Critical Strike (The Critical Series Book 3)

by Wearmouth

  “What about the micro-gate?” Layla said.

  “Oh, that’s still a real possibility, so if you want to get off this planet, I suggest you do as I say and go first when the vault door opens.”

  “What kind of security does this place have?” Charlie asked.

  Vingo shrugged. “No one knows. The Amalgam agent got the codes from a card game involving one of the capital’s matriarchs. That’s as close as anyone other than the governors have got. Even this sewer is usually protected, but given the war with the scion, I guess we got lucky.”

  “Luck, huh?” Charlie said, stepping forward to the side of the hatch. “I’ve never felt less lucky in my life, and that’s saying something.”

  “Let’s not waste any more time,” Denver said. “Vingo, enter the damned codes and let’s get this over with.”

  Denver joined Layla and Charlie by the door. They stood to its sides, the sewer too narrow to let them stand completely free of the opening. While Denver and Layla stared ahead, Charlie focused his attention on Vingo while wearing his ‘murder face.’ Denver just hoped his dad could hold it together long enough for them to figure a way out of this mess. A dead Vingo would be no good if they needed something to trade or beat information from.

  “Here we go,” Vingo said, stretching out his hand and tapping in a complicated-looking pattern of codes. Denver crouched when a high-pitched beep came from the control panel. The blue holographic display flashed red.

  “Shit, that can’t be good,” Layla said.

  “Wait,” Vingo ordered, entering yet more codes.

  The red flashing turned to a dark purple color and a hiss of air came from around the large circular hatch in front of them. The thing started to turn ever so slowly; the sound of servos whirred inside. Denver quickly glanced over at Vingo, who had his rifle raised at the door.

  “Quiet,” Vingo whispered.

  The hatch stopped turning after it traveled a complete revolution. It then moved toward them before folding down like a ramp. Green light flooded from a tunnel before them as the door finished its movement.

  “Well, look at that,” Vingo said. “The rogue was trustworthy after all. Perhaps that’s a lesson for us all, eh?” He looked at Charlie with an expressionless face before adding, “Go on, then; get inside. You don’t have the time to stand there breathing away your lives.”

  Denver stepped forward and entered the tunnel first, eager to get this charade over with. If they were going to suffocate to death, he’d rather do it knowing exactly what Vingo was up to and what the hell was in this place.

  The tunnel was wide enough for both Denver and Charlie to move forward. Layla brought up the rear with Vingo wedged between them. She shared a look with Denver that told him she would gun the alien down if he tried anything.

  “So where are we heading?” Denver whispered over the comms, stepping as carefully as he could over the solid surface. It seemed to be a kind of smooth granite. His suit clanked with each step, making him wince with the echoes of their movement. It reminded him of a mausoleum he had once spent a night in. The rock seemed to have its own weird acoustics.

  “This is one of the escape routes for the information arbiters.”

  “Who are they when they’re at home?” Layla asked.

  “This isn’t their home,” Vingo replied, not getting the turn of phrase, but continued, “They’re the ones who catalogue the sum of the tredeyan intelligence. It’s here, where our servers are, and our AIs that look for patterns in the data. It’s the arbiter’s job to interpret the findings as well as catalogue useful information. This vault goes back five hundred millennia.”

  They reached the end of the corridor and turned ninety degrees to the left. Denver stopped and held up his hand, indicating for Layla and Vingo to halt. “Dad, you hear that?” he whispered.

  “Sounds like… what the… is that?”

  “Croatoan,” Denver said. “You know anything about this, Vingo?”

  “No… approach with caution; we’re coming to one of the server analysis rooms. I can hear… there’s something else up ahead. We need to get to that room.”

  “Fine,” Charlie said, inspecting his rifle. “Load up; shoot anything that moves in there. Follow my lead.”

  Charlie stepped forward in a half-crouch. Denver stuck by his dad after glancing back to make sure Layla was okay. She looked as determined as his dad and filled Denver with pride. If they were going to assault a hyper-important vault on an alien planet during a war with super-advanced aliens, he wouldn’t want to do it without Layla and his dad by his side.

  Before Denver brought his attention back to the white light at the end of the tunnel, he saw Layla mouth the words, ‘I love you.’ He responded in kind, flashing her a confident smile, and returned his focus to the room.

  As they approached quietly, rifles at the ready, Denver started to feel something buzz around his mind. At first he thought it was static on his comms, but when he asked the others, none of them detected anything.

  It was almost as if he could sense…

  He didn’t get a chance to warn the others as a man-sized scion prism floated out of the white light and entered the tunnel. Another appeared behind them, making Vingo yell out with a kind of screeching panic.

  The two prisms steadied themselves. Their cones raised half an inch to expose their glowing blue insides… their lasers. Denver closed his eyes, bracing himself for the impact, but instead he heard a voice say, “Put down your weapons, and enter the room. You might still live yet.”

  “Did anyone else hear that?” Denver asked over the comms.

  Vingo was gibbering something in his alien tongue and raised his rifle toward the prism in front. The scion machine snapped a thin, narrow beam of light between Denver’s and Charlie’s heads, striking Vingo in the chest.

