“How will you get from the moon-ship to the fortress?” I asked.
“It will take me many of your years to do so,” Key said. “Once I begin the initial trajectory, I can drift the rest of the way while shutting down all but my most necessary functions.”
“Since we can’t travel there directly, why don’t we transfer to the fortress?” I asked.
“No, no,” Key said. “That is ethically and aesthetically wrong. One does not transfer a distance he can easily traverse by regular means. It simply would not be proper, Commander.”
Ella and I exchanged glances.
“I’ll get right on it,” she said.
“Commander,” Key said, sounding indignant. “I cannot believe you would try something like this after I just informed you—”
“Key!” I said, loudly, interrupting it.
“Yes, Commander?”
“Shut the hell up. You’re giving me a headache.”
The metallic cube bobbed up and down in the air, its lights slowing their speed and brightness. Finally, the thing made noises.
I checked. Key had sent the sounds through the comm channel.
“What did you just tell the Curator?” I asked.
Key remained silent.
“Key, I’m talking to you.”
“You told me to shut up.”
“I did, but you didn’t listen to me. You sent a message to the Curator, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Key admitted. “I told him we cannot reach him. I have no doubt he will now take the Museum elsewhere.”
I turned fast, looking up at the main screen. It might have been a trick of light or my imagination, but the Fortress of Light didn’t seem to shine as brightly. Then, it moved. The giant cube began to sink toward the accretion disk.
I swore roundly at Key until Ella touched my sleeve.
“I need your help, Commander,” she said. “We have to coordinate this as fast as we can. Even then it might be too late.”
“What can I do to help?” N7 asked.
“Stand by the rods,” Ella said. “You’ll have to pull them at exactly the right moment.”
I fed data as Ella rattled off instructions. I kept glancing at the main screen as I worked, noticing a continual dimming of the great cube fortress.
“Concentrate, Commander,” Ella shouted at me over the helmet comm.
I did. We had enough power on the bridge for most of the instruments to work. I typed madly as Ella spoke faster and faster. N7 dashed back and forth on the bridge. He fed the great machine more coordinates.
“I need more time,” Ella shouted.
The Ve-Ky swarm was approaching fast. They would soon be where the first three had launched their electrical bombs. By this time, the Fortress of Light had almost disappeared from the main screen.
The initial Vip 92 Attack Vessels launched energy blobs. The first one disappeared from sight.
“Now!” I shouted. “Pull the levers, N7, pull them!”
“No!” Ella shouted. “I need to make several more adjustments.”
N7 followed my orders instead of hers. With a hand on each lever, the android tugged hard.
The first energy blob must have struck the moon surface. The bridge shook and lights flickered. At the same instant, a sick feeling swirled across my chest. Everything went dark all at once. A second later, lights splashed across my brain. I groaned, clutching my helmet. It felt as if my world spun around and around. I clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t vomit. Did more energy blobs strike the ship? Everything shuddered. Everything spun and twirled. I heard garbled noises and—
All at once, it stopped. There was no sound, no sight, no smell, no hot or cold, nothing. I think we may have transferred into a null zone or a limbo void.
I wanted to groan. This was one of the worst and most helpless feelings in my life.
-18-
All at once, sight, sounds and feelings rushed into me with heightened force. I staggered, struck a console, rebounded the other way and crashed onto my side on the deck.
That likely saved my life. For at that instant, a bolt of what seemed to be electricity smashed against the panel I’d been standing at, causing it to explode in a shower of sparks and plastic shards.
I looked up from the floor.
A humanoid, electricity-crackling thing oozed from the wall, the moon rock. It was like a stick figure of electricity, with a wand or rod aimed at where the discharge had hit. I noticed, for just a moment, an aperture or hole, as if the rod was a gun that fired electrical bolts.
Key made screeching sounds, rushing the humanoid thing. The electrical thing turned, aimed the rod and fired another bolt.
