Chapter 27

Zerien

I didn't wait for our other ships to be freed before ordering Drade to get us airborne. Even if the guards manning those vessels realized something was amiss, they wouldn't be a significant enough threat to prevent us taking them down. But with Dread on the way to the palace, I couldn't delay any further.

I opened a channel to Faolen's com. Like the first time we visited the Sanctuary, he was secretly traveling on his own, but this time to a different rebel rendezvous point. Relief flooded through me when the connection was successfully established. I gave him a quick summary of what transpired here.

"What's your status?" I asked Faolen as our vessel took off, Drade immediately activating our stealth mode.

"The teams here have met the same fate you have," Faolen replied through the com. "The rebels only had two foreign vessels. As soon as they locked our men in the brig, they took off. Judging by their general flight direction, I assume they're headed for the palace. Unfortunately, all communications there are blocked for us as well."

"You need to free our men so that they can join us at the palace," I said firmly.

"Should I use the scrambler override to set it to maximum intensity?"

I clamped down on my instinctive desire to say yes. Considering the lingering pain I felt in my head, especially behind my eyes, using it on my men was too risky. Rushing their liberation would serve no one if the ultrasonic blast caused them severe brain injury.

Even though he couldn't see me, I shook my head. "It's better to wait the extra ten or twenty minutes needed to safely disable the rebels' implants than to risk harming our men."

"Agreed," Faolen replied. "I could also infiltrate the ships and perform a sneak attack. Based on my scanners, they've only left one or two guards in each ship. They haven't overridden the bio locks on the vessels, so I can still board them without problem. I'm confident I can take them out."

"Then proceed but be cautious. Do not take any unnecessary risks," I said. "If you succeed, move to the next location and free our remaining fleet. But before you even attempt to infiltrate them, try to remotely activate our men's scramblers if they don't block communications over there."

"Understood," Faolen said.

We ended the conversation, and I shifted my focus back to the endless flight to the palace. Anger boiled within me at my complete inability to get through to anyone in the direct vicinity of the palace. How did they manage this complete lockdown without us seeing them sabotaging it? Granted, they seemed to possess the type of technology that rivaled the Veredians', one of the most advanced species in the galaxy. But unless they bombed multiple sites at once, there was no way they could have turned everything off like one would flick a switch.

I didn't want to imagine the worst, but my mind kept returning to my mate and the fact that Dread was on his way to kill her. Despite the formidable Warriors who would surround Siona and put their lives on the line to save hers, and although she was a phenomenal Warrior in her own right, in the chaos and mayhem of battle, it didn't take much for things to take a tragic turn.

Smoke and the flying lights of missiles in the distance cast those somber thoughts out of my mind. I straightened in my seat, tension stiffening my spine as the imposing outlines of multiple Draylian ships came into focus the closer we got.

"All hands to battle stations," I commanded, calling up the combat interface from the captain's seat I currently occupied.

The controller rose from the armrest of my chair while a holographic visor extruded from the headrest, circling around my face from the right side to form a display before my eyes. It enhanced the outside view while also giving me crosshairs and other tactical information on anything I targeted with my controller.

My stomach knotted when I noticed how the Draylian ships were all hovering in strategic positions over each of the four wings of the palace. Realizing that an additional one had joined the ship above the residential wing where my own dwelling was located turned my blood to ice.

On reflex, I made a futile attempt to once more contact the palace. In desperation, I used my ultrasonic speech to try and reach them. Although it didn't carry as well through air as it did underwater, ultrasounds traveled through metal. Granted, too great a quantity of it would generate heat that could threaten the integrity of that metal, but those from speech would be far too minimal to represent any type of danger.

My heart sank when the tactical display of my holographic visor showed the signal degrading within seconds of me emitting it. Whatever type of high frequency noise those sons of a krillik were using to jam the palace's com was also blocking my ultrasonic signal.

As we made our approach, I stared in horror as what I initially believed to be giant missiles dropped near the residential gardens turned out to be some kind of moles. Rotating drill heads extruded from their noses moments before they hit the ground and immediately proceeded to bury themselves deep. The palace's ground-to-air defenses managed to destroy a few of them mid-air, but at least two of them—maybe even more—made it through.

