He looks away quickly, avoiding my gaze entirely.
I find the head of the slave crew. He’s the only human not covered head to toe in grease.
“I need your fastest ship,” I say.
“Sir? Ah, you are Kain?”
“Yes,” I say. “Son of Grius. Brother of the High Commander.”
Let him chew on that. A slave won’t dare double check an order coming from someone like me.
“The Fae’s Wake is the fastest ship,” he says, stuttering. “But–but–it’s small.”
“Can it hold six?” I ask.
“Yes, K-k-k-Kain!” he stutters.
“Then it’s big enough. Is it ready to fly?”
“Y-y-y-yyess!”
“Good,” I say. “I’m taking it.”
He nods furiously. “I’ll take you to her!”
He lowers the ramp down and says, “It’s already fueled up. But I need to link it up to the–”
“No,” I say. “Don’t link it to anything. This is a secret mission, and if Harmony catches me, she could upload herself back up through the–”
“As you w-w-wish, sir! It’s ready to go.”
“Good,” I grunt. “Now get back to work.”
It’s too bad that I can’t save all of the slaves. I considered it, but it simply wouldn't be possible. If Darkstar is weakened and falls, we may be able to liberate all the slaves later, but there are simply too many of them for one undercover peacekeeper to free.
I power up the ship and check my timer. Five minutes.
I move the ship along its landing gear toward the center of the airlock, and I pass through without incident. By the time I’m through the airlock, the timer is down to one minute.
17 Kara
“It’s the last wagon back,” Eli says.
“So get on it,” I hiss. “I’m staying here.”
“Kara,” Eli says. “If Kain didn’t succeed, you’ll run out of oxygen out here. No one is going to come looking for you.”
I think of being forced into Adus’s harem. “I’d rather die out here than go back. And Kain promised me that we would see each other again.
“You can’t promise stuff like that,” Andreas says. “He did his best, I’m sure...but it’s been a long time.”
“I’m staying, too,” Felicia says.
“Maybe we can wait another five minutes,” Thorsten says.
“The wagon is beeping and shit!” Eli shouts. “You ever heard it beep like this? If Kain got caught and we’re messing up the quotas with his girlfriend, we’re gonna’ get caught! Who took all the fertilizer? Do you think–”
“Shit,” Thorsten says. “Don’t blame me–”
I see a flash of orange erupt from the base. “Look!”
They all turn to look toward the base, and the orange burst grows like a blooming flower. A beautiful explosion, representing our freedom.
“You still want to go back?” I ask.
“Hell no!” Eli says. “I knew Kain would pull through.”
I roll my eyes.
Floodlights start to turn on all around the base, and I see a number of ships scrambling up into the air. I don’t know which one belongs to Kain, but I hadn’t expected so many ships to react to the explosion.
“That’s a lot of activity,” Eli mutters. “What are they gonna’ do when Kain flies away from the other ships?”
As if in answer, one of the ships starts to fly toward us, and Kain’s voice cuts onto our comms link.
“You’re all going to have to trust me,” he says. “Stand shoulder to shoulder and put your hands up in the air.”
“You’re going to land and pick us up,” Andreas says. “Right?”
“Hands up. Shoulder to shoulder,” Kain repeats.
I see a thick purple plasma beam blast out from the base toward Kain’s ship, but he rolls and dodges it. The beam flashes above our heads, casting purple light onto my sister and all the other miners.
“Come on, guys, line up!”
Felicia and I line up and put our hands up, and Andreas falls in line with us.
“I dunno’,” Eli says, hesitantly.
Andreas grabs him and forces him to join us in line. Thorsten shrugs and lines up, as well.
Kain dodges another beam, and slowly starts to descend. He’s flying only a few dozen meters above the ground. His ship looks like a missile headed straight for us.
“Why isn’t he slowing down?” Eli shouts, his voice full of panic. “It looks like he’s going to fucking hit us!”
It does look like that. His ship appears larger and larger as it races toward us.
