Britton cursed. “These must be the Valkyries we were warned about! MacAllistair, drop the cloaking fields and let’s push through this mess!”
Salvation shimmered and seemingly materialized out of nowhere, suddenly looming over the weaker side of the Arbolean forces. Glowing brightly at the rear, the massive battleship pushed forward at full speed. Her guns blazed, tearing apart the already weakened vessels at the rear battle groups.
Ugly Arbolean ships splintered into pieces; some took evasive maneuvers as the Salvation plowed a heavy furrow of destruction through enemy territory. Her starboard guns caught a number of the presumptuous Mechnar ships off guard as well; intense energy blasts wore down the enemy shields until they burned through, into the ships’ skin.
Salvation caught up to the MEA forces as they struggled against the Valkyrie attackers. A small number of Mechnar ships ventured too close and were promptly snagged by the deadly grappling vines.
MacAllistair noted, “The Mechnar forces are hanging back, now.” They kept just enough distance to funnel their human enemies into the maw of the hungry enemy. “I think they are just observing, for now.”
“They’re looking for our weaknesses,” Britton pointed out. “Look.” He pointed to the visual feeds streaming in from different ships and their own streams.
To emphasize his point, Captain Burton from the Valiant called a warning over the communicator. “Lasers aren’t affecting this new breed! Same with EMPs! We’ve got to get closer and use ballistics.” The three lead capital ships were the same ones Johns had sent to Darkside station to purloin warheads from the moon’s hidden stockpile.
Britton broadcast his own plan, “All ships, use hard ammo when targeting Arbolean Valkyries. Salvation has a full complement of pre Singularity-War era torpedoes and we are en route!”
“Make it so!” Captain Johns chimed in, glad for the assist.
“Make it faster!” Captain Smith pleaded from the Stalwart, the closest to the Valkyrie threat. They switched from their useless energy weapons to projectiles. Smith’s torpedoes caved in the port side of a nearby threat while his chain guns whittled away at the structure that closed the gap. Living cables suddenly snapped outward and attached to the Stalwart, pulling her closer with amazing speed.
The hulls of the two ships butted up against each other while the coils constricted. MEA fighters buzzed around the conflict like angry bees of opposing hives; their weapons did too little damage to have any effect. Stalwart’s shields provided no help against the enemy contact; their protection rapidly depleted beneath the crushing force of the arms.
The Valkyrie’s gun ports fired a sort of resin projectile which splattered against their MEA opponent’s hull. Like caustic acid, it seemed to burn through the shields, first, and then smolder against the armored hull, weakening the integrity and eating through wherever possible.
“Fire!” Britton yelled as the Salvation pushed past a modified freighter undergoing an identical fate. The Stalwart was a more valuable piece in this game. Salvation’s missiles streaked toward her target, but it was too far out to make an immediate impact and the Valkyrie had already begun pivoting so that its point of contact with the Stalwart couldn’t be broken up.
“All ships, keep your distance,” Smith stated. Then an explosion erupted between the Class E battleship and her Valkyrie assailant. Stalwart had fired her torpedoes pointblank where the two ships touched.
The blast pushed the two massive ships apart slightly. Each belched smoke and debris. A significant portion of the Valkyrie broke away as the ship drifted like a drunken sailor in his dingy. Stalwart’s aft suffered a massive hemorrhage; lights flickered on the ship but her engines remained lit and she limped away.
Salvation descended upon the Valkyrie; her amateur gun crews shredded what was left of the wounded arbolean vessel while Captain Smith broadcast a status report on the Stalwart. The channel opened with a raspy cough—likely smoke inhalation. “We’re badly damaged, but it ain’t over yet. Long range missiles still fully functional, but we can’t take another hit with any teeth.”
Britton angled his ship towards the main battle group, positioning the Salvation between Stalwart and a smaller Valkyrie as it vectored in towards Smith’s ship, trying to pick off the wounded vessel as it listed into Earth’s gravity well. Salvation’s heavy guns lit up as soon as the Valkyrie came within range and pulverized the predator; broken, white chunks of chiton floated away in the vacuum as the guns blasted away at the enemy.
