Star Viking (Extinction Wars Book 3) (4 page)

Sant’s poisoned slivers came closer to killing me than the damage I’d taken in Wyoming. I learned this in retrospect after several days with a one hundred and five degree temperature.

I regained consciousness in Mars Base medical hooked to a Jelk machine we’d salvaged from the battlejumper. This time, it took more than the healing tank to save me.

Lying there drowsily, I realized I’d gotten too cocky. I should have been ready for something like that, kept a weapon in my chamber. Sant had surprised me with his force blade and then the needler.

Where others go unarmed, there it is wise to go armed
.

It was an old proverb, one well worth remembering. Sant’s attack also hammered home the truth of a surprise attack. The Shi-Feng had used tactical surprise as well. Since prehistoric times, it had been a force multiplier, and it would continue to be so in the future. Next time, it needed to be on my side.

I ached all over. My eyelids felt gritty every time I blinked. I thought about getting up anyway. Instead, I drifted back to sleep.

The next day I couldn’t keep anything down. The fever returned, this time only reaching one hundred and thee.

I drank liquids and spewed them back up onto my hospital gown. A nurse put a green solution into the tube sticking in my arm.

I slept more. By now, it seemed as if I’d done it forever. The fever broke and then came back at one hundred and six. I had a terrible dream of Abaddon and his Kargs. The reality of it startled me.

I drifted in the void in a spacesuit. Far away in the distance, I saw a stellar snowflake. Stars shined behind it. That didn’t make much sense, even in my dream. Then I realized that was no snowflake. It was a giant Karg vessel. We’d faced far too many just like these in hyperspace.

I moved toward the snowflakes, and I realized more were coming. Dread filled me at the thought. The giant Karg ships weren’t in hyperspace but regular space. I began counting them, soon reaching fifteen.

Then I saw Jelk battlejumpers, one hundred of them, at least. They moved in a cone formation, with the endpoint farthest away from the Kargs. The open part of the cone faced the giant snowflakes. In front of the cone-formation at a precise distance was a gauzy substance like a titanic lens. It was most odd.

All at once, the Jelk battlejumpers in the cone fired their lasers at the gauzy substance. The rays filled the lens with bubbling light. Suddenly, a gigantic coherent ray beamed from the other side of the lens. It was then I saw smaller Jelk vessels at the edges of the lens. Did the ships do something to focus the massive beam? I suspected yes. In any case, the giant ray reached out and struck a Karg snowflake-vessel.

The beam disintegrated the alien structure, melting what turned out to be individual Karg moth-ships attached to the gargantuan mother ship.

The Jelk lens ray snapped off. The cone-formation battlejumpers had stopped beaming their lasers into their side of the lens. Were they recharging their coil banks?

More Karg snowflakes moved up. Clinging to them were moth-like ships with glowing nuclear eyes. Those vessels detached from the mother ships. Each craft spewed exhaust as they accelerated toward the Jelk lens.

The massed cone-shaped formation fired into the lens again. As before, a coherent beam lanced out the other side. It struck a moth-ship. The giant ray encompassed the entire Karg vessel, and it annihilated everything so the craft disappeared like a giant blowing out a match. The gargantuan ray moved like a swath, destroying one Karg moth-ship after another.

Did I witness a real space battle between the Kargs and the Jelk, fought in the Corporation’s core worlds? In my dream, I believed that to be the case. Yet that would imply the Kargs—or some of them at least—had escaped from their space-time continuum.

The cone formation with its lens wrecked savage destruction against the Karg vessels. Finally, however, some moth-ships drew close enough to the lens to attack. The eyes on the nearest Karg vessels glowed brilliantly. They seemed to bubble as if made of red-hot lava. Then, a red ray beamed. It touched the gauzy lens. More Karg beams hit it. In a consuming flash, like tissue in a bonfire, the lens vanished, as did the smaller ships at the lens’ edges.

The cone formation advanced, and the surviving Karg moth-ships gathered in a square. Beams flashed back and forth between the two fleets. Ships exploded, often harming its nearest neighbor. I doubt I’d ever witnessed a deadlier battle.

