I bit the inside of my lip, then decided to continue. “And if they’re trying to take over the entire solar system, then Peacekeeper Central on Earth needs to know absolutely everything we do. The fate of the United Federation of Sol could depend on it.”
Hiller put the rifle back down on the table slowly. Dammit—had I gone too far with that last part about the entire solar system hanging in the balance?
The colonel closed his eyes, and for a moment, I thought he might be losing consciousness again. But then he nodded slowly and opened his eyes.
“Walker’s right,” he said. “We prioritize the intel for Pluto HQ—they can decide what to do with it after that. And if Walker managed to fight off an entire army and get us off of Nix using those gems or whatever they are, he should at least be able to get us to a comm tower. Right, son?”
“Right,” I said slowly. Then, standing at attention, I said, “I mean, right, sir!”
He looked me in the eyes. “Just remember—your mouth shouldn’t write checks your ass can’t cash.”
“I’ll make sure my ass cashes for you, sir. I mean—”
Hiller held up a hand. Again. God, I’m an idiot.
Patel lowered her head.
“But just because Walker was right,” Hiller said to Patel with a smile, “that doesn’t mean you’re wrong, Lieutenant.”
He reached over the table and picked up a plasma canon, just like the one he held in my old poster. In that moment, his grumpiness melted away and he finally felt like the Hiller I’d seen staring back at me from my old bedroom wall.
With a twinkle in his eye, he said, “I’ve got a plan.”
We broke into two teams. Patel and her squadron went straight for the center of Charon station and took most of the armory with them. Their mission was to pull as many Dominion troopers as they could away from the comm relay tower on the other side of the station.
As Patel’s soldiers left, our crew was double-checking the seals on our new surface suits we’d found in the armory. Hiller said their built-in short-range comm units could come in handy in case we were separated, but there was no way any of us were going to leave Hiller. We’d die first.
With the other soldiers gone, our crew got the armory’s left over weaponry—no surprise there. But that still gave each of us our choice of plasma gun, rifle, and fully loaded slug clips. Hiller had two fully-loaded ammo bandoleers slung across his chest, a plasma pistol strapped to his thigh, and cradled a plasma canon.
The rest of the crew wasn’t as well equipped, but that was fine by us. Kovac carried a short-barreled plasma rifle and kept a plasma pistol in a holster—actually, it was two holsters we had to tie together to fit around his barrel of a waist.
Rand had a plasma rifle slung over his shoulder so he could carry his duffel bag in one hand and wheel his crate of equipment with the other. The team wasn’t too happy about this, but since he said he could need any number of things to get the relay working again, and since this mission was too important to take any chances, Hiller gave him permission.
Lopez carried two smallish plasma pistols, and that was it.
I didn’t need much, either, with my rod-sword strapped to my back, three-cross Dominion bow, and an orange stone still tucked into my suit’s glove. All I grabbed was a belt loaded with a dozen or so ion grenades.
After the sound of blaster fire from Patel’s squadron had completely faded, our crew ran out of the armory and went straight for the station’s maintenance hangar. We didn’t encounter any troopers during our short jog—not any live ones, anyway—and inside we found the all-terrain rover just as Patel had promised.
Lopez jumped into the driver’s seat, grimaced, then fired up the engine before anyone could say otherwise and punched in the hangar clearance codes Patel had given us.
“Shotgun!” I yelled as I took the co-pilot’s seat. I had no idea how to drive the thing—but I could wing it if Lopez got shot again, right?
Kovac and Rand hopped into the two rear passenger seats, and Hiller stood in the back end, wobbling only slightly, bracing himself against the rover’s roll bar and holding his canon proudly. We all pulled on the face masks on our surface suits and Lopez tore out of the hangar and out onto Charon’s surface toward the relay tower.
It was only a couple of minutes before we saw our first sign of Dominion troopers.
“Time to see what you’ve got, son,” Hiller said over the comm in our suits.