By rights, the enemy vessels never should have even made it to the restricted air space surrounding the palace. Why had our turrets taken so long to burst into action? Even with their stealth shields fooling our scanners, the three layers of detection shields at increasing distances from the palace would have detected anything passing through them, even camouflaged. That could only mean that either someone had tampered with our defense systems so they would ignore those intruding vessels, or the Draylian technology was truly beyond anything any of us were ready for.

My gut said the former was the answer.

After all, with his mimicking powers, Dread and anyone else with his skills could have done a lot of damaging stuff before we amped up our security measures.

By the time we finally got in close enough range to engage the intruding vessels, they all simultaneously launched their attacks. Previously, they only hovered there, releasing those moles. Now, they fired something we couldn't actually see. A flash at the exit point of their ships' launchers indicated where the attack emanated from. Then the air blurred, and the turrets of the palace's ground-to-air defenses went silent.

My brain froze as a flurry of shuttles shot out of the Draylian vessels to land in the gardens and any open area around the palace unimpeded.

"Pulse cannons," I whispered with sudden understanding before shouting through the com. "They're disabling our defense towers. Shoot those blasted pulse cannons below the bellies of those ships. Take them out now!"

Our missiles and photon torpedoes crashed ineffectively against the Draylian ships' defensive shields. To my dismay, my tactical display didn't indicate even the slightest dent in its integrity. It was like throwing water at a stone wall.

Gharah's blood! What the fuck kind of technology was this? How were we to defeat them if our weapons were useless against them, while their own technology effortlessly disabled our defenses and our coms?!

To my relief, our fighter jets left the hangar to join the battle. A few of them turned their attention to the shuttles landing around the palace to unload their troops. The others joined our efforts to fight back the larger vessels. Everything in me wanted to jump into a shuttle of my own and go down to the palace to fight the enemies on the ground. But I was needed in the air to try and eliminate this greater menace.

I had to remind myself that the palace was crawling with Imperial Guards. My father, who was the most savage and fearless Warrior among our people, would also protect my mate, not to mention the fact that she was an exceptional fighter herself. Hopefully, Siona, my son, and the women of our Councils were already safely tucked away inside one of the bunkers.

But what of the moles?

I didn't doubt their purpose was to destroy or bring some kind of terrible payload to the secured underground facilities. They'd been built to withstand almost any type of attack. I didn't worry about those moles piercing through the defensive walls of the bunkers themselves. It was the damage they could cause to the tunnels leading to them that scared me.

A wave of helpless anger surged through me as I continued unloading photon torpedoes on the Draylian chasers. Still without any effect… As despair began settling in, I couldn't help but wonder which vessel Dread was in. Had he gone to the ground to infiltrate the palace?

To my shock, the Draylian ships fired those pulse cannons again, but this time at the fighters. My heart sank as the power immediately went out on them, and our ships went into a forced landing. Thankfully, our expert pilots didn't crash, but being grounded effectively took them out of the battle. A wave of confusion washed over me when the intruding chasers fired their pulses again at our ground-to-air defenses.

Why would they…?

My jaw dropped when sudden understanding dawned on me. They had to fire their pulses again because the effect was temporary! If my assumptions were right, the pulse basically ‘stunned' its target, knocking its systems offline, a bit like a lighter version of an electromagnetic pulse. They would renew their attacks every time we'd be on the verge of restoring our systems.

"We must block their pulses," I said to my team.

"But how?" Naax asked.

A thought popped in my mind. "Try a reversed tractor beam on their cannons," I ordered.

Without hesitation, Naax complied. I held my breath when the beam shot out towards the pulse cannons. The flare indicating the Draylian ship firing another pulse was followed by the usual blur. A victorious roar escaped all of us when the blur quickly fizzled along the beam.

"Increase to maximum intensity," I commanded with a thrill in my voice.

