The Drahkori put a hand to her shoulder and she turned to face him. “It surprises me that you have not followed your own advice to bring pride to yourself,” he said sympathetically.
“I have,” Alana told him, not quite sure if that was the truth. “But there are some things we can’t let go of—thoughts and feelings we can’t erase even if we don’t believe them for a second.”
When Kenon tried to speak again, she put her hands up, wanting to end the discussion here before it could escalate any further.
“Look, just . . . leave me alone for a while, okay?” she requested, then stepped by the young warrior and walked to the center of the cave where Dr. Chambers was kneeling beside the Ship Commander.
Chambers gave her a sort of reassuring smile and Alana wondered how much of the conversation she’d heard. Probably the worst of it. She could only hope that the Doctor would understand the reason behind her emotional outburst and not bring it up in future.
Alana crouched next to her and asked if she was still handling the bitter weather all right. The older woman simply shrugged and went back to observing her patient, who was beginning to show signs of regaining consciousness.
She never did like when people worried about her.
Dr. Chambers pulled down the collar of the blue warrior’s bodysuit and gently pressed her index and middle fingers to the side of his neck, then announced with relief that his pulse was strong and steady.
Roused perhaps by the Doctor’s voice, Levian’s eyelids flickered, opened slowly, and he stared at the woman in a daze for a moment before trying to sit up. Chambers pushed him back down, a hand on his combat harness, and ordered him to lie still as she retrieved a flashlight from the deep pocket of her lab coat.
“Where are we?” the Leh’kin asked, looking around in confusion. “What happened?”
“We’re in a cave.” Chambers shone the bright light into his eyes, keeping one hand firmly on his harness. “You fell through the ice; gave us quite a fright. But you’ve no need to worry, you’re stable—”
“Get that device away from me!” Levian spat irritably and batted the flashlight out of the Doctor’s hand. Even in his weakened state, he pushed against her with ease and propped himself up on his elbows.
Alana expected Dr. Chambers to rebuke the Ship Commander for disobeying her orders, but instead she huffed and gave him space.
Maybe she has more respect for him than she does for her associates at the lab.
Levian rose, legs trembling, and staggered backward. His fall was stopped by Kenon, who caught him by the shoulder and held him steady until he’d regained his balance.
“How long was I unconscious for?” Levian asked.
“Six hours, give or take,” Alana said.
“Then we should keep moving. Enough time has been wasted already—” the blue warrior went to take a step forward, but his legs gave out and he collapsed.
Kenon caught him again; they exchanged a hard stare. Levian straightened and pulled his arms from the Drahkori’s grasp, readjusting his twisted robes.
Dr. Chambers bent over and picked up her flashlight, slipping it back into her pocket. “You’re in no condition to travel—and certainly not in this weather,” she told Levian with the sternness of a mother lecturing her child. “Your system hasn’t even had the chance to recover from the shock it took earlier. Give your body a while to warm up, get your blood pumping again. We’ll leave in an hour.”
The Ship Commander grunted and retreated further into the cave. He must have known that the Doctor was right but was too humiliated to admit it.
Chapter
———NINETEEN———
1110 Hours, December 03, 2438 (Earth Calendar) / Underground Tunnel System, planet Calypsis
As soon as the Ship Commander’s strength returned, the team gathered their belongings, woke their companions, and set out into the freezing winds once more. For a short while the storm had eased off and allowed the six clear passage for several miles . . . However, it returned with vengeance.
Unable to see more than a couple of feet in front of them, the team was forced to use their motion sensors to keep track of each other. And to make matters worse, Lithe was beginning to behave very strangely—throwing glances over her shoulder as if she thought they were being followed.
Sure enough, they were.
Kenon drew his rifle when he spotted the huge, white signatures winking on and off on the edge of his sensor—one on either side, flanking the team. Levian and Alana noticed them as well; both readied their weapons. The three of them formed a defensive circle around Ayla and the Doctor, who was riding upon the tyliven’s back.
