Rebirth (Cross Book 1)

by Hildred Billings

  “Ah, Commander…d’Halara, is it?”

  “Yes, sir, Commander Ethanius d’Halara, of Terra III’s Intergalactic Division. I’m sure you know why I am here.”

  “Because of Earth’s impending doom?”

  “News is blowing up across the Federation that it’s almost the end for Earth. Yet another planet to add to your list.” The commander locked his hands behind his back and stared at the dog beneath Marlow’s desk.

  “My list?”

  “Of failed operatives, of course. Master Marlow…”

  “Just Marlow is fine.”

  “…You’ve taken it upon yourself this past millennium to employ your own personnel to bring your old partner down, but a millennium is too long, and the universe has already lost ninety-eight other fine cosmic bodies, most of which contained sentient life on them. How many dead is that now, Ulgander?”

  The female of the trio held up a tablet to her face. “Over ten-trillion dead, Commander.”

  “And adding the six-billion of Earth pushes that number to over eleven-trillion. That’s eleven-trillion souls that will be on your hands, Master Marlow. As a julah, you should be able to appreciate such a grievous number.”

  “I fail to see what this has to do with me.”

  “He is attacking the Federation now, and he is escalating. Next planet targeted could be Terra III for all we know.”

  “And?”

  Commander d’Halara bent down to meet Marlow. “We won’t work with you then.”

  “Somehow I doubt you’ll work with me at all at this rate. You don’t work with me now.”

  “How can we when you don’t even let us know when you’ve found him again? This whole ordeal is ridiculous, Master Marlow. People are dying, planets and moons are disappearing, and all you can do is send the same two imbeciles in every time to do our work.”

  “You and your fellow Federation soldiers don’t have the means to fight a force like him.”

  “Oh? And two mercenary has-beens from a dead planet are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Preposterous.” Commander d’Halara turned on Marlow and knocked Evan over again. “I listened to your conversation earlier and heard that one of our ‘great hopes’ sold out to Nerilis Dunsman. Pretty soon we’ll have to halt our efforts in retrieving our Federation citizens from Earth if we don’t want our ships caught up in the destruction. I pity how my fellow soldiers will feel when they learn certain friends and loved ones are now no more.”

  Before the commander and his mini-entourage could walk off into the interdimensional night, Marlow gritted his teeth and stood on his shaky legs. “Tell them that they should be comforted that those souls will return to the Void, and that one day they will meet them there. We all end up there one day, Commander.”

  The commander signaled his companions to go on ahead without him. “Even old wizards who are way beyond their use now?”

  Marlow knew better than to respond with anything less than professional tact. “Yes, even me, one day.”

  “Well, then…” Commander d’Halara straightened out his jacket, “I suppose that this is a case of some people ‘going to the Void’ years before they’re supposed to. Good day, sir.”

  Charlie continued to growl even after the commander and his followers were gone. When they were gone, however, he finally crawled out from beneath the desk and went to beg at Evan’s feet. “Boss? What are we gonna do?”

  Marlow reverted his attention to Evan with a pale complexion. “There’s nothing we can do now, Evan. You’re new to this, but now we sit and wait. Either they will fail and Earth will be destroyed, or...”

  “He took the Relic, Boss. Doesn’t that mean he’s turned traitor?”

  There was common word in the old wars ravaging the Federation and its enemies a thousand years before. A piece of slang, for even the formal word still somehow conveyed a sense of honor in what the accused did. But in those times of double-crossed fighting, aborted missions, and the behind-back hiring of dirty mercenaries, there was one word used when there was no honor, hope, or even retribution.

  Marlow mouthed the word maita, testing it against Sonall’s character. Mercenaries took turning on their hired side seriously, and the only thing more heinous was going against the greater tribe, who all depended on each other to keep secrets and protect one another. When Marlow considered the current set-up of two mercenaries, a mad man, a hired criminal, and the identity of a fifth individual he could barely figure out… was it possible Sonall could become a dishonorable traitor? In the end, all Marlow could do was laugh, much to Evan’s frightened confusion – the tribe came before the mission, no matter what other code those old mercenaries tried to tout about hostage negotiations and inevitable friendly fire.

