Target: Earth (Extinction Wars Book 5)

by Vaughn Heppner

  “You’re not here to kill us?” I asked.

  Saul frowned. “Why would I kill friends? I want to kill enemies. I find this.” He raised the hand cannon. “I like it very much. Do not leave me behind, Effectuator.”

  This was a quandary. Could I trust Saul? I did not see how. He would be alone in the GEV while we went on the mission. Could I subdue him? I suppose I could grab a trank gun and fire a dart into him. Would the Abaddon clone trust me after that? Did I care?

  I found that I did. Despite everything, I’d learned to like Saul. Did that mean I could trust him?

  “You shouldn’t have teleported here,” I said.

  “I should have,” he said. “I have…” He seemed to concentrate. “I have quest against…evil Sauls.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Quest against evil Sauls,” he said.

  “You mean the other Abaddon clones?”

  He shook his head. “Evil Sauls. They look like me. They big, but they not act like me. They murder. They laugh at thought of evil. Saul hates that. That is why Saul likes Ifness. Ifness in big trouble. Saul save friend.”

  Oh, boy, did he have things backward, at least in some areas.

  “Creed,” Ella said, motioning to me.

  “Stay here,” I told Saul.

  “Where else I go?” he asked.

  “Right,” I said.

  I went to Ella, and she pulled me even farther aside. “You can’t let him stay,” she said.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “You had to pull me all this way to tell me that?”

  “He’s got ears like a cat,” she said. “I think his dumbness is a trick. He’s just waiting to take us out.”

  “Why didn’t he do it a moment ago?”

  “N7 wasn’t in here.”

  “All the more reason to strike,” I said, “taking us out piecemeal.”

  “You can’t be serious letting him stay. He’s a menace to everything.”

  I rubbed my neck. As I’d said earlier, the near threat of horrible danger wonderfully concentrates one’s thoughts. We were on our way to the mother of all PDSs. The thing was supposed to be massive. If we were going to complete our mission in time…

  I turned around and walked thoughtfully to Saul.

  “Tell me, big guy,” I said. “Have you ever been on the PDS before?”

  “You mean Jennifer’s Fort?” Saul asked.

  “Does it orbit the small world?”

  “Yes. The Fort is huge. It holds millions of sleeping Plutonians.”

  My eyes widened. “The Plutonians are not on the planet?”

  Saul shook his head. “Ifness tells me. Planet is big trap. You can go down, but no one can ever leave. It is…dense and has great gravity.”

  “The planet is a trap?”

  “Ifness says so.”

  I looked at the giant mug more closely. He did not seem to be putting on an act. He seemed—damnit, but Saul seemed good. Did lower IQ equal goodness? I didn’t believe that. High IQ meant a high potential. How one used the potential determined their degree of good or bad.

  Why would Saul’s heart be good while Orcus’s heart was bad?

  Could it have something to do concerning their genesis? I didn’t know enough to make the call.

  I grinned to myself. Did it matter how Saul had become a good guy? Wasn’t it more important whether he was good or not?

  “You’re not seriously thinking about letting him stay?” Ella asked.

  “Why not?” Saul asked her.

  “Because we can’t trust you,” Ella told him.

  “That not make sense,” Saul said. “I have always helped. I have always been good.”

  “Maybe to trick us just like Ifness tricked us,” Ella said.

  “That is a lie!” Saul said angrily. “Ifness is a good man. He be very good to Saul.”

  “Sure,” I said. “No one is going to tell you otherwise. Now, Saul, I want you to sketch out the PDS and tell us everything you know about it.”

  “Yes. I can do that. Saul has great memory.”

  “Later,” I said, “you’re going to have to go into the stasis tube for just a while. Will you agree to that?”

  “On one condition,” Saul said. “You let me fight to free Ifness.”

  “Sure,” I said, lying through my teeth. “It’s a deal.”

  -80-

  N7 piloted us in extreme stealth mode as we slowly eased through the thick gases. That gave us time to listen to Saul and study his sketches.

