This was a suicide mission. We had to buy the Ra’xon enough time, but there was no chance – absolutely no chance that my team and I would see this through.
Somewhere through the pall of anger and fear and action, I realized this was it. This was how the son of Admiral Shepherd would go down.
Maybe it was a fitting death or a senseless waste, or maybe it was the best death I could hope for in a galaxy that was being torn apart under my very eyes.
Realizing we’d have no chance of perforating their dome shields in time, I gave the command.
A section of the ceiling collapsed. Well-placed explosives detonated in a ring right above the incursion team, and a few hundred tons of rock and ice came sailing down towards them.
My own team was pushed back, and we lost at least three of our dome shields. That meant we had only five left.
It would have to do.
I shifted backwards, rolling to the side just as a chunk of ceiling sailed down and slammed into my own dome shield. The red light surged, crackling with all the ferocity of 100 strikes of lightning.
As I thrust myself through the shields, it singed my armor, leaving great swathes of black marks across the tattered and scratched gray surface.
I felt a few electric jolts make it through the armor’s buffer system and bite into my back and legs.
I ignored them as I thrust myself forward, rolled, and punched to my feet, twisting on my foot just in time to see the impossible – two incursion soldiers shot their way out of the absolute mountain of rock and ice that had encased them.
Their armor wasn’t just prototype, it was astounding. The kind of stuff they gave to the most elite members of the Enforcement Unit.
Strafing backwards, my hand thinking quicker than my brain, I ducked to the side and shot at my own dome shield.
My bullets were encoded to slice right through the shield, and they slammed into the 30 cm² matte grey box that generated the force field.
Instantly the thing exploded, sending a wave of energy punching out in every direction.
Expecting it, I’d already threw myself forward, pushed into a roll, and ducked behind a chunk of rock that had fallen from the ceiling.
The two incursion soldiers weren’t as lucky. They were much closer, too, and they got caught in the discharge as the shield dissipated into the air. Their bodies jolted back and forth as the red energy crackled over their black forms.
It didn’t last, and it didn’t tear them down.
They kept surging forward.
We had no chance, we had no goddamn chance.
“Pull back,” I screamed into my helmet. “We need to blow this cavern.”
“Already?” J’lax spat back. “It’s too soon!”
“We don’t have any choice.”
And we didn’t.
They kept swelling towards us.
I turned on my heel and skidded forward, hearing the sound of determined footfall echo out behind me.
It was now clear the Star Forces had sent their best.
We would be no match.
…
Alyssa Nightingale
There was somebody standing just beyond the shields.
Though it felt as if the rest of the med bay had been evacuated, and everybody had been redeployed to security, there was definitely somebody there. I tried with all my might to concentrate on their face, but it took a long time to resolve their features.
“You’re awake, aren’t you? You’re fighting it,” a woman said in a small voice.
I tried, with all my might, to shift my head, to blink my eyes so I could see who was there.
“You must have lived through hell,” she said again, voice dropping even lower.
I tried to open my mouth. I couldn’t.
“I lived through hell too,” she admitted, voice soft.
Finally I realized who it was. I saw a flash of a downtrodden expression, sorrow-filled eyes, pale and drawn lips.
Williams. It was Lieutenant Annabelle Williams.
She was a telekinetic warrior, just like me. And just like me, she knew what real hell looked like.
I stopped thrashing.
“I didn’t think you should be drugged,” she suddenly said, “they don’t understand us. They try, but they can’t.”
I lay there, as still as I could, listening. Her words washed over me, capturing just enough of my attention to keep me awake and fighting against the rising tide of unconsciousness.
“I know you won’t attack us,” her voice tightened on the word attack. “I know you – because you’re just like me.”
I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t agree. I just lay there and listened.
“And I know… you’re the only one who can get us out of here.”
…
Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd
We were going to lose. It was just a question of when.
Seconds, minutes? We couldn’t have much longer.
We pulled back into the access tunnels. Though I detonated the cave, somehow it hadn’t counted.
Those incursion soldiers were equipped with the strongest armor I’d ever seen, and their shields withstood every barrage we sent towards them.
There was only one good thing, only one thing I could be proud of – my team was holding together. Even the pirates. They weren’t fracturing, running away from this impossible suicide mission. We were still fighting with every last breath.
The resistance had its own superfast land craft to bridge the enormous distance of the access tunnels.
As soon as we made it into the tunnels, I grabbed the nearest one and launched myself onto it.
A low land craft about two meters long and a meter tall, it had a set of sleek handlebars that operated the controls, tilting the craft in every direction you shifted your body in.
Unfortunately the crafts were battered, old, and barely maintained. But even if they’d been running at optimal condition, they would have been nothing compared to the Star Forces blister crafts. Vehicles perfected for tracking down wayward prey. Blister crafts were equipped with shields, multidirectional weapons, and could put on bursts of up to 1000 km an hour.
This would be a fast paced, frantic, one-sided battle.
