Warp Gate (Valyien Far Future Space Opera Book 7)

by James David Victor

  I just have to slow them down so that—

  The Mercury Blade slowed dramatically, and the small trading craft pinged it with warning transmissions in alarm as it was forced to cut on its booster power as well…

  Which in turn affected the large hauler vessel. It was five or six times the size of the Mercury Blade, but Eliard knew that those things had big engines, and it would take them a while to slow down. He matched his speed to theirs as the large hauler lifted its nose high above the space lane to avoid any collisions, and then the entire space lane of traffic was scattering and breaking apart, creating a cloud of vessels avoiding each other rather than the tight, computer-controlled race that they had been locked into.

  “Bring the boosters back up, Irie,” Eliard called.

  “Aye-aye, Captain!”

  Eliard easily kept his boat in check, rising just under the nosecone of the space hauler as it left the space lane. He waited until his tracking computer picked up the enemy signals of the two Armcore craft—each one flaring away from the sudden cloud of civilian craft—before peeling away from the space hauler that he was hiding behind and hitting the boosters as he turned to the nearest Armcore craft.

  Target Lock: Railgun (Double): 1 Craft.

  He fired instantly and was rewarded by seeing the Armcore craft billowing apart in a flower of gases and fire.

  Which left only one. He scanned the navigation and tracking projections as he pulled the Mercury away from the space lane. Behind and underneath them, he was pleased to see that none of the civilian craft had crashed or been attacked by Armcore.

  “Sorry I ruined your trip, folks,” he muttered.

  “What was that?” Irie called over the communicator.

  “Nothing. Where is the last one?” Eliard called back, before seeing the small, fast-moving vector disappearing back into the void. “I got it. It looks like it’s had enough of us already.” He felt a surge of savage glee. How many has that been altogether? Five Armcore attack craft, and they had incapacitated two, destroyed two, and one was fleeing.

  Live Transmission Protocol: OEC.

  “Excellent flying, Captain,” the ethereal, dreamy tones of Ponos emerged from the speaker system. “I have a subroutine tracking your progress. Unfortunately, I have to warn you of one thing…”

  “Really? When do you ever have good news for me?” Eliard scowled deeply.

  “I do have good news. We have multiple Armcore war cruisers attacking Old Earth from four different vectors, as well as the Alpha-vessel currently engaged with over twenty OEC attack craft.”

  “You call that good news?” Eliard thought in alarm. “Then really, I can wait for your definition of a warning…”

  “Attack craft, whether Armcore or our own, do not have warp core capabilities, which implies that…” Ponos was saying.

  Oh crap. “It means they must have a friendly docking station nearby.” Eliard grasped the true nature of the problem immediately. Especially in his case, there had been five Armcore attack craft, which meant that there must have been something able to dock and support the five craft…which could be anything from an Armcore war cruiser to a battleship or an entire armada as far as he knew.

  Either way, Eliard also knew that there was nothing for it. He had to get to Esther, as Cassandra and the Q’Lot might be there already and might be engaged in their own fight against Armcore or whatever else the Alpha-vessel and the not-quite-dead Valyien could cook up.

  “Navigational array says that the retreating Armcore vessel is heading more or less straight to our predicted destination…” Eliard called out. “Irie?”

  “Already working on it, boss. Ten-second warp plasma injection? I can give you thirteen seconds tops, but after that, the chance of getting a retro-active reaction are astronomical,” she said, using terms that Eliard didn’t understand at all, but he presumed that it meant ‘bad stuff will happen if you ask me to go over thirteen seconds.’

  “Ten will do,” he said, and felt the whumps from the thrusters as they once again shone with warp fire.

  Warp-injected thrusters were about the fastest that you could go and not be in warp and was considered a dangerous flying move, but Eliard had grown up doing this back home, on the distant, wealthy backwater planet of Branton 1—a planet that could almost be called a water world if it had a fraction less landmass. It was home to the eagles of House Martin, as well as one of the unofficial hubs of the underground racing circuit: single-pilot craft which were barely comprised of wings, a pilot, and a giant torpedo of an engine.

