by T. R. Harris
With one hand on the TD controls, and the other on the attitude jets of the Najmah Fayd, Adam made the jump.
The distance to the space station was the shortest hop Adam had ever made, so the time interval between transferring to an alien dimension and back again was barely noticeable.
“Watch out!” Jym yelled from his station.
Adam knew instantly what he meant.
Fortunately, the Najmah Fayd did manage to materialize just above the huge space station, yet it carried with it a certain thrust vector from its previous location. In English…the ship was racing toward the station at about a hundred miles per hour.
The small gap between the two objects closed in a matter of seconds. Adam fired a strong blast of maneuvering gas to slow them down. It wasn’t enough. The Najmah Fayd slammed onto the top of the station, deforming hull metal, which quickly rebounded, propelling the ship back into space. With the exhaust jets assisting, Adam watched as a mile—then ten—separated them from the station.
Nearby Nuorean ships noticed the widening gap and felt confident they could take a shot at the Najmah Fayd without hitting the station. They were right. A pair of plasma bolts erupted from launchers, streaking through space toward the ship.
At the last second, Adam sent a short burst of chem exhaust through the still-functional starboard side nozzle. The ship slid sideways, causing the two bolts to slip past without impacting. Next he sent air through the topside jets, reversing course. The ship raced for the top of the space station…again.
Kaylor was ready with the grapples, and when they slammed against the hull for a second time, he let them out. Their banged-up starship rumbled with a high-pitched vibration, as the harmonics of both ship and space station synced up.
They were now locked on top of the station, not exactly at the center, but close enough.
There was a docking port on the bottom of the Najmah Fayd with a ten-foot long access tube that could be extended to form a secure airlock. Everyone quickly unstrapped and left the bridge, using the stolen gravity from the station to give them traction. The access port was located just aft of the common area. Adam pulled the hatch open and they all jumped inside.
Laser cutting tools had already been placed in the chamber, and after donning dark eye shields, Adam and Sherri set to work on the now exposed surface of the space station. Adam had no idea as to the construction and layout of the station, but the metal fell away easily, exposing an inner hull with a skeletal array of bracing beams.
He slipped inside the void between the hulls and located an area of clear metal between the braces large enough for them to pass through. He made quick work of the sheet metal before it fell away, crashing to the floor of an inner compartment. The room was vacant.
In the light Nuorean-based gravity, Adam dropped to the floor, followed by Sherri. Kaylor and Jym began to pass weapons to the Humans; the aliens would stay aboard the ship and prevent any Nuoreans approaching along the outer hull from gaining access.
Adam nodded to Kaylor and the Belsonian backed away, securing the access hatch behind him.
The Humans geared up.
At first, Adam had ordered Sherri stay behind and let him—and his new mutant abilities—take it from here. But she wouldn’t have anything to do with it. And when Sherri Valentine made up her mind, a supernova couldn’t change it. Adam had acquiesced, but insisted he take the lead.
Adam had a Xan-fi flash rifle slung across his back and an M-101 assault rifle in his hands. He also had eight flash-bang grenades, two flares, a .45-cal Colt and a 9mm Glock on his utility belt, plus a supply of extra ammo and extra battery packs enough to choke a small elephant. Sherri was similarly armed, the lighter gravity helping with the load. Yet even counting up all the ammo and bolt capacity they carried, it still wouldn’t be enough to kill all thousand-plus aliens aboard the station.
That’s where Kaylor and Jym would help.
Two of the bunker-busting nuclear-tip weapons had been modified with a trigger device on each, rather than the automatic timer they normally carried. Once the aliens made it back to the bridge, Kaylor launched the rockets.
They arced high above the vast expanse of the space station before returning to plunge through the metal hull and deep into the interior. Then using an acoustic contact placed against the hull, Kaylor gave the crew of the station the bad news.
The weapons could be set off by his command, so all Nuoreans wishing not to become radioactive waste should evacuate the premises post haste.
Of course, Kaylor didn’t use exactly those words, but the Nuoreans got the message. And as Adam and Sherri left the compartment and entered an outer corridor, a steady stream of unarmed alien techs was seen executing a rather organized and orderly evacuation. They eyed the heavily-armed pair of Humans with neutral expressions, yet none tried to engage.
That would be left to others.
109
The audio and video links to the space station were still intact—only the control links had been severed. Morlon had also destroyed all the local controls to the maneuvering jets for the generators and the pulse shot. Even if Adam Cain could make it to the generators, he would be unable to divert the alignment or stop LP-6 from firing.
But now Morlon was looking at a video screen of the Human starship sitting atop the control station. Reports were coming in of a hull breach, followed moments later with news of nuclear weapons aboard the station.
What was Cain planning, Morlon wondered? Did he think destroying the space station would render the generator complex inoperable? The Human couldn’t be that naïve. But still, there had been no detection of bombs on or in the generator complex.
Morlon shrugged off his questions. At the moment he felt secure that LP-6 would fire on time and on target. That left only one task to accomplish. And for that he had to return to the space station.
