Inherited War 3 Retaliation Read online

  In shock, he dropped the knife, let go of her hair, and tried to step backwards. Sky lunged forward to grab her sister and lowered her to the ground. She didn’t try to stop Cole. Unfortunately for Cole, the only thing behind him was the atmospheric shield and matter could pass through it just fine. Cole didn’t have on his skin suit. He had taken it off before his walk that evening, and was wearing normal clothes. He took another step backwards and kept on going right out into space. His eyes widened as he realized what was about to happen. Liam, one of the soldiers who had come with West, reacted first. He went from motionless to sprinting in a heartbeat and jumped out the hanger door. As soon as his suit detected vacuum, it extended the helmet over his head, increased the suit temp, and began to feed him oxygen.

  Liam slammed into Cole, wrapping his arms around Cole’s waist. He used the combat suits inertial jets to halt his progress and without turning around, reversed. In all told, Cole had been out for less than fifteen seconds, but it took a toll. Once he broke the plane of the hanger’s edge and came through the shield, they both collapsed into a heap as the bases gravity took hold.

  Sky was there in an instant. She had her portable nano communicator out and pressed up against Cole’s temple. Seeing he would be ok, she nodded to Liam and told him to take Cole back to his quarters. She turned back to her sister to find Jeth had picked her up and was cradling her in his massive arms. Snow’s own nanites were well on their way to fixing her, the blood was from wounds that had already closed. Still on her knees, she sat back on her feet and watched as the human soldiers lifted Cole gently and carried him out of the hanger.

  She felt a hand rest gently on her shoulder. She looked up at Thalo, placed her hand on his, and gave him a gentle squeeze.

  Thalo knelt next to her and placed his arm around her shoulders. He didn’t say anything to her. What was there to say? Nothing that could comfort her. Nothing that could erase what they all just witnessed.

  “We should go,” she said quietly. Jeth had already risen and still gently cradling Snow in his massive arms, was turning to go.

  “Wait, a moment.” He gently restrained Sky from leaving. They both waited and watched as Jeth slowly walked out of the hanger. He was taking great care not to jostle or disturb Snow at all. Moments later, they were alone in the hanger. Thalo let a slow breath whistle out from between clenched teeth.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Sky said to Thalo.

  “What? You can’t possibly know what I was going to say after all of that,” Thalo shot back.

  “Yes, I do. You want me gone, and my sister gone. Gone from this place, and back to anywhere—anywhere but within his reach,” she said.

  “Damn, you are good. And yes, I was going to suggest that, at first. But as soon as I thought it, I changed my mind. You brought him back somehow. I couldn’t, Gavreal couldn’t, but you did. We need you close, but never alone with him.” Thalo was being serious. When Thalo was serious, other beings should be nervous. “Not to change the point, but what has he told you about what happened to him on Esii?”

  “Not much. He hasn’t been ready to talk about it. Why? Has he said something to you?” she asked.

  “Yes and no. He did tell me that what they did to him was bad, real bad. Physical and mental, but mostly mental. He told me that he was worried that some of the stuff that got put in his head was trying to take over and displace the real Cole. This may be what he was talking about.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Tell me about Gavreal. He helped you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he helped get my mind back together when I had lost all hope of seeing Cole again. He entered my mind. He spent time with me in my own head and helped me sort through some things. He came to see me every night there for a while, until I felt more in control. It’s weird. I couldn’t lie when he was with me in my head. He cut through all the unimportant stuff and forced me to talk to him about what really mattered. When I saw him come in, all I could think was he could fix whatever was wrong with Cole.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I am not going to let Cole down again. I will stay and help him through this. But my sister should go. It is up to her, though.”

  Thalo grabbed her arm and turned her towards the door. “Let’s go check on him and find out where the hell Hal is.”

  Thalo was right. Hal had been suspiciously absent from the whole meeting. He definitely had some explaining to do.

  CHAPTER 2

  If I were sitting in front of an Army head shrink right now, he would be diagnosing me with PTSD. Easy call for him. Planet destroyed, fought and killed in battle, captured, tortured and finally responsible for the eventual destruction of a whole race. Trouble sleeping, paranoia, lashing out. (And if my nanites didn’t do such a good job clearing out my system, I would be a heavy drinker…naw never a big fan of booze.) In any other situation, that Army Doc would be right. What makes me so different from the average person is that I am not average. Death doesn’t scare me. Growing up in group homes and with the foster parents I had, death always seemed like an escape. Torture? Bah, I spent the first fifteen years of my life being tortured. Starved, beaten, and locked in closets. The Esii were masters, granted, but I survived. The best thing I have going for me right now is indifference. I just don’t care. As far as the Esii going extinct, wish it would happen faster, to be frank. It would give me one less thing to worry about. Lashing out at my friends? Well, some friends. They left me to rot on that planet and they suffer the consequences. I told Thalo that I was afraid I was losing myself, that what the Esii had put in my head was taking over. I now believe that it is revealing the man who is going to live the rest of my life. I have a clarity now that I lacked before. I have goals that I can achieve without help and a people to save. My ancestors made the mistake of relying on too many other non-humans, and I made that same mistake. Hal warned me way back when. “Leave the Nixa,” he said to me. “They can’t be trusted,” he warned me, and I ignored him. I heed his warning now, nearly too late. I have paid the price for my ignorance. I will pay it no more.

