He gave her a toothy grin. “Like she was told.”
“So what was that shape-shifter robot thing you used?” Allia said.
Toriko smirked widely. “Well, it was a gift from Maro. She ended up giving it to me before it was ready. I had to put the finishing touches on it. Of course, Eden gave me the ordinance for it.”
“It was awesome!” Allia said, jumping up and down. “Oh, when can I pilot it?”
“Um, that would be never,” Toriko joked.
“You was useful too,” Naijen said, looking back. “Kitty, claws.” He laughed and looked back out the window.
“That whole thing was crazy,” Cogeni said. “But those tactics you worked out were great!”
“We need better planning moving forward, but thank you,” Seigie said.
“I agree,” Eyani added. “Perhaps I could coordinate some training for you….”
Once they docked, while she walked with the team through the corridors of the Eden moonbase, Toriko crowed, “At least we captured one of those beasts—alive!”
“We were hoping for more information from that station,” Eyani added. “But right now I’m just glad everyone came back safely.”
“Maybe we can get more out of that creature,” Seigie said. “Especially since we have a resource that can go right into its mind.”
“Assumin’ it don’t melt our brains first,” Naijen scoffed.
Seigie glared at him. “You need a brain for him to do that.”
“Will Osuto be okay, Seigie?” Allia asked to distract her.
“He pushed too hard, but I’m sure he’ll be fine, child,” Seigie said.
Nikko turned to Mencari. “Are you okay, Rhysus?”
After a moment, he shook his head. “I guess, but … they just … left. No ‘thank you,’ no information, just took Anrik and disappeared—again!”
“It’s time for a visit,” Seigie said. “We talked about this before.”
He shook his head, affirming.
“I’ll take care of things here,” she said, and gave the rest of the group a stern look. “Along with some team training.”
* * * * *
“Mini-T will be with you all the way,” Toriko said while Mencari strapped into the pilot chair of his ship. “We’ll sit tight here at the moonbase.”
He smiled at the image, then at Mini-T floating next to him. “Thank you, Toriko.”
“Just be safe, okay?”
“Yeah, I will.”
“Okay then, Toriko out!” Her image burst into a million balls of light
“Ready to go?” Mini-T said.
After a nod, they were off.
With Mini-T at the helm, Mencari pondered his return. The Coalition. A place he’d not seen in a long time. With everything that happened in his life as a D’mok Warrior, the time when he called the Coalition home seemed like a lifetime ago. Things were so different back then. His deceased wife and son came to mind and he found himself playing with the ring on his finger. He smiled at the thought of his wedding day, followed by the birth of his little man. He missed them. Horribly. For the first time, their memory left a deep longing more so than pain; that shift was new.
Images from his nightmare darkened his thoughts. Flashes of moments stabbed like daggers into his mind, followed by the piercing, deep-green eyes of the sandy-haired boy. He shook his head, an attempt to dislodge them. A deep-seated anger sprouted within him.
Yes, mistakes were made. Yes, I failed many. Yes, I couldn’t save my family. Yes, I failed myself.
It was true, all of it. But there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could change. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He was done, over it.
A cool feeling, like a chilled breeze on a summer day, wafted over him. The very air seemed to get lighter, easier to breathe. A sense of something profound joined with a sense of being lifted.
A perfect stillness entered his mind. The quiet was bliss, but confused him. He was so used to being under siege that he found the calm eerie.
In that wondrous quiet, a realization came to him, an acknowledgement of how everything truly was over, done. He didn’t lament or fear his past, and the masochistic need for constant self-flagellation was gone. He didn’t want to beat himself up anymore. He had moved past it.
He envisioned Anaka and him, standing under the great oak tree in the only park of their Plutaran colony. It was their favorite place to go when they needed some quiet time. Anaka stood there, a light breeze ruffling her long jet-black hair. Her silent strength beamed in her smile.
His eyes fell to the ring on his hand. I loved you so much. But keeping this on doesn’t bring you back. It just binds me to the past. We wanted so much together, and we were so close to our dreams. But this isn’t what you would have wanted.
