Almost instantly, the Ambassador shrieked, stumbling backward. A second later, he collapsed onto the floor and twisted in agony as he began vomiting blood.
Several ceremonially armed Lokhars whirled around. Two heaved their spears. The hippy Lokhar—the Shi Feng assassin—dodged the first missile. The second spear caught him in the chest, making him stagger.
“Guards!” Spencer shouted.
Three spear-armed tigers turned toward Diana. Four of them lunged at me.
Beam weapons hummed. Every Lokhar in the chamber collapsed under murderous fire from the security detail and the marines standing in back.
The carnage was horrendous and fast, with a host of smoking, sometimes-shriveled tiger carcasses thudding onto the blood-slicked floor
One of the spearheads grazed Diana’s arm, staining the shimmering dress with bright drops of blood. I expected her to drop from poisoning. She did not, as that tiger hadn’t, apparently, been Shi Feng.
I parried the spears thrust at me, using my hands as trained: knocking each spear aside after the spearhead had passed. Otherwise, I would have seriously cut the sides of my hands.
“They’re dead,” Diana said in shock. “All the Lokhars are dead.” She looked up at me, with dazed amazement on her face. “It’s over, Creed. You made sure that the Lokhar Emperor will hate us with searing passion for murdering his ambassadorial party. That will be considered a harsh slur against his imperial dignity. Now, he has to burn Earth to its bedrock. You’ve just made sure that the aliens will wipe out humanity forever.”
-26-
The Prime Minister’s pronouncement ensured that everyone stared at me.
I glanced at the dead, smoking tigers. The crisscrossing beam-fire had been amazingly accurate and deadly. My plan to use the Ambassador to grab the Lokhar heavy cruisers had just evaporated. I hadn’t even gotten the codes from his mind and had no idea where the heavy cruisers were hidden.
As Ella had said, I’d planned to use the heavy cruisers to slip undetected through the Lokhar Empire. Now, reaching Acheron was going to be much more difficult.
“Look at them,” Diana said in a stricken voice. “We just murdered the ambassadorial party of the most powerful aliens in our sector of the galaxy. What are we going to do now?”
“Follow my plan,” I said. “It will still work.”
“What plan?” Diana shouted.
“I believe he means slipping through the Lokhar Empire and reaching Acheron, the planet of the First Ones,” Spencer said.
“Not technically the planet of the First Ones,” I said, “but a place that contains some of their technology.”
“First One technology is going to save us from the Lokhars?” Diana asked.
“No.”
“No?”
“It will help solve the Plutonian problem,” I said. “Once we’ve done that, taking care of the Lokhars should be much easier.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.
“Sure it does,” I said, smoothly. “Think about it. The Alliance will control the Plutonian pocket universe, right?”
“So what?” she said. “Earth needs more battlejumpers, not a pocket universe.”
“You’re not thinking this through,” I said. “The pocket universe will give you fantastic mobility, force-multiplying the battlejumpers Earth already possesses.”
“What mobility?”
“From what I’ve read, the Plutonians can reach most of the galaxy with equal speed. Think about it. The pocket universe is outside our space-time continuum. The wormhole—the needed dimensional portal—can open from the pocket universe into many possible areas with equal ease.”
“Ah,” said General Briggs, who had been following my explanation. “The pocket universe will act as a nexus point, a junction. Go to the pocket universe, and you can invade the Lokhar Empire at any point you desire.”
“Theoretically accurate,” I said.
“I don’t understand that part,” Briggs said. “Will it act as a junction or not?”
“We haven’t tried it yet, but it should work the way I’ve outlined it.”
Diana groaned. “This is just more of your gibberish so we don’t put you back in prison where you belong. How did you engineer this debacle, Creed?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, letting anger tinge my words.
