Three Against the Stars (18 page)

Camp Corregidor was deserted. Not a sound emerged from any of the quarters, offices and workshops. A lone shuttlecraft stood as if abandoned on the airfield. It was as quiet as an old west ghost town, with a warm breeze blowing across the tarmac. A gray bush that looked much like tumbleweed rolled past the barracks.

Sergeant Erin Ransford, quite recovered from her shoulder wound, took charge of a young corporal and two burly MPs as they patrolled the empty camp. Her belly grumbled from the inedible chow served in the mess; all she could think about was a hot cup of red velvet tea, and how nicely it would settle her stomach.

The quartet of Marines walked quietly across the parade grounds, searching for anything irregular, anything out of the ordinary.

Just as they neared the sergeants’ quarters, Preston crashed through the door, hopped across the porch and fell down the steps.

The corporal froze in his tracks and pointed. “Holy cow!”

Sergeant Ransford turned to the MPs. “Place that—
civilian
under arrest.”

Lying helpless on the steps, Preston moaned and shook his head in frustration.

444

O’Hara grunted and groaned as he stuck his head and arms through the bars of the narrow cell window. Working carefully and with a dexterity that surprised his cellmates, he fed the wire of the Diascan Unit through a charred hole in the plastic casing of the aerial, and connected the link-up jack to the wiry guts of the transmitter. When he completed this delicate operation, he checked the connections to make sure they’d hold, and then turned from the window.

“All finished, big Sergeant?” Makki asked. He hoped that his idea to use the Diascan would change the Irishman’s opinion of him.

“Just about!” O’Hara said. He hopped off the cot, then sat down and began typing away at the Diascan’s tiny keypad.

Cortez chewed his fingernails while he listened at the cell door. Akira chewed on her unlit cigar as she paced the room. Makki fiddled with the laser scalpel, waiting for O’Hara to finish so he could put the Diascan back inside his medikit.

“What are we going to do when the Khandra trace the signal?” Cortez asked.

O’Hara gave the Spaniard a wicked grin. “Fight our way out. That’s what. Now shut up and let me finish my work, Ferdinand!”

Begging all the saints in Heaven to grant him patience, Cortez shook a fist at O’Hara. “Will you please stop calling me Ferdinand? My name is
Fernando!
”

O’Hara laughed. “No kidding?”

Akira turned to Makki. “Match me.”

“You should not smoke that in here,” Makki said, lighting her cigar with his laser scalpel.

“What else do you have in that bag of tricks you carry,
amigo?
” Cortez asked Makki.

“Whistler Bomb found on Acheron.” Makki pulled the bomb from his medikit.

“Good,” Cortez said. “We may have need of it.”

Akira gave Makki a long, thoughtful look, blowing smoke rings in the air. “How come you never told us what happened to your family?” she asked Makki.

“Why you never tell anyone you are getting married?” he retorted.

Lowering her eyes, cheeks and ears turning red, Akira puffed on her cigar.

444

Major Helm paced the deck of the
Iwo Jima’s
bridge. Tri-D charts stretched the length of the instrument panel. The screen of a large, digital clock clicked out the time: 0900 Hours.

So far, all communications between the ship and Rhajnara had failed. But he had just received an urgent communiqué from the
Courageous.

Purely by chance, the starship
had caught an unknown warship by surprise as the vessel attacked the
Venture
, a freighter bound for Earth. Sustaining only minor damage, the
Courageous
promptly engaged and disabled the black starship, and then captured her crew.

“Sir, the
Courageous
has confirmed that the hostile vessel is a Drakonian warship,” reported Lieutenant Davis, the officer in charge of communications. “The Draks were returning to their own system when they encountered and decided to attack and plunder the
Venture
. According to the Draks taken prisoner, the name of their starship is the
Dark Star
.”

Major Helm stopped pacing. “So once again the Drakonians have violated the treaty,” he said. “Attacking the
Venture
can only be construed as a deliberate act of war.” He glanced at a monitor. “Where is the
Courageous
now, Mister Davis?”

“She set course for Rhajnara, sir. Her ETA is 1600 hours.”

“Then it looks like we’re going to war,” said Helm. “At least our AEVs are in orbit, and we can talk to them. Please keep trying to contact Colonel Dakota.”

Before Davis could reply, the main hatch slid open.

Sergeant Ransford and one of the burly MPs escorted a hand-shackled Preston onto the bridge. The Marines exchanged salutes with Helm, who glared at the journalist.

“Where did you find him, Sergeant?” Helm asked.

“On base, Major,” Ransford replied. “Someone locked him in a closet. But he won’t say who. It’s obvious he’s protecting someone.”

“More like
four
someones, if you ask me,” Helm said.

Preston bowed to Helm. “With all due respect, Major, I refuse to answer any questions until someone answers a few of my own.”

