THEY ARE PRIMITIVES - Part 1
by ardavenport
Dani Orliss stormed down the corridor. The overhead lights had gone yellow, the ones that were still working. The oil lamps still shined their dimmer light from their improvised wall settings.
"Turi!" he yelled at a young man in a powder blue tunic and cloak draped across his chest and down his back. He turned from the two armored City Defenders. They all gave Leader Orliss short, respectful bows as he joined them.
"Where's the Dwen?" Orliss demanded.
"She's coming," Turi, the Dwen's aide, replied. "We're having trouble with the coms. The power--"
"I can see that the power is out." Orliss waved at the flickering lights; he held up a small, silver device that emitted the soft sound of static before he clicked it off and put it away in an inner coat pocket. Then he looked to one of the City Defenders.
"I heard they came in from the mountain-side, Captain. Did you use the sentry droids on them? Did we get them?"
The man he addressed, tall and hard and gray from his years as a peace enforcer, frowned. "No," he answered. "They didn't even slow them down. They just cut right through them and kept going. We thought we had them in the workshops, but we couldn't touch them. They deflected everything we fired at them; I've never seen anything like it."
Orliss looked stunned by the report. "How many droids do we have left?"
The captain pressed his lips together into a bitter line. "None, Sir. They destroyed them all."
Orliss took a few seconds to absorb the loss and then he gave the captain a look of sympathy. All those resources spent on those droids...gone. He looked to Turi. "What about the Guardians? Have they done any better?"
Turi swallowed. "I don't know, Leader. But...we couldn't stop them behind the Defender Quarters. We tried to encircle them in the courtyard, but they just leapt up out of the way. We had snipers with blaster rifles above, but they deflected the bolts with their energy swords. I saw it myself. I've never seen anyone move so fast. We had to stop. We hit some of our own..." Turi bowed his blond head, his brown eyes downcast and ashamed.
"But they looked like us, Turi?" Orliss pressed, more gently this time. "They weren't creatures...like the others?"
"No, Leader. I wouldn't know what such things would look like." Turi shook his head. "They were very tall, but they were like us."
A short woman joined the group. Her red, general's armor markings were smudged with soot, strands of her dark hair escaped the combs on her head. "The auxiliary command is already activated, Leader Orliss. But I can only give you Folot and Abimado. They're climbing out of the Nad-oh-six elevator now. I just got a message from them through the wires," she explained. "They'll be here any minute," she assured. Orliss thanked her and she left with the two City Defenders. They could hear other people running, calling to each other, beeps and whirring of straining equipment, but Orliss and Turi were otherwise alone in the intersection where they had gathered.
A stern woman with a guardian's short, plain haircut and the Dwen's pale, gold pants, tunics and cloak strode in unaccompanied.
"We've lost them. They're somewhere in the upper levels of the Hold. We think."
Turi paled as he bowed to his Guardian superior. "They strung a cable over the wall and got in through a window. Then they surprised Orono and Limhov and went straight to the Core. That's what happened to the power."
"Can we fix it?" Orliss asked quietly. The invaders had gone through their best defenses. It was a lightning strike that they had not seen coming and couldn't seem to stop.
Dwen Traskyuler shook her head, her aged face grave. "Maybe, but not any time soon. They slashed all the controls, but the Core's still intact. Then Limhov thinks she saw them go up a stairway. They could be anywhere since most of the alarms went dead with the main power."
"They didn't try to stop them?" Orliss demanded.
"They've got burns and Orono is missing a couple of his fingers." Traskyuler snapped. "And these blasters," she angrily gestured to the side arm at her hip, "are worse than useless against them. They just deflect the bolts back at you."
"Were there any deaths?" he asked more quietly.
"Yes. But it wasn't them. We did it to ourselves in a cross fire." Traskyuler stated bitterly. "These two don't seem to be out for blood. They destroy every bit of technology we throw at them and then just go around us."
Orliss ran his hand through his graying hair. "Turi, you go and find Folot and Abimado and get them over here. We have to re-establish coms and find them." What they could possibly do if they did find them Orliss couldn't say, but knowing where they were was still better than not knowing. Turn nodded and left. Leader and Dwen went down the hall together to the auxiliary command, the brighter light inside shining into the flickering corridor.
"They're looking for the negotiators!" she told him. "And they're taking us apart to find them." Orliss abruptly stopped at the door to the auxiliary command.
"Well, they won't find anything, will they?" He turned and went inside. The emergency generators hummed from below. The room's thick walls muted all the commotion outside. But papers and tapes littered the floor by the room's coms table in the center of the room.
"We're falling apart! And there are only two of them. This place looks like it's been invaded by an army!" Orliss circled around the coms to the big screen on the far wall; it showed a mostly flashing blue multi-level diagram of the Hold. Some screens on the equipment lining the granite walls had active views of the landing platform, the entrance hall, the upper towers. A couple of them showed frozen images of the intruders. Other screens were blank or showed only static.
"They were sent to rescue the negotiators." Traskyuler went to the screen with the clearest image of the intruders. Half of one figure was cut off, only showing a partial side view, but the camera had captured the other one, full figure. He was very tall and clearly male; he must have had to duck through the doorway he was emerging from. He wore a long, dark robe, pale tunics and brown pants and high boots. And in his hands he held an astonishing weapon, a straight sword of bright, green light. It cut through anything, deflected all attacks. And he was clearly, like them in body and face. His coloring was the same as theirs, his hair long--quite inappropriate for a fighter--but an unremarkable shade of brown, like his beard and mustache.
End Part 1