  Thalo and Sky left the hanger and both saw the squad of humans outside Cole’s door. The leader, West, was quietly talking to his men as they walked the dozen or so feet to his doorway.

  “Do you need something?” West asked as they drew to a halt.

  “We would like to check in on Cole, I didn’t realize we needed permission,” Thalo said with a hint of sarcasm.

  West looked at the man to his right. “Let me ask you a question there, Liam. We just saw these two, umm beings, with our boss cornered and under the sights of a pretty large piece of hardware.” Liam was shaking his head in agreement. “Now I don’t know where you are from, but in my book, you don’t let the same dog bite twice. So what do you think, we let em in?”

  “Shit no, Sergeant Major, don’t think I like that Idea at all,” Liam responded.

  “Well there you go, turn and bun,” the Sergeant Major said and shooed them off with his hands.

  “You listen here—” Sky started to say when she was interrupted by West.

  “Sergeant Major,” he said, cutting her off.

  “What?” Sky looked baffled.

  “You can disagree and yell all you like, but you will call me Sergeant Major while you are doing it. I more than earned the rank, and besides, Cole gave it to me himself. See, he wanted to make me an officer but officers, in my experience, are pussies. They end up in the way and tend to get shot in the back when things go wrong. So I said make me a Sergeant Major, all the respect, none of the BS. Now buzz off.”

  “Fine,” Thalo said, “You want to pull out ranks. I order you to let us by. I am a Captain and outrank you.”

  “Ha ha, there are so many things wrong with what you just said. First,” West jabbed one finger in front of Thalo’s face, “you’re Navy and we are Army. Your rank don’t mean shit to me and my boys here. Second, you don’t hold rank in our military anymore. Cole rescinded
all commissions for alien crewmembers. Third, as I said before, you drew down on the Boss, you aren’t going near him.” West crossed his arms and smiled at Thalo, daring him to escalate the discussion to something more violent.

  Thalo started to step forward and open his mouth when Sky grabbed him by the arm. She gave it a sharp tug, which brought him up short. “Come on, Thalo. We are not wanted here. Let’s go check on Snow.”

  Thalo glared at the grinning human. “Yeah, go check on the albino chick. She seemed pretty worn out,” one of the soldiers said. They all got a chuckle out of that. Before Sky had Thalo free of the confrontation, Thalo asked one more question.

  “Tell me, Sergeant Major, why do you suddenly hate us so much? We fought side by side in the skies above my home and chewed the same dirt on that rock the Esii hid under. Now a sudden change of heart. What has changed?” The hall grew suddenly silent as Thalo finished talking.

  “Changed? Not much. Oh wait, I remember. None of your fucking business. Now fuck off out of here,” West said, and stepped forward giving Thalo a mighty shove down the hall. The soldiers all laughed at the retreating pair.

  “Cole is definitely right,” Liam said.

  “Oh yeah, about what?” West responded.

  “We are alone in this galaxy. People either want to conquer us, steal from us, or use us. I can see that now,” Liam said.

  West watched the pair retreat down the hall and board the elevator. He just grunted his response to the soldiers view. He wasn’t so sure himself, but orders were orders, and Cole had been around these people a lot longer than him.

  Cole opened his eyes and let out a low moan of fear. He turned his head and took in his surroundings. He looked down and saw he was standing in the same spot he had been buried alive in—the Esii home world. His heart started hammering in his chest. He watched the outline of the box form around his feet. He couldn’t move. In his mind he was violently thrashing around, but in reality, he was motionless. The box extended itself up and out of the floor, stopping just short of chin level.

  Cole held his breath and waited. Moments later the door to the room opened and a Pyndigum entered, as only one of their kind could. He appeared to float smoothly across the floor. Cole looked at the monster as it hovered mere inches from his face.

  He was as disgusting as ever. Skin flayed off every inch of its body, except the face. The eyes and mouth were sewn shut with heavy gauge steel cable. A foul stench permeated the air—rot, viscera, and other foul things.

  “No,” Cole croaked out. “No, I killed you. All of you. You all died by my hands, and I escaped this place.” He was shrieking, fear taking control. He couldn’t be here, not again. He couldn’t do this again.

  The voice drove into his mind like a laser.

  “Dead?Us? I think not,” it said.

  “I killed you,” Cole sobbed, “with my mind.”

  “Amusing, yet untrue. You did nothing. You lived a fantasy. Created by us. You killed no one with your puny mind.” He unleashed a mental barrage that tore into Cole’s brain and set it on fire. “You, who can’t even keep me from hurting you, killed me who has trained in my arts for hundreds of years. You did exactly what we wanted you to do, no more.”

