TAYLOR COOK
BAYAN-ÖLGII PROVINCE, MONGOLIA
MACLAUGHLAN WAS DEAD.
Taylor tried to heal the man, holding him by the sides of what was left of his head. But there was no spark, nothing for her Legacy to rekindle. Gone. His face was a mess of burns from the Mogadorian blasters. There were places on his shoulders where his body armor had melted into his skin.
Taylor gagged. She’d been around sickness and seen death before, had watched Einar force the sheikh’s guards to kill each other back in Dubai. This was worse, somehow. She’d at least known MacLaughlan a little, had been talking to him like five seconds ago. Was that really all it took to erase someone from the world? It almost seemed too easy.
Still ducked down in the backseat, Taylor saw a tongue of flame burst out from under the hood of their truck. No time to ponder existential questions now, no time to freak out.
She needed to move.
But something had caught her eye when MacLaughlan was shot. Something had fallen off his belt as he shoved Taylor down. The urge to flee was strong, but Taylor fought it. She groped around on the floor of the truck, fingers scraping over broken glass, until she hit upon something hard and plastic.
A satellite phone. Hurriedly, she tucked the object into her parka.
Black smoke was filling the inside of her truck. Outside, she could hear shouting, gunfire, and explosions. A full-fledged battle.
She had no choice but to go towards it.
With her telekinesis, Taylor knocked the battered back door off its hinges and leaped out into the freezing night. She kept low, blaster beams sizzling through the air from both sides. It was an ambush. The Mogadorians had come at the Foundation’s convoy from the east and west.
Mogadorians. Freaking Mogadorians. Taylor couldn’t believe it. She’d seen the alien creatures on TV—pale and sunken eyed, tattoos on their scalps, hideous creatures that looked like they belonged in subterranean caverns. They’d failed in their invasion of Earth and been mostly eradicated or imprisoned, but Taylor had heard the rumors about pockets of them still at large, thriving in the world’s more lawless places, avoiding the reach of Earth Garde.
Apparently, western Mongolia was one of those places. The pieces clicked together for Taylor, despite the panic. The Foundation had come here to procure something from the fallen warship. The Mogadorians had discovered them and not responded politely.
She could see them out there at the edges of the floodlights’ radiance, their pale faces and dark armor illuminated in bursts by their glowing blasters. A mercenary taking cover behind an overturned Humvee sprayed bullets at a pack of the aliens and Taylor watched as they exploded into clouds of dust. Unreal.
A blaster beam struck the burning truck she’d climbed out of. Taylor scrambled for cover and bumped right into a soldier doing the same.
“Shoot back, asshole!” The mercenary screamed in her face. He didn’t recognize her, but quickly registered that she was unarmed. “Idiot! Where’s your weapon?”
Taylor’s heart beat savagely against her breastbone. Adrenaline flowed through her. They’d tried to prepare her for fights like this at the Academy, but training rooms and obstacle courses didn’t get across the blood, mud, and madness. She was in over her head, but that didn’t matter. She was Garde. And why were Garde put on Earth?
To kill Mogadorians.
“Here’s my weapon,” Taylor said to the soldier.
With her telekinesis, Taylor hefted a door that had gotten blown off one of the trucks and sent it careening into the Mogadorian line. She was pretty sure that she sheared one of them clean in half.
“Ho-ly shit,” said the soldier. He grabbed his walkie-talkie and shouted into it. “It’s one of the assets! XO! It’s one of the assets!”
Taylor didn’t see the XO anywhere, couldn’t really make out any individuals. It was chaos. The Mogs returned fire and she ran, pushing her way behind a group of mercenaries taking cover beneath the base of a flood light. When a Mog stepped into view, she used her telekinesis to rip his blaster away.
A mercenary collapsed beside her and Taylor immediately smelled burned skin. He’d been shot in the shoulder, the Mog blaster searing through his armor. Taylor crouched down and pressed her hands against his chest, healing him. The soldier stared at her wide-eyed, then brushed her off, reoriented his rifle, and returned fire on the Mogs.
“A thank-you would be nice,” Taylor said, her words drowned out by gunfire.
Someone grabbed her by the shoulder. Taylor reacted by spinning around and elbowing the person in the face. The XO ducked just in time, narrowly avoiding getting his nose broken.
“The hell are you doing out here, Cook?” he screamed.
A howling Mogadorian charged into view. These things were practically suicidal. As he leveled his blaster, Taylor jerked on it with her telekinesis, causing him to discharge the weapon right under his own chin.
She tried not to think about how she’d learned that trick from Einar.
“I’m helping you not die,” she responded to the XO.
He smirked at that. Taylor noticed that his mouth was bloody and that there was a sizable cut over his eyebrow. She reached out to touch him but he slapped her hand away.
“Don’t waste your energy,” he said. “Focus on the ones that need it.”
Taylor started to turn from him, but then came a piercing shriek of metal. The steel beam holding up the floodlight above them had taken too much fire. It teetered and started to fall, a half ton of metal and spotlights collapsing right into their midst.
“Go!” screamed the XO. “Take cover inside the ship!”