by T. R. Harris
“Liquid nitrogen,” he said to Sherri and Riyad. Lila also felt the containers.
“Only recently,” she said. “And from the amount, they appear to have successfully subdued a creature at this spot. There…wheeled tracks in the frost, leading to the exit.”
“The Queen?”
Lila shook her head. “The Sol-Kor would not do this to the leader. And from the foresight put into having such a supply of the gas available, I would suggest this has been something the Queen herself planned as a contingency against Panur’s return.”
“He has been taken?” Benefis asked, already knowing the answer.
“It would appear so. To the waiting starship.”
“The one with inter-dimensional travel capabilities,” said Sherri.
“Hurry!” Adam led them further down the corridor, until there loomed before them a wide, glassed opening leading outside the pyramid.
As they burst through the doors and into the bitter cold of Kor’s rapidly approaching night, their worst fears were realized.
The platform was empty.
The team filtered out onto the vast concrete expanse, protected from the cold by the heat still radiating off the pad, the residual effect of liftoff jets. Adam scanned the darkening sky above. All he saw were the winking stars, but no streak of light indicating a fleeing starship.
J’nae—and Panur—were gone, along with the Star—the Najmah Fayd.
Adam shook his head, not from any external frustration or feeling of loss, but rather from the one loud and persistent thought screaming in his head. Finally, he let it out, releasing the words into the stiff, cold wind.
“The admiral is going to be pissed!”
Epilogue
“So what happens next?” Sherri asked, stepping up next to Adam. The Kor sun had set and the sky was quickly turning a deep navy blue, almost black, even as the twin moons coated the landscape around them in a soft, ethereal glow.
Adam continued scanning the winking stars above, trying to formulate an answer for Sherri. The Mark IV was gone, but he was searching the heavens for any sign of the first invading Hal’ic starships. They would be coming soon, which meant he and his team were vulnerable being anywhere near the M-I pyramid. He would have to lead them away from here, and as quickly as possible.
“I don’t know what happens next,” he finally said. “Only one person really does.” He pointed into the sky.”
“God?” Sherri said, frowning.
“No, the big author in sky.”
“Oh, him.”
“Yeah, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what he comes up with next.”
“I hope we won’t have to wait too long,” Sherri said, also staring into the night sky. “You know how I hate waiting for sequels.”
The End…for now
Read on for an excerpt from
Battlelines
The Human Chronicles Saga #14
ComingJune 15, 2016
Click here to purchase the pre-order of Battlelines
BATTLELINES
The war with the Sol-Kor within their home galaxy has finally begun, spearheaded by the revenge-seeking Hal’ic, whose massive fleet of warships is commanded by none other than Admiral Andy Tobias.
In the meantime, Adam Cain and his gang are stranded on Kor, trying to survive the battering the planet is taking at the hands of the Hal’ic. But soon they’ll find their way to Silana, the second capital of the Sol-Kor, to where Queen J’nae has taken Panur, along with the prototype trans-dimensional starship the Star Panther.
It’s a desperate race to save Panur and reclaim the starship before J’nae can learn its secrets and begin construction of a war fleet capable of going anywhere at anytime…including all the way to the blue skies of planet Earth….
Prologue
Two hundred thousand starships!
Admiral Andy Tobias shook his head each time he thought of the mind-boggling number. He tried to put it in perspective. The combined fleets of the Orion-Cygnus Union and the Juirean Expansion would come in somewhere near eighty-five thousand warships. Throw in all the other miscellaneous militaries in the Milky Way galaxy and one could stretch that number to one hundred thousand.
But the Hal’ic fleet, created on one world and in secret, was twice what an entire galaxy could muster.
Tobias was just glad the Hal’ic were on his side…and that he was the supreme commander—the Veritis, as they called it—of the whole kit and caboodle.
“Admiral, mass forces are approaching Kor,” the Hal’ic liaison reported. The native had been prompted by his superiors to use Andy’s Human military rank, even though Veritis was the official position he held. “There are inadequate defensives to prevent our objectives. Shall I give the order to proceed?”
“Hold one,” Tobias said. “Any word from Captain Cain and the others?”
“None, hallon.”
He’d only been the head honcho for three days, but he knew the Hal’ic word hallon meant sir. Andy specifically requested that his translation bug keep the native pronunciation, out of respect for native military customs. Besides, the sooner he became acclimated to life on the planet J’nae, the better. It looked like he—along with the other five Human members of his staff—would be here for very long time.
“And no trace of the Mark IV starship?”
“The same, hallon.”
This made the admiral’s jaw tighten. He had told them—repeatedly—and now it looked as though his worst case scenario was being played out.
Tobias addressed Tier-Five Miszn Obli. “Proceed to Phase One. Time to first contact?”
“Eighteen minutes.”
“Any status report on the portal assault?”
“Thirty thousand ships should be arriving on station at the remaining three transit portals within the next six hours. The twenty thousand destined for the inter-dimensional cluster will take another three days to reach target.”
“Very good. Feed continuous reports from Kor to my second, Lieutenant Commander Paulson.”
