The blast also washed against us, blowing down assault troopers. It might have taken me down, too, but I’d dodged behind a station—the blast blew over me.
Then I was up again, racing at the supposed First One, a clone of the most dangerous being in our galaxy. From the hip, I fired pulses, the blue sparks splattering against him.
Others fired at him. We should have lobbed more grenades. Golden ichor poured and pumped from his torn flesh. I could see rib bones shining in ripped muscles.
He raised his head and locked eyes with me. “I am Orcus,” he said. “I’m going away for a time. But I’m going to return, Creed. And when I do, I’m going to take a long time killing you.”
I laughed maniacally, and I aimed at his mouth, clicking the trigger as fast as it would go.
Before another blue pulse reached him, the wounded Orcus, the cloned son of Abaddon, vanished from view. He must have teleported, but teleported where?
We had to find him before the bastard could get away for good.
-36-
“Creed,” Ella said through my helmet comm. She was still on the GEV. “I’ve spotted another vessel.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Near the dwarf planet,” she said. “Oh, no.”
“Is it firing at us?”
“It’s launching missiles. The ship—it’s another heavy cruiser—seems to be running away. At least, it’s heading for the dwarf planet, maybe to get on the other side.”
I looked around. This was a cargo room. There were far too many dead and dying assault troopers in here, gratis of Orcus.
“We have to get off the heavy cruiser,” I said.
“The GEV’s teleportation pad,” Rollo said beside me.
“It’s a one-way device. We have to get to the escape pods or to the shuttles.”
Even as I said that, I knew we weren’t going to have enough time.
“Belay that,” I said. I touched my helmet. “Ella, Ella, do you hear me.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you see a small panel to your left?”
“I do.”
“Do you see the buttons?”
“Yes.”
“Tap in three-three-two-one-four-five,” I said.
“Done,” she said a moment later.
I’d already torn off a control device from my waist. I clicked fast, giving the AI full authority. I’d never liked doing that. The GEV AI was a tricky beast, far too intelligent. I mistrusted it as a matter of course. Still, from time to time, I’d let it do what it did best.
“AI,” I said.
“I am here, Creed.”
“Dismantle the incoming missiles.”
“Working,” the AI said.
Even as I did this, the other troopers were helping the wounded, giving aid as best they could. The bio suits helped repair what bio tissues they could.
“First missile, inert,” the AI told me in its robotic voice.
“How many more are coming?”
“Two,” it said.
I waited. Then I headed back toward the heavy cruiser’s bridge. I should have already thought of that. The ship might have something to add in terms of weaponry to help stop incoming missiles.
I ran, puffing hard, wishing I were in better shape. Had Jennifer given Orcus leave to do this, or had the Abaddon clone escaped from her? It was all very confusing. I did not know my enemies. I could not expect to defeat them if I didn’t know them. Sun Tzu had been quite clear about that.
“AI,” I said.
“I have just caused the second warhead to go inert,” it replied. “The last missile has safeguards. I do not think I will disable it in time.”
“Where’s it headed?”
“At your ship, Effectuator,” the AI said.
“Can you set up a decoy signal?”
“Yes,” the AI said. “But it won’t be in time.”
“Rollo,” I radioed. “Tell everyone to get ready. A missile is headed here. It’s going to hit. Maybe some of us can survive the blast.”
“How much time do we have?” Rollo asked.
“Less than a minute,” I said.
“I’ll tell the others.”
I ran toward the bridge just the same. Maybe I could reach it in time. Maybe I wouldn’t, but quitting meant I’d lose for sure.
“AI,” I said.
“The missile is on-target,” it said. “Good-bye, Effectuator. I shall tell the Curator—”
I never heard the rest, as the missile hit the heavy cruiser. The thermonuclear warhead ignited, making everything turn white and then red, black, and then—I don’t remember—
-37-
A beeping noise told me I was alive. My bones ached and my skin itched. What that a good or a bad sign?
I didn’t feel strong enough to open my eyes, so I didn’t. I lay there, enduring. Maybe someone touched me. Maybe it was my imagination.
I heard sounds afterward, and an instinct told me a woman called my name. I wanted to answer in case it was Jennifer. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t say a word.
I faded away soon after that…
I heard beeping noises again. There was a sense of the passage of time.
“Creed?”
The question came from far away. I thought it might have been God, but it was a female voice and I knew God referred to Himself with a male pronoun. Thus, I knew it wasn’t Him calling me.
“Can you open your eyes?”
I tried, and I did. The reward was blurry images.
“You’ve been hurt,” a woman said.
I recalled Abaddon—Orcus—the missiles he launched at us.
I made a croaking sound.
“It’s all right,” the woman said. “You’ve been healing.”
The blurriness became more distinct, turning into an exotic elf-chick with a worried frown.
“Ella?” I whispered.
She turned her head to look elsewhere. “I don’t think he suffered any brain damage.”
“He’s too hardheaded for that,” a man said. Rollo, maybe.
“Ella?” I asked with greater volume.
“Right here, Creed. Don’t strain yourself. You’ve been badly wounded.”
“Listen,” I whispered. “You have to listen.”
“I am.”
