Galactic Champion 2

by Dante King

  “Try to find spots in the woods that will ensure the guards can see the flames, but not so close that they can see you. And watch out for their red-eyed guard dogs. I have a feeling they can see in the dark better than any of us.”

  Skrew rubbed his hands together. “Skrew will set fires, yes. Fires to make Jacob proud. Like when little, but better.”

  Beatrix’s face confirmed there was something off about sending a pyromaniac to start fired, one who was so glad to do it too. It was a dangerous plan, but it was the only one we had.

  “Skrew,” I whispered, “when you’re done, make your way back to this area. We’ll use the quarry as our escape route. The guards would do anything to avoid igniting it, let alone firing their own energy weapons into it. And so would we. Once a fire like that starts, it could burn for a hundred years. There’s no way to put it out, and every ounce of coal will be consumed.

  “But the people will need it after we free the planet. They’ll need every bit of energy they can get their hands on, and it will be a resource they can use for trade. Do you understand?”

  The vrak nodded, squinted his eyes in what probably counted for mischief, and snuck away to go cause mayhem.

  There were three coal piles. The one close to the silent conveyor looked strong enough to support our weight.

  A thunderous explosion rocked the ground as a bright orange glow illuminated the night sky and the sparse clouds. I was worried the vrak had killed himself, until a second explosion tore through the atmosphere and sent the guards and four red-eyed robots charging toward the noise.

  A third explosion almost knocked the guard in the nearby tower from his post. It was time, and since the guard was leaning out from under the roof of his tower, I could clearly see his head. Reaver snatched a rock from the coal pile and threw it. The projectile slammed into the guard’s head, and he toppled over, impaling himself on the fence.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered as I drew Ebon and hopped onto the conveyor with my team behind me.

  A quick glance to my right confirmed that Skrew’s plan was working. The fires were about a hundred yards from the fenceline but were growing rapidly. It would take everything the guards had to put them out.

  As the conveyor carried us toward the main building, the two white spotlights illuminated a fire the guards were attempting to put out. If only the machine with the spotlights came close enough to the fires for me to see its silhouette… but I couldn’t risk falling off, I had to concentrate on our rickety transport. I gritted my teeth and let the conveyor carry me and my team into the building.

  The air inside was sweltering. Two huge boilers took up almost half the space with pipes and wires crisscrossing the ceiling and walls. In the center of it all was the dump site for the coal. It looked like the slaves had done a lot of work the day before, the pile coming only a yard short of the conveyor.

  A mass of slaves were shifting the coal in wheelbarrows while a group of one-eyed guards watched on. They were armed with energy rifles, and one even had a whip.

  On the right side of the building, two metal objects resembling ship’s wheels were mounted horizontally on the ground. Pipes ran in all directions but converged at a shiny dome. From the top of the dome rose a cylinder that moved up and down in a steady rhythm as slaves turned the two wheels. The slaves were being used not only to mine the coal but to pump water that would be boiled to turn turbines.

  I’d seen enough.

  A quick nod from Reaver and Beatrix confirmed they were ready. I jumped from the conveyor, landing halfway down the massive pile of coal, then immediately rolling and springing to my feet. A one-eyed guard spun to face me and grabbed for my throat, but I ducked and swiped at his leading leg with Ebon. The limb came off at the knee, and I skewered his skull with another strike.

  The others had made their way down behind me and had spread out. Just when I looked, a guard raised his rifle to Beatrix and fired. In an instant, she raised her glowing hammer, and the red hyphen of energy struck it. It didn’t burn through, and it didn’t bounce. Instead, the hammer glowed a little more brightly as it absorbed the enemy projectile. Then, Beatrix rolled forward and struck a guard hard in his knee with her hammer. The joint exploded in a gory shower of flesh and blood, but before the guard could cry out, Beatrix had reversed her swing and smashed his head into his chest cavity.

