Our electronic countermeasures were more than up to the task. Only three of their missiles hit targets. They shredded a shuttle, knocking us down to thirteen, and opened a huge hole in another.
My boys and girls did much better. They didn’t rely on missiles, but used autocannons with great targeting computers. We chopped up those fighters in quick order, leaving hunks of spinning metal and fleshy Saurian pilots to twist in space.
As a military problem, their menace lay more in that we hadn’t been able to slow our rush toward the moon-ship during the fight than the actual fighters’ basic deadliness. I suppose the dead assault troopers in shuttle fourteen felt otherwise.
“We know something vital,” Ella said. “The Saurians have the moon-ship, but it doesn’t appear they have any more technological advantages.”
“Their one advantage seems pretty harrowing,” Rollo said.
“Agreed,” I said. I studied the rear-viewing screen. The lunar surface was much closer than before. We only had a little time left.
“We’re going to hit too hard,” Ella said, studying numbers.
“That’s why we’re wearing bio-suits,” I told her. “They’ll absorb the shock.”
“The crash might kill the suits,” she said.
“Rollo?”
“I’m sick of running, Creed. I’m sick of Saurians, and I’m sure as hell sick of these Jelk bastards. I want to kill them. I want to kill all of them.”
“How about a moon’s worth of enemies?” I asked.
He shot me a glance. “You know we’re going to die in a few seconds, don’t you?”
“I didn’t survive Antarctica to die on this moon,” I said.
“I know what you mean,” Rollo said. “This is going to be like the Antarctica lander all over again, huh?”
“No.”
“No?” he asked.
“This time, we’re going to win.”
Rollo laughed. It was a good sound.
“Here it comes,” Ella shouted. “Good-bye, Creed. Good-bye, Rollo.”
I might have answered, but the moon surface smashed up against our little shuttle, hitting with too much force.
-7-
There’s a time for detailing all the pyrotechnics, all the gore, pain and misery of a situation. Sometimes, though, words simply don’t do a moment justice. This was one of those times.
The moon collided with our shuttles one right after the other. Some of the ships crumpled like beer cans in a strongman’s hand. Some smashed open like overripe cantaloupes, spilling their precious cargos over the lunar surface. A few of the shuttles cartwheeled down lunar mountains into a giant crater. That shed some of the initial killing velocity. Ours happened to be one of those vessels.
Three other shuttles met a similar fate. Approximately half of the cargoes survived. That meant one hundred assault troopers in horribly beat-up shape found the strength to get up and collect what weapons they could find.
Rollo, Ella and I were among them.
Every step hurt. So did every breath. Every time my right foot came down, I winced. Fortunately, my symbiotic suit was still alive. It was incredibly rugged. The bio-suit began secreting painkillers directly into me. That helped a lot. It also started healing processes. I would need those if I was going to do much.
Five minutes later, I’d gathered the hundred survivors. To my surprise, no Saurian fighters strafed us. I vowed to myself they were going to rue this to their dying breath.
“Listen up,” I said, using a short-wave band. “We’re here. Now, I’m going to tell you something critical. A man in the right spot at the right time can do more than a nuclear bomb lit in the wrong star system.”
Every silver-colored visor was aimed at me.
“A man with a knife in a foe’s bedroom can do more than a million-man army in the wrong city. We’re that knife, us, a mere one hundred assault troopers. We’re going to have to storm this moon-ship, killing anyone getting in our way. If we fail, the Earth dies. I’m not letting that happen. What about the rest of you?”
Many of them shook their helmets.
I pointed. “That way is the hangar bay door, the one that disgorged the fighters. This is a moon-ship with negligible gravity. That means we can run fast and far in a short amount of time. The first trick is getting inside this thing. The second is finding the bridge sooner rather than later and then taking over.
“Any questions?” I asked.
They were all probably still too sore to ask questions. But that was fine with me. I was tired of talking.
“All right,” I said. “Follow me.”
***
Someone inside the moon-ship must have finally gotten smart, or maybe they got scared.
Three Saurian fighters zoomed low over the horizon. Each of them launched missiles. Those must have been antipersonnel missiles.
I went down onto one knee, raised my pulse rifle and let instincts take over. One shot, two, three, four and an explosion told of a direct hit.
Other hits told of other assault troopers taking down missiles. Soon after that, three smoking fighters slammed against the lunar surface.
“It’s time to run,” I said.
They did, following me. As I said a few moments ago, this was a moon-sized vessel. That gave it a similar gravity as Luna. We were all highly trained, veteran killers of many campaigns. If I could have felt pity for our enemy, I might have almost felt it for the Saurians. But they’d already slaughtered far too many of my people. I told myself they hadn’t done so because they were good, but lucky.
We all like to lie to ourselves sometimes. Brain over brawn, right? What counted in the end was who won, not who fought better, whether it was because of bio-suits and killer attitudes or superior tech, like the moon-ship. Winning determined everything. If you don’t believe that, just ask the German soldiers of WWII or ask General Lee at the end of the American Civil War.
