The temple was at least two hundred feet high and looked old, its stones overgrown with moss and vines. A wide set of stone steps led up to a platform where a man stood in front of a dark doorway. He must have been at least ten feet tall. He was bald and muscular and wore only a loincloth and leather straps that were crisscrossed over his massive chest. In one hand, he held a long, thick whip of braided leather. Even from this distance, I could see that his face was cruel and that he had a black triangle painted on his forehead. Within the triangle was an eye, also painted in black.
His gaze was settled on the scene below him as Imperium soldiers led a line of lizard-creatures to a temple door at ground level. The lizard-men walked on two legs and wore simple armor but they were unarmed and chained. They hissed at their captors as the Imperium soldiers herded them toward the door with electric prods and energy lances.
The man at the top of the steps grinned as he watched the prisoners being forced into the temple.
“What do you think happens in there?” Sumiko whispered.
“That must be where they’re being brainwashed, mind-jacked, or whatever happens to turn them into the Horde,” I said.
“We should leave here,” Baltimore said. “The survivors aren’t here.”
We quietly retraced our steps away from the temple. When we reached the city an hour later, I was wondering what our next move would be and how we could possibly search the entire jungle for the survivors, when I heard voices ahead, among the ruined buildings. I motioned to the others to stay quiet and crept up to a pile of rubble that offered concealment. I peered over the top and saw five Imperium soldiers on the street in front of us.
They appeared to be searching for someone, entering buildings with guns drawn before moving on to check other places where someone might be hiding. Their heightened state of alertness, evidenced by rapid head movements and the way they trod warily, told me that their prey was somewhere close by.
There was a sudden movement as a young man broke from the one of the buildings and made a run for it. The soldiers turned to face him and leveled their weapons.
“Go, go, go!” I whispered to my team.
Sumiko and Baltimore were the quickest in our group. They fired their weapons before the rest of us had a chance to take aim.
Sumiko’s crossbow bolt pierced a soldier’s helmet and the man dropped down, dead, before he even knew he’d been shot.
Baltimore fired her blaster pistol and sent a second soldier to the ground, a smoking hole in his helmet.
I took one down myself, hitting him squarely in the chest, the blast sending him reeling backward.
The remaining two soldiers returned fire, running for cover among the rubble. I ducked behind the rocks and the energy bolts from their blasters sailed harmlessly overhead.
Hart’s men went into action, taking up firing positions and blasting at the Imperium soldiers. “Enemy down, Captain,” Hart said.
“Proceed with caution,” I warned, “There might be more of them. We need to find that young man who ran from that building. I’m sure he was wearing a flight crew jumpsuit. It was dirty as hell but I think I recognized the ISS Oregon patch on the arm.”
We advanced to the street where the dead soldiers lay. Hart took out the scanner and it made an oscillating sound when he pointed it at various buildings. “Three life forms, Captain,” he said.
“Survivors of the Oregon,” I called out. “I’m Captain Shaun Blake. I’m here to take you home.”
Nothing. No reply and no movement in the dead city.
“Georgia Vess,” I called, “your father is waiting on our ship. We’re here to rescue you.”
A head appeared in a doorway, peeking out at me. “It is you,” a female voice said. “Michael, Dan, it’s Captain Blake.” She stepped out onto the street and came toward us. She wore a dirty flight suit with the same ISS Oregon patch I’d seen on the young man earlier, the same patch I’d worn when I was captain of that doomed ship. Her features were plain but seemed to radiate an inner strength. Her long hair was curly and sat around her head like a dark halo.
Vess’s voice was almost deafening in my ear. “Georgia! It’s Georgia!”
I winced, noticing Baltimore do the same.
“Are you all right?” Georgia asked.
“Yeah, I just have your father shouting in my ear.”
The young man who’d made a run for it appeared from a building farther along the street, along with a second man who was older and shorter. Both wore beards and looked thin beneath their flight suits.
