by T. R. Harris
“Shut down all engines still operating. Helm, let her go.”
“Sir, helm isn’t responding anyway.”
“Engines at twenty, now ten…all engines stop.”
The squealing continued, just not as pronounced.
“Sir, we just lost three of the starboard launch bays, along bulkheads 9-454 through 18-398.”
“Integrity?”
“Down to thirty percent and falling.”
Emerson unfastened his safety harness, but held onto the command chair to keep from floating away. “Comm, contact the nearest vessels for assistance.” He pressed a button on the arm of his chair. “This is the Captain, all hands abandon ship. I repeat, all hands abandon ship.”
Emerson turned to the young lieutenant junior-grade. “Mister Smith, what was the last word on the battle?”
“Success, sir. Decisive.”
“Glad to hear it. Now, get moving.”
“After you, sir,” said the young officer with a sad smile.
“You know I can’t do that, Mister Smith, but I will be right behind you.”
Synnoc had made the ten mile journey to the Military Command Center to supervise the great battle, knowing full-well that his friend would be irritated by the interference.
Kradis was the Fleet Marshal; it was his job to conduct the battle, not the Elder’s. But this was the moment Synnoc had been envisioning for years. He wasn’t satisfied to play spectator, not for something this important.
That was then.
Now he was an emotional wreck, yelling at subordinates and throwing anything that wasn’t attached to something large across the dimly-lit control room.
It all started when nearly every contact point on the threat board suddenly doubled or trebled. How could this have happened? Were they employing a type of dimensional jump-drive?
“No sir,” Kradis reported. “Site reports show the additional vessels had been under tow and in dark status. They were undetectable.”
“Not to visual observation!”
“My Lord, we could not get a visual, Our units were in hiding. By the time verification was received, they were within the dampening fields.”
Later, as the battle deteriorated even more, Synnoc began to bark orders—many of which countermanded those of the Fleet Marshal—and sending hundreds of Juirean ships into the mass of enemy vessels on one-way suicide missions. None of the Juirean crews refused. These orders came from the Elder himself.
“My Lord, they have lost one of their ship carriers.”
Synnoc looked to Kradis with manic eyes. “Out of how many?”
“They had three.”
“And the other two?”
“Still operational.”
“So I find little joy in your report. What is the latest casualty report?”
Kradis punched keys on his panel. “Over two thousand, the situation is still fluid. Permission to call retreat. We must preserve what we can.”
“And the enemy strength?”
“That, too, is fluid, since we did not have an accurate starting count.”
Synnoc glared at his Fleet Marshal.
“The Humans still have a fleet of over two thousand five hundred ships in strength. If we preserve the remainder of our units, we should be close to parity for defense of Juir.”
“Juir? They will not be allowed to reach Juir!”
“My Lord, we have very little in place to stop them. With the channel open for Cain, the only units we have available are the survivors from this battle.”
“I refuse to accept that. We have five hundred more coming from the Bondit region.”
“In two days, my Lord, and they are on course for the battlefield, not Juir.”
“Divert them.”
“That will add another day to their journey.”
A dozen sets of yellow eyes were on the pacing Council Elder. “How long?”
“How long what, my Lord?” asked Kradis.
“How long until they get to Juir?”
“They the Humans, or they our forces?”
Synnoc took Kradis by his uniform and shoved him against a wall. “Do not mock me, Kradis. I want to know when Adam Cain will get to Juir! Do not be stupid.”
The Fleet Marshal had had enough. He pushed his superior away and pressed him into a nearby chair. “I am not stupid, Synnoc! It only appears so because I follow stupid orders! Cain does not matter at this point. The survival of Juir does!”
“Guards!” the Elder cried out. “Restrain Kradis. He is no longer Fleet Marshal. Place him in a holding cell pending review of his actions by the Council Elite.”
Kradis didn’t resist. He glared at Synnoc while being escorted from the room.
“My Lord,” one of the Master-Overlords in the room began, “who shall be the new Fleet Marshal?”
“I do not need a Fleet Marshal. I will assume the position myself.”
“My Lord?”
“You forget, I have military experience. I am more than qualified to lead the war against the Humans.”
“As you wish, my Lord. Orders?”
“Get me the location of Adam Cain.”
“And what of the fleet? Shall I order the withdrawal?”
Synnoc was up and pacing again.
“My Lord, the fleet?”
“Yes…recall them, but order our units not to interfere with the journey of Adam Cain. He must be allowed to reach Juir.”
Chapter 28
The manufacturing worlds of Oannan and Bal—two of the original planets in the Seven World Common Alliance, the precursor to the Expansion—had been rebuilt after the Kracori attack seventeen years before. They’d both suffered major damage, yet not as severely as Juir; dropping a half-a-kilometer-wide asteroid on a planet was a pretty serious event. Even to this day, the homeworld of the Juireans had an average temperature eight degrees below its pre-attack level, the result of the nuclear winter that followed the asteroid impact.
