Talbot screamed at him from his pockcomp; her words sounded muffled. “They’re bombarding the compound! Get the hell out of there!”
His vision turned blue and another building exploded. Hot air blew over him and debris flew in all directions. Stunned and nauseous, he rolled over and saw Danner sling Bandele over his shoulder and run toward the Maxxor. Beckenbaur tried to stand but tumbled over. He felt someone grasp his arm: Heather. With her help, he stood and limped to the vehicle.
“I’m driving,” Heather said and left Beckenbaur on the floor of the cabin. He felt something wet on his leg and looked at it. A long shard of metal stuck out of his thigh, but strangely, he felt no pain.
Danner loomed over him, the young man’s face dirty with grime. He smiled. “Here ya go, Doc!” Beckenbaur felt his leg go numb.
“Thanks.” However, it wasn’t Beckenbaur who spoke. He turned and saw Bandele lying next to him.
“Thanks for coming to get me.”
“No problem, Captain,” Beckenbaur heard himself say. He turned the other way and vomited.
The vehicle lurched, causing Beckenbaur’s stomach to do the same. He heard the splat splat splat of the plasma repeater reverberate through his skull. The vehicle swayed to the left and then accelerated.
“You gonna land that thing so we can get on?” Heather barked.
“We’re a pretty nice target for that particle beam if we stop moving,” Talbot said over the commlink. “You need a launching pad of some sort.”
What the fuck?
“There. Ten kilometers to the west. You see that knoll? One side has a nice gentle slope to the top of a cliff, about ten meters above the surrounding landscape.”
“I got it,” one of the twins said. Beckenbaur sat up and saw him in the passenger seat working the sensor console.
“We’ve got to time this just right,” Talbot said.
“I get it,” Heather said. “Hold on everyone!”
Beckenbaur heard the whine of the motor grow louder. He pulled himself up and strapped into one of the rear passenger seats. Through the windshield, he saw the prairie buck up and down as the vehicle moved over the landscape. “What the fuck are we doing?”
“Shut up, Hans,” Heather said.
A high point in the landscape appeared and Heather drove straight for it. The vehicle accelerated to an even faster speed as it climbed the knoll.
Good God, NO! Beckenbaur grabbed the seat harness.
Just as the Maxxor drove over the cliff, the Trieste swooped down and the vehicle sailed into the cargo bay.
“YEEEEEEEHOOOOOOOO!” cried the twins.
Heather slammed the brakes but the Maxxor still struck the forward end of the cargo bay. Beckenbaur felt himself thrown against the harness.
“I LOVE MY JOB!” one of the twins screamed.
“We’re outta here!” Talbot said
The vehicle slid backwards and slammed into the closed cargo bay doors. Beckenbaur felt gravity shift and the force of the ship’s acceleration pinned him to his seat.
“In a couple of minutes I’ll turn on the inertial dampening and the artificial gravity,” Talbot said. “Just hang on!”
The Trieste’s acceleration pinned Beckenbaur to his seat for what seemed like an eternity. His vision grew blurry and his leg started to throb despite the local sedative. Just when he thought he couldn’t take any more, the force lessened and he felt gravity shift.
“We’re a hundred klicks from the surface,” Talbot said, “but we’re not out of this yet. Dylan? Danner? I want you on the guns!”
“On our way!” one of the twins said. The twins popped their harnesses and scrambled out of the vehicle, leaving the door open.
Heather turned and looked at Beckenbaur. “Good job,” he said. With a smile, she undid her harness, got out of the driver’s seat, and moved past him. He turned to see her kneel and hug Bandele, who had braced himself against the side of the Maxxor. She wept.
Beckenbaur figured Heather would help Bandele to the medbay. He gingerly got up and limped to the door, and then made his way forward to the ladder leading up to the command deck. Beckenbaur looked at it and, with a grimace, grasped a rung with both hands and pulled himself up step-by-step. He heard Talbot barking orders above.
