Refugees? Kenon speculated.
He didn’t recognize either of them, but felt the tug of some lingering strand of familiarity to the scarred warrior. Perhaps he was an acquaintance of the family, a distant relative, or maybe they had simply met at the training academy many years ago.
In any case, these Drahkori might be able to tell him where he was.
Kenon moved to the edge of the dune and called out to them. Still they fought, too engrossed in their own argument to hear his cries. He called out again—louder this time.
“They cannot hear you,” someone said.
Startled, Kenon spun around to see who had spoken.
To his surprise, another Drahkori was standing behind him. This one appeared much older and wiser than the other two, and upon seeing the ivory-colored robes tucked under his jacket, one might think him a councilor. However, Kenon had never seen nor heard of a councilor with such an intricate collection of tattoos. Most thought it foul to permanently stain one’s skin.
However, the thing that set this newcomer apart more than anything was the jewel embedded in his chest. It was like a window to the universe—stretching to unfathomable depths, glittering with stars caught in the wisps of nebulae.
Setting aside his interest in the crystal, Kenon jerked his muzzle to the quarreling Drahkori below. “Who are they?” he asked. The sooner he found out where he was and who these strangers were, the sooner he could regroup with his teammates.
The jewel-bearer joined him on the dune’s crest. “The female is called Linadi Voskois. She was a Silver Forge dancer who devoted her life to the worship of the first god, Bhelios Kin’Sedrin.” He cast his amber gaze to the leather-clad warrior. “And the other, Valinquint, is her lover and my apprentice: a proud soul known as Avhelliss Demor.”
Kenon cocked his head when the stranger addressed him by his family name. “I am sorry, have we met?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Crossing one arm over his chest, the jewel-bearer stooped low in a bow and introduced himself. “My name is Doramire Kin’Delor. I am a vykord—a guide of sorts—and one of the forgotten.”
Wait a minute.
A memory nagged at Kenon, and he recalled the disembodied voices that had whispered to him. No wonder this Drahkori’s tone sounded so familiar! “It was you,” he blurted out. “You are the one who spoke to me in the Deadlands!”
“And several times before that as well.”
When the cliff collapsed on Calypsis . . . In the Council Building after it fell . . . Why was he only able to bring these vague messages to mind now? What had stopped him earlier, when he was so desperate to bring them to the surface?
“How?” Kenon demanded. “Your words do not reach my ears. They ring inside my skull like a memory! How is that possible?”
“Through an echo of your former self,” Doramire said, to which Kenon gawked at him. He studied the young warrior’s expression for a minute, then said, “You do not realize what you are, do you?”
“What does that even mean?”
“In time, you will learn.”
“Then at least tell me where I am!” Kenon thought his heart was about to burst out of his chest. The pressure gripping his ribcage was growing steadily stronger, making it increasingly difficult to breathe.
If Doramire noticed, he didn’t seem the slightest bit worried. “What you see around you is the outskirts of the ancient city of Dokan—a place you have come to call the Deadlands,” he said. “However, this is merely where your consciousness resides. In reality, your body lies on the lakeshore, where your companions are fighting to save your life. You were drowning.”
I’m . . . dying?
That nauseating sense of weightlessness from earlier returned. Kenon’s vision blurred, turning the desert to a wash of white and yellow. Bit by bit, the imagined world faded—evaporating like moisture in the air. Even Doramire’s image had started to dissolve.
Sweeping his tail over the pale sands, the vykord bowed once more. “We will speak again soon, Valinquint. For now, I bid you farewell.”
Kenon’s eyes opened to the waxing moon. Water flooded his lungs upon his first inhalation. He rolled over, coughing and spluttering, and gradually became aware of the people beside him. Jhiral was holding him steady, uttering words of reassurance in his ear. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Knoble and Corporal Sevadi sat off to the side chuckling with relief.
