Declaration (Forgotten Colony Book 5) Read online

  “Your trust isn’t misplaced. We need one another.”

  “Agreed. Go.”

  “This way, Sergeant,” Klahanie said. “It isn’t far.” He started toward the door off the bridge with Tsi beside him. “The CUTS system uses neural translation to control the craft. From what I understand, the electrical impulses are the same regardless of language, so we should be okay there…”

  His voice faded as they left the bridge, the door closing behind them.

  “Well, Governor,” Faith said. “It seems we’re in deep shit.”

  “It does,” Jackson replied. “But we aren’t dead yet. We need to go too. Sheriff Zane should have the recruits assembled in South Park.”

  “I hope there’s a good turnout,” Doctor Rathbone said. “I’d like to volunteer too, if you’ll have me, Governor.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but we need you fixing up the wounded. And I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of them before this is over.”

  The statement left a tense silence hanging between them. They all knew what was coming, and what was at stake.

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 9

  “Here it is,” Deputy Klahanie said, opening the hatch into the smaller hangar located in the bow of the Deliverance. “What do you think?”

  Sergeant Tsi Ong of the Free Inahri stared at the group of small fighters arranged near the front of the space. The ships in question, Daggers, looked primitive compared to the Inahri’s most advanced designs, but she wasn’t in a position to complain. Arluthu already had the energy unit. If the compound had fallen, if the Seeker had fallen, it meant the Relyeh were on the verge of victory, the totality of the war lasting less than a single cycle.

  The only hope she had to cling to was that Sergeant Wash and his team had managed to damage the ship well enough to keep it grounded while they recovered and regrouped. But how likely was that considering everything else?

  “It’s perfect,” she replied, glancing sideways at the deputy. “Are you certain I’ll be able to fly it?”

  “As I said, we have to assume your brainwaves aren’t too different from a normal Earth human’s. If they are too different, we’ll know right away.”

  They hurried to the Dagger closest to the hangar door. Tsi pulled herself up onto a safe step spot on its delta wing. The cockpit canopy sensed her presence and swung open.

  She looked down into the cockpit, at the large helmet resting on the seat. It reminded her of her battle armor. She would have given anything to be on the Seeker in her full gear, helping her people stop the Relyeh from capturing the starship. She would have given anything to be back at the compound, defending her people from the treacherous Doctor Riley and the Relyeh Sergeant Harai.

  She would have preferred to be anywhere but here, the place where her mission had ended.

  The place where she had failed.

  Sergeant Caleb was taken. Doctor Riley was a traitor. Awak and Kizi were dead. The modulator was gone. Why hadn’t Harai taken her too? If he didn’t want her, why wasn’t she dead? Riley had attacked her and knocked her unconscious. Before that she had shot the Earther multiple times. She had seen the woman bleed. But she hadn’t died. The wounds healed too quickly, and when Riley hit her, it was like a blow from an armored fist, not a lightly augmented Intellect Skin. She knew the doctor was sick. She had let her recover a possible cure. But what kind of disease made someone nearly impossible to kill? Tsi would have gladly accepted the mottled patches of skin on her body for an ability like that.

  She picked up the helmet and stepped into the cockpit and sat down. As she leaned back, she found the fit snug and comfortable. She glanced at the controls. Klahanie said she wouldn’t need them. That the system could read her mind. For all their technology, the Inahri didn’t have anything like that. For all their technology, there were still things the Earthers could surprise her with.

  She lowered the mantle of the Intellect Skin, freeing her head. Then she pulled the helmet down. She heard a click as something came out from the back of the seat to connect to it. The canopy started to close at the same time.

  “Godspeed, Sergeant,” she heard Klahanie say. She didn’t know what the first word meant, but she understood the word Sergeant by now. She waved to him, and he stuck his thumb up. She copied the move as the canopy finished descending, clicking and then hissing as the cockpit quickly pressurized.

  The front of the helmet lit up in Earther symbols she didn’t understand. She needed to ignore them. Klahanie had told her to stay focused on what she wanted the craft to do.

  The hangar door began opening in front of her, letting the morning light in. How much time had passed since Harai had left this ship? Her chest constricted with fear and anxiety.

  She ordered herself to stop thinking that way. She had to stay calm and focused. She looked at the cockpit. It had manual controls as a backup for what Klahanie had called cuts. She could probably figure out the manual controls if she needed. They were much simpler than an Inahri transport. Still, she hoped she wouldn’t have to.

  She turned her thoughts to the power source coming online. The helmet’s HUD changed with the idea, an indicator in the corner flashing as the ship started to vibrate gently. She turned her head, looking off to the side where Klahanie was standing. He flashed his thumb at her again. She looked back to the open air in front of her. She breathed in and imagined herself launching toward it.

  She was shoved back into her seat as the Dagger responded, the reactor whining loudly as the ion thrusters pushed the craft forward. Quickly gaining speed, the craft reached the edge of the hangar in no time, pitching downward and dropping toward the ground below.

  She was going to crash!

