Star Viking (Extinction Wars Book 3) (27 page)

Tiger guards appeared on untouched wooden parapets. They wore absurd plumed helmets and hefted long sticks with blades on the end. This was getting better and better. They must have been ceremonial guards.

With my Bahnkouv, I shot one of them in the chest. The Lokhar crumpled around the beam, with his fur smoking. Another, I pierced in the head, which vanished under the hot laser.

Then, I dropped the rifle and used both hands. I flew through an exploded opening into the Hall of Honors. Before me flashed the ancient prizes Ras Claw had described.

Standing up as if riding a jet ski, I skidded across the floor until I reached a blazing fire. Tigers roared, shouting what sounded like obscenities. Were these the vestals? They didn’t have weapons, but they did charge with their claws extended.

I thought about my dad. He’d never had a chance against the Lokhar dreadnought. Yeah, everyone wants war to be fair and honorable. It never has been, and it never will be. That’s just my opinion, for what it’s worth.

With a Lokhar machine gun, I put every tiger on his back. Blood and guts blew everywhere. I’m a savage. I’m an Earther. I’m not making excuses. I’m not proud of what I did to them. Could I have done it another way? Yeah. If I’d been thinking more clearly, I might have used another sonic grenade. I didn’t, though. I got off my cycle and slaughtered them.

Then I proceeded to beat out the fire. Why would any tiger care about these flames? Ras Claw had told us about the Eternal Fire of Purple Tamika. An old Lokhar prophecy said that if it ever went out that would be the end of the tribe. Well, I beat out the fire except for one precious coal.

Three troopers ran near with a hot box. Using tongs, I grabbed the last coal and dumped it into the container. A different trooper put in the special tinder for the coal. Great stacks of wood lay nearby. In the box was the last of their Eternal Fire. If Purple Tamika wanted it back, they were going to have to be nice to me.

“Go,” I told the three. “Take the fire and guard it with your lives.”

They raced back to their humming cycles on the floor.

I rotated in a slow circle, watching my people at work. Dead Lokhars lay everywhere. We ripped tapestries off the walls. Those were made from the fur of kings and emperors. Ancient tiger armor tumbled into our carrying carts. Swords, knives, kick boots filled our boxes. Black blood, skulls and banners twelve thousand years old fell into special sacks. Smooth gold coins and stone talismans clattered against each other.

“Lokhar military or religious police are on their way,” Dmitri radioed me.

I ran to my air-cycle, lifted and shot through an exploded opening. With five other Star Vikings, I flew at lights bobbing along the widest canal.

Big log boats with mounted weapons sped toward the middle of Zelambre.

“No you don’t,” I said. “Follow me,” I told the troopers.

I flew down their throats. I mean straight at those mounted weapons. There wasn’t any swerving or darting. Locking the direction of my cycle, I stood and blazed away with the Lokhar machine gun. Tigers tumbled from the dugouts.

A red beam from one of the boat cannons hit a cycle. The DZ9 exploded in a fiery blast. A helmet hissed past me. It carried the head of a dead Star Viking.

The machine gun trembled in my hands as I hammered tigers and their boats. Bloody chunks mingled with smoking wood. Then, everything went crazy as two red beams struck my cycle. They chewed metal, and I immediately began to drop.

With a bellow of rage, I leapt from my DZ9. Luckily for me, I struck water. I plummeted and hit bottom almost right away. Using my legs and the enhanced power of the symbiotic suit, I leapt again, this time for the surface.

My head broke the surface with big dugout canoes all around me. Blades slashed at my helmet. Several struck like gongs, making my ears ring. It’s hard to remember exactly what happened next. In a red haze, I recall grabbing a pole and yanking myself toward the surprised tiger. He braced his feet to keep from tumbling into the water. For his sake and that of his fellow guards, he would have been better off letting go of his pole.

Like a monster from a swampy lagoon, I climbed into his dugout. Tearing the halberd-thing from a Lokhar, I hacked with demented strength. They roared and rushed me. I mowed them down because I had a pure heart and wore living skin of Jelk design.

When I cleared the first dugout, I leaped, rocking the next as I landed. With fury, I chopped furry bodies. For as long as I lived, I planned to kill and destroy the enemies of Earth.

Even with the symbiotic suit, I began to grow weary after the third dugout. The skin had taken cuts and oozed, attempting to heal.

