by T. R. Harris
He would take his chances with that for the moment, as he gained control of the CW-comm computer aboard the Kracori Class-5 warship. He sent a flash message to the fleet, a blanket broadcast since he wasn’t sure if the flagship had regained control of their systems by then. “Human spacecraft destroyed … no survivors and no transmissions sent prior to destruction. Own CW-array damaged in the engagement; going offline for repairs.” The authentication signature for the message would be for the Kracori ship, and would be considered legitimate, at least until a follow-up link was established. Adam wouldn’t let that happen.
He cut all power within the Kracori dreadnaught.
The Kracori would be helpless aboard their massive ship, fumbling around in the dark and ever-growing cold trying to repair the unrepairable. Unfortunately, Adam had no way of knowing if the message he’d sent would delay the fleet’s departure from the Aslon system.
He unstrapped and went to check on Sherri. She was still groggy, yet her awareness was returning. “Did we survive?” she asked without looking at Adam.
“Nah, they got us. We’re dead … but at least we’ll be together through eternity.”
“So, we’re in Hell?” she said, her groggy voice devoid of humor.
“Anything broken?” Adam asked as he began to squeeze the joints of her arms and legs.
“Do you mind? I don’t think anything’s broken, but I’m still ticklish.” She glanced over at the Klin. “How’d he make out?”
Even without examining the alien Adam knew he was dead. “Not so good, looks like we may need to grab one of the Kracori if we want anyone to interrogate. And speaking of that, I’m going to wait a few more minutes for most of them to pass out from lack of air and then I’m going aboard their ship. I’m sure I can score some replacement focusing rings to get us back to full power.”
“Be careful, some of the Kracori may be in environment suits and still alive.”
Even though Adam was well aware of that possibility, he simply smiled at her. “Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“That’s what I’m here for, to keep a motherly eye on you.”
“Oh don’t say that! Now some of the things we’ve done together seem … well, disgusting!”
Sherri wrinkled her nose. “Speaking of disgusting, I think the Klin shit himself when he died. Help me get his carcass out of here before he really smells up the place.”
Half an hour later, Adam was decked out in a full environment suit and wearing a gas-powered thruster on his back. With the outer doors blown off, the landing bay was now open to space, so he had to use the emergency airlock located just below the pilothouse to exit the Pegasus. Once free of the ship, he activated the thrusters and shot off toward the looming bulk of the Kracori starship, now illuminated only by the light from the nearby stars.
Since the Kracori used energy weapons – like ninety-nine percent of the Expansion – he didn’t bother taking any such weapons with him; his ATD could disable any of these carried by survivors. Of course, he did take his Glock 21, .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun. Old habits die hard. Even though he had dumped the remaining atmosphere from the Kracori ship and opened it up to the deadly vacuum of space, there could still be pockets of pressurized atmosphere trapped in sealed compartments, as well as dozens of Kracori dressed in environment suits with their own air supply. He still needed to be cautious.
Adam knew he’d find ample supply of the larger focusing rings he needed aboard the Kracori warship, and once the Pegasus was fitted with them, he could beat the alien fleet to Earth by a couple of days, if not more. It wouldn’t be a lot of time to forewarn the planet, yet it was still better than nothing.
59
Located along the shiny metal hull of the massive Kracori starship were numerous access ports used for the loading of stores and to allow ingress and egress for repair crews. Each hatch was joined to a small internal airlock, and it wasn’t difficult for Adam to trace the electrical path to one of these ports and turn the power back on. He slipped inside the ship.
The internal gravity generators were offline, so he floated into the corridor and worked his way aft toward the generator room with the help of various handholds along the way. He was familiar with the layout of Klin-designed Class-5 warships so he made good time. Along the way he encountered dozens of dead Kracori, their hideously disfigured faces having literally exploded when Adam not only shut off the atmosphere to the ship, but also opened it up to the pressure-less vacuum of space. Even though this action had left a horrible mess throughout the ship, it did seem like a more efficient means of incapacitating the crew rather than waiting for them all to suffocate.
The series of compartments which combined to form the generator ‘room’ were secured behind a massive metal barricade designed to protect the rest of the ship in case of an explosion from within. Rather than spend time tracing the various electrical pathways to this particular doorway Adam simply restored power to the entire ship. It would remain without oxygen and gravity, but now the internal lights flashed on and he was able to activate the controls to the huge barricade.
Focusing rings were extremely-vital components of the gravity-drive system, although they had a nasty habit of burning out after about a year of transit time. Large ships such as Class-5’s always carried ample spares, and they would be located in one of the storage compartments within the generator room. It didn’t take Adam long to find what he was looking for.
These high-capacity focusing rings were about four feet in length and eight inches in diameter, with a bulbous end where the energy from the generators would be sent out to begin the dynamo-effect of recycling and compressing the beams from the other rings to form the gravity singularities of the drive. Adam had always been amazed that such small devices helped make faster-than-light travel possible. The technology was far above his paygrade; all he knew was that they worked – as long as they stayed focused and compatible with the energy output of the generators.
