Lunar alpha 4, p.17
Lunar Alpha 4, page 17
I was already a traitor. I’d already killed a Lagolian girl.
I zoomed in on that deceased girl again, thinking I might be able to recognize her. She was older, with long grey hair, tied into a ponytail behind her head. Her mouth was open now, showing off her thin lips and tiny nose.
And then, I realized that I did recognize her. I’d seen that woman before, in the auditorium, the day the fake survivors returned to Lunar Alpha. She was one of the queen’s commanders, one of the high-leveled officials in charge of the genocide on Lago.
My heart skipped a beat. Had I found Queen Syabus?
“I’m cut,” huffed Wrath. “But he’s dead. Charlie should… should be clear.” He sounded like he was about to collapse. His lungs were strained, maybe collapsed. “Roaraxe—do you hear me?”
But Roaraxe was silent.
“Fuck,” groaned Wrath. “Change of plans, Kyrie. It’s just me and you now. I’m going to take Charlie. You fall back to Alpha and try to stop the takeover. Do what you can, but know that there are two of them still out there: a close combat specialist and a unit yet to be identified.”
“O—Okay,” I said. I didn’t want to sound terrified, but I was on the verge of emptying my bowels into my pants. The queen had strong men and women at her disposal: high-leveled and heavily upgraded individuals with decades of fighting experience. I had nothing on them.
Now, I had my back to Beacon Bravo. I was heading towards Alpha, knowing that there was a swordsman lurking in those trees, ready to slice me up. I wasn’t equipped whatsoever for the fight. I had to manually reload every shot with the bolt on my firearm, which meant I basically had a single shot to hit, or I was dead.
I crept through the trees. I didn’t even know how long we had left. I was too afraid to take my focus off of the forest to look down at the timer on my watch. I scanned left and right and felt that cold silence penetrating my clothes and freezing my skin. I had to come out of this alive. I had to deliver this news to Patatora. This was the lead we were looking for, to be able to find out where Lunar Alpha had gone. I had to survive no matter what—and ideally, I needed to survive without being spotted. I hadn’t been spotted yet, as far as I knew. I just needed to get out alive, find out which star system I was currently on, and then I had to tell Eris, so she could mobilize the Lagolian army.
Now, I could see Beacon Alpha. I couldn’t see any units. I stopped to scan. Finally, I checked my watch. I had seven minutes—which gave me roughly two minutes to neutralize the enemy.
“I’m starting the takeover,” whispered Wrath.
“Good luck,” I whispered back. I couldn’t hear a sound. Was the swordsman waiting for me? Was this a trap? Was I being baited to go into that tower? Did I really have a choice?
I side-stepped, moving from tree to tree, stopping every few seconds to listen for rustling, but I knew that the Lagolians could be deathly quiet. I knew that they could move through a forest without making any sound at all, so I kept peering around me. My limbs were shaking, no matter how hard I tried to calm myself down.
And if Wrath wasn’t being contested, then where was their second unit? Were they regrouping for a full-blown attack on Alpha? Was I about to engage with two much more powerful enemies?
“Fifteen percent,” whispered Wrath.
“It’s dead here,” I whispered.
“Did you check the tower?”
“Not yet.”
“God speed, Kyrie,” he growled.
Now, I had no choice: I had to approach. I had to stop the takeover that was probably underway—or run into the trap and face my death.
Taking my next step, I stumbled, and I nearly screamed, looking down to see Roaraxe, dead, with a scaly hand still clutching his shotgun. It took my body a moment to become free from the paralysis. Then I put down my rifle and took that shotgun. I’d never used a shotgun before, aside from my dad’s twelve-gauge at a shooting range when I was fourteen. At least I could take more than one shot now. I felt like my chances went from five percent to ten percent: still most likely about to meet my maker.
I looked around. It was silent—too silent. It had to be a trap, but I had no other choice, so I just had to be fast. I had to beat the Lagolian to the punch.
I rushed in and swung left to right, ready to fire, expecting a stab in the chest.
