Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library

by Kevin McLaughlin

  When Satori’s nose was about to cross the point where he’d tracked the shuttles entering the ship, he yelled “NOW, Beth!”

  That now-familiar beam shot from the Satori’s nose, preparing to form the wormhole to take her back home to Earth. Dan noticed that the ship was visible again – he’d need to ask Beth about that! Without a cloak, they were sitting ducks for those fighters.

  He danced the ship sideways as the beam of light fired from her nose, slicing across the enemy ship like a scalpel. Where it touched, the alien hull didn’t vaporize or explode – it just stopped being there, leaving a jagged meter wide trail.

  “Fighters are coming back fast,” warned Charline.

  “Beth, can you get the cloak back up?” Dan asked. He jinked the ship back the way they’d come, cutting a second trail across the enemy ship. If he couldn’t blow a hole in the side with his new toy, he’d damned well cut his own opening!

  “Looks like we can’t while you’re using the wormhole, Dan. And not sure how much time you can keep it going. You’ve already exceeded our longest trial.”

  “No time for subtlety, Dan – get us in there,” John said.

  He slid the ship sideways faster, and the enemy vessel lurched ahead of him. He wasn’t sure if they were trying to evade him, or if he’d damaged something, but it threw his cutting off. And this time, something inside the hull did explode – he could see fire blossoming through the line he’d carved. Frantically, he slid the Satori back in the direction of the hole he’d been cutting.

  Then the wormhole beam stopped as suddenly as it had sprung to life.

  “Shit! Majel, can we get the wormhole back?” Dan said. The hole he’d cut was nowhere near big enough for the Satori to get through.

  “Negative. Device is at zero charge. Time to recharge is nineteen minutes, forty-three seconds.”

  “The fighters are firing on us!” said Charline.

  Andy fell slack against the deck as the pain stopped once again. The cool metal of the plates soothed skin that felt like a hot iron had been laid against it just moments before. His fingers were hooked into claws, every muscle tensed against the pain and unable to relax even when it vanished.

  But he could still hear what was going on, and still see. All the Naga were getting from him was a set of sheep on the screen above – jumping over a fence, over and over. That’s how he’d been holding out so far: counting sheep. It felt stupid, but it was working. That was good enough for now.

  The door was open, and a new Naga was in the room, saying something to Kassresh. Andy focused his attention, hoping they were close enough that the slimy ball in his ear would translate.

  “What do you mean, something is coming?” Kassresh said.

  “We’re detecting the movement of air on our sensors. Either something very large, or something small moving very fast. It’s headed straight for us!” the smaller Naga said.

  “Their ship! It must be. Have the fighters move to block their path.”

  Andy’s heart soared. The Satori was coming back!

  “I already did, Great One,” the other Naga replied. Andy raised an eyebrow at the emphasis the slug put on the title, then winced and wished he hadn’t moved as his overstressed face muscles twinged. Kassresh was apparently pretty high up around here. The Naga must be really worried, for him to warrant such special attention.

  “But the ship has slipped past them,” it went on.

  Andy saw the screen, where his mind was again projecting an image of the ship, and laughed.

  Kassresh whirled on him. “Laugh now, mammal! But your ship will be destroyed. And then I will personally feed you to the hatchlings, one strip at a time!”

  “They’re coming,” Andy said. “You’re so in for it now.”

  Kassresh snarled, reaching out with a claw to rip Andy’s throat out, and he was too weak to move out of the way. But before the claws could reach their mark, the deck lurched under them both, dropping the alien to the floor. The scream of tortured metal ripped through the air, tearing at Andy’s ears. The deck plates jumped again, tossing tools from the tables and knocking over the brain scanner.

  Andy’s rifle clattered to the deck only feet away from his head.

  Twenty-Four

  Beth was trying to keep one eye on the wormhole power level while she managed the railguns. She supposed John could have run the guns, but he had to coordinate everything. And they hadn’t had time to get Charline up to speed on using them, because of the rush to get this first mission started. This was supposed to be Andy’s job, she cried silently, as another of her shots missed one of the fighters.

