Unsanctioned Reprisal

by Eddie R. Hicks

  She interacted with the computer and found his answer. A video loaded depicting Alesyna being dragged away from battle at the starport landing platform, with a slave collar on, suppressing her psionic powers. Newer models, to his understanding, could force one’s HNI’s to deactivate, which would explain why she didn’t call for help, and why he couldn’t reach her. The transport he came down to the surface with was in the background of the video, as was Moe’s red-drenched body lying in a pool of his own blood.

  She was attacked when she teleported down, then was promptly incapacitated by the looks.

  “Durendal knows how to handle himself against psionics,” Sarah said. “Hell, I do as well, it’s a critical part of EDF training. Factor in the MRF our suits have and yea, Alesyna didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Excellent, we now have a means of escape,” Peiun said.

  “If we can get to her, I can’t find anything else here that would indicate where they took her.”

  “Perhaps they—”

  His HNI automatically picked up an incoming transmission, one he couldn’t shut down. It caused him to stand straight, panicking in attempt to figure out why his implants were operating in that manner. The holographic face of a woman appeared over his eyesight. It was the silver-haired women he encountered on the station.

  “Hello, Captain Peiun. You don’t know me, but I know quite a bit about you. Right now, you need to follow my instructions exactly and quickly. Your life is in danger.”

  Peiun hissed loudly. “You!”

  “What’s up?” Sarah asked him, facing away from the holo screen.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, did I interrupt something?” The silver-haired woman said. She gasped as Sarah’s nude body stepped forward curious to know why he made that outburst. “Oh, my, I am.”

  He faced away from her and ended up facing a wall mirror. It didn’t help. The silver-haired woman still saw Sarah, and now his exposed body. She flushed a little.

  “My HNI is being hacked, Sarah . . .” Peiun said.

  “By who?”

  “Oh blast, I’ll enlarge; I was never a fan of the telephone game,” said the silver-haired woman.

  The projection over his eyes vanished, replaced with a life-sized hologram of the woman, now standing with Peiun and Sarah. The two rushed to get dressed. The woman laughed.

  “Name’s Diamondrose, Penelope Diamondrose,” her hologram said.

  “This your girlfriend?” Sarah asked, slipping into her undergarments.

  Peiun got back into his pants. “Absolutely not, she’s from Maraschino.”

  “Good, cause I’m no good at explaining myself to jealous women,” Sarah said, then slipped into a pair of pants and a top stolen from Cody’s bedroom. “Wait . . . Maraschino?”

  “Ah . . . I recognize you from my hacked files,” Penelope said. “Gemini-S, Sarah Vaughan, Chloe’s younger sister, this is good. But first things first, as I said, EISS is moving in on your location, you need to take cover now!”

  “How much time do we have?”

  The power shut off, taking with it the lights they two left on in the kitchen. Sarah quickly unplugged the data crystal slipping it into her pockets. The feeling of weightlessness flooded the apartment suite, making the two along with all furniture and Cody’s body to float about.

  “Never mind, we figured it out.”

  No gravity in a room located on the surface of a planet. It seemed crazy to Peiun, until he remembered how gravity worked for this city. Antigravity generators cancelled the planet’s natural gravity while artificial ones replaced it with Earth-like gravity. Someone killed the artificial gravity under the apartment, while leaving the antigravity active. Tactically, it was a smart move. The two weren’t prepared for the loss of gravity and losing the ability to run for cover as projectiles from the outside shot through the walls and windows, raining into the room.

  “I’d love to assist, but EISS just rebooted their network and updated their encryption,” Penelope said, while the two drifted aimlessly avoiding the weapons barrage. “I can only give you moral support, and the reassurance that we’re doing what we can to get there quickly.”

  “Well, that’s just great!” Sarah exclaimed.

  “For what it’s worth, before I was kicked out, I discovered another target moving to your location fast,” Penelope said. “I’m assuming its backup for them, you two need to move it.”

