Khai grinned, knowing he had her. Rookie, he thought. As he made his move, he got a jabbing, piercing pain in his back, right through his kidney. The instant that happened, he knew that he was in trouble, and exactly what he was up against—Kil’Jah Assassins. Trained at killing from an early age, the Kil’Jah Assassins were a sect of Seryysans that had broken away from the mainstream society to start their own society based on the old ways, little technology, back-breaking work and decades of combat training. Always paired in twos—a male and a female—they fought, lived and loved together as the perfect pair. They were efficient and very, very deadly. He’d dealt with the Kil’Jah on numerous occasions. And despite the fact he always lived to talk about it, they always gave him a run for his money.
Khai’s reflex package kicked in and when the killing blow came in the form of a Kit’Ra—a specialized, extremely sharp sword—to the throat, Khai grabbed his wrist and twisted it, forcing the man to drop the weapon to the floor. The clanging sound of the sword drew the woman’s attention back to Khai, just as he used his superior strength to flip the man over his shoulder. Of course, Khai knew the man was trained enough to land on his feet, but Khai had other plans. As the man tried to wrench his arm from Khai’s iron grip, Khai simply squeezed. The man cried out, landing a barrage of kicks and punches with his free limbs trying to get away.
Before the woman could really respond, the room was filled the muffled cracks of the man’s radius and ulna breaking clean from the pressure. An anguished cry issued from the man and Khai grinned knowing his chances of surviving before he bled to death had greatly increased. The woman responded an instant later, thrusting her sword straight at Khai’s face. Khai simply tilted his head out of the way and as the sword passed, he used his free hand to grab at the woman’s wrist. She didn’t fall for it and quickly brought the blade down out of his reach, while simultaneously sweeping her off foot in an arcing kick over the top of her counterpart’s head and down at Khai’s outstretched arm. Had he not responded by letting the man go, she surely would have broken his arm.
Khai took a step back as the two assassins regrouped and reevaluated the situation. Clearly, they had underestimated Khai’s abilities, but that was not going to happen a second time… and Khai knew it… and he knew that they knew that he knew. The man’s right arm was practically useless, but he was no less dangerous, especially now that they were going to work in tandem. At once, they attacked. The man feigned an attack while the woman moved to sweep Khai’s legs out from under him. Little did she know that Khai weighed close to three hundred pounds; when her shin struck Khai’s, he barely moved and she stopped dead in her tracks. Before Khai could retaliate, the man threw a bicycle kick that connected with the top of his head. That’s why the assassins were so dangerous; they could turn a losing situation into a winning one in an instant.
Khai stumbled back two steps as he saw spots in his vision. They didn’t waste time, the woman struck him square in the chest with a powerful side kick that sent him tumbling over a chair and gasping for breath. Angry that he was beaten so easily, he kicked the chair at the couple. They easily avoided the wild attack and brought their weapons to bear on the seemingly helpless man.
From his back, Khai quickly drew his trusted pistol and pulled the trigger. He dropped the man with a well-placed shot to the top of his skull and painted the white wall behind him red and pink. A look of equal parts shock, pain and fear was permanently locked on his face as he dropped to his knees and then to his face. The woman cried out in anguish. Losing her life partner was a fate worse than death. In a fit of pain and rage, she charged at him wildly. Khai easily put a bullet between her eyes and she fell several feet short of her target.
Khai was instantly on his feet running to Brindee’s side. Once he was sure she was okay, he bounded to the door, barely waiting for it to open. Joon was there, surrounded by medical staff working to keep her alive. They shocked her. She jerked, making Khai wince. They shocked her again and again and again, refusing to let the Hospital’s namesake die this way. All Khai could do was watch helplessly as one of his oldest friends, one of the few people in his life who had shown him unconditional kindness without expecting, or wanting anything in return, fade away. For the second time since he could remember, he openly wept. Warm tears streamed down his rugged features and off his chin. Eventually, there was nothing left to do but accept the inevitable: Joon was dead and there was nothing, nothing Khai could do about it.
