by T. R. Harris
On several of the monitors he could already see space suited crew either at the mangled mess that were the sixteen focusing ring portals, or others making their way to them.
There were huge sheets of metal, bent and twisted, blocking the ports, and Adam couldn’t tell how deep the damage ran. Normally, exterior damage such as this wouldn’t extend far enough to reach the rings themselves. Yet the focusing rings for the Goliath were of a custom design and easily four times as large as those used on the Pegasus. Also, the energy modules that rode atop them were oversized. There was a very good chance, therefore, that the energy from the cannon platforms had reached the rings. If that was the case, then the portal was dead, even if the crew managed to clear the access.
But all they needed were two or three pair—four to six rings out of sixteen—operating to get the huge ship moving. Adam knew that wouldn’t be enough to get them to safety, but it would give them maneuvering capability.
Just then, as Adam watched, one of Nigel’s assault craft flared into view and slammed into the hull—directly on top of one of the repair crews. He switched to other cameras, and in nearly every instance, the same deadly practice was taking place.
Nigel wasn’t going to let the Goliath regain her legs.
Adam pursed his lips in frustration. He knew it was a long shot, but they had to try. The chemical engines had also been knocked out in the initial attack, yet with them the propellant had already leak off into space. There would be no reviving them.
Now hundreds of the large, black pods locked onto the hull of the Goliath, and the creatures inside opened airlocks and began the arduous task of cutting an access into the ship. Adam noticed that the pods formed in clusters, spread out primarily along the fourth, ninth and fifteen decks of the twenty-deck starship.
Adam nodded his approval at the strategy. If Nigel was to resurrect the Goliath, then he didn’t want it shot full of random holes across all decks. Instead, he was concentrating the damage to only a few decks which could be more-easily repaired.
Yet this also meant that his troops would initially be confined to those three decks.
Adam triggered the ship-wide intercom system. “Attention crew of the Goliath.” His voice boomed from speakers throughout the ship. “This is Adam Cain. The boarders are coming in on decks four, nine and fifteen. Evacuate and seal off those decks, and then dump the atmosphere in all three. Set your defensive lines at the main access points between decks above and below the ones mentioned. Do your best to keep them contained. Look for bottlenecks that can be easily defended. Cain out.”
On the screens before him, Adam could now see red hot sparks begin to erupt from bulkheads throughout the three decks targeted by Nigel’s raiders. Soon huge slabs of thick metal were silently crashing to the deck, as displayed in the images. And then the aliens poured aboard.
All were outfitted with breathing masks and wore a thin form of breastplate consisting of hundreds of thin copper wires running through them. The wires formed a crude diffusion screen, designed to dissipate the plasma energy from a flash bolt. For an initial Level-Two or lower hit, the shield would be effective, at least for one shot each. After that the wires would fuse and effectiveness of the shield would fall off drastically. The breastplate would then absorb only some of the energy from a bolt, but not enough to save the life of the wearer.
As Adam watched hundreds of troops enter the Goliath, he noticed very little organization or order to the horde. Aliens of a dozen or more species would enter the ship, look around for their bearings, and then run off down corridors apparently with no idea where they were headed. They were entering the ship blind, yet there were so damn many of them that organization really didn’t matter. The boarders simply rushed headlong throughout the now-abandoned decks looking for anything they could shoot.
Not finding much, they soon began to bunch up at the sealed off access points to the other decks. Cutters were brought in, and soon the blinding light from gas torches washed out many of the screens on Adam wall of monitors.
And that’s when Adam saw them. There weren’t many—probably one for every dozen landing pods. Humans, and they were effectively taking charge of the disorganized mass of alien invaders.
Adam counted between thirty to forty of them, undoubtedly part of Nigel’s original one hundred recruited and provided to him by Kroekus. Adam found it ironic that the Silean would now be fighting for his life against his own creation. And from the looks of things on the monitors, his prospects were dimming by the minute.
The Humans had assumed control of the raiders, and as the access openings were being cut between decks, they pulled back the troops, leaving only the cutting crew. When the doors were breached, there came an incredible rush of atmosphere through the openings, filling the voided areas, and in some cases, even drawing in some of the ship's defenders into enemy territory.
Next, the Humans ordered for several stun grenades to be lobbed through the openings, not all at once, but one every few seconds. And then in groupings of five to ten each, the aliens moved through the doorways.
Adam switched his view to the other side of these access points, only to find that a number of the cameras had been taken offline by the explosions. The ones that hadn’t now showed hundreds of the enemy flooding into decks that had been previously sealed off.
And the death toll was staggering. In fact, the largest obstacle to the raiders’ advance soon came from having to scale the ever-increasing piles of the dead and dying building up in the corridors. Using these piles as cover, the invaders continued to advance from deck to deck.
The crew of the Goliath was fighting with skill and determination, yet still they had to fall back, overwhelmed by the sheer number of the enemy. Occasionally, a large explosion would thunder throughout the ship, the result of a last desperate attempt to stop the advance or to prevent a vital compartment from falling into enemy hands. With decks being chewed up and spit out, the ship was being eaten from the inside out. Nigel may win the day, as the number of defenders gave way to his flood of raiders, yet there wouldn’t be much left of the ship except a burned out shell when the battle was over.
