Extinction Wars: 02 - Planet Strike Page 27

  Our trick of coming through the portal “behind” the planet had worked for the moment. We’d gained initial surprise and a chance to offload. Now, however, the alien Karg vessels focused beams onto the dreadnoughts. This fire didn’t only come from the ships between the Lokhars and the planet, but from behind them, from those enemy ships coming through the portal.

  Our dropship sped for the surface. We hadn’t even reached the atmosphere yet. I gripped the armrests of my crash seat, and I saw an unholy thing. Red beams of tremendous size cut into Defiant. They gored the mighty vessel. They poured heat and destruction into the ship as more rays added their power. The electromagnetic field hadn’t stood up long against the annihilating graviton beams. The armored hull lasted slightly longer, taking horrible punishment. Heated globs of metal floated everywhere.

  “What if the dreadnought blows?” Ella asked me.

  I thought about an exploding moth-ship the first battle. It had wiped out one hundred fighters like a man swatting a mosquito.

  The Defiant didn’t blow. The Rhode Island-sized vessel cracked apart as red-glowing sections fell away. The graviton rays acted like slicing knives. Here a slice, there a slice, everywhere a slice, slice.

  As fury bubbled in my gut, I stood and shook my fists at the Kargs. It meant nothing to the battle, but it helped my raving heart.

  A crackle of sound brought me around. “Commander Creed,” I heard through static.

  “This is Creed,” I said, slouching back into my crash-seat, snapping the buckles back into place.

  “We are about to rush for the planet,” Venturi said.

  “Give them hell, Prince,” I said.

  “No, I will give them a defeat,” the Lokhar said. “They are too many of them, but you have faced too many enemies before and still won the battle.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “Even if we close this portal, I wonder if our space-time continuum can defeat these far too numerous Kargs that have escaped their universe.”

  “That’s not our problem, Admiral. Our purpose is to give our universe a fighting chance.”

  “Yes, I believe this, too.”

  “We are in agreement,” I said.

  “We are in agreement,” Venturi said.

  “I am still,” I said.

  “May the Great Maker bless you, Commander Creed.”

  “And you, sir,”

  Those were the last words I heard from the Admiral-Prince Venturi. If you can believe it, I felt as if I’d miss the old tiger. He was all right. He was a man’s man even if he was a Lokhar. He knew how to finish his life in a blaze of glory. I admired that.

  The accelerating dreadnought, the last of its kind, soon sped past our swarm of assault boats. Karg moths beamed the giant vessel, and they brought down the protecting shield. They tore up hull armor. In return, Lokhar lasers killed two moth-ships; and the great vessel from our universe smashed against three Karg craft. Then the colossal ship glowed fiery red as it entered the portal planet’s atmosphere. I wondered if they had managed to pump T-missiles into the thing.

  I laughed wildly, realizing I witnessed one of the greatest charges in history.

  Indomitable went down like a blazing meteor, accelerating the entire time. It left a fiery tail as it plunged down, down. Then the great starship struck the portal planet.

  I would have liked to hear the clang, like a gong of doom from our universe to theirs. Did the planet wobble? I couldn’t tell. A vast dent appeared but I didn’t see that either. N7 told us about it. A giant mass of metal, plastics, water, bodies and other material flattened, exploded, burst into fire and did other contortions before billowing upward in a great mushroom.

  “Strike one!” I shouted.

  “Are we strike two?” Rollo asked from behind.

  “If we can get down and burrow under the surface in time, yes,” I said.

  “What is strike three?” he asked.

  I turned to Ella. “That isn’t extra ammo you’re holding, is it?”

  She shook her helmeted head.

  “You have the Forerunner artifact,” I said.

  “I do,” she whispered.

  “Did the Esteemed One willingly give it to you?”

  She sat silently, hugging the bag tighter against her chest.

  We all do bad things. We’re all human, right? No one is perfect. Maybe there’s a time to murder the innocent. I’m not saying that’s what Ella did to Ulmoc. Ella wasn’t talking about it, and there was a guilty feel to her. I’m glad she had the artifact however she’d gotten the thing, Ulmoc was dead now anyway. Would it have been better for Ella to leave the little relic behind? I didn’t think so.

