Human Chronicles Part 2 Book 2: The Apex Predator (18 page)

“Damn, babe,” he said. “This is about to get exciting. Come over here and give me a hug.”

The hug lasted a full two minutes, as Adam whispered in her ear explaining what he had been able to accomplish. Then he said they would wait for the Klin to arrive and let him escort them to the landing bay. Once there, they would make their break.

Sherri whispered back, “Can you disable all the ships in the fleet?”

The question sobered him immediately. It had taken considerable effort to link to the other ship and map out some of its basic systems. There was no way he would be able to link to all the ships; that would take days.

He pointed to the deck. “This one for sure,” he grunted, making his voice hard to pick-up on microphone. “Let’s get off here first and then deal with the rest of the fleet later.”

“Seat-of-the-pants-planning … I love it!” Sherri whispered while lightly biting his ear.

Chapter 26

The Klin…

A
norn Elsinum stepped off the ramp of the shuttle encased in a clear, plexi-glass exo-suit that helped him to move more easily in the oppressive gravity of the Kracori flagship. The suit allowed him freedom of movement, yet it did nothing to relieve the pressure he felt on his lungs and the effort it took to breathe.

Two lowly Kracori officers met him in the landing bay, tasked with escorting him to the prisoners and then making sure they got back to the Klin shuttle without incident. They each carried satchels containing restraints to be used on the Humans.

The journey through the bowels of the starship was exceedingly difficult and Anorn wondered why the prisoners were not in the landing bay awaiting his arrival. He tried to believe this had just been an oversight on the part of the Kracori, yet another part of him said the Fleet Commander Runor had probably done this on purpose just to watch the Klin suffer. He was probably watching a monitor at that very moment, as Anorn labored down the long corridors towards the security section, reveling in every second of Anorn’s agony.

Eventually, the small entourage arrived at their destination. The guards within the block of rooms met the other two Kracori and led them to the cells. Anorn was forced to follow.

The two Humans stood staring through the thick security glass with looks of unconcerned curiosity as Anorn finally pressed his way through the barricade of seven Kracori crewmembers blocking his view. He looked to the guards and nodded. The door to the cell slid open and the hulking gray creatures flooded in, grabbing the arms of the Humans and attaching strong, canvass shackles on their wrists and then wrapping the rest of the restraints around their torsos like a straightjacket.

Anorn stepped up to the smaller Human male. “Adam Cain, I am in awe of the importance of that name. I must admit, at first I was not aware of your legacy; I am not part of the high Council so I did not experience the troubles you caused them a few years prior. But I am aware now, and I assure you I will take every precaution to make sure I deliver you to the Pleabaen for his personal gratification.”

“Yeah, so how is old Summlin these days?” Adam smiled up at the tall, silver alien. “The last I saw of him, there was a building crashing down on top of him.”

Anorn’s expression turned icy cold. “That Pleabaen, who had held his post for a hundred years, eventually died from the injuries he suffered that day. The Pleabaen I refer to now is Wesselian Velsum, his successor.”

“I’m looking forward—”

“Stop the chatter!” the senior Kracori officer commanded. “I am to get you off the ship as soon as possible so we can depart on our mission. You are wasting time.”

The other Kracori forcefully jostled Adam and Sherri out of the cell and began the long march toward the landing bay. Anorn was forced to trudge along as quickly as possible, arriving in the bay a full five minutes after the others.

Chapter 27

Adam Cain…

T
he delay in the Klin’s arrival allowed Adam time to survey the landing bay – fortunately the same one with the
Pegasus
– and to map out its electronic controls. He hadn’t counted on this form of restraint, so a little improvising would be in order. He made eye contact with Sherri, reassuring her that he had a plan. He could see the near-panic on her face as the time for the escape was drawing shorter by the minute.

The Klin led them to his shuttle and up the ramp, to be greeted by two sweating and suffering O’mly who had accompanied the Klin on the journey to the flagship. They had endured the increased gravity for over half an hour already and they were nearing the end of their limits. Eight-inch talons or not, these O’mly would not be a concern for Adam and Sherri.

Soon the hatch was closing and the two O’mly did their best to escort the prisoners to the rear compartment. The Klin went forward to the pilothouse.

Adam and Sherri took seats opposite each other along the length of the fuselage, while the O’mly essentially forgot about them the moment they were seated. One sat next to Sherri, the other Adam, and they rested their dangerous looking hands on their knees and hung their heads, struggling to breathe.

The front latch of Adam’s straightjacket was made of a tough-looking canvas, material made by Kracori for Kracori. Since they originated on a heavy-gravity world, it was a good bet their material would be strong enough to hold a Human.

