by Ivan Kal
“Captain Kane,” Remi called over the comms. “What can you tell me about the defenses on the other side of the portal?”
“There are not nearly enough. Most are focused on the walls to protect from outside threats; the portal room itself isn’t really guarded. We saw no need for it to be, as it was buried deep inside Earth, and there were defenses on this side.”
“So if the defenses on this side fell, they would move almost unopposed to Ethorria?”
“The people on the other side would’ve known that the Val’ayash were coming, and they would’ve had the time to set up defenses. But what I am worried most about is the fact that the Ethorrian camp’s military contingent has been reduced ever since we began the retaking of Earth from Qash’vo’tar. They won’t have much to defend themselves with.”
Remi D-002 didn’t reply. Instead, they waited in silence as they quickly approached the first station. The platform began to slow down and they readied themselves for a fight. As it came to a stop, the side of the platform opened up and they were met with emergency lighting dimly illuminating the massive doors leading into the processing plant. Crates and carts were left abandoned to the side, and the massive metal doors of the facility were closed.
The Dragons left first, moving in and securing the landing platform. Kane and the mech-frames followed. They moved over to the giant doors and looked around.
“There are no signs of fighting,” Kane commented over the comms.
“No, I think they must’ve ignored the facility,” Remi said as she walked over to the communications panel near the doors. The comms between the facilities in this area and the rest had been cut. Command still didn’t know why that was, but local comms should still be working. He saw Remi working on the terminal before attempting to open a comm line with the inside of the facility.
“This is UTS army detachment Dragon, is there anyone inside?”
There was no response for a long while, but then the comms chirped up and a soft voice spoke. “Are you humans?”
“Yes, we are human. What is your situation?”
“Oh, hvala bogu, ej ljudi stigla nam je pomoć!” the voice said, and Kane could tell that the man was speaking to someone else inside.
“What is your situation?” Remi repeated.
“What? Uh, right, we’re all right. The guys up top told us to seal the facility once they came under attack. The aliens didn’t even try to get into the facility.”
“Good. I want you to remain there—more help is on the way. The tunnels aren’t yet secure. Do you have enough supplies to last a few more days?”
“Yeah, we have everything we need right here,” the voice answered.
“All right, don’t open the doors until you hear from the UTS army,” Remi said and closed the comms.
“They must’ve rushed all of their troops down to the portal,” Kane told her.
“The question is how many they managed to ferry down. We lost comms days ago, which was enough time for several trips on the platform. Their contingent up at the entrance hadn’t been large enough to account for all of them. They wouldn’t have been able to take down the defenses if that is all they had.”
“I agree,” Kane said. “We should hurry—for all we know the portal room is still holding against their assaults.”
Remi nodded, then returned to the platform, and soon they were on their way deeper inside Earth’s crust, traveling at amazing speeds through the massive tunnels toward the portal facility. The distance from the entrance up on the ground to the facility beneath the Alps was eight hundred kilometers on the ground at least. The number was in fact somewhat higher when one took into account the depth they had to get to. Still, there was no way that they could’ve gotten there as quickly as they would without the platforms and the tram system.
The speeds at which it moved were incredible, just as was the fact that the nullification spellscripts allowed them to reach them without feeling any effects from the acceleration. Then again, Kane was no stranger to such magic, as those same spellscripts were used by the fighters.
Kane only hoped that they arrived in time.
***
Remi D-002 waited patiently inside her Dragon-scale armor, the standard equipment for Dragons. The battle armor was the newest and the most advanced piece of magi-tech developed on Senka, an improvement on the CES suits which Captain Kane and his people used.
It was meant to enhance everything about the Dragons—and after using it in battle, Remi thought that it did live up to the sentiment. It held four power cells, two for powering the armor itself and its conventional technology systems, and two to power the magi-tech systems. The two spellslingers on her arms each held eight different spellscripts, and there were many more woven into the armor. It was truly a marvel. It made her feel invincible, even more so that she already did. With the amount of spellscripts implanted in her body, she was a monster of conventional power and magic. Inside her armor, she truly embodied the name Dragon.
As they surged through the tunnel, she and the rest of Dragons kept quiet, keeping their minds on the operation. They would be facing more Val’ayash soon. It was inevitable; the portal room couldn’t have held on for so long. Remi was sure that Captain Kane knew that as well. That meant that Val’ayash had most likely already assaulted the base on Ethorria. The only question was: How far had they gotten?
From everything she had learned about the place, she knew that allowing the Val’ayash to come in contact with the natives could prove to be disastrous. The Ethorrians were nowhere near as united as Earth; their world was divided into many city-state factions. Earth’s presence was tolerated because of the trade humanity brought. That did not mean that every faction wanted them there, however—there had been attacks on the base from those who saw them as invaders, and with so many different factions, she was certain that Val’ayash could find allies there.
Magic was a terrifying weapon, and one which had made Earth able to stand with the best on Earth’s side of the portal. Allowing the Val’ayash access to magic was not an option.
