The Sons of Sora

by Paul Tassi

  A series of shots came his way from the recovered Shadow, and Lucas dodged so they hit the exposed null core instead. No world-ending explosion followed, but the lights in the engine bay flickered and Lucas felt the gravity drive momentarily give way, his stomach crashing into his lungs for a split second.

  Lucas charged the Shadow and kicked him straight into the damaged engine housing. This time, the armored creature broke through completely and plunged into a mess of exposed wire and machinery. The Xalan lay stuck in the engine. Smoke streamed from a thousand metal wounds in the massive unit. The ship veered hard, and felt like it was falling before the gravity drive compensated. Alarms escalated their frequency and pitch, screaming for attention from engineers who were nowhere to be found. Xalan symbols were flashing everywhere, indicating some sort of imminent catastrophic failure. The central core was now so hot it was melting through its own protective shell, which was pooling onto the floor as molten metal.

  The Shadow recovered from his nest inside the engine, and was at Lucas’s throat almost instantly. Lucas tried to avoid him, but the creature’s claws sank into his collarbone, mere inches from his windpipe. Lucas had both his hands clasped around the powerful forearms of the much larger creature, and was desperately trying to keep the dagger-like claws out of his chest cavity

  “Abomination,” the creature growled in his mind.

  Dark blood was streaming down his body from his collection of wounds and he felt himself growing faint, darkness encroaching on his vision. As powerful as he was, it was too much. Two Chosen Shadows was more than any man should be forced to face alone.

  And yet, he didn’t want to die. Not again. Sora needed him. His sons needed him. Asha needed him. And he needed them.

  He let go of the Shadow’s right arm and drove his palm upward with all his might into the creature’s other wrist. He heard bone and armor snap from the powerful blow, and the creature let out a painful howl, recoiling and stumbling backward. Lucas reached out and grabbed the energy pistol from its holster on the Shadow’s chest. The creature lashed out with his good arm and knocked the weapon downward, which caused it to fire directly into his thigh. The Xalan dropped to one knee instantly, his other leg nearly blown completely off with his armor useless at such close range. Lucas drew the gun up to the creature’s lowered head, but a claw instantly reached up and crushed the snub weapon into scrap.

  Lucas knocked the Shadow’s arm away with a sharp backhand and brought a fist down across the creature’s jaw, which sent him sprawling on the bloody floor. Leaping on top of the heaving mass of metal and flesh, Lucas pummeled the broken Xalan with alternating blows, sending gray teeth scattering across the ground, replacing electric blue eyes with pools of black blood. Lucas felt the creature’s life slip away, the Xalan’s light extinguished in his mind, but he kept punching until his knuckles were split open and he could barely lift his arms.

  His gaze was bleary, and he felt like he was about to pass out. For the first time, he noticed a large porthole in the engine bay. One that revealed they were much, much closer to Sora than they had been. He could see smoke rising from the surface of the planet, and spaceships whizzing by like panicked insects. The massive cloaking ship was falling, getting closer and closer to the surface. A hellish orange glow on the windows indicated they’d breached the atmosphere. His melee with the Shadows had done serious damage in the engine bay. Everything had dissolved into smoke and noise and heat. His lungs were filling with noxious fumes from a cracked engine and a ruptured null core.

  And then, a voice in his head, like needles and glass.

  “Enough!” the Archon said sharply.

  Lucas rolled off the dead Shadow and he saw the long, powerful form of the Archon silhouetted in the open doorway. Lucas felt a particularly deep gash in his side, and blood flowed freely from the majority of his wounds. He was in no shape for another fight.

  “While you may be my greatest creation,” the Archon said, “you are far more stubborn than the other. You seek death the way most seek life. Though I require your wretched existence for at least a little while longer.”

  The Archon was clearly concentrating, attempting to quell a hundred different angry flashing readouts with his mind and stabilize the ship’s rapid and disorienting descent.

  “You can’t control me,” Lucas spat out. “Not anymore.”

