Invaders: Dreadnought Ocelot (Invaders Series Book 4)

by Vaughn Heppner

  I scowled. Given enough time, Polarion brilliance would destroy everything. Nerelon Brontios was set on a plan that could unleash hellish denizens from a horrible dimension. If that didn’t destroy Galactic civilization, some other master plan eventually would. Do you doubt that? Creating the Starcore must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it had nearly brought about Galactic doom. It would seem that the rule or law was the greater the power, the greater ability for good and the greater ability for evil and foolishness. Highly intelligent people could do some crazy stuff.

  George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and the dystopian 1984, had put it best: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

  There were some ideas so absurd or destructive that only godlike Polarions would think to implement them.

  “Faster,” Argon urged from ahead.

  We three ran harder, Jenna soon panting. I grabbed an arm, helping her. She gave me a quick smile of appreciation.

  “Glad you made it back to Earth,” I said, surprised I hadn’t told her so before this.

  Jenna nodded.

  “You’ll have to tell me how you managed that later,” I said.

  She didn’t bother nodding again, just running as hard as she could to keep up with Argon.

  “I know the answer,” Rax said from my belt.

  “Not now,” I told him.

  “Oh. Yes. I forgot. You like to flirt with the pretty girls. I will wait for an appropriate moment.”

  “Shut up, Rax.”

  “I have missed you too, Logan,” Rax said. “I am glad Nerelon did not succeed in destroying your mind. You gave it a rather high probability. You hoped that your mulish pigheadedness would see you through. I must say, you had a rather precise understanding about how obstinate you are in person.”

  “Yeah. Where are we headed, by the way?”

  “Sand had been experimenting with teleportation,” Rax said.

  “Is Sand alive?”

  “Before taking over down here with his Gigantopithecuses, Nerelon teleported from the Ocelot and melted Sand into slag.”

  “Damn.”

  “Did you know Nerelon is trying to hold the Great Machine hostage against us?” Rax asked.

  “Didn’t I see that in my genius plan?” I asked bitterly.

  “Surprisingly, no,” Rax said. “That is why I asked just now. You know, Logan, you are not even an eighth as smart as you were united with the CCC. I take that back. An eighth is much too high. I would estimate—”

  “Please don’t.”

  “I understand. You lack the CCC’s brutal honesty for self-examination—”

  “Rax,” I said. “Let me concentrate.”

  “Oh. Yes. Certainly. That is wise.”

  The chatterbox crystal mercifully fell silent. I thought to hear laser fire somewhere, but couldn’t be certain with the thrum of the Great Machine masking noises.

  Finally, Argon slid to a halt. With Ailuros in his arms, he peered around a corner. I reached him and peered around, too. A hatch ahead of us slid open, but no one came through. Had Argon opened the hatch with a mental command?

  The sound of the Great Machine poured through the opening into the corridor. Argon looked at me and then raced to the hatch and looked out, jerking his head back in.

  “Logan, Jenna,” he said. “Up here.”

  Jenna was panting so hard she couldn’t speak, and sweat bathed her face. Surprisingly, given my long confinement, I was only slightly winded. Doing all those pushups, deep knee-bends and other exercises had brought me back to my regular fine pitch.

  “I must refrain from fighting down here if I can,” Argon said, clutching Ailuros more tightly against his chest. “I cannot yet allow Nerelon to learn that I’ve returned.”

  “Where did you go?” I asked.

  Argon stared at me coldly. “Why would knowing matter this instant?”

  The Polarion was back to his arrogant, high-handed ways, and after I’d saved him from the Gigantopithecuses. I shrugged. I was free again, and we had a chance to save Earth. That was good enough.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Are your regular mental faculties clouded?” Rax asked in Argon’s place. “I had estimated you would still have a high propensity and desire for mayhem. You must clear the way as Argon just indicated.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Where are we headed after this?”

  “You should have already inferred the answer,” Rax said.

  “Jenna,” I said. “Do you want to carry Rax again?”

