Galactic Vortex: Set in The Human Chronicles Universe (The Adam Cain Saga Book 4)

by T. R. Harris

  Adam gripped the handle of the door and pulled. The Rigorians were through the opening a split second later, filling the interior of the building with flashes of blue light. They were answered with more brilliant streaks of white light, but the blue still dominated. More of Adam’s people poured into the building, shooting at anything that moved. Although the BARs used their own form of computerized targeting, the scan rate was ten times faster than conventional systems. The shots from his Enforcers were accurate and came at a much higher rate of fire. Soon, the interior in this part of the assembly building was filled with an ozone-smelling haze of ionized air. There was also the moaning of the wounded, almost exclusively from the BAAC fighters. Adam lost another two of his people, but that left plenty to clear—

  Suddenly, a powerful series of blue bolts lashed out at Adam and his people. They dove for cover—more cover than they were already taking—in light of this new threat.

  “They have a BAR, at least one!” Adam called into his comm, alerting his troops.

  “We have two firing at us over here!” Jay announced. “Caught five of my people. Four dead, the other caught it in the vest. Fried the thing with one shot.”

  “Understood. Other than that, what resistance are you up against?”

  “It’s thinned out quite a bit. They’re falling back to the next building, staying close to those with the BARs.”

  “All right, keep pushing, but be careful. So far, we only have one shooter over here. I’ll see what I can do to take him out myself.”

  Adam fell onto his belly and began crawling under long assembly tables. Even here, the floor was covered in a fine coating of brown fertilizer which was mopped up on his uniform and tac vest. In the heat of battle, he’d forgotten about the smell, beyond the first impression upon landing. Now it was impossible to ignore.

  He moved under cover, doing his best to find the source of the blue energy bolts. Since they weren’t as bright as traditional flash bolts, they were harder to pinpoint, but the closer he got, the more he was able to narrow down the target.

  The shooter was on a third level catwalk, high above the assembly floor, hiding behind a service crane that ran along the ceiling on huge tracks. Adam moved closer until he came upon two BAAC fighters crouching for cover, waiting for the shooter above them to clear a path so they could escape. They didn’t see Adam as he crawled up to them.

  Among his personal arsenal was his trusty K-BAR combat knife. He pulled it from the sheath around his right ankle, not wanting to give away his position by using one of his other assorted weapons. He rolled over and slipped under another table before coming up on one knee. The aliens had their backs to him. He looked up. If they sounded the alarm he would be a sitting duck for the shooter on the catwalk.

  Adam visualized the attack, and when he had it firmly in his mind, he struck.

  He sprung forward, sweeping the legs of one of the aliens knocking him to the floor, while at the same time slashing across the throat of the other in one fluid motion. He landed on the back of the first alien and then grabbed him by the forehead, jerking his head back toward him. The blade swung again, slashing across the throat of the alien on the floor. It took a moment for both creatures to bleed out, but with their throats cut, they couldn’t raise a warning.

  Even before their last breaths had been breathed, Adam had the K-BAR back in its holder and was scaling the side of the catwalk supports, moving from bar to bar, lifting himself effortlessly in the light gravity. At the top, he silently rolled onto the grated walkway. The shooter was still firing at Adam’s pinned-down troops, holding them at bay.

  Suddenly, white flash bolts began to strike around him and voices rose up on this side of the assembly building. He’d been spotted, and now desperate BAAC fighters were trying to take him out before he could get to their BAR-armed comrade.

  The blue shots lashing down from the catwalk suddenly stopped. There was a movement ahead, and a silhouette appeared, coming out from behind the crane motor. Adam rolled just in time before a blue bolt electrified the metal grate. The hairs on Adam’s body stood on end and the heat was incredible. The shooter missed, but not by much. Adam continued to roll to the side, until he fell off the edge of the catwalk.

  In a desperate move, Adam reached out with his right hand and grabbed the metal bar of the side rail to the catwalk. He dangled by one hand, as he heard running on the metal grate, the vibration growing stronger as the BAAC shooter came closer.

