Dusk

Published by Kiaju Publishing

Copyright 2010 Ashanti Luke

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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contents

• • • • •

prologue

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

eight

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

nineteen

twenty

twenty-one

twenty-two

twenty-three

twenty-four

twenty-five

twenty-six

twenty-seven

twenty-eight

twenty-nine

thirty

thirty-one

• • • • •

They should have shot him where he stood. If he died
here, there would still be hope—and hope was what had brought him
from very different beginnings to this point. But if he
surrendered, every gram of that hope would be lost.

Dr. Cyrus Chamberlain held the pistol in his
right hand over his head with his fingers clearly off the trigger.
Four elite soldiers settled in a modified phalanx and trained their
assault rifles on him.

He should have been wracked with anxiety,
should have been disabled by erratic breathing, high blood
pressure, slowed reactions. But he was calm, his breathing in
perfect sync with his heart rate. It was remarkable how losing a
son could move the mind to places you could never have imagined
when life went as planned.

“Drop your weapon and kick it over or we will
finish you!” The noise of the battle behind Cyrus muffled the voice
of the soldier at the head of the phalanx, but his words could not
have been clearer. Cyrus should have been dead or dying by now, and
the soldier who was now repeating his threat was standing too far
from the men in his formation.

Cyrus pressed the clip release on his
automatic pistol, but held the gun so the clip stayed inside the
handle. He slowly lowered his right hand and then let the pistol
fall to the ground. As it fell, he shifted his weight slightly
forward, expecting to get launched backward by a hail of automatic
weapon fire. But the men before him were convinced they had the
situation under control even as he lifted his right foot to kick
the falling pistol toward them.

Cyrus should not have been this fast, this
strong, this agile, and that had been what had kept him from dying
the moment he had reached the door, because these elite soldiers
were reacting to him as if he were a regular human being—even
though from his reputation they should have known better.

A sharp pain numbed his foot and sent a shock
coursing up his shin as his foot launched the gun toward the
soldier in front. The clip and pistol separated in the air and the
soldier fired, but Cyrus was already launching himself forward with
his left foot. He prayed his training had been enough as he vaulted
forward, covering much more distance in a much shorter time than
the soldier could have expected. The gun and clip sailed on
opposite sides of the man’s face, missing, but the soldier’s dodge
gave Cyrus enough time to cover the distance between them. Cyrus
felt the air next to his left ear crackle as a bullet passed
through it and the other rounds of the volley missed him. The other
soldiers had fired, but their bullets found their marks where Cyrus
had stood, while now, he was under the lead soldier’s firing arm,
twisting the rifle and tensing the shoulder strap around the
soldier’s neck. What felt like an elbow hit the right side of
Cyrus’s neck, but Cyrus used the momentum from the strike to shift
his own weight and flip the rifle from the soldier’s hand. He
lifted the soldier’s body from the ground slightly as the loop of
the strap tightened even more around the soldier’s neck. Cyrus did
not have a good grip on the rifle, but he fired anyway. He could
not aim, but he only needed to fill the space the other three men
occupied with rounds. The gun jumped, vibrating the grip against
the palm of his left hand as the stock slammed against his chest
with each report. The stock aggravated the bruise that was already
forming on his neck. One of the men flipped backward, and one went
straight down. The third collapsed on one knee, but managed to
steady himself with his off-hand and keep his rifle up.

Cyrus yanked the rifle strap to flip the
soldier over his shoulder and the man’s neck must have snapped
because his body twitched and fell awkwardly, snatching the rifle
from Cyrus’s hands.

As the last soldier lifted his gun, Cyrus
launched himself forward again, this time pulling his feet in front
of him as he made another extraordinary leap.

An explosion rocked the hangar floor as Cyrus
landed on his butt and slid. He could not tell if the man had fired
or not, which seemed strange because he could hear the snap of the
tendons in the man’s knee as Cyrus slid into him and kicked. The
soldier collapsed over Cyrus screaming, and Cyrus elbowed him
aside. He fell next to Cyrus, clutching his awkwardly twisted
leg.

