“We’re waiting word from Her Majesty,” he replied. “We think it’s the Trobins!”
“Damn!” he muttered, taking Skye’s trembling hand and moving off into the dimly lit palace interior.
Nicholas weaved their way through the underground halls, heading to the highly fortified bunker, the safe haven for the Royal Family if such an attack occurred. Never before in his life had he experienced a true run, but he was well trained in several of the military’s staged drills. When they reached the imposing tomb, he placed his thumb in the security panel, and the heavy and thick doors slid apart. Who waited beyond was not his family, but two well-armed Palace Guards.
He learned that this bunker was a decoy and that the guards were there to take him to the real royal stronghold, the military having trusted only his mother and father with the true location. They eyed a bemused Skye doubtfully, wary of any unexpected guest.
“She’s with me,” Nicholas commanded, leaving them no choice but to escort them both through the maze of passageways, onward to the covert command control.
When the doors opened, a quick scan of Nicholas’ eyes saw a score of elite armed guards that stood stoically about, and that his family was all there; he exhaled in his relief. His mother and father stood by the computer console that was before a large viewer on the wall, his brother beside his father. His two sisters sat on the lounge in the corner, Celeste comforting a tearful Selina.
His mother noticed him first and her worried face lit up as she rushed to him, and he took her into a crushing hug.
“Nicholas—you’re safe!” she murmured, relieved that all of her children were with her. She gave her attention to Skye, drawing her into a loving embrace. “Skye—I’m so glad he found you! You had us worried sick!”
Skye didn’t know how to reply, being met with such motherly concern. The Royal Family gathered around Nicholas and her, enthusiastic in their reunion, for the moment able to take solace in the fact that everyone was safe.
Nicholas met his mother’s regal dark-blue eyes. “What’s happening?” he asked.
“The Trobins,” she replied distraughtly. “They’re demanding our surrender. We’re awaiting word from Te Sa Narr, herself. She’s evil!”
Nicholas met his father’s wise and brilliant green eyes. “Surrender?” he uttered, in disbelief.
His father raised a golden brow, bespeaking his refusal of defeat, and moved toward the console, motioning for him to follow. Nicholas placed his hand on Skye’s back and guided her along with him, over to the viewer. The large and long screen glowed blue, in a stand by mode, waiting a connection to an imputing communication channel.
The senior Nicholas quietly said, “The Trobins were able to take over the SPSS.”
The junior Nicholas was surprised. “All of the satellites?” he asked.
“Yes. As of now, only the palace has auxiliary power. We’re at Sentry Five.”
Nicholas felt a chill of doom pass through him. Sentry Five was the highest ranking of alert—it meant that they were in a full-scale war! Adriel’s power supply was very well protected, but the Trobins had disabled the entire SPSS, the Solar Power Satellite System, leaving the world completely without power aside from the palace’s superior accessory grid. The four satellites, high above in Adriel’s orbit and positioned at the poles and equator, gathered the sun’s radiation, collecting and converting the raw matter into useable energy. They beamed the current of codes down to small dish receivers that were present outside on every home, every building, anywhere there was a need for physical power. Formidable robotics shielded the satellites from outside forces, but the Trobins had somehow penetrated them. And, they had also disabled the storage cells, electro-generators that were also present with every receiver, in the rare case the constant feed from the SPSS was disrupted by a vicious storm or solar flare. When the lights went out in Seascape, the generators automatically compensated, but that system was overpowered, as well.
“How?” he asked. “How did they do it?”
“Some kind of sporing, elemental IR virus they infiltrated into the electromagnetism,” he replied, with his usual calm. “We’ve never seen it before—our engineers are working on it. The Trobins were able to bypass the shields without the robotics' detection. The FAS patrolling the satellites were ambushed, destroyed by stealth Trobin fighters.”
The severity of the situation struck him. “The FAS? Destroyed?”
His father would hold nothing back, telling him how it was. “We’ve lost twelve. The Trobin forces have managed to capture the entire fleet, in the mountain ports and on the Silhouette Base. It’s clear that they’ve been planning this for quite some time. But we’ll find a way ...”
