Forged by Battle (WarVerse Book 1) (20 page)

Chapter 43

Ele

Ele awoke to chaos. The nightmare she had escaped was nothing compared to the reality around her. Everything was shaking. Shaking so hard she thought the ground beneath her would tear itself apart. She was lying on a stretcher, and the sheets were burnt and smoking. The metal walls around her were covered in black lines, drawn without pattern or sense.

Wires hung and sparked from one of the lights above. The medical cabinets beside her were smoking, their doors hanging off the hinges. The bottles and supplies inside them were twisted and warped, and puddles of medicine dripped from the shattered glass.

It looked as though a bomb had gone off right where Ele was lying. She pulled the still-smoking sheets away and stared down at her body. She appeared to be unharmed.

Her heart rate picked up pace. It was happening again. Same as the forest, same as the hall on the ship. The fire was chasing her—she couldn't escape it.

The light above her sparked violently, and Ele's nose filled with burning ozone.

Other people were screaming—some from fear, others simply trying to be heard over the destruction. A red light blinked slowly just outside her door. It made the dripping liquid look like blood. Ele prayed it wasn't. She couldn't stand knowing she had hurt one of the people who seemed so desperate to help her.

Vincent! She had seen him right before she passed out. He had rescued her on the ship. What if he was with her now? She had to find him, to convince him to run. She was dangerous. There was no denying it. The fire was after her. It was some kind of spell, or curse.

Something nagged at the back of her mind. Like a dream she could just barely remember. White suits, glass tubes, needles, fire. What happened?

Ele pushed herself up off the bed, pulling the ruined sheet around her. Whatever uniform she had been wearing was gone, probably burned by the fire that would soon consume her. She padded on bare feet over the strangely warm metal floor and out into the chamber beyond.

It was far too small to be the same ship as before. She was on a shuttle, a shuttle full of people who wouldn't be able to run.

One of the people at the front of the shuttle spotted her—a naked young girl with fiery red hair and fear in her eyes. She pointed and screamed, "Monster!"

The other passengers pushed away from her, screaming, pleading, stammering.

"Get out of here!"

"We're not soldiers!"

"It's not my fault," Ele tried to tell them. She couldn't control it. Whoever had taken her memory, those were the people they should fear.

One of the passengers, this one dressed in the same uniform Ele had come to recognize as the fleet’s, stepped closer. Maybe he would help. Maybe he could convince the others she wasn't dangerous.

But then he pulled a lever on the wall, and the ground dropped out from beneath Ele's feet. It was the shuttle's ramp, which was designed to open downward and touch the ground when the shuttle was parked. Only this shuttle wasn't on the ground; it was diving towards a planet, and the air that whipped by was far too strong for Ele to fight against it. She tried to grab onto the struts that lowered the ramp, pushing her fingers into the metal grating of what had seconds ago been the ground, but she could find no purchase.

Her scream was lost in the roar of the wind as she was ripped from the shuttle and plummeted towards the ground.

Chapter 44

Johnston

"Sir! One of the shuttles has taken damage. Moving to tactical."

Johnston whipped around to the display.

The shuttle he had dispatched was magnified on the screen, the damaged portions overlaid in red.

"Hostiles?" he asked.

"None on the sensors. It appears to be internal damage, sir."

Johnston looked down at the data scrolling across his console.
Always more bloody problems.
No matter how much they planned, something was always falling apart, and now civilians were in danger.

"Dispatch a rescue tug, and get me a com line with them immediately."

Johnston clenched his jaw as Belford executed the order. He was sorely tempted to do the job himself. He needed to light a fire under that man, or convince the fleet to give him a new Flight Commander.

After an agonizing amount of time, Belford announced, "The, uh, tug is launched, Captain."

"When it gets close enough I want the feed from its forward sensors. We need to know what happened to that shuttle. Pull up the preflight checklist as well. Until they touch down planetside, those civilians are ours."

"Aye, sir, the tug will be on station in two minutes."

Too damn slow
, Johnston thought. Those weren't sailors; they were women, children, the people he put on the uniform to protect. The kind of people he had left light-years behind to ensure they had a safe universe to live in.