Save for a few scrapes and bruises, Knoble and Jhiral appeared to have made it out of the crash mostly unharmed. Sevadi, on the other hand, was covered in burns.
“You had us worried,” Knoble said as he rose to his feet, brushing grass from his knees. “For a minute there, I was sure you were a goner. How are you feeling?”
Kenon cleared his throat. “Alive.”
“Good. We’ve set up camp at the crash site. Can you walk?”
With a swift nod, Kenon stood and followed his teammates to a small clearing in the middle of the woods. The Bandwagon’s aft section lay nearby. Clumps of muddied grass and sticks were tangled in its tail rotor, and both turrets had been torn off with the front half of the craft.
Corporal West sat cross-legged on a fallen tree next to the wreck, hugging her suit to her naked chest while Carter extracted shrapnel from her back. Her combat harness lay at her feet, reduced to a warped hunk of metal. Considering its condition, it was surprising she had escaped with only a few minor burns.
Opposite her, parked on the ground, Sergeant Bennett cradled a radio in his lap. The device had been dismantled, wires and screws stripped out so he could tamper with its innards. Two of his prosthetic fingers were missing.
Kenon scanned the site for the rest of the humans. “Where are Alana and the others?” he asked, assuming they must have gone down with the rest of the dropship.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Knoble peered over Bennett’s shoulder to scrutinize his work. “Any luck yet?”
“Nothing,” he huffed. “Comms must be down. I can’t get in touch with any of our people, and Anderson and ‘Nher are out of reach as well. Nepheran bastards probably blew up the outpost . . .” Bennett ran a hand over his sodden hair, careful not to disturb the bandage on his head. He was so heavily drenched in sweat, it almost looked like he was the one who had been hauled out of the lake.
Slipping back into her tank top, West zipped up her suit and walked over. “Sounds like it’s time to send out a search party.”
“I’m in,” Sevadi agreed.
“Oh, no you’re not.” Knoble said sternly, lowering the young man’s eager hand. “West, Kenon, Carter, and I will take to the woods. You’re going to stay here with Jhiral and Bennett. You can keep each other company and hold down the fort until we get back. Capiche?”
Sevadi folded his arms. “Yes, sir.”
Knoble slung his rifle over his shoulder. “Alright. Everyone else, gather your gear and move out. The sooner we locate our people, the better.”
Chapter
———EIGHTEEN———
1350 Hours, September 10, 2442 (Earth Calendar) / Va’rien Falls, Kingdom of Oe’Nhervon, planet Thei’legh
If there was one thing Alana hated more than wandering through the jungle in the middle of the night, it was having to go it alone. Every rustle and snap in the underbrush sent her heart looking for an escape route, even when the noise was the product of her own clumsiness.
She wasn’t fond of the dark—never was, never would be. The thought of what might be stalking her from the bushes was unnerving. Not to mention the last time she was alone in the woods, she found herself at the end of Kenon’s dart rifle faced with the very real possibility of death.
As she shuffled past a thorny shrub, her foot smacked into something hard. She hissed a curse through gritted teeth. One stupid injury and suddenly every step became a blunder.
She parted the branches to see what had obstructed her path. A hunk of metal lay beneath the shrub, covered in chips of yellow paint that formed part of a word:
ANDWA.
Bandwagon!
Up ahead, she could just make out the gentle slope of the dropship’s bow. She hobbled past the bushes as fast as her injured leg would allow, and paused on the other side when she spotted a body lying face-down in the dirt.
Alana moved to the soldier’s side, turned her over, and quickly averted her gaze. It was Private Mäkinen. She stared blankly toward the sky, her face shredded by the shards of her shattered visor. The only thing that gave away her identity was the wisp of blue hair under the edge of her helmet.
Alana collected the girl’s dog tags and continued onward.
The dropship’s nose had been flattened—crumpled against the boulder responsible for bringing its crash to a grinding halt. All that remained of it now was the cockpit and the foremost half of the passenger cabin, from which mangled branches sprouted. The tree’s broad trunk had punched straight through the windshield.
