The Shadows Cycle

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Chapter 21

The War within the Fortress

 

 

            Kara and Mendell took the first left in the hallway that they came to.  This new corridor, after jogging for what seemed like a mile, led to a long flight of stairs that led downward.  At the bottom, they passed through a door, which led them into a large cavernous room where their footsteps echoed around endlessly as a result of the amount of space in the room.  Leading upward to an opening in the top were the remnants of the claws on steel.

            “This is obviously where the Narlan kept their machines,” said Mendell, looking at the shallow gorges in the walls.

            A small door was ajar to their left, allowing light to pour through and make a dim path towards it.  They ran out and immediately found themselves between two groups of Narlan warriors, who had also stopped at the sudden arrival of the two humans.  Kara thought of the gun equipped in the Dalson Rod, and instantly it became the duel-barrel blaster, but it was only slightly different than usual.

            Kara fired and held the trigger, and instantly two lines of bright-blue electricity shot out from the ends.  Hitting their targets, the electricity sprang between the seven warriors at whom she was aiming at.  Still connected to the barrels, more and more electricity was pumped out, which increased the static level between the Narlan.

            Kara ceased her fire, but powerful waves of static still ran through the warriors, and they eventually collapsed.  Turning around to look behind her, Kara saw that Mendel had done almost the same thing to his smaller group.

            “I think yours came from downstairs; look at how the floor curves downward,” Kara told Mendell.  He nodded and they ran to the right hand passage, hoping that it truly led to the lower level.

            Kara was right; at the end of the passage was an elevator shaft which had recently been used.  They took this to the forty-eighth floor of the structure, for that was the lowest that this elevator could take them.  Windows were located on the far end of the room which they had entered.

            “Do you think that these things can turn into grapple claws?” asked Mendell, looking at the Dalson Rod.

            As he was saying this, a pure silver spike was formed from the clear substance within the Rod.

            “Yeah, I would say so,” responded Kara, looking at the silver claw.  She then thought of the grapple, which was also formed seconds later.

            Mendell shot out the windows with his normal blaster, and then they carefully stepped onto the four-inch wide ledge that was just below the opening.  On the ground, which was almost fifty stories beneath them, the Narlan had finally begun to drive back the human forces, who had issued a retreat.  The glow of lasers being shot was still visible, although they were now on the other side of the walls.

            “We have got to get down there, fast,” Mendell said, “but first, let me do this.”

            He reached onto his belt and grabbed four small plasma charges, but despite their size, they could cause tons of damage.  Mendell then threw them into the tower, where two of them rolled to a stop near the elevator shaft; the other two dropped inside of it.

            After he had done this, they aimed their hooks slightly above where they were standing and fired.  The force of the claws drove the spikes into the steel, where they firmly lodged themselves.

            Quickly descending the wall, Kara and Mendell were occasionally fired upon, but all of the shots, which were fired from very far away, missed.

            The wall was dented with hundreds of gorges which had been created by the machines when they descended the wall.  These dents created good footholds, for if Kara or Mendell fell too far, they would probably lose their grip and fall to their deaths below.  This image kept Kara focused on her task, and soon both she and Mendell were on the ground.

            After collecting the grapple claws, which actually had to be forced out by another tool, Mendell took a second rod from his belt.  Kara knew that this was a detonator rod, and then she realized what Mendell was planning to do.

            “You cannot be serious; four plasma bombs are not going to bring down that tower,” she said, looking at him as if he was mad.  “That tower is over one-hundred stories tall, there is just no way!”

            “That is what you think,” Mendell replied, grinning, “but I doubt that that elevator will be able to withstand the explosion of four plasma grenades in such a compact area.  It is going to destroy that tower’s structure.”

            Mendell pressed the button on the rod, and three seconds later, it beeped.  Then, nearly five-hundred feet above them, flames erupted out of the windows, and several of the walls collapsed on themselves, but the tower did not fall; it only swayed back and forth.

            “C’mon,” Mendell breathed through gritted teeth, starting to raise his hand.

            Kara’s eyes widened as the tower began to tilt farther and farther, and then all of a sudden, she heard an earsplitting grinding sound, and the walls completely collapsed.  In front of her, Kara watched the tower fall as if it were in slow motion.  As soon as the tower hit the ground, the entire thing exploded with such a force that the building was briefly lifted back into the air.

            “Kara, get back!”  exclaimed Mendell quickly, pointing at the gates.

            The Narlan warriors were returning to the scene, shocked by what they saw when they entered.  They spread around the fortress, trying to find who had done this to the tower, and Kara and Mendell walked backwards into the shadows near the enormous walls.  Seeing that the Narlan kept pouring through the gates, Kara changed the Dalson Rod into the communicator, and then spoke into it.

            “If ever there was a time to storm the Narlan, it would be now.”

            “We know,” said Brock, the officer whom Kara had left in charge.

            Thousands of pods suddenly flew over the fortress’ walls, and they were releasing waves of missiles as they came.  Explosion after explosion came, and the Narlan looked skyward, just as beams of light flew through the gates.  The rovers were firing in at the Narlan, who had now begun to retreat to the furthest wall.

            The human troops then poured back through the gates and followed the Narlan.  They too spread about the fortress, firing at anything that moved.  The Narlan tried to turn and face the humans, but the intensity of the bombardment was so fierce that most of them were unable to.  The most that the Narlan were able to do was blindly fire behind them, but this tactic only worked by killing very few of the human troops.

