The Exiled Earthborn

by Paul Tassi

  Lucas nodded.

  “I’ve heard he and Corinthia were … close.”

  “That was kept secret by them, but it ended some time ago for reasons my daughter didn’t care to divulge. But he never stopped caring for Cora, and I’m worried he’ll tear Tulwar limb from limb if no one stops him.”

  Lucas rested his arms on the console in front of him.

  “Why aren’t you issuing this order to him? Or Admiral Vale?”

  “I have, but if Tannon isn’t on the ground, you can be certain none of the Guardians will intervene to stop Mars. He’d defy a direct order to avenge Cora even if it meant possibly spending the rest of his life in a cell.”

  “I’m not going to lie, I’d love to see this bastard dead as well, even if I just learned his name a few hours ago. He took Asha, killed innocents …”

  Talis nodded.

  “I understand, but he must face justice for his crimes in a civilized manner. If we execute him on the spot like barbarians, we’re no better than the Order itself in the eyes of the world.”

  Lucas sighed.

  “I’ll do what I can, but Tulwar’s death may be inevitable. Things are likely to get heated during the raid.”

  “All I’m asking is that you try, Lucas. It would be the best way you could honor my daughter. Hopefully Mars will understand that as well. Cora wanted peace above all else. Peace with Rhylos, peace with Xala. She would not want to be ‘avenged’ in such a fashion.”

  Noah squirmed in her arms.

  “I know what you’ve done to get here. You’ve told us astonishing, harrowing tales of your will to survive. But you don’t have to be that man anymore. You’re a father now, whether you call yourself that or not. Be a man your children can admire, not fear.”

  That hit Lucas like a shot through the chest. He thought of his lost son, Nathan, on Earth, one he rarely saw even before the war, as he shirked his parental duties as often as he could. It was getting harder to picture his face.

  “Take care of him for me,” he said, motioning to Noah. Talis nodded with a strained smile and the feed went black.

  Despite being told to remain in crew quarters for the duration of the flight, Lucas had little desire to return and play twenty questions with Kiati and Silo at his assigned station. Instead, he made his way to the bridge and, after a fairly long trek, the large central doors opened and he saw before him the place where his journey almost came to an end six months past.

  The CIC had mostly been repaired, but a few of the consoles that Omicron had ripped out of the floor hadn’t yet been replaced. Angular craters pocked the ground where they once stood. Lucas saw Maston and the admiral drawing up battle plans on the large central holotable. The last time he’d seen it activated was when Alpha’s deceased father delivered his fateful message to them.

  Maston saw him immediately and predictably began to protest.

  “What’s he doing here?” he said to no one in particular. “I thought I told you to remain in quarters.”

  “And I don’t take orders from you,” Lucas said coldly. “I’m not a Guardian.”

  “You wouldn’t have even lived through training,” Maston spat back at him.

  Yet again, they were in each other’s faces with someone about to be hit. Tannon walked up to them coolly, putting a hand on each of their shoulders.

  “We’re eight minutes from arrival, we don’t have time for this shit,” he said in an exasperated tone. “Lucas, on the ground you will obey Commander Maston for your own safety and the safety of the other Guardians. We don’t do lone guns here. And you,” he said, turning to Maston. “The man lived through his local apocalypse and killed a Shadow right where you’re standing. Give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  Maston simply turned away and went back to the holotable. Lucas had no desire to provoke him further by relaying Talis’s message, so he walked toward the figure sitting in the pilot’s chair.

  “Alpha.”

  The gray creature turned to him, cables connected to his temples. He nodded.

  “Lucas.”

  The view out of the newly replaced central screen showed the curved edge of the blue planet rotating rather quickly ahead of them. They were in the outer atmosphere, the fastest way to get to their destination without being detected. They were cloaked, but flying too low at too-high speeds could damage any structures or aircraft nearby and give them away. The ship wasn’t meant to run errands from one end of a planet to the other. Its usual destinations were trillions of miles away.

  “How does this thing fly?” he asked.

