How far could they go?
“The survivors are outside and safe, Gabe,” Esau said. “Just waiting on you three to get here.”
“I planted a bunch of bangers in the room with all the cylinders,” Gabriel said. “And I set a couple HEAVY rounds to explode on fused timers. If I remember chemistry correctly, this whole building is going to be slagged soon enough.”
“How many bangers?” Markus asked, curious.
“Uh...all of them.”
“Holy crap,” Markus whispered. “That’ll drop the entire block.”
“Hope not,” Gabriel answered. “We’re coming out. Don’t shoot us.”
“Entrance secured,” Esau said.
“Street secured,” Joshua added.
“Then let’s get out of here.”
Gabriel led them out into the street, where he instantly spotted the survivors. He ushered them away from the research building and away from the damaged laser, into a shadowy alley off the road. The Wraiths maintained a circle around the civilians, protecting them from any surprise attacks by the Abassi.
The street remained silent, though. Gabriel again wondered where all the aliens were hiding – and when his impromptu bomb would explode. He checked his HUD and grimaced. Five minutes almost. It should have gone off already.
“Gabe,” Esau warned as one of the survivors marched straight to him.
“You the Wraith commander?” the man asked. Not waiting for confirmation, he continued. “We need your help.”
“You already have my help,” Gabriel corrected. He grabbed the man’s shoulder and pushed him back towards the alley. “You’re welcome.”
The man struggled futilely against the powerful Wraith. “No, hear me out. There are things going on here beyond your comprehension.”
“I comprehend just fine,” Gabriel said as he took a firm hold of the man’s ruined shirt. “I just don’t care. I’ve got a mission to complete and, surprise surprise, you are not part of that mission.”
“You don’t understand,” the man whined as Gabriel gently pushed him away.
“No, you don’t understand what constitutes a military operation,” Gabriel countered. “Okay, what this was originally at least. It’s still one, I mean. Well, kind of. Things may get dicey before too long. The Abassi have this world locked down, and we got lucky on our approach. The more time we spend here, the less chance we have of surviving.”
“But...we know he’s here! He must be rescued or there will be dire consequences!”
“Okay, fine, I’ll bite,” Gabriel sighed. “Who must be rescued?”
“The Praelictor!”
Gabriel stopped and stared at the man. “Seriously? The Praelictor? Even I know who he is, and he’s been dead for two years. What are you trying to pull here?”
“Not dead, just missing,” the man argued. “He was here, inspecting the Marines stationed here, when the Abassi attacked and invaded. Everyone thought he was dead but last week I saw him. He was being transported to one of the holding camps near the outskirts of the city.”
“Are you absolutely certain?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes, of course,” the man nodded his head. “The Praelictor is a very distinct man. And he’s alive.”
“Damn it,” Gabriel muttered. He keyed the squad. “Guys, we may have a problem.”
“Oh, sure, like we didn’t have any as it is,” Esau replied. Gabriel watched as his friend emerged from a ruined building.
“Well, this man here–” Gabriel gave the man a slight shake “–claims the Praelictor is alive and a prisoner.”
“I have a name...” the man sniffed.
“And I don’t care,” Gabriel finished for him after switching his comm. He refocused his attention to his men and back to unit comms. “I have a packet on my nodule that tells what and who the Praelictor is. I’m downloading it to you now.”
“Wait, this guy commands all the Marines?” Esau asked a second later as his brain finished processing the new information helpfully provided by Gabriel’s suit. “I thought they just promoted someone new to the rank or something.”
“No, looks like this is a hereditary position,” Gabriel said as he scanned the details. He felt the burning need for a drink. Preferably something alcoholic. “His son or brother would inherit the position once it was proven he was dead. Christ, this could be a problem.”
“Yeah,” Esau agreed. “Because I see he was the only son. He has a daughter, but she’s not of age for another three years. So, the Marines won’t have a Praelictor for a very long time, or at least until the Emperor decides otherwise.”
