The Lost Aria (Earth Song Book 3) Read online

  A few minutes later the big doors were rumbling open. It turned out to be easier than she'd suspected. Someone had overridden the mechanisms long ago, making it no more difficult than flipping a switch. Minu was the first one through the door, two of the new generation hand cannons strapped to her waist, one on either side. Aaron now called them Enforcers, some kind of inside joke he shared with Ted and Bjorn. The weight was substantial, but extra magazines balanced the load well enough. Without shock rifles it was the best close range weapon in their arsenal. Aaron wore a pair as well, and Cherise carried the last two.

  Outside was a massive hallway running parallel to the doorway. The sweeping slow turn of the hallway made something tickle the back of her mind. Each man carried a powerful electric torch that cast harsh white light in all directions. Despite the power operating the door and apparently cleaning the air, there were no lights.

  “Which way?” Var'at asked. A squad of his soldiers backed Aaron and her up as they prepared to explore their surroundings. The rest waited with the fighters and remained on high alert lest a speedy retreat through the Portal became necessary. Minu shrugged and pointed. And they were off.

  The hall continued a slow turn to the left as they walked. No other doors were evident but plenty of dust and disuse. The debris cover on the floor was light and well trampled. This facility was used fairly often. At one point one of Var'at's team knelt next to a clear track in thick dust. It was unmistakably a massive snake. “Oh shit,” Aaron put words to their thoughts quite well.

  “We knew the snakes laid claim to vast areas of space around here,” Minu reminded them all, “this is not a surprise.”

  “Tell that to my shorts,” Aaron said under his breath, which Minu heard clearly. She shot him a nasty look and he smiled innocently.

  The hallway ended in another doorway, this one operated automatically and began to slide open at their approach. They all moved through carefully, weapons holstered but with hands on gun butts, ready to respond in a second. Minu moved inside and instantly realized something was different. Their torches were reflecting from the wall opposite the door they'd just entered through, as if the wall was a massive sweeping mirror. “Everyone turn off your lights,” she told them. One by one the lights went out until they were cast into complete darkness.

  It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness, and discern the dim points of light shining through the glass wall. Minu stepped closer and gasped. It was a huge window, and below orbited a planet. “We're on a space station,” she said.

  “Extraordinary!” Var'at spoke as he came up next to her. Minus the glaring light of their torches, the stars and the world below cast enough light to illuminate the chamber in a dim glow rather like a child's night light. Tearing her eyes away from the window, Minu saw a Portal dais at the rear, and then the unmistakable signs of a fight. Here and there the dualloy walls were scored from energy weapons fire, and several pieces of unusual furniture were completed destroyed. This place had seen battle.

  “Have you ever been on a space station?” she asked her Rasa friend.

  “Once, many years ago when I was young. It was a horrible, dangerous place. There was no atmosphere, and the gravitic systems were down. We used space suits to move from one Portal to another as quickly as possible.”

  “Where did you get space suits?”

  “We, our people, had a small supply of them. We ordered them many years ago from some company in the Concordia.”

  “If the Concordia gave up space ships eons ago, why would anyone bother stocking space suits?”

  “That is a good question. And one for which I have no answer.”

  While they'd been talking, Aaron examined the Portal using the manual controls. Stepping on the dais the archway came alive and he used his hands to make the icons appear. All Portals were addressable in this manner, even if no one knew how to operate them using the icons. It served as a simple way to query the devices programming and status.

  “It's active,” he informed her after a moment, “set for only one destination. Hasn't been used in about a month, but its seen steady traffic over the years.”

  “Ask it if there are any other Portals on the station,” she told him.

  He tapped icons that rearranged themselves in answer. “There are at least two nearby.”

  “Okay,” she said and turned to Var'at,” let’s find them, shall we?”

  Ted and Bjorn both stood staring out at the magnificent panorama of a world far below, both babbling about the possibilities of owning such a station for research and such, when Minu returned with the Rasa scouts. The other two Portals had been located. As soon as Ted saw her he spoke up. “This particular Portal probably only goes to that planet below,” he told her.

