Chapter 8 Into The Rising Light #2
Bodies fell where they stood. The air was filled with smoke, the smell of ignited combustibles, and the copper reek of blood.
There was no warning sweep, no demand for surrender.
The attack carried only the intent to wound, maim, and kill.
She sprinted for the central office, lungs burning, heart slamming against her ribs. Inside, the team clustered over open crates, hands shaking as they drew rifles and sidearms free from their small weapons cache.
Faces were pale, eyes dilated, mouths set into lines of disbelief.
Imani stood at the center, jaw locked, distributing weapons with rigid efficiency. Brad hovered beside her, knuckles white, clutching a carbine.
‘Who is it?’ Sheba demanded, the words tearing out of her. ‘Who’s firing on us?’
Toma glanced up, fury etched into every line of his face.
‘It’s Ty Si’Rhix,’ he hissed. ‘That bastard finally made good on his threats.’
A short lull fell over the munitions fire, and the loudspeaker crackled overhead, feedback shrieking before a self-satisfied voice cut through, smug and amplified, carrying across the shattered ground.
‘Lattaya Medical Centre leadership,’ Ty purred. ‘This is what happens when you choose the wrong hill to die on. Your guardian is fighting off my men on his farm as we speak. No one is coming to rescue you.’
Outside, the rail guns swung and tore into the remaining wards.
Light and heat flayed the ground, as screams rose and vanished beneath the roar.
‘Move!’ Imani shouted. ‘Defensive positions. Now. If you see the enemy, fire at will.’
They ran, Sheba included, into the open, her rifle heavy in her hands.
She’d seen war, hell, she’d defended wounded soldiers in skirmishes, wielding weapons to protect them.
However, the ferociousness of this assault told her the perpetrators had no care for battle protocols and no fear of being hauled in for war crimes, attacking innocent patients, in a hospital no less.
Laser blasts rained down in sheets, carving trenches through earth and metal.
Attendants dragged the injured to cover.
Physicians fell trying to reach them.
Sheba surged further, aiming at a pair of armored flyers.
Her weapon kicked as she fired, straining her wrists and biting into her palms.
Thermal rounds shredded the vegetation around her, devouring dura-steel walls and throwing up plumes of molten grit.
Nurses dragged the wounded toward the shadows of the loading docks while medics collapsed in the crossfire, their ivory kits turning crimson before they hit the dirt.
In the corner of her eye, Sheba caught the sight of Imani tearing through the carnage without even a protective vest.
The woman was fearless.
Until a lance of white-hot energy bisected the air, catching Imani mid-stride.
The impact threw her body backward, a fountain of sparks and scarlet mist erupting from the rupture in her chest.
Sheba lunged through the searing heat, her knees skidding across the debris till she reached her fallen colleague.
Staring at Imani and swiping her weapons strap onto her back, she crouched, blinking at the hole in the woman’s side.
‘How bad is it?’ the doctor whispered, trembling fingers hovering over the hideous wound.
‘Focus on breathing, Imani, I’ve got you,’ Sheba countered, her pulse hammering as she pressed her palms into the gash, in a desperate attempt to hold her friend’s life inside.
‘Stay with me, Imani. Keep your eyes on me.’
The roar of the ongoing bombardment drowned out Sheba’s fractured whisper.
She leaned over the shuddering woman, shielding her from the spray of debris with her own frame.
Imani’s eyelids flickered, her pupils shimmering with a terrifying clarity.
‘Sheba,’ she breathed, the sound a ghost of a murmur. ‘I’m not going to make it, I’ve lost too much blood.’
She was right, the pool of crimson under her was horrendous.
Still, Sheba fought on.
A minute later, Imani sighed. ‘Fokk, I want to sleep.’
‘No sleeping, honey, not here. The extraction team is on the way,’ Sheba lied, her heart fracturing at the sight of more gore pooling beneath her friend’s supine frame.
Imani’s grip on Sheba’s sleeve tightened with a surge of strength. ‘Tell everyone goodbye for me. My mother. My brother, Raido. Tell them I felt no fear and that I love them so much.’
‘You’ll tell them yourself,’ Sheba choked, but the light behind Imani’s irises was already retreating.
The tension in Imani’s limbs gave way, and her head fell to the ground, her eyes empty and still.
‘Nada!’
Sheba gasped, hyperventilating as she reached out and drew her fingers down across Imani’s lids, sealing their stillness.
She said a quick prayer under her breath, willing Imani’s life to eternal peace.
The sound of even more bombardment pierced her grief.