  It would always remain the same. Sonall and Sulim, regardless of their bigger mission, were indebted, and would always put each other above what they were hired to do. Sonall was no traitor. And, Marlow mused, neither was his chief.

  ***

  All Danielle cared about was the throbbing headache in her skull and the tingling pricks of hell as the nerves in her body awakened. Saliva was trapped in her windpipe. She fell into a huddled mass of wheezing as her abdomen convulsed. Sweat beaded down her skin and blood pierced her chapped lips.

  “God, where am I?” Drab gray walls surrounded her, and unused boxes littered the dirty floor. It took a whole minute for her to remember this was not a military training exercise. She was a prisoner of the enemy. She would rather have the training exercise.

  “You’re awake already?” Syrfila stared at Danielle’s pallor face from the other side of the small room. “That serum didn’t last very long. You’re tough, huh?”

  “You…”

  Syrfila pulled out her pocketknife. “Yup. Me.”

  “Syrfila!”

  The sound of Nerilis’s voice was the last thing Syrfila wanted to hear, but she knew better than to disobey a command to come. She straightened out her jacket, flattened her hair, cleared her throat, and walked down a few hallways.

  She entered the meeting room with a sour face, hands crammed into her pockets and nose pointed to the ground. There were few people in the entire universe who could make Syrfila tremble. Nerilis Dunsman was the master of them.

  When her back was turned, the other door opened. The outline of Nerilis’s thin face jutted into the dim light of the room. He removed his glasses and stared at Syrfila through sharp eyes that reflected every soul he yanked from the galaxy.

  “Do you know why I called you?”

  She licked her lips and pushed a gulp down her throat. “If this is about the other Relic and the Third Piece, I promise they’re en route right now…”

  “No, Syrfila. This is about your role here.”

  The gulp made its way down. “Oh. Oh.”

  “The world is about to end soon. I hope you’re not attached to anything on Earth.”

  Syrfila shook her head. “Nope. Not at all. In fact, I would be quite happy to move on to another colony…”

  “I see. I wish you the best of luck in finding a way off this planet. I’m not going to help you with that.”

  The words Syrfila dreaded had come forth. Hadn’t she been warned about this? By Miranda, who knew this man almost as well as Ramaron Marlow did? “But I don’t have a ship anymore. I had to get rid of it when I came to this planet! Sold it for parts to some other criminals laying low here.” She laughed, nerves still shaking even as the quaint memory from thirty years before came back to her. “Got a lot of money for it… it was a Federation military ship that I stole when I escaped custody… custody I was put into because of you.”

  “That’s most unfortunate, but I don’t recall ever asking you to do my work on another planet. I appreciate what you’ve done for me here, regardless of how much you cost and how obnoxious it was to keep cowboys and grunts off your scent, but I don’t owe anything to you going forward. You can leave if you want.”

  Of all the times when Syrfil
a felt like her life was in imminent danger, there were two occasions when she could not find a solution – the first was when she was a child and a man beat her within an inch of her life, and the second was when she was taken into custody by the Federation military and sentenced to death for her crimes. She was in such a situation again, trapped on a lonely planet in the backwaters of the universe with no way to get off before it ceased to exist. Even if she could find one of her old contacts and get a ship in time, it did not guarantee said contact would not immediately turn her over to the nearest military base to collect the hefty bounty on her head. “But you’re a sorcerer, right? Just magic me away!”

  “I can’t do that without properly enchanting an object, and that could take me days. No time.”

  “Well…then…” Syrfila’s voice escalated. “Just take me with you, then!”

  He jerked his head to the side. “I let no one follow me. As nice as it would be to have you work for me again… this is where we part ways.”

  In a fit of fear, Syrfila bartered with one last chip. “What about Miranda, huh? You gonna let her rot here, too? Your own fucking daughter?”

  He strode to the door behind him. “That’s the course she’s set for herself.”

