by Paul Tassi
“You’re using the old core to run this thing?”
Alpha nodded.
“It was the only power source that was capable of supporting its tremendous energy needs.”
Lucas was amazed.
“But that was powering this entire ship, and you have all that crammed into one suit?”
“Correct. As such, it should be a powerful weapon in the coming fight.”
Alpha reached up to a section on the back that was almost entirely encased in the durable black alloy that made up much of their own plating.
“There is another item to show you,” Alpha said as he pressed a button and the panel swung open. Lucas and Asha’s eyes widened in surprise.
There sat Noah, clutching his holoball. He smiled when he saw them.
“You . . . you’re putting Noah in here? You’ve got to be joking,” Asha said.
“I know it may appear to be unsafe, but I specifically designed this compartment with his protection in mind. Believe me when I say that it is the most secure location on the ship.”
Lucas was unconvinced.
“He’ll be in the heat of battle! Can’t we just hide him somewhere?”
Alpha shook his head.
“They will be able to find him, and there is always a chance that his location may become depressurized during conflict.”
Noah kicked his feet wildly.
“Ah-fa! Ah-fa!”
“This compartment is reinforced with a layer of protection as thick as our ship’s hull. It could withstand an antimatter bomb. He will be safe, I assure you. For at least as long as we are alive.”
Lucas looked up at the colossus in front of him. Maybe he was right. What use was there in hiding Noah if they all were killed anyway? They might as well tie his fate directly to their own, and being fixed inside an impenetrable cocoon was probably the most ideal place to be.
Alpha left the mech standing where it was and walked over to the captain’s chair. There would be no need for a turret gunner. No reason to spool the white null core up for another jump. As such, the three of them remained in the CIC as Alpha took the controls. The blue-green glow waved hazily in front of them.
“Are you both prepared for what is to come?” Alpha said as the neural connections took hold of his temples.
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Lucas replied.
A million stars greeted them as the ship decelerated out of the tunnel. Unfamiliar constellations appeared before Lucas’s eyes, and in the middle, one star shone more brightly than the rest. The central sun of the Soran system was a distant beacon at this range.
Alpha was not stopping to admire the scenery. He immediately dialed up the speed as high as he could muster. The ship took a fair amount of time to reach its top velocity, which Lucas had learned from the Sentinel chase back in Earth’s system.
It seemed Alpha was hoping he was wrong. Perhaps his calculations had been off. Perhaps if they just flew fast enough, they’d reach Soran-controlled space before Omicron showed up.
The crew waited in silence. A minute passed. Then two. Lucas felt hope beginning to creep into his mind. Could they really outrun Omicron? Had all their worry and training been for nothing?
His gaze was captured by the large pale-green planet they were approaching. It had two rings and its surface swirled with gaseous storms. It was unlike any body Lucas had seen before. He wondered what the Sorans had named it.
The planet became enormous. Lucas kept his eyes fixed on it as Alpha barreled straight ahead. Briefly, he caught a glimmer of something that didn’t look like gas movement. A miniscule shimmer that shouldn’t have been there. And then, from the same spot, three bright blue lights began to glow.
“Alpha!” he cried, but as he did so, the lights fired. A pulse blast rocketed toward the ship. When it struck, every light went out, and Lucas and Asha were pitched off their feet from the impact while Alpha remained in the chair.
As they picked themselves up, the lights came back on one by one. Lucas looked out of the viewscreen and saw that they were now floating through space, their engines having been knocked out and their desperate race interrupted by the blast. The stars drifted lazily around, and the green glow of the nearby planet blanketed the room. Straight ahead, there was a void in the stars. A void growing ever larger.
“He has arrived,” Alpha said solemnly. The hope of escape was gone. Alpha’s prediction had been proven true and Omicron’s invisible ship loomed ahead of them.
Alpha flew out of the chair as the neural connectors snapped off from his temples with an audible crack. He raced over to the holotable and whirled through screen after screen, muttering to himself.
“Engines disabled, airlocks disabled, hull intact, life support online.”
He turned to them with a conclusion.
“We will be boarded.”
As he spoke the words, a loud clang reverberated through the ship. There was no confirmation from Alpha, but Lucas was sure that Omicron’s vessel had now attached itself to their own in some way.
The viewscreen flickered and changed from hazy stars to a familiar, imposing sight. Omicron’s dark face and blue eyes appeared before them. Alpha stepped away from the holotable and approached the front of the room. Omicron snarled something in Xalan.
“What’s he saying?” Asha asked.
Alpha continued to listen to his grunts. He flipped a switch on his translator, and it began broadcasting what Omicron was saying through the holotable behind them. It wasn’t reading his brainwaves from this distance, but the language was indeed being translated into understandable English.
“Greetings, lost child. It seems I have found you at last.”
Alpha growled back.
“I am no child of yours.”
“And yet you have no father.”
“Only because of your actions.”
Omicron sneered.
“Your clan was killed in a raid, as you have been informed.”
“A raid orchestrated by whom? And all surviving members were eliminated? An unlikely scenario, considering many are spread across the planet.”
