Star Brigade: Maelstrom (Star Brigade Book 2)

by C. C. Ekeke

  Habraum nodded, perking up at a mounting hum in the distance. “The Amalgam’s about to fire again.” The humming surged, and they transmatted. The Unilink faded away into blankness.

  Solid shapes broke through the blankness, and once again Habraum stood on solid ground. Plasma transformers and towering pillars of pulsating blue jutted out through a mesh bottom. One could only guess how far down it went. Habraum and Honaa stood on one of the crisscrossing walkways.

  “The power core. One more stop and—.” He turned to Honaa and frowned. The Rothorid was frozen in mid-stride, his diamond-shaped eyes widened in surprise. Habraum followed his gaze, and recoiled. “Fekt!” he swore under his breath.

  Honaa heard Habraum’s spout of profanity, but his own focus was on the wrench in their plans. Before them stood a teenage Korvenite male, lanky in build and with short indigo-hued hair. Obviously he wasn’t supposed to be there and stood in as much shock as both Brigadiers did.

  Habraum snapped up a fist glowing bright crimson. But Honaa was quicker, darting forward out and phasing his hand straight through the youth’s chest. The Korvenite made a choking noise and crumpled in a heap. Honaa retracted his hand and gave Habraum a disappointed look.

  “We’ve been made,” the Cerc grimaced. Honaa nodded grimly. Though their field outfits’ psi-blockers shielded them from Korvenite telepathy, the thoughts of that one errant youth had alerted their presence to every Unlinked Korvenite on the Amalgam. An instant later, alarms blared.

  “Transmat, NOW!” Habraum barked, readying his portable transmatter. Honaa did the same, and the two Brigadiers transmatted to their final destination.

  A vast dome of a room shimmered into existence. To Honaa’s left was a multiple viewscreen array exposing the conflict down on Terra Sollus. Bogosian was curled up on the ground to the far right. The instant they fully transmatted, both Honaa and Habraum rushed for Bogosian.

  “Chouncilor!” Honaa rasped out as he ran. “Are you injured?”

  The leader of the Galactic Union looked terrible, haggard and beaten. Clearly Maelstrom had taken out his animosity for humans on Bogosian. He fought up to an elbow and croaked out something resembling “Look out!”

  Habraum grabbed the Rothorid’s shoulder. “Wait.” Right then, Bogosian went sliding backward into the wall rather roughly.

  A sharp telekinetic shove rocketed both Honaa and Habraum in opposite directions. The Rothorid smacked into the wall near the viewscreens, dashing the air out of him. Dazed, he looked up and saw him. Maelstrom, clothed in black robes, strolled forward with an outstretched hand and a dispassionate gaze.

  “What an unwelcome surprise,” he sneered. “Korvan’s path for my race is already in motion. Neither of you shall interfere, or rescue your deplorable excuse of a leader.” Maelstrom’s black eyes flicked back and forth between the two Brigadiers.

  “We’re taking our Chouncilor back,” Habraum popped up to his feet. Both fists crackled with deep red biokinetic power. “Korvan won’t have his way today or any time this century.”

  The Korvenite snapped his head in Habraum’s direction. “Crimsonborn. I thought you learned your lesson on Alorum.”

  Habraum smiled brashly. “You can tell a man from Cercidale…you just can’t tell him much.”

  “Pity,” Maelstrom spat. He whipped a hand around and shot bright, snakelike energy bolts at Habraum. Honaa dashed forward to intervene, but knew he’d reached them too late…

  Habraum dropped to a knee, brought his forearms up to block the attack. The psychic bolts struck soundly against the biokinetic forcefield he put up, sizzling into nothing. But the momentum of the attack pushed Habraum back several feet. Honaa stopped and stared in amazement as the Cerc got up unharmed.

  “Looks like I did learn something from Alorum, yea?” Habraum snarked.

  Maelstrom’s reply was a glower of pure hatred. He shed his robes, revealing a deep purple formfitting combat suit. The Korvenite floated off the ground and toward Habraum, the air around him sizzling with psychic energy. The Star Brigadier codenamed Reign charged at the Korvenite terrorist, firing off biokinetic blasts from both fists. Maelstrom blocked each attack with a raised hand, his advance slowed, but not stopped.

  Seeing the opening, Habraum ducked down and plowed into Maelstrom, tackling him to the ground. Honaa could see sparks spurt off the adversaries’ collision as their battle commenced.

