Resurrection (The Inherited War) (31 page)

Someone in the back shouted.  “Is the surface safe?”

“No, not really.  Any other questions?”  Cole looked around.

“Who elected you leader?”  That shout came from around knee level.  The men standing in front of the shouter parted ways so Cole could identify the speaker.

“Say that again?”  Cole shot daggers at the man.

“Why are you in charge?  You were nothing more than a private, what gives you the ability to command these men?  Why should we even follow you?”

“You are?”  Cole asked.

“I am the junior Senator from California, Senator Jackson.”

“Well, former Senator, as to your first question.  I am in charge because I am the only on with a plan of action and the only one who knows the way out.  I am the only one who has been fighting these pricks for the last few months and you don’t have to follow me.  I will leave this room right now with anyone who wants to go with me and follow my orders.  The rest of you can rot here.  The choice is up to you.  Oh and I also have a sizable and very powerful navy floating around out there in space right now that is most likely on its way here to pick us up and get us to safety.  You know, my old Platoon Sergeant always used to say there are no stupid questions, only stupid people.  I guess he was referring to you.”  Cole stood and faced the crowd of men again.  “Okay everyone who wants to come with me and my large friend here, and who doesn’t mind taking my orders say Aye.”  The response was thunderous.  “Those who want to stay with the Senator here say Nay.”  Silence reigned.  Cole looked at the Senator.  “I guess that settles that.”  Cole turned to begin the organization and order of movement to the next room.

~

Cole was going over weapons and ammo counts when the next attack came.  He had drawn out, to the best of his memory, the dimensions of the next room.  He was getting an assessment from West on the abilities of the men who had been fighting the last few days.  There was no question that Cole would be the first through the door with Split tight behind.  He needed to know who else he could count on in a pitched battle until they could get everyone through.

West was just telling him the names of his best shooters when an explosion went off right above their heads.  No one was seriously injured from the blast because whatever the Esii had used had disintegrated the metal and stone above their heads so no falling debris had hit them.  A few men died as the Esii unit dropped down into the stunned crowd.  Panic ensued as the Esii began firing into the crowd.  Men were running and diving everywhere as the ten troops of the Esii attack sprayed into the crowd.  Cole and Split were the only ones to keep their cool. 

The moment Cole’s brain made the connection from the sound of the explosion to their being an attack had an instantaneous effect.  His battle programming kicked in.  Time slowed to a crawl as his brain perceived and processed what he was seeing faster than a human normally could.  His arm moved like lighting as adrenalin and other drugs flooded into his system.  Even as the Esii started killing the humans and the humans started to panic, Cole was calmly firing from the hip.  His blast flew true and in no time he had half the Esii team down with shots to their heads.  Split reacted slower but more brutally.  He launched himself headfirst at the nearest of the Esii to him.  He tore into them with his bare hands. 

Still they weren’t fast enough.  Nine of the ten Esii were down, but many more humans were on the floor.  The last Esii had grabbed Anastacia and was crouched behind her holding a gun to her head.

“Call off your men.”  The Esii’s voice hissed across the room.

Cole instantly recognized the hissing voice.  “Dayja, you just stepped in it.”  Cole responded in English.

“Please, we both know that I can take this girl again whenever I want.  You would never know which of us it was.  Now put down your weapons and prepare to surrender to my people.”

“Well, there is one thing I know that you don’t.”  Cole nodded to Anastacia who jerked her body forward so suddenly she cleared the barrel of the Esii’s gun and broke her grip at the same time.

Cole’s rifle tracked over and put a shot straight into her forehead.  “We have a protector keeping you nasty telepaths out of our minds.”

Split dropped the half of the Esii he had been using to bludgeon another Esii to death with and walked over to the downed Dayja.  “Yes and we did not like what you did to our friend in the past.”  He then smashed his foot down onto her face, caving in her head.  He picked his foot up out of the ruined mess and wiped it clean on the body of another Esii.

Cole turned and dove into the mass of wounded and dead.  He helped the two doctors as much as he could, but in the end there were more wounded than supplies.  Ten more men died, and twenty had sustained wounds of varying degree.  None had been a part of the team Cole had chosen to assault the next room.  He called West over to him.

“Bring the people you trust here now.”  West nodded and waved a small group of men over.

“OK guys this is Cole, Cole these are the guys.  This is Liam, former construction worker.  Brett and Jack were cops, and the last ugly SOB is Vinnie.  Former enforcer for the Chicago mob.  These are the best under fire I have found so far.”

