Europa
Page 9
Chapter 8
The Umbra smiled, the small group of survivors was killing itself now. That psychic was still a problem though, she was able to sense him, something few others could do.
He would rather she was a warrior psychic though, her death would not be what she deserved, she would die as all the others would, alone and undefended, falling without a fight.
It was sad; he hadn’t had a worthy adversary in the three decades since he defeated Arc’Tre, the old leader of the Umbra on Europa, in single combat.
He smiled again as he remembered that fight, two invisible warriors blocking and striking on reflex alone, the perfect and greatest test of skill one could ever hope to compete in.
He initiated mind-link with his second in command to give an update on the situation, and then sent a private mental wave to another Umbra.
“There is a package outside for you to collect.” He sent.
“Messor or Leviathan” Came a reply.
“Leviathan.”
“Copy that.” replied the Umbra and severed the connection.
The Umbra winced as neural feedback arced through his mind, bloody fusion cores he thought. Damn humans for inventing them and not finding a way to shield them.
His eyes flashed open.
A fusion core had been activated?
He began to think about what that meant. It wasn’t the intense agony like that ship core had caused or the constant drone of the backup core that powered the facility, so a smaller core, it came from near the surface so…
They were activating the suits.
He winced again as another core came online.
They were going to try and make a break for it over the ice.
He sent a hasty transmission to his second in command and hurried to the surface.
“Rex’Umbra.” Came a voice behind him
“Sar’Tor.” Greeted the Umbra
“I would take out one of these humans. Too long have I gone without fresh blood to my name.” Said Sar’Tor
“Very well.” replied the Umbra “The girl was my next target. Take her out.”
Invisible Umbra saluted invisible Umbra and Rex’UmbraKar’Elv prepared to track any survivors who escaped. He continued to think, there was still a couple of days before Europa escaped Jupiter’s magnetotail and cosmic radiation reached deadly levels, enough time to reach the relay and begin preparing a trap.
He gave up on the tracking idea and began to lope over the icy plains towards the tower of human steel dropped from orbit onto this world.
The remaining survivors were leaving, they had brought all the food up from the submarine pen and while Yuoi continued activating the suits, Mia, Neil and Lara continued to ferry food up to the surface.
Lara ran out of the growth lab holding a tray of food bars and sprinted up the stairs, closely followed by Mia and Neil.
One set of footsteps stopped suddenly and another’s stopped almost as quickly.
The stairwell began to get very cold.
Lara turned to Mia, her body turning blue with cold and ice beginning to form over her eyes.
She looked over her shoulder at Neil, who caught her eyes and shook his head.
“Run.” he hissed and dived back into the labs.
As she turned to sprint up the stairs she heard him shout.
“I will die on my own terms!”
She ran faster.
In the stairwell the statue that had once been Mia Carthage remained, where her skin had once been lightly tanned it was now pale blue, the coating of ice over her skin distorted the view and made it look as if she was floating in water, further emphasised by the fact that her hair had been frozen whilst in motion. Her eyes stared out, unseeing, except perhaps for the flicker of a shadow within them, as if a cloaked figure had just breezed past her face.
Lara slammed the door to the stairwell and flew through the living room and into the lift, as the lift doors closed she saw the door ripped from its hinges by some invisible force.
She was still shaking when she arrived at the hangar.
“Run.” she gasped, almost throwing herself into one of the activated suits, slamming the helmet on with shaking hands.
“Mia?” Asked Davrid.
“Dead.”
“Neil?” he asked.
“Dying on his own terms.”
Davrid’s eyes widened in fear.
“Everyone, run.” he ordered
The group of six survivors sprinted out of the research station, past the sign giving its designation, Z3U5-012, and into the icy wastes.
Neil was ready; in the five minutes being trapped here he had produced what could be called a thermobaric explosive.
He had also surrounded the explosive with eight barrels of crude oil, a substance he was surprised to find here but that would turn the explosive into an incendiary explosive as well as a thermobaric one. The explosive itself was made from fluoridated aluminium mixed with ethylene oxide surrounding a large cylinder of nitroglycerine in a pressurised canister.