  Adam used his momentum to swing his body under the catwalk, reaching out with his left hand to grab the opposite side rail. The shooter was above him, looking over the railing on the other side for his target. Realizing Adam had moved, the alien quickly shifted position, bringing the barrel of the BAR over the rail and aimed directly at Adam’s head. A grey alien face stared down at him, before a savage snarl erupted from the creature’s mouth. A full set of teeth were displayed as he growled at the dangling Human. There was no doubt about it. In this case, the grin on the alien’s face was definitely a death challenge and given by someone who felt he had the upper hand.

  And that was when the blast from Adam’s .45-caliber long-barrel rang out again, sounding even louder in the confines of the assembly building. There was nothing subtle about Adam’s aim, either. It was square in the center of the grinning face of the alien, a face that instantly disappeared in a spray of blood, bone and brain matter.

  The corpse toppled over, falling past Adam to the floor three stories below.

  Again, there was a strange quiet, before Adam’s people opened up and began sprinting forward, spirited by their leader’s reckless—yet effective—gambit. As Adam hung from the rail by his left hand, he holstered the pistol and watched the scene below. The BAAC fighters had had enough and were running away to the north and the nearest exit from the building. Adam counted fifty or more, against his team of seven surviving Enforcers. Still, the insurgents weren’t willing to fight to the last man—or alien, in this case.

  Adam pulled himself up onto the catwalk and contacted Jay Williford.

  “How’s it going over there?” he asked.

  “Fine—was that you and your hand-cannon again? We heard it all the way over here.”

  “What can I say, old habits die hard.”

  “Seems so. But to your question, the rebels are running. They seem to have lost their stomach for fighting. Should we pursue?”

  “Sweep the buildings to make sure they’re gone. I’ll send the covering ships to see if they can pick off any of the others as they clear the complex. I think the planet should be safe for a while. The BAAC can’t keep losing fighters like this in a losing cause. There’s just not that many of them. This should keep them quiet for a while. I’ll meet you back at the ship.”

  “Yes sir, Marshal Cain, sir. And so concludes another chapter in the legend of Adam Cain. And now I’m building a legend of my own!”

  “Only in your mind, Jay.”

  Adam heard the young man laugh. “Actually, I’m okay with that.”

  By the time Adam made it back to the EAV, a group of the local colonists were there waiting, having noticed when the fighting ended followed by a wholesale flight of BAAC insurgents running into the hills. Most of the colonists communities were made up of the same species, groups of a few hundred or more who sold themselves to the refugee groups in exchange for a specific term of labor. Once the contract was fulfilled, either through the passage of time or once a shipping quota was met, they would be set free to colonize any part of the vast empty world they wished. But until then, they were essentially slaves of the refugees.

  These individuals were used to dismantle just about everything on the planet with value and prepare it for shipment from the many spaceports spread across the land. The refugees would then sell the items across the galaxy for incredible profit. These early colonists worked under horrendous conditions on planets barely capable of supporting life. And until the soil became rich enough to support crops, all the food for the
colonists had to be provided by the refugees, placing the colonists in even more debt to their masters. It was a vicious, depressing cycle, with no true end in sight. Some complained, but most of the settlers came from the most impoverished worlds in the galaxy, so they welcomed the chance to make better lives for themselves and their families—eventually—on the worlds of the Dead Zone. And with the help of Maris-Kliss and their rainstorms of smelly fertilizer, the Dead Worlds were coming back to life, and within a few decades, the colonists would see green pastures and forests once again painting the landscape, along with growing food crops they would need to make a truly independent life for them and their families.

  That was if they could keep the BAAC from attacking their settlements and disrupting their shipment quotas.

  A four-armed, purple skinned creature wearing a thick, coarse set of overalls came up to Adam, leading a small entourage of others like him. He was one of the two-mouthed species, one who had an orifice in their belly in which they took in nourishment, while a generally normal-looking mouth and nose did the breathing and talking.