It was a wild idea but worth the try. Once again, Naax complied. This time, the next pulse didn't even travel a couple of meters outside the vessel's protective shield. It looked as if it struck a wall and bounced back, striking its own cannon. The lights surrounding the cannon flickered as if that section of the Draylian vessel was experiencing some power short-circuits.

"It's working!" Drade exclaimed. "It also slightly damaged their shield in that area!"

"Focus our beams on their cannons closest to their propulsion system," I said with excitement. "We need our fighters to use their tractor beams on the Draylian chasers' other cannons."

"Our coms are still down," Naax said apologetically.

I growled in frustration while looking at our disabled fighters on the ground. To my surprise, one of the first ones to perform a forced landing after getting hit by a Draylian pulse came back to life. Its lights blinked a few times, indicating all systems coming back online, then the pilot took flight to resume the battle.

Blinking lights!!

"Naax, use the Sequential Light Code to inform our fighters of our tractor beam strategy," I exclaimed.

My bodyguard's eyes lit up, his excitement quickly replaced by worry. "Our enemies might be able to read it… mainly the Sarenian rebels."

I waved a dismissive hand. "It's a risk we must take. We must force these vessels to move away from the palace. The Ancestors only know what other weapons they intend to use if their plans fail. And if my suspicions are right, they're emitting the disruption signal currently blocking our coms."

"Understood," Naax replied.

A wave of pride swelled deep within when the fighters closest to us quickly noticed and acted on our message. The USL was a basic messaging method using colored dots—a brief blink of light—and dashes—a longer display of that light—to form letters or words. It only took Naax sending the message twice before the first few fighters caught on and joined the fray. In no time, the others picked up on it and began targeting the other Draylian chasers nearby.

In minutes, our entire ground-to-air defense system switched back on.

Before long, they were forced to stop using their pulse cannons or risk their own self-destruction as the reverse tractor beam on them increasingly weakened the hull of their ships. To my shock, they retaliated by using more aggressive countermeasures against our vessels. Where they'd previously only tried to disable us, they were now seeking to inflict the type of damage that wouldn't necessarily destroy our vessels but would permanently put them out of commission for the remainder of this battle.

Thus began a taunt and dodge game that quickly forced the Draylian vessels into performing evasive maneuvers to protect their increasingly vulnerable spots. As we gave chase, my chest constricted upon seeing the damages sustained by the palace, but more importantly the number of corpses littering the gardens. From this viewpoint, I couldn't say for sure how many belonged to our people versus the rebels. The suit they wore looked far too similar to the Imperial Guard uniform.

"My Prince, two vessels of our fleet are approaching!" Drade exclaimed.

My heart soared to see the first ships among the units that joined me for the raid this morning were now returning. That could only mean Faolen succeeded in his mission. Despite our continued inability to communicate, they swiftly understood what we were doing and joined their efforts to ours.

With our current target on the run, we left our fighters to keep it at bay and shifted our focus to a different one making a beeline for the southeast gardens. Our scanners indicated its shield was on the verge of collapse. As we joined the fray, the wretched vessel vomited multiple shuttles, which scattered to different already breached sections of the palace. Our efforts to shoot them down were impeded by a second Draylian ship running interference. We only managed to destroy two of them before the others landed.

"Galleus, take the command and rout those vessels," I suddenly said to one of the Warriors on my chaser while deactivating the tactical visor of my chair. "Drade, Naax, with me. We're taking a shuttle to the surface."

I didn't wait for any of their responses. Shooting to my feet, I ran to the shuttle hangar of our battle chaser. With my guards hot on my heels, we hopped onto a shuttle and flew into one of the gardens after the rebels who had just disembarked from theirs. Four more men had followed us, undoubtedly upon the silent request from Drade. As the head of my security, he often made such calls to ensure my safety when my own decisions would be deemed reckless.

Pride filled my heart as our fighters and chasers immediately moved to cover our shuttle, keeping the enemy vessels on the move so that they couldn't target us. I didn't even bother sitting in a passenger seat and stood instead by the door, my blaster at the ready. Through the window, I watched two of the shuttles land in the garden. However, despite their ramps lowering, I didn't see a single Warrior exit the shuttles.

