Another small progress bar formed, filled, then flashed an answer. Emerson watched it scroll slowly up the screen, his eyes widening with every newly formed pixel.
CURRENT LOCATION OF REED, ASHLEY S., ID #521368905
MILITARY SCIENCE STATION/ENTROPIA
SUB-LAUNCH BAY TWO/PAD 5
...
EMERSON, SHE IS IN TRIVEN CUSTODY AND BOARDING A KOMODO-CLASS ASSAULT DROPSHIP. DEFENSE AUTOMATES ARE OFFLINE, SO THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO TO STOP THEM. IF YOU WANT TO RESCUE HER, YOU MUST GO NOW. – DARAC.
“Dad!” Emerson shouted. All three men turned to see the glow of Dr. Avery’s datapad in his hands.
“Emerson!” his dad shouted back and moved faster than he thought he could in his current state of fatigue. Correlli still beat him to Emerson’s side and quickly looked at the data scrolling on the small display. He injected another stim through the collar of his damaged armor and took off running towards the tunnel leading to the underground launch bay. Thorsten yelled after him, then rapidly scanned the query results. He took off after Correlli, leaping over several darker shapes strewn in his path.
Emerson started to run too, but his dad held him back.
“I’ll take that now, son,” said Richard Avery.
Reluctantly, Emerson let the datapad slip from his hands. He turned to his father, barely able to see him in the dark.
“How does it know?” He could barely get the words out.
“Emerson, I can’t explain that right now.”
The alien script danced on Richard Avery’s face and reflected in his eyes. To Emerson, his father seemed mesmerized by the pad, like his soul was being drawn into it, slowly, relentlessly. He crept away as his father sank down onto a damaged transport pod, engrossed in ... whatever it was. Avery was murmuring in amazement to himself, oblivious to the carnage around him, and to the fact that Emerson had left.
“Son, I know it’s tough to—son? Emerson?” It began to dawn on Richard Avery that he was completely and utterly alone. In the dark.
As Emerson entered the tunnel leading to the launch bay, gunfire erupted ahead of him. Most of it sounded alien.
He moved hesitantly towards it.
17
Ashley Reed swayed gently as the hammock moved in the late afternoon breeze. It was a soothing, peaceful sensation, and she felt only dimly awake in the warmth of Entropia’s sun. For some reason, she realized she felt incredibly thirsty. I need to go inside for a drink, she thought, but I’m so tired. Attempting to get up, she found her legs would not respond, and her arms felt stuck inside the weave of the hammock. It kept moving slowly from side to side as Ashley tried feverishly to stand up.
“Mom? Dad?”
“Branden?” Ashley tried to crane her head around to see the back patio door. Where her house should have been was a smoking, jagged crater.
“Emerson!” Something hit her on the back of her head, jolting her into groggy awareness. Light flooded into her eyes, nearly blinding her. Squinting, she could just make out the sky above. The afternoon rains had passed; the fury of the storm was utterly spent, leaving only faint gray tendrils as a sign it had been there.
Her brain made sense of its position relative to the ground and Ashley finally understood where she was, but not why. A distinct fluttering sound and slight hum directly above her intruded upon her confused thoughts. It’s a mechanical dragonfly, she thought, and it’s carrying me ... upside-down ... She almost began to laugh at the absurdity of it—until her fear reasserted itself in full force. She tried to twist away from the hideous-looking Triven automate, but its suspensor fields held her arms and legs firmly. Her head was allowed to droop, and it occasionally collided with the debris littering the subterranean launch bay that was now open to the sky. The sweet smell of rain-cleansed air competed with the acrid smell of smoke and the bitter stench of death.
Ashley swallowed hard and tried to scream, “Let me go!” But all that came out was a choking sound that elicited no response from the Triven shock troops around her. She squirmed harder against her invisible bonds, but they simply tightened their viselike grip with little regard for the circulation in her extremities. With what felt like the mightiest effort of her life, Ashley lifted her head to try to see where the Triven were taking her. An equally hideous and lethal-looking ship squatted on the damaged pad a short distance away. The ramp to its bulbous rear bay was open and she could see others like her, dangling upside-down beneath mechanical dragonflies, disappearing inside.
She ran her parched tongue along her back molars to stimulate some saliva and swallowed again. Then, not knowing if it would make any difference to her fate, screamed as loud as she could, “Let me go!” Her voice ricocheted off some of the closer walls, almost making it sound like several screams at once. The Triven closest to her smashed a taloned fist across her mouth, knocking her head back down, but she did not care.
“Let me go right now!”
A coppery taste began filling her mouth, making her gag. She turned her head away from her saurian assailant, so his next blow landed on her right ear. Pain shot through Ashley’s skull and she wondered, in a detached, delirious kind of way, if her hearing would be damaged from the impact.
From the tunnel entrance leading back to the central tube station, she saw a large man quickly emerge. He was helmeted and his blue-tinted hexagonal armor was torn in several places. He ducked behind a protective exhaust blast barrier, unshouldered his substantial-looking weapon, and opened fire.
