by T. R. Harris
The allies had thirteen huge capital ships of their own, seven hundred cruisers and destroyer-class vessels, and two hundred smaller support vessels. There were over six hundred small fighters in the launch bays of the carriers.. The two-man strikecraft should protect the larger ships from harassing attacks by the enemy fighters, allowing them to concentrate fire on the invader ships of similar size and firepower. Unfortunately, there were no units to go head-to-head with the three monster craft. Maybe after enough enemy units had been neutralized, the allies would attempt a concentrated attack on the alien behemoths.
Strategy would depend on how the battle progressed. A large part of the allied command wanted only a brief encounter, something quick in and quick out. That was the preliminary strategy. After that, a more long-term plan could be formulated.
The fighters were released, filling the tac screens with bright blue dots signifying friendly forces. Moments later, swarms of answering contacts poured from the ass-end of the huge carriers, these painted red on the screens.
At the same time, the destroyers and cruisers accelerated to attack speed and closed on the fringes of the fleet of waiting enemy ships. The invaders were greatly outnumbered, but they still turned toward the incoming ships and began saturating the space between forces with flares of brilliant blue-white plasma.
At the last moment, the diffused screen of allies warcraft joined up to form a concentrated phalanx only twenty ships square, yet with row upon row behind them. Shields glowed white, yet they continued until breaking through the thin line of enemy warships.
“Looks like standard diffusion screens, Captain,” a crewmember reported. “Nothing really high tech.”
Captain Davy remained silent. His ship was still in the rear, held in reserve along with the large Juirean Class Fives and Sixes. It wouldn’t be wise to commit your big guns until you knew if the aliens had any secret weapons up their sleeves.
The glowing thread of allied ships sliced through the enemy lines with relative ease and then looped back over, striking another part of the layer of invader craft like some sort of sea monster breaking the surface then diving back underwater at another point. Enemy losses began to pile up; however they were matched by allied losses.
Calculating the numbers, the Juireans gave the order for the larger ships to attack. Over half of the response fleet would be lost at this rate, but the enemy would be completely destroyed. The Juireans were okay with that.
The Lexington moved out, temporarily engaging a light-speed gravity-well before dropping out and proceeding on maneuvering wells only. At this distance, even the flash from the current battle would take minutes to reach them, so it appeared as though the ship was heading into clear space. Then the scene changed. They were in the mix, with flashes lighting the space around them in every direction. A hazy blue film covered the forward and side viewports as diffusion shields absorbed enemy flash bolts. Tiny fighters chased each other in and around the larger ships, even as cannon batteries aboard the Union battleship began to pick off invader ships with deadly accuracy. The enemy vessels could be destroyed—as could the allies. It was the uniformity of technology that gave hope to the forces from the Milky Way.
“Incoming, Captain!” another of the bridge crew called out. “New targets, bearing oh-nine-five, up forty.”
“Confirm new targets,” the captain ordered.
“Confirmed, sir. These are new, not part of the original fleet.”
“Give me a count.”
A slight hesitation, then: “Nine hundred to a thousand, many still coming in range.”
“Open a link with fleet comman—”
“Fleet command on the box, sir!”
“The retreat order is given,” said a calm Juirean voice over the bridge speakers. “Regroup at coordinates Contingency Green. I repeat, regroup at C-Green. Acknowledge.”
Davy pressed the comm button on the arm of his command chair. “Acknowledged, C-Green…breaking off attack.” Then he spoke to the bridge crew. “Recover all strikecraft. Transmit departure vector six-eight-eight. Have all craft assume that heading. Report when all birds are in the nest.”
He turned to Sherri and Riyad. “Looks like there are a lot more of those bastards around than we anticipated. No wonder they weren’t worried.”
Sherri didn’t respond. All she was concerned about was Adam. Her earlier feeling that he was alive was gone, replaced by the terrifying proposition that she may never see him again.
Sensing her discomfort, Riyad placed an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.
She whispered in his ear. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I don’t want any of these guys to see me cry.”
Riyad and Sherri were alone in her stateroom. Neither had spoken for several minutes, each lost in their thoughts. A box squawked on the bulkhead.
“Ms. Valentine, this is Captain Davy.”
“I’m here. So is Riyad.”
“There’s a ship approaching, transmitting an old Union transponder code. I ran it through the system and it came up classified. After further investigation the ship was identified as an experimental vessel designated the Mark IV. Wasn’t that your old ship, Mr. Tarazi?”
Both Sherri and Riyad froze. It was Riyad who answered. “Where is it now?”
“That’s the strange thing. It appeared for a moment, sent out a rendezvous request, and then disappeared. It just came back on the screens about half-a-light from us, paralleling our course.”
“It’s made no threating moves?”
“No, sir, why would it?”
“Never mind. We’re on our way to the bridge.”
When they reached the bridge, a concerned Captain Davy pulled them aside. “What’s going on here? You two look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“In a way we have. The Mark IV was the ship the mutant Panur converted into a trans-dimensional jump ship,” Riyad reported.
“The one that took you to the Sol-Kor universe?”
“One and the same.”
“What happened to it?”
