“Run to us, you fools!” Foster cut in.
Foster and Pierce continued to run, marching up short flights of stairs onto the platform where the golden monolith hovered and hummed. Behind her, she heard the footsteps of Eicelea and Vynei totter as they fled to join them. Amidst those sounds were the pods being torn open, and slime-covered invader soldiers splashing out from them, searching for their rifles still on the insides of the pods.
Foster resisted the urge to look back out of fear of witnessing an invader take aim and end her life. If she was going to go down running, she’d rather it come without warning. Then there was Eicelea and Vynei, who were also in the danger zone, more so than Foster and Pierce. No need to have their last moments of life etched into her mind because she decided to look back and see what was going on.
The monolith neared, and the hairs on Foster’s neck stood on end, still expecting that one fatal shot from behind.
She and Pierce made a hard turn to the left, placing their bodies behind the mysterious and towering device. They were safe for the time being, huffing and puffing noises were made by the two humans, while sweat from their run and the terror behind them soaked their uniforms. Eicelea and Vynei joined the two seconds before a barrage of tachyon fire erupted. Foster saw energy beams travelling faster than light streak past their sides as they remained hidden behind the monolith. Vynei made zero attempts at returning fire, looking from behind the monolith was suicide at that point.
Eicelea looked intently at the monolith and growled. “I am about to go down in history as the archaeologist that helped play a role in the destruction of the most important Lyonria discovery ever.”
Eicelea’s fists bashed against the surface of the monolith repeatedly. It made Foster wince, roll her eyes, and reach down to grab ahold of Eicelea’s fist that remained resting against the monolith. “Hey, slammin’ yer fists on this ain’t gonna do any—” The monolith flashed on with a surge of energy. “Good?” Foster finished.
Both Foster and Eicelea stepped away from it, looking at it in shock, removing their hands from the cool surface of the device. It became dormant with the exception of it hovering slightly off the ground. Eicelea went to place her hands on the monolith again.
Nothing happened.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Eicelea grumbled to herself. “We might have figured something out!”
She attempted to touch it again.
Nothing happened.
“This is hardly the time to be concerned about discoveries,” Pierce said to Eicelea.
“No, it ain’t,” Foster concurred as she went to place her palms upon the monolith. Seconds after she made contact with it, another surge of energy radiated through it. A holographic screen emerged from the monolith and floated next to Foster. The hologram had an image of a handprint on it with alien text flashing above it. Curiosity guided her hand to rise and touch the holographic handprint.
The hologram vanished the instant Foster touched it. A translucent figure flashed before the monolith, it looked like a naked woman. The woman’s eyes opened and met with Foster’s, it strode over to her, like a ghost embracing her.
The ghostly figure vanished.
So did Foster’s vision.
When Foster’s sight returned, she witnessed strange sights.
People screaming in horror.
Stars, lots of them.
A globular cluster of stars outside The Milky Way.
A woman dressed in dragon-like armor, being knighted, or something like that, by some sort of alien queen.
Slaves, thousands of them, forced to seek vengeance.
The vision shattered into millions of pieces as if it was painted on glass, and Foster’s mind returned to the ancient city and the monolith they took cover behind. Her body was paralyzed, she was stuck within a stasis field. She could see the three around her, calling out to her, though the sounds of their voices were muted by the field.
Foster felt her skin become irritated and extremely itchy along her hands, down her arms, legs, and along the sides of her thighs going up to her chest. Her spine became sore as though billions of tiny pins had been pushed into it. The pain traveled up her spine, into her neck, and into her brain.
The stasis field ruptured seconds later, hurling her mystified body to the floor, she shook uncontrollably. Pierce was the first to help her up. “Rebecca!” he called out to her repeatedly.
Foster wasn’t able to vocalize a reply, at least not right away, as she waited for her body to recover and regain control of basic functions, like being able to speak. “Travis . . .” Foster grumbled a moment later. “I think that was an engram.”
