Sonora and the Scroll of Alexandria (Book #2)

by T. S. Hall

  “Where are we going?” Tanner asked.

  “Go toward Crystal Lake. It’s our only way out of here. I’ll be right behind you.” Milly grabbed Allora and pulled her in tight. “I’m so sorry, baby. Whatever happens, just know that I love you.”

  She held onto Allora’s shoulders for a few seconds, staring into her eyes as a tear escaped its cocoon. Pulling a sword from the sheath on her back, she took off toward the field. Allora and the others quickly sparked the skippers and jumped onto them. Bell jumped up behind her sister and hugged her belly tightly.

  “Do not get separated,” Dax said as Jenny grabbed onto Tanner and Brandon onto Katie. “If one of us falls behind, then we all do. I’ll take the lead since I don’t have a passenger.”

  “Don’t worry, pipsqueak,” Allora whispered, feeling the slight trembling from her sister. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “You promise?”

  “Pinky-promise,” Allora said, extending her pinky finger. Bell grabbed and hooked her pinky. “Hold on tight.”

  Dax counted down, and they hit their accelerators all at once. Just as they got through to the edge of the football field, a barrage of lights came from behind, crashing into a line of soldiers on the edge of the woods. Dax saw the opening and sent a couple of bursts through, just in case. Sas and Yeti jumped across the fleeing skippers, knocking into a troll that had its club raised above its head. The two warlocks knocked it out and leapt after the four, moving with incredible speed. They increased the throttle, speeding through the middle of town, which exploded in a flurry of bursts that destroyed buildings that Allora had known all her life. The grocery store billowed smoke, and the gas station was fully engulfed in burning flames that shot over forty feet in the air.

  As they passed through the city and onto the main road toward the mountain, Allora’s screen lit up with small red dots. Behind them, multiple skippers were in fast pursuit, followed by large cruisers that were firing up their thrusters and launching skimmers. Speeding down the road, they zipped past burning cars and fleeing people. Allora glanced down at the speedometer, which had just passed two hundred miles per hour. Looming in the distance were the familiar whitecaps of Mt. Hood, indicating their destination.

  Just then a stream of light exploded in front of them, shattering the asphalt road and destroying an oncoming car. The skimmer came out of nowhere, positioned to ambush anyone who was retreating. It fired another salvo of bursts that exploded tree trunks, knocking them into the road in front of the group. Allora pulled up on the handles, launching the skipper off the fallen tree. She spun the vehicle to her left, firing off a few of her own bursts, which hit the skimmer, pushing its momentum into a large tree, which left a trail of fire and debris. Allora pulled the skipper all the way around, firing the thrusters below to keep from crashing into the ground.

  “Whoa!” Katie screamed over the intercom. “That was sweet!”

  “Ah, yeah, where did you learn that move?” Tanner asked.

  “Not really sure I meant to do that,” Allora admitted, knowing that the entire thing was an accident.

  “I think I just peed my pants a little,” Bell said, causing Allora to burst into laughter.

  “Not done yet, guys,” Tanner said, noticing three more blips come up on the radar in front of them. Four other red dots popped onto the screen on either side. They were converging at a designated point a few miles ahead of them in the small town of Zig Zag. “They are trying to box us in. We’ve got to get into the trees.”

  “Oh yeah, ’cause that was really successful the last time we tried that,” Dax said.

  “No choice,” Tanner said, as the single red light of the town appeared in the foreground. “Flip on autopilot. Allora, you go with Dax to the right. Katie, you’re with me to the left. Ready? Go!”

  Three skippers shot a salvo of bursts down the corridor as they split into the trees, jerked around by the thrusters on the sides as they zoomed through the forest. The constant swishing and rustling of branches against the metal vehicles echoed in the interior of the enclosed capsules as they traveled east through the trees. Two of the skippers followed.

  “Allora, we’ve got to go manual, or else these guys are going to catch us.”

