The Lost Tribe (Sentinel Series Book 2)

by Richard Flunker

  “I see you're not a weakling. You still live,” Just Wolf spat out to him.

  Gheno wiped the slime from his face. “Not for lack of trying on your part.”

  The weaver ignored him. “What did you do to that Vahe? How did you get it to change so quickly?”

  “I can’t really say.” Gheno was trying with all his will to not say more than he had to.

  Karai walked up to Gheno and helped keep him up on his feet. “I already told you. We were just looking inside of it.”

  Someone shouted something from behind them. “They say you speak with ghosts and put a spirit into the Vahe,” Blue Flower translated.

  “It’s...,” Gheno continued to struggle, “complicated.”

  “That Vahe was too old. We could no longer change it. Yet you did. It changed and left on its own. No guides. HOW!” He shouted the last part inches from Gheno’s face. He grabbed Gheno by the shirt and began shaking him. Both Karai and Blue Flower began lashing out to get him to stop. The weaver pulled away and spun about, looking back to the hole in the ground.

  “It is punishable by death to speak to spirits. Did you speak to one? Did you allow him to enter a Vahe?”

  “Listen,” Gheno started, “I'm no witch doctor. I don’t do spirits. And I also don’t do death threats.”

  The weaver turned around to face him again. He pointed a finger at him and was about to speak when Gheno moved quickly. In a flash, he had delivered a left hook right into the Threadweaver’s chin. As the robed man began tripping backwards, Gheno caught him by the neck and fell down backwards, dragging him to the ground. He put him into a choke hold. He had moved so quickly, no one had time to react. The few that had gone there with the weaver stood back in shock.

  “And I really, REALLY, don’t like being hit over the head,” Gheno snarled. “DAMN THAT HURT!”

  He held the weaver tightly and thought through his pain for a moment. What he really wanted to do was strangle the man and make a break for it. He had memorized the way here and knew for a certainty he could make it back on foot. He also had a small sidearm in with his equipment. He could get it and be off with Karai before anyone could do anything. But as he looked over towards his gear, he saw the hole again.

  “Sentinel,” he said quietly.

  He let go of the weaver who got up quickly. He began coughing violently, holding his throat.

  “Attacking a Threadweaver is punishable …”

  “Oh, knock it off old man.” Gheno interrupted him and took a step towards him. The weaver visibly took a step back. “You want to know how I gave that Vahe life? Fine. Help me find it first.”

  The weaver squinted. “You put life into it?”

  “I did. A life entered it. I think. I just don’t know.”

  “Whose life?” Just Wolf asked.

  “My friend’s.”

  The weaver looked over at Blue Flower. “What he says. You have seen this?”

  “I don’t know. But what I did see is that this man could see inside of the Vahe unlike we can. I think in one day, he learned more about the Vahe than we have known in a long time.”

  As Gheno stumbled over to his equipment, Karai followed. “What are we going to do Gheno?” she asked.

  “We have to find him.” Gheno reached into one of the bags. He looked back and saw the weaver and Blue Flower talking. He quickly reached into the bag and pulled out his gun. He tucked it away into his belt. He then reached in and grabbed another earpiece. The one he had been wearing before must have been knocked out when he received the blow to his head. He stuck it into his ear and whispered quietly.

  “Cove?”

  The familiar chirp responded, showing she was there.

  “We need a pick up. Now,” Gheno ordered.

  “Kale just ordered that I pick you up,” the AI replied.

  “He did?” Gheno tried to think. The throbbing pain had returned.

  “Gheno. The Galaxy has spotted black spheres in this system. They are headed this way.”

  “That’s bad news. I have no idea what is going on with Sentinel, and now we’ve got even bigger issues,” Gheno said, looking back up at Karai. “How long till you can get here?”

  “I'm already on my way. ETA in five minutes.”

  Gheno knew the distance they had traveled. Cove was flying the transport as fast as she could within the atmosphere. He stood up and began walking back towards the weaver. He, on the other hand, was already coming towards him with Blue Flower in tow. This time, he was a bit more reserved.

  “You say you have seen within the Vahe? Without cutting it open? And you have given it life?” He asked, in a far less threatening tone.

  “More or less.”

  “Can you show us how?” the weaver asked. Gheno turned and saw a pleading look on Blue Flower’s face.

  “Maybe,” Gheno started, thinking about what he was about to say, “I'm not sure. I need to find that Vahe first.”

  The weaver reached under his robes. He took out a small parchment which he began unrolling, revealing a set of small brown spikes. He pulled two out and then looked back at Gheno.

  “I can find it.”

  3127 – In orbit around Gadoni, on board the Galaxy

  Alarm sirens were going off in the corridor. Ayia was nervous. She wasn’t nervous because of the inherent danger. She clearly understood they were about to face an enemy that by all explanations, this crew had been unable to deal with. It was only with help from the Gadoni that this Alliance ship had survived. But they had no way to communicate with the local chieftains before they had to depart into orbit so they had no idea if they would get their help again. The odds were not in their favor.

  What bothered Ayia was that she was stuck in a small room.

