The Lost Tribe (Sentinel Series Book 2)

by Richard Flunker

  “Sir,” the woman known as Cove continued, “the locals have also informed us that they have sent someone out to help you.”

  It was only five minutes after that message that another Marine came forward with a local. The man was short, had long dark green hair, as all the natives were, and large powerful legs. The man gleamed with a smile that revealed some missing teeth. The Marine said this guy had just showed up and was looking around for someone. They couldn’t understand him.

  The local began to speak and pointed back down the road they were traveling on and then in an easterly direction. Graham tried asking, but quickly found that their lack of common words was going to get them nowhere. The local realized that as well because he reached into his small backpack and took out a large rolled up parchment. He unrolled it on the ground. It was leathery. As he unrolled it, Graham noticed drawings on it and it didn’t take him long to realize that it was a map. He could see the city, the coast, and several roads that led into and out of the city along with the multiple streets within the large city. It was a rather detailed map. Graham was impressed.

  Graham got down on one knee and tapped on his own wrist. He then projected his own orbital map on the ground next to the local’s map. The man jumped back for a moment but just as quickly realized what the projection on the ground was. He smiled his large toothless grin and rolled his map back up. He scanned a line in the ground that corresponded with the road they were traveling into the city. He laughed briefly as the projection appeared on his hand. Then the man’s tone got serious as he continued to talk in his own language. He began to draw dots all over the coastal area.

  “The bad guys, huh? Yeah, we know that’s where they’re moving from.”

  The local continued, then drawing a line in the ground. The line came off from the road and went off into the woods towards the coast. He then drew a line that followed down parallel to the coast. The line stopped just short of where he had drawn the enemy on the ground. He then slammed his fist into the ground.

  “A different way?” Graham asked. He shouted into his tablet for one of the officers. The image of the commander came up. “Sir?”

  “I think one of the locals here is giving us a different path to take. Is the projection uploading?”

  There was a pause. “I see. We didn’t see anything when we passed.”

  “If we could get a Cairn down there, could we offer some flanking action?” Graham asked.

  “Technically, if we can get there in time, and if they don’t drop enemies along the coast there. Again, sir, we didn’t see any path in that area.”

  “Maybe our local knows.” Graham pointed at where this new path branched off from the road and shrugged his shoulders. The local nodded his head and pointed back up the road.

  “Can you show us?”

  The local smiled and began running off north along the road.

  “Commander, I have no idea if that guide understood us, but he’s headed your way.”

  “Sir, plasma fire!” a Marine shouted out ahead of him. Graham stopped and listened. He could certainly hear the telltale sound of hissing hot air.

  They had reached the outskirts of the city. There were many residences here, and some outlying fields, but they hadn’t seen anyone yet, other than the local guide. The first Cairn was a mile ahead of him and had reported sighting the merchant ship just south of their location. The video feed from the scouts showed unidentified men on top of the floating ship, firing plasma rifles down to the east. Graham checked in with the woman on the ship, and she confirmed that it was them.

  Graham picked up the pace and began running towards the front of the line. The first Cairn had already begun to deploy along a small ridge just under the towers that they considered the center of the city. The tidal wave had stopped short of that small ridge and the Marines were busy digging and setting up their heavier weapons. Still, they hadn’t seen any locals. Graham hoped they had been able to evacuate by this point.

  Graham reached the edge of the First Cairn and asked for one of the nearest officers when the bombs began to fall. He heard the thud first, the sound of something heavy hitting the ground. That was followed by a small popping sound, akin to a small firecracker and then a high pitched whistling. Men were caught off guard as miniature shrapnel exploded in all directions. Graham hit the ground in an instant, but the first bomb was far from him. He heard the screams of men being hit, but that was drowned out by multiple bombs being dropped. The whistling of the shrapnel flying through the air overpowered any other sound for a few minutes. When the first barrage stopped, Graham looked up. Men began standing up around him. Everywhere he looked, Marines were bloody, but mostly intact. Their body armor had deflected most of the shrapnel. Anywhere there wasn’t armor, though, had been torn up.

  “What was that?” Graham asked, but was quickly interrupted.

  “Movement!” someone shouted down the line. Graham looked towards where the shout had come from and saw movement from behind a building. It was large and black, as it walked between two buildings. Graham checked his tablet, wiping dust off of it. There was a visible scratch along the screen. He checked the movement of the Second Cairn and they were still twenty to thirty minutes off. Now it was up to the Marines. He spied the black creature again as it stepped out into the open. It seemed to turn its focus back towards the line of Marines dug in behind different debris. It stopped. Graham could see the red line on its face flashing when he heard the static charge of the plasma turret. He could feel the heat as the turret fired one shot at the creature, splashing it in half, sending black goo all over the ground. It mixed into the water. Three of the centaurs jumped out from behind the same building and immediately opened fire on the turret.

  “It’s on,” Graham said, ducking behind a building.

  ***

  Gheno heard the large plasma gun fire and hit something. He looked north but couldn’t see where the Alliance soldiers had deployed. Cove was feeding all the information she could from her sensors, but all she could really tell was that the soldiers were just on the top of the small ridge directly in front of the towers. And that’s where the shot had come from.

