Extinction Wars 3: Star Viking

by Vaughn Heppner

  That meant our survival and freedom demanded we keep the object.

  I left the bridge for some shuteye. Stretched out on my bed, I fell into a fitful slumber. A dream coalesced soon enough. I was in the Forerunner artifact again with N7—a former mining-android. Abaddon spoke to me via screen, showing me Jennifer hanging by her wrists, her toes an inch above the floor. He offered me a position in his evil hierarchy, telling me he’d give me Jennifer to boot.

  In my dream, I shouted, asking for Jennifer’s forgiveness. She understood I had to do this, right.

  “Creed!” she screamed. “Save me. I’m your woman. You can’t sacrifice me. You’re my man. You’re supposed to protect me.”

  “Jennifer,” I whispered. “You have to understand.”

  “No!” she howled, as Kargs applied torture devices to her flesh. “Creed, help me!”

  My eyes flew open. I lay on my bed in the Aristotle. Sweat soaked my blanket and sheets.

  I got up, drank water, ate a sandwich and donned my uniform. What else could I have done back there on the portal planet in hyperspace six and a half years ago? If I’d agreed to Abaddon’s deal, our universe would have faced a billion enemy starships and a trillion death-dealing Kargs. I’d done the right thing. Yet, if that was true, why did I feel like such a heel?

  The intercom in my room buzzed.

  Wearily, I went to it. “Yeah?” I asked.

  “The Starkiens are almost here,” Ella said. “Their chief wants to speak to you.”

  “I’m on my way,” I said.

  ***

  Back on the bridge, I found myself staring at the Starkien commander, Baba Gobo. As N7 had once told me, Baba would be his name and Gobo was his rank. It meant lord of ships.

  A regular Starkien was the size of a baboon and looked as furry and as ugly. Baba had two long canines at the end of his wrinkled muzzle, each of them a dirty yellow color. He must have weighed ninety pounds, sporting a big pouch with an obscene belly button, easily the heaviest Starkien I’d ever seen. He had a mane like a lion, although his was stark white. I knew it meant he was old, older than Naga Gobo, a Starkien I’d killed in the solar system many years ago. I wondered if this Gobo had known Naga.

  Just as Naga had, Baba Gobo sat on a dais with raised controls around him. I knew the place stank because Starkiens did. When I’d met them in person before on a beamship, the chamber had smelled like a filthy zoo cage. Baba Gobo lacked clothes. Instead, he wore a harness around his body. His was devoid of weapons or tools, having scarlet streamers instead.

  The Starkien on the main screen opened his baboon snout. “I would speak to him known as Creed-beast,” Baba said.

  I doubted he knew English. We used translator devices to communicate.

  Ella touched a switch, splitting the screen into two parts. One half showed the braking armada. Long tails of fusion thrust showed they applied energy. The shark-shaped vessels had crossed our star system in a hurry and now slowed down for a meeting. They also spewed out masses of star fighters who swarmed the bigger ships like fleas. The Starkiens came in a crescent formation just as the Spanish Armada had come against the English in 1588.

  I had ten old Lokhar cruisers and missile-ships to face the Starkiens. Most of my vessels were bigger than theirs were. Their largest, however, dwarfed mine. Ella informed me that in tonnage the enemy beat us eighteen to one.

  I wasn’t going to win a Jutland battle or a Midway victory today. Bluff was my only hope…unless I could think of something better fast.

  Pushing myself off my chair, I strode toward the screen. I’d chosen blue naval uniforms for the guardians. It gave us a sharper image and a link to extinct Earth fleets. Glowering at the Starkien, I said, “Are you the Baba-creature?”

  The Starkien stiffened. “How dare you insult me? Do you have any understanding of my exalted rank?”

  “Lord of all Smells?” I asked.

  “Is that an insult?”

  “Will you look at this,” I said. “You’re too stupid to understand that I am indeed demeaning you before your face. You are the Lord of Starkiens after all.”

  He opened his snout, revealing his dental work. I could only imagine the fogging he’d give anyone near enough to smell his breath. For a moment, I expected him to howl with simian rage.