Silently, he went back to Brindee’s side and sat, waiting for either another assassination attempt or for the medical personnel to revive Joon.
Neither happened.
Chapter Thirty
Prime Minister Pual’Kin Puar sat in his dimly-lit office, massaging his temples. He knew as well as Chuumdar, that all-out war was less than a whisper away. If Warthol could orchestrate even a pitiful assassination attempt that was destined to fail, it would undo all the progress he had made with the Vyysarri and everything that Khai had done to bring in this era of peace. Much against his better judgment, he was about to take the advice of his military advisors. If things went south, they’d need an edge, and an edge they had… to the tune of several highly advanced dreadnaughts and a mobile dry-dock to build more.
He hated keeping the weapons cache from Chuumdar, but only slightly less than he hated the idea of being outgunned if the Vyysarri were to rescind their peace agreement. He knew it was time to send an armada to claim to the abandoned ships.
Just as he made the decision and moved his finger over the call button to raise his aide, a new message flashed on his computer screen. It blinked INCOMING CALL. If it was coming straight to him, it was urgent.
He accepted the call and the face of a haggard-looking man with a sweat-soaked uniform, messy brown hair streaked with gray and dark—too dark to be Seryysan—blood splattered from chin to forehead filled the screen. He could hear wild gunfire, screams and screeches in the background. It was the quarantine area at the bottleneck near the base of Seryys Heights.
“You have a report for me, Corporal?”
“Yes, sir. We are losing our battle out here!” he said as an attack vehicle that had been rolled off its hover pads exploded. “We can’t seem to stop them! They’ve gathered numbers and are simply overwhelming our defenses.”
“How long ’til they breach the safe zone?”
“I’d say less than an hour!”
With a very heavy sigh, he said, “Okay. I’ll order a general evacuation.”
“Very good, sir.” The screen went blank.
Puar hit the call button and his aide answered. “What can I do for you, Prime Minister?”
“Initiate General Order Sixteen,” he said with a heavy heart.
There was a pause as his aide searched his memory, then, “Are you sure, sir?”
After an uncomfortably long silence, the Prime Minister spoke, “Yes, I’m sure. We’re deserting Seryys City…”
“We’re what?” Pual’Brennan Puar snapped into his mic. “Are you sure it was my brother and not some yokel with a couple rank pins?”
“We’re retreating and evacuating the city,” his commanding officer said. “It came directly for the Office of Planetary Affairs. We’re outta here!”
Only seconds later, a blaring klaxon echoed off the abandoned buildings. It was once the air raid siren when the Vyysarri attacked, but as of late, it was the general evacuation siren. That meant there were hundreds of shuttles being prepped to take every last person to a safer location, most likely off-world where there were refugee camps already set up.
“Where are we headed?” Puar asked as they boarded the APAC, Armored Personnel Ariel Carrier.
“We’re on guard and support duty for the evac shuttles. I think everyone is.” He paused for a while then said, “Seryys City’s Last Stand.”
“Sucks,” Puar muttered.
“Yup.”
When they landed, their collective jaws dropped at the sight of hundreds of thousan
ds of people waiting to be evacuated. It was shocking considering they were only in the air for about twenty minutes before arriving at the evac spot. At the northwestern most edge of Seryys Heights, there was a park, Aurora Park that ends at a two thousand foot drop off into the Great Rush, a large river that ran along the western edge of Seryys City. The park itself was several thousand square acres with lots of wide open space for shuttles to land and take off. The people of Seryys were instructed to make their way there within the four hour timeframe from when the sirens were sounded to the last shuttle leaving.
Some, it looked like, had been camping there for weeks just waiting for the signal. Puar felt a huge swell of sorrow for these people. Some of them lost everything they had. And here they were, waiting like animals in a feedlot.