  “No,” Cole said. “I escaped. Split killed you and we escaped with Anastacia. This isn’t real.” Cole did the one thing he could; he squeezed his eyes shut tight.

  “Interesting. So you believe you killed me? Fought off an entire planet of my people and escaped. Did you kill some fanciful monster that doomed us all? Did you find more of your kind to help you out? Did you find a whole room full of everything you would need to survive on the surface? Did two spaceships arrive to take you away? I am amazed that you still believe all of that.”

  “No,” a whispered croak escaped Cole’s lips, “you lie.”

  “You never escaped, you broke under the strain. Your friends never came for you. In fact, they abandoned you to your fate. They took your ships and defended their homes from us with them. They were not, after all, your friends. But to no avail, you gave us what we wanted. You gave us the technology that your ancestors withheld from us. We go now to conquer the galaxy.” The Pyndingum shifted slightly and cleared Cole’s front. It held its arm out and pointed at the door. “We have finished with you and release you into our world. Go, my people eagerly await hunting you through the halls. And remember, before you die you will see those responsible for your woes.”

  The box dropped from around Cole and he fell forward from the sudden release of the pressure holding him in place. Stumbling to his knees, he scrambled to his feet and ran for the slowly closing door. He smashed into the guards on the outside of the room. They all went down in a tumble, and Cole came up with a pistol. He didn’t even look, he just ran. He careened down the hallway as fast as he could. He didn’t know where he was going; he just wanted to get away. He ran down empty halls and past locked doors. Finally, he rounded a corner and saw three Esii walking single file in front of him. The door they had just come from was still open. Cole ran up behind the one in back and fired at point blank range. The plasma bolt obliterated the creatures head and continued on through the two in front of it. All three headless bodies tumbled to the floor. Cole grabbed the door as it was sliding shut and with strength born of desperation, stopped it cold. He then put everything he had into opening it enough that he could squeeze through it.

  Breathing heavy, Cole turned and took in the room. There were Esii everywhere. Cole backed up against the door and raised his looted plasma pistol. His wild flight had sapped him of energy and slowed him down. The Esii in the room were diving for cover as he opened fire. There was cursing and shouting, and the sound of hissing metal as the plasma heated up the room. Cole was adding his voice to the cries of his enemy.

  Then the Pyndingum was there, seemingly out of nowhere, he appeared. Its voice intruded once again in to Cole’s head. “Remember my warning.” It slowly faded from view. Cole had stopped firing when then Pyndingum had appeared, and he once again scanned the room. Slowly the Esii built walls and tables began to melt in his vision. They reformed into the bright white walls and floors of Home Base. The Esii began to morph as well, changing from frail demonic beings to the familiar forms of Worlders. As the faint outline of the Pyndingum finally vanished, two figures rushed into the room and came to a halt almost exactly where the Pyndingum had been standing. Cole recognized the two, then they were joined by a third. Jeth, Thalo, and Sky looked around the room in horror as they saw the destruction wrought by Cole. Worlders were wounded everywhere. None had completely escaped the violence of Cole’s attack. Cole looked behind him and saw, through the now open door, the three headless corpses of the Worlders he had killed. But the three he hadn’t seen were their bond mates, bond mates who were still alive and now severed from the bond by their brothers’ deaths.

  Slowly Cole swiveled his head back to the room. He blinked a few times as if waking from a sleep and realized he was still pointing his weapon into the room. Finally the sounds hit him. Alarms were blaring, and Worlders were moaning in pain. This had been their rec-room; none had been prepared for violence.

  Cole looked at his friends and tossed the pistol on top of a wounded Worlder nearby. “Clean this mess up,” he said to no one in particular, turned, and left.

  The three stared at the carnage Cole had brought into the room and couldn’t believe it. It had only been moments before when the three had been standing outside of Snow’s room talking about the incident in the hanger when the alarms started blaring down the hall. The base’s AI was screaming some nonsense about Cole going nuts and killing Worlders when they heard the distinct sound of a plasma weapon. Sky and Thalo were off in an instant. Jeth was torn about not wanting to leave Snow but followed the two a few moments later.

  The AI guided them to where it had Cole trapped. Apparently the AI had reacted quickly and upon realizing Cole was not himself, had locked the area down.
But not before some Worlders made it into the hallway.

  The AI reported the first three KIA, then the firefight in the rec-room. Thalo and Sky were too late. They entered the room just as it seemed Cole had gotten control of himself. There were Worlders down everywhere—some suffering minor wounds, others near death. Thalo looked into Cole’s eyes and shuddered. Cole looked like he was dazed one second, then indifferent the next. He looked around the room, threw his weapon down, and left the room, his uncaring words hanging in the air.

  Sky made as if to follow Cole, but Thalo stopped her.

  “No.” He shook his head at her and pointed to the wounded. “You need to deal with this. I will deal with Cole.”

  “Don’t hurt him, please,” Sky said from behind a surprised look.

  “As if I could,” Thalo responded and walked over to one of the least hurt of his brethren. He knelt down and aided his kinsman into a more comfortable sitting position.