by T. R. Harris
Tobias shook his head. “Almost, Commander, but not quite yet.”
He turned to the stunning creature seated near the back of the bridge. “It’s all yours, Arieel. Work your magic.”
“At one time even I considered it magic. Now it is merely science.”
The Speaker of the Formilian race accessed her embedded telepathy device and sent a signal toward the surface of the planet, two thousand miles below. Within seconds she looked up at Andy Tobias and gave him a heart-stopping smile. “I have them. Should I say hi, or would you prefer to surprise them?”
“A surprise is always preferred. Let’s transfer to a shuttle and drop down for a visit. I’m sure Adam will be glad to see you again.”
“I detect that Sherri Valentine is with him,” Arieel Bol said as the smile vanished from her face.
“Yeah, now that’s a whole other subject, isn’t it? Shall we go?”
Chapter 19
“Dammit, are they trying to kill us!”
“It would appear so.”
The three Humans at first thought they were safe from the attacking vessels, since their fire was concentrated on the small hill to the north of them. But then the ships angled south, targeting the landing area and the few remaining Sol-Kor ships. They spared the main part of the camp, yet sent a flurry of streaking missiles heading their way. The explosions pulverized the spaceport, the very location at which Adam and his group had just arrived.
They dove for cover as the ruddy ground around them erupted. They felt the concussion and the heat of the explosions, even going so far as to drop into a recently created crater for cover. Fortunately, this phase of the attack didn’t last long before the small craft looped back around and headed for space.
As the dirty, bloody, and shell-shocked trio climbed out in the open, Sherri flipped the bird at the departing strikecraft, while Riyad and Adam looked to the east and the place where the Humans had been kept prisoner. At first they feared the worst, since none of the prisoners could be seen. But then a few here and there began to emerge from cover and look up into the morning sky. Some appeared angry, others cried and hugged each other.
None of the Sol-Kor guards could be seen, so the Humans prisoners were no longer under the influence of the blue beam. They were confused, yet alive. Riyad took off in a sprint for the prison area. Adam was about to follow when Sherri grabbed his arm. “Let him do it,” she said. “Besides, it will all be mushy hugs, kisses and tears. You know, all that sentimental bullshit.”
Adam turned to her, and seeing the dirt-crusted face and mottled hair, took her in his arms and kissed her long and hard, succumbing to all that sentimental and mushy B.S.
********
An hour later, several Human ships, along with a smattering of Juirean vessels, sat on the desert floor a half mile east of the old spaceport, which now looked like Swiss cheese from the aerial bombardment it had suffered.
Adam, with Sherri at his side, and Riyad with Ophelia at his, approached the still hot and popping hull of a command shuttle and waited for the hatch to crack.
Adam was delighted to see his former SEAL team leader appear in the opening, displaying a wide grin under laughing eyes and a shiny bald dome of a head. It was who appeared immediately behind him that made Adam gasp.
“Oh, this is just great,” Riyad heard Sherri say under her breath.
“Who is that?” Ophelia asked.
“That, my dear, is Adam’s old girlfriend,” Riyad answered.
“But she’s an alien, isn’t she?”
“I don’t think that mattered much to him.”
“I can see why!”
“Yeah, that’s how most people react to her.”
“If I hadn’t given up women in college, I’d be all over that!”
Riyad whipped his head around to look at Ophelia. He found her looking back at him with a wide grin and sparkling dark eyes. “You had me going there for a minute,” he said.
“Who said I was kidding?”
********
Adam stopped listening to the conversation around him the moment Arieel’s long black hair and perfect face showed itself around Andy’s shoulder. She was the last person he’d expected see, yet now it made sense. He broke his gaze from who many considered to be the most beautiful Prime female in the galaxy and looked at Sherri.
“Hey, we’ve been down this road before,” she said to him. “Go ahead and get your slobbering reunion over with.”
Adam turned back to Arieel just as the alien reached him, wrapping her supple arms around him and pulling him close to her impossibly voluptuous body. “I am so glad to see you again, Adam Cain. We feared we would not make it here in time.” After a long moment, they broke the embrace and Arieel looked at Sherri. “Greetings, Ms. Valentine. I see you are looking…well.”
“Sit on it, Arieel,” Sherri snapped. “We’ve just spent one hell of a night just trying to stay alive. I’d like to see what you’d look like after what I’ve just been through.”
“I am sure it was traumatic.”
Andy was now within the gathering. “We used Arieel to track your devices after you went missing. You really do need to get yours tuned up, by the way. She says the range and sensitivity features were damaged somehow. Otherwise she could have contacted you from back on Formil.”
“To be honest, most times I forget I even have it. It only works with Formilian designed controls, and they didn’t have many of those in the Cloud or here, among the Sol-Kor.”
“Sol-Kor?” Andy asked.
“Yeah, that’s the name of the aliens you just slaughtered.”
“That’s good to know. I get tired of calling them alien bastards all the time.”
Adam pointed to the Juirean starships also occupying the makeshift landing field. “Speaking of alien bastards, friends of yours?”
“They were already pretty upset about their Class-Four being taken out, and with their Third Fleet sitting just on the other side of the border in The Fringe, they insisted on joining the party.”
