First Assault Read online

hurt even in silence. Does it feel so awful in Ifrin? he wondered. Was there silence now or was he hearing the moan again? He couldn’t tell.

  His eyes were clenched shut in an effort to reach some satisfying level of calmness. But then he heard it again, he was certain this time. What else could drive the needle deeper than it already was?

  “Would you shut up?” he said. The reply he got was another moan. “For gods’ sake…”

  His head hurt like it was smacked by a hammer and then dragged on a rocky terrain and his head would bounce on every rock, large and small, and then he was turned upside down so it would drive his blood in his head and his pulsing heartbeat would give him sixty doses of pain each minute. And when that wasn’t enough he was pierced by a needle right in the middle of his skull, and it went deeper and deeper and deeper…

  “Shut up!”

  “He’s dying,” he heard a voice say. It had an echo with it like it was said in a cave. Or maybe it was Ailios’s head that gave the echo?

  “Can’t he die faster?” Ailios managed to say. His eyes were still shut, but his head started to rock from one side to another. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  “They broke every bone in his body,” the voice said with such calmness that frustrated Ailios.

  He doesn’t even hear the moan, he thought. “They should’ve broken his jaw.”

  “And they did.”

  Ailios tried to open his eyes. It was an effort, a painful, burning effort, but he succeeded. “Where are we?” he asked. It was dark around him, like he was somewhere underground where the sun never got to see this place. He even tried to recall how he got there, but his memories eluded him.

  “We are on Timor,” said the voice, “in the ancient temple. We are waiting to be executed.” Ailios then noticed the eyes in the darkness, staring at him with calmness despite the foreboding.

  He remembered the last time he was supposed to be executed. It turned out to be a test. Where’s the major to congratulate me now? Ailios wondered. He sent me here. Slowly his stream of thought brought him to Timor. We were looking for a clue, we found the secret corridor… the abominations – they shot me! His stomach clenched as if he experienced the shot once again. His hand instinctively moved over his forehead. He touched his hair first. They’ve ruined it, he acknowledged in pain. His black mane was smeared and bloodied and thick with grease. Underneath his bangs he felt a nasty bump that was like a pain-inducing button. He bit his screams when he touched it, and then decided not to touch it anymore. It turned out to be worse than the moan. But then he heard it again – the needle twisted in his brain.

  Nothing can be worse than the bloody moan.

  He let out a deep breath.

  His mind was back at the bullet wound on his forehead. He realized how lucky he was that those abominations used projectile weapons, and he thanked the major for the new skin DNA. If it were a beam weapon like the Cyons used, he would’ve needed a new head by now, no matter if he had thicker skin or not. Thankfully, his improved skin turned out to be quite useful against bullets because the one that got him just bounced off his head and left him with awful headache, but very much alive.

  Ailios looked around, his bleary eyes slowly waking up, slowly adapting to the darkness. It was a round room with low ceiling; that much was obvious at first glance. There was only one door. He couldn’t see any knobs or buttons or any other way to make it open.

  Next to him a body lay sprawled on the floor. Ailios couldn’t tell if it was alive or not so he poked it with a finger. The body moaned as if to give him an answer to that – a very painful answer.

  Ailios struggled to stand up, to get away from the guy next to him and his moaning, but all he did was stagger back down and smack the back of his head on the wall.

  “Gods,” he cursed. His head started spinning and throbbing. “I feel drunk and I didn’t even have the pleasure to drink,” he said.

  “It’s the drug,” said the man, his eyes not blinking.

  Ailios squinted. “The drug?”

  “Yes. It’s meant to keep us calm and quiet.”

  Ailios stared at him for a moment and then nodded at the man next to him. “Couldn’t they overdose your friend?” he asked. The man shook his head.

  It was a short man, Ailios realized. He was seated on the floor, it was true, but he was much shorter than Ailios. He wore a blue Bio-suit without a helmet, and it was blood-stained, much like the one Ailios wore. That’s when Ailios noticed that the blood didn’t just cover the man’s suit. His entire face was painted in red, and he had the largest bump on his forehead Ailios had ever seen. They must’ve beaten him badly, but he didn’t moan like his buddy, for which Ailios was eternally grateful.