“Show yourselves, you spineless bastards,” Levian hissed under his breath.
The signals drew nearer, quickly closing the gap, and then they appeared—two enormous beasts emerged from the snow squalls, their immense size making them easy to see in spite of the storm. Each one carried a set of spiraling horns atop a great, rounded head, and both were covered in masses of white fur.
“That’s . . . definitely not what I was expecting,” Alana said.
At the swipe of a massive paw, Levian shouted and leapt out of the way, armed Alkastoran’s Fire and pulled the trigger. A spout of crytal burst from the weapon’s barrel, burning one beast’s face. Blood and melted flesh sprayed the ground.
The creature rose up on its hind legs, let out a furious roar, and stomped its feet down in the snow in a failed attempt to crush the Ship Commander. Levian narrowly avoided the attack.
Kenon opened fire on the second creature as it lashed out at Lithe. This only served to make it angrier, and it charged toward him.
The young warrior retreated, not daring to let go of the trigger—but the beast pushed through the barrage of bullets and swiped him aside with one great paw, throwing him into the air. Kenon hit the ground hard and rolled, coming to a stop on a patch of ice.
As he tried to get back on his feet, the heavy weight of the white animal pressed down upon his back, forcing the air from his lungs and making it nearly impossible to breath.
This must have been exactly how Lieutenant Knoble felt when they’d first fought each other in the underground railroads of Masahi City. Stuck, powerless . . .
The massive weight lifted off unexpectedly, the Drahkori gasped for air and rolled over—only to see that his opponent had reared up on its hind legs.
It was about to flatten him like a leaf.
Not knowing what else to do, Kenon hurriedly activated one of his energy blades and thrust his arm upward as the beast’s hefty paws came down on top of him. He squeezed his eyes shut, left arm drawn up over his head, and felt something warm trickling down his arm.
Opening his eyes again, he looked up and saw that his blade had cut clean through the snowy creature’s black paw pads.
The beast howled in pain and bore down on the Drahkori with a set of massive jaws. Sharp, yellowing teeth clamped down around his midsection, trapping his arms against his body.
Kenon struggled in its hold and managed to free his right arm. Reactivating the blade with a flick of his wrist, he stabbed the creature in the side of the head. It growled and whimpered, continuing to bite down on the young warrior until it became too weak. Blood ran thick and stained its fur; small gray eyes glazed over and rolled back in its skull. It swayed on unsteady legs, then groaned as it collapsed in the snow.
Kenon sheathed his blade and pried the beast’s jaws open, crawled free of their grip and examined his injuries. The wounds he’d received weren’t nearly as deep as they felt, mere scratches and bruising.
Remembering the first creature that’d attacked the Ship Commander, Kenon squinted through the snowfall and spotted Levian and the female soldier dodging back and forth to avoid the beast’s thrashing paws.
This one wouldn’t be fighting for much longer—its flanks had been slashed open and much of its body was covered in crytal burns.
Lithe, still carrying the Doctor on her ba
ck, came up behind the animal and batted at its hind legs with her clawless feet, then darted off to draw its attention elsewhere.
While it was distracted, Alana unloaded an entire clip of ammo into the furry beast’s hindquarters—unable to keep up as it charged after the tyliven.
Kenon reached for his repeater . . . to find that it was no longer clipped to his thigh guard. It had been knocked from his hands when the other animal threw him aside. He caught sight of the weapon a little ways off and dashed over to it, scooping the rifle up from the snow. Fixing his aim on the remaining creature, he fired.
The beast spun and rounded on the Ship Commander, tucking its head down. Just as it was about to ram him, its forelegs buckled and it crashed face-first into the ground.
Levian walked over, planted a foot on the beast’s great head, then drove his energy blade into its eye socket. “Is that all of them?” he spread his arms wide, as if calling for a challenge, and then laughed. “Hah! These beasts were hardly worth the fight—merely a couple of savage brutes.”
