Zip did not flinch. “I know the rules of engagement, sir.”
“Those are your official orders, Lieutenant.”
“And yours.”
Dex nodded. “Yes. And mine.”
Zip paused for a moment before his reply. “Understood, sir. The men will be ready on your command.”
“Very good.” Dex turned back to the map projected on the table. “We leave within the hour.”
. . . . .
The Apocalypse emerged from hyperspace and Daniel instinctively checked his displays, finding a minimum of activity. A few SPACER ships quietly orbited the planet, and no Confederation vessels could be found. Though still technically under Confederation control and protection, the protests, riots, and increased SPACER activity on the planet must have persuaded ConFedCom to all but desert it, sending what few ships they had here to shore up undermanned defenses elsewhere. Though Daniel could not bring himself to agree with that decision—no matter how compelling the Confederation’s needs were in other systems—at least they had decided to send the Apocalypse to intercept the incoming Lucani Ibron ship.
One ship, and one man, to face those faceless butchers.
Atgard looked back to his tactical console. A mere trickle of passenger ships departed the planet, though ConFedCom had surely contacted them and warned of the impending threat. But the inhabitants of the sparsely-populated world—many of whom now sided with the SPACERs—seemed convinced they would be spared because of their ideological differences with the Confederation they thought the Lucani Ibron had come to destroy. They believed their pacifism would shield them from those who pronounced judgement by murdering innocents by the millions.
Daniel sighed and called up data on the perplexing planet. The population was only about 70 million, and the planet was led by a small bureaucrat who had, according to reports, been one of the few to heed ConFedCom’s warnings. He had, in fact, already fled the planet, as had most of his delegation. The Admiral scrolled down the listings, and found that one Confederation Commando squad had been assigned to the planet.
His breath caught in his throat. Listed as Commander of the squad was Dex Rutcliffe.
Daniel jabbed at his nanocomputer, dialing Dex directly over the communications net. Getting through on Dex’s personal frequency would take far less time than using standard communication channels.
Several seconds passed, and it became apparent that Dex was not answering the call. Daniel had designated the transmission as urgent, and even if Dex was asleep, his nanocomputer would wake him. He ran a trace subroutine that pinpointed Dex’s location at the outskirts of the planet’s capital city, far from the city’s spaceport. It did not appear that he was preparing to evacuate the planet. In fact, the tracer showed no movement at all.
A stirring on the viewscreen caught Daniel’s eye, and he fired off a message to Dex imploring him to leave the planet quickly, then refocused his attention on his present surroundings. Three SPACER vessels—two Corvettes and an overhauled cargo frigate—had broken orbit and headed for the Apocalypse.
On cue, a transmission came from the ships, and Daniel keyed it on-screen.
“Confederation vessel,” began a uniformed man, young enough to be Daniel’s grandson, “you are not welcome here. Depart this system immediately.”
Daniel’s face crinkled with confusion. “Are you aware that a Lucani Ibron ship is headed this way?” he asked. “Why have you not evacuated the planet?”
The man scoffed. “The Confederation claims a ship is heading toward this planet. But what proof do you have? Why would the aliens come here? We are sympathetic with their cause. We, too, think the Confederation is a cancer.” He shrugged his shoulders dismissively. “You are not wanted here.”
The Admiral ground his teeth together, unwilling to argue with the man. “Whatever you think, that alien ship is coming,” he replied. “And when it gets here, it will try to destroy your planet, and kill everyone on it. So do not tell me that I am unwelcome here. This is still a Confederation planet, and, more importantly, there are 70 million people in danger down there. I will protect them.”
“That will not be necessary,” he began, only to be interrupted.
“If you’re right, then I’ll just be sitting here wasting my time,” spat the Admiral, losing his patience. “But sit here I will. Your ships will not protect that planet, and neither will your naiveté.” The Admiral waved his hand. “Now get the hell out of my way.”
“That’s an awfully small ship you have there,” challenged the man, smirking.
Daniel leaned forward, just slightly. “Try me.”
