Page 26 of The Commander

Cara had felt out of sorts since she woke up. After some of the best nights’ sleep she’d ever had in her life in the arms of an alien lover, the world would cease to make any sense at all.

What was Brenda doing under Andy’s arm?

The device Bastian had given her was made for his long-fingered alien hand, not hers. Big and heavy, the thing barely fit in her hand. Her instinct was to point to aim and shoot. But it wasn’t a gun. He’d tapped the circle of raised buttons on one end and said that would aim and pointed at the panel down the side to fire.

She wanted to blow Andy’s head off. From their first meeting, she hadn’t liked him. He’d arrived in Springfield with two others who looked and smelled as greasy and unwashed as wankers.

Brenda had thought he was cute. Better looking than the others with him, younger, with all his teeth. But Cara didn’t see cute—not after he tried to corner her outside the shower. Have a little fun , he said. Just a little kiss , he said.

Brenda hadn’t hesitated with his offer of a little fun . She’d jumped right in. After dating most of the available men in Springfield, she’d acted like Andy was the best man she’d ever met.

They were in love. Let’s move to Dalewood where the work was better and easier and even single people had their own rooms instead of shared dormitories. Andy was on good terms with the mayor. He could get them their own house.

Brenda had believed everything. When Andy betrayed them with Danov, she’d spiraled, crying for days, saying things like, “I always knew he would do this.”

Yet, she was standing up there with him, wearing a clean short white top that showed her belly and tight shorts that showed everything else. She didn’t look pregnant, and those were new clothes, not the type a person wore for fieldwork or food processing.

Bastian was a high-handed son-of-a-bitch. Cara needed to find out what the fuck was going on, and he stuck her out of the way where she couldn’t do anything.

The harness, like a seatbelt, crisscrossed her chest and lap, tightening automatically. Frantic searching under the seat and beneath her legs yielded nothing. All the alien tech was subtle. Streamlined. Even the buttons on the device were shallow, barely raised plates. The truck had a steering wheel, but everything else was smooth panels. Nothing lit up helpfully under her probing hands.

Muted yells erupted outside. Cara jerked around to see people fall back, knocked off their feet. Mackie, curled like a shrimp, appeared on the platform.

Brenda was down, underneath someone else. The mayor’s face turned bright red as he tried to stand. He waved his arms, making come-to-me-motions and looking toward the building behind him as if he expected someone to come from that direction with help. Men ran off the loading dock and passed the truck, expressions urgent and intent.

What had happened? Hand on the dash, she leaned forward to see, felt a release, and looked down to see the belts pull away from her body.

“Yes!” she shouted in triumph and felt around for the door latch, hoping he hadn’t locked it. Did these things even have locks? She must have found the right thing because the door swung open for her. Killing device in hand, she got out.

“Brenda! Are you okay? What are you doing with him?” Cara called out. Had Andy forced her up there? She didn’t look forced, but after everything, Cara refused to believe that the scrawny good-for-nothing ass could coax Brenda back to his side.

Behind Brenda and the group, red hats appeared. They looked disheveled and confused. They looked drunk.

“Cara! Cara, help me. The bluey is going to kill us,” Brenda pointed at Bastain.

“Shut up,” Andy yelled at Brenda, pushing her aside with his foot as he helped the mayor up.

“No one’s going to die, girl,” the mayor called out, a goon on his other side helping him stand.

“Men have gone to get what you want, Commander,” Andy called out above the din the others were creating.

“Just do what he says, Brenda. You just gotta do what he says.” Cara was still confused. The answer was right there, but she didn’t want to believe it. While she’d risked her life to feed Brenda, Brenda had gone back to the person who had thrown her to the dogs like a bone.

“Yes. Do what he says. Unlike you,” Bastain said toward Cara with a dark menace that raised the hair on the back of her neck. She felt his anger.

Why was his menace as sexy as hell? He’d picked up a man and thrown him up into a group of people. She hadn’t seen it, but the result knocked them all down. He didn’t look winded. He hadn’t looked bothered by any of it until she exited his truck.

“Brenda, what are you doing here? Where are the others?”

She didn’t see any of the others. Were they still out in the camp by the river, starving, or had the mayor let them back in?

“She came back to me as soon as you disappeared. They said you got picked up. Gotta admit, I never imagined you would be an alien whore,” Andy answered for Brenda as he reached behind himself to take something another man handed him.

It looked like one of the guns the muzzle faces carried.

She only got a glimpse of the dark colored thing before the commander was up on the platform picking Andy up. Shit, he moved fast.

