Invardii Box Set 2

by Warwick Gibson

  Dinner was perfect. The service was unobtrusive, and the music – recorded unfortunately but crystal clear all the same – set a soft background atmosphere.

  At first they ate largely in silence, content enough with the feeling of being together. Then little flutterings of electricity began to build between them.

  “I’ve wanted to put my arms around you for a long time,” said Roberto quietly, half way through dessert.

  Celia looked down intently at her food.

  “I just wanted you to know that,” he continued softly.

  “When I kissed you at the barn dance I said if you wouldn’t go out and find someone for yourself, you’d just have to put up with me.”

  She nodded awkwardly.

  “I did once hope you’d find someone – you’d been such a good friend I really wanted you to be happy – but now I want you for myself. Totally.”

  She nodded again.

  “This isn’t from a sense of pity,” he said in a rush. “I want you for you. I Just thought I should make that clear.”

  “Understood,” she said quietly. “Don’t worry, I haven’t once doubted your enthusiasm for the idea. It’s just . . . my enthusiasm I’m worried about.”

  “You’re not sure you’re interested?” he said, a piece of exotic pie with a name neither of them could pronounce halfway to his mouth.

  “It’s not that,” she said, blushing. She was already thinking about him each day. Thinking about holding him, then imagining slipping her hands under the material of his top – leaving her in no doubt about her reaction to him.

  “I just think it will all go wrong again.”

  “Then we’ll have to make it go right, won’t we,” he said firmly. His commitment to making this happen was very clear in his voice.

  She almost believed him.

  They both lived in the large, central accommodation block, and the walk back was pleasant. It was late in the evening, and they found themselves nodding to acquaintances out on social calls of their own. It was easy to find things to talk about, and scatterings of conversation were interspersed with comfortable silences.

  Work was a fun topic, when you were both up to speed on what was happening. They talked about couples they knew, acknowledging the happiness and commitment of the individuals in them. They carefully avoided any mention of what might be required of them if they were to enjoy the same results.

  Celia noticed that Roberto had steered the two of into the accommodation block through the entrance off the admin area, a rather circuitous route. Then she understood. They would pass her rooms on the way to his.

  CHAPTER 30

  ________________

  It had been a lovely evening, but Celia was beginning to feel nervous again. Then she and Roberto stopped outside her door.

  “I’m not going to ask you to come back to my room tonight,” he said quietly.

  Her heart leaped with relief. Some sort of decision had to be made at some stage, but at least she wouldn’t have to make it tonight.

  She tapped the door commands and turned back to him, expecting a goodnight kiss. The door opened behind her, and Roberto walked her backward into the living room before she knew what he was doing.

  “No,” he said roguishly, “I thought you might be more comfortable in surroundings you know.

  “Lights, half,” he said, and the room controls dimmed the light.

  “Make that 40 percent.” he said, and the lights dimmed further.

  “Did I tell you how beautiful you are – when you stop frowning,” he said, covering her face in kisses.

  “No, ah, do I,” she said, trying to get a word in between his kisses.

  Roberto started to unzip the back of her dress, and she froze.

  This was it. A crossroads. A decision that could change her life, if she let it. The warmth of him pressing against her warred with the fear that rose unbidden from the depths of her mind.

  She had to make this a conscious choice, she thought desperately. She couldn’t let the desire and fear she felt in equal parts make decisions for her.

  She forced herself to think. Did she want to be frightened all her life? Wasn’t she worth more than that? Godsdammit, she was worth more than that! As a woman, she had a right to Roberto, and she would claim that right.

  “Hey, stud,” she whispered in his ear.

  “What?” said Roberto, lost at the turn of events.

  “I think I’m over it,” she replied.

  “Over what,” he said cautiously. “Over me? We haven’t done anything to be over yet – have we?” he finished nervously.

  “No, silly,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I think I’m over being frightened about the past, frightened about the future, frightened about every damn thing!”

  He’d never heard her swear, but she did at least seem to be swearing for the right reasons.

  “Well, good for you!” he exclaimed, delighted at her breakthrough. He hugged her tighter, until she protested and loosened his arms so she could get some breath back.

  “I’m so pleased,” he said. “Pleased for you that is. I mean, you could have anybody you wanted, well, now you’ve got over this thing.

  “I mean, you don’t just have to go out with me,” he ended lamely, no longer looking happy.

  “You are the worst salesman of their own wares I have ever seen!” she said with a laugh. “Let me dial up some drinks, and change out of this dress. Maybe then we could wash down all that rich food with something. After that we could get just sit on the couch and talk . . . or not,” she said impishly, and brushed past him to close the door.

  Roberto sat in the lounge, thinking the evening had gone better than he had expected – until she came out of the bedroom in a simple nightdress that showed her body off to perfection.

  After that he didn’t have time to do much thinking at all.

  Two days later, and not that far away, Finch stood in the boardroom at the top of the Prometheus admin building and watched the first wave of Javelins depart. The long, modified bodies of the starships contained Valkrethi. This was the first wave of the attack, and it would clear the way for specialist sabotage squadrons to go in and reduce another Invardii shipyard to twisted metal and molten slag.

