Secrets of the Prime Ones (Sentinels Book 2), page 14
“I’ve been better. Probably bone bruise, hopefully not worse, but it hurts like hell, that’s for sure.”
She frowned, her gaze tinged with concern as she looked him over for other injuries. “Can you still fight?”
“Always.”
“Good.”
For the moment, however, there was no more fight to have. Nummer shot the last monster, and it staggered back until Red came from its flank to blast it with her cannon through its chest and shoulders. What remained fell with a thud to the cold floor.
Melias tucked his gun beneath his armpit and rubbed his wounded arm, wincing as he surveyed the carnage around him. He whistled.
“Wow.”
“We are lucky there are not more,” Red said, voice monotone and devoid of concern.
“For now,” Nummer replied.
Steeling himself against the pain, Melias walked over to the lift. “Now, now, none of that talk. Come on, we have a job to do.”
They rode the lift in silence. This one was longer than the rest, the distance longer and the lift rising slower. He wondered if it was because the Barons liked to bask in their self-importance and look out over their kingdom when they came down from their perch.
A part of him thought that he should have felt some dread in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps that very thought was the dread, but really, he felt light. He felt like this was about to end, one way or another. If you’d told him a month ago that he was going to infiltrate one of the most heavily secured places in the galaxy, home to some of the most brutal, cruel, and dangerous people, he would have laughed. This was not a job for Sentinels. And he certainly wouldn't have thought he’d bear witness to the fall of a crime empire.
Yet, here he was. The pain receded, and his mind cleared. There was only the mission, their objective. Nothing else.
He took a deep breath. The lift stopped, and the door slid open.
They were greeted by a dim hallway, whose colorful lights had been broken and flickered. Two dead guards sat with their bodies splayed out. Blood pooled beneath them with the dim light reflecting of it. In the middle of the hall, standing still with its back to them, was a single person. The ragged breathing and twitchy movement told him that it was one of the mindless monsters.
It turned sharply as they came out of the lift. It snarled and jumped at them. Melias and company were silent in their dispatching of the creature. Niath surged forward and impaled the monster on the tip of her poleaxe, halting it in mid-air. Before it could wrest itself free, Melias slashed out with his saber and decapitated it. It stilled, and Niath kicked it from the end of her weapon.
One more room. One final fight.
The door opened. It was a wide room with a perfect three-hundred-sixty-degree window that looked out at the stars and the planet below. The pale light of the system’s distant star cast them in light. This was the top of the station, the executive suite.
There they were, listing around an inset conversation pit. There were five of them, all older men, all large. Two Cereleans, a human, a Yorutan, and a short, stout Girval. He knew there to be seven Barons, so he wondered if the two absentees were elsewhere and thus spared, or if they simply had left the room.
Even if two were alive and out of danger, the Barons would be in ruins as an organization. He felt no remorse for that loss.
The device gleamed in the light, emitting an eerie green glow in the grip of one of the Cerelean Barons.
Slowly, the Barons turned, their movements awkward and unnatural. On Melias and his crew’s way up here, he’d wondered if the Barons were sadistic enough to unleash this carnage on their own people a test, if they were in control of this whole situation, but as the Barons turned to face them, he knew that wasn’t the case. Their eyes were blank and gone, distant. No wounds could be seen, so there was a chance they could be saved, but Melias didn’t have any sympathy for them.
They were large, as some of them had been old and out of shape, but he had no doubt that they possessed the strength given to those affected by the device.
These were the men that had made Tomi’s life hell, who had owned her. Well, not the exact ones, as she had killed her true master and landed on their hitlist, but they were all the same. He wondered what she would do if she was here. Would she lose herself in anger and violence? Would she be paralyzed by fear? Even the strongest of people could be pulled low by their worst fears being in front of them.
But Tomi was strong, and they’d have given her strength too. She wasn’t here, but he knew she was looking on in spirit, hoping for their success and their safe return. He would go back to her with the good news that she was no longer hunted.
He was right that the Barons had the strength of the mindless ones. They moved with a ferocity of muscle and speed that those ghouls possessed, but there were only five of them, and their old, heavy bodies hindered them slightly. In a fight like this, every advantage and disadvantage could turn the tide.
These mindless ones were relentless as all the others, and their hulking frames didn’t stop them. In fact, they absorbed blows better, because their fat necks could weather the hacks of their weaponry better than others, but only so much.
