Critical Strike (The Critical Series Book 3) (28 page)

“That poor woman,” Mai finally said. “She led with such bravery.”

“Aye, it’s a real shame. Didn’t have an easy life by all accounts,” Mike said.

The four stretcher-bearers nodded with respect to Mai and Mike as they left, but the flaps didn’t close behind them. The nurse who showed Mike through held them open so the others could see through.

Those who could stand did so, and those who couldn’t sat up in their beds.

Together, they all gave Mike and Mai applause, many shouting their thanks and giving their respects for the help.

The nurse then said a few words about Aimee. The tent hushed again out of respect. Mike and Mai stayed silent as two women dressed in Unity council tunics addressed the hospital.

Mike zoned out after a while as they talked about Aimee’s goals for Unity and how she saw the society. They explained that they would lead the council until they could arrange for elections, but for now, they would continue to run things as Aimee had done in the past.

After they had finished and left, there was one more visitor who stepped through to join Mai and Mike.

“Maria, my girl!” Mai said. “So you’re quite the hero, I hear.”

Maria shrugged her shoulders and looked down at her hands clasped in front of her. “I don’t know about that, I just tried to survive. Look, I wanted to speak with you two, to say sorry… Augustus, he made me tell…”

Mike stood, his old knees cracking, and held her by the arm. “You don’t have anything to apologize for, you hear me? We all knew what he was like. He would have got what he wanted out of you one way or another. I’m just happy you’re safe now.”

“I concur,” Mai said. “He was a madman. God knows what he would have done to you. It all worked out in the end, and you got to kill the bastard, so your name will be long held in regard here, I’m sure. Don’t diminish your actions, girl.”

Maria’s face blushed and she stammered, not sure what to say when she seemed to suddenly remember something. She opened her palms and showed an object to Mike and Mai.

“I don’t know why I took this,” she said. “But in the heat of the moment I saw it on him and thought it might be something useful. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and it… well, it seems to have some kind of internal energy.”

She handed the prism to Mike.

He rolled it over in his hand, feeling the light vibrations coming from its warm, metal surface.

“How interesting,” he said.

He lowered it for Mai to have a look.

She sat up in her bed and took it from Mike’s hand. “Hmm, I think a trip to the workshop is in order.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Charlie watched Vingo limp toward some steps cut into the ground. Dim lights lined green-tinged transparent glass on the walls leading down to a set of double red doors at the bottom. He paused at the top of them and encouraged everyone forward with a wave.

“Where the hell does this lead?” Charlie said. “You’re not taking us to meet more clusps?”

“We need to go through the house to reach its transport deck.”

“Won’t the owner be a little angry?” Layla said.

“Their shuttle is missing. The house will be empty.”

Denver turned, peering through his sights at their surroundings. Charlie spotted a few tredeyans moving around vehicles on brightly lit external transport decks. The decks lined the edge of a cliff that dropped away to the sea. Metal walkways sloped into the cliff, connecting the thirty-meter-wide platforms to dry land. He wondered why the owners kept the lights on with the scion air assault still in full flow, although the large prism had floated to a distant part of the star-filled sky to continue its bombardment.

“Do you know who lives here?” Denver said.

“A high-ranking tredeyan. Their houses are cut into the cliff and have the best views. The rest of us live in villages or the barracks in the cavern systems.”

Vingo climbed down the stairs and pushed the door open. A shaft of artificial light brightened the stairwell.

Charlie immediately followed him inside, pleased that they got themselves out of view, but he remained cautious. A scared tredeyan might be waiting around any corner with a loaded rifle, or one of those damned prisms might have floated in.

The space opened up into a large corridor with smooth cream walls. Five small glass cases were screwed at eye level on either side, with dried flowers and plants inside. The décor took Charlie by surprise. So far, all he’d seen was functionality around the defense, a slaver cavern and pulse cannons on strategic hilltop positions. He guessed Layla would be in her element if they had time to poke around. A vehicle was priority number one, to reach the vaults, so he had no intention of giving her the opportunity.