Before the insouciant captain could respond, a shrill alarm trilled from Daniel’s console. But he had already seen the blip on his tactical display, and the argument had become moot. Ignoring both the Apocalypse and the SPACER warships, the alien craft advanced toward the planet.
The Admiral looked back to his nanocomputer, which he had programmed to redial Dex until there was an answer. The trace subroutine again stoically confirmed that Dex remained on the planet, oblivious to the silent assassins above.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 19
Dex motioned for a pair of his men to guard the hallway, and retracted the lockpick from the door. He slid it silently open, and crept inside, Zip close behind him.
The complex was quiet, as it should be in the dead of night. The sentries guarding the entrance had been taken out easily enough, and there were surprisingly few guards inside the stronghold’s walls. The Commander stalked silently down the hallway and peered around a corner. Around the bend in the hall, a lone guard lazily held his post just outside a large room that housed several sleeping men. Dex adjusted his night-vision contacts, blinking twice to bring the scene into clearer focus. At the far end of the hallway, beyond the guard, was another door.
A chill crept through the Commander’s body as he looked to the far door. He switched his contacts to thermographic sensing, and could make out the faint outline of a single person in the room, reclining as if asleep. He reverted his contacts to night vision as he turned to Zip, signaling for him to be silent.
Dex crept around the corner, concealing himself in shadow, and moved slowly down the hall. He slid the vibroblade from its sheath, crouching as near the guard as he dared to go. A faint pool of light streamed from behind the sentry, and any noise would surely wake the men in the barracks.
The Commander remained perfectly still, his muscles tensed, and his blade at the ready. The guard sighed, scratching at his rifle absently, and turned to look back into the barracks behind him.
In that instant, Dex uncoiled from his crouch, thrusting the blade into the sentry’s larynx before he had even turned back around. Dex cupped his hand over the dying man’s mouth, and jerked him quickly into the air, carrying the lifeless form back to Zip.
Zip’s eyes opened wide when the Commander deposited the body at his feet, but said nothing. Dex signaled for him to stay and began to turn, but Zip’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm.
“I’m going with you,” he whispered.
Dex shook his head. “I go alone.”
Zip’s hand stayed on the Commander’s arm for several moments. Wordlessly, he released his grip, and Dex crept back down the hallway, past the barracks and to the single door beyond.
The thermographic lenses still showed the room’s occupant to be prone, so Dex tried the door’s handle, marginally surprised that it was not locked. He opened it the first centimeter in total silence, and then threw the door forth and leveled his phaser at the bed, squeezing the trigger and sending two bolts through the sheets.
A hand struck out and knocked the weapon from Dex’s grip, and was followed instantly by a blow to the head. The contacts shifted painfully in his eyes, and he opened them to find that he could no longer see.
Instinctively, Dex rolled into the room, just as another blow from his unseen assailant hit the doorframe behind him. The noise had surely roused some of the men from
the barracks, but there was little Dex could do about that now.
The Commander turned to his other senses, and heard a rustle of clothing in time to avoid a blow that glanced across his shoulder. Dex grabbed the man’s arm and twisted it, bringing his own arm across his assailant’s neck, and squeezed hard.
Malloy groaned and dug his elbow into the Commander’s ribs, painful even through Dex’s armoured stealthsuit. From outside, Dex heard the reports of Zip’s rifle, firing not in stealth, but in full auto mode.
Dex’s eyes had begun to adapt to the darkness, and he could see Malloy’s face as he struggled for air. One of his arms was still pinned behind his back, and with the other, he was flailing in the direction of Dex’s face, trying to rake out his eyes. The noise from outside abruptly ceased, and the Commander could hear Zip rushing to his aid.
Without hesitation, Dex cupped his hand under the terrorist’s chin, and, with a sudden tensing of his muscles, snapped Malloy’s neck and dropped him to the floor.
Zip rushed in as the Commander retrieved his rifle, sparing a quick glance at the motionless body on the floor. “We’ve got to get out of here, sir,” he reported, turning back to the doorway. “There may be more coming.”
