Star Viking (Extinction Wars Book 3) (13 page)

“Silence!” Saris snarled.

“No!” the adept shouted in a reedy voice. Others around her took up her cry.

Admiral Saris pressed a button, and a loud klaxon blared. No one could speak until she removed her finger.

“Sit down,” Saris said. “I rule here. I will decide the agenda.”

The adept looked as if she wanted to argue. Finally, reluctantly, the trembling adept resumed her seat.

The interchange so reminded me of Prince Venturi and his adept on the
Indomitable
that I wondered if this was some sort of ritual the tigers went through during every big meeting.

“Commander Creed,” Saris said. “Orange Tamika has raised the flag of revolt against the Emperor. Did you know that was the doctor’s intent?”

“I wondered about it, yeah,” I said.

“You admit to this?” Saris asked in wonder.

“I have nothing to hide.”

“This is a grave breach of trust,” Saris said.

“I don’t see it that way,” I said. “Your lovely Emperor caused my planet’s destruction and billions of humans to die. I saved his bacon some time ago. To my way of thinking, he and you Lokhars owe us big time.”

Once more, silence filled the chamber.

“You are not very diplomatic,” Saris said.

“I figure you’re going to do what you came here to do. It hardly matters what I say.”

“Force him to tell us the artifact’s name,” the adept rasped from down the table.

“Yes,” Saris said, staring at me. “It is time for you to reveal the artifact’s name.”

I made of show of looking around the room. The Lokhars seemed to edge toward me, to wait expectantly for the great secret. They hungered for it. Settling back into my chair, I regarded the admiral. Did any of the Shi-Feng sit among them? I dearly wanted to know more about these holy assassins.

“Let’s think about this for a minute,” I said. “Many years ago, the artifact fled the Altair star system—”

“Listen to me,” Saris said, interrupting. “We are not here to relate old exploits. We know what happened at Altair and at the portal planet. It is inconceivable that a human knows the artifact’s name. What makes it more galling, is that no Lokhar has shared such a profound knowledge with a Forerunner object before. There are those among us who view this as a grave breach of protocol.”

Did she mean the Shi-Feng? Hmm, surrounded by all these tigers, with all these warships ready to attack the last humans, maybe I should speak delicately for once.

“Who am I to decide such things?” I asked. “I’m just a man, as you keep pointing out. If the artifact felt inclined to tell me and no one else, I’m going to keep it that way.”

“You must tell us,” Saris said. There was something new in her voice. It almost sounded whiny. Was the admiral desperate?

Maybe it was time to try a new tact.

Once more, I cleared my throat. Then I asked, “Do you believe in the Creator?”

Lokhars cowered and cried out, some shielding their eyes from me with their arms.

“I’m taking that as a yes,” I said. “If you wish to profane this ground, attempt to force me to speak. Otherwise, quit asking me because I’m not going to tell you. The artifact chose me. It didn’t choose anyone else. That must mean something, right? Maybe it’s even the Creator’s decision.”

My words made several adepts cringe. One tiger standing at the farthest wall watched me with hot eyes. He looked tense. I felt certain that Lokhar belonged to the Shi-Feng.

I bet they’re everywhere
.

“Oh, by the way,” I said, “Doctor Sant dearly tried to learn the object’s name as well. I didn’t tell him, either.”

“The doctor claims you did tell him,” Saris said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Kill him!” the adept screeched. “Boil him in stem oil and eviscerate him.”

“Silence,” Saris told the adept, “or I will have you removed from the chamber.”

The old adept breathed heavily and eyed me with wild eyes. Even so, she held her tongue.

I glanced at the far wall. The tiger I’d seen earlier wasn’t there. What did that mean?

“Look,” I said. “I think we should work together. We have been for some time, and it has been beneficial for both of us. What kind of alien is attacking the Jelk in the core worlds?”

“Your only concern is in telling me the name of the Forerunner artifact,” Saris said.

“John F. Kennedy,” I said, promptly.

A gasp went throughout the chamber. Tigers stared at one another in awed wonder.

“This is the artifact’s true name?” Saris asked in a soft voice.

I was tempted to say yes. Instead, I shook my head. “Sorry, no, it’s the name of a human leader.”

The wonder turned to outrage.

“He mocks us,” the combat officer said. “Let me kill him. His ways are profane, an insult to the Lokhar race.”

“Hey, I’m the object’s guardian,” I said. “You need to start giving me some respect. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to let you view the artifact or not.”

“How can you stop us?” Saris asked.

That was the rub. I didn’t have a powerful weapon. I needed one, all right. If I had the Purple Lokhar armada, ah, that would be something. Then things would be different around here.

