Extinction Wars: 02 - Planet Strike

by Vaughn Heppner

  Seconds later, the fingers relaxed their grip as the construct convulsed. I hadn’t been able to burn through the chest chassis to the brain. Just like on a tank, though, the armor had been less thick above.

  My ribs ached and the flesh felt pulped where it had held me. I checked my side where I’d been shot. My fingers came away bloody, but it could have been worse.

  I jumped to the android’s weapon. I’d never seen the design before: black, with a flat top. Breaking the gun open—it was the barrel that had melted—I discovered it had a gas cartridge. Yeah, I remembered hearing it hiss. The gas propelled a spring, ejecting a sliver. The weapon lacked electric impulses of any kind. Thus, the device in the toolbox hadn’t shorted it. Tricky android.

  I stuck the defective gun in my belt for further study later and remembered I’d left my communicator in my room. I’d wanted to be alone to think. Given what had just happened, that had been a stupid idea.

  I swore, and I leaped for the hatch down the corridor. The android had originated from somewhere. The way I saw it, two possibilities existed. Either he had flown through space to the battlejumper, gaining entry from the outer hull, or there was a secret compartment in the vessel where he’d hidden for who knew how long. That would mean something had activated the android. At least that seemed like the most logical explanation. If he came from space, wouldn’t that imply an enemy force was in the solar system? But if he’d been a sleeper aboard ship, my questions were two: first, were there more like him aboard? Second, what had woken him?

  In some manner, the battlejumper was under attack. I swore again, opening the hatch. Was it already too late for us?

  Why couldn’t the damn aliens leave us alone? What had we ever done to them? One way or another, I was going to make them wish they’d never heard of me or of Earth.

  -2-

  For a time, I float traveled through empty curving corridors, straining to reach the others. I risked slamming against bulkheads when I made sharp turns because I sailed so fast.

  The battlejumper was huge, a true space ark never meant to enter a planet’s atmosphere or gravity field. It could hold tens of thousands of individuals and masses of equipment. Counting our engineers and techs, there were only a little over two hundred humans aboard. A pittance, really, less the number of curators it would have taken to keep the vessel a clean museum piece. To make matters worse, I had gone a long way into the uninhabited areas to ensure I could think alone, without interruption.

  In case you’re wondering about my big decision, it was this. We had three defective freighters. Nothing anyone did could get the grav-mechanisms working again on those three. That’s how the Jelk had landed them in the first place. Without the gravity nullifiers, the huge scows could have never endured the Earth’s Gs without breaking apart. If they remained broken, it meant none of the three freighters could lift off planet, and that stranded half a million humans.

  The battlejumper had three working assault boats and a few air-cars. When the warship had been in top condition, there had been one hundred assault boats launching from the shuttle bays at a time. With a measly three boats, it would take us weeks to transport that many people to the other freighters already in orbit. In my estimation, we didn’t have weeks. As I traveled through the haunted corridors, I wondered if we even had a few days left.

  Time was a huge problem. If I couldn’t transport the half a million souls to the freighters, did I stick around as the techs tried to fix the grav-plates? Or did I write off those half a million humans in order to take the rest to a safe place? Yeah, I realized our situation called for hardhearted, no nonsense thinking. What was the most logical answer? I wanted to bring humanity back from extinction. If I saved too few people, maybe we’d simply die off like old dinosaurs because we lacked enough genetic diversity.

  I’d racked my brain for an answer, arguing pros and cons both ways. Now the android assassin had showed up, ending the debate for the moment.

  I gulped, and my heart beat faster. Three dead… I squinted. They were engineers by their coveralls and toolkits: red ones with black handgrips. Their toolboxes opened into levels. The men, their kits and tools floated in the middle of the corridor.

  Using a rail, I slowed down until I reached the corpses. Blood globules drifted around them, while their faces had frozen in painful grimaces. A quick examination showed me tiny and multiple puncture wounds in their chests and necks. None wore communicators or smartphones. Androids must have taken them.

  I nodded to myself.