The alien scooted away quickly.
Andy lifted a cup of what passed as coffee on the planet J’nae and drank the last of it cold. He hadn’t slept in going on thirty hours, and the invasion of Kor was just beginning. It was going to be a very long day.
Since having command of the Hal’ic fleet dropped in his lap, Tobias had already made an impression on the inexperienced native officers. Through a cautious release of his forces he had managed to get the Sol-Kor to commit far too many of their assets in a failed attempt to squelch the Hal’ic defenders. As a result, the home planet of the Sol-Kor was now left virtually defenseless. Tobias had to snicker. Even if it wasn’t, the prospect of warding off over fifty thousand enemy warships would have been impossible in anyone’s book. Only now it would be more of a cakewalk for the Hal’ic.
But the invasion of Kor was only the first campaign in what was surely to be a Titanic endeavor, and that was why Andy already had Phase Two underway: The isolation of the battlefield from reinforcements.
In his brief tenure on J’nae, Andy had learned of the existence of three major transit portal arrays nearby. These were the facilities which maintained contact with the other universes the Sol-Kor operated within; there had been four, until Andy destroyed the transit portal to the Human universe. In addition, he had learned of over ninety other portal arrays which were used to move ships between points within the Sol-Kor universe. He had no idea this type of portal even existed, but when one thought about it, it made sense. Journeying from galaxy to galaxy was still a long and arduous process, requiring dozens of years even with the most-advanced starships. Long ago, the Sol-Kor had made these treks and then built linking portals back to their home galaxy. Now they were able to hop around their universe with relative ease.
The Hal’ic had extensive intelligence on the Sol-Kor war machine, and as Andy scanned the numbers on his first day on J’nae, he felt like throwing up. The Sol-Kor numbered over one trillion in
dividuals in their Colony, and each one was essentially a soldier. They also had vast manufacturing centers and access to unlimited raw material from across multiple universes. But the most sobering number of all—even though it was was only an educated guess—was the estimated eight million warships the Sol-Kor had available—if they could be accessed.
And that was why Andy had fifty thousand of his own ships heading off to destroy the portal arrays of the Sol-Kor.
If Phase Two was a success, then the home galaxy of the Sol-Kor would be on its own against the Hal’ic forces. But the galaxy was also the most-populated and settled by the flesh-eating aliens, with an estimated five hundred thousand ships available. Even then, with the impending destruction of Kor, there was a very good chance the Hal’ic could deliver a crushing blow to the Colony, at least in the near-term. It would take time for the Sol-Kor to organize an effective counter attack. The Hal’ic were better prepared, and now with more experienced leadership.
Defeating the Sol-Kor, at least in this galaxy, could be done. Then with time, the Hal’ic could build defenses against the inevitable arrival of other Sol-Kor forces from the isolated regions. The SK could be beaten, just not in this lifetime, or several more to come.
To the Hal’ic, this was an acceptable tradeoff. Their race had been one of the first to be harvested by the Sol-Kor when the invaders departed their homeworld in search of new crops on distant worlds. That was five thousand years ago, and during all that time, the survivors of that first harvest had gone on to build a thriving and technologically superior civilization beneath the ruins of their once great cities. And for all that time, the Hal’ic had planned for this moment, designing and building weapons of war to be used against the evil Sol-Kor horde. They were in it for the long haul.
Even so, their moment of destiny had been thrust upon them unexpectedly only two months before, when word was received that the Eternal Queen of the Sol-Kor was dead, having been assassinated by none other than Adam Cain and Riyad Tarazi. That was great news. But add to that, all the Queen’s potential successors had also been killed. The Hal’ic saw this as the opportunity they’d been waiting for. Ancient battleplans were dusted off, and plans set in motion.
And that was when the Hal’ic Scribes decided they needed experienced and seasoned leadership to pull off such a major undertaking. All the native warriors had been trained by simulator, without a single live battle to their credit. So after learning that one of the Queen’s assassins had been captured by the Sol-Kor, the Hal’ic rescued Adam Cain and brought the Human to J’nae, placing him in charge of their massive fleet….
Until Admiral Andy Tobias had been unceremoniously—and unexpectedly—sucked into the Sol-Kor universe. At that point, Adam deferred to the admiral’s superior skill and experience, and within minutes of arriving on the Hal’ic homeworld, Andy found himself at the very pinnacle of the single largest military fleet anyone had ever seen. It was heady stuff for the sixty-nine-year-old Navy SEAL, but now the inevitable unknowns of war were beginning to surface.
And this last bit of news from the native liaison could easily send even the best laid plans of the Hal’ic to hell in a handbasket, and in spectacular fashion.
Andy had seen it coming.
The Mark IV prototype starship—the one Riyad Tarazi called the Star Panther—was missing and now presumed to be in the hands of the new Sol-Kor queen. At first blush, that didn’t sound too serious. After all, it was just one ship.
However, the Star Panther was the only starship capable of making independent trans-dimensional transits. All other ships were required to pass through huge rips in space created by planet-based arrays, whose towers climbed over a kilometer above the surface. Because of their size and complex construction, there were very few of these portal arrays around, which made them easy to target and destroy. Currently, Andy had fifty thousand warships tasked with doing just that.