  He stiffened immediately and shook within his suit. He collapsed forward, dropping his rifle to the hard surface.

  “Enter the room,” the neutral voice, neither male nor female, ordered again.

  “Of course,” Charlie said, stepping forward, but still holding his rifle to his side, the barrel pointing down to the floor.

  Denver turned to Layla and helped her step over Vingo’s prone form. The second prism behind them seemed to tilt when it got close to Denver. Man and machine regarded each other. Denver felt that strange buzzing sensation in his head again. The second prism moved forward until it hovered over Vingo’s body. A ghostly white field emanated from its base, lifting the tredeyan off the floor.

  “Please, into the room,” this second prism said, specifically to Denver.

  Denver nodded and turned, following the others into the white light of the server analysis room, feeling strangely secure despite his initial fear and uncertainty.

  The lights within the ten-meter-square room dimmed as they entered. It had golden walls that shimmered against the light cast down by an overhead glow panel. A narrow holoscreen no more than about thirty centimeters in height stretched around the walls at a little lower than chest level.

  Data in a script he didn’t recognize flowed around these screens. Two more prisms, smaller this time, like the one he and Layla had encountered outside of the temple, hovered in front of the screens, shining their pale blue lights onto the surface. Denver presumed they were scanning for information, much like the other one did around the statue.

  When he brought his eyes to the center of the room, he saw the source of the croatoan sounds. Bound by thick metallic cuffs around his wrists and ankles, the scarred form of Hagellan lay stretched out. The scion who had lifted Vingo dumped his body to the rear of the room onto the glossy black granite floor and returned to hover above Hagellan.

  The old croatoan managed to lift his head and thrashed when he saw Charlie, Denver, and Layla.

  Blood dripped from his mouth and sprayed out into the air when he called out.

  “What’s the meaning of this? What are they doing here?” he croaked, sounding more afraid than De
nver had ever heard any croatoan. It pleased him, seeing the ex-council member in such a humiliating and weak condition.

  “Well, well, well,” Charlie said, with a smile on his face. “Looks like you’re in a bit of trouble there, old friend.”

  Hagellan tried to spit at Charlie, but the spray just dripped uselessly down his thick neck and pooled onto the granite floor. The scion prism above him extended out that ghostly white field that had previously lifted Vingo. This time it didn’t lift, but pressed, forcing Hagellan’s throat to the ground, cutting off his words.

  The other prism hovered between Charlie and Hagellan.

  “Humans,” it said in that neutral voice, “your mission is over.”

  “Mission?” Denver asked. “The only mission we’re on is to get air and survive this goddamned planet. What’s any of this got to do with us?”

  Vingo came to and hobbled to his feet. He swayed and clanked against the wall. His eyes grew wide when he saw where he was. He spun to face the holoscreen and reached into a compartment on his suit leg.

  The scion didn’t seem bothered and were silent as everyone watched Vingo take what Denver thought was a recording. The tredeyan spun round and flicked his gaze across the occupants of the room, a kind of confusion coming over his face.

  He didn’t hesitate, though; he made for the way they had come in. Denver raised his rifle and was about to shoot the fleeing alien when the scion prism knocked Denver to the floor and pressed him down with a force that made it difficult for him to breathe, even with the protection of the suit.

  “Let him go, you fucking machine,” Charlie said, firing a burst of fire at the prism. The bullets ricocheted off the armored surface and embedded into the gold walls with heavy thuds that reverberated around the surface.

  One of the rounds had pierced the tough hide on Hagellan’s chest, making the beast wail out and thrash more within his shackles. The prism holding Denver glowed brightly as a bolt of laser fired from it, striking down Vingo with a single blast, the tredeyan’s body cauterizing before it even hit the floor.

  The neutral voice from the scion spoke up. “Stop, it’s over now.”

  The force on Denver’s throat eased and lifted him to his feet.

  “Humans, you are Charlie, Denver and Layla,” the scion prism to the left said. The one in front of Denver remained silent, its blue glowing strip had dulled to a softly pulsing gray. “It’s time you knew the truth. We will get you air and supplies, but first, you’re to receive an explanation.”

  “Don’t believe anything they have to say,” Hagellan croaked out. “They’re damned liars, just like the tredeyans!”

  Denver was expecting the croatoan’s throat to be crushed again, but the scion prism ignored him. Instead, the cone extended further up before flipping back. A holographic projection of a humanlike face extended up and regarded them with hollow eyes.

  “I am Drone 451, the coordinator of this encounter. If you have questions, ask them. We have just a few of your Earth minutes before we have to leave.”

  “What happens then?” Layla asked.

  “This vault will be no more.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said. “Tell me, what the hell is Hagellan doing here, and why are you torturing him? Not that that bothers me much.”

  The face turned to Charlie. “Hagellan was a scion agent… until he cut his algorithm short. He defected back to his race shortly before the invasion of your planet, taking with him artifacts that we had assigned a great deal of resources to procure. That’s why he came back here.”

  “Wait,” Denver said. “We came back to destroy the gate to stop the croatoan ship… Hagellan showed it to us. It was going to use the tredeyan gate to jump to Earth.”