  The barrage of projectiles from the outside didn’t stop. The situation was akin to the one he found himself in upon landing, in which the transport was filled with holes fired from magnetic rifles. Pushing off the floors to gain momentum, then off the ceilings had to make do. Furniture hit by the bullet storm came spiraling over to the two. The impact pushed them backward.

  There was a break in the assault that left the zero-g room littered with shrapnel, shattered glass from the window, and white stuffing from inside the couch. Bright light from Morutrin’s golden glow in the daytime skies beamed in—the rainstorm had long cleared out. Peiun’s sensitive Hashmedai eyes were forced shut. The imagery from the light was burned into his retinas.

  A second barrage ensued. There was nothing he could do to defend against it. The sunlight was blinding, and the floating debris and furniture only made it harder to navigate through the weightlessness.

  One round ripped a hole through his arm, orbs of Hashmedai blood jetted out from the exit wound, the force of the projectile sent his body spiraling. Sarah screamed ten seconds into the second barrage, forcing him to open his eyes and endure the pain the sunlight gave it and possible eye damage. Like him, red orbs leaked out from a hole that entered her stomach and exited her back. Her body hit the wall and her hands came to rest upon the gap in her belly, desperately trying to keep the blood inside. It was futile effort, weightlessness changed the rules for bleeds.

  “Sarah!”

  “Ah, fuck, fuck, fuck . . .”

  Ignoring the pain and the massive loss of blood, he grabbed onto the body of Cody, and forced it to float up to the living room windows. The body lost its left foot, while its right arm was severed at the elbow by the ultra-high-velocity projectiles shredding it apart. A third barrage entered the room as a result. Peiun had to shield his burning eyes from the light and hope he didn’t drift into the line of fire.

  Sarah and Peiun would have to avoid the windows where they could be seen from the gunmen outside, likely standing on top of the adjacent apartment buildings. When he was ready, Peiun peeked up at the shredded body of Cody being orbited by thousands of red shiny globes and butchered limbs removed from his body. The corpse continued to float and bounce in front of the windows, without a head. That had exploded into chunks of meat and bone. No further projectiles were fired. The attackers knew that shooting a dead body was pointless.

  Everything in the room had weight again and came crashing to the floor, Peiun and Sarah were no exception. They made a loud thump, while the orbed blood fell with multiple splattering sounds, coating the floor and overturned furniture with a mixture of human and Hashmedai blood. Peiun landed arm-first from the ceiling, the impact amplified the pain in his other that had the high velocity round make a perfectly circular hole through it.

  The arm he fell on refused to move. His HNI sent a report to his eyes, reporting it had been broken. It took him a while to make out what the report said due to the blotches in his eyesight, created by the light. Sarah’s screams and curses took him away from the HNI report. He went to search for her amongst the chaos, keeping prone on the floor to avoid being detected from the many shattered windows spilling in their painfully blinding light.

  He turned over her blood-drenched body. Upon a closer look it was Cody, Sarah was two meters away, next to the wall she crashed into. His eyes were far from recovery.

  “Gravity is back,” he said.

  “I’ve noticed,” she said drily.

  “They must think his body was one of us.”

  “Great, so that means they’re coming to confirm the kill.�
� Sarah’s head tilted to the side, her eyes locked onto her fallen pistol. She tried reaching for it. At least he thought that’s what she was doing. “Oh, shit . . .”

  He crawled over the top of Sarah’s body, this time confirming it was her and that her blood wouldn’t stop leaking away. He tried to stop the bleeding with his one free hand. It proved to be a complicated and painful task.

  “Don’t worry about . . . me, get my gun,” she said, pointing to it. “I can’t feel my legs.”

  His HNI scans showed him where her wound was, projecting a superimposed image of a human skeleton over her body. The projectile that hit her severed her spine according to the hologram. He crawled for her pistol, handing it back to her when he got it.

  She shook his hand and pushed the red-coated handle of the weapon back to him.

