Embers of Esper: A Sci Fi Adventure (Warden's Legacy Book 1)

by Tony James Slater

  “Fire!”

  Tris blazed away, sending a torrent of energy through the opening. Lukas favoured short bursts, some ammo-conserving reflex kicking in, but Tris was feeling spooked. The splash of fire from their combined efforts made it impossible to see what they were shooting, but Tris heard no screams and felt no stabs of mental anguish.

  “Go!” he yelled at Alek, hoping the coder would listen. “Get to the other side!”

  Lukas spared him a glance. “Retreat?”

  “No choice,” Tris said, squeezing off a burst that drained his powerpack. He groped for a fresh one as he backed up, angling away from Lukas to leave the escape route clear. He slammed the powerpack home and took a knee again, hosing the distant opening with fire.

  Lukas was quick on his feet, backing past Tris while continuing to fire his measured bursts.

  “Got it!” Alek shrieked, from across the empty space. Tris glanced up, to see a container the size of a bowling alley zipping through the air above him. He fought the irrational urge to throw himself flat — precisely the worst thing he could do right now, no matter what was happening up there.

  “Come on!” Lukas bellowed. He’d taken a knee to lay down covering fire. It was Tris’ turn to retreat. But as he released his trigger, he caught sight of the opposing force. Dark figures crowded through the opening, which was bigger now with great chunks blown out of it. Rifles glinted in black-gloved hands as the men surged through a jagged gap that still glowed red. The first enemy shots streaked out, ricocheting off the Aegis bubble. Tris fired back, abandoning any hope of retreat. Once enough of these guys got through the breach, it was over. He saw the lead man stagger back, hit multiple times, but the soldiers behind pushed past him, fanning out with their rifles spitting. A flash of pain came from Lukas; he’d thrown himself into Tris’ shadow, avoiding a messy death by microseconds.

  More weapons came to bear, and the air in front of Tris lit up with the deflected blasts. Heat washed off them, cooking his face as he fired blindly on full auto. The grip of his rifle tingled in his hand, warning him that he’d burned through his second powerpack way too fast. Any second now, he’d have to change it…

  Then Alek gave a triumphant yell — and with a sound like an earthquake, the dangling container dropped sixty feet to the deck. At least half a dozen soldiers had made it through from the other chamber; all of them vanished beneath tons of steel, the impact strong enough to throw Tris off his feet. His ears rang; the container itself was cracked and buckled, as shards of its housing rattled to the deck around it.

  It was, however, sitting squarely in front of the hole.

  Tris scrambled to his feet and sprinted the rest of the way across the chamber.

  Lukas was there ahead of him, and Alek was waggling his tablet and beaming at them both. “Crew areas are on the other side of this wall,” he said, planting his free hand on it. “Jenna’s ID says she’s in the accommodation block.”

  Tris scanned the immediate vicinity with the Gift. It was empty… for now. Although he hadn’t sensed the last bunch of attackers at all. Which was a worry.

  As though thinking about them had summoned them, a crunch came from that direction. Tris snapped his head around to look, but there was nothing to see.

  “They’ll have to cut their way in,” Lukas pointed out. “Too bad they don’t have a fancy knife like yours.”

  “Yeah…” Tris squinted through the dancing motes of dust kicked up by the container drop. Am I imagining things?

  He saw it again; movement. The container shook in time to a clang that reverberated around the chamber… and a bulge appeared in its battered metal side-wall. Oh, you have got to be kidding me.

  There was another clang, and the bulge grew noticeably. The container wasn’t being struck from the far side, he realised — that was coming from inside…

  “Tris?” There was tension in Lukas’ voice. “You might want to get the door, mate.”

  Tris snapped his rifle to a clasp on his hip and grabbed his knife, sliding it straight into the wall. He didn’t have time to be fancy, just slitting the metallic surface as fast as he could. He made four long slices, then planted his boot and delivered a mighty stomp to the cut section. It popped free, and he sprang through into a human-sized corridor...

  Which according to the Gift, should have been empty.

  It wasn’t.

