“Not alone.” Trixie rose as well. “I'm going with you.”
Cheng, Tom, and Tabor also rose.
Kostas looked around the table but saw no other officers. “It may not be enough. We don't know what we are up against.” He turned to Trixie. “Any of your crew have military training?”
Trixie nodded. “A few. I'll radio them.” She glanced up at Kostas. “You still have those weapons?”
Kostas grinned despite the gravity of the situation. “Aren't you glad I brought them now?”
She didn't answer and turned to the councilors. “Gather those in your group who are trained in firing guns, and have them meet us at the small western gate ASAP.”
Chapter Six
In the privacy of his ship's personal quarters, Ktal braced himself. His brain detected the caller's identity before the azure crystal hanging from a duranium chain around his neck chimed. He took a deep breath and pushed the gem's silver center.
“My Lord Emperor,” Ktal bowed deeply.
“I assume you have good news.” The holographic representation of Emperor Kobel, in black robes, with orange skin, black hair and black eyes, appeared in front of him. He sat on an elaborate throne of amber stone and gold. Everyone in the far reaches of this galaxy knew and feared the Goddian Empire... well, almost everyone. “Much at home depends on your success.”
“I am honored by your confidence in me, My Lord Emperor.” Ktal's heart beat a little faster. With the charge came the daunting responsibility.
“To the point, nephew.” The emperor straightened black robes that did not need straightening. “When can I expect the first duranium shipments?” he asked in a falsely casual voice.
“Very soon, My Lord Emperor.” Ktal sincerely hoped he could deliver. “The negotiations with the new workers' representatives are going extremely well.”
“There is nothing to negotiate!” A black fold flipped under impatient fingers. “Just strap the lazy bastards to work and be done with it.”
“Surprisingly, My Lord Emperor, there is a lot to be gained by negotiating first.” Ktal struggled to keep his tone even and neutral. He suspected imperial pressure had prompted the previous fiasco.
“Explain.” Emperor Kobel scowled. The dark flash in his eyes would have shriveled a lesser man.
But Ktal was a blood prince, and not easily intimidated. “These Humans have already come up with valuable ideas to speed up production, My Lord Emperor.” He did not mention the myriad of safety requests, his coaxing gifts, and the other favors he had to agree upon... all due to the ruthless negotiating skills of the Human female leader. “This could be a very profitable cooperation in the long term, My Lord Emperor.”
“I understand, but we are pressed for time.” The thin imperial lips pressed together then released in a sigh. “The Reptoids have attacked several of our outposts. Our entire fleet is mobilized on their border, leaving other parts of the empire vulnerable. We need more ships, and duranium is essential to their construction.”
“Still, I implore your patience, My Lord. We cannot afford to repeat past mistakes.” Ktal was painfully reminded of the grim fate of his predecessor. “That's why you sent me, your own nephew, isn't it? To solve this problem, to do things right, this time.”
“Of course.” The emperor's face remained closed, his jaw set.
“I already selected the perfect contingent, with a multitude of able bodies and no military presence among them.” Ktal felt rather proud of that fact. “They have women with them in space. And they work and are treated just like men.”
“Really?” Emperor Kobel shook his head in confusion. “Women?”
“Yes, My Lord Emperor.” Ktal knew that would catch Kobel's attention. “I snatched the whole lot of them out of jump space without incident. I forced them to land in the proper place. So far everything has gone according to plan. In order for this operation to succeed, I only need a little more time.”
“We do not have the luxury of time!” The emperor's sudden outburst chilled the entire chamber. Then he said in a calmer voice, “Empty barges are on their way from our duranium processing facility on the rim. They will reach Kassouk in three of your weeks. Make sure they return promptly, and fully loaded.”
“I will do my absolute best, My Lord Emperor.” Ktal doubted his best would be enough for his uncle. “But believe me when I say that rushing things will only bring disaster.”
“I have no tolerance for failure, Ktal... or for excuses.” The finality in the emperor's tone brooked no protest.