Engrams. They were thoughts, experiences, memories, converted into a form of pure psionic energy to be exchanged with others. The Undine and psionic Poniga used them quite frequently amongst each other to educate and preserve memories and experiences, and, apparently, so did whoever built the monolith.
“What did you see?” Pierce asked her.
“A lot of weird shit that didn’t make any sense,” Foster said as she slowly stood amidst the sounds of tachyon beams and scouting invader soldiers pushing forward. “It was different than the one I experienced in Sirius. This one didn’t transfer the knowledge of the language the engram creature had spoken. Had no idea what in the hell people were screaming and hollerin’ about.”
“Satisfied?” Pierce asked Eicelea who replied with an enthusiastic nod as she examined and scanned the monolith.
“Fascinating,” Eicelea said. “There’s pure psionic energy emitting from this.”
“Umm, Rebecca?” Pierce said, pointing at Foster’s hands. “What happened there?”
Foster looked at her hands, they were etched with sky-blue tattoos. She peeled back the sleeves of her uniform to see how widespread the alien tattoos were. The tattoos had formed along her arms, where they had felt irritated when she was trapped within the stasis field. There was a good chance the rest of her body that had become irritated suffered the same effect.
“Oh boy . . .” she said with her heart racing fast.
The number of invader drop pods continued to rain down, smashing new craters into the surface, adding three to four soldiers with each drop. Foster took a brief glance around the monolith when the shooting had let up. She stopped counting at thirty attackers, it was too demoralizing to fully assess the danger they found themselves in, never mind the drop pods that fell deeper in the city out of their sight, and the ravaging wyverns in the skies.
“So, Travis, I’m starting to think maybe staying back at the base was a better option . . .” Foster said drily.
Pierce grinned, keeping his body covered behind the monolith. “Isn’t this the part where you instill us with confidence with some speech about us surviving worse battles than this?”
“We’re surrounded by enemies with weapons far more advanced than ours, only one of us has a gun, and we’s got angry dragons gettin’ ready to poach us like vultures.” Foster wasn’t one to be full of negativity, especially as a leader. But what else could she say? Sirius was rough, but the enemy had a weakness, and there had been the Carl Sagan just a few AU away to save the day. None of that currently applied to their hellish ordeal. “What we need is someone to draw their fire away from us.”
Less than a second after she spoke, the wyverns altered their flight, turning, and preparing themselves for something else that had entered the fray, something they were not expecting. The soldiers on the ground halted their fire as leaders of their assault groups shouted orders in their language. The invader soldiers began to fan out and take cover behind pillars, dragon statues, and excavation equipment.
A steady burst of plasma fire sunk down from the clouds, vaporizing three wyverns that failed to fly away.
Pierce and Foster looked up at the unexpected event. “How about that?” he asked.
Foster smiled. “That’ll do.”
Following the plasma fire came a transport ship of Hashmedai design, at least that’s w
hat Foster assumed. It looked different from Hashmedai transports she had seen in the past, the biggest changes being the small plasma cannon mounted onto its forward end. However, as it neared their surrounded position, the flag of the Empire was clearly visible for all to see.
The invader soldiers welcomed the Hashmedai transport with a torrent of tachyon rifle fire. Dozens of beams from the surface collided with the shields of the transport as it swooped down to land next to the monolith, blocking the line of sight from the raging invader soldiers.
The side doors of the transport slid open and a single Hashmedai man stood before it, dual-wielding a pair of short plasma swords that shined brightly. His skin was pale, his hair not too far off, while the red glow of his eyes faded as he stepped out of the transport into the hazy sunlight. His Imperial navy uniform waved about in the winds as he passed through the irising shields of his craft. Hashmedai always reminded Foster of vampires whenever she saw them, the fangs in their mouths didn’t help her unsee the similarities. The only thing missing was an unnecessary glittering effect since he now stood in the sunlight.
