“Char?” Gar asked, and Chair pulled his rifle from his shoulder, the only weapon they had with a scope attached. He crawled ahead of the group and paused, a few hundred yards from the building. He watched it for a moment through his scope, and when he finally spoke they could hear him in their earpieces.
“It looks quiet. No movement, no one peeking through the window. I can’t be sure it’s empty though, not from this angle.”
“What is it?” Sarah asked. “Who built it?”
“I don’t know,” Gar said.
“It looks old,” Fib spoke up.
“Real old,” Sarah agreed.
“I’m going to make for it. Slowly,” Gar said. “Char, cover me. Sarah, watch the sky. Fib, you got the rear.”
Sarah rolled onto her side so she could see the sky. It was quickly fading from night to day, and surely any passing craft would have a much easier time spotting them. The night only helped so much.
Fib moved slowly, turning around on her stomach so she was facing the other way, her feet up next to Sarah’s head.
“Still clear,” Char said, and Gar started to move. Sarah wanted to watch her lover, to make sure he was safe, but she didn’t dare. She had a job to do.
Gar crawled more quickly than they had been, needing to get them in before the sun had fully risen. His stomach no longer touched the ground, instead he scurried along on his elbows and knees, his rifle slung over his back, instead of at the ready. He could reach for the handgun at his hip if he needed to in a hurry.
As he neared the building he could get a better sense of it. It was made of stone, a chalky white stone instead of the red he was crawling over, and the door was wood, so dark it was nearly black. There was a window on one side of the building, and could be more on the other sides. It was square, large enough to comfortably sleep them all, and Gar found himself hoping it was empty.
He pulled up when he was fifty feet away from the building and listened. He could hear nothing. Of course, the Aeon’s didn’t speak. They spoke through their minds, and Gar was glad he was wearing his breathing mask. It had a small strip that ran up to the temple on the right side, serving as a damper, intended to keep the Aeon’s from picking up their mental relays.
But the Aeon’s had eyes, and just as Gar lifted himself into a crouch, preparing to run for the door before another aircraft flew over and saw him, the almost black door swung open, and an Aeon was staring directly at him.
“Shit,” Sarah heard Gar and Char say, at the exact same time. Char was watching Gar’s progress through the scope on his rifle, and he took aim, even as Gar whipped his handgun out and fired at the surprised enemy.
Both energy bolts slapped into the Aeon, Char’s just below his chin, burning a hole through his neck, Gar’s slightly to the left of his chest. The Aeon flew backwards, and then Gar was diving to the side as a flurry of red bolts flew through the open door.
There were more Aeon’s inside.
A bolt found Gar, and he screamed. Sarah’s eyes went wide three hundred yards away as she heard the anguish in his voice.
Chapter Nine
Sarah was up and running for her lover, pulling her rifle into her hands even as she moved, taking wild shots toward the building as she quickly closed the gap.
“No!” she heard Fib scream in her ear as the other woman pushed up from the ground and ran after her.
“Get down!” Gar groaned in her earpiece, and Sarah scanned the landscape for him, but couldn’t find him.
“How many?” Fib asked. Char had remained where he was, using the scope on his rifle to peer through the open door of the stone building.
“At least three,” he said.
By then the Aeon’s had seen Sarah running toward them, and they opened fire on her, but she was still some distance away, nearly one hundred and fifty yards. She could see their shots were off target, the red beams sizzling past her.
“Get down now!” Fib said, and something in her voice let Sarah know that she wasn’t kidding. She threw herself to the red rocky earth just as Fib’s shots flashed by overhead.
“Fire!” Gar called, and Sarah did so, taking careful aim at the Aeon she could see, and one of them went down, though Sarah had no way of knowing if it was her shot or Fib’s.
“To the left!” Char called, and then he was taking the Aeon down himself, just as it came from around the corner of the house.