  She glanced at Argon before continuing to try to slow her breathing.

  Argon stared at me. “If my wife dies because you two are bickering all the time—” He stopped himself and looked away. When he looked at me again, he said, “We have to cross some open ground to reach an experimental teleportation chamber. The last of Sand’s robots are sacrificing themselves so we can escape. If we fail to reach the pad, Nerelon wins and the Earth dies. We’ve come to the last move. Can you do your part, Logan?”

  I nodded.

  “Then, you and Jenna must clear the way,” Argon said.

  I put a restraining hand on one of Jenna’s forearms. “Wait until you’re rested. Let me spearhead this.”

  Without waiting for a reply, I sprinted through the hatch onto rocky subterranean ground. I glanced back and saw that the hatch was part of a gigantic black housing structure built against the side of a subterranean wall. Huge lamps at the top of the building provided illumination for me.

  In the distance to the left was part of the Great Machine. It was black and massive, like some fantastic sleeping dragon, endlessly long. The ancient machinery supplied the power that kept the barrier in place. What was funny about the Great Machine was that it used old-style technology. Massive wheels, pistons, gears and other industrial-age tech clanked and rattled year after year, century after century, keeping the way closed to the dreaded Shadow Dimension. An offshoot was that it made all portal travel to and from Earth more difficult, as Rax had once explained.

  According to what I’d learned, Polarions had constructed the Great Machine before history began. In that, I mean written human records like the wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets the ancient Sumerians had made. Clearly, there had been primeval civilizations on Earth before that, but a great disaster had wiped out almost all knowledge of them expect for ancient myths and the Antediluvian biblical stories.

  It was crazy thinking about the Great Machine chugging along all that time. I did not want it to stop during my watch. Nerelon had destroyed Sand, an ancient guardian and the keeper of the Great Machine. Who would take Sand’s place if we won?

  I threw myself behind an outcropping of stone. Huge towering lamps in the distance provided more illumination. I peered over the outcropping and spied Gigantopithecuses ahead. The massive apes dragged heavy weaponry, five apes to a platform. Each platform had wheels and a huge cannon on top. By this, I did not mean the kind of cannons one saw on a wooden sailing ship in the movies. These were higher-tech weapons like huge antiaircraft guns. Maybe they were stored anti-starship weapons. Maybe—

  The apes dragged the cannons toward the Great Machine. Rax had just told me Nerelon meant to hold the Great Machine hostage to ensure our good behavior. If the Great Machine stopped chugging, the hellish denizens of the Shadow Dimension would pour through.

  “It’s always something,” I muttered.

  “Pardon?” asked Rax.

  “Well, little buddy,” I said. “You have a choice. I’m going to kamikaze on those apes. That means I’m likely going to die. I can set you down here, so you survive.”

  “That is very thoughtful of you, Logan. Yes, I prefer to remain here. In time, I will tell the highest officials of the Galactic Guard about your unstinting heroism in their name.”

  “Or you can risk it with me and record what happens for posterity.”

  “No,” Rax said. “I prefer you set me down.”<
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  “Are you joking?”

  “Are you?” he demanded.

  “No,” I said shortly. “Good-bye, Rax.”

  “Well, I was joking,” he said, as I put my hand on his outer shell. “I perceive the platforms and apes. If you die, it will not end well for the rest of us. That means I will still likely perish. Thus, my probability for survival will heighten if I aid you in your rash suicide assault.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” I demanded.

  “In point of fact, yes. Have you examined the case Jenna gave you earlier?”

  “Where do you think I got the blaster I’m carrying?”

  “There are three pulse grenades in the case. If you can throw far enough, I think you will find them sufficient to do most of the killing work. Afterward, you may be able to mop up the survivors with your blaster.”