18
When Thorsten finally reached Correlli, the BLUE MONARCH was already in the launch bay fiercely engaged with the Triven. The volume of return fire had him pinned down, but he was fighting with an intensity that bordered on fanatical. Thorsten could see the silhouette of Correlli’s face through his tactical helmet. It displayed the grim visage of a man totally focused and in excruciating pain.
“What’s our status?” asked Thorsten, crawling to the adjacent blast barrier and tossing Correlli another full capacitor cartridge.
“Subject A is aboard that dropship, sir.” He pointed to the one farthest away from them. “And the Triven have dozens of other prisoners—military and civilian.”
As if to emphasize his point, Correlli aimed his assault rifle’s particle beam and easily penetrated the shields of a retreating Triven automate, causing it to unceremoniously drop its human cargo in a tangled heap. The automate’s handler wheeled in fury and was also quickly cut down. Thorsten popped up and added his own weapon to the melee, immediately drawing return fire.
“Do you have a plan?!” he yelled as projectiles and energy weapons began demolishing the blast shield he was hiding behind, piece by frighteningly large piece. Correlli did not respond. He was still aiming and firing, but in a trancelike state, totally oblivious to everything and everyone around him.
“Lieutenant!” Thorsten scrambled back to the BLUE MONARCH and shook his shoulder roughly.
His finger still squeezing off rounds, Correlli slowly turned and looked at him—or more accurately looked past him—eyes locked, unblinking. Through gritted teeth and gasping breath, he choked out the words, “OMEGA code received ... Colonel ... all other priorities ... rescinded.” Then almost instantaneously Correlli’s eyes cleared and he gave Thorsten a brief smile. He stood up amid the withering fire, projectiles shattering against his torn armor, and looked down at the incredulous Colonel.
“Don’t worry, sir,” he said peacefully. “A storm’s coming.”
Thorsten’s ears were suddenly assaulted by a thunderous roar from overhead, and Entropia’s sun was instantly blotted from the sky. A rush of wind filled the launch bay, and dirt and debris swirled around him to the stentorian resonance bouncing off the walls. His very core seemed to vibrate. Correlli had taken off again and was taking advantage of the distraction to inflict even more Triven casualties as their attention was drawn upward toward the darkness. Covering his ears barely made the din tolerable, forcing Thorsten to scrounge for some noise-cance
lling gear on the flight line. He found one of the half helmets worn by deck officers and immediately the world went quiet. Looking up, he saw the storm Correlli had so mysteriously told him was coming.
Tempest had arrived.
19
The unnatural darkness cast by Tempest’s hull was sundered by the technological equivalent of flaming hail and locusts. Beams and ballistics erupted from her ventral gunports, sending a lethal rain upon the remaining Triven and holing several of their prostrate dropships. Tempest lived up to her christened name. Yet it seemed a corridor through the devastating barrage protected the sprinting Correlli. Deadly flechettes landed to the right and left of him like angry stalactites thrown by a raging giant, while anti-personnel lasers scorched the ground with undecipherable hieroglyphics.
Thorsten watched his progress while continuing to snipe through the deluge of expended ordnance. His contribution seemed almost superfluous in the face of Tempest’s overwhelming firepower, but training and an urge for payback kept him squeezing off rounds. Through the silence of his headset, he slowed his breathing and focused on his targets. Suddenly his eye was jerked away from the targeting scope by an almost frantic Emerson Avery. He was looking intently over what remained of the protective blast shield and gesturing wildly.
“What are you doing here, son?!” he yelled. His voice was overwhelmed by the roar of Tempest’s thrusters fighting gravity, but the message got through. Emerson looked at him with wide eyes, then turned and pointed in Correlli’s direction.
“They’ve got Ashley! They’ve got Ashley!”
Thorsten followed the line of Emerson’s arm and saw a young girl dangling beneath one of the Triven automates. Correlli ran right past her, oblivious and unable to respond beyond his OMEGA code programming. Thorsten tried anyway, “Correlli, you’ve passed a civilian prisoner! I say again, turn to your six o’clock and free the civilian!”
Nothing.
“Lieutenant, that’s an order!” Static filled the tacnet, and still Correlli kept sprinting towards the last Triven dropship in the launch bay. Its thrusters were clearly powering up for liftoff and kicking up their own vortices of dust and debris. Thorsten looked back at Emerson, who looked like he was on the verge of going over the barrier himself.
“Stay here, son, and don’t move!” he shouted, gripping Emerson’s left shoulder. Emerson nodded, but quickly looked away toward Ashley’s rapidly diminishing form.
Thorsten blew his breath out, quickly reloaded, and leapt over what remained of the blast shield.
The volume of return fire had greatly diminished in the face of Tempest’s onslaught, but random energy blasts still crackled past his head. He zigzagged his way forward, trying to get a bead on the grotesque Triven automate escaping with one of his civilian charges. Rolling behind another jagged ridge of protective blast barrier, he popped up and placed a carefully aimed volley at the center of the thing. Its shields were strong enough to deflect the ballistics Thorsten threw at it so he thumbed the selector to particle beam and prepped for a second shot. A line of poisonous spikes embedded themselves parallel to his position and he was forced to take cover once again. He gritted his teeth, leaned around the right side of the barrier, and let off a highly charged beam of energy.
