The colonel shook his head. "From what I've seen, you are far from being a coward. However, I thought you to be a planner. War may not be won with plans, but the outcome can be heavily dependent on planning. Don't needlessly rush forward if there are good alternatives."
I said, "Have you never rushed into battle, Colonel?"
The colonel laughed. "Far too many times. And the outcomes were often costly. All I'm asking is that you give us a little time. The fighting hasn't begun; maybe we can give you better options."
Joni and Garrett emerged from private time in the crew quarters. "What's going on? Where are you going?"
The colonel replied, "The Grunta are about to fight the Grotus. Knog wants to go down there. I think he needs to go in with a plan."
I cinched the straps on my parachute tight before turning to face the others. "I'll be back."
Before Garrett could speak, I stepped backwards through the gravity wall and began my free-fall toward the surface, landing in a field a hundred meters from a post set up as Grunta Command.
I was startled to see a half dozen Grotus standing in and among the Council members.
After pressing past a guard, I walked up to Getta. "What is going on?"
Getta replied, "The Council has decided on peace. Our past differences are just that, past. Both sides have agreed to cleanse the hatred that has filled our people's hearts for so long. It's a new beginning. A beginning in which the Grotus will be members of the New Alliance in Yallux. If all goes well, we may both become future members of the AMP."
I shook my head in disbelief. "And the Grotus agreed to this?"
Getta nodded. "It is a peace that has been brokered by the AIs. Both of us can now focus our energies on the rebuilding process."
I stepped back. "The AIs put this together? You aren't sending any of them here are you?"
Getta nodded. "And to the Kergan worlds. There is much infrastructure to be repaired and improved. The Grotus will be providing us with food until such time as our own crops can be grown and harvested. Only weeks ago, this peaceful resolution could not have been dreamed of."
I asked, "The portal ships, you have full control of them?"
Getta replied, "Look, the AIs are working for our side. They've done everything we've asked, including brokering this peace. They have agreed to assist in rebuilding and to termination when the job is done. I don't know what else we can ask for. Now, I have duties to attend to. I'll give you a comm when I'm free."
The ion inhibitor fields powered off. Seconds later the Thorn unveiled itself in the same field in which I had landed. The colonel stepped out and waved me over.
As I walked toward the Thorn I asked myself, "Is this possible? Peace with the Grotus? All fighting at an end? Would I finally be going home to my family?" My mind swirled with thoughts about the many possibilities.
Chapter 15
* * *
When I reached the Thorn, the Ares was settling in behind her. A shock of fear ran through my heart.
I ran toward the Thorn as I opened a comm. "Jack! What are you doing! Get that ship out of here!"
Jack replied, "You just told me to bring her down. It was over the general comm. I thought—"
"Colonel!" I yelled. "Get the Thorn out of here!"
As the colonel blinked out a portal opened on the opposite side of the Ares, sweeping across her midsection and taking a large portion of the Ares with it. The front and tail sections that remained fell twenty meters, setting off enormous clouds of dust as heavy rumbles shook the ground. The sweep moved across the area of the Thorn. I couldn't see if the colonel had made it inside.
A second portal sweep followed, taking the tail section of the Ares with it. The AIs were stealing our ship, one section at a time.
I yelled over my comm. "Jack! Joni! Garrett! Go! Get out of there!"
Garrett replied, "Jack's hurt! We can't move him!"
I watched in horror as a third sweep moved across the forward part of the Ares. Jack, Joni, Garrett, and Go were suddenly gone, along with the portal gate that had given us our freedom of movement. I dropped to my knees in shock.
Seconds later the thuds of ion blasters could be heard as the truce and peace accords between my people and the Grotus splintered. The fields between them erupted with blue ion bolts and green laser pulses.
A call came over my comm. "Your Highness, the fighting has begun, where would you like us?"
I took a moment to clear my head. "Where are you in relation to the inhibitor spikes?"
General Gurus replied, "We are positioned at the one nearest you."
I asked, "Can it be powered up? Can you bring it online?"
Gurus answered, "Consider it done, My Lord."
I stood. "Bring your men forward and move them to the front lines as that field goes active. Take advantage of every high point you can to fire into the backs of their ranks. And tell the troops to make every effort to not allow those weapons to be captured by the Grotus and used against us."
The general replied, "As you command, Your Highness."
The inhibitor covering the battlefront came to life. The blue and green flashes of the powered weapons quickly died off. Mauls were pulled from their mounts as battleaxes were swung. Both sides rushed forward with bloodlust in their battle-cries. It was the hand-to-hand fight I had originally envisioned.
The Grunta mauls were deadly to the Grotus. A sudden surge forward from our lines was met with a counter-surge. I raced toward where I had last seen Getta. Two of the Council had taken heavy wounds with the onset of the fighting. Getta, although advised not to by the other Council members, had sprinted for the front lines.
I slid to a stop as Colonel Tom Harper blinked in, standing in front of me. "Beutcher! Hold up!"
I replied, "Colonel! Jack and the others! The AIs have them!"
The colonel shook his head. "No. They're with Frig and Quan. They swept the front section of the Ares away to Effica."
