about his safety and long to see him when this was over nearly as much as he longed to see her? Yen didn’t know, and he shook his head trying to dislodge the distractions.
One of the soldiers broke from the shadows and stood by Yen’s side. Looking up, Yen stared into Adam’s blue eyes. Shouldering one of the team’s two heavy machine guns, Adam towered over Yen; his muscles bulging from holding the heavy weapon, though he offered no complaints. Shaking his head one final time, he brushed aside any further thoughts of Keryn and focused on the mission ahead.
“What’s the plan,” Adam said, echoing Yen’s thoughts. His deep voice sounded muffled in the tight confines of the room. The other teammates turned, eager to hear Yen’s reply.
“Keryn was able to dock us near the rear of the ship,” Yen explained. “I figure that even though we’re quite a few floors above it, the engine room would be our best bet. Take out the engines on this Destroyer, make it dead in space, and let the
“They’re going to expect that,” Penchant said in his gravelly voice. The Lithid carried few visible weapons, though Yen had been training with him long enough to know that any part of Penchant’s body could be transformed into a deadly instrument. “We’re going to run into a lot of resistance.”
“I expected a lot of resistance when we came aboard,” Yen interjected. “You can’t tell me you expected to have an easy time raiding a Terran Destroyer.”
“Why not just go straight for the bridge, if we’re already dead set on running into trouble?” Janus asked, stretching his wings as much as he could in the cramped space.
“Because we’re not the only team on board,” Yen said, “though we are the most experienced. Every team that doesn’t have their heads on straight will be heading straight for either the bridge or the control center. Yes, we’ll run into trouble trying to reach the engine room, but it’s less likely to be as heavily guarded as one of those other two locations.”
“We’re burning sunlight, people,” Adam said, his former platoon leader mentality reasserting itself. “We’ve made the decision to go after the engine room, so we stick to the plan. Anyone have any more questions?”
Though Yen could see more questions just below the surface, no one spoke up. Pulling weapons tightly into the crooks of their shoulders, the team gathered around the door. Karanath, a beastly Oterian, jammed a metal pole in between the seams of the door and pulled. Slowly, light began to seep through the growing crack until finally, with one last surge, the door slid open. The team members on either side of the door crossed their fields of fire as they scanned opposite directions down the hall. Using only hand and arm gestures, they signaled that the path ahead was clear. Filing out, the team took up positions in the hall, Adam watching the team’s rear while the rest began moving slowly down the eerily quiet hallway. Yen led the way, constantly expecting a danger that didn’t seem forthcoming.
The halls of the ship were immaculately clean. The bright silver walls fell just short of being mirrored, though they were disorienting for Yen as he constantly caught his own reflected movement out of the corners of his eyes. Along the walls, signifying either the Empire or the specific ship designation, a series of multi-colored pinstripes ran parallel to the ground. They passed a series of doors inset in their individual alcoves, all closed and sealed. Above each, numerical designators identified each room. Though Yen had no idea what the designators meant, whether these rooms were living quarters or storage bays, he quickly dismissed the idea of searching each one individually. Their time onboard the Terran Destroyer was limited and the longer they sat in one place, the sooner they would face overwhelming odds in a Terran counterattack. Instead, Yen signaled his team to warily watch the doors, but to press on toward the rear of the ship.
Through Penchant’s featureless, glossy black face, Yen could tell the Lithid was irritated. The lust for war had been pumped directly into his team’s veins like a psychotropic drug, driving them until they yearned for Terran bloodshed. His entire team, Yen included, had boarded the Destroyer expecting defensive positions and extensive fighting, making his team earn every inch of ground they covered between the
Yen slowed his pace, letting Penchant take the lead as they walked cautiously down the hall. Ahead, he noticed the first hallway leading off from the main passageway into which they had entered. Raising his hand in a tight fist, the team froze in place. As he opened his hand, extending his fingers skyward, the soldiers moved quietly to the side of the hall, taking up defensive positions in any of the nearby alcoves. Penchant flattened himself against the wall as Yen slid up beside him.
