Fall of Icarus (14 page)

           
With a smile, the Infantry soldier looked at Keryn.
 
“Fire in the hole,” he said softly as he pressed the detonator in his hand.
 

           
A series of muffled explosions detonated on the hull beneath them, shaking the
Cair Ilmun
slightly.
 
Thick dust and smoke rose through the hole, but the insertion team barely seemed to notice.
 
One at a time, they dropped into the hole, drifting completely between the
Cair Ilmun
and the dark interior of the Destroyer below.
 
The group disappeared until only Keryn, Yen, and Adam were left on board.

           
Reaching out with his large hands, Adam rested a hand on Keryn’s shoulder and gave her an affectionate squeeze.
 
“You’ve done good so far,” he said reassuringly.
 
“Be careful and we’ll see you soon.”
 
Smiling one last time, Adam lifted his machine gun and dropped into the hole.
 
Keryn watched him drop until his shaggy blond hair disappeared into the darkness below.
 
Finally, it was just Yen and Keryn remaining on board.

           
“I want you to promise me that you’ll stay on the
Cair Ilmun
,” Yen said.

           
Keryn knew the wisdom behind his words.
 
If they needed to evacuate quickly, which was always a possibility in their dangerous line of work, they needed her on board and ready to fly.
 
However, Keryn also knew that most pilots ignored that rule and went into the ship as well.
 
Especially in Keryn’s case, she was as skilled a fighter as anyone on the insertion team and Yen knew it.

           
“I can see the gears turning in your mind,” he said a little more sternly, “and I’m asking you not to go into the ship.
 
No one knows what we’re going to face inside the Destroyer.
 
They could have automated systems that are going to tear us apart as soon as we step foot on board.
 
If that’s the case, then all you’ll do by following us is get yourself killed too.
 
I care about you, Keryn, and I couldn’t do my job if I thought your life was in danger.”
 

Keryn was surprised his honesty.
 
“Be safe and I won’t have to come after you.”

Yen stepped toward the edge of the causeway.
 
Before he could enter the connecting passage, Keryn grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward her.
 
Leaning in, she kissed him deeply.

“What was that for?” Yen asked, as they broke their embrace.

“In case you do something stupid and I don’t get to see you again,” she whispered.

Without a reply, Yen stepped over the edge and dropped toward the Destroyer below.
 
Keryn’s smile quickly faded, replaced by a deep frown.
 
She didn’t like being relegated to a support role, not when she was so capable in hand-to-hand combat.
 
Still, she understood his concern, since she felt the same gnawing of worry in her belly knowing that Yen, Adam, and the rest of the team were now facing the unknown.

Closing the floor hatch behind her, Keryn walked back to the cockpit and began manning the two separate radars: one scanning the space around the Destroyer for any aerial threats and another scanning the interior of the hull.
 
She only hoped they managed to complete their mission before either the Terran fighters outside or the Terran soldiers inside figured out what they were doing.

CHAPTER NINE

           
As Yen cleared the hole blasted into the hull of the Terran Destroyer, the artificial gravity tugged at his legs, pulling him into the darkness below.
 
Landing in a crouch, Yen stood slowly, taking in the scene.
 
Around him, their faces cast in dark shadows, his team had already spread out, taking up positions near the only door exiting the room.
 
Checking his rifle, Yen examined the determined and anxious faces of his team.
 
Though the masks of their faces remained stoic, he could see the shine of nervousness behind their eyes.
 
He felt it too, though he would never admit it.
 
His team had breached the hull of a Terran warship, one of the first teams of Alliance soldiers to do so in over a century and a half.
 
The layout of the ship was unfamiliar, as were the hazards they would face.
 
They were blundering into the unknown wielding only their martial abilities and the weapons by their side.
 
Everything about the operation had the potential to end in disaster.
 
Glancing up, peering through the hole above him, Yen looked to the hovering
Cair Ilmun
some thirty feet above him.
 
Above him, Keryn sat at the controls of the ship, monitoring his team.
 
Did she wonder what they were doing, sitting in the dark room below?
 
Did she worry about his safety and long to see him when this was over nearly as much as he longed to see her?
 
Yen didn’t know, and he shook his head trying to dislodge the distractions.

           
One of the soldiers broke from the shadows and stood by Yen’s side.
 
Looking up, Yen stared into Adam’s blue eyes.
 
Shouldering one of the team’s two heavy machine guns, Adam towered over Yen; his muscles bulging from holding the heavy weapon, though he offered no complaints.
 
Shaking his head one final time, he brushed aside any further thoughts of Keryn and focused on the mission ahead.

           
“What’s the plan,” Adam said, echoing Yen’s thoughts.
 
His deep voice sounded muffled in the tight confines of the room.
 
The other teammates turned, eager to hear Yen’s reply.

           
“Keryn was able to dock us near the rear of the ship,” Yen explained.
 
“I figure that even though we’re quite a few floors above it, the engine room would be our best bet.
 