He and Kovac provided cover fire, while Rand hugged his equipment and I did my thing to summon the orange stone’s fast-paced drum and electric guitar theme music in my mind.nBut when the troopers raised their weapons to return fire, I tried something different.
I imagined I was swinging four golden lassos at once and tossed them around the four crossbows that were being leveled at our rover. I jerked the imaginary lassos, and in an instant the crossbows were all hurtling through the air toward me.
“The hell?” Hiller said over the comm.
Actually, the airborne crossbows hurtled toward where I had been a moment earlier—Lopez was driving so fast and the ground was so bumpy that I lost my focus as I grabbed the door handle to steady myself and the lasso image left my mind, leaving the crossbows to drift off to who knows where.
Once I had taken away their weapons, they were pretty easy work for Hiller and Kovac.
“Not bad, son,” Hiller said. “Not bad at all.”
Lopez kept driving like it was the end of the world—because maybe it was—and we skidded around the final corner between us and the relay tower.
A group of twenty or so Dominion troopers met us on the other side. The two portals of swirling colors were no longer there, which was good news. But here’s the bad news—one of them held the long, thick metal cylinder we’d seen earlier from the shuttle that had shot us out of the sky.
“That’s not good,” Kovac said slowly.
And, sure enough, as soon as they spotted us, this trooper turned the thing toward our rover and fired.
Once again, there was a flash from its end and another dark sphere wreathed in crackling white light shot toward us. Lopez swerved hard to the left, but it was too tight a turn for how fast we were going. The rover flipped and we flew out.
This was one of those times where low gravity was actually our friend. The rover kept rolling and we tumbled to the ground, but not hard enough to do any serious damage. On the other hand, I was pretty sure the hail of glowing red arrows could pick up the slack.
As soon as we got to our feet, the anti-grav boots let us dig in and we scrambled for cover behind the rover, which was now laying on its side. Hiller, Kovac, and Lopez each still had a weapon and were returning fire. Rand had recovered his duffel bag and equipment crate and had miraculously hauled it with him behind the overturned rover.
My rod-sword was still secured to my back and I gripped my crossbow with both hands as I peeked over the top of the rover. Hiller’s plasma canon was able to do a bit of damage, but Kovac and Lopez’s plasma slugs were easily deflected by the Dominion’s glowing purple shields.
I’m going to be honest—I was scared. There was a lot riding on us reaching the comm tower, and things weren’t looking good for us so far. If we were going to get past these Eggheads, I would need to dig deeper and use more power from these stones than I ever had before.
As I summoned the stone’s music, I started to increase the volume of the heavy drums and electric guitar inside my head, which gave my confidence a much-needed boost. In spite of my deep doubts about my ability to use the stones, I found a fragment of belief to latch onto. And as my confidence increased, the drums grew louder and louder until I could almost feel my teeth rattle.
It was time for some payback.
I stepped out from behind the rover. I stretched an orange-haloed hand toward the front line of troopers and pulled their shields toward me. At the same time, I raised my crossbow and fired a flurry of arrows into them. Hiller, Kovac, and Lopez took advantage of thei
r surprise and fired a barrage of shots in their direction.
The Dominion troopers recovered quickly, but that’s when my arrows started detonating down their front line. Limbs and helmets flew in all directions as the concussion from the blasts knocked the other troopers backward. My crew let loose—Hiller with his canon, Kovac with his rifle, Lopez with her pistol, and me with my crossbow. Hell, even Rand got in on the action with his little rifle.
Together, we made quick work of the remaining troopers, and soon the path to the comm tower was clear. We’d actually done it! Once we got inside, Rand would use his knickknacks to fix the transmitter, or whatever wasn’t working, and we’d send a message to HQ on Pluto. Our intel would be the turning point in the battle and we’d be heroes. Maybe I’d even end up on a poster.
So we awkwardly ran with our anti-grav boots to the tower’s entrance and Hiller used his command glove to open the door. But when it slid open, what we saw inside drained the color from each of our faces.
