twenties. Girls that age were never much of a challenge for Khal, which allowed him to get creative in his pickup tactics. His angle for getting between her long and lovely legs was to feign curiosity on reading the subtle movements of her craniowhisks—by way of tactile stimulation. Nnaxan always communicated both verbally and with their craniowhisks, usually saying much more with the latter than with words.
So far, so good. Khal ran a hand through his well-coifed mop of black hair and snuck in a quick kiss to her throat. The Nnaxan giggled again, her craniowhisks rippling like slithering snakes.
“And that?” Khal asked, his voice teasing.
The Hommodus native eyed him with an exquisite, shy smile. “Me thinking you are sly too much.”
That made them both laugh.
On Red Bar’s sprawling first floor, patrons from all over the Union collided in a swaying and shimmying throng of discordant rhythm. The one thing these beings shared was an enslavement to the catchy astropop dance tunes blaring in the foreground. Red Bar’s second-floor balcony slowly rotated like a planet orbiting a sun, ringed by floating tabletops similar to the one where he and his Nnaxan companion stood. Each tabletop came above stomach-level, surrounded by parties of two or more patrons deep in raucous celebration. Khal drank in the scenery with a smile.
Every Brigadier had gotten the day off. It would have been too easy for Khal to stay on Hollus and hit up his pet analyst Genesis Delgado for a quickie. But he needed a break from the sterile walls of Hollus Maddrone and all those irritating would-be Brigadiers. Hollus and Zeid’s woodsy forest moon, Atlas, were all Khal had seen for the past three and a half weeks.
During that stretch of time, Khal’s life had been nothing but endurance drills, hand-to-hand combat workouts, offensive ability exercises, environmental survival training, and team field simulations. Wake up, run that gauntlet while finding time to keep in shape and perform his duties in Brigade Intelligence. Day after day, week after week he had pushed himself harder than everyone. Khal was certain his spot on the new S
tar Brigade combat team was a lock, not just because of his amazing performance during training.
His superior officer had dangled the combat team carrot in front of Khal since his Brigade tenure began. That was the major reason why Khal had helped her oust Lt. Col. Nyell and Major Azohl’ozyma, both gutless turncoats planning to dismantle Star Brigade in exchange for promotions in other UComm divisions.
Since then, Khal had spent the last year at his superior’s beck and call, keeping her secrets and assisting in many of her off-the-books side missions. And while Khal knew his boss already had informants all over Hollus Maddrone and its satellite outpost Cobalt Waystation, his own harem of contacts kept feeding him additional intel on the non-Star Brigade inner workings which she continued to find useful.
Khal’s actions had produced benefits far too amazing for words, but his true goal was placement on a Star Brigade combat team. His superior had promised that and more, cunningly nurturing those ambitions for the past year. She lied to me, again, Khal seethed. And he fell for it. Again.
No, he told himself firmly. Khal refused to let that injustice poison his current mood, not when he was doing so well with this scrumptious Nnaxan.
“Are you troubled, sir?” Khal, realizing he had zoned out, turned to see the Nnaxan girl watching him warily. Her craniowhisks wavered in a slow, concerned manner.
“No,” Khal smirked, “it’s nothing that’ll take my mind off you.” He leaned in again and nibbled on one of her tiny ears, earning a delighted squeal out of the Nnaxan. Her fleshy craniowhisks began to ripple from root to tip in a slow, pulsing manner.
Got her now. “Now what’s that mean?” Khal whispered in his sexiest voice.
“There you are!” an angry human voice demanded before the Nnaxan could answer.
Khal grimaced and turned slowly. His eyes nearly popped out.
Under the red-tinted lights, he glimpsed an earthborn female about average height standing behind him. Her dress—short-sleeved, black and button down with chest pockets and a thigh-length skirt—honestly looked like someone had poured her into it with that insane body of hers. Her complexion looked sun-kissed and smooth as silk, her hair butter-blonde and tumbling past her shoulders in glossy sheets. And that stunning face, those big russet eyes… Khal knew her at a glance.
