The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  The initial rush became a torrent as hundreds of humanoid and dog-shaped robots raced out of the New Zealand high-bay, through the smaller room, and into the gateway cavern beyond, accompanied by a swarm of small drones overhead. As Jennifer waited for the end of that tide to flow past, she checked the status of her personal stasis field and unlimbered her war-blade. Beside her, Dgarra did the same.

  Taking a calming breath, Jennifer followed the last of the robots into the larger cavern and raised the stasis shield that protected the Earth gate. It was time to get VJ to that router.

  Shalegha struggled to understand all the discordant information cascading through the tactical combat matrix in her head. The impossible had just happened. Somehow the humans had remotely shut down the heavy beam artillery and the Kasari stasis shield before launching an assault by autonomous killing machines.

  A laser beam burned through the metal grating just a stride in front of Shalegha, putting her into motion. Pulling her own blaster, she vaulted to the stairs, followed by four of the Graath who made up her personal security detail. Her first shot ripped the sensor platform off one of the upright robots, but it still deployed six of the multilegged bombs, each scuttling toward her.

  The blasts from the Graath weapons destroyed all but one of the crawlers. Before the spider-bomb could reach the stairs, one of the Graath dived atop it. The explosion showered Shalegha with brackish goo. She ignored the cacophony.

  Leaping down the stairs, Shalegha took cover behind one of the mag-lev movers. The Graath spread out on both sides of the commander as chaos reigned within the facility. But now reinforcements were pushing into the room from the passage that led out of the chamber to the west. Shalegha transmitted orders that nobody was to fire toward the cluster of equipment around the Kasari gateway through which other reinforcements were now entering the chamber.

  And, oddly enough, the attacking robots were also making efforts to avoid damaging that equipment. She understood why. The rogues were targeting the communications equipment just as they had on Scion. But this time that approach was not going to work. She would regain control and end this carnage.

  With Heather’s mind filled with ever-changing visions of the near-future movements of the forces roiling around them, she led her group toward the equipment Rob and Eos had identified as containing the primary communications router. Heather saw five of the four-armed Kasari break through the robot swarm to her right then turn to level their blasters at Heather and her team, raking them with green fire.

  “There!” she yelled at the others as she dropped to one knee and aimed her own assault laser at the indicated spot.

  And then it happened again, almost exactly as she had foreseen; only this time the coordinated fire from Heather, Mark, Janet, Jennifer, VJ, and Dgarra cut the Kasari down before the aliens could aim their weapons. Heather was up, leading the group forward once again, the near future moving and shifting behind her eyes.

  “This way,” she said, turning between rows of equipment that led toward the monstrous matter disrupter that powered the wormhole gate.

  The fire support they were getting from the heavy beam weapons under Rob’s control kept the Kasari and their assimilated minions off their backs, but the ones coming through the gateway would have to be dealt with directly. Unfortunately, the Kasari stasis field controller had been destroyed in the first moments of fighting, so Rob couldn’t use that against their enemies.

  Heather motioned toward the gateway, and Jennifer, Dgarra, and VJ raced to intercept the Kasari troops who had just stepped through. As Heather watched in amazement, Jennifer and Dgarra drew the long swords they called war-blades and fell upon their enemies. The rage with which Jennifer fought startled Heather. In high school, Jen had always been her bookish best friend, the sensible one who cautioned Mark and Heather to think before they leaped. Now Jen battled like a demon.

  Jen leaped on the back of one of the gorilla-spiders that Heather and Mark had fought inside the ATLAS cavern a decade ago, slicing off legs and driving the tip of the blade through its body. Together, the three crew members of the Meridian formed a wedge of death that disrupted the flow of aliens from the gateway.

  Janet and Nikina blocked a narrow passage to the right while Mark hung back to guard their rear, preventing any of the trailing enemy commandos from getting to Heather and Rob. That was good. The two had time to make best use of their special mental augmentations.

  Less than thirty feet from their target, a new vision rocked Heather.

