Target: Earth (Extinction Wars Book 5)

by Vaughn Heppner

  I asked Ella about that.

  “I can devise some tests,” she said. “Maybe I should get started on them.”

  “Good idea.”

  Ella left the bridge.

  Rollo was slumped in a chair, staring at the main screen with Earth growing larger as we approached the planet.

  “Sorry about hitting you,” I said.

  Rollo shook his head. He had a bruise on his chin and another on the back of his head, and a hangdog look in his eyes. “I needed it,” he said. “Just like I needed the whippings my old man gave me when I was a kid.”

  “You’re glad your father spanked you?” I asked, startled by the idea.

  Rollo turned to me. “Totally,” he said. “I was a rat as a kid. My dad helped beat some sense into me. Now, mind you, I didn’t like it at the time. But I knew he did it to help me. Remember how no one spanked their kids anymore before The Day?”

  “Don’t I ever,” I said. “I saw the results in the local supermarkets and elsewhere. Kids screamed and acted up and their parents pleaded with them to behave.”

  “Exactly,” Rollo said. “A swift hand to the butt would have changed their attitude. Kids have to know who’s in charge or they’re monsters.”

  “There’s an incoming call for you, Commander,” a comm tech said, interrupting.

  “Put it on the main screen,” I said.

  General Briggs appeared. “Commander,” he said. “I thought you might like to know what’s happening with the Orange Tamika Fleet.”

  “You bet,” I said.

  The screen split into two halves. On one half, Briggs still stared at me. On the other half, a swarm of Earth-built missiles closed in on the accelerating OT fleet. They had three maulers and all the smaller vessels left, making fourteen warships altogether. Some of the light cruisers had taken damage and one pursuit destroyer lagged behind.

  “Have you received any calls from them?” I asked.

  “We have not,” Briggs said. “The Prime Minister would like a clearer picture of what you found aboard their ships.”

  I went over in detail everything he and Diana needed to know concerning my mission and the domination machines. I also told Briggs about Orcus, trying to remember exactly what the clone had said to me.

  When I was finished, Briggs said, “I have a question.”

  “Shoot,” I said.

  “Do you think Baron Visconti really visited Acheron like he said?”

  “Great question,” I said. “That was the hardest thing to accept about his story. What gave the OT crews the morale to attempt such a thing? It was a forbidden star system to them. No. I doubt Visconti really went there. On the other hand, I believe Earl Parthian really did go to Acheron. That would explain a lot, particularly his rapid rise to power, maybe the domination machines and Orcus’s adult age.”

  “Then we can’t go to Acheron and plunder the planet for superior tech?” Briggs asked. “We can’t because Purple Tamika has already picked it clean.”

  “You have a point,” I said.

  “Then how do we defeat the Plutonian cruisers, never mind defeating the rebuilding Purple Tamika navy with its superior weaponry?”

  “I’ll tell you how. Visconti spoke about a city deep in Acheron’s planetary core. Maybe I could go to the star system and travel to the city through special Effectuator means.”

  “Do we have the time for you to go to Acheron and back?”

  “With the stunt Orcus just pulled against us, it sure doesn’t seem like it.”

  “So we fight as is until we’re dead?” Briggs asked.

  “Do you know of a better idea?”

  The whites in his eyes expanded. “Maybe the Lokhar Emperor will accept our surrender.”

  “Sure, he might,” I said, scornfully. “But Orcus and Jennifer won’t.”

  “That is conjecture on your part,” Briggs said.

  “That’s right, but it’s the correct conjecture.”

  “We need something more, Commander.”

  I turned away. We needed something more. Briggs was right. We needed the enemy’s advanced technology, for one thing.

  “Plutonian cruisers should be attacking soon,” Rollo told me.

  “So what?” I said, understanding his implication. “If we try to storm them with assault troopers, the ships will just blow up spectacularly like always, killing more of the old guard.”

  “Not if you first get inside a ship with your phase suit and deactivate the ultra-detonator,” Rollo said.