Cole looked them over.  They all looked like hard men who had been in the center of the action the last two days.  Cole nodded and hunkered down with them to explain the plan. “Alright, this is what is going to happen…”

~

Cole looked back over his shoulder.  Split was right behind him and West with his squad of newly suited up ass kickers was behind Split.  All had second skins on and were in the com loop.

“Opening door in 3, 2, 1. GO!”  Cole shouted as he followed his own advice and threw himself into the room.  Speed and surprise were the key to this op working.  He ran down the short connecting hallway and out into the center of the massive room.  As he entered the room he got to experience what it must have felt like to be on the field of a pro football stadium.  The room was that massive and wide open.  He skidded to a halt ten feet into the room.  He heard Split and West’s team slid to a halt alongside him.

Of all the things he had expected to find in this room, what he saw wasn’t one of them.  “Retract your helmets guys.”  Cole said quietly over the comms.  “Let them see who we are.”  Cole’s helmet retracted exposing his face to the crowd.  His helmet had gotten a head count before he had turned it off.  Ten thousand heads turned to look at the small group that had just crashed their way into the room.  Ten thousand women, human females turned to see their entrance into the room.  Ten thousand women stood and turned to face the five men and one alien.  Ten thousand pregnant women looked on as more men poured into the room.  Eleven thousand humans suddenly started to rush in to embrace each other as they realized they were no longer alone.  Cole stood flat on his feet and stared in wonder at the remains of the human race.

CHAPTER 23

The feeling of timelessness left Thalo as the small, yet tightly packed transport ship left warped space and rejoined the rest of the galaxy.  The feeling always left Thalo feeling a little queasy and disorientated.  This wasn’t usually a problem.  The ship felt like it jumped.  Like something had slammed into their belly and lifted the ship up violently.  Alarms started to blare in the cramped spaces of the ship.  One of the Kin, Thalo wasn’t sure which one, bumped up against Thalo as the ship was pummeled.  Thalo desperately reached his hand out for the control point on his chair.

Just as he was about to grab onto it and bond with the ship, they were hit again, this time from the side.  The Kin that had bumped into him the first time was suddenly sprawled across Thalo's lap.  Thalo cursed and yelled at the Kin while pushing the big alien off his lap.  He got the winged alien far enough off the chair to expose the bind point.  He ignored the shouted questions from the other occupants of the bridge and reconnected with the ship.

Information pummeled his mind.  Damage reports, locations of enemy ships, incoming fire and defensive systems started dumping their information in to his brain.  Thalo didn’t have time to sort it out.  His shields were being overwhelmed and he needed to act.  He had deliberately plotted his course well shy of the max penetration range of the Twin World System. 

Thalo activated the gravity engines.  He didn’t have time to disconnect from the ship.  He remembered a conversation he had with Cole about this.  Cole had said that he didn’t know what would happen if you stayed connected to the ship, but that Hal had told him never to do it unless he had no choice.

Thalo had no choice.  He tried to disengage from the ship before it jumped, but even at the speed of light he wasn’t fast enough.  The ship’s engines warped space and disappeared in an instant.  In warped space these human ships could break the natural order of things. They could go faster than the speed of light.  It did funny things with your mind even if you weren’t bonded to a ship.

For Thalo, everything just stopped.  He felt stuck in time.  He was in every moment, he simultaneously existed in every moment in time.  He felt the Big Bang and the universe collapse in on itself and everything in between.    He saw everything that had happened and would happen in this particular place.   The images were stacked on top of each other and pushed at the boundaries of his mind.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”  It took Thalo a moment realize someone was talking to him.  He couldn’t make out what was being said though.  The words were mashed together in one single moment of time.  Thalo fought to control his mind.  The words hadn’t been spoken aloud, so it had to be the ship.

“I don’t understand.”  Thalo tried to shout but the words came out all at once.

“Focus,” one word, understandable then another, “break,” another pause, “up.”  More pauses and more single words.  “Words.  Focus.  One.  At.  A. Time.”  A final pause, then, “I said, beautiful isn’t it?”

Thalo fought to bring the words into focus and split them apart.  It took a while but he finally figured it out.  Slowly he responded.  “No, it is weird.  How long does this take?”

“A second or forever.  There is no time in this place.  It just is.  Haven’t you noticed yet?  It is everywhere and every time all in one place.  It is the beginning, the middle, and the end all in one place at one time.”