More requests for aid poured in as Valkyries systematically took apart the weaker ships. The largest of the arbolean grappler vessels, nearly a Class F in size, and obviously the Valkyrie flagship, broke away from their typical tactic and headed straight for the Salvation.
***
“Let’s assume that the initial conflict at Osix is somehow related to this all. We destroyed Beta Station when we left,” Dekker recounted. “That leaves Alpha station as an entry point; it’s a mirror image of Beta. Like Beta, Alpha connects to the main underground mining facilities by a magnetic rail system linking it to Gamma Station.”
As the Rickshaw Crusader swooped down through the atmosphere, the active scanners received new data. The landscape had transformed radically since their last visit. No longer a dusty ball of rock, a mossy kind of lichen had enveloped most of the terrain and given it a tinted hue; patches of scrubby brush sprang up from the ground. Sensors showed that the planetary body now possessed a thin atmosphere, just barely capable of sustaining humanoids, a probable byproduct of the new, burgeoning ecosystem.
The Crusader’s landing pads crushed the undergrowth as it settled down and released the boarding ramp. “Alright, guys,” Dekker stated. “It’s time to put our faith in Doc’s vaccination to the test. Keep the engines hot, Matty.”
They fanned out and approached the geodesic sphere of Alpha Station from the exterior. Broken glassine shards littered the ground; a huge section of triangular paneling was absent, broken apart by some large, unknown force.
Dekker looked at Guy as they entered through the gaping hole. Guy winked at him, excited by the prospect of imminent danger.
As Dekker took point, weapon hot and ready, Vesuvius chuckled, slipping back into the playful banter they’d gotten accustomed to. “After you, sweetie. I’ll just hang a step back and stare at your backside.”
Dekker rolled his eyes but smiled. The fate of the universe hung in the balance and the gang seemed dapper as ever. “Everyone sticks together this time,” he stated. “MacAllistair’s sensor settings show that the DNIET unit is in the Gamma complex. My money is on something very nasty awaiting us there. You all know the way.”
“Doesn’t that mean that the DNIET is on… I mean if we can detect it with the sensors?” Shaw asked.
“Yes,” Dekker stated flatly. It didn’t change the mission or its urgency. He stood and prepped to disembark.
Working as a team, they systematically worked down the corridors, covering each other. The silence of the planet almost overwhelmed their senses, like a calm before the storm. Trodding through the eerie stillness they soon arrived at the entry point to the main residential sector.
The place was a ghost town, just as Beta Station had been prior to awakening the mechnar force. Dekker patted the leather satchel at his hip, reassuring himself with the full complement of remaining shells for the reliquary. They jangled slightly against the wooden box at the bottom of the purse: the mystery item the enigmatic Ezekiel had given him.
They entered the area on high alert. Tension seemed to mount the further each footstep brought them. A barely discernible growl seemed to buzz in the air; they walked down a road lined with structures, the symmetrical equivalent to where they’d found the hidden Krenzin, Dachan, on their last visit.
An unsettling stillness rose up and the buzzing sensation seemed to cease. The Watchmen instinctively reacted, intuitively sensing the attack.
Crashing through the buildings, a massive lizard pounced on them.
The thirty foot monstrosity snapped its jaws with lightning speed, closing only on air as Dekker dove for cover.
The beast roared—his woody, vacant eyes searched for the easiest prey. Its behemoth head brandished a crown of jagged apothecium spikes.
Opening fire, Dekker’s team took defensive positions as the monster reeled from the painful shots needling it. Enraged, the reptile swung its colossal tail and wiped out the building where Juice, Rock, and Ahmed had fired from, flinging them across an alley and burying them under debris.
“Zombie dinosaurs?” Guy joked, “There’s nothing I can’t blow up.” He flashed a grin to Dekker. “Cover me!” he sprinted towards the immense carnivore while the others opened fire to distract the creature.
The beast shrieked in annoyance as Guy dashed just underneath it. He fired a number of successive splatter shots from his modified sticky. The goo stuck to the dinosaur’s belly like a heavy tar and alerted the creature to Guy’s presence.
