The Altreian Enigma (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 2) Page 23

  His plan answered one of her questions. She had once heard him use a description that now seemed applicable. Raul had gone totally bat-shit crazy.

  “Say what?”

  “According to what I’ve learned during my worm-fiber hunt for Jennifer, the Koranthian emperor has scheduled General Dgarra’s public execution inside the ArvaiKheer Amphitheater for two days from now.”

  VJ narrowed her eyes, starting to understand where he was going with this.

  “You’re planning on using the execution as a distraction?”

  He smiled and placed both hands on her face. For a moment she thought he might kiss her.

  “You better believe it. And you’re going to make it all work.”

  Raul had no illusions about the dangers involved in the plan he had proposed to VJ. But to her credit, after a lengthy discussion of the options available to them, she had agreed that this provided the best chance to rescue Jennifer. On the other hand, she thought the maneuver provided an even better chance for Raul to get himself killed or captured. He found the worry in her eyes oddly touching.

  But he also knew that if his and Jennifer’s positions were swapped, Jen would come for him.

  Raul was no warrior, but in this case he didn’t need to be. He just had to get to the dungeon cell where his worm-fiber search had found Jennifer and inject her with VJ’s freewill nano-virus. If she survived that, he would give her a laser pistol and lead her to the preplanned rendezvous point, where VJ would meet them with the Rho Ship. That assumed VJ met success with her part of the plan.

  The modifications to the subspace torpedo had gone faster than predicted thanks to a number of VJ’s creative design optimizations. The basic design of the torpedo was largely unchanged. The removal of the warhead hadn’t freed nearly enough space to allow his body to be stowed within the torpedo, and thus Raul had thought they would need to redesign the entire thing.

  Instead, VJ had replaced the warhead with a miniature stasis field generator. It would create a stasis field bubble on the outside of the torpedo with sufficient room to hold his body, a spare uniform for Jen, weapons, the serum, and enough air to keep him alive until the torpedo arrived at its designated target location. This would, of course, place additional demand on the super-capacitor power supply, but VJ assured him that there was enough power to get him there with a good thirteen seconds to spare. For her, that was practically a lifetime, but to Raul the margin for error still felt small.

  He would have preferred to design and manufacture a small shuttle craft to pop down to Scion, load Jennifer aboard, then make the subspace hop back to the Rho Ship. But they lacked time. Instead, he was going to be lashed to the outside of a subspace torpedo and shot through subspace on a terrifying, one-way trip into the heart of an ancient alien dungeon. And then he and Jennifer had to fight their way through a bunch of Koranthians to reach the rendezvous point.

  Having followed VJ to the airlock where the subspace torpedo awaited, he tried to swallow but just couldn’t work up the spit. If this hadn’t been his idea, he would have suspected that VJ was trying to get rid of him. Instead, she nervously flitted around him, dressed in a sheer black-and-purple uniform with a braided purple loop on her left shoulder, double-checking that all the equipment he needed was securely strapped to his body. His and Jennifer’s dark uniforms felt like tactical necessities, but VJ’s was the most critical to their plan.

  Raul took a deep breath and stepped up to the torpedo. He no longer believed in a higher power, but some rosary beads sure would have felt nice right about now.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” VJ asked, her eyes wide with concern.

  Putting on what he hoped was his brave face, Raul nodded. “Time to work your magic.”

  As he prepared to lie down atop the torpedo, an image from a classic movie filled his mind: a man, cowboy hat in hand, riding an atomic bomb down toward its target, whooping and hollering right up until detonation. That would be the way to do this with style.

  Unfortunately, the neural net relayed that there wasn’t enough power to create a stasis bubble big enough to accommodate such antics. So instead Raul lay facedown atop the torpedo, his arms and legs hugging the cylinder to him.

  Under VJ’s control, the cloaked Rho Ship accelerated, maneuvering so that its velocity vector exactly matched that of the targeted room at the instant the torpedo would emerge from subspace. Beside him, the AI began a ten-second countdown. When the stasis field activated around him, her voice cut off. The airlock opened, and the ship’s stasis field thrust him out into the void, then stabilized the subspace torpedo a hundred feet off the Rho Ship’s port side.

