Star Viking (Extinction Wars Book 3) (18 page)

It was time for me to go tactical and remember the victory conditions. That was to bring home as many assault troopers as I could, along with prime loot.

Killing tigers didn’t count in that. Grabbing territory didn’t matter at all, either. But I needed to ensure we brought back as much stuff as possible.

Turning the air-cycle, I sped above the gunmetal-colored road. The spaceyard was in the distance. Behind me spread out a Lokhar city. This one had tall steel towers like old science-fiction posters. Big block buildings glittered with sunlight. I saw a tiger air car take off one of those. It raced away.

That didn’t seem good, but I wasn’t going to worry about it now.

Facing forward, I saw Star Viking cycles dipping and darting above the spaceyard. As I neared, I heard tiger roars, screams of agony and machine gun chatter. An air-cycle broke apart, its two riders falling a hundred meters, no doubt to their deaths.

The high-pitched whine of lasers focused my vision. I saw bright rays stabbing down from the back riders. Tigers curled on the ground like bugs burning beneath a child’s magnifying glass on a hot August day.

The heavy machine gun quit firing. Then it started up again. Other Star Vikings killed those Lokhars, too.

A new squadron of cycles from Holgotha roared toward an empty tarmac. Rollo shouted orders. I heard them on my headphones.

The spaceyard had big skeleton girders. Inside most of those cradles sat spaceships. A few were mere skeletons themselves. Other half-completed jobs showed pleasure yachts and military patrol craft. Several big warships looked finished to my eye. Seeing them made me grin.

Then one of those ignited. Geysers of metal and electrical wires fountained into the air. Tigers raced away from the damage.

Sabotage. They wrecked the warship.

I gunned my cycle, heading for the other completed cruisers and missile-ships. We needed those, all of them we could grab.

I landed hard, running before my cycle had quit humming. Yelling at an arban of troopers to follow me, I began hunting for saboteurs.

We flushed three Lokhars trying to plant a bomb on the side of a cruiser. As we approached, one of them leaped to his feet and raced nearer, igniting into a fireball, taking two Star Vikings with him.

“Get down!” I shouted.

The next Lokhar sprinted at us. He moved fast with smooth rhythm.

The rest of the arban reacted beautifully, hitting the deck. The second tiger exploded harmlessly. That left the last one.

They work in triads
, I thought to myself.
These tigers were Shi-Feng
.

The last Lokhar’s gaze locked with mine. He began to squint, which I recalled was the firing mechanism. I beamed him in the head; to the side, it turned out. Yeah, I should have hit the ground like the other troopers. Instead, I waited for the explosion. It didn’t come. The tiger slumped onto the ground and didn’t ignite. Had my headshot shorted whatever mechanism made him blow up?

I debated beaming his body into a crisp. We couldn’t take chances with the Shi-Feng. Then, I reconsidered. I’d like to get my hands on one of the holy Lokhar warriors.

“Get up,” I told the troopers. “Back away from his body.”

“Sir,” their leader said, a woman named Zoe Artemis. “You should back up, too. We can’t afford to lose you.”

“I have to check something.”

Zoe glanced at the remaining arban of troopers. Something passed between them. They rushed me.

“What are you doing?” I shouted as they grabbed my arms. They dragged me farther from the downed tiger. Smoke trickled from his wounded head.

“What we
should
do, sir,” Zoe said, answering my question. “We’re keeping you out of danger. Henry, check the tiger.”

I struggled, but there were several of them and only one of me. “I just want to know if he’s still alive,” I said.

Gingerly, the selected trooper bent over the obvious Shi-Feng Lokhar. “He’s still breathing,” Henry said.

Zoe aimed her silver visor at me. “What should we do with him, sir?”

I thought fast. “Do you have any bomb detectors?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Check the tiger for explosives.”

“Where does he carry them?” she asked.

“In his body is my guess.”

Zoe stared at me a moment later. Then she snapped her head around, facing the trooper. “Henry,” she said, “back away from the tiger.”

He did, fast.

Soon, with the others still holding my arms, Zoe approached the unconscious tiger. The Lokhar had a hole in his head that leaked blood onto the tarmac. Zoe had a boxlike device aimed at the Shi-Feng.

She adjusted dials and turned to us. “He’s definitely got explosives in him,” she reported.

“Can you remove them?” I asked.

“Are you kidding me?” Zoe asked. “According to this—” she raised the detector— “the junk is in his stomach.”

“I realize that. Can you take it out of him?”

Zoe didn’t stare as long this time. “There’s only one way to find out, Commander.”

“He might blow up if you try,” I said. “Let me do it.”

She motioned to her troopers. They dragged me farther away.

