The Exiled Earthborn by Paul Tassi Page A

shotgun, to sniper, and back again. It had saved him many times over the years, and now it would help him save someone else.
    But it wouldn’t do it alone. Lucas slung Natalie over his shoulder and stooped down to pull out another pair of weapons, a long-barreled Magnum and a black-bladed sword only a few molecules thick. He clipped the revolver to his belt and mounted the sword so it crossed Natalie on his back. They were Asha’s weapons, and when he found her, she’d need them to exact vengeance on those who had taken her from him. He turned toward Tannon and nodded and the two marched out of the room, leaving the skittish lab attendant to reinstate the force field over the armory. As they left, Lucas saw one last door they hadn’t gone through. One simply labeled with the Soran symbol for “11.”
    Lucas was led into another large hangar area, though one far larger than the space that housed the Ark. It took him a minute to recognize the sleek ship before him, as he’d never seen Omicron’s vessel in full light before. Previously, it had been in the blackness of space, reflecting starlight, or hidden from view altogether with the same advanced cloaking system that had been employed to attack the Grand Palace.
    On the ground in front of the ship stood a formation of burly soldiers, each clad in gray fatigues and holding an energy rifle across their chest. Their eyes stared straight ahead, not daring to deviate from their path as their leader strode among them. Maston had assembled his Guardians.
    It became obvious that Maston wasn’t exaggerating when he said they were the finest genetic specimens on the planet, crafted using god-knows-what procedures for billions of the local currency. Every soldier here, male and female, was taller than Lucas, with many towering above him. They looked like a legion of comic-book superheroes, with bulging muscles and stone-cut jaws. Many looked more beast than man. Lucas caught the eye of a towering giant to his right when the soldier broke off his fixed gaze to eye the strange newcomer. If this was Earth, Lucas would have guessed he was Polynesian, but he still didn’t understand the racial groups here.
    Maston immediately strode up to Tannon, ignoring Lucas’s presence entirely.
    “You let him arm himself from the archive?”
    “Would you prefer he take on the Fourth Order with a right hook instead?” Tannon replied.
    “We could have issued him a rifle, that … thing he’s using hasn’t been fully tested yet. It could be dangerous.”
    “That’s kind of the point,” Lucas said.
    “Dangerous to us ,” Maston clarified. “I’ve seen the preliminaries. If you overload the core in that weapon it would blow an entire ship sky high.”
    That much was true. Alpha had told him Natalie’s power source could in fact detonate if it became unstable enough. All the more reason to take good care of his longtime friend.
    “I’ve seen a feed of him using that loadout to kill a ship full of Xalan Paragons and their commanding Shadow. If we had the time, I’d have the mad scientist make one for every soldier in your unit,” Tannon said.
    Flustered, Maston walked back toward his troops.
    “There’s more than one way to kill a Shadow,” he said, scratching at the scar on his neck.

4
    Once Alpha’s tracker had been built, the flight was going to take a mere forty-one minutes, despite the distance to Rhylos being equivalent to orbiting Earth about three and a half times. Omicron’s ship was fast in the atmosphere as well as out of it. The newly appointed Guardian crew had taken to calling it the “Spear,” likely due to its flat, elongated shape and razor-sharp nose.
    Lucas was relegated to crew quarters and found himself sitting across from a familiar looking brown-skinned giant, the one who had been eyeing him earlier. His black hair was shaved into a wide mohawk that ran all the way down to his neck, and he had a bandage wrapped around his enormous left bicep, which was