Rebirth (Rebel Wars Book 2)

by Michael Andrews

“Everyone keeps saying that. Look I’ll consider it but there’s a good chance I won’t even make it off this planet alive, so let’s just do what we came to do. We’re losing time.” Alice said and motioned for everyone to get out of her way. She managed to stand and found the mechanical parts were working well enough. All of her systems readings still pointed to damage, but it was less than it was before and the power had been restored to her emitter system; at least a fraction of it. She figured she’d have two maybe three decent shots before the battery drained. She remembered she’d have to keep that in mind as her normal charging systems weren’t working right after her fight with Azhulhand. He had been faster than she had anticipated and stronger too, his armor was much more than Alice had been expecting to deal with. She hoped the grenade had ended up, but she didn’t have much faith in that.

  The group took what weapons they could scavenge from the battlefield, Alice opting to wield not one, but two of the massive gatling-like guns she’d taken from the personal guard of Azhulhand. Much of the equipment had been destroyed in the fire-bombing, a personal gift from Reinholdt she guessed, but the two large guns had somehow survived. She didn’t care how, only that they had and they’d been able to pilfer ammunition from one of them that had fallen into the ruins. Lisa had been outfitted with a couple of scraps of armor that they’d taken from various sources. She wore a chest piece that was taken from Isaacs and the only helm that fit her came from Starborn, and even then it was a bit too big. It was enough to keep her safe and that was the important part. As usual, Jin wore very little save for a few scraps of clothing and no armor. He smiled when they asked and said that the planet was his armor and he feared not the weapons of sinners.

  Markus and Eric brought up the rear with Fiora. Fiora was quiet, more so than usual and it made Alice suspicious of what had happened to her here. She said she had broken her leg and the metal had shred the bone from impact, and yet she was able to walk. Fiora had informed the group that the planet had a funny way of thanking them by infecting their wounds with a nasty bacteria, but it could be beaten thanks to the medical training by Jin. Of course he had refused the compliment and said to thank the sinners as they were the ones who created the medicine. The group moved down through a series of overgrown tunnels, fungi and thick roots of trees filled the dusty hallways. It was interesting to both Alice and Lisa, it seemed that the society of the Cydrakians had taken a huge step backwards. The remnants of microchips and other technology was all around them and yet they had only a vague understanding of what they were capable of. At first Alice had assumed their lack of space travel and more advanced weaponry was due to a different philosophy in scientific creation and advancement, but it became clear that whatever had happened with the Unchangeable had set them back millennia.

  The lamps ceased to work here, the forward team of Alice and Jin didn’t need them to see anyways but the rest of the crew turned on their light sources and flooded the passageway with artificial luminance. The tension was thick and electrical as the group hurried through the broken floors and cavernous passageways. The conclusion was that the group would be able to beat the Corporation there, but only by a slim margin and only if the Corporation continued to burn the forest out of their way. Jin had communicated with the matriarch to send what remained of their battle-ready beasts and soldiers to engage the Corporation to slow them down. If Alice was right, then getting the seed and getting off world was their only chance of drawing the Corporation away. Alice wasn’t sure just how they were going to get off world yet and Lisa hadn’t been able to come up with anything. She reasoned that the Commander would have a ship down here, but she could be wrong. These two Commanders seemed different than the Demon and were far better at their jobs. Alice had been able to assassinate the former with little difficulty, and even Fiora and a fledging squad of Paladins had no issue in helping her.

  Markus seemed on edge, jumping at every possible motion from rodents and insects to his own teammates. The man’s heartrate was spiking out of control every few minutes and Alice was positive they were about to make a return trip without him. He had picked up an EM rifle from one of the soldiers and had reloaded it with the remaining half-portion of ammunition that remained. Alice was glad that he wasn’t reliant on nothing more than his sword, as this wasn’t the time or place to be fancy. Fancy plans worked in open battle from time to time, but this was urgent and sometimes the simplest plan of “shoot first” was the only viable option. Eric was quiet and steady, his pulse shifting rarely and in his hands was Starborn’s long-shot rifle. The idea of using a scoped, distance ready rifle wasn’t ideal in such close quarters but the main chamber hadn’t been explored in so long that the intelligence was incomplete on what kind of structure they would be engaging in. It never hurt she supposed to have a combustion powered sniper rifle backing them up.

