They’d killed them all.
Then voices. Before either could speak, coming from the console. It was the control group for this Kel unit, on the radio. Whoever was in charge was trying to reach them. Trying to find out, in fact, just what the hell was going on. Scant seconds had elapsed; surely the assault team hadn’t been able to communicate much in the time it took them to die.
Jess looked the console over, trying to see if there was anything she could understand. Everything was in modern Kel, but it wasn’t too far from the ancient Kel she knew.
“I don’t think they’ve grasped the fact that these guys have been attacked.” She listened, playing close attention to every word. “Almost … almost like they never had a chance to report.”
She looked back to Zac. Surging with the decisiveness and the brutality of what they’d just done. Zac was shocked, by her, she could see it, but as she listened to the Kel voice on the radio she could also see he was impressed with something else altogether:
“You,” he stammered a little, “understand what they’re saying?”
She did. Yet one more thing about her that had changed, and as she stood there amid the gore and the alien carnage—of which she’d played just as much a part—aboard an alien craft, in her own backyard, sitting atop her playhouse, every remaining shred of her childhood crushed beneath it … the sheer weight of everything, her life—her very existence …
All at once it threatened to suffocate her. Suddenly those tight, green-lit, alien walls were too much. Oscillations of the present roared through her, echoing against the ages of an impossible past. Squeezing in, expanding out.
Jessica.
Aesha.
Jessica …
“I do,” she cleared her head.
There was no time for any of that.
**
With mounting alarm Eldron watched the various feeds coming in from below.
“Update,” he glanced over his shoulder, at his second in command who had joined him on the bridge. Things were unfolding rapidly down in that little Earth neighborhood. So far everything they were seeing was bad. Very bad. They’d just lost communication with one of their insertion craft. An entire squad.
“Assessing,” came the same response he’d gotten the last time he asked. Other craft were circling and his warship’s eyes were trained sharply on that area, instruments able only to tell them two figures had run from the target dwelling as soon as the insert unit touched down, promptly heading straight for it. Communications from the crew had then ramped up—among themselves, none directed anywhere else at first, the squad obviously under some sort of attack—now, silence.
“No response, lord.”
A third human had just run from the house toward the landed craft. What is going on down there? Eldron’s worry continued its meteoric rise. There were just too many unknowns in this whole operation, and at that point, and after everything, he firmly believed anything was possible. What he was seeing down there, impossible though it might seem, was happening, and with no solid information to go on he was at a loss, even as to speculation.
Then a voice.
Interrupting the hubbub. The comm officer jacked up the volume. Eldron tracked the signal metrics; it was transmitting from the landing craft on the ground. The voice was female. And it was, frighteningly, human. Eldron could tell that at once. Then, as full recognition washed over him, his blood went completely to ice.
The human was speaking Kel.
“ … you’re receiving this,” it said, too clearly, too organic to be artificial. This wasn’t being translated. It was a girl, and she was speaking their language. “This is your last transmission from this unit, and your last warning.”
It’s a human!
Speaking Kel.
Eldron’s mouth was hanging open.
“You won’t win,” the girl assured them. “In the end, you will not win this. This time I won’t fail.” Then …
Silence. No more transmissions.
The chill gripped Eldron so tight … Not since a child had he experienced that sort of creeping fear. This was not right. This was very, very wrong. He looked to the comm officer. Then to his second in command. Around the bridge. None of them held any less disbelief in their eyes than his own. Any less unease. All eyes were wide; voices mute.
He broke the trance.
“Bring it up,” he ordered, turning back to the image of the grounded craft. “Seal it up and get it up here. Now.”
“Yes, lord.”
**
POW! the Kel console fragged in a ball of blue-white fire. Jess lowered the Kel rifle.
“Hopefully that does it.”
Footsteps out in the hold raced forward and Willet was there, stopping just outside the cockpit. Wide-eyed and gape mouthed. “What the hell?!” he managed. Jess studied him. Wearing Dad’s clothes and looking like a stunned civilian. In some ways maybe, in that instant of overwhelm, he was. Trained as Willet was, as experienced, he was no longer on any level with her and her newly discovered powers. Definitely not on par with Zac.
She handed him the Kel rifle.
“Here,” she said. “Works like a regular rifle.” She showed him the trigger. “Point and shoot. No idea how long the charge holds.”
There was a tense moment of inaction where they all just kind of stood there looking at each other, stuck, no way out and imminent death hovering all around, closing in like a clinging fog. Thanks to Jess they’d jumped straight into the fire, and this short victory could not last.
There were lots more Kel where those came from.
Willet looked at them both.
Jess glanced around the cockpit. “We should get off,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll try to destroy this next.”
“And go where?” Willet held the rifle like it was a foreign object.
Jess had no idea. “Anywhere but here.”
**
“No response,” Eldron’s lead tech worked to make the connection, to no avail. “I can’t establish control.”
“What’s going on?”
“Controls are inert. They must’ve destroyed them.”
No way to retrieve their compromised lander.
Damn!
“Are the insurgents still aboard?”
