Star Angel: Rising (Star Angel Book 4)

by David G. McDaniel

  “Come in.”

  The door opened and one of his aides entered. The man was a little pale and immediately Lindin began to worry. Though he noticed at once that the paleness did not come from fear. His aide seemed ...

  Eager?

  “What is it?” Lindin leaned all the way forward.

  The man cleared his throat.

  “They’re back.”

  CHAPTER 26: RISE OF THE DEMON

  It was a global spectacle across Anitra. The announcement of the starship’s arrival in orbit, the anticipation of its return in the skies above and its descent to the mountain base from whence it escaped held the world in thrall. Dominion, Venatres—all eyes were watching where this was concerned. When the ship was stolen both sides had been at war and the long-hidden secret was in the open the instant the behemoth slipped from its mountain stronghold, taking to the sky in full view for all to see.

  Now it was back. With forewarning this time, so everyone had ample opportunity to flood the fields and streets to try and catch a glimpse as it descended, the rest watching TVs as it returned across the heavens to the mountain base, easing at last down the same smooth-bore tunnel up which it departed what seemed an eternity ago.

  No matter the magnitude of the recent treaty between the two powerful nations, for that moment the Reaver was the top news story around the world.

  Lindin paced in the cavernous chamber, watching its final approach. In those last moments he wondered if that was a good idea and opted to stand instead near the far wall. The Reaver was big, the cavern was just large enough to contain it, and he had no idea how good Nani was at flying it. One wrong shimmy this way or that and people would get squished.

  Lots of people. The cavern was full. Brave souls, there to meet these equally bold thieves and make them pay for what they’d done. Lindin hadn’t been sure whether Nani would ever actually bring it home, though he expected the small group of outlaws to show up some day. They wouldn’t stay away forever. Now here they were. With very little conversation Nani had called out of the blue to announce they were back and they were coming and that she had important things to discuss—with all of them, not just Lindin, she was careful to assert—then refused any further efforts to make contact.

  And suddenly here it was. Nose sliding into view in the tunnel, causing the whole crowd to step back with a start. Lindin watched nervously as the impossible mass floated in the final hundred meters or so, heavy on its invisible columns of wave energy, all the way into the cavern and hovering above the floor, spread out to cover it all.

  Shit is it big!

  He’d forgotten.

  Once fully inside it began turning in place, slowly, edges just missing the rock walls, rotating until it was facing back out the tunnel for departure. For a panicked moment he thought they’d changed their minds and were about to leave again, but as his heart leapt into his throat heavy panels notched open beneath the ship and its giant landing struts extended, unfolding. A fluid yet large movement, impossibly solid for something so impossibly quiet.

  And it was landing. Only the mighty, tangible hmmmm of its powerplant betrayed its mass. That and the titanic crunch of the flat rock floor as it settled its bulk and the engines released its full weight. The transition from no weight on the floor to that many thousands of tons could actually be felt; an ever-so-slight tremor that pulsed through the foundations of the mountain itself.

  The ship settled and was quiet.

  Lindin thought to yell at the squads of soldiers on hand to get aboard but realized no one was going aboard until the people inside decided to open the doors. Everything remained, infuriatingly, up to the thieves. The ship was impossible to breach.

  And so they waited. Everyone focused on the one door. As they did Lindin’s eyes roved, and he noticed scarring on the hull, looked further and saw a few deep gouges along with what looked to be burn marks and impacts. At first he grew furious—they ruined it!—then began to feel a little afraid as he tried to imagine what Jessica and crew had been mixed up in. What had they encountered with the Reaver to take damage like that? The volatile fury and fear cocktail swirled harder. What were they doing all this time?!

  The door slid aside. Zac was the first through.

  “No one’s arresting anyone,” were his first, booming words as he leapt like a great cat to the floor. No one even had a chance to speak or react in any way before that thundering command was out of his mouth.

  He was an absolute mess.

