Extinction Wars 3: Star Viking Read online

  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.

  It was a dirty tactic, I know. I planned it that way. I wanted the horror of the situation to dull their reactions. Later, rage would consume the tigers. For now, I wanted them drugged with dazed disbelief at the loss of the precious cargo the Peru supposedly carried.

  For the next several hours, we headed cloaked for the distant jump gate.

  By that time, radio traffic raged with accusations back and forth. Priests called for an hour of silent grief. Lokhar scientists begged for decontamination units.

  A psychic force seemed to build over Zelambre. I could sense it aboard the Achilles. It felt as the unified fury and tiger grief reached out to our patrol boat. No one cheered here. No one clapped each other on the back.

  I made the rounds through the corridors and cabins. Relieved assault troopers stared at me with huge eyes.

  “Are we going to make it, Commander?” a man asked.

  “We’re doing it,” I said. “But we’re far from out of it yet.”

  I wanted to tell them to wear slippers and keep their voices down. It wouldn’t make any difference, but in our hearts, we must have all felt that.

  Finally, I returned to the bridge.

  Zoe turned to me. She shook her head. The woman looked exhausted. “Please, Commander, take over.”

  I nodded.

  She got up, moving like an old woman.

  With a sigh, I sank into the command chair. I could feel the weight of responsibility descend upon me.

  Maybe this was why I loved riding the cycles so much. I’d felt free hours ago on the planet. This…it strained my nerves and curdled my gut.

  “The enemy sensor sweeps are getting stronger, sir,” the comm operator told me.

  A hatch opened. I turned my chair. Ella walked to me and leaned against an armrest.

  “Maybe we should just make a dash for it,” she said.

  “Look at those battle cruisers heading for the jump gate,” I said. “Their beams would spear us in a moment.”

  “They’re going to know we went through the gate.”

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  Time ticked by with agonizing slowness. Was this how Prien had felt on the way out of Scapa Flow? The Germans had sunk a mighty British battleship. Their lives would have been mud if they failed to slip away undetected. Ours would be scrambled atoms in the void of a Lokhar star system if we failed.

  How could we beat the Lokhars? What would Gunther Prien do in this situation?

  For the next ten minutes, I thought furiously, and I drew a blank. We weren’t U-47. We were the Star Vikings. Yeah. What would a Viking captain of old have done in this situation?

  Our cloaked patrol boat would never make it past the star fighters beginning to spread out in front of the jump gate. Two battle cruisers already waited there. Three more came, with even more heading out.

  Did they know we’d made it off the planet? Maybe they suspected a trick. How would a Star Viking react?

  My eyes widened. I turned to Ella.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I know how we can escape the Horus star system,” I said.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  I did.

  After listening to the idea, she told me I was a lunatic. Maybe she was right. We had thirty minutes to get ready. Then it would be time to attempt the craziest attack of the mission.

  ***

  I pulled my blob of symbiotic armor out of the heat unit. Stepping onto it, I let the warm substance slide up my legs. Soon, I put on a helmet and shouldered a thruster pack onto my shoulders. Around me, assault troopers did likewise.

  With Zoe’s people added in, I had one hundred and seventy-three effectives. That left the bridge crew to run the Achilles.

  The three battle cruisers from Horus had already begun braking maneuvers. The two in front waited, with the wall of star fighters behind them at the jump gate.

  I had another Bahnkouv, a souped-up weapon we called Hot Shot. It would burn out after ten or eleven intense laser blasts. Usually, a laser rifle would fire for a long time. Each of these laser bolts had the ability to burn through Lokhar powered armor. Soon, if everything went right, we would be facing power-armored legionaries again.

  “All right, people,” I said over the short-speaker. “Probably, only half of us are going to be alive an hour from now. This is balls out to the firewall. I don’t see any other way of getting home, though. Kill every Lokhar you see, no exceptions. Don’t give the engine crew time to blow their ship. This is a blitzkrieg attack plus ten thousand. Any questions?”

