Things were heating up, and I still didn’t know exactly where the portal was situated.
“How close is the portal?” I questioned Alin. I figured it would be nearby since my mutant ability had triggered an upgrade in its level.
She sighed before answering reluctantly. “It is inside a fortress adjacent to the Watchtower.”
The siren suddenly changed to a low-pitched moan, and its warbles increased in frequency.
“What’s with the new siren?” I asked the empath.
“The power plant has been sealed,” she said. “No one can exit. The Grendels have reached the third ring.” The empath’s eyes were vacant, as though the battle had already ended, and her people were defeated.
Frustration burned like acid in my stomach as I considered my next move. I wanted to slay the Grendels, but I would need backup. With my comms down, I had one other option that wouldn’t take forever: I could attempt a teleport to the captain to inform him of the situation personally.
The last time I’d used my ability was during the RTF Bulwark’s assault, and all it had taken for me to teleport was thinking on the likely deaths of my friends. I brought those same thoughts to mind and added the impending carnage the Grendels would unleash on the five thousand remaining Ecomese on the Ark. As I felt magical energy coursing through my body, I pulled back. It took substantial willpower to banish the negative considerations from my mind, and I exhaled as the energy receded.
I had stopped because I didn’t know how my ability would interact with an active Grendel portal nearby. Jump mages couldn’t summon their own portals under such conditions because of the potential for deadly malfunction, and I thought my mutation might suffer from the same limitations.
Even though it was a great risk, I needed to get a message to the captain. I could attempt to teleport to him, but the Grendels might take the power plant before I ever got back here. Then my friends would be locked inside this place with a horde of angry lizard-warriors.
I wasn’t sure if I could teleport twice in a row, and I didn’t want Elle and Casey to die because I couldn’t instantly return.
“Alin,” I said. “Is it possible to get a message to Captain Cross? He needs to be informed there are Grendels here. We’ll need every artilleryman, squire, and knight to defeat them.”
“The Grendel portal is has disrupted all communication devices,” she said as she consulted her handheld device. “Even this tablet can only make use of a limited local network. And the power plant cannot be exited now that it is sealed.”
“What about the entrance around the western side?” I asked as I recalled the door Dr. Lenkov and I had used to sneak into the plant.
Alin’s eyes widened, and then she grabbed a passing enforcer. They shared a rapid-fire conversation before the man left. “I sent him to leave via the western entrance. He will send word to Captain Cross has soon as he is a sufficient distance from the portal for a comms device to function.”
I hoped it wouldn’t be too late. In the meantime, I would do my best to hold off the enemy waves. I’d made an oath to my queen to battle Grendel foes wherever they might be found, and that included planets outside the Caledonian Kingdom’s dominion.
But now my friends could escape the area. The area the enforcer had run toward could be their salvation while I remained here to fight the enemy.
“You two should leave the power plant through the western entrance,” I advised Casey and Elle. “Go somewhere else on the Ark. Preferably as far away from here as possible.”
“They might need enchanters,” Casey said.
“And I can probably utilize their computer systems,” Elle added.
I preferred for my friends to be safe, but they each had a point. While they could both be incredibly useful to defending this place, I didn’t want them in harm’s way needlessly.
I took a few seconds to look from the beautiful redheaded enchantress to the stunning raven-haired point clerk. Losing either of them to the hated enemies of humankind would be an atrocity. But they could be crucial to the Watchtower’s defense so I couldn’t force them to leave. I doubted they would even listen if I tried.
“Alright,” I said to them. “But you’ll need to obey everything I say. If I tell you to run, then you run.”
The two women nodded, and I saw Alin talking with a group of enforcers. Now was probably the best time to move in the same direction everyone else inside the building was going, so I entered the power plant’s main chamber. Soldiers and technicians were all rushing up the catwalks to a doorway at the very top of the room, and I turned to make sure the two beautiful women were following me.
“Do we go up there?” Elle asked, and then her attention was drawn to something behind me.
I turned to see Alin sprint toward us, and she stopped to catch her breath. “You must not go inside the Watchtower!” she managed to say. “Please, wait for your crew to arrive.”
“Will you call the enforcers to stop me?” I challenged. “Because they seem too preoccupied at the moment.” I was annoyed the woman had lied to me about the situation, but I was more concerned with the portal and the Grendels which would be coming out of it.
“No.”The empath shook her head.
“Then you need to come help us save your people.” I sprinted up the stairs to the catwalk with Elle, Casey, and Alin trailing me. After bounding up crisscrossing sloped metal platforms, we entered a corridor stretching twenty meters ahead.
This section of the power plant was organic, and the flesh-colored walls ebbed and flowed like a respiratory system. Armed enforcers and technicians in hazmat suits rushed through the complex while they yelled at each other in Ecomese. The place felt like an anthill that had just been stepped on, and I hoped there was sufficient manpower with weaponry capable of keeping the Grendels at bay.
We stopped at a sealed door guarded by two enforcers. Alin flashed an identification marking on her wrist, and the guards allowed her to pass. I figured she was granted high-level access since she worked for the prime minister. The enforcers didn’t seem too pleased with the presence of ‘old race’ humans, but they didn’t vocalize their disagreement.