Remember the glowing crates I saw the Dominion troopers carrying out of the portal before we crashed? Well, I found them.
And I immediately wished I hadn’t.
14
THE DOMINION’S PRESENCE inside was glaring against the natural order of the immaculately kept comm relay tower. Thick metal girders lined the walls evenly and stretched forty or fifty meters to the domed ceiling, with all sorts of buttons and screens and switches in orderly rows between them. A thick column stood in its center with multiple rows of control panels at its bottom and wires snaked symmetrically around the column and stretched to the ceiling’s center. On the ground, several free-standing control panels and pieces of machinery were stationed precisely throughout the room.
Interrupting this architectural precision, a heavily-armed line of Dominion troopers had formed a loose circle around another, smaller group that was working on the equipment on the far end of the room. A cluster of glowing barrel-shaped objects were being connected by glass tubes that led to a number of transparent bulbs on top, filled with bubbling liquid. The contraption was making a rattling sound, and smoke rose from somewhere inside. It looked like a dragon had just shat out a giant robot.
Even I could tell this wasn’t very safe. In fact, it looked like it was the furthest thing from safe.
Standing inside this circle of armed troopers and just beyond the dangerous-looking contraption stood a tall woman in purple and blue armor. Her pale face and sharp jawline was exposed, but a short blue collar covered her long neck and she wore a semi-circular black headdress with shafts of blue radiating outward from her covered scalp. I don’t think she could have looked any badder if she tried.
The woman directed the troopers with cool authority, and I could tell she was the leader—which meant that the glowing purple jewel on her long, intricately carved staff was probably the stone responsible for powering the Dominion weapons in the area. So she was my responsibility to take out—and not in a romantic way, although she was kind of hot, but in a “beautiful, but she’ll steal your soul and sharpen her teeth with your bones” sort of way.
Suddenly sensing our presence, the armored woman looked up and scowled. “Nothing may disturb the technologists,” she said in a smooth, but menacing voice. “Craniax will have our heads if we fail. Destroy these intruders—for the glory of the Dominion!”
“Yes, Sinistra,” several hollow voices responded in unison.
Sinistra? Seriously? Where do these guys get their names from—some sort of evil-sounding-name generator?
I tried to remember what cartoon villain was her doppelgänger. Terminatrix? Maleficent? Cruella? Evelyn? No—Evil-Lyn. That was it! How in the system did classical writers get away with these names?
But I didn’t have time to ponder it, because the troopers on the far side of the smoking equipment shifted their positions to create a single line and opened fire on us.
My crew leapt through the force field at the door and ducked behind a long, waist-high row of terminals to avoid the glowing arrows before removing our face masks. Some of the arrows lodged into the wall behind us, while others made small explosions upon impact, sending small bits of shrapnel flying.
Kovac rose and returned fire, but the troopers deflected his plasma slugs, which in turn peppered the machinery on to the tower’s walls and sent down a shower of sparks all around us.
“For the record,” Rand said loudly, “I would normally endorse crippling a comm station which the government undoubtedly uses to eavesdrop on its citizens.”
More red arrows whizzed past us. “But right now,” he continued, “the relay station’s servers need to remain intact or we will be unable to send our message!”
“Then what the hell are they doing?” Hiller asked as more red arrows flew over our heads and exploded against the walls.
Rand peeked up over the terminal then said,“Given their disregard for the equipment here, I would hazard to say they want to destroy the relay station altogether. And that,” he pointed at the smoking piece of machinery, “is probably the equivalent of an explosive device.”
“Dammit,” Hiller muttered as he set down his plasma canon and drew his two plasma guns instead.
“Okay, Rand,” he said over the constant small explosions surrounding us. “What do you need?”
Rand scanned the room. He pointed to a nearby bank of equipment. “If I can reconfigure the broadcast array, then the Faraday capacitor could potentially boost a signal to Pluto.”
Hiller nodded, then yelled, “Walker!”
“Yes, sir?” I asked.
