Chapter 18: Another Rescue Attempt

Horti stood before the larger assemblage at the end of the Admiral’s briefing.

“I want to state the goals of my mission. My primary goal is to save our people. When I say us, I mean the Enphaet and the Colza. To do this, I must take scientists to my universe to build gates to link us to you. Today we deal with a set of subgoals. Zyla Vandran has kept my mother and at least one other person hostage. For two million years, she has sabotaged the primary goal. We don’t have much time to neutralize and nullify her efforts. Getting her is our secondary objective. The third is the recovery of the hostages. If Zyla blocks us from traveling back home, we will die here.

“If we kill her here, her clone or clones will sabotage us, and many will die. She has a narrow time interval to harm us before she must leave or continue to fight us here. I am along as bait. She is preoccupied with capturing me, taking my mother and Ajende Grep Gahnil-Zuksat on her futile expedition.

“I rely on you to clear a path to Zyla. I must place her in a twilight state. Then we look for the hostages and get out. We have half a day to achieve our objectives. The planet will then fall outside the shield. We are entering a trap. Zyla knows we are coming, but we have no choice.

“Let us armor up and get going,” said Horti.

Horti and her team went to the armor dressers and picked up their assault and sundry weapons. The special forces platoons were waiting near a portal. Heather waved both groups to go through the portal ahead of her group. She waited a minute and then went through, followed by the others.

Heather looked out of the warehouse door. “We have fifty meters to traverse in the open before we get to the water. Run for the water when I say go. Stick with your partner and keep an eye on your partner. Your map is on the heads-up display. Follow it until you rendezvous with the Colza teams. In thirty seconds, the assault begins at the other end of the city from our dock. We are cloaking now. The special forces are covering us and are in the water.

“Go, we will continue to communicate using telepathy on this band and use band five with the others. We will network with both groups when we get together.”

They crept into the water and immersed themselves.

“It isn’t that cold here because the planet is cracking, and what is left of the core is emerging from below. It is warm enough to make us comfortable: the water is not icy,” said Heather. “Watch out for sudden chasms, volcanos, and whatever you do, keep going. Use your powers as needed. There is plenty of magical energy you can harness.”

Horti swam quickly ahead, using her suit gills to breathe. There was plenty of oxygen in the water. She was comfortable in her suit. It fitted perfectly. They had a long way to go, leaving the harbor and then turning to swim around the point. The port had sensors that could detect underwater propulsion systems. They had two kilometers to swim before they reached the redoubt. It was a leisurely swim as they were fit, and the suit boosted their efforts. Horti turned her head to her right. Craig swam strongly.

Griffexor intermittently used her powers to keep up with Emic. The others were doing equally well.

Horti sensed the Colza long before she saw them. She could recognize Maslav anywhere.

The meeting was all business. The groups tested and synchronized their communications nets.

The bombardment of the city increased in intensity. They all felt the heavy concussions. The sky lighted up and faded. There was a heavy pall of smoke above the city.

Thousands of assault craft headed for the surface. The planetary defenses were largely silent.

“We walloped them yesterday,” said Maslav as she and her partner swam alongside. We hit the defenses on the redoubt and dealt with the underwater sensors and antipersonnel weapons. They did not detect the advance teams and fed false information to the sensors. We have a team in place to take out the patrols. Let’s get this done, and we will talk afterward.”