  As he started for the waiting group Lindin pushed past the people between him and Zac and met the mighty Kazerai at the middle of the floor, stopping nose to nose with him, refusing to be cowed. An improbable stand-off.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Not the first words Lindin planned, but it seemed none of this was going to go exactly as he intended.

  Zac, essentially, ignored him. “No one else is coming out until I have your word.” He looked over Lindin’s head, keeping the volume high. “I’m not letting you arrest anyone,” he looked around the room, at the multitude of armed soldiers and others on hand. “Too much has happened you need to hear.”

  Lindin just stared at him. Everyone was staring at him. Zac was streaked with the faded remains of what looked like mud and bits of grass, even some blood. He wore nothing but a pair of shredded pants—and barely those. Almost like Lindin would’ve expected him to look after his battle with Kang.

  Had the Reaver just gone into some sort of a time warp? Obviously Nani and company used the starship to rescue him but … did they just do it? Just now? They’d been gone too long otherwise …

  Lindin couldn’t wait for answers.

  “Do I have your word?” Zac insisted. In addition to everything else he had a dark beard coming in. That was definitely different. Maybe time travel wasn’t part of this.

  I can’t wait to get some answers.

  Lindin held up a hand. In truth he was just relieved the ship was back. Punishment could wait, if Zac was so determined to be heard.

  “No one’s getting arrested,” he said. “Not yet. But you’re damn sure going to sit and tell me everything.”

  That seemed good enough for Zac. He turned and signaled. As he did the next figure emerged into the dark portal, backlit by the purple of the interior lighting.

  It was Nani.

  She, too, looked like hell.

  Though not covered in mud, clothes torn or anything like that, she nevertheless looked frazzled. And frightened. Yet, behind the fear, which Lindin was used to in his girl scientist—a timidity that rarely mattered in the face of her genius—he saw something else. A new confidence, it seemed, growing a little with each step. As she moved further away from the ship, closer toward him, that calm confidence took a greater hold. A certainty that was unmistakable to his trained eye, as if she’d changed somehow, evolved, and he was immediately wary for what this new twist might bring.

  There were lots of new twists in the air right then.

  Behind Nani stepped Bianca and, a little further back, Willet. The three began making their way down the ramp, all eyes in the room on them. Lindin noticed Willet looked completely crushed, and as they came forward, no one else emerging, he suspected why.

  Satori wasn’t with them.

  Lindin asked the obvious. “Where’s Satori?” Then: “And Jessica?” The instigator of this whole mess was nowhere to be seen. Was she hiding aboard?

  But the looks on their faces told him everything. Whatever did happen, Satori and Jessica were lost in the process.

  Nani walked closer; all the way up to him. She looked him straight in the eye, that new confidence in her gaze continuing to make him uneasy. This one had changed. They all had, as he looked into their faces, but Nani more than the rest.

  She spoke firmly.

  “We need to talk.”

  **

  “Dreadnought Dasaad is hailing,” came the report from the Kel comm officer. Cee sat behind him, listening to the exchange, on a raised dais in an
overlarge command chair. A seat made special for the queen, like a high-tech throne. Her flagship had just arrived in the Earth system.

  “Put them on,” her admiral ordered. The wide forward screen flickered and Voltan’s image appeared.

  “My queen,” he said in greeting.

  “Lord Voltan.”

  “I’m sending coordinates to you now.”

  “We have brought additional landing craft,” she informed him. “Eleven Rake class, with full compliments. They will aid in the ground insertions.”

  “Very well.” Voltan’s image dominated the bridge screen. “We are nearly through our initial wave. All has gone according to expectations.”

  “Good.”

  Her Praetor shifted a little. “We are ready to receive your shuttle,” he said. “I will be standing by.”

