When Earth Reigned Supreme (The Human Chronicles Saga Book 12) (13 page)

Tobias left the CIC and went to his away cabin. He sat at his desk, knowing that within minutes—once relays were laid between the Milky Way universe and the Sol-Kor universe—a flood of angry calls would be coming through. Most would be demanding his head on a platter.

That would be fine…as soon as Adam, Riyad and the rest of the strike team were safely back in their home universe.

Until then, Andy Tobias wasn’t going anywhere.

Chapter 9

Riyad motioned to the right down the connecting hallway, then clenched his teeth and shook his head. “I believe they put me in a room down this way until it was time to meet the Queen. I hope I’m remembering this correctly. I wasn’t paying too much attention, since I figured I was dead meat at that time.”

“You’re doing fine,” Adam said from his side. “And if I remember, the door to the Queen’s Chambers is to the left. It was a large, double-panel affair made of wood.”

“The Q’uel sorta turned that into kindling, if I recall.”

“They’ve had time to replace it. We’re going to the left,” Adam announced. “The door to the Queen’s Chambers is about fifty meters down on the right. Anderson, MacTavish, take point. Hug the walls. Now move out!”

The team had only moved ten meters or so along the hallway when they came under fire again. The defenders were far down the corridor and with no cover, but still they came rushing forward anyway, intent on sacrificing their lives if it meant saving their queen. Adam’s lead men dropped to the floor, and using their superior range, sniped the advancing defenders with little effort. Soon, the rearmost defenders were having trouble making it past the fallen bodies. They dropped behind them and began firing level-one bolts at the Humans.

“Screw this!” MacTavish yelled out. He cocked the M-4 grenade launcher on his M-91 and sent a canister into the barricade of alien defenders. Then he sent another, followed by a third.

The hallway erupted in a torrent of fire, smoke, and ear-shattering noise, unrecognizable pieces of alien bodies flying toward the Humans. The men were up and running forward even before the last of the blasts echoed away. The walls had been blown open at one place, revealing burning and smoke-filled rooms beyond, many with panicked natives coughing and choking as they sought to find a safe exit. But the only way out was the very hallway where the explosions had originated. The natives in these side rooms became easy targets for the advancing Humans.

“This should be it!” Adam yelled out to Riyad as they came to a tall, arching set of double doors in the wall to the right. No other doors were along this side of the wall, and none this large. But they weren’t made of wood any longer.

Within seconds, nine Human commandos were stationed to each side of the doorway. Adam frowned when he took the count.

“Who are we missing?”

“Drake, sir,” Chief Foster answered. “Caught one a couple of corridors back.”

“Damn,” Adam said. Then he steeled his effort. “Okay, this is it. The Queen’s Chambers are on the other side of this door. It’s a huge room with columns. She should be near the center, behind a partition possibly. No mercy. We go in blasting and take her out.”

Adam reached out and tried the door handle. It wouldn’t move.

“Good,” he said. “Just means we’re going to have to blow it rather than waltz right into whatever’s waiting on the other side.” He smiled. “A powerful explosion is always a pretty good distraction.” He turned to Kaczynski and Anderson. “Set two charges, one on the door and one down the corridor a ways. We’ve seen how these walls can be breached. Let’s give ourselves an alternative entrance and a crossfire position.”

A minute later, everything was in place. The men moved back down the hallway and took shelter inside one of the rooms they’d cleared earlier with a grenade explosion.

Adam nodded.

Even with several baffles between them and the explosion, the concussion was incredible. Two of his men were knocked off their feet. Then, their visors over their eyes to shield against the acrid smoke filling the hallway, the men rushed down the corridor, Adam in the lead.

Light streamed into the hallway from where the main door had once stood, as well as a second location a little further down. Adam took aim at the first shaft of light, and dove headfirst into the Queen’s Chambers. Through a cloud of billowing smoke, Adam spied at least fifty armed Sol-Kor soldiers forming a line three aliens deep facing the main doorway. They were still recovering from the effects of the blast when, in a panic, Adam began spraying the line with automatic weapons fire. He was soon joined by others, and as had happened in the hallway outside, piles of dead defenders began to form.

The Sol-Kor first concentrated their defensive fire at the main entrance. But soon confusion spread through their ranks, as more within their ranks were being cut down along the line than should be. The room was still clouded with smoke, and the aliens struggled to see where the extra incoming fire was coming from. By the time they realized, they were down to only a dozen or so.

“Grenade!” MacTavish cried out. Adam ducked, covering his head with his arms, just as a powerful wave of heat and pressure rushed over him. When he looked up, only a few defenders remained, and these all had wounds of some kind.

‘Dammit, Mac! Not every situation calls for a grenade.”

“If God didn’t intend us to use grenades, he wouldn’t have provided me with a  shitload of the little bastards…sir!”

Adam shook his head before jumping to his feet. “Secure the openings. Keep anyone from entering.”

He scanned the room. The Queen had been in here before, behind a series of thick columns and a thin, fabric barrier. Riyad and Adam rushed further into the vast chamber while the other seven men took up sentry posts.

