“I wouldn’t speak too quickly.” I said as I felt the first rumbling. Every reptile felt it and this was the sure trap I had been expecting- this or some other equally deadly variation. Every being within the Kievor Trade Station felt it and it was originating from right under my feet.
“They’re separating the core kernel.” Serrath said as she looked at the ground under her own feet. “The Station is about to come apart.”
“We need suits.” I said as I bent and then sprang for one of the new openings in the ceiling above. My claws caught the edge and I was back in Level One. I reached down and grabbed the females as they jumped and hauled both of them up and into the corridor this breach let into. I didn’t think it was necessary to order a retreat for the rest of my troops nor was I wrong. In a moment there wasn’t a reptile left below and we were moving up through the Station one slow level at a time. Fsyth moved fast but there was a whole Station above us before we would get back to our ships. As I felt the rumblings beneath my claws swelling I became increasingly sure we weren’t going to make it. The Kievor would get their revenge one way or another but as has been previously noted if there was breath in my lungs there was yet hope in my heart.
There were panicked beings rushing everywhere and I found our first spacesuit as its previous owner was just climbing into it. I poked a claw into its neck and then tossed the lifeless body to the vibrating deck. It was too small for me but would fit one of the females well. I held it out to the two of them as I scanned for more suits. There seemed to be few and then there was the question of how to get the being out of it without damaging it. Serrath took the suit and handed it to Leethea. We waited patiently while she quickly got into it and then we were climbing levels again.
About twenty levels later I noticed another suitable space-suited being on a similar quest as we- that of getting the hell off the Station before it came apart at the seams and climbing levels as rapidly as it could amongst the hordes of other beings all bent on the same mission. I didn’t recognize the race of this particular reptile but I did notice that it wasn’t moving quite as quickly as we. I landed on its back and choked it out with a skinny arm full of carbon-strong thin little striated muscles while the females held it still so it couldn’t thrash around and damage our suit. It was too big for Serrath and though I felt guilt at leaving her as the last without a suit quickly had the reptile out of it and myself into it. We climbed.
Serrath found her own suit about forty floors later hanging from a rack inside a closet providence might have it that we climbed right past. The Station was already beginning to come apart, the slight breeze I was feeling leaving no question about if it was coming apart but only how long before that occurrence and I had a pretty good idea what we’d run into if we did make it to the outer level before it came apart completely. Either the congestion of the packed mobs of beings would entirely block our way or most likely in my mind those areas had been completely vacuumed out when the Station lost power and the outer level probably now sealed with airtight emergency hatches and no way to get to the outer level without creating a hole and letting in the vacuum.
“We’ll be mobbed by hundreds for our suits if we continue on to the upper level.” Serrath said.
“We might as well wait it out here.” Leethea said as a large group of Fsyth caught up to us now that we had stopped and filled the corridors around us at the cross-corridor junction where we had paused.
There were several hundred in this group but most had been separated amongst the hordes of beings all climbing upward and as each fought for its own life. Many of those joining us had acquired suits but not all. I addressed those who had not; “Go as a group and help each other find suits. The Station is coming apart and you are not going to survive without suits. Go!” I said. Now was not the time for chivalric shows of loyalty though why I really wanted them gone was because the Station was coming apart and I didn’t want asphyxiating crazed reptiles ripping my own suit open in their frantic search for atmosphere where there was none.
“I’d say our odds look pretty good for once.” Serrath said to two uncomprehending looks. It was just then it so happens that the Station began to break open and the slight breeze turned into a gale.
Chapter 61
The backup power source went out- or was turned off- gravity and lights going with it but space-suits are generally equipped with thermal or scan imaging technology and these were no exception. The environment lit in my faceplate in the green glow of thermal energy and the simple computer chip in the control-module of my suit generated the rest of the real-time image. I leapt for a sanctuary before I lost my footing completely and with the females right behind we sailed into the hatchway of the watering-hole I had chosen as our goal- it was the closest open hatchway and time was of the essence.
We bounced off the ceiling in our upward momentum and then kicked off that ceiling to come to rest among the permanently fixed tables and chairs of the establishment. If it wasn’t bolted down in a Kievor Trade Station it was likely to find another home but it would be our home and haven for the moment. I wrapped arms and legs around the base of a table while the females did the same and tightened ourselves into the smallest knot of inter-tangled limbs as possible. There was a lot of atmosphere in this place and I had no idea how bad it was going to get. Then the gale became an irresistible force that came and went quickly but took everything movable with it before it departed. The bottles and elixirs behind the bar as well as everything else not nailed down went over our heads in a rush and out the hatchway. I watched with little emotion as dozens of my reptiles went flying past the corridor opening at velocity and probably right out into space, was my guess. The suction ripped at us but we were one of the immovable objects this gale was not going to blow out to sea. Then the atmosphere was completely drained from the Station and everything not anchored down gone with it. Though we had killed billions of innocent beings in the process we were alive and that was all that counted.
