The Life, Death and Life of Amelia Hollow Read online

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  Cameron Vis Home jumped when he spun around to see Cap Gor staring at him. The Titonic’s hangar was bustling with anxious marines who wanted their chance to hop on a shuttle and go down to Tamarax Station. All of them had been incredibly sceptical about Gor’s decision to fly across the galaxy on what appeared to be a wild goose chase, but now all they could think about was how amazing it would be to defeat Tamarax. It would look great on all of their records.

  “I suppose you’re going down with them.” Cap Gor said to the little harsnic who was in full armour with his gun in its holster.

  “My sister’s down there… and if she was right about Tamarax Station than maybe she was right about Tam having my father as well.”

  “I was informed that Dell tried to call you.”

  “I’ll call her back.”

  “Tek wants to have a word with you.”

  “I’ll talk to her later.”

  Gor’s pincers clicked: “She said she’s impressed.”

  Cameron smiled behind his helm. Maybe it was possible that First Off Tek wouldn’t kill him after all. She would only charge him for assault and have him dishonourably discharged. By that point, Cameron was okay with that.

  “Cap.” A man in full armour acknowledged as he strode by to get on a shuttle. He was a primary reason that the Titonic had left dock. The man was a professionally trained USM assassin that requested they journey to Tamarax Station because he trusted me, and Gor trusted him seeing as he was Lord Frekostillion Hes Canamao which meant he worked directly for Mel. If he trusted me, then Gor saw a reason to trust me too.

  “Try not to kill everyone down there!” Gor joked. Frek spun around and blocked Gor’s comment with his hand before turning back and leaving.

  The ground shuttered as Tamarax Station fired on the Titonic. The heavy warship had a strong shield and an even stronger body. It would be hours before they worried about Tam doing any real damage. They would only fret if Tamarax brought out her bigger weapons that they knew she probably had.

  “Are we going to receive any aid?” Cameron asked.

  Gor shrugged. “I think we’re going to get a little bit of aid.”

  “The USM is going to send a ship even though we went against orders by leaving the dock?”

  “They’re sending five ships… and Mel.”

  If Cameron had been sipping water he would have spat it out comically at that moment. Mel did not fight. Everyone in the galaxy knew that. The last recorded time Mel lifted a finger to fight was over twelve billion years ago during the early days of the United Systems of Mel. An extremely chauvinist race of aliens hated the USM for having a female leader and rebelled. They intentionally tortured and killed female USM personnel. After the fifteenth death of a female Mel took action sent all USM spaceships away from the planet while she remained. Mel returned to the original USM outpost a few months later drenched in the blood of a million people. – She singlehandedly created the first fourth-class planet.

  “Is she going to f-fight?” Cameron stuttered unprofessionally.

  “She did not say. She just said she would be joining us after she finished some other work.”

  My brother swallowed. He, like most of the crew, had conflicted feelings about Mel intervening in the fight. They all knew the story of the first fourth-class planet so they knew how ruthless she could be. She could destroy the whole of Tamarax Station by herself. Cameron just prayed that she did not confront moi and question me about how I broke so many rules and found Tamarax Station. If you made Mel a personal enemy, nothing in the universe could save you from her wrath. She may have done nothing about Tamarax Station before, but now that she was coming it could turn into a bloodbath.

  32: There Goes Your Innocence

  Chorst had gotten a little side-tracked from his mission when the sirens had originally gone off. Like me and the others, he had looked at the nearest monitor and discovered that a USM Naval spaceship was attacking. This certainly changed his plan to steal one of Tamarax’s ships while using the dub spaceship as a decoy. That was for the best. The original plan had too many variables for him to think of it as logical.

  If you had not figured it out yet; all of Tamarax’s most torturous places tended to be in the same area… and they were all in the floors below her office. There was the cellblock, bioengineering lab, torture rooms and then all the computers were running on the alien equivalent of Windows Vista. Really, it was best to avoid any of the rooms in Tamarax’s main building.

  With all the chaos surrounding hangar four, Chorst found it easy to go unnoticed as he crept down the corridor. There were various rooms dedicated to torture. The trinard had already walked into the wrong one and was forced to beat an employed tormenter unconscious. The little torture rooms were each about the size of an average bathroom. They even seemed similar to a bathroom as they had the ‘vacant’ or ‘occupied’ signs on them. Most of the rooms were vacant save the one Chorst had walked into before. Right at the very end of the corridor was an ‘occupied’ torture room.

