Extinction Wars: 02 - Planet Strike

by Vaughn Heppner

  “N7,” Claath said in an oily voice. “If you would win back my favor, shoot the upstart humans around you, starting with Creed-beast.”

  N7 did no such thing, but sat still, waiting.

  “The last time I saw your ugly mug,” I said, “you were burning a hole through my battlejumper.”

  “Your battlejumper,” Claath said. “You-you pirate,” he spat. “You stole from me, and you will repay for that a thousand times overs. I will recoup my losses.”

  “Sure you will,” I said. “But anyway, as I was saying, you floated away as an energy creature. I’m wondering how you went from there in Sigma Draconis to wherever it was that you found the Kargs. How did you find these fiends anyway?”

  A vicious smile curved Claath’s lips. “I find it delightful that you are ignorant on so many matters. Surrender to me, beast, and I shall enlighten you.”

  “Why did you just pretend to be Abaddon?” I asked. “Did you think you could fool us?”

  Claath continued smiling.

  “You don’t like that question?” I asked. “Why not try this one for size. Why do our bio-suits work so well in hyperspace? Did you foresee the coming of the Kargs? Or is it funnier than that? Did they capture you and force you to re-materialize into a body? Are you their slave perhaps?”

  “You are doomed,” Claath whispered.

  “Are the Jelk working for the Kargs?” I asked. “Is that it? What profit do you gain if the space-time continuum invaders destroy everything in our universe?”

  “You know so little,” Claath said in an evil voice. “Yes, I delight in watching you stretch your thoughts as you attempt to encompass reality. Surrender immediately, Creed-beast, and you can regain my good favor. The Kargs can use someone like you.”

  “The Kargs, eh,” I said. “That’s interesting. It’s not the Jelk who can use me, but the invading Kargs. I’m back to thinking you’ve sold out everyone, even your own kind.”

  His smile slipped for just a moment. “Believe what you wish,” Claath said, and he put the smile back into place. But it seemed forced now.

  “You know what I really think?” I said. “You lost once to me, and when you gathered new flesh to yourself, you fell into Karg hands. How that happened, I don’t know…yet. That makes this funny, and you know why? Instead of running the show like you used to, the great and greedy Shah Claath has become a slave to the Kargs. You’re running scared, Claath, and I like seeing it.”

  “If you—”

  “Shut up for a minute while I tell you what’s going to happen,” I said. “I’m still hunting for you, Claath. I’m going to make you float a second time, and then I’m going to use a special weapon that will fry your energized self into nothing.”

  “There is no such weapon.”

  “That isn’t what EP told me,” I said.

  “Who?” asked Claath.

  I jerked a thumb at the relic. “The Forerunner artifact has told me all about you, Claath, and it has given me the weapon I’m talking about.”

  “This is outrageous,” Claath said heatedly, and his words seemed directed at the artifact. “How could you tell such a low order creature about the energy ray?”

  As EP began to vocalize, I cut the connection and the holoimage vanished.

  “I did not give Commander Creed information about such a ray,” EP said, but it was too late. Claath was offline and didn’t know the information.

  I rounded on EP. “What’s the deal? How come you tried to calm down Claath?”

  “You would not understand,” EP said.

  “Try me.”

  “No,” EP said. “This is not the right time for it.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, unconvinced. “How is it you know who Claath is?”

  “The knowledge is unremarkable,” EP said. “I am Orange Tamika’s most sacred relic. As such, I have heard of Claath’s invasion attempts into various systems, particularly the Altair star system.”

  “Is Claath really Abaddon?” I asked.

  “Your android drew the correct conclusion,” EP said. “Claath attempted to impersonate Abaddon.”

  “Do the Kargs know who the Jelk are?” I asked.

  “Commander Creed,” EP said. “I believe you should worry about breaking into the Karg lines instead of querying me about old history.”

  “Do you know where the aliens are setting up their lines?”

