Eden's Revenge (Eden Paradox Book 3)

by Barry Kirwan

  Five churches, including the Monofaith, faced off each other in Pentangle Square, notable for its minarets and steeples competing for height. The square park on the opposite side from Pentangle, next to the schools, was a soft, easy target, where strafing invaders would reap scattering humans like wheat. As for the Dome at Esperantia’s Northern edge, it stared upwards like an innocent, unblinking eye gazing at the sky, inviting a single well-chosen missile. During WWIII Blake had commanded enough strikes on enemy outposts to know how to level a place like Esperantia in short order. He was tempted to shut off the display.

  Vasquez had told Blake that Antonia was handling a crisis meeting of the Council, which right now included anyone who could squeeze inside the Monofaith, answering the question of whether they should ship some people out. It would take two hours to reach the caves they’d first found on their arrival, those that led down to the underground ocean. Esperantia had subterranean shelters, Micah and he had seen to it years ago. Yet one serious-sized nuke would finish the town and cremate anyone below ground. So, the big question was how long they had.

  Word had been sent to the fringe town on Lake Taka two hundred kilometres away, but there were only two hundred residents in scattered homesteads, those who couldn’t take the ‘big city life’ of Esperantia.

  The Transpar lifted them away from the town and Blake spied ivory Shimsha, and felt a pang of regret. He’d sworn to Glenda to protect the spider race, and yet at the first sniff of trouble here he was, backing humanity again.

  Sonja’s medical team was already gearing up the infirmary, with paramedics ready just in case. Weapons had been dispatched to all able-bodied men, and although Marcus and Virginia had persuaded the youngbloods to work alongside the mlitia, they all knew that if it came to a ground assault, each group would fight according to its training and style. Blake consoled himself that, altogether, it wasn’t too bad given how much time he’d had to prepare. But then he caught himself – in reality they’d had eighteen years to prepare for this day, and now it had arrived, their readiness was pitiful.

  The Transpar accelerated the Hunter into Esperia’s deep-blue ionosphere.

  “Like old times, Zack.”

  The Transpar didn’t respond, nor did Blake expect him to, long ago having given up the ghost of his friend. “Transpar or not, you’re still the best goddammed pilot on the planet.” Blake decided there and then, that even if only one per cent of that glass being was still Zack, then that was enough, especially as they were about to go into battle. He decided to call him Zack forthwith.

  He glanced at Marcus, who looked uneasy. Blake would have preferred a crew of just himself and Zack, but he needed someone to liaise with Gabriel, if that was possible, someone Gabriel trusted. And he needed a good man at the weapons console. Blake had no doubt Marcus’ reactions would be quicker than his own.

  “Marcus, can you contact Gabriel?”

  Marcus nodded. His hands tapped at the tall Q’Roth console, its green light reflecting off his sixteen-year-old chin, barely registering the stubble he undoubtedly longed for.

  “He’s not responding.” Marcus paused. “Sir.”

  Blake sat in the forward command chair. “But I’ll bet he’s listening. Open a channel, and see if you can bring up a visual of the Pyramid.”

  Blake heard a click and a sound like a distant stream. “Gabriel, this is Commander Blake Alexander. Long time no see. I know what your plan is, and I’m not going to interfere, but we should coordinate our efforts. Do you agree?”

  There was no visual; stealth mode, Blake assumed. The sound of trickling water continued. “Is he reading me?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Then you try. In Hremsta.”

  Marcus clicked for around thirty seconds, while Blake momentarily let his head rest against the back of the chair. He closed his eyes. Well, here I am again Glenda, sixty years of age and still kicking. Maybe I’ll see you soon. He knew what her response would have been. Nothing reckless now, you look after that young boy. He opened his eyes. Fast clicks and guttural noises came through from Gabriel’s ship. Progress.

  Blake was about to ask when the Transpar broke in. “We are not alone. A Q’Roth warship, range two million kilometres, stealth mode. I cannot yet tell the vessel’s class.”

  “Marcus, relay it to Gabriel!”

  Marcus stuttered the message in Hremsta as fast as he could.

  “Blake, this is Micah. We aren’t picking up any vessel other than yours.”

