This is my room, my wife, why the hell should I knock like a serving maid?
He turned the handle and pushed open the door.
Standing in the doorway, he felt his legs freeze solid, unable to move. His wife was in bed. She turned away from the man in whose arms she lay. Revealing her own surprise and the evident embarrassment of this man, her lover, she looked across the room at Hannibal.
She climbed silently out of their bed and for the first time, Hannibal saw the other man clearly.
“Finnean?”
Admiral Finnean pulled up the sheets to his chest.
“We share the same woman, Hannibal,” Finnean said, “so you could at least call me Michael.”
Hannibal reached for his side arm holster and drew the weapon. He pointed it at Rachel and her lover and felt his hands shake with rage.
I drove her into his arms...
“Oh, please, Hannibal,” Rachel said with a tone of disgust. “It’s too late to act the wounded romantic hero.”
She turned to Finnean. “You promised he was headed for the rings of Saturn.”
Finnean leaned over to a small bedside table. He lit a cigar.
“Well, aren’t you going to say anything, Hannibal?” Rachel said. “After tomorrow we shan’t see each other for two years.”
Hannibal holstered his weapon. He clenched his teeth until his jaw quivered with the strain. He smiled. “Have a safe trip,” he said. “I’ll expect news of my new command soon, Admiral.”
Finnean puffed a smoke ring into the air and nodded.
Hannibal turned and walked heavily down the stairs to the lobby. He stepped out onto the porch and into a blinding ball of rainbow light.
Once more he was on Valiant’s bridge amongst his crew. “I’m home.”
Pilot Tess Child and Navigator Bo Sun stared wide-eyed at Hannibal. It seemed to Hannibal that they were sharing a knowing look.
“Damage report,” Hannibal growled. “And somebody tell me what’s the status of that Ursu ship.”
“Captain, Ursu ship made the jump to light speed,” Engineering Officer Harley Link said.
“But what about our marines?” Hannibal asked. “Did they make it inside the Ursu ship before the light speed jump?”
CHAPTER 31 - BEAR TRAP
“Explosive charges set,” Thor shouted and ran from the nearest hatch seal. He threw himself flat against the hull of the Ursu ship.
“Blow that sucker,” Van Cleef shouted.
The charges detonated. The hatch blasted open. Van Cleef tossed three grenades down the open hatch. Three rapid explosions later, Van Cleef led the assault.
Dax ran to the plume of smoke rising out of the open hatch. He gave himself a second and glanced over his shoulder. Valiant was nowhere to be seen.
He felt his guts somersault. He knew that despite successfully neutralizing the Ursu ship’s warp-drive facility, they were adrift in space somewhere amongst the rings of Saturn and effectively lost. He knew taking control of the ship was their only means of survival.
Dax threw himself head first down the hatch and instantly regretted it. The Ursu ship’s internal gravity slammed him face-down hard into the floor of a dark corridor. His power-armor and helmet took the impact, but not without damage.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows. Fragments of static swirled around his visor display. Night vision shadows faded in and out as sickly green and overexposed blobs of blinding white.
Fine time for a glitchy helmet.
“Anyone here?” Dax called out as he peered ahead into the erratic putrid green lighting of the ship’s long, empty corridor.
He felt a weight slam hard into his back and shove him down into the floor.
“What the hell?”
“Stay down, Commander,” Van Cleef hissed. “Sniper.”
Dax stayed low. He allowed his eyes to adjust to the gloom. What struck him most was the sheer scale of the corridor. The ceiling was unusually high, the corridors unnecessarily wide.
His scanners told him the walls were too thick for any accurate readings. His scanners told him they were made of Ursu-steel. Normally used only for Ursu armor and revered around the galaxy for its toughness.
But why use it on a ship’s interior?
It’s almost as if we’re inside a vast cage...
Dax tried to laugh off the thought, but the idea stayed with him.
His stomach backflipped. Damn these glitchy scanners...
A marine crawled along the corridor to Dax. His name flashed up across Dax’s IRL as O’Rorke.
“Are you with me, Commander?” said O’Rorke. The private’s helmet display threw up a blue hue across his twitching face. His eyes seemed dilated with adrenalin or an overdose of some field operation medication supplied by his power-armor.
