Star Viking (Extinction Wars Book 3) Read online

  Around us in the storm-tossed sea were other stealth pods. From them rose the wasp-like Star Vikings. In all, ninety-three DZ9s made it. Only one trooper drowned.

  “Rollo,” I radioed.

  “I know what to do,” he said. Gunning his air-cycle and taking three other troopers with him, Rollo headed for the underwater excavation. Between them in a mesh net, the machines carried a present for the tigers. It was part of our escape plan.

  The other ninety cycles hummed as we sped low over the water toward the mountains in the far distance. On one of those plateaus was the city of Zelambre and the selected Hall of Honor.

  We’d made the space drop. Now it was time to see if we could hit the city before anyone knew humans were on Horus’ surface.

  ***

  This strike was different from Sanakaht in a number of ways. The biggest difference was the need to travel three hundred kilometers before we struck the first blow.

  I led the pack, an air-cycle gang from Earth. The image made me grin for thirty kilometers. Opening the throttle, I flew until my craft shuddered. Below, the ocean whizzed past. Soon, we hit a sandy beach, climbed above plants that looked like palm trees and made the cycles throb with strain as we rode up steep slopes.

  It was dark, and thick cloud cover meant no stars. We passed monsters the size of city blocks, slow-moving slug creatures. Lava pits roared with flame fifty meters tall. Darting bat things swooped at me like gnats. Two struck my suit, flopping away as each gave their death-screech. Stupid bats.

  “Slow it down,” I ordered.

  We were forty kilometers from Zelambre. Horus time, it must have been two o’clock in the morning. Dense cloud cover protected the surface from the star’s harsh radiation. This system’s sun gave off more bad rays than Earth’s did.

  The DZ9s skimmed a swamp. I saw the scummy water ripple. Once, giant coils like a Loch Ness monster spun into sight and disappeared just as fast.

  “Snakes,” Dmitri said. “I hate snakes.”

  I smiled. The Cossack loved old movies and repeating his favorite lines from them.

  “No mercy,” I reminded my bikers. “Kill anyone getting in the way. This is one raid that must succeed.”

  No one argued. Everyone knew the score. Still, I felt it was good to remind them.

  The last ten kilometers showed farmland and bizarre structures. The latter reminded me of the funky statues I used to see on American college campuses. I know. I’m a philistine when it comes to art. I had a simple rule of thumb. Anything I could do wasn’t art. I could fling paint on a canvas. I could twist girders and cement them into the ground. I couldn’t paint like Rembrandt or chisel marble and make it look like a beautiful naked lady. Those things were art. The crap at the end had been the ugliness that the last American upper class had shoveled onto the rest of us and called it beauty.

  It seemed like the Purple Tamika Lokhars had the same mental disease.

  I gripped my handlebars. On my HUD, the dark log city rose into view. Well, rose might be the wrong word. It appeared as a cold, sleepy town with a few of the bizarre artwork statues thrown in.

  In the center of town was the biggest log palace that I’d ever seen. If I had to compare it to anything, it would have been the Kremlin in Moscow. The Russians had known how to build with wood. They had those crazy domes and cool spires. Sadly, these days, Moscow was a radioactive crater.

  I grabbed a sonic grenade from my pouch. Activating it with my thumb, I dropped it onto the first street. Other Star Vikings did likewise.

  Our helmets would stop the debilitating, and in some instances, killing noise. As the DZ9s buzzed Zelambre, we dropped our tiny bundles on a clearly unsuspecting metropolitan suburb.

  “Dmitri, now,” I said.

  The Cossack ordered his arbans. Almost immediately, missiles roared from under the belly of selected cycles. The small rockets hissed with hellish speed and blasted against the Hall of Honor.

  Explosions rocked the log palace. Wood shot into the air. Flames jetted. Fires blazed into existence. More missiles struck.

  Tiger guards appeared on untouched wooden parapets. They wore absurd plumed helmets and hefted long sticks with blades on the end. This was getting better and better. They must have been ceremonial guards.

  With my Bahnkouv, I shot one of them in the chest. The Lokhar crumpled around the beam, with his fur smoking. Another, I pierced in the head, which vanished under the hot laser.