  The blips of red were moving slowly toward the center of the screen at the lower right-hand side. A streak of red light shot into a tree to Allora’s left, causing the vehicle to lurch to the right and pushing it toward a large Douglas fir. Allora jerked the handles farther to the left and then back to the right, barely missing another tree. She pushed the throttle as they made it into a long field.

  “When I say so, I want you to slam on the brakes,” Allora said, peering back at the two pursuing skippers.

  Dax nodded as they got closer to the end of the field. A flurry of red streaks exploded into the ground, shooting dirt and grass upward.

  “Now!”

  They pulled back on the handles, causing the two skippers to pull up vertically and slow to a sudden stop. The pursuing skippers had to jerk their vehicles to the sides, leaving them open and vulnerable. Dax and Allora fired bursts of yellow hadrons. They didn’t let up, following the two enemy skippers as they tried in vain to maneuver away. Allora clipped the thrusters on one of the skippers, destroying the propulsion and flinging the pilot out of the encapsulated vehicle. The royal guardsman rolled along the ground, crashing into a tree at the edge of the field. Dax was equally successful, ejecting the other pilot out of his skipper.

  Allora and Dax had to pull up on the handles as they careened into the forest. Bell screamed as the skipper barely missed a low-hanging branch, spinning uncontrollably through a small opening in the foliage and exploding out of the forest top. She turned the handles the other way, trying to stop the spinning.

  “Allora, hit your thrusters!” Dax screamed as the skipper started careening down toward the forest. Allora pulled back and to the left, slamming on the thrusters as they skipped across the tops of the trees. The skipper had flipped, leaving them traveling upside down. Up ahead, three more enemy skippers had set up a wall, pointing right at them. Allora could see the lights of their weapons firing up, readying to blow them out of the sky. Bell clutched tighter and closed her eyes.

  Twenty-Eight

  SONORA

  Just then, as her heart sank into her chest, feeling the helplessness of her situation, Allora heard the crackle of the intercom. “Yee-haw!” Katie exclaimed, firing a steady stream of bursts that destroyed one of the awaiting enemy skippers. Tanner followed, catching the other two by surprise.

  “That was close,” Allora said, wiping the sweat from her brow.

  “Am I dead?” Bell asked, still holding on tightly.

  “Not just yet, pipsqueak,” Allora said, touching her sister’s hand. “Thanks, guys!”

  “We are not out of the woods yet,” Dax said. The entire fleet of ships was now in pursuit. “We’ve got more company. Those skimmers will be on us in minutes.”

  “Hey, Dax, you remember that play that we came up with?” Tanner asked.

  “How in the world would that work?”

  “Guys?” Katie asked.

  “We came up with a play where we’d hand off the ball to a wide receiver who would fake as though he was running the other way so that our main objective could get down the field.”

  “No way. Not happening,” Allora said, deducing their intentions.

  “They are after you, the Eye, and what you have in your head,” Tanner argued. “We can’t let them get to you.”

  “We all signed up for this,” Dax said.

  “I didn’t,” Jenny said from behind Tanner.

  “You really don’t have a say in this one,” Katie added.

  “Just promise me you guys won’t do anything stupid,” Allora said, knowing her friends would do anything it took to keep her safe. “Just distract them, and get out of there.”

  “Will do,” Tanner said. He veered to his left, followed by the others.

&n
bsp; Allora punched the thrusters, pushing the skipper to over two hundred miles per hour.

  “We’re not going to make it out of this one, are we?” Bell asked softly and painfully.

  “We’ve made it this far, Bell,” Allora responded. “Don’t you ever give up hope. You remember the promise I made you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I never break my promises, OK?”

  “OK.”

  On the side of the front screen, it showed an image of a billowing fireball behind them. Allora felt a sense of dread and helplessness. She knew that she had to get her sister to safety, but she felt guilty for not being in the fight. It was now clear that everyone in Sandy had been there to protect her. And now the entire town was destroyed.

