by C. W Tickner
It was clear they had suffered horrendous casualties but Damen was composed as he scanned the survivors.
‘Fight of a lifetime,’ Gold said, gazing down the hill at the mounds of bodies. They were being turned over and checked by the janitors who then dug trenches in the bloody soil under the watchful eye of armed guards.
‘It was a good fight on our end as well,’ Damen said. ‘But there is an even greater fight still to come.’
‘Typical,’ Kane said.
Damen ignored him. His face darkened. ‘Over a hundred watchers are waiting for us to leave this building.’
Silver turned pale. ‘A hundred?’ he said. ‘We won’t last ten heartbeats.’
‘Maybe not a silver,’ Gold said. ‘But a bronze man could last that and longer.’
Silver nodded, looking at the battle hardened faces around them.
‘What happened to the janitors?,’ Troy asked. ‘They decided to go back to work?’
‘Took a bit of explosive collar persuasion,’ Gold said. ‘We’ll leave them here before we fight our way out. It’ll be what they deserve.’
Harl understood the resentment but did they really deserve to be left here? If the building wouldn’t be destroyed then there was a chance that eventually they’d be freed.
‘When will we leave?’ Troy asked.
‘Soon as I have the part I need,’ Kane said, polishing his wire rimmed glasses on the grubby corners of his white coat.
‘Parts?’ Gold asked.
‘The reason we ended up here in the first place,’ Harl said. ‘We need to bring them out with us.’ He was going to add that if they didn’t then the mission would have been a waste of time, but seeing Damen’s change at killing Grakka and the freeing of all these people, he held his tongue.
‘Rest up,’ Damen said, ‘Eat well and we’ll be back soon enough.’
Kane was back on the platform before the rest of them.
‘Him and his precious reactor,’ Troy said trudging to the platform as Dana jumped on her flyer and hovered nearby.
‘We’ll be ready,’ Gold said. He looked up at the Aylen females and Sine, who was leaning down to hear them. ‘What about them?’
‘We will bring your men on the floor up,’ Sine said, her voice coming through Dana’s bracelet as her yellow gaze focused on Gold. ‘Then we’ll split up. Some will stay to protect the table but the rest of us will join you.’
Silver started to draw his sword, staring daggers at the voice that crackled from Dana’s bracelet and eyed the arm as if to chop it off.
‘You’ll see a lot stranger things than that,’ Harl said.
‘Come on,’ Kane called from the platform, ‘the transformer coils won’t find themselves.’
The engines whined as he switched them on and eased the platform up from the bloody ground until it hovered half a metre above it.
‘One more thing,’ Silver said, glancing from Damen to Harl as they climbed up on the platform. ‘What are you wearing?’ He looked at Damen’s thin ball-studded suit ‘That looks like the weakest armour I’ve ever seen.’ He looked Harl up and down, taking in the gore, his nostrils flaring at the nauseating smell. ‘And you look like you just climbed out of a watcher.’
They all broke into laughter except Silver and Gold who look perplexed as Kane took them away from the battlefield and towards the reactor room.
Chapter 51
In the nine years since leaving earth I have accomplished so much. It feels like a lifetime.
Sine stopped behind them as the door to the reactor room slid open. The room was vast, consisting almost entirely of the ground floor. A giant ringed tube formed a silver loop in the centre of the room. The ring was encircled in cables and huge curving pipelines that snaked into the machine from the floor and ceiling.
It dawned on Harl that it was a reactor but nothing like the one inside Orbital that Kane had constructed. Fifty Orbitals could fit inside this one, if they were lined nose to thruster around the tubular ring. It was a super-sized power making machine.
‘I’m no scientist,’ Troy said, ‘so I may be wrong, but I doubt the parts will fit.’
Kane slammed a hand down on the console in front of his seat, making the platform jolt forward then stop.
‘Made a rather large miscalculation,’ Damen said.
‘What now?’ Harl asked.
‘Give me time!’ Kane cried, placing his hands over his face.
