They all realized the dilemma at the same time, but it was Mordecai who acted first. Jumping up from his hiding place, he raced for the tree where Caleb was sitting in indecision. When he reached the base of it he called for the grenade launcher, which Caleb dropped down to him. Like a man in the middle of a deep plunge on a roller coaster, Alistair groaned through clenched teeth as the launcher plummeted, picturing a disastrous explosion. Instead, Mordecai neatly snatched the weapon out of the air, ran the ten or so steps to the middle of the path between the processional and the clearing and, while the Gaians paused and uncertainly pointed at the figure in front of them, launched a grenade.
With a high pitched whoosh it flew through the air, and just as it hit its target and exploded, a second grenade was launched, followed by a third, though the defensive shield was down before the last found its mark. There came the sound of crackling as the shield disintegrated, being first reduced to shooting lines of bluish light running over its hemisphere and finally disappearing altogether.
“Forward!” cried Mordecai, and as his companions jumped into action he launched a series of grenades at the processional.
The grenades hit and exploded at several points along the line of worshippers. Bodies flew into the air with chunks of earth, and fires burned on the ground. Those Gaians still of sound body scattered in terror, and Mordecai sent a couple more grenades flying their way, sending up sod and flesh as if from a geyser and causing more of the forest to ignite.
“God damn him!” yelled Alistair as he ran behind Taribo.
The forefront of the panicked wave of Gaians reached them, and Alistair, setting his concussive gun for a wide range, fired off shot after shot, knocking dozens to the ground. Dazed but uninjured, they moaned as Alistair, Wellesley, Taribo and Giselle weaved through and jumped over them. Those not knocked to the ground yielded to Alistair’s persuasion and flew in another direction, leaving them unhindered in their dash to the hangar.
A detachment of a dozen Gaians with the wherewithal to collect themselves amid the chaos made a break for the weapons depot. Not a cohesive unit, they moved as individuals who separately had the same idea. Most were flung into the air with a well aimed grenade from Mordecai, who was slowly advancing on Floralel as he pumped the explosive charges. A couple of the Gaians managed to reach the weapons depot, but Duke, Wei Bai and Caleb, now deprived of his grenade launcher but still armed with a concussive gun, entered moments after.
As Alistair neared the hangar, he saw the double doors open and two terrifying white forms emerge. Both were armed and, immediately detecting the threat, turned their guns on the four armed ambushers running at them. Alistair’s rifle was already aimed, however, and before the dreadbots could, he fired several shots even while his heart skipped a beat. The explosive rounds, hardly thicker than needles, sliced into their prey and detonated inside the bodies. The skin of the machines burst outward with a tiny flash of light, and as smoke poured out of the craters left behind, the dreadbots collapsed, twitching on the ground in a macabre parody of a human expiring. When he reached the double doors, Alistair, signaling for his team to stop, put a round into the skull casing of each.
“Ryan and Giselle, on my go I want you to open the doors.”
Giselle was breathless and looked dazed, but the words reached her and she nodded, taking up a position opposite Wellesley who, a veteran now of a handful of battles, looked more collected than she. Alistair and Taribo lay flat on their stomachs in front of the doors, rifles ready to fire.
“Go.”
They flung the doors open while Taribo and Alistair’s tense fingers perched on their triggers, but there was no immediately obvious threat inside. Alistair swept his rifle back and forth, carefully scanning the many shadows, but if there were other dreadbots their presence was not apparent.
When the four of them were inside and the doors closed, there was an abrupt, disconcerting quiet. Mordecai had finished launching grenades and the screaming mass of Gaians was scattered. Whatever noises were left were muffled by the building’s walls. Inside, there was ragged breathing from the four and a low hum underneath, which may have come from the dim electric lights above.
There were several different models of flying craft parked inside, casting shadows like puddles with the dim lights directly above. A gloom like twilight enveloped everything. The floor was a smooth concrete, and in each corner of the hangar a set of stairs led to a balcony, one at the front and one at the back. Beneath each there were double doors, and at the opposite side of the hangar there was a large, sliding door big enough to permit the various craft to exit. The structure’s main central room was larger than a rugby field.
Alistair lay flat on his stomach to peer underneath the aircrafts, his rifle still held ready to fire. The other three stood still, slowly regaining control of their breathing. A drop of sweat fell from Taribo’s chin onto the floor. After a couple long minutes of careful searching, he rose.
“I’ll take the north end if you take the south,” said Taribo, his voice, along with his breathing, more relaxed.
Alistair shook his head. “I’d rather not separate.”
Moving to the north end, they ascended a set of stairs and searched the balcony above, but there was nothing there save a few computer stations. Alistair gave these a cursory inspection and, though he could not read the printed Gaian, was moderately confidant he could figure out how to operate them. There was a moment of tenseness when they stood before the double doors below, but this dissipated when the opened doors revealed a small locker room as empty as the rest of the hangar.
A trip to the south end of the building, with Taribo stationed as a sniper on the north balcony, revealed it to be similarly unoccupied. The computer stations there seemed to be redundant, but the room underneath, past the double doors, was a control room. Emerging into the large hangar room once more, Alistair signaled for Taribo to rejoin them, which action the African accomplished with alacrity.
