The Exiled Earthborn (31 page)

There were many obstacles standing in the way of leaving the planet alive, but the most immediate was a Xalan spaceport located near the coast a short distance away. Lucas had seen its lights from his earlier trek through the jungle, and it was reportedly quite a sprawling facility. If their escape in the prison ship sounded any alarms among the Xalans, that base would be the closest one launching ships to pursue them. Simply put, it needed to be wiped out completely in order for them to make it to the outer atmosphere safely. If they could do that, there was a fair chance they could reach the edge of the system and activate the null core to head home. After the spaceport was gone, the rest of the fleet in the area would be scrambling to figure out just what the hell happened, and they likely wouldn’t notice a simple craft such as theirs passing through so many others like it. Prison ships were all over this planet, as resistance troops and Oni were constantly being rounded up and transported for questioning, sentencing, and execution. Zeta had one of her undercover Xalan resistance agents activate the prison ship using his biology so it wouldn’t be flagged or tracked by her or Alpha’s traitorous signatures. A lengthy hack had made the process permanent.

Maston and Zeta’s plan had many moving pieces, all of which would have to align at the correct time in the correct order for them to succeed. First, Zeta, piloting the ship, would sweep across the air hangars that held the largest ships stationed at the spaceport. Lucas, Asha, and Alpha would be in three of the craft’s six heavy gun turrets. The rest would be filled with a few Guardians who had lost legs and couldn’t join their squadmates in open combat during phase two.

After the ships were crippled, they’d need to destroy the rest of the base to ensure they didn’t call for help. Zeta asserted that she could block their communications temporarily, but the equipment and personnel needed to be decimated so reinforcements would be delayed after they left.

On the ground, Zeta’s undercover agents inside would open the main gate, letting the Oni troops flood in from the jungle and seize the base with the help of Guardians dropped from the prison ship into the higher levels of the base. Hopefully all of this would be enough to overrun the spaceport completely, and with no ships to chase them and no one alive to call for help once they left, they could cause enough of a delay to get away cleanly.

As mad as it all sounded, it wasn’t a hard sell to the Oni, who were eager to help their newfound warrior brethren by eliminating an installation that had plagued them with a constant supply of Xalans in the past. They’d never be able to take a base this fortified by themselves. Equally raring to go were the Guardians, who desperately wanted to leave Makari and return to Sora. The fact that the way to get there was to plow through a battalion of Xalans was a bonus, as there were many, many dead to avenge littered throughout the forest.

Lucas’s seat rumbled as the prison ship’s engines fired up. They slowly rose from the beach inside the cave, and Lucas could see the remnants of the Khas’to tribe assembled to see them off. Only the very old and very young remained. All other members of the village, men and women old enough to wield a spear, were already armed to the teeth and sprinting through the forest outside en route to the spaceport.

As they reached the ceiling of the enormous cavern, the figures below became mere insects. Lucas saw a flicker of light as they passed through the opening at the top of the cave, and then immediately the holographic barrier resealed itself, a perfect image of rocks and brush to hide the gap from above.

They struck a leisurely pace over the jungle toward the spaceport so as to not draw suspicion. Algae and barnacles had been scraped off the ship so it didn’t look quite so decrepit, but most prison transports were pretty battered anyway. From his perch, Lucas could seen dozens of drones strafing the jungle, still hunting for them. For the moment, it looked as if none had noticed their emergence from the cave, a move that had been carefully timed by Zeta after analyzing their patrol patterns.

Down in the jungle below, Lucas saw a trail of green specks through his window display. It was the Oni, tagged and visible only to them so they could monitor their progress. They were nearly to the spaceport, having left quite some time ago so the assault could be properly coordinated. Toruk was communicating to them from the ground, and relayed that they’d already dismantled four Xalan patrols they’d come across, all quickly enough to ensure the troops didn’t broadcast their position back to base.