  Instead, Baba Gobo regained his self-control, closing his snout without uttering a hoot. I reexamined his white mane. With age came wisdom. Perhaps the saying was as true for Starkiens as it was for humans.

  “You do not appreciate me naming you as a beast, do you?” he said.

  “I am a man,” I said.

  The Starkien nodded. There appeared a depth to his dark eyes then. I fixated on that, and a chill worked down my back. Baba Gobo was intelligent. Worse, he had cunning. Combined with self-control that was a dangerous mixture.

  “Why do your ships block my passage to the Sol Object?” he asked.

  Once, the artifact had been known as the Altair Object. At the time, the Lokhar Fifth Legion had guarded it, along with a greater number of starships than I possessed.

  “We are the object’s guardians,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said, before making barking sounds. I recognized it as Starkien laughter.

  “I choose who can and cannot approach the relic,” I told him.

  “What gives a beast the right?” he asked.

  I stared at him.

  He made a complex gesture with his left hand. “Let me rephrase my question. What gives you the right? Surely, not your puny number of warships.”

  “The artifact once rested in a portal planet,” I said. “The planet was in fact a Forerunner machine which the object powered. That opened the way to the Karg Universe. Abaddon would have crossed to our space-time continuum and hunted down all non-Karg life, eliminating it. I stopped that by talking to the relic. Among other things, the object told me its name.”

  Baba Gobo’s eyes shined wetly, greedily. He leaned toward me. “I have heard this story. It cannot be true, though. One such as you cannot possibly know the name well enough to repeat it.”

  I smiled. “Is this the extent of your guile, how you attempt to trick me into revealing the ancient name to you?”

  Hooting sounds came out of the background behind Baba Gobo. The Starkien commander whirled around. He beat his chest and screeched.

  “He’s excitable after all,” Rollo said to my left.

  I turned around. Rollo was my best friend. Of all the guardians, he most resembled a gorilla with his thick neck, massive shoulders and muscles. The man had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. I wondered why he was here instead of commanding his starship, the Thomas Aquinas. Before I could ask him, Baba Gobo cleared his throat to my back.

  I faced the view-screen.

  “I have grown weary of your vanity,” the Starkien told me. “It is time for us to reach an understanding. Several years ago, you slew my great-nephew, Naga Gobo. He dealt with the Jelk, which was an evil deed. I deplore his memory because of that. Yet, he was kin to me, and he ruled a Starkien flotilla. You must pay the blood-debt of his death.”

  “Pray tell me,” I said. “What does that debt happen to be?”

  “I’m sure you already know,” Baba Gobo told me. “I demand the Sol Object.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Do not play the fool, human. I have overwhelming numbers at my command. If you resist, I will not only destroy your ten warships, but I will hunt down your freighters as well. Oh, yes, I am quite aware of them hiding behind your poisoned Earth. I will capture or destroy each craft, eliminating your kind forever. That will atone for your vile deed of slaying Naga Gobo and his people.”

  “I saved our universe from destruction,” I said. “You owe me your life. That should atone for your great-nephew’s death.”

  “Words,” Baba Gobo said. “They do not impress me.”

  “Everyone’s an ingrate,” I said. “Do you realize I lost one hundred thousand troopers saving you
r ugly hide?”

  The Starkien made another gesture. I took it as a shrug.

  “You leave me no choice, I’m afraid,” I said. “I am the Forerunner Guardian. You cannot have the object, nor can I allow you to annihilate the last humans.”

  He smirked. “There is nothing you can do to stop me.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “There is the Samson Protocol.”

  He paused a half-beat before saying, “I have no idea what that’s supposed to be.”

  “Samson was an ancient Earth hero,” I said. “At the time, he was the strongest warrior in the world. His story is told in our holy text.”

  “I was not aware you beasts had a holy book.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “We most certainly do. In the book of Judges, we are told that the Philistines plagued Samson’s people. He killed many of their soldiers and mighty men. Yet, he had a weakness. Samson loved beautiful women.”

  “This is a common failing among champions,” Baba Gobo said.

  Maybe that was another universal principle.