Denver closed the entrance door and made straight for a rack containing a tredeyan rifle. He grabbed it and checked the magazine. Charlie kept his rifle shouldered and stayed close to Vingo. The corridor opened up into a softly lit circular space, which he guessed was a living area. High-resolution screens were fixed against a wall in a sunken square area in the middle of the room, in front of an L-shaped bench. Two small helmets sat on the end of it.

“Do you get to watch much television?” Charlie said.

“I don’t understand,” Vingo said.

“The screens down there. What do you use them for?”

“Communication and work. The helmets are for the children to take virtual reality training.”

Frosted glass doors led off in three directions. Directly ahead, in the direction of the transport pad, and to the left and right.

“I don’t believe it,” Layla said.

Charlie twisted in her direction. She stood in front of a plastic display case and pressed her gauntlet against it. Denver walked over and joined her.

“What is it?” Charlie said.

“Artifacts from Earth.” Layla turned to Vingo. “Do you have anything like this?”

“I don’t have a sufficient level in our chain of command. These objects are taken from humans we integrated to supply our outposts. They had no need for possessions. We supply everything they need.”

“Where are the outposts?” Denver said.

“A long way from Tredeya. The ones alive don’t know about you, and Earth doesn’t know about them. I think it’s much simpler this way. Humans have strong personal connections that can compromise behavior.”

“You said supply,” Layla said. “What do you mean by that?”

“Create other humans. Your lifespan is short. The only way to keep a constant supply is by reproducing.”

“You’re breeding us?” Charlie said, casting his mind back to the warehouses on Earth where aliens kept pregnant women. “You’re no better than the croatoans.”

Vingo blinked and hobbled over to the display case. “We don’t need to encourage humans to breed. Each one has a purpose for their life, whether that’s guarding territory, flying or fighting. Most are happy working in different parts of the universe.”

“You sell them?” Denver said.

“We did in times of peace. Not now. We require all of the resources to stay alive. After our planet has fallen, all we’ll be left with is our smaller outposts.”

“Which I assume the scion will be visiting in the near future?”

“It’s reasonable to come to that conclusion,” Vingo said.

The thought of his species being used, brainwashed even, into someone else’s fight grated on Charlie, mainly because there wasn’t a single thing that they could do about it. Nobody on Earth had the technology to search and recover the ancestors of kidnapped men and women. The humans in space might not even want to return if they were indoctrinated into an alien culture from an early age.

Charlie gazed at the contents of the display cabinet. The left half contained alien objects. A silver disc with luminous edges, two transparent blue teeth and a chrome pipe that looked like a musical instrument. The right half contained artifacts from Earth. A wooden comb with several teeth missing, a dagger with a boar’s head in a leather scabbard, iron buckles, and a pendant with three lions engraved on it.

Most of the human objects looked medieval, although in better condition than anything his old team dug up at Quaternary Productions all those years ago. It made him think of Mike, and how excited he used to get when an unfamiliar object came to the finds tent. They didn’t realize at the time how much of a simple life they had.

If people were taken centuries ago to fight about the galaxy, they’d have no idea of Earth’s advances and recent decline.

“Grab me a bag, Vingo,” Charlie said.

“What are you doing?” Vingo said. “You can’t take anything from here. A senior officer owns this house.”

Charlie smashed his gauntlet against the cabinet and the clear protective sheet shattered. He reached inside and scooped up the contents. “If we make it back to Earth, I know a man who’ll love this.”

“That’s theft,” Vingo said. “The security feed will have a recording of your actions.”

“I don’t give a shit. Your allies stole my planet.”

“Besides, we’re gonna steal his transport and you’ll be on the feed too,” Denver said.

Vingo grunted and disappeared through the door on the left of the room. He returned with a small green sack. Charlie stuffed in his newly acquired hoard and slung it over his shoulder. He imagined Mike’s face as he poured the contents in front of him.

