The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  CHAPTER 35

  ALTREIAN SYSTEM, AQ37Z

  TBE Orbday 30

  As they neared the subspace-to-normal-space transition point within the Altreian system, Jack continued to explore his new abilities, fascinated by what was happening to his body and mind. Like Mark, his strength and dexterity had increased in dramatic fashion. While he didn’t have Heather’s mathematical abilities or Rob’s telekinesis, he shared their perfect recall.

  More troubling and exciting, the gene splicing that Khal Teth had performed in the ship’s medical lab had created a human variant of the Lundola mutation within Jack’s upper spinal column. Seen through the holographic displays when he lay down atop one of the tables in the medical lab, it looked like a hairy leech. Microscopic tendrils threaded their way into and around nerve tissue. From there, the threads had invaded Jack’s medulla oblongata, hippocampus, and cerebellum, worming their way into his cerebral cortex.

  The sight of it made his skin crawl and brought a horrified gasp from Janet’s lips.

  “Crap!” she said. “What has that bastard done to you?”

  Jack swung his legs off the side of the iridescent medical table, climbed to his feet, and grabbed his shirt. “The same thing I did to the Khyre race on Quol. He’s introduced a genetic mutation that gives me psionic abilities.”

  “Psionic?”

  “Think telepathy on steroids. It should also allow me to channel the power of any with whom I become Twice Bound.”

  Although he had spent hours bringing Janet up to speed on what he had done on Quol, he knew she was having difficulty accepting the details.

  “Well,” she said, “it looks like it’s killing you. I’ve seen better-looking heartworms than that thing that’s invaded your spinal cord and brain.”

  “Better to not think about it, then.”

  As he prepared to slide into his black pullover shirt, Janet stepped up behind him and ran her fingers along his upper back and neck, probing his vertebrae with her fingertips.

  “Feel anything unusual?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, stepping back to let him finish dressing.

  Janet’s brown eyes met his. “So now you can read my mind?”

  “As easily as you can hear my voice.”

  “Just fricking great.”

  Reaching out, he pulled her into an embrace. He kissed her lips, relieved that she showed no sign of revulsion. Instead, she responded with an urgent longing that threatened to pull him back down atop the table. But tempting as it would be to grant themselves another bout of lovemaking, adding to the passionate binge of this last week aboard the AQ37Z, there just wasn’t enough time before today’s transition.

  Panting, Jack gently released himself from his wife’s embrace.

  A devilish gleam glinted in her eyes. “We have time for a quickie before we start kicking alien ass?”

  Jack laughed, remembering a line from a corny old vampire comedy. “No. With you, never a quickie. Always a longie.”

  With a sigh, she painted on her work face, her hand moving to rest on the butt of her holstered Glock. “Okay, then. Let’s do this.”

  Deep inside the cavernous military complex beneath the mountains on the far side of Quol’s Basrillan continent, Captain Moros surveyed thousands of his Twice Bound Khyre commandos. As he walked along their disciplined ranks, pride swelled in his chest, taking his breath away. They and the rest of the Khyre forces had acquitted themselves quite well over the last several orbdays, extracting a price in blood from their Dhaldric enemies.

  Unfortunately, the forces loyal to General Zolat had managed to dislodge the Khyre military units from the coastal cities bordering the Chasm Sea and the Altreian Ocean. The situation within the Altreian space fleet was somewhat better. Despite the command and control from the military operations center within the Parthian, the Twice Bound crews of half the starships within the Altreian system had switched allegiance to Captain Moros.

  While the protection the friendly ships provided against those of the enemy was far from perfect, it had given the Khyre race a fighting chance to combat the genocide the Dhaldric were perpetrating within the territories they controlled. The thought of those atrocities stoked the rage that throbbed within Moros’s veins. Only the subspace message with the encryption that he and The Ripper had used gave him real hope. It had been delivered to Moros through a private subspace channel three orbdays ago.

