“Acknowledged.”
Operators connected to the mind of assigned Warriors on the battlefield to look through their eyes at what was happening. They relayed that information as needed to central command and shared the visual highlights with us so that we would have a clear idea of what we were walking into.
The rough and spiky edges of the dark stones forming the inside of the crater began to smooth out as we approached the maze. Varnog frowned and stirred uneasily in his seat and exchanged a look with Violet sitting behind us at the combat station. That immediately set me on alert.
“There’s something fishy,” Varnog said, psychic energy emanating from him. “These look like secret panels, just the right size to hide something that will cause some serious trouble.”
“Agreed,” Violet said. “I will keep my aim on them.”
“Show me,” I asked my mate.
It was brief, a mere flash before my eyes, but shining bright in my mind. It would have looked inconspicuous to me had my mate not pointed them out. But now that I had seen them, a major wave of unease washed over me.
“Warn Tabitha. She needs to alert the others to fly away from them,” I said.
“On it,” Varnog replied, his face going slack.
As if triggered by this action, the bridges forming the maze began shifting to a new configuration before us. At the same time the panels Varnog had pointed out began glowing in the same frightening way the shields of the Zombie Workers accompanying Khutu the day he had kidnapped us on the Moon of Melibos had done before zapping us.
“Fall back!” I shouted in the com, before broadcasting it as far and wide psychically as I could. “Avoid those beams of light!”
But even as I spoke those words, the beams shot out horizontally, crisscrossing the walls of the crater.
“No!” Violet shouted, as many of our men’s vessels disappeared from my scanner.
I didn’t have to ask the source of her panic. The dampening effect of countless psychic disruptors hit me all at once.
“We’ve got to go get them!” Violet pleaded.
“I can get them,” I whispered.
Despite the clear strain the disruptors had on my abilities, my ‘mutation’ allowed me to bypass their effect.
“Ayana, get ready to yank them out of my vessel,” I mind-spoke to her.
“I’m ready!” she exclaimed, fear and hope flooding our psychic connection.
Tuning out Violet’s panicked voice and Varnog’s appeasing one calming her down, I reached out for the disembodied souls of my Vanguard brothers while hovering fifty meters or so above the beginning of the maze.
Ayana’s consciousness lurked at the edge of my psychic void, waiting to snag any soul that entered my psychic vessel. I caught Fury first. He had no sooner entered my vessel than Ayana pulled him right out, making room for Rogue second. Then Steele and Rage, followed by a few more Warriors and Dragons.
Judging by the number of vessels that had disappeared compared to the number of souls I had rescued, there were more of our men who had fallen but who were out of my range.
“Violet, we’re going in after our other boys. Nuke those beams,” I said.
“You got it,” she said, her anger palpable that they had killed her mate, even though he was currently being reborn.
Varnog psychically informed Yumi of our plan, while setting up his own aiming visor to help Violet.
“I need two volunteers to follow behind us,” I mind-spoke to the other pilots of our Team Alpha.
Fatima and Sakura, two phenomenal pilots, were the first to answer in the flood of volunteers.
“Follow in my wake and nuke those beams,” I said.
As soon as they acknowledged, I dove down, letting myself fall into that trance-like state that almost made me one with the vessel I was piloting. It made my body react to my thoughts faster than my consciousness could even comprehend. Like my two companions, I easily recognized the new pattern of the maze and navigated at high speed, although holding myself back from going faster than my team could destroy the beams.
Halfway through the maze, the pattern shifted again. Heart pounding, I realized that in order to avoid crashing into one of the bridges, I had to dash forward… into the path of the beam.
“BRACE!” I shouted to my team.
I sped past the bridge ahead before reversing my thrusters to maximum and lifting the nose of the ship. The vessel whined, shaking violently, then stalled. Setting us back into hover mode, I attempted to glide past the beam, but with the shifting bridges closing in on us, I didn’t see how we would make it. Shots coming from behind us obliterated the nearby beams, saving our asses at the last minute. I dropped down, avoiding the bridges as they settled in their new configuration, and sent a grateful psychic nudge to Fatima and Sakura following us.
Treading carefully, we weaved our way around the rest of the maze, destroying all the beams on our path, until we finally reached the other side. The disruptors’ range ended about ten meters further down, I nearly wept with relief sensing the healthy psychic minds of the rest of our boys whose souls I had not captured. Wrath gave me a gentle mental caress, reassuring me he was fine. I then sent the all clear for the rest of Team Alpha to make their way down the crater.
We flew down to what appeared to be a gigantic ship hangar and storage facility way at the back. Roughly carved directly into the dark stones of the mountain, both the walls and the floor clearly indicated this had been a rushed job purely focused on functionality. A single tunnel, big enough to accommodate a large chaser, provided the only visible way into the bowels of the secret base. A pair of massive, reinforced doors blocked its access. Next to it stood a security checkpoint with a complex set of monitors and a console that likely controlled its mechanism, including that of the maze.
Hundreds of Kryptid corpses—most of them visibly deformed or crippled—littered the floor. Our men and the Queen’s Guard surrounded the handful of survivors, kneeling before them. Judging by their much smaller numbers remaining, the Queen’s Guard had gotten seriously hammered on their way down, earning them at least the honorable death they had sought.
I landed my vessel next to the ones of our allies, soon imitated by Sakura and Fatima. We disembarked, and approached Wrath standing next to Legion, Chaos, Doom and Stran, while Hulax was addressing the surviving Soldiers that appeared to have surrendered. Then again, it was hard to be certain with the handful of Scelks towering over them. Bane and Reaper were at the console, no doubt trying to find a way to open those reinforced doors.
It didn’t take a genius to realize those Soldiers were the latest offspring of the General with the poor Queen Selixa that he had captured from the rebel base of the Northern Plains of Kryptor. A couple of them appeared to have been spared any kind of visible deformity. That the others had been allowed to live spoke volumes about the depth of Khutu’s desperation.
“…serving an enemy of Kryptor,” Commander Hulax said in a stern voice to the kneeling Soldiers. “Look at yourselves and then look at the Queen’s Guard standing before you. You may not have been raised by the proper Nursery Workers of our homeworld, but your instincts tell you none of this is as it should be. In your hearts, you know what Khutu is. So, you have a choice: you can help us restore the proper order by joining forces with us to eliminate the threat that he represents, or you can die as abominations and traitors to the Kryptid Empire.”