Endless Night (The Guild Wars Book 3)

by Tim C. Taylor

  All three looked on in dismay as the ancient battlecruiser burned past their tiny escape pod without slowing as it headed for the gate.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Eighty-One

  The CASPer blade rammed through the Blevin’s guts and kept going until the bloody tip stood six inches out of the alien’s mouth.

  His foe still skewered on his left blade, Jex pushed back against the deck, unlocked the mag clamps on his feet at the last moment, and hurled himself against the bulkhead.

  There was a satisfying liquid explosion leavened with crunching bone as the Blevin behind him popped.

  Eyes wild in sudden panic, Jex checked his rear view for damage to the station—the Cartography Guild might not take kindly to denting the control module of one of its stargates—but his rear vision was too impaired by alien blood.

  “That’s the last of them, Sergeant,” Turnaround declared.

  “Anyone seen any Cartographer civilians?” Jex asked.

  The response throughout the boarding team was negative. There was just one compartment left to search.

  A couple of breaching charges later, and they were inside the main control room for the gate, which was actually on an extendable gravity deck that circled the command module.

  Jex’s spirits soared. At last, something had gone right. The gate master was there and alive.

  Sumatozou were often compared to elephants, and indeed they had flexible snouts that branched out into two grasping trunks. The red and green striped skin wasn’t much on show, concealed behind silken robes, but it looked tough as hell. The stubby fingered hands would make a Besquith’s look dainty.

  On the not so positive front, a Human pirate—or whatever the Endless Night were these days—stood beside the gate master with a pistol against her head. It looked like a piece-of-shit Glock-89, but at this range even a toy gun like that could blow out the gate master’s alien brains. Beside them, a Pushtal covered the advancing Midnighters with a laser rifle.

  If Jex had been running this show, he’d have kept the more powerful gun on the hostage.

  Amateurs.

  Still, the Midnighters needed a quick exit out of the Aneb system, and that Glock-89 was seriously in the way.

  “Here’s how this plays out,” said the Human. “We leave with Lady Jumbo, nice and slow. We keep her alive while we fly out of here. We’ll figure out the next stage of this drama when we reach our fleet.”

  “That’s gonna be hard,” said Jex. “We kind of broke your ship getting in here.”

  “Having a ship wouldn’t have helped you anyway,” Turnaround pointed out. “Not unless you’re a pilot. We killed all your crew.”

  The Pushtal snarled, showing polished fangs.

  “Easy, Binroo.” The Human set his tattooed face into a grim expression. “Then you’ll have to donate your ship and its pilot. If Jumbo dies, no one is getting out of the system through the stargate until a replacement gate controller arrives in system—a system we now control.”

  Jex wanted to give the smug bugger a poke in the eye with his CASPer sword, but the man had a point.

  Thinking about the sword reminded him that he was still carrying an unwanted passenger. He lowered his left arm and the skewered Blevin dropped to the deck.

  The pirates watched in horror, but the gate master—gate mistress Jex corrected himself—must have been watching them.

  The Sumatozou had a super-heavy build, but she moved like lightning, thrusting back two steps and then throwing her hands behind her as she fell backward into a controlled fall.

  The Human fired his Glock, but his shot merely grazed the alien’s trunk. When the Sumatozou sprang back into the air and brought her heavy hands down to connect with the man’s head, they produced a satisfying cracking noise.

  The Pushtal also fired and was instantly riddled with bullets that ripped it into strips of bloodied fur and didn’t do much good for the control compartment either.

  McNeil screamed. Her status light flashed amber in Jex’s Tri-V. She’d caught the Pushtal’s laser. Leg wound. Serious, but her suit’s nano injectors were already at work, performing agonizing miracles.

  “Plunger, check McNeil’s status. Her suit needs resealing at the upper right thigh. Stix, help the gate mistress to her feet.”

  “That will be unnecessary, Human.” The gate mistress ripped the bonds from her wrists. “Does your comrade require medical assistance?”

  “I think we’ve got it. Thank you.”

