by James Somers
The transport finally sailed beyond the Korsov ridge and into view of Nagon-Toth. The entire basin was charred from the blast. The remains of the compound were nothing more than charred shrapnel and fiery debris on the basin floor. All of the Horva men were pressed to side viewing windows as they passed over the site.
The devastation was unbelievable. Wynn conducted a life scan quietly at his console even though he was sure what the result would be. The computer sounded an alert: “No life readouts within specified parameters.”
Grod and his men turned at the voice. Wynn was embarrassed that the men had heard it. They all looked at him helplessly. The scan only punctuated the aching in their hearts at the sight of the smoldering ruins and lost family members.
Tiet began to bring the ship into a descent toward the impact crater beyond the sight of the compound. He recognized it as the same place where Kale’s trials had been conducted. He looked back to Grod, “Is that it?”
He nodded back. “The entrance to the underground compound is in the southern wall of the crater. We’ll land and get inside quickly.”
“If the symbytes are tracking us…”
“They have to be,” said Wynn.
“Then it won’t take them long to get their forces here,” said Tiet. “How fast can you get the ship ready to depart?”
“Prep for the ship and the transgate will take twenty minutes; the ship has never been out of the bunker. I also need a little time to set the detonation system for the bunker; I’m not leaving this planet without taking out as many of those things as I can.”
“But, we’ll have to wait for them to get into the bunker to do that,” protested Mirah.
“Grod—” Tiet started and then thought better of protesting.
Grod stared into his eyes and he knew that the Horva general would not be persuaded otherwise. He glanced over at Wynn and could see a look of understanding on his face. It would be alright; a little close for comfort, but they would survive.
LUCIN pored over the data coming in from his forces as they made their way to the Nagon-Toth area. He had originally planned on assimilating the king, but the boy had youth to his credit and he had all but overwhelmed the two older Barudii during his trials.
Putting an Angelic seed into humans was not ideal; they were strong willed and difficult to control. But if such noble spiritual beings like himself were to be cursed to this disgusting physical prison, then mankind would suffer.
Why had God separated him from the other angels that rebelled? It wasn’t fair, to be singled out; when they had at least been given forms that transitioned between physical and spiritual realms. They had rejected him after; even though he had been the greatest and brightest. God had done it; imprisoned him in this disgusting, putrid form for leading the others in the rebellion. He would have revenge; propagate his seed. Lucin would rise again.
One hundred squads of soldiers were currently en route to the destroyed Horva compound. There would be no escape for them now. He saw their coordinates to be near Nagon-Toth at the impact crater where the boy had conducted his trials. It didn’t make sense; they were easy targets down inside the crater.
Lucin had quickly become accustomed to the human mind and one thing he had learned about a Barudii warrior was that he would not knowingly put himself in such a situation without a plan of action. The Barudii were very cunning warriors indeed; they had to realize that they were being tracked; the only conclusion was that they were planning some sort of trap.
TIET helped his son out of the transport and through the hidden door in the crater wall. Grod went ahead of the group, powering up the lighting systems and leading them through the winding tunnel as they descended deep below the surface.
Mareb and Jael remained at the transport ship; they had to set the first defense. Mareb keyed through the command sequences in the transport’s computer and set the fuel cells for a command detonation. He set the command frequency as Jael set the detonator frequency on his display. They completed the sequence adjustments and ran out of the transport to assume positions on the crater wall near the underground bunker’s entrance.
The Horva soldiers carried large tripod mounted rapid fire blasters and set them up at their respective positions. They had plenty of rock for cover and would hopefully be able to take out a large number of the symbytes before retreating into the bunker themselves. The warriors were each looking forward to a lot of payback today, but now it was time to sit and wait.
When the rest of the group finally descended to the lowest level, Grod keyed in a code on the wall pad. The large metal doors unlocked themselves, like a huge vault, and the treasure inside was finally revealed to their eyes. Tiet and the others gazed into the large chamber beyond.
“My friends, I give you the Equinox,” said Grod somewhat grandiosely.
The entire hangar bay lit up around the magnificent ship. It was a cruiser class ship by appearance, large enough for general housing quarters for twenty people and deep space travel.
“We don’t have time for a formal tour, but if you will all get on board I’ll prep the engines and the gate and we’ll be on our way.”
