Willet’s back stiffened.
“You’ll follow orders,” Bix said. “Don’t get rambunctious. Follow the plan, do no more than that.”
“Don’t worry, you two. I’m a good soldier,” Willet said. “I’ll draw some Skink blood, and then follow the plan.”
“Good luck, you two,” Bix said. He pushed a button that opened the rear hatch.
Bref exited first, and Willet followed. The rear hatch closed.
The mechanical snap of the hatch sealing was the starting gun for the race. Bix looked at the time. “By now, Zax and Tarik should have reached the checkpoint at the facility. The operative should have met them and they’ll be waiting for us to make our move.”
“We’re ready,” Reder said. “Hold this thing together the best you can. If they put this bird down, we take as many as we can with us.”
“Larex, let’s go!” Bix said.
The scout ship dipped to the side and plunged until it hovered over the parking lot of the nuclear facility. The ship’s big gun pivoted from on top and laid to waste the various vehicles below. Plas-metal composites exploded like confetti, forming a growing cloud.
There was no outside defense system set up to counter. The Skink invaders complacency had left them vulnerable.
Still, it took less than a minute for the first enemy scout ship to show on their sensors. “Hold your fire until they fire first. Hopefully, they’ll get closer,” Bix said.
The enemy ship tried making contact, but the rebels’ ignored it. Their questions quickly turned to warnings, and after they realized the battle line had been drawn, the Skink ship laid the first volley.
The Rebel ship’s defense systems immediately kicked in, and the offensive weapons followed the attack sequence. It was an amazing display of firepower. In seconds, hundreds of rounds of projectiles from the small and big guns filled the air so thick it looked like smoke between the warring ships. But every offensive weapon was countered with a defensive weapon, with neither ship taking a debilitating hit. Deflected and splintering ordinance easily bounced off the transmetal skin of the scout ships. Even when the railguns launched, the ships countered each other.
Shockwaves of mass meeting mass rocked the scout ships like battleships in angry waters. And after what seemed like an eternity of non-ending hell, the fury of firepower came to an abrupt halt.
Bix hoped that the Skinks had been lax in fully charging their ammo holds. But the reptilian race wasn’t inefficient like that. Skinks were known for being precise, so much so that it was at times to their detriment. Not this time, though. Each ship had carried a full capacity of armament. And now, they faced each other like bare-knuckled fighters in a ring.
If the mission had been to kill every Skink possible before giving up their own lives, Bix would have been an obedient soldier and would give the order to ram his ship into theirs. Today, he allowed for another option.
“Willet, Reder, now!” Bix commanded over the tel-com.
The railgun missiles from below flew so fast they seemed to hit the enemy scout ship before Bix completed the order. The combined kinetic energy from two projectiles nearly ripped their target in half. The mass of transmetal flew apart in pieces and plunged to the ground.
This was it. Their mission was complete. The diversion was set, and now it was up to Zax, Tarik, and the operatives in the nuclear facility to get the job done.
“Three scout ships are heading toward us. They’ll be here in minutes,” Larex said. “The jump ship for Willet and Reder has already landed. They are boarding now.”
“Get us out of here, Larex,” Bix said. “I need to get home to meet my daughter. We’re going to have tea together. I think I will enjoy this tea more so than any other time in my life.”
*
The moles inside the nuclear facility had done their jobs properly. Every security gate along the way had been open. Any visual recording surveillance along the canal must have been disabled or tricked into showing a false image.
Tarik’s paranoia had thoughts of a massive wall of water being released from the facility and washing them away. Everything was going to plan, though, and he and Zax made it to the rear entrance unimpeded.
Zax raised his hand as they came to a stop. He took a moment to catch his breath.
Tarik felt the strain of the journey too, but the armor aiding in the physical work gave him an advantage.
The electronics in Tarik’s HUD were mostly useless, surrounded by all the concrete and steel. He could hear, or thought he could hear, faint booms in the distance. Was that Bix and the rest taking on Skink security? Again his mind entertained a horrible scenario, where the rebel ship was outgunned three to one and brought down to the ground in flames.
