Consortium of Planets: Alien Test (21 page)

After she began to consistently clear an area quickly enough for her sensei, the real training began. He hung a one-meter-long tree limb at the center of the clearing, and she would practice kicking and punching the hard wood. Her mind and body absorbed the wood’s strength and became just as hard.

“You must be able to defend without the dart,” Master advised.

Once he was satisfied with her skill against the wood, he hung twenty fist-sized balls from bamboo parasols. They hung at different heights and distances on thin strings all around her.

“You must strike all the balls and keep striking. They must not stop swinging. They all must continue to move for ten minutes.”

Ultimately, she reduced her bamboo-clearing time to five minutes. At age fourteen, Master combined the wood and balls into a single exercise of power, agility, and speed. The wood became just another thing to kick or punch along with the balls.

Ignoring the pain in her knee, she continued to reduce her presence and patiently hid behind General Martle. He was trying to talk his way past the chancellor’s secretary so that Svetlana could confront Jonathan. What he said to the secretary wasn’t important, so she focused on the next obstacle: the chancellor’s guards.

Security included four plainclothes Secret Service agents brooding at different points around the reception room. On each side of the chancellor’s door stood a Ranger in full-camouflaged battle dress, holding an M25 with an attached rocket launcher. Even bulked up with all their gear, Svetlana could tell that they were almost two meters tall and seemed to squeeze the door like granite bookends.
That makes a total of six to eliminate.

“Ellen, I need to get in to see the chancellor. It has to do with the aliens,” he lied, aware that Svetlana stood right behind him.

“Well, he said no interruptions, but I guess he wouldn’t mind if it’s you,” Ellen considered out loud. She released the outside lock on Jonathan’s office door and keyed the intercom to announce the general.

Jonathan stood on the other side of the door. Deep in thought, he stared down at the glass-and-steel city. The rooftops shone brightly in the sunlight under the clear blue sky. He was waiting for confirmation that the assassin had finally completed her contract and killed the Network leader.

That’s odd – a small dark cloud...?
The rest of the sky remained clear as he watched the cloud only a few meters outside his window expand ominously. Suddenly, at the center of the apparition, a large alien shuttle burst into view. It was roughly nine meters across and covered in scaly silver armor plating. Hovering threateningly right in front of him, the craft’s slanted cockpit windows and pointed nose section gave the impression of a snake’s head.

Shocked, Jonathan jumped back, fell over an easy chair, and knocked over an end table. The lamp on the end table landed right on his chest. It hurt and knocked the wind out of him but wasn’t heavy enough to do serious damage.

He pulled himself up on the arm of the chair. Still reeling, he looked up just in time to see the shuttle’s pointed bow open like a scaly mouth. A ten-meter-long gangway shot out and crashed through his picture window. It bridged the gap from Jonathan’s office to the shuttle like a glistening tongue. The thin, slanted cockpit windows and the scaly gaping fore section gave Jonathan the uneasy feeling of staring into the mouth of a hungry king cobra.

Aliens in purple and gold battle armor disembarked from the shuttle and marched down the ramp toward his office. Jonathan leaned heavily on the top of his desk and hit the alarm. The door to his office popped open immediately. The two Rangers burst through the door with their M25s raised. The Secret Service followed right behind with their guns drawn.

Everyone paused for a long moment. The Humans froze with surprise while the aliens waited for new rules of engagement from Colonel Sodrew. Their orders were to get the chancellor and the Searcher back to Consortia in less than a sub-cycle without hurting any Humans.

Sodrew stepped out from behind his squad of twenty and screamed. “What are you waiting for? Take the chancellor!”

They began marching toward Jonathan again.

“Chancellor, get down!” yelled one of the Rangers as he raised his M25.

