Two electronic beeps sounded above the door and a green light winked. More croatoan engineering, Charlie thought.
It smoothly slid open, revealing a light brown corridor carved out of solid rock. A noise like a muffled drum echoed through the valley. Dirt flew from the field in even spacings of five meters toward the guard as the fighter’s gun on its left wing strafed the ground. The guard took a hit to the center of its back and slumped to its knees. A second burst smashed through its helmet and it fell on its side.
“Inside. Quickly,” Hagellan said.
The group dashed inside the corridor. Charlie entered with trepidation, but whatever they were going to meet inside couldn’t be as bad as the thing that hunted them outside. They had no choice.
Hagellan held its glove against the internal pad for the door. The fighter’s laser swept across the root field and came to a rest on Denver’s chest.
Chapter 2
DENVER DOVE to his left and rolled against the coarse, rock floor. The scion fighter’s gun rattled, thundering projectiles against the thick metallic door as it slammed shut.
A quiet electric hum replaced the outside noise.
Charlie held out a hand and hauled Denver to his feet.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Better the devil you know,” Charlie said with a sly glance at Hagellan.
Layla ran her hand along the smooth limestone-colored walls and gazed down the three-meter-wide slope that disappeared into the distance.
A thin strip of bright yellow lighting ran along the ceiling. Solid silver grills dotted the left-hand wall at regular intervals. Denver shouldered his rifle and peered through one, seeing a dark square shaft behind it, presumably for ventilation.
“Follow me to the central area,” Hagellan said.
The croatoan’s dull charcoal uniform creaked as he turned and headed down the tunnel. Denver resisted the urge to shoot him in the back of the head.
Since landing, he’d wanted to say many things to Charlie and Layla that weren’t for the alien’s gnarled earholes. Part of their success on Earth was coming up with clearly communicated plans to achieve their objectives. Everybody could be trusted to carry out a role. Hagellan couldn’t be trusted to know their next moves.
“Hagellan,” Layla said, “what did the tredeyans do when they visited Earth?”
“Collected resources until they had enough. They haven’t visited for hundreds of your years because they figured out a way to produce them themselves.”
“What resources?” Charlie asked.
“We all see things in different ways. What a croatoan might find useful for one thing, a tredeyan will find another purpose.”
“That’s as clear as mud.”
“You will see.”
They continued down until the tunnel split into four directions. Hagellan trudged through the left passageway. Denver purposefully stayed out of the conversation to remain on his highest level of alertness. A single moment of careless chat could cost them their lives. He’d seen people drop their guard and pay for it more times than he cared to remember.
Hagellan rounded a bend in the tunnel, but Charlie and Layla stopped and sprang back. Charlie held up two fingers, indicating company.
Denver hugged the wall and edged forward to peer round the bend.
Two stocky aliens, around five feet tall and dressed in dark purple body armor of interlocking metallic plates, stood on either side of a thick metal door. Both had semitranslucent ivory skin on their faces, no visible hair, and dark beady eyes that flittered as if surveying every dark corner at once. They held stubby black carbine rifles against their chests.
One of them gargled something to Hagellan, sounding more human than croatoan, but still unrecognizable as a distinct language. Hagellan clicked a reply and the door groaned open with a low metal screech that echoed along the tunnel.
“Come this way,” Hagellan said through the intercom. “They are two tredeyan wardens. You have no need to fear them.”
Denver glanced back at Charlie and Layla. They were committed to following, no matter how weird things looked. Going back outside to face the scion fighter wasn’t on the agenda, and they needed oxygen.
“I’ve got your back,” Charlie said. “We haven’t got a choice.”
A muffled explosion boomed overhead and the ground shuddered.
Denver instinctively ducked.
Hagellan and the tredeyans stood firm, showing no signs of distress, as though they were used to coming under fire from an alien bombardment. He knew that croatoans did react when they thought they were in imminent danger; he’d seen it countless times in their body language on Earth.
“We need to move,” Hagellan said.
Denver kept his rifle by his side and advanced. He squeezed the grip, ready to raise and shoot if required. The situation didn’t feel dangerous, but he had no frame of reference for trusting tredeyans.
Hagellan led them between the two aliens. One turned to look at Denver as he passed. It blinked, making a wet peeling sound as its eyelids closed and opened. The dull armor plates around each limb and torso looked too ungainly to be practical, but when the alien shoved the door to widen the gap, an electric whir came from the elbow area.
Servo-assisted power suits, he thought. Interesting tech.
One of the tredeyans followed inside as the door closed. Four thick metallic bolts, at the top and bottom of the frame, electronically snapped into rings, securing it.
At the end of a short, ten-meter-long tunnel, Hagellan slipped off a glove and palmed a pad attached to the wall. A black sheet of glass at the end smoothly slid open with a quiet hiss, making Layla gasp over the intercom.
Beyond Hagellan was a huge cavernous space buzzing with activity.
Denver and the others walked in and glanced around the large square area. It was at least fifty meters across and twenty meters high. And all carved out of solid rock.
A few hundred tredeyans stood in front of circular green screens positioned on a workbench that ran around the perimeter of the cavern. They tapped on pads in front of them, acting oblivious to the humans’ presence. They wore gray three-quarter-length trousers and nothing on their torsos, which were semitranslucent ivory in color, exposing the dark shapes of their internal organs.
Their beady eyes flickered from their pads to the screens as they chattered and clicked to each other. To Denver, they resembled biped insects but with almost humanlike faces—if their eyes weren’t so far apart and their noses weren’t actually just small breathing holes covered with a layer of chitinous material.
High-definition screens attached to the walls displayed streams from different parts of the planet. Most focused on scion fighters and the black prism glinting in the sky. Denver got a chill in his bones when he saw it up close. The thing just looked so… wrong. So… alien.
“Ugly,” Charlie said through the intercom, breaking Denver’s thoughts away from the prism.
“They think the same about you,” Hagellan said.
Denver’s hand twitched on his rifle again. What he would give to plug the bastard right there and then. But he resisted—they needed air and supplies first.
“This is one of the command centers and staging posts,” Hagellan said. “They control drones, weapons, and communicate with the other defenses.”
“They don’t seem bothered we’re here,” Layla said.
“You are with me.”
“What about blowing the gate?” Charlie said.
“They stopped using it a long time ago. Only croatoan ships transport through it since we took control of the planet.”