Lou rushed down the steps to the console next to Lindsay’s. He immediately started inputting commands, bringing up various menus. Much of it was written in a combination of Nordic and English languages. So little of it made any sense to him.
“I can’t read this,” Lou said. “What if I hit a self-destruct switch?”
“Hopefully we’ll take out a few of these Catters in the blast,” Syracuse said, spinning the wheel.
Lou glanced at Lindsay, unsure if Syracuse was serious or not. Lindsay Brooks’ returned glance told him the Commander was completely serious. When it came to fighting with the Ka’traxis Brood, the crew of the Lucky Liberty rarely played around. Twice, now, the Earth had come too close to losing with the Catters. Commander Syracuse Hill wasn’t going to let there be a third time. Even if that meant going down with the ship. Whatever would help Captain Irons and the others with victory was worth it.
Lou went back to his search for something that would quickly end the battle. A large explosion rocked them from their posts.
“Damage report!” Syracuse ordered.
“Commander, that came from underneath us,” Lindsay said.
“Ok, they’ve found our weak point. I don’t know how many more like that we can take.”
“The Slagschip can make repairs immediately.” Sitasha tried to sound reassuring.
“But for how long?” Lindsay asked.
Another blast rocked the crew.
Sitasha pulled herself back to her feet. “I fear the answer to your question.”
“Lieutenant!” Syracuse shouted.
Lou stumbled back up to his feet and went right back to work. His eyes fell on one word. “Zonne-uitbarsting?”
“Yes!” Sitasha shouted. “Commander drop all thrust! We need to be stationary!”
“If we do that—”
“You must trust me!”
Syracuse gritted his teeth and dropped the thrust to zero.
“Now, Lieutenant!” Sitasha said.
* * *
The forward thrusters of the Slagschip slowed the vessel to a halt, making it a perfect target for the Catter vessels around it. As the enemy ships positioned themselves around the merged Nordic and Earth cruiser, its guns began to spin.
Bullets stormed out from the Slagschip from every gun, surrounding it in a sphere of weapons fire. The nearest LAVs were shredded before exploding. The nearest tanks were riddled with bullets. Parts of the larger cruisers blew up, creating even more damage. Those that tried to dodge the shots only succeeded in turning into another series of them.
There was no way to escape the onslaught. Ship after ship exploded, creating another sphere of fireballs and smoke. The Slagschip was buffeted by the shockwaves surrounding it until all the explosions stopped and the Slagschip was all that stood in the middle of destroyed Catter tanks.
* * *
“That’s it, Lietenant,” Syracuse said as he watched the display. It was like a space ship graveyard. The LAVs were unrecognizable while so few of the tanks were left with any indicator that they ever ran at all.
Lou Trevern took his hand off his console, instantly halting fire from the ship.
All of them marveled at the destructive force.
“That’s what we were hit by?” Lindsay asked. “How did we survive that?”
“Captain’s got good piloting skills,” Syracuse said. “But we almost didn’t.”
“Aye, sir,” Lindsay said, automatically. She shook her head in disbelief.
During the war, the Lucky Liberty had seen her fair share of battles against the Ka’traxis Brood tanks. Many of those fights happened with other Earth Fleet ships at their back. Other battles were one on one fights only. Rarely were they ever surrounded on all sides. The few times it happened, Captain Irons’s skills were more than enough to keep them from being banged up too badly.
“Let’s hope the others aren’t dealing with anything like we are,” Syracuse said.
Suddenly, another alarm rang out. This one was more melodious than the first. Not that such brought any more comfort to those aboard.
All looked at Sitasha, who frowned. “We’ve been boarded.”
Lindsay spun around and looked up at Commander Hill. “Sir, they wormholed onto the ship!”
Syracuse glanced down at the hips of each member aboard. No one, not even himself was armed. “And we got no weapons.”
Twenty
Forest Fire
“They’re doing a search,” Irons walked back into the cave. “Musta been tipped off from that last fight. Hannah, where are you at with those things?”
