Some of the alien children in the cockpit began murmuring and moaning with the return of gravity as their stomachs leapt into their throats. But not Cassandra. She gave a whoop of delight.
Darius smiled. She was as fearless as ever. As they fell, the clouds swept up below them, and the sky gradually lightened from black to blue. Dark specks appeared, flitting between the mountain peaks—birds? Darius wondered, and the clouds flashed with lightning.
“Heads-up,” Blake said over the comms. “Looks like we’ve got some action over the LZ.”
“Action?” Darius replied. “What kind of action?”
The clouds drew a thick white curtain over the cockpit canopy, blocking their view. Darius checked the nav display and found over a hundred unidentified contacts, each of them about half the size of a Vulture. Those had to be the birds he’d seen.
A straight bolt of lightning flashed by in front of them, followed by another, and then a flickering stream of them. But lightning bolts weren’t straight. These were lasers.
A split second later the clouds fell away and a scene of utter chaos appeared. Dead ahead was a sprawling green field marked with a green diamond to denote their landing zone. The hunching black shapes of several Ospreys were already landed in the field, and four Vultures were circling above them, firing flickering streams of hot-white lasers into a swarm of giant black birds.
Lasers leapt out to either side of them as Darius’s escort opened fire. Birds leapt into flames and fell thrashing to the ground, raining over the LZ like meteors. Apparently the birds were more of nuisance than a threat.
But even as Darius thought that, a pair of birds latched onto one of the Vultures, and it went tumbling down. The canopy blew open as the pilot ejected. The ejection seat rode a bright blue thruster trail into the sky before deploying a parachute and drifting down slowly. The Vulture went spinning into the ground with a flash of light and a subsequent boom that rattled through the cockpit.
“What’s going on?” Cassandra asked.
Darius took over from the autopilot and activated the Osprey’s forward cannons. He targeted the nearest bird and sliced off its wings with two fat white laser beams. The severed torso of the bird fell flaming to the ground.
Just as Darius targeted the next one, he saw a pair of birds shredding the ejected Vulture pilot’s parachute with their talons.
The pilot’s panicked voice sounded over the comms: “Get them off me! Get them—!” His voice died in a gurgle as another bird snatched him from the air and carried him off—parachute, ejection seat, and all.
A second Vulture fighter went tumbling from the sky, and this time the pilot didn’t eject.
“Fek it!” Blake roared just as that fighter dug a flaming crater in the landing zone. It was a good thing Tanik had told the deck crew to empty the antimatter from all their Alckam reactors before heading down to the surface.
Darius’s Osprey hit the flock of birds, and suddenly it was hard to see for all the flapping black wings. Darius had already hauled all the way back on the throttle, but now he was forced to kill thrust entirely and hover to avoid colliding with one of the beasts.
It didn’t work. No less than four birds swooped in and glommed onto the Osprey. “Blake, get them off us!” Darius snapped over the comms.
“How?” Blake demanded. “I can’t shoot them without hitting you! Waggle your wings or something!”
Massive talons struck the cockpit canopy and scrabbled for purchase on the glass. Cracks fractured the canopy.
The children in the cockpit screamed, but their cries were promptly drowned out by deafening roars and a loud whooshing of wings. These monsters were trying to carry the Osprey away.
Thud-thud. THUD. Darius glanced up. More of them were landing on top of the transport. Claws screeched, raking on metal, and the Osprey nosed down with the added weight. The ground came racing up fast.
“We’re going to crash!” Cassandra screamed.
Chapter 5
The cockpit door swished open and heavy boots rushed in, but Darius didn’t have time to look. He fired the ventral thrusters at maximum power to avoid crashing into the landing zone, and the Osprey rocketed up. The birds clinging to them shrieked with fright and took off.
“Something spooked them!” Blake said over the comms. “They’re all leaving!”
Darius regained control of the transport and banked back around to see that he was right, and it wasn’t just the ones attacking his transport. They were all leaving.
