The Exiled Earthborn (25 page)

Alpha chimed in.

“I have spent the two days after my arrival attempting to explain our present circumstances to Zeta. Why we came. What we can hope to achieve. And of course, I shared my father’s truth with her.”

Zeta looked shaken. A freeze frame of Alpha’s father’s face hung on a monitor across the room.

“It was … difficult to process,” she said quietly. “To think that our entire existence is built upon a lie? It is almost unfathomable. The scope of this deceit is truly astonishing, even for a ruling body as corrupt as ours. Hundreds of thousands of our own people must have been killed to prevent this secret from getting out. If the public knew our history, that we were created by the Sorans from their own DNA, the unrest would destabilize the Council.”

“Then you think it will work,” Lucas said.

Zeta nodded.

“I do,” she replied. “But the challenge of disseminating the message throughout the colonies and Xala so that all may see it at once is great. And that is without considering the obvious fact that all of you are now stranded here without a ship. I am told you have two sons who need you back on Sora?”

“That’s right,” Lucas said, his thoughts turning to Noah. How lonely he must be without the pair of them, even if he was surrounded by palace staff. And their second child was scheduled to be “born” from the tank when, in a month? Two? He and Asha had to make it back to them.

“We have to find a way out of here.”

“That will be an arduous process,” Alpha said. “And there is much to plan in order to ensure the success of our mission.”

“The success of our mission?” Lucas exclaimed. “Most of our crew is dead and our ship is in pieces. How exactly is our mission going to be a success?”

“We have reached Zeta, as intended. She is already working on a broadcast algorithm for our message of truth. For every ally we have lost, we’ve gained two in the form of the Oni.”

“No offense,” Lucas said, “but they don’t look like the most well-equipped bunch compared to the Guardians, who would have been here in full armor with high-tech weaponry in tow.”

“You should not underestimate the Oni,” Zeta said. “They have survived here for thousands of years, and the jungle is littered with the carcasses of Xalans who have died at their hands. In fact, the local military base calls this [garbled]. ‘The Black Forest.’ Entire platoons have been swallowed up by the Oni as they have attempted to navigate the jungle. The more superstitious Xalans believe them to be ghosts of the old civilization, haunting them for their crimes against the planet’s people.”

“And what do the Oni believe about us arriving here?” Lucas asked.

“There used to be those on this planet that shared your skin tone, many, many generations ago. I have told them that you are
Rokaan.
Descendants of the once-great mountain tribes who have come to fight alongside them. They are wary of new faces, but can see you are obviously Oni as well, which builds a bridge of trust. Though to you they would be called Soran. Or human, as you said on Earth. All the words mean one and the same now. I will never understand your people’s presence all throughout this galaxy. And now knowing that the Xalans are not a sovereign race, merely a Soran genetic experiment, it appears you are the only true species that populates the stars.”

“And yet here we are,” Lucas said, “practically extinct on a half dozen planets, save one.”

“We will try to reverse that with our work here,” Zeta said.

“So what’s the plan now?” Lucas asked, turning to Alpha.

Alpha scratched an old scar on his chest.

“Zeta is working on her algorithm and I am attempting to formulate a path off this planet.”

“And what can I do?” Lucas asked. He noticed that Natalie lay propped up against a console and immediately walked over and grabbed the rifle. Alpha had likely placed it there for safekeeping. It was one of his best creations, after all.

“There is one more matter we need you to attend to, if you feel able to take on the task,” Alpha said.

“I’ve been in way worse shape than this,” Lucas said. It was true, and his body had learned to live with minor discomforts like burns and fractures for years now. With the poison out of his system, he was refreshed.

“There is one last Guardian in need of rescue.”

Lucas already knew what was coming next.

“First Watchman Mars Maston.”

He’d seen his dot on the map a fair distance away from camp. The area he was in had been shaded red for some reason.

“Why hasn’t a team been dispatched to him already?”

“One was,” Zeta said, looking sorrowful. “But they were lost in
Ai Los’ri Vin-taasa.”

“What is that?” Lucas asked.

“The Dead City.”

Lucas’s face remained blank. She elaborated.

“It is the two-thousand-year-old husk of an ancient Oni metropolis. It lies in ruins deep within the jungle, and it is most unfortunate your colleague landed there.”