  I blocked a swing from a guard and opened his stomach with my sword. His rifle clattered to the ground, and as I spun round to find my next target I spotted a figure among the prisoners. Yaltu had made her way over there and was trying to free them from the chains binding them to the wheels. Most were human, but there were several other species I didn’t recognize. Most kept pushing their wheels, afraid to do anything else.

  The guard with the whip joined the fight. I wasn’t worried about the whip until he activated its power source and turned it into a flaming snake. He cracked the whip, and I dodged out of the way. The guard calmly marched forward, the snaking weapon crackling. As I dodged and blocked the squirming lash, its owner began to make a noise.

  At first, it sounded like he was coughing up a hairball. But as the sound grew in intensity, I recognized it for what it was: he was laughing.

  Another guard was trying to sneak up behind me. Whether he meant to punch me in the back of my head or hold me for the one wielding the whip, I never found out. As soon as he was close enough, I turned and removed his head with a decisive slice. As the severed head topped to the ground, I returned my focus to the other guard. His whip flashed forward, and I spun aside a split second before it would have cracked open my skull.

  “You sure you want to use that around here?” I gestured to the tall pile of coal behind me. “Sure would be a shame if you hit this instead of me, wouldn’t it?”

  I couldn’t make out whether the creature had ears, but he glanced down at his glowing whip, then to the huge pile of coal, and hissed at me.

  “Where’s the priestess?” I asked him. “Tell me, and I’ll let you join your friends outside to put out the fires.”

  The guard snarled at me in return.

  Beatrix and Reaver had dealt with the other guards, and now surrounded the final enemy alongside me. He hissed at Beatrix and bared his teeth in her direction.

  I took advantage of his momentary distraction to press my attack. I came in high, telegraphing my move and forcing the guard to block high. As soon as I hit the ground I stepped to the side, spun Ebon vertically, and ran him through. I snatched the falling whip from the air before it could ignite the residual coal, crushed it in my hand, and tossed it.

  “Everyone out!” I ordered the slaves. “Now!”

  If these guards didn’t manage to put out the fires Skrew was lighting they weren’t worth half their wages, but I couldn’t risk turning the slaves into the victims of the guards’ possible failure.

  The guard with the whip was still alive, and he groaned on the floor as blood escaped his body. I remembered Yaltu’s pheromones and gestured her to come.

  “Can you use your pheromones?” I asked. “Make him tell us where the priestess is?”

  “I can try,” she said as she knelt him.

  She placed her hand on his forehead, and his eyes rolled over. He made a few grunts, and I figured he hadn’t said anything of importance, but Yaltu turned to me with a smile.

  “The priestess is inside a secondary building made of discarded electrical items,” she said. “They call it the Switchboard.”

  After checking for hostiles, I guided the slaves through the main entrance to the quarry outside. An elderly human seemed confused by my urgency, the sword, and the dead guards. I quickly gave up trying to talk him into leaving and resorted to picking him up and throwing him over my shoulder. He grunted once but didn’t fight back.

  When I made it outside, two of the slaves lay dead on the ground.

  “Sniper got them,” Reaver said quickly. “I got the sniper.”

  I looked at the nearest guardtower and saw the
blood splattered across the wall inside.

  “I think we’re going to have to cut a hole in the fence and turn the slaves loose,” Reaver said. “We can’t protect so many people.”

  “Agreed.”

  I ran to the bars and hacked at them with Ebon. When enough bars had been cut, I kicked the grid free. Most of the prisoners ran, but the old man was rooted to the ground as he marveled at the chaos surrounding him.

  “Yaltu!” I said, turning to her. “He won’t move. I don’t want to leave him. Can you do anything?”

  She looked from me to the old man, studied him for a second, then placed her hand over his face. After a few seconds of concentration, she removed her hand. The old man looked like he’d just woken from a bad dream and cowered from my team.

  “Go with him,” I ordered. “Get him moving, then go to the coal pile where I told Skrew to meet us. If the fire gets too bad, head into the woods. We’ll find you.”

  She nodded and grabbed the old man by his hand. “Come with me!”