  She lunged at Nikina just as the blond agent suddenly aimed her gun at Janet’s back and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet penetrated Heather’s body armor in the center of her chest, sending her sprawling into a sea of darkness. And all her visions of the future drowned alongside her.

  Nikina saw the bullet she had intended for Janet strike Heather in the center of her chest. Then Janet Price was on her, a black combat dagger striking outward toward Nikina’s neck.

  Nikina took the point of the combat dagger through her right hand, dropping her weapon but stopping the blade an inch short of her throat. Ignoring the pain, she pivoted into a judo throw that landed Janet hard on her back. Janet twisted the knife, and Nikina felt a bone in her hand break. Jerking her wounded hand free, Nikina sent Janet’s black blade flying. Janet’s kick to her face knocked Nikina to the bloody floor.

  Rolling to her knees, Janet dived onto Nikina’s back, attempting to lock her right arm around Nikina’s neck. Again, Nikina countered, twisting her head to the side and biting down hard enough on Janet’s arm to fill her mouth with blood. Whipping her legs around, Nikina went for the arm bar, but her bloody hand slipped before she could lock it into place, allowing Janet to rip her own hand free and roll back to her feet.

  Cursing, Nikina drew her own dagger and lunged, driving the knife hard toward Janet’s stomach, just below the bottom of her bulletproof vest. But instead of sheathing the blade in her opponent’s flesh, she felt her wrist slam into Janet’s cross-handed block. And when Janet uncrossed those hands, she gripped Nikina’s wrist and twisted it out and back in a wrenching move that slammed Nikina facedown on the ground and sent her blade flying. In growing desperation, Nikina struggled to prevent Janet from locking her arm behind her back.

  The realization that this woman outclassed her in hand-to-hand combat brought an unfamiliar wave of panic crashing in on Nikina. Janet’s head butt into the side of her face drove her skull into the stone floor, loosening Nikina’s teeth and causing her vision to dim. As Nikina struggled to retain her consciousness, Janet flipped her over on her back. Unable to rise, she felt Janet lift herself up only to drop back down, driving her right elbow into Nikina’s throat. With a sick crunch, her trachea collapsed upon itself. A fresh fountain of terror drenched Nikina’s brain in adrenaline.

  As Nikina’s panting breath changed to a rattling wheeze, Janet rammed her elbow into that damaged throat a second time. With dark clouds squeezing her vision into a straw’s-eye view, she saw Janet jerk a six-inch needle from her dark hair.

  Janet’s voice was a low snarl. “Die, you traitorous bitch.”

  For Nikina, time slowed to a crawl. The needle descended to bury itself in her left eye. There was no tunnel with a light at its end, just a painfully bright flash followed by nothing.

  “Die, you traitorous bitch.”

  With all her strength, Janet drove her hair needle through Nikina’s left eye and into her brain. Giving it a hard twist, she made sure that this was a wound no nanites could heal. Panting, she pulled the needle from the bloody socket and wiped it on Nikina’s shirt. Then, giving her long hair a twist, Janet returned the needle to its customary spot and stood. She rose to her feet, pulled her Glock from its holster, and fired two shots into Nikina’s forehead.

  Without a further glance, she turned back toward the sounds of combat.

  Having been focused on redirecting the automated beam weapons at the Kasari who blocked their path ahead, Rob hadn’t
thought the firing behind him strange. Then he heard the double tap. He turned and froze at the shock of seeing Heather and Nikina both lying in pools of their own blood in the confined space.

  Janet’s yell brought him out of it. “Rob! Close that gate or we’re all dead.”

  Reaching into the controller with his mind, he let Eos take over. Off to his left, the Kasari gateway winked out.

  Mark rushed past him, grabbed Heather’s limp body, and carried her into the jumble of equipment that formed the matter disrupter.

  “Everyone consolidate around Heather,” Janet yelled. “I want three-hundred-sixty-degree coverage.”

  Rob returned his focus to the automated beam weapons, redirecting their fires into the UFNS soldiers pouring into the north side of the chamber. As the number of his group’s combat robots dwindled, the odds that they could fight their way back to the Earth gate did likewise. Dismissing the thought, he shifted his gaze to a huge vehicle that appeared to be some type of heavy equipment mover.

