Star Brigade: Maelstrom (Star Brigade Book 2)

by C. C. Ekeke

  “We began working together, while keeping tabs on your pet Kedri, Biros Nor. I told Maelstrom what I knew, because Thulican technology had been used to upgrade many UComm defense systems. I got him access to any internment camp in the Union.”

  Timbore began to chuckle brashly. “It got better when Biros took personal leave a few years ago to the Uncharted Expanse, who knows why. I tracked him down and struck. With advanced HLHG tech and Maelstrom’s followers psi-scanning Biros’ memories, I set my place in this scheme.”

  This was all too much for Ari. “And the real Biros Nor?” he asked in a dead voice.

  Maelstrom stepped forward. “We disposed of him after he served Korvan’s purpose. In proper Kedri fashion.” The Korvenite waved his hand dismissively, as if the thought of Biros annoyed him. “Once Timbore replaced Biros Nor, he convinced the Sovereign about the benefits of a trade merger, along with building a Kedri-Union station. All the while, he kept supplying us with better technology and vessels.”

  A dazzling explosion, on the viewscreen from Sheffield, lit up Maelstrom’s colorless face. “We finally had the means to free our race, liberate the internment camps and take back Sollus.”

  Bogosian stared at them both, unable to absorb all this. “The entire time you worked with me on the trade merger….” He shook his head. “The Imperium won’t forgive this—.”

  “The Kedri won’t be harmed by our plan,” Maelstrom countered. “They’ll be more offended and embarrassed by the weak government that couldn’t protect its own capitalworld.”

  That horrifying fate bubbled up a memory in Ari’s mind. “When I saw Maelstrom in my home—!”

  “He is smarter than he looks,” Timbore snarked. “During that meeting with the Domini, I implanted a tracker in your body, small enough to evade detection. Though Maelstrom using it to project into your mind almost burned it out. How did you think I countered your tried-and-true Honor Guard maneuver?”

  Bogosian remembered; instead of transmatting to an impenetrable lower level in Andromeda Hall, he was yanked out of mid-transmat and captured by Timbore. Bogosian glanced at the viewscreen and saw Terra Sollus burning. Hatred did this; his, the Korvenites’, Timbore’s. And the Union citizens were the ones suffering, dying. That hard truth made Ari want to weep.

  Maelstrom kneeled before Bogosian, his eyes glittering maliciously. “Did you truly believe you and yours wouldn’t pay for you crimes? Now Sollus will be cleansed of those not of Korvan’s chosen race, by the very technology protecting it.” Maelstrom calmly stood up.

  Bogosian looked up quickly. A sudden dread filled him. “Cleansed?”

  “With this space station,” Maelstrom took a brief glance at his surroundings. “The planetary shields will cleanse this world, just like on Earth. Quadronide and thaelarite from this station’s core, mixed into Sollus’ shielding, will wash everything clean. Only this time, we choose who dies.”

  “No,” Bogosian was on his feet. “NO!” He rushed Maelstrom. Timbore leaped forward to intercept, but the Chouncilor somehow danced around him. The Korvenite stopped pacing, but didn’t turn.

  Ari didn’t care about his own life, or that he had no chance of defeating Maelstrom. As Chouncilor of the Galactic Union, as someone with family on Terra Sollus, he could not let this ‘cleansing’ happen.

  “I’ll kill you first!” he spat, hands outstretched to strangle the Korvenite. “You won’t-AAGH!”

  Some invisible force yanked Bogosian high into the air by the throat—squeezing tightly. The Chouncilor choked and clutched madly at the telekinetic vice. Maelstrom turned, looking annoyed. “You try to assault me, Aristotle? The temerity.”

  “Now?” The Thulican impatiently stomped his foot.

  Maelstrom sighed with taxed patience. “I suppose. But only once.” He waved a warning finger at the Thulican. “A dead Bogosian can’t suffer. Once he has, then he dies.”

  Timbore grinned cruelly and grabbed Ari by the scruff of the neck, after which Maelstrom released his chokehold. The Chouncilor gratefully gasped in as much oxygen as he could—only to have it viciously driven back out by Timbore’s piston-like fist to his stomach. Ari’s body shuddered, his insides igniting with hurt. He felt and heard two ribs snap on his left side. Bogosian sagged in Timbore’s grip.

  “Shut me down, that felt good!” The Thulican dropped him like a youth bored with a toy. The Chouncilor doubled up in anguish on the stony floor.

