Chapter 19

19

- Maeve -

"You okay there?" Tara asks from her cage.

"I'm fine," I reply. "Just annoyed."

"Stay angry if you can," she says. "It's better than being scared."

"Oh, I'm mad as hell," I assure her. "First chance I get, I'll knock them out."

Lacking something else to do, I examine the cage very carefully, looking for weak spots. And if I'd been as strong as Arelion, I could probably have bent the bars open and flown around the station, beating everyone up. As it is, I can only kick at the bars and wish I still had my fighting stick. That thing is incredible, and it might have been possible to use it to at least damage the cage and get some frustration out.

The Mark keeps tingling. I'm sure it means it's healing. If it worked the way Arelion said, then I'm sure it would be more a painful burn than this. Because his thoughts about me now can't be too kind.

I glare at the lone guard, but the mindless creature just stares right back, no life in his eyes.

Several hours go past before the Eoans are back. But now there's a dozen of them, as well as a Bululg. He looks like a dwarf compared to the big Eoans

They stop twenty feet away, and one of them comes up to the cage. He's smaller than a regular Eoan, and his splotchy white color also stands out. His wing feathers are brown and have a dirty look to them.

Still, the other Eoans defer to him in a way that helps me guess who he is.

The chemicals in the energy bar have faded. Still I have the patience to wait until he draws breath to speak.

Then I quickly say, "Oh, it's Buroteo the dictator. Also known as Buroteo the Dead!" I make sure to put some force into it, and my words echo from the wall.

Buroteo's mouth snaps shut, and his expression turns sour. "Watch your tongue, little female. It can be easily removed!" His voice is creaky and flat, nothing like I would expect from an Eoan.

But he's talking to someone who's been in the company of a much scarier peacock for days, so I just laugh. "Soon, all of you will be removed from the universe, Buroteo the Dead. Already Arelion has decided which sewer to throw your dead body into."

"Arelion is an annoyance," Buroteo says slowly. "But that is all he is. And now, we know he has no hope for his silly little rebellion to succeed. Because I have you ."

"Yeah, that's not going to be much of a help," I tell him. "If you notice, he's not here."

Buroteo gives his men a sign. They quickly approach and take me out of the cage, holding me firmly between two of them.

"He's not here now, " Buroteo says with a smile of brown teeth, with some missing. "But I want to find out if he's coming. Strip her."

While two Eoans hold me, two others start taking off my armor.

"Take your fucking hands off her!" Tara yells from her cage. "I'll kill you all!"

Her voice resonates from the walls, but the Eoan's don't pay her any attention. Only the one Bululg glances nervously up at her. She must have seriously scared them at some point.

I spit and kick and struggle, but I'm nowhere near strong enough to handle Eoans. Krunku and Fresk are smaller and weaker than these giants. Soon my boots are off and my jumpsuit is being pulled down.

"Tell me if it's time, Maeve!" Tara yells.

I know what she means — she also has a final option implanted in her wrist.

"Not yet," I yell back. If it were just me, I might consider it. But Tara is here, too.

The Eoans pull my jumpsuit off and drop it on the ground. Then they turn me around.

"Aah," Buroteo says with satisfaction. "That looks like a Mark to me. But Earthlings don't Mark, the Bululg have told me. Who gave you this, little unadorned female?" He traces the Mark with one icy cold finger.

I recoil from the creepy touch, but his cronies hold me firmly in place. "Get your dead fingers off me!"

"His Mark is on you," Buroteo says with satisfaction. "And the way I know Arelion, he's stupid enough to think it means something. He's just the type of young idealist who will believe in the ancient myths and old-wives tales!"

"He's ten times as smart as all of you combined!" I hiss. "And right now, he's taking back his planet!"

"And yet I now have his Marked female and that female's sister," Buroteo cackles. "Not a sign of great intelligence!"

The Bululg takes a step closer. "There's a message from Source," he says in his thin, creepy voice. "Arelion is approaching the station."

The mere mention of the name makes the breath catch in my throat. Arelion here?

"Good," Buroteo creaks. "When he enters through that door, he will see his Marked female defiled and his rival victorious! We shall kill his female in front of him. And then we will kill him, and his rebellion will be over.

I suddenly spot movement all around. Hundreds of aliens are entering the room from all sides. There are Bulug and Fresk and many others, but only a handful of Eoans.

"Yes, most of my army is here," Buroteo goes on with great self-satisfaction. "I was going to ambush Arelion the moment he landed with his pitiful little forces on Eo. But now, that will not be necessary. We will simply trap and kill Arelion here. Without him, his silly little rebellion will fall apart."

Shit. This is worse than I thought. Not only have I doomed myself by coming here, I may also have doomed Arelion's whole planet to be ruled by this jerk.

But there is still a way out.

Buroteo's forces get ready to ambush Arelion when he comes in the door. They're all armed with deadly-looking guns and they are arranged in a semicircle around Buroteo and me.

"Get the light," Buroteo orders, and his lackeys place a single floodlight in the middle of the floor, creating a circle of light on the crazy dictator and me.

