by Paul Tassi
The original plan had been to drop the Guardian squadron on the hangar, but the surface was too unstable with the area in ruins, and Zeta relayed over the central comm that she was looking for a new place to touch down safely.
The monitors showed Alpha and Asha firing at troops on the other side of the ship while Lucas did the same. The enemy soldiers were shredded by the artillery fire and the structures around them were reduced to rubble as explosive canister rounds the size of footballs ripped through them. But even after being caught off guard, the troops were starting to get in position to return fire on the ship, and there were simply too many to target. Where were the Oni?
Lucas flinched as plasma peppered the hull near his turret. He returned fire, but the ship veered so that he took a chunk out of the structure behind the Xalans instead. More and more of their shots were connecting; the prison ship was a rather large target lacking significant maneuverability. They were too far into the base to be able to evade properly, and suddenly a raucous explosion from somewhere underneath Lucas rocked the entire craft.
“Zeta, Alpha, talk to me!” Lucas yelled as the ship started lurching hard to the right.
Alpha broke in, but the comm was going fuzzy.
“[Static] stabilizer took a [static] hit.”
Then Zeta:
“Have to [static] set down [static] repair.”
“This is not the time to stop for a tune-up!” shouted Asha, her voice bursting through the static and gunfire. On her monitor, Lucas watched her take a shot and blow a pair of Xalans to pieces even as the ship was spinning.
“No [static] option,” came Zeta, and the array of flashing warning lights and alarms all around the turret seemed to back up her statement. “Brace [static].”
There was only a split second between her warning and what happened next. The ship spun around and Lucas suddenly saw nothing but an enormous wall in his viewscreen, a wall that shattered like china as they plowed directly through it. Lucas was almost pitched off his seat, barely held in place by ill-fitting restraints meant for a much larger creature. His stomach dropped as the ship fell a few stories and hit the ground with a jarring thud that shook Lucas to his core and made his ears ring.
His controls were unresponsive, and only emergency lighting was flickering in the turret bay. Outside the viewscreen in front of him there was nothing but a mass of swirling smoke. Lucas unclipped his restraints and staggered to his feet. His helmet was nowhere to be seen, but Natalie had been flung into the glass in front of him. He scooped up the rifle and headed into the bowels of the ship. Comms were completely silent, though sporadic gunfire could still be heard outside. Lucas ran down the hall and saw an electronic panel in flames as thick smoke filled the corridor. Would the ship be able to get airborne again after this?
“Asha … Asha,” he called in between coughs into his armor’s communicator, but was met with silence. He stumbled around the dimly lit corridors of the ship, and had to bring up a display of the craft to understand just where the hell he was and where he was trying to go in the unfamiliar vessel.
Eventually he pried open a stuck set of doors and found himself staring at a large collection of Guardians, along with Asha and Alpha, all assembled in a large storage bay with a massive door at one end. He breathed a sigh of relief, but that sparked another fit of coughing as his lungs were still inundated with smoke.
“What’s going on?” he managed to get out as all eyes turned to him.
Alpha was dressed in a full set of Xalan power armor, which made him look far more menacing than usual. He spoke first.
“A [garbled] strike hit the [garbled] and we now need a period of time to perform repairs.”
The exact specifics escaped Lucas through the mistranslation, but he got the idea.
“Here? Now?”
Maston was uneasy.
“We have no time to debate this. Xalan forces are amassing outside as we speak.”
“Defend the ship for as long as you are able,” said Alpha. “I will stay back and assist with repairs, which can hopefully be made with haste.”
“Where are the Oni?” Asha asked.
Alpha looked grave.
“We lost communication with them some time ago. We must assume they met with some form of resistance.”
Gunfire was growing louder, and it could be heard striking the hull outside.
“We’re moving out, now,” Maston said emphatically.
“Agreed,” Alpha said. “I will inform you of our progress once I can bring communication systems back online.”
He exited through a door in the rear of the room, and all eyes turned to Maston.
