by T. R. Harris
However, the six aliens were no match for the REVs. Without holding back, it took just one hit each to crush their skulls. But now all hell broke loose. The bodies had continued to ride the rotating escalator where other priests and assistants could see them. There was panic, with calls being made to security. Other Qwin, curious about the commotion, were coming out of their rooms on the eighth level. Seeing the carnage, they either raced forward to attack the Humans, or ducked back inside to make more calls.
“Looks like the need for stealth is over,” Angus yelled above the screeching of qwin, qwin, qwin. He pulled off his head mask before pressing a button on the side of his backpack. The lower section spun around on a built-in rail. He had the M-93 out, extended and slung around his shoulder two seconds later. The HK-14 came next, with extra magazines held in pockets on the rifle’s strap. He stuck the handgun in a pocket of his Qwin uniform. A flick of a release, and the backpack section fell away.
He took the M-93 in his hands, sighted a group of Qwin emerging from one of the side rooms, and fired. He wasn’t the only one. By now all five REVs were locked and loaded. The room was cleared of enemy three seconds later.
They stepped onto the escalator and rotated down to the next level. Qwin were here to, but most were running for their lives. Zac smiled. Now this was more like he was used to. He fired at the retreating aliens.
Then he stopped. No matter how much he enjoyed killing aliens, the team couldn’t spend too much time at it. They had to get to the Enlightenment Chamber before the Corollaries were destroyed.
“Let’s go!” he yelled to his team, who were literally giddy as they shot the aliens.
They followed him through the spinning platforms, hopping from one to the other to go deeper under the Temple. They reached the bottom-most level and discovered it was of a different design from the others, definitely less traveled with ornately decorated walls of wood relief, plush carpeting and a heavy wooden door at the center on a long, wide corridor.
Zac raced up to the door while two of the REVs covered the escalator and the other two each side of the corridor. There was a thick, black iron handle on the door, and when he pulled it opened.
Zac was as shocked as anyone. This didn’t happen in the movies. But when he stepped through the entrance his spirits fell. This was just the showcase entrance. The rear entrance was inside the anteroom.
This was a set of shiny metal doors, devoid of handles, with only an electronic key pad for entry. On either side of the portal were wide windows looking into a well-lit room with high ceilings. There were rows of low bookshelves, tables and ancient-looking books sealed in containers resting atop elaborate podiums. This was definitely the Enlightenment Chamber. The half dozen Antaere huddled over bound texts was the other giveaway. Those inside the room spotted the Humans and began to move.
Zac stepped back and fired a burst from his rifle at one of the windows. The glass spider-webbed but didn’t break. He tried again, with the same result. It was worth a try. He turned his attention to the door, and all a blast at the control pad did was knock it off the door, leaving a mass of sparking wires.
Out of frustration, he slammed the stock of his weapon on the metal door. If he was activated, he would simply batter the doors down with his body. As it was, he now had to think of a solution. Sometimes that wasn’t as easy as it sounds.
The Qwin inside the Enlightenment Chamber were talking on communicators, reporting the intruders. Anytime now someone in the building would figure out why they were there and order the destruction of the Final Glory document. That’s when Zac noticed a couple of the Qwin disappear around a wall to the right. From what he could see of the room, there shouldn’t be more than ten feet behind the wall before met with the outer wall to the corridor.
His throat mic was active. “Angus, Kyle, check to the right. See if there’s another entrance.”
Zac heard a pair of quick rifle bursts in that direction.
“Roger that, LT. Caught two of them coming out. They left it open for us with the bodies.”
More gunfire, this time from the left.
“Report,” Zac called out.
“We’ve got company!’ said Donovan Ross.
“How many?”
“Well, about all of them. They’re on the escalators, but just found an express elevator of some kind. They’re pouring out of there, too.”
“Kyle, Angus, support Mike and Don. I’ll go in the room alone. Hold them back until I find the document.”
