Eclipse blackout book 5, p.7
Eclipse (Blackout Book 5), page 7
Grocit stragglers were just now breaking through the dome coming from the cavern. They barreled for the base, too, but they checked their advance when they saw everyone else.
The Gishki led the advance, following Jackson through the dome. They took one look at the situation and opened fire. They used some kind of projectile weapon that Jackson didn’t recognize. Each weapon took three people to operate.
One Gishki knelt low to the ground and braced the gunstock against his or her ankle. This Gishki concentrated all their great strength just holding the weapon steady. A second fighter dropped the ordnance down the tube, while a third aimed the thing where they wanted it to shoot.
The first five guns unleashed. Their rockets spiraled over the Krakzid base and wavered at their peak. The Krakzid modules pivoted to target the rockets, and their lasers sprayed into the sky.
Half a dozen lasers stuck the ordnance, but instead of detonating the projectiles at a safe distance, the lasers only bounced off. Then, amazingly, the missiles changed direction. They actually swiveled in midair and flew in a death dive straight for the lasers that attacked them.
The next second, the missiles collided with the Krakzid fighter craft. Three of them blew, showering sparks and flaming debris on the base. The Grocit below went ballistic when they saw this, and the new arrivals racing to join the fray.
More Gishki took up positions on the slopes flanking the base. Their missiles sprouted from all over and lit up the sky before plunging to their targets.
Jackson could hardly believe the evidence of his senses. The projectiles really actually changed direction at the top of their arc. They adjusted their dives to assault the guard towers, the parked fighter craft still on the ground—anything.
They didn’t harm the Grocit, though. They must be keyed to destroy only inorganic objects because, as Urvals and Kanz flooded onto the base to join the Grocit, the Gishki rockets avoided them, too.
Two guard posts exploded, and the Grocit went to town on what was left. The remaining towers swiveled in all directions to gun them down, but the Krakzid apparently didn’t count on anyone targeting them from a distance. They could decimate the Grocit all day long, but they didn’t seem to grasp the concept of shooting farther afield to take out the Gishki positions.
The Gishki took the opportunity to inflict as much damage as possible. The Krakzid managed to launch a few more fighter craft, but these vessels never got a shot off before the Gishki destroyed them, too.
For one moment suspended out of time, the base lay silent, exposed, and utterly vulnerable before the combined wrath of the insurgents. Jackson could just imagine the Krakzid, hidden inside their impenetrable geometric structures, scrambling to come up with some strategy to save them from this disaster.
The guard towers stopped shooting. No sight or sound came from any Krakzid module anywhere, but that quiet only foretold the retaliation to come.
The Grocit roared their blood rage and charged for the power source. Urvals took up positions at the base’s edge and hammered the guard posts and larger structures with a mish-mash of weapons from God knows where.
Roy slapped Jackson hard on the shoulder. “Come on! Let’s get down there.”
He and Benedict darted down the hill. The pair buried themselves among the Grocit, who stormed through the base destroying everything in their path. They scattered around the parked fighter craft. Grocit picked up the modules in their huge arms, smashed them into the pavement, and stomped them to crumbs.
Roy fired on the run. He waved the Grocit to the right. “Over here! The control relays are over here!”
A squad of ten Grocit veered to join him. They might have been the same Grocit who’d destroyed the power coupling in the cavern, but in this chaos, Jackson couldn’t be certain.
They advanced to a small black box adjacent to the power station. A humped section led under the black pavement from the control relay to the station itself.
Some of the Grocit squad split off and set to work ripping up the pavement. It came away in squares of durable black material that didn’t crack in their hands. They flung it away and tore into the infrastructure beneath.
Jackson pulled up next to Roy at the control relay. Three Grocit wrenched the solid cover off the relay to expose circuitry, wiring, and a bunch of other weird stuff inside. Roy studied it. “This is where the duct communicates with the station. There has to be some other component that controls the rest of the fleet.”