Dex nodded and raced out of the room and around the bend in the hall, back to where his men were waiting. They met no further resistance as they escaped from the building, sprinting from the fortress to where the rest of the squad was positioned outside. A few people chased them from the entrance, but were quickly cut down by the remainder of Dex’s men.
Fingering his nanocomputer, Dex called out to his squad. “Fall back. Return to base.” His feet thundered on the packed dirt as he ran back to the center of town.
Once reactivated from stealth mode, his nanocomputer vibrated to alert him that he had a call. He glanced at it as he ran, and would not have answered it were the call from anyone other than Daniel Atgard.
“Admiral,” he panted, following Zip as best he could. “Something urgent?”
Daniel’s face clearly betrayed his concern, though the small projection bobbed as Dex ran. “Get the hell off the planet, Dex. Get the hell out of there right now.”
Dex turned to Zip. “Call Retro and get him to pick us up in the Cerberus right away,” he ordered, turning back to the Admiral’s image. “Admiral, where are you?”
The pain on Daniel’s face was evident even through the tiny representation. “I’m in orbit around Charnus Prime,” he replied gravely. “Between you … and a Lucani Ibron ship.”
. . . . .
It was hard to believe the speed at which the Inferno was traveling, but Captain Mason’s readouts confirmed that they were only a few minutes from Cordova. Even the starlines on the viewscreen seemed to be shooting by faster than Anastasia remembered, though it was probably merely her imagination.
The encounter with the Vr’amil’een had cost them precious time, and she had pushed the ship to its limits in an attempt to compensate. The sonorous pulse of the hyperdrive engines resonated throughout the ship, which screamed through the void at unthinkable speed. Anastasia rechecked the ship’s trajectory, a path she had nervously plotted in order to avoid the lengthy sublight journey to the system’s fourth planet. The Inferno would—theoretically—emerge from hyperspace a mere fifty thousand kilometers from the planet, more than ten times closer than a standard hyperspace core would allow. Vance had assured her that the system had been tested and would perform as advertised, but Anastasia had been on starships for over three decades, and her old instincts proved hard to ignore.
With just under three minutes remaining to realspace emergence, Cody turned to the Captain. “What are we going to do?” he asked from his pilot’s chair. “I mean, how will we stop the ship without any help?”
Anastasia pursed her lips. “I don’t know, Cody. We’ll figure something out. We won’t let that ship destroy another world.”
Cody nodded, but said nothing. The Captain wished she could really feel the optimism she tried so desperately to portray, but she had always been poor at hiding her own feelings.
Ariyana seemed to sense the Captain’s thoughts. “We’ve stopped them before,” she replied with confidence. “We know their weakness.”
“That’s right,” agreed Victor. “We’ll overwhelm their defenses just like we did the last one.”
Only Byron was conspicuously silent. But Anastasia knew what he was thinking: they had destroyed the last ship with the help of the Apocalypse, a ship now dozens of parsecs away.
“Captain,” Byron finally announced, “realspace emergence in thirty seconds.”
Anastasia nodded, noting that only a fraction of a second differentiated their course from a standard approach, and that the extra instant translated into hundreds of thousands of kilometers. If the hyperspace core did not work as promised, the star system’s gravitational field would rip the ship apart as it approached. The Captain tried not to dwell on it.
At the precise time, the ship dropped into realspace, and Anastasia jerked back in her chair when the yellowed planet of Cordova suddenly appeared before her, frighteningly large on the viewscreen. Instantly, an alarm rang out, and the Captain’s tactical display showed frenzied activity on the far side of the planet.
“Get us over there,” she ordered, and Cody complied, rocketing the ship toward the planet, skimming the atmosphere as he raced for the planet’s far side. A pink glow surrounded the ship, which streaked high through the ionosphere and quickly shot back into the familiar darkness of space. Visible now on the viewscreen was a tiny silver ship approaching the planet, and a phalanx of Confederation warships maneuvering to intercept.
