Syn-En: Registration Read Online Free PDF Page B

field slammed them down, deforming the metal gurney. Hot spears gouged his skull and pain flared.
    Memories were scrapped off brain cells—of Earth’s green plains, of his first battle, of his men and Nell. He couldn’t forget her. Catching the memory of her vomiting blue into his shower, he balled it up, protected the code and hid it in the deepest recesses of his mind.
    He would remember.
    He would overcome.
    More memories fled, stripped away as the United Earth Nations had stolen his limbs and organs so many years ago. But this was worse, so much worse.
    Keyes’s and Rome’s screams swirled through his thoughts.
    He had to save his men.
    He…
    The thought was ripped from him, leaving nothing but emptiness.
     

Chapter 4
     
    Nell leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The soft purr of the Icarus’s engines swirled around her. “I’m out of ideas.”
    No movie she remembered covered being trapped in a very tiny room with a six-limbed alien wolf and an autopilot steering them straight into the enemy’s hands. She’d even removed the isolation wire in her cerebral interface to interact with the computer directly. Yet, even Mom couldn’t help.
    Obviously, her husband had not watched all the movies she’d given him. Otherwise, he would have known that the autopilot should have an override, so she could set the spaceship down on an asteroid or moon. Just as she drew her last molecule of oxygen, Bei would rescue her.
    She dragged her forefinger and thumb over her eyes, causing white spots to dance on her eyelids and sighed. Why hadn’t Hollywood written a movie about this very situation? Why couldn’t she think of a way out after two days?
    Elvis’s nose twitched. When he climbed off his chair, his nails clicked against the metal deck. He curled up next to Nell. “Does this mean you’re giving up?”
    “Never give up or surrender.”
    The Amarook’s ear flicked. “That is from a movie.”
    Nell hugged her shins and set her chin on her knees. “Don’t mock my use of movie clichés. It comforts me. Besides, not all of us can lick our cares away.”
    Elvis’s tail thumped and his lips curled into a smile. “It is most handy.”
    “Do you think the Skaperians will stand behind me when I register Humanity?” Registration had been her only option, only way to get help to find Bei, Rome, and Keyes. Dipping her hand into Elvis’s downy feathers, she scratched him behind his ears.
    He stretched his neck a little and his eyelids drooped. “If there are any left alive.”
    His purring vibrated along her fingers. “I thought there was a Skaperian base on Erwar.”
    That was where their damaged spaceship had laid course. Too bad the ion trail left by her husband’s kidnappers aimed for the same planet. She didn’t want to meet the lime-green elf and his Scorpion side-kick without an army at her back.
    “Before your Skaperian allies went into hibernation on Terra Dos, the embassy on Erwar reported deaths from the Surlat Strain.” Elvis shifted. “They could all be dead.”
    She scratched behind his other ear. “Or some could have survived, and now their numbers are growing. It has been a hundred years since the two planets lost contact.”
    I am picking up two energy signals, Mom’s reassurance flooded Nell’s head. One is from the Skaperian embassy’s location. The other is from Outpost Twelve.”
    “See.” Skaperians must be alive or in stasis. They just had to be. The Amarooks could sponsor humanity’s registration, but Nell needed the Skaperians’ political and military might to retrieve Bei, Rome, and Keyes. “That’s two Skaperian bases in working order.”
    Actually, dear, Outpost Twelve is an Erwar heritage site. When the Skaperians uncovered it, they were excited to discover a city over a million years old. Then they realized that Human labor had built it and that no other sentient species protected—
    Yeah, yeah. I don’t need a history lesson now, Mom. Nell swallowed despite her