The Exiled Earthborn (48 page)

All of them knew where they were. Their urban spelunking over the past hour or so had gotten them past two of the checkpoints that led into Xalan central command. They were now at the third and final one before the entrance, and it was simply impossible to continue any further underground with a wall of metal a dozen feet thick at the far end of the room.

Above them, however, the floor was not quite so sturdy, and they could force their way into the room via the paneling the two resistance Xalans were currently working to quietly dismantle. No one was speaking, but each knew what was about to come. It wasn’t another empty room up there. This final checkpoint was filled with guards, anywhere from ten to fourteen at a given time, according to the insiders.

Even so, the plan wasn’t to go loud. Not yet. Not until they got deeper, or else they’d never get there at all.

The panel was loosened. If Maston was there, he would likely have been doing the honors, but Kiati held the pulse grenade instead. They’d make him proud.

25

The grenade bounced like a rubber ball across the floor of the room above them. It caught the eyes of a pair of Xalan guards who had only milliseconds to deduce what the device was. By the time they understood the threat, it had exploded in a flash of blue light. A pulse quickly rebounded throughout the entire room.

The device worked as intended; the explosion blinded the guards, while the pulse rendered every piece of electronic equipment in the room useless. Power weapons and armor were deactivated. But more importantly, so were comms and cameras. The room was now completely dark.

That was their cue. The group sprang up through the floor paneling, weapons raised. It took all of a few seconds for them to scramble to their feet, and only a few more to put down every soldier in the room quickly and quietly.

Lucas immediately put a pair of silenced rounds into two Xalans stumbling toward the outer doors. He turned to see Reyes opening three separate Xalan throats with her pair of curved blades and Kovaks taking out another pair of soldiers with dead-center headshots. Kiati silently snapped the neck of a disoriented Xalan while Alpha unloaded a stream of silenced plasma into a group of guards at the far end of the room. Lucas looked around for Asha, and saw her in the middle of a pile of Xalan body parts, sword in hand, dripping with blood. Lucas put one more round into a Xalan struggling to raise his weapon, and the room went silent.

By his count there were a dozen Xalan bodies littering the floor. Not one stirred and none of them had managed to even get a shot off in the chaos. The doors on either side of the room remained closed, meaning no one had heard the assault within. That didn’t necessarily indicate their invasion wouldn’t be discovered eventually, however.

It was time to pick up the pace.

Zeta crawled out of the floor where she’d been hiding for the duration of the brief skirmish. Though she was armed and more than capable of defending herself, the entire mission was lost if she ended up dead in a firefight. Her two Xalan escorts rose out of the ground with her and set to work on the room’s security system, ending the video and audio blackout, replacing it with an old feed that would make it look like nothing had occurred within. Even if it bought them mere minutes, it would help. As a last resort, the two resistance Xalans would stay behind and barricade the entrance so that no one entered or exited. The sight of the room would instantly put the entire facility on lockdown.

Lucas walked over to the large metal door that would lead them further into the compound. Alpha was ready with an entry chip pulled from a dead guard that would open the door, but they needed to know what was on the other side first.

Lucas looked through Natalie’s scope, which he’d switched into X-ray functionality. On the other side of the door, he could see the skeletons of two Xalans on either side of the frame, facing the other direction. He marked exactly where they were on the wall, and Reyes and Kovaks moved into position.

The door sprang open, and the two soldiers couldn’t even turn their heads before blades were driven into their necks from behind. The two Guardians dragged the bodies into the room and tossed them onto the bloody floor like rag dolls.

The group quickly sprinted out into the adjacent hallway, the door closing behind them, sealing Zeta’s two agents inside. They would work to disable security along their route as quickly as possible, but nothing was guaranteed.

Kiati drew first blood in this next phase when she rounded the corner of the hallway. Standing there were a pair of unarmored Xalans discussing something on a data pad. They had half a second to process that they were staring at a group of Sorans before Kiati’s pistol tore through them. Lucas checked the map and motioned to everyone that their next move was to duck into a room to the right. The door opened without hesitation and they found themselves in some sort of control center.

