Warfare: Rise Of Mankind Book 2

by John Walker

  “Christ…” Gray rubbed his eyes. “That’s why you tried to get into orbit?”

  “Yes…” The man coughed. “But right when I boarded the ship, it was hit by that explosion…and I thought my information might die with me. The recording…is here…”

  “Send it over, Laura.”

  “On it.”

  Gray downloaded the file and watched a video appear on his screen. It showed a woman who looked remarkably like Clea but her expression of bitterness twisted her into something else entirely. He bit his lip as she began to speak, his brow furrowing in thinly veiled rage.

  “I am sending you the coordinates,” she said, “to one of our most advanced research facilities. The alliance has grown weak. I expect you will purge this universe appropriately and bring about an ideology for the strong. Those who cannot support themselves, those cultures incapable of pushing through their limitations, should be destroyed. My work can help you do that.

  “We have two orbiting vessels and a number of ground forces. Be aware of our other defenses as well. They are listed below.”

  Gray clenched his fist as he listened to her give them everything they needed to annihilate the planet. He shook his head and stood, slapping the com. “Let him rest, Laura. he’s done his part. Agatha, patch me through to Hoffner and Clea, ASAP. Priority one.”

  “Working on it, sir. The interference from that energy surge is playing havoc with outbound communications.”

  “Cut through it, this is important.”

  “Establishing a weak connection now…”

  “Thanks, Hoffner? Clea? This is Gray, can you hear me?”

  ***

  Clea put her hand to the side of her helmet, pressing it into her ear. “Captain? I can hear you, this is Clea…your signal is very weak.”

  “Pay close attention to what I’m about to tell you,” Gray said. “We’ve identified the traitor.”

  “Good,” Hoffner replied. “Where is the bastard?”

  “With you, I assume,” Gray said. “It’s Vora An’Tufal. We have a recording from her that she sent to the enemy. It’s pretty damning. In fact, I’m sending it over.”

  Clea watched the video in silence, her back stiffening. From beginning to end, she didn’t move an inch. Every fiber of her being, every nerve ending and sensation went numb. Her blood ran cold and sweat instantly dried on her back. An energy filled her muscles, replacing exhaustion with honest rage.

  Hoffner grunted. “That bitch! Clea, are you near her?”

  Clea didn’t respond. She turned to her sister, eyes narrow and glistening with unshed tears. The faceplate of her helmet hid the emotions playing out openly on her face, in direct defiance of everything she’d ever learned about maintaining discipline. Third hand betrayal upset her, the very idea anyone would turn on them sickened her. But this…

  A thousand memories flooded Clea’s mind going back to when she was a child. They ran together, threw rocks in the pond near their house, received the same tutoring for a time and played games with friends. Their mother taught them to cook and Vora fussed about getting messy. Her sister’s eyes never lit up so much as when she indulged her passion for science.

  So why would you have done this?

  Clea couldn’t confront her on the shuttle, not in front of all those people. Not only would they likely beat her to death but they didn’t need to hear whatever she had to say. There was no defense for her actions, no justification which anyone would accept. This situation, as it stood, damned Vora completely.

  My sister…

  A tear finally fell, streaking her cheek before absorbing into her collar. The armor felt insanely restrictive, biting into her skin and irritating her. She wanted nothing more than to tear it off and throw it on the ground, to remove the offensive garment but people crowded around her, making too much movement impossible.

  “Clea?” Hoffner had been speaking to her for a good several minutes and finally got through her thoughts. “Hey, talk to me.”

  “I’m here, Captain.” Clea tried to make her voice sound distant but her words trembled and she felt like she was falling into a great pit. “I’m here.”

  “We can’t do anything here…”

  “I know.” Clea replied. “But when we board the Behemoth, I’ll take her aside. You can have some marines follow so we can arrest her properly. However, I must talk to her.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Gray’s voice filled her helmet. “Clea, you don’t have to talk to her. Leave it to the MPs. They can put her in lockup and question her later. You shouldn’t—”

  “She’s a blood relative, Captain,” Clea interrupted. “One I grew up with. I will understand her motivation before she is sentenced. Whatever happens to her after, that’s her business but at least right now, she’ll explain it to me. After all, I’ll be responsible for explaining it to our parents…to making our family understand. I have to mitigate the damage to our family as well.

  “Vora has much to answer for. Her betrayal is merely the most important.”

  “Okay,” Gray conceded. “Hoffner, ensure you pick a couple of men who are discreet. No vigilante nonsense, got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She may know more about the enemy,” Gray said, “and if so, then this might not be a complete loss.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Clea said. “Because if you’re not…then she’s thrown away her life for nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, Clea.” Gray sighed. “More than you know.”

  “So am I, Captain.” Clea clenched her fists tightly. “So am I.”

  ***

  As the shuttle broke atmosphere, a massive explosion rocked the continent where the research facility had been. The flash of light bathed the ship for a brief moment before dying down and falling silent. When they looked again, a massive crater formed over a twenty-thousand kilometer radius. Nothing could’ve survived the blast.

  The facility, and any secrets it may’ve still had, were quite gone.