Take out the engines on this Destroyer, make it dead in space, and let the
Duun
fighters finish it off.”

           
“They’re going to expect that,” Penchant said in his gravelly voice.
 
The Lithid carried few visible weapons, though Yen had been training with him long enough to know that any part of Penchant’s body could be transformed into a deadly instrument.
 
“We’re going to run into a lot of resistance.”

           
“I expected a lot of resistance when we came aboard,” Yen interjected.
 
“You can’t tell me you expected to have an easy time raiding a Terran Destroyer.”

           
“Why not just go straight for the bridge, if we’re already dead set on running into trouble?” Janus asked, stretching his wings as much as he could in the cramped space.

           
“Because we’re not the only team on board,” Yen said, “though we are the most experienced.
 
Every team that doesn’t have their heads on straight will be heading straight for either the bridge or the control center.
 
Yes, we’ll run into trouble trying to reach the engine room, but it’s less likely to be as heavily guarded as one of those other two locations.”

           
“We’re burning sunlight, people,” Adam said, his former platoon leader mentality reasserting itself.
 
“We’ve made the decision to go after the engine room, so we stick to the plan.
 
Anyone have any more questions?”

           
Though Yen could see more questions just below the surface, no one spoke up.
 
Pulling weapons tightly into the crooks of their shoulders, the team gathered around the door.
 
Karanath, a beastly Oterian, jammed a metal pole in between the seams of the door and pulled.
 
Slowly, light began to seep through the growing crack until finally, with one last surge, the door slid open.
 
The team members on either side of the door crossed their fields of fire as they scanned opposite directions down the hall.
 
Using only hand and arm gestures, they signaled that the path ahead was clear.
 
Filing out, the team took up positions in the hall, Adam watching the team’s rear while the rest began moving slowly down the eerily quiet hallway.
 
Yen led the way, constantly expecting a danger that didn’t seem forthcoming.

           
The halls of the ship were immaculately clean.
 
The bright silver walls fell just short of being mirrored, though they were disorienting for Yen as he constantly caught his own reflected movement out of the corners of his eyes.
 
Along the walls, signifying either the Empire or the specific ship designation, a series of multi-colored pinstripes ran parallel to the ground.
 
They passed a series of doors inset in their individual alcoves, all closed and sealed.
 
Above each, numerical designators identified each room.
 
Though Yen had no idea what the designators meant, whether these rooms were living quarters or storage bays, he quickly dismissed the idea of searching each one individually.
 
Their time onboard the Terran Destroyer was limited and the longer they sat in one place, the sooner they would face overwhelming odds in a Terran counterattack.
 
Instead, Yen signaled his team to warily watch the doors, but to press on toward the rear of the ship.

           
Through Penchant’s featureless, glossy black face, Yen could tell the Lithid was irritated.
 
The lust for war had been pumped directly into his team’s veins like a psychotropic drug, driving them until they yearned for Terran bloodshed.
 
His entire team, Yen included, had boarded the Destroyer expecting defensive positions and extensive fighting, making his team earn every inch of ground they covered between the
Cair Ilmun
and the engine room.
 
To this point, they had found nothing but pristine hallways and unopened doorways hiding mysterious contents.
 
It had to be a trap, Yen thought, or else the other
Cair
transports had lured the defensive forces away from this sector.
 
Keryn had landed close to only one other ship and far from the rest, so he realized it could be a possibility.
 
Or it could be a trap, he knew with just as much certainty.

           
Yen slowed his pace, letting Penchant take the lead as they walked cautiously down the hall.
 
Ahead, he noticed the first hallway leading off from the main passageway into which they had entered.
 
Raising his hand in a tight fist, the team froze in place.
 
As he opened his hand, extending his fingers skyward, the soldiers moved quietly to the side of the hall, taking up defensive positions in any of the nearby alcoves.
 
Penchant flattened himself against the wall as Yen slid up beside him.

           
“Tell me what you can see,” Yen whispered, his voice barely audible even to Penchant.

           
Nodding, Penchant relaxed.
 
The glossy exoskeleton on his face began to swirl and flow as though made of a viscous liquid.
 
Slowly, from the left side of his face, a small swirling cone began to extend, like the reaching arm of a newly formed tornado.
 
Stretching outward, the tornado grew wider until it reached a uniform width before it stopped moving.
 
The faintest of lines formed across the end of the now cylindrical appendage before it popped suddenly open, revealing an eyeball.
 
Yen smiled to himself, both impressed and simultaneously disgusted.
 
The new
eye stalk
stretched around the corner, allowing Penchant to observe the length of the hallway while revealing almost no part of his body.
 
Turning the
eye stalk
side to side, Penchant looked for anything out of the ordinary, but instead found himself staring down a morbidly similar hall to the one they were already walking.
 
Retracting the eye, it fused back into his featureless face, leaving no mark that would have told on outside observer that the stalk had ever existed at all.
 
Penchant turned his head toward Yen and shook it slowly.