The APAC landed just outside the park where a large stone wall had been erected years ago to protect the civilians during their escape—though, its original design was to facilitate escape from Vyysarri ground troops, not monsters that until recently were only rumors blabbed about by conspiracy theorists and laughed about by children. Now, those children and conspiracy theorists were standing in line with everyone waiting to escape.
The Prime Minister was escorted to a private landing pad where a space-worthy, armored shuttle was waiting, hovering on its hover pads. The driver stood at attention. “Sir, we’re taking you to Orbital Base Seventeen.”
“Seventeen? Around Seryys Four?” Prime Minister Puar asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to take me to one of the eleven Orbitals around Seryys?”
“My instructions were clear,” the driver said. “Orbital Base Seventeen. The powers that be wanted to get you out of the system to one of our outposts, but Colonel Wat’Son Watnarr said that that was a bit obsessive. He made them compromise with somewhere in the system but not Seryys One.”
“Fair enough,” he relented. Watnarr was a hard-nosed officer who worked his way up from nothing, much like he and Khai had. Only Watnarr went fleet and they went SCGF. As he stepped into the shuttle, he threw a quick glance at the driver and noticed that he was sweating. Maybe it’s the pressure of knowing that his greatest city was being evacuated for the first time in over a hundred years…then again, maybe it isn’t. Erring on the side of caution, as he sat and straightened his suit jacket, he deftly unlocked the safety strap on his shoulder holster, which carried his military pistol.
He settled in and the driver got in. The shuttle angled up and made for the sky. The Commander in Chief looked out the window and saw thousands of shuttles lifting off at the same time. His heart broke. It was a quite a sight to behold. His eyes never left Aurora Park until he simply couldn’t see it anymore. He was fully aware of the fact that he was the first Prime Minister to call a general evacuation since the war started. The worst part was it wasn’t even the war that caused it. For the first time in his ministry, he wished someone else was Prime Minister…
Being the tallest building in Serrys Heights, the Hall of Justice stood like a pinnacle titan amongst its subjects. Puar was looking right at it when he saw the slight glimmer of the sun glinting off a shuttle leaving the private pad on the south side of the building overlooking the courtyard and knew that his brother was being moved to a safe location. He wondered if his brother was looking down on him at that moment. He didn’t envy his older brother one iota. His thoughts whirled about in his head as he watched his brother’s shuttle angle up skyward. He watched it until it disappeared into the distance.
That was when he realized someone was talking to him.
“Puar!” someone shouted. “Get your head in the game! We have incoming!”
He snapped out of it and looked in the direction the man was pointing. Sure enough, hundreds of Reapers were running for them and the civilians.
Puar shouldered his grenade launcher and started flinging explosive slugs at them. Snipers on the wall pill boxes started firing from their posts. Hundreds of sharpshooters opened fire from the top of the wall. Between the two squads, Reapers starting falling by the hundreds, but more just sprang up to take their places. Puar kept firing, blasting Reapers to bits. His squad was also doing what they could to keep the Reapers at bay.
Through all the shooting and explosions, Puar could’ve easily missed the ground vibrating. Had he not been slapping another magazine of RPGs into his gun, he wouldn’t have even registered it. He paused, waiting to see what was making the ground quake beneath his feet. The Reapers stopped their advance and he prayed to the Founders that it was a tank battalion from the SCGFAC, or Seryys Combat Ground Forces Armored Corps, coming to save the day out of the SCGF base in Klomehaven, a city north of Seryys.
“Hold your fire!” Puar shouted into his mic. Nobody could hear him. “Damn it! I said HOLD YOUR FIRE!” The gunfire subsided, then stopped completely. The Reapers retreated into the wooded area of the park. Then everyone could feel the rumble. It was rhythmical and with each tremor, the trees would sway and leaves would fall to the ground. Suddenly everyone was forced to cover their ears as a piercing screech so loud it broke glass windows and resonated in their chests came from the wooded area.
Everyone’s collective jaws dropped when they saw it. A Reaper—a super Reaper, Puar thought—rose from a crouching posture to its full height above the trees. Other than the obvious size difference, the only other thing that looked different was its skin color. While most of the Reapers were stark white, this one was a deep burgundy.