Adam had to smile, as he found a small sense of satisfaction with that thought. But then he suddenly grew tense and his heart leapt into his throat.
On one of the quieter monitors, a lone figure had just step through one of the holes that had been cut in the hull. The ginger hair, the chiseled chin, the freckled face; the face was unmistakable.
Nigel McCarthy had just entered the Goliath.
This was the moment Adam had been waiting for. He didn’t bother with deciphering the numerical code for the location, but instead pulled up the graphic display. Nigel was on deck fifteen, only five below the comm center, and almost directly in line with where he sat.
He scanned the other monitors on the deck, as well as for sixteen, and found that Nigel’s fighters had made it through the initial barricades on sixteen. Adam’s problem now came from trying to figure out how to get down there through all the damn aliens, both his and McCarthy's.
He went back to the monitor showing the Englishman. The scene was a peaceful setting, compared to the frenetic violence taking place on nearly all the other monitors. On this one, there was just Nigel, standing calmly near the black access hole in the hull and looking casually into the room he had just entered.
And then he spotted the camera, one set high on the ceiling and showing the complete expanse of an assembly room of some kind. Adam was able to manipulate the field of view, and so he zoomed in on Nigel’s face.
He was smiling and staring directly into the camera. Then he looked down at a datapad he held in his hand. He waved at the small screen. Adam activated the audio pickup.
“Hello there, Adam Cain. I can see you sitting in that large chair watching me. Although our telepathy devices don't work here, good old-fashion computer hacking does. Smile for the camera.”
Even in the comm room, there were cameras, and Nigel
had tapped into the one showing Adam in the command chair.
Nigel looked around at the room he was in and then back to the pad. “I imagine this has to be a bloody sick moment for you. This mighty starship is about to fall into my hands, and with it, I will kill all the crew, along with that lying, backstabbing slob, Kroekus. And yet I’ve been thinking long and hard what I’m going to do with you. That is still unresolved, and I will probably depend on what you do over the next hour or so.”
Nigel lifted a datapad and was silent for a moment reading data before speaking again. “We’ve secured all the decks from seventeen down to four, so I say another hour and the ship will be mine. Looking at you now, I see you are in a communications center, more-than-likely somewhere near the bridge. That would put you on Level 20. You know, I could have concentrated the breach on that level and hastening our meeting. Yet I love the thrill of the battle too much to have done that. Let our alien peasants fight it out, while we masters of war sit back in our vantage points and revel in what we are able to make others do. It is all quite exhilarating, isn't it, mate?”
“And I’d say a little sadistic,” Adam announced over the room intercom. “You know I’m going to end you.”
Nigel laughed. “That I doubt. You’ve tried so many times before and failed on every occasion. This one will be no different. And yet I believe you have just solved my dilemma for me.”
“What dilemma is that?”
“The question about what to do with you when we meet.”
“I suggest hand-to-hand combat, just like a couple of prize fighters. But this would be to the death.”
“And you see, that is where we differ. I think now I would prefer to keep you alive. Yes, death would be too easy for you. Then all your silly need for vengeance would be over, along with all the pain and frustration you’ve experienced in your lifetime. Yet to keep you as my prisoner, for years to come, now that would be a bloody treat—and bloody in the literal sense of the word, my Yankee friend.”
“You truly are one sick bastard, McCarthy. Now, after all I’ve been through getting here, I see that it was all worth it just to have the chance to end your evil existence.”
“Keep up the front, Adam, if it make you feel better. Yet you are only fooling yourself. You know I’m going to win, and if you choose to take your own life at the end, then that would spoil all my fun. Otherwise, let us meet for one final contest. I will indeed give you a chance, if only to satisfy my own curiosity.”
He shut off the datapad and placed it in a pocket before looking into the room monitor. “I must go now and clean up the mess I’ve made. I also have Kroekus to track down. I will deal with him first. So stay out of harm’s way until I can get to you. I’d hate for some lucky bastard to take you out before we meet.”
He then withdrew an MK flash weapon and blasted the camera.
Adam sat for several moments staring at the black screen. He had no doubt Nigel would survive long enough to make it to the twentieth deck. At that point their match will be fought on ever-shifting ground with a savage, desperate battle taking place all around them. He wouldn’t be able to control the battlefield at that point, so he would have to make things up as they went.
He lifted out of the chair and checked the battery charge on his MK-47. He set the bolt intensity at Level-One, a bolt which could kill a Human. He would prefer to squeeze the life out of Nigel McCarthy with his bare hands, but he would use the bolt launcher if needed.
He headed out of the comm center, having to fight through the mad rush of crew, many of which had retreated from the lower decks and now massed in the upper level, with nowhere else to go.
It was then that he wondered what had happened to Kroekus? And for that matter, he hadn’t seen Nurick or Dracus on any of the monitors, either.
If they had left the bridge deck, then they were probably dead by now, and that he truly regrettable.