            Kara and Mendell joined the fray, shooting with their normal blasters and cutting through obstacles with the Dalson Rod’s sword.  After only a relatively short while, the Narlan were being pushed back into a corner of the walls, but most of them were starting to escape inside the tower that they were near.  Kara knew that once inside, the Narlan were safe from nearly everything, for she knew that the humans would get lost if they went inside, which gave the Narlan warriors a slight advantage.

            “Do not follow the Narlan inside,” Kara ordered.  “Have the rovers focus their fire at the towers, preferably the windows.”

            The humans ceased their brutal advancement and let the rovers slowly roll forward.  As they did so, the aerial battle above them furiously continued; bright explosions of flame and smoke occurred every second, and it was still too early in the battle to tell who would take control of the air.

            The rovers were firing their lasers at every level of the tower, and the windows that they were hitting were being blown apart, and glass was raining down on top of the Narlans’ forces.  The Narlan who were still trying to make their way inside finally got the chance to fire back at the humans, but it was not enough resistance, for they were just too crowded to fire safely in the back.  Therefore they tried to get inside the tower faster, for if they could not make it safely inside, they would surely lose the battle.

            Kara looked up as she heard several more explosions in the sky; the humans were beginning to outmatch the Narlan in the aerial battle.  The Narlan were finally starting to realize this, so they decided to give up in that section of the fight.  Instead, they were forming a new strategy to help out their forces on the ground.

            “Mendell,” Kara quickly called to him.

            “Yes Kara, what is it?” he responded.

            She pointed up at the sky: Thousands of feet above them, the humans and Grekil had taken control of the air, but now thousands of lights were facing the ground.

            “What are they doing?”  Mendell asked out loud, and the soldiers around them also looked skyward.

            The Narlan were diving towards the ground as fast as they could go.  As they watched, the Narlan started firing missiles at the humans, but before anyone it, the first explosions were occurring around them.  Twenty-five yards away, Kara watched as twenty soldiers were killed by an explosion, and the ship that had shot at them came crashing into another segment, killing fifty.

            All around them, the same thing was happening to other parts of the army.  The humans were being forced to scatter and run for their lives, heading back toward the front gates.

            “We have got to get out of here!”  yelled Mendell over the sounds of the crashes and explosions.

            He and Kara ran back toward the gates, but just as they were about to exit, Kara began to run to the right, and Mendell followed behind her.

            “What are you doing?” he inquired, quickly stepping behind a small building that they were next to.

            She pulled a silver disk from her belt.

            “This,” she said, showing it to him, “might be able to stall the Narlan long enough so that we will have more time to get away.”

            Kara took a small chip off of the disk near a switch and put it in the Dalson Rod.  Then she stepped out from behind the building and flung the disk.

            She went back to the Dalson Rod and thought of the chip that she had just put in it.  Kara waited for three-minutes as the disk flew through the air; the longer she waited, the larger of an explosion there would be.  Most times, the soldiers waited for ten-seconds for the detonation to occur; this explosion would be huge.

            As soon as she saw that the disk was beginning to fly over the Narlan, Kara pressed the chip.  The disk immediately dropped and hit the ground, but it did not explode.

            “What the-” started Kara, but Mendell cut her off.

            “Kara, that chip has to break for the disk to explode.”

            She looked at the chip and broke it, looking up just in time to see the explosion, which had occurred instantly.  It was so powerful that the ground shook, and all of the front ranks of the Narlan that had been chasing the humans were destroyed.

            “Go,” Mendell told Kara, and they ran out of the gates.

 

            Forty-minutes later, all of the humans and most of the Narlan had gotten out of the fortress.  There were still several small battles happening outside of the walls, but most of both armies had escaped to the empty plains further out in the land.

            Light was starting to creep up on the horizon of the planet, signaling the beginning of the day.  This proved as an advantage to the humans, for they could run faster than the Narlan, now that they could see where they were going.

            Just outside of the fortress, a small group of humans was defending themselves against a barrage of Narlan with three times as many warriors.  The Narlan, unable to get past a force-shield that humans had generated, were crushing the shield’s energy with a barricade of missiles.

            “Most of the troops have escaped, but they are still being followed by the Narlan army.  The rest, well you see what is happening.  Any group of humans that did not escape with the rest of the troops is being driven back towards the fortress, where they are met with a force of Narlan warriors that are waiting to destroy them.  According to these officers, the only section of humans that are not being attacked are a few miles northwest of here,” exclaimed Mendell.

            “Where are the retreating forces headed?” asked Kara.

            “The officers told me back to Haven.  Is there a problem?” Mendell questioned.

            “Yes, I had told the navy that we would hold off the Narlan for at least two days to give them time to practice and get ready for an attack.  We cannot just have the Narlan storm into Haven while the navy is still unprepared. We need to warn the fleet to expect an attack,” she answered him.

            Mendell and Kara walked to the shield.  The officers dissolved a small opening into the side.

            “Yes?” asked a short officer who was operating the portable communications booth.

            “Call off the troops on their retreat to Haven,” ordered Kara.  “Our Naval fleet needs more time to prepare.  Instead, have them flee to the mountains.  I can tell the other half of our army to intercept the Narlan there.”