“What are you doing?” Jackson asked over his shoulder.
“This base feeds power to fifty other bases all over the planet. That’s why the Grocit picked it. They don’t care about this power station. They want to take out the whole network.”
Jackson squinted into the relay and saw what Roy was talking about. The channel coming from the power station entered on the left, but these relays were way too complicated to power a single base. The right-hand side must be dedicated to the rest of the Krakzid invasion force.
One of the biggest, most brutish Grocit pointed into the relay. He grunted something and traced some of the circuits with his crooked finger. Roy started to say, “Yes, I think that’s—”
A hair-raising crackle startled the whole party. Dead center in front of their eyes, a Krakzid ship lifted over the horizon—but it wasn’t like the Krakzid fighter modules Jackson was used to.
The giant featureless black sphere levitated from the ice storms beyond the dome and kept rising like a small moon that blocked out the sun. Jackson’s spine tingled. He’d seen these before, but only once. These same Krakzid battleships had attacked the Severance and invaded Zenith.
Roy murmured under his breath. “I think we might have a small problem.”
The next instant, the Krakzid ship shattered into millions of tiny modules and several more larger craft made up of several modules working as one. They rocketed through the dome and dumped laser fire on the surprised invaders.
The Gishki fired more rockets, but the Krakzid quickly overpowered all the forces on the ground. A laser carved through the pavement, slicing countless of the Krakzids’ own fighter craft to scrap.
Jackson saw the laser swerving dangerously close to the power station. He slammed his palm against Roy’s shoulder and propelled his friend away to the right. “Get down!”
Jackson dove left. He took three Grocit with him and they all bowled head over heel as the laser struck the control relay. It carved a corner off the housing and kept on skittering toward the Grocit laying waste to the guard towers.
Jackson rolled to his feet, but when he searched for somewhere to take cover, his heart sank. The Grocit had done their job too well. They’d torn down every guard tower and structure. They left nothing anywhere to protect themselves.
Unlike the guard towers, the fighter craft had no trouble targeting the Gishki on the hills. The modules scattered, and spread an unbreakable net over the whole area. They hemmed the Grocit inside the base while other craft zipped back and forth, annihilating anything that moved.
The Gishki grabbed their guns and tried to make a break for the dome. The fighter craft cut them off. The lasers sliced deep fissures in the soil. They left the Gishki no choice but to retreat back toward the base—back into the line of fire.
Jackson scrambled to get hold of the Grocit nearest him. “Get up! We have to get out of here!” He floundered from one to the next. Every other Grocit he found dead. A few responded, but he still didn’t know where he should take them.
He could only think of one option: the cavern.
9
Bombie led Liri and Hitori through the dim passages of Arlyane’s underground command center. Liri had been down here countless times. She even countered herself one of Arlyane’s most trusted operatives, but now she dreaded seeing him again.
The real problem was that she couldn’t deliver Uzud’s message, and Lana was out of action. What if Uzud turned out to be Arlyane’s enemy, the way everyone said? Lana had agreed to cooperate with Uzud, but Liri never would.
Bombie waved them into a tiny room lined to the ceiling with bookshelves. Arlyane leaned over the desk. He looked up when Liri and Hitori entered. “Ah! You’re here! Excellent.”
Liri motioned to Hitori. “This is Hitori Haru, Arlyane. He’s a sentient robot from the—”
“We don’t have time for that.” Arlyane strode around his desk and approached the pair. “We need to mobilize right away. I know you’re a crackerjack pilot, Liri. I need you to fly for me now.” He turned to Hitori. “Do you know how to fly?”
“I have flown a Keter Legion Rebel, but only once.”
“He can fly,” Liri put in. “He’s really good.”
“Excellent. We need every pilot we can muster.”
“Hold on a sec,” Liri interrupted. “Aren’t you even going to wait to find out what message Lana brought you from Uzud?”
“I don’t need to. I already know what message she brought from Uzud. The fact that she showed up here, even unconscious, delivers the message. Now please, quit stalling. We have no time to waste.”
