Undeterred, Apolo continued to examine Roden.
He doesn’t know the truth
, Roden assured himself, but it didn’t help his comfort level one bit. He leaned back in his seat as much as his wings would allow, the loud
whoomp-whoomp
of the helicopter vibrated through the metal hull behind him.
Closing his eyes, he inhaled the petroleum-pungent smell of hydraulics. He was mentally exhausted. Bringing a feud against his own people lay heavily on his heart. But not nearly as heavy as the loss of one female in particular. Even though she made it clear she didn’t want him, she couldn’t deny that she needed him. Just as he would never admit that he needed her even more. The only thing Roden could give Nalea now was vengeance, and that was something he was very, very good at.
It’d taken him years, but Roden was a patient man. This time, he came to her a man in his prime, and she’d shown no interest. She didn’t recognize him from the surgeries he’d had done to alter his face.
The drugs he’d chosen were very special. They’d enhanced senses ten-fold. He’d taken her to the same orchard. He’d already tied her husband to a nearby tree to watch. He’d given the husband drugs that caused him to orgasm relentlessly.
Roden had taped her mouth shut. He’d chosen drugs to ensure she felt everything. Shoved stakes through her wings and into the ground.
He pulled out the collection of blades and tools he’d selected over the years for this exact night. With help from drugs to keep her conscious, the pain would’ve been beyond agonizing. His artwork took hours. Throughout it all, her husband moaned and cried out as he came again and again.
When her husband’s cock had finally started to flag, Roden skewered the man before turning back to the woman. Just before he strangled the life from her, he said. “You’ll never add another to your collection.”
• • •
“Jump in zero minus three minutes.”
Roden gave a slight jump when the voice came over the loud speaker. He grounded himself by looking around the interior. The helicopter was now alight with activity. Seatbelts were unhooked, and soldiers of all three races came to their feet. Draeken stretched their wings, earning curses from those around them. Humans and Sephians situated their parachutes and checked their new blasters. Roden had provided weapons — all set to stun — a stipulation he made very clear as an assurance for preventing as many Draeken deaths as possible.
Otas needed to be removed just as a festering wound needed cauterized. He only hoped that not too many would be lost in destroying the infected false heart of the Draeken people.
“Jump in zero minus six-zero seconds.”
Roden and the eleven Draeken soldiers who’d volunteered for this mission took the lead at the wide opening at the tail of the aircraft, with the wingless soldiers filling in behind. Cold wind blasted their faces. They stretched their wings.
That they hadn’t been shot at yet meant his encrypted blocking program worked. He inhaled deeply. The cold air reminded him of his first kill many years ago.
It’s a good night.
A light flashed red and a buzzer sounded. With his wings held tight to his body, Roden leaped from the helicopter. Angling into the wind, he shot forward, waited for a mental count of five before spreading his wings. Pressure stretched his muscles to their limits as he caught lift and flew. Even in the black of night, the freedom of flight was exhilarating.
He couldn’t imagine not having wings. It would be like wearing leaden manacles. Nalea was part Draeken. Had the desires to take flight soared through her veins like it did his? He’d never had the time to ask her things like that.
Too late now.
He cursed, refocusing his attention on the mission. He touched down first, a bare second before the first human who was clearly an expert jumper, came in silently before him. The dark-skin who’d watched him earlier was impressive, already rolling his parachute before the first Sephian landed.
While humans might be wingless and not technologically evolved, they did bring some value. Their primary value being that their DNA was eerily similar to Draeken DNA, making them the key to the survival of Roden’s race. The most noticeable differences between the two races were that humans were shorter from evolving on a planet with greater gravity. Humans also never developed wings, which Roden found strange, given that their DNA supported it.
Being winged, surprisingly, Draeken bodies hadn’t evolved to be overly muscled to support the wings. Instead, their wings grew larger in proportion to their bodies, and their bones became lighter. What would happen by mating with heavier boned, smaller humans remained an unknown. It was a risk Roden wouldn’t have to deal with as it would take generations to reveal the new — and hopefully better — joined race that his troops had already jokingly labeled
Druman
, a word ironically similar to a Draeken term meaning
changeling
.
