Kali's Fire

by Craig Allen

  Cody traced the line on the fliers’ map to the point inland. In moments, he was able to nail down coordinates. The facility was about two hundred kilometers away from their current position. Jesus. If the fleet nuked the area, the fliers would unquestionably feel the fallout.

  “Do you know what this is?” Cody asked.

  It was not there until just before your people left and then it appeared from the ground and made loud noise.

  “This has to be the central communication system we’re looking for.” Sonja rotated the structure on the HUD, but that didn’t help matters.

  Cody stared at the image. Jericho had only speculated it existed, which made sense, but to actually see it was another matter. If it was real, then their plan had a chance.

  “I think we should have a look,” Cody said.

  Stripe shifted back and forth.

  We can look more but they will hurt us if they see us flying over places they don’t want us to be.

  “No, it’s too dangerous.” As is this island.

  The problem was that no safe place really existed… except for one.

  “Can you get to the island where we last were?” Cody asked. “Where the large ship attacked us?”

  Stripe’s head bounced up and down.

  We remember the terrible place and can gather there but we are afraid of large ships. Why must we go?

  “I understand, but you’ll be safe there.” Cody debated for a moment what to tell them, but they deserved the truth. “It’s possible when the fleet arrives, they will devastate this machine you found. This might hurt others on your island. The other island will be safe until we come for you.”

  Stripe watched Cody, unflinching, as Cody related the events as he understood them, praying the toads hadn’t hacked their coded frequency. He wondered if he was being too technical, but Stripe didn’t ask any questions.

  Cody was sure Stripe understood, but the flier also seemed doubtful. Humans had run Stripe and his people all over the planet doing errands as well as running from threats. Cody wished all their problems would go away so the fliers could finally live in peace, but he had a feeling that day was a long way off.

  Stripe tapped out a message.

  You will harm our world again as before and soon there will be no world for us.

  “We won’t be using nukes if we can help it,” Cody said. “If we can destroy this communication facility, then it won’t be necessary.”

  Will it not be?

  Cody could see the despair in Stripe’s alien form. The fliers’ world was on the precipice because of the other species on the planet. If the fliers were lucky, they could live near the poles after the nuclear holocaust. Otherwise, they couldn’t live there at all. And Cody could see that Stripe understood that.

  “We’re going to find a way to preserve your world,” Cody said. “Please trust us.”

  Stripe didn’t react at first. Then, he tapped out a message.

  We will wait on the place we saw you last. We have no choice.

  The viewer shut off on the other end, severing the signal. Cody felt like a father failing to protect his children. He only hoped they would have a world to return to. He could do nothing more than keep them as safe as he could.

  Cody examined the location Stripe mentioned on the maps they had of Kali. “Older maps show nothing there. How long until the fleet arrives?”

  Sonja pulled up a timer. “Less than an hour. They’ll wait for confirmation we’ve completed our mission. If they think we haven’t, they’re going to nuke that whole two-thousand-klick stretch.”

  “All right then,” he said. “Let’s have a look.”

  Sonja brought the main drive online and accelerated. In seconds, they broke the surface. Cody double-checked the transponder, verifying they were still broadcasting the proper codes. As they gained altitude, he kept an eye on the passive sensors. He counted three hoppers a few thousand kilometers away and, again, no Kali-type vessels in orbit. That might not be too bad, considering they couldn’t see outside their Alcubierre bubbles, which meant they couldn’t see the tiny hopper. That would change if the main communications facility detected their hopper and broadcast the location.

  “So far, so good.” Sonja banked the hopper toward the coordinates. “If they notice where we’re headed, they might think something’s wrong.”

  “And even if we get there,” Cody said. “What can we do?”

  Sonja brought up the weapons console. “We have four nukes. Looks like they didn’t rearm her with tacs when she was on the Tokugawa, but that’s fine. Four nukes are plenty for targets in an atmosphere, but I bet they have a point-defense system down there.”

  “How close do we have to get to bypass that?”

  Sonja pressed her lips together. “Close. I’d say we need to get within at least a couple of kilometers. Closer would be better. But that will make it harder to avoid the blast.”

  “How hard?” Cody asked. “Or do I want to know?”

  “You don’t.” Sonja leveled off at about three kilometers over the ground. The coastline appeared, followed by several kilometers of yellow ground.

  “That’s odd,” Cody said. “Where’s the plant life? It’s usually all over the place.”

  Sonja shrugged. “They probably left.”

  Cody zoomed in on a section of the shoreline. A dish tree sat in the water, its leaves just above the surface. “I wonder what’s driving them away.”

  “There.” Sonja pointed down. “What is that?”

  Cody zoomed in on the area. A metallic dish flush with the ground pointed almost straight up in the air. In the center of the dish was a bridge assembly, almost identical to what was in a bridge sat. Red reeds fluttered around the dish.

  Sonja banked the hopper slightly. “It’s not the coordinates from the fliers’ map.”

  “That must be one of the wormholes Tokugawa’s probe spotted,” Cody said. “Each of those facilities produces a wormhole to communicate with a specific ship. There’s probably one of these for a handful of ships or even one per ship. They’d have to be all over the planet. Taking this one out would probably just draw attention without doing a lot of damage to their communications network.”

