Alien Games (The Human Chronicles Saga Book 17)

by T. R. Harris

  Moments later the pilot entered the ship and buttoned it up. The interior was cramped, with the Overlord Safnos and his three Juirean Guards pressed back in a corner, with two Nuoreans holding flash weapons on them. Sherri and Copernicus were being watched by four of the aliens, while the pilot/captain checked his datapad.

  Another Nuorean came down a narrow corridor. The captain turned to him. “Our departure is hasty, but make secure accommodations as best you can. We have fuel enough to reach the Boundary, where we will restock. We launch in two minutes.”

  The second-in-command turned to the crowded room. He looked exasperated. “Place the prisoners in the right side crew quarters. We will make accommodation for ourselves out here.”

  “We will not be quartered with the filthy Humans!” the Juirean Overlord Safnos roared, causing the guards to tighten their grips on their weapons. He continued. “Place us in the cold of space before we will sleep with these beasts.”

  Copernicus was the closest to the huge Juirean, so it was he who caught the full brunt of Safnos’s fist. Caught off guard and shocked, Coop fell against a bulkhead and grasped his jaw, more angry than hurt. But then he caught the glimmer in Sherri’s eye…and a moment later collapsed to the deck unconscious.

  The captain reappeared, looking frustrated and frazzled at the disturbance. “There will be no more such outbursts! Place the green creatures in the berthing quarters, the female Human in food storage.”

  “What of this other one?” asked his second-in-command.

  “Is he dead?”

  The alien bent down and felt his chest. “No.”

  “Then place him in medical holding until he recovers. Place a guard with him.”

  The pilot rushed down the corridor and a few seconds later the generators were heard cycling up, even as magnetic lines lifted the small craft and flung it out the back of the battle-carrier. Two minutes later Sherri sensed the ship move as it entered a gravity-well for the return to Andromeda.

  ********

  Copernicus opened a slit in one of his eyes. He was on a table with a thin pad under him and a pillow supporting his head. The room was bright and lined with glass cabinets containing medical supplies. Earlier he’d felt hot breath on his face, and then convinced that his charge would be unconscious a while longer, the alien guard slipped out of the room, ostensibly for only a moment. Now the room was empty.

  Coop hurried off the table before opening draws and cabinets looking for any kind of weapon he could find, a scalpel or even a metal bedpan he could whack the guard with. He found an electronic sensor about eight inches long and made of heavy metal. It was something.

  He climbed back on the table.

  The door opened and the guard re-entered. Coop heard him place something on a counter before coming to check on his patient. With his face on inches away, Copernicus opened his eyes wide, startling the alien. Before he could draw away, the sensor smashed into his head, delivered by Coop’s right hand. The Nuorean knelt to his knees, down, but not out.

  The Human jumped from the table and grabbed the alien around the neck from behind. An application of pressure, accompanied by a quick twist to the left, and the Nuorean’s neck snapped.

  The guard had a flash weapon, which Copernicus promptly confiscated. He went to the door of the small sickbay. If he was right, there were six guards and two crew aboard; make that five guards now. The Juireans were locked in the berthing quarters, presumably without guards in the room. That put seven deadly Nuoreans wandering the ship, with the majority armed against the prisoners. If he was to have any chance of taking them out, he would need help.

  The starship was about ninety feet long with all critical systems on one level and along a central corridor. As he was being carried to sickbay, he’d watched the Juireans being herded aft. The last thing he saw they were being placed in a room on the right about twenty feet away.

  Like most doors in spaceships, they were pocket doors and operated electronically, making them very difficult to open only a crack. It was either all or nothing. He readied himself…and triggered the door release.

  Empty. The corridor was empty. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Are you recovered?” asked a voice to his right. He leaned out into the passageway, holding the flash weapon behind his back.

  Four of the guards sat in a small alcove, initially hidden from view from the sickbay door.

  Coop smiled and wobbled his head. “I believe so, although still shaky. It was not fair to be hit without notice by the ugly green beast.”

