by Hal Archer
"There!" She raised her arm and pointed to a brewing lightning storm on the western horizon.
One of the other Elders nodded. "They are coming."
They watched the storm as it approached, even as the fight continued at the distant edge of the rock formation, far below where they stood.
"You two must leave me here," she said.
One of the men took a deep breath and exhaled before speaking. "Yes. I know, but if something happened to you…"
"What will happen, will happen," she said. "They will listen to me. They know the Waudure are no threat to their land."
"You speak truth," the other man said, "and still, it is unsafe here." He looked to the edge of the rock, in the direction of the Cracian forces.
"We must protect the Elders," she said. "We must always protect the Elders, and that is why you two must go. We risk only one of us, and this is my task."
One and then the other of the two men extended his arm and embraced hers before parting.
The woman looked at her two friends. "She will return one day to take my place."
The two men nodded, then they left her to wait for the creatures which she had summoned.
She watched the storm grow in both size and wrath as it drew near. The rock beneath her feet continued to tremble. She knew the base would fall soon, and with that her people would have no protection from the Cracian forces amassed outside.
And then she saw them. Born of the Untamed Lands, the creatures for which the storms sounded. Cracking and crushing the ground before them as they moved, gargantuan things, thick-bodied legless tube-like monsters. There were four of them. With heads pushed down into the earth, their undulating bodies drove them half buried, scarring the landscape as they traversed toward the mass of hills and rocks that protected the Waudure base. The storm traveled with them, obeying their direction.
She felt their presence, and their connection with the elements around them. Reaching back into the depths of her mind, to the channel she'd formed in the mystic trance before coming to the surface, she gave her thoughts to the creatures. Joined in consciousness with them, she stood, no longer aware of her other senses or her surroundings.
The giant beings cut a path toward Kharn's forces outside the northern part of the Waudure base.
Seeing the monsters approach, the Cracians redirected their fire at them, but their weapons did little to deter the creatures.
Within moments the ground before the Cracians burst up and toppled over upon them. The gigantic bodies of the creatures pushed through the amassed equipment and troops. The explosions of their vehicles as they were crushed became smothered under the weight and breadth of the monsters. As they obliterated the Cracian forces, one of the four giants sloughed through the edge of the rock formation on which the Elder stood, still folded into their mind. The quake from the impact cast her down against the rocky ground, and, as the creature continued through the crumbling stone of the hill, caused her body to tumble. Without breaking her connection with the creatures, she fell over the edge of the cliff, dropping fifty feet below to her death.
The storms gathered overhead, raining down onto the rock that covered the Waudure base, which stood far below, still partially intact, and with scores of her people alive. The creatures withdrew and made their way back to the depths of the Untamed Lands.
CHAPTER 34
"I want him dead!" Kharn thrust one hand into the chest of the uniformed Cracian, shoving him. The man, captain of the High Guards, flew back from the push, his feet coming off the ground. He struck the wall five feet behind him.
Kharn looked at his hand, turning it over and then clenching and opening it. He seemed to relish what the augmentation process had done for him.
The captain, who had fallen to the floor after hitting the wall, picked himself up. He straightened the coat of his gray uniform. "I will see to it myself."
Kharn, wrapped in his own thoughts and not looking at him, merely tipped his head down slightly in response.
The captain took his leave from the room.
Kharn squeezed his hand into a fist and held it until it shook. "Jake Mudd, how many times must I kill you?"
Lorian, who witnessed the exchange with the captain from his seat in one of two oversized upholstered chairs nearby, spoke up. "He's only one man. Insignificant to our plans."
Kharn directed his attention to Lorian. "One man? My High Guards have been attacked. My base, which sits behind impenetrable mountains, has been infiltrated. As we speak, filthy Waudure rebels run through our corridors."
"A foolish and lucky few. By the day's end, their forces will abandon the mountain assault and return to their stronghold in the Untamed Lands where they belong."
"And do you know who is leading this foolish few, as you call them?"
Lorian shook his head.
"Your precious daughter."
"Nadira? No. She's returned?"
"I had Rekla place a tracker in her. Our sensors picked it up when she got close enough to the base. I was right not to trust her. Your feelings for her blinded you to her true allegiance. She's brought a team here to sabotage the weapon."
"I'll speak with her. I'm sure I can get her to see reason."
"No! You will finish the work. My guards will deal with her and her friends."
"You must let me see her."
"I must? How dare you. I am Crassus Kharn! You live at my pleasure. You will complete the weapon as planned. Then your daughter, along with every one of the Waudure traitors will be wiped from the face of Daedalon." He walked to the window and looked upon the raging battle among the mountains in the distance. "I will have my world. The true Cracians will rise!"
Lorian rose from his seat and watched Kharn take in the flickers of fires and explosions and death on the horizon. Nadira, forgive me.
CHAPTER 35
"T he lab will be heavily guarded," Nadira said to Jake as they hurried down the hall. They were several passages from where they'd left Hanlan and Brun.