  “Agreed.” Sonja leveled the hopper. “Let’s check out these coordinates the fliers gave us. Hopefully, that thing is the main communication hub. Take that out, and…”

  “And the other stations go down.”

  It took only a few more minutes to see what was at the coordinates. Sitting between two mountains was a flat disk about forty meters across. Dozens of bridge assemblies extended out from the edge of the disk, plus many more inside it. The whole assembly sat no higher than ten meters over the ground.

  “Gravimetrics are lighting up on that thing,” Sonja said. “Identical to bridge-sat signatures. But it covers the whole surface.”

  “I see it. Gravimetrics readings indicate there are microscopic wormholes all over that thing.” Cody pulled up the sensors on the HUD. “I can’t determine how many are there.”

  “One for each ship,” Sonja said. “Each wormhole probably connects to one of those dishes we passed earlier, which connects with a ship. I bet those smaller dishes are all over the planet.”

  A proximity alarm sounded as something big appeared on gravimetrics. A large signature registered a good five hundred kilometers overhead.

  “Hold on,” Sonja said.

  The hopper whipped to the side. Sensors registered a massive gamma wave blasting through where they had just been.

  “Shit, shit.” She yanked the stick one way then the next. “I can’t keep them off forever. We have to get out.”

  Cody brought the weapons console up. “Get us in as close to the disk as you can. If we’re too close, they’d be afraid to grase us from above, right?”

  “Because they’d risk hitting it.” Sonja adjusted course. “Oh, Christ, this better work.”

  “It will.” Cody brought grasers and nukes online. “They don’t h
ave the training you do.”

  She gave a nod, almost imperceptible as she evaded another blast. “I know this sounds selfish, but for once, I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Me too.”

  “I don’t want to die alone.”

  Cody wanted to reach for her, but he didn’t want to distract her. “We’re not dying today. You’re going to OCS then piloting school, and then you’re coming back to me.”

  “Deal.”

  Cody checked his console. They were almost in range, but he had no idea how they would survive.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Admiral Jericho watched the viewing globe calmly. Within seconds, the Alcubierre field switched off, and they were in normal space once more. The planet was a good three million klicks away, and they had the sun at their backs to confuse enemy lidar. However, gravimetrics was another matter. For the moment, all engines were disengaged, but they wouldn’t stay that way.

  “Report.”

  The lieutenant responded after a few seconds. “Gravimetrics negative. The only contacts are our ships.”

  Damn. That meant the Olympus Mons had failed her mission and all hands were likely lost, including Dr. Brenner and that gunnery sergeant he was sleeping with. He resisted the urge to curse aloud. Aside from the fact he’d sent a civilian into harm’s way to be killed, he rather liked the man. He liked them both.

  Not to mention they had failed to take down the communications hub—that or it didn’t exist, and he was wrong about a central communications hub existing. Either way, the mission was a failure, and Kali’s fleet was at her strongest with a major tactical advantage.

  A lieutenant interrupted his thoughts. “Sir, we’re getting a request from the fleet for instructions. And the Spicans are asking as well.”

  With such a tactical advantage, the Kali ships would hammer the fleet into ground meat. Even if they could pull off some kind of victory, the loss of life would be catastrophic. Jericho couldn’t take the risk of losing so many ships and thousands of lives. He would need a bigger fleet or at least a way to detect this new cloaking technology, but for the moment—

  “Contact!” The voice of Tokugawa’s sensor operator rose in pitch. “Multiple vessels. All Kali design. They just appeared out of nowhere.”

  The lieutenant continued to give coordinates, but Jericho could see them well enough on the main holovisual. Five modified Kali ships appeared dead ahead, less than five hundred thousand kilometers away.

  “Battle stations,” Jericho said as calmly as he could manage, even as klaxons sounded across the bridge. “All ships bring point defense online and acquire firing solutions. Fire as you have those solutions.”

  Only the first command would actually do any good. The toads had probably not found a way to wrap their torpedoes in stealth fields, but once they fired—

  “Multiple tacs incoming!”

  Dozens of torpedoes lit up on the holoviewer. The Tokugawa’s captain gave the order to shoot them down, and through the main comm channel, Jericho heard the captains of the other ships give the same orders. One by one, the missiles were grased from the sky. More would come.

  “Contacts vanished, sir.” The lieutenant at sensors narrowed his eyes at his board. “No idea where they went.”

  Jericho ground his teeth. The lieutenant had been debriefed on the new stealth fields. Then again, actually seeing it for one’s self was another matter.

  “Contact! Zero nine four by zero one three. Range… Jesus, twenty thousand klicks. Just a thousand klicks from the Texas.”

  Three Kali ships appeared on the holoviewer, racing past the Texas. Her grav-drive climbed to maximum as she attempted to evade, but it was too late. The three opened fire with grasers, about half of which raked across her hull. Her grav-drives were knocked out at once, and one of her Daedalus struts had been crippled, and from what Jericho could see, a section had vented into space. The Texas spun in space, heading in the direction she had last accelerated. The three Kali ships vanished seconds later.

