Evolution's Essence (16 page)

The doors to the power station were guarded
by two men, but Sparky deceptively made them think that they saw no
one. It was difficult even for him, but it lasted long enough for
the Ranger’s to subdue them.

“
Elder’s, I can’t hack in.”
the Ranger said not a moment before flashing red lights and a siren
wailed above the door. “Fuck, they know we’re here now.”

“
No time to be subtle then
anymore.” Oliver lifted his hand, made a squeezing motion and
suddenly the door was crushed into a large ball, unable to resist
his overwhelming force.

Six Elders stood guard as the rest ran in to
see the enormous container holding all the ship’s primary power
reserves connected to the distribution relay that powers all the
ship’s functions. The container was similar to the Dorgenox’s and
Renee knew Chandler had patterned it after her father’s design,
theft of intellectual property. Even the relay had too close a
resemblance. It was merely enlarged for the copious power
requirements. The room was humming with energy collected from
everyone aboard for fuel.

A hearty blue shield enveloped the system,
but again was no match for a Solarian powerhouse. The indigo shield
was suddenly infused with so much power it turned white before
being thrust forward. Barrier’s clashed and blue buckled. Vanishing
Claw used a free hand to loose a sphere half as large as himself
and the resulting Kinetic Blast irreparably destroyed the hub.

The effect was instant. Without multiple
redundancies to take up the slack, the entire ship went completely
dark for several seconds. Artificial gravity turned off as well
before backup power kicked in. Throughout the ship people were
injured when gravity jerked them back underneath.

Without main power, all non-vital power was
shut down.

The Emperor said from the Gaia’s bridge “They
did it. Shield’s are down. Target the engine relays for pinpoint
severing. We’ll need them intact and repairable later. Destroying
the engines entirely is unacceptable. You know where I’ll be.
Admiral, you’re in command of the bridge.” Nathan nodded and began
shouting orders and the cannons aboard changed output from heavy
impact to drain shield power into laser precise for cutting.

“
Time to leave, boys!” Elder
Javelin called as a squad of a hundred strong came running and
firing as soon as they were spotted even while
invisible.

Camouflaged Ligers, pretending to be metal
debris waited in the hallway till the group passed and attacked
from behind. Chaos lasted mere moments as the more experienced
Hunters and Pride killed them all except four. Their wounds were
serious, but Renee stabilized them in passing. They were out of the
fight and of no further danger.

More flying brought more conflict. Usually
the surprise of spiky armored cats, neo-animals, and Hunters were
enough of a shock to hold the crew off long enough to be
incapacitated without much fuss. Others were silenced forevermore
in death.

“
This the place?” Talon
asked, her swords zapping with electricity as Oliver looked up at
the ceiling of a junction in the hall as Hunters threw up barriers
holding off rifle fire easily.

“
Yes. Thirty floors above is
the place we’re going. Chandler and the two women are running… and
just sealed themselves in a panic room with five shady looking
others and he’s screaming at them.”

“
Can you hear what they’re
saying?”

“
No, my micro-drones can’t
pick up sound vibrations. Merely visual, but I’m recording it. Have
a lip reader figure it out… my drones detect poison filling the
cabin and hallways… and… oh you
fucking
bastard.”

“
What?” She asked the
question everyone was listening to.

“
It’s more than poison. The
air itself is laced with nanites programmed to rapidly break down
Hunter armor and flight-suits so if the poison doesn’t kill you…
the Keptl spores will.”

“
What the fuck is he so
obsessed with the Keptl for?”

“
It’s why I kicked him out
besides letting civilians die. He had an
un
healthy obsession with the Keptl.”
Vanishing Claw swung his blade, releasing a slicing wave that cut
approximately fifty men completely in half when the front line
ducked and the rear couldn’t respond. “He wanted us to try to
splice the ability to evolve like the Keptl. Have a hard shell over
soft flesh, grow claws. That sort of thing. He said we were weak,
needing to rely on metal armor. I should have killed him back then,
but because he didn’t intentionally break our code, I could do no
more than banish him.”

