When Earth Reigned Supreme (The Human Chronicles Saga Book 12) Read online

With their comrades being cut down outside, the five aliens realized they had no other choice but to rush the crazed animal. In unison, they charged.

  At this point Adam’s motions came instinctively, without thought or remorse. He dodged a fist while running the serrated edge of the combat knife across the side of an exposed neck. Next, he spun around to slide in behind two of the attackers, planting his blade deep into a spine while wrapping an arm around a head and pulling away quickly, snapping a neck.

  Only two remained. Their seven-foot-tall bodies pressed him against a cold metal wall. The handle of his knife had been slick with alien blood and he’d lost it in the back of his last victim. Strong hands sought to hold him. He twisted his wrist and freed his right arm, and followed up with a balled fist to a scaly, gray temple, feeling bone shatter and the life flow from his victim.

  Only one remaining. Adam swept his right hand over the arms of the creature, freeing himself while sending the alien to his knees, writhing in pain. The Sol-Kor warrior looked up at him with pain on his face, yet with defiance in his eyes.

  “You will never defeat us, Human,” he growled. “We are too many…and you are just…food!” The alien reared back, opened his mouth, and clamped down hard on Adam’s thigh, sinking long, sharp teeth through his pants and into the flesh of his leg.

  Adam cried out, while running his hand down the face of the alien until he reached the eye sockets. He pressed, penetrating deep, like fingers into a bowling ball.

  The alien screamed—momentarily—then Adam’s fingers reached his brain and the creature fell silent and limp in his grip.

  ********

  Adam was still leaning against the wall, completely covered in blood and gripping the head of the dead alien with his fingers, when Sergeant Newsome and two other commandos entered the stairwell. He was panting, teeth bared in a display of crazed animal savagery, when one of the commandos activated his combat camera and began recording.

  “If ever an image captured the legend of Adam Cain, this is it,” Sergeant Newsome whispered. The other men just nodded, expressions of both fear and concern on their faces.

  Adam met their expressions with one of his own, one of steel-jawed, clenched-teeth determination. He released the head of the alien and took a step toward the open-mouthed non-com.

  “Mission accomplished,” he reported.

  Then he pushed past the men and exited the stairwell, leaving the bodies of forty flesh-eating aliens in his wake, victims of a futile attempt to challenge the Human race for superiority of the Milky Way galaxy.

  Chapter 2

  “You know the video has gone viral,” Riyad said, with humor in his voice. “In fact, I think Central Command is using it for propaganda purposes, hoping it’ll make it back to the Sol-Kor.”

  “That’s not going to stop those animals. They don’t give a damn about themselves, just about your girlfriend, the Queen.”

  Riyad unleashed a full-on smile. “Yeah, I think she really had the hots for me. If you and Q’uel hadn’t showed up when you did, who knows where our relationship might have gone.”

  Adam was getting in the mood of the banter.

  “You’ve always preferred tall women.”

  “But not one the size of a school bus!”

  “Yeah, she was a lot of woman, even for an alien. And damn, she could have used a little make-up now and then.”

  Riyad leaned back on the couch and placed his hands behind his head. “Lebanese men prefer women to be more natural than are your painted-up Western ladies. But alas, it was not to be. However…we’ll always have Paris.”

  “What are you two scoundrels talking about?” Admiral Andy Tobias asked as he entered the officers’ lounge aboard the Mount Rushmore.

  “Lost loves and regret. What else?” Riyad answered in a sing-song voice.

  “Not Sherri again?”

  Both Adam and Riyad looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Not hardly,” Adam proclaimed. “More of the alien variety.”

  “Arieel?”

  Now the two men shared a look of mutual male lust. “Now that’s another story. But no, we were talking about the Sol-Kor Queen.”

  Tobias’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding. From what you told me—”

  “Relax, Andy, we’re just winding down,” Adam said. “So what’s the latest?”

  “Not good.” Tobias moved to the counter along the bulkhead and poured himself a cup of black coffee. “Another two portals have come online in just the past three days. The Juirean and Rigorian fleets took out three of the old ones, but we’re not making much headway. And the aliens—meaning the Juireans and the others—suffered heavy casualties during the attacks.”

  “Why don’t they just nuke the bastards?” Adam asked, his frustration showing.

  “Each race wants their own portal to go along with ours. It’s some sort of balance of power thing apparently.”

  “Don’t they know the scalies are still trying to send units through the one we control? It’s a constant battle to keep that one secure. It won’t be any different for the ones they capture.”

  Tobias snorted. “You know what it’s like trying to reason with aliens.” The admiral sat down in a worn leather chair and flung a long, thin leg over one of the arms.

  “Kind of like trying to reason with Humans, I would imagine,” Riyad said.

  Tobias took a swig of his coffee and immediately pushed the mug away, blowing across the surface for a couple of seconds. “You know there are people who want to reopen negotiations with the Sol-Kor. They still believe they can talk their way out of all the casualties we’re taking. And now with these new portals, they feel we’re fighting a losing battle trying to cut off access to the galaxy.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you, Admiral?” Adam asked.