He raced past Kyle and Angus as they headed in the other direction toward the escalator. Stepping over the bodies of the two dead Qwin priests, he entered the side door to the Enlightenment Chamber.
This entrance was simple, with barely a deadbolt. It seemed even the heavy interior security door was more for show. Day-to-day access to the room was through the side door.
Zac blasted a couple of running Qwin when he reached the main chamber. He couldn’t risk any true believers making their last great sacrifice by destroying the Final Glory text. He looked around. “If I were a set of Corollaries, where would I be,” he said aloud. They would be special, revered, so possibly in one of the sealed cases.
He moved to the nearest podium. There was a huge book resting on an ornate stand, with a black leather cover etched in silver ink. He shrugged the upper half of his backpack off his shoulders and opened it. There was an optical reader inside. He took the unit, and through the glass cover, ran the broad end over the book. The screen on the top device displayed the translated the text.
Order of the Universe….
There was more text, and although this book was something special, it wasn’t what they’d come for.
He raced to three other podiums, aware that there was a firefight taking place in the outside corridor and that he didn’t have a lot of time.
He spotted a Qwin—a young one—hiding behind a bookcase. He ran to the alien and pointed the M-93 at his head. “The Corollaries…where are they!”
The alien trembled, as his eyes shifted unconsciously to the right. He was too afraid to speak, but he didn’t have to. Zac moved to the pedestal.
Under the glass was a thin set of square pages, fanned out like playing cards. There was a small heading on each page and then blocks of writing. Zac ran his reader along the pages.
Corollaries of Order.
He lifted his rifle and slammed the stock into the protective cover. It shattered, showering the ancient documents in shards of glass. He brushed away the debris and scooped up all the documents. He took them to a table and did a quick scan. There! Final Glory of Mentar, Universal Corollaries to the Order of Light. This had to be it.
Zac took the full sheet—it was only a single sheet—and slipped it under the tight-fitting top of his Antaere uniform. It would be safe there—unless he was shot in the chest. He headed out the way he came.
“I got it,” he reported over the comm.
“Just in time; I’m low on ammo,” Mike reported.
“Me too,” said Angus.
“Time to kick some alien ass!” Donovan cried out. “Rock on REVs!”
The New REV doll every red-blooded boy needs this Holiday Season. Simple to use and all action. Just wind him up…and let him go!
Facebook ad, December 2, 2086
24
The Antaere troops had thinned out by now, either dead or retreated to a stronger position. Zac’s REVs were pressed into doorways, covering the rotating escalator and the open doorway of the elevator. The elevator was something special, with its existence hidden within the wall reliefs, either on purpose or not to disturb the reverent feel to the hallway. It was a way to gain access to the Enlightenment Chamber without have to cycle through each floor. It would have been nice to know that ahead of time, Zac thought. It would have saved a lot of time…and ammunition.
During the lull in the battle, the REVs were taking turns changing out of their gaudy starship engineer suit and into their uniforms. If they were to die, th
ey wanted to die looking good. Besides the fatigues, they attached shoulder and chest armor onto fastening anchors. These were thin pieces of composite material, lightweight but extremely tough. The chest plate had the distinctive raised sword of the REVs with a red stripe running away to each side and up toward the shoulders pads. They strapped utility belts around their waists and the placed the HK-14s into the attached holsters. As one REV would dress, the others covered him. Three minutes and the team had the look of a squad of killer REVs ready for action.
“The elevator,” Zac called out. “Cover me.”
The team opened up on the escalator, driving away any lurking aliens. Zac sprinted to the open doorway and kicked away several dead Qwin, even as he scooped up four of their weapons and tossed them inside the cab. He surveyed the carriage before jumping up and grasping an overhead panel. With his REV strength, he yanked down, tearing the metal sheet away. He continued to rip at the ceiling until the top of the elevator was open to the dark shaft above it.