Eventually he sighed as if giving up. Silence reigned for a long moment then he jumped up from his seat and rushed at Dana. Her hand was on the ring of blades around her thigh before Kane reached her but she did not draw a blade, even as he grabbed her arm in both hands.
He tapped the screen and brought the computer bracelet up to his mouth and spoke into it.
All the Aylen had wandered away from them and seemed to be searching for something on the far side of the reactor. Kane’s voice made them stop as it was translated through the bracelet to Sine who had taken Grakka’s earpiece.
‘Is there a storage room?’ he asked.
Sine stomped over and Kane let go of Dana’s hand as she leant over, the earpiece picking up the rest.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is what we are searching for.’
Harl guessed they could tell what Kane was seeking almost before he knew it himself.
‘Kane?’
The scientist spun to face Harl, his eyes feverish with revelation.
‘The plans that were taken,’ he said, throwing Dana a sharp glance, ‘would only work on a small scale. They would had to have built a smaller prototype first or the cores would be out of sync with the tritium level-’
‘So there’s more than one?’ Troy asked before Kane could confuse them with the finer details.
‘If they kept it,’ Kane said jumping back in the control seat.
The platform almost bumped into Sine several times as they made their way around the room. Kane seemed unable to tear his gaze away from the twisting pipes and levers that ringed the centre of the room and only a shout of, “watchout,” from Troy or “Idiot!” from Damen prevented a collision with the Aylen.
They found two unlocked doors into rooms on the far side.
Both doors had Aylen writing stamped across them.
‘Miniature Solutions,’ Kane read and Harl remembered the competitor to Micro Elements in that long ago debate.
‘They were in partnership,’ Sine said.
‘Probably a result of Harl’s impassioned speech at the all world meeting,’ Troy said, giving him a wink.
The long, white painted room they entered was lined with tables on one side, covered in tiny pieces of technology. Half constructed armour suits stood on wire frames, waiting for the final touches that would never come. Human sized vehicles, similar to the tanks were in various stages of construction and an array of strange weapons were set out ready for inspection. They were all too small for Harl to make out from so far away.
‘Watch out!,’ Troy yelled as Kane rubber necked, unable to look away from the bizarre selection. A sharp yank on the controls and Kane adjusted their course so they did not hit into the back of Sine as she stopped beside a shelf that lined the white wall on the opposite side of the room.
Kane’s head swivelled back to hundreds of small engineering components lined up beside two giant cylinders, propped up by a huge strut.
‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘An Aylen microscope. If only Tess could see this.’
‘That is what you seek,’ Dana’s wrist computer chimed in as it translated Sine’s words. The Aylen stepped aside and pointed to a small scale, ring shaped reactor placed on the shelf.
Kane was too busy looking back at the tables.
‘Can’t wait while the army out side gets bigger,’ Damen said, ‘and you get absorbed again in all the fancy technology.’ The last word was dealt a twist of sarcasm.
‘What about all the advancements?’ Kane said, turning to inspect the reactor as they neared the strange contraption. ‘The elect
ronics?’
Damen rolled his eyes.
‘The weapons,’ Kane went on.
‘Weapons?’ Damen said, moving to the rail and peering down hopefully.
Kane smiled. ‘Those tanks over there,’ he said, thrusting a bony hand back to the table lined with single specimens of armoured vehicles. ‘Could be well in advance of the tanks we found on Orbital.-’
‘No,’ Harl said, unwilling to let any more time slip by. ‘Stick to the mission, both of you.’
The look of disappointment on their faces forced him to compromise. ‘We can always come back for some of this, assuming they don’t destroy the building.’
‘We’d never get it out,’ Kane said.
‘No need to sulk,’ Troy said.
Kane glared at him.
‘We can help carry everything,’ Sine said, ‘Once the threat has been eliminated.’
