Mastermind by Aer-ki Jyr

Author:Aer-ki Jyr [Jyr, Aer-ki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

Four hours later…

“Close them, now,” Kyler said in between plasma rod parries with three more of the never ending lizard infantry.

“What about the Archons outside the doors? There are several dozen of you,” Linda said from the command level.

“We’ll be fine,” he said, jabbing one of the lizards with its own plasma rod after a Fornax burst that disrupted the nervous systems of all three. “Shut them now.”

“Closing,” Linda said, nodding to another staffer in the city’s control center who pressed the final commands into the console before him. On the central holographic display detailing the subsurface battles they were gradually losing, the five tunnel entrances into the city flashed with highlights as meter-thick doors began to inch their way into position, physically closing off the entrances where before there had only been containment force fields.

It took the better part of a minute for them to all close, with Archon and Regular troops ducking back through at the last minute as the lizards approached two of the positions on foot, with the wall of water held back a few sections in each location by still intact energy fields.

“Doors closed,” she told Kyler. “Good luck.”

“So long as they have det packs they’re still coming through,” the trailblazer reminded her. “We just bought ourselves some more time. Beef up our defense lines inside.”

“On it,” she said as Kyler cut the comm from his end, no doubt busy killing more lizards.

“We’ve got a flight of dropships and mantises inbound from Seaquest,” another staffer reported. “They’re requesting permission to land in the city.”

“Are we clear?” Linda asked, glancing at the hologram but not relying on her cursory look.

“No aerial lizard contacts showing. No known launch capable submersibles.”

“Open shafts 3 and 4. Launch two skeets on patrol.”

Up on the ocean surface two tiny shield columns reached up from the seafloor and broke the surface, then began widening as they pushed a mile’s worth of water aside, gradually creating a pair of open air corridors capable of carrying the wider aerial craft straight down into the city. As those formed two smaller ones manifested beside them and launched the skeets into the air where they split up and began circling around the perimeter.

All of Manaan’s transports had already left the city with passengers onboard and had yet to return. The incoming flight was from their twin city, carrying Archons and Regulars along with a number of small aquatics craft. Those carrying personnel went straight for the open shafts, with a pair of Falcon-class dropships being the first to settle into a hover and carefully descend down into the shafts with the ocean water poised around them in heavy walls ready to come crashing down on top of them if the shields failed.

Four Dragon-class dropships ignored the shafts and landed in the water itself above the city, opening up their holds and releasing schools of arrowheads into the war zone below. With their cargo released the dropships slowly rose back up, draining their holds of the water,

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