Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3

by Devon C. Ford

  Their contingent of twenty warriors, with triple that number of the smaller caste of supporting engineers, had been degraded by the hostility of the alien world and the monsters that inhabited it; this resulted in an order from the spineless Aq in command being given to fall back and reinforce the defenses of the main base that he had not left since the day they had arrived there. They had abandoned their outposts ,with the loss of every Va’alen posted there, as well as the equipment and power generators installed at great cost to their expedition.

  Flight inside the atmosphere was treacherous due to the ion storms that ravaged the skies higher up, and flying close to the terrain had downed a ship after it ran into a flock of flying creatures. The only exception to the rule that nobody left the mining base, was the rotation of the pairs of warriors controlling the orbital railgun command bunker.

  As the two bored and sullen Va’alen returned to their given position near to the main gates of the compound, the sight of their mates standing stock still to watch their approach came into view. Something was wrong, off somehow, as neither of their females bowed their heads in respect and deference to their mates when they saw them. Both males growled warnings as they neared but still no deference was shown. Before they could speak and berate them, a coldness swept over their minds and paralyzed their bodies.

  The words somehow sounded simultaneously in their minds instead of travelling through the air and into the tiny holes that were their ears.

  “Weak fools,” the voice boomed with a vibration that shook their bodies into terrified stillness, “you complain about your commander? About MY presence? I should force you to recycle each other slowly and watch your screams of agony.”

  Both dropped to their knees and put all four of their upper limbs onto the dusty, flattened surface beneath them. The movement was involuntary, it was commanded, and both let out a keening noise of a cornered predator with a grievous injury. Their thoughts poured from their mouths without their permission and both babbled incoherent apologies and pledges of fealty to obey everything. They were powerless to stop the Hive Lord from controlling their bodies and minds. They had still not seen him, but knew he must be close to have heard their words and exerted such will over them.

  As suddenly as they had been gripped by the powerful telepathy, they were released to drop to the dirt in agonized silence. Both rose to their feet hesitantly, glancing around for any other Va’alen who had seen their humiliation, and shooting vicious glances in the directions of their mates, who had not warned them of the presence of a Hive Lord. Wordlessly, both took up their positions and remained silent for an entire rotation of the moon, through the scorching heat and freezing night, without uttering another sound.

  ~

  “Incoming target coordinates,” announced the mate of the Va’alen warrior in charge of the railgun battery. Her mate said nothing in response, still maintaining his hostility towards her as a way to cope with the boredom and isolation of the deployment that grated on all of them. What had been sold to them as a profitable expedition had become a dangerous detail defending a wall and the mining operation within from the horrors of the indigenous wildlife, which was somehow more savage even than they were. His complaint to his superior officer about their fate had resulted in the reward of command; command of the sole anti-orbital gun battery that had never been fired since it had been tested on completion, and with a team so small it was likely to result in the unsanctioned murder of a fellow warrior. Only he and his mate were deployed there with another warrior pair, and the commander had spitefully chosen his subordinate with exquisite care, as the two families within the same clan had a conflict spanning generations over some claim to clan seniority. That feud had resulted in a bloodbath long before either of their sire’s sire took their first steps, but their sense of clan memory was as fierce as it was illogical.

  He inputted the coordinates, feeling the dull vibration of the huge gun on the distant mountaintop articulate, and he turned the barrel longer than a ship to point at the given location.

  He stopped, stared at the magnified screen in disbelief as the outline of an alien ship was joined by a second, appearing as an angular shape of lighter gray than the sky below it. His clawed hands caught up with his brain moments later, and a firing solution was inputted to the targeting computer.

  “Charge levels?” he snapped at his mate.

  “Sixty-two percent,” she replied, “and falling… one of the power lines is failing.”

  “No!” The warrior in charge roared, flinging out the hands on his left side to impact the mate of his blood enemy and knock her to the ground. “Go and fix it. Now!” he snarled at her, looking up at the hostile stance of her mate, who was on the verge of challenging him. Had they not been given a sudden mission to destroy the enemy in orbit, he would have raked the claws of all four upper limbs across his chest in an X and demanded that the other warrior fight him to the death.

  That would have to wait until the humans were obliterated.

  He leaned down, not taking his eyes off his enemy once, and lifted his mate to her feet, before grabbing up two of the bulbous rifles from the weapons rack and walking to the exit to the bunker. His mate, knowing as well as all of them that she would be forced to fight with the other female if their males made a challenge, shot her a hateful stare on the way past.

  “Ignore them,” the warrior in charge said as the bunker door was slammed so hard it failed to engage the lock, “we will deal with them after we have destroyed the humans.”

  ~

  The two Va’alen sent from the bunker said nothing to one another as both knew the inevitability of what would happen that day. At least they thought they did. They followed the two thick, snaking power lines running along the dusty surface of the moon towards the distant peak as they checked for signs of damage or a disconnected junction, and they found the source of the power failure after a mile. Sparks of blue power arced from the damaged cable beside the charred corpse of one of the large predatory birds they had encountered enough times to know to shoot first when they were seen loitering around the edges of their peripheral vision. They never showed themselves fully unless they were attacking, and when they did it was often too late, as they hunted in packs ranging from a single trio to over two dozen. As the corpse was evidently alone in the mist that reduced their visibility to twenty paces, both laid down their weapons and reached for tools on the utility belts they wore to bypass the damaged section and restore power to the railgun.

