The Wars of Zegandaria by Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov (find a book to read .txt) 📕

And yet hope seemed to have already won. The hope of a new life! He now believed much more that the end had come. And his chest heaved contentedly to inhale the compressed air that the suit's suction system was feeding him.

Nundrag met him on the surface, proudly riding his Groandus. Beside him, his battle companions dragged bodies of the slain, but this time they did not feed them to their animals. They had respect, and they knew they shouldn't!

- 'We found out about Elmbaum's betrayal. I myself sent my brother secretly on a journey to the northeast to find out the truth fully. Instead of killing each other, it is high time we find the real culprit and let him get his just deserts. We are also your brothers because we are descended from you. This whole fabricated legend has been shattered to dust. Everything will now fall into place, or so I hope. My father is a clever man. He may be cruel and ruthless. But he is smart.,' the prince spoke through an interpreter who struggled to garble his words into human speech. It was definitely amusing.

- 'And what is your brother really looking for?,' Stockton asked him.

- 'Seva's armour!,' was the short reply.

- 'Se- what?,' Stockton puzzled.

- 'Seva, the last Great Queen of Au Kaktir,' the prince said through a chuckle. 'It was actually a skeleton that my warriors placed there. If he won't listen to me, at least let him listen to her. Or read what's written on the note.'

Even though he didn't fully understand Stockton, he couldn't help but agree that the guarrons did want to help him, and they did.

- 'And when will he be back?,' asked Stockton again. 'It's time for us all to take on the main villain together.'

- 'It won't be easy. He has long since left these parts.,' the prince muttered with a sigh. 'We can only wait and hope we're on the right track to catch him.'

CHAPTER TEN: RODWELL

Rodwell. It was a place that seemed to have suffered some terrible misfortune, the effects of which the most exquisite pen and the most flowery tongue would have been unable to describe. The sense of desolation and hopelessness radiated from everywhere. The traces of the destruction were everywhere visible. Portable communication towers had been torn out and half demolished, machine-gun nests had been turned into heaps of slag, exposed and ragged - with more holes than a honeycomb, and huge craters over five metres deep yawned where soldiers' wards were supposed to be. Here and there the wind that blew made a number of rubbish and debris roll across the surface. The lifeless bodies of soldiers with pre-death terror written on their faces lay prostrate and useless to anyone. A veritable mortuary. It was as if someone's experienced hand had attempted to not just destroy, but outright wipe this human abode from the face of Zegandaria once and for all. This effectively left Ubunder's Northern Front almost completely defenseless, and the only obstacle the Elohian faced was the remnants of the Southern Front they were currently fleeing! A veritable catastrophe!

Such thoughts swirled through Sasia's head as the small battle speeder flew over the remains of the battle approaches. He and Zengar One-eyed could barely fit in the cramped cockpit. Sasia mentally thanked that the Ubunder's military designers had provided a second, spare seat behind the pilot.

Needless to describe the inhuman effort it had cost them to get out of the underground tunnel and out of the base after the guarrons had collapsed the hangars almost completely. Their escape was a true miracle.

They were both very aware of that fact.

Although she seemed seemingly calm, in truth it had to be admitted that Sasia still didn't have full confidence in One-eyed. Despite her excellent military training as an elite pilot, as she struggled to keep the battle battered speeder on course, her built up instinct for self-preservation made her imagine the little Tanturan man, no more than six feet tall, suddenly digging his tiny fingers into her neck and strangling her to death. Then it went dark before her eyes. Then the speeder slowly loses altitude, spirals like a badly folded paper racket, and crashes into the ground, bursting into flames that envelop it from all directions. Recovering from her heavy imaginings, Sasia shook her head and concentrated on the flight of the machine.

Her misgivings were due to a variety of reasons, but her greatest fears were due to the fact that they were now truly running out of oxygen. It was a real stroke of good fortune that in the speeder cockpit, she kept two spare compressed air capsules at all times, which were virtually intact despite the infernal fire that had broken out in the hangars. At the moment, they were the only reason they were alive. But she knew that once they ran out, doom was now inevitable. No amount of heroism and luck could replace the compressed oxygen their lungs were greedily gulping down as the lack of fresh one was making them accustomed to it.

Because of Rodwell's foggy weather, Sasia was forced to fly at an extremely low altitude, a fact that stretched her already frayed nerves to the limit. Sasia did not know this region well. It was true that she had access to military maps of this part of the planet, but she had never come this close. Who knew what was waiting for them down there? And inevitably they would have to land, for their fuel was nearly depleted.

