“Overman Creed, I can’t hear you,” the assault leader said.
“You give them Hell, sir, and-and…damnit, but this is hard.”
“I know, but so is staying behind to buy you time.”
Some people have the knack of drawing the best out in you. I don’t know how Claath had known to pick Smith-Bell to lead a legion, but this time the Jelk had picked one of the best of us.
“I promise to free Earth, sir,” I whispered. I could feel the breath leaving me as I spoke, seeming to deflate my lungs. I had to sip air to add, “I promise to save the human race.”
“You keep your promise, Creed,” Smith-Bell said. “You remember us and know that many troopers paid the ultimate price to give you the opportunity.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Aha,” he said. “The tigers are here. I have to go. Goodbye, Overman.”
“Goodbye, Assault Leader,” I said. It was the last time I heard his voice. Then I bellowed orders and began directing traffic, getting these badly needed assault troopers into their last mad gamble.
***
“Not all the obedience chips are disabled,” N7 told me.
I hadn’t thought of that. I should have, but I hadn’t.
We stood in the central control chamber as the last troopers filed aboard.
“That can’t be helped now,” I said. “Listen,” I told Dmitri, Ella and Rollo. “I’m sending each of you to a different part of the ship. We might materialize into the battlejumper, or part of our ship might. We have to spread out so some of us are alive at the end of the teleportation. Once we’re aboard the battlejumper, strip off your living armor. They’re deathtraps then.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Rollo asked. “We’re going to storm the Jelk battlejumper naked?”
“It’s even better than that,” I said. “We’re going to save the women while we’re running around in the buff. If that isn’t a fantasy come true—”
“I am ready,” N7 said. “I have a running coordination—”
“I don’t care about the specifics,” I said. “Go,” I told the others.
As they hurried out of the hatch, I switched onto the wide comm channel. “Get ready, troopers,” I said. “We’re going to teleport, and it’s going to be crazy rough until we stop.”
Actually, until we moved at the same velocity as the battlejumper, it would be rough, but telling them the way I did amounted to the same thing. They could understand that, anyway, and that’s all that mattered at the moment.
“Once we’ve come to complete stop,” I said, “boil out, get ready to kill Saurians or whatever Claath keeps for defense in there. This will be just like storming the PDS, only worse, because we have to catch Claath by surprise.”
“Impossible,” N7 said.
“Good luck, troopers,” I said. “I’m counting on every one of you. The survivors back on Earth are counting on you as well. Overman Creed, out.”
“Are you ready, N7?” I asked.
The android pressed a switch and the entire ship thrummed into life. By the sound, the engines worked fine. N7 made several adjustments. The thrum changed pitch, going higher and higher.
I breathed deeply. This was it. I couldn’t believe it.
Once more, the android looked up at the screen. Then he pressed another button.
Nothing happened. I looked at the screen. The battlejumper was still out there. So was the Jelk and Starkien fleet.
“What just happened?” I asked, wishing to say more.
At that instant, vertigo as I’ve never felt it slammed against me. The world blurred and I heaved everything I had in my gut. Humming began around me and it increased to an intolerable pitch. I wondered if N7 had known this would happen. Maybe he was still loyal to Claath. Maybe all his actions aboard the PDS had been to find out how Earthers would react if given half a chance for freedom. How could I have been such a fool as to trust the android? Claath had tricked us—me—yet again. I wanted to weep. I wanted to—
Weird intense colors flashed before me and the world went BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. I already lay on the floor, gripping a stanchion. It shuddered and vibrated. I curled my arms tighter, hanging on, expecting the worst, and that’s exactly what I got.
A mélange of crashing, roaring, pounding, screeching, howling and other noises combined with violent moving. Things went POP, POP, POP, as the world flipped, jerked, shuddered and screeched. The screeching of twisted, torn metal went on and on. My grip weakened as violent motions tried to tear me loose. I refused to release my grip, and my new strength combined with the living armor ensured I remained at my spot.