The next ten minutes were tense and full of shouts from the strike team, and gunfire from both sides. Sarah got up once and ran for a red boulder, throwing herself behind it as red hot plasma slapped against the other side.
When it was done Gar was the only one injured, if you didn’t count the dead Aeon’s. Sarah helped Fib pull him into the building as Char hurried to their position. They then pulled the dead Aeon’s inside as well, not wanting any passing craft to see them and investigate.
The building was sparsely furnished, just machinery along two of the walls and a table and chairs in the center of the room.
“What is it?” Char asked Fib, who was the technical expert of the group. She looked over the meters, but there were few. Aeon’s did so much through their minds only.
“I think it regulates the pressure in the weapon,” Fib answered after a while. “It looks like it to me, at least.”
Sarah was hardly listening. She had rushed to Gar’s side as soon as they had pulled the dead Aeon’s inside.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking down to his torso. He was bleeding heavily, and Sarah pulled his shirt off to get a better look.
“It hurts, but I’ll be okay,” Gar said, trying to smile, but only managing a grimace. He tried to sit up but Sarah pushed him down. She looked at his stomach, her eyes going wide at the sight of the wound.
“Is it bad?” Char asked from near the door.
“I think so,” Sarah said. “Does anyone know first aid?”
“We’re both trained in the basics,” Fib said. “But neither of us are experts.”
“It’s fine,” Gar insisted.
“Honey, it’s not,” Sarah said, moving to the side as Fib joined her, so the female Zaytarian could have more space to work. She cleaned and dressed the wound as Sarah looked on in terror, and then she instructed Char to give Gar some water as she pulled Sarah to the side.
“It’s bad,” she said.
“How bad?” asked the girl from Earth.
“I don’t think he’ll be able to make it to the weapon. We’re going to have to leave him. Someone will need to stay with him, if that wound gets infected, it could kill him. If we don’t get him to a professional, it could kill him.”
“How long?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know. Days maybe. It’s just going to get worse if we don’t get him closed up.”
“And you can’t do it?”
“Not here. Not with what we have. And probably not at all. This is above my training.”
“Can we contact the ship? They can come pick him up,” Sarah said, her voice full of hope, but it sounded as though she was trying to convince herself.
“It’s too dangerous, remember? You’ve been feeling the updrafts. It’s crazy when the wind goes, the ship is just as likely to crash down on us as it is to land here.”
“We have to do something.”
“I can send Char with him, he can help take him back. I don’t know what else to do. You and I can go on, and then retreat once we’ve done the job. The ship can pick them up, take Gar to a doctor off world, and come back for us. We’ll be faster coming back since we won’t be crawling, the job will be done then and the Aeon’s will have other problems on their hands, but it will still be a day, a little more maybe. The ship can take him and come back,” Fib said.
“I won’t leave her,” Gar said from the corner of the room.”
Sarah went to him, kneeling down and taking his hand as Char stood and moved away in an effort to give them some privacy.
“You have to. You have to survive.”
&n
bsp; “I won’t make you do this alone,’ Gar said, looking up into her eyes.
“I won’t be alone. Fib will keep me safe.”
“I know. But I need to be there. I can do it.”
“If you do, you might die. I can’t risk that.”
Tears were shining in Gar’s eyes, though Sarah couldn’t tell if they were from the pain or because of their conversation.
“I can’t leave you. It doesn’t matter after we do the job. You’re going back home. You don’t need me then, you need me now. I won’t let you down.”
“You have never let me down, not since I met you. You have done nothing but save me, Gar. And I love you for it. I love you. For all time. But this… it’s the end, right now. You have to go back. You have to trust in me, and you have to trust in all that you have taught me. Fib and I will go on. Char will get you back. As soon as night falls, it’s time.”
Gar looked as though he wanted nothing more in the world than to argue with her, but he could tell by the determination on her face that she wouldn’t budge, and somewhere, deep down, the alien knew the girl from Earth was right. He couldn’t do anything for her now. And he may even slow her down if he insisted on coming.
