Siege of Terra (The Mavrik Woods Series, Book 1) (29 page)

“Well in that case then we destroy them as soon as we can.”

“And how are we supposed to do that General?”

“We have enhanced warheads with sufficient amounts of Thopium. According to the engineers that built them they will be more than enough.”

“Did this information get leaked somehow?”

“Not that I know of, why do you ask?”

“It was just a few short days ago that one of the Hakorians was questioning me something about deactivation codes for our weapon system. At the time I could say anything if I wanted to, seeing as I didn’t know about these warheads.”

“That seems odd that they got that information that fast, unless of course they have more moles amidst our ranks.”

“That would be bad, how can we tell if we do?”

“I’ve taken care of that. I have certain agents amongst them that are gathering Intel on the renegades movement and plans.”

Great, now there’s no way to know now who’s on which side. “I’m assuming that this is classified information?”

“Yes, on the highest level. I’m sorry son, but you’ve been out of the loop for quite some time now, if I told you now it might compromise them. We can't let that happen.”

“So that’s how the Hakorians had known about the weapon system, someone must have relayed it to their ship.”

“Yes. There is a slight hiccup though in that,” the General scratches his chin.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there was no transmission sent from Terra that would have gotten all the way to that cargo ship you were on.”

I know exactly where the General’s going with this, “you’re saying that there were traitors in the team you picked out to come and get me.”

“Exactly. There is no way to tell if our operative had given out that information to make his position in the groups rank higher, or if the information was actually given out by one of the traitors.”

“How many men were on that ship when it left Terra?”

“Twelve. Why?” The Generals eyes light up.

“Well, we can narrow it down to who that traitor would be, unless of course it wasn’t our agent.”

“Only nine people returned from that mission, we have no way to tell if the traitor was killed or not.”

The General stands up, “I’ll contact our agent discreetly and see if they were the ones that leaked the Intel, if that is indeed the case than we have nothing to worry about.”

“Is this debriefing done General?” I ask politely, I don’t want to seem eager to get out of here.

“Yes it is Colonel, unless you have further information to share with me.”

“There’s nothing else that I can think of that’ll help us in any way. I would like to ask if I could get new security codes,” I stand up, readying myself to leave.

“We can definitely do that, by the way Colonel, I’m sorry about your wife; I’ve taken to understand that you didn’t even have time before all this started to go on your honeymoon.”

My memory flashes back to the day we woke up on that nice sunny morning, oblivious to the fact that our lives would be changed forever in only mere minutes; it seems like years ago that that happened. My eyes begin to well up. I can’t stop thinking about her, she’s the one thing in my life that I’d cherished and am thankful for, now it’s gone.

“That’s correct; I was called in for duty that very morning after the wedding.”

“I also understand that she will most likely not make it,” his face looks solemn at this change of conversation.

“That’s also true, however I have a plan to save her.”

“And how do you intend to do that? We don’t have the proper technology to accomplish that. And that is most likely the case for years to come.”

“Doctor Zanning told me that we have Cryogenics. She will be put into stasis until I con procure the medicine or technology that will save her.”

“And where do you plan on finding this medicine? Like I said we don’t have anything powerful enough to do the job.”

“We don’t, but maybe the races where the Hakorians came from do.”

He scoffs at the suggestion, “are you saying you want travel somewhere where we know nothing about, and just demand their assistance?”

“Not demand, if we get out of this Sir they’ll owe us one.”

“How did you come to that conclusion?”

“Well Sir, there are only three possible outcomes of this war: The first one is that the Hakorians win and wipe us out. The second is that we negotiate with them and there is a peaceful outcome -which we both know will never happen - and the third one is that we prevail. If we do survive this General we’ll have wiped out their enemy, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“You have a good point, but there is still no way that we can get there. Even with our current level of jump drives it took us days to travel the distance that a fully capable jump drive that would take mere minutes.”

“The Hakorians have that technology. With all due respect Sir, I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks about my plan. It’s the only thing that will keep me going.”

“Fair enough, you’re dismissed Colonel. Before you do anything else, go down to the armoury.”

“Why?”

“It’s not just warheads that we have made; we have lots of shiny new toys down there that you should check out. You are dismissed Colonel.”

I give him a quick salute before making my way to the door.

The door opens up; it requires no code to be entered from the inside. I wander through the halls, weaving in and out of the crowd to make it back to the lift. I retrace my steps by following the green stripes on the ceiling.

It doesn’t take me long to reach the lift, the doors hiss open; several people scurry out as I walk in. I scan the numerous icons that indicate the different levels. I find the Medical levels and hit the number 6 button. I wait for the doors to close. The all too familiar feeling as my stomach lurched upwards as the lift suddenly drops. The lift drops faster than usual. I know something’s wrong, I can’t guess what though.

Day 32: Cycle 3: Period 2: Year 2397

Before I know it sirens are going off, coming from below and above, probably from the numerous levels. I hit the emergency stop icon on the pad; the lift lurches to a halt, most likely in between two levels. The door starts to open, only to stop after a few centimeters.

I squeeze my hands in between the small gap. I slowly begin to pry the door open. The door is hard to slide open, it’s then that I realized my mistake, I never should’ve exerted myself so quickly. A sharp pain traces up my shoulder, I drop involuntarily to my knees. It’s the first time that my body’s made me aware of my injury.