  It was time to bring out the hammer.

  Jennifer, covered in multicolored alien blood, fought her way back into the mechanical fortress where Janet had decided to make their last stand. Then she saw Mark hunched over Heather, tears pouring down his face as he performed CPR. She raced to his side, horrified to see the bloody hole in the center of Heather’s bare chest. It wasn’t a sucking chest wound. This was worse.

  Riffling through a side pocket in her utility vest, she grabbed one of the two nanite syringes and dropped to Mark’s side.

  “Move!” she said.

  When Mark’s eyes shifted to the syringe, he didn’t argue.

  Jennifer jammed it home, delivering the complete load of nanite serum directly into Heather’s wounded heart. When she pulled it out, she motioned Mark back in.

  Once again, he put his back into it. Steady, rhythmic chest compressions.

  “Jennifer!” Janet yelled. “Get your ass back on the line.”

  When Jennifer moved to comply, she could see just how desperate their situation was becoming. Well, if she was going to die, right here by Dgarra and her friends was as good a spot as any.

  Dgarra held the narrow access between equipment racks, knowing that if the group of Kasari soldiers made it past him, they would kill Jennifer and her brother while the two worked to save Heather. He would not allow that to happen.

  His war-blade whistled through the air, spraying a greenish-orange mist of Kasari blood in an arc as it sliced through the aliens’ thick torsos. These were the same beasts who had helped General Magtal frame him as a traitor for the murder of Dgarra’s uncle, Emperor Goltat.

  Letting rage propel him forward, he blocked the clawed forepaw of one of the eight-legged creatures that the Kasari called Graath with the stasis shield projected onto his left forearm. The force of the blow knocked the beast astride backward, and before it could recover, Dgarra split the Graath down the middle, cleaving the drooling maw from its underside, dropping the creature atop the growing pile of bodies.

  Motion to his front left drew Dgarra’s gaze, and he ducked back behind thick metal as a pulsed beam sizzled past his face. As if they sensed that he was retreating, two more of the Kasari charged, seeking to impale him on their own blades or drive him backward through sheer force of numbers. Then, bracing his feet against the metal on either side of the aisle, Dgarra grunted with the effort of halting the alien advance.

  “No,” he growled. “You will not have her.”

  Wielding his shield, he pressed forward, his war-blade rising and falling within the narrow space. And with each stroke, another Kasari died.

  Raul had a new plan. He’d made a series of short subspace jumps just beyond the range of the Kasari fast-attack ship’s weapons, pulling it farther and farther away from Earth. Now, from just beyond Jupiter’s moon, Io, he prepared to make the most aggressive maneuver he’d ever tried. And he didn’t even have VJ to blame it on if this didn’t work. Then again, if this didn’t work, he would be dead.

  He initiated the subspace jump that took him just inside the moon’s orbit. Having lured the fast-attack ship too far away to interfere, Raul flooded the Friendship gateway cavern with thirty worm-fiber viewers. The imagery they delivered took his breath away. Except for the Kasari gate and its surrounding equipment, the cavern was a wreck. The hundreds of robots that the Smythes had planned on sending in had been reduced to sixty-three. These battled to prevent a surge of fresh troops from entering the cavern from passages in the north and west walls.

  Another set of images shocked him. Instead of the Earth gate being positioned within the large Kasari gateway cavern, it had ended up inside a small room along the north wall. Jennifer, VJ, and Dgarra were pinned down in the south end of the cavern. There was no way that they could battle their way back to that room. Raul was their only chance.

  He maneuvered the Meridian onto the vector that matched that of Friendship Cavern and shifted into subspace. He felt vulnerable without VJ there to help him do this, even though the ship’s neural net provided all the same calculations. Oh well . . . now or never.

  Gritting his teeth, Raul commenced the subspace maneuver that would take him to the cavern, knowing that missing his target could kill those he was trying to save or damage the Meridian too badly to get back out. In either case, everyone would die.