  Sharp laughter cut like blades in his mind.

  “You have no idea how mistaken you are.”

  Lucas summoned the last of his remaining strength and raced toward the Archon, grabbing the bladed staff from its resting place in the heart of the downed Shadow as he went.

  The Archon didn’t flinch as the blade dove toward a point between his star-filled eyes. At the last possible moment, he swatted the polearm away with one hand and raked his claws up Lucas’s already bloodied torso with the other.

  Lucas felt nothing as he stumbled past the Archon, holding the staff. But looking down, he saw blood streaming from neat, fresh slices, and the Archon’s claws were bright red. They had tips so fine he didn’t even feel the cuts, a far cry from the jagged nails of the Xalans that had gored him too many times before. The pain suddenly hit him and burned in his midsection, but he pushed past it with gritted teeth.

  He swung the staff around again and again, but the Archon weaved out of its way like it was no more threatening than a strong breeze. Finally, another slash from his claw sliced the bladed head from the staff, and Lucas was left holding a useless metal pole. He swung that.

  The Archon finally grabbed it and pulled. Lucas was flung across the room and landed just a few feet from the sparking, sputtering null core. He crumpled to the ground in a heap, panting profusely, a worrying amount of blood draining from his wounds. The intense heat from the damaged core washed over him like a wave.

  Lucas had just gone toe to toe with two Shadows and survived, but the Archon was another level of power, strength, and speed entirely. He truly was a god, and fear wormed its way inside Lucas’s chest. The core’s hellish heat was sapping away the last of his strength. His blood that had pooled on the floor was mixing with molten metal and literally starting to boil in front of his eyes.

  Lucas got to his knees, sweat pouring down his face. The Archon was walking toward him, lit up by the glow of the core. Razor claws glinted in the darkness. Ancient constellations revealed themselves in his eyes.

  “If you need me,” Lucas said, his mouth filling with blood, “come and get me.”

  Lucas reached over and grabbed the top of the white-hot null core, the pain so searing it felt oddly cold. He wrenched the unit out of the ground completely and hurled it at the damaged engine behind the Archon across the room.

  By the time it struck its target, Lucas was already sprinting toward the nearest porthole, the Archon’s attention split between him and the core, unable to stop either in time. His eyes were wide with surprise. The shockwave of the explosion shattered the porthole’s viewscreen, and Lucas jumped into the void.

  Lucas drifted in and out of consciousness during his long descent to Sora. He spun slowly in the air, ice-cold winds tearing at his tattered flight suit. He saw land and water below, an unfamiliar coastline on an adopted planet he’d actually explored very little of before he nearly sacrificed his life for it. He saw the smoking hulk of the critically damaged cloaking ship above him, and now from the outside could see it was a bizarre collection of curved armor plating and sputtering engines. Xalan and Soran ships raced through the sky in every direction, all ignoring him completely.

  He blacked out. When he came to, the ground was much closer. There would be no Asha to swoop in and save him this time. Trees. He thought. Water. He was desperate to hit one or the other, as he had to imagine, even as half a Shadow, dry land would kill him. Maybe he could survive. Maybe he could cheat death just one more time.

  A pair of Xalan fighters tore by him, dropping ordnance on the remnants of some Soran city below. The sun was shining brightly, and the only cloud
s were pillars of smoke rising from the surface. The massive cloaking ship was moving away from him, locked in a flat spin. The ship had about as much control over its descent as he did, it seemed. Flames were pouring out of its every orifice, and it left a meteoric trail of black smoke in its wake.

  Maybe he’s dead, Lucas thought as he closed his eyes. Maybe at least I did that right.

  Darkness found him in the air once more, and didn’t let go.

  The salt stung.

  He could taste it as the water lapped into his mouth. He could feel it seeping into the wounds scattered across his body. Opening his eyes, there was clear sky above him. A flock of birds flew by, cawing angrily. Far above them, a formation of Xalan fighters streaked past, too high for their engines to make a sound.