Finally, the last Jelk vessel disappeared under a barrage of red rays. The Kargs had won, but at a dreadful cost. Hulks and pieces of starships floated everywhere.

As I watched from a distance, my fevered nightmare became personal.

During our invasion of the portal planet, Abaddon had addressed me via screen. He’d shown me how he tortured my sweet Jennifer. For years now, I’d agonized over her fate. Maybe that’s what powered the horrible dream.

In the nightmare, the feeling of dread grew worse than ever. I watched as Karg moth-ships cruised through the wreckage of battle. More giant snowflakes appeared, with huge exhausts showing they accelerated, traveling who knew where.

I sped toward one of the snowflakes. Believe me, I didn’t want to go there. Yet, nothing I did could stop my advance.

No! I refused. I was Commander Creed. I’d defeated the Kargs before. I wasn’t their slave rushing to them at their bidding.

With an intense effort of will, I halted my dream plunge toward that vessel.

Then, it seemed that I didn’t float in space anymore. Instead, I stood on a bridge. I didn’t recognize the type of ship. It must have been a newer style. Before me, a baroque screen sizzled. A fuzzy image appeared on it. I couldn’t see the exact features of the thing, but I saw two fiery eyes like the pit of Hell burning at me.

As I stood on the bridge, the weight of those eyes wilted my resolve. The burning orbs had something to do with Jennifer. Bracing myself, I roared defiance at the eyes. I shook a fist at them.

“Commander Creed,” said the deadliest voice I’d ever heard. The words rumbled against my chest, vibrating with debilitating power.

“Abaddon?” I whispered.

The sizzling worsened on the elaborate screen. The image grew fuzzier, but the eyes became like twin fires. I felt the gaze, which locked my jaws.

“I see you, foolish mortal,” Abaddon told me. “You are far away, and you are desperate.”

“This is a dream,” I managed to whisper.

“How truly dense you are,” Abaddon said. “You think yourself so wise concerning science and reality. Yet you understand little of power and supernatural force.”

“You’re saying this is real, not a dream?”

“How can you comprehend? Yes, you dream, but I am indeed speaking to your unconscious mind in the manner of my kind.”

“You’re a demon,” I said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Come closer to me, mortal. Look at me with your soul and lose all hope.”

I almost listened to him. “No!” I shouted, averting my gaze from the burning eyes. “You’re not my master. You’re an invader in a place you don’t belong.”

“Wrong. I have come home. Now, I shall devour the living along with the dead.”

“The Jelk Corporation will defeat you.”

“They fight but lose every battle.”

“Taking down more of your moth-ships all the time,” I said.

“These are the core worlds. I expand my operations, gaining factories every week. My strength grows as I induce Saurians and creatures you know nothing about into my kingdom. If you can survive long enough, mortal, I will devour your paltry Earth. I will take you, though, and force you to serve me for uncounted centuries. You know nothing of despair, although your woman does. She is my slave, mortal. She is my killer, doing my bidding. Oh, how she hates you, Commander. Perhaps I should send her at you like an arrow to rip out your heart.”

“You’re a lying fiend from Hell,” I said. “I’m going to kill you, Abaddon.”

“Brave words from a creature locked in sleep. I doubt you shall survive your sickness. Good-bye, little creature. Know that everything you’ve worked to achieve, I will destroy. There is no hope for your space-time continuum. I have arrived and humanity’s end rushes toward completion.”

My heart felt sick. What had he done to Jennifer? How had Abaddon escaped hyperspace? Just how many Kargs had he brought through with him?

“
Creed
,” a distant voice shouted. “Wake up, Creed. You’re having a nightmare.”

I blinked, confused. Abaddon’s burning eyes disappeared. I no longer stood on the strange bridge. Neither did I drift in space. It felt as if I zoomed upward toward the light.

“Can you hear me, Creed?”

I felt so utterly weary. Even so, I wanted to wake up.

