Starship Paradiso (Helltroopers Book 3)

by Isaac Stone

  All he knew was this woman showed up when he was in danger of losing everything and promised to save him from those fiends on the other side of the gate. He’d run as far as he could and the only thing he’d managed to do was unleash them on the people in that research station. Those demons wanted his ass and he was willing to do anything to keep them away. Especially that Chronozon leader of them.

  While Haddo continued to chant and Team Omega continued to wait for Ash to return, something happened that none of them noticed. Even Viktor the AI was busy supervising repairs on the starship and didn’t have the opportunity to see it take place. It was within sensor range for Viktor, but the event passed by him unnoticed. Had he focused on one spot outside the starship he might have noticed it.

  The battle lords of Sirius decided they had enough information on the Paradiso to take action. It was important they do it quick before the starship ended up on their door. They sent forth three destroyers, each twice the size of the carrier unit, against this new ship developed in the Sol System. Each destroyer was capable of taking out an entire planet, so they didn’t need to worry.

  They watched each destroyer leave the port and waited for the signal that would indicate the mission was accomplished. Then they could proceed to the next phase of eliminating this bothersome system. No reason to let it exist if it would prove deadly in the future.

  The destroyers faded into space a microsecond apart. Each time they did, the combined force of Babalon/Horus destroyed each one. It was a quick process as their power was extended to look for any threats to the system. As Barbara Ann/Ash was merged into one being, they had no separate identity for as long as Ash delayed his climax.

  After they made the jump, the battle lords of Sirius never heard from the destroyers again. After waiting nearly a standard month for a response, they decided the Sol System was much too dangerous to tamper with and moved onto other objectives. From their perspective, it made sense to look for other targets of opportunity and leave this one alone. It had destroyed everything they threw at it.

  The moment the third and final destroyer was eliminated, Barbara Ann allowed Ash to climax. She felt his warmth flow into her, but it was not to conceive. Such an operation would come later. Ash tightened and released just the way she wanted. Barbara Ann slumped on top of him and sighed.

  “I was somewhere else,” he whispered to her.

  “So was I,” she replied. “We were other people, then one consciousness, and now are separate again.”

  “There were more invader ships,” he mentioned to her.

  “They are gone. They won’t be back. We took care of them and this system is safe from Sirius for the present.”

  11

  A standard day later, the Paradiso dropped out of hyperspace into a location near Neptune. It was the result of Haddo and Barbara Ann’s calculations where to locate the final beacon. She expected this one to be the most difficult.

  Every member of Team Omega was armored up. They entered the shuttle with their weapons loaded. Ash gave strict orders to seal the suit armor and lock all visors down. They would be forced to communicate by radio, but he would take no chances. Viktor had them close the most remote orbital station in the system and they expected the worst.

  “Doesn’t appear to be much activity in this place,” Viktor transmitted as the shuttle crossed the gap between the ships to the station. “I can operate their shuttle bay, but no one is responding to my attempts at communication. This seems to be a common feature with all the places we visit.”

  “Common because of what the corporation has done,” Ash commented. “They’ve been here in advance of us somehow. Don’t know how they managed to do it because we are the only ones with jump capability in the system.”

  “There were the invaders from Sirius,” Kris pointed out.

  “Nobody was aware of them,” Ash corrected her. “They had jump ability, but used it because they found out about this starship.”

  “The corporation has people who work for it everywhere,” Barbara Ann let them know. “It is very easy for them to activate their operatives and initiate whatever fall back plans they have in place. I’m sure they had people at every place we’ve visited. All they have to do is send out a signal and there people can snap into action. No need to dispatch any special operative crew. It’s why they had to hire you, Ash. And your crew. No other way to get around all the operations they had in place.”

  Their target was the Hearthstone Orbital Collective. It had been located in orbit around Neptune twenty years ago when a group of utopians decided to establish their own colony in space. Orbital colonies by space utopians were not new, but this one had its own twist. It was composed of fifty people all dedicated to the concept of “free pleasure”. It was difficult to describe the idea to anyone who wasn’t involved with the group, so, unless you were a member of the collective, no one tried.

  “Isn’t this the place where everyone was supposed to be married to everyone else?” Costa asked aloud, as they approached the orbital station. “Seems I heard something about how it worked by a lottery system who was sleeping with who that night.” He adjusted the strap holding him into the acceleration chair.

  “Close to it,” Kris let him know. “My parents knew some of the people who helped build it. From what they told me, it was never completed. There was supposed to be a communal love room that was cushioned and lined with mirrors, but it was never built. They had all kinds of plans, nothing ever worked out.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Theo snickered.

  “It was the leadership,” Kris explained. “You can’t do much when your founder is a hopeless drunk and everyone is supposed to look up to him. He talked a good line and convinced many people to put their money in his project, but the drink got to him. He died when the station was half completed. The followers tried to keep it running, but they didn’t have the stamina. His wife used a lot of the money on herself and the believers fell off when they heard about her moving in fashionable circles while they didn’t have enough food to survive. The last I heard was ten or so people who were left trying to sell it to a group of investors. Can’t imagine why anyone would want to buy it unless they planned on hauling it back...”

