Kenon heaved a sigh of relief, glad to still be alive, and tried to banish the aching pain in his skull. Regaining his bearings, he pulled his knees to his chest and kicked out strongly at the pod’s door until it popped off.
Heavy rainfall welcomed him to the alien world. Cold drops of water pinged off the pod’s exterior and fell upon his armor, sending shivers down his spine.
Kenon turned upright, gripped the doorframe and climbed out. He staggered sideways, feeling awfully light in the head, and thought for a second that he was about to pass out. When the lightheadedness wore off, he looked around.
The pod’s landing had caused some serious damage.
In the wake of the crash were shredded trees, sheets of armor plating, and other smaller fragments of metal. What appeared to be some kind of coolant trickled from the pod’s underside, pooling in the muddy gouge that led to its resting spot.
Kenon followed the trench over a hill and came to the edge of the forest that he’d landed in. The bank he stood on dipped down into a wide, rushing river. On the other side he could see the towering structures of a massive city shrouded in thick smoke. A red-orange haze emanated from within the metropolis, lighting up the tiny silver shapes of evacuation craft attempting to flee.
The landing zone was somewhere within those concrete towers, and here he was on the outskirts.
Returning to the crashed pod, he retrieved his equipment and checked his helmet-mounted display. His tracker was clear, no signs of enemy activity in the immediate area. Right next to the tracker was the curved bar that told him the status of his energy shields.
The bar was empty, his shields had depleted and were failing to recharge.
Perhaps the pod had been hit with an electromagnetic pulse of some sort on the way down through the atmosphere—that could easily have taken out both his armor’s and the pod’s shielding systems.
A bout of static came through the young warrior’s headset, followed by a voice: “Kenon . . . ! –is your –ocation? . . . lost your signal –you dropped off the radar. Are you injured?”
It was Levian. His words were scarcely audible over the interference on the channel.
“My shields are down and will not recharge, but I am fine—no injuries. But my pod has crashed near a river on the city’s outer limits and I’m not sure where to go from here. Would it be possible for you to transfer the landing zone coordinates to my display?” He listened for a response. The other end of the channel stayed quiet for a long time and he wondered if the Ship Commander had heard him.
“. . . No. It was troublesome enough to establish this connection. However, what I can tell you is that when your signal disappeared from the radar, you were already three miles off course. I hope this information helps you.”
Kenon would have answered but as he was about to, he heard a sonorous, mechanical rumble. He recognized the noise from his combat simulations—It was a sound produced by a human vehicle, though he could not remember which vehicle it belonged to.
Whatever it was, it was closing in on his location.
Kenon logged off the communications channel and slipped into the trees a few meters from the drop pod, crouching behind the leaves of a bush so that he could peer over the top. He stared at the river bank and watched as a large, bulky transport rolled to a stop at the top of the hill where the debris trail began.
It had to be a tank.
Lightning zipped through the clouds, and in the brief moment that it illuminated the forest, the Drahkori spotted six human soldiers sitting atop the battle tank.
The small creatures hopped down from the armored treads and took out their weapons as they cautiously approached the Drocain pod, quietly muttering to one another. But with all of this rain and thunder, Kenon couldn’t make out a word they were saying through his translator.
The humans walked right by the Drahkori’s hiding place, completely unaware of the fact they were being watched, and then halted when the leading soldier raised a fist. The man called to one of his teammates, who moved forward and examined the downed pod.
Kenon’s heart jumped into his throat when the team’s leader looked in his direction and narrowed a pair of tiny eyes, brow furrowed as if he thought he’d seen or heard something and was now searching for it.
Surely the human hadn’t spotted him? He was well hidden, hadn’t made a sound, and no lightning had flashed.
. . . But there was one other thing that could have been bright enough to give away his position.
Kenon checked his shield status bar and saw it was full. When his shields recharged they would have flickered briefly, but he had been too focused on these humans to take notice.
The enemy team’s leader shouted orders to his men, gesturing to the bushes, and they advanced on the young warrior’s hiding place.
Kenon couldn’t run away from the fight, not when it had come right to him. That would be a coward’s move.
He broke from his cover and snapped out a shock rifle, aimed and squeezed the trigger. The energy ball hit one soldier in the arm and burned her dark skin, but that didn’t stop her.
The humans unleashed a storm of lead bullets and pulse rounds.
Kenon’s shields flared over his body, deflected the lethal shower, and then broke. He sprinted to the crashed pod and dove behind it, clutching his side when it started to sting. Warm blood seeped through his fingers from a gash just below his ribcage. One of the bullets must have grazed him.
The warrior leaned out to see where his targets were, pulling back almost immediately as gun barrels flashed and bullets peppered the pod’s shell. He waited for the status bar on his display to refill, then leaned out again. This time he was ready.
Three more energy bursts left his rifle. One hit a soldier in the leg, the second was dodged by his teammate, and the third round crashed into the chest of the team’s leader. The impact knocked the man to the ground, his armored harness steamed at the point of contact.
The humans cried out in fury and opened fire once more.