I did, to find a redheaded nurse whose name I didn’t know standing over me. She told me I’d been raving, shouting incoherently. Was everything okay?

I blinked at her, confused. The dream had felt so real. Yet how could Abaddon have spoken to me from hundreds perhaps a thousand light years away? That made no sense. What I’d seen couldn’t be reality.

As always, my subconscious must have taken many truths and twisted them into the nightmare. Yet, I have to admit, part of me believed I had glimpsed something more. Could I tell anyone about this, though?

I decided to wait.

Whatever else had happened, the fever had finally broken. The nurse let me suck on a straw as she held a can of vile glop. This time I kept the liquids down. That was a beginning.

I vowed never to let anyone shoot poisons into me again. Why had I gotten fancy with Sant? I should have killed the tiger and been done with it before he could use the needler.

Debating with myself what I should have done with the Lokhar—letting the Abaddon dream dissipate back into my subconscious where it belonged—I fell into a deep sleep. I stayed that way for twenty-three hours. Something had exhausted me beyond normal. It had to be the fever, right? A dream couldn’t have done it. Only a fool would believe such a thing.

In any case, I woke up twenty-three hours later, scaring the nurse with my red eyes. She called a doctor. He examined them, shining a penlight into the pupils. After he clicked off the light, he patted me on the shoulder and said I was recovering. I shouldn’t worry about the redness. It would go away soon.

Finally, two days later—minus twenty pounds and feeling permanently lightheaded—I allowed the nurse to help me stand. I shuffled to a chair, collapsing into it and panting.

“Why are you up?”

Lifting my chin off my chest, I found Ella Timoshenko in the room with me.

A little over six years ago, Ella had been a Russian scientist. I’d first met her in Antarctica the day after the Earth died. Now, she was a former assault trooper turned guardian. Despite the steroid-68, Ella was still thin with a pretty face. Actually, she had sunken cheeks just like a porn star I’d seen in my misspent youth. Her dark hair dangled to her cheeks, giving her an elfin quality. There was nothing pixy about her razor-like mind, though. She enjoyed things you could count and weigh—using the scientific approach wherever possible.

“Hello to you, too,” I said.

Ella grabbed a stool, setting it near me, studying my face. “We thought you might die this time, Creed.”

“I feel like I’ve been dead,” I said. I wondered if I should tell her about my dream. Then I realized our scientist would be the last person to believe it could have been real.

Ella smiled, nodded and turned away. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this. You’re still getting better.”

“Are you kidding? I’m sick of being sick. What’s the problem? Give me something to think about.”

Ella regarded me, biting her lower lip. Finally, she said, “The Lokhars on Ceres keep pestering us about Doctor Sant.”

“Oh?”

“They want him back.”

That didn’t seem right. The Lokhars on Ceres were Orange Tamika warriors. They’d been with us on the portal planet. Out of ten million tigers making the attack, they were the handful who had survived. What’s more, they lived because of us. They owed the assault troopers everything. I had the impression they had dedicated themselves to the Forerunner artifact and to helping mankind survive as a species.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “They want Sant even after he tried to kill me?”

Ella smiled tightly, looking as if she had a secret. “They have no idea what occurred in your chamber.”

“You’d better explain that.”

The woman’s lips thinned as she stared into my eyes. “You have to understand something first. The doctors didn’t think you’d make it through this time. You’d just been in the healing tank. A second immersion this soon…”

“Go on,” I said.

“We thought you were dying, Commander. You can understand our grief and rage.”

“Sure. What did you do to Sant?”

Ella bit her lower lip again. “Rollo and Dmitri agreed with me. They said I should proceed with the experiment. Only N7 demurred.”

“What about Diana and Murad Bey?” I asked.

They were the principle Earth Council leaders. The council governed the people in the space freighters, the bulk of humanity, in other words. As Forerunner Guardians, we are outside the Earth Council’s jurisdiction. It was something I’d hammered home to the others many times. Even so, I tried to coordinate with Diana. There weren’t enough of us left to allow squabbles.