Warfare: Rise Of Mankind Book 2 (18 page)

             
Who made you one of the gods?

              The ship emptied and Vora followed the last survivors off the ship with Clea close behind. Two marines followed as she tapped her sister on the arm. “We need to go this way.” She gestured with her head off to the left, down a hall toward the brig.

              “Why aren’t we going with them?”

              Clea hesitated for only a moment. “Because we’re not hurt. Come on.”

              Vora shrugged and walked along with her sister, moving into the privacy of the hall. Clea stopped her there with a touch to her arm. “Do you remember…” She swallowed back emotion, struggling for a moment to maintain her composure. It took a moment but she finally mastered herself and continued. “Do you remember the An’Vell plantation?”

              “Of course.” Vora nodded. “They grew those amazing filans.”

              “We snuck in there and gorged ourselves during the hot months.”

              Vora finally smiled, the first positive expression she’d shown since they met up again on the planet. “Yes…it made us sick for days.”

              “Thank God.” Clea took her helmet off and set it on the ground. “I had to know if you’d lost all feeling. I’m glad to see you haven’t.”

              “What’re you talking about?” Vora tilted her head, looking confused. “Clea…”

              “I know what you did.” Clea held up her computer and showed her the video. Vora watched, standing up straighter the moment she saw her own face. The words didn’t seem to move her but she didn’t look away until the video finished.

              “I thought I’d deleted all trace of my indiscretion.”

              “Is that what you call high treason?” Clea asked. “Indiscretion? As if you’ve done nothing more than annoy a person?”

              “I followed my conscience.”

              Clea shook her head. “No, no…no, you did not. If your
conscience
told you to do this, then you wouldn’t have tried to get away with it. You wouldn’t have cared. Unless you thought you might do
more
damage to your own people.”

              “We’ve grown decadent—”

              “You haven’t been home in a while.” Clea shook her head. “Are
we
amongst those species which don’t deserve to live? Mother? Father? Our brother?”

              Clea felt a surge of anger threatening to overtake her and she swallowed it back, fighting with every fiber of her being to contain it.

              “The enemy has won.” Vora shrugged. “There’s no use fighting them. They have devoted all their resources to battle, to destroying us.”

              “How do
you
know that? What did you discover?”

              “It doesn’t matter…”

              Clea grabbed her by the shirt and slammed her into the wall, raising her voice. “It matters, Vora! It matters to all the people who died today out in space! Our culture depends on what we do here and now, what you tell me and what you give up. So don’t try to hide behind some nihilistic nonsense! Tell me what you found!”

              Vora looked away, shame filling her features. “Our research into enemy technology led me to stumble upon one of their archives. After a battle, our ships recovered more of their data core than ever before. I personally studied it, eager to learn more about those who would kill us. I thought I might be able to provide context, a weakness in their social structure we could exploit…”

              “But?” Clea prompted. “What was it?”

              “When we made contact with those people, they were content to their colonies and home world. Their social structure, their caste system, was rigid and well defined. Even before they had a cause, their religious zealotry bound them together. Their morals were unshakable and their ideologies uncompromising.

              “When we met them, with our liberal attitude toward sharing knowledge…our concept of freedom and individuality…it offended them. We could not treat with them because they had no interest in what we had to offer. They didn’t appear technologically savvy but what we didn’t know was how well they guarded the secrets they’d uncovered in their colonial expansion.

              “They have some sort of manufacturing planet capable of churning out equipment, ships and fighters, some sort of…of precursor tech we can only imagine. For every two ships we destroy, they can produce five and they do so with resources claimed from other worlds nearby, strip mined to fuel their jihad.

              “Make no mistake, they want us dead due to
religious
and ideological differences. They are not interested in a cease fire or any kind of peace. Their only goal is to annihilate any culture which defies the tenets of their race. We represent the largest threat to their goals. The longer we struggle, the more we prolong the inevitable.”

              Clea stared at her with wide eyes. The revelation she’d been presented with, the story Vora carried with her, made her stomach turn. “So you just gave up? Decided we weren’t worth fighting for? How could you have so little respect for your own life? What happened to your self preservation? Why didn’t this compel you forward, making you search harder for the technology we needed to win this war?”