  For five seconds the torpedo coasted beside the Rho Ship, exactly matching the vessel’s velocity. Then, as the torpedo transitioned into subspace, the Rho Ship and the surrounding stars winked out of Raul’s view.

  Raul didn’t really want to start a mental countdown, but he couldn’t help it. As each second ticked off in his mind, the tension in his body increased until he found himself shaking. Thankfully, this time he didn’t wet himself. VJ would be so proud.

  The transition out of subspace into an unused section of the dungeon should have set him down softly. To give credit to the precision of VJ’s calculations, the velocity vector was perfect. However, the height at which the torpedo materialized above the stone floor wasn’t.

  The eight-foot fall rattled his teeth and knocked the breath from his body. It also collapsed one of the two landing struts that had been added to the torpedo’s underside, causing it to turn over. Raul clenched his teeth, ready to be rolled out flat as cookie dough, but the stasis field lasted until the other strut brought the torpedo to a stop. When the field finally died, he tumbled to the floor and lay there, gasping.

  Raul forced himself to stand up. The backpack, though not particularly heavy, threw his balance off. Once he had his feet under him, the weight ceased to matter. He was thankful for his new robo-legs and the cyborg eye that turned shadow into a psychedelic mix of colors, mostly purple and blue.

  Even now he could hear the distant echoes the sonic boom produced when the torpedo dropped out of subspace into the warren of connecting passages. Though some distance from Jennifer’s cell, he and VJ had selected this particular point because the sound of entry would radiate outward, reflecting off walls and down side passages. Surrounding guards would be unable to tell the origin of the noise.

  Now he had to wait for the distraction.

  “Raul, can you hear me?” VJ asked.

  A fresh flood of adrenaline shot through his veins. His cortical array had reestablished its subspace communications link with the Rho Ship’s neural net.

  “Bit of a bumpy ride at the end, but I’m fine. How do the worm-fiber scans look?”

  “The pressure wave has got the dungeon staff confused. They’ve sent all but five of the on-duty guards to investigate.”

  “How many?”

  “Seventeen. But none are currently headed in your direction.”

  Raul concentrated, and the imagery from the active worm-fiber scans formed in his mind, along with a detailed 3-D map of the warren of passages. Jennifer’s cell was highlighted in red.

  “Are you ready for your part in all of this?” he asked.

  “You know I am.”

  “Okay, babe. Let’s do this.”

  He felt her surprise at the pet name, knowing it was inappropriate. But screw it. He probably wasn’t going to live to regret the act.

  Then, as he knew it would, his mental link to the Rho Ship died.

  Raul removed his laser pistol from its holster pocket and switched its safety selector into the ready position. For more than half a minute he waited, straining to hear. He didn’t need to. The rumble he had been listening for vibrated the tunnel walls and put him into action. Reaching into a recessed slot on the side of the subspace torpedo, he engaged the self-destruct timer and moved out, letting his powerful legs propel him forward at a run.

&
nbsp; He might not be a warrior, but being a cyborg didn’t completely suck.

  The boom that echoed through the dungeon, a distant thrum that brought Jennifer to her feet, lit her surroundings like the midday sun. She recognized that sound. Something had just made the subspace-to-normal-space transition nearby. Her mind worked the problem. It had to be the Rho Ship, but it sounded so far away. The sound had been distorted by a particular echo path. Suddenly a much deeper rumble vibrated the cavern walls.

  The heavy footsteps of running guards gradually faded into the distance. Then she heard new footfalls, although these were much lighter than those of the Koranthian guards.

  Raul’s voice on the far side of the solid-steel door startled her.

  “Jennifer, can you hear me?”

  “My God, Raul. How did you get here?”

  “I’ll explain later. Stand back from the door.”

  She complied, putting her back against the wall to the left. “Ready.”

