Stepping gingerly over his prone teammates, Yen took one more opportunity to scan the area, marking the location of the nearest Terran soldier. The gunfire had fallen silent as the Terrans eagerly awaited their next target. Yen gave them credit for their patience, but mocked their ignorance, thinking they were safe around something as insubstantial as a metal wall. Extending his upper body just far enough to see down the hall, Yen jerked his arm forward. The psychic whip passed through his body with no effect, but launched forward, extending fifteen feet down the hall. The blue tendril struck the wall behind which one of the two Terrans was hiding and passed through it unobstructed. Protruding out the other side of the seemingly solid wall, the glowing blue tip of the tendril surprised the Terran soldier, who was unable to move as it passed undeterred through his armor and into his body. His nerves felt as though they had caught fire and boiling magma pumped through his veins. Screaming in agony, the Terran stumbled backward, exposing himself for the rest of Yen’s insertion team. Opening fire, rounds tore through the thick armor of the soldier. His body danced and jerked as more and more bullets penetrated his body before, in a heap of gore, he fell to the floor. The remaining Terran returned fire, though it seemed weak in comparison. Leaning back around the corner, the team hid safely away from the Terran’s barrage.
Yen’s temples pulsed, sending shockwaves of pain down his neck and radiating through his shoulders. Though the whip had been effective, he felt drained and struggled to maintain his control. As the pain washed over his forehead and took root in the deepest recesses of his brain, the blue tendril flickered before dissipating, as though caught in a strong wind. The dim glow it had offered disappeared and, gratefully, the pressure within Yen’s head eased.
Noticing the furrowed brow and beads of sweat forming on Yen’s brow, Adam approached from the back of the group. “Need me to take care of this last one?” he offered.
Without speaking and afraid to move his head more than a little, Yen nodded gently. He could feel the bile churning in his stomach and was more focused on suppressing his urge to vomit than eliminating the remaining Terran. Smiling, Adam tightened his grip on the top hand guards on his heavy machine gun before stepping around the corner.
Adam knew which alcove the Terran hid behind, though he was unable to see any exposed flesh, as he would have hoped. Moving slightly to his right, Adam knew that it barely mattered where the Terran hid. There was a reason he had brought so large a weapon. As he squeezed the trigger, the jerk of the first round leaving the barrel nearly drove Adam backward. Pressing down on the front grip to keep the barrel from rising too much, Adam poured hundreds of rounds per minute into the thick metal wall. Shreds of metal and the polymer beneath flew into the air, filling the space between Adam and the Terran with a haze of white snow and glistening metal flakes. The armor piercing rounds tore quickly through the remaining corner of the alcove before finding the softer flesh beneath. As a round finally pierced through the metal plating against which the Terran leaned, the wall panel jerked, as the round slammed into the soldier’s shoulder. Ripping through body armor, flesh, and bone alike, the wall beyond him was splashed with streaks of red as the Terran’s arm was nearly torn free of his body. His howls of pain were cut short as a second and third round struck him in the lower back. Shredding internal organs and soft skin, the large caliber rounds shattered the front plates of his body armor as the exiting bullets left massive, gaping holes in the Terran’s stomach. Gurgling softly, he looked down before a final round lifted him from his feet, throwing him head-first into the wall. Crumpling, the Terran slid to the ground without even so much as a twitch as his mind accepted the fact that he was now dead. With a gentle whir, Adam released the trigger, letting the glowing barrel cool in the softly recycled air of the Destroyer’s circulation system.
Yen, his headache receding despite the noise, looked down the hall at the destruction beyond. Blood and gore could be seen just beyond the sheet of falling debris. Large holes scored the wall beyond the decimated alcove. The bodies, or at least what remained of them, were strewn in awkward positions both on top and buried beneath the rubble. Shaking his head and rubbing his ear in an attempt to remove the ringing, Yen smirked.
“Well,” Yen conceded, “at least they know we’re here.”
“I was never much for stealth anyway,” Adam admitted, smiling to himself.