His hand trembled slightly as it fondled the ring one last time. A burning filled his eyes. It was time.
I love you.
He slipped the ring off, and stared at it. Flashbacks of the moment she put it on his finger ran through his mind. Her beautiful eyes had met his as it pushed into place. Neither had doubts about the other, or about their future together.
You will always be with me, Anaka. You and our little man.
He opened a compartment in the ship’s console and placed it inside. He couldn’t take his eyes off the tiny door as it closed tight. When he returned home to Osuto’s asteroid base, he’d put it with the picture of his family. Something inside begged him to retrieve the ring, but he didn’t.
In the stillness, exhaustion washed over him. Some rest would be nice.
“Mini-T, how long until we’re there?”
“We still have a few hours of travel.”
He nodded. “Good. I’m going to get some shut-eye.”
“I’ll take care of things! Sleep tight!”
* * * * *
“Rhysus, wake up! … Rhysus!”
“What?” He stretched, his limbs heavy and mind foggy.
“Rhysus, come on!”
He sat up, eyes attempting to focus. The space ahead looked blurry. “Uh, Mini-T? Did I fall asleep?”
“Yes, you were out for a few hours. There’s something out there.”
He scratched his head, and stretched with a yawn, then checked the navigational display. A pattern of energy swirled ahead.
“Where are we?”
“Well, Toriko reported her probe to the Drago Nebula wasn’t responding, and it was kind’a on our way so I thought I’d swing us by to pick up and relay the signals. But whatever that swirl is out there, it literally pulled us out of the tunnel,” Mini-T said, almost panicked. “I don’t like the readings either.”
“Then stop,” he said. “Why are we still moving toward it?”
“It’s not me. The thrusters aren’t responding. We’re drifting to it. And the closer we get, the more systems are failing. I can’t stop us!”
His protective golden glow appeared, unbidden. He looked down at his body in confusion.
“Environmental controls are off-line,” she cried as her projection began to glitch. “Oh no!”
Before his eyes, her body began to lose its shape. “I’m melting! Melting!”
A moment more, and her body became a virtual puddle of pixels, which sparkled, then disappeared. The monitors in the ship went dead.
He looked forward, at the distortion. It was a few thousand feet away now, but didn’t seem to be getting any nearer. This close, it didn’t look like a simple distortion; it looked more like a tear in space. Squinting, it appeared something floated within the anomaly, but couldn’t make out what.
Perhaps he could get out and push the ship back, out of the anomaly’s range. Then the ship’s systems might come back online. Then again, what was the thing?
He went to the aft airlock, and used the manual release. Floating gently into space, protected by his golden aura, he moved toward the anomaly. It was, as he’d thought, a rift in space. The walls within it were milky white that seemed to ch
urn with an ambient energy.
Within the rift, he saw what looked like a planet. How could that be? Floating to the side, he looked around the anomaly and saw empty space. Yet, when he looked through it, he clearly saw a planet.
He turned back for a look at his ship. It remained motionless, as if parked in space itself. Then he returned his gaze to the tunnel. What was that planet? It certainly wasn’t something usual. An idea occurred to him. Maybe he could check out the planet. After all, if he needed to, he could just fly back through the tunnel. His ship didn’t appear to be going anywhere anyway.
Osuto would warn him away from checking it out himself. Then again, anyone else who drew near would end up with a dead ship too. He needed to find out what this was one way or another.
Smiling, he realized he was filled with curiosity. Perhaps this urge to explore, to move forward, was a sign that he was, in fact, ready to move on from the past. His body radiated with golden light. In a flash he burst forward, streaking into the rift.
Epilogue
“Yer lookin’ rougher than usual,” the bartender said. When his patron didn’t reply, he joked, “Ohhhh, must be serious!” He tried to see what the man stared so intently at, but Jencho turned off his hand-display before he could. “Come on, ya never kept secrets before.”
Jencho’s free hand formed a tight fist. “You fool! I’ve never been here before!”