“You want us to just jump and grab the landing gear, Kain?” I ask.
“Keep your arms up,” he says.
And just as it looks like his ship is going to ram into us, he pulls straight up, and I see teal tendrils blasting out from the ship.
Two tendrils grab hold of my hands, and dozens more wrap around all of us to pull us together. They squeeze us into a bundle, and suddenly we’re tugged into the air.
“Fuck!” Eli whines. “Ahhh!’
The tendrils pull us in toward the ship, and I see the ramp dropping in mid-flight. Another purple beam blasts past us, missing the ship by only a few meters.
As the beam fades, we’re pulled hard into the ship, and the ramp snaps shut behind us.
The tendrils fling us onto the familiar feeling of an acceleration couch, and the couch squeezes me tightly as my stomach churns. I see Kain in front of us, but he’s 100 percent focused on piloting the ship.
I hear a big blast and feel the ship vibrating wildly, and the g-force rises so high that the edges of my vision start to blur.
“Everyone on board?” Kain asks.
“Yes, you crazy fucking...fucker!” Thorsten shouts, his voice vibrating and oscillating wildly.
“You got us!” I shout.
“I told you,” Kain says. He looks back and smirks at me. “Kara, you need to drive until we’re out of range of the plasma batteries.”
He hits a button, and my acceleration couch slides forward, up to the main controls, trading places with his.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Outside. I am our shield.”
His suit forms a helmet that covers his face, and his couch slides into the airlock. The airlock shuts behind him.
“What do I do?” I ask. “I’ve never piloted a ship like this before.”
“I’ve already locked in the course,” he says. “You shouldn’t need to do much...just monitor the alerts and make sure nothing goes horrendously wrong.”
I look down at the console, and it’s hard to see everything as my peripheral vision is covered by blackness. I have to physically turn my head just to see the sides of the console, and this movement hurts my neck. I notice that we’re accelerating at 3g’s. It’s near the limit of what humans can handle.
“Why are we going so fucking fast?” I ask.
“This is the fastest ship on Darkstar,” Kain says. “If you steal the fastest ship, then you’ve gotta’ go fast.”
I grit my teeth and try to keep an eye on all of the indicators.
I see a section of controls for the camera system, and I toggle through them. Each button activates a screen showing an outer section of the ship. Eventually I find one that shows Kain.
His biosuit looks like it’s melted itself onto the back of the ship. His legs are one big mass–like a long robe–and his arms have formed a huge shield, which he’s pointing back toward Darkstar. I can only see Darkstar now as a big lack of light. There are bright stars everywhere, save for that spherical shape in the center.
A huge beam of plasma flies out from the darkness, and it slams straight into Kain’s shield. He presses the shield forward and angles it to meet the beam head-on. The beam splashes hot plasma out in all directions along his shield, and some even splashes against the hull of our ship.
“How long can you keep that up?” I ask.
“As
long as I have to!” he grunts.
I find the targeting system on the ship, and I lock into Darkstar. “It says we’re .05 AU from Darkstar. What is the range of the plasma batteries?”
“.2 AU,” Kain says.
The beam cuts off, and I see him panting. Through his visor, sweat is dripping down his face.
“At least the ship is holding together at this speed,” Kain says.
And almost before he can finish his sentence, a red light flashes on and an alarm sounds.
“Shit,” Kain says. “Did I jinx it?”
I look down at the console. There’s a flashing alert. “It says the heat dispersion system is overloaded,” I say.
“Hmmm,” Felicia says. “That’s a familiar problem.”
“No,” I say. “Ours was broken, this one is overloaded.”
“It must be the plasma beams,” Kain says. “My suit is getting hot, and it’s heating up the ship. It can’t offload the heat fast enough.”
“It does feel hot in here,” Andreas says. “Eli, why don’t you jump off the ship and sacrifice yourself. Your fat ass must be generating the most heat.”
“One human’s heat is a drop in the bucket,” I say. “It won’t work.”
