The Reprisal
- The After Trilogy: Book III -
Kelly St. Clare
Copyright 2018 by Kelly St. Clare
First Published: 14th January 2018
Publisher: Kelly St. Clare
The right of Kelly St. Clare to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.kellystclare.com
To the incredible friends in my life.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BOOKS BY KELLY ST. CLARE
The first genetically enhanced humans were cultivated, and the original four thousand left Earth in the year 2050, in what is historically known as
The Retreat.
In the 152 years that have since passed, the space soldiers have yearned daily to reinhabit their beloved homeland. So much so, they now refer to this future day as
The Return.
And when the day came that the space soldiers did return, only to find The Retreat was a lie, a few united against the mighty in a last, desperate bid to establish peace, and deliver
The Reprisal.
CHAPTER ONE
“There’s two of one number and three of another.” Elara stared at her cards, a small wrinkle between her brown brows.
Phobos cocked his head for a second, saying, “A full house? I think that’s a good hand.”
Romy held back a smile, glancing at her row of cards. She had that thing where all of the hearts cards were in a row, including the king, queen, and what she assumed was a prince. Romy knew it was good.
Really, really good.
Peeking up, she saw Phobos and Elara watching her with narrowed eyes. Without a word, they tossed their cards down on the concrete floor of Atlas’s room.
“I’m folding,” Phobos said, green eyes bright.
Elara nodded. “Yep.”
“Why?” Romy asked.
The couple snorted at the same time, and Phobos replied, “You have no poker face, Ro. You were literally grinning at your cards like they were chocolate cake.” His eyes fell to her hands. “And you’re currently showing us all your cards, proving we were right to fold. Royal flush, huh?”
Crap. Romy tilted the cards back, but after a beat, she gave up and threw them down. “You guys cheated. You’re not supposed to look at my face when we play.” Heat began to creep up her neck.
“Just because you said that’s a rule, doesn’t make it a rule.” Elara pushed the cards into a stack and shoved a bunch of twigs from the middle toward Romy.
Romy’s pile of twigs was the biggest tonight. She smiled and felt the heat settle back down.
A booming knock sounded from the solid metal door at the front of the small room.
“It’s Thrym,” Elara and Phobos guessed in a chorus.
“Why does he knock so loud?” Romy asked, jolting with each crashing blow against the door.
The couple exchanged a smirk, watching her. “Because he doesn’t want to walk in on you and Atlas getting your freak on,” Elara said.
Romy’s molars clicked as her mouth snapped shut. However, the comment had her hastily getting into her role.
Grabbing a few crackers from the plate in the middle of their game, she crunched them together, lay on her back, and sprinkled the crumbs over her torso.
The knocking stopped and the door creaked open an inch. “Hello, I’m coming in,” shouted Thrym on the other side. Romy rolled her eyes at the muffled snorting coming from Elara and Phobos. The door cracked an inch further. “It’s Thrym and I’m about to enter.” One more inch. “If I shouldn’t come in, now is a good time to let me know.” Another inch and he muttered, “Here goes nothing.”
As Thrym grew a pair and flung the door open, Romy let out a massive belch.
Thrym’s nose wrinkled as he looked at her. “Uh, hey. Tina said you guys would be in here. What’s up?” He closed the door behind him.
Romy sniffed loudly and rubbed her nose on the back of her hand, wiping it on her blue coveralls. “Playin’ poker,” she said in a deep voice.
“What’s wrong with them?” He jerked his thumb at Phobos and Elara.
Her eyes shifted to the couple. They were tangled around each other for support as their unsuccessfully stifled laughter echoed in the confines of the space. Atlas’s room was larger than most—him being the commander-general’s son—but it was still a rectangular and windowless underground bunker, with a sink, mirror and single bed.
“I just told a joke,” Romy lied.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. . . .” Please don’t ask me what it is. I’m never funny on purpose.
They stared at each other in silence and Romy’s heart sank as the quiet extended. There was this tiny thing with Thrym where they were technically programmed to want each other. It didn’t affect Romy anymore because, well, she’d gone a bit mental for a while. Her mind had obliterated the nano programming and controls placed inside her by the Mandate. Thrym, on the other hand, hadn’t gone mental. The urge for him to engage in . . . coitus . . . with Romy was still very much there—and very one-sided. For a long time, he hadn’t believed his feelings were fabricated by his nanos, and she strongly suspected he didn’t now, though he’d hidden his feelings since they’d made a friendship pact a month ago. It hurt Romy that he hurt inside. Thrym was a member of her knot, and that meant he was her family. She didn’t want him to be sad. That was why she sprinkled crumbs on herself and burped. It had to help, right?
“I got my injection,” he said, holding out his arm.
Thrym was the last member of her knot to get the ‘insanity cure’. Romy asked, “Charlee said everything was normal?”