“Form up!” he bellowed. “Position 202!”
The formations Lucas had learned on the Spear rushed back into his mind. Yes, he’d failed his final exam, but that didn’t matter now. He took his place down on one knee in a line of Guardians with their weapons pointed toward the exit bay doors. A row stood behind them, their weapons facing forward as well. Asha was right next to Lucas, and Maston stood behind the pair of them. In the corner, the newly cycloptic Kiati ran her hand through a cluster of floating controls.
It seemed like an eternity as the bay door opened; the wall became a ramp that slowly descended from the ceiling on a path to make contact with the earth. As it did, the smoke cleared and they could see what lay before them outside.
They were on the ground level of the base, and there were dozens, hundreds of Xalan troops standing or crouching with energy weapons leveled at them. The remains of the spaceport were crumbling or blazing around them, ravaged by their airstrike. The two groups eyed each other, neither daring to fire first, but it was clear who had the upper hand. The Guardians were cornered and vastly outnumbered. This is about to get ugly.
A tall Xalan with slate-gray skin strode toward them. Lucas recognized that his armor had the Xalan symbol for “Commander” on the breast, embossed in gold. He pointed at them and began snarling unintelligibly. A call for surrender? Four other menacing Xalans strode to take places at his side, their armor’s markings implying they were lieutenants of some sort. The hundreds that surrounded them started creeping slowly forward. Were they trying to capture them? Lucas could only imagine what horrors lay ahead if they were taken alive rather than slain here and now. But the Guardians would never let that happen. Neither would Asha. Neither would he.
Maston raised his hand, and when it dropped, all hell would be unleashed on the army in front of them. He held it aloft for five seconds, then ten, then—
Down the central road running through the base, they heard a loud groan at the opposite end of the spaceport. The colossal gate that stood there was slowly opening, and a dull roar could be heard from up ahead.
The Xalan troops started to look around nervously, not wanting to switch their focus away from the phalanx of Sorans in front of them. One of the lieutenants made the bold move of pivoting fully around to see what was going on, his back turning toward them. When he saw what approached, he let out a loud yell that caused nearly everyone to turn around, the commander included.
Two Xalans near the rear of the assembly took plasma rounds to the head and slumped over. One caught a spear through his heart while a half dozen more were pelted with arcing arrows. Through the legions of troops in front of him, Lucas could see what was plowing through them. In the distance, the dark skin and white tattoos of the Oni were unmistakable.
The Xalan commander turned back to the Guardians, stretched out his claw, and yelled something that assuredly meant “fire.” But as he did so, the lieutenant who had been the first to turn around pulled out an energy pistol, leveled it at the commander’s temple, and pulled the trigger. The creature’s head exploded and the air became instantly misted with black blood. The other three lieutenants couldn’t process what was happening, as one got a claw in the throat while the other two were dropped by another pair of headshots from the traitorous Xalan’s pistol.
The Guardians watched in confusion, Mas
ton’s arm still raised, as the Xalan lieutenant pulled out a red piece of cloth and shoved it into his upper arm’s plating. It was the sign of the resistance Zeta had told them to look out for. He was one of hers.
Maston’s arm fell. The entire area roared to life as gunfire was traded between armies. The Xalans had their attention split between the rampaging Oni and the Guardians before them, and it largely negated their advantage of numbers. The undercover Xalan dove out of the crossfire and proceeded to dismantle two other soldiers hiding behind a downed piece of a nearby building before bounding out of sight.
Lucas had set Natalie to full-auto mode, and he sprayed a constant stream of plasma out into the smoke. He connected with a trio of Xalans perched on a nearby rooftop, and they dropped from it like dead birds after the rounds had pierced them.
“Forward!” came the order from Maston, and the group all stood up and marched out of the loading bay into the street ahead, continuing to fire without a second’s rest. Out in the open, without adequate protection, their close proximity was making them easy targets, and a few Guardians took hits and went down. Lucas expected Maston’s next order from their training exercises.