Georgia said, “Ensigns Michael Fletcher and Dan Blythe, Captain.”
I nodded to the two men. “Are there any other survivors?”
“There were two more of us, Captain,” Georgia said, “but they were captured and taken to the Overseer.”
“The Overseer?”
“At the temple. The Overseer oversees the turning of prisoners into members of the Horde.”
“Yeah, I think I saw that guy,” I told her.
“He has some sort of mind control power of his own. The prisoners are turned using a machine inside the temple but the Overseer can get into people’s heads and make them do things. The two other survivors who were captured…he made them fight to the death while he and his soldiers watched. Then he made the victor take his own life. We all saw it. We were hiding in the jungle, watching. There was nothing we could do.”
“Captain, you need to return to the ship,” Vess said in my ear. “Our mission here is complete.”
He was right about needing to get the survivors on board the Finch but I disagreed about our mission being over. How could we leave Savarea while that Horde factory was still in operation?
“Let’s go,” I said to everyone. “We need to get back to the Finch.” I led the way toward the road where the shuttle waited.
When we were on board and lifting off from the planet’s surface, I looked east to where the temple stood. It was obviously an important part of the Outsiders’ mission to subjugate all the other races in the galaxy, including human beings. They might not have many of these Horde-making factories, so dealing a blow to this one could be a major milestone in the war.
There was no way I could fly the Finch out of her orbit around Savarea until the machine inside that temple was destroyed.
Whatever it took.
CHAPTER 15
TWO HOURS LATER, I was in Conference Room One with Vess, Morrow, Baltimore, Hart, and Sumiko. Vess had spent some time with his daughter and she was now sleeping in her quarters, finally able to sleep somewhere safe. Fletcher and Blythe were doing the same.
“Captain,” Vess asked me, “do you have any suggestions regarding where we should go next? We need to avoid the Imperium and I’m afraid there probably aren’t too many places where that can happen.”
“We aren’t done here yet,” I said.
He looked confused. “Of course we are. The survivors have been rescued. My daughter is safe.”
“There’s a machine on that planet that’s turning innocent beings into soldiers for the Horde. We can’t just leave here and forget about something like that.”
“Are you suggesting we fly down there and blow them away using the Finch’s weapons?”
“No,” I said, “there’s a race of lizard-men down there, prisoners of the Overseer. If we blew the temple away using the Finch’s firepower, we’d probably kill them all. They don’t deserve that.”
Vess frowned in confusion. “So you’re suggesting a stealth mission? You want to sneak into the temple and destroy the machine under the enemy’s nose?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m suggesting an all-out assault.”
“But without using the Finch, that would be suicide. I saw that place through your camera. They have much more firepower than we do. And more soldiers.”
“We have something that could balance the odds in our favor,” I said. “We have Doragon.”
Sumiko pumped her fist in the air. “Yay, Dora
gon!”
Vess looked at Sumiko and then back at me, confused. “What is Doragon?”
“It’s the tank in the landing bay. If we use the tank and some of our soldiers to keep the Imperium forces busy outside the temple, a second team could get inside and take out the machine.”
He looked doubtful. Now that his daughter had been rescued, he wasn’t hiding his doubts beneath a veneer of optimism. The time for that was past. Now, he was weighing up our chances of survival if we assaulted the temple.
He shrugged. “You saved my daughter and I can never repay that. And you are the Captain, after all, so the final decision is yours.”
I looked at the expectant faces around the table. “Prepare to assault the temple. Hart, can you drive the tank?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Baltimore will take a team of your men and attack the Imperium soldiers outside the temple. You’ll be using the tank to support them. Sumiko and I will slip into the temple with two of your men and find that machine. We’ll use grenades to destroy it.” I looked at Vess. “I assume we have grenades on board.”
He nodded. “Of course. In the armory.”
“Excellent,” I said.
