The Sac'a'rith (6 page)

I was already behind the barrier, but I crouched down as a loud thud marked the sound of the magnetic grenades attaching to the door. Not long after that a deafening explosion ripped through the corridor and I felt its intense heat pass over my head. As soon as I thought it was clear I looked over the barrier and saw that most of the door was gone, then two of those creatures came flying towards us at high speed.

Narcion was already in motion, and with both his knives drawn he catapulted himself over the barrier towards the one on the left. Following his lead I dropped my gun, drew my knives, and launched myself at the one on the right.

Our attack caught them off guard, which made it easy for both of us to strike the first blow. The creatures let out a horrifying scream as our knives sliced through whatever their bodies were made of, fatally wounding them. As I pushed through my target I hit the floor in a roll, coming up ready to fight whatever came next out of the door, but nothing came.

I looked back to see Narcion picking up my gun. “Never leave a weapon behind. You may not get a chance to go back for it.”

“Sorry,” I said. I wanted to kick myself for being so stupid.

He slowly moved towards the door and I hung back a few steps. As he neared what was left of the door he pulled out another grenade, this one much smaller than the others, and tossed it into the room. Instinctively I flattened myself against the wall, using what was left of the doorframe to shield me from the blast. It must have been a concussion grenade because I felt a tremendous shockwave come out of the room, but there was no heat this time.

Just as it passed us, Narcion yelled something and charged into the room. I counted to three as he had trained me and then followed him in.

“Clear,” he said as I entered.

Looking around I saw no sign of any enemies. “Where are the rest of them? And why have we not encountered any walking dead?”

“Both very good questions,” he said. “Let’s see what the computers can tell us. Guard the broken door while I work.”

I moved to what used to be a door but was now more of a large gaping hole, and watched the hall. Narcion worked away at the computers for a while. Eventually I heard him say, “This is Engineering, calling Central Computing. Can anyone hear me?”

“Yes, sir!” came a reply.

“Great. With whom am I speaking?” he asked.

“Private Milstone, sir!” was the response.

“Excellent. Private, can you give me your status?” asked Narcion.

“Yes, sir! There are fifty-three of us here. A magus has been using his shields to secure this area, but we are under heavy assault. None of our weapons seem to work on the three beings that led the attack, and most of the forces seem to be made up of walking dead versions of the crew of this station, sir!”

Well, that answered my questions, at least.

“We sent Sergeant Sunto back to you. Has he arrived safely?” asked Narcion.

“No, sir. We have not heard from him or his partner since they went to check on a landing, sir,” said Private Milstone. “But, sir, there is no way they could make it back. We are completely surrounded.”

“How many magi do you have left?” asked Narcion.

“Three, sir, but they are all tied up with the shields. I do not know how much longer they can hold out,” said Private Milstone.

“Do you have sufficient firepower to handle the walking dead if the other creatures were taken care of?” asked Narcion.

“More than enough, sir,” said Private Milstone.

“Excellent. We will be there soon. We can handle the leaders, but we will need you to take care of the others. I will contact you again on this channel when we are ready to attack, assuming we have time. When we take out the leaders, make your move on their troops. Understood?” asked Narcion.

“Yes, sir!” he said with no small amount of excitement in his voice.

“Engineering out,” said Narcion.

“Narcion, isn’t odd that he never asked who you were?” I asked when the channel was closed.

Narcion chuckled and said, “No, he is a private. He got a call on the proper channels from Engineering and it never occurred to him to question the source.”

“Seems foolish to me,” I said.

“Good, because I expect you to know better,” he said with a smile. “Now, let’s move. We need to get there before their shields fail.”

“How do we know this is not a trap, though?” I asked.

“We don’t,” he said as he took off down the corridor.

I was sure he was not telling me everything, and that was starting to annoy me more and more. By now he should be able to trust me, but he was not behaving as if he did. It did not take a strategic genius to realize we had been told multiple different stories about the computer core, none of which matched up, which left me wondering why we were rushing that way.

As we moved through the base heading towards Central Computing I began to think that the base must be bigger on the inside than the outside, as it seemed that we had been running forever by the time we came upon Sergeants Sunto and Sam, who were pinned down under fire from a group of three humans further down the hall. We quickly joined them and Narcion asked, “Who are they?”

“We don’t know. They just attacked us without warning,” said Sergeant Sunto.

Narcion called out, “Hold your fire and identify yourselves!” A fresh wave of blaster fire was the only reply he got. “Zah’rak, toss one of the stun grenades.”

A stun grenade emits a blast of electricity, which temporarily renders most life forms defenseless. It would only buy us a few seconds, but that would be plenty of time in this case. I tossed the grenade, waited for the flash indicating that the grenade had gone off, and charged in. Narcion and I reached the enemy position at the same time and we quickly disarmed them before they had a chance to recover.

Something seemed odd about them, something I could not place. I did not get much time to think about it as Sergeant Sam came up and said, “We should kill them. It is too dangerous to leave them behind.”

“I’ll worry about them; you head towards the core. It sounds like they are in real trouble down there and need help. We will catch up with you when we can,” said Narcion.

“With all due respect, sir … ” started Sergeant Sam.

“Enough. Go,” said Narcion. They hesitated a bit more, but Narcion commanded, “Now!”

There was something in Narcion’s eyes that seemed to drain them of any urge to stay, and they quickly ran off. Once they were gone he turned to me and said, “We need to get these men out of here before those two come back with help.”

The surprise on the face of our prisoners probably matched my own, but I moved quickly to comply, “Can you walk yet?” I asked the one closest to me. Narcion obviously had some plan that he was not sharing with me, yet again.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Good, help your buddy and let’s move it,” I said. It got on my nerves that I could not figure out what was different about them. I knew I should recognize it, but it eluded me.

