As I skirted the room and drew closer Monstros, music began to swell inside my head once again. The monster was only a few meters away. It was now or never. I took a deep breath, held the testing rod upside-down like a sword, and closed my eyes.
I was standing in a spotlight and wearing a long-tailed tuxedo. I faced a large, darkened auditorium, and held a thin metal baton in my hand. Just below me was an entire pre-synthetic orchestra, all dressed in black and looking up at me with their musical instruments at the ready. I raised my baton and held it there for a heartbeat. When I suddenly brought it down, the orchestra answered with the first low, booming notes of the ominous-sounding marching song.
I opened my eyes. The long base of my testing rod was now alive with a bright yellow light. Or maybe it was a flame—it was hard to tell. And I didn’t have time to find out, because a giant monster was cracking a deadly whip just a few meters away.
I leapt out from behind my barrier and charged toward Monstros, brandishing my sword at my side. He turned with a toothy sneer and cracked his glowing red whip at me. I yelled, raised my sword, and swung.
My glowing yellow sword made a sputtering sound as it sliced through the whip. Monstros dropped what was left of his weapon, snarled, and raised his other hand toward me. The stone around his neck shone brightly and the veins under the short hair on his forehead bulged as he closed his fist and quickly pulled back his arm, as if willing my sword to come free from my hands.
I felt a small tremor in my sword, but nothing more. Monstros wrinkled his furry brow and froze for a moment in confusion.
A moment was all I needed.
I lunged forward and, with two hands, brought my sword up between two overlapping plates of armor just above his waist. The glowing end sank into his chest, almost to the handle. There was a sizzling sound and the air was filled with the smell of singed hair and burnt flesh.
With a heave, I pulled the sword from Monstros’s body and leapt backward, bringing my sword up in preparation for his next attack.
It never came.
Instead, his dark eyes widened and his clawed hands went to the smoldering hole near his stomach. He dropped to his knees with a deep metallic thud and he looked me in the eyes.
“Impossible,” he growled, then shook his head slowly. “Even if this moon . . . does not fall . . . the others certainly will . . .”
The monster convulsed in a short coughing fit, then continued. “Craniax will surely conquer . . . your puny planet . . . And the Ultimate Magus . . . ”
More coughing. He made a fist with one of his large hands, pulled it tightly to his chest and cried, “Long live the Dominion!”
His fierce face slackened and the orange stone around his neck dimmed and went out. Then he toppled backward.
The handful of troopers standing behind him looked from one to the other and back again, confused. To be honest, I was surprised, too. I’d never killed a giant furry monster with a nasty glowing whip before—not even in my imagination. Which is saying something.
After a second, a trooper stepped forward with his sword raised. Only now, it wasn’t glowing red. It was now the same dull silver as the sword I had broken earlier. He yelled as he took a step toward me, but was quickly knocked back by a light-blue flash that left a hole in his chest plate.
More blue flashes lit the hazy room. I dove behind a nearby heap of equipment and leaned against it, trying to make myself as thin as possible and holding my still-glowing sword in front of me protectively. The troopers raised their shields to deflect the blasts from Rand and Lopez, but they weren’t glowing purple anymore. The plasma slugs exploded against the shields instead, knocking the troopers backward.
A couple of them managed to fire their crossbows in return, but their arrows had also stopped glowing and stuck harmlessly into the side of the broken equipment that shielded my crew. There were a few more flashes and yells of pain, and then, silence.
“Clear?” I yelled.
“All clear,” Rand answered.
I closed my eyes and imagined I was back in front of the auditorium. With a flourish, I snapped my baton horizontally to stop the music that had been playing in the back of my mind. When I opened my eyes, the glowing sword was once again just a normal testing rod.
I was hit with a wave of exhaustion and my legs buckled a bit. Apparently, making a sword light up took a lot out of me. I was hungry, too. Like, starving. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me from taking a closer look at that orange stone on the monster’s necklace.