They all turned as Royal Officers, a group five strong, came out from the adjoining room, the command central, along with three of his mother’s top advisors. Nicholas recognized their leader and knew him to be the Commander General Sir William F. Sparr, a man that one wanted to see in a situation like this but hoped to never have to see. He was the supreme commander of the military force, his crimson and white uniform bedecked with many emblems of his valiant accomplishments. The man was nearly as tall as his father—although balding and with a black goatee—and his striking blue eyes and stately frame projected an air of authority.
The queen, who was consoling her daughters, spied the commander and approached. “Any luck?” she asked anxiously.
“We’ve a strategy, Your Majesty,” he replied confidently. “But we need your final word.”
The technician who was monitoring the viewer called out. “Your Majesty, Queen Te Sa Narr is on screen!”
Queen Sarra caught and maintained her composure before she moved gracefully to the viewer, to be seen by her illicit foe. Over the miles, their hostile eyes met, each weighing the other opponent, Sarra knowing the import of the coldness in the pink, hollow eyes. This creature had absolutely no mercy within her.
Sarra put her conviction into her gaze, ready to take on the aggressor. “Queen Te Sa Narr,” she said sweetly. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
The Trobin leader lifted her head arrogantly, giving attention to her lofty tiara of sparkling scarlet gems. Her robe was of the same hue, stating the eminence that wrapped her thin frame. “No pleasure, you,” she said in a cool, soprano-pitched voice. “You surrender, me. No help, you. We take USFC. We take Myrrh. You, no power, no FAS ... We capture Adriel.”
Sarra hid her surprise. The Trobins had captured the USFC Headquarters—the United Star Flight Control of the tri-planets of Urania—and planet Myrrh. This was a formidable foe ...
The enemy sovereign spoke. “We want not shed blood. Say your subservients to be peace.”
Sarra smiled, derisively. “You understand Humans as well as you’ve bothered to learn our language. Why do you want Adriel? What do you—being such an insipid breed—have to gain?”
Te Sa Narr caught her insult and waved it off. “Our language, superior. Humans, we like—many pleasure. You fight—we take. So little!” She giggled, as if being amused by a simple toy. “Pleasure.” She became serious once more. “Our captured you came take off Strou. Me choose whole Adriel, now. Merciful, we,” she added, as if to reassure.
“Merciful!” Sarra scoffed. “Like your death collars are merciful?”
Te Sa Narr shrugged. “When no behave.”
“We won’t surrender, Sa Narr,” Sarra promised. “You’ve much to learn about Humans.”
The Trobin queen sighed, exaggeratedly. “Thought, we. No choices, you. See ...”
Another feed came into the viewer, a large square in a corner that had an actual time image of Seascape City’s Infinity Monument. The towering pillar was lit by the glow of two Trobin starships that flooded it in their light, to show that its own light—the proud, blue beacon that always shone—was no more. Everyone in the bunker knew what was about to happen and they braced themselves, holding a collective breath ...
A laser wave like fire shot out from a
Trobin ship and the majestic monument exploded across the sky and dropped, in a slow, heart-wrenching fall, bringing gasps of outrage from all.
Sarra kept her calm, but the sadistic Trobin wasn’t fooled by her lack of response. “Like the pleasing symbol, you,” she said. “Sad ... but listen, now. You, symbol can be. Gone, palace can be. Surrender—say your subservients to be peace. No damage pleasing forms.”
Sarra glared, defiantly.
Te Sa Narr smiled, coldly. “Moment, I give. Locate words on subservients to be peace.”
The viewer flashed to a blue screen, in stand by mode again. Queen Sarra’s slender shoulders slumped before she moved, meeting her consort halfway and taking refuge in his arms. He held her head in his large hands and whispered in her ear, clearly giving her his warfare expertise.
Skye’s heart thumped wildly in her fear and her disbelief that this was truly happening. She knew of the Trobins’ brutality first hand, able again to feel the cold metallic collar encircling her neck—and a twinge of the excruciating pain. Stra Akka had wanted to rape her, and now all of the Trobin forces would invade the planet, and be rampant to do what they will ...
