The Human Chronicles Saga Box Set 5

by T. R. Harris

  Ashton raised his eyebrows, certain that the Criminean didn’t mean what his last statement inferred. The Human heard it as: It would be a shame to go through all this trouble if the Klin don’t attack. He couldn’t have meant it that way…could he?

  18

  “You have done all you can, Adam,” Arieel said in a losing battle to console the morose Human. “Because of you, millions of Bannokfore will live. Without warning, there would be countless more lost to the Klin.”

  They were in the captain’s cabin and in bed, with Arieel’s silky black hair draped over Adam’s chest. He absently stroked her hair while staring up at the ceiling.

  They had resisted as long as they could before resuming their fifteen-year-long affair, one that had resulted in the impossible birth of their daughter Lila—a mutant of extraordinary power. The chemical bonds that the ancient Aris had programmed into the genes of the Humans and the Formilians had done their job, producing their super being three billion years after the experiment began.

  “It’s just that I feel so helpless. I want to be in the fight.”

  Arieel chuckled. “There will still be plenty of fight for all of us”

  “I should have taken him out when I had the chance.”

  “Robert McCarthy?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “From what I understand, there never was an opportunity, not without risking the life of Sherri.”

  “Yeah, but she would have understood if it meant killing McCarthy.”

  Arieel lifted her head and looked at Adam with a sultry frown. “Surely you are not serious?”

  “No, I’m not…and don’t call me Shirley.”

  The old joke really brought another layer of confusion to Arieel’s beautiful face. He changed the subject with a long, soft kiss. That got her mind off of his odd Human-speak and onto other matters. The other matters distracted them for the next forty-five minutes.

  Exhausted and covered in sweat, the two lovers basked in the afterglow of their passion. “I have said it before,” Arieel breathed. “Your new mutant stamina is extremely welcome. You are now equal to most Formilian males in that regard.”

  Now it was Adam’s turn to frown. “Gee, thanks…I think. But I didn’t know it was a competition.”

  Arieel smiled, a heart-melting, take-your-breath-away smile. “It is very much a competition. Everything is. So please…keep attempting to win. It is certainly worth the effort.”

  The Nautilus was a huge ship, especially when there were only seven people aboard. Although large, it could be crewed easily by the small number. Most of the ship’s bulk was in the form of cargo holds, so if needed, each member of the team had plenty of opportunity to get away from the others for quiet time and contemplation.

  When he wasn’t with Arieel, Adam spent time in one of the airtight lateral cargo holds running along the side of the ship. It was about the size of a basketball court with ceilings over fifty feet high. He worked on his telekinetic skills here, recalling the thrill he felt when he’d soared though the air on Corfer like the real Superman.

  He also remembered how he almost killed three of his crew when he sucked all the air out of the room to lift the cycling module.

  Now he was taking smaller quantities of air and compressing them more to gain the same effect. Through his experiments, he was able to create an invisible sheet of air under his feet, like a futuristic hoverboard. It didn’t take much effort to make one, but it did require balance to stay on. After a couple of weeks, he was an expert at riding his air-surfboard, using ancillary side currents to help keep him upright.

  Now this was what having mutant superpowers was all about!

  The Nautilus had a habit of breaking down quite often, adding about five days to journey. Eventually, Kaylor had to rebuild the #6 focusing ring cradle from scratch after his plastic battery cover fix stopped working.

  The ship was also traveling above the galactic plane, its gravity-well as deep as possible. They were making good time. They just had a very long way to go.

  19

  Gary Romaine had been born into the military and he fully intended to die in the military. He was forty-one and had seen more action than most Humans in that time. He volunteered for duty on Juir, when the Humans ran things, then stuck around afterwards to take on mercenary work where he could find it. Fortunately, Humans were in high demand at the time, so he was able to stay busy while banking some good coin.

  Recently, however, he was in the habit of entering and exiting the military services of a half-dozen races, splitting his time between legitimate duties and not-so-legitimate capers. At the time of the Klin offensive, he was on the official side of the ledger, serving as a well-paid advisor to the Bannokfore.

  When the news broke that the Klin may be targeting the planet, a wholesale panic erupted, even among the armed forces. The planet had a robust military—mainly a glorified police force—which patrolled the forty-two worlds in the Bannokfore Protectorate. Gary laughed at the name every time he heard it. The planet was a voting member of the Expansion Advisory Council; it didn’t have much to be protected against. In fact, Bannokfore was one of the unscrupulous major superpowers in the galaxy that others had to be protected from.

  But Gary was okay with that. The Bannokfore liked to flex their muscle now and then, and the Human got to plan most of their more complicated events. He was able to bark orders and blow things up. What more could a man ask for?

  But now it was serious. By all accounts, the Klin were coming in their black ships and with their killer robots. Estimates showed that less than a quarter of the population would have time to evacuate. He also read the intelligence on the Klin war machines and their capabilities. It wasn’t looking good for the Bannokfore.

