Splunk sent back. For 170 hours they would have no contact with their agents within the retreating fleet. She tried to appear confident, despite her inner feelings of failure. Jim was there, only a few kilometers away. She could point to him, if she’d wanted to. They all knew where their operators were, a side effect of the joining. It wasn’t like the texts said it would be. She’d tried to explain it to Sly, but he didn’t believe her. Well, now he did.
“Command. Echo-5, report,” said a voice from one of the Besquith radios.
Splunk pointed, and Peanut snapped it up. He had a device already set, and he clipped it to the radio. A second later, another Besquith spoke. “Echo-5 to command, system is almost up.”
“What is taking so long, Kreth?”
Peanut cocked his head and tapped on a tiny screen with his claws. The machine answered, “My team are idiots.”
Laughter came in reply. “That they are. Hurry up, command out.”
From across the ruined rooftop, Splunk could see Dante nodding without looking over. He approved of efficiency almost as much as he approved of slaughter.
Peanut sat the voice duplication device aside. It was the reason Splunk had been hanging from the antenna while the Besquith worked and gave away intel—she’d been recording their voices. “Here we go,” Peanut said, and Splunk jumped down next to him. She moved close—closer than she had to—and surreptitiously put a hand on his shoulder. He glanced at her, giving a tiny smile so nobody else would notice.
You are such a fool, she scolded herself.
Peanut reconfigured the monitor’s Tri-V and a map of the vicinity came up. In a second, a sea of tiny blue pinpoints decorated it. “These are all the units they had deployed searching for us.”
“Hmf,” she said as she examined the pattern. Efficient, but predictable. All the search teams were using the same type of equipment too. All the better. “Modify their gear to give a false positive in five minutes,” she said and pointed. “Have us going that way, toward where our operators are being held.”
“We’re not going there?” Peanut asked. He looked surprised and disappointed. “I have listened to Darrel thinking about it. There are almost no guards. We can be in and out—”
“That’s what Peepo wants us to think,” Dante said from a few meters away. “Use your head for a change, child. Splunk might be a fool for believing in these Humans, but she’s a solid commander.”
“So, you agree with Sly putting her in command?” Sandy asked, her voice obviously surprised.
“I didn’t say that,” he replied, but didn’t add anything to it.
Splunk knew he had it out for her. She’d known it ever since he turned up on Karma and tried to make her come back to Kash-Ka. When she’d told him about the Canavar, he’d been as stunned as anyone else. She’d known something was happening when the Human boy showed up suddenly that night. Known it in the depths of her being. It was time for them to come out of hiding.
“We’re still alive, aren’t we?” Peanut snapped at Dante.
“Yeah, we are,” Dante replied. “It’s the fact she thinks some sort of damned destiny is guiding her that scares the piss out of me.”
“Seldia sees it too,” Splunk reminded him.
“Seldia is insane, just like all K’apo.”
Splunk couldn’t argue. They were a necessary part of Dusman society, though. More so after The Disaster than ever before.
“Speaking of Seldia, when are we going to do it?”
“Better be now,” Splunk said, looking at the Tri-V. “We’re going to be moving too fast the next couple days to take that kind of chance. “Everyone double check for unwanted visitors.” Nobody saw anything, then they joined her.
Splunk stood in the center and the other five Dusman reached out, touching each other and making a circle. Then each put a hand on her head. Splunk sighed, reached within herself, and stretched.
came the reply from light years away.
The connection cut, and Splunk gasped from the suddenness of it. She’d been expecting something. What, anger? Accusations? But there was none of it.
“He seemed calm,” Peanut said.
“A Koof always seems calm,” Dante said and snorted. “They seldom understand what’s really going on.”
“Sly will handle his end of it,” Splunk said, changing the subject. “Our job is to not get caught, and to see if we can get our operators out.”
“We should cause as much carnage as possible in the meantime,” Dante suggested.
“I like the sound of that,” Shadow said.
Splunk found herself agreeing. Aura would have approved of some payback as well. Suddenly she felt Jim was highly agitated. Something had happened; either they were interrogating him, or he’d found some piece of information which had him highly upset. She tried to send a calming thought to him.
Splunk knew it was unlikely he would get the thought. Humans were remarkably weak when it came to receiving thoughts. Maybe it was part of what made them so different from the Lumar? The others had cleaned up any evidence of their presence, except the five dead Besquith, of course. It was time to go.
* * * * *
The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of the Salvage Title Trilogy:
Salvage Title
___________________
Kevin Steverson
Now Available from Theogony Books
eBook, Paperback, and Audio
Excerpt from “Salvage Title:”
A steady beeping brought Harmon back to the present. Clip’s program had succeeded in unlocking the container. “Right on!” Clip exclaimed. He was always using expressions hundreds or more years out of style. “Let’s see what we have; I hope this one isn’t empty, too.” Last month they’d come across a smaller vault, but it had been empty.
Harmon stepped up and wedged his hands into the small opening the door had made when it disengaged the locks. There wasn’t enough power in the small cells Clip used to open it any further. He put his weight into it, and the door opened enough for them to get inside. Before they went in, Harmon placed a piece of pipe in the doorway so it couldn’t close and lock on them, baking them alive before anyone realized they were missing.
Daylight shone in through the doorway, and they both froze in place; the weapons vault was full. In it were two racks of rifles, stacked on top of each other. One held twenty magnetic kinetic rifles, and the other held some type of laser rifle. There was a rack of pistols of various types. There were three cases of flechette grenades and one of thermite. There were cases of ammunition and power clips for the rifles and pistols, and all the weapons looked to be in good shape, even if they were of a strange design and clearly not made in this system. Harmon couldn’t tell what system they had been made in, but he could tell what they were.
