by C H Gideon
“Our path is blocked,” he replied, glancing at the sky. “And there are more missiles incoming.”
“Shit,” Maddox muttered. “And to think I just changed my underwear.”
“Likely going to need to change it again if those damn Orau keep this up,” Ka’nak informed him.
More missile strikes tore the city apart as the crew remained in place, unsure whether they wanted to run back the way they’d come or try to find a way ahead.
Sergeant Gib seemed a little more certain about what they needed to do.
“We need to get to the shelter,” he stated matter-of-factly. “They’re waiting for us.”
“They who?” Reynolds questioned.
“The elites,” he answered without hesitation. “The president and vice president and his council. It’s the only place we’ll be safe.”
Reynolds watched the sergeant’s expression for any hint of deception, but he didn’t see anything that made him think the guard believed anything other than what he was saying.
That didn’t mean the destination wasn’t a trap or an ambush, but the soldier didn’t know it was anything other than a place of safety.
“Which way?” Reynolds asked.
“We have to go out and around—” he started, leaning out to show Reynolds the direction. Gunfire rattled over his head and sent him scurrying back behind cover.
Reynolds took a shot to the chest and stayed in place a moment longer to see what was going on.
He growled when he did.
Ahead of them were a cluster of soldiers dressed in red and black armor.
The exact same color as the Orau ships that had attacked them in space.
“Orau,” Sergeant Gib unnecessarily confirmed.
“Damn it!” Jiya spat, hearing the sergeant. “We don’t have any weapons.”
Maddox reached out and snatched the pistol from Sergeant Gib’s holster.
“Now we do,” the general claimed, leaning out from behind the wall and blasting the nearest of the Orau invaders.
The alien dropped, caught off-guard by the attack, but his armor was better than the armor of the Krokans. He scrambled to his feet again as Maddox jumped back behind cover, the Orau returning fire.
“That didn’t go as planned,” Maddox muttered.
“Pull back,” Reynolds ordered, pushing them behind him.
Before they’d managed to flee even a step or two, an Orau soldier rounded the corner and raised his weapon.
It was the last thing he ever did.
Reynolds’ fist crashed through his helmet’s visor and slammed into his face.
There was a crunch of bone and the soldier went stiff, held aloft by Reynolds’ hand in his gore-filled helmet.
The AI grabbed his pistol and handed it to Jiya, then flung the soldier’s body at his companions. It crashed into the others.
“Get my people to safety, Gib,” was all Reynolds said before he shot off.
He snatched a piece of broken brick off the ground and hurled it at the entangled Orau invaders. The brick crashed into the visor of one and knocked him back, gunfire blasting upwards as he fell.
Reynolds dropped to the ground and slid into the mass of soldiers trying to slip free of the dead person in their midst.
They didn’t manage it.
Reynolds snatched a weapon from one of their hands and turned it on its owner. Two quick bursts to the male’s head left him with a charred skull and little else.
The other Orau scrambled to shoot Reynolds, but they were caught within the tangle of their companions, unwilling to blast their fellow soldiers to get free.
Reynolds had no such compunction.
He pressed the gun to the dead body and fired over and over, drilling holes through his armor and flesh and blasting the soldiers behind him.
The fight was over in a moment, the handful of Orau invaders lying dead on the ground.
Reynolds jumped to his feet, grabbed as many pistols as he could carry, and raced back to where the others were slowly making their way toward the shelter Sergeant Gib had promised.
The AI arrived just in time.
A group of Orau were in front of the crew and Sergeant Gib, pinning them in place. Maddox and Jiya were on opposite sides of the street behind different buildings, the two working in tandem to keep the Orau at bay.
One would fire and step back, then the other would, the pair alternating and mixing it up so as to not give the enemy the opportunity to predict which one would pop out next.
Reynolds came up behind the crew. “At your back!” he warned, passing the guns out as if they were party favors. He even gave one to Gib.
As soon as he’d finished, he darted across the street in a lull of fire, drawing the attention of the Orau.
He crashed into the wall on the other side, unharmed, but what he’d seen when he’d been on the street gave him pause.
“We’ve got more incoming,” he announced.
“How many?” Maddox asked.
“A bunch,” he answered with a sneer.
“That’s a pretty damn vague answer,” Jiya complained.
He didn’t argue.
The odds weren’t in their favor.
While missiles rained down in the distance, battering the city, it appeared as if the Orau had figured out how best to land an invasion force without it being shot down en route.
Mixed among the missiles were tiny troop carriers.
Although they contained only three to four soldiers packed in tightly, the carriers came on the heels of the missiles, letting the ships flare out and land without resistance and eject their battle-ready contents into the streets in the wake of the explosions.
Reynolds had seen at least twenty of the ships inserting via the missile barrage nearby, and he didn’t need to do the math to realize just how outnumbered he and his crew were.
“Can you reach your troops?” Reynolds asked Sergeant Gib.
The sergeant shook his head. “No comm,” he answered, tapping the side of his head where a spattering of blood resided.