“True, true,” the bartender said as he turned and busied himself washing glasses.
Jencho gave a drunken shake of his head while he looked over the riffraff in the dark bar. Where’s Whemel? Maybe his transport’s late. This safety port, halfway between Tericn and Argosy, was as far as Jencho was willing to travel. Already scheduled to report to his superiors about what had happened on Tericn, he had to head back soon and try to explain the unexplainable. And most of all, to find a way to rationalize his failure in a way that wouldn’t end in his death.
A hand waved before his face. With difficulty, his eyes focused on rows of medals that danced on a maroon sash.
“Jencho, buddy, sorry I’m late. Couldn’t leave until old lady De’Genico reamed me out.” While speaking, Whemel plopped down on the stool next to Jencho and waved to the bartender. “Double zinger on the rocks—with a melo-ball.”
“You got it, 2x Zing, cold and glowin’,” the bartender called back, reaching for a bottle.
Whemel lowered his voice. “Had to promise the hag we’d get our gear out of Selsamed in two weeks. Just enough time to figure out what to do about her.” He paused and looked Jencho over. “Hey, you really look rough.”
“Think I heard that once today already.” Jencho sighed and looked down at the bar. “At least you’re able to go back to your assignment. Those Terconian version-rats really messed things up. I have dozens of customers to get research and components to. Now, I can’t get anything outta Bansa Corporation.”
He slammed a fist against the bar. “And I not only got Admiral Kiss-My-Ass chomping on mine, but that backstabbing Kajlit’ga too.”
“Kajlit’ga? What jurisdiction does she—?”
“Promoted. Our luck. Seems there was a sudden opening above her in the ranks. My buddies back at base, they’re crying foul, but there’s nothing they can do.”
Whemel gave a disgusted snort. “Great, just what we need, another ladder-climbing wing-nut at the top.”
Jencho’s communicator began to flash and vibrate. He fumbled the device from his belt and opened the channel. A hologram projected of a mass of auburn hair accompanied by a shrill alto voice that said, “Let me guess, you’re at some bar.”
The viewer adjusted to fit in the woman’s face and shrub of wiry auburn hair. “Ah, Whemel, you’re there too? No surprise.”
Jencho scowled. “I’m not in the mood for your gloating, so don’t start.”
Menla retorted, “I was just calling to give you my undying support. Promise. I wasn’t going to say anything about how well my crystal operation is going on Aeun, or how you got your butt kicked on the planet of the geeks, also known as Tericn, a.k.a. Murai Dome. No, I wasn’t even going to mention those things. At all.”
By now, Menla was cackling. Jencho contemplated cutting off the link, but didn’t, just allowed her image to look him over.
Her playful look became serious. “Hey, you really are off. Things that bad?”
Whemel replied for him. “Tericn is done. For now.”
Jencho gritted his teeth. “After that geek-girl’s friends exposed us, just about all our sources were tossed off the planet. The others are hiding, afraid to do anything. It’ll take forever to get things back the way we had it. And damn, was it good for a while. If only I’d gotten to the girl first….”
Menla narrowed her eyes at him. “Girl? What girl?”
He sighed. “The sister of one of my operatives. Well, ex-operative. Both of ’em technical whizzes.”
Menla smirked. “Just two? Thought all of Tericn was geek heaven.”
“Not like these two. They can pull off stuff our best minds’d take years to figure out.” A slow grin spread across his face. “It was fun watching them go at it. Here, watch this….”
He activated the portal player and ran through the last few minutes of a battle. The young woman’s holographic image whizzed around, taking down her sister’s inventions. The view panned across and showed a shot of a man battling alongside her. Menla gasped. “Wait! Freeze that! I’ve seen him!”
Jencho almost knocked the player off the bar as he worked to pause it. “Him who?”
Whemel looked with disbelief at the frozen image. “That guy in the back? Brown hair, two-toned jumper?”
Menla nodded with vigor, her mass of hair following a second behind.