  The Nuoreans laughed. “Yes, that is a violation of fighting protocol.” The aliens had their weapons in their holsters and appeared relaxed. They had no idea how dangerous a cargo they were carrying.

  Coop turned his head left and right, scanning the corridor.

  “Where is Lacdis (819)?”

  “Oh, him?” Copernicus looked back into the sickbay. “He’s dead.”

  Golden eyes blinked at the unexpected reply; however, understanding came when Coop stepped into the corridor and blasted all four of the aliens with the flash weapon. Now Copernicus blinked, temporarily blinded by the incredible light filling the small room.

  He ducked back in the sickbay and waited for his vision to clear, while listening for any reaction. When nothing came, he rushed from the room and grabbed two of the weapons from the dead Nuoreans. He hurried to where the Juireans were being held. He tried the controls to the door but nothing happened. It was locked.

  He stepped back and placed a bolt into the control panel. It flared and sparked, but still the door stayed closed.

  It always works in the movies, Coop thought with frustration.

  He began to press against the panel, trying to shove it aside.

  “Copernicus?” said a voice from the other side.

  “Yeah, give me a hand.”

  With effort from both sides, the door moved, not a lot, but enough for strong fingers to grasp the edge and pull. The Juireans squeezed out. Copernicus handed two of the flash weapons to them.

  “I hope I did not hurt you,” said Safnos with a thin grin. Juireans seldom smile, and never displaying their teeth—unless they mean it.

  “Five of the six guards are down. I don’t know where the sixth is. The crew’s probably in the pilothouse. I fired four shots in the corridor, and no alarms went off, so the door must be closed. Where’s Sherri?”

  Safnos shook his head. “We were taken away before her.”

  “All right, I’m going to the bridge. The rest of you find Sherri and the other guard.”

  On the way forward, Coop took another weapon from the dead guards and stuck it in his waistband. He couldn’t read alien power meters so he had no idea how many more shot he had with the first one.

  At the pressure door to the pilothouse, he checked the outer wall for the controls. The panel was on the right. Crossing his fingers that it wasn’t locked, Coop pressed the button.

  The door slid open.

  Copernicus didn’t have any experience fighting Nuoreans, just shooting them. He was about to get a lesson.

  The pilot was at the controls when the door opened, engaged in his duties. His second-in-command, however, was standing near another console, a datapad in his hand. With reactions seldom seen outside those of a Human or Juirean, the alien heaved the pad at him and rushed forward without a moment’s hesitation. Coop triggered the flash weapon, but the alien was too fast. He missed, and now a strong hand was on the weapon and twisting. He released the handgun before his wrist broke, just as he caught a powerful elbow to his chin. Coop dropped to his knees, but fortunately still in the pilothouse. The pressure door slid shut.

  Through blurry vision, he saw a knee coming for his face. He raised both arms in time to block it, although the force sent him slamming into the hard metal bulkhead at his back. A quick mental analysis—the best he could conjure up at the time—had him trapped in a room with two expert fighters, and with his backup locked outside. He was also daze
d and hurt.

  He rolled to his right to escape another incoming blow, twisting his left wrist on something when he landed on all fours. The object moved under his hand, and a moment later Coop realized it was the fallen flash weapon.

  The alien dropped a sharp elbow into his back, sending Coop falling flat on the cold metal deck. Then a fist bunched up the cloth of this shirt and flipped him over. The expression on the face of the Nuorean was one of euphoria, and now he had his right arm lifted high and about to deliver the knock-out blow to his beaten opponent.

  That was until he noticed the flash weapon pressed against his belly.

  At this range, a perfectly round hole was burned all the way through the Nuorean, with the energetic bolt exiting the body with enough residual charge to strike the ceiling of the pilothouse and ricochet toward the pilot. He was on his feet by now, having reacted to the fight taking place to his right. He jumped out of the path of the flash bolt, landing about three feet from Copernicus. The pilot was unarmed, but when he noticed the weapon in Coop’s hand, he showed no fear. Instead, he bared his teeth in a savage show of defiance and jumped forward.