  I stared at my over-muscled friend. “I’ll be damned,” I said, softly. “I actually knocked some sense into you.” I turned to Briggs. “General,” I said. “I have an idea.”

  -49-

  The more I thought about it, the more Rollo’s suggestion made sense. Not only would a Plutonian vessel carry exotic tech, but it should give us the ability to form a dimensional portal to the pocket universe.

  There were some problems, though. Orcus must still be alive, escaping with the OT Fleet. Earth’s missile salvo had destroyed the pursuit destroyer, two light cruisers, a heavy cruiser and one of the maulers. The fleet must have taken damage as a whole earlier to let the missiles get so close to them. Given the clone’s special teleportation ability, I doubted Orcus had stayed long enough on any destroyed ship to die. Pop! He’d be on a safe ship.

  What remained of the OT Fleet neared a jump gate to escape from the Solar System. I found it telling they hadn’t made a dimensional portal to escape. That told me the present fleet could not do so. Maybe whatever did the creating had been too heavily damaged or destroyed.

  Here was the thing. Could Orcus send a message to the pocket universe? Or could he send a message to someone who could reach the pocket universe quickly?

  “Holgotha could do it,” Ella said, when I mentioned the problem to her. We were riding a shuttle down to Earth, to New Denver and the coming strategy session there.

  “True,” I said. “I bet Holgotha is with Jennifer, and she’s most likely at the safest place possible.”

  “The pocket universe?” asked Ella.

  “That would be my guess.”

  “If all that’s true…” Ella said, “I’d say Orcus can’t call Jennifer yet. That means Orcus can’t warn the Plutonians not to make another attack here.”

  “Those are too many ifs for my liking,” I said.

  Ella nodded, and that ended the conversation.

  We reached New Denver shortly thereafter. This time, no massed hovers waited to swarm us on the tarmac. I rode quietly in a car, enjoying the mountains and particularly loving the green grass and the flowers everywhere. I rolled down a window as we passed towering evergreen trees. The pine scent was overpoweringly delightful, reminding me of boyhood trips into the mountains.

  I smiled at Ella. She was in the back seat with me. “I’ve missed this,” I said, quietly, maybe more emotionally than I’d intended.

  “Are you going back to the Curator when this is over?”

  I was looking out of the window again, maybe so I wouldn’t have to face her. “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I said. “I don’t want to go back.”

  I listened to the tires rolling against the road.

  Ella asked a minute later, “Do you think the Curator is watching you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Does that modify your behavior?”

  “What is this,” I asked, “twenty questions?”

  “You’ve changed, Creed. You’re still cunning and like to attack, but you don’t seem like the same hard charging bastard I knew ten years ago.”

  “I’m ten years wiser.”

  “That’s hard to fathom.”

  “I know… I hate getting older.”

  “It beats the alternative.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I tell myself. But I’d rather be younger and stronger.”

  “And dumber?” Ella asked.

  “If that’s the price, you bet.”

  “Not me. I never want to be
dumber. I’ve made enough mistakes in my life, big ones. I don’t want to make any more.”

  I turned away from her again. I’d made plenty of mistakes in my time, and I would likely make many more, but I loved being strong and reckless. I liked the invincibility of youth—at least when I had been young, I’d figured I was invincible and acted accordingly. Nowadays, I felt my mortality more often, and I didn’t like it.

  I focused on smelling the passing pine trees once more. In this marvelous moment, I loved life. I had purpose, and I was on the road to recovering my long lost love. I wasn’t going to believe what the Curator had told me about Jennifer. I would help heal her tormented mind. I would fix what Abaddon had twisted. And if I couldn’t do those things, the universe was going to know that Commander Creed, Effectuator Creed—one of those two, anyway—had given it his best shot.

  -50-

  Nothing much changed during the strategy session except that Diana made it plain that she wasn’t simply concerned about the Earth’s survival. She wasn’t even mainly concerned with us Earthers surviving. She figured all the humans were Earthlings—Terrans—if long-lost cousins a thousand steps removed.

