Critical Strike (The Critical Series Book 3) (2 page)

Denver and Layla reached the building first and fiddled with the black pad by the side of a metallic gray door. Hagellan pushed them both out of the way and pressed his hand against it.

Charlie cut across and hugged the edge of the small building.

The croatoan guard moved in the opposite direction and threw its rifle to the ground. The fighter’s laser beam continued to track around its torso and helmet.

Charlie grabbed Hagellan’s stocky shoulder. “What the hell is your pal doing?”

“And why isn’t the fighter firing?” Denver said.

“The scion calculate everything. A single guard running away without a rifle doesn’t carry a threat. A pulse cannon gets an immediate response.”

Two electronic beeps sounded above the door and a green light winked. More croatoan engineering, Charlie thought.

It smoothly slid open, revealing a light brown corridor carved out of solid rock. A noise like a muffled drum echoed through the valley. Dirt flew from the field in even spacings of five meters toward the guard as the fighter’s gun on its left wing strafed the ground. The guard took a hit to the center of its back and slumped to its knees. A second burst smashed through its helmet and it fell on its side.

“Inside. Quickly,” Hagellan said.

The group dashed inside the corridor. Charlie entered with trepidation, but whatever they were going to meet inside couldn’t be as bad as the thing that hunted them outside. They had no choice.

Hagellan held its glove against the internal pad for the door. The fighter’s laser swept across the root field and came to a rest on Denver’s chest.

CHAPTER TWO

Denver dove to his left and rolled against the coarse, rock floor. The scion fighter’s gun rattled, thundering projectiles against the thick metallic door as it slammed shut.

A quiet electric hum replaced the outside noise.

Charlie held out a hand and hauled Denver to his feet.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Better the devil you know,” Charlie said with a sly glance at Hagellan.

Layla ran her hand along the smooth limestone-colored walls and gazed down the three-meter-wide slope that disappeared into the distance.

A thin strip of bright yellow lighting ran along the ceiling. Solid silver grills dotted the left-hand wall at regular intervals. Denver shouldered his rifle and peered through one, seeing a dark square shaft behind it, presumably for ventilation.

“Follow me to the central area,” Hagellan said.

The croatoan’s dull charcoal uniform creaked as he turned and headed down the tunnel. Denver resisted the urge to shoot him in the back of the head.

Since landing, he’d wanted to say many things to Charlie and Layla that weren’t for the alien’s gnarled earholes. Part of their success on Earth was coming up with clearly communicated plans to achieve their objectives. Everybody could be trusted to carry out a role. Hagellan couldn’t be trusted to know their next moves.

“Hagellan,” Layla said, “what did the tredeyans do when they visited Earth?”

“Collected resources until they had enough. They haven’t visited for hundreds of your years because they figured out a way to produce them themselves.”

“What resources?” Charlie asked.

“We all see things in different ways. What a croatoan might find useful for one thing, a tredeyan will find another purpose.”

“That’s as clear as mud.”

“You will see.”

They continued down until the tunnel split into four directions. Hagellan trudged through the left passageway. Denver purposefully stayed out of the conversation to remain on his highest level of alertness. A single moment of careless chat could cost them their lives. He’d seen people drop their guard and pay for it more times than he cared to remember.

Hagellan rounded a bend in the tunnel, but Charlie and Layla stopped and sprang back. Charlie held up two fingers, indicating company.

Denver hugged the wall and edged forward to peer round the bend.

Two stocky aliens, around five feet tall and dressed in dark purple body armor of interlocking metallic plates, stood on either side of a thick metal door. Both had semitranslucent ivory skin on their faces, no visible hair, and dark beady eyes that flittered as if surveying every dark corner at once. They held stubby black carbine rifles against their chests.

One of them gargled something to Hagellan, sounding more human than croatoan, but still unrecognizable as a distinct language. Hagellan clicked a reply and the door groaned open with a low metal screech that echoed along the tunnel.

“Come this way,” Hagellan said through the intercom. “They are two tredeyan wardens. You have no need to fear them.”