  “In the end,” I said, “a woman named Delilah wanted to know the secret to Samson’s supernatural strength. She nagged him mercilessly, asking him day and night for the answer. He played along, giving her nonsense answers. Each time, Delilah would perform the needed deed to steal his strength. Then, when he slept, she would say, ‘Samson, the Philistines are upon you!’ He’d wake up and kill them. At last, though, Delilah wept bitterly, telling him he didn’t love her. If he did love her, he’d tell her his secret.”

  “What did your Samson do?” Baba Gobo asked.

  “Like the fool he’d become, he told her the secret. Samson had never cut his hair. It was his symbol as a Nazarene, one who had been set aside to the Creator. As he slept, Delilah saved his head. Then she cried out, ‘Samson, the Philistines are upon you!’

  “He woke up and attempted to defeat them as he always had, but the spirit of the Creator had left him. Samson had become as weak as other men. The Philistines bound him and burned out his eyes. Then they set him to work as a slave, grinding grain.”

  Baba Gobo bristled. “Is this what you think you’ll do to me: burn out my eyes?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “Then I do not understand your Samson Protocol.”

  “That’s because you don’t know the end of the story.”

  “Oh,” the Starkien said. “By all means, finish it.”

  I’ll say this for the baboons. They like a good story as much as anyone else. Maybe they weren’t all bad.

  “One day many years after Samson’s blinding,” I said, “the Philistines worshiped their gods in the city’s primary temple. The leaders said, ‘Let us bring out Samson to mock him.’ They did. The blind warrior asked the boy leading him to set him between the two central pillars holding up the temple. There, Samson prayed, ‘Lord, let me die with my enemies. Give me the strength to push down these pillars.’ Afterward, Samson strained. As the Philistines watched, the spirit of the Creator came upon him and he brought down the two pillars, and that brought down the temple full of Philistines. The holy text says he killed more that day than he had during his life.”

  Baba Gobo squinted at me. “What is your point?”

  “The Samson Protocol means I will bring down the temple on both of us, killing all of us as I destroy the Forerunner artifact.”

  “No,” the Starkien whispered. “That is blasphemous sacrilege. You would be branded an outlaw, and your people hounded to the ends of the universe.”

  I laughed. “Do you hear yourself? You threaten to destroy my people, extinction for mankind. That doesn’t matter to a race already slain. Do you plan to kill us twice?”

  “You do not possess the means to destroy the artifact,” Baba Gobo said.

  “I assure you, I do.”

  “You’ve fitted nuclear warheads onto the relic?” he asked.

  “Among other things,” I lied.

  “You are an animal,” Baba Gobo said. “It is vile to destroy an artifact of the First Ones. It is unclean to set explosives on the shrine. I abhor you, beast. Listen to me well. Many think lowly of the Starkiens. But today I will sacrifice my flotilla to rid the universe of monsters like you and your ilk. Prepare to die, Creed-beast.”

  “The explosions will destroy you, too,” I said, surprised at his reaction.

  “I have no interest in your—” The Starkien paused, and he glanced to his left, my right.

  “Commander,” Ella said. “I’m receiving a communication from Ceres. Doctor Sant would like to address the two of you.”

  Baba Gobo regarded me. “I have received a call from Doctor Sant, a Lokhar of Orange Tamika. Did he not return from hyperspace via the artifact?”

  “He did,” I said.

  “Let us hear what the noble Lokhar wishes to say,” the Starkien told me.

  Why did Doctor Sant call now? Could he have been listening to our two-way conversation? Did the Lokhar have military-grade spy devices on Ceres? What did that say for Ella’s assurance that Sant would favor us?

  The split screen changed. The image of the Starkien fleet disappeared. In its place Doctor Sant appeared in his orange robe.

  Like the Starkien and me, Doctor Sant used a universal translating device to communicate with the two of us.

  “I thank both of you gentlemen for taking my call,” Sant said.

  Baba Gobo stiffened. “I hope you are not equating the beast with me. Do you not realize he has just threatened to destroy the Forerunner object?”

  “Yes, I know,” Doctor Sant said. “It is why I wish to address you both.”