When Houston betrayed the Amach and took the insanity cure with him, he hadn’t counted on Dr Charlee switching files on him, or that she’d be able to replicate the cure.
“As normal as Elara and Phobos,” Thrym announced.
His sky-blue eyes were piercing against his dark skin. Thrym was wide-shouldered, narrow-waisted, six foot, and everything a space soldier should be. He wore the same thing everyone here wore, dark blue coveralls with the word ‘Amach’ embroidered over the heart, but when Thrym wore it, he gave the impression the uniform meant more. Thrym had high standards, and expected everyone to strive for the same level. He’d always been ambitious, and sometimes that made him act like a jerk, but his heart was always in the right place underneath, and he wasn’t allowed to act like a jerk for
long, before Knot 27 slapped him back to normal. He spoke again. “I should be able to kill humans now without . . . uh. . . .”
Phobos had recovered, but stayed tangled up with Elara on the floor. “Buying a one-way ticket to a padded cell?”
He was answered with a faintly reproving expression from Thrym.
Romy belched again and scratched her butt. “Charlee will be happy the shot worked.” So was she. Now all of her knotmates were protected against the insanity trigger inserted in their nanos by the Mandate.
“Happy is an understatement,” Thrym said, selecting a cracker. “She burst into joyful tears when I didn’t—”
“Put the ‘raz’ in ‘crazy’?” Elara piped up.
Romy scrunched her nose. “I don’t think that one works. ‘Raz’ and ‘crazy’ sound different.”
“It works if I say it works.” Elara scowled.
Romy offered an indulgent smile and let her feisty sister have the win.
“We would’ve been in a pickle if Charlee hadn’t been able to replicate Houston’s work,” Phobos said.
They trailed into silence.
The quiet in the room deepened and an almost tangible sorrow thrummed in the room.
Elara sighed heavily. “I wish Dei—”
“Who wants to play another round?” Romy asked loudly.
The others blinked at her. Heat crept up her neck again.
“I do,” she announced, equally as loud. No way was she thinking about the ex-member of their knot. Traitorous meteor face, degenerate piece of poacher poop that he was. Deimos. She gritted her teeth, rolled over and knocked the plate of crackers aside, sending them scattering. Romy picked up the twigs. “Who wants a twig?” She glared at her knotmates. “I said, who wants a twig!”
Thrym started and quickly took a twig. Elara gave her a sad look with puppy-dog hazel eyes. Phobos avoided her gaze completely, but took a twig.
“Great,” Romy huffed. “We all have twigs.” She wouldn’t talk about Deimos. She hadn’t uttered his name since that night. The fifth member of Knot 27 made his choice when he tried to kidnap her on Houston’s order. By force. He wasn’t her brother any longer.
“What are you playing?” a voice asked behind them.
Phobos, who faced the door, was the only one who didn’t jump.
Romy eyed the steel door, certain it creaked every other time someone entered. Just not for the person who opened it now, apparently. She didn’t blame the door, though. Romy would stop creaking for the man there, too.
Atlas.
Her heart squeezed. The word meant so much to her. Atlas. There were a hundred different emotions it contained, and one hundred more experiences. It annoyed her to think when she said the word, no one else understood these complexities contained within. Atlas wasn’t just a word to her, or a name. It signified so much more than she could articulate.
“Poker,” Phobos answered as Romy continued to gape.
Atlas moved into the room and stood beside the spot where Romy sat. Elara was making faces at her from across the circle.
“What?” Romy mouthed at her.
Elara dropped her eyes to Romy’s chest, pointedly.
Huh? She glanced down and jerked at the sea of crumbs covering her chest and lap. A suspicious snorting sound came from Elara’s general direction as Romy did her best to get rid of the mess without Atlas noticing.
“Looks like you had trouble finding your mouth,” he said, crouching beside her.
She stilled and craned her neck to meet his grey gaze. He brushed a hand through her bristly hair. A few crumbs fell to the floor. Dammit. She’d only put them on her shirt, she was sure of it.
They stared at each other.
He’d been gone all day. Atlas coordinated the Amach attacks for this quarter of the northern hemisphere. Since a third of the Amach ditched them to join Houston’s new faction, he’d also been coordinating part of the southern hemisphere, too. Translation: She didn’t see him enough. More than that, she didn’t know when that would change. Things weren’t exactly looking up. Or even left and right.
Phobos’s dry voice interrupted their stare. “If she has any trouble finding her mouth next time, I’m sure you can help point it out. You seem to know exactly where it is.”
She shifted her eyes from Atlas’s arms in time to catch him looking at her lips. She couldn’t help giving a small smile, and glanced away to hide it, but was stopped by a finger on her chin. Atlas winked at her and bent down, placing his warm mouth on hers.
Bliss.