Two guards inside the room were the first to go down, both beheaded by Asha with one swipe of her sword. There was another pair on the far side of the room, one of which Lucas took out with a long-barrel sniper shot, and the other sank to his knees with one of Kovak’s small throwing blades embedded in his skull.

Three seated, unarmed Xalans barely had time to be shocked before they were cut down by Alpha’s rifle. They slumped over their consoles like they’d suddenly fallen asleep.

As soon as everyone in the room was confirmed dead, Kiati headed over to the central viewscreen, which she promptly smashed with the butt of her gun. She and Reyes began unloading some equipment from their packs, a superheated plasma cutter that would slice through the metal behind the screen like butter. The room’s outer wall was a shortcut to where they needed to go next.

The cutting tool hissed as a bright orange line slowly tore its way through the wall. Lucas took a moment to collect his thoughts and briefly leaned against a nearby console spattered with the black blood of its operator. He peered at the screen and was stunned at what he saw.

It was an enormous Xalan fleet, all moving in unison through a field of stars. Lucas saw a familiar green-ringed planet, one he’d seen when they first arrived in the Soran solar system. They were already there.

“Alpha,” Lucas called out, but across the room he saw Alpha was looking at a similar scene on a larger screen.

“It appears the invasion force is nearing the Soran homeworld,” he said, confirming what Lucas had seen.

“There will be massive casualties within the hour,” Zeta said. “We must hurry.”

“This is as fast as this thing goes,” Kiati called out. The cutter had now completed roughly half of a rectangle on the wall.

Asha stepped gingerly over a dead guard as she approached Lucas. She’d removed her helmet and brushed the wet, stringy hair out of her eyes. Lucas had already taken his helmet off. His heart hadn’t stopped racing since they first set foot on the planet, and it didn’t seem like it was going to let up any time soon.

“So far so good,” Asha said, threading her sword over her back. Lucas nodded.

“The advantages of going through the details a thousand times,” he said.

Indeed, everything had gone exactly according to plan since they’d arrived on Xala, discounting of course Maston’s untimely demise.

Then came a moment they had all been dreading. An alarm began wailing at the top of its mechanical lungs. The sound pierced the silence and caused everyone’s eyes to widen and pulses to quicken.

“[Garbled]” came the sound from Alpha’s translator, assuredly failing to convert some sort of Xalan curse word.

“Shit,” Lucas said in English simultaneously, meeting Alpha’s startled gaze.

They would likely never know exactly what happened. It could have been any of number of things that set it off. Perhaps they boarded the interceptor to find a tomb of dead Xalans. Someone could have come across Maston’s carnage-filled escape pod. The blood-soaked checkpoint might have been discovered. Whatever the case, it didn’t matter now. It was bound to happen at some point, and was built into the plan accordingly. Stealth had gotten them this far, but it would take them no further.

Every monitor in the room flashed with a warning indicator as the alarm droned on. Lucas quickly translated it.

“SECURITY BREACH SECTION SEVEN. ARMED SORANS AND REBEL AGENTS INSIDE. ALL UNITS CONVERGE TO ROOM 1250.”

Lucas glanced up at a strip of Xalan symbols above the door they’d just entered. 1250.

“We have to go!” Lucas shouted. Alpha was already heading toward the door leading into the room, where he planted a pair of blinking mines on either side. Kiati was just bringing the cutting tool around to complete the red hot rectangle in the wall.

“Ready!” she called back, and the group formed up behind her. Alpha tossed out more mines throughout the room, which stuck to various surfaces with their magnetic backing.

With a hefty kick from Kiati’s armored leg, the metal plate flew into the next area. Everyone froze.

The room they’d broken into was massive, with ceilings at least five stories high. The far wall was entirely translucent, a curved sheet of glass that revealed an assortment of machinery. They were looking at their final destination. A large set of double doors that led to the communications relay sat at the base of the glass. It was where Zeta needed to be in order to disseminate the message and disrupt comms. The only problem was the dozens of very angry-looking Xalan soldiers standing in their way.

With a wide sweep of her arm, Kiati threw out a half dozen grenades, mixing explosives with crippling pulse devices. They all exploded at roughly the same time, disorienting and dismembering the soldiers closest to them. It was the last time they could utilize the element of surprise.