              “Because you are not listening!” Vora shouted. “There is no victory here!”

              Clea closed in so their noses were touching and their eyes were inches apart. She whispered harshly. “I for one would rather fight to my dying breath standing between my enemies and my family than to roll over and surrender to cowardice.”

              Vora opened her mouth to respond but Clea’s scowl stopped her.

              “You cannot defend yourself from this. You can’t make amends. You can’t escape the judgement you’ve requested. In attempting to damn our entire race, you’ve merely thrown all your potential away. Giving up never helps anything, Vora. Don’t you remember that simple lesson? Our father made it quite clear.”

              “He didn’t face these odds.”

              Clea shook her head. “He did state
any
odds.” She pulled her sister close, embracing her tightly. She recited their traditional statement for a condemned prisoner, her eyes burning with tears. “I hold the remnants of Vora An’Tufal in my arms. When I release her, she will be known only as Vora. Her ties to family and tradition will be cut. Only the individual will remain and she will pay for what she has done.”

              The gravity of it must’ve sunk in. Vora returned the hug and began to cry, burying her face in her sister’s hair. “I’m sorry, Clea…”

              “I wish I could believe you.” Clea fought hard to let go but couldn’t immediately. “I wish you would’ve thought about all of us first. I’ll miss you. The memories I’ll cherish will be those of our youth. The other actions are those of another and that’s the person I’ll see punished.”

              Vora nodded, unable to speak through her weeping.

              As Clea stepped back, she directed the soldiers forward. “Take Vora to a cell. I’ll accompany you.”

              “Yes, ma’am.” She recognized the men as Jenks and Walsh. Their familiar presence gave her some strength. Walsh smiled at her, offering a sympathetic expression before bringing their prisoner down the hall and to the brig.

             
So ends the hunt for our traitor…and the life of my sister.

              Clea saw her locked up and headed for the bridge. They still needed to get out of the system if any of this was to matter.

              Gray stood behind Redding, watching the view screen. Olly put up the position of the enemy fleet and it was approaching fast.
They know the facilities gone, they have to. They must assume we got everything out of there.
The thought worried him. Would they try to blow them out of the sky or commandeer the ships to get at their cargo?

              The traitor situation made his heart sick for Clea. He knew what family meant to the woman, how much it meant to their culture. Having her own sister do such a thing must’ve been quite the blow. He’d received the report that Vora An’Tufal was locked up in the brig. He wondered if he’d see his liaison any time soon.

              Technicians worked to backup the data recovered at the facility. Tech crews assisted with Paul on lead. He’d been working in the computer labs when those people arrived and broke off to ensure everything they saved got some redundancy. Olly didn’t have the bandwidth to coordinate any of that, especially considering their current situation.

              The Crystal Font came closer to them and they allowed visiting fighters to return home. Gray turned to Olly when the last ship boarded. “Are we ready to jump out of here?”

              “The engines have been charging for almost ten minutes,” Olly replied. “I’m not sure what’s taking so long.”

              Gray gestured to Agatha. “Patch in Higgins.”

              “He’s on the line, sir.”

              “Higgins, what’s going on? How long to jump?”

              “We’re working on it,” Higgins replied. “That microjump messed with the charging stations. Our sensors said they were working fine but when Olly called down to ask what happened, I found they were trickle charging.”

              Gray rubbed his eyes. “Is the problem corrected?”

              “It is now…”

              “How long before we can jump, Higgins?”

              “Five minutes, sir.”

              “And how long before the enemy fleet gets here?” Gray looked toward Tim.

              Tim replied, “at present speed, they should have a firing solution in less than eight minutes.”

              “Not much room for error,” Adam said.

              “Plot a course away,” Gray said. “Redding, turn us around. Get us moving at top speed. Buy the drive some time to charge.”

              The navigator and pilot went to work. Gray brought the Crystal Font online. “Kale, we’ve got a problem.”

              “We were just about to recommend a jump…where are you going?”

              “Our pulse drive isn’t charged up. Something happened when we did the micro. We’re going to put some distance between us and that fleet long enough to get the drives ready. It’ll be about five minutes.”

              Kale hummed. “I see.”

              “You guys are welcome to take off. I’m sure your ship’s ready to go.”