“Why?”

Alpha was growing nervous as Zeta spoke.

“Legend has it the Gal’krai, the Xalans, handed the city over to a powerful beast some time after they invaded, one they did not want living among them. It hunts in the jungle by day, sleeps somewhere within the walls by night. While the Oni have hunted Xalans in the Black Forest, the creature has been hunting them. They quickly learned that stepping foot in the city itself was certain death. None have survived to even report back what the beast looks like.”

“Fantastic,” Lucas said. “How is Maston even still alive, then?”

Alpha spoke now.

“Readings indicate that his cryochamber has not yet opened, and his tracking signal is coming from underground. Most likely, both the Xalans and the creature do not know he is there.”

Maston was still asleep? That would be quite a wake-up call if they managed to reach him. Something occurred to Lucas.

“A beast they didn’t want living among them … Alpha, that’s not—”

“The Desecrator?” Alpha said. “For all our sakes, I hope not. That would be an exceptionally unfortunate stroke of luck if the abomination were being kept on Makari.”

“The Desecrator?” Zeta said incredulously. “You believe the creature to be the subject of an old children’s tale?”

“It is more than a story, it seems. I discovered actionable intelligence of the creature’s existence, and the fact that it had been tasked with our extermination.”

“Well, perhaps you will be fortunate and it is halfway to [garbled] by now looking for you, and will have to make a long return voyage.”

“Perhaps,” Alpha said, but did not sound confident.

13

Lucas stopped by a large hut that sat on the edge of a crystal-clear lake within the cave. It housed more than a dozen injured Guardians, some Lucas knew, others he didn’t recognize. His old sparring partner Axon was unconscious and feverish, stricken by some sort of jungle ailment like Lucas had been. He was being treated by the Kal’din, a witch doctor of sorts, using a combination of herbal remedies and Xalan technology. He waved a metal stick with a blue light on the end of it over Axon’s body like it was a magic wand. His face was hidden behind an elaborately carved mask, and he had two outstretched handprints tattooed on his bare chest. Lucas wanted to thank him for his role in his own recovery, but the language barrier prevented him from doing so. The Kal’din barely acknowledged his presence as he darted from patient to patient. Lucas could see a number of Oni warriors were lying on wooden mats as well, many nursing fresh wounds.

In the rear of the room lay a pile of Guardian armor and weapons that had been salvaged from the forest during the search for survivors. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to be useful, and Lucas slipped into a stealth suit, as full-scale war plating was not ventilated or maneuverable enough for the murky jungle. In addition to Natalie, he took an energy pistol, a pair of pulse grenades, and a combat knife that could be lengthened into a machete if the situation called for it.

Soon he and his newfound party were marching through the dreaded jungle once more. Because of the forbidden place they were headed, this “Dead City,” Zeta and the Oni had pulled out all the stops when assembling the team. Zeta had ordered her entire personal guard to accompany Lucas, and Toruk had volunteered to come as well, bringing three of his best warriors with him. Also in tow was Toruk’s vornaa, which Lucas learned roughly translated to “bloodwolf.” But mere minutes after they set out, it bounded into the jungle to scout ahead, as was apparently customary for a bloodwolf escort. It’s why he’d felt hunted during much of his time in the forest.

Though the Xalans and Oni could communicate to each other with a series of gestures that Zeta had developed over the years, Lucas had no such way to converse within his own group. To rectify that, Zeta donated her translator collar to the leader of the squad, a tall Xalan corporal who had a pair of automatic plasma submachine guns strapped to his hips. It took him some time to get accustomed to it and they traveled mostly in silence for the first few hours. Lucas was the first to break it.

“How far to the city?”

“[garbled] is [garbled] away from our present location,” the Corporal replied, immediately frustrated with his translator’s inability to relay the Oni name of the city or a presumably Xalan unit of measurement.

“How many days?” Lucas tried.

“Two, if we keep this pace,” said the Corporal, grateful for the rephrasing.

They were making fantastic time through the jungle, led by Toruk. There weren’t exactly paths, but there were definitely moving through less dense brush, routes the Oni assuredly took when they went hunting for food, or for Xalan troops.