Spencer glanced sharply at the Prime Minister before regarding me curiously. “Yes,” he said. “I see it now. This murder spree is your handiwork, isn’t it? You’re the Galactic Effectuator. This is what you do. You’re like a stage magician, practicing misdirection while you go about your task. We believed you were safely in our Rat’s Nest. Instead, you outmaneuvered all of us. That was neatly done, Commander. You have my congratulations.”
“I’d like to take credit for this—” I said.
“Please,” Spencer said, “don’t bother denying it. You’ve created an incredible balls-up for us. We’ll have to take out the rest of the Lokhar delegation, or sequester them until we decide what we’re going to do. In the meantime, you’re free. And we’re forced into accepting your help. You don’t seriously expect me to believe that what happened here occurred by accident?”
“Are you saying the commander engineered this?” General Briggs asked Spencer. “That doesn’t make sense. You told us he was in his cell all night.”
“I’m going to double and triple check that,” Spencer replied. He eyed me. “What will a close examination of the guards and your cell reveal, Commander?”
“Not a damn thing,” I said.
“What do you recommend we do?” Spencer asked.
“Same as always,” I said. “Grab the Lokhar heavy cruisers and pack them with assault troopers.”
“How do we summon the Ambassador’s heavy cruisers to us?” Spencer asked. “They’re nearby, certainly, but we haven’t located them. Besides, are the Starkiens a match for the Lokhars?”
The Proconsul referred to the unfortunate fact that Earth didn’t have any nearby battlejumpers at the moment. The Plutonians had destroyed those. Starkien warships presently protected Earth.
“It may not come to a battle between Starkien versus Lokhar,” I said.
“What are you two talking about?” Diana said. “Look at these dead Lokhars—”
“Prime Minister,” Spencer said, interrupting her. “We have committed a terrible deed here today. It has sealed our fate, as you’ve already explained to us. We have burned our ships.”
“What ships?” Diana asked.
“It’s an old expression,” I said, studying the Police Proconsul. “It refers to Hernando Cortez. He was a Spanish Conquistador. He sailed to the Veracruz coast in what was once Mexico. After landing his men, Cortez secretly burned all his ships anchored in the bay.”
“That sounds like madness,” Diana said.
“No,” I said. “It meant his small party of Spanish soldiers had no choice. They couldn’t retreat. So they advanced and found the Aztec Empire and conquered it with the aid of Indian allies. It was one of the most amazing conquests in Human History.”
“And you’re our Cortez?” Diana asked, sarcastically.
“And those are our burned ships,” I said, indicating the smoking tiger corpses. “Once Emperor Daniel Lex Rex hears of this, he’ll summon the Jade League and demand a vast armada to attack us.”
“We’re all dead in other words,” Diana said.
“Hardly,” I said. “Now, we really have a chance at striking a victorious blow against the Lokhars.”
Diana stared at me as if I’d lost my senses. Spencer leaned near and whispered in her ear. She stared at him for a time, and slowly, a change came over her.
“Are you the Galactic Effectuator?” Diana asked me.
I sighed. Maybe it was time to drop the pretense.
“Not anymore,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“That I left the Curator’s service.”
“Whatever for?�
� she asked.
“Because he forbade me to rescue Jennifer,” I said.
“And you came here anyway?”
“I had no choice. I have to save Jennifer and I have to stop her from destroying Earth.”
“Why didn’t you tell us all this in the first place?”
I shrugged. I could have given a reason, told her why I’d now told the truth about Jennifer; because Ella had already given the game away. I could have told Diana that the Lokhar dead were not according to some grand plan on my part. This was a disaster. I’d wanted the Ambassador alive. I kept all this to myself because I’d learned a key lesson many years ago as Commander Creed. It made the troops feel better if they thought their leader knew what in the hell he was doing. If they knew their leader was winging it, they might lose heart and stop trying as hard.
It looked like not much had changed since those days.
Diana took a deep breath and abruptly sat down. She fanned herself with a sheaf of papers. Finally, she shook her head.
