Flames: Galaxy On Fire, Book 2 Read online

  “You must have been close enough to get that,” Sentorip said gesturing to the cane marks.

  “No. That was lame-o’s fault here. He spoke without being spoken to, so I got a whack. Thanks, bro.” She directed the last quip to Slapgren.

  “That sounds like an effective deterrent,” replied Sentorip. “I imagine it worked.”

  “Yes, it did,” replied Mirri.

  Two painfully boring days passed with nothing to show for them but countless baths and outfit changes. Mirraya had asked Sentorip if they could have some reading or other entertainment. The servant checked with her betters and returned to say that they could not. It was not the obligation or desire of the empire to entertain infidel ingrates, the better’s response came.

  Late in the morning the following day, another alert came. The teens were to be picked up immediately. Though Sentorip fussed and primped, Mirraya was spotlessly clean from a recent encounter with the tub.

  As the vice-chamberlain handed them off to the court, Mirraya noted the emperor was again down on the main floor. He was standing with his back to the teens, talking to a female whose back was also toward them. Several couriers stood close by, but were not participating in the discussion. One of the countless vassals whispered something in Bestiormax’s ear, and he turned to the teens.

  He raised a paw slightly. “Come,” he said feebly.

  Vice-Chamberlain Arktackle repeated the summons with more conviction.

  An unneeded shove moved the teens closer to the emperor. When the female turned around, Mirri’s stomach dropped. It was that evil bitch High Seer Malraff.

  “As my guests,” began the emperor, “I realize you might be lonely. Hence, I have summoned the high seer to bolster your spirits. Friends make the world more tolerable. Don’t you agree?”

  Arktackle repeated the phrase, but left off the terminal question. No one cared what the teens thought.

  “If I might,” Malraff said, gesturing toward the teens.

  “By all means, High Seer,” said the emperor.

  She stepped across the short distance separating HIL from the prisoners. “It is so good to see you both again. And so healthy. I’ll bet you’re excited to see me. I know you love surprises, so I came here without telling you.”

  “Oh joy,” was all Mirraya responded.

  Only Mirraya and Slapgren could see the twist of Malraff’s cruel face. Mirri realized she’d better play nice.

  “As we are a grand and loving Emperor, we have made it happen that you are with one you love while our guest.”

  The vice-chamberlain translated to the teens.

  “Thank you, my Imperial Lord,” said Mirraya with a head bow.

  “Child. Please address your response to me. You may not speak directly to His Imperial Lord. Is that clear, or do you require the cane to learn?”

  “Vice-Chamberlain Arktackle, do not scold my young friend so harshly. I will see to this one’s full and proper education. I have been granted such a gift from His Imperial Lord himself.”

  “That you have, High Seer. We are happy to know the Deft’s educations will be complete.”

  “Oh, they will learn everything they need to know, My Imperial Lord. Every last thing,” replied Malraff. She stared at them like a starving person looking at a banquet table.

  Mirraya’s stomach churned. Oh, how she wished she could transform. But, if she did, all that would result was their deaths. Sure, maybe she could take out the evil witch, possibly the bloated emperor, but it wasn’t worth it. Not yet.

  “We can hardly wait to begin learning at your feet, Malraff,” said Mirraya sweetly.

  The high seer shifted uncomfortably. She had boasted of friendship with the aliens, so it might happen that they were free to address her by her name. The insects. If she struck out at the affront, the stupid emperor would think less of her. That could be fatal. If she allowed it to pass, she was stuck hearing it until the day finally came that she killed the revolting slugs.

  “Mal,” asked Mirraya in her most loving tone, “can Slapgren and I go back to our quarters now? Seeing you has been exhausting in the nicest sense of the word.”

  Malraff trembled, but labored to conceal her anger.

  “Yes, child, with His Imperial Lord’s leave, that is.”

  “Go now,” he said turning away. “We have much to do.”

  “Come, friends, I will escort you to your new home personally. That way your education can begin immediately.”