“This is the Praelictor,” Gabriel told his squad as he brought the image of the Lord Commander of the Dominion’s Marine Corps up on their screens. He did not have time for them to figure out how to access the kernel nodule he had loaded onto their systems. “His name is Raoul Posey. He is now a priority rescue, according to the records I found about him. Survivors report he is still alive and hidden outside the city in one of the holding camps we were supposed to clear after we retook the city. You know, before our primary plan went to shit. He’s–”
“What’s the deal with his hat?” Esau interrupted suddenly. Gabriel sighed as he glanced back at the picture. Sure enough, a ridiculously tall hat was perched atop the man’s head.
“No clue. Maybe a functionary thing? Anyways, he’s nobility, and he has the security codes for quite a few important – and classified – systems back on Trono del Terra, and–”
“He looks like the Pope,” Markus stated.
“Space Pope!” Esau laughed.
“–and he’s very important to rescue. I mean, important and we need to rescue–”
“Blessed be the Space Pope!” Joshua offered. Beeker and Twist both snorted with laughter.
“Will you shut the hell up?!” Gabriel roared. “The Pope wears a completely different hat!”
“Blasphemer!” Esau replied, shock in his voice. He wagged a finger at Gabriel. “Thou shalt not mock the Almighty Space Pope!”
“All hail the Space Pope!” Twist cried out. More laughter followed.
“Fuck you. Praelictor Posey is very important–”
“Space Pope!” the rest of the squad chorused.
“I’m going to kill you all.”
“Respect the Space Pope!” Esau shouted back at him.
“Fine. If it’ll shut you all the hell up...”
“Repent, sinner.”
“Esau, I’m going to kick your ass last, so you can watch while I kill the rest of them...”
They laughed harder. There was a definitive reason that the Wraith Corps wanted men who could be classified as insane.
“Okay, so we’ll take out those lasers, rescue the Space Pope – you assholes – and skedaddle to the extraction point. You with me so far?”
Everyone nodded.
“All right then. Markus, Beeker, point. Keep low profiles. I want to find the camp well after dark.”
“You think the Space Pope offers some sort of communion?” Beeker asked.
“You? You, I’m going to kill slowly...”
Gabriel looked over at the civilians. “Stay hidden. Esau, give him a transponder. You know how these things work?”
“I think so,” the man stuttered slightly, nervous. Gabriel sighed and grabbed the device from Esau. “This button here turns it on. A quarter past the hour, every hour, you will turn it on and leave it on for fifteen seconds. Then you turn it off. That way, no Abassi can pinpoint your location fast enough. If you haven’t been rescued by the time we get back, we’ll launch a priority-one alert. That’ll bring every damn alien in the system on us, but at least then the Eye will know where we are.”
“The Eye? Where are the rest of the ships?” the man asked, surprised.
“Destroyed. Along with the entire Fifth Fleet. You missed that lightshow?” Twist asked and chuckled. “Right. Beyond the horizon.”
“Anyway, keep out of sight,” Gabriel ordered. “Fifteen
minutes past the hour, every hour. For how long?”
“Fifteen seconds,” the man answered. Gabriel nodded.
“Good.” Gabriel motioned towards a small building nearby. “That place looks empty. Hole up in there. There’s a damaged laser down the street. Don’t go near it. The aliens know someone did that but not who. Don’t give them any ideas.”
“Got it.”
“Esau, take the rear, watch for any sign we’re being hunted,” Gabriel said.
“My faith in the Space Pope will guard us,” his best friend replied.
“Enough about the Space Pope, damn it,” Gabriel growled.
“You think the Praelictor would have us up on dereliction of duty if we called him His Worshipfulness?” Esau asked as they began to move away from the dark alleyway and towards the east side of Newcastle.
“I hope he kneecaps you.”
A sudden explosion rocked the street. The Wraiths rode it out, the rolling wave barely upsetting their balance. The civilians, though, were tossed to the ground as the force of the blast spread through the street beneath their feet. Cracks began to appear in the ground and Gabriel, who recognized tectonic activity after living on a moon while in college, turned and shouted at the survivors.