Lucas took a sip from his canteen. His leg felt noticeably better, and healing gel had almost regrown all the burnt-away skin on his arm. The dark stealth suit reflected the sunlight with its mirrored microfibers and kept him cool. All in all, it was a far more pleasant experience than his last time out there, half naked and half dead. The eight fearsome-looking warriors to his front and rear helped put his mind at ease, as did the bio-signature masking device implanted into his shoulder. He was now a hunter, not the hunted.

Surprisingly, the dark fell without rain, and the group made a small camp in a clearing they deemed safe enough to stop and rest in for a bit. The Corporal took a small bowl out of his pack and placed it on the ground. When activated, a white, barely visible flame shot out of it and heated up the surrounding area quite nicely without giving off too much light. As humid as it was in the day, it got rather frigid when the giant moon came out. Toruk was chewing on a piece of fruit he lifted from somewhere in the jungle, while his Oni brethren had taken to the trees to scout and slumber. The Xalans were seated on a downed log, each cleaning their guns, grunting to each other occasionally. Lucas attempted to chime in.

“So why did you join the resistance? You all look like you come from the military,” he asked.

The Corporal turned to him.

“Indeed. Our team served on [garbled] for many years. I have killed more Sorans than I care to count.”

The tone sounded more despondent than boastful.

“What made you switch sides?”

The Corporal grunted to the men around him, presumably translating. Turning back, it was a while before he spoke.

“Many of us grew up together in [garbled], a small village on the homeworld. We only were allowed to see our clans sparingly, often deployed on missions for months, even years.”

The faces around him were solemn, as was his own.

“We were sent to the siege of [garbled], where we assaulted an extra-solar Soran base. It was a prolonged affair, and quite far from home. When the battle was over, we were exhausted and wanted nothing more than to see our clans again back on Xala.”

He lay his rifle against the log. The enormous moon could now be seen through the trees up ahead.

“When we returned home, our hearts broke. Over the year, our village had been ruined by famine. The Council had issued a tax meant to pay for a new warship, at the expense of food and water for a string of local settlements along the [garbled] coast. Even our wages sent home to our clans were appropriated. They were left with nothing.”

He stared straight ahead at the trampled leaves underneath his clawed feet.

“My mate, my six sons and four daughters were already in the ground when I arrived. The same was true for many of my men.”

This was the sort of thing Alpha had told him was happening, but to hear a firsthand account of it was unsettling.

“When our leaders kill more of their own citizens than the Sorans, the time for intergalactic war is over. The time for civil war is at hand.”

Lucas nodded.

“Can’t fault you for that.”

“And you?” the Corporal asked, his voice shaking off any hint of sorrow. “Is it true you and your mate are the last survivors of Earth campaign?”

“More or less,” Lucas said. “We brought a child as well, and have another on the way.”

His “mate.” He wondered what Asha would think if she heard that. She’d likely be back at the Oni village in a few more hours. He was glad she was alive, but hurt feelings still lingered after what had taken place on the Spear.

“You must despise my people, for destroying your world.”

Lucas chuckled, which caught the Corporal off guard.

“Yeah, most. But a few of you aren’t so bad.”

“The Oni have been hospitable, but to have true Soran allies is a welcome development for the movement. Your High Chancellor actually sanctioned this?”

“It was practically her idea,” Lucas said, taking another swig of water. “Peace with Xala is good for everyone. Preferably peace by way of the death of your Council and all the corrupt who support them.”

“Then we are in agreement,” the Corporal said. Toruk turned his head in their direction as if he were about to speak, but went back to eating his meal, carving out the pit of his red fruit with a jagged knife.

As the night progressed, it was Lucas’s turn to take watch up in a tall tree. He found a particularly wide branch that would suit his purposes. The giant moon was lofted in the sky again, though it was waning a bit now. The light it gave off masked most of the stars around it; only a few could be seen outside of its radiance. The forest was still and mostly quiet except for the occasional jarring screeches from some of the local wildlife. Their path had hooked around the base of a mountain. It was in the exact opposite direction Lucas had been traveling earlier. Far off in the distance, Lucas could see the lights of what looked like some sort of settlement. A Xalan city? It didn’t appear to be very large, but it was hard to tell.