Kill Before Dying (Tau Ceti Agenda Book 5)

by Travis S. Taylor

  “Fox Three!” Jack shouted.

  “Goddammit, Jack! Would you quit firing missiles in such tight quarters?” Fish said all the while grunting as she fought the Chiata mecha on her back.

  “Oh, fuck it! I’m gonna get court martialed anyway.” Jack mumbled to himself, kicked the bot over into fighter mode, and screamed back up the shaft, bursting through into a rolling and yawing mad spin with targeting Xs filling his mindview. “Guns, guns, guns.”

  Backup was right behind him and going to guns as well. The four of them tied up with the aliens for precious seconds, and Jack finally realized that he was wasting far too much time. He rolled over with his cockpit facing the megaship and took a deep breath and a hit of stims.

  Start pukin,’ Candis! Now!

  Deathblossom in three, two, one.

  There were only four alien fighters on top of them and there were a handful more inbound, but none of them were expecting what Jack was doing. The Ares-T spun up, firing DEGs and cannons and targeting all of the alien fighters within seconds. Jack barely had time to place himself in his “zone” before the targets were neutralized and the Deathblossom spun down. Jack clenched his jaws on the bite block and breathed through his nose doing his best to keep from regurgitating. Somehow he managed to choke back the bile.

  “We’ve got to move it!” Jack gasped as he opened his mouth and swallowed. He dropped back through the elevator shaft hole and then through the top-floor opening his missile had made. He bounced in and looked around. The concussion from his missile had taken out all six of the ground troops, or more likely command team, or bridge crew of the ship, and there were mutilated and mashed-up alien bodies and amorphous armor stuck to the bulkheads like someone had thrown a plate of red and green spaghetti in a blender with the top off. The shit was everywhere.

  “I guess they weren’t expecting us,” DeathRay said. “Fish, get in here and keep my exits covered!”

  “Roger that, DeathRay!”

  What now, Candis?

  I was expecting you would ask that, his AIC said. I’m in direct contact with Allison. First things first, get out and look around.

  Right.

  Jack popped the hatch and dropped to the floor. His jumpboots hit the deck plating solidly with a bit of a crunching sound and he noticed that there was frozen alien goo all over the floor. He looked up and for the first time had a second to notice the Beta Fleet engaged with over two dozen Chiata megaships in the ball around him. The porcusnails were zipping those fucking blue beams of death from Hell across the sky, and one of the Fleet ships burst at the seams.

  “Shit, they’re getting hammered,” he thought as he checked the battlescape. The Beta wave was down to seven ships. He crunched across more of the alien body parts and goop.

  “This place is gonna need a shitload of floor cleaner.” He walked to what he thought was the captain’s chair, if you could call it a chair. The Chiata were odd beasts with legs, yes, but they were amorphous blobs that changed on a whim. Jack wasn’t even sure that sitting meant anything to them. But it was a station, whether it was a chair or not. “Alright, Candis, I’m looking at what I think is the Captain’s station. Can you handshake with it?”

  Allison and I are on it. It would appear as if propulsion is locked out and the shield generators are offline.

  No shit, Jack thought. What else?

  It looks like that there is the weapons station, Jack. Candis lit up a panel in his mindview. Jack turned to it and pushed the dead Chiata torso off the panel.

  Okay, so it does. Yeah, this looks like a targeting link here and there are the fire controls. Is it locked out?

  I’m not certain, his AIC replied.

  Well, it is certainly not in any language I’ve ever seen. Jack stood in front of the console pretending he was the alien gunner for a second. He looked out the transparent bubble in front of him and could see the giant spires of the tuning fork reaching out above the ship. In the distance he saw one of the alien megaships taking up position on a Fleet ship’s six o’clock. Jack laid his hand against the alien handprint on the table and flexed his trigger finger. Nothing happened.

  Did you think it would be that easy? Candis asked.

  You never know. What now?