So much hope pinned on the future.
Roden hoped they wouldn’t be disappointed.
As all the helicopters emptied, the soldiers split into six squads, each containing four members from each race, as much from lack of trust as to leverage one another’s unique abilities. Apolo led his team away from the others through the tree line around the base. It would have been faster to fly, but unfortunately the two other races were inferior in that regard, and they burned four minutes running an outer semi-circle of the base.
Apolo halted and held up a fisted hand in human fashion. All were fully aware of how dangerous this particular squad’s mission was. That was why Apolo had demanded to have Roden on his squad, although he suspected the Sephian had an ulterior motive to keep him close.
Roden wasn’t comfortable about serving as a second on this mission, but he understood the whole conflict-of-interest thing. He could deal. As long as they didn’t get in his way.
Apolo’s squad would be the first to go in, to grab Otas before the rest of the base realized they were surrounded, and — hopefully — have the base surrender without a drop of blood spilled.
Otas’s sour blood excluded, of course.
He glanced at his wrist-com.
Twelve seconds to go.
Everything had to be precise for this mission to succeed. Roden planned this mission for over a year, had spent countless nights awake planning how to end a tyrant’s reign without casualties. There’d been no way around it, though. There would be casualties. But ending the Grand Lord’s rule wasn’t the most important reason for this mission. The Sephians saw Draeken as their enemy, and they’d already begun to sway the humans. For his people to have a future, he’d have to find all three races a common enemy — something to bind the three together.
Enter the Grand Lord as the perfect scapegoat. In a way, Hillas Puftan would lead his people to a new future. His downfall and Otas’s death would be the dawn of his people’s future on this planet. Otas thought Roden was trying to take over. He didn’t know the half of it.
Nine seconds.
He waited.
Four seconds.
Two.
One.
Apolo nodded to a bulky Draeken soldier Roden had handpicked for his squad, who prepped a huge door-punch to break into the base as close to the heart of the base as possible. It only took two ear-ringing hits before the door splintered wide open. The base-com alarm blared through the opening, and blaster fire burst forward, taking down the man still holding the door-punch with a dozen shots to his body. Everyone took cover to each side of the door.
Fyet!
They must’ve bypassed his program. The question now was how much time did the base have to prepare. Not that it would change anything.
Too late to call off the mission.
If they didn’t get Otas now, the imposter would get to the core ship and launch a return attack this planet would be defenseless against. Tonight, the Grand Lord’s reign must be ended for good.
With a scowl, Apolo punched in a code on his wrist-com to warn the other squads and then raised his hand, holding up three fingers. The Sephians on his squad quickly slid on black dark glasses. Wync pulled out two chaos-charges and activated them. He tossed them down the hall, and the squad turned away and grabbed their ears.
Light and screeches pierced the night, erupting from the hallway. Sparing a quick glance over the four humans, Roden nodded. With how little time they had to prepare, they were solid. He made a mental note to approach them later about joining his team on a more permanent basis. He imagined what they’d say, but it was still worth a shot.
He moved around Apolo to enter the brightened base as their tracker, knowing they were only steps away from Hillas’s heavily protected com center. He took down the first two guardsmen with clean stun shots to the head as they knelt in the hallway, still recovering from the vertigo brought on by the chaos charges.
Shots fired from his sides, and the remaining guardsmen fell. No new guardsmen appeared, and Roden stopped. Something wasn’t right. No sooner than the thought crossed his mind that the back door to Hillas’s office opened and a small orb flew out at them before the door slammed closed once again.
“Chaos charge!” Roden yelled. “Fall back!”
They sprinted back the way they came until light and sound sent out waves of vertigo, knocking the squad to the ground. His ear drums rang shrill sirens, nearly breaking under the duress. Even with his eyes closed, the light caused an instant migraine. If the Sephians hadn’t been wearing special dark glasses, they would have been knocked unconscious.