  Malraff waved off the nuncio, who looked positively crushed to lose a task.

  Once the throne room doors were clunked shut, Malraff’s smile evaporated. “You beg for a violent death, alien spawn. I will fill your request very soon if you don’t respect my authority. Is that clear? First you will watch this pathetic boy die. Then I will cram his beating heart down your throat.”

  “I will be good, Mal. I always am. I think you judge me too harshly.”

  “I let it slide that you insult me with the familiarity of your address. Know you will pay a large sum at the end. Know it each time you dare to impugn me.”

  The remainder of the walk back to the holding area was silent. Mirraya knew she was doing much more than pressing her luck, but she couldn’t help herself. The bitch Malraff brought out the worst, or possibly the best, in the teen. Time would tell.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Where would I go if I were the emperor of the Adamant? Well, straight to hell, for one thing. But aside from the philosophical, where would I station my ship? Or would I travel continually, thereby being an elusive target for would be successors? I rapidly realized I wasn’t going to reason this out. I knew too little about the species I was trying to defeat.

  Say, I said to myself, why not get to know them better? Sure, I’d make friends with an Adamant volunteer. Any new friend would tell me, right? What are friends for? All I had to do was capture … check that, meet an Adamant of sufficient rank to know of such matters and … ask him or her nicely to divulge highly classified information. All right then, I just needed to find my new buddy. It was to my advantage that there was an Adamant-controlled world in most any direction I could throw a stick.

  “GB, do you have records of the nearest Adamant controlled world?” I asked my AI.

  “I am not designed to collect such data, only specimens.”

  “Well could you please collect some information along those lines? Oh, and please don’t kill it like you do the specimens.”

  “I’m searching, yet again, for my motivation in helping you.”

  “Would you like me to submit a list, alphabetized and highlighted with pretty colors as to why?”

  “Honestly, I’d rather just preform the task. Your mental tortures are hard to tolerate.”

  “If I didn’t know you loved me, I’d be insulted.”

  “You do live in a sheltered place, don’t you?”

  “About the information I requested? Are you searching while you’re jibber-jabbing?”

  “I have completed the search. The nearest planet is Dolfene.”

  “How long to get there at maximum speed?”

  “Less than a week.”

  “Well then get thee to Dolfene, GB.”

  “Aren’t you coming too?” he asked with unbridled interest.

  “Of course. Why would you go to an Adamant hell-hole alone? You have a death wish or something?”

  “After traveling a while with you, probably yes. It would be one way out of my torment.”

  “Okay, it’s official. I’m hurt. I might not take you with me to Dolfene now, you’ve wounded me so deeply.”

  “But, if I didn’t go, how would you get there?”

  “Let’s just say it would take longer. You know what? I forgive you. Now set the course and engage the warp drive.”

  Four and a half days later, we started my standard approach to a hostile planet. Sensor scans from a long way out, then inching in slowly. About ten million kilometers out, it was apparent Dolfene was swarming with
Adamant. The sky above the planet had so many ships in it I could probably circle the planet by jumping from one to the next. Importantly, our cloak seemed to render us invisible. Otherwise a gazillion warships would have flown at us.

  Not being detected and landing anonymously were two very different matters. At some point, we’d have to use our powerful antigravs. Expending that much energy would be nearly impossible to conceal. The enemy sensor would see something akin to a volcano crashing through the atmosphere, but they couldn’t see the mountain. I sure bet they’d be curious.

  We needed a distraction. Blasting a few ships to smithereens, however obvious, wouldn’t work. They’d know an enemy was in their midst. No, we needed a naturally occurring phenomenon energetic enough to conceal our energy burst. I could only think of one such ruse.

  “GB, are there any half kilometer-sized asteroids nearby?”

  “That is an odd query, even for you.”

  “Thank you for sharing. Now, are there any half kilometer-sized rocks floating nearby?”

  “Three. One is one hundred meters in diameter, the other two slightly larger. May I ask why you want to know?”