It snapped at him with reptilian, predatory reflexes. Guy leapt through a glass window as the fiend pursued, jamming its head through a wall, pulverizing the side of the building, reaching for its meal.
Its underside erupted in flame as Guy detonated the explosives in his phlogiston rounds. With a shriek, the beast’s carapace split open, spilling charred innards through the smoke as it collapsed in a heap of stinking reptilian death.
A few seconds later, Guy emerged through the smoke, sticky gun propped over his shoulder and with only a few minor cuts on his face. “If that’s all the tougher they’re defenses are, this is gonna be cake.”
Another shriek echoed over the rooftops as additional beasts called out nearby. “These things are too big to fit into the railway system, right?” Guy asked.
Dekker nodded.
“Then let’s get down to the tunnels.”
The Watchmen left in a full sprint.
***
Sloughing off the shots from other ships, the Valkyrie flagship continued pressing towards the Salvation with singular purpose. Their intent was clear: the annihilation of the biggest human threat in this skirmish. Without the gigantic Class-G and her full armament, the MEA’s forces stood virtually no chance. Even with it, they appeared to only delay the inevitable.
Most of the Arbolean ghost ships had earlier fallen away from the conflict, as had the Mechnar observers. Several of the ghost ships came into position to run interference for the flagship; they mindlessly absorbed the enemy fire while the flagship continued pursuit of its quarry.
With engines in full reverse, Britton angled away from the primary threat, directing main weapons banks to continue pounding away at the imposing Valkyrie while adjusting their vector so that the remaining gunneries could target the other grappler ships which attempted to shield their flagship. Even so, the remaining MEA forces were falling fast as the vines tore capital ships asunder and their acidic projectiles decimated the smaller class fighter ships.
Britton’s maneuvering drew the flagship out of the fray as much as possible. But the other Valkyries proved too great a threat and they’d razed most of the MEA’s most powerful ships. From their distant post, Mechnar vessels took pot shots at the enemy; the Stalwart provided cover fire for whatever smaller vessels as it could, but it suddenly erupted as a Mechnar gunboat launched a missile salvo into her decimated backside.
“No!” Screamed Captain Johns as Stalwart burst apart. Only half a dozen ships remained in their pool. “Captain Burton! Get your ship out of there!”
The Valiant provided cover fire for a smaller D-class frigate caught in a grappler vine. Trading blows with the Valkyrie, the arbolean ship it released the MEA frigate as it unleashed a scorching rain of acid fire into its prey; it punched the wounded vessel with its tendril arm and the blow crumpled the damaged ship and pushed her adrift.
Unable to correct, the collapsing frigate rammed into the Valiant which had tried to protect it. The collision shook both vessels violently. Fuel cells exploded, atomizing the frigate and blowing a chunk out of her protector. The Valiant shuddered momentarily, began to roll like a dead whale, and then likewise erupted.
Britton poured more energy into the guns, knocking out the shielding vessels as the Valkyrie pursued, switching between lasers and ballistic weapons as situations demanded. The Salvation quaked as a smaller Arbolean grappler took hold, then another. The rear gunnery turrets took care of them, but not before the Valkyrie flagship closed the gap. Four lethal tendrils seized the ship like whips and coiled into a deadly, constricting hold.
The Salvation poured the full force of all offensive batteries into the monstrosity as the Valkyrie pulled itself against the battle-class galleon, spewing corrosive venom all across the vessel. Acid globules scarred the side while the shields flickered; the Salvation’s guns warped slightly as the caustic resin burned and eroded the offensive batteries.
Warnings and reports poured into all screens on the command bridge as the vessel shook violently. MacAllistair screamed into the comm units, trying to direct repair crews to the failing systems.
“Critical condition,” SHIP stated in its blithe, electronic voice. “Hull integrity compromised.”
MacAllistair shot a worried look to Britton. Britton clicked on his comm. “Johns! Can you intercept?”
Britton looked at the visual scopes. Escape pods jettisoned away from the Gallant as two Valkyries pulled it in opposite directions. Johns was either dead, or watching helplessly from an escape pod with nowhere to go.
Salvation was on her own: the last human vessel in orbit. She groaned as the tension twisted her frame and bent both carling and bulkhead. In a matter of seconds she would break.
