by James Somers
Lucin turned on the hill he stood upon to look to the city in view several miles away. From orbital scans, it was probably the largest out of a few real cities on the continent. The remaining population clusters consisted of small towns and villages.
Lucin knew very little about this planet, apart from its time of creation. It had been sparsely populated, but had been rumored, during the war, to have received a great many refugees seeking an escape from the conflict. Evidently the rumors were true.
But something had happened. The city smelled of destruction, death and decay. The planets largest city was a dead zone. It had to be the handiwork of his Mithrial brethren, the Agonotti, and if so, then they appeared to be gaining power as well.
A fog of ash and pestilence hung over the skyline. He breathed it all in. How wonderful it is. Lucin laughed within himself. He could sense the presence of his fallen ones, somewhere. With the landing of this great army and his warships hovering overhead, surely his Mithrial brethren would have to investigate. Now, all he had to do was to wait for them to make an appearance.
☼
Kale flipped backward over the Agonotti warrior as he struck at him. Emil hurled a handful of spicors at the creature, landing a couple of hits that did damage. Kale was quick with a blade from behind, ramming it through a joint in the warrior’s armor plating. The Mithrial being fell over and began to dissipate after a moment.
Both boys surveyed the damage. The hangar was a disaster area, and most of the ships were too damaged to be safe for flying. The two rebels that had stayed on this side of the transgate portal were dead.
“That portal is totally ruined,” said Emil.
“Yeah, I don’t think we could fix that mess, even if we knew how.”
“Did you notice that one of those things shot up that ventilation shaft?”
“He’ll probably lead others back in here like my father was warning. Got any suggestions?” asked Kale.
“That smaller transport over there; it looks to be in good shape. Maybe we can use its computer to activate the gate they came in by.”
“It’s worth a shot,” said Kale.
They ran across the deck and slid the side door open on the troop compartment of the ship. Making their way into the cockpit, Emil went to work searching the database for a gate command function. Kale was performing systems checks on the engine and bringing the turbines online.
“I’ve got the command sequence for the gate—I’m activating it,” said Emil.
“Great, now if I can—”
Emil looked over at his friend. Kale was staring out of the cockpit window toward the far end of the hangar. Emil followed his friend’s gaze to where he could see humanoids materializing from a dark fog growing in size in the far end of the huge chamber.
“Any weapons systems on board?” whispered Kale without taking his eyes from the window.
“Yes, pulse lasers and rockets.”
“Unload the rockets on them when I hit the thrusters,” instructed Kale.
Emil nodded and gently slid into his flight chair’s harness. The panel indicated that turbines were operating at ninety six percent efficiency.
“Time to go,” whispered Kale as he grabbed the flight controls.
“Rockets are locked and the gate is active.”
He tensed his grip on the controls and activated the thrusters, just as Emil sent the deadly ordinance hurtling down the chamber toward the Agonotti. The ship reared up into the air, barely clearing the pavement before Kale pulled it into a one hundred and eighty degree turn heading for the portal. A huge flash of light erupted behind them as the rockets hit home. The rock wall came at them fast as Kale sought their escape through the active transgate portal.
“I hope that bought us some time. Open the gate!” shouted Kale.
“Got it!”
The portal flashed into being just before the nose of the ship would have smashed into the rock. They were suddenly emerging into open air outside the mountain; rising off of its face. Gravity fought to pull them back as the thrusters pushed hard away from the ground—the boys were locked into their flight chairs barely able to move. The panel readout was registering thruster power at maximum and a warning light was flashing to inform the pilot of potential turbine failure if speed was not reduced quickly.
Kale complied with the computer and eased off of the throttle as he pulled the ship around and leveled out their flight path.
“Do you see anything?!” shouted Kale over the roaring engine.
Emil looked out of the side window from the cockpit as the ship came around.
“We’ve got company!” said Emil. “Agonotti cloud, rising off of the mountain and headed our way.”
“Is there anything near our position where we could hide or anything?”
Emil tapped into the ships database again. He pulled up maps and triangulated their position. “It says the closest civilization is Sector City—one hundred miles. Probably take about ten minutes at this speed.”
“Are they gaining on us?” asked Kale.
Emil looked back at the cloud spiraling up and after them. “Hard to tell—they don’t even show up on these scanners at all. What do we do when we reach the city?”
Kale looked at his friend with a shrug and said, “At this point, I haven’t got a clue. I’m just hoping something will present itself.”
☼
Tiet watched the display from behind Alec. The rebels still managed to have access to quite a bit of technology, even with the Agonotti dominating the population.
“It’s confirmed, Tiet. Someone has escaped the mountain with one of our ships. The satellite is tracking them on a course heading toward Sector City.”
