by T. R. Harris
The team moved down the hallway.
Adam and Riyad turned to each other. They had both noticed the ornate sconces on the walls, and the presence of padded benches along the way. They’d seen this before—in the corridors of the Queen’s Chambers.
At a wide intersection, Adam looked to the left as Riyad looked to the right. “I don’t believe it,” said Adam. “Look!”
Riyad rushed to his side and slid down until he too was seated on the tiled floor. Then he glanced around the corner.
“You would think they would have repaired the damage by now, the lazy bastards.”
“Looks like they did some, but not all. At least now we have a trail to follow.”
At the far end of the left branch of the corridor, where it met a crossing hallway, the wall was littered with black dots, bullet holes from their last battle here, when Adam and a team of brutish Q’uel warriors had come to Riyad’s rescue. Defenders had placed a barricade at the end of the corridor, and Adam vividly remembered as Dravis, the captain the Q’uel’s championship Drunage team, had charged headlong into a Sol-Kor defender, smashing him against that very wall—literally popping the SK’s head off his neck.
Down this corridor and to the left was the Queen’s private quarters—her birthing station—from where the entire Sol-Kor race spewed forth.
Adam stood and jumped into the connecting hallway—and then immediately dove back into Riyad’s lap. A barrage of a dozen brilliant flash bolts whizzed by a breath later.
“Looks like déjà vu all over again,” he said to Riyad as they untangled. “They’ve set up a defense in the same place.”
“But this time you don’t have the hard-headed Q’uel to run cover for you.”
“That may be so, but we have the next best thing.” He lifted his M-91 and patted the underbarrel grenade launcher. “Say hello to my little friend,” he said in his best Scarface imitation. “Mac, Anderson, how many canisters do you have left?”
“Plenty, Captain. We got more than our fair share of the extras from the carts.”
“Good. That’s what I thought. Light up the end of this passageway. Blow the shit out them.”
“Yes, sir!”
The two men made it to the other side of the intersection before the defensive line was set up. They took turns popping around the corner and firing grenade after grenade down the hundred-foot-long corridor. They’d sent three each when Adam ordered them to stop.
Other than the popping of metal walls and the crackling of small fires, there was silence.
Adam looked around the corner. Through the thick smoke he could see bulging metal walls scorched with black streaks, a smoldering pile of what had once been furniture from the makeshift barricade, and the shattered remains of several Sol-Kor, the number impossible to determine from the multiple body parts covering the floor.
“Move!” Adam ordered, and the team raced down the corridor, sliding on the smooth metal floor into defensive positions at the next intersection. No return fire came from either direction.
Chapter 8
Admiral Andy Tobias was ready to go. He’d been planning this since before his two favorite sidekicks had been whisked away to pursue some harebrained operation in a faraway universe.
Now it was Andy’s turn to join the party.
After screening captains and crews for loyalty and dedication to the cause, he’d only asked for five ships to be assigned from each of the allied fleets. He now had a total of one hundred twenty-five attack ships ready to go, crewed by skilled warriors from eighteen distinct races, all committed to the plan and raring to go.
Tobias had always planned on attacking the Sol-Kor home galaxy. As a student of military history, he was quite familiar with the Second Punic War and the story of Publius Cornelius Scipio. Between 218 and 201 B.C., the Romans were getting their asses kicked up and down the Italian peninsula by an upstart Carthaginian general named Hannibal, and it was only a matter of time before Rome herself would fall.
The Roman general Scipio devised a plan to relieve the pressure on Rome. He would attack Carthage directly. The strategy worked. The panicked leaders in the North African city recalled Hannibal back from Roman territory, thereby saving Rome from certain defeat.
Hannibal’s army was eventually defeated on the sand-swept plains outside Carthage, cementing both his and Scipio’s names into the annals of military history.
Tobias had no illusions of following in Scipio’s footsteps, but he did intend to shake things up a little. With control of a trans-dimensional transit portal, he would place a fleet of warships within Sol-Kor territory, showing the Queen that his galaxy wasn’t just going to sit back and let the scalies call all the shots.
However, his true objective was to do all he could to save his friends by giving them an escape route from the SK universe.
Both sides had been passing unmanned reconnaissance drones through the portal, seeking information on the other’s strength and intentions, so Tobias knew the SK were building up their forces on the other side. He also had a pretty good idea that the buildup was not to provide a defense of their universe, but to launch an attack to regain control of the Human-side portal. After all, who would imagine that the upstart aliens on the other side would even contemplate an invasion of Sol-Kor space?
That would be crazy.
So Andy Tobias would follow in the immortal words of the famous Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu: “Attack your enemy when he is unprepared, and appear where you are not expected.”
If Adam’s strike team was able to assassinate the Queen, Andy’s invasion might cause even more alarm within a society already in disarray. Would that prompt an immediate recall of units, at least until the situation could be assessed and stability returned?
That would be more than he could hope for. Yet there was still only a slim chance his friends could actually accomplish their mission—at least its primary objective. Whether they could make it back safely to friendly territory had always been the operation’s biggest question mark.