  He drew ten times better than I would have thought he could. Maybe this moron Abaddon clone was brighter than he seemed.

  “I heard Ifness say this PDS blow away any enemy fleet,” Saul said as he passed us another sketch. We sat around a table in the galley. “The heavy gas means only pointblank-range firing works. The PDS super-thick hull armor and massive inhibiter engines give it fantastic power.”

  “Does Jennifer stay in the PDS?” I asked.

  “When she here,” Saul said.

  “Where is Holgotha?”

  “Who?”

  “The donut-shaped Forerunner artifact,” I said.

  Saul shook his head. “The artifact hates it here. He never stays. The artifact checks in from time to time. Then he goes before the place…” The clone frowned. “I forget how Ifness said it.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  I gathered the sketches strewn across the table. One of them showed a square-like oval with jagged edges along the sides. According to Saul, there were vast beam cannons embedded in the super-thick, dense hull. The cannons could fire farther through the murky gas than any Plutonian warship. Jennifer and her crew stayed in the central node in the very center of the PDS.

  I figured it would be like that.

  “Any comments?” I asked Ella.

  “None that I haven’t made before,” she said, gloomily.

  “Right,” I said. I kept studying the sketches until Ella got up and left. Saul made himself a meal of five big hamburgers and a mound of fries an hour later.

  I returned to the piloting chamber, spelling N7.

  Time passed as we crept through the thickening gases. I detected flashes of lightning in the distance. This was like heading deeper into the gas giant Jupiter. The conclusion seemed obvious. The dense planet attracted more gas, causing it to compact. Why hadn’t the same thing happened by the star? Presumably, the heat forced the gases away, or maybe the star devoured the gases, chugging them like a thirsty man in a desert. Yet, if that were the case, wouldn’t the star consume all the gas in time?

  I nodded. Of course, it would.

  That showed this pocket universe wasn’t very old. Given enough time, there would be no gas. Unless the planet or some other mechanism created more gas.

  It was interesting to speculate and frustrating because I didn’t know. My lack of knowledge might lose me the coming battle. However, the more I learned about the PDS, the more I believed our fleet would face annihilation if we attempted to attack it en masse and head on.

  My way might be the only way to victory.

  I piloted us through the gas and became more nervous as time passed. If the gas became thick enough, the stirring gases caused by the passage of my GEV would give us away to watching defenders.

  I had to take us closer, though. My thruster pack wouldn’t take us as far as in our universe.

  I reduced velocity and watched my passive sensors. It was like driving through a thick fog at night. High beams helped me less than low beams, as the brighter light reflected off the thick fog.

  Finally, about two hours later, I detected a faint signal.

  I leaned closer to the panel, waiting for—

  I jerked back as I heard alien screeching. I had no doubt it was Plutonian communication. I did not like it, but that should mean we were closing in on the planet.

  After that, the weird screeches increased. The longer I had to listen to the alien noises, the worse they sounded to me. Soon, the sound
s began getting on my nerves. I tried to analyze that. I think the sounds caused it to hit home with greater clarity that I was in an alien dimension.

  Would I go to Heaven if I died in the pocket universe? I decided yes. If there was a Creator—and I believed there was—He would have created all the dimensions. Thinking otherwise would have taxed my morale to the limit.

  I used the Plutonian signals, guiding our stealth ship nearer the small planet. The signals thickened. I veered away from the loudest clot and strove with all my might to pierce the darkness ahead.

  I strained—

  “There,” N7 said, peering over my shoulder again.

  “What?” I asked.

  He pointed.

  I saw what he meant, a dot out there that didn’t move.

  “You think that’s the planet?” I asked.

  “What else?” N7 said.

  Like a one-eyed man in a dense fog, I turned the GEV ever so slowly. We crept toward the dot. It never wavered. It never shifted. It seemed to grow the closer we came.

