Extinction Wars 3: Star Viking

by Vaughn Heppner

  -3-

  I hadn’t expected this. It was past time to calm him down.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Do you remember that the Forerunner artifact told me its name? You do know that none of the artifacts has ever told that to a Lokhar before.”

  Doctor Sant roared. It was loud in the small confines of my chamber. With flapping robes and long limbs, he rushed me, thrusting the force blade like a rapier.

  Now, it’s true succeeding bomb-blasts a week ago had beaten my body and broken my bones. The healing tank at Mars Base had also speeded my recuperation. I wasn’t one hundred percent, but I was still an assault trooper.

  Even in my condition, I was too quick for him to kill me easily.

  With long flourishes and grunting slashes, Sant came after me. The force blade sliced through the bar top. It chopped a lamp on my nightstand and slashed my blanket to ribbons. I’d grabbed the blanket off the bed and hurled it at Sant like a net.

  I would have tried to talk sense into him, but he did wield a force blade. They were nasty weapons, perfect for close quarters combat. All he had to do was touch the energy blade against me, and it would cut skin, bones, muscles and interior organs. That thing was no toy.

  Who would tire first? Normally, it would be Doctor Sant. Today—

  After three passes around the room, I began to pant. His eyes still glowed with righteous fury. He gripped the front of his robes with his free hand and stood still for a moment.

  I could see the wheels turning in his mind. I’d been able to dodge his rushes. Maybe he needed a new approach.

  A hard grin stretched his lips. Slowly, using his greater reach, he began to back me toward a corner.

  First gulping air, I said, “The Forerunner artifact told me its name. That it did so is a sign of my uniqueness. Surely, you realize that, Doctor. I am above your petty rituals and legends. So, these Shi-Feng hunted me in Wyoming. So what? They failed, exploding uselessly. I’m marking them for death now, not the other way around. You don’t want to keep attacking me or you’ll face my wrath.”

  Sant halted. He tilted his head to the side, appearing quizzical. “I hold the force blade, not you.”

  “I’m an assault trooper, though.”

  “No! You are a guardian of the object.”

  “That’s one of my duties, sure,” I said. “But first and foremost, I’m an assault trooper. That means I can defeat you.”

  “Is that why you keep retreating before me?”

  “No. It’s because I don’t want to hurt you, Doctor. You’re my friend.”

  Lowering the force blade to his side, he stood hunched over. From glaring at me, his eyes darted away again. He backed up until he could view the panel. Although he faced me, he side-glanced at the sands of Mars outside.

  “I have ridden the artifact,” Sant said, almost as if reciting a litany. “I survived the deaths of millions against the ancient enemy. I have been chosen for a holy task. I cannot throw away my life. I have a duty to Orange Tamika.”

  “This is much better,” I said. “Turn off the force blade, and set it down. Let’s talk.”

  He frowned. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

  “Sure I did.”

  “I am chosen. I cannot throw away my life.”

  “That means you’d better put down your weapon before I decide I’ve had enough of this.”

  Sant shook his head. “No. It means you are dead. They have marked you to die. By telling me, by naming them, you have brought me into the circle. I cannot stand with you against them. Thus, I must end it here before Orange Tamika loses my uniqueness. If I don’t kill you, they will learn I heard of their attack in Wyoming. Then, they will come and kill me too.”

  “You’re making a bad decision, Doctor.”

  With his free hand, he re-gripped the front of his robe. Hunching forward, he began to stalk me again. He held the force blade in front, waving it as if he knew a knife-fighting technique. Maybe he did.

  “This is your last chance, Sant.”

  “Good-bye, Commander Creed.” He bounded in a tiger rush, thrusting the deadly knife.

  I’d seen his thighs tense, however. His body language had screamed his intentions. The lanky tiger roared at me as he came. Maybe he thought he could frighten me.