Having flipped around, Riyad now felt the artificial gravity of deceleration in his head and upper torso. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just a little annoying as he approached the huge generator complex ass-end first. He couldn’t look up and see his target, just the image projected on his video monitor.
But soon the signal sounded and the tiny ship came to a stop relative to the generator, five hundred miles below. This is where the fun began. Riyad took manual control and spun the PAV around to get his bearings. He checked the contact radar and decided here looked as good as any place. He released his bombs to float leisurely in the vacuum of space.
Next, he cranked the handlebars around and shot off toward the looming surface of the generator. Moments later he was skimming along the surface, feeling like Luke Skywalker in an X-wing fighter. His destination was the area just this side of the spherical network of girders and ribs connecting the two massive generators. He didn’t know the purpose for the ninety-mile-in-diameter sphere, but it was decided this would be the weakest part of the complex. Copernicus was targeting the same location on the other generator.
Hostile contacts appeared on his board, these being small, one-Nuorean worker pods. Riyad didn’t know what type of armament they carried—if any—but he wasn’t taking any chances.
He dove closer to the surface, which looked to be a combination of metal and composite material. Near the edge where the round, metal cage connected the generators, Riyad began to circle the tube, releasing the contents of his sprayers at three equal distance patches along the circumference.
When brilliant lines from laser weapons passed by him, he knew it was time to split. He could see Copernicus on his screen making his departure as well, after painting the surface of the other generator. The pair raced away from the complex, heading for the space station five thousand miles away and just ahead of a small swarm of repair pods.
Within minutes, nearly all the Nuoreans onboard the station had departed, taking escape pods to the small fleet of starships encircling the station. That didn’t mean Adam and Sherri were out of the woods. They encountered spotty resistance in the form of the
black-uniformed aliens with the yellow strips on their chest—the Third Cadre.
At one particular corridor intersection, they came upon ten of the pesky aliens and had to expend a lot of their ammo reserves to eliminate the threat. Farther along, at a deserted control station, Sherri plugged in a datapad while Adam utilized his newly-acquired talent for alien computer hacking. Soon they had the layout of the station, with the main control room set as their destination.
They met additional resistance, but nothing they couldn’t handle, and when they entered the huge room, with its multiple banks of computer terminals, they found it deserted. Yet more of the Third Cadre was just behind them. Adam shut and locked the door, placing Sherri on sentry duty.
Adam rushed to what looked to be the central console and sat down. He began tapping on the keyboard, which had a combination of letters and short-cut symbols as options. He could read the screen, and soon was on the hunt.
“I got it!” he called out.
“Great, hurry,” Sherri said. “We only have forty-eight minutes before LP-5 sets off and we’re nowhere near the transit zone.”
Adam scanned the data—which revealed the staging area for the LP-6 station in Andromeda—their way home. Then he scanned it again…and again. This wasn’t right.
Sherri was looking at him, baffled by his long silence. “What’s wrong?”
“The LP-6 transit zone….”
“What about it?”
“It’s six thousand light-years into the galaxy beyond Nuor.”
“Six thousand!” Sherri fell back on her butt, leaning against a console, M-101 rifle cradled in her lap. “We can’t make that in time, no matter what we do.”
There was another long silence in the room before Adam began tapping again on the keyboard.
“What are you doing?”
“I have an idea.” He spoke as he typed. “This station controls the generator complex, including the alignment. All I have to do is figure out how to do that and I can bring the transit zone in closer.”
“You can do that?”
“I should. I can’t see why not.”
He continued to feverishly tap the keys—until be pushed back in his chair, staring at the console.
“Now what?” Sherri asked.
“The links…they’re gone.”
“What links?”
“The links to the generators, or at least to the alignment and fire controls. I can’t even stop the firing from here.”
“You mean they’ve been disabled? Well…we’ve got to find a way to bypass it.”
“They haven’t been disabled, but totally cut. They no longer exist between the two locations.”
Adam left the chair and ran to where Sherri sat. “I have to get to the control room at the generator complex. It’s the only way to change the alignment.”
Sherri was on her feet, checking the load on her weapon.
“I need you to stay here.”
“No frigging way!”
“Really. I need you to monitor the alignment. I have an idea that just might save our asses all around, but I need you to help guide me.”
He took her to the main console screen and pulled up a graphic representation of the generators and their programmed alignment. “I’ll link with your ear comm with the ATD. Five thousand miles is nothing for the device, so we can stay in contact. I’ll take the Najmah Fayd to the generators.”
“You think the Nuoreans will just let you hop over there without putting up a fuss?”
“I’ll deal with that. You just stay here and monitor the screen.”
“You know there are Nuoreans outside the door?”
“I’ll take care of that too,” he said with a wicked grin.
“Go for it Superman!”
Adam removed all his gear except for the M-101 and laid it at Sherri’s feet. “In case you need it.” Sherri nodded.
Then Adam set himself at the pressure door to the control room. With another nod, Sherri activated the controls.
