Shackleton's Folly (The Lost Wonder Book 1) (5 page)

“I have special dispensation from your Exalted One, and I think she would be very displeased if you were to kill me without completing the mission,” countered the insolent Wolfgang Gray. He walked to the front ports flanked by screens. “Shackleton is coming here. The reports are he thinks a piece of the inscription his father scoured the galaxy for is here.” He pointed to the world on the monitor.

Gray walked back to the station and fidgeted over the tactical screen. He threw his hands up mockingly. “Are we going to do anything?”

Captain K’Dhoplon’s chair rotated slowly toward Gray. “The Koty Union isn’t foolish enough to fight when we do not have to.” As he lifted himself from his chair, the bridge crew pretended not to notice, but every last one of them gave the Captain as much room as possible. Gray alone stood his ground.

“Gray, the Exalted One ordered me to complete this mission. She did not specify how.” Captain K’Dhoplon grabbed one of the uniformed crewmembers closest to him. Discipline needed to be refreshed. He had one of the chippers installed on the bridge to maintain order. He dragged the whimpering crewmember to a nearby section of wall with an open vertical compartment the size of a small closet. “This is a small look at what the future has for you.” The crewmember screamed as the captain picked him up and tossed him, flailing, into the nook as its grinding cutters came into view. The cries of excruciating pain and anguish ended suddenly as the blending cycle started. The force field kept the body fluids from splattering the bridge.

The Captain traversed the bridge and confronted Gray. “You insolent humans will be extinct soon, and it will be a pleasure killing you to make the end come that much quicker. The human hunts reduced your numbers.”

“You need me, a human, to complete your mission, so let’s not forget how you earned your promotion, Captain.” Gray glanced over at the blender, now in a self-cleaning cycle. “Let’s not forget, Captain K’Dhoplon, that your promotion came after you executed your captain upon his failed mission. Yes, Captain, you, too, can join the gods.”

He slowly turned his back on the captain. “My job is to help you find the pieces of the inscription and use it to find the advanced technology your military could use to vanquish your foes. I have known Alec Shackleton all my life. He’s all out of luck.”

The captain considered his options carefully and went to the forward ports; he stared out at the battle. “One thing you can count on, Gray: You will die before me.” He returned to his chair on the podium. “Tactical.”

The forward display changed to a 3D tactical view of the system. “Gray, the marauders are doing much of the work for us. All we need to do is destroy any ships trying to get away.” Captain K’Dhoplon glared at the bridge crew. “Enemy fleet damage?”

“Marauder fleet: 80% have sustained damage; many have been disabled. The blockading fleet: 60% are damaged or disabled. The planetary defense satellites have taken losses, too; we estimate losses of 19 percent. They are no longer capable of defending the entire planet,” said a crewmember.

Captain K’Dhoplon responded, “Signal the
Saleen
; cleanup operations will commence.”

The
Illia
and
Saleen
had fighter squadrons in cleanup operations as their gunnery crews fired salvo after salvo that created a path toward the planet Daltron-6. The surviving ships of the marauders and the blockading fleets ceased fighting each other. The wreckage of hundreds of fighters had begun to mingle with the graveyard that floated above the planet. Koty Union plow vessels were released and formed large overlapping shields that led the way through the debris field. Koty Union fighter squadrons patrolled in the wake of the plow vessels and finished off any crew unlucky enough to be found alive.

Bolts of energy filled space, blasting metal sheets that protected ships’ interiors from the ravages of space. A violent death marched with the Koty Union. The bridge of the
Illia
ran with a deathly quiet. “Report,” commanded Captain K’Dhoplon.

“Losses are at a minimum, sir. Enemy forces have consolidated near the planet’s rings. Defense sat network has been reduced by 19 percent. The fire and control system effectiveness has been reduced by 12 percent.”

“Signal the
Saleen
to join us in the glorious battle,” said Captain K’Dhoplon.