But the room was empty. I gasped, spinning around, in complete disbelief that the room could actually be empty.
“Thirty percent,” said Wrath.
“It’s empty in here,” I whispered, backing towards a wall in case they came at me.
“Hold it. Six minutes, Kyrie. You can do it.”
I nodded my head as if he could see me. I kept my back to the wall, gun pointed at the doorway. Sweat fell from my brow, onto my nose. I tried to wipe it with my shoulder. My heart was racing dangerously. No man was supposed to experience this amount of adrenaline.
Then a Lagolian man rushed into the room, clad in armor, wielding a long blade. He looked right as he quietly pranced in, turning his head away from me, and I knew I didn’t have time to wait for him to look at me, to give me an ID. I just had to fire, for my own preservation, so that information could have a chance of making it to Eris.
The first shot knocked him forward, but his thick armor absorbed the shotgun blast. I pumped and fired again as he tried to spin around, this time blowing the back of his head off, sending him flat to the ground. “I—I got their swordsman. He’s dead, Wrath. He’s dead,” I whispered. My voice was a stuttering mess. It was a miracle Wrath could understand me.
“Good job, Kyrie! Keep holding!” he roared. “Fifty-five percent.”
I caught myself smiling, but that moment of joy was premature. A shell lobbed into the room and I recognized it immediately: an explosive grenade. I turned around and curled myself into a ball as it went off. I felt the flames against my back, and I felt all of the little bits of sharp metal jabbing into my skin. I shrieked in horror, falling onto my face, but I wasn’t dead. In fact, my metal arm took the brunt of the blow, and it was still in working condition.
The room was smokey now. I turned to the door as another explosive round flew into the room. Their lone survivor was a demolitionist, and they were set on ensuring I didn’t survive in that room.
I flattened my face to the ground and covered my head as the next round of fire engulfed my body. Thankfully, my clothes were fire resistant.
I screamed.
“Kyrie!” Wrath screamed into his mic. “Kyrie! Can you hear me!?”
I didn’t want to make a sound, so I kept my mouth shut. I wanted the demolitionist to think that I was dead. But they weren’t about to take any chances. A third explosive round was fired into the tower, and it exploded, engulfing me once again. Now, my skin was really starting to hurt. I was peppered with shrapnel, and it seemed like a complete miracle that I wasn’t dead. I tried to crawl to the tower stairs. My legs were weak and my body was tingling with awful pain.
“Kyrie, do you read me!?” Wrath shouted.
I coughed. “I—I’m okay,” I said with lungs full of smoke. Now, that whole tower was filled with dense smoke. I couldn’t breathe. I may as well have been underwater. I tried to crawl up the steps, towards the opening, but now it seemed impossibly far.
“Five minutes left, Kyrie! We did it! They can’t capture!”
But that wasn’t too helpful for me. The demolitionist still wanted me dead. Another round fired into the building. I groaned as I was thrown forward, onto my face, hitting my teeth into the stone steps. I could feel teeth breaking and my mouth filling with blood as my skin was roasted once again.
I don’t know where the energy came from, but I managed to pull myself up another four steps, getting a breath of oxygen for a moment between plumes of heavy gunpowder-scented smoke.
“Eighty percent,” Wrath announced, as if it made any difference to me at this point.
Then I rolled onto my back so I could breathe. I caught a dark figure coming in through the smoke. With one shaking hand and one sparking hand (only a couple of fingers seemed to be working now), I aimed at the silhouette. The enemy was scanning the room, risking his life to take me out, even though it had no bearing on the results.
Maybe they managed to ID me. Maybe they wanted to take me out before I could relay the information back to the Lagolians on Lago. Or maybe this was just an act of revenge. Either way, I couldn’t miss my shot. So I awkwardly pointed my shotgun at the traitorous Lagolian, I trembled, and then I fired.