Reynolds growled. They were being hung out to dry, trapped in a city they didn’t know, no allies anywhere.
“Can you fire on coordinates if I provide them?” he called up to the Reynolds.
He was sure he knew the answer before he’d asked, but he was still disappointed to hear it.
“Only if you and the crew want the entire ocean coming down on your head,” Tactical replied. “Anything we do from here will rip open the protective dome and kill all of you in one big splash.”
“Fuck a walnut,” Reynolds cursed, leaning out to fire at the encroaching Orau to try to slow them again.
“What about L’Eliana?” Jiya asked over the comm.
“Given her inexperience and our lack of open space, she’s more likely to shoot us than anyone else,” Reynolds answered. “Besides, she wouldn’t reach us in time, even if I let Helm take over the piloting.”
Jiya leaned out and fired a barrage at the Orau. She dropped one, blowing a smoking hole in his chest after repeated blasts. She ducked back as they returned fire.
“Anyone got any grenades?” Ka’nak asked.
Ka’nak ducked and squeezed off a few useless rounds before he was driven back to cover.
“We’re not going to get past these guys,” he stated. “There are about twenty more moving up to reinforce them.”
“We need to think of something fast,” Geroux shouted. Maybe we can cloak and flank these guys, she said over the comm, so Sergeant Gib didn’t hear her.
All we’d do is split our forces since Ka’nak and Jiya don’t have devices, Reynolds replied. We’d only kill ourselves quicker.
Geroux growled her disappointment.
The young tech had been pecking away at the enemy, the barrel of her gun angled around the corner as she pulled the trigger with reckless abandon, but her efforts had done little to repel the enemy. She was getting desperate.
“Got any computer tricks up your sle
eve?” Jiya asked.
“If you’re asking me if I can hack the soldiers or their guns, the answer is a resounding, ‘Fuck no!’”
Reynolds felt the pressure mounting. He’d unintentionally walked his crew into a killing field, and he had no idea how to get them out without putting them all at risk.
Well, more risk than they already had to worry about.
He contemplated his options, then decided the only viable choice he had was to delay the approaching Orau and give the crew a chance to retreat.
It was a slim chance, he had to admit, but it was better than standing their ground and ending up dead one by one.
I’m going to distract them, he announced over the comm. As soon as I have their full attention, I want all of you to follow Sergeant Gib somewhere safe, if only long enough for Asya to send a crew down to get you and L’Eliana.
What the hell are you going to do? Jiya asked. The look on her face made it clear she knew it was something stupid.
She wasn’t wrong.
This is an order, he told her, not willing to get into it with her right then.
The longer he waited, the more likely it was that they would all be killed.
Just fucking do it, he demanded, then stepped out from behind cover and started forward at a run, blasting as he went.
The Orau took the bait and targeted him as he advanced.
Reynolds wasn’t going to make it that easy.
He dodged and feinted and rolled and made himself as difficult a target as possible. As he did, he snatched up a second gun and fired both weapons into the crowd of Orau marauders.
He killed a number of them, but there were simply too many.
Their blows began to take a toll on his android body.
A shot to the chest made him stumble and a second one put him on his ass.
“Reynolds!” Jiya screamed, and he knew she was going to disobey him.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he shouted back, climbing to his feet as another blast struck him center mass.
He growled and returned fire, smoke swirling all around, and that was when he realized the number of Orau who had just been standing in front of him had been cut in half.
“What the shit?” he exclaimed, having no idea what had happened. He certainly hadn’t mowed through them like that.
As he sighted on an Orau soldier, he caught a flash of shadow and realized then what had happened to the other invaders.
From within the smoke and wreckage of the nearby buildings, other warriors, their dark skin and bright eyes identifying them as Krokans, had joined the fight.
They darted in and out of the chaos and speared the Orau from behind, the heart-shaped blades of their weapons tearing through the invaders’ armor as if it were paper.
Blood sprayed as the Krokans yanked their blades free and turned them on other Orau. Bodies dropped one after another.
Reynolds snarled, wanting more of the action.
He shot forward again, noting the damage to his android form but ignoring it, and launched himself at the Orau who’d attacked and cornered him and his crew.
He killed three with as many shots, then emptied his weapon into a fourth before grabbing another gun that had been discarded by a dead soldier.
But as he went to re-engage, Reynolds realized that most, if not all, of the Orau invaders were already dead.
He saw two more fall in as many heartbeats, then a third, their killers’ angry shadows appearing and disappearing with surgical precision.
The helpful Krokans began to slip away as mysteriously as they had appeared, leaving Reynolds standing in the middle of the road surrounded by the corpses of Orau invaders.
His crew and Sergeant Gib ran up behind him. Jiya stared after the shadows as they departed.
“Are you okay?” Jiya asked as Geroux looked him over.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, brushing them off.
As much as he appreciated their concern, he had too many questions to worry about the condition of his android body. He needed to get his crew to safety before the tables turned anew.
Reynolds spun, grabbing Sergeant Gib by the shoulder. “Lead us to this shelter,” he ordered.
