Command

  Lilli never dreamed that base life on a strange world would involve dark elves and ancient races who both wanted to get inside her.

  Lillibeth enjoyed being Base Command of a listening post on Ikanni, the home of a branch of dark elves of Admar. When the death of the local politician sends the inhabitants of the base fleeing to the stars, Lilli is left to make sure that they all manage to leave intact before the locals arrive. Locked in her quarters, she tries to remain calm, but the strangers infesting the base are getting closer with every moment.

  Moving his people to the newly abandoned Alliance base was a serious matter. Orriko felt the obligation of stepping into his father’s shoes but his predecessor’s fondness for the base was still a mystery. When he finds that one member of staff is still on the base he decides to seek her out and meeting the human woman is more of a shock to his system than he could have anticipated.

  Dark elves, disembodied advanced species and one befuddled human woman take a world by storm.

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  Command

  Copyright © 2012 Viola Grace

  ISBN: 978-1-77111-407-3

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books

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  Command

  A Terran Times Tale

  By

  Viola Grace

  Chapter One

  Lillibeth looked out over the landscape of Ikanni. Her sketch was coming along well, capturing the rise and fall of the foothills.

  A chirp in her com unit got her attention. “Command. What can I do for you?”

  “We are bringing Bael Lerock into our medical bay. Can you clear the tarmac and alert the team?”

  Lillibeth sat up. Her mind worked, sending alarms and activating machines around the base. “Bael Lerock? Of course. Tarmac is cleared and medical is standing by.”

  Multitasking was her skill, and a few small implants let her run Observation Base Ikanni. Her call sign was Command and that is what she did. Even the captain and commander had to submit to her demands when it came to running the base.

  She flipped her sketchbook shut and got to her feet. She was going to meet that transport.

  The medics were waiting on the tarmac when the vehicle landed. The gurney hovered at waist height, and the tall figure was lying still. The medical team sprang into action and surrounded Bael Lerock, escorting him into the building.

  Lillibeth looked through every camera on the route and focused on the face of the only local who was happy to have them there.

  When his vital signs were stable and the medics had thinned out to a monitoring crew, Lillibeth Hislar slipped into medical and took his hand. “Hello, Bael Lerock. You look like hell.”

  He looked at her through his scarlet eyes, the midnight skin of his face wrinkled with time. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Base Command.”

  “You know that isn’t my name.”

  “You address me by my title, and I will address you by yours.”

  She chuckled, and he squeezed her hand. “Fine. Hello, Alvar. You still look like hell.”

  “I am dying, Lillibeth. It happens to everyone.” He shifted and the white hair under him tightened. “Can you help me here?”

  Lilli moved and helped him sit, moving his knee-length, snow-white hair and draping it over his chest. She started to smooth the strands. “Why do you think you are dying?”

  “I know I am dying. I wish to meet my wife in the beyond and let my son take over our people. The only way I can do that is to let my body go.”

  “You are still young at heart.”

  He chuckled and his monitors flickered, bringing the medical staff in for a quick check. “I am older than you can imagine. My son has waited patiently to take over our people, and now is his time.”

  “What do you mean? How old is he?”

  “Orriko is two hundred and fifty-seven years old. He was born late in my wife’s life.”

  “How old are you, Alvar?”

  He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles. “I have been responsible for my people for eleven hundred years. I was first generation when my people separated from the Admar and mixed with the Heshi. The expanded lifespan was unforeseen.”

  “When did you meet your wife?”

  “My wife and I were married for six hundred years before she passed to the next world. I first met her when she came to my settlement to negotiate for her people. I fell in love and imprisoned her immediately.”

  Lilli was startled into laughter. “Is that really a thing?”

  “I had to make sure that she didn’t return to her people before I could press my suit, so I visited her on a daily basis and gradually won her over.”

  “How long did it take?”

  He shrugged. “About a year. Her father finally had to intervene and order her to wed me and put me out of my misery.”

  “She sounds feisty.”

  “She was. Danara was the love of my life, and when she presented our son to me, I was happier than I could ever imagine. Part of me died when she did, and I have been eager to join her in the beyond since then. Having her visit me in my dreams is no longer enough.” He sighed and closed his eyes.

  “Why did you want to be here instead of with your own people?” Lilli had to know.

  He smiled. “You have been a good friend and made sure that the Alliance always honoured its treaty. Now that I am leaving the physical world, the treaty no longer holds, and my people will overrun the base to purge the interlopers from our world. I know that you can keep your people safe, but I don’t want lives lost on either side.”

