In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (40 page)

Standing in front of the tower and its three dark
energy siphons was a bank of transparent chambers filled with exotic matter.
The first chamber was two thirds full. Its glowing contents were being fed up
through the center of the tower into the wormhole mouth, where it stabilized the
hyperspace tunnel’s fragile throat against the tremendous crushing forces
pushing against it. Display screens lined the bulkheads on either side, filled
with images of curved space, wormhole mouths, gravitational tides and a storm
of chaotic forces fighting to collapse a perversion of celestial geometry that
refused to buckle. One screen showed the micro-singularity itself, whose mere
presence threatened the survival of all life on Earth.

Below the screens were consoles and human sized
seats, all empty. Inok a’Rtor, the Mataron scientist from the
Merak Star
,
stood in front of one console, busily making adjustments. He wore a Mataron
energy weapon strapped to his chest and a loose fitting pressure suit, but
showed no sign of a skin shield. The tamph traitor would have told him we were
here, but with victory so close and with Earth about to be flung to a freezing
death, he couldn’t abandon his post – not yet.

Not far from the consoles, three human technicians
lay side by side, face down on the deck amid a converging pool of blood. They’d
each been shot in the back of the head, execution style, gruesome proof the
Matarons had double-crossed the Consortium. Once the human scientists had realized
the wormhole exit mouth was in the wrong place and the singularity was not
dissipating, the Mataron had eliminated them.

I realized the armored door I’d cut through hadn’t
been sealed against Izin and me, but to lock out the
Mavia’s
human crew.
It left the Mataron scientist and his tamph lackey free to do as they pleased,
securely encased inside the ship’s armored citadel. With all power coming from
the dark energy siphons, they could control the
Mavia
from here. It was
why the old depot ship’s passageways had been immersed in darkness and why her
crew had desperately tried cutting through the door with a feeble hand torch.

I pulled back into the shadows and whispered to
Izin. “One Mataron. Three dead humans. No sign of the tamph.”

“The tamph has moved.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s what I’d do.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “How long have we got?”

“He’ll strike when he’s ready, when he can win,
not before.”

“OK, we kill the Mataron, blow the ship and get
out of here. We’ll deal with the tamph when he shows himself.”

“How do we get off the ship, Captain? The suits
are dead.”

“They must have lifeboats.”

“This is a big ship and there are still crew
aboard. Even if we find the lifeboats in time, the crew may not want to share.”

“If you’ve got a better idea, I’m listening.”

Izin hesitated. “Considering our homeworld is
about to be destroyed, your plan will suffice.”

Our homeworld! He really was a Terran, a Terran
Amphibian. “Told you human survival instincts were superior to tamph’s.”

“If that were true, Captain, we wouldn’t be in
this situation. The Matarons would not have deceived my people the way they
deceived yours.”

It was probably true, but the Intruders had
millions of years on
Homo sapiens
. “At least we’re not at war with half
the galaxy,” I said, stealing another look into the siphon room, finding the
Mataron was no longer visible. I pulled back quickly as a flash from his blast
pistol almost took off my face.

“Earth’s destruction’s now on autopilot,” I said.
“He’s just got to hold us off.”

“Keep his attention, Captain. I’ll find another
way around,” he said, vanishing into the darkness.

I fired blindly into the compartment, just to let
the snakehead know I was still here, pulling back as another blast flashed past.
After a few seconds, I dropped to one knee and let off another unaimed shot from
close to the deck. It took the Mataron a moment to adjust before a blast
scorched the deck plate in front of me. Black Sauria or not, this Mataron
egghead could shoot.

Hoping to track the snakehead by sound, I cranked my
listener’s gain to full, but all I heard was the static hiss of the siphons –
which gave me an idea. I fired once at the nearest siphon from waist height, but
the stasis field surrounding it caught my slug harmlessly, then as I pulled
back, a shot from the Mataron struck the bulkhead beside me.

“Worth a try,” I muttered to myself, now certain a
P-50 slug was no match for the universe’s near-infinite supply of dark energy.

