New Frontiers- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  They walked across the catwalk to the far side of the reactor room. There they came to a dead-end, but even before they reached it, doors materialized and slid open, revealing Ch-va-la’s char-blackened form. The headlamps of the others came sweeping out, and they heard Remo’s voice echoing over his external speakers.

  “Cover the doors!” Remo ordered as they walked into the control room. He stood with Desiree already watching those doors at the other end of the room.

  Alexander hurried over to join him, crouching down behind Remo. He pointed to the other side, where Desiree was, and Catalina took up position behind her.

  Ben came on the comms ordering Jessica to join them.

  She explained about the missing catwalk between her and the core, saying, “I’ll have to walk around.”

  “Make it quick,” Ben replied.

  “Going as... fast as... I can...” Jessica panted.

  Catalina kept her eyes on the corridor beyond the control room. Then a thought occurred to her and she glanced back the way they’d come.

  “What if they jump into the core and finish what Esther started?” she asked.

  “According to Ch-va-la, they can’t, the reactor room is independently shielded against portal transits.”

  Jessica appeared at the end of the corridor. She came running toward them only to skid to a stop as the air in front of her began shimmering with the appearance of a bubble-shaped portal.

  Remo called out, “Here they come! Jessica, get out of the way!”

  She dove to one side of the corridor, and then a flash of light issued from the portal, but Catalina didn’t see anything step through.

  Pling.

  A green-shaded alien appeared there, aiming a small dish-barreled gun at them.

  Remo fired a thunderous burst from his cannons, and the Gray fell thrashing to the deck, de-cloaking the instant it hit the ground.

  Pling. Three more green-shaded Grays came through in tandem. Cannon roared once more, this time in stereo as Desiree joined in. Two of the aliens fell. The third remained standing for a moment, and Catalina felt her face blister with sudden heat. She ducked into cover and the sensation passed.

  She waited a second longer, and then peeked back. Pling. Now there were five grays in the corridor. Cannon fire flashed out, illuminating the walls and floor with strobing yellow-orange light.

  A mound of dead Grays was piled between them and the open portal, giving subsequent ones something to take cover behind. Green-shaded heads peeked around the mountain of bodies, taking aim with welding torches. The air in the corridor shivered with heat, and Remo withdrew suddenly, his arm smoking and glowing a faint orange color.

  “Fuck!” he roared, waving his arm around to cool his armor faster. “How much longer do you need, kid?”

  “Give me a few more minutes!” Ben said.

  Catalina tried aiming around Desiree, but her shot went wide hitting the mound of bodies with meaty thwaps.

  Alexander stepped out of cover—Krrshhh!

  A rocket streaked out and exploded with a terrific boom, throwing debris in all directions and filling the corridor with smoke. Catalina’s ears rang, and bits and pieces of Grays rained down. Now she was grateful for the lack of illumination. As the ringing in her ears subsided, she heard the last of the debris touching down. Thup, thup, plop—

  A small four-fingered hand landed a few feet away from her. The rest of the carnage snapped into focus: walls black and glistening with blood, bits and pieces of Grays scattered everywhere—here a foot, there a thigh, a head, an arm...

  Catalina scrambled away, her stomach churning and head swimming. The others went on firing around her, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t trained for this! Her hands trembled like autumn leaves, and she shook her head over and over, desperate to erase the horrific scene.

  * * *

  No sooner had Alexander cleared the first heap of bodies than another one appeared. Gun smoke and rocket smoke blurred together in a dense fog until it felt like they could reach out and touch the beams of light shining from their headlamps. Shifting curtains of smoke sparkled with the moisture of vaporized alien blood. Cannon fire roared and the vibrations chattered his teeth as if there were a jackhammer lodged inside his head.

  “I’m almost out of ammo!” Remo yelled.