  Blake frowned. Since when did Micah speak Hremsta? “Micah, Zack’s at the controls, patched into the Hunter’s sensor arrays. I don’t doubt him – if he says it’s there, it’s there.”

  Micah continued. “Okay – Gabriel is going to deploy one of the mines as a missile, please relay us some telemetry – ship codes – anything – so we can target the ship.”

  “Roger.” He turned to watch Zack’s crystal fingers blur over the keypad.

  Marcus nodded. “Co-ordinates sent.”

  Blake was thrown sideways out of his chair as their ship lurched to one side. He clawed his way back, struggling against the G-force of intense acceleration, noting that Marcus had managed to stay with his console. “Report,” he barked.

  The Transpar responded with its cool, tinkling voice. “The warship fired on us and the pyramid too. We took minor damage, and I am executing a fractal defence pattern so they cannot get a fix on us. The inertial gravity will protect you now – my first evasive manoeuvre was a little extreme.”

  Blake regained his chair. “Show me the Ossyrian vessel, split screen.”

  The pyramid spun slowly, punched by pulse beams from the warship. Stealth mode had failed, and the pyramid hung like a spinning sapphire in space. Hell’s teeth, how could they detect and target it so accurately from so far away?

  Marcus interrupted. “Gabriel has launched the Ossyrian genetic weapon. Five seconds…”

  Blake waited, then shielded his eyes as space lit up with green saccadic flashes. The Level Eight weapon, refined for the Ossyrians by the Tla Beth, was known and feared throughout the galaxy, employing a gamma-based carrier wave to penetrate hulls and infect non-coded DNA. Yet Blake wondered if counter-measures had been developed during the War – after all, it had not stopped Qorall’s advance. The Q’Roth vessel stopped firing, and Blake held his breath. At least the beam pulses had ceased. He prayed Gabriel’s gambit had worked.

  “Blake,” Micah said over the comms, “we took some damage, the Ossyrian shields are still holding, barely. It appears the Q’Roth firepower has increased since this particular Pyramid-ship was last updated.”

  “Do you have any conventional weapons, beams or missiles?” Even as he asked, he doubted they would help. The Ossyrian vessel might be Level Eight compared to Q’Roth Level Six, but so much time had passed, and weapon-tech had undoubtedly advanced during the ongoing war.

  “No,” Micah answered, hints of desperation and frustration in his voice.

  A yellow pulse beam flashed across Blake’s viewscreen, slapping straight into the pyramid. Dammit!

  “Zack, intercept the Q’Roth ship, full speed with your fractal pattern, don’t be afraid to shake us up a little.”

  Marcus looked up from his console. “Suicide run?”

  “Not today, son. Hail the warship, let’s see how personal this is.”

  Marcus tried. “No reply.”

  Okay, Blake thought, have it your way, strictly professional. “Micah, Gabriel, we’re going in. I have a nannite warhead and a nuke. Won’t down the warship, but maybe I can take out their beam weapon and distract them for a while.” He wondered why it wasn’t coming closer, but then why should it, it could do all it needed to from a safe distance. The real question was why it hadn’t fired on Esperantia, now that the Q’Roth – or whoever was aboard that ship – knew the barrier must have come down.

  Gabriel came online. “Commander. Clearly they want something from us.”

  Gabriel’s last word jarred a
s Blake saw three pulses smack simultaneously into the pyramid, its own evasive manoeuvres failing to outpace the Q’Roth warship’s targeting capability. A blackened smudge scarred the pyramid’s mid-section, some of the mirror-like exterior appearing fused and warped. Blake winced; there were casualties for sure.

  He stood. “Gabriel, get behind the moon while you still can.” But even as he said it, the pyramid vanished, and Blake reminded himself these kids were smart. Sure enough they showed up where he’d advised.

  Blake sat down again, and called up the long-range viewscreen. The enemy warship was long, large structures at the front end, engines at the rear, but most of it was uniform, without any gun turrets or obvious function. He frowned. “Marcus, do you recognize that ship configuration from any of the Ossyrian databases?”

  Marcus walked down a few steps from his console and stood next to Blake, as if he needed to get closer to the screen to verify what his eyes had already confirmed.

  “It’s a planet-cutter, Sir, Crucible Class. They haven’t been in use since the Eruvian uprising two thousand years ago, except for demolition during solar system re-balancing.” He returned to his station.