"He will be caught the moment he exits the hangar," Buroeto says, his voice trembling with excitement. "Then he will be led in here. He will hear the sounds of your defilement, and then he will see it. Perhaps they will be sounds of great joy! Yes, you should enjoy my attentions to the fullest. It will be the last experience you will have, female!" He laughs like a madman.

I struggle against the Eoans holding me, but I can't budge.

"Another report from Source," the Bululg says. "Arelion is getting close. He's moving fast, and may have to circle the station once to slow down."

"Ah, he's so eager to get here it's actually slowing him down," Buroteo laughs evilly. "What did you say about him being so smart, female?"

I try to spit in his face, but I was never good at that and end up dribbling more than spitting. "You're going straight into his trap," I try desperately. What were those persuasion techniques I practiced? I could fake insanity. But I'm not sure that would be of much use here, because Buroteo seems plenty insane himself. And I'm having serious trouble thinking clearly. How about creating a win-win scenario?

"This is not the best use of your resources," I try, mind racing to think of a better one. "There is a way for you to get younger!" It's just a spur-of-the-moment thing, because Buroteo looks old and sick.

He inserts a bony, pale finger under the fabric of my bra. "Oh, I know. Nothing keeps a man young like taking a younger female. And if she's another man's Marked female, so much the better. I have done it many times on Eo, whenever a man has defied?—"

"New report from Source!" the Bululg suddenly screeches. "He's about to collide with the?—"

The whole station is shaken by a terrible crash that knocks everyone off their feet. The Eoans lose their grips on me, and I immediately crawl away, towards my suit and armor on the ground.

A terrible storm suddenly blows through the room, tugging at my short hair.

I don't check to see what happened, just frantically search the fabric for something I can use. Just as I get a hold of my fighting stick, someone grabs my ankles and lifts me.

There's a lot of noise. Alarms are blaring, and the aliens are bellowing commands. The storm suddenly stops, and all kinds of loose objects drop to the ground.

I extend the stick and whack it at the hand holding me. There's a yelp, and I give the Eoan another hit before I scramble to my feet.

Then I freeze.

Half of a flying saucer is poking out from the wall. There's a lot of smoke and sparks and fire, and it's obvious that the saucer has crashed into the station so hard it's broken through the wall. It looks a lot like the Revenge .

The confusion is immense, and the aliens don't know what to do.

I wonder how there's still any air in here at all. That's a big hole, and the air should escape. That was the storm I noticed. Probably the station has some kind of force field system that seals any breach.

I don't spend more time wondering about it. Holding my stick out in front of me as a spear, I sprint over to the cages and climb to Tara's cage. "Hey."

"Hey, Maeve." She reaches out through the bars with her whole arm to grab mine. She looks thin and pale. "I think it might soon be time."

"Not yet," I say tightly and insert the fighting stick through the metal bars, then lean on it. "Help on your side."

She does, and the bars flex a little. But nowhere near enough to bend them.

Tara stares past me. "Damn. Someone just came out of that saucer."

"Is he blue?" I ask tightly, using all my strength on the fighting stick.

"More gray," she says. "Very big, though."

I quickly turn to check out what she's seeing. There is indeed a big, gray thing coming towards us through the air. It could be an Eoan inside a hi-tech suit of armor.

The aliens in the room are starting to react. Buroteo is barking orders, and Fresks and Eoans are running towards the cages. One red Eoan beats his wings and takes off in our direction.

I pull the stick out from the cage. "I'll knock them out."

The flying Eoan lands and tries to grab me. I whack him on the side, but it doesn't knock him down. He takes hold of both my arms, despite me fighting as hard as I can.

His eyes suddenly roll back in his head and he drops to the ground, letting go of me.

The huge, gray suit of armor is hovering behind him.

"Sorry, my love," an electronic voice says. "I should have told you I would help." The visor slides up, and Arelion looks down on me. "But I think this will work out."

Buroteo's aliens are shooting now, with ray guns and bullet guns. Some of the shots ping off Arelion's armor.

"Don't hit the female!" Buroteo screeches. "Only Arelion!"

The shooting stops while the aliens run closer to get a better aim.

"Can you get her out?" I ask and point at Tara.

Arelion grabs two bars with his armor-suited hands. With a hiss of hydraulics from the suit, he pulls them apart and then rips them off the cage.

Tara climbs out. "Do we have a ship?"

"Mine is broken," Arelion says and nods to the wall, then takes a few shots at the aliens.

"Mine is not," I quickly state. "In the hangar!"

But the aliens are converging on us very fast. There has to be a hundred of them, and now they're aiming better. Arelion is taking so many hits he lowers the visor again.

He grabs me and pulls me behind him. "Stay there."

Tara clings to me. "Shouldn't we be running?"

I knock on his metal back. "Arelion, we have to go!"

"I was promised a show," Arelion rumbles through the speakers in his suit. "Ah. There it is."

A small, trash can-like cylinder is rolling to the middle of the floor.

I recognize it. "Cerak. But what can he do— oh!"

