The Chronicles of Nardyl III: Embraced by Darkness

The Chronicles of Nardyl III:

Embraced by Darkness

By

Kaitlyn O’Connor

( c ) copyright by Kaitlyn O’Connor, January 2018

Cover art by Jenny Dixon January 2018

Smashwords Edition

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Chapter One

Look alive, people! Captain Cheyenne Mortensen bellowed before it occurred to her that she’d already put her helmet on and secured it and she’d just deafened everyone by yelling into her microphone. Ignoring her embarrassment, she struggled to maintain her professionalism as she commanded her crew. The wormhole’s opening! Let’s try to maintain formation—and stay sharp! We don’t know what we might be up against when we hit the next world.

Hopefully nothing.

Intel says it’s clear, but we’re all familiar with Murphy’s law. Anything that can go wrong will.

Because they weren’t packing enough supplies for a prolonged stay anywhere in between Earth and Nardyl and they also weren’t carrying nearly enough firepower or ammunition for a firefight.

They’d packed all they dared. She was carrying twenty pounds more than she’d ever been required to carry before and, despite months of training with the extra weight, none of them had managed to make the time for the jumps with more than a few seconds to spare.

According to her briefing, they would have just enough time to catch the next ‘shuttle’ to the next planet if they ran like hell. If anything prevented that leap, they were going to be stuck a full day cycle, at the very least, until the wormhole opened again going their way.

That meant trouble that could be multiplied down the line, as they hit the next planets, and things could very quickly reach a point of disaster in regards to their mission.

She struggled to dismiss that possibility.

According to the brass, this thing—this phenomena—had been thoroughly vetted—via unmanned probes, granted, but still studied exhaustively. They already knew the Saitren used it and, despite every effort to do so, they’d never found a vessel they’d used to make the jumps. They’d sent the probes in and brought them out again. They’d tested the atmosphere, gravity, temperature variations, and pressure—anything and everything that might present a problem with personnel and or equipment.

Every planet was conducive to the human condition. They’d found nothing to suggest there might be interference that would cause equipment or electronic failure.

No hostiles had been encountered—except those on the target planet, Nardyl.

It was their mission to change that—the hostiles part.

Trust the stupid bastards in charge to make a fucking mess of things and expect somebody else to clean up after them, she thought angrily!

She just hoped like hell they could avoid running into their guinea pig! Because she had serious doubts he’d forgotten what it was like being the ‘guest’ of the military.

It had been several years, granted, but a lifetime wouldn’t be enough if even half what she’d heard was true. It seemed doubtful he would ever forgive let alone forget or that it would in any way enhance their chances of success with the mission if they ran into him!

The alert on her wormhole detector gizmo went off, instantly capturing her attention and redirecting her mind to the task at hand.

Her sphincter tightened a little more with nerves as she jerked the device up to study the readout.

The wormhole was opening, alright, and she was fucking standing at the edge of the hole!

Oh my god!

She whipped a look back toward her squad even as she felt the pull.

Here! she bellowed. "Now, soldiers!"

She didn’t have the chance to see if they followed orders or moved quickly enough. She was snatched into the whirlpool. Every alarm on her special suit went off as the suction threatened to rip it off of her.

She didn’t want to think what the stress was doing to her body, but her monitor was screaming in her ears fit to deafen her.

Like she needed a fucking alarm to tell her what was happening to her!

Unfortunately, she couldn’t reach the damn control to shut it off!

She stopped abruptly enough to knock the breath from her. Fortunately, she’d had her training drummed into her until she was running on autopilot. She bounded up, glanced around to see how many—if any—of her squad was still with her and then dashed toward the hole that was opening a few yards away.

Delayed by shock, when her scan of her squad finally caught up with brain function she realized with a great deal of relief that she still had her full squad with her as she made the second jump.

Hopefully, they would still be with her when she got to the alien world they’d targeted. Arriving all by her lonesome wasn’t a possibility she wanted to think about.

* * * *

Damien knew he had no one to blame but himself, but that just pissed him off more since he couldn’t actually kick his own ass for doing something regrettably stupid.

Again.

And then compounding that by doing something else stupid.

He was going to have the hangover from hell when he sobered up.

And he was probably going to be nursing it in the brig.

He supposed that was punishment enough and totally deserved.

He should have called the Private on it the moment he’d produced the case of brew and the cards for a game of chance instead of joining his squad members in ‘blowing off a little steam’.

Thereby compounding the trouble he’d already gotten himself in to.

But how the hell was he supposed to know that the female that had been giving him come hither looks was the general’s woman? She damned sure didn’t act like a claimed female!