Bastain raised Andy in the air, bent him in half. The wrong way. The man’s bones broke, cracking to pieces as he screamed with a horrific furor that Cara would never forget.

Worse than a weapons blast, the sound of Andy’s death scraped across Cara’s eardrums in a loud, painful burst that hurt the soul. The commander had broken Andy’s spine like a piece of wood—and who knew what else—in a single, brutal move.

The man who’d gotten the weapon for Andy tried to dash away, but the commander was so fast—everywhere at once. He threw Andy down, caught the man around the middle, snapped him backward like a cracker, and threw him down like trash on top of Andy.

“You humans are very tiresome. Where are those power cells?” He straightened up, casual and bothered, bored by his own violence.

Cara looked from him to the dying, broken bodies of the men on the ground. He killed them so easily.

“Here! Here!” One of the pig’s men called from across the street. There were several of them, each carrying a square battery and running in their direction.

“No! Andy. Not my Andy. Someone help him.” Brenda scrambled off the loading dock and went to her knees next to the man who tried to prostitute her.

“Brenda.” Cara didn’t know what to say.

“You killed him.” Cara said between huffs of breath. She looked like she was hyperventilating—entering full panic mode, her face growing redder by the second. “You have to calm down. The baby. Your baby.” Cara tried to grab at something sane. This was all so crazy, and there was still a baby to save.

Andy didn’t deserve anything from anyone. He was scum. Brenda must have gone back to him because of the baby.

Jumping down from the platform, a grim expression passed over the commander’s face as he looked from Brenda to Cara.

Cara just knew Brenda and her baby would die if she didn’t defend them. She had to get between them. “Don’t, please. Don’t kill her. She’s the only friend I’ve ever had.”

Before she could move, she caught a mean little ugliness in Brenda’s narrow eyes before the other woman smoothed it back to grief. It looked like she’d tasted something sour before she managed to swallow it back.

“There was no baby.” The knowledge escaped her. A sudden knowing, the truth in that flash of ugly.

“No, there was no baby. That woman is not carrying a child.” Bastian agreed, putting himself between them, his hand at the small of Cara’s back.

“I am. Baby! I have a baby. I’m going to. I’m pregnant.” Brenda wrapped her arms around her stomach and bent over Andy, wailing. “You’ve got to help me. What am I going to do now?”

It was too late. Cara had seen the lie on Brenda’s face. Had that woman really manipulated her so easily?

The mayor pointed at Brenda. “Someone shut that woman up. I’m not going to let her get me killed.”

The power cells arrived, five of them, looking old and useless, dropped next to the back wheel of the truck.

Bastian stepped in front of Cara, and she couldn’t see what was happening, moving her with his body back to her open truck door and handing her a black case.

“Open that black case, Kitten.”

“Bastian,” she said his name, wanting to say a hundred things, mostly for him not to just kill anyone.

“Do as I say.” Taking the gun remote from her, he put one of her hands on the case.

In the other, he handed her copper-colored wire.

“I want you to take this wire and wind it around each end of the white margin cell.” There were four pieces.

Of the several things in the case, only one was white. A can sized tube; it reminded her a little of an oversized battery. When she picked it up, two little sharp pointed ends ejected. “We will MacGyver this together.”

“What?”

His black eyes twinkled at her. She had no idea what he was saying, but something about his off humor comforted her. It shouldn’t. He could still just decide to mow everyone down.

“I need you to connect the margin cell to the old human power cells while I deal with Control. I do not know if you have ever encountered batteries?”

“My dad showed me some things, how I could use them. But I don’t know what I’m doing.” Her mouth had gone dry, and it was hard to talk, but he was calm, so she would be calm. She could do this.

“Connect the wires to the points on the margin cell, then the heads on the boxes.”

Picking up a car battery, he tossed it aside with a growl. “This one is faulty.”

He chose two more from the group. They must have passed his test because he set them down in front of her on the truck. Pointing, he said, “Connect them here. See if you can get a spark, too.”

“A spark from the batteries will tell us they are still live,” she murmured.

“That’s right, Kitten, very good,” he murmured above her ear, his body all along her back.

Now was not the time, but her body didn’t care. A distracting warmth shot all through her.

“Don’t worry about anything else right now. Not the humans. Nothing. Just this.” He palmed her waist, his hand twisting around her front to her belly, there and gone before he stepped away again at a booming woosh of noise from behind them.

Cara had heard the distinct sound of an alien shuttle landing before, but never from so close.