And then the cable finally snapped.
Suddenly, they were both hurtling toward the ground, traveling in a wide arc in the direction of the tower near the lake. At an incredible speed, the two Humans swept over the parking lot about ten meters, with dozens of aliens scrambling to get out of the way. But the arc continued, and they soon found themselves flying back up into the air.
At the apogee of the arc, Adam found that they were now over the lake and about twenty meters up. Adam released his grip on his right arm and let it slip through the loop in his shirt, setting him free. He tumbled through the air and impacted the surface of the lake with such a force that it momentarily stunned him. The unexpectedly cold water of the lake soon jolted him back to his senses, however, and he sank deep into the icy water until his buoyancy stopped him. He kicked for the surface.
Adam emerged about ten meters from the shoreline and quite a ways down from the parking lot. A dozen aliens were running across the grass toward him.
McCarthy suddenly surfaced next to him, a wide grin on his face. “Whoa! That was exciting!”
Adam didn’t say anything, but instead kicked strongly for the shore. They reached it in a few seconds and stepped up onto a firm mud bank. A car had passed the aliens who were running toward them; it was only second away.
“I don’t know what good all that did,” Adam said as both he and McCarthy bent over, panting, shirtless and shivering from the cold water dripping from their bodies. The car was just about upon them.
As the vehicles skidded to a stop, the two Human soldiers spread their legs and brought their arms up in a defensive stance, ready for a fight. They had a pretty good idea that they could overpower anyone in the car; what they had to guard for were the weapons.
The door to the transport flew open. “Get in!” a female voice yelled from inside — and then Sherri’s frowning face appeared in the doorway. Without hesitation, Adam and McCarthy jumped for the car, diving head first into the rear compartment. Riyad Tarazi, seated in the driver’s seat, then shoved the central joystick forward and the car sped off, just as streaks from flash-bolts zoomed past.
Adam found himself lying face down between Sherri’s legs; he lifted his wet head up and looked into her eyes. “Later, stud,” Sherri said with a smile. “Right now we have to get off this fucking planet.”
Both he and McCarthy sat up to find themselves crushed into the back seat of the transport with Sherri, with the massive Carter Thomas in the front passenger seat and Riyad driving.
“Why aren’t you with the others?” Adam scolded, looking around at the others in the car.
“We thought you might need a lift,” Riyad said.
Thomas looked at his boss. “I sent Mitchell along with the others. They’re about ten minutes ahead of us.”
Riyad steered the car across the grass and around the main building. The antenna had apparently crashed all the way down through the structure, igniting fires as it went, with flames that now engulfing nearly half the building. There were hundreds of aliens streaming from the building now; many covered in blood with vacant looks on their faces. Others still rushed out covered in flames, only to collapse to the ground, writhing in agony.
A mass of transports clogged the access gates in and out of the complex, so Riyad steered to the left and plowed through the metal fence next to the main gate.
The crash was loud and violent, as the metal fence bounced off the hood of the car, smashing the front windshield. Glass filled the driver and passenger seats, but Riyad and Thomas seemed unfazed. They simply bushed the broken glass off of themselves, not bothered by the tiny moles of blood now appearing across their faces and arms.
They were now on a main street and moving as fast as the small electric vehicle would allow. “Where to,” Riyad yelled, the wind whipping into the compartment through the shattered windshield.
“Turn right at the next intersection. I’ll guide you from there,” said Carter Thomas.
Chapter 61
Adam kept looking through the cracked rear window of the car to see if they were being pursued. Fortunately, there was very little traffic in this part of the city and no one was following them. Soon Thomas guided them into a rundown industrial section of the city where he had Riyad stop next to a row building with the truck from the estate parked outside.
They exited the dented and scratched car and ran through a set of double doors into the building.
Adam was relieved to see a large shuttle sitting in the middle of a cavernous warehouse, the side entrance to the shuttle open, and Andy Tobias standing in the doorway.
“Thank god. We were beginning to worry,” he said, eyeing Adam and McCarthy’s shirtless and soaked torsos with a questioning frown as they slipped in past him. “I guess I won’t ask.” The Lieutenant then shut and dogged the hatch behind him.
Adam followed McCarthy to the pilothouse. One of his men — they had not had time to be properly introduced — was seated in the pilot’s seat. Kaylor and Jym were hunched up against the back bulkhead, looking terrified.
“And of course, you also have a shuttle.”
McCarthy slipped into the co-pilot’s seat. “Every contingency covered, Mr. Cain.”
“How the hell did you get it inside the building?”
“A little push here, a little pull there.” McCarthy then busied himself with the prelaunch sequence.
The man sitting next to him soon turned and said, “Primed. We can go at any time.”
“Do it!”
Instantly — and from all around them — there came such a deafening roar that all those not piloting the shuttle placed their hands to their ears. The building around them disintegrated in a cloud of dust and debris, as the first of a series of thousands of micro gravity wells formed far above them. The shuttle was drawn into the air, a bright flash of sunlight now blazing through the shuttle’s viewport. The debris streaming up all around them soon disappeared and the city fell away quickly below. Within three minutes, they were in space.
Kaylor stepped up behind the pilot. “This is a short-range shuttle. It won’t get us very far,” he said, concern thick in his voice.
“It only needs to get us there,” McCarthy said, pointing through the viewport at the smaller of the two moons of Marishal.
Adam stepped up next to McCarthy’s seat. “Don’t tell me, you also have starship hidden on the moon?”
“Nothing fancy, just a little Klin 722 — you probably don’t even know what that is, do you?”
“I do,” said Kaylor. He looked over at Adam. “It’s like the ships we saw on Calamore, at the Klin base there. Basic, but it will suffice.”
Adam placed his hand on Nigel McCarthy’s broad and freckled shoulder. “I’m impressed, Mr. McCarthy. Well done.”
McCarthy looked up at him and grinned. “And that is why the SAS can beat the shit out of a SEAL any day.”
Adam returned the grin. He would leave that comment alone — for now.
Chapter 62
Most beings throughout the Expansion would have been surprised to learn that the Juirean High Military Command was not housed in Malor Tower. Nor was it in one of the five surrounding structures the Tower that made up the Arolus Array high atop the Kacoran Plain on Juir.
Rather, the structure that housed the supreme military force in the galaxy was located a kilometer away in a non-descript building behind a cluster of limillian trees. If one didn’t know where to look, it could be easily missed.
One would think this camouflage of the building was intentional, being as it was the headquarters of powerful and secret military activity. In truth, it was not. Instead, for generations the military operations of the Expansion — and the Juireans in particular — had faded into disinterest and neglect. This was no anybody’s fault; it was simply the verities of the times, where peace reigned and dangerous bombast was suppressed by pragmatic need.