“All right,” Gabriel breathed. He was close, he knew it. She had to be in the room. His entire psyche was screaming for her to be there, because he was afraid of what he might become if she wasn’t. “Let’s go. Once we’re in the room, Twist secures the hall while Beeker and I go in. Any questions?”
There were none. Gabriel nodded. “Okay then. Let’s go.”
They moved quickly down the hall, Gabriel’s heart pounding harder and faster the closer he came to the room. And the truth. He couldn’t see any signs of the Abassi, though his infrared scanners told him they had been in the area, and recently.
Calm down, he told himself as he turned left. It was a struggle, however. His hands shook inside the suit and, if the jelly hadn’t been there to absorb and reprocess it, he would have been soaked in sweat. He felt as if he were burning up yet a chill continued to run up and down his spine. He stopped halfway down the hall at the fourth door.
He stared at the door, terrified, heart pounding harder in his chest than ever before in his life. He reached for the lever which sat above a strange digital keypad. It didn’t budge. He stared stupidly at it for a moment before he realized it was locked. He applied a little more pressure to the lever, the extra strength provided by the suit bending it in half. He pushed hard and the lock popped inwards, removing the last obstacle to the room. The door crept open.
He peeked inside. His suit scanned the room and found a dozen humanoid shapes in the dark, huddled together in the back corner. He switched through different visual frequencies but none were good enough to put facial recognition to the forefront. He looked around but couldn’t see any sign of a light switch.
“Hello?” he tried, his voice amplified outside his suit. He turned the volume down a little. “Sorry. I’m Commander Gabriel Espinoza, Wraith Corps. I see human life signs. Is everyone okay in here?”
Silence answered him.
“That’s okay, you don’t have to speak,” he continued. “I know you must be afraid. We know what the aliens were doing, which is why we came for you. Is there someone in charge? A colonist leader or something?”
“I’m in charge,” a haunted voice replied. “Gabe...Gabriel? Is that you?”
She stepped into the light from the door, her eyes haunted. Gabriel turned his faceplate transparent, showing his features. She looked at him closely.
Her approach was slow, careful, with short measured steps. She had been through hell, he saw, but she was still as beautiful as the day they first met. An unbidden sob emerged from his mouth.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Sophie said as she looked him over. “Did you come with a task force?”
“One ship,” Gabriel managed to choke out.
“That’s enough for me,” she replied. She turned back to the group. “This is Gabriel. We can trust him. He’ll keep us safe, but we have to follow him out of here. Can you do that for me?”
They nodded. She looked back at Gabriel.
“I know it must be a shock to see me,” she said as she tapped his armor. “But we need to move. The guards all left, but they’ll be back. We’re the only survivors from the ship. They hit the planet from orbit, then we showed up. Bad timing, right?”
“I, uh...” words failed him.
Gunfire erupted outside the room. Everyone in the room screamed, save for Gabriel and Sophie. He turned and brought his Lynx up, but nothing remotely alien came through the door. He stepped outside and looked around. Twist was nowhere to be found, a few dead Abassi the only things in sight
“I thought I told him to secure the hall for me,” Gabriel snarled, the sudden burst of anger surprising him.
“Twist had it well in hand so he went to kill more aliens,” Beeker replied. “Besides...” he motioned with his hand at Sophie.
Sophie had followed out the door, grabbed a pulse rifle from a dead Abassi and checked the charge handle. She flipped her hair out of her face and looked at Gabriel. She frowned slightly.
“Lieutenant Sophie Cardenes, Dominion Navy, at your service,” she reminded him.
“Right,” Gabriel breathed. If he could have cried, he would have. “I’ve told you how beautiful you are, right?”
“In my dreams, every day, for a very long time now,” she answered.
“Romantic,” Twist interrupted as he came around the corner, the barrel of his Lynx still smoking. “But we have bigger issues. How do we get the civilians to the landing zone without having them all killed, doos?”
