by T. R. Harris
“You sound like Panur,” the Sol-Kor named Drasic said.
“I take that as a compliment.”
She turned back to Adam. “Panur is your…friend?”
“We’ve met.”
“And you are still alive. That is a testament to your…entertainment value. That would be the best way I can describe it.”
“We were more like partners when it came to finding ways to destroy the Sol-Kor. He’s completely abandoned the Colony, preferring us over them. Maybe you should too.”
J’nae laughed. “And give up being the leader of the race of beings who will eventually dominate all universes? You are interesting, but not that interesting!”
Adam smiled back. “At least I tried.”
J’nae turned to Drasic. “Bring this one to M-1. Place a tracker on him and then quarter him near my chambers. I wish to retain him as a pet.”
“And the others?”
She looked at the glowing interior of the active trans-dimensional portal in the center of the room. “Have this device reprogrammed to where the Humans originally came through. Then cut up their bodies and hurl the still warm and bleeding remains through the portal. That should leave a lasting impression for those on the other side.”
Sensing the tension in the bodies of the two Humans near her, J’nae warned: “Let us not have a repeat of the last episode. There may be two of you, but the results will be same…and I may feel compelled to take a more active role in my defense. If I did so, it would not end well for you.” She looked at Adam. “Guards, take this one out and place him in a transport. Return the big one under the influence of the beam, and then call in a carver to do a masterful job of piecing the Humans. Come now, Drasic, let us take my pet and return to M-1.”
Mac went to move again, but this time he was hit instantly with the pulse beam. His forward momentum sent him tumbling over his feet, falling face-first to the floor. The guards lifted him, revealing a bleeding nose, probably broken. The blank expression on his face showed he didn’t much care.
Strong arms grabbed Adam and hustled him out of the building. He was tossed into the back of a huge non-truck transport and the Queen slipped in next to him. Drasic sat in the seat next to the driver, and the vehicle quickly sped away.
Chapter 26
There were only three guards and two techs left in the large bay after the Queen departed. The carver was due in half an hour.
In the meantime, it took the two techs a few minutes to pull up the data that had been processed through the Farm’s computers to find the location where the destroyed portal had been linked. They placed no significance on the terms Klin, or Milky Way galaxy, knowing only that it was some place in U-5, manned by allies of the Sol-Kor.
They opened the portal, and the hazy image switched suddenly to show a small room with a bank of sophisticated comm equipment climbing a far wall. There were two beings seated at the console, one with shimmering silver skin, the other dressed in a pale blue uniform, with its back to the portal. The techs didn’t pay much attention, at least not at first.
********
ITC Specialist David Carpenter felt a strange tingling on his back and turned to see that the portal had become active. Through the doorway he saw a large room, dimly lit, with a few creatures spread out at a distance from the opening. Immediately, three other members of his team rushed from the other side of the doorway and looked in.
When David went to join them, they could see further into the other room. There were Sol-Kor there…and Humans!
He whipped around to the console again, placing the barrel of his M-91 assault rifle against the head of the Klin prisoner. “Don’t do a thing to break this link or I’ll plaster your brain all over the console.”
From behind him, Corporal Dennis Samuels could be heard calling into his comm unit. “It’s open! The damn thing is open!”
The creatures on the other side of the portal suddenly took notice of the gaggle of observers standing to each side of the doorway, a universe away. Samuels saw the expression on the Sol-Kor seated at a console against the far wall. A look of shock came over the alien’s face as their eyes met, before he quickly turned back to the console.
Without thinking, Samuels rushed through the portal, his weapon leveled at the back of the Sol-Kor tech. He pulled the trigger, sending sparks skidding off the floor as his initial aim came in low. He readjusted and perforated the back of the Sol-Kor tech up to the base of his skull.
There was another alien seated next to him, and Samuels cut him down with a shift of his gaze.
That’s when a burning flash of light hit him on his right side. He fell to the floor, the pain intense, his vision blurry.
There was more gunfire, matched by stabbing flashes of light. Then the loud report of other M-91’s overwhelmed the number of flashes, and everything fell quiet.
Someone was at his side; he was being helped up. Through his watery vision he saw several of his men in the room. They were helping others toward the portal.
The quiet was interrupted by more flashes of light and more discharges of the M-91’s. Then he was back through the portal and shuffled off to a far corner of the now-crowded room aboard the Klin colony ship. He felt a pinch, and looked up to see a medic hovering over him.
People were yelling…and a bolt of lightning flew into the room. It hit another man, but his armor reflected most of it.
“Shut it down! Shut it down. We’ve got ‘em. Shut it down!”
Another explosion filled the room, and before his vision gave out fully, Dennis saw the portal control console shatter from a hit by an intense flash bolt.
Then all went dark. He couldn’t remember why he was lying down, or why everyone was shouting. He just knew he felt no pain, none whatsoever. And he smiled, thinking how nice it would be to sleep…
********
Captain Mike Meyers surveyed the damage to the portal room. The controls were toast, so they wouldn’t be using the gateway for a retreat back to Travis anytime soon.
