Defying The Alliance (Novokin Alliance Invasion 1) (8 page)

Two hours and this Garlakian rat sheetek hadn't given us anything. There was no way I was letting this opportunity slip through my fingers, but torture just wasn't in my wheelhouse.

“Captain? Permission to come aboard the Alliance ship,” the comm system chirped to life with my first officer’s voice.

“No way Jaxx, we went over this. I can’t put you in any more danger in your condition. How are you doing by the way? Are my godchildren ok?”

“No worries, all’s good here Captain. Thanks for asking...” he mumbled as a sniffle crept over the still open, comm.

“What’s going on Jaxx?” Annoyance tinted my voice with a mix of worry.

“I’m sorry about that Captain. Damn hormones...," he huffed, followed by another sniffle. "We're linked into the Alliance cargo ship's security system and we've not only been monitoring your situation, but have been going through both the ship's and crew's logs of the past several weeks, along with a skeck load of vid surveillance the Prime Minister recorded from cams hidden all over the ship. Based on what we found, we think we may have a possible solution for you.”

“Go ahead Commander, I’m all ears.”

“Remember Julie?” he asked.

“Of course I do.” Julie was the slave girl with the firey red hair whose defiance of her captors led us to liberating the slave caravan on Deep Proteus space station 5.

“She came up with a way that might help us. Everyone still on board here thinks it’s worth the effort.”

“What do you think Jaxx?”

“The clock is ticking Captain, and the longer we wait the greater the chance we’ll get caught out here with our proverbial pants down. I’d say give her a chance.”

He sounds like a Terran these days. He’s been hanging out with me way too much.

“Ok, let's hear it."

"No can do Captain, not with the possibility of ears listening. It would destroy the surprise. I'll send what I can to your data pad, but I think you'll want to see this firsthand."

****

I wasn't clear on what exactly they had planned, but Jaxx seemed so confident Julie could make the prime minister talk without resorting to physical abuse, I had to let her try.

When she arrived, I had to ask myself if this would really work. She was a little slip of a thing, and she looked way too young to have the ability to pry information out of a box of crackers, let alone a person.

The crew had taken to her quickly, and in the last two days she had familiarized herself with nearly every working aspect of the ship. Anya had been quite impressed by the girl’s quick intellect and eagerness to work, and that was some high praise coming from my engineer. Sure, Julie's adaptability and resilience might be impressive, but this seemed a bit out of her league.

Upon entering the prime minister’s broken apartment, which we had temporarily converted into a makeshift holding cell, she made a beeline for Trex. She leaned up to him and whispered something into his ear. I felt a small pang of jealousy rise up in me, threatening to lash out. I had to beat it down with a stick.

I had no reason to be jealous, he wasn’t mine, we weren't attached. He could be with anyone he wanted. It's not as though he clearly expressed an interest in me. One moment he sends me soaring with a single kiss in the midst of a plasma firefight, the next he's cold and distant.
Males.
Anyway, it was fortunate that he distanced himself when he did. Such close proximity to him and without the bother of prying eyes, I’m not sure I could’ve resisted. Opening his heart to me like he did though, sharing his past, freed something deep inside me. I wanted to hold him, feel the warmth of his body pressed against mine, his strong muscles coiling around mine. I wanted to be with him. To whisper his pain away...

Of course, all that after a quick lesson in humility. It was obvious his profound sense of superiority relating to his military experience and tactical training had him staring down his nose at this Protectorate Captain's ability. Well, we'll see about that, you barbarian.

I watched as his sexy, massive figure strode across the room in swift, powerful steps reminiscent of a golden Arpalothian Jaguar on the hunt.
Meow!
He followed Julie over to where the prime minister and several of his goons were tied up. She nodded at a tall blonde haired man with a swimmer's build and Trex dragged him into his feet. He stood behind the blonde man, grabbing him by the arm with one hand and pulling his hair back with the other, forcing the goon to look at the little red haired girl.
I guess the show was about to begin.

She stood about a foot away from the sneering blonde man and leaned close leveling her eyes with his. "I'm not sure if you know who I am, or moreover what I am. I may look like you, but I'm not. I was born gifted with a power, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. With this power I can read images directly from your mind and I can tell if you're lying to me or not," her strong voice reverberated throughout the room, a hard look frozen on her pretty, delicate face.

He scoffed at this.

Julie responded by rushing the man. She ended up nose to nose with him, her slender fingers splayed and grasped both sides of the blonde man's face, from temples to cheeks. Her eyes rolled around in their sockets, going nearly completely white at times. The muscles in her arms were straining, and I watched in awe, waiting to see what she’d do next. I wasn't alone. So when she leaned in to whisper into the man's ear, everyone in the room strained to listen. "If you tell the truth, this mind meld will be painless and easy. However, if you attempt to hide the truth from me..., well, let's just say, it's been described as agonizing."

No way. Could she really do that? Jaxx had assured me that no physical harm would befall our hostages. The deadly serious look in her eye and the maniacal tinge to her voice… Let's just say I was impressed, and worried.

Julie began pulling out pieces of his past, seemingly right from his mind. The other bound guards gaped at her ability and her accuracy. Sometimes she had questions, and other times she just looked at the man and recounted images and stories from his past. Randall, as we learn the man was named, was an open book to her. Her ability was uncanny. Even the prime minister was starting to squirm in his pink frillies. Then her questions intensified.

"I wanted to thank you Randall, up until now you've been honest with me – to a point." She whirled, and approached him slow and deliberate. All in witness could see beads of sweat forming in his hairline as she moved closer. He tried to turn away from her but Trex forced his head back in her direction. When he dropped his eyes to the ground, Julie moved up close to the man, resting a gentle hand in the blonde man's shoulder. The room went silent enough to hear the faint background crackle of the open comms system. She whispered softly into his ear.

"It's okay, you can tell me, you're safe here with me." The lilt of her voice almost a song against the man's whimpering.

His shoulders bounced up and down uncontrollably as he tried to bite back his sobs. She stroked his face with the back of her hand as would a mother to comfort a small child. Even with Trex holding his head, the man fought to shake it back and forth.

"No! Don't make me… please," he begged.

What was she doing to him? Wait, was Trex using his power? I specifically told him no torture. I can't believe Jaxx would be okay with this? I was about to call this off, when the soft song of Julie's voice worked to soothe the soul of the blonde man they were interrogating.

"Shhhsss, it's okay, it's okay Randall. I'll do it for you, there's no need to hurt." Patting him once more on the cheek, Julie rose and walked towards the remaining prisoners. They all scuttled away from her, including the prime minister who seemed to be a natural at scuttling, except for one. A tall, well-built dark skinned man waited in the now semicircle of prisoners, with his head down and tears staining his face.

Julie held out a hand to the dark man, which he took without further prompting. She then guided him over to the blonde man she had interrogated, now on his knees and weeping uncontrollably. She stopped in front of Randall and held out her hand for his. Slowly, as if afraid her touch would burn, he tentatively reached his hand out to her also. She brought their hands together and clasped them in hers. She smiled warmly before directing the darker man, "Go to him."

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?"

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.