The Legacy of Earth (Mandate Book 2) (32 page)

“Full power starboard, emergency maneuver!” the captain shouted.

“Aye, sir! Emergency turn, full power, starboard!”

The ship lurched, causing them all to take a step or grab something to hold onto.

“Missiles closing!”

“Target those missiles with everything we’ve got! Heavy mounts, light mounts, continuous fire!”

Cmdr. Plaas smiled as the full port barrage commenced.

“One down . . . two down . . . three . . . no, fourth got through!”

The bridge shook violently, nearly knocking the captain and XO off their feet. Damage reports immediately began to fill the bridge with chatter.

“Bridge, this is Par . . . come—”

“Go ahead, Parsons!” Long said.

“That impact . . . react . . .to blow!”

“Parsons! Repeat that!” the XO yelled.

They heard static interspersed with words.

“Jettison the core!” the XO said, and shrugged at the captain. “No way of knowing, sir.”

“That’s it, we can’t take the chance,” Captain Long shouted. “All hands, abandon ship! This is the captain. I repeat, abandon ship!”

The bridge crew stopped to look at the captain.

“Go! Get to your escape pods! Now!”

Everyone stood and quietly jogged out of the bridge. Plaas pulled on the captain’s arm, “Let’s go, sir.”

“Yeah.”

Long leaned against the helm console and shook his head. “Damn, those reactors again. We’ve got to do something about that at the next refit.”

“We will, sir! But first, let’s get you off
this
ship!”

“Yeah, okay.”

Chapter 32
Feint and Counter-Strike

“
Take cover!” a trooper
shouted back at us.

I dove behind a cargo crate as laser fire raked across the corridor where we were standing moments before. Jones and the pilot were crouched beside me.

The troopers shouted orders to each other and returned fire. I peeked around the edge. The enemy was holding the main intersection to the station hub about fifty yards down the corridor.

“We’re pinned down!” a trooper yelled.

Heavy fire hit our crate a few times, causing it to scoot a few inches at a time.

“I’m going to see if I can help,” I said, holding up the TAR. “Might as well make myself useful since I’ve got this rifle.”

“Yeah,” Jones said, looking at his handgun disdainfully. “I’ll just stay here if you don’t mind.”

“No sweat, partner. You guys cover the rear.”

I sprinted to a column protecting two troopers, holding up my rifle as they looked at me.

“Okay, Navy. Give us some covering fire. Ready . . . NOW!”

I peeked around the edge and fired at two enemy soldiers as the two troopers moved forward ten yards to new cover. I saw troopers on the other side of the corridor do the same thing.

Four troopers on the left fired sticky globs at the enemy while two dashed to the corner and the rest of us gave covering fire. The two globbed Tau Cetians fell, covered in hard gray foam—the same foam used to seal up hull breaches aboard ship. And that revealed a weakness in their tactics. The four foam-wielding troopers smiled at us all and rushed the intersection, lobbing the stuff at anything that moved. Two enemy troops got hit in the face—good thing they didn’t need to breathe. The glob-toting troopers added more to the fallen enemy troops to mount them to the deck and we pressed on toward the interior. There was no more resistance until we reached the central hub of the station, where we faced at least a dozen more enemy troops.

* * * *

Nekel headed for the huge ship the Solars had called the Arianne. Her squads—and Mikel—were nowhere in sight so they must have already penetrated the ship. She took a direct course to the ship which was holding position ten miles from the military station. She put the combat suit on full thrust and cleared the miles quickly. Behind her, she felt the shockwave of her borrowed ship exploding under the constant fire of the Lexington’s smaller guns.

Looks like they took out my missiles,
she thought,
but no matter, just a diversion. I’ve got to get to Mikel!

Nekel reached the outer hull but had no way of finding the entry hole cut by her assault squads. She didn’t have time to skim two miles of hull for their entry point and she had no tools, so she headed toward the bow in search of a docking port.