  I hadn’t seen any comm-equipment on the one I’d slain. That implied different androids had killed these three. It told me the battlejumper was definitely under assault.

  No, no, wait a minute, a colder part of myself said. My android could have easily killed these three and stashed the comm-equipment elsewhere. Yet if that was true—that he’d killed the engineers—had he broken apart his spring-firing gun after finishing them?

  Hmm. The truth was I still lacked enough data to make a concrete conclusion.

  As I wondered about my next move, I felt an aching sensation like a cold or flu. It felt as if the sickness was in my bones. I shivered, and I glanced at the damp spot on my coveralls. The sliver from the spring-gun had gone in just under my bottom left rib and out my back. Why should that make me ache? Had the splinter projectile contained a toxin?

  While rubbing the material of one of the dead men, I realized I had to ignore the ache for now. I had to warn the crew. There might be more androids posing as engineers, moving through the ship and slaughtering us one by one or three by three.

  I resumed traveling, listening for odd sounds. I didn’t want to run into another assassin just yet. I needed a weapon first.

  The interior battlejumper made plenty of its own noises, such as long creaks of shifting metal. It reminded me of a whale, this one a creature of the void. Pumps cycled air and they caused a constant thrum. Finally, recyclers occasionally hummed into life, always ending with a rattle like a smoker’s hack.

  I’d gotten used to the noises. Now they seemed alien again as I sought to hear something different. The flu-like pain became worse as I pulled myself along, and I shivered more often.

  Finally, I reached an emergency comm-panel some of our techs had installed. I expected to find it wrecked, but it looked good. I pressed a button, and loud static came out of the speaker. I tried it again and got the same result.

  My stomach twisted in concern. Was everything I’d fought for this past year going to be a waste of time? Had I gained freedom only to have it snatched away from me? Ever since the Lokhars—

  I forgot. You might not have heard about them. The Lokhars were the first aliens, the ones who dropped the thermonuclear warheads and sprayed the bio-terminator on Earth. They were like upright tigers, seven feet tall with thick chests, dangling arms and retractable claws in their fingertips. They were also militarists, the Spartans of space. They’d gotten wind of the Jelk idea of using humans as ground pounders. To end run the idea, to make sure they didn’t get our kind of competition, the Lokhars visited the Earth first. I hated the tigers. Their day was coming, believe you me.

  Back then, during the first alien visit, my dad Jack went up to greet their ship. He went in a shuttle. The Lokhars used a laser on the craft, killing Mad Jack Creed.

  What’s the point of my telling you this? Instead of fearing the aliens—Lokhars, Jelk, whoever—I wanted to bust their heads. I wanted to get even. So despite the fear of another alien attack, there was also anger and rage, the primitive desire for retribution of the worst kind.

  Thinking dark thoughts, I resumed my journey. The reward came five minutes later.

  I heard rapid-fire talk down the corridor, like computers with voices who only spoke that way when humans weren’t around to hear. I knew that androids sometimes communicated like that. Maybe just as bad, the voices headed my way.

  I retreated until I reached an empty compartment, opening its hatch and closing it behind me w
ith a minimum of sound. Floating near the top, I kept peering out the round glass window in the hatch. Finally, I saw three androids float past. They carried rifles and wore cyber-armor: mechanical skin, molded to fit them.

  The sight jarred me. That was combat weaponry, not just an assassin’s tool. Well, now I knew. The battlejumper was under a full-blown enemy stealth assault. I hadn’t heard any klaxons wailing due to hull breaches. That was telling.

  I had to use my wits. So what did I know? My android killer had given me greetings from Claath. That implied…what exactly? I expect it meant someone had sent a radio signal, or some kind of signal, activating the androids. Had they been in hidden storage areas as I’d first suspected? That made the most sense. But if someone had sent a signal, that would have to mean at least one alien vessel had reached our solar system, and that meant they knew where we’d taken the battlejumper.

  Yet if all that were true, why hadn’t I heard from anyone else yet? Why hadn’t a ship-wide alert gone out? Was I alone, the last human left on an empty vessel?

