The Exiled Earthborn (6 page)

“Where’s Talis? I mean the High Chancellor?”

“She’s safe,” said Tannon quickly. “But mourning the loss of her daughter.”

Corinthia. An image flashed in Lucas’s mind of her being consumed in flame.

“Who was talking to
you
last I saw,” Maston said venomously.

“She wouldn’t … I was … There was no time,” Lucas stammered. “She had walked inside when the blast hit. When I reached her … she was gone.”

“There’s nothing he could have done, Maston. Calm down,” Tannon said.

“This whole damned party was for them! If they hadn’t shown up in the first place—”

“I had no idea this would happen!” Lucas spat back. “Maybe if your security had been better, you’d have stopped this and she’d still be alive!”

Mars Maston lost what was left of his composure. He swung at Lucas’s jaw and connected, his target too groggy to dodge the blow. Lucas hit the floor and Maston leapt on top of him. The officials around them scrambled to pull them off of each other as Tannon circled around the table, shouting at the pair of them.

The holotable lit up and the image that was displayed made everyone freeze at once. The top of the frame read “incoming transmission.” Underneath it was Asha, battered, burned, and bloody. She was seated, her hands behind her back and her black hair hanging wet around her face. Her green eyes shone brightly through the feed and Lucas saw a familiar look of burning anger in them. Her mouth was covered by some sort of metal device that looked more involved than a simple gag. From the way her muscles were tensing, it looked as if she couldn’t move an inch, and the mechanism was inducing a sort of paralysis. Lucas let Maston’s collar slip from his hand, and the pair of them slowly got to their feet. The camera panned back and two armored men walked into frame, each with weapons drawn and pointed at Asha. Lucas’s heart was thundering in his ears.

A new figure entered, one with no helmet or mask to hide his face. He was tan, with long brown hair and dark features. He wore a black uniform that was unbuttoned to his chest and had the sleeves rolled up.

“That bastard …” Tannon spoke slowly. Lucas looked at him. “That’s Hex Tulwar,” he clarified.

“Sir, this isn’t just for us. It’s taken over every layer of the Stream,” the short man next to him said.

“What? How is that possible?”

“It seems your resistance is doing many impossible things today,” Alpha said.

The man began to speak as he drew closer to the camera, which panned away from Asha. The background was dark and unidentifiable.

“Greetings, my Soran brethren,” he said. His voice had an accent unlike any Lucas had heard on the planet so far.

“By now you’ve received word of the judgment that has rained down from the heavens on Elyria. The apostates of the High Chancellor have been made to pay for their misdeeds, and their facade has come crumbling down.”

Lucas looked over at Maston, who was now seething at the monitor, not at him.

“We did not know what we would find when we infiltrated the gala of the vain and powerful this evening. After weeks of preparation, only this morning did we learn it was to celebrate the appearance of the two false idols known as the
Earthborn
.”

He said it with the same sort of sneer Maston had.

“I hope that you are not foolish enough to believe these two are truly long lost relatives of Sora from some distant land. They are merely tools, pieces of propaganda created to further fan the fires of war.”

The Fourth Order’s statement decrying the Earthborn’s validity on the Stream earlier that day was worded nearly identically to what Tulwar was saying now.

“This war has gone on for too long, and we want no more of it. For every ship that’s vaporized, a hundred thousand Sorans could have eaten for a year. The cost of an antimatter missile could filter a million gallons of toxic water. And they have the nerve to celebrate this new chapter of conflict with a lavish party where the elite oppressors stuff their faces with fine food and drink as they worship these new idols.”

The camera panned back to Asha who was still frozen motionless in her restraints.

“Now we put their lie to the test. If this Earthborn is as special as they claim, the last of her kind, they will pay to see her safely returned. It will be a ransom used not to kill, but to heal. The Fourth Order demands a payment of fifty trillion marks by tomorrow’s moonrise, or we open up the idol and see if she looks like us on the
inside
as well.”

One of the two guards brandished a long curved knife that flittered dangerously close to Asha’s throat. Lucas’s fists were clenched so tightly he’d lost feeling in them.

