The civilians had done the smart thing at the start of the battle; they had just stopped and dropped to the ground, making them less likely a target for stray rifle fire.
“You ssee? You are not invincible human, your kind thinkss you are, but you fail to realize that all living thingss die.” The wounded alien gurgles out. I had completely forgotten about it.
“You aren’t either,” I say to it from across the room, pointing at its stomach wound, “and when have we ever said that?” I ask curiously.
“Not you, otherss of your kind have ssaid that in the past.”
“What others? We were listening the whole time, I heard no one say that we were invincible.”
“Hiss exact wordss might not have been invincible, but they were very ssimilar.”
“Whose words?” I say, it felt like I was in a chair, sitting at the edge of my seat, waiting to hear more.
“The human that came to our planet, it was ssuch a long time ago.”
My heart almost drops dead. All my life I thought that I had no proper family. My mother had died giving birth to me, and her brother -my uncle that bought me and my wife our new luxury apartment- had been the only type of family to me. Now on the other hand there was still a hope that my father was still alive.
“Was his name Charles Woods?” I say, pulling my secondary knife from my hip and digging it into the seeping flesh in between the shattered scales. The alien responds by jumping up in pain.
“Whoa, where do you think you’re going?” T-Rave says, aiming his rifle at the aliens head.
“I do believe that wass hiss name. We gained lotss of information from him from hiss yearss sspent with uss.”
“What do you mean ‘was his name’?”
The alien only smiles at me, or what I can assume is a smile, it’s hard to tell what facial feature meant which emotion to its kind.
“We decided that he wass of no further usse to uss, once he gave uss information about thiss planet and what kind of technology your sspeciess have. He alsso told us of a rare gass that the sscience teamss discovered. No one knew what it wass; only that it had enormouss potential. However we knew what it wass, we had been ssearching for it in the giant gas nebulass, which is where it originatess.”
It feels like I’m going to pass out. Knowledge has come to me about my father being alive, and that he didn’t die in a giant magma explosion. But now that hope was ripped from my mind as I discover that these aliens had disposed of him like a piece of trash.
“You mentioned before that you wanted to reintegrate yourselves into proper society. What did you mean by that?”
“We were banisshed, cast asside for our beliefss, and feelingss towardss the other racess.”
My stomach lurchs, “other races? There is more of your kind?”
A sickening laugh emanates from it.
“Human arrogance amussess me, there are more of my kind yess, and other speciess that dominate the galaxy. We were once called the Akkessianss human, but when we were banisshed we fasshioned a new name for oursselvess.”
“What do you call yourselves now?” I ask. My heart is racing from this large amount of new information.
“We renamed oursselvess to be forever known ass the Hakorianss.”
The name alone sends a chill running down my spine.
“Colonel we’re running out of time. We have to go, now!”
I look at the civilians still cowering on the floor. “You guys know that you could’ve and should’ve left when we stopped firing right?” I say.
All they do is look at me in puzzlement.
“That means go, unless you want to say here and get blown up with the building?”
The civilians start to scream and panic again, running around and not knowing what to do.
“Captain, make a note that civilians are idiots under pressure. Walk down that hallway and through the door, then make a lef-, you know what, why don’t you people just follow me. I’ll be done in just a second.”
They just look and stare at me as if I’m joking.
“One last thing, Hakorian, what do you plan on doing with Terra when you get what you want? Leave?”
“Again, arrogance, no human, we plan to crussh you under our bootss when we are done. Leave no trace behind uss for the otherss to find.”
“You know, for someone who has been captured you sure do spill the beans rather easily,” I say.
“It does not matter to me, thiss information will not help you one iota, you will all die, and there iss nothing to sstop uss.”
“Wrong answer,” I say, slashing the knife across its throat. The Hakorian had only a second to react, his hand went racing towards his neck to try and stop the bleeding. It’s just too big of a wound though, the lifeless body falls over with a sickening splash in its own blood.
“Now who's the arrogant one.”
“Colonel come on, we need to get moving. Terein said that the building was the bomb, set to overload the capacitors. He couldn’t shut them down either, which means that we have less than seven minutes now to get out of here or we all die!” T-Rave shouts, flailing his arms wildly like a marionette whose strings were cut.
“Right, let's get out of here,” I say, brushing my knees off as I stand.
T-Rave takes point, “alright people, and now if you can please come with me as calmly as possible, but remember, you must run your asses off, follow me!”
We retrace our steps through the building, rushing through dark deserted hallways, the taste of fresh air outside the building appealed to everyone.
Still running as T-Rave finally broke the silence, “we should have brought back the body Colonel,” he says in the private squad channel.
“We couldn’t have Captain; there was no way that we could have hauled a hundred kilo man in full body armour through this entire building, plus up all those stairs.”
“Right, I was just curious. It's just that now we have to have two funerals with empty caskets,” T-Rave switches to the external voice in his helmet again, “please folks, this way, now I am warning you in advance, our only way up is through the stairwell. Seeing as power was cut to everything but some select rooms, the lifts are also down. So, start the climb.”