A low rumbling explosion outside snapped Charlie out of a brief moment of wonder. The filter display in his visor clicked down to its final notch. “Lead the way, Vingo. We haven’t got long.”

Vingo opened a door leading to a metallic tunnel and they clanked toward the transport pad outside. Charlie’s stomach fluttered when he looked out of the long thin window to his right. They were a hundred meters above the sea, which crashed against rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Thick metal girders curved from the bottom of the pad into the rock face just below them.

A dark oval-shaped craft sat on the right-hand side, roughly the size of a car but on four square blocks instead of wheels. Charlie hadn’t seen transport like this before, but realized that he’d only seen invasion and colonization vehicles, and this was probably a civilian ride.

Denver and Layla stood together on the edge of the platform, gazing at the distant skyline. The scion fighter presence had diminished in this area and it had been hours since Charlie saw anything tredeyan in the sky.

Vingo sat in one of the two front seats, secured a rubber strap around the upper part of his suit and wrapped his gauntlet around two shiny rods on the dashboard. Charlie stepped in and glanced at the controls. A light red hologram appeared on the glass shelf in front of them, showing a 3D outline of the vehicle with measurements alongside.

Like most tech he’d seen from the croatoans and tredeyans, it was nondescript until it burst into life, far exceeding anything on Earth.

Layla and Denver sat behind them on a soft leathery bench and fastened their straps. A wise move considering the thing didn’t have any doors. A quick tilt would throw them overboard.

The engines hummed and increased in pitch. They rose unsteadily to a height of three meters above the pad.

“It might be bumpy because of the updraft. We’ll be over land soon,” Vingo said.

Charlie secured his strap. “Go for it.”

Vingo eased the rods in opposite directions. They gained height and thrust forward. Charlie took a deep breath as wind rushed around his suit. This vehicle made the catamaran feel like riding on the back of a snail in comparison.

Bumping along in minor turbulence, Vingo swept to his left and headed along the right-hand side of the village. The ground below passed by in a blur. Ahead, a few lights dotted the dark horizon below the clear night sky.

Charlie braced himself for the possible carnage of their main city. They’d heard a lot of explosions since arriving. The vaults were located there, and the scion were after information.

The group needed to go there to have a chance of survival, but he was also aware that they might be flying straight into a battleground.

***

Vingo stuck to the valleys and snaked between hills. Flames and smoke belched from infrastructure spread around the summits. Charlie guessed they were destroyed pulse cannons or other defensive buildings. From what he had seen of the scion attack, they systematically destroyed any threats without ceremony.

A glow rose up from behind a ridge directly in front of them.

“The city’s behind it,” Vingo said, briefly taking a gauntlet off the control rod and indicating to his front.

“Is it all underground?” Denver said.

“The vaults and urban command center are,” Vingo said. “But the entrance areas and administration buildings are on ground level. I’ll land away from the main area and we can proceed on foot.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” Layla said.

Charlie would’ve credited the suggestion with smart strategic thinking, considering they didn’t know the state of the place. But Vingo had done everything for himself so far, so his decision was probably based on self-preservation.

Another lie or misdirection would lead to a swift end for the tredeyan. Charlie decided that Vingo had no more chances to burn. If they only found the information in the vault that would be traded with the Amalgam, and no filters, that would be the end of Vingo, and probably Denver, Layla and himself shortly after.

The vehicle slowed and drifted over the ridge. The central part of the city was two miles wide, designed in a grid system of single-story buildings on well-lit roads. A good sign that they still had electricity. Small clusters of lights from other buildings sprawled into the distance.

After seeing the city and the previous village with the nice house, Charlie eventually got a sense that a civilization lived on Tredeya. Before that, the dangerous caverns around the command center and the slavers’ cave seemed slightly out of step with the technology on display.

Halfway down the slope, Vingo directed the vehicle behind a copse of trees and they bumped to the ground. “We can access the underground system from the edge of the city.”

“You better hurry,” Layla said. “A flashing light’s just appeared on my visor display.”