Page 43 of Relyn
“Give the com to Nora,” Relyn said. Bright peered around him to look. Relyn knew it had been a mistake to let Nora and Wendy leave without coms, but he hadn’t realized they didn’t have one until they were nearly out the hatch, and by that time, none of them wanted to stop and wait to replicate the sensitive devices.
“Gone. Took. Shoppppfs,” Grom said.
Relyn didn’t wait for more information. He began to all out run toward the shopping district of the station. Two minutes later and he’d found Grom smashed up against a wall, just now gathering his form and putting himself back together.
“Five, six of them. Big. Yellow. They went that way. Took them. I tried, I tried to stop them,” Grom said.
It was clear that the kid had met his match. Relyn gave clear instructions. “Get up, go to the ship. Find Bright and fill her in on the details.”
Relyn grabbed the laser pistol that lay beside Grom and headed in the way that Grom had pointed. He stopped when he came to the first intersection and closed his eyes. Relyn concentrated on tracking. Had it been anyone else, Relyn might have been lost at that moment, but it was his mate, and he knew, by instinct and a slight whiff of her in the air, which direction to turn. He followed it into the temporary housing section of the station, until he reached a set of doors, right next to each other.
Not knowing which was the correct door, Relyn rang the door buzzer. Relyn pointed his gun at the first one to open. It was a Melian, a tall thin species hardly matching the description Grom had given. The Melian backed up, panicking, until Relyn got a good look in the room, verifying that Nora and Wendy were not there.
He focused on the other door that did not open. Relyn entered an override code that the Mahdfel commonly planted on stations like this for emergency situations. A large yellow Poling was blocking any view of the room, but the smell of Nora was enough for Relyn to grab the thing by a lock of hair, pull it down, and shoot it at point blank range right under the jaw.
The gun fired, but sizzled after so he dropped it and decided a knife would make a better choice. He dumped the first Poling into the hallway and stepped over it to another. That one received the same treatment as the first, except it was a knifeinto its simple brain instead of a laser shot. Hot orange blood spurted out onto his hand.
The other four were now alerted to his presence, and were now shouting in unison.
“Kill him, kill him, kill him!”
The chant echoed through him and triggered the memory of his first consciousness. That in itself was enough to strengthen his resolve as he quickly made it through the creatures and dropped them one by one.
They weren’t even much of a challenge. The poling were no more than husks that could be controlled from a short distance away. They were bred to be hands and feet and mindless workers, not trained assassins.
Nora surveyed the carnage at her feet, an unbloodied knife in hand. She’d backed Wendy into a corner, protecting her from the Poling. Relyn felt pride surge through him at his mate’s ability to protect the girl.
“Hi,” she said simply. “What took you so long?”
Relyn paused, and traced back his movements, trying to figure out where he’d lost time.
“That was a joke, sweetie,” Nora said. “How does one get out of here?” She stared down at the lumps of fur that blocked her path.
“Do we need to report this?” Wendy asked. “I mean six dead bodies is going to draw some attention.
“They are not bodies,” Relyn said. “They are husks, controlled by a source. They are biomechanical workers.”
“Oh,” Nora said. “That makes a lot of sense, considering they all talked at once.”
“If they spoke, the controller must be nearby.”
The range of motion control was about a hundred yards, but for speech, the controller needed to be within ten yards. The Melian!
Relyn leaped over the bodies just in time to catch the Melian exiting his cabin with three large cases under his arms. Relyn grabbed him by the back of his coat and yanked him with ease back to the room with Nora who had begun to climb and jump around the Poling corpses.
“This guy is the brains behind the operation?” Nora asked.
The Melian dropped his cases and flailed, trying to get loose.
“I don’t know what you are talking about. Let me go! Let me go!” He was so thin that his punches were more like taps on Relyn’s frame. He pulled a small stunner out of his pocket, but Relyn was too fast for him. He knocked it away before it could do any harm.
Then the Melian started crying, sobbing, actually, big sparkling purple tears.
“Is that glitter? Is he crying glitter?” Nora asked.
“Sure looks like it,” Wendy said.
Neither one seemed too upset by his tears, which stopped immediately the moment Relyn gave his coat a jerk.