“Well,” Eli says. “Fuck you all. I wasn’t going to sacrifice myself anyhow.”
“Let’s try this,” I say. I disable the autopilot and grab hold of the control stick.
“Kara...did you just take manual control? If you turn too hard, the ship could tear itself apart.”
“Better than overheating and exploding,” I say. “The moment you see purple, tell me,” I say.
“Got it,” Kain says.
I hold the ship as steady as I can, and I cut the acceleration down to 2.8g’s.
“Lock tight into your acceleration couches,” I shout back to everyone. “And maybe take off your helmets...unless you want to vomit inside them. And Kain, make sure your suit is–uh–melted securely onto the hull.”
“Oh, God!” Thorsten says. “I have such a fragile stomach, please be gentl–”
“Now!” Kain shouts.
I pull on the stick, and I nearly black out from the strength of the g-force. But the plasma beam misses us.
I hear someone throwing up behind me.
“It’s re-adjusting. Dodge again!”
I jerk the stick again, and this time I nearly vomit.
“It grazed my shield for a moment,” Kain says, “but it shut off. The farther away we get, the harder it will be for them to aim properly.”
I try to keep my gruel in my stomach. I straighten the ship back out onto the pre-set trajectory toward Titan.
We have to dodge three more times, and Thorsten vomits twice more. The plasma battery stops firing, and Kain comes back inside.
“Please take over,” I say, voice heavy. “I need to go sleep forever.”
He kisses me and presses his forehead against mine. “You did really, really well, Kara.”
I smile and rest my head on his shoulder. “Thank God it’s all over.”
“Not yet,” Kain says.
18 Kain
“You’ll all want to sleep–need to sleep. We’re going up to 5g’s.”
“That’s too fast!” Eli says frantically.
“I’m going to have the couches wrap totally around you, and I’ll use my biosuit to dampen some of the inertia on you.”
“When are we going to turn around and start slowing down?” Felicia asks. “It seems like we’re burning all of our fuel to just reach max speed.”
“Correct,” I say. “I stole antimatter from Darkstar, and we’re using it to accelerate. We’re using all of it, even what’s in my biosuit. We won’t be turning around to slow down.”
“I’m not a physics expert,” Kara says, “but don’t we need to slow down if we’re going to land on Titan?”
“This is the riskiest part of my plan,” I say. “You probably don’t even want to know the details. Trusting me worked before, so trust me again now.”
I hit the button, and the couches completely close around all five humans. I shoot out tendrils and encircle all of the couches with biomatter to dampen the inertia.
I check the light signatures and see that a fleet of ships is indeed on our tail. It’s only accelerating at 2g’s, however–and toward Mars, not toward Titan.
Adus’s plan included feigning an attack on Mars...but what good is that when I can simply tell them it’s a fake attack? That the real attack will come on Titan?
I open the comms link to Titan and start my broadcast. We’re still far enough away from Titan that they won’t get my message for a few hours. I don’t have time to do any back and forth with them, so I have to make the initial message work.
“This is Peacekeeper Kain,” I say. “Badge number 603. This message is for immediate attention of Cygnus. I’m accelerating toward Titan at 5g’s, and I have no reaction mass available to slow down. The ships heading toward Mars are a feint, Darkstar is sending a sizeable fleet full of Seraphim soldiers to raid Titan….”
I finish the message quickly and hit ‘send.’
I doze in and out of sleep while I wait for a response. After a few hours, the message pops up. It’s Cygnus himself.
“Kain,” Cygnus says. “My nephew told me about you and your mission. I’m glad it was successful. We are scrambling our limited forces and preparing for battle on Titan. Mars doesn’t believe it’s a feint though, and not only are they not sending us any backup, they’re pulling all their fleet away from Jupiter and sending it back toward Mars. I believe you, for what it’s worth–my nephew and brother vouched for you–but Mars clearly doesn’t. We’ll have to fight with what we have here. It’s not a lot”
Cygnus twitches his ears and pauses....