  “Have the Amazon and the Congo rescue survivors from the Texas,” Jericho said.

  It happened again and again. Kali ships would appear from nowhere, grase or tac a ship, then vanish again. The Chicago lost some hull plating but nothing serious. Three ships actually had the audacity to attack the Joan of Arc. One of them was grased out of existence before she could vanish once more.

  Spican ships surrounded the human fleet, some firing grasers as occasional Kali vessels appeared. They managed to score one victory, but that wouldn’t be enough.

  The attacks ramped up, growing in number and intensity. More ships appeared, hit a target, and then vanished again. Jericho made his hands into fists. They couldn’t fight like this. With time, the Kali ships would whittle them down to nothing. The Texas was already out of commission. They would have to grase her so the Kali residents couldn’t use her—not that they would need to use a human vessel. Then humans would have to leave the Kali system altogether.

  Jericho didn’t want to give the order to run, but if he didn’t, they’d have to leave a lot more ships behind.

  The captain of the Tokugawa spoke. “Admiral, something is happening on the surface of the planet.”

  “Show me.”

  The globe zoomed in and enhanced a section of the planet, focusing on the equator. A Kali ship hovered less than a hundred klicks over the surface. Nearby, sitting between two mountains, was a dish-like structure. Gravimetrics showed a series of wormholes along the surface. Periodically, flashes lit up the atmosphere under the ship. Those had to be grasers from the Kali ship. They could be shooting at only one thing.

  Jericho didn’t bother to suppress his grin. “Looks like the crew of the Olympus Mons isn’t dead after all.”

  ~~~

  Grasers painted the sky all around them. How they weren’t getting a lock on the tiny hopper, Cody couldn’t understand. Maybe the Kali creatures weren’t very good shots, or maybe it was just Sonja’s manic piloting. Or both.

  Abruptly, the firing stopped. Quickly, Cody got a weapons lock on the disk. All they had to do was get a little closer.

  “Looks like you were right, babe.” Sonja pointed the hopper straight down. “But that cease-fire won’t last.”

  “Contact.” Cody put gravimetrics on his side of the canopy so as not to interfere with her view. “At least three dozen hoppers incoming. They’ll be here in under a minute.”

  The hopper rocked, and Sonja gritted her teeth as she changed course, trying to avoid the grasers while still hovering over the dish. “That disk is using their defense system to attack us. They’re designed to take out incoming torpedoes.”

  Cody aimed the hopper’s graser as best as he could manage at the disk. “Can they hurt us?”

  The hopper trembled again, and red warning lights lit up on the holocontrols.

  “Eventually.”

  Cody raked the side of the disk with the hopper’s graser. A series of explosions erupted along the disk’s weapon ports, but graser ports littered the entire structure. He’d never take them out by the time they got within range, and if they launched the nukes at that point, the grasers might shoot them down. Then he and Sonja would be dead.

  The hopper shuddered violently. Tubes three and four had gone down, racked by grasers. Repair systems initiated, but they would take too much time.

  “Four hundred meters,” Cody said. “Can we do it with two nukes?”

  “Let’s find out,” Sonja said. “Fire!”

  Cody jammed his fist so far through the holocontrol firing button he nearly hit the emitters on the other side. After a jolt, the canopy polarized as the torpedoes launched from their tubes, shining their bright engine lights across the hopper, then accelerated toward the disk.

  They could do nothing more. Sonja jerked the stick to the side, arcing the hopper north. They leveled out barely fifty meters over the ground, the throttle all the way open—“supersonic” didn’t cover it. With engines designed for high accelera
tion in space, they zoomed across the landscape at many multiples of the speed of sound. If they hit something large enough, they’d crash, and the explosion would destroy anything that survived.

  Cody brought up the flight path of the two nukes. One had already been grased down. The last one still maintained its course, dodging predicted paths of graser fire by monitoring the energy spikes. Cody willed the nuke to dodge and weave, willed it to reach its target.

  Sonja spoke but didn’t take her eyes off the canopy. “How long until—”

  A bright flash lit up the sky, and the canopy polarized once again, so dark that Cody couldn’t see. Information poured onto the HUD through the sensors. The last nuke had detonated fifty meters over the target. The shock wave rushed up on them faster than Cody thought it would, given their speed. It rattled the hopper like a tin can. Sonja swore as their altitude dropped.

  The hull ceased polarizing just in time to reveal a dish tree dead ahead, one that apparently hadn’t gotten away yet.

  “Shit!” Sonja yanked the stick back, swerving the hopper.

  As far as Cody could tell, they didn’t touch the tree, but the nuke would make quick work of the poor thing.

  Sonja increased their altitude, still angling the hopper west, where they had a clear view of the mushroom cloud. A handful of other trees, including the one they’d nearly hit, had been mowed down. Cody scanned the area with lidar, radar, gravimetrics, everything he had. All that was left of the facility was bits of debris and a crater.

  Cody grinned. “We did it.”

  “That we did, and just in time.” Sonja jutted her chin through the canopy toward the sky. “Look what’s going on up there.”