Inherited War 3: Retaliation (28 page)

He walked through the already open door to the cargo bay and saw a dozen or so men hard at work preparing the equipment. He walked over to where West was directing the techs.

“What’s the word?” West asked his friend.

“We got in clean, if that’s what you mean,” Cole replied.

“Good,” West grunted a reply. “Now we are going to talk about that little stunt you pulled when we left.”

“No, actually we aren’t.” Cole pointed at the pods leaning on the wall. “Have you familiarized yourself with them yet?” West glared at his friend for a moment before relenting.

“Yeah, the coffins are ready to go and we are loaded up. Check this out. Look at the first one.” West walked them over to it then he spoke to the ships AI. “Turn on that thing, the one you did earlier.”

“If by ‘thing’ you mean the cloaking skin, I will, but this is the last time.” The AI actually seemed put out by his request but before he could inquire further, the coffin, as West had called it, disappeared. It was still there. It hadn’t actually vanished, but there was a black emptiness where it should have been. Then Cole’s eyes began to water as his mind tried to focus on what he was seeing. He actually began to get nauseous looking at the hole and just before he vomited, the emptiness was filled by the coffin. West had been ready and had averted his gaze but was now looking at Cole with a smug grin.

“What the hell was that?” Cole choked out.

“It turned into a black hole,” West supplied with a grin.

“No, how many times must I tell you,” the AI cut in, “It doesn’t turn into a black hole. If it turned into a black hole, it would tear the ship apart as it compacted it down into a millionth of its size. What it actually is, is a coating of trillions of micro singularities that when provided power have just enough gravity to capture light but remain too small to actually distort space time. It is an engineering marvel and deserves the respect of all who use it.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to cram yourself into it and hurtle through space to an abrupt meeting with the ground,” West said as he crossed his arms.

“Hardly abrupt, repulser jets will fire ten seconds before impact and land you well within the tolerable levels for a human being. You may pass out as the gravity of the planet grabs your pod, but there will be no lasting damage.”

“Do you have a body? God damned machine. Come out so I can kick your ass.” West was angry now. The AI had no sense of body language and should have quit while it was ahead.

“Calm down.” Cole put his hands on West’s shoulders. “If it wasn’t safe, I wouldn’t put you in there.”

“Have you done it before?” he asked.

“Done what?” Cole asked. “Kicked an AI’s ass?”

“No smart ass, gotten dropped off in space to ride a coffin down to a planet? Have you done that before?”

“Nope, you guys get to be the first. Exciting, huh? Make the history books, you will. First man to reenter an atmosphere not in a ship. Well, and live, that is.”

“You owe me, big. If I live through this, I’m going to own you,” West said flatly. Cole coughed to clear his throat.

“Ahh, yeah well that’s a deal. Now we have two days until we get to where we are going. Are the rest of our goodies unpacked?” Cole said.

“Not to change the subject or anything, but yes their good to go. They are loaded up into the airlock and can be deployed whenever you’re ready.”

“Good, take the next few hours to rest up and get ready.” Cole leaned in close and pitched his voice low so no one else could hear. “Look, in all seriousness, this is up to you. When we get there, if you don’t like what you see, we change the plan. We didn’t come here on a suicide mission. We only go hot if the mission will work.” West gave a small sigh.

“I know,” he said. “And I know you would go in my place if you could, but damn it I hate tight spaces. Really hate them, and it’s just getting to me. Look, I’m fine. Go, get out of here and let me mope around a bit. I will be ready to go when it’s time. Now go get some from that girl of yours. I know that’s what I would be doing right now if Jess were here.”

“You got a problem, buddy. Your mind is in the gutter,” Cole said with a laugh.

“Fuck you,” West said and shot Cole the finger.