“I’m out of options,” she told Spencer. “What do you think we should do?”
The Police Proconsul glanced at Briggs before regarding me. “You never did tell us how you reached Earth.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“Well?” Spencer asked.
“I have a stealth ship.”
“Hmm,” Spencer said, before turning to Diana. “Creed has outmaneuvered our play against him, and we do have two implacable foes. As I recall from my readings, Commander Creed was notorious for using one problem to solve another.”
“You want me to trust him?” Diana asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Spencer said. “But I do think it’s time we reinstate him and let him do what he does best.”
“Create mayhem for those he hates?” Diana asked.
Spencer nodded, “Precisely.”
-27-
I didn’t want to borrow a Starkien beamship, and I didn’t want to wait for Earth Defense battlejumpers to get here. We had to get started if we were going to stop Jennifer from convincing the Plutonians to launch everything they had at Earth before we could get into their pocket universe and stop them.
The problem was that I also didn’t want strangers aboard my GEV. It was a small vessel, anyway, and could only reasonably hold maybe fifty people for a short time.
The solution was simple. Instead of strangers, I’d have fifty friends aboard, and we would find the six hidden Lokhar heavy cruisers and pirate them.
That meant I needed assault troopers. The problem was that all of my former assault troopers were ten years older. Some of them wouldn’t be elite soldiers anymore.
Still, I only needed fifty and could presumably select the best out of those who volunteered.
General Briggs was on it, combing the planet for ex-assault troopers. He was the Prime Minister’s creature, however, and would attempt to pack questionably loyal troopers onto my vessel. I couldn’t blame him: he was what he was. But I could certainly try to outmaneuver that play as well.
While still in stealth mode, N7 took the GEV upstairs into low Earth orbit. Ella got on the horn for me, calling a few of the ex-assault troopers she’d kept in touch with over the years.
I went to Neo Vegas, using my flitter and landing at the airport.
Neo Vegas was a lot like old Las Vegas before The Day. The city contained The Strip with all its old vices: sexy ladies, gambling, drinking, wild shows, you name it. I’d been to Vegas as a kid. This one lacked the huge casinos of old.
It felt weird walking The Strip. There were hardly any cars but plenty of bicycles and a few flitters zooming overhead. In that way, it reminded me of the futuristic cartoons I’d loved as a kid, with old George J. zipping around in his flying-saucer vehicle. Neo Vegas lacked the futuristic buildings of those cartoons, it had old-style buildings of the type from before The Day.
As I walked The Strip, it hit me that I was home, but it wasn’t the same. The Lokhars had stolen our old world from us many years ago. All those people I’d known before The Day were dead. Everyone related to me by blood was gone. It was like that for all the real Earthlings now.
Those of us that lived on Earth were all Terrans—sons of Adam, you could say—but we weren’t all Earthlings who had lived on our homeworld before The Day.
I’ve said it before, and it really struck me today as I walked The Strip. The roughest one percent had survived the Lokhar sneak-attack. The mean humans, the sons of bitches that hit a guy in the mouth if he said the wrong thing had primarily been in such out of the way places that he or she had lasted long enough to start surviving in the new world.
The human immigrants to Terra weren’t like that, weren’t mean sons of guns. They usually had living fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters—family, in other words. That wasn’t a knock on them. Heck, I would love to tell my Mom all the cool things I’d done since she died. What it did mean was that the immigrants to Earth were different from the one-percenters, not bad, but different.
No assault trooper had come from the freed slaves of the Jelk Corporation. Well, in one sense we’d been slaves, too, for a time. But we’d been the wild humans, part of the one percent, the killers, and had torn off our slave collars and turned on our jailers.
I stopped on a sidewalk on The Strip, raised my hands into the air and shouted with frustration. I’d forgotten about all the dead from The Day, the ghosts that haunted Earth. Walking the streets like this, almost feeling home again but knowing I’d never know the Earth I had lost, drove me crazy.