Dreading the worst, Alana moved to the portside hull. The pilot’s door was already open, and there was a rattling noise coming from inside. She armed her rifle, half expecting to find some animal gnawing on her teammate’s corpse. Instead, she found him fumbling with his seatbelt.
“Parker!” she gasped.
He whipped around, startled, then relaxed when he saw her. “Alana—Jesus Christ, you scared the crap outta me!” Though the fear was gone from his eyes, it certainly hadn’t left his voice.
“Are you hurt?”
“Not badly.”
“Good, then let’s get you out of there.” As Alana clambered into the cockpit to help Parker out of his restraints, he put his hand up.
“No, I’m fine. I can handle this,” he insisted, clearing his throat to banish the tension in his voice. “Right now, I need you to go check on Foster. He was awake for a few minutes after the crash, then he just stopped talking.”
“On it.” Alana jumped down. She staggered on her injured leg, but quickly regained her balance. As soon as she rounded the starboard side, she saw the blood splatters on the window. She grasped the door handle and wrenched it open.
The copilot’s seat had broken free of its bolts and come away from the floor, pinning Lieutenant Foster against the dashboard. Blood poured from his mouth, pooling at his feet. His body was twisted at such an angle that Alana couldn’t tell whether anything was actually broken or not. He didn’t appear to be breathing.
“Carmen, what’s going on?” Parker called out from the other side of the tree trunk. “Do you see him? Is he all right?”
Just as she was about to deliver the bad news, Foster’s eyes snapped open. He tried to speak, only to break into a violent coughing fit.
“Oh shit—Parker, he’s still alive!” Alana hopped onto the running board to see if she could free him. Splintered tree branches jutted out everywhere, bits of broken glass littered the floor. With all this mess, she couldn’t haul Foster out safely. She would have to lift the seat off first.
Slipping her hands in behind him, she pushed against the back of the chair with all her might. Leather scrunched beneath her palms. Metal groaned in protest. But it was no use.
The seat wouldn’t budge.
“Hang in there, Foster. I’m gonna get you out.” Alana limped over to the trail of wreckage behind the Bandwagon. She needed a piece of framework, or a rod of some kind—something she could use to pry the seat off him.
Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to find either of those in this mess.
She spotted a pipe sticking out of a puddle a little ways off and tromped through the water to get it. Once she’d pulled it free, she hurried back to Foster. If she could get him out of the cockpit, fill his wounds with foam, it might just buy time to—
Alana halted abruptly.
Parker was standing on the running board, his hand raised to Foster’s neck. She waited in anticipation, praying he was still alive. Her hopes crumbled when Parker reached inside the man’s suit to retrieve his dog tags.
I’m too late . . .
The pipe slipped from Alana’s grasp, landing with a thud at her feet. She took Foster’s bloodied tags from Parker and slipped them inside her suit for safekeeping. Tzirel Dahan’s were probably out there somewhere as well. After getting ripped out of the dropship like that, there was no way she could have survived.
“Mäkinen is gone, too,” Alana reported.
Parker sighed. “Anyone else?”
“Not that I’ve found.”
“I suppose that’s good. At least that means there’s a chance everyone else is alive. Probably scattered across the jungle with the way that explosion tore through us, though.” Parker shot an almost mournful look at the crippled Bandwagon. He patted the dropship’s battered hull and stepped down from the running board.
“So, what do we do now?”
Parker pointed to some unseen place in the distance. “Head for higher ground. I spotted some hills about four klicks to the west. They’ll give us a decent vantage point. We might even be able to see where the rest of the ship landed from there.”
“Are you sure you can walk that far?” Alana asked, regarding his prosthesis with uncertainty. It was noticeably twisted from the knee down, and the foot and shin had been fused together at the ankle by crytal vapor, rendering the joint unbendable.
