Click here to check out part one :) And come back on Friday for the cover reveal and release date for my next book, due out next year!
Rat Pack, part 2
© RAD Writing, 2015
I
tried to keep my eyes on Neal, to figure out what was going on, but nothing in
the room was still. My body knocked against one of the walls when the ship
lurched again to the side, tools floating in open air along my new path. In the
back of my mind I noted the sound of screeching hydraulics, the ramp closing,
but I couldn’t see a thing beyond the blur of motion. Every time I closed my
eyes I saw my husband’s face, the day I’d left him back on Earth. We’d both
agreed that this was an opportunity I couldn’t ignore. He’d let me come out
here, for the mission of a lifetime, and as I felt the ship careen once again
under the force of yet another tether and again found myself hurdling toward
the wall, I doubted that I would ever look into those beautiful eyes ever
again.
The
next thing I knew, I was back in the helm on deck one of Apollo-Negata, my
flightsuit removed and blood trickling down my forehead. I lay on my stomach,
my wrists bound behind me and my ankles tied tight.
Silently,
I lifted my head and turned toward the viewscreen. Two men I’d never before
seen were sitting in the pilot and copilot seats, neither of them paying any
attention to me. Their minds were focused on the ship, on flying us deeper into
the Kuiper Belt.
Earth-Space
had no knowledge of where the Hunters kept their base. That was the simple
truth of the matter. We’d been looking for their base for years, thus far
coming up empty. But if they were taking us deeper into the belt, then I had to
assume their base was beyond it. Where else would they be taking us, now that
we’d been captured? We were far from the first people the Hunters had kidnapped
and attempted to force to join their ranks—but I would not be moved. I vowed it
to myself, there and then. No matter what these people did to me, I would
rather die than join them.
I
turned the other way now, looking for any sign of Neal. He’d been acting
strangely before we’d been tethered to the Hunters, but it didn’t mean he
wasn’t in danger as well. I had no idea what was really going on here, and I
was intent on giving my CO the benefit of the doubt. Neal was a good man. He
always had been, and he always would be.
“Distress
beacon activated,” Harry announced.
Immediately,
I lay my head back down and closed my eyes, feigning unconsciousness.
Both
Hunters left the helm and I rolled onto my side, wiggling my legs through my
arms as I did so. I stood up and stared at the viewscreen as the ship came out
of the Kuiper Belt and neared Planet X.
Earth-Space
rarely came out of the solar system this way. We tended to avoid X and Y, the
so-called useless rocks of our system. But right now, I wondered if there was
another reason why we were always told to avoid X: the hub, the Hunter station
we’d all supposedly been looking for. I stared long and hard as the
Apollo-Negata flew automatically toward the station, nearing the docking ports.
I gawked so long and hard, in fact, that I nearly missed the sound of Neal’s
shout behind me.
Now
brought back to reality, I searched for some way to right the situation. There
must have been a way to get out of this. My hands shook, my mind spinning in a
search for anything I’d learned in my training that might help me in this
situation. But even protocol couldn’t save me from the fist that then wound
itself in my hair.
“She’s
awake,” the man said in my ear.
“Put
her with the other one,” a second man replied.
By
the roots of my hair, he dragged me out of the helm, through crew quarters,
toward airlock three in the rear of the ship. The whole of my body shook
violently, but I didn’t know what to do. Protocol mandated something in this
situation, surely, but I had no idea what it might have been. In that moment,
every speck of my training left my mind. I was nothing but a woman who’d been
taken captive, randomly chosen by the Hunters. I wondered why they would even
want someone like me, someone so feeble and afraid.
He
opened the airlock doors only long enough to put me inside with Neal, who knelt
beside the outer doors. He still wore his flightsuit, his arms and legs were
free, but his nose looked badly broken.
I
flinched when the doors closed behind me, and I dropped to my knees beside my
CO. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“I
don’t know.” He shook his head, avoiding my gaze.
The
whole of Apollo rattled quietly as we docked with the station, and my heart
sank. There was no getting out of this now. I’d failed us. I hadn’t been able
to do anything. As soon as I’d seen what had happened, that we were approaching
the Hunters’ station, I’d lost my will to continue. Neal had put his trust in
me, and I’d failed him. I’d failed both of us.
Neal
remained silent but got to his feet, looking through the single window in the
airlock doors, to the interior of the ship. Only two bulkhead doors now held us
within his ship. All the Hunters would have to do was press a single button,
and we would be sent out into the void of space. Our lives would cease, in that
very moment. I didn’t doubt that they would go through with it, soon enough.
I
stood beside my superior, doing my best to harness every ounce of bravery in my
being. My eyes shifted through the window as more Hunters filed onto the ship
through airlock two, the main docking center. Apollo was small enough that they
could’ve put us inside the station if they’d wanted to—there must have been
reason for them to leave us out here. Either way, I didn’t honestly think we
would live long enough to find out.
One
of the men caught my eye, a man I’d seen before. I recalled his face plastered
on a billboard, his piercing eyes seeming to look into mine even through the
ink on paper. Back then, back on Earth, he’d been a different man. He’d been in
several of my classes in the Earth-Space academy, and he’d been aboard one of
the cadet ships overtaken by Hunter forces. Since then, his name had appeared
in more and more places. Terrorist, they called him.