As the grenades leveled the troops in front of them, Lucas heard other explosive thuds coming from their rear. Troops had entered the room they’d just exited and had tripped Alpha’s mines. The guards in front of them had regained their senses from the grenade blasts and all hell broke loose.

The temperature in the room rose ten degrees in an instant as plasma scorched the air all around them. Both the Guardians and the Xalan guards were unloading on each other while each dove for cover behind anything they could find. In the first wave of shots, at least four Xalans went down while Kovaks took a round in the chest. He winced in pain as his suit rapidly tried to seal the wound, but it was clearly not a fatal hit. Kiati tossed him a syringe that would instantly erase the pain for the time being.

Lucas had a round whiz by his head at such close range he could feel it singe the hair on his temple. He scrambled to find his helmet, which had been knocked loose, but it was lost in the chaos.

The guards closest to them had their guns destroyed by the pulse grenades and were sprinting toward them like madmen, wielding razor-thin blades assuredly meant to be a last-resort weapon. One bounded over the console where Lucas was hiding and was blown apart with a shotgun blast from Natalie. The next one over got Asha’s sword in his chest and the soldier’s blade clattered to the floor next to them. Asha kicked him backward forcefully, freeing her sword from his sternum as he crumpled to the ground in a lifeless heap.

Kiati turned around to lob one more grenade into the hole they’d just emerged from. They were fighting a war on two fronts now, as all Alpha’s mines had been tripped and fresh troops were trying to flank them. The blast caused a shower of black blood to erupt from the hole, and it was clear Kiati had disrupted their entry. Large pieces of debris fell in chunks over the opening, and it would take the Xalans some time to excavate.

Shots ricocheted off the clear far wall of the room. Despite being translucent, the material was something far more durable than glass. After all, it did protect the most important communications relay on the planet. They somehow had to get across the room.

The Guardians, now able to avoid an attack from the rear for the time being, began to press forward. It wasn’t the type of group to hunker down behind cover for long. They were assassins, and Reyes and Kovaks were bounding across the room, dodging shots and killing Xalan soldiers with extreme precision. Asha followed their lead, no stranger to the same style of combat. Her blade whipped through the air as she cartwheeled over stunned Xalans who couldn’t get a bead on a target so small and fast. The sword shredded their armor and the cavernous room echoed with wails of agony. The alarm still blared all around them.

Lucas followed closely behind her, taking out any Xalan that swung their weapon toward her. They put down creature after creature, and the pair of them were leaving a trail of bodies in their wake as they pressed forward across the increasingly slippery floor.

Behind them, Alpha was wrestling with a knife-wielding guard when Zeta walked up and put a round in the Xalan’s head. Alpha looked at her appreciatively, but both had to quickly turn and unload at another pair of soldiers trying to line them up.

Kiati had taken a hit somewhere and blood was dripping from her stealth suit to the floor. It hadn’t slowed her down, however, and she cracked off shots from her pistol toward soldiers attempting to end the acrobatics of Reyes. Kovaks and Reyes, despite their friendly rivalry, made a hell of a team, and the Xalans simply didn’t have an answer for the pair of them.

Lucas took a grazing shot to his ribcage and doubled over in pain. When he looked back up, the assailant was already dead, Asha’s blade planted in his head while she stood a few feet away. She bent her wrist and the sword ejected itself from the Xalan’s body and back into her hand. She quickly ran over to help Lucas up, and he could feel his suit releasing painkillers into his bloodstream. The wound wasn’t serious enough to call for Kiati’s aid, so he continued forward.

The troops in the room were starting to thin out and they were able to finally reach the doorway to the comms relay. Alpha set to work hacking through the security, which was on complete lockdown after the breach had been broadcast.

Reyes was taking a few last shots at downed and squirming Xalans that weren’t quite dead yet. Kovaks was clutching his chest, injured, but functional. Kiati attended to Zeta; a plasma round had eaten through her leg armor near her shin, despite constant protection by Alpha. Lucas wiped away the blood that stained his side, the wound now closed and the pain muted. They were battered, but alive. But there was no telling when the next round of reinforcements would show up.