“There are only two exits,” said Alistair.
“That we can see,” cautioned Taribo.
They heard what sounded like firecrackers popping outside, in rapid succession, and in response, from farther away, came another series of pops with a higher pitch. Silence followed.
“We’re going to lock the doors we came in,” Alistair continued with an uneasy look in the direction the sounds came from. “Giselle and Taribo will stay to guard the hangar.” He indicated one of the balconies with a nod and continued, “Take position up there and don’t let anyone in. Ryan and I are going to make sure the weapons depot is secured. If they can’t get firearms they can’t take the hangar, and if they can’t take the hangar the city falls.”
With a slap to Ryan’s shoulder, Alistair headed for the exit.
In the darkness outside, with the doors locked behind them, Alistair and Wellesley considered the scene. A few fires burned around charred craters in the earth. Inert forms and rent body parts lay like ejecta from a meteorite. A few agonized moans and whimpers were heard, and one bloodied Gaian, his robes burnt and torn, was feebly attempting to crawl across the ground. To their left, many yards distant, the torches flickered in the clearing, some of the light making it through the gaps and interstices in the foliage. There was no sign of anyone else; all able bodied Gaians had fled and Alistair’s companions had penetrated the city.
“That’s the weapons depot, right?” prompted Wellesley.
Alistair absentmindedly nodded, scanning the area one last time before falling into a slow trot across the ground. Passing by the stout trunk of a gigantic tree around which wrapped an intricately carved staircase, the two of them made for an archway marking the entrance to the weapons storage facility. The sliding gate that served as the front door was partway open, and through it they could see a hallway lit by small lights set in the floor, one row on each side. There were larger lights in the ceiling, but these were turned off, leaving the interior, much like the hangar, in a sort of twilight.
&n
bsp; Alistair entered and Ryan followed as surely as if a rope bound them together. The building was not overly large and it was not difficult to find the main storage room, which comprised half the building. The door leading to it was shot through from both sides, its window shattered, and a large scorch mark stained almost all of what remained.
“Squad one coming in!” Alistair barked.
“Squad two reporting!” called back Duke’s voice.
He relaxed his hold on the rifle, stepped through the door and was presented with a storage hall with a roof nearly thirty feet overhead. The concrete floor was a dark gray with multiple stains, and the metal support beams were a dark red. There was a walkway above circumscribing the chamber and row after row of shelving reaching almost to the ceiling. Duke and Wei Bai were standing next to a pair of Gaian bodies and looked to be in the middle of dragging them somewhere. Duke’s face was blackened, and his mustache and eyebrows, along with the bulk of the hair on the front of his scalp, had burned off. A little smoke wafted out of the singed ends of what remained on his head, and already there were blisters forming on his scalp and forehead. The blisters were sullied by the soot Alistair guessed was hair not long ago. Looking to his left, he saw Caleb lying face down in a pool of blood, silent and motionless. One outstretched hand lay next to his gun.
“We’re minus one,” said Duke.
“No casualties,” Alistair reported with respectful sobriety.
“Three more bodies in the back,” continued Duke with a nod of his head towards the labyrinth of shelves. “None escaped.”
“How many exits?”
“We haven’t had a chance to look yet,” said Wei Bai. “This should be the only way in or out.”
“One would think,” added Duke.
“Confirm that for me, Ryan,” said Alistair.
His companion hesitated a moment, and Alistair remembered he had not understood Wei Bai.
“See if there are any more exits.”
Ryan nodded and readied his gun before entering a row and heading for the back.
“The hangar is secure; Taribo and Giselle are guarding it. We took out two dreadbots; that leaves two unaccounted for if Bert was telling us the truth.”
“Fine,” said Duke.
“I’m going to leave Wellesley here with you. If we can maintain control of the guns they’re not taking back the city.”
“Don’t keep us waiting long,” said Wei Bai.
***
The way to Floralel’s Town Hall was not obvious. Alistair felt as if he were in a labyrinth of hedges impeccably trimmed into amorphous, rounded shapes; sculpted rocks; and paths of soft dirt and leaves. This by itself would have sufficed to frustrate his efforts, but his difficulties were compounded by his slow pace and the attention he gave to corners and shadows. Furthermore, the steadily dropping temperature coaxed an increasingly opaque fog out of the humid air.
The Town Hall was always in sight, its upper story visible over the hedges, even if the route to it was unknown. The room at the top with a dome of glass was the only room in the building whose lights were still on, and he was finally able to reach it when he came to the base of a massive tree trunk with a spiral staircase wrapping around it. The staircase and its banister were composed of varying colors of wood melded together, smooth and irregular, as if Nature, random and dispassionate, had chanced to fashion something resembling a human creation, like a cloud that recalls a castle. When he stepped on it, it felt as solid as granite, yielding nothing under his weight, despite its delicate appearance.
It was forty feet from the ground to a landing that gave way to a walkway spanning the distance between two great trees. He raced around the tree several times before reaching it. Once on the landing, he swept his rifle over the area, knowing he would be easy to spot above the fog. With his right foot he tested the walkway and, finding it to be as solid as the staircase, darted over a city as still and cold as a sarcophagus. When he reached the other end, he felt relieved to descend the opposite staircase and wind up mere yards from the Town Hall’s front door.