  He signed off, Cee issued final instructions to her admiral and left the bridge. A few lifts and a long hallway later, accompanied at each step by her bishop and her personal staff and guards, a retinue she was not often without, she was boarding her personal shuttle and they were on their way across the void to Voltan’s dreadnought, the Dasaad. As they sailed through the vast, empty space she admired the might and scale of her fleet ranged before her, floating in wide formation, spanning the target world. The world itself was quite blue, lots of water, at least from that angle, and she could scarcely peel her eyes from it, feeling an intense sense of satisfaction that it would soon be theirs.

  The shuttle docked and she brought her gaze back inside. Outer doors closed, the shuttle rose and, in moments, Voltan was meeting her in the halls outside the docking bay aboard his command dreadnought.

  “My queen,” he said and bowed by way of greeting. Cee nodded and continued walking. Voltan turned and took up pace beside her, his own personal guard and her group falling in step behind. The heavily buttressed, green metal halls of the warship echoed with the nearly synchronized strikes of their boots.

  “There are many things of which to update you,” Voltan said as they walked, “First the two most significant.”

  Cee nodded for him to continue.

  “To begin,” he said, “Kang is alive.”

  She missed a step and nearly came to a halt, covered quickly and kept going. Voltan seemed to have been expecting this reaction.

  “Shortly before you arrived,” he elaborated, “the beast climbed out of his hole, quite alive, and began a rampage. Since that time he’s been wreaking havoc. He appears to be even more savage than when we found him.”

  “Amazing,” Cee said in quiet awe, back on pace. Then: “Has he interfered with any of our efforts?”

  “Not as yet, though mainly because we have not yet crossed paths. Prior to his return we’d vacated that area. Kang is moving in a completely different direction. In the end his impact is negligible. Overall he is nothing. However, we can ill afford to have such a rogue agent loose and running free. Given time he will be a problem. It will certainly be a destabilizing effect. Amid the chaos of our invasion his effect is only noticeable in his immediate vicinity. He is not disrupting any key operations. But, as you imagine, we cannot let his wrath go unchecked.”

  Cee nodded, struggling to process this news, wondering just what to do with their indestructible little monster.

  How is he still alive?!

  And … what would it take to kill him?

  “We could try something larger,” Voltan suggested, apparently already having given this thought. “Perhaps an antimatter strike. Something directed, tactical. Strategic if need be. Take him out once and for all. We have him clear in our sights. There may, in fact, never be a better opportunity.”

  Cee mulled this possibility—longer than she wanted; she didn’t want to give Voltan the wrong impression—then spoke hurriedly to cover the lapse.

  “No,” she said. “We will discuss Kang later. Let him run amok for now.” This bore further consideration.

  The group entered a lift.

  “Of course, my queen.”

  As they boarded and the doors closed Cee looked up, her Praetor tall and broad in the confining lift, towering over all but one of the warrior guards.

  “And the other?” she asked. “News from the ancient fighter craft, I assume?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “But perhaps not what you would expect.”

  “Is the technology of use? Can we adapt it? Was there information on the other world?” She tried not to sound eager.

  “Nothing on the other world. All data was erased.” Voltan gave that a moment and, for a frustrating instant, Cee could not read him. Was he glad of it? Did he find pleasure in the fact that she would not yet have her second world for conquest?

  But he was continuing: “The technology is being evaluated,” he said, “and will likely prove quite useful.”

  She let it go. “What then?”

  “We captured the operator. A human.”

  Cee knew her reaction betrayed her, yet again, and just minutes into her arrival wanted to throttle Voltan for the way he played her. A human?! Of course he knew what a shock that would be. How could a human have been in possession of that craft?! Already they knew the larger ship had picked up Horus. Was it truly manned by other humans? How?

  And … could they be like him?

  “A human?” she managed to keep her voice level.

  Voltan nodded. “A human female was flying the ancient Kel craft.”

  “And you have her?”

  “Yes, my queen. We are questioning her even now.”