  Ayia saw herself four years ago, just before she had made the bad choice of going out on a rebellious adventure. She had a great education and had the upbringing of a strong father. She knew how to do many things that most her age and in her similar social status didn’t. She considered herself strong at the time, but looking back, it was apparent how clueless she was. Her father’s death and the events on board the Magyo and then on Oxaoca had awakened something within her. Whether she would admit it or not, she had fed off of Kale’s own brand of strength. The past three years she had come into her own. She was used to taking charge if needed and being respected for that. In fact, she’d have less of their respect if she didn’t take the reins from time to time.

  She couldn’t do that from this room.

  It was a small residential quarter of the kind intended for when the non-military were on board the ship. It had the look and feel of military quarters, everything neat and in its place, but had more space than most quarters. She had been dumped in the room unceremoniously, shortly after the large capital ship took off from the dark side of the planet. Ayia could still hear the ocean water spilling across the side of ship into the darkness below as they lifted off. She then had asked if there was anything she could help with. Unsurprisingly, the answer had been no, and she had been escorted to the room. There she was supposed to wait until the issue was resolved.

  The issue, of course, could result in all of their deaths. Ayia wasn’t about to sit around waiting for that.

  She had been able to maintain contact with Cove for nearly twenty minutes, but after that the link was broken. She wasn’t sure if they were too far, or if the military ship was blocking all unauthorized transmissions. All she had been able to establish with Cove was that they had found Kale on top of a mountain, that Gheno and Karai were in some field somewhere, and that Cove was going to pick them up. The link was broken just as Cove was trying to relay some scanning data about the black spheres. Ayia never got the information.

  The room was small enough that pacing the floor quickly became boring. She had no idea what was going on outside of the room. There was no sense of motion, no windows, no screens with data streaming onto its displays. Ayia was lost and she hated feeling that way.

  S
he sat at the guest console and brought up the display. Two tabs came up: guest services and communications. She hit the com tab and an error popped up. There were no working links. She then hit the guest services tab. Several options came up in a list, but all were marked as unavailable. The only one that wasn’t grayed out was the food service request. She hit the tab and an elaborate menu with full displays came up.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  There was nothing left for her to do but to sit on the cot. No sooner had she done that, when she felt a minor tremor in the ships gravity field. For a brief moment, she felt a moment of lightness before it was reestablished. She looked around hesitantly, then the lights went out.

  “Even better.”

  A popping sound signaled the locking mechanism on the doorway came offline. It was her way out.

  “I'm not gonna wait around here to die.”

  She peered out into the hallway which was lit up by a dim blue emergency light. She half expected to see smoke and people running around, but it was eerily silent. She looked back into the room and remembered she had not brought anything with her, then darted out into the hallway. She remembered quickly the way she had come. At some point, she had come across a large central elevator hub. She had no idea what she would do, but that would be the place to start, so she took off at a light run down the hallway back down the direction she remembered.

  She remembered the way back well. She ran past several other crew members that didn’t give her a second glance. Some ran by armed with rifles at the ready and with full combat armor. They ran past her at the highest sprint possible under such a burden. They looked serious. Ayia wondered if she was going in the right direction. She stopped at an intersection she was going to turn right down. She stopped to let three more armed men fly past when she felt the slight loss of gravity again. This time, it lasted almost two seconds. The men running past her nearly lost their footing. Their training kicked in though, and they stopped running, floated in the air for a moment, then landed on their feet, mostly, when the gravity returned. Ayia had held on to the many handles along the hallway. They didn’t miss a beat and kept running down the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” she wondered out loud.

  ***

  “Wedges?”

  “Sir, their first barrage didn’t do anything, as you predicted. They’ve now stopped firing the smaller spheres and we are picking up six, well, wedges.”

  Marcus pulled up the data on his console. There were still many non-functioning systems in the dual level bridge. They simply hadn’t had enough time to do all the repairs necessary. Instead, ensigns were running back and forth from the non-working stations to the Captain’s chair and relaying data packets. Even the wireless data wasn’t working properly.

  They had left the planet easily enough and were in orbit in nearly an hour. They didn’t want to burn it out of the atmosphere too quickly, especially without the heat shield fully checked out after the previous battle. That had cost them time to prepare. Not that it might have made a difference. They were in no shape to try to take the enemy head on, especially after what they did to them the first time.

  This time, though, they had an idea of what was coming.

  The Indigo had deployed from the Galaxy just after they entered orbit and they started drifting over to the light side of the planet. In a few hours, there would be no more dark side on the planet anyways, but it was their plan to hide in the other side of the planet for a while at first. They hoped the locals would bring up their ships too, and then they could try to coordinate their attacks with them, but none of the huge ships had shown up yet. The Galaxy didn’t even know how to track the large Vahe. As far as he knew, there were none on the planet or in orbit.

  They did know how to scan the black spheres. There were five spheres of similar size to the ones they had first encountered. But if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a far larger sphere with them as well. It was nearly five times the size of the others. The other spheres orbited around the larger sphere as they hurtled towards the planet. This was a battle they would not be able to win by themselves. But they certainly would be able to go down swinging.

  TOM was ready for battle.