“Tell me what you can see,” Yen whispered, his voice barely audible even to Penchant.
Nodding, Penchant relaxed. The glossy exoskeleton on his face began to swirl and flow as though made of a viscous liquid. Slowly, from the left side of his face, a small swirling cone began to extend, like the reaching arm of a newly formed tornado. Stretching outward, the tornado grew wider until it reached a uniform width before it stopped moving. The faintest of lines formed across the end of the now cylindrical appendage before it popped suddenly open, revealing an eyeball. Yen smiled to himself, both impressed and simultaneously disgusted. The new eye stalk stretched around the corner, allowing Penchant to observe the length of the hallway while revealing almost no part of his body. Turning the eye stalk side to side, Penchant looked for anything out of the ordinary, but instead found himself staring down a morbidly similar hall to the one they were already walking. Retracting the eye, it fused back into his featureless face, leaving no mark that would have told on outside observer that the stalk had ever existed at all. Penchant turned his head toward Yen and shook it slowly.
“Nothing at all,” he hissed.
Yen barely heard him as the air around him began to shimmer. He had the utmost trust in Penchant, but couldn’t shake a nervous feeling as though they were overlooking something obvious. Expanding his consciousness, Yen searched the area nearby for any hint of sentient life, knowing that a positive search would reveal any Terran ambushes waiting to be sprung. At first, he received only feedback from his own team. Slowly filtering familiar brain patterns from his search, Yen sought Terran thought patterns instead. The pain built slowly in his temple, distracting his focus. Shaking his head, he saw Penchant preparing to step around the corner. Concentrating once more, Yen was visibly stunned as the echoes from two distinct minds rolled back from down the hall they were getting ready to pass. His hand shooting out, Yen grabbed a hold of Penchant’s weapons bandolier, jerking him back to safety less than a second before the Terran soldiers opened fire.
Gunfire split the uncomfortable silence, as rounds slammed into the wall across from the opening to the new hallway. Round ricocheted, peppering Yen’s team with flying debris and molten metal. Dropping to the ground in order to avoid the sprays of gunfire, Yen and Penchant eased backward into the relative safety of the main hall.
“I didn’t see them, sir,” Penchant growled over the din of gunfire. “I swear I didn’t.”
Yen nodded, understanding. “They were in the alcoves. They’re using the thick walls as cover.”
“That’s going to make it almost impossible to get to them,” Penchant said.
“Nothing’s impossible,” Yen said, his dark eyes glowing excitedly. Opening his palm, Yen began to coalesce a thin blue tendril, similar to the one with which he had teased Keryn after dinner. Not stopping at a mere foot long serpentine tendril, however, Yen pushed himself as the blue psychic manifestation grew increasingly longer. As it extended past four feet, it began wrapping back around his arm, making more room in the spacious hallway as it continued to extend. While Yen worked on creating his weapon, the rest of the team moved closer to the entrance to the hallway, positions from which they could lean out and fire at the newest threat. Yen hardly noticed their movements. His brain felt as though it were on fire as the tendril cleared ten feet and continued to grow. Not much more, Yen knew, before it would be ready. At nearly fifteen feet, the tendril now wrapped fully around his arm and wound around his shoulders and chest. Yen relaxed and smiled softly.
Stepping gingerly over his prone teammates, Yen took one more opportunity to scan the area, marking the location of the nearest Terran soldier. The gunfire had fallen silent as the Terrans eagerly awaited their next target. Yen gave them credit for their patience, but mocked their ignorance, thinking they were safe around something as insubstantial as a metal wall. Extending his upper body just far enough to see down the hall, Yen jerked his arm forward. The psychic whip passed through his body with no effect, but launched forward, extending fifteen feet down the hall. The blue tendril struck the wall behind which one of the two Terrans was hiding and passed through it unobstructed. Protruding out the other side of the seemingly solid wall, the glowing blue tip of the tendril surprised the Terran soldier, who was unable to move as it passed undeterred through his armor and into his body.