“
Olly, flash me the data and
I’ll neutralize the poison and spores. You do something about the
nanites.” Renee said and an instant later her chip received the
file, opened it and began looking at the poison makeup. “Nasty
stuff. Whoever created the poison sure knew what he was doing. Too
bad he’s a pussy.” Her mind found a way to neutralize it and said
“I need a human ovum!”

“
Take mine.” Talon offered
and unlocked her breastplate to show off a hard abdomen. The Elder
didn’t ask why Renee didn’t use one of her own. It didn’t matter
either. She would regenerate more eggs even with a frozen fertility
cycle.

The Valek cut through the flesh without any
discomfort, harvested an ovum and Renee modified it and added some
specialized hormones. She created the same poison the egg would
feed on and changed the cell to rapidly divide at an astronomical
rate. It would have a short life though. Less than two hours. “I’m
done, Olly.”

“
Same here.” He tossed her a
glass vial reconstructed from the rubbery heel of a dead man’s
shoe. Manipulating matter took energy, but changing one substance
to another wasn’t so difficult as it once was with Stephanie’s high
heel shoe and transforming it into crystals. She looked inside and
saw tiny particles like the finest sand and knew they were nanites.
She dropped the four droplets worth of antidote in the mix and
returned it.

It vanished via teleportation up into the
hallway laced lethally and broke apart as soon as it shattered on
the floor. Right away the vial’s contents began propagating.
Cleaning the air of all harmful matter.

“
Time to make an air-shaft
up.” Oliver said. “It’ll take fifteen minutes for the hallway to be
rendered safe enough till we can get to the controls and get the
microbe scrubbers to clean the neutralized spores out.”

“
As a last resort we’ll send
the air out in vacuum and rip the panic room with us.” Vanishing
Claw added as cracks formed a circle in the ceiling before being
ripped down and set aside. A twenty meter wide hole so Sparky can
come up too.

With elevators shut down as a non-essential
waste of power in a ship tinted red, they made their own way up,
attacked from beginning to end.

Four floors up Oliver said
“This
must
be he
teleportation room.” Because a large dais was surrounded in glass,
able to send anything that could fit inside. The room was packed by
frantic people who threw arms up as soon as Hunters started pouring
in. There were dozens more undergoing construction, but only one
seemed fully operational in the stadium size room. They couldn’t
figure out why it wasn’t working because it had its own power
supply. Three Rangers broke off and subdued those resisting. A mere
touch knocked their opponents out. Their telepathic training much
more powerful than a normal person.

The next level had blood boiling. Far as the
eye could see in hundreds of columns were cloning tubes complete
with naked floating men all as grotesque as Ten K. Each one having
a device attached to their temple, a neural stimulator that is used
to implant memories. Scythe hefted his battleaxe and flew over to a
console flashing red, read it to yell “Brothers! There is a
countdown of fifteen minutes. This ship is going to blow!”

“
That makes no sense.
Chandler is a coward who isn’t ready to die. He’s a rat and rats
survive. Why make a panic room… unless…” Vanishing Claw drifted for
a mere moment.

“
It
can
resist a blast of such magnitude
and is really his private shuttle he was seen leaving in from
Verard. It was designed to be rather tough because he made many
enemies while running Galicom. But he hasn’t left yet. The loss of
power is preventing his cowardly escape. In the aftermath of an
explosion no one would see his shuttle vanish and let him start all
over again. It’s his contingency plan.”

“
We need a primary console
that can deactivate the self-destruct.” Talon said. “So you can do
it with your Valek. It’s bound to be impossible with our hacking
equipment.”

“
Agreed. You all keep going.
I’ll be faster alone. Help my Pride if they require it.” He didn’t
wait for a response as a bubble shifted around him and he
disappeared and reappeared on the emptied bridge to find all the
consoles smashed beyond repair. As were many hard-line ports for
ancient methods of computing devices. It would be impossible to
stop the countdown for anyone else.