  Just as she was about to get to the edge of the perimeter, numerous red dots appeared on her screen. They were coming right at her. There was nowhere to go. She could see the multitude of aircraft bearing down, but they were hundreds of feet in the air. They zoomed past, heading straight for the cruisers. It was another wave of American F-16s. Allora watched the orange-and-yellow glow as hundreds of jet missiles were sent toward the large Sonoran ships.

  The projectiles exploded against the hadron energy shields that surrounded the cruisers. Then a barrage of lights escaped the exterior guns, destroying most of the attacking aircraft. The others fled, only to be run down by pursuing skimmers. Distant balls of flames erupted in the sky.

  Five minutes later they had passed by the perimeter defenses. A couple of skimmers and larger aircraft littered the forest where they had examined the gnomes’ weaponry. Allora set the skipper down in a field that bordered Crystal Lake. The capsule slid open, and Allora and Bell both got down off the dented metal sheet. The muffled sporadic explosions in the distance were ominous, as she knew that any one of them could be her friends or relatives. Allora sparked the skipper, activating the contraption and leaving it floating in the air in a cylindrical tube. She flung the strap around her back just as her sister threw her to the ground. A hadron burst hit Bell in the chest, flinging her through the air and toward an overhanging cliff. Allora screamed and spun around, pulling in hadrons and forcing them forward in anticipation of another burst, which came right at her. The force of the explosion against the hadron shield pushed her back along the ground, leaving two dirt trails as she fought to gain her balance. Allora ran backward, kneeling down next to her sister to check her pulse. She let out her breath after feeling the repetitive thump of Bell’s heart.

  From the edge of the forest came a familiar figure.

  “You, my dear, are a pain,” Dr. Lucas Smith said, walking through the field with a blade held by his side.

  “Lucas,” Allora said, anger seething from her pores. “So, I guess that you’re not really a math teacher after all.”

  “No, darling. I’m not.”

  “Who are you?” Allora asked, pulling a sword from the sheath on her back and standing tall against her adversary.

  “You don’t recognize me?” Lucas said, sauntering toward her. His body began to morph, growing in height, his hair changing to dark brown.

  “Marcus,” she said, her fists clenched.

  “How about we go for round two with that kiss?”

  “Why would you do this? Why can’t you just leave us alone?”

  “You represent everything wrong with Sonora,” he answered while morphing back into Lucas. “You and this entire race of humans are a disease that I intend to eradicate. These weak, stupid, wretched creatures are a plague upon this world and our own. I am simply protecting our people.”

  “By slaughtering humans?”

  “What you don’t understand is that we are gods to these creatures,” Lucas said, becoming more animated. “I am just balancing the natural order of civilization.”

  “No, what you’re doing is genocide.”

  “History only judges the losers,” Lucas said, dropping his chin, focusing his eyes, and clenching the hilt of his sword.

  “Well, then let’s just see who comes out on top.”

  “So be it,” Lucas said, raising his sword and pushing a hadron burst at his opponent. The red hadron burst pushed back on the shield that Allora had placed in front of her. She barely saw the glint of the sword bearing down on her. She pulled her blade up, and the two pieces of metal clashed, the sounds echoing across the lake. Lucas sent short bursts of energy that kept Allora on her heels and pushed her back toward the cliff. Seeing the edge of the water at her back, she sent a bubble of energy to her feet and launched into the air over Lucas, swinging at his head. He flipped backward sending a barrage of bursts at the flying girl. She didn’t see the red streaks and was hit with numerous streaks of energy that jolted her body and flung her violently into the ground.

  Her elbows buckled under the weight of her body as she tried to get up. Her nervous system sent sharp, shooting pain into every limb. Lucas shot another string of red hadron bursts that hit the ground around her. Adrenaline shot through her, lifting her to her knees. She pulled her sword up as Lucas’s came down. The muscles in her arms strained against the full weight of her old teacher. Then she saw an opening between his two-handed grip on the sword. She used all of her strength, pushed his sword up, pulled in the hadrons around her, and sent a purple ball straight into his gut. He stumbled back and tripped on a rock.