  She tugged at his arm until he had no choice but to get moving, and they disappeared into the darkness.

  Thankfully, the guards were all too busy fighting the fires to hinder the slaves from fleeing.

  I turned to head back to the powerplant when I noticed the corpse of the guard Reaver had shot out of the tower lying by my feet. There was something small and shiny attached to his head. I bent down and pulled it off. It felt like it had been attached magnetically. It vibrated in my hand, stopped, then vibrated again. When I touched the item to my own head, I thought I could hear something. I moved it to the bone behind my ear and was sure: it was a communications device that transmitted sound by vibrating the bones in the head. I didn’t understand what I was hearing, though, so I removed it and stuck it in my pocket. It might come in handy later.

  Finding the communicators gave me an unexpected problem I hadn’t thought of. There were three of us who needed to be able to shoot, move, and communicate. Five, if I counted Yaltu and Skrew. As far as I knew, only two of us, Reaver and I, were trained on how to use communications effectively in battle.

  I could smell and hear the fire in the woods. Judging by what I could see in the starlight, it looked as if the volume of smoke was diminishing, as was the density. The guards were succeeding.

  What I didn’t know, however, was how they were managing it. The intense flames from the burning bushes and trees would be impossible even for the tough-skinned aliens to get close to. I didn’t think they could tolerate more than a minute or two of 600-degree temperatures or higher.

  I scanned the dozen buildings for the Switchboard. My eyes settled on a two-story welded building with a railing that bordered a narrow walkway. Its rusted junctions were repainted cubes and angle iron pieces, cobbled together pragmatically.

  The first story appeared to be nothing more than power inverters, transformers, control boxes, and other devices I wasn’t familiar with. The second story was plain scrap metal. I was about to look to another building when I noticed a woman staring through a barred window. She looked like the other Ish-Nul. She had to be the priestess.

  “I’m going to grab the priestess,” I said.

  “You know where she is?” Reaver asked.

  “Yeah.” I turned to Beatrix. “Come with me. Reaver, take cover among the equipment here and secure the perimeter. Don’t let anyone sneak up on us.” I was worried that someone might approach from behind as soon as the fires were under control. The heat from the main generator fire was growing intense enough to cause spots on the big building to glow with the heat. It wouldn’t be long before—

  My thoughts were interrupted by a hissing explosion that sent a shockwave through my bones and rattled my teeth. One of the generator’s boilers must have exploded. The powerplant was still standing, but the walls and roof bulged outward, like a square balloon a child had started to inflate before becoming distracted.

  Reaver grabbed a three-foot-long rifle from a guard’s corpse. I figured it was some kind of sniper rifle. She took cover while the last of the slaves fled the powerplant.

  Beatrix and I ascended the metal stairs to the Switchboard building. I wondered how I’d greet the priestess. By the way the Ish-Nul had spoken of her, I expected she’d be elderly, frail, and very wise. So long as we didn’t run into any more trouble on our way out of the compound, either Beatrix or I could carry her back to her people. The guards would likely have enough to worry about just fighting the fires. We were almost done with the mission, and we’d delivered a devastating blow to the slavers. I felt a grim smile settle on my face.

  Beatrix and I made it to the doorway without any further trouble. I caught a glimpse of a near-extinguished fire through one of the barred windows. In perhaps a couple of minutes the guards would have realized it was a distraction for something happening inside the powerplant.

  When I arrived at a locked door at the top of the stairs, I signaled Beatrix to approach cautiously; you never knew.

  “Well?” a sassy female voice suddenly said from behind the door, before I could even think of knocking. “What are you waiting for? As soon as the fires started, I got ready. I’ve been sitting here twiddling my toes, waiting for someone to finally make their way here and rescue me. Unlock the cell! Let’s go!”

  Beatrix raised her eyebrows and smiled. “I like her.”

  I laughed as I placed my foot on the metal by the lock and put all my weight behind it. The door buckled before crumpling. I grabbed the handle and tore the mangled door free of its hinges.