  Ash remembered hearing about it too. Kris left out the part about people who claimed the venerable founder of the organization had his way with the married women and whoever didn’t move fast enough. Most of the damming testimonies came out years after he and his wife were dead. He was surprised there was anyone left at it at all.

  The shuttle swung around the station as it tried to find the bay where they were supposed to land. Viktor was on the lookout for any hidden attack ships and kept the plasma and EMP weapons on standby. At the same time, he scanned space for any signs of extrastellar ships coming out of the jump. If it had happened twice it could happen three and more times. When Barbara Ann warned him about the second jump ships, he was shocked. Ash looked at the data files and found evidence of hyperspace departures around the ship.

  Viktor opened the doors to the bay as the shuttle glided inside and found a place to park it. From what Ash could tell, the last time the bay hadn’t been used in five years. The shuttle landed without much effort and the doors sealed back behind them.

  Still wearing their armor, Team Omega left the shuttle and emerged into the bay. No other shuttles were parked inside, not even the emergency shuttles all orbital stations were supposed to carry. Ash could hear his own breathing inside the suit as they walked down the only corridor into the station.

  It was painted in bright blue and pink colors. This was odd as stations were normally colored in drab military combinations. This was a civilian station, although it fell under the jurisdiction of the Mars Colonial governments. It was completely different than what you would find on a commercial or military installation. This one was built for living and in accordance with the desires of the founder.

  “Char,” Ash questioned the AI on Theo’s belt, “how is th
e atmosphere in this place? Anything we need to worry about?’

  “Nothing at all,” came the reply. “The air is fine and the pressure normal. Temperature is a comfortable 76 degrees Fahrenheit.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Barbara Ann said. “Because you and I, Ash, have to get naked.”

  Ash, a little irritated, turned to her. “Can’t we save that for later?” he snapped, “I’m not complaining, but we need to find that final beacon.”

  “It’s the way we have to take this one out,” Barbara Ann. “They’ve buried it so deep and surrounded by so many nuclear weapons we’ll never get rid of it the direct way. We can’t even pull back and blast the station because there are still people living inside it.” There was a hiss as she unsealed her helm and took it off.

  “We can’t get them out of here, then blow it up?” asked Costa, who tried not to stare at Barbara Ann as she began to remove her suit.

  “That won’t work either. These people are secured deep inside the station and it would take months to pull them out, even if we could locate them at all. We don’t even have a clear record of how many there are in this place. Yes, I could find them through some of my own resources, but it would take too long. The corporation is busy putting the final touches on their plans to activate the gate and let the remainder of the demons from the abyss through. We can’t afford to waste that kind of time.” She took unsealed the harness on her suit armor and took the chest protector off.

  “Ash,” she said to him. “Would you please get your clothes off? We need to get on with this thing.”

  “Is it necessary we do it in front of everyone?” he asked as his helm came off.

  “No, but I think they want to watch.”

  The rest of the crew stood and starred in fascination as they merged. It wasn’t anything they didn’t already know about. Ash worried he’d have performance issues. But he forgot about his audience after he stripped off his suit armor. The rest of the team seemed to vanish. By now, he was fully erect and she took him into her, balancing on him with her knees on the ground and her hands on his chest.

  “We must become one,” she said to him in short voice as he entered her. Ash could feel her tighten around him and engulf his manhood.

  He felt himself drawn into her. It wasn’t just his cock; he felt his very soul merge with hers. Once again they were in a distant place and she was watching him very carefully as the great architect looked over the plans for the monument. The monument was on place this time, but there was more that needed to be done.

  “Your majesty,” the man told him, “I have shown you the farmers are capable of this task. You have a way to unite the entire kingdom better than it’s ever been done before. So long as you give them work to do when the river floods, they will praise your name. And they will see the glory of the two lands rise to the heaven and know their kingdom is truly blessed by the gods. By the way, I have a son-in-law who needs a job; can you find something for him in the department of trash collection? He’s a good kid, but sometimes he gets drunk at nights and my daughter comes to the house the next day whining about him being out all night. This will give him something productive to do.”

  He studied the plans and realized how ambitious they were. This was no small stone monument. Amenhotep had ambitions beyond anything he’d ever seen before. The man had vision. He wanted to build a series of tombs up and down the river. These would be enormous and would take years to finish. They had the limestone to do it at the quarries. All he needed to do was to float the stones up the river. He had the boats to do it.

  Now Ash/Horus had merged with Barbara Ann/ Babalon. He/her/them was one being and searched around the station until they could find the hidden beacon. It didn’t take them long to do it this way. Once the beacon was found, buried under trash in another storage unit, they could locate the slip stones inside it, which acted as a relay for other slip stones in the power packs the corporation had distributed across the system. They found the power feed into the beacon and began to magnify it ten thousand fold. Soon, the beacon began to smoke.

