Whispers From Exile (Corwint Central Agent Files Book 2) Read online

  Orynn lifted her silver eyes up and Jade stood, taking a quick step back with an alarmed gasp. Orynn furrowed her brow as she tried to bring the Ruisk’s face into focus. Everything remained a dizzying blur.

  Jade stumbled backwards in shock. “Shit, Charity, get back in here! You gotta see her eyes!”

  Charity walked back into the room carrying a large tray with a basin of water, a rag, a towel, a small teapot, a mug and small triangular cut sandwiches. Her barefoot steps were slow as she balanced the load with her short Hedarion frame of four feet and three inches. “What’s so special about them? I mean, are they crooked or some- ...Oh.”

  Orynn turned her liquid-mercury-colored irises to Charity, making the woman's steps hesitate. Orynn tried to speak, but her lips only cracked, causing a stuttered, pained breath. Charity frowned and resumed her approach. Setting the tray on the ground a few feet from Orynn, she took the rag and soaked it with water. Wringing it lightly, she pushed the Ruisk gently aside and took Orynn’s chin into her hand.

  “This will sting a bit,” Charity warned before setting the wet rag against Orynn’s lips. Orynn’s silver eyes filled with more tears and her face winced, but she didn’t drop her gaze from Charity’s black-eyed stare.

  Charity tucked her short, jaw-length, black hair behind one ear. “Poor thing. Don’t mind Jade’s reaction. She lives her life high on Sil, so everything looks twice as crazy to her. I’m Charity. Jarren sent us to look after you.”

  “I… Or…” Orynn couldn’t get the words out and closed her eyes. The constant pain from the collar jaggedly grating against her aura was exhausting.

  “Orynn,” Charity finished for her as she dipped the rag back into the water basin and held it back to Orynn’s mouth. “So, you’re a real live Vesparian, huh? Wish I could say it was nice to meet you, but trust me hon, I don’t want to be here anymore than you do.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Jade, go make yourself useful and dig out that robe from the box Tavia brought down.”

  “I am always useful,” Jade huffed, but she moved over to a large box at the foot of the bed and started rummaging through it.

  “Yeah, in a client’s bed. Sometimes,” Charity smirked as Jade growled at her. Turning her attention back to Orynn, she frowned heavily, glancing at the shackles. “Fucking Trexen.” She stood and walked to the tethering control panel on the wall and started tapping the buttons with a growing scowl of concentration.

  Jade walked over with the black robe draped over one arm and hissed as she realized what Charity was up to. “Stop that! If you hack those shackles, that Trexen bitch will put us in them next!”

  “She can try,” Charity smirked defiantly and continued her work. “I’ll just say we couldn’t wash her properly while she’s tethered to a wall. Fuck, look at her! The girl can hardly breathe! If that mind-fucked whore has a problem with me keeping the girl from dying, then I’ll gladly tell Jarren that myself. It’d be worth a few new bruises, and maybe he’ll finally do us all a favor and kill the black-eyed bitch! Ah-ha!”

  Charity’s rant ended as she successfully overrode the tether control system and the shackles released. Orynn’s body slumped forward, her head making a quick descent towards the ground, but Jade caught her and held her steady.

  Jade stared down at her, wide-eyed. “She's so light. I feel like I could break her.”

  “Well, don’t go doing that. Set her on her back. Slowly.” Charity knelt down next to Orynn’s head, looking down at her face with growing concern. “Jarren told us you’re a low gravity race.”

  Orynn’s eyes fluttered open for a moment, but closed again. Charity sighed, moving strands of white hair away from Orynn’s face. “They were supposed to have a low gravity unit ready for you, but it’s old and they haven’t been able to get it working. Jarren ranted for hours about it and nearly killed one of the techs. Anyway, your neuro-stimulator has been acting erratically. I tried to recalibrate it, but I’ve never seen a model like it before, so I stopped trying before I did more harm than good.”

  “Thank…” Orynn swallowed, unable to finish her sentence or open her eyes again. With her aura being kept in a state of flux by the collar, she wasn’t able to connect with the neuro-stimulator attached to her neck. It was a system that served to regulate over one hundred muscular stimulators throughout her body, helping her low density frame deal with normal gravity environments. “Where?”

