The Exiled Earthborn (30 page)

“Well, how about that,” Lucas muttered to himself. “Tough old bastard.”

That the animal survived its encounter with the Desecrator was a miracle, though to expect the wolf to have killed it was far too much to hope for. But still, it was a heartening sight. The brave beast taking on the supposed pinnacle of evolution, and surviving.

“What’s that?” Asha asked, also rising.

“Hope,” Lucas said.

15

Lucas rose the next morning after a mercifully dreamless sleep. He was in a hut close to the bank of the lake, and as he sat up he could hear the bustle of the village outside. Underneath him was a stretched skin coated in a striped fur, pulled from the local fauna, no doubt. Light crept in through narrow windows cut into the sticks that made up the forward wall of the enclosure.

He looked down at Asha, her bare skin still pressed against the fur. They’d stayed up half the night talking about what had happened back on the Spear. Silo, Kiati, Maston, all of it. Asha admitted Maston had a cruel streak, but Lucas had to admit in turn that he was an effective commander. Lucas had learned the hard lesson Maston was trying to teach when he found Silo wounded in the forest. Asha recognized that some part of her still felt trapped on Earth, where instinctive killing was second nature. It was why she was willing to execute Kiati when the moment called for it. They’d come so far, but still held on to pieces of their old selves, for better or worse. But they realized that, whatever their lingering issues, nothing had broken between them, they spent the other half of the evening not talking much at all. In the end, there wasn’t much time for sleep.

Lucas noticed a pulsing light from the sleeve of his crumpled stealth suit. After crawling over to it, he realized Alpha was pinging him to go to Zeta’s hut. Time to figure out just what the hell they were going to do now.

He sat down on the fur floor and tried to nudge Asha awake. On the third try, she rolled over and grinned sleepily at him. She stretched her arms overhead and the morning light bathed her body in such a way Lucas forgot about how tired he was. Alpha could wait a few minutes longer.

They arrived at Zeta’s a while later to an annoyed Alpha expressing confusion that he had requested their presence some time ago. Zeta quickly shushed him and attempted to veer him back to the task at hand. Lucas was puzzled to see that Alpha looked wet, his gray skin glistening. Also present in the room were Maston, who now wore a pressurized bandage over his shoulder, and Toruk, who was idly thumbing through his claw necklace.

“Now that we have all managed to respond to my summons,” Alpha said as he cast an eye toward Lucas, “we need to discuss present circumstances.”

Zeta spoke next out of another translator collar, though this one looked more hastily improvised then her first, now lost in the Dead City around the neck of the Corporal’s headless corpse.

“I regret to inform you that the action you seek, to disseminate this message to all Xalan systems, is not possible from our present location.”

“What? Why not?” Lucas asked.

“Since your arrival, a void veil has been dropped over this entire planet. No communications in or out. Or even between installations on the planet itself. Nothing is allowed other than the singular military channel, which still allows access to the troops directly. The general populace is simply in the dark. The Council knows what you are attempting to do and is taking drastic steps to ensure you cannot achieve your ends. I cannot even broadcast the message to this entire planet, much less all the colonies from here.”

“A ‘void veil’?” Asha said. “How the hell do we lift that? If they can just shield entire planets from communication, there’s no way to even accomplish what we’re trying to do with the message.”

“You’re going to love this,” Maston said from behind her, his arms crossed.

Zeta continued.

“The only way to disrupt the veil is to trace it to its origin.”

“Xala,” Lucas said breathlessly.

“Correct. It is also the only location where I can ensure I am able to broadcast the message to every colony, every citizen at once. Otherwise, broadcasting to select groups would just make each a target as the Council seeks to contain the fallout.”

“Contain with mass murder,” Alpha muttered. Zeta nodded.

“In our present circumstances, there is simply no other method of mass delivery that would be viable other than broadcasting from the veil’s point of origin itself, central command on the home planet.”

“We have to go to Xala itself ?” Asha asked, incredulous.

“Yes, but you also have to take
me
to Xala itself. Though I have been able to create the necessary broadcast algorithm, I am the only one with the knowledge to implement it into the Xalan galactic network.”