Tiet breathed a sigh of relief as he glanced back at his wife, who was still assisting one of the young mothers that had just given birth.
“Are they being followed?” asked Wynn.
“It’s difficult to tell. One of the advantages the Agonotti have is our inability to detect them as they travel in molecular cloud form.”
“My guess would be that they are,” said Tiet as he stared at the tracking information. “Look at the speed they’re traveling. That’s probably close to the max for a troop transport of that type, without blowing the turbines.”
“Perhaps they hope to lose the Agonotti somehow inside the city,” said Wynn.
“We have a large base under the city with some of our best people there,” said Alec. “We can call for them to open up a gate here at the holding station and you can try to intercept them inside the city.”
A warning alarm sounded at the computer station. “Sir, we’ve picked up something you had better see,” said one of the data techs.
“What is it?” asked Alec.
“It’s an army, sir.”
“What? Who are they?”
Tiet and Wynn were at his side pouring over the incoming data. They looked at one another with dread as they realized the nature of the warships and the mass of soldiers assembling in the plains outside of Sector City.
“Those are our warships,” said Wynn hesitantly.
“You’ve brought an army with you?”
“Not exactly,” said Tiet. “They’re all under the control of Lucin. He managed to assimilate the population on Castai through parasitic invasion.”
“You mean we have to fight this invasion army and the Agonotti?”
Neither Wynn nor Tiet wanted to answer the question, but it was still obvious to everyone. Tiet stepped to him.
“None of us has any choice,” said Tiet. “We either face them with everything we’ve got now, or we wait to be hunted down one group at a time. We have to trust Elithias, Alec. He has a plan even if we don’t understand it yet.”
Tiet stared right into Alec’s eyes trying to reassure him. It felt good to walk by the pajet. He didn’t have any idea how they could hope to fight against the Agonotti and the symbyte controlled army that was awaiting them, but Tiet was determined he was going to obey Elith
ias’ command from Aija the prophet, no matter what.
“Can you assemble your people at the Sector City base, Alec? Will you fight with us?” asked Tiet.
Alec hesitated a moment, examining the faces of his people in the chamber. “Tranner.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Ask Sector command to open a gate here, and send out to all commands to assemble our forces at Sector City.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alec turned back to Tiet and said, “We’ll give you everything we’ve got, Tiet.”
“My friend, no one can ask more than that,” said Tiet. “Wynn, I think it’s time to contact Grod and have him rendezvous with us in the city. Mirah—”
“I’ve got to bring one of the young women with us,” said Mirah.
“What? But we’re going to war.”
“Ramah needs immediate care in our ship’s med-lab,” said Mirah, “This place is just not equipped for an emergency.”
“What’s wrong with her?” asked Tiet.
“She’s hemorrhaging,” she said. “If I don’t get it under control quickly, she will bleed to death.”
“Alright, get her ready to move.”
Mirah smiled and kissed Tiet before heading back to her young patient. Now, all they needed, thought Tiet, was enough rebels to face off against thousands and thousands of their former assimilated comrades and thousands more wraith-like, fallen Mithri. He would have been in despair already, if not for the words of the prophet Aija assuring him of Elithias’ plan and the inevitable defeat of his enemies.
“You don’t look so good,” said Wynn. “Are you alright?”
“I guess that’s the thing about walking by faith,” replied Tiet. “It’s never easy.”
TROUBLE
The ship was shaking pretty badly by now. The turbines were screaming for mercy as the engine core temperature began to overcome the cooling system and climb into the high range.
“I think they’re gaining on us,” said Emil, from back in the troop compartment.
“I wonder how many there are?”
“I can’t be sure, but the cloud doesn’t look nearly as big as the time we were here before. How far are we from the city?”
“According to the satellite feed, after these mountains, we’ll be crossing through the plains of Jezerit and then we will hit the city perimeter,” said Kale.
“Well, we had better hurry, this thing sounds like its going to fly apart any time,” said Emil as he turned away from the side window.
He came back up to the cockpit with Kale. The ship began to pass through light cloud cover around the mountains. “Too bad we don’t have really heavy clouds,” said Emil. “Maybe we could lose them.”
“I don’t know if that would work or not, but like you said, this ship doesn’t have what it takes to keep ahead of them. According to the map we’re coming out of the mountains and into the plains now.”
The white vapor obscuring all foresight began to part before them as the ship cleared the last peak. “Oh boy, this is not good,” said Emil as they finally got a view of the plains of Jezerit.
A massive troop deployment was in progress in the distance and large Vorn warships were the most distinct objects—several of them were hovering directly in their flight path toward the city.
“Those are our ships!” said Kale.
“And our people—what do we do?”
Kale searched the control panel and said, “I don’t think this ship has any decent scanning devices on board. When those cruisers lock on target we won’t even know it.”