“Lila—the same Lila that now rules the galaxy—took it and met back up with Panur. Then she returned, but not the ship. It’s assumed Panur kept it.”
Now Captain Davy’s expression matched that of Sherri and Riyad. Like nearly everyone in the galaxy, he knew of Panur and his powers.
“What should I do? You know him better than I do,” said the captain.
“Can you open a link to the Najmah Fayd—that’s the name I gave the ship?”
“We don’t have a line, but we can send a flash in his direction and see if he answers.”
“Do it,” said Riyad. “I’d like to talk to him before you let him aboard your ship.”
Ten minutes later the gray, almost featureless face of Panur was on a screen in the secure comm room—the SCIF—aboard the Lexington. Sherri and Riyad were visible to the alien, while Captain Davy leaned against a wall out of sight.
“Greetings, my friends,” said the alien, his voice unemotional.
“What the hell, Panur? Why are you here?” Sherri said, cutting right to the chase.
Panur was taken aback by her abruptness. “Forgive me, but I have been monitoring events; I always have. Did you expect me to sit idle with Lila missing?”
“I thought you didn’t care anymore.”
“I may be a mutant, but I still have feelings,” Panur countered. “Lila is still the closest I have to an equal. I could never forget her.”
“What about that monstrosity you created…J’nae?” asked Riyad. “The last thing I saw the two of you were all buddy-buddy.”
“Please watch your tone, Mr. Tarazi. She is here with me.”
Sherri’s jaw drop opened while Riyad gnashed his teeth. “You brought that thing into the Milky Way? I don’t know what to say,” Riyad growled.
“Relax, friends, she is completely rehabilitated and now on our side.”
“I didn’t know we had a side,” Sherri said when the shock subsided.
“Indeed we do. We are here to help recover Lila, yet I must admit, I’m at a loss as to what happened to her. All I’ve been able to discern is that she was taken from her chambers. What—and who—could have done this is the mystery. It is obviously something of which even I am unaware.”
When neither Sherri nor Riyad spoke, Panur leaned in closer, his dark eyes seeming to reach through the screen and into the room where they sat. “Are you going to allow me aboard your ship, or will I have to take matters into my own hands?”
Riyad turned back to Captain Davy.
Davy shrugged. “From what I’ve heard of him, he’s coming aboard whether we invite him or not.”
Riyad looked back at Panur and nodded.
“That’s better. Oh, and from the outcome of your recent skirmish, it looks like you could use my help.”
The Najmah Fayd was given permission to enter docking bay three, which was cleared of other vessels and locked down from the rest of the ship. Once the large hangar doors closed and the atmosphere returned, Sherri, Riyad and Captain Davy entered the huge chamber, dressed in thick coats to protect against the lingering cold of outer space.
The hatch cracked and cycled open. Panur was there, all four-foot-six-inches of him. Behind the mutant stood another creature, over seven-feet-tall, with an oblong face, scaly light yellow skin and shoulder-length yellow hair. This was J’nae, an experimental creation of the mutant Panur and the former Queen of the ravenous, flesh-eating Sol-Kor. Her expression conveyed contempt for the Humans, making Sherri doubt Panur’s assertion that they were now all on the same team.
The two mutants stepped from the infamous TD-starship.
Sherri and Riyad had a lot of experience with Panur—not so much with J’nae. Every prior encounter with her was only heartbeats away from impending death—and always theirs. There had never been a time when they didn’t know her as an enemy.
Panur stepped aside, clearing the space between the Humans and the Sol-Kor mutant. “J’nae, you remember Sherri Valentine and Riyad Tarazi.”
“Of course; I remember everything.” The towering alien female spoke in English without need of a translation device, the same as Panur. The mutants were fluent in every language in the translation database of the Milky Way.
The Humans didn’t respond, nor did they offer hands to shake. They stood staring suspiciously at the deadly mutant.
“I understand your trepidation,” J’nae spoke to fill the awkward silence. “Be assured my creator has weaned from my being all evil tendencies, allowing me to see the truth about the Sol-Kor, and even myself. I now exist to assist the efforts of my creator. At the present, that is to be of service to your galaxy during this current crisis.”
“Very good, J’nae!” Panur exclaimed. “Now can we all be friends? There is so much to do and so little time.”
Riyad leaned over and stuck his face only inches from Panur’s. “That was all sweet and well-rehearsed, however, it doesn’t change anything. But you’re here now, what’s next?”
“First, I need to know all that has happened over the past ten days, ever since Lila’s celebration was so rudely interrupted by her uninvited guests.”
It didn’t take long to brief Panur on what they knew of the Nuor, Lila’s abduction and Adam’s captivity, after which the mutant insisted on a link with Trimen O’lac aboard the Formilian flagship.
“Adam said this three-billion-year-old orb told him where the Aris have been in hibernation?” Panur questioned.
On a screen in the wardroom, Trimen shook his handsome face. “Zee helped build the hibernation pods, so she knows the location. She told Adam, yet he did not relate this information to me during the brief time we had together before he left Formil.”