  “I don’t get you!” Syrfila pursued him, always one step behind. “You’re all either killing random people or punishing yourselves! At least I kill because I’m being paid to! I don’t know what your problem is.”

  “Perhaps you will only understand,” Nerilis mumbled in adieu, “when you are dead.”

  He was gone.

  Syrfila’s next lonely minute consisted of planting her face in her hand, dry heaving, and feeling the insurmountable denial cascading through her body. How could she be surprised that this was her end? Trapped on a colonial planet without decent drugs to get her by, and nobody but one self-harming wretch of a woman to talk to about what existed in the cosmos and beyond. She would have been better off fending for herself than under the protection of Nerilis, only for that protection to end with the world that was her cage.

  But the end had not yet arrived. She still had her bait, and she still had remaining hours until the final pieces would arrive to bring about the end.

  The hollow, blind hatred so often seething through her veins returned, collapsing her judgment. Syrfila pulled out her pocket knife.

  Her march down the hall echoed through every nearby corridor and vibrated every crate and loose wire keeping the place together. She threw open the door to the small storage room and addressed the bedraggled woman before her.

  Danielle lifted her head. A gasp strangled her throat, but she didn’t have the breath to push it out. What was the point, when whatever Syrfila was going to do would come whether Danielle screamed or not?

  “You…” Syrfila pointed the edge of the blade at the head of blond hair cowering beneath her gaze. “You! Who are you?”

  She slapped her hand near Danielle’s right ear. The pocketknife grazed her speckled face, like a feather tracing the corners of its lover’s complexion. Yet the threat hanging behind the handle of the knife was neither loving nor docile. Syrfila stabbed the chair.

  “You’re nobody, you know that?” She lowered her lips to Danielle’s ears. “You’re a scared little girl on the verge of death again.” She clicked her tongue as tears forced their way down Danielle’s cheeks. “Oh, don’t worry. I just found out that we’re actually still on Earth… when you die, everything will happen to you as it’s supposed to… as for me?” Syrfila scoffed.

  Danielle bit her lip to stifle another embarrassing sob. When Syrfila arrived, every wall Danielle built around her nerves crumbled into a million pieces.

  Syrfila put her pocketknife away and withdraw a cigarette before straddling Danielle’s lap. A plume of black smoke blew into the prisoner’s face, making her uncontrollably cough.

  “Why am I not surprised that you’re not a smoker?” Syrfila grumbled. “Such a goddamned uppity bitch. You think you’re better than everyone else? Let me guess. You only drink socially, you’ve never done drugs, and you have safe sex with those who mean something to you. How droll.”

  Danielle did not react how Syrfila wanted. Another method of intimidation was necessary. “You know, when that little fancy girl was in my home a couple weeks ago,” she began, “I had her tied up just like this.” She traced the lines of Danielle’s ropes, sure to stop wherever they overlapped across her bound chest. “She was so pretty. So clean. So scared. That’s when they’re the best, the ripest.”

  Danielle did not meet Syrfila’s gaze.

  “I threatened to do everything to her. Shoot her, cut her. I wanted to leave my mark on her somehow.” Syrfila exhaled another trail of smoke, tapped the ashes onto the floor, and stared at the possible targets before her. Cheek. Arm. Thigh. Breast. “I did do one thing. Something that will always be a part of her, whether the world ends or not. You know what that was?” She pulled down the neckline of Danielle’s shirt and lowered her lips to her hostage’s ear. “I branded her.”

  The heat of the cigarette was enough to burn Danielle’s unmarred skin. Yet no matter how much she struggled, she could not escape when tied so tightly to the chair.

  “You know why I did that? Because she used to be yours. And I hate anything you think is yours.”

  Danielle was too caught off guard by that sentiment to hold back her thoughts. “What are you talking about?”

  The cigarette was only an extra push away from becoming a part of Danielle’s skin. “I want to destroy you. I want to make you feel so much pain that you end up begging for death as the world echoes its last rites around you. I want to make you and everyone who loves you suffer, like I have suffered.”