The comm chirped. “I’ve got one last trick up my sleeve,” a familiar voice broke in.
“Nibbs!” Britton yelled, leaping to his feet. “You’re alive! Where are you?”
“Not for long,” Nibbs replied. “I’m dying; my legs are paralyzed. Infected bad, too. I think I’ve got blood poisoning. I can still hear the implant, like a whisper in my mind. A part of the root must have broken off inside; it’s still in there, dying just like me.”
Britton didn’t understand; he didn’t need to. “You can’t help here. Unless you’ve got some kind of invisible battle cruiser, your guns won’t make any difference,” Britton yelled as the Salvation shook again. “Get to Earth; we’re done for up here!”
“I’m cloaked in the psy-nar vessel. The arbolean implant told me where to hit a Valkyrie where it’ll hurt and it’ll never see me coming. You take care, my friend.” The comm channel went silent as the Salvation groaned under the stressful torque.
Britton and MacAllistair watched the video scopes. They couldn’t see the invisible ship, only the explosion it made as it streaked forward like a guided missile, puncturing the Valkyrie’s hidden brain module.
The grappler tendrils went limp and released. Spinning away from the deadly grasp, Salvation unleashed a deadly salvo in response; the charges vaporized the Valkyrie which had threatened to strangle the Watchmen’s craft. The Salvation’s engines struggled and sputtered, but held up under the damage.
Watching the monitors, the entire remaining Valkyrie group turned to give chase and avenge their leader. The Mechnar forces angled to intercept the arboleans as they pursued. “SHIP!” Britton directed, “Lay in the following course at half speed.” He rattled off a quick heading, sending them on a route back the direction from where they’d entered the fray. “MacAllistair, you keep whatever guns we’ve got left going. Just keep them off our nose and buy me some time!”
MacAllistair nodded. Britton sprinted from the command center even as the last of their offensive array’s failed, melting under the corrosive fire of Valkyrie spittle.
***
The Watchmen sprinted down the long, dark corridor. “It’s too bad the rail lift isn’t working!” Guy complained breathlessly.
“It’s also too bad the tunnel’s not as narrow as we thought,” Vesuvius stated.
&nb
sp; A deafening, echoing roar responded to her quip. Dekker turned and unfurled his ancient weapon. He leveled the reliquary down the stretch of darkened corridor and fired.
Azure lightning crackled all around like a tesla coil and the front end erupted with a ferocious, emerald beam wider than Dekker was tall. The sonic boom of its report seemed to suck the air out of the underpass. It illuminated and atomized everything in the passageway, annihilating anything caught in the beam while momentarily blinding the Watchmen with its intense, destructive light.
“Did you see them?” Guy asked, fumbling in the dark. “There were three more of em hot on our trail!”
As their eyes readjusted, they continued the trek, making one more stop to fire the reliquary yet again to vaporize their continued pursuit. The carnivores came back again, each time with greater numbers.
“Up ahead,” Dekker yelled. A pale light grew larger as they neared the end of the rails. “Sensors say DNIET’s there!”
The group spilled out of the darkness and into a massive cavern. The warren was lit by a blanket of bioluminescent mushrooms that glowed with a teal aura. They covered the old mining equipment, the walls of the orb-like cavern, and anything man-made within the mining facility of Gamma Station.
“One more for good measure,” Dekker said, aiming the powerful artifact at their noisy pursuit. The beam revealed a pack of ravenous beasts giving chase even as the crackling green fire disintegrated them. The echo of the blast rang down the corridor. “That should buy us several minutes.” Dekker pulled out the empty cartridge and examined the marking on it: Rho. Seven shells remained, each marked with a progressively climbing Greek alphabetical character.
As their eyes adjusted again and the darkness deepened, the chemical light from the fungi seemed to grow brighter. Vesuvius wiped the velveteen walls. “Apothecium spores?” She looked upward; the entirety of Gamma Station had been turned into a grow-house for arbolean fungus and seeds. “These ones are a different variety… I sure hope Doc’s vaccine is okay against these ones too.”
The Last Watchmen Page 24