“Oh man!” Puar whined.
“Where they hell did that come from?” the man next to him asked.
“Does it matter?” Puar asked, taking aim. “Kill it!”
Puar shot off three rounds that all connected leaving a deep, gushing wound in it, but it kept coming. It ripped a tree clean out of the ground and threw it at the wall. The impact knocked several men off the wall and sent them crashing to the ground in a heap of arms and legs. Then, as if matters weren’t bad enough, the other Reapers rejoined the fight. That was when Puar noticed that they weren’t all the same size; some were bigger than others as if in different states of growth. He also noticed that many of them were different shades of burgundy. One Reaper, in particular, caught Puar’s eye. A soldier was filling it with lead. The beast writhed on its knees pounding the ground with its oversized fists. All of a sudden, the skin on its back split, oozing forth the thick purple liquid that was its blood. Beneath the skin was another layer of skin, darker and vein-covered. As it was being shot up, the rest of the skin split and peeled with a small blood explosion to reveal a much bigger Reaper with slightly darker skin, but not nearly as dark as the super Reaper.
The poor soldier shooting the monster didn’t stand a chance. The Reaper gripped the man with one hand by the chest and the left leg. With little effort, the Reaper removed the screaming man’s leg and put it straight into its mouth. The man screamed, firing wildly at the monster eating him alive, but it only served to anger the thing. It screeched and grabbed him by his other leg, swinging him wildly about, bashing him into the ground and into trees, vehicles, buildings, other soldiers. Eventually, he either died or lost consciousness because he started flopping about like a rope.
Puar was so horrified by what he saw he completely missed the Reaper coming up to pounce on him. Puar finally caught sight of it as it flew through the air at him. He covered his face and turned away from the attack that never came. Still grimacing, he peeked out with one eye and found that the largest Reaper had snatched the smaller one out of the air and was chomping down on it. Puar breathed a sigh of relief just a little too soon. As soon as super Reaper finished its snack, it locked eyes with Puar, so to speak. For a good five seconds Puar just stared into its nostrils. His heart was pounding so hard he could actually hear it in his ears over the din of the gunfight going on around him. The monster screeched and lumbered forward.
“Shit!”
Puar fired two rounds straight at the monster’s face. It reared back, covering its face as two explosive rounds connected with its arms, bla
sting deep holes in them. The monster screeched again, this time in pain and surprise. Puar knew he couldn’t outrun the thing so he did the dumbest think he could think of…he charged right at it!
With a roar, Puar sprinted forward firing his launcher. Another grenade found its mark scorching another hole in its abdomen. Thick, purple blood gushed from the wound and all over Puar as he ran between the thing’s legs. He fired another round up in between its legs just to be sure on his way and didn’t stop running. The monster whirled around and tried stomping the little man. At the last second, Puar juked to his right and kept running. Another normal-sized Reaper lunged at him, raking with its talons, Puar slid forward on his belly under the attacking beast. He scrambled to his feet, still trying to dodge the giant Reaper’s hand swiping down to pick him up.
“Damn it, Dack!” he growled. “Where the hell are you?”
Puar ran over a Reaper sprawled out on its belly after lunging for another soldier. The giant Reaper squashed it under its giant foot in its pursuit of Puar. He fired blindly backward and heard a satisfying screech as the grenade detonated on impact. His victory was short-lived, though. Another Reaper blindsided him, taking him to the ground. Puar squirmed as best he could under the weight of the beast as it snapped at him.
Almost instantly, he registered that the pressure on his chest had suddenly doubled and also realized that he wasn’t on the ground anymore. He spotted his gun lying on the ground a good ten feet away and getting farther every second. His hands were uselessly pinned up by his face. He was wriggling a finger around the pin of a grenade on his bandoleer; if he was going to die, he was taking ugly with him!
The Seryys Chronicles: Of Nightmares Page 23