Key dodged upward at the last moment. The bolt struck another panel, sending pieces flying everywhere.
Were we under attack? I mean, did this have anything to do with the blobs shot at the moon-ship? Could these be Ve-Ky versions of assault troopers? If that was true, what did they want?
The electrical humanoid aimed at Key once more, firing another bolt.
Key was good. He dodged to the left this time.
Now, N7 was up. He swung a pulse rifle off his shoulder. The Ve-Ky trooper fired at N7. The android dropped onto his chest. The bolt passed over him. N7 fired three pulses into the thing in return.
Each pulse caused the electrical thing to darken for just a moment. The Ve-Ky seemed to move a little slower, too. But that was it. Seconds later, the ill-effects seemed to have vanished from it.
N7 didn’t stop, though. He kept firing pulses at the thing. That made the attacker sluggish, but he finally nailed N7 with an electrical bolt. N7’s armor blackened as pieces spun off.
“N7,” I said through my helmet comm. All I heard was static.
I scrambled off the floor, dashing to my pulse rifle where I’d laid it down by the command chair. The attacker saw me, firing several electrical discharges. Even though I dodged the bolts, I could feel a current flowing through my body, setting my teeth on edge. Did he want to capture us? At the last moment, I dove, skidding across the deck. I snatched my rifle, rolled to dodge another bolt and targeted my weapon on the galactic core native.
One pulse after another darkened his torso area. In frustration, he backed into the wall, oozing out of sight.
“Check N7,” I shouted at Ella. “Key, what is this all about?”
“Raiders,” Key said. “Some of the Ve-Ky must have made it onto the ship before we transferred.”
“Where are we now?” I shouted.
“I do not know,” Key said. “They want to destroy me, it appears. That is most odd, most odd indeed.”
Before Key could say more, three electrical attackers oozed out of the moon rock. I had no idea how they could do that. It must have been similar to the way I entered Holgotha.
They shot as one, sending bolts at Key. The cube dodged the first two, but failed to miss the third. The discharge struck Key, drilling a hole into a side. That caused an explosion, and Key tumbled through the air to crash against a bulkhead. The heavy metallic cube struck the deck, all the colors having vanished from its sides. It left Key a dull iron color with smoke pouring from the hole.
Now, the attackers turned toward Ella and me. She dove and rolled as two bolts sizzled across the deck where she’d been. One aimed at me, but he turned as the doors to the bridge swished open.
Three crewmembers rushed in. They wore ordinary vacc-suits.
“Get back!” I shouted.
The three didn’t hear me or didn’t have time. The nearest Ve-Ky aimed and fired, sending bolts into them. These were ordinary men, not modified assault troopers. The discharges blew gaping, smoking craters in them, hurling them backward and sending up oily smoke. Each of them shuddered and died.
I rose to one knee and fired pulses into the killer. He darkened, grew sluggish and headed for the wall—no doubt to disappear and recharge if he could.
The other two fired at me. One hit the pulse rifle, shattering it in my hands. The electric
al effect made my teeth ache.
Hurling the broken weapon from me, I scrambled for cover as bolts zigzagged above me. The raiders had killed three of my crew, incapacitated and maybe destroyed Key and wounded N7. Now, I’d lost my pulse rifle. Maybe I could get N7’s. Even as I thought that, one of the electrical bastards zapped the android’s weapon into several glowing pieces.
Three of them, a lousy three of them were taking over the bridge. Where had everyone gone? I knew a lot of people were trying to fix the various systems but—
I remembered my .44 then. How could I ever have forgotten? Yes, it was an old-fashioned weapon for this space age, but it had done its duty before.
One of the electrical people spoke in a screeching manner. Were they calling on me to surrender?
“What do we do now, Commander?” Ella asked over her crackling helmet comm.
I thumbed back the hammer on my .44, rose from behind a console and saw a Ve-Ky flowing toward me. It seemed to be running and moving like lightning at the same time. It was wicked strange.
BOOM!