  Click. Alexander’s cannon ran out of ammo at that exact moment, and he mentally triggered the magazine release. The empty magazine dropped out onto the deck, and Alexander hurried to slot in a spare from his suit’s equipment belt. It was his last one. He’d already burned through the other three, and there was one more loaded in the cannon in his other arm. After that he’d be out, too. They’d only been firing for a few minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.

  “Ben!” Alex gritted out, watching as another wave of Grays fell in a heap. Remo fired a rocket at the mounting pile of bodies. Krrsshhh—boom!

  “You’d better hurry up!”

  “Almost done!”

  Alexander cut down another nine Grays, bullets rattling out. His arm was numb from the endless recoil. Click. Alexander released another spent magazine and scavenged the loaded one from his other arm.

  Remo stopped firing.

  “That’s it! I’m out!” he ducked out of the doorway and shook his head. His armor was smoking, glowing orange in places. The Grays didn’t have much time to aim and shoot when they came through the portal, but it was still enough to scald them. Alexander could feel his own skin screaming at him. His exposed arm and shoulder felt like they were on fire.

  “I’m out, too!” Desiree said, retreating behind her side of the doorway.

  Click. Click.

  All sounds of gunfire stopped, replaced by a ringing silence that made Alexander’s brain throb with a headache. He glanced at Catalina. She sat out of the enemy’s line of fire, hugging her knees to her chest, her eyes wide and terrified.

  “Caty! Toss me your spare magazines!” he said.

  She stared blankly back at him, as if she didn’t know what a magazine was. She probably didn’t. Grays streamed out of the portal, filling the corridor. Desiree fired a rocket, krrsshh-bang! Carnage rained around them and blood splattered his faceplate. He swiped it away, creating a smeary mess.

  “Caty!” he tried again. Nothing. She was in shock.

  Desiree reached over and grabbed the magazines from Catalina’s belt. She tossed two of them over, keeping the other two for herself. Alexander caught them and passed one to Remo.

  “Single fire!” Remo instructed.

  Alexander nodded and switched his cannons over to single fire mode. They picked off targets one at a time as they ran through the portal. Not fast enough. Searing waves of heat lit their skins on fire. Their sonar identified the Grays even through the smoke, so they could aim, but with the delay between sensor sweeps, every other shot they took missed, slicing through imaginary targets that had since moved somewhere else. Alexander managed to cut down another dozen Grays before he ran out of bullets again.

  Click.

  Remo and Desiree stopped shooting at the same time, too. Alexander was about to tell Catalina how to release the loaded magazines from her cannons when he noticed that the Grays had stopped coming through.

  For a moment he wondered if the jamming field was back online, but the smoke cleared enough for him to pick out the portal still shimmering in the corridor.

  “Looks like they gave up,” Remo said.

  He spoke too soon. Another figure came swirling through the smoke, but this one wasn’t shaded green by sonar. Their headlamps illuminated it, revealing a human child—a little girl no more than five years old. She came waltzing out through the carnage, looking around hastily, her eyes wide and terrified.

  “Hold your fire!” Remo said.

  Alexander didn’t have any bullets left, but he wouldn’t have fired if he did. He watched the girl approach, wondering what game the Entity was playing now.

  “Hello there,” Remo tried. “Are you all right?”
r />   “N-no! W-where am I?” the girl said as she reached them.

  “You’re aboard a spaceship,” Remo said. He waved her over to get her out of the line of fire in case more Grays came through. Then he crouched in front of her and looked her over.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she shook her head.

  “How did you get here?” Desiree asked from the other side of the doorway.

  “Don’t know. When I woke up, I wasn’t in my bed. I went to find Marco.”

  Alexander noticed something glinting in her hand. He pointed to it. “What are you holding?”

  She turned to him, trying hard not to smile. “Nothing,” she said, and dropped the object. It fell with a heavy thunk and rolled between them. Red lights blinked faster and faster in time to an urgent tone.

  It was a plasma grenade.

  Alexander didn’t even hesitate. He threw himself on top of the grenade.

  “Cover!” Remo yelled.