“Working on that,” Gabriel said as he reluctantly looked away from Sophie. He peered back inside the room at the other survivors. “Joshua? Any sign of Abassi activity?”
“They’re pushing against the doors,” he replied. “Markus and I are headed your way now.”
“We’ve got a dozen survivors,” Gabriel told him. “We’re going to need some sort of delaying action while we figure a way out of here.”
“My wall idea not good enough?” Joshua asked.
“No, it’s good,” Gabriel tried to appease the other man. “I just don’t know what’s on the other side of these walls.”
“We go out one wall, get some intel on where the Abassi are and you can go out a clear wall with the colonists,” Markus suggested. “If nothing else, the Abassi will focus on us, splitting their defenses.”
“What little there’s left,” Gabriel nodded. “Good plan, Markus. Have you contacted the Eye yet, Josh?”
“Yeah,” Joshua responded. “Spotty comms. The Abassi system is weak compared to ours but I piggybacked on it. I wonder how they get their messages out?”
“I care more about getting off this damned planet,” Gabriel said. “Watch your butts.”
“Which way, Omelet?” Twist asked.
“West leads to the sea,” Gabriel muttered, thinking aloud as he peered at his map. “South is back through that valley. North has some steep hills and mountains, and east...what’s east?”
“Don’t go east,” Sophie said and shivered. Gabriel looked at her.
“Why not?”
“That’s nothing but a wasteland now,” she said. “They dropped kinetics and fuel-air explosives on it.”
“Sounds like we’re headed north,” Gabriel told his squad. “Markus, Joshua, meet us a few klicks north of the camp. I marked a point on the map for our rendezvous. I’ll inform the Eye where to pick us up.”
“Breaking down the west wall now,” Markus said. “Good luck, you guys.”
“You too.” Gabriel looked at the gathered colonists and frowned to himself. He had to keep them alive and safe until he could get the Eye to extract them. One little girl, who looked to be about five, was hovering fairly close to Sophie. Gabriel’s frown changed into a smile as he stared into the crystal-blue eyes of the child.
“Okay, we’re going to be making a hole in the north wall and heading out,” Gabriel said as he looked over the colonists. While their clothes were old and worn, they were good enough to survive the chill outside. “It’s raining outside, and it’s almost night, so stick together. We’ve got more Wraiths providing cover for our escape, so let’s make sure we get away. Okay?”
The colonists all nodded.
“Let’s move out,” Gabriel said. “Twist, make a hole in the north wall. Markus?”
“Already through and wreaking havoc,” Markus replied. “They really don’t like us.”
Gabriel heard a loud explosion, one which shook the building to its foundation. “The hell was that?”
“That was the mines Joshua set,” Markus added. “I’ll handle this.”
“Okay, when are you going to meet us at the rendezvous?”
“I don’t think we are,” Markus said. Gabriel looked at his readouts and frowned.
“I’m not picking up Joshua anymore.”
“Gabe?”
“Yeah, Markus?”
“I just wanted to say thanks, man.”
“Huh?”
“It’s been an honor to serve with you,” Markus said. “Even if w
e are just worthless Wraiths. Now run.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Run, you stupid motherfucker! Run like hell!”
Gabriel cursed loudly. “Move your asses, people!” he yelled at the colonists.
The colonists began to run as Twist and Beeker led the way. Sophie scooped up the little girl and began to run, her long legs easily allowing her to keep up with the rest of the group despite her burden. Once they were far enough away, Gabriel stopped, turned around, looked at the base and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.
A bright blue flash lit up the night sky as Markus released the containment field around his fusion reactor. Though he wasn’t as far away as he should have been, the explosion was contained to the west side of the camp, where the majority of the Sharks and Abassi troops had been gathered. He watched the blue-tinted cloud climb into the air, energy bolts dancing inside it as the hydrostatic charges in the atmosphere clashed with the failed reactor.
He turned and began to jog away, his soul in pain as he realized he had lost two more people under his command. He slowed down as he recognized Sophie and one of the other women. Sophie passed the child over and waited for Gabriel to draw closer.
