Fortress Earth (Extinction Wars Book 4)

by Fortress Earth (epub)

  The Curator took his time. “I realize you say this now, Commander. It will be different during the moment. The Jelk are very persuasive, and they will struggle to an intense degree.”

  I kept my mouth shut. Why let the Curator think of me as more bloodthirsty than he needed to? If I ever got that far in the game, I’d see how I’d react then.

  “There is one problem I have failed to mention yet,” he said.

  “I already know what it is.”

  The Curator raised his bushy eyebrows.

  “We’re going to have to steal the Santa Maria from you,” I said.

  “The what?”

  “Your old Survey Ship,” I said.

  “I cannot be party to such a plan,” he said, saying it in such a way that let me know I’d guessed correctly.

  “If you can’t talk, let’s not try to talk about it,” I said. “I would like to know how we can deduce where Abaddon is in the Super Fleet.”

  The Curator shook his head. “You will have to figure that out yourself.”

  “But if you’re giving us all this equipment—”

  “I am not,” the Curator said. “The only way anyone could get this equipment is by stealing it. I have no right to give you any of these things.”

  I studied him. “Won’t I get in serious trouble if I steal from the Curator?”

  “Only if you’re caught,” he said.

  “Is there anyone around here who will try to catch me?”

  “Everyone,” he said, “including the Forerunner artifacts. If you were to leave here as thieves, having broken my concord of goodwill and peace, you would be fugitives. No race would help you after that, including those in the Orion Arm.”

  “How will anyone back there know we’re thieves?”

  “You would be marked by such a theft,” the Curator said. “I cannot change that.”

  “Uh…so you’re saying every hand will be turned against us?”

  “Would be turned against you if you practiced such a heinous deed,” he said. “That is exactly so.”

  “Not even the Starkiens would help us?”

  “A few might dare, but I doubt it.”

  “Anyone will be able to tell this mark?” I asked.

  “Alas, that would be so.”

  “Will all humans be marked?”

  “As long as my Survey Ship roamed free, as long as those weapons were used, yes.”

  “Could we return the ship back to you after we killed Abaddon?”

  “You will not survive his death, Commander.”

  The Curator seemed so certain as he said that that I felt a chill blow over me.

  “Well, suppose I did survive,” I said.

  “The only way to atone for such a theft would be to return it to the Fortress of Light and accept whatever punishment awaited you.”

  “You’re dead serious, aren’t you?”

  “Abaddon corrupts everything he touches. The Jelk are beyond hope now. The entire Orion Arm will soon teeter over the abyss. You could possibly save the others, Commander, but you would risk the entire human race doing so.”

  “We’re dead anyway if the Super Fleet reaches our Solar System.”

  “That is true. At least in your passing, you could save the others.”

  “I can do more than that,” I said.

  He raised those eyebrows once again.

  “I could make sure anyone who screwed with us would lose big time.”

  “They would feel the same way about you.”

  “Good,” I said. “I like beating a sore loser. It makes the victory that much more enjoyable.”

  “I wish there was another way,” the Curator said, “but I cannot see it. I dare not confront Abaddon myself, for I dare not risk my own corruption. Any who would do this would embark on an impossible quest. Your only hope would be that you are the little killers. If any race had a chance of winning through battle, it would be you and yours. Good luck, Commander. May the Creator…” He stopped talking.

  “Well,” I said. “Aren’t you going to bless me?”

  The Curator shook his head. “I cannot bless killers, and I cannot bless possible thieves.”

  “Sure,” I said, dryly. “Maybe you can show me what I need to know in order to do what I have to.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We can talk about theoretical possibilities. Follow me, if you dare.”

  I dared all right, my fingertips tingling with the thought of meeting Claath again, of seeing Abaddon face to face and maybe, if I was lucky, of finally freeing my sweet and almost forgotten Jennifer.