“You might want to reconfigure your dosage, Private,” Dax said.
“I’m fine, Commander,” O’Rorke said, but his wide eyes said otherwise to Dax.
“O’Rorke, you’re jacked to the max,” Van Cleef said. “Fall back into position.”
Dax’s IRL registered an unidentified and fluctuating anomaly ahead.
“Some sort of field ahead, Private,” Dax said. “Give me a minute to get a better reading.”
A rapid fire sequence of shots pummeled the wall just above their heads. There was a cry from behind.
“I’m hit,” a marine cried out.
Dax’s visor display flashed up a field map. He was identified as a flashing green dot in the center. Around him, a dozen blue dots marked out the nearest marines. Each blue dot was tagged with the name of the marine. Van Cleef to his left. Valkyrie to his right.
A flashing blue dot tagged as Private Solange Rhiordhan suddenly turned grey. It slowly stabilized back to blue as Dax’s IRL received a med-report of Rhiordhan’s injury. Medic nano-bots reported in real-time their progress in sealing the wound and injecting pain-killers.
“She’ll live, Commander,” Valkyrie said. “But O’Rorke’s right about one thing. The longer we sit tight, the worse it’ll get for us in here.”
Dax’s IRL and visor display both failed to grasp the source of the field. But he had an uneasy feeling.
“Just another minute,” Dax said.
“Every minute we wait here,” O’Rorke shouted, “those Ursu scum will pick us off, one by one.”
“Dial it down, O’Rorke” Van Cleef said.
“To hell with this, Commander,” O’Rorke shouted as he jumped up. “Covering fire.”
O’Rorke rushed down the corridor. From behind Dax, a heavy barrage of shots rang out in support.
“No, O’Rorke,” Van Cleef yelled.
Marine O’Rorke sprinted down the dark corridor. A hundred feet down the corridor he ran straight into a flash of bright yellow. A laser lattice of web-like strands.
“I’m stuck,” he cried out. “There’s something crawling on me. Oh, no not them--”
O’Rorke struggled to free himself. He kicked out, but his legs and arms seemed stuck fast.
“Hold still, Private,” Dax shouted and climbed to his knees. “The more you struggle the harder it will be to get free.”
A volley of shots rang out from the far end of the corridor. Forcing Dax and Van Cleef to flatten out.
Dax watched helplessly as O’Rorke thrashed about until he burst into flame. He screamed as the fire consumed him. No one spoke. The silent corridor sounded with the dying echo of his last scream.
The yellow web dimmed and went dark. Dax instructed his IRL to zoom into the corridor. O’Rorke’s charred and agonizingly contorted body hung in the air like a dead fly in a spider’s web.
“Spider-bot webs,” Van Cleef said solemnly. “Bring up Flamer.”
Something about the Ursu sniper didn’t seem right to Dax. “You ever heard of Ursu using guns,” Dax said. “Or for that matter, spider-bots and bot-webs?”
Valkyrie shook her head. “It’s not their style, but neither is gun running. What’s unusual about a formid
able enemy adapting to take advantage of superior firepower?”
Dax considered this, but it didn’t make sense to him. As they waited for the Flamer to arrive, he sorted through what he knew about Ursu warrior behavior.
“Ursu are proud about their warrior traditions. Almost archaic about meeting their enemy face to face,” Dax said. “Hence their superior close combat skills with weapons like the Kopis sword, and those vicious laser-whips, the Cat O’light tails. Their armor is superior to ours. They ride into open battle like half-crazed Vikings. But what they don’t do is hide out in the shadows. What do you think we’re facing, Captain?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” she said and looked over her shoulder. “What’s keeping the Flamer?”
“If possible,” Dax said, “I’d like you to take the sniper alive.”
Valkyrie pulled a face as if Dax had farted through a hole in his power-armor.
“One slash from those Ursu claws can open up a man from head to toe,” she said. “Ain’t that right, Sergeant?”
“What worries me, Captain,” said Van Cleef, “Is the width of this ship’s corridors.”
“What do you mean?” Valkyrie asked.