Hannah looked back down at the gun she had been working on. “I’ve done as much as I think I can. But…” She held the gun up in her shaking hands.
“Give it to me,” Jammin said. He approached the Specialist and grabbed the Catter gun from her.
“If it starts to make a high-pitched noise, throw it,” Hannah warned.
Jammin walked back to the cave entrance with the gun and aimed. Irons stepped back, not wanting to get caught in the blast if Hannah’s reconfiguring didn’t work.
The Nordic sighted down on a rock just a few yards away. He took a deep breath, suddenly unsure of his decision to be a guinea pig weapons tester. His finger lightly touched the trigger then yanked it backward.
A whole chunk of the rock broke off from the rest after the bullet struck it. Jammin smiled, glad to have a firearm back in his possession.
“Good,” Irons said. “How long till you can get those others working?”
“Now I know what to do, it should only take a few minutes, Captain,” Hannah said.
“Time we certainly have little left of if any Ka’traxis heard that,” Haddron said.
“You must stop them from completion of the station,” the Elder said. He turned to the Night Hunter and spoke in their native language. The Night Hunter looked to the back of the cave and waved for someone to join him.
Irons watched as another slave, this one healthier looking than the others, approached with a medium sized crate. A brown piece of cloth rested over the top of it.
The Night Hunter pulled the cloth off and reached inside the crate. Durham narrowed his eyes at the site of a device made up of three metallic cylinders. Each end of the cylinders had metal rods protruding from them. The rods curved around to an attached square panel.
“That looks a lot like dynamite,” Durham said as he turned to Irons.
“That’s cuz it is,” Irons said. “At least equal to it.”
The Night Hunter held up the device. “This destroy whole station.”
“Whole station?” Haddron asked. “You mean the whole planet?”
“Half of our planet is dead,” the Elder claimed. “We have been taken from our own solar system. Left in the dark of a star that could offer no life to us. So many of our people are already gone from life. Many already make the final walk.”
“Only one terraformer,” the Night Hunter added. “When gone, other life safe.”
“You speak of sacrifice,” Haddron shook his head. “There must be another way.”
“What brings peace, brings life. The King seeks to rule over all. He cannot succeed in this.”
Another alarm, much closer, sounded off in the woods. Irons donned the full armor.
“Hannah?” he asked.
“Almost got the last one…There.” The Specialist tossed a gun to Haddron then one to Irons.
Durham took his and aimed at a small root growing out of the cave wall. “Now we’ll see how they like their own guns on them.”
“If we can avoid a fight, we need to,” Irons said.
“How far are they?” Haddron asked.
Irons used the HUD to find any signs of movement. “I don’t see anything, yet.”
“You take,” the Night Hunter presented the explosive device to Haddron.
“Where?”
“The Terraformer is in the middle of our eastern hemisphere,” the Elder explained. “It is a large machine. Difficult to m
iss with so many Ka’traxis Brood surrounding it.”
Haddron glanced at Irons.
Irons shrugged. “I don’t like it either. If we can find another way, we will but right now, we’re easy pickings for any Catters come our way.”
The Nordic secured the bomb in an inside coat pocket.
“What about the rest of them?” Hannah gestured toward the alien slaves. “We can’t let them get captured again. Or worse.”
“They come with us,” Irons said.
“We can’t move that fast in a group that size,” Jammin argued.
“We ain’t leavin’em.”
“Jammin is correct. They will only slow us down,” Haddron reiterated.
“We leave them here, the Catter’s will rip’em apart.” Irons leaned into Haddron’s face. “You already got one planet messed up. You want another one to notch in your gun?”
Haddron stared defiantly at the helmet covering Irons’s face. Both men fumed, adding tension to an already tense situation.
The Night Hunter’s hand parted both men. “Save for out there.” He pointed toward the dark trees.