  -25-

  The next thing I knew, I was running through the Santa Maria, racing to the bridge. This felt like Mars all over again. I wondered if all this sprinting here and there would ever end for me. Probably only on the day I died.

  Klaxons rang, and people rushed past me in the corridors. Finally, I made it to the bridge.

  “Commander,” Ella shouted. “What’s happening? The last thing I remember was walking through a forest.”

  N7 sat at a console. He banged his forehead with the heel of his right hand. “I feel strange, Commander. I have the sense I have forgotten something. That is a non sequitur, as I have total recall. Why, then, do I have a feeling I have lived through an experience I cannot remember?”

  I slid to a halt. Could they have lost their memories of what had happened to us in the Fortress of Light? I frowned. What was the last thing I remembered? Yes, I’d been talking with the Curator. I was supposed to steal the Santa Maria and certain weapons from him to slay Abaddon. Why didn’t I remember doing that? I mean, I must have, right? We had the transfer ship, and I knew the T-suits, the pronged Jelk Catcher and the Ultrix Disintegrator were in a special weapons locker on the vessel.

  I strode to the command chair to give myself a few seconds to figure out how I was going to play this.

  After settling myself, I asked, “What’s the last thing you remember, Ella?”

  “We had appeared by the supermassive black hole…” she said, as she turned to the main screen. “There it is. But…why does my mind feel fuzzy?”

  “Commander,” Rollo said briskly. “Over there on the edge of the accretion disk. Do you see those points of light?”

  I did. They looked like Vip 92 Attack Vessels. Was I going to have to go through one of their attack runs again?

  N7 glanced around the bridge. “We’re missing someone,” he said slowly.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “A floating machine…” N7 said, still sounding a bit uncertain.

  This was interesting. Were the Curator’s methods less successful on an android than on a human? I would have thought androids would be easier to reprogram than humans.

  “Are you referring to Key?” I asked.

  “What key?” N7 asked.

  I bared my teeth in frustration.

  Why hadn’t the Curator told me he was going to erase their memories? I had a suspicion he’d done it to protect them. Whatever they didn’t know, they couldn’t tell Abaddon if we failed. Only I could sell out humanity. That seemed fair. I was the one who’d left his lover behind in Abaddon’s hands. Now, after all these years, I would have to pay the bill for running away on Jennifer.

  Ella looked up from her panel. “Those are ships, Commander,” she said, referring to the Vip 92s. “Should I hail them?”

  “Negative,” I said. “Set a transfer jump for Sal 63 B in the Orion Arm.”

  The others stared at me as if I’d gone crazy.

  “But we just got here,” Ella said.

  “That’s not true,” Dmitri Rostov said hoarsely.

  I glanced at the Cossack. His blocky features were sweaty and he blinked furiously. “I…” He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t feel well.”

  “There is no response from the points of light,” Ella said. “My instruments suggest they are containment fields of energy.”

  “Those points of light are Vip 92 Attack Vessels,” I said.

  Dmitri
looked up sharply. “That’s right. They hold…the Ve-Ky.” He frowned. “They’re going to storm the Santa Maria. One of them will be frozen in a moon wall.”

  “That already happened,” I said. “This is a second attack. Well, their third attack, really.”

  Ella glanced from Dmitri to me. “He should go to sickbay, Commander. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. I do know one thing. We haven’t been here before.”

  “Yet N7 recalls a machine that is gone,” I said.

  “Perhaps that’s an after-effect of transferring to the galactic core,” Ella said.

  “That’s one possibility,” I conceded. “Maybe the other is that your memory of certain events is gone.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Ella said stubbornly.

  “I’ve already been on the Fortress of Light—” I snapped my fingers. “I have it. Call the engineering deck. Ask for Marcus, Rodriguez and Kholo Ron.”

  “We should concentrate on the approaching energy ships,” Ella said.

  “Call engineering,” I told Rollo. “Ask for those people.”

