The Human Chronicles Saga : Boxset #2 (The Human Chronicles Saga Boxsets)

by T. R. Harris

  Molison bristled, yet he wasn’t through. “Then what about master to student? I am sure I could learn much from you.”

  “I’m sure you could,” Panur said. “I, on the other hand, would find the boredom impossible to cope with. Besides, it took me five thousand years to acquire my knowledge. If I spent time passing even a fraction of what I know on to you, then you would be circumventing hundreds, even thousands of years of required study. That would lessen my accomplishments and bolster yours, of which neither do I desire.”

  “You have been alive for five thousand years?” Molison couldn’t believe what he just heard.

  “Why is it in this universe that everyone repeats what I just said?”

  “If you are through playing with your toys, Panur, we really must get on with this meeting,” the Sol-Kor leader said. “You asked what you can do for us? We seek information regarding the race called Juireans. Their essence is especially rich in nutrients and the taste is to our liking. The first vessel we harvested in this universe was of this strain. At that time, we pulled information from the ship’s databanks, such as languages and certain technological factors, yet we did not seek the location of the Juirean home planets. When the mainship returned for this data, that was when it was destroyed by the Humans. We also seek information regarding the location of the Human’s growing fields. Even though they have not been tested yet—that will come within hours, as a least some of the Humans are sacrificed for this purpose—I imagine we will find them to be in the same category. It seems that the more advanced a strain, the higher its nutritional value.” The creature took a moment to look Molison and his two colleagues up and down. “As the self-proclaimed most-advanced strain in this galaxy, it goes without saying that, if given the opportunity, the Klin would be welcomed on our table as well.”

  “Undoubtedly, Noslead Vosmin,” Dinis said, quick to head off this line of conversation. “Yet we number less than two hundred thousand individuals. We survive on huge colony ships, without even a planet to call our own. The Klin wouldn’t even satisfy the needs of your Colony for a day.”

  “Then you have no fleet to assist us?” Vosmin barked out.

  Molison felt his stomach tighten. He had not imagined the aliens needing help is this arena. With their suppressor beam they seemed fully capable of providing for themselves.

  “Is that what you seek from us, military assistance?” The scientist asked.

  “It would not have been unwelcomed. Yet now I must think on this further. You cannot assist us in subduing unruly crops, your numbers are too small to be considered a viable food source, and, according the Panur, you can offer no technological insights that might help us acquire more food.” He turned to Panur. “This is why we do not need nor seek allies. Food cannot help us acquire more food.”

  “We have other items which might be of interest to you,” Dinis quickly said.

  “Such as?”

  “Forgive me, yet not knowing where this meeting may lead, we left these items on our ship. Additionally, they are bulky and not easily transferred within shuttles.”

  “You still have not told me what these items are, or how they can help the Colony.”

  “In light of the ominous tone this meeting has taken, please afford me the luxury of not providing details at this time. I would not want to insult anyone with the presumption of these items being of superior quality as yours. Allow your scientist to travel to our ship, where he can be the judge of what would be of value and what would not.”

  “Are you refusing to tell me—”

  “I accept your invitation, Senior Fellow,” said Panur, interrupting the Noslead.

  “I cannot allow this.”

  “I will be fine, Vosmin. Your concern for me is touching.”

  “My concern is for the Queen…and for the Colony.”

  “Again, I will be fine.” He turned to Senior Fellow Dinis. “How soon can we travel to your ship? I assume your scientist will accompany us?”

  “Of course. He will act as your guide.”

  “Excellent. Now Vosmin, while I am gone you might post additional guards around the array this night.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Human Adam Cain and his associates are, at this very moment, planning to destroy it.”

  193

  Night had fallen by the time the Humans from the meeting tent—as well as all the others in the camp—were hit with the suppressor beam, rounded up and placed in a large outside holding area where they were exposed to the falling temperatures of the desert world. With their blue beams fully activated from a dozen of the sword-like weapons surrounding the corral, the guards didn’t feel the need to pay much attention to the herd of passive Humans. Even as the chill increased, the addled creatures would not feel the cold. Nor would they require food, water or special provisions to relieve themselves. They would stand until they fell and then remain there until the Sol-Kor decided what to do with them, lying in their own filth and excrement.

  Adam, Sherri and Riyad had no trouble slipping away from the docile mass of Humans without being seen. There were lights throughout the camp, yet none to speak of only a hundred yards beyond. The desert sky was black and moonless, yet the three escapees managed to conjure up tiny balls of static electricity with their ATD’s to help navigate the unfamiliar landscape as they wound around to the opposite side of the array hill from where the camp lie.

  Far above, they could make out tiny explosions of light. “Looks like they’re sending a ship through every thirty seconds or so,” Sherri commented in a whisper. She had no idea if the Sol-Kor had guards posted around the array—they hadn’t to this point. But with the buildup of their fleet, as well as so many visitors in the camp, one could never tell if security had now become a priority.

  “I’m no mathematical wizard,” Adam said, “but I make it out to be about one hundred twenty ships per hour.”