“Gabe, we need to talk,” Sophie whispered as the rest of the colonists moved ahead. Gabriel looked back for any sign of pursuit, but Markus’ sacrifice had covered their escape. He knew they had to keep moving before the aliens discovered there were more Wraiths on the planet.
“We don’t have time, Sophie,” Gabriel said.
“We have to make time,” she argued.
“What could be so important you’d risk being recaptured?”
“You know they did experiments on us, right?”
“I figured as much,” Gabriel allowed. “When we rescued a bunch of civilians on Ibliss, they’d been cloning them and then doing weird things to the prisoners there.”
“They did harsh things to some of the women here too,” Sophie said.
Gabriel winced. “I’m sorry.”
“No, nothing like that,” she explained. “No, but they were very excited when they saw me.”
“Oh.”
“They saw me, and I managed to keep them from killing all the passengers on the ship,” she continued. “They’ve treated us pretty good, considering. But they did do something that...it’s hard to explain.”
“Try,” Gabriel breathed.
“They forced my pregnancy.” It came out in a rush. “I have a little girl. Her name’s Aurelia. She would be eight months old if not...”
“She died?” Gabriel asked, his voice gentle.
“No,” she shook her head. “She’s very much alive, and with this group.”
“Only little girl I saw was that five-year-old,” Gabriel said. His eyes widened suddenly as the numbers began to sink in. “Wait. That puts it at almost two years. That means...”
“Yes, Gabriel Espinoza,” she said as they stopped. She took his armored hand and looked into his eyes. “Congratulations. You’re a father.”
#
“I was five months pregnant when I arrived at Ptolemy,” she said as they continued to walk north. Gabriel’s emotions were a jumbled mess, his heart skipping every few beats as strange surges of adrenaline jolted through him. “When they took the ship, they saw me and, like I said before, got very excited. I managed to negotiate with them to keep the others alive, and they took us all down to the planet. Then they...well, they did some tinkering with my pregnancy. I gave birth literally the next day. I named her Aurelia.”
“Jesus,” Gabriel breathed.
“Oh, it gets better,” Sophie said. “Every day they took her to a lab, where they did experiments I can’t even begin to describe. Every night, they’d bring her back to me, a little different. It took me four days to realize she was growing, aging at three times the normal rate. I asked the aliens what they were doing but they refused to tell me. She grew, aged and then one day they just...stopped. She was a normal, happy, four-year-old girl. The Abassi were happy and quit experimenting on her. They asked if I could have another. I told them I couldn’t.”
“They speak our language?” Gabriel asked dumbly.
“Yes, Gabriel, they speak our language,” Sophie nodded. “So they kept us in the room, men and women together, hoping I’d change my mind. I didn’t, but a few of the other women had kids. They took their kids and never brought them back.
“We never could figure out what happened. They elected me governor of the colony, since there were only twelve of us left and the aliens seemed to respect me. It’s kind of funny, really, because when you showed up, my first thought was ‘Hey, I could command the entire Navy force that just arrived’. It’s why I didn’t respond immediately. That, and I couldn’t believe it was actually you. The odds...you know, we dream about things like this happening to us, our knight in shining armor shows up to rescue us. I was a commissioned officer in the Navy, and yet there I was, looking at my knight.”
“So Aurelia’s really–”
“Your daughter?” Sophie looked at him. “Of course. You were my first and only.”
“Wraith Command, this is the Eye of Solomon. Do you read?” his comms suddenly came to life. He held up a hand to Sophie as he switched frequencies.
“Go ahead, Eye.”
“Received a request for an evac,” the voice said. “Wait one for Captain Reukauf.”
“Roger.”
“This is the Captain,” Reukauf identified himself. “Is this Commander Espinoza?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good, you survived the fusion explosion. We received your coordinates for the new LZ from one of your Wraiths, sending confirmation now,” Reukauf said. Gabriel watched as the coordinates Joshua had sent before dying popped up on his viewscreen. He grunted.