They’d
never released his name to the public, and I’d never known him well enough to
find it out.
He
approached the airlock, a look of defiance in his eyes. By that look alone, I
was aware of his power over these people. He’d been promoted quickly through
the ranks, if he was already in command of a task force like this. We would’ve
graduated the same time, he and I, if he hadn’t been taken and turned.
The
man reached out to the side of the door and I held my breath, expecting that
any moment I would be thrust out into the void.
Instead,
the doors slid open. He looked me straight in the eye, his power clearer now
than it had ever been before. He was in control here. I had become the
prisoner, the weak woman who’d lost her own mind and will the moment she’d
woken up inside the helm, her hands and feet bound.
I
opened my mouth to speak, and he turned his head away from us. “Find out what
you can,” he said. “Then bring the woman to the commander.” He stepped away
from the airlock, moving toward the exit. “Use whatever force you deem
necessary. Kill the man, if you wish. Commander’s orders.”
Again
my hands shook, my eyes gaping wide and turning to my commanding officer. What
was I to expect, in this situation? Should I now lie down and allow myself to
be beaten half to death, at the whim of a man who’d once been a part of my
cadet class in Earth-Space?
“Neal?”
I whispered.
He
shook his head slowly, imperceptibly, and I took a slow deep breath to steel
myself. This was going to happen. These men wouldn’t ignore their orders, not
even for a woman. I couldn’t consider myself anything more than another mission
to any of them. I had to assume that they hadn’t come to the Kuiper Belt for
me. Neal would’ve been the better of us, the one they should’ve come for. He
meant something, in Earth-Space. I was just another recruit, another rookie in
the field, probably too early.
The
next three hours were the slowest of my life so far. First I watched while my
CO was stripped of his uniform, both of his kneecaps shot out from under him.
They forced me to stand idly by while his blood pooled upon the metal grated
baseboards of his own ship, long enough to make him too weak to stand. A
medical officer saw to him long enough to keep him alive, and then they turned
to me. My flightsuit had already been stripped from me, my sense of dignity
gone in the hours since I’d been stolen from my life. I never allowed myself to
scream, to cry out for help, or to ask them to stop. I only made a sound when I
could not prevent it, when my lungs required it for the expulsion of air from
the force of a blow.
In
all my days, I had never seen so much blood. Both mine and Neal’s, mingled on
the ground beneath me. I could only barely stand upon my feet, my knees shaken
and bruised from countless falls, my face and chest bloodied beyond
recognition. I felt the warmth of my own blood seeping from my wounds, getting
into my eyes, pooling in my mouth. The metallic taste was the only thing that
kept me lucid, prevented me from falling into dismay.
Life
in Earth-Space wasn’t supposed to be like this. Coming out here was supposed to
be my great adventure, the thing I’d been working toward my whole life. It
wasn’t supposed to be the thing that killed me, the thing that proved I wasn’t
cut out for life in the void. I’d been trained in combat, in flight, even in
ship repair, but in that moment I believed nothing could prepare a person for
the fact that their life was about to end. And when another metal rod was
rammed into my abdomen, another bout of electricity sent coursing through my
veins and knocking me back down onto my knees, I knew that I would not survive
much more of this.
All
the while, my eyes shifted whenever I found the chance, to the computer panels
that surrounded me. Harry was there, the ship’s AI, watching all of this.
Protocol mandated that he allow this to happen, that he do nothing that might
go against the orders of his crew, and we could not order him to help us. Right
then, I saw the absurdity of it all. In his humanoid eyes projected upon those
screens, I saw his confusion, his desire to help us. But I had no idea how he
might be able to do so. He needed an audio command from one of us, if he was
ever going to succeed.
We
were alone in this, Neal and I, and though I did my best to clear my mind and
find a way, I saw no way out for either of us.
They
asked us questions, things I didn’t know the answers to. I was only a lower
level specialist, not privy to important information. The things I knew were
the things anyone in Earth-Space could know, and I had a feeling that the
Hunters had people hiding among our ranks as it was. They didn’t need to know
the things I knew—we already had the same sources, the same intelligence.
The
rod was removed, and I wept as I collapsed upon the ground. I didn’t bother to
look up when footsteps approached through the airlock, from the station. There
was only one person who would bother to come back here: the man who’d ordered
this to happen.
“Report,”
he said, the man who’d been in my classes, the man who’d seen my face countless
times before today, the man who surely knew who I was and why I was here.
The
others made no reply.
I
turned my head to the side, to look into Harry’s eyes upon one of the out of
the way panels, and my brows furrowed as I attempted to focus upon the words
that had been written there. Harry shouldn’t have been able to do anything like
that, to even attempt to communicate with me. It went against the mandate of
his very creation, the coding within his own systems. This wasn’t possible.
And
yet, there they were.
How
long can you hold your breath?
You're right, that was mean. This isn't the ending. The ending will be revealed in the next edition of Mavguard Magazine, due out in April, 2016.
Patience, grasshoppers.
[love]
{Rani Divine}
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