“Might I remind you that you’re just a civilian, Mister Preston?” Helm told him. “You don’t get to ask any questions.”

“Message from Rhajnara coming through, Major,” Lieutenant Davis said.

Helm glared at Preston and then turned to the communication’s officer. “I thought there was some glitch blocking all audio and visual transmissions to and from the planet?”

“There is, sir—but somehow this message got through.”

“From Colonel Dakota?”

“No sir,” said Davis. “I don’t know who sent it, but it originated from somewhere on Rhajnara. And Major . . . it’s in Gaelic.”

“
Gaelic?
Are you sure?”

“Positive, sir. I recognize the words
Erin Go Bragh.
And get this, Major—it’s signed by someone named
D’Artagnan.
”

“Who the hell is D’Artagnan?” Helm asked.

“He was the fourth member of The Three Musketeers,” Preston told him.

Helm frowned . . . and then his eyes popped open. “That’s what Colonel Dakota calls Akira, Cortez and—O’Hara! Only he would send a message in Gaelic. Mister Davis—can the ship’s computers translate that message?”

“No, Major, they cannot. The computers aren’t programmed to translate old Earth languages,” the lieutenant explained.

“How long will it take to correct this problem?”

“At least three hours or so to upload and reprogram, sir.”

“Then get started on it now, Lieutenant.”

“Aye, sir!”

“Excuse me, Major,” Preston said. “But I think I can translate that message in about fifteen minutes—maybe less.”

Helm stared at him. “You may be a hotshot journalist, Mister Preston, but are you Irish?”

“As Irish as Paddy’s Pig,” Preston said with a wink and a grin.

444

Sakuri Landuro, who now called himself Taluro Chanori, turned from the viewport. He was wearing a zapgun and a black and silver Khandra uniform.

Vash walked toward him and handed him a cup of tea.

“It’s almost time, my son.” Chanori tasted his tea. “Very soon we will wipe the human interlopers from the face of our planet and eradicate the Felisian pestilence for all time.”

“What about the prisoners?” Vash asked.

“When the time comes, have them brought to the roof so they can watch their regiment crushed and defeated.” Chanori sipped his tea again. “And then you may cut off their heads.”

Snark rushed over to them. “Excuse me, my lords. But my people have intercepted a coded message transmitted to the
Iwo Jima.
”

“How is that even possible?” Vash asked. “We’re cloaking all transmis-sions.”

“We think the message was sent from somewhere inside the fortress,” said the Drakonian agent. “It was sent through our own communications network.”

“Do you have any idea who sent it?” Chanori asked.

“The prisoners, no doubt,” Snark replied, stroking his wattles.

“Take care of this matter,” Chanori told his son.

Vash purred with pleasure. “Yes, Father.”

Nodding to four tigermen armed with tazers and grenades clipped to their belts, Vash led them from the command center and toward an elevator in the outer corridor.

Chanori showed his teeth in a fierce grin. He was proud of his first born.
Too bad his younger brother had been such a disappointment, a traitor like his mother,
he thought. The Grimalkin lord remembered how he had killed Kriff’s mother with his own paws, after learning that she had been unfaithful to him.

There was no grief, no remorse, and no regret in Chanori’s cold and unforgiving heart.

Chapter Eighteen

The Path to Glory

T
he Rhajnara salt flats stretched for countless leagues to the north. In the distance ahead, where the Giruda Foothills appeared as little more than bumps in the road, the Baroda Mountains stood like titans of stone capped with snow, their tallest peaks cloaked by white clouds.

Colonel Stella Dakota sat in the back of her armored jeep as it followed the Marine convoy toward the foothills, and toward Jaipur Pass.

The air was cool and crisp that morning, with a clear sky hanging overhead. There were no storm clouds, no chance of rain, which was a good sign: The colonel didn’t need to concern herself with the weather. She had enough on her mind, worrying about her three AWOL sergeants and Corpsman Doon, who worshipped and would follow them to Hell and back.

Dakota’s driver was a young corporal with a shaved head and a nice disposition.

“Corporal,” Dakota said. “Contact Major Helm aboard the
Iwo Jima
. I want to know why he hasn’t reported in yet.”

“Yes, Ma’am, Colonel!”

The corporal fiddled with the jeep’s Questron communicator for a few moments, and received nothing but white noise that set Dakota’s teeth on edge.

“What’s wrong, Corporal?”

“I’m not sure, Colonel. Either there’s a glitch in our system or there’s some interference from an unknown source—perhaps some sort of ore in the mountains?”

“I doubt that. Keep trying.”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

Dakota settled back in her seat. Acid reflux climbed toward her throat, so she popped one of her stomach pills. A moment later, she took another. 

