The Lost Tribe (Sentinel Series Book 2)

by Richard Flunker

  Gheno reached down and grabbed the rifle. He took the rock and put it in his shirt’s front pocket.

  “Can you still hear me?” he asked.

  “Why would I not hear you?” she asked. Gheno looked out towards the ocean. Many of the saucers were starting to reach the shore, or at least where the shore was. Most of the shore was covered in the ocean’s dirty water as it rushed back out to sea. He squinted towards the coast. The saucers were slowing down and changing shape. He tapped his visor.

  “Can you see what’s going on?” he asked.

  A secondary screen popped up inside the visor showing images from the ships optics. It was zoomed in on one of the saucers. It was splitting into four separate orbs. Cove zoomed in on one of the orbs as it continued to change shape. Four legs sprouted from it and lifted the orb up out of the water a few feet. A slender body formed from the front of the orb and two arms formed from that body along with a slim head. Gheno could see what appeared to be red flashing light coming from the heads.

  “They kinda look like centaurs,” Gheno said.

  “I agree,” Karai’s voice echoed over the com in the visor.

  They watched as the new creatures began moving forwards into the land. The zoomed image panned back and Gheno could see hundreds of the saucers landing near the shore and going through the same transformation. Their long spindly legs reached out through the flowing water and moved through it with ease. Gheno aimed down the rifle, but even with assisted aiming, his odds of hitting any of them were too low. He watched in the optics as a group of three of the centaurs walked towards a small building. He saw a man appear on the roof of the building. He appeared to be wielding a sword and was motioning at the creatures.

  Gheno saw them raise their long spindly hands and point at the man. The man then went down in a bloody heap.

  “What was that?” Gheno shouted out. “Did you get that?”

  “What?” came the voice from the rock.

  –They fired something. I am scanning.-

  “What?” the voice echoed.

  “There are creatures on your shores. They just killed a man.”

  “Then rain light on them, Ghost walker,” she said.

  “Not from here. And just one man won’t help here.”

  “Show us how to rain the light,” she said.

  “Um…” Gheno stood up and looked around. The shore was about two miles from his position. The creatures were starting to move inland amidst the rubble and washed over trees.

  “Can you see me?” Gheno asked out loud.

  “Yes. I see you,” Blue Flower replied.

  “Where are you?” Gheno spun about as if he would see her magically appear.

  “I am in the third of the council towers,” she said.

  Gheno focused back inland towards the center of the city where the three large spiral towers reigned over the city.

  “Cove, are you hearing this?” Gheno asked.

  -I am Gheno. What do you need me to do?-

  “Can you fly over to the towers?”

  The ship turned slowly. Gheno sat down against the hull and held on to the magnetic strap as the ship began flying towards the tower. They approached the tower and as the transport flew next to the towers, he could see hundreds of face peering out through the countless windows.

  “Down below. Put your box down here. We have warriors ready to help,” Blue Flower’s voice sounded muffled in his shirt.

  The ship descended slowly and Gheno could hear cheering from within the tower.

  “Is it safe here?” Gheno asked.

  -It is dry here.-

  “It’s safe here. There is no water,” echoed from the stone.

  “Gheno, what are we doing?” Karai’s voice came over the coms.

  “We’re making a pickup,” he said.

  Gheno felt the ship land on the ground. He stood up and walked to the edge where the lovely face of Blue Flower was smiling from the ground. Gheno felt a surge and waved back to her. She went rushing on board the transport followed by twelve other men. He heard a commotion inside and was soon greeted by the men emerging through the top hatch on board of the transport. The wide-eyed men hopped up through the hatch one by one, making space for each other on the hull. Blue Flower came through last and ran over to Gheno.

  “Do you really need to be here?” Gheno asked. He realized he was being foolishly protective.

  “You will show me how to rain light on the dark spirits?” she asked.

  Gheno looked back at the other men.