“You can’t do this?” Lucas said, turning to Alpha.

“I could attempt to do so,” Alpha said, “though Zeta has a dramatically better chance of completing the objective, as she has had intensive experience with the system for decades. She actually built most of it. I am no match for her prowess in this area.”

Lucas walked over to the metal desk in the center of the room and sat on the edge.

“We seem to be fast-forwarding here. How are we supposed to do any of this when we can’t even get off this planet?”

“There is … something I must show you,” said Alpha. Lucas glanced at Maston and he shrugged with his bandaged shoulder.

Alpha ushered them out of the room. Toruk crossed in front of Lucas and was muttering something to himself.

“What did you say?” Lucas asked.

“Broken chariot,” replied the chief.

Lucas followed him out into the village square, and Toruk began speaking to the Oni nearby.

“
Holoi ba’to suuta. Ba’to suuta.
”

Some of the Oni whispered to each other while others raced to nearby huts to spread the message, whatever it was. Soon there was a large group following them. Even a few of the rescued Guardians were now with them, moving with the growing crowd down to the shore of the underground lake.

When they got there, Lucas looked around and saw that Alpha had disappeared entirely.

“Where the hell did he go?” he asked Asha. “What’s going on?”

“I have no idea,” she said, shaking her head. “But knowing him, I’m sure it’s something insane.”

The Oni were all staring at the vast lake in front of them. A hush fell over the crowd. Maston and the other Guardians were scratching their heads and looking around.

Zeta stepped forward to stand next to Lucas.

“I never thought this day would come.”

“What day?” Lucas asked, but before she could answer, he felt the ground start to vibrate. Dark silt slid toward the water, and ripples scattered across the normally tranquil surface.

From under the water, a spectrum of white and blue orbs shone up from deep underneath the surface. The Oni let out a collective gasp, and Lucas took a step back in amazement.

The lights grew brighter and brighter until, finally, what they were attached to broke through the surface of the lake.

“What the …” Asha’s voice trailed off.

It was a ship, assuredly of Xalan origin, but far older and boxier than the models Lucas had seen over the past few years. As it rose out of the water, seaweed hung off it like wet hair, and there were hundreds of barnacles attached to its hull on all sides. Lucas actually saw a large rainbow-scaled fish flopping around on top of one of the engine mounts before it managed to dive back into the water.

“Want to fill us in here?” Lucas asked Zeta as Maston and Asha drew closer.

“This is the ship in which I arrived,” Zeta said as she observed the craft slowly rotating in the air. “It’s a prison vessel used to shuttle high-risk inmates.”

“How did you escape?” Asha asked.

“After my capture, during transport to sentencing, I overrode the security protocols and released those incarcerated within. We let loose the psychopaths, imprisoned for insanity and violent crimes, who killed the guards. Then my fellow resistance fighters and I killed the surviving criminals. Unfortunately, the plan went awry as the ship was damaged in the conflict. I ended up being the only one to survive the crash.”

She motioned to the largest hole in the roof of the cave where the sunlight came in. It was hard to get a sense of scale, but it looked to be the same size as the ship before them. Lucas could see the sheen of the holographic imagery that shielded the opening from view up on the surface.

“I ended up in the bottom of the lake, and it was a full week before the Oni found me. You have heard the rest of that story already. After we made S’tasonti a permanent settlement, I made sure to keep the ship in working order as best I could, should I ever need it again. It is immune to rust and other maladies, even housed underwater, but it was a challenge to repair the damage from the hijacking and subsequent crash. However, even with everything repaired, its [garbled] core was depleted, and it could never leave the system again. At least not until now.”

“The Spear core,” Asha said slowly.

Zeta nodded.

“You are our unwitting savior, human. With the long-range [garbled] core you salvaged from your downed ship, we now have a chance of returning you to your home, and of continuing on to Xala for the final dispersion of the message.”

The Oni were scrambling to move fishing boats so that Alpha could park the tail end of the large ship on the beach. It was bigger than the Ark, but smaller than the Spear. As it drew closer, it really did look ancient. Lucas’s knees buckled as the metal monstrosity landed with a thud on the sand a short distance away, scattering the Oni.