Twenty meters further into the smoke, they spotted the barrier. Adam motioned for the two of them to separate and come at the location from opposite sides. Riyad fell to his belly and slid around the partition, weapon cradled in his hands and pressed against his cheek. Adam came in on one knee, also with his weapon glued to his cheek, ready to fire.

But there was no one behind the partition.

The two men exchanged looks. It had been their understanding that the Queen seldom left her chambers, and from the look of things the last time they were here, she hadn’t in quite some time. Now the area behind the partition was empty; however, there was evidence that she
had
been there recently. A soiled hammock-shaped canvas hung between the arms of a rusting metal support apparatus, and two metal basins on the floor were filled with a thick yellow liquid with a crust forming over the top.

Adam winced. This device had to be some sort of support cradle for the ugly, smelly body of the Queen of the Sol-Kor, and from the look of it, once she was it, she had remained there for what could amount to centuries—or until the time the building was attacked and her life threatened…

“She can’t be far,” Riyad said as the two men met near the twin basins. The smell rising up from the containers forced them to move away and back around the partition.

Gunfire suddenly erupted from the other side of the room. With no time to spare, Adam and Riyad ran deeper into the room, looking for any evidence as to where the Queen had been taken. It was a pretty good bet she didn’t waddle off on her own, so there had to be a way of carrying her, and that should leave tracks.

“Here…in the dust.”

Adam ran up to where Riyad was pointing. The Queen herself was a study in poor grooming, and her attendants didn’t do a very good job of keeping the floor of her chambers dirt free either. A set of wide tracks, almost impossibly wide yet running parallel to each other, ran straight and obvious towards a broad, empty wall.

“Some kind of emergency exit?” Adam said. “Now I need some of Mac’s grenades.”

The two men ran up to the wall before setting off in opposite directions to see if they could locate a control mechanism for the hidden panel. The tracks ran right up to barrier, so there was no question whether or not this was the right place.

Out of frustration, Adam rapped on the wall with his knuckles. It sounded hollow and soft, like drywall.

Adam lifted his weapon, switched it to auto, stepped back, and fired. Even with the suppressor, the sound was deafening this close to the target. The wall was perforated along a line, one cut diagonally from top to bottom, another cut in the opposite direction, both lines forming an “X.” Light from the other side could be seen through the perforations.

Adam lowered his shoulder and charged for the center point of the “X,” crashing through in a shower of white, powdery dust, tumbling forward on the shattered debris. In the brief moment before he fell, he noticed several figures in the room…and then a fiery hot ball of light hit his right side. His armor was designed to ward off level-one flash bolts, but this one came at such close range that the armor melted, allowing the plasma to reach his inner clothing and then his skin.

He rolled, and when he attempted to lift his weapon he discovered his entire right side was searing with pain and virtually useless. A shadow formed over him, and through watery eyes Adam looked up to see a tall Sol-Kor standing over him. The creature wasn’t wearing the traditional black armor of a soldier. He was dressed in what amounted to a loose-fitting, dark brown dress. The alien stood over him, gripping an oversized flash weapon aimed directly at Adam’s head. The beast smiled.

And then his head exploded, and the roar of the gunshot echoed back out into the Queen’s Chamber.

Riyad walked up to him and offered a hand.

“Any lasting damage?”

“Nothing permanent, but I have to say…I prefer the headaches to this. Don’t get me wrong, I still have the headaches, but this is much worse.”

The two men focused their attention on the massive figure in front of them—the Queen of the Sol-Kor—all Jabba-the-Hutt thousand pounds of her—and that was measured in the three-quarters gravity of Kor, not Earth’s.

A line of Sol-Kor surrounded her, protecting her, made up mainly of attendants and government officials—yet none of them were armed.

Adam was in a rotten mood, and Riyad wasn’t feeling much better. The two Humans lifted their weapons—Adam using mainly his left arm, favoring the right—and took aim at the Queen of the Sol-Kor.

A year ago, Adam had stood in this exact same posture, cradling a weapon, ready to pull the trigger and end of the life of the five-thousand-year-old leader of the Sol-Kor Colony. But then Panur had rushed in and blocked his shot. With his weapon once again aimed directly at the mother of the flesh-eating invaders, he was sure no such interference would happen again—not this time.

The Queen was a unique creature among the Sol-Kor, easily standing twice as tall as the normal male and ten times as wide. As a result, the protective ring of government officials around her couldn’t come close to shielding her body completely. In addition, she was on a motorized cart, guided by her long hands on short arms. Now she spun the cart around to face her two assailants.

Panicked attendants crowded between the Humans and their Queen.

“Stop!” the Queen commanded. “Protection is no longer necessary. Leave us now.”

“My Queen!”

“Do as I command.”

After the briefest hesitation, the cluster of bureaucrats scampered away, but not before sending Adam and Riyad a look that was unmistakable.
You may kill our Queen, but you will not live long beyond the act.