  “Do you wish to view a 3-D map of the strategical situation?” EP asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  EP swiveled, and another beam flashed against a tube-car wall. This map showed the center of the planet with the former Altair Object floating in a monstrously huge chamber, like a chocolate center buried in the middle of a tootsie pop. I’d seen the donut-shaped artifact before as a Jelk assault trooper. I understood its size and realized it floated in a titanic area. That was interesting.

  Before the huge and final chamber, the Kargs blocked the corridors with thick red clots of color. That meant thousands, tens of thousands of Kargs. If I’d had my entire Earth Commando Army with me, I might have been able to battle through the enemy. With a partly two thousand troopers and several hundred Lokhars—I didn’t see any way through. I couldn’t believe it. We’d made it this far, and now…this.

  I glanced at EP. What was its game? Had the relic helped bring us this far and then given us an insolvable problem in order to see how Earthlings reacted?

  “Are the Karg 3-D representations similar to those you showed us previously near the surface?” I asked.

  “They are an exact and equal representation,” EP said.

  “How many Kargs do you estimate stand between us and the Altair Object?” I asked.

  “Fifty-four thousand and increasing,” the relic said.

  “Fifty-four thousand?” Rollo said. “We can’t fight through that.”

  “What other choice do we have?” I asked.

  We exchanged glances with each other, everyone no doubt realizing the hopelessness of the situation.

  “May I ask the relic a question?” N7 asked.

  “Be my guest,” I said.

  “EP,” our android said, “are there any armories nearby that might hold exotic Forerunner weaponry?”

  “Ahhh…” EP said, as if thinking. “Why, yes there is.”

  “You’re kidding?” I told the relic.

  “No, I speak truths or the truth,” EP said. “I never lie.”

  “Why didn’t you say something about it earlier then?” I asked.

  “That is an interesting question,” EP said, “as I desire your victory and it would have been good for you to know about the weaponry. The answer is I do not know why I kept silent. Perhaps an alien virus has damaged memory cores.”

  I wanted to howl. Instead, I closed my eyes, thinking. I needed to ask the right questions. That seemed clear. Opening my eyes, I said, “Do the Kargs have this weaponry, too?”

  “I do not know,” EP said, “but I do not believe so.”

  “How far is the armory to the Kargs?” I asked.

  “I will show you on the map.”

  The artifact did. It looked to be several kilometers from their most upward outpost.

  “The Kargs might find the armory if it’s that close to their positions,” I said.

  “Commander,” EP said, “on further contemplation, I feel I should inform you that the weaponry likely cannot help you. It is ancient battle-gear primarily suited to the First Ones. I do not believe it has been used in millennia.”

  Great. More curveballs. “We’re all out of options, EP. You said fifty-four thousand Kargs with growing numbers await us. Soon, they will have one hundred thousand in position and then two hundred thousand. We have to attack now.” I shook my head. “It’s too bad Venturi and the other Lokhars couldn’t have listened to my original idea and used T-missiles, letting a nuclear holocaust solve the problem.”

  The relic dipped and lifted several times, with more lights than ever flashing in odd sequences. “Wrong,
Commander,” EP finally said. “Such an act would have been a crime against reality.”

  “Why?” I asked. “The Forerunner artifact is just a machine.”

  “A machine, yes,” EP said. “But much more than just.”

  Why couldn’t the relic talk plainly for once? If the oracle was anything like this…

  “Tell us about the weaponry,” I said. I distrusted the little Forerunner. It had been wrong too many times. Then the thing began to talk…

  -29-

  Despite the Kargs’ nearness to the armory, we beat them to it. The main reason was that the aliens didn’t know to march there. The Kargs waited in their selected chambers and corridors, no doubt creating the perfect defense. To make it even worse for us, new Kargs disembarked from their tube-cars and continually added reinforcements.

  Two thousand assault troopers and roughly three hundred Lokhar legionaries piled out at the last station. Here, all the corridors shined with a hurtful radiance. Even with our polarized visors, we squinted and splotches danced before our eyes. The hallways were bigger than ever and the chambers massive beyond belief. It was like walking through a museum, with strange crystalline shapes towering around us. We passed rooms covered with pink sands and deep cobalt-colored wells of slowly sloshing mercurial liquid. We were near the center of the planet. In several chambers, we saw metal walls beating like hearts. I found that incredibly disturbing. Was the planet alive?

