The Powers That Be by Aer-ki Jyr (best pdf reader for ebooks txt) 📗

was so overpowering against this type of minion. The Elarioni could strike them before they got within contact range so long as they weren’t too outnumbered, which was why Oasu’kli ordered her guards to engage rather than run, and after a few minutes there were hundreds of dead eels and no casualties to her troops…which continued to try and backdoor the minion formations assaulting the V’kit’no’sat.

She and her guards made it a long way before a huge group of minions of many varieties broke off from the main combat and headed towards them…some of which produced homing missiles that were faster than the Elarioni, but Oasu’kli wasn’t worried. Her group continued swimming as the streaks raced towards them, only to be intercepted by what looked like solid lasers being produced by the prongs on the Elarioni staffs.

They reached out nearly 100 meters, and while they were difficult to move at that range, the little shield columns that separated the water were filled with cutting energy that would slice the projectiles in half on contact…but were programmed not to interfere with each other when one Elarioni’s ‘Fire Line’ crossed with another.

So Oasu’kli’s guards swiped their Fire Lines back and forth like strobe lights, taking out most of the projectiles while the Shark Bots intercepted the few that got through, either with expanding shields or their own ‘laser beams’ emanating from a port on their heads.

But the bulk of the attack had not yet come, for there were thousands of minions ranging in size from half the length of an Elarioni up to the size of a Hjar’at headed their way…but rather than run, Oasu’kli had her group keep swimming in a predictable line.

Then out of nowhere a crash occurred on the ocean top far above them as an Elarioni warship made a leap frog jump through the air to save time and raced down to the depths far faster than anyone could hope to naturally swim. The angular craft was a quarter mile long and sliced through the water like a knife…but a knife that left a huge wake in its passing that disrupted many shots heading for Oasu’kli’s group.

She turned them a different way now that the warship was coming down to give them cover, and from it leapt all manner of weaponry. Fire Lines, Interceptors, shield conduits that sent Dre’mo’don blasts through momentary voids, shield walls that blocked enemy movements to others that grabbed hold of targets and crushed them to death…the Elarioni war chest was a deep one, and the Hadarak had nothing to compare to it. Their strength, as always, was their numbers and their ability to quickly grow new troops in the field from local resources.

But that wasn’t her concern now. The tunnel was, and soon they were all the way around on the backside by themselves while the battle raged above and in front of it as more and more minions continued to pour out and join in the battle.

Yet all that could be seen of the tunnel was the exit orifice. The track of it underground had not been determined, yet the Elarioni had strong enough telepathic ability to pierce down through the mud and rock a decent distance, and working together as a group they could enhance that power enough to become a biological scanning crew tracing a line behind the exit looking for where the tunnel was actually coming from.

They swam well past the midline where it was expected to be, then they began to sense some faint minds below. When they homed in on them all the way to the muddy seafloor, they could sense the swarms moving below on an ascending path, but a shallow one. The tunnel was deep in the rock, but where they now floated it was not so deep to be invisible to their telepathy, and the combat hungry minions being told a fight was near made detecting them even easier.

Oasu’kli marked the position in the battlemap then waited, monitoring and beginning to trace a path back and forth to map out as much of the tunnel as they could get without moving too near the exit that was some 4 miles away at the minimum.

Holding there she watched the combat on the battlemap, for all she could see of her eyes were an occasional flash in the murky distance. The waters had once been clear enough to see, even with the native orange murk to them, but the ink blots made it impossible to now except for a few fortuitous glimpses as the currents moved the dark areas around.

It felt like forever to Oasu’kli, but eventually two streaks from far off emerged on the battlemap, having been dropped from the air. They both bore the mark of Clan Cookie, and moved through the water so fast towards the waypoint that Oasu’kli had dropped that she assumed they were warships…only they weren’t. They were two Garas’tox, probably enhanced by their armor, but swimming faster than Oasu’kli could ever hope to…which seemed backwards, for they were one of the massive aquatic races. There were many of them on this planet, besieged by the Hadarak attack, but these two were not V’kit’no’sat. They were Star Force, and they were coming to Oasu’kli’s waypoint, though to do what she did not know.

Obviously they needed to dig down to the tunnel, but how could two Garas’tox do that? She’d seen many in combat before, but nothing they had could dig through solid rock.

Then she got orders from them…movement orders that had them retreating in their direction and a countdown clock with perimeter warnings.

And they were currently dead center in the danger zone.

“Move,” she ordered while slapping her tail into the effort immediately. All the others followed, swimming in an arrow-shaped formation with the strongest swimmers at the front to break water for the others and gain more speed, for the Garas’tox were not giving