Cain's Crusaders

by T. R. Harris

  “I will not! I must face my attackers.”

  “Don’t be stupid—” Arieel jerked her head around to look at him, cutting him off with a piercing glare from her dark eyes.

  Just then Adam saw a squad of five native beings, moving carefully through the debris, flash rifles held at the ready. They spotted the two of them standing in the open and raised their rifles to fire. Adam grabbed Arieel’s arm.

  Just then one of the aliens fingered the trigger on his weapon – but nothing happened. He fingered it again, and still nothing. Then the other four took aim and pulled the triggers.

  The same result.

  Adam fell back on the ground, sitting on the blackened soil, shocked into simply watching what happened next.

  Arieel walked defiantly further into the opening until she was about twenty feet from the five natives. Then she held her hand out in front of her, and immediately all five flash weapons began to hum. Adam recognized the sound as an overload warning; he had heard it several times before, but only coming from the MK variety of hand-held flash weapons. Through mishap and experience, Adam had found he could create make-shift hand grenades by bending the barrels of the weapons and then triggering their controls, thereby building up an overload – and leading to an explosion!

  Adam jumped up and tackled the diminutive Formilian, just as the five flash rifles exploded in a rain of fire and deafening concussion. The heat from the blasts cascaded over them, searing the hair on Adam’s right arm as he shielded Arieel from the bulk of the blasts. When he looked up again, there were no remains of the five alien attackers, not even their shoes were left intact.

  “Are you crazy?” Adam yelled, grabbing Arieel by the shoulders. “I haven’t gone through all this trouble just so you can get yourself killed by being stupid.”

  “I was in no danger.”

  “Bullshit!”

  Arieel frowned at him – as all aliens did upon first hearing the word bullshit. “That’s not true,” Adam quickly amended. “The blast would have killed you.”

  “My Gods have protected me.”

  “Let’s not get into that.” Adam looked around to see if the explosions had attracted any attention. If they had, it was to affect a clearing out of any survivors from the area. “We have to get out of here. I have a ship a couple of miles away, if it wasn’t destroyed in the bombardment. Can you walk?”

  Arieel cocked her head. “Of course I can. My life energy is being enhanced even now. I am able to move, if not at my optimal speed.”

  Adam just looked at her. She may be cute and all, but this was one strange creature. “Then let’s get the hell out of here before any more of McCarthy’s people show up.”

  “What is a McCarthy?”

  “A McCarthy is the rat-bastard who’s behind your abduction. His forces probably won the battle against the Kracori, so his next order of business will be to find you.”

  “I am right here! This rodent-beast does not have to go looking for me. I will meet him here!”

  Adam leaned in closer to her, towering over the small female like he seldom did with most other alien species. “Listen, your royal Speaker-ness. I’m supposed to get you back to Formil, and hopefully, all in one piece. You may have some pretty impressive powers, but this is not the time or the place to pick a fight. Help me when you can, but first let’s make it off this stinking planet.”

  Arieel glared up at him for several tense moments. Then her face softened – just a bit. “Four more weapons are approaching from the south. I suppose we should be leaving … as you suggest.”

  “It was not a suggestion, your Highness.” Adam took her by the arm and pulled her off into the clouds of smoke, in the direction where he had left the Phoenix.

  “What is a Highness?”

  Adam just shook his head. She may have some incredible powers, but he figured as long as he wasn’t wearing a pacemaker, then he’d be safe.

  He just hoped his ship was still there. He was really counting on the ship’s special features to help him get this bitch back to her home planet … and out of his hair.

  Much to his relief, the Phoenix was safe and sound sitting in the backwater spaceport. As he approached the hull, with Arieel trailing behind him, the nervous native Azzel ran up to him.

  “What have you done? You have completely destroyed my home!”

  “I didn’t to it,” Adam said barely acknowledging the alien. He brushed past him and fingered the control panel to open the access door.

  “I’m not going to let you get away with this!”