The
Quest
rose from the continent, covered in the rich green color of a well-nourished jungle, and raced toward the heavens. The disciplined A.I. managing the defensive actions of the planetary defense satellite network sensed one of the Koty battleships had reached the projected coordinates and was vulnerable. It directed 128 satellites to lock on to the
Saleen
and fire concurrently. The massive shafts of light crisscrossed the heavens, focused on the Koty battleship
Saleen,
atomizing anything in their path. The much smaller Koty fighters in the immediate area of the attack vanished in the hellish onslaught. The battleship’s shields held but were measurably weakened by the blistering firepower. The advance of the
Saleen
slowed to a crawl; they were now forced into a full-scale space battle. The defense satellites’ repulsion maintained the energy load with the cycling of fully charged satellites for the depleted ones. They came offline, recharged, and reentered the battle.

The reappearance of the
Quest
in an orbital trajectory didn’t go unnoticed. The
Saleen
reallocated one of its fighter squadron from frontline duty to secure it and dispatched two Koty assault craft on a planetary mission.

The Koty fighters tried to keep up with the space yacht
Quest
as it changed course and headed into the planetary rings. It had been built for speed and agility with a kingly sum of wealth. The path of the
Quest
was an agonizing journey of absolute nerve or foolhardiness, and the Koty fighter pursuit chasing the human fell behind rapidly.

*

Sparks of light from the forward shields flitted across Alec’s and Dancer’s faces as they hurtled through the ice and rubble that made up the planetary rings.

“We’re losing shields!” proclaimed Dancer.

“I see opportunities here.” Alec verified his monitors. “Look what I see. Someone is using a Trojan horse — or asteroid — in this case.” He pointed out the 18-meter asteroid on a trajectory toward the
Saleen
. “I count one — no, two — ships pushing it. They don’t have it at a velocity that will do much damage.”

“We’re being hailed.”

“Let’s hear it, on screen,” Alec responded.

The human face of Wolfgang Gray looked back from the screen. “Shackleton, give it up.”

Alec’s smile was as cool as liquid nitrogen. “That’s
Captain
Shackleton to you, Wolfgang.” He surreptitiously keyed instructions to Dancer to plot a rendezvous course with the asteroid and to reverse the polarity and power up the tractor beam. The instructions ended with, “Let’s help them with a really big push.”

“You will turn over all the materials you have acquired to the Koty Union or risk immediate execution. They’ll be boarding you soon enough to secure it, anyway.”

“If you mean the inscription, I didn’t get it — not enough time.”

Dancer maintained his duties, set up the tractor beam, managed the power flow balancing between the massive power plants hurtling through space-time and taking them along for the ride. Outside, a Koty fighter just succeeded in the nearly impossible: It caught up to the
Quest
only to have Alec use the mass of his ship to bump the Koty fighter into an oncoming rock. The shields lit up again.

“Down 35%,” Dancer reported.

Gray sneered. “We humans are a dead race. Your father’s folly can’t save us, and I proved it before the council. I showed them what he was — a demented old man.” He said solemnly, “Join me and serve our masters, the Koty Union, in their galactic manifest destiny.”

The
Quest
and the three remaining Koty fighters emerged from the sub-zero rock that made up the planetary rings, a trajectory that skimmed the ring’s surface. Their engine wake disturbed the ringlets they crossed. The remnants of the blockading Metalunan fleet fired blasts of energy at prey and pursuer alike, causing more disruptions in the rings, like heavy rain smashing into a pond’s surface.

Dancer gave Alec a fleeting look and shrugged. It was Alec’s decision. Alec returned to the communicator. “You have me at a disadvantage, Wolfgang. We’ll have to discuss this again sometime.”

The
Quest
flew up from the plane of the rings in a tight backward spiral that took them through a narrow gap between the G1 and G2 rings. The lead Koty fighter fired at the
Quest
, scorching its hull and knocking it into a rock the size of a small personal land transport, which ricocheted off the ship and into the path of the trailing fighter. The fighter tried to evade, but it was too late. The debris of the detonation took out its wingmen. The
Quest
materialized alone from the planetary rings with the scars of the exchange, but the
Saleen
was approaching their port side.

Alec saluted the communication screen and gave Dancer a subtle nod. Dancer threw the
Quest
into maximum thrust on a course to come in from behind the Trojan asteroid.