  They docked with the Behemoth only a few minutes later. As the ramp dropped, medical personnel welcomed the people aboard and escorted them to one of the triage centers. Clea waited patiently for her turn to leave, staying close to Vora. Her sister continued to look sour, not even an ounce of gratitude filling her angular face.

  Would you have rather died down there? Clea began to wonder. There was a chance, however slim, that her sister knew she’d done something wrong. Perhaps she hoped to die when the enemy arrived, sacrificing herself for this mad ideal of inferior races and those who didn’t deserve to live.

  Who made you one of the gods?

  The ship emptied and Vora followed the last survivors off the ship with Clea close behind. Two marines followed as she tapped her sister on the arm. “We need to go this way.” She gestured with her head off to the left, down a hall toward the brig.

  “Why aren’t we going with them?”

  Clea hesitated for only a moment. “Because we’re not hurt. Come on.”

  Vora shrugged and walked along with her sister, moving into the privacy of the hall. Clea stopped her there with a touch to her arm. “Do you remember…” She swallowed back emotion, struggling for a moment to maintain her composure. It took a moment but she finally mastered herself and continued. “Do you remember the An’Vell plantation?”

  “Of course.” Vora nodded. “They grew those amazing filans.”

  “We snuck in there and gorged ourselves during the hot months.”

  Vora finally smiled, the first positive expression she’d shown since they met up again on the planet. “Yes…it made us sick for days.”

  “Thank God.” Clea took her helmet off and set it on the ground. “I had to know if you’d lost all feeling. I’m glad to see you haven’t.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Vora tilted her head, looking confused. “Clea…”

  “I know what you did.” Clea held up her computer and showed her the video. Vora watched, standing up straighter the moment s
he saw her own face. The words didn’t seem to move her but she didn’t look away until the video finished.

  “I thought I’d deleted all trace of my indiscretion.”

  “Is that what you call high treason?” Clea asked. “Indiscretion? As if you’ve done nothing more than annoy a person?”

  “I followed my conscience.”

  Clea shook her head. “No, no…no, you did not. If your conscience told you to do this, then you wouldn’t have tried to get away with it. You wouldn’t have cared. Unless you thought you might do more damage to your own people.”

  “We’ve grown decadent—”

  “You haven’t been home in a while.” Clea shook her head. “Are we amongst those species which don’t deserve to live? Mother? Father? Our brother?”

  Clea felt a surge of anger threatening to overtake her and she swallowed it back, fighting with every fiber of her being to contain it.

  “The enemy has won.” Vora shrugged. “There’s no use fighting them. They have devoted all their resources to battle, to destroying us.”

  “How do you know that? What did you discover?”

  “It doesn’t matter…”

  Clea grabbed her by the shirt and slammed her into the wall, raising her voice. “It matters, Vora! It matters to all the people who died today out in space! Our culture depends on what we do here and now, what you tell me and what you give up. So don’t try to hide behind some nihilistic nonsense! Tell me what you found!”

  Vora looked away, shame filling her features. “Our research into enemy technology led me to stumble upon one of their archives. After a battle, our ships recovered more of their data core than ever before. I personally studied it, eager to learn more about those who would kill us. I thought I might be able to provide context, a weakness in their social structure we could exploit…”

  “But?” Clea prompted. “What was it?”

  “When we made contact with those people, they were content to their colonies and home world. Their social structure, their caste system, was rigid and well defined. Even before they had a cause, their religious zealotry bound them together. Their morals were unshakable and their ideologies uncompromising.

  “When we met them, with our liberal attitude toward sharing knowledge…our concept of freedom and individuality…it offended them. We could not treat with them because they had no interest in what we had to offer. They didn’t appear technologically savvy but what we didn’t know was how well they guarded the secrets they’d uncovered in their colonial expansion.

  “They have some sort of manufacturing planet capable of churning out equipment, ships and fighters, some sort of…of precursor tech we can only imagine. For every two ships we destroy, they can produce five and they do so with resources claimed from other worlds nearby, strip mined to fuel their jihad.

  “Make no mistake, they want us dead due to religious and ideological differences. They are not interested in a cease fire or any kind of peace. Their only goal is to annihilate any culture which defies the tenets of their race. We represent the largest threat to their goals. The longer we struggle, the more we prolong the inevitable.”

  Clea stared at her with wide eyes. The revelation she’d been presented with, the story Vora carried with her, made her stomach turn. “So you just gave up? Decided we weren’t worth fighting for? How could you have so little respect for your own life? What happened to your self preservation? Why didn’t this compel you forward, making you search harder for the technology we needed to win this war?”

  “Because you are not listening!” Vora shouted. “There is no victory here!”

  Clea closed in so their noses were touching and their eyes were inches apart. She whispered harshly. “I for one would rather fight to my dying breath standing between my enemies and my family than to roll over and surrender to cowardice.”

  Vora opened her mouth to respond but Clea’s scowl stopped her.

  “You cannot defend yourself from this. You can’t make amends. You can’t escape the judgement you’ve requested. In attempting to damn our entire race, you’ve merely thrown all your potential away. Giving up never helps anything, Vora. Don’t you remember that simple lesson? Our father made it quite clear.”