  Adam turned to see that the alien had his MK-17 aimed at him. If this creature followed tradition, he would have the energy setting at level-two. That wouldn’t kill Adam, but it sure would sting. So Adam looked over at Arieel and nodded.

  The Formilian Speaker smiled slightly.

  Adam turned away and entered the spaceship, with Arieel close behind. As he turned to close the hatch, he saw the rust-colored alien fumbling with his now-inert weapon, at a loss as to why it wasn’t working.

  “You better back away if you don’t want to be turned to ash,” Adam called out just as the door slid shut. He had to admit, that was a pretty neat trick.

  Adam lifted off, and even before reaching orbit, spotted a squadron of oblong spacecraft lining up on his position. These would be McCarthy’ remaining fake-Formilian warships.

  Arieel had followed Adam to the pilothouse without saying a word and now sat in the co-pilot’s seat, looking at the display on the proximity screen.

  “They are beyond my influence! Do something!”

  Adam stopped what he was doing and looked over at her, a frown on his face. “Just who the hell do you think you are? You don’t tell me what to do on my ship.”

  “Well you did not appear too concerned about the approaching spaceships. I did not know if you were expecting me to save us – again.”

  “Just sit back and relax, sweetheart; you’re not the only one around here with super-powers.”

  And with that, Adam engaged the four forward focusing rings of the Phoenix, creating a gravity-well deeper than any of the pursing ships could even imagine this far in-system. The Phoenix sped off from Uniss-3 at many times faster than a beam of light, and leaving the crews of McCarthy’s ships staring at a now-empty section of space.

  Adam looked over at Arieel with a satisfied grin. In return, she sent him a childish sneer, then rose out of the seat and stormed out of the room.

  Adam watched her leave, a sight enhanced by the torn and revealing gown barely covering her ample form. “Hate to see you leave,” he whispered under his breath, “but love to watch you go.”

  Even then, Adam knew this was going to be a very long trip back to Formil.

  Once safely on the Coalition side of the border, Adam opened a CW-link with Convor on Formil. Arieel and the High Celebrant spoke for several minutes, both expressing immense relief and thanks that Arieel was safe and headed home.

  Throughout the conversation, Arieel refused to give Adam credit for saving her. But once all the pleasantries were over, Convor asked Arieel to let him speak with Adam in private. Adam was shocked to see that she demurely agreed and left the room.

  “Mr. Cain, we are all forever in your debt. This creature – McCarthy – was not going to release her. That would have been a tragic event.”

  “You still have major problems, Convor.” Adam went on to explain how McCarthy had planned a staged attack by faux-Formilian forces on Uniss-3 in order to provoke the Federation to declaring war. Even though his plans were disrupted by the Kracori, he would still blame the destruction of the backwater town on the Formilians. After all, the Federation wasn’t looking for a real incident, just something they could base their actions on.

  “And yet The Speaker still lives,” Convor countered. “This will surely prevent the Omphly from attacking.”

  Adam hesitated telling Convor what he knew of The Speaker’s so-called powers. He had a sneaking suspicion that McCarthy would
reveal the truth to the Omphly, that all her demon powers were simply a product of high-tech magic and trickery. If he could convince them of this, then the mystique of The Speaker would be broken, and the Federation would attack. McCarthy would get his war, and out of necessity, both the Federation and the Coalition would end up buying weapons through McCarthy’s various suppliers, with him well-hidden as the source of those transactions.

  The bastard would win this round.

  But what of him developing a mind-reading device like Arieel’s? Did he really have enough information to do it?

  Adam watched Convor on the screen, who now sat frowning at Adam’s long silence. “Let’s hope that’s the case, Convor,” Adam finally said. “Whatever is going to happen will happen pretty soon. We’ll be back on Formil in three days. I’ll see you then.”

  Adam then cut the link. He had some thinking to do; a plan was percolating in his mind that required a little more fleshing out. Then suddenly he panicked. Can that spoiled brat read my thoughts? If so, then he was indeed in for a very rough ride back to Formil.