I took a deep breath. "What about the Thorn?"
The colonel nodded. "The AIs have it, but I don't think they know they have it. I activated the skin before the portal closed."
"They said Jack was injured. Have they said any more?"
The colonel replied, "I haven't heard. We lost comm when the inhibitor came back live."
I continued to walk toward the front lines. The colonel stepped in my way.
I moved my face close to his. "Out of my way, Colonel. My fight is up there with my family."
Tom Harper stood firm. "We need you in the bigger fight. The AIs set this up. They took out the Ares. If we don't reestablish control, they will take this galaxy. And following this one is the six that make up the AMP. You were suspicious of the AIs and their intent. Well, now they have played their hand. You go in there and fight and get killed and the AIs win. We need you, Knog Beutcher. Yours is a name the Grunta know. It's a name the Tamarin know. It's a name that those in the AMP know. The Talisans are engaging as we speak. The Grotus won't be successful in their attempt to wipe your people out."
I asked, "What do suggest we do, Colonel?"
The colonel took hold of my shoulder. "I have almost a thousand ships back in the AMP that the AIs have been stripped from. Your Talisans are readying those ships for war. Half are ready to fight. I suggest we bring those ships here, drop the inhibitor fields and clean this cesspool out. But we'll have to work fast, as the AIs will most assuredly counter with ships of their own. This is the only fleet we have, so we can't afford to lose them."
I glanced toward the front lines. "And what of my people?"
The colonel smacked my shoulder. "We send them back to Dallex and then to a new world. Maybe Effica if we don't have anywhere else."
I said, "They will want to return to Jorus."
The colonel shook his head. "We can't protect them there. Heck, we can't protect them on Dallex either, but we have infrastructure there that can support them until we can make another move. The first option you've chosen here...
it accomplishes nothing. You are needed in the bigger war."
The colonel stepped forward, pulling on my shoulder. "Come on. I have to get you out from under this inhibitor."
I looked one last time toward the fighting before deciding the colonel was right. There was a bigger war on the horizon. The AIs had four portal ships under their control. We had stopped the theft of more gates, but they would no doubt try again.
The colonel pointed toward a hilltop. "We make it over that and we should be home free. We need comm with the others and we can't do that while in this field. And this suit is now a hindrance. I wish you hadn't forced me into blinking in. Would have made things a lot simpler."
After a long jog we reached the edge of the inhibitor field.
The colonel attempted a comm back to Frig. "I've got nothing. No reply. I hope the AIs didn't somehow trace us back to them."
I shook my head. "How could they? You were using the QE comm, right?"
The colonel frowned. "We no longer have that option. Those lines went dead when the power was cut to the front half of the Ares. Remember, those QE endpoints were on that ship."
I asked, "You wouldn't happen to have any of the stealth tags would you?"
The colonel replied, "Nope. We have no way to comm with them unless they open a portal."
Seconds later, Frig came over a comm channel. "Colonel, stay where you are, we're sweeping you out of there."
My view of the grassy hills of Mayanis's southern region was replaced by row after row of circuit boards on racks. We were now in what used to be the docking bay of Quan's ship, the Quantix.
Garrett said, "Ah, thank goodness you made it."
I replied, "The Talisan ships... we need any that are ready to be swept out to Jorus. The Grotus must be stopped!"
Garrett nodded. "I'll get right on it."
I asked Joni. "How's Jack?"
Joni shook her head. "It doesn't look good. When the ship dropped... he dropped with it, catching his chin on the nav console. He has a fractured vertebra in his neck. He's in the med bay right now getting scanned. Frig is seeing to him."
"And Go?" I continued.
Joni pointed toward the med bay. "Slight concussion from the hard bounce. His prosthetics took the brunt of it. Our Baldi friend wasn't so lucky. He came down hard on a chair arm, driving one of his ribs through one of his hearts. My father and Harden's people that we still have are all shook up, but nothing major. It all happened so fast."
I half frowned. "The AIs set us up. We should not have had the Ares in that close. There was no reason for it. I should have had you drop me from the Thorn."
Joni replied, "What's done is done. Where do we go from here?"
I said, "The colonel wants to take what Talisan fleet force we have available and to send them to Mayanis. We defeat the Grotus and pull my people back. After that we can focus on the AIs. We have to get those portal ships. They are key to shutting the AI down."
Joni nodded. "Maybe we'll get a hit on one of the stealth tags."
I shook my head. "Those are no longer valid. When the Ares lost power, those QE links were lost."
Joni replied, "Not true. The other ends of those tags are buried at Effica. All we need is new links from there to us. Quan still has monitoring of the stealth tags ongoing."
I sighed. "That's the first good news I've had today."
The colonel said, "Quan is sweeping four hundred Talisan warships out to Mayanis. The Grotus will be finished within the hour unless the AI intervene. As soon as the inhibitor has been dropped we'll pull the Grunta out of there."
"Send me back in," I said. "The Grunta won't leave unless I tell them to. And even then, so long as they know a single Grotus is alive, they will push back."
The colonel grabbed a stealth tag, poking his finger through the opening of my face shield and depositing it on the inside of my helmet. "Go, activate that tag."
