The Exiled Earthborn

by Paul Tassi

  Reyes and Asha leapt at him from either side. He quickly caught Asha with a backhand that sent her flying into the wall and tumbling to the ground. Reyes was not so lucky and took all three of his claws directly to her chest. They pierced her armor and everything inside, and as he brought her around, Lucas could see the tips of his claws protruding out of her back. Her head rolled back, her eyes vacant. She was dead already, but that didn’t stop the Desecrator from burying his other claw inside her, and tearing her body completely in half right in front of Lucas.

  This creature was pure power, pure evil. They hadn’t been ready for this. Not even with little tricks like the light scope. Lucas raised his rifle as the Desecrator leapt forward. He attempted to fire, but found the damaged gun had overheated and was sparking in his hands. He prepared to die.

  But death did not come.

  The Desecrator hung suspended in the air in front of him, one claw a mere eight inches from Lucas’s head. His face was frozen in a snarl, and Lucas could see the muscles tensing in his neck. He was six feet in the air, completely frozen.

  Two figures floated down from an open portal in the ceiling, each with arms outstretched toward the creature. They were Shadows, hovering above the ground, suspended by their own psychic energy. Their black skin and blue eyes were visible, but they wore actual cloth garments, something Lucas had never seen on a Xalan before. One had a long, flowing green-and-white sash wrapped around him that encompassed most of his body. The other’s was red and gold. There were runic symbols on the garments Lucas couldn’t recognize. They weren’t Xalan in origin, or at least not the dialect he knew.

  The two Shadows floated down on either side of the Desecrator, and Lucas turned to find a third Shadow behind him. This one was slightly taller and had a cloth that was pure white with gold symbols. His arms were not outstretched, and Lucas’s feet remained planted on the floor. Asha was slowly starting to rise, drifting back into consciousness, and her eyes widened when she saw the three figures before them, balancing on thin air. There was a soft moan from Kiati across the room, indicating she was still alive.

  It was obvious these were Chosen Shadows, but they were different than the one aboard the interceptor. Their power seemed to radiate from them like heat. It was something Lucas had never felt before. Finally coming to rest, their feet were still well above the floor. The two closest to them turned their wrists, and the Desecrator was slowly pulled upright and away from Lucas. Glancing behind him, Lucas could see that the third creature was furiously swirling through the door controls attempting to access the comms relay. Alpha had locked it up tight with a binding code only he could release, and the door was otherwise indestructible, even for Shadows, it seemed. The creature attempted to pry it open telekinetically, but it would not budge. He floated over toward Lucas. The creature’s voice boomed in his head.

  “Tell the traitors to open the door.”

  His tone was icy, and its pitch cut through Lucas like a needle.

  “Or what?” Lucas said defiantly. He had been prepared to die a moment ago. He was still ready. Asha looked warily at him.

  “Or we’ll tear her apart in front of you,” the creature said, turning his cold gaze toward Asha.

  “We came here to die,” Asha said. “You can’t stop them now.”

  There was a look in the Shadow’s eyes that said he believed them. He turned his attention toward the imprisoned Desecrator.

  “What are you doing here?” he said. “You have been banished from the homeworld for centuries now.”

  The Desecrator growled and his collar translated.

  “To finish the mission. Your mission.”

  The Shadow to his right snarled.

  “You failed on Makari.”

  The Shadow to his left sneered.

  “The Sorans nearly killed you.”

  “I came to end this,” the Desecrator said. “This was your task. It was meant to be my redemption!”

  “You murdered an entire battalion to get here. Of your own brethren,” said the white-robed Xalan behind Lucas.

  “They would not grant me access. And I have no brethren.”

  “That much is true,” the red-robed Xalan said. “We thought the fact that these insects killed your father would be motivation for you to exact vengeance, but we overestimated your devotion to him.”

  “Do not speak of my father,” growled the Desecrator. Lucas could see his muscles straining against their influence.

