Athena's Ashes

by Jamie Grey

  It missed, thudding into the wooden door beside his head. His finger tightened against the trigger, and Renna jumped out of the way as he fired. Her shoulder cracked as she tumbled toward the door to the warehouse, and her breath whooshed out in a rush of pain.

  Fuck.

  Renna’s right arm throbbed and burned as she scrambled to her feet. Across the room, Jayla struggled with the final guard, but the commander would have to fend for herself. Larson’s murderous expression sent shivers down Renna’s spine as he stalked toward her. She was going to need all her skills to take him down.

  Renna darted deeper into the warehouse toward the only furniture in the space—a heavy, metal desk. She slid behind it just as Larson marched through the door and quickly scanned the space. Light filtered in from windows high on the wall, driving away some of the gloom. Boxes were stacked in the far corner, but otherwise, the space was empty. Where the hell was the med team?

  “You can’t hide from me,” Major Larson called. “There’s nowhere to run.”

  “I don’t need to. You couldn’t hit the side of a transport ship with that thing.” Her bravado sounded false even to her, and she grimaced. Her arm throbbed in time with her head and she wanted to curl into a ball, but right now, that wasn’t going to happen.

  Shifting her weight, Renna clutched the gun even tighter. She straightened from her crouch, pointing it at Larson. “Drop the weapon.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “I admire your fight, thief, but you’re trapped. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Where are the MYTH soldiers?” she demanded. “Where’s Dr. Samil?”

  “Right where Pallas left them.” A smug smile split his face. “I can’t believe you fell for it. I didn’t think you were that stupid.”

  “Did you even consider we might have walked willingly into the trap?” she asked.

  The door beside him opened, and Larson glanced back, then saluted crisply. “So glad you could join us.”

  Renna’s gaze snapped to the figure standing beside him, and her arm lowered on its own account.

  FOURTEEN

  The very doctor Renna had trusted with her life stepped further into the warehouse, a soft smile on her face. “I’m glad to see I wasn’t wrong about you, Renna. Being here in person will make it so much easier to verify your death.”

  “Dr. Samil?” Renna’s words were barely a whisper.

  “Looks like the drugs haven’t worked quite yet, but that’s all right. I’m excited to study you as the change happens.” Samil’s expression was calm and friendly, like this was just another med visit.

  Renna’s right arm burned where she’d landed on it, her head felt like it was stuffed with shrapnel, and confusion twisted her insides so tight she thought she’d burst. “I don’t understand, Doctor. What are you doing here? Why are you working with these people?”

  “I’m not working with these people, dear. They work for me.”

  Major Larson saluted. “And it’s a pleasure, ma’am.”

  Samil smiled at him. “You’ve done well, Major. Now please wait at the ship. Renna and I have a few things to discuss.”

  Larson glared at Renna, but eventually nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Call me if anything changes.” He marched away through a side door, back ram-rod straight.

  But Renna barely noticed as the blood rushed to her head and she put out a hand to steady herself against the desk. “What are you saying?”

  Samil shook her head regretfully. “I suppose I should forgive you for not understanding. Those drugs I gave you actually sped up the process instead of slowing it down. I’m sure your brain feels like mush right now.”

  “You lying bitch,” Renna hissed.

  “I did what I had to do, dove. You should understand that.”

  Fear was an iron band around Renna’s lungs as she tried to suck in a breath. She’d never even seen this coming. It wasn’t possible.

  Dr. Samil was Pallas?

  “Why don’t you make this easy on both of us, Renna?”

  “You should know by now, the last thing I am is easy.” Renna tried to rotate her injured shoulder and winced as a flash of pain shot down her arm. “How about another way out of here?” she muttered to her implant. But of course there was no surge of knowledge, no indication the damn thing was even on.

  “Poor choice of words. Look, Renna, I don’t want to hurt you. I need your special physiology to finish my experiments. Let’s talk this through. We have a few more minutes before the MYTH bombers arrive on planet.”

