M'tak Ka'fek (The T'aafhal Inheritance) (38 page)

Jack turned and saw Mizuki laying face down in the vault's doorway. The bolt that had just missed him had struck her from behind. Her suit was scorched and worse, both her legs were missing from the knees down.

Shit! Light armor is not good enough in this environment.
“Chief, you and the SEALs get Dr. Ogawa into the vault and take cover inside.” 

“Aye aye, Captain. Bud, Phil, grab Mizuki and move, now!”

Each grabbed an arm and together they pulled the astrophysicist's inert form into the vault. Chief Morgan bounded through the opening as crabs began to leap onto the courtyard floor. 

Inside the Vault

The SEALs dragged Mizuki's body away from the open door and rolled her onto her back. Her face was wide-eyed, mouth open in a wordless scream of pain. As they watched, her suit's auto-doc flooded her system with painkillers. Her face went slack and her eyelids slowly closed. At the same time, nanites in her suit sealed off the stumps of her legs and restored its atmospheric integrity. The cloud of butterflies pulsated above her supine body, alternating between blood red and deep indigo.

“Doc, we got a casualty!” yelled Chief Morgan, turning around to look for Corpsman White. What he saw was Betty standing with her weapon raised, trying to get a shot at Ooshnar-tar-rak-ra, who was cowering behind a freestanding console ten meters away.

“We got a problem here Chief,” Betty said, not taking her eyes off the trader. “The little shit is trying to close the door and lock the others outside.”

“Don't fire at me or you will set off the antimatter!” the trader blustered, making a move for the controls. “Let me close the door or we will all die!”

“What's he babbling about?”

Betty sent a three shot burst in the trader's direction, causing the treacherous weasel to pull back from the controls. 

“Look around, Chief.”

Glancing around the huge vault, the Chief could see rack upon rack of large AM containers.

“There must be hundreds of eggs in here!”

“Yeah. I don't think flechettes will penetrate them, at least not on the lowest velocity setting, but I'm afraid to just hose down the control console.”

Before Chief Morgan could answer, the flock of butterflies rushed the console, surrounding the traitorous trader. Ooshnar swatted ineffectually at the swarming winged creatures, but his flailing could not prevent them from alighting on his person. His yells of aggravation changed to shrieks of pain as flashing sparks and the crackle of electric discharges engulfed his struggling form.

The trader fell from sight behind the console, leaving a few wisps of smoke rising above it. The swarm rose above the smoldering alien in a helical column, flashed to black and streamed back to orbit above the fallen Mizuki. Betty and the Chief looked at each other and then cautiously advanced on the control station.

“It looks like Mizuki's fan club fried his double crossing ass,” Betty remarked with some satisfaction.

“Yeah, and I thought they were just defenseless butterflies.” Chief Morgan flipped the trader's body over using the toe of his boot. A piece of folded paper fell from the dead alien's grasp. “Look, it's the instruction sheet.”

* * * * *

Outside the vault the enemy assault intensified. The second sled was blasted by crab bolts, which threw Brown and Feldman back against the open vault door. They had been using the sled for cover. The Captain was standing behind JT and Sanchez, using their heavier suits to shield his light armor. Several of the Marines had taken spider hits on their armor but none had been struck by the more deadly crab bolts.

“Lt. Bear, we need to withdraw to the inside of the vault. Provide covering fire. Lt. Taylor, get the Marines inside.”

“After you, Captain,” JT said on suit-to-suit.

“You have your orders, Mr. Taylor,” was Jack's terse reply.

JT wanted to argue with him but had been a solider too long to do so. “Let's go Marines, into the vault, move it.” One by one, firing at the enemy as they retreated, the Marines escaped to safety through the open vault door. Then it was Jack's turn.

“Follow right behind me, Bear,” the Captain said as he turned and jumped through the portal. Bear answered with a low growl and backed in behind him, all the while spraying the courtyard full of cyborg attackers with 15mm shells.

At the control console, Betty had the bright idea of asking M'tak for help translating the instructions. The ship's AI quickly scanned the alien scribbling using Betty's suit video and responded almost instantly.

