by James Somers
Tiet removed his blade, ignited it and hammered into the viewing window. It scarred the material, but did not penetrate.
“You’ll be working a while to get through that stuff Tiet. It’s made to withstand a large freighter explosion if need be,” said Wynn.
The heavy doors they had come through began to ring with pounding coming from the other side. “They’ve found us!” shouted Grod as he prepared his plasma weapon for a final showdown.
“Wait men,” said Wynn. “If I’m correct we can follow this back hallway through this control station and we’ll find a corridor that is supposed to lead to a small fighter bay. It must be a reserve hangar just for personal fighter craft?”
He pulled the map down to take with them. The doors began to glow from heat being put to it from the creatures beyond.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Tiet as he and Grod jumped the counter to join Wynn. He led them through the control station area according to the schematic. Hopefully they wouldn’t encounter more predators along the way.
☼
EMIL helped Mirah to get Ramah situated in the single patient bed in the Equinox’s med-bay. They strapped her in securely as the rumble of the engines increased in intensity—they were taking off.
“I’d better get up front and help Kale,” said Emil.
“Do you have to go right now?” asked Ramah, half dazed from her medications.
“You’ll be fine now,” he said. “You’ve got a great doctor looking out for you.”
He smiled and acknowledged Mirah and then turned to head up to the bridge.
“Emil?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for saving my life.”
“You’re very welcome,” he replied, smiling again.
Emil headed on through the main corridor quickly as pounding noises began to resonate through the hull. When he reached the bridge, Merab and Jael were with Kale as he brought the ship up off of the tarmac.
“Let’s get those shields up!” he shouted. “We’ve got some of them on the hull!”
“I’ve got it!” said Merab.
Beyond the main bridge window, he could see hundreds of ships clamoring into the air trying to get away from the aerogores. They were raining fire down upon the smaller ships that were vulnerable to such an attack and others were almost completely covered by the beasts as they tried to rip through the hull armaments to get at the people inside. The larger ships, some that were much bigger than the Equinox, were shielded and impervious to the creature’s attacks. Nevertheless, evacuation was still necessary.
Emil took a seat at the communication and science station next to Kale. “Let’s see who’s leading this parade.”
He tapped into the rebel’s coded frequency, still in the computer’s memory from recent communications, and found one particular ship, the Maelstrom, apparently leading the others out.
“It looks like the lead ship has opened whatever gateway is up ahead in the huge escape tunnel down at southern end.”
“They must have had power feeding it from another source,” said Jael.
Some of the smaller ships were colliding in the low light conditions and aerogore fire and smoke from some of the wreckage on the tarmac wasn’t helping the mess.
“We’ve got a long line to get out that way,” said Merab. “The smaller ships are getting bogged down behind those bigger vessels.”
“What about the transgate?” asked Emil.
A moment of epiphany swept the bridge as they all remembered the special capabilities of their ship.
“Do it,” said Kale. “Just put us above ground inside the city; we don’t want to leave the main group.”
“Calculating,” said Emil as he worked the controls frantically. “I’ve got it! I’m engaging transgate.”
Everything around the ship flashed. In a moment the murky scene of torn transports, fire and smoke was replaced by the brightness of day above ground. The sudden transport into sunshine was a little painful to the eyes, but still a welcome sight.
They could see that many of the ships were already on the surface, but there seemed to be no direction as to the intended destination for the group. Aerogores still mingled among them—the foul creatures weren’t giving up their prey so easily.
Suddenly, a massive burst of energy impacted with the side of a building near the place where the ships were emerging from the underground hangar. It shattered the old dilapidated structure to pieces.
“What is that?!” shouted Merab.
“My guess is that those Vorn cruisers are firing on us from the plains beyond the city,” said Emil.
“I’m picking up something else,” said Merab as he surveyed his scan readouts. “It looks like several hundred pods are heading this way from the same area beyond the city.”
“I’m taking us in,” said Kale. “Let’s see if we can provide some cover fire until everyone can get above ground.”
☼
BY the time the warrior trio reached the door to the corridor indicated on Wynn’s schematic, they were all winded. The aerogores were still somewhere behind them and continuing the chase.
“This is it,” said Wynn as he tried to make out the details in the low light.
Tiet ignited his weapon and proceeded to cut a portal through the electrically controlled door. As soon as the piece fell through, they were hit with a horrible odor coming from the corridor beyond.
“Oh man! What is that smell?”
“I know that odor,” said Grod. “It smells like an aerogore nesting site.”
He proceeded through the cut portal ahead of them, peering cautiously into the dark corridor before moving completely through. Wynn and Tiet were puzzled, but they followed their friend on through with their own weapons at the ready.
Something was squishing under their feet. Tiet lowered his lit blade to cast the glow on the floor. Oh great, droppings.
“Don’t slip,” said Wynn as he came up behind him.