The door opened to a server room, and lights danced across the computer systems as we weaved our way around the stalls. Wherever we were going was meant to be hidden even from the technicians who worked in the plant. We stopped at a terminal with a dead monitor screen. It didn’t appear to be functional until Alin lifted her wrist marking to a scanner on the computer console. The entire wall shifted, and we entered the secret doorway.
“This is the Watchtower,” the empath said as we entered a chamber with a dozen control consoles in its center. The systems weren’t like those in the server room; these were all constructed of the same organic material elsewhere in the Ark. An empath sat behind each one, and they were all wearing virtual reality helmets identical to the one I’d worn while playing the virtual game earlier today.
Three-meter-tall cages rested against the wall behind me. The lattices on their sides were too narrow for me to see what was inside, but the cages looked like they might contain vehicles or heavy weapons of some kind. At the far end of the room was a ten-meter-wide monitor screen displaying a horde of Grendel Grunts engaged in battle with a dozen warsuits.
“The alarm was sounded because of a virtual reality game?” I asked Alin to make sense of what I was seeing. Then I realized the meaning of the people wearing the VR helmets and the battle on the monitor. “Are these Grendels real? This monitor isn’t showing a game, is it?”
“The cyber alchemists are using the helmets to control the warsuits,” Alin admitted.
“Can twelve of these mechs take on that many Grendels?” Casey asked.
“I doubt it,” Elle said with a shake of her head.
I stared at the monitor as a group of Grendel Grunts surged over a warsuit. Their sheer numbers overpowered it, and then a Warrior carved it in two with its serrated sword. A cyber alchemist screamed and shuddere
d like he was having a seizure. Alin rushed over to him, and I followed behind her. She removed the alchemist’s helmet, and I saw blue blood leaking from his lifeless eyes and oozing from his mouth and nostrils.
I now knew the true purpose of the virtual world I’d entered earlier. It was a training ground for when the empaths needed to use the warsuits to fight against real lizard-men. No wonder their programming was so good; they had probably witnessed lots of Grendel activity while using the helmets.
My insides coiled and clenched, and I could barely speak above a hoarse whisper. “Where is the portal?”
The empath didn’t seem to hear me because she was busy reading a computer terminal. The screen displayed a flashing block of letters, but I couldn’t understand any of it.
I gripped my longsword’s handle from over my shoulder and released the weapon from my breastplate’s magnetons. “I will help your men fight,” I yelled at Alin.
A squad of enforcers ran to her, and she issued them commands before they bowed their heads and then marched out of the chamber. The woman was too busy organizing the Ecomese forces to hear me, and my anger boiled over.
“Alin!” I shouted. “Show me where the enemy lies!”
I ached to kill the Grendels. Every induction class in the Academy drilled in me an unstoppable hatred of the lizard aliens, and I felt those conditioning sessions come back to me as I watched enemies on the monitor screen.
A swarm of Grendel Grunts rolled over the warsuit like a scaled wave. The dog-like lizards toppled the machine, and then they slashed its armor with their talons. The first dozen Grunts were unable to penetrate the mech's outer casing, but more kept coming until the warsuit’s armor was shredded like cheap metal. Another alchemist screamed before dying.
“They have taken the primary rune-turret,” Alin muttered as she consulted her tablet. “Any Grendel wanting to get here needs to pass through the turret chamber. Without its main weapon, they will surely overwhelm us.”
“We can repair the rune-turret,” Casey said.
“It’s too dangerous,” the grey-skinned woman countered.
“I will escort her,” I said. While I agreed it was dangerous, we were all sitting ducks until the captain and the others arrived. If we were going to hold off the Grendels, the turret needed to be working.
“What do you need?” I asked Casey.
“More Arcane Dust,” the enchantress said.
“I will send an enforcer to bring three containers of Dust here,” Alin said.
Casey's face hardened in determination. “I’ll grab the other enchanters.”
“Hurry,” I said. “We don’t have much time.” The Tyranius mission had taught me how quickly a powerful Grendel force could overwhelm an unprepared enemy.
Alin relayed the information to an enforcer, and he left the room to retrieve more Dust. I was surprised by how well she commanded these enforcers, and I realized she was far more than an attendant for guests. The ignorant and whimsical persona she’d shown earlier must have been an act. The prime minister had probably assigned her best people to the Stalwart’s crew because she was suspicious of our intentions. It was a smart move considering the captain’s desire to obtain the Ecomese implants.
Regardless, I was glad to have Alin with me now.
“Can you provide me with the location of the turrets?” I asked her.
The empath brought up a map of the Watchtower on her tablet. She then zoomed out, so it displayed a circular facility attached to this one. A series of narrow corridors surrounded the innermost circle, and I guessed it was the location of the Grendel portal.
I had lots of questions about this place, including how the Ecomese managed to determine the exact location of a portal with sufficient time to build a fortress around it. Even the Triumvirate Kingdoms hadn’t developed technology capable of that level of accuracy and foresight. But the fortress seemed ancient, so I guessed the Den Ark had been subjected to alien gateways at this exact location for many years.