  “I will start the evacuation procedures.”

  He smiled. “You already have. I can see that tick in your jaw that you get when you are working with the computer.”

  “You watch me too closely, Alvar.” She shook her head.

  “It is a lovely view. Now, to the other matter I have come for. I want to give you a great gift. You may not appreciate it now, but you will come to in the future. Of that, I am certain.” He stroked her cheek.

  “You need to rest. Your vitals are jumping all over the place.” She smoothed his hair, and he relaxed on the medical bed.

  “Get a meal in you, Lillibeth, it is going to be a long night.” He closed his eyes and relaxed into a light sleep.

  The moment that he was out, Lilli ran to the captain’s office and flung the door open. “I am prepping the ships. We need to evacuate.”

  Captain Worling blinked at her in shock. “What?”

  “The Ikanni leader is dying in our medical bay, and he was the only person on this world who welcomed us. His readings are not good, and he will probably be gone by dawn.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The Ikanni have psychic resonance with their families. Th
e moment that he is dead, an army will be over our gates, declaring this a sacred burial site. We have hours to get the hell out of here. I need your help to get the evacuation moving.”

  The captain still looked stunned.

  “Now, Captain Worling. We need every minute to scrub the computers and load all the equipment.”

  She left him, and when his voice announced the evacuation over the intercom, she sighed in relief. It took him a while to get moving, but once he did, he was unstoppable.

  Lilli followed Alvar’s orders and got herself a nice dinner, the last hot meal she would have for a while. She was going to be the last person off Ikanni, but there wasn’t any transport left for her, only an ejection pod. The problem with the pod was that she needed a direct shot to the orbital station or she would end up floating indefinitely in space.

  Lilli grabbed ration packs and hoarded them in her quarters. She had the command computer in her rooms, and she could hole up for several weeks if she had to, waiting for her window to escape.

  Now that she was prepared and she had three routes to and from medical planned, she returned to her friend.

  Alvar’s eyes opened as she began to idly braid his hair. “You are fascinated by that stuff, aren’t you?”

  She grinned. “It is like liquid snow. It reminds me of home.”

  His smile was slow, and he looked exhausted. “Are you evacuating?”

  She nodded. “We are. The first full transport already left.” She kept braiding his hair into a smooth column that reached his thigh.

  “Good. It will not be long now, and the moment the connection is broken between myself and my people, they will be over your walls and swarming the base.”

  “It’s okay, Alvar. I know what your people can do. They won’t go over the walls, they will go through them.”

  He smiled. “I knew you would notice that.”

  “I spend a lot of time staring out at the landscape. The fact that your folk could pop in and out of the foothills without walking anywhere was not lost on me.”

  Alvar started laughing, and he wheezed softly as the laughter died. “You are going to kill me before it is my proper time.”

  Lilli authorized lift off of two more shuttles. “You will go when you want to and nothing that I say will hurry you along.”

  He grinned. “You have a strong spirit.”

  “Some folks say I am bossy.”

  “They don’t know you—don’t see you like I do. Remember, I am giving you a gift, it just may not appear to be one at first.” He smiled and relaxed for a moment.

  Lilli pulled out her sketchbook and drew his picture, not as he was now but as he had been the first time she had met him five years earlier. A few fat tears dropped on the page as she drew, but she kept going until the last ship had departed, leaving her alone on Ikanni.

  She pulled a chair to his side and held his hand while his breath grew shallow. When he opened his eyes and smiled, she knew he wasn’t seeing her.

  He exhaled the word, “Danara,” and he didn’t breathe again.

  With tears streaming down her face, Lilli folded his arms over his chest with his braid cascading over them. She closed his eyes and drew a sheet up over him to his crossed arms.

  She tore off the image of him and propped it up near the head of the bed and left him in medical. The Ikanni were coming, and she needed to get to a place that they had not been before if she were to survive.

  Her quarters were suited to the task.

  Chapter Two

  Orriko felt his father die and returned home to honour his memory.

  His father’s advisors were standing sheepishly around the empty bed. “Where is my father?”

  “He chose to spend his last hours at the Alliance base, Bael.” The advisor bowed low.

  “Fine. Get the warriors together. We are going to honour my father and his place of death.” Orriko snarled at the advisors, and the men scurried to gather the warriors together.

  How could my father leave his designated spot of dying to give honour to the ground that the Alliance has borrowed as their own? The Alliance had tried to bribe them, but it ended up being a treaty that expired with the death of Orriko’s father.

  Bael Alvar Lerock was dead, and it was time to get the aliens off his world.

