19. Valmore

19

Valmore

Hazel powered up the shuttle and lifted off. I sat down at the secondary control station.

"How do you turn on the scramble field?" she asked.

"I'm turning it on now."

"Hold on!" she yelled. "The IPA strike force is coming in fast!"

The words barely escaped her lips when forty ships rocketed past us. They bombed into the atmosphere at high speed and attacked the Ranxi transports by the dozen. Explosions boomed over the landscape and the shuttle rocked.

Hazel cut through the forest and emerged far from the battle zone. She then cut her speed and inched toward the silent mother ship. It hung just above the atmosphere, menacing and foreboding in its size and dull exterior. I braced myself for the most important mission of my life.

Hazel inched closer, and I pointed at the vessel's underside. "Down there… You'll find an open landing port. You can set down in there."

"Does it have a pressurized atmosphere? Will we be able to deploy once we're inside?"

"Yes. The landing port has a force field with an oxygen atmosphere inside. Take us in."

She nodded and floated on the shuttle's momentum, veering upward at the last moment. We drifted into the port unseen. A few other ships sailed back and forth. A bunch of drones and robots motored between the vessels parked on the landing platform.

She set the shuttle down, then we both went to the rear. She armed herself with a laser rifle, but I stayed with my tried and true, blunt and sharpened weapons. As we stepped out, none of the drones noticed us. They kept up their routine, motoring from ship to ship. I tapped Hazel's elbow and pointed up at a catwalk overlooking the landing port. Armed guard robots marched back and forth, aiming their weapons down at us, but not seeming to register that we were intruders.

Hazel rotated her weapon upward, but I stopped her. "Make yourself invisible," I whispered. "Don't attract their attention. "

She couldn't stop herself from looking everywhere for the first attack. I steered her off the platform and onto a stairway. It led up to the scaffold where the guard robots patrolled the landing port.

My pulse quickened. If we got off the landing port in one piece, we'd be sitting pretty. I halted when I heard the metallic clacking of robotic feet. I pressed Hazel and myself against a corner and held my breath as the robotic guard passed. As soon as it did, I whispered, "Come on," then tugged Hazel along. "The reactor core is at the very top of the ship. We're at the very bottom."

"Great!" she huffed. "It couldn't be easy, could it?"

"Where's the fun in that?" I pulled her into a fast walk. "Just remember one thing. If we get into a fight against the sentinels, you have to break off the arms holding their guns. Then you can turn their guns against them. Xavier had many run-ins with these bastards and said that's the best way to deal with them."

We stopped at the end of the corridor and tapped the control panel, waiting for the elevator to arrive. What could be simpler than riding it all the way up to the reactor?

The elevator doors opened and gunfire erupted in my face. I barely dodged five laser shots as a fleet of sentinels flew out of the elevator. Hazel yelped and dove sideways.

She landed on her side and rotated onto her back. She swung her rifle forward and bombarded the sentinels with a spray of fire. The sentinels all turned in her direction. I lunged to grab one of their weaponized arms when one of Hazel's shots hit its attachment joint.

The arm came free in my hands and I turned the gun on its owner. I pounded shots into the attachment joints of every weapon in sight. The guns dropped to the floor and left the sentinels buzzing in all directions.

I sprang behind them and laid into them from inside the elevator car. I blasted their heads off and kicked the remains out of the car. Having cleared the elevator, I pulled Hazel inside and slammed on the door button.

The doors closed, and I scrambled to pick up as many fallen guns as possible. "Well, guess our cover is blown. The sentinels will be all over us now. Be ready to fire as soon as the doors open. Understand?"

"Yeah. Just tell me how to blow the reactor… In case something happens to you and I have to do it myself."

I didn't want to think about that, but it was good that she could be practical. "The reactor is two separate containers of some reactive elements held apart by the reaction chamber. The reactor allows both elements into the reaction chamber at controlled rates. You can destroy any of the three chambers and it'll blow up, but if you can destroy just the reaction chamber, the explosion won't set off for a few minutes. That'd buy us time to escape. Still, in the worst-case scenario, if you can't take a careful shot, any chamber will do."

I went back to work on the sentinel weapons. I felt pretty sure she didn't grasp just how much resistance we would encounter when the elevator stopped at the reactor core.