Still, Ktal knew better than to promise the impossible. “I am not making excuses. I truly need more time... if you expect success, that is.”
“You have three weeks. I want the extraction to be going full blast by then. And every third week after that, be ready to load a full convoy of barges.” The obsidian eyes glowered at Ktal. “Or else.”
Ktal shuddered inwardly but showed none of his alarm as he bowed. The Goddian Emperor never made empty threats. “Be assured, it will be done, My Lord Emperor.”
The hologram vanished and Ktal released a long breath. This mission would prove as difficult as expected. He hoped to speed up the negotiations. But having studied the way these Humans reasoned, over the past few days, he doubted he could coax them into producing at the rate the Empire demanded of him.
If Ktal did not succeed, however, this would end dreadfully for everyone involved, including himself.
* * *
Trixie climbed the melting slopes, controlling her breathing as much as she could. After two months cramped in a ship, she had to get back in shape.
In front of her, Kostas climbed steadily, impervious to the craggy terrain, or to the slippery slush that filled the depressions and drenched their boots. Despite the pack on his back and the arsenal at his belt, he led at a fast clip along the western wall of the citadel. A very smooth wall built through means unknown to humankind.
Like most in the armed party going after Dolores and Kenny, Trixie had left her parka behind. The twin suns shone brightly between sparse couds, and the exercise kept her warm. She wished she'd worn gloves, though. The wet rock scratched her fingers each time she grabbed for purchase, and the awkward pulse rifle slung across her back clinked with each step, its weight threatening her precarious balance.
As Kostas picked his way up, Trixie couldn't help but admire the workings of his powerful legs. His calve muscles bulged. Each step stretched the black fabric of his pants over his round, hard butt. Easy, girl. He's a soldier.
Yet, soldiers had their uses. She could never manage the present situation without his expertise. Trixie excelled in the civilized negotiations department, not the kill or be killed emergencies.
A stifled oath, a slide of gravel behind her.
Trixie glanced back downhill. Someone had slipped and fallen. The man, helped by Tom, resumed his climb.
“We need to slow down a bit,” Trixie managed to call ahead in a breath.
Kostas stopped and glanced back at her. In black commando gear, with his sunglasses against the white snow, he looked like the James Bond space hero of her childhood holovids... a very muscular James Bond. His lips curled in a teasing smile.
“Are you getting tired, Captain?” He didn't sound winded at all.
“Not me,” she lied and pointed to the straggling group behind her. “But they are.”
Kostas had insisted in keeping the team small... ten people, half a score as the settlers counted, mostly crew and a few civilians. The stragglers labored to catch up, huffing and puffing. Another slip in the slush below brought a new string of muffled expletives.
“Let them regroup. We are almost there.” Trixie cleared the snow from a flat rock and sat, wiping sweat from her forehead. “You don't want to be the only one standing when you face whatever is waiting for us.” She pulled out her radio and talked into it. “Dolores, Kenny, answer me. Are you all right?”
Nothing. Not even static. Wraith.
She glanced up
at Kostas. “What do you think Dolores meant when she said we are not alone? And that strange word from Kenny... Zerkers?”
Towering over her, Kostas shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine... all I can tell you is that it's not friendly.”
Trixie felt ill-equipped to deal with unfriendlies of the deadly kind. “If Dolores and Kenny are alive, they must be in bad shape, or restrained. Otherwise, they would answer the radio calls.”
“Unless the radios are damaged.” Was Kostas trying to cheer her up?
“But then they would have returned.” Still, Trixie refused to consider the worst. She shuddered at the memory of these yodeling screams. What were they?
The stragglers slowly caught up and sat around, catching their breath for a few minutes. Tom, in addition to his rifle, bristled with blades hanging from his belt. His long, beaded dreadlocks hung on each side of his red beret as he conversed with Cheng and Tabor in a low voice. Around them the team members straightened a strap here, slapped a shoulder there, in the kind of camaraderie brought on by common danger.
Trixie pushed herself to her feet. “I guess we are all here.”
Kostas nodded. “Let me talk to them.”