  “To strip a planet clean of its entire population of Primes would take a lot of ships,” Sherri said. “They’re not out just to kill a lot of people. They then need to gather up all the bodies for transport them back to wherever the Hell they’re from.”

  “Exactly,” Adam said. “That’s why we have to shut down this thing. I’m sure they need a certain number of ships before they can start messing with whole planets.”

  “You do realize we don’t have any explosives with us, don’t you, Captain Cain?”

  Adam patted his pockets in feigned surprise. “Oh damn, Riyad, I must have left them in my other pocket.”

  “So what is the plan, Kemosabe?”

  Hearing Riyad say the word Kemosabe in his thick Lebanese accent almost made Adam laugh out loud. Instead he said: “Well, Tonto, with something this big, this complicated and this focused, usually all it takes is a swift kick to knock it out of alignment, at least long enough to stop the flow of lunch trucks into our universe.”

  “Rather than the Lone Ranger, we’re more like the Three Stooges, “ Sherri threw in. “As soon as we muck up the works, they’ll be all over us, and with no cavalry to ride in and save the day.”

  “What’s with all the negativity? Let’s just get inside one of those generator rooms and see what kind of mess we can make. If nothing else we pull the plug and kick out a few vacuum tubes.”

  “That’ll do it,” Riyad said. “I’m sure in this day and age replacement vacuum tubes can be pretty hard to find.”

  They scurried up the dark side of the low hill, but soon found themselves in a bath of light at the top. The three impossibly tall towers disappeared above them in a dizzying display of spectacular construction. Adam became woozy just looking up at them. Focusing on the squat generator buildings seemed like a better idea.

  Each tower had its own generator, and even though light covered the structures, they didn’t see any Sol-Kor posted around. As they approached, the buildings that at first seemed small compared to the towers, were actually quite large, each four stories tall and over two hundred feet on e
ach side.

  There were two small doors plus one large sliding panel along the front face of the building, and Adam signaled for Riyad and Sherri to stay in the cover of the building’s shadow as he ran forward to check the first door. It was unlocked—in fact there was no locking mechanism at all. This made sense. After all, he was sure the astronauts who first landed on the Moon didn’t need a key to get back inside the LEM. And this facility was so far off the beaten path that anyone finding their way here and wanting inside the building wouldn’t let something like a locked door stand in their way.

  There were no lights on inside the building and the place was too huge to go looking for a switch. So Riyad conjured up a large static ball and placed it high above them. With no windows in the building they felt confident that the light wouldn’t give away their presence.

  “I can’t pick up anything with my ATD in here,” Sherri said.

  “Me either,” Riyad commented. “Looks like the Klin don’t subscribe to Formilian design specifications.”

  “We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way,” Adam said. “Look for anything that looks like a control console or power box. This thing was designed to run automatically for years if necessary. If we can find the central control, we may be able to knock this particular tower out of commission, and I’m pretty sure they need all three to make a hole in space.”

  The problem they soon ran into was that nothing looked like a control panel or power box. The entire building was one huge machine, with miles of thick cable, conduit, readout dials, cooling pipes and fans. Yet without the need for on-site supervision, there apparently was also no need for a central on-off switch, or even a console with computer screens. The health of the facility may even be monitored and controlled remotely without the need for any live input at all.

  Another problem was that there were no loose pieces of equipment, tools or surplus of any kind lying around. The place was spotlessly clean and everything they saw was attached to something else. Where was the huge metal rod they could stick into a cog somewhere to stop the machine? The answer: there wasn’t one. If Adam and his crew were going to start smashing things, they’d have to do it with their hands and feet.

  “C’mon, this is ridiculous!” Adam cried out. “Is there nothing around here we can use to break things with?”

  “Over here,” Sherri called out. “I may have something.”

  Riyad and Adam met up with her a moment later. “Up there, it’s a railing of some sort. Looks like it was built for people—or Klin I mean.”

  “Klin are people, too.” Adam said sardonically, Then they began climbing up pipes and conduits to reach the walk way three stories up, near the top of the room.

  It was indeed a walkway, and they chose the direction that held the most promise, one that ended at a wider platform area with a wire floor. There was a large display panel set against an outer wall of the building with several rows of imbedded gauges, and with a series of thin pipes leading out and into a huge humming bank of equipment.

  “Help me with this top rail bar,” Adam said. “We may be able to break it off and then use it to twist up some of those pipes.”

  The three Humans began to tug and push on the top bar of the railing. It was about two inches in diameter and appeared to come in sections of ten feet each. After a minute, the metal of the railing was bent with the bar beginning to separate from the rest of the structure. Another thirty seconds and they had their tool.

  Adam took the rod to where about a dozen thin tubes joined the huge display panel. He placed it between two of the conduits and pushed up on the bar. The tubes bent easily. He continued to push upward until they began to wrap around each other—and then one snapped. A brilliant flash of electric light temporarily blinded the trio.

  “Hey dummy, make sure you don’t electrocute yourself,” Sherri said.

  “Little late for that, isn’t it?”