Remi couldn’t help but sneak glances at the large mech-frame. She was standing just next to her father, and she wasn’t sure how to feel about that. All the Dragons now knew who their parents were. From those in her team now only the twins were biological offspring of Captain Reinhart, but their mother was different than Remi and Ethan’s, that made them biologically half siblings. That didn’t really matter to the Dragons, they had always considered themselves as brothers and sisters. The fact that some of them now shared biological connection didn’t factor in their feelings at all.
But still, Remi kept thinking about her father. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling, but she was drawn to find out more about him. Watching him, studying the way that he spoke and acted. She had read through everything she could find on him the moment she found out that she shared the same blood as he. She knew that he was married, but that he didn’t have any children. That of course wasn’t unusual for a man of his age and in the military. He was approaching his mid-thirties, and was young still. But she couldn’t help but wonder if he even wanted children. That thought made Remi feel strange, she knew that she and the others were not what any normal human would’ve imagined their children growing up to be. But it didn’t matter really, the Dragons didn’t plan on ever telling their parents who they were.
She shook her head and dismissed those thoughts, focusing instead on the mission.
They spent a few hours in silence waiting, until finally they reached the docking station to the portal facility.
“Get ready,” Remi said over the Dragons’ comms. There was no need to speak with the mech-frames, as they had already taken positions at the side of the platform and were ready, pointing their weapons at the doors.
The platform slowed down gradually, until it eventually came to a stop.
The doors opened up and a group of Val’ayash stood there, looking at them with almost surprise. Their surprise didn’t l
ast long, however, before they raised their weapons and attempted to open fire. Before they had the chance, the three mech-frames opened fire with their plasma turrets, burning them to death nearly instantly. Remi motioned for the Dragons to move and she blinked forward ten meters, then used the thrusters on her armor to get in air.
The dock was a large platform in the side of the tunnel, looking similar to the processing plant, only larger. It was filled with Val’ayash and their portable barriers, and three turrets had been hastily placed behind them. As Remi raised herself higher and higher, two swiveled to target her and opened fire with their purple beams of light. The shields on her armor caught them automatically as her armor recognized the danger and triggered the spellscript inside the plates on her chest. She pointed both her arms at one of the turret and used her brain mod to cycle through her spellslinger scripts. Once she had the correct ones chosen, she fired. Magic bolts left her palms, hitting the turret in a flurry of energy. Each magic bolt was condensed pure energy with power equivalent to a plasma bolt, only without heat. A magic bolt burned, but its energy was far more contained and directed.
The turret was eaten away by her attack and eventually became nothing but slag. Below her, Emma D-008 and Anna D-007 blinked together next to the second turret. They placed their hands on the turret and activated their disintegration-wave spellscripts and entire pieces of the turret disappeared. Their armor’s d-wave spellscript had a short range of only about a meter away from their palms, but it was enough. Without its base, the turret screamed as metal bent and it toppled over.
By the time she looked over to Dario D-006, he had cut the third turret to pieces with his sunfire blade. The mech-frames moved out of the platform behind them, and were dealing with the Val’ayash standing on the dock. Remi blinked to the ground and then used her back thrusters to surge forward and smash into a Val’ayash standing behind the cover of the barriers. She hit his shields and she triggered her sunfire blade, pushing it through the weakened shield and impaling the Val’ayash through the chest. The burning spread from the impact point consumed the being’s armor and burning everything inside. She turned off the power-hungry spellscript and turned around, sending magic bolts into the other Val’ayash who were attempting to fight back.
Their weapons fire was constant, but didn’t do much damage to them. The mech-frames’ hulls were too tough for anything other than ship-grade weapons, and their hand-mounted weapons just didn’t have enough power to seriously harm them. And the Dragons had their shields.
Still, there were many of them, at least two dozen still alive.
The Dragons moved around the battlefield, quickly taking them down with their magic, while the mech-frames stomped the rest. The Val’ayash suits were good, advanced, but they were no match for magic.
After they cleared the docking area of enemies, Remi moved to the doors leading into the facility proper.
“They’ve locked the doors,” Remi reported after attempting to use the console to open them up.
“Step aside,” Captain Kane said, and his mech-frame moved over to the doors. After a moment of looking around the massive doors, he took a step back and then started firing at their centerline, burning through the center of the doors. It took a few moments for it to burn through, and then there was a human-sized hole in the center of the doors. Captain then put his mech-frame’s arms through the hole and started pulling the two apart. For a moment, nothing happened—but then the doors started screaming as they were pulled apart by a magically awakened battle golem augmented with Earth technology.
He pulled open the doors just enough for the mech-frames to be able to pass through, and then stepped back.
“Let’s go,” he said and stepped through. The rest of them following behind.
They went slowly through the next corridor, following the captain’s instructions on which corridor they should take. Everything around them was oversized; massive doors led to tall corridors and cavernous rooms, all built to facilitate moving equipment from and to Ethorria.
