Predator (Old Ironsides Book 3)

by Dean Crawford

  Tyrone hesitated. He could make it out of here unseen if he kept running.

  The Ayleean child crawled backward and away from the creature, too young to fight.

  Tyrone stared in horror, unable to tear himself in either direction. The Ayleean infant would one day grow into a warrior who might kill countless humans. It might grow to hate us. There was nothing that he could do right now. The needs of the many…

  The child cried out, its wailing tinged with fear.

  ‘Damn it.’

  Tyrone made to switch on his plasma pistol, but then he saw the clouds of drones diving in and out of the smoke and he knew that he could not betray his presence. Tyrone shoved the weapon into its holster and leaped from his hiding place. He ran down the hillside and onto the bridge, sprinting for the child as the octoped dragged itself ever closer. Tyrone pumped his arms and ran as hard as his legs would allow him, but the gravity on Ayleea was too much and he knew that he could not get there in time.

  The octoped saw him coming, and in a moment of horror Tyrone saw it judge the distance and make a strange cackling sound that seemed almost like laughter. The octoped’s spines reared up over the infant Ayleean but its eyes were locked onto Tyrone’s and shining with the mindless satisfaction of pure hatred.

  The spines rushed down and Tyrone hauled his pistol from its holster as he crouched down and fired twice. Two plasma bolts ripped into the creature’s face and neck in a cloud of hissing flesh and it recoiled backward, screeching loudly as Tyrone dashed in and lifted the Ayleean child bodily from the ground.

  He turned to run, and as he did so he saw a dozen sentry drones zip upwards out of the smoke, hovering briefly as though sniffing the air before they turned and accelerated toward him.

  ‘Oh no, not again.’

  Tyrone started running, but his legs were already weakened and he knew that he would not get far before the fast moving drones would overhaul him and cut him off before moving in for the kill. He reached the end of the bridge and set the child down before pointing up the hillside.

  ‘Get out of here,’ he ordered the child. ‘I’ll hold ‘em off as long as I can.’

  The child stared up at him in confusion, it’s yellow eyes bleary with tears.

  ‘Go!’ Tyrone yelled as he heard the drones rushing in. ‘Now!’

  He pushed the child away and whirled, aimed and fired at the nearest of the drones. The shot hit it square in the face and it spiraled down to clatter onto the rocks nearby as three more dove in toward him. He fired twice but he knew that he could not hope to hit them all.

  From beside him something flashed past through the air and to his amazement a tightly weaved net opened up across the sky, weights spinning at its corners as it expanded. The three drones slammed into the net and it closed around them, trapping their winds as it plunged down into the river. Tyrone looked to one side and saw the Ayleean child snarling, one fist clenched in joy as it watched the drones hit the water and sink in a tangled mess beneath the waves.

  The child looked up at him, smiling broadly, and then it reached up and took hold of his hand before waiting expectantly. Tyrone sighed and pulled the Ayleean child with him. Maybe he could use the kid as a bargaining chip when the Ayleeans fled the system.

  ‘C’mon,’ he said to the child. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

  He hurried back the way they had come, climbing over the ridgeline and down the far side, jogging along as beside him the lithe Ayleean child leaped from rock to rock. Bounding ahead, he could finally understand the Ayleean’s physical prowess in battle. They were so used to dealing with Ayleea’s gravity that when boarding CSS warships in battle it must have seemed as easy as walking on air.

  Tyrone followed the child along the pathway, but when the child began to head for the caverns Tyrone called to him and pointed to another way. They followed the river around the base of the mountain as fast as Tyrone could manage, every step seeming twice as difficult until after twenty minutes of frantic trekking Tyrone finally saw the spit of land he had been looking for, jutting out from the jungles toward the churning surface of the black river. His heart leaped in his throat and he was about to sprint for the Phantom still parked on the shore when he saw the four drones hovering around the fighter.

  ‘Wait, bugs!’

  The Ayleean child grabbed his hand and prevented him from rushing in as he too spotted the enemy drones circling the fighter.

  ‘We’ve got to get in there,’ Tyrone said.

