Cain's Crusaders (16 page)

The bastard would win this round.

But what of him developing a mind-reading device like Arieel’s? Did he really have enough information to do it?

Adam watched Convor on the screen, who now sat frowning at Adam’s long silence. “Let’s hope that’s the case, Convor,” Adam finally said. “Whatever is going to happen will happen pretty soon. We’ll be back on Formil in three days. I’ll see you then.”

Adam then cut the link. He had some thinking to do; a plan was percolating in his mind that required a little more fleshing out. Then suddenly he panicked.
Can that spoiled brat read my thoughts?
If so, then he was indeed in for a very rough ride back to Formil.

Chapter 11

N
igel McCarthy was beyond livid.

Only one of the buildings in the compound would pass as intact, and he had moved his operations center to a large room within the shattered remains. His second-in-command, Carter Thomas, was seated in front of a door they had propped up on two stacks of broken concrete to form a makeshift table.

Thomas was a forty-year-old, ex-Army Ranger – a huge, African-American – who had been with Major Nigel McCarthy for going on fifteen years. They had both been abducted by the Klin, and made part of the growing army of Humans the aliens intended to send up against the Expansion-leading Juireans. Most of the Humans who were abducted at the time did not join the Klin willingly. Instead they were either brainwashed into joining, or were sent to work in the factories building the weapons of war which those who did volunteer would use against the Juireans.

McCarthy and Thomas had been a couple of the most-enthusiastic volunteers, quickly rising in the ranks of Human turncoats to become the primary advisors to the Klin on all things Human-related. They planned abduction excursions to the Earth, stalking vulnerable military personnel, mainly from the more-advanced military powers such as the US, Britain and Russia. They tried to avoid most of the more militant religious countries, figuring that those abductees would be the hardest to convert. Trying to convince these people that it was in their best interest to pledge loyalty to a group of aliens seemed like a losing proposition and not worth the effort.

They also coordinated the kidnapping of thousands of women, mostly chosen for their youth and physical conditioning. These women would be used to birth a whole other level of Human fighters, the 2G’s or Second-Generation Humans. These were people born into the Klin training camps and raised to believe all the aliens told them about their fellow man – as well as their honored purpose as the force that would rid the galaxy of the Juirean disease. The 2G’s would help protect the Earth from the Juireans, while also manning the fleets that would be sent against them.

McCarthy and Thomas, along with McCarthy’s other twenty or so most-loyal confidants, helped the Klin for several years, until a few months after the Human-Juirean War began – right up until the time they learned that the Humans were being used simply as fodder in the war. The Klin’s ultimate plan for McCarthy’s strong, savage race was to use them to reduce the Juirean forces down to a level where the Klin – along with their true allies, the Kracori – could then move in and defeat both the Juireans and the Humans.

The Klin had never intended to share the rule of the galaxy with the Humans, and McCarthy’s payment for all the assistance he had provided the Klin over the years – namely the rule of the planet Earth herself – was simply bait in order to get him to cooperate.

Once he and Thomas had learned the truth – inconveniently from one Adam Cain by the way – they had escaped from the Klin stronghold on the planet Marishal just before the aliens eased them as potential problems in their ultimate goal of galactic domination.

Several of McCarthy’s men had been killed around that time, until he was left with only nine loyalists. This team accompanied Cain to the planet Juir, where through a strange twist of fate, Adam sided with the Juireans, while McCarthy and his men sided with the alien Kracori.

Now ten years later, McCarthy was an independent contractor, building a criminal empire the likes of which had never been seen in the galaxy before, while Adam Cain worked for the Expansion Administrator, the fat blob of a creature called Kroekus of Silea.

Now Carter Thomas sat stoically in one of the few intact chairs in the entire compound, watching his boss storm around the room, cursing and throwing chunks of broken concrete through whatever walls had managed to survive the Kracori bombardment of five hours before.

Nigel stopped near the blown out opening in the wall that had once been a large window. Outside, one of his men, Kyle Baker, was surveying the damage, a Xan-Fi flash rifle cradled in his arms. A tall, rust-colored native was picking through the debris nearby, looking for any survivors in the rubble.

“Baker!” McCarthy called out.

Baker looked up at the sound. “Yes, sir!” he called back.

“Bring me that alien.”

Baker frowned, looking at the native and then back at McCarthy.

“Yeah, that one, bring him to me.”

Baker looked confused but complied, grabbing the taller, yet much weaker native by the arm and dragging him towards the room where McCarthy was standing.

Once inside, Baker shoved the alien to his waiting commander. “What do you wish?” the scared alien asked. He was dirty and with blood showing in several spots on his face and arms. He had been one of the fortunate ones, one of the survivors of the attack.

“Oh, I don’t want anything from you – except this.” McCarthy stepped forward quickly and grabbed the head of the alien. Then he twisted it nearly completely around, snapping the neck instantly. The creature went limp, and Nigel continued to hold the head tightly, supporting the now inert body of the native, his own face showing an insane intensity at the killing. Nigel then tossed the body ten feet to the other side of the room and turned back to Carter Thomas.