  “Pl-please Maelstrom, I beg you to stop!” His voice sounded like a pathetic raggedy gasp.

  “Your plea is a raindrop falling onto an ocean; utterly irrelevant.” Maelstrom’s lips curled into a sneer. “Enjoy the view.”

  As dark spots danced in front of his vision, Ari Bogosian looked up and saw from afar a viewscreen displaying a space view of Terra Sollus. A dense yellow shell covered the Galactic Union capitalworld.

  Brief, bright flashes snapping all around the sphere showed warships still attempting to breach the shield. Bogosian prayed that they did.

  “Pray all you want to your ‘deity’,” he heard Maelstrom retort to his thoughts. “Korvan’s work will be done. This day, Sollus returns to its rightful owners.”

  24.

  Chaos and madness, the only two words Liliana could conjure to describe the Union Commons Park. Civilians running for a place to hide surrounded her on all sides, easy pickings for the swarms of three dozen or more Retributionaries. The golden-armored Korvenites rained down bright psionic chest beams—killing targets for sport, humans taking priority, of course. The smoky air reeked of burnt corpses. Liliana’s stomach roiled and knotted, but she had somehow numbed herself to the choking stench, the screams coming from every direction, the vicious killings. But she wouldn’t allow herself to look beyond the Commons. Liliana knew what she would see, Conuropolis bleeding, burning, dying. It would be break through her walls, devastate her.

  Instead the doctor kept her mind on CT-1, on Captain Nwosu’s crazy plan to breach the Amalgam, on Sam’s equally crazy plan with a fourteen-sentient UComm A.N.T. squad to stop the Retributionaries and save these civilians. Sam and Khrome hovered far away on either side of the attacking Korvenites. V’Korram was perched somewhere in one of the park’s redwoods. A.N.T. Troopers surrounded the Commons in their hovering assault crafts. They had already transmatted a number of civilians to secure underground locations. This park was one of the last outstanding sections. Tyris stood back to back with Liliana. The coldness rolling of him was oddly comforting. Thanks to their outfits’ psychic dampening, both Brigadiers hadn’t been detected by the Retributionaries. A Galdorian female fell to the ground, impaled through the back by a jade psionic blast. Another innocent killed. Liliana, struggling to stay upright amid the barrage of fleeing civilians, looked away. These Korvenite terrorists had to pay for this and all they’d done to her homeworld.

  All Liliana needed was the go sign.

  “Crescendo. Arcturus,” Sam called to Liliana and Tyris respectively via their comms. Her disembodied order cut through the tidal waves of screaming terror. “GO.”

  Liliana whispered a prayer to the Holy Trinity of God, pointing her hands skyward like a loaded pulse pistol. At the exact moment, Tyris lifted both bronze gauntleted fists in the air. “Now,” he wheezed.

  They moved as one, spinning at the same time to the left like a wheel, Liliana firing a sonic blast and Tyris shooting a hail of icicle blades. Liliana knocked one Retributionary into another, both smacking into a huge pinewood with a hard scrunch. Tyris’ razor-sharp icicles ripped through the Korvenite’s sollunium armor in green spurts of blood. The duo spun to the right and blasted another four more out of the sky. Spin left, blast. Two more fell. Spin right, blast. Three more dropped like flies. Confusion disrupted the Korvenite soldiers fleetingly, as they couldn’t telepathically sense their attackers’ location. Then they turned and saw with their eye, losing all interest in the helpless civilians. Liliana’s heart leapt into her throat. Trust in your combat team. The Retributionaries conv
erged on their location with vengeful haste. One unleashed a jade chest beam and scorched a path toward the doctor and Tyris.

  “Jakadda,” Sam called to V’Korram. “GO!”

  A tawny blur ripped across overhead. SCHLESH! The Retributionary’s psionic blast sputtered and died. Lime-green blood poured from the slit through her armored throat. The Korvenite fell, lifeless.

  Liliana and Tyris spun left and fired, taking down another two of their confused attackers. She glanced up to see V’Korram crouched atop the branch of another redwood on the other side of the fight, his scaphe dagger green with Korvenite blood. The blood hungry brute was smiling. He sprang again. SCHLSCRUNCH! Another Retributionary fell, neck spurting blood. The Kintarian landed easily in the middle of the chaotic crowd before Liliana and Tyris, wrapped his arms around his teammates. Tyris tapped a button on his belt and the Commons vanished in a yellow shimmer—right before a torrent of jade energy beams tore through the ground they had just stood on.