  ‘The bugs,’ the child insisted, ‘they get you first, then you’re no good to me.’

  Tyrone almost laughed. ‘I like the way you’re thinking kid, but if we don’t get aboard that fighter, we’re never gonna get off this rock.’

  Tyrone shook the child free and pulled out his pistol. ‘Stay right here.’

  Tyrone ran down onto the beach, stumbling as his weakened legs struggled with his increasing momentum. He hit the beach hard as the drones detected his approach and changed direction. Tyrone looked behind him at the sun setting behind the mountains and he staggered to his left, putting the brilliant orb of the star directly behind him and illuminating the drones while blinding them.

  Tyrone saw them zip left and right, hoping to flank him and get the sun out of their sensors. He crouched down and opened fire on two of them to his right, catching one lucky hit but missing the other as on his left the other two drones circled around. Tyrone saw his chance and dashed for his fighter as the drones closed in from either side.

  He was half way there when the drones changed direction away from him. Tyrone turned, and then he saw the Ayleean child on the beach far behind him.

  ‘No!’

  The child shouted to him, waving its arms to attract the drones. ‘Hurry!’

  The drones lunged in as the child suddenly crashed into the black water and with great swings of his arms sent water spraying in bright sunlit plumes up into the air, drenching the first drone as it flashed past and climbed away again to avoid the water.

  Tyrone fired at the drones and drew one of them toward him as he ran for his cockpit. The Phantom detected his approach and he saw the canopy opening as he ran the last few yards across the beach. He heard the hum of the drone behind him as he scrambled to the fighter and hurled himself up, one boot landing on a footrest as he powered himself up and vaulted into the cockpit. Tyrone slammed down into the seat as the drone rushed up to him and he aimed and fired once.

  The shot slammed into the drone and smashed it aside in a mass of melting metal and smoke. Tyrone lowered his pistol and then he heard the scream. He looked past the smoldering remains and saw the Ayleean child stagger out of the water with one of the cruel drones attached to his chest.

  ‘No!’

  Tyrone hit the Phantom’s emergency scramble power switches, heard the powerful ion engines begin to whine into life as he shouted at them to work faster. The avionics came on line before him and the weapons began charging. As soon as he dared he engaged the anti gravity plating and the Phantom lifted off the sandy beach and he turned the fighter around as the drones rushed toward him.

  Tyrone flipped the safety cover on the cannon switch and fired once, and four bolts of plasma rocketed away from him and blasted two of the drones into embers as the last zipped to one side and rushed in. Tyrone hit the canopy switch and the drone slammed into the canopy frame with a clatter of metal on metal, clutching on and watching him with a cruel, black eye. Tyrone ignored it as he hovered across to the child’s body on the beach and settled the fighter down again. He activated the fighter’s shields and the drone was suddenly hurled away by the charge and crashed against the nearby rocks.

  Tyrone opened the canopy again and leaped from the cockpit to the child’s side. The kid was laying on his back, its chest plate pushed aside by the drone attack, and with a start Tyrone suddenly realized that the child was a girl. Her eyes stared up at the darkening sky as her chest heaved rapidly.

  ‘C’mon,’ he gasped as he lifted her up, straining
against her weight as he made his way back to the cockpit.

  Gently he lifted her into the fighter’s seat and then climbed up behind her.

  He barely heard the drone above the noise of the Phantom’s idling engines as it rushed in behind him, and he realized that it had not been destroyed by the shields. Before he could turn to face it the drone’s fearsome stinger plunged between his shoulder blades and Tyrone gagged as pain ripped through his body. On instinct he turned and jumped down, letting his back slide against the edge of the Phantom’s footrest to rip the drone from his back.

  The metallic hornet buzzed and lifted off, ready to strike again. Tyrone grabbed a rock in his fist and whirled as the drone rushed in. He reached out and grabbed the machine by its face, slammed it against the Phantom’s fuselage and smashed the rock down on it with the fury of the insane.