  I need my armor and a gun, a real one.

  Exiting the dark compartment, I floated stealthily through the corridors. I felt naked and defenseless, hating the sensation.

  The next ten minutes were among my worst. Not only did I feel rotten and weak, but I also had no idea what the situation was with the rest of my troopers. I couldn’t afford to lose a single soldier.

  Sweat dripped off my face as I finally entered my room. A groan escaped me. The chamber was a mess, with cushions, bed sheets and junk floating everywhere. Androids must have been here, and they had tossed it, looking for something. Did that mean they’d taken my armor and weapons?

  I jumped to the closet, hitting it harder than I wanted, rebounding and drifting away. For twenty seconds, I flailed uselessly. Eventually, I floated to a wall and shoved off. This time I grabbed the closet handle, anchoring myself. I opened the thing and knew a vast sense of relief as I spied the heat unit. The green light was on, indicating that it still worked. I drew out the unit, lifting the lid. I found it there, and pulled it out: a hefty black blob. I pushed it onto the floor where it quivered in anticipation. Taking off my shoes and my clothes, I stepped naked onto the blob. The substance oozed onto my legs, coating my flesh. It felt warm, a comfortable sensation.

  This was second skin, symbiotic alien armor, genetically engineered for human use. Alive after a fashion, it could heal itself at times. The outer surface would harden and it allowed the wearer to operate in a vacuum, in outer space. The skin also amplified human strength. At times, it secreted a battle drug into our system. It must have done that now, giving me something to counteract the toxin.

  The familiar symbiotic skin rushed up my thighs, over my belly button and didn’t stop until it reached my chin. I put on my helmet and grabbed the gun in the closet. The androids should have disabled it. That was a mistake on their part. I checked the battery pack. It had a bar symbol on it, with the green all the way to the + sign on top. The laser rifle had a full charge. We had taken to calling it a Bahnkouv assault rifle. Dmitri had told us about an experimental Russian laser, the design headed by a Dr. Bahnkouv. I liked the name because it was human.

  As the aching feeling receded, righteous fury boiled in me. I would attack with my Bahnkouv. I would kill. I would—I shook my head.

  The armor was doing that, or some of it, at least. The symbiotic skin had been engineered to prompt soldiers to attack head-on in a storm assault. That meant the suit often turned a trooper into nearly a berserker warrior. How else could a man psyche himself up into attacking blazing weaponry?

  At this point, outwitting the androids was the key. I had to save troopers and the battlejumper, not just win a firefight.

  Did the androids monitor my helmet’s radio frequency? I had to risk transmitting. I chinned the command channel. Before I could send out a signal, I received one.

  “There are too many,” Rollo was saying to someone. “They’re driving us away from the armory.”

  “You must fight through,” N7 said. “Unless we—”

  Rapidly spoken chatter—enemy androids—broke onto the channel. Did they do that to disrupt our communications or were they directing each other on the same frequency? Probably the first reason. That showed me more than ever they had originated on our vessel. They must have been monitoring us for some time to know the right frequency to use.

  With a grimace, I leaped out of my room. On my helmet’s HUD display, I pinpointed N7’s location in the battlejumper’s control room. Rollo was closer, several corridors over, in fact.

  “Okay, you bastards,” I muttered to myself. I leaped with power, with feral, suited strength. I was a space-assault trooper again, with vengeance thrumming in my brain. My neuro-fibers gave me heightened speed. The bio-suit amplified my muscles—

  I heard laser fire before I actually saw it, a high whiny noise. Cyber-armored humanoids also clanked down the halls like automatons. It told me they used magnetized boots in the zero G.

  I unlatched a grenade from my belt, twisted the setting and peered around a corner. The androids had gotten cocky. They hadn’t left a rearguard. Three of them in a staggered formation moved purposefully away from me, with their rifles beaming. Farther away on the other side of the androids, I heard men shouting, my friends. I recalibrated the grenade’s setting to something lower. Rollo’s comment earlier meant they were unarmored. I didn’t want to kill my friends with too high a blast.