I considered running into the compartment,
wondering if my ultra-reflexed speed would be enough to get me to cover before
the Mataron shot me. There was a lot of open deck to cross, but fortunately,
Izin’s voice sounded in my earpiece, saving me from testing the reptilian’s
aim.

“Fire one shot, Captain,”

I let off a blind snap shot, narrowly avoiding a
return blast, then I heard a single distant shot – Izin’s shredder – followed
by a guttural groan.

“Izin?”

“I have him, Captain.”

I glanced into the compartment. The snakehead sat near
the exotic matter chamber, holding his bleeding hand while his gun sparked on
the deck a few meters away. Izin stood nearby covering him with his shredder,
but there was no sign of the tamph traitor.

I hurried across to them, facing the Mataron. “Turn
it off.”

The snakehead glanced at me, opened his long snout
and exhaled slightly, causing a synthetic word to sound from an implant in his
throat. “No.”

“You sure about that?” I said, switching out my
standard ammo for hardtips. The snakehead didn’t dignify me with a response, so
I shot him in the ankle, shattering his dense reptilian bone with an armor
piercing slug. He groaned, grabbed his ankle, then after giving him time to
appreciate my resolve, I explained my position. “I’m morally opposed to
torture, but we both know I don’t have time for niceties. So … how do I shut it
off?”

Inok growled defiance in his own guttural
language, so I shot his other ankle. He fixed his angled eyes on me with
growing hatred, but refused to make any sound.

“Captain, I doubt this line of questioning will be
effective.”

“Give me a better idea.”

Izin watched the Mataron bleeding on the deck, but
said nothing.

“You snakeheads have more joints than we do,” I
said, aiming at his lower knee, “but I have plenty of ammo.” I shot him in the
left lower knee, waited a moment, then seeing Inok was ignoring me, shot the
right one.

His legs slid out in front of him as his back
slumped against the exotic matter chamber. The armor piercing slugs had shattered
bone and caused a growing pool of dark fluid to form beneath his legs.

“Answer me, and I’ll get you medical treatment,” I
said, aiming at his upper knee. “Otherwise, I’m going to let you bleed to
death, after I run out of ammo.”

Inok a’Rtor raised a hand as if fending off the
next shot. “Wait!” I hesitated, then he added, “If you shut down the extraction
field, the exotic matter will cease to flow and the wormhole will collapse.”

I lifted my aim from his upper knee to the bank of
exotic matter chambers and fired. The hardtip flashed harmlessly against a field
surrounding it, then I returned my aim to the Mataron.

“Not like that,” Inok said, nodding toward a
control console in front of the containment chamber. “Drag the second vertical
control all the way down … That will reduce the flow rate … to zero.”

I stepped over to the console. It had a row of
vertical sliders. I reached for the control the snakehead had indicated, then a
large Kesarn hand materialized out of thin air and grabbed my arm, pulling it
back.

“No!” Gern Vrate declared as his stealth field
dropped, causing him to appear beside me, a large weapon in his free hand.

“I have to!” I said, aiming at his face, knowing
he cared more about three frozen Kesarn than billions of humans on Earth.

“That will collapse the wormhole,” he said.

“That’s the idea!”

Vrate released my hand and turned to watch the
shadows, unconcerned by my gun. “Do you know what happens when a wormhole
collapses?”

“What?”

“It forms a black hole.” He looked me in the eyes.
“Beside your homeworld!”

I turned to Inok a’Rtor who avoided my stare, confirming
Vrate’s warning. With controlled rage, I strode back to him and pressed my gun to
his head. “Give me a reason not to kill you!”

The Mataron looked up at me and emitted a guttural
coughing sound, what passed for reptilian laughter, challenging me to shoot him.
It was what he wanted. If he were dead, I couldn’t make him help me.

“You’re Black Sauria!”

“Of course,” he said, a fanatic in his own
snakehead way.

“Vrate, do you know how to shut it off?”

“No,” he said, drawing a small tracking device
from his belt and studying it as he moved away from the exotic matter console.

“Izin, get over there!” I snapped, nodding toward
the control panels on the far side of the compartment.

“Captain, I know nothing about this technology.”

“You’re a fast learner. Figure it out!”