“Looks like a light cruiser and two frigates dead ahead,” he heard Nick say. “Just over two-thousand clicks. There’s a carrier at three five zero mark three, range forty thousand, and four frigates at zero one zero mark eighteen, range fifty eight thousand.
Beckenbaur hobbled onto the command deck.
“Minutes to hyperdrive limit?” Talbot asked.
“Fifty five at maximum acceleration.”
Beckenbaur looked at the tactical display on the HUD. Three icons, spaced about three hundred klicks apart, moved toward the Trieste.
This doesn’t look good.
“Stay on present course, Jerrit,” Talbot said. “Close with the frigates, dead ahead.”
“Strong purge!” Nick cried. “They can see us!” The HUD flashed red. “They’ve got target lock!”
BANG!
“We’ve lost our outer shield,” Krenlar said over the intercom.
“Four missiles incoming! Nine seconds!”
“They don’t want to board us, this time,” Talbot said. Her fingers flew over her console. “Target lock on the missiles! Fire!”
Four throbbing icons streaked across the HUD; they disappeared within five hundred klicks of the Trieste.
“Good shooting boys!”
“We didn’t hit shit,” one of the twins answered.
Nick turned and looked at Talbot. “Those missiles self-destructed.”
The icons on the HUD changed heading.
Talbot looked at Beckenbaur. “They’re letting us go.”
“I think I know why, Captain,” Beckenbaur said.
“Please, enlighten me, Doctor.”
Beckenbaur shook his head. All of the surveillance by the General Intelligence Directorate and the Union Security Service he had suffered finally made sense.
They figured out where I am, and want me to do all the work.
“The Union wants to find what I’m looking for as bad as I do.”
Kruger
How the hell did they get the damn things open?
Kruger had obsessed over that question since he discovered the Harbinger facility on the forty-second moon of Cerilia VII. A hundred and five stasis chambers, five lines of twenty-one each, radiated out from the central shafts in the large space below the surface of the moon.
If there are Harbingers inside the chambers, how could they free themselves from the stasis field if they are frozen in time?
On the third moon of Anuvi III, Dr. Batista had cut the power conduits to the chambers. This resulted in killing almost half the Harbingers on the moon, and her death.
There has to be a better way!
When he first found the place, and eliminated the crew that helped him, he was alone. As he wandered around, he sensed something, just at the limit of his awareness. When he concentrated, he began to see visions of battle, bullet-shaped vessels flying through space, and huge figures stalking across planets. Something else permeated all the visions, a strong feeling of pride.
Batista’s research said the Harbingers were telepathic.
Could telepathy free them?
The other possibility was a system or protocol in the artifact itself that someone on the outside could trigger. The plans for the Anuvi Artifact, only partially researched and understood, may reveal that answer.
He would need to investigate both possibilities, but there was much work to do beforehand. Over the next year, he petitioned his boss to free up the funds to build a surface station. He couldn’t believe how difficult this was, given the enormity of the discovery. He also had to find, vet, and recruit the technical and scientific personnel to help him. This was a very difficult task; the most likely sources were the Exploration Service and academia, institutions infested
with people who hated the very Union in which they lived.
Finally, years later, everything was in place.
One of the Ph.Ds believed he had found the circuit in the artifact that controlled the stasis chambers, based on the plans for the Anuvi Artifact. However, Kruger wanted to test his telepathic theory first.
“The technical staff are now clear,” a technician said. “All sensors are activated.” Kruger stood at the sitrep table, surrounded by technicians seated at consoles. They had constructed a steel wall and ceiling enclosing one of the stasis chambers. Inside the enclosure, they had placed four crippled telepaths in power chairs, each doped up and unconscious. Several gas dispensers in the ceiling would potentially knock out whatever emerged, but for a backup, six robotic warriors armed with multi-barrel blasters stood along the wall.
A holographic image of the stasis chamber appeared above the sitrep table. Lines tracking the vital signs of the telepaths wiggled at the margins of the image. “Wake ‘em up,” Kruger said, puffing on a cigar.