  By the time that Eliard had started sneaking off to participate in the illegal races, they had become even more dangerous by using stolen or retro-fitted single warp cores with booster attachments, allowing a near-constant burn of the plasma-injection system, and allowing fabulous turns of speed.

  Eliard had been one of the best racers on Branton 1—before the crash, that was—and so now, riding on the wave of warp energy and feeling his Mercury thrum and shake underfoot could almost be said to feel like coming home.

  Warning! Enemy Vessel Detected! his computer shouted at him as a red, flashing vector appeared below and grew larger as the Blade tore through the void towards it.

  But Eliard wasn’t concerned with one singular attack craft anymore. All hopes of disabling the Armcore craft before it reported back to its mothership were gone.

  Because the Armcore mothership was already here, hanging over the surface of a golden-brown desert world, and already engaged in a battle for its very existence.

  The Q’Lot were here.

  14

  Esther

  “What can we do?” Irie’s voice was small and somewhere between awe and horror over the Mercury Blade’s communicator.

  Eliard agreed with her assessment. “I’m not sure that there is an awful lot that we can do,” he said doubtfully as the battle ahead of them played out.

  It was a sight unlike any other in the history of Imperial Coalition warfare, principally because one of the combatants shouldn’t even exist. The Q’Lot vessel appeared like a cross between a deep-sea anemone, a giant star of diamond, and a fungus bracket or coral. It glowed white, with fine tendrils of hardened bone-white material spiking in every direction from its center, and as Eliard looked, he was sure that he could make out pulses of softer blue light that ran up the fattest ‘stalks’ or ‘shards’ like the beating of some electrical heartbeat.

  But the Q’Lot wasn’t just an odd-looking vessel, it was also an odd-feeling vessel to the eyes. Eliard had to blink and shake his head as he slowed the Mercury Blade almost to background booster power and stared at the thing through his cockpit window.

  Light reflected, refracted, divided, and bounced off the thing so that Eliard’s eyes hurt with the gleam. It was almost like looking directly into a flame, or into a warp jump, as strange, dancing after-images of the glow flickered in his vision long after he looked away.

  “Where are the thing’s engines? Its boosters? Reserve tanks?” Eliard said in awe, as there was no visible means of propulsion or warp engine visible on the thing at all. It was, in fact, a design or a technology or a biology that was completely unknown to the captain. He couldn’t understand which part of it was the cockpit, or the bridge, or the prow or engines.

  “I don’t think it HAS engines, Captain…” Irie said in a subdued voice.

  The Q’Lot star was also large—nowhere near as wide, but still of a comparative size to the central fatter sections of the Armcore war cruiser it was currently engaged in a battle with.

  On the far side of the Q’Lot, and facing it straight-on, was the heavy inverted W of an Armcore war cruiser, and as Eliard watched, he could see tiny specks of other Armcore attack craft being deployed from its rear loading bays to swerve around towards their foe.

  But if these tiny Armcore attack craft had hoped in any way to even reach the Q’Lot vessel, then they would first have to negotiate the dangerous battle scene playing itself out between them. The light o
f laser charges and pulses of meson railguns lit up the space between the Q’Lot ship and the Armcore war cruiser. It was so bright that the space between the two craft had started to convulse and shine with an unholy light, as yet more fast-traveling, ‘sharper’ weapons were fired.

  “Meson security fields,” Eliard noted. That was what was creating the wash and swathe of glaring light between the two craft. Both had thrown forward energy fields to try and deflect their opponent’s weapons, and they were creating a deadly buffer zone filled with warp fire and ruin.

  Which one is going to win? Eliard thought, a sliver of doubt creeping into his mind. He had no idea what the Q’Lot were capable of, aside from the space-mariners’ tales that they could apparently ‘disappear’ entire boats—even stations and colonies—whenever they wanted.