“Set us down over there,” a gruff voice said, and Darius turned to see Tanik standing behind him in a suit of power armor.
“What were those things?” Darius asked.
“Awks. Revenants call them Seekers because they’re drawn to us. They must have sensed us coming.”
“Great,” Darius said.
“So why did they leave?” Cassandra asked.
“I filled their minds with terror. They won’t bother us again. At least not until we’ve set up our defenses.”
“What about the pilot they dragged off?” Darius asked.
“He’s dead. Set us down over there.” Tanik pointed to the far side of the grassy landing zone where a broad river raced over the edge of a cliff. A beleaguered tree clung to the cliff, and glittering curtains of spray rose above the waterfall.
Darius’s mind flashed back the vision of his daughter’s funeral at the edge of a river that looked just like this one.
“Darius, did you hear me?” Tanik prompted.
He said nothing, but took them down for a landing beside the river as Tanik had directed. Their landing struts touched down, and Darius spent a moment staring into a field of blue-green grass, undulating in the wind and shimmering in the sun. Clear, rippling water raced by in front of them, surging down from a soaring mountain range to one side of the landing zone.
“Let’s go,” Tanik said, and gave Darius’s shoulder a squeeze.
Darius gave no reply. He was frozen in horror, staring at that river, the one that had carried his daughter’s casket away.
“Is something wrong, Darius?”
“I saw this place in my vision,” Darius said quietly. “This is where we held the funeral.”
“My funeral?” Tanik asked. His voice was laced with irony, as if he knew Darius had lied about who he’d seen in his vision.
“We can’t stay here,” Darius said. “We have to go.”
“There’s nowhere else for us to go. Besides, you don’t know yet what kind of vision you had. It may be easy to prevent.”
Darius unfastened his harness and turned to look at Tanik. “We can stay on the Deliverance. Train us there.”
“No, you can’t. A starship is too easy to spot, and if a Keth or Revenant vessel passes through here, they’ll instantly spot a ship that size with its reactor online. I’m sending the Deliverance away as soon as we’re done offloading people and supplies.
“Away where?” Cassandra asked.
“You can’t do that!” Darius said. “That carrier is our only ticket out of here!”
“Which is why we can’t afford to lose it. The Deliverance will be safer hiding beyond the edge of the solar system, far enough away that no one should see it, but close enough to summon or fly back to when we’re ready to leave.”
Darius shook his head. “The Cygnians are going to come here. I saw it.”
“Did you now?”
“Yes. Cassandra was—” He stopped himself, glancing briefly in her direction, then back to Tanik. “She was trying to negotiate with them. It didn’t work.”
“And then they killed me?” Tanik asked. His dark eyebrows hovered up behind his faceplate, furrowing his brow.
“Yes.”
“Then this time we won’t negotiate. Now come, we have a lot to do, and we don’t want to be doing it in the dark.”
Darius rose from his seat as Tanik went clomping back through the transport. Cassandra and the other children stood up too. The Banshee child bared jagged gr
ay teeth at him. “My people are not the enemy, the Augur is.” He spoke in the guttural mixture of hisses and growls of the Cygnian language.
Darius regarded the Banshee with a frown. “Did Tanik tell you that?”
“He told everyone,” Cassandra replied. “You were still unconscious at the time, so I guess that’s why he told you later in his quarters.”
Darius jerked his chin to the Banshee. “If your people are being controlled by the Augur, then my vision makes no sense. Why would we bother trying to negotiate if we know that the Augur is controlling your leaders?”
“Maybe what you saw wasn’t a vision,” Cassandra suggested. “Maybe it was just a dream.”
The black-furred Lassarian Acolyte rolled his head from side to side and growled. His pointed ears twitched, and he said, “Who cares? I’m starving. Let’s get out of here.” With that, the Lassarian turned and left the cockpit. The Banshee child ignored him. It blinked its four giant black eyes at Darius, first the lower set, then the upper. It licked its brown lips with a long black tongue and flicked the air with its barbed tail.