  “Jack this is Nancy, copy?” His wife’s voice cut into his speakers on a private channel.

  “Copy, hot stuff.” Jack said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Allison says you have to find some sort of transmitter or implant from one of the alien bodies. They must use some sort of wireless interface that is encrypted at the user. She is having no luck cracking it from the outside,” Nancy told him. “The consoles are likely biometrically locked out.”

  “Okay, hold on. You seeing this?” He asked.

  “Yes, I’ve got you in my mindview. Keep looking.”

  Jack foraged about the bridge and the mangled and frozen bodies until he found an alien’s head. There was an implant on the left side of the earhole that looked as if it went all the way into the thing’s brain.

  “That’s it, Jack!” Nancy stopped him. “Pull that out.”

  “How did I get the gross job?” He carefully pulled at the implant until he felt bone snap and then it pulled out of the alien head with green brain matter still connected to it. “Ooh, shit, that’s nasty. Now what?”

  “Open up your universal data port to your suit and snap that thing onto it,” Nancy told him.

  The alien implant didn’t have any sort of connection that would fit into his suit, but the UDP was basically a wideband full-spectrum antenna. Any connections were wireless. Jack waited for a second longer.

  “How is this going to help? If you couldn’t get in wirelessly already, what difference will this make?” Jack asked his wife.

  “The ship’s system was locked out. But Allison believes she can hack in through this creature’s wireless interface and get us in. Maybe the creature wasn’t locked out before the system was shut down.” At that, the bridge lit up and the panels came to life.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jack stammered.

  “What I used to do for a living, remember.” Nancy sounded pleased. “Now just use your battlescape mindview to highlight a target and Allison will relay that to the targeting computer and fire the system.”

  “Okay, that one.” Jack pointed out one of the alien megaships. Nothing happened.

  “Allison says that should have worked,” Nancy said. “We’re missing something.”

  Jack looked around the panel and at the dead body on the floor next to it. He looked at the panel again and looked closer at the hand print indention. Then he looked back at the alien body.

  “How about this?” Jack pulled the dead alien’s hand up and placed it on the handprint on the tabletop control panel. Then he looked in his mindview and focused on one of the Chiata megaships. As soon as he did, the panel jumped to life with lights and the tuning fork began flashing lightning like a thunderstorm. The hair on the back of Jack’s neck stood on end as a blue beam of death from Hell burst forth from the top of the porcusnail’s antennae and zigged out before them and then zagged twice, hitting home dead center of the alien megaship.

  “Hot damn! Hit it again, Jack!” Nancy exclaimed. Jack did.

  Chapter 34

  February 19, 2407 AD

  Northern Region

  Alien Planet, Target Star System

  700 Light-years from the Sol System

  Tuesday, 1:06 A.M. Ship Standard Time

  Deanna Moore stood motionless in what at first was a sea of blackness, and then there was something that was lit up in the distance. Maybe it was a wall. Dee wasn’t sure. But it was a light. A light aqua color with rippling white flashes dancing across it. The wall was perfectly square and it appeared to be approaching her; therefore, the scale of the wall grew while the aspect ratio remained the same.

  What the hell is that, Bree? she thought. It looks a lot like a QMT gate.

  I’d have to agree with you, but every one we ha
ve seen before is round and not square.

  So? Deanna wasn’t an engineer or a STO, but she figured the shape of the gate was in the engineering of it and not the physics. So what?

  I have no response to that other than there are no readings on any instruments.

  Keep looking.

  The square continued to approach her until it was within a meter from her, and the quantum foam rippling effect before her stretched in all directions as far as she could crane her neck to look. The center of the square right in front of her formed a circular wavefront that propagated outward along the surface of the quantum foam and then a figure stepped through it.

  At first Dee thought it was another human, but once the lighting from the gate, or whatever it was, illuminated the being’s face, it was clear to her that it wasn’t human. Humanoid, yes. Human, no.

  “Hello?” Dee asked timidly. “Who, who are you?”