  “You are a mistake,” said the green-robed Xalan. “And the Council does not make mistakes. You should have been destroyed immediately after conversion.”

  The Ruling Council. It explained their immense power, their ornate robes.

  “Look where you are!” the Desecrator shouted, his voice echoing around the room. “Your empire crumbles before you, brought crashing down by these … creatures.”

  Suddenly, every screen in the room, small and large, began to play a video. Lucas’s heart soared in his chest as he recognized the face. Alpha’s father.

  “Greetings, my son,” it began. “I do not wish to endanger your life with this message, more so than I already have by causing your exile to Earth campaign.”

  “It’s starting,” Asha said. The Council members looked furious as they glanced from monitor to monitor.

  “My only hope is that if I am killed, one of you may find a way to make the truth known to our people. The truth about the intertwined histories of Sora and Xala.”

  Alpha broke through on Lucas’s armor comm.

  “It is done. Every screen, every colony. Zeta is fighting off override procedures to ensure it remains broadcasting.”

  The Shadows looked at each other. The white-clad one spoke urgently.

  “We must stop this,” he said. “Kill them all, and concentrate your energy to tear through that wall.”

  “But it’s not possible, that material is—” started the red-robed Xalan.

  “Do not question, obey!” the white one snarled. “Or all may be lost.”

  “You do not see,” said the Desecrator with a low growl. “You have already lost.”

  “Do not speak!” the Shadow shot back. His anger hammered inside Lucas’s skull like a migraine. “We would not be in this circumstance if not for your father’s failure! And your own!”

  He turned and floated quickly toward the door. The Desecrator spoke to his back as the Shadows on either side of him began twisting his limbs to unbearable angles. His deep voice was shaking as he spoke through the pain.

  “My father taught me many things. How to live. How to kill. How to resist.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “How to resist your abominable mutation.”

  It was like a switch had been flipped, and the Desecrator immediately dropped to the floor, his claws digging into the metal. Though the Shadows still had their arms extended, they no longer bound him. They looked even more shocked than Lucas and Asha as they frantically motioned toward him, but were unable to lock him in place. The video continued to play.

  “Synthetics could evolve at a rapid rate, their intelligence dooming their creators as it expanded exponentially. But organics? Such quick evolution was impossible, and living things could be engineered to be docile.”

  The Desecrator swung his claw around and buried it in the abdomen of the green-robed Xalan. He flung him to the floor as black blood soaked the cloth he wore. He gasped as air evacuated his chest through new holes in his lungs. The Desecrator grabbed the other Shadow by the leg and slammed him down to the ground.

  This was their chance. Asha leaped on top of the first downed Xalan and drove her blade through his chest. He swung up a claw, which caught her around the collarbone, but as she cried out in pain, she ran her thumb across the pommel of the sword. Blue electricity surged out of the blade and caused the Shadow’s body to seize until it smoked. The crackling eventually stopped, and the Shadow was still save for a few last muscle spasms.

  Lucas had attempted to fire Natal
ie at the second downed Xalan the Desecrator had pinned to the floor, but the gun still wouldn’t shoot. The red robes he wore were bloodied to a darker crimson as the Desecrator ravaged the creature with claw swipes. The Shadow attempted to swing his claw up into the Desecrator’s eye, but Lucas speared his palm with a knife and pinned it to the ground before it could reach its target, and the creature howled in pain. A half second later, the Desecrator removed the Shadow’s head with his teeth.

  “A family’s personal Xalan would do housework, supervise children, whatever was required of it. They were slaves, but cheerful ones.”

  The Desecrator raised its head, black blood streaming out of its mouth. His wings sprang out of his back and he dove toward the final Council member, bowling Lucas over in the process.

  The white-robed Xalan had managed to flex the metal of the door with intense mental strength, but he had to shift his focus as a two-ton armored creature came hurling toward him at a supersonic pace.

