Defying The Alliance (Novokin Alliance Invasion 1) Read online

  The two men embraced each other, the darker man kissing away sobs of the now quivering Randall. They gripped onto one another as if not doing so would be akin to not breathing.

  Murmurs of, "I never knew," and "she must be a witch," could be heard from the remaining prisoners. Some beamed with pride at the two men, others like the prime minister grimaced with disgust, but all paled when they realized Julie had turned her attention to them. Her smile was sinister and foretold of pain to come and demons she would unleash. Both hers and theirs.

  "What are you doing in the sector?" Julie pointed at the first guard, a short wiry man.

  "We were just passing through, on err...a tour of the Alliance planets?"

  Julie narrowed two green skewering orbs at the guard. "Liar!" She shouted and the man began to shake as if an electrical current were coursing through his body. Julie moved closer, motioning for him to answer again.

  "We're escorting the Prime Minister. He had business at the bank of Genervairea on Swiztlandia," the man confessed, sweat soaking his forehead.

  She smiled, and began circling the next poor guard like a Talerian bird of prey.

  "Very good. Now what was the Prime Minister’s business there?"

  The guard swallowed hard. I knew what was coming.

  "I don't –." Before he could finish his sentence, she pinned him with her gaze, his body writhed and his muscles spasmed in violent contractions.

  "Liar!" She screamed into his ear. He crumpled bonelessly to the ground.

  But Trex wasn't even holding that one?

  She whirled on another man, one of the pilots if I remember correctly. Under her shooting green glare, this one was already staining the armpits of his torn uniform and looking like he was about to faint. Julie pointed a long crooked finger at him and slowly asked her question again. Apparently, she had read from his mind that he too was about to give her a false response because she screamed like a feral Zepovian howling beast.

  Then silence.

  Julie stood slowly, surrounded by men twice her size. For a minute I was afraid for her safety. But the focus in her eyes even gave me pause. Her body stilled, but it looked like her face was being pulled in several different directions at once. All of the men leaned away from her. She raised an arm to the sky and bellowed savagely as an unknown gale of wind coursed through the fiery locks of her hair, "who here has the truth, who will thou not claim for thy offering!"

  The prisoners in the semicircle scattered back even more, their eyes wide like dears in a hover pods forelight. She deliberately took measure of each of them, meeting their eyes and staring into their souls, until she faced the largest of the prime minister's security officers. The man was a giant, but under Julie's scrutiny his mocha skin paled to a gray ash and his hands shook uncontrollably. The two men flanking him stepped back with noses scrunched, either from fear or from the stench of the big man's bowels which had obviously given way.

  Julie's smile set me back half a step too before she spoke to the giant man. "There is no need to die today. Why are you here?" Her voice low and otherworldly as she slowly approached him.

  "The Prime Minister was making a deposit,” the words tumbling over themselves to get out of his mouth before his eyes darted sideways to his boss.

  “How much?” She stilled her advance, her eyes focused on the floor in front of him. “How much?” She glowered.

  He hesitated for half a second before he revealed, “250 million in Alliance hard credits.”

  “What was the money for?”

  “I don’t know. Please, I beg of you. Truly, I don’t know. All I know is that regular deposits are being made in that account every couple of months.”

  "Thank you, I believe you," Julie said, moving forward to scratch the man behind his ear. A wave of her arm caused the giant to fall backwards into one of the prime minister's many couches and she traipsed over to the bar. There she pulled out a cloth and proceeded to soak it in a pitcher of water. She folded the wet cloth and brought it back to the quivering giant. She placed it reverently on his head, touching his cheek and smiling once more. He smiled back gratefully.

  She whirled on the rest of the crowd. Everyone, including my lieutenants took an involuntary step back and held their collective breaths.

  Julie's eyes narrowed. "Which one of you is the Prime Minister?"

  Chapter 9

  Bits of petrified Larkwood showered the metal doorframe of the prime minister's luxury apartment. A small metal spring flew through the doorway, ricocheted off the opposing wall and began an odd jerky dance on the floor until Julie put her foot down on it.

