The Immortal War Read online

  Adam looked at Tidus. The Juirean’s face was a study in stone, making his emotions impossible to read. “You okay, Tidus?”

  “Yes…but please take care of the ships. They are expensive.”

  Adam smiled. So it wasn’t the transit that had the alien worried; it was his deposit.

  Adam shared a knowing look with Copernicus, then he shrugged. “If there’s nothing else, then let’s get this show on the road. It’s all yours, master chief.”

  * * *

  The initial foray into the nebula was anticlimactic. The outer layer of gas—although dark and foreboding—was relatively thin. The ships, running in single file on thin trails of blue, ionized chemical propellant, were able to pass through the diaphanous cloud with ease. They didn’t bother to raise their shields—they were only effective against charged energy bolts. In normal running, the ship was protected from forward collisions by the series of microscopic black holes forming ahead of it. Most chem drive operations were for landings and takeoffs, as well as maneuvering close to other vessels or space stations. This was different. Even at the relative low velocity they were going, any gravel-size bit of space debris could damage the ship. Now they were essentially going supersonic through a sandstorm, multiplying the effect of the tiny collisions on their hulls.

  Simple radar was Pitts’ greatest tool, scanning for the thinner sections of the Shield. The course was erratic and abrupt, sometimes making forty-degree changes in the blink of an eye. The inertia compensators were on and helped alleviate the more nauseous effects of the course changes, but they couldn’t overcome the wild scene through the viewport. After a few minutes, Adam looked away and concentrated instead on Monty’s radar screen. At least it provided a more static view of the area.

  “Oh crap!” Adam heard Copernicus say over the still-open comm. Long-range cameras on the aft section of the Sally showed a real-time view of the other two ships behind them. Coop’s ship was veering off course. Not only that, it was twirling.

  “We took a pretty good bump to our ass,” he reported. “Luckily, it came in obliquely so the damage is minimal, but it did send us spinning.” Tiny maneuvering jets were flaring from the sides of the small mining vessel. Coop’s piloting skills were being tested, and in a moment he was straightened out and back in line, although now behind Tidus.

  Adam looked at a relieved Riyad. With the amount of explosives in Coop’s ship, an explosion would have surely taken out all three of them.

  “Follow me,” Monty ordered unnecessarily; the other ships were still close on his tail. “It could get hairy from here on out.”

  “You mean that wasn’t hairy?” Coop asked rhetorically.

  They entered an area of relative emptiness in the middle of the nebula wall, surrounding a jagged asteroid about ten miles across. It was rotating wildly, with tiny sprays of particles flying off it, the result of some recent collision with another decent-size body. Monty slipped under the stream of deadly rock and then dodged a large outcropping of the asteroid.

  “Is this normal?” Riyad asked.

  “No,” Monty answered tersely. “This wasn’t here before. It could also screw up the rest of the transit.”

  Watching the rear-looking camera, Adam gasped as Tidus’ ship came within a hundred feet of the spinning rock. He corrected his course, which sent the tiny starship racing away and out of the clear space around the asteroid. The internal cockpit view to the left of Monty’s pilot station showed the Juirean fighting against multiple hull strikes. He was attempting to turn away from the path of the micrometeorites to lessen the impact of the hits, but the ship was still taking a beating.

  “There goes my deposit,” he groaned against the near-constant vibration through the hull from the dozens of hits.

  “Get out of there, Tidus!” Adam yelled into the comm.

  “Do you not think I would if I could?”

  Just then, a propellant tank ruptured and a jet of diffused gas shot out from the hull at a ninety-degree angle. The ship began to spin.

  “I will have to jettison—”

  The tank flew off, colliding with unseen objects. It exploded a moment later.

  Tidus brought the ship under control and steered it back toward the spinning asteroid. Copernicus stopped his ship in the clear space next to the rock, while Monty made a tight loop with the Mustang Sally. Soon, all three ships were hovering in the tiny oasis of calm in the middle of the Dysion Shield.