  Chapter 11

  Nigel McCarthy was beyond livid.

  Only one of the buildings in the compound would pass as intact, and he had moved his operations center to a large room within the shattered remains. His second-in-command, Carter Thomas, was seated in front of a door they had propped up on two stacks of broken concrete to form a makeshift table.

  Thomas was a forty-year-old, ex-Army Ranger – a huge, African-American – who had been with Major Nigel McCarthy for going on fifteen years. They had both been abducted by the Klin, and made part of the growing army of Humans the aliens intended to send up against the Expansion-leading Juireans. Most of the Humans who were abducted at the time did not join the Klin willingly. Instead they were either brainwashed into joining, or were sent to work in the factories building the weapons of war which those who did volunteer would use against the Juireans.

  McCarthy and Thomas had been a couple of the most-enthusiastic volunteers, quickly rising in the ranks of Human turncoats to become the primary advisors to the Klin on all things Human-related. They planned abduction excursions to the Earth, stalking vulnerable military personnel, mainly from the more-advanced military powers such as the US, Britain and Russia. They tried to avoid most of the more militant religious countries, figuring that those abductees would be the hardest to convert. Trying to convince these people that it was in their best interest to pledge loyalty to a group of aliens seemed like a losing proposition and not worth the effort.

  They also coordinated the kidnapping of thousands of women, mostly chosen for their youth and physical conditioning. These women would be used to birth a whole other level of Human fighters, the 2G’s or Second-Generation Humans. These were people born into the Klin training camps and raised to believe all the aliens told them about their fellow man – as well as their honored purpose as the force that would rid the galaxy of the Juirean disease. The 2G’s would help protect the Earth from the Juireans, while also manning the fleets that would be sent against them.

  McCarthy and Thomas, along with McCarthy’s other twenty or so most-loyal confidants, helped the Klin for several years, until a few months after the Human-Juirean War began – right up until the time they learned that the Humans were being used simply as fodder in the war. The Klin’s ultimate plan for McCarthy’s strong, savage race was to use them to reduce the Juirean forces down to a level where the Klin – along with their true allies, the Kracori – could then move in and defeat both the Juireans and the Humans.

  The Klin had never intended to share the rule of the galaxy with the Humans, and McCarthy’s payment for all the assistance he had provided the Klin over the years – namely the rule of the planet Earth herself – was simply bait in order to get him to cooperate.

  Once he and Thomas had learned the truth – inconveniently from one Adam Cain by the way – they had escaped from the Klin stronghold on the planet Marishal just before the aliens eased them as potential problems in their ultimate goal of galactic domination.

  Several of McCarthy’s men had been killed around that time, until he was left with only nine loyalists. This team accompanied Cain to the planet Juir, where through a strange twist of fate, Adam sided with the Juireans, while McCarthy and his men sided with the alien Kracori.

  Now ten years later, McCarthy was an independent contractor, building a criminal empire the likes of which had never been seen in the galaxy before, while Adam Cain worked for the Expansion Administrator, the fat blob of a creature called Kroekus of Silea.

  Now Carter Thomas sat stoically in one of the few intact chairs in the entire compound, watching his boss storm around the room, cursing and throwing chunks of broken concrete through whatever walls had managed to survive the Kracori bombardment of five hours before.

  Nigel stopped near the blown out opening in the wall that had once been a large window. Outside, one of his men, Kyle Baker, was surveying the damage, a Xan-Fi flash rifle cradled in his arms. A tall, rust-colored native was picking through the debris nearby, looking for any survivors in the rubble.

  “Baker!” McCarthy called out.

  Baker looked up at the sound. “Yes, sir!” he called back.

  “Bring me that alien.”

  Baker frowned, looking at the native and then back at McCarthy.

  “Yeah, that one, bring him to me.”

  Baker looked confused but complied, grabbing the taller, yet much weaker native by the arm and dragging him towards the room where McCarthy was standing.