  Then, I dropped the rifle and used both hands. I flew through an exploded opening into the Hall of Honors. Before me flashed the ancient prizes Ras Claw had described.

  Standing up as if riding a jet ski, I skidded across the floor until I reached a blazing fire. Tigers roared, shouting what sounded like obscenities. Were these the vestals? They didn’t have weapons, but they did charge with their claws extended.

  I thought about my dad. He’d never had a chance against the Lokhar dreadnought. Yeah, everyone wants war to be fair and honorable. It never has been, and it never will be. That’s just my opinion, for what it’s worth.

  With a Lokhar machine gun, I put every tiger on his back. Blood and guts blew everywhere. I’m a savage. I’m an Earther. I’m not making excuses. I’m not proud of what I did to them. Could I have done it another way? Yeah. If I’d been thinking more clearly, I might have used another sonic grenade. I didn’t, though. I got off my cycle and slaughtered them.

  Then I proceeded to beat out the fire. Why would any tiger care about these flames? Ras Claw had told us about the Eternal Fire of Purple Tamika. An old Lokhar prophecy said that if it ever went out that would be the end of the tribe. Well, I beat out the fire except for one precious coal.

  Three troopers ran near with a hot box. Using tongs, I grabbed the last coal and dumped it into the container. A different trooper put in the special tinder for the coal. Great stacks of wood lay nearby. In the box was the last of their Eternal Fire. If Purple Tamika wanted it back, they were going to have to be nice to me.

  “Go,” I told the three. “Take the fire and guard it with your lives.”

  They raced back to their humming cycles on the floor.

  I rotated in a slow circle, watching my people at work. Dead Lokhars lay everywhere. We ripped tapestries off the walls. Those were made from the fur of kings and emperors. Ancient tiger armor tumbled into our carrying carts. Swords, knives, kick boots filled our boxes. Black blood, skulls and banners twelve thousand years old fell into special sacks. Smooth gold coins and stone talismans clattered against each other.

  “Lokhar military or religious police are on their way,” Dmitri radioed me.

  I ran to my air-cycle, lifted and shot through an exploded opening. With five other Star Vikings, I flew at lights bobbing along the widest canal.

  Big log boats with mounted weapons sped toward the middle of Zelambre.

  “No you don’t,” I said. “Follow me,” I told the troopers.

  I flew down their throats. I mean straight at those mounted weapons. There wasn’t any swerving or darting. Locking the direction of my cycle, I stood and blazed away with the Lokhar machine gun. Tigers tumbled from the dugouts.

  A red beam from one of the boat cannons hit a cycle. The DZ9 exploded in a fiery blast. A helmet hissed past me. It carried the head of a dead Star Viking.

  The machine gun trembled in my hands as I hammered tigers and their boats. Bloody chunks mingled with smoking wood. Then, everything went crazy as two red beams struck my cycle. They chewed metal, and I immediately began to drop.

  With a bellow of rage, I leapt from my DZ9. Luckily for me, I struck water. I plummeted and hit bottom almost right away. Using my legs and the enhanced power of the symbiotic suit, I leapt again, this time for the surface.

  My head broke the surface with big dugout canoes all around me. Blades slashed at my helmet. Several struck like gongs, making my ears ring. It’s hard to remember exactly what happened next. In a red haze, I recall grabbing a pole and yanking myself toward the surprised ti
ger. He braced his feet to keep from tumbling into the water. For his sake and that of his fellow guards, he would have been better off letting go of his pole.

  Like a monster from a swampy lagoon, I climbed into his dugout. Tearing the halberd-thing from a Lokhar, I hacked with demented strength. They roared and rushed me. I mowed them down because I had a pure heart and wore living skin of Jelk design.

  When I cleared the first dugout, I leaped, rocking the next as I landed. With fury, I chopped furry bodies. For as long as I lived, I planned to kill and destroy the enemies of Earth.

  Even with the symbiotic suit, I began to grow weary after the third dugout. The skin had taken cuts and oozed, attempting to heal.

  A red beam slashed past me.

  That revitalized my energies. I dove, hiding on the bottom of the boat, crawling for the front of the craft. I never made it. Using beams, the tigers sawed and hacked my dugout. Instead of dying to their weapon mounts, I slithered overboard, sinking into the murky water.