  If it wasn’t—even if it was—this was an alien place. I don’t think the First Ones had been humanoid in any manner.

  We marched, and EP still refused to explain the exact nature of the weaponry. I think he felt we needed to see it to believe.

  Finally, we reached thick vault hatches. EP spoke in High Speech, and I began to notice many hisses in his words, like a snake. At the end of the sequence, the hatch dilated open, and we entered a great storage room with floaters made for giant creatures. Sprouting around them were more towering crystals pulsating with steady red lights.

  N7 glanced at a wrist monitor. It had tiny numerals glowing on its screen. “It’s hotter in here by ten degrees,” the android informed me.

  “Where’s the weapon?” I asked the relic.

  EP lifted out of Ella’s arms and floated to a large crystal box. The thing measured approximately two feet by two. It also had knobs on one side, with exotic imagery within it that eerily pulsed just like the towers. There were small handholds on the box that tentacles or centipede legs could have easily grasped.

  “Is that one of the weapons?” I asked, pointing at the crystal box.

  “No,” EP said. “That allows the proper application of the weapons and a nullification of others.”

  “How about telling it to us plainly for once?” I said.

  “You have such primitive minds,” EP said. “I keep forgetting. This machine produces a ten-score continuity field.”

  “Hold it right there,” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “Put simply, an active continuity field means guns and lasers, grenades and other technological weapons will become inoperative. Or said another way, while under the field’s influence, such weapons will not fire or explode.”

  I laughed harshly. Why had I ever let myself be talked into listening to the stupid relic? “The box looks too heavy to throw. So I don’t get it. How does having this field help us in the slightest?”

  “I should think that would be obvious,” EP said. “We carry the emitter with us and create the continuity field.”

  “I already got that part,” I said. “Once we create a continuity field—meaning we can’t fire our weapons—the Kargs can slaughter everyone by shooting their bullets and beams into the field to kill us.”

  “No, no,” EP said. “Their bullets and beams will no longer be able to race at speed through the field. The continuity mechanism renders that impossible.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering what kind of physics produced such an effect. “That’s a little better, I suppose. But I’m still not seeing it. That means we’ll be down to hand-to-hand combat. The Kargs can simply overwhelm us with numbers.”

  “Certainly there is that possibility,” the relic said.

  I groaned aloud, wanting to bang my forehead against a wall. After so many disappointments, why did I insist on thinking that EP was more than an idiot savant, with the accent on idiot? This was yet another of its boondoggles.

  The relic floated from us. Like a dog watching a running cat, my desire to blast away with a rifle became intense.

  “You must observe,” EP said. “I will now show you the second part of the process.”

  I relaxed my grip on the rifle, grumbling, “What now?” as I followed him to an alcove.

  The relic floated into a side area, and a crystal wall slid back to reveal hundreds of the brightest sticks I’d ever seen. Each of them had paper-thin wedges on one end.

  “What the hell?” I asked. “I hope you’re not telling me these are your great Forerunner weapons.”

  “It must be that you lack understanding,” EP said. “The weaponry is fashioned from Obdurate-10, an ultra-dense substance with a monofilament edge.”

  “What’s a monofilament edge?”

  “A single linked atom-chain of Obdurate-10 on the cutting edge expanding finally to the wedge you see,” EP said. “Nothing known to Forerunner science can resist such an edge. It is the sharpest object you will ever see. I suggest you pick one up.”

  I glanced at the others piled behind me, shrugged and climbed into the alcove.

  “Beware the edge,” EP said. “There are utterly unforgiving.”

  “By edge,” I said, “do you mean the end of the wedge with the thickness of paper?”

  “Precisely,” EP said.

  Gingerly, I wrapped my bio-suited hands on the other end of the stick. I grunted, surprised at its weight. “This thing is heavy,” I said.