The admiral’s own operation had been kept under wraps. Fleet Command would never have authorized such a mission. The ships of his tiny invasion fleet were needed elsewhere. His stripping of units vital to the defense of both Union and Expansion worlds would be seen as a very serious dereliction of duty. The politicians, who were facing mounting pressure to provide even more defense of their member worlds, would not see the logic in the plan. They’d find a ready scapegoat for their own failed policies by claiming the lack of resources was a result of rogue officers like him.
Of course, keeping a fleet of one hundred twenty ships off the books wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Essential supplies, munitions, even correspondence back home were hard to keep secret. Fortunately, Tobias had another fleet nearby comprised of over five hundred ships, made up mainly of Union forces tasked with guarding the portal against the impending Sol-Kor attack. He also had ships serving sentry duty around some of the nearby Union worlds in order to keep the SK harvesters as bay. Most of the needs of his new fleet were seamlessly siphoned off from his main force.
On the day of his personal invasion, Tobias had ninety percent of his main fleet away from the portal on other assignments, and issued orders to the various unit commanders individually, so no one of them would notice the drawdown of defenders. Meanwhile, he began to move his clandestine invasion fleet into position.
He knew the launch date of Adam’s operation, so he set his for the same time. If everything went smoothly for Adam, his team could—theoretically—find the Queen’s Chambers in a matter of minutes, do the deed, and then get out the way they came in. But if their exit was blocked, Tobias wanted to be in position to send a message to Adam, giving him an alternative escape route.
Andy had no illusions he could hold the ground they would gain from the invasion, yet he might be able to hold it long enough for Adam to make his way home.
A few days earlier, Tobias had turned over command of his flagship to
Admiral Akira when he sent the Mount Rushmore off on another assignment. Now he stood on the bridge of the fast-attack battleship, the Winston Churchill, preparing to open the portal and move his forces through.
Tobias was counting on the element of surprise to give his fleet the upper hand. However, he also had another surprise up his sleeve for the scalies. Union and Expansion scientists had learned the secrets of Panur’s passive suppressor beam defense, and all of the invading ships were equipped with the system. The Sol-Kor relied on the beam almost exclusively as both a defensive and offensive weapon. As a result, their ships were traditionally lightly-armed and shielded. This limitation was overcome by the sheer numbers they could deploy. It was estimated that over a thousand ships were stationed on the other side of the portal.
A part of him wished he could be on his Sol-Kor counterpart’s command deck when his ships began flooding into SK space. Seeing the expression on his face would be…priceless.
********
Even though his attack fleet was readying for a journey through a TD portal, the bulk of the admiral’s units were still two light-years from the doorway. He ordered all the ships to be brought to full power, with the deepest wells they could generate, aligned as close to one another as possible without causing well-overlap.
Through an expansive, three-sided viewport aboard the Churchill, Andy watched as the steady points of light from distance stars changed to red, white, and blue streaks along the starships’ path, while battery crews sat ready to engage an enemy who was still a universe away.
They would activate the portal at the last second and have his deadly fleet bolt into SK space already deep in gravity wells and at maximum speed. For a fleet on station and not expecting such an attack, Andy’s gunners should have a field day—at least initially.
The bridge crew was silent, watching their screens as the target point on the nav screen drew closer, fingers hovering above execute buttons in nervous anticipation.
The portal popped into existence.
The white, glowing rectangle in space measured six thousand by four thousand miles, which was a very small target to hit when traveling at several times the speed of light, and especially when the opening was subject to an establishing variable of a hundred thousand miles. The nav computers adjusted the fleet’s flight path by a fraction, and a moment later the Churchill was rushing through the darkness of another universe, and right in the middle of a huge mass of enemy starships.
Before Tobias could truly take in the scope of the battlefield, his crew was unleashing powerful plasma bolts at the Sol-Kor ships along their path. In the rearview mirror—the aft-mounted camera and monitor located on the bridge—Sol-Kor beamships were exploding, their shields failing to activate in time to buffer any of the initial bolts.
Then more of his invaders entered the fray.
The enemy vessels were now alerted; shields were raising and suppressor beams activating. To Andy’s amusement, most of the Sol-Kor ships began to maneuver within the battlefield at an almost lackadaisical pace, trusting their blue pulse beams to neutralize the invading starships.
When all of Andy’s attack force was through the portal and continuing to split off to follow assigned flight paths through the bulk of the enemy fleet, it didn’t take the SK’s long to realize their beams were having no affect whatsoever. Rudimentary defenses were hastily assembled, and limited-range plasma bolts began to flare out. The shields on Andy’s units could withstand several direct hits from these low-energy weapons. What they couldn’t overcome was a hundred ships concentrating fire on just one set of shields.
He began to take casualties, losing a dozen ships before the SK numbers could be pared down to a reasonable level. Andy’s units continued whipping in and out of the mass of SK vessels in a series of two large loops, angled at forty-five degrees from each other. At the center of the battlefield, his units would be within three hundred thousand miles of each loop, bolts firing in all directions from his ships. The Sol-Kor units caught between the two loops lasted the shortest time; those outside were kept at bay by the continual use of covering fire.