To gain this front door, one had to climb an earthen slope and cross a roofed patio with four irregular stone columns at the corners. At Alistair’s approach, the front doors slid open and the muscled Aldran passed through. Another twilit interior greeted him. He took only so much time as he needed to confirm he was safe before pressing deeper into the building. As he moved farther in, he became aware of a trace of something, a sound too faint to distinguish. It hovered in the air around his breaths when he paused and the echoes of his footsteps faded away, filling in the quiet intervals like mortar between bricks.
This was all he heard until he reached the second story. There, he detected the sound of feet treading on the tile floors and looked around for a likely hiding place. There was a door, oval in shape, set a couple feet into the wall and Alistair made use of the small alcove it created, tucking himself in behind the rounded corners just as two men rounded a bend in the hall.
They were Gaians, robed in green and armed with hand guns. Their long beards swayed from side to side as they moved with haste. He watched their grim faces until they passed, then leapt out with the deadly end of his rifle pointed right at one of their heads. When he addressed them, his voice was loud and aggressive, as he had been trained.
“Drop the gun and put your hands on your heads! I will splatter your brains on the floor if you don’t drop those guns now!”
The Gaians spent their years on Srillium as the uncontested masters of a populace that could do no more than throw stones at them but dared not. Alistair’s shouted commands shook them as much as a grenade. Their guns were on the floor in an instant, followed by whimpered entreaties for mercy as they placed their quivering hands on top of their heads.
“Kick the guns down the hall and get on your knees!”
These commands were obeyed with no less alacrity.
“Lie flat on the floor!”
Again they obeyed, and he moved closer to search them.
“How many more in this building?”
“I don’t know,” stammered one, his faltering voice doing as much as his thick accent to make his speech difficult to understand. “There are… we were running from the… the…”
“The command center,” finished his companion with the accent of a native English speaker. Alistair guessed he was Terran, American or Canadian. “They’ve taken control of it.”
“How many other Gaians in the building? If you lie to me I’m going to kill you.”
“We escaped the command center. The only others we know of are captives up there.”
Alistair finished patting them down and then recovered their guns.
“Up. Walk in front of me and stay ten feet away from each other. You make a sudden move and I pull the trigger. Now take me to the command center.”
As they neared the center it became apparent the faint sound Alistair heard was the mix of noises coming from it. Different machines hummed and whirred as they ran, footsteps crossed and recrossed the floor, men spoke, and punctuating it all was the desultory rhythm of some sort of series of impacts, a thumping of some kind. Before he could ponder what this was, they reached an intersection where several hallways merged to form an irregular chamber. At the far end the wall was round and convex, and Odin stood guard in a doorway, half looking in and half looking out. The former chieftain tensed when he spotted the Gaians, but their body language, with hands on their heads, was unthreatening, and when he saw Alistair he relaxed.
“How goes it?” Odin asked.
“Hangar and weapons depot secure. Two dreadbots down, two unaccounted for. Caleb’s gone.”
Odin accepted the news with a slow nod. “Frank took a round in the chest. He’s dead. The other two dreadbots, Mordecai shut them down from the control center.”
There was a great thud and a wail of pain. Alistair gave Odin a questioning look.
“Take these two,” he said brushed past him into the command cent
er.
The room was circular, sixty feet from side to side and brightly lit by a multitude of lights, to say nothing of the glowing buttons, switches and 3D displays. There was blood over much of the floor, most of it in long streaks where bodies had been dragged. These streaks led to a side of the large, conical room where several Gaians were piled one on top of the other. Frank’s cadaver lay to the side of the haphazard pile, composed in the traditional position with hands folded on chest. The flesh of his chest was torn open and a large hole yawned where much blood clotted.
As many Gaians as lay dead knelt in another part of the room, their hands on their heads, some sporting bruises and gashes on their faces. Mordecai, covered in blood but seemingly unharmed, had hold of a final Gaian who was half lying on the floor, raising a feeble hand to ward off the blows raining down on him. His face was bruised and bloodied, and the fingers of his left hand were smashed and jutted out at unnatural angles. Alistair did not hesitate to intervene.
“That’s enough, Mordecai,” he said with something less than a shout but which did not lack for firmness.
Mordecai, startled, paused for a moment to regard him. With a derisive curl of his lips he turned back to his victim and once more smashed his face with his fist.
“I said enough! Mordecai!”
Mordecai turned back to Alistair, weighing his options. Though Alistair’s weapon was not pointed at him it attracted his glance and perhaps decided the issue. He dropped the beaten Gaian onto the floor and glowered.
“It’s done,” said Alistair. “The Gaians have scattered; their weapons and ships are ours.”
Despite his look, Mordecai’s voice was well moderated. “We need to find the ignition keys for the aircraft. Then we can take complete control of the city. And the planet.”
This response gave Alistair a feeling of unease, but before he could formulate a reply, a familiar voice from among the Gaians addressed him.
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