“What is your name?” Darius asked.
“Gakram.”
“I’m Darius.”
“I know.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Gakram.”
The Banshee just went on staring at him.
Darius glanced around, looking for the other two children. The shape-shifting Vixxon stood on the opposite side of the cockpit from Cassandra, listening quietly. Like the adult Vixxon he’d met, this one also had a ghostly-white skin, but her hair was dark and shimmering, rather than luminous blonde.
“What’s your name?” Darius asked.
The Vixxon’s glowing white eyes shifted to him just as the final child, a wrinkly, bony-limbed Murciago with solid black eyes came up the ramp from the gun-well below the pilot’s seat.
The Vixxon said, “I am Seelka.”
“And you?” Darius asked, nodding to the Murciago.
The Murciago squeaked unintelligibly at him, and Darius frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Can you speak Primary?”
The Murciago’s black nose slits flared and it spread its wings. Its pinched black mouth opened to let out another series of squeaks.
Darius shrugged helplessly. “I still can’t—”
“He says you can call him Flitter,” Seelka interrupted. “It’s a nickname that another human gave him.”
Darius blinked at her. “You can understand him?”
“Of course. Murciagos come from a planet in my solar system. All Vixxons have to learn Murcian.”
“Darius!” Tanik’s voice boomed over the intercom. “We’re waiting for you in the airlock! You’ll have plenty of time to get to know the other Acolytes later.”
Darius used his extra-sensory implant to activate the intercom speakers in the cockpit, and then replied, “On our way.”
Chapter 6
As soon as the airlock opened, Tanik and Dyara ran down the landing ramp, followed by the squad of Marines. Darius hung back with Cassandra and the other Acolytes until the ramp was clear, then he led the children out, stalking down the landing ramp into a rippling field of blue-green grass. Cassandra was all but skipping along beside him. The wonder of exploring an alien world had swept aside the inherent danger for the time being. Or perhaps that was just adolescence rearing its ugly head.
Darius sucked in a deep breath of the alien air. It was cold enough to make his nostrils flare and lungs burn, and it had a sharp, metallic scent to it.
Dark clouds gathered overhead, and a rumble of thunder muffled the amplified shouts and thudding feet of Marines running around in power armor. Darius grimaced, hoping it wouldn’t rain. The last thing they needed at these temperatures was to get wet. The Marines would be fine in their power armor, but he and the children were only wearing jumpsuit uniforms and mag boots—and in the case of the Lassarian and the Banshee, not even that.
Cassandra ran through the field at top speed, whooping with excitement.
“Cass! Get back here right now!” Darius roared.
She stopped running and turned to him. “I’m not a kid, Dad. Besides, those birds are gone.”
Darius jogged up to her, scowling. “That doesn’t mean it’s safe,” he growled. He grabbed her arm roughly, and pointed up. Four T-shaped silhouettes riding on cold blue tongues of fire were flying in circles overheard.
“If it’s so safe, what are those fighters still doing here?” Then he pointed to the still-flaming ruins of the two Vultures that had crashed. Both were on the other side of the river and pumping thick black columns of smoke into the storm clouds overhead. “Someone already died today. You want to be next?” Darius demanded.
Cassandra frowned, but said nothing to that.
Darius turned to watch the Marines work. They were all barking orders at each other and cursing as they hurried to unfold and stake down what looked like giant white tents. Making their task more difficult, a brisk wind gusted through the field, dragging the tents around like sails. As Darius watched, one of them burst free of its stakes and took flight, dragging a Marine along with it. The man cried out in alarm and began cursing viciously. His leg was tangled up in the tent ropes. Before anyone could do or say anything, the tent landed in the river and sucked the Marine in with it.
Darius released Cassandra’s arm and sprinted down to the riverbank. “Hey! Somebody help him!” Darius ran along the riverbank, trying to keep up with the tent, but the current was too fast. The only sign of the Marine was the occasional glimpse of a thrashing foot or hand.