As the charges faded, Roden tried to drag himself to his feet, only to be thrown against the wall by a human, who started firing at door in the hallway, and Roden realized that he was returning fire. Pulling out a weapon, he fired off several shots, knowing his aim was still skewed by the charge. “Thanks, Ace,” he shouted over the noise of battle.
The human nodded and kept on firing, looking fully recovered from the blast. In fact, all the humans had recovered quickly.
Impressive.
A shot singed Roden’s thigh but he kept firing, finally taking down the Draeken nearest to the entrance with a solid stun-shot to the shoulder.
The rest of his squad recovered soon after, and they volleyed enough return fire that their assailants retreated behind the closed door. “Status,” Roden called out before checking his latest injury. The laser had just skimmed the skin. He’d gotten lucky, because, unlike his squad, Otas’s guardsmen had their blasters set to “kill.” He’d survive this battle, just as he’d survive countless more. It seemed as though he was doomed to survive.
“Everyone’s good,” Apolo said from off to his left. “And I’m leading this squad.”
Roden smirked and stepped forward, grimacing at the pain but refusing to limp. He pulled out a round metallic ball from his pocket and squeezed. Apolo gave him a nod and then kicked open the door. Roden tossed the chaos charge inside as Apolo slammed the door closed. Light and sound bled through the cracks around the door, but it was nothing compared to what the Draeken were experiencing inside.
Apolo glanced back and, without waiting for a response, opened the door. With Apolo at the lead, the squad charged into the large room and fanned out, laying down gunfire like a rainfall of falling stars. The Draeken guardsmen, blasting away in a wild spray of shooting, were taken out in the first seconds. The room fell silent, and Roden glanced over the squad.
Apolo was leaning over one of his own. Roden placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. The soldier on the ground was conscious, dark golden blood pouring from her stomach. “I’m fine,” she scolded while Apolo ignored her and slapped a coagulant wrapping on it. The soldier hissed but the bleeding stopped nearly immediately.
Apolo pulled her to her feet, and she clenched her teeth. He turned to Ace. “You get Sana back to Kilo Tango.”
The human moved forward and the Sephian glared at him from her spot against the wall. “I don’t — ”
“Go,” Apolo said, interrupting her excuse. “You’re no good to us when you can barely stay conscious.”
Her mouth clamped shut, but she didn’t say anything as Ace grabbed her under the shoulder and took on some of her weight.
Apolo eyed Roden’s leg. “How about you?” he asked with a gesture.
Roden took a look. The material was frayed where the blast singed his pant leg, and a wet spot around the hole betrayed signs of bleeding. “A paper cut.” He motioned to the other man’s arm, which currently had a stream of gold running down it. “You?”
Apolo barely glanced down. “Paper cut.”
With a nod, Roden turned walked through the room, in between the fallen Draeken, and toward the wall. Just as he’d expected, Otas had hidden himself away from battle.
Spineless.
He went straight to the far wall, past the wall with the obvious hidden door, to where Roden knew also held a hidden door to Hillas’s battle shelter. Otas couldn’t have known Roden knew, but he was likely watching his doom walk toward him on video at that very moment.
Once the squad filled in behind and Apolo nodded, Roden casually typed in the secure code to open the door. With a click and a
swoosh
, the wall slid back and then to the side.
All of their blasters locked onto the small room’s occupant.
Roden froze. Make that
occupants
.
Otas stood, facing him, in full protective gear with Nalea held before him like a shield, wearing no body armor whatsoever. Her eyes were covered by dark glasses so he couldn’t tell if she was as surprised to see him. Why couldn’t he sense her? Had the bond been broken somehow?
“Hello, my dear,” Roden said, fighting against every nerve in his body to show a response.
She’s alive!
She stood like a silent statue. Why wasn’t she trying to break free? She wore no restraints. She could easily overpower the fop. Yet she just stood there, draped in a long gown.
“Nalea?” Apolo asked as he came to Roden’s side, his face a mirror of the same shock that Roden felt.
Until that point, Nalea had been focused on Roden, but on seeing her old friend, a smile filled her face and she stepped forward, only to have Otas yank her against his chest, and she scowled.