  “And then we’ll all be dead,” Renna snapped. “I can live with that.” She pulled the chair out from the desk and sank into it. This was a fucking nightmare. The woman she’d thought was trying to save her had been behind Myka’s kidnapping, the hybrid army, even the experiments Navang had conducted on Renna. But why?

  “What do you want, Doctor? Or should I call you Pallas? Why are you doing this?”

  Samil brushed back her hair and glanced down at her watch. “I’m not sure we have time to do this now, and I don’t know that it really matters.”

  “It matters to me. If you’re going to turn me into a monster, don’t I at least deserve to know why?”

  The doctor sighed. “Very well. I joined MYTH ten years ago. I was young, just twenty-three, and terribly naive. When I got my first assignment, I was proud to be part of this organization, proud to help protect the galaxy. But after a few years, MYTH became too powerful, too corrupted, and they started using their own troops as experiments.”

  Samil’s face darkened. “When they destroyed the thing most important to me, I knew it was time to stop them. And you are the key to revolutionizing this organization once and for all.”

  Renna’s arm had begun to shake as she tried to hold her gun level with Samil’s chest. “If you think I’m going to help you, you’re sorely mistaken. MYTH knows about you, and we know how to stop you.”

  Samil chuckled and shook her head, her blonde hair grazing her shoulders. She looked so kind, so innocent. How could she be the one behind all of this?

  “Have you forgotten that ticking time bomb in your head?” Samil asked. “Besides, I’ve been working on this plan for almost five years. It’s flawless. When I’m done, MYTH will be destroyed, and the galaxy will be changed forever.” Her words rang with conviction.

  Great. Another fanatic.

  “Look, doc, I respect you,” Renna said, holding her hand out. “I even thought we were friends. Instead of going all vigilante on MYTH, why not just tell a reporter and have them do a smear story? You know how well that works on the politicians. Imagine the blow up with a government operation. They’d be shut down in seconds.”

  Samil shook her head, her pink sweater at odds with the ice in her voice. “I don’t want them shut down. I want to use them. But they must be cleansed first. And you’re part of that, dove.”

  “Hate to disappoint, but I have other plans.”

  “Not for much longer.” Samil pulled a small gun from her vest pocket and fired it at Renna before she could even blink.

  Renna gaped at the feathered needle sticking from her arm. “What the hell did you do?” Her fingers trembled as she ripped it away. For the first time since they’d arrived on this planet, the possibility she might fail hit her. Pallas would win, and they’d all die. Or worse.

  The gun was suddenly too heavy to hold, and she let it sink to the top of the desk. She’d wasted way too much time talking to this woman. She should have just shot first, but she’d wanted to understand Pallas’s motives. She’d needed to know why the woman was doing this. Renna gripped the edge of the desk as the room started to spin. Look where that had gotten her.

  “I need you alive, Renna. Your body is mutating Navang’s experiments in ways even Myka’s didn’t. You will be the lynchpin of my army.”

  “Army? We destroyed it with Navang’s facility.” The room was going gray around the edges, like fog rolling in, and Renna blinked furiously to clear her vision.
r />   “You didn’t think that was the only facility I used to produce my army, did you?” Samil laughed, loud and girlishly high.

  Renna clutched the edge of the desk even harder as her whole body started to tremble. “I should have guessed.”

  “Yes, you really should have.” Samil took another step closer. “Give in, dove. There’s no need for heroics. I don’t plan on killing you.”

  “Stay where you are.” Renna tried to raise her gun again, but her arm wouldn’t obey.

  “Another minute now and you’ll be out. You and I will disappear, and when MYTH finds the charred remains of my team, unidentifiable because of the bombs, poor Major Dallas will assume you’re among them.” Samil gestured to the back of the warehouse.

  Renna’s gaze followed the woman’s finger to the heap of bodies piled in the shadowy corner. All wearing gray MYTH uniforms. “You killed them,” she whispered, pressing a hand to her lips.

  As she watched, a trail of crimson blood snaked from the shadows toward Renna. It trickled across the pavement at first, gaining speed as it flowed through the warehouse. Her eyes widened as the thick blood flowed faster, picking up pace as it turned into a river of death. Headed directly for her.