With her Bahnkouv, Zoe Artemis beamed the tiger’s stomach, slicing open his stomach with a deft touch. Then, she knelt and reached in with a bio-suited hand. A second later, she yanked out a bomb with bloody wires. Cocking her arm, she hurled the warhead, doing it none too soon.

With a terrific blast, the bomb exploded in midair. A zagun of troopers turned and stared.

Zoe re-aimed her detector at the Lokhar. “He’s clean now, sir,” she said. Her head jerked. It must have been a signal.

The four troopers released me. I hurried to the tiger.

“No hard feelings, sir,” Zoe told me. “We were just following orders.”

I said nothing. Instead, kneeling beside the defused Shi-Feng, I took out a medikit. With it, I began to patch him the best I could.

“Are you trying to keep him alive, sir?” Zoe asked behind my back.

“As of now,” I said, “your task is to bring the tiger back alive. I want him upstairs with us when we leave.”

Zoe aimed her visor at the sky.

I stood, looking up too. The vast silver donut gleamed up there. It seemed obscene somehow, and it struck me as very like the science fiction stories I’d read in my youth.

“Is he important, sir?” Zoe asked.

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

She nodded, motioning to her troopers.

I could see that Zoe Artemis ran a tight ship. That was a good sign. Soldiers like her were one of the reasons we’d won so many of our encounters.

After watching Zoe and her arban hustle the unconscious tiger to their cycles, I went back to mine.

Lifting into the air, I searched for Rollo. It took me a few moments to find the right channel. He stood with a clot of Star Vikings near the biggest spaceship.

I landed beside him.

For the next few hours, Rollo and I toured one spaceship after another. Those we could take rose upstairs to Holgotha. The rest we rigged with explosives.

At this point, I discovered a problem with using the artifact as the central attack platform. On Sanakaht, Holgotha remained stationary. I would have liked to hit the opposite side of the planet and do the same thing there as we’d done here.

“From what I can tell,” Rollo said, “the outskirts of the city are where they keep the warehouses.”

I gazed at our new warships floating beside the artifact. The raid was supposed to be a rich one for us, the big daddy payday.

In World War II, at the start of the Pacific War for America and Japan, the enemy had struck at Pearl Harbor. Everyone knows the story. Japanese planes destroyed docked American capital ships and parked aircraft, although they missed the carriers. The U.S. flattops had been out at sea on maneuvers. On the return to their own carriers, some of the Japanese pilots begged for one more strike. They wanted to hit the big oil tanks onshore and blow them up. The Japanese Admiral Nagumo wanted no part of that. He wished to bring the Japanese fleet home intact. They’d done enough. It was time to scram. So, they sailed away, leaving the oil tanks intact. If they had made one more strike, it would have crippled American recovery efforts even further. Without those oil tanks in Hawaii, the American Navy would have had a much harder time striking the Japanese Empire as soon as it had.

This was our Pearl Harbor. I had to grab as much ordnance as I could, not rush out too soon.

“Gather your troopers,” I told Rollo. “We’re hitting the outskirts of the city.”

From the spaceyard, we rose like a swarm of angry wasps. Gunning our DZ9 air-cycles, we sped for the city warehouses.

As we approached, the Lokhar urban area took on a more distinct shape. Some of the steel towers looked rusted, which seemed strange. I saw chips in the big block buildings. Had there been fighting here recently?

A few tigers stood on the roofs with heavy machine guns and handheld RPGs. The rockets flew as slugs and beams struck us. They took out several cycles. Then we closed, slaughtering the Lokhars on the roofs.

We landed and killed every tiger we saw on the ground. It became a massacre. The warehouses stood several stories high. Each held military hardware, much more than we could carry away on our cycles.

I made a call. Haulers rose from the spaceyard and landed here. On the double, troopers loaded the grounded spaceships. We packed the cargo holds, raced to the next warehouse and emptied it as well.

For me, time sped up. Several hours passed in a flash. There was so much to do and no time to do it.

Then, tiger tanks rumbled out of the city. The cannons on Holgotha put on a laser light show, destroying them all. Death from above, baby.

Later, power-armored tigers tried to surprise us, bounding like maddened grasshoppers, desperately trying to close. The artifact-perched lasers hit them too. By that time, three captured Lokhar pinnaces joined the fun. They slid above like air-sharks. Particle beams destroyed tiger combat cars sweeping from the west.

We were the Star Vikings. We smashed the local tiger forces and filled up hauler after hauler. Each one rose up to Holgotha, waiting to leave.

Those who remained on the surface went to another spaceyard fifty kilometers away. There, we repeated the sequence. At that point, the resistance
on
Sanakaht ended, although we didn’t know it yet.

Could we have looted the entire planet? It’s possible. A surprise against us halted our operations.

After a solid seven hours of fighting, looting and laughing, I called up to N7. A soldier had told me they really wanted to speak with me.

