Kill Before Dying (Tau Ceti Agenda Book 5)

by Travis S. Taylor

  “Ouch! What the fuck!” Dee stood up and flung herself backwards awkwardly, shaking her hand trying to free the beetle from it. The beetle wouldn’t let go and it pulled itself closer to her hand with its legs and mandibles. “Bree!?”

  Calm yourself, Dee, Bree told her. I’m analyzing it now.

  Do I yank it free or what? Dee did her best to stay calm. Just what she needed was to be paralyzed even further by some alien toxin.

  Dee, you are not being injected with venom of any sort. Relax. I think it is taking blood samples from you, Bree told her. Then the proboscis retracted and the bug sat still on her hand.

  Dee stood motionless for a long pause and took in a deep breath. Then, cautiously, she looked at the alien beetle that sat motionlessly in the palm of her right hand. She zoomed in on it with the visor instruments, and at max zoom she wasn’t so sure that the creature was actually biological, or at least not completely.

  This thing might be a bot, she thought.

  That would make sense, Bree agreed. Now what is our play? The clock is ticking, Dee.

  Right. Let’s go. Dee turned toward the ruin entranceway with her new friend resting comfortably in the palm of her gauntlet.

  As she pressed into the ruin the awkwardness of walking was becoming less and less a problem. Dee was getting more of the hang of letting the suit walk for her, but she still felt really strange with each step. There was no feedback from her feet and legs to tell her she’d made the steps and motions she was making, and it was actually overwhelming to her mind. Even when walking mecha in bot mode, the mind received sensor information that was passed through the body’s nerve endings and sensory points. Walking with no feedback just felt odd.

  Odd or not, she was making it work. Finally, she made it back into the large cavernous room with all of the dead Chiata stuck to the force field and the wall covered with the alien glyphs. The floodlights from her suit illuminated the large room with bright white light, causing long shadows to move about with each of her movements. The rapidly moving shadows kept her on edge, not sure if one of the Chiata was going to spring to life and jump out at her from the shadows. Dee just kept telling herself to stay frosty.

  She centered herself in front of the wall with the largest set of ellipses and curves and the one marked as what Dee interpreted to be representative of the ruin she was standing in. At least she hoped she was reading it right. The picture of the star system and planets matched and the continents on the planet matched. As far as she could tell, the wall was pointing out the ruin she was standing in. It looked like the Chiata had figured the same thing out as well, but they had taken that information to their grave.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said, and carefully picked up the beetle with her left hand and placed it against the divot in the stone wall that looked like it had been carved out just for the alien bug-bot.

  Dee held it in place and pressed it against the wall. Nothing happened. She pressed it harder against the wall and still nothing happened.

  “Damnit! I thought that was going to work.” She wasn’t sure what to do next.

  I thought it might as well, Bree agreed. Don’t give up. We will figure this out.

  Right. We WILL.

  Dee started to retract her hand from the wall, but the beetle didn’t move from its place, and then she realized that she couldn’t remove her hand from around the bug. She was stuck in place, and the horrific looks on the decaying Chiatas’ faces stood out in her mind. Had she been trapped only to die in place, never to be let go?

  Bree! I can’t remove my hand! she thought in a panic, and with each pull of her hand she seemed to be stuck even tighter to the wall. I’m stuck!

  Calm down, Marine. Calm down!

  Then a ripple of blue and white started to form around the periphery of the bug and Dee’s hand. The wall rippled like she had dropped a stone in a puddle. The waves splashed outward across the wall and built up in width and depth. A cone of white light sprayed outward around Dee’s hand and filled the room, blinding her momentarily and saturating the suit’s sensors.

  There was a frying bacon sound, and more dancing whites and blues and arcs of light and ripples of quantum foam churning about her. And then it was dark. It was completely dark, wherever she was.

  What happened to the floods, Bree?

  The suit diagnostics say that they are still operating within normal parameters. They’re on, Dee.

  Bullshit. It’s dark in here. And I still can’t move anything.