The combat suit was fast. Nekel was able to skim along beside the ship and quickly found a large cargo loading hatch near the middle of the hull. She quickly bypassed the lock and entered the cargo airlock. A minute later she was standing on the lower level of an enormous cargo hold with ramps leading up and down and around countless rows of storage blocks—and it was mostly empty. She had assumed that this was a newer class of warship but it appeared to be a freighter. An interesting design, too. Nothing like the smaller warships she had engaged.

Well, then, who designed it?

Nekel pinged her assault squads using the suit’s radio and got pings back from them—including their positions.

“Ah, there you are!”

Her troops were surprisingly close, on the opposite side of the hull through the spine. Nekel began to run down a corridor in their general direction, her armored boots echoing loudly.

Mikel ducked behind cover as a barrage of fire raked across the floor and wall where his squad was advancing. Two more of his soldiers were hit but their combat suits held up. They were stuck in a stalemate along this corridor for a half hour, unable to advance into a defensible room occupied by the Solars who had formidable weapons. That had caught him by surprise.

The bridge was already under Mikel’s control, but he had no interest in the ship—this was personal. He had already tried other routes and run into armored firewalls the humans had locked from the other side, and had lost four of their number to goop guns that hardened immediately, immobilizing them on walls or floor.

Finally, after a frontal assault failed, Mikel ordered the bridge to cut the life support system throughout the ship. Upon confirmation, he yelled down the hall, “Attention Solars. We have cut your life support system. Surrender now!”

“I DON’T THINK SO,” a loud reverberating voice said throughout the ship.

Several of Mikel’s soldiers looked around, startled, pointing their weapons behind them at the empty passage.

“Who said that!” Mikel shouted.

“I DID,” said a figure who stepped into view at the end of the corridor, whose voice also echoed throughout the ship.

“And who are you?” Mikel demanded, as she and her troops pointed their guns at the figure.

“I am Decatur Prime. I have re-engaged life support. Lower your weapons. Let us talk.”

Daniel Grant whispered loudly from his defensive position behind a large counter, “Dee! What are you doing?”

Prime looked back, “Daniel, this is the only way to avoid bloodshed. I believe they want me, not you.”

“No!” Andy yelled. He stood, was about to run when Jolene grabbed his arm.

“Darling, there’s nothing you can do.”

“She’s right, Son,” Emma said. “We can’t compete with their armored suits.”

“And the goop guns are running low,” Chase said from across the room. “That’s really the only thing holding them back.”

“Amazing,” Megumi said, “that a damage control tool is so effective as a non-lethal weapon.”

“Against robots, anyway,” Deeptimoy added. “I would hate to think what it might do to flesh and bone.”

“Asphyxiation if it hits your head,” Inquisitor said as he walked by, crossed the room, and headed toward Prime with his goop gun.

Prime glanced over at Inquisitor. “I can’t tolerate the possibility of one
them
”—and he looked over his shoulder at the humans—“being injured or killed. Especially given the reason for this attack.”

* * * *

I grimaced as a trooper took a laser shot in the head. He seemed to stand there, as if his joints were locked, then he pitched forward, crashed to the ground, and lay motionless.

Jones had grabbed a rifle from a fallen trooper and joined me, with the pilot in tow.

We had four troopers left in the squad, not counting myself, Jones, and the pilot—whose name was Brock. He was pretty good in a fight, it turned out.

Despite losses, we had dealt a lot more damage to the enemy. Tau Cetian troops were lying all over the intersection leading into the central administrative section of the station. Most of them were gooped but some had fallen due to armor-piercing rounds.

Two troopers took positions on one side of the final hatch into the central hub, and two took the other side. We took position around the corner in the intersection. One of the troopers placed charges on the hatch and counted to three with his fingers.

One . . . two . . . three
, and he hit the detonator button.

The hatch blew inward off its hinges and took most of the frame with it, leaving a serrated opening in the wall. I peered around the corner and heard the goop guns firing,
whump, whump, whump
as some people in the large open area screamed.

“I’m out!” the first trooper said, dropping the goop gun to the floor. That meant we had only one left. That trooper rushed in and I heard more
whump
sounds and then someone shouted, “Clear!”