How many troopers tumbled through the corridors? How many had melded into the ship? Had we made it onto the right battlejumper? Had—
I opened my mouth and bellowed, because at that point I couldn’t do anything else. I would never do this again. Had it worked? What—
I heard buzzing. It came from my helmet.
“The automated systems have activated,” N7 said. “You must shed your bio-suit.”
I pressed pads inside my helmet and roared orders. Then I began to tease the living armor from me. How long until these automated systems emitted the needed frequencies to cause my suit to kill me?
I flung the living armor from me, and I grabbed my laser rifle, aiming it the quivering blob.
“Will it attack?” I asked N7.
The android still wore his cyber-armor, and he shook his head.
I wore nothing but my helmet and boots. I suppose I looked absurd, but so be it.
“N7?”
“I am awestruck,” the android said. “I cannot believe that we have successfully teleported onto Shah Claath’s battlejumper. You and I have survived. It would now seem reasonable to believe that so have others. We could conceivably win.”
“Not if we stand around jawing,” I said. “Open up the ship.”
N7 pressed several controls. “They are frozen. We will have to batter our way out.”
“Whatever it takes, “I said.
I aimed my laser rifle on the hatch and went to work. The beam flashed and I used it like a torch, with curls of smoke drifting from the metal. If N7 was telling the truth, we were inside Claath’s battlejumper. We’d beaten the odds.
The beam turned the hatch red hot where it burned and then white, with lava-like curls of metal appearing and cooling in place. Finally, an opening clanged free. Immediately, I heard wailing and men and women groaning from outside my chamber.
Carefully, I stepped through the opening, making sure my skin and even more my balls didn’t touch any of the hot metal. Running around naked might turn into a genuine handicap. I needed some clothes. Even a pair of shorts would make feel better.
I came upon the first troopers. The bio-suits had suffocated some. Others had gotten the living armor half off and now battled for their lives. It was horrifyingly gruesome.
I grabbed my Bowie knife and hacked at living armor. Some of the stuff slithered onto my hand. With a shout, I backed away and managed to extricate myself from it.
“Use your lasers,” I said. “Burn off portions at a time.”
Some of the troopers heard me. The soft purr of the lasers rifles filled the cramped quarters. Soon, a pork-like, burnt-human stench filled the area and fumes drifted everywhere. Ten more assault troopers died to their living armor. Claath’s automated protective systems had worked to a degree.
With eighteen survivors, I cut through to another section of the teleported ship. We should have all stripped off the living armor before popping in here. I’d thought we would have time to do it on this side. I’d wanted the troopers armored to amplify their strength and protect them from smashing around like people in an auto wreck. My decision could have cost me half or more of my extremely limited number of troopers.
How many troopers would I need to conqueror this monstrous ship?
I didn’t know it, but the nightmare had just begun. Every time I broke into a new outer section of the
teleport-ship, I found a lower percentage of survivors. Then we reached a dead end. Our ship had melded into part of the battlejumper.
We stumbled in a different direction. We needed to storm the battlejumper, not while away our precious seconds fighting to get out of this deathtrap of a space vehicle.
Finally, we came upon some troopers with the Lokhar mine ejectors. With those, we blew down hatches. Now we had to take greater care, as flying projectiles scratched and cut our unprotected skin.
Far too long of a time later, my troopers blasted the outer hull and we stumbled into the battlejumper proper. I watched the man in front of me. He carried a Lokhar chest cannon. He jumped down out of the teleport-ship, landed on metal flooring, and his neck exploded. His head tottered forward and hit his chest. The few strands of hanging flesh tore away. Blood fountained, and the body twitched horribly. All around me, other neck explosions tore off more heads. The obedience chips that were functioning did their grisly work.
It cut the number of my troopers by a third.
“Sound off,” I said in a hoarse voice. The combined horrors had stolen my zeal and hope.
No one spoke. Maybe the horrors had frozen them, too.
“Dmitri,” I said. “How many troopers do you have left?”