So instead of trying to break the restraints, Adam began to gather up the free electrons in the atmosphere and create a small static ball. The sparkling light would be visible to the guards, so he tried his best to create the ball in the small void between the latch and the bulk of the jacket pressing against his stomach. Soon the ball was forming, and as Adam continued to concentrate the energy in such a small area that it began to heat up.

When a faint burning smell could be detected, Adam looked to the guards to see if they’d noticed as well. At first the two O’mly were too distracted by their own discomfort, but then Adam noticed the one next to him begin to wrinkle his nose and frown even more than before. Adam pulled with all his might trying to separate the singed bindings before the guard turned to the source of the smell. It was going to be close.

“Hey guys, have you ever had sex with an alien before?” Sherri suddenly blurted out from the other side of the cabin. “It can be quite stimulating.”

Confused and distracted, the two guards turned their attention to Sherri, just long enough for Adam’s bindings to break. He whipped his arms out, striking the guard next to him with a debilitating blow, while Sherri buried her shoulder into the guard next to her, knocking him off balance. Adam was now on his feet; he reached Sherri’s guard in a flash and grabbed him around the neck.

“Look out!” Sherri cried out, just as Adam saw the O’mly jab his talons toward Adam’s midsection. He spun the alien around until he was behind him and then tossed the guard across the room before the talons could make contact. The pitiful alien tried to regain his feet in the heavy gravity, yet only made it to his knees before Adam sent a crushing right hook to the creature’s boney head.

With both the guards down, Adam quickly released Sherri’s bindings and then stepped to the hatchway leading to the forward section of the ship.

“What now?” Sherri asked as she disarmed the two guards of their primitive versions of MK flash weapons.

“Follow me,” he commanded as he yanked open the hatch and sprinted for the pilothouse.

The Klin in the pilot’s seat was taken by surprise by sudden the arrival of the Humans; Adam pulled him from the seat, exo-suit and all, and literally handed him to Sherri. She shoved him down in a corner and placed a foot on his chest. With the creature already struggling to breathe, Sherri’s foot on his chest left him with only one thought on his mind, and it wasn’t escape.

Adam looked through the viewport of the shuttle and saw several Kracori moving throughout the large landing bay. Four of them were standing at the entrance to the
Pegasus
, which sat about thirty yards directly in front of the Klin shuttle. Adam looked toward the huge slide-away doors to the hangar, now safely secure, and he began to narrow his concentration.

The ATD found the microprocessor to the doors and overrode all safety controls and alarms. The doors began to slide open.

Immediately, a wild torrent of escaping air filled the room and began to flow toward the opening. Several Kracori were sucked through the ever-widening gap, along with nearly every small module, crate and loose piece of equipment in the bay. The four Kracori at the entrance to the
Pegasus
were gone, too, swept up in the torrent.

After a moment, Adam stopped the doors from opening any further, otherwise even the shuttles and other small craft in the bay would have been sucked out into space with the already dead and frozen Kracori.

Within a minute or so, those Kracori who had managed to hold onto fixed objects began to lose consciousness from the lack of atmosphere. They released their handholds and soon joined their companions in the absolute cold outside the ship.

Once the bay was clear of any living Kracori, Adam shut the doors and began to pump air back into the chamber. He moved toward the exit hatch of the shuttle. “What about him?” Sherri asked, referring to the Klin.

Adam didn’t have a lot of time to linger. “I’d love to take him with us just so he can be interrogated back on Earth, but I don’t think he’d survive the trip.”

“We can always set the gravity a little lighter on the
Pegasus
.”

He hesitated near the door. “I suppose you’re right. Okay, bring him.”

The trio, with Sherri carrying the Klin over her shoulder, left the small shuttle and ran for the entrance to the
Pegasus
. Now that an atmosphere filled the bay once more, curious yet cautious Kracori were beginning to reenter, at a loss as to why the outer doors had opened without warning and no alarms sounded. Two of the nearest Kracori saw the running Humans and instinctively drew their MK’s.

Even though he was still learning how to use the ATD to its fullest potential, the disarming of flash weapons was one of the first things he’d learned, and by now he could do it in his sleep. The two Kracori were completely baffled as to why both their weapons failed to discharge, and then just as Adam entered the
Pegasus
, he noticed one of the Kracori point his weapon in the direction of his companion while still triggering the inert device. The look on the Kracori’s face was priceless when the MK suddenly discharged, sending a lethal bolt of blue-white energy into the chest of the other Kracori.