  I jerked a thumb at Ella. “Our scientist has a tool that might come in handy for strike three,” I said. “Of course, we’re going to have to make it down onto the planet first.”

  “The Kargs are converging on us,” N7 radioed.

  “Give me a snapshot of it,” I said.

  On the dropship’s main screen, I saw giant snowflakes to the side of us turning our way. Whatever we were going to do, we would have to do fast.

  “How much longer until impact?” I asked N7.

  “ETA, ten minutes,” the android said.

  “Will the debris from the dreadnought have settled enough?” Ella asked.

  “We’re not going to land there,” N7 said, “but beside the radius of destruction.”

  Like a vast swarm of bees, the lead invasion craft entered the atmosphere with our assault boats in the center. The air was a blue-green methane mix, and it created hot yellow flares as the first dropships smashed into the upper levels. Then the rocking and shaking started for us. It threw those on the floor and in the aisles all over the place.

  “I’m getting a message,” N7 said over my headphones.

  “From the Kargs?” I asked.

  “Yes, Commander,” N7 said.

  “From the great Abaddon?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  I’d been waiting for that. “Patch him through to me,” I said, “but just me. We don’t need to give him an opportunity to demoralize us.”

  “Are you sure that is wise?” N7 asked.

  “What are you thinking? Spill it.”

  “Maybe the Kargs have technology to know who hears the message. If so, they will discover who our leader is.”

  “Good point,” I said. “Here’s what you do. Reroute it to one of the Lokhars. Make sure it’s the captain of the most damaged fighter left.”

  N7 followed my orders.

  Meanwhile, the shaking, the screaming sound of metal with building heat, buffeted us and rattled our teeth.

  “Anything?” I asked N7.

  “Observe,” he said.

  “Put it on my HUD,” I said.

  “I have.”

  I watched as a seeking red ray switched from the human assault boats to an outer Lokhar fighter, one of the few left. The beam stabbed the fighter, destroying it in an instant. Once done, the graviton beam began torching Lokhar assault boats.

  “Was that the ship that received Abaddon’s message?” I asked.

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “We haven’t figured out all their tech yet, that’s for sure,” I said. “Do you know how he knew?”

  “No,” N7 said.

  The shaking became too much then. I clung to the armrests and lay my head back. The entire dropship slung from one side to the next. We went up and down. I was hardened from entering hyperspace, though. It did nothing to upset my veteran stomach.

  Who had made this portal planet? The Forerunners, right? Why had they bothered? Did it have anything to do with the Kargs? I would bet yes. Had the First Ones forced the Kargs into the strange space-time continuum? Why would they have done so? And had the eerie universe already been on the brink of destruction back then? Or did time flow much faster there than our cosmos?

  I had questions and few answers. Yet now we had an artifact from that era. I wondered if Ella could sp
eak to it. She said it spoke High Speech. None of us knew it, just Lokhar adepts. Most of them were dead, or would be very shortly.

  “I urge everyone to hang on,” N7 said. “We are taking evasive action.”

  “What?” I shouted. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “There are planetary cannons,” N7 said. As he spoke, our assault boat flipped, and it hailed troopers down onto those strapped in their crash seats.

  The next few minutes became a jumble of confusion. I couldn’t focus on the screen anymore. I dodged unsecured troopers. I grunted at heavy impacts. Bringing the extra soldiers might have been a mistake. Some broke limbs. Worse, they did the same to those buckled in. Without the symbiotic suits, many of the crash victims would have died. Because of the bio-armor, those with broken limbs could still function, the suit supplying extra stability for the broken or cracked bone.

  N7 leveled out, and I heard groans and saw troopers squirm in agony. The boat’s shaking continued. We dropped through green clouds. A massive something sped past us, heading into space.

  “That was an enemy shell,” N7 informed us.

  The shaking and rattling become worse. Small pink clouds now appeared for no good reason. I took those to be exploding anti-dropships shells, like flak. Metal rattled against us. Three pieces tore through, killing a trooper. The wind shrieked, and then we dropped almost straight down. It made my gut flip and I clawed at the armrests.