  To Gary, this seemed like a good time to make a strategic career change. He was thinking about returning to Earth, at least until things cooled down. But then he was offered command of the Bannokfore defense force, both native and Expansion. He would be the head honcho, the conductor of an orchestra nearly a thousand ships strong.

  Seeing that supreme commanders seldom die in major battles; Gary Romaine accepted the promotion.

  The Bannokfore star system was a minefield—literally. It also demonstrated to Gary Romaine how politics played a role in military planning as he struggled to gain the upper hand within his command.

  He’d been against the deploying of mines in a static fashion, but not the politicians. They still didn’t comprehend that the Klin ships actually fed on energy, especially nuclear energy. Also, there were too few of them—mines, that is—and they covered a lot of space the Klin would probably never traverse. As a compromise, Gary was given operational control of all the weapons, allowing him to group them as necessary—if he had the time—and with his finger on the detonator. If a Klin ship did happen to run into one—which was highly unlikely—it would explode. But Gary would be able to cluster them around a VN-91 and detonate them all at once. If five explosions had been enough to drive the Klin away from G-nin Bor, how would they react to fifty or more going off at the same time? He was both anxious—and hesitant—to find out

  This was his strategy: overwhelm the ships with more energy than they could handle. But that meant he had to get enough of the warheads on station before the VN-91 reached its destination. And with three hundred of the mines scattered across a vast expanse of space, it would take time to gather them at specific locations.

  That’s why he also had over six hundred nuclear-tipped missiles aboard the ships of his fleet. The problem he saw with these weapons was they were slow and visible. Once launched, heir gravity signatures could be tracked, and with the speed at which lasers can pinpoint a target, a beam could be sent out and on to the next within milliseconds.

  Gary had another idea in mind, but that would only come into play if—and when—the Klin attacked.

  When the fortieth day came and went since the news that Bannokfore was a potential target—and still no Klin—the grumbling
began. It was only supposed to have taken thirty-eight days. The Klin were overdue, if they were coming at all.

  So, it was with a modicum of relief that Gary watched the strange gravity signature as it appeared at the edge of the galaxy. He sent out word immediately to be on alert at the opposite side of the system, in case the Klin tried an end run as they did at G-nin Bor. Then he set his plan in motion.

  “Give me a track, navigator,” he called out to his all-alien bridge crew. Translation bugs activated and a moment later the main viewscreen had the beeline course of the VN-91 up for all to see. No one had been able to predict where the enemy ship would first appear, so none were surprised when it came in above the ecliptic at a seventy-degree angle. The good thing—if that term applied—was there were no planets to get in the way. The ship had clear space all along the course with no place to hide.

  Gary laughed at the thought. If anyone should be hiding, it should be us!

  “Move the mines into position, the farthest out first. Do it quickly and then set them in dark mode.”

  On the wide view, tiny red dots began clustering along the course but far ahead of the VN-91. Gary knew where they were, but they should be out of Klin range. They would be invisible to the enemy ship as it drew closer, their composite hulls designed to absorb detection signals. When the time came, Gary would press the button.

  In the meantime, he moved other mines up behind the Klin vessel, matching speed with the six-mile long warship before also setting them to run dark. His own warships were out beyond five million miles from the track line, which to Gary seemed like a ridiculous requirement, but one he didn’t question. He had trouble comprehending a weapon that could reach out that far from its source. Only something with the energy of a laser and traveling at near the speed of light could make such a threat a reality.

  Gary Romaine was in charge of nine hundred Bannokfore and Expansion warships. Most carried the nuclear missiles. Even then, if the nuclear blossom created by the mines didn’t work, he had no idea what the missiles could do against the invincible starship. Although Gary wasn’t a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, he had a sneaking suspicion that it would take technology to beat the Klin, not firepower. He was about to unleash the energy of a small nova explosion, with no guarantee of success against a single enemy ship. What could they do against hundreds of the black ships?

  At the moment, Gary Romaine regretted he didn’t make the career change when he had a chance.

  “Nearing frontal line,” an alien announced to the bridge crew. Gary didn’t take the time to identify his species—it didn’t matter. He was too absorbed watching the VN-91 approach the first line of twenty-five nuclear mines placed along its course.

  The mines were actually set to either side of the enemy track so to avoid the effects of the maneuvering gravity-well the ship traveled by. It wouldn’t do to have all his super weapons sucked into a shallow event horizon before he even had a chance to use them.

  But now the show was only moments away from starting. Gary wasn’t nervous; he’d been in numerous space battles before. Besides, his flagship was twenty-eight million miles away, well beyond the range of the Klin lasers. Others may die this day, but Gary Romaine wouldn’t be one of them.

  “Detonate on my command,” he announced. “Three, two, one…detonate.”