“Those are accurate, sir,” Gabriel replied.
“I’m orbiting the seventh planet, Wraith,” Captain Reukauf said a few moments later. “I can be on station relatively quickly, say, twelve hours. Be ready for extraction at that point in twelve hours.”
“We won’t last twelve hours!” Gabriel protested loudly. “We have unarmed civilians in our midst.”
“If you want to be rescued, you will,” Reukauf informed him. “I’m only reading three suits in your locale, by the way. A fourth is nowhere near you, active but not moving.”
“I lost Markus and Joshua. That’s where the fusion explosion came from. One damaged suit in the ocean needs retrieval when you get here as well. And you better pick up that suit! None of what you did last time.”
“We’ll send a shuttle to pick up the damaged suit for you,” Reukauf paused for a moment. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your fallen.”
Gabriel shrugged. “They did their duty. Now you do yours.”
“Twelve hours, Wraith. Keep those civilians alive.”
Chapter Twenty
Gabriel shook his head. Twelve hours. He doubted they would last one hour, much less twelve. He looked at Sophie, who had begun to hug herself for warmth and comfort. The sun had set to the west three hours before and his suit was informing him temperatures were dropping quickly. Even though the rain had tapered off to nothing, it was still a damp and frigid environment. The Abassi base had been set up at a higher elevation than the settlement, leading Gabriel to wonder whether or not the blue-skinned aliens were more inclined to colder weather, like Ibliss. In the meantime, however, he had some innocent civilians to keep alive. He opened his comm to Twist.
“You Boers were nomads, right?” Gabriel asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“How’d you keep warm when out in the wilds?”
“Portable housing units,” Twist said. After Gabriel was silent for a moment, the small Boer explained. “Polymer canvas tents we could break down, pack up and leave within five minutes. Durable, lightweight, easy to make. Could fit ten people inside one and stay warm. Of course, it was a bit crowded, but that just meant more warmth to share.”
“How easy? Can you make some for the survivors?”
“If I had the material, easily enough. But I don’t see anybody carrying polymer canvas, or any sort of support structures,” Twist stated.
“Isuluwandi, these suits are strong enough to dig into the side of a hill,” Beeker interrupted. “We can dig out a small cave and get everybody inside. Then we can protect everyone and keep them warm.”
“That’s brilliant. Can you do it in a hurry?”
“Of course.”
“Twist, help Beeker out. We’re five minutes behind you. See what’s available and get the best shielded spot. Evac is coming, but we have to wait twelve hours.”
“Damn,” Twist muttered. “I don’t think we’ll last that long.”
“My thoughts as well,” Gabriel said as he and Sophie crested a low rise. A small plateau greeted his eyes, and a steep cliff rose beyond it, to his left. On his right the plateau continued up into the mountains, an easier route to the peaks. Large boulders were scattered around the plateau, though there weren’t any trees. He looked around and began to nod. The evac was the plateau itself, near the cliff but with enough room for the shuttle to have some maneuverability.
Reukauf chose well, he thought. “These are the LZ coordinates the captain of the Eye sent us.”
“Good place,” Sophie said as she eyed the surroundings. “Too bad there isn’t a cave to hide inside.”
“Working on that now,” Gabriel said as he motioned towards the two Wraiths at the cliff. Beeker had begun to dig into the cliff, removing large chunks of granite as Twist carried the rocks off to build a small wall to provide some cover. Within minutes, Beeker had dug a large cavern in the face of the cliff.
“Get everyone inside and huddled together,” Gabriel ordered as they drew closer. “I want this night to pass as quietly and as peacefully as possible.”
Sophie hurried to the entrance of the cave, where her daughter was waiting. She picked her up and hugged the child tightly. She glanced at Gabriel, worried, as he offered him a tentative smile. Gabriel walked over, his emotions in turmoil as he looked at the little girl in Sophie’s arms. Their daughter.
Wraithkin (The Kin Wars Saga Book 1) Page 29