  “How’s the other tank?” Pitts asked.

  “It appears intact,” the exhausted alien replied. “I will have power, at least enough to keep up. Yet I will not have enough fuel for the return journey from the Void. I should have known I would not receive a refund. It appears my Priority Acquisitions counterpart was correct in assessing the risk.”

  Pitts surveyed the radar. “We’ll be playing it by ear from now on. The old channel has been closed by this fucking rock. We’ll have to feel our way out of here.”

  “Speaking of that,” Riyad said. “Do you know another way out of the Void…when the time comes?”

  “I know several, but none as close as this one to Mon-Sim.”

  “That’s fine,” Adam said. “By then they’ll be no need for stealth. We should be able to use full gravity drive to make for the Shield.”

  “Copernicus, Tidus, form up on me again,” Monty said. “We’ll be going really slow, so it shouldn’t be a problem keeping up. Heading out at point-eighty-five degrees. Follow me.”

  Although the rest of the journey was without major incident, that didn’t mean it wasn’t without its tense moments. Twice Monty had to turn around and probe other sections of the gas cloud when the way ahead closed off. As it was, the normal four-hour transit ended up taking seven, by which time the crews were exhausted and stressed to the breaking point. Monty took them along the inner wall of the Shield until he found a small asteroid and had them nestle in its shadow to catch their breath. They were in no condition to make the run for Mon-Sim.

  After a couple of hours, Tidus and Copernicus donned spacesuits and went outside to survey the damage to their ships. The tiny vessels were beat up, but still air tight and functioning. They also surveyed the Mustang Sally, but gave up after a few minutes, unable to tell old damage from new.

  “We’re about a million miles out from the Kryils star system, with another eight million to get to Mon-Sim,” Monty reported. All the members of the team, old and new, were aboard the Sally for the briefing. “We’ll need to go in on gravity-drive if we want to get there this year, so that will be dicey. I say we spread out and maybe drop in and out of wells to keep our weak signals sporadic. That will confuse anyone monitoring us. If we go in as a cluster, the signature will be stronger. Tidus, Copernicus, you lead the way. You’re sigs will be the weakest, and if you are picked up the Olys may just think their equipment is acting up when they see my stronger trace.”

  Adam was leaning against a console, his arms crossed, listening to the experienced master chief give his briefing. He felt no insecurity; it actually felt good to delegate some of the planning for the mission to another. Too often, the full responsibility for an operation fell on him, and that was getting old.

  Monty shrugged. “I can’t say I’ve ever been to the planet before, so I have no direct experience, but I have been by it several times. Mr. Tarazi piloted the Davion on its one and only trip to the planet, as well as the brief raid you made after dumping out of the portal. He’s been able to accurately pin-point the location of the array. That helps…a little. Still, we have no idea of the terrain surrounding the facility and what cover it might provide. So…after consultation with Captain Cain, we’ve decided to come in at the complete opposite side of the planet and then skirt the surface until we get to the array.”

  Adam was impressed that Monty would give credit to the senior officer onboard for part of the planning, something any non-com worth his salt would do to maintain the chain of command. He was a sly old fox, Adam observed. He may be rough aro
und the edges, but in the few days he’d known the chief, Adam had gained respect and confidence in the man’s abilities.

  “We won’t be able to go much beyond fifty feet above the surface on the way in,” Pitts continued. “And again, in the interest of time, we’ll be going pretty fast. So stay alert. I don’t want any of us crashing into the side of a mountain or crater. Speaking of that, there are a number of craters on the surface, just like Mars back home.” He looked at the team, of which a majority were aliens, and shrugged. They got the message. “This should allow us to stay hidden most of the way. When we get to the array, we’ll find a nice little hole somewhere and crawl in. After that, Mr. Cain and Mr. Smith will make a reconnaissance of the facility to identify points of entry and to assess the opposition. They will be in radio contact with the main force throughout. Any questions?”