  No. That was it. I’d had enough already. My mind snapped into overdrive. His movements seemed to slow down. The long arm kept coming as he leaned and stretched his seven-foot frame. He staked all on the thrust. If I’d been a regular human, no doubt the doctor would have skewered me. Instead, I dodged, but I’d forgotten about my bed’s exact placement. The side of my leg struck the edge and I toppled. Both us of seemed to move slowly now.

  Sant still thrust as I fell onto the bed. He straightened. I rolled across the mattress. My legs shot up and I stood on the other side. Sant swiveled his hips, thrusting again. My feet tangled in the blanket lying on the floor. I almost tripped because of it, but I stilled my momentum long enough to keep standing. That took too long, though, giving Sant the needed time. When my attention riveted back to him, the force blade already thrust at my midsection. Sant’s length allowed him to reach widthwise across the bed to reach me.

  Even to my speeded senses, my hands blurred. The edge of the force blade touched my forearm. Blood spurted. A loud crack told of broken wrist bones: his. Tiger fingers became numb and released the handle. Given the safety design of the force blade, the energy portion of the knife disappeared.

  Time flowed back into normal channels for me then. Because of my move and throw, Sant sailed over me, flailing his long Lokhar limbs. He crashed against a wall and slid down in a jumbled heap, tangled in his robes.

  I clamped a hand onto my bleeding forearm. The force blade had barely touched the skin, but it was enough to spill blood. A fraction more pressure and that end of my forearm would by lying on the bed in a welter of gore. Instead, the white handle lay on the bed.

  As Sant worked to untangle himself, I reached down and picked up the force blade. A hum warned of the reappearance of the energy blade. I cut the blanket and wrapped part around my forearm. Blood soaked it, but I stanched some of the bleeding.

  Turning with his force blade in my hand, I faced Sant. He sat against the wall, cradling his broken wrist.

  I walked to the bar, set down the knife and picked up my glass. Ice cubes rattled in it. I drank the liquid. It was barely enough to wet my mouth. Even so, that made my cheeks warm.

  “The Shi-Feng is a holy order,” Sant said from where he sat. “They cleanse away evil. None has ever seen one. In their purity, they commit deeds no Lokhar would dare. They accept modifications to their body. They commit ritual suicide and they use their blood to wipe away wickedness.”

  “I’m wicked?” I asked.

  “You have learned the name of a Forerunner artifact. You are the chief guardian to an object that belongs to the Lokhars.”

  “If you’re referring to its stay in the Altair star system—”

  “I am,” Sant said.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t move the Altair Object. It relocated on its own, remember?”

  “That is not how the Shi-Feng would view it. To them, you are a beast, Commander. It is inconceivable for a creature to do the things you have. No. You must relinquish the Forerunner artifact. You must formally return it to the Lokhars.”

  “Now you can say their name?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. With his back against the wall, Sant slid up to his feet. “You’re about to die.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why? Are the Shi-Feng about to break into my room?”

  “It is not wise to mock what you don’t understand.”

  “That’s why I asked you to come to Mars. Explain the situation to me.”

  “You are marked for death, Commander. That you have resisted your fate endangers the rest of us. I cannot allow that to happen.”

  I picked up the force blade. “Do you see who has this?”

  “I will make
your passing quick, Commander. And perhaps it is well for you to understand.” He winced painfully, glancing at his broken wrist.”

  “Let me summon you aid,” I said.

  “No! I will leave on my own. First, you must know this much. When one mentions the Shi-Feng, it means their actions must be honorable. Without realizing it, you brought the old codes into play.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  Doctor Sant reached into his robe and pulled out a wicked little needler. He pointed it at me.

  “This is a spring-driven weapon,” the doctor said. “It holds poisoned slivers. It was fashioned without any ferrous metals. Thus, it passed your detectors.”

  “If you had that all along, why use a knife to try to stab me?” I asked.

  “Didn’t you hear my words? You invoked the Shi-Feng. I had to slay you with a knife, washing away your insult with blood.”

  “What insult?”

  “That you, a beast, should name the holy ones,” he said.

  “Holy ones blow themselves up to kill others?”

  “Good-bye, Commander Creed.”