  A flash of blaster fire strobed towards him, hitting the Aegis forcefield and bouncing off into the roof. Another shot followed it, and another; Tris couldn’t draw a bead on his attacker through the storm of energy surrounding him. Gritting his teeth, he turned towards the blasts and ran directly into them. No matter how many times he’d relied on the tiny gem’s protection, it didn’t make this any less unnerving. But in a split-second gap between shots he caught sight of his opponent; another soldier encased in the same black armour, who had paused to evaluate the effect of his volley.

  Bastard won’t see this coming!

  Gripping his staff like a lance, Tris charged towards the man. Another pair of shots splashed off the Aegis as he closed the distance, but he reached his target and stabbed the blade deep into that black-armoured torso. He twisted it for maximum effect, then drew back for a second strike. But a back-handed blow nearly knocked the weapon from his grasp, the soldier reacting as though the wound meant nothing. His rifle swung up again at point-blank range, and Tris narrowly managed to smack it off-target with a blow from the butt-end of his staff. He danced back a few steps to gain distance, spinning the staff over his head and bringing the blade slashing down to chop the rifle in half. He’d never tested how close a gun had to be to shoot through his forcefield, and he didn’t want to find out now.

  Denied his main weapon, the soldier adapted with impressive speed. He rushed straight at Tris, arms outstretched, heedless of the blade — which ended up embedded in his chest once again. It did little more to discourage him than it had the first time, and Tris had a horrible premonition that this guy would pull the staff deeper into himself just to extend his reach. Suddenly, he didn’t want to be anywhere near those clawing hands. He sprang back, wrenching the blade free, and used its momentum to spin it again. This time he swung it like a scythe — straight through the man’s neck, sending his severed head skittering down the corridor behind him.

  That did the trick; the soldier ground to a halt, his limbs freezing in place. Tris stepped back as he pitched forward, landing with a clang that made the deck tremble.

  What the ffff…

  He knew the answer without having to look.

  At no point during the fight had he been able to sense his attacker’s thoughts — and in the absence of highly trained assassins from the White Priesthood, that meant only one thing.

  A frikkin’ robot.

  Sure enough, a wisp of smoke drifted from the neck of the damaged machine. The sharp smell of fried electronics came with it, and somewhere deep inside the thing, a servo was still whirring.

  Oh crap. This is so not cool.

  “Another one?” Lukas had come up behind Tris, incredibly stealthy for a man his size.

  Alek was cowering behind him; confusion radiated off the coder as he stared down at the remains. “What have they done?” There was more rebuke in his tone than fear. Tris had to hand it to the guy; if he’d been in Alek’s shoes, he’d be crapping himself about now.

  He squatted next to the robot’s torso for a closer look. “It’s crazy lifelike,” he reported. “Skin and everything. I bet if you look inside that helmet there’ll be a face with hair, teeth…”

  “Why go to so much trouble?” Lukas prodded the robot with the toe of his boot. “Bad enough they’re building these things. Why bother making them look human?”

  A muffled clang reminded Tris of the danger coming up behind them. He rose. “I’ll tell you what I do know. Where there’s one, there’s more. If this is what’s coming out of that crate back there, we’re in a lot of trouble.” He reached into the collar of his suit a
nd pried the Aegis from his neck. He made a face; it always stung more coming out than it did going in. Probably because he always did it slower. “Here,” he beckoned Alek with a finger. When the coder moved closer, still looking confused, Tris slapped the Aegis into place on his neck.

  “Owww!” Alek moaned. “What was that for?”

  “To keep you in one piece,” Tris told him. “I hope you had a good breakfast.”

  The screech of tearing metal reached them, and they all glanced back reflexively.

  “How many robots would fit in a container that size?” Lukas wondered out loud.

  Alek raised his tablet, as though he was actually going to do the calculation.

  Tris snapped his fingers to get the coder’s attention. “Alek! You’re invulnerable to laser blasts, not my foot up your backside. You still want to find your daughter?”

  He nodded vigorously.

  “Then haul ass!”