I waited until every other member of my team mounted one of their crafts, then we set off.
I stayed at the back.
J’lax stayed at the back too.
Then it happened. The blister crafts punched through the wall of rock at the mouth of the tunnel.
They were here, and the battle was about to begin.
The engine of my craft roared as I pushed it to its maximum speed, the whole body shaking, sending sharp vibrations snaking into my hands, up my arms, and deep into my shoulders.
I twisted my head around, removing one hand from the controls as I grabbed the gun from my hip.
I started firing.
The blister crafts were just a blur.
It took the onboard targeting sensors of my armor to help me track them, and even then my primitive eyes couldn’t resolve their fast snapped movements.
It was like I was fighting flashes of shadow in the dark.
One of the crafts snaked towards me, closing the distance of a kilometer in what felt like half a second.
I grabbed my controls, practically hauling my body to the left as I threw my craft into a skid. It twisted around, changing direction until I slammed right into the side of the blister craft.
Though it had better shields, I wasn’t trying to ram it.
On the contrary.
I only had one chance.
Unlike most of the other soldiers in the resistance, I’d had the opportunity to ride a blister craft. Heck, back when I’d been a kid, I’d practically grown up on them. My father was an admiral, after all. While the other children my age were watching holo movies, I’d been tooling around on the back of some of the fastest crafts the Star Forces could produce.
So I knew their strengths. And I knew
their weaknesses.
The shields along the starboard side had a frequency problem. If they were facing a barrage from the front, it took a few short precious seconds for the side shields to adjust.
If you knew how, you could take advantage of those seconds.
In an instant, I fired a barrage of shots from my roundabout gun. I’d already locked its targeting sensors onto the front of the blister craft, and in less than a nanosecond, the shots twisted around and slammed into the front shields.
Then I jumped. Sideways. I flipped, right off my own craft, and right through the momentarily weakened shields of the blister craft.
I barely made it. I was almost rebuffed. The shields recalibrated so fast that I could actually feel them re-form around my armor, their repelling force almost enough to push me back. But my momentum held true.
I landed on the back of the blister craft.
The guy in front, the soldier in jet-black armor, twisted towards me, head moving so fast it was a surprise it didn’t unscrew from his neck and fly off the ship.
He thrust towards me.
I had one opportunity.
And it wasn’t to fight him. Take on that guy in hand-to-hand combat, even with my gauntlet, and I’d lose. I’d be a pancake in seconds.
So I fought the ship instead.
Rounding my gauntlet into a fist and sending a blisteringly quick electric pulse into the knuckles, I lent down and slammed my fist through the back of the blister craft.
It wasn’t enough to make it explode. I timed my punch carefully and picked a non-essential system.
As soon as my fist slammed into it, buckling the metal, electric pulses snaking out from my gauntlet, the blister craft bucked, then it pushed into a spin that saw it slam towards the side of the tunnel.
Just before the soldier could lunge towards me, grab a hand around my arm, and pull me off, we slammed into the wall.
Our shields were enough to buffer us, and we weren’t blown to smithereens, but whereas I had a hand lodged into the back of the craft, the soldier wasn’t as lucky.
He was thrown from his feet.
Despite the shock and speed of slamming into a wall, our shields crackling with the light of 1000 fires, I took my opportunity and jumped to my feet, rounding my shoulder and punching it into the guy’s chest.
My only opportunity was to get him off the blister craft.
And it worked.
My timing was perfect and I shoved my shoulder hard enough into his side to see him shoot backwards and fall right off the side of the craft.
We were travelling so fast that he was out of sight before I could blink.
I threw myself around and slammed my body over the controls, hunching down, letting my forearms lock against the handles as my hands gripped the primary control pads.
From me jumping onto his craft and grabbing the controls barely a few seconds passed.
The pace of this battle wasn’t frantic – it was impossible. It belonged in a realm of hell unto itself.
Just before one of the other blister crafts could start firing on me, I shifted forward, then swung to the side and travelled around in a great arc, slamming towards another one of the crafts.
“Damn, maybe I was wrong about you,” J’lax said, his crackling voice filtering over the comm.
I didn’t have time to reply, but inwardly, I smiled.
Outwardly, I slammed my vessel towards the closest blister craft. While I had no chance of destroying one of these things with my old cruiser, now it was different. Now I could use this craft as a battering ram.
Without hesitation, I slammed into the closest craft. Our shields bounced against one another, crackling, spitting energy out in a great arc.
With my forearms flattened over the stabilizes and my hands gripped around the primary controls, I shifted my ship to the side, then slammed it back into the blister craft.
As I angled my head to the left, the soldier aboard the blister craft stared towards me too. The two of us locked in a deadly battle at a blistering pace as flashes of wall and light sliced past us.
I didn’t allow myself to think I could win – not for a second.
Just that I could fight. Fight until the end.
…
Annabelle Williams
I’d made a promise to myself long ago: I would never go back to the Farsight Program, no matter what it took.