Kane hopped off onto the shelf to inspect the reactor. Like a piece in a toy set the reactor was standing on a base plate so it could be moved around. The reactor blocked them from going further along the shelf without entering the inside core via an access tunnel. The single hatch was sealed with a wheeled locking system in the centre.
Kane tried to turn the wheel, his feet slipping as he panted with effort. ‘Shoddy workmanship,’ he said.
Damen sighed and walked to the hatch. His muscles twitch as he grabbed it with one hand and spun it as though it hadn’t been stuck.
Harl watched Kane clamber up and disappear inside before he turned to view the room. Behind him along the shelf, was a plastic box. At fifty metres wide it blocked him from seeing anything further along the shelf. He wondered what was in inside, all these inventions that could further humanity, just waiting to be used. A pang of what Kane must feel spread though him, a longing to be the one to discover something new.
He felt an intrusion in his mind. Sine reached over them and dipped her hand into the open top of the box. She brought her hand up, and as she lowered it, they all stepped back. She dropped dozens of flyers in a heap in front of them
Dana rushed forward to inspect one. They were very similar to her own, with some of the modifications she had added herself. She spat on the pile. Had those she met to deliver blueprints tried to copy her personal drone while she was making the exchange?
A thought struck Harl, where was the machine they had used to heal Troy? Could it fix any illness or even wounds? It would be an invaluable asset to the human race.
He looked at the pile of flyers and an idea popped into his head. ‘What’s further along the shelf, Sine?’ Harl asked, recalling several other boxes beside the one containing the flyers.
Sine put her hand in each box. First she placed a handful of electrical pieces and reels of thick cables down beside the flyers. Troy turned to run when the next handful was dropped as hundreds of explosive collars clanked together. Only when they stilled did Troy look back and stop trying to clamber into the hatch that led inside the reactor.
‘Move it,’ Kane said, shoving his way out past Troy and knocking him aside with his bulging hbackpack.
The collars were followed by a fistful of rifles. They were similar to the ones from the old city of Delta, in the sense that a sword from one blacksmith was the same as another. Both were without doubt a sword, serving the same purpose, death from a sharp blade but each could look wildly different.
‘Just what we need,’ Damen said, picking one up to test its weight. He took a shot up at the ceiling, the only place that wasn’t blocked by an Aylen body. Instead of the blue hue that he was used to, a jet of multicoloured light leapt from its tip.
‘Like the energy from a charge,’ Kane said, admiring the tangle of lights as they struck the ceiling hundreds of metres above.
‘Bring all of them,’ Harl said to Sine. ‘Perhaps there’s a way out of this after all.’
Chapter 52
I will spend the next eleven months putting things in order. I need to reduce my impact on the core. It has grown into a budding forest with a self contained ecosystem.
Harl hovered above the battlefield table on his flyer, rocking back and forwards to test the response while observing the formations practise below. His armour made it a challenge to stay nimble. Damen spotted him and flew up from an unsteady group of men to join him.
‘Well?’ Harl enquired.
The stress lining Damen’s face was only partially hidden by his black beard. He shook his head and the braided tip dangled above the screen fix to the motion suit. ‘Some are worse than Troy,’ he said, frowning as a cluster of men crashed together on their hover flyers.
There was hundred of them, shifting around like an uncoordinated swarm above the table’s battlefield.
Sine had brought over enough flyers and rifles to outfit the remaining soldiers from the bronze army and, for two arduous hours, they had been practising manoeuvres. Most had picked up either one or the other. Some were apt at shooting the targets that dotted the battle field while others excelled at flying. Only a fraction could manage both at the same time.
‘We’ve no more time to train them,’ Harl said. ‘The army outside have gotten closer, possibly wondering if we’re still alive. it’s only a matter of time before they come inside to investigate.’
‘Give me a year and we might be ready,’ Damen said.
Troy had broken away from lessons with Dana and had been hovering behind them just within earshot.
/‘They’re afraid,’ Troy said, slowing to a halt beside Harl. He wobbled, then with an effort managed to still the triangular board beneath him.