  The tunnels opened up after miles of jogging and revealed line after line of magnetic railing. Alice confirmed with herself that she had to be correct, magnetic railing wasn’t something that was created over-night and then abandoned. This high level technology was destroyed and lost in the events that occurred on this world, and Alice was going to have to inform President Tate that this planet could be brought up to speed with little effort. Alice knew Tate would still have to write the terms of their allegiance, but she’d definitely done her part in showing them that the humans could help them. The forests may be burnt and the beast-men may be lying in their own blood, but they’d given the Corporation what they had gotten and much more. Alice was running numbers on what it would be like to have a squad of humans and Cydrakians working together and the efficiency rate was surprising, even to her. Such a ferocious combination of metal and claw that it would hard for the Corporation to develop a counter strategy.

  Sitting on the rails was a husk of a train, a burnt and broken white-metal shell that listed to the side. Alice went to work, her and Jin ripping off the metal and plastic where they could and forming a set of seats that would hold all of them. Lisa and Masters went to work- Masters opening the compartment for the train’s engine and Lisa on the console. The power suppliers for the train system and in fact the entire corridor was off, but Lisa siphoned power from a small battery to turn on the console long enough to find the power supplies. There was massive amounts of power still stored down here and it amazed Lisa that it had been left dormant for so long.

  “Alice the tech down here is really advanced. For over a hundred years these batteries have kept power and lost less than 3% of their payload. In fact… I can turn this whole place on.” She said, flicking a switch and watching as the connection from her remote battery to the console dropped. The lights flipped on, an intense flood of white fluorescent beams. Jin nodded in approval and Masters shut the compartment to the engine. It wasn’t really an engine, but more like a computer that connected with the rails and provided navigation as the trains didn’t run on a single rail but could switch through different passageways that ran below the planet’s surface. Jin cautioned that the computer wouldn’t know where the rails were going due to the changes they’ve made to the planet’s surface. Lisa only shook her head. “No, it won’t matter. I can’t explain it, but it seems as if these tunnels are unchanged.”

  The crew loaded into the open-aired train cart and prepared themselves for the journey. Lisa opened up the console once more and punched in the destination, using an old map and Jin’s eyes to find the appropriate network of tunnels. Jin seemed to be more impressed with her with everything that she did, and Lisa didn’t mind the attention though Masters always had something more engaging to say to the young beauty. Eric and Markus exchanged glances and a few words here and there, and Alice detected a sense of hostility coming from them. She couldn’t focus her hearing to listen in, something within the acoustics of the hall was playing having with her audio sensory suite. Alice hoisted the heavy rapid-fire cannons onto her forearms and sat towards the front of the make-shift cart, Eric taking a position to her left and settin
g the launcher that Isaacs had been using at the front. They were prepared to smash through any barrier or enemies that got in their way, for the fate of the universe may actually depend on the small warband’s success.

  Chapter 10

  Azhulhand had Alice dead to rights. The inferno engine within his apparatus had sped up his motion through space by lowering friction and giving him impossible strength in speed as long as he kept up the assault. The problem was that the increased speed and kinetic exchange had turned him a little too far off the ground, so his descent was going to be uncontrolled. That was fine, when the blade hit Alice it would vaporize her metallic head and crush her. At least, that’s what Azhulhand had figured would happen. He was a bit disappointed when he’d discovered that she was made of metal and not flesh and blood, though Reinholdt had gathered enough information to warn him of that possibility. What he had not been disappointed in was the fact that what should give her an unfair advantage had been useless against his raw power and skill. She had attempted basic defensive techniques and he’d countered all of them drawing first blood from her and going in for the kill. His eyes grew wide as he was seconds from skewering the Tower’s champion and ending a portion of the war right here, claiming his Blood Hunt trophy and a piece of history.