“Yes, lord.”
There would be no evidence, but maybe they could at least end this.
“Destroy it.”
**
Jess got them moving. “Come on,” she headed for the hold, all the way across to the exit ramp and, as she reached it, got a tingling down her back, almost like a sixth sense.
She went to the edge of the thick doorway and peered into the starry sky. Willet and Zac stopped at either side. The smell of the fresh night air wafted in, the clean aroma of grass, a cool breeze brushing her skin—and for a flash she recalled the same smells, the same sensations playing nighttime hide-and-seek with her friends. Running between bushes, shouts and screams in the dark, the laughter of hot pursuit, the thrill of the chase, the tingle of an imminent “tag you’re it!”
“I hear others,” said Zac. Jess strained but heard nothing, which wasn’t surprising, but she could definitely sense the danger in other ways and that was surprising.
Her gaze snapped suddenly to her house. Shit! A few lights were on, shining invitingly from the upper windows.
Most notably her 2nd floor bedroom.
“The Icon.” Without another thought she was off. Sprinting down the ramp for the back door. Even as in the sky …
Anther Kel craft cut into view, arced around the front of the house and dropped to the street beyond. In that same instant Zac landed beside her, leaping after her as she ran, then bounded again, over the house to engage the arriving Kel.
“Jess!” Willet yelled from behind.
“Run!” she shouted.
WHOOOOM!! The blast knocked her forward. The force of it hammered her skull but didn’t knock her out. She was nearly to her porch and so tucked and turned the i
mpact to a forward roll, tumbling head over heels until she banged into the screen porch and stopped. Fearful for an instant she looked frantically behind, searching the ground until she found Willet. He’d been closer to the blast, but at least he’d been off the lander and in motion and, she could see in that snapshot of images, was alive. Behind him the craft they’d just left was slagged in the middle, armored hull burning and popping white-hot like magnesium flares.
She had to keep moving.
With a lunge she rose and was through the screen and onto the porch, blew the door off its hinges and into the kitchen with a hard snap of her hand—WHAM!—and was racing through behind it, the solid wood clattering and banging onto the tile floor and into the living room beyond.
BOOM! the wall in the front foyer blew inward in the same instant, a cloud of debris billowing away from the impact with force and she drew up short, sliding to a crouch behind a recliner. Three dark, lethal forms charged through the swirling dust.
Where was Zac?!
No time to wait. She sprang from the behind the chair, over and across the room—an impossible leap enhanced by whatever force she wielded—launched clear to the front door and into their midst.
“Nyaa!” she swung the sword in the same action, landing with all her strength—beyond strength, fueled by that same energy—and to her momentary shock realized she’d cut one of the Kel completely in half. The others reacted to her sudden presence, and to the incredible death of their comrade, pulling back in alarm and raising rifles as the cloven body flailed in two distinct parts and spazed to the floor. But Jessica’s shock was momentary and she was already swinging for the next, dropping him with another harsh hack, even as she squatted and spun back the other way—their reactive blasts shooting over her head. The end of the sword came around and sliced the final Kel as she extended a fist toward him:
“HA!” his torso ruptured from within and he jerked, firing his rifle twice more in random directions. She had the fleeting thought that she needed the sword if she was ever to use the gate again, but right then she had to live and the blade was an extension of her attack.
All or nothing.
As the last one fell she rose and ran for the stairs, checking once out the gaping hole in the front of the house; spotted the landed craft in the street, ramp down, another circling in the air beyond, Zac nowhere to be seen. Five more Kel soldiers were on the lawn and charging toward the house from the other direction, maybe having been dropped by yet another lander.
This whole situation was going south fast.
She hurried up the stairs as a flurry of blasts from the charging Kel punched more holes in the wall and she was leaping to the top, down the hall and through the door to her room.
Any second they might just blow up the whole house.
Zac was probably inside the craft that had landed in the street. Willet she worried for most, as he was on his own in nothing but a shirt and a pair of jeans with a Kel rifle, no powers, no armor, no super strength. But there was nothing she could do for him right then and the Icon was in danger—and if the Kel found that a whole world would be on the chopping block …
Anitra.
She could never let that happen.
Another shot, that one ripping sideways through the wall. Her dresser mirror shattered in a spray of glittering confetti. More shots and she reached for the Icon on the bookshelf inside the door, grabbed it and crouched as the Kel began tearing up the room from down the hall, strafing wildly, shots blasting through the walls, firing blind. They were no longer trying to engage her as they knew by then how futile that was. Their foe was too dangerous. Total obliteration appeared to have become their new objective.
She looked at the Icon. Destroy it? How? All she had was a sword and … whatever she could do with her mind. Would that have the intended effect?
I can’t let them get it.
And for an instant, a random redirection of her thoughts that had nothing to do with the situation at hand, a moment shattered in time like the shards of glass from her mirror … she saw the camera. On her dresser, beneath the broken frame. Impulsively she jumped and grabbed it, throwing the strap across her shoulder even as shots from down the hall continued to hammer the room relentlessly. It seemed a foolish waste of three seconds and she wasn’t sure what drove her, but for that instant the camera became vitally important. Whether afraid the Kel might learn something from it or that it held a memory of Zac … she didn’t know. All she knew was it was right there, it was within reach and, suddenly, it was every bit as critical as the Icon.