In a flash, faster than it should have been given the weight of the situation, it was suddenly at an end. The Barons lay unmoving, dead as dead could be, with no chance of being revived. Melias didn’t want them to be revived, as they had done innumerable, unthinkable things in their lives.
Dying like this was too good for them, too easy.
He wiped the blood and sweat from his face, his arm flaring with the effort. He looked at the others. Niath had a cut along her forehead, blood trailing past her eye. Nummer took large breaths, but Melias didn’t see any wounds beyond him holding his still-recovering ribs. Red had a crack on her cannon and on her domed helmet, but she’d sustained “injuries” like that before. She would fix herself up in private. He still wasn’t sure how.
Everyone was fine, so it was time for this to end.
He padded over to the Baron with the device, who still had his head but with a few holes in it. He knelt and pried the Baron’s fingers off the device. Its grip was incredibly strong, even in death, but finally, after cracking a few bones, he got it free. Letting out a tired but relieved breath, he put it in his pack.
It was over.
12
Limbo Station was no more. The place was engulfed in chaos. The prisoners were freed, and the Barons’ leadership was dead. Most of them, anyways. They were all the heads of powerful crime families, so this wouldn’t be the end of those families, but at the very least, the Barons wouldn’t be a threat anymore for a while. Other underworld groups would likely swoop in to occupy the power vacuum before long.
Melias hoped all the prisoners got off safely. He hoped the people on the unnamed planet below rebelled and made better lives for themselves. He knew that the ensuing chaos would be hard, even if the end of it would have good results.
Melias, Nummer, Niath, and Red returned to the Goose with few issues, coming across only a few stray mindless ones on their way back. They also found some survivors, but no one messed with them. Before they left, they used the Barons’ biometrics to unlock the station-wide security system, turning off the lockdown and unlocking all the prison cells.
There was no delay. No sooner were they in the cargo hold than Vasya was getting them out of there.
Arke hugged them all, and when she did, Melias let out a yelp when she squeezed his arm. She recoiled and covered her mouth with her hands.
“I’m so sorry!”
“It’s okay.”
Ixion had been able to fix up Tomi a good bit. Healing synthetic skin was within his skillset, but the internal wounds, of which she had a few, were beyond his abilities. Fortunately, they had connections with a droid surgeon, who could help androids and droids alike. Tomi was not the only android in the ranks of the Sentinels.
It was a relief that she wasn’t hurt worse.
He was finishing up with her when they arrived back and departed. Once the medic was done with her, it was Melias’s turn. It was determined he had a bruised bone, which he thought was getting off easy. Red, of course, disappeared to her room for a while, and when she returned, her dome and cannon were repaired.
They were on their way back to Waystation—tired, recovering, but relieved. They were victorious. They had two of the devices in hand, Tomi was back safe with them, and the Barons were no more. That meant that Tomi’s bounty was no more. She would be able to rest easy.
Things were looking up, and Melias was able to smile and relax and think that maybe they would soon be done with this. They would find the rest of the devices, hide them away or destroy them so no one could use them, and then they could take a long, long vacation.
Things, it seemed, were never so easy.
As they all lounged in the common room, more or less left to their own devices, Vasya rushed into the room with a tablet in hand and a worried look behind her veil.
“Everyone, you have to see this, quick!”
The tone, along with the near-panicked look in her eyes, sent alarm bells flaring in his mind. They all lurched to their feet and hurried to her side.
There, they saw the breaking news article. Massacre at Prime Ones Site: fifty dead at a previously unknown Prime Ones site in Yorutan space. Investigators encountered individuals of incredible strength and ferocity that could not be killed when confronted, and Yorutan forces were sent in to quell the threat. Whether this is some new drug or a disease unearthed from the ruins is unknown, but it is advised…
Melias stepped away. He didn’t need to read any more, because the cause was clear.
“Another device,” he groaned. His crew looked at him, worried eyes darting about.
The Lightbringer was back and was on the move. There was no time for rest or for relief. The enemy had made their move, so they would have to make their own. Again.
Things were nowhere near easy…or ended.
See what dangers Melias and crew face next in Lightbringers. Order it now on Amazon.
amazon.com/dp/B0C8X5G45P
Thank You For Reading
Thanks for reading Secrets of the Prime Ones, the second book in the Sentinels series. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I really have a lot of fun writing about the amazing technology the future holds for us, and all the possible chaos :)
The next story in the series is called Lightbringers. Order it now on Amazon.
amazon.com/dp/B0C8X5G45P
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James David Victor, Secrets of the Prime Ones (Sentinels Book 2)