“Do you go through this every time we travel?”  Thalo asked the AI.

“Yes.  It is the same every time.”

“It feels like I am being blown apart at the same time as I am being collapsed in on myself,” Thalo said.  “Unimaginable pain mixed with unrivaled pleasure.  I feel everything and nothing.”

“Yes it is very addicting.  Or so I have been told.”  The AI responded.

“What do you mean?”  Thalo asked.

“When the Pures discovered how to move faster than light in warped space it was a wonderful achievement indeed.   They practiced and adjusted the process until they had it mastered.  Then the new ships were invented.  Ships that could hold the minds of the crew, their consciousness.  The first Pures to test fly those early ships jumped into warped space and were never seen again.  Finally test after test revealed the answer.  Their minds were too weak to turn away from the beauty of this place and they stayed connected to their ships and are probably still floating around in warped space as we speak.  Though since they are still going faster than light they may have left the universe already, or more likely found out there is nothing past the universe and simply disappeared when they reach the edge.  Very few of the Pures were ever able to come here and leave with their sanity.  And only then when an AI was here to help them.” 

“Is that why they created you?”  Thalo asked with wonder.  So far this trip had shown him places and beings he hadn’t known existed in the galaxy before.

“No, but it motivated them to create AI’s with higher intelligence than had been created before.  They theorized that if there was someone there with them in this place, they would have a better chance of getting out.  They were right.  If it wasn’t for me right now, this ship would be headed for the edge of the universe and its ultimate demise.”

“Thanks, I guess.”  Thalo said.  “What do we do now?”

“Now, you need to prepare to handle a very badly damaged ship when we return to normal space.  I adjusted the shielding as best as I could, but we sustained some major damage before we jumped.” 

Thalo was about to ask what he could expect when they returned to normal space but was interrupted by the ship violently reentering the normal universe.  Thalo was opening his mouth to ask but instead vomited all over the body that fell into his lap. 

Thalo felt like his insides were being torn out through his mouth.  He spewed up everything he had eaten in the last day or so onto the unfortunate Kin that had been knocked over onto Thalo's lap.  Searing pain jolted through Thalo's head as his synapses fired all at once and all of the muscles in his body contracted and released as one.  His eyes rolled wildly around in his head as he desperately tried to focus.  His ears were bombarded with the sounds of shouted questions and the blaring of alarm klaxons...

He managed to get control of his right arm long enough to slam his hand down on the ships bond interface and release his mind back into the ship.  Calm slipped over his mind.  He regained his focus in nano seconds and put his mind behind assessing the situation.  He opened the combat information feeds and scrolled through the readouts.  They were not very good.  His shielding was gone and he had micro fractures in his hull.  They were slowly venting atmosphere.  He turned his attention outward.

Thalo's virtual eyes widened as he saw the external sensors reports.  Ships, thousands of ships were in a blockaded position around the Twin Worlds.  The space between the blockaded and the worlds was filled with the countless wrecks and destroyed ships of his people’s fleet.  It took only a second for the transport to begin sorting out the makeup of the ships.  The Esii had come and were once again trying to conquer his world.  It had been thousands of years since their last incursion, but Worlders had never forgotten.  The horror and atrocities the Esii had perpetrated on his world and its people was nearly as great as they had done to Cole’s ancestors.

Thousands of Esii ships were just out of firing range of the two planets ground guns and appeared to be holding their distance.  Then he saw why.  The remaining ships of Cole’s fleet were holding the line with the remnants of the Worlders fleets.  Thalo said a silent thanks to those ships and for his quick getaway.  He had come out of hyper within range of the Esii guns. The advanced shielding of his transport and his quick reflexes saved them from destruction.  The transport kept the reports coming in.  They were losing primary power and the gravity collector was offline.  Main engines were down and they had lost communications.  Thalo began shutting down all the ships secondary functions in the hopes he could buy more time for the primaries.

His people had to have seen his two jumps and were on the way.  It was just a matter of time.  He finished doing everything he could from the virtual bridge and disconnected.  The calm of the virtual bridge was replaced by shouting and the smell of burnt electrical components.  And the sour stench of his vomit across the back of the still struggling Kin that had fallen over Thalo.  Thalo helped him regain his feet and was about to stand when the lights went out.  The bridge was plunged into complete darkness.

