by Vivian Venus
But I realized now there was also honor there, and a desire to do what was just. It was really different from what I had been raised to understand about their kind and from what I had developed in my head reading about their conquest of the Terran system. I had to admit that seeing and experiencing Reylar’s power first hand and having him pledge himself to me…it gave me a strange kind of thrill, something that I had never felt before in my life.
I wanted vengeance for what had happened to me and my friends. Reylar had offered that to me.
“Get some rest,” he said, standing up. I stood up too, the prospect of being alone sending a shock of fear through me, and I grabbed his arm to stop him. His forearm was massive, like a tree trunk.
“Wait,” I said.
He smiled, more of a smirk really, lopsided and roguish. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right outside.”
He placed his hand on the back of mine, taking it in his and guiding me towards the bed. His huge palm completely encompassed my hand, and I could feel the rough callouses from where he held the handle of his knife. I shivered.
“Goodnight,” he said, and then left the room, closing the door slowly behind him.
I sat there alone and then laid down onto the bed. Every time I closed my eyes to try and sleep I saw the smoldering destruction of my lab and the horrific things the monster had done. I felt a cold sweat creeping on me, and my body tensed every time I heard a disturbance from outside. I stared at the ceiling for a while before finally pulling myself out of the bed and peeking out the door.
Reylar stood to the side of the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest and staring straight ahead like a watchful statue. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Do you think you could…maybe keep the door open? Just so I know that you’re there. It’ll make me feel safer.”
“How about…” He came inside the room and pulled up the chair from the desk and put it next to the bed, and then sat on it, his body completely dwarfing it. “I sit here until you fall asleep.”
I laughed at how ridiculous he looked sitting on that tiny chair. If it had arms he would’ve had to snap them off to fit on the thing. “Okay,” I said, laying down. I immediately felt better just knowing Reylar was right there keeping watching. It felt like having a big guard dog at the foot of my bed…if the dog were a huge, alien warrior ripped with perfect muscles. The guy was seriously a perfect specimen of masculinity. I had spent most of my professional career studying Veldarians, but now I began to wish I had spent it studying Ezrok men. I turned my back away from him and pulled up the blanket over me, smiling to myself. When I closed my eyes now my mind turned to images of Reylar, to thoughts of what he might look like without a shirt on.
Oh, Lily…stop thinking of such ridiculous things. He’s an alien. He’s an Ezrok.
I heard the click of Reylar unsheathing his knife, and I turned around to see what he was doing. He had pulled out a scrap of wood and was working it with the tip of his blade. He looked up.
“It’s what I do to calm my mind.”
I watched him for a little while as he delicately carved away at the piece of wood, occasionally blowing the shavings off onto the floor, his eyes fixed with concentration on his work. Before I knew it I had fallen asleep.
In my dreams, I was chased by shadows that morphed and melted, unable to get away. I tried to fight them but any attempt I made would do nothing and so I could only run, until I realized my feet were trapped and I could only move like I was wading through a pool of mud. Then I felt my body lifting up, powerful hands raising me and carrying me to safety. I looked up and saw Reylar’s face – my heart pounding with excitement. “Liliandra,” he said. “Liliandra.”
I could only stare at him. I never wanted him to put me down…
“Liliandra!”
My eyes snapped open. Reylar had his hand on my shoulder. “Wake up. Get up.”
“What is it?” I asked, confused. I looked around. A clock on the wall indicated that I had only been asleep for a few hours.
“It’s here.”
My heart, which had already been racing from the dream, now threatened to explode from my chest. I bolted up. “It’s outside? Where is it?”
The charged crack of an energy rifle going off outside in the hallway told me all I needed to know. There were shouts and the thundering of boots as soldiers ran by the door. “I told them it wasn’t secure here,” Reylar grunted. “Didn’t want to take it on with this many people around.” He drew out his energy knife and activated the oscillator, the blade glowing a hot red as plasma pulsed around it. The door burst open suddenly and I yelped in surprise. It was sergeant Rocco.
“Get her out of here!” he shouted. “Hurry!” The air crackled with the sounds of rifle blasts and the screams of men, and I could only imagine what was happening outside.
“Stay behind me,” Reylar said. He had that look on his face again – his eyes were ferocious and wild, but there was also a glee there. This was his element.
A soldier collapsed against the door, struggling to keep himself upright, his uniform bloody and an energy rifle in his hands, the barrel white hot from extended fire. “It’s broken past the blockade,” he panted.
The sergeant cursed, unholstered his energy pistol and handed it to me. “Take this,” he said. “I don’t know what good it’ll do against that thing but it’s better than nothing.” He turned and ran back out.
“Come on,” Reylar said.
He moved out into the hallway. Smoke trailed along the ceiling, and straight ahead the MSE soldiers had turned over their desks and were blasting away with their rifles. I screamed when a tentacle shot out and smashed one of the soldiers, sending him flying into the wall. Reylar let out a ferocious bellow and charged ahead, and I hugged the wall and peeked around the corner to see the Veldarian in the middle of the room, the soldier’s energy blasts going right through the thing without any effect like its body was completely avoiding them.