  Nuclear weapons of the time were powerful devices, well beyond anything ever built on Earth, and measuring out at around four hundred megatons each, and in space, that yield was multiplied five-fold. Without air pressure, gravity or friction to limit the expansion of the fireball, each explosion grew to a quarter the size of the Moon in matter of seconds. Now imagine a string of twenty-five such fireballs appearing suddenly along your path and you had the situation facing the Klin.

  In actuality, intelligence reports indicated there would only one living Klin aboard the huge vessel, which to Gary was an incredibly efficient use of man—alien-power. The experts also said that even though the flesh and blood creature may be overcome by the intense radiation, the ship’s mission would continue, run automatically by computers and robots.

  As predicted, the alien warcraft slowed to a relative stop, even as the forward waves of nuclear energy swept over its three-tier screen system and began absorbing energy as fast as it could. Intense laser beams flared out from the ship, shedding energy as fast as it could. Then the ship began to retreat, creating a small back-well the way it came.

  That’s when Gary detonated the trailing mines.

  The huge black ship was caught between two lines of twenty-five exploding mines each, one front, one back. As the vessel tried to maneuver horizontally, Gary gave the order to launch the missiles. This would be the moment of truth.

  Although slow and visible, Gary was hoping the previous explosions had created an EMP effect within the black ship, at least enough to blind its sensors. The missiles were well within laser range, and the VN-91 certainly had enough energy to dance among the incoming targets and obliterate every one of them in a matter of seconds.

  But to his joy, none of the blazing lasers locked onto the missiles. Instead, they continued to shoot beam of intense white light into space with no specific target in sight.

  The missiles struck a lot closer to the VN-91 than the mines, some as close as twenty miles from the hull. The end came quickly for the black ship. When it could no longer absorb energy, it exploded, the great bulk being quickly lost in the growing nuclear inferno.

  The bridge exploded in riotous cheers, in a variety of manners. But the message was clear. They’d scored the first verified destruction of a Klin VN-91. They proved it was possible. The invincible weapon of the Klin wasn’t so invincible after all.

  Admiral, captain, Godfather—whatever you wanted to call him—Gary Romaine, let the celebration continue for another thirty seconds before he called the bridge to order. He’d read the reports. The Klin used two black ships against a much smaller and insignificant planet. He had trouble believing they would send only one against a Council World.

  “Continue system monitoring,” he ordered. “They’ll probably hit us with another one anytime now.”

  He checked his inventory. His three hundred mines were down to two-fifty, and most of them were scattered across the system. It would take time to create another concentration. He had plenty of missiles, around four hundred of those. The good thing, he hadn’t lost a single vessel in the attack.

  “My lord, contact…correction, contacts detected.”

  Gary didn’t like the sound of that. He left his command chair and went to the proximity screen. His ship was linked to others at the edge of the system; he was too far out to detect the intrusion himself. What he saw on the screen turned his blood cold.

  There were three waving gravity signals, the distinctive signature of the Klin VN-91s. The dual blackholes for each ship canceled out most of the warping of space associated with gravity drives. The ships were virtually undetectable in deep wells. Only when they dropped to sub-light could they be seen.

  And now Gary had three distinct signatures on his screen.

  In this particular case, he hated being right. The Klin had indeed made this system a priority, enough to send four VN-91s to do the job. He scanned his mine locations. The Klin signatures were separating, spreading out to approach the planet from different directions. That might help, by allowing more of his disbursed mines to be brought into play.

  “Plot their courses! Get them on the screen.”

  As before, straight-line tracks were plotted. He might have a chance if they stayed steady, allowing Gary to position his weapons where they could do the most good. He began barking orders, firing up the small gravity drives on each of the remaining mines and moving them into the path of the three Klin warships.

  At the same time, he was moving his fleet. It was harder now keeping them out of harm’s way, with the three tracks to consider. Some of his units slipped within range, but the VN-91s weren’t charged for a long-range
attack, not yet. His ships moved to safety without a problem.

  Gary shook his head. It was taking too long. The Klin ships were getting closer to Bannokfore and he was still having trouble clustering enough mines to the rear of the tracks. The mines were laid thinner toward the outer edges of the system. He didn’t have enough to effectively cut off the retreat of the Klin if he had to.

  Dammit, he had no choice. He had to go now.

  “Detonate…all forward mines!”

  It took almost two and half minutes for the light from the one hundred forty-eight nuclear explosions to reach the flagship. That was about the same time it took it reach Bannokfore. The flash was incredible, brighter than anything anyone had ever seen this side of a supernova. The overlapping balls of fire spread across space creating the largest artificial-created event in history.

  Gary worried that even though they may save the planet Bannokfore from the Klin, the incredible amount of deadly radiation he was releasing in the system would eventually overwhelm the planet’s magnetic field and bombard the surface, mimicking the effects of a gamma ray burst. Life would end on Bannokfore—all life—and more than the Klin could ever hope to achieve.

  “They have stopped their advance,” someone reported.

  “Detonate the trailing units.”