The Apex Warriors

by Marc Stevens

  She said a few choice Chaalt oaths and pointed to where Klutch was laying. “I am fine. Check on the Troop Master.”

  I knew she wasn’t fine because I damn sure wasn’t. I staggered to my feet and started walking unsteadily back to where Klutch was sprawled out on the floor of the passage. Coonts ran past me and knelt at his side.

  He rolled him over and started talking to him in a calm voice. “Klutch, can you hear me? We need to move Troop Master.”

  Coonts repeated himself, and then we heard a low groan. Klutch was trying to wake up. His armor AI was administering pain killers and a stimulant to get him stabilized. Tria made it to my side and we both knelt next to Coonts. He was trying to get Klutch to sit up. Klutch’s armor had several large impact dents in it, one of which gave his helmet an unusual shape. The cloaking emitters on the front of his armor were now junk. We could see the Troop Master’s face and his eyes were looking in two different directions and not focusing. He was in La-La land and there was nothing we could do about it at the moment.

  Sael was behind us and called out a warning. “I have movement!”

  She fired a volley of explosive buckshot down the corridor. Over the top of the rippling blasts, we heard the warbling screech of a Hunter. I had hopes the freaking Hivemind running this joint had used up all the troublesome Throggs. It sucked to be wrong.

  Before I could tell Sael to fall back to our position, she let loose with a beam shot. There was a thunderclap of an explosion and we were showered with high-velocity debris. Another arc-like flash flared and a second detonation showered us with more debris. Something big hit me and knocked me flat. I pushed myself off the deck and saw the lower appendage from a Prule Hunter laying next to me. Tria pulled me to my feet and we aimed our launchers down the passage. Tria called to Sael and told her to hit the deck. She didn’t hesitate and dropped flat. Tria and I fired a volley of high explosives over the top of her head, and into the cavernous hole that was once a hatch. The multiple detonations reverberated down the passage and parts of the roof collapsed down in front of us.

  Coonts suddenly opened fire to our rear with his shotgun. “Hostiles to our rear!” He yelled out.

  While we were dealing with the surprise party to our front. The Prule maintenance machines were burrowing through the debris of the mounted gun and advancing to our rear. Coonts threw two grenades. Both immediately exploded and shrapnel ricocheted back up the passage. Some of it pinged off our armor. The Bio-machines were close. Coonts fired his minigun and it promptly ran dry. The overmuscled Grawl started swearing in three languages, one of which was Earth English. He threw his arm up and emptied all eighty of his anti-personnel rounds into the oncoming machines. The munitions were designed for softer targets but did manage to bottleneck the passage with damaged Bio-machines.

  Tria gave me a none to gentle shove in Sael’s direction and turned back to join Coonts. I boosted up the passage to Sael’s position. I could hear non-stop shotgun fire to my rear as I went prone next to Sael. She looked over at me and pointed at the mangled entryway in front of us.

  “Just before you and Tria fired your barrage, I saw something. I can’t be sure, but I think it was a cloaked power source. My scanners couldn’t give me a good read because of the heat and flames from your attack.”

  Sael passed the video of her scanner readings to my HUD. There was a lot of smoke, dust, and heat coming through the opening. I could also see there were multiple hot spots from Tria and my explosives detonating. Just for a second, I saw what she was talking about. It was to one side of the ragged opening. Unlike the heat from our explosives, the faint detection looked like it moved back out of our sensor envelope.

  “It could have been a hot piece of debris passing through my scan field. My instincts tell me otherwise.”

  I slowly got up on my knees. “There is only one way to find out.”

  Over the top of staccato blasts from the passage behind us, I heard Sael mumble over her mic.

  “I had a feeling you were going to say that.”

  We both crouched against the wall of the passage and worked our way through the rubble. There was another large blast that rocked the passage and it was followed by the sound of rock being dislodged from the ceiling.

  I called to Tria. “How are you doing back there?”

  She called back using an Earth word she said sounded funny every time I used it. “Peachy!”

  Klutch’s life signs were still blinking yellow. I called him on his IST. “Troop Master, I need you to get off your ass and give us a hand.”

  All I got was some muttered nonsense that sounded like he was telling me to pleasure him. Anything else I might have got from him was washed out by a blast that shook the passage hard enough to bring rocks down on us from the overhead.

  Sael was hit by some sizable rocks falling into the passage and curtly called out in frustration. “Are you trying to bring the passage down on our heads?”

  Coonts had a one-word reply. “Yes!”

  Another blast rained more debris down on us. Sael let loose with some very unladylike comments. I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to the other side of the passage with me. The rock falling from that side didn’t seem as large as the ones bouncing off my armor on this side.

  I heard Tria call out to Coonts. “That should hold them for a while, let’s move!”

  I was beginning to wonder why we were not being pressured from our front when Sael called to me. “There Nathan!”