444

Cortez sat on the cot with his head bowed, quietly praying that their message had gotten through to the
Iwo Jima.
But with the Khandra jamming and cloaking all communications, their attempt to send that message might have failed. He was about to suggest that they try again when they heard the soft sound of elevator doors
whooshing
open and shut outside their cell. Heavy footsteps echoed in the outer corridor, heading their way.

That’s when he and his cellmates set Plan B into motion.

Moving quickly, Cortez stretched out like a corpse, hands folded across his chest. Akira sat in the lotus position on the floor and puffed her cigar. Makki clutched his medikit and examined the origami starship. O’Hara knelt next to Cortez, hands folded in prayer.

“Anyone got the time?” O’Hara asked.

Akira grabbed his wrist and looked at his chronoband. “Nine-fifteen,” she said. “Now quiet—company’s on its way.”

The cell door slid open a second later. Vash and his tigermen stormed into the cell. He looked around, baffled by what he saw. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

“It’s an Irish wake, ya bloody heathen!” O’Hara said. “Can’t you see that poor old Cortez there died from the hideous torture you furballs inflicted upon his person?”

Vash nodded to one of the guards and pointed to Cortez.

Akira shot Makki a quick glance. He stuffed the origami starship into a breast pocket.

O’Hara rose to his feet and stepped aside. The knife slid quietly into his prosthetic hand.

The guard walked over to Cortez and poked him in the ribs with the snout of his tazer. Cortez opened his eyes and slammed his palm into the nose of the tigerman. Blood spurted. The guard howled in pain. Cortez sat up, grabbed the Rhajni’s head and twisted it until his neck snapped. The Spaniard grinned as the tigerman collapsed to the floor.

A nano-second later, Akira flicked her cigar at a second guard, leapt to her feet and nailed him with a left jab to the throat. The tigerman dropped to his knees, choking and gasping for air. Akira kicked him in the chest, and when he fell over, she stomped on his windpipe.

Makki immediately leapt from the cot and whacked the third Khandra warrior in the face with his medikit, and then rammed the tigerman in the belly with his head. The guard doubled over and dropped to the floor as if every bone in his body had been removed.

O’Hara wasted no time stabbing the fourth guard in the gut. Then he sliced the tigerman’s throat from whisker to whisker. The guard uttered a gurgling sound as he crashed to the floor in a spray of blood.

As Vash turned and raced for the door, Makki tackled him to the floor. O’Hara hauled Vash to his feet and wrapped an arm around his neck.

“Just gimme one excuse to give you a really close shave,” he hissed at Vash.

Sweat matted the fur of Vash’s brow as O’Hara pressed the knife against his throat.

Makki and Cortez disarmed the dead guards. “Good job,
amigo!
” the Spaniard told his buddy. He slung a tazer rifle over each shoulder, tossed another to Akira, and removed three grenades from one of the dead guards.

With the barrel of the tazer, Akira jabbed the surviving guard in the back of the head.

“I think you know what this means,” she said.

The tigerman moved shakily as he stood and raised his arms over his head.

“You will never leave here alive,” Vash told them.

“Then neither will you,” O’Hara said. “Now move!”

O’Hara and Akira shoved Vash and the guard toward the door and out into the corridor. Makki slung his medikit over a shoulder and followed them. Cortez brought up the rear, juggling the three grenades.

Makki and the Marines hustled Vash and the Khandra guard down the corridor. Luck was with them: the corridor was empty—not a sound, not a soul . . . not even a shadow. When they reached the elevator, Cortez clipped the grenades to his war belt and cradled one of the tazers in his arms. He caressed the weapon with loving tenderness.

“Where does that elevator lead?” Cortez asked Vash.

“To your doom,” the tigerman growled.

O’Hara turned Vash around and nailed him with a haymaker. Vash staggered backward, and his knees started to buckle. O’Hara grabbed him by his uniform jacket, hauled him up, spun him around and put the choke hold on him again.

“My friend asked you a question,” he said. 

“To—to the hangar,” Vash told him.

The elevators suddenly slid open, and five Drakonians armed with zapguns emerged. They drew their weapons, but when they saw Vash they restrained from firing.

“Kill them, you fools!” Vash shouted in English. Then he slammed the back of his head against O’Hara’s face.

O’Hara groaned, dropped his knife and fell backward.

Vash broke free, ran forward and pushed the Drakonians aside. He raced down the corridor and disappeared around a corner before anyone could take a shot at him.

Akira shoved the Khandra guard at the Drakonians. “Hit the deck, Makki!”

Makki dropped to the floor as Akira fired her tazer rifle and wasted three of the Drakonian warriors. One of them tumbled into the elevator just as the doors began to slide shut, his body preventing them from closing. The remaining two Draks opened fire at once, but succeeded in killing only the tigerman. Cortez quickly tossed a tazer to O’Hara, and together they fried the lizardmen with blasts of green tracers.

Retrieving O’Hara’s knife, Makki handed it to the Irishman and offered a paw to help him to his feet. O’Hara grinned and pinched Makki on the cheek.