“Commander Creed, where you have you been?” N7 asked.

“Just tell him,” Ella said in the background.

“Tell me what?” I asked. From where I stood, I watched troopers entering a hauler, stowing away hardware as if they were African army ants.

“We have to leave Sanakaht, Commander,” N7 said. “A flotilla of Lokhar warships is headed from the heavymetal moons toward us. They’ve already wiped out our space-drones. The Demar hauler is heading back to Hol—” N7 almost spoke the artifact’s name. “The hauler returns to—” He probably realized he shouldn’t call it
the artifact
either. Not if Lokhars could hear him.

“I understand,” I said.

“We must leave, Commander,” N7 said. “The approaching warships will have the high ground against us. We can send up five patrol boats, but we still haven’t shaken down our own cruisers and missile-ships. If the enemy attacks us from orbital space…”

“Okay,” I said. “Start packing. I’ll talk to Rollo. We’ll lift up to…the platform. I want you to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”

“Someone will have to go see our pilot,” N7 said.

“Roger,” I said. “I’m coming upstairs.”

Our android meant I should go see Holgotha in the inner chamber. It was time to let my troopers finish their tasks and scram. Rollo and Dmitri could take care of things down here. I had to get the artifact ready to transfer back to the solar system before the dreaded Lokhar cavalry arrived on the scene.

***

My air-cycle used the last of its power source to climb upstairs. Stolen Lokhar cruisers, missile-ships and patrol boats hovered around the artifact. Seeing them made me feel good inside.

From the direction of the faintly appearing stars, I saw the Demar hauler descending. What had N7 told me? The approaching Lokhars had already destroyed the hauler’s space-drones.

Yeah. It was time to go.

I grounded the DZ9 on Holgotha’s metallic surface. Sprinting to a waiting locker, I threw it open. Yanking the heavy vacc-suit inside, I put it on. Afterward, I jumped onto the cycle again and floated toward the inner curve. Halfway there, the cycle shorted out. I would have to hoof it the rest of the way.

After ten minutes of walking, my headphones crackled. I chinned a response.

“Commander,” N7 said. “I have a message from the Lokhar flotilla admiral.”

“Why would I care?” I asked.

“He wishes to speak with you. He asked for you by name, Commander.”

“Come on, N7. Did you forget to turn off your video when you addressed him?”

“I followed procedures, sir. He demanded to speak to Commander Creed.”

“Do you personally know the Lokhar admiral?”

“No,” N7 said.

“All right,” I said. “Patch him through to my HUD.”

I trudged along Holgotha, using my magnetic boots at full strength. I didn’t want to fall off. As I walked, an old tiger appeared on one half of my HUD. The other half let me see where I was going.

The old guy had a wide face for a Lokhar with too much white fur. This tiger had jowls like a bulldog. I’d never seen that before on one. I suspected he was fat. He wore a heavy purple garment with a fringed purple robe. His eyes were bright orange. I wondered if drugs had caused the color.

Naturally, I kept my face from his sight.

“You wanted to talk to me, so talk,” I said.

“Commander Creed?” he asked in a rich voice.

“Don’t know who that is,” I said. “But it’s true I lead the expedition.”

“You are the one known as Creed,” he said with finality.

“Is this Creed a legendary space pirate?” I asked.

The tiger snarled. It brightened his already orange eyes. It also made the white fur stand out. “Do you not realize who you address?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said. “Don’t have any idea.”

“I am the Emperor of the Lokhar.”

Oh
, I thought to myself.
You’ve got to be kidding
.

“I am Felix Rex Logos,” he said. “I have heard of you, savage. Know, the Imperium of the Lokhars shall hunt you down to the ends of the galaxy. There is no place you can hide.”

“The worst part is that I bet you think that’s an original threat,” I said.

He snarled again, spraying spit.

“Got a bit of an anger issue, do you?” I said.

“You have bitten off more than you can swallow, beast. You have awakened my wrath against your species.”

“Turn that around, and you’ll get some idea of how I feel about you, Mr. King-bro.”

“I accept your declaration of war,” Emperor Felix told me.

“Great,” I said. “I accept as well. Destroy these others you speak about as I laugh all the way to the bank.”

He leaned toward me with his eyes widening. “You consider yourself clever by hiding your visage, beast. Yet, I know it is you, Commander Creed. We have images of the Forerunner artifact in Sanakaht’s skies. All aboard my flagship know it as the Altair Object. I know every mark on the holy relic.”

For a moment, I closed my eyes. I hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, King-bro,” I said.

He snarled a laugh. “Do you not realize yet? Once, during the reign of my mother, I commanded the Lokhar Fifth Legion as it guarded the holy artifact in the Altair star system.”