  I turned in time to see not one, but two heat sources. They were in close proximity to each other and cycling back and forth in pulses. The sight gave me goosebumps. It was a Stalker. The cloaked Prule Bio-machine was a horror with an oversized energy cannon for a tail. Both of its power sources glowed brightly and synched. I threw my arm up and fired a hasty beam shot that was low and left. I must have hit the Bio-machine on one of its legs. The bright blue-white beam of energy that was meant for one of us, hit the ceiling somewhere inside the cavernous room. There was a tremendous blast that knocked me back into Sael and we both ended up in a heap on the ground. The rock around the entrance collapsed sealing us into the passage. The blast rattled me and my vision was wonky. When I got my wits back about me, I found myself staring up at Sael from between her armored legs. She somehow found herself sitting straddle of my helmet. My brain must have been banged around by one too many explosions, and I was having one of my Earthman moments. I let slip the nonsense running through my mind.

  “Whatever Tria may have told you about this behavior, is probably true.”

  Sael gave me the strangest look and rolled off of me. Tria and Coonts dragged Klutch up to our position. He was flailing his arms around and telling them to let go. His speech was a little slurred, but at least he was talking. I knew Tibor’s had really thick skulls, and hoped Klutch could shake it off. I slowly got to my feet and staggered to Tria’s side.

  She reached out and grabbed my hand to steady my shaky legs. “We collapsed the passage but the Bio-machines are trying to dig it out. We cannot stay here long.”

  I pointed back to where Sael took up a defensive position. “We have bigger problems than the maintenance machines digging us out. There’s at least one Stalker, maybe more, on the other side of the passage. We need to get Klutch back on his feet so we can port out of here.”

  Tria looked worried and nodded in agreement. “ Klutch sustained serious head trauma and is still speaking nonsense, but he seems to be improving. The portal device appears undamaged but we won’t know until we activate it.”

  Sael called out a warning. “Commander, it sounds like the Stalker is burrowing its way in here!”

  I could hear a loud rumbling and more of the ceiling dislodged and collapsed. The Stalker was pretty pissed off and wanted a piece of my ass for shooting it. If any more of the passage collapsed we would be buried alive. We all turned when we heard Coonts yelling at Klutch. He pounded his fist on the front of Klutch’s armor and told him to quit screwing around li
ke a useless Throgg.

  Klutch’s voice still sounded messed up, but the indignant edge to it came through loud and clear. “Who are you to be calling me a useless Throgg?”

  Coonts didn’t cut him any slack. “ Not only are you a worthless Throgg, but you renege on all your wagers!”

  To our surprise, Klutch staggered to his feet. The look on his face said he still wasn’t all with us, but the tone of his voice improved. Unfortunately, it sounded like it had a deadly edge to it. “No one talks to me like that. I have never reneged on a wager in my life!”

  He groped for his fighting knife and when he found the handle he pulled it out. He walked unsteadily toward Coonts. Coonts stood his ground. “You still owe me a hundred thousand credits and have yet to pay me. Double or nothing says you can’t get us out of here.”

  Tria and I were getting ready to intervene when Klutch suddenly stopped and shook his head. He looked at his fighting knife then back to Coonts. “What are you talking about? I don’t owe you any credits.”

  He put his fighting knife away and looked around. “Where in the quirg are we?”

  It was at that moment I knew Klutch was back. He was swearing in proper Tibor and seemed like he knew who we were. I called to him. “Troop Master we are in trouble and need to get out of here now.”

  Klutch looked around then back at Coonts. “What did you do?”

  Well, he was mostly back with us anyhow. “Troop Master, we are trapped and a Prule Stalker is digging its way in here. We need to move now!”

  More rock fell from the overhead and Klutch’s eyes found their full focus. Coonts pulled his shotgun from the rubble and threw it to him. He caught it with one hand dropped the spent magazines with the other.

  He slapped fresh ones in place and looked at me. “Where too, Commander?”

  I pointed at the wall that faced the transport parking area. “Make a hole.”

  His first attempt was a no-go and must have been into solid rock deeper than the device could penetrate. His second attempt got us a partial hole that we could fit through.

  Klutch readied himself to advance and I put my hand on his shoulder. “Are you all here Troop Master? There could be a scat storm waiting for us.”

  He gave me a goofy grin. “I didn’t know I had left Commander.”

  That was good enough for me. I rapped him on the shoulder and we went through the portal single file as fast as we could. We came out into the transport parking area. The Prule were busy while we were inside. All of the transports were wrecked and on fire. The Prule tried to make use of them and found Coonts and Klutch’s grenades the hard way. A large group of Bio-machines was at the giant door that closed off the facility from the entrance tunnel. They working at a control panel that must be used to open it. While I didn’t have a problem with that, I wasn’t about to let any of the Throggs get away either.

  I raised my arm and called out a warning. “H-E out!”

  My strike team took a knee behind one of the burning flatbeds. I fired a burst of high explosives into the backs of the Bio-machines. It was gratifying to watch them being blown apart.