He strapped three of the rings together and then tethered the package to his suit. This would give him the two replacement rings he needed, plus a spare.
When he floated out of the storage room and back into the main chamber near the generators, he noticed a shadow move along the deck, coming from the direction of the outer corridor. Sure enough, when he reached out with his ATD he detected the energy signatures of four flash weapons. He paused only slightly before continuing his hand-over-hand journey. The weapons would not be a problem, but the fact that four Kracori were still alive bothered him. They would be dressed in environment suits and possibly even battle armor. The armor would make his Glock useless, so as he moved toward the huge barricade doors and spotted the Kracori, he pursed his lips and nodded his head. Yep, they were wearing armor.
The four startled Kracori turned toward Adam’s floating figure and lifted their weapons. They were confused and visibly upset when their weapons refused to discharge. The line of hulking aliens – dressed in even bulkier body armor – were secured to the metal deck by magnetic boots and formed an effective blockade to Adam leaving the room. There was a moment where he froze in mid-air, staring at the aliens as they stared back at him.
Adam’s ATD traced the comm units within the Kracori suits and opened a link. “I don’t suppose you’ll just let me pass?”
The four Kracori looked at each, confused, yet once they realized the communication was coming from the invader, they stood even taller and tighter, while extracting projection swords from their gear. This was unexpected: who carried swords as their normal compliment of armament anymore?
Adam wore only a thin, composite spacesuit, which would offer little resistance to the razor-sharp blades. The Kracori knew this, too, and they began to slowly spread their ranks and advance towards him. Adam pulled himself up and drifted to the ceiling of the generator room, high above the aliens. For an answer, the Kracori deactivated their mag-boots, and employing small gas jets within their battle armor, began to surround his posi
tion.
These were not your typical aliens – they were Kracori, equal in strength and coordination to Humans. And there were four of them, armed with deadly swords, and maneuvering through the vastness of the generator chamber with more dexterity than Adam was capable of. He had his thruster pack, yet that was designed for movement through open space, and did not provide the refined control he would need within a confined space. He moved along the ceiling like a monkey through a jungle canopy, trying to keep from being cornered by the advancing aliens.
“You are the Human responsible for the destruction of our companion vessels, as well our crew.” The voice came over the comm as a vicious, animal growl. “I do not know how you have done the things you’ve done, but now we require nothing more than your death to satisfy our legends.”
“Can’t we talk this over like civilized beings?” Adam moved further away, while alternately commanding the ATD to begin the priming process for the generators – the nine massive units that filled the floor of the vast chamber.
“If you animals were civilized that would be news to the Kracori,” the leader spoke again. “Your kind will soon be exterminated from the universe, and there will be a celebration of joy throughout.”
They were closer now, skillfully cutting off all his avenues of escape. Adam found a four-inch thick conduit running along the length of the ceiling and wrapped his arm around it. “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,”
The aliens were now close enough for him to peer through their faceplates … and see the look of confusion on their faces from his latest comment. Can’t any of these creatures grasp the concept of slang?
Just then, Adam had the generators engage the ship’s internal gravity-wells – yet set on double the intensity level of both Human and Kracori. The startled look on the alien faces was priceless – at least for the split second before they plunged a hundred feet to the metal deck below, accelerating at twice normal rate of fall in the heavier gravity.
Adam didn’t have the luxury of watching them impact the floor. Instead he screamed through the pain of his injured shoulder as his body weight suddenly jumped from zero to nearly four hundred pounds, plus with the weight of the three focusing rings adding to his agony. It felt as if his arm was being ripped off as the conduit pipe bit into his flesh.
Through the excruciating pain, Adam commanded the ATD to reduce the level of the internals, in fact now down to about a tenth of Earth-normal. He unhooked his arm from the metal pipe and floated gently toward the deck.
When he landed he discovered that two of the Kracori were still alive, moving in jerky motions inside their thick suits, bodies shattered by the tremendous impact and unable to lift the heavy armor encasing them, even in the near-none-existent gravity. Adam approached the nearest one and opened a link to the alien’s comm.
“One day there will be a reckoning … and only one of our races will survive.” He leaned down until he could look through the blood-splattered viewplate of the Kracori’s helmet. “And look what just one puny Human has done to five of your most-powerful warships.” He smiled at the vacant eyes of the alien. “How’s your Legend hanging now, asshole?”
Adam left the generator room a moment later, leaving the Kracori to spend the final few minutes of his life in excruciating agony.
Before leaving the Kracori warship, Adam severed the rail-slides for the flash cannon and set the batteries to begin a slow build-up. He made his way back to the Pegasus with the replacement focusing rings, knowing that in another fifteen minutes or so a critical mass would be reached and all nineteen cannon would explode in a fiery ball of pure white energy. The mighty Class-5 warship would be left a twisted hulk of death. Adam hoped the advancing Kracori fleet would happen upon the carcass; it would serve as a stark warning to the rest of the aliens not to mess with the Humans. At least not this Human….