  The creature stepped very close to Dee, almost to within millimeters, and appeared to be sniffing her suit. Then it reached up an extremely long set of fingers, six on each hand, and poked at her visor. The alien made some sort of facial expression that Dee didn’t understand and then it pointed a device in her general direction. When it did that, the beetle that was stuck between Dee’s hand and the wall back in the ruins on the planet in the target star system crawled up her arm and jumped into the alien’s outreached hand.

  For the first time Dee realized she was no longer standing in the alien ruins, or if she, was she had somehow moved further into them. She wasn’t really sure just where in the universe she was and she wasn’t sure what was going on at the moment.

  Dee, we are being scanned and I’m being sent connectivity handshaking protocols. They don’t seem malicious yet, Bree thought to her.

  Talk to it, Bree. This is why we’re here.

  The creature stood silent for a moment and Bree didn’t respond any further to Dee’s thoughts. At first Dee was getting concerned that the alien was taking over the AI and longtime friend in her head. But then an expression that looked like relaxation washed over the alien’s face.

  Dee? You hear me?

  I’m here. What happened to you?

  I think this creature just downloaded everything I know. It was so overwhelming I could do nothing but let it happen.

  Are you okay?

  Uh, yes, thank you. I’m fine.

  “Human? Interesting.” The creature said in perfect English. “United States Marine Major Deanna ‘Apple1’ Moore. Why are you here?”

  “Uh, I was looking for you.” Deanna wasn’t sure how to respond, but she knew she needed to be diplomatic and not blow whatever chance this might be. She thought briefly to herself about what her father would do.

  “Looking, for me?” The creature started to do something that resembled laughter. “No, I highly doubt you were looking for me.”

  “Well, I was looking for someone? Or something that could help.”

  “Of course you were! Ha, ha. Well then, you have found me. Help you how? What do you want?”

  “Uh, wait, you know who I am, so why don’t you tell me who you are?” Dee was doing her best to think her words through before she spoke. She had no idea if this alien was finicky or easily insulted. She didn’t want to create some intergalactic incident with a first contact by saying the wrong things.

  “Very well. Mru.” It said.

  “Mru? Is that your name or what you are?” Deanna asked maybe a little too abruptly.

  “Aha, yes, my name is Mru as yours is Deanna. I am Thgreeth as you are human.”

  “I see. Where am I, Mru?”

  “You are here,” it said with a pause. At first Dee thought the thing was being funny, but it was merely pausing to find the right words. “Here is a pathway between places. Give me a moment as I’m still assimilating your speech.”

  “This place is a teleportation facility? That’s what all the star maps and trajectories on the ruins mean, right?”

  “Yes. As the scourge covered the galaxy from the outer rings inward, my people moved ahead of them and placed these safe havens and escape passages through space. Our hopes were to enable multiple attack fronts unavailable to the enemy in the oncoming war. You have found how to access one of them. This is important in that no other species as of yet has been judged by the automated guardians as trustworthy enough to allow through. Perhaps they allowed it or perhaps you manipulated it. Either way, you are here now.”

  “Automated guardians, you mean the beetle bugs? That thing didn’t like the way I tasted,” she said.

  “Yes, I see this. That is exciting and intriguing for me. In seventy thousand years, no other species has triggered the tunnel system. But through testing your blood and reading the history stored in your artificial counterpart, we could see that we should at least have a conversation with you,” Mru explained. “That does not mean you are trustworthy.”

  “Great. We are having a conversation. What now?”

  “You still haven’t answered my question. Why would you put yourself through so much pain to come here? Tell me, Deanna Moore of Earth, why are you here?”

  “My race is about to be invaded by this scourge you speak of. They are moving rapidly through the galaxy like locusts and within two more years they will devour my homeworld. We came here hoping to find answers and perhaps a way to fight the Chiata horde. We are looking for something, well, something that will give us hope. Any kind of hope is more than what we have now,” Dee said.