The elevator ran by magnetics, not cables, but that didn’t matter. Here was a way out, and without all the accompanying obstacles they would encounter taking the traditional route. He signaled for his men, one at a time, to race past the escalator and to the elevator, while the others provided cover. Even if the Qwin wanted to time their shots to the crossing, the REVs moved in a blur, taking a blink of an eye to cover the distance. Even before everyone was across, others were had taken up the extra weapons and were climbing into the elevator shaft.
There were struts and supports all the way up which where like a jungle gym to the Humans. With extraordinary strength and coordination, the men literally flung themselves upward, gaining a level every couple of seconds.
“Looks like a control unit up above,” Donovan reported. He was in the lead and would reach the top of the shaft first. “This could be our exit.”
Just then, rifle slugs began to ricochet off the walls of the elevator shaft, being fired from below. Kyle took a round in his left thigh and lost his footing, falling away into the center of the shaft. He dropped a full level before Zac reached out and grabbed him around the neck. Kyle gasped, unable to breathe until he was pressed against a cross beam along the wall and wrapped his arms around the metal strut.
“Crude, but effective,” he coughed. “Thanks.”
Zac was already scrambling upward and didn’t reply.
Dodging incoming fire from below, the team reached the top of the shaft. There was closed door, which Zac figured would open to a firing squad of Qwin, having been alerted by those below. He looked up and spotted a narrow gap between the elevator’s control unit and the wall of the shaft. He sent his men squeezing through until they were all standing on top of the metal control box.
There was an access panel on the wall, used by maintenance personnel for the elevator. Zac kicked it and the panel fell away…and down onto the waiting Qwin.
The panel didn’t hurt any of the aliens; it just startled them. But by the time they reacted, Zac’s REVs were flinging themselves through the opening and tumbling to the floor outside the elevator, weapons firing non-stop.
The Antaere who weren’t cut down by the metal slugs were crushed by powered blows from the Humans. The fight lasted only seconds before Zac had his people sprinting across the wide service corridor they’d left almost half an hour before. But now the place was a madhouse, filled with confused and panicking aliens, intermixed with an influx of armored troops rushing in from outside.
Zac rushed to a service counter made of stone and ripped off the top. He tossed it down the tiled corridor. It slid, cutting the feet out from under a dozen troops, while others tried to jump the speeding object. Distracted, they became easy targets for the REVs, who in a state of cascading were finding their target acquisition abilities improving by the second. The fire was so rapid that it sounded like one continuous shot. Qwin died by the dozen, as the team would empty one weapon only to scoop up another and keep firing, with only a heartbeat’s delay.
“We can’t keep this up,” Zac said from behind a counter, as slugs shattering everything around him. “There are a lot more them than there are of us. We have to get outside.”
“I have several doorways over here,” Mike reported from his position. “They’re along the outer wall; could be another way out other than the way we came.”
“Angus, go with him. We’ll provide cover.”
The two REVs crashed through the first door, using their bodies rather than the handle. Flashes from their weapons lasted a second before the all-clear was given.
“Just a room, but more doors. Completing our sweep.”
Zac ducked a barrage of bullets as they ripped at the wall above him “Hurry up. It’s getting dicey here.”
“Bingo!” said Angus over the comm. “Not a door, but a panel of windows looking out. A whole boatload of Qwin are running past, heading for the service entrance. You’re going to have even more company in about two seconds.”
“We’re on our way.”
The rest of the team ran into the first room and then the second. Angus and Mike hadn’t broken through the window yet, not until they were all there. When the last of the advancing aliens had run pass the window, Mike took the stock of a Qwin weapon to the glass. This wasn’t any special bullet-proof material and it broke away easily. He cleared a section and hopped through to the outside.
He was spotted immediately, which was unfortunate for the Qwin who turned their weapons on him. He was much quicker.