  She swallowed her fear, reacting without thinking, her desire to live causing the fighter to accelerate and then level off, still thirty meters from the ground. It put her on a heading toward the jungle canopy ahead, rocketing toward the top of the trees before angling up and climbing over them.

  Then she was in the open air, the Dagger streaking through the sky above the river. It was the wrong direction. She knew which way she wanted to go, and the thought caused the fighter to bank, changing its heading until she was on course.

  “Faster,” she said in Inahri , smiling despite herself as the craft responded.

  She would be over the mountains and across the distance to the compound in no time.

  Which was perfect.

  They had no time to spare.

  Chapter 10

  The Dagger allowed Tsi to make the journey from the Deliverance to the Free Inahri compound in a hurry, quickly crossing over the mountains toward the hidden cavern. She nearly lost control of the craft as she closed on the area, expecting to need visual cues to find the precise location of the projected cliff face, and instead discovering that the projection was gone, the compound open and visible to the outside world. She gasped at the realization, eyes quickly tearing as her greatest fears for the base were quickly confirmed. The Dagger acted in kind, losing power in an exaggerated response.

  She swallowed the flood of emotion, quickly refocusing on the control of the craft before it could fall from the sky. It swooped in low over the terrain before rising on a vector to carry it into the deep cavern.

  She wasn’t quite sure how to land the craft. Once she was close enough, she fixed her gaze on a portion of the cavern floor, placing the Dagger there. The CUTS followed the mental impulse, slowing and descending toward the spot before gently touching down.

  Tsi didn’t have an opportunity to examine the compound before she landed, not trusting herself or the Earth fighter’s systems to land properly unless she kept her focus on the effort. She only looked up once the small landers were on solid rock. As she stared out the closed canopy, tears rolled down her high cheeks, caught by the padding at the bottom of the helmet. The compound was in ruin. The transports and other vehicles had all been destroyed, blasted to slag or detonated with planted explosives, left i
n smoldering wrecks by the assault. The buildings were intact, but it didn’t mean much. There were scorch marks along the walls where energy bolts had hit, and smoke still spilled from some of the open doorways.

  And then there were the bodies.

  They littered the floor of the cavern by the hundreds. Inahri soldiers in battle armor closer to the open space at the front, blue-robed officers further back, mixed with green tunicked fighters who didn’t have time to don armor...and non-uniformed civilians. The trail of corpses continued beyond Tsi’s sight, but she was sure she would find more of the same throughout the base.

  The death and destruction broke her heart, leaving her struggling to breathe. Her hands shook as she reached up to remove the Dagger’s helmet, the motion signaling the canopy to swing up and out of the way. She stood on shaky legs, still trying to process what she was viewing, her stomach growing more queasy as the smell of death and decay reached her nose. She dropped the helmet onto the seat, quickly climbing out of the cockpit and sliding down off the wing to the floor.

  She leaned over and vomited.

  She stayed there for a few seconds, eyes dripping tears, mouth dripping bile, chest heaving. Gone. It was all gone. Riley Valentine had done this. She was responsible.

  Why hadn’t they listened to Caleb?

  All of this could have been avoided. Even if the Seeker had been lost, the compound could still be intact. One bad decision. One blind eye. One deaf ear. That’s all it had taken.

  She straightened up, pulling the mantle back over her head. The HUD was clear for the moment. Her legs still felt unsteady, but she forced herself to move ahead. The communications array was still intact. She had to try to raise the main settlement. She had to reach someone and explain what had happened, along with what was going to happen if they didn’t send help to the Earthers.

  Caleb had spoken poorly of Governor Stone. He had told her how the Governor blamed them for bringing them to the planet and turned the people against them. But when she met him in the hospital, she couldn’t believe this was the same man. She could hear the pain in every word he spoke. She could see the sadness in his eyes. The Relyeh had broken him, the way they broke so many of their followers. The way they had tried to break her.

  But Stone was fighting against it the way she had fought against it. He had treated her with kindness and let her take the Dagger and return here to check on her people. He had put his trust in her to help him train his people, and he had shown remorse for the decisions he had made. She didn’t know Caleb as well as Wash, Paige, Kiaan, or Dante, but she believed he would accept that Stone was different.

  The Free Inahri needed all the help they could get. So did the Earthers. There was no room for second-guessing from either side.

  She just had to convince her leaders.

  If they knew what happened here and how they might not be as willing to forgive and forget despite the adverse impact that decision might have. It would be on her to make them see reason, to pool their resources with the humans and fight back against the Relyeh, even if the Seeker was already operational.

  Even if the war seemed already lost.

  She was sure of one thing—they couldn’t give up. They had waited for ens for something to break the stalemate. For something to push them into action. Then the Earthers had come to their world. It was the catalyst they had been waiting for.

  She crossed the hangar, reaching the first line of barracks. The smell grew harsher the deeper into the cavern she went, the outside air struggling to filter the stench. It took all of her willpower to keep moving forward, to stay focused on the task at hand, to keep her stomach under control and not break down again. She stepped over bodies of soldiers she had known, heading for the command center. She paused when she came across a corpse slumped against a wall. Leaning down, she lifted the dead soldier’s head. His neck was bruised and broken, crushed by something powerful. She felt dizzy all over again.

