At that point, our battle cruiser reached the jump gate, sliding through toward the other side.
***
Groaning, I pushed myself off the deck plates where I’d fallen. This jump had been particularly bad.
I floated up toward the ruined ceiling. The anti-gravity plates had stopped working.
The flu-like symptoms of jump left me achy and dull-witted.
“Dmitri?” I asked in a hoarse voice.
“There has to be better way for star traveling,” the Cossack said, his voice weak.
“Tell me about it. How are the rest of you feeling?”
“We’re ready, Commander,” one of the other troopers said.
“Rollo?” I radioed.
He coughed before saying, “I’m all set.”
Pushing against the ceiling, I floated down to the only working screen. It showed the jump gate behind our vessel. So far, no one else had followed us through.
“Now,” I told Rollo.
Seconds passed and turned into a full minute. I hated this damn waiting. What was wrong? Why couldn’t Rollo—
Just then, a T-missile appeared by the jump gate. Its fusion engine burned. These missiles could move in the normal manner as well. A blue tail appeared behind the exhaust port. It grew longer by the second, accelerating the missile.
Our gift to the Lokhars went through the jump gate back to the Horus star system. Would the timer function? Would the warhead explode, smashing nearing enemy craft at just the right time?
“Go,” I told Dmitri and the others. “We have to get back to the patrol boat.”
Before they could argue with me, I leaped for the corridor. The hatch onto the bridge had blown open some time ago. With my HUD giving me visibility of the dark hall, I propelled myself off the sides. I “swam” faster and faster, taking the corners at a dangerous speed. Behind me, the others did likewise. We were old hands at these kinds of zero-G maneuvers.
In less than five minutes, we vomited out of the last hatch, shooting for the patrol boat sitting in the big bay.
From a different hatch, Rollo flew for the boat, meeting us at the Achilles. We scrambled inside. My last glimpse of the inner battle cruiser was the bay doors lurching open.
Thank God, they still worked after the pounding this vessel had taken.
Before I reached the bridge, Zoe Artemis guided the Achilles out of the battle cruiser’s belly. She built up speed, moving away from it.
I entered the bridge, still wearing my symbiotic skin.
“Turn on the cloak,” Zoe said.
A member of her crew did just that, tapping her board. That caused a high-pitched whining sound throughout the patrol boat.
“Captain Artemis,” a man said, pointing at me.
Zoe swiveled around and grinned hugely. I wanted to hug and kiss her.
“Commander, you made it,” she said.
“Captain,” the sensor operator said. “Lokhar fighters have just come through the jump gate.”
“Put it on the main screen,” Zoe said.
I steadied myself, holding onto the back of her chair.
“I don’t know if the cloak will hold,” she whispered to me. “The star fighter earlier damaged our field generator.”
I didn’t say a word. I watched the screen, wanting to know what the Lokhars were going to do. As I did, a big battle cruiser appeared in our star system. That was bad.
“The admiral is hailing our old battle cruiser,” the comm operator said.
“Let her do it as much as she wants,” Zoe said.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen. Would the tigers fire at the empty vessel? I didn’t think they would. They didn’t dare.
Several minutes passed. My gut tightened all the time. Another Lokhar warship entered the system.
Shuttles left the first tiger battle cruiser. Those looked undamaged. Six of the assault shuttles gathered under the wrecked and empty battle cruiser. Once ready, they moved in a flock toward the battered hulk. One by one, the shuttles entered the ship.
At that point, Rollo’s last T-missile ignited inside the vessel. Even on the screen, I could see it shudder. A microsecond later, it expanded like a slow-motion grenade. The sides blew off and a white explosion grew. Coils, fusion engines, hull parts, dead tigers and humans, water, concentrates, mass of junk blew apart in an expanding ball of destruction.
“Let’s hope that blinds their sensors for a time,” I said.
Our bridge crew turned to stare at me. I guess my words sounded inappropriate. I couldn’t help it.