  Behind both vessels was the banded orange and ochre scrub world of Esther, large compared to the craft in front of it, and striated with lines of dazzling light.

  Solar collectors, Eliard knew. Esther was a desert world and his Imperial histories education had taught him that with many worlds—even the rare ones with both a human-breathable atmosphere and human-normal gravity—that if it would take too much effort to terraform their chaotic environments, then it would generally be given over to resource collection and energy production. The sub-orbital panels that floated over the desert sands of Esther would generate trillions of kilowatts of energy, ready to be stored in chemical batteries or used directly in resource extraction.

  And now Alpha will harvest all of that, Eliard thought grimly as his computer screens blared.

  Incoming Transmission! Unknown Sender! Accept? Y/N

  The captain immediately waved his hand through the projected ‘Yes,’ as he knew that there was only one boat in near-space that would be unknown to the Mercury Blade’s computers, and that they would have easily identified the Armcore war cruiser’s signature.

  “El?” a voice appeared over the ship’s transmitters. It was a voice that he hadn’t heard in too long.

  “Cass,” he said, even as his throat unexpectedly started to tighten up.

  I saw you die. I let you die. It was my fault. How could he put all of that into words?

  “El, there’s no time. But it’s good to hear your voice again. I didn’t know that you were still…”

  “Alive?” The pirate managed a wry smile. “Ah, you know me, Cass. They’d have to do a lot more than resurrect an ancient alien ghost and throw it into a galaxy-spanning intelligence to slow me down.”

  A short, digitized laugh on the other end of the line made Eliard grin, although he didn’t want to think why. It’s just good to hear her alive and well again, he told himself.

  “Well, good. Because we’re probably going to be testing that theory very soon.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “I’m sending you coordinates on Esther. It’ll be through the Q’Lot’s encrypted subspace mycelia network, so Alpha shouldn’t be able to hack it. Yet.”

  “Subspace what?” Eliard was baffled.

  “Don’t. No time. Something to do with sub-quantum viruses. Forget it. We’re already on the surface, and we’re heading to the site now. Get here as soon as you can, while the Q’Lot vessel keeps Armcore occupied.”

  “They can handle it?” Eliard asked, but Cassie’s answer was not forthcoming as she had already ended the transmission.

  “Just like old times.” Eliard found himself grinning as he rolled the ship’s command wheel to swing the Mercury Blade in a wide arc around the ferocious battle ahead, taking the route into the comparatively safer space behind the Q’Lot’s side of the firefight.

  “How, under all the stars, is this anything like old times, Cap’?” Irie asked.

  “Well, Cassie’s up to something and I have no idea what it is, and we’re about to throw ourselves into the teeth of danger.”

  A momentary pause from his engineer at the other end of the boat. “Oh yeah, I see what you mean. In that respect, this is all just another day at the office.”

  If your office happened to be ancient alien warp gates, Eliard thought as they roared towards the desert planet.

  The Mercury Blade entered the atmosphere of Esther with the finesse of a knife, cutting through the air and screaming over alien mountain ranges of black rock, edged by rolling orange dunes. It didn’t take long for Eliard to see through the cockpit windows where they were going. Up ahead was a mound of rocks and dunes, as large as a small town and sitting oddly apart from the nearest rock formations.

  “What’s the bet that underneath that is a sunken ziggurat?” Eliard grumbled as the Mercury swooped down to disturb strange four-winged vulture-type birds from their rocky perches. The horizon was a shining band of chrome-white, and Eliard knew that it wasn’t the glare of sun on sand, but instead the glare of sun from the floating platforms far above the orange deserts, moving constantly as they caught the most light that they could.

  Coordinates Acquired! The Mercury’s computer sent the projection of a targeting green square through the cockpit to flash at one corner of the rocky dome. Eliard squinted, sure that he could see shapes out there. Something white against the rocks?

  It was them, he saw as they drew ever nearer, and the sand and rock dome filled his screen. There appeared to be a craft of some sort against the bottom tiers of the rock, although it was hard to tell if it was a craft or another rock formation itself.