Not waiting to see what the weapon was capable of, twenty lines of red praser energy flashed centimeters above Jonathan’s head as he dropped to the floor again behind his desk. The two Secret Service agents went down immediately, flaming holes smoking from their chests. The Rangers and remaining agents shot their weapons, rapid fire, through the smoke rising from the downed guards. Another volley of red energy lashed out as the Rangers and Secret Service took cover behind the overstuffed leather chairs. Gaping holes opened up and smoked in the wall around the door to their rear.

Bullets and energy flashes filled the air as Martle and Svetlana lay on each side of the doorway and carefully peeked into the office.

“You groutin! If you kill the chancellor, I will rip off
all
four of your arms. I don’t even
want
to tell you what the commandant will do to you!” Sodrew screamed in disbelief that they would shoot so close to their Human quarry.

The red flashes abruptly stopped as the aliens considered a new approach. The lull gave the two Rangers a welcome opportunity and they took advantage of it. Both popped up at the same time and fired rockets into the aliens. One of the rockets blew three aliens off the gangway, ultimately splattering the sidewalk two hundred floors below. The second rocket landed in a fiery splash against the shuttle’s cockpit. The force of the blow caused the shuttle to drop a meter but it quickly regained altitude and didn’t appear damaged. The Rangers immediately dropped down again and reloaded.

“Get the chancellor!” Sodrew screamed through the smoke and gunfire.

“I take it the ugly ones are the aliens,” Svetlana observed dryly.

Martle raised his eyebrows and looked at her in silence.
Is she trying to be funny?

Bullets were ineffective against the aliens’ armor, but the Rangers were able to inflict serious damage with their rockets. The aliens hadn’t started firing yet, and the Rangers sprang to their feet again with another round of rockets. Four aliens were cut in half, but the rest released thirteen lines of red fire into the outnumbered defenders.

“Joe, grab the launcher.” One of the agents whispered to the other, pointing at a dead Ranger’s weapon.

He reached out and red praser energy sliced off his arm just above the elbow.

“Aaauugghh, my arm!” Joe screamed in agony.

Joe’s partner leaped from behind his chair and onto the other rocket launcher. He stood and turned to fire, but four bolts of red fire burned holes through his torso.

“So much for security. I think it’s time for a woman’s touch,” Svetlana said confidently, jumping to her feet.

“What the hell do you think you are going to do?!” Martle was astonished that she would attack them after what just happened.

“I’m going to beat the crap out of some purple men from Mars,” She said evenly.

“First, they aren’t men, and secondly, they aren’t from Mars. They are a lot tougher than any
man
you’ve ever fought.”

“Why, General, you almost sound worried about me. You’re going to make me tear up,” Svetlana said sarcastically.

Martle explained angrily, “I’m not interested in watching
anybody
commit suicide, even you.”

Four aliens had reached Jonathan and were leaning across the top of his desk to grab him. Svetlana kept an eye on the aliens’ progress as she debated with Martle. They had picked him up screaming and were clearing the top of the desk. His arms waved wildly. It was time to get serious. The edge returned to her voice.

“Listen to me, old man. The aliens aren’t going to kill that bastard, I am!”

Martle realized he couldn’t reason with a lifetime of hatred and held up his hands in resignation. “Fine, do what you have to, but throwing him in maximum security confinement for the rest of his days would hurt him much more than a quick death. Think about it.”

“I
am
thinking about it,” Svetlana snarled. “Either way, I have to stop them from taking him. If I can’t, I will kill him,” she promised as she rose to her feet. She didn’t have time to focus her thoughts in order to hear the melody or call on her master. She would have to fight the aliens and the chaos in her mind at the same time.

In one easy motion, she reached back, swiped the dart off her back, and flipped forward through the door. As her feet touched the floor, she sent the dart through a narrow gap in the back of an alien’s armor between the helmet and its upper back plating. The dart ripped through the exposed neck of one of the aliens carrying Jonathan toward the shuttle. The creature went rigid, dropped the chancellor, and toppled sideways. Prior to the alien hitting the floor, Svetlana twisted her body with hard rotation and jerked the dart back into action.

