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

fought against, but her body stood stiff, her hands on her hips as if she were ready to defend herself.
    Tayden said, “Marika and Val will be meeting us down here. It sounds like they have a big announcement that they want to share with the rest of us.”
    Upon hearing this, Marian smiled and tried to hide it, but Frank saw it and raised an eyebrow. “Marian knows something and she isn’t sharing,” he teased, and Marian looked over at him with her eyes wide.
    “I might, Frank OTA, but I’m not sharing, schtill !” she barked at him, but kept her smile to let him know that she was still teasing. He looked at her as if her beauty intoxicated him, then he forced his eyes over to Tayden in order to break the spell.
    “This will be nice,” Tayden said. “It will be good to finally have most of our Phasers back here inside of the command center. It is the way I imagined this place would be, back when we had it built, but we have all had so many issues to deal with that we got scattered all over the galaxy. Now I’ve gone and added to our separation, and a young Phaser has lost his life in the mix.”
    “Come on, Tayden, quit with the self-pity, schtill ,” Frank said. “It’s countering your intent and you’re not making it easier. We know that you’ll do what is needed to get everyone back.”
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t shake this guilt. But you know what? Once we destroy the Geralos I’m dictating vacation. You all can fight me on it, but its happening, one way or another.”
    “I know you want us here, Tay, but when that day comes, I’m dragging my husband back to Luca away from this schtill . This place is nothing but trouble for him and he can’t get a break. Our vacation will be in a cottage deep within the forests of Tyhera, where we’ll thype our brains out and stay drunk on Talalulan wine.”
    The thought of this seemed to lighten Marian’s mood, and Tayden felt more encouraged to bring the Phaser home.

05 | Second Chances
    M AES VAN SENTHYN opened his eyes expecting to see the lush fields of Zeron , the afterlife, but what he saw instead was a distorted reality filled with wires, tubes, and bubbles that escaped from his mouth when he tried to speak. He gathered that he was in some sort of tank, but couldn’t understand how it was that he was still alive, and why the humans would have preserved his body instead of incinerating it.
    He made to try for the glass, and realized that he could not move. He looked down and the sight of the mangled piece of meat that was his body frightened him like he had never been frightened before. He had only glanced, but the glance was enough to let him know that he could not look at it, not for any amount of time; the sight of it had hurt him.
    It would have hurt anyone, especially after a lifetime of training and careful maintenance that was meant to put him above all enemies. When he had been discovered and beaten to the point of disability he had taken to outfitting his body parts with cybernetic enhancements. He hadn’t allowed himself to lament the loss of his body then, but now it came to him like a hot wave, and though the tears he shed only added to the liquid that he was submerged in, he could feel the burn of them, regardless.
    A knock on the glass snapped him to attention, and from what he could make out there was someone standing by the tank staring in at him. Could that be a Geralos? he thought, and the greenish palms that were placed against the glass confirmed it. One of his kind must have slipped in, found his near-corpse, and thrown him into one of the recovery tanks the humans used for their warriors.
    He didn’t know whether to feel angry or elated at the second chance. Rafian VCA had dealt him a series of deadly cuts, and though he denied him the il ad ach tchi (warrior’s death) and expected him to suffer in a dishonorable passing, it was a death from a greater warrior, nonetheless.
    Maes was annoyed. He had been an