  Renna jumped to her feet and lurched away from the oncoming storm. Samil dashed forward to grab Renna’s arm, but she wrenched away from the doctor. Renna stumbled, her foot slipping in the viscous liquid, and she landed on her ass with a jarring thud.

  “I’m gonna…killlll…” Renna’s words slurred as her mouth filled with cotton wool, and she tried to swallow.

  Godsdammit.

  Terror surged through her in one last burst of mind-clearing adrenaline, and she scrambled to her feet. She threw herself at Samil, her left fist connecting with the woman’s jaw. With Renna’s momentum, the two women landed in a heap on the floor.

  Samil screamed as blood streamed from her nose, and the door behind them slammed open, two more guards surging into the room. As they crossed the threshold, Commander Jayla jumped from somewhere behind them, cracking the butt of her pistol against one of the men’s skulls.

  He went down like a ton of rocks, and Jayla pointed her gun at the other. “Don’t move, asshole.”

  The doctor scrambled to her feet and raised her own gun at Jayla. “I’m sorry you got involved, Commander. You’ve never been part of this plan. You were one of the good ones.”

  Renna blinked up from her position on the floor as the whole room spun drunkenly.

  Samil’s grip tightened on her gun and Renna opened her mouth to scream a warning at the commander, but her lips didn’t move.

  Samil fired off a tranq shot, hitting Jayla in the neck.

  Jayla furrowed her eyebrows. “Dr. Samil? What are you doing?”

  Before the doctor could respond, a low vibration filled the air, growing louder. “Looks like I’m out of time. Come along, Renna. We have an appointment with a medical facility far from here.”

  Jayla dropped to her knees with a thud. Her gaze met Renna’s across the room. Terror had stretched her features into a stiff mask.

  “I’m sorry,” the commander whispered before she toppled to her side, unconscious.

  The throbbing grew louder as the ship approached the bunker, and Samil hooked her hands under Renna’s armpits and pulled her toward the door.

  “Damn, you’re heavier than you look,” she muttered.

  Renna glared or, at least, tried to. Her muscles just wouldn’t respond. Maybe there was some way to slow the doctor down so she was caught in the bomb blast as well. She’d sacrifice herself if it meant stopping Pallas for good.

  Renna’s eyes had turned to sand, her eyelids growing heavier by the second, but she forced them to stay open, to stay focused. She was not going out like this. There had to be some way to fight it. Coldness seeped through her limbs. She would have liked to have said goodbye to Finn. To see him one last time. But this way he’d be safe. He’d get over her.

  The doctor hit a rough patch on the floor, jarring Renna, and she gasped as fire shot through her bad shoulder. The pain cleared her mind for a split second.

  Her holo interface blipped into focus. Maybe her implant had reset. Maybe she could use it against Samil. Another bump and the heads-up display flickered off. Shit.

  Renna fought for consciousness and for control of the implant. At the next bump, the display slid into focus. Something low and insistent blinked behind her left eye, and she forced herself to read the letters. It felt like trying to decipher an alien language, but eventually she got it.

  The approaching ship wasn’t the MYTH bomber.

  It was Lieutenant Blake and the Eris.

  FIFTEEN

  “Let the drugs take you, Renna. You won’t feel a thing.” Samil smiled down at her, then pressed a finger to her ear communicator. “Larson, I need someone in here now! We need to evacuate.” Samil paused, a frown marring her pretty features. “Where the hell is everyone?”

  The door slammed open, and Blake stood there, his blaster aimed at Samil’s heart. His blond hair was disheveled, and with his brown eyes flashing, he looked like some kind of avenging angel.

  “Dr. Samil? What are you doing?” Confusion furrowed his eyebrows as he glanced at Renna and the commander both motionless on the ground.

  “Oh thank god, Lieutenant,” Samil said, her voice going soft and trembling. “Larson tried to kill them. We have to get help.”

  “I can radio MYTH. They’ll stop the bombers if they know we’re here.” Blake lowered his gun and pressed a finger to his comm unit.

  “Good idea. I’m going to go get my med kit. I’ll be right back.”

