Ereshkigal’s War (Edge of the Splintered Galaxy Book 5), page 6
He still hadn’t been able to reach his ship, the Marauder, via the communication app installed on his laptop nor send his crew the intel he had gathered regarding a ship they’d been tracking. Tetsuya forgot the ship’s name, just that it was something his captain had spent a lot of time tracking down over the years. A part of him was okay with his inability to reach the Marauder. The Hashmedai people in Hanti were cool. The kids’ laughter when he taught them how to pitch a baseball was soothing. Watching one kid hit a home run for the first time was neat too. Pernoy watching him teach the kids how to play baseball was even better.
Speaking of Pernoy, she invited him to her suite again for the usual drinks and chatter about the good old days when they lived in the Vancouver area. While seated at the edge of her bed, Tetsuya and Pernoy watched a movie together on his laptop. Once the credits started to roll, Tetsuya sat up to leave and went to collect his laptop. Pernoy held his arm instead, pulled him toward her, and kissed him. Yes, kiss, not lick. Hashmedai typically showed affection to an intimate partner by licking them, not kissing. Pernoy’s kissing lips showed how much human culture changed her and that Hashmedai weren’t simply monstrous alien invaders back in the day. The Hashmedai who attacked Earth in 2018 were just people carrying out their orders, people who could have gotten along fine with humanity if the senseless fighting had never erupted.
Tetsuya ended up having sex with Pernoy some five minutes later. Or was it thirty? He couldn’t remember. He was so happy to be deep inside a woman. It had been ages, decades perhaps since he experienced sensual intimacy. He was certain this was the first time he bedded an older woman too, a mother at that. He couldn’t blame Pernoy for doing this. Single Hashmedai mothers needed intimacy too. Pernoy cuddled and kissed him repeatedly, even when they finished having sex. It was an act that none of the colony’s Hashmedai men would have been comfortable with. Those men were from the Hashmedai Empire, and Tetsuya was a human from Earth, Vancouver. Tetsuya was the partner Pernoy had dreamed of having since leaving Earth and boarding that fated colonization ship.
The next day, Tetsuya woke up in Pernoy’s bed. Well, the next day as far as his human brain was concerned. It was still dark outside. The walls of the arcology weren’t helping with the light. He sat up and glimpsed Pernoy leaving her icy bath for the morning. She was naked with specks of ice water rolling down her pale Hashmedai thighs. She reached for a towel and patted herself dry, starting with her breasts, then lowering the towel to her navel, its ends blocking the sight of her sky-blue pubic hair. Tetsuya rolled his naked ass out of bed, went to fetch his attire, and considered himself thankful that Pernoy was one of the few Hashmedai who could tolerate slightly warmer temperatures. She had upped the thermostat so that he wouldn’t freeze. Her icy water baths in the morning helped keep her body cool.
“Hey,” Pernoy said to him. “You never told me. How did you make it out here?”
“That’s a secret I’ll have to keep to myself for now.” Tetsuya grabbed his boxers and pulled them up, obscuring his cock and ass cheeks from sight.
She raised an eyebrow. “HLF related?”
“The HLF is dead.” He glanced at a picture on the wall. It was a photo taken on Earth featuring Pernoy hugging a young Hashmedai boy and a half-human, half-Hashmedai teenage girl. Pernoy’s children, Lyir and Eupiar. Her kids looked different from one another since they had separate fathers.
And neither of Pernoy’s kids was with her.
“How are the kids?” he asked.
“Heading to their daily studies.”
“I mean your kids. Eupiar and Lyir.”
Pernoy frowned and looked away. She said nothing else and resumed drying her naked body before slipping into a comfortable pair of pants and a silky blouse.
“Wish I could say fine, but . . .” Pernoy spoke at last. The pause was so long even Tetsuya had finished getting his stuff on, a pair of durable cargo pants, a matching top, then later his jacket. “Eupiar and I . . . we had a disagreement just before we booked passage on the colony ship. Lyir . . . he’s still in cryogenic storage, I hope.”