  “So,” Ailios said, squinting his headache away, “how do we get out of here?”

  “We can’t. There is no way…”

  “There is always a way and it’s usually hidden,” Ailios said, forcing his eyes to find it.

  Ailios stood up. He still staggered, his head still throbbed making the world pulse in black nuance, but he forced himself to reach the door with his hand extended to keep the walls at a distance. Once he was at the door he knocked and pressed his ear, waiting to hear someone, something, anything. It was cold and silent, except for his throbbing pulse. He then tried to push the door, he even slammed his foot on it but it didn’t budge. He backed away, fingers rubbing his temples. “Okay, the door is locked,” he said, stating the obvious. But he didn’t plan to give up just yet. He started moving around the room, knocking on walls, hoping to find a weak spot where he could carve his way out somehow.

  First couple of knocks proved the walls were thick. It felt demotivating. However, there was still more to go.

  “Why are you here?” Ailios asked his cellmate between knocks.

  “We were captured.”

  “I already figured that out,” Ailios said. “I meant why did you come here on Timor in the first place?”

  There was a pause before the man answered. “We were looking for something.”

  Ailios knocked. “Are you raiders?”

  The man coughed, maybe trying to laugh. “Worse,” he said, “we’re archeologists.”

  Archeologists … Ailios stopped to look at him. “So you are the group that Major Ailig mentioned.”

  The archeologist gave a weak nod. “He sent us here. We were part of his Secret Projects Division.”

  “Never heard of it,” said Ailios, then shrugged, it was secret division after all. “What does it do?”

  The man seemed to wonder for a moment whether to answer that question or not. “Let’s just say we are searching for weapons that would defeat the Cyons.”

  “Mm,” Ailios nodded. “You were searching for a weapon here.”

  “Well, to call this particular item a weapon is putting it mildly. Have you ever heard about Eve before?”

  Ailios squinted again. His throbbing head gave him little chance to remember if he did hear about it. “No,” he said. “I can’t seem to recall. What is it?”

  The archeologist wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What if I told you that maybe there is a way to defeat the Cyons?”

  “Then I would say you’re insane.” That was ridiculous. Everyone knew that there was no way they could defeat the Cyon fleet and their army. The only thing they could do was kill as many Cyons as possible, to cripple their race. But defeat them? No. Bloody. Way.

  Ailios turned. Another throb made him squint, but he continued knocking on the walls.

  “Eve is the weapon,” the archeologist said.

  Ailios knocked and felt his eyebrow rise. He glanced over his shoulder. “A weapon? Eve? What sort of weapon bears such a funny name?”

  “The ultimate weapon. The one that would bring the Cyon domination to an end.”

  Good luck with that, thought Ailios.

  The archeologist went on, “Few years back, I stumbled upon an ancient text that kept repeating the name Eve over and over again. Majo
r Ailig gave me access to the military library. I did a little research and discovered that the ancients owned something with that particular name. They buried it in one of their temples. It didn’t say where exactly, but if you looked closely you would see a pattern emerge. There are twenty temples on Talam with the sign of a snake curled around the Rod of Asclepius, and only one of those is here on Timor.” The archeologist shrugged. “I suppose it was only logical that the only temple outside our home world would house the weapon.”

  Ailios felt a cold breeze caress his hair. He looked up. Two tiny holes gaped at him from above, blowing air into the cell. His eyes quickly dried. He blinked. “It doesn’t sound logical to me,” he said, his mind on those two holes and how to reach them.

  “Let’s say you posses the most powerful weapon ever created…”

  “Mhm.”

  “…Why would you keep it close to everyone’s reach?”

  Ailios knocked under the holes, his hand moving up. Still nothing. “Was it a bomb? One of those … how did they call them…?” He noticed a weak spot in a straight line under the holes, some thirty centimeters down.

  “Fusion bombs?”

  “Mmm. I suppose that was the word.” Ailios squinted, not because of his throbbing head – he almost forgot about it – it was the weak spot on the wall he discovered. It sounded hollow, he was absolutely certain.

  “No, I don’t think so,” said the archeologist. “I believe it is a syringe. The ultimate combination of DNA modifiers.”

  “Hmm…” Ailios scratched his chin. He then put his