The Hashmedai man beckoned to the four to join him. The mere thought of accepting help from a Hashmedai irritated her thoughts, more so than the danger they were facing.
“Come with me, this planet will be overrun soon,” said the Hashmedai, his accent was reminiscent of a Russian one, as with all Hashmedai.
Foster winced. “Go with you?”
“Yes.”
“A Hashmedai?”
“Yes . . . that is what I am.”
“I think we’ll be fine, right here—”
Two invader soldiers marched past his idle transport. The Hashmedai was quick to react by engaging in swordplay and elegantly weaving together combos of rapidly executed thrusts, slashes, and rolls across the ground to escape weapons fire. His speed and reflexes were unmatched, one of the many unique traits of the Hashmedai species, they did evolve from a predator species on their homeworld after all. And it was those primitive survival instincts the Hashmedai before her utilized to sever the arms of the two invader soldiers, disabling their ability to shoot. His twin blades took turns impaling the chests of the two invaders, splashing their steaming hot blood against the flickering shields of his transport.
The Hashmedai turned to face the four and reiterate his offer. Foster wasn’t convinced, not for a second. His savage display only reminded her of the ruthlessness his people unleashed upon her home city of Nashville many years ago.
“Oh, no, no, no, don’t listen to her, she does not speak for us!” Eicelea said, clearly impressed by the Hashmedai. “Vynei, let us make our escape.”
Eicelea and Vynei raced into the Hashmedai transport, Foster stayed put and was ready to force Pierce to do the same.
“This planet is about to be made into a wasteland,” the Hashmedai said to her. “I am offering you a chance to escape and you wish to . . . argue with me?”
Pierce stepped toward the transport as more invader pods rained down from the skies amongst the sounds of the soldiers pushing forward to get around the transport blocking their attacks.
“Travis . . .” Foster grunted, stopping his steps.
“Rebecca, come on please,” Pierce pleaded to her.
“Last chance, human,” the Hashmedai said as Pierce reluctantly entered the transport. “My ship has orders to withdraw from this system if I do not return in time.”
Foster sighed. “Fine . . .”
It was the Hashmedai Empire that killed Foster’s father. Accepting help from a member of their species . . . It went against her every instinct. What ultimately made her climb aboard his transport, wasn’t the fact they were seconds away from being overwhelmed by the invaders, though she would have preferred that outcome than being saved by a Hashmedai. It was the fact both Eicelea and Vynei climbed on without a second thought. Eicelea and Vynei were members of Radiance, a galactic nation that hated the Hashmedai for centuries fighting in what seemed like an endless genocidal war between the two.
Something ain’t right if Radiance trusts Hashmedai more than me . . .
Foster joined her company in the rear compartment of the transport, as its doors shut and the Hashmedai piloted it back into space. The temperatures inside were chilly, enough to make their sweating from the action outside come to an end, and their deep breaths to release white mists from their mouths.
Eicelea grinned at Foster as she took a seat on the icy chair. “Ah, so she came to her senses at last.”
“For members of Radiance, you two seem awfully trustworthy of a Hashmedai,” Foster said to her.
“Trusting a Hashmedai with our lives is one of the many reasons we are alive today,” Eicelea said. “If you want to survive in this galaxy we live in, you’ll have to trust monsters, and be skeptical of your own countrymen.”
The transport rumbled slightly during their escape from the surface. Foster’s hand wiped away a layer of fog and frost from the window next to her. Angry wyverns flew alongside the transport during its ascent up and away from the clouds into the void of space.
They weren’t going to make the rescue an easy task.
27 Foster
Transport on approach to Rezeki’s Rage
Jacobus orbit, Kapteyn’s Star system
August 9, 2118, 19:16 SST (Sol Standard Time)
The Hashmedai man cursed in his language.
He exerted a great deal of effort to keep the transport still as it left the high gravitational pull of Jacobus and soared toward the Hashmedai frigate in orbit. The pursuing wyverns flapped their wings and discharged their cybernetically mounted weapons or waves of plasma from their mouths. He spoke to another Hashmedai via the transport’s communication system, most likely notifying them that they’d be coming in hot, at least that’s what Foster would be doing in his position.
