Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
She was coming back to him. Rykal peered at the holoscreens as the small transport vessel came into view. It was still thousands of kuliks away, but it was making good time.
She had been as good as her word. Rykal hadn’t expected anything less. She was a soldier, just like him. She understood duty, but she also knew how to adapt to the situation.
His ashika was no fool.
Rykal found a seat, removing his large weapons and resting them on the floor as he sat down, keeping them within easy reach.
He propped his legs up on an instrument panel as the freighter pilots looked at him in alarm.
The control and navigation room of the freighter was surprisingly small for a vessel of this size.
It was located on the uppermost level of the ship, and it was staffed by a team of about six human pilots who rotated in teams of two, taking turns to monitor the freighter’s navigation systems.
Rykal glanced back at Jeral. The warrior sat discreetly in one corner, his plasma rifle resting on his lap.
His orange eyes burned through the darkness, taking in every little detail.
Like most of Rykal’s colleagues, Jeral was a silent, stoic bastard at the best of times.
He didn’t talk much, and he wasn’t interested in getting friendly with the natives.
“I’ll take over here,” Rykal offered, nodding towards the human pilots, who suddenly seemed very absorbed in their data. “Go and stretch your legs. The rest of the cargo holds still need checking.”
“You sure?” Jeral’s voice was deep and slightly hoarse, as if he hadn’t used it for a very long time. He shot Rykal a pointed look, raising a questioning eyebrow.
“No problem.” Rykal shrugged but didn’t offer any explanations.
No doubt Jeral had his questions; the fact that Rykal was actually offering to do this kind of work was more than a little odd.
Rykal had a reputation for being a bit of a restless bastard.
In the early days, his inability to sit still had driven the general nuts.
“Hm.” Jeral grunted and rose up out of his seat. He didn’t ask any more questions, instead offering Rykal a grateful nod. They all hated this sort of simple watch-work, but it had to be done.
The warrior disappeared into the shadows as Rykal stretched, enjoying the feeling of his once again intact skin and exo-armor. His superficial burns were completely healed; in the end, the process had barely taxed his nanites.
Whatever that human had hit him with had been powerful. The missile’s blast had ended up melting a crater-like hole in the metal floor. Rykal shook his head. Fucking humans and their strange weapons.
“Oi, human.” He nodded towards one of the humans, a generously proportioned man with a shock of wild, curly hair.
“Y-yes?”
“How long until the transport gets here?”
“Uh.” The human blinked, appearing a little shocked that Rykal was actually talking to him. Rykal attempted a smile, baring his fangs. From what he’d observed, humans placed a great deal of emphasis on body language, and small pleasantries seemed important to them.
The human paled. “I-it’s about two hours away.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me. How long in Universal units?”
The human’s expression went blank as he did some mental calculations. “About fifty chalens,” he blurted.
“Ah.” Rykal leaned back, putting his hands behind his head.
“In that case, I’m going to catch some shut-eye.
Don’t wake me up unless there’s an emergency.
” He’d been taught to be opportunistic when it came to sleep, but if anyone tried anything, he’d be awake in the blink of an eye, his hands flying to his weapons.
He closed his eyes and drifted off into nothingness, wondering what would come to him this time.
Images of broken worlds and darkness flashed through his mind, interspersed with nothingness. He saw cowed alien populations suffering in silence. He saw the facility where he’d been dismantled and remade, his memories stripped from him as they’d tried to break him.
It was so clear in his mind’s eye; a black, sinister structure on a remote planet, its pale, dusty landscape more barren and desolate than that of Kythia itself.
They’d erred. They’d made him so strong they couldn’t break him. They’d made all of them like that. They’d tried to break him. They’d failed, time and time again. He’d been angry, unanchored, and wild.
How he’d fought at first. It had taken a certain general to pull him into line.
Patience, Rykal. There will come a time when everything shall change, but for now, we must serve the Empire.
His thoughts drifted again as the slipstream of time became distorted. He was on the ice plains again. He didn’t know why, but he felt at home here. It was the only place in his dreams that didn’t feel painful or chaotic.
The coldness on his bare skin was invigorating. His hair was long, and it was whipped around his face by the fierce, howling winds. The wildness of the place made his heart sing.
He walked across the barren plains of the Vaal until darkness overtook him again.
Rykal drifted in and out of dreams, existing in a forgotten place somewhere between the void and the icy wilderness until human voices pulled him back to the surface.
He opened his eyes and found that nothing had changed. His human companions hadn’t dared move since he’d fallen into a half-sleep.
“They have arrived,” he said softly, causing both humans to turn, their eyes wide. He’d startled them.
Humans. They were such a flighty species, their thoughts easily betrayed by their body language.
“Hendrix II, this is the Arawen, requesting permission to dock.” The male voice that greeted them was an unfamiliar one.
“Come aboard, Arawen. Docking bay three’s airlock is open and ready.”
“Uh, this is a drop-off only. We won’t be staying.”
