Forged in Shadow

by Anna Carven

  “That’s insane,” Arin whispered, as Rykal went still. He was like a statue suspended in mid-air, barely breathing, barely moving a muscle, and that terrible tension was still rolling off him, growing in intensity until Arin could almost read his thoughts.

  He wanted to kill his enemy, but the cold vacuum of space separated them.

  If they were together in the same vessel, chances were E1 would be dead right now.

  “Hand her over, alien, and nobody will get hurt. Refuse, and you’ll only have yourself to blame.”

  Rykal’s hand was still on her shoulder. Arin covered his armor-encased fingers with her own, looking up at him. “I have to go with them. We have no choice.”

  He nodded, staring straight at the holoscreen with scary intensity, as if he could burn through the woman with his eyes. “Go,” he said softly, his gaze fixed upon the cold-faced woman on-screen. “If anything happens to her,” he told E1, “I’ll personally hold you and your entire race responsible, and in my culture, revenge is sacred.” He smiled, but there was nothing good in his smile. It was a smile that held promises of blood and retribution. It was the worst smile she’d ever seen him wear.

  E1 looked right back at him, her face a blank mask. If she was at all bothered by his words, she didn’t show it. “She’s coming with us.”

  Rykal glowered at the holoscreen as he moved back. Arin tried to appease him with her glance, but that feeling of dark pressure was still there, curdling the air until it was thick with a sense of impending violence.

  Arin was glad Rykal was on her side, but if they ever made it to Earth, he would have to try and tone down that death-aura of his. It was enough to give people nightmares.

  “Prepare for retrieval,” E1 said in that same emotionless tone. If Arin didn’t know better, she would have sworn the woman was an android.

  She still couldn’t believe they had the audacity to threaten them like this. What right did they have to do this? Even if they were operating under the guise of protecting Earth’s borders, this kind of thing was unheard of.

  Something was very, very wrong, and left with no other options, Arin was being forced to step into the belly of the beast. At gunpoint. Because she’d been consorting with aliens.

  She was beyond compromised, and it was going to take all her wits to get out of this one unscathed.

  “They’re dead if they hurt you,” Rykal whispered as he bent to retrieve his weapons. “Tell them whatever you have to. I trust you. You can’t betray me, even if you tell them the truth. You haven’t done anything wrong, my love.”

  There was a dull thunk from outside. The retrieval pod had connected. Rykal palmed two of his small knives, the ones she’d seen him throw countless times with deadly precision, and passed them to her.

  Thankfully, they were sheathed. Arin discreetly accepted them, stashing them in the inside pockets of her flight jacket before zipping it up.

  “Just in case,” he whispered as the pod’s exit began to open, activated from the outside. The dull grey walls of a mobile airlock were revealed, and moments later, a space-trooper appeared in the doorway, his features obscured by a shiny black visor.

  Rykal drifted to the side of the airlock, grabbing a handhold to steady himself in the weightless environment. His sword appeared in his hand as the trooper brought up a bolt-rifle. “Stand down, alien. My boss doesn’t fuck around. Any sign of trouble and we’re all going down. I’m as expendable as you are.”

  Rykal glared at the trooper, his sword resting by his side. His demeanor was deceptively relaxed, but Arin knew he could explode into action at any moment.

  She gave him a reassuring glance. Hold. Everything will be okay.

  She didn’t know that for sure, but the situation right now called for calm.

  Miraculously, he obeyed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rykal wanted to kill someone. It took all of his self-control to hold back. He watched silently as Arin donned a helmet, preparing to step off into the airlock.

  His instincts were screaming at him to kill the Human who was taking her away.

  But he had listened to her. Her calm gaze did powerful things to him, soothing the savage beast that dwelled in the void.

  She was the ice to his fire.

  He needed her.

  Her eyes were on him the entire time, until she slipped the dark helmet over her face and stepped outside, away from him, leaving him with a small parting wave of her left hand.

  Hold.

  And then the pod’s door closed, leaving Rykal alone.

  And for the first time in his life, being alone bothered him.

  He activated his comm. “Where the fuck are you?”

  “Coming.” It was Torin. “Got held up. We were thrown off course by an explosion on the freighter, then a little Human thought he could sabotage our thrusters. Let’s just say he won’t be sabotaging anything now. It’s a funny thing. I think some of these Humans aren’t afraid of death. The old captain understands survival, though. He’s got your co-ordinates. We’re nearly there.”

  Too little, too late. They had Arin. Rykal’s hand tightened around the grip of his sword as he tried to suppress his killing intent.

  He’d held her in his arms, kissed her all over, and tasted her sweetness from both outside and within.

  And he had let her slip out of his grasp.

  He didn’t trust Humans. He didn’t trust the cold-eyed woman who had negotiated Arin’s release. He had seen her kind before, countless times. Hers was a special kind of insanity that wasn’t reserved for just Humans. Some Kordolians were afflicted with the same thing; dead eyes and a vacant soul.

  There was no such thing as a ‘noble’ species. Like every other intelligent life-form he’d come across, they could be selfish, violent, petty, and cruel. The difference between Kordolians and Humans was that Humans were weak.

