Fortress Earth (Extinction Wars Book 4)

by Fortress Earth (epub)

  We did, but found nothing. The Super Fleet wasn’t in the Cantor System either.

  I began pacing again, with my hands behind my back. “This T-searching is harder than I would have thought. The Curator—”

  “Who?” Ella asked.

  I glanced at her, scowling. Despite their questions about what had happened during their memory loss while in the galactic core, I hadn’t said anything about the Curator. They couldn’t spill what they didn’t know. With Abaddon’s dream assault, that seemed more prudent than ever.

  “Napoleon Bonaparte used to scatter his forces when he marched,” I said. “Each smaller command marched faster than if they’d been in one huge mass. Maybe Abaddon has done the same thing?”

  “Is that logical?” N7 asked.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Did Napoleon rule a polyglot force through terror?” N7 asked.

  “Are you suggesting Abaddon’s presence helps keep everyone in line?”

  “Would Abaddon trust the Jelk if they were apart from him?” N7 asked. “Might he suspect a double-cross from them?”

  “We don’t know enough to say,” I said.

  “Given what we know about Abaddon’s nature,” N7 said. “I suspect he would keep the Super Fleet together.”

  “Suppose you’re right. Then what route is he using? Or do you think he’s switched his objective and is no longer heading for Earth first?”

  “So far,” N7 said, “Abaddon has moved with fixed purpose each time. It seems unlikely he has abandoned his Earth assault.”

  “Could he cloak the Super Fleet from our T-scanner?” Ella asked.

  I stopped pacing, thinking about that. The Curator had seen the Super Fleet easily enough from his wall-screen. Could Holgotha’s scanner see as easily as the Curator’s tech? I had a feeling the Fortress of Light would have a better far-ranged sensor. And, if I was a First One like Abaddon, and I knew about the artifacts’ powers, might I not figure out a way to cloak myself from their far-ranging sensors?

  “That must be it,” I said. “Abaddon has a cloaking device against the T-scanner.”

  “Then we’re back where we started,” Ella said, her shoulders slumping.

  “Let’s not concede so quickly,” I said. “Suppose Abaddon has a cloaking device. Is there some way we could sense the Super Fleet’s presence anyway?”

  “Space is vast,” N7 said. “Even the space in a single system is vast compared to starships. I do not think even a Super Fleet would give off noticeable gravitational effects. How else could one detected a cloaked fleet other than through gravitational effects?”

  “Space is vast,” I repeated, beginning to pace again. “Maybe that’s the answer. It isn’t a matter of cloaking. Abaddon saw something in Ella’s thoughts. He knows about the T-scanner. Thus, he maneuvered the Super Fleet—”

  I spun around. “I have it. Abaddon ordered the Super Fleet to swing wide in the Tau Beaux System. He didn’t use the obvious route—the straight line. Instead, he ordered the ships to make a curving maneuver.”

  “That sounds good in theory,” Ella said, “but we have no way to know if that’s right or not. What if he is using a cloaking device?”

  “As N7 would ask, ‘Is that logical?’ Such a device would have to cover a lot of space. And where would he have gotten such equipment? The artifacts possess the highest-grade technology in our zone. Let’s keep looking.”

  For the next twenty minutes, we planned our sensing pattern.

  “I have calculated the power drainage for the scan,” N7 said. “If we search for over an hour, we risk a burn-out.”

  “That’s bad,” I agreed.

  “Maybe we should affix values to our search areas,” Ella suggested. “We should scan the higher valued routes first.”

  “To do that,” I said, “we’d have to try to think like Abaddon.”

  Both Ella and N7 looked at me meaningfully.

  “Great,” I said. “You’re saying I think like the devil?”

  “He’s not the devil,” Ella said. “But I believe you think like him more than anyone else I know.”

  Instead of arguing, I thought about what I would do if I knew what Ella had most likely given away to Abaddon. Then, I studied the Tau Beaux System map. With a marker, I highlighted how I’d maneuver a Super Fleet.

  “Let us proceed,” N7 said.

  We powered up the T-scanner. Seven minutes later, Ella whispered, “Look. What’s that?”