  Blake steepled his fingers in front of him. Sonofabitch. Blake had heard about them, but never seen so much as a schematic. So, that was the attacker’s plan. Blake guessed it would have to get a lot closer to Esperia to deploy the weapon, so Gabriel was right, whoever was out there wanted something first.

  Micah came online. “Blake, we’re out of the action for a while. We took heavy damage, and that last jump triggered a general power failure.” Micah sounded rattled, though trying to put a brave face on it.

  “Micah you take care of yourselves for a while. I always said the best place to have an accident is in a hospital. We’ll keep them occupied.”

  Gabriel spoke, his voice uneven. “Commander, I fear I have misjudged the situation, we –”

  “Stow it, Gabriel,” Blake interrupted. “You and your youngbloods were right, and we should have listened.” And I should have been there to listen. “If you hadn’t done anything we’d have been easy meat. You gave it your best shot. Now get that ship back up and running, I’m damned sure we’re going to need it active pretty soon.”

  He turned to Marcus, who was staring at him. “Apprise Vasquez of the situation. Relay him all our telemetry. Tell him to prepare.”

  “For what, Sir?”

  Blake could feel it in his gut; he knew what was coming, though he had no idea what they wanted or why. “Tell him to prepare for ground assault. They’ll be coming soon.”

  Their Hunter zigzagged as sporadic beams from the destroyer tried to target them. Every once in a while the ship was punched sideways as one of the energy pulses struck a glancing blow, but they were steadily closing the gap. He knew no human pilot, not even Zack, could fly like this, anticipating and reacting with lightning speed. Still, it was taking too long. He slapped his thighs. “Zack, can’t you go any faster, dammit?”

  “Sure, boss.”

  Blake swivelled his head to face the Transpar. What did you just say? Marcus, deep in discussion with Vasquez, hadn’t heard it. Blake spoke quietly to his crystal companion. “Zack? Is that you?” But there was no response, the Transpar looking serene as ever, glass eyes glinting and staring straight ahead at the nav-displays in front of him, his fingers dancing over the console, enabling all of them to escape being fried alive.

  Blake clutched the edges of his command chair. They were nearly in range, fifty thousand miles from the Crucible. But he detected movement on the mid-range scanner. “Marcus?”

  “Sir, seven smaller craft – Raptor Class – just left the Crucible, heading towards us.”

  No, he thought, they’re going maximum speed towards Esperia, though a couple might slow to tackle us en route.

  Marcus voiced the question Blake was pondering. “Do we engage them?”

  Blake studied the tactical screen, the vectors, the time-to-intercept display. He knew if they went into a dogfight, they could be damaged or taken out – Raptors were short range, more manoeuvrable than a Hunter, harder to hit. He had ten seconds before intercept. If only he knew their mission.

  “Zack, slide into their path, so at least the destroyer won’t fire on us. Maintain speed but increase spin. Just before intercept, thrust to avoid any grav-mines they deploy and launch port and starboard spikeshot… well, you know what I want, right, a dead-man’s flourish?”

  The Transpar nodded.

  Marcus interjected. “What you’re asking is impossible! Even the Transpar can’t –”

  Blake raised a hand, and Marcus cut off the rest of his words. They both watched the screen. Blake brought up the aft viewscreen, too. The tactic was the equivalent of an old-style Uzi machine gun being whirled around to catch anything in its spray: the Hunter would spin and jettison HB-enhanced proton-heavy clusters – shot, in layman’s terms – into the enemy’s pathway. The Raptors’ own speed would magnify the kinetic energy of the impact, their normal bow-wave deflectors overwhelmed by the super-dense material. If enough made contact they could tear a ship apart. That was the theory, but in practice it was very difficult due to the relative speeds. It was like firing a rifle at a rider galloping past a narrow window, the shooter using a microscope for a lens. Time to see what the Transpar can really do.

  On the forescreen, seven pinpricks of light blurred large then were gone. At the same moment on the aft screen, seven blobs flashed down to nothingness, but then two of them flared into a shower of red sparks before vanishing.

  Marcus was speechless, though he let out a short laugh. His right arm tensed, as if he was going to punch the air, but instead he faced the Transpar and bowed deep, a fist over his heart.

