Three Against the Stars (2 page)

Lost in her private musings, Akira sipped her tea and watched the snow fall. She was engaged to be married in a few months, but had yet to tell her fiancé that she had no plans to retire from the Corps when her current tour of duty was up. But the one thing that bothered her most was the fact that she had not told her buddies, Cortez and O’Hara, of her coming nuptials.

A young man, dressed simply in synthetic jeans and a genuine cotton T-shirt bearing the Sun and Starship insignia of the United Terran Empire, entered the room. He was drying his long, sandy hair the old-fashioned way—with a towel. His name was Cooper Preston, a handsome man in his early 30s with twinkling eyes and a friendly smile.

“Have you contacted your two partners in crime yet and told them you’re getting married in April?” he asked, tossing the towel over the back of a chair.

“You mean Cortez and O’Hara?” Akira asked. “Well, I might have mentioned that I
know
you. I mean, you
are
a famous writer, after all.”

Preston went into the kitchenette and poured himself a cup of tea. “But you haven’t told them about
us
, have you?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

Akira shrugged. “I’m waiting for the right moment.”

“You aren’t afraid of what they’ll say, are you?” He carried his tea over to the loveseat and sat down next to her.

“Of course I’m not!” she said.

Akira didn’t even know how to explain to him about the pact she’d made with Cortez and O’Hara:
no marriage, no breaking up the team.
But she had no intentions of breaking up the team, though those two goons wouldn’t see it that way. Well, she still had a few months to figure out how to tell the boys. As for Preston . . . she’d just have to try to make him understand that she didn’t plan on leaving the Corps until old age, retirement or death intervened.

“What about your protégé?” he asked her.

“Makki?”

“Yes, Makki. Jeepers, Claudia—where’s your head at today?”

In spite of her pensive mood, she had to stifle a laugh. She always found it hilarious whenever he said
jeepers.
“I’m thinking about the upcoming mission,” she said.

“Which you already told me you can’t discuss because you have no idea what it is or where you’re going.”

“That’s right. We haven’t even been briefed yet.”

“So what about Makki?” he asked. “Have you told
him
yet?”

She shook her head. “No. Not yet.”

“God, Claudia!” Preston swore in Gaelic, the one thing he had in common with O’Hara. “What are you waiting for?”

“The right—”

“Moment—yeah, I get it. Maybe that’s all for the best. From what you tell me, Makki can’t keep anything secret from that Don Quixote—”

“You mean Cortez?”

“Yes, I mean Cortez. I think your friends should hear the news directly from you.”

Akira sipped her tea, deep in thought.

Preston tasted his tea. “Green tea with jasmine?” he asked.

She nodded. “Like it?”

“It’s good.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about Makki,” she said. “He and I have become tight over the past year. But I really don’t know much about him. I know he lived through a war, and there’s this Rhajni nurse he has eyes for, but that’s all I know.” She took another sip of tea. “Funny thing is . . . none of us really talk about our pasts. Especially O’Hara.”

“So you’re not even going to tell Makki about us?” Preston asked.

“Just give me some time, Coop. Okay? Makki will understand when I finally tell him. He respects me. He looks up to me.”

“From everything you’ve told me, that’s more than I can say for Cortez and O’Hara.”

“Oh, they respect me. They just don’t know how to show it. Or won’t.”

“Wrong. They’re
afraid
of you, Claudia. They know you can kick their brass bolts from here to Alpha-Centauri without ruining your manicured nails.”

“Manicured nails?” Akira laughed and punched Preston in the arm, causing him to drop his cup on the floor, spilling tea all over the carpet.

“See?” he said. “Even
I’m
afraid of you!”

Akira set her cup on the table next to the loveseat and wrapped her arms around Preston.

“Are you afraid of this?” she asked, kissing him passionately.

But there was something else troubling Akira, something other than how her friends would react when she told them she was getting married. She was worried about the forthcoming mission. The scuttlebutt was that they were being sent to one hell of a planet—Cindar, a primitive and dangerous world of deadly creatures and savage mutants. It had something to do with the Drakonian Hegemony establishing an outpost on the planet, which was located in a neutral sector of known space. For the first time since joining the Corps, Akira was afraid.