He holstered his shredder and hurried between the
siphons to the control consoles while Vrate glanced into one of the
cryochambers, keeping his gun level and his eyes darting back to the tracker in
his hand.

“Can you save them?” I asked.

“Yes, but they’re very weak.”

The
Mavia
suddenly shuddered, ringing
hollowly as if struck by a giant hammer. A moment later, another resonant thunderclap
reverberated through the ship. The three Kesarn energy siphons increased in
brightness as they sucked in more power, feeding it into the ship’s massive
defense shield.

Jase’s voice sounded from my earpiece through roaring
static. “Skipper, we’re here. Get out of there now!”

I glanced at Vrate, who heard it too. “If they
destroy us, they’ll collapse the wormhole!”

“Jase!” I yelled into my communicator, “cease
fire. Do not destroy the Mavia! Tell the navy to stop firing!”

“Skipper, can you hear me?” Jase’s barely audible
voice came from far away. “The battlecruiser is here. She’s blasting the Mavia!”

“No! Cease fire!”

“He can’t hear you,” Inok a’Rtor said, certain the
siphons were causing too much interference.

I turned to Vrate, “Can you get a signal out?”

“Not through this,” he said as the depot ship
shuddered again, causing the siphon’s energy stream to surge in brightness to
compensate.

“Will the siphons overload?” I asked.

“No. They’ll keep feeding energy into the shield
until this ship melts from the inside out.”

“And the wormhole will collapse!” I added.

“Yes.”

The snakehead started his guttural laughing again,
so I lashed out with the butt of my P-50, slamming it into his head, sending
him slumping unconscious to the floor.

“You humans have a temper,” Vrate said. “I like
that.”

A flash of light streaked out of the darkness and
struck the Kesarn’s chest, sending him flying back. He dropped his gun and tracker
as he hit the deck, then groaned as wispy smoke wafted from a ragged hole in
his body armor where mangled flesh and bone were visible. Within moments, fluorescence
began spreading from his healsuit into the wound, trying desperately to seal it.

The surprise nature of the attack screamed tamph,
so knowing I was next, I dived toward the nearest cryochamber as a blast flashed
through where I’d been standing. Another blast grazed the cyrochamber, then my
threading triangulated the tamph’s position. He was at the vehicle passageway
I’d entered from, having backtracked around behind me as Izin had predicted. I
looked for Izin to warn him, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“I can get a shot from the other side, Captain,”
Izin’s voice sounded calmly in my earpiece.

“No,” I whispered. “You shut this thing down. I’ll
take care of the tamph.”

“Remember Captain, he fights like me, not you.”

The ship continued reverberating from the
Vigilant’
s
bombardment as shockwaves carried through the shield into the hull every few
seconds. Jase’s voice was no longer audible above the static as the siphons pumped
more and more power into the
Mavia’s
shield. Vrate was right, the
battlecruiser might not be able to destroy the shield, but the old depot ship
had never been designed to handle the kind of energies the siphons were feeding
into her. It wouldn’t be long before her interior began to melt.

I stole a glance around one side of the
cryochamber, long enough to see a delicate hand holding a streamlined, silver
weapon. I fired and pulled back behind cover as the tamph unleashed another
blast from his plasma weapon, then I sprinted for the side entrance Izin had
sniped the Mataron from. Halfway across, I let off an unaimed shot at the
vehicle passageway, trying to keep the tamph pinned. When I reached the
corridor, I threw my back to the bulkhead and aimed around the corner, waiting
for the tamph to show himself, but he remained hidden.

While I waited, Izin’s words echoed in my mind:
he
fights like me, not you!

The tamph’s instincts would drive him to gain
surprise, something he couldn’t achieve if he stayed where he was. He hadn’t
shown himself because he was already circling around through blacked out
corridors. With the light from the siphon chamber silhouetting me, I’d be an
easy target once he got behind me.

I glanced over at Vrate who lay on his back, eyes
closed, breathing shallow.

“Vrate, are you dead?” I whispered.

He coughed blood and wheezed, “No.”

“The tamph’s coming around behind me. I’m going
after him.”

The Kesarn turned his face toward me, opening his
eyes. “Don’t go to him ... Let him come to you.”