by Alex Guerra
“Commander! Is everyone alright?” asked Nadu over the comms.
“We’re fine. Minor injuries,” said Kayton “Make your way to our position and prepare for evac.”
“On our way, Commander,” replied the pilot. “Twelve minutes out.”
In the distance, I saw the black silhouette of the dropship crossing over the rocky landscape towards us. The mission was a success—five power cores and three living, breathing Yau alongside us. I couldn’t wait to begin poring over the Yau dataslates the first chance I got.
“Good job everyone. We—”
“Contact on a direct heading with Dagger,” said Dotty, cutting me off.
“Where? I don’t see it,” I replied, scanning the horizon.
“The contact is pushing through the atmosphere. Time to intercept is seven minutes,” replied the A.I.
It wasn’t enough time to get everyone aboard and leave before the enemy arrived.
“Turn on Dagger’s cloaking device, maybe we can lose it,” I said. The silhouette of the dropship suddenly vanished from the sky in a blink, and a brief moment passed.
“Maneuver failed. Target is still tracking the dropship even after a change in heading,” said Dotty. Dagger disabled its cloak, popping back into existence when its cloak was turned off.
“What about The Pillar; is it safe?” I asked, hastily.
“Nothing has focused on The Pillar,” said the A.I. as a brief wave of relief slid over me, but we weren’t safe yet.
“Habi, Nadu, come in,” I said over comms.
“We read you, Arthur, what’s going on?” asked Nadu.
“Something is tracking the dropship,” I explained “It’s gonna get intercepted before you two reach our position. Dotty will divert Dagger low and over your position, but you need to bring down the enemy aircraft.”
“An enemy out here? Uh—yes, sir. Advise you have the dropship cross at this point here,” said the pilot, marking our HUDs at a high and rocky outcrop. “This will give us the best cover in the immediate area. We will be there in two minutes.”
“I have diverted Dagger to the specified location,” informed Dotty.
My mind was racing as I looked at our immediate surroundings. The nearest cover available was several hundred yards away.
“There! Make your way to the rocks!” I said, pointing towards the destination. A marker lit up over the objective. Heaving the power core over my shoulder, we all began running towards the marker as fast as possible
“Arthur, contact is breaking off from Dagger. It seems to have spotted us,” said Dotty.
“It’s coming for us, we need to move,” said Seya.
“Keep going, spread out!” I shouted, waving an arm to the group in front of me. “Dotty, we can use some help here. Now, please.”
“Circling Dagger around to engage. Contact will be on our position in forty-one seconds,” said the A.I.
Risking a look around me, I could finally see the black dot of the enemy, and it was bearing down on us fast. We weren’t going to make it to the rocks in time, and there was nowhere to hide.
FOURTEEN
The enemy ship grew larger by the second. Twin autocannons shot out from its nose towards us, kicking up two explosive lines in the sand. Seeing where the spray of bullets was heading, I banked to my left and tackled Entosh and his kid with force. Bullets hit the sand and sizzled mere inches from where the two were previously. The enemy ship yawed, realigning for another burst towards the others.
“I thought you said you said you came alone!” shouted Entosh, checking on Piki, who was spitting out sand.
“We did,” I replied, scrambling to my feet and helping the two up. “I don’t know how the empire tracked us all the way out here. Keep moving!”
More fire came from the ship, its twin lines of death racing towards the others. Sensing the raining destruction drawing near, troopers stopped and turned suddenly, throwing off their predictable paths. Several of the troopers dove, some mere inches from certain demise.
“Is anyone hit?” I called out over comms.
“Still alive,” said Kayton.
“All good here,” replied Del. Everyone was able to get back on their feet and keep going.
The aircraft still had time to get one more shot in before it went over us. The thinner atmosphere slightly muffled the sounds from the roaring cannons. Our luck was running out.
Bright flares from the cannons lit up again, and bullets raked the sand when suddenly, the stream stopped just short of reaching the troopers.