  A sizzle and hiss accompanied the thin red glow that began to eat its way through the door hinges. As the last of the hinges became a glowing, molten puddle, the heavy door fell inward.

  Raul stepped into her cell, lowering the pistol in his right hand. Then, as Jennifer stepped forward to embrace him, he raised another and fired.

  She staggered to a halt, her shocked gaze drawn to the thick dart lodged in the center of her chest.

  “What the—?”

  The agony that curled her body into a convulsing mass on the floor killed the question.

  General Dgarra, chained hand and foot, stood atop the emperor’s dais looking out across the parade grounds where he had led Jennifer and his ten thousand warriors into this very amphitheater in the not-so-distant past. Before him was the notched block where he would soon kneel to rest his neck. There was no basket to catch his head. It would be allowed to tumble down the steps and onto the field below. Then, at the emperor’s command, the watching crowd would release their children from the grandstands to kick it around the stadium until the traitorous head was unrecognizable.

  To Dgarra’s left, Emperor Goltat faced the gathered crowd, his blue robes swirling slightly as he drew the war-blade from its ceremonial sheath on his back and held it high.

  The crowd roared its delight and anticipation, a sound that shook the huge stadium. Dgarra looked out at the faces of those who had recently cheered him and understood their hatred. They believed that he had betrayed his own army. Whether his actions were intentional or based on negligence made no difference.

  His impending death held no fear for him. But the thought that Jennifer Smythe had somehow deceived him ripped at his soul. How had it happened? He had been so sure that they shared the same feelings. He had staked his life on that trust. Now, appropriately, his uncle would take that life from him. Dgarra welcomed it.

  Emperor Goltat lowered the black blade, and complete silence descended on the stadium as the crowd held its collective breath. The emperor turned and motioned Dgarra forward. He complied, stepping forward, then awkwardly knelt. But as he began to lean down, a tremendous blast knocked him flat on his back.

  The shock wave left him dizzy, but he rose to see Emperor Goltat lying, unmoving, a body length to one side, his war-blade having tumbled down the steps. The Rho Ship sat directly in front of the dais. As he watched, a ramp lowered from its side and Jennifer Smythe walked out, wearing the black-and-purple uniform of his aide-de-camp, a stern look of disapproval on her delicate features. Her hair was different, light colored and short, as it had been the first time he had seen her.

  A group of the emperor’s guards, having recovered from the initial pressure wave, raised laser pistols and fired. Although the air around Smythe shimmered, the beams glanced harmlessly away as she continued off the end of the ramp and began calmly climbing the steps toward the top of the dais.

  Drawing war-blades, a cohort of more than two dozen warriors charged, but she gestured with a hand and they froze midstride, locked in place as if by magic. As panic spread through the surrounding stadium, the civilians in the crowd surged toward the exits, blocking the path of the warriors who sought to reach the stadium floor. But when the guards did reach the ground level, they found their way forward blocked by an invisible force shield.

  Smythe paused just before the top of the dais and gestured toward the black war-blade, levitating it into her right hand. Then, with a quick glance at the unconscious body of Emperor Goltat, she stepped up to Dgarra.

  Shaking his head, Dgarra managed the utterance that encapsulated his disbelief. “Smythe!”

  She pointed, and his shock collar and chains burst apart, sending the pieces clattering to the dais around him.

  “Close enough,” she said, giving him a subtle smile. “Time to go.”

  Another gesture lifted Dgarra and set him on his feet. Then she turned and began walking slowly back down the steps, ignoring the pandemonium that reigned supreme outside the protective shield.

  Since there was only one way to get answers to the questions that flooded his head, Dgarra followed her back to the Kasari starship. As he walked up the ramp behind Smythe, Dgarra had no idea what awaited him inside, but apparently this was not his day to die.

  General Magtal watched helplessly as the horrifying scene unfolded before his eyes. Having hammered his hands bloody against the invisible barrier that blocked him from getting at Dgarra and his pet human, he raised his communicator to his mouth and ordered all city guards to make utmost haste to the amphitheater. Maybe if he could bring enough firepower to bear on the shield, he could overload it.