  At least she’d managed to get the cloak back up before they’d been hit. She guessed they’d be dead already otherwise, and the thought chilled her. Too much was riding on their success here. She wasn’t an action hero – she was an engineer, damn it! She fired again, missed again.

  “Dan, I can’t hit them while you’re dodging,” she said.

  “I stop dodging and one of them is going to ram us,” he replied. “This close and as slow as we’re going, they have a pretty good idea where we are.” He sent them diving off to one side again to avoid another fighter making a run at them. All around the Satori, the air was full of flashes of light from the fighters’ guns.

  It seemed they weren’t interested in capturing the Satori anymore. Beth smiled grimly, unsure quite how to take that. At least it meant they’d hurt the bastards enough to be taken seriously.

  But her return fire was completely ineffective. If Andy was here, maybe he could hit something, but she was out of her element entirely. She simply didn’t have the reflexes to hit the fast moving fighters.

  But she knew who might. “Majel? Can you assist in targeting for the railguns?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Beth’s eyes lit up. “Target a fighter and fire.”

  A moment later, the guns spat out another ball of uranium and iron, and one of the fighters exploded into flames. Beth whooped, throwing her arms in the air.

  She looked around the cabin. Everyone but Dan was staring at her.

  “Nice shot, Beth!” Dan said, his focus still on his controls.

  “Wasn’t me. That was Majel,” Beth said. She saw Charline raise an eyebrow before turning back to her own console.

  “Well, have her do it again. A few less fighters out here would be good!” Dan said, grunting as he struggled to dodge more incoming fire.

  “Majel, take railgun control. Eliminate those fighters,” Beth said, feeling much better about the odds of their survival than she had a few moments before.

  The railguns spat again, and another enemy ship exploded.

  Andy’s eyes widened, seeing the rifle come to rest so close. Both of the Naga in the room had lost their footing, crashing to the deck and sliding across the floor as the entire ship tilted madly. Andy glanced at Kassresh, rising from where he had fallen across the room from him. Their eyes met, and he saw the feral challenge there, saw the predatory look of the cobra in those slitted pupils. The look almost froze him in his tracks, like a mouse instinctively trying to avoid the predator by remaining still. Instead he pushed himself up from the deck onto all fours, moving toward his weapon.

  He was not prey, damn it!

  Andy’s hands found the rifle and grasped it firmly. He rolled over into a sitting position, then moved to bring his back up against the side of the table. It wasn’t much protection, even bolted to the floor, but he felt better with something solid at his back. His whole body was screaming, the lingering agony from the torture made so much worse by every movement. Andy was counting on adrenaline to ease the pain, and it did – somewhat. He still felt like he’d been dumped into a bin of needles and then run over by a truck.

  The ship righted itself with a lurching motion. Whatever was going on to mess with the artificial gravity like this, the Satori had to be involved somehow. His friends were coming – he just had to hold on.

  The lower ranked Naga got to its feet
and saw the weapon in his hands. It gave a loud snarl the ear-slug declined to translate and launched itself at Andy.

  He raised the rifle and aimed in a fluid motion.

  The shot took the Naga through its open mouth, shattering one tooth and proceeding on into its brain. The impact halted its forward motion, tipping it backwards head-first before it crashed down against the deck. It was dead before its body came to rest, and Andy was already moving his rifle toward the other target in the room: Kassresh.

  The alien was getting to his feet as Andy’s sights came to rest on his head.

  It cocked its head sideways, looking at him with unmistakable curiosity. “You are a warrior, then. I would never have believed it. A mammal warrior.”

  Andy got slowly to his feet, the rifle never leaving his shoulder, his sights trained on his foe. He could smell the sharp gunpowder smell from his last shot, and his ears were ringing a little from firing in close quarters. But the slug still seemed to be translating just fine.

  A warrior. Yes. Never prey. “I am,” he replied.