  The message had stunningly originated on a distant Altreian research vessel en route to Quol and had contained information known only to Moros and The Ripper. Subsequent direct communications with the humans aboard that ship had convinced Moros that The Ripper’s mind had once again swapped back to his human body, while Khal Teth’s had regained control of his form. That dialogue had been what motivated Moros to gather the force of five thousand fighters at this remote location.

  The plan was a bold one. A rational being would call it foolhardy. How appropriate. It was what Moros had come to expect from The Ripper. Why should he suspect any change just because The Ripper had swapped back to his human body?

  As Moros completed his precombat inspection of the elite assault force, he returned to his operations center that overlooked the troops gathered within the room. Turning his attention to the images that the tactical computers delivered directly into his mind, the impressively large underground hangar located at the end of a long connecting hallway lay empty. Right now the hangar’s blast doors had been closed, and all the atmosphere pumped out in anticipation of the AQ37Z’s imminent arrival.

  Moros felt as though his association with The Ripper and the mutation that continued to mature within him had ripped away the facade of whom he had always believed himself to be, a simple seagoing captain of a fishing vessel. He was now only beginning to discover this new and larger self that was in the process of emerging. The experience frightened him almost as much as it thrilled him.

  As he shifted through the various video feeds, Moros rubbed his palms together. Any moment now, he would be reunited with his old friend.

  Lumbering through subspace, the ancient craft approached its exit point. Janet looked from her seat on the bridge of the AQ37Z to where Jack sat in the captain’s chair, his mind directly communicating with Z. Due to his psionic mutation, he no longer required the alien headset to make that connection, at least not while he remained aboard the research vessel.

  “Ten seconds,” Jack said.

  “Ready.”

  Not having experienced the subspace exit before, Janet felt her body tense. Hopefully what Z had said about the inertial damping would prove correct. Since Captain Moros had transmitted the precise coordinates and angular momentum for their target, Z would bring the ship into normal-space eight light-minutes from Quol. They would remain in normal-space just long enough to complete the maneuver that would match the AQ37Z’s velocity vector with their target on Quol before jumping back into subspace.

  There was little doubt that the Altreian defense systems would detect them. But Jack had selected a location that Captain Moros had said would be unlikely to have an Altreian starship patrolling nearby.

  Z hadn’t exaggerated the ship’s capabilities. Janet barely felt the transition or the subsequent normal-space acceleration. But for all it could achieve with inertial damping, the AQ37Z was a pig when it came to combat maneuvering.

  “We’ve got company inbound,” said Jack.

  “What’s our margin of error?”

  “It’s going to be tight.”

  “What about our defensive systems?”

  “This isn’t a warship. Its shielding is for protecting the research vessel when it emerges beneath the ground as it did in Bolivia. It was supposed to launch the Second Ship to repel any attackers.”

  Janet shook her head. “This just keeps on getting better.”

  With tactical displays blossoming in his mind, Jack watched as Z optimized their turn, ignoring the starship that had just locked its targeting systems onto the AQ37Z�
�s vast bulk.

  “Get those engineering robots ready to react to a hull breach,” he said.

  Janet adjusted her SRT headset over her temples without bothering to answer.

  When the attacking ship activated its graser weapons array, it did so at maximum range, causing its first volley to sizzle off the hull at an oblique angle. Plasma from the AQ37Z’s hull boiled off into space, but the beams failed to punch a hole into the ship’s interior. Then the research vessel shifted back into subspace for the short trip that would carry Jack and Janet into the subterranean hangar near the room where Moros and his commandos awaited their arrival.

  The AQ37Z’s emergence was nearly perfect, and because of the near-vacuum within the chamber, the related shock wave was almost nonexistent, certainly undetectable from more than a mile away. Almost as soon as the ship had appeared within the hangar, the blast doors slid aside. Air refilled the room.

