Supremacy's Shadow: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 1) by T.E. Bakutis

Author:T.E. Bakutis [Bakutis, T.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2021-01-18T22:00:00+00:00

The next time Lerisa squinted, she felt a screaming headache and a throbbing arm. Ceto’s sun beat down on her. Sweat and dried blood covered her aching body, but she was alive. She had never been so glad to be alive.

Phorcys glistened in the green sky above them, a giant ball of glimmering cloud. What little wind blew was warm and unsatisfying. It got hot in the desert, hence the sweat.

The Patriots had tied her to a thin metal post. Lerisa looked up and recognized it: one of the four posts on a dig-rig shelter. The machine itself was long rusted, but prospectors once used it to drill for minerals.

A Patriot walked toward her, the same woman who had held the rifle on her. She still wore her white wrap, but her brown eyes were dry now. She squatted feet away and spoke.

“Why?” the woman asked.

Swallowing anything felt like a knife was jammed in Lerisa’s throat, but it was only bruised. She was lucky to be alive. “Why what?”

“Why do you treat us like animals?” The woman’s narrowed eyes poked at Lerisa’s guilt. “We’re just like you. Human. Or are you Advanced even human anymore?”

Lerisa doubted many Advanced were, but she couldn’t say that here. Any attempt to convince this woman of her true loyalties would betray everyone who’d died for her. Better to endure the hate.

“I’m just doing my job,” Lerisa said instead.

“Your job killed my husband. Your job is the reason my brother vanished. Who speaks for him?”

I do, Lerisa wanted to say. Instead she said, “I don’t know anything about that.”

The woman stood and looked out over the yellow desert. “My son wanted to choke you to death. I pulled him off you, but he’s not over losing his father. He’d be hurting you, now, if I wasn’t here.”

Lerisa felt cold inside. Morna’s orders said to keep her alive, but did not specify much beyond that. They had given her nothing for her fractured arm, and the pain remained excruciating. Was that justice?

“I didn’t kill your husband,” Lerisa said.

“Of course you did.” The woman shook her cloth wrapped head. “And I want you to know something, something you can take back to your precious Supremacy.”

Lerisa pulled at her bindings despite the agony that caused. She couldn’t get loose, but that was fine. The more time she bought the Patriots to carve their way into Varik’s PBA, the higher their chances of retrieving the location of Shadow Complex. She just had to hope Morna got her released.

“Every time you kill one of us,” the woman said, “we grow stronger. Every time you abduct one of us, we recruit five more.”

Even after losing her husband, her brother, and who knew who else, this woman remained a fighter. She would fight no matter what the Supremacy took from her, and that made Lerisa’s eyes itch. She wanted to hug the old woman, to apologize for taking her husband away.

“You’ll never break our spirit,” the woman said. “We’ll fight you to the last man, woman, and child.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.