  “Coonts called out a warning. “Two of the doors are opening to our rear.”

  “Klutch,” I yelled. “Get us back to the Daggers!”

  Klutch charged into the surviving maintenance machines. He shot anything that moved with a penetrator slug. Our armor was taking a beating from the flying pieces and parts.

  Sael gave a warning that made my heart start beating faster. “Stalkers!”

  We formed a semi-circle amongst the debris of the maintenance machines. We opened fire with our beam weapons as two Stalkers came through the doors. We lit their shields up and staggered the big machines back into the doorways. One of them got a shot off the struck the door well above our heads. The blast wave flattened us and we were pelted by more high-velocity shards. One of the Stalkers crawled back out of the doorway into the parking area. Coonts and Sael hit it multiple times with beam shots. Its shield faltered, and Tria hit it with a solid shot in its front sensors. The Stalker reared up and Sael shot it in the undercarriage. Its legs gave out and it crashed to the ground. It tried to swing its tail weapon in our direction but Klutch hit the weapon right on the emitter. The shot caused a secondary explosion in the rear of the machine that destroyed it.

  “Klutch,” I yelled over our comms. “Get us out of here!”

  The Troop Master didn’t need any more urging. He got up on his knees and projected a portal low on the door. We crawled back toward the shimmering hole and sent barrage after barrage of high explosives at the open doorways. Our battle suits were giving us low munitions warnings. Once our explosive rounds were depleted, we would only have five anti-matter rounds each. We were in much too close quarters to use those.

  Klutch thought we were taking too long to get through the portal and he grabbed Tria by her armor and shoved her into the portal. Before I could say a word, he did the same to me, then Sael. I was going to go back through, but Coonts came flying through and collided with the front of my armor. We were both knocked to the ground. Our HUDs lit up with anti-matter warnings. The warning went from red to orange and had a one-minute delay blinking under it. Something impacted the backside of the giant door. Coonts was getting up to charge back into the now blinking portal but got flattened when Klutch came flying through like a cannonball. His armor was smoking and his ammo pack was wrecked.

  He rolled up onto his knees and looked around to get his bearings. “Commander,” He called. “We should get into the Daggers!”

  The anti-matter warning was counting down to twenty seconds, we managed to get into our Daggers in fifteen. My three-dimensional display just came up with a picture of our surroundings when the giant door in front of us shook hard enough to bring down some of the rock it was mounted into. Dust vibrated off of it like a smoke cloud. The sudden calm after all the chaos was a welcome relief. It was as if the anti-matter charge I had left behind was not impressed with Klutch’s attempt at blowing things up. The giant door bulged from its frame and the tunnel started coming down around us. There were still fifty-one minutes left on the weapons timer. The Prule must have detected the location of the weapon and decided they could disarm it. It always gave me a warm feeling when my enemies made really bad mistakes.

  We wore out our unwelcomeness and it was time to leave. We started phasing up the tunnel as it continued to collapse behind us. We exited the volcano and found we were no longer alone. There were twenty-two Prule warships engaged in combat with our drones. My attention was drawn to the number of green circles my sensors were detecting. There were forty-five instead of the twenty we left guarding the gate.

  “Justice?” I commed. “I am not getting a read on your location.”

  I was getting an uneasy feeling when he didn’t respond. My HUD picked up transition distortion waves just behind our location and inside the small planet’s gravity well. If there were any Prule survivors on the planet, they just got their scat shook hard.

  A green circle appeared on my HUD with the Legacy’s ID under it. Justice was making intersystem jumps. A grim smile crossed my lips. Six Prule ships disappeared from the fleet. They were making jumps in response to Justice’s moves. Ten more green circles appeared at the Legacy’s exit point. The drones cloaked and rapidly spread out. Justice jumped again. When the Prule transitioned back to normal spacetime at Justice’s exit point, they were going to get a rude welcoming from ten different directions.

  Klutch made a turn for the remainder of the Prule fleet and we started phasing at maximum power. In the blink of an eye, the hostile ships appeared right in front of us. We opened fire with our anomaly weapons as we passed through the formation. We made a wide looping turn to do an assessment of our attack and give Justice a clear shot if he was going back after the fleet. Our weapons left four of the five Prule warships heavily damaged and drifting without shields. The fifth was scattering debris. The enhancements to our Daggers were now confirmed. Un
less the Prule could upgrade their shields, they were prey just like the Scrun and the pirates. Our Sentinal and Guardian race tech was a step above anything our enemies could bring against us. They still had the numbers, but we had a distinct technological advantage.

  The Legacy transitioned from hyperspace and made a slashing attack through the Prule ship formation. Four more were reduced to dust and gas. Justice gave the ships we disabled a missile each, blasting them into large pieces of wreckage. The Prule fleet was now down to seven in a matter of minutes. Klutch turned us back in the direction of the remaining Prule ships when all of them jumped to hyperspace simultaneously. We didn’t know if they were bugging out or making an intersystem jump to avoid another attack.