  There were none. Adam stepped next to the master chief, who still wore his sleeveless shirt and jeans, but now sported an old Atlanta Braves baseball cap over his longish white hair. “Very good, master chief, excellent briefing. Tidus, Coop, get your people back to your ships. We jump off in thirty minutes.”

  The Humans fist-bumped, while the aliens gave an assortment of nods and wobbles of their strange-looking heads. Then the team disbursed. It was game time.

  6

  With Tidus and Coop spread out over a distance of ten thousand miles, each of the tiny ships engaged very shallow gravity-wells. They would slip in and out on an irregular basis and out of sync with each other. Monty, in the Mustang Sally, would do the same, trailing behind fifty thousand miles back.

  The boundary of the Kryils system was only an imaginary line on the nav screen. Long before that, the ships encountered a sea of comets and other rogue bodies left there after the formation of the inner ring of planets. Because the star dominated the Dysion Void, there was even more miscellaneous crap orbiting the system, all part of the nebula that had been cleared out during the star’s formation. It wasn’t hard to navigate, not after coming through the Shield, and soon the team entered the relatively clear space between the planets of the system.

  There were twelve of them, including three gas giants that had migrated to the outer regions of the system. There were two small asteroid belts, rather than one large one like in the Solar System, and just beyond the last one was the world of Mon-Sim.

  It was farther out from its star than Mars but was of comparable size and density. The thin atmosphere reflected the reddish soil, turning the sky a light pink. The light from Kryils was dimmer, making the planet colder. There was also more moisture in the air, creating large sheets of frozen carbon dioxide across most of the surface. And as Monty had said, there were thousands of impact craters, both large and small. Two jagged mountain ranges dissected the planet as well, running north to south and about three thousand miles apart. The portal array was near the equator, resting along the slopes of one of these ranges. That was fortunate. It would allow them to approach on the other side of the ridge, moving over the north pole and down for approximately a thousand miles.

  Once they reached the planet, Monty took the lead, dropping the Sally to a dangerous altitude of fifty to one hundred feet. Normal navigation equipment could keep the ships from plowing into a level surface, even at the speed they were traveling. But this wasn’t level ground. All three ships were on a form of auto-pilot, letting the radar-control computer attempt to keep them at a stable altitude. The pilots controlled the path forward, looking ahead for crater walls, deep canyons and other obstacles. Soon, they were on a roller coaster ride, dropping into deep crevasses before turning to run along the valley until they could pop back out into the clear.

  The crater walls were harder to avoid. The ships would ride up along the steep rises, before dropping into the smooth level ground inside. But then it was up again in an instant and then back down. They were traveling on chem drive at this point, with the inertia compensators off. They didn’t work this close to a surface.

  After three hours of this, Monty brought the Sally to a stop along the southern slope of a small impact crater and settled to the surface. The man was drenched in sweat and smelled like a skunk. He hadn’t used deodorant in twelve years.

  Coop and Tidus showed up fifteen minutes later, their tiny ships better able to handle the close maneuvers but lacking the power of the Mustang Sally. All were grateful for the reprieve.

  “The array should be on the other side of the mountain range from here,” Monty panted. “We’ll move in a little closer once everyone catches their breath.”

  The unspoken worry among the team was that the repairs were already made to the array and Kracion would be in the Milky Way by now. They would have no way of knowing whether this was true or not until they made a visual inspection of the facility. That would be Adam and Coop’s job, Adam because he was the boss, and Coop because he was the mechanic. It had been nine days since they came through the portal from the lost universe, and without knowing the extent of the damage they caused to the array, it was anyone’s guess as to the status of the facility. It was possible all their efforts were for naught.

  An hour later, they set out again, this time traveling only about fifty miles per hour over the jagged terrain, up the mountainside through steep ravines until cresting the frost-covered summit. The array wasn’t visible from here, being as it was behind a series of hills farther to the south. Adam would have liked to have had a quick aerial view of the complex, but that was too dangerous. Instead, Adam and Coop put on their spacesuits, set their comms to secure frequencies, and armed with binoculars and flash weapons, set out over the dusty surface of Mon-Sim.