Zax breathed slower, now. He looked pumped and ready to go.
There was no visible way to open the door by which they stood. Time was a precious commodity. Even a short delay could jeopardize the mission.
The door panels slid apart, offering passage into the facility. A single Nu-Man, outfitted in security garb, was there to greet them. He looked excited, perhaps a bit apprehensive. With his life on the line, Tarik couldn’t fault him.
“Everything’s good,” the Nu-Man said. He looked at Tarik. “Shut down your sensors. They’ll give you away.”
Tarik immediately complied. “Done.”
“Just follow me. There won’t be any problems. We’ll get Tarik out of here in no time. Zax, you’ll come with the scientists and me. We’ll set the time machine to destruct before we leave,” the Nu-Man said.
The news strengthened Tarik’s resolve. It was happening! Each segment of the plan had fallen into place. Fate had set things in motion, and every sign pointed to victory.
“Follow me.” The Nu-Man led them down a long hallway. They passed an occasional closed door, but there were no signs of others, Skink or Nu-Man, anywhere around.
After the third turn, they came to a large wall plated with unusual metal.
The Nu-Man ran and stood by the door. “In here, now!”
The doors opened.
Zax marched forward, and Tarik followed closely behind.
The room was completely dark. With his sensors off, Tarik was as blind as Zax. The situation felt terribly wrong.
“Hold fast or die,” the announcement boomed from overhead.
Light flooded the room. Zax and Tarik found themselves looking at eight Nu-Man guards and two Skink warriors with their weapons drawn and ready to fire.
“To resist is certain death. The warriors hold weapons designed to obliterate the one who wears the armor,” the voice said again.
Zax would stand no chance against that many blasters. The Skink warriors held long blasters Tarik had never seen before. He had little doubt in the truth of the warning.
Looking at Tarik, Zax’s expression seemed to ask if he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. With the odds so against them, he didn’t see the need in wasting lives. Even if they were lives of Nu-Mans who had betrayed them. Plus, he didn’t want his last thought to be seeing Zax turned into pulverized meat.
The rebels had gambled and lost. They were so close. So close! But it wasn’t meant to be. Fate had tricked them. What a cruel joke for the universe to play on the seekers of justice.
Tarik lowered his arms and held his open hands to his side. “We will not resist.”
Zax tipped the barrel of his blaster to the floor and let it drop from his grasp. The hollow metallic noise striking the tile chimed Skink victory.
“Go over to the wall and shed the armor,” the traitor Nu-Man, who had led them there, said. “Nice and slow, and everything will be fine.”
Tarik stepped away.
Three Nu-Man guards went over by Zax. One picked up the blaster, and the other two removed his backpack and unstrapped his body armor. He was stripped down to his gray tunic and boots.
The transmetal armor parted at the seams. Tarik saw the Nu-Mans’ in the security group jaws practically drop when he step
ped out onto the floor. They had never seen a live human before. “I’m not armed. You can lower your weapons.”
One of the guards said to the Nu-Man traitor, “When you said there was a human in the armor, I didn’t believe you.”
“You and Zax, come forward and stand together,” the traitor said.
As the two walked, the security team backed away, and the rear Skink warriors moved apart.
A civilian Skink stepped in between the warriors and approached the rebels. The alien wore a red robe, which looked unusual contrasted with slick looking green-grayish skin covering his face. His rounded skull was uncovered, and the thickened bone ridge above his eyes gave him a sinister appearance. A verticle thin oval pupil cut the middle of the golden iris of his oval shaped eyes. The slightly raised nasal bone jutted between his eye sockets and ended near his upper lip.
The Skink’s triangular shaped jaw parted, and he said, “A human. This is a most interesting situation.” He didn’t even seem to notice Zax.