“No mention of their trespassing in Human space, I suppose?”
“Maybe later, but for now we need all the help we can get. The alien bastards—I mean the Sol-Kor—have a very potent beam weapon. Fortunately, shock-n-awe is still an effective strategy, but it does take a lot of ships to pull it off.”
Andy looked off to the north and the smoldering ruins of the trans-dimensional array. “I guess that’s it. Won’t be having any more hungry aliens shopping for dinner around here anytime soon.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“What does that mean?” asked Admiral Andy Tobias, suddenly turning serious.
“The Klin built the array—”
“No shit?”
“That’s right. And they could build another. Also, there’s a creature named Panur who may have survived the attack. Did any ships get past you?”
Andy grimaced. “Yeah, a handful, and all from the planet.”
“Then it’s a good bet Panur was with them.”
“So who’s this Panur character?”
“He’s the one who built the original portal in the universe the Sol-Kor come from. He’s a freaking genius and he, too, could build another array if he wanted, and probably out of popsicle sticks and rubber bands.”
“Did I just hear you right? You said universe?”
“That’s right. You just destroyed a trans-dimensional portal kind of thing, whatever.”
“And here I thought it was just a novel way of moving within this universe!” Then Andy turned serious. “If they do build another portal, it’s a good bet they’ll come at us with a different strategy. We may not even know they’re here until it’s too late.”
Adam smiled. “Just one more excuse for you not to retire, Admiral.”
“Hell, I was already retired, until you started making trouble for me again.”
“Good, then I saved you from an early grave. Fighting alien bastards keeps a person young.”
Chapter 20
“You say the Klin and the Sol-Kor have partnered up?”
“Apparently,” Adam answered.
“That’s probably where the ships that escaped are headed. So, in reality they’re gone for good, or at least until they choose to show themselves again,” Andy Tobias said dejectedly.
“Not necessarily,” Sherri said. “I may be able to track them.”
“That’s right,” Adam said, suddenly perking up. The three of them were in the admiral’s away room, kicked back on soft couches and sipping a very potent scotch whisky. Riyad was off somewhere with his new love, while Arieel was making herself scarce while Sherri was around.
“What are you talking about? You can track their ships?”
“I did it once before, after we found the empty delegation ship over in Que’l space. It’s a very faint, yet distinctive signature. We don’t have anything like it, so if you aren’t looking for it, it would be missed.”
Adam frowned. “However, if you recall, we did walk right into a trap by following that trail. Maybe they left it intentionally.”
“We can find out. If it’s not here, then we’ll know it was a plant in the first place. If it is there, then we’ve not only got the Sol-Kor, but also the location of the hidden Klin colony—which I didn’t even know existed.”
“I think we’d be surprised just how many Klin still survive. They are a tenacious bunch of silver-skinned bastards,” Andy said.
“If you don’t mind, Admiral, we’ll tag along with you for a while,” Adam said.
“Yeah, sorry about the Pegasus, buddy, but it was right in the middle of the alien landing field. I hope you didn’t have anything really valuable aboard.”
“Just as heap of medals and plaques we got on Unisid. Quite honestly, I don’t have room left on my walls for any more of that stuff. They probably would have just ended up in a box in the garage anyway.”
“Said the always humble Adam Cain.”
Andy Tobias had shared many an adventure with Adam in the past, even predating his abduction by the Klin. He had been Adam’s first team leader—just a lowly lieutenant at that time—when Adam joined SEAL Team Six. That seemed like several lifetimes ago now, yet the memories were just as vivid as if it were yesterday. And then Adam cringed. He’d had a wife and child back then, both now long gone. Back then he never dreamed of aliens and galactic wars, or journeys to distant galaxies. And never in his wildest imagination could he have foreseen invaders from another dimension. What the hell was that all about, anyway?
Adam longed for the simple life again—though at the time life hadn’t seemed all that simple—it was all relative, as the genius Albert Einstein once postulated. Adam laughed to himself. It seemed even genius was relative. And with that thought, he wondered where Panur was at that very moment, and what trouble he was cooking up for the Milky Way Galaxy.
********
The Klin mothership had held off a distance from the TD-1 star system and watched with stunned reactions as the combined Human and Juirean fleet made quick work of the Sol-Kor forces. Even without the means to defeat the suppressor beam, they found a way around it. The strategy was simple yet effective, and revealed to the Klin the limits of the alien’s military thinking. For too long the creatures from another dimension had relied on their blue beam to win the day. Now they were up against creatures who practiced war as a vocation. If the Sol-Kor didn’t learn the art of war themselves—and learn it quickly—they might find this galaxy a little too hot for their liking, no matter how good the brain matter was here.
After being briefed by Molison on Panur and his abilities, Senior Fellow Zimfelous and the others reluctantly agreed to allow him virtual free reign of the ship, much as he had with the Sol-Kor.
Still, that didn’t stop the analytical Klin from testing his claims.
While the mutant was distracted during a tour guided by Molison Jons, another of the Klin approached Panur from behind and placed an MK-47 Level-One plasma bolt into his back. What happened next left the Klin speechless and very afraid.