Although six of his men had been injured—none fatally—the best news of all, they had recovered the strike team from the Sol-Kor universe.
As soon as the commandos were through the portal, the influence of the alien pulse beam had vanished. Meyers’ team was equipped with neutralizers—as a precaution—and it had paid off. The room on the other side had been bathed in the beam, and that’s when Meyers and the rest of them got their first taste of the excruciating headache the alien weapon produced, even with the shields in place.
Initially, they had been able to subdue the resistance on the other side of the portal, and thanks to the heroic efforts of Corporal Dennis Samuels, it remained open long enough for the rescue to take place. But the position soon became untenable, as nearly fifty armed Sol-Kor had swarmed into the room.
Meyers had called for a retreat, and then a shutdown of the portal on the Klin side. Their long wait had paid off. The team was home—or at least in their home universe—what was left of them.
********
Lieutenant Fred Johnson was seated with Meyers, surrounded by the rest of the strike team, all except Ensign MacTavish, who had been taken to a makeshift sickbay aboard the occupied section of the Klin starship, suffering from mild shock and a broken nose. The captain was being bombarded with a dozen questions a second from the rest of the team, the overwhelming inquiry being, “What just happened?”
“Relax, Lieutenant,” Meyers said. “I’m going to tell you.” He looked around at anxious faces staring at him. None seemed to be happy with where they were, only concerned.
“After you guys went through the first time, and the Klin took control of the portal room again, the backup team was cut off from entering and securing the site. We didn’t know what to do at that point, or whether you’d made it into Sol-Kor space or not. Eventually, some of us got the balls to try it again, but this time with the purpose of securing the portal on the Klin ship. We figured if we could do that, then maybe we could ei
ther launch a rescue mission or another attempt on the Queen. But the first priority was to secure the portal.”
“That’s where we are, on the Klin ship?” Johnson asked.
“Yep. They weren’t expecting a second try, so we caught ‘em flatfooted. We’ve been here three days now, having established a perimeter that covers about a tenth of the alien ship. You know these are huge, round starships, with upwards of twenty thousand Klin aboard? Well, since not too many of these silver-skinned assholes are trained at fighting, we took the initiative and spread out beyond the portal room, grabbing as much real estate as we could in the process. They’ve been fighting back ever since, but we just keep bringing in more personnel from Travis. Hell, we may eventually take over the whole damn ship.” Then the captain shrugged. “With the portal room in shambles, that’s about our only option, besides calling in outside forces. They should be able to triangulate our communications to find the colony ship. Either way, it’s going to take a while before we can get you guys back home.”
A vein on the thick, muscular neck of Fred Johnson began to pulse. He looked at the men around him: Connors, Kaczynski, Anderson, Foster and Tarazi. “So this is it…us and Mac in sickbay?”
“That’s all that was in the Sol-Kor portal room.”
“When we got hit by the beam, we can’t remember anything that happened after that, but Captain Cain was with us then.”
Sensing the dread among the survivors of the strike team, Meyers placed a hand on the shoulder of the other officer. “Sorry, LT, I don’t know what happened to him—”
“I do!”
All eyes turned to the doorway, where the huge bulk of Mac MacTavish stood, complete with a thick white bandage over his wide nose. The skin under both his eyes were black and yellow, and he had a chipped front tooth. “She took him.”
“Who took him?” Meyers asked.
“That new queen.”
“They have a new queen?” Johnson burst out.
“Sorry, LT, but the mission was a bust. They’ve got some super queen now, a mutant like Panur. And she’s one tough bitch.” He held up his bandaged hands. “I beat the hell out of her and she didn’t even blink. I don’t think she can be killed, just like Panur.”
“What about Adam?” Riyad called out. The pulse beam had hit him particularly hard, intensified by the concussion he’d suffered on the refuge planet. He was just now regaining his senses.
“Yeah, that’s the weirdest thing. He didn’t seem to be affected by the beam, and when the Queen was about to waste me, he stepped forward. She’s taken him back to the pyramid to be her pet, or so she says.”
“He’s still alive?”
“For now, I guess. Until she gets bored of him.”
Riyad turned to Captain Meyers. “Can you get us back over there, over to the Sol-Kor portal room?”
“Highly unlikely. The bolt really did a number on the control panel. From what I understand, that alien Panur built this device, so not even the Klin could rebuild it, assuming they would.”
“We have to go get him, Riyad,” Johnson said. All the men in the strike team voiced their agreement.
“How?” Meyers asked. “We barely know how to dial a number in them, let alone how to rebuild a broken portal.”
“I know someone who does.”
“Who?”
“Panur.”
MacTavish moved into the room and sat down, still groggy from his injury and the drugs in his veins. “I may not know much, but I do know he’s taken off for places unknown…and according to rumor, with Adam’s daughter. Is that right?”
“Close enough.”
“So how do you expect to find him?”
“I don’t know, Mac. All I know is that if we want to get Adam back from the Sol-Kor, we have to find Panur.”
All the team roared, “Hell yeah!” All except for MacTavish.