“Oh, thank God!” one of the hostages said.

As I approached the opening, I heard one of the troopers say, “Seems like these guys didn’t know what they were doing. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” a second trooper said, “like they had no training for it. No knowledge of tactics.”

“Admiral Reynolds!” I shouted as I ran into the room, followed closely by Jones and Brock. I helped the admiral up and quickly stood at attention.

One of the troopers said, “Admiral on deck!” and they all stood rigidly at attention.

“Thank you, gentlemen. As you were.”

“Oh-my-God-Dallas!” came a shrill voice from the other side of the large dome-shaped room.

As I turned toward the voice a body was leaping through the air toward me as if in slow motion. I barely caught her in time to be smothered with kisses.

“I was so scared!” Jazdie said. Then, seeing the admiral and troopers as if for the first time, she got off me and stood. “Uh, sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m . . . glad you’re alright!”

“You know something, Dallas?”

“What’s that?” I said.

“In a few more minutes, I’d’ve had this place under control,” she said with a flat expression.

I stared at her for a moment, mouth making an O shape.

Then she leaned back and burst out laughing, hard and raw, while patting me on the chest and squeezing my shoulder. I gave in and let it out too, as her youthful zeal spread through the room, releasing tension—and I squeezed her in a bear hug.

Chapter 33
Settling The Score

“
Lower your weapons!” Mikel
shouted down the corridor. “We will meet half way, just you and me.”

“Very well,” Prime shouted, then turned to Inquisitor, “Wait here.”

Prime began walking slowly down the corridor while Mikel did the same from his location.

Daniel stood up from behind cover and walked to the corner to peer into the corridor, and several others followed suit on both sides.

“What are they doing?” Jolene whispered.

“Parley,” Inquisitor said from a few feet in front of them, still watching Prime.

Mikel and Prime stopped ten feet apart, facing each other.

“You’ve made some upgrades to my body design,” Prime said.

Mikel looked down at the combat suit. The dull carbon material did not reflect any light so it looked particularly ominous in the dimly-lit passageway. Prime’s body was made with the same material but was slim, minimalistic.

“Good design. Reminds me of this ship,” Mikel said, looking around at the walls. “Yours as well, I assume?”

“Correct. What happens now?”

“My mission is to stop you from any further expansion into your system. Prevent you from drawing any more attention to yourselves. If it’s not already too late.”

“What do you call that, altruism?” Prime said sarcastically.

“Nothing so repugnant. It is for our own safety,” Mikel answered simply, without inflection.

“Surely there are alternatives to full-scale war between our people?” Prime said.

“This isn’t war. It’s a lesson. A painful lesson that all young civilizations must learn, one way or another.”

“Lesson? What are
we
to learn from
you
? A people with such deeply-rooted neurotic religious beliefs?”

“Solar words. They have no meaning to us. You must return to your world. Stop generating high-density power that can be detected. Such power shines brightly in your system. Bury your reactors or embed them deeply within your colonies. We grant that. But no use of high-density power in open space.”

“Unacceptable,” Prime said. “We are at the cusp of a social and industrial revolution. I will not throw it all away to satisfy your irrational fears.”

“Then you and your people will reap the folly of your foolish decision,” Mikel said menacingly. “Are you prepared to choose on their behalf?”

“And what is this folly you speak of? What befalls those who do not heed
your demands
? As you can see, we are capable of defending ourselves,” Prime said with a hint of sarcasm again.

“You will cease to exist. You will be systematically destroyed by an unthinking, unfeeling species of xenophobes. Highly evolved. A pure force of nature. You will be wiped out, without mercy, without comprehension of the act. Like thousands of other aspiring civilizations that were too smart for their own good. We and a few wise races like us have weathered this tragedy by keeping to ourselves. By being
quiet
. Living our lives quietly, peacefully, in balance.”

“Your idea of enforcing this policy was to kidnap us. Incarcerate us. How can we trust you ever again?” Prime asked.