  “I’m the elected representative of the Terran Confederation of Liberated Planets,” Diana said, standing at the head of the conference table. She was wearing a suit today, skirt and jacket, and had her hair up. I can’t say that I liked it as much on her. The suit was too masculine looking, the wrong look for an Amazon Queen.

  “I’m not going to shirk my responsibility,” Diana added. “We have to defend all humans.”

  “Begging your pardon,” I said. “But a king by the name of Frederick the Great had a saying about that. He who defends everything defends nothing.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Diana demanded.

  “Easy,” I said. “If you defend every spot just as hard, that means wherever your enemy strikes will be no better defended than anywhere else. One has left the initiative to the enemy.”

  Diana rubbed her jaw. “That wasn’t what I meant,” she finally said. “I want to defend—let me use a different word. I want to save as many people as I can. I don’t want to divert everything to saving Earth while all the other Confederation planets burn.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I get that. It’s clear what we have to do then.”

  Diana shook her head.

  “Attack,” I said. “You know what they say. The best defense is a good offense. If you’re attacking hard enough, your enemy doesn’t have time to attack your territory. Thus, it’s totally defended.”

  “Enough of your tomfoolery, Creed,” Diana said. “I’m well versed in the strategic arts.”

  “I have no doubt about that,” I said. “Sometimes, though, it’s good to get back to basics. The enemy almost trapped us with the Orange Tamika Fleet. We barely foiled it in time.”

  “You foiled it,” Spencer pointed out.

  “Oh, yeah, well, I was glad to oblige,” I said.

  Diana rolled her eyes.

  “My point,” I said, “was that in foiling the deception and breaking the trap, we found out that the Plutonians are going to hit soon. We’ll be ready for them.”

  “We have far more ships in place this time,” Briggs said, “but it’s still going to be a hell of a fight. What’s more, I know the commander has suggested that we capture a Plutonian vessel—”

  “Excuse me,” I said, interrupting him, “but I’m going to do the capturing by myself.”

  “By using your phase suit?” Spencer asked.

  “By any means possible,” I replied. “That will probably entail help from the assault troopers.”

  Spencer turned to Diana. “It’s risky being so reliant upon one individual—no matter how gifted he might be.”

  “What other choice do we have?” Diana said, challenging him with her eyes, and then sitting down.

  “None that I can think of,” Spencer admitted.

  “I have a suggestion,” Ella said.

  Everyone turned to her.

  “I’ve been studying what we know about the Plutonian ships,” Ella said. “As I see it, the ships have one weakness.”

  “They have no weaknesses,” General Briggs said bitterly.

  “Perhaps ‘weakness’ is the wrong word,” Ella said. “They have one deficiency in regard to our warships. None of the Plutonian vessels has an electromagnetic shield.”

  “A force field,” Spencer said. “Does that matter?”

  “Maybe,” Ella said. “I watched videos and read after-action reports about the first Plutonian attack while waiting for Creed to heal in his tube.”

  “‘Heal?’” asked Spencer, perking up. “What do you mean by that?”

  I signaled Ella. She nodded faintly to me.

  “A slip of the tongue,” she said. “It means nothing.”

  Spencer sat back, slyly regarding me out of the corner of his eye. I wondered if this was a way to engage him: pretend to let something slip so he spent all his time on a false trail.

  “Now,” Ella continued, “we’re aware that Plutonian ships possess some kind of inhibiter field. In some fashion, the ships seem to generate this field very near their hulls. The inhibiter limits the amount of explosive damage that…I don’t know, that reaches the hull. The science behind the inhibiter baffles me. I’m simply reporting on what is there.”

  “How is that important to their lack of a force field?” Diana asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Ella said. “Maybe the inhibiter field precludes a force field. Whatever the case, the Plutonian ships do not have shields. In contrast, all our ships have shields, some heavier or stronger than others. A Purple Tamika bombard, for instance, is known to possess greater or sometimes double-layer shields, providing them with extraordinary protection.”

