by T. R. Harris
“In the back there, that’s one of those A’s with a crew of around twenty-five.” Adam said. He looked around at the rest of his team. “How many weapons do we have?”
Tobias held up his single MK-17 and grinned. “That’s it – one gun?” Adam said. He took a deep, painful breath. “These are not your typical run-of-the-mill aliens we’re dealing with. They’re strong, fast and tough. About the only advantage I see we have going for us is that they don’t know squat about martial arts. No offense Sherri, but they fight like girls.”
Sherri sent him a smirk and patted his cheek. “Not all girls.”
“I hear that.” He tried to flash a smile through his broken lips but failed miserably. “But we’ll have the element of surprise. Kaylor, Jym, stay back in the access shaft until we get the ship secured. Okay – let’s roll.”
They darted from shadow to shadow under the forest of Klin starships, which always appeared to be much bigger once you got close to them. At the last one on the field, sitting almost half a klick from the cluster of tents, they crouched near the sliding entry door on the extended pedestal under the ship. The door was shut but there would be no reason to require a security code to open it. Rutledge slapped the operating panel and the door quietly slid open.
Inside the wide, round base was a winding staircase surrounding the central elevator tube. The elevator was used primarily for moving freight and equipment into the ship while crew used the stairs. With Tobias and his MK in the lead they began a slow, silent ascent up the stairs.
At the top they entered into the central generator and storage room, circular in shape, following the natural curvature of the ship. Beyond doorways on the outer wall of this room was a concentric hallway that wrapped around the entire ship; off this corridor where entrances to various other compartments, all set toward the ship’s exterior. There was another level above this one with two concentric corridors and more compartments. Topping it all off was the bridge, a prominent dome sitting in the middle of the disk.
Seeing that Adam was in no condition to engage in another fight with a Kracori, he was the last to enter the generator room at the head of the stairs. He heard a soft click and looked to see Tobias motioning with his hand. Tindal and Rutledge had already spotted it and were moving in that direction. It was a flash rifle, sitting on a table at the other end of the room, as conspicuous as could be. The young petty officer reached it first and snatched up the weapon before Rutledge had a chance. The Chief shot him an evil glare; Tindal just lifted the weapon to his lips and kissed it.
Tobias opened the nearest hatch leading to the outer corridor and did a quick look-see. Nobody; their luck was holding. At each hatch they came to, Tobias would stop and put an ear to the metal, listening for any sounds from inside the compartment.
At the third door, he heard what sounded like a grunt coming from inside. These interior doors were operated by recessed pressplates, not latches, so with Tobias on one side and Tindal on the other, Rutledge pressed the door release and stepped back. The door slid open smoothly and quietly – but not quietly enough for the occupant inside not to notice.
It was a Kracori officer, in the process of removing his shirt, and looking to be preparing for bed. His back was turned to the door and he nonchalantly turned to see who had opened it. His eyes grew wide when three burly Humans slammed into him, one pressing a clamp-like hand over his mouth while the other two held him down on the compartment’s single bed. Riyad, Adam and Sherri soon joined them inside the tiny compartment.
Tobias placed the barrel of his MK-17 against the temple of the alien. “Don’t yell out or I’ll blow your brains all over that wall over there. Tell me now, how many are there aboard?”
A look of defiance crossed the Kracori’s face and he shook his head. “I will tell you nothing, Human.”
“Fine,” Tobias said. He looked at Tindal. “Cut off his nose. Maybe that will make him talk.”
Adam could see Tindal hesitate; he knew he didn’t have a knife. But after the briefest of moments, Tindal leaned back and reached with his left hand behind his back.
“No! No! There are only four of us onboard.”
“Where are the rest?” Tobias asked.
“Most are aboard Ludif Jonnif’s ship. There is a celebration going on,” the alien nodded toward Adam “regarding him and the Juirean. It is a joyous day for us.…” The Kracori’s voice trailed off as he realized just how silly the statement now sounded .
“Where are they, the others aboard this ship?”
“When last I saw them, they were in a feeding room.”
“Where is that?”
“Next level up, next to the stairway exit.”
“Left or right?” The alien seemed confused. “When you come off the stairs, which way do you turn?”
“To the right. Yes, to the right.”
“Tindal, stay with him,” Tobias commanded. “We’re going up. If he’s lying … kill him.”
“No! No! I meant you turn left,” the scared alien corrected.
Tobias smiled, displaying all his pearly-whites at the alien. “That’s better.” And then he brought the butt of the MK-17 down on the head of the Kracori. The force was sufficient to break a hole in the creature’s skull and penetrate the brain. The Kracori officer died instantly.
“Let’s move,” Tobias said as he pressed through the others in the room and out into the corridor, the MK held ready in his right hand.
At a point in the curving corridor they came to the stairway that would lead them to the second level. Again with Tobias and Tindal in the lead, the team of six Humans climbed the stairs and positioned themselves at either side of the doorway just to the left of the stairs.
Rutledge once again tripped the entry pad and the door slid open. The two armed SEALs entered the room in tandem.
