The Immortal War

by T. R. Harris

  The Immortal War

  The Human Chronicles Saga #25

  T.R. Harris

  An Adam Cain Adventure

  Copyright 2018 by T.R. Harris

  All rights reserved, without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanically, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  Contents

  Novels by T.R. Harris

  Adam Cain…

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  The End

  Don’t miss a thing!

  Novels by T.R. Harris

  Novels by T.R. Harris

  The Human Chronicles Saga

  The Fringe Worlds

  Alien Assassin

  The War of Pawns

  The Tactics of Revenge

  The Legend of Earth

  Cain’s Crusaders

  The Apex Predator

  A Galaxy to Conquer

  The Masters of War

  Prelude to War

  The Unreachable Stars

  When Earth Reigned Supreme

  A Clash of Aliens

  Battlelines

  The Copernicus Deception

  Scorched Earth

  Alien Games

  The Cain Legacy

  The Andromeda Mission

  Last Species Standing

  Invasion Force

  Force of Gravity

  Mission Critical

  The Lost Universe

  Destroyer of Worlds

  The Human Chronicles Book Bundles

  Bundle #1 - Books 1 -5 in the series

  Bundle #2 - Books 6-10 in the series

  REV Warriors Series

  REV

  REV: Renegades

  REV: Rebirth

  Jason King – Agent to the Stars Series

  The Enclaves of Sylox

  Treasure of the Galactic Lights

  The Drone Wars Series

  Day of the Drone

  In collaboration with George Wier…

  The Liberation Series

  Captains Malicious

  Available exclusively on Amazon.com

  and Kindle Unlimited.

  Adam Cain…

  …is an alien with an attitude.

  His story continues…

  In the exciting continuation of the battle against the evil creature Kracion, Adam and the team race against time and unbeatable star fleets to stop the mad Aris from becoming immortal. At stake are the lives of Adam’s daughter, Lila, and the mutant genius Panur…along with the fate of the entire galaxy. Never has the Milky Way faced such a deadly foe. And never has the galaxy needed Adam Cain and his band of heroes more than it does now….

  1

  “Here they come again!” Copernicus yelled from the weapons station.

  “How many?” Adam inquired.

  “Six…no seven.”

  Theoretically, the Klin Fleet Vessel known as the Davion had an unlimited capacity for flash cannon bolts, as long as the generators could recharge between salvos. The problem was the Olypon were sending ships through the breach in the Dysion Shield every few minutes, so the generators couldn’t build up a full charge. The ship still had weapons, but after each brief battle, their shots were reduced by one or two. Adam needed time to get the systems fully charged or eventually the batteries would run dry.

  Riyad swung the Davion along another attack line, giving Coop a clean shot at the first alien ships emerging from the swirling mass of nebular gas and stellar debris. It wasn’t that hard to counter the Olypon warships; they could only exit the corridor two at a time and with each pair separated from the others by a respectable distance because of their gravity-wells. Also they appeared with their sensors scrambled by the electrostatic charge built up on the surface of the nebula, making them temporarily blind as they emerged. A few point-blank shots by Copernicus and a shield panel would drop, opening the enemy ships up for the kill shot.

  But then they were back at it again, without giving the generators time to recover. They had already countered four such salvos, with a combined eighteen Olypon ships destroyed, yet with no sign of letup.

  Adam wasn’t sure if this was a deliberate strategy on the part of the Olypon, or just how they were moving their ships through the corridor the Humans had blasted in the Shield with a pair of colliding gravity-wells a few hours back. The passage was narrow and unstable, with random debris and gas clouds already closing in to fill the void. It was now a race to see who lasted the longest: The Davion and its rapidly draining generators, or the integrity of the opening allowing the enemy ships access to a region of space outside the Dysion Void.

  Either way, it was going to be close.

  Adam’s eyes were glued to the charge meter displayed above Coop’s station. The Olypon had an entire fleet of warships on the other side of the Shield, so it wasn’t a question if they had the units to overwhelm the Davion’s systems. It was whether or not they could get a foothold on this side of the barrier before the corridor closed. Adam’s tiny ship was preventing them from doing so. So it wasn’t a question of stopping the enemy with cannon fire, but rather letting the nebula do the job for them.

  “Riyad, set a course for the opening,” Adam ordered. “Let’s see if we can help close that damn thing once and for all.”

  “Even if we do, it will only be a thin barrier,” Sherri said. “The Olypon will be able to punch through.”