  Even from the corridor Chorst could hear that the torture room was dead quiet. He only heard the clattering of utensils. Unarmed, the pale boy tightened his left fist while his other hand went to the panel. To his surprise, the door made a hissing noise as it opened even though he hadn’t even touched the panel. Chorst was a deer in the headlights when he saw the tormentor standing in the doorway holding a tray of dirty utensils. The pale red-eyed man looked surprised to see Chorst. It was lucky the trinord could not see through the helm otherwise he would have immediately known that he had an advantage over the trinard. Then again, it was quite obvious he had an advantage over Chorst seeing as he was a foot taller than the pale boy.

  Unlike most of the personnel at Tamarax Station, this trinord was not a slave clone or lower-class USM citizen. He was paid to be a torturer. He had taken on the job simply for fun. Humans would think that all trinords were sadistic bastards, and they were. Like it was genetic for trinards to fear expressing thoughts or feelings, it was genetic for trinords to have sadistic tendencies. That was why the USM was less rough on trinords in court when they hurt someone. They knew it was just in their nature. You know that kid you went to kindergarten with? That little shit who practically got away with murder because the caretakers knew they had a messed-up home life? Yeah, it was like that except on a larger scale.

  Chorst overcame his fear of trinords. He had to. If he was ever going to become a captain in the USM Navy then he had to extinguish his phobia. He knocked the tray out of the trinord’s hands. As the utensils fell he grabbed what looked like a bloody corkscrew. The trinord was bewildered. After the alarm went off a few minutes before he had hardly expected the USM to arrive at his haven.

  Frenchy could have done so many things at this moment. He could have knocked the trinord out, stabbed him in the shoulder or used his knew corkscrew weapon to threaten the taller man into submission. What did Chorst end up doing? He plunged the corkscrew into the trinord’s eye. The taller man’s body stiffened before he dropped to his knees. He looked like he was trying to bow to Chorst.

  No one will ever be sure if trinards could feel vengeful. What went on in a trinard’s mind was even beyond a telepath’s judgement. The only sign that Chorst felt anything at all was how he dealt with this trinord. With the pale red-eyed man on his knees dying slowly, Chorst drew his fist back before hitting the man’s temple, cracking his skull, and letting him hit the floor.

  Beyond the lifeless trinord sat Nis. He was locked into a cold black chair with his head hung low. His golden complexion had faded into greyness. Even his sparkly golden hair had turned the dull colour. He was not dead, but in no way was he living.

  Chorst looked at the scattered utensils of torture on the floor. In the end he bent down and picked up long slender knife. On day one he had been told what he had to do if Nis ever entered grey-state.

  First, he freed Nis’s wrists and ankles. His body-glove was torn in most areas to
reveal the grey skin underneath. Even Chorst wondered how far into the torture it was before the little boy entered grey state. Hopefully, he had gone quickly. In the state he would feel no physical pain.

  Out of curiosity Chorst gently lifted Nis’s head. He looked impassive like a trinard if not a little more solemn. His clear blood looked like tears as it came from where his eyes used to be. The trinard let the head drop again. He felt no need to look at the boy’s face as he put him out of his misery.

  He wrapped an arm around the boy’s torso and pulled him into a hug. Not an expression of emotion, he simply did it because he knew Nis’s species liked being close to someone. It was comforting for them as it replicated how their mothers used to hold them when they were babies. Even though Nis was in grey state, Chorst felt it was necessary.

  The boy’s skin became as black as Chorst’s uniform as the sharp knife tore through his heart. The final stage for bhe marcs: black stage.

  Without a moment to spare, Chorst checked his wrist computer to see where the others and I had gotten to (another feature I did not know we had on our wrist computers). He roughly picked up Nis’s lifeless body and made a dash for it. All security and military personnel had gone to hangar four so it was unlikely he would encounter any danger in the corridors.

  Looking down at the body, he did not understand why all the cadets would want the corpse of Nis. If he didn’t bring it to them they would not be satisfied. It was most likely a closure thing for them. Chorst did not understand that. He kind did not need to see a corpse to have closure. When he was born through Caesarean section his father just left his mother on the operating table and went home with Chorst. The fact the pale boy was even considering taking the body of Nis back to Starside was quite unusual for his nature.