“Disarm those bastards,” Hiller said. “But don’t you dare use your crossbow near that bomb. We’ll cover you.”
I nodded.
“Aim low, soldiers,” Hiller said loudly. “Short bursts. On three.”
After the count, my crew began firing and Rand scurried over to a nearby bank of equipment, holding his duffel bag tightly to his chest.
I had already begun twirling seven lassos in my mind—I couldn’t clearly picture any more—so as soon as I stood up, I flung my arm out toward the seven troopers in the center of the line and yanked their crossbows away from them.
With the troopers off-balance and momentarily exposed, my crew picked them off with their plasma slugs and they dropped to the ground, their off-white armor now riddled with black holes. I let go of the weapons, which fell to the floor with a clatter.
Without missing a beat, the remaining five troopers on either side of their fallen ones shifted toward the center to take the place of their lifeless comrades, and fired.
My crew and I all dropped to the ground behind our makeshift barricade. I looked over and saw Rand furiously pulling tools from his bag and using them to connect his small cylinder to the underside of a console.
“Shields on three!” Hiller yelled to me. “One, two, three!”
I pulled at their glowing purple arm shields and sent them flying toward us. The troopers kept firing, but without their protection, they fell quickly to our plasma fire.
Sinistra had been moving around the contraption, inspecting it and occasionally moving her lips and flexing her spindly, long-nailed fingers, while her black cape billowed gently in an airless breeze. When the twang and hum of crossbow arrows finally stopped, she turned and saw me standing with my arm outstretched and a faint orange glow radiating from my glove.
She wrinkled her razor-thin eyebrows and pursed her dark blue lips before yelling, “Swordsmen!”
Two of the troopers who had been working on the contraption stood and each took a long sword from their scabbard, which began glowing a deep red the moment they had been removed.
I dropped my crossbow to reach behind me, grabbed the rod-sword from my back, and pulled loose the fabric that was keeping it in place.
It only took me a moment to summon a louder, brassier version of the marching song and to harmonize it with the fast-paced, beat-heavy music from the orange gem that was already playing in my mind. My rod-sword flare
d to life and its yellow light warmed the room.
The swordsmen hesitated, then stepped forward. At the same time, Sinistra began moving her hands in slow circles and raised them above her head. A softly glowing, light purple transparent sphere shimmered to life around her and the machinery, like she had just put them into a life-sized snow globe. Then she went back to pacing around the contraption.
Hiller fired his plasma gun at her, but the slug ricocheted harmlessly off the sphere’s surface and seared a hole into a nearby support beam on the wall.
“Damn!” Hiller yelled, before firing at the swordsmen.
They swung their swords in tight circles, which glowed brighter as they deflected the plasma slugs back toward my crew. Hiller and the others ducked and barely missed being nailed by their own slugs.
One of the swordsmen looked at the other, tilted his T-shaped visor to the side, and began moving away from me and instead approached Rand, while the other kept taking heavy steps in my direction.
“Oh no, you don’t,” I said as I yanked my arm back. The farther swordsman was jerked from his feet and knocked into the first.
I flexed my fist and pulled again, this time sending both swordsmen speeding toward me. I grabbed my rod-sword with both hands and as soon as they were within striking distance, I released my hold on them and slashed horizontally across their midsections.
My yellow rod-sword sliced through their armor and bit into their bodies with a sickening sizzle.
It was so awesome.
The only problem was, I didn’t let go of them with the orange stone soon enough. And so their lifeless bodies rammed into me, knocking me to the floor. With a heave, I pushed them off and sprang back to my feet, hoping nobody had noticed.
They had. Once again, Kovac was wide-eyed. Rand smiled approvingly. Hiller shook his head in disbelief. And, of course, Lopez was smirking.
A shrill scream sounded from behind me and I twisted my head to see the purple glowing sphere around the the explosive contraption shimmer and disappear. But now that the light from the force field or whatever was gone, I saw that the contraption itself was pulsing with light, and my stomach sank.
Rebel Sword Page 8