After facing them for the first time outside a simulation, he came to the conclusion that he could not take them all on by himself. He hadn’t even taken out a single soldier yet, and only managed to injure three. His best option now was to flee the fight and regroup with his squad at the landing zone.
Pulling a grenade from the clip on his thigh guard, he tossed it over the pod and made a mad dash for the hill when the humans leapt out of the way to avoid the explosion. He slid down the embankment and splashed into the river on the other side, then headed for the city.
Heavy rain continued to flood the streets of Masahi, and by the looks of the clouds swirling above, the storm wasn’t going to be easing off anytime soon.
Yellow and white lights running the length of the streets flickered unsteadily as Kenon made his way through the aftermath of a battle. Collapsed towers that had once touched the clouds lay in ruin all around. Amongst broken glass and chunks of concrete were the bloody remains of human bodies—dismembered, cold and lifeless. The sight made Kenon’s stomach turn.
The silence that blanketed this place was unsettling. He’d come here expecting to hear fighting, to see fellow warriors, and humans—if not soldiers, then at least civilians—running through the streets.
But no one was here. The whole area had already been swept clean of life.
Kenon halted when the haunting cry of a Drocain assault carrier entered his ears and he tilted his head back, looking up between the buildings that still stood. Squinting against the rain, he watched as the Legacy of Night descended through the wild storm clouds, lightning licking at its bow.
Following the carrier was a single human frigate which plunged down past its adversary, smoke billowing from its thrusters and flanks blazing bright with flame. The frigate skimmed over the city and crashed beyond Kenon’s view, sending a shiver through the asphalt road.
“Warrior, there you are!” Levian’s voice came over Kenon’s headset. “I congratulate you on maki
ng it this far on your own, but you still have a little ways to go. There is a bridge not far from your location, Alceta Squad is waiting for you there.”
Even though he knew Levian would not see it, Kenon acknowledged the transmission with a slight nod. He looked ahead, down the barren streets, and saw where the bridge stretched out over the river. Its midsection was absent, destroyed, deeming it useless.
Kenon carried on through the wreckage until he found his way to the waterfront where his squadmates had gathered. They had just cleared out the last of the human soldiers when he arrived and were now dumping the bodies in the river.
Phero walked over to the young warrior. “The battle has finished, Drahkori,” he said. “Our mission has been completed, but we are not leaving Anahk yet. We have received new orders.”
“Already?” Kenon asked.
“An anomaly has been detected beneath the center of this city. We are to find the source and retrieve it if possible.”
“When do we leave?”
“Immediately.”
Alceta Squad took a dropship to the heart of Masahi to avoid getting caught in the hectic battles that still raged on closer to the city’s borders. The human forces in the vicinity were beginning to thin, but they were a determined bunch and wouldn’t go down easily. If Kenon, Phero, and Suro were to have any chance of getting to the objective alive, they would have to find a quicker way to exterminate these pests . . . or find a way around them.
As soon as the Drahkori set foot on the ground he sprinted to the nearest source of cover—a concrete wall sitting in the shadow of a warehouse. He crouched low and armed his repeater, poked the barrel through a hole in the wall and took out one target.
The soldier dropped to the pavement, the grenade he’d been about to throw blew up in his hand.
Kenon rose and peered over the top of the wall, waiting for the dust to clear. Then he heard a cry. A human jumped on him from the warehouse’s second story window, causing him to stumble forward into the wall.
Digging his heels into the small of the Drahkori’s back, the man clung to his enemy’s combat harness with one hand, and went for the knife in his holster with the other. As he tried to drive the blade into the warrior’s neck, Kenon reached up, grabbed the soldier by the collar of his uniform, and threw him.
The man barreled into one of his comrades and they rolled across the asphalt.
Kenon resumed his stance, crouched in the dirt just below the top of the wall, and scanned the battlefield for his squad. There was no sign of them, and when he tried to make contact by radio, all he heard was white noise.
Where could they have gone? They were with him only seconds ago!
A pair of Skysealers screeched overhead like two speeding missiles, swooped low over the streets and unleashed a shower of superheated crytal upon a handful of soldiers cowering behind barricades—burning holes in their armor and leaving craters in the roadway.
The aircraft veered right to come back around for a second assault.
“Valinquint,” Phero said over the radio at last. “Make your way to the underground tunnels. We’ll meet you on the other side.”
“Understood, Captain,” the Drahkori replied. They must have lost sight of him in the chaos and decided to carry on ahead rather than search him out in the midst of the battle. Looking around for an entrance, Kenon caught sight of a stairwell leading down through the sidewalk.
A way into the tunnels?
It was his best shot. The young warrior slipped out from cover and darted toward the stairway, keeping his head low and weapon at the ready.
Chapter
———THREE———
0940 Hours, December 01, 2438 / Masahi City, planet Anahk, Subway tunnels
First Lieutenant Lance M. Knoble led the men of Alpha Team and a ragtag group of civilians through the dank subway tunnels of Masahi City. The team had been traveling for over an hour on a path that would take them to a Falcon—a UNPD heavy-lift dropship. The aircraft was waiting for them outside Central Station.