  Rollo did as requested. Afterward, he looked up in surprise. “They’re not at their posts. Engineering called their quarters but hasn’t gotten any responses yet. They, along with others, appear to be missing from duty.”

  “They’re missing because they’re dead,” I said. “The Ve-Ky killed them when they stormed the Santa Maria. Dmitri is right. One of the alien enemies died frozen in a wall. Their electrical combat-suits allowed them to walk through the walls if they wanted.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Ella said. “Wouldn’t your bullets and our pulse shots go right through them then?”

  “It took a special process,” I said. “Maybe wall-walking caused a high energy drain so they could only do it for short periods of time.”

  “Why would energy creatures need suits in the first place?” Ella asked.

  “They’re Skinnies,” I said, “flesh and blood creatures that fly energy ships and wear electrical combat-suits.”

  Ella glanced at Rollo. “I think Creed is hallucinating. You should take over.”

  “What about the missing personnel?” Rollo asked her.

  Ella licked her lips, appearing uncertain.

  “Listen,” I said. “I took special combat-suits from the Fortress of Light. I also have a special gun that can kill Abaddon. If I’m crazy, how did I get those items?”

  Ella frowned severely, blinking.

  “The energy ships are approaching fast,” Rollo said, studying a panel. “They have excessive speed. Look at their numbers. I think we should transfer as the Commander suggests.”

  “But Sal 63 B is practically back home,” Ella said. “Why transfer all the way there?”

  “So we can practice with our T-suits,” I said. “Ella, do you really think I’ve gone crazy? If so, tell me what happened to all our missing people.”

  She stared at me and then Dmitri. “Why does he look like he’s been through hell?” she asked me.

  “Dmitri wasn’t supposed to remember anything,” I said. “Maybe his Cossack brain is wired wrong and the…the being we spoke to didn’t erase his memories properly.”

  “I can believe that about the weird brain wiring,” Rollo said with a slight smirk. “It would explain a lot of things about Dmitri.”

  The rest of the bridge personnel waited. Many of them seemed nervous at this dichotomy. A few of them seemed ready to bolt off the bridge.

  “Okay…” Ella said. “This is crazy. I’m not buying any memory losses…but something isn’t right. Let’s transfer and start over. I thought we were on a tight time schedule, but I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Right,” I said.

  The Vip 92s raced for us as the bridge personnel made the calculations. From farther away than last time, blobs of energy detached from the Vip 92s. The first one disappeared.

  At that moment, two men pulled the main levers. The Santa Maria transferred out of Sagittarius A*.

  -26-

  “It shouldn’t be that hard to believe,” I said. “We’ve all watched time traveling movies, right?”

  The five of us sat in a conference chamber, Ella, Rollo, Dmitri, N7 and me. I’d shown them the T-suits, the Jelk Catcher and the Ultrix Disintegrator. I explained how I’d been in a viewing chamber on the Fortress of Light and seen the enemy Super Fleet.

  As I spoke to them, I sketched on a pad from memory the disposition of the enemy fleet. That could come in handy soon.

  “At the end of a good time traveling movie,” I said, “only one or maybe two of the heroes remember what the timeline was like before they changed it. No one else can remember what it was like.”

  “I’ve seen those kinds of movies,” Ella said. “But that doesn’t apply here.”

  “It does. I remember what happened but the rest of you don’t.”

  “I remember, too,” Dmitri said.

  “Parts of it anyway,” I said. I’d been wondering about that. Could the Curator have made an error? If so, that didn’t bode well for us. However, the Curator might have done that to give me an edge with my own people. In other words, the Curator may have done me a favor with Dmitri.

  “I can’t explain the missing crewmembers,” Rollo told Ella.

  “That’s another thing,” she said. “If this creature can erase our memories, why wouldn’t it have taken our memories of those missing people as well?”

  “You didn’t lose your memories to protect it,” I said, “but to protect you.”

  “How does that work exactly?” Ella asked.

  “If I told you, that would negate what he did for us,” I said.