  The Shadow drew some sort of small black dagger from his robes. He spun around quickly and jammed it into the Desecrator’s neck the moment he reached him. The Desecrator lost control and crashed into the door. The Shadow lifted him up from afar by raising his right hand, and then, by thrusting his left forward, drove the Desecrator into the indestructible glass above the door.

  Lucas and Asha were already sprinting at the Shadow who was distracted, but his senses were too finely tuned to ever have his attention truly diverted. They were caught by a blast of psionic energy that knocked them from their feet. They kept their hold on their weapons and unloaded at the creature as they slid along the blood-slicked floor. Natalie had finally cooled down enough to be fired, but the rifle found nothing but air as the Shadow dodged and weaved out of the path of their incoming fire.

  The Desecrator was already up and airborne again. The Shadow tried to swing his dagger once more, but the Desecrator wouldn’t be fooled twice. The object deflected off his armored back, and he speared the Shadow with his shoulder and the two of them crashed into a holotable on the floor of the room. Alpha’s father still spoke on the display.

  “The ones who remained made an oath. Their children must never know how they came to be. They swore revenge against the Sorans, but they would invent a tale about invasion and decimation of their world.”

  The Shadow flung the Desecrator off him with strength far greater than his size suggested. Seeing Lucas and Asha quickly approaching, he reached into robe once more. A pair of blades shot toward them at blinding speed. Asha barely raised her sword in time to deflect the one about to connect with her forehead. Lucas did not have the same good fortune.

  The diamond-shaped shard buried itself between two of his lower ribs, and pain exploded through his body like he’d just been set on fire. Whatever material the weapon was made of, it had cut through his armor like paper. He gasped and tumbled forward. Asha cut her sprint forward short to run to him.

  “I’m alright,” he whispered, but immediately the two of them were flung backward again by another energy blast. Lucas landed sprawled on his back, staring down at the razor point sticking out of his torso. Asha was already up and unloading shots at the Shadow, who was now fending off a fresh assault from the Desecrator.

  Lucas blinked and saw something he thought was a dream. It was Kiati, standing over him. She dropped to her knees.

  “Slow your breathing.”

  Her left arm dangled uselessly at her side. Her shoulder had been nearly blown off completely by the Desecrator’s blast earlier, but she’d made out better than Reyes and Kovaks, whose body parts were currently spread around the room.

  Lucas almost passed out as she jerked the blade from between his ribs. She immediately reached into her armor with her working hand and pulled out a sealing tool that hissed and burned as it attempted to close the wound. Lucas looked over at Asha and saw that she was bleeding rather profusely from the chest, having taking one of the other Shadow’s claws to her collarbone earlier. If she could keep fighting, so could he. Kiati hoisted him up and the sharp pain in his abdomen lessened as more painkillers flowed into him. His head went fuzzy, then cleared a few seconds later.

  When he looked down, however, he found that the sealing gel hadn’t worked. Some sort of bubbling foam had eaten through both it and his undersuit and blood continued to pour out of the opening. It appeared the blade had been coated in an agent that resisted attempts to close the wounds it caused. But there was no time to think about it now.

  Lucas found Natalie resting a few feet away, her casing torn away and her readouts flashing danger warnings. But she was still willing to fight, just as he was. Lucas unloaded a stream of shots toward the sparring figures up ahead.

  “I believe we can end this war if the truth is revealed. I understand this knowledge is a heavy burden, but despite your age, you were always the strongest of us, and I know it is something you can bear. Be well, my son.”

  That was the end of it. The message had been broadcast, the truth was out there for every Xalan to hear. The door to the comms relay opened and Alpha and Zeta walked out. They immediately raised their weapons when they saw what was happening.

  “The Council!” Alpha exclaimed, seeing the white-robed Xalan ahead and two of his dead compatriots on the floor. The Council Shadow and the Desecrator were locked in combat and didn’t seem to notice them.

  “And our old friend,” Lucas said as he clasped his hand over his side.

  “This is our chance,” Zeta said. “We can make it to the secondary extraction point. Hurry, while they are occupied!”

