Supreme Leader of Anstractor: A Sci-Fantasy Space Adventure (The New Phase Book 3) by Greg Dragon Page B

said dryly. “Does this face look like someone you could call a friend?”
    “It looks like someone I would call a meal,” Lasae joked and then laughed with so much gusto that Maes had to stop to admire her.
    “You’re not as hard as you come off, Lasae; I admire that. It leads me to think that you’re competent, a good fighter. Am I right?”
    “I’ve seen sixty-five tours, and I have all of my teeth, lord. This would make me Anstractor’s luckiest Geralos, or, as you say, I am quite competent.”
    Maes Van Senthyn smiled. “The Phasers are good. You are not seeing them here because they have Geralos in their city, killing and eating their babies!”
    They laughed cheerfully as they opened the door to the tank room, but when they stepped through, Maes—who had moved ahead of Lasae—stepped right in front of Marika Tsuno.
    Her movement was so fast that even a trained professional like Maes Van Senthyn was frozen in shock as it happened. Marika Tsuno—trained-assassin-turned-Phaser—had removed the head of the Geralos female and was staring at the man she thought to be Laern Cobo, as if he had agreed to explain himself.
    The hot, sticky blood of Maes’s savior was all over the walls and his face, and as he reached up to wipe it from off of his smooth human face, he feigned terror and backed himself into a wall. The woman was a Casanian, which surprised him. Typically Casanians were not the type to be living in metal structures—like the humans—let alone using las-swords…
    A loud noise took him out of his shock as Val Tracker came into the room and saw the carnage. “Laern, you’re alive!” he exclaimed, and as he made to reach for Maes, Marika placed her hand in the center of his chest and stopped him.
    “What are you?” she asked Maes. Her eyes were large, black pools of mistrust, and the Geralos spy knew that if he made a mistake, she would snatch the life from out of his body.
    “Rika, what’s going on?” Val asked as Maes tried to calculate what he would say to calm the Casanian’s nerves.
    “This one was coming up from the cell area, giggling and carrying on with the headless lizard you see next to him. He’s either an abomination, or we have a Phaser that likes to stick it in lizard chiern .”
    “While that physically makes no sense, I don’t want to hear about it if that’s what he’s been up to. Come on, Laern, you’re not even defending yourself? She’s saying that you like Geralos chiern , bro. Speak up for yourself, dammit.” He began to laugh and it annoyed Marika.
    “HEY, meathead! What part of this stand-off are you not getting? This is a breach, erm , I mean this could be a breach. The lizards take over the minds of the weak. I saw him talking to one; get a grip!”
    Maes saw his chance to escape when Marika turned on Val. He bolted back down the hall towards the cells, hoping within his heart that there was another way out. The Casanian was on to his ruse but the rest would be ignorant. If he could get to Rafian, or one of the other major Phasers before he died, he could bring honor to his family’s name.
    He heard the sound of Marika descending the sloped floor behind him, and as he got to the cells he realized that he was not going to be able to outrun her. Spinning around to face her with his fists at the ready, he couldn’t see her appear behind him and deliver a kick that rendered him unconscious.

06 | Familiar Faces
    A RI GROATRATH climbed from his sleek, black, specialist skiff to stand in the yellow dirt of a Virulian valley. The ruins of the temple was spread out in front of him, but what he focused on was the sheer loneliness of the place and the spirits that he felt haunting the land. He was never a religious man, but he felt something both alien and frightening. He quickly wished that he had brought along his wife or his troops, and he assumed that what he was feeling were the fingers of death.
    Walking forward he scanned the mountains. They were tall giants