A red beam slashed past me.

That revitalized my energies. I dove, hiding on the bottom of the boat, crawling for the front of the craft. I never made it. Using beams, the tigers sawed and hacked my dugout. Instead of dying to their weapon mounts, I slithered overboard, sinking into the murky water.

Aiming my visor toward the surface, I used my HUD to make out the dugout bottoms. Some of the fury departed my brain as I stood down there. I recalled my sonic grenades and the force blade at my side.

Right, I knew how to play this.

With a leap and a bellow inside my helmet, I shot up, latched a hand onto a gunwale and pulled myself aboard a new dugout. Tigers roared and hacked.

My suit had hardened and fended off the first round of blows. Before the second cut my living skin, I rolled a sonic grenade onto the sloshing bottom.

It must have gone off. The tigers dropped, with blood pouring out of their ears. Some clapped their paws over their ears and dove overboard.

I stood and began lobbing sonic grenades into other dugouts. Soon, I stood alone, bobbing in the canal.

On shore, the big Hall of Honors burned nicely. I watched with professional appreciation and saw air-cycles burst out like a swarm of bees. They flew for the ocean. I waved to them, and I would have used my helmet’s radio to call. Unfortunately, it had shorted out. Must have happened because of all those halberd slashes to the head.

I breathed deeply. How long would it be until the tigers brought power-armored soldiers to take me down?

I shrugged.

Then, I noticed three cycles skimming the water. I waved again, more vigorously than before. One of the riders must have seen me. He turned, and in less than thirty seconds, he hovered just above my head.

Gratefully, I climbed onto Dmitri’s cycle. The Cossack hadn’t given up on me. I owed my friend big time.

Slapping him on the back, I let him know I was okay. He gave me the thumbs up. Then Dmitri gunned his DZ9, heading out of Zelambre with our sacred loot.

We’d made it in, always the easier part of a raid or an assassination. Getting out alive was going to be the challenge.

As Dmitri drove, I worked on my helmet radio. When we flew over the sandy beach, I finally managed to reconnect by using a secondary emergency pack.

N7 had already arranged the timing with Ella upstairs in the
Achilles
. I confirmed that everyone was ready.

“The orbitals have gone onto high alert,” Ella told me.

“It’s time for our surprise, then,” I said.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Creed?” she asked.

I didn’t mind that she used my name on the radio. Let the Purple Tamika Lokhars know I’d done this. Let them crap their drawers over me.

“I’m sure,” I said. “Do it.”

“Roger,” Ella said.

I waited behind Dmitri. He skimmed over the dark waves. Around me, the Star Vikings flew in a tight formation.

After another thirty kilometers, I swear I felt a shudder coming from the planet. That was impossible, of course. First, I was airborne. Second, how could Horus tremble?

Then, I saw it. My heart went cold. Far out on the watery horizon, a giant mushroom cloud rose higher and higher.

I swallowed uneasily. Had I done the right thing? I had a feeling I’d have to pay for giving this order. Maybe not right away, but someday.

At my orders, Rollo and his team had carried a hell-burner, dropping it over the ancient Forerunner city. The fantastically powerful explosive must have sunk onto the sea bottom before igniting. Could the blast have made the planet rumble? No. It must have been a guilty subconscious on my part.

I’d destroyed a great archeological dig. The site had held history from the beginning, ruins from the fabled First Ones. What did I care, right? Why fret over it? The Lokhars had nuked and poisoned the Earth. Screw the old digs. The tigers had messed with humanity. I wanted them to gnash their teeth and pull out their fur over us. Maybe just as importantly, I wanted something to occupy their thoughts. Let them wonder what we would strike next. Let them focus on the terrorist attack instead of the Star Viking raid, at least for a few minutes, in order to let us execute our last maneuver.

The mushroom cloud grew as a brilliant flare of noonday light expanded on the horizon. Hell-burners have that effect. We only had the one, though.

Heaviness squeezed my chest. Despite my hatred for the Earth-destroying Lokhars, I felt bad for the order to drop the nuke. Still, I didn’t think my personal payback would happen today. That meant I had to concentrate on the here and now.

“Let’s do it,” I said. “Go!”

All around me, DZ9s shot upward into the sky like old-time Blue Angel jets. We attempted to rendezvous with the
Achilles
in the upper atmosphere.