Something tugged at the edge of his mind, and he turned to face his Psykin battle commander.

"God help us," Johnston whispered. What had he unleashed on the planet below? Would Aberdeen be destroyed by the same fires that had ravaged Bastogne? He was running out of time, and out of options. He needed to know more before he could justify firing on civilians.

If he stayed his hand, allowed the shuttle to touch down, was he condemning everyone planetside? Or was the anomaly not what he feared, and he was throwing away lives out of fear?

"Damn magicians and their godforsaken spells." He slammed his fist against the console. Around him, the other officers looked up sharply.

"I need eyes on. We need to know who is on that ship."

"Sir! The shuttle opened her bay doors. The passengers are forcing someone out. It appears to be a woman."

"They're doing what?" Johnston yelled, twisting towards the sensor officer.

"They opened the loading ramp, and it looks like a woman is falling out, sir! Wait, I'm getting something else... She's throwing off all sorts of radiation. Electromagnetic, gamma. I've never seen anything like this."

Johnston turned to look at his Psykin battle commander.

Chapter 45

Ele

Ele screamed into the wind that blurred her vision. She saw the blue sky, then the green ground, and then the blue sky again. She flailed, screaming, no longer thinking. Screaming because it was the only thing she could do. She was going to die, and the terror was impossible. It filled her to the point of bursting, burning her skin, throbbing in her head, pounding in her chest.

When her scream finally drained her lungs, she tried to pull in another breath, but the wind tore any chance of that away from her. Then a flash caught her eye, and she felt a sharp crackle in her skin.

What was happening? Why? Why?
Why?

Another flash, another snap against her arm. Like she was being slapped. She tried to twist her head around, but she was still twisting wildly in the air.

She didn't want to die this way. To hit the ground and be gone. Then, the idea that she might not die instantly drowned all her thoughts again. The sky flashed azure, and again she felt the stinging bite across her entire body.

Light poured from her body, so bright she was blinded, and her tumble ended. She was falling with her back to the ground now, and above her was the shuttle she had fallen from. She needed to get back there.

Her vision shattered open, and suddenly she saw everything: the trees of the forest, the insects crawling in the dirt, the scorch marks on the shuttle. All at once, like she was everywhere—a thousand fractal images, as if she were looking through a prism.

The pain was gone, and replaced with a tingle of energy that filled her being. Her entire body coursed with power, but she could not feel her hands or move her toes. But somehow she could “see” the pillar of blue crackling energy she had become.

Then it was over. Her body was whole again, and she looked out from two eyes set firmly on the front of her face. A thunderclap boomed around her.

She was on top of the shuttle and scrambled for a handhold as the wind tried to pull her from the metal. She caught a yellow-and-black handle with her right hand. Tiny blue snakes of electricity twisted from her fingers to dance along the metal, and she felt each bolt sting as it snapped between the shuttle and her. The handle grew cherry red, but she could not feel the heat. The spitting arcs of energy only grew more violent as she tried with all her might to hold on.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the impossible things she was seeing, and tried to muster the strength to reach up and hold on with her other hand. Again, a boom of thunder assaulted her ears, though it was not nearly as loud as before. When she opened her eyes again, she saw the panel ahead of her had been torn from its bolts, and the electronics and wiring beneath it were completely destroyed.

Her left fist sizzled and popped. Had she done this? Was she in control of this power?

What had they done to her?

The shattering. She saw everywhere again. Another ship was streaking down towards her. The people inside the shuttle were staring out the windows. The engines were sputtering and belching smoke.

Boom
—thunder—Ele was whole again, and tumbling along the edge of the blunt wing that made up the shuttle’s profile. Each time a part of her slapped against the metal, there were more sparks, more arcs of twisting energy. How was it possible?

She was human. Not a monster from the other side. They looked different, had powers no one should have. That was never her. Was it? She didn't remember anything. Anger bubbled up inside her. She shouldn't have been there, shouldn't have been torn from her home and sent across the galaxy. She shouldn't be able to shoot lightning from her hands.

Her body smashed against the wing one last time, and the shuttle passed her. Helpless, she tumbled through open air.

Her chest burned, and her skin flushed red. She screamed again, feeling as though she would explode at any moment.

