Striker (The Alien Wars Book 2) (17 page)

Scrambling
aboard, Molly followed Frank as they clambered into the seats of the aircraft.

“I was beginning
to think you wouldn’t make it,” Lucy said, clearly worried.

“Me too,” Derek
said, clutching his sister tightly.

“We haven’t made
it to safety yet,” Frank muttered as he spotted some blue-suited Seods approach
the aircraft and open fire.

With green bolts
hitting the exterior of the Striker, Frank switched on the firing mechanism and
grabbed the stick. After taking aim at the blue Seods, he pressed down on a
button. Red bolts flew out of the front of the aircraft and hurtled toward the
creatures. They didn’t stand a chance. They collapsed to the ground and
disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Derek glanced
toward the hangar door and saw a group of Seods putting together some kind of
large weapon. He quickly pointed it out to Frank. “Look!”

“Good spotting.”
Frank whipped the controls to the left and opened fire. Just as he did so,
another explosion rocked the aircraft and the Conqueror started to tilt to the
right.

“We need to get
out of here!” Molly cried out.

“I know,” Frank dropped
his empty
mag
and slammed a fresh one in. As soon as
he finished getting rid of the Seods who had hid behind the large weapon, he
focused his attention on the closed doors of the runway. He aimed his weapon
toward the doors and let the red bolts destroy it.

As the cargo
doors shattered, blue sky greeted Frank and the others. Suddenly, the aircraft
tilted dangerously to the right. As loose objects tumbled and cracked noses, Molly
screamed and pointed out a
viewport
. “They’re all
over us!”

Outside, Seods swarmed
over the other Strikers in the hangar like a bloodthirsty horde of locusts.

“Hold on to
something!” Frank gripped the control stick with both hands.

White-hot flames
and acrid smoke filled the air as one of the remaining Strikers blew up and
added to the chaos.

Frank tried to
steady the Striker as he navigated down the runway, but with explosions
happening left and right of them and Seods running everywhere, it was hard to
do.

Derek gripped the
edge of his seat tightly as he stared through the glass windshield. “
Agh
!” he howled as a small object flew toward the screen
and hit the glass full on. Luckily, it didn’t break.

“Hurry up!” Lucy shouted.

“I’m doing the
best I can!” Frank thundered as the Conqueror gave a massive, loud groan and then,
with the largest explosion so far, the aircraft tipped even farther to the
right until the runway was at an almost vertical angle. Various items started
to hit the glass. Frank glared at a large and deep crack snaking across the
screen.

Clutching the controls,
he yanked the stick in the same angle as the floor of the runway and pushed the
power down.

The Striker shot
forward, nearly losing a wing as another aircraft came across its path. Frank
hurriedly grabbed the firing control and shattered the other aircraft with red
bolts.

With a screech of
scraping metal, the other vessel slipped by. Spitting in the face of gravity,
Frank poured on the g’s, shooting through the brief opening and out into the
blue sky.

Before anyone
could celebrate, the engine on the aircraft spluttered once, twice, and then
died. Frank slapped every button in frustration, but nothing seemed to work.

“What’s
happening?” Lucy said
,
her eyes wide open in fear.

Suddenly, the
engine powered back on. “That was way too close. Must have gotten something
caught in one of the exhausts.” Steadying the Striker, Frank pointed their nose
back at the Conqueror.

“It’s going down!”
Derek yelled.

“We did it!”
Molly cried, hugging her brother.

Lucy also grinned,
but then her smile melted away. “Oh no …”

“What’s wrong?”
Frank asked.

“It’s going to
crash into the mountain!”

The others stared
as the sleek, black aircraft broke apart. The two parts dropped like stones
toward
Mount Shasta
. The front part, the one with the controls, seemed to be heading
directly for the black hole.

With an
ear-shattering crash, both parts collided with the top of the mountain and
exploded in a fiery crash. The massive shockwave slammed into the Striker and
sent it spinning toward the ground.

Frank grabbed the
stick and attempted to regain control of the aircraft. He failed. His face took
on an expression of fear as the engine cut out once more.

With all thoughts
of the Conqueror now out of their minds, the teens and Lucy grabbed the side of
their seats and didn’t let go as the aircraft tore toward the ground.
Everything became a blur as the ground rushed by.

Frank knew that
they were running out of time. He punched the control keypad in frustration as
each button after the other failed to respond.

Slowly, the
aircraft started to come out of the spin. Finally, half a minute later, it did
just that. As the ship whined and strained to level off, Frank could make out
bird nests in the pine trees. Frank roared just as the engine finally sputtered
back to life.

Too late though.

“Brace for—”

The Striker
plowed
into the forest full on. The blazing engines torched
the woods and bled off just enough speed to keep them from becoming a crater.

Frank unsnapped
his crash-seat harness and stood up, only to topple over in pain. “Ah!” He
rolled to the side and slammed his left shoulder back into its socket. He staggered
to his feet and kicked at the warped escape hatch, but it didn’t budge. “We’ll
have to get out another way.”

“What about the
glass?” Derek whined, tilting his bleeding nose up.

“Good idea.”
Frank fumbled through the debris until he found a weapon. Despite the extensive
damage, the
armored
glass didn’t go down without a
fight. It took two magazines and several minutes of crowbar prying before they
could gouge out a man-sized hole. “Damn, they should have made the whole ship
out of this stuff.”

Derek shimmied
through first, soon followed by Lucy and Molly. The three of them dropped to
the blackened grass and waited for Frank to join them.

