Worlds at War (A Captain's Crucible Book 5) Read online

  One of those silvery tentacles underneath the pod extended. The tribe members tensed, raising their spears as if to throw them. The tentacle paused in front of the lead Neanderthal, and remained there. It seemed to have five diaphanous fingers. One of then unfurled toward the man.

  The leader stood for several moments, seeming uncertain, then he slowly lowered his spear. He reached out gingerly with his free hand. His index finger approached the lead digit of the tentacle. Then the two touched.

  “Humanity’s true first contact,” someone said from beside Bridgette.

  She jumped slightly. She realized one of the Neanderthals was standing beside her. He was clothed the same as the others, and also had a blond beard. While no one else so far in the psychic experience had acknowledged her presence, this one was looking right at her. After a moment, she realized it was the humanoid from the lab. She hadn’t recognized him at first because of the unkempt hair and beard.

  “You may call me Marin,” the man said without moving his lips. “My vocal cords are not developed enough to speak the words of your language. We skipped that phase of evolution and moved directly to the telepathic stage.”

  “I’m Bridgette,” she answered.

  “I know,” Marin said, once more without moving his lips. That was eerie as hell.

  “What is this?” Bridgette waved toward the Neanderthals. “Why are you showing me this?”

  “You asked why we were aboard the ship,” Marin said. “This is why. They gathered us before the extinction level event ended our species on Earth. Just as they gathered the dinosaurs. Those you name the Elder once saw themselves as great preservers of life in all its forms. Unfortunately, the Elder were forced to flee this galaxy only a thousand years after the scene you see before you. When the Khrolosse came.”

  “Khrolosse?” the name sounded vaguely familiar.

  “An ancient creature, more an interdimensional virus than anything sentient,” Marin said. “It manifests as a multi-phasic retrovirus in this reality, converting select organelles of hosts into something that can manufacture the higher-dimensional energy the Khrolosse consumes, killing the hosts in the process. Hundreds of worlds had fallen to the Khrolosse before the Elder fled.”

  “Does the... Khrolosse... still exist?”

  “We do not know,” Marin said. “The Elder destroyed all Slipstreams leading to that region of the galaxy. Either the Khrolosse starved itself into nonexistence, or it has expanded coreward, away from your space. There is also a chance it is hibernating.”

  “I don’t really like the sound of that latter option,” Bridgette said. “So what happened to your species after the Elder collected you?”

  “We became honored servants,” Marin said. “They tweaked our genetic code, accelerated our evolutionary progression toward our ideal state so that we attained psi abilities far sooner. They also helped us discover the cure to all diseases, including age. I am over four thousand years old. When your branch of humanity was still in its Iron Age, I was born. Some of my brothers who lost their lives in the fighting out there were even older.”

  Bridgette gazed at the distant ship and watched as the Neanderthals willingly walked up the ramp and boarded. “They’ve obviously gathered different species under their wings other than you and the dinosaurs?”

  “Of course,” Marin said. “But we became their most dedicated servants. Our intelligence and creative thinking impressed them so greatly that they elevated us above all the rest, and assigned us the care of their offspring among other duties—in those rare occasions when they actually reproduced. We are also their skirmishers, as you witnessed during your attack run.”

  “Interesting.” Bridgette had heard enough about their background. It was time to start leading the conversation toward her main objectives...

  twenty-six

  They once saw themselves as the great preservers of life, you say?” Bridgette regarded him scornfully. “What happened to change all of that? To turn them into the enforcers they have become instead? The self-proclaimed intergalactic police, ready to terminate a race for violating their secret laws?”

  “The Elder still preserve life,” Marin said. “In fact, that is why they are here.”

  “Really?” Bridgette said sarcastically. “Last I heard, the Elder were trying to rip the magnetosphere away from our homeworld. I don’t see the life-preserving aspect of that.”

  Marin didn’t answer.

  “You have to tell them to leave our space,” Bridgette said. “They can’t do this to us. They have no right. Humanity doesn’t deserve this.”

  “The Elder will not listen to me,” Marin said. “They will not stop. When their ship has been repaired, they will return to your planet and finish what they have started. Your Earth will become but a memory.”

  “It’s your planet, too,” Bridgette said.

  “Not anymore,” Marin answered.

  “At least tell me why they’re doing this to us?” Bridgette said. “Help me understand. First they aid humanity, or at least the Neanderthals and dinosaurs, and now they exterminate us. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You know why,” Marin said. “You have destroyed billions of their Children.”

  “The Elk?” Bridgette told him. “We were tricked by the Zarafe into doing that. They told us we were bombing an Elk colony world with a minimal population. They lied. The Elder should be attacking the Zarafe, not us.”