  No one had any.

  We waited in the cargo bay, the one we’d entered not so long ago above the Horus Ocean.

  “Hang on,” Zoe said over the ship speaker.

  I grabbed a crash bar. Others did likewise. A period of hard maneuvers took place.

  “One more minute,” Zoe said.

  My palms became slick with sweat. Would the patrol boat remain cloaked long enough?

  “Thirty seconds,” she said.

  I would have liked to say something more to my troopers. My mouth had turned too dry.

  “Now,” Zoe said.

  The bay door began to slide open. Stars appeared. Then I saw the underbelly of a big Lokhar battle cruiser. It, too, had an open bay door. Fighters launched down from it.

  That was our one stroke of luck. It might be all we needed.

  “Hang on just a moment longer,” Zoe said. “I’m taking us closer.”

  She maneuvered the patrol boat. A Lokhar fighter barely missed us as it flashed past. The wash must have hit our cloaking field in same manner. An electrical discharge flared between the two vessels. Ours was a toy compared to the battle cruiser.

  “Someone spotted us,” Zoe said. “Go!”

  I let go of the crash bar. With my magnetic boots, I ran along the deck plates. When I reached the open bay door, I cut their power and jumped. At the same moment, I turned on the thruster pack. At maximum acceleration, I rushed the battle cruiser’s fighter launch bay.

  Behind me, other Star Vikings did likewise. It was a race, all right. We were going to board and storm the vessel and try to take it over as our own.

  I expelled hydrogen spray, a white misty trail behind me as I strained to reach the open bay door. If I failed, humanity would never make a comeback. My teeth ground together as rage consumed me. I envisioned the Emperor himself aboard the craft. My head began to beat in time to my heart. A hazy red nimbus surrounded my vision.

  A cool, detached part of my mind, a little citadel buried deeply in my brain, watched as berserker-gang overcame me. Maybe the suit pumped the drugs. Maybe I did it on my own. For once, I couldn’t tell the difference.

  Raving, I closed the distance and the bay doors began sliding shut. I came like a cannonball, readying my Bahnkouv. Ten shots to win a species—mine—another extended bout at life.

  I flashed past a giant door and pulled the trigger. Eighty meters away, a clear surface shattered so shards glittered in the hangar bay. A Lokhar officer backed away from his controls. I shot again, and he exploded in fur, blood and bone.

  Speeding fast, I twisted my torso, readied myself and struck a bulkhead. Cannonballing off it, pushing with my legs to guide my direction, I shot at the wrecke
d control chamber. I swiveled my torso once more and blasted a roar of hydrogen spray from the thrusters. I had to slow down.

  More armored Star Vikings flew into the hangar bay. Their laser bolts took down floating tigers and others running away with magnetic boots clanking along the deck plates.

  Swiveling around again, I pulled the trigger three times. The shots blasted within the chamber. The closing bay doors halted, frozen with ten meters of space between them.

  Then, I hit a gory wall within the control chamber, bounced and floated out.

  A big hatch deeper in the hangar bay opened and power-armored Lokhars poked their rifles through.

  I emptied my Bahnkouv at them, dropping three tiger legionaries. Before they murdered me, I landed behind steel cylinders, activating my boots. My head still beat with a savage pulse. Instead of sonic grenades, I had proton hand-bombs. Pressing a thumb on the igniter, I hurled one so it sped like a bullet. Two tigers shot at me. One missed. The other hit symbiotic skin, making my suit quiver with pain.

  The berserker-gang evaporated from my brain, making me realize the suit had been giving me the madness.

  At the big hatch leading into the interior of the battle cruiser, a proton explosion took out the legionaries.

  “Follow me,” I radioed. In leaping bounds, I moved to the wrecked portal into the ship. Grabbing a Lokhar rifle, slipping on a power pack, I charged down the corridor. It had gravity so I moved like a freight train on meth.