As Adam commanded the ship’s computer to secure the outer hatch and prepare for launch, he was wondering how the unfortunate alien would explain
that
at the inquest which was sure to follow.

********

Sherri forced the near-comatose Klin into one of the seats in the pilothouse and tied a safety harness around his thin body. The alien was still encased in his clear plastic exo-suit, which even if he did manage to work his way out of Sherri’s restraints, he wouldn’t be able to move very fast.

Adam slipped into the pilot’s seat and was relieved to see all the monitors before him lit-up and functioning. The Kracori technicians hadn’t done anything drastic to the
Pegasus
in the two hours since their arrival on the flagship. The
Pegasus
would get them away; what Adam had to do now was make sure they weren’t followed.

Sherri took a seat at the nav station and then looked over at Adam. “Time for some fancy mental shit,” she said. “They’re not going to let us just fly off without at least a few token bolts sent our way.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I can handle the flagship. It’s the other ships in the area that we have to worry about.”

Once the generators were charged and the chemical engines primed, Adam began to systematically disable all the electronics throughout the massive starship. Lights flickered out, without even the backups springing to life. Computers shut down and atmospheric fans quickly whirled to a stop. Weapon systems received no power, and even if they were charged and ready, the sensors and targeting computers were all sitting idle, their monitors blank.

In the darkness of the ship, the Kracori were panicking. Even though they were a proud and accomplished warrior class, the disorientation caused tempers to flair and fear to boil. Eventually self-contained flashlights were found in the dark, and soon wild beams of white light were lighting the interior of the ship like an epileptic laser show.

Adam activated the servos to the large sliding doors of the landing bay once again, yet this time he let them open to their full range. Dozens of more Kracori were sucked into the clear cold of space, along with four small shuttles and countless crates and propellant barrels that had managed to survive the last purging of the vast chamber.

Even the
Pegasus
was pulled toward the opening, and just as the delta-shaped craft joined the rest of the cascading debris leaving the bay, Adam activated the chemical drive and shot off into space.

With a flick of a switch on his console, Adam initiated a shallow gravity-well, while reserving his mental activities to link back to the ghost ATD he’d created aboard the nearest Kracori ship to the command vessel. He didn’t have time to explore too many of the ship’s command and control computers, so he focused on the weapon systems. There were nineteen separate batteries aboard the Kracori warship, served by four independent computers. He began to sever the controls to these units.

“They’re coming!” Sherri yelled. “Five ships just initiated gravity-wells.”

Adam noticed that the ship he was linked to was one of their pursuers and he wondered if they were even aware that their weapon systems were offline. Even so, there were four other Class-5’s only a step behind.

“Send me a course plot of the Kracori ships,” Adam commanded. The image Sherri sent over showed a wide line of tracks spread out just aft of their position. If the two focusing rings that had been replaced aboard the
Pegasus
had been larger models, Adam could have easily outrun the Class-5’s. As it was, all the ships were more or less capable of the same maximum speeds. And then he smiled as a plan popped into this head.

The five pursuers were spread out behind him in a perpendicular line to the
Pegasus
, each having initiated their wells simultaneously rather than in sequence. Each ship was separated from the others by an adequate distance to keep their wells from overlapping, with the ship Adam was linked to the second from the left along the line.

Adam felt along the electronic highway aboard the ship until he found the auxiliary steering control. He assumed control of the system … and sent the ship into a radical ninety-degree turn to starboard.

At the incredible speeds the row of ships were traveling, none had time to react before Adam’s slaved ship angled across the paths of the other three ships to the right. Gravity-wells overlapped, drawing the starships towards a central point in space, and even before they joined, Adam’s ship slammed into the vessel immediately to starboard, resulting in a tremendous explosion mimicking a miniature nova. The other two ships met at the apex of their gravity-wells, and they, too, were consumed in a second massive burst of fire and radiation.

That left only one pursuer … at least for the time being.

Adam wasn’t linked to this ship, and he had no way of initiating contact without his own CW-comm being in working condition. Even the traditional radio was ineffective since both ships were still about a third of a light-year apart.

Could the
Pegasus
take on a Kracori Class-5 dreadnaught on her own? He didn’t see how it was possible. Even though she did possess a powerful array of weapons, the
Pegasus
was built mainly for speed; her weapons were no match for the Kracori ship.

If only he could get within range of his ATD without getting blown to dust.

“What now, slick?” Sherri asked with a smile on her lips and worry in her eyes. “Once the rest of the fleet sees that their other ships haven’t destroyed us, they’ll be an all-out race for Earth with only an hour or so separating the winners from the losers. That won’t be enough time for the planet to prepare a defense.”