The Exiled Earthborn (47 page)

Alpha reluctantly obeyed.

All seven of them froze as they watched the screen, waiting for Maston to move, waiting for him to respond to Alpha’s hails.

Silence.

“I don’t know what Corinthia saw in me, but I didn’t care. Every eye on a ship full of thousands was on her whenever she passed, and somehow, some way, she’d chosen me.”

Silence.

“At times she barely even seemed Soran, like some sort of celestial being that had graced us with her presence.”

Silence.

“It was only her. I never cared for anyone as much. I never will.”

Silence.

The seconds continued to tick away.

I hope you found her,
Lucas thought as he watched the unmoving figure on the viewscreen.

I hope you’re with her again.

24

There was no time to grieve. Alpha had to wave away the escape pod’s video feed. Their ship was now in orbit over Xala and descending rapidly. The planet reappeared in the viewscreen and a host of bright lights could be seen scattered across the surface. They were cities, judging by the patterns the lights made as they drew closer, and they were heading straight for the largest cluster.

Structures hung at various points in the atmosphere as they descended, space stations and satellites that were hard to scale. Some appeared to be no bigger than their own craft. Others were more distant and were made up of bizarre clusters of metal. Floating dwellings, perhaps? They were big enough to hold thousands, it seemed. From up here, there wasn’t much of the planet that looked particularly habitable.

Alpha was communicating to the receiving crew on the ground of the unpronounceable metropolis where they were headed. Sorans simply referred to the Xalan capital as
Vas Raksis
, which almost literally translated to “The Pit.” At its heart was Xalan central command, their final destination. The comm growled back at Alpha, relaying that everything was in order. These were Zeta’s resistance members who were meeting them at the docking bay, and they would facilitate their hopefully uneventful landing.

Kiati was the next highest-ranking Soran officer aboard and had assumed command of the mission. It had been one of many contingency plans should Maston fall in battle, but no one anticipated he wouldn’t even be there when they set foot on the planet. Kiati was handling things as best she could, but was obviously thrown off balance by Maston’s unexpected death. She patched up Lucas’s wounds and he changed into his spare stealth suit, one not gored by Xalan claws. Lucas even found Natalie wedged behind one of the sleeping pods, mercifully still intact. Its readouts were fuzzy and its power core seemed to be glowing hotter than usual, but the display said she would fire, and that’s all he needed her to do. It would have been hard to even consider attempting a mission without her. His old friend had carried him through many harrowing ordeals; perhaps she could do the same today.

Another old friend stared out the viewscreen at the planet below. Asha was silent and hadn’t said a word after seeing the footage from inside the escape pod. She didn’t flinch when Lucas came up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“I imagine he’s the only man to ever kill two Shadows,” Lucas said.

“He was an asshole,” she said curtly. Lucas was caught off guard and let out a short laugh.

“Yeah, but he liked you,” he said. “He saw something in you.”

Her expression softened.

“He didn’t hate you. Not after Makari,” she said.

“I know,” Lucas replied.

“Well, just one more reason to not screw this up,” she said, turning away from the window. Lucas now saw she was holding a small chip in her hands.

“His Final?” Lucas asked, surprised she had it.

She nodded and tapped the chip. It only had one name on the recipient list.

“Have you watched it?” Lucas asked. Asha shook her head.

“I saw him throw it away after the Rhylos mission. I picked it up out of curiosity, but never felt like I should actually listen. I figure if we make it back, I’ll bury it at the foot of whatever monument they’re currently erecting to the late Miss Vale. Hopefully they’ll give him one too.”

The window flickered with heat and light as they broke through the atmosphere of Xala. In a few moments, the disturbance stopped, and they could see a reddish-orange color out the window. The sun didn’t appear to be rising or setting. It seemed this was simply how the sky looked here. It reminded Lucas of the angry red clouds that had surrounded Earth in its final days, but there were a few trails of white visible here.

The sky soon lost its orangish hue and they broke through a cover of brown smog as they kept heading toward the surface. It was hazy at first, but once they got low enough, they could see it. Vas Raksis, the Pit.