“I think this was your best plan ever.” Serrath touched her helmet against mine to share her wisdom. If there was a way the suit-coms of space-suits from three entirely separate reptilian races could be synchronized so that we could communicate I wasn’t going to figure it out at that moment. The lines of alien script flowing on the face of the control-module on my sleeve made my head spin and were as comprehendible to me as Bren’s mathematical equations- nor did I want to experiment and push the wrong button. The suit had activated automatically when I had sealed the helmet and since I could breathe and very much desired to keep it that way I would just have to suffer without a com. I was sure there was very little the females might have to say at this moment I really wanted to hear, in any case. Silence could sometimes be golden and even more often harder to find.
I moved my helmet away before she could share more of her wisdom with me but didn’t bother giving her a look. We were alive but what were we to do now? What was going to stop the Kievor from destroying the shell they were leaving behind just to be sure they had put an end to me forever, that they had put an end to all of us. Nothing was what I was thinking. We had accomplished nothing as far as I could tell beyond forcing the Kievor to abandon the Station section of one ship- a minor victory at best- and we were probably only moments from our own end. The victory would in the end belong to the Kievor. I briefly wondered how long it would take the much diminished Kievor kernel ship to completely destroy the shell it had left behind but decided I didn’t want to know when the sudden shudder of the table leg in my hands told of far off blaster explosions- large ones. So it had begun I thought as I used the table to gain my feet. The females were right behind me as I leapt for the hatchway.
We kicked off the ceiling of the corridor in the direction everything else had gone just moments previously. There were still several dozen of my reptiles and as a group we went shooting down the corridor, bouncing from walls, deck or ceiling upon occasion to keep ourselves moving. The piece of the Station we were in had a min
or rotation of some kind and there was a very small but noticeable pull to my right. At least there was no chance we would get stuck drifting in the middle of the corridor. I had once done that when I had turned the gravity off for a moment and then accidentally fell asleep. When I woke I was stuck in the middle of my Bridge with my whole crew there to witness my embarrassment. They had floated in the hatchway laughing for twenty minutes while I space-swam my way back to my chair. Getting stuck in the middle of a corridor here could be an entirely different matter. I knew of no beings which could space-swim their way out of the path of an oncoming blaster bolt.
The suction had cleared everything out of our path so it was clear sailing at a fair velocity once we got the hang of it yet it still took more than an hour to finally reach the breach. When we did it was a sight to see. The end of the corridor was open space and the cutaway slice of Station surrounding us far too large for the imagination much less mortal eyes to grasp in its entirety. An entire planet sized ship cleanly dissected in half… and something else as well.
“That’s the Kievor kernel ship!” Serrath said after leaning her helmet against mine. She sounded slightly in awe and I could just barely make out what she was saying but the news was late in any case. I could see it for myself. A perfect sphere of trans-metal now devoid of the grassy plains which had so recently adorned it but there was more to it than that. It was immediately clear the ship was adrift and without power because it was on a head-on collision course with the other half of the shell and I seriously doubted the Kievor were planning to ram it on purpose.
How the kernel ship had lost power- considering Kievor technology- was beyond my mental capacity but the massive blaster damage on our half of the shell and visible from my vantage answered the question as to why the kernel ship was on a collision course with the other half of the shell but not how they had lost power. They were blasting this half of the shell when their power went out and their last blaster bolts were enough inertia-impetus to set them on a slow but sure course towards what was certain to be oblivion for the kernel ship when it struck its much larger just abandoned half-shell. It looked like Kievor on a half-shell for lunch if I was any sure judge. I could offer no theory as to why the kernel ship had lost power but things that were unexplainable just were and I didn’t give it a second thought. The all-powerful god Luck once more ruling in my favor and probably due to all the business I drummed up for Him.
We had a few minutes to kill before the other half of the shell did our final work for us but only one of us moved a muscle while we waited expectantly for the ship to stop playing possum and wake up in the last moments just in time to save itself. Anything was possible in this Universe and the Kievor ship wouldn’t be finished until it had collided and until it did Serrath and I stood mute sentinels in front of my remaining troops to witness its last moments- or to run if it woke up.
Leethea wasn’t quite finished with the Kievor just yet however so wedged herself into a nook and opened up on the impossible to miss target. Though it was many dozens of kilometers distant by this point her blast-rifle bolts crossed the span in almost less time than it took to think about it. The explosions didn’t seem to be affecting the kernel ship much- at least not from this distance- as they marched across the now distant sphere but the other half of the Station did.
Chapter 62
“Those are Vaes’ ships.” Serrath bumped her helmet against mine again to tell me the moment the Fleet of ships sailed over the lip of our section of Station and into view several dozen kilometers distant below our vantage. There was little doubt they had seen Leethea’s stream of blaster bolts which had just ceased erupting from the end of her weapon, a rope of them still on their way to the kernel ship and pointing out our location unerringly. Then the kernel ship ran into the other half-shell of the Station.