  With the exception of Arin, he hadn’t yet encountered a Human he’d be willing to save.

  But then again, he was hopelessly biased.

  Rykal closed his eyes, crossed his arms over his chest, and let his body float, allowing himself to drift through the pod as he waited for his brothers to retrieve him.

  He tried to calm the savage emotion seething within him, but he couldn’t.

  What the fuck are we doing here?

  Killing Xargek. That was what they’d been ordered to do.

  Eliminate at all costs.

  And there was the unspoken. If things got out of hand, they could always retreat. They could have hijacked a Human vessel and made their way to Sector Eight, where there were Kordolian occupied territories.

  Retreat.

  The word wasn’t in the First Division’s vocabulary.

  In the past, they’d been able to subdue entire planets with little more than their reputations and the weight of the Kordolian Empire behind them.

  Once people knew what they were about, they generally tended to co-operate.

  These delusional Humans, on the other hand, still thought they held some power in the Universe.

  They had no idea who or what they were messing with, otherwise they would have capitulated a long time ago.

  Rykal exhaled and latched onto the image of Arin that was burned into his mind. She filled his emptiness and made him feel complete. She soothed his wild, reckless heart.

  He would have her back at all costs.

  She was the last thing he saw in his mind’s eye as a giant boom shook the shell of the pod. He had barely enough time to activate his full armor before his world disintegrated into a raging inferno.

  There was another boom.

  Then another.

  And another.

  There was only searing heat, pain, and the fading image of his mate, in all her beautiful Human glory.

  Whatever they’d hit him with was fierce. His armor could only hold off so much. The blast was starting to burn through.

  It was excruciating.

  Arin.

  He coul
dn’t lose her now. He’d only just found her.

  As Rykal’s body burned, he reached out with one arm, trying to grasp her, but her form was ethereal and elusive, and it was stolen from him as agony took over, thrusting him into the depths of Kaiin’s darkest hells.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Arin stepped warily across the threshold, moving from the mobile airlock into the body of the dull grey cruiser.

  The transfer from the pod to the surveillance cruiser had been straightforward; they’d stepped into the mobile airlock and it had sealed up, drifting slowly across to its home vessel.

  She removed her helmet as the doors closed behind her, replacing one oxygen source for another.

  “Welcome back, Sergeant Varga.” E1 was there, along with her offsider, E2. He stared at her through his datalenses, not saying a word as E1 motioned for her to follow. “Come with us. You will undergo a debriefing session, but before then, I want you to see something.”

  “I trust this won’t take long,” Arin said coldly. “I have to get back to my squad.”

  “That all depends on you, Sergeant. Your co-operation is essential.” The look E1 gave her made Arin’s skin crawl. The woman smiled. “I have to admit, your way of getting the DNA samples we asked for was rather bold, but having been there myself, I can’t judge you for your methods.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Arin’s anger was mounting, compounded by the fact she felt completely and utterly helpless.

  “You know what I mean,” E1 whispered as they passed darkened cubicles occupied by agents who were hooked up to complex monitoring equipment.

  A wave of disgust swept through Arin, and she shuddered. Had these people somehow hacked into the escape pod’s monitoring systems? She didn’t like the way E1 looked at her, as if they shared some dirty secret.

  They made their way down to the bridge, which was surprisingly crowded. Pilots and navigators focused intently on their holoscreens, and armed guards lurked in the shadows, watching everything.

  The whole scene had a sinister feel to it. Arin had walked straight into the other side of the Federation; the hidden, covert side that nobody ever talked about. It was a side ordinary citizens probably didn’t even know about.

  How many hidden surveillance cruisers did Nonhuman Affairs have out there? They were watching everything.

  “Are the radiation shields intact?” Barely noticed by Arin, E2 had trailed behind them, and now he spoke for the first time.

  “One hundred percent,” one of the navigators replied.

  “Good.” E2 stood before the bridge with his arms crossed as E1 leaned close to Arin.

  “Watch now,” she said softly.

  An image of their escape pod appeared on a large holoscreen. Floating in the cold, empty void of space, it appeared so tiny. So vulnerable.

  Rykal was in there. Arin’s chest tightened as terrible realization dawned on her. “No,” she whispered, a wave of horror washing over her. “You said you wouldn’t…”

  “Prepare all missiles,” E2 said. “Stand by.”

  “You can’t do this,” Arin snapped. She strode towards E2, forgetting where she was.

  “Fire.”

  “No!” Arin screamed, her body moving of its own accord as the holoscreen showed a sleek missile leaving its launcher, turning into a white flash as it shot towards the escape pod.

  Arin’s mind went blank as white-hot fury consumed her. A vicious cry of anger and grief escaped her throat as she reached inside her jacket and drew one of the Callidum knives Rykal had given her. She reached E2 and knew nothing but hatred.

  There was a flash, and the pod exploded in a white ball of heat. There was no sound, just a whisper of an aftershock that shook the cabin. Arin couldn’t bear to look anymore.

  The knife was in her hands. She knew nothing but rage.

  They had taken him from her.

