Alien Avatar: An Alien Sci-Fi Romance Page 19

  Conversation went around the circles, people weighing their options, discussing the possibilities, and considering the ramifications of each choice. There was little comfort in the discussion. So much was unknown that it was impossible for anybody to make a decision that they felt comfortable with.

  Marko decided that he didn’t much care what they chose to do, the odds were just as good or bad one way as they were another. So many members of the tribe seemed to share his sentiment that it seemed like an official decision would never be reached. Nobody had strong enough opinions to make a decision.

  “I propose another option,” came a voice from the other side of the room.”

  Their accent was, well, bad. Even to Marko’s ears it was stilted and awkward, the pronunciation not quite right. The entire room turned around to look at the speaker.

  It was a Watcher. Specifically, the commander of the air base that the tribe had destroyed. And he was surrounded by heavily armed and armored Watcher commandos, already shifted into their combat forms. But that didn’t bother Marko. No. There was only one part of the scene that sent chills up his spine and rage to his cheeks.

  They had Naeesha.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  The military made their approach while the tribe was circled, discussing their plans. They snuck in as insects, moving behind Naeesha with the threat that if she made a noise, they would kill her on sight. She opted to take their threat seriously - alerting the tribe now wouldn’t do anything to help them. The military’s plan, the best she could figure it, was to isolate the Halians one by one and take them to the holding cells that they’d passed in the tunnel. This was the only way to destroy the tribe without starting a fight that the Watchers could not win.

  She’d picked up little bits of their strategy, watching the military unit operate as they waited in the hills around the compound, waiting for the Halians to walk inside. It wasn’t until Marko had long disappeared that they moved. They were cautious to make sure that the tribe was deep underground before there was any chance of a fight.

  It made sense. If they did that, they could at least contain the threat of one of the Halians going wild. A small detachment was carrying high explosives into the tunnels behind her right now. There was enough power in those bombs to vaporize anything in the tunnels and bring the entire compound down in a rubble pile. It was unlikely that even a completely enraged wild one would be able to free themselves from thousands of tons of rubble.

  Naeesha didn’t see a lot of room for hope. She thought that maybe the military would give the Halians a chance to go through the portal. It turned out that they’d deliberately sabotaged the device to make sure there was no escape for the tribe.

  Second was that the Halians would have seen the attack coming and set up an ambush for the Watchers. Naeesha knew that wasn’t going to happen as soon as she was close enough to feel their emotions. They were scared and confused and hopeless. Not exactly the feelings of a strike force preparing to ambush an enemy.

  Now? Her only hope was that the military forces would fuck something up big time. That was about the tribe’s only hope. They were in a bad position, heavily outgunned, with no options for escape. She’d never seen such a dire situation on either side of a fight.

  The only thing that gave her any hope was, well, hope. That irrational, illogical, and indifferent voice in the back of her head that didn’t care how bad things were, it could still see a way through. She didn’t see what good it did her now, except to make her death a little less traumatic.

  She stood in the entrance to the portal room, watching the tribe at circle, so caught up in their own affairs that nobody noticed her. Nor did they notice the two dozen Watcher commandos as they shifted back into their combat forms and readied their weapons.

  It wasn’t until the commander spoke that anybody looked up.

  “Listen carefully,” he said. “We’re going to let every single one of you walk out of here unharmed, but only if you cooperate. I will not tolerate even the slightest resistance from any individual in your group. Any act of defiance will be met with swift and lethal retribution. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”

  The thousand eyes of the Halian tribe stared back at the commander. Only one pair looked at her. Marko. She could read his face, looking for a way out, looking for a solution. She saw the precise moment when he realized that there was none.

  She watched helplessly as the military troops moved through the frozen Halians taking all of their weapons. Well, almost all of the weapons. She’d caught Marko shifting his weapon into his arm, hiding it away. Naeesha wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Any cause that he would have to use it was almost certainly a death sentence for anyone in the compound. Still, maybe.

  Although her hands were still bound in chains, she tried to give Marko all the intelligence she could pass along with hand signals. She told him about the bombs, the reinforcements in the tunnel, the heavy guns outside covering the exits. He nodded in response, and told her to hang tight, that help was coming.

  She tried to believe him.

  The Watcher troops piled the confiscated weapons in the corner of the room and turned their guns back on the tribe.

  “We’re going to take you one at a time. Don’t move a muscle until one of our soldiers puts you in restraints and gives you orders. Anybody who so much as sneezes gets shot, no questions asked.”

  Naeesha’s blood began to boil. The commander was dead serious. She’d heard him order his troops to shoot the first person who stepped out of line, even a little bit, just to show that they meant business. She crossed her fingers and closed her eyes and prayed that it would not be necessary.

  One by one, the Watcher troops began to restrain and walk off with the tribal members. She watched Marko carefully, waiting for them to go to him. Waiting for something that looked like hope.

  She watched as her friends and family were dragged from their people and into the darkness. It was everything she could do not to lash out. The only thing that stayed her hand was the knowledge that she would be no good as a corpse. Still, that didn’t make it any easier.