  Star Vikings rushed behind me.

  We had surprise and murdered every tiger we saw. More power-armored legionaries appeared. We killed them, losing ten troopers to their weapons.

  Dmitri split off, leading a team for the bridge. Rollo likewise went another way as he fought to reach the T-missiles. I battled my way to the engine room.

  Instead of playing a skilled game of maneuver and countermove, I lobbed proton bombs and rushed to close quarters. There I stabbed with my force blade. If I’d tried for perfect tactics, I’m afraid we would have traded shots from around corners. That would have slowed everything down. Time counted more than ensuring we didn’t take casualties.

  It meant the headlong attack cost human lives. We traded them for time. Then, the Lokhars must have run out of power-armored legionaries, at least the ones facing all died.

  Our last gamble turned into tiger butchery. Twenty-two Star Vikings, along with me, burst into a huge chamber. It contained silver-colored, throbbing fusion cells. I shot sprinting Lokhar engineers trying to get away. Then, I blew away the heads of three tigers madly tapping at controls. I assumed they attempted to build a fusion overload.

  Star Vikings rushed to those panels. Three minutes later, my techs turned to me and popped up their thumbs. They had the engines under control.

  In my helmet, I flipped onto a different channel. “Dmitri?” I asked.

  “We have control of the bridge, Commander. But I have bad news. The other battle cruisers are turning to engage us.”

  “Are the ship’s shields at full power?” I asked.

  “Yes, Commander,” Dmitri said.

  “Is the Achilles in the main hold?”

  “Yes, Commander,” the Cossack said.

  “Then hang on. I’m coming up to you.”

  “We cannot defeat the enemy fighters and the battle cruisers about to engage us,” he said.

  “You don’t think so?” I asked.

  “No, Commander,” Dmitri said.

  Once more, I switched onto a different channel. “Rollo, are you ready?”

  “Give me ten more minutes, Creed,” Rollo said.

  “You have five. Then it’s go time.”

  “That’s cutting it too close,” Rollo said. “It’s not going to work if you don’t prepare properly. Five minutes isn’t enough time to rig everything perfectly.”

  Through the comm-line, I brayed with laughter. “No battle is perfect, my friend. It’s all about winning. Nothing else matters.”

  “You think we can win through to the jump gate and beyond?” Rollo asked, sounding dubious.

  “We’re about to find out,” I said. “Now quit jabbering and get those T-missiles ready for launch.”

  -27-

  I stood on the bridge of our captured battle cruiser. It was a big ship, an engine of destruction, although unequal against a Jelk battlejumper. This vessel must have been a fifth the size of Shah Claath’s former flagship, which gives some indication of a battlejumper’s power.

  Ten Star Vikings stood on the bridge with me, Dmitri among them.

  The rest of the boarders had returned to the Achilles. The patrol boat waited in another cargo bay, the armored doors sealed shut.

  I still breathed hard from the tremendous exertion.

  “Commander,” Dmitri said. “The enemy wants to bargain with you.”

  “Put him on the side screen,” I said.

  “Her, Commander, the Lokhar admiral is a female.”

  “Whatever,” I said. My helmet sat on the former battle cruiser captain’s chair. He lay sprawled on the deck plates, half his head a gory ruin.

  A tiger appeared on the screen. She must have sprinkled ash over her fur, because it was dull gray color. Her red eyes squinted at me.

  I used a technique on her that Shah Claath had played on us during our attack on the portal planet. With Dmitri at the comm-controls, I had him transmit a fuzzy image of me and deepen my voice.

  During the portal planet attack, the Jelk had pretended to be Abaddon. It had scared the crap out of us at the time. Maybe I could pull something like that here.

  “I am Admiral List Mocker,” the tiger woman said. “Who are you?”

  “Abaddon,” I said.

  The Lokhar recoiled, her eyes widening. “You lie,” she whispered.

  I forced a laugh. “Why do you think I struck the Purple Tamika Hall of Honor?”

