Defender of the Empire: Cadet #1 (34 page)

             
Their employers were not expected for a few more hours yet, so there was plenty of time for the entertainment to resume. Either from Kifen’alusa ses-Ky or some other who drank too much. Talis’talklen ses-Ky absently wondered why their employers wanted a thirteen cycle old cadet. He wasn’t too concerned though because he understood the first rule of being a mercenary: don’t question why. He also didn’t care, as long as he got paid.

***

              All was quiet, which to most would be a good thing, but it made me nervous. Especially when dealing with Telmicks. When on the hunt, they were quiet. And all was quiet so far as we intruded into their ship. Did they know we were here?

             
Westley and Marius were also uneasy. After all, we were on an enemy ship, full of unknowns…
Scrae, Luna can you scout ahead? Can you find Jason?
I asked.

             
OF COURSE WE CAN. Scrae replied. WE
ARE
SPECTRALS AFTER ALL. A BETTER QUESTION WOULD BE ‘WILL WE’? OOF! His mental voice grunted.

             
SHUSH MOUSE! Luna growled. THIS IS NO TIME FOR JOKES. I felt her focus on me. SCRAE AND ZARA WILL GUARD YOU LOT. THE OTHERS WILL LOOK FOR THE TELMICKS.
I
WILL GO FIND THE BOY.

             
Thank you.
I thought fervently. The relief of knowing that we would have some sort of advanced warning allowed me to breathe. I was also grateful that we had a Spectral wolf searching for Jason.

The three of us
slinked along the corridor and I got my first real good look at a Telmick mercenary class ship. It was built with its crew in mind. The halls were dauntingly tall. Whatever metal that was used was an odd brown with a greenish tinge. It reminded me of camo that someone would use in a savanna. I wondered why they would use it when the outside of the ship was a more metallic color. It seemed too bland to be an attempt to remind homesick mercenaries of home. But then again, what do I know?

T
ime seemed to move sluggishly as we made our way through the ship. I wondered how much time we had before help arrived. As Marius had suggested we had sent out the message requesting aid and giving the coordinates that Kylesst had given me. And, as I had suggested, we had sent the message to both Admiral L’Seral and Captain Wingstar. Shortly after sending our brief transmission Westley had dropped out of hyperspace. He had timed it to be just short of our true destination. We didn’t know what we would find so we decided to check it out first.

Orbiting a large volcanic world
that resided just on the star side of the frost line was the Telmick mercenary ship. It was a bit larger than the shuttle they had used to visit Nem and it was still smaller than an LFP.  With careful precision, Westley had docked the LFA to the docking hatch. Marius had done something to silence any alarms. Even so, we had thought that someone would have come to investigate, but that didn’t happen. Which was why we were sneaking about the ship on our toes even if we did have Spectrals helping us.

I FOUND HIM. Luna announced.

Where is he?
I mentally asked. I couldn’t hide my excitement now that I would soon know where to find my friend.

TURN LEFT AT THE NEXT INTERSECTION. THE SECOND DOOR ON YOUR RIGHT IS WHERE HE IS BEING HELD. 

Is he hurt?

Luna sighed. HE IS ALIV
E. THEY DID NOT TREAT HIM KINDLY, THOUGH. BUT THEY DID REFRAIN FROM MUTILATING HIM.

             
I managed to take some reassurance that Jason had a chance. Which was getting better since we were almost to the intersection.

How many guards?
I asked picking up the pace slightly. Enough that I had both guys staring questioningly at me.

I nearly tripped when she replied. THERE ARE NONE.

What? Then where are they?!

CELEBRATING THEIR RAID.
A disgusted new voice said. Even through the disgust I got the idea that whatever Spectral it appeared to be was of the peaceful, down to earth kind.

THEY WOULDN’T BE EXPECCTING ANYONE TO COME AS YOU THREE DID.  Scrae added. THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND SNEAKING AROUND. BESIDES THEY THINK YOU LOT ARE EITHER DEAD OR TO
O DEMORILIZED TO TRY ANYTHING. BESIDES, HOW WOULD YOU KNOW WHERE THEY WERE GOING?