“No matter the cause, your services are required on Xala. Your past transgressions have been forgiven. From your cowardice during Earth campaign to your destruction of the [garbled] station, where you slaughtered thousands of your brethren with the aid of . . . Sorans.”
His voice carried a tone of very obvious disgust as he motioned with his claw to Lucas and Asha, standing beside Alpha staring up at the screen. He let out a loud roar that shook the walls.
“And you dare lecture me about the death of your traitorous clan?”
“So you admit your misdeed?”
Omicron threw up his claw dismissively.
“What of it? Your father disobeyed an explicit directive and compromised the security of the entire war effort. He made the foolish mistake of trusting your brothers with his findings, and as such your entire clan was deemed a threat, no matter their scientific value.”
“Then why spare me? Why not obliterate this ship when you had the opportunity?”
“Study of your genes has shown that you will develop into a formidable mind. It would be unfortunate if we were not able to come to an arrangement for you to continue your work on Xala, as your clan has for generations, producing some of our finest technology.”
“Until you wiped them out.”
“It was necessary for the preservation of our species.”
“What did my father find?”
“If you learned that information, we would be forced to execute you as well, no matter your inherent worth to the cause. We trust that you will see the error of your clan’s ways, and give up this foolish pursuit of refuge on Sora.”
Omicron leaned forward and continued.
“For someone with such a high intelligence quotient, you appear to be a fool. Do you really think the Sorans will welcome you?”
Alpha stood defiantly, his claws clutched into fists.
“
I offer knowledge, far beyond what they possess. I bring with me humans, Sorans from another world. They think themselves alone in the universe. They will embrace us.”
Omicron shook his head.
“You know nothing of the cruelty of the Sorans. You think you understand this conflict. You think our regime corrupt and barbaric. You are too similar to your father. And if you do not submit, you will meet the same fate.”
“You merely prove yourself the barbarian,” Alpha replied.
Omicron leaned away.
“Further debate would appear to be useless, as it is apparent you have made your choice. You will return to Xala. Your ill-chosen companions will be destroyed. My men are already onboard.”
The screen cut to black, and Alpha raced over to the holotable.
“They’re here already?”
Alpha scrambled through monitor after monitor, but they were all deactivated.
“They disabled all of our sensors. I thought we would have more warning.”
He shut down the console.
“We must depart, immediately.”
Alpha walked over to his suit and crawled inside. The metal plates shifted and engulfed him.
“To Point A?” Lucas asked, remembering their plan.
“Yes,” Alpha said from inside the mech. “Let us hope we are not too late.”
In making preparations for the coming battle, Alpha predicted Omicron’s troops would be drawn to the stasis room first, where eleven humans were suspended in tanks. The Xalans’ equipment would merely detect the life-forms, not the fact they were brain-dead, and as such, they might deem the chamber a haven for a secret collection of stowaways that needed to be exterminated.
The elevator had been rendered offline, but was likely too slow for their purposes anyway. Instead, in preparation for the battle, they’d already cut large holes in the hallway floors, allowing for easy, fast access between levels. The three of them reached the first opening outside the CIC and Alpha’s thundering metal suit dove straight into it. A loud, jarring clank from below indicated he’d landed. Lucas and Asha affixed their helmets while they ran toward the opening. They leapt into it without a moment’s hesitation, an action they’d practiced repeatedly these past few weeks. The fifteen-foot drop was a breeze since their armored suits absorbed the impact. One more drop and they were in the laboratory hallway.
This time, all three of them landed at the same time, their collective weight making a crater in the metal floor. As they looked up, they saw Omicron’s troops for the first time. There were five of them at the end of the hall, two busy cutting through the door to the stasis room while the rest stood guard.
There was no look of surprise on their faces, as each wore menacing helmets that engulfed their entire heads. Their dark armor covered every inch of them. Far from the chunkiness of their own suits, the troops’ plating was sleek and streamlined. Lucas recognized the Xalan symbol for “paragon” emblazoned on their breastplate. These soldiers were not the clumsy misfits that guarded the fuel station. Alpha had warned them, but to see them now sent unwanted chills up Lucas’s spine.
In an instant, the hallway erupted with gunfire. The enclosed space was a nightmare for engagement, but Alpha’s giant mech suit was able to act as a shield for them. It lumbered toward the soldiers, taking shots from their energy rifles as Lucas and Asha fired their own weapons from underneath each of its arms.
They were fast. Very fast. They dodged plasma rounds and fisson bullets alike, and in seconds the back wall had been blasted through to the hull, which was the only thing keeping them from blowing a hole in the ship with their fire.
A blast from Alpha’s arm cannon finally caused one of them to stagger. Lucas managed to catch him with a spray of plasma from Natalie’s full-auto mode, and the rounds ate through his suit like acid.
Just as soon as he started mentally celebrating, a round caught him square in the chest. He flew backward onto the ground, and looked down to see a smoking dent in his black alloy breastplate. He winced in pain, but staggered to his feet to rejoin the fight. Asha took a grazing round to her left arm, and it cut through the armor all the way to the skin.