  “Are … raiders … pacified?” the alien barked.

  Adam took a step back, because the alien had truly barked at him. At least that’s what it sounded like. It took Adam by surprise.

  “Yes, they are,” he answered. “They shouldn’t cause you any more trouble, at least for a while.”

  “You … too … long … respond! Leave … force … for … protection.”

  Adam frowned. “I can’t do that. We have a hundred worlds to patrol. We can’t have stations on all of them. You have the authority to set up your own militia. You should do that.”

  “We … no labor … spare.” Each sentence fragment was snapped at Adam. The words were heard in English, thanks to his imbedded translation device. But they were still hard to make out, spoken in such a rough staccato. “That … your … job!”

  “Sorry, buddy, but it’s not.”

  Other troops were filtering back to the starship, most looking tired and dejected. Adam lost half his force, most from the bolts from the super rifles. It was a terrible price to pay, especially by a police force. The original intent of the Enforcers was not to become a paramilitary unit, but when it came to protection of the Dead Worlds, that was a role they were filling more often. Without having officially joined either the Expansion or the Union, the Zone was still in limbo with regards to a military operating in the region. There was none, at least not against locals killing other locals. That responsibility was dropped in Adam’s lap. He would have been fine with that, if he was given the resources he needed to build such a force. And although the budget for his Enforcers was truly impressive, it wasn’t nearly enough to support a true military force.

  That left Adam sacrificing members of his relatively small police force on missions better suited for a more powerful military.

  Adam took a step toward the taller alien colonist, his jaw set. “I just lost a lot of good troops clearing this facility of BAAC raiders, just so your refugee masters can live like kings on the other side of the galaxy. Don’t ask me to do any more than I’ve already done. If the raiders come back, give us a call. But as I said, maybe you should start taking a little responsibility for your own security. After all, who knows how long it will take for us to respond the next time?”

  Chapter 2

  It was a five-day journey back to Navarus from Hax’on. His four-ship squadron set down in the Enforcer spaceport that had been built in the large field next to Coop’s old shipyard. The shipyard itself had been converted into a modern service center for the forty-eight Formilian-designed assault vessels belonging to the force. Forty-eight ships may sound like a lot, but when one realized they had a swath of space six hundred light-years long and a hundred worlds to patrol, that wasn’t nearly enough.

  Fortunately, more ships were arriving every week, and since Adam had left, another two had been delivered.

  Upon seeing the gleaming new starships being surveyed at the service center, Adam smiled. Arieel said she would be coming with the next delivery intending to stay for a couple of weeks and keep him company. She and Adam had been an on-again-off-again item for several years already, and with all the stress of his new job, he would welcome the distraction. And distraction she was. Arieel Bol was the Speaker of the Formilian People—the leader of the planet—and often referred to as The Most Beautiful Prime Female in the Galaxy. Adam couldn’t dispute that, although he knew much of the appeal other species had for the Formilians came from the potent pheromones they gave off. They were engineered with the scent by the ancient Aris, hoping to foster interspecies relationships that would result in the creation of the Apex Being, the first and only naturally born immortal creature. Their three-billion-year-long experiment paid off. The Apex Being was created. She was Adam and Arieel’s mutant genius daughter, Lila.

  Adam anxiously boarded an official police transport for the short, five-mile drive to his headquarters, hoping to get through the official wrap-up of the Hax’on mission as soon as he could. Arieel would be waiting at his house, and knowing her, wearing nothing but the most glorious and sensual smile in the galaxy.

