by T. R. Harris
Adam struggled with the growing list of priorities filling his mind. Save Lila, stop Kracion from becoming immortal, convince the galaxy of the reality of the threat before it’s too late…hit the head and get something to eat. It was all so overwhelming.
“We’ve bought ourselves a little time by screwing up the TD portal,” he said. “But not much. And now we’re in for the fight of our lives, and this time they’ll be no points for second place.”
Riyad shook his head. “Hardly original, my friend, but true. Yet when are there ever points for second place in the game we play?”
Good question….
The End
…with more to come.
To my loyal and intrepid readers…
This latest challenge for Adam Cain and his friends is just getting underway, with the intrigue and action now set on full auto. In the next adventure, Adam must locate the lost artificial world of the Aris and prevent Kracion from assimilating Lila and Panur, creating an insane immortal with a god complex. In the meantime, the hastily formed forces of the Milky Way race to find an answer to the advance weaponry used by Kracion’s fleet of Klin and Olypon, before the tide shifts so much that they’ll be no coming back from the brink. The galaxy has faced threats before, but nothing as widespread and relentless as this.
T.R. Harris
Part V
The Immortal War
An Adam Cain Adventure
The Human Chronicles Saga
Book #25
by
T.R. Harris
____
Copyright 2018 by T.R. Harris
All rights reserved, without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanically, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Adam Cain is an alien with an attitude.
His story continues…
In the exciting continuation of the battle against the evil creature Kracion, Adam and the team race against time and unbeatable star fleets to stop the mad Aris from becoming immortal. At stake are the lives of Adam’s daughter, Lila, and the mutant genius Panur…along with the fate of the entire galaxy. Never has the Milky Way faced such a deadly foe. And never has the galaxy needed Adam Cain and his band of heroes more than it does now….
109
If this keeps up we’ll be dead in an hour….
“Here they come again!” Copernicus yelled from the weapons station.
“How many?” Adam inquired, distracted from his morbid thought.
“Six…no seven.”
Theoretically, the Klin Fleet Vessel known as the Davion had an unlimited capacity for flash cannon bolts, as long as the generators could recharge between salvos. The problem: the Olypon were sending ships through the breach in the Dysion Shield every few minutes, so the generators couldn’t build up a full charge. The ship still had weapons, but after each brief battle, the number of available shots was reduced by one or two. Adam needed time to get the systems fully charged or eventually the weapons would run dry.
Riyad swung the Davion along another attack line, giving Coop a clean shot at the first alien ships emerging from the swirling mass of nebular gas and stellar debris. It wasn’t that hard to counter the Olypon warships; they could only exit the corridor two at a time and with each pair separated from the others by a respectable distance because of their gravity-wells. Also, they appeared with their sensors scrambled by the electrostatic charge built up on the surface of the nebula, making them temporarily blind as they emerged. A few point-blank shots by Copernicus and a shield panel would drop, opening the enemy ships up for the kill shot.
But then they were back at it again, without giving the generators time to recover. They had already countered four such salvos, with a combined eighteen Olypon ships destroyed, yet with no sign of letup.
Adam wasn’t sure if this was a deliberate strategy on the part of the Olypon, or just how they were moving their ships through the corridor the Humans had blasted in the Shield with a pair of colliding gravity-wells a few hours back. The passage was narrow and unstable, with random debris and gas clouds already closing in to fill the void. It was now a race to see who lasted the longest: The Davion and its rapidly draining generators, or the integrity of the opening allowing the enemy ships access to a region of space outside the Dysion Void.
Either way, it was going to be close.
Adam’s eyes were glued to the charge meter displayed above Coop’s station. The Olypon had an entire fleet of warships on the other side of the Shield, so it wasn’t a question if they had the units to overwhelm the Davion’s systems. It was whether or not they could get a foothold on this side of the barrier before the corridor closed. Adam’s tiny ship was preventing them from doing so. So, it wasn’t a question of stopping the enemy with cannon fire, but rather letting the nebula do the job for them.
“Riyad, set a course for the opening,” Adam ordered. “Let’s see if we can help close that damn thing once and for all.”
“Even if we do, it will only be a thin barrier,” Sherri said. “The Olypon will be able to punch through.”
“But it will give us time to recharge our batteries or bolt out of here.”
“Ready,” Riyad reported.
“Coop, spray the lining to the opening with cannon fire, as much as you have left,” Adam said. “Let’s get everything moving. Maybe the chaos of the colliding debris will help. If anything, it’ll make passage through the corridor a little more dangerous.”
The Davion swept along the impossibly large outer wall of the Dysion Shield, aiming for a dark spot in the kaleidoscope of colorful gases. The wall wasn’t exactly a wall, just a denser version of the space the ship was bolting through. The gravity-well forward of the Davion could suck up this diffused matter; any closer to the wall and it would overload.