But the soldiers were ultimately cornered. As the trio moved closer, there began to be less time and space to dodge blasts. Alpha caught one of them directly in the chest, the explosive round disintegrating him on the spot. Asha managed to hit the leg of a soldier attempting to dive out of the way, and the fission bullet caused his leg to detach at the knee. Even over the sounds of constant fire, Lucas could hear him screaming on the ground.
Asha ducked as a stream of rounds went over her head. Lucas flipped a switch and Natalie’s barrel extended. Thermal vision cut through the smoke and he targeted the white shapes ahead. A single piercing round went through the right soldier’s helmet, and black blood sprayed out the back of his head.
The last soldier pulled his rifle’s trigger only to find it broken—Asha had grazed it with a round—and he dropped it to whip out an energy pistol instead. They were less than twenty feet away now, and Lucas was amazed at the soldier that stood before him. Even in the face of certain death, he fired away at them, praying he’d connect with a shot. Such courage.
Lucas spun out from behind the armored Alpha and blew him apart with a shotgun blast. The noise was even more defeating than in test fire mode.
Alpha examined the door that stood next to the pile of corpses reeking of cooked flesh. A few seconds longer and they might have cut through the door entirely, but it remained intact with no piercing damage. Lucas thought he heard Noah giggle from inside Alpha’s rear compartment.
“Back to command,” Alpha ordered, and they began sprinting down the hallway where they’d just come from.
Lucas held up his hand to stop them. He checked a readout on his suit, a motion sensor. He slowly pointed upward toward the hole they’d come through, a few yards ahead. The quiet shifting of metal could be heard above.
Aiming Natalie upward, Lucas activated his “X” scope. Above them, he could see through the ceiling where another squad of six or seven skeletal soldiers hovered around the hole, waiting for them to climb back up.
Lucas flipped a switch. His barrel shortened and widened. He signaled to Asha and Alpha who nodded. Three. Two. One.
He blasted the ceiling just to the right of the hole. Four Xalans tumbled down to the hallway floor. Alpha immediately crushed one’s head with his massive metal foot while Asha celebrated a chance to use her dearly beloved blade. As promised, it tore through the soldiers who were struggling to reach their feet. In an instant, the three of them were in pieces, black blood spatter coating the walls and their own suits.
Asha suddenly looked up and raised her sword. It blocked the first shot from the soldiers that remained above, but the second and third caught her in the chest and she rocketed backward into Alpha’s mech. Lucas sprayed a stream of rounds at their knees. They dodged the barrage, except for one of them who staggered and fell through the hole. Lucas leapt on him immediately and jammed his knife through the metal mask. Blood pooled out around him and joined that of his comrades on the floor.
Alpha discharged his cannon arm and the final soldier was obliterated as more of the ceiling came down around them. Lucas ran over to check on Asha, who was writhing on the ground. He pulled off his helmet and removed hers as well.
“Where are you hit?” he asked frantically.
She gasped for breath.
“First one . . . hit plate. Second . . . shoulder. Ow.”
Lucas now saw the smoking hole near her right collarbone. He searched for the release on her chestplate, and once he found it, peeled the entire apparatus off. Underneath, she was wearing a pressurized black bodysuit, as they all were. It was an organic material meant to seal itself after damage, stopping blood from exiting wounds, among other uses. Quickly, Lucas reached into his own suit and pulled out Alpha’s medical cauterizing tool. He cut open the resealed suit with his knife and sprayed the gel into her wound.
She winced as it hissed and steamed. Soon however, the bleeding stopped, a fresh layer of faux skin began to form over the wound, and the organic material mended itself from the knife slit. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“That’ll do,” she said as she picked up her chestplate and reattached it over her torso. Lucas helped her to her feet and both put their helmets back on.
Alpha’s mech doubled as a ladder to the next level. He extended his metal clawed arm above his head, and Asha and Lucas were able to scramble up the suit to the barracks level. Alpha gripped the edge of the destroyed floor with his claw and hoisted himself up with boost from his mechanized legs.
They executed the same maneuver to reach the command level, but as Alpha landed, they saw another contingent of soldiers rounding the corner from an airlock tunnel. This time they were a dozen deep and sprinted toward them in formation. Those in front had some sort of large metal shields in place that deflected incoming shots.
“Retreat to command!” Alpha yelled from inside the mech. Lucas and Asha sprinted toward the door as Alpha provided cover. Then he too turned and bounded toward the entryway.
They slid inside and Lucas closed and sealed the door behind them. Soon after, he began to hear the sounds of metal being cut. They’d come prepared.
“What happened to the traps, Alpha?” Lucas asked, still regaining his composure from the recent engagement. “Those airlock entrances were supposed to blow.”
They’d rigged a series of explosives on each of the external entrances using a combination of the human grenades and mines they had left over from Norway and a few of Alpha’s own creation.
“It appears they either disabled the devices, or were simply unaffected by them.”
Lucas suspected that soldiers this well-trained knew how to spot a booby trap, but he was disappointed they hadn’t worked. But not everything could go according to plan, could it? The real plan was to not die, and that was working so far. Now, they were the ones who were trapped. The second doorway leading into the room began to emit similar sounds of metal being shorn. Behind them, the viewscreen had been covered by a large solid shield to prevent it from being shattered in a possible firefight.