They went down, but they were still squirming, so I awkwardly pumped with all of my energy, and then I shot again. Now, the smoke was thick in my lungs. I could feel a terrible lightheadedness coming on. I tried to compose myself, and then I rolled off of those stairs, hard onto the stone ground, engulfed in that dense smoke. A moment later, I was out cold.
CHAPTER XIX
When I was revived, I was in the Ekturian underground base. I knew I was there before I even opened my eyes because I could feel the cold dampness that they were accustomed to, and I could smell that off-putting old water smell. I heard beeping and chiming and knew that I was in a sort of infirmary. Then, I pulled my left arm over to feel the burning sensation on the side of my face, and I felt the tug of needles and tubes.
“Try to relax, Kyrie,” growled the familiar voice of Wrath.
I blinked a few times. My eyes felt dry and burned. But there was something on my eyelids: a thick, gooey substance that was heavy, but clear. It was all over my face, and all over my naked chest and arms.
“You survived, Kyrie. Now relax while we fix you up.”
I blinked a few more times and saw the vague shape of Wrath standing before me. “We won?” I asked.
“Thanks to you,” he said. “We certainly weren’t expecting that much heroism from a mercenary. You must really want those bonus credits.” He laughed. “We’ll make sure the fight was worth it for you, brother, don’t worry. Just relax while they heal you up. They said you’re going to make a full recovery. Though you’re going to have to find someone else to fix that arm of yours. We had a mechanic look at it and he can’t figure out how they wired it.”
“That’s fine. I know some people,” I smiled, and then I coughed.
“Relax, relax,” he said again. “You’ll need to be here overnight.”
“I can’t. I need to get back to my people.”
“Your people can wait.”
“They’ll kill me,” I said.
“Wife?” he asked with a grin.
“Something like that.” I coughed again. “But I really need to go. I need to deliver some information. It’s urgent.”
“Well perhaps I can do it for you. I’d be happy to do you a favor, as you did a favor for us.”
My heart skipped a beat. “I—I don’t know if that’s a great idea.”
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Afraid of giving us your star system information? You can trust us, Kyrie. We aren’t going to stab you in the back.”
“It’s not that,” I said. And then I paused, feeling a surge of tingling pain all over my skin. I was getting tired of being shot and getting lit on fire. “I wouldn’t be going back to my home planet. I…” I knew the news wasn’t going to be taken well. “I’ve been helping the Lagolians.”
Then he turned silent, jaw parting. His horrid breath seeped out, making me turn my head away. “Lagolians?” he said.
“They control my star system, Sol,” I said. “I’ve been helping them.”
“You lied to me,” he growled.
“I’m sorry.”
“I wouldn’t have hired you if I knew,” he said.
“I know. Believe me—I know. I was desperate for the cash, and the experience.”
“Why are you telling this to me now, human?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it feels better to come clean. I’ve got nothing against you personally. I get that you have some history with the Lagolians—that’s not really any of my business.”
“History is putting it lightly,” he growled, now looking like he was resisting the urge to spit. “I thought you smelled like a Lagolian.”
“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this,” I said. “But we’re desperate. I have kids, on the Lagolian mothership. The Lagolian queen—Queen Syabus—took the mothership after massacring almost the entire population on Lago. My kids are on that ship and I want to see them again.”
“I know about the ship,” he said. “And the queen—she made a deal with us to pass through our controlled territory, to a neutral star. It was a damned deal that we should have never agreed to. We thought it would be a way of inching closer to peace, but then the Lagolians stabbed us in the back. A couple weeks after they settled, they attacked. They’ve been trying to earn ground on us. They control two systems now—the neutral star they settled on and another system that was dear to us.”
“And what’s behind them? If you were to push them back, where can they go?”
“Nowhere,” he said. “It’s an End Portal, one of two that we control.”
“So it just ends there? They can’t escape back?”
“If they take Godora, the moon we just defended, and then the next moon, Seeve, then they can spread. Seeve is a tri-portal, and it’s our border with a race called the Wolites. In fact, the Lagolian queen asked us for a pass straight through to the Wolites territory, and we were going to let them go, but we met with the Wolites and they told us not to approve the crossing.”