Another soldier moved out from behind a
loading lev with a set of nondescript canisters in the loading
clamps. The assault on the hangar had left everything in its normal
operational state. Technicians and non-military staff scurried
about hysterically and took refuge. The pilot of the lev had left
it running and floating above the hangar floor, and soldiers were
forming up now on the other side. Cyrus saw three sets of feet
visible beneath it even as he brought his elbow down across the
throat of the soldier he had slide-tackled. He smashed his elbow
down again and felt something in the man’s throat collapse with a
sickening gurgle.

As he saw the barrel of the assault rifle
peek from behind the canisters, Cyrus realized he himself had
pulled too far ahead of his own van, but the only chance any of
them stood was him taking advantage of the chaos his own friends
were causing behind him.

Chaos.

That was not the right word. Chaos was what
was going to happen in seven minutes if he did not make it to the
ominous grey ship that was more than two hundred meters away. Chaos
and the bloody destruction of everything Cyrus had fought for up to
this point.

Cyrus deftly unhooked a grenade from the belt
of the man sputtering and clutching his damaged throat beneath him.
Cyrus lifted his shoulder, pressed the activation button on the
side of the grenade, and then rolled to his left. He counted three
beats, rolled again, and released the grenade on the fourth beat.
The grenade left his hand, hit the ground between him and the
loading lev, and spun awkwardly as it slid beneath the floating
vehicle. The soldiers on the other side recoiled, but the explosion
sent the lev flipping, toppling the canisters in various directions
as the vehicle spun and landed on its side.

Cyrus gambled on the soldiers being shaken by
the explosion and was already up and running again. The lev smashed
against the ground with canisters boggling around it.

Over his shoulder he heard more gunfire and
glanced to see Dr. Marcus Tanner and Commander Azariah Uzziah run
from behind the massive ship that was behind him. They provided
cover fire as Cyrus continued to sprint.

Someone grabbed Cyrus from behind, locking
his arms in front of him. Cyrus felt himself being lifted and
pulled away from the destination that lay only meters in front of
him. His breathing, erratic from the last attack, now failed him.
For a moment he felt his eyes glaze, his head lighten, and in the
haze he saw his son. Not as the man he would be now, but as a boy.
The promising eight year-old he had left too many years ago.

He bit down against the pain, ignored the
complaints of his oxygen-deprived brain, and gripped his captors
thumb with his left hand. Cyrus pulled, and as the man resisted, he
twisted his own body and dug the back of his arm into his captor’s
throat. The man tried to adjust and shift Cyrus’s weight to get a
better grip, but Cyrus had gained enough leverage to thrust his
left hand over his own shoulder. His thumb, held rigid in a martial
claw, struck cheek bone and then slid into what must have been the
man’s eye socket. Cyrus felt something gooey and warm, and then his
feet were on the ground again.

Cyrus kicked the man backward as a nearby
explosion tumbled the man to the ground. Three more men rounded the
edge of the ship. The one on point fired as he cleared the edge,
but Cyrus was already diving toward a rifle on the ground. Bullets
tore into the ground where he had leapt from, and he heard someone
on his side fire a cover volley at the three men. The first fell as
Cyrus scooped up the rifle, rolled, and fired back at the two now
taking cover behind the nose of the ship.

Before he had left Earth, life had been so
different. It wasn’t so long ago that he been just a pudgy
scientist, trying to rebuild his body and condition his mind to
survive long enough to stake a claim on a barren wasteland. How did
I get here? he wondered. It was a strange thought to have in the
midst of a gunfight. Cyrus knew how he had gotten there didn’t
matter as he angled toward the entrance to the ship, pulling the
electronic key Dr. Taewook Jang had programmed to defeat the
security system. All that mattered was getting onto the ship. The
men who had come with him covered the front of the ship with
suppression fire. The hull would hold under the assault of the
small munitions, but if one lucky shot from any of those soldiers
found his flesh, their entire plan could be for naught.