Human Chronicles Part 2 Book 2: The Apex Predator (27 page)

However, the purging of his stomach did help to counter even more of the effects of the drug, and Nigel felt much better afterwards. He reached out with his awareness and reduced the gravity level to a mere twice that of Earth normal. The sudden drop in his weight from eight hundred pounds to only four hundred, gave him a sudden surge of energy and strength that allowed him to stand and lumber his way toward the location where he’d heard other moaning before.

It wasn’t long before he happened upon a second salamander-like alien. This creature was experiencing the same surge of relief from the lessened gravity, but this is where the quickness of a Human had its advantages. Nigel reactions were much faster than the alien’s, and he was able to strike out with his knife and slashed the tender neck of the creature before it could sound an alarm or lift its squatty arms in defense.

His attacker fell the short distance it had to go to reach the floor, while gurgling sounds escaped from its severed throat.

Nigel had to assume that since he was lured to the cargo hold by six flash weapons that his assailants numbered six in total, and if this were true, then he still had four of the beasts to locate and dispatch. He now regretted leaving the heavy flash rifle behind – yet he did know where at least two others were located: in the decoy room about fifty feet to his right.

He stood and braced himself against a cold metal bulkhead – and then with a command through his medallion, he cut all the gravity to the rear section of the Class-5 starship.

Now free of the restraints of gravity, Nigel kicked off the bulkhead and flew across the room. He slammed into the door to the side room and quickly activated the controls that caused the panel to slide open. He pulled himself inside just a two metal darts ricocheted around him.

He grabbed both of the MK-17 flash handguns from the table as he drifted by and then kicked off the rear bulkhead of the room and was sent flying back out into the vast expanse of the cargo hold. He soared high above the floor and up to a vantage point where he could easily see the four other brown aliens flailing about in the zero gravity. These creatures were not built for maneuvering in weightlessness, and their long bodies only served to send them twisting in the air with each turn of their torsos. Still, they were each armed with a dart gun, and they did their best to lock onto Nigel’s now distant figure near the ceiling of the room.

McCarthy braced himself against an upper support and aimed the MK he held in his right hand. Two Level-2 blue and white bolts shot from the barrel and toward one of the aliens below. The first one missed, but not the second. The white-hot ball of energy didn’t kill the alien, but it did cause him immense pain as evidenced by the primal scream now filling the chamber. Nigel flicked the bolt level up to Level-1 and fired again. This time the bolt penetrated the thick skin of the alien and the screaming stopped.

The other three agents were gyrating in wild movements, attempting to literally swim in the air of the cargo hold. Nigel took aim with the second weapon and one-shot, one-kill later his opponents now numbered only two.

While he was occupied with trying to lock his aim on the next alien, Nigel’s medallion detected an energy surge from below. Looking around, he noticed that the final alien had withdrawn an electronic device from his uniform and had powered up the unit.

A dart hit the ceiling near him; Nigel turned his attention back to the other alien and with another accurate shot from the MK, sent this one to whatever these salamanders had for a heaven.

The last agent now hid behind a heavy-equipment loader, yet the electronic device he was operating gave away his location. Nigel kicked from the ceiling and drifted down toward the loader. He kept the last MK held firmly in his grip and aimed at where the alien was hiding. In his zero-gravity freefall, this was when he was the most vulnerable.

The alien stayed hidden and Nigel was able to reach out with his free hand and pull his body down to the deck behind the loader. The alien saw him drop down a few feet away, and yet he continued to enter data into the device rather than pulling his dart gun.

Nigel slammed into the beast, knocking the device from his hand.

“What did you just do? What was that device?”

Normal gravity suddenly returned to the room, and without skipping a beat, Nigel stepped forward and shoved the barrel of the MK against the alien’s forehead.

“Talk, dammit!”

“Our orders were to capture you and bring you back to Lord Wydor.”

Nigel sensed something unsaid. “And having failed at that ….?”

“I just sent a message to the Council.”

“Go on; what do they think they can do from…?” It seemed as though all the blood rushed from his head; the alien verified his worst nightmare.

“If we could not take you alive, then the Juireans will detonate the bombs that are aboard the ships.” Even though most defeated beings, when faced with a scenario such as this, would revel in the shock that crossed Nigel’s face, this creature only showed concern. He was not about to gloat, not when his own life was about to be end – along with Nigel’s.