  "So how long will the Captain be like this?" The red haired girl asked the large golden man standing in the hallway, his arms crossed, leaning his muscular frame to the right of the bent and blackened metal door frame.

  They both winced at the sound of something very large and very fragile crashing inside the apartment. A couple of hours ago the prime minister confessed to betraying the United Worlds Protectorate to the Novokin Alliance force for the promise of his present title, prestige and a monthly financial arrangement of astronomical value. Since then Captain Jones has spent the last hour taking it out on his objects de'art.

  Trex made no move to venture so much as a peep inside the room. "Your reckoning is as good as mine. You have knowledge of her as long as I have.”

  Julie did a quick peek, just in time to witness her new Captain smash what looked to be a positively ancient vase. "True, but you two seem to have gotten awfully close since she freed us from the Lizardian slavers."

  Trex let out a soft growl.

  "Oh save it for someone else. I saw you give half your food away every day to many of the slaves that seemed too weak or too sick to work. I also caught you doing the old man's workload during our shift – just like I saw you spending a lot of time with Captain Jones." She waggled her eyebrows at him, and he assumed her curious facial tic meant something on her world, maybe even the same as it did on his. She was almost as observant as he was. He had to give her that, but did not have to give her anything else.

  He turned an eye on the little, fiery red-haired female. "I have a query for you young one. What is the power you wielded over these males? I didn’t even have to use my power as you had requested."

  A broad, white-toothed grin stretched across Julie’s face and made her look even younger. "Well, I’m sure you know, criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot. I simply used that against them," she offered and paused for him to catch on.

  He had nothing. He stared back at her with his usual stony glare, that only made her want to tickle the expression out of him.

  "Nothing, really? Okay, here it is. While you guys were over here blowing stuff up, disabling the guards and stripping the ship, I worked with Jaxx to penetrate the Alliance cargo ship’s data banks. Turns out there's a backdoor built into most of the Protectorate components, particularly the waste disposal unit. I know, sounds gross to crawl in through the toilet, but it allowed us to access not only the ship’s main data banks, but a whole host of secret surveillance cams the Prime Minister had set up all over the ship. Seems he wasn't a very trusting man."

  Trex nodded in understanding. "Those like him often believe that others are filled with the same duplicity."

  "Any who, there was a TV show I used to watch back home, about this guy who could read people's expressions, ticks and little idiosyncrasies to determine stuff about their lives."

  "TV?" He tilted his head, cocking a thick, shapely, golden-brown eyebrow.

  Julie waved his question off. "Unimportant. The thing was he never just asked random questions. He led people down specific paths making them give him the answers he wanted. He just made it seem like he had special powers."

  "And they believed him?" Trex favored her with an incredulous stare.

  "Most of the time."

  "So you too harnessed this skill?" Trex said appreciatively. This young woman was proving extremely resourceful, and he
was dutifully impressed.

  "eh, a little maybe, but I had to do better than just 'most of the time' with the Prime Minister." Trex stared at her, waiting for her to continue.

  "Jaxx asked me and the rest of the refugees to help. We scrolled through weeks and weeks of the Prime Minister’s secret vids and tried to find something to make the prisoners talk. That's when I first noticed Randolph. Unfortunately for him, he became the focus of our study. We must've followed his movements around the ship going back weeks. That's when I saw something that we could really use. That along with an extensive collection of personal information in the old Protectorate database on both the Razor and the cargo ship gave me everything I needed to get in his head."

  "And that of his lover’s,” Trex added amused.

  Julie kicked at the spring on her feet, setting it to life again. "That was just a bonus, I mean I knew who he was, but I didn't know how he'd react." She stepped back behind the safety of the wall when the sound of a plasma fire started up again. "That was really, something. It went better than I thought."

  Trex turned his head to face the young woman, "You did well young warrior,” a matter-of-fact look in his face.