The sergeant nodded, a true soldier, and started off, not even questioning the fact that he didn’t work for Reynolds.
The crew and Reynolds chased after him.
A block or two later, Jiya realized that Maddox wasn’t with them. She stuttered to a halt and made to turn around and race back.
“Where’s Maddox,” she called over the comm.
Reynolds grabbed her by the arm to stop her, pulling her with him.
“We can’t leave him behi—”
“I’m good, Jiya,” Maddox answered over the line. “Took the opportunity to cloak and slip off to do some recon now that everyone is safe.”
Jiya growled and shook loose of Reynolds’ grasp. “I wish someone would tell me shit before it happens.”
Reynolds shrugged. “I didn’t know he was going to do it either. I only realized he had when you turned back to find him.”
“Not cool,” Jiya muttered, then started off after the sergeant again.
Reynolds followed her.
He hadn’t issued an order for Maddox to run off like that, but it made perfect sense, and Reynolds was kicking himself because he hadn’t thought of it.
Fortunately, the general was trained for this type of situation, unlike the rest of the crew, so Reynolds trusted the general to operate on his own.
Now, if only Maddox could figure out what was going on, that’d be great.
But if he couldn’t, Reynolds had an idea of his own.
He’d bust heads until people told him what he wanted to know.
Chapter Eight
Sergeant Gib led them to the shelter through back alleys and bombed-out streets.
Every step Jiya took made her stomach churn.
Although the majority of the Krokan people had managed to find shelter or get out of the line of fire, far too many hadn’t.
Bodies littered the streets, and Jiya couldn’t help but think that many of them had died simply because the SD Reynolds had shown up and taken a side.
She knew that was ridiculous, seeing as how the war had been going on forever by all accounts, but it didn’t make her feel any better about her part in it.
Still, she was there now, and she wouldn’t waste the opportunity to pay the Orau back for all they’d done to the Krokan people.
Her cheeks warmed as she imagined what she’d do to the bastards who had hurt so many people and destroyed so many innocent lives so they could raid the planet and move on once they were done.
It was so…so vile.
She didn’t get a chance to imagine what else she wanted to do to the Orau scum because Sergeant Gib announced they were there.
Jiya looked up, blinking to focus, and stared as he led the crew down a dark, narrow alley.
Her paranoia rose up like dry tinder, and she pointed her gun at the sergeant’s back as he walked ahead of them. She didn’t like how easily she’d taken to killing, but she’d do anything to protect her crew.
If she had to kill the sergeant, she would without hesitation, and she’d worry about the consequences later.
No one would hurt her friends.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to shoot Gib.
He led them to a brick wall at the end of the alley, shadows obscuring most everything there.
Jiya could see clearly thanks to her optics, but she still had no idea what Gib was doing, running them into a dead-end.
She realized things weren’t as they seemed when he tapped out a code on a number of bricks in the wall and a section of it came open like a door.
“In here,” he said, ushering them inside while staring down the alley to make sure no one saw them.
“You first, Ka’nak,” Jiya ordered, and the warrior went in with his gun at the ready.
Reynolds followed, then Geroux, and Jiya brought up
the rear. When she reached the door, she motioned Sergeant Gib in before her.
“I’ve got the door,” she told him.
It was a test, of sorts, but Gib passed without issue.
He simply nodded and darted into the dark passage behind the others. Jiya shut the door behind them, and she sighed when she heard the sullen thump of its latch.
Then she chased after the others, a bit perturbed by the tight tunnel they were squeezed into, but that didn’t last long.
A short while later, Gib opened another secret door in what appeared to be a random wall and led them into a great domed chamber. Voices struck her as soon as the door was opened, and she caught the scent of perfume and cologne and a variety of foods and beverages as she stepped into the room.
Her stomach grumbled.
“Fancy,” Ka’nak remarked, retracting his helmet and staring at the crowd of people, all of whom had stopped what they were doing to stare back.
The Melowi warrior was right. The crowd looked as if they were at a ball or some social event far above Jiya’s pay grade. Other than the obvious Krokan guards stationed about the room, everyone was dressed in fine clothing, and although she knew nothing about style, it was clear these outfits were at the top of the heap when it came to cost and fashion.
“Anyone else feeling a bit out of place?” Geroux asked, slipping behind Jiya so she wasn’t being stared at directly.
It took a moment for the surprise of their arrival to wear off, then the people finally went back to what they were doing, although the conversation had dropped to a low murmur and didn’t rise again.
“These are the elite of Krokus 4,” Sergeant Gib explained, gesturing to the crowd milling about below them. “They come here or go to one of the other shelters when raids begin.”
Jiya felt her cheeks warm. “And the regular people?” she asked, not expecting an answer.
Sergeant Gib shuffled his feet and Jiya could tell he didn’t want to meet her eyes, but he did after an uncomfortable moment.
“I’m one of those regular people,” he said quietly. “I don’t get a say in who ends up here.”
Jiya made ready to snap back, to argue, but the look on the sergeant’s face told her he was telling the truth. He was just a soldier.