  The AI had assured him and his sub-commodores that the enemy’s hacking code would not affect them again. Of course, the existence of the AI was still a secret to the entire crew, so Marcus had to explain to the other officers that they had made changes to their blackwall protocols. As always, they trusted him fully. In his turn, Marcus had to trust the AI. It also didn’t really matter. They would be dead if he didn’t successfully repel the hacking.

  The Indigo ran up into higher orbit in order to keep optical view on the incoming enemy. The data fed back into the Galaxy showed that their trajectory had them headed straight into the atmosphere. That relieved the Admiral a bit. He also had come to the very clear understanding that the Gadoni had feared this moment for a very long time. They had managed to keep their planet a secret from these black spheres, and now they were here.

  “They are on trajectory into a high orbit sir. Detached from the main force.”

  The first attack had come from the far smaller orbs. At first, the scanners had picked them up only as a large cloud. It wasn’t until ten minutes out that they saw that they were the smaller black spheres. The Indigo had dropped back down into low orbit close to the Galaxy and deployed its phasing shield. This time the orbs simply ignored the Indigo, which was able to use its shield to effectively destroy nearly half of the smaller spheres. The deployed Jaguars did their job as well, maybe counting for a ten percent reduction in the black cloud. When the ones that got through all the defense mechanisms attached to the hull, it was up to TOM.

  There were no power outages and TOM was in full control this time. He updated Marcus in real time as he proactively blocked and destroyed every single attacking code. He kept chirping into the Admiral’s ear about how he was ‘killing’ the enemy code. Maybe the Admiral had heard a hint of excitement in the artificial voice. TOM also learned a lot about the enemy at that point.

  “There is a network, a data link between all the spheres. Its works with a gravity pulse. Very similar to the way our gravity tubes work, just in waves. There is constant communication back and forth.”

  The Admiral asked if he could intercept the messages, but even the advanced AI said he’d need a few months to decipher it. And that was when the wedges appeared.

  The failed attack by the smaller spheres had prompted a new option. The six wedges were about the ten feet by thirty feet long. They were flat, with one side clearly shaped like a wedge. It was an axe without a handle.

  “Projectiles?” Marcus asked.

  Graham chimed in from the Vega. “Not high velocity enough. We’d dodge them too easily. I'm sensing something else.”

  As the Galaxy sped behind in the planet’s orbit, the black wedges began to go higher into a sling around the planet.

  “Vector leads directly to the Galaxy, Admiral.”

  “Graham, get the shield ready,” Marcus shouted into the com.

  Graham responded, “It may not be enough.”

  Marcus got readings on the mass density of the wedges. The greatest mass was clearly on the front part, on the wedge. The density of the rear was significantly less than the front.

  “You get this?” Graham reported after seeing the same data.

  “Hull busting,” the Admiral concluded. “Get all batteries to open fire when they are in range.”

  The Indigo shot out in front of the Galaxy to once again serve as its literal shield. The Galaxy turned in its broadest side while keeping its movement fast and tight against the thin barrier of space and atmosphere. Marcus wanted to be able to drop back into the atmosphere if needed. Turning also allowed them to direct as much of their projectile weapons at the incoming wedges.

  “Sir, speed change. They are building speed rapidly.”

  Marcus watched on the console as the wedges spread o
ut in a wide formation. He didn’t need to give any more orders. Gunners watched as the incoming weapons came within range, and the Galaxy opened fire. Thousands of rounds of super-heated metal formed into slugs began to be magnetically flung towards their targets. Ahead of them, the streaks of metal flew past the Indigo as it pushed ahead with its shield. The wedges detected the incoming fire and the shield and began to move.

  “Get at least one, Graham,” Marcus said. He had to repeat himself when he realized he hadn’t pushed the com button on.

  The Indigo began to move upwards towards one of the wedges. The black weapon detected the movement and angled up. It impacted the very edge of the shield, smashing through the metal cleanly, but seemingly stunning the wedge, sending it into a spiral off from its brethren wedges. There appeared to be no damage to the wedge. The Indigo continued to smash into it with its shield, trying to get it to keep from stabilizing. It flew past the other wedges as they began to get pelted by the Galaxy’s incoming slugs, with no apparent affect.

  “Concentrate fire solutions on one wedge at a time,” Marcus ordered.

  A large countdown clock reached the two minute mark and continued counting backwards. The Admiral followed the action as the data showed the gunners moving their weapons to focus all the firepower directly on each of the wedges one by one. In the meantime, he saw that Jayne had ordered the Jaguars to concentrate their attacks on a single wedge as well. The continuous ‘zapping’ by the lightning guns appeared to do no noticeable damage, but the wedge they were attacking was clearly slowing down and angling off slightly. It was a small victory.

  “Our guns are doing nothing. The slugs just aren’t making dents,” the report streamed in on the Admiral’s screen.

  The order went out from his chair to suit up for vacuum. The attack would likely produce a hull breach. He needed everyone to function. He watched with pride as his highly trained men donned their suits in just a dozen seconds and quickly resume their work. The tension was high in the lower bridge as crew members struggled to shout over each other giving information that wasn’t being relayed on the screens.