A tendril repaired a port and accessed the
ship’s functions in mere moments, running the display through his
chip so he could literally see the damage levels. Marines were
breaching the docks from all sides. Flashing red areas showed the
engines were severed from power lines… until he accessed the
countdown sequence and bypassed the security protocols without any
effort. He snorted in the poisoned room at how easy it was for his
prowess. Then he deactivated the hidden explosives running
throughout the ship, frying them from ever being used again since
explosives were illegal in the Empire.

Cowardly too.

Inside the panic room
Chandler slumped in defeat as he stared at the armored man on the
bridge withdrawing the Multi-tool a moment before tearing a gaping
hole in the windows. All the air was violently sucked out and took
maybe two minutes. He couldn’t even respond when the room was
yelling. He knew right then as soon as the countdown vanished and
turned green that is was over.
He
was over.

Oliver had decided to let the vacuum of space
sanitize the entire level before placing a barrier of his own over
the hole he created to watch as nanites in the glass thinned it to
cover over in minutes while oxygen and nitrogen filled the cabin
before thick white mist was pumped in. Microbe scrubbers combined
with Keptl residue and broke it down to clear the area. When scans
revealed all danger was taken care of the window sealed back up. It
took less time to do it that way than wait more minutes for what he
and Renee did earlier to clear the worst dangers.

It wouldn’t have had time to finish
sanitizing the poison as they were meant to do with the
self-destruct initiated.

“
All clear!” He relayed to
the team and moments later a hole in the floor was created and
dozens came gliding up.

“
Good thinking releasing all
the doors for the Marines and our siblings, Brother. It saved loads
of time.” Vanishing Claw grinned behind the mask. “Thousands of
armed men and women are locking this whole place down. Now it’s
time to finish this.”

The oldest living Hunter stood in front of
the only closed door on the ship and yelled “Chandler, open up and
surrender.”

“
That you, Claw?” came the
calmly defeated voice Oliver had heard only once back on Verard
during a clip on GNN. “Come to put me down like a dog I
suppose.”

“
You know you cannot win.
You’ve never bested me and I’ve not sat on my ass for centuries.
I’ve done something worthwhile while you illegally undermined our
nation’s fundamental principals. You know you have only two
options. Open up and face your crime or kill yourself. But we both
know you and the others with you are too cowardly to do it because
you know when we do it it’ll be quick and clean.
Choose.”

A hard edge laced the man’s tone through the
intercom. “I’ve changed, Claw. It’s been centuries and you’ll never
take me alive.” Followed by a woman’s scream.

“
Let me knock.” Said Renee
as she came to stand with the two men. Before either could stop her
she raised a fist and punched a hole through the thick titanium and
carbide door with her extreme power. “Hmm, it was open all along.”
With an opening made Vanishing Claw and Oliver dove in just as
Chandler beheaded a man in a green cloak.

Chandler tried to take another life, but a
shortsword locked hilts with a larger broadsword Star-saber made of
lime green, twisted and disarmed the man. Oliver followed up with a
large metal boot to the face that sent the man flipping end over
end into a wall. Chandler crumpled.

“
You saved us! He was going
to kill us all!” Praised a peach haired woman of great beauty. A
sun yellow woman nodded too. They tried to touch Oliver.

Big ass mistake.

“
Mine, Bitches!” Renee came
in, easily a head taller than both, grabbed a fistful of hair and
cracked their skulls together. Renee then did it three more times
as they screamed. “This is for Deegen and Bell you whores!” Renee’s
wrath was in full swing as she beat the two supermodels bloody and
passed them off to Stone and Steven who happily broke multiple ribs
and arms. Not enough to kill them, but to finally get vengeance.
Then Javelin took custody, carrying both unconscious and bloodied
woman.

Chandler came around as arrests were made to
the other survivors and Renee was closing a heart wound of a man he
attempted to murder first. Her Valek able to keep the blood flowing
rather than let him die. Then he saw a sword’s tip and followed it
up to meet burning blue eyes, the unassuming face twisted with
tempered wrath. “Again I defeat you. Stand up and face the wall,
hands behind your back.”