“The five characters on the lower left-hand side are the door closing code. Press the matching symbols on the control panel in sequence, reading from right to left and the vault should close.”

“Great! Thanks M'tak. Captain, we can shut the door once everyone's inside.”

“Good,” Jack replied, taking a position just inside the door. Bear was still backing into the vault, still returning fire when the doorway was engulfed in a hellish orange glow. Bear roared and flew backward into the vault, smoke rising from his left side where the refractory armor was still glowing cherry red. It took a second to register, but Jack noticed that smoke was also rising from Bear's right shoulder, where his right foreleg used to be. The impact of multiple plasma bolts had caused his suit's shielding to fail.

Bear!
Jack almost ran to his friend's side. A bolt from a crab cannon had struck Bear's unshielded right arm and railgun straight on, vaporizing both weapon and arm almost to the shoulder. Bear's auto-doc tranquilized the wounded ursine, freeing him from pain and preventing him from doing further damage to himself. Quickly recovering from the sight Bear's terrible wound Jack silently cursed.
The cost of this damned mission is becoming unacceptably high.
 

“Corpsman White, on my signal close the vault door.” Jack pulled a tube from his suit's backpack, a meter long and twelve centimeters in diameter. “Close it now!”

Betty pressed the five symbols in sequence and the door began swinging shut. Jack balanced the tube on his right shoulder and stepped in front of the closing door. Something shot from the tube and the Captain quickly stepped back behind cover.

The door was almost closed when a blinding white light flared around its edges. The vault door snapped shut and a massive tremor shook the room. Expedition members were thrown violently into the air, several bouncing off of the ceiling.

The vault went pitch black.

Chapter 23

Farside Defense Perimeter

“Farside Control, Base Defense. We are about to commence a live fire exercise in the space above the base,” called Clem. Next to him, Lem held a tablet interfaced with the fire-control computer that directed all of the railgun emplacements ringing the base.

“Roger, Base Defense, the space above Farside is free of traffic at this time. You are clear to proceed.”

“Affirmative, Farside Control, we are going hot.” Clem spoke to Lem on suit-to-suit. “Let's do it, buddy.”

“Right, I've got it set to lay down an interweaving pattern 1,000 klicks out. Each tube will fire four rounds for a total of twenty four.”

With a gloved finger, Lem tapped on the tablet. Immediately the railgun in the enclosure in front of them spun and tilted. The barrel recoiled four times, jumping about a meter each shot before returning to battery. The salvo complete, the gun returned to its initial vertical position.

“Hot damn! Looks like they all fired successfully.” Lem was staring down at the tablet's display which showed the status of all six railguns in the system.

“Finally,” exclaimed Clem. “I was starting to doubt these things would ever work. It was adding the short recoil mechanism that did it.”

“Yep, took enough of the kick out of firing to keep the mounts from breaking under the stress. Let's fire another salvo.”

“You are like a kid with a new toy,” Clem said to his friend, though he too was wearing a big grin. “Just make sure you aim all the projectile trajectories toward the Sun.”

“Why? The slugs are just going to wiz off into space?”

“They have a muzzle velocity of over 17km/sec. You shoot in the wrong direction and one day, in a hundred thousand years or so, some poor creature on an alien world could have a very bad day.”

“I thought that the escape velocity at Earth's distance from the Sun was around 41km/sec?”

“Yes, but Earth, and the Moon, are orbiting around the Sun with a velocity close to 30km/sec. Fire in the same direction Earth travels in orbit and the slugs will have enough total velocity to leave the solar system for good.”

“Moving frames of reference always mess me up,” Lem conceded. “I'll make sure the slugs' trajectories will have them spiral into the Sun. We got enough alien problems without picking a fight a hundred thousand years in the future.”

“Right, old Isaac Newton can be one unforgiving bastard. And try not to hit any of the inner planets while you're at it.”

“Picky, picky, picky,” Lem said, smiling as he entered commands to the fire-control computer. This was definitely more fun than the fly farm.