  “Aw, why the heck not. Cove, get us back there!” he shouted. Gheno heard one of the men shout in excitement the words he now recognized as ‘Ghost walker’. He beamed in pride. He went over to the pile of rifles and began handing them out to the men, who took them with a certain degree of care and awe. The transport began to rise up back into the sky as Gheno led the men to the edge of the ship. As the ship moved out back towards the shore, moving slowly, Gheno stood in front of them and without uttering a word, showed them how to aim, and press the trigger. They jumped and gasped in excitement as the bolt of plasma shot from the Gheno’s rifle.

  “Make sure they understand, they have thirty times to fire, then it’s done,” Gheno said to Blue Flower. She translated for him.

  He turned to gauge their reaction to her explanation and saw their faces change to a serious tone. They all took positions with extreme ease and balance along the edge of the hull. He knew from the way they moved on the moving ship that these men would not fall.

  “Ok Cove, find us the closest bunch of black things. Let’s see what we can do with this mobile platform,” he said.

  -Tracking incoming.- The message was blinking.

  Gheno looked up into the HUD on his visor and saw countless objects spewing out of the black pyramid miles out in the sea. The tracking software was having a difficult time separating all the new targets. But what really scared Gheno was the fact that these new objects were coming out of the top of the pyramid. They were flying.

  “That’s gonna suck.”

  ***

  Jayne Sawyer had not piloted a single-man fighter craft in nearly seven years. She had initially found the ultra-high tech interior of the Jaguar a little intimidating. But it didn’t take long for her to see why this new spacecraft was the premier choice for Alliance commanders. It was intuitive flying. No gaudy instruments or useless knobs and buttons. After the initial shock she got when she brought up the 360 display, she found her old space flying instincts and training kicking in.

  “All wings check in,” she said over the coms.

  They had just entered the atmosphere and were headed down to the surface. Her orders were simple: ascertain the nature of the attack on the locals and assist in any way possible and provide an escort for the Marines which were descending in the shuttles. Sub-commodore Crawford was personally leading them. Jayne checked the incoming messages one by one. They hadn’t lost a single Jaguar in the black sphere’s initial attack. They had their full three wings.

  “Eyes open.”

  They went through various layers of clouds without seeing anything. The Galaxy was partially blinded up from orbit and was relying on simply optics whenever the clouds broke. The information fed to their ships was fearsome. The giant spheres had formed some kind of pyramid on the water, miles outside of the coastal city and were mounting some kind of amphibious attack. Part of her mission was to become the eyes and ears for the Galaxy up above.

  “Thick clouds,” someone echoed over the coms.

  “Keep it tight. Sensors are barely breaking through ahead of us, but it’s clear so far. Where are the shuttles?”

  Wing leader B chimed in. “I've got them just off my port. We are flying tight.”

  “B, nothing touches those shuttles until they land. Nothing. Wings A and C, as soon as we break these clouds, I want full target assessments.”

  “Copy.”

  “Good luck. It’s time to take it to these bastards,” Jayne said j
ust as they broke through the last cloud layer.

  The pyramid was directly underneath them as expected. What was not expected was the overload on the sensors from the new readings coming from the pyramid.

  “Multiple bogies. Computers starting assessment.”

  Her screen exploded with information as the targeting computers began to process all the information and allocate targets. It was quickly reading over one hundred new flying targets that were coming out of the pyramid. They were tear drop shaped, almost like the Jaguars, just without the arms. They were also smaller by nearly half. They were all headed towards the city.

  “Pick ‘em out and hit ‘em hard.”

  Thirty Jaguars came through the clouds, gleaming in bright turquoise. The two wings following Jayne formed up into tight formations and followed her down in a dive into the lead of the black locust-like cloud flying towards the shore. The Jaguars networked and started selecting targets between them. Following just behind them, a few miles south, the other Jaguar wing came through the clouds, followed by the first of ten cone-shaped troop transport shuttles carrying the Marines. They angled off and were headed toward an area just north of the city. There was a plains area there where they could land the men.