“Break!”
Their singular unit shattered into thirty-odd pieces, and the remaining Xalans lost their targets in the smoke and rubble. Guardians streamed into nearby buildings, and Lucas could hear the screams of the Xalans being butchered within. It was time to start cleaning house. No one could be left to relay the attack to other bases in the area or in orbit. The facility’s communications were being jammed by Zeta presently, but that effect would dissipate once they left. If they left, rather, as looking behind them, their downed ship, buried in a collapsed building, didn’t exactly look like it was going anywhere. But there were larger tasks at hand.
Lucas sprinted forward down the street, making sure to keep Asha in his view through the chaos. Natalie’s barrel retracted, the gun shifting into close-range shotgun mode forever identified by the Xalan symbol for “carnage.” And carnage was exactly what it created as it blew apart Xalan troops left and right on the road, shredding armor and flesh and bone alike.
Asha, meanwhile, had her own way of dealing with close-quarters combat. Her guns were holstered and she grasped her black-bladed sword tightly in her hands. Lucas could barely keep up as she sprinted down the street, leaping over craters formed by their own assault with the prison ship. She cleaved the legs of one soldier, then whipped the blade around to slice through the midsection of another. Dodging a blast leveled from a nearby rooftop, she flung her sword at the culprit. As it struck him in the chest, she drew her Magnum and put a pair of fission rounds into the face of the soldier in front of her. A slight flex of her wrist caused her sword to shoot out of the dead Xalan on the roof and race back into her hand as fast as the electromagnetism in her wristband could propel it. Once reunited, she used it to removed the head of a nearby trooper whose attention was directed toward Lucas.
Lucas watched the decapitated soldier sink down to the ground and blasted through a lanky Xalan ahead of him. His constant use of the carnage setting was causing Natalie to overheat, something he’d never actually encountered before with the revamped weapon, though he’d never been in a firefight this intense. He shouldered the rifle as steam poured out of its cracks and unholstered his sidearm and knife from his chestplate. As he did so, a round whizzed by his ear and, touching it, he found sticky red blood on his black-gloved fingers. Still running forward, they were approaching a cluster of Xalans who had their backs turned to them and were focused on the marauding Oni warriors ahead. Lucas popped off two shots from his energy pistol, dropping a pair of unaware soldiers, and he sank his knife into the spinal column of another who howled as he collapsed to the ground, paralyzed. Whipping the knife out, Lucas flicked it into its elongated machete form and swung it around where it buried itself in another Xalan’s throat. The resulting spray drenched Lucas in black blood, though at that point his armor was already slick with it. The latest kill drew the attention of another cluster of a half dozen troops, two of which proceeded to eat a pair of plasma rounds while three more were carved up by Asha’s blade from behind before they could fire a shot. The final soldier was dragged away with his head clamped in the jaws of a nearby bloodwolf.
Lucas spun around to shoot another Xalan, but as he turned, found he was half a second behind and there was a barrel already pointed at his unfortunately unarmored head. Lucas’s stomach felt like he’d just fallen off a building, but the gun didn’t fire. Rather, the Xalan gave him a curt nod, and Lucas saw the red cloth tied around his arm. Another insider. Perhaps the same one from earlier. It was hard to tell.
The creature flinched and cracked off a shot that nearly deafened Lucas, but he quickly saw a Xalan soldier writhing around behind him, having caught the round in the neck. Asha stuck her sword through his chest, causing him to go still, and looked up at the resistance fighter. But he was already gone, having disappeared into the smoke to continue the fight elsewhere.
The remaining Xalans were retreating now, but they were caught on one side by the Guardians and the other by the Oni. Lucas looked up and saw Axon on a rooftop, clutching an enormous spinning plasma cannon, raining down brimstone on the confused troops attempting to flee into the building beneath him. Through the haze on the road, Lucas saw Toruk burst forth in full war regalia, impaling a Xalan on his spear before riddling another two soldiers with plasma rounds from his rifle. Retracting the spear, he thrust the blunt end backward into another Xalan’s midsection and then whipped around, the razor’s edge opening the creature’s throat from a solid eight feet away.
