The passageway beyond the doorway was short and curved out of sight, immediately giving Halloran an uneasy feeling. On a sudden urge, he dashed after Deacon and ducked in between the glass doors just as the far door was shattered by a plasma bolt. Halloran dropped and covered himself as a rain of what seemed like real glass pieces fell around him. The door swung in with force and knocked him over onto his back, and he felt the stabbing pain along his upper spine. Grimacing with the sudden shock of it, his eyes flew up and met those of what must only be a Xu warrior.
The Prax was thinly-built but muscular, its red skin patterned with tattoos of some sort. The face was scarred but the eyes clear and menacing. Belts and straps covered its chest as it leaned in through the smashed door to locate Halloran where he lay across the threshold.
Time passed in milliseconds. Halloran saw the plasma gun coming up at the same time he saw the large chunk of glass, still wedged in the doorframe. About the right height. Ignoring the pain searing his back, he kicked out with both boots—hard—into the door.
The frame slammed back against the Prax momentarily pinned him within it. With a tremendous effort of will and speed, Halloran came up and placed both hands on the Prax’s head, jamming it backward.
The Xu was already twisting easily out of Halloran’s grasp when the section of glass plunged into the opposite side of it’s exposed neck. Direct hit.
It had happened in the expanse of two or three seconds, and the Xu’s face wore as much a look of shock as confusion. Halloran lost his balance and fell back, the pain in his back blossoming and nearby overwhelming his senses.
The Xu’s blood was jetting out the side of its neck as it dropped the plasma weapon and threw its hands up to assess the damage. At least their anatomy seems the same as ours, Halloran thought as he tried to roll on his side and get to his knees.
The alien half-fell through the doorframe and was suspended there, arms draped out and blood dripping freely from both onto the dark-gray flooring. Halloran attempted to roll away, but the body was dead.
Halloran stared at the plasma weapon at his feet.
When Axxa charged around the corner moments later he almost ran down Halloran, who was standing shakily in the boarding room, gun trained on the doorway. The Prax stopped and took in the plasma weapon and the dead body hung in the doorframe, an incredulous look on his face. Their eyes met.
“Trust me, I’m a surprised as you are.” Halloran handed the weapon to Axxa and took the projectile pistol in exchange.
Axxa briefly fingered the gun, re-acquainting himself with it. “Amazing,” the translator spoke into Halloran’s brain. The Prax noticed the protective way Halloran was holding himself. “You are injured.”
Halloran nodded. “Stabbed in the back.”
“Can you run?”
“I have to.”
They started across the open room and were nearly through the maze of seating when the first plasma bolts leapt across the opening, slamming into the walls beyond them. Axxa crouched behind a stand of seats and fired back. Halloran trudged to the next door and looked back. The other Xu were advancing across the room but at a slower pace, the newly-acquired and expertly-wielded plasma weapon in Axxa’s hands slowing them down significantly.
“Let’s go!” Halloran called from the door, taking detached note of the bloodstain his hand left on the frame as he had paused for a handhold. He took a deep, painful breath and lurched to the tube opening that was several meters away. The opening was unguarded and he pressed the button next to it. The door swooshed open to reveal Hummel’s frowning face.
“There you are, sir. I thought…you’re hurt, sir!”
Halloran staggered to the Lieutenant. “Do we know where we are going?” He felt himself going light-headed.
Hummel put an arm around him. “This way, sir.”
Halloran heard the sound of metal tearing. He could feel his senses drifting…blood loss, no doubt. Time seemed to stretch as he clung to Hummel’s shoulder.
They stumbled over a threshold and Hummel set Halloran down a moment, carefully leaning him against a wall. “Stay right there, sir.”
Halloran closed his eyes. Time passed. He lost track of it and the thumping of boots on metal around him. Being lifted. Fighting the blackness, sensing his back covered with wetness. Then detached from his body. Numb.
Then he found himself at a crossroads. It was like a personal struggle with darkness, the two sides warring back and forth within him. He had a vision of the dead Xu warrior, joining the darkness and reaching with bloody arms to claim Halloran as his own. Then there was Cindy, calling to him soundlessly with waves to join her. He pulled against the irresistibility of it mightily. Then he saw a figure standing as though watching the struggle—a regal, older woman with red skin—a Prax? She observed without showing emotion. Then there was another face—Antonov, screaming at him. No, Axxa. He focused on the red alien’s features, trying to understand the foreign language. No translator. What was he saying? Halloran didn’t the energy to spare to try to understand, he was so occupied with pulling away from Cindy and the Xu. But why was he pulling away from Cindy? How he missed her…he heard her voice now. “Thomas. Thomas!” Her voice…so sweet. So sweet…but it wasn’t real. He had buried her…buried her. He needed to live.
“Halloran! Tom!”
Cindy’s voice. He needed to live. Was it her voice?
He felt the heat of a strike to his face. The blood warmed it. The blood…
“Wake up!”
He felt himself bodily lifted and realized that he was staring a blood-soaked floor. “Ugh,” he found himself repeating, weakly.
“He’s awake,” someone said.
“Get him…” But the voices dimmed again and Halloran heard no more.