  “What makes you so sure?” she asked.

  “Well, look out the window. It's kinda like how you get to watch a dirigible land and take off through a window while waiting for your own flight to leave. Makes sense, in a psychological sort of way.”

  “You're assuming the aliens who built the station share any psychological common reference points,” Bjorn pointed out, still looking out the window. Ted turned to debate him on the issue so Minu quickly stepped in.

  “Lots of snake traffic through the station, so you figure there are goodies down there?”

  “Yes,” Ted answered, shooting a 'later' look at Bjorn. “Probably a prime find that they've been exploiting for years. We're so far off the beaten path that they're not even blocking the back door.”

  “Still, we better get out of here ASAP,” Minu said more to herself. It wouldn't serve to have a squad of T'Chillen warriors slither through either Portal to find a bunch of humans squatting around digging in the dust. Minu had searched the area thoroughly, hoping this would be one of her father’s secret caches, but to no avail. It was, however, most certainly the key to reaching Enigma. The question was, which Portal? This was where her dad's map ended, and where her instincts would now take over.

  There were only three real options. One; go home. She immediately tossed that one over her shoulder. Two; send scout teams through each Portal to see where they went. And three; pick one and go in force. Options two and three each had their plus and minus factors. Two was riskier to the individual scout team, but safer to the expedition as a whole. Three was safer to the individual, but risked the entire team should she guess wrong. After several years of leadership, it still wasn't easy to make decisions where lives were at risk. Minu hoped it never would be easy.

  Var'at came over with one of his scouts. “We have located the other two Portals,” he told her. Together they went with Ted and his control rod to verify what she already knew in her heart. Each Portal was only open to one destination. But in a bit of luck, there was evidence to help her make a decision.

  “This one has not been used in years,” Var'at said of the Portal dais before them. Dust lay on everything and the room was piled high with debris. There were a few tracks in the dust, but no snake trails. Wherever this Portal went, it wasn't somewhere the T'Chillen frequented.

  The decision seemed obvious, and that worried her. “Is it this easy?” she wondered. To make it worse, the hallway was tight, and the fighters would be a difficult fit. They'd have to move them along at a crawl with someone calling out clearances all the way. This Portal was obviously meant as a personnel mover, not cargo. They'd been on the station an hour, and every minute they waited increased the risk that a snake patrol would come through.

  Everyone was looking at her as she thought. Even the much older Ted waited patiently for her decision. “Okay, this is our target,” she told them. “Have Aaron start moving the first fighter ASAP.”

  Just as Minu thought, maneuvering the bulky fighters down the hallways was a nightmare. Each one had a person on either side relaying instructions to the pilot every meter of the trip. Even with the guides, the turn was tight enough in two places that the fighters were forced to literally scrape along the wall for several
meters. The screech was bone chilling and reverberated through the entire structure. Instantly the Rasa on guard duty were on alert.

  The first fighter was lined up with the exit Portal and the second one about half way there when things started to go bad. Minu checked the progress of the last fighter and decided it was time to call in the rear guard. “Var'at, bring them all in, we're going through as soon as we squeeze that beast around the corner and line it up.”

  Var'at nodded and spoke into his communicator. He cocked his head and spoke again. “There is no response.”

  “Oh shit,” she said, turning from where she'd been watching the slow, plodding progress of the fighter to look back down the hallway. They were at a vulnerable point where the weapons of the fighters would be useless should they come under attack from behind right now... “Var'at, with me!” she barked and trotted back down the hallway.

  “What about us?” Ted asked from the rear cargo door of the fighter.

  “Get a weapon and be ready,” she tossed over her shoulder. Var'at gave a loud hissing snap as he followed her. Instantly, five of his soldiers fell in behind as a fire-team.

  If humans possessed any noticeable advantage over the Rasa besides sheer physical size, it was running speed. Despite Minu's diminutive height, she was almost a half meter taller than Var'at and she quickly began to pull ahead of him as she raced down the hall towards their original Portal. She was pretty sure what happened. A team of some sort came through the original Portal and Var'at's team was pinned down or keeping silent to avoid detection. Minu figured a quick distraction would get them clear and then they could all beat it back to the fighters, and out of the station. The last thing she expected was to come around a corner next to the room with the huge window and be confronted with a pair of T'Chillen.