Gray smiled in triumph. “I’ll have a piece of the inscription today.”

“Be my guest. I bow to the superior race.” Alec gave a fleeting look at a worn section of bulkhead polished by years of hope and rubbed it once again for luck.

The
Quest
hurtled through the void, with Koty fighters in pursuit. The ship came round and slowed for the rendezvous so quickly that the fighters overshot their prey. They matched velocity with the asteroid and found, to their surprise, that the two ships were of opposing factions but with one common enemy — the Koty. The tractor beam’s polarity, now reversed, became a great pushing shaft of energy locking onto the asteroid.

“The Koty will ensure that not even you will hinder their manifest destiny.” Gray watched Alec closely for a reaction.

“Work with me, Wolfgang; we can save our race from extinction.”

Quest
’s mighty engines were let loose at full thrust. The asteroid quickly gained velocity; the fighters held on to the space rock so as not to be left behind. Course corrections were made targeting the bridge of the battleship
Saleen
.

“There is no lost tribe of humans out here; it’s just a myth. That was your father’s delusion. It does not need to be yours, too.” Gray turned away from the screen. “We are about to land. Understand?” Alec could see troops gearing up behind Gray. “Now, let’s find our prize.”

The monitor went dark. Alec chuckled. “Are you ready?”

“Right on course — the bridge section of the
Saleen
.”

“Disengaging the tractor beam,” said Alec as he keyed in the strokes.

The
Quest
freed itself from the asteroid. The occupant of the marauder saluted the
Quest
as it separated. Alec tapped the control screen and slid the throttles to full power. The ship edged forward, its shields reconfigured to protect it and the asteroid from the onslaught.

Dispatched squadrons of snub-nosed fighters from the
Saleen
tried to block the
Quest
’s course. They then realized the true danger was actually the highly accelerated rock hurtling in behind the ship, on a direct trajectory to the
Saleen
’s bridge.

The marauder ship detached from the rock in the middle of the Koty Union fighters. They followed the marauder ship, thinking it somehow controlled the asteroid. It held its own against the fighters and finally went down in a blaze of weapons fire and explosions from
within
the craft.

The
Quest
flew past the battleship nearly unmolested as the gunnery crew’s attention was redirected to the asteroid. They found it nearly impossible to get a clear shot because their own fighters were getting in the way.

The rock’s kinetic energy crashed into the outermost shields of the
Saleen
, causing them to fail almost instantly. The impact caused the rock to break up. The energy released in the impact created a cascading shield failure, allowing it to breach the inner shield defenses. The speeds and energy of the remaining rocks were still so great that they sprayed the battleship’s bridge with the equivalent of a megaton shotgun blast.

Alec watched the peppered hull of the
Saleen
vent atmosphere and debris from the battleship. “Right now, this is the last place we want to hang around. I need a drink.”

Dancer keyed in the figures. “Coordinates entered. We’re out of here.”

The
Quest
kicked into FTL and vanished.

The Koty assault craft were at rest but had left their blast and landing-gear marks upon the once-pristine promenade in front of the pyramids. Wolfgang Gray exited the lead assault craft and walked up the steps.

Koty Union technicians repacked the equipment back into containers. A huge hole had been melted through the transparent wall of the central pyramid. Gray passed through the blasted doorway without as much as a glance.

He moved along the foyer with a momentary look at the artwork. The number of pieces on the walls had decreased substantially as the pyramid’s security system covertly removed the works from display. The process was happening at breakneck speed here in the foyer and cascading outward from the passageways they were using. Whole sections of galleries were closed off now. The art would vanish into recesses that appeared behind them, closing them off from view. The depression closed over the tapestry, erasing the last evidence that a work of art had been there. Gray followed the technicians and headed for the heart of the structure.

He slowly climbed the grand staircase, taking in the architectural design and stopping to marvel at the landing’s inlaid floor. He traversed it to the wall with a single archway and entered. Ohn, a small Koty archaeologist, approached Gray to report for duty. “Doctor Gray,” he said with a slight head bow. His amphibian eyes darted back and forth, never really looking at Gray for long.