  Muttering under my breath, I opened the case and extracted the pulse grenades. They were heavy little beauties. Clicking the settings into place, I stood up, cocked my arm back as far as it would go, and as if heaving the winning long bomb in the Super Bowl, I hurled the grenade. I could throw farther than I used to because of my upgraded strength. Without waiting to see if the grenade made it, I picked up the next and did the same, throwing it in a different area. I barely heaved the last of them before I threw myself behind the stone outcropping.

  Three vivid white flashes and loud explosions told me they’d worked. I gathered myself—

  “Wait until I say,” Rax told me.

  I did—

  “Now,” Rax said.

  I jumped up with the blaster in hand and sprinted over the glowing and cratered ground. Metal burned. So did giant dead apes. There were also metal and ape chunks everywhere.

  “Damn,” I said. “Those things are deadly.”

  “And expel too many Z rays.”

  “What are those?”

  “Death to all life-forms,” Rax said. “Fortunately, they dissipate in a matter of seconds. Now, Logan, I detect three stirring apes. They were undoubtedly the captains. They will have received better shield generators. You must dispatch them before they can communicate with the Ocelot.”

  I kept sprinting, and saw intact apes stirring. I shot and killed them in short order. I shot two others for good measure.

  “Excellent work,” Rax said. “Argon and Jenna have left the building.”

  “You’re in communication with him?”

  “Do you really need me to answer that?”

  “Where to next?” I said.

  After Rax told me, I began running. The place was two and a half miles away and there were no further distractions to slow me. Rax caused the main hatch to open into a low steel building. I entered and cased the place, finding no Gigantopithecuses or other dangers.

  Finding a chair in one room, flopping on it, I asked, “Is Argon almost here?”

  “He will arrive in five minutes,” Rax said. “I suggest you warm up the T-pad.”

  “Right,” I said, heaving to my feet.

  Following Rax’s instructions in a different room, I activated a board. Farther inside lights lit upon a raised dais with various circular pads on it. The dais reminded me of the T-pad in my lost Guard shuttle. The pads here began thrumming with energy.

  “Do we have a destination in mind?” I asked.

  “Oh, assuredly,” Rax said.

  “The Ocelot?”

  “It would be quite stupid of us to go there,” Rax said, “as Nerelon Brontios would simply capture us.”

  “Where to, then?” I shouted.

  Rax told me.

  I would have demanded an explanation for his absurd answer. Before that happened, Argon and Jenna raced inside. Ailuros was still unconsciousness in her husband’s arms.

  “Quick,” Argon said. “Get onto the pads.”

  “But—” I said.

  Argon jumped onto the T-dais. A panting Jenna followed suit. Muttering and confused, I also followed. Before I could ask for confirmation of Rax’s absurd answer, all of us began to fade away.

  -49-

  We appeared on the surface approximately an hour after sunrise at Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was 124 miles east of the Aral Sea in the desert steppe of Kazakhstan, which put it in the middle of the Eurasian continent. The Kazakh government leased the facility to Russia. The area used to be under the control of Soviet Russia.

  The sky was intensely blue, and the steppe was a desert like most of Nevada. The shape of the leased area was 56 miles east to west and 53 miles north to south with the cosmodrome in the center.

  The Communist Soviet Russians had built the place in the late 1950s for its space program. In fact, it was the world’s first and largest space launch facility. Since the end of the U.S. Space Shuttle program, it was where most manned space flights were launched.

  That was the reason we were here, of course.

  We appeared on a tarmac, with elite and armed Russian spetsnaz or Special Force soldiers surrounding us. A few Russian tanks were there for good measure. They must have been expecting us.

  An unsurprised Russian colonel approached, corroborating my thought. The man was a chunky officer with red checks and hard eyes, and he looked decidedly nervous as he smoked a cigarette.

  He looked at Argon, nodding and half-bowing, and he regarded me. “Sergei Gromyko sends his greetings.”

  “Sergei’s alive?” I asked.

  “Da,” the colonel said.

  The last I’d heard, Sergei Gromyko had joined CAU. He used to work for the Ukrainian Mafia in America but had actually worked for an alien using the mafia. I’d met Sergei when Kazz and Philemon had pirated my Guard shuttle and I had been forced to find the chronowarp.