  Another small wave washed over Lucas’s body. He struggled to sit up, elbows digging into the wet sand that clung to most of his body. Everything ached, his head pounded, and though he knew there were broken or fractured bones lurking somewhere inside him, he could at least move all his limbs. And he was alive, no matter how insane that was given a five-mile plunge into the ocean.

  He looked around the beach for the first time and realized he wasn’t alone. There were many bodies washed up on shore, their blood turning the water dark. Most were Soran, though there were a few Xalans in full armor plating scattered around as well. None were bloated or disfigured; they hadn’t been dead long.

  In the water ahead, bits of wrecked ships poked out of the surface of the ocean. Lucas scanned the wide horizon for any sign of the Archon’s cloaking ship. There were plumes of smoke everywhere from downed craft, but he couldn’t find the ship itself, which could either be a thousand feet under the water by now, or back in the air searching for him. More fighters screamed overhead, these much lower.

  Lucas got up and faced the land. Immediately ahead, a hundred feet off the beach, was a stretch of jungle. Behind that, he could see tall buildings poking out of the brush. A city. A small one by Soran standards, but enough of a target that the Xalans had clearly included it in their initial invasion plans. Lucas wondered if a military base was nearby. He needed a ship. He needed to break through the Xalan fleet and reach Solarion where Asha, Alpha, and his sons should be. Provided the station hadn’t been destroyed already.

  No, he thought. Impossible.

  He tried to reach out to them with his mind, the way he’d done so unconsciously on Earth. Noah, he thought. I’m—

  But he didn’t know where he was. The climate was hot, the trees were tropical, and he was by a massive ocean. But on an alien planet the size of a half dozen Earths, he had absolutely no idea where he was.

  I’m safe, he finally said, not knowing if the telepathic message had gone anywhere beyond the echo chamber of his mind.

  He looked down. His damp flight suit was hanging off of him in strips. He pulled the rest of it away completely and marched through the sand barefoot. His deepest wounds were still bleeding a fair amount, but the salt had helped, and his Shadow biology had already erased a few of the most minor cuts. The sharpest pain actually came from his right hand, and he looked to see it covered in angry red burns. He’d touched an overloading null core so hot it was melting metal. He was lucky to still have a hand at all.

  Had the Archon really survived the blast? After seeing what the Xalan’s leader was capable of, the answer was likely yes. Until the Archon’s lifeless head was on a spike before his eyes, the creature would be a threat.

  Lucas used a piece of his ruined flight suit to wrap up his injured hand, and caked some of his deeper wounds with sand to help stop the bleeding. His muscles burned as he trudged across the beach toward the jungle.

  This wasn’t Makari. The jungle here wasn’t a nightmare. It was a thin strip of greenery separating a section of the beach from the coastal city. Lucas wouldn’t have been surprised if the entire thing was artificially grown. In barely a half hour he had nearly made it through to the other side. Along the way he stopped to dress himself in the power armor of a dead Soran soldier who lay sprawled in a muddy puddle on the forest floor. The man had apparently succumbed to his wounds fleeing the city; Lucas hadn’t spotted a live Xalan in this area since he crash-landed. Lucas pulled on whatever plating was still functional and armed himself with a long-barreled, scoped rifle that had been strapped to the man’s back. He would have to shoot with his left given his maimed hand, but it was better than nothing. Lucas had been around enough Soran military to know the stripes and badges on the dead man’s armor meant he had been relatively low-ranked. He tried the man’s communicator, but it was half dissolved by plasma.

  There were muffled thumps of explosions ahead through the last row of trees. Distant gunfire and screams followed. Lucas stepped out of the brush.

  The city was a ghost town. The sounds of war continued, but they were elsewhere, bouncing off collapsed buildings and crater-ravaged roads. Lucas was at the edge of what used to be a park with the downtown ahead. There were more bodies visible now on the streets. Dozens, and as he moved further in, hundreds. Nearly all Soran. Nearly all civilians. Some blown apart, others with still-smoking plasma wounds. A lump formed in Lucas’s throat when he found the body of the first child. He went completely numb soon after when he found the twelfth. And then he stopped keeping count.