I stepped out from my hiding place and looked to my crew. Kovac was sitting Hiller up against the compressor like a large doll. Lopez had cocked her head in my direction and was moving her mouth, but nothing came out.
Rand was staring wide-eyed at my testing rod. “Fascinating,” he said. “How did you manage to activate it?”
“A magician never reveals his secrets,” I said with a grin.
There was a hint of a smile on Rand’s face as he squinted his eyes and looked inquisitively at the yellow rod.
I took a few steps toward Monstros’s massive corpse and Rand followed. When we came close enough to see his head, we both gasped. His face was no longer furry and wolfish. Instead, a man with curly red hair, a square jaw, and a severe underbite stared straight ahead. Rand nudged the body with his boot, but nothing happened.
My eyes immediately went to the orange stone around his neck. It still wasn’t glowing, but when I moved closer, I heard the stirrings of music start inside my head. But this music had a faster tempo than the other I’d heard—or felt—and it grew louder as I bent over the body. I thought I heard the pounding of low-sounding drums and . . . was that an electric guitar?
“Take care,” Rand said.
I paused, but then stretched my hand out. The moment I touched the stone, I heard a single, crystal clear note and felt an intense tingling—like when your foot’s been asleep and you stand up on it suddenly and have to limp around. Then, just as suddenly, the music stopped and the tingling faded.
The orange stone came loose and practically shot out of the necklace and into my hand.
“Look,” I said, holding up the stone. “Another souvenir to add to my collection.”
Rand shook his head. I looked to see if anyone else had heard my joke. Kovac was staring at me from the ground beside Hiller, wide-eyed. Apparently there wasn’t enough room upstairs for him to register what I’d said.
I glanced at Lopez, hoping to at least get the hint of a reluctant smile out of her, but she just looked at me with her brow furrowed, as if she couldn’t possibly comprehend my awesome display of power.
A moment later she shook her head and looked down at the data pad in her hand. She immediately began tapping and swiping at her pad, until she stopped suddenly.
“I hate to ruin Walker’s magic show,” Lopez said, still looking down, “but we’ve got a wave of troopers headed straight for us.”
8
“IT’S NOT MAGIC,” I said. I could actually feel my ears growing red. “I don’t know how I’m getting these weapons to work, but it’s definitely not magic. It’s gotta be . . . I don’t know. Something else.”
“Whatever,” Lopez said.
She looked skeptically at the orange stone in my hand. I quickly slipped it into one of my cargo pockets.
“Anyway,” she said, returning to her pad. “We’ve only got a couple of minutes before lots more of these caped weirdos show up. I can navigate us, but I’ll need cover.”
I bent down and picked up one of the trooper’s crossbows. “Leave it to me,” I said.
But the crossbow felt different from the first one I’d used. That one was alive. This one was just as dead as my regular plasma pistol. I turned the crossbow to look at the stock and, sure enough, the glowing ruby stone was now dark and dull—like a normal rock. I looked at the other crossbows on the ground and none of them were glowing, either.
“Um, guys? I don’t think these crossbows are going to work a
nymore.”
Lopez looked up just long enough to glare at me. Rand ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Hmm . . . Perhaps I could remedy that.”
“We don’t have the time,” Lopez said.
Rand looked like a kid who had just been told that Christmas had been canceled. “Fine,” he said. “But what do we do with Hiller?”
Kovac was still squatting by the colonel’s side. He looked up at us and said slowly, “I’ll carry him.”
“Excellent,” Rand hurried across the debris-filled room, snatched up his duffel bag, and quickly checked its contents. He dropped to the floor and began tossing several small pieces of equipment inside. “Then I will be responsible for carrying this bag. And that over there.”
He motioned to a small, scratched up blue crate with wheels sitting against a nearby wall.
“Which means I can return your firearm,” Rand continued.
He tossed me my pistol and quickly went back to scouring the littered floor for parts.
“Easy now, hoarder,” I said. “I think we can leave the Legos.”