“Oh, he was part of the colonists who never awoke?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Only a few of us were revived to build the colony because of the accident. The system lord has ordered certain people to remain in cryo until our resource problems are dealt with.”
“Damn, your son was one of those nonessentials, eh?”
She nodded and walked toward him. “That is why I’m excited about this new deal we made with those space farmers I told you about. They operate a flotilla of agriculture ships that deliver food and water to planets in need, and we’re going to be getting our second shipment soon. If this keeps up, we’ll be able to release more people from cryo.”
“Hopefully your son as well.”
Pernoy peered into his eyes. “How long will you be staying? Wasn’t your ship due to swing by any day?”
“I’m not sure what the delay is,” Tetsuya said, wincing. “I hope they’re alright, otherwise—”
The echoes of concerned voices drew Tetsuya and Pernoy’s attention toward her suite’s window. There were a lot of worrying murmurs echoing from the streets outside. Those mummers turned into screams.
Tetsuya and Pernoy stood shoulder to shoulder and glanced outside. He didn’t see anything worrying at first, just Hashmedai pedestrians standing in awe. They were looking up at the arcology’s ceiling. Tetsuya did so as well and gasped. Beyond the transparent top of the habitat were large ships diving from the stars to hover above the settlement.
He pointed out the six ships floating above. “That your delivery of food?”
Pernoy looked up then shook her head. “No . . .”
The screaming in the streets intensified. Tetsuya felt his stomach flip, and his heart’s thumps reverberating across his rib cage. Gunfire echoed. Then came plasma fire, followed by some kind of beam weapon. That only made the screams even louder, sending the Hashmedai below running for cover. Above, the six ships floating above the arcology opened fire with a barrage of beam strikes, destroying the arcology’s ceiling and sending thick shards of fragmented glass to the city. Falling debris crushed or sliced in half those who failed to run fast enough.
A second and third ship opened fire, cutting a swathe of destruction across the city. The beam weapon was cutting through skyscrapers and was seconds away from slamming into their hotel.
Tetsuya grabbed and pushed Pernoy away from the window seconds before it exploded with a thunderous blast.
Tetsuya’s head wouldn’t stop ringing. He arose from where the devastation threw him to see Pernoy’s once lovely and tidy hotel suite turned into a mess with its walls looking like a bomb had gone off. He felt a rush of warm air blow against his back as he stood up. The ship bombarding the city with its beam cannons destroyed the window, wall, and the arcology’s ceiling. Tropical air from the outside world gushed into the city now. If the attacking ships weren’t killing the Hashmedai, the warmth would. He helped Pernoy to her feet.
“Are you okay?” Tetsuya asked, holding Pernoy with his aching hand.
Pernoy held her gut as she stood. Blood covered her hand. A piece of shrapnel hit her good. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
“Like hell you are. We gotta get you to a hospital or something,” Tetsuya said. “You have those on this planet, right?”
Pernoy didn’t answer and limped to her suite’s window. What was left of it. It was now just a giant vertical gash in the wall. Fleeing Hashmedai littered the streets below, their rushing footsteps carrying them away from the falling debris and ash. He wouldn’t have been surprised if half the ash were once Hashmedai bystanders. Some of the fleeing Hashmedai ended up tripping and falling over the dead. Energy weapons blazed in the distance as transports flew toward the edge of the arcology.
Tetsuya joined Pernoy and eyed the strange ships hovering above the city. “They stopped firing.” He looked at them closer and saw smaller ships, likely dropships landing in Hanti’s streets and parks. “Their initial attack was to crack a hole through the ceiling.”
“They don’t want to destroy the city,” she said.
“They want to capture it.”
The screaming in the streets below wouldn’t stop. In fact, it seemed to have worsened, and he spotted the reason. About two blocks over, Tetsuya pointed out heavily armed shock troopers marching toward the cluster of skyscrapers where their hotel was. Hashmedai warriors wielding plasma swords and wearing exosuits engaged the shock trooper aliens. The warriors decapitated two shock troopers. That turned out to be their last act in life as the remaining aliens aimed their vaporizing beam rifles at them, turning the fighting Hashmedai into ash. The armored men continued their march through the street and were minutes away from approaching the hotel.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Tetsuya said. He tugged on her arm and glanced at the wound on her midsection, soaking her blouse with Hashmedai blood. “Keep pressure on that. It should stop the bleeding.”