Nicholas took her into a firm hold, pressing her breast against his. “They won’t get us, Skye,” he promised hoarsely. “I’ll see to it—keep you safe. We’ll get them. Stay here.”
On a mission, he left her with his nearly hysterical sisters, going off into the adjoining room to join the military leaders who worked on a plan of defense.
Nicholas understood the dire position his planet was in, but what he didn’t understand was how the Trobins had penetrated their strict defenses with such ease. His father had long ago advanced the security systems, his devious, criminal mind correcting the vulnerabilities he had used in his abduction of the then princess royal, upgrading the safeguards to protect those who had become his own. The most adept engineers also deployed the most advanced Human technology, and yet in but a moment, the Trobins could take all. Howbeit, although the creatures were superior in schematics, even he knew that they lacked in any divine wisdom.
The Commander General remained level headed while he spoke to the queen and her consort—and his retinue who circled around the console—about his plan of attack. Nicholas learned that two days ago the girls that the Trobins had made sexual slaves of on their planet had been freed. The FAS commandos had disabled the shields in Te Sa Narr’s headquarters and had quietly rescued the prisoners, stunning any Trobins who interfered, until all three hundred and eleven were accounted for. These victims were being treated and detained in the Palace Infirmary, unbeknownst to the subjects, as of yet, so as not to cause a fervor.
The Queen’s Advisors had anticipated that this could provoke an attack from the Trobins. They believed that they were prepared, delaying the act of banning them from Adriel’s airspace in the hope that they would come and be destroyed by the FAS. This would send the final message to their queen, a carnal yet ultimately cerebral creature, who would retreat on the availability of Humans.
Or, so they had thought. They had just discovered that the cunning Trobins had a secret stealth technology superior to theirs, as they were able to destroy the FAS fighters with their ‘invisible’ ships and take control of the FAS bases and the satellites.
Nicholas gathered that Adriel’s Royal Forces had been at Sentry Two since he had made the call to the palace about the slave trade, after his rescue of Skye. They had intensified their efforts to locate the weaknesses of these creatures that were now a threat because of the vicinity of the wormhole. Stra Akka had alerted the Kalcoons that their illicit trade had been exposed, so the FAS commandos could no longer entrap them on Kan and had to resort to investigating from the inside of Te Sa Narr’s palace. They had learned that the Trobins were a purely hierarchical breed, whose queen had the sole power over the colony. If she were to be destroyed, her followers would be lost and defenseless, for a time, until they positioned a new queen for their command.
They were a strange race. Howbeit, they had a firm knowledge of the intricacies of technology, enough so to make them a serious threat. The science engineers had dissected the qualities of their shields, finding a counteracting matrix to disable them, enabling the commandos to rescue the slaves. It was a concept that they must put to use now.
From Te Sa Narr’s conversation with Queen Sarra, they had pinpointed her coordinates. She was just within Adriel’s orbit, in her royal spacecraft, surrounded by four imposing guard ships. The four guards embedded her craft in an energy shield, but if this shield could be deactivated—as the commandos had done on Strou—she could be made defenseless and destroyed, and her ‘drones’ would fold.
The Commander General was convinced of this while he pointed out the enemy queen’s location on the viewer screen. Getting at the queen was the hard part.
“We will deploy the remaining FAS stationed at the palace underground and at the individual royal escape bays,” he said, “all but for one bay that the entire Royal Family will use if invasion becomes imminent. This is a perilous situation. We have the palace weaponry to hold them for a time, but if the Trobins are not obstructed, it will be much more difficult to resist them with our civilians’ spotty M-5 firepower versus their military. We must stop them before they can reach a stronghold. The only way to do this is to destroy their queen. Our engineers are composing the matrix spheres in the science lab, for the FAS ships. The spheres must be jettisoned into her guard ships’ surrounding shields, to nullify them. Then we can use our weaponry.”