“Contact front!” Durham shouted, running to the cave mouth. He dropped to one knee and fired at a wormhole opening. The portal closed as soon as his shot went through.
“More coming in!” Jammin leaned against the wall and fired at three Catters rushing toward the cave.
Irons dropped two more. “I got readings of more coming through the trees.”
Haddron and the Night Hunter raced out of the cave. The Nordic fired several rounds into the dark. Irons’s HUD showed readings of negative life signs from Haddron’s targets while the Night Hunter vanished from his readings. But two more life signs dropped out. That was five more down and still more were on the way.
“Form a line!” Irons ordered. “I want two high and two low. If it’s got fur and moves, drop it.”
Hannah took a knee to the right of the Captain while Durham did the same on the left. Jammin stayed in his spot, taking the second high position.
Durham turned to the Elder. “Keep your heads down!”
The HUD constantly flickered orange outlines of oncoming enemies. Irons moved the gun to line up with each outline. He fired twice for every Catter he aimed at, hitting each before he had a true visual. It reminded him of the days when the Cyber Eye worked, before he covered it with the patch. After a while the data flow got distracting. Now he was glad for it. If it had been just he and his crew, it wouldn’t matter so much. But this was now a protective detail mission and they needed every edge they could get.
“What about that homing spread shot thing, Boss?” Durham fired a round.
“Not enough big cats.” Irons held his finger on the trigger, mowing down a larger wave rushing toward the cave.
“Not enough?” Durham muttered.
“You always talk this much in a fight?” Jammin asked.
“You should hear me when I’m not fighting.”
“Both of you shut it. Haddron and Night Hunter are getting swarmed out there.” Irons crouched next to Durham. “Can you handle it here?”
“Aye, Captain,” Durham said, putting one between the eyes of a Catter sneaking up from Jammin’s side of the cave.
The Nordic looked down, shocked by the quick save. He nodded in gratitude and continued to fire at the oncoming enemies.
“Good soldier.” Irons activated the jet boots and raced forward.
* * *
Captain Irons flew into the dark of the woods, firing into wormholes as they opened, ending the life of the Catter on the other side before it could even step through. The suit kept track of Haddron, reading off the distance as he closed in on the Nordic. Haddron and the Night Hunter had put a large amount of distance away from the cave. Irons didn’t like leaving his people alone regardless of how well they could handle themselves. But with so many more enemy warriors converging on the area, he thought it best to head them off where he could.
Finally, Haddron came within sight. The HUD scanned multiple wounds on the Nordic. Nothing life threatening but enough to slow his movements. Even so, his speed was hard to believe.
The Night Hunter fared better only because of the suit he wore, blending him in with the dark. Irons watched as Catters fell, one by one, under the hand of their unseen assailant.
The Captain dropped next to Haddron and positioned the two of them back to back. The Catter gun lay at the Nordic’s feet. Irons handed his off and activated the arm gun. Both of them fired off into their enemies, lighting up the dark woods with random muzzle flashes. The two traded places when it was to their tactical advantage while the Night Hunter stayed along the perimeter of approaching Catters, taking out those missed by the gunfire and ending those who had only been wounded.
Irons and Haddron had never fought side by side during the original Ka’traxis Brood War. Their reputations were known to one another only through battle reports and the stories they’d heard. Yet they worked together like a well-trained unit of two. Neither needed to call out anything to the other as each, instinctively, knew what to do.
It was a bloody battle despite the fact that Irons and company were winning. His only hope was that the bulk of the enemy numbers were in this spot and not back at the cave.
When the light from muzzle bursts finally stopped and the strobe affect had ceased, rendering the woods dark again, all three surveyed the nearby damage. Only Irons could see just how many were dead. During all of the chaos, no one had noticed just how close the Catters got. Five of them lay mere feet from Haddron. They’d even fallen on top of each other to get to their prey.
“They are ceaseless,” Haddron said.
“Yeah. We gotta check on the others. Can you run?”