He thought back to a time on Pyrum-3, when Nigel McCarthy lay unconscious after an explosion in the hangar bay of the Pegasus and the Phoenix. If only Adam had pulled the trigger at that time, then none of this would be happening. It was hard for him to comprehend how sparing the life of one man could go on to affect the fate of entire galaxies.
If someone eventually does manage to write a detailed and accurate history of the universe, they may record Adam’s one expression of compassion and noble justice as the seminal moment in history.
Damn, I should have pulled the trigger.
158
The moment Adam ran out of the bridge to attend to duties unknown, Dracus grabbed Nurick by the arm and prevented him from following.
“I must go with Adam Cain,” he cried out.
“No, you shouldn’t,” Dracus countered with conviction. “But what you should do is save your life.”
In light of all that was happening around him, this got Nurick’s attention. “I am not opposed to that,” he said.
“Then follow me. We have a ways to go and only moments to get there.”
The pair raced off the bridge. They run to the nearest bank of elevators and found them to be all occupied and with hundreds of others waiting for the doors to open. Dracus took Nurick by the arm again and pulled him to one of the wide stairways leading down to the lower levels of the Goliath.
“Where are we going?” Nurick asked at they fought against the tide of bodies which all seemed to be going in the opposite direction as they were.
“We have to get off the ship,” Dracus panted. He was slender, yet old, and the effort required to make the descent down from the bridge deck was taking its toll.
“How is that possible—and why does not Adam and Lord Kroekus do the same.”
“Kroekus may be steps ahead of us already, but Adam Cain will stay and fight. It is what he does.”
Nurick felt conflicted, but not enough to turn around and return to the bridge. If Dracus had a way off the ship, then he was going to take advantage of it. Adam Cain would just have to follow his own destiny. Nurick preferred to live.
Yet when they sprinted down the now-near deserted third level, Nurick began to question the plan of Dracus. “How are we to exit the ship from this level? There are no escape pods here.”
“We have to pick up something first.”
“What is so important as to delay our escape?”
Dracus ignored him as he stopped in front of a door. He pressed a security code and the door slid open.
Standing in the center of the room was a young, red-hair Human Nurick had never seen before. As a matter of fact, he believed Adam Cain to be the only Human aboard the Goliath.
‘I was wondering if you were going to leave me,” the Human said. “Where is Kroekus?”
“He’s on the bridge level, I believe. But he may be joining us soon. Let us go now.”
The three of them now ran back down the long corridor and down two more flights of stairs and into an emergency evacuation chamber. To Nurick’s horror, all the escape pod bays were empty. Apparently, some of the ship’s crew had chosen to escape rather than face the battle to come. Nurick couldn't blame them. Yet now there were no pods available for them.
“Now we are in the bowels of the ship and the Kirans will soon be attacking. Your plan has failed, Dracus.”
“Have faith, Nurick.” Dracus then approached a large panel in the outer bulkhead of the chamber. He pressed a section of the wall and the panel slid silently aside. On the other side was a large escape pod, its access door yawning open to the trio.
“Is there one for Kroekus, too?” asked the Human.
“Yes,” replied Dracus impatiently. “Now get in. Even if we can jettison, our escape is not guaranteed.”
“I want to go with Kroekus,” said the Human. He hesitated at the pod hatch; as Nurick suffered no such conflict, he rushed past him and into the pod.
Dracus looked out the hatch at the Human. “Don’t be a fool. You know Kroekus better than most of us. You know he won’t sacrifice himself over this metal shel
l and a few thousand beings. He had no desire to become a martyr. He will find his way down here. Now do as I say and get in.”
The Human still hesitated.
“Leave him, if that is what he wishes,” Nurick cried out.
Dracus and the Human stared at each other for a moment longer than Nurick could stand. He reached out to pull Dracus into the pod, just as the Human finally stepped forward and entered as well.
“Excellent. Now let us be gone from this place. Terrible things are about to happen here, and if we do not want to part of it, then we should leave.”
Dracus and the Human remained silent as the pod was shot out into space. Almost immediately, on the tiny monitor that provided the only light in the confined space, they saw dozens, if not hundreds of contacts approaching. Yet to Nurick’s surprise—and relief—they were not fired upon, even as several of the contacts passed within visual range of the pod.
“Why are they now shooting us?” he asked.
“Those are boarding craft; they have no offensive weapons. They serve to only transport raiders to their target.”
“Then we are truly fortunate.”
“Save your relief for later, Nurick,” said Dracus in the dim light of the pod. “We are in an escape pod and deep within enemy space. We have no weapons, limited communications and food and water enough for two weeks at the most. The only ship in the vicinity allied with us is about to be overwhelmed by thousands of raiders and so can offer us no safe haven. It shall be a miracle if we survive to reach friendly space.”
Nurick slumped further down into his tiny and uncomfortable seat. Perhaps I should have stayed aboard and fought alongside Adam Cain, Nurick thought. At least then, with a Human of Adam’s abilities, I might have stood a better chance of survival.
Kroekus had also departed the bridge prior to the raiders locking their pods onto the hull of the Goliath. Yet he had gone to his stateroom to gather up classified documents regarding his fortune and the Polimor fleet.