  Aiming my visor toward the surface, I used my HUD to make out the dugout bottoms. Some of the fury departed my brain as I stood down there. I recalled my sonic grenades and the force blade at my side.

  Right, I knew how to play this.

  With a leap and a bellow inside my helmet, I shot up, latched a hand onto a gunwale and pulled myself aboard a new dugout. Tigers roared and hacked.

  My suit had hardened and fended off the first round of blows. Before the second cut my living skin, I rolled a sonic grenade onto the sloshing bottom.

  It must have gone off. The tigers dropped, with blood pouring out of their ears. Some clapped their paws over their ears and dove overboard.

  I stood and began lobbing sonic grenades into other dugouts. Soon, I stood alone, bobbing in the canal.

  On shore, the big Hall of Honors burned nicely. I watched with professional appreciation and saw air-cycles burst out like a swarm of bees. They flew for the ocean. I waved to them, and I would have used my helmet’s radio to call. Unfortunately, it had shorted out. Must have happened because of all those halberd slashes to the head.

  I breathed deeply. How long would it be until the tigers brought power-armored soldiers to take me down?

  I shrugged.

  Then, I noticed three cycles skimming the water. I waved again, more vigorously than before. One of the riders must have seen me. He turned, and in less than thirty seconds, he hovered just above my head.

  Gratefully, I climbed onto Dmitri’s cycle. The Cossack hadn’t given up on me. I owed my friend big time.

  Slapping him on the back, I let him know I was okay. He gave me the thumbs up. Then Dmitri gunned his DZ9, heading out of Zelambre with our sacred loot.

  We’d made it in, always the easier part of a raid or an assassination. Getting out alive was going to be the challenge.

  -26-

  As Dmitri drove, I worked on my helmet radio. When we flew over the sandy beach, I finally managed to reconnect by using a secondary emergency pack.

  N7 had already arranged the timing with Ella upstairs in the Achilles. I confirmed that everyone was ready.

  “The orbitals have gone onto high alert,” Ella told me.

  “It’s time for our surprise, then,” I said.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Creed?” she asked.

  I didn’t mind that she used my name on the radio. Let the Purple Tamika Lokhars know I’d done this. Let them crap their drawers over me.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “Do it.”

  “Roger,” Ella said.

  I waited behind Dmitri. He skimmed over the dark waves. Around me, the Star Vikings flew in a tight formation.

  After another thirty kilometers, I swear I felt a shudder coming from the planet. That was impossible, of course. First, I was airborne. Second, how could Horus tremble?

  Then, I saw it. My heart went cold. Far out on the watery horizon, a giant mushroom cloud rose higher and higher.

  I swallowed uneasily. Had I done the right thing? I had a feeling I’d have to pay for giving this order. Maybe not right away, but someday.

  At my orders, Rollo and his team had carried a hell-burner, dropping it over the ancient Forerunner city. The fantastically powerful explosive must have sunk onto the sea bottom before igniting. Could the blast have made the planet rumble? No. It must have been a guilty subconscious on my part.

  I’d destroyed a great archeological dig. The site had held history from the beginning, ruins from the fabled First Ones. What did I care, right? Why fret over it? The Lokhars had nuked and poisoned the Earth. Screw the old digs. The tigers had messed with humanity. I wanted them to gnash their teeth and pull out their fur over us. Maybe just as importantly, I wanted something to occupy their thoughts. Let them wonder what we would strike next. Let them focus on the terrorist attack instead of the Star Viking raid, at least for a few minutes, in order to let us execute our last maneuver.

  The mushroom cloud grew as a brilliant flare of noonday light expanded on the horizon. Hell-burners have that effect. We only had the one, though.

  Heaviness squeezed my chest. Despite my hatred for the Earth-destroying Lokhars, I felt bad for the order to drop the nuke. Still, I didn’t think my personal payback would happen today. That meant I had to concentrate on the here and now.

  “Let’s do it,” I said. “Go!”

  All around me, DZ9s shot upward into the sky like old-time Blue Angel jets. We attempted to rendezvous with the Achilles in the upper atmosphere.