They're using stealth shields!

Moments before we even touched down, I was already lowering our own ramp. As soon as the door parted, I jumped out.

Drade's muttered swear words behind me testified to his annoyance at my impatience. Normally, he or Naax should be leading the charge to block or deflect any incoming attacks. But an increasing sense of doom that I couldn't explain screamed for me to hurry. At a bone deep level, my gut said that if I didn't intervene now, all would be lost.

Such powerful instinctive impulses came very rarely to me. But every time they did, listening to them averted major disasters. With so much on the line, I would not ignore that urge.

To my relief, as we ran the short distance in the garden into the southeast gallery, I finally got to see that most of the fallen belonged to the rebels. Anger and hatred still filled my heart to see the handful of good men from the Imperial Guard who had given their lives to protect the palace. Those responsible would pay.

Although they had a few minutes head start on us, the rebel infiltrators couldn't have gotten too far. As much as I would have liked to quietly sneak up on them, the sense of urgency twisting my innards demanded I threw all caution to the wind and raced after them as quickly as possible. To my dismay, my short-range scanner didn't detect any intruder as we ran towards the Commons, where the battle appeared to be concentrated.

With the vocal command, I activated the particle trap along the gallery leading to the central wing of the palace. It was a genius defense technology devised by some of our female scientists. Special blowers dissimulated inside the ventilation systems would release tiny particles invisible to the naked eye and ignored by the majority of scanners as being nothing more than dust. However, the clever design made it visible to us when shifting our vision like when we tried to see someone's soul.

We raced through the first junction of the gallery and then the second without encountering anyone. For a brief instant, I wondered if we were headed in the wrong direction. But it made no sense for them to run farther into the southeast wing as there would be nothing of worth there, and especially neither my mate nor my son.

Silencing the insidious doubts threatening to make me stray from the path I believed at a visceral level I must follow, I pushed forward. Each step without finding any intruder undermined my determination.

And then I saw them.

In the statue room—which was merely two large alcoves on each side of the large hallway, forming a wider space where sculptures of past Sarenian heroes were on display—vague silhouettes appeared in the distance. I gestured for my men to slow down and be silent. Through our shifted vision, it looked as if magic dust had been sprinkled over the ghostly silhouette of the people. We could see right through them but also which direction they faced and what gestures they were performing.

I swiftly counted twelve rebels—nearly double our numbers. But my gut told me there were a few more of them ahead. They were stealthily making their way towards the Commons. Moving as quickly as we could without drawing their attention, we reduced the distance with them to make sure they couldn't escape us once we attacked.

Instead of being sated, now that our prey was within reach, the sense of urgency I felt went into overdrive. Under normal circumstances, I would have waited a little longer to get even closer, but I gave in to my pressing instinct demanding I proceed.

Picking up one of the throw knives on my weapons belt, I threw it with deadly precision at the nape of the rebel closing the march. It punched right through, severing his spine and jutting out the other side. His legs gave beneath him, and he fell like a boneless ragdoll, all motor control gone. He didn't even have the power to reach for his throat. His gurgling, followed by the thudding sound of his body slumping to the floor drew one of his companions' attention. He turned around only to eat my blaster fire set to lethal straight in the face.

His head nearly blew into pieces.

Alerted, the others turned around and discreetly spread out. The stiffness of their defensive stances indicated they were unsure as to whether we were able to see through their camouflage. My men and I unloading our blasters on them while also throwing a few more knives their way answered that question.

Despite knowing they'd been discovered, they didn't come out of stealth even as they charged us. The sense of doom grew exponentially when two of the males darted towards the Commons, away from us, while whipping out what resembled long range precision weapons. The eight remaining rebels returned our fire. I raise my forearm before me to block the shots with my energy shield. Racing towards them, I fired a few more rounds then shoved my blaster back into its holster to pull out my long dagger, which would be more efficient in close quarters.

