Lastly she brought up the Valkrethi search function. It was of no use inside the cargo bay, but she wanted to lock onto one of the enemy ships the instant she was free of the Javelin.
“Open the cargo bay doors,” said Cagill, and Celia felt a sense of weightlessness as gravitysum ceased and the doors swung away from her.
Then she was free, and she could see the edge of the atmosphere below her, alive with the restless orange dots of Reaper ships as they slowed above the Celimeesi mining center.
She realized once again how life-like the Valkrethi were. She could feel the coldness of space on her skin, see better than she could with her own eyesight, and sense her mount’s weightlessness. There was no sign of Ayman Case’s squadron, which had been sent ahead of them to hold off the enemy. That made it all the easier. No friendlies to get in the way.
Time to test all that practice on a live target, she muttered grimly, and moved her hand to open a pathway between herself and a Reaper ship directly below her.
She wasn’t supposed to do this, she knew – she was just supposed to observe – but you couldn’t let your shipmates go into action alone. Besides, Roberto wouldn’t be able to stop himself, and she would have to save him from himself, again!
Celia’s Valkrethi began to slide toward the enemy ship, picking up speed. It accelerated sharply to the mid point, and then decelerated sharply. In moments, it seemed, she was in the middle of the Reaper ship’s fiery orange shields. She felt the immense heat on her skin, and the plasma scratching at her, and then she was through.
A little further over, Cagill entered the fiery hull of a Reaper ship at the same moment as Celia. He wondered at the strange sticky sensation of the shields. Then he broke through, and looked around in awe as he saw what was inside the shields.
The Reaper ships were alive! All the Alliance had seen in the past was the metallic hub and spar construction of the ships when their shields had been destroyed, but this was different.
The shield behind him lit everything with a bright orange glow, and jagged beams of bright energy flickered from the many hubs of its construction to the shields and back. Were they drawing power from the shields, or supplying it to keep them running, he wondered.
Then he noticed that the spars were moving, flexing like the great masts of ancient sailing ships. Different colors sparkled across them as the stresses within changed. It was a fantasy world, something like a great city lit up at night. He had not expected this!
Then his forward speed brought him directly over one of the largest hubs. He moved a hand slightly to open a path onto it. The Valkrethi landed with knees bent, and even the imposing size of his mount was lost on the broad, flat surface of the hub.
This would be his first time inside a hostile warship, and he could hear his heart beating loudly in his ears. He reached down and punched both fists through the surface of the hub. He grabbed an edge and tore the hole wider. There was no sign of a vented atmosphere, which surprised him. Did the Invardii worked in a vacuum? He felt an artificial gravity though. It had started pulling at him as soon as he landed on the hub.
“The Valkrethi will have to make it up as they go along,” he muttered, lowering himself into whatever was below.
He fell into a maze of rooms too small for his mount, and tore out a space to move about in. Then he realized he wasn’t close to a vital spot that he might use to destroy the ship. He smashed his way through more walls and floors, and lowered himself at last into a set of vast rooms that contained row after row of what looked like data panels. He started to move forward, then realized there were recesses in the walls, and each recess contained an Invardii cylinder, surrounded by a web of glowing filaments.
“Goddammit!” breathed Cagill. He had stumbled into a dormitory of some sort, maybe a repair station, maybe even a nursery – how would he know?
Something glowed briefly above one of the recesses, and then a circle of lights began to rotate in front of the cylinder it contained.
“That doesn’t look good,” muttered Cagill to himself, and strode hurriedly across the room toward a portal in the opposite wall. It was too small for the Valkrethi to fit through easily, but it might lead to a more central area.
There was a flash of light, and he turned to see one of the Invardii in its energy form, powerful orange legs striding toward him as a number of projections on the low dome of its ‘head’ clicked and whirred. It was tracking his movements, and it was closing fast. It was less than half the size of the Valkrethi, but there were hundreds of them in here.
The best thing he could do was get rid of this one – fast – and make a run for it.
CHAPTER 10
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Cagill found himself in a warehouse full of Invardii. They were in their dormant cylinder state, but he knew he couldn’t wait around for them to wake up. He backhanded one cylinder that had already changed into its active form, and his fist passed straight through its shoulder. That part of the hybrid creature was, it seemed, pure energy.
Then he lifted one giant-sized leg and booted the apparition squarely in the chest. This time he made a solid connection, and the orange shape disappeared as abruptly as it had arrived. A misshapen cylinder lay on the floor, leaking what looked like synthetic, multicolored oils.
The cylinder was part of the Invardii’s active phase, he realized in surprise. The head of the creature, with its many instruments, was one end of the cylinder.
There were now bright flashes all around him, and that meant more of the cylinders were waking up. Cagill didn’t want to be distracted from his mission to destroy the enemy ship, so he tore a hole through the first wall he came to, and stepped into the gap he’d made. He found himself inside a massive power station.
