Free Command by Viola Grace Page B

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