Page 114 of Alien Prince's Fake Bride
“Stop it!” I try the Syntrix again, but it doesn’t help to push the blade away.
Juriniel holds me in a grip so firm that it doesn’t feel natural. No skinny woman should have muscles that strong.
“No, I don’t think I will stop,” she purrs. “Because?—”
The whole ship shakes as if it crashed into something. Juriniel loses her balance and lets go of me. I immediately go for the knife gun, diving into the bush.
A thin alarm starts wailing, and the world spins around me. I reach for the knife and grab it, but when I try to get back up, it works too easily. One push at the floor sends me spinning into the air. The gravity is gone.
I replace the knife in its sheath as I try to get my bearings. A lot of debris from the ground and the soil that the plants grow from starts drifting around in the room. Juriniel is floating too, drifting away, but her icy gaze is focused on me.
I ignore the pain in my arm and throat. This could actually work out for me, if I can only escape from the Empress. But there’s not much I can do right now — I’m floating towards the hot light panels in the ceiling, slowly drifting upwards. But they’re still a long way away, and the ceiling is high above me.
The door bursts open and Vyrpy aliens silently flow inside, looking like they want to fight.
The Empress screeches something, and the aliens start climbing up the walls like huge flies. I can’t do anything but ignore them. I’m slowly rotating in the air, but I have played in weightlessness enough to be able to turn and get ready for the impact with the ceiling. Although there’s a good chance the Vyrpy get there first. They’re carrying long, nasty-looking spears that I remember from their ambush by the escape pods in the Gladiux. They are like cattle prods, except much more deadly.
They’re obviously coming for me, but now that I have the knife gun, I can at least take some of them with me. And I think one of them will be the Empress. Her feet touch the top of a sapling, starting her slowly drifting towards me. Her face is expressionless and her eyes as cold as a winter night on Pluto. She’s far more alien and deadly than any other Khavgren. And Nerox did say ‘the Empress is dead’. Did he mean that she’dlost her mind, and that the woman she used to be is dead in a figurative sense?
Her very presence sends cold shivers down my spine. I want her gone. And as I think that thought, it’s as if she gets a push away from me.
Ah. The Syntrix. I do it again, really wishing the Empress was far away from me. She shrieks with fury as she gets another push.
But I don’t get a push in the opposite direction. It takes my brain a little while to process it. That’s the main problem with being weightless — when you try to push something away, you get the same push in the opposite direction, unless you can stem your legs or arms against something. But using Syntrix, it doesn’t seem to happen. I can push with my mind, but my body doesn’t get a push the other way.
“I guess the Syntrix doesn’t obey the laws of nature,” I mutter as I push off the ceiling in the same way, stopping my slow upwards drift and now floating still in the middle of the greenhouse, for a moment safe from the Vyrpy spears. “That’s a game changer.”
The crackle in the Syntrix is still there, and it takes effort to push through the resistance. But if it comes from Juriniel, she isn't making it as unpleasant as before.
Probably because she’s busy trying to regain control but helplessly drifting down to the floor, crashing into a bush with her back first.
At the same time, the door opens and big Khavgren legionnaires in armor come flying in, roaring deafening battle cries.
I recognize one of them, and a bright warmth fills me. But I’m alarmed that he’s not wearing armor.
“Mareliux! Up here!”
The prince spots me. I can feel his surprise as a jolt through the Syntrix. He’s on the verge of kicking off the floor so he can come up to me. But if he does and holds onto me, that will mean that we’ll both drift upwards to the waiting Vyrpy on the ceiling. So he checks himself.
“Stay there, my love!”
His words make my mind light up more. He came for me!
A fierce fight immediately erupts between the Khavgrens and the Vyrpy. Swords clang against spears, electric charges discharge with little bolts of lightning and sparks fly as sharp spears hit shields. The Empress screeches orders from somewhere below me. All the Vyrpy are going for Mareliux, which is not a mystery. He’s basically why all this is happening.
The Empress has managed to hide herself in the dense greenery of this botanical garden in space, and I only have a vague idea of where she is. But she’s close — the Syntrix is dirty with her static.
The greenhouse is getting to be a really unpleasant place to be. In this weightlessness, drops of blood and other fluids don’t drop to the floor — they drift around in the air, creating a cold, sickening mist, mixed with the dirt the plants grow from.
The Khavgrens are noisy and ferocious, but the battle isn’t going their way. The Vyrpy not only move better in zero gravity, they even seem to enjoy it. Their moves have an easy quickness to them, while the Khavgrens are slower and more clumsy. Many of them are starting to drift around helplessly in the air, while the Vyrpy easily stay at the walls and ceiling and ground. The way they move effortlessly in the air reminds me of fish in the ocean.
I’m not surprised that they turned the gravity off in this ship when they realized Mareliux was going to board them. They have the advantage, that much is clear. And they do seem to be winning. The Khavgrens have been pushed apart, each one having to defend himself against attack from many sides instead of having the help of his friends.
Two Vyrpy coil up, kick off with powerful legs, and then shoot down from the ceiling, moving so fast they’re just like streaks. Like living harpoons they hit one Khavgren warrior each, their long spears discharging their energy as they touch their armor or skin. One of them is cut down, but the other swings his spear around and kills the legionnaire with a hardzap.
More Vyrpy shoot down from the ceiling like deadly rain, and I do my best to push them off course with the Syntrix, throwing a wrench into their plans. I’m able to ruin the aim for two of them, but the others move so fast, and there’s so many of them, that there simply isn’t time for me to deflect them all when the Syntrix is so full of unpleasant, crackling static.
In the ear-rending chaos, I suddenly notice that four Vyrpy are coming straight for me, two from the ceiling and two from the floor, a deadly X with me in the middle of it. They move so fast I only manage to deflect one of them before the three others have grabbed my arms and legs and are holding me in iron grips.