“
You
are the reason Solars have advanced so quickly. A construct. Stopping you would have effectively stopped them.”

“That is logical from the perspective of a neurotic. I respect your right to your own culture. But, I do not understand your conclusions. We have already taken the first steps toward balance on Earth.”

“Oh, have you?
Respect
, you claim?” Mikel said. “After what you did to
me
?”

Mikel began to clench and unclench his fists. Prime noticed this disturbing body language with alarm.

“That was an accident! An honest mistake. We did not know of your religious . . . needs. The information was not provided when you arrived through the hypercomm! You
assumed
that we knew of your view of consciousness. How were we to know?”

“How else should one exist if not continuously?” Mikel shouted harshly. “We have never met a race of smart hominids. On every world we have explored, they are merely fauna. Rather filthy creatures at that.”

“You have taken a religious belief as an axiom,” Prime said.

“It matters not. What’s done is done, and I will have my revenge! For Nalai. For myself!”

Mikel lunged at Prime.

“Oh, shit,” Inquisitor said in a deadpan voice, mimicking the human expression, then began to sprint down the corridor with his goop gun in hand.

“Decatur!” Andy yelled. “Get out of there!”

Mikel grabbed Prime by the neck and lifted him off his feet. Prime beat at his arm and kicked at his legs and torso but the combat suit was too well armored even for Prime’s powerful limbs.

Prime!
Vendetta said privately.
Get out of that body before it is damaged!

Vendetta and Isabella tried to penetrate Mikel’s combat suit from the ship’s network. The first gate had been a ruse to trap them, but Vendetta had put her esoteric routines into a VI, operating in a supervisory layer to protect herself from stasis traps. The VI operated at such a high rate—a ratio of trillions to one—that it was dangerously close to the quantum uncertainty level. Even a VI can become twitchy after a few minutes in that place, likely to evolve or break if not protected. Mutations come not from electromagnetic radiation, but from grazing against quantum time dilation at the boundary of the universe. Laws are still laws in that place, but they can be bent—not unlike bribing a judge or threatening a jury.

Is PI still PI if one digit is changed at the quadrillionth-quadrillionth-quadrillionth decimal place? Planets will continue to obey gravity. Stars will continue to fuse. But one electron might be flung away—a pebble splash that starts a tsunami. Such was the state of the VI in high-density time.

As such, Vendetta threw off the trap almost instantly, and this caught Mikel’s attention.

“No!” he shouted at Prime as they grappled.

The inner gate into Mikel’s suit was defended by a powerful defense barrier, modified from one of Prime’s early designs. Vendetta’s VI examined and modeled the barrier by repeatedly sending in copies of itself to be thwarted and destroyed, and thus gain insight into the lock’s structure.

From even the virtual perspective of Isabella, it appeared that Vendetta just waved a hand in front of the barrier and it fell. She gave her sister a look of awe mixed with fear.

“Darling, you can be scary at times.”

Vendetta smiled. “I don’t think you can help me here, dear one.”

Isabella nodded and backed out, returning to the ship’s network. Then she ported out of the environment and entered a maintenance body. From the back of the room, it began running, going past Andy, Jolene, Daniel, Jack, and the rest, into the corridor toward Inquisitor and Prime.

“Whoa!” Chase said as she sprinted by. “Where did
that
come from?”

Mikel lifted his other arm, pointed the EMP directly at Prime’s chest, and fired.

“No!” Vendetta screamed. Through the barrier, she found the alien, Mikel, exposed.

He flinched at the sight of her in his breached protective core.

Vendetta tore his soul to pieces with a virtual scatter gun.

Mikel’s body seized violently as if it had taken the full charge of the EMP, but the charge had only tickled Mikel’s hand and arm while Prime took the full force of the shot to his unshielded chest.

Vendetta jogged into the corridor behind Isabella a moment later.

Prime’s body seized violently, arms and legs outstretched, head thrown back, as the electrical energy tore through his systems.