  “We’re on-” Charity stopped as Jade hissed a warning at her. She huffed and rolled her black eyes. “Sorry, hon, but I can’t tell you. Let’s just say you’re in the basement level of a shithole on some larger shithole floating in space. I’ll be your tour guide and Jade may or may not provide some entertainment.”

  “Jarren’s estate is not a shithole. It’s-” Jade cupped her hands to her mouth.

  “Yexka,” Charity chuckled lightly. “So yeah, we’re at Jarren’s estate. Hopefully, Jade here will let slip the name of the planet, too, so I can stop saying shithole all the time.” She turned a glare to Jade. “Even though that’s exactly what it is. I don’t care how nicely it’s decorated! Hanging fancy silk curtains doesn’t keep you from noticing all the drunken, fat Xen'dari bureaucrats walking around grabbing my fucking ass!”

  “Shhh!” Jade hissed again, this time in fear as the Sil surged a paranoid shiver through her body. “Tavia could be listening!”

  “I hope so!” Charity yelled. “I’m thinking of a nice, big, fat-fucking-cock right now, just for her, so I hope that mind-fucked whore is digging around in my brain and enjoying it!”

  Jade’s hissing worry broke into a chattering laughter as the Sil in her system shifted emotional directions again. “You’re awful.”

  “I know,” Charity shurgged before holding the rag out to her. “Now start washing.”

  “Ataha. Fine, fine.”

  Charity turned back to Orynn. “We’re just gonna get you cleaned up, okay hon? Then we’ll get some tea and food in you.”

  Orynn gave a small nod. The water from the rag had alleviated some of the pain in her throat and she couldn’t deny how good it would feel to be clean again. “Thank you for your kindness.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Charity shrugged off the thanks. “We may be whores in bondage, but we look out for each other. It’s about the only thing that keeps us from jumping off the damn balconies.”

  “Bondage?” Orynn opened her heavy eyelids halfway. “Jarren’s?”

  “You got it.” Charity gently patted Orynn’s arms with the towel as Jade moved down to her legs. “Surprised the bastard hasn’t tattooed his name on my ass. His name’s on Jade’s shoulder, but she did that herself.”

  “He loves me.”

  “Uh-huh,” Charity sighed, shaking her head at the Ruisk. “It’s why he feeds you Sil and sells your time to other Xen’dari who want to see the taboo Ruisk naked.”

  Jade let out a deep-throated growl, tossing the rag into the water basin as the Sil shifted into rage. “Why must you be so damn honest all the fucking time.”

  “Because, I do love you.” Charity took Jade’s hand and squeezed it. “We're like sisters, and your continued dependence on that blue-eyed bastard really pisses me off.”

  “Ataha,” Jade sighed heavily with a sniffle at a sudden influx of tears as the Sil switched directions again. She slumped down at Orynn’s feet with a quiet sob. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know.” Charity gave her friend a light pat on the hand.

  Charity finished drying Orynn off and helped her to sit up. Draping the robe around her, she helped the Vesparian get her arms through the sleeves, then moved to pour a cup of tea. She held the teacup to Orynn’s lips and slowly tilted it. “So, what’s your story with Jarren?”

  Orynn swallowed the tea and took in a slow breath. “I broke a promise to him, and now he is making me keep it.”

  “I know how that goes,” Charity nodded to herself and offered Orynn a sandwich. “Here, try and eat something. Gotta keep your strength up. Pretty thing like you,
I’m sure someone is gonna break down the doors any minute to come save you from this mess.”

  “Not likely.” Orynn took the sandwich into her fingers after a struggle with her coordination. “I am Vesparian. I do not exist.”

  Jade sat down behind Charity and took one of the sandwiches for herself before speaking with a mouth half-full. “No one at all knows you’re here?”

  “They do not even know I am missing,” Orynn let out a forced laugh. “They will not even remember me to know that I am missing.” She took a tiny nibble from the corner of the sandwich and swallowed. At the back of her mind, a tiny voice whispered in hope to remind her that not everyone had been forced to forget her. “Except-”

  “Hold it, hon,” Charity held up a hand. “Don’t say any names around Jade. I can block that Trexen bitch out pretty well, but Jade’s like an open book.”

