Inherited War 3: Retaliation (33 page)

“No, in fact it doesn’t excuse him at all. He has said as much. He even volunteered to turn himself over to the Worlders when this is over to pay for his crimes.” He watched the look on her face go from angry to confused in a heartbeat. “See, he literally was not himself during that time on Home. He had an uber Esii torturer living inside his mind and influencing his thoughts. It took your sister and one of those angels to kill it for good. It had been in his head since he had killed its physical body on Esii. So before you go around convicting people of things, make sure you get the right guy.” West crossed his arms and let that sink in. Snow hung her head and began to cry. West’s look went from smug to confusion as fast as Snow’s had.

“This whole damn war is a mind job,” Snow said after a moment. “I should have trusted Sky. She said she knew that it wasn’t really Cole doing all those things and saying those horrible things about nonhumans. I just want it to be over. Why must we all suffer so badly?” West didn’t know how to respond as he stared blankly at the beautiful Nixa. He opened his mouth to say something when Smitty dropped down in front of him and slipped his helmet down.

“Shields down,” he said and the other three were up and moving.

“Where are you going?” Snow asked.

“Shield is down. We’re going into the city,” West said hurriedly as he shouldered his pack and checked his rifle.

“How? There are millions of Roche between us and the city,” Snow asked.

“Flying,” was all West said. Then as an afterthought, he added, “You want to go back?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Okay, grab onto my back.” He shifted his pack around so it was on his chest. He adjusted his suit so that it flowed into and around Snow’s body. “Don’t get excited, I’m married,” he said with a grin. “Hats up, stealth on, let’s go.”

West had to use more power on this flight to make up for the extra weight, weight he didn’t mind feeling pressed up against the back of his body. Ahh, oh well, marriage was good too, right?

They crested the top of the trees and flew up and towards the city. They could see the massed fire coming from and going into the city. He hoped they couldn’t be seen. His stealth was stretched to its limits covering both of them, but he hoped they were traveling fast enough to not be noticed. In moments they were high above the Roche lines and over the rubble, then past the standing structures and into the remaining area of the capitol. West picked a spot and slowly lowered himself and his passenger to the ground. He disengaged his stealth and retracted his suit from around Snow.

In seconds they were surrounded by nervous looking Nixa, all pointing lethal looking guns at them. Snow dropped her helmet first, then the humans followed suit. West looked around the ring of soldiers holding him at gunpoint. He smirked.

“Take us to your leader,” West said, completely deadpan.

“Dumbass,” Drew snickered from behind him.

CHAPTER 17

Cole sat motionless in the briefing room on Home. He watched as a perfect 3D rendering of the Nixa homeworld floated above the table in front of him. He watched as the world slowly spun in the vastness of space and watched the thousands of small ships as they patrolled the emptiness around the planet.

Nothing was jumping out at him. There were just too many for him to launch a successful attack. It had been two days since they had left West and his team on the planet. They had spent the next twenty-four hours immediately afterwards watching as the Roche fleet chased their decoys all over the system. After he got all the useful information he was probably likely to get from passive observation, they headed out of the system and made for Home.

Now the Worlders were arriving soon and he had yet to come up with a viable plan. He wished Hal were here, but so far there had been no response from the issued recall order. He pulled the view of the system back and looked at the whole solar system. Big yellow star at the center, no planets close to it, Nixa about nine light minutes away, the next nearest planet was ten light minutes further out, and the second sun was five more further. No planets further out, two suns, two planets and no moons around either.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his face in frustration and exhaustion. Unless an armada suddenly appeared and was willing to help, they were screwed. Cole turned to look behind him when he heard the door open. It was Sky and she had a plate of food.

“You need to eat if you aren’t going to sleep.” She set the plate in front of him and settled into the chair next to him. Cole grunted, leaned forward, and began to shovel food into his mouth. He chewed just enough to get it past his throat and into his stomach. He was done in under five minutes.

“Ughh,” Sky said. “That was the most disgusting display I have seen in a while.”

Cole looked at her and smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and went back to studying the image. Sky turned her attention to the image as well.

“Anything yet?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“Nothing. We don’t have the men or the equipment. The Esii know that, that’s why they made this move.” Cole slammed his fist into the desk.

“Maybe the Worlder commander will have some insight,” she suggested.

“Our time is running out to save your people and the four men I just left on your world. If we can’t launch in a few days, I spent their lives for nothing.” Cole spun the image around and began looking at it again. He focused on the ships, the planets, and the suns.

“How bad does your world need the secondary star?” he said, jokingly.

“Why, what are you thinking?” she responded

“I don’t know, I keep looking at our odds and thinking we need something big. Something unexpected. My eyes keep going to the star.” He pointed at the bright star. “Could we force it to go supernova?”

Sky paused and thought for a moment. She thought back to her schooling and tried to remember what she had learnt about the makeup of her system.

“If that star went nova so close to my world, it would cook it in an instant,” she replied.

“What if it was shielded? What would it do to your world to have only one sun? Would it slowly freeze?” Cole asked.

“No, we can go long periods where we are on the opposite side of the solar system from the sun, every few hundred years or so. The temperature drops slightly but the secondary sun doesn’t raise temperatures too much when they are both out. Together both of our suns heat up the planet slightly more than your one sun did. A planetary shield could be installed to trap more heat if necessary,” she said.

