Earth Warden: A Sci Fi Adventure (The Ancient Guardians Book 1) by Tony James Slater

Author:Tony James Slater [Slater, Tony James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Various Things (ADT)
Published: 2018-08-27T22:00:00+00:00

21

Reaching around for his staff, Kreon palmed the rune on its pommel.

Then he hesitated for a handful of heartbeats – until the sound of the study door exploding inwards gave him the distraction he needed.

Kyra was through the bedroom door almost before he’d opened it, diving into a roll that took her towards the lift shafts. He was dimly aware of the movement off to one side as she came to her feet, disembowelling the guard in front of her in the same motion. Then the haze of battle descended. Propelled by his mechanical leg Kreon crossed the lobby in three great strides, ploughing into the gang of soldiers like a breaching torpedo.

Fully half the men went down, no match for the sheer weight and momentum of his charge. Flailing out with both arms, he connected simultaneously with two of his adversaries. Their armour provided little resistance for his toughened metal hand; it could punch through hull plating as easily as it could through flesh. Anything hit by the gravity orb atop the staff in his other hand was simply reduced to jelly.

From the corner of his eye he saw a head roll – the other man on overwatch, decapitated at long range by Kyra’s twisting blades. He planted a steel foot, crushing the chest of a guard who’d fallen at his charge. He swung his staff around, seeking a target – and came face to face with the muzzle of a blaster rifle. Time seemed to stop. He could see the eyes of the man facing him through the slit in his mask, could see the beads of sweat on his temple as his finger tightened on the trigger. Kreon’s staff swung up in slow motion – too far, and much too late. He braced for the life-ending explosion—

Just as the guard’s head disintegrated.

Tris, firing from the doorway, had scored his first kill.

Time snapped back to normal. Kreon glanced around, noting as he did that the body in front of him was not Tristan’s first hit – another soldier lay in a crumpled heap against the nearest wall. Kyra had thrown a knife clear across the room with such force that it pinned her third target to the wall. Between them they’d cleaned up the entire cover detail, leaving only the men in the centre. Of those, one had died on Kreon’s impact, two had been pulped, and one he’d stood on. In saving Kreon’s life, Tris had eliminated another…

Which left one. That soldier, literally the last man standing, held his rifle out in surrender. “I don’t—” he started.

Which was when Kyra cut him in half from behind.

“I do believe he was about to give up,” Kreon reproved her.

Kyra shrugged. “Yeah, I was thinking about that too,” she said. “But then, we were doing so well.”

They rode the High Warden’s private lift down to the catacombs in silence.

Kreon’s thoughts tumbled back and forth between triumph and despair. On the one hand, surviving this long was a minor miracle. On the other, they’d now utterly destroyed any possibility of remaining on Atalia.

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