I cast aside the questions as Alin highlighted a chamber on the second most outer ring with an antechamber connected to it. By my estimations, we were about fifty meters away from the highlighted location on the empath's tablet.
“The primary turret is inside the second ring.” The empath pointed at the doorway connecting the turret chamber to the antechamber. “This has been sealed to prevent the Grendels from getting closer to the power plant. They have already conquered the first three inner rings. We might have held them off, but something happened in the last hour. We suspect the portal has grown much stronger.”
“It’s now a Level Eight,” Elle confirmed.
My pulse screamed against my chest. “Are you sure?”
“I’m a point clerk,” she answered as she tapped the metallic implants on her temples.
A Level Eight was one level higher than the portal we’d faced on Tachion. Even the Stalwart’s knights had struggled to kill the Ogres it spewed out, so I doubted we would fare well without them now.
“Any chance of a video feed from the turret chamber?” Elle asked the empath from over my shoulder.
Alin drew her fingers across the tablet’s screen and then selected a menu with text in the Ecomese language. After a few more swipes, I was looking at a room with at least fifty Grendel Grunts squashed inside it like canned sardines. The outer line of lizard-dogs pounded against the sealed door but couldn’t get through.
“The door on the other side of the turret chamber has also been sealed,” Alin said. “Those Grendels are locked inside for now. Until one of the doors are breached, at least. The Ark has organic weapons throughout the fortress. Unfortunately, those are mostly ineffective against higher level enemies. Our systems are incapable of showing the weapons' statuses, but I suspect they have been destroyed.”
I’d already seen a Grendel Warrior, so I knew there were higher level enemies than Grunts coming through the gateway. Eventually, they would traverse the fortress and breach the door. Before that happened, the turrets needed to come online. I could barely see the mounted weapons beneath the sea of scaled monsters, but they sparked and smoked from the damage the enemies had done to them. These Grunts had used sheer force of numbers to take out the weapons so they might do the same again.
Still, there wasn’t really another option. It was either bring the turrets back online and pray they could hold back the wave in time for the Stalwart’s crew to get here, or hope no stronger enemies would come and break the sealed door. I could probably deal with a dozen or more Grunts by myself. Fifty would be almost impossible. Luckily, the antechamber provided a bottleneck. Alin could open the door separating the antechamber and the turret room so I could take on a few enemies at a time.
“By the queen!” Joseph Roman uttered as he entered the Watchtower. Brad and Dominic shook their heads in disbelief after gazing up at the monitor. A giant Ecomese robot followed them into the room with three Dust containers attached to its back.
We possessed everything we needed to fix the weapon. Now we just needed to risk our lives to get inside the turret chamber.
“I’ve explained everything to the others,” Casey said. “We’re prepared.”
“Good,” I said before turning to Alin. “Can you close and open the doors inside the fortress remotely?”
“Yes,” she said. “I will monitor your progress through the first and second circles from the internal cameras.”
“When we’re inside the antechamber, I’ll signal you with my longsword,” I said. “Then you can open the door to the turret chamber.”
Alin simply nodded as the door to my left slid open, and three dozen enforcers entered the room. They were all carrying glowing staves, and fear was barely hidden behind their eyes. Alin gave them a sympathetic look, and I guessed she could feel their terror like it was her own.
“I have notified the Stalwart’s captain,” the leader said to me with a quavering voice.
“Thank you,” I said. “How soon will he be here?
” I knew we were running out of time to repair the turret, but a specific ETA on the crew would help me know exactly how desperate the situation was.
“At least twenty more minutes,” the enforcer responded. “There is no fast route to the Watchtower. They must go through the city and then the power plant.”
Hearing the crew wouldn’t be here for twenty minutes was like a blow to the chin. I suspected the Watchtower had been purposefully designed so that the rest of the Ark was separated from it.
Alin spoke to the soldiers and then turned to me. “These enforcers will accompany you Caledonians into the Watchtower while you repair the turrets. When the weapon is back online, you must return here and await the arrival of the rest of your crew.”
I nodded at the empath before facing the enchanters. “Are you all wearing prot-belts?” They nodded. I wasn’t surprised. The items were meant to be restricted to combat roles within the RTF, but the Stalwart’s crew did things their own way.
“Lead the way, Squire,” Joseph said to me, and I got the feeling he was only polite because I would be the first in the path of any Grendels we might encounter.
I activated my longsword’s runes from my prot-belt, then I triggered my prot-field. My forcefield hummed to life, and the air around me crackled with energy.
“Activate prot-fields,” I ordered the enchanters, and they obeyed. The enforcers didn’t move, so I guessed they weren’t wearing prot-belts. If we encountered Grendels with rifles, these men would be dead in seconds.
“Stay safe,” Elle said.
I’d seen the point clerk fight and knew she could handle her own, but I was glad she hadn’t asked to accompany us. She would be just another person I had to protect, and I needed to keep Casey and the enchanters from coming to harm.
“I’ll make sure no one dies,” I said to Elle. The promise sounded flat on my tongue, and I prayed I could keep it as we turned to face the entrance to the fortress.
Space Knight Book 2 Page 14