  Once inside, Baker shoved the alien to his waiting commander. “What do you wish?” the scared alien asked. He was dirty and with blood showing in several spots on his face and arms. He had been one of the fortunate ones, one of the survivors of the attack.

  “Oh, I don’t want anything from you – except this.” McCarthy stepped forward quickly and grabbed the head of the alien. Then he twisted it nearly completely around, snapping the neck instantly. The creature went limp, and Nigel continued to hold the head tightly, supporting the now inert body of the native, his own face showing an insane intensity at the killing. Nigel then tossed the body ten feet to the other side of the room and turned back to Carter Thomas.

  “Do you feel better now?” his second-in-command asked, showing no emotion on his face.

  “A little,” McCarthy answered. “I just really needed to kill something, and since I can’t get my hands around the neck of Adam Cain, that alien had to do.”

  Still with stone-cold, emotionless countenance, Carter said, “I sometimes get like that myself, Major.”

  McCarthy looked at Carter’s shiny black skin and cold-black eyes. He couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile; his stoic manner was one of the only constants in McCarthy’s tumultuous life.

  “Now can we get back to business?” Carter asked. “Should I open a link with Surun and let them know the Speaker is still alive, or not?”

  McCarthy stared at the dead body of the alien for a few more seconds before answering. “No, not yet, I need a little time to think.”

  “Cain’s going to contact Formil, and then the spies there will let the Federation know. They’ll call off the attack.”

  “I know, Carter; just give me a second.” Nigel moved to the end of the door-desk and sat on a stack of concrete debris. On the table was the small bag of purple Expansion credits, thirty-million worth, that they had recovered from the other room. At least that had survived.

  “Let me play this out,” McCarthy started. “Cain has escaped with the Formilian bitch in a hopped-up spaceship that none of us can catch. The fucking Omphly won’t attack now because they still fear the demon powers of the Speaker—”

  “Why not just let the Omphly know that her powers are fake, just the product of an artificial gadget?” Carter asked. “Then they won’t have to fear her anymore. Nothing will stop them then.”

  McCarthy thought about that for a few moments and then shook his head. “We could do th
at, but then the whole Formilian myth would collapse. The Coalition’s belief in her divinity is the basis for their religion, for the Coalition’s existence in the first place. If we told the Omphly, then the word would get back to the Coalition and it would fall apart by itself. Then the Omphly would win by default, and we’d have no war to supply.”

  “Won’t Cain let it out? He knows the truth.”

  “I don’t think so; Kroekus would never let him do that. Again, the Coalition would fall apart and Formil would be lost to the Omphly without a fight. Kroekus needs the technology from the Formilians to keep his Expansion intact. No, even though he may know the truth, Cain won’t let it out.” McCarthy slammed his massive fist down on the surface of the table, cracking it nearly in half down the middle. The bag of credits slid toward him in the valley created by the impact.

  Even though the bag had been in Cain’s crotch, Nigel grabbed it and held it up is his massive fist. “Thirty million, Carter; just a drop in the bloody bucket to what we could have made off this war, and all it will take is for that bloody bitch to die. I didn’t need these credits, Carter. All I wanted was for the war to start. I should have killed her when I had the chance, or at the very least just let her explode. If I’d just waited a few more days….”

  “That’s fine Major,” Carter said, “but we really do need to call Surun.”

  McCarthy suddenly sat up very straight, his eyes growing wide. He looked at Carter and smiled. “That’s right, we sure do,” Nigel agreed, more enthusiastically than was necessary. “Assemble the men. Get them back to ship as soon as possible. We do have a call to make, in fact, a lot of them.”

  Carter had seen McCarthy go off like this before. It frustrated him, wishing he’d just say what was on his mind.

  “We don’t have to kill that Formilian bitch. We just have to let her kill herself.” Nigel eventually explained.

  “Cain’s ship will get her to Formil long before that happens,” Carter countered.

  “Not unless we can delay them.”