Dagger filled the side of the aircraft with its own bullets, causing one of the ship’s engines to ignite, sending it into a lazy spin. Its ramp lowered as the ship careened over us. Soldiers flung themselves out into the soft sand dozens of feet below, with some of them landing just a few yards from me.
“Soldiers on the ground,” I called out. Markers lit up the field with nineteen red dots. The team shot at the markers, bullets and laser fires crisscrossing among the sand-filled dunes. The damaged aircraft landed hard, throwing itself into a violent, and shredding roll; its wings and engines flying off in a torrent of shrapnel among the desert.
Dropping the power core in the sand, I pulled the blaster from beneath my cloak and shot a hole through the nearest soldier struggling on the ground after the fall. Dark blood gushed out in a geyser from the center of his chest, his body instantly going limp.
“Stay here,” I said to the two Yau. Entosh nodded vigorously, covering Piki with his body among the banks.
Fighting raged on in the distance. Trudging through the sand, I reached the crest of the nearest mound and switched to my rifle, bringing the weapon up and peering through the scope, looking for available targets. Seya was dispatching a soldier with her sword and blaster. Bon was lying prone and took the top of a soldier’s helmet off. I was searching for Garvo when bullets sprayed up next to me, prompting me to dive down.
My HUD signaled that the fire came from my three o’clock. Crawling away from my last location, I quickly sprang up from behind the dune and scanned for targets. An enemy soldier snapped up and fired at me. One of his bullets struck me in the shoulder with the round imbedding itself into the armor plating. My brain lit up in a rush of lightning with the activated combat mind. My shot was precise and true, hitting the soldier in the chest, sending him sprawling back behind his dune and out of sight. The adrenaline coursing through me dulled the sharp pain in my arm, and my hands were still, fully engaged in the combat mind.
I wasn’t sure the soldier was dead. The rifle’s bullets were a smaller caliber—accurate over a longer distance compared to the blaster on my hip, but it lacked the punch needed to go completely through the chest plate of a soldier. No, he was still alive. I needed to seize the opportunity to move up on him. I dared to move out from cover, closing the distance to the enemy I was engaging. I snapped some fire in the direction of other soldiers that presented themselves during the move, keeping them ducked down behind cover.
When I crested my target’s dune, he was grasping his chest, struggling to breathe with a large and deep dent present in the center of his chest plate. A rifle lay in the sand near him. Once he noticed me, he struggled to reach the rifle. Before he could grab the weapon, I jumped on top of him, knocking what little wind he had left and grabbed it. I removed the magazine and emptied the chamber, tossing both it and the rifle several yards away.
Yanking his helmet off, I revealed the pureblood Darkkon’s dark, purple face and white hair shorn close to his scalp. His fierce, glowing green eyes looked at me between gasps for air in the thin atmosphere. I tossed the helmet in the opposite direction from the weapon and stripped him of the knife on his belt. The choice was his to decide what was more important. Slamming a fist into his face, I broke his nose with a crunch and moved on.
A grenade exploded, throwing two soldiers a few feet out from the dunes, their smoking bodies resting in the sand in a mangled mess. Kayton deflected a charging sword attack with h
er weapon and struck the soldier in the helmet hard with the butt of her rifle, knocking him down. She ended the soldier with a quick burst from her rifle into the soldier’s helmet before turning to engage others.
Another grenade detonated, this time right by one of our troopers. A leg arced freely into the battlefield.
“Del!” Kayton shouted over the comms. “Ellar! Get to Del!”
“Armor, where are you?” I asked.
“We see you now,” said Habi. “Engaging.”
The markers popped up for the two armor suit pilots as they opened on the enemy soldiers driving them into cover. The armored suits’ large weapons tore those not in hiding to pieces in an instant.
“Ellar, talk to me. How’s Del?” I asked, using the opportunity to get closer to the others.
“It’s bad. We need to get him onto the ship right away,” said the medic, huffing over the mic.
Dotty, bring Dagger in on the far side, we’re not staying long.
Understood, Arthur.
