Apex

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Hundreds of us have already died fighting to save you, she reminded him. And the rest of us will do the same if we have to. You . . . must . . . live. Nothing else matters.

  Riax spat out the water he’d sucked in when Ella punched him as the oxygen being absorbed through his skin circulated throughout his body and the resultant carbon dioxide slowly refilled his lungs with air.

  Circumstances forced me to stand by and do nothing while my ­people were systematically exterminated, Riax told her angrily, but he was no longer resisting. ­People are being killed all around us and I really feel like returning the favor.

  I share your anger, but there will be a time for vengeance later. Focus on survival now. Our fleet will come. We have to hide out until then.

  She felt his body go slack beneath her knee and sensed his mind capitulate as well.

  Block it out, she told him, feeling his distress at the deaths he was sensing. Though not as powerful as him, she could feel them too, but her primary objective was to keep him safe and her emotions braced around that singular purpose. I’ll keep watch.

  No, he told her, barely as a whisper in her mind. I may not be able to stop it from happening, but I will not ignore it.

  Ella took her knee off him and swam down until her chest was on his back and wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace, sensing the conflicting emotions within him. She opened her own thoughts up to him as a counterbalance, with her emotional protectiveness continually reinforcing his conviction that this was the right course of action, no matter how hard it was to endure.

  They both stayed safe on the bottom of the pool for hours, listening to the horrors occurring throughout the ship.

  Chapter 35

  WAKE UP! ELLA’S voice echoed through Riax’s mind.

  The Human stirred, lazily realizing he was still underwater and had somehow fallen asleep. His next thought was to congratulate himself for somehow holding onto his nose pinch while losing consciousness, then he noticed that his skin had lost the green and reset to its normal lightly tanned hue.

  Wake up, Riax! she repeated, jostling him for emphasis.

  I’m here. How long was I out?

  I don’t know, it doesn’t matter now. I can feel Cres nearby.

  Riax shook off his haze, realizing that Ella was still lying on top of him. There was no way he should have fallen asleep, though he did admit he was a bit punch-­drunk from the telepathic chaos. But still he shouldn’t have nodded off.

  You knocked me out, didn’t you?

  I thought it better if you slept.

  Riax laughed in spite of himself. I can’t believe you did that.

  You’re welcome, she said sarcastically. What can you sense outside the ship?

  Riax sent a fluctuation through his mind to fully reawaken his senses, then reached out with his telepathy.

  There are Cres on board, he said, sending a copy of his sensory input to her mind. There were many, grouped together at three different boarding points, all currently engaged in combat . . . and given the little Nevari dots in his mind’s eye that were winking out he was fairly sure they were winning.

  Our fleet? Ella asked again.

  Riax expanded his senses outward, beyond the jumpship, and picked up clusters of dots, some Nevari, some Cres. All were moving about, and not in a holding pattern.

  They’re fighting on the ship and in space simultaneously, Riax said, his ire growing. Can I go now?

  Ella smirked, looking down at the back of Riax’s neck. He was such a smartass.

  She reached out with her mind and searched the park below. The hundreds of Nevari that had been there previously had dispersed, ostensibly to fight her brethren. Less than a hundred remained now, scattered about in small groups.

  Grab me a weapon?

  Gladly.

  Let’s go, she said, releasing him and swimming up to the surface. Riax flexed all of his body’s muscles then pulled his legs underneath him and pushed off the floor he’d been trapped on for far too long.

  Ella was already standing on dry ground by the time his head broke the surface. Instead of following her he swam toward the waterfall outlets and caught himself on the notches. He pulled himself up on top of one, grabbing onto a thick branch that most of the obscuring greenery was sprouting from.

  On my back, he said, mentally giving her an idea of what he had planned. Ella walked around the circumference and crawled along the branch, stepping from one notch point to another. When she got to Riax he knelt, balancing on a tiny foothold, as Ella climbed on piggyback.

  With her secure, he ducked under the branch and pushed through the vegetation, looking down over the falling water with a clear view of the collection pool beneath.

  Ready?

  Ready, she answered.

  Riax pushed off hard, dropping them both into freefall and angling away from the cascading water. When they’d dropped a hundred meters he gathered a blast of concussive energy beneath them and released it in a stream twenty five meters up, rapidly breaking their fall.

  They landed with a thump on dry ground just beyond the pool, with Riax’s legs crunching and inadvertently dumping Ella off to the side. She lithely rolled off and up to her feet, alert for nearby troops.

  Riax was slower to rise, deliberately taking his time as he searched the area. He spotted a group in a small encampment next to one of the nearer exits. Beyond them, deeper into the ship, he could sense the Cres troops advancing.

  His mind set on a target, Riax ran in that direction with Ella following two steps behind and one aside, giving her a clear view ahead as she paced him, but as he slowly accelerated past her maximum speed the Cres fell behind.