Yen turned to the rest of the team. “Check your ammunition and equipment. If you’re short, let someone know so we can cross-level supplies. Give me the thumbs up once you’re ready and we’ll move out.”
His own weapon still hung unused at his side, so Yen pulled free a magazine and handed it to one of his teammates. As the rest collected their gear – supplies they had dropped during the gun fight – Penchant approached Yen.
“I almost got myself shot, sir,” the Lithid admitted with what seemed almost a tinge of embarrassment. “You saved my life.”
“You’re right,” Yen replied, shutting off any hope of sympathy. Turning toward Penchant, he glared at the Lithid. Behind his dark eyes, Penchant swore he saw a flicker of soft blue light. “Which means you now owe me your life. If it ever comes down to it, I will expect to be able to collect on that debt.”
Though the Lithid was used to the traditional stern officers within the Infantry, something about Yen’s tone caught him off guard. Flinching, Penchant wanted to shrink away from the half-crazed psychic. Then, almost as quickly as it had appeared, the look in his eyes was gone and the soft smile returned.
“Alright team,” Yen called out as though nothing had happened. “Let’s get ready to move out.”
CHAPTER TEN
Her stomach twisted in knots, as Keryn watched the radar. Drumming her fingers on the console in front of her, Keryn tried to quell the rising nausea, an unfortunate side effect of her nervousness. Nothing would have made her happier than fighting alongside the team as they raided the Terran Destroyer. Instead, she was relegated to the Cair Ilmun, watching a screen of glowing blue dots signifying the members of the team. Her heart had stopped when she saw the two red dots appear on the screen, though they were quickly eliminated by Yen and his team. Frustrated, Keryn sank deeper into the pilot’s chair. The radar was a direct update recorded by some of the equipment the team was carrying. As it detected foreign contacts on the ship, Keryn’s screen updated. As a result, she often didn’t receive an update until the group was fully entrenched in a battle against the Terrans. It was like watching a sporting event two to three seconds after the action happened. She could hear the explosions and yells long before the radar showed her any danger. Though Keryn knew that wouldn’t always be the case, that the radar could detect enemies well in advance of the team engaging the Terrans in combat, it hadn’t been the case thus far.
Tracking their movements, Keryn had surmised that Yen was leading the team toward the engine room. She had smiled at his decision, taking his team far from the chaos that would surround the Destroyer’s bridge and control center. The infiltration team was comprised of some of the best Keryn had come across. They were hardly glory-hounds, and the thought of charging the bridge in a suicidal attempt at martyrdom hardly appealed to the team. The way they were moving now allowed them to do the most damage possible while engaging the fewest Terrans. Yen was smart, and Keryn felt a swell of pride in her chest knowing that they stood a good chance of survival under his leadership.
On the console’s screen, the radar image flickered briefly. Her brow furrowing, Keryn leaned forward and watched the monitor closely. Again, for the briefest moment, the image wavered. Slamming her palm into the side of the console, she expended the extent of her technical proficiency. Beyond that, there wouldn’t be much she could do to fix the malfunctioning console. To her dismay, the flickering continued, picking up a quicker pace as it continued to waver unsteadily.
Frowning, Keryn reached to her throat and activated her microphone. “Yen, this is Keryn. Do you copy?”
A fine veil of static w
as all the radio offered in response. Her frown deepening, she spoke again. “Yen, this is Keryn. Are you there?”
“Keryn, this…” Yen answered, though his voice was distant and faint even over the radio. Between the clearly understood words, the rest were obscured by a rain of static. “…moving toward… contact soon…”
The console wasn’t malfunctioning, Keryn realized. The signal was being broadcast from the team itself. The further into the Destroyer they ventured, the more interference the signal received. Much like the broken radio signal, the radar was only working intermittently as the steadily rarer signals broke through the external disturbances and slipped through the heavy metal plating surrounding the hull of the Terran ship.