  “Keep it, you can walk, I can’t,” she said. “Take the data crystal out from my pocket, get out of here, and meet with your hacker friend. If you meet my sister . . .” Sarah paused, as her eyes began to fill with strange moisture. He forgot the name of it, tears? Whatever it was, his people were never capable of forming those. “Oh fuck . . . Chloe . . . I’m so sorry,” she added.

  “There must be a medical kit somewhere,” he said with burning determination.

  “Leave me, man!”

  “I cannot face our enemies alone!”

  “Sure, you can,” she said, grinning. Her teeth stained slightly red. “You Hashmedai perform and think better after sex. Last night was strategic buddy, though, me getting paralyzed wasn’t.”

  “My arm is broken, and the one that isn’t is lame from being shot,” Peiun said. “And as for my vision, I’m not used to this level of light and its blinding curse. I won’t last long.”

  “Great . . . just fucking great.”

  Sarah couldn’t walk, Peiun could. Peiun was partially blinded by the light, Sarah, being a human, wasn’t. Sarah had both arms and hands in working order, Peiun had broken and wounded arms.

  She was right about one thing. Sex did make him think better. He sat next to her. “Reach up and grab onto my back.”

  “Why? So I can slow you down?”

  “If we both stay, we die, if I go alone, I’ll die, and then you.”

  “And if you piggyback me, we’ll both die.”

  “Then we die, taking as many of our attackers with us,” he said. “Two injured targets killing their adversaries on their way to their end. There is no greater insult. Besides, they think we’re dead. Let’s keep that lie alive when they enter.”

  “I guess it might give us an opening advantage,” Sarah said. “Fine, didn’t want to die alone anyways.”

  She climbed and pulled herself up to his back, lightly hooking one hand around his neck, while the other held her pistol. He braced himself, and used the full power of his Hashmedai strength, ignoring the pain and warm rolls of blood falling off their bodies. Peiun became the legs she needed, Sarah became the arms and eyes he needed.

  Muffled chatter came from beyond the apartment’s front door. The EISS agents were preparing to conduct their search.

  “Any last words?” Sarah said to him, as he strafed away from the door that was seconds away from allowing enemy forces to enter.

  “Just one question,” he said. “What does piggyback mean?”

  Plasma-breaching charges exploded and reduced the door into a red glowing debris of metal and wires.

  Sarah aimed her pistol forward.

  39 Foster

  Phylarlie’s manor

  Muro, Taxah, Uelcovis system

  October 16, 2118, 14:36 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Foster was right about one thing, the azure sun in the skies didn’t move.

  It was going to make retiring for the evening hard as light from the windows in their room continued to shine in. The curtains did help to a degree, but not enough for her active mind to accept the fact that it was time for bed rest.

  She ended up meandering around the manor to pass the time as the day went on. Chef Bailey had arrived later, commandeering the Hashmedai-designed kitchen, and enlisting the help of the Imperial palace’s chef, whose life was on the line. Foster paid them a quick visit, watching the two go over the menu items. EVE stood idle, providing translations for them both.

  Hashmedai and human fusion cuisine, she felt conflicted about enjoying the food of the people that killed her father. She sampled some of the sauces the two chefs worked to produce, and a slice of sautéed protein from some dead animal that lived on Taxah. It tasted like chicken, every piece of meat in the cosmos tasted like chicken. Not that she objected to it.

  Hashmedai system lords, nobles, and the Imperial family arrived and were treated to teams of servants escorting them to their assigned rooms. The drunken shouts, laughter, and music that filled the halls of the manor increased threefold as a result. She debated if it was safe run back to the Kepler to snatch a pack of melatonin, she had a feeling she’d need it later in the evening.

  Security naturally increased, every floor and room had Hashmedai warriors and guardians standing idle, polearm-wielding guards stood watch over Eensino and Kroshka’s rooms. Understandable given the number of VIPs in attendance and from what Foster was told by one servant she found that did speak English. The servant was a woman with short purple hair, who looked upset and seemed out of place, unlike the rest of the servants.