  “You’ve established your point,” Diana said.

  Ella smiled softly, unintimidated. “I don’t mean to belabor the obvious, but it is important. Shields are more critical for stopping certain kinds of weaponry than others. For instance, shields help in forestalling PDD or Particle Discharge Detector missiles.”

  “You’re talking about very special missiles,” Briggs said.

  “Exactly,” Ella said. “A missile outfitted with PDD means less space for warheads. In compensation, a PDD missile targets a ship’s engines. Once inside the ship’s shield, a PDD missile multiplies the probability that an enemy ship will explode because its engine explodes spectacularly.”

  “Yes,” Briggs said, nodding. “I like it.”

  “Explain it to me,” Diana snapped.

  “The Plutonian ships don’t have shields,” Briggs said. “While they can withstand heavy firepower due to their inhibiter fields and exotic hull armor, they’re vulnerable to an older-style weapon: a PDD missile. Thus, as we attack the Plutonian ships, we should saturate them at the end with PDD missiles and blow up their engines to blow up the ships.”

  “Blow up,” Diana said. “I thought we were talking about how to capture one.”

  “On, no,” Ella said. “My idea was how to destroy the Plutonian ships as quickly as possible so as to save Confederation warships from the enemy’s deadly particle beams.”

  “Maybe that will help us in capturing one,” I said.

  “How?” Ella asked.

  At that point, an alarm rang. We all looked up. The main door opened and an orderly ran in.

  “Luna Command has spotted a dimensional portal opening,” the orderly blurted. “Admiral Sparhawk wants me to inform you that Plutonian ships should begin appearing at any time.”

  For a second, there was silence.

  “Creed,” Diana said. “You were saying?”

  I told them my idea. Some of them looked at me as if I were crazy. Others nodded.

  “Right,” Diana said. “General, do any of the battlejumpers have these PDD missiles aboard?”

  “There should be a few of them still in storage on each vessel,” Briggs said.

  “Then, we’ll use w
hat we have,” Diana said. She regarded those of us at the conference table. “We’re going to try Creed’s idea. But first I suggest you get back to your ships so we can win this war.”

  -51-

  The Prime Minister’s statement was premature, but her sentiment was correct. Earth had gained time since fighting off the first Plutonian attack and had gathered reinforcements. The other side had tried to set up a trap so the bulk of Earth Force would have been caught between two enemy forces.

  That had been a plan worthy of Hannibal Barca—Hannibal Lightning—of the Second Punic War. Studying warfare from the ancient world, one would be hard put to find a more perfectly executed battle.

  At the start of the Second Punic War, Hannibal had left Spain and marched across the Alps into Roman Italia. There, his mercenaries had defeated the dreaded iron legions on two different occasions. Hannibal had been the wizard-general of the ancient world, taking inferior soldiers and creating a nearly invincible force with them, terrifying the fabled Roman legions for thirteen years. Much of his legend derived from the perfectly fought battle of Cannae.

  There, with fewer soldiers, Hannibal’s mercenaries and Gallic firebrands had butchered the largest host of Roman-born legionnaires ever assembled on a battlefield. Hannibal had baited the legions—the iron soldiers with blood-soaked short swords—into pushing the front-row Gallic warriors back. Through dint of hard fighting, the legionnaires forced the Gauls to retreat in a concave fashion as the barbarians died horrifically, but in return, the Romans and their allies had followed the longhaired warriors into a trap. Like the jaws of a ravenous beast, Hannibal’s veterans wheeled around the Romans, hitting them from the sides. At the same time, the superior Carthaginian and Numidian cavalry—who had chased off the Roman horsemen—closed the trap from behind. It was as if the legions had marched into the neck of a bag until Hannibal had them in the sack.

  At that point, Hannibal’s killers had pushed the legionnaires in against each other until the dreaded Romans had been packed tight and hardly able to draw their swords. Surrounding that mass of screaming men, Hannibal’s butchers had slaughtered for hours.