The six Third Cadre troops in the outer foyer were caught off guard by the door’s sudden opening. They weren’t expecting a counter assault, but that’s just what they got. Adam sprayed the area with hot lead, ripping apart five of the aliens. A sixth appeared to his left, and promptly ate the butt end of the M-101’s stock.
The door to the control room was still open, with Sherri standing in the portal. Adam sent her a wink before racing away.
110
Adam’s ship was sitting atop the space station, nine levels above his current location. Yet as he ran through deserted hallways, he began to encounter an inordinate number of closed and locked pressure doors. They hadn’t been closed before, and with nearly the whole crew off the station, it didn’t make sense they would be closed now.
He had memorized the layout of the station, so he kept altering his path back to his ship to avoid the locked doors. His task became more difficult, until only one path remained.
He burst into a large circular room, with a double-high ceiling and a deck covered in dirt. Adam instantly recognized this as being one of the Nuorean combat arenas, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Someone moved on the other side.
Adam unleashed a spread of M-101 bullets following the path of the running Nuorean but didn’t strike him before he ducked behind a metal partition along the circumference of the arena. Adam’s weapon clicked empty; all his spare magazines were with Sherri in the control room.
The alien hiding behind the partition heard the clicking, as well, and understood the meaning. A well-proportion and fit-looking Nuorean stepped out from behind the barrier, wearing the uniform of a Third Cadre, yet with two sets of three stripes each on his chest. He stepped forward a few paces before stopping, a standard Nuorean combat sword held in each hands.
“Who the hell are you?” Adam asked, as he tossed the useless M-101 to the side.
“I am Morlon (783) Voden-Mor. I am the Third Cadre officer who has been your primary opponent since your arrival in the Suponac.”
“My opponent?” Adam said with a smirk. “Well, you haven’t done a very good job of it. You haven’t stopped me from getting here.”
Adam saw a vein in the alien’s neck pulse and his jaw set. “No, I have not,” Morlon said. “Yet you will go no farther.”
Adam knew the only way to the Najmah Fayd was through the door behind the alien warrior. He eyed the two swords in his hands. Even with that, Adam was sure his mutant abilities could get him past.
“Before you contemplate any rash movements, I must warn you.”
“About what?”
“Who I am.”
“I don’t care who you are.”
Adam’s comment surprised the Nuorean, but he recovered quickly and smiled. “You should, Adam Cain. Before I joined the Third Cadre, I had acquired more points for my age than any Nuorean before me. I did that because I’m the best—the best player the Nuorean race has ever produced. Yes, you may be able to dispatch others of my kind with relative ease—even my Cadre teammates—but you will find I am at an entirely different level. You will not defeat me.”
“Not with you holding all the swords.”
Morlon laughed and looked down at his weapons. “Oh, both of these are not for me.” He tossed the one in his left hand over to Adam. “I intend to make this an honor match: the Kac’s greatest player against the Suponac’s greatest. I only regret this challenge will not be broadcast. It would be a match for the ages.”
Adam didn’t have time for this. The clock was ticking down to the launches of both LP-5 and LP-6, and this alien asshole was standing in his way.
Adam twirled the lightweight sword with a flick of his wrist. Morlon did the same, before beginning a defiant march toward Adam.
A surge of energy coursed through Adam’s body, a sign that his mutant cells had got the message. And it was needed as Morlon made his first attack.
With seven consecutive slashes at phenomenal speed, it was all Adam could do t
o counter the blows. He wasn’t expecting this, and only his enhanced reaction time saved him from being sliced to bits. His mutant healing abilities helped with cuts and bruises; but he doubted they would make much difference if he was decapitated.
The attack resumed after only a brief pause, with Morlon displaying remarkable footwork and balance, along with his speed and agility. Adam could counter the strength of the alien; that was no problem. But it was Morlon’s skill with the blade he couldn’t overcome. Only through luck and residual mutant cells, did Adam manage to slip back just as the tip of Morlon’s blade sliced open the front of his shirt and split the skin. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was bloody—for a moment.
Morlon was aware of everything on the battlefield, and he watched wide-eyed as the cut stopped bleeding almost immediately. The wound was still open, but the first thing Adam’s mutant cells did was order the surrounding skin to seal the broken blood vessels. In addition, the pain was minimal, allowing Adam to send a thin smile back to his alien opponent.
Morlon’s confusion only lasted a moment before he was on the attack again. This time he combined his strikes with fantastic cartwheels and flips. It was really quite amazing, because each time he landed he was balanced and in position for another thrust or slice.
This went on for a full minute before Adam’s mind finished cataloguing most of the alien’s moves, at least enough to send instructions to his muscles and limbs, allowing him to counter each of Morlon’s strikes, almost by instinct.
The alien had enough combat experience to know something wasn’t right. He had defeated thousands of opponents—both Nuorean and alien—yet this felt different. He was giving it his best, and still it wasn’t enough. Adam could see the concern clouding the alien’s eyes.
The pair separated, at which point Morlon asked: “What are you? In all my research on Humans—including live demonstrations of your fighting skills—I have never witnessed anything like this.”