It only took a split second for the Humans to see that all three of the other aliens aboard were in the room. They opened fire with their weapons, and a second later all three lay dead, puffs of smoke rising into the room from the clean, level-one bolt-holes burned into their flesh.
Adam turned to Riyad. “Go down and get Kaylor and Jym and meet us on the bridge.” Riyad ran off.
Sherri and Tindal helped Adam up the last flight of stairs leading to the bridge, where he collapsed into one of the side console chairs, much to the relief of his burning ribs. A moment later, Kaylor and Jym followed Riyad into the room. The alien pilot slipped into the command seat and confidently began the preparations for lift off.
“Even this far from the others ships, our leaving will be noticed,” Kaylor said. Jym had taken a position at the nav console and was pulling up star charts even before his ass hit the seat.
“Nothing we can do about that,” Adam said. “Just do it as quietly as possible.”
Kaylor looked back at Adam as if to say are you crazy? “Either we go up on chemical drive – which sounds like a bomb going off – or we go on gravity drive and rip half the landing field away. Either way, I think the Kracori will know we left.”
“Can we use the gravity drive to take out their ships?” Rutledge asked anxiously.
“We’d only destroy a couple and damage a few more. That would still leave the bigger ones near the tents to come after us,” said Kaylor, much to the Chief’s disappointment.
“How fast can we get up?” Tobias asked.
“Once we’re clear of the surface we can switch to gravity drive. But it will still take us a couple of minutes to reach space.”
“Jym,” Adam said, “get all the weapons online and charging. There doesn’t seem to be any way we can do this without fighting our way out—”
Just then a loud explosion reverberated through the spaceship as a brilliant light filled the pilothouse through the forward view port. Another of the Klin saucers had just engaged a chemical drive, sending a tidal wave of smoke and noise across the grass landing field.
“They’re coming after us!” Jym screamed.
“No, i
t’s the ship taking Hydon to their homeworld!” Adam corrected. “Kaylor, can you get us up using that ship as cover?”
“We’re ready, but the sound will still be significant on the surface, and that other ship will know we’ve followed them.”
“Just do it! We’ll deal with the consequences as they come up. Go!”
Kaylor did his thing, and seconds later the ship was engulfed in its own cloud of white chemical smoke. The landing field fell away quickly as all eyes turned to Jym’s screen, watching for any signs of pursuit. As the seconds increased – and still no other liftoffs – they began to relax.
But then the comm link buzzed.
Jym looked to Adam for guidance. Adam shook his head.
The link buzzed again. Kaylor switched to gravity drive and they experienced the customary surge of vertigo as the internal gravity wells took priority.
After the third buzz Adam nodded for the link to be opened.
“Krylorif, I was not aware you are to accompany us to Eilsion?” said the voice on the link.
“We are not,” Adam answered in quick short words. “Reconnaissance.”
Only a moment went by before the voice came back over the speakers. “I was not aware.” Everyone on the bridge held their breath. “Success with your mission, Krylorif. I envy you. We have three long months before reaching Eilsion, and you know what it is like to traverse the Discourse.”
“Enjoy,” Adam spit out.
“We shall endeavor. And Krylorif, please seek medical attention. You sound as if you may have an affliction of the Juirean Junk, like so many of us.” The Kracori laughed through the speakers and then Jym signified that the link had been cut.
“Juirean Junk, huh,” Sherri said. “Is that anything like Montezuma’s Revenge?”
“Miss Valentine, you seem fixated on bowel movements tonight,” Tobias said with a smile. “Something you’re not telling us?”
“Stay frosty, people,” Adam said. “That was just the first hurdle. You can bet that on the surface they know we shouldn’t have left, and pretty soon they’ll notice that all their prisoners have disappeared. They’ll put two and two together, and then a simple phone call to their ships in orbit and we’re running for our lives.”
“So what’s new?” Riyad said with his patented grin. “That seems to be a one of our favorite past times.”
Chapter 23
Once away from the planet Kaylor initiated a full gravity well and six hours later they were leaving the Juirean stellar system. The space around them was full of all kinds of spacecraft, but very few with the gravity signatures of Klin ships. The vast majority were Juireans, or other species, still fleeing the area after the Kracori invasion. There were literally thousands of them, and the mass of gravity signatures helped to mask that of Adam’s ship from the pursuers he was sure had been alerted.
After seven hours – and easily a dozen or more attempts by the surface to contact the ship – the team began to relax, believing they had actually gotten away clean. They tried to celebrate as best they could, but then were hit with the reminder that if they couldn’t reach the fleet in time, their homeworld would be turned into a radioactive wasteland.
As she had done on too many occasions in the past, Sherri found the ship’s sickbay and patched Adam up as best she could. She didn’t think his ribs were broken, just badly bruised. Either way, it really hurt for him to breathe. There were medicines onboard, but none of those onboard could read Kracori to know what they were for, so they didn’t risk it.
Once he was bandaged up, Adam returned to the bridge. “So Jym, how soon can we attempt to make contact?”
“It’s not as simple as that,” the tiny alien stated. “We are in a Klin-designed ship –”
“As is the fleet,” Adam interjected.