I wanted to write the history books on our war, telling my story. That meant I had to win this fight. Otherwise, some hoary Saurian in some lizard cave would tell all the listeners how foolish the Earthlings had been to take on the Jelk Corporation moon-ship.
“I just had a thought,” I said over the short-wave comm. “What if Claath is in here? Wouldn’t that be something?”
“We could make him float away again,” Rollo said, leaping even with me.
“I’d like to figure out a way to kill him for good,” I said.
“Yeah,” Rollo agreed.
I saved my breath after that. We traveled up the crater, turned right at the base of the mountains and noticed the blue-green object in the heavens.
Earth had gotten bigger, more visible. It was maybe a quarter as large as Luna seen from Montana at night. How much time did we have left?
I was guessing it was not enough.
It was at that point we got our first break. Someone in Earth Fleet was thinking. They’d sent more T-missiles. Those missiles now targeted various open hangar bay doors. With the keen precision I’d come to expect from humans, they threaded those missiles into the various openings. Only once inside the enemy ship did the thermonuclear warheads detonate.
The blasts and shockwaves would no doubt travel down various corridors. The T-missiles might prove terrific shock grenades, softening up the enemy before we reached them.
It took another ten minutes to reach a twisted, smashed hangar bay. It was hot with radiation. But we could take it for a while with our bio-suits. Later, we could soak in healing baths. Many of us had done that before.
At that point, the assault troopers received a coded pulse letting us know our boys in Earth Fleet knew what we were doing. They weren’t going to send any more T-missiles down to frag us.
“This is it,” I radioed. All our communications crackled with static. “We’re headed for the center. That’s where the Jelk probably built the bridge. This doesn’t end for us until we’re dead or victorious.”
I got a ragged cheer and some curses. That was good
enough.
With bitter determination, remembering all the indignities Claath had first heaped on us, I jumped into the hot hole, hoping to head down deep into the moon-ship.
-8-
We made it half a kilometer into the ship before the Saurians hit us. They’d set up heavy laser guns, chopping down seven troopers before we knew they were there.
I chalked that up to radiation poisoning. I was feeling woozy by then, with an upset stomach. Like many of the others, I was taking too long to react to the enemy.
“Peter is down,” a man radioed.
“Side hatch time,” I snapped.
My troopers knew what I meant. We retreated from the laser gun nest. Then, a team set up a mine against a bulkhead. We ducked around a corner and saw the blast. I led the way through our new “hatch” until we reached another selected bulkhead and set up another mine. We ducked around a corner, saw the blast and used the new opening.
In short order, we bypassed the blocking Saurians. Normally, I would have hit them from behind. They didn’t count, though, not in the greater scheme of things. Let them wait for us to show up again.
Sure, we set up a few booby-traps in case they decided to chase us. But in that case—
Behind us, the corridor shivered from heavy explosions. The Saurians had tried to follow us after all. That had been their last mistake.
“I’m recalibrating my motion-sensors,” Ella told me. “I know their trick now.”
I didn’t bother to ask what she meant. I used my remaining mental energy to keep going. I was having an interior debate with myself. Long ago, our bio-suits had secreted a berserker drug into us troopers. We’d short-circuited that feature. With a simple command, however, I could reorder my suit to give me the battle-juice. That might make things a whole heck of a lot easier on my aching head. It would also make me stupider.
“Creed,” Rollo said.
“What is it?” I asked in an irritated voice.
“I found an elevator,” Rollo said. He studied an analyzer.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I downloaded a schematic,” Rollo said. “I’ve been deciphering old Jelk commands and maps.”
He always had been good at electronic devices.
“And…?” I asked.
“And I found an elevator. Aren’t you listening to me? It’s to our left. I have to tell you, Creed. It’s a long way to the center of the ship.”
“Just like the portal planet, huh?”
“Pretty much,” Rollo said. “I don’t think we’re going to make it in time unless we go for broke and use the elevator.”
“Halt,” I said.
Assault troopers threw themselves onto the floor, panting. We’d been going for some time now. If the rest of them had started like me from the first body-smashing moon-crash, they’d felt beat from the get-go.
I sidled next to my friend and studied Rollo’s schematic. He had a point about the distance. Ah. He’d also located the enemy bridge. It was at almost the exact center of the moon-ship. That was a long way down, all right. We had to start turning the massive vessel sooner rather than later if we were going to make it miss the Earth.
“This is the piece of luck we needed,” I said.
“I think it had more to do with the T-missiles than luck,” Rollo said. “We’ve seen the number of dead, right? Those EMPs must have messed with many of their control systems.”
Had I forgotten to mention the many dead Saurians lying in the upper corridors? I must have been more beat than I realized.
“Listen up, people,” I said. “We’re heading out. We have to move.”
This wasn’t like the portal planet. I didn’t need to kick anyone to get them up onto their feet.
“Let’s double time this,” I said. I was getting paranoid about having enough time to turn the moon-ship. Did that show I was overconfident about reaching the bridge? Maybe.
We found Rollo’s elevator several minutes later. Guess what? It worked. The T-missiles hadn’t messed with it. The thing was a cargo hauler. That meant there was room for everyone. Did I dare take everyone, though?
I laughed to myself. Did I dare leave anyone behind?