              “We can’t leave you here,” Kale replied. “Not with the cargo you carry. The data, the traitor…between the two of us, we are the expendable.”

              “Listen to me,” Gray said firmly. “No one is expendable, okay? No one.” Clea came on the bridge and stopped abruptly. Gray made eye contact with her and frowned. She paced closer.

              “I’m not saying I wish to die,” Kale said. “Nor do I necessarily plan to. I have some tricks up my sleeve still and I should be able to get out of here before they dust my ship. However, you need time and I can buy it for you. Keep your throttle at maximum and jump out of here. We’re sending you some coordinates. From there, you can jump back to Earth.”

              “What about you?” Gray asked. “What’ll you do?”

              “Go in another direction…a roundabout way to get home.” Kale smiled. “They’ll be far more interested in us than you in a few moments so we’ll have to take the long way back.”

              “I see.” Gray shook his head. “I don’t like it, Kale. We’ve been through a lot together. I really wanted to see this through to the end.”

              “And we will,” Kale assured, “just in different parts of the galaxy. I look forward to our next meeting, Captain Atwell.” He pressed his hand to his chest and bowed his head.

              Gray nodded once and saluted the man. “Likewise, Anthar Ru’Xin.”

              “Crystal Font out.”

              “They’re going to try to run,” Clea said. “But how will that help us?”

              Agatha turned to them. “The Crystal Font has sent us a message. They offer thanks for returning the data from the facility and wish us a speedy trip back to…to Xion Six? Where’s that?”

              Clea smiled sadly. “That’s a planet on the outskirts of our space…a deserted world. If you check the chart, it’s in the opposite direction of Earth.”

              “Clever,” Adam said. “That guy’s good.”

              “I hope he makes it,” Gray looked at Olly. “You tell me when those engines are ready for us to get the hell out of here, okay?”

              “Yes, sir.” Olly put the charging meter up on the main screen.

              “Are you okay?” Gray asked Clea and she nodded once. “You don’t have to be here for this. I know you’ve been through a lot.”

              “Captain, in the next several minutes, we very well may be dead,” Clea said. “I’d rather do that on the bridge, at my post and not in my bed, hoping.”

              “Very well.” Gray motioned for her seat. “Your station, please Vinthari.”

              “Thank you, sir.” Clea sat down and leaned back, looking over the reports. She frowned at the energy build up in the engines and shook her head. “This is wrong.”

              “What is?” Gray asked.

              “The engines…” Clea stood and joined Olly at his terminal. “Bring up the power relay six.”

              He tapped his screen and they saw a three dimensional schematic of it. “Indicate energy flow.” Olly did so and they saw a strange pulse on the wave meter. Every ten seconds, something surged. “That’s bad.”

              “What
is
that?” Olly asked. “I’ve never seen anything but regulated power down there before.”

              “Whatever happened to the rechargers has them cycling additional energy unevenly. While it will still charge up the engine, we’re relying on a continuous flow so we can do it again any time this year.” Clea picked up her own tablet, her fingers flying over the controls. “This has to be fixed
before
we jump or we’ll be stuck wherever we show up.”

              “Thank God you caught it,” Adam said. “What brought it up?”

              “Our top report is from Higgins indicating the rechargers malfunctioned during the microjump. I checked their output and noticed the surge.” Clea glanced at him. “After helping to implement those drives, I know precisely what they are
supposed
to do and how they do it.”

              “Can you fix it from here?” Gray asked.

              “No, I’m sending the formula down to engineering now and will guide them through the process on the com. There’s no time to run all the way down there.”

              “No, there’s not,” Tim said. “The enemy is now pursuing the Crystal Font. They’re moving around the other side of the planet, out of visual range. A small contingency of the fleet has decided to pursue us.”

              “How close are they?”

              “Outside extreme range but closing.” Tim shook his head. “Can we get any more speed, Redding?”

              “Not without tapping into power we’re storing to jump out of here.”

              “We’ll make it,” Clea said. “Believe me, I will ensure we do.”

              “What would’ve happened if we tried to jump?” Adam asked.

              “Worst case scenario, the ship would’ve exploded,” Clea said. Adam, Tim and Olly all gave her an incredulous look. She cleared her throat. “The more likely scenario involved getting stranded where we emerged.”