  “Shi-Feng!” I shouted.

  Sant frowned. “Why do you shout those as your death words?”

  “I’m invoking them. You have to fight me honorably now.”

  “I attempted that. Now, you will use dishonor to question me. I cannot allow myself to be captured and give away Lokhar secrets. Instead, I will kill you any way I can.”

  I stared into his eyes. He seemed to mean what he said.

  “Listen, Sant,” I said. “You don’t realize—”

  He pulled the trigger seven times, sending seven poisoned slivers into my stomach.

  I stared at him. Then, I collapsed onto my knees.

  He tucked the needler within his robes. Then he shoved his broken wrist there as well.

  I sucked air into my constricted throat. “You shot me,” I wheezed.

  “I killed you, Commander Creed.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Are you daft? Look at you.”

  “Don’t you realize I still have medical monitors in me?”

  Sant frowned. Maybe he didn’t understand.

  Intense dizziness struck me. The chamber seemed to spin. Then the door slid open and several assault troopers rushed in.

  Sant managed to redraw the needler in time to shoot the first one. The rest reached him and bore him onto the floor.

  That’s when I fell unconscious for the second time in a little over a week. I couldn’t believe it.

  -4-

  Sant’s poisoned slivers came closer to killing me than the damage I’d taken in Wyoming. I learned this in retrospect after several days with a one hundred and five degree temperature.

  I regained consciousness in Mars Base medical hooked to a Jelk machine we’d salvaged from the battlejumper. This time, it took more than the healing tank to save me.

  Lying there drowsily, I realized I’d gotten too cocky. I should have been ready for something like that, kept a weapon in my chamber. Sant had surprised me with his force blade and then the needler.

  Where others go unarmed, there it is wise to go armed.

  It was an old proverb, one well worth remembering. Sant’s attack also hammered home the truth of a surprise attack. The Shi-Feng had used tactical surprise as well. Since prehistoric times, it had been a force multiplier, and it would continue to be so in the future. Next time, it needed to be on my side.

  I ached all over. My eyelids felt gritty every time I blinked. I thought about getting up anyway. Instead, I drifted back to sleep.

  The next day I couldn’t keep anything down. The fever returned, this time only reaching one hundred and thee.

  I drank liquids and spewed them back up onto my hospital gown. A nurse put a green solution into the tube sticking in my arm.

  I slept more. By now, it seemed as if I’d done it forever. The fever broke and then came back at one hundred and six. I had a terrible dream of Abaddon and his Kargs. The reality of it startled me.

  I drifted in the void in a spacesuit. Far away in the distance, I saw a stellar snowflake. Stars shined behind it. That didn’t make much sense, even in my dream. Then I realized that was no snowflake. It was a giant Karg vessel. We’d faced far too many just like these in hyperspace.

  I moved toward the snowflakes, and I realized more were coming. Dread filled me at the thought. The giant Karg ships weren’t in hyperspace but regular space. I began counting them, soon reaching fifteen.

  Then I saw Jelk battlejumpers, one hundred of them, at least. They moved in a cone formation, with the endpoint farthest away from the Kargs. The open part of the cone faced the giant snowflakes. In front of the cone-formation at a precise distance was a gauzy substance like a titanic lens. It was most odd.

  All at once, the Jelk battlejumpers in the cone fired their lasers at the gauzy substance. The rays filled the lens with bubbling light. Suddenly, a gigantic coherent ray beamed from the other side of the lens. It was then I saw smaller Jelk vessels at the edges of the lens. Did the ships do something to focus the massive beam? I suspected yes. In any case, the giant ray reached out and struck a Karg snowflake-vessel.

  The beam disintegrated the alien structure, melting what turned out to be individual Karg moth-ships attached to the gargantuan mother ship.

  The Jelk lens ray snapped off. The cone-formation battlejumpers had stopped beaming their lasers into their side of the lens. Were they recharging their coil banks?