  TWENTY-SIX

  The crew-accessible part of the ship was a twisting maze of corridors, squeezed around other more important sections like an afterthought. Alek led the way, his tablet held close to his nose, barking out directions as he took them.

  Lukas went next, his rifle at the ready.

  Tris brought up the rear, still using the Gift to look for traces of pursuit. It wouldn’t do any good if this place was entirely crewed by robots, but there had to be a human in charge somewhere… didn’t there? So far, he couldn’t find one. Only that single, blink-and-you’d-miss-it life sign that he was fervently hoping belonged to the crown princess of Esper.

  Or what’s left of her.

  Crunches and bangs followed them, shaking the deck, and Tris racked his brain for a way to slow down their enemies. But how do you slow down something like that? If they managed to break out of that container… and why the hell are there bloody great boxes of those things sitting in storage? Not just waiting for us, surely? Flattering as that would be…

  A yell from Alek snapped his focus back to the front of the group. They’d reached a short corridor lined with plain metal doors — the accommodation block, though no-one seemed to be home. Tris concentrated, and narrowed down the fading presence to one room in the middle.

  Alek was already standing beside the right door. “It has to be this one,” he said, holding his tablet out as though the gibberish on its screen meant anything.

  Lukas planted a meaty hand on his chest, pushing him out of the way. “We’ve got to do this quick.”

  Tris stepped up, staff in hand, while Lukas trained his rifle on the locking mechanism.

  This is it… damn, this would be so much easier if Kyra was here.

  And that thought triggered an automatic reflex, sending his mind reeling out in search of hers. A thrill of excitement went through him when he made contact; she was here alright, though pretty far away. Many decks below, it felt like, and further towards the rear of the ship. He gasped; she’d just come face-to-face with Viktor, and judging by violence in her thoughts, she was about to attack him.

  With a wrench, he tore his mind away. Better leave her to it. The last thing she needs is me shouting progress reports into her head. Through her eyes he’d seen a cruel, scarred face matching the one on the video they’d watched. If it’s just him, she’ll be done in the next ten seconds anyway. Then maybe she can nip up here and give us a hand with our robot problem…

  Lukas was watching him for a signal. Tris gripped his staff, flattening himself back against the wall, and nodded. He couldn’t sense anyone else in the room, but that meant nothing at this point.

  Sure enough, as soon as Lukas blew the door open with two shots on full power, answering blasts streaked through the opening. Lukas ducked back behind Alek, but Tris had a moment of premonition and threw himself flat as laser blasts punched through the wall at chest-height.

  I suppose it was too much to ask that they made dumb robots.

  Heavy footfalls sounded inside, and Tris got his feet under him. Lukas opened fire at the doorway, his angle stopping his shots from entering the room, and Tris judged the timing was right.

  As the muzzle of a rifle emerged from the doorway, he launched himself up. He swung his staff two-handed, the Kharash knife slicing through a chunk of wall and the doorjamb on its way into the robot’s torso. He put every ounce of power he could muster into the blow, driving the blade clear through his opponent. A gout of flame from inside it made him flinch away, but in that moment he saw past the stricken machine to another identical figure standing behind it. Reacting on instinct, he dropped his shoulder and barged into the first robot. Pain lanced through him; it was like hitting a brick wall, but he had enough leverage to topple the thing back onto its comrade. A laser blast meant for him plowed into the ceiling, and he leapt over the tangle of bodies to deliver the coup de grâce. Another helmeted head went skidding across the floor, and Tris gritted his teeth against the spikes of pain shooting down his arm. He could only imagine what damage he’d done to himself; a fracture maybe, or a dislocation? Something unpleasant was grinding inside his shoulder when he moved it, and the sensation made him feel nauseous. Damn it! At least it’s not paralysed. I really need that arm.

  “Good work, mate.” Lukas came into the room, keeping his rifle trained on the twitching corpses. They looked disturbingly human, even with bits missing. Only the lack of blood spoiled the illusion; Tris wondered why their creator had gone to such great lengths to make them look human, and yet hadn’t engineered them to bleed. Too complex? Or maybe he wasn’t expecting them to sustain much damage.