  The advisor poked his head into the room. “The warriors are ready.”

  Orriko left the room and grabbed his weapons. He nodded to the warriors and gave them the plan. “Take the base and leave no one free.”

  He steeled his body and took a step forward, bringing him to the foothills. The next step took him to the edge of the base. Orriko had been inside the compound before, so he stepped into the courtyard, turned and opened the gate to let his warriors in.

  The silence and lack of activity were peculiar. “Where are the guards?”

  The warriors looked at each other and spread out. They entered the silent base and crept through every room. When one of the men called out, Orriko ran to his side and found the body of his father laid out with respect.

  “It seems that someone was fond of him.” Orriko put his hand on his father’s and waited for the rush of the soul.

  A flicker came to him. It wasn’t his father. It was an image of a woman with pale skin and dark hair. She braided her father’s hair, folded his arms and covered him.

  He frowned. She had been the only one in the image.

  “Get what records you can from the base computer.”

  The warrior on his left nodded and went to the terminal. “The base records are scrambled.”

  “That is a puzzle. How could they launch a ship with their computers scrambled?” He looked into the corner and the camera that was watching over his father. “Base Command, are you there?”

  * * * *

  Lilli blinked at the image in the monitor. She put on her blank tone and asked, “Base Command is active.”

  He looked into the monitoring camera. “How many personnel were on base?”

  She bit her lip. “Thirty-one.”

  “How many personnel are there now?”

  She winced and told the truth in her computerized monotone. “One.”

  “Where is this person?”

  “Personal quarters.”

  “Who is the person left on base?”

  “Unable to retrieve data.” She held her breath and waited.

  He straightened. “Fine. If you won’t tell me, the Alliance will. I am sure they are eager to reclaim their personnel.”

  Lilli swallowed and kept her mouth shut. She wanted to curse in every language she had learned, but she didn’t want to make extra noise.

  “Communications have been deactivated.” The words came out of her throat without her control.

  Orriko smiled into the camera, his white teeth bright against his midnight skin. “Excellent. Then, we have unlimited time to tear this place down, stone by stone, until we find the final Alliance member.”

  He went to a table in medical and grabbed a piece of cloth. With a final smile at the camera, he flipped the fabric over the monitor and her world went white.

  She hissed quietly, her voice off the com. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  Lilli started pacing, her mind watched the monitors in the base, and one by one, they went white. If the coms were out, how was the base talking to them? She was an idiot, and she had given herself away.

  It was only a matter of time before they found her, and with the Ikanni penchant for dealing harshly with those who trespassed on sacred ground, she wasn’t looking forward to it.

  * * * *

  Orriko spoke to his men in low tones. “What do you mean there is no one here?”

  Tablin blinked. “I am sorry, Bael, but we cannot find one living soul in this building, nor can we hear one. Rasok has been listening keenly and has heard nothing.”

  “Smoke her out.”

  Tablin leaned back, “What?”

  “Wet some fabric and light it on fire. It will smoke, and we w
ill be able to follow the air currents into the room that isn’t there.” Orriko looked back at the picture of his father with tearstains on the paper.

  “Begging your pardon, Bael, but how do you know someone is here?”

  Orriko crossed his arms over his chest. “The Base Command said that communication had been disconnected, yes?”

  The men gathered nodded.

  “Then, who was speaking to us? Computers are either on or off, nothing in between. Base Command is a living thing and that thing is somewhere in the building. We need to find it.”

  The men looked at each other and followed his instructions.

  Orriko watched the smoke snake down the hall, and it churned against a wall before disappearing.

  Tablin looked at him in amazement. “You were correct, Bael. This wall is false.”

  Orriko looked up and noticed a high vent across the hall. There was more than one way into the room that wasn’t.

  * * * *

  Lilli listened to the sounds of bodies getting closer via the air vent. There were no valves to shut her airflow down on this side of the base. She loaded the stunners and watched the vent from behind the door to the lav.

  She crouched low and waited as the first dark arm punched his way through the grating and the male pulled his body into her private quarters.

  Lilli waited until the man straightened before she pulled the trigger on the stunner.

  He groaned and collapsed.

  She quickly switched stunners and used the full charge to immobilize the male in the vent.

  He grunted and rocked. There was obviously another male behind him.

  Lilli opened the crawlspace hatch and quickly moved to hide under her bed.

  She could barely see the male on the floor, but he bore a striking resemblance to the male who had stared into the monitor. Lilli winced and waited for him to wake and notice the open door.