"This is strike group commander, Silvar. We have been given a very singular task. Our orders are from flag Captain Vapade himself. We are to capture the genetic carrier intact. I know you've all been briefed on this mission or you wouldn't be here, so I will spare you the particulars. This, my clutch mates, should be a simple snatch and grab. We land, we search and retrieve, and we come back, that's all. I was given a briefing on what might be a minor problem, so if things go bad, keep your eyes and ears open for new orders." Silvar, a medium height Rougarian officer, stepped back from the communication station affixed to the bulkhead of his drop-ship and turned to his company of Saltek. His transmission had gone out to all the fourteen landers in his small armada, so he would address his company personally.
"Fellow warriors, we have a chance to end these cycles of endlessly orbiting this world in one day. With the genetic material from this one hybrid, our scientists will be able to cut the cleansing process to a matter of days instead of the years its turned into." He saw the questioning glances from under the heavy brows and answered their unasked question.
"I know this is a large force for a retrieval mission, but this is proof of the importance the Prince has placed on us and our mission. We have no way of knowing exactly where our prey will be found. What we have is a proximate position. So we will have to drop over a wide area and conduct our search. Once the target has been retrieved, the drop-ships will land and we all return to the carrier. Any questions?" Silvar was not one of those commanders who ruled with an iron fist. He took the considerations of those under him seriously. Because one lesson he learned early in his military career is that no one is perfect, the more sets of eyes that could be brought onto a problem, the sooner a solution was likely to be found.
"What condition does our quarry have to be in upon retrieval, sir?"
"Our science personnel need it alive. Beyond that, use your discretion."
"Yes, sir."
"We should be entering the atmosphere in just a few minutes. Stay where you are and await my return." Turning, he slipped into the small passage leading from the troop bay to the ship's cockpit.
Silvar had always wondered, as he turning his body to the side and slipped sideways down the cramped passage not for the first time, why, with the vast amount of technologies, from hundreds of conquered worlds. Why the engineers that had designed the class five troop lander couldn't have made this passage a little wider?
"What's our time at the drop point?" He asked, squeezing his slender frame out of the tiny passage.
"Commander, we are," the pilot looked at a few of his readings." Still on schedule. We will have you within jump distance, in thirty earth minutes.
"Good, do you mind if I stay up here until then?" He rubbed his shoulder. "That passage is going to kill me one of these days."
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"Tamar?"
"Yeah, what now?" Tamar rose from her bed, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
"I was just wondering. How many troops do those Rougarian drop-ships carry?" Malachi asked from the other side of the small hotel room they had commandeered.
"We've seen them crammed with as many as ninety before. Why?" Her head dropped back onto her pillow.
"Because we have fourteen of them dropping into upper orbit as we speak."
"Oh, okay. Let's talk about it in the morning. I'm tired." It took a second for what he'd said to sink into her sleepy brain.
"What did you just say?" She sat upright, her covers flying off.
"We have about forty minutes and fourteen drop-ships will be right on top of us." He dropped his feet off the edge of his bed and turned to Tamar, who was leaping from hers, eyes wide with terror.
"Do you have any idea how many Saltek that is? We need to move now." She grabbed his arm, pulling him towards the door.
"It's too late for that. Whoever is in change up there thought of that. There are fourteen of them, but they're spread over a ten-mile radius. I could get out from under that net, but at that speed, I would do you more harm than good. So we stay here, and I fight."
"But you can't fight that many, no one can, and they'll have full Rougarians with them." Malachi watched her face go pale.
"Full Rougarians? What are those? I thought the big ones were Rougarians?"
"Oh no, those are Saltek. They're the foot soldiers of the empire. Rougarians are much more pleasing to the eye, smaller and much more deadly. Purple skin, black eyes, and the strength of at least ten grown men. There will be at least fourteen of them, because there is one always in every drop-ship." She turned to him, and for the first time, touched his arm of her own volition.
"You need to go. They'll catch me but you can get awa..." Her words were cut short by the fire that fountained from his eyes.
"I am not going to leave you here. As long as I breathe, I will keep you safe." Red lines began to bleed away from his eyes. Soon they covered his entire upper torso, glowing with power.
"I do need you to do one thing for me, though."
"And what is that?"
"I need you to go outside."
"Why?"
With a broad grin, "Bait."
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"Sir, we have a solid lock on our target. Our genetic scanner confirms it, it's nine miles from our current position."
"Place a call to all other ships. Tell them to form up into maximum drop formation. This mission just got a whole lot easier." Silvar smiled.
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"Are you happy now? Why in the world did I have to run outside? I'm sure they saw me on their sensors. They might be ugly, but they're not stupid." Tamar screamed to Malachi as she ran back past him and into the hotel lobby.
"I'm counting on it." He ran to meet her and grabbed her by the shoulders.
"I need you to stay in here. There's enough mass in this building to hide you from most of their scans until they reach the ground." She grabbed him back, her claws digging into his arms.
"And what are you going to do? There's no way even you can fight that many Saltek, they'll kill you!" She dug her claws in, wanting to keep him inside, and safe.
"There is no safe. You can't keep me safe." His red eyes bored into hers, as if reading her mind "I will keep you safe." Then Malachi did something neither he nor Tamar expected. He softly grabbed either side of her head, bent it towards him, and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. "Stay here, stay safe. I'll be back when I'm done." And before she could muster the will to be mad at him, he was gone.
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"Sir, if I may ask, how are we going to do this? We've never practiced for anything like this." His suit asked him.
"I have an idea. All I need you to do is give me a way to keep my energy levels as high as possible." He skidded to a stop on the gravel covered asphalt outside the hotel.
"Well, sir, this suit was grafted into and onto your nervous system at almost the molecular level." His suit began while Malachi ran towards the tallest structures in town, a seventy story apartment building. "It can draw energy from almost any source, solar, direct electrical, but the most plentiful source I can think of is neural energy."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Your body is nothing more than a large bio-electric battery. This suit can amplify that energy and stay charged as long as needed, again theoretically."
Looking at his energy levels, he saw they were at seventy-nine percent.
"Okay, here goes nothing."
Malachi had only had this thing on, while conscious, for a little over six months. That wasn't nearly enough time to become familiar with something as complex as his suit. He'd practiced and become good with many of the most basic systems, but much above that was still uncharted territory. So with little forethought into what the consequences could be, he got within thirty feet of the edge of a large sixty story building and sprang.
He sailed off the ground, hitting the flat surface of the structure at an angle that allowed him to continue his sprint, only now up the building's side. Dark red energy began to coalesce around him the higher he rose from the ground. He would not let them have her, he would not let them touch her, he would protect her, he'd made a promise. His thoughts drew down to a razor's edge, that pin point of clarity blossomed into a fountain of energy.
The blast of red fire broke every window in the face of the massive structure that faced him, and with one last step, he launched himself into the sky. A word, highlighted in red appeared on the upper left corner of his HUD, flight. He had never seen it there before, but under the current situation he decided to select it. Large black wings shot from his shoulders, caught the air and swept downward, shooting him farther from the ground. Again and again, the mighty wings beat the air, and with each one Malachi soared higher and higher. His wings had never moved before, they had just been stationary, as a gliders wings are still. Now they beat like a huge bird of preys, lifting him ever higher. He passed through the clouds and out into crisp clean air and still he flew higher.
"There they are." He growled, seeing the tiny specks appear on his HUD as his suit found and sorted targets.
"I've got to take out as many as I can before they reach the ground." He looked at his energy readings and found they were past the one hundred and fifty percent level. Abilities and weapons he'd never seen began to pop up on his HUD. With a thought he selected one that he'd used before and plotted an intercept course.
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