She looked to that. Gripped tightly in her hand, shiny and waiting. Holding it close she dropped to the floor and low-crawled to the door. Zac needed to come to her.
Zac!
Where was he?! Could she …
But no. No way to know where he was. It was like shouting into space. No sense of having reached him or anyone.
Should she just yell? With his hearing … could she reach him over all this noise? The Kel rifles continued to hammer apart her room from without.
She shimmied all the way forward and peered around the doorframe, into the hall, preparing to yell …
CRASH! A tremendous impact from behind and she jerked to her back, squinting up, plaster and wood raining into the room. Kel bodies were dropping through the ceiling. They’d punched a hole in the roof overhead and were right there, practically on top of her, landing on her bed, on her floor …
Time had officially run out.
She twisted the Icon.
CHAPTER 6: A HOPELESS SITUATION
Zac killed the kel aboard the craft. As soon as he landed from his leap over the house they were there, another full squad, ramp down and hurrying off, guns up as he rushed to dispatch them. Absorbing painful blasts from their electric rifles he leapt in after them as they fell before him by twos and threes. It felt like he couldn’t move fast enough. Jess was in danger and there had to be more Kel coming.
The last ran toward the front. Zac pursued him but the Kel reached the cockpit and fired the door closed. It cost him a second as the door crunched beneath the blow of his forearm but held. With a second stance he brought both forearms against it and knocked it all the way in. Inside the cockpit he grabbed the final Kel from his chair and—
Froze. For a surreal instant, unable to tell if it was a physical or a mental hitch that held him. Almost as if he couldn’t figure out how best to kill the alien in his hands. He’d been on such a roll, dispatching one after the other, now … For a very difficult stretch of what felt like long, agonizing minutes, he was stuck. Standing there. Holding the Kel soldier who struggled futilely, uselessly, in his grip.
At length he found the faculty to resume action and smashed the Kel’s head. Done, he dropped the body to the floor. Precious time had slipped away, dangerous, lost time, and Jessica and Willet needed him.
Rushing into the hold, determined not to let this little lapse cost him—he found the exit ramp notching closed into its final, lock position.
**
“We have him, lord.” Eldron’s systems officer checked readings coming from the landing craft below.
Eldron watched the feeds. The lander bearing the superhuman sat patiently in the little neighborhood street, door now closed and locked. Secured. “Bring him up,” he ordered. They’d lost the opportunity with the other craft, contact having been severed when the controls were apparently destroyed, but now they had another chance. He watched as the craft lifted off under their control and began a rapid ascent. Landing gear retracted and it curved upward, accelerating. When Eldron saw the explosive separation of the craft’s door from the hull there was a lag between the time his eyes witnessed that event and his mind actually processed it. Likewise it was another few seconds before anyone on the bridge said anything in response to what everyone had just seen. Namely that the superhuman had, somehow—though perhaps it should not have been a surprise—knocked a hole through the hull from the inside
, sending fragments of the door and its sturdy frame ejecting away from the accelerating craft, even as the dark-haired and pale-skinned form launched out and away in the wake of the debris. The craft continued its ascent, of course, racing to orbit under their direction, unaffected overall by the breach, hole in the side, trail of small and large chunks of metal streaming away as the human flew with them in an arc toward the ground. A mockery of the advanced Kel technology.
Rather than report the obvious the systems officer elected instead to ask:
“How should I proceed?”
Before Eldron could gather an answer to that question the science officer was chiming in.
“I’ve separated a rogue signal from the rest,” he said. “An energy pulse much like that of the device. Moments ago.”
Eldron tore his eyes from the impossible scene on the view screen. The superhuman had just hit the ground and was running.
Had someone used one of the transit devices?
He looked at his science officer. “The device?”
“The transit device,” his officer confirmed. “Like the one Kang brought. The signature of this pulse bears the same characteristics. Came from the house.”
Eldron looked at the screen. The superhuman was headed back to the dwelling. A silence hung on the bridge. This whole scenario had quickly ballooned into something far beyond the scope of anything they’d come expecting. Eldron glanced at the landing craft still making its way steadily into orbit. Broken, filled with dead Kel. Hole in its side. Down there on the ground below … the superhuman, another lander slagged and burning, the half-destroyed house and, impossibly, the residual charge of what had been the activation of, what appeared to be, another of the ancient devices.
This …
This required a new set of orders.
“Get me Voltan,” he said.
**
Falling. Jessica’s gut knotted as she began to drop. Wind whistled at her ears, teasing with sickening altitude as she began her plummet in a clear, dusk sky; gentle wisps in those first seconds, so peaceful compared to the chaos of where she’d just been, so serene ... accelerating to a mighty roar that assaulted her senses as the vertigo seized her and she fell.
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 8