  Blake smiled, but knew what was coming. He turned to Zack. “Well done, buddy. You’d better increase our defence moves, whoever is on that Crucible is going to be pretty pissed.”

  Blake was proven correct almost immediately. A lattice of pulse beam tracers lit up space all around them, jarring the ship. Zack’s frame leaned forward, zen-like concentration smoothing his face so that his nose seemed to recede and the eyes grew larger, as they dodged a hailstorm of fire from the Crucible.

  Blake watched the Transpar, wondering if it could sweat, feeling proud of what his erstwhile friend had done. But the growing density of enemy beams told him they’d never reach their target in one piece.

  “Turn about, Zack, use fractal dodge but stay in the Raptors’ slipstream, chase them back to Esperia.”

  He walked up to Marcus’ station. “Think we can target any of them?”

  Marcus hit a pad and a 3D image of a spherical grid showed the five remaining Raptors closing on Esperia, the Hunter lagging well behind. Marcus’ brow furrowed. “Not till they decelerate outside Esperia’s atmosphere, if that’s what they intend to do. Even then we’d risk striking Esperantia ourselves if we missed.”

  Marcus laid his right forefinger along his nose, studying the Raptors’ flight pattern. It was a gesture Blake had seen Genners do when they concentrated: considering all the eventualities, playing them forward in probabilistic time. He recalled the chess matches Micah had instituted to check the children’s development, and how the really good adult players had learned to hate this forefinger habit, as it was usually shortly followed within a few moves by checkmate. Blake recalled the bitter rows over the Genning of the children, how he’d fought and lost against Micah on that issue. Now, maybe for the first time, he realised its advantages.

  He stared at the pattern too, but there were too many unknowns for him to handle: the enemy’s intention, including their identity, their pattern when they decided to attack, and their armoury capacity… All he knew was that humanity had one vessel against five Raptors; he had to even the odds.

  “You have an idea, Marcus?”

  He nodded. “Yes, but very risky.”

  Blake assumed they were on the same track. “How many could we take down?”

  �
�Two, maybe three.”

  “Are we still alive afterwards?”

  Marcus’ eyes met Blake’s.

  Blake nodded, then returned to his station. He punched a control. “Gabriel, Micah, Vasquez, you’re all on comms. We’ll be coming in hot behind the Raptors. My guess is they’re on a ground assault. Don’t know why, but that Crucible can only be here for one reason, to destroy Esperia. We’re going to try and take down a couple of the Raptors. Vasquez, get everyone prepped down there, they’ll be coming in in five minutes. Gabriel, Micah, do you have jump capability?”

  “Blake, it’s Petra, Micah and Gabriel are busy. Negative.”

  “Then damn well get it back, and get Chahat-Me to call for –”

  “The Crucible is jamming everything.”

  So, a surgical strike, whatever it was, then a clean-up operation. No witnesses. And it meant he had no real strategy, just tactical manoeuvres. That had implications for chain of command. “Vasquez, you’re now in charge.”

  There was a pause. He knew Vasquez would catch the implication, that Blake and the others might not survive. A second later, Vasquez replied, his voice firm. “Good hunting, Sir.”

  “Marcus, tell Zack what you need him to do.”

  As he listened to Marcus’ words, he smiled. It was brilliant, and yet underlying it was a very old strategy, one he’d heard from Bill Kilaney forty years ago during close combat training. Bill had simply said, “If you don’t want to miss, make sure you’re touching your opponent.” He’d called it the bayonet strategy, after the ancient horrors of the First World War trenches, when young men had to learn to kill others directly, pushing cold steel into their enemies’ bellies and hearts, prising the life out of them. Fear made most men do it, because if they didn’t, they’d be on the receiving end instead. Being in ships, fighting with energy beams and missiles made it feel more distant, less personal, but in the end it wasn’t. You lock onto your enemy, you touch him, and then you kill him, you tear his life from him. That was war. That was what you did to protect those you loved. Glenda was far from his mind when he was in this mode, and he knew she found it difficult to accept, it being the one sore point in their long marriage they’d argued over countless times. But then, he figured, in about five minutes he’d have plenty of time to explain.