The Kracori had targeted the manufacturing plants hoping to limit the Juirean recovery should their attack on Juir fail. After the Humans took over the Expansion, they poured money and resources into rebuilding the resources of the empire. Now the twin planets enjoyed thriving economies and a higher-than-average standard of living, as compared to the rest of the Expansion.
The planets were also located less that a light-year from Juir.
Adam reasoned Synnoc would be expecting him to come directly to Juir in his super-powerful starship, burning a path right up to the Elder’s front door. So Adam would do the unexpected. He and Riyad would make their way to Oannan, and from there, to Juir via the hundreds of daily cargo ships delivering goods and services to the capital planet of the Expansion.
Of course, the two Humans would have to commandeer yet another vessel and then land at one of the huge receiving ports located hundreds of miles from Juir City. From there they would move overland before Adam could implement the second part of his plan.
The shuttle from the Class-2 worked great for getting them to the surface of Oannan, then wearing black environment suits to disguise their identities, they mingled with the dozens of Expansion races populating the cargo transit center. After that it was simply a matter of gaining access to a small delivery ship destined for Juir.
They settled on one of Lan’olic ownership, with a crew of six and carrying a cargo of unfrozen and foul-smelling food stock to the capital planet. The ship was simply a target of opportunity, so it was done out of no animus toward the aliens. In fact, the Humans had never heard of Lan’olics before, so they were surprised when they turned out to have very strong suction cups on the tips of their fingers that made fighting them for control of the ship problematic. The suckers locked onto the composite material of the environment suits and wouldn’t let go, even as alien bodies were smashed against bulkheads and doorways. Even after all six were down, it took Adam and Riyad several minutes to pry the stubborn suckers from their suits.
“Dammit, that’s thrown us behind
,” Adam complained as he sat in the single pilot seat—oversized, even in his enviro-suit. He lit up the generators. “We don’t want to lose our place in line.”
“There’s an angry Juirean telling us to hurry up. There’s still a chance,” said Riyad from a station to the rear of Adam position.
The small cargo ship lifted from the surface in a cloud of chemical exhaust and raced upward toward the small gap in the caravan heading for space. The line was narrow at this point, and Adam nearly collided with a much larger ship on chem drive as he squeezed in.
“Now you have those in the ship to our rear yelling at us.”
“Screw them.”
An image of a hideous, multi-flapped mass of pink and yellow skin appeared on the forward viewscreen. “Just thought you’d like to know what they look like, my friend, in case you still have a desire to screw them.”
“Yuk, get rid of that! Was that a face…or something else?”
“I think it was a face, but one can never be sure. On a more serious note, the line is stretching out now, preparing for gravity drive. Time to Juir: Sixteen minutes.”
“Not even enough time to get a breather from these damn suits. But maybe you can do something about all the dead Lan’olics stinking up the place.”
“Why me?”
“Because someone has to fly the ship…and I got to the pilot seat first.”
********
It had been ten years since Adam lasted visited Juir. That was when he gave his famous—or infamous—speech returning control of the Expansion back to the Juireans. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
After taking control of the galaxy at the end of the war, Humans found themselves falling into the same self-destructive path as the Juireans, that of trying to rule something as large as a galaxy as a single race. The job was just too big, requiring every Human alive to be involved in the task in one way or another, while still falling woefully short. Massive breeding would be needed to create more Humans, with the young trained for critical jobs even before they reached their teenage years.
That was no way to live, and fortunately the powers on Earth realized this early on. They still liked the idea of lording over a stellar empire, but maybe one not quite as large as the Expansion. Adam joined the movement to abdicate rule of the Expansion in exchange for a more manageable empire comprising only of the Orion-Cygnus Arm of the galaxy.
Because of his fame, Adam was given the honor—or curse—of delivering the galaxy-wide speech that told of the Human’s plans. He wasn’t comfortable as a public speaker, but by all accounts, the speech came off just fine. Then the Humans left Juir and returned to Earth. Soon afterwards, the Orion-Cygnus Union was formed, with Earth as its capital.
And then they all lived happily ever after….
Well, not quite.
Then came the Sol-Kor, followed a new war with the vindictive Juireans. Adam couldn’t understand what Synnoc was thinking? There was no need to go to war, not again, and not so soon after the galaxy-wide devastation caused by the Sol-Kor.
The Juirean Elder was clearly mad, and madmen—or mad-aliens—were hard to understand or predict.
As to the fate of Sherri and Arieel, it wasn’t a mystery what could happen to them, only the details of their death. Would Synnoc use them for bait, as a way to capture Adam and Riyad? Or would he use them to force a surrender? He could also simply execute them on a whim, just out of spite. The bottom line was Synnoc was going to kill the two females—and Adam and Riyad, too, if he got his hands on them. The only questions were when and how?
Chapter 29
Pollic Pon was a huge city about a hundred miles from Juir City. It served as a receiving and distribution center for the planet, along with ninety other centers scattered across the surface. But Pollic Pon was the largest, as well as the closest to Juir City, and that was where the Lan’olic ship was scheduled to land.