  “It is … pleasurable. The difference between this ship’s capacity and the Ark’s is like that between a [garbled] and a [garbled].”

  Alpha’s translator broke up when it couldn’t find the necessary words to substitute into the analogy.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Lucas said.

  “Perhaps when Asha has been safely returned, you can pilot the craft. You were quite skilled in combat with the Ark, and that was merely a transport vessel. This is a far more refined weapon.”

  “You should know, you built it.”

  “It was largely a creation of my father, though I did some work on the engine systems when I was younger. This ship brought Commander Omicron many victories, though often his enemies did not even realize it was present.”

  Lucas walked up to the viewscreen. The vista before him of the planet’s curved surface was astonishing. He wished Asha were there to see it.

  “What do you make of the cloaked ship the Fourth Order used?” he asked.

  “It is hard to say,” Alpha replied. “But I imagine it is a much, much smaller craft, and developed by someone with an intimate knowledge of the science.”

  Alpha became quiet for a moment.

  “I would like to apologize in advance.”

  Lucas broke his gaze out the window and turned to him.

  “For what?”

  “For not being able to accompany you on this mission on the ground. I must remain here, as I am the only one trained to fly this craft.”

  “Of course, I never expected you would be coming. Why would you apologize for that?”

  Alpha sighed.

  “Asha is my … friend,” he said, as if the word was foreign to him. “We have fought many battles together, the three of us, and I would not see her lost after the journey we undertook to get here.”

  “Neither would I,” Lucas said firmly. “We’ll get her back. Have you seen these guys?” he said, motioning to the hulking troops around him. “We have an army of monsters behind us now.”

  “But who is behind those we seek?” Alpha pondered.

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  The blue edge of the planet turned red as land appeared over the horizon. Reading off Alpha’s monitor, Lucas saw the famed cliffs of Rhylos were below.

  “Suit up,” Tannon called from behind him.

  5

  It was nearly dawn when they set out from the Spear. All five moons were still visible in the night sky while the sun lurked under the horizon.

  The cliffs of Rhylos were indeed impressive to behold. A thousand feet of sheer red stone wound away from them for as far as Lucas could see. They’d landed on the muddy beach, where murky streams of brown water, spawned by a few trickling waterfalls on the sides of the cliffs, fed into each other. Clearly, a great body of water had flowed through here once, but not for ages, and the area was now desolate.

  Advance recon had found multiple entrances to the underground base where Asha was being held inside the cliff. They made their way to the one at ground level. The darkness helped hide them from view on the ground, but it wouldn’t for much longer, and they’d be much more visible climbing up the face of the massive cliff come daylight.

  Lucas followed a long line of Guardians sprinting toward the rock wall. Rather than heavy battle plating, each wore a light mesh suit made of tough fibers that promised to stop a shot or two, but no more than that. It made their
approach quiet and undetectable, as the stealth suits masked their biological heat signatures and heartbeats from any sensing equipment nearby.

  It was impossible to see Maston, who was leading the charge a few dozen soldiers ahead of Lucas. There had been no time to train him in the formations and tactics of the unit, so Lucas was simply told to “stay in back,” much to his dismay. And with Alpha at the ship’s controls and Tannon running point on the bridge, he had no allies out here. He did, however, recognize a bandaged arm and a few tufts of red hair a couple yards ahead of him.

  Lucas heard a few dull, concussive thuds up ahead he couldn’t place.

  “Three down,” came Maston’s voice over the comm. Gunshots. So that’s what silenced energy blasts sound like. Lucas switched on Natalie’s silencer as well, a firing mode he’d never had occasion to use in their past frenetic firefights. Their previous fights hadn’t required the element of surprise the way this operation did. Lucas was convinced he’d suffered a bit of hearing loss from all the gunfire he’d endured over the past few years, much of it at close range.