“We demand the funds used for war be returned to the people of Sora for peace. If they refuse to pay, and she dies, you’ll know that your government has lied to you and the Earthborn are no more from another world than you or I. Surely the greatest discovery in Soran history is worth a few marks, no?”

The camera cut away from Asha and fixated solely on Hex Tulwar once more.

“Think, my children. Vales, I await your reply.”

The feed cut to black and only a short string of symbols remained.

The room was silent.

“Trace?” Tannon said, but the woman next to him was already shaking her head.

“What the hell do we do now?” a rather frightened-looking military commander said from across the table.

“We leave her,” Mars Maston said coldly.

“What?” Lucas exclaimed. “You have to be kidding. Just give them the marks!”

“Fifty trillion marks could finance our entire next campaign,” Maston said, too close to Lucas’s face once more. “Your … counterpart isn’t worth a fraction of that.”

Lucas clenched his teeth, but avoided lunging at the man again. He tried reason.

“If you don’t pay, and they kill her, your citizens will think that we’re just inventions of your government to drum up support for the war.”

“You mean you’re not?” Maston said mockingly.

Tannon slammed his fist down on the holotable, causing all the images on it to fizzle.

“You boys are forgetting a third option. We kick down their door, save the girl, and bring Tulwar to justice.”

Maston had a confused look as he turned to him.

“They came here in an invisible ship, you can’t trace the location of the transmission, and they’ve already carved out her tracking chip. How exactly are we supposed to find them?”

Tracking chip?
Lucas quickly looked over his own body. They’d implanted him with something? And it had been cut out of Asha? Both thoughts were highly disconcerting.

“I’ve been chatting with our new friend here, and he has a way we can find her. Tell ’em,” Tannon said, motioning to Alpha.

“Back on Earth,” Alpha said, looking at Lucas, “I planted a chemical tracking element on you and Asha.”

“What? Why?” Lucas asked.
Him too?

“I required knowledge of your whereabouts in the early phase of our partnership, as I did not know if you were to be trusted. Later, it served to locate you as we journeyed to dangerous areas and were separated.”

“Alright …” Lucas said hesitantly.

“The trace is still on you now. And Asha as well. It will be undetectable by this Fourth Order even if they were able to locate the more obvious Soran device. So long as they do not take her out of the system, the agent will still be traceable. I would, however, require a few hours to rebuild the device needed to detect the trace; it was destroyed in our last conflict aboard the Ark.”

“We’d never reach her,” Maston interrupted. “They’d detect us miles out and slit her throat before we could storm the place.”

“He’s got a point,” Tannon said gruffly. “If there’s one thing the Fourth Order is, it’s jumpy. They’ve got more aircraft detection in Rhylos than ever after our last string of operations there.”

“You are forgetting another gift you have been given,” Alpha replied. “There is a ship in a bay a mile underneath us that would allow immediate and undetected access to anywhere on your planet.”

Omicron’s flagship stealth cruiser. Lucas had forgotten. It had the same cloaking abilities as the vessel the Fourth Order had used. But it was presumably much bigger, and much faster.

“Absolutely,” Lucas said, energized by Alpha’s plan. “Keep your money, let’s just kill them all.”

Maston was silent. He stared into the light of the holotable. Finally he spoke.

“For Corinthia,” he said solemnly. “Put me on this infernal ship and Tulwar will be dead by dawn.”

Tannon pushed back from the table.

“I’ll talk to the High Chancellor. You,” he said, pointing at Alpha, “start building that tracking device.”

“At once,” Alpha said. “But I need to be aboard my ship.”

“And I need access to a few things as well,” Lucas said.

Soon they were deeper inside the palace, down many levels past the dimly lit war room. Mars Maston had gone to assemble his Guardian squadron, which had been assigned to the mission at hand, and the group had dwindled to only Lucas, Alpha, and the admiral.

When the doors opened, Lucas saw a sight he hadn’t witnessed since back on Earth: the exterior of their savior ship, the Ark. The transport looked worse for wear after their frenzied firefight with Commander Omicron’s troops, and much of the internal tech had been ripped out when the ship depressurized in the battle’s final moments.