  His eyes widened as he watched her slip so narrowly from his blade’s trajectory and leave in her wake a black metal sphere. Without being overly familiar with the weaponry of humans it didn’t take a genius to understand what was about to happen, and his speed had reached too much momentum and nothing he could do would alter his course. The blade tip pierced into the grenade and set off its firing mechanism, blasting the forest with concussive energy. Azhulhand hit the wave with great force, his own kinetic energy bleeding off as the concussion smashed him backwards and flipping him upside down. The apparatus didn’t understand what was happening as it was simply a construction of the Corporation and incapable of such things, but it did know to react as it had been doing. Azhulhand’s mind swam from the force of the impact and didn’t think to turn the armor off as it increased his momentum and channeled the energy straight downwards. Azhulhand rocketed through the forest canopy and into the sky.

  The Commander managed to keep his grip on the sword and punch the command to shut off the apparatus at the same time. The energy was immediately dispersed in a kinetic field around him that stopped his motion completely, suspending him in air for a short second in time. He turned on the apparatus again and regained his composure, floating in mid-air with his temper getting the best of him. He cursed and shouted those curses for all to hear.

  “REINHOLDT! Clear this damned forest! You hear me? I want firebombs and strafing runs. Send every drone and pilot you have down here. Light this place up! I’m going back!” He started to make his way down when Reinholdt brought reason to him.

  “One or the other Azhulhand. You can either let me soak the place in fire, or go back. I can’t execute an order that kills you.” Reinholdt said through their communique. The Fleet Commander was right Azhulhand supposed and thought about it for a moment.

  “Fine. Turn this place to ash. Order my barge in, I know where they are heading and I’ll need my ship. Also, send me a resupply of my personal guard and another squad. I want this forest a sea of black by the time I’m ready, I don’t have time to be picking their location through the greenery.” Azhulhand said to his friend, though his words were treating the Fleet Commander as if he were a subordinate.

  “Understood, your barge is on its way. I will continue to play support as long as I am able, but I warn you that we are having some trouble with the prisoners from the human ship. Somehow they’ve managed to get out of the brig and are working their way through the ship. We’ve cornered them, but…”

  “Yes, yes. That’s fine Reinholdt. Azhulhand out.” He said, thinking back on what Reinholdt had just said and deciding it didn’t make any sense to him. He hadn’t been listening, all he could think about was cornering that metal woman and defeating her. He was enraged that he had been beaten by such a cheap and clever trick. He floated off to the horizon and heard the sounds of his missile-barge entering the atmosphere, he picked a spot in the near-by mountain range to meet with the vessel. He had much work to do, and he wasn’t going to let them off easy.

  Reinholdt was vexed. As usual the oaf of a Corporation Commander he considered his best friend had not listened to him. He had ignored the fact that there was a problem outside of his normal expertise and hadn’t offered him any solutions. He let out a loud and heavy sigh of frustration, punching in the Commander’s orders into his console and watching the results occur with no hesitation. The men on the ship were eager to get going, to move down to the planet’s surface and engage with an enemy they hadn’t been fighting every day for a decade. He was glad they were excited, he was not. His security team had somehow missed it when one of their prisoners had managed to slip a keycard off the guard and now he had not only one of the most irritating criminals in the Glaive’s history loose, but a whole bunch of pissed off humans.

  Milor Rinot was a pain the ass and had been when he first arrived aboard the Glaive. The man was a pilot of decent skill who liked to gamble with partially loaded weapons and place them against his own temple. Such destructive games was not what lead to his imprisonment, what had brought him to the brig was the fact that others didn’t like losing. When they lost the bets against him they had decided he was cheating, and he had decided that he didn’t want them to kill him. So he shot every single one of them dead. The internal alarms had notified them immediately that shots had been fired and though the precision of Milor was such that they were never in any danger, the six dead men at his feet was enough reason to imprison him. For four years he was locked in the brig aboard the Glaive and every opportunity to transfer him to a more appropriate prison was denied by HQ. The reasoning was that he was capable of being reformed and that soldiers in time of war often behaved that way. The ‘boys will be boys’ defense.