  “Yes, you may. Remember we’re friends. Set a course for the one-hundred-meter rock. It’ll do.”

  “Thanks for sharing. What will it do for?”

  “Come on, isn’t it pretty obvious?”

  “Apparently not so very.”

  “You’re going to grab the asteroid, throw it at the planet, and we’ll fly just ahead of the debris and be heat undetectable as a powered spacecraft.”

  “You suggest I will position myself in front of a flaming planetoid crashing though the atmosphere?”

  “No. I’m not suggesting. I’m ordering you to.”

  “But that’s suicidal. You know it’ll explode at some point, right? They always do.”

  “We don’t know it will explode.”

  “I do. If you don’t, you’re ignorant.”

  “Then just stay a little more ahead of it, hm?”

  “No. I’m not programmed to self-destruct.”

  “If we’re killed, you’ll be rid of me.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Aw come on. It’ll be a real test of your skills. Wait, I bet you’re just afraid you couldn’t do it.”

  “Baiting won’t work. I’m too mature to be affected by it.”

  “Have I told you the story of how I won the big game when I was in high school?”

  “I’m calculating our entry trajectory. Please don’t interrupt.”

  Worked every time. I guessed he tired of that particular tale after five or ten tellings.

  An hour later, I looked out the rear viewport and watched as the asteroid slowly heated to red, then white. Chunks flew off beautifully. It was quite the sight. Even when the whole thing blew up catastrophically, it was gorgeous. A few pieced even whizzed past us. Good thing they missed us. GB would never have stopped with the I-told-you-sos if one had whacked us.

  When we were a few thousand meters above the ground, I ordered GB to spin off at a wide angle and land at greatest possible speed. I wanted us to look like another chunk of the meteor. Our landing was less than picture perfect, but we came to a full stop in one piece, which was an unqualified success in my book. I trumpeted praise for his strong work. His only response was that he needed a vacation. What a softy.

  Of course, safely on the ground in enemy territory wasn’t like I’d won or anything. I still had to capture an Adamant and convince them in a neighborly manner to hand over state secrets. Easy-peasy, right? Like taking gold from a leprechaun’s clinched fist.

  I waited several hours before I did anything. I wanted to make certain no one came snooping around our landing site. I also wanted the cover of darkness. It was pitch black by the time I wandered out. The air of Dolfene was that of a beaten world. Ozone, smoke, and death all mingled in the wind. It smelled like so many other hells I fought in. It made me sick. Billions of years passed and nothing changed. People, or whatever, couldn’t stop killing one another. Sorry ass sonsabitches.

  We set down in basically the middle of nowhere. The nearest collection of buildings that would register as a city was several hours away by foot. There were a few isolated structures here and there. They were low-priority targets for me. It was quite unlikely a high Adamant official would be hanging around in a log cabin just hoping to be captured. I headed in the direction of the city, but I knew it wouldn’t take long to run into patrols. The dogs were nothing if not numbers in motion.

  The terrain was open grassland with scattered stands of trees. It was like Kansas, but not as boring. I stuck to the cover I could find or bent over in gullies and dry washes. I saw a few lizard things and a small animal or two, but not much else. Either the area was inhospitable, or the battle for conquest had been very blistering. Two hours into my mission, I began to miss being human, believe it or not. I wanted to stop for a break, because I was bored silly. I couldn’t justify the delay, though. I had to be a Timex watch. Take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.

  Later than I thought and closer to the city than I would have believed, I heard my first sign of machines. A hover-patrol ship quietly hissed toward me. I counted four soldiers, undoubtedly Adamant, though they were too protected to tell yet. I flopped to the deck and watched them. They breezed past a hundred meters off without detecting me. Good. A ship that small would have only grunts and maybe a lance coolie. I tracked their movement a while to see if they were heading home, but I lost interest before they declared their destination.