Tetsuya gathered his bag and slipped his laptop into it, glad to have brought them with him. As they entered the hallway, he saw that there was nothing left of his suite. It was just a door that led to a drop to the city where a pile of rubble littered the streets. Spending the night in Pernoy’s bed literally saved his life.
“Take me to the central hub,” Pernoy said midway into their escape through the ruined hotel hallway.
“Why there?”
“That’s where the colony was first established. Most of our defenses are stationed there, as well as emergency shelters.”
“Which way to it?”
“Just follow the crowd. I’m sure they’re all running toward it.”
“All right. Let’s hope these shelters are good enough to keep these aliens out.”
“We designed the shelters to protect people from asteroid impacts. I doubt these attackers could break into it.”
The lifts were out. Figures. They had to make do with the escape ladders inside the shaft’s walls. Tetsuya told himself repeatedly that the splats he kept hearing as they climbed down weren’t Pernoy’s blood leaking to the floor. She grew weaker upon their arrival on the main floor, and he had to hold her steady. And then they made their escape to the city streets.
He winced at the scent of burned metal and plastic in the air.
Tetsuya looked to the left and right but didn’t see the fleeing Hashmedai. He saw the alien shock troopers cover behind fallen signs once glowing with light.
“Ah, shit!”
Tetsuya dashed away while holding Pernoy’s shaking wrist, got behind a sign advertising the hotel’s services, and ducked. An explosion of sparks rained around them, its loud crackling noise forcing the two to cover their ears. The enemy weapons were fucking loud too. Well, the ones that fired projectiles. The beam weapons were much quieter. A second explosion sent a wave of heat across his face. Tetsuya shrugged it off; Pernoy nearly fainted. The Hashmedai weren’t meant for such high temperatures. The enemy stopped firing and moved forward, their armored feet thumping with ominous thuds. Tetsuya retrieved an ePistol from his bag and hoped the damn thing still worked. He bought it from a weapon smuggler in Rome back in 2041.
Pernoy was unresponsive and leaking a lot of blood onto the road, so much that it spilled past their cover. He listened closely. The enemy was moving toward Pernoy and her blood trickling across the road. They were moving to see if they had killed him and her. Tetsuya crawled to the opposite end of the fallen sign, counted to three, then looked around it. It was clear. He moved around the sign as the two aliens surrounded Pernoy’s body, aiming their rifles down at her. They were probably wondering what had happened to him.
So he let them know.
Tetsuya got behind one target and repeatedly shot it in the back of the head, splattering its brains across the inside of its helmet. Alerted to the ambush, the alien’s partner spun with its beam rifle flaring. Tetsuya held the dead alien ahead of him as a body shield. The corpse vaporized in his hands. As the body disintegrated, Tetsuya leaped backward quickly and fired from the hip. His high-velocity rounds punctured a hole through the alien’s armored arm, and it lost grip of its rifle. The weapon must have weighed a lot.
The armored alien was injured, unarmed, and glaring at Tetsuya. He couldn’t see the alien’s face or a visor on its helmet. He assumed the helmet used tiny cameras to display what the user was facing. Tetsuya was genuinely frightened. It looked like a faceless creature. He couldn’t tell if the alien was wincing, talking, raging the fuck out, nothing.
So he shot the alien in the head three times.
Tetsuya stored his ePistol inside one of the pockets of his cargo pants then picked up the alien’s weapon. He had no idea what the buttons did or what the screens said. As a test, Tetsuya pointed the rifle at the road and touched what he assumed was the fire button. The beam weapon vaporized a small hole into the street. He liked it.
Pernoy came to about a minute later, groaning and holding her wounded gut that was spilling too much blood for his liking.
“Tetsuya . . . I don’t know if—”
“Stop,” he cut in. He didn’t want to hear it. “I’m getting you to the central hub.”