  Chapter 29

  February 19, 2407 AD

  U.S.S. Sienna Madira

  Target Star System

  700 Light-years from the Sol System

  Tuesday, 12:47 A.M. Ship Standard Time

  Sir, I’m not receiving Dee’s blue force tracker ping at all, Abigail said in Alexander’s mind.

  Keep looking.

  Yes, sir, but it is like she isn’t even on the planet.

  Keep fucking looking.

  Yes, sir.

  “Fullback, keep those bastards off our nose and lay down cover until you can’t lay it down any longer!” Alexander ordered over the Fleet-wide open tac-net. His four ships were in tight formation, cruising like Orcas looking for the right seal to pounce on, all the while Admiral Walker led the remaining eighteen supercarriers out a few tens of thousands of kilometers ahead, creating a perimeter in front of them and using their hyperspace jaunts effectively to disrupt the Chiata formations. “As soon as we pick our prey, you start jaunting all ships at a once to a chosen singular target. Just like we planned.”

  “Roger that, General! Good hunting!” Walker replied and cut from the net. Alexander looked at the mission clock in his mindview and noted that they’d been in system less than two minutes and the Chiata were already responding with heavy resistance.

  “Alright, let’s find our target!” Moore pulled up the DTM battlescape of the system and started looking for the right response tactic. There were over twenty Chiata megaship porcusnails already responding to their attack, and he expected more would show up soon enough. In fact, he was counting on it. Alexander twisted the ball around in his mind until he found the enemy ship he wanted to go for. “That one right there!”

  Abby, transfer those coordinates to the Fleet.

  Done, sir.

  “Why that one, General?” the XO asked. From the contorted look on her face, she was clearly studying over the DTM battlescape in her mind, trying to understand the logic from the General’s decision.

  “Because it is dead center of the ball right now. If this shit works out, that is right where we want to be.” Alexander explained and then he toggled the channel on the net to ship internal. “All hands, all hands, this is General Moore. Prepare for a short jaunt and then an impact on the aft section of ship. We are on the attack! Moore out.”

  “Sir, all ships in Alpha wave are ready for jaunt.” The Nav said.

  “Well, don’t waste time telling me about it, Nav! Go!” Alexander watched as the vortex spun up in front of them, and then as soon as they were in hyperspace they were out and only a few tens of kilometers from one of the porcusnails.

  “Blue beams, General!” the STO shouted. Alexander held tightly to his chair and waited but the beams didn’t hit the Madira. Instead, several of the Admiral Walker’s Beta wave popped into reality space at just the right moment to draw the enemy fire. “Yeah! The Thatcher is drawing their fire, sir!”

  “Damn good, Fullback!” Alexander smiled. The plan was working so far. “Nav, you know what to do! Let’s ass-end the bastards!”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Gunnery Officer Banks.”

  “Sir?”

  “Target that shield generator with everything we’ve got and soften it up,” Alexander ordered. “I want that spot soft when we ass-end it.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “General!” the Air Boss looked up from his station. “The search and rescue teams have been dropped, sir. Full stealth and decoys. So far, all resi
stance is staying on the main attack waves.”

  “Good. Keep me posted.” Alexander turned back to his mindview, but the Air Boss wasn’t finished.

  “Uh, sir,” the Air Boss continued. “We have no location ping on Major Moore. I’m not sure where to send the SARs team for her extraction.”

  Abby?

  No, sir, still no ping. She simply is not there, or is being cloaked or has her transmitters turned off. None of those solutions seem to make sense.

  Alexander wasn’t sure what to do. While he wanted to give Dee every opportunity to escape, he also couldn’t just send a team to a random location on the planet’s surface and hope that they guessed right. He couldn’t send them in if he didn’t know where to send them. He had to wait and hope that whatever was happening, Dee would find her way on top of it in the end.

  “Have them support the first team then. We’ll deal with Major Moore once we find her,” he said reluctantly.

  “Yes, sir.” Alexander could tell the Air Boss didn’t really like the order either.