  The tail of the group caught up with the head, where Guardians were being ushered inside the ground entrance quickly by Maston while he radioed something back to Tannon. As Lucas and two more soldiers behind him made it through the entryway, Maston followed them and the large metal door snapped shut behind him. Inside, the three dead Fourth Order sentries were being stripped of their black armor, and a trio of Guardians were preparing to don the gear to replace them at their posts. One of them was already speaking into the radio collar of a dead guard in a language Lucas didn’t recognize.

  Maston was busy looking at a three-dimensional map of the complex. It was a maze of winding tunnels with no discernible pattern to it. Occasionally, a vast pocket was carved out, indicating an open space. Asha’s tracking signal appeared as a faint dot on the far end of the labyrinth in one of the open outcroppings.

  “She’s there?” Lucas asked, sticking his finger into the holographic map, much the annoyance of Maston.

  “It would appear so,” he said coldly. “Unfortunately there appears to be no direct route to get there. These are ancient Lochni tunnels. We’ll have to split up or we risk the entire unit being trapped or killed in these narrow corridors.”

  Lucas didn’t want to know what a Lochni was if it was large enough to make a nest out of a thousand-foot cliff face.

  The Guardians checked their gear in the dimly lit corridor around them. It was dawning on Lucas for the first time that these men and women were in fact risking their lives to help save Asha, as was the man he intensely disliked standing in front of him. But as Maston continued, his own primary objective became clear.

  “Hex Tulwar will likely be in close proximity to the Earthborn. Her containment area appears to be the largest chamber in the facility, which is giving off the highest energy readings.”

  One female and two male Guardians had now fully donned the black armor, and Lucas saw the familiar four blood-red lines splashed across their breastplates. They looked similar to the invading force at the palace, but with no propulsion mechanisms on their backs. The large metal door opened and they sauntered out into the canyon, one continuing to chatter on the radio in the strange tongue. Lucas felt a hand jerk his shoulder plate.

  “You,” Maston said as he turned to him. “You’re coming with me and Splinter Four. I wouldn’t jeopardize another unit by forcing you on them.”

  Lucas scowled, but followed. There was no reason to continue sparring with Maston when Asha’s life was at stake.

  Splinter Four turned out to be one of eight units of six soldiers each that were being sent down the various spindly passageways of the cliffside stronghold. In addition to Maston, Lucas found himself marching alongside Kiati and Silo once more. Kiati didn’t acknowledge his presence, but Silo gave him a curt nod. The other two soldiers were a massive, bearded blond man who reminded Lucas of a certain old acquaintance on Earth, and the other was a dark-skinned woman with a shaved head who was a good five inches taller than he was and built like an Olympic athlete.

  The tunnel had a metal floor, but the walls were smooth stone. Sporadic lighting was implanted in the ceiling every few hundred feet, but it was still rather dark. Lucas checked his own micro version of the tunnel map on his wrist and found they were approaching an open area up ahead. He was in the rear and kept swinging Natalie around, peering through her infrared scope to ensure they weren’t being followed.

  Suddenly, Maston threw his arm up. The six of them split in half and pinned themselves to each wall. They stood perfectly still with their rifles fixed straight ahead. Lucas followed their lead and remained as motionless as he could.

  Maston held up two fingers, his index and middle, and motioned downward. He then switched to his ring and pinky, and pointed those two up. Lucas was unsure of what exactly he was signaling, but no one wanted to break radio silence to tell him. Four enemies ahead?

  Before he could speculate further, Maston clenched his fist and the other four Guardians sprinted around the corner with him. Lucas pushed off the wall and took off after them. He rounded the tunnel bend just in time to see the Guardians in front open fire. On the ground, he saw two guards being riddled with silenced plasma bursts. Above, Kiati and Silo had fired at two points Lucas couldn’t identify, but debris rained down from the ceiling and he had a guess at what had just been destroyed. Cameras.

  He didn’t even get to fire a shot; the Guardian unit took out all their targets in seconds with extreme efficiency. Silo motioned for him to take one of the dead guard’s arms, and they quickly moved him to the side of the tunnel, out of the light above them. A massive door stood before them, and Maston was checking readouts on his wrist.

  “What is it?” Kiati asked him, breaking her usual stoic silence.