“But this equipment could prove valuable,” Rand said. “Remember the communicators I altered?”
He had a point—it was his damn tech junk that had saved Hiller and me earlier. “Whatever,” I said. “Just hurry it up.”
Kovac stood and easily slung Hiller over his shoulder. In his free hand, he clutched Hiller’s plasma pistol and motioned to Rand.
“Take my hammer,” Kovac said.
Rand opened his mouth to protest, but Kovac shot him an angry look. Rand closed his mouth and stepped over to the vibro-hammer, picked it up with two hands, and dropped it into the wheeled crate with a thud.
“They’re almost here,” Lopez said sharply. “Come on—this way.”
She ran out of the door near the back of the room. Kovac followed, pistol drawn and Hiller balanced on his shoulder. When he stepped through the door, there was a loud bang as Hiller’s head smacked against the door frame.
“Sorry about that,” Kovac droned over his shoulder to the unconscious colonel.
Rand was next, gripping the black duffel bag and rolling the small wheeled crate by its extendable handle. I brought up the rear, testing rod in one hand and a plasma pistol in the other. But, like I said, I was starving after powering up my testing-rod. So on my way out I holstered my gun, threw open a scorched cabinet, and grabbed a high-density nutrient square from a pile on the lowest shelf. Nobody ever ate these things, but I was desperate.
I tore the wrapper open with my teeth and shoved it into my mouth. The thing tasted like dog food. I mean, what I imagine dog food tastes like. I’ve never eaten dog food. Not even on accident when I was totally hammered in college.
Anyway, as soon as I swallowed, I immediately felt stronger. Which was a really good thing, because as soon as I had tossed the wrapper onto the floor, I felt something whiz past my ear and heard a loud twang as an arrow stuck into the wall next to my head.
The good news was, it looked like the other troopers’ weapons weren’t powered anymore, either. The bad news was, they still had lots of lethal metal arrows to shoot at us.
I pulled my pistol from its holster and fired a few quick shots behind me. I heard a scream from one of the troopers as I bolted out of the door and into the hallway.
I quickly caught up to the rest of my crew. “This way,” Lopez said, and turned sharply. I have no idea how she was able to run and look at her data pad at the same time. Maybe that’s her superpower.
We followed her along another couple of dimly lit passages until we came to a short hallway just outside the hangar where the maintenance shuttle was docked. Lopez entered an access code into the large door’s control panel, but instead of opening for us, the rusty door just let out an angry buzzing noise.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lopez said.
“What is it?” Kovac asked as Hiller’s legs swung limply from side to side over his shoulder.
“The explosions and smoke must have activated the base’s safety protocols for all hangars and airlocks,” Lopez answered.
“Yet another example of an oversized government usurping control,” Rand said. “You know, I’ve been petitioning for—”
The whizzing of arrows stopped Rand’s rant from picking up steam, which was fine by me. I spun around and fired several shots toward the other end of the hallway and, for a few moments, the arrows stopped coming.
“Can you get us in?” I asked as Kovac and I fired more shots down the hallway.
“No. We’re all going to die,” Lopez said in her monotone voice.
She tapped violently at her pad and a couple of seconds later, the door whooshed open. She ran inside, followed by Rand, his duffel bag, and that ridiculous blue rolling crate. Kovac fired another shot and then darted into the hangar, Colonel Hiller in tow.
At the end of the narrow hallway, I could see a mass of off-white armored troopers gathering near the corner. I needed to buy us some time, so instead of firing at the soldiers, I aimed for the flickering lighting fixture just above them and started firing.
After a few moments, a large shower of sparks started falling and the troopers retreated back around the corner. I whirled around and beelined for the hangar.
Several large, lumpy palettes with, you guessed it, even more broken equipment balanced on top were scattered across the hanger. Among the forest of junk piles sat two shuttles. One looked like it had been torn open by a pack of direwolves. The other wasn’t much better, but because it was the one my crew was piling into, I figured it was the one that worked.