Harl wondered if he was right.
‘What if they don’t know Grakka is dead?’ Harl said.
‘Troy is correct,’ Sine’s voice came to him, echoing as if all the females were speaking to make themselves heard. ‘They know he is dead, what they fear is sabotage and the explosion of the reactor if it blows.’
Kane had already made the reactor inert, something about corrupting the plasma and while Harl been waiting for the scientist to return from his sabotage mission they had formulated a rough plan.
The female Aylen would stay behind. At least until Harl could contact Veel or Taal the overseer. He hoped she would respond and save the prisoners. There was no way the six Aylen could step outside the building without a hundred weapons opening fire on them. They needed to appeal to the other factions for help and hope that with Grakka dead they would be willing to step in and solve the stand off.
The real challenge had been how to get out through the army of mechs and the rain of bullets that would destroy them in seconds.
Harl looked at Damen. ‘Order the men to the door.’ he said, ‘It’s time we left.’
The bronze army was almost a thousand strong. Once Damen and Dana had organised them, they looked like a frozen swarm of flying insects, waiting mid-air behind the main entrance door. Each man had been given a flyer and equipped with a rifle. They were spaced equally to lessen the damage of incoming fire and waited patiently for the orders that might cost them their lives.
‘I don’t think it will work,’ Harl said, pulling the durium helmet on so his vision was narrowed by the eye slits.
‘Only because for once, you’ll be in the thick of it,’ Troy said.
‘It’s only before a fight,’ Damen said ‘I get it all the time. Once you get stuck in, the adrenaline will kick in and you’ll be fine.’
The words didn’t reassure Harl and he would be first to admit he had the hardest job. Run down the arm and press a button on the mech, that was all. All stupid, he thought. At least the durium suit would protect him from the worst of the enemy fire but anything could happen when they opened the titanic door that loomed in front of them.
Being so small, they would have the advantage of surprise but the thought of so much fire power gave Harl a queasy feeling that the constant wobbles of his drone didn’t help.
Damen shifted close enough to rest a calloused hand on Harl’s shoulder and looked at Troy a
nd Kane ‘We all fear battle. Fear runs through me each time I strap on a sword or buckle up my armour. It’s a facet of the warriors life. There is no shame in the feeling.’I have watched each of you face so many dark battles and overcome that fear that I am honoured to be your friend. But you need to acknowledge that fear now and let it pass through you.’
They were all resolutely silent for a moment at the unexpected words
‘I’ve adjusted the armour,’ Kane said eventually. ‘It should allow you enough movement to run without compromising too much of the durability.’
‘Shame we can’t sneak out,’ Harl said, testing the limited movement of the black plate-mail.
‘They’ll be expecting it,’ Kane said, ‘Sine has confirmed they are monitoring the exterior of the building.’
Harl watched Damen as he flew down to the platform, stepped off the flyer and began to limber up on the platform’s cargo area, hemmed in by rails. He adjusted the nodes on each of his body joints as Gold and Silver waited to either side of him. Grakka’s durium mech stood behind the army like a watchful god presiding over its warrior subjects.
Dana had flown to the front of the swarm and she split her arms wide in a signal, waving the mass of men to break left and right, leaving a clear path from the mech to the door.
A sickness rose in Harl and he fought to keep the contents of his stomach to himself.
Dana looked back and gave Damen a nod. Kane hunched over the platform controls, ready for action. Harl braced himself or the onslaught to come but he couldn’t quell the rising panic in him. The enemy beyond the door were more numerous and powerful than any they had ever faced and he knew men going to die.
Harl glanced at the control box beside Kane’s chair to distract himself. It fed information from Damen’s suit to the giant machine. While Damen had been training the men, Kane had salvaged electrical components from his bag and those they found in the lab to make a second, cruder version of the control box which was now attached to Grakka’s mech. According to Kane it was a clumsy unit, with poor reaction times but they only needed it to do a simple task, run as fast as the machine can.