We piled into the box. Ella fiddled with the controls. Soon, we plunged down at express speed. It took eight minutes to reach the center.
They tried another ambush, big-wig Saurians with lots of braid on their fancy uniforms. They manned plasma cannons, heavy laser guns and pulse rifles like us.
Fifteen assault troopers fell to their savagery. We returned the favor with interest, slaughtering all but three of them. The biggest Saurians, which were the oldest, I took as prisoners.
We stormed onto the bridge next, dragging our Saurians with us.
It took Ella less than ten minutes to figure out the controls. Soon, the giant engines made the bridge thrum with power.
Slowly, on a large screen, we watched the Earth. By incremental degrees, we shifted our home planet from the center of the screen to the edge. It looked like we were going to do it.
That’s when a Saurian horde hit us, trying to retake control of the moon-ship.
-9-
The Saurians made a mistake, though, an elementary one. They should have sabotaged the engines so we couldn’t turn the ship away from Earth. Fortunately, they didn’t do that.
Instead, the lizards tried to boil through the main hatch onto the bridge. My assault troopers mowed them down. It was carnage, a butcher yard.
Pulse bolts tore holes in tough lizard armor and the leathery hides underneath. Awful smelling smoke roiled. Blood spurted. You get the idea. After a while, the lizards tore at the corpses jamming the main hatch. They should have rolled grenades onto the giant bridge. They should have blown bulkheads to make new entrances. They should have at least fired blindly as they charged in. They did none of those things. They rushed us with knives and knuckle-crushers. Some of them held their rifles like bats, coming in swinging.
That didn’t impress us. We killed them like you would kill cockroaches scurrying through the house.
All the while, Ella used the primary controls, turning the moon-ship farther off course.
I kept my left arm tight around the biggest Saurian’s throat. Surprisingly, he stood a little taller and a lot wider than me. Once I started to get the idea of his critical importance, I pushed the old shod forward, using a pistol. I target practiced against the Saurians trying to get at us. They rushed me madly, straining to reach me, probably wanting to free the old Saurian in my grip, the one I used as a lizard shield.
Here’s the thing. A Saurian was like any lizard on Earth. As long as he lived, he kept growing. That meant the biggest ones were old ones, the most important Saurians. This old guy was the biggest lizard I’d ever met.
As I said, the other Saurians didn’t roll grenades onto the bridge or charge while shooting from the hip. Clearly, they didn’t want to accidently kill one of the three old ones we held. Mine was the most important. He had an impressive uniform, too, positively jangling with all the medals on his chest.
Maybe you’re waiting for me to tell you I got tired of killing Saurians. I’d be lying, though. I didn’t get tired. I could have kept doing this for days. My only regret was how sore my trigger finger was getting. I kept switching hands. That helped a bit.
Finally, I began to wonder if there was a better way of doing this. It turned out, for us, there wasn’t. The Saurians kept charging until more assault troopers landed on the moon-ship. They came directly from the Earth Fleet, who had finally reached the moon-ship.
This vessel had literally tons of Saurians as crew and service personnel. Finally, however, the enemy realized the hopelessness of their situation. After a long time trying to kill us, the Saurians began to surrender.
We were the last to learn of it down here. Luckily, before our energy packs drained dry, the cavalry rescued us.
I could have dropped to the deck and slept right there. Instead, I popped a stim. It took a l
ittle longer than normal to take effect. Finally, my eyes bulged, and a dry taste developed in my mouth. A wicked energy began to fill me.
I hustled my captive into a different chamber. Ella joined me, standing against a bulkhead near the hatch. I shoved the old Saurian onto a chair. Then, I took off my helmet. Even here, the air stank, but at least it was breathable.
The old Saurian looked at me with big, sad eyes.
“I’m glad that’s over,” I told him, using the slave tongue I’d learned in Jelk service.
He made an incomprehensible gesture with his three-fingered hand.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What’s your rank?”
He said nothing.
“You’re not the Wisdom of the Family, are you?”
He sat a little straighter at that. Had that been a surprise for him? I’d captured an old Saurian before on a star-city we raided three years ago. That old one had been a robe-wearing priest known as a wisdom, a religious leader. The Saurians called all other lizards “the Family”, although I’d never learned why.
“Time’s up,” I said, drawing my pistol, aiming it at his oversized head.
“Wait,” Ella said, stepping forward.
I turned to her while keeping the gun rock-steady on him.
“Let me put him under the machine,” she said.
As I’ve said before, Ella had a Jelk machine, a nasty mind gadget. It did things…
“I am So-Ko-Liss,” he said in his hissing speech.
I lowered my gun a fraction as I stared at him.
He glanced at Ella before regarding me. “I am the Supreme Ship Lord. I received a direct commission from…”
“Don’t stop now,” I said, when he seemed to hesitate. “Who gave you the commission?”
He made an odd expression with his leathery jowly features. “I am not to say,” he informed me.
I holstered the gun, jerking a thumb at Ella. “You heard the lady, right? She’s our expert, our mind scrubber. She’s going to rip out your every secret.”
Fortress Earth (Extinction Wars Book 4) Page 4