  “No. The thanks are due to you from me, my staff, and the Cartography Guild. Or are you expecting payment?”

  “No payment. I’m Sergeant Obadiah Jex and on behalf of the Midnight Sun Free Company based out of Tau-Rietzke, I’m happy to say that this one’s on the house. Wait, your staff? We didn’t see anyone else.”

  The alien gave a deep rumble of a laugh. “They are safely hidden. We maintain the routes between the stars, Sergeant Jex. We are attacked more often than you might believe.”

  “Good. And nice moves smacking that pirate, by the way. I guess I thought you gate mistresses sat at a console all day pressing buttons. Never realized you had such fight in you.”

  “You do not ask for payment, Sergeant, yet I offer one freely. Yours is the latest in a long sequence of races to emerge into the Union telling themselves that their freshness makes them superior to the elder races. Underestimating those who have survived and thrived over millennia was a fatal mistake for many. You Humans interest me. Do not make the mistake of your predecessors. Underestimate successful Union races at your peril. We Sumatozou are capable of more than pressing buttons all day.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I think I’m just beginning to work that out for myself with the pollywiggles.”

  “You mean the Goltar?” The Sumatozou’s trunks retracted in on themselves. “You appear to be in alliance with them. This I advise you strongly against. I will say no more on the matter.”

  Noting with satisfaction that the Human pirate with a bleeding head had a CASPer hand gripping his shoulder, Jex returned his attention to his squad. “McNeil, how bad is it?”

  “Leave Lily to me,” Turnaround replied. “Nanites are hurting too bad for her to speak, but she’s going to be okay. Watson and I will make sure she gets back to the D-Clock.”

  Meanwhile, the Sumatozou seated herself at a console and was now trumpeting with satisfaction. “The gate is off lockdown. Regular operation is restored. Return to your ship, Sergeant Jex of the Midnight Sun Free Company. You may travel through unmolested.”

  “I hope so. There’s a Maki battle fleet that might have something to say about that, though.”

  “Do not trouble yourself with the Maki. They withdrew from the gate and the emergence area. They wanted to be completely unassociated with the heinous crime Endless Night has perpetrated against the Cartography Guild in their assault on myself and my operation here. However, the Maki did not come to the aid of the Cartography Guild representatives. No, if you leave now, the Maki will not intervene, I shall make quite sure of that. Should you return to the system, however, any dispute you have with the Maki will be none of my concern.”

  “Fair enough. Thank you for your assistance, Gate Mistress. I’ll give you a wave when I come back in-system. And we will be back. I may be new to the Midnighters, but I’d happily place twenty bob on that being real soon.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Gun ports open, Blue watched the Maki fleet edging closer to the stargate, herding its opponents out of the Aneb system.

  “The last Patriot ship is in position, Captain,” reported Flkk’Sss.

  “Very good. Compliments to the gate mistress and inform her that we’re the last batch through the gate.”

  Blue exhaled plasma through her front ports, accelerating her backward toward the gate with the main guns still trained on the Maki.

  Contract fulfilled. That’s what Blue boasted at the end of every Midnighter operation. Even after the carn
age of the Raknar job, she’d made a point of celebrating the fulfilment of another contract, though even she’d known to keep that a somber affair until the drink really started to flow.

  But not this time. This time she’d failed spectacularly.

  Sun was somewhere aboard, cursing that they’d left Branco behind in the confusion of their rapid bug out.

  They’d left a lot of the people behind, but not Gloriana and the other survivors of the Uzhan for whom Blue had dispatched D-Clock dropships. They’d searched Tagoz too, but her wreckage zone had yielded no survivors. Gloriana was being given luxury treatment on Deck 12 with her simulation techs, guarded by Top and a squad of CASPers.

  Some of the surviving Goltar mercs had been rescued by Patriot ships, as had four Midnighter CASPers. Scores of Patriots were aboard Midnight Sun. The situation was an unholy mess, but they would be stuck with it for the 170-hour journey ahead of them.