“That will help,” Jym conceded, “but we have no idea what frequencies they may be monitoring and what relays might be compatible with Klin wormhole technology.”
“What did he just say?” John Tindal asked from a seat at the other side of the bridge. Although the Petty Officer First Class had been traipsing through space for over a year, he had never bothered to inquire into the technology that made communication over light years even possible. As long as it worked, he was happy not knowing. But wormhole technology, that was something new.
Adam ignored him. “Can we send out a broad spectrum broadcast, or send the same thing out over multiple frequencies?
“Yes we can. If you make a recording, I can have it sent out over a million frequencies if you wish. There is still no guarantee that any of them would be picked up and relayed throughout the network. And if any were, they would be in the open and able to be heard by anyone.”
“Good point, Jym. Then I will have to send it in a code of some kind, but not so much that it would be lost to anyone on the fleet who might be listening.”
He thought for a moment, and then the answer became obvious. We’re Humans. Not too many people out here know anything about us.
“Okay, Jym, start recording.” Jym pressed a few buttons and then signaled for Adam to start. “Team Leader to Commander SEAL Team Six. Team Leader to Commander SEAL Team Six. This is A.C., please respond on this frequency. Urgent – I repeat urgent – message to follow. Please respond ST6 Commander.” He nodded for Jym to cut the recording.
“Send that out on as many frequencies as you can in the direction you believe the fleet will be located. Loop it; keep it going until we hear something back.”
“The message will go out, Adam. Whether anyone will be listening within your fleet is an unknown.”
Adam sneered. “I always love your positive attitude, Jym. It always brightens my day.”
Chapter 24
Jonnif Vinn was still struggling to overcome the effects of the sedatives he had been administered the night before. In light of the morning’s devastating news, it was imperative that he do so – and do so quickly.
“How could Kaddof have allowed this to happen?” he said to his aide Mininof walking beside him. “It should have been apparent to him right away that something was not right.”
“We all heard the launches, Jonnif, including yourself,” Mininof countered.
“Yes, but I was not myself. I have very little recollection of the activities of the last night.”
“In defense of Kaddof, he did raise the alarm and attempted to contact the ship. When that was unsuccessful he spoke with Krylorif who informed him the other ship was on a reconnaissance mission.”
“Which was untrue,” Jonnif growled. “And by the time the deception was discovered, the ship was already in a well and merged with the hundreds of other ships fleeing the Cluster. Why wasn’t Adam Cain killed in the arena?”
“You left orders not to, my Ludif, and you were not available to amend those orders.”
“So this is all my fault?”
Mininof did not reply immediately. He waited until he had gathered his thoughts before responding. “It was simply an unfortunate set of circumstances, Jonnif, impossible to have been foreseen.”
“I doubt if the Ludif Council will see it as such.”
Ludif Council, Jonnif thought. What a ridiculous term: Ludif.
Being more-traveled than most Kracori, Jonnif was in the unique position to see the Kracori in a more comparative light. He also knew all Kracori were Ludifs; it was what made them Kracori in the first place.
Ludif was the term used for the mythical gene that made the Kracori the superior creatures upon their homeworld of Eilsion, the one thing that made them different from the animals in the trees. It was loosely translated into meaning the god-gene, and for thousands of years the Kracori did consider themselves as Gods upon their world.
With Eilsion buried deep within a brilliant nebulae comprised of hundreds of stars, the Kracori had gazed up at the fiery swath of red and green with no false illusion that they were the only creatures in the universe – just the most superior. And when they turned their telescopes to their
sister world of Olypon, located only slightly more distant from the birth star of Kyrils, they saw a world of vast blue oceans and land of brown and green.
In the early years the Kracori imagined all kind of creatures evolving on Olypon, from deadly threats to benevolent Ludif-like beings in their own right. But when the first Kracori landed upon the surface they found it to be a much younger world than Eilsion, and therefore had lacked the time required for development of any life forms higher than grasses, fishes and small reptiles.
Disappointed, the Kracori nevertheless established settlements on Olypon, a world of considerably lighter surface gravity than their own. At first, the settlers of the planet reveled in the gravity of Olypon, yet as many years passed, and even new generations of Kracori were born on the planet, they realized that these Kracori could never return to their homeworld after having lost the ability to function in the oppressive weight of Eilsion.
By the time the Klin arrived nearly fifteen hundred years before, most of the Kracori colonies on Olypon had been abandoned, with the now lower-class Kracori still living there destined for eventual extinction.
The arrival of the Klin had come as no surprise to the Kracori; it was either going to be aliens contacting the Kracori or they contacting the aliens. The Klin had arrived bearing gifts; advanced technology, engineering and medicines. They also brought with them knowledge of the larger universe beyond the nebulae and of the myriad of races that existed elsewhere.
Yet the most important thing the Klin provided the Kracori with was a destiny, a new legend to be pursued. The aliens informed the Kracori that they were to one day share the galaxy with the Klin, as rulers, as its masters. Out of all the races in the universe that the Klin had encountered, the Kracori had been selected for this honor.