Denver glanced back at Charlie and Layla. They were committed to following, no matter how weird things looked. Going back outside to face the scion fighter wasn’t on the agenda, and they needed oxygen.

“I’ve got your back,” Charlie said. “We haven’t got a choice.”

A muffled explosion boomed overhead and the ground shuddered.

Denver instinctively ducked.

Hagellan and the tredeyans stood firm, showing no signs of distress, as though they were used to coming under fire from an alien bombardment. He knew that croatoans did react when they thought they were in imminent danger; he’d seen it countless times in their body language on Earth.

“We need to move,” Hagellan said.

Denver kept his rifle by his side and advanced. He squeezed the grip, ready to raise and shoot if required. The situation didn’t feel dangerous, but he had no frame of reference for trusting tredeyans.

Hagellan led them between the two aliens. One turned to look at Denver as he passed. It blinked, making a wet peeling sound as its eyelids closed and opened. The dull armor plates around each limb and torso looked too ungainly to be practical, but when the alien shoved the door to widen the gap, an electric whir came from the elbow area.

Servo-assisted power suits, he thought. Interesting tech.

One of the tredeyans followed inside as the door closed. Four thick metallic bolts, at the top and bottom of the frame, electronically snapped into rings, securing it.

At the end of a short, ten-meter-long tunnel, Hagellan slipped off a glove and palmed a pad attached to the wall. A black sheet of glass at the end smoothly slid open with a quiet hiss, making Layla gasp over the intercom.

Beyond Hagellan was a huge cavernous space buzzing with activity.

Denver and the others walked in and glanced around the large square area. It was at least fifty meters across and twenty meters high. And all carved out of solid rock.

A few hundred tredeyans stood in front of circular green screens positioned on a workbench that ran around the perimeter of the cavern. They tapped on pads in front of them, acting oblivious to the humans’ presence. They wore gray three-quarter-length trousers and nothing on their torsos, which were semitranslucent ivory in color, exposing the dark shapes of their internal organs.

Their beady eyes flickered from their pads to the screens as they chattered and clicked to each other. To Denver, they resembled biped insects but with almost humanlike faces—if their eyes weren’t so far apart and their noses weren’t actually just small breathing holes covered with a layer of chitinous material.

High-definition screens attached to the walls displayed streams from different parts of the planet. Most focused on scion fighters and the black prism glinting in the sky. Denver got a chill in his bones when he saw it up close. The thing just looked so… wrong. So… alien.

“Ugly,” Charlie said through the intercom, breaking Denver’s thoughts away from the prism.

“They think the same about you,” Hagellan said.

Denver’s hand twitched on his rifle again. What he would give to plug the bastard right there and then. But he resisted—they needed air and supplies first.

“This is one of the command centers and staging posts,” Hagellan said. “They control drones, weapons, and communicate with the other defenses.”

“They don’t seem bothered we’re here,” Layla said.

“You are with me.”

“What about blowing the gate?” Charlie said.

“They stopped using it a long time ago. Only croatoan ships transport through it since we took control of the planet.”

“Control? I thought you were allies?” Layla said.

“We are. You can’t begin to understand the geopolitics of my people’s empire. But you’re wasting time with petty questions. Follow me to the staging area. I’ll introduce you to the commander of zone four.”

Denver moved alongside Hagellan as he passed a row of tredeyans surrounding a central screen. One glanced over its greasy shoulder. Denver looked away, wanting to avoid eye contact, and followed Hagellan toward an entrance on the far side of the room.

“Is there another way back to Earth?” Denver asked.

“No,” Hagellan said, snapping his response before leading them beyond the command center.

A natural cavern lay on the other side of the command center. A straight path cut through the rocks. Bright lights were attached high on the brown walls, just before the roof arched at a height of forty meters.

Numerous tunnels of varying size led off to the left and right.

Denver counted at least fifty as they headed toward a loud collection of mechanical noises at the far end of the path. He wondered where they might lead and if any would provide an escape route if required.