He pushed between them and headed for the door. Liri and Hitori exchanged glances and then hurried after him. “What’s going on, Arlyane? I would never question your orders, but if there’s anything—”
“Don’t give me that shit, Liri,” Arlyane snorted over his shoulder. “I’m counting on my loyal officers questioning my orders, and no one can question them better than you and Lana. Uzud sent word that it’s time to trigger a plan we’ve been hatching for years. I don’t know what Lana said to him in Doing-Doing, but it’s time.”
He burst into the command center, where Wicklow, Montayne, Creet, and a handful of others still worked around the central table. “Pack it up, all of you,” Arlyane ordered. “We’re moving.”
“Where to?” Creet asked.
“The parking lots. Mobilize every pilot on the roster and get the mechanics on deck with all their gear.”
Liri gasped. “The parking lots! The…” She couldn’t finish her sentence.
“The Legion parking lots. Now move!” Arlyane’s voice boomed through the command center. The assembled staff scurried away to carry out his orders. Liri would have done the same thing, but before she could move, Arlyane sliced his finger at her and Hitori. “You two, come with me.”
He crossed to an alcove tucked into the command center’s back corner, and held a safety gate out of the way in invitation. Liri pulled herself together and stepped onto it next to him. Hitori joined them. Arlyane shut the safety gate, and the alcove whizzed upward on an invisible track.
The platform carried them up three levels, and then sideways. It emerged in the conduit tunnel and ran parallel to the tracks, about fifteen feet off the ground.
“What size ship do you want?” Arlyane called over the device’s high-pitched whine.
“What are the options?” Liri yelled back.
“Anything you want. You have the whole parking lot to choose from.”
“I’m partial to the Rebels, if it’s all the same to you.”
“It’s all the same to me.” Arlyane turned to Hitori. “What size ship do you want? You have some experience with the Rebels. Maybe you’d like another one.”
Hitori fixed his steely eyes straight ahead. “I’d prefer to stay with Liri, if it’s all the same to you.”
Arlyane raised an eyebrow. “I thought you’d want your own command. The more ships we get in the air, the better our chances of success.”
“What exactly is our objective?” Liri asked.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” Arlyane told Hitori. “You can split up and take a Rebel each, or you can go together and man a Radical together. It’s up to you.”
Hitori didn’t blink. “I prefer to stay with Liri.”
Arlyane shot Liri a questioning glance. “All right,” she replied. “I guess we’ll take a Radical.”
“Suit yourselves.” Arlyane faced forward just in time for the platform to skim to a halt. He raised the safety gate, and the three stepped off it.
Liri and Hitori followed Arlyane to a different platform, similarly arrayed with a safety gate. Dozens of people surrounded this one. Their buzzing conversation died the instant Arlyane showed up.
He pushed between them and took his place at the front. “This is it, people. This is the moment we’ve been working toward all these years. You know what you have to do. Let’s get out there and give ‘em holy hell. I’ll be right there with you. We have all the strength and determination. We have the power of the Grand Votek behind us. We can’t lose.”
A cheer went up from the assembled insurgents. Arlyane stepped onto the platform, and it whisked him upward and out of sight.
Liri and Hitori hung back and waited for the scramble to abate. Only four or five insurgents could fit onto the platform at a time. It carried them up to the surface before it came back for the next group.
The last cluster rode upward and out of sight. Only Liri and Hitori remained below ground. “Is he out of his mind?” Hitori murmured.
“Before today, I would have said he was a military genius. I would have agreed with him that the Grand Votek wouldn’t let us lose.”
“And now? Would you still say that, or would you say he was certifiably insane?”
“I only know one thing,” Liri said. “I’m not standing around down here while the others do the fighting. If this is a suicide mission and we’ll all be dead by tonight, then I’m going out there to fight with my friends. You don’t have to. You can find a way back to the Blackout and rejoin Jackson on Apra. I won’t blame you.”