He pointed out the obvious: “And get the mutant to help us. That won’t be easy.”
“Now look who’s the new buzzkill king in town.”
Epilogue
Fleet Admiral Tobias shook his head for about the hundredth time in the past fifteen minutes.
“Where would you even begin?”
“Formil,” Riyad answered. “Mac said Adam was immune to the Sol-Kor pulse beam even without a neutralizer belt. That means he’s had another telepathy device installed.”
“How will that help you locate Panur?”
“Not sure that it will. But it does mean Adam’s had contact with Arieel, and she may have some way of contacting her daughter, maybe through a psychic connection or something like that. I don’t know.”
“The Formilians rely on science for all their magic, Riyad, not anything supernatural.”
“Maybe so, but I have to start somewhere.”
“Well, you’ll have all the help I can provide, even though that may not last much longer. Osbourne is still plenty pissed at me.”
“You’re a hero all over the galaxy, Andy…almost as much as me and Adam.”
“Yeah, but he’s being a baby about it. On the surface he’s all accolades and congratulations. Behind closed doors he’s still seething. I wouldn’t put it past him to try something really underhanded to get back at me.”
“Something a politician might try?”
“Exactly.”
“Then you should really watch your back, Admiral.”
“As we speak. But back to you—who are you taking with you?”
“No one at first, but Lieutenant Johnson has set up shop at Travis, putting together a new strike team in case I get lucky.”
Tobias stood up, followed by Riyad. The two men shook hands.
“Good luck, Riyad…and hurry. From what Mac said, this new queen could grow bored of Adam at any time and toss him down into that giant mountain of trash you told me about.”
Riyad shivered. “I still have nightmares about that one.” His expression turned serious. “And, Admiral, the Sol-Kor aren’t going away. You’ve cut off their access to the Milky Way, but they have a new queen every bit as smart as Panur. She’ll figure some way to get back in.”
“Well, if you do find Panur, see if he can help us with her too. If anyone can figure out a way to kill an immortal mutant alien, it’s another immortal mutant alien.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will. Now go find Panur…and rescue Adam Cain.”
The End
And now a preview of
A Clash of Aliens
The Human Chronicles #13
coming mid-April 2016
Adam Cain was pissed.
J’nae, the Queen of the Sol-Kor, hadn’t come by to see him in nearly two weeks, and when she finally did, she arrived with two, five-foot long broadswords in her hands.
“I wish to test your prowess with these weapons.”
Adam knew for a fact that the Sol-Kor didn’t use broadswords, so he was at a loss as to where she’d even found them. But he wasn’t going to complain. At least she still found him relevant enough to make the effort. If she grew bored of him, or found that his usefulness had been exhausted, he’d wind up as an appetizer at the next royal banquet. At that point, the most he could hope for was that she’d experience an explosive bout of Montezuma’s Revenge as a result.
Of course, after this sparring session, he may still end up on the buffet table, as finger-food in convenient bite-size pieces.
He took the offered shiny metal sword by the plain leather hilt. In the light gravity of Kor, the weapon was surprisingly light. “I wasn’t aware the Sol-Kor used such weapons,” he said as he took a couple of practice swings to get the feel of the instrument. Training with broadswords was not part of the regular SEAL regime.
“They are not, yet I was allowed to practice with them during my own captivity. They help to develop coordination and spatial awareness, and from the archives we have available, there are countless references to these swords used as weapons of war throughout Human history.”
“Not for the past thousand years, J’nae. You may be very disappointed in my skills.”
“Or so you say.”
Adam cringed at the accusation in the Queen’s statement. After first being taken captive, J’nae visited Adam often, either spending hours in conversation—she did most of the talking—or sparring with him on occasion to test the limits of Human endurance and combat skills. Initially, he’d laid back, just to keep her guessing, and ended up paying a terrible price for doing so.
Sensing his strategy, J’nae wailed on him relentlessly to the point where he had to defend himself for real. She’d already experienced a Human fighter—when Ensign Mac MacTavish had attempted to beat her senseless back at the portal building in the Farm, so she had a pretty good idea what a Human could do. And as she did with Mac’s earlier attack, she shrugged off Adam’s, as well.
Those earlier bouts had been pure fist-a-cuffs; now she was bringing in exotic weapons to test him further.
He noticed that the sword J’nae retained for herself contained no protective gear, being just as sharp and deadly as his. The only difference came not from the weapons, but from the combatants. Adam could be killed, while J’nae couldn’t.
As the pair separated in the wide space of his living quarters, Adam wondered how far she would let this go? Was she intending on ending his life here and now, or did she still believe him to be entertaining and useful? He was soon to find out.
J’nae struck first, whipping her sword into a short circle and coming at him from his left side. The movement was swift, yet he managed to counter the strike with a clash of ringing metal before backing away.
Next the Queen’s sword came in low, again sweeping in toward his body, this time in an upward motion. He continued from his previous parry with an arc of his own, and again the blades met. The Queen was easily within range of his body, and each blow came with such speed and intensity, that if not blocked, he could have been sliced in two.