  The Santa Maria was in the Sal 63 B System. I’d chosen it because I thought the Super Fleet was headed this way on its path to the Solar System. That was a possibility given from what I’d seen on the wall screen in the Fortress of Light.

  “Suppose we accept your explanation,” Ella said slowly. “What are we supposed to do next?”

  I told them most of what the Curator had told me about the Jelk, Forerunner artifacts and Abaddon being a First One. I also explained something about the civilizational zones and that we were possibly the little killers of galactic legend. What that legend was, though, I didn’t know.

  “You are describing a great deal of order to the technological and civilizational arrangement of our galaxy,” Ella told me.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “A First One…” she said. “Your tales seem to make Abaddon a devil. A First One sounds like it could be an angel. This so-called ‘bad angel’ rebelled and found itself exiled from our space-time continuum.”

  “I didn’t say anything about angels or devils,” I told her.

  Ella drummed her fingers on the table. “This rebel angel idea disturbs me. Why concoct this elaborate ‘religious’ dogma for a hard-fought war between highly advanced species?”

  “Why should that surprise you given all we’ve seen so far?” I asked. “We belong to the Jade League, right? Its basis is religious. Besides, that’s been the norm throughout all of human history.” I snapped my fingers. “The…person I spoke to in the Fortress of Light told me that nothing in the fringe zones was new. It was all a reflection of what had happened in the galactic center. Thus, it makes sense that all these aliens are religious. We’re just mimicking how everyone else does it.”

  “That doesn’t make it true,” Ella said.

  “Never said it did,” I told her.

  “But you think that’s how it is, don’t you?” she asked.

  “What do you want me to say, Ella? Yeah. I think that’s how it is. I’m not saying you have to believe that. Sure, we’re off to kill a devil. Is Abaddon the real thing or are devil legends Plato’s shadows on a cave wall? I don’t know. Why does it matter? Abaddon is scary and is going to be hard to kill no matter who or what he really is. You go about this your way and I’ll go about it mine.”

  She frowned at me.

  “
You were from Russia,” I said. “In the States, the teachers and most media types told us we had to accept their thoughts on things. Only they could say their way was right, because they were tolerant, you see. But if they had been tolerant of our way of thinking, they would have welcomed our thoughts as being part of the human experience. Instead, they said we were bigots and had to think like they did in order to be tolerant like them.”

  “Were they insane?” Ella asked.

  I laughed, shrugging. “I guess that would depend on who you asked. They were a royal pain in the-you-know-what. My point is this. You hate the idea of religion. I’m not keen on atheist thought. As long as we can work together to defeat Abaddon—whatever he is—I’m not going to worry how you see things.”

  “Yes,” Ella said. “I can tolerate your belief in your fairy tales. Despite your simplicity concerning a Bronze Age god, you are a good battle leader.”

  “And you’re a heck of a scientist, Ella. Whether Abaddon is a devil or an advanced species with delusions of grandeur, I need your insights to help me kill him.”

  “Da,” she said. “I can live with that. I already have for all these years. Why change now? Besides, it occurs to me why the advanced species in the galactic core use religious beliefs. It is the same reason rulers have used it on Earth since time immemorial.”

  “Why was that?” N7 asked.

  “It should be obvious,” Ella said. “Religion is a societal tool. It helps keep the masses in line. Don’t steal, or you’ll go to Hell. In some times and places, that was as good a tool as enlightened self-interest or heavy-handed policing to keep people from theft.”

  N7 considered that while blinking slowly. “That computes. Yes. It is interesting. I shall have to think about this carefully.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “But I want you to do that on your own time. Right now, we need a game plan. We have to figure out how to beat the greatest threat Earth has faced so far. Who has an idea about the best way to defeat Abaddon and his Super Fleet?”

  Dmitri grew thoughtful. N7 became blank-faced. Ella rubbed her left cheek with a forefinger. Rollo leaned back his chair so it creaked ominously.