“Fine,” he said finally, nodding his head weakly. “Fine, damn it.”
The day wore on with the four of them trying to sleep, but Sarah spent most of her time fussing over the injured Gar. And then the sun went down, the sky turned black, and it was time to move.
“Go as fast as you can, don’t crawl, just drop for the aircraft,” Fib told Char.
“Got it,” Char said. “I’ll contact our ship when we’re half a day out.”
Fib nodded, and then she embraced Char. Sarah did the same, and then hugged Gar gingerly. “Hurry up and get better. I’ll do this, and then they’ll come pick me up, too.”
“I’ll see you up there,” Gar said, and then he kissed her. “I love you, Sarah from Earth.”
Sarah laughed. “I love you, too.”
The four of them left the stone building together, but the women turned and went in another direction. They dropped to their bellies once more, and began to crawl for the volcano.
This was the first night the volcano looked larger, as though they were getting close to it, and it loomed so high above them that Sarah thought they may reach it before the sun rose.
She was incorrect, however, and as day broke the two women lay together under a slanted rock which jut out from the red earth at an extreme angle. For a while they had been able to hear Char and Gar as they had progressed back to the landing zone, but an hour or two after they had begun the men had dropped out of range. Sarah could do nothing but yearn to hear her lover’s voice once more.
“We’ll be there in a few hours,” Fib said to Sarah as they lay. “This will all be over.”
“And then we have to get back?” Sarah reminded her.
Fib laughed. “That’s the easy part,” She said.
Of course, the female Zaytarian had no idea just how wrong she was.
Chapter Ten
Night fell once more and Sarah was eager to be on their way. They crawled on, the ground now rising steadily as they reached the base of the volcano, each slow foot forward rising at a more extreme angle.
The ground would rumble every now and then, and thick black smoke spilled from the tip of the open mountain above their heads in a noxious plume.
“This is too hard,” Sarah said some hours later, sweat dripping from every pore of her body.
“You can’t stop,” Fib said. Already the sky was starting to grow lighter. “We’re so close.”
Sarah looked up. Fib was right. Ten more minutes, maybe less. She closed her eyes for a moment, wiped the stinging sweat from them, and continued on.
Feet from the top of the volcano the familiar whirring of ships pierced the air. The women lay as flat as they could, their hands holding them in place since they were almost vertical. They waited for the sound to pass, and for one wild moment Sarah worried that it never would that the ships had seen them and they were wheeling around to take aim and fire, that they would simply wipe them off the mountain the same way one would slap down a pesky mosquito.
But no, the whirring faded, the ships moved on, and Sarah climbed the rest of the way up the volcano.
She stood at the lip of the massive crater and looked down. There was bubbling lava, bright orange and yellow and red, gurgling and spitting up at her from a hundred feet or more below.
With trembling fingers Sarah pulled the crystal out from under her shirt. She looked at it for a moment, thinking of how it was alive.
It did not matter. She needed to get back to Gar.
“Just throw it in?” she asked, looking to Fib, who was standing beside her.
“Just throw it in, girl.”
Sarah pulled her arm back and then snapped it forward. The crystal flew from her hand, and fell, down, down into the lava.
At first, nothing happened. They could see the crystal, tiny so far away, hit the lava. It sat on top for a moment and then sank. Sarah had been expecting… well, she didn’t quite know what, but more than what she was seeing. Something.
BOOM!
The force of the explosion threw the women off their feet, and they went sliding partway down the side of the fiery mountain.
Sarah got to her feet and looked up. Fire was spewing upwards, into the sky. Lava splashed out and over the lip. The volcano was erupting.
“Run!” Fib said, pushing Sarah to go. They picked their way down the mountain as quickly as they could, their feet skidding, changing course when a river of lava came speeding down around them.
