Sunlord

by Ronan Frost

  He dropped from the trapdoor and landed, his legs springing like a spider's to absorb the shock as his feet hit the polished floor. Even though he had fallen more than two metres he had made not a sound. He remained in a crouched position, elbows raised, as he scanned his new environment.

  He was in a corridor, an unbroken twin row of lights running overhead. A few closed doors lay in sight further down the corridor, their surface bowed inwards to match the slightly circular shape of the passageway. The surface was creamy white coloured plastic, its durable surface unmarred and spotless.

  Once he was satisfied no Hartrias guards were in the close vicinity Shaun relaxed a little and drew back away from the trapdoor above him. He motioned for Myshia to come down.

  Myshia was not as agile as the other but the grace in her movements demanded respect. In moments she too was standing in the corridor at Shaun's side.

  "The ceiling space is getting a little too crowded," explained Shaun. "It's time for a change of tactic."

  Myshia had her short bow in her hand, an arrow already notched. Her eyes flickered uneasily along the length of the corridor.

  "Are you sure this isn't going to get us killed?"

  "Don't worry," said Shaun in a slightly too confident tone. "This will be the most direct route, and the quicker we are the better. Come on, we head this way."

  The Hartrias officer was as surprised as Shaun when they practically bumped into one another. The officer wore only a light loose fitting helicasuit pulled tight at the waist, the Royal Hartrias emblem on the broad shoulder marking him of high rank. The officer's eyes widened in surprise, knocked from his thoughts by the small human colliding against his chest.

  Shaun heard a sharp thwack as Myshia released an arrow from her taught bow. Shaun ducked instinctively, feeling a movement brush aside his hair as the shaft slammed into the Hartrias.

  Shaun moved his feet and threw the Hartrias upon the ground in a deadly efficient judo manoeuvre. The Hartrias lay sprawled on the floor, a trickle of blood flowing from the corner of his mouth and the last gasp of air leaving his lungs.

  Looking down at the prone form, Myshia felt a stab of remorse for the huge fearsome form now reduced to a bleeding carcass. She thought she could feel the Sunlord's mind, watching it shrivel and die like a flower exposed to an thermo-nuclear blast. It was eerie to feel the presence of his mind shrink away into the ether, leaving a vacuumous space.

  What had he been doing? Myshia found herself thinking. Had he been going about his own business, set upon some unknown goal. Had, somewhere, a wife been just widowed?

  Myshia shook her head, angry with herself. She reminded herself why she was here, that she was to take revenge for the Elder and everyone else who had died. The steel hearted reasoning seemed to falter a little as she watched Shaun pick through the pockets of the Sunlord. All of a sudden she didn't know if she was doing the right thing, as if she had just realised what Ashian had been saying for so long. She hadn't really listened to the Currach's rambling of religion and respect for life, but now, watching the alien blood stiffen about the Sunlord, she knew what he meant.

  She broke from her reverie as Shaun passed the wooden bolt to her. One end of the arrow was coated in blood, the bulk of which had been wiped onto the Hartrias' helicasuit.

  "Here's your arrow back," he said, seemingly obvious to Myshia's concerns. "I noticed you only had a few of them left, so it's best if we can reuse them."

  Myshia took the arrow numbly, shaking herself to wake herself up. She put aside the wave of disgust as her hands met the wood that had met with heart of the Sunlord, and tried to ignore the sensation of slippery blood on her hands.

  "We got lucky," said Shaun. "He was totally unprepared. Wasn't even wearing chest armour. It was a good shot Myshia."

  Myshia accepted the compliment silently and turned her mind to other matters. "We've got to keep moving."

  Shaun nodded, clipping a belt to his waist as he stood. It was a holster containing a sleek barrelled pistol, numerous cartridges accompanying it. At last he had a weapon. And it was a decent one - good old fashioned large calibre hollow headed bullets. He tested its weight in his hands before placing it back in the holster.

  Myshia noticed his new weapon. "Do all Sunlords carry firearms?" she asked.

