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 grey, 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 neighbours 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 grey 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 grey 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 sizeable 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 offsider, “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 centre 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 centre 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 grey 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 centre of the hub.
The other pair beat them to the fusion reactor at the centre 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 centre 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.
As soon as they were clear of the disintegrating vessel, Cagill pulled up another Reaper ship on his optic screen, and fed the coordinates to his team. They began to slide in a new direction, just as a gigantic explosion reduced the enemy ship below them to an expanding circle of debris and superheated gases.
On the way to their new target, Cagill opened a channel to his command Javelin, and got an overview of the situation. A little over a quarter of the Reaper ships had so far been destroyed.
A good start, he thought. It showed the teams were getting the hang of the new tactics. Once they’d wrapped up this part of the operation, the sabotage squadrons would be able to get on with their work destroying the shipyard itself.
He called in his partner’s operational status. The Valkrethi energy levels were almost completely restored, which was a good result after the hammering the giant mount had received from the Invardii weapons. The other two Valkrethi were showing good to go as well.
“Focus,” said Cagill over his team’s open channel. “We need to be fresh for every one of these damn things. If boarding a Reaper ship becomes routine, we’re in trouble.”
Three hearty, “yes, Sir!” replies snapped back. As one united force they worked their way through the shields, and descended onto the nearest hub. From there they repeated their earlier performance.
The rest of the operation went smoothly, and one by one the enemy ships were knocked out of the fight. Then it was all over.
“It’s starting to cost us,” said Cagill later, over the sub-space connection to Cordez.
“Sure, it took time for us to work out how to meet the changes in the Reaper ships, so we should be better prepared when we meet them again, but that’s another three Valkrethi lost. On top of that there was one pilot we couldn’t resuscitate,” he added grimly.
“That’s five Valkrethi of the original 24 gone now, and we can’t afford a war of attrition.”
“I know, Neuman, I know,” said Cordez sympathetically. “There’s what, 120 Valkrethi left on Orouth? That’s a great asset for us, but it’s not an inexhaustible supply.
“It shows us we don’t have forever to wind up this showdown with the Invardii,” he continued, “and now we’ve got the location of the Invardii city, we’ve got to decide when we take the battle to their front door.”
Cagill tried not to show his surprise. When had the alliance learned that? Cordez seemed to realise he wasn’t talking to himself, and focused on Cagill again.
“Leave the loss of the Valkrethi to me, Neuman,” he said, “and pass on my congratulations to the rest of the pilots. We’ve knocked out most of the shipyards now, so the Invardii must be hurting.
“I doubt they can muster enough Reaper ships to be much of a threat to the Javelins when we do decide to attack their city, and we have you to thank for that.”
Cagill accepted the commendation on behalf of himself and the Valkrethi pilots.
“Accelerate the Javelin program for the Hud trainees,” said Cordez, as an afterthought. “There’s a large contingent of them mustering at Shellport, and they will be arriving at Prometheus soon.”
Cagill acknowledged the order.
“Until next time,” said Cordez with a nod, and ended the transmission.
Cagill was left transfixed by what Cordez had let slip. He knew Cordez had an inhuman amount of work to cope with now he was coordinating all the alliance forces, and the ever-expanding research at Prometheus, but it looked like the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing any more.
He decided it didn’t matter, as long as Cordez could hold it all together for the final assault on the Invardii city he had found. He knew Prometheus had been looking for it, and he knew it was the nerve centre of the Invardii cell in the alliance part of space.
Now they had to destroy it, and he and his Valkrethi were going to be tested to the limits of the giant machines.
THE END
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APPENDIX A
TIMELINE OF THE INVARDII WARS.
~ December 109 (2586AD) ~
A mining team on Proteus, one of Neptune’s smaller moons, encounters an automated Druanii scout ship.
II
~ March 110 ~
An Invardii ship destroys Ragnaroth, an ancient Rothii space station.
II
~ July 110 ~
First contact with the Mersa, and their home planet Alamos.
II
~ August 110 ~
Regent Cordez unveils plans for a giant production facility named Prometheus, to meet the Invardii threat
II
~ October 110 ~
The planet Hud heats up, and many plants and animals die. Hudnee and his family make a desperate cross-country journey to Shellport on the coast.
II
~ March 111 ~
Regent Asura agrees to be Regent Cordez’ queen in an effort to unite Earth behind them for the war effort.
II
~ April 111 ~
K’Sarth planet destroyed, but the K’Sarth live on underground and produce materials for the Alliance forces.
II
~ June 111 ~
Hudnee forms the first militia to overthrow the Descendants of the Prophet.
Celia’s research team learn about the Caerbrindii, and their ideas of ‘cultural dissonance’.
II
~ July 111 ~
An Invardii armada of over a thousand ships defeats a combined Earth and Sumerian force above Uruk, the
Sumerian home world. Survivors settled on remaining Sumerian planets.
II
~ November 111 ~
Battle for Roum between Hudnee’s militia and the Descendants of the prophet.
II
~ January 112 ~
Earth ablaze from end to end. Alliance forces fight the Invardii to a standstill. Prometheus completely destroyed.
II
~ April 112 ~
Celia and her research team arrive among the pre-technological peoples of Orouth, with many questions about human ancestry.
II
~ May 112 ~
The early days of rebuilding Earth.
II
~ January 113 ~
The discovery of the Valkrethi at the Lizard’s head.
Prometheus is rebuilt.
II
~ July 113 ~
Valkrethi training over and a series of missions against Invardii ships and shipyards.
II
~ October 113 ~
The Invardii commander Kalken-ar-wuyr has concerns about the stability of the great Invardii city mind.
II
~ February 114 ~
Fedic Vits mission to Mentuk, the original Rothii planet, inside Invardii space.
His time with the Collector.
II
~ May 114 ~
Discover great Invardii city inside the red supergiant sun Antares.
II
~ June 114 ~
The last stages of rebuilding Earth.
II
~ November 114 ~
Cordez and Geelong travel outside the galaxy with Druanii help, and meet their elusive protectors.
Alliance forces protect the Orion home planet from the Invardii following a Druanii request.
II
~ March 115 ~
The Invardii unleash the Buccra, a vicious slave race they have only subjugated by having vastly superior numbers.
II
~ June 115 ~
Battle at Antares between the Invardii and Buccra forces, and the Alliance. Earth, Sumerian, Druanii, Centaur and Magenta forces take the field, supported by pacifist Mersa and the trading planet K’Sarth.
Rise of the Valkrethi Page 19
