“I cannot concur with your logic,” N7 said.
“Rollo?” I asked.
“Did you say you read some of Abaddon’s thoughts?”
“I did. I’m sure I sensed fear or unease concerning me.”
“Could Abaddon have faked that?” Rollo asked.
I scowled, but finally said, “I suppose that’s possible.”
I didn’t tell him that Abaddon wanted to lure me in. I would let myself be lured, but give him a bigger surprise than he expected. Knowing you’re going to be ambushed is halfway to defeating the ambush.
“I’d say it’s likely that Abaddon is faking you and us out,” Rollo said. He tipped his chair forward and lurched to his feet. “But we gotta go for it anyway. I’m with you, Creed. I think this is our lone shot. That means we have to take it. We can’t hang back like pussies because Abaddon makes us shiver.”
“Yeah…” I said. “N7, you’re staying this time. I want you suited up on the bridge, though. You’re going to make sure the Santa Maria transfers home. If we die or Abaddon captures us, then you can implement your Plan B.”
“I do this under protest,” N7 said.
“But will you do it?” I asked.
The android looked at me squarely. “I will,” he said.
“That’s good enough for me. Now, let’s get ready.”
-36-
It took longer to get ready than I liked. I kept thinking about Ella, how scared she’d been before our commando assault. I’d told her not to worry, but she shouldn’t have listened to me. What was Abaddon doing to her? What had the First One done to Jennifer?
My idea this time was predicated on the belief that Abaddon wouldn’t risk destroying the Santa Maria. It was too valuable for him. Surely, Abaddon had many long-term goals. I had no doubt he hated the Curator. To reach the old man sooner rather than later, Abaddon would need the ancient Survey Vessel.
As we climbed into our T-suits, I thought about the Kargs. They were much different from Saurians or even Jelk.
I could almost hear an old voice in head. It wasn’t Abaddon, but a Lokhar who had told me about the Kargs a long time ago. That had been the year we’d gone into hyperspace to search for the portal planet.
A Lokhar named Prince Venturi had told me, “The Kargs are a devouring species, even more rapacious than the Jelk. They inhabit a much smaller universe than ours, with fewer planets per star. When that became too little space, they demolished the planets and used the matter to create Dyson spheres around the various suns. They annihilated all other life forms but their own. They are xenophobic to an intense degree, destroying everything they hate.”
Karg soldiers had barrel bodies with horny shells like beetles. They had triangular heads with the same tough substance and complex eyes like common Earth houseflies, with wet orifices for mouths with chitin teeth. They had two metallic tentacles with metal pincers on the end and three shorter tentacles on the bottom of the torso for mobility, allowing them to scuttle from place to place. Kargs spoke in clicks. They might have been designed as cannon-fodder creatures. They had served Abaddon faithfully enough. As to the Karg genesis, I had no idea. Maybe only the Curator or the Creator did.
It was likely that Kargs would be guarding Abaddon on the ship as we struck.
“I have the enemy fleet in visual,” Rollo said hoarsely. He was using Holgotha’s T-scanner.
Rollo tapped his controls as he zeroed in on the moth-ships. They rode the gargantuan mothership snowflakes. A moth-ship looked like a giant moth in many ways. The “wings” could move to a small degree. They were energy collectors. The “eyes” in the “head” glowed with an eerie red color. We’d seen destructive red beams pour from moth-ship eyes. We had yet to discover how they powered the red beams.
No one I knew had ever been aboard a Karg moth-ship before. We were going to be the first.
“How will we figure out which moth-ship holds Abaddon?” Rollo asked.
“I believe I’ll sense him,” I said. “I think the two of us are linked now. Maybe we have been ever since he talked to me in my sleep several years ago.”
“I’m not sure I’m buying that,” Rollo told me. “It sounds forced.”
“Keep scanning,” I said. “We’ll find out soon enough whether I’m right or not.”
I had the Ultrix Disintegrator hooked to my T-suit. Both Jelk-holding cubes were on my belt. The captured Jelk seemed more agitated than ever. I believe they had a good idea what this gun did and how they would each power a shot.