  Jayne saw the computer pick up a new target a few miles inland. She tapped on the screen and zoomed it in. It was the Lion transport that belonged to the merchant and his crew. She zoomed in further and was shocked at what she saw. On top of the ship, as it hovered over the land inshore, were men who appeared to be firing either plasma or beam weapons of some sort down into the debris below them. The sight was interesting, to say the least. She punched that target as a friendly and the information disseminated through the Jaguars.

  “That one of ours?” the leader of C wing asked.

  “Friendly. C, after your first swing through, send two out to see that they are attacking.”

  The leader confirmed the order.

  They angled towards the tip of the black horde flying towards the shore. Jayne picked out the first four targets, waited for the range to lock, then fired. Lightning flashed, cracking into the four targets with precision. She could barely tell, but four targets dropped out of the sky. She prepared for the retaliation, but the black cloud just kept flying. No other black teardrops broke from their flight path to engage them. Jayne smirked and started firing. The computer continued to pull up targets and she just kept firing right up to the point where she had to break off and fly back up.

  “They’re not firing back. Nothing.” That was the general consensus coming in from her pilots.

  “We’re not going to complain. Drop them.”

  Lightning continued to flash, as wave after wave of Jaguars attacked the front of the black cloud. As Jayne made her third pass, having already shot down thirty-two of the black tear drops, she angled her Jaguar and flew down the coast. She brought in the images from on the ground and began feeding them back up to the Galaxy. There were strange black creatures swarming the coast. They appeared to be coming out of saucer-shaped transports. They also appeared to have made it nearly a mile inshore and were attacking dozens of different locations where the locals had set up defenses. She fed the information to Graham as well.

  “You see this?” she asked.

  “I do,” he replied. “We're just landing the first shuttle now. It really bugs me these things aren't trying to attack us. They are so lethal, yet so single-minded.”

  “Let’s not complain,” Jayne added.

  “But I want to complain!!” he shouted jokingly.

  Jayne angled her Jaguar back down the coastline and took in a wider view. The tear drops were reaching the shore and starting to drop small objects onto the ground. Their impact trigged a small explosion that sent black shrapnel tearing through the already demolished debris. Jayne watched as a tear drop launched its payload. As it exploded on the ground, a small building was shattered by whatever was expelled by the bomb. The tear drop angled back directly towards her and came right at her.

  Jayne smiled. “Now I know what you're doing.”

  She turned the Jaguar into a hard dive just as tear drop opened up something akin to machine gun fire.

  “Get into wings now. These things are dropping bombs and attacking,” she shouted into the coms.

  She spun to the right and angled the Jaguar straight up. She swung the front around while the computer kept the ship flying straight up. The tear drop naively followed right behind as it turned to try to follow. Jayne tapped the gun once and the flash knocked it out of the sky. She watched as a small fragment broke off of it, turning into an oily glob. The rest of the small black ship spun out of control and dropped back to the earth. Jayne spun her ship around and pointed it towards the pyramid. A small screen displayed the hit counts from all of the Jaguars. They had destroyed nearly two hundred of the small tear drops, but the targeting was picking up just over one thousand still coming in from the pyramid, and more still spilling out from the giant sphere.

  “This is going to be a long day.”

  ***

  “Ok, sir, it’s on.”

  Graham tried checking behind himself to see if the Marine had snapped the body armor on. He had borrowed a standard set of the armor for himself as his personal armor was still stashed back at his home in Alioth. He had never intended to lead a ground defense when he was first asked by Marcus to help him on the expedition they were on. Now, here he was on the exotic planet trying to coordinate a bunch of pissed off Marines in defense of the locals against a completely unknown enemy. It was just his kind of thing.