***

By the time we reached our limit, the light from the hell-burner had long since died down. I imagine every orbital and its sensors watched the sea. I also figured that many of them would be blind for a little while longer.

When the explosion first blasted in the Horus Ocean, the
Peru
and the
Achilles
plunged down into the atmosphere. They came for different reasons.

As the
Achilles
hovered in place with its anti-gravity pods whining at full power, Star Vikings drove to an open bay door. This was the tricky part. The cyclists didn’t drive in. Instead, they hovered in place and pitched their cargo through the door. Then, they leaped into the patrol boat. Afterward, the DZ9 fell toward the ocean.

Soon, it was our turn. The larger
Peru
hovered beside the
Achilles
. We lifted between the spaceships as Dmitri maneuvered the cycle to the open door.

“Go, Commander,” he told me.

I stood and made sure not to look down. Instead, I focused on the open bay. With a leap, and the cycle dipping under me, I shot through the gap into the waiting arms of fellow Star Vikings. A second later, Dmitri followed. His cycle plunged down.

We lost three troopers who misjudged the distance or were wounded or too tired. I would have liked to rescue them. We had no more time, though. They dropped with the falling DZ9s.

The bay door closed, and the
Achilles
headed for low orbit. Beside the patrol boat, the automated and quite empty
Peru
did likewise.

Zoe’s patrol boat had a special feature, a cloaking device. It didn’t need to work long, but it needed to hide us from scanners for a few critical hours.

I shed my symbiotic skin, depositing the quivering blob into its heated cylinder. After capping the unit, I literally ran down the ship’s corridors, reaching the bridge as the boat entered the darkness of space.

“Commander,” Zoe said from her chair. She rose to move aside for me.

“No, sit down,” I said. “You’re running the
Achilles
. I’m just here to watch.”

She nodded, sitting down and all business again as she rapped out commands.

The two vessels rose together almost side by side.

“Now,” Zoe said.

A terrific hum vibrated the deck plates under my feet. The boat’s pilot slowed our climb. On the main screen and in the view port, I watched the
Peru
accelerate into higher orbit.

Over our speakers, harsh Lokhar voices uttered orders.

We ignored them. So did the
Peru
. Did the orbital operators know about the looting of the Hall of Honor? It would appear so. No plasma cannons fired on the transport. If I had to guess, the tigers didn’t want to destroy the precious cargo they thought rode in the hauler.

On auto, the
Peru
headed for deep space.

I stared at the main screen. It showed a passive sensor image of what happened. Twenty Lokhar military vessels peeled out of orbit, accelerating after the
Peru
. Clearly, they must have known about the sacrilege to the Hall of Honor. They must have known that whoever had attacked had stolen precious items. The tigers obviously wanted those items back.

In the
Achilles
, we tiptoed the rest of the way up from the planet. With the cloaking device, we slipped past orbitals and big Lokhar battle cruisers.

As a kid, I used to read war novels and history. War World II had always held a special place in my heart and imagination. I recalled the tale of German Lieutenant Commander Gunther Prien.

On October 14, 1939 in U-47, a German submarine, Prien snuck into Scapa Flow at night. The British home fleet was concentrated there. Slipping past antisubmarine defenses, steel nets for instance, and negotiating treacherous riptides, Prien fired two spreads of four torpedoes. He scored several hits against the battleship
Royal Oak
. In two minutes, the British capital ship went down, taking 786 officers and men with her. Afterward, Prien slipped out of the harbor and away, making the most gallant exploit of the sea war between the two nations.

Standing on the
Achilles
’ bridge behind Captain Zoe’s chair, I felt a thrill similar to what Commander Prien must have felt back then.

How long could our cloaking device hold? Maybe no longer than it took the tigers to storm aboard the
Peru
.

In the end, it took the Lokhars forty-three minutes for a battle cruiser to speed beside the transport. Power-armored tigers made the small voyage between the two ships, landing on the
Peru’s
hull.

We’d been waiting for that. The transport exploded into a massive fireball. The battle cruiser’s shield held for a tenth of a second. After that, it went down, and the
Peru’s
debris smashed through the armored hull, destroying the Lokhar capital ship. There wouldn’t be anything left of the boarders.