  “Move the scanner three degrees to the nearest jump gate,” I said.

  N7 did so, the viewing plate shimmering.

  I felt my gut tighten. I wondered if this was how American Navy pilots had felt in World War II when they’d found the Imperial Japanese Fleet. That’s how it had been back then, the carrier ships hiding from each other with search planes scouting the vast Pacific Ocean.

  We’d found the Super Fleet. It was en route to Earth. Clearly, Abaddon had used the information he’d torn from Ella in her sleep.

  “Right,” I said. “Let’s pick our first target.”

  As I’d seen from the Fortress of the Light, masses of Jelk Corporation battlejumpers led the way. They were huge vessels, each carrying tens of thousands of individuals and equipment. Instead of spheres, the battlejumpers were like thick, triangular pie-slices. Behind them followed giant snowflakes. Each of those Karg snowflakes represented many riding moth-ships. They rode together on the snowflake, the mothership carrying the smaller red-eyed vessels.

  “There’s a problem,” N7 said.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “We cannot look inside a battlejumper to pinpoint the location of a Jelk.”

  “The T-suit scanners can do that later,” I said.

  “From a mere one billion kilometers away,” N7 said. “That will defeat the purpose of the present scan: to figure out how to attack without being seen.”

  “Maybe something about a battlejumper will give away a Jelk’s presence,” I said, “so we can at least know which battlejumpers to T-suit scan first.”

  We scanned the battlejumpers for another ten minutes. Nothing indicated that one was different from another.

  “Maybe we can assume Jelk will pick the safest spot in the fleet,” I said. “In your opinions, what place is that?”

  “The center,” Ella said promptly.

  “Then we need to T-suit scan the center battlejumpers first,” I said.

  Ella looked at me. “That doesn’t solve our basic problem. As soon as we appear, they’re going to start attacking the Santa Maria.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “I have an idea what we have to do so they won’t find us until it’s too late for them.”

  -30-

  This was it. We were going to go against the great enemy, Abaddon and his Kargs with his Jelk allies. They had been our bugbear for many years already.

  Yeah, the Jade League’s Grand Armada had rerouted for Earth, but it would never get there in time to save humanity. Rollo had said it before. If we could cut off the head, maybe the body would begin fighting against itself. That was the plan, going after Abaddon and killing him before the fleet battle began.

  Before we could do that, though, we had to collect ammo for our weapon to kill Abaddon.

  I wiped my sweaty palms on my thighs. After all these years, I was finally going after Shah Claath. Would I get to see him again or would I have to settle for several of his hyper-intelligent brothers?

  I’d gone through a lot of grief in my life because of Claath. At his command, I’d had to wear a control device so he could shock me if he wanted. The red-skinned Rumpelstiltskin with his dark eyes, narrow face and crafty smile…I could still see him in my imagination. Some people fade in one’s memories over time. Claath didn’t have that distinction with me. I’d wanted to wipe away that superior smirk, to knife him again. I wanted to kill Claath, and this was my big chance. But what were the odds that I’d come face-to-face with him again?

  Probab
ly not too good, I was thinking. I had tried to cudgel my thoughts to come up with a plan to make it certain. How many Jelk did the Super Fleet hold? I was betting most of those that were still on the loose in the Orion Arm.

  I remembered what the Curator had told me. The Jelk weren’t really alive but were machines like N7. Yet, N7 felt as if he was alive.

  I shook my head, took a deep breath and headed onto the bridge. It was time to begin implementing my great plan. I hoped it worked.

  ***

  Soon, the Santa Maria powered up, transferring from the Solar System to the Beta Sigma System.

  I’d calculated this carefully. The others had mixed feelings about it. Rollo had grinned evilly. Ella and N7 both thought it was a bad idea. Dmitri had shrugged.

  “It could work,” the Cossack had said.

  I was hoping it did, ’cause if it didn’t…

  The Santa Maria took up a middle orbit around a blue gas giant. This was the sixth planet in the system, which had a lot of them. Even better, all the planets had plenty of moons of varying sizes. The middle-sized ones were just about the size of the ancient Survey Vessel.