“To the east! Run!”
“Forgot about your bomb, didn’t you?” Esau asked as they followed the civilians down the street.
“No. Maybe. Okay fine, I did,” Gabriel admitted. He looked behind them and watched as a large sinkhole appeared, swallowing a portion of the building and most of the street. Fires began to erupt from beneath the street as the phosphorous flash grenades reacted violently with the ruptured water lines. One building began to burn, the extreme heat from the fires causing it to burst into flame almost immediately.
“That’s impressive,” Markus observed. “I guess that servo in my knee wasn’t important after all.”
“Find a safe place to put the civilians,” Gabriel ordered, attempting to ignore the carnage he was leaving behind. “Might as well go and blow something else up.”
“Might as well,” Esau agreed, an unseen smile on his face.
#
Before they crested the final rise before the small prison camp, Gabriel split his squad into two teams. The first, led by Markus with Joshua and Beeker close behind, swung wide of the camp and slipped into a small wooded area to the north. Twist, Esau and Gabriel dropped as low to the ground as they could and belly-crawled to the top of the ridge.
Gabriel frowned as he brought up the image of the camp below.
“I thought these were holding pens,” Gabriel said as he looked at small outpost. A few Sharks were parked together near the front gate, and two watchtowers loomed over the camp but, other than that, it did not resemble what he had thought a prison would look like. He zoomed in on where he figured the prisoners were being kept. “Strange. Those look like Abassi.”
“No prisoners?” Esau asked as he crept closer to Gabriel’s position. “Weird.”
“What do we do?” Twist asked.
“Rescue the Praelictor, of course,” Gabriel stated. “We just need to figure out where he’s at.”
“Gabriel, this is Markus,” a private comm interrupted him.
“Go.”
“I don’t see any prisoners,” the Wraith said. “In fact, all I see is a small outpost over there. Like a forward relay point. Not a prison camp at all.”
“Same thing I see as well,” Gabriel informed him. “I don’t see any sign of the Praelictor either. Think the civvies in town lied to us?”
“Maybe,” Markus said. “Well, we were looking for a fight...”
“Yeah. Wait one,” he told the other team as he focused on a small structure in the center of camp. A command tent of some sort, there were four Abassi guards standing outside the main entrance. Gabriel brought up his infrared thermal scanner and peered inside. He read seven signatures, though one appeared to be hotter than the rest. He looked over the readings and blinked in surprise. Six signatures were around ninety degrees, too cold to be human. The seventh, however, was just right.
“Got something?” Markus asked.
“Maybe,” Gabriel said. “Looks human, but I only have it on infrared. Center structure, looks like a large square tent. Marking it now.”
“Got it,” Markus stated. “I see guards outside. Four.”
“Same.”
“Well, there’s one human down there who needs to be rescued,” Markus said.
“Agreed,” Gabriel nodded. “Though why they’d keep a prisoner in their command tent is beyond me. Okay, Markus, your team is going to provide cover and fire support for us. Stick to the plan, but be careful with your shooting. Try not to destroy the command tent. Take out the towers to cover our escape.”
“You still going to come our way, or just pull back the same way you go in?”
“Still going to hit the woods for cover,” Gabriel decided. “Setting a timer now. Initiate in...fifteen seconds.”
“Got it.”
“Gee, a working timer might have predicted your bomb a bit better…”
“Fuck off, Twist.”
Gabriel looked at Esau. “We’re going in fifteen. Any comm bands floating around you can jam?”
“They’re hardwired,” Esau replied. “I doubt I’ll be able to do anything more than tickle them.”
“Damn,” Gabriel muttered. “Be ready to move.”
He watched the timer count down, his targeting system up and running. He designated multiple targets of importance, with the four guards outside the command structure as priority. He relayed the targeting priority list to the other suits, and watched as Markus did the same for his team. He smiled as the number reached zero.