  Foster entered a chamber that housed a small indoor pool once evening hours had arrived. Darkness was in every corner of the chamber, save for the lights up above shining down upon the water. She began to wonder if a dark room with a single spotlight in the ceiling was a common design amongst the Hashmedai.

  The sound of the water flowing was soothing, blocking out the drunken activity elsewhere, and the thought of the Hashmedai chef who wasn’t out of the woods yet, because of her actions.

  New sounds echoed in the distance, footsteps that weren’t hers. Foster wasn’t alone. Her body began to tense as a result.

  “This is where it fell apart for them,” it was Phylarlie’s voice.

  She looked about in the darkness until she spotted the pair of glowing eyes that neared and walked out of the shadows. “For you?” Foster asked, as she cautiously stepped away from the pool. Phylarlie used to be an assassin after all.

  “Lisette and Avearan,” Phylarlie said. “Have you heard about them?”

  “Kinda been busy trying to save us all from extinction and all,” Foster said. “What’s the scoop?”

  “Lisette was a human woman, a psionic at that, visiting from Titan. Someone reported that she and Avearan were becoming intimate.”

  “That’s a problem for you folks?”

  “Not at all, unless you’re a psionic.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “We Hashmedai don’t have the means of creating psionics, unlike humans and Radiance, we have to breed them. Radiance, during our wars, saw to it the technology needed to create Hashmedai psionics had been destroyed, and then went to slaughter as many psionics as they could.”

  “I see where this is goin’. You Imperial folks like to tell your people how to live their lives. If you’s a psionic then you have to use your powers to serve the Empire.”

  Phylarlie kneeled next to the edge of the pool, running her ring- and bracelet-draped hands through the water leaving rippling waves in its wake. “My mother sought to keep my powers, and my sister’s, a secret. She befriended the former lord that lived in this manor to do so; we made this place our home, living in secret from the Empire. One day . . . it was discovered my mother had children and we had been hiding here. We ended up having to serve the Empire, while our mother lost her head.”

  “Just like that?”

  “There’s more to the story than that. However, that is how it ended.” Phylarlie stood facing Foster. “All Hashmedai psionics must undergo training, must serve the Empire, and must put themselves in the position to have children. Two women frolicking about while they bathe tog
ether can’t do that, nor can two men. Imperial law forbids it.”

  “I didn’t see any other humans here other than my team. I’m gonna assume, they’ve been arrested?” Foster asked.

  “Lisette has, and will have to face what comes next.”

  The Empire executes all who breaks the law, no matter how small or big the crime is. The real punishment you served after being arrested was how long they kept you on death row. Since you were going to die anyways, the guards had very little incentive to make your stay in gulags, pleasant.

  “What happened to her Hashmedai partner?”

  “I do not know. She went missing before the arrests were made.” Phylarlie’s echoing footsteps carried her closer to Foster. She backpedaled and hit the wall behind she couldn’t see. “But, this manor . . . this planet is home to many secrets. She could be anywhere hiding, like me, my mother and sister before her.”

  The conversion needed a topic change, ideally one that was important to what was going on. “How much longer until everything is loaded onto my ship?”

  “The transport is still on its way to deliver the protective substance,” Phylarlie said, then held onto Foster’s hand, scoping out her dormant shimmering tattoos. “I hope you and these tattoos, will be up for the challenge. If this device malfunctions like the last, then our progress would have been for nothing.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Foster assured her.

  Phylarlie held her hand longer and gave Foster a concerned look. “You’re not fine. You seem tense, agitated, and these tattoos are a part of you. Have you considered that your physical and mental state might affect your ability to commune with the Draconian tech?”

  She yanked her hand out from her grip. “Possibly.”

  “When was the last time you copulated?”

  “That ain’t any of ya damn business.”

  “You’ve seen the men here, and you know we Hashmedai believe that frequent pleasing can lead to improvements in one’s job. Take advantage, Captain, you’re free to have the men in my harem. Remember that secrets that appear here stay here.”