“Sure.” Trixie sat back down. Trust the expert soldier to do his job.
Kostas drew his enormous plasma blaster out of its backpack sheath and surveyed the group. By now the team stared at him, waiting.
“Whatever is out there is wild, primal, and most likely deadly. Fortunately, we have weapons, so hold your rifles ready to shoot.” Kostas slung the heavy plasma blaster strap over his right shoulder to demonstrate, as if it were a regular rifle. “Listen to my orders, no matter how strange they might sound. It's our best chance to eliminate whatever threat is out there... for the safety of the entire community.”
Men and women pulled out the pulse rifles strapped to their backs. None of them had the strength to lug a plasma blaster. Trixie loosened the strap of her rifle over one shoulder.
“And only release the safety upon my command,” Kostas went on. “I don't want you rookies to shoot each other in the back, understood?”
Heads bobbed in understanding.
“According to what we know,” Kostas went on, “the mouth of the cave should be just a little higher to the right. It's big, we can't miss it. Keep as silent as you can for this last climb.”
The ragged team nodded gravely, jaws set, a stern look of determination in their eyes.
Kostas turned and resumed climbing, the heavy blaster dangling from his shoulder. They ascended no more than a hundred yards. Kostas stopped, pumped his arm and crouched in front of her. Then he gripped his blaster.
Trixie swallowed the hard lump in her throat. Her heart careened like a rock down a steep incline, gaining speed as it tumbled. Adrenalin flooded her system. She'd never fought or hunted on foot before. She always knew her enemy, and she'd orchestrated all her skirmishes from the safety of the captain sling, on a heavily armed vessel.
Trixie heaved herself to his level and peered over the edge of a vast rock shelf, the size of a soccer field. She became very aware of his knee touching hers, sending whirls of heat up her thigh. A frisson skittered up her spine. Dread? Or excitement?
Kostas simply pointed toward the gaping mouth in the rock wall. The cave entrance.
All seemed quiet. No one in sight. No animals either. No sound except for the rushing of blood in her arteries.
Kostas leaned to whisper in her ear. “When we leave, I'll collapse the entrance. Bury whatever is in there... alive or dead.” He seemed confident they would survive this mission. “Even our own losses, if any. We are not hauling dead bodies down the mountain, understood?”
Trixie swallowed a hard lump in her throat. How could he remain so clear about what needed to be done? He looked so focused, so calm, so sure of himself. All she could think about was the cold fear that dripped like poison down her insides.
* * *
All senses in alert, Kostas advanced slowly into the cavern at the point of the V-formation, blaster in hand, motioning the three on each side of him to stay behind and remain quiet as they followed him into the gaping maw of the cave. Trixie, Tabor, and one crewman stood to his right. Tom, Cheng, and another crewman guarded his left.
Kostas trusted his reflexes to be the fastest in case of attack. Enough light flooded the vast natural space through the wide opening for his enhanced vision to see the outlines of the back wall. But there were dark fissures on all sides, nooks, crannies, narrow passages... and the piles of discarded large bones Dolores and Kenny had mentioned.
His sensitive nose recognized the overpowering stench of carnage, ripped flesh, excrement, cold mud, but mostly blood. The lair of flesh-eating beasts? No. He also smelled fire. Animals did not make fire. But he'd spotted no smoke from the battlements of the citadel. How could there be fire without smoke? Fire breathing dragons? Could they exist on such a remote planet? He could not afford to discard any theory, no matter how farfetched.
Kostas distrusted the quiet of the place. Not even the scurrying scratches of a rodent. Their footsteps crunched on the cave floor littered with tiny bone shards, the only sounds with their breathing. It felt like an ambush.
He pointed his blaster to something on the hard floor.
Trixie nodded and picked it up then paled and almost dropped it. Her eyes opened wide.
It was a severed hand holding a radio... what was left of it. The fat grubby hand must have been Kenny's. It looked as if it had been trampled or smashed. Obviously, Dolores and Kenny had met with foul play. They had been armed, and they had fired... yet they did not prevail.