The large sliding door was partially open. As I ran, I saw Kovac hoisting Rand’s crate of equipment into the opening. Hiller lay limp on the floor next to Rand, who was leaning against the door frame and aiming a plasma gun at my head. And just when I thought we were finally getting along.
“Don’t shoot!” I yelled.
He shot.
But the pale blue slug flew past my head and was followed by a muffled yell of pain. I paused a moment to look over my shoulder and saw a trooper falling backward. More of them spilled through the doorway into the hangar, so I turned back around and sprinted the final few meters. I tossed my testing rod inside and leapt. The moment I landed, Rand pulled the door mostly shut, but kept it open just far enough to keep firing.
Lopez was in the pilot’s seat pushing buttons furiously.
“I’m in,” I said to her between shallow breaths. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Oh, is that what we should do?” Lopez said. “They really should promote you to general with that sort of tactical genius.”
Unbelievable. I was about to deliver a witty response, but was interrupted by a volley of arrows thunking against the side of the shuttle.
“Lopez,” Rand said. “Now would be an opportune time to make our exit.”
“Give me a second, okay? The safety protocol locked the bay doors and they’re not going to override themselves.”
The stream of troopers pouring through the door became a trickle, until no more appeared. That had to be all of them.
Dozens lined up behind the bulky palettes and fired repeatedly at our shuttle. Rand was still firing, so I knelt down and helped. We managed to hold them back for a few moments, but it was clear that two plasma pistols wouldn’t be enough to buy us the time we needed. We needed something else—something unexpected.
“Must we leave the other shuttle behind?” Rand asked between plasma slug bursts. “I just fixed the fusion drive yesterday.”
“You’re seriously worried about a junked shuttle’s fusion drive?” I said. That was stupid. No—not stupid. Unexpected.
The troopers were still taking cover behind the randomly scattered palettes of solid equipment. I could probably do something with those, if I could just figure out how the orange stone worked. When I first picked it up, I’d heard faint strains of heavy drums and an electric guitar riff in the background. Now, this same music began to sound i
n my head. I holstered my gun, reached into my cargo pocket, and pulled out the orange gem—which was now glowing softly.
“Don’t stop firing,” Kovac said deliberately as he looked out the viewport on the other side of the shuttle. “Doors are opening.”
“I can get us out,” I said. “Trust me.”
What had Monstros done? I’d seen him reach out, close his hand, and then pull it back before objects went flying toward him. It was like he was grabbing things with his mind. If a fuzzy red monster could do it, why couldn’t I?
I closed my eyes and pictured a golden lasso, like the one that half-naked Amazon used in the comic books—the ones my parents forced on me. In my mind, I began swinging the lasso around faster and faster. The up-tempo music grew louder with each rotation and I felt the orange crystal grow warmer in my hand.
When I felt the music had crescendoed to a peak, I opened my eyes and made a casting motion toward a large palette on the far side of the broken-down shuttle. I imagined the end of the lasso wrapping around the palette, and as soon as I felt it was secure, I gritted my teeth and pulled my arm back with all my might.
“Close the door,” I grunted to Rand. “Now!”
Suddenly, the palette was in the air and flying toward me. It would have kept coming, too, if the other shuttle hadn’t been in the way. The palette slammed into its front end and the shuttle erupted in a giant ball of flame that filled the entire hangar.
“What the hell?!” Lopez shrieked.
Rand slammed the doors shut just before the exploding shuttle’s shock wave knocked us through the now-opened hangar bay doors and force field—and out into space.
“We made it?!” Kovac boomed, his meaty hands clapped to his eyes.
“Apparently,” Lopez said from the front of the shuttle.
Rand looked at me and shook his head slowly. “I don’t know how you did it,” he said, “but nicely done, Walker.”
I would have liked to celebrate, but instead I collapsed onto my back in exhaustion. My eyes felt like lead weights, so I let them drop. And damn, was I hungry.
Rebel Sword Page 5