He hoped the girl had got his message and the survivors had got far enough away from the research station not to be caught in the blast. He picked up the detonation wires and prepared to go out with a bang.
The door behind him was opened by an invisible hand.
“I die on my own terms frosty.” he hissed and touched the two wires together.
“See you in hell.”
In that instant before the nitroglycerine detonator exploded, he remembered the words of the prophet
“A blaze of crimson fire
On gigantic burning pyre
Shall be your final victory
But shall never go down in history.”
He would be correct thought Neil, a blaze of crimson fire would be his pyre
The door closed and rapid footsteps could be heard.
The world turned white, and then black, perhaps intersected by a flash of silver though as the darkness grew.
Rex’UmbraKar’Elv heard a mental scream for help from Sar’Tor before the connection was cut forcefully.
He slowed to a stop and looked back into the distance, soon the shock wave reached him, blowing the ice as a strong breeze would, a tower of black smoke rose into the sky and he sighed.
He went down onto one knee and put one hand on the ice; two blades flicked over his shoulders and thudded into the ice as well. His other hand he placed against his shoulder.
“Utcustodiantte in coelum, deducetvos in omnemventum, et tenet terramsanaviaquas.”
He rose and continued towards the relay.
Nearer to the research station the blast was more dramatic. The survivors were flung forwards as the charge detonated. The station literally exploded as the pressure wave tore through the cramped confines, tearing apart the reinforced graphene-steel composite that made up the walls of the station.
Moments later the pressure wave reversed as the fuel ignited with the oxygen within the station creating a temporary vacuum.
Hannah slipped and flew backwards; firing a grapple and reeling herself back in to stop herself being sucked onto the flaming maw of what had once been the research station.
Then the crude oil went up, a tower of black smoke rose above the crippled station as it sank into the fractured ice and into the ocean below.
Chemicals coloured the towering flames and further explosions shook the ice.
Davrid hauled himself off the ice and looked at the gaping hole in the ice pouring out black smoke and globs of burning oil.
“Looks like a volcano.” Lara said, rising to join him.
“As seer’s words ring true
And all that is left is a few
One shall survive
But five shall leave here alive.”
Davrid turned to Odis.
“How do you know the future?”
“We all have our secrets, man of bloodied gods
Some we must keep in face of all odds
You know why we are her
e and why we must die
Yet when asked you will be forced by honour to lie.”
Davrid looked deep into his eyes with a look of pure hatred on his face.
Then his eyes widened
“Odis Veritas, I name you Oliver Vale, psychic extraordinaire and attempted dictator of Earth, escaped from prison and in hiding. Thirteen separate bounties from as many worlds all asking not for you but for your head. You are worth a total of three trillion credits to the person who kills you and as an enemy of the state I should kill you here and now.”
“Names are power and you know mine
But you will not use it in time
For death looms at a heroic stand
In this icy, inhospitable, land.”
The others looked on in horror at both men.
One the man who had tried to take over the Terran Empire.
The other an ISF elite with the truth of why they are here.
“What did he mean, Davrid?” asked Lara.
“What did he mean?” asked Othella.
“The entire reason that we were shot down is because there was a weapons’ test. A new generation of fighters, developed from a secret military facility on Io.”
Yuoi nodded “Truth, but not all of it.” he had trained himself to see when someone was speaking the truth.
“Okay. That was part of the reason.”
“Truth.”
“And the real reason?” asked Lara.
“Secret weapons test.”
“Truth.”
“What weapon? The invisible creature?”
Davrid hesitated, looked at Odis, touched the suit where the scars of the church of blood would be and whispered to himself.
“May the martyrs forgive me.” He said. “The secret weapon is Sakara Frost.”
“But he’s dead.” gasped Lara.
“The blast destroyed the external life support monitor and ruptured the suit.”
“So he’s dead?”
“No, not yet.”