“I think I’ll stay with you.”
Liri cocked her head to study him. She didn’t understand his sudden fixation on staying with her, unless… “Comrades?”
He nodded. “Comrades.”
“Let’s go.”
They stepped onto the platform together, and it carried them up to the surface. They emerged under a cramped overhang packed with insurgents. Everyone gazed out over the parking lots where the Keter Legion stored derelict, disused, and retired vessels.
A group of hooded figures darted from one ship to the next. The repair crews wore tattered rags and patched hoods. If Liri ignored their carts and backpacks loaded with tools and supplies, she might have mistaken them for the scavengers who prowled these lots for rations and spare parts.
“You know the drill,” Arlyane murmured in a tense undertone. “Wait for my word before you even think about powering up. Get your communications systems running, but leave your engines cold until I say.”
Some nodded, but no one spoke. Liri’s scalp prickled as the picture formed in her mind of what exactly Arlyane planned to do. All her doubts evaporated about his sanity and his claim to being the Grand Votek. He was the greatest leader alive, greater even than Jackson Keogh.
The repair crews crisscrossed the parking lot dozens of times. Different squads attended to different vessels, but none of them remained long near any particular one. They didn’t enter, and they didn’t remove any hull sections. They didn’t open up the engines or any other working system.
This could mean only one thing. All these ships that Arlyane planned to commandeer—to steal from under the Keter Legion’s very nose—they were all functional. They’d been sitting unused but perfectly serviceable all these years. They just needed crews to man them.
Adrenaline fired into Liri’s guts. This was it. This was the battle where Arlyane expelled the invaders from Keter. She never truly believed she’d live to see this. Damn, she wished she was launching with Lana at her side, but at least she’d get to take part in it herself.
The repair crew halted at a giant Radical to the left of Arlyane’s hiding place. The instant Liri laid eyes on it, she knew this was her ship. She couldn’t read the nameplate from here, but that didn’t matter.
She shot a glance at Hitori at the same time he looked over at her. They shared a moment of silent understanding. He was with her. He was right here, and he knew what he had to do. She didn’t have to tell him.
The next instant, the repair crew ran up a white flag. It flapped over the parking lot. “That’s it!” Arlyane hissed. “Go! Go!”
The assembled insurgents streamed into the open. None of them bothered to hood up. Protecting herself from the sun was the absolutely last thing on Liri’s mind. The Radical dominated her whole attention.
She and Hitori took off toward the ship as the repair crew split off. They headed for cover, and the insurgents darted to their ships.
The discharge ramp stood open waiting for them. Five perfectly detailed Skeeters lined the ramp, with their noses pointed toward the outside world. The ship’s interior chrome shone like new. The nameplate on the vessel’s flank read, Radical Anarchy. Oh, hell yes.
She raced up the stairs. These Radicals were much bigger than Rebels like the Blackout. They usually carried a crew complement of hundreds. Liri had one person—Hitori.
She had to scale seven decks to reach the bridge. Hitori tailed her all the way, and she raced to the pilot’s station. She switched on the power systems, but when she tried to check the readings on the other insurgent ships, she had to walk all the way to the navigator’s station to find them. This would never work.
She returned to the captain’s command podium. From here, she could access everything, including the helm. “I need you to handle the bombardment stack, Hitori. You can do that, can’t you?”
He didn’t answer. She checked behind her and jumped. He stood right next to her and didn’t register what she said. He stared straight at the bridge’s observation window, but he didn’t see anything out there.
Both his hands rested on the console. Fibers wound out of his fingertips and burrowed into the instruments. The voice coming out of his mouth sounded like a machine. “Fly the ship, Liri.”
Liri spun forward, struggling to breathe. He’d jacked the Anarchy’s bombardment stack, the Skeeters’ launch sequences, and even the… Holy mother-lovin’ crap! He’d even infiltrated the piloting systems that controlled the Skeeters.