“You do not yet understand your place in the scheme of existence,” Saris informed me. “Perhaps it is fortunate for you that I am about other matters at present. We came here for your cruisers and starships. You will return them to Purple Tamika.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“The two cruisers facing us and the Earth Fleet warships, we’re taking them back,” Saris said.

My gut tightened with rage. I had bought those with the most precious commodity in the universe: human lives. It took an act of will for me to refrain from launching myself at the admiral.

In a shaking voice, I said, “We humans earned those warships with our blood.”

“Times change,” Saris said, pretending not to notice my anger. “Unknown aliens appear to battle the Jelk Corporation. Can the Jelk stop these invaders? If not, the Emperor might have to do so with the might of the Lokhar fleets. I, as the Emperor’s representative, will ruthlessly put down the Orange Tamika rebellion before that. Thus, I demand every warship I can lay my hands on. You have ten.”

This was a disaster. I had to use my wits, and use them now. Despite the seething inside me, I said, “Nine warships not ten.”

“What happened to the tenth vessel?” Saris asked.

“I sent it out on a raid,” I lied. The tigers no longer deserved even an approximation of the truth. “The cruiser never returned.”

Saris sat utterly still. Finally, she shrugged. “I will take the nine.”

“No!” I said. “How am I supposed to defend the Forerunner artifact without warships?” When Saris didn’t answer, I said, “What if Baba Gobo shows up again and takes the object?”

“Before that happens,” Saris said, “I have no doubt the object will disappear as it did before in the Altair system. It will not allow Starkiens to hold it.”

“How will the artifact know what’s happening?” I asked.

“You are a dense beast,” the adept said. “The artifact knows, of that you should have no doubt.”

I sat stunned. Despite my efforts to use cunning, I found it too hard to concentrate. “You’re not taking our warships,” I said. “We’ll fight to the death to hold them.”

“Perhaps that is so, Commander Creed,” Saris said. “If that is true then you will die, and all humanity will die with you. Is that worth a noble but futile gesture?”

I studied the admiral as wheels turned in my mind. Finally, I concluded she was telling the truth. We’d have to give up our cruisers. That would leave us practically defenseless. Just when we’d begun as Star Vikings, Admiral Saris came and took all our
dragonships
. Was this going to be the fatal handicap that ensured our extinction?

If Baba Gobo returned too soon or some other predator alien then the answer would be yes. Instead of climbing out of the hole, Admiral Saris was putting us as deep down as humanity could go.

Several days later—after the Lokhar armada had left—Diana informed me that panic threatened the people packed in the Jelk freighters. As the vessels orbited Earth, there were riots, fights and assassinations.

I came to a hard conclusion and loaned her half the assault troopers. It was difficult to think of ourselves as Star Vikings now. In any case, in a Demar hauler, troopers from Mars Base landed on freighters in Earth orbit, breaking heads as they helped restore order.

The Purple Tamika armada had left us defenseless, taking every warship they could lay their paws on. Fortunately, they didn’t taken any haulers, freighters or hidden loot on the asteroids. Nor did they hunt too diligently for the sunken cruiser and Demar hauler sitting down on Earth.

What was one more cruiser to their mass anyway? To us, the single warship might mean everything.

I admit it. Depression hit me hard. A single alien pirate ship might annihilate humanity. We had to act fast. But what was the right decision?

In our Demar hauler, I descended through the atmosphere toward Lake Erie. The Great Lakes looked normal from high orbit. No artificial lights shined up from the planet, though. Everything was dark the way only North Korea used to be.

Little had changed on Earth since the nukes and bio-terminator had hit. Winds howled, shoving multicolored clouds. They reminded me of oil slicks in puddles I’d played around in as a kid.

N7 piloted us. I had a skeleton crew along. Most of the troopers were in the freighters, fighting under Rollo and Dmitri. During times of panic, a hard fist with shows of mercy to the defeated often helped quell rebellions the quickest.

The hauler shook as greater winds struck our hull. There were no more trees on Earth, no more grass or lichen, moss or mushrooms. It was a dead world with quickly decomposing skeletons, rusted metal and crumbling brick and concrete structures. The Lokhar decontamination ships had begun their work. After they left, though, the process of de-atomization continued.

Our automated factories worked slowly but relentlessly. It would take them more than a century to clean up the biohazard mess. Humanity needed something quicker.

In any case, Lake Erie had the multicolored glare. It made me sick seeing it. I hated walking on Earth now. The bio-terminator was still strong in places. Four years ago, we’d lost twenty thousand freighter people when someone with the terminator bug returned to the living quarters up there.