Nothing happened for a minute, but then the vital signs erupted with activity. Kruger figured the telepaths would automatically focus on the stasis chamber because of the faint telepathic images he himself had experienced.
After a few moments, Kruger heard a hissing sound, and the top of the stasis chamber floated up to the ceiling; mist formed and shrouded the chamber itself.
“He’s come!” one of the telepaths cried. “A god has come!”
A transparent wave, a distortion, emanated from the stasis chamber. A moment later, Kruger felt nausea, then confusion, and then fear. “Hit the gas!”
Something crawled out of the mist and stood upright. It towered over the telepaths in their power chairs, a stark figure with straight limbs. Its upper limbs ended in seven fingers, open and arranged equidistant around a disk of flesh. Its motor limbs ended in seven toed feet. It wore no clothes or suit, and looked sexless. Its head was that of an animal, with one large organ dominating the face.
It looks like a rose.
The telepaths started to scream, their vital signs reaching critical.
“God-damn it! Hit the gas!”
“We did!”
The telepaths’ vital signs flat lined.
Kruger saw the being stoop and look at one of the telepaths. He zoomed in the image. The telepath had blood trails from his nose and eyes. The being stood at its full height and touched the walls of the enclosure. It swung a fist and knocked a hole in the steel.
Oh shit! “Kill it! Kill it!”
Blaster fire erupted and the being roared. It swept two of the warrior robots aside with its foot and struck the wall of the enclosure again. After one more blow, it fell, shuddered, and stopped moving.
“We’re lucky,” the technician said. “It may have opened the other stasis chambers.”
Kruger looked at the telepaths’ vitals. “The telepaths are dead.” These were hard enough to come by. Where are we going to get more?
“I guess we’ll go with the other method,” the technician said. “It’s not a total loss; we’ve proved one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Telepathy is a force separate from electromagnetic and quasi-particle energy. It seems it can penetrate a stasis field.”
“Great. Get started on a dissection; we’ll need a more powerful gas.”
Gavanus
The Spoor Follower emerged from hyperspace two hrulas from Naath, the capital world of the Naati Hegemony. Gavanus, Fangrik and Commander Koor occupied the raised platform on the command deck, the latter seated in the command chair. Over the next several hours, holographic images of Naath and thousands of ships began to populate a large volume at the front of the deck as the ship’s instruments received sensor data. The command crew kept their heads down and ears flat, working their consoles in the trenches on either side. Gavanus studied the images as they appeared in the holographic display while the Spoor Follower decelerated.
“All the other Commissars are in attendance,” Gavanus said, studying the holographic projection. The ships, grouped into thirteen fleets, loitered in low and medium orbit, well within Naath’s hyperspace limit. “I ordered the core of the Vallia Prime Fleet here some time ago. The rest of the Tolkist Faction has done likewise.” He tapped a few keys on the arm of the command chair. “They are all here: Lord Commissars Mirksha, Kileer, Peiirk, and Mirsham.
“The Tolkist fleets occupy low orbit above the Capital.” Koor said.
“Yes,” Gavanus said. “The Reactionary Faction’s fleets are in medium orbit.”
“They are still honoring the Protocols,” Fangrik said, “by allowing place of primacy to the dominant faction.”
“That is a good sign, yes?” Gavanus looked at Fangrik.
“We shall see, but we must take precautions. The Spoor Follower’s assault platoon will serve as a bodyguard for both Arch Commander Gavanus and myself. Commander Koor, you will stay with this vessel during the council.”
Koor’s scent of disappointment filled the air, but he said nothing, and began barking orders at the command deck crew.
As the Spoor Follower approached, the image of the planet loomed large in the holographic display, a red-tinted blue and white ball stained with black and dark red streaks and patches. Ecological wastelands covered large regions of the surface and pollution poisoned vast areas of the oceans, the result of the decades of constant warfare that wracked Naati society before the coming of Maldar. The yallic science slaves had made steady progress in repairing the damage, but there was still much to be done.