It was a dirty tactic, I know. I planned it that way. I wanted the horror of the situation to dull their reactions. Later, rage would consume the tigers. For now, I wanted them drugged with dazed disbelief at the loss of the precious cargo the
Peru
supposedly carried.

For the next several hours, we headed cloaked for the distant jump gate.

By that time, radio traffic raged with accusations back and forth. Priests called for an hour of silent grief. Lokhar scientists begged for decontamination units.

A psychic force seemed to build over Zelambre. I could sense it aboard the
Achilles
. It felt as the unified fury and tiger grief reached out to our patrol boat. No one cheered here. No one clapped each other on the back.

I made the rounds through the corridors and cabins. Relieved assault troopers stared at me with huge eyes.

“Are we going to make it, Commander?” a man asked.

“We’re doing it,” I said. “But we’re far from out of it yet.”

I wanted to tell them to wear slippers and keep their voices down. It wouldn’t make any difference, but in our hearts, we must have all felt that.

Finally, I returned to the bridge.

Zoe turned to me. She shook her head. The woman looked exhausted. “Please, Commander, take over.”

I nodded.

She got up, moving like an old woman.

With a sigh, I sank into the command chair. I could feel the weight of responsibility descend upon me.

Maybe this was why I loved riding the cycles so much. I’d felt free hours ago on the planet. This…it strained my nerves and curdled my gut.

“The enemy sensor sweeps are getting stronger, sir,” the comm operator told me.

A hatch opened. I turned my chair. Ella walked to me and leaned against an armrest.

“Maybe we should just make a dash for it,” she said.

“Look at those battle cruisers heading for the jump gate,” I said. “Their beams would spear us in a moment.”

“They’re going to know we went through the gate.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

Time ticked by with agonizing slowness. Was this how Prien had felt on the way out of Scapa Flow? The Germans had sunk a mighty British battleship. Their lives would have been mud if they failed to slip away undetected. Ours would be scrambled atoms in the void of a Lokhar star system if we failed.

How could we beat the Lokhars? What would Gunther Prien do in this situation?

For the next ten minutes, I thought furiously, and I drew a blank. We weren’t U-47. We were the Star Vikings. Yeah. What would a Viking captain of old have done in this situation?

Our cloaked patrol boat would never make it past the star fighters beginning to spread out in front of the jump gate. Two battle cruisers already waited there. Three more came, with even more heading out.

Did they know we’d made it off the planet? Maybe they suspected a trick. How would a Star Viking react?

My eyes widened. I turned to Ella.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I know how we can escape the Horus star system,” I said.

“Tell me,” she said.

I did.

After listening to the idea, she told me I was a lunatic. Maybe she was right. We had thirty minutes to get ready. Then it would be time to attempt the craziest attack of the mission.

***

I pulled my blob of symbiotic armor out of the heat unit. Stepping onto it, I let the warm substance slide up my legs. Soon, I put on a helmet and shouldered a thruster pack onto my shoulders. Around me, assault troopers did likewise.

With Zoe’s people added in, I had one hundred and seventy-three effectives. That left the bridge crew to run the
Achilles
.

The three battle cruisers from Horus had already begun braking maneuvers. The two in front waited, with the wall of star fighters behind them at the jump gate.

I had another Bahnkouv, a souped-up weapon we called Hot Shot. It would burn out after ten or eleven intense laser blasts. Usually, a laser rifle would fire for a long time. Each of these laser bolts had the ability to burn through Lokhar powered armor. Soon, if everything went right, we would be facing power-armored legionaries again.

“All right, people,” I said over the short-speaker. “Probably, only half of us are going to be alive an hour from now. This is balls out to the firewall. I don’t see any other way of getting home, though. Kill every Lokhar you see, no exceptions. Don’t give the engine crew time to blow their ship. This is a blitzkrieg attack plus ten thousand. Any questions?”

No one had any.

We waited in the cargo bay, the one we’d entered not so long ago above the Horus Ocean.

“Hang on,” Zoe said over the ship speaker.

I grabbed a crash bar. Others did likewise. A period of hard maneuvers took place.

“One more minute,” Zoe said.

My palms became slick with sweat. Would the patrol boat remain cloaked long enough?

“Thirty seconds,” she said.

I would have liked to say something more to my troopers. My mouth had turned too dry.

“Now,” Zoe said.