Most of the tunnels were shrouded in darkness or disappeared around bends, but he spotted signs of life along one of them. He stopped and peered into the gloom, spotting an area packed with small green cages. A tredeyan leaned in front of one and held what looked like a piece of meat on a metal spike through the bars.

“Come,” Hagellan urged.

Charlie nudged Denver and he followed his dad, tracing Hagellan’s footsteps.

Layla kept pace with Denver, occasionally glancing aside to him, her face trying to communicate something more complex than her expression. Denver could guess what she was thinking but couldn’t respond, not while they were here, underground, with god knows what.

As they neared the end, the path twisted round to the left. Denver stopped and took a deep breath. The cavern opened up and the path descended into a two kilometer or so wide bowl-shaped area.

Four shallow levels packed with hundreds of alien machines, crafts and vehicles ran down to a parade ground at the bottom. At least five thousand troops in tredeyan armor lined up in formation, watching strange icons flash on a large blue holographic map of the planet. Information streamed below it.

“Jesus Christ,” Charlie said.

Layla pressed her hand against her forehead. “You can say that again. This is nuts… crazy. I can’t believe we’re seeing all this… I mean, it’s just started to hit home where we are, what we’re seeing.”

Being born during an alien invasion, Denver grew up with the concept of aliens as normal. For him, this wasn’t so shocking. It stood to reason for him that there were more in space, which meant more danger for the human race. Charlie once showed him around the crumbling remains of the Metlife stadium while giving a lesson about their former culture. The idea of watching competitive sport seemed abstract to him, even a little pointless compared to what he had devoted his life to.

He scanned the cavern, looking for sources of imminent danger.

A platform raised a graphite-colored aircraft to the upper level of the bowl. Two bipeds, the size of humans, in dark blue uniforms and helmets with mirrored visors, sat in the domed cockpit of the V-shaped craft.

The ship looked built for combat with its numerous gun turrets and sharp angles. It reminded him a little of the US stealth fighters he had seen crashed into the woods.

The platform twisted and the light blue rear engines roared. Natural light washed the craft, coming from a wide rectangular entrance near the roof of the cavern.

“Wait here,” Hagellan said. “We might have trouble. I’ll talk with them.”

“Talk to who?” Denver said.

Hagellan pointed toward the left edge of the cavern. “We have other company.”

Three croatoan hunters stood by their distinctive cobalt blue fighter craft. The sight of them made Denver sick to his stomach as he thought of Baliska.

The fighter rose from the platform and hovered in the air for a couple of seconds before accelerating forward and zipping out of the gap. Its engine’s roar reverberated along the launch tunnel as the natural light disappeared beneath a motorized canopy.

A hundred or so of the troops on the parade ground filed out of a tunnel on ground level. Hagellan made it to the bottom of the ramp and approached the three hunters.

“Are you watching this?” Denver said.

“Like a hawk,” Charlie said.

“This is unbelievable,” Layla said. “Look down there.”

She pointed down to the second ramp. A hover-bike in the style of a catamaran spiraled into the air and headed for the launch tunnel. A tredeyan driver sat at the front and controlled it using a bright touch screen. Another stood behind the turret of a mounted pulse cannon.

“Run,” Hagellan croaked through the intercom.

“What?” Denver said.

Two of the hunters sprang at Hagellan and hauled him to the ground.

“Run for the tunnels. Keep heading up—”

The feed cut to static. Denver looked at Charlie and back down toward the croatoans. The remaining hunter, dressed in meshed gray body armor, peered up and drew its sword.

“I think Hagellan meant get the hell out of here,” Layla said.

“No shit,” Denver said. “Let’s move!”

Charlie unslung his rifle. “Follow me.”

Denver checked his oxygen reading. They had one hour left and were now on the run in an alien cavern system. Not good. Not good at all. He sprinted after Charlie and Layla as they headed for the nearest tunnel.

They disappeared through its dark entrance. Denver turned to check behind before following the other two. The croatoan hunter tore around the corner.

Denver backed into the darkness, avoiding being spotted. “Come on, get going. It’s right outside looking for us.”

“I’m taking it nice and slow,” Charlie said. “Who knows what we’ll bump into?”