As I watch, the cylinder turns itself inside-out and ends up as a gleaming metal sea with dozens of spikes sticking out of it, like a nightmarish sea urchin. It hovers in mid-air, then calmly turns and orients itself before it suddenly erupts with bright white beams.

The aliens scream and howl as they fall, one after the other.

"That's enough of the show," Arelion decides. He grabs Tara and me, then jumps off and slowly descends on the ground. "This thing isn't designed for passengers."

The aliens that guarded the exit have wisely fled from the sea urchin of death. Tara and I run through it with Arelion behind us, shielding us from the few remaining aliens.

"This station is owned by the Bululg," Tara tells me as we run. "They use it for their slavery auctions. We have to blow it up!"

"Can we get away first?" I ask, looking behind us. The light show is over, and nobody's coming after us.

Arelion stops and dumps his armor to the floor with loud clanks. "Too heavy and hot to wear if we're not being shot at. Is the saucer in the hangar?"

"That's where I left it," I tell him. "But I'm not sure it's there now."

"Why not?"

"You'll see," I say tightly. "If it's not, there are other ships we can use."

Some Fresks come lumbering towards us. Arelion takes down two of them with his ray gun, and the others duck behind some crates. When they duck back up, one of them meets the tip of my stick as I fling it in a wide arc. The rest come out and try to run, but now I'm in a fighting mood. I throw the stick through their legs, tripping up two of them.

"Get down," Arelion calmly says, and I do as he suggests. He carefully aims and takes down two more. The rest scurry away.

As we get to the main market hall, a small pink ball of fur comes running fast towards us. "There you are! Follow me! That way, there's an ambush!"

"Are you sure, Bari?" I ask, looking across the hall to the hangar portal. "I can't see any enemies that way."

"That's why it's called an ambush," Bari yips. "You can't see it until it's too late. I know a way, though!" She runs into another corridor.

Arelion looks behind us. "We can just wait for Cerak to catch up. We don't need to fear any ambushes with him here."

Tara draws up to the wall. "There are a lot of enemies on this station. We should get away before they come."

Bari stops and looks at us. "Come on! What are you waiting for?"

Arelion and I exchange glances.

"For a friend, " I tell her.

A few seconds later, Cerak comes flying towards us. He's back to his regular trash can look, but he's going so fast I instinctively duck before he comes to a sudden stop.

"That was most of them," he says with his tinny voice. "Buroteo and some of his cronies got away, though."

"You have many hidden talents," I tell him as I straighten up. "Can you keep us safe until we get to the ship?"

"Probably," he says. "I was made for battles on planets, not inside stations like this. But if you don't mind the station being broken a little bit, then I feel confident that I can."

Bari trots back towards us. "I see now that you don't trust me. I suppose I can't blame you."

I shift the grip on my fighting stick. "Why can't you blame us?"

The small, furry robot stops. Then she seems to morph and stretch in every direction. Every hair on her fur becomes a long thread, so thin they're barely visible.

Arelion grabs me and pulls me behind him, the way he always does when there's danger.

We back off as Bari's long threads come together to create a dense grid of interlocking triangles. In a matter of a second, the robot has turned herself from a small puppy into a weird, scary, and profoundly alien machine the same height as Arelion. It's like a giant, faintly pink spider web spun around and through the skeleton of some fearsome alien predator. It's clearly there, but at the same time it consists almost entirely of air.

"Because you're right," Bari says, still with her cheerful, girly voice. "You shouldn't have trusted me."

A cold shiver goes through me. The contrast between her voice and the terrifying machine she has become makes my skin crawl. Bari has become something entirely new.

Arelion aims his gun. "State your intentions!"

"I will deliver you to Buroteo, as I have been ordered," Bari yips. "I'm honestly surprised about how difficult that has been."

"You betrayed us to the Bululg every chance you got," I accuse her. "It was you all along!"

"It would have been so much easier if they had just captured you," she says. "I told them exactly what to do. But organics… Well, they tend to mess things up. Orders are orders, and I am a robot. I must obey."

"Obey whom?" I ask. "The Bululg?"

"Buroteo is my master. He ordered me to follow Arelion some time ago. And I did, from a distance."

I'm not surprised about this. For a while I thought Cerak was the traitor. But when he started blasting Buroteo's guys back there, I knew it wasn't him. Then there was only one option left.

Some pieces are falling into place. "You killed the Bululg when we boarded the saucer. You didn't want Arelion to talk to them, because they would reveal you as the traitor! I wondered why you were suddenly right beside me in that control room."

"I ran past you," Bari admits. "I can be very fast when I want."

"Did you meet me by chance?" I ask, conscious we don't have time for this but still needing answers.

"Of course. You saved the lives of those Krunku by simply beating them up. I was about to murder them in a very bloody way. But then I made sure you picked Arelion's ship to break into. And then I could keep a really close eye on him and report on his moves. I'm sure you understand that I would never be allowed to stay in his ship if I hadn't been in your company. You were my cover, and it made my task so much simpler!"

"Traitor!" Arelion aims carefully and shoots.