These were not the shining towers of Elyria. The structures were also massive, but jagged and asymmetrical, sprouting up from the ground like dark volcanic rock formations. The air buzzed with spacecraft locked into no discernible traffic patterns. On the ground, haphazardly constructed structures coated the planet like spreading mold. Milky white rivers carved paths between the buildings. There wasn’t so much as a solitary tree in sight, and Vas Raksis was so sprawling its skyline spread all the way to the horizon.

This was a dying world, to be sure, though not one ravaged directly by war. But what little resources might have been here at one point were now clearly stripped bare, and it was no wonder the Xalans were forced to invade other planets and use them as fuel to keep their war machine running. Lucas thought of Alpha’s dream to revitalize Xala someday. Would such a thing even be possible? It seemed like the place might be better off condemned and abandoned altogether, like Earth. But somehow thirty billion Xalans still lived there. Though many of them weren’t particularly pleased about it, said Zeta.

The irony was not lost on Lucas regarding what they were about to attempt. They were the mirror image of Hex Tulwar and his Fourth Order, trying to destabilize a government though the revelation of long-buried secrets. Tulwar had succeeded, and now Sora was in chaos, a Xalan army on its doorstep. They simply had to hope that what they accomplished here would offset that chaos with chaos of their own.

Alpha slowly steered the craft into the docking bay of a massive structure. Other ships buzzed by them, giving little notice. They were simply one more craft returning from a mission like so many thousands of others. The official orders of the receiving crew were to take the prisoners to a nearby detention facility, where they’d await public execution. The group of Xalan resistance agents gathering on the monitors outside in the bay had no such inclinations.

Lucas’s knees buckled as the craft came to rest on its landing gear inside the hangar. They’d officially landed on Xala. The thought was surreal.

Asha and the other Guardians were ready. Alpha and Zeta joined them in the exit bay, and soon they heard the familiar hiss of another vessel attaching itself to their own.

The airlock doors opened and the tunnel revealed a path into another transport. They’d be completely shielded from surveillance during the transfer, and the seven of them hustled into the new ship, leaving the interceptor and its deceased crew behind. Zeta’s agents would ensure no one came sniffing around.

This new ship was incredibly small, a local transport with seating for only a dozen. Zeta greeted a quartet of her undercover operatives inside with a gesture Lucas didn’t understand, but it was clear these were friendlies. Though their grunts couldn’t be translated, a simple nod toward the humans conveyed the appropriate sentiment.
Allies.

Lucas barely had time to fit himself with a restraint before the transport took off. He’d studied the infiltration plan enough to know exactly where they were heading next. And it wasn’t to rot in a Xalan dungeon.

The trip inside the transport gave them a brief tour of the surrounding area. They flew by a shipyard constructing mammoth cruisers like the ones they’d destroyed at the Makari spaceport. Alpha pointed out the Xalan science academy, a domed building that looked slightly newer than the rest of the dust-covered shapes all around them. They flew over slums, where they could see wretched-looking Xalans living in squalor next to assuredly toxic lakes. Workers, they were told, were forcibly kept here to assemble ships and weapons for little pay. Many were former soldiers, Zeta said, deemed too old or injured to fight. A thousand feet up rose skyscrapers of sharp black metal, lofting citizens with means far above the peasants who served them. But even prime real estate on Xala meant you were constantly surrounded by thick clouds of smog and had a glorious view of a decaying planet. The place was a ruin.

Eventually, they came to rest at their destination. They landed at the mouth of what used to be a river a few centuries ago, but was now a strip of sludge and refuse. They were sunk deep into the lower levels of the city, and even the slums were above them. Out the forward viewscreen they saw a wide, round opening in a very large stone wall. The remnants of an ancient sewer system, back before that descriptor applied to the entire city.

The doors of the transport opened. He was sitting closest to the exit, so Lucas was the first to plant his foot on the rocky shore.