  “I’m not sure,” Maston answered honestly. “It would appear to be a hangar, though I’m not detecting any life inside.”

  “Sir,” the dark-skinned woman said, sifting through a display on a small tablet. “I’m getting some bizarre energy signatures from in there.”

  Maston looked at a trio of squiggly lines in the palm of her hand. He shook his head.

  “This doesn’t make sense. Are you sure that’s right?”

  The woman nodded.

  Silo held up a small chipcard he’d looted from the dead guard they’d just finished dragging.

  “We going in?” he asked as he handed the card to Maston.

  “It’s the only way through, and we’ll lose too much time if we backtrack. Just stay sharp.”

  Maston walked over to the side of the entrance and inserted the chip into a blinking console. The great metal door let out a groan that echoed throughout the hallway and slowly parted in the middle. Maston led the Guardians in, two at a time, and Lucas walked into the chamber next to Silo, whose eyes and gun darted to every moan and creak coming from within.

  The room they found before them was circular and surprisingly vacant. There were mounds of scrap metal in small piles around the cavernous area, but otherwise it was completely barren. Looking up, Lucas saw the walls of the cylinder curve upward until they reached a massive, round skylight that was easily thirty feet in diameter and filled the room with an almost pleasant coat of moonlight. The six of them fanned out and began to explore the bowl, which appeared deserted. Then why was it being guarded?

  Lucas was drawn to a particularly large mound of debris and walked toward it with Natalie raised. He heard electrical whirring, and as he circled around it, he found himself staring at a collection of consoles laced with holographic controls resting under a cascade of monitors. A workstation of sorts? As he approached, he recognized symbols that littered the screens. Xalan symbols.

  “Guys,” he whispered into the comm. “I think I’ve got something here.”

  Maston and the other five began to walk over to his position, but suddenly they all put fingers to their ears. The noise in Lucas’s head was a cacophony at first, b
ut soon dissipated into more recognizable sounds: yelling and gunfire.

  “All units, this is Splinter Seven,” came the frantic voice on the other end. “We’re blown. I don’t know how, but we were spotted. They’ve engaged us in the northeast tunnel. Gattio and Horva are down, I’ve been hit. Expect resistance wherever you are momentarily. Mission is now sparked.”

  “Shit!” Maston cried and flipped channels on his receiver. He patched himself into the enemy feed, which was broadcast out into the room. There was yelling in broken Soran.

  “They’re in tunnels two, five, nine, ten, and fifteen. Wait, six as well.”

  “How did they find the facility? How did we not we see them approach?” another voice asked. Lucas recognized it. Tulwar.

  “We still don’t know. I’ll check—”

  Tulwar cut him off.

  “No matter. There will be time to dwell on your failures later. I must leave immediately. Kill the girl. They will earn no prize by coming here.

  “Tell the Xalan to meet me at the craft. And you’ve encrypted our communications?”

  “Um, of course,” said the other voice nervously. There were a few tones of virtual keys being tapped, and the comm squealed before going completely silent.

  Maston yelled into his chestplate.

  “Are you getting this admiral? Mission’s shattered, Tulwar’s making a run for it.”

  “We’ll head him off,” came Tannon’s voice through the speaker. “Pull everyone out.”

  No, they can’t. Asha.

  Lucas raced over to the cluster of monitors and whirled through the Xalan menus. It had been a while since he’d needed to read the language, but he could navigate the system well enough. He found the symbol for “holding,” and the view that awaited him sent ice through his veins. It was Asha, hunched over in a cell with a lightscreen guarding the entrance. The barrier flickered, then disappeared. Four armored men strode in and formed a semicircle around her as she sat with her head between her knees, blood already caked on the floor around her. One brandished a long curved knife that Lucas recognized from the ransom video.

  The feeds bathed Lucas’s face in white light as they were all wiped completely. He frantically ran his fingers through the controls, but all were locked. The station had been shut down, and he no longer had eyes on Asha. He had to reach her. He ran out into the middle of the room toward the door on the opposite end.