  Jade growled, then cried into her half-eaten sandwich. “It is a truth. I am a yexka.”

  Charity patted Jade’s leg gently, her attention still on Orynn. “You don’t think they'll come after you?”

  “No.” Orynn set aside her barely-nibbled sandwich. “One will be bound by her government's rules not to, and the other… The last time I saw him, I almost killed him.”

  Charity brushed aside Orynn’s white hair, offering her another sip of tea. “Jade and I are in the same boat. Jade’s got family out there, but they had a heavy falling out, and I… Well, I got Jade. But, don’t you worry, hon. Jade and I have been dealing with this reality for four years now. You just let us know if there's anything we can do. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to scream, scream. If you need to hit something, hit Jade. I bruise easily.”

  Jade let out a quiet chattering of laughter and Orynn looked up with a small smile. “Thank you.”

  Charity caressed Orynn’s cheek, watching as Orynn’s smile slowly melted away into sadness. Taking Orynn gently into her arms, Charity softly rubbed Orynn’s back as the sobbing grew in intensity. “Go ahead and cry it out, hon. You’re not alone in this.”

  “Not alone.” Jade’s long, lanky arms wrapped around them both. “Never alone here.”

  2

  Whispers

  Even when he slept, he was awake.

  The mind of a Mechatronic Automaton wasn’t prone to going offline, at least not completely. He often wondered if the mental activities that occurred while he was in a state of sleep was akin to the dreaming minds of Organics. He, however, never dreamed of romantic walks on the beach, monsters lurking from the shadows, or giving speeches in the nude.

  Unlike their dreams, his thought processes were, what he liked to boast, much more logical. He could spend an entire recharge session working on a calculation needed for improving the intake ratio of their ship’s engine, or mapping the best route to their current destination. It seemed, to him at least, to be a much better use of time than thinking about some imagined scenario that would, probability speaking, never happen.

  Velstrae!

  Ethan’s sapphire blue eyes snapped open and refocused in the dimly lit room of his workstation on board the Zera. His facial muscles contorted and flexed as he blinked several times to recalibrate his bearings. That strange word hung in the silence as he took a deep breath into his cooling system. Reaching up to his left ear, he unplugged the cable that connected him to the Zera’s mainframe and sat up straight in his chair. The memory of the word faded, but the strange heavy feeling in his chest remained.

  This had been his second charge cycle since they'd departed Entarsk empty-handed, and it was the second time his mind had awoken to that odd word being whispered into his ears. It wasn't a word or language he'd heard before, and it was starting to cause him some concern. The first time it happened, he thought to run a diagnostic on Zera’s systems when they returned to Corwint. Now, he was giving serious consideration to submitting himself to Central’s Mechatronics team for evaluation.

  He wondered if perhaps it was just the stress of having to return to Director Szina without the intel they'd been sent to retrieve for the plague on Ventaris, or the possibility that someone on the Council had set them up for failure. Still, hearing things was something Organics did.

  When a Mecha started to hear things, it meant there was something wrong with its system. Despite his loathing resentment for the Central Mechatronics team, as every time he went to see them they pestered him non-stop for a copy of his schematics, he knew it was better to be safe than sorry. The crew of the Zera, his friends, depended on him to be in perfect working order.

  Checking the time on the console in front of him, he stood from his chair and headed out of his workstation. The bridge was empty and Zera was on autopilot, heading through the edge of Tharsan space on the way back to Corwint. They were still only running at half speed, but he'd done all he could to repair the deflector array after the last run in with those T’jaros pirates.

  They still weren’t sure what those damn pirates had been after, but they'd been no real match for the Zera. Hank figured that they were just desperate, or drugged up out of their minds. Brom and Tara were in agreement that it was probably a mixture of both.

  Leaving the empty bridge behind, Ethan made his way down corridor C towards the small kitchen where he knew the crew of the Zera would be gathering at this early hour. Rounding the bend in the corridor, his steps slowed as the ship’s engineer, Tara Flint, came into view. She was standing in the middle of the hallway, staring at the door across from her.