The human pilot glanced warily at Rykal. “Yeah, we figured.” There was resignation in his tone.
“Where is docking bay three?” Rykal asked softly, turning to the second navigator. She raised her brown eyes, hesitating.
“I just want to say hello to the sergeant.” He tried to sound reassuring. He probably wasn’t doing it right, because the woman just stared at him as if he were mad.
“Show me the map,” Rykal said, leaning forward. The woman nodded and hastily brought up a three-dimensional representation of the freighter on the nearest holoscreen.
“Docking bay’s down here.” She pointed to a red marker in the lower regions of the ship.
“Good.” Rykal rose to his feet, retrieving his weapons and sheathing them.
He activated his comm, an implant behind his ear that threaded directly into his auditory nerve.
“Anyone feel like doing me a favor and taking over in the navigation room for a while?” He sent his message out to the other five First Division warriors, who were busy prowling the decks.
Including the general, there were ten of them in total, but Kalan, Lodan, and Nythian had become separated from them during the chaos and had somehow landed on Earth, apparently in the company of some crazy-sounding human female.
The general had returned to Kythia to take care of some mysterious business, taking a captured human female with him.
The general rarely explained himself, but he always had his reasons, and ninety-nine percent of the time, he was right.
Rumor had it that something big was about to go down on the Dark Planet.
So, including Rykal, that left six of them onboard the Hendrix II.
That wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. They were used to working without Tarak al Akkadian, and being left behind to carry out missions on distant planets was nothing new, although they usually had their own stealth fighter, Darkshadow.
Tarak expected them to handle the situation on their own.
The plan had been for them to control the situation on Fortuna Tau, eliminate the Xargek down to every last skittering larva, and await backup from Sector Eight.
The general had even been contemplating capturing the mining station for his own purposes.
That had sounded as easy and straightforward as a walk on the Vaal until some cognitively deficient humans had decided they would be better off destroying their own mining station by setting off a bomb.
Ah, humans. Those Kaiin-cursed ignorant, primitive, meddling, sub-advanced, irrational life-forms. Arin, of course, was the exception. If the humans had left well alone, Rykal and his brothers could have contained the infestation on Fortuna Tau.
But the Xargek were on Earth now, and humans had only themselves to blame.
“You dodging the shit jobs again, Ry?” It was Kail who answered first, in his usual gruff voice.
“I’m just going down to check out the new arrival. Our sergeant is back.”
“Ah.” Kail sounded amused. “Your pet human.”
“Call her that again and I’ll deck you,” Rykal snapped, surprised at how defensive he sounded.
Kail responded with a wry snort. “We’ve all seen how you look at her, as if she’s your Goddess-given property already.”
“I just prefer dealing with her over some of the other humans.” Rykal tried to justify his actions. “She’s one of the rational ones.”
“Hm.” For a moment, Kail said nothing more.
“So are you going to come and take over here, or not? Or would you prefer going down to the docking bay to check out the incoming yourself?”
Kail hesitated. Rykal smirked. Kail didn’t do well with pleasantries and small talk, and he didn’t like dealing with other aliens. Especially humans. Kail was an irritable bastard at the best of times.
“Just go, Kail.” This time it was Torin who chimed in. “You’re closest to the navigation deck, and we all know Ry has to be there to greet his female.”
“She’s not my female,” Rykal grated. Why was everyone on his case all of a sudden? “We just have a good working relationship, that’s all.”
“If that’s what you want to call it.” Now Jeral cut in, sounding darkly amused.
“I’ll deck you too, Jeral.”
“I’ll spar with you any time, pretty boy.”
“Get your ugly ass over here, then.”
Kail cleared his throat, interrupting their verbal sparring. “I’ll cover for you if it means you’ll stop your jabbering and leave me in peace, but you owe me.” His voice was a low rumble. “And if anyone wants to spar, you know where to find me.”
“I will be taking you up on that offer,” Rykal grinned.
“Too much energy for your own good,” Kail muttered. “See you in a siv.” There was a soft beep, indicating that he’d signed off.
“Hey, Ry,” Torin’s voice was quizzical. “What in Kaiin’s hells have you done to all the humans?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Every time I walk past a human now, they look at me as if I’m Kaiin himself, risen from the underworld. They reek of fear and hatred.”
“That’s nothing new,” Rykal shrugged. “But I might have reinforced a little lesson about consequences. Some ambitious humans tried to ambush me down in the cargo hold, so I just showed them what would happen if they tried to fuck with us again.”
“Only a matter of time before they start to get desperate,” Torin warned. “There are thousands of them and only six of us. Right now, it’s just fear holding them in check. Only so long that will work.”
“Then I hope the leaders of Earth have decided to let us go and play on their fair planet.” Rykal bared his fangs, causing the two human navigators to glance at him in alarm.
“Give them some time to get acquainted with the Xargek,” Jeral said. “They’ll cave soon enough. They always do.”