A round struck me in the thigh, the impact feeling like a baseball bat breaking over my leg. I dropped to a knee and returned fire in the direction it came from, aiming at helmets that disappeared behind the sand.
I turned up the external speakers in my helmet. “Entosh! Entosh!” I shouted over the battle, knowing he didn’t have access to our comms. A red face peeked over the top of a dune. “Take Piki and go around.” I waved my arm in a wide motion behind me. “Go now, dammit!”
The two Yau hurried along the path I designated in a stooped run. Changing out a magazine for a fresh one from my chest harness, I continued firing into the enemy line, which showed little, if any relent in their attacks.
“I’m hit!” said Garvo.
Zooming in on his position with my visor, the trooper was clutching his gut. He had been using himself as cover in the open terrain to protect Feylan behind him.
“Armor, use sky shards on the enemy line!” said Kayton, running over to Garvo.
Sky shards? I thought. The two pilots each shot several canisters over the battlefield. Once they were over the enemy line, they ignited, sending a hailstorm of long, dark needles down over the soldiers.
The attack left them squirming in the beige sand while others lie motionless. A couple avoided the barrage but the pilots quickly dispatched them. The battle died down and went completely silent, save for the moans of the injured.
“Report,” I ordered, as I limped my way over to the troopers.
“Del’s in bad shape,” replied Ellar, his breathing a little hard between the frantic aid he was administering. “I’ve stopped the bleeding, but he’s going into shock. Garvo got one in the gut. A few other injuries here.” Del was clutching Bon’s good hand tightly. His left leg was missing below the knee, while shrapnel stuck out of the rest of him.
Suddenly, a flashback of Afghanistan hit me as my squad pulled a marine missing his leg from a Humvee hit by an IED. The rest of the Marines inside were dead. The blood was everywhere, and the rancid smell was sickening.
“Art. Hey, Art!” said Kayton, placing a hand on my shoulder.
I recoiled slightly from the touch, as she guided me back into the present. The Codari’s dark, almost black blood pooling into the insatiably thirsty sand replaced the red blood in my mind.
“You still with us?” asked Kayton.
“Yes, sorry. Get everyone on Dagger now, we’re getting out of here,” I said as I looked around to make sure everyone was accounted for. Seya had Feylan draped in her arms.
“Garvo saved her,” she said. Onray helped the hulking trooper to walk back towards the group.
The team made their way towards the dropship quickly with the two Yau in tow, bringing the power core I dropped earlier. Dagger landed close by, and the two armored suits made their way down to our position.
The battlefield was a mess. When we first landed, I didn’t think the planet could get any uglier—I was wrong. There were bodies strewn all over and baking in the sun. The desert eagerly drunk the pools of dark, red blood with its unquenchable thirst.
A soldier was crawling on all fours in the distance. His purple skin marked him as the one I left earlier. He was crawling towards his helmet and not the rifle. Taking off in a limping run towards him, Kayton called after me, “Art? Art, what are you doing?”
I didn’t respond, instead, I continued towards the struggling soldier. Reaching the man, I kicked him onto his side as he struggled to take in ragged breaths in the thin and dusty air. Striking him in the jaw, I knocked him out cold. I scooped the helmet off the sand and put it on him, locking it into his suit. Satisfied with not finding any weapons, I tossed him across my shoulders in a fireman’s carry and brought him to the ship.
“What are you doing with him?” asked Kayton.
“We’re going to get some answers when we get home,” I said, tying him to one of the locked in armor suit’s legs. “Did we get everything?”
“It’s all here,” said Seya.
“Good. Dotty, take us to The Pillar and set a course for Fengar. Take the wounded to the medical pods as soon as we board the ship,” I said, placing a hand on Del’s shoulder. “Hang in there.” I took my position in the cockpit next to Seya. The ship was incredibly cramped now with four more passengers and a wealth of supplies aboard.