  Both dropped to their knees, working as fast as possible while the cold wind howled around them and flickered the edges of the mist to play tricks on their minds. A chattering noise rang the air, snatched away by a gust as soon as it was heard and made both kneeling Va’alen stop and face one another.

  “Just the wind,” he said, not entirely believing his own words, “keep working. We will fix this, shoot the human invaders out of the sky and tear those two limb from limb.”

  “What of the blood price?” she asked him as she worked.

  “What of it?” he snapped back. “The challenge is legitimate; no Va’alen has the right to strike you down but I. He overstepped, and he should know the consequences.”

  The same chattering rattle sounded again, this time answered by a second call that could not be ignored.

  “Keep working,” he ordered her as he stood and raised his rifle. He scanned the fringes of the mist in all directions, his nerves growing more taut with each passing second. “Hurry,” he growled at her, hearing only an answering, guttural noise before a thud and the sound of sharp claws on hard carapace. He spun and looked down at his mate, her mouth wide in agony as her outer layers of biological armor were punctured by the elongated hind talons of the creature latched onto her back, about to sink rows of sharp, conical teeth into her head. His rifle pulsed once, shredding the beast’s head clean away from the ragged and bloody stump of its neck as the body fell away lifelessly. He opened his mouth to issue a bellowing roar of
rage as his mate twitched and spasmed on the dusty ground before him. Scratches of claws on rock made him spin, firing the rifle as he did, and picking two more of the animals out of the air as they launched themselves at him. An involuntary squeal of pain sounded again, punctuated by growls and cracks of his mate’s shattering hide as more erupted from the mist behind him to tear at her. Her scream of rage and pain was cut short as one long talon pierced her chest and punctured the soft core inside to kill her.

  Instantly, the male, now devoid of a mate and robbed of the neurological link created when they bonded for life, turned berserk.

  He switched his rifle into the lower of his left hands and drew the curved blade from behind his back to swing it in a vicious arc to cut the top of a creature’s head off through its open mouth as it shrieked at him. Kicking out with one powerful leg to push the dead beast off his mate’s corpse, the momentum carrying her body to flip it over onto her front, he reached down for her own blade and rifle, rose to his full height to fire both guns, and swung both cruel-edged blades at the beasts attacking inside the radius of the gun’s effective fire. Bodies piled up around him, dying in droves as his rage at losing his mate pushed him through one of the largest and most effective ambushes laid by the hunters.

  Sheer numbers were triumphant as one lucky creature, a young male, given the start of the bright blue plumage growing around his neck and chest, made it through the twirling maelstrom of directed energy bolts and swinging curved swords, to strike a successful blow with both back feet as his talons cut into the arms of the Va’alen’s left side. Both weapons dropped uselessly as the predator fell hard onto its back and flailed to get back to its feet inside the ring of dead pack members. The Va’alen rounded on it, stabbing down with the sword to pierce his attacker through the chest so hard he pinned it to the dusty ground, where the weapon stuck around its squealing, writhing form. Unable to free the weapon, he let it go and brought the single rifle back to bear. Three more fell to his wrath before he was overwhelmed, forced onto his back on the dusty ground, and killed by the pack.

  When both Va’alen had been torn and shredded into black, pulpy messes, the pack responded to a single sound like a whistling birdcall, and as one, they set off for the open door of the command bunker.

  ~

  “Power at sixty percent still,” she said to her mate, who slammed a pair of clawed hands into the console again.

  “We have no choice,” he muttered as he flipped up the safety device to expose the firing command level. He pulled it, sending the projectile up the long barrel under the force of the magnetic fields charging it to impossible speeds. The slug the size of a mature Va’alen left the barrel, spinning at an incomprehensible rate, to create a sonic boom and shockwave that cleared the mist around the mountain for half a mile. The wait was only seconds, but they never got the opportunity to charge a second shot and destroy the other ship in orbit. As the new targeting solution was being typed into the controls, the door of the bunker creaked open and a vicious, chattering snarl filled the chamber.

  Chapter Eighteen – Orbit of Unnamed Moon

  “Sir! Massive energy reading from the surface,” cried the tactical officer on the bridge of the Hammer. “I think it’s a weapon discharge.”

  “Shields to maximum,” Hayes barked as he took his chair to end his usual pacing.

  “They are,” came the terse reply, “weapon discharge detected. Small reading heading our way; fast!”

  “Helm, evasive maneuvers. Signal the Vengeance to get the hell out of here.” His orders were acknowledged as the slight, almost imperceptible lurch of the ship betrayed the incredible forces in play fighting against their grav emitter. A colossal boom and answering shudder rocked the Hammer as the lights on the bridge flickered in and out like eyelids fluttering.

  “Damage report,” Hayes called out, fearing the loss of more of his crew in this godforsaken solar system.