The entrance ramp descended and Alpha walked into the light, promising that there was enough material onboard to craft the tracking device he needed. Tannon then led Lucas to an offshoot room. Two Soran symbols were imprinted above the opaque door. E
ARTH
A
RCHIVE
.

Inside, Lucas was told he’d find what he was looking for. As he entered, he had the distinct impression he was inside the most significant museum on Sora, though one not open to the public.

Everything they’d taken from Earth and kept aboard the Ark was on display here. There was Lucas’s desk, looted from the Scandinavian mansion. Asha’s worn black tank top hung stretched out behind thick glass, a few dozen other pieces of clothing next to it, including his own. In another row lay books in secure containers on top of pillars rising from the floor. Approaching one, Lucas saw it was
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, every single one of its pages translated into Soran in a holographic screen below it.

Lucas turned a corner and entered a new section, one more relevant to his needs. A large display spanned the entire length of the wall, and this time the transparent energy field securing it promised to liquefy anyone who attempted to cross it. Mounted every few feet was a new gun labeled E
ARTH
W
EAPON
along with a string of identifying numbers. There was his old boot pistol, shining more brightly than it ever had when he’d used it. A cannibal’s assault rifle, wiped free of blood and dirt. Standing vertically was an RPG that never ended up being fired in combat. As he reached the end, past two dozen weapons, he found what he was looking for.

“Open it,” he said coolly.

A small man in a blue lab coat glanced nervously at Tannon, but the admiral nodded his approval. The energy field dispersed, and Lucas took his old friend into his hands. Natalie had been polished to an almost mirror shine, though the letters etched into its stock still remained. As Lucas turned it on, he could see that Alpha’s technological hybrid appeared to be as fully operational as the day it was confiscated from him. The scientist next to him looked terrified as Lucas cycled through the modes from full-auto, to shotgun, to sniper, and back again. It had saved him many times over the years, and now it would help him save someone else.

But it wouldn’t do it alone. Lucas slung Natalie over his shoulder and stooped down to pull out another pair of weapons, a long-barreled Magnum and a black-bladed sword only a few molecules thick. He clipped the revolver to his belt and mounted the sword so it crossed Natalie on his back. They were Asha’s weapons, and when he found her, she’d need them to exact vengeance on those who had taken her from him. He turned toward Tannon and nodded and the two marched out of the room, leaving the skittish lab attendant to reinstate the force field over the armory. As they left, Lucas saw one last door they hadn’t gone through. One simply labeled with the Soran symbol for “11.”

Lucas was led into another large hangar area, though one far larger than the space that housed the Ark. It took him a minute to recognize the sleek ship before him, as he’d never seen Omicron’s vessel in full light before. Previously, it had been in the blackness of space, reflecting starlight, or hidden from view altogether with the same advanced cloaking system that had been employed to attack the Grand Palace.

On the ground in front of the ship stood a formation of burly soldiers, each clad in gray fatigues and holding an energy rifle across their chest. Their eyes stared straight ahead, not daring to deviate from their path as their leader strode among them. Maston had assembled his Guardians.

It became obvious that Maston wasn’t exaggerating when he said they were the finest genetic specimens on the planet, crafted using god-knows-what procedures for billions of the local currency. Every soldier here, male and female, was taller than Lucas, with many towering above him. They looked like a legion of comic-book superheroes, with bulging muscles and stone-cut jaws. Many looked more beast than man. Lucas caught the eye of a towering giant to his right when the soldier broke off his fixed gaze to eye the strange newcomer. If this was Earth, Lucas would have guessed he was Polynesian, but he still didn’t understand the racial groups here.

Maston immediately strode up to Tannon, ignoring Lucas’s presence entirely.

“You let him arm himself from the archive?”

“Would you prefer he take on the Fourth Order with a right hook instead?” Tannon replied.

“We could have issued him a rifle, that … thing he’s using hasn’t been fully tested yet. It could be dangerous.”

“That’s kind of the point,” Lucas said.

“Dangerous to
us
,” Maston clarified. “I’ve seen the preliminaries. If you overload the core in that weapon it would blow an entire ship sky high.”