He might have thought it funny if they weren’t potentially creeping toward their own deaths in the chamber up ahead. There was absolutely no light at all. They had seen the last of the emergency lighting back before entering this corridor. It seemed like no people had been in this remote corner of the base in years. He remained close enough to illuminate Grod’s back with his blade and Wynn was on his heels, but walking sideways against the wall to be sure nothing came at them from the darkness behind.
The horrible stench was only getting stronger as they approached what was supposed to be an auxiliary hangar with a clear designated opening to the outside, at least according to the map.
“Are you sure about this Wynn?” asked Tiet in a low whisper.
“This is what the schematic says. I only hope there are still ships stored down here.”
“And that they’re in working condition.”
Grod stopped ahead of them. “I think there are some controls here,” he whispered.
He stepped off to the side as the corridor opened up into the other room. They couldn’t see anything beyond the glow of Tiet’s blade. It appeared to be a vast chamber and descended downward beyond the railing they were standing near. Grod raised the computer display mounted in the forearm of his uniform and clicked the power on to cast some light on the panel he was looking at. He tapped a few keys on the board and it began to illuminate its own controls.
“Power is coming on,” said Tiet.
“They must have an alternate power source for this bay—good thinking on someone’s part,” said Wynn.
The self illuminating of the control panels began to run off of the panel before Grod and continued on many more along the walls of what appeared to be a control booth for the hangar. The overhead lights blinked on in the booth around them revealing an aerogore waking on the floor near Grod. It screeched and sprang toward the Horva general. He reflexively brought his glove up and swatted at the beast. Its powerful head knocked Grod into the air and over the railing as the lights continued to c
ome on inside the chamber.
Tiet was quick to slash into the beast. He got a strike to the aerogore’s face and barely recoiled ahead of its claws as it defended itself. He somersaulted over the reptile, driving his blade deep in between the beast’s shoulder blades into the heart as he went; landing against one of the control panels on the other side. He found a place of attachment and clung to the face of the panel as the aerogore went into a wild spasm and died.
Wynn was already at the railing searching for Grod. Tiet grabbed his blade as he jumped over the carcass and landed next to his elder.
“Help me!” shouted Grod as he hung from a lower portion of the railing that spiraled along the chambers outer wall.
The Barudii raised him safely with their thoughts, bringing him back to stand beside them.
“Thank you.”
The main lighting for the chamber was on now and they could see that it had been a great while since any humans had been to that portion of the base. There were droppings everywhere; especially along the bay floor below. There appeared to be twenty fighter craft in the bay, although the majority of the ships were ruined. Most appeared to have been used as aerogore play toys and were beaten and stripped apart; chewed on and defecated upon.
The men hurried along the ramp, cautiously investigating their surroundings for more predators. “It looks like the rest of them are all inside the base,” said Wynn.
“This is definitely a nest,” said Grod. “They love caves and places like this where they can rest undisturbed and then use the dark of night to hunt by.”
“How do you know so much about these things?” asked Tiet as they came to the tarmac at the lowest level.
“My campaigns with the Vorn military—we fought on several different worlds. The Vorn home-world of Demigoth also has aerogores indigenous to it.”
“That looks like the way out,” said Wynn, pointing to an orifice in the chamber above them.
“Now we just have to see if there are three working fighters in this mess.”
NINETEEN
MERAB was blasting away at the aerogores, but they were difficult targets to hit. Buildings were being blown to pieces around them by the big Vorn cruiser in the plains beyond Sector City and over a hundred pods were on their way to intercept their convoy of ships.
“I’ve got the Maelstrom!” shouted Emil over the noise of explosions. “Captain Viche is online!”
“Captain Viche, this is Kale Soone, the son of the king. We have to get everyone away from that cruiser firing on us from the eastern outskirts of the city.”
“I understand. We had better head west, away from them. There is a place we can regroup some distance from here; the valley of Sayir,” said Viche. “The other rebel forces were rendezvousing there already before coming on to Sector City. I will let them know our situation and have them wait for us there.”
“That sounds good. Please transmit the coordinates to the others while we try to provide some cover for you.”
“I’ll notify all of our ships,” said Viche. “Lord willing, we’ll see you there, young master. Maelstrom out.”
“The coordinates are coming through now,” said Emil.
“Good. Keep trying to raise my father. We’ve got to let him know where we are headed.”
“Those pods are closing in fast,” said Jael.
“Merab, send the scans of the pods into the auto-targeting system and set it to fire at will!”
“Kale, I’ve got your father online,” said Emil.
“Great!” he said, relieved that his father was safe. “Send him the coordinates for the valley and tell him we’ll be meeting the rest of our forces there.”
One of the larger vessels exploded a few miles away over the rooftops. The Vorn cruiser had found a nice sized target and obliterated it. The rest of the ships were filing steadily out of the city to the west, leaving behind the aerogores that had driven them out of the base. But the pods were almost to the others still trying to get above ground.