  The blade connected with E2’s chest. There was a faint pop as it sliced through rib and lung and Jupiter knows what else. The man screamed, and for the first time in her life, Arin found that sound - the sound of Human suffering -satisfying. Warm blood streamed over her hand, coppery and glistening. She tried to reach for the other blade, but someone was restraining her now, and there were gloved hands all over her as she fought like a wildcat, attempting to kick and punch until she heard a cry of pain behind her.

  “Fucking bitch!”

  “I need her alive. Take her down, but don’t kill her.”

  She swung wildly as five or six troopers surrounded her, and although she was strong, their combined strength was greater. They took her down to the floor with a thud, pressing their weight into her ribs and stomach and crushing her legs as she howled and kicked.

  They piled onto her like wrestlers until she was completely restrained and could move no more.

  Breathing heavily, Arin looked up and saw E1 squatting down beside her, her face still composed in that infuriating expressionless mask.

  Truly, the woman was inhuman.

  “I didn’t quite expect that reaction,” E1 murmured.

  “Fuck you.” Arin spat in her face. “You have no idea what you’ve just done.” She tried to hold her grief at bay, but a giant chasm of loss was opening up inside her.

  “They’re a new prototype,” the woman said dispassionately, ignoring her colleague E2, who was lying on the floor gasping like a fish. A medic rushed to his side and began applying coag-gel to his wounds. “Compact nuclear missiles with a controlled blast radius. Effective in close-quarters combat. As you know, nuclear’s one of the few things that can cause a suitably effective explosion in the vacuum of space. There are three more missiles to deploy in this weapons test.”

  “No!” Arin squirmed, trying to break free. E1 was so close, and all she could think about was wrapping her hands around her neck and strangling her until the very last drop of life was squeezed from her.

  Rykal was inhuman and near-invincible, but there was no way he could have survived that.

  A choked sob escaped Arin’s lips.

  “Judging from your reaction, it must have been good,” E1 whispered, her red lips curving slightly.

  An emotionless voice reached her ears. “Missiles two, three, and four, successfully launched.”

  Helpless and seething, Arin strained against her bonds, giving in to hatred and despair. “I’m going to kill you,” she snarled, before someone clapped a gloved hand over her mouth.

  “I don’t think so. Sedate her.” E1 rose as something sharp and painful dug into Arin’s neck. She struggled, but her power was quickly washed away as the sedative took hold and the world faded to black.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  She opened her eyes and quickly closed them again as harsh light flooded her vision, blinding her.

  Her head pounded.

  Where the hell was she?

  Faint voices drifted to her through a haze of clouded thoughts, and in her half-consciousness, she thought she was dreaming.

  So why were tears leaking from her eyes?

  “Has the corpse been decontaminated?” someone asked, and Arin struggled to process the words. For all she knew, they could have been speaking Kordolian.

  “It’s been cleared,” another person said. “Radiation count is down to background levels. We can go ahead and extract some samples.”

  “They’ll want to do a full autopsy.”

  “That will happen after the specimen is transported to Earth, but we can do the preliminary tests here.”

  “I can’t wait to get stuck into this one. It’s not every day you get your hands on fresh meat from the other side of the Universe.”

  “Yeah. It’s surprisingly well preserved considering it’s had all that firepower thrown at it. It’s impressive, really. The escape pod disintegrated completely. We were lucky to find the body.”

  “Careening off into space like a goddamn asteroid.” A mirthless laugh punctuated the stillness. “But we’ve got the most advanced detection equ
ipment known to man. We could find a needle in a proverbial galactic haystack.”

  “I want to take a closer look. It’s not every day you see one of those things up close. Let’s extract some tissue samples.”

  Arin choked back a sob as the memories came crashing back, underscored by the dispassionate conversation between the two Humans. They’d spoken about Rykal as if he were nothing more than an insect; a lab specimen to be dissected and experimented on.

  It was over. The beautiful dream she’d grasped for a few brief, exhilarating moments was gone, ripped to shreds and transformed into a waking nightmare.

  Arin forced herself to open her eyes, willing her tears to stop. At first, the light was searing, but as she blinked furiously, her surroundings came into sharp focus.

  She tried to sit up, but her arms and legs were restrained. Something hard and cold was beneath her; a bench of some sort. She turned her head to one side and saw white walls. A harsh chemical scent filled the air, reminding her of the strong, cheap disinfectant they used to clean the shower stalls on Fortuna Tau.

  She turned to the other side and saw a glass window. Beyond the window was a sight that branded itself into her mind and stilled her heart.

  “No,” she whispered, her voice cracking. Her heart was being squeezed in a vise. She couldn’t breathe. Nausea rose in her throat, and the walls threatened to close in on her.

  The ‘specimen’ those two Humans had been talking about was Rykal. He was almost unrecognizable, but Arin would know him anywhere.

  She knew his features, even when his skin had been burned away, revealing charred flesh underneath. She knew the elegant lines of his jaw, the noble slant of his forehead, the sharp slash of his cheekbones, even though the flesh covering his bare bones had become twisted beyond all recognition.

  The skin and muscles of his body seemed to have melted away, leaving behind a gruesome remnant, a shell, a husk, disfigured memory of the magnificent creature he had been.