Adam moved the Pegasus a safe distance from the Kracori ship before it exploded and installed the replacement focusing rings in short order. Ten minutes later, they were safely wrapped in an unimaginably-deep gravity-well and bolting for home. They would arrive in seven days; the aliens would throw caution to the wind and engage system-disrupting deep-wells of their own. They would arrive two days later.
60
Riyad Tarazi …
The Dysion Shield lay directly ahead of them, with Ruszel at the controls. It was an impressive and mind-bogglingly huge cloud of gas and pre-stellar material forming a vast bubble over thirty light-years in diameter. In a far-distant past a gigantic star had exploded near here, sending out a thick cloud of debris and forming the Shield. Within the interior of the bubble, some stars had survived the massive explosion, while others were created from it. The space inside the bubble was the Dysion Void, virtually empty space except for these few rogue stars – one of which Riyad hoped was the star for the planet Elision.
“Even with the capabilities of your ship, the transit through the Shield will be slow,” Ruszel informed him. “Your additional array of focusing rings could cause a spontaneous overloading of the wells, so we must be prepared to dissolve at a moment’s notice. Canos will be constantly monitoring well-integrity and will have emergency authorization should he detect an overload.”
“I’m fine with that,” Riyad said as he strapped into a seat directly behind Ruszel’s pilot’s station. Even though he felt somewhat impotent where he sat, he felt confident in the abilities of his two alien companions. Yet once through the Shield, Riyad would be back on the stick.
“I will be cutting the internals now since I will be making some rather fast and radical course changes. This will help reduce our inertia reactions.”
Suddenly, the all-to-familiar feeling of vertigo swept over Riyad. He had experienced weightlessness countless times before, yet it was always these first initial seconds that one could never get used to. Ruszel was smart to place them in weightlessness, otherwise the constant jerking and roller-coaster-like ups and downs would surely have made him sick.
The circular star field before them suddenly began to swing back and forth and up and down in a wild display of streaking colors. Riyad tried to turn his eyes away as he felt an uncomfortable queasiness developing in his stomach, yet try as he might, his attention always returned to viewport.
Seconds turned into minutes, and before he knew it, the clock on the bulkhead showed an hour had passed – and still they weren’t through. The ever-presence knot in his stomach was now at the tipping point, which was his fault for looking at the forward viewport as long as he had. Another few seconds of this and Ruszel would be wearing Riyad’s breakfast on the back of his head….
Suddenly the buffeting ended and the space before them cleared up to reveal a clean circle of near pure white light. Gravity returned to the ship and Ruszel turned, displaying a wide alien grin.
“Great job, Ruszel!” Riyad said with genuine admiration, even as he still fought to keep the knot in his stomach contained. “Only you could have made that passage.”
“My … your ship made it easier than expected.”
“That was easy?”
“We have contacts!” Canos yelled. “Several of them!”
“It’s the Kracori!” Riyad yelled. He shoved Ruszel out of the pilot’s seat and slid in, activating the ship’s defensive screens as he did so.
“No, these are odd contacts,” Canos said. “Massive ships, larger than anything I have ever seen. And it is their mass I am detecting, not their drives.”
Riyad raised the outer shield to cover the main viewport and called up Canos’s navigation screen on the forward display. The young Tel’oran was right – these were massive structures all their own, clearly twenty times larger or more than even the largest Class-5 starship. And there were nine of them in the vicinity of the Ifrit.
Riyad cranked the control stick hard to port and sent maximum power to the focusing rings … yet nothing happened. Instead, well-integrity dropped to zero and the Ifrit entered normal space.
Riyad knew what dampening fields were, and he knew they covered only a small area and required tremendous amounts of energy to maintain. He watched his gauges for the moment their momentum would carry them beyond the field and he could engage the gravity drive again. As he waited, he activated the CW-comm array. The Earth had to be warned.
He worked frantically to focus the array, but every time it looked like he had it, the signal would degrade. “Ruszel, I can’t get the CW to focus. What’s happening?”
The Tel’oran was seated at the comm station and had noticed the problems Riyad was having. “I can’t get a signal, either. It must be the Shield. It contains swirling radiation pockets which are impeding wormhole creation. We may not be able to communicate with the outside until we leave the Void.”
This was not good, Riyad thought. He hadn’t planned on being mute while in the vicinity of Elision. And with these massive contacts he was encountering a potential game-changer in the Human-Kracori arena. The nine huge ships were larger than anything Riyad knew to have ever existed before in the galaxy. If the Kracori could build such ships, then what other surprises would they have in store for the invading Human fleet?
And so he waited, watching for the moment when he could attempt his escape.
However, the moment never arrived, at least not before the Ifrit was surrounded by ten shiny silver disks carrying Class-4 signatures and operating on chemical drives. This was too much firepower for him to counter.