  They reappeared a few meters away, near the safety of blue, grey and black camouflaged A.N.T Troopers armed to the teeth. Liliana realized she had forgotten to breathe and sucked in a welcome gasp of air. Sam then said on their comms. “Khrome. You and I are up.”

  A fiery comet scorched through the confused group of Korvenites from the east, Sam aka Heatstroke. A silvery bullet of speed bowled into the Retributionaries from the west, Khrome aka Khrome. Back and forth the two airborne Brigadiers zigzagged. And the Retributionaries, too slow to evade the attacks, fell either in crushed armor or scorched and smoldering.

  “A.N.Ts Go!” Immediately the hundreds of churning and terrified civilians, who were still fleeing or had stupidly stopped to watch the ongoing battle, began to vanish in bright flashes. Soon the whole of the commons became a garden of brilliant plumes of sparkling light, until only the dead remained.

  “Crescendo. You and me!” Liliana stepped away from Tyris and V’Korram, pointing at the Retributionaries attempting to flee for the skies. She almost felt sorry for them, before glancing at the corpses strewn across the Union Commons. The doctor shot off a widened sonic discharge akin to a cascade of rings, keeping up the pressure. Sam flanked them from up high, wreathed in orange and yellow flames. A churning blaze burst forth from her hands, swallowing any Liliana had missed. The doctor heard screams of pain and death. She felt the intense heat from Sam’s controlled inferno. Liliana shut them out and amplified the power of her attack. These Korvenites deserved this, she kept telling herself.

  Within moments dead Retributionaries hit the ground in dead heaps, either missing chunks of armor or roasting in it. A few remaining Retributionaries tried flying away, and met the blazing volley of the A.N.T troopers’ Sunfire pulse rifles. Greenish sprays of blood, sollunium chunks and other innards showered the ground further. After the last Retributionaries had been killed, Sam and Khrome flew toward CT-1 with big smiles. And Liliana found herself easily reciprocating.

  “Great work guys,” the pyrokinetic codenamed Heatstroke crowed.

  Khrome floated above the ground with arms across his chest, looking smugger than usual. “Ten,” he bragged about how many Retributionaries he defeated.

  “Ten,” Tyris replied calmly, his crystalline body smudged with soot.

  Khrome stopped smiling. “The ones Crescendo took out with you don’t count, Icicle!”

  Liliana rolled her eyes. Tyris only took out nine Korvenites, but she wasn’t getting pulled into their competition. Then she recalled that this was how they were coping with this conflict’s devastation.

  “Quiet.” V’Korram crouched and placed his ear to the ground. One rumble, two rumbles, three, four—each shuddering through Liliana’s bones, sounding like footsteps.

  “Incoming!” He sprang up and pointed east, just beyond the Union Commons. Everyone gawked.

  A Korvanes statue, one of the few not engaged by any UComm vessels, tromped past two buildings. The towering monolith moved fluidly, like a giant Korvenite sheathed in gold. Its eyes burned bright green, visible through the dark billows staining the air. Twin beams ripped out from those glowing eyes, scorching the Commons’ perimeter. Thick veins of hovercar traffic exploded on the Korvanes’ chest when it walked right through them. The colossus strode to the Commons, every step shaking the ground.

  “Bloody hells!” seethed the earthborn human commanding this PLADECO squad, a sunburnt Australasian named Rigel Simmons. Weathered in features and wiry in build, his accent resembled Captain Nwosu’s Cercidalean drawl. “That ‘un must’ve got past the perimeter our SkyGuard bruthas set.”

  “Won’t get past me.” The Thulican’s statement drew stares, as did the hum of his signature feet repulsors growing closer and louder.

  “Khrome!” Sam called out. But the silvery Thulican had already zoomed away in a shiny blur, scorching the air in his wake. He cut the distance between himself and the Korvanes statue and plowed straight through its left knee.

  The impact completely shattered the entire leg from hip to foot, shooting millions of sollunium fragments in all directions. The statue teetered to the left, tottered to the right on one leg. Liliana saw the tiny speck of Khrome flying up past the monolith’s head, up into the sky until barely visible…

  …and plunged straight down, picking up speed, now a flash of motion. The monolith was so intent on staying upright it never detected the Thulican smash into the Korvanes’ dome, exploding it into a million little pieces. Shockwaves from Khrome’s strike rippled along the headless monolith’s entire body, forming into intertwining spidery cracks, until the entire statue collapsed in upon itself.