  The Q’Lot ‘pod’ was a large egg-shaped structure of white, which, as Eliard turned the Mercury in a slow circle to land nearby, he saw that the surface was a lattice of white and bone-white organic tendrils, knitted together to form a solid shell. Once again, the captain had the dizzying sense of strangeness as he tried to work out what it was that he was looking at. Where are the engines? The thrusters? Booster rockets? But no answers were forthcoming, and the question was swept from his mind as he saw the small shapes standing beside the Q’Lot ‘egg’ craft.

  The first and most visible was taller than all the others, wearing white and silver flowing robes, but its head was covered in an over-large, ovoid blue dome. From this distance, the captain could see the Q’Lot’s smaller midriff arms tightly folded over its middle.

  Next in line came the mutant hybrid creature that was Argyle Trent, his head a small, tortoise-like white dome atop the body wearing similar white and silver robes.

  And then the last figure, who was all that Eliard had eyes for. It was Cass, he was certain of it. Still with that bob of almost platinum blonde hair, slightly disheveled from the desert winds, and whose own silver and white robes were closer-fitting and more like an Imperial Coalition encounter suit.

  Billows of sand and rock dust obscured them from his view as Eliard extended the landing gear and the Mercury crunched down, settling a moment later as the engines and electrical components hummed down to silence.

  “Irie, full tactical!” the captain said, already slipping on the heavier upper-body harness that formed plates over his shoulders and the tops of his arms as he snapped the chest buckle together. He added to it his holster of two laser pistols, checked their charges to find them at full, and threw the Mercury into a sensor-scan lockdown mode that would only open the doors to its crew after they had left.

  Swinging down the metal gantry steps to the main hold, he found Irie Hanson already emerging through the rear bulkhead door in a similar body harness, but hers had more attachments for strange sensors, gadgets, and tools. Eliard knew that their upper-body harnesses were nowhere near as strong as the Armcore heavy tactical, full-body suits, but they were all that a bunch of pirates like them could afford, and they fitted easily over the scavenger-class encounter suits that Irie had insisted the crew wear.

  In Irie’s hands was a snub-nosed weapon of black composite materials with a mesh strap around her neck, her preferred heavy blaster.

  “I guess we’re ready.” He gave his chief engineer a serious nod as he opened the Mercury’s main hold doors, although a part of him
still wished that he had Val Pathok behind them, wielding the one-man artillery cannon that only he could hold, known as The Judge.

  “Cassie.” He grinned as the dust settled to reveal the trio of waiting forms on the other side.

  Just as the sky exploded with fire.

  15

  Interlude IV: Revelation

  Inside the embattled almost-orb of metal that was the OEC platforms surrounding Old Earth, Ponos-Omega sat. To look at him, you might be mistaken to think that he was a statue, perhaps some strange robot god. Ponos-Omega had the same large, black-metal body as it had before, and the same strange camera-head with one central lens of an eye. But rubber tubing and gold wires splayed from the back of its head, neck, and shoulders into the back of the giant metal throne, and its large clawed, vice-like hands gripped the levers on the armrests.

  Ponos-Omega didn’t move externally, but inside, it was fighting.

  In the transfigured architecture of Ponos’s mind, there were corridors and tunnels. A vast interconnected system of data nodes and virtual rooms, each one accessing a different store of information, but most of the pulses of data were all funneling towards one virtual site: a large arena simulation of the battle taking place outside as Armcore and the Alpha-vessel hammered the surface of the OEC platforms.

  Glittering white lights of the various platforms’ orbital defense lasers slowly pulsed bright and then faded again, in time with their cycle charge to get them up to firing readiness again. As each one reached peak brilliance, a line of light stabbed out at the attackers, holding its integrity for a heartbeat, before winking out of existence. Ponos had them on carefully relayed timers, so that there was a steady barrage of the OEC’s heaviest weapons against the heaviest threats: the war cruisers and the Alpha-vessel itself.