“I’m taking us right at them,” said Kale as he brought the Equinox to bear on their position.
He charged the ship toward the pod squadrons. The auto-tracking for the weapons systems came alive as the first pod was picked up by its sensors. Gun turrets all across the hull of the ship blazed into action, tracking and terminating the one man attack fighters.
The offensive attack was wreaking havoc on the orderly pod formations. They resembled swarming insects as they engaged the larger vessel plowing through their ranks.
“Hopefully, we can buy some time for the others to escape,” said Kale.
A blast hit the Equinox sending a booming shudder through the ship.
“What happened?!” shouted Jael.
“We’ve been hit by one of the cruisers,” replied Emil as he quickly sifted through the various alarms and information pouring onto his displays. “We’re losing the engine control systems!”
Kale was battling the controls to keep the ship stable. “I’m losing the helm!”
“How did they get through the shields so quickly?”
“Shield Frequency Capture… it’s a system that was developed for the cruisers back during the Baruk war,” said Emil as he tried to bring the engine control backups online. He tried to reroute power to auxiliary systems but everything was failing under the power load. “It’s no good, Kale—I can’t get helm control back up yet. I should have taken you up on letting me drive the next time.”
The ship was beginning to tumble out of control and lose altitude.
“Load the coordinates for Sayir and activate the transgate!” shouted Kale.
The Equinox’s shields bounced them off of the side of a burnt out sky scraper as they continued out of control in their descent.
“Man, I’m getting tired of landing upside down,” said Emil, frustrated.
“What’s going on up there?!” shouted Mirah through the intercom.
“Hold on Mother—it’s going to get rough!”
The ship began to tumble over again in its descent. The pods that had been engaged with the vessel were trying desperately to remove their selves from its path. The pavement was approaching fast. Emil hammered away at the computer controls from his upside down position strapped inside his flight chair.
“Talk to me, Emil!” shouted Kale desperately.
“It’s tricky! We don’t want to land on our backs somewhere else, you know?!”
Their flight chair harnesses strained against their bodies to hold them firmly in place. Kale hoped they were strapped in well enough in the med-lab.
“I’ve got it!” shouted Emil triumphantly.
The Equinox was enveloped in a pocket of bright light and vanished.
☼
TIET sat in the dusty mold infested cockpit of a relic. The ship was Barudii made, a predecessor of the Viper class aerial fighter. He completed the login of the coordinates that had been transmitted by Emil from the Equinox. He powered up the engines and they gave only a slight choke before coming online fully. Boy, these were well made.
A few ships down, Grod had his fighter’s engines warming up and Wynn was outside of his ship tinkering with a regulator. He made a final manual adjustment that set the engine cycle into a nice purr. He looked at Tiet with satisfaction.
A screeching noise could be heard from the hallway near the control booth—the aerogores were coming back to their nest.
“Get in!” Tiet shouted.
Wynn fumbled with the lock on his canopy, it was stuck. Aerogores began to march through the hallway into the chamber. When they saw the aircraft, powered up for flight, they became enraged. Wynn finally got the canopy to open up again as Tiet and Grod began to lift off of the pad.
The aerogores took to the air, sailing over the railing toward the hovering ships. Tiet instinctively went for the guns and set them blazing, rapid fire. Several of the beasts fell out of the sky, chewed to bits by the onslaught of the aerial fighter’s guns. Tiet brought the nose of the ship to
bear on the hallway’s opening in the rock and launched a small rocket into it which shattered the stone to pieces. The entryway was mostly blocked to the others coming back to the nest.
Wynn was airborne and following Grod’s fighter out of the underground hangar bay through the cave that had once served as a launch point. The guns of Grod’s ship blazed to life, taking out oncoming predators that were returning from the outside. Grod cleared the way and all three aerial fighters shot into the open air above ground.
They were immediately faced with the awesome sight of a Vorn battle cruiser hovering above the grassy plains where their ships had emerged.
“Switch on your sensor cloak!” shouted Wynn through their cockpit speakers.
“What?”
“Lower left on the panel—quickly. I don’t think they’ve spotted us yet.”
Tiet obeyed his mentor and tapped the switch that was labeled Sensor Cloak. The indicator lit up green in color.
“What does it do?” Grod asked.
“Just what it says. We’re masked from their sensor scans, at least if they’re working properly,” said Wynn. “Now, we can head toward Sayir and they won’t even realize we’ve been here.”
Tiet studied the ship ahead of them. Lucin could be on that ship. Also on his display, was payload information. He was carrying fifty rockets minus the one he had used inside the hangar and one laser guided smart bomb.
“We’re not leaving just yet,” said Tiet into the cockpit microphone.
“What are you talking about, we have to rendezvous with the others at Sayir,” said Wynn.
“And we will. I just want to give them a little present before we bug out,” said Tiet. “Are your ships armed?”