  “Just bend some more. I didn’t notice anything happen the first time.”

  Working with urgency now, Adam soon had half the tubes broken and spitting out flaring sparks of electricity before falling dark. “C’mon, dammit. The wires in these tubes have to do something—”

  Just then the huge humming equipment bank was no longer humming. That has to be significant, Adam thought, and for good measure he kept twisting and breaking tubes until the entire connection with the gauge panel and the equipment bank was severed.

  Now other parts of the huge machine began shutting down, one after another. Adam took the metal rod, and just because he could, began to smash one end of it into the glass covered gauges. He didn’t know if it would make a difference or not, but it sure did make him feel better.

  “I’ll go outside and see if the flashes are still coming from the portal,” Riyad called out. He hopped over the railing, and in the light gravity of the planet, managed to land three stories down without injury. He looked up at Adam and Sherri and smiled. Even from this distance, his teeth glowed unnaturally white.

  He disappeared out one of the smaller doors and was gone a full minute. Sherri and Adam stood at the mangled railing, waiting with anticipation for him to return. Finally the door opened and Riyad entered.

  “Good news,” he declared. “Looks like the portal has been closed.” Then he stepped further into the room. “In other news, the bad guys are here.”

  A squad of huge, black armored Sol-Kor flooded in behind him, taking Riyad by the arms and shoving him against the front wall of the building. They pointed their weapons up at the other two Humans, and this time the blue beam was absent. Whatever the weapons were capable of doing, Adam and Sherri were reluctant to find out.

  And then Noslead Vosmin entered. His helmet faceplate was clear and Adam could hear his words through external speakers. “I have been informed that our pulse beam does not work on the three of you. I can assure you that we also have more traditional energy weapons, ones I’m sure you are not immune to. Would you like to test my assumption?”

  “Another time, perhaps,” Adam called down.

  “Come down; you do know we can have the generator repaired within the hour?”

  “From our calculations, that’s about a hundred and twenty fewer invaders into our universe,” Sherri called down.

  “Insignificant. A reaper fleet consists of ten thousand ships, and when we’re done there will be several such fleets operating within this galaxy alone. And with this portal back in operation, we will be able to jump from galaxy to galaxy within your universe, feeding, reaping and sending the harvest back to Sol.”

  “Sol? What’s Sol?”

  “Sol is our star system. It is where the Sol-Kor originated.”

  “No shit?” Adam said. He looked at Sherri. “I believe we definitely have a case of copyright infringement, my dear.”

  “I would say so, and just think how large that class-action lawsuit would be.”

  “Stop talking amongst yourselves and come down. You are wasting my time, and this armor is very irritating.”

  Adam and Sherri climbed down from the platform using traditional methods, saving for later the revelation of their special talents in the planet’s low gravity.

  Later came as they approached the eight Sol-Kor guards on the floor of the building and their one leader. Adam had already contacted Riyad and Sherri telepathically through their ATD’s, and they were ready to go. With death appearing to be the only alternative to action at this point, the three Humans agreed that going down without a fight was against their nature. And besides, there were only nine aliens and three of them. The odds hardly seemed fair…for the aliens, that is.

  Although the gray creatures all wore armor suits, Adam had noticed how thin and lightweight they appeared to be. They were more like environmental outfits rather than real armor. Adam neared Vosmin, while Sherri positioned herself between two of the others. Riyad was being held by two other guards with his back to the wall.

  The aliens seem pretty lackluster with how they
hold their weapons, Adam said through the telepathy device. We should be able to take two out each. That still leaves three. Someone is going to have to grab a weapon.

  I have the best angle on the rest of them; I’ll do it, Riyad said.

  Get ready. Count of three. Three, two, one…now!

  Adam planted a solid forearm into the under part of Vosmin’s helmet, the force of which lifted the huge alien off the floor and slammed him into the metal wall of the building. In another blur, Adam jumped at the alien to his right, grabbing him around the neck. He twisted at the helmet, ripping it off the creature’s head. Adam was curious as to how the Sol-Kor would react to the planet’s atmosphere without their suits, but he would have to wait to find out. Because as he pulled off the guard’s helmet he felt the neck snap, and the grey alien crumbled to the floor.

  Just then a flash of light came from his right. Riyad was there with an alien rifle cradled at his waist, with successive pulses of angry white light pumping out the barrel. Three guards stumbling backwards, with fiery holes blasted through their black armor.

  Sherri was having fun, too. She had swung out a leg and tripped one of her two guards, before placing a knee firmly into the groin of the second one. She had no idea what affect it would have on the alien, although most Prime males carried their junk in about the same place. It was at that point that she remembered these weren’t normal males. They were part of a colony of drones spawned by a queen. They were eunuchs—all of them—and as such it was only the force of her knee that caused the alien to buckle over. At that point she was presented with an irresistible target, and even with his helmet on, the creature was knocked unconscious when Sherri swung doubled-clenched fists against the side of the guard’s head. Next Adam watched as she calmly steeped up to the alien she’d tripped and planted a throat-crushing foot to his neck.