Morrow spoke up. “There’s just one thing I need to remind you all of. Everson will have sent his men after us. He knows exactly where we are and he’s headed this way. We don’t have much time to pull off this mission and then get the hell out of here.”
“Then let’s get started,” I said.
CHAPTER 16
IT WAS DECIDED that Morrow would land the Finch on the surface of Savarea. That would take her out of orbit for when Everson’s ships arrived and would also mean we could make a quick getaway from Savarea if we needed to. Morrow wouldn’t have to wait for the shuttle to return before leaving the area. We’d be on board the Finch as soon as our mission was over.
As we descended through the planet’s atmosphere and I sat in the landing bay with the others, I checked my weapons, including the three grenades I’d taken from the armory. I had no idea how many grenades it would take to destroy a mysterious Outsider machine but three seemed like a good number. Besides, Sumiko had three as well in case we needed more.
I looked at the people around me. They were good people, skilled crew members. I had to find a way to clear their names with the Imperium. I owed them that.
We descended through the cloud layer into brilliant sunshine. It shafted in through the bay doors, reflecting off the steel floor, the shuttles, and Doragon.
“Get ready to disembark,” I said. “Once we hit the ground, we need to move swiftly to the temple and attack with speed and aggression.”
Two of Hart’s soldiers, Palmer and Simmons, came over to Sumiko and me. They were the two men we were taking into the temple with us. Hart climbed into the tank while the rest of his men joined Baltimore, ready for action.
We touched down gently, Morrow seemingly able to land the Finch on the rubble-strewn road as if it were a sheet of smooth glass, without so much as a bump.
“Let’s go!” I ordered, making my way to the open bay doors with Sumiko, Simmons, and Palmer.
When we exited the Finch, the heat of the day struck us. It was slightly cooler in the jungle, beneath the shade of the canopy, but by the time we reached the temple, I was covered in sweat.
My team sneaked along the tree line around the clearing to a position near the temple doorway. There was still a line of lizards being herded inside by soldiers and I hoped that when all hell broke loose, those soldiers would move away from the temple entrance to join the fight.
Sumiko, Palmer, and Simmons crouched in the undergrowth behind me, waiting for my signal to advance toward the doorway.
The Overseer stood on the platform hundreds of feet above us, at the top of the temple steps, watching the proceedings with cruel interest.
A sudden flurry of energy bolts cracked through the air at the northern edge of the clearing. The bright blue bolts shot out from the trees, cutting down surprised Imperium soldiers.
One of the soldiers shouted, “We’re under attack!” at the same moment as Doragon rolled into the clearing and fired her main gun. The long gun barrel recoiled as it released a glowing blue shell toward a group of soldiers. When it hit, the shell exploded with a brilliant radiance, expending enough energy to kill everyone within a thirty-foot radius. At least a dozen soldiers were blown to pieces.
I turned my attention back to the doorway. The soldiers there were hesitant, some looking up at the Overseer for orders.
“Get them,” he bellowed, pointing a huge finger at the area where a skirmish was developing. Some of the Imperium soldiers were firing at Doragon while others were firing into the trees where Baltimore’s team was positioned.
The soldiers at the doorway, three of them in all, turned to join the fray. As soon as their attention was diverted from their prisoners, the lizard-men fought back. Swinging their chained arms at their captors’ heads, they attempted to pummel open the soldiers’ battle armor.
Three more soldiers came out of the doorway, along with the lizard-men they’d been ushering into the temple.
I looked up at the platform to see where the Overseer’s attention was focused, but he wasn’t there.
“Let’s go,” I whispered to my team over my shoulder before breaking cover and making a dash for the doorway. They followed.
Ahead of us, a savage battle to the death was developing between the lizard-men and the six soldiers. Two of the soldiers began firing at the prisoners. Their shots were panicked and wild but I saw three lizards go down, almost cut in half by the blasters.
I looked at Sumiko. “Take out those two.”