"We'll deal with that when we get there." He held out his arm in front of her, halting her progress. Then he stepped forward, raising his blaster. He fired across the room from the corridor, but with a shaky grip on his blaster. His hands still felt tender from the burns; he missed.
The Cracian guard standing beside a door sixty feet ahead, returned fire, but also missed. Jake and Nadira slid down behind a long row of waist-high cabinets that divided the room in half.
She glanced at his hands. "Those look bad."
"I'll make it," he said. "How's your aim?"
"Right now, better than yours." She popped up from behind the metal storage units and shot the guard.
Jake stood and saw the guard on the floor. "Nice work."
Nadira moved around the end of the row of cabinets and toward the door where the guard had been standing. "Come on. The lab's this way."
Jake followed. Before she opened the door, he holstered his blaster and tore a long strip of fabric from the bottom of his shirt. Then he ripped it in two and began wrapping each of his hands, around his palms and knuckles.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Changing weapons."
"Right."
After a few seconds, he'd finished. Then he nodded to her.
She quickly opened the door. He went through first.
He ducked as the guard on his left swung the barrel of his arm's-length weapon at Jake's head. Landing a solid punch into the man's midsection, Jake dipped one knee to the ground and spun around with his elbow, striking the second guard in the groin.
Nadira stepped in to hit the first guard, who now leaned forward from Jake's blow. She raised her pistol arm and brought the butt of her weapon's grip down against the back of the man's head. The guard hit the floor hard.
Jake, from a kneeling position, shot up to his feet, striking the second guard in the face with his forearm. He followed through on the move, which lifted the man a few inches off the ground and knocked him again
st the wall behind him. Then the guard collapsed like a loose sack of rocks.
Nadira looked at the two unconscious guards. "Changing weapons."
Jake looked at one of his hands. The cloth he'd wrapped around it had dark spots now. The burned skin underneath had torn from the punch.
"How do you do it?" Nadira asked.
"What?"
"The pain. First you jump off a cliff and crash a ship with your bare hands. Now those hands are burned and bleeding and you’re hitting people in the face."
"I've built up a tolerance, you could say. And for the record, I didn't hit them in the face."
Nadira shook her head and walked off down the hall.
"How much farther?" Jake said, catching up with her.
"Just a bit more."
CHAPTER 36
"Down!" Jake threw his arm around Nadira's shoulders and pulled her toward himself.
A bolt of energy narrowly missed her head. The sound of the blast striking the wall behind her echoed down the corridor.
She dropped to a crouch and braced her firing arm with her opposite hand before taking the shot at the Cracian standing thirty feet away in an open doorway at the end of the hall, half his body behind the wall.
She hit the edge of doorway and the blast reflected at a wide angle, grazing the attacker's arm. He dropped his weapon as the shot burned his sleeve and the flesh underneath it.
Jake saw a faint shadow on the floor as he was keeping Nadira's head protected. In the same second, the shadow grew and loomed over him. He saw the shaded outline of an arm swinging toward him, a weapon in its hand. Acting even before he looked to see his assailant, Jake rose as he stepped in to give an uppercut. His fist, still bandaged, but as powerful as ever, connected with the guard's chin. The force of the blow knocked the man unconscious, his blaster flinging from his hand. Jake saw a second attacker behind the one he'd struck. He drove forward into the first man before the guard hit the floor and pushed the unconscious guard backward onto the other.
Nadira rolled to the opposite side of the corridor, landing with her back against the wall. She took another shot. The Cracian, still reeling from the wound on his arm, didn't see her second attempt. She hit him in his chest this time. He spun around to his right, slamming against the wall. The thud was noticeable. Then he dropped to the floor, his leg sliding out across the opening.
The two men Jake knocked down landed a few feet from him. The conscious one, still half underneath the other man, looked at Jake and stretched his arm to grab his weapon that lay on floor a few inches from his fingertips. Jake leapt forward towards the man's blaster with arms outstretched. The guard grabbed his weapon at the same time both Jake's hands landed on it. In an instant of struggle, Jake forced the man's hand into an unnatural position, breaking the Cracian's wrist and a few fingers. A blast shot low down the hall from the weapon. The man screamed in anguish at the damage done to his hand. Jake wrested the blaster away and stood up. Then he gave the man a kick to his chin, knocking him out.
Two more men appeared in the portal at the end of the hall. They hadn't drawn their weapons yet. They stood for a moment, until Nadira saw them.
"You!" She blasted her weapon down the hall at them, but missed. "How could you?"
Rekla and Jafir stepped back behind the wall to the right of the opening.
Nadira continued firing down the hall, though her former comrades were out of sight.
Jake quickly moved over to her and pulled her up by her arm. She let off another shot, still with no target in sight. He moved her several feet back until the two of them also had cover, taking a position around the nearest corner.
Rekla's voice sounded from the end of the hall. "We should've finished you two off the last time."
"Oooh!" Nadira started to come out from behind the corner, but Jake held her back. She shouted at them, "Step into the open and try it!"