After that, Diana’s people quit mining the Earth for old junk. It wasn’t any wonder the Lokhars hadn’t looked too hard here for the missing cruiser.

The Demar hauler shook as it touched down. N7 and I traded glances.

“I’ll see you around,” I said.

“This is wrong, Commander,” N7 told me. “Send someone else.”

“No. This is my job.”

“You are too important to lose,” the android said.

I laughed sourly. “Right. I’ve brought humanity back to square one. Do me a favor, N7. Tell Rollo the artifact’s name if I don’t make it back. Promise me you’ll do that.”

“I give you my solemn oath, Commander. I will do so because you dared to risk taking androids from the Demar Starcity.”

We shook hands. Then I headed for the hatch that would take me outside.

***

In my pressurized suit, I walked on Earth. Despite the ruins around me, I felt as if I’d come home again. That was crazy, don’t you think?

I saw badly rusting cars, buildings looking as if hungry termites had been eating for a hundred years. The freeways were still intact. They were like the granddaddy of dinosaur bones laid in the Earth. Nothing living grew up through them. I wondered if a thousand years from now the freeways would be all that was left of mankind’s rule on Earth.

I have to change this. I have to make the Earth green again. I want children to frolic under our sun
.

This sense of purpose steeled my heart for what was to come. I didn’t have any right to be depressed. Someone had to drive ahead and make these aliens pay for what they had done to us.

I reached Lake Erie’s shoreline. The waves lapped on the lonely Earth. I was the only living soul walking the planet. It made me shudder, and it almost brought tears to my eyes.

I refused to give the aliens the pleasure. This was my planet and they had destroyed it.

“Think, Creed. What are you missing?”

I could feel a hole in my head. No, not a literal hole. But there was something knocking around inside my noggin that I wasn’t getting. It plagued me, demanding attention. Was it my subconscious?

With a shrug, I began to wade out into the cold water. I wore a pressurized suit. Forcing my legs, I waded so the water reached my knees, my waist and finally my chest. The harsh sound of my breathing was the only noise in my ears.

“Let’s get this over with,” I told myself.

Water swirled before my eyes. Despite the queer colors in the water, it was clear down here. I could see easily, rainbows in the water as far as I could look.

For the next hour, I tramped along the muddy bottom. All plant life down here had died. Mud swirled and slowly it became darker. I would look up and see faintly colored light. At last, that stopped and I moved within a world of eternal gloom. How deep had I come?

I didn’t have any instruments to measure that. Instead, I had a locating device. It beeped every minute. After two hours, a dot appeared on my HUD. That would the Lokhar cruiser hidden down here.

Okay. Here’s what happened. I walked forever and reached the outer hull. I couldn’t see a damned thing until I turned on my headlamp. It felt eerie as all get out as the spotlight washed over a Lokhar letter. If something had swum by me then I’d have freaked out and raved. I didn’t even have a spear gun, just a knife.

Twenty minutes later, after marching around the craft, I found the hatch. Slowly, I rotated a wheel and tugged. Nothing happened. Had the deep pressure sealed this thing shut for the rest of my life or was that rust doing its trick?

Inside my helmet, which dripped with condensation, I snarled. I recalled Rollo and his one thousand pound bench press. It was time for Creed to play muscleman. I pulled harder, all to no avail.

Maybe I should have sent someone else down here, Rollo for instance.

“Nope, I’m doing this.”

The words sounded hollow to my ears. I put my feet up against the hull. I gripped the wheel and I began to pull. The hatch moved so very slowly. I wondered then how I’d prop it open. The frustration made me roar, and I pulled it wider. Quickly, I squirmed between the hatch and the hull. I forced myself through as the pressure of Lake Erie shoved the hatch against me. I bellowed in pain. If the hatch should breach my suit—

I couldn’t worry about it now. Water came gushing in with me. Then I slithered through. The hatch clanged shut and water came up to my chin. It was slow work, but I finally opened the inner hatch. The water gushed through with me into the warship’s hall, but I was inside the cruiser with contaminated Lake Erie water.

Sealing this area, I found my way to a decontamination area. After a long scrubbing, I shed my suit. Finally, I walked the lonely corridors of the starship. Outside were millions of tons of water pressing down against the hull.

I turned on the engines, flicked on the gravity generators and lifted the Lokhar cruiser. An hour later, I parked the cruiser in orbit.

We had our sole remaining warship.

***

Later, I spoke with Rollo as we inspected the cruiser. The man might have looked like a muscle-bound idiot, but he was anything but.

“You know,” I said, as he ducked into engineering. “We have a cruiser, as in one to humanity’s name. What do we do with it?”

“It seems to me that sitting on our butts only means it’s a matter of time before Baba Gobo or someone like him comes around to kill or enslave humanity,” Rollo said.