The three Wraiths stood and ran towards the reinforced fence, shooting as they closed the camp. He brought his Lynx up and shot the guards to the left of the command tent, while Esau eliminated the two to the right. Multiple HEAVY rounds streaked across the open area between the small wood and the camp, blowing up the watchtowers and the protective gate just as Gabriel and his team reached the outer perimeter.
Gabriel jumped over the ruined gate and landed amidst a small squadron of Abassi soldiers. He spun and began to fire, the small rounds blasting the aliens to bits at point-blank range. They didn’t even have time to cry out in alarm as the Wraith obliterated them.
“Command tent! Move!” Gabriel ordered as Twist began to systematically destroy any and all Sharks he could find. Esau nodded and quickly followed him, watchful as Markus’ team continued to pin down the surviving Abassi with continuous fire.
He looked at his targeting scanner and recognized the hotter heat signature of the lone human in the tent. He began to shoot through the structure’s walls, targeting the Abassi near their captive. He watched their heat signatures bloom, then fade to nothing. He grunted and stepped inside the structure.
A HEAVY round slammed through the wall and struck the ground at his feet, exploding on impact. Gabriel was flung back as white-hot fragments screamed through the enclosed space, tearing into the still-standing man in the center of the tent. The other man grunted and fell, bleeding from multiple wounds.
“Ah, shit,” Gabriel muttered and picked himself off the ground. “Markus, cease firing on the command tent.”
“Got it,” came the reply.
“Esau?”
“Camp is secured,” the man from Solomon answered. “A few stragglers ran off to the east, but nothing’s out there as far as I can tell. All Sharks are destroyed.”
“Good. Markus, bring your team down to the command tent,” Gabriel commanded.
“On our way.”
“The Commandant is not going to be pleased with this...”
Five minutes later, the rest of his squad had joined him in the ruins of the command tent. Beeker, who misfired the HEAVY round which had killed the man on the ground before them, was still trying to apologize for the errant shot. Gabriel had shut him up with a terse warning.
“I gotta say,” Esau said as he looked at the still form of the man they had come to rescue. “That didn’t go well.”
“God,” Gabriel muttered. “Can anything else go wrong?”
“We forgot to take out that last laser emplacement,” Esau reminded him as the Wraiths stood in a circle around the body.
“We’re going to hang for this,” Gabriel moaned as he gingerly prodded the broken Praelictor with his suit. “Why did the Abassi have him in their command tent and not in some holding cell or something?”
“Interrogation?” Twist offered.
“Maybe,” Gabriel mulled over the thought as his suit began to capture images of the Praelictor. “But why interrogate him here and not in front of the other prisoners? Well, okay, we didn’t find any other prisoners, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any here.”
“Maybe they like to do it in the dark, you know?” Markus suggested.
“We still have to take out that laser if we want to get off this miserable little hellhole,” Esau said. “No offense, Twist.”
“None taken, doos,” Twist answered. “There’s a reason why I left as soon as I could.”
“What about him?” Beeker asked, motioning at the fallen Praelictor.
Gabriel shrugged. “We have evidence he’s dead. That’s enough for me. We tried. Now let’s get our asses off-planet.”
“And the survivors back in the city,” Markus added.
“Right, and them.”
“Still gotta destroy that laser,” Esau repeated.
“Okay, fine. Back to town, destroy the laser, retrieve the civilians, and get on a shuttle out of here,” Gabriel summarized. “Did I miss anything?”
Silence.
“Okay, Esau, get on the horn with the Eye. Let them know our ETA. Also, try to get those four suits you slaved earlier ready to evac. Maybe the Eye can pick them up, too,” Gabriel ordered. He looked back towards the burning city. “Jesus. How much phosphorous did I drop in there? Never mind. That last laser emplacement is on the north side of town. We can be there in an hour, if we hurry.”
“Should we have the people we rescued meet us up in the north?” Twist asked.
“No. We’ll do the extraction near them,” Gabriel said. “That should keep them out of trouble.”
Wraithkin (The Kin Wars Saga Book 1) Page 21