  “It is ultra-dense, as I originally informed you,” EP said. “The entire shaft is composed of Obdurate-10.”

  “Come again?” I asked.

  “Lead is heavier than balsawood,” Rollo said, who must have understood. “Maybe Obdurate-10 is heavier than lead.”

  “Countless times heavier,” EP said.

  Bunching my shoulders, I heaved the…Forerunner space axe upright. Then I chopped with the wedge, the axe head. It sheared through the floor with amazing ease.

  In that second, I saw it. The First Ones had gripped the continuity field box, creating a zone where high-tech weapons wouldn’t work, not guns, lasers, bombs, nothing. Then they waged combat with Obdurate-10 made space axes, hacking each other or enemies to pieces. It was freaky, and it might actually give us an advantage over the Kargs, at least for the initial contact.

  “Okay,” I said. “This just might work. But these things are rather heavy. We’re going to get tired swinging them.”

  “I suggest we use them in teams,” N7 said. “A trooper handles an axe until he’s weary. Then he hands the weapon to his second. Once he becomes too fatigued, the second hands the axe to a third. By that time, the original soldier will have recovered some of his strength and stamina.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. I shook my head, bemused at what we contemplated. “The Kargs have numbers. We have a continuity field and axes, making this a hand-to-hand battle. I don’t know how that helps a very few beat a horde, but let’s give it a whirl.”

  We found three of the continuity field devices and four hundred space axes. Two thousand troopers divided by four hundred gave us five wielders per weapon. Seeing that we had three CF devices, I decided to make this a three-pronged or three-corridor attack. The Lokhars would split into one hundred legionaries per attack group. They elected to remain outside the continuity fields and act as observers and help keep in radio contact. No radio worked in the continuity field, so we had to devise simple hand messages to give each other.

  Even though we were under a hard time schedule, I believed we needed to practice. We did, for f
orty-five minutes. In that time, seven troopers died, cutting themselves or another with the axe. The slightest touch with the wedge-edge cut deeply, shearing bio-suits. These thin stick-axes were dangerous.

  Finally, as Kargs began arriving in our tube-train station, we advanced to combat, but not before booby-trapping our station. Ten minutes later, we heard a thunderous explosion.

  “There’s no turning back now,” I said. “The station is gone. We can only go ahead.”

  We marched through the alien tunnels for our battle with destiny.

  I gripped one of the axes, resting the haft on my shoulder. I’d done many strange things this past year and a half, but I hadn’t gone into battle against aliens from another universe while trusting to ancient weaponry. I imagine my ancestors on Earth had fought like this, with swords and axes, I mean.

  I grinned, and I wondered if I’d thought of everything. We had plenty of space between troopers. I nodded. I used to play many war games as a kid, the old board games with cardboard counters and dice on a hexagonal-grid map. I remembered this one on ancient’s battles. I’d read how Greek phalanx soldiers had more hoplites per square foot than Roman legionnaires. The hoplite held a spear and could fight shoulder to shoulder, shoving a sharp tip at an enemy. The Roman had needed more space, even though he’d wielded a smaller weapon, the gladius, a two-foot short sword. The Roman needed room to swing without worrying about hitting his comrade. The Gallic barbarians with their six-foot broadswords had needed even more room between warriors, and thus his battlefronts had lesser density than even a legionary cohort did.

  Well, for the coming fight, we space axe-men would need Gallic room to swing these nifty First One weapons. That meant Kargs could possibly outnumber us as they attacked shoulder to shoulder, using their rifle barrels and knives to jab at our faces.

  “Kargs!” a trooper shouted.

  “Turn on the continuity field,” I ordered. “And good luck.”

  Almost immediately, the world turned metallic gray with black shimmering motes drifting everywhere as our continuity field spread outward from the First One box. The field encompassed the troopers to my right and left. I heard harsh breathing and realized it was me. In a few seconds, the first Kargs showed up, or we marched to them. The alien creatures lay on their torsos or fired from behind crystal monuments.