Aramus by Eve Langlais Read Free Book Online Page A

in his head until only the whites appeared. As his body thrashed, foam began to spill from his mouth. Aramus dropped the body in disgust. It seemed the military didn’t want them getting their hands on their soldiers.
    A soft touch against his back had him whirling, ready to fire. He held back at the last moment as he realized the petite doctor had crept up to him. She peered around his frame and murmured. “Strychnine, or some variation of. Often the main ingredient of suicide pills.”
    “Fucking fanatics.”
    “At least he’s dead.”
    “Without answering any questions. Why did they want to terminate you?”
    “I’d say that was obvious. So I wouldn’t talk to you.”
    “Are there many more soldiers?”
    She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I was kept locked up for the most part.”
    “What do you know?”
    “That I’m glad they’re dead. Thank you.”
    He grunted in reply. He didn’t want her gratitude. “Why did you hide behind me instead of running away?”
    “Run to where? If you ask me, sticking to you seems like the smartest way of getting out of here.”
    Good point. Would wonders never cease? He’d finally found a human with an ounce of common sense.
    Aramus use d his internal communicator to check in with his team.
    Status report.
    Only one room left to clear in the southwest corridor, announced Kyle. We are no longer encountering resistance. However, the remaining prison cells are either empty or have bodies. It seems the soldiers are executing the inhabitants, staff and prisoners, before deserting their posts.
    Less deserted than fled, Aphelion announced grimly. My sensors picked up a vessel leaving the atmosphere.
    And you didn’t give chase? Aramus queried.
    My calculations , given their speed, vessel capabilities, and trajectory, put my chances of capturing them at less than seventeen percent, so I chose to remain here as an additional means of support.
    It galled him to have lost some of the assholes running this place, but Aphelion had made the right choice. Given the injured cyborgs they’d recovered and the fact they needed to sweep the base for clues before departing, or the humans arrived to clean it up—AKA via nuke—their current mission took precedence over a futile chase. How many cyborgs did we liberate?
    Two males, one female in total. Another pair died during the raid, both of whom were female.
    What about those gray beings? Other than the dead one, how many live ones are left?
    All of the aliens have disappeared, including the dead one.
    Aramus didn’t bother correcting Aphelion about the alien comment. It seemed an apt description for the moment given they didn’t know who and what those gray-skinned beings were.
    What do you mean disappeared?
    When the units returned to those cells to recover the body and to see if there was a means of transporting the other two, we discovered all three rooms empty.
    Fuck! I wanted to bring at least one of them back for Einstein to study.
    The good news is we did recover a few humans before the soldiers could kill them. Hopefully, they will be able to fill in some of the blanks and let us know what was going on. The bad news is they were all civilians. The soldiers that were left tied up and unconscious are gone, or dead.
    Suicide? Not unheard of with fanatic troops, and he’d seen one resort to it already.
    Not unless they managed bullet holes in their heads with their hands still tied.
    Someone didn’t want to leave witnesses behind. So what do we have in total for live bodies?
    Five humans in total. Two are mute, another is gravely injured, but the other two seem intact.
    Make that six. I’ve got one of the doctors with me, Aramus added, frowning down at the little female who remained tucked close enough he’d need a pry bar to remove her.
    What would you like me to do with them?
    Place them in our holding room. I’ll be by to question them later. How is the download of their computers going?
    Slowly. Someone began a wipe not long