Hybrid Saga 01 - Hybrid (23 page)

And Jarred was gone. Executed right before her eyes . . . and it was her fault. She had guilted him into taking them with him. Guilted him into helping Orna and bringing her here. All of this was her fault. She felt sick, nauseated by what
had
and what
was
happening all around her, but most of all, by what was to come.

“Elora?” Ethan was sitting close beside her on the floor of their crowded tram car and she looked down at him.

“What’s going to happen to us?” he asked. “Are we going to be slaves?”

“I don’t know.” she answered, honestly. Elora put her arm around Ethan and pulled him in closer to her. She really didn’t know what was going to happen to them and it was that uncertainty in their fate that truly terrified her.

The tram began to tremble slightly, probably from turbulence of some kind, and Elora held on to Ethan more tightly. As the turbulence became more intense, groans and cries of distress reverberated through the mass of refugees in the car, the sounds quickly being drowned out by the loud, thunderous clap of an explosion. The tram shuddered violently as something hard began raining down over the top of the car, making loud crashing sounds, and the lights began to flicker off and on. The sounds were mixed with the fearful screams of those within the car and Elora hugged Ethan to her, hoping this wasn’t the end.

Then, as suddenly as the turbulence had begun, it ended, the lights returning to normal. For a long moment, Elora just sat still, listening. Had there been an explosion on the tram? They seemed to be fine now. What had just happened?

“What was that?” Ethan asked, staring up at the ceiling of the tram.

Also staring up at the ceiling, Elora could only shake her head negatively, her heart still racing. “I don’t know.”

Chapter 13

Following the skyrail’s power nodes, it didn’t take Jarred long to catch up to the hover tram. It would be heading for a docking port, he knew, where the refugees would be loaded onto the Trill’s waiting freighter. He would have to board the tram, locate Elora and Ethan and get them off before it got there.

He didn’t think it would be too much of a problem, at least not after he dealt with the tram’s two patrol escorts. One was flying escort on either side of the tram, so for his plan to work, he would have to take them out simultaneously, or risk another long pursuit that he didn’t have time for.

Jarred dropped his Stinger into a position that would allow him to come at the tram from a lower angle and set himself up for a run at the escort on the left side. Moving in slowly, he came in under the patrol ship, matching the other’s speed when he was directly beneath it. Ascending, he moved up to within arm’s reach of the ship and retrieved a grenade from his belt, keying the timer for sixty seconds before carefully attaching it to the hull.

Dropping back down, Jarred dipped under the hover tram, moving into a similar position as before beneath the second patrol escort, and retrieving another grenade, he keyed it for thirty seconds. Attaching it to the ship’s hull, he then came up beside the escort and passed by its cockpit, grinning at, and saluting the Gnolith pilot as he hit the accelerators.

As expected, the patrol craft began to give chase, the second appearing out from the opposite side of the tram as well. Now, all he needed to do was lead them a safe distance away from the tram before they detonated.

The escorts opened up with bursts of laser fire and Jarred had to veer off hard to avoid being hit by their crisscrossing volleys, launching into a series on evasive maneuvers. The patrollers stayed on him and pressed the attack, working their shots with one another’s to cut down his mobility, and to that end they were succeeding. Jarred had to admit that these pilots were much better than the last two.

Pointing his nose down, and punching the throttle, he sent the Stinger into a hard dive, jinking, juking and dodging as his attackers poured super heated fire down at him. Just a few more seconds. Jarred reversed thrust and pulled his nose up hard, quickly throwing full power back to the engines again, the gut wrenching maneuver sending him rocketing into a steep climb.

The patrol craft were about to do the same when the first grenade exploded, blowing one of the ships apart. The second patrol craft flew out from behind the flames and wreckage, managing to stay with Jarred a few seconds longer before it too detonated, blowing debris out in all directions.

Jarred let out a relieved breath and changed his course to intercept the tram. Leveling out, he glanced at his rear display, and had to look twice before realizing he was still being followed. Reacting on instinct, Jarred cut the Stinger’s throttle and repulser pads, causing the hover bike to go into an immediate free fall.

The homing missile that was baring down on him rocketed past, by what seemed like only inches, immediately beginning to arc back around. That last patrol craft must have gotten off a shot before detonating. The hover bike had no weapons or enemy detection systems, so he never would have known if they’d had a lock on him.

Jarred reengaged the repulsers and pushed the throttle up as far as it would go, following the missile as it continued to wind back toward him. The Stinger was fast, but not fast enough to keep the speeding projectile in front of him. He wouldn’t be able to evade it for very long. Considering his few options, he pointed himself back towards the tram, angling himself to come in at a safe distance above and ahead of it, and bore down for a straight run. Any maneuvering would only take away from his speed.

He watched in his rear display as the missile finally came in behind him, closing rapidly. He had run out of time. Locking the controls and throttle on, Jarred lifted one leg over his seat and rolled off the hover bike, falling down and away from it. A moment later, the Stinger exploded in a spectacular display, one Jarred hardly noticed as he landed hard atop the speeding hover tram, bouncing and rolling along its surface as chunks of burning debris fell all around him.

Fighting to get a grip on anything that might stop or slow his own momentum, he managed to latch on to a small bulkhead, wasted shards of hover bike flying past him. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he realized the bulkhead he was holding on to was actually an access hatch. Coming to a crouched position next to the hatch, he triggered its locking mechanism and pulled it open, slipping down through the portal.