  More Karg snowflakes moved up. Clinging to them were moth-like ships with glowing nuclear eyes. Those vessels detached from the mother ships. Each craft spewed exhaust as they accelerated toward the Jelk lens.

  The massed cone-shaped formation fired into the lens again. As before, a coherent beam lanced out the other side. It struck a moth-ship. The giant ray encompassed the entire Karg vessel, and it annihilated everything so the craft disappeared like a giant blowing out a match. The gargantuan ray moved like a swath, destroying one Karg moth-ship after another.

  Did I witness a real space battle between the Kargs and the Jelk, fought in the Corporation’s core worlds? In my dream, I believed that to be the case. Yet that would imply the Kargs—or some of them at least—had escaped from their space-time continuum.

  The cone formation with its lens wrecked savage destruction against the Karg vessels. Finally, however, some moth-ships drew close enough to the lens to attack. The eyes on the nearest Karg vessels glowed brilliantly. They seemed to bubble as if made of red-hot lava. Then, a red ray beamed. It touched the gauzy lens. More Karg beams hit it. In a consuming flash, like tissue in a bonfire, the lens vanished, as did the smaller ships at the lens’ edges.

  The cone formation advanced, and the surviving Karg moth-ships gathered in a square. Beams flashed back and forth between the two fleets. Ships exploded, often harming its nearest neighbor. I doubt I’d ever witnessed a deadlier battle.

  Finally, the last Jelk vessel disappeared under a barrage of red rays. The Kargs had won, but at a dreadful cost. Hulks and pieces of starships floated everywhere.

  As I watched from a distance, my fevered nightmare became personal.

  During our invasion of the portal planet, Abaddon had addressed me via screen. He’d shown me how he tortured my sweet Jennifer. For years now, I’d agonized over her fate. Maybe that’s what powered the horrible dream.

  In the nightmare, the feeling of dread grew worse than ever. I watched as Karg moth-ships cruised through the wreckage of battle. More giant snowflakes appeared, with huge exhausts showing they accelerated, traveling who knew where.

  I sped toward one of the snowflakes. Believe me, I didn’t want to go there. Yet, nothing I did could stop my advance.

  No! I refused. I was Commander Creed. I’d defeated the Kargs before. I wasn’t their slave rushing to them at their bidding.

  With an intense effort of will, I halted my dream plunge toward that vessel.

  Then, it seemed that I d
idn’t float in space anymore. Instead, I stood on a bridge. I didn’t recognize the type of ship. It must have been a newer style. Before me, a baroque screen sizzled. A fuzzy image appeared on it. I couldn’t see the exact features of the thing, but I saw two fiery eyes like the pit of Hell burning at me.

  As I stood on the bridge, the weight of those eyes wilted my resolve. The burning orbs had something to do with Jennifer. Bracing myself, I roared defiance at the eyes. I shook a fist at them.

  “Commander Creed,” said the deadliest voice I’d ever heard. The words rumbled against my chest, vibrating with debilitating power.

  “Abaddon?” I whispered.

  The sizzling worsened on the elaborate screen. The image grew fuzzier, but the eyes became like twin fires. I felt the gaze, which locked my jaws.

  “I see you, foolish mortal,” Abaddon told me. “You are far away, and you are desperate.”

  “This is a dream,” I managed to whisper.

  “How truly dense you are,” Abaddon said. “You think yourself so wise concerning science and reality. Yet you understand little of power and supernatural force.”

  “You’re saying this is real, not a dream?”

  “How can you comprehend? Yes, you dream, but I am indeed speaking to your unconscious mind in the manner of my kind.”

  “You’re a demon,” I said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Come closer to me, mortal. Look at me with your soul and lose all hope.”

  I almost listened to him. “No!” I shouted, averting my gaze from the burning eyes. “You’re not my master. You’re an invader in a place you don’t belong.”

  “Wrong. I have come home. Now, I shall devour the living along with the dead.”

  “The Jelk Corporation will defeat you.”

  “They fight but lose every battle.”

  “Taking down more of your moth-ships all the time,” I said.