  “But it will give us time to recharge our batteries or bolt out of here.”

  “Ready,” Riyad reported.

  “Coop, spray the lining to the opening with cannon fire, as much as you have left,” Adam said. “Let’s get everything moving. Maybe the chaos of the colliding debris will help. If anything, it’ll make passage through the corridor a little more dangerous.”

  The Davion swept along the impossibly large outer wall of the Dysion Shield, aiming for a dark spot in the kaleidoscope of colorful gases. The wall wasn’t exactly a wall, just a denser version of the space the ship was bolting through. The gravity-well forward of the Davion could suck up this diffused matter; any closer to the wall and it would overload.

  Adam didn’t have to give the order to shoot or tell his pilot the proper course to take. Both Coop and Riyad were experienced enough to know. The gravity-well absorption rate was near redline when Copernicus opened fire, sending twelve powerful balls of white-hot plasma energy into the
gas cloud at either side of the opening. Already, the gravity-drive of the Klin flying saucer was affecting this tiny part of the nebula, changing the direction of the swirling wisps of methane, oxygen and helium, creating even more turmoil in the structure. The dark opening became clouded and eventually closed, overcome by the introduction of new material into the small void.

  The Davion sped away, maintaining the deepest gravity-well they could. That should hold them, Adam thought. Not for long, but long enough.

  He knew the Olypon weren’t in a position to launch a full-scale invasion of the Milky Way, not without the Klin forces or their Aris master—Kracion—leading the way. The insane ancient alien had boasted about his superior technology, and how the Union and the Expansion would be no match for his much smaller fleet and their advanced weaponry. Adam had no doubt what the Aris said was true. Your race didn’t survive for a million years of civilization—and then another three billion in suspended animation—without possessing technology beyond imagination. Kracion would provide his allies with the means of defeating the combined forces of the Milky Way in any heads up battle. The key to victory would be to out-smart the Aris.

  Adam slumped in his command chair at the thought.

  Yeah, right. Outsmart the beings who created nearly all advanced life in the galaxy; who could travel between dimensions when the Human race was just a glimmer in an ameba’s eye, and who could build hibernation pods that allowed them to live long enough to see their multi-billion-year-long experiments come to fruition. A piece of cake.

  “What now, Adam?” Riyad asked from the pilot seat. “Do we stay and hold down the fort, or do we find some safe place until we can warn the galaxy about the coming threat?”

  The voluptuous Arieel Bol moved up to the side of Adam’s chair. “We must rescue Lila!” the sexy Formilian exclaimed. “Nothing else can take priority.”

  “She’s not even in the Milky Way yet,” Sherri Valentine pointed out.

  “Which is why we must find the Aris station before Kracion can come through the portal,” Arieel said. “Once he does, that will be the first place he goes.”

  Adam nodded. “She’s right. The conquest of the Milky Way will take a backseat to his becoming immortal. And he needs the artificial world of the Aris to make that happen. If he makes it into the galaxy, we know where he’ll go first.”

  “Along with Lila,” Arieel pointed out. “He must be stopped.”

  “I agree. But we also have to let the word out about Kracion and his Olypon and Klin fleets. We can’t stop them on our own—”

  “But we can stop him!” Arieel stated.

  Adam thought for a moment, all eyes on him. “We’ll contact Earth, let them know what’s going on. Arieel, you need to contact Formil and get the Expansion on alert. After that, we’ll head to the Kidis Frontier. That’s where the Aris world is located.”

  “Do you remember how to get there?” Riyad asked. Of all the members of the team, Adam was the only one aboard who had been to the planet-size artificial space station the Aris had created for themselves.

  “I have a pretty good idea,” he said. “It seems the harder I concentrate, the clearer things become. But first things first.” He wanted to get off the subject as soon as possible. Although he had enhanced recall ability from the brain meld with Panur, it hadn’t come with a new level of confidence. His memory was a hit-or-miss thing. “We need to make some calls and then get to the nearest Expansion base to warn the people there.”

  Sherri was scanning the navigation files. “Looks like it’s a place called Vadon. It’s just outside the entrance to the nebula, near Tel’oran. The Juireans have an outpost there.”

  “Good; Riyad, set the course. In the meantime, let’s make a call to Earth, while Arieel contacts Formil. Kracion is a threat to the entire galaxy, so it doesn’t matter who gets the news first, just so that everyone eventually knows and reacts.”