Rollo kept scanning one snowflake after—
“That one,” I whispered, as a sharp pain spiked in my head. At the same time, I could see in my mind’s eye Abaddon’s head coming up sharply.
“Let’s go,” I said. “He can sense me.”
Rollo stared at me hard. Finally, with his voice more hoarse than ever, he gave the command.
“We will transfer in four…three…two…one…now,” N7 said through the comm. He was on the bridge. “We are transferring—”
The transferring sensations cut in. The moment the strange feelings quit, I tapped on my T-suit’s scanner.
“Link to me,” I whispered. I felt Abaddon a second before I saw him on the scanner.
He was huge, just like he’d been in his spacesuit. He was dark like clotted blood but had classically handsome features. The eyes swirled with power, with extreme menace and evil. I sucked in my breath upon seeing his eyes, working to tear my gaze free. He wore a metallic, iron-colored garment up to his neck. There were computer-like monitors on his chest and several big weapons on his belt. He was like some dark Greek god and seemed intelligent and forceful beyond anything I’d known. His appearance called to mind images of fictional vampire princes or the way humans imagine Satan might look.
Ella was chained by the neck and wore little in the way of clothes. The end of the leash was in Abaddon’s left hand. She appeared downcast, defeated in spirit.
Several Kargs stood nearby with big rifles in their tentacles. I saw one other person, a tall woman with dark hair. She had elongated features and a sinister smile. Like Abaddon, she wore a metallic garment that did nothing to hide her womanly contours. It had to be Jennifer. She had a long knife in her hand, the blade gleaming with electric power.
“Are you seeing this?” Rollo asked over the suit comm.
“Ready?” I whispered.
“He’s expecting us,” Rollo told me.
“Do we have a choice?”
“No,” the First Admiral said.
“Right,” I said. “It’s clobbering time.”
-37-
Pressing the teleport switch was hard. My thumb seemed to travel for an eternity. I wondered if this was how it had felt in World War I. There, soldiers had heard a whistle blow. Then, they climbed up the trench ladder or scrambled up the trench on their hands and knees, and charged the enemy with a rifle and bayonet. They had walked or run across No Man’s Land and crawled through reams of barbed wire. All the while, enemy machine gunners had mowed them down. How had the Tommie Boys found the courage to walk forward into the teeth of streams of lead?
Maybe a similar numbed courage moved my thumb. Maybe it wasn’t courage, but soldierly stupidity. Maybe that’s what valor was, part manliness and part craziness.
I moved my thumb against the switch, and found myself shouting as I appeared in Abaddon’s chamber.
It was a big room with screens on the walls. I saw Abaddon peering at me on the screens. He’d known we were coming, all right, and he’d known the exact spot.
As I materialized, heavy slugs whined off my T-suit armor, staggering me. They knocked the Ultrix Disintegrator out of my hands.
“Surrender,” Abaddon said in a dark voice full of authority.
Part of me wanted to grovel right there. How did one disobey the voice of a god?
I saw Dmitri throw himself onto his face before Abaddon.
“Put down your weapons,” Abaddon ordered.
The Kargs kept
firing, the heavy slugs hammering against me, making it hard to think.
I heard Rollo roar a battle cry. He fired back, and a Karg exploded into metallic and fleshy parts.
That helped me. I used my T-suit’s beam and the gun, chugging shots, blowing apart the hated Kargs and firing at others. Then, I centered on Abaddon.
He jerked the leash so Ella cried out, pulled into my line of fire. The beam and slugs tore her into a rag of flesh. Afterward, the beam and slugs almost struck Abaddon. A force field kept them from reaching him, however.
“No!” I howled.
“You’re a murderer,” Abaddon said in a voice dripping with judgment.
If he thought that would break me, he was wrong. I went berserk instead. I’d killed Ella. I hadn’t meant to, but she was dead anyway.
Jennifer—for who else could she be?—moved like greased death at that point. She reached Dmitri and yanked a power cord from his pack to the teleportation device. The Cossack tried to rise. Jennifer slapped sticky pods to him. They expanded with startling speed, wrapping him in a vile cocoon.