That’s why I’d joined the resistance, why I’d sacrificed everything to fight back against the Alliance.
I wasn’t prepared to surrender ever again.
I would do whatever it would take.
Including going against my orders.
I looked down through the category 10 shields once more, gazing at Alyssa.
I’d once convinced myself I hated her. Now I understood her. And more than that, I understood she was our only hope.
The Chief Medical Officer was out of the med bay, called on a fake mission I’d concocted.
There were no other witnesses.
Maybe they’d throw me in the brig for this, if we survived, but I didn’t care.
I took a single step back from the shields, then another and another before I gathered the courage to turn.
Once or twice, her unfocused gaze locked on me.
I knew what she was thinking, knew the exact kind of fear that pulsed through her veins.
I also knew, with all my heart, she was going to do anything to keep the Ra’xon safe if it meant saving herself from the Star Forces.
I walked towards the shield controls.
I needed to be careful. If I accidentally tripped the safety protocols, the Chief Engineer would be automatically warned. She’d be able to reinstate the shields way before I got the chance to bust Alyssa out. Plus, I needed time. Not only did I have to flush the chemical from her veins, but I had to administer a dose of 78.
Maybe I was fooling myself that Alyssa would be able to find the strength to fight. She’d been sedated for the past 36 hours. None of us had any idea what long-term exposure to these kinds of drugs did. Knowing Professor Axis and the Farsight team, the consequences were probably appalling. They didn’t care about loss of life, only power. And they would sacrifice anything and everyone in their never-ending quest for more of it.
As I worked, I barely took the time to breathe. My chest was pushed out, my mouth parched as I struggled to inhale.
I had to do this. I would not return to that program.
Though I’d spent the past year and a half devoted to the resistance, it had taken me awhile to join them.
When I’d completed my so-called training at the Farsight Program, I’d been redeployed back into the Star Forces with the same name and identity, which was unusual for the program. They’d turned me into a spy, erroneously thinking they could trust me.
They’d been wrong. It was a symptom of the hubris that defined that program. Professor Axis and his team thought they were undefeatable. I was here to prove they were wrong.
I clenched my teeth, feeling my jaw lock harder and harder into place as my hands darted over the shield controls.
I just hoped with all the confusion produced by the incursion that no one would be watching the engineering controls too closely. If they were, I would be found out long before I broke Alyssa free.
I heard her groan a few times. I fancied it wasn’t an ordinary moan. I fancied it was only the kind of noise you could make when you’d virtually given up on hope; when it had been crushed from your soul like juice from a grape.
I wasn’t ashamed to say my heart thundered in my chest. I pushed past that though, pushed past everything.
I concentrated, with everything I had.
The Farsight Program had been thorough; they’d taught me multiple incursion techniques. A telekinetic warrior of my caliber was intended to be used as a sleeper, one who could be activated at any moment. Deployable on any number of vessels within the fleet, my purpose was to watch my commanders and act should I be given orders. So I h
ad plenty of training in how to undermine systems and hide my tracks.
The red alert klaxon no longer blared, though the red strips of lighting along the walls still glowed a bright blood red, and would only be turned off once the threat had passed.
With every passing second I thought somebody would enter the med bay and my game would be up. But my luck held.
My luck held.
Alyssa started to mumble, clearly trying to speak but incapable of forming the words.
“Just hold on,” I told her, “just hold on.”
…
Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd
With every passing second, I thought it would be my last. I’d never faced a battle as fast-paced and frantic as this. If it ever ended and I survived, I fancied I’d have a headache for a week. It felt like somebody had grabbed my brains and rattled them around in my skull. But still I fought. Still I threw myself forward, using my blister craft as a ram to attack the remaining soldiers.
My team fought valiantly, but they weren’t undefeatable.
One after one, the blister craft picked them off.
Despite the fact I thought they were untrained and undisciplined, the pirates still fought with the most force. They were relentless, more than earning their title as some of the most vicious warriors in the galaxy. And if there was one who fought harder than the rest, it was J’lax. Though he hadn’t managed to secure a blister craft of his own, somehow it didn’t matter. He maneuvered his own craft with such skill and speed he managed to stay out of range of two blister craft as they locked on him from behind.
As gunfire split the air and flashed around me, I kept my eyes locked on the craft to my side. One of the biggest soldiers was atop. Definitely not human, and probably Mancor, he would crush me if it came to hand-to-hand combat.
That’s why I was keeping well out of his reach.
Considering I’d been using my own craft as a battering ram, it was starting to show considerable damage. There was a constant plume of smoke billowing out from the rear exhaust. While it was great for reducing visibility, it was a bad sign for the craft. Sooner rather than later, it would fall.
I had to make these last few moments count.
I zeroed in on the big guy. Maybe he was their leader, or maybe this band of elite soldiers didn’t have a leader. For all I knew, Professor Axis had pulled out their goddamn brains and replaced them with computers.
The Crucible- The Complete Series Page 33