I sent lead into his chest. The result was greater than I would have expected. The bullet struck the electrical creature and blew it backward. A sheet of electricity seemed to fly off it, exposing flesh underneath, as if an ordinary person was inside the electrical suit.
That was so weird it kept me from firing a second time right away.
The Ve-Ky fell down, rose, fell again and finally aimed his electrical gun at me.
BOOM!
I sent a shell at his head. It blew away another piece of electrical armor—if that’s what I was seeing—to show me a man with red eyes and what appeared to be a bruise on his skin.
Without thinking—
BOOM!
I sent another round at the exposed flesh. The Ve-Ky catapulted off his feet to land on his back. Blood from his face boiled on his outer electrical suit.
I crossed him off from a mental list. I think he was dead. I had a weapon that could hurt the other two. One of those noticed me. He flowed fast for the wall.
BOOM!
BOOM!
The bastard didn’t make it. He was on the floor, writhing as his blood boiled onto his outer suit. I’d used the first shot to open his armor, the second to send a slug into him.
At that point, I was up and running. The third Ve-Ky approached the dull-colored Key. He stood over the poor thing, tracing his electrical gun along a side. What was the alien thinking?
The Ve-Ky knelt by the block of metal, put an electrical arm on it and pressed something on his belt. Both of them began flowing with electrical power. As one, they rose. Slowly, almost staggeringly, the Ve-Ky carried Key toward the nearest wall. I think he planned to escape with Key.
I raced after him. Maybe he heard me. He half-turned, raised the electrical gun.
BOOM!
BOOM!
CLICK!
I put two rounds into him. They were side by side instead of one on top of the other. The second one would have killed him, I’m sure, if it entered the creature in the armor. Instead, pieces of electrical armor flew off, exposing his skin.
The shots had caused the alien to drop his gun. The weapon didn’t fall on the floor, but flowed into his electrical suit. That was a nice touch. I could have used that on a battlefield or two.
In any case, I was out of bullets. There were more in my room, but I didn’t have time to go there. I grabbed a spare pulse rifle from a rack.
The bastard flowed away faster, heading for a wall. He still carried the Key in his electrical hold.
“Stop!” I shouted.
He turned to look at me. All I saw was the living, jumping electricity that was his suit.
Okay then, I laid down a barrage of pulse shots, darkening his armor.
He reached the wall and tried to flow into it, but it was no use. I must have damaged the suit just enough to erase that ability from his toolkit.
Manipulating his electrical suit, the Ve-Ky let the dull-colored Key drop away from him. The heavy cube rolled onto the deck.
For a second time, the attacker tried to flow into the wall, this time beginning to get away.
I slapped another energy pack into the pulse rifle. At the same time, Ella began firing. We pumped one pulse after another into the Ve-Ky. Gouts of electricity began to sizzle in the air. His suit darkened with him halfway into the wall.
Abruptly, it shut off. At least, that’s what I figured happened. He froze, half in the moon-wall and half out. All the electricity simply stopped. It left a dead Ve-Ky stuck in the wall.
The suit, I noticed, as I approached, was a network of connections like something from advanced laser tag.
“Is he dead?” Ella asked.
I turned around. She’d taken off her helmet. With a few clicks, I removed mine. The air smelled how you’d figure it should. It had the fresh smell of after a thunderstorm but the horrid stench of burned flesh. It was a terrible mixture.
I walked closer to the dead Ve-Ky in the wall. His face was outside of the rock. The alien had a much thinner face than a human would have. His body was thinner, too. Maybe I should call them Skinnies, from an old sci-fi novel I’d read as a kid.
I didn’t see how the Skinnies had a right to think of themselves as our superiors. This one might have passed for human on a busy New York City street, especially if it had been a rainy day and he’d worn a raincoat.
I moved to Key and tapped on it firmly. The thing sounded solid. Nothing happened, though. Was it destroyed or just badly damaged?
“Did we transfer?” Ella asked.