I was beyond speech or I would have warned Rollo to watch out. My best friend seemed to have lost it as well. He was down on one knee, blasting away, hammering Kargs into smithereens. Many of their slugs struck him, but it didn’t matter. Rollo had braced himself against them, and the Ronin 9 body armor held.
I felt like the Angel of Death come to wreak retribution upon Abaddon the Lord of Evil.
I reached the Ultrix Disintegrator, picked it up, shoved a Jelk-filled cube into the chamber and targeted Abaddon.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said.
I felt him reaching out with his mind power. He struck, but I had steeled my will behind a curtain of rage. Despite the wateriness in my eyes, despite the throb of pain, I howled with battle-fury. I centered the Ronin 9 weapon and pressed the firing stud.
A silent screech cut off Abaddon’s mind assault. I realized without knowing how that the Jelk in the cube was pleading for mercy.
It didn’t matter. I kept my finger on the firing switch. In a swift act of justice, the disintegrator devoured the glowing machine ball. The Jelk fed the weapon power, and the thing discharged a short but savage beam of ultimate destruction.
Like a gush, it swept at Abaddon, striking him on the chest instead of his head as I’d aimed. The mighty Abaddon shouted with pain as he tumbled from his throne onto the floor. Smoke billowed from his form. The metal garment at that spot had curled away to expose the wound. Golden ichor flowed out of the rent, and I almost expected to see bone.
I raged joyously at his pain. I think I surprised him. I think Abaddon had forgotten about the Ultrix Disintegrator. Maybe he hadn’t torn that from Ella’s mind yet. Maybe he just thought his armor and force field proof against my weapon.
I’d just taught him otherwise.
I clicked the weapon. The spent and darkened cube tumbled onto the floor. I shoved my last captured Jelk into the chamber.
“Cretin!” Abaddon roared.
“Dead man,” I said, targeting him.
Abaddon squeezed his eyes closed. I supposed he feared death. A halo appeared around him. What did I care about that?
I fired the Ronin 9 weapon. It discharged a ferocious gout of energy. Abaddon disappeared. The energy burned through the spot where he’d been, drilling through deck after deck until it must have reached the outer bulkhead.
At the same time, Abaddon appeared beside me on his feet. He had teleported. The halo must have had something to do with that. I thought it had been a last ditch protection against my gun.
Abaddon snatched the Ultrix Disintegrator from my hands. His shoulder muscles bulged, and more golden ichor flowed from the chest wound. With a grunt, he broke the ancient weapon. Then, he reached for me.
The result of my last shot saved me from those deadly hands. The gout of energy had burned through to the outer hull. Air whistled out into the vacuum of space, causing masses of debris to swirl into our chamber.
Abaddon swatted at things flying at his face.
I took that moment to backpedal, looking around. I’d failed. I’d had two shots, and I’d failed to kill Abaddon. I’d wounded him, though.
Jennifer raced to the hole, slapping something over it, sealing us from the vacuum. That caused the debris to fall to the deck.
Then, everything seemed to go crazy. Balls of energy oozed through the walls. Some of the pulsating energy balls halted. Others oozed back the way they had come as if running away. One materialized into a Jelk.
Right, I thought. The balls of energy had been Jelk in their real form. The one that cloaked flesh around it looked familiar.
I found myself staring at Shah Claath. He looked exactly as I’d remembered him. He wore a blue suit and fancy shoes. He had red skin and satanically intelligent eyes. He was the size of a tall child. I realized he was yelling at me, gesturing wildly.
Finally, his words penetrated my sound receptors.
“It’s a trap, you stupid beast,” Claath shouted. “Grab me and teleport back to your ship. Do it now before Abaddon regains his senses. Move, you brute. Do something intelligent for once.”
The conniving creep infuriated me. I had no idea what the Jelk had in mind, but his words made sense after a fashion.
“Rollo, Dmitri,” I said over the suit-comm. “Retreat to the Santa Maria. We have to regroup.”