Tiet helped Kale into the ship with Mirah following close behind, while Wynn helped a recently conscious Emil into a harness behind the main cockpit area. Both of the boys looked like they were barely able to stay awake as their bodies fought against the parasites. Mirah stayed close to them, monitoring their vitals and the organisms struggling for control of their bodies. She could see a distinct difference between her son and Emil.
Something about his Horva physiology was causing the symbyte within to shrink in size. His body was fighting it and winning, but Kale was struggling just to keep the organism at bay by mental power alone.
Grod worked at the helm controls, bringing the engines online while Wynn and Tiet went after supplies and weapons that Grod had instructed them to retrieve. The engines came to life obediently and Grod soon passed by on his way back to the transgate compartment.
Once inside he followed the manual’s instructions that appeared on the display and proceeded to prep the gate for the jump sequence. He set the target coordinates for the planet Kosiva. The planet itself was one visited before by the Vorn military scientists who had either built or stolen the transgate technology.
It was reported on file as a hospitable planet with a peaceful, friendly and intelligent race. The Vorn military regime had apparently been surveying for future conquests; fortunately, they weren’t around to fulfill those plans.
After the prep sequence was set and counting down toward jump readiness, Grod left the ship to set the bunker’s self destruct control sequence so that he could trigger a timed delay from the ship’s transmitter.
Wynn and Tiet made quick work of the supplies that Grod had requested, the bunker had an ample supply of weapons, and the best of all for the Barudii warriors was a cache of old Castillian weapons including several Barudii blades and kemsticks. They scooped them up quickly and loaded them onto the ship.
MAREB’S handheld scanner began to sound a warning. Ships were approaching. He took a moment to send a hand signal to Jael forty feet across the wall at his own position.
A swarm of troop transports sailed over the crater rim and descended to the crater floor near the stolen ship their group had used to get here. They remained crouched in their positions as the symbyte troops began to file out of their ships and surround the transport.
They scanned the ship in vain; the hull’s materials were designed specifically to block such intrusions into the military vehicles. The soldiers began to approach the transport carefully and gained access quickly into the main compartment.
Lucin looked on from his own transport as his troops made their way inside.
“Commander, did you find the boy?” asked Lucin over the com-link.
Suddenly the transport exploded in front of him in a massive concussion wave and fireball. It shattered the windshield in his transport, killing the pilot.
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Lucin emerged quickly from his damaged transport’s main troop compartment to find many of his symbyte soldiers lying dead on the ground around the blast site. Others were filing out of their own transport ships, weapons at the ready as a wave of pulse laser fire began to rain down upon them all.
Jael and Mareb began to cut down as many of the enemy soldiers as they could with massive amounts of rapid pulse blaster fire from their respective perches in the crater wall.
The symbytes soon returned their fire and the rock around them began to crumble as hundreds of symbytes soldiers began to advance upon their positions. Realizing they couldn’t do anymore out in the open, the two Horva quickly retreated under fire to the bunker entrance in plain view of the enemy. As they passed through the rock door they broke into a sprint downward toward the lower level that housed the Equinox; the symbytes followed quickly as expected.
“I want all the levels searched!” shouted Lucin, as the soldiers filed through the entrance, “Find the boy at all costs and kill the others!”
The bunker contained ten levels in all, housing various military and scientific technologies, along with living quarters. The symbyte soldiers dispersed at each level while the next group of symbytes proceeded to each successive level to continue the search.
Lucin proceeded downward toward the base level with a squad of his own. He tried to sense where the boy might be as he attempted to communicate with the organism within him. He was getting closer, he knew it; only a little further and the boy would be with them finally.
JAEL and Mareb came running through the hangar bay’s only door and proceeded up the loading ramp to the Equinox. They tossed their smoking guns to the compartment floor as they entered the flight chamber where the others were already strapped in waiting for them.
“Let’s go! They’re coming in right behind us!” shouted Mareb as they found available flight chairs and strapped themselves in.
Grod activated the landing thrusters and brought the ship upward a little, hovering above the bay floor as he locked the final coordinates into the helm and started the transgate sequence.
A flood of symbyte soldiers came running into the bay with their weapons blazing. Pulse laser fire pounded into the hull with little effect as the soldiers tried to surround the vessel hovering above them.
A wall of light pierced the bay ahead of the ship. Grod tapped the command sequence for the bunker on the ship’s transmitter panel.