"They're blocking the entrance to the lab, right?" Jake asked her.
"Yes, it's through that room, in the one beyond it. They knew we'd head there. I can't believe those bastards." She peered around the corner and took another shot.
"No other way in?"
"No."
Jake pushed his hand against the wall beside him.
"What are you doing?" Nadira asked.
"I'm thinking of doing something stupid."
He took a step back. Then he swung his fist into the wall. His hand, still wrapped in cloth, and half his arm plunged through the wall. He winced. "Man, that hurt."
"Are you crazy?" Nadira said, looking at his muscled arm and shoulder.
"Probably. The blasts reflect off this material, but it's not that strong." He pulled his arm out of the hole, which went clear through to the room on the other side. The structure inside the walls looked flimsy.
Nadira looked through the opening. "The lab walls are armored. You can't punch your way in."
Jake glanced at her blaster. "You ready to use that?"
"What do you have in mind?"
He looked to the corner opposite them. "Move over there. Keep them occupied. Don't let them out into the open doorway."
"And?"
"And don't shoot me."
"What?"
"Trust me. Just keep shooting near the edge. Keep them ducking against the wall for cover."
She looked at him in disbelief. Then she quickly moved to the corner across from him.
"Ready?" he asked.
She nodded. She took a stance at the edge of the wall and laid down a stream of fire next to the wall Rekla and Jafir hid behind.
"You're not a very good shot, are you?" Rekla yelled from behind the wall of the room at the end of the hall.
"What are you going to do now?" Jafir asked.
"You're too late," Rekla said. "We've won."
Jake shook his right hand, letting his fingers move loosely. He felt the warmth in his knuckles from the burns they'd taken. The throbbing sensation, he noted, was from driving his fist through the wall.
Seems I'm inflicting more damage to myself than the Cracians.
He ran down the right side of the hall, staying close to the wall and clear of the blasts from Nadira's weapon.
She called out to him, but continued shooting. "Jake!"
"Don't stop," he said as he ran. A couple of seconds later he reached the end of the hall, sliding on his feet toward the wall to the right of the doorway.
Nadira's shots whizzed by his left side.
With a heavy audible exhale, using the momentum from his run, Jake plowed his right fist through the wall and followed through with his arm, his elbow, his shoulder, and, much to his regret, his face. The wall caved inward, hitting Rekla and Jafir, who leaned against it on the other side.
All three of them fell into a pile, along with the rubble from the wall.
Nadira raced down the hall.
When she stepped through the doorway, which was much larger now, and quite oddly shaped, she found Jake on his back grinning. Rekla and Jafir were still and quiet, half-buried under debris.
"Give me a second, if you don't mind," Jake said, "then we can head into the lab."
CHAPTER 37
N adira helped Jake up from the pile of debris, some of which clung to his clothes and skin.
"Thanks," he said, dusting himself off. "Good as new." The scrapes on his arms and face, along with an actively bleeding cut on his cheek, said otherwise.
"You." Nadira shook her head.
"Hell of a delivery, huh?"
She chuckled, but then her face recomposed at the seriousness of the situation.
He nodded toward the door that led into the lab.
She readied her weapon, and they entered.
Jake stepped inside first, ready to take on the next Cracian he saw, but only one person stood in the room.
"Father!" Nadira moved quickly in front of Jake, but then halted.
The room was large, three times the size of any they'd seen in the base. White floors and walls, well
lit, it was a sterile working environment, as was to be expected. A sharp antiseptic smell filled the chilled air.
The Waudure man Nadira spoke to stood beside a massive steel rectangular vat, filled with a murky brown-colored liquid. The sides of the vat extended, forming work surfaces, cluttered with laboratory equipment — a rack of vials, metal tongs, and other assorted items. A large robotic arm hung from the ceiling above the vat. The man, her father, and the functional part of the laboratory were behind a thick glass wall that extended the width of the greater room and divided it evenly in half.
To the right of the door Jake and Nadira came through was a couch and a single end table. To the left, the wall on their side of the glass divide stood behind cabinets, shelves of books above them.
Her father, Lorian, looked up when she called to him. Jake watched him mouth a response. "My child."
Lorian half turned away from the vat before him and reached out to a panel on the wall behind him, pressing a button.
Jake heard a click, followed by a faint hum of static.
"I'm so glad to see you," Lorian said, his voice coming from above Jake and Nadira.
Jake glanced up, spotting the speakers in the ceiling.
"Why?" Nadira asked. "How can you do this?"
Jake scanned the glass divide for a door, which he saw at the far end to the right. Also glass, it had two wide steel bands connecting from the wall inside the enclosure where Nadira's father was to the inside of the door itself.
"Our work is a worthwhile cause," Lorian said. He moved around to the opposite side of the vat, approaching the glass between himself and Nadira. "You've known the importance of what we're doing."
Jake headed over to the glass door and tried to open it. The door wouldn't budge.
Lorian looked at him. "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't let you in. I know the two of you are here to stop us, but I can't allow that to happen."