  He had gathered several officers around him as they got messages in from their subordinates. The majority of the Marines had disembarked from the shuttles and already Graham could see the conical shuttles lifting off. He had instructed them to find a place to lay low back behind the mountain range. He wanted them nearby, but safe.

  The officers had their own wrist tablets and Graham was linking all of them to his own. He wouldn’t presume to command each of the Cairns as he hadn’t led a ground troop in nearly a decade. Instead, he would let the officers do their own leading, but he would try to coordinate with Galaxy’s optics…once they were able to cut through the thick clouds that had moved in. For the moment, he was relying on days old orbital images of the land. He had already mapped out a path into the city from the north east along a road, but was unsure of what he would see or find along the way.

  He did have some eyes in the sky with Jayne, but from all the chatter coming in from her wings and from the Galaxy, they were quite busy with their own problems. The flying black drones were dropping bombs in the city and then were turning the fight against the Jaguars.

  “We need to get a move on it.”

  The officers nodded and ran off to their respective groups. On a regular ground assault on any planet, he would have had the assistance of an orbital fleet to provide real time positioning. Here, he would have to rely on old school scouting. It wasn’t going to be easy.

  The Marines were pros at this, though. They had already sent out various scouts ahead of them. They knew the black centaur beings were coming on shore just east of the city and were moving in a slow line towards the towers. Their plan was to follow the road into the city and try to setup a defensive line and do what they could to defend the locals. There appeared to be no variation from the straight line of centaurs moving inland, but this was an unknown enemy. The few beings that had entered the Galaxy had been at the same time brutally lethal, while also oddly simple and predictable. Once the terror of their presence was overcome, they were relatively easy to take down. What no one could know for sure was if this enemy would adapt or not. Graham kept watching the skies to see if any of the flying drones would fly over their locations. They certainly would have spotted the shuttles, so they knew they were there.

  It was about two miles to the city and one Cairn had already vanished into the woods along the road. The Marines were trained and in top physical shape. The first ele
ments of the Cairn would reach the city in twenty to thirty minutes. The heavy weapons would follow shortly. Already, the scouts were reporting no action near that side of the city.

  Graham fell in line at the end of the first Cairn, along with some of the heavy turrets being dragged along in small wagons with huge rubbery tires. Most of his communication was done via his tablet, but occasionally, a soldier would run up with a message. Just as Graham approached a small meadow, about three quarters of a mile from where the shuttles had dropped them off, one of these messengers ran up to him. The Marine stopped just in front of him and stared at the sub-commodore. Graham stopped as others walked by and waited, but the soldier didn’t say anything.

  “Well?”

  “It’s…” the marine, a gruff short man with an old gash in his right ear. “It’s rather odd, sir. I'm picking up a low frequency communication. It’s…Alliance code…open merchant. They’re asking for you. Not you specifically, just…”

  “Yeah, whoever is leading this mess.”

  The Marine stepped forward and showed Graham the frequency code. Graham tuned it in with his own tablet and the data link connected.

  “This is Sub-Commodore Crawford. Please identify.”

  “This is Cove. I am onboard the lion transport. We picked up your shuttles coming down. I have data to feed to you if you need it.”

  Graham hadn’t remembered that name from the crew aboard the small merchant ship.

  “What kind of data?”

  “Enemy movement from my sensors as well as from a few live cams. Whatever we can see through the trees,” replied the soft female’s voice.

  Graham looked down and saw several new data streams being offered into his tablet. He looked up at the Marine who had brought him the information.

  “This stream legit?” Graham asked.

  “All I can tell you is that it is on Alliance codes. They could be faked, I guess.”

  “You guess?” Graham shook his head. He tapped the data streams. Several new images popped up on his small wrist tablet. The sensor information was mostly of unknowns moving through the coastal area. What was far more useful were the images of the centaur beings from the live stream. The creatures were attacking a small building, spraying a gas at the building. It was his first view of the creatures and he instantly cloned the stream to his officers. They would need the information.