The Altreian Enigma (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 2) Page 4

  As her consciousness fled the mind storm that she had unwittingly unleashed, the ledge spun away from her. With a burst of focused will, she broke the Kasari’s mental connection with the others and pulled him alongside her into shadow.

  Distant voices speaking in low, urgent tones welcomed Jennifer back to consciousness, accompanied by a skull-cracking headache that pulled a moan from her lips. She struggled to open her eyes, but they felt like they’d been glued shut. When they did open, the big room spun so rapidly that she squeezed them shut again, while a wave of nausea tried to empty her stomach.

  Jennifer forced herself to concentrate. With her mental augmentations, she should have been able to clear her head of the migraine, or whatever this was. But though she managed to reduce the throbbing intensity, she failed to rid herself of the pain, a sensation akin to something being ripped open inside her brain.

  She remembered her mind connecting with that of the Kasari. Not with an individual mind. Her action had drawn the attention of many minds, more than enough to overwhelm her. She had no doubt that if that mental connection had lasted another couple of seconds, her mind would have broken completely. She should be thankful to have awakened with this hangover from hell. Right now, though, she was having a difficult time acquiring the appropriate level of gratitude.

  With a fresh burst of willpower, Jennifer sat up and swung her legs off the side of a pallet, somehow managing to avoid puking her guts out as she struggled to her knees, one hand on the stone wall for support.

  “Lie back down, or get out of our way.”

  The deep voice pulled her head up. To her left, doctors and nurses worked to stabilize wounded warriors, their gray gloves and gowns stained with Koranthian blood that was such a dark red that it looked almost black. On the bed to her left, the whine of a bone saw was followed by the thump of an amputated leg landing in a large bucket, having been dropped by the doctor who had just spoken to her.

  A little over a year ago, the sight of this much carnage would have left her weak and shaking. Now it just pulled her to her feet. Instead of pissing her off, the doctor’s harsh words spurred her into motion. She rose to her feet, where she wavered unsteadily for several seconds before making her way through the mayhem toward the exit.

  As she sidestepped the medical staff and their equipment, she scanned the room, anxious to see if she recognized any of the wounded, but the severe nature of some of the injuries had left several patients unrecognizable.

  When she stepped out of the field hospital, she found herself standing inside a cavern she knew well, one that lay along the primary railway line, less than a mile south of General Dgarra’s headquarters. As she watched, six maglev ambulance cars rounded the bend and came to a stop at the elevated platform. The doors opened to disgorge a line of medics carrying the most severely wounded on litters, leaving the patients who were still ambulatory to limp down the ramp to the triage area.

  Exhaustion wafted from these seven-foot warriors in waves that didn’t require her unique mental abilities to pick up. But what worried her more was the profound sense of depression that accompanied their weariness. These battle-hardened Koranthians, male and female alike, were unfamiliar with losing. But the unending succession of assaults by the Eadric and their Kasari allies had siphoned doubt into their souls—doubts about their own abilities and, more importantly, doubts that even their legendary commander could win this fight.

  As Jennifer looked at them, her will solidified, driving the headache from her consciousness. She pulled her subspace receiver-transmitter headset from a cargo pocket in her black uniform trousers, letting the beads at either end of the partial loop settle over her temples. Her mind made the connection with the Rho Ship’s neural net, and through that to Raul. His relief flooded her mind.

  “Christ. Where the hell have you been?”

  “I got knocked out and medevaced to the First Medical Detachment’s field hospital.”’

  “How bad are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine. What’s our current situation?”

  She felt his mood grow more somber.

  “Not great. Dgarra’s lines are still holding, but he ordered me to take the Rho Ship off planet. Right now I’m on the back side of Scion’s nearest moon. The ship is cloaked, and I’m monitoring the battle through the worm-fiber viewers.”

  Jennifer accessed the video feeds, letting the imagery fill her mind. Night had fallen over the northern Koranthian Mountains, but brilliant flashes from the ongoing battle laced the sky.

  “Can’t you use the Rho Ship’s weapons to support Dgarra?”

  “Yes, but the Kasari will detect it and intercept me with their fast battle cruisers. I might be able to make one pass before I have to shift into subspace and get the hell out of there. After that, they’ll have weapons ready to blast me out of the sky if I try it again.”

  “Any relief you can give Dgarra’s troops may make the difference.”

  VJ, the artificial intelligence that Raul had modeled on Jennifer’s personality, interrupted. “I don’t recommend that.”

  “And I don’t give a damn,” Jennifer said, feeling her headache reassert itself. Raul wavered, and Jennifer reached deeper into his mind, tweaking his confidence just enough to ensure that he made the right decision. It felt wrong to manipulate someone who had saved her life multiple times, but right now she didn’t have time to argue this out.

  “Okay. I’ll give it a try.”

  “Thank you,” she said, relief accompanying her thought message. “Good luck.”

  Jennifer removed the headset and returned it to its pocket. Seeing that the ambulance train was preparing to depart for its trip back to the battlefront, she trotted up the ramp and stepped aboard.