How I hated the Lokhars. I realized now I would love to start a league of my own, raise a vast host of starships and burn the bastards to the ground planet by planet.
I’d thought I had lost those old hatreds. I guess I was wrong.
I noticed people avoiding me or hurrying past.
I lowered my arms, finally put my hands into my pants pockets and kept walking. I wore regular garb today, so I blended in soon enough.
I missed Earth. I missed my people. It was good to be home, though, even if it was bittersweet.
As I walked, I remembered Dimitri Rostov, my slain comrade. I inhaled the air and increased my pace.
Maybe that’s what this was all about. It was more than saving Jennifer. In some way, even though she’d been born a slave human on a different world, Jennifer represented all the good things we’d lost when the aliens had come to Earth.
I had to save her. I had to bring her back. I had to show her that I wanted to face the monster for her.
What was the worst thing for a man? It was running away when the bad guy came for your girl. It was being a chicken when you were supposed to be the lion.
A man is supposed to protect his woman. A man is the defender. Some people don’t believe that, but some people are idiots, too.
One of the best things of the one-percenters is that we say what we mean. Before The Day, Earth and particularly the West had social justice warriors. They were terrified little weaklings afraid of bad words, needing safe spaces in case they fainted from “hate speech.” Yet these were the same losers that screeched at anyone who didn’t agree with them. The SJWs didn’t mind calling their enemies every rotten name in the book.
When you looked up the word hypocrite in the dictionary, it had as a synonym: SJW.
Well, it didn’t matter anymore. The SJWs were dead, slain by the Purple Tamika Lokhars. So I wasn’t going to worry about it anymore.
Sometimes, though, I wonder what kind of hell they would have made of America. Then I realize that regular people—the gun owners—would have finally gotten sick of them one day and said, “That’s it. Now we’re going to play Cowboys and SJWs.”
Thinking about that made me feel better.
Yes indeed. It was time to start recruiting the best of the best.
-28-
I asked around in the casino. A waitress told me to check down in the card room.
I walked around, watching people play
the slots, try their luck at blackjack and the roulette wheel. I almost felt as if I’d returned to before The Day. There was old cigarette smoke, the clink of drinks and the tinkle of coins falling into slots. I heard a drunk or two explaining his system to another. I watch dice flash as a crowd surrounded a craps table.
Neo Vegas was practically the same as Las Vegas. The new boss was the same as the old boss.
I bought a beer, guzzled it and bought another. I took it by the long neck and headed for the stairs leading down to the poker room.
Soon, I moved through a corridor to a poker table. There were seven men sitting around it. The dealer was an older lady wearing a casino uniform, a gray outfit with her name SUE on a tag. She dealt the cards. They were playing Texas Hold ‘em.
I saw my old pal Rollo Anderson almost right away. He was huge, and by huge, I mean hugely fat. I couldn’t believe it. He had to weigh close to four hundred pounds.
What had happened to my best friend?
He had a Tom Collins on the table before him and seemed drunk.
Rollo and I used to work together in Black Sand, a mercenary outfit. We’d been in Antarctica on The Day. He hated aliens more fiercely than any of us ever had. He also used to be the First Admiral of Earth.
Rollo’s skin was blotchy, and he was wearing a hat—so I couldn’t tell if he’d lost all his hair or not—and he was huge like I’d said. That didn’t mean there wasn’t hard muscle underneath all that blubber. According to what I’d heard, he fought in a cage for money.
Did Rollo blow all the money down here playing poker?
I stayed back, watching. Rollo bet every hand, and his chip stack dwindled considerably. Finally, he won a hand.
Several of the men glanced at him.
Rollo collected his winnings, flipping one of the chips to the dealer. He didn’t seem elated, but drained his drink and gruffly ordered another.
A waitress hurried to him, collecting the empty glass and giving him another.
Target: Earth (Extinction Wars Book 5) Page 10