Lucas felt a jolt as someone grabbed his shoulder plate, but as he spun around with his machete, he saw it was Maston.
“You, you, and you,” he said, motioning to Lucas, Asha, and Toruk. “Come with me.”
Maston was flanked by a quartet of Guardians whose helmets were hiding their identities. All were covered in a thick coat of dust and blood.
“Where to?” Lucas shouted over the roar of the battle that surrounded them.
“Central comms hub. Insurance,” Maston yelled back. He looked free from injury, but blood was seeping through the bandage on his shoulder where his armor had been torn away.
Something exploded a few dozen feet away and they were showered with bits of metal and stone that stung like wasps. It was enough to motivate them to head inside, and they followed Maston into a burning building that already had dead Xalans lining the corridor.
Maston kept checking his wrist readout, and the group wove up and down narrow halls and ascended oversized staircases to higher levels. Occasionally they passed a shattered window that showed the fighting raging outside.
From around the corner ahead came the dull thumps of plasma bursts, and as Lucas rounded it he saw the corpses of two unarmored Xalans freshly killed by Maston’s Guardian escort. One stirred briefly and Asha barely glanced downward as she put a round in his skull while she stepped over him.
When they reached the top of yet another staircase, they came upon a vast room full of blinking consoles and loud alarms. Inside were a half dozen Xalans attempting to use the unresponsive equipment. They all turned to look at the group that had just entered the room. The terror on their faces was unmistakable, regardless of their species.
Only three had weapons anywhere near them, and Maston shot the first two before they could reach their rifles. The third went down to one of the other Guardians, and the other three attempted to flee toward the rear door. Lucas let off a pair of shots with the now cooled-down Natalie that connected with the lower back of the closest one. Asha hit another in the arm, knocking him off balance and sending him crashing into a nearby desk. But before either could take further action, Toruk was already hurdling a holotable in front of them. He landed on the back of the one Lucas had shot, driving his spear into his chest. He then leapt over a workstation and brought the spear around, which planted itself into the neck of the second Xa
lan clutching his wounded arm. Finally, just as the third fleeing creature reached the door, the spear shot into his back, pinning him to the metal after a powerful throw from Toruk a solid fifty feet away.
The rest of the room stood silent after the display of murderous athleticism. Toruk ignored their stares and set about pulling a claw from each of the three dead bodies, which he then threaded onto his necklace.
Maston was also walking around, but not to collect trophies. Rather, he was planting explosive satchel charges on the most important-looking pieces of equipment.
“So this is it?” Lucas asked.
Maston nodded as he set another charge, this one fixed to the base of the holotable. “The bulk of their long-range broadcasting equipment is in here. If we detonate it all, it shouldn’t matter that our jamming signal fades after we leave.”
Lucas jumped as one of the Guardians took a shot at a Xalan who had the misfortune of stumbling into the room. The creature promptly crumbled into a heap at the doorframe. The soldier holstered her pistol, removed her helmet, and ran her gloved hand through her wet red hair.
“How many of those are you planting?” Kiati asked, her one remaining eye glaring intently around the room.
“Eight should do it,” Maston said as he finished activating the final device. The alarms kept blaring, and the entire room was a strobe of white and red lights. When Maston finished, he motioned toward the rear door and the group moved out as Toruk removed his spear from the entryway. Rather than go out the way they came, they kept moving up until they reached the light of the open air. They spilled out onto a roof and, following Maston’s lead, sprinted across the surface until they were a solid thousand feet away from where they’d emerged. Across the chasm of the street below they saw where the prison ship lay buried in the side of a structure. A contingent of Oni had surrounded it and were fending off advances from Xalan troops. Lights were starting to flicker inside the craft.