  Coop fingered the trigger—and nothing happened. He’d drained the weapon’s power pack.

  The Nuorean was on top of him, hitting and kicking with insane ferocity. Coop had another flash weapon on him somewhere, but he forgot where. All he was concerned with at the moment was protecting himself from the onslaught to his head and body.

  Seeing an opportunity open—yet not knowing Nuorean anatomy—Coop still took the shot, delivering a knee to the alien’s exposed groin. He was rewarded with a squeal and burgeoning golden eyes from his opponent, along with a momentary cessation of hostilities. As with most mammals—be they from the Milky Way or Andromeda—when your balls are crushed, a change of heart quickly follows.

  Feeling sympathetic for his fellow male, Copernicus laid a swift fist to the alien’s projecting chin, sending bone fragments into the brain and ending the poor creature’s suffering. He shoved the body to the side and sat up, looking at his victim. “You’re welcome,” he panted. If the roles had been reversed, Coop would have prayed for death as well.

  After a brief recovery, he climbed to his feet and unlocked the pilothouse door. Sherri was waiting on the other side, the sixth and final guard nowhere to be found.

  A Juirean guard went to the controls. This was one of the smaller vessels with the pad of keys for control, rather than the wheel with buttons underneath. Either way, no one aboard knew how to fly the ship. It was still in a gravity-well, heading for the blaze of star ahead that was the Andromeda Galaxy.

  “We have to get to the jump point,” Sherri said, vocalizing the thoughts running through the minds of all the former prisoners.

  The Guard in the pilot seat looked up at the Human female. “I will gladly surrender control to one more-experienced.” When Sherri remained silent, the alien grunted and turned back to the key panel. Soon, it became discovery by committee, as everyone was offering their input, with some reaching out and pressing buttons even as others were tried.

  Fortunately, the ship was alone in space otherwise its erratic movements would have surely attracted the attention of even the casual observer. Ten minutes later, everyone aboard—and not just the Juirean sitting in the pilot seat—had a working knowledge of the controls.

  Now they turned their attention to nav screens and monitors. Sherri let out a sigh of relief when it became obvious they were still in the vicinity of the transit channel between galaxies, in fact not too far from the staging area. That was indicated by the incredible mass of energy sigs, now moving slowly closer together, to form an even more intense signature. The fleet was preparing for a jump.

  The Juirean pilot increased the well depth and raced toward the jump point. Moments later they were closing on the back side of the mass of ships, and merging with hundreds of smaller ships, many like theirs. The larger signatures were in the front of the formation.

  They eased back as the cluster became denser. Starships usually didn’t move this close to each other, but the Nuoreans only had so much room in the gravity beam. They had to get all the bang for their buck they could.

  “It has to be happening soon,” she said to the room. “Otherwise we’ll start running into each other.”

  As if on cue, she felt a strange sensation come over her, like waves of nausea. She was dizzy and her ears began to ring. This may have been what she’d experienced before, but now she was more aware.

  And then came the flash.

  Chapter 20

  Close to the mutant Panur meant bringing the D-4 within forty-two miles of the alien craft before sending Adam and Riyad out to fly through space like Buck Rogers. In case anything went wrong, the mutant was so kind as to send them out with additional oxygen tanks which they would leave at the halfway point with a magnetic beacon attached. Otherwise they’d be sucking fumes on the way back if they had to abort.

  They chose a Nuorean ship like the one they’d stolen from Ankaa simply for its familiarity to Adam and Riyad. The next nearest ship was four hundred miles away—just the blink of an eye in space distance. After a brief explanation of where and how to install the small device he’d built, the mutant cast them out the airlock and sent them on their way.

  Adam had never made a forty-two mile space walk before; he doubted anyone ever had, at least intentionally. Now he and Riyad were flying through the vast emptiness of space on gas jets, awed by the absolute size of the nothingness around them. The stars seemed much brighter from here, their brilliance separated from their eyes by only an eighth-inch-thick piece of glass.