  “Who do we call?” Sherri asked. “Everyone we know on Earth has either died, retired or won’t take our phone calls.”

  She had a point. Any allies the team may have had in the past were long gone, which was a sad thing. It seemed that no matter how many times you save the galaxy, it’s always a question of what have you done for me lately that counts.

  “Pull up a directory for Phoenix Command,” Adam said to Sherri. “Let’s see if we recognize any names.”

  “Public records will be for the unclassified personnel and command staff. They don’t publish all the big names.”

  “Do it any way. It’s worth a shot.”

  * * *

  “He’s still in charge?” Adam asked as he recognized a name a few minutes later. “I figured after we stole the components to the trans-dimensional starship he would have got the boot.”

  Sherri looked at him askew. “If you remember, they put all the blame squarely on us. You don’t become the director of the Orion-Cygnus Union’s Technology and Development section without knowing how to deflect some incoming shots.”

  General Paul Sharp had been Adam’s friend, an aging warrior/scientist who liked to live vicariously through the adventures of Adam and his team. Adam had used that friendship to distract him while the rest of them stole a non-working prototype vehicle that would eventually become the Defiant. The general was a physicist and a mechanical engineer, in addition to a military officer. That was probably why he was still in charge of the division. His mind was too valuable to let go.

  “Let’s see if he’ll take my call,” Adam said. “Open a link to his command.”

  Continuous Wormhole communications weren’t designed for making direct calls to local numbers on Earth—or anywhere else, for that matter. They were effective for ship-to-ship comms because just about every starship carried the required equipment. But for linking to land-based numbers, the call had to be routed from a larger center and then transferred to the local system, and not every link warranted such attention or priority. It took Adam a full thirty minutes—half the single link time limit—just to convince someone that his call should be forwarded. He wasn’t even sure what time it was in Phoenix, or if General Sharp would be in his office. The fact that the man practically lived on-site was a plus.

  “General Sharp’s office, sir or ma’am, Staff-Sergeant Janice Reynolds speaking.

  “Hello, this is Captain Adam Cain calling for the general. Is he in?”

  There was a pause on the line. Everyone over sixteen on Earth knew the name of Adam Cain, for good or bad. “Captain Cain? Yes, sir. I will check with the general.”

  Janice Reynolds didn’t sound that impressed. Had she been assigned to the division during Adam’s last visit?

  “You fucking pirate,” said a gruff voice over the audio-only comm link. Video was seldom available for multi-transfer comms. “You have some nerve calling me. The last I heard, you were busted and leaving the planet with your tail between your legs.”

  “Yeah, nice to hear your voice, too, general,” Adam replied sourly. “Thanks for reminding me. No one wanted to believe I had much to do with defeating the Klin.”

  “And did you?”

  “The only reason the Nuoreans destroyed the Klin planet was because they thought I was there. You don’t really believe those bastards did it to help us out, do you?”

  “Of course not…I’m just fucking with you, captain. But seriously, you are the last person I expected to hear from.”

  “Are we cool, general?”

  “Hey, your last visit here was just more material for my book. I can’t make it all up. Some of it has to be based on true events. So what’s up?”

  Adam gave Sherri a sigh of relief. It seemed like his old friend was still his friend. It was a start.

  “I have some bad news to relay to you, Paul. There’s a new enemy about to attack the galaxy, and this time it’s really bad.”

  “That’s good to know,” General Sharp said. “I didn’t think the Sol-Kor and the Nuoreans were that bad, so I’m glad to see this one is really bad
.”

  “I’m serious, general. Have you ever heard of the Aris?”

  There was a pause on the line. “Aris? I don’t believe so.”

  “Then they’re keeping the information on ice. I was debriefed, so someone knows.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Only a race of three-billion-year-old creatures who helped seed life throughout the galaxy.”

  There was another, longer, pause on the line. “You’re serious? And these creatures are still around?”

  “It’s a long story, but what’s important right now is that one of these Aris has gone insane and is about to attack the Milky Way from another dimension with an army of Klin and Olypon.”

  “Hold on, Adam, let me get a datapad out. This is too good to pass up. This could be a new series of books, maybe even a Netflix movie.”

  “I’m serious, general. We just got back from a parallel universe. The Aris—his name is Kracion—has been trapped there in hibernation for four thousand years. Now he has a way to come back, and he has technology that can make him a threat to the galaxy.”

  “That…that sounds, well, crazy,” Sharp commented. “And what the hell is an Olypon?”