If someone had told her that she would have to make such a flight with an almost complete stranger into the very heart of one of the most mysterious and dangerous places on the planet, she would certainly have thought them crazy. But there was no turning back.

- 'Do you have any idea where we're supposed to be flying?,' she suddenly asked One-eyed, who seemed to have frozen and she couldn't even detect his presence.

- 'Of course, madam,' he replied a little greasily. 'Uncle Zengar is true to his word.'

- 'Our oxygen's almost running out,' she stammered slightly, saying it with an awkwardness that made herself startle.

- 'I know that very well,' One-eyed replied calmly.

After a short silence he added:

- That's another guarantee that you'll keep your promise and not try to blow my brains out like in that damned tunnel.

The last words were spoken with a slightly wry smile, but Sasia seemed to detect a subtle reproach in them.

- 'Where are we going, anyway?,' she couldn't stop herself from asking.

- 'To our friends in Rodwell, of course,' One-eyed replied without batting an eyelid.

'Hope every leave,

Stepping into this hour,

To Him above pray,

He has turned away from us.'

^^^

Sasia struggled to make out the strange inscription carved into one of Rodwell's rocks. Behind her, Zengar the One-eyed gasped in anguish:

- And you didn't believe me. I told you it was here.

Sasia could not deny that this inscription was hardly placed by accident. But then again, it seemed almost impossible to her that there were other human beings here besides the two of them.

- 'We have no time to lose,' she interrupted him, 'We could run out of oxygen at any moment and suffocate.'

- 'Follow me,' One-eyed muttered with mild displeasure.

The two of them sank into the dark cave opening set in the low cliff, jutting out of the sand like a child's half-curled foot on the beach. What was Sasia's astonishment when, after only a hundred yards, someone called out to them:

- 'Stop! Don't move or I'll shoot!,' a soft female silhouette with a determined expression on her face emerged slowly-slowly-from the darkness. Several more men armed with plasma submachine guns slowly walked up behind him.

The two companions held their breath in anticipation of the most frightening.

- 'My name is Neola,' pronounced the strange red-haired woman, pointing a sleek plasma pistol at the two, 'and you have just stepped into the lair of the Rodwell pirates.'

- 'My girl, is all this necessary?,' uttered Zengar, fully aware that any sharper movement could cost him his life.

Only now did Sasia remember the strange sounds she had encountered during her reconnaissance mission. It had crossed her mind even then that the guarrons had gruffer voices and made rougher sounds, and the noises she'd picked up had seemed more like interference from a muffled radio transmission. As the pilot of an ultra-modern military speeder, she was well aware that her aircraft had sophisticated equipment to automatically decode any randomly picked up signal within a three zegandarian mile radius. So that was what they were! Her thoughts were interrupted by a quiet, short cry:

- Uncle Zengar, is that you? How could you still be alive?

This unusual outpouring of feeling touched Sasia. She could hardly imagine that the short man was capable of gaining the favor of anyone.

- 'Put down your weapons, boys,' the redhead commanded, 'they're friends.'

She turned and was about to return to the depths of the dark cave from which she had crawled, when she suddenly added

- 'Search them, just in case. In times of war such measures are not superfluous. Don't take it personally, Uncle Zengar,' she shot him a look.

The men staggered to their feet and checked them most carefully for concealed weapons and listening devices. In the short time it took for this routine procedure, Sasia had time to cast a glance around. The cave was definitely much better maintained than the narrow hole they had to pass through to enter would suggest.

The small group formed a cordon around them, and thus they walked another two hundred yards or so until they faced another opening in the rock. The naked eye would not have noticed it at all - so unremarkable was it.

We are in for a deep dive, my friends. Get ready!’ said Neola, who led the group and simply jumped into the hole without further ado.

Seeing their confusion, one of the men nudged them.

- 'No big deal. And so was I the first time. Just follow her. 'Don't forget,' he added. 'I'm Radsoil, and he here,' he pointed vaguely into space, is called Edouard.

^^^

Once they emerged from the other end of the so-called hole, Sasia noticed that they were in a relatively large cave, and in the middle of it a glass fire was crackling merrily, liberally doused with interron fuel to keep it burning longer.

Neola smiled enigmatically at them. She looked like a samiddha hidden in her refuge, receiving guests. Only these guests, were seeking salvation for their lives.

- 'Sit down, what are you scared of,' she joked. 'Endwhite, they must be hungry, give them two blocks of high calorie pilot food.'

Actually, in a cave like this there was nowhere for a human to actually sit, much less if they were wearing a spacesuit, albeit the lightweight pilot type they used in the Navy. But come on, that was the tale.

- 'Our compressed air bottles will run out soon,' Sasia hastened to add. 'I'm