“Moot point anyway. How the hell do you blow up a sun to begin with?”

“Cause the core to collapse, taking away its gravitational hold, and the star explodes outward. That’s the only way I have heard an active star go nova,” she said. Cole leaned forward and looked hard at the system.

“This is purely me thinking out loud. What if we could shield the planet, draw the majority of the fleet close to the second sun, and cause it to go supernova? God I wish Hal were here. He usually knows all about this shit.” Cole swore and leaned back in his chair.

“Do it.” That was a shocker. He glanced at Sky.

“Huh?” was all he could muster.

“In a few days, maybe a week or two, my homeworld is dead. My family and people will all die from the invasion, then the fleet will travel to our colony worlds and try to exterminate us from this galaxy. Figure out a way to do this, blow up both of our suns if you need to just get my people off the planet safe.” Cole saw the conviction in her eyes.

“Hey,” Cole said to the room. “You been monitoring us?”

“No you said you wanted to be left alone.” The bases control AI said.

“Funny,” Cole replied. “Is it possible?”

“What, to blow up a star and shield a planet from the radiation, heat, and debris? Tell me your plan and I will run a simulation.”

“Well, we know that they jump at every dummy anomaly they detect. They have to ensure it’s not a real attack. We do a few close to the secondary star and get them shifted closer to it. Then we drop the real fleet in the kill zone of the star and engage the Roche. We stand and fight, drawing them in, and when enough are close, we cause the star’s core to collapse and warp out of the system. Meanwhile a transport fleet packed with fighters and equipment warps in as close to the planet as possible. We bring portable shields, like the ones we used to keep safe on Esii when the planet died. Once those shields are up and enough of the fleet is near the sun, we turn them on and blow the star. We wipe out their fleet and trap the ground forces on the planet. With no resupply, the Roche won’t last long. With our added forces, we can shore up the capitol’s defenses and aid the guerrilla fight in the country.” Cole finished describing his plan.

“Running simulation…done.” The image died in front of Cole for a second and flared back to life. He saw his dummy drones go off and lure the fleet away, then his real ships jumped in. The battle was joined in earnest. The Roche fleet, finally seeing some action, was more than likely to totally engage Cole’s fleet. As the Roche fleet moved toward the enemy, the ground forces warped in behind them closer to the planet. They rapidly split up and shot off for different points on the globe.

Meanwhile the attack fleet was getting chewed up. They had suffered twenty-five percent losses so far, and they still had to wait for the Worlder ships to recharge their gravity generators and the assault ships to land and deploy the shields. Forty-five minutes later, the shield was up and running, and the fleet was down to under fifty percent strength. Mostly it had been the weaker Worlder ships that had succumbed, but a few of Cole’s ships had been lost as well.

“Stop, run it again but this time have my ships out front forming a shield wall. The Worlder ships will last longer if they are behind us, and our ships can take more damage than theirs ever could.

The AI ran the new simulation and the fleet seemed to fare better. More of Cole’s ships were lost, but overall more total ships survived.

“That, of course, is a perfect execution of the plan. If too many of your assault transports with the shields are destroyed, then the shield won’t be strong enough to protect the planet and everyone dies.”

“Well let’s work on this some more. Try to maximize success and limit failure.” Cole thought for a moment. “What if we could double or triple the size of the fleet and amount of beings landing on the planet?”

“Any addition to the mission, ships and personnel wise, is, of course, always a good thing.”

“What are you thinking Cole?” Sky asked.

“Now it’s time to figure out how to blow up a whole star.” As Cole finished speaking his eyes rolled up in his head and his body shook violently. Suddenly he froze and toppled over onto the table, thin streams of blood drained from his tear ducts.

Sky was up in an instant and getting Cole off the chair and onto his back on the floor. She felt for his pulse and pried his eyes open to look at his pupils.

“I have sent for a medical team and emergency medical equipment,” the base AI announced.

“Don’t,” Sky said. “I have seen this before. We just have to wait it out.” She placed Cole’s head in her lap and stroked his hair wondering what he was learning from his own DNA.

Cole’s eyes popped open and he was momentarily confused by his surroundings, then he remembered. This was home, real home. The back training area of Ft. Campbell Kentucky. Dinosaur country, is what they called it. It had been Cole’s favorite part of post. The whole area had a primeval feel to it, one that Cole was comfortable in.

“Hello, Cole,” a man said stepping out from behind a tree.

“Long time no see, Jarrod,” Cole replied as he walked over to his customary seat when he met with his ancestor.

“Yes, well there was a time I couldn’t reveal myself to others who were inside of here.” Here being Cole’s mind. Cole’s DNA was a hardwired storage system that was designed to release information that his ancestors had prepared for him when needed. An entire race’s worth of knowledge stored in what modern scientists had called “Junk DNA.” Human DNA that was dormant and seemed to do nothing. The problem was that humans hadn’t evolved enough on their own to access it without help. Since Cole had been forced to evolve, he could access it, but at a price.

“Am I bleeding from my ears again?” Cole asked.

“No, eyes this time, but your friend seems to be handling it better. Sky had been very upset the first time she had seen this happen. Usually it only happened when a certain phrase was said at the right moment. Thalo had triggered it the first time on purpose to see if Cole was actually a descendant of the ancient humans.