  A split second later, there came a blinding flash of light, and Alexander felt a surge of excruciating heat radiate from his stomach. The sensation was there and gone in an instant—

  And so was he.

  CHAPTER 28

  Catalina recovered from her shock just in time to wonder what a little girl was doing in the middle of a battlefield.

  Then Alexander dove to one side of that girl, and Remo screamed, “Cover!”

  Everything went white. A wave of hot air hit her and threw her against the far wall. She hit with a thud, and sat there stunned. Debris rained down—bits and pieces of blackened armor, and other bits her brain refused to identify.

  The lights came on inside the room, casting everything into horrifying clarity. Alexander was gone, the walls plastered with his remains.

  “Power’s up!” Ben announced.

  Alexander’s dead! Catalina wanted to scream back, but words failed her.

  “Fucking shit!” Remo said, pounding the wall with an armored fist.

  The little girl Catalina had seen just before all hell broke loose lay in a tattered heap to one side of the room. Catalina blinked, and something wet grazed her cheek. People mulled around her, crouching down and speaking in soft voices; then yelling and shaking her by her shoulders.

  Ben stopped in front of her, looking like he wanted to say something, but then he grimaced and looked away. Remo and Desiree pulled her to her feet and held her up, one to either side of her. Jessica came to join them, picking her way through the carnage with a wrinkled nose. Ch-va-la opened a portal back to the ship’s bridge, and everyone walked through. Remo and Desiree carried her through with them. A merciful flash of light cleansed the gory scene and then they stepped out onto the bridge of the harvester. Ben went to sit in the commander’s chair and once again took orders from Ch-va-la.

  He said something about the ship being clear of enemies. A thunderous boom shook the bridge as enemy ships went back to attacking them. Catalina swayed on her feet and fell, hitting the deck hard.

  “He’s dead...” she whispered.

  “He saved our lives—twice,” Remo replied, getting down on his haunches beside her.

  “Got it!” Ben said.

  Remo looked up suddenly, and Catalina followed his gaze to the outer circumference of the room. The wraparound holo display showed them sailing straight toward a spherically distorted area of space. A wormhole. It looked like one of the portals the Grays used.

  The wormhole swelled to fill their entire field of view. Then they sailed through and stars seemed to fall away rapidly to either side of them.

  Boom!

  “They’re following us in!” Ben announced.

  “How long before we reach the rendezvous?” Desiree asked.

  Ben looked to Ch-va-la, and the alien said. “T-ee toc-a.”

  “Three hours,” Ben replied.

  A violent explosion rocked the ship.

  “What was that?” Desiree asked. “I thought the Grays didn’t have explosives?”

  “They don’t, but we do. If the Entity sent a human girl after us with a plasma grenade, it has probably extended that strategy to include sending the surviving warships from our fleets after us, too.”

  Another boom! interrupted them.

  “Can we last three hours?” Remo asked.

  Ben shook his head. “We’re about to find out.”

  Ch-va-la stepped into the center of the room and opened another portal. This time Catalina could see that it led somewhere aboard the Liberty.

  The alien gestured to the portal and said something in a rasping whisper.

  “What did he say?” Remo asked.

  “He says we’ll be safer on our ship,” Ben replied.

  “The Liberty doesn’t have any shields,” Remo objected. “This thing does.”

  Another explosion rocked through the harvester, and the lights flickered.

  “What if we lose power?” Desiree said. “No power means no shields.”

  Remo grimaced.

  “She’s right,” Ben said. “Let’s go.” He stepped through the portal first, followed by Desiree. Then Catalina went. Once she emerged aboard the Liberty, she looked back at the portal and watched as Remo came through. They all turned to watch with her, waiting for Ch-va-la to follow, but no subsequent flashes of light lit the room. He was nowhere in sight.

  “Where’d he go?”

  “There—” Ben pointed at the portal, to the harvester’s deck, and Catalina saw the alien lying curled on the floor in a fetal position, his char-blackened skin blending almost perfectly against the black deck.