Yet the Star Panther didn’t need any such array to make the jump between universes, or even within universes. It was a revolutionary machine, which would rewrite how interstellar travel was achieved from here on out.
The thing that could spell complete and utter disaster for the Hal’ic—along with every other race in all the universes—was the fact that the Sol-Kor had the only working prototype, while Andy and his allies didn’t have a clue how to build one.
Panur—that pain-in-the-ass immortal mutant alien—had built the only working model, while leaving no instructions with the good guys on how it was done. Now the prototype was gone. And even if the Sol-Kor didn’t have the ship—which Andy wasn’t one hundred percent positive they did—their new queen was a mutant, too, and an intellectual match for Panur. Just knowing that such a thing was possible would set her on the course of building her own TD-capable starship, and then millions more just like it.
Tobias and his side were short one immortal mutant alien genius of their own, one who could connect the dots and build their own version of Panur’s Mark IV. Even as the thought crossed his mind, Andy knew that wasn’t entirely true. There was Lila Bol, Adam Cain’s half-human, half-alien daughter. She was also an immortal mutant alien genius; which it seemed to Andy were popping up everywhere these days. She had helped Panur build the first prototype; theoretically, she could show them how it was done.
Unfortunately, she was missing in action somewhere on the planet Kor, along with Adam, Riyad Tarazi, Sherri Valentine and Arieel Bol. Hell, they even had a Juirean Overlord with them, which Andy found to be exceptionally unnerving.
And now, as Admiral Andy Tobias watched the graphic of the massive Hal’ic fleet approach the planet Kor, he felt nauseous. Once the Hal’ic were through with their vengence attack on the planet, there wouldn’t be much left beyond piles of smoldering ruble. Even if Adam and his team were alive now, they wouldn’t be after the Hal’ic got done with the planet.
With the possible exception of Lila, of course.
Supposedly, the girl couldn’t be killed, thanks to something called regenerative cells. But even that fact didn’t give Andy much comfort. Finding one individual survivor out of the maelstrom to come would be next to impossible. And without her to help Andy’s side counter the Sol-Kor’s coming technological leap in star travel, even two hundred thousand warships wouldn’t be enough to stop the flesh-eating aliens from conquering everything. And anywhere they damn well pleased.
Adam Cain is an alien with an attitude.
His adventures continue….
Chapter 1
Adam Cain could smell the Juirean Overlord from fifty meters away.
It was a foul, sickening odor which stood out even on a planet full of foul, sickening odors. The alien’s condition—as he called it—was not only annoying, it was dangerous. It would certainly give their position away should any Sol-Kor with a sense of smell happen by.
And now this.
“Yes, it is definitely a cave,” the excited, white-haired alien was saying. “We can seek shelter within.”
Within was the problem. That meant a confined space with very little ventilation. Adam patted the handle of his MK-17 flash weapon, knowing that the last battery pack was spent. If not, then the fate of either him—or the Juirean—would have definitely been up for grabs.
“Are we far enough down the mountain that an attack on the pyramid would not collapse such a refuge?” Arieel asked, working her way down a series of huge granite boulders, as a small cascade avalance trailed out from her latest foothold.
Adam reached out and grabbed her arm, steadying her.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “We’re almost to the bottom. It might be just as easy to keep going—”
“Holy crap!” Sherri Valentine cried out. “That has to be the Hal’ic fleet.”
All eyes turned skyward, only to be covered by lifted arms, shielding them against the brilliant flare from above. It looked as though the entire sky had suddenly caught fire, with a vast sheet of blinding white light falling toward them.
/> “Hurry! To the cave!”
Benefis Na—the Juirean—along with Lila, were the first to duck inside the small, dark opening. Riyad was right behind her, with Sherri on his six. Adam and Arieel were the farthest from the entrance.
In the light gravity of Kor, Adam could have easily bounded his way the fifty meters to the entrance, but he wasn’t about to leave Arieel on her own. So he wrapped an arm around her impossibly narrow waist and hoisted her over his shoulder. She let out a grunt, but then quickly surrendered to his macho assistance. Moments later they were in the cave.
And none too soon.
The cave was about three thousand feet below the top of the mountain that served as the base for the eighteen Sol-Kor pyramids within this settlement cluster, including the huge, black capital structure designated as M-1. This was the Hal’ic’s primary target, and the combined energy of over ten thousand flash cannon bolts now fell upon the building with the force of a nuclear bomb.
The ground shuttered with such intensity that all those inside the cave were thrown to the musty floor. The ceiling gave way in another part of the cave, sending roiling clouds of choking dust racing for the exit. Adam and his team were coated in fine, gray powder, and even as the first rumbles from above began to subside, they crawled desperately toward the opening themselves and its promise of breathable air.
But then the avalance reached the level of the cave, as a torrent of boulders, rocks, mud and pyramid debris rained past the entrance. Adam pulled Arieel back inside, just as Sherri flew over them, having dived back in for the relative protection of the cave.