Pain erupted from her chest, screaming down her shoulder and arms until her whole body was on fire with it. Then her skin darkened. First pink, then red, and then deep black. She was burning from within.

Her skin flaked away from her palms, and was whipped away by the wind. The fall seemed to last an eternity, but she was still miles from the ground. The red glow of embers shone from behind the broken flesh, and as her skin peeled away, so did the pain. Fire bellowed from her hands, burning the air red and orange.

The burning forest, then inside the ship, and now the shuttle. It was all her. The fire had not been chasing her, it had been trapped inside her. She really was a monster.

Like a blanket, the searing heat wrapped around her, burning away any shred of clothing that remained. Soon, she was a blazing comet the size of a girl. Her descent slowed, and then she started to rise, turning towards the people who had forced her change.

They had done this to her. They were responsible.

The fleet would pay for what they did.

Chapter 46

Exile

The concussive force of the Chimeras' first pass was too much for Exile's Web. She sat back with a sneer, her connection to the platoon severed, and for the first time since she breached the portal, she took a good look around.

She had no idea how close to death she had been. The tracked vehicle she occupied was jerked up to the side and front, on enough of an incline that her seat's harness was the only thing keeping her from falling. The cab was empty, and though she vaguely recalled the soldiers evacuating, she did not remember what had created the gaping hole where the rear of the vehicle had once been.

It wouldn’t be long before her platoon moved without her, so Exile summoned her ethereal arm and tugged at the webbing that kept her seated. It released all at once, causing her to spill to the floor. With a mild reprimand to herself for fumbling, she pushed herself to her feet and moved towards the newly made exit. Closer to the hole, Exile saw that the edges were uneven, and had the look of charred wood despite being made of composite metal. A fireball must have detonated close, she decided; the unnatural fire could make any substance burn like kindling. Any closer and she would have been roasted alive, though that torture would be a welcome death compared to what awaited her should she fail in her mission.

Careful not to touch the still-scalding edges of the metal, Exile leaned out and looked to the ground below. It had to be at least an eight-foot drop, and there was not enough room to roll.

Her Shell gave her great control over her own physiology. She had learned firsthand what made her so different from—and superior than—the humans she infiltrated.

Humans had massive potential energy stored in their muscles, but they could only use a fraction of it without harming themselves. They had enough energy to jump six feet into the air, or sprint at forty miles an hour, but that explosive use would break down their muscles, and as a result, their minds limited their bodies for preservation’s sake. Her people didn’t have that problem. The conclave called it a Shroud of faith, and claimed the gods gave them strength, Exile knew that was all lies.

Her muscles contained specialized organic capsules that, when accessed with her Shell, allowed her to exert explosive bursts of energy, effectively tearing open the capsules in place of the muscle tissue surrounding it and releasing the recovery chemicals inside. Given enough time, she would regrow those capsules and be as good as new. If she used them judiciously, she could operate at a more powerful level than normal for longer. It took year of training and massive willpower to force the break, and the Exile believed that whatever manipulation her species had undergone, it was intended for last resort.

Wrapping her Shell around her legs, she pulsed, breaking open several of the capsules with a cold rush of energy. She kicked off, leaping six feet out from the vehicle, and landed in a crouch on the ground.

She glanced around and took off at a sprint, energy still coursing through her. With the arrival of air support, she had a good chance of making it to the Condemned, and once close enough, she could establish a stronger connection, pierce their thoughts, and make her presence known. All around her, vehicles like the one she had arrived in were scattered in various stages of destruction. The corridors between buildings had been far too tight for any real assault.

The boxy six-wheeled transports that remained were either destroyed, as hers had been, or covered in soldiers repairing whatever damage had kept them from retreating. Unlike the Condemned, not everyone in the field had stood their ground when the charge came, and Exile could not pick out any fully functional vehicles. Further down the road was a torn-up tank that had made it nearly to the portal. One of the massive bears lay dead beside it, a gaping hole in its chest.

As her Web expanded across the field again, she tuned out the sparking emotions of the soldiers outside of her platoon. The fear, anxiety, excitement, and determination of the remaining 101
st
soldiers was powerful, but the Exile was able to find the bright sparks of the Condemned without much effort. With her battle map once again outlined in her mind, she allowed her senses to intermingle; by creating outlines from a bird’s eye view with her Web, she knew where to move.