  “Shit. I’ll go get him,” Remo said, already starting back toward the portal.

  It vanished with a pop and Remo fetched up short. “Where’d it go?” he demanded, glancing at Ben.

  The nine-year-old super AI regarded them all grimly. “We’re on our own.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The portal had taken them straight to the bridge of the Liberty in Section One. Catalina looked around, feeling lost.

  A lump rose in her throat, and her eyes glazed over, drifting out of focus. Her mind flashed back to the war zone in the reactor control room, to Alexander diving on top of a plasma grenade and dying a horrific death, bits and pieces of him raining down all around her...

  Someone was calling her name. She blinked. It was Remo.

  “Watch the doors!” he ordered, pointing to a broad entrance on the far side of the room.

  She saw that he’d peeled out of his armor and his crimson jumpsuit was blackened and burned through in places, revealing equally blackened skin. Burns from the Grays’ weapons.

  Another flashback. Commander Johnson’s remains. Catalina grimaced and shook her head. She spent a moment staring dumbly at Remo.

  “For fuck’s sake—she’s a zombie! I don’t have time for this. I’ll let you know once Deedee and I are ready to launch.”

  “Ready to launch?” Catalina echoed, wondering what she’d missed. The doors swished open and she turned to see both Remo and Desiree running out.

  Ben looked at her, his eyes hard and devoid of pity. “I sent out a distress call when we were on the bridge of the harvester, telling the Grays at the rendezvous that we’re on our way, and that we have the cure. The Entity must have overheard; it carved a hole in the harvester to get to us first.”

  Ben pointed to the main holo display and Catalina looked up. That panoramic screen was so dark and empty that she’d just assumed it must be off, but now she could see a bright patch of stars shining through the darkness.

  She said nothing.

  “I get it,” Ben said, speaking more gently now. “I’m also grieving, but there will be time for that later. Right now we need you to guard the doors.”

  Tears sprang to Catalina’s eyes, and she swiped them away on the backs of her hands. “That’s life,” she said, smirking bitterly. “We’re born and then we die. Just because we’re immortal doesn’t mean we can’t be killed.”

  Ben frowned. “We’
re still alive,” he said. “Focus on the people you can save, and we might still make it.”

  “All four of us?” she countered, still smirking.

  “Five,” Jessica said, reminding her that she was there.

  Catalina turned to face her and saw the little girl sitting at one of the control stations on the far end of the bridge—the ship’s gunnery control station by the look of the holo displays arrayed in front of her.

  Catalina looked away, back to the doors she’d been told to guard. She walked up to them thinking it wouldn’t be long before she joined Alexander wherever he was. She wasn’t trained for combat; she hadn’t fired more than a handful of rounds in her entire life—and all of those she’d fired within the last hour. Now they expected her to be their last line of defense?

  “Let’s hope they hear our distress call soon,” Ben said, as if he’d just been thinking the same thing.

  “And that they respond to it,” Jessica added.

  “Right,” Ben replied. “That, too.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Remo gazed out his virtual cockpit canopy and down the magnetic launch tube. He flexed his hand on the flight stick, and checked his holo displays. It all looked and felt real enough, but he knew the images and sensations were actually being relayed directly to his brain and ARCs, while his physical body floated motionless in his G-tank.

  “Raven Two, report,” Remo said.

  “All systems green,” Desiree reported.

  “Liberty Command, this is Raven One, we are ready for launch.”

  No reply.

  “Liberty Command, I repeat, this is—”

  “This is Command, I read you, Raven One,” Ben replied. “You’re cleared for launch. They’ve opened up a hole in the harvester. Nothing coming through yet, but you’ll need to hold them off when they do.”

  Unfortunately the infected crew had taken almost every available ship down with them to Proxima—including the drones—so they were on their own: two Phantom IV fighters against whatever the Entity decided to throw at them.

  “Copy, Command. Raven Two, we are go for launch. Be advised, we may be entering hostile space.”