Lucas brought up a series of three-dimensional displays that rotated in front of him. One was of a large Xalan capital ship, three of which were docked at the spaceport ahead. Alpha had highlighted the engine power nodes in red. If they were destroyed, it would disable the vessels. A few other images showed a couple of smaller single-pilot fighter and bomber variants. Some were housed in the ships themselves, others would be out in the open and needed to be eliminated. If not, even without white null cores, they could chase them into the outer reaches of the solar system, and the prison ship would likely not survive their pursuit.

Lucas’s leg still hadn’t stopped shaking. It didn’t matter how many battles he’d lived through, fear wasn’t something that could be erased when there was this much danger present. Days like these were why he still jumped at shadows each night. Not knowing whether he would survive the next day, the next hour, took a toll on his mind, which felt like it was fracturing a little more with each new upheaval. The luxurious comforts of Sora seemed so far away now. Earth was so distant it didn’t even feel real anymore. He brought up a monitor and saw Asha staring at her own display.

“You alright?” he asked through a private channel. She looked at her monitor when she heard his voice.

“This is no Kvaløya,” she said. It was true. They were assaulting a secure military installation, not some run-down Scandinavian fishing village. The only things working in their favor were Zeta’s inside men and the element of surprise. Lucas flipped to another feed, where Maston was in a cell block going over assault tactics and blueprints of the compound with the remaining Guardians. There were so few of them now. They’d lost, what was it, 70 percent of the squadron between the crash and the jungle? And most of the rest were injured or ill. It was time to see what a few trillion in government-grown genetics actually bought.

The ship rounded the side of the mountain and the spaceport could be seen up ahead. It really was enormous, and Lucas nervously eyed defensive gun turrets pointing out from various corners of the outer wall. Zeta said her spies would be able to deactivate the automated defense systems of the facility, leaving them to deal with organics only, but that was a hard gamble, which made Lucas uneasy.

The dwarf sun was starting to set now, and the light refracted off the ocean behind it. This place did have a certain beauty to it at times, but while it was still populated by bloodthirsty Xalans, there was no chance to return it to its untainted former glory. They’d have to win the war and then some in order for Toruk to get his planet back.

The central comm channel started to light up with untranslated Xalan hailing requests as they approached the station. Though Lucas couldn’t understand the growls, they were clearly inquiring as to why an unscheduled prison ship was arriving at their base. Zeta spoke back to them in Xalan, reciting her practiced story about capturing a troupe of Oni warriors, explaining all the Soran life signatures onboard. After much debate, Zeta convinced the operator to allow them entry to the hangar area to set down and discuss the miscommunication in person.

The ship slowly glided toward the hangar area where Lucas saw the large capital ships looming. On the deck below, there was a long line of fighters with Xalan pilots milling about. Lucas gripped his controls tightly and shifted in his heavy armor plating. No stealth suit this time; this was an all-out assault that would require his armor to catch a plasma round or two (or dozen) on his behalf. Natalie was hooked to his chair and his pistol and knife were strapped to his chest. He put on his helmet and a litany of display readouts sprung into his line of sight, attempting to work in synergy with those of the Xalan turret in front of him. The combination was a garbled mess, and he decided to remove his helmet for the time being to avoid confusion created by the pairing of two different technology systems. They hadn’t had time to retrofit any of the Xalan readouts on the ship to Soran other than a few key words. F
ILTER
switched in and out of thermal and infrared views. F
OCUS
cycled through potential targets on the viewscreen. F
IRE
was self-explanatory.

Alpha broke in on the central comm.

“This is it,” he said solemnly. “Fire on my mark.”

The prison ship was starting to dip low, though Lucas knew it would never touch the ground. In his viewscreen, the engine compartments of the capital ships in front of him were highlighted, and his fingers hovered over the turret’s dual triggers.

They were only a few dozen feet from the surface now, and Lucas saw a Xalan pilot staring up at him from the ground. Was the glass opaque enough to obscure him from the outside? The Xalan tilted his head, then turned to shout something to the other pilots nearby who gathered around him and also looked up at his turret bay.

“Alpha …” Lucas said as commotion started breaking out on the ground below.

“Engage,” came the mechanical reply.