  “Impact on enemy shield generators in fifteen seconds, sir!” the Nav shouted excitedly.

  “All DEG batteries direct hits on target, sir!”

  Alexander watched out the viewport, on multiple screens and in his mindview of the battlescape as the Madira accelerated the last few kilometers toward the alien megaship. Smaller spires were firing plasma weapons from the surface of the ship, which were redirected by the Buckley-Freeman barrier shields. They were too close for the megaship to use the blue beams of death from Hell on them, but twice the large tuning fork belched forth lightning blasts of the blue beams into Admiral Walker’s formation of supercarriers. Several of the other alien ships were firing their beams as well. Alexander could see in his mindview that Walker’s formation formed a phalanx and drove at a single Chiata megaship. All of the weapons of the supercarriers in the formation focused on the one alien porcusnail and before the ship could generate a targeting solution, it burst at the middle, exploded into a large orange and white plasma ball, and ripped from bow to stern in a fiery death.

  “Yes!” Alexander cheered under his breath. “Go Fullback!”

  As instantly as the alien ship exploded, the entire Beta attack wave vanished into hyperspace and reappeared seconds later on the opposite side of the ball. Alexander nodded in approval of the execution of the plan.

  He quickly zoomed in on his target and noted that the Hillenkoetter had already rammed the ship on the opposite side. The two clone ships hitting the megaship on the aft section generators were within seconds to impact. As far as Alexander could tell, the Hillenkoetter’s shields and hull plating had held up during impact. Mr. Buckley’s calculations had been spot-on and the supercarriers could not only take a beating but could dish one out.

  “Ten seconds to impact!” the Nav announced. “Nine, eight, seven,”

  “Brace!” Firestorm shouted.

  “Six, five, four . . .”

  Alexander clenched his teeth against his mouthpiece and clutched his gauntlets around the chair arms. He wasn’t sure but he thought he felt the metal give way under his grip because he was holding on so tightly.

  “Three, two, one, impact!”

  The shields of the supercarrier generated a quantum uncertainty field that caused energy and matter to be redirected randomly at the potential barrier location. As the alien ship’s shield system, which appeared to function in a very similar manner, made contact with the Buckley-Freeman shield, each of the fields did their best to redirect the energy vector of the other into random directions. It became a fight of uncertainties as to which shield would hold. In the end, it was the barrier shield that was able to generate the thickest potential barrier that won out, and that meant the one with the most energy density in the area of impact.

  Alexander watched the numbers and graphs and diagnostics in his mindview. He and the CHENG had gone over the simulation many times and he hoped that real life would work as well. The plan was to put all the energy from the hyperspace projector into the shields at the instant of impact and hope they could overpower the alien’s shields, especially after having weakened them with the DEGs on the attack run. Just like in the simulation, the shields of the Madira held and the generator on the alien ship buckled and exploded as the barrier came into contact with the structure. The barrier shield tore against the super-hard alien alloys and dispersed them in spacetime, with an ionizing ball of plasma forming in its wake. The entirety of the rear section of the supercarrier pushed into the alien ship dragging hull plating, conduits, and a sundry of other alien technology down as it did. Metal against metal vibrated and resonated throughout both ships and fires began to break out along the aft sections of the Madira.

  But the shields held.

  “CHENG to CO!”

  “Go, Joe.” Alexander kept his grip tight on the chair arms but eased up on his gritted teeth.

  “The shields are holding, General! I’m ready to release the bots on your command.” Buckley said excitedly over the net. Alexander thought his excitement was well warranted.

  “Nav! Are we full stop?” Alexander asked.

  “Aye, sir! All progress full stop!”