  ***

  By the time we reached our limit, the light from the hell-burner had long since died down. I imagine every orbital and its sensors watched the sea. I also figured that many of them would be blind for a little while longer.

  When the explosion first blasted in the Horus Ocean, the Peru and the Achilles plunged down into the atmosphere. They came for different reasons.

  As the Achilles hovered in place with its anti-gravity pods whining at full power, Star Vikings drove to an open bay door. This was the tricky part. The cyclists didn’t drive in. Instead, they hovered in place and pitched their cargo through the door. Then, they leaped into the patrol boat. Afterward, the DZ9 fell toward the ocean.

  Soon, it was our turn. The larger Peru hovered beside the Achilles. We lifted between the spaceships as Dmitri maneuvered the cycle to the open door.

  “Go, Commander,” he told me.

  I stood and made sure not to look down. Instead, I focused on the open bay. With a leap, and the cycle dipping under me, I shot through the gap into the waiting arms of fellow Star Vikings. A second later, Dmitri followed. His cycle plunged down.

  We lost three troopers who misjudged the distance or were wounded or too tired. I would have liked to rescue them. We had no more time, though. They dropped with the falling DZ9s.

  The bay door closed, and the Achilles headed for low orbit. Beside the patrol boat, the automated and quite empty Peru did likewise.

  Zoe’s patrol boat had a special feature, a cloaking device. It didn’t need to work long, but it needed to hide us from scanners for a few critical hours.

  I shed my symbiotic skin, depositing the quivering blob into its heated cylinder. After capping the unit, I literally ran down the ship’s corridors, reaching the bridge as the boat entered the darkness of space.

  “Commander,” Zoe said from her chair. She rose to move aside for me.

  “No, sit down,” I said. “You’re running the Achilles. I’m just here to watch.”

  She nodded, sitting down and all business again as she rapped out commands.

  The two vessels rose together almost side by side.

  “Now,” Zoe said.

  A terrific hum vibrated the deck plates under my feet. The boat’s pilot slowed our climb. On the main screen and in the view port, I watched the Peru accelerate into higher orbit.

  Over our speakers, harsh Lokhar voices uttered orders.

  We ignored them. So did the Peru. Did the orbital operators know about the looting o
f the Hall of Honor? It would appear so. No plasma cannons fired on the transport. If I had to guess, the tigers didn’t want to destroy the precious cargo they thought rode in the hauler.

  On auto, the Peru headed for deep space.

  I stared at the main screen. It showed a passive sensor image of what happened. Twenty Lokhar military vessels peeled out of orbit, accelerating after the Peru. Clearly, they must have known about the sacrilege to the Hall of Honor. They must have known that whoever had attacked had stolen precious items. The tigers obviously wanted those items back.

  In the Achilles, we tiptoed the rest of the way up from the planet. With the cloaking device, we slipped past orbitals and big Lokhar battle cruisers.

  As a kid, I used to read war novels and history. War World II had always held a special place in my heart and imagination. I recalled the tale of German Lieutenant Commander Gunther Prien.

  On October 14, 1939 in U-47, a German submarine, Prien snuck into Scapa Flow at night. The British home fleet was concentrated there. Slipping past antisubmarine defenses, steel nets for instance, and negotiating treacherous riptides, Prien fired two spreads of four torpedoes. He scored several hits against the battleship Royal Oak. In two minutes, the British capital ship went down, taking 786 officers and men with her. Afterward, Prien slipped out of the harbor and away, making the most gallant exploit of the sea war between the two nations.

  Standing on the Achilles’ bridge behind Captain Zoe’s chair, I felt a thrill similar to what Commander Prien must have felt back then.

  How long could our cloaking device hold? Maybe no longer than it took the tigers to storm aboard the Peru.

  In the end, it took the Lokhars forty-three minutes for a battle cruiser to speed beside the transport. Power-armored tigers made the small voyage between the two ships, landing on the Peru’s hull.

  We’d been waiting for that. The transport exploded into a massive fireball. The battle cruiser’s shield held for a tenth of a second. After that, it went down, and the Peru’s debris smashed through the armored hull, destroying the Lokhar capital ship. There wouldn’t be anything left of the boarders.