  On the screen, I saw another dropship, and I saw something reach up from the planet. The thing exploded, and there was a white-and-pink fog of vapor and hot smoke. I watched for another second. The other assault boat was gone.

  “Landing in ten seconds,” N7 said in his cool android voice.

  On the surface, I saw pleochroic domes. They shifted with a bewildering array of brilliant greens, blues, reds and purples. Through the brightness, I realized they were great metallic hemispheres with giant gun barrels sticking out of them. They boomed, sending hardware into the sky. Another dropship disappeared in a pink cloud. I felt like a rat on the Titanic. The domes dwarfed our boats. So did the planetary cannon tubes.

  “Get ready for impact,” N7 said.

  I did, and like an out-of-control helicopter, our android smashed against the metallic ground. We skipped, hit down again, skipped again and spun like a careening bumper car. Then we slid with a shrieking sound of metal.

  At last, the dropship came to a halt. I panted in my seat, trying to get my eyes to focus right. Then the sides of the craft blasted open. I watched a section of detached hull tumble end over end. It finally struck the ground and skipped across the metallic surface. The heavily methane mix rushed in. That killed three troopers who hadn’t sealed their helmets properly. Stupidity was a bad way to die. I wanted to kick their butts, but it was too late for that.

  Besides, I didn’t have time to worry about the dead. We’d reached the portal planet, or its surface at least. Now we had to get to the center before the Kargs could kill us.

  -24-

  The atmosphere was alien, with milky threads drifting like rivers of smoke. Illumination came from atomic fires raging in the distance. Giant red beams stabbed down from space and areas of the metal planet composed of a pleochroic substance shimmered with eldritch lights.

  Too many troopers never made it out of the dropship. It would have been good to set up a hospital area for the badly wounded. I stopped then, staring at a gun dome three times bigger than any football stadium I’d seen. The boom would have been deafening without a helmet to dampen some of the noise. The concussion of sound hit like a wall, staggering me backward.

  I stopped because I had no idea where Jennifer was. She hadn’t made it to my assault boat. I’d had far too little time for her lately. In fact, we’d grown apart. It was unconscionable that I didn’t know where she was, but I didn’t. Maybe that made me a heartless bastard. Maybe it meant I was on a mission to save our universe and nothing else mattered, not even my shattered love life or the life of the woman I loved.

  More assault boats landed. Even more crashed and crumpled with a scream of metal. They leaked blood and gore, and the losses sickened me. I couldn’t think straight with the continuous roar of the planetary cannons, the sounds like waves pushing against our bodies. The flashes of intense light—

  “We have to get down before we can count off,” I shouted.

  “Down where exactly?” Ella asked me.

  I pointed at a radiant planetary cannon dome. I labeled it a PCD. The giant tube sticking out of the opening belched orange fire and spewed a heavy projectile. The firing tube recoiled out of sight into the dome. Then it reappeared as blue smoke curled from the mighty orifice.

  “We break into one of those structures and kill the Kargs,” I said.

  “And if the domes are automated?” Ella asked.

  “Let’s find out,” I said, starting for the nearest one.

  A trooper grabbed my arm, stopping me. I whipped around to see Rollo.

  “We can’t just charge in,” he said. “We need a plan.”

  I laughed crazily.

  “This isn’t a solo mission!” he shouted. “You aren’t just charging a Saurian lander this time. This is a planet, Creed.”

  “I’ve always been a follow-me type leader,” I shouted back. I ripped my arm out of his grip. Transmitting on a wide channel, I said, “Listen up, you grunts. We’re going to take that dome.” I raised my arm, waved it and pointed at the huge metal thing. “We don’t have much time. The Kargs upstairs are going to start beaming down with greater precision and killing more of us. At least, I would in their place. That means we have to act like gophers as fast as we can. Find your sergeants. Find your zaguns. Then follow me and kill everything that doesn’t look like us.”

  I took a step forward before spinning around. “Ella!”