Chapter 43
Outer Sol System
The Station came into visual range as the Valor powered up her weapons.
“Are you sure about this?” Captain Heres asked. He was holding the tablet with the Admiral’s last coded message.
“The transmission was sent during our decel, sir.”
“Very well. Weapons,” he called across the bridge. “Enable full shields to the fore.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the officer as he communicated the order to his department.
“Sir,” said the navigator Renno from her station. “Sensors indicate several internal explosions and at least one decompression blast from within the station.”
“Bring us up carefully, Navs. I don’t want any surprises. Other vessels?”
“Only…sir, the military target tracked earlier is on its way to Pluto. Must have undocked just recently. Sensors show no life forms.”
Heres leaned forward. “Oh?” Anything else?”
“Sir, there is a drive signature residue.”
“Identify?”
“Looks like a commercial-class vessel.”
Heres rubbed his chin. “So the Coloran flight. It just left?”
“Also very recently, yes sir.”
“So everyone is leaving the station.”
The weapons officer called out. “Sir! We have an unidentified vessel behind the station, out of visual. It appears to be powering up a jump drive!”
Heres was on his feet immediately. “Are you sure you can’t identify?”
“Absolutely, sir. Must be alien.”
“And they’re about to jump. Get me a visual…maximum speed!”
The Valor leapt forward, causing Heres to grab for the bridge rail nearest him as the G-forces threw him sideways. Within moments the station passed underneath them to reveal a smallish craft, accelerating away at a vector clearly designed to avoid detection by the human warship.
“Sir, their drive is powered.”
“Fire a plasma burst—now!” Heres ordered.
Simultaneously the yellow-white bolts reached from the Valor’s guns and the foreign ship began to fade as the its drive engaged. There was a flash and the ship disappeared from view.
Heres stepped to Renno’s post. “Did we make contact?”
She was studying the sensors closely, analyzing the contents of the space recently occupied by the other vessel. After a few tense moments she looked up. “I’m getting structural residue mixed in with the drive signature. By the way, the drive is definitely Praxxan in origin.”
“So we hit him?”
“It would appear so, sir.”
“So,” Heres frowned. “We can hope that we threw off their drive to the point of causing a terminal failure and folding them into jumpspace forever.”
“More likely, a hit at that extreme distance would cause their drive to malfunction and drop them somewhere other than their intended destination.”
Heres resumed his seat. “Code off a transmission to Mars—.”
“Sir!” The weapons officer was yelling. “The station!”
The viewscreen flipped to see in the direction of Charon…but all that was there was an expanding ball of debris.
The bridge was silent for a minute. Finally, someone said, “Unbelievable.”
Heres found his voice. “The moon…”
“It’s still there, sir. But the majority of the station is not—anymore.”
Everyone watched the mess spreading across space.
Heres exhaled loudly. “Alright. Let’s get that message to Kendall. He’s probably not going to like it. Then we move in for survivors.”
The ship rocked and contorted, throwing the team against their seats violently.
“Status!”
Fryax sat in Kalyx’s seat, handling the controls. “It was a hit from that human cruiser. They got one in just as we jumped!”
“So?”
“Analyzing…” Then, “the shot threw off our navigational computer. We’re going to come out of jump somewhere other than where we had planned.” His distressed face said the rest.
Calxen fumed. He kept seeing his friend, suspended in that doorframe, dead to him. The rage within would not be satisfied. The humans…and Axxa…had escaped once again. “Where?”
“Unknown. Recalculating.” The Xu ship buffeted again, violently. It was as if the vessel itself was reacting to the anger boiling within the assassin. It was as if the fates themselves were aligned in favor of this Axxa.
Calxen forced himself to think clearly. The civilian ship had been departing; the nature of the spaceport indicated a regularly-scheduled flight. Where else but to the Ceti System? Clearly, Axxa hadn’t planned to take a regular flight until the situation changed around him.
Axxa. Calxen understood his father’s fears at the escape of the Praxxan. Axxa was greatly favored, not only for his exploits but for his family. The Sol System Prime had good reason to be concerned that this Prax would go over to the humans under his responsibility—it could easily mean his head once the Premier reacted to this debacle. And what if Axxa attempted to speak for the Prax? Perhaps Calxen and his team would be better off getting lost for a cycle…
No. They would track this passenger vessel through its likely course and hunt down these elusive filth. After all, Calxen had personal debt to settle now—with the tall human commander who had killed one of his own.
He leaned over to Fryax. “When the jump completes, set a new course for the next likely waypoint for this commercial flight to the Coloran System.”
“Yes, Lord. We grieve Kalyx, my Lord.” Calxen heard the others behind him muttering their agreement. He placed a hand on Fryax’s shoulder.
“We will be avenged, my friend.”
Mars Command
Commander Kaela stood in the center of the Fleet’s nervous system, arms crossed over her impeccable uniform jacket and chin lowered in a model of patience. She was waiting for the feed from Pluto region to come online for the timeframe of the action that had taken place there. She knew they were all waiting with her, from Admiral Kendall down to the newest tech on her team.