Anyway, long story short, we made it by playing the same trick twice against the Lokhars. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
As the surviving Lokhars began to search the debris, we tiptoed away in the cloaked Achilles.
The good news was that this system had several jump gates to choose from. We slid toward the nearest. If we could get some real separation from the Lokhars, we wouldn’t have to worry about our damaged cloaking device lasting any longer.
“Captain,” the comm operator said. “The Lokhar admiral is placing a system wide message. Should I put it up?”
Zoe turned to me. I nodded.
In a moment, the tiger with the ash fur appeared. She seemed tired beyond anything I’d seen.
“You are not Abaddon,” she said. “I know that for a fact. Never fear, we will learn who you are. We will find you. Then we will destroy your race limb from limb. I don’t know how you did this or why, but you will never gain from your vile deed.”
The cloaking whine increased within the patrol boat.
Zoe looked worried. “Our invisibility isn’t going to hold much longer,” she whispered to me.
“Race for the nearest jump gate,” I told her.
“They might see us if we accelerate too fast.”
“If we want to win, we’re going to have to risk it.”
Reluctantly, Zoe gave the order. The Achilles built up velocity. That made the cloaking device labor overtime. It sounded worse than before.
On the bridge, we watched the main screen and listened to the sensor operator give a minute-by-minute report.
“I think you’re right,” Zoe told me. “The last T-missile hurt the enemy’s sensing systems.”
Afraid of jinxing our good luck, I didn’t say anything else about that.
Ten minutes later, Zoe asked, “Why aren’t they splitting up to search the different jump gates?”
“Good question,” I said. “Despite the admiral’s words, maybe they wonder if we really are Abaddon. The possibility terrifies them, making them afraid to go off alone.” I grinned. “It doesn’t seem they know if we’re even alive or not.”
Zoe frowned. I don’t think she accepted my explanations. The truth was I didn’t know why the tiger admiral didn’t race ships to each jump gate. By the time they decided to do anything else, it was too late.
We entered the next gate, and it looked like we had raided Horus and gotten away with the loot. Now we had to see if we could reach home in time to stop the Emperor’s armada.
-28-
The comedown after the daring assault brought depression to the survivors. Instead of cheering wildly at what we’d done, we remembered the friends who died at Horus and during the deadly battle getting out of the star system.
The small size of the patrol boat didn’t help matters. To make sure no one went stir crazy, I began training exercises three days after leaving Horus. Bored troopers were harder to handle than exhausted, recovering soldiers. As the trip lengthened, I increased the intensity of the drills.
Even so, we had our problems the next few weeks. They had to do with the ship itself. Despite our best efforts to keep the Achilles out of the fighting, the patrol boat had taken damage. Most of it had come from our own T-missiles.
The cloaking device shorted out for good. We weren’t going to be able to use it again until the ship went through of month of repairs at a dockyard. Worse for us, the anti-grav
ity plates had taken a pounding. Much of our trip, they didn’t work. Extended time in zero-G wasn’t any fun.
There was another problem with that. Without the anti-gravity dampeners, hard acceleration strained the crew. I ordered Zoe to push the ship anyway. We had to keep ahead of the news. I could imagine the shockwaves hitting the Lokhar worlds, particularly those belonging to Purple Tamika. A league-wide manhunt must have already started against us. Certainly, the Lokhars on Horus were going to find human corpses. How long would it take the tigers to reach the right conclusion?
Our engineers worked overtime on the ship to keep it running. There were fights among the crew. The people using their fists I could understand. Then, two troopers fought over a man. One of the women killed the other with a force blade. I debated executing the victor. I couldn’t afford to lose any more fighters, though. So I put her in a closet, calling it a brig.
Afterward, for five miserable days, I ran everyone but the bridge crew and techs through savage calisthenics. Maybe I took the guilt gnawing at my conscience out on them.
Rollo warned me. “If you don’t ease up, you’re going to have a mutiny on your hands.”
I ignored him.