I rammed my shield into the first rebel, who had also switched from his blaster but to a sword instead. It blocked his attempt to strike me with his weapon and made him stumble back a few steps. Carried by my momentum, I pivoted to the left, swiping my dagger at the other rebel trying to run interference. It found its mark in the fleshy part right below his solar plexus. I released the blade still buried in his chest half a beat before he instinctively clutched it with a stunned look on his face.

Sensing the incoming blow from my first opponent, who had regained his bearings, I dodged out of the way, only to retaliate by clawing him across the forehead, right eye, and part of his right cheek in a single vicious swipe. He cried out, dropping his sword to cover his bleeding face—which I caught on the fly.

Using his weapon, I parried the attack of a third rebel. Before I could exchange more than a couple of swipes with him, the sharp blade of Drade's sword punched through his chest from the back. His blood filled his pierced lungs and poured out of his chest and mouth as he gurgled. Drade grabbed his head from behind and snapped his neck, putting a swift end to his agony.

I tried to run after the two rebels who had fled towards the Commons, but my first opponent charged me again, despite his lacerated face and having lost an eye. Under different circumstances, I would admire his resilience and determination. But his interference only further enraged me. I ducked to avoid getting beheaded, then caught his wrist before he could strike again. Lifting my knee, I slammed his elbow down against it, breaking his arm. Even as he was doubling over in pain, I fisted his hair on the nape, holding him up, and rammed my heel in front of his leg, right below his kneecap. His leg snapped, dangling like a broken twig. His screech died in a choked sound when I smashed my fist in his throat. Blood exploded from his mouth, and his eyes rolled to the back of his head.

Seeing his broken body collapse to the floor, his left limbs folded in half at an unnatural angle, gave me a tremendous amount of pleasure. But I stomped my foot on his neck, reveling in the snapping sounds of his spine giving way, then ran after my prey. I found them both in position, aiming at a target I couldn't see. Only a few meters ahead, a handful of Imperial Guards manned the southeast entrance of the Commons. Because of their camouflage, the rebels remained invisible to the guards and their scanners.

Naturally, the latter wouldn't be using their altered vision to see the silhouettes like I could. Their shocked and thrilled expression upon seeing me running towards them quickly turned to fear and confusion. Although none of them drew their weapons, they took a defensive stance and shouted in alarm for me to stop.

Ignoring them, I threw a knife at the rebel on the left before shooting my blaster at the one on the right. My first target dodged, but not quickly enough to avoid getting grazed by the blade. Realizing there would be no escape, he didn't even attempt to flee, but trained his weapon somewhere behind the guards, inside the room ahead.

Only then did I see my mate standing near my father.

A savage war cry escaped me as I barreled down on the sniper while frantically firing my blaster at him. A few of my shots found their mark, throwing off his aim, and making him miss by a wide margin. I couldn't tell whether he hit someone inside. All I cared about was the way his body flew back from the force of the impact with which I collided with him. He stumbled forward before face planting hard on the floor. He dropped his weapon, which slid a few meters away from him, making it visible to everyone.

The guards manning the entrance of the Commons gasped and burst into action. But behind me, I could hear Drade and Naax making minced meat out of the second would-be assassin.

My prey attempted to get back up, but I stomped on his back with both feet. His breath rushed out of him. I couldn't tell if I broke any bones, not that it mattered. My next move guaranteed it. With near feral fury, I grabbed his hair and repeatedly smashed his face onto the hard stone floor, until the cracking sound of bones shattering turned into a wet and meaty thump.

"My Prince, he is done," Drade said in a soothing voice behind me.

I jerked my head up to look at him, my fangs bared. A bestial growl tumbled out of me in a low, steady flow. He immediately raised his palms in a submissive and non-threatening fashion, snapping me out of my blood rage. Feeling a little haggard, I blinked and looked around me. Only then did I realize the sense of dread and urgency had finally waned.

Under the cheers of an increasing number of Imperial Guards noticing my return, I glanced back inside the room to see my beloved looking in my direction, drawn by the cheers.

My heart filling with infinite love and gratitude, I ran to her.