Free The Exiled Earthborn by Paul Tassi Page A

pinky, and pointed those two up. Lucas was unsure of what exactly he was signaling, but no one wanted to break radio silence to tell him. Four enemies ahead?
    Before he could speculate further, Maston clenched his fist and the other four Guardians sprinted around the corner with him. Lucas pushed off the wall and took off after them. He rounded the tunnel bend just in time to see the Guardians in front open fire. On the ground, he saw two guards being riddled with silenced plasma bursts. Above, Kiati and Silo had fired at two points Lucas couldn’t identify, but debris rained down from the ceiling and he had a guess at what had just been destroyed. Cameras .
    He didn’t even get to fire a shot; the Guardian unit took out all their targets in seconds with extreme efficiency. Silo motioned for him to take one of the dead guard’s arms, and they quickly moved him to the side of the tunnel, out of the light above them. A massive door stood before them, and Maston was checking readouts on his wrist.
    “What is it?” Kiati asked him, breaking her usual stoic silence.
    “I’m not sure,” Maston answered honestly. “It would appear to be a hangar, though I’m not detecting any life inside.”
    “Sir,” the dark-skinned woman said, sifting through a display on a small tablet. “I’m getting some bizarre energy signatures from in there.”
    Maston looked at a trio of squiggly lines in the palm of her hand. He shook his head.
    “This doesn’t make sense. Are you sure that’s right?”
    The woman nodded.
    Silo held up a small chipcard he’d looted from the dead guard they’d just finished dragging.
    “We going in?” he asked as he handed the card to Maston.
    “It’s the only way through, and we’ll lose too much time if we backtrack. Just stay sharp.”
    Maston walked over to the side of the entrance and inserted the chip into a blinking console. The great metal door let out a groan that echoed throughout the hallway and slowly parted in the middle. Maston led the Guardians in, two at a time, and Lucas walked into the chamber next to Silo, whose eyes and gun darted to every moan and creak coming from within.
    The room they found before them was circular and surprisingly vacant. There were mounds of scrap metal in small piles around the cavernous area, but otherwise it was completely barren. Looking up, Lucas saw the walls of the cylinder curve upward until they reached a massive, round skylight that was easily thirty feet in diameter and filled the room with an almost pleasant coat of moonlight. The six of them fanned out and began to explore the bowl, which appeared deserted. Then why was it being guarded?
    Lucas was drawn to a particularly large mound of debris and walked toward it with Natalie raised. He heard electrical whirring, and as he circled around it, he found himself staring at a collection of consoles laced with holographic controls resting under a cascade of monitors. A workstation of sorts? As he approached, he recognized symbols that littered the screens. Xalan symbols.
    “Guys,” he whispered into the comm. “I think I’ve got something here.”
    Maston and the other five began to walk over to his position, but suddenly they all put fingers to their ears. The noise in Lucas’s head was a cacophony at first, but soon dissipated into more recognizable sounds: yelling and gunfire.
    “All units, this is Splinter Seven,” came the frantic voice on the other end. “We’re blown. I don’t know how, but we were spotted. They’ve engaged us in the northeast tunnel. Gattio and Horva are down, I’ve been hit. Expect resistance wherever you are momentarily. Mission is now sparked.”
    “Shit!” Maston cried and flipped channels on his receiver. He patched himself into the enemy feed, which was broadcast out into the room. There was yelling in broken Soran.
    “They’re in tunnels two, five, nine, ten, and fifteen. Wait, six as well.”
    “How did they find the facility? How did we not we see