  She agreed with a crisp nod of her head and a big bounce of her happy curls.

  He turned back to staring at the plastisteel wall across from him. "You placed yourself in great peril questioning the largest, very likely violent male in the room like that. The prime minister’s chief of security does not seem like somebody who responds well to being trifled with. And yet you did not appear intimidated by him,” she could hear the respect in his voice and yet his face remained as impassive as ever. “How did you break him?”

  She folded her arms to match his and leaned back on her side of the door frame, pride sparkling through her bright, green eyes. "That my friend was a combination of luck, moxie and this." She reached up and pulled at the neckline of her shirt to reveal a shiny green strap of cloth rising and falling over her shoulder. She snapped it with her thumb. "I bet you didn't see me show this to him when I had him cornered."

  "No, I only saw that odd wind take your hair."

  "Oh yeah, Jaxx set that up for the finale. He had total environmental control of the whole room. Did you know he kept me in a cone of cool air all the while he was slowly raising the temperature around each guard as I approached?"

  "I did not know that either, nor did I know he would be capable of so much, given his condition."

  "Watch it buddy. Never underestimate the power of the pregnant male," Julie pointed a deadly finger at him, before holstering it. "Anyway we found a video marked 26-admin-J. It's over 20 minutes of that giant Chief of Security guy singing into the mirror -bras, panties, wig and high heels– the whole bit. Way off key, but pretty sure it was the kind of thing he wouldn't want getting out." She punctuated her tale with a knowing wink.

  "Very clever. I am impressed," He admitted in all earnest.

  "Thank you Trex, it means a lot coming from you. By the way..., it was just a face I put on,” she mumbled dropping her eyes to the floor.

  “You wore somebody else’s face?” His eyes went wide; his face betraying his emotion for the first time perhaps since she’s known him.

  “Of course not,” she chuckled. “I mean I pretended to be brave. I was so scared...But then, you were there and I knew I could count on you to have my back,” she admitted gently, color deepening her rosy cheeks.

  Trex blinked once nodding his head and tightening his arms around his wide chest.

  Another explosion shook the deck floor under their feet from a plasma burst near by. ”So you think we should stop her?" She asked throwing a thumb over her shoulder at the doorway. A large clanging echoed out into the hall, reverberating deep in their bones.

  "Do you want to get in the way of that?" Several vicious shrieks tore through the air causing them both to cringe. Then silence. Trex composed himself then looked across the opening at the young girl. "I believe she will tire of her destruction soon enough. A warrior should be permitted to unleash the battle’s frustration. Otherwise, it builds and festers eventually poisoning one’s heart and mind.”

  The young girl’s eyebrows danced with the same jerky movements as the spring she played with. “You know, there are other ways you could assist her with to release her frustration.”

  A warning growl filled the hallway, followed by a snort and giggle.

  Chapter 10

  “The son of a Gulurian bitch! He sold us to the Novokin butchers! A year before the invasion. A whole year! If only we’d known. We could have prepared ourselves. We could’ve won. So many lives. So many. Dead.” I carefully took aim and incinerated another one of the sheeteck’s expensive furniture pieces with my plasma pistol. Some kind of antique handcrafted, Floturan, petrified hardwood, purple footstool or something. He sold his people out for a praking footstool. Skeck. I used to like purple.

  “He did all that, just so his traitorous, puny ass could sit in a nice pracking, comfy chair with his feet up and call himself the prime minister,” I yelled into the air while blasting the stool’s matching chair.

  “I mean, I knew the Senate was soft, a bunch of bureaucractic cowards with over inflated egos. But I never thought of them as backsliders and recreants. I never thought to doubt their patriotism, their commitment to protect the people of the Protectorate.”

  I couldn't stop myself, blood throbbed in my temples as I took aim, shooting at random pieces of furniture around the room and kicking down modern sculptures. I was vaguely aware of Trex and Julie standing silently, somewhere near the door. I hoped.