  By the time he got to the Nevari position Riax was running 78 kph and charged into the group as their attention was on guarding the exit from the opposite direction. Two of the thirteen noticed his approach moments before he reached them and brought their lachar rifles to bear, only to have them telekinetically ripped from their grips and tossed aside. A split second later he was in their midst and kicked one in its armored back, knocking it five meters through the air and into the wall next to the exit.

  Riax paused briefly, then blew out a ring of concussive energy around himself, knocking all of the Nevari back and scattering them like leaves.

  Ella watched his attack as she sprinted as fast as she could, still not to him yet. The Nevari picked themselves up, some slower than others, as Riax methodically beat down each of them, snapping limbs and necks in the process. One of their rifles flew up into the air in a long arc, coming down and intercepting Ella’s approach. She grabbed it on the run and shot the nearest Nevari in the head.

  KREN KNELT BEHIND a low wall, keeping his head down. He’d already lost shields twice from the damn Nevari snipers and was pretty sure his golden helmet had a good blast mark in it. Fortunately it hadn’t penetrated, but several other Cres troops lay dead next to him as a result of the ambush they’d just walked into.

  Far down the tall corridor the enemy had two levels of barricades set up. On the lower level was a contingent of troops holding one of the entrances to the city from the docking area. The approach was wide enough, with several outcroppings for cover along their advance, but when they’d moved ahead concealed snipers on a second tier balcony just above the barricades had popped up and mowed them down. They were out of effective range of the Cres assault rifles, and Kren’s squad didn’t have any snipers of their own. As far as he knew none of the boarding parties did.

  He’d tried to advance to closer cover, but the snipers were too good. He’d lost shields immediately the first time, and the second he’d lost another of his squad before he could even stand up. Right now he couldn’t even fall back, the snipers had him and two others pinned behind cover about twenty meters from the junction they’d come through.

  They couldn’t get a line of fire on him or
the others as long as they stayed put, so he’d just have to wait and keep his head down while the other teams hopefully breached through into the city and circled around to flank the blockade. He’d communicated their predicament to the others and was lightly monitoring their progress as he waited. None of the teams nearby were close to getting through yet, but he’d just gotten a report that another boarding party had made it into the interior on the other side of the jumpship . . . which was going to do him no good in the immediate future.

  So it was with great surprise when he received a mental ping from a Cres on the other side of the barricades, letting them know that she was incoming and friendly.

  His two squadmates exchanged glances with him, readying themselves to exploit any opening the flanker could provide them. She wasn’t quite there yet, but her movements were quick, so she must not have been encountering any . . .

  All of a sudden there was a disturbance behind the barricades and the Nevari scrambled about, two of them being thrown up and over the red armored panels and into the Cres’s line of fire. Kren resisted the urge to move . . . the snipers were still in position above the fray.

  The red blockades blew apart, falling forward with several armored bodies following them. Out of it all walked an individual of a race Kren couldn’t identify. It was unarmored and unarmed, and the Cres had no idea what it was doing, but it had succeeded in breaking through the lower blockade.

  Inexplicably the snipers jumped out from cover on the second level and fell to the ground . . . which was the opportunity they had been waiting for. Nevin beat him to the punch, jumping up and over the low barricade he had been hiding behind and sprinted to the next. Kren followed a split second later with neither of them drawing any return fire.

  The three Cres quickly advanced down the corridor and saw an unarmored kinsman emerge from behind the man and shoot the snipers multiple times. They made mental contact with her and confirmed each other’s identities before approaching.

  Two of the commandos passed them by and advanced to the barricades, securing the position and policing the bodies. They retrieved the fallen sniper rifles and stashed them aside the barricades, in case they’d have need of them later.

  Kren stopped to deal with Ella and Riax, but the Human just walked right past him as more Cres combat squads were informed of the open passage to the interior of the ship and were diverted their way. Six more Cres rounded the corner and jogged up the long corridor to join the others on point, but they stopped to look at Riax as he knelt down next to the two Cres bodies and began searching one of them.

  Ella, where’s the armor release? he asked as a second squad approached with a medic.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Kren said angrily, grabbing Riax by the arm.

  A second later the Cres found himself knocked against the side wall and pinned there by an invisible force.

  “Stand down!” Ella yelled at him as she stepped forward and knelt over the body, showing Riax where the manual release was on the neck. The medic arrived and examined the other a meter to the right.

  “That one’s gone,” he pronounced, and Ella could feel that he was dead as well. The other was still barely hanging onto life.

  The armor on the dead one retracted into a vest with three glaring holes in the chest and a mess of purple blood. Riax pulled the damaged armor off the Cres and tossed it aside, then tore his uniform shirt open, expanding on the holes the lachar blasts had created.

  Kren felt the invisible hand on his chest dissipate and he reflexively took a step forward. “What is . . .”

  “He’s Human,” Ella told everyone, giving them a quick mental snapshot of their archaeological mission, the discovery of the artifacts, the battles they’d fought to escape with the cargo, and the time they’d spent on the run culminating in the attack on the jumpship.