“That’s the Eric I know and love.” Cole gave him the finger back and turned to leave the bay. In a few short moments, he was back down the hallway to his room. He paused for a moment before going in. The room was dark, except for a crack of light coming from the nearly closed bathroom door. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust and noticing the bed was empty, he walked silently to the bathroom and peeked in. He saw Sky leaning over the sink peering at herself in the mirror. All she had on was a towel. Cole dropped the stealth and threw the door open.

Sky whirled so fast she came right out of her towel. Cole grinned at her and moved before she could speak. He had her gathered up in his arms and was holding her tight to his body while fiercely kissing her lips. He mentally released the second skin from his body and felt it slough off to puddle at his feet. Sky’s warm firm body was pressed firmly against his and he reacted to it.

Hours later, Cole awoke, still tired. The blankets were tangled around his legs, and Sky was asleep on the couch. His body was stiff and his head slightly foggy. He sat up and turned to hang his legs over the side of the bed. He rested his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands. He rubbed at his temples for a few moments to ease the tension behind his eyes.

“You okay?”  The question came from Sky, she had turned towards him and her eyes were wide open. No trace of sleep to be seen.

“Depends, why you on the couch?” he asked.

“You,” she said as she rose to a sitting position. She made no effort to cover her naked torso, for a moment. She watched him for a second before bringing her knees up to her chest and hugging her legs. “You got pretty active last night, after you fell asleep, that is.”

“Hell, I was pretty active before I fell asleep last night.” He shot her a weak grin. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, nothing that bad. Just some moaning and thrashing. I didn’t want to wake you so I moved down here.”

“Sorry, I guess I’m not fully recovered yet. I don’t remember what I was dreaming about. Maybe you should have your own room for a while,” Cole said as he flopped backwards onto the bed and threw his arms above his head.

“Not on your life,” Sky countered. “We don’t separate anymore. I sleep with you from now on. If I have to cozy up to your couch, then so be it.” Cole turned his head so he could see her as she rose fully from the couch and took a step towards the bed. He smiled at her as she stopped at the foot of the bed. She smiled back and gave him a wink as her suit slowly crawled up her legs to cover her body to the neck. “Time for that later. We’ve got work to do, and I am hungry.”

She bent over, scooped up his suit, and tossed it to him. It landed in a formless blob on his chest. A quick mental command had the suit spreading out and covering his body. He gave his nanites orders to dull the pain in his head and aches in his body. Nothing too heavy but enough to allow him to get moving. He felt the response immediately and a warm feeling spread over his body. In its wake, it left him feeling refreshed and ready to go.

“Let’s go get some grub.” He threw his arm around her shoulders and they left the room together, heading to the communal mess. It was shift change and the outgoing watch crew was also just arriving to break their fast. Cole loaded up on eggs and what passed for bacon with a large glass of fruit juice. Sky settled for lesser portions of the same and they settled down with the crew to eat.

“How far out are we?” he asked his men.

“Thirty-six hours, Sir,” the officer of the watch replied.

“Good, are the force multipliers ready to go?”

“Yes Sir, all loaded and ready to deploy on your orders,” he responded.

“Force multipliers?” Sky asked with a raise eyebrow.

“A neat little gadget I found stored in the base’s manufacturing database. I only had time to get a dozen made up before we left, but I have high hopes for them.” Cole shoveled a spoonful of eggs into his mouth, and Sky was forced to wait for the rest of the answer. Cole swallowed and took a long pull from his juice before he continued.

“Basically it’s a decoy.” The watch officer snorted a laugh.

“That’s like saying a nuclear bomb is basically a weapon. It’s true but a complete understatement. Uhh, Sir,” the watch officer said.

“True, I will give you that. So as to what it does,” Cole continued, “It’s a cloaked device that has two purposes. First, when it receives its activation orders, it begins releasing a huge cloud of super reflective particles that rapidly expand to cover a great deal of empty space. Secondly, a fraction of a second after it begins the release, it creates a false gravity distortion, a big one. So suddenly they see a massive signature appear at the same time as local gravity goes wonky,” Cole said.