Rollo disappeared.
“Go,” I told Dmitri. Then, I grabbed Claath, hugging his little body to my T-suit.
“You have lost,” Abaddon told me.
I gave the Dark One the finger. Before Abaddon could respond, I teleported back to the Santa Maria with Claath as my prisoner.
-38-
I shoved the Jelk away from me as I materialized onto the bridge of the Santa Maria. Several officers gasped in surprise.
Trask turned to me. He was a small old man in a crisp uniform. “Commander, Karg squads have landed en masse on the moon surface. They have breach bombs and have entered the corridors. I estimate something in the nature of a million soldiers. We cannot possibly fight them off. Once they reach the engine rooms…”
A T-suit popped onto the bridge.
Claath whirled around. “Shoot him, Commander. It’s one of Abaddon’s creatures.”
“No,” Rollo said. “It’s me, Creed.”
I reached for the Jelk to shake him. Claath neatly dodged my suited hands and straightened his garment after stepping out of reach.
“What are your orders, sir?” Trask asked.
“Transfer,” I said, dully.
“To what coordinates, sir?”
“The next star system,” I said.
“You’d better go farther than that,” Claath said. “Abaddon will reach you otherwise.”
I stared at the Jelk, realizing he’d run to me for help. After all these years, wondering if I could ever hunt down Claath, the cunning schemer had run to me for succor.
“Transfer immediately, Trask. We’ll pick different coordinates once there.”
“Yes, sir,” Trask said. The old man turned and began issuing orders.
In less than a minute, we left the Super Fleet, with at least one million Kargs working their way into the guts of the Santa Maria.
Claath was right about one thing. Abaddon tried another mind assault while we were here. It happened while Rollo and I shoved Claath ahead of us. We went to the viewing chamber.
I grunted and went to one knee. I resisted the mind assault by getting as angry as I could. Abaddon probed. I could almost hear him, but fought against it. Finally, the mind attack ended, and I climbed to my feet.
“You okay, Creed?” Rollo asked.
“No,” I whispered. “But let’s figure out where to transfer next. We have to move farther away from Abaddon.”
“The First One must be hurt,” Claath said. “You can thank whatever Deity you worship for that. Otherwise, Abaddon would have dominated your beastly mind like that.” The Jelk snapped t
hin red fingers.
Rollo raised a gun at Claath. “Do you want me to waste him?”
“What good would that do you?” Claath asked Rollo. “You beasts have always baffled me. Why don’t you start using your minds for once?”
I swatted Claath across the back of the head, making him stagger.
“We’re not beasts,” I told him. “I thought I taught you that a long time ago.”
“You certainly act like beasts,” he said, rubbing the back of his head.
Standing around and arguing wouldn’t help anything, so we continued to the scanning room. In short order, Rollo and I chose another star system. We transferred again, around fifty light years away from the Super Fleet. I didn’t want to take us to the Solar System, not with a million Kargs on board. I wasn’t sure yet what kind of equipment they had brought with them. Could the Kargs launch off the moon-ship to attack elsewhere?
Claath cocked his head thoughtfully, finally nodding. “I think we’re far enough from Abaddon.” He grinned at me. It was a smile filled with toothy relief.
“Well done, Commander,” Claath said. “That was astonishing. You have my full appreciation, believe me. I couldn’t let you know that until out of range of the First One’s filthy mind powers.”
“What are you trying to pull, you weasel?” Rollo demanded.
The Jelk blinked at us in what appeared genuine surprise. “Surely you two cannot hold old times against me. Much has changed since then. We are allies of the gun, are we not?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
Claath made a bland gesture. “It seems obvious enough. Abaddon has a larger gun than either of us. He has forced us to recalibrate our attitudes toward each other. Once, we considered each other as enemies. Now, we have become friends of the gun, friends of convenience, you might say.”
“We’re going to kill you,” Rollo said.
Claath arched his eyebrows. “Whatever for? I have what you need. You have something I could use. We should work together in order to defeat Abaddon.”
Fortress Earth (Extinction Wars Book 4) Page 21