Relic - Jaid Black Page 0,2
through there!”
“That’s an order!” the commander shouted back, making herself heard above the deafening sound. “Grab their weapons and three cloaks!”
She tore a fourth cloak from one of the human collaborator’s bodies and quickly fashioned a sack of sorts from it. Throwing as many weapons as she could inside it, she also stripped the dead feeders of the various alien paraphernalia they sported on their bodies. Medical kits, bio weapons—she took it all. She had watched the invaders use all of it and would figure things out when time allowed.
Preparing to stand up from her crouching position, Octavia’s gaze landed on a circular, gold, ring-like object in the hands of one of the dead aliens. Having never seen it before, she almost left it behind, then decided at the last second to retrieve it. She tossed it into her makeshift bag and stood up.
The gateway was whirring so violently that Octavia guessed they had maybe a few heartbeats left. Pushing aside her doubts, she held up one of the pilfered assault rifles and walked into the pulsing violet portal. She understood without visually confirming it that Jackson and Bellamy were on her heels. They might have thought she’d gone crazy, but they’d never defy a direct order.
A fierce wave of nausea overwhelmed Octavia as a kaleidoscope of colors zipped her body into the unknown. She could hear Jackson’s roar of pain, could sense Bellamy panting for air beside her, yet she saw nothing but whirling, jarring, vivid colors sucking them into some type of maelstrom.
The dizzying vortex lasted maybe twenty seconds, yet passed like an eternity. The three of them landed with a thud, hard, onto an unforgiving ground. Jackson was instantly impaled through the head by a jutting tree branch, his lifeless body twisted in an unnatural position. Blood gushed out, spraying the two survivors.
Octavia closed her eyes, guilt consuming her. She had ordered Ensign Jackson to follow her and said order had gotten him killed. “Marcus is dead,” she murmured. “Because of me.”
* * * * *
”Where are we, Commander?” Lieutenant James Bellamy whispered.
Octavia said nothing. She continued to lie on the grassy embankment, her eyes unblinking.
Bellamy sighed. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known.”
She knew he spoke the truth, yet the guilt remained. Pulling herself up into a sitting position, she wrapped her arms around her knees. “I don’t know where we are,” she said truthfully. Octavia quickly recapped her last conversation with Admiral McAdams. “All I know is I was given a direct command.”
She glanced around, her sharp gaze taking in their near idyllic surroundings. They were in the middle of a dense forest, trees surrounding them for as far as the eye could see. Her acute hearing picked up the vague sound of trickling water, telling her the rare stuff was close by. She blinked, unwrapping her arms from around her legs, and let her hands come to rest on the grass around them.
Grass. It had been over a year since she’d seen a single blade of it, much less felt the soft, fragrant stuff with her own hands. There were rumors that grass and trees could still be found within the compounds where human collaborators dwelled, but she’d never been outside of an internment camp to see if it was true. But this… this was different. It was as if she was in a naturally wooded forest rather than a carefully constructed compound.
“This place looks like a feeder’s worst nightmare,” Bellamy said. “And that makes it my best case scenario.”
Octavia agreed, but said nothing. She was too busy assessing their surroundings. Still, Bellamy was right. For whatever reason, Xenocanns preferred their environments to consist of rocks, dirt, and heat. In areas not given to high temperatures, the aliens set up towering heat lamp contraptions to warm themselves. She supposed it had something to do with the reptilian part of their DNA.
“One of the feeders got through the porthole, James.” She told him about the doctor, the ten military traitors, and the three Xenocanns. “We only killed two of those alien fucks.” She sighed. “I guess where we are doesn’t matter so long as the final feeder remains alive. We have to track it and kill it. And we need to find that doctor.”
“Maybe the doctor knows where here is,” Bellamy agreed. He ran a hand over his unshaven jaw. He had developed a thick, black beard since she’d last seen him. “But before we do anything else…”
Octavia nodded. They had to bury their