Three Marines ran by Darius in a blur with the augmented speed provided by their power armor, but one of them was far faster than the others, and he reached the edge of the waterfall first. Even he wasn’t fast enough. The river swept the tent and the Marine over the cliff just a split second later.
The other two Marines reached the cliff, followed a few seconds later by Darius. He stood with his hands on his knees, gasping for air and doubled over with exhaustion. He couldn’t see anything through the shimmering sheets of spray rising over the waterfall. The spray was so thick that it soaked through his jumpsuit in seconds.
All three Marines stood there in shock, staring over the cliff with water running down their black armor in glistening streams. This was their second casualty of the day, and they’d only just arrived on Ouroboros.
“What the...” One of the Marines pointed out to the horizon.
A billowing white tent appeared floating up through the swirling mist. A man in gleaming black armor dangled by his leg from ropes trailing below the tent.
The tent and its victim floated down to a safe landing in the field. Two of the Marines ran to help him, but Darius stayed right where he was, staring at the third Marine. The man’s face wasn’t visible through the reflections in his faceplate, but Darius knew who it had to be. “Tanik?”
“Yes?”
“How did you...?” Darius trailed off, shivering violently. He was soaked with spray from the waterfall.
“After everything you’ve seen me do, this surprises you?” Tanik asked. “You’ll see much greater things than this.”
Darius hugged his shoulders and shook his head. He turned to look around for Cassandra, and found her striding through the field toward him.
A crack of thunder split the air, and both he and Tanik looked up at the gathering storm. The clouds were black now. Darius felt heavy raindrops land on his cheeks. “Go back inside the transport before you freeze to death. Take the children with you. I’ll come get you when the habitats are ready.”
Darius nodded quickly and ran across the field to reach Cassandra.
“Is that guy okay?” she called out as he drew near.
Darius nodded as he reached her side. “Tanik saved him.” Another crack of thunder split the air, and the rain began falling harder. “Come on!” He grabbed Cassandra’s arm again and ran back to the Osprey. By the time they reached the transport both of them w
ere soaked. The other kids had already taken shelter inside the airlock, all except for the Banshee.
“Where’s Gakram?” Darius asked.
“He said he was hungry,” Seelka said, blinking her white eyes at Darius.
“Who isn’t?” the Lassarian demanded.
Darius rubbed his arms in a vain attempt to get warm. Beside him, Cassandra’s teeth were chattering audibly. “We’d better go back inside,” he said. “Cassandra and I need to change into dry jumpsuits.” Darius cycled the airlock and led the way inside. He checked the lockers in the troop bay and found a pair of spare jumpsuits.
“Come on, Cass,” he said, and hurried down the corridor from the troop bay to the cockpit. Stopping just outside the open door to the cockpit, he passed one of the jumpsuits to his daughter and nodded. “You change first.”
She took the jumpsuit and walked through. He waved the door shut behind her and waited, shivering in the corridor, with his back to the door. A few minutes later, Cassandra emerged in a dry jumpsuit. Her hair was still wet, and her lips were blue, but at least she wasn’t shivering anymore. That was more than could be said for him.
“Your turn,” she said.
He hurried into the cockpit and struggled to get changed with shaking hands. As he got undressed, he realized that he hadn’t thought to look for dry underwear. Too late now. Once he was dressed, he began to feel warmer. It also helped that it was much warmer inside the Osprey than outside.
Darius left the cockpit and walked back into the troop bay with Cassandra. The black-furred Lassarian was pacing up and down.
“How much longer do we have to wait here?” he growled.
“I don’t know,” Darius replied. He heard a muffled peal of thunder and gestured to the ceiling of the transport. “It could be a while. At least until the storm passes.”
“I am sssstarving!” the Lassarian hissed.
Darius’s own stomach growled with that reminder and he went to check the lockers in the back of the Osprey for ration packs. It didn’t take long to find them. He turned and held one out to the Lassarian.
Broken Worlds- The Complete Series Page 37