He missed. Cursing under his breath, he watched the charge indicator slowly creep back into the green. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emerson skitter between two massive chunks of ferrocrete.
“Emerson stay back!” Thorsten yelled hoarsely, trying to will the young man to stay put.
Emerson ignored him, leapfrogging to another blast barrier with a trail of deadly spikes following close behind.
Correlli ahead, Emerson behind, and me in the middle ... Thorsten weighed his options. The darkness over the bay lifted abruptly, and he looked up in time to see Tempest bank hard to port and begin to move off at speed. Her railguns were bared for action. They flared to life at some target he could not see, and all he knew was his perfect blanket of suppressing fire had just been taken away from him.
Swinging around to see if Correlli had reached his target, Thorsten felt a massive blow to his right shoulder. Before he could register what had just happened, he flew backwards, feet swinging out from underneath him, and travelled several meters through the air from the impact. His assault rifle leapt from his grasp and landed very close to Emerson, who stared at it as if it were alive. Emerson watched the Colonel land, bounce twice like a rag doll, then lie very still.
20
Emerson had emerged into a world he could not comprehend. Darkness, thundering sound, trembling earth, staccato flashes of multi-colored light, stinging vortices of debris, and then, as if through the eye of a tornado, he had seen Ashley. Captive, helpless, suspended and swinging like a pendulum, she seemed beyond his help. She was being torn out of his life by sinister and alien forces. Already he seemed to feel the hole in his heart growing with every nanosecond he saw her slipping away. Correlli had run right past her without even a second glance, and then the Colonel had gotten shot only a few meters from his position.
It came to him like a whisper, a still small voice in the middle of the cataclysm.
Do not be afraid. I am with you, even until the end of the age.
Peace descended on him like a shaft of light piercing the storm clouds, and he calmly reached out for the assault rifle on the ground before him and stood up. He felt its heft in his arms. The length of it was a little awkward for him, but he looked it down one side and then the other. The small computer interface on the rifle’s left side was by necessity simple and straightforward. It was already flashing a query: auto reload? Emerson hit ENABLE. Another query: auto targeting? He thumbed ENABLE again.
The eyepiece ring flashed a dull red and he heard the sounds of ammunition cycling into the firing chamber. Looking through the eyepiece, he followed the sighting instructions projected on the tiny screen: a small red arrow blinked in the direction of his first target. Swinging the unwieldy weapon in the direction indicated, he saw Ashley flash through his scope. The red arrow flashed up and the whole screen pulsed red as it locked onto the Triven automate carrying her. It was nearly through the dropship’s rear hatch, and the ship itself was already about a meter off the ground and preparing to rocket out of the launch bay.
Emerson squeezed the trigger. The report shocked his already damaged eardrums, and the rifle kicked up and back like nothing he had ever experienced. It rammed into his collarbone and nearly flew out of his hands. Quickly pulling it back down, he checked the small screen on the left side again: auto stabilize? Hitting ENABLE for the last time, Emerson sighted the automate again and pulled the trigger.
The rifle vibrated slightly in his embrace, but stayed put and tracked true. The automate’s shields flashed and flared under the ballistic assault, and he saw Ashley look straight at him through the rifle’s sight. He could see her mouth his name, but the ringing in his ears had returned and no sound reached him. The automate staggered briefly, nearly dropping her, then vented a short blast of propellant. It disappeared into the dropship, the rear hatch slammed shut, and in an instant she was gone.
The ship’s nose dipped slightly as it gained velocity, then it rose quickly into the sky like some malevolent bird of prey. Drive systems engaged, then it too was gone.
Emerson watched until it was nothing but a streak against the darkening sky.
Cancer had taken his mother. The war was devouring his father. Now the Triven had taken the closest friend he had ever known. He staggered back slightly, then began to tremble and shake as the adrenaline tide in his system ebbed away. The rifle slid slowly from his grasp, clattering to the ground for a second time. Emerson followed only seconds later, exhausted and spent. He was so tired, oblivious to even his father shaking him by the shoulders.
It was all too much, really, to expect from someone so young, and whose day was supposed to end with a backyard barbeque.
21
Everything after the events i
n the launch bay were a blur in Emerson’s mind. Sounds were still muffled, distant. Sedated and resting comfortably on a med bed, he was gently loaded onto his evacuation ship. It was still safely tucked away in its hangar and inspection revealed only superficial damage to its outer hull. He slipped in and out of consciousness, but knew his father was with him. He did remember holding his hand for a while, then seeing the stars in the viewport transform silently from pinpoints to streaks.
Ashley? Where is Ashley? Ash? The young Triven’s saurian features intruded briefly into his thoughts but quickly dissipated. Where are you, Ash? He finally descended into a fitful, dreamless sleep.
22
Colonel Thorsten lay unconscious in the med bed across from Emerson. Correlli had carried the man from the field of battle, set him down as gingerly as he could, and attended to his wound. Richard Avery continued to be amazed at the BLUE MONARCH’s seemingly endless strength and stamina despite his own injuries.
Cerulean Rising - Part I: Beginnings Page 6