I snorted softly. Well the T
elmicks were going to learn the hard way that size was not everything. I ignored the questioning looks Westley kept throwing my way as I took the lead with purpose in my steps. I couldn’t help myself. We had to get to Jason and I knew where he was. I couldn’t pretend to not know. I figured I would have to find a way to explain myself later when I came up with the story of how I had known the coordinates. I wished my future-self luck with that. I can hear her cursing me now. But right now, I didn’t care. Future explanations didn’t matter at this time. What mattered now
was
now. Jason’s life was hanging in the balance. What would come would come.

             
Entering the narrow room where he was held, I realized just how accurate my thought had been. The three of us paused upon entering the room. Jason was suspended against the rear wall. His wrists were clasped tightly by heavy chains that, coupled with his weight, cut into his wrists. They held his arms up over his head and kept his toes from touching the floor. More chains kept his legs immobile. A tear slipped down my cheek at the evidence of the agony Jason had gone through. Not only were the chains cruel, but it looked like he had been beaten. Before or after he was strung up like a hunk of meat, I don’t know. But what used to be lightly sun bronzed skin was now a mottled coat of black, blue, yellowy brown, and red. No wonder he was unconscious with his head lolling forward listlessly. Westley finally broke the silence. “
Damn
! What did they do to him?”

             
“I don’t know, but it could have been much worse.” I said hurrying toward the boy. “And no, you don’t want to know what could have happened to him.” I said before he could ask.

             
It was much worse closer up. I won’t lie to you. I nearly gaged. It angered me that anyone could do something like this to another living being. It angered me more that it had been done to my friend. Fear tangled with the fire of anger because I knew what could have happened to him. And, grateful as I was that it hadn’t, I wondered why. Why had they taken him in the first place? Kylesst had said a prince was going to be kidnapped and I could safely guess Jason hadn’t been completely honest in telling us who he was. The question remained though: Why? Was it a ransom? Or was it something more? Admiral Knight was involved I knew. Just how did everything fit together?

             
Stop it Rylynn!
I scolded myself. I had a friend who needed aid. I just was stymied as to how to provide that help.

             
REALLY? COME ON RYLYNN. SURELY YOU CAN GUESS? Scrae challenged like a teacher. I glanced at Westley and Marius who had come up and started to work on getting Jason down. My eyes widened as I glanced at Marius. Back on Prima Imperium, Marius had still been in some pain from the battle on Nem. The medical nanites could only work so fast and Zara had been trying to help. When I had touched him, I had incidentally transferred some of that energy I had so much of to him. It had healed him faster and healed Zara. Could I do the same for Jason?

             
Only one way to find out.
I thought to myself as I lightly touched Jason’s chest. I gasped. So much energy was pulled out of me that it appeared as a large bolt of electricity. It was so strong that it caused some of the systems nearest us to stutter. In the flickering light I could see that most of the bruises were gone. Leaving only smears of blood and the lightening of the worse contusions behind.

             
“What the hell was that?!” Westley exclaimed glancing uneasily at the flickering lights above us.

             
“Doesn’t matter!” Marius hissed at the same time that I was told that our position was being approached by a large number of enemies. “We are going to have company!” Marius continued for Westley’s benefit since no Spectral could warn him. By this time we could hear the clanging of steps coming toward us. Westley swore and took out a plasma knife and began cutting off the chains, leaving the cuffs alone for now. Marius followed his lead. By the time our guests arrived, Jason was free of the wall and just coming around.

             
LOOK OUT! Luna howled in warning. And I didn’t see the reason to be redundant since we were already trapped by enemies at our door. In the next moment I learned why.