  "Most. Its standard procedure for them, just incase of emergency. Even though they may not be in battle you hardly ever see a Hartrias without a weapon. I also got the ID card from him, and from the looks of it I'd say it will get us through a few doors. At least for as long as Avatar catches up with the death and cancels the card. Okay, let's go."

  Myshia was glad to leave the dead body of the Hartrias behind them; the smell and closeness of the death had disturbed her more than she realised.

  They ran as fast as their spent legs would allow them, moving quickly through the smooth finished corridor. Shaun was mildly surprised to find very few Hartrias, but figured it would be because a vast number of the crew were planetside setting up the installation.

  Myshia skidded to a stop as Shaun abruptly changed directions. He had the ID card and was running it through the reader of a door lock.

  "What are you doing?" asked Myshia.

  Shaun grinned and nodded his head at the painted sign on the door, the row of finely etched letters totally unrecognisable to Myshia.

  "It's a secondary armoury," explained Shaun. Barely had he uttered these words had the door hissed open, sliding to the side and revealing a dark interior. As he stepped inside motion detectors detected his movements and lights flickered on.

  "They have them scattered through the ship incase they are overrun." Shaun spoke over his shoulder as he moved between the compact rows of dark gleaming weaponry. Fearsome looking rifles were slung from the walls, great belts of ammunition stacked in orderly rows along the wall. The weapons lost individual shape such was their amassment; there were so many barrels and projections it looked like an regimentally ordered tree sprouting black metal.

  Shaun's eyes glowed as he picked out a choice selection. As he slung a heavy multiple barrelled machine gun over one shoulder he glanced out at Myshia. She hung back uneasily, staying in the corridor and glancing up and down its length.

  "If an enemy manages to get aboard the crewmen can arm themselves here," Shaun continued. "Once they are finished Avatar lock the rooms closed so that the enemy don't have access to any weapons left. It's quite an effective sys-"

  Myshia spun around as Shaun's voice was cut off abruptly with a sharp hiss of machinery. Her nose was now no more than a centimetre from the plastic coated door that had slid closed in the blink of an eye. It had happened so quickly it was almost as if Shaun, still inside the armoury, had been swallowed alive - the quick chomp of the sliding door like jaws sealing Shaun's fate.

  Myshia hit her hand against the door, suddenly afraid, shouting his name. Her efforts seemed lost upon the cold surface that seemed to absorb the sound waves like a sponge.

  She stopped and put her ear to the door, and thought she could hear a banging from the inside. It was definitely Shaun thumping against it.

  Inside Shaun blinked his eyes as if this would induce his retina's to open quicker. He stood in complete blackness, a darkness devoid of all light. He had been taken unawares when the lights had snapped abruptly off, the door closing at the exact same instant.

  Shaun raised his hand close before his nose but couldn't see a thing; he may as well be blind for all he saw. He was still bewildered - one minute he had been standing in full light selecting weapons, the next he was in utter darkness in a small, isolated room.

  Shaun slung the rifle he had selected over one shoulder and tucked a pistol into the small of his back. He reached out in the black until his fingertips met with the cool metal surface of the door. He tried his fingernails against the crack where the door met the wall but couldn't budge it in the slightest. It was as if the force of tons heaved against it, sealing closed as if intending to stay so for a millennium.


  He found his screwdriver and attacked the seal, but it would not give to his frantic efforts. Muscles strained until they shook with effort, but still the door did not move. It was like a lid slammed down on a coffin.

  Stopping, he held his ragged breathing and tensed in the dark as faint sounds filtered through the heavy walls. He cocked his ears, this time distinctly catching a distant sounding whump, whump like deep subterranean explosions. It confirmed his worst fear - they were caught in Avatar's trap.

  He whirled about as a violent hissing filled the room as if the very molecules of the air were being ripped apart. A terrible stench met the back of his throat and he gagged, doubling over and blocking his eyes from the foul steam that now filled the air. He expelled all air from his lungs, tears streaming from the corner of squeezed shut eyes, as the gas thickened.

  It was all so clear in that instant. It could only be a trap, a trap that they had stumbled into headlong. Shaun cursed his stupidity and rashness; he had not even suspected a thing when the keycard had opened the weapons room door. The only explanation was that Avatar had allowed them to roam free down corridors with the intent of trapping them at the soonest opportunity. The computer knew they would leap for weapons like a rat for cheese, and all it had to do was set the trap. Once inside it was a simple matter to open the gas vents, and a small team of armed droids in the corridor outside would take care of the bodies.