The circular room soared up through row after row of balconies. They ringed it all the way to a distant ceiling. The room was astounding in its own right, but Cagill was more interested in the thick column that stood at the center of it. A number of translucent cables rode up the column, and he could see the surging plasma currents contained within them.
Something bounced off the back of his Valkrethi, and then an energy blast blurred Cagill’s vision for a moment. He looked up, and saw dozens of orange Invardii on the balconies, with more pouring out of portals onto the balconies every second.
Cagill figured out that if he was in a major power station for the ship, these must be Invardii engineers. They were getting weapons from somewhere, or making them up from what they had on hand, and another blast scorched the floor next to him. There was no point in hanging around to see what they would try on him next!
He took two giant strides to the line of thick power cables and grabbed one in each hand. The Invardii froze as they saw what he had done, and all activity in the chamber ceased. Cagill grinned, and tore the power cables from the central column.
The broken ends erupted with chaotic matter at thousands of degrees, and the walls of the chamber disintegrated wherever he pointed his new-found weapons. Balconies collapsed and pandemonium reigned as the Invardii jammed the portals trying to escape.
“That’s not nice,” said Cagill into the growing roar of noise. “On my ship we have more discipline. On my ship we look after our shipmates.”
Then he pointed the broken cables at the central column, and the other cables ruptured one by one. There was one last, frenzied explosion, and Cagill blacked out. He came to in the middle of an expanding circle of debris and dying flame. Nothing of any significance remained of the enemy ship.
“Delta leader, can you read me? Come in Delta leader,” said a voice in his ear. One of the ships that oversaw the Valkrethi operations was trying to contact him. He checked his mount’s diagnostics, then made sure each of his limbs still worked.
“Cagill here,” he replied. “All systems still go. Have any of the Valkrethi taken on any damage yet?”
“None in Delta squadron,” said ops, “One not responding in Alpha squadron. The research team are all o
kay. They have two kills by the way.” The ops officer sounded amused.
Cagill growled under his breath. Damn civilians were supposed to stay out of harm’s way. His pilots could lose their lives trying to get civilians out of the messes they got themselves into.
Still, two kills, eh? The research team were an unpredictable bunch, that was for sure.
“Returning to the hunt,” he snapped crisply, and closed the link to ops. Then he opened a pathway to another Reaper ship. A long silver thread came up in his optics, and connected him to a new target.
While Cagill was recovering from the destruction of his first Reaper ship, Celia was rampaging through the hub she had dug into. She smashed her way through it from end to end, but found no central system to destroy. She climbed out onto the surface once again and kicked herself off, coasting along one of the flexing, colorful spars. She brought herself to a halt beside a much larger hub.
It took a moment to work her way through the surface of the larger hub, and then she was in a huge, open space that seemed to be some sort of Invardii living quarters. The place was buzzing with orange shapes, and she fell back as a wall of them came to attack her.
She soon discovered the energy forms didn’t have the heat or energy readings of the plasma shields, but they still packed a punch. Enough of them could knock her off balance, and she didn’t intend to find out what they could do to a Valkrethi once it was down. Unfortunately they were now attacking on all sides, and there seemed no immediate escape.
The wall to her left burst apart, and two of the orange shapes hurtled across the room. They turned back into cylinders as they hit the wall opposite, and slid to the floor.
“Need a hand, then?” said Roberto’s voice in her ear. She looked across, and indeed the face on the giant Valkrethi, smiling impishly, was Roberto’s.
Celia wasn’t sure if she was pleased to see him, or annoyed that he might think she needed help.
“This is my Reaper ship,” she said primly, picking up one of the Invardii in each hand and squeezing them until they returned to their cylinder state. Then she used them to bludgeon more of the orange shapes out of the fight.
“That’s what I thought when I arrived,” said Roberto, wading into a group of the orange figures and battering the majority of them down. “There wasn’t a sign saying it was occupied.
“Anyway,” he cut in, as she went to speak, “the main power center for this hub should be straight ahead and down, how about we make a run for it together?”
Celia nodded, and they bulldozed their way through a wall of fiery, orange bodies, and dug their way down until they came to a layer of extremely thick shielding. It had to be the power source.
“Together,” said Roberto, as they battered their way into a circular room that soared above them, a thick column at its center. Celia grabbed his hand, and together the Valkrethi bulldozed through the column. Cables ruptured and the central supports gave way. Intense light overloaded the Valkrethi optics, and then they were whirled away in a maelstrom of destruction.
Celia stabilized her Valkrethi in space, and realized Roberto was still holding her hand.
“That counts as half a kill each,” said Roberto, smiling.
Celia rolled her eyes. Men thought keeping score was so important, when it wasn’t. Then she took the time to look around, and see how the battle was going.
It was going well. Over half of the enemy ships had disappeared, presumably destroyed, and the rest were rapidly succumbing to the Valkrethi onslaught. She opened a pathway to a new target, knowing Roberto would be doing the same.
“Good hunting,” said Roberto, and released her hand. They slid away from each other, Celia’s Valkrethi accelerating quickly toward the midpoint of its flight path, then swinging around for the deceleration toward the Reaper ship she had selected.