  He began laughing as he got up. Her wrist communicator flashed. She pulled the metal band back, and a steady stream of blinking lights moved into the area around her location. Allora looked up into the sky to see two large black cruisers lifted over the edge of the forest on the other side of the lake.

  “I gotta say, I admire the fight, but there is no happy ending for you,” Lucas said, getting to his feet. The radio came alive with the voices of her family and friends fighting through the overwhelming forces. Screams of death echoed in her ear as they were fleeing the onslaught of skimmers that were pursuing them. Allora looked at Lucas and then at the body of her unconscious sister lying by the edge of the cliff. Small black dots escaped the sides of the cruisers above, indicating a large air force deployed on their position. The cruisers at her back would be there in less than a minute. They were surrounded with no way out.

  “I promise if you surrender to me, I will make sure that none of your little rebellion here is hurt further,” Lucas said, watching as his forces moved out of the forest and slowed to a stop above the lake. “You can save them. All you need to do is come with me.”

  Allora thought back to the words her uncle had spoken: “Never give in; never give up.”

  They echoed in her head, battling against the dead faces of those she had known and cared about. Her nightmares were coming alive, eating away at her slowly.

  “Prove it,” Allora said.

  Lucas stared her down, contemplating his next move, like a chess player ready to exact his final blow.

  “Royal guard,” Lucas said, pulling up his communicator. “This is Commander Lucas. All forces, stand down the attack and hold positions.”

  The advancing army stopped at the edges of the field. There were hundreds of them, fully clad in black-and-gold battle suits. The voices of her friends were confirming the orders as they made their way to the lake. As the hovering pods of her friends’ skippers touched down behind her, Lucas backed up to the edge of the cliff, glancing down with a smirk at the still-unconscious Bell.

  “How do I know you won’t betray your word if I go with you?”

  “You don’t. But you don’t really have a choice, do you?”

  “Why?” Allora asked, still perplexed. “Why am I so important to you?”

  “You don’t know?” Lucas said, shocked at the revelation.

  “All this time and no one told you who you really are?” Lucas chuckled. “Milly is not your mother.” Allora stared at him, unable to comprehend what he had just said. “You’re the royal baby, the daughter of Tildar and Kalia Antioch, previous king and queen of Titanis, capital city of Sonora. You are th
e lost princess Aurora.”

  “You’re lying!” Allora said, emphatically.

  “No, he’s not.” Milly touched down, got off her skipper, and pulled out her sword as Allora started to walk to Lucas. Seeing the famous keeper, Lucas stepped back, grabbed Bell from the grounds as she started to come to, and placed his blade against her throat. Milly instantly stopped and looked at Allora, who had her mouth open and eyes wide.

  “Bell, it’s going to be all right,” Milly said, her hands in the air, dropping her blade.

  “Mom?” Allora said, cocking her head to the side.

  “I meant to tell you long ago, but I just couldn’t find the right moment to do it.” Allora’s heart dropped into the pit of her stomach. This betrayal was even more difficult to swallow than anything she’d experienced.

  “Who are you?” Allora said angrily.

  “Your birth mother was my older sister,” Milly said. “We were pursued by Salazar’s forces after your father, the king, was murdered in a secret council meeting, set up by Salazar himself. I needed time to open up the gateway to Earth. Your real mother sacrificed herself so that you could live. I’m so sorry, Allora. I never meant for you to find out this way.”

  “Such a pitiful royal family,” Lucas said, laughing maniacally.

  “You bastard,” Milly yelled. “You lay one finger on her and I’ll rip your heart out.”

  “You are in no position to be making threats. I gotta say, though, it’s an absolute honor to meet you finally. The legend of the Rebel Wars standing right in front of me. I feel star struck.”