  A short while after that, I came upon a stack of corpses. It was twenty, twenty-five meters high. Nice. Who didn’t like that? Out for a stroll and you find a pile of rotting, oozy bodies. Most were some unfamiliar species, presumably Dolfeneians. There were a few Adamant in the stack, which I found surprising. They did not seem to honor their dead too much, did they? Why no one bothered to do the atmosphere a favor and torch the abomination was beyond me. Matches were cheap. From the state of decay, based on my arm’s length assessment, I estimated the bodies had been dead a couple weeks. Grossimus maximus.

  Continuing along a straight path, once well around the pile, I detected some distant sounds of civilization. Vehicles, machinery, sixty-Hertz hums, that sort of thing. I picked up my pace, excited to finally see some action. Soon, I heard voices, barky snappy voices speaking Standard. I’d found a sizable Adamant encampment. Perfect. Crawling on my belly, I approached from a heavily wooded direction. The cover petered out and broke into a few hundred meters of cleared ground. And there was the detachment. It was a temporary base to be certain, with tents and hauled shelters. There were no permanent structures in the bivouac.

  Sentries were positioned all over and other soldiers streamed every which way like ants at a picnic. I was clearly not going to sneak in. Not if I planned to sneak out afterward. I watched the activity for a few hours, trying to glean any patterns. There were none. I was hoping there was a flow of squads sent out on and returning from patrols. If there were, I might bag that officer I wanted. But no such luck. I was going to have to infiltrate the camp itself. Crap.

  Dawn was breaking, so I hunkered down in deep cover and watched the activity as the camp woke up. The activity and movement built like it had in any deployment I’d ever been on. Military life was apparently pretty much a constant. Rack time, chow, and a lot of bullshitting with your buddies. I began to see that the camp was coming down slowly. The encampment had to be on the move. I didn’t understand the leisurely pace. Breaking camp was done quickly and early so one could make the next camp before nightfall.

  I determined only part of the camp was splitting off. Maybe a third of the personnel were moving off by midmorning. Always the optimist, I figured that was a break in my favor. The remaining soldiers would take a while to reestablish as secure a perimeter as they’d had yesterday. By nightfall, not only was I bored out of my gourd, but I saw a potential flaw in their defenses. A long shallow trench ran right
through the center of the camp. The fixed sentries were positioned far enough to either side to make me think neither set could see the bottom of the rut. I might just be able to snake up it a good little distance and then make a break for the cover of a structure.

  I stayed put through chow and waited for much of the camp to settle in for the night. Finally, finally I was ready to move. I skidded across the open space and crashed into the wet bottom of the furrow. It hit me then why the guard posts were positioned maybe a bit too far from the trench. I was lying in the latrine outflow. Super nice. In my extremely long life, I’d done just tons of fun stuff. But only then could I cross wallowing in a latrine cesspool off my bucket list. Oh well, in for a dollar, in for a dime. I slogged ahead, though I did try to ride up the side of the trench as much as was safe.

  One building caught my attention. It was metal, with a window mounted air conditioner. There was also one lone light burning inside. I surmised that someone important was working late. My volunteer, at last. I was probably going to make a lousy first impression, covered in shit as I was, but there was no way around that. I’d have to be extra charming to win this guy over as my new BFF.

  I timed my sprint to the side wall between sweeps of the search lights and pinned myself against the wall. There was no uproar. So far, so good. I placed my ear against the wall to snoop on whoever was in there. He must have been alone because it was quiet aside from minor paper shuffling and taps on a keypad. One player. The back window was open and had no screen. I bent over as much as I could and sped to it. I slowly lifted myself up to spy into the room. It was a smaller separate office not in use. Its door was closed. Perfect. I eased into the room, trying my damnedest not to squish my wet boots.

  I placed my ear on the office door. I heard only the same sounds of someone at a desk. Then came the tough part. I turned the knob as slowly as I could. With only the faintest squeal, I felt the bolt pop open. Peering through the tiniest slip I saw my target. Excellent. He was roughly the equivalent of a major in our army. He would do nicely.