  We were hiding out in the open, using one of our weaknesses—the distinctiveness of the Santa Maria—that it was, in fact, a moon. If we tried to act like a starship, our vessel stuck out like a sore thumb. But if we turned the giant thrusters so they aimed at the planet and kept all the hangar bay doors shut, we looked like another Beta Sigma moon.

  When I say we were out in the open, I mean in relation to the jump gate that led from the Tau Beaux System.

  “They’ll be so busy trying to figure out where we’re hiding that they won’t notice us in plain sight,” I said.

  Ella looked up from her panel. She was pale, with darkness around her eyes. Her bad dream still plagued her.

  “How long are we going to wait for them to show up?” she asked.

  “Hopefully, not long,” I said.

  It ended up being another five hours and thirty-six minutes. Finally, the distant jump gate glowed with a yellow color, and Jelk battlejumpers began coming through.

  They poured through, one every fifty-seven seconds. That was impressive. I’d been with the Grand Armada for a time. The best any flotilla had done is one ship through every ninety-three seconds. Most flotillas had less than forty vessels, however. It often took ten minutes or more for the next Grand Armada flotilla to start its process. The enemy poured through consistently.

  When you’re trying to push a lot of vessels through at once, the seconds added up.

  After coming through, the battlejumpers didn’t mill and wait around. They began accelerating. But they didn’t scoot toward the distant jump gate that led to the next system. Instead, they began a curving circuit toward the gate. That meant Abaddon was still being cautious.

  We watched from our bridge. The battlejumpers headed in the direction I’d predicted they would take.

  Rollo shook his head, counting out credits, coming to me and putting them in my palm.

  “How’d you know they’d take that route?” the First Admiral asked.

  “Luck,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” Rollo said, marching back to his station.

  Watching them come through the jump gate reminded me of Xerxes’ massive army that had marched across the Hellespont from Asia to Europe on his boat bridges in 481 B.C.

  Xerxes had been the Persian king who’d planned to conquer ancient Greece. The historian Herodotus claimed Xerxes had marched with 2,641,610 men. More likely, it had been around 150,000 to 180,000 soldiers. Some military historians had calculated that if it had been the larger number, the men and animals would have drunk dry all the streams of Greece. Plus, the front of the marching army would have reached Athens as the last man crossed the boat bridge.

  The boat bridges across the Hellespont had been the truly fantastic engineering feat of the day. Xerxes had two boat bridges of triremes and penteconters (fifty-oared galleys). They were linked by six long cables, two of flax and four of papyrus. Over the vessels was constructed a wooden roadway. In all, 314 ships were used for the western bridge and 360 for the eastern.

  As the triangular-shaped battlejumpers moved away from the jump gate, they began to take up the same formation I’d seen while standing with the Curator and from Holgotha’s scanner. It was like a giant school of sharks, only these were all the same size.

  Later, massive Karg snowflakes began coming through. We’d fought the moth-ships in hyperspace a long time ago already. Then, the humans had been a tiny minority aboard the Orange Tamika dreadnaughts. Those had been rough battles with only a handful of survivors.

  After several hours of watching this, Dmitri said, “The lead ships are almost one billion kilometers away from us.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “It’s time to suit up.”

  The five of us rose from our respective stations and marched off the bridge. As we went, personnel shouted out, “Good luck” and “Happy hunting,” and other ancient battle slogans.

  The five of us walked alone in the corridors. It was a good feeling being with friends. We’d been through a lot of wars together. We’d helped each other in many tight spots. Here was one more, hopefully among the last of our engagements.

  We’d argued about this earlier. Should we hit them right away—at the one billion kilometer mark—or should we wait for them all to get closer.

  “Do you think Abaddon knows our T-suit teleportation range?” I’d asked Ella.

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes, nor would she say.

  “If we strike them near our range limit,” I’d said, “that will make it harder for them to strike back at the Santa Maria. Given that they figure out we’re a starship.”

  That had been the deciding factor for doing it like this.

