Starforce on the rise, p.10
Starforce on the Rise, page 10
Then she looked down as the stealth bomb began its deadly dive to the surface, heading straight for the bunker. Closer to Minn-Erva, she could just see Att-Lass and Korath climbing up and over the edge of the crater. But what about the rest of the team?
The stealth bomb hit its target, and everything went white.
The scent of ozone hung in the air, and the white flash had been replaced with a thick black soot that descended from the sky like fallout. Minn-Erva had managed to avert her eyes right before impact, sparing herself the flash blindness usually caused by a stealth bomb. Static hissed and crackled over her comm-link as she tried to reach out to her teammates.
“Att-Lass, Korath, do you copy? Yon-Rogg, Bron-Char, do you copy?”
More static.
Minn-Erva pulled herself out of the rocky nook in which she’d been waiting and climbed over the top. Looking down, she couldn’t see the concrete bunker, only the thick black soot as it fell. She felt a slight breeze behind her.
In a heartbeat, her body shifted, turned, and she had swiveled around, weapon slung into firing position. Her finger had tripped the switch from single shot to rapid-fire.
“Whoa! Whoa! It’s us!”
Att-Lass.
She watched as he emerged from the soot, with Korath right next to him, a fine layer of dirt clinging to their persons.
“Any sign of Yon-Rogg or Bron-Char?” she asked.
Korath shook his head. “Nothing. Can you reach either of them on the comm-link?”
Minn-Erva opened her comm-link channel so Korath could hear the static. Korath nodded.
“What now?” Att-Lass said. “I say we go back down there and get Vers out of that bunker.”
“We have our orders,” Korath said, putting a hand on Att-Lass, who was already starting down the peak to the crater. “Back to the freighter. Now.”
“Whose orders are those?” Minn-Erva asked.
“Yon-Rogg’s. Straight from the top. We go back to the freighter and wait. Bron-Char and Yon-Rogg can take care of themselves,” Korath said.
“And Vers?” Minn-Erva pressed.
Korath paused for a moment and then shook his head. “Orders are orders. She can handle herself, too,” he said.
For a moment, Minn-Erva even believed him.
“What does that mean, ‘I am the plans’?” Vers didn’t make any effort to disguise her annoyance at Kaal’s cryptic statement. She didn’t have the time or patience to play games.
Peer Kaal smiled at Vers, but it didn’t meet her eyes. “I am the plans. They are in my head. Only I know what they are,” she said.
Vers looked at Peer Kaal. “Does it work?” she asked.
Kaal nodded slowly. “What you see on Sy’gyl is a direct result of the axiom cannon. Before the cannon, this planet was a paradise. Lush, dense forestry, plants and flowers of all kinds thriving, growing, taking root—and now? The earthquakes. The fire. The lava flows. All of it.”
“The axiom cannon did all this?” Vers said in disbelief.
“It is a terrible weapon,” Kaal replied. “It destroys slowly, decimating a planet, until there’s nothing left. Any greenery or plant life you see that’s still surviving—if you were to return to Sy’gyl in a year, maybe less, there’d be nothing left.”
Vers scratched the back of her head. “So if the plans are all in your head, I guess you’re coming with me, then?”
Kaal reached inside her shirt as she walked over to Vers. Vers moved quickly, ready for an attack, but none came. “No, please, let me show you,” Kaal said. Then Vers saw the silver chain that Kaal wore around her neck.
When she finished pulling out the chain, Vers saw something at the end of it. A small silver capsule, about the size of a bean. “I’ve recorded everything I know about the axiom cannon on this data capsule. Take it,” Kaal said as she took the silver chain and handed it, along with the data capsule, to Vers.
Vers draped the chain around her neck, secreting it beneath her uniform, where no one would be able to see it. “What about you?” she said to Kaal. “What’s gonna happen to you if you stick around?”
Kaal looked thoughtful. “I suppose when all is discovered, my treachery will be dealt with,” she said, a sadness in her voice. “All I wanted to do was create. Now it has come to this.” She gestured to the lab around her.