Panur drummed his long fingers on the table. “And Adam is currently being held prisoner by the Nuor, these beings we assume are from Andromeda?”
“As much as we can tell—which isn’t much, just a bunch of assumptions.” Sherri offered. “We assume he’s still alive, since we got the impression they don’t like to waste good player stock, at least not before meeting them in formal combat.”
“Adam would be a prime player in their games,” Panur stated. “If they’ve been monitoring the galaxy, they would have heard of him.” He turned to Douglas Davy. “Captain, do you have a track on the Nuorean fleet? There must be a staging area somewhere in the Radis Spur.”
“We sent probes after them. Their standard gravity drives aren’t much better than ours—if at all—so we’ve been able to keep up. They now have six of those big ships. They’re all part of a larger fleet. We’re getting reports of raids at other locations within the galaxy.”
“They come from Andromeda, yet their gravity drives are standard. There must be a jump portal somewhere near the edge of the galaxy.”
“What’s a jump portal?” Riyad asked. “Is that like a TD-portal?”
“No.” Panur looked to the ceiling as if deep in thought. “They must have discovered how to elongate a singularity.” He looked to J’nae for confirmation.
“Yes, that would allow them to focus the effects,” she replied.
“What does that mean?” Captain Davy asked. “A focused gravity-well?”
“Exactly,” Panur answered, conveying respect for the quick-thinking officer. “I can see the benefits. They could build a massive set of generators yet limit the effects on nearby space. By confining the effects to a narrow beam, they could draw in space from opposite ends and across incredible distances. It would be a variation on wormhole technology, yet much more refined and manageable. I give them credit for inventing such a device. The Nuoreans have been planning this invasion for quite some time. Captain Davy, I will need a small speeder.”
“You’re not going after Adam without us!” Sherri protested. Riyad scooted closer to her, just in case there was any confusion as to who ‘us’ referred to.
“Of course; the Nuoreans have undoubtedly heard of you as well. You will be the bait.”
“I demand to go as well,” Trimen said. “Lila is Formilian—”
“She is a hybrid, neither Formilian nor Human,” J’nae corrected.
“That does not matter. To me she is Formilian—and family.”
“You may come, my friend,” Panur said with a smile.
Sherri shook her head. “We may be able to get close, but how do you think they’ll react to the two of you?” She was referring to the mutants.
“You mean the Human pilot and co-pilot for the spacecraft?”
The mutant’s response left Sherri blinking her eyes in confusion. “What—”
Slowly Panur’s smooth gray features began to change. He appeared out of focus for a moment until his face morphed in that of a Human male, in his mid-twenties, with light brown hair and brown eyes.
“This takes considerable energy to maintain such a cell manipulation for long periods,” the mutant explained. “The features fight to return to their normal state. I can sustain such altered appearance for about four hours—J’nae approximately an hour—before the need for an infusion of direct energy. At that point we would return to normal. That should be long enough to pass any cursory inspections.”
Sherri met Riyad’s wide eyes. “What do you think?”
“I’m excited. I figured at some point we’d go after Adam and Lila. I never thought we’d have two of the most-powerful mutants in the galaxy—hell, any galaxy—helping us. I say let’s do it,” Riyad replied.
Sherri was still nervous about having Panur and J’nae this close, let alone part of the team, but she couldn’t argue with Riyad’s logic. She’d rather have the pair on her side than not. She nodded. “Okay then, let’s go get our boy.”
49
Adam didn’t complain when Daric kept coming to him with updates of both the recent battle, as well as their progress on reaching the holding planet he’d mentioned; it gave him operational intelligence he wouldn’t otherwise have. For some reason, the alien felt compelled to kee
p him informed. Of course, most of it was delivered in the form of boasting.
He bragged on how thoroughly the Nuoreans had surprised the allied forces with the introduction of a force over three times their original estimates. He also gloated on how quickly the battle devolved into a rout, with enemy forces running for the hills as fast as they could. All this was according to plan, and a strategy worked out long ago through an understanding of game theory.
He also told Adam they were nearing the holding planet. There he would be placed with the thousands of other species already collected so far, not only from the Formilian celebration, but also from hundreds of raids the bulk of his fleet had been making while Daric ran his first gambit at Formil.
“So when does all this fighting start?” Adam asked just as Daric was leaving his cell.
“The challenges?” The Nuorean turned back to him. “That is months away. First arenas must be constructed on the planet. However, I may allow some of the lesser players in your galaxy to be challenged, even on natural terrain. This will help maintain morale among my fellow beings, as they begin to acquire direct immunity points beyond those from space battles.” He laughed. “I fear your military forces may be reluctant to meet us head-on after their last encounter.”
“Don’t count on that. Just like you, now we know what we’re up against.”
“And that will give you more confidence to face us?”
“No, but it will allow us to devise a strategy for your defeat.”
Daric smiled. “At first I found your bravado entertaining. Now it is bordering on insanity. You must realize our strength is not only the vessels in this fleet. The entire Nuorean race has access to your galaxy. If you manage to destroy a portion of this force, there will be countless others to replace us. To defeat the Nuor you must destroy all of us, not just this exploratory contingent.”
