The Fringe Worlds (17 page)

Then he stared at Kaylor. “And you had the computer core from the beginning.”

Kaylor’s eyes grew wide with terror, as Jym tried to slip in behind him, hiding from the steely attention of the Overlord.

At that moment, a communicator on the Counselor’s belt buzzed, distracting the Overlord momentarily. The Counselor quickly answered it, whispering into the device. Then he stood and moved next to the Overlord.

“My Lord, the technicians have tried all they can to decipher the information from the core, but there is a compatibility issue. They believe the core must be linked to its original system.” There was a slight panic in his voice.

The Overlord firmed his jaw, then instructed the Counselor to have the core transferred to the ship as soon as possible. He stood silently for a long moment, looking into the room without seeing. All the others stood silently, shifting nervously. The Overlord was used to doing things in his own time.

Finally he took a deep breath and said, “Now you see why we have purged all evidence of the discovery of this ship. The only beings that know of the ship’s true identity are in this room. Only after I have learned the location of the Klin hiding place and purged the Expansion of their plague will I let the rest of the galaxy know what I have done.”

After a while, the group was herded up to the command dome. The core had arrived and technicians were preparing to install it back into the equipment tower. Adam noticed Riyad had separated himself from him and the two aliens, standing closer to the Juireans. The rest of the room was crowded with guards and various technicians.

The last time Adam was in this room Kaylor had shot him, and the wound on his head still had not healed completely. Adam noticed that Kaylor and Jym were becoming ever-more agitated, almost panicky. They had been petrified with fear toward the Juireans for quite awhile now, but this was different.

The technicians lifted the core and struggled to get it lined up in the opening. Then it slid in. Immediately, three steady orange lights above the core opening changed to yellow and began to flash in sequence. Kaylor and Jym literally ran for the exit but were quickly subdued by the guards. The Juireans didn’t notice the commotion, as they had turned to the command consoles and a screen that had suddenly flashed to life. A technician sat down at the console and began to type on the keyboard before him — and data began to stream across the screen. The Juireans leaned closer.

Adam was curious, too, but of course, he couldn’t read any of the data. But what really piqued his interest was how Kaylor and Jym were acting so strangely.

“There!” the Overlord yelled and pointed his finger. “Stop,” he commanded to the technician. “Surrender your seat and leave the room.”

When the seat was empty, the Counselor slipped into it. Only the two Juireans could see the screen. They began to read intently.

Kaylor grabbed Adam’s sleeve. “We have to leave!” he whispered to Adam.

“What We can’t leave.”

“We have to!”

Adam shrugged off Kaylor’s grasp and returned his attention to the Juireans. If they learned the location of Earth, they might reveal something that Adam could use. He couldn’t read the screen, even if he could see it, but he could listen in on their conversation.

“Amazing!” the Counselor was saying. “Annan.”

“Yes, but that is not what concerns me,” said the Overlord. “Look what it says about these Humans.”

Both the Juireans turned to look at Adam and Riyad, who in unison backed away quickly, trying to look innocent. The Juireans actually looked scared. Then they turned back to the screen.

“There. That’s it.” the Overlord said.

A few moments later, Riyad shoved a shoulder into Adam’s chest, sending him flying into Kaylor and Jym and the guards behind them. They all tumbled to the floor in a heap. Then Riyad kicked the Counselor in the ribs and grabbed the Overlord around the neck from behind.

Guards rushed into the room, but Riyad swung the Overlord around in front of him for cover. The guards hesitated. The pirate backed further into the room, almost disappearing from Adam’s view from the curvature of the room. Then with his free hand, he reached down and flipped his belt buckle inside out, revealing the trigger device for the ankle bombs! He grinned at Adam and then pushed a button at the same time he ducked around the equipment tower.

Nothing happened. A few seconds later, Riyad, with the Overlord still firmly in his grasp, peaked around the corner. Adam had regained his feet, and seeing Riyad, pulled his pant leg up to reveal a bare ankle.

A look of exasperation came over Riyad’s face. Then he gave Adam a wink and moved back out of sight, dragging the Overlord with him.

Guards rushed past Adam, some helping the Counselor to his feet, others heading after Riyad who had exited the command room through a secondary doorway.