  “Glancing blow to the forward shields,” the tactical officer answered, “down to fifty percent but rising, Sir.”

  Small mercies, Hayes thought as he resisted the urge to genuflect to a God he didn’t wholly believe in but who had been such a large part of his upbringing, that the gesture was almost automatic. He guessed that had the charged projectile hit them dead-on, even the full layer of all four shields would have been insufficient to save them from a follow-up shot.

  “Keep your eyes on those sensors, Tac,” the captain ordered, “another reading and we jump; I don’t care where to. You got that, helm?”

  “Understood, Sir,” the pilot snapped back, “emergency tenth of a second jump course laid in.”

  “Good,” Hayes replied, “hit that base with a return barrage – energy weapons only – and get me a full active sensor sweep. After that, get us the hell out of here.”

  ~

  Dawn came as fast as sunset on the surface of the moon, and the night spent huddled in the cold of the abandoned outpost rapidly gave way to a morning of instant humidity and rising temperatures. Brandt ordered more ration pills to be taken and for everyone to drink from their tubes as she had Turner check everyone’s vital stats for signs of dehydration. Zero had taken in the morning air as he called it, climbing to the roof of the structure to assess the closed-in lie of the land. A distant, percussive crump sound drifted to her via her suit sensors.

  “Grip,” he called over the open channel, “better get up here.” Brandt didn’t wait for any further explanation, nor did she expect one from her marksman. She locked her submachine gun to the front of her left thigh and fast-walked outside where she jumped to catch the lip of the roof and hauled herself up. Zero said nothing, simply pointed to the distant sky where a dead-straight vapor trail showed the trajectory of something tiny launching upwards at an angle. Moments later an answering burst of bright blue temporarily lit up the unmistakable shape of one of their frigates.

  “Oh, my God…” she said, “is that…”

  “Has to be one of ours,” Zero answered, “looking for us probably.” Both of them stared upwards as the outline flickered away to become a dull, gray ghost once more. It didn’t disintegrate or break up in sparking ruin, so whatever had fired on them hadn’t scored a killing hit. They hoped. The answer came seconds later when a rolling barrage of bright orange flashes poured downwards, following the reverse trajectory of the vapor trail. Hundreds of shots rained straight down without deviating, likely obliterating whatever had fired the initial shot, before both of them woke up to the prospect of rescue at the same time.

  “Comms!” Brandt snapped, her voice mingling on the channel with Zero’s call for the comm device to be set up.”

  “I’ve got it,” Payne’s voice came back, “what do you need?”

  “Send out an emergency pulse, nothing specific, just aim it upwards and send. Quickly.” A few seconds passed before she came back on the net.

  “Done, what now?”

  “Now,” Brandt said, “we wait.”

  They waited. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Without any reply, the shape high above them blinked in a dull flash, and was gone. Brandt sank her head.

  “Did it send?” she asked. “Did it get through the atmosphere?”

  “Can’t tell,” Payne replied, “I sent a broad spectrum emergency beacon burst like you said – no direct link established.”

  “Goddammit,” the commander muttered, cursing herself for betraying her dismay to the others under her command. “Okay, people,” she started, before being interrupted.

  “Incoming message…” Payne paused as she read before speaking, “It’s the Vengeance. They have our beacon, and they promise they’ll be back.”

  “Did they say when?” Paterson asked hopefully.

  “Negative… They’re gone.”

  Brandt took five long, deep breaths before she spoke. She wanted her voice calm and measured, like this was all expected and okay when inside she wanted to scream at the sky and beg their ships to come back for them now.

  “Zero? Overw
atch. Specter and Horne, conduct a perimeter check – I want this place locked down as best we can for now. Paterson, get back on that energy source and see if you can’t speed up figuring out how to make it work for us. Everyone else, police up the camp and prepare to dig in. Payne on me, we need to find a water source to purify. Like it or not, this place could be home for another day at least.”

  The stranded team took the news in their stride, even if most of them were quiet and a little subdued. Brandt moved slowly through the thick foliage, which seemed to grow even thicker as they descended a slippery drop towards the clearing of trees at the water’s edge. It was murky, with an oily film resting on the top and the dark promise of things they hadn’t seen before lurking below the surface. The state of the water didn’t matter too much, as whatever pathogens and chemicals lay inside it would be filtered and neutralized by their emergency water purification module.

  Her mind went back to basic training, when the petty officer on the training staff took great delight in unfastening his uniform pants in front of their whole squad and loudly filling the container from his bladder as the horrified recruits looked on.

  “It don’t matter what you put in here,” he told them with a smirk and evident pride in the weapon he held in both hands, “as long as it has good ol’ H20 at its heart, then you’ll get the freshest mountain dew in return. That thing about not eating yellow snow? Well stick that snow in one of these bad boys and you’re good for days.” He had zipped himself up and waited, still smiling as he wiped a sprinkled hand on his uniform pants, before he took a canteen and filled it with the cool, crystal clear liquid already filtered through, and took a long, satisfied slurp, like it was his first beer after a hard day’s work.