Lifeless trans-metal shattered at contact and the entire kernel ship broke apart. Without its life-giving electrical spark the trans-metal shell was structurally unable to withstand the impact and shattered like an egg dropped on a plas-crete sidewalk. Everything spilled out but at this distance I could see little more than a smudge around the outline of the shattered ship. It was good enough to know that the Kievor themselves were now doing their spasmodic space-swim in the vacuum of space but I wondered if they had brought their suits. Wondered if they would have ever thought they needed them. One of the Vaes ships immediately turned in our direction while the remainder angled for the shattered Kievor kernel ship. Salvage was never far from a reptile’s mind and this was the mother-load of them all. We immediately vacated the opening and only just in time as the explosions began tearing at the cutaway face of the slice where we had just been. Clearly they had recognized who we were with their scan so they knew we were Fsyth but did they know which Fsyth I was and if so how badly would they want me.
The explosions tearing apart the face of the cutaway seam strangely ceased almost as quickly as it had begun but it was long minutes before our curiosity got the best of us and the oxygen level in my suit dictating that I just had to go and see what was going on. I had no idea how much oxygen recycling time I had left and didn’t want to find out the hard way. Twice in just a short time I received a stunning shock upon reaching the lip of the cutaway corridor but I actually received it before I got there because the new Kievor Trade Station which floated into view and hovered over the wreckage of the kernel ship came into view long before I reached that lip. Then suddenly it was just gone. The ship vanished and all I saw was just a faint trail of blur teasing my vision for a moment and then that was even gone.
“What the hell?” I said though of course no one could hear me.
“What the hell is next?” Serrath asked as she bumped my helmet.
“Where did the Vaes go?” I responded though the answer to that was quite clear. The Vaes had been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and even though this wasn’t their doing they had paid for it.
“How are we going to get the hell out of here is what I want to know?” Leethea said as she bumped her helmet against mine on my opposite side, but I had already figured that out. My Alartaw Fleet was here and clearly also why the Kievor had left. One moment nothing and the next an Alartaw Fleet stretching for as far as the eye could see, even in its diminished state. “Never mind.” She added before moving her helmet away and severing our contact. A tender arrived only moments later- less time than it took to convince the remainder of my reptiles to board the tender- but finally I got them all aboard and moments after that we were safely aboard my Flagship. After dropping my reptiles aboard one of the numerous but empty Fsyth ships still docked to the shell of the Station we were back in hyper-space and once again at least temporarily safe from the Kievor.
“But we accomplished nothing.” I said as we gathered in a lounge.
“Not true.” Bren contradicted.
“Absolutely correct.” Serrath corroborated, though I couldn’t tell who she meant was correct.
“What’s absolutely correct?” I asked tiredly as a servant brought me my first drink. Tailor designed for reptiles, this time. I was going to drink myself to death and be reincarnated as an Alartaw. I poured the drink down my neck and handed the empty tankard back to the servant with a keep them coming motion of my fingers.
“Bren is absolutely correct.” Manuel said.
“Who would have ever thought?” Leethea said.
“You astound me sometimes Marc.” Janice said.
“I astound myself more often than I astound you.” I assured her. “Fess up with what the hell-ever you people are talking about or go away and leave me to my funeral.”
“Planning to drink yourself to death?” Serrath asked with an interested note and a wave to the servant to begin bringing her drinks as well. We could drink ourselves to death together in celebration of having lived. We would be reincarnated and forever after known as the God Emperors of the Alartaw, but for the moment my curiosity had been piqued. There was something they knew that I didn
’t and it was beginning to bother me, so I just kept my mouth shut to their baiting and waited them out. I didn’t shut my mouth to the four drinks I put down before I won the contest of not caring and they just simply couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“We won the war.” Bren said.
I just continued looking at him. As far as I could tell we had won nothing and would spend the remainder of our long lives running from the Kievor. His smile was telling me other things however. “All right. I’ll bite. What gives?” I asked.
“Do you have any idea of what a monstrous plague you have unleashed upon the Universe when you gave humanity all that technology?” Manuel interrupted asking.
“Does this have any bearing on what I’m waiting for Bren to tell me?” I asked as I put down my fifth and handed the empty tankard back to the servant. I did have an idea but I didn’t want to think about it at that moment.
“No but the look on your face was sure something to see.” Bren answered for himself with a triumphant smile and then laid it on me; “Your real mission aboard the Kievor Trade Station was to deliver the virus I wrote.”
“Virus?” I asked.
“That was our real mission.” Serrath agreed as she poured them down just as quickly as I. Never mind that she was only two-thirds my mass she could polish them off with the best of them.
“We were carrying a virus all along and not on a mission to steal the Kievor data-base?” I demanded incredulously.
“We already had the Kievor data-base.” Leethea said.
“You don’t remember all those Kievor ships we salvaged over the decades?” Serrath asked.
“Well yeah…” I began and seeing quickly where it was going turned to the only thing that really worked in these types of situations; you turn the blame back on them; “This plan could have gotten us all killed!” I said indignantly.
Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 3: Vengeance Page 19