“How much time?” Nigel shoved the barrel of the handgun even harder against the alien’s head.

“I do not know. That was a CW-link sent through your ship’s system. The Juireans are receiving it now. It will be they who activate the destruct.”

Anger flared in Nigel, and he reeled back with the MK before sending it crashing into the skull of the alien, nearly splitting it in half and sending even more muck and brain matter into the room.

McCarthy rushed out of the cargo hold and into the hangar bay immediately adjacent the cargo hold. His Exitor had been loaded aboard – you can never have too many starships was McCarthy’s motto – and using the medallion, the side port hatch was open and waiting for him by the time he arrived. The generators were charging and the doors to the bay were already opening by the time he reached the pilothouse.

His ship began to screech toward the every-widening gap in the hangar doors as the atmosphere was sucked out and into space, taking everything in the landing bay with it. But Nigel didn’t wait to be sucked out; instead he initiated a shallow gravity-well while still inside the hangar bay.

The effect was amazing. The whole rear section of the mighty Class-5 warship suddenly disappeared, having been swallowed by the blackhole created a mile beyond the hangar doors, and Nigel found himself suddenly clear of the warcraft and in a cloud of trailing debris that had once been the aft section of the Class-5 starship.

Just then the Exitor was hit by a staggeringly-powerful shockwave created by the exploding Class-4’s around him. Nigel was slammed back in his chair as the small craft was jolted forward, riding the shockwave. Lights flickered and then went out. Having no time to secure his safety harness, Nigel was suddenly flying forward, leaving the pilotseat and crashing his head into the forward display.

Everything went dark, and suddenly he found that he didn’t care about a goddamn thing anymore. Nothing. Anymore. In the moment before losing consciousness, Nigel felt the most-incredible calmness from within, and in his blurry grayness of thought and vision, Nigel believed he’s finally found the peace and tranquility that had forever evaded him.

********

Nigel’s blissful state of unconsciousness didn’t last long, and when reality returned he felt a sick hollowness permeating his well-being.

It was all gone; the money, his ships, everything. He was now right back where he’d started; one ship … and penniless. Yet what made this reality so different from the one just before was that for a few brief hours he had actually been the richest damn bastard in the entire galaxy! Now it was all gone – again. He had nothing, nothing but….

Nigel smiled out at the vast blackness of space revealing itself through the viewport of the Exitor; it was not a smile of joy, but one of wry cleverness.

He did possess one last thing of value – he always seemed to have this, and it could possibly save him, again.

He had information to sell. He had used information to gain his freedom from Cain’s henchmen. And he’d used information to briefly get the upper-hand with the backstabbing Juireans. Now he had another morsel of information that he just might be able to peddle. And he knew just the person who might be grateful to receive it.

He set a course for the planet Juir.

Chapter 41

With the Human Fleet near Duelux…

G
eneral Alan Larson stared at the faces of the other officers in the wardroom and knew the feeling was unanimous. It wasn’t hard to discern; they were all disgusted and frustrated. The trap had been set – and they had stepped right into it.

“The question now is how do we proceed?” the General stated, his gravelly voice more pronounced than normal from all the yelling he’d done behind closed doors just prior to the start of the staff meeting. “We are a month – at least – away from Earth, so for the time being, we can render it no assistance – and that is assuming we forget about the Jusepi threat and head straight home.”

“Can we even do that, General?” asked his second-in-command, Admiral Brian Sears. “Our mission is to destroy the Jusepi forces, and like it or not, that threat is real, if seemingly insignificant now in light of the Kracori attack on Earth.”

“Exactly, Brian,” Larson said. “All the intel indicates that the Klin are assisting the Jusepi and that the timing of the revolt was not random. Any time the Klin and Kracori start working together, you know it’s serious. And now they have a third ally, which makes the Jusepi just as dangerous.”

“General, my analysts estimate that our campaign against the Jusepi could take up to six months or more.” Commander Len Smith looked up from his data pad. “With the failure of the Kracori attack on Earth, that just gives them more time to prepare for our inevitable response.”