“So…?” I asked.

“So we must go on more Star Viking raids and rebuild,” Rollo said. “Nothing else makes sense to me.”

“If we take the cruiser that leaves nothing behind to protect the freighters,” I said.

“Well, the freighters do have their mobility,” Rollo said. “They can run away.”

“That’s one possibility, I suppose.”

“We also have a few missile launchers and ground-based laser cannons we took from Demar,” Rollo said. “We can fortify an asteroid or two so they can defend against pirates. We could set up the weapons systems like German 88s as Rommel did in the North African deserts during WWII. The freighters race for safety to the laser cannons and bam, the rays take out any following pirates.”

“I like it,” I said. “Yeah, I think you’re right. We have to keep raiding. We have to build up to the best of our ability. It’s a long shot. But ever since the aliens showed up on our doorstep this has been a crapshoot. It’s surprising we’ve managed to keep the remnant alive for as long as we have.”

“I’d agree to that,” Rollo said.

“Right,” I said. “It’s time to get to work.”

***

Nine days later, we were almost ready to leave the solar system in our cruiser.

The freighter riots had ended. Most of the ringleaders found themselves in the brigs. Murad Bey spaced a few of them. I wished he hadn’t had done that. I would have taken the so-called troublemakers with me, if nothing else.

We’d worked overtime getting ready. Ceres bristled with the Demas system weaponry we’d taken. It was a veritable space fortress now.

After long days of work, Rollo, Dmitri and I relaxed in a rec room aboard
Glorious Hope
. We’d rechristened the vessel with its new name.

The three of us played pool on a regulation-sized table. The trick was to beat Dmitri, a real shark. The Cossack didn’t spend long seconds eying the billiard balls either. He would chalk the cue stick, step up to the table and put his left hand on the green cloth. Then, as quick as you please, he readied the stick, slid it twice through his fingers and
whacked
the cue ball. The targeted billiard sank like lead into a pocket.

Once again, I didn’t get a shot for an entire game. Instead, I watched Dmitri sink all of his balls and then the eight ball.

He straightened with a grin. “Another game?” he asked.

Frustrated, I handed my stick to Rollo.

“This time you’re going down,” the muscleman told our Cossack.

Dmitri only grinned. With a
crack
, he split the balls, which expanded across the table. This time, none of them fell into a pocket.

“My turn,” Rollo said. He proved the opposite of Dmitri, carefully lining up each shot. After a long study, he tipped the cue ball, which rolled and nudged a striped fellow, which ever so slowly rolled to a side pocket and…fell in.

“Yes!” Rollo said, shaking his stick.

“Look at him,” Dmitri said with an indulgent smile.

Taking just as long for his second shot, Rollo sank another billiard ball.

“Now you’re showing real improvement,” Dmitri said.

Rollo threw the Cossack an evil grin, and he squinted studying his next shot. He sank the third ball.

Dmitri said nothing this time.

In fact, Rollo sank five balls before missing his sixth shot.

“Fatal are thy mistakes,” Dmitri said.

Rollo quietly stepped back, no doubt seething inside but calm outwardly.

Dmitri sank everything, including the eight ball. “Creed?” he asked.

I almost shook my head. Instead, I said, “Yeah, one more time.”

Dmitri chalked his tip as I racked the balls. “You know what I think sometimes?” our Cossack asked me.

“What’s that?” I asked, stepping away from the table.

“Why you don’t use the Forerunner artifact as a ship?”

I hung the billiard rack onto its peg and turned around to stare at Dmitri.

“Do you remember how the artifact disappeared from the Altair star system?” Dmitri asked. He walked to the end of the table, leaning down to take his shot.

I said nothing.

With the cue stick sliding between his fingers, Dmitri said, “And how the artifact vanished from the portal planet with all of us hitching a ride on it?”

I still didn’t say a word.

Crack!
Dmitri’s break did better this time, sinking a striped and a solid. He lined up another solid, sinking it. As he moved around the table, examining the balls, the Cossack said, “I’ve wondered why you don’t go back into the artifact and talk to it. I mean, if it can teleport wherever it wants”—
crack
, another solid went down into a pocket. “Why not convince the artifact to pop around the galaxy for us. Can you imagine what kind of Viking ship the object would make?”

Dmitri straightened, glancing my way. He frowned. “Creed, you okay?”

Rollo had been looking at something on a computer pad. He looked up too. By the frown on his face, it appeared as if Rollo played back in his mind the Cossack’s words. Suddenly, the muscleman glanced at me.

“That’s brilliant,” I whispered.

Dmitri raised his eyebrows. “You think so?”