“As for your braking issue, we’ll need to hit you with everything our big laser has got in just under 20 hours, so hold tight until then. Next time you get a message from me, deploy your light sail.”
If I were on Mars, I wouldn’t believe me either. I can’t blame them, but damn those bastards for falling for Adus’s plan. I collapse into my acceleration couch. I let it encircle me as it has encircled all the humans, and I sleep until I hear back from Cygnus.
The message beeps, and the couch spits me back out.
“Deploy your sail,” Cygnus says. “We are firing the laser in five minutes, so the beam is already on its way to you. We’ll see you soon on Titan.”
I hit the button, and the huge lightsail spreads out. It’s only a few millimeters thin, but it is over 100 times wider than the ship itself.
I wait, and soon the console confirms that the laser is hitting us.
The energy from the laser disperses across the sail, and it begins slowing us down. All the extra travel time at 5g’s gave us a huge lead on the Seraphim dropships. We were able to use all of our fuel to accelerate as fast as possible, and we didn’t have to use any of it to slow down.
The dropships, on the other hand, will need to turn around halfway to Titan, and they will need to save half of their fuel to slow down.
They’ll likely need to slow down even earlier, as they will want to stop outside of Titan’s defense grid before going stealth.
I wait until we are down to 1.5 g’s, and then I wake up all the humans.
I wait until we are down to 1.5 g’s, and I wake up all the humans.
The couches open up, and everyone stands up and rubs the sleep out of their eyes. They stretch and yawn.
“God,” Kara says, “I never thought Darkstar gravity would feel this good.”
“You’re the strongest woman in the solar system now,” Andreas says.
Felicia scoffs. “What about me?”
“I hope you all slept well,” I say. “Now, I have good news, and bad new--”
Kara and Felicia groan.
“Hey, now!” Eli says. “Don’t be so catty. He said he has good news too.”
“Kain does that,” Kara says. “He thinks humans can’t ha
ndle ‘harsh truths,’ so he always makes up some ‘good news’ that is usually just a total given--”
“Hm,” I say, interrupting her. “I think humans are spoiled. You grow up in the sun’s light, and you take everything for granted.”
“What’s the good news, Kain,” Felicia asks, voice tired.
“Well,” I say, “To put some things into perspective. There was a real chance I was going to wake you all up and let you know that we had no way of stopping. That we’d just rocket out of the solar system at this speed, and eventually we’d die when we ran out of water, food, or oxygen--”
“Kain!” Kara snaps.
“The good news,” I say, “And something you shouldn't take for granted, is that we will not die in this way…”
I watch the men’s faces as I deliver the great news, and I see them all begin to deflate noticeably. They are truly spoiled.
“How are we gonna die then?” Thorsten asks. “I knew I should have just stayed on Darkstar!”
“The bad news is that the Martians have fallen for my brother’s feint attack. They have pulled the bulk of their forces back to defend Mars, and they have left a small skeleton crew to defend Titan. Cygnus has told me he has only around six Marauders capable of fighting, and a dozen or so humans.”
“How many dudes are they sending to attack?” Andreas asks. “Twenty?”
“Around 2,000 of the Seraphim that I personally trained to be vicious killers,” I say. “I remind you this is part of the bad news.”
Kara grabs my hand and hisses into my ear. “You are awful at this, stop talking!”
“Wait,” I whisper back to her. “The very good news is still coming.”
She looks up at me skeptically.
“It’s really good,” I say. “One last chance.”
“Fine,” She says, crossing her arms.
“These 2,000 Seraphim will be spread across ten dropships,” I say. “Around 200 for each dropship.”
“Ten dropships…” Thorsten whispers. “Nine bombs…”
“Yes,” I say. “Nine of those ships, 1800 Seraphim, are wired to blow.”
The miners all high five each other, but Felicia cuts in, “That’s still 200 Seraphim against Cygnus’s skeleton crew.”
Marauder Kain: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars Book 5) Page 12