“No!! Stop them!!” shouted Lucin as the large ship suddenly lurched forward into the transgate jump field. Another flash and the ship and its portal were gone from the hangar bay, leaving Lucin and his troops alone.
Lucin sank to his knees and pounded his fists into the pavement. Now what? He had lost the boy. How would he make the host bodies of one mind and body without a mentally powerful host?
As Lucin pondered the question, he suddenly noticed a voice coming over the intercom. It was counting, “three, two, one.”
The symbyte soldiers within the bunker never knew what had hit them. The reactor core powering the underground facility erupted with such ferocity that most of the crater wall above collapsed inward upon the hundreds of symbyte soldiers and their transport ships that covered the crater floor. A portion of their military was destroyed in the last trap of the Barudii and Horva on planet Castai.
IT was a mild sunny day on Kosiva’s Guniran province the day that his father, Wynn and General Grod left for negotiations with the Guniran council. Kale sat in the grass outside of the ship thinking about recent events as a cool breeze provided relief from the sunlight.
The Kosivans were a peaceful people, and highly intelligent though they purposely minimized overt technology in their lifestyle. The arrival of the Equinox on their planet had alarmed the population somewhat. They weren’t sure if the Castillians were to be trusted and they were familiar with the Vorn military which had visited them in the past. The Vorn had evidently left the impression of a coming invasion, but had not come back since their visit over thirty years ago.
The Council of Gunira province was now ready, after a month, to consider an alliance with the group on board the Equinox, and his father and the others were to be gone into the main city for at least two days. Only his mother, Emil, Mareb and Jael remained behind with him and the ship.
It had not been a good month for Kale. The symbyte within his body was constantly speaking in his mind; still trying to take over. He often had horrific dreams of murdering everyone on board the ship at the symbyte’s command. Kale didn’t sleep well anymore. He feared he might succumb to its influence while unconscious and actually perform the awful deed.
It had been a difficult decision for him to make, but he couldn’t risk hurting his family and friends; he had to leave them to save them. His mother, as brilliant a doctor and scientist as she was, still had no answer as to how to remove or destroy the organism terrorizing him from within. And his body, unlike Emil’s, was not able to fight it off. He could feel it getting stronger even while he struggled to maintain control.
His mother, Emil and the two Horva soldiers had gone to survey an area just north of the camp where the Guniran council had recently approved for the group to begin building a permanent facility for housing and other needs. The Gunirans would be providing the necessary materials, technology and labor as long as the talks today went as well as expected.
He was alone with the ship, claiming he didn’t feel like making the trip today, and in his present condition they believed him. Kale breathed in another deep breath of the fresh air and stood up, carrying a letter he had composed to his father and mother. He made his way back into the ship and headed back to the transgate control room.
He had spent the last week and a half, since making his decision to leave, studying the operations of the transgate by way of the ship’s computer. He had found a suitable location, another planet that the Vorn military had apparently rejected because of the hostile inhabitants that controlled the planet. It would be the last place his family would look to find him. And if he ran into trouble it wouldn’t be a peaceful people that suffered his wrath if he went out of control.
Kale laid the letter on the transgate console and tapped in his own preset jump sequence. Once the gate was ready, he activated it. A wall of light snapped into place in the room ahead of the console. The gate could jump the entire ship or a small group depending on the need.
He picked up his travel bag from the floor next to the console and hoisted the backpack of supplies up on his shoulder. He wore his Castillian army uniform loaded with weapons that would give him an advantage in the hostile environment, and in the other hand he carried more supplies. He tapped another key on the display that would begin a scrambling sequence on his jump point once he passed through the portal.
This was it. He looked around the room once more, then whispered his goodbyes to his family and friends. He turned and walked through the portal into the world beyond. The transgate obeyed his preprogrammed command sequence and the portal snapped the jump gate closed after him—he was gone, without any way to return, but at least his family would be safe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rev. James Somers is the Assitant Pastor of Martindale Baptist church in Tennessee and also works as a Surgical Technologist, specializing in Neuro-Spine surgery...so you know he's smart! He is married and has five children...all boys. In addition to all of this, he plays the guitar, bass and drums.
The Chronicles of Soone: Heir to the King is his first published novel. Other writing credits include a short story, The Meeting, featured in The Writers Post Journal.
For more about James, feel free to visit his website at:
www.jamessomersonline.com.
His blog can be read at www.jamessomers.blogspot.com and he can be reached at: [email protected]
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