  Their bodies were at least as big around as a well build human, and between six to eight meters long from their beak-like mouths, to the metallic tail-spike they used as a weapon in close combat. The two Minu encountered flared up, serpentine arms waving at their sides in a threat display. Both had been carrying Concordia standard packing crates. The one on the left dropped the crate and fumbled at its belt for a compact beamcaster. Minu snatched at one of her Enforcers. The snake was a hair faster, but Minu was more accurate.

  The 18mm cartridge boomed and the gun rocked with a familiar slam against her cybernetic hand. She noted in the back of her mind that the recoil was less than the prototype. The T'Chillen's beamcaster bolt missed her by a half meter, still close enough to raise blisters on her shoulder. The new gun generated less recoil because Ted and Bjorn had redesigned the concept. Instead of packing the casing with power, they packed the projectile with propellant. Once clear of the barrel, a tiny computer inside the bullet activated a miniature rocket charge and deployed stabilizer fins. Programmed with data from the guns sight in the instant Minu pulled the trigger, the bullet corrected for initial recoil and target movement as it accelerated to four times the speed of sound in less than ten meters. The round impacted with more than five thousand kilograms of kinetic force, almost instantly. The round was frangible and after the initial armor penetrating impact it shattered, spreading the hydrostatic shock.

  The T'Chillen’s central body mass exploded with a wet resounding bang, spraying gore and bone fragments for meters in all directions. The second T'Chillen screeched in a most un-serpent like fashion and spun back towards the Portal. Minu was too surprised at the power of the improved hand cannon to react. A buzz saw grinding sound that set her hair on end came from behind Minu and the second snake fell as a line of discarding sabot projectiles nearly cut it in half. A glance over her shoulder saw Var'at lowering his weapon as he drew alongside her. “We do not have much time,” he said as he passed and turned into the Portal chamber. The two Rasa scouts had been keeping their heads down, just as they'd thought, and they quickly came out to join them. “It wasn't a combat team,” Var'at told her, inspecting the two dead beings, “this one I killed is a scientist, the other you shot was a guard. They will be missed, and quickly.”

  Minu snatched up the compact beamcaster and two extra power cells before turning and examining the hallway. “Get your men to set up two fall back positions,” she told him, “if they come looking we need to buy time.” Without shock rifles they were sorely under gunned against T'Chillen soldiers. Minu moved to help her friend prepare the defenses, all the time hoping they wouldn't be needed.

  Chapter 4

  January 11th, 522 AE

  Space Station, Undesignated Star System, Galactic Frontier

  Where the first fighter made the last turn with only a nasty loud scrape, the second one lodged tight as a door stop. “It won't budge,” Aaron told her over the radio.

  “What the fuck? They're identical, why would one fit and the other not?”

  “I don't have a clue,” he admitted, “but the mystery is proving no end of amusement for Bjorn and frustrating the shit out of Ted.”

  “Well, tell them both to stop screwing around and get that fighter unstuck or they can explain it all to the snakes!” she cut the channel with a final curse and rubbed the bridge of her nose where a headache was threatening to spread backwards and engulf her in a sea of pain. This was supposed to be a smash and grab mission. If they ended up in a pitched battle with T'Chillen...

  From her vantage point in the doorway to the windowed Portal room Minu saw the archway flash into life. They wouldn't make it in time. A pair of T'Chillen slithered through, both much larger than the first two they'd dispatched and wearing articulated body armor covering almost every millimeter of their scaled skin. Both wore a segmented helmet which was rotated back to allow their slitted eyes better visibility. They were investigating an overdue scientist in their own secret corner of the galaxy, not making a combat jump. “Left,” Minu whispered.

  “Right,' Var'at replied. She raised her Enforcer, placed the laser designator on target and pulled the trigger. The left hand soldier’s head exploded in a hail of red mist, the other was engulfed in a flashing storm of hyper velocity discarding sabot, several shredding the unprotected head.