“I wonder what happened to their guns,” he whispered to Trixie. “Animals would have left the guns.”
Trixie nodded. “They must have been outnumbered.”
“But by what?” Ignoring the haphazard piles of large bones that had prompted Dolores and Kenny to report, Kostas surveyed the cracks and fissures in the cave walls. He switched on the blaster's barrel light and trained it upon the dark ceiling. Would the danger drop down from above, like bats? Nothing moved in the lofty recesses.
He'd left the other half of the team outside, for support in case of sudden attack and retreat. He would need their firepower if they encountered a great number of enemies, but he suddenly realized this was a mission more suited for a team of expendable Space Marines... like him. Expendable being the operative word.
At least, here, Kostas was unique, a true individual. Still, if Trixie ever discovered what he was, she certainly wouldn't trust him, or look at him sideways with hungry eyes, like she'd done during the climb. He liked the way she looked at him. It made him feel like a real man.
But she believed him to be natural born, and although Kostas was flesh and blood with all the functioning parts of a man, he had been hastily grown in a vat, then trained to serve as cannon meat... and he was good at his job.
Kostas extended his enhanced senses and detected faint sounds ahead. Breathing... many someones or somethings held their breaths. Very foul breaths. Silently Kostas signaled the team to stop. Imminent attack!
A beastly howling broke out, echoing and reverberating against the cave walls, making it impossible to pinpoint the direction of the sound. Kostas slowed his breathing as he listened. The howling sounds rose in pitch, grew frantic.
A swarm of naked beings, tall, strong, smeared with mud and blood, erupted all around them, leaping from every fissure like giant frogs, scurrying from every nook and cranny like scorpions, throwing hails of rocks, screeching like animals, brandishing primitive blades and clubs. Madness roamed in their black round eyes. Saliva dripped from their screaming mouths.
“Fire at will!”
A bearded giant rushed at them. Kostas shot his plasma blaster, and the man burst into flames but kept rushing at him and collapsed in a fiery heap at his feet.
The conflagration of rapid pulse fire filled the cavern with flashes of red pulsing light. The pulses also repelled the volleys o
f stones, sending them back toward the screaming savages. His blaster spewed hot plasma that ignited on contact with flesh and even stone. Screams, wails, and weapon fire reverberated against the walls, setting the walls and ceiling to vibrate with a rumbling hum, adding to the maelstrom. Rock dust sifted from the ceiling.
At his right, Trixie yelled for courage and fired nonstop in a killing frenzy.
As he shot more plasma bursts at incoming enemy waves, Kostas estimated the savages to be at least a hundred. Half of them lay dead or injured from the first salvo, but more kept pouring in, as if from a myriad of hidden passages leading to this vast entrance hall.
The temperature around them rose to scorching. Fire lit the carnage in an orange glow. Kostas dodged a hurtling stone. He shot another coming at his team, disintegrating it in midair.
Trixie and Tabor rained pulse fire on the right half of the cavern, dodging rocks, aiming, firing with uncanny precision. At his left, Tom and Cheng sustained their firepower as well.
There could be many more of these Zerkers waiting in the wing. Kostas couldn't afford to lose his precious few volunteers. Obviously, Dolores and Kenny were long dead. No point in pursuing the rescue.
“Move out! Backwards, slowly.” Kostas yelled over the inferno. “Do not let them cut us off.”
They retreated, stepping back over bones and a few enemy bodies, firing all the way. A Zerker dove and grabbed his foot. Kostas kicked the head and fired. More Zerkers deployed in a wide half circle, attempting to surround them, to cut their retreat, but both wings kept firing full blast.
A large stone crashed to the right. Kostas feared for Trixie. It smashed the head of her crewman, who collapsed. Trixie picked up the slack and redouble her firing as fearless savages kept pouring at them. “Blow them all to hell!”
One glance told Kostas the crewman was beyond saving. As they retreated, Kostas bent to pick up the man's rifle and stepped over his body as the V-formation, now lopsided, kept moving backwards, toward the exit.
Noah's Ark Page 8