“Do you feel better now?” his second-in-command asked, showing no emotion on his face.

“A little,” McCarthy answered. “I just really needed to kill something, and since I can’t get my hands around the neck of Adam Cain, that alien had to do.”

Still with stone-cold, emotionless countenance, Carter said, “I sometimes get like that myself, Major.”

McCarthy looked at Carter’s shiny black skin and cold-black eyes. He couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile; his stoic manner was one of the only constants in McCarthy’s tumultuous life.

“Now can we get back to business?” Carter asked. “Should I open a link with Surun and let them know the Speaker is still alive, or not?”

McCarthy stared at the dead body of the alien for a few more seconds before answering. “No, not yet, I need a little time to think.”

“Cain’s going to contact Formil, and then the spies there will let the Federation know. They’ll call off the attack.”

“I know, Carter; just give me a second.” Nigel moved to the end of the door-desk and sat on a stack of concrete debris. On the table was the small bag of purple Expansion credits, thirty-million worth, that they had recovered from the other room. At least that had survived.

“Let me play this out,” McCarthy started. “Cain has escaped with the Formilian bitch in a hopped-up spaceship that none of us can catch. The fucking Omphly won’t attack now because they still fear the demon powers of the Speaker—”

“Why not just let the Omphly know that her powers are fake, just the product of an artificial gadget?” Carter asked. “Then they won’t have to fear her anymore. Nothing will stop them then.”

McCarthy thought about that for a few moments and then shook his head. “We could do that, but then the whole Formilian myth would collapse. The Coalition’s belief in her divinity is the basis for their religion, for the Coalition’s existence in the first place. If we told the Omphly, then the word would get back to the Coalition and it would fall apart by itself. Then the Omphly would win by default, and we’d have no war to supply.”

“Won’t Cain let it out? He knows the truth.”

“I don’t think so; Kroekus would never let him do that. Again, the Coalition would fall apart and Formil would be lost to the Omphly without a fight. Kroekus needs the technology from the Formilians to keep his Expansion intact. No, even though he may know the truth, Cain won’t let it out.” McCarthy slammed his massive fist down on the surface of the table, cracking it nearly in half down the middle. The bag of credits slid toward him in the valley created by the impact.

Even though the bag had been in Cain’s crotch, Nigel grabbed it and held it up is his massive fist. “Thirty million, Carter; just a drop in the bloody bucket to what we could have made off this war, and all it will take is for that bloody bitch to die. I didn’t need these credits, Carter. All I wanted was for the war to start. I should have killed her when I had the chance, or at the very least just let her explode. If I’d just waited a few more days….”

“That’s fine Major,” Carter said, “but we really do need to call Surun.”

McCarthy suddenly sat up very straight, his eyes growing wide. He looked at Carter and smiled. “That’s right, we sure do,” Nigel agreed, more enthusiastically than was necessary. “Assemble the men. Get them back to ship as soon as possible. We
do
have a call to make, in fact, a lot of them.”

Carter had seen McCarthy go off like this before. It frustrated him, wishing he’d just say what was on his mind.

“We don’t have to kill that Formilian bitch. We just have to let her kill herself.” Nigel eventually explained.

“Cain’s ship will get her to Formil long before that happens,” Carter countered.

“Not unless we can delay them.”

“His ship is too fast—”

“But it’s not faster than a CW link, Carter. All we have to do is let every scoundrel, crook, pirate and anyone else willing to help, to get in his way and prevent him from getting her to the Temple within the next eight days.”

“And why would they do that, Major?”

McCarthy held up the bag of purple credits. “For thirty-million credits, that’s why.”

Carter’s big dark eyes grew wide looking at the bag McCarthy now displayed. Then the smile appeared – the first smile Nigel had seen in over fifteen years. McCarthy continued.

“We broadcast the news of the reward out in the open, offering it to anyone who can kill Adam Cain and the Formilian. Even law-abiding citizens would want a piece of that action. And the ironic thing about it the Formilians have paid the money that will be used to kill their own demi-god.”

“There’s not a lot of time to organize this, Major. It will take time for the ships to head out.”

“All we need to do is flood the area of space between here and Formil. There will be ships already in space or on the planets that are on the way. If we get enough ships out there, then Cain will be forced to change course, taking him longer to get to Formil. By then, there could be thousands of ships hunting him. And they won’t even have to kill him just prevent him from getting to Formil on time.”

“You know Cain, he may still get through.”

“I know, but this is the best chance we have to get this war started. And the beautiful thing about it, we just have to sit back and let others do all the work for us!”

“I like it, sir,” Carter said, flashing that most-rare of smiles for the second time. “But what about the Kracori, it’s obvious they mean business this time? They found us once, they can find us again. Shouldn’t you let everyone know where their planet’s located?”

“I don’t want to do that right now. We’ll head out now back to Highland. The Kracori will have a hell of a time finding us there. Besides, I want to save that bit of information for when I really need it. I don’t want to waste my best trump card simply because I’m pissed.”