She didn’t want to die and miss out on having a future with Preston.

Chapter Two

The Ruins of Cindar

T
he Comanche AEV—All Environment Vessel—was a huge, whale-shaped, interplanetary troop carrier and fighter ship. It had two gun-mounted wings, a pair of dorsal fins, and a ball turret up top housing one laser cannon. As soon as it touched down on Cindar, Corpsman Makki Doon knew he wasn’t going to like the planet. It had a sick feeling to it, an illness. It had bad energy.

Once the Comanche had lifted off, the patrol was on its own.

The wind blew cold and damp across the face of a dead landscape. Black clouds crawled like thick smoke across a hard, leaden sky. The moon burned through the clouds like a beacon of cold light in the darkness of night.

“There’s a storm brewin’ in the east,” O’Hara told his patrol; as senior non-com, he was in charge. “But I don’t think it’ll be affecting our mission.”

“So you say, O’Hara,” Cortez griped. “But what you think you know and what you actually know are two very different species of animals.”

“Stow it, Ferdinand,” O’Hara said. “We’ve got ourselves other things to worry about besides the lousy weather on this unholy planet.”

“Do
not
call me Ferdinand!” said Cortez. “I have told you—that is not my first name.”

“Put a sock in it, you baboons!” Akira said. “We’ve got a job to do. So let’s do it.”

Makki grinned. The six Marines with them shook their heads and laughed.

Thunder rumbled in the east like the snores of some ancient titan. Lightning flashed and lit the sky with electric brilliance. The air was heavy with the tang of ozone.

“Fleming,” O’Hara said.

“Yes, Sergeant,” said Sara Fleming, a tall, muscular woman in her 30s toting an M-16 laser rifle. A seasoned veteran, she had fought at O’Hara’s side in many campaigns.

“Take the point,” he said.

“You got it, Sarge!” Fleming said, starting off without another word.

“Chen, Kowalski—you two cover her backside,” O’Hara said. “Baim, you and I will dog their heels. The rest of you try to keep up. Remember—we’re looking for a Drakonian outpost.”

Monster Kowalski was the tallest, the most muscular, and the ugliest. He had bad skin, a scar across one cheek, a massive nose, and bulbous eyes. He hefted an Eddy machine gun that fired electrically charged quartz bullets. Rosie Chen sported a high-and-tight haircut. She was a petite, quiet woman armed with an M-16. She carried a small, portable Questron subspace communications unit slung across her back.

Chen and Kowalski followed close behind Fleming.

O’Hara shouldered his Primo-2000: a one-man mini-bazooka that was like a machine gun, except that it fired small, rocket-like shells. He walked next to Corporal Susan Baim, a pretty brunette sporting a Mohawk haircut and an Edison submachine gun. She took no guff from anyone and would probably make sergeant in five or ten more years.

Without another word from anyone else, the Marines moved out. Each of them was equipped with a pair of infrared goggles.

Cortez led the other two privates who had volunteered for this mission.

Jerry Khan was a thin, dark-skinned Muslim with a constant smile on his handsome face. Derek Bond was a bull of a jarhead with a clean-shaven head and a gleam in his eyes that belied his stone face. Like Cortez, they also toted M-16 laser rifles.

Akira and Makki brought up the rear. He lugged his medikit over one shoulder, wishing it were an M-16 or an Eddy machine gun like the one Akira carried. Makki still harbored that sick feeling he had about Cindar, and the further they marched the stronger that feeling grew . . . a gut instinct warning him to be on his guard. It wasn’t that he was afraid, he was just exercising caution, keeping his eyes and ears open.

“How you holding up?” Akira asked him.

“A very long walk,” he replied. “This one’s paws are growing much tired.”

“Yeah, my dogs are barking, too.”

Makki arched an eyebrow and bent one ear. “Dogs?”

“That’s what we call our feet.”

“This one has seen pictures of dogs,” Makki said. “They do not look to be very much comfortable to walk on.”

Akira laughed and slapped him on the back.

In silence, they trudged on.