“I’m slowing you down . . .”
He ignored Pernoy and carried her with him through the streets and past burning buildings. They moved at a much slower pace. The alien rifle weighed a lot, but it kept them alive during the slog to the hub. Tetsuya vaporized three aliens on the way there then used the beam to free a man pinned under fallen rubble. Above, various Hashmedai interceptors and transport ships soared through the air to confront the invading ships hovering above the city. A long white line descended from the sky and struck the Hashmedai vessels. The spherical explosion that followed turned the ships into falling slag in a bright flash.
It looked like someone had dropped a small nuke from orbit.
7 PEIUN
Mountain Range
Nadevina’s World, Unnamed System
Unable to Retrieve Date, Unable to Retrieve Time
A transport left the Rezeki’s Rage and descended to the planet it orbited, now named Nadevina’s World in honor of Nadevina’s piloting skills. She was also at the helm of the transport and carefully angled it toward the mountains the five Draconian bioships and various wyverns slammed into. There was no activity from the five bioships during their approach to the planet.
Peiun directed Nadevina to a clearing on the mountainside where she landed their transport then opened its side entrance. He approached the doorway first and studied the vista ahead through the visor of his EVA suit’s helmet. A lush green world with grass and tall pine trees adorned the landscape. The sun hung above and shone through several white clouds that had moved into the region. Peiun turned to face Nadevina and an escort of warriors and a guardian. Stanxi was the guardian, an experienced fighter and swordsman from the Empire’s interior colonies. The two warriors were named Shandara and Xai.
Shandara was from a family of warriors who had served in the Imperial army for centuries. She looked eager to get the mission started. Xai was one of the newer recruits, as Peiun recalled. The young man hadn’t seen a Draconian soldier on the battlefield. He hoped that would change today.
Peiun and Nadevina wore EVA suits, while Shandara and Xai donned exosuits suitable for inhospitable environments. Stanxi’s guardian combat armor had a similar function. The planet’s average surface temperature was 23 degrees Celsius, much too hot for a Hashmedai. He imagined that the snowcapped mountains would be perfect for them to take off their helmets and enjoy the air, assuming the sun didn’t get into their eyes, which was the other reason the team had worn the suits. Their helmets had tinted to dim the white sunlight that could damage their light-sensitive eyes.
Peiun extended his hand to the door in a presenting manner. “Nadevina, please accept the honor of being the first Hashmedai to walk on this world.”
He spotted her confused look through her helmet’s visor. “Me?”
“We named it after you, so it is only appropriate that you be the first person to walk on it,” Peiun said.
Nadevina stepped forward and took one timid footstep onto the planet’s soil. Peiun followed Nadevina, officially becoming the second Hashmedai to step onto the planet. He wondered if Foster did such things on the Omega Centauri worlds she and her crew explored. By now, Foster and her crew must have visited many planets that nobody from the inner galaxy knew of.
Once Peiun and his team left the transport, they scaled up the steep incline on the hill, found an open grassy field, and planted a beacon flag into the dirt, claiming the planet in the name of the Hashmedai Empire.
They stepped away from the beacon as it projected a holographic flag of the Empire. Below the flag was a list of the names of those present when Peiun placed the beacon and the ship that discovered the planet, Rezeki’s Rage.
“What if someone else had claimed this world before us?” Xai asked.
“We scanned no signs of civilization anywhere in the system,” Peiun said. “This is one of many unexplored and unclaimed worlds.” He examined his suit’s scanner data regarding the outside temperature. 28 degrees Celsius and rising. “And hot.”
Peiun led the group up the mountain’s path and toward one of the five downed Draconian ships that cratered the side of the hill. Their suits blasted their bodies with a chilly mist that they needed to stay alive. His group approached the first ship in a small impact crater. The remains of trees littered the lip of the oval-shaped indentation. The impact had spread broken wood and pine needles everywhere. He moved past the mangled trees, waving for Nadevina, Stanxi, Shandara, and Xai to follow and stopped before the fleshy skin of the bioship. Nadevina scanned it quickly then eyed the data appearing over her left eye.