Her insides warmed as he lingered just a moment, then straightened. The kiss was bitterly short, but the perfect amount of sweet.
The eyes of her knot were fixed on them, and Romy gulped at their expressions. Happy, they were not.
“Something has happened,” Thrym said, giving Atlas a searching look. “What is it?”
Atlas gave him a brief glance and crossed the room to the sink, turning on the tap. “Summons to the Mess,” he said, splashing water on his face. Some ran down his neck and disappeared into the top of his black singlet. The black singlet and cargo pants were her favourite combination, though that was probably because that was all Atlas wore. He ran wet hands through his jet-black hair and over the nape of his neck.
“You’re licking your lips.” Elara’s voice whispered in her ear. Romy bit her tongue in fright and whacked the smaller woman.
“Ow!” Elara said.
“You snuck up on me.”
Her knotmate’s eyes flickered to Atlas and gleamed. “Only because you were about to lick At—”
Romy launched herself at the woman and threw a hand over her mouth. “Don’t say it,” she hushed in her ear.
“What will you give me?”
Romy considered it for a moment. “I’ll play with your hair two times, for ten minutes.”
“Five times, one hour.”
“Three times, half an hour,” Romy said in her no-nonsense voice.
Elara pondered this, then jerked her head, tapping Romy’s hand.
“What was that?” Atlas asked the boys behind them.
Thrym said, “From what we’ve observed in the past, it’s a kind of code. It appears to have a set of indiscriminate regulations you must possess female parts to decipher.”
Phobos grunted his agreement as Elara pulled him to his feet. “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Enough chit-chat. I swear that’s all guys do—gossip about this, nag about that. Come on, we’ve got a meeting to attend.”
Her knot filed out into the network of exposed-pipe concrete passageways that made up the Amach. Romy trailed behind, the warmth of Atlas at her back.
A tickling at her ear was all the alert she got before Atlas’s low voice spoke. “I’d hoped to get a private moment to speak to you beforehand.”
She half turned. “Why?”
He paused before replying, “Because there is about to be a big change.”
Others joined them in the passage, and he fell quiet.
Though Romy could never agree with Houston’s entire vision—to attain leadership of the world using whatever violence necessary—she could understand his frustration with the Amach’s slow progress in overthrowing the Mandate. For a long time, the Amach hadn’t made any real headway, and the time for something to happen was long overdue.
“Change is a good thing,” she whispered back to Atlas. Something had to change.
Thrym looked back to check that they still followed. She smiled at him and he faced forward again. They continued down the dimly lit concrete passage.
Atlas took a deep breath. “Change in the Amach, yes.”
“But?”
He replied, “What if it changes us?”
CHAPTER TWO
Romy squeezed through the two-thousand-strong crowd to stand between Thrym and Phobos near the front. People poured out of the asterisk of passages branching off the large mess room where they ate and gathered for announcements.
Thrym took one look at Romy’s fa
ce. “What happened?”
Atlas had just whispered the news in her ear, that was what, and Romy still hadn’t decided how she felt about it. She gave a terse shake of her head, ignoring the inquiring glances from Phobos and Elara. “You’ll find out soon enough.” There were too many people, and too close. The announcement had to be done properly.
The change was a good thing, a strategic move . . . but it felt like one more sacrifice on her part. Let’s take your memory, Romy. Let’s take your sanity, Romy. Let’s take someone you love, Romy.
“Your attention.” Gwenyth, Atlas’ mother and commander-general of the Amach, spoke into a microphone. The Mess quietened, a few stragglers whispering with their comrades in hushed tones. The feeling that something big was about to happen hung heavy in the air.
“One month ago, the Amach was attacked from the inside,” she started. “On the tail end of the most serious threat we’d ever faced, someone we thought we knew betrayed us, splitting off a large number of our force with false promises of change, welcoming in an army of alien invaders, and harming several of our own to get what he wanted.” Her eyes fell on someone in the crowd and Romy stood on tiptoe, spotting Dr Charlee.
“Watch out. Coming through,” someone said loudly at the back of the room. Gwenyth stopped talking. Voices rose in complaint at their backs.
“Move it!” the same person snarled.
A small, mahogany-haired woman shoved between two people in the row behind Knot 27 and gave Romy a scowling look. Romy returned the look with a smile.
“Tina,” she greeted.
The woman dug an elbow into Romy’s side to make her shift closer to Thrym and inserted herself in the gap. “Boy, it’s crowded in here. Are they serving hot dogs again?”
Tina seemed small, but she was made entirely of muscle, and while Romy had heard the human body was sixty per cent water, she imagined Tina was sixty per cent tequila and venom, instead.
“Whenever you’re ready, vice-commander,” Gwenyth said into the microphone.
Tina pursed her lips and readjusted her sports bra underneath her coveralls. After another quick once-over she called out, “Okay, I’m ready.”
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