Season Of The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 1) (68 page)

And
us
, Amundsen thought
worriedly.

***

The alien ship had activated its
jump drive. While primitive, it was clearly based on the same
principles used by Imperial starships. Such technology was an
impressive accomplishment for any species, and gave the warriors
hope that once again they had found worthy adversaries among the
stars.

But the aliens would not - could
not - be allowed to leave. Together, the battlecruisers moved
in...

***

“Jump engines are
spooled up, captain,” Kumar reported from his console. The jump
coordinates were locked in. All they had to do was engage the
computer interlock and
Aurora
would disappear into hyperspace inside of two
minutes.

“Very well, XO,” McClaren replied,
his eyes fixed intently on the four titanic ships, all of which
were now shown clearly in the main bridge display.

Suddenly the ships leaped forward,
closing the remaining ten million kilometers in an
instant.

“What the devil...” McClaren
exclaimed in surprise, watching as the alien vessels just as
suddenly slowed down to take up positions around his
ship.

“Sir,” Kumar exclaimed, “they
must’ve picked up the jump engines activating! I recommend we
jump-”

“Execute!” McClaren barked, a cold
sliver of ice sliding into his gut. Then he jabbed the button on
his command console to open a channel to the crew. “General
quarters! Man your battle stations and prepare for emergency
jump!”

“Interlock
engaged,” came the unhurried and unconcerned voice of
Aurora’s
navigation
computer. “Transpace countdown commencing. Primary energy buffer
building. Two minutes remaining.”

McClaren looked at his command
console, willing the countdown to run faster. But it was a
hard-coded safety lock. There was no way to override it.

“Navigation lock
confirmed-”

“
Captain!
”
someone shouted.

McClaren looked up
at the screen as a stream of interwoven lightning arced from the
bow of the alien ship that had taken up position in front of them,
hitting
Aurora’s
spherical sensor section. Its effect was
instantaneous.

“
Jesus!
”
someone screamed as what looked like St. Elmo’s fire suddenly
exploded from every control console and electrical system on the
ship. The dancing display of electric fury went on to cover
everything, even the clothing of the crew. The entire ship was
suddenly awash in electrical discharges.

But it clearly wasn’t simple
electricity. There was no smoke or heat from overloaded circuits,
and no one was injured by whatever energy washed through the ship
and their own bodies. Surprised and frightened, yes. But hurt,
no.

Then every single
electrical system on the ship died, plunging
Aurora’s
crew into silent,
terrifying darkness.

***

Having subdued the alien ship’s
simple electronic systems, the lead warship made ready the boarding
party that had been awaiting this moment. While the great warship’s
crew now knew the layout of the alien ship and all it contained,
including the aliens themselves, down to the last atom, the
boarding party would be sent without this knowledge. They would
give themselves no advantage over the aliens other than the
surprise they had already achieved; even that, they would have
given up if they could. They wished as even a field as possible, to
prove their own mettle and to test that of the strangers. In this
way, as through ages past, they sought to honor their
Empress.

As one, the thirty warriors who had
bested their peers in fierce ritual combat for the right to “greet”
the strangers leaped into space toward the alien vessel. Thirty
warriors pitted against seven times as many aliens. They hoped the
odds would challenge their skills.

***

“
Calm down!
” Chief Harkness’s voice cut through the sudden panic like a
razor. At her assigned jump station in the survey module inside the
spherical bow section, Harkness had immediately clamped down on her
own fear in the aftermath of the terrifying electrical surge that
apparently had killed her ship. She had people to take care of, and
she was too much of a professional to panic. “Listen to me,” she
told the seven others in the cramped compartment. There were still
a couple of them moaning in fear. “Listen, goddammit!” she snarled.
That finally got their attention. Of all the things in the ship
they might be afraid of, she would be the first and foremost if
that helped them hold it together. “Get your heads screwed on
straight. The ship’s hull hasn’t been ruptured. We’ve still got
air. That’s priority number one. All the electrical systems must’ve
been knocked out, which is why the artificial gravity is gone,
along with the lights.” The darkness was disorienting enough, but
being weightless on top of it was a cast iron bitch. She was
actually more worried that the emergency lighting hadn’t come on.
Those weren’t powered by the main electrical system, and their
failure meant that something far worse had happened to her ship
than a simple, if major, electrical blowout. “You’ve all
experienced this before in training. So relax and start acting like
the best sailors in the Navy. That’s why you were picked to serve
on this ship.” She paused to listen, relieved to hear that the
sniveling had stopped, and everyone’s breathing had slowed down a
bit.

“Now, feel around for the emergency
lockers,” she told them. “There should be three in here. Grab the
flashlights and see if the damn things work.” While they could
survive for some time on the available oxygen, the total darkness
was going to give way to fear again if they didn’t get some
light.

“Found one, chief,” someone said off
to her left. There was a moment of scrabbling around, the sound of
a panel opening, then a bit of rummaging.

Click
.

Nothing.

“Fuck,” someone else
whispered.

“Try another one,” Harkness
grated.