  VJ assessed their situation. As more and more of the robots were destroyed, the north half of the room was slowly filling with UFNS soldiers. Her small group had no chance of fighting their way back to the room with the Earth gate. But she still could accomplish the main mission. Most of the Kasari shock troops had been killed in the initial fighting or by the big machine that Rob had just driven through their ranks before it was destroyed.

  The hive-mind had clearly directed all troops closing in on her team’s position to avoid using heavy weapons. She glanced back at the others. Having gotten Heather stabilized, Mark had moved up to get back into the fight.

  VJ checked the status of her internal power supply. The steady drain on her personal stasis shielding had outstripped the ability of her matter disrupter to replenish her twin super-capacitors, leaving their charge at only 32 percent. It would have to be enough.

  Without a word to the others, VJ charged out from behind the machine that concealed her and raced toward the primary router, feeling laser beams play across her shield. Ten feet from her target, one of the four-armed Kasari leaped in front of her, firing. She deflected the shot, then sliced his head off with a stasis field blade.

  She slid between two thirty-foot-tall equipment racks, identified the router, and began climbing toward it. Energy level 27 percent. Then Jennifer and Dgarra joined her in the passage, firing back at the onrushing soldiers as Janet’s and Rob’s covering fire also chopped into their attackers.

  “Crap!” Jennifer yelled. “My shield is down.”

  “Get back behind me,” said Dgarra.

  “Fat chance.”

  VJ closed in on the router, having to climb out on top of the rack to get to it. Reaching into a pocket in her utility vest, she extracted a palm-sized device of her own design and attached it to the side of the communications hub. Partially exposed as she was, she took three more hits that siphoned off another 6 percent of her power reserves.

  She switched on the induction coupler that gave her access to the router’s internal circuitry. Using the subspace receiver-transmitter within her brain, she manipulated the coupler’s controls until she found the interface she was seeking.

  ALERT. INTERNAL POWER THIRTEEN PERCENT.

  VJ locked in on the circuit and commanded the induction coupler to upload the free-will virus to the hive-mind.

  Another direct hit took her power supply down to 8 percent. She jumped off the rack into a thick group of soldiers. Wielding her stasis weapon, she cut into them. From behind she heard Dgarra’s battle cry as he and Jennifer charged into the mix, their bloody war-blades singing through the air.

  For the first time, V
J felt a shiver as what Jennifer called gooseflesh dimpled the skin of her arms and legs. Now this was a life worth living.

  Mark aimed and fired, aimed and fired, until the charging troops were upon him. He slammed the butt of his pulse rifle into the face of the nearest soldier and then brought the muzzle down into the throat of the man who leaped over the fallen one’s body. Pulling his combat dagger, Mark began a combination of bone-shattering punches, kicks, and slashes that chopped down the men and women who tried to fight their way past him into the narrow channel between the machines.

  He would not be pushed backward—not by humans and not by the lesser numbers of Kasari shock troops who struggled to kill him. And as one fell, the press of those who came at him shoved the next victim within his reach.

  With all his augmented speed and strength, Mark fought to defend Heather, who lay unconscious three feet behind him. And from the sound of the gunfire from the far end of the rift, Janet was holding her own with the weapons she loved.

  From somewhere in the melee before him, a Russian soldier fired a laser that killed two of Mark’s enemies and splashed molten metal onto the back of his neck. Mark hurled one of their dying bodies at the shooter, sending them both down to be trampled by their fellows.

  A sudden boom shook the cavern. The shock wave rocked Mark back on his heels and dropped those before him to the ground. First to recover, Mark grabbed a laser pistol from one of the fallen and killed those who were attempting to regain their feet.

  He looked around the corner toward the north end of the cavern and immediately saw what had happened. The Meridian Ascent had materialized amid the mass of UFNS troops, killing hundreds in an instant. Now Raul wielded the ship’s stasis field like a giant buzz saw, cutting down the horde and sending the survivors scrambling toward the west exit.

  “Everyone back to the Earth gate,” Janet yelled. “Move.”