  Jack and Janet rose from their chairs and made their way toward the primary airlock. Jack issued the mental command that caused Z to open the portal as well as the much larger door that provided access to the central engineering hub. Together, he and Janet walked the ramp that led down to the hangar floor. There, Jack paused to examine the ship that had carried him here, this being the first chance he’d had to see the vessel from the outside.

  The bottom of the bubble that formed the central engineering bay rested on the hangar floor, as did the bottoms of each of the tubular structures that supported the ship’s outer ring. The movement to his left brought Jack’s gaze to the spot where Captain Moros entered the hangar through the forty-foot-wide opening in the wall, accompanied by a dozen heavily armed Khyre soldiers.

  Jack linked Janet’s thoughts to his, then reached out to touch the mind of his friend. He felt a mixture of surprise from Janet and welcome relief from Moros.

  “Ripper,” Moros thought, “it truly be you.”

  Jack performed the mind trick that translated Altreian into English and vice versa for Janet’s benefit.

  “As advertised,” Jack projected as he walked out to greet the captain.

  They clasped hands as Moros studied him, then shifted his gaze to Janet.

  “This look to be a marked improvement over the Dhaldric form,” Moros said.

  Janet’s laugh turned Jack’s head toward her.

  “And this, my friend,” Jack said, “is my mate and partner, Janet.”

  Again Moros extended his hand, and Janet took it.

  “Pleased be to meet you,” said Moros.

  Janet started to speak, recognized that her words had failed to translate, and shifted back to the mental conversation. “A pleasure.”

  With the introductions out of the way, Jack turned the conversation to the business at hand. “Are your soldiers ready?”

  “They be.”

  Jack pointed beneath the AQ37Z’s elevated outer ring toward the expansive central cylinder and the ramp that led into the engineering bay.

  “Get them loaded. Any that don’t fit on the three engineering decks can spread out along the six hubs, the outer ring, or inside the multilevel biolabs.”

  Moros redirected his thoughts to his subordinate commanders within the Twice Bound, who ushered the columns of gray-uniformed female and male Khyre commandos toward the broad ramp that accessed the ship’s engineering bay.

  Then Jack, with Janet at his side, turned and led Captain Moros back through the primary airlock and onto the bridge. Once inside, Jack instructed Z to close the airlock behind them.

  He stopped and turned back toward Moros, simultaneously passing a vision to Janet of what he was about to attempt. Theoretically, it should work, but her concern percolated into him.

  Moros stared back at him, puzzled.

  “I want to become one of your Twice Bound,” said Jack.

  “Be that possible?”

  “Khal Teth genetically altered my body using a variation of the Lundola Procedure. I don’t know for sure that I’ll be able to channel some of the power of the Twice Bound, but I want to try.”

  “Wait,” said Janet. “Didn’t you say that could produce brain damage?”

  “Yes, but only if the user tries to channel more than his mind can handle.”

  “You have no idea how much, if any, your brain can handle,” she said.

  “True enough,” Jack said, feeling the tension creep into his shoulders. “I’ll be careful, but I have a feeling I’m going to need that extra psychic boost.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Be careful? You?”

  “There’s a first time for everything.”

  “Not if you’re dead before that happens.”

  Jack took a deep breath and forced himself to relax, shifting his focus away from Janet’s sudden anger and back to Captain Moros.

  “Captain, are you ready to give this a try?”

  Moros glanced from Janet and to Jack. He shook his head slowly back and forth. “On your head be it.”

  Khal Teth strode into the Parthian’s military operations center, barely able to keep himself from lashing out with his mind to smite those who had failed him.

  “General Zolat,” he said in a voice that was simultaneously soft and threatening, “how is it that you detected but failed to destroy the AQ37Z? Where is it now?”

  Zolat turned to face him, the general’s face the same infuriatingly stoic mask with which Khal Teth had become too familiar.

  “Overlord, the research vessel emerged from subspace beyond the range of any of our attack ships. By the time the FV02A acquired a targeting solution, the AQ37Z had returned to subspace. Since that time, we have detected no further subspace transition anomalies.”