“Hold your fire!” someone yelled as Reylar leapt through the air, his blade raised to strike. I gasped when he smashed into it, the blobular creature and him tumbling onto the floor. Reylar flipped back onto his feet and he and Veldarian monster began circling around each other like predators sizing each other up. Reylar’s blade crackled and glowed and he twirled it in his hand, his teeth gritted in a snarl.
“What kind of new tricks have you learned, Veldarian scum,” he taunted.
The creature shot out three nasty tentacles with needle points and Reylar dodged one. The other shot straight for his face and he raised his hand and stopped the thing with his repulsor manipulator. The tentacle froze in midair and jutted off in an angle, just barely missing his face and imbedding into a wall right next to a soldier who yelled in surprise and scrambled away. The last tentacle almost made its mark. Reylar moved out of the way just in time, the end catching the top of his Ezrok uniform and tearing it, leaving a gash in the fabric that showed through to his pectorals beneath.
“Come on,” he grunted. “Is that it?” The Veldarian moved at him, whipping out with another tentacle and Reylar lept onto it, nimbly running along its surface. He swept up in an arc with his blade in what should have been a killing blow, but to his surprise and mine the Veldarian’s body seemed to recede away where the knife entered, like opposing magnetic fields. He flipped off and landed knee to ground, his eyes wide. “What the hell?”
“Come on,” the sergeant said, running to me and pulling me up. “We need to get you out of here.”
“Not without him,” I said stubbornly.
“Don’t be a fool, you need to get out of here!”
“Not. Without him.” I said slowly, glaring at him. I knew I was being foolish. I didn't rightly know why I was refusing to leave, but I just couldn’t bring myself to run away while Reylar fought to defend me.
The Veldarian swung out with one of its arms, bashing Reylar across the stomach and sending him smashing into a desk. He rolled out of the way as it shot it
s arms at him, just barely dodging when they blasted into the floor. He flipped back onto his feet and swung his knife in a horizontal arc through the Veldarian. Again the creature’s body seemed to move around it. He swung again and again, his blade doing nothing. It grew an arm like a club and smashed Reylar in the face, sending him spinning against the wall.
“Reylar!” I shouted.
The Veldarian’s body perked up at my voice and I realized my stupid mistake. It had zeroed onto me, its objective. “Get the hell out of here!” Reylar shouted. “Go! To the roof!”
“Fire!” the sergeant shouted, and all the MSE soldiers unleashed their weapons on the thing, the blasts impacting against it and hammering it down. I sprinted for the stairs to the roof, barreling up into the security area and through the scanners. I heard a buzz of an alarm and looked over my shoulder to see the Veldarian coming after me, bubbling along the floor like a slug moving in fast forward. Reylar leapt onto it, stabbing at it uselessly with his knife until he was flung up against the ceiling. I heard his grunt as he crashed onto the floor, but by that time I was charging around the corner past the booking area where a few men in energy binders around their wrists gawked at the woman being chased by a horrific blob creature.
Go! I stormed up the stairs and smashed through the metal doors at the top, bursting into the cool Martian dawn air. Reylar, come on! I ran out to the landing pad where the hover bike still sat where we landed it. I wasn't going to just leave him here…
I leapt into the seat, my fingers flying across the console to fire up the engine. It’d been a while since I’d flown a hoverbike. The thing roared to life under me, lifting a few inches off the ground. Come on, Reylar, where are you…
Then the doors burst open. Reylar flew out and rolled across the ground, blood streaming down his forehead, his uniform slashed in several places where I could see he had been struck. The Veldarian burst out after him, and I gunned the engine and roared straight for him. Reylar sprinted, and moments before meeting him I jolted the bike to the side, swinging the end around for him to leap on. His hand caught the back and he frog jumped onto the seat as I hit the throttle and pulled the bike away from the landing pad and away from the building. In the side mirrors I saw in what felt like slow motion the Veldarian reaching out to grab us, only to barely miss as the bike rocketed away.
We made it.
Looking below, the MSE soldiers charged out onto the roof, their rifles unloading on the Veldarian as it slithered away down the side of the building and disappeared.
“You saved me,” Reylar said. I shivered, his voice on my ear. He was so big that it felt like I was sitting in his lap on the bike, pressed between his legs with my back against his abs.
“I wasn’t just going to leave without you,” I shouted over the wind. “Besides, I need you to kill that thing for me.” I grinned over my shoulder, trying to overcome the overwhelming sense of fear that was coursing through me from our narrow escape. Reylar smiled weakly back at me, blood on his face. “You’re hurt!”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” he said, though from his strained voice I wasn’t sure I quite believed him. “Take us to the border of the outer city. I know a place we can hide and figure out a strategy. That thing is definitely no ordinary Veldarian.”
We raced down the highway, the city just waking up to go about its morning business. We passed by a few squadrons of MSE security shuttles going in the direction of the station, but other than that it seemed like just another First Haven day with most of the city probably ignorant to the Veldarian infiltrator that was right under their noses.