There were three upright containers on one side and three more against the back wall that looked like lockers. Five of the containers were not locked, so Clip opened them. The first three each held two sets of
light battle armor that looked like it was designed for a humanoid race with four arms. The helmets looked like the ones Harmon had worn at the academy, but they were a little long in the face. The next container held a heavy battle suit—one that could be sealed against vacuum. It was also designed for a being with four arms. All the armor showed signs of wear, with scuffed helmets. The fifth container held shelves with three sizes of power cells on them. The largest power cells—four of them—were big enough to run a mech.
Harmon tried to force the handle open on the last container, thinking it may have gotten stuck over time, but it was locked and all he did was hurt his hand. The vault seemed like it had been closed for years.
Clip laughed and said, “That won’t work. It’s not age or metal fatigue keeping the door closed. Look at this stuff. It may be old, but it has been sealed in for years. It’s all in great shape.”
“Well, work some of your tech magic then, ‘Puter Boy,” Harmon said, shaking out his hand.
Clip pulled out a small laser pen and went to work on the container. It took another ten minutes, but finally he was through to the locking mechanism. It didn’t take long after that to get it open.
Inside, there were two items—an eight-inch cube on a shelf that looked like a hard drive or a computer and the large power cell it was connected to. Harmon reached for it, but Clip grabbed his arm.
“Don’t! Let me check it before you move it. It’s hooked up to that power cell for a reason. I want to know why.”
Harmon shrugged. “Okay, but I don’t see any lights; it has probably been dead for years.”
Clip took a sensor reader out of his kit, one of the many tools he had improved. He checked the cell and the device. There was a faint amount of power running to it that barely registered on his screen. There were several ports on the back along with the slot where the power cell was hooked in. He checked to make sure the connections were tight, he then carried the two devices to the hovercraft.
Clip then called Rinto’s personal comm from the communicator in the hovercraft. When Rinto answered, Clip looked at Harmon and winked. “Hey boss, we found some stuff worth a hovercraft full of credit…probably two. Can we have it?” he asked.
* * * * *
Get “Salvage Title” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H8Q3HBV.
Find out more about Kevin Steverson and “Salvage Title” at: https://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/kevin-steverson/.
* * * * *
The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of the Earth Song Cycle:
Overture
___________________
Mark Wandrey
Available Now from Theogony Books
eBook, Paperback, and Audio
Excerpt from Overture:
Prologue
May 21st
Dawn was still an hour away as Mindy Channely opened the roof access and stared in surprise at the crowd already assembled there. “Authorized Personnel Only” was printed in bold red letters on the door through which she and her husband, Jake, slipped onto the wide roof.
A few people standing nearby took notice of their arrival. Most had no reaction, a few nodded, and a couple waved tentatively. Mindy looked over the skyline of Portland and instinctively oriented herself before glancing to the east. The sky had an unnatural glow that had been growing steadily for hours, and as they watched, scintillating streamers of blue, white, and green radiated over the mountains like a strange, concentrated aurora borealis.
“You almost missed it,” one man said. She let the door close, but saw someone had left a brick to keep it from closing completely. Mindy turned and saw the man who had spoken wore a security guard uniform. The easy access to the building made more sense.
“Ain’t no one missin’ this!” a drunk man slurred.
“We figured most people fled to the hills over the past week,” Jake replied.
“I guess we were wrong,” Mindy said.
“Might as well enjoy the show,” the guard said and offered them a huge, hand-rolled cigarette that didn’t smell like tobacco. She waved it off, and the two men shrugged before taking a puff.
“Here it comes!” someone yelled. Mindy looked to the east. There was a bright light coming over the Cascade Mountains, so intense it was like looking at a welder’s torch. Asteroid LM-245 hit the atmosphere at over 300 miles per second. It seemed to move faster and faster, from east to west, and the people lifted their hands to shield their eyes from the blinding light. It looked like a blazing comet or a science fiction laser blast.
“Maybe it will just pass over,” someone said in a voice full of hope.
Mindy shook her head. She’d studied the asteroid’s track many times.
In a matter of a few seconds, it shot by and fell toward the western horizon, disappearing below the mountains between Portland and the ocean. Out of view of the city, it slammed into the ocean.
The impact was unimaginable. The air around the hypersonic projectile turned to superheated plasma, creating a shockwave that generated 10 times the energy of the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated as it hit the ocean’s surface.
The kinetic energy was more than 1,000 megatons; however, the object didn’t slow as it flashed through a half mile of ocean and into the sea bed, then into the mantel, and beyond.
On the surface, the blast effect appeared as a thermal flash brighter than the sun. Everyone on the rooftop watched with wide-eyed terror as the Tualatin Mountains between Portland and the Pacific Ocean were outlined in blinding light. As the light began to dissipate, the outline of the mountains blurred as a dense bank of smoke climbed from the western range.
The flash had incinerated everything on the other side.
The physical blast, travelling much faster than any normal atmospheric shockwave, hit the mountains and tore them from the bedrock, adding them to the rolling wave of destruction traveling east at several thousand miles per hour. The people on the rooftops of Portland only had two seconds before the entire city was wiped away.
Ten seconds later, the asteroid reached the core of the planet, and another dozen seconds after that, the Earth’s fate was sealed.
* * * * *
Get “Overture” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077YMLRHM.
Find out more about Mark Wandrey and Earth Song: Overture at:
https://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/mark-wandrey/
# # # # #
Do No Harm Page 36
