Siege of Terra (The Mavrik Woods Series, Book 1) (6 page)

Voices begin to penetrate the emptiness of the corridors.

“You guys hear that?” Terein asks.

“Yeah, we must be getting close, cut power to exterior lights.” I say, shutting off my helmet lights once again.

We walk as quietly as possible. We don’t want to give away our position and blow the whole mission because someone can’t walk quietly. In all fairness in the case that did happen we would blame it on the armour. They’re heavy to walk in, even though they are advertised as lightweight armour.

“I see them, over here,” T-Rave says.

I walk over to the Captain’s position. He’s peering through the spaces that separate the equipment boxes. There are dozens of boxes that line the outer edges of the room. He pointed at the far end of the room, “there they are.”

“I thought there were supposed to be power generators here?” I ask.

“There are, see that door over there? That leads to secondary rooms that all connect to one another. The generators all run through those rooms, this room we are in is just the power regulation office. All it does it keep track of the power usage and if necessary it can shut off all power to each generator.” Terein replies.

“Why don’t we do that then? Cutting all power to this building might come in handy.”

“You don’t understand, this building regulates power to the entire city, I might be able to find localized secondary generators and then shut off certain sections of the city, this building included in that.”

“Well, see if you can slice into the system and just minimize the range of the power outage. We don’t need to take sections of the city offline, just find a way to take out this building.”

“I’ll do what I can, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

“Alright, try to be quick about it as well, we don’t know how long these things are going to be here for, they might leave at any minute.”

“Colonel they are starting to question the hostages,” T-Rave interjects.

I bring my attention back to the small gap between the crates; I peer through the gap, scanning the crowd for the civilians.

“Humanss, iss thiss the only sstructure in which thiss city iss powered from?”
A voice hisses.

All the civilians do is whimper and try to look away from their captors.

“Ansswer me or one of you will die,"
t
he voice speaks again.

“Colonel should we intervene?” T-Rave says.

“We can’t, not without getting some form of information that we can bring back. I plan on saving as many civilians as I can. But, if we go back empty handed and the reason for that is because we disobeyed our orders, we would be in big trouble.”

“Alright, I’m just not sure how much of this I can take.”

The alien that spoke had now dragged a helpless civilian out into the middle of the room, in front so all the other hostages could see.

“Please don’t, I don’t know anything!” The civilian cries out.

“Well, itss a good thing that I am killing you then.”
The Leader says.

“Wait!” A female voice yells, “what do you want?” 

“I told you already, I want to know if thiss is the only sstructure in the city that providess power.”
The Leader growls out.

“Yes, as far as I know. I don’t really know anything about this building; you see it's the first time I’ve been inside.”

“Do any of your worthlesss hidess help maintain thiss facility?”

All of the civilians shake their heads.

“It seems that we have made a mistake in our sselection, kill them all.”
The Leader says.

“Wait! Please, can’t we negotiate?” A male voice says.

“No, we can’t, you have nothing we want.”

“And what do you want?”

“You humanss power your planet using a rare gass ssubsstance called Thopium. We need thiss Thopium to help
reintegrate oursselvess
into proper ssociety, your planet iss our way to achieve that goal.”

“Well, I know for a fact that we don’t have raw Thopium here.”

“Oh, we know that, we are already extracting it from the ground in certain locations on your planet.”

“What?”

“We have deployed mining operations to other continents; we will soon have enough to accomplish our goalss.”

“What do you want from this place then?”

“All we want to do is make you blind.”

“That makes no sense.”

“We want to initiate a city wide blackout, in order to do that we have to completely get rid of the power generatorss.”

“So you are trying to hack into the system mainframe and shut off all the generators?” I was surprised at the one hostage that was talking.

“Not exactly, I mentioned before we plan on getting rid of them completely.”

“You’re planning on blowing it up?” Another civilian says, completely horrified.

“Correct. In fact, we have already put a plan in place that will make thiss building blow up, and it sshould be going off anytime now.

I feel a tap on my shoulder plates, snapping my attention from the aliens to the Sargent.

“Colonel I can’t shut down the power; they have managed to hack into the power main frame. They said that they were going to blow up the building; well they didn’t bring any explosives. The building
is
the bomb. The Generators are planned to go off within the next ten minutes. We need to get out of here now!”

“No, we can’t leave them behind.”

“But Sir, we have orders to return with that Intel.”

“And we will return with that Intel, along with all those civilians.”

“Captain, pick your targets, make sure we leave one only wounded, I have a couple questions for him.”

“Got it, the four left ones are mine.”

“Sargent, do the same.”

“Ok, well the four right ones are mine.”

“Ok, the rest are mine. Fire when I fire boys.”

I line up the sights of my gun to the first targets shoulder. Only wanting to wound him. I squeeze the trigger. Before I even watch the first target go down I’m already on my second, this time aiming for the head. One shot one kill, I move to the third target, which it’s scrambling around, trying to find the whereabouts of the mysterious shooters. I fire another shot, taking it in the leg. It dropped to the ground, howling in pain, only to be silenced a second later with a shot to the head.

I hear a scream go through the intercom, I search through my HUD for the biometric scanning’s of my squad mates.

Major Lorid’s icon is red with a ‘terminated’ sign directly under it. T-Raves readings show that his heart rate is irregular, but that was probably only the adrenaline rush you get into the heat of battle. However Sargent Tereins readings showed that he is bleeding out.