  Her heart leapt as she heard the sounds of shouting from the group. A young mother, was clutching her child, sobbing. Two Watcher guards pried them apart and one carried the child off. The other dragged the mother out of the group. Naeesha held her breath, hoping that they would take her away. That she would not pay for her humanity with her life.

  It looked like she was going to be okay. The guard pulled her along, limp and sobbing, but made no sign of reaching for his weapon. She looked at the woman’s face as she drew closer. The anguish written across it spoke for the entire tribe - being pulled apart one by one, separated from that upon which their lives depended.

  The commander reached out and stopped the soldier dragging the wailing mother as he walked by. Naeesha did not hear what was said, but the soldier dropped the woman and turned back to the group. There was an audible gasp and a moment of immeasurable sadness from the tribe as the commander pulled out his sidearm and shot the woman dead without a moment of hesitation.

  He looked up with a grin, defying anyone to respond to his cruelty.

  One of the warriors did. He walked towards the commander, hands loose at his side, no trace of emotion on his face, no sign of fear in his stride. He made it three steps before the guards dropped him with plasma fire.

  The tribe remained silent, crushed. Naeesha found Marko, his jaw clenched and his hands clutched into fists. Rakkan stood beside him, his hand wrapped around Marko’s arm, trying to soothe him. Nobody else stepped forward. They all resisted the urge to lash out.

  But Naeesha could not. The commander turned away from the group, confident that he’d made his point and that he would have order for as long as it took to systematically dismantle the Halian people.

  He was still wearing a shit-eating grin when Naeesha spat in his face.

  For a split second, everything went perfectly still. Naeesha thoug
ht that time had stopped, but as she felt her heart pounding, she realized that time was not frozen, only everybody in the room, the commander included.

  He raised his hand to wipe away the strands of spit covering his smug, murderous face. He traded his grin for a scowl, and lunged towards Naeesha, striking her with the back of his hand.

  She twisted to the side, rolling with the blow, and came up smiling.

  “Maybe you have your men carry out all of your beatings for you.”

  The lines on his face deepened as his scowl intensified. He swung a wild haymaker, connecting the butt of his pistol to Naeesha’s cheek. She went down, the taste of blood in her mouth. She managed to look up and get half a laugh in before the commander’s boot connected with her chin.

  Naeesha looked up to see the commander level his sidearm at her head. She was still laughing, even as she choked on her own teeth and blood. The pistol’s capacitor whined as it charged, glowing green as the commander prepared to fire.

  A small voice pierced the silence. “Don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her!” Naeesha looked up to see Kiran running across the room, her arms outstretched and tears in her eyes. She saw Rakkan run after the child, trying to stop her, but it was too late.

  There was a burst of light and plasma. Naeesha sat stunned and sobbing, staring numbly as what was left of Kiran drifted into the air on a cloud of vaporized matter. Rakkan was still kneeling, holding his arms out as though Kiran might rematerialize and come running to him.

  She saw him look up and lock eyes on the commander, she could feel the bloodlust boiling in his veins, stronger than any hatred she’d ever felt. The commander shouted for his soldiers to fire, and another volley of green light criss-crossed the portal room.

  Naeesha looked away from the blinding flash, looked back up and saw another cloud of thick, acrid smoke. It rose towards the ceiling to reveal Rakkan, still kneeling there, his robes tattered and charred, hanging from his shoulder by a single shred.

  She jumped to her feet and brought her chained hands down on the commander’s head. He dropped to the ground, his pistol falling next to him. Naeesha dove for it, rolled onto her back, and squeezed a shot off at the demolitions specialist, hitting him square in the chest.

  Heavy plasma fire sailed over her head towards the Watcher soldiers. She spun around and dropped two guards as they turned their rifles to the Halian tribe. She saw Rakkan charging at the enemy. Except that it wasn’t Rakkan. Not anymore. He was gone. He was wild.

  Naeesha pushed herself to her feet and shuffled as fast as she could away from the exit to the room. Rakkan wouldn’t distinguish between friend or foe, not anymore. She needed to get out of his way.

  She wasn’t the only one with that idea. The Watcher commander scrambled to his feet and dove away just as Rakkan spilled into the tunnel. A hail of plasma fire spilled out after him, causing the tribe to scatter for cover. Naeesha turned around to take aim at the Watcher commander, but wasn’t fast enough to stop him from knocking her weapon away, sending it sliding across the rough stone floor.

  “Are you happy?” the commander taunted. “Is his what you wanted?”

  She swung wildly at the commander. He ducked right and spun around, catching her in the back with a closed fist. She tumbled forward into the blaster fire, tumbling away before she was caught in the crossfire. The commander approached again, fists raised.

  “Look what you did, Precept. You’ve killed everyone here. You’ve killed everyone on Alderoc. We had this threat contained, and you had to go and run your fucking mouth off.”

  Naeesha charged, swinging her arms up at the commander’s stomach. He took a step back and caught her on the upswing, pushing her flat onto her back.