The quick stomping of feet and the rustle of trees in the distance told them their quick ally had already left them.
“Not as swiftly as that. Not now.“ Haddron felt down his leg and pulled his hand up with something wet. “I do not know when this happened.”
“Don’t matter, now.” Irons placed one hand on the Nordic’s shoulder and reached down to his own leg. The armor gave way to the teleporter and Irons pressed the lens, lighting up the woods in one quick flash.
The area in front of the cave lit up and Irons noticed Hannah standing up still pulling the trigger of what he concluded was a long empty gun. The fear in her eyes was something that had been coming for a long time. He looked down at the amount of fallen enemy along the ground. It was close to what they had faced in the woods.
Durham held one of the slaves in his arms. It was fatally wounded. Whatever the Private was saying, it was inaudible. Irons liked to think it was words of reassurance and comfort while the alien passed.
Jammin grimaced as he slid down the rocky wall. He kicked his useless gun aside while the Night Hunter eased the Elder to lay on the ground, surrounded by others who had been killed in the attack. Irons and Haddron looked at each other.
“They come with us.” Irons deactivated the suit and walked to Hannah. He gently grabbed the gun and pushed it down till Hannah’s eyes finally burst into tears and she threw herself into his arms, sobbing.
This had to be counted as some kind of victory though it didn’t feel like much of one. Irons, still holding Hannah, looked at the Night Hunter.
“We got’em. They’re gone,” the Captain said.
“They will return. “The Elder’s voice was weak.
Irons finally noticed the tear across his stomach. There were a couple of dead Catters laying well inside the cave. He returned his gaze to the Elder.
“Then we’ll get them, too.”
“Your promise?” the Night Hunter asked.
“That is my promise.” Irons gently pushed Hannah aside. “We’re ending this with Erra.”
Durham gently lowered the pink alien to the ground. He closed its purple, lifeless eyes and wiped his tears with his sleeve. “These people didn’t deserve a hard life only to be killed like this. They weren’t fig
hters.”
“Neither are my people,” Haddron said. “Yet I know only a fraction of the pain these unfortunate’s feel.” Haddron looked at Irons. “You have my apologies for the plight I put your people through, Captain Irons. My apologies and my renewed allegiance. To you and to Earth Fleet.”
Jammin struggled to his feet. “Erra won’t suffer this fate.”
“You will go with them,” the Elder said to the Night Hunter. “I leave for the final walk.” He exhaled one last time before laying back, lifeless.
The Night Hunter said something in his native language to the Elder before closing his now lifeless eyes. The shadow figure stood and turned to Irons. “They final walk, too?” He gestured to the dead Catters.
Durham stood. “This only ends with one more death.” He turned to Irons, his eyes filled with more rage than the Captain had ever seen. Regardless of the outcome, this battle had changed all of them. “We finish what they started years ago. We kill the King.”
Twenty-One
Uninvited Guests
Lou Trevern’s fist smashed into the nose of a Catter much larger than himself. The alien reared back, hands clutching its broken face while two more rushed past it. Those two were struck by Lindsay and Syracuse. Both Earth Fleet soldiers jabbed the attackers in the throats. The Catters dropped to their knees, unable to breath. Lindsay smashed her knee into the face of one of them, breaking its nose just as Lou had done. Syracuse did the same with his boot. Considering the greater force against them, the crew of the Slagschip Lucky Liberty wasn’t doing too bad.
The narrow environment of the corridor did little for the Ka’traxis Brood in terms of mobility. And each of their fallen brethren made the space even smaller, limiting their striking power.
Lindsay leapt up to grab a pipe hanging from the ceiling and wrapped both legs around a Catter’s neck. There was little time for the enemy to realize what was happening before she made one quick movement, snapping the alien’s neck, adding it to the number of fallen invaders on the floor.
“Clear?” Syracuse asked.
ROYAL LINE (War In The Void Book 3) Page 14