As the patrol moved through a withered forest and across a broken landscape, the sky serenaded them with a heavy drum solo. Silver-white lightning winked on and off like sizzling fractures in the vault of night. Bat-like creatures with long beaks and four wings soared across the black sky, heedless of the storm.

Of all the planets the Drakonian Hegemony had attacked in its long history of aggression and conquest, Cindar was not one of them. No, the Cindari were the architects of their own destruction. Their planet had been devastated by an atomic holocaust that turned it into a wasteland of ash and ruins, and had nearly blasted the Cindari into extinction. The tribes that had survived were at constant war with each other, trying to eke out a meager existence.

By the time the Drakonians had arrived, Cindar was all but a dead world. But that didn’t deter the Draks, who had come to Cindar in search of urathium crystals. In fact, it proved to be to their advantage: the Cindari were not a force to contend with, having mutated into something akin to troglodytes. They were easy prey for the Drakonians, who had enslaved and forced them to dig for urathium. These green crystals were a source of power for Drakonian weapons—a natural resource their own planet was rapidly depleting. So when the Drakonians landed like the mighty Roman Legions of ancient Earth, they built an outpost among the ruins where they could lord it over their slaves. Cindari spears, bows and arrows, clubs and other primitive weapons had been no match for the superior fire power of the Drakonians.

But the Cindari were learning to set aside their tribal feuds and band together.

“How much farther is it to this Drak outpost?” Kowalski asked.

“We’re almost there,” Corporal Baim told him. “Now pipe down!”

The sky lit up with a brilliant display of cosmic pyrotechnics. Thunder exploded in the night. The lightning revealed a vast expanse of black sand that had been fused by heat so intense that it resembled a field of glistening gems. A thin, silvery mist hovered like a ghost haunting the ruins of a lost civilization.

Mutant forms of plant life held dominion here, sprouting between the charred rocks and stones of ancient buildings. Strange insects and worms crawled across the floor of burnt sand and cinders. Bizarre creatures that looked like monitor lizards—except for the fact that they had two heads, a horse-like mane of coarse hair, and were as big as elephants—stalked the night, feeding on the vegetation, insects and smaller animals. For some reason, these beasts weren’t interested in the Marines. Makki was glad of that.

Then, in the distance ahead, a stick-like figure with two legs raced across the patrol’s field of vision. It quickly disappeared in a dark forest of broken concrete and twisted, fire-blackened metal. This figure was carrying what looked like a spear in its hand.

“Was that a Cindari?” Bond asked.

“Aye,” O’Hara told him. “Easy does it now, lads and ladies. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”

“I would not care to wager on that,
amigo
,” Cortez said. “That Cindari was armed.”

“For crying out loud—it was only a spear,” O’Hara said.

“It’s still a weapon, Seamus,” Akira told him.

“I see a building up ahead,” Sara Fleming said, pointing. “It looks like an old church made of stone. Could be the outpost.”

The patrol moved up, cautiously and quietly.

A serpent-like creature with six legs and a spiny back suddenly reared up out of the darkness, hissing and screeching in anger. It looked like a dinosaur from Earth’s prehistoric past—and was definitely a carnivore. It seized Fleming in its jaws and crushed her. Then it swallowed her whole. She didn’t even have time to scream.

“Fleming!” Rosie cried, scorching the monster with blasts from her laser rifle.

The leviathan hissed and charged.

Baim and Kowalski opened fire, their Eddy machine guns filling the monster with scores of quartz bullets. But it was a blast from O’Hara’s Primo-2000 that blew the creature to smithereens. The beast was dead before the rest of the party could join in.

“It just jumped up out of nowhere and grabbed Sara!” Rosie said, fighting back her tears. “There was no time to save her. Damn—it happened so fast!”

“Easy now, lass,” O’Hara said gently. “Fall back and join the others. I’ll take point.”

After O’Hara said a few words for Sara Fleming, the Marines moved out in grim silence.

Makki knew that the big, gruff Irishman would shoulder the blame for poor Fleming’s horrible death; he would hold a special service for her when their mission was completed. It was something O’Hara did whenever a fallen Marine could not be brought home.

“Come on, kids,” O’Hara said. “Be on your guard and watch where you step.”

