Assignment: Avalon

Chapter Eighteen: New Beginnings

Kyla, feeling lost and alone, had just turned to leave the landing bay when the spaceplane's cockpit suddenly popped open. "Kyla! Artega has Vik! He's alive!"

Her heart skipped a beat; then she was running across the metal floor to join Melodan in the X28.

They roared out of the landing bay and banked toward the heart of the city. Melodan destroyed a small park with her landing rockets, then both of them clambered out of the spaceplane and dashed toward the city's Central Tower, the tall white doors that sealed its entrance crumpled and blackened by someone who had gone before them.

Inside, the marble lobby swarmed with RSF marines, who directed them to the twenty-eighth floor. They got off the elevators to find themselves in a white-tiled hospital corridor where more marines, incongruous in black battle-armor, crouching outside a door.

The nearest marine looked up as they emerged from the elevator and hurriedly jumped up, grabbed their arms, and pulled them down—just as something exploded and the door blasted inward.

The marines burst into the room. The one that had grabbed them tried to hold Kyla back, but she pulled free and ran to the door. "Vik!" she called...and stopped.

Vik sat in a wheelchair, very much alive, and her heart leaped again to see him—but standing beside him, gun aimed at his head, was a man she'd never seen before but recognized instantly from countless photographs: Ekland Artega, Strator of Skandar.

#

The blast toppled Artega backward. He rolled and came up with his gun aimed at Vik, as two men in black armor burst into the office, the aiming lasers on their weapons drawing small red lights on his chest. "Move and I kill him!" Artega cried.

Everyone froze for an instant. The red aiming beams never wavered, but the armored men came no closer. In the corridor beyond, Artega saw Melodan, another girl he didn't know, and more marines. "Captain, call them off!" Artega shouted. "Or—"

He got no further. His attention had been on the door. Only when something struck him from the side did he realize he should have watched Vik as well. He fired as he fell, his gun shockingly loud in the enclosed space, then in fury, flung the wounded boy away and staggered to his feet.

The gun was still in his hand, but no longer aimed at his hostage, who lay where Artega had thrown him. The Strator hoped he'd killed him.

One of the aiming lasers moved from his heart to his head, glowing between his eyes. "Move and you're dead," the gun's owner growled. Melodan and the other girl rushed into the room and knelt beside Vik.

Artega ignored them. "Captain Nguyen," he said to the still-open link. "Kill me and you lose Skandar."

And then came the final blow.

"We've already deactivated your artificial intelligence, Artega," Nguyen said. "You really should have updated its security systems sometime in the last century."

Artega's heart stumbled, stabbing his chest with a sudden, sharp pain. "Skandar is dead?"

"If you want to call it that. We'll be installing our own. In the meantime, the ship's computer has full control of all of Skandar's databases and sensors."

"But...the communications link..."

"Activated by our computer. How do you think we found you?"

The gun dropped from Artega's limp hand and he sagged against the doctor's desk, offering no resistance as the marines came for him.

#

As Kyla knelt over Vik, he groaned and opened his eyes, and relief flooded through her. Without thinking, she bent over and kissed him, and after a moment he returned the kiss enthusiastically.