Alien Fleet #1, Beta Hydri

Floating in space roughly two AU out from Beta Hydri—a star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Hydrus as seen from Earth—a fleet of warships counted down the hours before they launched their attack. The star itself was a type G yellow dwarf, though 10% more massive than Earth's Sun. It
is also the closest confirmed subgiant star to Sol and one of the older, most highly evolved stars of the Sun's spectral class in the Solar neighborhood. It possessed a planet habitable by warm life—the home of a primitive insectoid species—but they were not the target of the fleet. No, the fleet hunted bigger game.
 

The ships themselves would have looked familiar to any crew member from Peggy Sue's second voyage and their drive signatures would be recognized by any ship from Earth. Black and spiky, like giant sea urchins cast adrift in space. They were led by a creature that looked much like its ship, quasi-crystalline with long mobile spines. They were cold life creatures who inhabited the outer belts of several nearby star systems—zones like Sol's Kuiper Belt, where comets and frozen dwarf planets orbit faint distant suns.

They called their civilization the Republic, and they were governed by three members of their ruling class. Each elected for a limited term, they were similar to the Consuls of ancient Rome, empowered to lead the Republic, perform public works and to wage war. Called upon by their allies, the Dark Lords, to participate in a warm life cleansing, the Consuls of the Republic named a Proconsul to lead the expedition in their name, a worthy named Booshnarrallna.
 

Booshnarrallna was not just a member of the ruling, Senatorial class, he was an admiral of note and a rising power in the Republic. Barring a major misstep, he would one day serve his term as Consul. Accompanying him as second in command was his friend, Seemallooshna, also a member of the Senate.

“The hour grows near, Proconsul. Soon we will pass through the lesser dimensions and wreak havoc on these warm life vermin who have sown so much discord among our allies.”

“Yes, friend Seemallooshna. My spines already quiver in anticipation of skewering these execrable upstarts who have trespassed on our space and disturbed the Republic's peace.”

“Even worse, noble Booshnarrallna, these vile creatures are rumored to have destroyed King Lewnhallooshna and his entire fleet.”

“Do not remind me of Lewnhallooshna of 61 Virginis. A border barbarian, a renegade of our own class who fled the Republic to start his own petty kingdom. He was a limp spined blowhard who richly deserved being taken down a notch or two. Unfortunately we have been tainted by his failure, since the blunt quilled cretin was of our own species.”

“Under your leadership, we will erase the stain along with these upstart pond scum. Upon our return you shall surely receive a triumph, which will almost certainly lead to your own Consulship.”

“let us not count our honors before the battle is fought, my friend. In any case, the hour is upon us. Signal the fleet to proceed through the transit point.”

“By your command, Proconsul.”

The fleet, 39 warships in all, entered alter-space in three squadrons of thirteen, each anxious to kill the warm life renegades who had so humiliated their cousins. Transit time to the Earth system from Beta Hydri was only seven days, less than the transits for the other two fleets that would be joining in the attack.

The Dark Lords' plan was to have the three attacking fleets emerge from alter-space simultaneously, or as close to simultaneously as possible given the vagaries of traveling such distances from three widely flung star systems. But the dark ones, being such long lived creatures, did not posses an overly acute sense of timing. For beings who mark the passage of time in rotations of the entire Milky Way Galaxy, simultaneity was a somewhat imprecise concept. Proconsul Booshnarrallna's grand fleet, though faithfully following their instructions, was going to arrive several days before the other two elements of the attack.

Inside the Vault

Slowly, the expedition members picked themselves up off the vault floor. LED strips on their suits drove back the darkness, casting long shadows throughout the vault's interior.

“Anyone injured?” asked Doc White, not that she could do much with everyone encased in armor. No matter, she quickly scanned the medical telemetry from her companions' suits. Bear and Mizuki were the only Earthlings who could not regain their feet.

“Where are we?” one of the Marines asked.

“We are still on the station,” replied JT, “if we had been thrown free we'd be weightless.”

“Holy crap, Captain,” said Chief Morgan, “what did you hit them with?”

Jack looked up from where he knelt next to the fallen Bear. “Fifty grams of antimatter with a short delay fuse.”