Then the loops would shift slightly, placing another group of SK ships within the primary kill zone.
The battle lasted nearly two hours before the last remaining SK units fled the scene. Andy lost thirty-eight ships, but by computer estimates the enemy had lost nine hundred eighty-two. Not a bad kill ratio.
He deployed his remaining units to form a huge bubble around the portal array. Ground units swept down to the base planet and an hour later had secured the array. He had feared the SK would destroy the portal once the battle was lost, but it seemed destroying portals was not in the Sol-Kor lexicon, figuring it was only a matter of time before they could retake the facility.
Andy left the bridge and moved to the CIC, where he joined a tech crew at a CW comm station.
“We know the SK’s use CW communications, but of an advanced nature,” said Master Chief Rachel Potter. “I’m hoping our systems can link so a message can be sent to Captain Cain.”
“Any luck so far?”
“The sync waves appear to be close, but I can’t guarantee they’re close enough. We’ve been sending the alert code for the past fifteen minutes, but unless he responds there’s no telling if we’re just broadcasting into open air or not.”
“Send a test link.”
“Sir?”
“I’ll have one of our ships head out about a hundred light-years. Try to link with it using the Sol-Kor relay stations.”
“That might give an indication as to whether or not our signal is linking with the relays, but it still won’t tell us if the filters are working.”
“I understand that, but first things first.”
“Yes, sir. Sounds like a plan.”
Tobias nodded to a hovering Navy commander, who rushed off to a nearby station to dispatch the test starship. It would take approximately four hours for them to get on station. It would also place the ship well outside the protective sphere of allied warships.
Tobias left the CIC and went to his away cabin. He sat at his desk, knowing that within minutes—once relays were laid between the Milky Way universe and the Sol-Kor universe—a flood of angry calls would be coming through. Most would be demanding his head on a platter.
That would be fine…as soon as Adam, Riyad and the rest of the strike team were safely back in their home universe.
Until then, Andy Tobias wasn’t going anywhere.
Chapter 9
Riyad motioned to the right down the connecting hallway, then clenched his teeth and shook his head. “I believe they put me in a room down this way until it was time to meet the Queen. I hope I’m remembering this correctly. I wasn’t paying too much attention, since I figured I was dead meat at that time.”
“You’re doing fine,” Adam said from his side. “And if I remember, the door to the Queen’s Chambers is to the left. It was a large, double-panel affair made of wood.”
“The Q’uel sorta turned that into kindling, if I recall.”
“They’ve had time to replace it. We’re going to the left,” Adam announced. “The door to the Queen’s Chambers is about fifty meters down on the right. Anderson, MacTavish, take point. Hug the walls. Now move out!”
The team had only moved ten meters or so along the hallway when they came under fire again. The defenders were far down the corridor and with no cover, but still they came rushing forward anyway, intent on sacrificing their lives if it meant saving their queen. Adam’s lead men dropped to the floor, and using their superior range, sniped the advancing defenders with little effort. Soon, the rearmost defenders were having trouble making it past the fallen bodies. They dropped behind them and began firing level-one bolts at the Humans.
“Screw this!” MacTavish yelled out. He cocked the M-4 grenade launcher on his M-91 and sent a canister into the barricade of alien defenders. Then he sent another, followed by a third.
The hallway erupted in a torrent o
f fire, smoke, and ear-shattering noise, unrecognizable pieces of alien bodies flying toward the Humans. The men were up and running forward even before the last of the blasts echoed away. The walls had been blown open at one place, revealing burning and smoke-filled rooms beyond, many with panicked natives coughing and choking as they sought to find a safe exit. But the only way out was the very hallway where the explosions had originated. The natives in these side rooms became easy targets for the advancing Humans.
“This should be it!” Adam yelled out to Riyad as they came to a tall, arching set of double doors in the wall to the right. No other doors were along this side of the wall, and none this large. But they weren’t made of wood any longer.
Within seconds, nine Human commandos were stationed to each side of the doorway. Adam frowned when he took the count.
“Who are we missing?”
“Drake, sir,” Chief Foster answered. “Caught one a couple of corridors back.”
“Damn,” Adam said. Then he steeled his effort. “Okay, this is it. The Queen’s Chambers are on the other side of this door. It’s a huge room with columns. She should be near the center, behind a partition possibly. No mercy. We go in blasting and take her out.”
Adam reached out and tried the door handle. It wouldn’t move.
“Good,” he said. “Just means we’re going to have to blow it rather than waltz right into whatever’s waiting on the other side.” He smiled. “A powerful explosion is always a pretty good distraction.” He turned to Kaczynski and Anderson. “Set two charges, one on the door and one down the corridor a ways. We’ve seen how these walls can be breached. Let’s give ourselves an alternative entrance and a crossfire position.”
A minute later, everything was in place. The men moved back down the hallway and took shelter inside one of the rooms they’d cleared earlier with a grenade explosion.
Adam nodded.
Even with several baffles between them and the explosion, the concussion was incredible. Two of his men were knocked off their feet. Then, their visors over their eyes to shield against the acrid smoke filling the hallway, the men rushed down the corridor, Adam in the lead.