  **

  “You think that’s some wild shit,” the spec ops soldier, Pete, clicked through pictures on his camera, “take a look at this.” He leaned over the desk at which Drake sat, looking at a laptop screen in one corner of the dingy, functional-but-cramped safe house; electronics, maps and all manner of information and other items crammed into the small space with way too many bodies, everyone looking at screens. Pete flipped to another set of photos on his small field camera. The camera was hooked to the laptop, and Pete had just shown Drake a few blurred images taken by him and his team, of the super-human Drake knew all to well. He’d seen broadcasts of Jessica’s friend from the field, fighting the yellow demon, marveling at just how powerful he was. Before Drake could fully process those photos, however, Pete was on to the next, a few shots of the unusual Kel fighter craft—hard not to think of them all as unusual—they were alien spaceships for crying out loud—but this one was definitely different than those belonging to the invaders. It was the one shot down in the valley where Pete and his team had been operating, which in itself wasn’t huge news—again, Drake had to reference that, putting it in perspective—this was all huge news—but there was something else about these particular images.

  Pete pointed a gloved hand. He and his team were still in field gear, had been since they got there, and Drake followed his cloth-covered finger to the picture on the screen. A bright splash of red stood out against the overall black, something emerging from the tilted side of the wrecked craft. Around that splash of color were a handful of Kel warriors, black and white ponytails flying this way and that in the still shot, swishing in the air as they moved, dragging out …

  A person.

  “Can you zoom? Zoom in.” Drake fumbled for the controls but Pete was already on it.

  “It’s a girl,” said Pete. “A human girl! Already looked at it ever which way. She’s got bright red hair, probably dyed, but look: She looks maybe Japanese or something.

  “And she came out of it.”

  Drake’s nose had drifted forward, practically against the laptop screen, looking back and forth, crosswise, up and down, scrutinizing the pixelized resolution. It was indeed a human girl. Being pulled from the wrecked fighter.

  Clearly she’d been aboard when it went down.

  He leaned back. “What the hell?”

  Pete shook his head. “I know, right?”

  “Did they pull anyone else out?”

  “Not that we saw.” P
ete stood straight and took a pull on the fat cigar he’d been holding in his other hand; blew the smoke up and away from where he and Drake were talking. The leader of this small group of operators, Heath, had produced cigars from a cargo pocket shortly after their arrival; a tradition, Drake had the idea, which most likely included a celebration. Mission accomplished. Job well done. While the spirit of that still applied—they’d definitely accomplished their mission—there was no reason to celebrate this day.

  The heavy cigar smoke had begun to fill the room.

  “I think the girl was the only one in there,” Pete speculated. “We didn’t see ‘em get anyone else.” Drake studied the image a little longer, then leaned back in his creaky swivel chair and ran a hand across his close-cropped scalp. It was a somber affair in that room, intense, cigarette smoke blending with the cigars, multicultural, accents of all kinds making a din. Drake had been sent back to this zone of operation shortly before the invasion began, by General Peterson and the President himself, to reconnect with his team and be on hand to evaluate whatever came in from the field. Here he’d met highly-qualified reps from other countries that had also been dispatched by their respective governments to form, they hoped, the seeds of future knowledge on the aliens and, with any luck, future resistance. Expectations were that bad. No one thought the Earth would survive this invasion in any sort of shape to fight back.

  Drake looked around the smoky room.

  Bobby was with him, others of the Project scattered elsewhere across the globe, engaged in the same effort to piece together an understanding of the Kel. So far all groups were in spotty contact but there was no telling how long that would last.

  Probably the smartest member of their little cell was a hacker sent by the Chinese, one of their elite, a guy named Fang Le. Pete had already had fun meeting him, finding it funny his name was Fang in English. Funny thing was, the real funny thing, was that Fang spoke better English than Pete. Maybe better than any of them. He was definitely way, way, smarter than anyone there. A clear example of the stereotype genius Asian. Drake had a feeling they would be relying on Fang and his network more and more as this debacle continued to unfold.