Adam felt a strong tug on his arm. “Come Adam, we must go!” Kaylor had an absolutely terrified look on his face.

Using the confusion left over from Riyad’s abduction of the Overlord, Adam sent an elbow into the jaw of the one remain guard standing between them and the stairway out of the command room. He scooped up the guard’s weapon and the three of them bounded down the stairs and into the wide corridor. Three more guards ran past them and up the stairs, ignoring them completely. It seemed that rescuing the Overlord was a greater priority than subduing the three of them.

So they ran, back down the corridor, past the hiberpod room and into the umbilical tube. The hatch to the Counselor’s ship was open and they shot through it, Adam leading the way. Finding no one aboard, they quickly located the pilothouse and Kaylor took a seat at the controls.

“What the hell’s going on” Adam yelled as Kaylor fingered a switch that closed the outer door to the ship. Then he grabbed the control stick and sent the craft tearing away from the umbilical.

“The bomb!” Jym answered.

“What bomb”

Kaylor cranked the stick to the left and Adam could see the large Klin ship began to shrink away quickly.

“The nuclear bomb that’s aboard the Klin ship,” Kaylor said as he switched the screens to a rear view. The Klin ship was now about the size of the full moon and rapidly shrinking as the distance between the two craft increased.

“There’s a nuke aboard the ship How do you know”

“The core was hooked to a self-destruct,” Kaylor explained. “When I removed the core originally it activated the countdown. I was trying to disarm the bomb when you first attacked me.”

“So, why is it a problem now”

“The lights,” Kaylor said, not taking his eyes from the view screen. The Klin ship had disappeared from view. “Before I removed the core, the lights were orange. When I removed it, the lights turned yellow and began to oscillate, just as they’re doing now.”

“But why would the self-destruct be activated when the core was returned”

“Because I reversed the controls. The device thinks the core has been removed. We have about seven minutes.”

Adam joined Kaylor and Jym in their vigil at the view screen.

Riyad jerked the struggling Overlord through the side door to the command room and dragged him down a hallway. He was unarmed, but he did have the most valuable hostage in the Fringe. He had planned for the ankle bombs to go off and take out most of the guards, then in the confusion he could have easily slipped away with the Overlord virtually unseen. But that didn’t happen. Now he knew he only had a few seconds to extract the information he needed from his hostage. From the reaction of the two Juireans, he was sure they had learned the locations of both the Klin and of Earth.

The guards could be seen cautiously moving down the hallway toward them, safely keeping their distance.

All of a sudden the ship rumbled and Riyad felt an explosion vibrate through its structure. Almost immediately, he heard the sound of plasma bolts charging the air. The guards seemed confused, as some of them broke off to disappear down the hallway.

Then a stream of electric blue bolts shot down the hall over his head toward the guards. The guards returned the fire and Riyad found himself caught in the middle of a firefight!

He dragged the Overlord through a doorway and threw him to the floor. There was a battle going on in the hallway and this could be his opportunity to interrogate the Overlord. Riyad straddled the Overlord, grabbing him firmly around the neck. The eyes of the Overlord were wide and he struggled vainly to escape. But Riyad easily kept him pinned.

“You found the location of Earth. Give me the coordinates!” Riyad demanded, squeezing tighter on the alien’s neck.

The Overlord tried to shake his head, but Riyad’s grip restricted the movement.

“I will not,” the Overlord managed to say through gritted teeth.

“Then I will crush the life out of you with my bare hands. You have about two seconds to tell me!” He squeezed even tighter.

“Ellipse plane minus 4, section 21.” the Overlord strained to say. Riyad could feel his heart begin to race.

Just then he heard a strange scrapping sound on the metal floor of the hallway outside. The sound was growing louder. Riyad looked over at the open doorway just in time to see a small, puck-size sphere come sliding up and stop right at the doorway.

Riyad’s eyes grew wide. It was a grenade! A grenade like his pirates used when boarding a hostile ship.

He rolled off the Overlord and further into the room just as the bomb exploded! He felt a hot searing pain across his right side-and then darkness enclosed him.