A day later, Dmitri told me the same thing. I knew why I couldn’t hear them. I kept thinking about the hell-burner. Had I really needed to explode it? I wondered if I’d destroyed half the planet. First Sanakaht and now Horus—how many Lokhar worlds should I pulverize? My bloodlust against the tigers must have been waning and I found that hard to deal with.
What saved me from munity, I believe, was running into an Orange Tamika warship in the Sargol star system.
The place swarmed with asteroids and heavy metal meteors. It was supposedly neutral territory and a miner’s playground.
“We have to fix our anti-gravity systems,” Ella told me. We floated in a corridor while hanging on to side-rails. “Too many troopers are on the edge, Creed. If you continue to push everyone…”
“Okay, already,” I said. Their combined nagging had put me on edge.
After some tough haggling, we put the patrol boat into an asteroid dockyard called Rill 7. Squat-bodied Ilk ran the place. I paid them in platinum. They sent two tech teams aboard, dragging their equipment on sleds. Dmitri watched the one, Rollo the other.
I kept N7 with me and toured the interior asteroid. The Ilk were busy hollowing it out, using the heavy metal ores for their trade.
We went to the main bazaar. The Ilk held it in a vast underground hall several kilometers in circumference. All kinds of league races bartered and dickered with each other from metal-walled booths. A few of the “booths” were the size of old Safeway stores with floating forklifts to bring down the big items. Fortunately for us, we’d traveled fast enough from Horus that no one had heard about our raid yet.
As we explored the marketplace, N7 pointed out five Lokhars in body armor. The tigers argued with a squat Ilk over combat weaponry.
“What Tamika do you think they are?” I shouted at N7. The bazaar thrummed with noise, making talking a chore.
The android stood for a time, watching the tigers. Finally, one of them must have felt the scrutiny. He turned and scowled at N7.
“I believe they are Orange,” N7 informed me.
“Let’s find out,” I said.
N7 put a restraining hand on my forearm. “If I’m wrong, it could mean trouble.”
“It could mean it anyway,” I said.
As I brushed past aliens, I slapped away the slippery tentacle of a thief trying to pickpocket me. No matter how far one went from Earth, nothing ever really changed in a fundamental fashion.
The biggest Lokhar watched our advance. He was a good seven and a half feet tall, a towering individual. Even better, he had the widest and deepest chest I’d ever seen on a Lokhar. Was he a wrestler or a combat specialist?
“Who are you?” the Lokhar growled at me, with his ears laid flat against his skull. I knew that was a bad sign.
“We are friends of Orange Tamika,” I said, in the tiger tongue.
The Lokhar’s head swayed back. The others talking to the Ilk pulled away, coming closer to us, with their hands drifting to the guns and knives on their belts.
“Are you bounty hunters?” the big Lokhar growled.
The way the other tigers readied themselves made me wonder if the big guy had reason to fear hunters. I decided to take a chance.
“I personally know Doctor Sant,” I said.
The big tiger hissed and stepped back among his friends.
“You’re being rash,” N7 whispered to me.
I was too busy watching the Lokhars to worry about that.
The big boy nodded, it seemed to himself, as if he’d made a decision. He muttered at the others. Then he stepped toward me. “Once, Sant was a doctor.”
“I know,” I said. “Eight years ago, I journeyed with him to the portal planet in hyperspace. Prince Venturi led the mission.”
“Who are you?” the tiger asked in a hoarse voice.
“Are you of Orange Tamika?” I asked.
He watched me with his cat eyes. What was he thinking? Finally, he pushed aside the bottom of his torso armor, revealing an orange shirt underneath.
“I’m Commander Creed,” I said.
N7 shook his head as if he could take back my words.
Once again, the tiger hissed. “You lie. Creed is in the solar system. I have heard the seer say so many times.”
“Do you mean Seer Sant?” I asked.
“You just called him doctor. Now you name him correctly. What treachery do you plan, human?”
“Me?” I said, jamming a thumb against my chest. “Look, buddy, the Shi-Feng tried to assassinate me on Earth. They failed.”
As one, the Lokhars roared and went into combat stances, two of them drawing hook knives.