I spin around to see an alien crouching over the Sargent, staring into the black eyes of the helmet.

“Tell me human, how many of you are there?”
It says.

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” I say, projecting my voice to the outside world, pulling the trigger and firing off multiple shots, ripping right through the neck of the alien.

“Man down! Sargent, can you hear me?” I say, running over to the motionless body.

The Sargent is slumped up against a wall in a fast growing pool of blood. His own and the aliens mixing together to form an irregular hue.

I unseal his helmet, only to reveal eyes staring past me, unfocused and unwavering, staring into nothing.

“Is he gone?” T-Rave asks, now unoccupied seeing as he finished his four targets only seconds after my own.

I check once more at the biometrics in my helmet, pulling up the statistics for the Sargent. I read through them quickly, there was no hope for the Sargent. Even if we do manage to get him the actual medical assistance he would still be lost.

“Yeah, he’s gone,” I say, reaching my hand to his neck to retrieve the dog tags, “good-bye Sargent,” I bow my head in respect.

The civilians had done the smart thing at the start of the battle; they had just stopped and dropped to the ground, making them less likely a target for stray rifle fire.

“You ssee? You are not invincible human, your kind thinkss you are, but you fail to realize that all living thingss die.”
The wounded alien gurgles out. I had completely forgotten about it.

“You aren’t either,” I say to it from across the room, pointing at its stomach wound, “and when have we ever said that?” I ask curiously.

“Not you, otherss of your kind have ssaid that in the past.”

“What others? We were listening the whole time, I heard no one say that we were invincible.”

“Hiss exact wordss might not have been invincible, but they were very ssimilar.”

“Whose words?” I say, it felt like I was in a chair, sitting at the edge of my seat, waiting to hear more.

“The human that came to our planet, it was ssuch a long time ago.”

My heart almost drops dead. All my life I thought that I had no proper family. My mother had died giving birth to me, and her brother -my uncle that bought me and my wife our new luxury apartment- had been the only type of family to me. Now on the other hand there was still a hope that my father was still alive.

“Was his name Charles Woods?” I say, pulling my secondary knife from my hip and digging it into the seeping flesh in between the shattered scales. The alien responds by jumping up in pain.

“Whoa, where do you think you’re going?” T-Rave says, aiming his rifle at the aliens head.

“I do believe that wass hiss name. We gained lotss of information from him from hiss yearss sspent with uss.”

“What do you mean ‘was his name’?”

The alien only smiles at me, or what I can assume is a smile, it’s hard to tell what facial feature meant which emotion to its kind.

“We decided that he wass of no further usse to uss, once he gave uss information about thiss planet and what kind of technology your sspeciess have. He alsso told us of a rare gass that the sscience teamss discovered. No one knew what it wass; only that it had enormouss potential. However we knew what it wass, we had been ssearching for it in the giant gas nebulass, which is where it originatess.”

It feels like I’m going to pass out. Knowledge has come to me about my father being alive, and that he didn’t die in a giant magma explosion. But now that hope was ripped from my mind as I discover that these aliens had disposed of him like a piece of trash.

“You mentioned before that you wanted to
reintegrate yourselves
into proper society. What did you mean by that?”

“We were banisshed, cast asside for our beliefss, and feelingss towardss the other racess.”

My stomach lurchs, “other races? There is more of your kind?”

A sickening laugh emanates from it.

“Human arrogance amussess me, there are more of my kind yess, and other speciess that dominate the galaxy. We were once called the Akkessianss human, but when we were banisshed we fasshioned a new name for oursselvess.”

“What do you call yourselves now?” I ask. My heart is racing from this large amount of new information.

“We renamed oursselvess to be forever known ass the Hakorianss.”

The name alone sends a chill running down my spine.

“Colonel we’re running out of time. We have to go, now!”

I look at the civilians still cowering on the floor. “You guys know that you could’ve and should’ve left when we stopped firing right?” I say.

All they do is look at me in puzzlement.

“That means go, unless you want to say here and get blown up with the building?”

The civilians start to scream and panic again, running around and not knowing what to do.

“Captain, make a note that civilians are idiots under pressure. Walk down that hallway and through the door, then make a lef-, you know what, why don’t you people just follow me. I’ll be done in just a second.”

They just look and stare at me as if I’m joking.

“One last thing, Hakorian, what do you plan on doing with Terra when you get what you want? Leave?”

“Again, arrogance, no human, we plan to crussh you under our bootss when we are done. Leave no trace behind uss for the otherss to find.”

“You know, for someone who has been captured you sure do spill the beans rather easily,” I say.

“It does not matter to me, thiss information will not help you one iota, you will all die, and there iss nothing to sstop uss.”

“Wrong answer,” I say, slashing the knife across its throat. The Hakorian had only a second to react, his hand went racing towards his neck to try and stop the bleeding. It’s just too big of a wound though, the lifeless body falls over with a sickening splash in its own blood.

 “Now who's the arrogant one.”

“Colonel come on, we need to get moving. Terein said that the building was the bomb, set to overload the capacitors. He couldn’t shut them down either, which means that we have less than seven minutes now to get out of here or we all die!” T-Rave shouts, flailing his arms wildly like a marionette whose strings were cut.