Foster joined the Hashmedai man in the transport’s cockpit and gave a concerned glare at his piloting skills. Where did you learn to fly? I could fly this better than you and I can’t make head or tail of your chicken scratch looking language!
“I take it that’s your docking bay over yonder there?” Foster said, pointing at the opening within the center of the frigate.
“It is,” he confirmed.
“We’s gonna crash at this speed and angle then,” Foster said. “And it’s gonna be nowhere near the docking bay, mister—”
“Peiun.”
“What?”
“My name, Peiun Starblazer,” he said. “Forgive me for the late introduction.”
“Right, uh, so, Mister Starblazer—”
“Just Peiun, Starblazer is the title I earned during my youth.”
“Well, whatever!” Foster spat loudly. “Look, if you don’t adjust our heading then we’s gonna be blazing like the stars in the next three minutes.”
Following Foster’s advice and guidance, Peiun readjusted the angle and speed of the transport, allowing them to make a quick landing within the protection of the frigate’s shields and docking bay. The pursuing wyverns from behind broke off and away, hopefully back to the planet, though Foster had a feeling their escape was far from complete.
The five exited the transport into the dark confines of the ship, rubbing their numb hands together to create friction heat, except Peiun, of course. He strode away into the corridors as if the near-freezing temperatures were nothing. Foster followed behind, prompting the rest to do the same arriving at the ship’s main bridge minutes later.
An uneasy feeling crept into Foster as they stepped aboard the bridge unexpectedly. Multiple pairs of glowing red eyes examined the four while Peiun went to take his post. It was lightly staffed judging by the various stations that were unmanned and the fact that the shipboard psionic had been keeping the captain’s chair warm during Peiun’s absence. Why the hell would the captain be the one to make the rescue mission? Foster pondered.
The view screen upfront showed the planet Jacobus come under siege from the invader forces, fires raged fro
m the cities, and blackened the skies. Hundreds of wyverns swarmed around in front of the scenery displayed on the viewer, taking shots at the frigate they were aboard. Two invader ships appeared over the horizon and discharged their tachyon cannons, creating havoc on the overshields of the Hashmedai frigate.
Peiun issued orders to his extremely small bridge crew in the Hashmedai language, some of them replied back, hopefully with good news as the planet shifted out of sight from the viewer.
“You think this is a bad time to ask if they got any coats to wear?” Foster said to Pierce.
“Probably, they’re all busy trying to get us to the wormhole.”
The ship broke orbit and entered sub light speeds. The wyverns that had been swarming it were no longer an issue. The two invader ships, however, were, as they continued to be within weapon range, dishing out punishing strikes with weapons that travelled faster than the ship.
The Hashmedai bridge crew spoke some more with their captain, Pierce listened in and said. “They have doubts they’ll be able to make it to the wormhole in time, there’s too many ships in the system shooting at them, plus several others patrolling in front of the wormhole.” More Hashmedai chatter filled the chilly air. “They’re going to try and fight their way through.”
Foster was impressed with his translations. “You speak their language?”
Pierce shrugged his shoulders. “Not very well.”
“Why?
“I’m from Vancouver.”
“Yeah, and?”
Humans that spoke the Hashmedai language and lived in places like Vancouver were more often than not, loyal to the HLF terrorist group. Pierce’s reluctance to shed more details on the subject made Foster’s mouth twist. Any more secrets I should know about?
The wormhole became visible on the view screen minutes later into their escape. A small blockade of invader ships sat next to the mouth of it. Some were firing tachyon beams through the wormhole, most likely to deter the UNE forces on the other side from pushing through. The rest spun to face the approaching Rezeki’s Rage as it neared.
Celestial Incursion (Edge of the Splintered Galaxy Book 1) Page 27