Counselor Deslor found the unconscious Overlord in a side room, bloody, but alive. Guards swept in and helped their leader to a nearby couch, just as he was regaining his senses.

“Where are the Humans” he asked the Counselor through the pain.

“I don’t know. We are searching the ship.”

The Overlord reached up and grabbed the Counselor’s cloak. “Open a link to the Fleet Commander - now!”

“Of course, my Lord. Immediately.”

The Counselor spoke to a guard who then hurried out of the room. Moments later, a tech arrived with a portable transmission unit. He placed the unit on a table at the end of the couch and after a few moments, stepped away so the two Juireans could operate the device. Deslor sent everyone out of the room.

The pain woke Riyad from his sleep. He became aware of people around him and he opened his eyes to find himself lying across a console chair in the pilothouse of a shuttlecraft. Through groggy and filmy eyes, he could see Angar seated at the controls, the blackness of space showing through the front viewport. He ached all over and suspected his right arm was badly damaged from the screaming pain emanating from that part of his body. He groaned and instantly several people were at his side, helping him sit up in the seat.

Angar turned to face him, a large, satisfied grin on his face. “I’m so glad to see you’re awake,” he said. “The meds should make you feel better pretty soon.”

“Where am I” Riyad managed to force out of his dry throat.

“You’re in a shuttle. We’re almost back to my ship.”

“How.how did I get here”

“We rescued you.” Angar’s voice was proud and animated. “I brought a boarding party and pulled you out. You’re safe now.”

Memory began to surface in Riyad, and he soon remembered sitting atop the Juirean Overlord, hearing him recite the coordinates of planet Earth. And then an explosion!

“You fucking idiot!” Riyad screamed at Angar, as loudly as he could manage.

Angar recoiled with a shocked look. “What’s wrong”

Riyad managed to stand, cradling his broken right arm in his left. Between gritted teeth he said, “I was about to learn the location of my homeworld - until you interfered!”

Angar’s jaw was slack, his eyes wide. He didn’t know what to say, so Riyad stepped into the silence. “Turn around. We have to go back!”

“But General, we.we can’t—”

“Do it, damn it!”

Angar sat back down in the pilot’s seat and cranked the stick over. The star field changed ahead of them, but they were so far out that the Klin ship was not visible. Riyad stood shakily behind the pilot seat, overflowing with anger. He was so close! The Juirean was telling him where his home was located. He had half the coordinates: Ellipse minus 4, sector 21. Another second and he would have had it!

The link to the Fleet Commander was established and Oplim and the Deslor moved closer to the small screen on the unit. “Are you alright, My Lord” he asked, seeing the bloody and battered Overlord. This was unheard of. No one in his memory had ever even struck a Juirean, let alone injured one as badly as his Overlord.

“Listen to me, this is important!” the Overlord said. “The Klin exist!”

The Commander’s mouth fell open and his eyes grew wide. “Are you sure” He was so shocked that he forgot all decorum with his superior.

“Yes, Commander. They have a secret base in the area. But that is not our biggest threat.”

“What What could be worst”

“It’s the race called Humans. I will give you the coordinates to their planet. Then Commander, you must assemble your fleet and-“

The Fleet Commander saw his screen go completely blank, no static, no ghost images. He pressed the buttons to try to regain the link, but nothing happened.

After a couple of tries, he called in a technician. Another few minutes went by while the terrified technician tried in vain to reestablish the connection. Finally, he had to tell the Commander that there was nothing wrong with his equipment. There was simply nothing to link to.

The blast first appeared a tiny, yet brilliant dot against the star field. Adam and his two alien companions watched in horror as the dot grew almost instantly to fill half the sky. They turned away to shield their eyes, as the view screen darkened to lessen the light intensity inside the pilothouse.

A nuclear explosion in space is quite different than one within an atmosphere. The fire was not as intense because of the lack of oxygen and there is no shockwave from compressed air. But the radioactivity created an almost perfect sphere of light as the force expanded equally in all directions. But what was the most startling to Adam, were the bolts of electric blue and yellow lightening that shot out from the point of origin. It reminded him of one of those static electricity globes. The ribbons were beautiful and filled most of their view, travelling away on their own, slowly losing intensity as the minutes passed.