  “I have no idea. It was barbaric and sacrilegious.”

  “First, I will stamp out your honor,” I said, trying to sound like the devil himself. “Then I will demand your lives in payment for your crimes.”

  “What crimes?” the admiral shouted.

  “That of living in the same space-time continuum as me and my Kargs,” I said.

  She became visibly emotional, breathing hard as she wrestled with her superstitious fears. Finally, she pointed a clawed finger at me. “Whoever you are, I demand you return our sacred articles of honor. If you do, we will let you depart with your life. If not, you will die.”

  “You are wrong,” I said. “It is you who are about to die.”

  “You have one crippled battle cruiser. We have a flotilla of star fighters and four battle cruisers with fifteen more on the way.”

  “Prepare to die,” I said, and I nodded to Dmitri.

  The Cossack cut the connection. “Did she buy it?” he asked.

  I had no time to answer him. Instead, I told our pilot, “Full speed for the jump gate.” Then, I radioed Rollo in the T-missile quarters, “Send the first one,” I said.

  “I’m as likely to ignite it in here,” he said over the helmet radio, “then get it out there.”

  “Then do it right,” I said.

  “Like I have a choice in the matter,” Rollo said. “You’ll get what I can get.”

  I would have preferred more confidence from him. This was stressful enough. I stared at the screen, watching, waiting. Star fighters raced at us, about two hundred space vessels readying their particle beam cannons. A battle cruiser stood in our way, heating its considerable number of heavy weapons. The other battle cruisers came up fast from behind.

  “They’re waiting for our move,” Dmitri said. “They don’t want to destroy us because they still think they can get their precious items back.”

  I blinked hard. Why was waiting such a difficult thing to do? My plan was simple. A T-missile was a teleporting missile. It was an ingenious weapon. Special tubes launched them. I didn’t have time for that. Nor did I have time to make precise calculations for
each missile. N7 would have been needed. He was on the patrol boat. Instead, Rollo would cause one missile at a time to teleport outside our battle cruiser.

  From within my helmet on the headphones, I heard Rollo shout, “Fire one!”

  Inside our battle cruiser, nothing extra happened. Outside, it was a different story. A T-missile appeared behind the approaching star fighters. That meant the missile was close to us, too. Its thermonuclear warhead ignited, creating a blinding white flash.

  “Fire two!” Rollo shouted.

  As the small attack fighters vaporized in the atomic blast, a second T-missile appeared. This one ignited between two approaching battle cruisers and us.

  From this close, our ship took the blast and hard radiation. Our screens buckled.

  “Keep them popping,” I shouted at Rollo. “Saturate the battlefield with nuclear fire.”

  “Roger that, Creed,” Rollo said in a hoarse voice.

  This was like lobbing grenades a few yards from oneself and hoping the body armor held. It decimated the star fighters and hammered the enemy battle cruisers. Unfortunately, we started taking a pounding from our own weapons as we headed for the jump gate.

  ***

  In slow motion, like a dying destruction derby car near the end of its existence, our battle cruiser glided past the wreckage of hundreds of star fighters. The nearest Lokhar battle cruiser slammed point defense shells into our ruptured hull. The force screen had died several minutes ago. From behind us, enemy particle beams shredded our ship.

  Then another T-missile popped into existence beside a Lokhar battle cruiser. Because of the thermonuclear blast, I lost sight of the enemy. The particle beams stopped, though. Seconds later, our bridge shuddered. More of the ceiling crashed down onto the deck plates. Electrical wiring writhed like angry snakes, hissing and showering sparks. Lights flashed and klaxons wailed.

  “Get to the patrol boat,” I ordered.

  “You’ll need help up here, sir.”

  “No! I’m coming with you. Just give me a few more seconds.”

  “Creed!” Dmitri shouted. “You cannot stay.”

  “Go,” I said. “Hurry.”

  Dmitri stubbornly shook his helmeted head.