“You’re one to talk.” Parker shuffled over and hooked his arm around her middle. “Come on, we’ll help each other.”
They didn’t make it far.
Half an hour into their trek, Alana had already reached her limit. She could barely hold on to Parker anymore, let alone help him hobble about on his damaged leg. The pain had traveled up her thigh and intensified to a point where it was difficult to move the limb at all.
They sought shelter amongst the roots of an old tree, whose branches stretched upward and outward to form a giant umbrella over their heads. Fireflies twinkled amid the leaves. A cloud of the glowing insects even drifted down to investigate their visitors, and scattered when Parker shooed them away.
He knelt in the grass beside Alana. “Mind if I take a look?” he asked, gesturing to her knee.
Alana was hesitant—partly because she didn’t think it was a good idea to mess around with it until it could be treated properly, but mainly because she didn’t want to see if it had gotten any worse. If it was serious she would start to worry, and then that worry would turn into fear . . .
Just don’t look, she told herself.
“Alright. Be careful.” She averted her gaze when Parker activated his helmet’s flashlight. But as he peeled back the blistered fabric of her suit, she couldn’t help herself. She had to take a peek.
And immediately, she regretted it.
The wound was still drenched in blood, making it difficult to discern reddened skin from torn flesh. However, what she did notice was that the swelling had increased considerably since she last looked at it. She flinched when Parker pressed around the hardened medi-foam.
“Sorry,” he said. “What did this?”
“A metal rod of some kind.”
“Deep?”
She shook her head. “Not very. Is it bad?”
“Well, it’s infected. Looks like the crytal vapor fried the nanites in this part of your suit too, so you’ll have to keep the wound clean until the hole can be repaired.” Parker unclipped his canteen and handed it to her as he sat down. “Don’t worry, though. A shot of antibiotics should fix you right up.”
“Colin Parker, when did you become the medical specialist on this team?” Alana asked jokingly, taking a sip from the open cap. She wrinkled her nose at the taste. The water inside was warm and it had taken on a metallic tang, but she was too dehydrated to care.
Parker grabbed his combat knife and started chipping away at his artificial limb in an attempt to free up the ankle joint. “I actually did attend medical school before the war. I mean, I didn’t graduate. I dropped out at the end of the first semester to try engineering and computer science.”
“You never told me about that.”
/> “Didn’t come up in conversation.”
Alana twisted the canteen cap shut. “I’m assuming you dropped out of those other two as well?”
“To go work for Sector Two, yeah.” He laughed. “I could never stick to one thing. My parents hated me for it; said I had the attention span of a goldfish. One day I wanted to be a firefighter like my mom, the next I wanted to make video games. Now I’m here. Funny how things change, isn’t it?”
Alana hummed in agreement. Life before the war, she mused. Hers was singing at local festivals and poker nights with her stepfather and his pals from the army. Then one snafu led to another, and everything prior to the last fourteen years just felt like an old dream.
Parker’s knife screeched over his foot and left a chalky white line in the metal plates. He shook off the discomfort and continued. “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”
“Didn’t give it much thought,” Alana admitted. “My mom always had these high expectations of me. She wanted me to do something worthwhile with my life, like save lives or make earth-shattering discoveries. But those were things I could never hope to achieve, and I didn’t want to become anyone special.”
“Well, you are a great singer. Not too shabby on the guitar, either,” Parker said, to which she prodded him in the ribs with an elbow. He swatted her arm in retaliation. “I’m serious! You’ve got talent.”
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
“Have you ever considered music as a career?”
“It was a hobby. Maybe it would have grown into something more if I’d had a few more months to practice, but . . .” Alana rested against the rough tree trunk and stared up at the stars. “I was supposed to play at the New Beginnings Music Festival the day the Drocain attacked. Things got kind of crazy after that.”
“Understatement of the century.”
The Calypsis Project Boxed Set (Books 1-2 - The Echo-Alpha Duology) Page 44