Concern washed over Whemel’s face. “Hey, I’ve seen him, too! He was there when we found De’Genico’s boy on Argosy. He was just there.…”
Jencho’s head began to hurt. “How the hell is that possible? Aeun, Argosy, Tericn. Not exactly close to each other. Guy gets around. He have some kind of ‘in’ on our operations?”
“I was setting up shop on Aeun when I saw him,” Menla said. “He saw me too. Gave me a funny look, but didn’t cause any trouble. Though I did lose a few of my droids and an exploring pod around that time. Hmm …”
“Oh wait!” Whemel pulled a thumbnail-sized chip from his pocket and popped it into Jencho’s player, scanned through some files and pulled up a frame. He pointed to a blurry video. “Oh no. See that man in the two-toned jumper? How is this possible?”
Jencho nodded with worried eyes. “And that’s the girl—there, behind him.” He pointed.
“Got this from a subcommander buddy,” Whemel said. “Taken in a mine that was invaded a while back. One we … acquired recently.”
Jencho considered the implication. “What’s a geek doing on a mission like that? Her sister made her sound useless. Of course, that was proven wrong.”
“Come to think of it,” Whemel said, “De’Genico’s kid and his gal left with the same guy. The old stone-bag and those kids with him had some crazy abilities. Maybe he’s pulling together a group.”
“There’s a woman here with some type of gem abilities,” Menla said. “The townspeople call her Lady Weun. But he left her behind. Maybe she’s a fake?”
Jencho gave another boozy shake of his head. “Don’t like this. Everywhere we are, he shows up. We need to find this guy, do something about him. Somehow, he’s screwing us at every turn. Our big bosses won’t like that.”
Menla scoffed. “So how do we do that?”
“Lure him out,” Whemel said. “I mean, seems like he’s looking for people with certain abilities. Maybe create another person with the abilities he’s looking for, and feed it through the news channels?”
Menla shook her head. “You want some reporter to glom onto the story?”
Jencho’s eyes gleamed, and he felt himself sobering. “Don’t have to get that complicated. We don’t need to attract others, that could
follow a news posting.”
Menla and Whemel fixed him with curious gazes.
“Don’tcha see? The girl. The girl’s the key. Get to her, we’ll reel him in … and I think I know how.”
Whemel looked at Jencho, still confused. “Which girl?”
Jencho tapped the image on his display. “Toriko. Toriko Purg.”
Prologue
She paraded through the command deck, head held high, shoulders square. Her many medals of distinction rattled loudly from the sash draped across her chest. Anyone who dared look at her knew she was in charge. If they had a problem, her escorts, two hulking Grizel beasts, creatures of her own arcane design, would deal with them. Few challenged the rabid-looking, purple-furred behemoths and lived. Gifted with nature’s most fearsome defenses: serrated bony plates from its back and appendages, overgrown paws with retractable claws, and fanged snout evolved to tear flesh, even a heavily armed opponent wouldn’t last long.
Stopping before a shiny metal door, she saw her reflection and smiled.
Utter perfection.
With the exception of a slight wrinkle in her Nukari uniform, which she fixed with a quick tug, looking back at her was the epitome of her kind, and nearly the most decorated officer in the Nukari fleet. Her personal sense of style evolved the tired dress uniform beyond its stodgy roots. She was particularly proud of her short-cropped, aggressively jagged hairstyle, something traditionally worn by high-ranking men. Her menacing blood-orange locks furthered the hairstyle’s flair. She wore it better.
Completing her fierce look, two lip rings connected to elaborate earrings by hand-beaded strands of silver. The ornamentation was an heirloom passed down through the women of her line. Such things were once a long-standing tradition for Nukari, but had become passé. Keeping it alive set her apart from others, but also connected her to a long line of proud and powerful women. She held that bond sacred, something she planned to pass on to her future daughter.
But for now she wasn’t a mother; she was a conqueror. The weaker, less-evolved alien races were just the beginning. The real target was total domination of the chauvinistic, overly confident, and weak breed of man who led her people.
D'mok Revival: The Nukari Invasion Anthology Page 63