One small step for man …

The other Guardians followed suit and surveyed the area. Though the air was being filtered through their helmets, it didn’t eliminate the odor. Everything smelled of burnt metal and bile, and it was enough to make Lucas’s eyes water. Gray smoke poured from buildings around them, and streams of cloudy liquid ran down the walls surrounding the river, adding to the horrifying mixture pooling a few feet away from them.

Alpha motioned for them to follow him toward the sewer opening, and the group quickly obeyed, eager to get out of the open.

Miraculously, it smelled better inside the sewer than outside, thanks to its not having been used for centuries. That made it the perfect entry point into central command, though they’d have to trudge a fair distance to get there and knock down a few walls along the way.

Two of the four resistance operatives that escorted them waited just inside the entrance to the sewer while they continued deeper into the tunnel. They were stationed there to prevent any maintenance crew or random wanderers from entering the tunnel after they did, though that seemed unlikely given the remote location.

Slowly, the light of the opening grew fainter and fainter as they moved forward, then disappeared altogether around a bend in the tunnel. Lights on their armor and guns illuminated the way from there. Even though the sewer system was a complete labyrinth, they all had studied the blueprints so much over the past few weeks that each of them knew every next turn by heart. As such, they were making great time hustling through the tunnels toward their next checkpoint.

Finally, they reached an old control station for the sewer. The rusted door opened with a swift kick and they made their way inside. The station was vast and covered in a layer of dust an inch thick. It blew up around them angrily as they entered; it was clear no one had stepped foot inside for eons. Controls sat dormant and were so old they actually used physical buttons and levers rather than holograms. It almost looked like a similar facility would have on Earth, other than the tall chairs meant to seat eight-foot Xalan frames.

Rounding a corner, Lucas saw a patch of dust that had recently been disturbed. Surrounding it were prints leading off in various directions. Moving closer, he could see the remains of a deceased creature. A ribcage, a femur, a skull. Not a Xalan. It was small, and the prints surrounding it weren’t Xalan either.

Lucas jerked his head around as he heard two muffled thumps, silenced plasma rounds unloaded from Alpha’s rifle. When Lucas reached him, he was standing over a dust-covered ball of fur about the size of a trashcan. Alpha kicked it lightly with an armored foot.

“Wild dog,” he said, using the English word. But it was no dog. Lucas shone his light on it and saw a rat-like face with three-inch-long fangs poking out over its jowls. It had four lanky legs that spread out sideways from its torso like a spider. Whether this was simply how these things looked, or it was mutated from all the toxic contamination down here, he couldn’t be sure. Upon closer inspection, Lucas realized that the thing had two completely white eyes on the right half of its face, making three in total. Mutant seemed the more likely option.

Another pair of thumps echoed out from where Lucas had been a second ago, along with a painful yelp. This time it was one of the two remaining resistance Xalans who had fired. Another dead “dog” lay at his feet. Only two eyes this time. Lucas couldn’t translate the Xalan’s next grunt, but it was clear the idea was “let’s keep moving.” A sound suggestion, and Lucas kept his eyes peeled for more of the creatures as they cautiously walked forward. For a brief moment, Lucas thought he saw skittering movement across the open room, but it was far away, and this was no time to start firing into the darkness blindly. They reached another old door, this one wrenched open haphazardly, and left the cavernous room behind.

They were moving through dark hallways rather than wide-open tunnels. Lucas could only keep track of the Guardians in front and behind him with his helmet tagging them with virtual identifiers in the dark. He was happy to find it was Asha watching his back.

“We’re down the rabbit hole now,” she said over a private comm channel when she saw him glance backward.

“Even got our own white rabbit,” Lucas replied, nodding toward Zeta at the front of the pack.

They cut holes in walls with plasma torches or blew through them with pocket-size explosives. They crept through the underbelly of the city however they could, a route mapped out by spies months in advance. Eventually they came to rest in a very cramped corridor full of pipes and wiring, where they all had to stoop to avoid the ceiling. The Xalans in the party were practically kneeling.