              “Well, I’m glad there’s a narrow range of possibilities,” Tim snarked.

              Gray watched over Clea’s shoulder as she rapidly typed up a mathematical formula for the engineering crew to implement. She hit send then pulled on her headset, connecting with Higgins. Gray tapped into the line so he could listen along, gathering data straight from the source.

              “The key to our problem lies in the computer’s ability to regulate the power,” Clea said. “There are multiple possibilities that could be causing this error: the computer code may’ve become corrupted during the microjump, one of the relays may be damaged or the charging devices are producing inconsistent power.”

              “I think we can hold off on root cause analysis,” Higgins replied. “What am I doing with this formula?”

              “I’ve already decompiled the code,” Clea said. “Insert that data between lines thirty-six hundred and thirty-seven hundred. There’s a solid break there. This new formula I designed will override the others and clean up the power going to the engines. Instead of pulses, the engine will only accept it at a rate I’ve indicated.”

              “And you’re sure the rate you’ve created will be correct?” Higgins sounded doubtful and Gray shared some of his concern. However, few people knew the technology aboard the Behemoth as well as Clea.

              “I am one hundred percent positive,” Clea replied. “Install the code, Higgins. We’re running out of time to recompile it.”

              “God damn son of a…”

              Gray ignored Higgins quiet rant and turned to Clea. “Do you think Olly can help get the code back up and operational quickly?”

              “Not any faster than I have,” Clea said. “As soon as he puts in the formula, I’ll have it ready to go in less than a minute. I debugged it through a simulation and it returned positive results. Ultimately, we don’t have a choice in the matter, sir. There’s no time for better than my makeshift solution.”

              “Enemy fleet is firing at the Crystal Font,” Olly said. “They are on the other side of the system now so we’ve totally lost visual.”

              “How’re they doing?” Adam asked. “Any damage?”

              “So far, they seem to have survived the initial onslaught. Wait…” Olly paused. “They sent me a message. They’re waiting for us to jump before they leave!”

              “God damn it.” Gray slapped his console. “Clea…”

              “Higgins is doing his best sir.”

              “I’m done!” Higgins shouted. “The code is placed!”

              Clea took a look and hit the button to recompile. She remained motionless throughout the process as a percentile bar climbed toward one-hundred. It stalled at sixty, making Gray’s heart jump in his chest then proceeded again up to eighty. By the time it hit a hundred, he thought he would have a heart attack.

              “Are we good?” Gray asked, waving his hand as if he might hurry her up.

              “I have to check it now, sir,” Clea replied. “It’ll be a moment.”

              “We don’t have a moment!” Tim called back. “Enemy is approaching extreme range for weapons!”

              Clea worked quickly but did not respond to the others. She brought up the system and performed a diagnostic check. A moment later, Higgins received the signal and did his check, backing up her opinion. An energy blast flew past the ship, narrowly missing. Olly called out the proximity as less than one hundred kilometers.

              “Aren’t they accurate,” Adam turned to Redding. “What will evasive do to us?”

              “Slow us down, sir,” Redding replied. “I’m on as full a sprint as I can without compromising the integrity of the ship.”

              “Clea, they are going to make any jump pointless soon,” Gray said. “I appreciate your risk analysis but we really need to make some headway on this trip. Now!”

              “Readings are normal,” Clea replied. “All systems read functional…the new formula is doing its job. Engines are only accepting the proper amount of energy. It worked.”

              “Thank God!” Adam turned to Olly. “Are we ready to go?”

              “Engines show they are full up.” Olly nodded. “I’d say we can punch it.”

              “Agatha,” Gray said, “send a final message to the Crystal Font. Tell them we’re jumping out and Godspeed. We’ll see them again…one way or another.”

              Agatha sent it as a tight beam text message, typing swiftly. “Message away, sir!”

              An explosion brightened the other side of the planet, a massive surge of light which made the world between them into a silhouette. Gray scowled but gestured to Redding. “Get us out of here. Now.”

              Redding nodded once, slapping the controls to initiate the jump. Another series of beams nearly collided with them, one sizzling the shields. The strange weightlessness fell over them and a moment later, the ship faded from existence, leaving behind the system and the enemy fleet.