Raul’s moment of hesitation almost cost him his life. The first alien to spill through the portal into his command center hurled a spinning blade with such force it would have passed all the way through his torso if it had reached him. Instead it glanced harmlessly off the invisible stasis shield he erected in front of his body. Seeing eight additional Kasari jump through the portal into the Rho Ship, Raul sealed it behind them.
Despite their training, the Kasari assault team wasn’t prepared for the legless apparition that hung suspended in the air before them, wielding a stasis field for which they lacked the modulation codes. Neither did they expect his mind to be seamlessly interconnected with their own world ship’s neural network.
As Raul looked beyond the nine members of the trapped Kasari assault team and into the vast expanse of the invasion staging chamber, he knew he didn’t have much time. While the assault team offered no threat to him, even the stasis field could not long defend him against the advanced heavy weaponry available to the army in that facility. Its commanders had been stunned into inaction by the gateway’s unexpected shift, but unless he enhanced the impact, their lack of coordinated response wouldn’t last long enough.
Manipulating his field with long-practiced expertise, he filled the surrounding chamber with a tight grid of microscopic force planes, dicing the nine Kasari so rapidly even their super nano-bots had no chance at compensating. Collapsing the force grid, he packed the orange-green Kasari soup into a ball and shot it back through the portal, where it exploded into the midst of the assembled troops like a giant paintball.
Raul didn’t wait to watch it, turning his full attention to the worm fibers inside the ATLAS cavern. He couldn’t just terminate his end of the gateway. The modifications he’d made to the Rho Ship’s wormhole drive consumed so much power on initiation it would take weeks to recharge the reserves for another attempt. Disconnecting from the far end would shift his wormhole engines to some random point in space, throwing the starship’s drive into its primary mode of operation, transporting it through the wormhole, a trip no one could hope to survive.
No. He had to stay linked to a far gateway until he brought the system down in a controlled fashion. That meant that if he wanted to get Heather, he had to stay linked to the Kasari gateway until he could reacquire the one in the ATLAS cavern.
Stephenson had done something to regain control of his portal, something that Raul needed to counter. And he needed to make it happen right now.
Ketaan-Ra hurtled through the gateway, landing in the dimly lit cavern, accompanied by two Graath shock troopers just to his right. His shared nano-bot tactical display showed only two armed humans, one at floor level, another high up along the metal latticework that draped the walls.
He wasn’t surprised by the lack of human military at the gateway. Of all the worlds they’d assimilated, most had had no armed presence at the portal. The whole point of building a Kasari-inspired gateway was to welcome the benevolent species that offered a world so much astounding technology. It made no sense to open the gateway and present a threatening presence to one’s benefactors.
Motioning with an arm, Ketaan-Ra issued a mental command, sending the two Graath scurrying to eliminate the soldiers as he focused on understanding every aspect of his tactical display. Something was wrong with the portal behind him. He didn’t need to look to confirm that it had lost the link with the Kasari staging planet. Only he and the two Graath had made it into the cavern. By now he should have had his entire dozen-member team already moving through the coordinated dance they’d rehearsed hundreds of times.
Worse, a bright red rotating threat matrix highlighted something he’d already seen with his own eyes, a glowing orb contained within a stasis field a handful of strides in front of him. The energy readings showed the field contained an asymptotic gravitational event with a rapidly expanding event horizon.
A bomb.
As hard as it was to believe what he was seeing, he couldn’t deny what the data was telling him. Somehow this species had rejected the beneficial concept of assimilation and responded by using the Kasari technologies to construct a gravity bomb with a growing singularity at its core.
As the scanner displays flashed through his mind, instantly identifying each piece of equipment in the cavern along with its probable purpose, his initial assessment was confirmed. The stasis field containing the singularity was programmed to thrust it through the gateway upon a command from its operator. And if he didn’t get control of that station very quickly, the humans might just succeed in destroying a Kasari staging planet, along with multiple gateways and millions of highly trained warriors.
A scowl spread across Ketaan-Ra’s face. Not happening. Not through his gateway.
Turning to the left, Ketaan-Ra identified the human female operating the workstation on the third stair-stepped platform that wrapped behind the gateway. With a red numeric countdown in the corner of his sensory display, he leaped onto the first platform and grabbed the human male who had just begun to rise from his seat, impaling him on the dual-edged kedra and tossing the body aside as he prepared to leap to the next level.
A tactical alert triggered his attention, a human moving up behind him, fast. Very fast. The force of the blow staggered him, caving in the right rear section of his skull as he started to turn toward his attacker. For a matter of seconds Ketaan-Ra lost all tactical, while the nano-bots swarmed to repair the brain injury. Ignoring the loss of awareness, he whirled toward the human, pulling the second kedra from his equipment belt and driving his bulk forward with all the power his legs could deliver.
As his upper two arms reached to embrace his opponent and pull him into the sweeping blades, the human dropped to his back, his feet catching Ketaan-Ra in the junction between his legs with surprising force, adding a vertical component to his forward momentum, launching him over his target, one blade barely nicking the human’s head. He hit the ground and rolled to his feet as tactical came back online. Ketaan-Ra knew he’d failed to compensate for this planet’s lower gravity. Compounding that error, the human showed startling dexterity, far greater than anything he’d seen from the world ship’s periodic reports on this planet.
One of the Graath had taken out a guard, but the other was having its own problems, taking fire from a human female who displayed traits similar to the one he was fighting. The tactical network incorporated this new data, adjusting the team’s tactics as they moved.
A projectile flew from his opponent’s hand so fast that it hit his lower left hand before he could move it out of its path, breaking the bone just below his wrist and sending the kedra skidding across the floor toward the portal. Again his tactical display shifted dramatically, showing a gateway connection to another point on this planet, a connection to the Kasari’s own world ship.
Shrugging off this distraction, he prepared himself for the human male’s charge. It never came. As Ketaan-Ra’s wrist knitted itself back together, the human broke into panicked retreat. With his legs providing more controlled explosions, Ketaan-Ra gave chase, smiling at the cascading displays in his head. The chase wasn’t going to be a long one.
The human cut to the right and, once again, the absence of sufficient gravity betrayed Ketaan-Ra, robbing him of the friction necessary to match the human’s two tight turns. At least now the other’s plan was clear. Get to the dropped kedra. He planned to stop and fight. Ketaan-Ra relaxed, letting his pace slow just enough to make sure the human got there first. It was the kind of fight he wanted, kedra to kedra, his four hands and superior strength and healing against this human’s quickness. A truly worthy opponent.
Mark’s finger closed around the alien sword’s haft, feeling the grip adapt to his hand. As he whirled to face his pursuer, he measured the weapon’s weight and balance, his eyes caressing the black sword’s three-foot blade. Two razor-sharp edges swept to a Roman point, practically screaming for blood. He liked it.
The big alien came to a controlled stop three paces from where Mark waited, its own sword gripped in its lower right fist, the other three arms reaching toward him like a wrestler’s. Like a couple of wrestlers’.
So it had learned Mark’s momentum tricks. No more bull rushes. Just good old-fashioned man-versus-giant-four-armed-alien combat. A mental image from the classic B movie Clash of the Titans brought a grin to his face.
Amazing. The alien warrior appeared to be waiting for him to make the first move. As Mark raised the sword in front of him, another thought filled his mind.
Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you.
Then Mark’s body blurred into motion.