“Put me in the GEV stasis tube. It’s in the—”
“I know where it is,” she said. “You’re already in the tube. That’s why you survived. You were hit pretty bad, Creed.”
I tried to reason out her words. Slowly, it dawned on me that she’d been using the GEV like an Effectuator. I hadn’t told her about the stasis tube, and certainly not how to run it. Had she figured that out for herself? If that was the case, she’d been poking around where she didn’t belong. The Curator wasn’t going to like that.
“Do you see that?” Rollo said from far away. “He’s getting mad about something.”
“That means he’s recovering,” Ella said.
She came into sharper focus. I could also see the edges of the inner stasis tube beside me. The lid had slid open and I obviously lay inside it.
“How many died?” I asked.
“Three quarters of the assault troopers,” Ella said.
“How many lived?” I whispered.
“The lucky thirteen,” Ella said.
“Are any of the cruisers salvageable? No, wait. You have to prepare for Orcus. He’s out there.”
“Not out here,” Ella said.
What did she mean? “Orcus escaped,” I said. “He could be prowling behind the dwarf planet, plotting to destroy us.”
“Creed, we’re back at Earth. Orcus isn’t anywhere near here. Don’t worry about him.”
“What?”
“You’ve been out for two weeks.”
I thought about that. I’d been healing in the stasis tube for two entire weeks? The blast must have almost killed me. If we were back at Earth—
“Don’t tell Diana about my injuries.”
Ella looked away, probably at Rollo, before staring down at me. “Diana thinks you’re hard at work on a plan. She’s wanted to see you for a couple of days, but I’ve made excuses.”
“Smart,” I said. “Orcus got away from us?”
Ella nodded.
“Did you see which jump gate he used?”
“We did. He opened a dimensional portal, which would indicate he escaped into the pocket universe.”
I must have grown pale, because I heard Rollo say, “Better put him back under. Let him heal another few days.”
“No,” I croaked. “Help me up.”
Ella shook her head. “If you can’t get up on your own, you should heal a few more days like Rollo says.”
The idea of trying to get up left me cold. The idea of lying here like an invalid made me mad. I gritted my teeth, tried to reach up to the edges of the stasis tube, and found myself panting.
“Relax,” Ella said.
“No,” I said.
“Creed.”
I roared, and I raised my hands to the sides, clutching them. I heaved with everything I had. Then, I pulled and shouted louder, slowly sitting up until I could see Rollo. At least, I thought it was Rollo. My friend was blurry and indistinct. My head was also pounding from the exertion. I blinked several times and looked again. Rollo slowly came into focus. He seemed thinner than I remembered and had the strangest smile.
“There,” I said, panting, with sweat dripping from my chin. “Now, tell me—”
That’s all I remember. I must have blacked out from the overexertion and flopped back into the stasis tube.
-38-
In retrospect, I’d come just about as close to dying as a man could get and still make a full recovery. With Earth tech from before The Day, I would have died. With Jelk Corporation medical tech, I would have also died. With state-of-the-art center-of-the-galaxy tech, I made a full recovery after spending three weeks in the stasis tube.
The tube beeped at the end of the third week, the lid slid back and I climbed out without a problem. I remembered earlier and examined my body. I was naked and there were hundreds of little pink marks everywhere, indicating mass shredding across the entirety of my body. I wondered what the insides, my organs, looked like.
Had I been naked before when Ella spoke to me? I shook my head, deciding not to worry about it.
Ella had said something earlier about brain damage. I checked a mirror. My face and shaved scalp had similar pink markings.
I walked naked out of the stasis chamber, padded to my room, put on some clothes and went to the small galley. I ate three, half-pounder hamburgers, tons of fries and chugged water as if I’d crossed the Sahara Desert.
I felt full after that.
It occurred to me that the GEV was empty. I decided to test the theory and made a quick inspection of the ship. I was indeed alone.
I trotted to the control chamber and slid into my piloting chair. I clicked on the screen and looked outside the ship. I saw a small hangar bay around me, cocked my head, wondering if I was hallucinating. I realized a second later that the GEV must be in the main cargo hold of a ship. I reexamined the cargo bay. I recognized it as Lokhar design and thus it must be a tiger vessel.
I turned off the screen and headed to an outer lock. Wait. What if I was wrong about being inside a ship and was actually in space? I returned to my quarters, found my bio suit, helmet and boots, and put them on. Then, I went to the outer lock and opened it, prepared for anything.
I stared into a cramped cargo bay.
A man worked a machine near a hatch, looking as if he was drilling something with a drill press. He must have felt my stare because he turned around, saw me and began to shout and wave.
I exited the GEV, heading to him, letting the visor whirr down so we stared eye to eye. He was one of the Lucky Thirteen, an assault trooper by the name of Cherokee Jones. He was squat and thick with flaming red hair, something of a scout specialist and crack shot.
Cherokee Jones was three quarters English and one quarter Cherokee, and had been a U.S. Army Ranger before The Day. He’d been in Afghanistan hunting down terrorists, and had been deep in the Hindu Kush Mountains when the Lokhars had sprayed the world with the bio-terminator.
The trooper grinned. “Good to see you’re back on your feet, sir.”