“Send a message to those ships,” ordered the Captain, but before Ariyana could comply, the Lucani Ibron ship fired a series of pulsing white balls at the incoming human vessels. The balls each pursued a different target, and each found its mark, igniting a series of explosions from within each ship as it was struck. In moments, not a single human ship stirred.
Victor pounded his fist on his console. “So much for getting any help.” He looked to the Captain. “I thought those bastards usually ignored us.”
“Maybe they realize we can hurt them now,” the Captain replied.
Cody turned back to face them. “Maybe we just made them angry.”
Anastasia leveled her gaze back on the viewscreen. “Byron, prepare to fire weapons on my mark. Modulate the ion cannon to random frequencies, and cycle the plasma burst cannon harmonics.”
Byron nodded, and Anastasia felt a voice in her head. She jerked back, realizing that the other crew members were hearing the same thing.
“Human transgressors,” began the message, “do not resist us. Your punishment must be imparted.”
“What is that?” wondered Cody aloud.
The voice went on. “Do not resist us.”
“The hell we won’t,” shouted Victor, looking about helplessly. “We’ll blow you out of the sky, just like your friends.”
The voice suddenly seemed even more cold, lifeless. “I do not think your friend would appreciate that.”
“Friend?” asked Victor. “What are they talking about?”
But Anastasia could not respond, for she found no air in her lungs. Still the voice went on.
“We have underestimated your species for the last time.”
The viewscreen, unbidden, seemed to explode in a deluge of light. The void of space was replaced by an image almost unbearably bright.
When the Captain’s eyes had adjusted, she could plainly see a perfectly white table in the center of a perfectly white, featureless room. Ensconced on the table, held motionless but clearly alive, was Zach Wallace.
. . . . .
Daniel surged the Apocalypse away from Charnus Prime, streaking toward the Lucani Ibron vessel. He aimed to intercept it as far from the planet as possible. A glance to his tactical display confirmed that the SPACER ships, so fearless only a few moments ago, were headed in the opposite direction, abandoni
ng the planet and its inhabitants for the safety of deep space.
The Admiral inhaled deeply, knowing there would be no negotiation with the faceless Lucani Ibron assassins. His hatred for the Lucani Ibron was palpable. He abhorred the nefarious aliens as much for their depraved sense of justice as for the results of their formula of punishment. Ten years did little to dull the agony wreaked by their systematic annihilation of humanity, a process that had claimed the life of Daniel’s own son.
As soon as the Apocalypse was in range, Daniel opened fire on his enemy. A barrage of lasers reached out to the swirling silver ship, and was swallowed by its liquid metal hide. The gyrations of the ship abruptly changed, and the Admiral instinctively rolled the Apocalypse, evading a prismatic beam that had issued forth from the vessel. His own shots had no impact on the enemy ship, and he ran his fingers along his console, powering up his ship’s mighty Omega Cannon without a second thought. The bridge lights dimmed, and the Apocalypse slowed as the ship’s power was funneled into the incredible superweapon. The sound quickly intensified to a sustained roar, and Daniel leveled his flight, aiming the ship at the Lucani Ibron. The Apocalypse’s nose split into four segments, separating to reveal the barrel of a massive cannon.
The Lucani Ibron ship fired again, and Daniel was not quick enough to evade a small ball of light, which penetrated the shields and coursed throughout the ship. A surge of electricity wracked the Admiral’s body, throwing him against the restraints. The computer wailed a sickly, ululating alarm, and sparks shot from Daniel’s tactical display, singeing his arm. He quickly focused himself, sliding his fingers across his console to the firing stud. The trace of a smile played at the Admiral’s lips. He pressed the button hard.
The thunderous sound continued to build. The Omega Cannon did not discharge.
The Admiral called up the weapon’s status, and his display dutifully informed him that the firing coil had been overloaded by the aliens’ assault. Without the coil, there was no way to release the waves of energy accumulating within the Omega Cannon’s reactors.
Declination Page 19