Frank slipped and
rolled down less gracefully, but he managed to get back on his feet before too
long. He swayed, with his hands on his knees, and laughed. “We’re in luck.”

“What the hell do
you mean?” Lucy wheezed through the small, but
smoldering
forest fire. “We’re stranded—”

“Near one of the secret exits.”
Frank
pointed toward the trees on the left side. “The exit should be around that
bend, up against the cliff. Now it may not be the one that the others will head
for, but it could be.”

“Let’s go and
check,” Derek said, striding off.

“Wait, I just
have to get something.” Frank clambered back into the Striker. “I’ll just be a
moment.”

While Derek
waited outside, he slipped in some liquid dripping out of the bottom of the
aircraft. Before Frank could say anything, he heard a whoosh from behind followed
by a world-shattering explosion.

The teens and
Lucy were thrown to the ground by the shockwave as the front of the Striker
erupted in a sheet of flame.

Coughing, the survivors
crawled away from the scene of the inferno and watched, shell-shocked, as yet
another explosion, this one at the back, took apart the back of the aircraft.

Lucy cupped her
hands too her mouth. “Frank!”

Everyone
listened, but no one answered. Not a single sign of life came from inside the
aircraft.

Molly sobbed at
Lucy, “Is he …”

Lucy slowly
nodded. “I’m afraid so.” She put her arms around the two teens and comforted
them. As another explosion, this one from far away, shot through the silence,
she looked up.

She couldn’t see
anything. She frowned. “I wonder …” More explosions, all coming from
Mount Shasta
, drowned her out.

The explosions
didn’t come from the shattered remains of the Conqueror strewn all over the summit,
but from deep inside the mountain.

Derek flinched as
a fresh plume of smoke rose up through a hole near the top of the mountain. “A
part of the Conqueror must have somehow set off explosions inside the base.”

“I wonder if the
others are heading for that entrance,” Molly muttered.

“Come on, let’s
go and find out,” Lucy stated, tearing her eyes away from the avalanche in the
distance.

~*~*~

As earthquakes
rocked the mountain, Kenneth stood by
Logan
as he fired
the silencer at the door.

“Come on,”
Kenneth muttered, trying to urge the door to fall apart. The roof wobbled as an
especially loud explosion rocked the cave. “What do you think is happening?”

“I don’t know, but
I don’t think it’s anything that the Seods were expecting,”
Logan
said as he
continued to fire green bolts at the door. “The guard seemed jittery when he
rushed away five minutes ago.”

Kenneth grinned
as a hole suddenly appeared in the door. He tried kicking it open. The first
kick didn’t do anything, but then, with
Logan
’s help, the
door suddenly opened.

Logan
looked both
ways before going to the right. Kenneth frowned. “What are you doing? That’s
the way back to the cave.”

“I know. I want
to find out what’s happening,”
Logan
replied.

Reluctantly,
Kenneth followed him down the tunnel. The explosions grew louder as they rushed
closer to the cave, and high-pierced shrieks could be heard.

“Whatever’s
happening, the Seods seem frightened.”
Logan
rounded the
corner and stopped in shock and wonder as he reached the end of the tunnel.

The rocket lay on
its side. It was ablaze. A ring of fire circled the rocket. All the Seods
seemed to be trying to put the fire out with whatever they could find.

A group of
white-suited Seods spotted the brothers and hurried toward them, reaching for
their weapons.

Logan
flipped his
up first and fired from the hip.
 
“Time to get the hell out of Dodge!”
He rotated and raced
down the tunnel, Kenneth nipping at his heels.

Rounding the
first corner, a massive shockwave turned the ground into a bouncy house. He
tumbled forward and stayed on the tunnel floor as another explosion, bigger
than the first one, kicked the mountain in the nuts. Chunks of the wall rained
down on them.

Logan and Kenneth
rose as the explosion subsided, but before they could speak to each other, they
heard another noise.

“What’s that?”
Logan
asked. “Do
you hear it?”

Kenneth took off
back to the cave but drew up short before the entrance. Something appeared on
the ground.

It was black water.
As the seconds passed, more water streamed in. Kenneth hurried to the tunnel
exit and stood in shock. Ice cold water gushed in from a tunnel above them.

Logan
watched as
more water rushed in from the tunnel. It flooded the main cave and swept the Seods
aside. Glancing down at the tunnel floor, he whistled at all the water
streaming past. More and more water flooded the cave with each passing second.

“Damn! This cave
mustn’t be level,”
Logan
muttered.

“And we’re on the
down slope.” Kenneth hurriedly looked around and spotted a tunnel on the other
side of the cave that the majority of the Seods were heading for.

The water seemed
never ending. It kept on coming and coming.

Logan
stared back
and forth between their tunnel and the tunnel that the Seods were heading for. “We
could try it,”
Logan
yelled, trying to be heard above the rushing water and its steadily
increasing roar.

Kenneth shook his
head. “Even if we did make it, we’d be prisoners.” He glanced down the tunnel
they had come up. “This might lead somewhere.”

Logan
nodded and
led the way down the tunnel. It was relatively easy going at first, but as they
passed the cave that they’d been held prisoner in, the tunnel started to go
downhill.

“Hmm.”
Logan
pivoted his
weapon back up at the tunnel just as the lights, which had been lighting up the
tunnel, went out. “Damn! We don’t have a flashlight.”

“There’s nothing
we can do about it now, except take it
slow
,” Kenneth
said, continuing down the tunnel.