  His thoughts spun about one another like pieces of tissue paper thrown into a whirlpool, disintegrating and tearing into insanely coloured fragments. His temples throbbed and his lungs started to burn, and he knew he would have to take a breath soon. If he did it would be his last.

  Myshia's thought was like that of a swooping eagle, a dark shadow flickering through the waters of his mind as if born to it. He detected no words, but felt her presence like a rope cast to a drowning man.

  Open the door, he cried. If only she could open the door from the outside...Avatar had expected them to both be trapped in the room, and Myshia's freedom was a bonus. Perhaps all was not lost after all...

  Myshia huddled into a small ball as bolts of laser arced overhead. The droids had closed in from either side and within moments were firing at her and her quick dive to the ground had saved her from a grisly death.

  She reached out with her mind found herself skimming over Shaun's consciousness. She knew immediately something was wrong for his thoughts were a maelstrom of activity. Moments after establishing contact she felt Shaun's words and hurried a reply, communicating more by feeling and specific impressions than words. Her question was clear.

  How?

  Her thought dropped into the sea of Shaun's mind and instantaneously she received a faint picture of a door mechanism, and the feeling of strength driven by desperation. It was clear Shaun wanted to beat the catch to a pulp. Brute force and ignorance was the way to go.

  She opened her eyes, searching for the mechanism in question. She found it after a quick scan - it was located about waist level at the side of the door. It was a small panel with two dark lights topped by a keycard slot, the whole thing recessed into the plastic coated steel of the wall - to reach it she would have to move across the corridor and out of the protection between two wall supports and into the hail of laser fire.

  Shaun's mind prodded like a pin, jabbing her into action.

  Uttering a subdued curse she drew together the last remaining shreds of her courage, gripped the haft of her bow in both hands, and drew her legs under her. She tensed for a second, shifting her grip slightly, her eyes never leaving the door mechanism.

  Then she lunged, the bow held out before her as if she were harpooning a whale from a raft. Her feet left the air as she dived across the open space, hands held back over her head. She brought down the hardwood bow at the last instant, the end connecting solidly with the mechanism.

  The bow snapped and twisted her wrist as it pulled away. Her momentum carried her weight crashing into the door, the snapped bow buckling into her stomach. Unaware, her subconscious mind reached out and hit the device with a force far greater than her physical lunge. Her strange powers dug into the circuits in the instant her bow connected and the locking device shattered in a shower of electricity. Myshia curled her head and absorbed the shock with her shoulders to fall in a heap at the base of the door. She was vaguely aware of bolts of laser nicking her as if someone was plucking at her clothing. It would only be a matter of seconds before the droids found their aim.

  The instant the door had snapped open he leapt out, the two events almost simultaneous. Myshia's blow to the catch had flung the door back into its recessed mountings with a savage crash. Then Shaun was there, yellow angry fire erupting from the muzzle of the huge machine gun held at his waist. Mind shattering noise filled the air as he fired off countless rounds of ammunition - the machine gun spewing out shrapnel to carve the droids into pieces.

  He about-faced, holding up on the trigger only long enough to bring the heavy muzzle around. A split second later he was firing again, knocking all resistance back as if he wielded a fire hose to a row of tin cans. He moved his left hand over the top of the gun, pulling back and cocking a separate mechanism that lobed a grenade into the droid's midst. A huge wall of smoke broiled out, forcing a wall of concussed air before it.

  He hit the ground and covered Myshia's body with his own as the terrific blast hit them. He held his breath as pieces of shrapnel whizzed overhead and thick smoke filled the narrow passageway.

  Shaun recovered and hauled Myshia to her feet. The latter's eyes were wide with surprise and her hands still clenched stubbornly to the splintered half of her once sturdy bow.

  Shaun passed a long barrelled pistol to her. "Take this."