  The Enforcer Unit had grown so large in the six months since its creation that it now occupied three buildings in central Balamar. There were two operations centers across the street and down a block from Capt. Cain’s Bar & Grill, and his official headquarters was located in the warehouse where Riyad once ran his defunct outfitting business. With independent salvage operations dying off in the Zone, Riyad’s business went belly-up. It was for the better. It had never been a big profit center for the Big Three Partnership, which consisted of the bar, Sherri’s hotel/opium den and Riyad’s outfitting business. Even Sherri’s revenue was down considerably, once the huge Maris-Kliss resort opened up a mile down Lan Road from her hotel. She still catered to a certain type of clientele, but even that was dying off seeing that the main police station in the Dead Zone was located two doors down.

  In many ways, the demise of the hotel and outfitting business was okay. Riyad had taken to his position as the Number Two badass cop in the region as Adam’s Deputy Marshal. And Sherri secretly reveled in her unofficial capacity as the president of the Dead Zone through her position as Vice Minister of the Governing Council. The Partnership still received a monthly stipend of forty thousand Juirean credits to cover twenty-five percent of the operating expenses of their businesses, two of which were essentially closed down. The money helped, along with the inflated salaries of all three. Financially, they weren’t doing that bad.

  Adam stopped first at the main operations building. It was housed in an old food stock processing building that had been taken over—appropriately—through the exercise of police powers within the Navarus constitution. As he entered the large lobby, the place was filled with creatures going about their tasks with purpose. Riyad worked out of the building. As Adam made his way past desks and other workstations he acknowledged the nods from several of his deputies and agents. There were expressions of concern and sorrow. The troops he’d lost on Hax’on were friends and colleagues.

  He then came to a cluster of desks outside Riyad’s office. Seated at them were Adam’s old SEAL buddies, Gill ‘Peanut’ Norris, Tim Robertson and Toby Wills. They’d come to work for him once the Dead Worlds got shut down for independent salvage operations. For a few months, the trio had cleaned up by searching small, out of the way settlements, mainly for Juirean credits left in tiny community banks. The pickings were slim, but when they occasionally hit the jackpot, it was pretty sweet. They each had a fairly sizable bankroll saved up, but when Adam offered them jobs on the new police force, they jumped at the chance. All three were retired Navy SEALs, and they longed for a taste of the old days—just as did Adam. Being with the Enforcers filled that need.

  “To fallen comrades,” Peanut toasted with his cup of alien coffee. The others joined in.

  Adam nodded. “Thanks, guys. It was a little tougher than we anticipat
ed. It ended up the BAAC found three BARs at the factory. We were also going up against three hundred bad guys. We were bound to take some casualties, just more than we wanted, of course. What’s been going on here?”

  Tim held up a datapad. “More of the same,” he said. “Kanac is quieting down, but now we have trouble in some of the newer cities cropping up. It’s a madhouse, mainly across the ocean. They’re building so many temporary structures just to have a place to live, and then when permanent facilities are done, they leave the old buildings to the vagrants. Then the owners come in to raze the buildings to build new condos and they have to evict the squatters. That’s where we come in, when the riots start. Don’t get me wrong, I like busting alien heads. It’s just that these poor souls have no place else to go. The only option we have is to arrest them.”

  “And then that fills up the Panorius center with what is essentially dead weight. And that all costs the government money.”

  Adam had to smirk at the mention of Panorius. That was the for-profit organization that ran several major detention centers throughout the Expansion, including the one where Copernicus Smith had been temporarily held while he worked to gain the trust of the Gracilian Aric Jroshin. Out of desperation for a place to house the new criminals entering the Navarus justice system, the government contracted with Panorius to build a prison complex. For the right price, they jumped at it, taking a large tract of donated jungle to the south of Balamar and constructing three temporary structures in record time. One unit was for the transients, essentially a huge drunk tank. The second was for the shorter-term convicts, those sentenced to three years or less. The third was for the hard-core inmates. Panorius was now hard at work building the much larger permanent facilities on the same tract of land. It cost the newly formed government a fortune for the service Panorius offered, but it was one less thing Lion/El and Sherri had to worry about. Besides, with all the new taxes being imposed—supported by a three-fold increase in the planet’s population over the past six months—there was plenty of money to pay for the prison complex.