She startled me out of my thoughts. "I love you, Valmore."

"I love you too. I told you that, and I meant it."

"No, I don't think you understand. I'm going to stay on this planet with you. I'm not going back to the IPA. I'm going to stay here—with you. I'll never leave you. You're my life."

I looked up and almost didn't recognize the woman in front of me. She faced me with her head up, her shoulders thrown back, and her eyes clear and bright. Those words came from some part of her that didn't exist before this moment. They transformed her.

At that moment, I realized I didn't really believe before that we could do this. I believed it now. I could accomplish anything with this woman by my side.

We would have to save this planet first, though. I barely had time to snatch one kiss from her before the elevator stopped and the doors opened. Hazel and I shared a last glance, then we both turned to face our fate.

She raised her rifle. I trained my stolen laser gun on the doors as they glided open, but no army of sentinels waited for us. Silence welcomed us into the reactor core.

We stood breathless and tense in the elevator for a moment. I didn't want to believe it. There was no one here… At least, not at first sight.

Hazel moved first. She stepped out of the elevator, sweeping her rifle from side to side. Nothing. I followed her onto the landing outside, and we both looked down at the reactor.

The core occupied a tall pedestal across a large hold. The reaction chamber glowed with the energy coming from the mixture combination compartment, but that didn't bother me.

Fourteen of the most hellish monster aliens I'd ever laid eyes on worked around the core. Their many sets of jointed limbs danced feverishly over their controls. Long tentacles snaked out of their sides to grab tools, fiddle with different parts of the reactor, and then whip off somewhere else .

Their heads elongated to dangerous pincers around mouths dotted with dozens of needle fangs. I didn't see any eyes. Tough armor covered them all over in an impenetrable shell.

These could only be the Ranxi, the puppet masters behind the entire Kavian disaster. These monsters slaughtered millions, displaced countless more, and intended to finish the job by wiping out the last surviving refugees.

Even as I realized just how hopeless our mission turned out to be, my surprise turned to rage as I watched them. These bastards manipulated everyone and everything whose path they crossed. They left nothing untouched, and they destroyed billions of lives. Even now, they controlled those soldiers on the ground. They manipulated them and drove them to their destruction to achieve the Ranxi's heinous ends.

I tightened my grip on my weapons. Hazel swept her rifle to her shoulder and took aim at the reactor. One shot and the entire vessel would detonate. And unless she shot in the right spot, the detonation would be fast and it would take us with it. But at least the Kavians on the surface would be safe.

I raised my guns too, but I didn't aim for the core. I left Hazel to handle that. I targeted the Ranxi themselves. As soon as Hazel made her shot, they would retaliate, and if they held us up for too long, we wouldn't have any time left to escape.

I braced myself for her to take her shot when, out of nowhere, a tentacle whistled up the landing. It cracked in front of my face, then snapped around my wrist. Hazel squeezed her trigger, but at that moment, another tentacle grabbed her by the elbow.

It yanked her rifle aside. The gun went off, and a laser sizzled toward the core, but it missed the reaction chamber. It shattered into the wall in a rain of sparks.

Hazel yelled something, and the next instant, the entire place erupted into mayhem. Tentacles lashed back and forth in front of my face. Several Ranxi looked up, and when they saw us, they sprang away from their controls.

They leaped onto the walls, then bounded higher until they reached a platform above. In a split second, they would be on top of us.

Hazel made a grab for the tentacle binding her. I tried to reach her, but another tentacle whipped out and strapped around my ankle. I bellowed in fury. No one would keep me from my mate. I wheeled and fired at the advancing Ranxi, but my shots only glanced off their armor. They skittered along the landing, and the first one snatched me off my feet, pulling me into the air and taking me away.

I fired into the tentacle holding my ankle. The limb severed and I started to fall. I twisted in mid-air and caught the limb that just held me. Its sinuous length unwound as I dropped. The Ranxi on the other end—whichever one it was—pulled it back and broke my fall.

I landed right in front of the reactor core, but I didn't care about that. I had to concentrate on not hitting Hazel. I shot the tentacle around her chest and she dropped too. A single limb around her upper arm stopped her fall.