We start our long ascent to the levels above ground. It’s been only three minutes since we left the generator room, “Colonel, do you think we can make it?”
“I’m going to keep my hopes up. That’s what you should be doing as well. It took us five minutes to get down here, and returning to the surface should be a lot faster, seeing as we don’t have to be on the lookout for more Hakorians.”
“Right, but we have a dozen civilians we need to herd along. Sorry, right; keep my hopes up, I’ll try Colonel.”
The longer we climb the stairs the faster people began to slow down. Most of these civilians are not trained for such endurance, unlike me and T-Rave; this is what we do, this is our job; to be better than everyone else at everything.
“Look, light!” A civilian yells.
“That’s a flashlight! Help is coming!” Another person says.
“Help is coming? What do you think we have been doing?” T-Rave says, projecting his voice through the audio system.
I switch to the private channel, “Captain, did you call for assistance?
“No Sir, do you think it's them?”
“Yeah I do,” - I switch to the external channel again- “stop, people, you must stop now!”
They don’t listen though, driven by the hopes of freedom they just keep running.
The male civilian that reached the ground floor stairwell door that led out into the hallway stops dead as he opens the door, a look of fear on his face as the open doorway reveals three snarling Hakorians.
The lead Hakorian reacts to the screaming civilians by taking a swipe with his clawed hand and completely severing the head of the male civilian that opened the door.
The rest of the civilians scream as they are splashed with blood.
&nb
sp; “Everybody get down!” I yell, already aiming my rifle at the three newcomers.
Me and T-Rave open fire as soon as all the civilians hit the ground.
The Hakorians clearly weren’t expecting resistance seeing as they don’t bother taking cover.
All the Hakorians did was stand there and die, rather quickly I might add.
“That was close,” I say, “Captain, I thought I told you to take point?”
“I did Sir; people desperately trying to get out of a building that is about to explode tend to run a bit faster than a man in full body armour.”
“Keep moving people, there’s nothing that we can do for him,” I say as I run past the hacked corpse.
The civilians, now scared out of their wits follow orders much better. We continue to go through the corridors, trying to find our way out.
“Colonel, we’re getting closer, look,” T-Rave says as he points to a blackened room.
Major Lorid had died in that room within the past hour, that room meant the death of a fellow soldier, but also salvation, it was a sign that we were going the right way.
“Everyone,” I say, not giving a second glance back to the destroyed room, “just continue going on straight and then left, you should then find a large hole in the wall. Exit through that wall and you should be fine from there on.”
T-Rave continues to usher everyone through the hallways; not looking back at me for orders, he knows not to waste time.
“Please people, you must hurry, otherwise-” I stop in midsentence as the floor begins to shake, a deep grating sound emanates from underneath us, it could mean only one thing.
The power generators have begun to overload and explode, causing the building to shake underneath us. Roof tiles began to fall off, making the last thirty or so meters to the outside world a minefield, making your steps potentially your last ones.
“Colonel, those were just the secondary generators that power all the non-essential systems. We haven’t even experienced the full force of the explosion yet. This whole building is going to crumble away into nothing!” T-Rave says as he breathes heavily through the helmet intercom, making it sound scratchy.
A much larger sounding boom reverberates through the hallway, this time it must be the actual generators going critical.
What follows shortly after hits everyone by surprise; it almost feels like my body betrayed me as I involuntarily jumped -more like being shoved into the wall beside me by an invisible force- others around me experience a similar effect.
I get up as fast as I can; my body feels like it weighs an extra fifty kilos for some reason. As if the explosion has short-circuited some of the electronics that enable my suit to move more efficiently.
I find the nearest two civilians only a meter in front of me. I know what to expect from explosions. I’ve been in the line of duty serving in the army for years, these first explosions are just the beginning.
I wrap myself around them. I’m just in time as I feel and see the aftereffects of the sounds. Large bits of concrete and building metal that supports the underground complexes has come up, protruding through the floor in which we now stand on.
Bits of shrapnel begin to pepper my back. It had been quick thinking on my part that I shielded the civilians with my armour. I couldn’t save everyone though.
I only have a second to look up at a middle-aged man that’s a little too optimistic. He continues to run, hoping to make it out of the building before the main generators blow up. He’s mistaken though. The shrapnel that had missed me or bounced off my armour flies directly into the path he’s taking, nailing him to the floor as if hit by a boulder, he goes down without a sound. The little bits of deadly flying metal had flown into his neck, paralyzing him a split second before killing him.
“Don’t look.” I whisper to the cowering civilians, even talking in a quiet voice my helmets audio system had amplified it and made it sound menacing, the only thing I succeeded in is scaring them even more.
The building tremors stop, I know that they won’t stop for long though., “run!” I yell.
The building's floor has begun to crumble beneath my feet and sink down, as if it were quicksand.
The civilians that are near my stomach have broken free from my grasp and have started to run as fast as their legs can carry them as they bolt towards the exit point.