“Where are we?”
“The Lokhar Light Cruiser Thistle Down,” Jones said.
“No. Where is the light cruiser?”
“Oh. We’re orbiting Luna.”
“We’re not already on the way to Acheron?”
Jones looked confused.
“How long have we been in Luna orbit?” I asked.
“A week, more or less.”
“We’ve wasted all that time doing nothing?”
“No. We were getting set to leave. You wouldn’t believe how fast people worked to get our two cruisers into fighting trim. But then Orange Tamika Lokhars showed up.”
“Here in the Solar System?”
Jones nodded.
“Who commands the Lokhar flotilla?”
“Don’t know about no flotilla. I heard it was a fleet.”
“Fine,” I said. “How many ships did the Lokhars bring?”
“Twenty-one, but half of those are Orange Tamika maulers.”
That was interesting. We could use some maulers, the Orange Tamika heavy hitters. “Who leads the fleet?”
“A Lokhar baron,” Jones said.
“Baron Visconti?” I asked.
Jones brightened, nodding.
“Baron Visconti of Orange Tamika brought a Lokhar Fleet to Earth?” I said.
“It made quite a stir,” the trooper told me. “And from what I hear, the tiger has quite a story.”
I remembered Cherokee Jones better now. He was a fantastic soldier, maybe the best scout in the outfit, and one of the longest serving. But he’d never been the keenest when it came to anything beyond eating, sleeping, whoring and fighting.
So, Baron Visconti had come to Earth with ten maulers, at least. A mauler was a perfectly round, spherical vessel with five times the mass of a battlejumper, making it huge. They could pour out prodigious amounts of firepower, how they’d gotten the name mauler.
At this point in the war between the Lokhar Empire and us, the baron’s fleet was a substantial force. Ten maulers and eleven more Lokhar warships would make a fine addition to the human fleet gathering here. But that also meant Visconti had left Orange Tamika planets that much more undefended. That must have entailed a hard political decision on the baron’s part.
I still couldn’t see why Rollo and Ella hadn’t demanded we leave for Acheron. With the Lokhar maulers along, we would have a much better chance of reaching the legendary planet.
“Are you all right, sir?” Jones asked. “You’re starting to look pale.”
“I’m fine. Now shut up a minute; I need to call Ella.”
“You don’t need to bother calling, sir. Ella, Rollo and the tiger baron are in the galley. They called me a half hour ago, asking if I’d seen any sign of you yet. One of us is always in the cargo hold in case you show up.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that right away?”
“Ella said to make sure you were coherent first. They don’t want you getting excited if you can’t take it. I’ve been determining that while we speak.”
“Has something gone wrong?”
“I’d say so. But maybe them others should explain it to you. I’ll probably just get you mad if I say it.”
I stared at Cherokee Jones, finally saw the wisdom of his words and hurried past him to get to the galley and see what Baron Visconti had to say.
-39-
As I entered the light cruiser’s galley, a giant Lokhar jumped to his feet.
Baron Visconti of Orange Tamika was the biggest tiger I’d ever met. The towering baron bared his fangs as he approached me. He had a massive chest that even Rollo could envy. Medals clinked on his Lord Admiral uniform, medals for c
ourage, cunning and fighting in some of the hottest battles in Lokhar history. Visconti had been there when we’d destroyed the Karg-Jelk Super Fleet ten years ago. He was older, now, with more white on his muzzle than I remembered.
“Commander Creed,” Visconti said in his deep voice. “This is a glorious meeting, old friend.”
I’d removed the second skin and stashed the helmet elsewhere. Maybe I should have kept them on.
The giant tiger gave me a bone-crushing hug. I gave one right back, though, making him grunt. He let go, towering over me as he grinned down into my face.
“You’re as strong as ever, Commander. I was worried about you when I heard what happened at Tau Ceti.” Visconti turned to the table where Rollo and Ella sat. “Are you sure he was healing all this time? He seems perfectly fit to me.”
“How are you feeling, Creed?” Ella asked.
“Great,” I said, slapping my chest. The hug had taxed me, though. I had to exert myself to saunter to the table and sit down instead of collapsing onto a chair.
Rollo got up, pouring me some coffee, returning to the table with a saucer and cup. That seemed out of character, both his getting up for me and giving me a saucer for the cup.
I decided to play along and see if this was a subtle joke of some kind.
Ella eyed me like a concerned doctor, or was it more than that?
I sipped. The coffee was scalding hot. I almost jerked back from it before I remembered this was how I was supposed to like it.
I must have been even more winded than I realized. I’d recovered from a near-death-experience. Now, I had to regain my former stamina.
Visconti resumed his seat and we chitchatted for a time. The Lokhar made light talk until I’d finished my second cup of coffee.
During that time, Ella finally relaxed, her study of me lessening.
Visconti must have noticed, as he glanced at her. Then he became serious. “I heard you faced Orcus.”
I glanced at Ella and Rollo, surprised the baron knew about the encounter with the cloned First One.
“We told him everything,” Ella said.
I raised an eyebrow.
“We don’t have time for anything else,” she explained.
Target: Earth (Extinction Wars Book 5) Page 14