“So they tried to get away, but that’s as far as they could get?” I asked.
He nodded his head.
“We want that ship back,” I said. “Tell me what star they’re on.”
“It’s called Pandolia,” he said. “But if you want to get to it, you’d have to go through us, and we won’t allow it. We aren’t falling for that trick again.”
“Then let me fight with you. Let me convince a few trustworthy Lagolians to fight with you too. I promise we won’t stab you in the back. We just want to get that ship back. Wrath, I have nine children on that ship. I’ll do anything.”
He stared at me for a long moment before shaking his head. “You’re putting me in an awkward position, Kyrie.”
“Right now, you’re the only hope that we have.”
“The Lagolians killed many of our men. We wanted peace for years, and our naivety has only gotten us into more trouble. In fact, our generals are considering allowing the Lagolians to capture Godora and Seeve, just so they can move into Wolite territory, so they won’t be our problem anymore. It’s a tough decision to make. The Wolites have been our close allies for thousands of years. But they’re a weak race, not a fighting race. The Lagolians would destroy them entirely. But maybe that shouldn’t be our problem. It’s a hard position to be in.”
“Let us fight with you. Don’t let them get away. I’ll do anything. I’ll bring help. We can take them.”
“I don’t think you understand, Kyrie. They have level fifties in their ranks. Two days ago, we hardly defended their attack. I don’t even think they were trying to conquer territory; they just wanted to injure our fighters, and it worked. Those men are still in the infirmary. And today, I’m not convinced they were trying to win. They’re just trying to weaken us so that they can roll through us easier. Our population has been destroyed from war. We’ve spent the past five hundred years defending six different tri-portals, wars with various races. We don’t have much left. Our resources have dwindled. If the Lagolians end up attacking us from the tri-portal at Roth-12 on top of all the fronts we’re already defending, we’re doomed. We don’t have the military strength to defend another front.”
“The Lagolians at Roth-12 don’t want to fight. They just want to get Lunar Alpha back.”
“I’m sorry. I’m doing you a favor right now by keeping this a secret between us,” he said in his deep, growling voice.
“There must be something I can say to change your mind. There must be something I can do to prove to you that the Lagolians don’t want war—not my Lagolians. Queen Syabus is another matter, but we can help to take her down with you.”
“Sorry, Kyrie,” he said, shaking his head.
I let out a frustrated sigh. I could tell there was no breaking through to him. He wasn’t even pausing to consider what I suggesting, and who could blame him? They just made the mistake of trusting the Lagolians, led by Queen Syabus, and they were immediately stabbed in the back. Maybe my Lagolian girls, led by Eris, wouldn’t be so different. They hated the Ekturians too, and perhaps they were just waiting to hear that the Ekturians were weak and vulnerable so they could take them out of the picture. I still didn’t have a full grasp on the political situation the Lagolians were dealing with, and there were strong opinions outside of my sphere of influence. “There’s really nothing you can do for me?”
“Letting you stay here is what I’m doing for you,” he said with the nod of his head.
“Well I should be going,” I said.
“You need to recover. You won’t be leaving that bed for the next twenty-four hours.”
I bit down on my tongue. “Fine,” I groaned.
“Then, tomorrow, I’ll show you to a room. We’ll make it comfortable for you—and dry. I can tell that you don’t thrive in the humidity.” He smiled.
“Thanks, but I need to get back to Lago,” I said.
He shook his head. “I can’t let you do that, Kyrie,” he said.
“What?” I paused, feeling the color draining from my face. “No—you have to let me go.” I let out a nervous laugh, assuming he was messing with me, but now, he was just staring into my eyes with a blank, heartless kind of look. “Wrath—no.”
“I’m sorry, Kyrie. It’s a matter of security. I know that you understand.”
“Are you telling me that you’re going to keep me as a prisoner?” I could feel my heart sliding down, down, down into my stomach.