  “That’s not possible,” Kren said, wavering.

  Ignoring their confrontation, Riax placed a hand in the center of the dead Cres’s chest and the other on his forehead, then closed his eyes and concentrated. “Ella, watch my back.”

  Instinctively she reached out with her senses and turned about, scanning the corridor for any possible threats while standing behind him and blocking the obvious firing lines with her body.

  The medic injected the living commando with a small vial and momentarily took his eyes off his patient to look at Riax. A second later the dead body jerked and inhaled deeply . . . with its mental presence returning.

  Riax kept his hands in place and a telekinetic hold on the man as he partially healed his wounds, stopping the blood flow and repairing enough tissue that would allow him to recover fully later.

  All the Cres standing there, including a second combat squat that had joined them in the interim, were shocked senseless. Meanwhile Riax let go of the first downed commando and crawled over to the second that the medic was treating. His helmet had been retracted, but the armor was still otherwise deployed. The Human didn’t bother retracting it, and reached a hand down and placed it on his neck.

  In mind’s eye, the Cres medic watched as the neural patterns of the wounded commando increased to the point of consciousness, then Riax released his contact and pointed to the nearest two standing commandos.

  “Take your armor off,” he ordered in Terran, further convincing them all that Ella had spoken the truth. The commandos, however, didn’t move a muscle.

  “Do as he says,” Ella said, intervening. “Impossible or not, he is Human, he is here, and he outranks us all. Take off your armor, now!”

  There was a slight standoff, but the two Cres eventually relented, retracting their armor and pulling the vests off over the heads as Riax stood and looked around at all the gold-­clad warriors, saying nothing. When the nearest of the commandos had his armor off Riax grabbed the vest from him and slid it over his own head, receiving some less than pleasant thoughts in return from Kren and a ­couple of the others. The commando he’d taken it from, however, merely looked on, curious to see what he would do next.

  Riax telekinetically tugged the other armored vest away from its owner and flung it back to Ella, who deftly plucked it out of the air as the onlookers were thrown into another wave of disbelief. “Give her your weapon,” Riax said as he searched for the telepathic interface. It was crude, but simple in design. He mentally hit the activation sequence and the vest spread out in segments, quickly covering his entire body in golden plating and thick energy shields.

  Ella, now equally clad in protective gold armor, took the assault rifle offered to her as the other commando offered his to Riax.

  “No,” the Human said, retracting his helmet. “Keep your weapon. You two will escort the wounded back and begin spreading the word of my presence. Any clusters of heavy Nevari resistance are to be reported to me and contained until I arrive to break them up. Understood?”

  “Yes, Darmek,” one of the two said, granting him the Cres honorific for ‘General’ that they reserved only for Humans.

  Riax nodded and mentally signaled them to get moving as he stepped out of the way and over to Ella while they assisted the wounded and disoriented commandos to their feet. He looked into her armored faceplate, seeing his own golden reflection. “I need to remove the gloves.”

  The golden warrior took a step forward and grabbed his wrist, touching and twisting a small panel. The armored glove retracted into his forearm plate in response.

  “Thanks,” Riax said, copying the process on his other hand and opening the passageways to release his bioplasma if needed. He paused for a moment and closed his eyes again, recalibrating his senses and summoning a ripple of concussive energy around his body, making sure that it was manifesting outside the armor rather than at his skin. He didn’t want to blow the armor off himself in the process.

  He released a small amount as a test, and succeeded in calibrating his release to compensate for the armor, but
the blast wave impacted his shields, draining them and not passing through. Frustrated by the incompatibility of Cres technology with his physiology, he reached for and found the mental on/off switch for his armor’s shields, seeing that its rate of sequence was a bit slow. He toggled it off, released a small forearm blast against the wall, then reactivated his shields, cringing at the slight delay.

  It would do.

  He looked up at the stationary Cres. Another two combat squads had appeared behind the others and were waiting to see what he did next.

  “I have point,” he announced, then gestured towards Ella. “She has operational command. I’ll break up and disrupt their formations, then you pick up the pieces.”

  Riax turned towards the blockades where the two Cres commandos were still on station and deployed his golden helmet. Let’s move.

  He took off running slowly, with Ella on his shoulder. The rest of the commandos followed neatly behind in pairs, ready for action.

  Chapter 36

  WORD OF THE Human’s presence and his death being the objective of the Nevari attack spread quickly across the jumpship, and eyewitness accounts of his combat prowess quelled most doubts as to the truth of his existence, but Jalek needed to see for himself. Ever since he’d been ordered to deploy his troops on the jumpship he’d been wondering what in the galaxy would have possessed the Nevari to seize it inside Cres territory.

  If a Human were present that would explain their nearly suicidal actions, but it’d been 16,000 years since they’d been eradicated. What were the odds that one had survived all this time? He’d heard Ella’s story, retransmitted from mind to mind until it made its way back to the commander of the boarding parties, but part of him still couldn’t fathom it being true, while another part of him desperately hoped that it was.