I reach into my left pocket and extract an army knife that I always carry -since I got back to Terra at least- and slide it in between the door that leads to one of the levels. It’ll be rather hard to prop myself up, seeing as there’s only a quarter of the door showing. I’m lucky though that the lift stopped where there was a door, and not just in between the gaps that separate each level from another.

The door slowly slides open as I repeat the procedure that opened the first door, luckily my shoulder doesn’t go into a fit of pain this time.

When I actually get the door open enough to see through, I can’t believe my eyes. The entire level is either in pieces or on fire, probably both in most cases.

 What could’ve happened that could cause this much damage? Did something malfunction and result in an explosion of some kind?

“Is there any survivors up here?” I yell as loud as I can over the Sirens and the sound of broken equipment.

There isn’t any response, not even the sound of something moving.

I start to run through the wreckage of what the corridor used to be, there are dozens of bodies that litter the ground. All of them killed by what looks to be a flash fire. Whatever caused the original explosion though I can’t say, there’s just too much damage to make an assessment.

I try my best to check each body, just in case someone has somehow survived the catastrophe. I keep searching however, despite obvious facts that there’s probably no survivors left on this level. I don’t even know which level I’m on. There’s medical equipment lying around in some of the rooms, this must be one of the infirmary levels.

A small voice comes from inside one of the rooms, I hurry over to where the voice originated from.

“Make more noise, I can't find you!” I yell, in hopes that the person can hear me and respond in any way. It’ll be hopeless for me to find the person without help; there are dozens of rooms all across from each other, criss-crossing across the hallway.

The noise comes again, in one of the rooms on the left side. I quickly run up to the first room, I peer in, there’s a person lying on the floor, they probably fell there when the explosion had shook the entire foundation. This person however can’t possibly be the person that I’m trying to find, they’re fried to a crisp, the smell of burning flesh makes my stomach churn.

It’s sounds like a small child that’s calling for help. I race to the other rooms, checking each one quickly. The fourth room seems untouched, at least from the explosion, everything instead is just upturned as if a giant earthquake happened. Underneath the metal bedframe there’s a child pinned down under it. It’s a little girl; tears are streaming out of her eyes, either from the pain or the superhot air from the explosion that’s burning my own eyes.

“Are you ok?” I ask her.

All she does is look at me with her big green eyes; blood’s caked down the side of her head. She whimpers at me, stretching her arm out towards me to seek help.

I muster all the strength I can to move the heavy frame off her leg. It clatters to the floor beside her.

“Are you hurt?” I ask again, “what's your name?”

“Kate,” is all she says, the voice sounds so innocent it seems hard to believe that something could ever happen to someone so small.

“Ok Kate, I’m Mavrik. We’re going to go outside now ok? It’s going to be hard to breath but we’ll be alright,” I tell her in a calming voice. I reach over to the bed that’s now on its side and rip off a large piece of the sheet, “ok, can you put this over your mouth?”

She takes the rag from my hand and wraps it over her head and mouth. At least she’s old enough to understand what she has to do, “wait, where’s my mom?” She asks.

“I don’t know, when did you see her last?” I ask.

“She said that she had to go and check on my dad.”

“And where is your dad?”

“She said that he was in one of these rooms,” tears begin to well up in her eyes again.

“We can come back for them later ok? For now we need to get you out of here,” I make my way to one of the staircase shafts that I found earlier, at least whoever built this place had been thinking properly to put in something that didn’t rely on technology.

I reach the staircase door quickly and grab the knob, only to be met with searing pain. The door’s grown much hotter since I’d been here last, which was only mere minutes ago.

“Ok, time to find a different exit,” I say to myself, as well as to reassure Kate, “do you know of any exits?” I ask her, she probably doesn’t know of any though.

She shakes her head. Worth a try I guess.

Something ahead catches my eye; a lone figure is standing at the end of the hall, which is almost ten meters ahead. It’s hard to tell what the person’s doing.

A man. His left leg’s dragging behind his right, as if it’s useless. The fires has blackened all his clothing; his skin a cherry red color from the heat.

My eyes travel to his chest, where a small red light is blinking, I try my best to identify what the item can possibly be.

A bomb.

My eyes open wide in horror, with nowhere to go but back the way we came I start to run. The lift’s the only option now, even though it didn’t work that’s the only place that we’ll be able to survive in, hopefully.

There’s no way to tell if we’ll even get to the lift in time. I can see the door still pried open, there’s hardly room to get into it while running, I’ll have to resort to more extreme measures.

“I’m going to slide you! This might hurt!” I yell to her. It’s the only way. I would’ve slid in together but there’s only a half of a meter worth of room. I drop to my knees and roll onto my back, child still in arms. We’re still going at an alarming rate, faster than I want. I flip onto my front, spinning Kate in my arms so that she’s in a lying down position. By doing that, I’m able to stretch out so that we can glide right into the lift.

Before I know it we’re flying into the lift, I can’t reverse my body in time for the impact. I land heavily on my front.

Then it happened.

The bomb went off.

It shakes the entire level, probably more levels as well. I let go of the child and stand up, I can see the massive fireball and pure destructive energy hurtling towards us. There’s no way that we’ll survive if these doors don’t close. I only have a couple of seconds before the blast wave hits us. I know that it’ll be pointless to try and manually close the doors; it was a difficult task to open them.