Beyond the Sky: Chapter 27
For Freedom
Out of the pouring rain, a trio of headlights came into view. Udan waved the truck forward, urging it into a rundown shack. It parked and the engine turned off, leaving only the pinging of drops on a tin roof, and the trickle of leaks.
Velli jogged over. Climbing from the cab were two strangers in JNF uniforms, from Commander Gracan’s squad. And in the truck?
Teliv whistled when the rear curtains were pulled aside. Three old oil drums, tied to a pallet and connected by wires to electronics and a battery.
“Gracan’s Firecrackers, they call them,” Udan said. “Enough fertilizer to blow a building in half! Give my thanks to your commander, lads! The rest of you, get some rest! We leave at dawn!”
Velli met Udan in the courtyard next morning, before the sun rose. “I want to drive the truck.”
“What?” Udan stared like she’d just grown a pair of wings. “You know what that means! If anything goes wrong, you’ll have to—”
“Please. You know why.”
She found Teliv and a half-dozen others packing up near the exit: shorter rifles and submachine guns, with their civilian disguises and backpacks.
“You’re heading out?” Velli asked.
Teliv raised his ears. “Wish me fortune.” His team was heading to the slave market, to cause a diversion.
Velli replied, “Don’t feel too bad, if you hit any buyers.”
The Burrower warriors met them on the road. A few hours later, Velli was sitting in a stuffy truck cab with the plated form of Prev, the golden-scaled warrior. The truck sat some steps from the road, nestled amid trees and facing towards the city, unseen in the distance.
Velli checked her watch. Almost time.
“Why are you doing this?” Prev asked.
“Huh?” Velli asked, checking her watch again for lack of anything else to do.
“There are many others in your cell equally suited to this task. No need for someone so young to risk their life in excess.”
“Those slavers hurt my family.” She looked down the road, in the direction of the compound. “I want to hurt them back.”
“As good a reason as any.”
“What about you?”
Prev grunted. “It is simple. For a commander to be anywhere but leading the attack himself is cowardice, among my people. My men would cease to follow me.”
Above the trees, a cloud of smoke burst upward. Right on time.
She started the truck, heard the explosion’s crack as it reached them. “Arm the bomb.”
“Done.” Prev flipped a switch.
Velli dropped the truck into gear and eased it out onto the road. Overhead, several passing Yunes had changed course, looping around to rubberneck at the blast. She rounded a corner and floored the accelerator. Elacmagolintec’s compound was ahead, just over a hill.
Its high grey walls obscured the buildings behind, she saw the peaks of warehouses and the flat roof of a mansion with a Flyer roost atop. Guards above the gates raised machine guns and began firing, seeing immediately what was coming.
Lashing the steering wheel in place and propping a brick on the pedal, Velli popped open the door, sucked in a breath, and dropped out.
The impact winded her, she felt her head hit a hard spot and saw stars as she rolled across the grass. Coming to her senses, she saw Prev beside the road a ways down, and a now-empty truck barreling for the gate. She clutched the detonator.
Ruts and bumps in the road diverted the truck from its intended path, for a moment Velli thought it would tip over before it reached the wall, the mission lost. It kept going.
She flipped the switch at the moment of impact. The blast wasn’t like a TV show, a fireball conflagration, instead the vehicle exploded in a clod of black smoke and shrapnel, concrete chunks hurtling skyward as a huge section of wall collapsed in. One arced out away from the compound, Velli followed its trajectory and rolled aside just in time.
Commander Udan’s trucks rounded the bend, gunners already firing. Velli cheered as the vehicles passed, the last one slowing just enough for Dobok to haul her aboard.
The first two trucks rammed through the debris and burning wreckage, the others stopped outside the breach. Velli took her rifle and hurried through, crouching behind a pallet. Already, slaves were fleeing through holes created in the warehouse walls, mostly Burrowers and Cepic.
“Squad One!” Udan shouted, exchanging fire with guards in a tower. “Engage the hostiles! Squad Two, liberate the warehouses! Three, find some transportation! Four, on me!”
Time to go for the head. She covered them as they crossed a road between two warehouses. There were relatively few slaves here at any given time, mostly it was a processing center were raiders would bring their captives before the trains took them north. Most of the escapees she saw didn’t yet have brands on their foreheads, they could return to society with relative ease.
“Through here.” Udan pried a lock from a door, they entered an anteroom full of boxes. From behind a stack came a burly Fesk slaver, a few crack shots dropped him.
At left was a trapdoor, Udan opened it and tossed a grenade down for good measure. “Clear.” He looked back up.
“This must lead to the mansion,” Nacca said, following Velli.
“Not much resistance,” Udan mused. “I think he sent most of the guards to the wall.”
“If he’s here at all.” They’d chosen a day when Elacmagolintec usually went away, to the Supreme Leader’s court.
The mansion’s first floor was silent as they climbed out a second trapdoor, not even an alarm. Velli crept along a hallway, noting the ostentatious trim and paintings. A staircase lay ahead.
She sighted a pair of shoes and jumped back just in time to avoid a hail of bullets from the second level. The squad returned fire, two guards went down and slumped against the railing.
“There’s got to be a basement for this place,” Udan said. “That’s where our bombs will be! Velli, take Nacca and check the upstairs. Rest of you, with me!”
Those guards had been the upstairs security; the upper hallway was clear. Ahead was a copper-trimmed double-door, they crept to a stop outside it. Velli signaled to Nacca, who reached down and unlatched the knob.
Velli burst in, rifle raised. No one to left or right, and by the desk at center two creatures. One was a Nevi servant, a little fuzzball of a brachiator with long limbs, dangling from an overhead swingbar. The other was the slave-lord himself.
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