“Sergeant Van Cleef means we could be advancing into a trap,” Dax said. “A full on Ursu Cavalry charge.”
Valkyrie swallowed hard. “You think they have one of those hideous beasts on board?” she asked. “It’s nothing but urban legend, right?”
Dax shrugged and set the motion detectors on his visor display to scan for Ursu heavy cavalry.
“I’ve not seen a marine alive today,” Van Cleef said, “who didn’t turn and run when he saw a full cavalry assault.”
“I’ve seen found-footage from the war,” Valkyrie said. “I figured it was all faked. Disinformation to spook our front-line troops. And it worked.”
“How’s that Flamer coming?” Van Cleef said. “We didn’t pick up anything on scanners, Captain?”
Valkyrie shot a dark look at Dax.
“We didn’t scan,” Dax said. “It would alert the Ursu.”
“I think they’re sufficiently alerted,” Valkyrie said, “to worry about waking them up, now. Scanning now... damn, these walls are too damn thick to get a reliable reading.”
“I picked up large green and white blobs on entry,” Dax said.
“What are you saying?” Van Cleef said and for the first time since he had met the marine sergeant, Dax thought he detected fear in his face.
“If you want to go one-on-one with an Ursu, be my guest. But I’ll not risk my marines on a suicide mission,” Van Cleef said.
Dax shrugged. “They said you’d say that,” Dax said. “Being peace time and all...”
“Who’s saying what about my marines, Commander?” Van Cleef asked.
Valkyrie’s eyes narrowed. “Dax, if you’re implying marines scare easy... then--”
“Never crossed my mind,” Dax said and smiled.
Van Cleef unsheathed his Xiphos. “I’ll skin that Ursu alive to make him talk, Commander.”
“Detaining the Ursu under guard,” Dax said, “will suffice, thank you, Sergeant.”
Two Marines crawled up to Dax’s position. They dragged a long thick tube like a mobile rocket launcher with them. Painted on the side of the launcher was a crossed-eyed clown face with huge flaming lips.
“Incinerate the webs,” Van Cleef said.
One marine, Harrison, loaded a shell into the rear end and tapped the other marine, Chan, on his shoulder.
Chan, aimed the Flamer and squeezed the trigger. A fireball shot out of the launcher. It roared down the corridor and hit the laser-web.
The web burst into flame and collapsed into a thousand orange embers.
“Time to go,” Valkyrie said and nodded to Van Cleef.
“Alpha squad on me,” Valkyrie said. “Beta Squad, covering fire. Sergeant, take Delta squad. Find another route and come up behind the sniper.”
“Yes, Captain,” Van Cleef said.
Valkyrie and a squad of twenty marines advanced under fire.
The Ursu sniper-fire intensified from the far end of the corridor.
“I’ll join the Sergeant,” Dax said and sped off to find Delta squad. Before he reached the end of the corridor his motion sensors spiked across his visor display.
“Sergeant, hold up,” Dax shouted.
Van Cleef signaled for Delta squad to wait. He turned to Dax.
“Commander?”
Dax studied the visor display. It was just a faint tremor and now, nothing. The red line went flat. He was just about to tell Van Cleef to proceed, when the red line spiked again. It dropped and settled. Then two seconds later, spiked again. It settled into a slow, rambling sequence. Every two seconds a spike.
As if something very large was moving at a walking pace.
The spikes sped up.
“I’m getting heavy movement spikes every one second,” Dax said. “No, correction, every half second. No, every quarter second.”
He whipped around and stared hard down the corridor at Valkyrie’s Alpha and Beta squads.
“There’s something behind us,” Dax said. “Something big. And it’s running.”
He caught Van Cleef’s wide open stare.
“You want us to turn back?” Van Cleef asked.
“No,” Dax said. “Proceed as before. The captain and I will hold them off. But hurry.”
Dax turned and ran back to Captain Valkyrie. The sounds of screams and gunfire propelled him faster.
As he turned the corner, what he saw next made him freeze on the spot and question his sanity.