  The drone’s stinger missed his arm by a whisker as Tyrone slammed the rock against its body again and again, shattering its circuitry and bending the stinger into a useless chunk of twisted metal. The drone’s wings stopped beating as its body was crushed and dented by the blows and it dropped onto the beach at his feet. Tyrone lifted one boot and stomped on the machine twice again for good measure before he dropped the rock and clambered wearily into the Phantom’s cockpit once more.

  Tyrone slid in beneath the Ayleean child’s limp body as the canopy closed and managed to lever himself into position as he pulled the seat harnesses over himself and the girl. He reached around her waist and grabbed the control column as he lifted off, pain pulsing through his body like lances of fire as he struggled to maintain focus.

  The Phantom lifted off and he guided the fighter across the ridgeline to where the city sprawled in the river valley the other side. The shadows were falling fast now and he could see endless ranks of octoped creatures swarming through the city in pursuit of the fleeing Ayleeans.

  Flashes of plasma fire flickered through the streets near the landing pads and he could see the shuttle still there, Ayleeans clambering up the vines and hurrying to board her, others still fighting on the ground beneath the pad’s pillar in an attempt to cover the escape of the women and children.

  Tyrone took careful aim and with a grim delight he opened up on the octoped hordes with the Phantom’s powerful cannons. Streams of high energy plasma bolts ripped into their ranks and he saw the city light up as the shots decimated them in billowing clouds of flame, smoke and severed body parts. He saw the Ayleeans far below him punching the air and firing at the octoped masses as they began pulling back, leaving their dead behind as they climbed with gusto up the vines toward their shuttle.

  Tyrone circled around, lined up again and this time he hosed the octoped hordes down from the front, his plasma rounds smashing through them in bright explosions, killing dozens with every shot. The octoped ranks scattered off the platform and away from the onslaught, the scorched bodies that remained billowing flames and smoke as Tyrone pulled up and strained to look over his shoulder.

  In his helmet he heard a crackle and a sudden, clear Ayleean voice ragged with joy and despair at the same time.

  ‘Phantom this is shuttle one one four clear of the pad.’

  ‘Copy one one four,’ he replied. ‘Let’s get out of here. I have one injured, correction, two injured.’

  ‘We’ve got two dozen,’ came the reply, ‘but there will be medical equipment aboard Fortitude.’

  Tyrone nodded and looked down at the child slumped against him. Her chest was fluttering weakly and his own pain was increasing with every passing moment.

  ‘Roger that,’ he replied, his voice raspy. ‘I have the lead, stay close.’

  With grim relief Tyrone opened the throttles and the Phantom accelerated away from the smoking remains of the city as she pointed her nose upward and began to climb into the blood red sky toward the stars flickering faintly beyond the turbulent clouds.

  ***

  XXXI

  Tyrone blinked as his vision blurred, the stars shimmering and smearing across his field of vision as the Phantom fighter soared clear of Ayleea’s atmosphere. The Ayleean child in his arms was hot to the touch, her breathing coming in ragged, rattling gasps that were becoming weaker with every passing moment.

  ‘I’ve got Fortitude on my passive sensors,’ he gasped as the last of the sunlight vanished over the planet’s limb, Ayleea in darkness far below him.

  ‘We’re right behind you.’

  Tyrone guided the Phantom in toward the faint signal from the Senate cruiser, the same IFF beacon that Endeavour had pinged that he could now detect without having to betray his position using active radar. They would have precious little time to get aboard the cruiser before she was overwhelmed by the strange shape shifting substance used by the invaders to quell resistance.

  ‘Thirty seconds,’ Tyrone said.

  The Phantom rocketed through the deep blackness, and ahead he saw the stars being eclipsed by a long field of debris orbiting the planet. The occasional shooting star of burning wreckage flickered by below as Ayleea’s gravity began drawing the shattered hulks of warships down to their doom.

  Fortitude’s beacon was transmitting from the far side of the debris field, the Phantom’s computers triangulating her position and displaying it to Tyrone on a small display mounted before him. He kept most of his systems switched off, hoping that he could sneak in as close as possible.

  ‘Switching to stand by now,’ he ordered. ‘Engines off.’