  Massive chunks of jagged sollunium crashed down, rumbling the air like a thunderstorm. Once the dust began to settle, V’Korram nimbly bounded atop the widespread mound of sollunium, checking for some sign of Khrome underneath. “Khrome, are you under here?”

  “Brainy question!” a muffled voice yelled. A pile of sollunium chunks burst up from V’Korram’s left, revealing Khrome’s fist jutting out of the ground. Moments later, the Thulican dragged himself out.

  “Fine,” Tyris conceded grudgingly. “You win.”

  The PLADECO A.N.T.s erupted with huge cheers, all in backslapping bro-mode over Khrome’s reckless act. “Impressive, mate,” Simmons gave a huge thumbs up. Liliana was in awe, but also furious. Khrome thought having armored skin gave him license to take such stupid risks. Fortunately the doctor wasn’t alone in her feelings.

  As soon as Sam landed near the wreckage, she got right in the Thulican’s face, easy given he only had an inch in height on her. “Don’t ever break rank to go demolish big moving statues…unless you’re ordered to,” she added with less bile.

  “Yes, commander,” Khrome nodded humbly, but for less than a moment. Thoroughly pleased with himself, he held up a hand for a high-five. “That was so beyond, right?”

  Sam’s scowl quickly melted into a smug smirk. “Goddamn right,” she returned Khrome’s high-five, much to Liliana’s annoyance.

  A while later, Sam and Khrome flew off to assist PLADECO SkyGuard. The commander tasked Liliana, Tyris and V’Korram with heading further into the heart of Conuropolis on a sleek and light-armored PLADECO assault cruiser. Their mission remained the same. “Transmat any civilians to the underground shelters and kill as many Retributionary fuckwads as possible,” said Sam with a nonchalant smirk. Of course she was worried that Terra Sollus might fall, and fearful for Captains Ishliba and Nwosu. But as usual, Sam kept her true feelings contained, and soared off like a fiery comet. Liliana tried to do the same when the apocalyptic scene before her became clearer, but couldn’t.

  The Diktat District looked like a war zone. Because it is a war zone, she reminded herself chillingly.

  Conuropolis’ heart and soul was in ruins; plazas striped by blackened scorch marks and strewn with dead bodies. Its once majestic skyline was now a chain of smashed shells, jutting upward like broken teeth. All the while, the rogue Amalgam hovered like a baleful shadow overhead, firing blas
t after blistering blast on the Union’s capital city-state. Swarms of Retributionaries swept through, firing bright jade blasts at anything that moved. Hovercars, hovertrams and civilian crafts were blown to fiery shreds. Moving through the dense smoke nearby were two more colossal Korvanes statues.

  Regiments of PLADECO Terrestrial Infantry and A.N.T Troopers, along with squads of UComm Space Marines and needle-like SkyGuard interceptor jets, squared off against scores of Retributionaries and Korvanes golems. Artillery fire streaked the air from either side, soundtracked by a jarring chorus of screams and explosions. The sky above bore an ugly yellow tint from the planetary shielding the Amalgam had activated, sealing Terra Sollus off from rescue. As someone who grew up on Terra Sollus, Liliana was more gutted than terrified.

  “Whatever your commanding officers are doing, they need to hurry,” Commander Simmons sighed, “Terra Sollus and Conuropolis can’t take much more.” They landed in one of Diktat district’s financial districts, abandoned at first glance. As soon as they stepped off the assault cruiser, a golden swarm of at least forty-plus Retributionaries exploded out of an abandoned depository building. They flew in quickly and flanked the A.N.T. cruisers from all sides.

  “Spread and get cover!” Simmons barked. A blinding flurry of salvos was exchanged, quickly claiming three A.N.Ts and one Retributionary. No doubt the Korvenites had sensed the deaths of their comrades in the Commons, as fury drove their every movement. Liliana was pinned to the side of the assault cruiser, fear gripping her. Those deaths, all the shooting, everything was happening so fast.

  Someone activated the psychic disruptor, as the Retributionaries lost their seamless coordination and moved around jerkily. And like that, the A.N.Ts and Star Brigadiers took advantage.