“Half,” the Cossack said. “This is bad, my general.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and shoved a fist against my forehead. He was right. This was bad.
A hand touched my bare shoulder. I shrugged it off and stumbled forward. How could I have been so reckless, so arrogant?
“Creed,” Rollo said.
I bumped against a bulkhead and let my forehead rest against it.
“Creed,” Rollo said, whispering in my ear.
“This,” I said, “is too much.”
“You’re in prison,” Rollo said. “The rapists are coming and they’re going to use you good for as long as they want.”
I snapped up and turned around.
Rollo’s eyes were wide and staring. I saw the fear in them. I saw the worry. The man wore no clothes. His helmet’s visor was open. He was muscled like a steroid freak.
“Creed,” Rollo said, “you got to lead us. The troopers are petrified. You’re right, this is too much. You gotta take control and make things right.”
“You take control,” I said, “or let Dmitri do it. I’m done. I’m an idiot and I’ve—”
Rollo shoved me, pushing me against the bulkhead. “Do you want me to kick your ass?”
I sneered.
“Then lead us,” he said. “Do something before Claath comes, laughs in your face and orders his Saurians to screw the bunch of us like prison chickens.”
I glared at my friend.
“That’s it,” Rollo said. “Get pissed.”
I knew what he was doing. It was school-yard psychology, but I accepted the premise. What else could I do but wallow in my grief or…
“Claath!” I shouted. “Claath, you little prick! I’m coming to get you.”
Rollo stepped out of my way.
I scanned the chamber. Bulkheads had been torn down, making this a huge area. In the middle of it was the teleport-ship. I looked up, scanning a higher deck. I spied dead Saurians up there.
“Okay!” I shouted. “We’re heading up. Do you troopers see up there?”
“There aren’t enough of us left,” a trooper said.
I gave him a cocky prison laugh. “Are you whipped, trooper? Are you ready to go home and cry to your momma?”
The trooper scowled. “You have no cause to say that.”
“Listen up!” I shouted. “I’m climbing up there. I’m getting me some clothes. Then I’m going to get oriented. We’re here. We made it.”
“Only a few of us did,” a trooper said.
“Yeah, I can see that,” I said. “But we’re the ones who are living. Therefore, we’re the ones who have to get the job done. I need troopers to back me, troopers to fight with me. The rest of you pansies can stay here and sulk about how much this sucks. The ones with grit follow me.”
“I will follow!” Dmitri shouted. “We all will follow.”
No one else agreed with him, but I was glad that at least Dmitri did.
I slung the laser rifle over my shoulder so the butt of the weapon struck my hip. I winced. The rifle butt hit a sore spot I hadn’t known existed. I was out of pulse grenades, but I didn’t care. I jumped, grabbed a jutting piece of metal and promptly cut my hand.
“Remember,” I said from there. “We’re not wearing our suits anymore. So you can get cut far too easily. But don’t let that worry you. I’m not letting it stop me. Come on!” I roared. “What are you waiting for? You’re the space-assault troopers. You took over a Lokhar planetary defense station. There isn’t anyone whose butt we can’t whip. Now we have our chance at freedom. Let’s use it.”
This time, enough of them shouted in agreement with Dmitri. The Cossack helped bring them back around, and they swarmed after me. The others glanced around, maybe thought about it, and most of them came, including N7. We had a battlejumper to capture.
-25-
The Jelk battlejumper was merely large, instead of huge like the planetary defense station. As I’ve said before, the battlejumper was several miles in diameter. Even with four legions of Earthers, there hadn’t been enough of us to properly capture the PDS. At least not compared to the number of Lokhar legionaries.
After the horror of the suffocating bio-suits and the exploding chips, we had a mere two hundred troopers left to take this vessel. That meant if the Saurians had any numbers we’d be wading in lizard blood before we would ever reached Claath.