  The Gadoni that had come on board with Blue Flower quickly understood the plasma rifles. They were clearly soldiers with amazing dexterity and control. It hadn’t taken them but a few shots to understand the flight path of the plasma bolt. Without any kind of targeting visor, they were easily hitting targets five to six hundred feet away. Gheno was impressed. Unfortunately, the ones they hit, even if destroyed, were quickly replaced by many more. There just weren’t enough of them on top of the transport to truly make a difference.

  In the sky above him, a whole other battle was raging as the Alliance one-manned fighter craft, truly unique ships that Gheno had never seen before, were engaging the countless smaller black drones. These had first dropped shrapnel bombs all over the city to seemingly no effect and then flown off to engage the Jaguars. He kept an eye on that battle, but they mostly screamed through the clouds and the sky far above him. The worst part, though, were the destroyed drones that came crashing down to the ground. Thankfully, Cove’s sensors picked them up quickly and she just moved the transport around as they rained down.

  Gheno and his band of Gadoni had used their rifles to initially protect the few locals they had found, who were either trapped inside buildings or fleeing back towards the towers. He remembered seeing the bodies of those caught in the tidal wave, but since then had yet to see any of the living citizens of the city. For the past ten minutes, they had been firing just at random centaurs. They were now moving freely in the city in a steady flow towards the center. They appeared to be looking for targets. Gheno was still surprised they weren’t reacting to them when the shots first came. Everyone ducked back towards the middle of the transport as shots starting hitting the side of the hull.

  “Cove, move her now,” he shouted, but the ship stayed put.

  “Gheno, it is water.”

  �
�Um, what?” Gheno said, looking back up.

  “Water is hitting the hull. It’s being fired at an extremely high velocity, but the hull is taking no damage,” Cove explained.

  “Water?” Gheno asked again.

  “Fired at high velocity. I am not sure how that is possible. Do not let it hit you. It would greatly damage your flesh,” Cove said.

  “That’s good to know,” Gheno said, peering down over the side of the transport. He saw several centaurs look back up at him, and point their arms at him.

  “Water,” he thought, wondering just how damaging it could really be, when a shot whizzed by him, tearing the top of his right ear off. Gheno jumped back, hand over his ear, screaming.

  “Your flesh, Gheno. Please be careful,” Cove chirped into his earpiece. He heard that amidst the startling pain. When he looked back at his hand, he saw the blood.

  Blue Flower rushed up and took his visor off. She reached out to grab the torn ear but Gheno pulled away.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  The sound of water splattering against the hull was replaced by the sound of rock chipping at metal and the ship quickly began to move backwards. Everyone dropped to the hull and held on as the ship sped back nearly half a mile. Cove then turned the ship on its side as it dodged a dropping drone, sending them all sliding down the side of the hull. She quickly corrected just in time. Two of the Gadoni men had nearly slid off the side and only the quick reaction by their friends reaching out to them, saved them.

  “Those were not water,” Cove reassured in his ear. Gheno could barely hear it over the blood dripping into his ear.

  He refused to reach back up and touch his ear again. He was lucky he hadn’t been hit anywhere else. Then it dawned on him. The centaurs were targeting humans. This was an attack to destroy human beings, not just defeat them. He recalled that while the tidal wave had destroyed the coastal area, that may have been coincidence. The creatures themselves were not targeting buildings or any structures. Instead, they clearly attacked any and all humans they came across.

  “Gheno, are you ok?” Karai shouted over the earpiece.

  “Just barely,” he replied, picking up the visor to speak into it. “Cove, drop us back, we’re nearly out of charges on the rifles, anyways.”

  Gheno stood up and pointed down at the top hatch.

  “He wants us to go inside,” Blue Flower said.

  The men nodded and began walking over to the hatch.

  “They understood you?” Gheno asked, a bit surprised.

  “Of course they did. You forget I am speaking my language. You just understand me,” she explained.

  Gheno shook his head. He was still a bit muddled and would on most occasions have picked that up. He opened the hatch and began helping the men down the ladder. They all went down and he began handing the rifles down. He asked Karai to get them charged so that they could use them again soon. Gheno stood back up and watched as Cove flew the ship back towards the western side of the city, far out of the action. Blue Flower walked up to him and he held his hand out to help her down. She looked past him at his ear.

  “You are a warrior now,” she said, reaching out to the torn ear. Gheno moved his head to avoid her touch.

  “A lot of good that will be,” he said. “We can’t stop them.”

  “We won’t have to,” she said confidently.

  Gheno turned his head as she lowered herself down the hatch. He followed down after her and rushed past the tired men into the pilot’s cabin. Karai reacted with a shriek when she saw the blood on the side of his face. Gheno raised his hand to avoid any questions.

  “Cove, do you have any idea where Kale is?” he asked out loud.

  “None. No sensors, no communications,” the AI replied.

  Gheno growled in frustration. “Ok, fine. Can you put us back down? We’ll see what we can do down there.”

  Karai spun about quickly. “You're going out there?”

  “We have to do something,” he said.

  “Do we?” Karai asked.