The other three aliens realized they were under attack again and let go of the Human. Before they could turn to look, the dart was spinning again and Svetlana swung it into an alien that had been carrying Jonathan. Its helmet cracked with a loud crunching sound and the alien tumbled sideways into the two that stood beside it.

Half of the aliens were already back on the shuttle but had come back out to see what was going on. The rest had waited for the chancellor on the gangway with Colonel Sodrew. All were targeting Svetlana now as she cartwheeled and spun toward them. Ten red lines of praser energy flashed at her bobbing, weaving form. Only one ripped across her bare thigh and lit it on fire.

She tumbled to the floor in agony with her burned flesh smoking.

A dark cloud began to gather between the aliens and Svetlana.

“It’s the Searcher,” Sodrew warned his Warriors. “We’ll take her right here.”

Dean and Wystl appeared at the cloud’s misty center. Wystl saw the praser bolts coming at them and immediately punched up a force wall with her Dimensional Shifter pad for protection.

Jonathan was cowering behind his desk again after being dropped by the aliens. “Dean, help me!” he begged pitifully.

The chancellor never called Dean by his first name.
He must really be terrified.
Dean shook his head in disgust and glanced at Svetlana.

Even hurt and in pain, she still had fire in her almond-shaped brown eyes. Holding her smoking thigh, she rocked anxiously and looked back at Dean.

“Forge, you’ve got to stop them from taking him. I may never get another chance to kill him,” she pleaded.

She knows!
Jonathan realized in fear.

“You want to kill your boss?” Dean asked, trying to determine if she was sincere.

Martle stepped up beside Dean and answered his question. “That’s right,” he said softly. “When I showed her the proof, I was a little too convincing. Now she wants revenge. I should have expected her reaction.”

Dean gave a weak, crooked smile. “Well, I know how she feels about wanting to kill him, but you talked me into the nobler response.”

Wystl was only half-listening to their conversation as she watched for the Warriors’ response to her intrusion. She knew they would not quit until they got the chancellor or died trying. The former wasn’t an option, so that left the latter. Warriors would only respond to force, but maybe she wouldn’t have to kill
all
of them. Wystl raised her voice for all to hear.

“Warriors, which one of you chooses to die first?!”

They glanced fearfully at the control pad in Wystl’s hand, then at each other, and finally at Colonel Sodrew. She pointed at the dead Warriors and Humans. “If you leave the chancellor and take me,” she emphasized, “no one else needs to die.”

Sodrew spoke up. “Who are you trying to fool, impersonating a Human? You know we can’t leave him. We have orders to follow.”

Before he finished speaking, a Warrior standing on each side of the colonel disappeared.

“What have you done with them, Searcher?” he demanded.

“Oh, I think you know that their lifeless bodies are now floating in the Travel Dimension, as promised.” She looked around with interest. “Who’s next?”

“Attack them! Go around the force wall.” Sodrew pointed at four Warriors and ordered, “You, shoot at the ceiling. Make it fall on them.”

The Warriors were trying to kill everyone but the chancellor and her. Wystl realized it was useless to try and reason with them. On second thought, they might even be part of the Warriors for Change that Captain Aydr’n had raved about. Maybe they
were
trying to kill her.

It was time for them to go. She adjusted the force wall to include the chancellor and to extend over their heads as the roof began to collapse from the praser assault. A few more taps on the control pad and all the Warriors, including the dead, vanished. The shuttle still hovered where it was, unaffected, a few meters outside the broken window.

She sighed at her inability to keep the Warriors alive and looked at Svetlana sympathetically. “I am sorry the Consortians injured you.”

Svetlana didn’t want anyone’s pity. She had been too cocky and removed the body glove armor. She realized that her injury was her own fault. “It’s not so bad now that I don’t smell my own flesh burning anymore.” She tried to sound reassuring and project strength that she didn’t feel. “It’s gone numb.”