Eventually they reached an open passage, and inside Remi could see an eerie glow as well as feel a thrum in magic. It was a strange feeling, one she had never felt before. It was almost as if it were singing.
“Take care.” The captain’s voice snapped her out of her reverie. “Ethorria is different. It feels like there is magic everywhere, and it can be…intoxicating for people like us.”
Remi nodded, but inwardly she was far more shaken than she let on. She checked in with the rest of her team and made sure that they were good, and then they all continued forward. They entered a vast domed room filled by a circular ring made out of metal, and in its center was the portal. It shone with light, but its edges were black, filled with absolute darkness, unlike anything she had ever seen or felt.
They checked for Val’ayash, but there were none. To the side of the room they could see the corpses of a few people, workers and scientists, but there were far fewer than she had expected. There were a few Val’ayash pieces of technology, but no Val’ayash themselves.
“They must’ve gone through the portal,” Remi said. “That means that they probably have at least a beachhead there.”
“Agreed,” the captain said. “We must follow them. It doesn’t look like they had gone through long ago—these people died only a few hours ago at most.”
“Then there is hope that our people on the other side are still holding on,” Remi said.
“Yes—let’s go and help them,” the captain said. “Let us go through first. You follow behind. The passage is instant, but it can be disorienting. Try to keep your eyes forward.”
The mech-frames moved, passing through the portal with their weapons ready. Remi took a deep breath, then she and her siblings followed closely behind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Kane guided Leviathan through the portal, and he stepped directly into weapons fire. Within a moment, he used the mental spellscript which allowed him to pilot his mech-frame and lined up his weapons at his attacker. Plasma left his turrets as he put his mech-frame into a crouch only a few meters away from the portal, and Imari and Erik did the same on his sides.
The large portal room was more of a hangar and was filled with Val’ayash in the process of hastily putting up portable barriers, two turrets fired from across the room close to the doors leading outside of the room and the hangar in which the portal resided.
As he and his mech-frames fired, the Dragons passed through and were immediately shielded behind his mech-frame’s bulk. The turrets managed to land a few good hits, and Kane saw few damage reports appear on his screens. Leviathan was powerful, but even a machine such as it had limits. Before he had a chance to open comms with the Dragons, they had already blinked forward. In a terrifying display of power and magic, they moved among the Val’ayash, dealing out death and destruction.
One of the Val’ayash wearing a strange bulkier version of their battlesuits stepped forward and started blasting at the Dragons with a large weapon that was a replacement for its arm. A ball of white energy slammed into Dario D-006 and blew right through his shields, sending him flying through the room and hitting a wall hard. The Dragon stood almost immediately and blinked away just as another ball slammed into the wall where he had been before.
The twins, Anna D-007 and Emma D-008, blinked behind the Val’ayash and each fired a lightning spell into its back. The screens of his mech-frame protected Kane from the sound, but the other Val’ayash were clearly shocked. Dario took advantage of that and cut down a few more of them, while Remi destroyed one of the turrets, and the second fell to the combined firepower of the mech-frames.
They cleared the room and walked forward, mech-frames in front with the Dragons using them as cover and following. They entered a long corridor that led outside of the hangar, and in the distance they saw light. A few moments later they walked out into the bright day under Ethorria’s sun. Immediately they were fired upon—turrets and large vehicles unlike anything th
at Kane had ever seen before shot purple energy beams at them. The vehicles looked like a cross between walkers and tanks topped by turrets.
Kane stepped forward with Leviathan to protect his comrades, but the firepower the vehicles had was immense. The Val’ayash had what looked like a hastily built defensive position around the hangar, next to the still burning buildings and dead UTS soldiers. Now that they were finally outside, Kane flipped a switch and fired the missiles in the launchers on his mech-frame’s shoulders. Streaks of light flew and covered the front in fire, and only a moment later Kane realized that the Val’ayash were protected by a shield. They had to get through it to get to the Val’ayash, but he didn’t know if they had anything able to break through it quickly enough.
“What do we do about the shield?” Kane asked Remi over their channel.
“We can use the greater sunfire spell like the tanks, but it will drain us completely,” Remi said from her position behind the mech-frames.
A chunk of hull got blown away from the Leviathan’s shoulder and he knew that they didn’t have a lot of time. His hand flew over his consoles as he switched his missiles from strikers to blinks and quickly programmed what he wanted them to do. A few moments later, he fired.
Five blink missiles launched from his shoulders and headed toward the shield, then blinked and bypassed it completely, slamming into the shield generators. The shields flickered, and the Dragons jumped out of the cover, heading for the Val’ayash. Blinking in close, they fired at them with their spells.
Kane guided Leviathan into the air and fired missiles at the Val’ayash vehicles and turrets, Imari and Erika following close behind. The enemy vehicles fired back at them but Kane and the others used their mech-frames’ blink capability at its lowest possible range to evade and strike from their blind spots. When the last vehicle was destroyed, he turned to look at the Dragons, who had just finished up with the last of the Val’ayash behind the barriers.