  It was estimated the array complex was about twenty miles to the south, over a set of low hills strewn with huge boulders. The gravity of the planet was about a third of Earth’s, so that helped. They had rebreathing systems in their suits, providing up to eight hours of air. It was late afternoon on this part of the planet, with another two hours of daylight left. Barring any unforeseen incidents, they could reach the site, make their assessment, and be back to the Sally in time for a late dinner.

  Although encased in the synthetic fiber of the suit and carrying a load of weapons, oxygen tanks and other equipment, Adam found the hike to be refreshing. He was stretching his legs and using his muscles, all the while amazed by the stark, alien scenery around him. He had rarely spent time on a planet with a hostile environment. Most of the worlds he visited were Earth-like. There was no need to go anywhere else. But this was different. The late afternoon sun was casting long shadows over the rust-colored surface, and the mountains to his right towered up several thousand feet, rugged and raw, preserved throughout the millennia by the lack of substantial weathering. The scene was both beautiful and exotic and left Adam with the impression he was an explorer in an unknown land.

  But then they spotted the towers.

  They could be seen over the nearby hills for several miles before Coop and Adam reached the last buttress. They dropped down on their hands and knees and climbed the remaining few feet to look over the ridge.

  Adam let out a sigh of relief. The facility was a beehive of activity, with spotlights illuminating the towering structure and the three surrounding buildings, signifying a work in progress. The array was still out of service, and the repair crews were preparing for an around-the-clock shift.

  “It’s still down,” Adam reported over the comm. “We’re still a go.” Adam could have communicated with Riyad and Coop by ATD, but he used the standard link for the benefit of the others.

  “That’s great news,” Riyad said. Through his tone, Adam could sense the brilliant white grin on this friend’s face. “What is the guard strength?”

  “We’re just beginning our survey,” Adam replied. “We’ll have to move in closer to make a proper assessment.”

  “Please be careful. None of our ships are equipped to fight our way in for a rescue.”

  Adam and Coop breached the crest of the hill and slid down the side on
their bellies, using the increasing shadows of the Mon-Sim sunset for cover. The facility was still a mile or so away. It was crawling with Olypon, scurrying about in spacesuits, as well as bouncing over the surface in wheeled vehicles. There was a series of powerful lights on the three towers, which upon first glance, appeared to be erect and in alignment. Sherri had laid three cannon bolts into them as the Davion sped past a little over a week ago. Slow motion video of the attack showed one of the towers leaning into another, enough to prevent a portal from being formed in the space above the array. Since then, the Olypon had pulled the towers apart and were working on getting the last of the internal parts working again. There had to be miles of wiring and other components that had been damaged, not just the towers themselves. The three buildings—the control center and the two generator rooms—had been left unharmed in the attack.

  That was what Adam and the team were here to remedy.

  Keeping the internal helmet lights off, Copernicus and Adam moved in the shadows closer to the control building. The problem: the vast nebula surrounding the star system caused the night to stay illuminated stronger than the full moon on Earth.

  Coop crouched behind a boulder and lifted his binoculars.

  “They’ve set up a pressure house near the towers for the main work crews,” he reported to Adam, who had his binoculars up as well and was scanning the scene. They swept their views to the control building. It was well-lit, but with fewer Olypon moving in and out. There were airlocks, but once inside, the aliens working in the center remained there for longer periods than the repair crews. They would be fine-tuning the equipment, getting it ready for when the towers would be operational again.

  Adam looked up into the darkening sky. Seventy-five thousand miles up, a portal could open at anytime and the mad Aris Kracion appear, at the head of a fleet of subservient Klin. He had no doubt the force Kracion would bring with him would be a threat. The ancient being knew the level of technology the Milky Way had to throw against him; he wouldn’t be making the effort if he wasn’t sure he could win.