  Minu was about to rush in and relieve them of their unused beamcasters but Var'at put a hand on her shoulder. He pointed and she could see the Portal was still on, and on the other side was a distant world. A dozen more warriors were there, all of them looking through in surprise at their dead comrades. “Hurry it up!” she yelled at her friends through the radio. Already the squad of T'Chillen soldiers were lowering their helmets and rushing towards the Portal. Their bodies were low to the ground and snapping from side to side, a snake rushing to the kill. “Hit them hard,” she told Var'at, and the instant the first one came through the Portal she opened fire.

  Despite their heavy densified dualloy armor the first two fell under their fusillade. The combination of the massive Enforcers punch and the grinding buzz saw of Var'at's accelerator rifle just tore them to pieces before they could clear the Portal and activate their fields. But after seeing what happened to their comrades, the next four dove through together in one huge mass. The booming Enforcer stunned one of them and Var'at chewed him up on the spot. The other three slithered with shocking speed behind the Portal dais and began to return fire.

  “Beamcaster!” Var'at hissed and a second later the squad’s heavy weapons specialist came sliding up, peeking around the corner for a quick look. His head exploded with a crack.

  “Son of a bitch,” Minu spat and wiped bloody gore from her face. She slapped a fresh magazine of seven shots into the Enforcer in her right hand and added the second one in her left while Var'at dispassionately relieved the dead trooper of his weapon.

  “Is this fun yet?” he asked as he safed his accelerator and swung it over his shoulder. The ammo feed track that led from his belt was an additional encumbrance but it didn't seem to bother him any.

  “Getting there,” she said. She leaned just far enough forward to put both hands around the door frame and unleashed the two Enforcers
, pounding round after booming round in the direction of the Portal. Var'at used the distraction to peek around the corner. Finding a target to his liking he fired several quick snapping shots before Minu's guns ran empty, then quickly pulled back. A fusillade of energy beams clawed at them, all far closer than either of them would have liked. “Fucking snakes are good shots!”

  “Yes, they are no Tanam. Where the cats are crazed fighters, the snakes are well trained, disciplined, and patient.” More weapons fire tore at the doorway, the intense energy beams threatening to chew through the wall.

  “Really? News to me!” Minu swapped out magazines while he radioed his men. Another flurry of fire from the snakes started, this more subdued than the last, and Minu was immediately on guard. She sat the two Enforcers on the floor in easy reach and snatched the compact beamcaster in her pack she'd taken from the fallen guard just as a lone T'Chillen raced through the door, low and fast, under cover of fire from its comrades.

  Minu cycled the small beamcaster over and over, the soldier’s shields flashing red, blue, and then white. Var'at turned his own energy weapon on it and the shields overloaded with a pop. A single shot from Minu's gun killed it, easily tearing through the torso armor and vaporizing internal organs. At the same time the hallway reverberated with a monstrous blast back toward the fighters. Minu only gave it a second’s thought; it was all she had to spare.

  She snapped a quick look through the doorway and cursed. “Run,” she said and raced back down the hallway. Var'at was up and behind her in an instant, his pace further slowed by the additional weapon he now carried. Two T'Chillen burst through the doorway they'd just abandoned, closely followed by two more who Minu had seen coming through the Portal; still more reinforcements were staging, and their situation was quickly becoming untenable.

  Shots bracketed Var'at on both sides and he tried zigzagging as best as he could. Minu slowed her pace a step and slapped the shield control on her belt. Var'at moved a step closer as they ran, just close enough to be inside the perimeter of her shield as a beamcaster shot hit square in the center of his back. She heard him hiss in pain as some of the thermal energy penetrated through the shield, and the dualloy combat armor they wore. She felt the Faraday grid in her uniform buzz from the stray EM splash. Luckily they cleared the next corner before any more shots scored a hit. Her shield unit was smaller than the one carried by the T'Chillen making it much more portable, but it also could only survive two hits, where theirs could handle three or four.