  His first thought was to help Habraum, but a quick headshake from the Cerc stopped him cold. The Chouncilor was their main priority. Honaa dashed toward the leader of the Galactic Union, finally beginning to stir in the room’s far corner. Then something—no someone grabbed Honaa by the tail. Unable to shake free, the Rothorid glanced back. A shiny fireplug of a Thulican about Khrome’s height had both arms wrapped around his tail. Honaa knew him instantly.

  The son of the Thulican Union Senator that openly supported the first Korvenite rebellion, this was the Thulican colluding with Maelstrom? “Timbore Fivery?”

  The Thulican hoisted a struggling Honaa into the air effortlessly. “You should worry about how many bones I’m going to break.” Chuckling, Timbore heaved Honaa over his head. So many things rushed through Honaa’s head as he went flying toward a viewscreen. But the Rothorid flipped mid-throw, hit the viewscreen with all fours, and launched himself back at his adversary. Have to take him down, Honaa gritted his needle-like teeth. Now.

  Timbore banged both fists together with a clang, ready to meet him.

  26.

  Habraum charged and rammed a shoulder into Maelstrom’s abdomen, hoisting the Korvenite up and driving him down hard into the ground. The Cerc had Maelstrom pinned, his glowing fists rising and falling, the Korvenite’s head rocked from side to side by each vicious blow.

  Part of Habraum knew he had no chance one-on-one against Maelstrom, but if he could distract him maybe Honaa could get Bogosian to safety. That hope quickly faded when Habraum spied Honaa engaging another being—a Thulican?

  Despite this, Honaa moved toward Habraum and Maelstrom. The Cerc shook his head sharply. The Chouncilor was the priority. In that instant of distraction, Maelstrom struck.

  “Off me, human!” The llyriac’s eyes went dark and Habraum went flying. The potent telekinetic shove dazed the Cerc. He hit the floor hard, pain knifing across him despite his field outfit’s built-in shock absorbers. “Sollus will be cleansed of your kind, Nwosu,” Maelstrom crowed and rose back up. “Your particular brand of heroics is futile. We Korvenites won’t be denied of our homeworld any longer.”

  Habraum groaned, struggling up to a knee. He saw Maelstrom’s power radiating off him in waves.

  “You love the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” Habraum snapped up his fist and issued forth a crimson biokinetic blast. The Cerc thought of Marguliese, praying that she would finish soon.

  Maelstrom casually raised both hands, telekinetically deflecting the attack back at Habraum.

  “Oh, fekt!” Habraum leapt away before his own kinetic force blast tore through the flooring he was just standing on. But Habraum got no time to regroup.

  Maelstrom flicked a hand, lifting the Cerc into the air and smashing him against the room’s jade-colored door. He heard and felt his left shoulder pop out of its socket, followed by a blinding surge of a pain. Maelstrom tossed Habraum up again, slamming him into the ground. The back of his head smacked on the floor. Stars danced before his eyes. For a split nanoclic, everything below his neck went numb.

  Maelstrom’s enjoyment was tangible as he flung Habraum back and forth across the room, spinning him up and slamming him down repeatedly like a rowdy child with a new toy. And Habraum was powerless to stop the Korvenite. The Cerc’s uniform dented and warped under the slams and shudders. In the face of the crushing pain, Habraum forced himself to stay conscious. He saw Bogosian cowering in a corner, and Honaa battling that strange Thulican, unable to reach the Chouncilor.

  Trying to focus on the mission, Habraum attempted to shield himself with his biokin
etic fields. But the pain, the constant tossing, jarred him too much. Maelstrom rammed him hard into a wall across the room face first, spinning Habraum around so his back smacked against diament, whirling the Cerc again to drive his face and torso into the wall. A couple of ribs snapped on the first two wallops, as did something in his lower back on the last one.

  Finally, Habraum slid down the wall to the ground, coughing up bloodied spittle as he went.

  Rogguts, that was lolly-brained. He was jerked against his will toward Maelstrom, who caught him by the throat. The Korvenite hauled Habraum up high and drove a swift, TK-enhanced punch to the Cerc’s stomach, further injuring those ribs. Maelstrom pulled Habraum closer, ebon eyes gleaming. “You somehow block my Mindspeak,” he hissed. “No matter, behold.” He pointed a long finger at the viewscreen they were right next to. Habraum turned his head, every small movement throbbing, and saw destruction in different areas of Terra Sollus on the miniscreens.