  She had the feeling of a sudden jolt, like falling back off a high cliff. And then she was through the gate and into the bizarre realm of hyperspace.

  Immediately, she felt the poisoned spikes piercing her from the energy machine melting away from her mind. Being free of it was like walking in fresh mountain air after choking in a pit of industrial smog while being shouted at by an irate Oogar.

  She sighed. At least now she could think.

  Her pinview reported a personal link request.

  It was Jenkins. Her Jenkins.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait, Chief Engineer. I need to rest a moment.”

  The Jeha conveyed an irritated clicking. “But, Captain, I have already been waiting until we reached hyperspace. You said I should not hesitate to contact you on matters of importance.”

  “That’s true. I did.” She sighed again. “Is this the kind of all-important Jenkins crisis that involves choosing which kind of insect protein to sneak into the diets of my CASPer operators? Or is this the kind of Jenkins important that means if we don’t do something in the next five minutes, the ship will implode and suck the entire galaxy into a hell dimension?”

  “Neither, Captain. I do wish you didn’t keep bringing up the incident with the insect paste. But your second option is the closest comparison.”

  “Okay, Jenkins. I’m all ears.”

  “Really? Fascinating. But there’s something even more interesting—I mean important. It’s about the device the Goltar have been operating on Aneb-4.”

  “Their energy factory?”

  “No, Captain. Energy factory? Interesting…is that how the Goltar think of it? If so, they’re profoundly wrong. Romalin isn’t an energy factory at all. The Goltar have no idea what they’ve been playing with.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Finally, they were all assembled in one place. Midnight Sun’s secondary briefing room hosted Gloriana, Sun, and Mishkan-Ijk, now commander of the Goltar mercs after Colonel Goz-Han and Force Commander Batir-Lek perished inside Romalin Island. The two Jenkins’ were there too—Human and Jeha—eyeing each other suspiciously. Also present, in Blue’s mind and soul via pinlink, was Midnight Sun itself.

  “How can you even consider releasing Gloriana?” growled Captain Jenkins from his front row seat. “Do you fully understand the misery she’s caused?”

  Mishkan-Ijk slithered across the second row of seats until he was directly behind the Human Jenkins. “The councilor owns this vessel and the Midnight Sun Free Company. She is not and has never been a prisoner.”

  From her perch at the briefing dais, Blue reluctantly gestured at her former captain to cool things down. “Mishkan-Ijk is right, Skipper. We still need Gloriana, and she’s still my boss.”

  “I must return to Tau-Rietzke,” said Gloriana. “I will summon more firepower.”

  “And we need to resupply and refit,” said Sun. “We need to do it before Endless Night blockades Beta-Caerelis 6 and the only stargate out of the nebula.”

  Captain Jenkins stood and walked over to Sun. “And who are we today, hmm? Midnight Sun and the Goltar, or the Spine Patriots?”

  “That’s—” Sun clammed up. Blue wanted to step into this breach. She’d concocted a wild plan with her sister to put the Midnighters under new management, but that had to stay under wraps for now.

  Sun looked for support from her little sister and was rewarded with a slap of powerful memories. She had forgotten what it was like to rely on someone other than the ship.

  Blue stood and gestured for calm. “Keep it together, everyone. There are a lot of questions yet to resolve, but before we break out into hand-to-tentacle combat, there’s something we all need to hear first. Chief Engineer Jenkins, you have the floor.”

  Jeha Jenkins scurried over and activated a prepared Tri-V presentation, which came to life in front of the dais. A column of abstract symbols swirled around each other like an animation of DNA replication.

  “These are Veylias equations,” the Jeha explained.

  Blue’s pinplants translated the concept, dumbing it down for her consumption. Veylias equations were an advanced fusion of high energy state transitions with theoretical notations of e-dimensional hyperspace.

  Blue wasn’t sure the translation made things much clearer, but the two Goltar went rigid with rapt attention.

  Jenkins chittered and clicked his mandibles and other mouthparts, as was the way of his people’s speech, but the translation she heard was of Jenkins singing the equations.