“Now what?” Cortez asked. “Vash will no doubt sound the alarm.”

“And we can’t count on your message getting through, Seamus,” Akira said. “We have to find another way to warn the regiment.”

“Got any ideas?” O’Hara asked.

Cortez and Akira exchanged glances. Then Makki grinned and sprinted to the elevator. He held the doors open and kicked the dead Drakonian out of the way.

“Going down?” he asked.

444

With tazer rifles locked, loaded and fully charged, eight Khandra leopardmen waited patiently in the Level 2 corridor as the elevator slowly made its descent. Rhajni and Drakonian personnel hurried past them, obviously afraid to even glance at the fierce warriors.

The elevator stopped and the doors slid open.

The Khandra raised their weapons.

The elevator was empty except for a single grenade lying on the floor.

The leopardmen screamed—and the grenade exploded, destroying the elevator and tossing the Khandra and their body parts all over the corridor.

444

Alone in the medical lab on Level 3, Doctor Morgele rose from his desk as the force of the explosion from the level above shook the walls and ceiling. A moment later, the main doors to the lab rolled open. Makki, Akira, O’Hara and Cortez rushed into the room with weapons charged and ready to blast anything and anyone that crossed their path without permission.

Makki leapt over the desk, grabbed the doctor, slapped him around and pointed to the doors leading to the stairwell. “Talk English! Where do stairs take us?”

Akira picked up a roll of surgical tape and began to unroll it. The doctor glanced nervously at her. “If I were you, I’d answer him,” she said.

444

The Marine convoy rolled forward and turned toward the mouth of Jaipur Pass. The early-morning clouds had begun to evaporate as the heat index rose. It promised to be a glorious day, with the sun lighting up the stratosphere.

Colonel Dakota fidgeted in the back seat of her armored jeep. “Corporal, any signs of intelligent life on the other end of our transmissions?”

“Sorry, Colonel,” the young corporal replied. “Still no communication with the
Iwo Jima
. Maybe they’re having problems.”

“That always a possibility aboard that old derelict of a ship,” Dakota said. “Have you tried to contact Lord Chanori or Chancellor Ginjua?”

“Yes, Colonel. But there has been no response from either of them.”

Dakota began to worry. “Pull ahead of the convoy and come up alongside the communications van. I want to discuss this problem with the tech-heads.”

“Aye, Colonel. Hang on!”

The armored jeep broke rank and raced ahead, kicking up sand and dust in its wake as it passed the other vehicles in the convoy and headed for the large communications vehicle.

With her stomach griping because she had neglected to eat breakfast, Dakota’s belly would have tied itself into knots were she able to see the hundreds of Khandra warriors manning gun emplacements and lying in wait high in the foothills at the mouth of Jaipur Pass.

444

“…cut this idiot down before he vomits…”

Except for a chorus of electronic
blips
and
beeps
sung by computers, diagnostic equipment and a vast array of gadgets and gizmos that would be the envy of any mad scientist, the Khandra medical lab was silent. In the hallway beyond the lab, heavy boots pounded an underlying beat to this chorus of technology.

A note of discord suddenly interrupted the electronic harmonies as the main doors slid open and Vash stormed into the lab. Weapons drawn, charged and ready for action, over a dozen Khandra warriors rushed in behind him.

But all they found was Doctor Morgele, bound and gagged with surgical tape. He was hanging upside down between the same two petal posts that had been used to torture Makki. The doctor struggled helplessly like an insect trapped in a spider’s web.

Vash looked around at the empty lab, and then turned to his warriors. “Find them!” he growled. “And someone cut this idiot down before he vomits all over the floor!”

444

The stairwell ended in a tunnel that was deep in the subterranean catacombs beneath the Khandra fortress. Makki, Akira, Cortez and O’Hara raced past the ancient bones of countless Rhajni. The costal remains of the dead were housed in circular niches carved out of the walls on either side of a long, serpentine passageway that wound its way through a series of caves and grottoes. Cables of fiber optic lights hanging on the walls guided their path. Water dripped from the ceiling which, like the walls, was formed of some green, quartz-like substance that was as hard as granite. Stalagmites and stalactites gave Akira the impression that she was walking straight into the jaws of a Valkarian dragon.

One of the grottoes held an ancient statue, similar to the one in in the Luzsaran temple back in Tantrapur. But this statue was missing its arms, and it was badly chipped, cracked and burned, as if it had been used for target practice.

Makki stopped and knelt before the statue. Bowing his head, he touched his brow, his lips and his heart with two fingers of his right paw. In a soft voice he chanted a quick prayer. 

O’Hara rubbed a hand over his face. “Hurry it up, Makki!” he said. “If we don’t get outta here soon, you ain’t gonna be sayin’ no more prayers—you’ll just be playin’ a harp!”