We took a very erratic path through the station for about half an hour; then Narcion stopped us and said, “Okay, now we talk.”

The
y all looked at each other and seemed to have a conversation completely with their eyes. It was odd; I could almost feel them talking, but there was no sound at all. Long minutes passed until one of them said, “We do not think it would be wise to talk to invaders.”

“I agree entirely; however, of all the people we have spoken with today, I suspect you might be the only ones who are not invaders,” said Narcion.

Something clicked in my head at that moment and I suddenly realized what was different about them. “They are the magi!” I called out involuntarily.

Narcion grinned and said, “Yes, but could you have your revelation a little more discreetly next time?”

“What are you getting at?” said the same one who had spoken before.

“Here,” said Narcion, showing him his security pass. “We were hired to assist in taking back this station from the wraiths. We were told that some magi were sent before us and had failed, but we did not find out about the more mundane attackers until we arrived.”

The magus did not even look at the security card. Instead, he looked deep into Narcion’s eyes. “How do we know you’re telling us the truth?”

“You are not dead, for one thing,” said Narcion with a grin, matching the man’s gaze.

“I am going to need more than that,” said the magus.

“I think you and I both know you are not going to get much more. Let me fill you in on our adventures here so far.”

While Narcion related our experiences, one of them turned to look at me. I turned and met his gaze and felt him boring into me. I could feel him digging, somehow working his way into my head, and all I could think of was the slave collar I had once worn. Never again would I allow anyone to take control of me. A fierce anger rose up in me. I stood to my full height, easily dwarfing the magus, and took him by the throat. I lifted him into the air with one hand while squeezing down on his windpipe. “Get out of my head!” I growled.

He started to shake violently in my grasp and I felt him retreat from my mind. I dropped him and said, “If you ever try something like that again I will rip your head from your shoulders. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, coughing, trying to get his breath back.

“Probing a Zalionian? You could have picked a less violent way to commit suicide,” said Narcion.

“Let’s go, Narcion. Leave them to the wraiths,” I said.

“Easy, Zah’rak. They have been running for their lives around this station for a while. I think you can understand that they might be a little suspicious,” said Narcion.

“What now?” I asked, keeping my eye on them. I was not ready to trust them and would be more than willing to toss them to the wraiths.

“That is up to them,” he said, then turned to the three magi. “You are free to strike out on your own again, or you can join us as we hunt the wraiths. There are too many unknowns here, and g
uides would be welcome at this stage.”

They looked at each other and were silent again for a while. I was sure they were communicating in some manner, but I could not hear anything, nor did their lips move at all. Eventually the first magus said, “My name is Felix and we would be happy to join you.” Felix was obviously the leader of their little group, but he had a shifty look to him. He was shorter than Narcion, but fairly average for a human in height and build.

“Good. Then tell us who we should try to save, and who are the attackers?” asked Narcion.

“We were wondering the same thing. You two are the first friendly faces we have seen in weeks. The two men you helped us overcome are new also, as far as we can tell.”

“What happened with them?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. We came around the corner and they yelled and started shooting; we fired back. That was only moments before you arrived. We were planning a retreat, but you cut that off before we had a chance,” said Felix.

“We have spoken to three other groups of people since coming to the station, and all of them claimed that Central Computing was where everyone was holing up,” said Narcion.

“Central Computing is on lockdown. We can’t get in. I think that whoever was here before us locked it securely
so that it did not fall into enemy hands.”

“Then whoever invaded this station is trying to get us to open it for them?” I asked.

“Possibly. That would explain why we keep getting pushed in that direction,” said Narcion. “Let’s head back to Engineering and see what we can figure out from there.”

“But the hangar was empty. How did you get here?” I asked.

“Sir, we probably arrived the same way you did. We flew in, but shortly after we arrived we came under heavy fire and tried to return to our ship, only to find it had been stolen,” said Felix.

I looked to Narcion in concern, and he said, “Relax, that ship won’t move without me knowing it. Let’s get a move on before someone else comes along.”

As we approached Engineering, Narcion said quietly, “Careful. They are likely to have returned in our absence. Zah’rak and I will take the lead. You three follow five seconds behind and be ready. Remember, your guns are useless against the wraiths. If you have mage bolts, use them.”

“Understood,” said Felix, who seemed to be very much afraid.

Narcion moved down the hall slowly with his assault rifle at the ready. I stayed three seconds behind him, as was my place. As he entered Engineering I heard weapon fire. I charged in with a yell and executed a shoulder roll to the left where I remembered there being some cover. Narcion was behind some debris on the right, and animated corpses of the station’s crew were marching towards both of us.

“Found the dead for you,” said Narcion as he continued his rapid fire into the approaching mass. “Concentrate your fire on their heads and spine. That is where the wraiths interface to them.”

Just then the magi came into the room and found cover with Narcion, adding their blasters to the mix.

“There are too many of them. We will just drain our guns and they will keep coming,” said Felix.

“Is that what normally happens?” asked Narcion.

“Yes,” said Felix.

“Can’t you conjure up some kind of spell to finish them off?” I asked.

“We have to save our magic for the wraiths. They seem to know the moment we get low and choose then and only then to attack,” said one of the other magi.

“Do it,” said Narcion. “We can handle the wraiths.”

They nodded and put away their blasters to free their hands for casting. Soon lightning, fire and stone flew at the line of approaching corpses, cutting them down far faster than we could have done even with ten times the number of guns. I stopped shooting and prepared for the wraiths to attack, but they never came.

“Fall back!” called Narcion as the magi began to weary.

I moved to cover the magi as they stumbled out of the room, barely able to walk from their exhaustion. They seemed to have destroyed hundreds of the enemy and yet others still came. Narcion and I slowly backed out of the room until we were in the hall. The magi had not made it very far when one of them collapsed.