  She dropped the bow to her feet and took the pistol, its weight awkward in her small hands. Now that she was familiar with the principle of the Sunlord weaponry it was an easy matter to slide her finger around the trigger guard, putting it before her like a rattlesnake held at arms-length before squeezing off a blast at whatever presented itself in the smoke.

  The small blasts punctuated the heavy rattling of Shaun's heavy K-gun. Round after round churned through the massive machine, empty shells spilling at his feet. His muscles ached with strain and Shaun knew he couldn't hold it up for long; the gun was made to be mounted on a tripod as a stout defensive weapon and not to be carried on the shoulder.

  He was mildly surprised when the heavy beating of the bullets changed abruptly to a hollow ringing and the muzzle that had been throwing a finger of flame now spun harmlessly like a turbine, empty of cartridges. Shaun cast aside the large gun, his right arm crying with relief as the dead weight fell to the floor with a deep reverberating clatter.

  He dropped a shoulder and allowed the rifle he had slung earlier fall into his hands. He pulled back the cocking mechanism with a rasping click.

  "Okay Myshia, on my count we run. We've got to break through those droids before they have a chance to recover."

  Myshia nodded, crouching low and hard against the wall, the pistol tight in her hands. For a brief instant Shaun was caught by the steely look in her eyes like that of a caged beast itching to be free. He found himself caught in that gaze, and when she turned her wide insectile eyes to face his own he felt a rush of energy surge through his soul.

  Raising his eyes back to far end of the corridor Shaun saw the smoke had started to disperse via the ventilation fans, and already dark silhouettes were emerging from obscurity as the droids and soldiers rose from the shattered husks of their downed comrades. Myshia was caught off guard when Shaun saw that exact instant fit to break into a run and begun charging the wall of droids, wielding the slim rifle like a battering ram. A wild cry burst from his throat as the shadows rose up into humanoid shapes, bringing weapons to bear upon the wild human.

  Shaun ducked and rolled at the last instant as the wall behind splintered with meteorite-like craters pimpling the hardy material. Shaun tucked his head into his shoulder as he s
pun head over heels, the world a chaos of colours and noises as he crashed into a solid barrier, halting his progress.

  Droids spun as the human rolled into their midst. Electronic eyes whirled and spun to dilate and bring the form into focus, but by then it was too late. Shaun raked those droids nearest in two, the slender bullets ripping through metallic torso's and spewing cables like intestines.

  Heaving for breath Shaun lowered the smoking muzzle of the rifle and motioned Myshia forward. Her eyes were alight with anger.

  "Warn me when you're about to do that next time," she muttered.

  Shaun couldn't help but grin. "I'll let you know."

  "Thank you. Now what's your plan."

  "Plan?" Shaun feigned surprise. "Who said anything about a plan? As far as I can see it, we've been exposed and if we stop for much longer we'll be buried in a mound of troopers so thick we won't be able to shovel our way out."

  "Then lead!"

  Shaun nodded, and was about to reply when a movement caught the corner of his eye. He spun about in time to see motion in the debris at their feet - a ragged hand raising, a thick heavy duty pistol in the green gloved hand. Shaun dropped and twisted at the waist, turning around backwards to bring a raking kick around in a low semi-circle.

  A yellow light flashed overhead, blinding Myshia for an instant. The bolt of laser had brushed her head, diverted only because Shaun's boot had kicked the would-be assassin's hand off target. Shaun had lowered his rifle in the next instant and returned the fire from point blank range, bullets smashing into the helm of the Sunlord guard as if it were a watermelon.

  "Cunning," muttered Shaun under his breath. "He was just sitting and waiting for his chance."

  Myshia found herself unable to look away from the shattered faceplate of the guard. The yellow metal helmet had splintered and the shards had buried themselves into the fleshy face of the Sunlord. The reptilian visage was ripped and oozed thick blood, one eye hanging from its socket. Bile rose in her mouth and she fought to contain it, looking away quickly and clenching her fists. She had seen so much death, and no end seemed in sight. The cold metal of her pistol seemed to grow slippery in an instant as if it was trying to worm its way out of her hand and fall to the floor, but she clung onto it resolutely. She was doing this for the Elder, and all the others who had died with the Sunlord invasion.