Page 5 of Game on Askole

I scowled. “Wait a minute. This whole interrogation was a ruse. Why?”

“Quinn.” Aunt Tess gasped. “They want Quinn.”

Shit! My cousin Quinn was an extremely powerful psychic, and the bastards couldn’t afford to let him live. A cold fury flared inside me. No one messed with the Jones clan. I took control of Oydle’s mind and ordered,“Stun the Battle Commander and his goon.”

Oydle obediently shot the Battle Commander. A crackling red energy storm ricocheted around Voss’s battle suit before dissipating harmlessly.

Bummer. Other than a few random muscle twitches, Voss was unaffected by the stun beam.

Rho, a fast-draw expert, blasted Oydle. The warrior collapsed as violent muscle spasms shook his body.

Well, shit. I scooped up Oydle’s laser pistol. The next thing I knew, I was locked in a bone-crushing grip. Voss increased the pressure on my right hand until I dropped the pistol.

“I won’t let you kill Quinn.”

“We want Quinn and your male relatives alive and reasonably unharmed,” the Battle Commander murmured in my ear.

“I thought you boys were only interested in broodmares,” Tess retorted.

“Males can be converted as easily as females.”

Aunt Tess and I exchanged stunned glances. In unison, we asked, “Why convert the men?”

“The Jones family DNA is quite unique. Our scientists think combing our DNAs with the Jones clan’s will reverse the cellular damage done in the Great War and accelerate our birthrate,” Voss answered.

“Oh joy,” Aunt Tess remarked. “You convert our men, and they go out and hopefully sire female children?”

“We do what we must to survive.”

“So do we. The Jones family has never lost a battle.” I wiggled in Voss’s painful grip. Yeow! He was cutting off my circulation.

Voss grinned down at me. “We are aware of your family’s tactical skills. Once you are converted, you will make excellent Coletti warriors.”

“I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”

“Yeah, popping out little warlords has always been our dream,” Aunt Tess added.

Oydle puked again.

“Who is he? He’s not the least bit intimidating.” I grimaced. The smell was horrific.

“Our original interrogator was injured in a battle with Malik’s warriors. We simply projected Tihar’s image on Oydle’s body and transmitted the interrogation on every military vid feed to catch your missing family’s attention.”

All to bring my kinfolk running to my rescue. “Who the heck is Tihar and Malik?”

“Malik is an ally of the Tai-Kok, and Tihar is an Askole,” Voss answered.

Any friend of the Tai-Kok needed to be put down like a rabid dog, and I wasn’t sure what an Askole was. “It won’t work. My cousins are too smart to fall for your hoax.”

“Your cousins, including Quinn, have been captured.”

“What? I don’t believe you.”

The Battle Commander tapped a button on his communications bracelet and held it out for me to watch. The vid screen showed my bruised and bloody family. Caleb, Jake, and Ethan were in chains. Quinn was unconscious and being dragged off a shuttle by two Coletti warriors. “They will be put into stasis chambers until we arrive at Tanith.”

Relief trickled through me. The Coletti hunters had missed a few vital members of the Jones clan. My cousin Samantha was meeting with Hank Benson, the founder of Earth First, at the Old Tucson theme park. He wanted us to join his resistance movement to stop the Coletti takeover. That was a done deal as soon as we lost Voss and his goons.

My little sister Casey was still MIA after her Lockheed C130 transport went down in the South Pacific a week ago. Central Command refused to give us any updates on the search for survivors. I knew Casey was still alive, but my attempts to mentally link with her had failed. Was she injured or laying low?

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