  CT-1’s fighting on down the surface. With great effort Habraum looked away, his gaze landing on a space view of Terra Sollus blanketed by a dense orange planetary forcefield. Several UComm AeroFleet and Kedri Imperial Navy warships pounded the shielding, but to no effect.

  “They will fail,” Maelstrom hissed. “Even without Amalgam’s enhancements, Sollus is one of the most protected worlds in your Union. And soon Sollus will be free of you Earth humans.”

  Habraum gritted his bloodied teeth, fighting to ignore the excruciating pain wracking his body. He had no idea what this ‘cleansing’ actually was, but it wouldn’t happen as long as he had any fight left. “I’m from…Cercidale you sanctimonious squit!” Habraum hauled back his good arm and swung a fist charged with biokinetic power, smashing into Maelstrom’s visage once…twice…three times. The blows caught the Korvenite off guard. Still, Maelstrom held on to Habraum’s throat. A fourth rather nasty punch bloodied the Korvenite’s nose. Habraum paid for that.

  Maelstrom’s grip tightened and a psionic torrent ripped through Habraum’s body. Just like on Alorum, he writhed. Blood boiled in his arteries, every nerve ending overloaded. The Cerc screamed. Pain wracked him so unbearably, he couldn’t even think.

  “Humans from Earth, humans from Cercidale, humans from Pogoll. I don’t care!” Maelstrom shrugged. “All humans are enemies of Korvan and the Korvenites!” His face looked even more sinister with the trickle of green blood dripping from his nose. The Korvenite llyriac tossed Habraum aside and the Star Brigadier hit the floor again. His uniform smoked, he trembled nonstop. Something brushed against his mind, but in Habraum’s pained state he didn’t realize it right away. But when a dawning recognition washed over the Korvenite’s face, Habraum’s heart sank. Before Maelstrom could comment, he snaked out his free arm, catching a charging Bogosian by the throat. The Chouncilor clearly couldn’t watch Maelstrom’s beating of Habraum anymore, but the Korvenite sensed his intentions before the human even rose to his feet.

  “Haven’t forgotten about you, Aristotle,” Maelstrom didn’t bother looking at the Chouncilor while calmly choking him. “Wait your turn.” With a sneer, Maelstrom kicked him in the chest, aided by a bit of Mindshift. The Chouncilor tumbled backward in a heap and lay still again.

  Maelstrom focused again on Habraum. “Seems whatever was blocking my Mindspeak in your suit is now broken, eh?” Maelstrom laughed, running a hand through his hair.

  Habraum instantly felt Maelstrom reach out and pry at his mental barriers. Though dazed and injured, the Star Brigadier strained to steel his mind against the Korvenite’s intrusion.

  “Keep fighting human,” Maelstrom taunted. “It will make your failure even sweeter. Ah, there!”

  Maelstrom finally plunged into Habraum’s psyche, his eyes turning pitch-black.

  Suddenly someone else stood over Habraum. He turned…and his jaw dropped in horror. A human female, petite, Asiatic in features and very pregnant. Habraum knew her at a glance.

  Jennica, his wife; alive and beautiful. She carried their baby girl in that protruding belly. This was how Jennica looked the last time he saw her—the day she left Hollus to wait for him on Cercidale. But something was wrong. The smoldering hatred on her face was foreign and frightening to the Cerc.

  “You did this. To us. I should be alive, raising our children. But thanks to you…our daughter and I were reduced to burnt flotsam and jetsam.”

  Jennica’s words gutted him like a blunt sword, ripping old unhealed wounds wide open. He reached for her with his good arm. “ Jenn? Wha—what are you…? I love you….”

  “Love me?” Her harsh laughter rang off the walls. “When I was incinerated in that freighter collision, all you cared about was your precious Samantha. You chose her over me!”

  Habraum sank to the ground and clutched his injured shoulder. He told himself this was all Maelstrom, channeling Habraum’s deepest fears and regrets into this horrific phantom. That didn’t temper the disdain in Jennica’s words, the revulsion on her face.

  Other voices joined in, faceless and eerie, but Habraum knew them all. “We trusted you with our lives and you lead us to our deaths.” The Star Brigade combat teams killed on Beridaas, another failure of his past. “No…No!” Habraum rasped through bloody lips. “I tried to save you!”