Of course, there were a lot who didn’t these days—because they didn’t feel it. So many had lost their first mate—their true mate in the great dying. And the survivors had had to pick up their lives and go on.

They were willing, needful of finding a new mate, but that didn’t make it a true mating, didn’t mean they were truly bound.

And, unfortunately, when it wasn’t a true mating bond the female might or might not be able to remain loyal to their new mate.

He supposed it was pointing that out to General Niger that had cost him his rank since he hadn’t succeeded in plowing her furrows. He’d been caught before he’d actually managed that.

He’d lost the damned ranking he’d just earned back—busted all the way down to sergeant—the first time he’d been demoted below officer!—and been sent off on this shit detail to boot!

As if half pay wasn’t punishment enough, gods damn it!

Of course he could’ve been stuck with something far worse—and had been plenty of times. They still sent ‘clean up details’ out every week. These days remains were discovered far less frequently than in the years past and they were typically skeletal and usually unidentifiable, but it did something to a person to work around that for very long.

It had fucked him up even worse than his parents had, he thought derisively.

Well, he thought philosophically, it was at least an hour before their relief was due to show. Maybe he had time to sober up and could avoid visiting the brig again … so soon?

He studied the bottle in his hand thoughtfully for a moment and saw that it was still almost half full. Shrugging inwardly, he lifted the opening to his mouth and downed half of what was left in one long swig.

He couldn’t afford to waste good brew on sergeant’s pay, he thought morosely.

Maybe just one more sip and he’d toss it?

Unfortunately, he’d just lifted the fucking thing to his mouth again when an ungodly racket abruptly cut loose. He jerked in response and sloshed the shit all down the front of his uniform, eliminating any possibility of evading detection and avoiding a new stint in the damned brig!

Then, he was really pissed off!

* * * *

There was a detachment of soldiers waiting when the wormhole spat Cheyenne out like an over-chewed piece of jerky, slamming her against the ground for the umpteenth frigging time since they’d been sucked into the wormhole on Earth.

Cheyenne was beyond punch drunk.

She had a vague notion that she’d arrived at her destination, but she didn’t have the energy left to bound up and race to another opening anyway.

She’d hit her limit.

If she wasn’t where she was supposed to be … well, she was going to have to rest before she could try anything else.

She literally saw stars as she closed her eyes in an attempt to stop her head from spinning.

She supposed she might have been in worse shape if not for the specialized pressure suit the government had had made for the trip, but it was hard to say since she hadn’t tried the trip without one.

And she damned sure didn’t want to!

But then again, they were carrying nearly a hundred pounds of gear and supplies on their backs. Luckily, it had only taken a fairly short sprint to get from one opening to the next, otherwise she was convinced she simply wouldn’t have made it.

Certainly not in one go.

She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have been better off to chance a fire fight on any or all of the other planets just to ‘rest up’ before taking the next jump.

As she lay panting for breath, waiting for her head to stop spinning, the soldiers she’d gotten a glimpse of approached them. She opened her eyes when something that felt a lot like the barrel of a gun prodded her in the center of her chest.

The being standing over her set off a deluge of shock. It cascaded over and through her like a frigid tsunami. Her brain took a ‘snapshot’ of him without really taking note of any details—huge, angry red, and … really big … and demonic looking.

His bat-like wings were slightly arched in a way that cast a shadow over her and seemed somehow threatening although she couldn’t have said why.

She was in the right place, alright.

It was a struggle to summon the language she’d ‘mastered’ after spending hours and hours reviewing the videos and working at it.

Peace! she managed finally. We are a peace mission!

He crouched beside her and removed her rifle from nerveless fingers, tossing it away. Shouldering the weapon he’d had dug into her chest, he felt her up all over and removed her utility knife, the pistol she’d tucked into her boot, the bayonet for the rifle he’d already tossed away, and a ten inch hunting/gutting knife.

The weapons formed a small pile a couple of yards behind him.

He met her gaze with a narrow-eyed one. Peace?

She felt her face heating with discomfort. Yeah, well we didn’t know what we might encounter before we got here.

His expression was patently disbelieving.

I’m carrying a diplomatic pouch that I was ordered to hand over to your … uh … leader.

He stood up and motioned for her to stand. Remove the helmet.

Cheyenne’s belly knotted. She’d recovered enough presence of mind to experience a dilemma.

If she removed the helmet, there would be no possibility of pressurizing the suit again for an escape … or attempted escape she amended when she’d given her captor another once over.

She didn’t think she could outrun him on her best day and this was definitely not one of those.

But if she didn’t take the helmet off she was going to find it hard to convince these … truly terrifying aliens that she hadn’t come to make war. She