“N7!” I said. I ran to the android, unbuckling his combat armor. His eyelids flickered as I pulled off his helmet.
“Creed,” he said dully. “Did you defeat them?”
“The three that made it here,” I said. “I don’t know if there were any others, though.”
Ella was at a comm control. She tapped it, asking if anyone could hear her. She tried several times without receiving an answer.
Just then, the main bridge doors swished open. I didn’t know what to expect. The last thing in the world I would have thought to see was exactly what walked through to greet us.
-19-
I was wearing my bio-suit minus the helmet. The pulse rifle in my hands slipped free, clattering onto the deck. That startled me so I frowned at the seemingly old man walking onto the bridge.
He was big, almost a giant, wore a long blue robe that hid his feet and had a great white beard like some mountain man or the way a lot of people pictured God. His eyes were blue and dangerous-looking, not kindly and simple.
I cleared my throat but hesitated to speak first. There was something intimidating about him.
The big old man stopped, taking in the scene, the dead Ve-Ky on the deck, the one frozen in the rock and Key’s now dull-colored cube. The old man nodded slightly, as if to himself.
“Uh…” I said, finding my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
The old man looked at me and raised his bushy eyebrows.
“Uh…” I repeated, finally tearing my tongue loose. Even so, I hesitated. Maybe Ella didn’t believe in supernatural manifestations, but I sure did. Now, I hadn’t read the Bible much, although I knew a few stories. I seemed to recall that no one had ever looked upon the face of God and lived. I was living and looking at this old man. Maybe this was an alien then, an energy creature, and it read my mind. It knew how I conceived of God and came in that guise to trick me. Surely that was the explanation for this.
Whatever the case, the old man seemed dangerous and capable. He frightened me, if you want to know the truth. He hadn’t threatened us directly yet, but I didn’t feel my usual cockiness.
“Sir,” I said. Then I hesitated for the third time. I glanced at Ella.
She was frowning severely as she bit her lower lip. N7 had raised his head from where he lay on the floor, staring quietly at the big old man.
On impulse, I went to one knee and bowed my head as
if to a king.
“Sir,” I said again, “if any of my actions appear to be disrespectful, please know that I only mean to honor you. I am from—at least I believe I’m from a 6C Civilizational Zone. If I have erred in coming to the galactic core, please know I only did so in order to recuse my race from certain doom.”
I could feel Ella’s stare burning into my back. She’d likely never seen me act like this.
“I’m unsure what I should call you,” I added.
“The Curator will do,” the old man said in a deadly deep voice.
I nodded. “Curator,” I said, “your presence would imply we made it to your Museum.”
“It isn’t mine,” he said, “although it is correct to say that I am running the Museum for now.”
I looked up at him to see if he was smiling. He was not. He had fixed those hard blue eyes on me. I felt as if he judged my worth. It was an uncomfortable feeling. Yet, I did not get the sense he was condemning me.
“Key also said this is called the Fortress of Light,” I said.
“Among other names,” he said.
“Ah…are we in trouble?” I asked.
“A great deal,” he said. “The most pressing problem at the moment are the Ve-Ky storming the vessel.”
“What?”
He indicated the Skinny frozen in the wall. “You dealt with the central team, but know…what are you called?”
“I’m Commander Creed.”
“Commander, several assault pods made it onto the Survey Vessel before you transferred directly into the ancient hangar bay. I suspect old protocols took over. You must, of course, clear this infestation at once. Otherwise, I will flush the ship with anti-force, ridding it of the Ve-Ky and you fringe dwellers in one sweep.”
“Sir?” I asked.
“The Ve-Ky have tried to break into the Museum for…hmm,” he said, studying me. “You are a short-lived race, I suspect. Your time units—”
He held up a big beefy hand. The fingertips glowed as if embedded with electronic equipment. I felt light-headed watching this, and had to steady myself with a hand on a console.
Fortress Earth (Extinction Wars Book 4) Page 11