*****
Dagger screamed into the air as we punched through the atmosphere to rendezvous with The Pillar. With both of the ships cloaked, it should have prevented anyone from tracking them. But what we witnessed clearly argued against that and left me with an uneasy feeling. How did they track Dagger? I thought. The large ship welcomed us into its hangar, locking the dropship in place, and bringing it up to the loading dock.
The troopers filed out immediately, with Ellar and Tal taking the wounded to the medical pods. Though Ellar stopped most of the major bleeding, the ten-minute ride up left the hold full of blood, which oozed from the chairs and seeped onto the floor. I untied the unconscious enemy soldier and had the pilots take him to the laboratory. The Pillar didn’t have a brig, but the chair I received the combat mind injection in, should act as a good restrainer in the meantime. I needed information, and I knew just how to get it now.
“Enemy ship sighted. It will enter engaging distance in two minutes,” announced Dotty, cutting off my thoughts.
“What?” I said with concern. “Can we make the jump to Fengar in time?”
“It will be close—the enemy will engage as we are entering the wormhole. It is too dangerous to do so,” said the A.I.
“Bring the cores, and follow me!” I said to the troopers still lingering around the dropship.
We ran down the slick, black hallways, towards the core room, our five glowing cores in hand.
“Dotty, prepare the weapons!” I shouted. Taking a knee, I slid my core into the cradle, giving it a twist and locking it into place. “Put the cores in.”
“Done,” said Seya.
“Here too,” said the others.
When I stepped out of the core room, Entosh and Piki stood there quietly, with Feylan resting in the man’s arms.
“Come with me, we need to buckle down,” I said. I took off at a frantic pace towards the bridge, the sharp pain in my leg wanting to slow me down with each step. Pushing through it, I reached the bridge with the others.
“Enemy has fired torpedoes. Taking evasive actions,” said Dotty over the room’s speakers.
The ship jerked suddenly, causing us to stumble onto the deck. We crawled our way to nearby seats and strapped in.
“What’s going on up there?” asked Ellar over the comms.
“Are the injured secured?” I asked.
“Not yet, still getting them out of their suits before they go into the pods,” replied the medic in a hasty voice.
“Get it done quickly,” I said. “Dotty, can we shoot these things down?”
The Pillar lurched again, squeezing me into my seat with force as torpedoes maintained their heading.
“Torpedoes are coming within defensive firing range—firing,” came the calm voice of the A.I. On the screens, green plasma fire spat out from The Pillar in rapid succession. The stream of lasers looked like a supercharged hose against the incoming bee swarm of red torpedoes. As some found their targets, explosions ignited mid-field between our two ships. Half a dozen incoming missiles made it through as red streaks bore down on us.
More blasts erupted from our ship, throwing us around with its massive jukes.
“Accessing shields,” said Dotty. “Continuing evasion.”
The extra cores allowed access to the shields, something that wasn’t enabled before. A blue pulse slid over the front of the ship several times before it turned into a nearly opaque energy shield. Blast shields slid into place over the bridge’s viewports, buttoning us up in preparation for the incoming torpedoes.
“Impact in twenty-three seconds,” said Dotty.
My breathing came faster, and sweat ran down my face. I was in such a rush, I didn’t even take my helmet off after boarding the ship. Small hissing sounds from my own breathing continued at a furious pace, almost at a constant. If it hit us, I wasn’t sure if the shield would hold.
“Brace for impact,” said Dotty.
Kayton was in the seat next to mine, breathing hard with anticipation. To my right, Seya squeezed her eyes shut while a mixture of silent panic or prayer came from the rest of the team. Entosh and Piki were whispering to each other, but I couldn’t hear what they said as Feylan rested limply next to them. I hoped for their sakes that we would still be alive in the next few seconds.
Here we go.
One last explosive jerk and four of the missiles missed us completely as they streamed across the starboard side into infinity. One of the missiles curved up and uppercut the ship’s nose while another grazed the starboard side, igniting near the stern. The force rocked us in our seats, the harness squeezing tightly onto our bodies like the thumb of a giant.
We were still alive. The shield was bright white as it took the brunt of the damage before it dissipated completely.