“There is no way that thing is airworthy, much less spaceworthy,” Maston said.

“For all our sakes, I hope you are incorrect,” replied Zeta.

“And we’re just going to fly this thing out of here, completely undetected by the entire planet that’s hunting us? I’m guessing you don’t have stealth drives in ships a thousand years old,” Maston continued.

“Very astute, though the facilitation of our escape is a problem I was hoping that you could help us solve, commander.”

Maston stayed barricaded in with Zeta, drawing up battle plans, while Lucas and Asha headed toward the Khal’din’s medical hut, where they were to get loaded up and ready to ship out. They weren’t clear on the specifics just yet, but they were told their escape attempt would take the combined might of the surviving Guardians and every Oni who could hold a weapon.

In the tent, the injured and whole mingled as everyone dug through the salvaged supplies to find a collection of armor and weapons that suited them. With adequate recovery time, nearly all the surviving Guardians were now standing, thanks to a combination of their resolute genetics and the healing techno-magic of their caretaker. A few however, were missing entire limbs, an ailment that would need to be remedied off-planet.

Even the Kal’din himself was strapping on a ragged suit of armor, and he wielded a metal and bone scythe taller than he was. He still never said a word nor took off his mask, but seemed ready for a fight as he did last minute touch-ups on the wounded.

Lucas milled through the crowd until he saw a familiar shock of red hair up ahead. Moving his way through Soran and Oni, he gave her shoulder plate a tap. He couldn’t hide his surprise when she turned around.

Kiati wore a bandage wrapped around her head that covered her left eye. Jagged cuts poked out from underneath the bloodied fabric.

“Jesus Christ!” Lucas exclaimed in English, ignoring that she wouldn’t recognize the expression. “What happened to you?”

“Got ambushed returning from hauling back Celton,” she said, jerking her head toward a silver-haired male Guardian a few feet away who was missing most of the fingers on his left hand. “Lost the eye to proto-nade shrapnel. Xalan who threw it lost his head.”

“Does it hurt?” Lucas asked.

“No, it feels like I dipped my face in a cool river,” she snorted.

“I mean, should you be fighting?”

“They’ll grow me another one back on Sora. But I’ll have to fight to make it there first. All hands on deck here, as you may have noticed.”

Lucas fingered the chip in his pocket.

“Look, the reason I wanted to find you was because of … Silo.”

She nodded briskly.

“I already know. I saw the blacklist.”

“Yeah, well, not sure if anyone told you, but I was with him when he died.”

She raised her eyebrows. Well, her eyebrow.

“That so?”

Lucas pulled the Final out and held it in his outstretched hand.

“I figured you could get this where it needs to go.”

Kiati took the chip and tapped it. The list of names came up, including her own. Her eye widened, and she quickly shut the device off.

“Did you watch this?” she asked, her tone arctic.

“No,” Lucas lied. She seemed to relax a bit. “But I know you were … friends. I’m sorry.”

“Stupid bastard was always going to get himself killed one of these days. What’d he do? Eat a poison mushroom?”

“Killed four Xalans with a makeshift pike before they took him down,” Lucas replied.

Kiati scoffed.

“Only four?”

Her face remained stern, but Lucas could see wetness creeping into her one visible eye. Tough talk wasn’t enough to block the grief within. Lucas didn’t feel the need to give Kiati the full rundown of his involvement in Silo’s last moments, at least not right now.

“We should have gotten out after Golgath …” she muttered, mostly to herself.

“Golgath?” Lucas pried, recognizing the name Silo had mentioned during his message to her.

She looked up at him.

“Never mind,” she said. Whatever had gone on between them, Lucas wouldn’t hear her side of it here or now. He turned to leave.

“Thank you,” she said after he’d gotten a few steps. Lucas turned back and nodded before continuing on. She tapped the chip and stared at her own name in the list.

16

Lucas tapped his foot nervously as he sat in one of the prison ship’s turret chambers. Nearly a half day had passed before Maston and Zeta finally got their plan of action together, and Lucas could hardly believe it when they’d told him.