  Then, I realized N7 had to be right. It wasn’t a moon, an asteroid or a meteor. That was the small dense planet of the Plutonians, a trap, according to Saul.

  Soon, now, we would have to leave the safety of the stealth ship and see if we could storm the mother of all PDSs by our lonesome.

  As we closed in, I crept around the planet. It was the size of Luna. By its pull on the GEV, it had to be thirty times as dense as our Moon. It was a Hell-world if there ever was one. It had an atmosphere, a heavy one, of course, making the surface invisible to any of my sensors.

  For the time being, I ignored the planet.

  Our fleet was behind me. If I took too long, they would come roaring in, trying to wipe out everything.

  “Take over,” I told N7.

  The android sat at the controls, guiding the GEV with a delicate touch.

  I went to the galley, telling Saul it was time to sleep.

  The giant shook his head, although he did not reach for the .55 lying on the table.

  “Are you going to give me trouble?” I asked.

  “I am going to help you,” he said.

  “You know we’re going in with the phase suits.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I can’t leave you behind on the ship.”

  Saul picked up the .55 hand cannon. He seemed crestfallen. He looked away and made a deep sigh. I almost felt bad I’d hurt his feelings. Before I could say so, he disappeared.

  “Saul,” I said.

  There was no response.

  “AI,” I said.

  “Here,” the AI replied.

  “Where is Saul?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Is he on the ship?” I asked.

  “Negative.”

  I spoke a one-word curse and clutched my face, shaking my head. So now what should I do? Turn around? Keep going?”

  This was a disaster. I’d just told the clone our plan.

  I muttered another curse and jumped up, racing to the piloting chamber.

  -81-

  We crawled around the planet at a distance. The gravity was even worse than I’d feared from the last scan. The greater gravity meant even denser gases. The denser, thickening gases acted as a natural shield against “invisible” ships like ours by revealing our position more easily due to gaseous stirrings.

  “I see it,” I said, from the piloting chair.

  Beside the planet was a massive PDS. The artificial station was almost the same size as the world. That made them companions and the station almost as big as Earth’s Moon.

  “The PDS is like the Curator’s Moon-ship,” Ella said.

  I nodded mutely, wondering why Saul hadn’t told us about that aspect of the PDS. I knew the reason, of course. In the end, the Abaddon clone had been just as treacherous as his master Ifness.

  I manipulated the controls, as I said, “All stop.” I didn’t dare go deeper into the densest gases. Even at a crawl, I’d give away our position.

  “So now we’re a submarine?” Ella asked.

  “No more negativity,” I said. “We’re as close as I’m taking the ship. We’ll add extra thruster tanks and head to our destination by suit. This is it. It’s time to gather our—”

  “Please,” Ella said, interrupting. “No more speeches, Creed. I’ll go. But no more speeches.”

  I nodded. “No speeches. We’ll let our actions speak for us.”

  “That’s another speech,” Ella complained.

  “No more long speeches,” I said, trying to lighten the grim mood.

  Ella didn’t respond.

  Okay. She didn’t have to. It was enough that she was going. Once we were on the way and she saw we could do it, everything would be fine. I realized my own morale was low. But I had a life rule: fake it until it was real. I would fake enthusiasm and a belief in victory until it happened or until I was dead.

  To that end, it was time to get ready.

  I won’t bore you with the details. We donned our phase suits, the thruster packs and tanks, and our respective weapons—Ella had the Globular Blaster—and set out for the PDS while fully out of phase.

  We checked in at a timed interval and found ourselves much farther away than I’d expected. I did not like that.

  The next run, we moved out of phase for twice as long, ghosting up afterward.

  The Planetary Defense Station loomed hugely in the near distance. It looked even more menacing than before. N7 spied movement around the vast station, pointing at it.