  “I’m surprised an American Ukrainian is helping you Russians,” I said, deliberately tactlessly.

  The thick-bodied colonel shrugged. “We are all Earthmen and all hope to survive the alien threat.”

  I turned to Jenna. “He knows about the Ocelot?”

  “Most of the highest ranked spooks do,” Jenna said quietly. “This was all your idea, by the way. The CIA and the ex-KGB are working together on this. The Chinese, Iranian and Israeli spymasters, among others, are in it to win it as well.”

  “Hot damn,” I said. “World peace in our time.”

  “Allies of the moment,” Jenna replied. “When brutal aliens start attacking, humanity better forget its squabbles, or it’s finished. This time, the head spooks, at least, and some of the elite military units are part of a huge coordinated effort. You’re the tip of the spear, Logan. Every country with ballistic nuclear-tipped missiles is going to help.”

  “And my part is what, exactly?” I asked.

  “To join me,” Argon said.

  “And do what?”

  “I’ll explain as we get ready.” Argon paused. “This was your idea originally. It was a good one, probably the only one with a chance of success. Now, come. The Russians are nervous enough. They want to launch us before Nerelon finds out what they’re doing. He might prematurely begin dropping hell-burners, targeting Russia first if he figures this out in time.”

  “Sure,” I said, bemused. “Let’s go.”

  The Russian colonel pointed the way, and he began running. It wasn’t something he should try often. The ring of spetsnaz soldiers ran with us as an outer perimeter guard.

  Soon enough, the colonel, Argon, Jenna and I jumped aboard a large jeep. The colonel drove like a madman, burning rubber as he sped for a huge Soyuz-2 rocket in the distance.

  Argon sat in front, looking like a thoughtful Greek god in repose. That’s when it hit me.

  “What happened to Ailuros?” I asked.

  Argon did not even look back a little, although I’m sure he’d heard me.

  Jenna nudged my side. “During the teleportation, Argon sent her elsewhere?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  She stared at me, finally muttering, “I wouldn’t ask so much about her. She’s fine for now.”

  I finally shru
gged, looking around as Jenna explained in my ear.

  We headed for Site 31/6: the place the Russians launched humans into low Earth orbit, sending people to the International Space Station.

  “America, England, France, Israel, India, China and Russia are all going to fire nuclear-armed ballistic missiles at the GGS Ocelot,” Jenna shouted in my ear. “Argon has given each of those countries equipment linked to his main scanner. That’s how they’re able to see the cloaked dreadnought. It has taken time, but techs have put new flight software into each. The attack will use most of Earth’s supply of nuclear missiles.”

  “Why not all?” I shouted.

  “All would be better,” Jenna agreed. “But each country wanted to hold some missiles back. You must know why?”

  “Because everyone trusts each other so much,” I said sarcastically.

  Jenna nodded.

  “And Argon and I are going up there with the Ultimate Annihilator?” I asked.

  I saw the colonel lean back with his right ear.

  Jenna shot me a reproaching look. “Once Argon gets close enough, he will use his personal energy to destroy the dreadnought.”

  I almost asked, “What personal energy?” Instead, I said, “He’s the Ultimate Annihilator, all right.”

  Argon shifted in his seat, almost turning to stare at me. I had the feeling he raised his eyebrows and barely restrained himself from shaking his head in disapproval.

  “Nice recovery,” Jenna mouthed at me.

  I shrugged, smiling.

  Jenna pointed at the nearing Soyuz-2 rocket. It was big and ugly looking, and far too top heavy for my tastes.

  It hit me then. I was going back into space, but in a frail human-built spacecraft. We were somehow supposed to finish the GGS Dreadnought Ocelot, a Galactic Guard super-ship. We two were supposed to do that, or did anyone think the ballistic missiles would reach the dreadnought?

  “You’re not saying much, Rax,” I said.

  “I would like to remain behind this mission, but I feel I must go.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said.