Adam didn’t have to give the order to shoot or tell his pilot the proper course to take. Both Coop and Riyad were experienced enough to know. The gravity-well absorption rate was near redline when Copernicus opened fire, sending twelve powerful balls of white-hot plasma energy into the gas cloud at either side of the opening. Already, the gravity-drive of the Klin flying saucer was affecting this tiny part of the nebula, changing the direction of the swirling wisps of methane, oxygen and helium, creating even more turmoil in the structure. The dark opening became clouded and eventually closed, overcome by the introduction of new material into the small void.
The Davion sped away, maintaining the deepest gravity-well they could. That should hold them, Adam thought. Not for long, but long enough.
He knew the Olypon weren’t in a position to launch a full-scale invasion of the Milky Way, not without the Klin forces or their Aris master—Kracion—leading the way. The insane ancient alien had boasted about his superior technology, and how the Union and the Expansion would be no match for his much smaller fleet and their advanced weaponry. Adam had no doubt what the Aris said was true. Your race didn’t survive for a million years of civilization—and then another three billion in suspended animation—without possessing technology beyond imagination. Kracion would provide his allies with the means of defeating the combined forces of the Milky Way in any heads-up battle. The key to victory would be to outsmart the Aris.
Adam slumped in his command chair at the thought.
Yeah, right. Outsmart the beings who created nearly all advanced life in the galaxy; who could travel between dimensions when the Human race was just a glimmer in an ameba’s eye, and who could build hibernation pods that allowed them to live long enough to see their multi-billion-year-long experiments come to fruition. A piece of cake.
“What now,
Adam?” Riyad asked from the pilot seat. “Do we stay and hold down the fort, or do we find some safe place until we can warn the galaxy about the coming threat?”
The voluptuous Arieel Bol moved up to the side of Adam’s chair. “We must rescue Lila!” the sexy Formilian exclaimed. “Nothing else can take priority.”
“She’s not even in the Milky Way yet,” Sherri Valentine pointed out.
“Which is why we must find the Aris station before Kracion can come through the portal,” Arieel said. “Once he does, that will be the first place he goes.”
Adam nodded. “She’s right. The conquest of the Milky Way will take a backseat to his becoming immortal. And he needs the artificial world of the Aris to make that happen. If he makes it into the galaxy, we know where he’ll go first.”
“Along with Lila,” Arieel pointed out. “He must be stopped.”
“I agree. But we also have to let the word out about Kracion and his Olypon and Klin fleets. We can’t stop them on our own—”
“But we can stop him!” Arieel stated.
Adam thought for a moment, all eyes on him. “We’ll contact Earth, let them know what’s going on. Arieel, you need to contact Formil and get the Expansion on alert. After that, we’ll head to the Kidis Frontier. That’s where the Aris world is located.”
“Do you remember how to get there?” Riyad asked. Of all the members of the team, Adam was the only one aboard who had been to the planet-size artificial space station the Aris had created for themselves.
“I have a pretty good idea,” he said. “It seems the harder I concentrate, the clearer things become. But first things first.” He wanted to get off the subject as soon as possible. Although he had enhanced recall ability from the brain meld with Panur, it hadn’t come with a new level of confidence. His memory was a hit-or-miss thing. “We need to make some calls and then get to the nearest Expansion base to warn the people there.”
Sherri was scanning the navigation files. “Looks like it’s a place called Vadon. It’s just outside the entrance to the nebula, near Tel’oran. The Juireans have an outpost there.”
“Good; Riyad, set the course. In the meantime, let’s make a call to Earth, while Arieel contacts Formil. Kracion is a threat to the entire galaxy, so it doesn’t matter who gets the news first, just so that everyone eventually knows and reacts.”
“Who do we call?” Sherri asked. “Everyone we know on Earth has either died, retired or won’t take our phone calls.”
She had a point. Any allies the team may have had in the past were long gone, which was a sad thing. It seemed that no matter how many times you save the galaxy, it’s always a question of what have you done for me lately that counts.
“Pull up a directory for Phoenix Command,” Adam said to Sherri. “Let’s see if we recognize any names.”
“Public records will be for the unclassified personnel and command staff. They don’t publish all the big names.”
“Do it any way. It’s worth a shot.”
“He’s still in charge?” Adam asked as he recognized a name a few minutes later. “I figured after we stole the components to the trans-dimensional starship he would have got the boot.”
Sherri looked at him askew. “If you remember, they put all the blame squarely on us. You don’t become the director of the Orion-Cygnus Union’s Technology and Development section without knowing how to deflect some incoming shots.”
General Paul Sharp had been Adam’s friend, an aging warrior/scientist who liked to live vicariously through the adventures of Adam and his team. Adam had used that friendship to distract him while the rest of them stole a non-working prototype vehicle that would eventually become the Defiant. The general was a physicist and a mechanical engineer, in addition to a military officer. That was probably why he was still in charge of the division. His mind was too valuable to let go.