The noises of the bazaar lessened. Many aliens turned to stare at the Lokhars and then at us.
The big tiger looked around. He noticed others watching us. Even so, he said so only I could hear, “I must slay you, outlander. You have spoken words that should have remained silent.”
“Wrong,” I told him. “I just proved to you that I’m Commander Creed. If you’ve heard Sant talk about me, you know that I do and say whatever I want.”
“This is true,” one of the other Lokhars said. “Maybe he is who he claims to be, baron.”
“Baron…?” I asked.
Slowly, the big tiger straightened. His friends put away their knives. The regular loud sounds of the bazaar quickly resumed. The other aliens must have realized there wasn’t going to be a fight.
“I am Baron Visconti,” the tiger said in a deep voice. “Prince Venturi was my third cousin on my father’s side.”
“Venturi never had your size,” I said.
“No,” Visconti said. “The prince took after his mother’s people, not his father’s.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Come this way,” Visconti said. “It is not proper for us to speak of these things in the open where any ear can hear.”
I glanced at N7. He shook his head. Good. I wanted him paranoid so he’d stay alert. Then I indicated for Visconti to lead the way.
The baron guided us to a tent on an open grassy area to the side of the bazaar. Bright sunlamps provided the greenery with light. They also made it hot. Other Lokhars stood guard around the tent. Two outposts held heavy machine gun teams, with barrels poking past piled sandbags.
“Come inside,” Visconti said.
Inside the tent, a tiger opened a flap into an interior sanctum.
N7 and I headed toward it.
“No,” Visconti said, putting a big paw on N7’s chest. “The machine cannot enter.”
N7 and I traded glances. “Forget it then,” I told the tiger.
Baron Visconti looked down at me. “It would not be seemly if he came within.”
“Hey,” I said, “we can talk just as easily out here.”
The big guy thought about t
hat. He nodded, and the trace of a grin might have appeared on his face. “Now I truly know that you are Commander Creed. It has been said you drive Lokhars mad by your arrogance. Experiencing your vanity for myself, I begin to understand how hard it is to work with you. The stories are true after all.”
“Yeah, I’m a real head case.”
“Yet, it is said you are a mighty warrior.”
“Not just mighty,” I said, “the greatest.”
He eyed me. I think he wanted to test my mettle, see if he was tougher than me. Finally, he laughed. “Bring your machine. For the great Commander Creed, I will make an exception.”
We went into the sanctum, sat on mats and sipped a hot Lokhar drink called task.
“Look,” I told him, after lowering my drinking bowl. “I’m sure you’re in love with your customs, but we don’t have time to indulge in all of them.”
Visconti brushed his paws together and waved off a server. The baron leaned his head toward me and spoke in a whisper.
“It will be as you say.” He seemed to compose himself before adding, “I wonder at your presence, Commander Creed. At first, I believed you an assassin from Purple Tamika. I recognized you as human, but…” He shrugged.
“Why do you wonder?” I asked.
He laughed before saying, “I am bringing my House troops to the fleet. I have decided to cast my lot with Seer Sant. He heads to the solar system, there to stop the Emperor from destroying your people.”
“Sant’s headed for Earth?”
“I have just said so,” Visconti said, with a bite to his voice. “I am unaccustomed to having my words questioned.”
“Yeah,” I said, “sorry about that. Do you know how close the Emperor’s armada is to Earth?”
“Several weeks away, maybe as much as a month,” Visconti said.
I made some quick calculations. If we continued the journey at a little more than top speed, we might just make it home in time to face the Emperor.
“How far is Doctor Sant from Earth?” I asked.
“He is called Seer Sant,” Visconti said.
“Of course,” I said. “That’s what I meant to say.”
The baron stared at the ceiling in seeming annoyance. Finally, he said, “The forward elements of the Orange Tamika fleet should already be approaching your world. We will attempt to ambush the Emperor’s leading elements before they reach your star system.”
Star Viking (Extinction Wars Book 3) Page 27