  “You are a Lokhar,” Baba Gobo said. “Of all the races, I know you serve the artifacts with the greatest zeal. Surely, you realize that we must expunge mankind from the star lanes.”

  Doctor Sant said nothing, although he turned his yellow eyes onto the Starkien. There was something unsettling about Sant, something I’d never noticed before. It was a new majesty, perhaps, an extra weight or gravity to his bearing. Was that due to the Jelk machine?

  “You weren’t with us in hyperspace, Baba Gobo,” Doctor Sant said. “I joined the humans as they battled down the portal planet to the artifact in the center of the great Forerunner machine. I saw Commander Creed in his element. What is more, I saw him walk the curve toward the ancient residence in the inner torus of the object. He disappeared into an olden building. There, he did communicate with the relic, learning the construct’s name. He bargained with the tool of the First Ones. In a moment of time, the object now in the solar system’s Asteroid Belt left the portal planet and came here. The object has blessed the humans with its presence. It judges them, Baba Gobo. The Lokhars await the artifact’s word on the nature of man. Are the humans beasts as you subscribe, or should mankind join the civilized races as guardians of life?”

  “He threatened to destroy the ancient shrine,” Baba Gobo said.

  “He is the object’s appointed guardian,” Doctor Sant said. “He uses what weapons he has. Yes, Commander Creed is crude and bloodthirsty, yet he saved our universe from destruction.”

  “We Starkiens will make better guardians,” Baba Gobo said.

  Slowly, Doctor Sant shook his head. “This cannot be. The object has chosen its residence. Here it must stay until it choses otherwise.”

  The Starkien’s eyes gleamed wetly. “I acknowledge your rank, Doctor Sant. You are a chosen one of the relic. I bow before you. Yet, you should know, acolyte, that you have just sealed humanity’s fate. I will annihilate them and take up residence in this star system.”

  “Then you must slay me as well,” Doctor Sant said. “The Lokhars will, of course, learn of this. Then, you will have to pay the price for spilling my blood.”

  The Starkien stared at Doctor Sant seeming deflated. “Is this your final word?”

  “It is,” Doctor Sant said.

  “You would do this for these beasts?” the Starkien asked.

  “I would do it because th
e artifact has told Commander Creed its name.”

  “This is true?” Baba Gobo asked.

  “It is true,” said Doctor Sant.

  The Starkien sniffed several times. He avoided looking at me. “We will leave the solar system, Doctor. As one who journeyed with a Forerunner construct, you have my envy and highest regard. Your words have weight, acolyte. I cannot carry them on my shoulders. Thus, I retreat before your glory.”

  Doctor Sant bowed his head, and then his image disappeared from the screen.

  Finally, Baba Gobo glanced at me. There was venom in his eyes. “This isn’t the end of it, beast. When the Lokhar—” The Starkien snarled. Then his image vanished.

  That left me alone with my thoughts. Doctor Sant had ridden on the artifact when it teleported away from the portal planet. I had gone inside the object and actually spoken with it. Yet, I was the beast and Doctor Sant the holy acolyte.

  In that moment, with a burning in my chest, I vowed to make the aliens of all stripes recognize that humans were equal to any other race in our galaxy.

  -7-

  The Starkien flotilla left the same way it had come, through the Neptune jump gate.

  Seven months later, Doctor Sant informed me that he and his fellow Orange Tamika Lokhars were going home. After what had happened with Baba Gobo, that sounded ominous. Other extraterrestrials feared the Lokhars but had nothing but contempt for us humans. With the last Lokhars gone, what would stop bloodthirsty aliens from ransacking the solar system?

  An Orange Tamika starship docked near Ceres. A day later, Doctor Sant and I walked along an underground corridor jackhammered from the asteroid’s rock.

  I wore my navy uniform, complete with a military cap and sidearm, my .44 Magnum.

  I’d finally gained back all my lost weight and felt strong again. The last of Sant’s needler venom had disappeared from my system. At no time had he shown any inclination to recall his assassination attempt against me, nor did he ever speak about the Shi-Feng.

  Doctor Sant wore his former silver and black garment with orange chevrons. With his greater height, the tiger towered over me.