“MSE isn’t prepared for this,” he said. “We need to stay outside of their information net. If we report to them they’ll only give our position away to the enemy. The checkpoint leading out of the inner Citadel to the outer city is ahead. Avoid that. Take the exit and follow the road.”
The outer city.
I was fortunate enough to have spent my life in the inner citadel, coddled by the comforts afforded to the upper class. We had security, safety, the best technology and infrastructure on Mars. My father, a quantum engineer, was born in the outer city to a factory worker father and a school teacher mother and had been selected for upward transfer into the inner Citadel after he graduated university with outstanding merit. He received a job and a place to live, an experience that was as rare as winning the lottery. It was something that happened to only the best of the best. For the vast majority, being born in the outer city meant living there your entire life. I had a general understanding of what life was like there from stories from him, reading about it and from the various charities I had participated in, but I didn’t really know what things were like there. Was it really the crime cesspool that the inner citadel stories made it out to be?
Straight ahead I could see the line of transports slowly queuing up to go through the checkpoint, and the huge, towering wall that made up the border between the two cities. The huge number “5” was painted above the checkpoint’s street entrance, and above that I could just make out the tiny figures of the MSE soldiers patrolling the ramparts of the wall.
I pulled the bike onto the exit ramp, swinging onto the road that ran parallel to the wall and away from the checkpoint. We were still in the inner Citadel, but this border area was noticeably more unsavory than rest of the city, as if the outer city were slowly seeping into the Citadel through the wall. Junky looking bars and dives lined up next to old ship repair shops and motels – everything looked far seedier than what I was used to, but I knew it was nothing compared to what was on the other side of that wall.
“Right there,” Reylar said, pointing over at a line of repair shops with a heap of shuttles, ships and hoverbikes parked or broken down in front, I couldn’t quite tell. “Turn in there.”
I turned our MSE bike into the lot, and Reylar patted my thigh and told me to stop. I felt a tingling jolt from where he touched me that shivered through my body and made me warm between the legs. Whoah. I hadn’t expected to have that reaction, not at all…
Reylar slid off the back of the bike as a man came out from one of the shops. His face and hands were covered with black grease and he had a pair of black tinted goggles pulled up on his forehead. He was wiping his hands with a dirty rag, an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“Reylar?” he called out, cautiously.
“Dex,” Reylar answered.
“What’s with the official transport? Got me worried I was in some sort of trouble.” He paused. “I’m not, right? Jesus, you look terrible.”
“Whatever you think you may be in trouble for, I don’t want to know about it,” Reylar said walking up to him as I shut off the bike and followed. “You know that favor you owe me? I need to call it now.”
The man named Dex eyed Reylar, lit the end of his ragged cigarette, drew a deep lungful of the smoke, and then exhaled. “Alright,” he shrugged. “Who’s the girl?”
“None of your concern,” Reylar replied. “Let’s talk inside.”
Dex led us into his shop, which was pressed right up against the border wall. It was a small garage, the inside filled with ships all in various stages of repair, walls covered with posters of classic ships and photos of scantily clad women. The place had a smell of mechanics and cigarette smoke, and it immediately brought me back to the tinkering space my father had when I was a child, only instead of working on repairing ships he was playing with repulsor lifters and mini warp gate transducers.
“So what does an Ezrok need my help for, eh?” Dex grunted, exhaling a cloud of acrid smoke. “Didn’t think there was anything an Ezrok wouldn’t have access to here.” He turned around. “You haven’t gone rogue, have you?”
“We have to stay off the grid. Need supplies and a place to hide.”
“Jesus, you have gone rogue haven’t you? Never thought you had it in you, Reylar.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Dex, but that day hasn’t come yet. Can you help us or not?”
<
br /> “Sure. Of course. And I thought you were going to ask something difficult of me.” He chucked. Reylar didn’t comment. “Well, come on. Follow me.”
We followed Dex through the garage and into the back where he had a spare room laid out with a bed, a small desk and a sink in the corner. He pulled down the shutters, closing the garage up and then retrieved a metal box which he put on the tiny desk inside the spare room. “First aid,” he said. “Stay as long as you need.” He stopped before leaving the room. “But ah, not too long. I have a business to run. I will go and get new clothes for the both of you.”
Reylar shut the door to the room and went to the sink to wash his face. I opened up the box and pulled out some medical supplies and laid them out on the desk to the take inventory. There was some healing foam, cleaning gel and a suture kit, along with a set of bandages. “Sit down,” I told Reylar.
“It’s alright. It’s not bad.”
“Bullshit. I’m a doctor, sit down.”
He gave me one of his little roguish smirks. “Didn’t know you were a medical doctor.” He sat in the chair and unbuttoned his uniform top, and then let it drape down his arms to reveal his back. He had a series of lashes cut across him from where the Veldarian had struck, and one across his cheek. I winced just looking at them – they were deep and looked painful.
“Oh, quiet,” I said, pulling up a little stool to sit behind him. He had a few old scars going down his hard curves of his back, and I traced my fingertips along them, my heart picking up.