  There was a definite hypnotic rhythm to his song. It reminded her of religious drone music. Like Gregorian chants overdubbed with drum ’n’ scratch.

  “Your equations are indeed elegant, Jeha,” declared Gloriana, “but we need ships, particle cannons, and brave marines, not elegant theoretical physics. Why do you parade your equations?”

  “They are not mine,” stated Jenkins. “Their beauty surpasses my ability. They come from the most desirable genius in the galaxy. Her name is Hopper.”

  “You mean the Jeha they took aboard the Crazy Notion?” said Captain Jenkins. “You were reading out your crazy sex equations? This isn’t the time, err…Jenkins.”

  “Please indulge him, Skipper,” said Blue from the front row. “When Jenkins says ‘desirable,’ he means ‘worth a billion credits in hard currency’ kind of desirable.”

  “You are mistaken, Captain.” Jeha Jenkins rose to his modest height. “I was indeed referring to Hopper’s sexual allure.”

  Sun shot to her feet. “Not now, Jenkins,” she said sadly.

  “Forgive me, Major.” Jenkins bowed deeply. “We share the same wound to our hearts. My love was stolen by Endless Night to give them the secret to the great engine inside the island of Romalin. Now that I have taken measurements from orbit, and Councilor Gloriana has explained the Goltar use of the engine, I can now understand Hopper’s equations sufficiently to unlock the secret.”

  “Our secret is already revealed, Jeha,” said Gloriana. “This is why we must discuss alliances, so that we are prepared when the wider galaxy also finds out.”

  “On the contrary, Councilor. You have no understanding of Romalin Island’s construction, nor of its true purpose. You Goltar are like primitive sentients who have encountered a great starship half buried in the sand and squat within, unable to conceive of the ship’s purpose. To the ignorant, it is nothing more than a large metal hut. It was Major Sun who suggested Romalin’s true purpose. I made a theoretical statement some weeks ago, and she suggested the answer within seconds. Endless Night also have Humans. And their Humans will also rapidly understand the purpose of the Romalin artifact.”

  “Sorry, Jenkins,” said Blue. “You missed the step where you explain what Romalin really does.”

  “The Romalin artifact is linked to the stars of the nebula through lower dimensional energy channels. Its energy sources are the fusion reactions at the heart of the stars themselves. You Goltar thought the energy was free, but as a great Human philosopher once said, ‘there ain’t no such thing as a free lunc
h.’ The truth is that Romalin is a parasite feeding on the local stars, which is why they’re prone to bursts of radiation as the artifact sucks the heat from them momentarily. These energy bridges are highly energy intensive to maintain, and that is all that Romalin is doing, feeding on the stars just to maintain its own operation and its connections to those stars. The Infinite Flow was possible because you tapped into that power feed. The artifact’s true function is to draw power from those stars and use it to project an energy tunnel to far more distant systems.”

  The two Goltar hissed at each other.

  “Do you mean it’s some kind of remote energy vampire?” asked Mishkan-Ijk.

  “No,” said Sun. “Think about it. The stars in the Spine Nebula are notoriously unstable, and that’s just a side effect of this Romalin thing leeching power to keep itself in standby mode. Imagine if it tried sucking really hard.”

  “Then the star will explode,” said Blue.

  “Exactly,” said Jenkins. “The galaxy recoiled in horror during the last great war when antimatter bombs were used to destroy entire planets, but Romalin is more than that. It’s a star killer. If I’ve understood Hopper’s equations correctly, it can strike anywhere in the galaxy at will and wipe out an entire star system. All at the touch of a button thousands of light years away.”

  “We squatted inside the greatest weapon in the galaxy for a thousand years,” said Gloriana. “And we’ve just abandoned it to Endless Night and the Tyzhounes.”

  Blue lifted her hands in the air, unsure of a way forward. “What the hell do we do now?”

  She looked from one face to the other: Human, Goltar, and Jeha. There were gross differences in their physiology, but her pinplants interpreted their body language in exactly the same way. They were all too stunned to reply.