  “Oh, no, you are mistaken. The Chiata are not the scourge I spoke of.” Mru hesitated as if searching for words again. “The Chiata are only doing what is within their nature the same way a swarm of insects would. They devour what is within their path. True, they are destructive, but that is simply what they do. Doing what is natural isn’t evil, it simply is.”

  “The Chiata were not the scourge? Seems like it to me.” Deanna was confused. “Scourge or not, they are about to wipe my people out. We have to stop them.”

  “Do not doubt that the Chiata must be dealt with. This is why we left the guardians behind on all of the planets we have traveled to. But there is a much more malignant species bent on being overlords of all that is not them within this galaxy. They are amorphous parasites. When we first encountered them they had enslaved a race of large sentient mammals and used them as parasitically controlled slaves. They attempted to enslave us and that is why we disrupted their technologies nearest our outposts. To the Thgreeth, living in freedom is the most precious and sacred concept. We could not coexist with this evil. We will not be enslaved.”

  “Wait, you mean you were not fighting the Chiata?” Dee realized that the Chiata didn’t have quantum membrane teleportation technologies, so, clearly the dampening fields that rendered the QMTs useless were not meant for them. She also knew who had the QMT technologies and how humanity had come by them. Knowing that gave her pause and frightened her even more than the Chiata. “Someone worse than the Chiata?”

  “We were winning the war and seeding the galaxy with bases that would enable a clean sweep of the parasites, but that is when the Chiata came. Their numbers were so great that we did not desire the loss of life required to stay. This was the last planet we had made it to and we were not finished here when the Chiata arrived here. So, we left the inner galaxy and relocated our civilization to what you know as the Monoceros Ring around this galaxy. We have remained and will remain there until such time as we can retake the galaxy in peace or leave it altogether.” Mru paused and studied Deanna closer. It looked at the instrument in its hand and then back at her. “You are very strong, Deanna Moore of Earth. Yet you are still very damaged. I see that you must depend on this mechanical suit for support because of injuries you have sustained.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll live,” she said. “What I need to know though, is can you help me stop the Chiata from destroying my homeworld?”

  “Oh, I cannot help you, not really, as you see, I really am not here. This is a real-time p
rojection of me. I am tens of thousands of light years away from here. But that isn’t to say that you are not able to help yourself.” Dee was tired of the riddles the alien spoke in. She wanted it just to come out and explain itself.

  “Help myself? How?” She asked.

  “You now know how to use the tunnels. The map is complete on the walls of the evacuation centers. Use them to your advantage as you see fit. The walls are interactive once you figure them out. They will help you plan your attacks or escapes as needs be. We used them to evacuate entire worlds before the Chiata devoured them,” Mru told her, but Dee wasn’t buying it.

  “Without our QMT engines we can’t move to those tunnels fast enough. Being limited by just our hyperspace travel puts us at a much lower advantage than the Chiata. These tunnels would be useless to us.” She wanted some sort of super Chiata killer, but Mru was being too cryptic to give away something of the sort. Or maybe it was like her grandmother had told her, Mru was just too alien for her to completely fathom.

  “Yes, I see that,” Mru noted. “Very well. As long as your people remain trustworthy allies, you will be able to use your teleportation technologies within range of the evacuation centers and forward operating bases. But do not expect them to bring you all the way to us. We will not allow that. I am uploading the key sequence to your counterpart who can then disseminate it to your people. But be aware, as soon as a non-trustworthy entity attempts to use it, the key will be changed.”

  “That’s it? Nothing else? No super weapons that eat Chiata?” Dee was disappointed.

  “Perhaps something, more than nothing.” Mru held up his hand and the beetle jumped from the alien’s hand to Dee’s shoulder and perched there briefly. “This key is yours. Learn from it. Perhaps it is what you are looking for. You should have your bigger minds study it, but note that it is yours, Major Deanna Apple1 Moore. It is yours to command and control. It will only answer to you. Your people have returned and I think it is time you do as well.”