  Scanning the tactical information that streamed into his mind, Khal Teth shuddered in frustration. He should have known that Jack Gregory wouldn’t have accompanied his wife back to the safety of Earth. Having shared the human’s mind for more than a dozen Earth years, he had observed firsthand the man’s indomitable will. The Ripper’s nature was one of eternal risk. He would never stop until he accomplished what he regarded as his mission.

  “Scan the surface of Quol,” said Khal Teth. “If he hasn’t already done so, The Ripper will set the AQ37Z down on the planet.”

  “If he does so above ground,” said Zolat, “we will see it.”

  “The research vessel is designed to emerge subsurface.”

  “Then we will detect the hypersonic shock waves that reentry will generate, be it below ground or underwater.”

  A new thought dawned on Khal Teth. “Get me a list of all subsurface military facilities with rooms large enough to hold the research vessel.”

  He felt Zolat issue the instructions to the AI that managed the military operations center’s neural net. The answer to this query appeared in both his and Zolat’s mind at the same time. Before Zolat could respond, Khal Teth gave the order.

  “Hit all eight of those with fusion torpedoes.”

  General Zolat’s eyes widened. “Overlord, three of those targets lie on the outskirts of cities with a combined population of twenty-three million, a third of whom are Dhaldric.”

  With a snarl, Khal Teth gripped Zolat’s mind in a crushing embrace that dropped the general to one knee. Despite the partial amputation of his psionic lobe and the lack of power from the Twice Bound, Khal Teth was far from neutered.

  Releasing the general, Khal Teth scanned the room, exalting in the fear his power generated from Zolat’s military staff who were present. He watched as the general regained his feet.

  “Never question any order I give you. I will not issue another warning.”

  Although Zolat failed to dismiss the angry glint in his black eyes, he inclined his head. “As you command, Overlord.”

  “How long will it take to get the torpedoes to their targets?”

  “Our orbital planetary defense platforms will have to be reprogrammed to attack targets on the planet’s surface. After that, it will take only moments to send the weapons through subspace t
o their buried targets.”

  “Do it.”

  Khal Teth pondered this weakness in Quol’s planetary defenses. But since subspace technology was the sole realm of the Altreians, the military planners had never had to concern themselves with the weighty problem of how to counter such an attack. Until very recently, rebellion had been deemed an impossibility. Besides, with their space fleet capable of faster-than-light travel, the vast majority of the Altreian Empire’s defensive systems were mobile.

  No technology allowed a starship or weapon system that was traveling through subspace to detect targets in normal-space. The fusion torpedoes on Quol’s orbital defense platforms were designed only to make short subspace jumps that would get them into the general vicinity of an attacking ship, just close enough to allow the torpedoes to home in on their targets once they reemerged. The crudeness of this approach had led the Altreians to rely much more heavily on gamma-ray-laser technology powerful enough to burn through most shielding.

  Khal Teth found himself wishing that the Altreians had the Kasari technology to manufacture antimatter weapons. For now, the fusion weapons would have to suffice.

  For the first time, as General Zolat initiated the sequence that Khal Teth had commanded, he found himself questioning his decision to aid the overlord in returning to his body. Then again, considering how The Ripper had released a genetic mutation that threatened to give complete control of the empire to the small gray-skins, it was still the best of options available to Zolat.

  With a clenched jaw, Zolat issued the launch order.

  Having closed the door to the engineering bay, Jack directed Z to pick a spot for their normal-space reentry that was likely to be free of enemy spacecraft so that they’d have time to perform the line-up maneuver for their next target on Quol. When the solution formed in his mind, he gave the command that took the AQ37Z back into subspace.

  This time the ship emerged just outside the Altreian system, eight light-hours from Quol, and immediately accelerated into its turn. Long-range sensors confirmed that there were no Altreian starships close enough to be threatening.