  “The Zarafe might have been the hand,” Marin replied. “But you were the blade. The human battle group deployed its planet weapon to the Elk homeworld and destroyed all life residing there. The Elder are not pleased, to say the least. They have come to a decision: humanity is too warlike, and poses too great a threat to the rest of this galaxy. If left unchecked, they fear you will prove a greater threat than even the Khrolosse to the remaining races. So you see, by eliminating you now, they do in fact protect the rest of the galaxy. Preserving life, in the end.”

  “So you’re going to kill all of us?”

  “Not all,” Marin said. “A handful will be spared, as the Neanderthals were, and brought into the Elder care.”

  “Turned into brainwashed slaves, like you.”

  “We are not slaves,” Marin said. “But honored servants.”

  “You can’t do this,” Bridgette said. “We don’t deserve this. We’re a good people. You can’t condemn all of us for the actions of a few. We’re not the Khrolosse. Punish those who instigated this instead.”

  “You mean those you call the Zarafe?” Marin said.

  “Them, and the human leaders. Punish those who staff the upper levels of our government and military bureaucracies, those who gave the order to destroy the Elk world in the first place. We’ll gladly give them to you.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Marin said.

  “Don’t punish us all,” Bridgette pleaded one final time.

  “I’m sorry,” Marin said. “The Elder don’t see it that way. Humanity was given a warning. You were told to tread carefully; to use the power of the planet killer wisely. You did not heed that warning. And now you must pay the price. I am sorry.”

  “If they won’t see reason,” Bridgette said. “We’re going to have to fight, you know that don’t you?”

  “You will do what you have to do,” Marin said. “Just as we will.”

  It was time to take the plunge.

  “You’re going to tell me how to defeat them,” Bridgette said.

  Marin cocked one eyebrow. “And why would I do that?”

  Bridgette hardened herself for what she knew must come.

  “If you help us, we’ll let you live,” she said. “I can’t promise we’ll let you go anytime soon, but at least you’ll have your life.”

  Marin smirked. “Even if you told the truth, I would not betray the Elder simply to save myself. You are a greater fool than I thought if you believe that. I have lived over four thousand years. Do you truly think I cling so dearly to this life? I would rather die now at t
he hands of my descendants than to do so twenty thousand years hence, knowing that I betrayed those I loved more than anything in the universe. And if I truly must die now, I do so knowing that I have lived fully, many times over.” His face twisted into a scowl. “Now leave this place and impart everything you have learned to your precious captain, before I decide to wipe your mind of every last memory, including the knowledge of how to control your own body, leaving you a living vegetable.”

  Bridgette turned so that she was facing him fully, and planted her feet. They had no planet killers left. Nukes weren’t powerful enough to cause any damage. Humanity needed a way to win this. She remembered Jonathan’s words: she could be humanity’s last hope.

  “Tell me how to destroy the Elder,” she said, mustering all the psi force she could manage behind the words.

  “As you wish,” Marin said.

  And then the humanoid was gone, as was the land around her.

  She floated disembodied in darkness once more. The dueling spheres lay before her, one red, one blue. The tiny blue struggled to emerge from the larger red, which had earlier engulfed it. The blue was only a quarter submerged at the moment; it seemed on the cusp of escape, but then tentacles of energy repeatedly lashed out from the red and the blue was once more sucked inside, crushing her will along with it.

  She resided in a dungeon of some kind. Her naked body was smeared in dirt and grime. Cold stones lay at her feet and back. Her arms were shackled above her head, joined together at the wrists by an impervious iron clasp. A torch glowed in a bracket beside her, the flame providing a small pool of flickering light that barely penetrated the darkness around her.

  How did I get here? Where am I?

  Wasn’t she just on a starship? Or... what?

  Something moved in the darkness ahead of her.

  Eugene? Is this your doing?

  From the murk emerged a giant centipede. The terrible thing grabbed her bound wrists in its mandibles, and reared its segmented body, tearing the iron clasp from the wall and lifting her bound body from the stone floor. A maw opened in the middle of that torso, and writhing insects swarmed out. Worms and beetles landed on her body, whipping their wings, skittering all over her naked flesh, crawling into her mouth and nostrils and other bodily orifices.

  She struggled against her bindings and screamed, but the sound quickly became a muted gargle as more of those insects shoved themselves down the wider opening she had provided them. She felt everything keenly. Pain, everywhere. And repulsion. Violation.

  The insects swept away and she collapsed to her knees. She was in a pure white room now. Actually, no, it wasn’t a room. Everything around her was completely white. She couldn’t see any demarcations to indicate walls, or even a floor or ceiling. She knew that there was in fact a floor, because when she touched the area beside her feet, her fingers flattened against an invisible surface. But otherwise, she saw only that infinite whiteness.

  She sensed movement and looked up.

  Eugene stood in front of her.

  “I knew it was you,” she said. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  She had experienced psychic attacks from her son before, but never had they been so intense. Especially not since she had begun to properly school him.