“Come with me,” Vers said as she headed for the door. “We’ll get you out of here.”
“Go with the Kree? I think I like my chances better on Xandar,” Kaal replied, a smile playing on her face. “No, you go. My place is here. Whatever my punishment, even if it be death, it is worth it knowing that there will be balance in the galaxy.”
“You can have balance now!”
A voice from behind Vers had cried out, and before she could turn around, she felt it. Hot metal slicing into her right leg. Deep. The pain was blinding—in fact, it didn’t even register as pain at first.
Instinctively, her hands reached out and grabbed at the edge of the knife, trying to knock it loose. The woman wielding the weapon was wearing Xandarian battle gear, and she was built like a wall. Vers slammed the hand that held the knife into the wall once, twice, three times.
The woman wouldn’t release her hold.
“This is what happens to traitors!” the Xandarian shouted, struggling to free her hand from Vers’s grip and attack Peer Kaal.
“Put. The knife. Down!” Vers grunted against the pain in her leg as she put all her might behind one more punch to the Xandarian’s knife hand. The warrior dropped it at last, and the metal hit the floor with a loud clang.
And then there was a high-pitched whistling sound. . . .
“Incoming!” Vers shouted.
But by then, it was already too late. The bunker exploded around them, throwing Vers to the ground. In the explosion, she lost sight of Peer Kaal and the Xandarian warrior who had just tried to kill her.
“It’s hard to believe that any vegetation has stayed alive through these fires and lava,” Dey observed quietly, drawing Vers back to the present as they made their way through the sparse forest.
They had been in the brush for about a half hour or so, Vers figured, putting some distance between them and the site of their skirmish with the Skrull. “Our ship’s just beyond that stand of trees up there,” she said, motioning with her head. “I think.”
“My mission is to get you to your ship safe and sound,” Dey said. “I don’t have any desire to meet any of your crew. And I’m pretty sure they don’t have any desire to meet me.”
Vers looked at Dey. “You know something.”
Dey seemed taken aback, and a little surprised. “Me? I know nothing. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you,” he said.
“Spill.”
With a sigh, Dey started in. “You want to know why you were the one chosen to enter the compound and get the plans?”
Is this guy reading my mind?
“Because out of everyone on your team, you’re the one who’s least likely to kill first and ask questions later,” Dey replied.
Vers didn’t say anything, just kept walking. She heard the sound of hissing gas in the distance.
“Same reason you were chosen?” Vers asked.
Dey nodded. “Yep.”
“How do you know?” Vers said. “Why should I believe you?”
“You don’t have to believe me,” Dey said. “I’m following orders, just like you. But this sort of mission doesn’t just happen. It has to come down from the highest levels.”
Highest levels? What does he mean?
“The two of you should have a whole army following you, for all the noise you’re making.”
Vers was interrupted from her furious train of thought by a voice erupting from behind the tree line.
“Yon-Rogg!” Vers called out. There he was, emerging from behind the trunk of a gnarled tree, with Bron-Char and Sun-Val behind him.
“You all made it, I see,” Vers said drily.
“We followed the three Xandarians we saw back at the compound, made sure they didn’t circle back, and gave you time to get the plans,” Yon-Rogg said. “You did get the—?”
“What do you think?” Vers asked shortly.
Yon-Rogg smiled and held up his hands in a mock gesture of surrender. Then he turned to face Rhomann Dey. The smile faded away. “Your mission is completed,” Yon-Rogg said.
Dey nodded. “She’s all yours,” he said. “A pleasure to never have met you, and know nothing about what happened here this day.”
“Likewise,” Yon-Rogg said.
“Thank you,” Vers said, eyes meeting Dey’s. “Great time.”
“The best,” Dey replied. Then he walked the opposite way. In less than a minute, he had disappeared into the thick woods.
“Better head back to the freighter,” Sun-Val said, her voice taking on an urgent tone.
“What are you doing out here, Sun-Val?” Vers inquired. “Shouldn’t you be with the freighter?”