Pinpointing the platoon's position relative to her own,  Exile ducked off the road into an alley between buildings, and rushed to meet them.

Their emotions began shift from the bitter resolve of having their backs against the wall to the determination before a charge. Swiftly, she ducked behind a piece of rubble and reached out with a firmer grasp for the leader’s mind. She was close enough to hear their voices, and peered around the rubble.

"This is the opportunity we needed, men," Killswitch called, wiping his Ka-Bars against the back of his pants. He lifted a fallen soldier’s M-4 and pulled extra magazines from his web gear. "Those fighters have opened up a path, and as soon as they find where this elf camp is, we're going to push the pointy-eared Merlins back to the hole they spawned in."

The rest of the platoon followed Killswitch's example, each grabbing as much ammo as he could carry. Locksmith and Widget were wounded, but Doc had patched both of them up enough for them to continue fighting.

Exile had limited time before they charged into the battle beyond. She had to establish herself as their commander now. She stepped around the rocks, and found herself staring into the barrels of several M-16s. Chastising herself for her haste, she slowly raised her arm with her palm open, suddenly cognizant of the weapons on her hips and back. She didn't believe for a moment that the platoon would be fooled by the simple hologram she held in place, but the sudden appearance of a blue, one-armed alien probably spooked them more than the weaponry.

"What the hell is that?" one of the soldiers blurted. Exile reached out tentatively, taking care to not shift his already startled mood. It was Widget.

"
That
is a Psykin, and an officer to boot, Widget. Show some respect," Killswitch snapped, but his surface thoughts showed that his own opinions were similarly disrespectful. He swiftly clamped down on any errant thoughts, and Exile looked over at him in surprise. She could scarcely remember the last human she had encountered who was able to hide from her.

"X-ray protocol in effect. Try not to think too loud, it's like screaming for our new lieutenant," Killswitch ordered, allowing Exile to sense his displeasure for a moment before clamping down on his thoughts once more. Not content to be bested by a human, Exile shaped her Web and pushed deeper into Killswitch's mind. Somehow whenever she tried to pull a thought or emotion, it slipped away, leaving her searching. Killswitch had obviously been trained in how to avoid Psykin intrusion. With  a quick look into the minds of the others, she encountered similar blockades, though they were not nearly as adept as their leader.
Impressive
.

Although she was unable to glean any information Killswitch didn't want her to know, she was still able to speak to him telepathically.

"We are the only tech platoon on the ground. Psykins aren't that common in the fleet, and if I'm not mistaken, you have four gnome tech weapons strapped to you." Killswitch let slip a touch of his distaste. "It's not my first day, and you’re not my first lieutenant... ma’am."

Widget's thoughts were the least tightly controlled, and Exile sensed confusion rolling off him. He asked Cowboy a question, but she didn't pay enough attention to make out the words.

"Psykin can't talk; they speak in your head," Cowboy explained, giving Widget a shove. "Now fill up your ammo so we can move."

Exile pushed at the group.

"No offense, ma’am, but that was our plan long before you got here," Killswitch said. "If you wouldn't mind lending out the Gauss rifle, and maybe that rail gun, that might just increase our odds."

Exile nodded, using the simple human gesture as opposed to expending the mental energy. Calling forth her spectral hand, she reached over her head to lift and unclip the Gauss rifle. A chorus of grunts and inhalations sounded off when her ghost arm shuddered into existence.

Killswitch shook his head. "You can all be amazed and impressed by our new LT’s abilities later, men. We have a mission to accomplish." Killswitch tossed his scavenged gun on the ground and took up Exile’s weapon. A sudden thought jumped to the front of his mind, past his veils: <
And you and I can discuss why you were sent here in the midst of a battle on an enemy planet.>

Exile declined comment, choosing instead to unclip the sniper rifle and hand it to Cowboy. It wasn't the first time her missions had taken her into the ranks of the Joint Fleet, and she had dealt with suspicious soldiers before. Not one who could slip around her thoughts, however. It seemed the Condemned would not be so easily fooled.