  Kassresh hissed. “Enough then. It would have meant eternity in the cold-dark if I’d died by mischance to a lesser being. But if a warrior’s heart beats within you – then there is something you should know.”

  “And what’s that?” Andy kept the sights trained on Kassresh’s eye, all the anger, frustration, and fear he’d felt under his captivity boiling to the surface. He started to squeeze the trigger.

  “Your ammunition is still on the table.”

  There was a click instead of a boom as Andy’s finger finished squeezing and the rifle’s hammer fell into an empty chamber. He realized his mistake immediately – he’d been too glad to hold the weapon again, too distracted by pain. He’d missed that he only had the one round already chambered in the gun. The Naga had removed the magazine from the weapon.

  Andy’s heart sank, a cold sensation filling his gut. He lowered the rifle, holding it staff-like across his body as Kassresh came closer. The rounds he needed were maddeningly close, right behind him on the table. But if he turned to grab them, Kassresh would be on him in an instant.

  Instead, the alien advanced slowly, leisurely, each step measured with a boxer’s grace as he closed the few meters between them.

  “Now we will see how well you fight with your claws, mammal.”

  Dan noticed that it was getting easier to dodge the fighters. He realized there were a lot less of them to avoid. At first he thought that Majel had taken most of them out – her fire control was devastatingly effective. Charline was still sitting at her console, nose down, and hadn’t lifted her face since the computer had taken over targeting.

  But although their railguns had thinned the herd, that wasn’t the only factor in the suddenly lessened fire. The fighters were retreating. There were still a dozen struggling to engage the Satori, but Dan could fly rings around a dozen ships, thanks to the cloak. What was bothering him was that another dozen had returned to their hangars. As he watched, three more peeled off from the flight chasing him, and Majel took one of the remaining fighters out.

  “John, they’re recalling their fighters,” Dan said.

  “Just saw that,” John said. “They can’t see us well enough to hit us with the big ship’s guns, or they would’ve already done so. I’m thinking they intend to retreat.”

  The mothership had been heading steadily skyward, lifting toward space. Dan had no clue what sort of drive they were using for interstellar travel – he had a feeling the Satori’s would work as well within atmosphere as out – but if they were trying to get away, that was a Bad Thing.

  “Not with Andy, you don’t,” he growled.

  He felt John’s hand on his shoulder. “Dan, can you get us in there?” John asked. “We’re so close. We’ve got to try something to get him back.”

  Dan could hear the emotion in his friend’s voice. He’d pushed them to this. Driven John to hope. His idea to drill a hole through the ship’s hull had failed. He had to think of something else. He watched the retreating fighters fly into their mothership.

  “I think so. Better sit down, though.”

  The hand vanished, and Dan went back to his work. With a twist, he sent the Satori spinning off after the alien ship as it sped skyward away from her. He closed the distance easily – he thought the Satori was the faster ship even under normal circumstances, but his target was trying to hold steady enough for fighters to dock. Another one zipped into a second bay as he swung around the starboard side of the enemy ship.

  “That’s our way in,” he said, eying the hangar bay.

  “Can the Satori even fit through that?” Charline asked.

  “Yeah. Just barely. I think,” Beth said.

  Dan brought the nose level and began his approach. There was a blue shimmer at the mouth of the hangar – some sort of energy field. He hoped it wasn’t going to work like a brick wall. Maybe it only let in the alien fighters? He had only seconds to make the decision. They might not get another shot; if the aliens knew they were trying to get in this way, they might close the bay entirely.

  “Majel, fire one railgun round ahead of us, into the bay,” Dan said.

  “Complying,” the computer replied. A second later there was a detonation and a burst of flame as something inside the hangar exploded from the round’s impact. If the railgun rounds can get in, then the Satori probably can too, Dan reasoned. The fighters had entered at a high speed. Maybe you just had to be going fast enough?