“We found her in the forest on our way back,” Bron-Char said. “Thought she saw something, so she left the freighter to investigate.”
“Had to make sure no one was trying to hijack our ride,” Sun-Val said.
Vers didn’t buy it for a minute.
They broke through the trees, and then it happened.
Vers emerged first, Sun-Val next to her, with Yon-Rogg and Bron-Char right behind. To Vers, it was like everything was playing out in slow motion.
Just ahead of them was the freighter. Vers saw Att-Lass standing by the hatch, and made out Korath in the cockpit. The ship’s engines were humming, ready for blastoff. Minn-Erva was about halfway between the freighter and the trees, approaching Vers.
“Get down!” Minn-Erva shouted suddenly as she lowered her weapon, taking aim.
Is she trying to shoot me?
That’s when Vers felt it: the barrel of a weapon shoved in between her shoulder blades, and heard Yon-Rogg and Bron-Char shout to her.
“Get down!”
Minn-Erva, again.
Vers fell to the ground, hitting the stone surface hard. She felt the impact on her injured leg, and then something tore.
From the ground, she saw Minn-Erva let loose with two shots.
Then Vers heard a body slump down next to her.
Sun-Val.
Only it wasn’t Sun-Val. Her face slowly changed, twisting, morphing, until Vers knew exactly who and what the person was.
A Skrull. The other one Dey was talking about.
“Sun-Val. A Skrull?” Vers whispered, almost inaudibly.
“No,” Minn-Erva said, approaching the Skrull. She wasn’t breathing. “Not Sun-Val. The real Sun-Val is dead. Killed by this one.”
Att-Lass ran over from the hatch and knelt down next to Vers. “We found Sun-Val’s body on the way back to the freighter. She must have been drawn out by the Skrull who killed her and took her place.”
“Hoping to kill you and take the plans,” Yon-Rogg said. “You really do have them?”
Reaching inside her uniform, Vers extricated the silver chain with the data capsule at the end and pulled it over her head, dropping it into Yon-Rogg’s hand. “Got your plans right here,” she said. With almost inhuman effort, Vers rose to her feet and made her way to the ship, willing herself not to pass out every step of the way.
Vers listened to the loud humming of the freighter’s engines. She tried to sit up, momentarily forgetting that her motion was restricted by two bands of cloth; one against her chest, the other restraining her legs. She looked down at her right leg, immobilized in a gel-like casing.
“Don’t try to sit up,” Minn-Erva said, sauntering over from where she had been watching over the freighter’s auto-pilot controls. Luckily the course home was expected to be much smoother than the trip there, as they were now without Sun-Val. The loss of the talented pilot weighed heavily on the team, especially Yon-Rogg, but in typical Kree warrior fashion the mission would be completed first. Emotions would come later. “You lost a lot of blood. Your leg’s a mess.”
“But I get to keep it, right?” Vers said, trying to smile.
“Yech, don’t smile—that’s gonna make me sick,” Minn-Erva said. “You’ll be fine. And you did all right, by the way,” she added grudgingly. “You came through.”
“So did you,” Vers said, her throat scratchy.
“What did you expect?” Minn-Erva replied with a shrug. Then she got up and walked toward the cockpit.
“Good focus.”
Yon-Rogg.
“Hey, boss,” Vers said, trying to keep the tone of the conversation light.
“How’s the leg?” he asked.
“I’ve had worse.”
“Get some rest. When we reach the Kree home world, you’re heading straight for the med-bay,” Yon-Rogg said.
“Yon-Rogg,” Vers said, pulling on his sleeve. “Rhomann Dey said something while we were down there. About the mission.”
“You know you can’t trust a Xandarian,” Yon-Rogg said. “Or believe anything they say.”
“He tried to tell me why I was chosen for this mission. Why I was the one sent into the compound.”
“And do you think he was telling you the truth?”
Vers was quiet. “I’m not sure,” she said.
“Does it matter?”
With that, Yon-Rogg stood up, and left Vers to her thoughts.
Yes. Yes it does.
Steve Behling, Starforce on the Rise