Once the transmission from the Valor had been received, Admiral Kendall had called down to Fleet Intelligence to run back the recording of the action taken by the military satellites orbiting Pluto itself. The Valor’s navigation officer had verified that the two satellites remained intact, and Kaela’s group activated the data dump using ancient codes dating back to the surveillance net’s creation a hundred years prior. Kaela waited for news that the devices were still operating at all, let alone faithfully recording the events in and around the dwarf planet. Though the satellites were tested several times a year, Kaela knew how temperamental they were.
As she waited she also thought of her sister, whom she knew to be in the vicinity of Charon Station at approximately the same time. Though she hadn’t seen Kendra off on Mars, Kaela had surreptitiously monitored her progress using cameras on the shuttle. Once they debarked on Charon, however, her live feed capabilities disappeared. No one was sure if the outbound Coloran transport had departed before the action that had apparently destroyed the station, along with the security recordings and virtually all of the security force. The survivors were confused and had no idea who had attacked or if any ships had departed.
So she waited.
Her comm unit beeped softly. Kaela removed an arm from around her waist and glanced at the display. It was Commander Krug from Kendall’s staff.
With a shudder, Kaela turned and walked to the indicated conference room. Krug was there, and shut off the surveillance monitoring as she entered. He sat at the table and looked up at her. “We have a problem.”
She just watched him. He was six inches shorter than Kaela and somewhat attractive for a beta male. But, he was a dismissive toad all the same. But in their clandestine relationship he was the one who held all the cards.
He shifted in his seat, squirming under her gaze—or so she imagined. “A new variable has entered the equation. Apparently the Prime perfected a new device that moves objects through time.”
“Really.”
He watched her closely. “Yes. He transported an ancient Earth submarine to Rat City Center and imprisoned the crew. He has possession of the warship’s offensive weapons. Pure fusion.”
That got her attention. “Impossible. They were outlawed generations ago.”
“Correct, but he leaped over that barrier by bringing a working warship packed with them forward in time.”
Kaela leaned against the bulkhead. “Incredible. Our remaining stockpile was incinerated a hundred years ago after being deemed unstable.”
Krug nodded slowly. “Partially correct. In the meantime, some of the crew, headed by a resourceful officer named Halloran, managed to escape in a stolen military transport.”
Kaela impressed and not a little dismayed that Kendall had managed to keep this information from her group. “So that was what the orders were behind the most recent attack. I wondered about the short notice, and Kendall was too crafty to make it generally known.”
“Our timetable has moved up. Halloran had a Prax defector with him.”
Kaela caught her breath—she knew how hard it had been to secure inside intel on the Prax. After all, it had been her group doing the interrogations over the years.
“I see that you understand the situation.”
“I…I’m not sure I can do this.”
Krug waved a dismissive hand. “You shall do as you are told, Kaela. Nothing more. Nothing less. The Prime has high hopes for you.”
“He’ll kill us all once he’s done with the Fleet.”
“I believe otherwise, Commander. In the meantime, watch for my message to initiate the shutdown.”
She found Krug personally repugnant; the man oozed duplicity. “What will he do with the weapons tech?”
Krug stood, smoothing his uniform. “I expect he’ll use them to dispatch the Fleet with certainty, then turn several on this base. Of course, none of our network will be here at the time.” He walked around the table and stood close to her. She knew he desired her, and his breath coated her cheek with its foul closeness. “You and I shall lead a new human flee
t, under the Prax banner, to conquests beyond our wildest dreams.” He laid a lingering hand on her sleeve, appraising her with his eyes, before shrugging and opening the door to leave. “Soon.”
Kaela walked—more slowly—back to her station, feeling the eyes on her and knowing that it was just her imagination, which was now on overdrive. Only her network had knowledge.
“Commander, footage arriving from Pluto region.”
“On screen,” she ordered, attempting to regain her aloof composure.
The display was massive, covering a wall ten by fifteen meters in size. Suddenly, it illuminated with the view of Charon, lit by dozens of pinpoints of light that Kaela knew to be part of the station implanted within the moon. Nothing seemed to be happening. The resolution seemed to be good.
“Go to the last frames.”
The starscape changed rapidly as the camera tracked the moon through its orbit around Pluto. More points of light came and went from the station—shuttles and various vessels, nothing as big as a warship. Then, from one side of the screen, a larger ship approached and docked at the station.
One of the techs announced, “Vessel confirmed as the 3033 transport from Coloran. Arrival time corresponds with the published timetable.”
Kaela nodded. The ship settled and docked—all looking normal. Shortly after, a smaller vessel approached and docked.
“Vessel type unknown, but I believe the approach vector corresponds with an inner-system origin.”
Kaela asked another tech to her right. “Run an ID on that hull.”
“Yes, Commander.”
The frame continued to advance for another few minutes without any obvious abnormalities. Then, without warning, a large section of the station exploded outward. Pieces flew into space and several more explosions registered nearby to the larger blast.
“Locate that explosion on the station schematics,” Kaela ordered.
“Already done, Commander. That location corresponds to the station armory.”
Kaela recrossed her arms. “Convenient.”
The tech rolled the footage forward again. No further explosions presented themselves. Then, the 3033 transport launched and jumped away in the distance.
War Without Honor Page 27