  She seemed to be deep in thought, idly running her fingers through her brunette ponytail draped over one shoulder. He stopped next to her unnoticed, turning to face the door. It was a room they used for the guests they sometimes took onboard.

  C-6

  “Tara?”

  “Oh!” Tara startled. “Good morning.”

  “Morning,” Ethan glanced down at her with a raised eyebrow, then looked back to the door where her bright green eyes were still staring intently. “Is everything alright?”

  “Yeah.” She felt stupid for just standing in the middle of the hallway, but her feet had taken her there as soon as she left her quarters that morning, and then they'd refused to budge. “It’s nothing.”

  “What is?”

  “I…” She rubbed her temple. “I don’t know. I’ve just been getting this weird feeling every time I walk by this door. I feel like I should be stopping and asking the person on the other side if they want to have breakfast or …if they just want to talk… but there’s no one on the other side. I swear, I’m going crazy.”

  “It’s been a long and disappointing mission, Tara,” Ethan patted her shoulder lightly. “You’re probably just tired. We haven’t had a guest in C-6 since we dropped off that Kilarian princess last month. Maybe you’re thinking of her?”

  Tara huffed. “Doubtful. That stuck-up twat is the last person I’d like to sit down with to have breakfast or a chat.”

  He chuckled lightly. “She was a handful, wasn’t she?”

  Tara leaned in to the door and pointed as Ethan’s laughter faded. “How'd that happen?”

  Ethan looked to where Tara pointed. There was a subtle indentation at the vertical mid-point of the door frame's right edge. His head tilted in confusion as he stepped closer to examine it. “Odd. Zera, examine and report on the compression seal system for room C-6.”

  “Command confirmed,” the non-sentient, female voice of the Zera’s A.I. responded. A syncopated beep followed a few moments of silence. “Door compression seal for room C-6 has been compromised by door frame structural failure. Recommend immediate repair to ensure inner hull integrity.”

  Ethan’s confused curiosity grew. “Zera, when and how did the door frame structural failure of room C-6 occur?”

  Zera gave an argumentative mix of beeps. “Unknown.”

  “Unknown?” Tara blinked. “Doesn’t she have a running log of all damage to her systems?”

  “Yes, she does,” Ethan scowled.

  “Hey, you two,” Captain Ha
nkarron Eros rounded the corner and looked over their shoulders as they peered at the door frame. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not sure yet, Hank,” Ethan straightened back up to his six-feet and ten-inch height. “But I think I need to put Zera into Central's maintenance hangar for more than just the deflector. She’s getting a little glitchy.”

  Hank ran a hand through his wavy, brown hair and mirrored the Mecha’s raised eyebrow. “Glitchy?”

  Ethan wasn’t given time to respond as Zera alerted them to an incoming vessel that was hailing the ship. They all turned back the way they'd come and headed for the bridge. They ran into Brommrigor Torregathos, the ship’s weapons specialist, on the way there. Ethan gave the bald-headed, orange-scaled Orellian male an apologetic look. “Sorry Brom, but breakfast will have to wait. We have an incoming vessel.”

  “Aw.” Brom’s large, muscular shoulders slumped, but he turned and led the way onto the bridge. Heading over to his station, he glanced at the readout, sighing with relief. “It’s just Merik.”

  “Better late than never, I guess,” Hank rolled his brown eyes and sat down in the Captain’s chair. “Go ahead and patch him through.”

  The main view-screen lit up with the image of Merik’s completely black Trexen eyes staring at them. His usual cold smile was on his lips as he surveyed the four on the bridge through his own view-screen. “Aren’t you going the wrong way?”

  “No,” Hank cocked his head to the side. “We’ve already been to Entarsk, without any help from you I might add, and now we’re on our way back to Corwint.”

  “That’s not physically possible, especially with how slowly your ship is limping along. I was on my way there, but found your engine signature heading this way. You really should fix that hole in your graphene shielding.” Merik scowled at Hank, then turned his eyes to Ethan. “What the fuck is going on?”