In the end it was little short of a massacre, and not one of the enemy ships got away with the tale.
Celia had managed to get something to eat, and was on her way to the debriefing session, when all pilots were called to the bridges of their respective craft. A top priority call was coming through.
“Earth thanks you,” began Cordez, his voice booming out around the bridge as Celia unconsciously stood to attention.
“Prometheus thanks you. Air Marshall Cagill thanks you, and I personally want to tell you what this victory means to me, to the Alliance, and to your families and your most cherished memories of Earth.”
His words rang out over the sub-space connection to the modified Javelins that had carried the Valkrethi to the Alamos system, their support ships, and Ayman case’s Javelin squadron.
“We had less than an hour after squadron leader Case left for the Alamos system to decide to send out the Valkrethi. It was your first action against the Reaper ships, and you little more than half that time to get ready, and get underway.
“You have faced the unknown of that first action bravely. You went out determined to fight for what you believed in.
“You went out in untested machines against a deadly enemy, and you discovered within you what it took to beat them. When you didn’t know what to do you found a way. When the way ahead was barred you put your lives on the line, and forced a way through.
“Not one of you has been lost, and that is as much due to your belief in yourselves, and each other, as it is to the powers of the Valkrethi.”
There was a pause.
“Squadron leader Case tells me the staff of the accelerator complex were lost when a group of enemy ships destroyed the relief depot in the mountains. I will ask you now to take a moment’s silence to remember them.”
This time there was a longer pause.
“Do not blame yourselves,” continued Cordez.
“We all acted as quickly as we safely could to get here. This is not the time to ask whether the outcome might have been better if something we did was different, and I forbid you to have such thoughts.”
His voice was low, and chiding, but the crews and the pilots did not mind. Every one of them would have followed Cordez into hell and back, but they followed him precisely because he would never have forbidden them their freedom, or forbidden them to have their own thoughts.
What he was gently doing was asking them not to take themselves to task over the deaths.
Cordez wound up his speech, and signed off. Cagill took over.
“The Invardii threat to the nuclear accelerators in the Alamos system is over, people, and it’s thanks to your efforts. Not one of the enemy ships escaped, and the only damage we sustained was a communications malfunction in one of the Valkrethi – due we think to standing around for 200 thousand years.
“Well done,” he said firmly. “And now, prepare yourselves for the trip home!”
A short time after he signed off, Cagill got a comms message from Ayman Case.
“Air Marshall, navs is picking up a signal from the heat exchanger shaft under the depot that was destroyed. It’s some form of primitive electromagnetic pulse, apparently mechanical in origin.
“There’s no reply to a comms messages sent on all the usual frequencies. My engineers say we can expect some sort of resonance like that from the heat exchanger, now the energy is no longer being stored by the depot.”
Cagill nodded. He turned away from the screen for a minute, then came back.
“Affirmed. I’m getting the same interpretation of the situation from my people here. I think we can carry on with our pre-flight routines, and prepare to leave the system. Cagill out.”
CHAPTER 11
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In the shaft below the depot, now destroyed beyond all recognition, the group of eleven Mersa and four Humans was taking stock of the situation. Ereth and Sebastian had managed to close the isolation doors above the first booster station, and bring a plug of metal and rock down on top of that. It had protected them from the Invardii bombing that had destroyed the depot.
Ereth was trying to tap into the cables that ran down t
he heat exchanger shaft. It was bitterly cold in the shaft, and the suits’ powerpaks would only last so long. Maybe he could augment them with power from the cables.
Sebastian was trying to figure out a way the little group could make contact with the Javelins before they left the Alamos system. He went over the schematics for the shaft again. There was another booster station a thousand meters lower down, and another set of isolation doors above that.
If they wanted to make a breathable atmosphere out of the thin, poisonous gases of the planet it might be possible to close off the lower doors and build a set of gas scrubbers.
He pondered that for a moment, then shook his head. The suits they wore recycled their breath, capturing the oxygen from the carbon dioxide they breathed out and removing the water vapor. They would last for days before the accumulation of more complex gases made them a hazard to health.
That was not the problem. The problem was the Javelins would be leaving the ice planet well before the suits’ oxygen and water ran out. Whether the Javelins left in defeat or victory wouldn’t matter to those in the shaft – they would still die a slow death, abandoned under the depot.
Sebastian had no illusions about their future if they did nothing. The depot had been totally destroyed, and the Javelins would have assumed they were dead.
At least they had plenty of lighting from the cable running down the shaft. He looked with pride at the lamps he had jury-rigged into the system. The little group had also brought along plenty of equipment when they left the depot. Assorted packs and boxes now hung from the rungs they were tied to.
Sebastian looked down the shaft, and was almost overcome with the spinning sensation that followed. The rungs faded away below him as the light from the lamps grew dimmer. It wasn’t just what the members of the little group saw that counted, it was what they thought about it.
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