“Since they’re symbyte controlled, you know they’ll shoot at us.”
“Absolutely, but maybe we can make it a little more difficult for them to act on the urge,” said Kale.
As they approached the army assembling on the ground, Kale broke his flight path and dove straight at the masses of ground troops.
“What kind of plan is this?!” shouted Emil as he struggled to fasten his flight harness.
“I figure if they want to take potshots at us, then they can take the risk of shooting their own people.”
The transport groaned as the gravitational forces played against the hull. They fell to an altitude of thirty feet as Kale leveled out the ship, swooping over the heads of the symbyte controlled soldiers below.
Streams of automatic pulse fire poured upward from the soldiers as they tried to take down the aggressive ship. Many soldiers ducked for cover as the transport steadily descended upon them. The hull was taking a pounding even without fire from the big ships.
“Lower the landing skids,” said Kale.
Emil smiled back at his friend. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about!”
He pressed the panel button and the control motors could be heard lowering the skids. Almost instantly the ship began to quiver and shake as the extended skids pounded mercilessly through the ground troops that weren’t thoughtful enough to throw themselves to the ground.
By the time they had flown three quarters of the way through the soldiers, almost all of the remaining troops ahead had flattened themselves across the ground to avoid being hit. Kale and Emil’s ship left a bloody trail in its wake and the landing gear became torn and twisted from multiple impacts.
“I think we’re going to make it!” said Kale as they shot away from the ground deployment and headed into the outskirts of Sector city.
Huge pulse laser blasts began to race past them, smashing into the surrounding buildings and shattering them like glass.
“The big cruisers are firing on us!” shouted Emil over the explosions.
Kale was flying erratically and fast as he fought to make their ship a wild target.
“If we can just get further into the city—” he said.
But it wouldn’t happen. A blast from the big guns on the Vorn ships incinerated the corner of a nearby building as Kale managed to get the ship around it. The residual energy and debris smashed into the tail end of the transport. They were going down fast.
“Hold on, we’re gonna hit hard!”
☼
Lucin waded through a trail of crimson with a pair of binocs against his eyes as the cannons, from his battle cruisers overhead, pummeled the outlying buildings of Sector City. They were tracking the rogue transport that had appeared out of nowhere and cut a swathe of destruction through his troop deployment. One of the last blasts connected and the ship plummeted fast, trailing its shattered aft section and a plume of flame and smoke. It fell out of view, but the impact could be heard several seconds later.
“I want them!” he shouted.
Around him were the writhing bodies of many of his symbyte controlled soldiers—mortally wounded and gasping their last, completely unable to obey the dominant voice crying out inside their minds.
“Commander!” shouted Lucin into his headset.
“Yes, sir?”
“I want a team of pods sent to investigate the wreckage immediately. I want prisoners or bodies—understood?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
A shadow began to cross the plains, veiling the Lucin in its darkness. Lucin looked up at it and a villainous smile crossed his face as he recognized its true nature. Walking back through his troops, in the direction of the cloud, Lucin used his mental dominance to command the humans out of his way.
They parted before him leaving a large area around their Mithrial leader. Then he called out mentally to the boiling mass of spirits hovering overhead. Come to me my brothers. The response was almost instantaneous.
The cloud began to dissipate rapidly as spires shot down to the ground around Lucin, forming powerful Agonotti warriors ready for battle. “How dare you to address us as brothers, human?”
Lucin stared confidently at the one speaking to him as nearly fifty of the warriors encircled him. He had mentally instructed his own human soldiers to make no aggressive moves against them. Power emanated from Lucin’s being as he felt his own spiritual power accentuated by the presence of his Mithrial
brethren. Then the Agonotti warrior shifted from a commanding stance to one of apprehension.
“Who are you?!” the warrior asked.
“I am Lucin, my brothers.”
“Lucin? That isn’t possible.”
“Are you sure of that?”
Lucin sent out his thoughts to his thousands of soldiers on the ground, while allowing the Agonotti to perceive the mental commands. Hundreds of pulse rifle gun bolts quickly locked into firing position in a consecutive wave around them. A group of pods headed away from a fighter bay on one of the large battle cruisers hovering overhead.
The Agonotti warriors turned to find seemingly every gun possible aimed right at them—thousands of humans moved by this man’s will alone. “Can it be true? How can you be our former master?” asked another of the Agonotti.
“There is much to discuss my brothers, but surely this is not all of you. Bring the others to me at this place and we will discuss our mutual rise to power.”
“But you don’t—”
Lucin cut them off as he turned and walked away, leaving them puzzled and unsure of their next action.
“Bring the others to me!” he shouted back as he proceeded through the ranks of his soldiers.