I blasted that one in half too, and she plummeted into my arms. I caught her and set her on her feet. That was when all the Ranxi sprang for us at once. The monsters on the landing vaulted over and streaked downward for the kill.

I grabbed Hazel and bolted behind the reactor core. We ducked at the base of the pedestal and huddled together while we gasped for breath.

"Any brilliant ideas on how we can get the hell out of here alive?" she hissed.

I cracked another grin. "How can you doubt me like this?"

She snorted. "I'm all a-quiver, waiting to hear your genius strategy. Please tell me it involves something other than blowing ourselves up along with this reactor."

I nodded and held up my gun. I switched the calibration lever to maximum and set the weapon on the floor next to the core. "This will overload the plasma cell in about ten minutes and explode the reactor. A lot better than having only a few minutes to escape."

Her eyes widened. "Yeah, but now we have to fight through that ." She jerked her thumb over her shoulder.

I peeked out from behind the pedestal. The Ranxi occupied a position between the reactor and their work stations. They scuttled back and forth, hissing through their teeth. They slithered their tentacles toward the core again and again, but they always retreated before they reached it.

"It looks like the energy field stops them from coming too close to the reactor core. They can't come any closer."

"What good does that do us?" she returned. "We still have to go out there. We have ten minutes to get off this vessel and fly to a safe distance—and don't even get me started on those robots. They'll try to stop us."

While I watched, the elevator doors opened up on the landing where Hazel and I just emerged. Dozens of sentinels moved into view. Their mechanical limbs bristled with weapons, but they didn't dare aim it in the direction of the reactor.

I chuckled. "They're bluffing. They're not gonna shoot at us. Not while we're anywhere behind or in front of the reactor. They wouldn't risk it. So we're just going to run right at them, and blast through any tentacles or arms that try to grab us. Then once we're in the elevator, we'll unload all our fire until the door closes. Are you ready?"

A buzzing sound answered me. We both looked down. The gun I set to overload buzzed against the pedestal. A high-pitched whine came from its housing. Our time was running out.

I picked it up and wedged it into the support straps holding up the reactor core. When that gun blew, it would take out the entire vessel.

Hazel and I didn't speak. We didn't share a knowing look. We didn't have to. We communicated through the airwaves now. A single consciousness connected my mind to hers. We were one, and we both knew what we had to do.

We rocketed out of our hiding place and straight into the Ranxi. They lunged for us at the same moment, and that played right into our hands. Their tentacles lashed for us, but I dodged left and Hazel dodged right. We avoided their grasp and skated behind them.

We charged right into the sentinels' path, and just as I had thought, the robots held their fire. Hazel and I slid onto the slippery floor, skidding under the landing and into the elevator.

Once inside, I slammed the button to take us back down to the cargo bay, then we both unleashed gunfire to hold them back. The doors finally closed shut as we left chaos and noise behind.

"Now what?" Hazel asked.

"Now we escape in the shuttle—as soon as we get past all of the sentinels awaiting our arrival."

"How do you propose we do that?"

Fortunately, I didn't have a reasonable answer because there wasn't one. The doors opened, and we braced ourselves, but all we were met with was silence.

Had all the sentinels been called up to the top? "It's all clear," I announced after carefully checking outside the elevator doors.

"No way."

"But if they're all up there, they'll be taking the next elevator down. We gotta get back on the shuttle, fast!"

We made a run for it. I had never run so fast in my life, and to my surprise, Hazel managed to keep up—though her small size did let her take some shortcuts on the way over to our shuttle.

Once we reached the hatch, the elevator opened again, this time with a pack of sentinels, armed and ready to stop us. Hazel yanked the hatch open, and we jumped in, just as laser blasts skirted off the shuttle's hull. She powered up the engines and yelled, "Hang on! "

I grabbed onto a handle as she barreled the shuttle out of the cargo bay. I activated the scramble field and Hazel soared out of the port. We entered black space, then she turned the shuttle toward the planet's surface, hitting the throttle.

At that moment, a catastrophic boom punched us from behind. The controls snuffed out for a second, then the shock wave propelled us at an impossible speed into the atmosphere. The mother ship detonated in a supernova of fire and debris until nothing remained.

We did it. My mate and I took down the forsaken Ranxi.

I just had to hope we did it in time.