The largest settlement on the surface, the Capital covered thousands of square kidaheedas, home to a population of over a billion. As the Spoor Follower flew toward the Memorial, the light of the setting star cast an orange and red glow over the slave quarters, hunting parks, factories, and the vast warrens of huts that housed the population, vein-like paths and roads snaking through all of it. Gavanus had studied Human cities, and couldn’t understand how the homs could live all piled on top of each other; a Naati needed breathing space and room to run and chase its prey.
The structures became larger as the Spoor Follower approached the center of the Capital; birth-factories, technology labs, and a vast spaceport occupied the area around the zukkaree ritual hunting grounds and the large central plaza. The Memorial, the tallest structure on the planet, towered above the surrounding plaza. The structure, lit with orange and red light, still impressed Gavanus. Three massive red stone pylons, each three hundred heedas tall, represented the pillars of the Code of Maldar: Discipline, Knowledge, and Patience. In a massive stone hall between the Pillars, the thirteen Commissars of the Command Authority met periodically to guide Naati society.
Centuries ago, in a bloody uprising, the Naati had overthrown their alien slave masters and destroyed them, wiping every member of that species from the galaxy. A civil war lasting decades ensued, as individual warlords fought each other for mastery of the old lokkev empire. The fighting destroyed entire worlds and species. The Naati would have destroyed themselves had Maldar not appeared.
Maldar had saved the Naati from themselves, with the Code of Discipline, Knowledge, and Patience. With the Code of Maldar, a single bloodline conquered and subjugated the entire race, giving birth to the Naati Hegemony. Discipline replaced wild abandon; Knowledge replaced superstition and conjecture; Patience replaced frustration. Maldar formed the Command Authority to regulate Naati society.
Koor commanded the Spoor Follower to fly by the Memorial at a distance of a thousand heedas, as proscribed by law, as he contacted the spaceport for permission to land. Gavanus saw thousands had already gathered in the plaza in anticipation of the coming council.
The Spoor Follower set down on a large tarmac adjacent to the plaza beside eleven other cruisers; they were the last to arrive. Gavanus’ hunting fury rose in his chest and head in anticipation of the zukka, the ritual hunt that preceded each meeting of the Command Authority. Gavanus could smell the excit
ement of the others in the spacecraft.
To participate in the zukka was a high honor, usually reserved for the members of the Command Authority and their retinues. The hunt sated any bloodlust that might interfere in the council that followed, helping to ensure peace and cooperation between the thirteen Commissars and their followers.
The lokkev had genetically modified a ferocious and cunning hunter on the planet of Naath into a race of warriors: stronger limbs, heightened senses, and most importantly, transformed a hunter’s cunning into a fierce intelligence. The original animal species reproduced using sexual means, but the lokkev genetic modifications removed all sexual organs and sense-response, and tied the sexual urge to violence. With these sentient half-beasts, the lokkev had conquered hundreds of star systems.
To a Naati, the hunt was the ultimate expression of self.
Gavanus moved though the vessel to the port airlock, Fangrik leading, Commander Koor and the assault platoon following. The latter wore battle armor but carried no weapons. With a hiss and a whine, the door opened and lowered slowly, transforming into a steep ramp leading down to the tarmac. The setting star darkened the sky, the horizon a riot of red and orange. Scattered clouds hung high in the sky. Gavanus breathed deeply and smelled the recent rains. They stepped down the ramp and strode to the edge of the tarmac.
The other Commissars waited for them at the edge of the tarmac. The members of each faction stood together in their own group. Five Commissars of the Tolkists had already arrived; Gavanus and Fangrik completed that faction. All six of the Reactionary Faction stood several heedas away. The retinues of each Commissar plus those selected to take part in the zukka, thousands of individuals, formed a large crowd.
The members of the Tolkist faction all had graying hair, missing spines, and scars on their faces and bodies: sure signs of age and experience. Without exception, the members of the Reactionary Faction had sleek orange and black hair and few scars.
The Borrega Test Page 19