  Ahead of us, a door swished open and we walked to our T-suits. We’d been practicing with them, of course. Dmitri and I had also gone over with the others what we’d learned during the strike against Holgotha.

  “Feels strange,” Rollo said through his helmet comm. “This suit must be thousands of years old. Heck, maybe it’s even a million years old. Now, we supposed little killers are going to use it to do exactly what it was designed to do: killing First Ones. That’s a good feeling, if you ask me.”

  “We’re the Space Ninjas,” Dmitri said. “Seems like an improvement on being Space Vikings.”

  “There you go,” I said, “ever the optimist.”

  On a big screen, we could watch the progress of the Super Fleet. This time, the individual starships were accelerating faster than before. I wondered what caused the difference.

  “Have they detected us?” Ella asked. “They have to see us.”

  “Of course they see us,” I said, “but do they see a starship or a moon?”

  At last, we secured the last seals. Each of us moved around the room, testing the various pieces of equipment.

  “I’m still not sanguine about the antimatter grenades,” N7 said. “It is self-immolation to use one.”

  “No it isn’t,” Rollo said. “It’s perfect for these. You squirt one out just as you teleport away. You leave it behind for some deserving aliens. Boom! They’re blood and gore.”

  “Yes, I understand the concept,” N7 said. “The timing troubles me, however.”

  My stomach was seething. Jennifer was somewhere in the enemy fleet. Did she ever think about me? If so, was it with hatred or fond memories? She must have worked it out by now that I had to do what I’d done.

  If that was true, why did I feel like such a scoundrel over doing it? Out of all my decisions these past years, that was the one that bothered me the most.

  I turned on my T-suit scanner with trepidation. What if Jennifer attacked me? Could I shoot her in self-defense?

  I shook my head. Thinking like this was beginning to cloud my judgment.

  “I’m seeing inside a battlejumper,” Dmitri announced. “This one has Saurians. Big ones. I don’t see a Jelk yet.”
/>   Soon, the others began scanning battlejumpers as well.

  “Yes!” Rollo shouted, punctuating the shout with curses. “Link with me, people. I’ve found us a Jelk bastard.”

  “Is it Claath?” I asked, hopeful.

  “I have no idea,” Rollo said. “They all look alike to me. Is everyone linked onto my T-suit?”

  “Wait,” Ella said. “Yes! There, I’m linked.”

  We saw onto a modified battlejumper bridge. The Jelk wore a blue uniform, sitting on a raised throne-chair. No, it wasn’t raised. It hovered high above the Saurian crew. The Jelk was small, with narrow shoulders and red skin. It offset his dark, hyper-intelligent eyes. The creature reminded me of a fox. I looked more closely, searching for machine-like elements about the Jelk.

  I had to remind myself that a Jelk’s natural state was as an energy creature, a ball of pulsating light. This was just a fleshly disguise.

  The Saurians sat in a round chamber, the edges lower down like a pit. The dais in the center under the hovering Jelk commander was full of combat-armored Saurians. By full, I mean twenty soldiers. In the past, Saurians hadn’t used combat armor. Was that an offshoot of the Jelk-Karg War?

  “Everybody remember his location?” I asked.

  “Roger that,” Rollo said.

  We stood in a close circle, each of us facing out.

  “This is for the human race,” I said. “We can’t feel pity or remorse for the enemy.”

  “No worries there,” Rollo said, with an edge to his voice.

  “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Here we go. Teleport in three, two, one…now!”

  -31-

  My T-suit buzzed, shaking the slightest bit as it built up teleporting power. Then the chamber deep inside the Santa Maria disappeared.

  Whatever the process was, we moved nearly one billion kilometers through space in the blink of an eye. This time, my feet appeared perfectly on the raised dais inside the battlejumper. I heard the rush of air displacement and felt my lips stretch into a wide, almost painful grin.

  I elbowed a Saurian space marine, sending him staggering. Then, I used the beam weapon, hosing one Saurian after another. This was a grade-A beam, all right. It breached the Saurian battle armor with pathetic ease. If I could have felt sorry for the enemy, this would have been the moment. But I didn’t feel sorry. The Saurians were in the way of humanity. Too bad for them.