James Somers - Heir to the King

MAREB'S handheld scanner began to sound a warning. Ships were approaching. He took a moment to send a hand signal to Jael forty feet across the wall at his own position.

A swarm of troop transports sailed over the crater rim and descended to the crater floor near the stolen ship their group had used to get here. They remained crouched in their positions as the symbyte troops began to file out of their ships and surround the transport.

They scanned the ship in vain; the hull's materials were designed specifically to block such intrusions into the military vehicles. The soldiers began to approach the transport carefully and gained access quickly into the main compartment.

Lucin looked on from his own transport as his troops made their way inside.

"Commander, did you find the boy?" asked Lucin over the com-link.

Suddenly the transport exploded in front of him in a massive concussion wave and fireball. It shattered the windshield in his transport, killing the pilot.

Lucin emerged quickly from his damaged transport's main troop compartment to find many of his symbyte soldiers lying dead on the ground around the blast site. Others were filing out of their own transport ships, weapons at the ready as a wave of pulse laser fire began to rain down upon them all.

Jael and Mareb began to cut down as many of the enemy soldiers as they could with massive amounts of rapid pulse blaster fire from their respective perches in the crater wall.

The symbytes soon returned their fire and the rock around them began to crumble as hundreds of symbytes soldiers began to advance upon their positions. Realizing they couldn't do anymore out in the open, the two Horva quickly retreated under fire to the bunker entrance in plain view of the enemy. As they passed through the rock door they broke into a sprint downward toward the lower level that housed the Equinox; the symbytes followed quickly as expected.

"I want all the levels searched!" shouted Lucin, as the soldiers filed through the entrance, "Find the boy at all costs and kill the others!"

The bunker contained ten levels in all, housing various military and scientific technologies, along with living quarters. The symbyte soldiers dispersed at each level while the next group of symbytes proceeded to each successive level to continue the search.

Lucin proceeded downward toward the base level with a squad of his own. He tried to sense where the boy might be as he attempted to communicate with the organism within him. He was getting closer, he knew it; only a little further and the boy would be with them finally.

JAEL and Mareb came running through the hangar bay's only door and proceeded up the loading ramp to the Equinox. They tossed their smoking guns to the compartment floor as they entered the flight chamber where the others were already strapped in waiting for them.

"Let's go! They're coming in right behind us!" shouted Mareb as they found available flight chairs and strapped themselves in.

Grod activated the landing thrusters and brought the ship upward a little, hovering above the bay floor as he locked the final coordinates into the helm and started the transgate sequence.

A flood of symbyte soldiers came running into the bay with their weapons blazing. Pulse laser fire pounded into the hull with little effect as the soldiers tried to surround the vessel hovering above them.

A wall of light pierced the bay ahead of the ship. Grod tapped the command sequence for the bunker on the ship's transmitter panel.

"No!! Stop them!!" shouted Lucin as the large ship suddenly lurched forward into the transgate jump field. Another flash and the ship and its portal were gone from the hangar bay, leaving Lucin and his troops alone.

Lucin sank to his knees and pounded his fists into the pavement. Now what? He had lost the boy. How would he make the host bodies of one mind and body without a mentally powerful host?

As Lucin pondered the question, he suddenly noticed a voice coming over the intercom. It was counting, "three, two, one."

The symbyte soldiers within the bunker never knew what had hit them. The reactor core powering the underground facility erupted with such ferocity that most of the crater wall above collapsed inward upon the hundreds of symbyte soldiers and their transport ships that covered the crater floor. A portion of their military was destroyed in the last trap of the Barudii and Horva on planet Castai.

IT was a mild sunny day on Kosiva's Guniran province the day that his father, Wynn and General Grod left for negotiations with the Guniran council. Kale sat in the grass outside of the ship thinking about recent events as a cool breeze provided relief from the sunlight.

The Kosivans were a peaceful people, and highly intelligent though they purposely minimized overt technology in their lifestyle. The arrival of the Equinox on their planet had alarmed the population somewhat. They weren't sure if the Castillians were to be trusted and they were familiar with the Vorn military which had visited them in the past. The Vorn had evidently left the impression of a coming invasion, but had not come back since their visit over thirty years ago.

The Council of Gunira province was now ready, after a month, to consider an alliance with the group on board the Equinox, and his father and the others were to be gone into the main city for at least two days. Only his mother, Emil, Mareb and Jael remained behind with him and the ship.

It had not been a good month for Kale. The symbyte within his body was constantly speaking in his mind; still trying to take over. He often had horrific dreams of murdering everyone on board the ship at the symbyte's command. Kale didn't sleep well anymore. He feared he might succumb to its influence while unconscious and actually perform the awful deed.

It had been a difficult decision for him to make, but he couldn't risk hurting his family and friends; he had to leave them to save them. His mother, as brilliant a doctor and scientist as she was, still had no answer as to how to remove or destroy the organism terrorizing him from within. And his body, unlike Emil's, was not able to fight it off. He could feel it getting stronger even while he struggled to maintain control.

His mother, Emil and the two Horva soldiers had gone to survey an area just north of the camp where the Guniran council had recently approved for the group to begin building a permanent facility for housing and other needs. The Gunirans would be providing the necessary materials, technology and labor as long as the talks today went as well as expected.

He was alone with the ship, claiming he didn't feel like making the trip today, and in his present condition they believed him. Kale breathed in another deep breath of the fresh air and stood up, carrying a letter he had composed to his father and mother. He made his way back into the ship and headed back to the transgate control room.

He had spent the last week and a half, since making his decision to leave, studying the operations of the transgate by way of the ship's computer. He had found a suitable location, another planet that the Vorn military had apparently rejected because of the hostile inhabitants that controlled the planet. It would be the last place his family would look to find him. And if he ran into trouble it wouldn't be a peaceful people that suffered his wrath if he went out of control.

Kale laid the letter on the transgate console and tapped in his own preset jump sequence. Once the gate was ready, he activated it. A wall of light snapped into place in the room ahead of the console. The gate could jump the entire ship or a small group depending on the need.

He picked up his travel bag from the floor next to the console and hoisted the backpack of supplies up on his shoulder. He wore his Castillian army uniform loaded with weapons that would give him an advantage in the hostile environment, and in the other hand he carried more supplies. He tapped another key on the display that would begin a scrambling sequence on his jump point once he passed through the portal.