  He goosed the engines for a little more speed, and the enemy ship seemed to leap toward him, the hangar bay looming larger with every second. Sweat beaded on his brow. The door was too small for them to get in at this speed. He knew that. He was going to tear the Satori to shreds trying to crack through.

  And then they were inside, a screech of metal tearing as the Satori’s wing clipped the edge of the door, starting the ship into a spin. Warning lights flashed across his console. The world rolled by his view in a blur as he tried to bring the ship back under control.

  The ship came to a shuddering stop. He looked out the window, still trying to orient himself and shake off a lingering dizziness. They’d spun in almost a full circle, and smacked into at least two of the lighter aliens fighters in the process. The interior of the hangar was a mess. Through the window, he could see a couple of the aliens running out the main door.

  “Think I scratched the paint a little, John. Sorry,” Dan said, gasping. He must have forgotten to breathe for a few moments there, and his lungs were telling him what a bad idea that was.

  “Any landing you walk away from, eh Dan? No worries. This time. Everyone OK?” John asked. Dan peeked over his shoulder, saw Beth and Charline nodding. “Good. Dan, keep the engines warm. Beth, you’re with me.”

  Charline half stood up, about to protest, but winced when she put weight on her ankle. She gingerly settled back into her seat.

  “Sorry, Charline,” John said. “But I need you here with Dan, working with Majel on the railguns. You know computers better than anyone else on the team. Ready, Beth?”

  “Couldn’t keep me away,” Beth said, getting to her feet. The brusque tone she used almost hid the faint quaver in her voice as she said it. Guns and firefights were outside Beth’s experience, but she was willing to back John up anyway, and Dan was torn between admiration and fear for her.

  She picked up her rifle, checked the magazine quickly, then looked back up at John. “Let’s go get Andy.”

  The look in her eyes promised a painful encounter to anyone standing in her way.

  Twenty-Five

  Kassresh closed on Andy like lightning, and he barely got the rifle up in time to deflect the claws coming at this throat. He whirled the butt end of the weapon up and smacked it into the back of the alien’s elbow with a blow that would have sent a human stumbling. But rather than lose his balance, Kassresh just grunted and held his ground, pivoting his hips to take another swipe.

  Andy knew he was fighting way out of
his weight class. The alien out-massed him at least two to one, and it felt like most of the difference was muscle or scales. The Naga had evolved to be hand to hand predators. He was wearing out fast, and wondered for a moment how long it had been since he’d slept? He’d suffered a lot of bangs and knocks in the last day, too.

  A claw flashed toward his face in his peripheral vision, and another brief burst of adrenaline hit his system, giving him just enough speed to dodge. The curved claws whizzed by inches away from his eyes.

  Then Kassresh stopped his attack abruptly, although he stayed in a fighting stance.

  “You tire,” the alien said. “A shame. This will not last long.”

  He was right. Andy knew that. He wasn’t going to win this by outfighting Kassresh. He needed to outsmart him.

  He fears.

  The thought came out of nowhere. Andy wasn’t sure what had made it pop into his head, but as soon as he thought it, he knew the assessment was dead on accurate. And that was a weakness, a chink in the armor.

  “Where are your guards, Kassresh?” he asked. “Why haven’t any other Naga come in? Why did your ship tilt? Why are the alarms sounding?” He could hear them, although none were blaring in this room, a sound like a distant gong being rung.

  Kassresh growled and closed with him again.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Andy said, stepping back to avoid another blow. He had the table to his left now, so Kassresh would have a harder time attacking from that side. “My friends are here. And they’re going to take your ship apart.”

  “Vermin!” Kassresh spat. But Andy could see the first glint of something new in the alien’s eyes. These Naga were not used to dealing with the unknown, he realized. By being something new, with technology that was familiar to the Naga as the boogeyman was to Earth children, they were messing with the Nagas’ heads something fierce.

  Andy jammed the butt of his rifle up toward Kassresh’s snout, and connected. He smiled, enjoying the heavy crunch of plastic and steel slamming into bone.