Panur reacted to the blast by closing his eyes and arching his back, an almost erotic look over his face. As the flash from the bolt dissipated, Panur let out a long, emotional sigh before opening his eyes again.
“Thank you for that,” the alien said. “I haven’t eaten in a while. And I must say, that is some real good energy you have there.” He turned to the shooter and snatched the weapon from him. “May I?” And then he turned the weapon on himself and pulled the trigger again.
This time the bolt impacted the creature directly in the chest, burning a large hole in his garment, yet only serving to make his pale skin glow at the point of impact. Once more the ecstatic expression. He returned to normal as the glow on his skin subsided.
The amused grin returned to his face. “I told you I absorb energy in a unique way. While the rest of you get yours in the form of converted food energy, I receive mine directly from the source. It’s more efficient and lasts much longer that way. It will now be a month or longer before I require food again.”
He stopped and looked at Molison. “I know you had to test me, and now that you have I trust there will be no more such episodes? One is all you’re allowed. However, scientist, I must ask that you supply me with a weapon and battery packs for my future use. I have at last discovered the one thing this universe has to offer. That was some of the purest energy I’ve experienced in a long while. After this I may become spoiled. Now, Molison Jons, please proceed with the tour, unless this has all been another ruse on the part of the Klin? If so, then I would suggest you stop it. Any more attempts to deceive will certainly upset me. And as I said before, that is something you do not wish to do.”
Chapter 21
Sherri was able to detect the faint, telltale sign of the Sol-Kor jump drive even though she had to turn the gain all the way to high and then dampen the squeal that came from the sensors.
The Abraham Lincoln was a huge carrier vessel, over a thousand feet long and capable of carrying sixty-five strikecraft in her launch bays. Sherri found tracking the alien gravity trail extremely difficult while aboard the huge ship. The Lincoln’s own drives disturbed the surrounding space so much that as they gained speed Sherri would lose the signal completely, requiring them to slow down and backtrack to find it again.
“This is ridiculous,” she finally said, leaning back on the console chair and throwing off her headphones. “We need a smaller ship, yet one with the proper tracking gear. The Pegasus had what I needed, but the Lincoln is just too big. Too much interference.”
“We could equip an SES with the right gear and set you off in that?” Tobias offered.
“What’s an SES?”
“It stands for Surface Effect Ship,” the admiral explained. “It’s taken from the line of double-hulled, fast attack warships the Navy had back about the time the Juireans hit us. Of course we don’t make them anymore—at least not for the water. But we have begun to build some smaller, faster ships, much like the Pegasus, for use in the regular Navy—I mean the regular space navy.”
“You have one aboard?”
“No, but there are a few within the fleet. It will only take a couple of days to get one here.”
“Better hurry, Admiral. The signal is getting weaker the further we fall behind.”
********
Adam was on the huge ship’s observation deck, watching the streaks of stars blur pass, when Arieel Bol entered the room. He didn’t need to ask how she knew where he was, he had begun to sense her presence as well. Maybe his ATD didn’t need tuning after all. Could he have subconsciously shut it down just to break the constant bond between them?
“So how have you been, Arieel? I understand the Order has undergone some changes?”
“Yes, it has. The people are not as content to believe in me as they once were, although the majority still do. It remains comforting for some to still believe in my connection with our gods, Mislin and Sufor, even though it
takes more faith than ever to maintain.”
“Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to ruin your entire religion, your history.”
“You didn’t do anything, Adam. Even I was blinded to the truth. It is refreshing to finally know that one is not a demi-god. That was a lot of pressure to live up to.”
“I imagine it would be. And what about your father, Convor, and Trimen? Are they well?”
“My father is ill, as is expected of a being nearly two hundred years old. And as for Trimen, you do know we mated, and that I now have a daughter?”
“No, I hadn’t heard. Congratulations. I was out of the galaxy for a while and lost touch. What’s her name?”
“Lila. She is three now.”
“Will she be trained to take over for you?”
“It is still our way, although she may be the last of the Speakers.”
“Again, I’m sorry.”
Arieel smiled. “I am not. I wish for her to lead a life without boundaries, without such responsibilities from a young age. Now that I have experienced more of the galaxy—and other species—I wish the same for her.”
“Only one child per Speaker, is that right?”
She suddenly became saddened again. “That was a practice imposed on us by the Order. Biologically, there is no such limitation.”
“Then have more children. And abdicate the role Lila must fill. Life is too short not to live it the way you want.”
Arieel smiled again. “You do know I’m the equivalent of ninety of your Earth years old, don’t you?”
Adam’s mouth fell open. “Damn, you look good for your age!”
“You mean for a Human great-great-grandmother? And here I thought you liked your females a little more mature, more experienced.”
The mischievous sparkle in her eye brought back a myriad of erotic memories for Adam. As it turned out, their flirtations made more sense than the reality of a physical relationship. They were of two different species, and no matter how physically superior Humans might be in other arenas, when it came to keeping up with the oversexed alien love machine, Adam was no match. Honestly, he would have endured as long as he could; however it was evident from the start that he couldn’t satisfy Arieel and all her needs. That was better left to other Formilians…the lucky bastards!