Fortunately, the movement of ships in and around such a large distribution center was mostly automated. With thousands of landings and take-offs per day, it was the only way to avoid collisions and misrouted cargo.
Adam and Riyad sat back in huge, comfortable chairs and let the computers guide them to a soft landing at their designated location. Robots then accessed the rear hold and unloaded the cargo with mechanical speed and efficiency.
By this time, the two Humans—still in their environment-suit disguises—had already left the alien ship. They knew it would be shot back into space for a return trip to Oannan. But without a crew, once manual control was returned, it would race wildly off course, eventually to be stopped and boarded. Fortunately, all this would do is create more questions; Riyad had dumped the bodies into space. All the investigators would have would be ghost ship and a missing crew. Whether they would put two and two together and alert those on the Kacoran Plain, that was an unknown.
As a species, Juireans were too few and too important to tend to such mundane tasks as driving taxis. That job—and many others on the planet—was left to the assorted creatures who came to the capital planet seeking well-paying jobs, or at least better than they could find on their homeworlds. The driver of the transport Adam and Riyad climbed into was another of the races neither of them had seen before. He had almost iridescent red skin and wore a tight-fitting garment made from a material resembling tin-foil. He had the standard two arms, two legs and Prime-looking face. The eyes, however, had double eyelids that closed from top to bottom and side to side. Adam’s own eyes began to water just looking at the alien in the rearview mirror.
He leaned forward and presented a stack of Juirean credits.
“Will this get us to Juir City?”
The alien took the chips. “Juir City is a long trip. Without a return fare I will need double.”
Adam handed him more, feeling like he’d just been hustled.
Without expression or comment, the driver guided the transport away from the huge spaceport and onto the main road leading to Juir City.
Adam had spent a year on the planet after the Humans took over, with most of his time surveying the damage caused by the Kracori asteroid attack. The huge rock had been guided to a water splash-down a hundred miles out into the Southern Sea, so most of the catastrophic damage was to the area around the city. Huge tsunami waves climbed nearly to the top of the Kacoran Plain, where the main cluster of Expansion-ruling buildings had once stood. Most had already been destroyed by the Kracori air and space assault prior to the rock being dropped from orbit, so further damage was limited to what was left to burn on the hundred-mile long flat-top mountain, along with the brutal, two-year-long nuclear winter that followed.
The planet Juir of that time was nothing like the Juir of today. Adam was amazed at the speedy recovery of the natural ecosystem. Grasses had returned, along with thick groves of large-leafed trees. The skies were blue, even as the surrounding mountains showed considerably more snowpack than before the attack. It was cold outside—colder than normal—and according to the experts it would remain so for another twenty years.
The trip to Juir City took two hours in light traffic, but before reaching the rebuilt metropolis, Adam had the driver pull off the main road five miles west of the city. The alien didn’t question the instructions. A new road wound through the groves toward the imposing edifice that was the sheer rock wall of the Kacoran Plain, climbing to a height of three thousand feet above the city.
Adam had the driver stop before reaching the small town of Hammic, four miles farther along the road.
“We’ll get out here,” said Adam.
Without question, the driver stopped the car.
Adam was in awe of the driver’s total lack of concern or curiosity. So he felt really bad when he reached out and knocked the driver unconscious. The Humans found emergency equipment—including rope—in the transport. They bound and gagged the driver and placed him the cargo hold of the vehicle. Adam would need the transport after the rescue. He moved the car into a grove of trees and out of view fro
m the road.
“Let’s hope this doesn’t take too long, otherwise our red friend here will die of dehydration and starvation.”
“Can’t be helped. It’s a long walk from here back to Pollic Pon.”
Riyad looked up at the towering wall of stone. “Are you sure it’s still there?”
“No, I’m not. But I came here ten years ago and it was then.”
“That’s reassuring, otherwise we’ve got one hell of a climb ahead of us.”
A towering and imposing wall of granite rose up before them, yet even then it was a fifteen minute hike to reach the mountain, where millions of years of wind, rain and snow had caused huge piles of fallen boulders, rock, soil and gravel to accumulate at the base.
The Kacoran Plan was the last remnant of a huge shield volcano. Sometime in its fifty-million-year-long history, a hundred-mile long capstone formed at one level within the mass of basalt and granite, and over time everything above and around it weathered away until only the imposing, flat-top mountain was left standing.
A hard wind was howling down the mountain, and Humans were grateful for their environ-suits. Adam stood back and looked up at the mountain, before scanning to the left and right along the base.
“You seem lost.” Riyad observed.
“Not any more than usual.” Adam moved off to the right, threading his way through the crumbled stone debris. Fifteen minutes later he pointed.
“There, see the path and that small stream? That’s where we’re going.”
The small brook flowed from the maze of rock rubble as an ancient path ran along its bank. Adam and Riyad wove through the narrow opening, following the creek until it led them to a wider clearing. Against a flat cliff wall was a perfectly round hole in the side of the mountain, thirty feet in diameter, with a small waterfall draining from it—and a rusted metal grate blocking the entrance.