  “Of course not. Besides, I’m with you now in believing the SK would never live up to any agreements, but I also wouldn’t put it past them to say or do anything to gain an advantage. If they can delay things long enough to saturate the galaxy with portals, then we’re toast, literally.”

  “What about their existing fleets?” Riyad asked. “I know they have to keep a lot of their force in reserve to defend the portals, but they still have half a dozen harvest fleets roaming the galaxy.”

  “They’re not roaming anymore, Riyad. A major concentration is chewing up planets within the Union, and we don’t have enough ships available to protect whole planets and take out their portal arrays at the same time.”

  “I see your problem, Andy,” Adam said, a frown clouding his face. “If you concentrate on the portals, billions of creatures die. And if you allocate forces to the defense of these planets, then the scalies build more portals…and then more people die.”

  “I’m coming down on the side of taking out the portals and stopping their access to the galaxy, but I’m telling you, boys, politically that’s becoming harder to defend with each new planet that gets attacked. The alien bastards aren’t even harvesting most of these worlds. They simply knock out the population and leave them to die.”

  Adam sat up a little straighter. “How long has that been going on?”

  “Just recently. We assumed they were harvesting these worlds, at least taking some of the people away. But we’re finding that only about one-in-five planets is being harvested, and then only marginally.”

  “So they’re killing trillions of creatures…just to kill them?” Riyad asked.

  “It’s a new strategy on their part. Needless to say, it’s causing quite a stir back on Earth, as well as in the Expansion, although most of this scorched-earth campaign seems to be taking place within the Union.”

  Adam looked over at Riyad. “Looks like your girlfriend is really pissed off.”

  “Nothing like an alien scorned.”

  “What are you talking about? Did you and the Queen have some kind of affair when you were over in her universe?”

  “If we had, she wouldn’t be doing all this today. I’d have
her eating out of my olive-colored hands and lost in the depth of my dark, sensual eyes.”

  Tobias stood up and placed his empty coffee cup on the table next to the chair. “I don’t know about the two of you, but I think I’m going to be sick.”

  He turned crisply on his heel and left the room.

  Riyad looked at Adam and flashed him one of his trademark smiles. “Some people just can’t handle the truth.

  ********

  A week later, the Mount Rushmore was en route to the next TD portal at the head of a fleet of warships tasked with destroying this particular array. Thanks to the heroics of Adam’s commandos, the scientists and the politicians had their portal, so the rest of them were expendable.

  Yet when Adam returned to his stateroom after a long day of operation prep, he immediately sensed a presence in the room. He felt the wall for the light switch, remaining at the open door until he had fully surveyed the cabin. The man sitting at his small, fold-down desk didn’t make any move to conceal himself. He looked back at the stone-faced officer with an amused smile.

  “You knew I was here,” the man stated.

  “Just had a feeling. Now who the hell are you?”

  The man didn’t get up. “I’m Stephen Monroe, Captain Cain.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  The man snickered. “I would hope not. If you’ve heard of me, then my usefulness would be over.”

  “You’re some kind of JUDS spy?”

  Monroe shook his head. “A spy would denote someone seeking information by clandestine means. No, I’m more on an operative, tasked with making certain things happen without a lot of people knowing about it.”

  “Semantics, Mr. Monroe. What are you doing in my stateroom?”

  “It should be obvious. I have a mission for you—and your friend Riyad Tarazi—should you choose to accept it.”

  “I suppose a burning fuse is going to cut across the screen now.”

  The man looked genuinely confused.

  “Mission Impossible, the movies…the TV show?” Adam said. “Never heard of it?”

  “I’m afraid not. Perhaps it was before my time.”

  Adam felt very old at that moment.

  “Okay, son…so who do you work for and why are you coming to me?”

  “I work for the Security Enhancement Division of the Joint Union Defense Service.”

  “Never heard of it. Even if I had, you should know my return to active duty is only temporary.” Adam moved to his bed and sat down, all the while keeping an eye on the thin man across the room. “My job right now is to track down and destroy all the Sol-Kor portal arrays. I don’t have time for any new missions, no matter how mysterious the invitation. What I do is the most important job there is to keep the galaxy safe.”

  “There is another way, a way to bring this war to a screeching halt just like that.”

  “And how is that, Mr. Monroe?”

  “By cutting off the head of the snake.”

  “The Queen?” Adam shook his head. “I was told by a very reliable source that that won’t work. They’ll just hatch another one.”

  “Of course, Captain, but what do you suppose they’ll be doing in the interim as this new queen is hatched and grows to maturity? Do you know how long that will take, and what sort of education a new queen needs before she’s ready to start calling the shots?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “Neither do we. But one thing is certain, it will take time. And you see how the Sol-Kor operate. They don’t do squat without direction from their queen. What do think they’ll be doing while the new queen grows up?”

  Adam was quiet as he tried to work out the answer. The honest truth was he didn’t know. However, like Monroe said, it would take time.

  “I imagine they’d be in a state of flux for a while. That’s my best guess. And anything your people say is also a guess.”