  “He didn’t face these odds.”

  Clea shook her head. “He did state any odds.” She pulled her sister close, embracing her tightly. She recited their traditional statement for a condemned prisoner, her eyes burning with tears. “I hold the remnants of Vora An’Tufal in my arms. When I release her, she will be known only as Vora. Her ties to family and tradition will be cut. Only the individual will remain and she will pay for what she has done.”

  The gravity of it must’ve sunk in. Vora returned the hug and began to cry, burying her face in her sister’s hair. “I’m sorry, Clea…”

  “I wish I could believe you.” Clea fought hard to let go but couldn’t immediately. “I wish you would’ve thought about all of us first. I’ll miss you. The memories I’ll cherish will be those of our youth. The other actions are those of another and that’s the person I’ll see punished.”

  Vora nodded, unable to speak through her weeping.

  As Clea stepped back, she directed the soldiers forward. “Take Vora to a cell. I’ll accompany you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She recognized the men as Jenks and Walsh. Their familiar presence gave her some strength. Walsh smiled at her, offering a sympathetic expression before bringing their prisoner down the hall and to the brig.

  So ends the hunt for our traitor…and the life of my sister.

  Clea saw her locked up and headed for the bridge. They still needed to get out of the system if any of this was to matter.

  Chapter 17

  Gray stood behind Redding, watching the view screen. Olly put up the position of the enemy fleet and it was approaching fast. They know the facilities gone, they have to. They must assume we got everything out of there. The thought worried him. Would they try to blow them out of the sky or commandeer the ships to get at their cargo?

  The traitor situation made his heart sick for Clea. He knew what family meant to the woman, how much it meant to their culture. Having her own sister do such a thing must’ve been quite the blow. He’d received the report that Vora An’Tufal was locked up in the brig. He wondered if he’d see his liaison any time soon.

  Technicians worked to backup the data recovered at the facility. Tech crews assisted with Paul on lead. He’d been working in the computer labs when those people arrived and broke off to ensure everything they saved got some redundancy. Olly didn’t have the bandwidth to coordinate any of that, especially considering their current situation.

  The Crystal Font came closer to them and they allowed visiting fighters to return home. Gray turned to Olly when the last ship boarded. “Are we ready to jump out of here?”

  “The engines have been charging for almost ten minutes,” Olly replied. “I’m not sure what’s taking so long.”

  Gray gestured to Agatha. “Patch in Higgins.”

  “He’s on the line, sir.”

  “Higgins, what’s going on? How long to jump?”

  “We’re working on it,” Higgins replied. “That microjump messed with the charging stations. Our sensors said they were working fine but when Olly called down to ask what happened, I found they were trickle charging.”

  Gray rubbed his eyes. “Is the problem corrected?”

  “It is now…”

  “How long before we can jump, Higgins?”

  “Five minutes, sir.”

  “And how long before the enemy fleet gets here?” Gray looked toward Tim.

  Tim replied, “at present speed, they should have a firing solution in less than eight minutes.”

  “Not much room for error,” Adam said.

  “Plot a course away,” Gray said. “Redding, turn us around. Get us moving at top speed. Buy the drive some time to charge.”

  The navigator and pilot went to work. Gray brought the Crystal Font online. �
��Kale, we’ve got a problem.”

  “We were just about to recommend a jump…where are you going?”

  “Our pulse drive isn’t charged up. Something happened when we did the micro. We’re going to put some distance between us and that fleet long enough to get the drives ready. It’ll be about five minutes.”

  Kale hummed. “I see.”

  “You guys are welcome to take off. I’m sure your ship’s ready to go.”

  “We can’t leave you here,” Kale replied. “Not with the cargo you carry. The data, the traitor…between the two of us, we are the expendable.”

  “Listen to me,” Gray said firmly. “No one is expendable, okay? No one.” Clea came on the bridge and stopped abruptly. Gray made eye contact with her and frowned. She paced closer.

  “I’m not saying I wish to die,” Kale said. “Nor do I necessarily plan to. I have some tricks up my sleeve still and I should be able to get out of here before they dust my ship. However, you need time and I can buy it for you. Keep your throttle at maximum and jump out of here. We’re sending you some coordinates. From there, you can jump back to Earth.”

  “What about you?” Gray asked. “What’ll you do?”

  “Go in another direction…a roundabout way to get home.” Kale smiled. “They’ll be far more interested in us than you in a few moments so we’ll have to take the long way back.”

  “I see.” Gray shook his head. “I don’t like it, Kale. We’ve been through a lot together. I really wanted to see this through to the end.”

  “And we will,” Kale assured, “just in different parts of the galaxy. I look forward to our next meeting, Captain Atwell.” He pressed his hand to his chest and bowed his head.

  Gray nodded once and saluted the man. “Likewise, Anthar Ru’Xin.”

  “Crystal Font out.”

  “They’re going to try to run,” Clea said. “But how will that help us?”

  Agatha turned to them. “The Crystal Font has sent us a message. They offer thanks for returning the data from the facility and wish us a speedy trip back to…to Xion Six? Where’s that?”