  I hurled the grenade and ducked back around the corner. A terrific flash and a loud crump told me the grenade ignited. Instantly, I darted back into the corridor. One android drifted. One was missing an arm. The last one had torn cyber-armor on its back and swiveled toward me. Blasting with heavy laser fire, I beamed through its visor. Then I remembered my original attacker. I switched targeting to the chest and burned him down with several seconds of concentrated fire.

  Then it was over. I’d killed the three androids.

  “Rollo,” I shouted.

  “Creed?” he yelled. “Is that you? The androids told us you were dead.”

  “Hurry here. We have to get to the armory.”

  “Creed, Starkien warships are coming through the jump point. N7 counted at least five beamships near Neptune.”

  I closed my eyes in pain. We needed time to get every freighter in orbit, and time to escape from here and hide in a lonely star system. If I couldn’t win free from Earth, human life might cease to exist.

  By what Rollo said, it appeared as if Starkien contractors had come after us. I hated the technocratic baboons. That’s what Starkiens looked like: furry monkey-creatures with bulging foreheads so you knew they were clever. Just like all the other aliens, they thought that humans were animals.

  I’d worked with Starkiens before. In their case, contractors really meant they were nomadic pirates for hire. Had the Starkiens signaled sleepers hidden on our battlejumper? If true, that meant the Starkiens worked under Jelk backing, and that likely meant Claath.

  “Hurry up! “ I roared. “We have to clear the androids off our battlejumper. We have to get ready to face the Starkiens.”

  Rollo appeared at the other end of the corridor. Three other troopers followed him, one with a bandaged and broken arm. My friend used to be long and lanky. Steroid-68 had turned him into a muscled gorilla with thick deltoids. He had an angry red laser burn on his cheek, looking like Indian war paint. How close had I come to losing my best friend?

  “Come on,” I said. “We have to get to the armory. We need to get you boys suited up.”

  “How are we going to beat five Starkien beamships?” Rollo asked, as pain flashed across his face. The laser burn must hurt. “We’re screwed, Creed. Everything we worked for—it’s over.”

  “Not yet,” I snarled. The pain had apparently made him pessimistic. “Now hurry up. We don’t have all day.”

  -3-

  I took point. As we traveled through the metallic corridors, I noticed the flu fe
eling again. It pulsated in my bones, attempting to steal my strength and dull my wits. The suit tried to counteract it. I could feel each drug entering me. The toxin must be more powerful than the suit’s ability to handle, though.

  That made me paranoid. If the android poison was too strong, the symbiotic skin could be dampening the symptoms even as the toxin killed me. I had to get to sickbay and get treated. First, however, I had to clear my battlejumper of android sleepers.

  “Creed,” Rollo whispered.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked in a low voice. I had my visor open so I could hear him.

  “There’s something just up the corridor,” Rollo whispered. “Can’t you hear it?”

  I must have been sicker than I realized. No, I hadn’t noticed anything. Now I did. From around the corner, metal scraped against metal and I heard a purr that could only mean a flamer, a portable piece of heavy weaponry that fired heated plasma.

  “We know you are near,” an android called. “We see you on our scanner. Surrender; you cannot reach the armory and it is useless for you to die.”

  “How did you get on my ship?” I shouted.

  “The battlejumper belongs to the Jelk Corporation,” the android said. “It is the property of Shah Claath, your owner. You must return it.”

  “Is that what you are, property?”

  “Why do you labor against reality? You know the answer to your question.”

  “Do I?”

  “If you are Creed, know that we will accept your surrender. Shah Claath is eager to regain you in prime condition.”

  “The thing’s trying to trick us,” Rollo said.

  I motioned Rollo to give me his jacket. Once he did, I balled it up. Then I whispered, “Get back, and await my signal.”

  Rollo retreated to the others.

  “Have you come to the logical conclusion?” the android asked. “Are you ready to submit?

  “You promise me you’ll take my surrender?” I asked.