  Ever since General Dgarra had violated the wishes of his uncle, Emperor Goltat, and made Jennifer a ward of his house and his aide-de-camp, she had fought to prove herself worthy of his trust. Not only had she seen her efforts change the way he looked at her, but she’d also felt the general’s growing affection for her despite his efforts to maintain a strict military bearing.

  She shared that feeling.

  Taking a deep breath, Jennifer settled back into her seat. She would return to General Dgarra’s side. Whatever happened next, that was where she belonged.

  CHAPTER 5

  General Magtal strode through his headquarters adjacent to the emperor’s palace complex in the subterranean Koranthian city of ArvaiKheer, his seven-foot-frame quivering with a barely contained rage that worked its way up his dark-skinned face into the crown-bones that topped his skull.

  Word from the northern front was good—heroic, in fact. Such news was exactly what had set his teeth on knife’s edge. General Dgarra and his pet human female continued to hold out against far-superior enemy forces that included elite Kasari assault troops. This despite the ongoing denial of reinforcements to Dgarra’s beleaguered command. How much longer Magtal could continue to convince the emperor that the attacks against the northern front were merely a feint to convince him to divert troops there, he didn’t know. In truth, the Kasari, with their advanced worm-fiber viewing technology, knew precisely where the weakly defended points in the Koranthian defensive network were, in Dgarra’s sector.

  But apparently Magtal could not count on that enemy to take advantage of that weakness to rid him of his most hated rival.

  He reached his command center, hearing the announcement “Commanding General!” as he strode through the triton-steel doors.

  “As you were,” he ordered, sending his warriors back to their duties.

  Seating himself in the swivel chair that gave him an elevated view of the situational-awareness displays that tiled the room’s walls, Magtal waved away the aide who had scurried to his side. Right now he needed to think.

  Dgarra’s human female had proved far more resourceful than Magtal would have thought, considering she had summoned her human companion to land the captured Kasari world ship within one of Dgarra’s hangars. W
here exactly, Magtal didn’t know. Only through his spies inside Dgarra’s headquarters had the general learned of the landing and alien technologies Dgarra’s engineers were working to implement. They were getting help with those engineering efforts, of that there could be no doubt. And Dgarra had refused to share the results of his research, claiming that the work was purely in the experimental and test phases and that he would share the results should they prove stable and beneficial.

  Just like the warrior—to take every advantage for himself, using his kinship with Emperor Goltat to secure that edge.

  Magtal felt his lips curl to reveal his teeth, a look that sent the lieutenant who saw it scurrying to the far side of the room. Dgarra had forced his hand. Magtal was ready to release the dagger that would disgrace his rival and remove him from the line of ascension once and for all.

  General Magtal would then be but a single step from the throne, a step that he would take in due time.

  Raul leaned forward in the invisible command couch that was a precise manifestation of his control over the forward compartment’s stasis field generator. His right hand massaged the sudden tightness in his neck.

  “You shouldn’t let her manipulate you like that.” VJ’s voice carried more than a hint of petulance. “This is stupid, and you know it.”

  “She didn’t talk me into anything I wasn’t already considering.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less stupid.”

  “Just make the course calculations. I want to pop out of subspace ten thousand feet above the Eadric artillery positions, fire the ship’s disrupter weapons at that artillery, then shift back into subspace before they have a chance to respond.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.”

  For the thousandth time, Raul noted that he could have already accomplished what he was ordering VJ to do, but he had come to value the opposing feedback she provided. Either that or he was a closet masochist. He was glad that he had never given her a visual appearance to go along with Jennifer’s voice. Having her smirk or scowl at him would be way more than he wanted to put up with.

  VJ delivered the subspace course calculations that would bring them out of subspace at the desired location. Unfortunately, since they would not have a chance to establish a normal-space momentum vector optimized for that spot, he would be forced into a tight maneuver immediately upon exiting subspace. And that maneuver would have to be completed before he activated the firing sequence from the ship’s disrupter weapons. That would increase his time over target, and since the ship’s stasis shield would have to stay down while he fired, the element of surprise was crucial for this attack to work.

  The transition into subspace was accompanied by a subtle vibration that Raul didn’t like. A quick diagnostic revealed a minor anomaly in the functioning of the subspace field generator. Nothing serious, but he added the issue to his growing to-do list.

  “Ten seconds until normal-space reentry,” VJ said.

  Raul wrapped himself tightly in the stasis field that would protect him should the worst happen, feeling droplets of sweat pop out on his forehead as he did so. Christ, he wasn’t cut out for this space-warrior bullshit.

  Then, as VJ’s countdown approached zero, he mentally rehearsed the weapons run. Pop into normal-space, bank hard, fire the Rho Ship’s disrupter beams, then pop back into subspace. Nothing to it, a mantra he repeated with each count. Hopefully he would come to believe it.

  The Rho Ship materialized ten thousand and four feet above the Eadric artillery battalions. Raul initiated the targeting sequence while VJ maneuvered the Rho Ship for the firing pass.

  “Enemy targeting sensors are attempting to acquire us.”

  Raul tensed but maintained his focus. “Stay on target.”

  He felt the Rho Ship’s targeting solution lock in and fired a pattern of disrupter blasts, his efforts rewarded by a half-dozen secondary explosions that sent fireballs boiling into the sky. Not a perfect run, but it would have to do.