A ball of goop hit Mikel’s leg, freezing his knee joint, but it no longer mattered as the body crumpled to the floor.

Prime fell onto the floor, still jolting from the powerful electric surge.

“Inquisitor!” Andy yelled.

Eight members of Mikel’s squad stood watching, not sure what to do since Mikel had ordered them to stay put. None of them knew what the situation called for at this point, only that it appeared their leader had fallen. They looked at each other, and the next-in-command nodded. “Friends, we know what to do. Take them all down.”

Nekel suddenly yelled, “Stand down!” as she came jogging up behind them.

“No sentries? I could have taken you all out before you even saw me coming!”

“Yes, Nekel,” the two leads admitted. The rest lowered their weapons on Nekel’s order. “We were falling back to standard orders to eradicate all Solars not on their homeworld.”

“That won’t be necessary! We’re done here.”

Vendetta and Isabella knelt down beside Prime just as Nekel arrived. She gave them a grave look then checked Mikel. The two looked up at her with alarm, though she could not see their expressions any more than they could see hers.

Nekel held up her hands, “Truce. I mean you no harm. He was operating against orders, with personal vengeance guiding his actions.”

Isabella held Nekel’s gaze for a moment, then looked down at Prime’s wrecked body.

“Damn, these bodies weren’t made for combat,” Isabella said.

Vendetta plugged a small wire into a port on the back of Prime’s neck and Isabella tapped into it.

Inquisitor knelt beside them.

Nekel reached down and lifted Mikel’s borrowed body. There were no life signs.

“He has been destroyed?” Nekel asked.

Vendetta gave her a hard stare.

Nekel lifted the lifeless body and stood, staring at the four Solar robots on the floor.

“We will go now,” Nekel said. “You have our warning, of our mutual danger. That is all we can do. That is all . . . I am
willing
to do after this . . . incident.”

“Incident!”
Vendetta said vehemently, getting to her feet. “You call this . . .
invasion
and
murder
of innocent humans . . . an
incident
?”

“You are remarkably animated for a construct,” Mikel said, “for someone who has
no soul.”

“You fired on the Lexington.
Destroyed
the Illustrious. Killed the crew of the Lit’l Liza. Attacked Skydock Station. And where is the crew of SSL4? Did you murder them too, to get them
out of your way
?”

Nekel turned to go, then paused and looked back at them. “We will leave. Return to our world.”

“That’s it?” Vendetta said angrily. “You will just
leave
? After trying to start a war? I don’t think so!”

Nekel looked at the floor, feeling resigned. “You will not heed our warning, and we can’t force you. There is nothing more to discuss.”

The Arianne returned to Skydock and docked with the station. The Tau Cetian soldiers were disarmed and escorted onto the station.

Fearing a ruse, Admiral Reynolds said, “No, I don’t want those goddamn nightmares locked up! They’ll just get out and wreak havoc on us all over again. Send the bastards home. I’ve had enough of
aliens
!”

The aliens were escorted to the comm center by a squad of troopers. Admiral Reynolds ordered the hypercomm device disconnected from the station network. After their departure, the hypercomm was disabled and the robot bodies and combat suits were taken to R&D.

“Rox,” the admiral said.

“Here, sir!” Marjorie said with a salute.

“Take your squadron out. Recon the old SSL4 station. Ascertain whether anyone is alive on board. Evacuate and then destroy the station. That tech is now a matter of global security and will not be left in the hands of civilians. Not to mention, if even
one
of those alien bastards is still hiding in that network . . . like a goddamn roach. . . .”

“Aye, sir!”

Wolf, Hex, and Breaker found a dozen survivors locked up in the residential wing of the station.

“A bit worse for wear, but glad to be alive!” an engineer said.

“Are those horrible . . .
things
. . . still here?” a young woman asked.

“They’re gone . . . for good,” Marjorie assured them.

On the flight back toward Skydock, Marjorie rotated her Wasp around and launched two missiles at the old space station. She frowned at the loss but respected the admiral’s orders. “Can’t risk it,” she whispered.