  The woman I saw standing in the dim light of a single electric bulb was neither toothless nor old. She was on the short side, maybe an inch or two over five feet. Her blond hair was collected into a tight ponytail on the crown of her head, but the hair stuck out at odd angles.

  She inspected us with almond-shaped green eyes before speaking. “You’re not Ish-Nul.”

  It was a statement of fact, not a question. Her small mouth and full lips pursed for a moment before relaxing.

  The priestess didn’t seem to be the spiritual guru I was expecting. She was also a lot younger than I’d expected, no older than mid-20s. I wondered why the Ish-Nul had called her a priestess. To me, she looked more like a scientist. She was dressed in the heavy but well-fitting clothes befitting a blacksmith, including a leather apron that almost reached the knees of her trousers. Her boots were leather as well, and little burn marks spotted them.

  I realized I was staring and cleared my throat. “My name is Jacob. This is Beatrix. Reaver is outside. Skrew and Yaltu will join us later. We’re here to rescue you.”

  “A pleasure!” she said with a gleeful yip. “I’m Nyna.”

  “Let’s go,” I said as I motioned for her to join us down the stairs.

  As Beatrix and I started to move, Nyna paused.

  “Oh, wait!” she exclaimed. “I forgot my tools! I can’t leave them!”

  Beatrix sighed deeply and rolled her eyes. “We will get more tools,” she said through gritted teeth. “Leave them!”

  “No,” the priestess snapped from somewhere deep in her prison cell.

  I could hear her shoving boxes over and metal things bouncing and rolling across the floor. A moment later, she reappeared with a colorful leather backpack and a smile.

  “I’ve been hiding these from the rushada guards. The guards are tough, but they’re also stupid. I probably could’ve left them out in the open, even told them what they were, and I still could’ve kept them.”

  I wanted to be angry at the delay, but her mischievous smile was infectious. It wasn’t infectious enough for Beatrix, though. That woman was all business.

  Beatrix made it clear she’d had enough talking by marching down the stairwell. I motioned for the priestess to take a position in the middle while I took the rear. Reaver emerged from her cover as soon as I got to the bottom, and we assumed a diamond formation with the priestess in the center.

  “Nyna, this is Reaver,” I said. “Reaver,
Nyna.”

  Reaver grunted while the priestess beamed. She seemed not at all frightened by her circumstances.

  We turned to the hole I’d cut in the fence—toward our escape—when the pair of spotlights I’d seen earlier landed on us. The brightness momentarily blinded me, but a half-second later, my eyes adjusted, and I saw the source of the illumination.

  They were two lights shoulder-mounted on a mechanical giant standing more than eight feet tall. Black-, silver-, and copper-colored pipes zigzagged across its bulky torso. Two arms ended in fists the size of my torso and two smaller arms shook like a beetle’s antennae. Surrounding one arm was a massive gun ringed with barrels, each connected to each other like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. The mech’s legs were protected by armored plating and buzzed with electric motors and servos.

  The mech had us exactly where it wanted us: out in the open and unprepared.

  “Oh,” Nyna said with a snap of her fingers. “I knew I forgot to mention something.”

  “Was it this mech?” Reaver asked.

  “Actually… it’s a golem.”

  Chapter Five

  I scooped up Nyna with one arm as Reaver charged the mech, firing her rifle from her hip as she ran. Her target was too close for anything else, and though the weapon was slow to fire, it left red blotches on the machine’s armor.

  At first, I thought she might be panicked, because each of her shots hit somewhere else. The first struck the hip joint. The second blasted the elbow of the smaller arm. The third hit dead center. But she was looking for a weak spot.

  As I came to a sliding stop under the building, I lost sight of Beatrix. She’d cut around to the mech’s left side as it tried to follow her. It was a good way to divide its attention, and would at least buy enough time for me to rejoin them.

  “Stay here,” I told the priestess as I set her down gently but quickly.

  “But I can help,” she pleaded.

  “I’m sure you can, but stay here for now. We came here just for you, and if you get hurt or killed, then this was all for nothing.”