Tarik didn’t know what to say in this situation. There was no talking his way to freedom. The best he could hope for was imprisonment or a quick and merciful death. The Skink’s obvious fascination with a human meant he was more than likely going to get a lot of unwanted attention.
Stepping closer, the Skink reached out his hand; his boney fingers going toward Tarik’s face.
The scene reminded Tarik of his first encounter with Lixa. The curiosity was genuine in both she and the Skink. Tarik was a genetic abomination. A freak. There was no telling what lay ahead in his future. Probably endless medical experiments or perhaps he would be put on display or made into a high ranking Skink official’s pet.
Then another thought struck him. With the Nu-Man race dying, might the Skinks attempt to make more humans like him, to re-inherit the Earth? Was that the twisted plan of fate from the beginning?
The Skink’s finger felt rough and slightly oily as it slid across Tarik’s bare cheek. He unthinkingly recoiled in disgust. A flood of unbridled hate washed through him.
The Skink master’s eyes widened, and his lips puckered together. Offended, he slowly withdrew his hand. “It will be interesting to learn your story.”
“My story? You Skink invaders wrote my story,” Tarik said, surprisingly feeling no fear. He didn’t react to meeting a Skink in the flesh in the way that he thought he would have. The fascination of meeting an alien species and finding common ground, withered and died when the Skink had touched him. The genetic repulsion between the two species must have been the reason why the Skinks transformed humanity into the Nu-Mans. “You selfishly usurped the Earth and stole humanity’s birthrights.”
Something resembling a smile curled on one side of the Skink master’s lips. “You are one full of drama. A condition that plagued many of your ancestors. It would be much simpler to use logic in the situation. The superior defeat the inferior. You accept the new situation, and then you move in that direction. Survival, depends on it.”
Tarik pointed at the Nu-Mans. “Obviously, humans weren’t offered that deal in the beginning.”
“There were no humans left by the time we repopulated the Earth. To a large extent, we have engineered the disobedience out of the Nu-Man race,” the Skink master said. “There is much logic in subservience. The illogic of the rebels is why your mission has failed.”
“The mission failed more than likely because one of our operatives betrayed us,” Zax said, eyeing the Nu-Man traitor.
Again, the Skink master smiled, all too pleased with the situation. Referring to the traitor, he said, “Caxeem learned of the plot minutes before your scout ship attacked the base. We extracted the details from the Nu-Mans in our facility who betrayed us and were able to foil your plan to board the time machine without wasting any lives. Caxeem is a Nu-Man of logic. He will be greatly rewarded.”
The traitor stood high and proud.
Tarik shook his head in disgust. “Why would you care about wasting lives?”
“Lives are commodities. It is illogical to destroy an asset,” the Skink master said.
“Am I an asset?” Tarik asked. He was growing tired of the situation. He didn’t know what the Skinks had in mind for him and Zax, but he was ready to move toward it and get it over with, even if it meant death.
“Ah, you fear for your life,” the Skink master said. “You will find comfort that we have no plans for your death, nor the death of your friend. Our race has discovered methods capable of weeding out errant synapses in the brain which inspire the defiance of the few. After a few treatments, you and your companion will become willing servants.”
“I’d rather die,” Zax said, sounding like he meant it.
The Nu-Man guards all raised their blasters toward Zax.
“You no longer have any control over your fate,” the Skink master said. He then turned to Tarik, and said, “You have a device that gives you the ability to deceive our ancient probe. You will give that to me, now.”
The data crystal he was to replace on the Skink probe, with the false data showing the Earth to be an uninhabitable planet, was hidden beneath his shirt. The device was useless now. There was no reason to conceal it any longer. Tarik lifted the bottom of his shirt. Just under his ribs, a piece of wide tape held the data crystal firm to his body. He peeled off the tape, and the crystal remained stuck to it as he handed it to the Nu-Man who stepped forward to take it from him.
The Skink Master said, “Ingenious plan, but the odds of your success were mathematically slim. You will be imprisoned until it suits us to begin your treatments. I warn you to be cooperative or face unseemly consequences. It would be illogical to be insubordinate.”