  It was the invasion of Earth all over again. The tropical city even reminded him a bit of Miami, where he’d been when the shooting started all those years ago. Though this metropolis was far larger, with every other building made out of smooth white stone. Some of the more ornate structures suggested parts of the city were very old. Eventually Lucas saw enough signs to deduce its name, Kun-lai. He’d vaguely heard of it before, but had no idea where on Sora it actually was.

  Lucas froze when he heard a familiar voice.

  “At the time of this broadcast, I am transferring all military authority to Asha the Earthborn while I coordinate the evacuation of civilians out of the system.”

  It was Madric Stoller, speaking on a holoscreen five stories high, flicking intermittently on the side of a still-standing whitestone skyscraper. Lucas’s heart soared when he saw that Asha was standing next to him, along with Alpha. And was that Kiati? And Toruk? What was going on? Flooded with relief, Lucas smiled uncontrollably as Stoller continued.

  “Asha will serve as acting High Chancellor effective immediately, and would like to say a few words.”

  Asha nodded curtly, staring daggers at the irritated-looking Stoller, and addressed the camera with a grim, but determined face.

  “I’d like to thank High Chancellor Stoller for placing his faith in me to lead you in these dark times. You all know me by now, with all we’ve been through together.”

  Lucas realized they must all be rallied at Solarion, or outside the system somewhere. He needed a long-range communicator.

  “Though I am not Soran by birth,” Asha continued, “your home is my home, and I will defend it at all costs. We have not abandoned you.”

  How the hell had Asha convinced Stoller to give her control of the entire planet? Still, Lucas could think of no better symbol for Sora to rally to in its blackest hour. He could see the message was playing on every visible holoscreen in the area, large and small. But there was no one around to watch other than him.

  “We have not abandoned you. The Xalans took us unaware, but we are not beaten. Do not lose faith. Sora will survive. You will survive. We are coming for you.”

  “Soldier!” came a voice from behind him. This one was flesh and blood. Lucas turned around slowly, keeping his grip on the rifle. He found himself facing a platoon of roughly two dozen soldiers on foot with a few more in an armored hovercraft with engines so quiet they’d actually managed to sneak up on him. Sorans. SDI, all wearing the same style of armor as him.

  “What unit are you with?” their captain barked. He removed his helmet and strode toward Lucas. He was a tall, middle-aged man with tan skin who looked distantly Asian, if Lucas had to classify him using a
n Earth race. Lucas began to speak, but realized there was about to be a problem.

  “What the—” the captain said, the words trailing off once he got close enough. No doubt he could see Lucas’s Shadow blue eyes and the black veins snaking up his neck and down his right arm where the armor plating had been too damaged to use. The man raised his pistol halfway.

  “What happened to you, Initiate?”

  The rest of the soldiers started to raise their weapons behind their commanding officer, all pointing directly at Lucas. Lowering the barrel of the rifle to the ground, Lucas took a step forward, which made everyone twitch. The captain’s gun went all the way up.

  “I said, what unit are you with, and what happened to you?” the man repeated.

  “No unit,” Lucas shook his head. “This isn’t my armor.”

  Perhaps he could have phrased that better.

  “Down on the ground!” the captain said loudly. He motioned to the cracked pavement with his pistol. The enormous barrels of guns on the hovercraft swiveled toward Lucas.

  “Calm down,” Lucas said, taking another step toward him. “Calm. Down.”

  Lucas felt a twinge in his brain, a sharp, cold prick. The man’s eyes unfocused; he clipped the pistol back into his belt. His men became more at ease, but still were pointing all their weapons in his general direction. Lucas approached the man and stood within a few feet of him.

  “Do you know who I am?” Lucas said, the man regaining control of himself once more. He looked confused, but left his weapon at his side. “Look at my face,” Lucas said.

  “It … can’t be,” the captain said, slowly shaking his head. “You’re …”