“No!” Sarah screamed, feeling the immense heat of the eruption all around her. Sooty smoke filled the air, making it hard to see.
“We’re going to make it!” Fib screamed back, but it didn’t sound as though she believed it herself.
Sarah had been expecting something, that much was true, but she hadn’t been expecting this.
The steepness of the ground beneath their feet leveled out, and then it was easier to run from the base of the volcano and beyond.
“Damn!” Fib cried, as a river of lava flowed directly in front of them. Both women stopped, turned, and stared at more lava. There was nowhere to go. This would be the end.
“There!” Sarah cried, spotting the ship first. It wasn’t the same triangular one which had brought them to the planet, but one that somewhat resembled a plane from Earth, a long body and wide wings. It flew down from the bright dawn sky and hovered over them for a moment, the belly flashing open and a metal ladder sliding down.
Sarah looked to see if Fib recognized the ship, but the Zaytarian just shrugged and reached up, hooking one arm through a rung of the ladder and pulling herself up. She climbed quickly, and Sarah did the same.
Chapter Eleven
Gar and Char had done it. They’d a close call with a trio of ships which had passed earlier in the second night of their trip back to the landing zone. One of the pilots must have seen something which concerned him because the ships had banked, turned and headed back toward the two Zaytarian men, circling overhead for nearly half an hour. The two soldiers were well-trained and neither had moved a muscle, even Gar who had been in a considerable amount of pain.
When the ships had moved on, still the two men waited, fearing a trick. An hour later they up and moving once more, their rifles slapping against their backs with each sprinting step.
“We’re going to need to pick up at the landing zone in an hour,” Char called into his radio.
“Copy,” a voice replied.
“Advise. We have one injury, possibly mortal. Immediate medical intervention required.”
“Copy that,” said the same voice.
Less than an hour later Char and Gar had made it, and the ship was swooping down to them. In the distance they had heard a massive boom, and fire and lava spat from the volcano.
“Sarah!” cried Gar. “No!”
Suddenly Gar collapsed, he had been running on nothing but adrenalin and the desire to live, and now that he was so close to the ship he could no longer sustain himself. Char reached down and hooked his hands under Gar’s arms and pulled him up.
“Come on, friend,” Char said, as he walked Gar up the ramp.
“Sarah!” Gar cried out again.
Once they were aboard the ship, the ramp closed and the ship took once more to the sky. The pain became too much for Gar, and his world went black.
There was a beeping sound, faint but annoying, and the slight hiss of machinery. Gar’s throat hurt. He opened his eyes to see dim lights above him. A hand reached for his mouth, found something there; a mask over his nose and lips. He pulled it away. A rubber hose that had been run down his throat coming, too.
“You ought to keep that in,” a voice said.
Gar looked toward the voice.
“Doctor Bak,” a pale yellow Zaytarian said, his hair shorter than most males, his fingers long as he tapped his name badge. “You’re aboard the medical ship Shining Health.”
“Sarah,” Gar said.
“I don’t know anything about a Sarah,” Doctor Bak said.
“The weapon…” Gar tried asking.
“You should really not talk,” Doctor Bak insisted.
“The weapon,” Gar said once more.
“Ah yes, you were with the team that was tasked with that ordeal, your chart says here,” Doctor Bak answered, flipping through the pages. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that you and your team succeeded. The volcano erupted, and it’s tearing the Aeon home world apart. The war is over. We’ve won.”
“Sarah.”
“I don’t know a Sarah,” the doctor once again insisted. “Someone will be along to brief you shortly, I am sure.”
As much pain as Gar was in, he knew this to be true. If there was anything his military liked, it was briefings. Gar thought back to Sarah at that. He had longed to fight, and she was the reason he had been given the chance. He had been punished, kept from being a warrior, but when his people had seen the relationship he had with their savior, things had been different. He had been on that mountain because of her. He had almost died because of her, and it was an honor that he had never thought possible.
Aeon War Page 6