That led to my first decision. I predicated it on one critical factor. I had to believe this was humanity’s sole chance at freedom. And we would need freedom in order to achieve survival in a universe full of exploitive aliens. Given that, I couldn’t fail. I’d made a vow to Smith-Bell who had given his life for us to gain this chance.
I’m taking the long road to say that I took a red-hot branding iron to my heart. I seared the mercy out of me. At this juncture, I could afford none. The original Lokhar dreadnought showed me the way: absolute annihilation. This was like Genghis Khan’s campaign against the Khwarezmian Empire. If you haven’t heard of that vast and exceedingly powerful Muslim empire of the Middle Ages there’s a reason for it. Genghis Khan fought the most brutal campaign of the sword and sandal era of Earth ever. Once the Mongols captured a Khwarezmian city, they drove the survivors to the next one, forcing them against the walls, to pull it apart, with their bare hands if they needed to. It meant their own countrymen on the walls had to fire arrows and boiling pitch to destroy them. The Mongols killed two enemies with the same stone, making the defenders waste slender resources on their own kin.
The Mongols burned through the Khwarezmian Empire as if they were a portable nuclear bomb. Millions perished and the Mongols erected pyramids of skulls, at times butchering the dogs and cats of a captured city. The region never recovered even into modern times. The Mongols broke the canals and chopped down the trees, turning a once fertile area into a desolate place fit for jackals, camels and nomad horsemen.
Like a snowstorm from Hell, we burst upon shocked Saurians. We didn’t ask anyone to surrender. We couldn’t afford the lizards to change their minds later. We were two hundred space-assault troopers, and the berserk rampage through the battlejumper cost us a soldier here and a soldier there, dwindling our already sparse numbers.
Along the way we found clothes and put them on. I felt ten times stronger because of it. Men were just not made to fight with their junk flopping around.
The materialization of the Lokhar bomb-ship inside the battlejumper had caught everyone we’d found so far by surprise. The destruction caused by the teleport ship inside the battlejumper had rendered the majority of the Saurians disabled due to broken limbs or snapped necks. It made our sweep easier in a physical sense. The murder pure and simple played havoc on my soul, at least, and likely
upon others as well.
But what else could we do? Call on Claath to surrender in order to save Saurian lives? He’d laugh at us. Like a jackhammer then, we smashed through walls, attempting to act like a thrust spear to pierce the heart of the dragon. Doing it this way bypassed rigged hatches and possibly other inner Jelk defenses.
In retrospect, it’s clear we would never have gotten as far as we did without N7. He had a lot of critical information. The other piece of luck—yeah, I’m going to admit that despite everything I did, a lucky break helped us. Only it wasn’t quite a lucky break. It was the raw spirit of the humans Claath had dared to collar with obedience chips. What compelled them to their acts of bravery? I believe rage did it, shame and the rugged desire to be free. Like us, they saw a chance and took it.
The chance came because the teleporting bomb-ship caught Claath by surprise. The days of pre-Sigma Draconis invasion planning and the intensity of combat must have drained the red-skinned Jelk. He had left the bridge long enough and during the right time for him to fail and for us to succeed.
What happened? What was the piece of luck?
We blew down another bulkhead. We were getting low on Lokhar claymores, and that could soon become a problem. Then we rushed into a Jelk’s bachelor quarters and found seven women with snapped or blown-out necks. We also found five androids with smashed craniums. The real surprise was Shah Claath laying on a bloody rug and bound by cords. Beside him a woman wept. She’d wrapped a towel around her nakedness and had her face in her hands.
“N7,” Claath said, with hope in his devious voice.
The woman looked up. Tears streaked her cheeks. I couldn’t believe it: it was Jennifer. She scrambled to her feet and aimed a laser pistol at us, me in particular because I was in the lead.
“This is exactly as I explained it to you,” Claath told Jennifer. “You have thrown away your life for this vain gesture. Your fellow creatures are dead because of your willful disobedience. Now you will experience pain and torment as you cannot imagine. Troopers, disarm her.”
Assault Troopers Page 29