  The face shook from side to side. “That was a lie. He wanted to destroy the gate to stop us from getting to Earth and reclaiming the lost artifact that he stole from us. He is a traitor to us and his own kind. His plan was to join the Amalgam after his failure on Earth.”

  “Like Vingo,” Layla said, looking at his corpse.

  “So what about the micro-gate?” Denver asked.

  “There is no such thing,” Drone 451 said. “There is only one gate, the one Hagellan had you damage.”

  Denver picked up on the language immediately. “Damage? So it’s not destroyed?”

  “We currently have our architects fixing it—this”—the holographic display extended an arm to point at the data on the screens—“is what Vingo was hoping to trade; the technical specifications of the gate.”

  “You can’t trust them!” Hagellan said, trying to appeal to Charlie directly. “They’re worse than us; they don’t care about your life, your planet. All they want is—”

  Denver winced at the sudden burst of gunfire.

  A swirl of smoke trailed away from the barrel of Charlie’s rifle as Hagellan’s head exploded under the power of the tredeyan firearm. Shreds of croatoan hide scattered around the room, bouncing off the golden walls. The beast’s yellow blood and dark purple brains splattered against the back wall as pieces of bone and cartilage clattered against the floor.

  Hagellan’s great body continued to thrash for a few seconds after until eventually his limbs became still.

  “Damn, that felt good,” Charlie said. He turned to Drone 451. “Frankly, I don’t care if what you’re saying is the truth or not. We’re going to die if we don’t get air in the next quarter of a unit. If you have air, then we need it now. After that, we can talk.” He kept the rifle poised in his hands, aimed partly toward the scion drone.

  The drone’s blue stripe flashed twice and the smaller ones in front of the screen of data hovered around the group and disappeared through another door behind Denver that he hadn’t spotted originally.

  “Follow us,” Drone 451 said. “We have much to discuss.”

  Leaving the remains of Hagellan and Vingo behind, Denver followed the scion along with Charlie and Layla, all three of them sharing a ‘what the fuck?’ expression.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Layla woke on a soft bed, stretched and yawned. A cool draft pumped from a chrome vent in the roof, providing air in the pressurized barrack block. These sparse white rooms attached to the command center were used by humans when serving on Tredeya. It came as no surprise that Vingo didn’t tell them about the area. She wondered if he spoke a word of truth during their whole time together.

  The partially split dark blue armor stood at the end of the bed with her helmet propped on top of it and a tredeyan rifle slung over the shoulder. The last two days were the strangest in Layla’s life, but she could see light at the end of the tunnel.

  Sleep came easily after being transported back by the scion prisms, who provided clean filters for their suits and promised no harm would come to them. Drone 451 showed them a video of a shocked-looking Mike, Mai and Maria and told them they were safe and Augustus perished in the battle for Unity.

  Layla activated a screen at the end of her bed and looked at the still image of their faces again. The drones refused to give more information until they spoke to an agent called Doslin.

  It was a relief that the city survived the attack and all three of them lived through it. She found Augustus’ death the most unbelievable. The man was an eternal survivor and seemed to get away with everything he did. Layla assumed he would be a thorn in her side until her dying days.

  Reflecting on her post-invasion life, it was the first time she felt real pride about her role in society. It wasn’t like reintegrating human livestock back into civilized life. That was just repairing the damage that she played a part in creating. Augustus forced her, under the threat of death, to work on a farm. Her path for survival involved self-preservation at the expense of others. Those days were over.

  Together with Charlie and Denver, they put their lives on the line for Earth.

  A female tredeyan, dressed in a peach-colored robe, knocked on the transparent glass door. Layla thumbed the panel by the side of her bed and the door hissed ope
n.

  “I am Doslin,” she said. “Follow me to the observation deck.”

  “Do I need to put my suit on?”

  “No. It’s safe for you to breathe. Please, this way. I will reunite you with your friends.”

  “You breathe our air?”

  “It’s purer than Tredeya’s. I wouldn’t advise you to try the opposite.”

  “I’m well aware of that.”

  Doslin led Layla up two flights of stone steps to a dull gray corridor. The caverns looked barely recognizable after a good six hours sleep and a lower threat level. The scion had taken full control, and only their agents were allowed access. Instead of seeing the passages as dark, alien and intimidating, expecting a threat around every corner, Layla took some time to peer in every room and murky corner. She doubted she’d get a chance to see a world like this again.

  In one room, two black prisms hovered next to a bank of glass boxes with circuitry and boards inside. Three slaughtered clusps were piled in another. Electronic pads were attached to the smoothly carved walls at regular intervals, some had views to other parts of the cavern system on their screens, others provided security access to sturdy metal doors. None required wiring because of their wireless energy solution. Layla wondered if they could take some of the tech back to Earth for Mike to reverse engineer.

  “What do you know about humans?” Layla said.

  “I’ve met them here and on one of our mineral planets. I like them.”

  “Is that where you learned our language?”

  “We learn it as children, along with croatoan since their colonization of our planet. We despise their presence.”

  “How does working with the scion help?” Layla said.

  “If it means ridding our species of the croatoans, I’m prepared to do it.”