Lucas swiveled the turret down toward the cluster of pilots that had assembled at the behest of their colleague. His first pair of shots liquefied most of the group, as armor-piercing artillery turned on organics was like emptying an Uzi into a box of crackers. He kept firing until nothing stirred in the smoking hole, and then pivoted upward to tear into the cockpit of the nearest fighter.

Behind the line of planes on the deck, the three docked capital ships were being lit up as the other five turrets focused their fire onto the highlighted compartments, which had been opened up for maintenance and were particularly vulnerable. Two ships had been crippled in the first few seconds with targeted strikes, and now the third was attempting to take off under fire. Lucas turned his turret toward it and let loose on the engines. The ship got about five hundred feet in the air before a huge explosion inside the hull shorted out the lights of the engines, and Lucas watched as the massive craft fell back to the hangar floor, almost in slow motion. When it hit the ground, it didn’t stay there. The gigantic ship tore through the metal floor and sank deep into the highest levels of the base. With a painful groan, it pulled much of the hangar bay down with it, and the smaller ships parked on the deck began to slide down the newly sloped surface and into the jagged hole the ship had created. Pilots scrambled to stay on their feet, but many were leveled by their own ships and equipment and were swallowed into the pit. The two other capital ships that had initially been disabled tumbled off the edges of their platforms and landed with deafening crashes in the jungle below, shaking the entire facility. Nothing was going to be taking off from the hangar now, as that entire section of the base had ceased to exist.

Alarms sounded all over the spaceport. The prison ship rose up from the collapsing hangar and turned toward the center of the base, where troops were starting to scramble. They rained down fire on all the Xalans they could see, and Lucas breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the defensive auto turrets remained still. Zeta’s inside men had done their job. Well, one of their jobs at least.

The original plan had been to drop the Guardian squadron on the hangar, but the surface was too unstable with the area in ruins, and Zeta relayed over the central comm that she was looking for a new place to touch down safely.

The monitors showed Alpha and Asha firing at troops on the other side of the ship while Lucas did the same. The enemy soldiers were shredded by the artillery fire and the structures around them were reduced to rubble as explosive canister rounds the size of footballs ripped through them. But even after being caught off guard, the troops were starting to get in position to return fire on the ship, and there were simply too many to target. Where were the Oni?

Lucas flinched as plasma peppered the hull near his turret. He returned fire, but the ship veered so that he took a chunk out of the structure behind the Xalans instead. More and more of their shots were connecting; the prison ship was a rather large target lacking significant maneuverability. They were too far into the base to be able to evade properly, and suddenly a raucous explosion from somewhere underneath Lucas rocked the entire craft.

“Zeta, Alpha, talk to me!” Lucas yelled as the ship started lurching hard to the right.

Alpha broke in, but the comm was going fuzzy.

“[Static] stabilizer took a [static] hit.”

Then Zeta:

“Have to [static] set down [static] repair.”

“This is not the time to stop for a tune-up!” shouted Asha, her voice bursting through the static and gunfire. On her monitor, Lucas watched her take a shot and blow a pair of Xalans to pieces even as the ship was spinning.

“No [static] option,” came Zeta, and the array of flashing warning lights and alarms all around the turret seemed to back up her statement. “Brace [static].”

There was only a split second between her warning and what happened next. The ship spun around and Lucas suddenly saw nothing but an enormous wall in his viewscreen, a wall that shattered like china as they plowed directly through it. Lucas was almost pitched off his seat, barely held in place by ill-fitting restraints meant for a much larger creature. His stomach dropped as the ship fell a few stories and hit the ground with a jarring thud that shook Lucas to his core and made his ears ring.

His controls were unresponsive, and only emergency lighting was flickering in the turret bay. Outside the viewscreen in front of him there was nothing but a mass of swirling smoke. Lucas unclipped his restraints and staggered to his feet. His helmet was nowhere to be seen, but Natalie had been flung into the glass in front of him. He scooped up the rifle and headed into the bowels of the ship. Comms were completely silent, though sporadic gunfire could still be heard outside. Lucas ran down the hall and saw an electronic panel in flames as thick smoke filled the corridor. Would the ship be able to get airborne again after this?