Larson nodded. “They’ll know we’re coming, and that’s for sure. And if you factor in transit time, we could be looking at a year or more before striking Elision. That’s too much time to give an enemy to prepare.”

“What about the Cain gravity-drive?” This came from the Chief Engineer, Captain Owen Crist. “A refit of the fleet could mean reaching Elision in a month, rather than six.”

“That’s an option, Captain, but it would require our return to Earth, plus the time to refit the fleet. The planet’s pretty torn up; I’m hoping most of our industrial capacity is still intact.”

“It is General, at least what would be needed for the refit.”

“And the Jusepi?” Commander Smith asked.

General Larson looked away from the table for a long moment and gathered his thoughts. He turned back to his senior staff. “We have three options as I see them. One, we cut and head back to Earth now, refit the fleet with the new drives and then head for Elision. Estimated time would be a month back to Earth, refit in three to four and then one-month’s transit to Elision. Five to six months total. The next option is to leave now for Elision, giving the Kracori less time to prepare for our attack. Transit time on conventional drive: approximately six months. And the third is we spend six months mopping up the Jusepi problem, and then head to Elision directly or via Earth for the refit. That would take a year.”

“I think that last option is unacceptable General,” Admiral Sears stated. “Yet on the other hand, we can’t leave the Jusepi free to wander the Arm. With the fleet gone to Elision, the Klin may help them get all the way to Earth.”

“There is a forth option, General,” said Colonel Hayward McMaster, the fleet’s operations officer. “There’s no question of our victory against the Jusepi, only when, and it’s obvious that the Klin have advised them to disperse their small fleet to make it harder on us to track them down. This will prolong our campaign, as the strategy was designed to do.

“Now this may not be pretty and may go against our definition of humanity, but I say we attack the Jusepi homeworld of Duelux directly. Hit them hard and make them pay for their association with the K’s. This may not have the effect of drawing their fleet home to face us, but it may stop any further movements by their units into the Arm.”

Larson raised an eyebrow. “We’d be striking civilians, Mac. Is that really what we want to be known for?”

McMaster’s face turned beet-red. “Pardon me, General, but screw alien bastards! We have over half-a-billion dead back on Earth, and with a billion more waiting to suffer a slow, agonizing death from radiation poisoning and various cancers. These aliens were involved in the plot, and they’re keeping us from going after the Kracori, something that’s being done by design. We shouldn’t play their game any longer, sir.”

General Larson smiled at his visibly-agitated junior officer. “Oh don’t get me wrong, Mac, I wasn’t being critical or even politically-correct.” He looked around at the faces at the table. “Personally, I like the idea and I think the rest of us concur.” There were nods of agreement around the table. “Since the beginning of the entire Human-Alien interaction over a decade ago, we have been the victim of numerous assaults, even when we are trying to mind our own business. I say it’s time for the Human race to exert itself. We responded to the Juirean attack by conquering their empire … and then we gave it up. That was understandable at the time because we were trying to play nice with the aliens, and they didn’t respect us for it. The same happened with the Jusepi. We didn’t conquer them; we came in peace and to make them part of a larger universe. And they reward us by siding with the K’s and helping them to implement their sneak attack on the Earth. Just think, if the Kracori
had
succeeded as planned, we’d be a fleet without a home, and instead of one-billion to two-billion dead, there’d be six.”

He paused and took a visual vote around the table. He didn’t ask the officers to verbally express their vote since he was the head of the fleet and therefore had ultimate command authority – and responsibility. Even then, he could tell the vote was unanimous.

“Here’s the plan, gentlemen,” he began in a slow, deep cadence. “We will proceed to Duelux and rain fire down upon the surface. If their units choose to come to the planet’s defense, we will destroy them without mercy. Following our strike, we’ll proceed to Earth at best possible speed. Once refitted with the Cain drives, we will depart for Elision. The total time may be the same as if we leave now and head straight for Elision, yet I would rather be in Kracori space with the new drives installed than without them.” Then he smiled; something rare for the beast of a senior flag officer. “Besides, once we’re in Kracori space, we may find more targets worth taking out. Someone has been assisting the Kracori in the nebula. It’s about time some lessons were taught to these aliens.”

Admiral Sears smiled back at his superior officer. “And what lesson might that be, General?”

“Simple: Don’t mess with the Humans!”