  “Get us out of here.”

  “Subspace transition initiated,” VJ said.

  There it was again, a jitter as the subspace field generator activated, this one much more pronounced than the last time. The neural net gave Raul the bad news. The subspace transition had failed.

  “Enemy targeting sensors have acquired a lock on us.”

  Despite the fact that she was a simulation, Raul heard the tension in her voice. Apparently the imminent threat of being blown out of the sky could do that. Fear sharpened his mind’s connection with the neural net, and he issued the command to activate the vessel’s stasis shield mere nanoseconds before the Rho Ship’s exterior lit up brighter than the sun as a combination of disrupter blasts and laser beams played across the hull.

  The relief that flooded Raul’s mind that he was still alive was short-lived. The stasis shield was holding, but the stress the attacks were placing on its generator were already approaching the red line. He worked to compensate, felt VJ activate the Rho Ship’s cloaking mechanism, then performed a hard banking maneuver that carried them out of the line of fire.

  As expected, the Eadric air-defense systems began firing a spread pattern, hoping to get a lucky hit on the target that had just disappeared from their sensor screens.

  “Can you get us into subspace?” Raul asked.

  “Negative.”

  “Then find us a safe spot on the ground.”

  “Working on it,” said VJ.

  A laser beam sizzled into their shielding with such intensity that Raul could feel the stasis field generator overheat.

  “Shit. Get us on the ground.”

  The fact that VJ didn’t respond told him more than he wanted to know about the number of ship’s systems that were failing. The neural net transmitted the ship’s status directly into his pain receptors, a sensation that was getting less pleasant by the moment.

  VJ entered the new course command, sending the Rho Ship plummeting from the sky into a deep canyon far behind the Eadric lines. The maneuver didn’t startle Raul, but the destination coordinates did.

  “Oh shit!”

  Wrapped in the command deck’s stasis field, Raul braced for impact, praying that the ship’s shielding would hold. As he studied the cascading status displays that blossomed in his mind, he gulped in a deep breath. He hoped it wouldn’t be his last.

  Kasari group commander Shalegha stood as tall as any of the Koranthians, her four powerful arms as familiar with battle as her mind was with strategy and tactics. But the subterranean warrior race had earned her respect. Much as she would have liked to assimilate them into the Kasari Collective, their brains had an odd structure that prevented the cortical nanobots within the Kasari nanite serum from linking their brains to the hive-mind, the first such intelligent species that the Kasari had ever encountered. Unfortunately, they would have to be exterminated.

  Suddenly Shalegha was alerted to the tactical display that her nanobot cortical array delivered to her visual cortex. She took particular note of one signal concerning a subspace transition within the caverns controlled by the Koranthian general, Dgarra.

  Although the Kasari did not have Altreian subspace technology, they could detect whenever Altreian ships transitioned in and out of subspace if that happened in close proximity to active Kasari sensors. Whenever an object transitioned into subspace, it left a brief hole in normal-space. When that hole refilled, a distinctive electromagnetic signature propagated outward. The reverse happened when an object emerged from subspace into normal-space, also creating a detectable signal.

  The Eadric air-defense sensors clustered along the northern Koranthian front had noted several subspace anomalies just before the deadly Koranthian winter had made further assaults impossible. The odd thing was that they hadn’t detected any similar disturbances during the intervening months. That, combined with the encrypted message Shalegha had recently received from her source within the Koranthian High Command, gave extra importance to this new signal.

  It meant that the hum
ans had not only managed to capture a Kasari world ship but had also somehow managed to enhance it with subspace capabilities. That could only mean that they were getting help from the Altreians, thus making the capture or destruction of that world ship one of Shalegha’s top priorities.

  She ran her upper right hand through her short-cropped orange hair and issued a mental command that placed all air-defense systems along the northern Koranthian front on high alert, as well as those that surrounded her headquarters in the Eadric capital city of Orthei. As much as Shalegha trusted her connection to the hive-mind and the enhanced permissions that she enjoyed on that network, she trusted her battle-honed instincts more.

  Something big was about to happen, and it just might be precisely what she had been hoping for.

  General Dgarra felt the shock waves from the fireballs that rolled above the battlefield as the cigar-shaped Rho Ship flashed across the sky, creating a sudden, eerie pause in the Eadric assault. Apparently Raul had launched an attack on the distant enemy artillery. The action was foolhardy but still could provide the window of opportunity that Dgarra’s beleaguered warriors so desperately needed.

  As he watched, the Eadric antiaircraft batteries opened fire, bathing the ship in brilliant explosions. Dgarra didn’t understand. Why hadn’t Raul shifted the vessel back into subspace by now? Surely the starship’s shielding couldn’t withstand such a battering for much longer. His conviction that something was seriously wrong grew stronger with each passing moment.

  When the Rho Ship disappeared, Dgarra breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, that feeling didn’t last long. The batteries of lasers and disrupter weapons adjusted their firing into a spread pattern designed to seek out and destroy a hidden target. The Eadric believed that the Rho Ship had cloaked itself and remained in the area.