  He always stood in the boardroom, by himself, when Prometheus went to war. Even when the command to send out their forces came straight from Cordez, he had to decide for himself whether he agreed. He felt the weight of Prometheus – and its people from many planets, and its various operations – sit heavily on his shoulders tonight.

  Finch had set the overhead dome to show the stars over the base. That way he could, as usual, see the ships and wish them luck as they departed. Next they would pick up speed until they were clear of Neptune, and could start the orscantium decay process in the massive containment chambers in their bellies, and hurl themselves across space as it folded like a paper star chart around them.

  Most of this new generation of pilots called him Commodore, the navy rank just below Cagill’s rank of Air Marshall, though he’d never been given the commission and wasn’t part of the navy. The staff at Prometheus mostly called him Chairman, or Sir. It was only the old guard who now called him Finch. He missed the name, a reminder of happier days with less responsibilities.

  The sabotage squadrons for the Invardii shipyards were leaving Prometheus for the interstellar flight lanes beyond Neptune. There they would hurl themselves across vast spaces to their next target.

  Row upon row of them rose from the exit ports below the horizon of the small moon, and vanished in the distance as they climbed above Neptune. Finch had more than 50 squadrons at his disposal now, over 500 Javelins. Cordez was of the opinion they were going to need every one of them.

  What was the wily Regent up to? wondered Finch. The Regent normally included Finch in his plans, but lately he had been keeping some things to himself. Was the situation so bad he felt he couldn’t burden others with the facts?

  Whatever it was, it was c
lear Cordez saw something on the horizon that would change everything. It was uncanny how he could do that. It was almost as if he could see into the future.

  Finch’s mind wandered to one of the more pressing problems that lay ahead for Prometheus. The next group of elite pilots had almost completed training for Valkrethi of their own, and the original group of 24 Valkrethi had lost two of their number while boarding Invardii flagships.

  Prometheus would have to collect more Valkrethi from Orouth, and they would have to do it soon. The problem was that the remote nature of the planet had kept it secret in the past. Every trip there showed their hand to their enemy. How was he going to handle the mission when the time came?

  He mentally wished the last of the Javelins good luck, one last time, as they passed out of sight. Then he left the boardroom for his office. He would check in with Cagill toward the end of the day, to see how the mission was going.

  The modified Javelins came out of the gray, grainy nothingness of star drive into a quaternary system. A white dwarf orbited at a great distance from the frenzied dance of three other suns. A red giant and blue sun in a stable configuration had captured a smaller yellow sun that now circled closer and closer to them as its outer layers were stripped off. It wouldn’t last much longer, a few thousand years at the most.

  The Javelins drifted to a stop just outside the interlocking orbits of the three inner suns. They were bathed in a red and blue glare, with the remains of the yellow sun just starting to show through the edge of the red giant.

  The shipyard stayed close to the yellow sun, using the stream of fusing hydrogen that was ripped off it by its neighbors to provide the power it needed. Cagill could see the shipyard now, in a magnified view on his ship’s main screen. The long spar and hub construction sported a number of wheels where the Reaper ships were constructed in some sort of assembly line. A denser burst of thermonuclear gases obscured the picture, but Cagill had seen all he needed to see.

  “Target identified,” he broadcast on the open channel. “Valkrethi assemble at position being sent . . . now, Cagill out.”

  The alloy and composite giants dropped out of the bellies of the modified Javelins, and Cagill hastened to mount up and join them. Once on board his Valkrethi, and clear of his ship, he brought up his optic shields. Then he opened a thin gray line on the optics from the green dot of his position to the blue dot at the assembly point. His Valkrethi began to slide toward the new position, accelerated, and was there.

  The shipyard lay dead ahead, deep within the column of fire that snaked across from the yellow sun to its blue companion. A scattering of enemy ships provided a protective screen, circling the tail of fusing gases.

  “You know the drill, people,” he said, when they had all gathered. “Stay alert, stay alive, destroy Reaper ships.” He paused momentarily, then counted them down to a starting mark.

  “And go! Choose your targets. Good hunting.”

  Cagill opened a dipole thread between himself and one of the enemy ships, and his Valkrethi began to slide toward the new position, accelerating rapidly. As he decelerated through the last half of the transition, he noted some interesting changes in the enemy ship he was approaching.

  It was smaller, and more three-dimensional. The original Reaper ships had been flat, ornately constructed warships, but this one was different. Cagill worked his way cautiously through the ship’s plasma shields, noting the spike in temperature on the skin of his Valkrethi, and looked around as he floated inside the plasma shields.

  There were fewer hubs, and they were bigger, much bigger. It looked like the Invardii had made some effort to adapt to the appearance of the Valkrethi, and that wasn’t going to be good for him or his pilots. He wondered what else the Invardii had in store for them, and dropped down toward the nearest hub.

  CHAPTER 31

  ________________

  The top of the hub tore away under the force of Cagill’s attack. There was no sign of an internal atmosphere, as usual, and he dropped down into a large space. That hadn’t been there last time he breached one of the Reaper ship hubs, and he wondered what it meant.