  “Petulant,” he shouted, kicking her in the ribs as she lay stunned on the ground. “Short sighted.” More kicks. “Stupid. Fucking. Bitch.” He accented each word with the toe of his boot. On the last kick, Naeesha managed to get her hands around, and caught hs shin in the chains of her shackles. She rolled onto his other foot and pushed up off the ground, sending the commander back.

  He twisted free as he fell, and was back on his feet before she could launch a counter attack.

  “You brought this upon yourself, Naeesha. You killed that child. You killed everyone in this place.”

  She charged again, aiming low. He caught her as she slammed into his stomach, grabbing her by the middle and flipping her up over his head. She landed hard. Pain shot through her right leg and she fell. Her arms caught behind her as she hit the ground. The commander’s back was pressed to hers, his hands reaching behind him frantically grasping at her head.

  The chain had caught under his chin as she flipped over him, and was now wrapped around his neck. He kicked and gasped, flailing for something as she pulled hard, choking the life out of him.

  She’d heard of Watchers dying of strangulation before. They panicked, and tried to fight with their hands instead of shifting. Until she felt the commander’s body go limp against her back, she never believed it.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  The fighting was over quickly. The Halians had proven to be the more disciplined fighting force, and when Rakkan turned and all hell broke loose, they were the first to the guns. It had helped that Naeesha was so quick to incapacitate their commander and to disable their black up plan. With no leader and no plan to fall back on, the two dozen Watcher fighters fell into disarray and were easily defeated.

  Their commander was the last soldier to fall. Marko had lost track of hm and Naeesha during the fight, and it wasn’t until the last Watcher soldier dropped that he saw them struggling in hand to hand combat.

  Naeesha had barely untangled herself from the dead man when she got up and shuffled over, shouting for somebody to break her chains. One of the Halian warriors shot them off and handed her a weapon. Marko joined at her side.

  “You’re in charge,” he shouted over the piercing wail of plasma fire that still sailed out of the hallway.

  “What?”

  “Rakkan told me to put you in charge if things went south,” he said, struggling to be heard over the fighting. A rumble went through the floor and a chunk of ceiling fell to the ground a few feet away, exploding in a cloud of dust and mortar. “I’d say things have gone pretty fucking south.”

  “Alright,” Naeesha said, shaking her head in disapproval. “Get the civilians into the corners. I want every warrior with a weapon to get into cover behind anything big enough to stop a rifle bolt.”

  As the words came out of her mouth, the tribe began to mobilize. They left their things lying where they stood and moved to the relative safety of the recessed corners of the room in an orderly panic.

  Naeesha and he set up behind a piece of digging equipment that was close to the center of the room.

  “Do you know anything else about the Watcher plan?” he asked.

  “I don’t think they’ve got one, not anymore.”

  The sounds of heavy plasma fire and distant explosions still shook the giant portal room. Marko shuddered to think of Rakkan, out of his mind, tearing apart anything dumb or slow enough to get in his way. All that he could hope was that he’d chase the Watchers out of the tunnel compound and far enough into the woods that the tribe would have a chance to escape.

  Escape where, he didn’t know. But they sure as hell couldn’t wait around here.

  “What do you want to do next?” he asked.

  Naeesha was peering over the top of the giant bucket on the front of the digging machine, watching the tunnel. The fighting had moved back to the staircase at least. There was no sign of combat coming from the bottom floor of the compound anymore.

  “We should move up gradually, once we’re sure that the coast is clear. When Rakkan clears the tunnel, we’ll move out and move whatever direction he’s not going.”

  “And then?”

  “Who the fuck knows.”

  Marko left to go spread the word about the plan. He was officially the only person left in the t
ribe who could translate from Halian to Alderoccan, which was a slight drawback considering the fact that their leader now spoke a different language than the rest of the tribe. He could feel the fear and uncertainty in the group. They were strong, doing everything that they could to contain the fear and keep it from getting out of control. Considering the situation that they were in, Marko had to say that they were doing a damn good job.

  Once he’d gotten word around, he returned to Naeesa, who had her head craned towards the tunnel with a worried look on her face.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She held up a finger to request his silence. He listened too. Plasma fire and explosions were still rattling the compound.

  “They were almost gone a minute ago,” Naeesha said.

  “Maybe they pulled back to regroup.”

  A louder explosion rocked the floor. She was right. The sounds of fighting were getting louder. Two minutes later, there was no doubting it. They could hear shouting now, and footsteps. A little more than a dozen Watcher troops appeared at the far end of the hallway, facing back and issuing heavy fire.

  “Drop them now!” Naeesha shouted.

  Marko relayed the order. They were leading Rakkan back into the tribe. One final attempt to destroy the Halians.

  There was a flurry of plasma fire and a cloud of rubble blocked their view into the hallway. There were no more sounds of combat, and Marko strained his ears, listening for a sign. He could hear Rakkan shuffling in the distance. Every step he took caused the ground to rattle ever so faintly. He listened closely, trying to decide which directions the footsteps were headed.

  The smoke in the hallway billowed and swirled as an enormous figure moved through it.