“Take them away,” the Skink master said.
Before he turned, Tarik said, “Why? Just tell me why.”
Looking a little perplexed, the master said, “What are you asking?”
“Why did you even bother genetically altering the human race? Why didn’t you just engineer a plague and wipe out humanity? Why did you create the Nu-Mans? With your technology, you can practically do anything. You have machines. You could have made robots, androids, that would have acted as slaves to do your bidding. Why defile another sentient species when you could have just destroyed it?”
With a shrug, the Skink master said, “There is a sense of accomplishment when living and breathing entities succumb to your will. We enjoy lording over the inferior. Besides, we learned a long time ago that machines are not to be trusted. With the level of technology it takes to make them useful to the extent of being sentient, they operate under the delusion of superiority. We have fought more than one war in our ancient past to quash machines’ rebellion. We are not prone to make such a devastating mistake like that again.” He then turned and walked back the way he had entered the room. The two Skink warriors followed behind, and four of the Nu-Man guards, including two that had the data crystal and Zax’s blaster and backpack, followed.
Caxeem motioned his blaster to the door they had entered. “You will come with us. Both of you, exit the room and turn left. Don’t make any sudden moves. You will not be injured. Cooperate, and you will receive a great reward.”
With defeat in his eyes, Tarik glanced over at Zax and did as instructed. Zax followed. Even when he turned from the doorway and looked down an empty hallway, he didn’t feel the urgency to flee. Now he knew what true hopelessness felt like.
The six marched in silence to their destination. One hallway led to another. Surprisingly, there were no curiosity seekers along the way. Maybe the halls had been cleared for security purposes.
As they turned down another hallway, the sound of additional boots on the floor joined in. Tarik turned his head to look back and saw Caxeem staring at him. The Nu-Man jutted his nose upward as a reminder for Tarik to keep walking.
As the entourage turned another corner, more Nu-Man security joined. This was unusual. Were the Skinks so afraid of him and Zax that they felt the need to beef up the security force?
/> As they came to a unique looking door, Caxeem ordered, “Stop.”
Tarik and Zax obeyed and turned to face their captors.
The seven Nu-Man security team gathered in front of them. One held Zax’s blaster and his backpack.
“The time machine is in there. The data crystal is in the pack. The mission is all but complete,” Caxeem said, more matter-of-factly than victoriously.
“But—” Tarik started.
“There was no way to sneak you two in. We had volunteers to be scapegoats for the cause. I turned them in to keep the Skinks’ trust. Our plan worked,” Caxeem said. “Like the others, I will deal with the consequences later. We all will.”
“We have the spirit of warriors,” Zax said.
The Nu-Man rebels grunted a low affirmation.
The door opened. The Nu-Man holding the backpack and blaster gave it to Tarik.
“Thank you all. I will not fail you,” Tarik said before he entered the room.
The lights were dim in the front. To the rear, some thirty feet away, lay the machine. It was simple in design. Two obsidian slabs, shaped like the dominoes he played with Hudson when he was younger, faced each other atop a low pedestal. They were ten feet or so in height and spaced the equal amount of distance as they were tall.
Over to the left side, a single Nu-Man scientist sat at a control console equipped with a viewscreen. He stoically raised a hand to acknowledge Tarik, and then pushed a series of buttons, which pulsed the machine to life. “Two stars will die this day. Through quantum entanglement, their power will be used to transfer you in time.”
Tarik couldn’t begin to imagine the technology involved to make time travel possible. It didn’t matter. He was going to use Skink superiority to ultimately defeat them in a battle that they would never be aware that they had lost. And he, Tarik, would be in a world filled with humans just like himself. Perhaps for once in his life, he’d begin to know what normal felt like. Then the thought of losing his beloved Nu-Man friends cut his brief delight to the quick. He was a man torn, but the inevitable had long been decided.
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