  His Valkrethi had just hit the floor, and switched to infrared, when he found out. A weapons blast slammed him back against the nearest wall. He had a momentary vision of the gray machines Celia had described from the flagship she destroyed, each one surrounded by orange Invardii.

  Then multiple blasts punched him through the wall. He vaguely remembered taking more hits, and jumping back through the hole he had made for his Valkrethi in the top of the hub, before he lost consciousness.

  Cagill came around some time later, finding himself held by the stickiness on the inside of the plasma shields. His Valkrethi was beginning to overheat. The systems in his mount had been busy repairing themselves, and most had returned to normal functioning.

  He hastily moved away from the plasma shields, and tried to make sense of this new turn of events. It was looking like the defensive arsenal on the flagships had been adapted to these new ships, and that wasn’t good.

  Cagill turned back to the plasma shield and worked his way through to the outside. Then he called off the attack on the Reaper ships. They were just too well prepared this time round, and the Valkrethi needed a new approach. He wasn’t ready to quit though, and he gave his troops a new assembly point.

  One of the Valkrethi didn’t arrive with the others. Cagill waited for a moment, but then decided to move on with his briefing. He had to hope it was just taking a while to regenerate from damage sustained in an attack.

  A brief discussion soon established that less than half the enemy ships were of the new type. That was a blessing. Cagill decided to destroy the newer types first – they were the more dangerous.

  “We attack in sets of four,” he told the others. “Celia and Shavez found working in pairs was effective against the flagships, and there were a number of success stories among the other pairs too.

  “We attack from two directions, and the pairs work by leapfrogging past each other. If the lead Valkrethi takes a big hit its partner takes out the weapons system doing the damage. That way none of us should sustain too much damage at once.

  “Keep one comms channel open for each team of four, keep your partner in sight, and keep talking. If you’ve all taken multiple hits get out of the ship and leave it for a fresh team. Got it?”

  There was a chorus of assents.

  “Let’s take them down!” said Cagill. He finished with a hearty “good luck!” and the Valkrethi dispersed to set up their new teams of four.

  Cagill took one of the top pilots as his second, and two of the more methodical thinkers among the pilots completed the team. He called up his optic shields and looked for the Reaper ship that spat him out after it came close to killing him. Based on its last heading, and the difference in shape he’d observed, he was pretty sure it was the one at the top of his optics screen. He locked onto it, and felt his heart begin to speed up.

  “Let’s go do it,” he told the others on his team, and passed on the coordinates of the target. The Valkrethi began the translocation process, drifting at first, and then accelerating rapidly. A few minutes later they punched through the plasma shields of the enemy ship.

  Cagill skipped across the top of the nearest hub, ripping a number of sizable holes as he went. Several bright discharges punched holes in the hull around his handiwork. It appeared the Invardii weapons systems were on the alert.

  “We’ve got them rattled,” he said on the comms channel allocated to his team.

  “I say we go in two from the top and two from the side,” said the top pilot he had taken as his off-sider, “so we meet in the middle.”

  “I bet they’ve set up firing lines in those big spaces just inside the hull,” he added. “Once we get past those, we should be back in the usual warren of smaller rooms – and not far from the fusion reactors at the center of the hub.”

  Cagill nodded. “The lead Valkrethi keeps moving and takes the hits,
” he reminded them, “while the number two targets the weapons systems. Once we’ve got control of one of the bays, it’s straight to the center of the hub for both teams. We rupture the central column, and then we’re gone. Agreed?”

  The other three nodded in turn.

  Cagill sent the second pair down the side of the hub. He motioned the remaining Valkrethi to fall in beside him, and they floated quietly over the top of the hub. When he figured the other pair were in position, he flicked his hand in the ‘go’ signal.

  His partner dropped down and punched a hole in the top of the hub. It took him only moments to pull himself through, and into the large, open space below. He hit the floor, bounced to his feet and began running for a wall that appeared before him. Several weapons discharges slammed into the wall next to him, and one hit him in the back.

  Cagill took a second to gauge where the bright plasma discharges were coming from, and then raced across the top of the hull. He dropped through the hull right on top of the gray machines that were taking shots at his partner.

  He swatted the machines aside, and used one of the Invardii cylinders to bludgeon the others into an inert state. His partner pulled himself out of the wall where he’d been thrown by the blast. He looked a little scorched, but none the worse for wear. Cagill pointed down, and they began to dig themselves toward the center of the hub.

  The other pair beat them to the fusion reactor at the center by a minute. Cagill and his partner burst through into a circular room that soared up through row after row of balconies. Two giant figures were already advancing on the thick column that stood in the center of it.

  Plasma surged through the translucent cables that ringed the column, and the Valkrethi were heading for these. They tore the power cables free, and chaotic matter at thousands of degrees erupted into the chamber.

  All four Valkrethi barely had time to scramble back to the outside of the hub before the fusion reactor detonated, leaving a gaping hole in the Reaper ship’s construction of spars and hubs. As they reached the plasma shields another hub, pierced by one of the spars, flared as well, and the shields failed.