I push my body up off the ground so I would be able to make a run for the cavity in the wall, only to discover that I can’t lift my left leg. I glance backwards to see what is restricting my movement. I hadn’t noticed before but a piece of the ceiling had collapsed onto the back part of my leg, connected to it is a metal beam, which apparently lined the entire ceiling.
I wonder why I never felt it fall onto my leg, maybe my body and mind had gone into a state of shock.
My only options are to call for help. Which I know will never come. No one in their right mind would run back into an exploding building after just previously escaping from it. The other option was to shoot my way out, literally.
I reach for my gun attached to my hip; I turn the settings to half power. In case I accidentally skim the side of my leg there would be no permanent damage. It would most likely make my leg immobile, as if it was just asleep.
I take careful aim before firing my gun. I squeeze the trigger, watching in shock as the blast almost literally vaporizes the entire concrete block. I guess I put the power setting a little higher than I thought. Good thing I didn’t hit my leg, otherwise I would’ve been limping out of the building.
I look for T-Rave, it was rather hard at this point. The building support frames that are inside the wall have started to fall apart, jutting out of the walls, making it a very dangerous path to the exit. T-Raves already there, I can see as he begins ushering people outside to safety.
T-Rave looks back at me; I can tell he’s thinking of running back inside to help get me out.
“Colonel! Get your ass moving!” He yells through the intercom system.
I get up as fast as I can, making a run for the exit, a full on sprint is hard to accomplish for a long period of time, especially with full body armour on.
“You're almost there Colonel, just don’t look back,” he urges.
Power of suggestion was the worst. Instinctively if someone told you not to do something, you just had to do it. I look back, horrified as the floor that I was previously pinned down to is gone. It collapses under its own weight and sinks beneath us, probably all the way down to the bottom level.
The exit is getting closer and closer, T-Rave is now only a meter in front of me.
I rush past him and burst through the hole, the sunlight is blinding as it hits my eyes, I wasn’t expecting it to still be daylight out; it felt like hours had gone by in our time down there.
“Captain, did you make it out?” I ask, swerving my head around to look at the building. It has started to sink down beneath the ground; the lower levels must have been completely disintegrated for the building to collapse in that manner.
“Yeah, that was close, how many civilians survived?”
“I don’t know, do a head count, I’ll check the readings.”
I pull up the bio-scanner in my HUD; it reads that there is only seven in the immediate area, total.
“I’m only seeing five here Colonel. We lost seven from the time we left the power room. Almost all that work was for nothing.”
“Easy Captain, we made it out alive with five, that’s better than nothing.” I say, dismay overwhelms me, Major Lorid and Sargent Terein had almost died in vain.
“We just lost two of our own people; Lorids death wasn’t our fault, Terein died because we disobeyed orders. General Anders isn’t going to like this.”
“Course he won’t, but we saved five civilians. That’s got to count for something eh?”
I take a moment to mourn the loss of those that had died in that godforsaken building, the only upside is that we saved some lives, and that we came out with lots of Intel. G
eneral Anders would be pleased to some degree, except for the loss of two soldiers.
“Captain, call a Dropship to come and pick us up,” I say.
“Yes Sir.”
“T.A.R. Headquarters, this is Shadow Unit One, requesting Evac, our mission was a success,” T-Rave says.
A pause, it feels like forever waiting for the call, for some reason it felt like me and T-Rave are to only people left on the planet; the silence broke as the intercom started to crack.
“T.A.R. Base to Shadow Unit One, sorry for the delay, the explosion seems to be interfering with our comm channels. The Dropship is on its way and will arrive at your present location shortly,” a voice crackles over the intercom.
“Much appreciated, Shadow Unit One out.”
“Alright people, listen up,” I say, making my voice nice and loud so they can all hear me.
“You will all need to come with us so that the military can debrief you about the situation you were just forced into. Now, I know that a lot of you are probably wanting to go home and take comfort with loved ones, but only after you get debriefed. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. But any more information that you can provide us will help you in the long run,” I pause and let the message have enough time to sink in, “thank you.”
I hear the joyful sound of the Dropships engines as they pass over us.
I switch to the private intercom channels.
“You ready to go Captain?”
“Yes Sir, I’m ready to have a nice hot shower, we deserve one.”
I laugh in my helmet, even though I’m not actually broadcasting the marvelous sound, “yes, we do.”
The Dropship lands on the ground only moments later, already taking on passengers.
“Watch your step people, you don’t want to come this far just to trip and break your neck do you?”
I’m the last one to jump onto the ship, I also watch my step, how embarrassing would that be? The big macho soldier with the big gun that trips and hurts himself as he flies away to safety, it would be ironic; surviving the entire ordeal within the past hour, only to be thwarted by a step.
The Dropship begins to take off. All the civilians look out the viewports on both sides. Most of them have looks of relief on their faces, the other look saddened. Maybe they lost family or friends, the ones that were killed in the first tower perhaps, or the ones we lost while making our escape to the surface.
Siege of Terra (The Mavrik Woods Series, Book 1) Page 5