  Battle armor was strong enough to crush bone, but the gauntlets were too large to easily fit around a human neck. The damage had come from something smaller, and the bruising showed the individual finger marks of a right hand.

  A hand like Sergeant Caleb’s.

  She made herself start breathing again. There was nothing in her that was able to consider Caleb had done this by his own free will. Something had made him kill, and she knew what that something was. She had been born and raised in the Citadel as a breeder. She had given birth to children from a number of high-ranking Inahri and had been forced to share a bed with many more. She knew about the Advocates and their ability to seize control of their host. She knew the creatures were simple, disgusting things that thrived on powerful emotion. Anger, violence, lust. Caleb would have no idea how to defend himself against them.

  She stood again, leaving the dead soldier. She could only imagine how horrible Caleb must feel, aware of every action he was taking but unable to stop it. It had been easier for her. She had been raised believing it was her solemn duty to have as many children as possible, for the honor of Lord Arluthu. She had only broken free when one of the Inahri officers, kind and compassionate and enamored with her, had told her what the Relyeh were doing amounted to slavery and convinced her to run away with him.

  She had made it to freedom.

  He hadn’t.

  She had promised him she would live her own life and follow her own path. It had led her to begin training as a soldier, which had brought her here.

  She started across the open circle, increasing her pace to reach the command center, her eyes sweeping the area ahead. She felt a fresh pang of fear as her eyes landed on one of the bodies, and she ran over to it, falling to her knees beside it.

  “General Gao,” she said, putting her hand on his cold, dead forehead. He hadn’t been shot like most of the bodies. Caleb had been forced to kill him too. “I will avenge you, General.”

  She got up, running across the open space and past the armory. She didn’t need to check the munitions storage to guess it had either been emptied or destroyed. The emergency system hidden in the command center had to be active. What else had they connected to on the Deliverance?

  She ran straight toward the doorway leading into the command center and nearly lost her head to a bolt that missed her by centimeters and smacked the wall. Her HUD showed two soldiers, one positioned in the inner doorway and the other around the corner on the other side of the aide’s desk. She had been so preoccupied she had failed to notice them, even though the Intellect Skin painted them as clear as day.

  She dived to the side, rolling away as the Relyeh Inahri tried to track the movement, blaster digging up the stone floor beside her. One of the shots glanced off her forearm before she could get out of the doorway, leaving a mark on the Skin and a burning sensation that went all the way up to her shoulder. She made it to cover behind a row of bolt-ridden electronics, reaching for her sidearm.

  “Ga de!” she cursed. She checked her HUD. The soldiers were splitting up, coming toward her from both sides of the building. They knew she was in a Skin, which meant they also knew they couldn’t take her by surprise.

  Even so, she couldn’t crouch here forever. She would have to break left or right sometime. There was no other direction to move.

  Tsi scanned the area, finding a dead soldier a few meters away, his rifle resting on the ground beside him. She would have to move into the open to grab it, but it might be her only chance.

  She pivoted in the soldier’s direction, watching the enemy on her HUD. She had to time it just right.

  Her heart pounded in her chest. She counted the beats. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

  When she reached ten, she moved, taking three quick steps before she dived, arms stretched out, reaching for the rifle. She heard the blasters fire behind her and felt the heat of the energy bolts whip past her face and body. Her hands landed on the rifle, grabbing it as she tucked in, hitting the ground with her shoulder and rolling to her knee, facing back toward the fir
st Relyeh soldier.

  His gun shifted, getting a bead on her.

  She fired. The bolt hit him square in the faceplate, the flash of light blinding him and sending his shot wide. She fired twice more, breaking through the transparency of his faceplate and killing him. She was already facing the second soldier by the time the first’s body hit the ground. She came up, intending to dodge left to ruin his aim.

  His bolt hit the rifle, causing it to melt in her grip, the heat burning her hand. She pulled it back with a shout as the weapon fell away. She was too open. There was nowhere to take cover.

  She charged, rushing the Relyeh soldier while projecting Beth Stone and then a nurse, next a young kid in a hoodie and then Doctor Rathbone. She hoped the quick changes would distract the soldier, even if only for a hair’s breadth of time.

  They did. The Relyeh hesitated for a fraction of a second, thrown by the shifts. When he fired again, she was ready, throwing an energy shield up in front of her to catch the bolts before slamming into the battle-armored soldier at full speed.

  She couldn’t knock him down on her own, but she didn’t need to. She redirected the energy in the Skin to her good hand, getting it on the soldier’s faceplate and sending a blast through the front an instant before she bounced off him. Grabbing his rifle, she tore it from his hands to keep him from using it again.

  He wouldn’t. He collapsed to the ground, dead.

  Chapter 11

  Tsi quickly scanned the ground floor of the command center. The two Inahri she had just killed were there, but so were two other Free Inahri soldiers, along with a civilian woman and her child.

  All of them were dead.

  There was no mercy in the killing. No measure of civility. The Relyeh hadn’t only killed soldiers. They had killed all of the civilians—men, women, children. It didn’t make a difference to them.