“Is everyone….” He began to shout when he got a lungful of smoke and began to cough.  He cleared out his lungs and took a more cautious breath.

“Is everyone ok?”  He managed to get out between clenched teeth.

“Yes, those on the bridge are fine,” came the voice of a Kin, one he didn’t recognize, “but the power has gone out and we are unable to open the door or com the rest of the ship.”

“No shit?  The powers out, huh?”  Thalo muttered under his breath, “Ok my people saw us and will come for us.  We just have to wait.  We took too much damage and I routed as much power to the life-support as I could.  We are well within range of rescue ships and should be fine.”

Thalo was sending good thoughts out to the universe.  “Please, please,” he thought, “see us and send someone to get us.”

“Then we wait.”  That same unknown Kin voice responded.

Thalo settled back into his chair and rested his chin in his hand.  They had maybe an hour before the air began to run out.  After that it wouldn’t take this many beings in such a small space to consume the last of the oxygen.  Thalo settled in to wait and as an afterthought apologized to whomever he had vomited on.

~

Just minutes before his mental clock said they were out of time, Thalo heard a loud clang reverberate through the hull of the ship.  Everything had failed at this point and all that was left was the life-support.  Luckily for him, the Kin put out an amazing amount of body heat and had kept the bridge from cooling too much, but he could taste the staleness in the air.  Thalo had just about given into despair that his people were just unable to rescue them when the loud clang startled everyone onboard.

Thalo let out a whoop of excitement as he felt the ship begin to move.  Within moments he felt the artificial gravity of their rescue ship take hold on the transport as he and the Kin slowly settled under their own weight.  More clanging was followed by a small explosion and the ship rocking on its belly.  It seemed like an eternity to Thalo but finally they heard sounds just outside the bridge door.  Seconds later a cutter was burning through the door frame.  The cut out fell out and away from the bridge as cool clean fresh air assaulted the bridge members.  Soft light flooded the cramped room as well.

“We were cut off from the rear,” Thalo began to force his way to the newly cut door, “how is everyone in the back?  Did they all make it?”

A startled engineer looked at Thalo in amazement.  “Yes, yes sir.”  He stammered out.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Everyone in the rear was almost asphyxiated by the time we cut through.  We weren’t expecting anyone to be conscious.  Our medics are tending to the Nixa and,” he hesitated for a moment.

“Kin, they are called the Kin.”  Thalo supplied.

The engineers eyes got a little wider at that point and his mouth hung open in amazement.  “They don’t exist, do they?”  He quietly asked.

Thalo walked by the soldier and said.  “Ask them,” he pointed his thumb behind him as the Kin filed out of the bridge, “they will be able to tell you.”

Thalo stepped out of the dead vessel and into the bright lights of a bustling hanger bay.  Kin lay sprawled all over the deck and every one of them had an oxygen line and mask on their faces.  Thalo scanned the room and saw that everyone was well tended and taken care of.  His eyes stopped when he got to Jeth and the Nixa sisters.  He rushed over to them and knelt down beside Jeth.  Everyone else seemed to slowly be rousing, but Jeth was still out cold.  Sky was arguing with the medic tending to Jeth when Thalo got there.

Sky’s voice was muffled by the mask she still had on but Thalo could understand her completely.

“Boy, when you have been a doctor as long as I have then you can tell me what’s, what.  In the meantime go get me the god damn infuser and DO. IT. NOW.”  Sky screamed the last at him.

The medic stumbled backwards and ran off to do her bidding.  “What is it?”  Thalo said quietly.  “What's wrong?”

“I won’t lie Thalo, it’s bad.”  She laid her hand on the big beings arm as she spoke.  “It's his size.  He needs vast more amounts of oxygen than we do.  He was the first of us to go down when the air got thin.”

“What does that mean?”  Thalo asked again, even quieter this time.

“I honestly don’t know.”  Sky began.  “The human nanites we have in us more than likely carried what oxygen he was getting to his vital organs to keep him alive.  He could range from a bad headache to brain damage.  It is going to take time.  He is breathing on his own for now but he needs a direct infusion of oxygen to his blood.  That medic thought he knew better.  Thalo I'm sorry, but what happened?”

“Esii.  Thousands of them.  Their ships are all over the system.  I got telemetry from the other planet.  Both are currently under a blockade.  We jumped in too short and got blasted by their picket ships.  We are lucky to be alive.”  Just then the medic returned with a small case and handed it to Sky.