The storm cleared and the winds died down. Only a few snowflakes drifted through the underground cavern now, glittering in the artificial light of a miniature sun. Finally able to see clearly again, the team was on the lookout for a way back to the alien tunnels.
Kenon focused hard, sure he’d seen something shine amongst a forest of pine trees, and signaled for his comrades to halt. “There,” he said, pointing to an angular archway fused into the rocks—the entrance to an open passage.
The team made their way over to investigate and stopped abruptly under the arch, shocked at what they saw inside.
Smears of red painted the cool gray walls. The metal was dappled with soot and pockmarks where projectiles had struck; and smudged across the floor were ashy, two-toed footprints—three sets, one of which was bloody. The trail led deeper into the tunnel to a gate, blackened and twisted out of shape, lights flickering faintly.
“What happened here?” Kenon breathed.
“I think we’re better off not knowing,” Alana put in as she passed the young warrior, following Levian as he ventured further into the tunnels.
Levian pried the gate open, wide enough for the tyliven to squeeze through, and the six moved into the next passage together. Shredded cables spilled out from the bottom of the walls, throwing sparks. The stench of burnt rubber and flesh mingled in the air with a scent akin to crytal discharge—unpleasant, pungent.
Something stirred in the darkness ahead.
Black Team assumed defensive positions.
Ayla, much less cautious than her teammates, gave a whistle and moved forward. Casting a beam of light onto the floor, she illuminated a crumpled Nepheran fighter that lay propped up against the wall.
Drenched in blood, the alien’s armor was cracked and dimpled. His torso had been ripped wide open, insides fried, and bones broken.
He appeared to be dead—he had to be dead . . .
But Ayla seemed to think otherwise. She hovered low to the ground and politely requested his identity.
Against all odds, the alien turned his helmeted head to look at the Drocain AI bot and even managed to speak. “I am the Seeker of Renaissance.” He chucked softly to himself. “Or rather, was.”
Seeker, the word echoed in Kenon’s head. Where have I heard that before?
“You are—all of you—fools,” the alien carried on, wheezing. “To journey into the depths of our world . . . and with the Legend in tow? My brother, my sister—oh, you have made this so very easy for them. This time,” he coughed, “this time, we will prevail . . .”
Ayla clicked her small robotic claws together and rotated to face the team, reporting that all life signs had vanished. The Nepheran fighter’s last words had left them mystified, and now that he was gone, there was no one to answer their countless questions.
The Legend? Surely he did not mean one of us. Kenon supposed the fighter could have been delirious in his last moments of life. After all, he had lost a great deal of blood. Seeker of Renaissance . . . What did you know, and by whose hand were you so fatally wounded? If only we had found him sooner, then perhaps we could have uncovered more about the conspiracy surrounding this planet.
Theory upon theory crowded the young Drahkori’s mind, and the rush of fear and curiosity that plagued him was almost overwhelming. Focus. He could not allow it to get to him, couldn’t make assumptions based on the ramblings of a dying alien . . .
Muffled speech resounding off the walls interrupted Kenon’s thoughts. It was coming from somewhere up ahead—the others had heard it, too.
Black Team advanced further into the corridor and crept up to the gateway the voices were emanating from. Kenon, Dr. Chambers, and the tyliven hunkered down on the left side of the gate, whilst Alana, Levian, and Ayla stuck to the right.
The Corporal peeked around the corner.
“How many?” Dr. Chambers asked.
“Too many to engage, even if we have the element of surprise, and they’re too far apart to take out one-by-one . . .” Alana scanned the floor in front of her and picked up a fist-sized chunk of metal. Leaning out again, she drew her arm back and tossed it through the doorway.
The chatter stopped.
She’s luring them out . . . Smart move.
On the young warrior’s motion sensor, enemy signatures congregated around the object Alana had used as bait—seven of them—and before they had the chance to separate again, she lobbed a couple of fragmentation grenades into the room.