“Great,” Keryn muttered. “Not only was I left behind, but now I can’t contact them even if I wanted to.” Nothing frustrated Keryn more than feeling helpless. Stuck on board the Cair Ilmun, receiving only sparse radar and radio updates, she could do little more than wait and hope that Yen came out okay.
That was what truly bothered her, Keryn realized. It wasn’t that she wasn’t involved in the combat, though she would gladly take that opportunity should it arise. What bothered her was that she was trained to be a warrior. Both in her school training as she grew up and during her time at the Fleet Academy, she had learned to rely on others and support them in times of danger. Now, when someone she cared about was thrust into danger, she wasn’t there to help. Should they run into trouble, Keryn could do little other than fly away, firing her meager weapons toward the thick hull of the Destroyer. Slamming her fist onto the console, she cursed loudly to herself, her voice echoing through the cockpit.
Moving her hand aside, Keryn saw the blue dots held in a state of suspended animation as she waited for the next update to arrive. The signals from the radar that did slip through the hull were frozen moments in time, no longer displayed as an up to date real time analysis. As she watched, the screen flickered again as another signal burst was uploaded to her computer system. Keryn exclaimed as the blue dots ceased to be the only images on the screen. Hugging the north end of the screen, in the direction that the team had been moving, nearly a dozen red dots had appeared. More disturbing to Keryn was the image that appeared between the Cair Ilmun and the boarding team. Doing a quick mental count as the image shifted again, Keryn counted over thirty red dots, signifying Terran soldiers, moving into a flanking position behind Yen’s team. She reached so quickly to the microphone at her throat that she had to cough roughly from the trauma to her neck as she violently pressed the microphone activation button.
“Yen, this is Keryn!” she yelled anxiously into the microphone. “Yen, come in!”
She waited, but the only response was the white noise of building static. Either they had moved too far away to get a clear signal or they were too engaged in a battle to answer the radio. Either way, they had no way to know that they were in trouble.
You could warn them, the Voice offered.
“The hull is blocking the signal,” Keryn said out loud, her voice sounding fretful in the empty cockpit.
The hull is. But there isn’t a hull in your way if you go onto the Destroyer.
Keryn’s eyes drifted back to the sealed hatch just inside the crew compartment. The boarding tube was still attached and granted access inside the Destroyer. The radar hadn’t shown any signals close by yet, which meant she would have time to warn Yen before they triangulated her signal and began moving in her direction. It could be done, but she’d have to move now.
With little more than a thought, Keryn leapt from the pilot’s chair and rushed back to the hatch. Flipping the locking switches to the side, she pulled back on the large door. As the hatch finally opened and locked into the upright position, Keryn was able to peer into the darkness beyond the flexible tube keeping the Cair Ilmun attached like a parasite to the Terran ship. She knew that the radar could have been wrong. The Terrans could be waiting in the dark room below, ready to ambush her as she recovered from disorientation after dropping into their artificial gravity. Still, the ache in her chest reminded her that Yen was in trouble. With only the briefest pause to pull her pistol, Keryn stepped over the ledge and dropped into the hole.
As she became weightless, her braid of silver hair floated behind her as she dropped. The change from gravity to weightlessness was disorienting, as though she had plunged from a dock and was now submerged in frigid water. For a moment, she struggled to take a breath as she was overwhelmed by the sensation of drowning. As quickly as the feeling began, however, it disappeared as her lower half entered the Terran’s atmosphere. The artificial gravity within the Destroyer yanked her downward, where she fell and took her first full gulp of breath. As her heart slowed its erratic beating, she keyed the microphone.
“Yen,” she whispered, fearful of disrupting the still silence around her. “This is Keryn, do you copy?”
The reply was more than the harsh static she had been hearing. His reply, though still broken, was also punctuated by sporadic gunfire. “… read you,” Yen yelled over the radio. “…busy… now.”
Frustrated, Keryn moved into the hall, trying to get a better reception. With the Cair Ilmun unguarded, she didn’t want to wander too far for fear of it being destroyed or, worse, boarded by Terrans. Still, her priority remained warning Yen and the rest of his team of the danger maneuvering behind them. She moved stealthily down the silver-walled hallway, slipping from alcove to alcove as she headed deeper into the heart of the Destroyer.