  Tyrone cut the power to the Phantom’s engines and shut down all unnecessary systems as soon as he was lined up directly with Fortitude. In the vacuum of space the fighter required no constant source of thrust to travel, allowing Tyrone to sneak up behind the cruiser without being detected until the very last instant.

  Tyrone, his own breathing becoming hoarse in his throat and incessant pain throbbing through every fiber of his body, flipped the safety cover off the trigger on his control column and prepared for battle. The Phantom fighter was able to transmit override frequencies to the senate cruiser as they were both CSS vessels that recognized each other’s identity. That would allow both the fighter and the shuttle behind to land aboard her. However, what happened when he opened that landing bay was anybody’s guess as the enemy would know he was there the moment he sent the signal.

  Fortitude appeared before him, her sleek and silvery hull glinting in the faint starlight and distinct from the dark, foreboding hulls of the Ayleean warships around her. Despite the chaotic nature of the debris field the cruiser looked undamaged but for minor dents in her hull caused by low velocity collisions with other wreckage in the debris field.

  ‘Just a little further,’ Tyrone whispered to himself.

  He saw the cruiser’s stern before him, her shape enhanced by the displays in the cockpit to help him pick her out in the deep blackness of the planet’s shadow. The Phantom was drifting at high speed toward the stern landing bay, barely seconds away now. Tyrone took a deep breath to clear his senses and then he hit a switch in his cockpit and suddenly the fighter went “fangs out”, her fire control radar activating as the engines spooled up, her shields switched to active and her plasma cannons charged up.

  Tyrone emitted the emergency landing signal and instantly the cruiser’s stern bay doors began to open. He saw her interior lights beam out into the darkness, power still available to the ship, and he knew that if they could fight their way in they had a chance.

  ‘Doors open, landing protocol now!’

  Tyrone switched the Phantom over to its autopilot to land the fighter as he gripped his plasma pistol tightly and watched as the fighter sailed through the hard light atmospheric shielding into the empty bay and touched down on one of the smaller landing pads. He craned his neck over his shoulder and saw the Ayleean shuttle touch down nearby.

  Tyrone opened the canopy on his fighter as the engines shut down and he punched the harnesses clear as he clambered out of the cockpit on unsteady legs, ready for a fight. He saw the shuttle’s main ram
p open and Ayleeans pour out into the bay, plasma rifles at the ready as they fanned out.

  ‘I need a medic!’ Tyrone snapped as he dropped to one knee, exhausted.

  Shylo burst from the shuttle and hurried across.

  ‘You are hit?’

  ‘Stung,’ Tyrone gasped, ‘but I have a passenger who needs a medic, now!’

  Tyrone stood up and climbed onto his fighter as the Ayleeans flocked out of the shuttle, and he hauled the child’s body out. Almost immediately he heard a shriek of anguish as one of the Ayleeans rushed forward and dropped his rifle as he tore the child from Tyrone.

  ‘I got cut off in the attack on the bridges,’ Tyrone said to Shylo. ‘The kid was there too. She helped me take off, but she took several stings.’

  Tyrone watched as the Ayleean rushed away toward the elders, who were already grabbing ingredients of some kind from a satchel and were busily grinding away some mysterious potion that Tyrone took to be an antidote of some kind. The focus was on the child, but it was Shylo who looked away to one of the landing bay entrances and spoke, his voice carrying above the commotion.

  ‘They are coming.’

  Tyrone turned to face the entrance as the Ayleeans lined up either side of him. His breath was coming in short, sharp gasps and he could feel sweat dripping from his face despite the cruiser’s cool atmosphere and normal gravity.

  All of a sudden one of his legs gave way beneath him and he stumbled.

  Strong hands caught his fall, and he looked up to see Shylo and another warrior holding him. They lifted him upright again but said nothing, maintaining their grip on him to prevent him from collapsing.

  Tyrone turned to the sound of footsteps emerging from the entrance to the landing bay, and before him strode Senator Isabel Gray, her son Samuel and a phalanx of armed CSS guards. Tyrone’s eyes widened as he stared at them.

  ‘Senator?’