  “Then you should have given your life to save us!” thundered a rumble of a male voice, heralding the appearance of a gigantic, shadowed Suuruali standing behind Jennica. Pel Makenokom, codenamed Thanatos, the last member of his combat team he saw alive.

  “You left me to die!” Pel yelled accusingly.

  “I didn’t want to leave!” Habraum cried, crawling toward him. “But someone had to save Sam!”

  “A coward’s excuse!” A white-hot explosion of power illuminated Makenokom fleetingly before his flesh and innards were scorched away, just like Habraum remembered. He recoiled.

  “You didn’t even try, Nwosu,” a gruff and always angry human voice jeered. Jovian Ivers. “Using that year ‘anniversary’ of our deaths to celebrate their lives…with my wife.”

  Habraum remembered that year anniversary of his teammates and Jenn’s deaths. The infinite grief and loneliness, the comfort of an equally suffering friend to celebrate those they’d both lost…and the shame that followed. The Cerc gripped his dislocated shoulder and pain shot down his arm, somewhat snapping him out of Maelstrom’s illusion. It only hurts if I let him.

  “Fekt you, Maelstrom!” Habraum shut his eyes, trying to hold back tears. “Get out of my head!”

  “Too late,” Maelstrom sang. “Clearly you failed at that, too.”

  Habraum opened his eyes to see Jennica kneeling beside him. She rubbed her swollen belly dotingly. “I’m glad our daughter never saw the light of day,” Jennica smiled frostily, voice dripping with malice. “ Seeing the failure her father has become?” His late wife disappeared in a gust of smoke.

  Those last words rattled through Habraum’s brain like an echo. Could he have saved his team? Should he have gone to Cercidale with his pregnant wife instead of staying with a critical injured Sam? Those questions had never ceased to torment him. And now with his mistakes laid bared in front of him, they were more than he could bear.

  “Humanity will die,” Maelstrom whispered in his ear. “You never stood a chance of saving it.”

  The Cerc collapsed onto his side and sobbed. He couldn’t stop Maelstrom. Habraum had failed, again.

  Honaa darted forward and whipped his tail into Timbore’s face. The upswing stood the Thulican straight up, though hitting the metallic skin hurt Honaa just as much as it did Timbore. Just then he heard a scream rife with agony—Habraum’s! Honaa turned to see Maelstrom standing imperiously over the crimsonborn Brigadier, pointing a glowing fist at him, undoubtedly a deathblow.

  “This Union is completely corrupted.” Timbore’s fist swelled to twice the size of his own body, a common Thulican body modification. He drew back and drove his enlarged fist at the distracted Honaa. “It betrayed me and left me for—UKK!”

 
Before the Thulican could strike, Honaa dropped to all fours and phased his talons into Timbore’s torso. The Thulican froze, staring down at his own chest like it was an unfamiliar thing.

  “Enough with your daddy isssssues!” The Rothorid yanked out Timbore’s cardio component in swift, brutal fashion. The bloodied organ still pulsed in Honaa’s hand, a fascinating fusion of machinery and organics. Honaa tossed the organ away uncaringly as Timbore collapsed, and sprinted toward his one-time protégé, praying that Habraum wasn’t already dead. Maelstrom snapped his head in Honaa’s direction. The Korvenite looked utterly depraved, his eyes blacker than pitch.

  “You killed Timbore?” Maelstrom shrugged coldly. “He served his purpose. And his endless self-pity had grown irksome.” He raised both hands, issuing forth a telekinetic wall 10 times his own width and lobbed it at Honaa. “You couldn’t kill me four years ago. What makes you think now will be any different?”

  The Rothorid didn’t respond, instead phasing his whole body to plunge through the telekinetic wall. Though briefly disorienting, the attack barely halted Honaa’s charge.

  Maelstrom lifted up spiky metal shards, fragments, coverings of walls, spare parts from all over the room, hurtling them at Honaa. The shrapnel whistled through the air. The Rothorid easily dodged and ducked them all. Almost upon the Korvenite, he leaped with teeth bared and talons reared to finish him.

  Snarling, Maelstrom fired off a sweeping arc of raw psionic energy. Honaa tried twisting away, but had already committed to his lunge. The Rothorid was slapped back, rattled to his very molecules, phasing powers failing again. He hit the floor in a heap, pain swaddling him like a second skin.

  “The cleansing is about to begin,” he heard Maelstrom shout joyously, but the voice became fainter as darkness consuming his vision. “Come now, Aristotle. Watch Korvan’s will be done!”