“Okay-”

Suddenly she could see something.
But it wasn’t the ship’s lighting or one of the emergency
flashlights. It was like the walls themselves had begun to glow,
throwing a subdued dark blue radiance into the
compartment.

“Chief, what is this stuff?” one of
the ratings asked quietly, her eyes, visible now in the ghostly
light, bulging wide as she looked at the glowing bulkheads around
her.

“I don’t know,” Harkness admitted.
“But whatever it is, we can see now.” The compartment was now
clearly, if softly lit. “So let’s use it and find out what the
hell’s happened to the ship.”

Then something else unexpected
happened: the gravity returned. Instantly. All eight of them
slammed down on the deck in a mass of flailing limbs and passionate
curses. Fortunately, they all had been oriented more or less
upright, and no one was hurt.

“Shit,” Harkness
gasped as she levered herself back onto her feet. “What the
hell
is going
on...”

That’s when she heard the
screaming.

***

The warriors plunged toward the
alien ship. They wore their ceremonial armor for this ritual
battle, eschewing any more powerful protection. They soared across
the distance between the ships with arms and legs outstretched,
enjoying the sight of the universe afforded by the energy shields
that invisibly surrounded them and protected them from hard vacuum.
They needed no devices to assist in maneuvering toward their
target: theirs was a race that had been plying the stars for ages,
and their space-borne heritage led them to a fearless precision
that humans could only dream of.

They were not concerned about any
pathogenic organisms the aliens carried, as the healers who would
be sent once the ship had been subdued would take care of such
matters. The scan of the alien vessel had revealed an atmosphere
that, while not optimal, was certainly breathable.

There was no warrior priestess in
this system to bear the honor of leading them in this first
encounter, but no matter. The senior warriors were well experienced
and had the blessing of the Empress: they could sense Her will in
their very blood, as She could sense what they felt. It was more a
form of empathic bonding than telepathy, but its true essence was
beyond intellectual understanding.

As they neared the ship, the
warriors curled into a fetal position, preparing to make contact
with the alien hull. The energy shields altered their
configuration, warping into a spherical shape to both absorb the
force of the impact and force an entry point through the simple
metal rushing up to meet them.

The first warrior reached the hull,
and the energy shield seared through the primitive alien metal,
instantly opening a portal to the interior. The warrior smoothly
rolled through to land on her feet inside, quickly readjusting to
the gravity that the crew of the warship had restored for benefit
of the aliens. The energy shield remained in place behind the
warrior, sealing the hole it had created in the hull plating and
containing the ship’s atmosphere.

In only a few seconds more, all the
other warriors had forced themselves aboard the hapless
vessel.

***

The screaming Chief Harkness heard
was from Ensign Mary Withgott. Her battle station was at a damage
control point where the spherical bow section connected to the main
keel and the passageway that led to the rest of the ship. The
damage control point was on the sphere’s side of a blast proof door
that was now locked shut. She could open it manually, but wouldn’t
consider it unless she got direct orders from the
captain.

“Ensign!” one of
the two ratings with her shouted as a shower of burning sparks
exploded from the bulkhead above them. The two crewmen stared,
dumbstruck, as someone, some alien
thing
, somersaulted through a huge
hole that had been burned through the hull and into the damage
control compartment.

A blue-skinned
nightmare clad in gleaming black armor, the alien smoothly
pirouetted toward the two crewmen, exposing fangs between dark red
lips. Its eyes were like those of a cat, flecked with silver, below
a ridge of bone or horn. The creature’s black hair was long and
tightly braided, the coils wrapped around its upper shoulders. The
armored breastplate had two smoothly contoured projections over
what must be the alien equivalent of breasts. While Withgott had no
idea what the alien’s true gender (if any) might be, the creature’s
appearance was such that Withgott had the inescapable impression
that it was female, a
she
.

The alien stood there for a moment,
meeting Withgott’s frightened gaze with her own inscrutable
expression. Then the sword the alien held in her right hand hissed
through the air, cleanly severing the head from the nearest
crewman. His body spasmed as his head rolled from his neck, a gout
of crimson spurting across the bulkhead behind him.

Withgott screamed, and kept on
screaming as the alien turned to the second crewman with the
ferocious grace of a hunting tigress and thrust the sword through
the man’s chest.

Then the fanged nightmare came for
Withgott.

DISCOVER OTHER BOOKS BY MICHAEL R.
HICKS

The
In Her Name
Series

First Contact

Legend Of The Sword

Dead Soul

Empire

Confederation

Final Battle

From Chaos Born

Trilogy Collections

In Her Name: Redemption

In Her Name: The Last War

Thrillers

Season Of The Harvest

Bitter Harvest

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in 1963, Michael Hicks grew up
in the age of the Apollo program and spent his youth glued to the
television watching the original Star Trek series and other science
fiction movies, which continues to be a source of entertainment and
inspiration. Having spent the majority of his life as a voracious
reader, he has been heavily influenced by writers ranging from
Robert Heinlein to Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, and David Weber
to S.M. Stirling. Living in Maryland with his beautiful wife, two
wonderful stepsons and two mischievous Siberian cats, he’s now
living his dream of writing novels full-time.