  But as he watched, the ship’s ramp closed. Feeling the force shield give way, he took two strides forward, but a new sonic boom knocked him backward, though this one was not as intense as the first. The starship had disappeared.

  Taking advantage of this new confusion, Magtal rushed to the dais and then, taking the steps three at a time, hurtled to the top. Emperor Goltat lay faceup, eyes closed. Magtal glanced around at the panicked crowd and at the confused warriors moving toward the spot where the starship had just been. Dropping to a knee, he took the emperor’s head in his two powerful hands and hammered it into the stone edge of the chopping block, feeling the satisfying crunch all the way up to his elbows.

  General Magtal rose to his feet, cupped his hands to his mouth, and yelled, drawing the attention of the warriors below.

  “Guards! To me.”

  Major Groltar was the first of the emperor’s elite guards to reach the top of the dais. General Magtal pointed at the spot where blood and brains oozed from the back of the emperor’s broken skull.

  “Major,” he said, noting the shock on the other’s face, “the traitor, Dgarra, has murdered our emperor. Have your warriors guard this body. Let no one disturb Emperor Goltat’s final rest until the royal honor guard can be assembled to respectfully transport him to the Hall of Valor.”

  Seeing the fury build in the major’s eyes, General Magtal placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

  “Do not despair. We shall exact our revenge on the betrayer, Dgarra. And it will not be the quick death that our emperor offered him today. On that, you have my word.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Jennifer opened her eyes to find Raul bending over her, deep worry lines etched in his forehead. She tried to rise, but she was stopped by the tremors in her limbs. Jesus. What had he done to her? And then she felt it. The mental barrier she had erected was gone. Panic almost overcame her as she thought about what that meant. But something felt different.

  She focused, calling upon her neural augmentations, trying to understand precisely what else was missing.

  “You’re free,” Raul said.

  Jennifer licked her dry lips as she struggled to find the meaning behind his words. There it was again, that odd yet vaguely familiar feeling. Suddenly everything snapped into place. She wasn’t quite sure how she knew, but she did. The Kasari nanobot cortical array was no longer functioning.

 
She felt her eyes widen in joyful disbelief. “How?”

  Raul held out his hand, and she took it, letting him help her to a sitting position.

  “We analyzed your blood sample, and VJ designed a freewill nano-virus serum. Sorry about shooting you with it, but I couldn’t take the chance that the Kasari might make you kill me.”

  For the first time in weeks, Jennifer managed a genuine laugh. “Can’t say I blame you.”

  “Look, I don’t mean to rush you, but I don’t know how long VJ’s distraction will keep the Koranthians from sending someone to check on you. We need to be going. Can you stand?”

  Jennifer stretched her arms, happy to see that the tremors had stopped. Her strength was returning.

  “Let’s see.”

  She managed to get up with barely a wobble. Once she was steady, Raul dug in his backpack and handed her a clean black uniform, a pair of boots, and a laser pistol. Then he turned his back to let her dress. The gesture was unnecessary, but she found it sweet nonetheless. She quickly changed.

  “Where to?” she asked.

  “I’ve got the map in my head.”

  Jennifer concentrated and felt her mind slip into his, making the memory her own. She was ecstatic to be back to her old self. If she only had a war-blade, the transformation would be complete.

  As Jennifer started to withdraw from her link with Raul, she felt his mind connect with the Rho Ship’s neural net and VJ, followed by the distant rumble of another subspace transition.

  “Where are you?” VJ asked.

  “Headed for the rendezvous point along with Jennifer,” said Raul as Jennifer led the way out of the cell and toward the rendezvous point marked on his mental map.

  “Hurry up. I stirred up a hornet’s nest when I interrupted Dgarra’s execution.”

  Jennifer felt her heart jump. “Is Dgarra okay?” she asked, interjecting herself into the mental conversation.

  “He’s standing right here beside me on the command deck, and if I can get you and him to shut up with all the questions, I might be able to help you guys get back here alive.”