  “I didn’t do anything to you!”

  Such tenacity! “Stop. You’re too much.” She smoked the cigarette. “I want to do something else with you.” She locked her poisoned lips upon her captive’s.

  She breathed the remaining smoke into Danielle’s lungs, causing her to retch and jerk the chair around as her body fought for breath.

  Danielle waited until her lips were engulfed before chomping her teeth down and nearly ripping Syrfila’s tongue out of her mouth. She cried out and leaped back, a small trickle of blood creeping through her lips.

  Danielle could only laugh at her. “Fine. Do whatever you want to me. Stab me. Cut me. Shoot me. Pry my fingers off one by one! And I won’t care at all! You know why?” The world spun. Danielle pressed on. “Because once you kill me, or the Earth kills me, or something else kills me, I’ll move the fuck on and never remember this or you, again. I get that peace! It’s the best part of this whole ordeal! Forgetting everything!”

  Syrfila stared at her in shock for a moment. The pocketknife came alive in her hand.As Syrfila slapped Danielle across the cheek and launched upon her like a pack of vicious dogs, Danielle closed her eyes and wished for some dark, calming death to wash over her. She could bleed forever, or cry from the pain, but she would never give Syrfila the satisfaction of remembering her in her next life. Somewhere inside the parts of her mind still alive, she wondered if this was what kept Miranda living through the years of Syrfila’s so-called companionship.

  She wondered why she thought of Miranda at all.

  ***

  Miranda lifted her head at the first sound of distress. A stifled scream permeated the air, bringing her out of her trance and sending her into the corridor.

  Another sob, followed by a slap and a curse, as familiar as a mother’s call, made Miranda freeze in her steps. With widening eyes, she pressed herself against the wall and stole a glance into the storeroom. Inside was something disgusting enough to make anyone nauseous.

  Miranda’s heart was on fire as she pulled out her phone and texted Syrfila. “Why are you playing with her when you could play with me?” Her fumbling fingers made so many mistakes that she barely recognized the words until she corrected them. So much lost time. “I’m waiting for you in the other room.”

&nb
sp; She flittered back down the hall, anxious to get away from the sounds of Danielle’s pain.The crying stopped. Miranda found a mirror and combed her fingers through her hair, smoothed her clothing, and undid the top two buttons of her blouse. Yelling now traversed the corridor. Miranda figured she had another ten seconds before Syrfila burst through the door.

  “This had better be fucking good!” Syrfila’s bellowing voice slid through the door before her arrival. Her cheeks flushed red. Her hand clasped the pocket knife. “Where are you?”

  Miranda kicked the door shut, bringing Syrfila’s hazardous attention to her. “Oh, I’ve been waiting for you.” Even though fear swelled inside Miranda’s throat, her cheeky smile aided her in duping Syrfila. “I’m surprised you weren’t looking for me.”

  Syrfila relaxed her shoulders. “I had things I wanted to take care of.”

  Miranda clicked her tongue. “Is that so? I’m surprised, honestly. This could be our last day alive and you want to play games… with another woman…” She batted her heavy eyelashes.

  “What are you getting at?”

  Realizing Syrfila was still too hot in the head to think of the sensual side of sex, Miranda eased toward her, sure to swing her hips with taunting grace and biting her lip in anticipation. “I know you like blonds, but you make me jealous.”

  She was lucky Syrfila was not the brightest when it came to seduction. Miranda figured she could not tell the difference between pornographic sex and love making.

  “So, what you’re saying is…”

  “Wouldn’t you rather spend this time with someone who wants to spend it with you?”

  Not the first time in her life Miranda offered herself so Syrfila would not do something they would both regret. She closed her eyes and let the putrid woman on top of her. She had ridden out the end of the world in worse ways. Saving someone else the pain and crazed actions of an abomination wasn’t so bad.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  An almost inaudible cell phone ring was what brought Devon out of his doze. He jerked himself awake again, hand reaching for his back pocket and withdrawing the small phone. An unknown caller awaited, turning the pit of his stomach sour.