The ruins of a Cindari city lay beyond the wasteland of black, fused sand. It was a barren wilderness of cracked stone columns, shattered domes and twisted beams of steel that reared their fire-blasted heads above the scorched earth. Darting back and forth in the shadows of that landscape of devastation were dark, skeletal creatures resembling men.

“Drakonians?” Bond asked.

Khan shook his head. “Clean your goggles.”

“They carrying spears?” Kowalski wanted to know.

“Yes. And bows and arrows, too,” Chen replied.

“And they’re all just nasty enough to notch a hole or two through your thick skulls,” O’Hara said. “Now get down—all of you! I’m going to have me a look-see.”

Crawling ahead on knees and elbows, O’Hara went to reconnoiter.

The Marines squatted for cover to await his return.

Makki watched O’Hara disappear into the dark shadows, and said a quick prayer to Azra, the Maker of All Things, for his safe return. The Rhajni corpsman was the only one not wearing goggles: his keen eyes could see quite well in the dark. He saw the figures moving about . . . saw their primitive weapons made of bone, wood, stone, and shards of metal.

444

The Cindari were humanoid, like all sentient life in the known galaxies. They had evolved from simian progenitors into a bipedal species very similar to human beings. They had just discovered atomic fission and were embarking upon the exploration of their star system when their own greed and prejudices, their own petty squabbling, exploded into war, a war that decimated their planet and left it a burnt-out shell.

The dominant life-forms on planets such as Drakona, Omega and Rhajnara had evolved from reptiles, birds and felines. These worlds were classified as H-Class Planets, capable of sustaining humanoid life. But millions of H-Class Planets either had no sentient life, or their indigenous populations had succumbed to war eons before mankind first ventured into space.

On planets where humans could not exist without artificial atmosphere, no intelligent life had ever been discovered by Man or their Omegan allies. By all reckoning, the Omegans were the oldest civilized species in the known universe. Had it not been for Omegan intervention, humanoids on numerous planets would not have survived the death and destruction caused by their never ending wars. The Omegans were the great explorers and benefactors of intergalactic space. Sadly, they had arrived too late to save the Cindari from their own destructive impulses.

444

By the time O’Hara returned, the storm in the east had subsided.

“Rosie was right,” he said. “That’s a Drakonian outpost, by God. But it looks deserted. There were a few Cindari buggers lurkin’ about, but they scattered when they saw me and my little buddy here.” He patted the barrel of his Primo-2000.

“Shall we investigate?” asked Cortez.

“Those are our orders,” Akira told him.

“Then let’s do this thing,” Kowalski said.

The patrol started forward, O’Hara and Baim in the lead, the others following closely.

The Drakonian outpost was a small, domed structure atop a hill overlooking a high ridge; behind it stretched what could only have been a landing strip, now silent and abandoned. A flight of stone steps led up the side of the hill to the dome’s entrance. Gray grass and blackened weeds grew along either side of the steps. The roof resembled a cracked eggshell, with gaping holes in it. Ash-gray vines and creepers draped the walls like the tentacles of some long-dead sea monster. The metal doors stood wide open, bent and twisted; one of them hung from a single hinge. A weighty-looking beam, like something left over from a building that had been destroyed ages ago, was lying on the stairs.

“This place is darker than a Canisian burial pit,” Baim whispered.

As if on cue, the moon’s ice-white luminosity poured through the cracks and holes in the dome overhead, bathing them all in its lunar glow.

The outpost was empty, cleaned out except for—

“Allah’s mercy!” Khan cried out.

—the naked and horribly wounded Drakonian propped up in one corner, moaning in pain. His species had evolved from reptilian progenitors; he had one curved horn on his long snout, and his saurian face was badly torn and mangled. His scaly body had been riddled with arrows. There was a gaping wound in his belly.

There were other Drakonians lying about, too—all dead, all naked.

Makki raced ahead to tend to the wounded Drakonian, opening his medikit and removing a hand-held Diascan Unit.

“Baim, post a sentry outside the entrance,” O’Hara said. “The rest of you, remain here and cover them doors. Akira, Cortez—on me.”