  Yeah… sorry about that. I guess these things would cost a pretty penny, too. My bad!

  The ease with which he’d taken them down was deceptive, though. These things could probably soak up a lot of punishment, and one punch from those gloved fists would have splintered his skull. Fighting them with conventional weapons was a sure-fire way to get squished.

  “Jenna!” Alek pushed past Lukas and made for the bed in the centre of the room.

  “What?” Tris looked up just in time, and threw his good arm out in a clothesline.

  “Ack!” The coder staggered back, shock and surprise on his face. “What? Why did—”

  “Wait,” Tris told him. “This isn’t right. I can’t sense her.” He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. Acrid smoke reached his nostrils, along with Alek’s nervous sweat and Lukas’ musk. But nothing else… the room was cold and sterile.

  He flicked his eyes at Lukas. “Hold him.”

  The big man didn’t ask questions — he just grabbed Alek and wrapped him in a bear hug.

  “What? What are you—?”

  Tris squeezed the grip on his staff to extend it, then raised it over his head and swung it full-force at Jenna’s body.

  “NO!” Alek yelped.

  Half a second before the blow landed, the girl on the bed came alive. She sat upright and drew in her legs, ready to spring. Tris’ blade, aimed at her neck, contacted her face instead; it sheared straight through, slicing off a chunk of metal that popped and crackled as it came free. The girl spasmed, losing control of her limbs, and Tris brought his staff around for a final blow. He severed the neck cleanly this time, confident that he’d discovered a weak spot. She collapsed back onto the bed, her limbs gone rigid. A small fire erupted from the stump, charring the bed sheets around it before dying out just as quickly.

  Alek had been struggling in Lukas’ grip; now he went limp, his eyes wide. “What… but… how…?”

  “That wasn’t her,” Tris said, in case clarification was needed.

  “But… her ID chip is here!” Alek wailed. He wriggled free of Lukas’ embrace and knelt by the wreckage, tears streaming down his face. “What have they done to her?”

  Tris touched his arm. “No — I think she’s alive. I can sense her, just about. But it’s not coming from that,” he gestured at the ruined machine. “It’s lower…” He approached the bed and threw back the sheets. Revealed beneath was not a spongy mattress, but
a flat, solid block of hard white material. “Help me with this!”

  He dug the tip of his knife into a seam that ran around the edge of the block. The Kharash blade met no resistance, and he quickly sliced a line all the way around. Lukas figured out his game quickly enough, and put his muscles to good use shoving the cut section aside, like he was opening the lid of a sarcophagus…

  Which is pretty close to what it was. A hollow white box, containing a single frail body wrapped in a silk nighty.

  “Jenna!” Alek half-fell into the box, grabbing her hand and moaning in dismay. “She’s cold!”

  Lukas reached in and lifted her out, not straining even a little bit. The girl looked tiny in his arms; pale and fragile as a porcelain doll.

  “She’s alive,” Tris told an increasingly frantic Alek. “Now we’ve got to keep her that way.”

  “Give her this!” The coder groped for the gem embedded in his neck and tried to pry it free. He grimaced at the pain, and Tris stopped him.

  “She’s too weak. It draws energy from her body to deflect attacks. Even if she survives a blast, the gem will kill her.”

  Alek’s mouth worked silently for a few seconds. “You didn’t warn me about that,” he said.

  Lukas laid the girl on the deck, and checked her over with a critical eye. “She’d been heavily sedated,” he said, peeling back one eyelid. “And she hasn’t eaten anything in quite a while. But she’ll live.” He didn’t need to add, “as long as the robots don’t kill her,” — because the sound of their approach was echoing off the walls.

  He shrugged out of his backpack and picked Jenna up again, carefully draping her over his shoulder. “Give the gem to me,” he said, crooking a finger at Alek. “I always eat a good breakfast.”

  Tris grabbed the Aegis and yanked it out of Alek’s neck, eliciting a howl of protest. He spun round and jabbed it straight into Lukas — hardly hygienic, but they had bigger things to worry about. Lukas took his rifle in both hands, and headed for the door.