  "Not the entire Senate, Captain. The majority of them were killed during the second wave." Anya, as always, refused to hold a strict adherence to tact and timing. Staying in character, she had swept into the room and insinuated herself into my conversation.

  “What do you want Chief?” I growled at her.

  She sauntered around the debris like she was a model on the runway. She handed me a data pad. “Here is the quick inventory of the spoils. As you requested Captain,” I caught a note of pride and satisfaction in her voice. Her eyes sparkled, and she smacked her lips expectantly.

  I held the data pad for a few seconds, struggling not to smash it against the wall. My fury was amped up to cataclysmic. No release. I clenched my fist and ground my teeth, before I handed her the pad back, unable to focus on anything, well anything but the lamp I just melted to slag. “Just give me the gist Chief. Was it worth the risk?”

  “Captain, we hit a gold mine. We'll strip the plasma circuits and data wires from the walls if we have time. The water and reactor coolant gel is being drained as we speak and fuel cells are being disconnected, cooled and ferried back to the Razor. The armory has been emptied, and we scored enough Novokin rifles, phasers, and amunition to trade up for the good stuff.”

  I was pretty sure my chief engineer hated the cheap, unreliable Novokin technology even more than she did the actual Novokins.

  “We found two food resequencer's and one synthetic resequencer, for clothing and the like. Sexy over there can finally have himself some proper pants.” She licked her lips, tossing a lustful look toward the door. Toward Trex? I felt the rage starting to rise again.

  Unable to form a cohesive sentence, I hoisted a heavy, metal, serving tray off a small nearby table and flung it at the glass of the bar in the far corner. The resounding symphony of the shattering glass barely scratched the sharp edges of my soul.

  Anya held her ground. She didn’t wince. She didn’t recoil. Only her big eyes went wide with concern, when she asked, “Are you all right Captain?”

  My abashment was beyond words. I prayed for the God of lightning, if such an entity existed to strike me dead. I’d never lost control like this before.

  “I...I’m sorry Anya. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. And no, I’m not all right,” I admitted, my voice strained and my body trembled from the pure unbridled hatred festering in my chest. “But I will be. Carry on
with the scavenging and...good work Chief,” I managed a twitch of my facial muscles in my attempt to a smile.

  “Sure, no problem Captain,” she hesitated and stood there for a minute, worry etched in her pretty face, before she finally turned and started re-configuring the panel near the main exit door.

  A small, gentle hand touched my shoulder and Julie spoke in a soft voice at my side, "You have his confession now Captain. He spoke in great detail about the plans he made with the Novokin Alliance, months before they entered your sector. He not only ensured that he and his family would be safely off planet, but they paid him handsomely and then set him up as the new Prime Minister."

  I whirled on her, ready to release the fire of my rage. Elated to have a target. Instead, I was caught off guard by her calm demeanor and steady, open gaze. It was disarming. The girl was so young and she spoke in earnest. My fire fizzled out like a match in the Wind Caves of my home planet’s southern continent.

  "She is correct, Captain." Trex chimed in. His voice was deep and husky, his hazel eyes penetrated my heart.

  Him, I wanted to be pissed at, I just didn't know why.

  "I know she's correct, but now what?” I snapped at him. As if all this had been his fault. Not fair, I know. But I couldn’t help myself. His mere presence simultaneously excited and infuriated me like nothing or no one else before.

  “The Prime Minister may have admitted he colluded with the Novokin Alliance spies to destroy the Senate and undermined the Protectorate but who do we go to with this information Trex? Who do we tell, Julie?" I looked from the one to the other.

  Jaxx's voice buzzed over the comm, almost as raw as my own. I'd forgotten the channel was still open. "We tell people that the majority of the Senate wasn't killed in the Novokin raid, we tell them, the truth. They were murdered by a traitor.

  "We have the taped confession." Julie’s hopeful look flashed a spear of light piercing my darkened soul. I turned to her and squeezed her hand on my shoulder tightly. Tears threatened to spill over. I couldn’t have that. I had to be strong. My crew depended on me.