On this side of the Temple dome was a cluster of small buildings, as well as the North Gate and the beginning of the half-mile-long barracks for the security troops that ran along the interior of the border wall. Even with the main contingent of security units having moved into the dome, there were still plenty of loose Qwin around to fire on them. Besides that, the main force was being alerted to their position. Qwin were appearing everywhere.
Zac led his men through a barrage a fire and straight into the advancing Qwin. Friendly fire began to cut into the aliens, even as all the REVs took hits of one degree or the other. Fortunately, there were so many bodies rushing about that the Humans became lost in the mad crush. They slipped behind one of the outbuildings and took inventory.
“How bad are you hurt?” Zac asked the team. Each sounded off. Mike appeared to be the worst off, with three wounds, including one to his lower abdomen. He was bleeding badly. Zac had two wounds himself, both in his legs. He felt the pain, but it was numbed to a degree by the cascading taking place in his body. The natural NT-4 was doing its job.
He glanced to the east and the small spaceport within the Temple grounds. There was a lingering cloud of smoke, left over from when the Rowin’s ship was evacuated from the surface at the outset of the battle. It was a natural reaction. But now a multitude of small atmospheric fighter planes were either landing or taking off. Soon the sky would be filled with them, all looking for Zac and his team. It was bad enough facing the ground troops. Threats from the sky would be the last straw.
Behind them was the north wall—rising forty feet up—with the well-guarded gate five hundred feet to the west. The wall was wide enough for guards to patrol the top. Most had clustered near the gate, expecting the Humans to try to break out there.
Zac sized up the leap it would take for them to reach the top of the wall. Forty feet in Earth-normal gravity, that was asking a lot. He had an idea.
“One of us will catapult the rest to the top. Then we’ll hang one down by his wrists while the man on the ground makes a leap for his legs. He’ll then climb over the other to the top. It should work.”
“I’ll take the bottom,” Mike volunteered.
They rushed to the wall. Angus was the first up. With a boost from Mike, he reached the top with his fingertips. He lifted himself up and rolled over onto the top of the wall. Zac went next, grabbing Angus’s outstretched hand. He was up and in covering position a second later. Guards on the wall near the gate noticed the Humans a
nd came running. Without any cover, Zac cut them down with three center mass shots from two hundred feet away.
Donovan came next, followed by Kyle, who with Angus holding his wrists, dangled along the inner side of the wall.
“C’mon Mike!” Donovan called out.
Mike stood back, looked up at the wall, and then to the spaceport half a mile away.
“Mike! Hurry.”
“You guys go on without me. I’m bleeding live a sieve; I won’t last much longer.”
“Bullshit!”
Zac heard the conversation. “Sergeant, get your ass up here. That’s an order.”
“Sorry, Zac.” Mike called up. “I’ll provide air cover. Get out of here. It’s all right.”
Zac looked down at man, who was grimacing and holding his side. “Do you even know how to fly one of those things?”
“I’m a fast learner. Now go, LT. Go.”
More Qwin were climbing to the top of the wall, coming from both sides now, as the small aircraft lifted off and gained altitude, looking for a target. They were sitting ducks on the wall.
“Good luck, Mike.”
Mike Brickey ran off along the wall, still clutching his side but faster than any of the aliens trying to catch him.
Zac couldn’t wait any longer. On the other side of the wall was a fifty foot buffer where the Antaere didn’t allow any native buildings. Beyond that, however, was the ugly sprawl of a shantytown. With Zac remaining on the wall for cover, the remaining three REVs jumped to the ground, their REV-enhanced leg muscles absorbing the shock of the landing. They sprinted off to the cover of the slum buildings. Zac followed a few seconds later, just as enemy slugs tore into the part of the wall he’d just left.
The team didn’t linger. They ran into the urban sprawl, zig-zagging between huts and lean-tos, avoiding the few natives they found along the way. It seemed that when the call went out to defend the Temple most had made their way to the main entrance, expecting a frontal assault. Few realized the threat was already within the compound. Now the streets were virtually deserted. What natives they did encounter didn’t live to tell about it.