  “Cove, just do it.” Gheno turned and walked out of the cabin.

  The transport hovered for a few minutes as the AI scanned the area for a clearing large enough to land the transport. She informed Gheno about the Marines fighting north of their position, nearly in front of the towers, but that the line of centaurs was a few miles long. Gheno asked Blue Flower for a few suggestions, and when she asked the other men, they came to a quick consensus. There was a residential area next to a small river towards the southern portion of the city. It was, for all purposes, a suburb. There was a large meadow, a park, that was large enough for the ship.

  “Take us there, Cove,” Gheno ordered.

  After landing, Gheno opened the hatch to the first sight of locals fleeing. Men, women and children with packs, bags and crates were rushing out of their homes along the edge of the park and seemed to be headed south. The stream of green skinned humans flowed along the streets on the other side of the park. In the distance, the sounds of plasma fire was being responded to with projectile fire. Smoke was rising in several locations. In the sky to the east, directly towards the horizon, an aerial dogfight was taking place between the numerous black drones and the knightly but vastly outnumbered Jaguar fighter-craft.

  “Cove, do you have a reading on the closest of those black things?”

  “As we flew over in this direction, their line was maybe around one mile to the east,” the AI responded.

  That was closer than he wanted. “Ok, can you review the video? Confirm for me what I'm fearing. The creatures, they’re targeting people right?”

  “Systematically,” was her reply.

  Gheno was afraid of that. He turned and looked behind him again and saw the stream of people hustling out of the city as fast as they could, but with the children and the elderly, the centaurs would catch up to them, and the slaughter would be horrendous.

  “That river isn’t going to stop them,” Gheno pointed out. “Cove, I'm open to suggestions.”

  “I'm sorry, Gheno. I am very limited. Sentinel did not teach me anything to do with fighting.”

  Blue Flower had been standing next to him. “What is the ghost saying?”

  “Um, the ghost. Yeah. Those evil spirits are very close to here, over there,” Gheno said, pointing east.

  Blue Flower spun around and looked at the men she had recruited. She quickly understood. “I will be back,” she said, then ran off south, dodging in and through the people fleeing. It didn’t take long before Gheno lost her in the crowd. He was left there with the twelve Gadoni staring back at him.

  “Cove, how many metal crates do we have in the cargo hold?” Gheno asked, walking towards the underpart of the ship.

  “We have seventeen.”

  “Good enough. Open the cargo hatch,” Gheno ordered.

  There was a popping sound and a hiss and the hatch began to open. The men followed Gheno over to the lowering doors and watched as he ducked under and jumped up inside of the hold, grabbing a hold of the cargo net to pull himself up. He motioned with his hand for the men to follow him, and they easily leaped in. Gheno found the closest metal crate, nearly eight feet tall by four feet wide, and started dragging it out towards the edge of the cargo doors. He gave it a push and it toppled over onto the ground below. The men watched curiously. Gheno then pointed at the other metal crates and pointed at the cargo hold hole. They understood and went to work.

  Gheno climbed back up onto the main deck of the ship and found the plasma rifles. Karai had set them up to charge. He took as many as he could handle, about eight of them, and the charger, and walked out the side hatch. In the few minutes it had taken him to get the rifles, the men had already moved out twelve of the crates and had them about the side of the ship. As he stepped out, they had moved the thirteenth and fourteenth crates out. He tossed the rifles and charger on the ground and rushed back inside to get the rest.

  Gheno went back down into the cargo hold to the rest of the rifles
. The Gadoni men went outside after having moved all the crates out.

  “How much time, Cove?” he asked. “Where are those things?”

  “The readings are much harder to come by while landed. They appear to be following the river we are next to, looking for a place to ford. They are coming south along it. Perhaps ten minutes.”

  Gheno panicked a bit. He tossed the rest of the rifles out of the cargo hatch and scrambled to find the power cable he wanted. He uncoiled it as quickly as he could, tossing an end out cargo hatch. He jumped out, grabbing a hold of the cargo net as he came down, swinging out onto the ground.

  “Cove, where are they going to cross?” he asked as he tugged on the cable, forcing it to unwind inside the transport. The men just stood around watching him. They had recognized the rifles and some had picked them up again.

  “I cannot say, Gheno. The river seems thinner and shallower here.”

  “Let’s hope so, because I'm making my Alamo right here.”

  Gheno turned to look at the human exodus down the road. The crowd had diminished some and he could see an end to the stream, but there were still moving slowly. He dragged the thick power cable over to the charger and looked around for the outlet. Gheno turned the thing over multiple times and grunted in frustration until one of the men reached out and pointed it out. Gheno looked up surprised. He was holding the end of the cable and it matched. Gheno nodded his head, took the cable and plugged it in.

  “Ok,” he said, watching the small box hum with power, “now we need our castle.”

  Gheno began to guide the men with pointing and motioning as they dragged the crates into place, forming a small fort stacked two crates high, with a one high layer of crates along the inside, almost like an inverted pyramid. They had three sides nearly stacked up when one of the men shouted. Gheno jumped up on their makeshift wall and peered over, just in time to see one of the centaur creatures walk out from behind some trees. Right behind it were two more.