  At one point they dropped the extra oxygen packs and continued on their way.

  They approached the ship at an angle, rather than straight on. Most starships had a passive laser defense system to protect against micrometeorites and other objects on a collision course with the vessel. They were traveling fast enough at this point to be considered a hazard. As it was, the radar would record them as a non-threat and let them go.

  As they neared the craft, they reversed the thrust on their jets and matched speeds with the spaceship. Approaching at a crawl wouldn’t set off any alarms.

  They still had a mile to go, but that passed quickly. They contacted the hull and grabbed onto attached lifelines. They were under influence of the ship’s gravity internals by now and were able to walk on the surface. At the airlock door at the rear of the ship, Riyad looked at Adam, both their faces lit by helmet lights.

  “Okay. It was you’re brilliant idea,” said Riyad, having already raised the question back at the D-4. “Go ahead, knock.”

  The question had been how to gain access to the ship? Adam’s solution was simple. He took out a metal wrench from his tool pouch and began to tap on the airlock hatch, non-rhythmically, as if something was loose and banging against the hull. The sound would transfer throughout the ship, attracting the attention of the crew. If they were like everyone else, they would want to know what’s happening outside. It could be dangerous.

  They would be right in this case, but only when they opened the hatch would they find out how much.

  That came four minutes later, after the source of the knocking had been isolated. The hatch cycled open.

  Adam and Riyad slipped out of view. A space-suited figure swung the rectangular door open and looked outside. He stayed in the airlock while looking up and down along the hull. Then he checked the outer side of the door. Still nothing. He ducked back inside.

  Adam crawled along the hull until he was just above the closing hatch and wedged the wrench into the gap between the door and the opening. When the pressure door failed to close, the frustrated Nuorean pushed it open again and looked up at the obstruction. That’s when Riyad swung in from underneath, using one of the lower lifelines for leverage.

  He crashed into the unsuspecting alien, knocking them both to the deck of the airlock. Adam followed a moment later.

  He dogged the hatch an
d the chamber began to pressurize automatically. In the meantime, Riyad had smashed every antenna and electrical contact with the alien’s helmet and his suit, hoping to break communications with the other crew members. Adam knew a ship this size had a crew of four. After Riyad smashed the faceplate of the alien’s helmet with a tool of his own, embedding it the soft tissue of a golden eye, only four were left.

  Adam opened the inner door quickly, allowing the two invaders to enter the main part of the ship. They couldn’t risk tripping any alarms and having pressure doors locked down around them.

  Now the real mission began. The problem, as Panur outlined, was that the control ship—the one with the radio link—had to stay active until the last second for the plan to work. First, the gravity drive had to be activated to prevent the ship from being pulled into the nearly three-million-light-year-long blackhole. Afterwards, they had to cut the drive as commands were sent to all the ships around it to engage back-wells for the headlong crash into the arriving fleet. The bottom line: The crew had to be eliminated and Adam and Riyad take control. Luckily, this particular ship didn’t need to be one of those crashing into the fleet. After the commands were sent to the other ships, it could be flown back to the D-4.

  Normally, killing four aliens was something Adam did before breakfast, but these were scattered throughout the Nuorean ship and he had no idea where. The pair of pirates kept their suits on, yet they now had flash weapons at the ready. They split up, Adam heading forward while Riyad checked the engine room and landing bay.

  Since these particular aliens were assigned sentry duty, Adam figured they weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. He was hoping to find them napping, with feet resting on control consoles, and therefore easy targets. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

  The first alien came out of a side room, wearing a modified combat outfit and covered in sweat. He was placing a ressnel sword into a soft, velvet sheath, appearing to be finishing up a training workout. The moment of hesitation upon seeing the surprise guest aboard was measured in milliseconds. The Nuorean had the ressnel out again and was crouched for action. Proving the old adage that you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, the flash bolt that burned a hole in the alien’s chest eliminated the threat, but it also light up the interior of the small starship, with its distinctive crack echoing off the bare metal walls.