“Yen, do you read me?” Keryn tried again over the microphone.
This time, his reply was only slightly distorted, though she could sense the irritation in his voice. “I read you, Keryn, but we’re a little busy right now. I don’t really have time to talk…” The rest of his sentence was drowned out by nearby gunfire. “We’ve run into some stiff resistance.”
“I know, damn it!” Keryn yelled, her own irritation growing. “But you’ve got more heading your way!”
“Say again?” Yen replied, his voice finally reaching some semblance of clarity.
“There are nearly thirty Terran soldiers moving around to flank you while you’re busy with the group in front of you. You need to get your team out of there now.”
There was a pause over the radio; a nerve-wracking silence that stretched longer than Keryn would have liked. She hoped she hadn’t waited too long before notifying Yen. Finally, to her relief, he replied. “How long do we have?” Keryn noted a gratifying lack of weapons fire in the background.
“A few minutes,” she answered as she approached a hallway intersecting the passage she moved down. “Maybe less depending –“
She was interrupted as two Terrans stepped around the corner, as surprised to see her as she was to see them. Their weapons still hung at their side as both sides stared at one another.
“Keryn,” Yen’s worrisome voice called over her radio. “Are you there? Are you okay?”
In a surprisingly calm voice, Keryn replied. “I’ll be with you in a second.”
As the front most Terran began to raise his weapon, Keryn lashed out with the pistol in her hand, stabbing forward with the barrel as though it were a knife. The heavy barrel struck him between the upper plates on his body armor and the visor on his helmet. She felt the muscles in his neck tighten as he exhaled loudly and began gasping for breath. The Terran’s eyes widened as he noticed the calm, calculated look in Keryn’s eyes as she squeezed the trigger. Leaving the barrel at point blank range, the bullet tore into the soldier’s neck, shredding through muscle and trachea. It passed unabashed through his carotid artery before ripping out the back of his neck, only barely missing his spine. Gurgling as blood poured into his crushed throat, the Terran clutched in a steadily weakening attempt to stop the jet of blood that smeared across the silver wall.
Before the front Terran could collapse to his knees, Keryn launched a roundhouse kick that knocked aside the second soldier’s rifle, jarring it free from his hands. Disarmed
, he reached forward, his thick hands closing around her neck. Shifting her weight backward, she drove the heel of her left foot into the Terran’s kneecap. With a satisfying snap, she heard the bone break. Howling, the Terran dropped to his knees, his leg no longer able to support his weight. Keryn broke free of his grip and leapt in the air, bringing her heel around in a spinning kick that landed solidly on the Terrans plastic visor. As it shattered, shards of the visor flew into the Terran’s eyes and bit into his flesh. Keryn watched him only momentarily, reveling in the blood seeping from his ruined face and running between his fingers, before drawing her knife and driving it into his chest. Twitching once, the Terran laid still. She didn’t have to bother turning toward the other soldier. His destroyed windpipe had allowed blood to pool in the depths of his lungs. The amount of blood that had poured from his body coated the ground, leaving it tacky. Looking down, Keryn wasn’t sure if the soldier had asphyxiated before dying of blood loss. In the end, his means of death mattered little.
Leaning down, Keryn rolled the bloody Terran over so she could see his face. A deep seeded curiosity filled her as she knelt beside his body, running her hand over his strong features. Though she had spent enough time around Adam, her former roommate Iana, and the other Pilgrims onboard the Revolution to not be surprised by the appearance of the Terran soldier, it felt different to stare into the face of an enemy. She had never seen a Terran so close before, though she had heard more than her fair share of stories of the atrocities they committed during the Great War. She couldn’t help but associate the ideal of the Empire with violence and aggression. Growing up, the Terran Empire was the antagonist in all her childhood bedtime stories. But the face before her didn’t seem as demonic as the stories had always described. In his death, the Terran almost looked at peace.
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