Lieutenant Knoble had been assigned a mission to pinpoint the location of a device being used to send unauthorized transmissions off planet, and the only lead they’d been given was that the signal was coming from somewhere beneath the city’s center. But when he and his team had come across a cluster of civilians hiding out in a department store, they couldn’t pass them by—even though it meant sacrificing their mission.
Every life mattered.
The Lieutenant looked over his shoulder at the group shambling along behind him. He could see they were tired, growing weaker and weaker from dehydration and hunger. He raised his hand and signaled for everyone to stop.
“We’ll rest for five minutes. No more, no less,” he said, not particularly happy about stopping. But he was sure that if they kept going, they were going to start losing people. He couldn’t let that happen.
“Lieutenant, sir?”
Knoble turned his head when he heard the concern in Corporal James Bennett’s voice. The Corporal was kneeling on the railway beside a woman and her two kids, the youngest of which she held in her arms. They were sitting against the tunnel wall, the mother sobbing and trying to comfort her children.
“What’s the situation, Corporal?” Knoble limped over. He’d taken a hit to his knee earlier in the day and it still ached when he moved.
Bennett rose, his exhaustion clear in the way he stood. “The kid’s not doing so hot. His vitals are fading fast,” he reported, downhearted. “We can’t do any more for him here. He needs proper medical attention.”
The boy, who the woman cradled gently, was suffering from severe crytal burns that covered the majority of his body. It was a wonder he was even still alive.
Knoble couldn’t help but sympathize with the boy’s mother, having lost his wife and daughter five years ago during an attack on one of Anahk’s larger capital cities. He knew all to well what it was like to lose a child and he wanted to prevent this woman from having to go through the same pain.
Burying those thoughts in the deepest, darkest crevasses of his mind, he approached the woman and crouched down in front of her.
“Please, Lieutenant,” she cried, face wet with tears. “Isn’t there anything you can do to get us out of here faster? I need to get my son to a hospital! I can’t lose him!”
“Listen to me,” the Lieutenant said softly, then motioned upward. “There’s a Drocain ship parked three hundred meters above the city and it’s been shooting our evac birds out of the sky all morning. Now, I dropped my mission so I could try and get you out of here, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.” He caught the woman’s eyes and she went quiet. “Am I understood?”
She bit her lip and nodded slowly, then Knoble helped her up and drew his gaze over the rest of the group. “Let’s get a move on, people!” he ordered with a wave of his hand, signaling for them to follow his lead.
As they continued down the subway tunnels, the lights on the ceiling began to flicker, threatening to black out and cast them all into the darkness.
Knoble was beginning to have doubts that the dropship would still be waiting for them at the station. The battle was intensifying, he could hear it above. The Falcon could have been blown up for all he knew, and to make matters worse, he couldn’t contact anyone—whatever equipment the Drocain were using was screwing around with the radio frequencies.
A high voice piped up from behind the Lieutenant: “You know, this whole thing is pretty unbelievable if you think about how we’re fighting giant lizards from space! They came down, guns a blazin’—kinda like a video game. We can take comfort in that, right?”
Knoble stifled a laugh, a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. Private John Sevadi, or “Sparky”, as the Lieutenant had nicknamed him, was the optimist of the group—a constant flow of positive energy. He was a little trigger-happy, the youngest on the team with only two years of service, but he was a good soldier.
The Private chuckled and carried on, li
kely trying to cheer up the few children in the group. “Everyone used to be all like, ‘Oh, aliens don’t exist! Don’t be silly!’ But hell, were they wrong! And these aren’t even the little green men people expected—they’re lizards! Goddamned lizards! And they . . . they . . .”
All heads turned when a shuffling sound started up in the ceiling. Worried murmurs spread through the civilians.
“What is that?” Sevadi asked.
The Lieutenant’s gaze followed the noise as it continued traveling overhead, then he noticed the hole that’d been blown through the ceiling, leaving it wide open to the ventilation shaft above.
“We’re about to find out,” he said. “Move the civilians back!” Knoble unslung his M5C, retreating with his team to put a good few meters between himself and whatever was about to join them.
A dark shape dropped onto the tracks, landing hard on the gravel. Spreading sinewy arms, the alien flicked its wrists, and from its gauntlets came a pair of blue blades that sparked with energy.
“Back, back, back!” Corporal Bennett shouted, waving his hands and urging the civilians deeper into the tunnels away from danger. They were screaming now, crying out in fear.
Knoble repeatedly squeezed his assault rifle’s trigger, releasing short, controlled bursts. He was trying to take down the alien’s shields, but that only seemed to make it angrier.
It charged at him.
He swore and kept firing, holding his position. It would be pointless to try and outrun the damn thing.
Then when the armored warrior came far too close for comfort, he sidestepped—only to be kicked farther aside by his enemy’s clawed foot. He hit the wall hard but managed to get straight back up.
It seemed luck was on Knoble’s side. Just as the Drocain warrior launched itself at him, the lights went out and the tunnel fell into darkness, allowing Knoble to dodge unseen. The lizard, however, was still ridiculously easy to see due to the bright lights on its armor.
The Calypsis Project Boxed Set (Books 1-2 - The Echo-Alpha Duology) Page 4