“And,” Sky said, finishing his sentence for him,” they think a massive fleet has just dropped out of warped space. A decoy.”

“It’s our insurance policy if we get noticed, or if we need to distract them from deploying West and his team. Also if it fools them, we can leave them behind to keep them jumping at ghosts until we get there. It may not be much of an advantage, but if they get lazy after chasing them around the system for a few days, it might just give us the drop on them.” They ate in silence as the reality of the situation reasserted itself on their thoughts. Cole and Sky finished eating and cleaned up their dishes before heading to the bridge. They sat in their chairs and reconnected to the ship.

Cole didn’t need to ask for a status report. It was instantly fed into his brain and he saw and knew everything that had happened over the last twelve hours. The Nixa primary sun burned bright and large to their immediate front while its secondary star was on the far side with the Nixa homeworld. Cole studied the immediate area intensely for a few moments. There were a few picket ships on this side of the system moving here and there to their front. Cole focused on the nearest and dialed up the zoom. The ship grew to enormous proportions in his vision.

Cole had seen many ships over the past year since being off Earth. His sleek deadly looking ships, Worlder stout battle cruisers, and the vile looking ships of the Esii fleet, but nothing prepared him for what he saw now. It has to be a ship, he thought to himself. It’s flying in space after all, but it looked nothing like he’d ever imagined a space ship to look like.

“We have found the Roche,” the ships AI said to him.

“In that?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, those are their space ships. They can no longer enter a planet with an atmosphere because of the trophies welded to their hulls. When they defeat an enemy in space battle, they claim a section of their enemies’ hull as a trophy and weld it to the outside of their ship. The more sections on a ship, the more battles won. Veteran captains refuse to set foot anywhere their ships cannot land.”

“Yes, and they disappeared after the last battle,” Cole said.

“It appears that the Esii have found them and brought them to play,” West said as he bonded with the ship.

“This is bad.” The new voice was Sky’s. “There are lots of Roche in the galaxy. We know of their homeworld and a few other planets they inhabit but they are rumored to be spread far and wide throughout the galaxy. There could be trillions of them for all we know. If they dropped even a fraction of their army on my planet,” her voice choked up, “all is lost.”

“Bullshit,” West said. “Thermopylae.” 

“What does that mean, Thermopylae?” the AI asked.

“Earth, ancient Earth history. The 300. It was a war, an impossible war. Three hundred Greek warriors from Sparta versus hundreds of thousands of Persian invaders.” West said

“And these Spartans won?” the AI asked in awe.

“Hah, no they lost but not after forcing the Persians to fight a war the Spartans wanted. They formed up and blocked the only pass through the mountains to the rest of their country. The Persian numbers were meaningless because the Spartans could only be faced by a few at a time. They were eventually betrayed and a shepherd showed the Persians a secret pass that allowed them to surround the Spartans. Still, they stopped the army for a few days and killed the Persians by the thousands.” Cole pulled the view back as he was speaking and the ship shrank away. “Still, that’s not a bad idea. We force the Esii to fight the war we want and not the one they prepared for.”

“How?” Sky asked.

“No clue. I will have to see what’s ahead before we can make that call. But it’s there and if we look hard enough, we can find the chink in their armor. No one is unbeatable. Everyone falls, eventually.” The next twenty-four hours seemed to drag as slow as possible but finally
The Resurrection
cleared the central star and plowed ahead towards Nixa. It got real crowded at this point and Cole got real nervous as they approached the first flotilla of ships. He knew his stealth package was good and he had slunk around Esii ships before, but things change and he hoped they didn’t know how to find him still. He breathed a sigh of relief as they ghosted by the first ships, and they gave no hint that they had seen him. Slowly and in small increments, he adjusted his heading and went around large groups of ships and debris. He watched as the threat counter sped its way up. It hit one thousand ships and kept right on going. They weren’t even to the planet yet, and he was already hopelessly outnumbered.