  I used a zoom function in my visor for a close-up and felt awe. Those were battleship-sized Plutonian vessels. There were docks for thousands of them. The free battleships accelerated away from the PDS and planet, heading obliquely toward us. Were they sallying in order to attack our fleet? I would bet so. Of course, that had to be the case. Saul had certainly told Jennifer Earth Force was here. Now, the Plutonian battleships raced to join other, hidden enemy fleet elements. This was turning into a vast disaster. Rollo had been right after all. Our entire invasion fleet should have come in firing. If the entire enemy battleship fleet left those docks—

  A grim certainty filled me. In order to give Rollo any kind of chance, we had to destroy the PDS. Given the thousands of docked battleships… I could not allow the massed Plutonian navy to sweep aside our fleet, to invade our space-time continuum. These weren’t Karg numbers, granted, but still, with all those docked battleships coming out, it would be a mass invasion that could possibly destroy a quarter of the galaxy before the last Plutonian vessel was destroyed. By that time, the human race would be extinct.

  That meant the three of us had to finish what we’d started. To that end, while out of phase, we continued toward the PDS. The closer we got to the appointed target, though, the more attraction I felt tugging at me, causing me to drift away from target. That had to be the planet’s fierce gravitational pull, which obviously reached into out-of-phase enough to influence us. The only thing for it was greater thrusting power. Slowly but steadily, while consuming fuel at a prodigious rate, we neared our target.

  There was a new negative to the mission: according to my gauges, we would not have enough thruster fuel to get back to the GEV.

  Did the PDS have the needed fuel for our tanks? We would find out. If we died or lost, it wouldn’t matter. Heck. Maybe we could steal one of those battleships later and fly back to the GEV.

  That gave me another problem. How long would the GEV stay in its present location? Wouldn’t the planet’s gravitational pull yank my stealth ship to it?

  I shook my head. I couldn’t worry about such minor details now. I had to mentally “burn my ship” in my heart in order to focus on the coming mission.

  We thrust toward the PDS and finally ghosted up for another look. The vast station loomed before us. I could no longer see it as a whole, but just the nearest hull. We hardly moved toward it, though, as we did not thrust at this point. That meant the planet was pulling us toward it.

&
nbsp; I made an arm-hand signal, as I didn’t dare use the helmet comm for fear of giving away our coordinates. The other two nodded. We phased out again and headed for the PDS. It took longer than I liked, but finally, we stopped drifting and had to use our feet to walk, as we’d passed through the outer hull into the PDS.

  I soon found a hiding place for our thruster packs and tanks—a cubby in a low-ceilinged vault near the outer docks. We’d saved most of the tanks this time instead of letting them go. I’d try to find thruster-pack fuel later and refill the tanks. I snorted to myself. Given the vast size of the PDS, would I ever find my way here again to pick up the packs?

  I had my doubts. But I shoved those aside. Now wasn’t the time to give myself more and possibly needless worries.

  I grabbed a tablet from a phase-suit pouch, typing out the words: Are you ready?

  The other two looked at the screen and nodded.

  This was it. We were here. It was show time.

  Unfortunately, the next problem proved to be the PDS’s size and our motive power of walking while out of phase. It would take us days, maybe even weeks to reach the center of the station. By that time, the coming space battle would have long been over.

  I gave the signal, and we phased in, this time deeper inside the station. I expected the place to be honeycombed with narrow Plutonian tunnels. Instead, we stood in a regular-sized—human-sized—corridor. That was a surprise, and it meant something. At the moment, I didn’t know what.

  We plugged attachments into to each other’s suits, hooking a comm-line between us so we could talk in safety.

  I said, “We need a faster means of locomotion while out of phase if we’re going to get to the center in time to influence the battle.”

  “I agree,” Ella said. “Logically, there have to be elevators or something that acts like elevators. We should commandeer one, using express speed to go down.”

  “What do you think of that, N7?”

  “I suspect all such elevators will be monitored,” N7 replied. “That means Jennifer will know we are coming, especially if she sees no one riding in the elevator as the three of us are out of phase.”

  “Jennifer already knows we’re coming,” I said. “Or have you forgotten about Saul?”