The colonel said, "Quan. Sweep him back to Mayanis at the point we picked him up. That should give the Talisan time to start their campaign. I'll go with and power to the front lines to let them know what's coming. Blasters will likely be in use for several minutes before those ships take control out there."
I flipped down my visor. "Ready when you are, colonel."
The colonel glanced over at Go, receiving a thumbs-up about the tag. Seconds later the two of us were standing on the same hilltop we'd been pulled from only minutes before.
The colonel said, "You shut down the inhibitor and I'll head for the front line."
I nodded as the colonel blinked out.
I looked at the far hill, knowing that a few kilometers to the other side was my family, no doubt embroiled in a fight to the death with any number of Grotus warriors. I pushed myself to the limits of my endurance as I ran. My arrival at the inhibitor spike could not come soon enough.
I sprang up, climbing the twenty meters to the top in seconds before flipping the power switch to off. As I dropped back to the ground my arm pad came to life.
I opened a comm. "Getta! If you can hear me, pull back! Have everyone pull back! The Talisans are coming in with ships! Move back and give them room!"
There was no response. I continued my heavy sprint and was soon topping a hill that gave me a panoramic view of the chaotic battlefront. With the inhibitor field down, blasters once again battled lasers as the two sides took cover behind anything and everything. With the continuous bright flashes of light, it was almost impossible to make out the enemy across the small stream that ran the center of the field in front of me. The trees, shrubs and grass that had been there were nothing more than smoldering stumps and charred remains. Bodies covered both sides of the raging fight.
As I ran down the hill the Talisan ships moved overhead. The Grotus lines were ruthlessly obliterated in a torrent of powerful blue ion bolts. In under a minute, the fierce battle on the ground had turned to a mop up operation. When the few remaining Grotus attempted to run, a merciless rain of ion bolts cut their escapes short. The Talisan ships quickly moved on to other Grotus targets.
I ran up and down the line looking for my wife and children. A panicked feeling began to set in as they were not in the area I had searched. As I continued down the line, I came upon the first of my sons. He had given his life for our people. I was both proud and heartsick at the same time. We had been taught since birth that the valor of dying in battle for a just cause was a death to be held above all others, a death to be celebrated. The reality of it was... celebration was the last thing on my mind.
I continued my search, this time moving back to the injured. My next encounter was with two of my daughters. One was missing a foot while the other's shoulder had a deep wound from an axe. Both would live, and both were smiling over the great victory. When told of their brother, they continued to smile and cheer. The Grotus were dead, and he had perished in the fight that had forever freed his people from their threat. I was shocked by their lack of sadness or concern. I again reasoned that perhaps I had been around Humans for too long.
As I moved further down through the ranks of the injured I came across Getta. She was unconscious and had a deep laser burn to her lower right abdomen. The medical team working her wound quickly pushed me aside as they loaded her on a stretcher for transport back to the ships and their medical bays. I scanned the crowds of cheers and moans for the others.
A hand settled on my shoulder from behind. It was a daughter.
"Father," she said, "it was a glorious battle. You would have been proud of us all."
I slowly turned around to see the remainder of my children standing before me. I dropped to my knees as they gathered around.
A son said, "What a tremendous victory here today!"
I asked, "Your mother, what is her condition?"
My eldest daughter replied, "She will live. The burn missed any major organs. Her healing will take months, but they assured me she will recover."
I said, "We lost Gracka."
The others smiled. "He
fought valiantly, taking at least twenty Grotus with him. Gracka will be remembered with honor!"
I suddenly felt as though I no longer knew my children. They were tough, they were strong, and they had grown up without me. While I had little interaction with Humans and their children, my interactions with Human adults were different. There was compassion for others, a trait that seemed to be lacking in Grunta culture. And there was my own impulse to help everyone, regardless of their species, another trait that seemed missing when it came to Grunta mentalities.
I bumped foreheads with each of them and pointed toward the transports. "Offer what assistance you can at getting everyone back to the transports. And where would I find the remainder of the Council?"
Six arms pointed to the left. I made my way over and struggled to get past a pair of guards.
The eight uninjured members of the Council were standing in a circle. "I apologize for this intrusion, but I must speak with you. The AIs are taking control and they must be stopped."
The lead councilwoman said, "Mr. Beutcher. Shouldn't you be seeing to your wife?"
I replied, "What? Did you hear what I just said?"
The lead replied, "We have adjusted our agreements with the AIs. They will not meddle in our affairs with the Grotus and we will not terminate them when our five year restoration and modernization program comes to an end."
I shook my head. "When did this happen? Do you not understand that they plan to dominate this galaxy and the others? You are enabling them to do so!"
The lead huffed. "Mr. Beutcher. The AIs are reporting to us. They will help us to rebuild the worlds here and to make them strong where intruders will not threaten us. Jorus will be the center of trade and culture, and the citadel of our combined military. The AIs have assured us that they will not bother the colonies of the AMP."
I pointed toward where the Ares had once been. "They were attempting to steal a portal gate on Gratis and then, just hours ago, they attempted to take our portal ship. What do you not understand about their intentions?"
OMEGA Rescue Page 15