  “No argument there, Captain Cain. But put yourself in the place of the SK and not think about what we would do. In a normal society, there are plenty of capable people who could step into the leadership role at the drop of a hat. Not the Sol-Kor. It’s our…guess…that the SK will put most of their operations on hold, at least those not crucial to the survival of the Colony. All these attacks taking place without harvesting should come to an end. Their current strategy seems to be more of a punishment rather than a way to acquire food. That has to be a personal decision made by the current queen. If she’s out of the picture, then the vindictive nature of the attacks should go away. In any event, it certainly couldn’t hurt the war effort to take out the Queen.”

  Adam looked around his tiny stateroom. He’d left some of his uniform parts scattered about earlier, but an attendant had come in and stowed them away. Everything seemed in order, safe and secure. It didn’t take much imagination to see that the mission Monroe was proposing could be a one-way street. Was he willing to take the risk?

  However…it did have merit.

  “Okay, say your mission to assassinate the Queen is a go, how do we do it? Send a ship through the portal we control? You know it’s as well guarded on the other side as it is on our side. Then if a ship could survive long enough to make it into clear space, we have absolutely no intelligence about, well, anything on the other side.”

  “We propose a more direct approach.”

  “Explain.”

  “The portal at your house.”

  “I thought it burned up?”

  “No, sir. Fire crews arrived in time to save it. There was a little damage, but that’s been repaired.”

  Adam shook his head. “Panur said it couldn’t open up between universes. He did some weird shit to it that stopped that from happening.”

  “That appears to be the case. We’ve been trying, but so far no luck.”

  “Okay, so what’s your plan?”

  “The Klin.”

  “What about them?”

  “They came through your portal. How did they do that, and where do you think they came from?”

  “Probably from the portal they have aboard the colony ship.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And your point is?”

  Monroe leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “We believe the Klin are working with the Sol-Kor, feeding them intelligence and other information about the galaxy and our military actions. This belief is based on an almost uncanny avoidance of our sentry units by the most recent shipments of array parts entering the galaxy. It’s obvious they’ve been tipped, and Klin fingerprints are all over this new dynamic. They insist on sitting in on all strategy meetings even though they have no major force invested, just a token ship included in every task force.”

  “The portal in the SK universe that linked to the Klin ship was destroyed.”

  “They could’ve rebuilt it by now. And that portal was located where, Mr. Cain?”

  “The Queen’s Chambers.”

  “Bingo.”

  Adam was silent for several seconds as he thought through the mission parameters: Use his portal to enter the one on the Klin colony ship, make a quick transfer over to the SK universe—right into the heart of the Queen’s Chambers—take her out…and then extraction.

  “You’ve been there before, Mr. Cain,” Monroe said to fill the silence. “And according to your after-action report, it was only because of Panur that you didn’t take out the Queen at that time. It could be done again, and this time without any interference.”

  “They’ve probably added several more layers of security around her since the attack.”

  “Undoubtedly, and that’s why we need you and Mr. Tarazi. The two of you know the lay of the land, at least better than anyone else we could send. And this wouldn’t be a rogue rescue mission like last time. This would be fully-sanctioned and supported. You’d go in with skilled backup and armed to the teeth, which, according to what I’ve heard recently, is how you prefer it.”

  Adam knew the video that was circulating didn
’t show him holding his combat knife in his teeth, but his after-action report did mention it. Monroe seemed to be the real thing, at least as far as having access to classified documents.

  “I’ll have to talk with Riyad.”

  “Of course. And I hope the tender feelings he’s expressed for the Queen won’t interfere with the mission.” There was a wicked smile on Monroe’s face.

  So the bastard’s been listening in on our conversations. Adam returned the knowing smile. In war one became very pragmatic and determined; very few things were off limits, including privacy. Adam knew it went along with the territory. Still, part of him was bothered by the intrusion.

  With the Sol-Kor now indiscrimanently destroying entire planetary populations without harvesting, Adam agreed it felt like a personal reaction by the Queen. Her son—Panur—was gone, probably for good, and she was blaming the Milky Way galaxy for her loss. With the SK fleets concentrating on the Union, obviously she was holding the Humans more responsible than others. If she wasn’t stopped, her hatred could eventually lead to the Earth being sterilized, just like all the others.

  Adam could see the need for such a mission, but launching from aboard a Klin starship added an incalculable degree of danger. Sure, there was a good chance he and his team could get through. It was getting back home that would be the issue. Any escape route would be closed off within seconds of the team’s passage into the SK universe.

  Yet with the Union controlling a full transport portal, there could be a way. The strike team would need to acquire a starship. But then there was no telling where the matching portal was on the other side, if it even worked that way. Or could any large portal be linked to the one on this side? And if it could, then how exactly was that done? It would require gathering intel…

  Monroe let Adam think, but after about a minute he stood up. “I assume by your silence and look of concentration that the mission is a go?”

  “There’s a lot of unknowns, questions that won’t be answered until we’re on the other side.”

  “That’s why you and Mr. Tarazi are the perfect leaders for such an operation. You’ve proven time and again you can adapt, improvise, and overcome.”