Another of her workmates, Brad, crumpled a meter away, his frame folding and yielding to the kinetic force of a lethal blast.
A steel pinion from a double-level demountable nearby groaned above her before it surrendered to gravity. Slamming into the ground with a bone-shaking thud that sent a curtain of dust and shrapnel into the sky.
Sheba threw herself behind the remains of the collapsed structure as the heavens turned a bruised purple from the persistent artillery fire.
Laser beams hammered the wreckage, carving molten grooves into the metal inches from her temple.
She pressed her back against the twisted alloy, chest heaving, lungs burning, panic clawing up her spine.
Was this how her life ended? Without dignity, caught up in a vengeful monster’s revenge? A senseless deletion in the wake of a man’s pride, an annihilation that left no room for honor or survival?
She thought of the patients still trapped in the wards.
Of the nurses she worked with.
Of the promise she made to herself when she came here, brokenhearted but determined to do good.
She squeezed her eyes shut from the heat and noise, certain that there would be no rescue this time.
No one was coming.
With an inhale, she swung her weapon up above the edge of her pinion and began firing at will into the raider’s hull. Allowing her fury, blind rage, and wild grief to empower her.
The whoomph of the first rail gun strike tore the night open beyond the Lattaya Hills, and Idan parsed it from halfway up the mountain.
It surged over him, a convulsion in the world’s spine, a violent wrench that scraped through his chest and into the core of his bones.
The land below him recoiled. Birds burst from the canopy in panicked spirals, and his sheep skittered in their pens.
‘What the fokk was that?’ Lago asked, from inside the barn door, where he sat on a bale of hay, still in shock from the unexpected blitz on the farm.
Idan halted at the shed door, one hand still wrapped around a length of wire he intended to use to repair a perimeter fence that fell victim to the raider’s attack.
Lifting his chin, he let his Sacran perception make sense of the chaos.
Ty Si’Rhix’s intent rode the violence with obscene clarity, swollen with triumph, thick with the belief that Idan’s absence from the medical center bought him freedom from consequence.
He closed his eyes as he precogged the offensive, the cadence of the guns, the careless sweep of destruction, the arrogance of taking innocent lives.
‘You fokkin’ stupid, greedy bastard,’ he growled.
Dropping his fence wire, he turned to Lago. ‘The hospital is under attack, and they need me.’
Ignoring Lago’s shocked reaction, Idan unleashed his potency and folded distance until it ceased to exist.
He arrived above the clinic in a glimmer of gilded lightning, the sky splitting with a concussive crack that sent dust and debris spiraling.
Gold-white energy flared around him, scorching the air, bending light. Below, the field infirmary burned.
Canvas and demountable walls hung in tatters.
Steel frames lay twisted and half-melted.
Screams cut through smoke and fire as two raider-class ships banked over the scene, their rail guns chewing methodically through what little still stood.
Idan sped up, launching into the atmosphere, over scorched earth as the ground collapsed beneath the force of his ascent.
He slammed into the first skiff head-on, hands locking into its hull with crushing certainty.
Metal screamed, and systems failed in cascading sparks as he drove the ship sideways with a roar that ripped apart the superstructure and shattered its spine.
It cartwheeled into the ridge and exploded in a violent bloom of flame, shockwaves rolling outward and flattening what remained of the nearby tents.
The larger corvette clawed for altitude.
Idan crossed the distance in a blink and struck its flank, momentum and will braided into a single, merciless line.
The vessel slammed into the ground and skidded across the valley floor, engines shrieking until it came to a rest on its side.
Its propulsion systems shut down with a whine, and moments later, hatches blew open.
Pilots and Rhixon guards spilled from the wreckage and ran, weapons abandoned, terror plain on their faces.
A pair of flyers hovered higher, retreat already written into their arc.
Idan turned in time to see Ty Si’Rhix through the cockpit glass.
The man’s face was pale, drained of color, eyes dilated with disbelief, mouth working around a scream no one would hear.
The aircraft veered hard and fled into the dark.
Idan let them go, vowing that Ty Si’Rhix would not have an easy death by downing his vessel.
Nada, he would die of slow torture, his limbs torn apart and his skin seared atom by atom until his screams tore up the sky.
Idan landed amid the wreckage of the clinic, surrounded by fires and implosions from which smoke billowed in heavy gusts.
The crackling of the inferno was broken only by distant sobbing and the ragged breaths and moans of the wounded.
Medics worked on the injured out in the open, on the grass patches not affected by the battle. Patients staggered, bloodied and stunned, clutching one another before collapsing to the ground.