  “Here,” she said. Like everyone else, she was black with her symbiotic suit. She wore an air converter, a bulky ammo pack, had a Bahnkouv laser rifle, old-style Jelk grenades and the most important thing of all, the little Forerunner artifact clutched against her chest.

  “You stick to me,” I told her. “That thing you’re carrying is probably the only way we’re going to win.”

  “Roger,” she said.

  “I mean stick tight,” I said.

  “Yes, Commander,” she said. “I understand.”

  Amid the landing boats, the hail and clang of others, we started for the nearest gun dome. The gravity struck me as slightly more than Earth norm. We could easily move in it, as we were stronger and many times faster than normal humans were. Our Lokhar allies landed and would continue to land for the next few minutes. They would come down in a circular circumference around us for at least one hundred kilometers in width. They were the outer shell. The humans were the inner. This arrangement was part of the plan. Would a Karg admiral noticing this decide the inner part was the bull’s-eye? I’m guessing that was more than likely.

  I wanted to make this hand-to-hand combat as quickly as I could. The Kargs had the heavy hardware with their spaceships acting like orbital platforms. They had infinitely more numbers, too. Were they any good at face-to-face fighting?

  The landscape was eerie, stark with giant metal towers and the brilliantly lit PCDs, lonely as all get out. There weren’t any stars up there. There sure wasn’t any sun. There were Kargs, though. Fiends maybe; deadly aliens for sure.

  I shook my head. Lokhar tanks wouldn’t have a chance on the surface. All our plans went out the window as far as I could see. We had to be commandos indeed. I had the One Ring—the Orange Tamika Forerunner object—and the center of the planet was the Crack of Mount Doom.

  Wasn’t that funny? Venturi and I had made all these plans of moving big armies. We’d played sandbox general for weeks. Ten millions Lokhars advancing, holding, deepening the pit, and then bring in the drill that were the human assault troopers. Instead, our strategy was shot to hell with a portal planet swarming with ten thousand Karg space vessels or more. All th
ey had to do was beam wherever we landed, and soon all of us would be cooked, crisped corpses, smoking like hot pork.

  The giant dome came into better relief. Were there doors into that thing, hatches? If there wasn’t a way in—bingo, I saw one.

  “Look at that circular hatch!” I said over the open channel. “Dmitri, Rollo, do either of you see it?”

  “I do,” Dmitri said.

  “Blow it down,” I said.

  I’m not sure how many troopers Dmitri had of his mingan, maybe two thirds, maybe half: meaning seven hundred fifty to five hundred troopers. Three squads set up portable plasma cannons on their tripods. Seconds later, the first heated orange blob splashed the big metal hatch. Here was the test, eh? Would our firepower prove good enough to crush Forerunner construction?

  The answer proved to be a resounding yes. The first shot created a breach, the second opened it wider with glowing-hot edges and the third made room for us to jump through it.

  I’d expected darkness inside. Instead, I saw yet more intense brightness, and my visor polarized deeper to compensate.

  A few swift glances around showed me I had something like four mingans worth of troopers. That meant four thousand tough guys from Earth. Was that enough to clear out one of the giant domes? We were about to find out.

  A regular mingan led by Demetrius charged through the opening first. In seconds, radio chatter told me the closest halls and corridors proved empty. Then the Kargs in there struck, and the first gun battle with their infantry began.

  They fought savagely, as you’d expect fiends to. They should have slaughtered Demetrius’s mingan, right? Wrong, my friend, wrong, wrong, wrong. We were on a mission from the oracle. It had told the Lokhars to get us for this assignment, and it must have done so for a reason.

  I learned several things fast. One, the big dome had decks, levels, turning this into a three-dimensional battle. That made it like old time PDS fighting in the Sigma Draconis system. That brought back memories and ideas. I started acting like a general again.

  Ella spread out a computer scroll for me. I already stood inside the gun dome, giving orders. Dmitri to the left, Rollo to the right, climb, go down, encircle and fire from all sides. Demetrius dug in. Well, he couldn’t do that in metal. But he and his troopers held their locations while Rollo, Dmitri and Ms. Chan, the last mingan commander, followed my orders.