I scowled. If he’d led the Fifth Legion once…

“I served the artifact and gazed upon its beauty,” the Emperor said. “Many times, I walked upon it as I considered the holiness of the Creator. You, beast, attacked the Fifth Legion. You and your Starkien scum used nuclear weapons to kill my brothers in arms. I know you, Creed-beast. In an arcane, vile fashion, you have suborned the noblest of the artifacts. It sickens me. Yet I have heard you know the relic’s name. How this can be so is a mystery. But for your reckless killing on Sanakaht—”

“Hey, you know what, Mr. Big Shot,” I said. “Why don’t you shut the Hell up? You ordered my Earth destroyed. You tried to take humanity down.”

“Yes. I knew from the beginning that you were savages beyond the pale of civilization. I indeed ordered your species’ destruction. My only remorse was that some of you survived the attack. Orange Tamika has much to answer for in failing to do as I bid them.”

“That’s it,” I said. “By your own words you’ve sealed your fate.”

“No. You have sealed yours.”

I almost told him, “No way, man. I said it first.” But this wasn’t a pissing contest. This was the game of races.

As I trudged across Holgotha, I considered what the Felix Rex Logos Purple Tamika Emperor had just told me. He’d once been a legionary of the Fifth. I’d helped slaughter the legion. He knew Holgotha by sight. Yeah. I could see this was bad.

Instead of a Star Viking raid so humanity could grab some extra stuff, I’d just ensured we were in a war to the death with the largest battlefleet around. The Jelk didn’t seem to be interested in this part of the Orion Arm just now. They had their own problems. Instead of improving mankind’s situation, I’d just made it a whole lot worse. Great.

“What are you doing in the Sanakaht system anyway?” I asked.

“Vain beast, I shall capture you.”

It was time to throw him a curve ball. “Are you going to do it with the Shi-Feng?” I asked.

On my HUD, the Emperor recoiled. “How have you come to learn the holy name?” he asked in a higher voice.

“Secrets, secrets are no fun,” I answered. “Secrets, secrets hurt someone.”

He gnashed his teeth and sprayed more spit. “Know, you foul beast, that I shall begin a holy crusade against humanity. You will not be able to hide among the Jelk. No. You cannot run far enough to escape my wrath. I will track you and slice your belly open myself. Then, I shall pull out your intestines and feed on them to my court’s delight.”

“I’m not that fancy, King-bro. I’m just going to blow your head clean off and piss down your neck.”

“Enough!” he roared.

“That’s right,” I said. I clicked off the connection. I’d had enough of his royal majesty.

I stalked across Holgotha, getting angrier by the moment. This was just great. This—I had to warn the others.

“N7,” I radioed.

Static answered me. Our radio equipment didn’t seem to be as good as what the Lokhar Emperor possessed. I’d have to wait until I was farther away from the black hole to communicate with the others.

Why was the Emperor in the Sanakaht star system? I shook my head. It didn’t matter how Felix Rex Logos had come to be here at this time. I wondered if Holgotha had known. Would the artifact even care? Maybe.

I began to wonder why the artifact had agreed to my request to transfer to Sanakaht. Had Holgotha computed the present situation between the Lokhars and us? At this point, did he wish to see humanity gone forever?

If true, that had ominous implications.

Shaking my head again, I realized I couldn’t worry about any of that now. We needed to get out of here before the tiger flotilla reached its operational range. Surely, they would have T-missiles.

I increased my pace across Holgotha.

An eternity later, I stood before the wall of the building. It looked different in daylight. I’d never realized before how pitted the surface was. Raising my right gauntlet, I curled the fingers, getting ready to strike the wall with my knuckles.

“
You are ready to return to the solar system
?”

“Yes,” I radioed.

“
You do not need to come inside. Instead, return to your people. I will transfer in thirty of your minutes
.”

“How about doing it right now?” I said.

“
That would kill you. Knowing that, do you still wish for me to leave instantly
?”

“Can you sense the approaching Lokhar ships?”

“
I am aware of them, of course. I have been the entire time
.”

“Can they attack us within thirty minutes time?”

“
No
.”

“Then give me those thirty minutes to get out of the black hole’s range.”

“
Good-bye, Commander Creed. Do not ever attempt to speak with me again. I find myself sullied by today’s murders
.”

“Why would you care? It is the way of the universe, things dying out. You told me so yourself.”

“
Heed my words, Commander. I am sick of your voice, your thoughts and your ways. Do you seek to speak with me again. I will finish my analysis in your solar system. Then I will leave.
”

“That gives us eighteen more years, right?” I asked.

“
You are deluded. Your species does not even have three years left. The Purple Emperor will annihilate every human in existence before the triple years run their course
.”

I didn’t know what to say to my own private oracle preaching doom. So, I turned around and headed back toward the outer surface.