  “XO, let’s give the Chiata bastards a present.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Firestorm turned to his console, and both he and the Ground Boss began giving orders over the net for the shipboard teams to deploy into the alien ship and start bringing hell. Alexander watched the battlescape as the aft hangar doors opened and the shields were dropped. The first line of attack were hovertanks in tank mode and they instantly started blasting away at the interior of the alien ship. Alongside the tanks a river of buzz-saw bots flowed into the ship, programmed to seek out any Chiata and fight them to the last rivet. Behind the battle bots were two teams of armored soldiers. The first team was back up to the bots and numbered at almost one thousand. Alexander had taken ground troops from the clone ships to support the numbers needed for the ship-to-ship assault. The second team had twenty-five soldiers in it being led by DeathRay. Moore followed the action in the battlescape and noted how Jack was biding his time, and waiting for the tanks and bots to create openings in the Chiata defense before he pressed inward. But all things considered, the plan seemed to have caught the Chiata with their pants down and it was working.

  “Alright, Mr. Buckley, it is time to release the bots.”

  Chapter 30

  February 19, 2407 AD

  U.S.S. Roscoe Hillenkoetter

  Target Star System

  700 Light-years from the Sol System

  Tuesday, 12:51 A.M. Ship Standard Time

  “Push the tanks forward and keep on them for cover!” Commander Davy Rackman shouted over the net at the Franklin clone leading the tank squadron and the Malcolm clone leading the armored environment-suit marines. Davy ducked just in time as a blue plasma ball separated a buzz-saw bot from its blade. The blade flew between him and the clone, only missing them by centimeters. “Holy shit! Move!”

  The Franklin clone dropped back down into the tank and closed the hatch and Rackman spread himself out flat in prone position just to the right of the big gun, bringing his HVAR up and blasting on full auto as his targeting Xs turned red in his visor. A red and green blur roared up the middle of the corridor, slinging the bots off of it in every direction in sparks and pieces. The Chiata trooper was formidable and laid waste to several of the bots. But the bots were too numerous for the single Chiata, and it started to stagger. The armor on the alien started to flicker, suggesting that its shield generators were being pushed to the limits. Rackman put a red X right dead center of the creature’s head and released several rounds. The hypervelocity rounds spittapped out of the weapon and ionized the air in their path all the way up to and through the alien’s head. The blur stopped dead in its tracks. Green viscous fluid was sprayed across the sea of killer battlebots as it fell. The bots simply moved on to the next target once they realized that their current one was d
ead.

  “Franklin, we need to keep moving on this route. The CHENG’s map cuts right and down in about fifty meters.” Rackman highlighted the map in the clone tank-driver’s head. “And we need to be laying down better suppressive fire. I’m tired of these damned bots getting blown up all around us.”

  “Roger that, Commander Rackman,” the clone replied. “If we get stuck, just say the word and I’ll blast us a new doorway.”

  “Right,” Davy said and then nodded at the AEM clone nearest him. “Keep that flank clear. I don’t want one of those fucking blurs to come zipping through a hatch or dropping down on top of us. Eyeballs peeled!”

  He looked to his right and over his shoulder and could see tanks two and three behind them, making a V-formation. Several other tanks were further back protecting their rear and the builder bots as they started in on their important tasks.

  Where the Hillenkoetter had rammed into the alien ship had created an impact zone the width of the supercarrier and several false bulkheads deep. Where the aft end of the ship had finally come to a stop was a large cavernous hangar-sized room that looked like a hurricane had hit it during an atomic bomb test. Bulkheads were collapsed and crushed and bent metal dangled about from every structure. Sparks and fires flashed at every corner of the area and there were multiple conduits that appeared to have ruptured and were venting plasma jets. What once was likely a pristine area of the alien ship became a disaster area after the supercarrier rammed it. Davy looked behind him and could see the extreme aft end of the Hillenkoetter jutting out into the room, and tanks, bots, and AEMs deployed almost continuously into the Chiata megaship.

  They were on the port side just forward of the giant blue-beam tuning forks. There was a cavernous room that led to multiple corridors heading off in multiple directions. Davy led them along the corridor that had the least amount of distance between the power source and the impact zone. The STO and the CHENG were using instruments aboard the Hillenkoetter and in conjunction with Commander Buckley on the Madira to guide the team to the target power source. He could only assume that the clones in the ships that attacked the aft sections were doing the same. He didn’t have time to play armchair quarterback in his mindview.