Explosions drowned out the shrieks of alarmed Nephera. A cloud of smoke and shrapnel burst out of the chamber and filled the hall, then dissipated.
“Targets: neutralized,” the soldier said slyly; clearly smirking behind that faceplate. She stood and let Levian take the lead as they continued past the room and into a hall with an arched ceiling. At the end was an elevator shaft.
The team boarded the lift, Kenon activated it with the tap of a finger on the control panel, and it ascended the shaft.
At last, he thought, glad to be moving on an upward course rather than journeying deeper and deeper into the planet.
The temperature gradually increased until the lift reached the top, where they were greeted only by blackness. Feeling around in the dark, the six discovered that they were trapped inside a dome.
“Can you hear that?” the Doctor said.
Chambers’ outline was becoming visible as Kenon’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. He listened intently, hearing nothing but the breathing of his comrades at first . . . and then a whistle. “Wind?” he queried.
“Wind, birds—wildlife. We’re outside,” she said, then pointed upward. “Look.” Rays of warm light began to filter in through a sliver of an opening, illuminating the inside of the dome and dividing it into two hemispheres. “Sunshine.”
More noise filtered in—gunfire, the whirring of ship engines and aircraft. The dividing line continued to grow wider, revealing an azure sky dotted with pink clouds and the long, narrow shapes of human and Drocain Royalty-Class warships.
A UNPD battle group of four frigates and two destroyers opposed a Drocain carrier and five corvettes in a frenzied battle. The Drocain assault carrier unleashed its twin cannons on one of the frigates and cut clean through the smaller ship, stem to stern. Severely damaged, the frigate veered away from its attacker and plunged into the forest below.
The two sides of the dome sunk into the ground beside the lift until there was no evidence they’d ever been there, and Kenon realized he was standing on a cliff. The moss-covered stone was cool beneath his feet and engraved with circular symbols and complex geometrical patterns.
Though certain he’d never seen these before, he felt he somehow knew them.
The young warrior looked to the horizon, in the direction of the Terrak Mountains, and what he saw left him, and the others, paralyzed with shock.
A large portion of the sky appeared to be warped; twisting and bubbling around motes of light. And several kilometers away fr
om this distortion, a colossal alien vessel sat motionless. It was the size of a Drocain Supercruiser, maybe even a bit bigger—a Nepheran design, probably.
It was one of the strangest, most complicated ships Kenon had seen.
The vessel’s stern fanned out into many serrated metal claws that offered protection for the engines, and jutting off its underside, between rows of crimson lights, were more jagged blades. It had no symbols or writing of any kind on its copper-tinged hull; nothing to indicate what faction it belonged to.
Even when a pair of UNPD ships closed in on it and unleashed just about everything they had the damnable thing didn’t budge.
“Please, for the love of god, tell me they’re not trying to open a portal that huge in the lower atmosphere,” Dr. Chambers said, regarding the warped sky with concern.
If that was indeed the objective the aliens had in mind, a portal of such size would send out a lethal shockwave capable of wiping out anything within a range of ten kilometers.
“Never mind that,” Levian growled. “Where do they plan to go?”
“The portal will connect this system to the Phoenix System.” It was Ayla who answered after reviewing the data she’d gathered from a scan of the unopened portal. “Thirty-two thousand kilometers outside of Dyre’s orbit, to be precise. What the Nephera seek on the planet is unknown. Advising we initiate further investigation.”
Kenon thought his heart had stopped beating. In a bout of sheer helplessness and fury, he stormed to the cliff’s edge and parted his jaws in a cry of despair that rang out over the marshland. Falling to his knees, he pounded the engraved stone with a fist.
Is this my limit? Is this all I can do—stand here and watch hopelessly as those bastards rain hell upon my homeworld? He lifted his head slowly. And yet . . . is that not what I have always done? Just stood by in silence and watched as the world grew and shifted around me? Doing nothing to change or improve it . . .
The Calypsis Project Boxed Set (Books 1-2 - The Echo-Alpha Duology) Page 20