Inside, a number of passengers moved out of the way as Jarred dropped to the floor. Looking around, he found himself immediately confronted by hoards of nervous looking refugees, packed so tightly into the car he could barely see the hull on either side. Murmurs of curiosity went through the passengers as he pushed his way through them, slowly making his way to the front of the car. Scanning the mixed faces for Elora and Ethan, he called out to them as he went. Finally making it to the front portal of the car, and having received no reply, he opened it and stepped outside, crossing into the next car.

This one was just as packed as the other, if not more so, and Jarred found himself almost unable to move, straining to see up over the heads of all the refugees.

“Elora!” he called out into the crowd. “Ethan!”

As he began to push his way through the passengers, he heard a familiar voice cry out from the opposite end of the car.

“Jarred?”

He stopped and strained to see where the voice had come from. “Elora?”

“Jarred!” he heard Elora shout again.

“Jarred!” a new voice called out excitedly, and he knew it was Ethan’s.

“Ethan!” he called back, finally able to see the two through the small gaps in the crowd. “Stay there. I’m coming to you.” He worked his way through the passengers until he finally reached them, Elora throwing her arms around him in an embrace that took him by surprise.

“I thought you were dead,” she proclaimed, stepping back to look at him.

“Yeah, I heard the same rumor,” he replied, reaching a hand out to muss Ethan’s hair.

Elora’s eyes drifted to the scorched hole in Jarred’s vest and she reached out to touch the burned material, looking concerned and a bit mystified. “I saw them shoot you. You were . . . burnt.”

Jarred took hold of her hand. “I’m fine,” he said, reassuringly. “I need to get you out of here.”

“Okay,” she replied, snapping out of her daze. “How do we do that?”

Jarred stopped to think about his answer for a moment. He hadn’t planned on losing the hover bike like he had, and now he wasn’t entirely sure as to how they
would
make their escape. “I don’t know.”

Elora seemed genuinely surprised by his statement. “You don’t know? How did you get here?”

“Well, I had this really nice bike,” he began. “But, it kind of got destroyed.”

“Oh,” she granted, knowingly. “So, that’s what that was. Well, what about the tram? Can’t you take it over or something?”

“No,” he answered her, shaking his head. “The trams run on autopilot, and even if I could override it, it can’t run off of the skyrail.”

Elora looked suddenly disappointed. “Then we’re trapped.”

He hated to admit it, but it was starting to look that way. He may have done all of this for nothing.

Jarred looked up suddenly, along with everyone else in the car, at hearing a number of light impacts from the upper hull. Impacts that continued to move across the car.

Footsteps.

Jarred turned towards the portal he had entered the car through and saw a figure drop down in front of it. He recognized immediately that it wasn’t a Sect soldier as it moved through the small doorway, the surrounding passengers backing away in fear. The being was clad very simply, wearing only a dark, armored vest and pants made of a brown leather of some sort. His arms were bare and muscular and in his hand he carried what looked like a short and elaborately designed spear. His head was shaved bald but for a tail of black hair blowing in the wind behind him.

Jarred recognized the being’s race, but could hardly believe what his eyes were showing him. The warrior’s fierce looking eyes quickly came to rest on him and his mouth contorted into a sadistic grin.

“What is that?” Elora asked from over Jarred’s shoulder.

“Rai Chi,” Jarred answered, coldly.

The Rai Chi were a warrior race, more fabled about than actually known. People didn’t speak about them from first hand knowledge because people didn’t usually survive first hand contact with them. Though not a part of the Dominion, the Rai Chi were considered to be at the highest point of power in the ruling body which the Sect represented. Their warrior skill was spoken of as if from legend, and until this moment, Jarred had believed that they too may have been just that.

Unfortunately, he was wrong.

The Rai Chi warrior began to stalk forward towards them and Jarred backed away, pushing Elora and Ethan behind him. He turned around to see another figure drop down outside the small window in the car’s front entry hatch. The door opened and another warrior stepped through, blocking the way.

Thinking quickly, Jarred looked up to the ceiling and saw another of the upper hatches he had come through in the other car. Moving under it, he jumped up and released it.

Both warriors noticed what he was doing and started to move in on them, but the masses of refugees restricted any fast progress.

Jarred grabbed hold of Ethan and raised him up to the hatch. “Go, Ethan.”

As Ethan climbed through the opening, Jarred did the same with Elora, boosting her up to the hatch as well. The warriors were almost within striking distance, and as Elora cleared the opening, Jarred gathered his strength, crouching down before leaping straight up through the hatch. He landed with a foot on either side of the opening and closed the hatch shut, glancing down to see the matching, stunned looks on Elora and Ethan’s faces. His heart sank when he looked up to see the two Sect transports that were gliding along next to the tram, their cannons trained on him.

A voice shouted from behind him and Jarred turned to see four more Rai Chi stepping onto their car from the one behind it. The warrior he had first seen climbed back up from between the cars to join the group, and Jarred turned to see the second coming up at the opposite side, joined by a sixth who must have come up from the first car. To his surprise, the transports hadn’t fired yet and he looked to see that they were actually backing off a ways, coming to the conclusion that they had been ordered to do so by the warrior who had spoken before. He turned back to face the warrior leader.

He was similar in appearance to all the other warriors, his head completely bald. In addition to the body armor that had a more elaborate design, probably signifying his rank, he wore both shoulder and forearm guards, made from what looked like the same material as the vest. He carried a similar sort of short spear as all the others, only more elaborate again. What distinguished him most was the jagged scar that ran vertically down his face, beginning at the forehead and running over his left eye to branch off across both mouth and cheek where it disappeared into his jaw line. Jarred’s focus though, was on the Rai Chi’s ice cold eyes, that were both controlled and fiercely intense, analyzing him. He had seen and faced enough opponents to know a dangerous one when he saw it, and knew in an instant that this warrior would prove to be just that.