“Let’s see if he’ll take my call,” Adam said. “Open a link to his command.”
Continuous Wormhole communications weren’t designed for making direct calls to local numbers on Earth—or anywhere else, for that matter. They were effective for ship-to-ship comms because just about every starship carried the required equipment. But for linking to land-based numbers, the call had to be routed from a larger center and then transferred to the local system, and not every link warranted such attention or priority. It took Adam a full thirty minutes—half the single link time limit—just to convince someone that his call should be forwarded. He wasn’t even sure what time it was in Phoenix, or if General Sharp would be in his office. The fact that the man practically lived on-site was a plus.
“General Sharp’s office, sir or ma’am, Staff-Sergeant Janice Reynolds speaking.
“Hello, this is Captain Adam Cain calling for the general. Is he in?”
There was a pause on the line. Everyone over sixteen on Earth knew the name of Adam Cain, for good or bad. “Captain Cain? Yes, sir. I will check with the general.”
Janice Reynolds didn’t sound that impressed. Had she been assigned to the division during Adam’s last visit?
“You fucking pirate,” said a gruff voice over the audio-only comm link. Video was seldom available for multi-transfer comms. “You have some nerve calling me. The last I heard, you were busted and leaving the planet with your tail between your legs.”
“Yeah, nice to hear your voice, too, general,” Adam replied sourly. “Thanks for reminding me. No one wanted to believe I had much to do with defeating the Klin.”
“And did you?”
“The only reason the Nuoreans destroyed the Klin planet was because they thought I was there. You don’t really believe those bastards did it to help us out, do you?”
“Of course not…I’m just fucking with you, captain. But seriously, you are the last person I expected to hear from.”
“Are we cool, general?”
“Hey, your last visit here was just more material for my book. I can’t make it all up. Some of it has to be based on true events. So, what’s up?”
Adam gave Sherri a sigh of relief. It seemed like his old friend was still his friend. It was a start.
“I have some bad news to relay to you, Paul. There’s a new enemy about to attack the galaxy, and this time it’s really bad.”
“That’s good to know,” General Sharp said. “I didn’t think the Sol-Kor and the Nuoreans were that bad, so I’m glad to see this one is really bad.”
“I’m serious, general. Have you ever heard of the Aris?”
There was a pause on the line. “Aris? I don’t believe so.”
“Then they’re keeping the information on ice. I was debriefed, so someone knows.”
“Who are they?”
“Only a race of three-billion-year-old creatures who helped seed life throughout the galaxy.”
There was another, longer, pause on the line. “You’re serious? And these creatures are still around?”
“It’s a long story, but what’s important right now is that one of these Aris has gone insane and is about to attack the Milky Way from another dimension with an army of Klin and Olypon.”
“Hold on, Adam, let me get a datapad out. This is too good to pass up. This could be a new series of books, maybe even a Netflix movie.”
“I’m serious, general. We just got back from a parallel universe. The Aris—his name is Kracion—has been trapped there in hibernation for four thousand years. Now he has a way to come back, and he has technology that can make him a threat to the galaxy.”
“That…that sounds, well, crazy,” Sharp commented. “And what the hell is an Olypon?”
“They’re a race of beings in the Kracori star system—”
“Wait, I remember them. They’re that backward race on the planet the Klin used as a base. So now they’re a superpower with a fleet of warships. And you mentioned Klin. What Klin?”
“There’s a whole colony of them in this other universe. They’ve been there since before the Reckoning.”
“Okay…sl
ow down, captain. Have you been drinking?”
“A little…but what I’m saying is true.”
“It is, general,” Sherri said, leaning in toward the microphone.
“Who was that?”
“Sherri Valentine, general.”
“Of course; you two still hanging out together?”
“I have my whole team with me, along with the Formilian Speaker Arieel Bol.”
“Are the mutants with you too?’
“No sir, they’re being held captive by Kracion.”
“The Aris? He’s holding them captive?”
“I told you he has some really advanced technology.” Adam could tell he was getting farther away from convincing the general of the threat.
“Let me summarize,” Sharp began. “There’s a three-billion-year-old alien—
from another universe—who’s about to attack the galaxy with a fleet of extinct Klin and a primitive race from deep within the Juddle Nebula? And he also has Panur and Lila captive—the two most-powerful beings to ever exist? I can see why you called me. I’m the only person gullible enough to believe you.”
“Why would I make this up, general? I’m calling to warn you…all of you.”
Adam could tell where this was heading.
“General, just do me a favor. Check with some of your contacts. Find out what you can about the Aris. There are records somewhere. And also about the Olypon. They’ve been using ancient Klin technology left over from when the Klin were on their planet. This is real, Paul. But I know you need to confirm this for yourself. Just hurry. We damaged the Olypon portal when we came through. I don’t know how long it will take them to repair it. And once they do, Kracion will come over. After that, we’re really screwed.”