  The group stopped firing and turned toward one of the exits. Whatever Xalan troops had been there were either dead or scattered after the message had been broadcast. Who knew what state of panic the entire planet was in right now? It was what they were relying on to make their escape. At the end of the broadcast, Zeta had disrupted all Xalan communications across all colonies and fleets for a brief window, and it was surely causing chaos in this solar system and many others. Hopefully all the way to Sora, where the deadly invasion fleet loomed.

  They ran toward the exit, but were stopped in their tracks when the Desecrator slammed into the ground in front of them. He slowly extended his claw outward. In it, he held the detached head of the final Council Shadow. He tossed it to the floor where it bounced and rolled toward them.

  “No brethren,” he said.

  “You helped us,” Lucas said slowly. “The Council is finished. Xala is free.”

  “Xala will burn to ash,” he said forcefully. “And you are not my allies. My father must find peace in your death.”

  All of them knew what was about to happen and preemptively unleashed a barrage of plasma that spattered off the Desecrator’s heavy plating like fireworks. Undeterred, he flew toward them, arms swinging wildly.

  Asha cried out as a black claw tore across her leg, upending her. Alpha took a swipe that dug into the side of his face, but very well could have taken his head off had he been a little closer. Lucas and Kiati were sent sprawling as the enormous creature crashed into them and soared up toward the ceiling.

  Lucas fired a few shots but quickly turned and ran to Asha. Her leg was bleeding badly. The suit was fighting to close the wound that stretched from the top of her hip to the inside of her kneecap. She was trying to cry out, but her voice was caught in her throat. Kiati immediately attended to the injury, instructing Lucas to put pressure on the leg.

  “I can’t …” Asha stammered. “I can’t …”

  Her eyes were starting to roll back into her head. The blood was spreading out beneath her into a pool of worrying size. Lucas pressed as hard as he could on the leg, which caused Asha to arch in pain, but it allowed Kiati to seal the enormous gash that had shredded her armor and muscle tissue. The bleeding was slowing, but there was no way she could walk.

  There wasn’t time to dress her injury further, as the Desecrator was looping back around. Lucas sprinted forward to join Alpha, who was firing a nonstop s
tream toward the fast-moving target. Alpha shoved Zeta out of the way as the Desecrator buzzed by them again, this time his claws mercifully missing the pair of them.

  They were in front of the comms relay now, and Lucas shouted to Alpha over the gunfire.

  “We need to get to extraction, they’re wounded!”

  Lucas motioned to Asha, lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood, being attended to by Kiati, who only had one functional arm. That was to say nothing of his own injury from the Council Shadow’s blade. There was a trickling waterfall of blood running from his wound down the front of his armor.

  “The beast is too fast. He will slaughter us as we flee,” Alpha replied over the din. One of his shots connected with the Desecrator’s shoulder, but it wasn’t even fazed. Lucas had watched the thing take a canister round from a spaceship directly to the chest. There was no stopping it.

  Lucas turned back to look at Asha, who was struggling to sit up. She met his gaze, but then her eyes widened in horror as she looked to his right.

  The Desecrator slammed straight into Lucas with the force of a freight train. Lucas felt the breath pulverized out of his lungs as the pair of them shot through the now open door to the comms relay. The Desecrator’s wings shattered the conductor crystals inside the entrance and the sudden contact pitched him off balance. Lucas tumbled to the floor and the Desecrator spiraled into a guard rail near the central console of the relay.

  Lucas scrambled to his feet and raced toward the door. But almost immediately he felt a claw sink into his shoulder and he was flung back into the room. The Desecrator now made a beeline for the entrance instead. Lucas ignored the pain and lined up a shot. Natalie’s barrel extended and released a single round that buried itself in the door’s control cluster. It sparked an instant lockdown of the room, and the doors snapped shut. The Desecrator flung himself into the metal, but even with all his unfathomable strength he couldn’t dent it. He howled with rage, then turned to sprint toward Lucas once more.