Nicholas studied the stratagem on the viewer, realizing that the general—in his desperation—would be sending most of his fellow FAS fighters out on a suicide run. The general needed seventeen of the twenty fighters to distract the four Trobin guard ships that secured the queen in a rectangle of protection, while the other three jettisoned the matrix spheres and destroyed the queen’s ship. The Trobins would easily detect most of the seventeen fighters and would annihilate them.
As he stood there, he was struck with another idea, with the ease of how all of this could be done ... but only he could do it—and it would not be allowed. It was possible ... he could do it ... He had a better way.
He knew what he had to do. He left the circle without anyone noticing, and in the adjoining room he saw his Skye, pacing between his two equally agitated sisters. Her lovely face lit up as he approached, and she came to him, and he took her into his arms ...
Skye relaxed in the comfort of his embrace. She was surprised when he suddenly kissed her, unleashing his passion for her even before all of the guards and his sisters ... but she was drawn into his warmth, uncaring that they weren’t alone, basking in his care, his protection. She was dizzy when he drew away, and he steadied her, keeping her close a moment before he let her go.
She glanced at his sisters and discovered that Nicholas and she had provided them with a much-needed moment of levity. A hint of amusement twinkled in their eyes.
Celeste quipped, “Smitten, Nicholas?”
“Very!” he admitted. “And, for always.”
Skye blushed, for a moment burying her face in her palms. When she turned to him, he was gone.
Believing that he had gone back to the command central, she moved back to the two princess royals, to wait for him again. All their nerves were frazzled, and they talked, babbling about nothing to keep up their morale, avoiding the true horrors at hand. Skye spoke about her life out in the wilds, Celeste and she distracting Selina, who—as it turned out to be—was a very emotional girl. The minutes crawled by while they waited, each that passed becoming more and more unbearable to endure. After what seemed to be a lifetime, it came to be that Skye could no longer handle the cold pit of dread in her belly, and she had to seek Nicholas out.
She excused herself and bravely went off to the command control. The guards at the door took pity on her and permitted her access. When inside the room, her gaze roved the nigh score of people, finding no Nicholas. She searched again, with the sam
e results.
Queen Sarra noticed her, and Skye went to her. “I’m looking for Nicholas,” she said, apologetically for her intrusion.
Sarra was confused. “He isn’t with you?”
Skye shook her head. The queen ushered her over to the senior Nicholas and shakily said, “Raine—Nicholas is missing!”
His green eyes widened while he took in this news, knowing his son. “Ah, no. He didn’t!”
The cold pit of dread in Skye’s belly burst into a caldron of fear. Something was very wrong ...
Nicholas hovered in Adriel’s atmosphere in his starship, readying his helm. His weaponry was equipped with a matrix sphere, him having commandeered an engineer by his royal command. His ship was more of a FAS starship in its operation but civilian in appearance, him having modified it long ago. The engineer had been frantic when he had left him, insisting that he didn’t know if it would work; still, that was the same guarantee that he could give to all of the FAS pilots. Nicholas felt that he had better odds of surviving than they would. He would deploy the same strategy he had used in the FAS training exercise, when he had destroyed the robotic buoy.
Not that this was quite the same. He was up against a very alive and hostile foe. What he must do is rush the four guard ships’ space without their detection, jettison the matrix sphere to drop their collective shield, and at the same instant, drop the weaponry onto the queen’s ship, in her moment of exposure. Without his shields, his ship would appear as a small, nonthreatening asteroid that their shields would automatically destroy upon contact. He plotted his trajectory to take his ship over the top of the battleships, and he might actually be able to avoid being drawn into the wake of the expanding, massive explosion that would follow his attack. He did want to live another day, especially now that his Skye was with him ...
He cleared the atmosphere and slowly made his way toward the coordinates of the armada. He stopped, staying just out of their range. He would have only one shot at this ... Steadying his nerves, he took in a deep breath, channeling his id, and then he let providence take him. He exhaled, dropped his protective shield, and sent his ship on the bolting rush ...
The Princess of the Wild Page 24