She nodded and fired her crossbow. She didn’t stop running and barely took aim yet her first bolt flew true, slicing into the throat of one of the soldiers. He clawed at the air as if struggling to get more of it into his lungs and fell to the ground, dropping his blaster.
Sumiko had already reloaded and fired at the second soldier. The electrified bolt pierced the soldier’s helmet. He collapsed to the ground, his descent aided by two lizards who began tearing him apart.
The other four soldiers were dead by the time we reached the temple doorway, killed by the prisoners they’d been tormenting only seconds earlier.
A group of lizard-men had armed themselves with weapons from the fallen soldiers and were firing at the men in the northern section of the clearing. That meant the soldiers attacking Doragon and Baltimore’s team were being attacked from two sides, pinned down between angry lizards, a tank, and a legionnaire.
The lizard-men let us pass into the temple unhindered, some of them giving us nods of greeting. We had a common enemy and, for now, that made us allies.
When we entered the temple, a dozen of them followed us inside. I stopped and turned to face them. They halted and regarded me with their yellow eyes.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Like all Imperium employees, I had a translator implant in my right ear. It had been put there before my first off-world posting, a tiny chip embedded beneath the skin in my ear canal. When it recognized a language other than English, it translated the words in a voice that was slightly mechanical but got the job done.
I assumed the lizard-men might have something similar since such devices were available all over the galaxy and enabled interplanetary commerce.
One of them came forward and spoke in a language that consisted of hisses and glottal stops. The translator went to work and the mechanical voice in my ear said, “There are some of our kind in this place who are not of our kind any longer. It is only correct that we deal with them ourselves. This is not your burden.”
“All right,” I said, nodding. If they wanted to deal with those of their species who’d been turned into Horde drones, I had no reason to stop them. “But we must be careful. There will be more soldiers in here.”
“Good,” the creature said, his eyes narrowing slightly.
I wondered how long these beings had
been prisoners to the Horde, how much pain they had endured, and how many had died. I couldn’t blame them for wanting vengeance.
The inside of the temple was lit with strip lights that had been attached to the stone ceiling. They cast a harsh glow into the wide passageway in which we stood, the light picking out the bas-relief carvings on the stone walls. The scenes depicted a humanoid race hunting animals, feasting, and worshipping their gods. This must be how Savarea had once been, probably a long time ago. This place had been used for worship and had probably brought a community together in their shared beliefs.
Now, the Outsiders had claimed the temple as their own and were using it as part of their plan to rule the galaxy.
I looked over my shoulder at Sumiko, the two soldiers, and the dozen lizard-men. We seemed an unlikely bunch to throw a wrench into the plans of a galactic master race, yet here we were, willing to try.
Ahead, four soldiers appeared. When they saw us, they dropped to firing stances and began shooting. We returned fire, Palmer and Simmons with their blaster rifles, me with my pistol, and Sumiko with her crossbow. She killed two of the four with her deadly aim, and Palmer, Simmons, and myself handled the other two.
We moved forward to the bodies and our lizard companions took the blaster rifles and pistols from the fallen soldiers, arming eight of their number.
The corridor terminated in a huge room that had more bas-relief carvings on the walls, tall pillars supporting the roof high over our heads, and a low stone dais that had probably once been the focus of the worship that took place here in times past but was now the home of a device that looked more organic than machine.
It seemed to be a pod, large enough for a man to fit into, with a hard outer shell over half its surface while the side that faced us seemed to consist of a softer material. It was as if a huge walnut had been cut in half, leaving the inside exposed. But instead of a nut, the pod’s innards contained a gray, fleshy organic material, covered with an opaque milky liquid that formed a dome over the exposed side.
Dead lizard-men lay scattered around the room. I assumed that they had been in line to enter the pod but the soldiers had heard the commotion outside, or received word of it via their comm links, and killed the prisoners before either fleeing deeper into the temple or setting up an ambush for us.
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