  They smiled at each other as the beacon exploded into a thousand fragments.

  “Only a few more of them,” they said.

  Kris felt the imagery from the union of Ash and Barbara Ann bleed into her mind. It wasn’t the first time it happened, but this time it was real to her. It was real to Costa as she crawled over him in the bed they shared. It was one of the down times after a successful mission and they’d gone home together after a night of heavy drink. After the tavern closed, they found a room at an inn and proceeded to spend the night in lustful embrace.

  It was a series of images that came back to her repeatedly. She didn’t know why, because they’d avoided each other after it happened. But for a few hours, she felt intense love from him and couldn’t explain it to anyone. She was raised to understand that her body belonged to her alone and not to loan it to any fool. They’d worked together for a long time and she worried about the animosity it might create with the other men on Team Omega.

  Costa felt something too that next morning, but couldn’t bring himself to think about it. He’d had quite a night with Kris and her ability to show him the whole world was astounding. She left a deep hole inside of him the next day, but he needed to keep in mind they were part of the same company. Ash frowned on these kinds of affairs and made it clear he would tolerate no special friendships. So what was he to do?

  It wasn’t just Costa. Jack remembered and experienced the moment he’d had with Ester. Now she was gone. They had to leave her body behind, which really bothered him. At least Makulah was in the freezer. Didn’t Ester and he have a brief thing going on too? It was hard to remember all the women they’d been with over the years, but Ester was special to the both of them. It was the only time he’d ever shared a woman with another guy. A little bit embarrassing, but it had happened and there was no getting around it. But she was gone.

  The entire crew was lost in the sexual recesses of their own minds. Ash/Barbara Ann faded in and out, as they tried to ground themselves. The beacon was destroyed, but there remained the gate to eliminate. This would take a bigger plan, but right now they basked in the energy of the crew as all relived a very important moment in their past. Haddo was even included in some of the energy from where he stood on the Paradiso. They could feel him connect and saw his own past, which wasn’t very exotic. After all that had been written about the man, they expected plenty of shocks, but there wasn’t much. He lived by his reputation and no more.

  12

  “We’ve been lucky up to this point,” Ash pointed out to everyone when they de-briefed on the Paradiso. “So far, we’ve been able to get around their traps and ruses. It won’t work much longer, even with Barbara Ann back and helping us. We need to come up with a better plan for how to approach these beacons. There are only a few left; I want to see this thing done.”

  “How many are left?” Kris brought up. “You’ve been vague about the exact number. We need to know by now.”

  Ash opened his mouth, but Barbara Ann filled in the words. “There is only one more beacon,” she told them. “I think Ash felt like you should think there were more, keep everyone from smelling the barn, to use one of your colloquialisms, but I’m here to tell you we only need to destroy one more.”

  “So where is it located?” Ash demanded from her.

  “In orbit around Neptune,” she told him. Barbara Ann sat on the edge of a chair at the table where they were all seated. “They picked a small asteroid not on any charts which would be hard to reach. And it looks the same as the last one.”

  “But it’s not all we have to destroy,” she continued onward. “Why don’t you tell them the final objective?” Barbara Ann faced Haddo.

  “The gate,” Haddo said. “The gate itself must be destroyed. Once the gate is eliminated, there will be no further way the corporation can work with these creatures from the Other Side. If we don’t destroy the gate after the last beacon
is taken out, there will always be the chance they will come across.”

  “Wonderful,” Costa mentioned. “And this from the man who found the gate and opened it.”

  “It’s my responsibility and I will see that it’s destroyed. I want to see humanity protected from those fiends on the other side.”

  And save your own skin, Ash thought. He remembered what the mysterious woman who appeared and disappeared on Mars told him about Haddo. He wanted to ask her about the woman. Ash wanted to know who she was. However, he needed to find the right time, just in case she was only in his mind, had to maintain what scraps of authority he had left with his people.

  “You have the coordinates for the next and last beacon?” Ash questioned her. “I’m sure they’ve been changed many times over. How do I know yours are precise.

  “Because of who I am,” she replied. “I also have the coordinates of the gate, which are changed daily by EAC.”

  That night, in the synth’s sweaty embrace, Ash found himself in a barren plain with a spear in one hand and shield in the other. His chariot waited on one side while a groom held the horses that pulled it. The helm felt a little bit different and he reached up a hand to feel the bronze rim of his helmet cushioned with a liner of cotton. The sun beat down on him from the sky and he heard a sound in the distance.

  The troops were lined up in their battle formation as they waited to surge forth against the enemy. He could see the infantry out front with their shield and swords. Behind them was another rank of charioteers and next to them both wings of the remaining parts of his army. It took them days to assemble the army for battle, even after they’d trained long and hard.

  “They will soon be here,” Babalon/ Barbara Ann, said in his ear and he turned to see her stand with her ladies in waiting. In the distance, he could hear the beating of drums and the horns of the signal corps.