Chapter 26- The Imperial Gift

              The tall, gray, and heavily tattooed leader of this band of Telmicks entered the room. A pace behind him was a many limbed creature. It was gray-green in coloration. And had six jointed legs that supported a central body. Its head was an inverted pyramid that supported two eye stalks above a clicking mouth. Each of the six legs had decorated armor plates and ended in three clawed points. Tooled leather formed a baldric of sorts that covered its humanoid form from one shoulder to just above its legs. Four arms gestured as it spoke with the Telmick leader. There was only one think that fit this description: A Zar’daken. The gesturing conversation stopped in shock when they noticed the four of us.

             
The Telmick leader’s yellow eyes widened when he caught sight of me.
Hey sucker, I’m back.
I couldn’t help thinking with grim humor. His surprise quickly turned to anger. And who could blame him? I mean, here he was assuring his high paying customer that the merchandise was secure and alive only to find that said merchandise was no longer secure.
And
to make things worse, there were three intruders. His credibility was now very questionable. I almost felt sorry for him… no that’s a lie. I could never feel sorry for a Telmick.

             
He shouted orders at his men who were pouring through the door around him and the Zar’daken. We were more than overwhelmed. And to add to it, more Zar’dakens were entering too. I wondered vaguely what they would do if they accidently killed the one they were after? Then I mentally slapped myself and bent my brain to do something more productive- like finding a way out of this situation alive and, preferably, intact.

             
Westley, Marius and I were pulling weapons to take as many of them down as we could before one of two things happened: help arrived in time or we were overwhelmed. I definitely preferred the first to the second. I just hoped we could last that long. We ducked behind some luckily placed consoles and storage pods to avoid getting shot ourselves. I jerked Jason undercover next to me. He was still mostly out of it when blasts lit the room in red flashes. Even though that was the stunning color, it still terrified me. What would they do to us if they caught us? It really didn’t bare thinking about. And besides, the Zar’daken used different weapons than us. There probably wasn’t a stun setting on their weapons.

             
Jason stirred and I ducked down to check on him. “Jason? Can you hear me?” I called softly. His tri-colored eyes opened and focused on my face for a second. Something hit the console we were huddling behind and a shower of sparks rained around us. Those tri-colored eyes of green, purple, and crimson went wide and it seemed that one of those sparks had lit something behind those eyes. They glowed and, suddenly, Luna’s warning made a hell of a lot of sense.

             
Some instinct took over and I scooted back from Jason. He grunted and curled into a ball. “What’s wrong with him?!” Westley shouted. I could only shake my head as I struggled to decide if I should fight my instinct or not.

             
I didn’t get the chance to decide because suddenly Jason’s form melted away and all the fire power in the room experienced a change in trajectory. A ball of heat drew the blasts to itself and suddenly expanded. The shock wave knocked everyone down. For the Zar’dakens, the position was somewhat problematic with all those limbs.

             
A rattling hiss drew my attention to a sight that my mind was having serious trouble understanding. In Jason’s place was a large serpent creature with feathered wings that were mostly crimson with purple and green highlights. It was coiled about the console and hissing at the enemy. Long fangs, roughly the size of my arm, dripped a neon green substance. I didn’t need to be told that I did not want it touching me. The serpent’s feathery crest was erect in a threatening manner. There was a moment of silence as we all stared. Then a Telmick made the mistake of moving and the serpent struck.

             
Shots flashed into the creature and only seemed to piss it off more. It lashed out with its body, knocking down a few of the enemy who had made it too their feet back to the ground or slammed into the wall.

             
“What the hell?!” I think the three of us rescuers said at the same time. We traded a glance before giving ourselves a shake and joining Jason in fighting the enemy.
How did he do that?
I mentally asked. I had never seen anything like that before. It was amazing. The only problem was that Serpent Jason was taking up all the available room and we risked hitting him with our weapons. The enemy was already doing a stellar job turning his brown-black scales red.
Scrap that. I expect to know later, but, first, how do I get him back to human?
I asked the Spectrals as I ducked to avoid the flailing feathered tail.