CHAPTER 32 - CAVALRY CHARGE
A full grown adult male Ursu had the same physical appearance of a brown grizzly bear as familiar in the forest regions of Earth. But this Ursu sat astride a thick armored saddle. He wore black and gold armor, which, judging by the dents, scratches and lacerations, seemed to be capable of surviving many a vicious hammer blow, sword thrust and plasma cannon blast.
Dax had never seen an Ursu in real life. His specialist expertise concerned the other alien race enemy of his people, the Lupos.
Dax’s heart hammered in his throat as he frantically fought to comprehend the sight of horror rapidly unraveling his mind. His eyes stung with tears as he assimilated the shear majesty of the beast the Ursu was riding.
The Ursu stood up in thick iron stirrups, standing some ten feet tall as his vast razor sharp claws pulled on reins made of thick, but rusting iron chains. The reins were attached to an armor plated harness around the head of a creature that to Dax’s mind hadn’t existed for at least sixty five million years. At least, not on his own home world.
The Ursu smashed his armor plated fist down on the top of the skull of the beast. He seemed to activate some kind of electronic dome-shaped device embedded into the beast’s skull. Perhaps sending electronic commands to its brain.
Something, Dax figured, that might help control the beast he was riding. For the Ursu, in all his fearsome glory had tamed the most terrifying creature in all of history.
The Ursu rode a full grown adult Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur charging at Alpha and Beta squads. Both bear and dinosaur were clad in the same black and gold armor that shimmered with some kind nano-tech force field. The armor seemed impenetrable. Deflecting expertly aimed shots from the marines.
The T.Rex opened its jaws and roared. The shock wave of the roar pummeled Dax and crackled with unbearable distortion through his helmet. Each of its hundreds of teeth seemed taller than Dax’s head and as thick as his wrist.
The T.Rex’s head was a five feet long wedge of rippling muscle and green scales. A plume of red feathers like a punk rocker’s Mohawk flowed out of the chinks of a solid helmet that matched the Ursu’s armor.
Scratches, human head shaped dents and blood splatter covered the Rex’s beautifully crafted armor plate head-piece. Blood shot eyes, some four inches wide, peered out of the helmet with an intelligence that shocked Dax.
It kno
ws, despite our weaponry, we’re all terrified. It smells our fear.
Dax’s mind wanted to reject what he was seeing.
How can they create a monster like this? They’re not scientists. The Ursu are a warrior race. It makes no sense.
Dax felt as insignificant as his distant cave-dwelling ancestors facing the discovery of fire for the first time. Like them, every fiber of his being needed him to flee in fear.
With a thump of the Ursu’s fist, the giant jaws of the T.Rex turned abruptly and lunged at the Flamer crew of Chan and Harrison. Chan launched the Flamer’s rocket at the T.Rex’s chest.
The explosion blinded Dax for a few seconds. Everyone waited for a full five seconds as smoke and dust cleared. A roar, louder than ever, seemed to crush Chan’s willpower.
He seemed routed to the spot.
The T.Rex stepped out of the dust cloud and shook its skull violently from side to side. It swiftly clamped its jaws around Chan’s head. It bit through him like a knife cutting through soft butter.
It shook Chan’s body like a rag doll and swiped his legs at Alpha squad. Barreling Alpha squad down the corridor as if they were bowling pins. The Rex barreled through both squads. Head butting them and scattering them as if they were dandelion seeds in a summer breeze.
As I live and breathe... an Ursu cavalry charge!
Valkyrie ordered the marines to regroup around her. She directed squad fire-power against the T.Rex. But bullets merely rebounded off the armor. The T.Rex responded by dropping the headless marine.
In the corner of his eye, on his visor display, Dax’s attention was caught for a second by a blue dot tagged Private Felix Johanson. It winked and turned black. A white skull and cross bones appeared over the black dot. It joined another dozen black dots with skull and cross bones.
The T.Rex headbutted Valkyrie and crushed her high up against the ceiling. It pulled away. Valkyrie slid lifelessly down the wall to the floor.
Across Dax’s visor, Valkyrie’s tagged blue spot turned grey. Dax held his breath. The shade grew rapidly darker.
The T.Rex paused. It eyed Dax. Took a step toward him.
In its blood-shot four inch wide eyes, Dax could see every nuance of his own, wide-eyed fear reflected back at him.
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