  Renna tried to thrash and scream, to warn Blake, but her whole body felt like it was coated in cement. Things were getting dimmer by the second.

  “This isn’t over, Renna,” Samil whispered, before darting away through the open door.

  Renna gasped for breath, the words echoing over and over in her mind.

  Pallas. Dr. Samil had escaped.

  Blake crouched beside her and placed two cool fingers against her neck to check her pulse. “Hang in there, Renna. Help’s on the way.”

  She felt her eyelids grow heavy, and he shook her shoulder. “Stay awake. You don’t need any beauty sleep. You’re gorgeous enough already.”

  Blake spotted the feathered needle beside Renna and picked it up to study. His long fingers dwarfed the tiny barb. “Shit, that’s a Marko tranq. Takes at least twelve hours to wear off.” He stood to search the warehouse. “Where the hell did this come from, and where the hell is Dr. Samil?”

  Renna tried to answer, tried to break free of the drug trapping her mind. She gasped for air, ordering her arm to move.

  And then everything went dark as the tranq took over.

  Cold. She was so cold.

  The air felt strange—heavy somehow. As if a piece of metal mesh was draped over her like a blanket. Slowly, her vision cleared and she blinked at the lights glowing brightly in a ship’s corridor.

  A happy sigh escaped Renna’s lips. She was back on the Athena. The familiar walls and controls of the CIC surrounded her and the tension slipped from her muscles.

  Lieutenant Keva sat at her station, busily scanning the sector displayed on her holomonitor. Viktis stood behind her, peering over her shoulder at the screen.

  “Looks all clear,” he said. “I think we should have a safe run through the system. Once we get to the nav point, switch over to the hyperdrive and follow those coordinates.”

  Keva nodded, the bun of silver hair on the top of her head swaying slightly. “Kojima said the stealth system was working again. Gheewala was able to reprogram it on the new frequency.”

  “Good, we’re going to need it to get in and out of that system without MYTH detecting us.”

  Keva’s already thin lips all but disappeared as she frowned. “I hate this.”

  “I know,” Viktis said, squeezing her shoulder. His hand lingered a bit longer than was acceptable. “But Renna�
��s working on it. You’ll be back in the fold in no time. I’m sure of it.”

  Keva jumped as Finn’s heavy boots sounded on the stairs to the CIC, and Viktis dropped his hand.

  “Status report,” Finn ordered, his impatient gaze raking over the crew.

  The lieutenant scrambled to pull up the information on her console. “We’re approaching the Leporis system. Viktis thinks we can get through without anyone the wiser if we use our stealth drive.”

  “Do it.” Finn turned to Viktis. “Any word from Renna?”

  The alien shook his head, the sharp planes of his face deepening. “Not yet. It’s only been two weeks, Finn. Give our girl some time.”

  A muscle jumped in the captain’s jaw as if he wanted to snap at the Ileth, but he turned away. “I want to know the instant you hear anything.”

  Viktis clapped a hand on Finn’s back. “Look, Cap. We’re all worried about her, but you know Renna can take care of herself. She’s fine.”

  “I’m not so sure. I’ve had Gheewala scanning the frequencies for MYTH transmissions. The base on Titus Beta was hit.”

  Viktis’s amber skin paled. “Pallas.”

  Finn nodded. “That’s what I’m afraid of. But I don’t know if that’s where they took Renna or if she was even still there. What if her cover’s blown already? What if she’s dead?” He stared off over the CIC, clearly caught in some nightmare in his own mind.

  “Renna’s smart. She knew the risks.” Viktis glanced at Finn from the corner of his eye. “And she’s too stubborn to be dead. I’ve seen her get out of worse spots than this.”

  Deep lines were etched into the space between Finn’s eyebrows as he scowled. “We all knew the risks. Doesn’t mean I like them.” He turned and started back down the stairs. “I’ll be in my quarters. I want to know the second anything changes.”

  Keva and Viktis exchanged worried glances.

  “He hasn’t been the same since we left Forever Station,” the lieutenant said. “I don’t know what to do to help him.”