  His constant disobedience to commands and penchant for gambling were shadowed only be his fast temper and desire to end arguments with fists over words. The man was shorter than most Corporation men and Reinholdt assumed that played a role in his attitude being so poor. Now his security team had gotten too close to Milor and he’d taken advantage of the fact, seeing a way out of prison, he’d grabbed the keycard and let the prisoners loose. Reinholdt had devoted a couple of security teams to the task of capturing them; one was no unresponsive and the other had been locked inside an engine room. This was not going well for Reinholdt, who still had to help clean up the messes on Cydrak that Azhulhand was in the process of creating.

  “We have prisoners who have managed to make their way outside of the brig. They are humans, and with them is our good friend Milor Rinot. If you have a duty that you can pause or are not being sent to Cydrak, please armor up and capture them. The first man or men to bring them to me will have one week’s leave to anywhere of their choice, on me.” He said through the loudspeaker that broadcasted over the entire station. Part of what made him effective as a Commander, or so he believed, was his willingness to drop formality when necessary to get the job done. He knew that the standard information that they were probably all going to get shoved out of an airlock if a group of angry humans took over the Glaive wasn’t going to work as well as the promise of a free vacation. He’d been in the military long enough to know that was the way that soldiers thought. There was always the threat of some sort of danger but there was rarely the promise of some sort of reward and using it sparingly created more dedicated soldiers and more efficient results.

  The doors to the command center sealed shut and the armed guards took up position. He couldn’t spare his personal armed guards, the command center was huge and housed hundreds of working men and women. These were the finest minds in the Corporation military complex when they’d recruited, and he wasn’t going to risk their deaths. He set them on individual tasks and fired up the Glaive
’s weapon systems. Azhulhand wanted a forest cleared of green, then he would turn it to pillars of ash with pillars of fire. The ship lurched closer to the planet’s surface before dropping off bombs piloted by drones to crash into the planet’s surface. One of his drones below broadcast the dazzling display of power up to him, bringing a smile to his face and easing the tension in his shoulders. Oh how he loved the feeling of being a wrathful deity. He watched in pleasure as the forests were erased with the stroke of a finger on a keyboard, his finger on his keyboard. He was still in charge, despite the rebellious little children running amok on his ship.

  Milor Rinot was short for a Corporation man, but his build was muscular and stocky. He’d spent the past four years wrestling with the guards for sport and building his personal strength. Mentally he’d kept up a sweat by reading through whatever material he could convince the guards to give him. What he hadn’t counted on was a group of humans being taken prisoner on the Glaive. He had laughed for nearly ten minutes when he first heard about it, striking up a conversation with a guard named Tedeal. Tedeal had become a friend of Milor’s, and despite the agony that Milor had caused the majority of those stationed there through his shenanigans and pranks over the year; Tedeal had developed a kinship with the prisoner. Tedeal had not developed a kinship so close that when Milor wrapped his arms around Tedeal’s neck he had released him before the bones were broken. Milor liked Tedeal, but he didn’t like being a prisoner and if he had let Tedeal live it was likely his plan would fail.

  The keycard in his hands had let him free and full reign over the underpopulated prison block. Letting out a few more criminals and rebellious Corporation men they took the guard force by surprise. Security teams armored up and grabbed their non-lethal supplies, but in the twenty minutes it took for them to get ready the riot had exploded all over the brig. The kitchen was raided and the armory was wide-open for the prisoners to grab whatever they could. Milor had freed the humans last and let them know that he wanted to go with them. An older woman, far older than most Corporation folk that Milor had met, negotiated their release. He was pleased with her ability to talk straight and not fill his ears full of the double-talk humans were known for. He nodded in agreement and released them, knowing that he would have a full pardon by the Rebellion leadership and freedom from the Corporation military. He hadn’t really enjoyed serving anyways, though he had been one hell of a pilot and a critical shot behind a pistol.