Empire Read Online Free Page A

rising to her feet as she saw the dark shape silently move from the hallway. A burst from down the street lit the thing’s face with a hellish glow, leaving no doubt as to its origin.
    The Kreelan stopped just beyond the hallway. Watching. Waiting.
    Enrique reacted first. Instinctively he brought up his rifle, aiming it at the alien’s chest.
    “Bitch!” he cried, his finger convulsing on the trigger.
    Solon saw her arm move like a scythe in the eerie display of his helmet visor. The movement was accompanied by a strange whistling noise, like a storm wind howling against a windowpane.
    Enrique suddenly grunted. Solon saw the gunner’s eyes register disbelief, then nothing at all as they rolled up into his head. His body sagged backward and the gun discharged once into the ceiling before clattering to the floor at his side. Solon saw a huge wet horizontal gash in Enrique’s chest armor that was wide enough to put both fists in, as if someone had split him open with an ax.
    Camilla reached for her rifle, propped against the wall behind her.
    “No,” Solon said softly. “Don’t move.”
    She stopped.
    Reza lay face down on the floor, his body pointing like an arrow toward where his father now stood frozen. He blinked away the tears in his eyes, his entire body trembling with fear. He felt something sharp under his right hand, and without thinking he closed his fingers around it: a knife. He clung to it desperately, for he had no weapon of his own. A brief glance told him that it was his father’s. He knew that his father always carried two, but must have somehow lost this one in the rubble during the fighting. Reza held it tightly to his chest.
    “Why doesn’t she attack?” Camilla whispered, terribly tempted to reach for her pistol or rifle. The sight of Enrique’s gutted body stayed her hand. And then there was Snowden. Undoubtedly, she lay dead somewhere deeper in the house.
    “I don’t know, but…” Solon hesitated. He suddenly had an idea. “I’m going to try something.”
    Before Camilla could say a word, he drew the long-bladed knife he carried in his web gear. It was an inferior weapon to the Kreelan’s sword, but it was all he had, and he didn’t know where his regular combat knife had disappeared to. Then he slowly moved his free hand to the clasps that held his web gear to his armor. With two quick yanks, the webbing that held his grenades, pistol and extra weapon power packs clattered to the floor.
    “So far, so good,” he muttered. Sweat poured from his brow down the inside of his helmet. “Now you do it,” he ordered his wife. “Draw your knife and drop the rest of your gear.”
    “What about Reza?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the alien as she repeated what Solon had done, her own equipment rattling to the floor around her feet a moment later. “Solon, we’ve got to get him out of here.”
    Crouching down slowly under the Kreelan’s watchful, almost benevolent gaze, Solon reached down to where his son lay.
    “Reza,” he whispered, the external helmet speaker making his voice sound tinny, far away, “stand up, very slowly, and look at me.”
    Reza did as he was told, his body shaking with fright.
    “Listen carefully, son,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the Kreelan to look at his son for what he knew would be the last time. He fought against the tears that welled up in his eyes. “You must do exactly what I tell you, without question, without being too afraid. You’re a young man, now, and your mother and I need you to help us.”
    “Yes, Papa,” Reza whispered shakily as he stared into his father’s dirty helmet visor. But instead of his father’s face, Reza saw only the dull reflection of the apparition standing behind him, only a few paces away.
    Holding his son by both quivering shoulders, Solon went on, “Not far from here, there used to be a really big schoolhouse, the university. Do you remember?”
    Reza nodded. His father had taken him there many times to