  He walked up to her. Since she was still slumped down on her knees, he easily stood the same height as her head. He reached out, grabbed a small, squirming beetle from her face, and tossed it aside.

  “Let me out, Eugene,” she said.

  “Mommy, you have to kill the captain,” her son said.

  Bridgette’s eyes widened, and she shook her head frantically. “I can’t.”

  “You have to,” Eugene said. “Killing him will end this war, and save humanity.”

  “No,” she said. “It will doom humanity. He’s the only one standing between us and the Elder.”

  “The Elder want him dead,” Eugene said.

  “They want us all dead,” Bridgette said. “And killing Jonathan will only help them.”

  “They only want him,” Eugene said. “I promise you. Kill the captain and this will all end.”

  And then she was in the captain’s mess. Having dinner with Robert, Stanley and Jonathan.

  Robert was laughing at some joke Jonathan said, while Stanley was scowling as usual.

  Bridgette wrapped her fingers tightly around her utensils.

  Kill the captain.

  Jonathan looked at her. “What do you think, Bridgette? Should we promote Robert to the head of the sanitation department?”

  “Demote, you mean,” Robert said.

  “Hardly,” Jonathan said. “A change of that sort is definitely a promotion. Think of how quickly your days will pass without having to do all that digital paperwork.”

  Staring at the captain, Bridgette lifted her knife and fork. She stood up.

  Jonathan eyed her uncertainly. “Bridgette? Is everything all right?” His gaze flicked to her utensils.

  She spun around and stabbed her knife and fork into the bulkhead behind her. Blood oozed from the metal surface.

  A humanoid slowly coalesced from the bulkhead. His chest bled where the utensils had dug into his flesh.

  The humanoid grabbed her wrists before fully forming, and pulled her arms roughly away from him.

  The environment around them blinked, and she lay in her bunk with Robert. The light from the HLED lamp on the nightstand was dim.

  Robert held her arms. “What’s wrong, baby?”

  “I’m afraid,” she found herself saying. “I’m not sure I have the strength to raise a child like Eugene.”

  “We’ll both find the strength.” Robert caressed her side. “We’ll do this together.”

  Bridgette smiled bravely. But as she looked into those compassionate eyes, she realized something was off about them.

  This isn’t Robert. None of this is real.

  “I know who you are,” she whispered.

  A red sphere overlaid her vision. It seemed translucent, so that she could still see Robert behind it. She poured all her being into that sphere, reaching deep inside herself, siphoning everything she had. If she failed, there would be nothing left of her, she knew. So she might as well risk it all.

  Nothing was happening. The humanoid she faced was over four thousand years old. Of course she had no chance against him. It was hopeless.

  And yet she had occasionally beaten Eugene in similar psi duels. In those duels, Eugene’s sphere was about twice the size as this one. That had to mean Eugene was stronger than Marin. And if she could occasionally defeat Eugene, than she had a good chance of beating Marin now.

  The realization spurred her to try even harder.

  Finally a sliver of blue sprouted from that sphere. Then another. Tendrils from the first reached out toward similar threads from the second, until the two joined, thickening. Another blue sliver emerged nearby, and it too linked with the others. More and more blue kept bursting from the sphere, threads of energy linking with one another until the red sphere was completely engulfed.

  “This is my world,” she said.

  She stood in the white expanse once more. Her arm was extended in front of her. Her fingers were wrapped around Marin’s neck.

  She released him, and chains formed from the air behind him, wrapping around his arms and legs. Stone walls, ceiling, and floor appeared around him, similar to the dungeon that had held her moments before.

  She reached out, and shoved her hand through his skull. There was no gore—her fingers simply passed through as if his head wasn’t there.

  Marin screamed.

  The scene vanished, and she was hurtling through the deep space. She had no body.

  “You will tell me how to defeat the Elder,” she said. Her voice boomed through the void.

  Though the scene around her was one of stars and space, she felt like she was hurtling through different neural pathways. Ahead of her, she sensed resistance. She shoved at that resistance.

  A brigh
ter star appeared among the points of light ahead. It quickly grew larger. It was the Elder ship.

  Below her she caught sight of a cigar-like shape, tinted silver, hurtling toward the Möbius strip vessel with her.

  Abruptly she decelerated, while the silver object continued forward and struck the ship. Where it impacted, the surface was eaten away. As she watched, a sixth of the entire ship dissolved before the effect abated and stopped.

  “The disintegration bombs,” Bridgette said. “Those are the key, then. Tell me how to get them.”

  Her vision shifted, and she accelerated in another direction. The Elder ship receded beside her.

  In front of her one of the scavenger ships rapidly came into view. In moments she was entirely inside, roving the many passageways and compartments. She stopped in one particular compartment that was filled to the brim with silver disintegration bombs.

  “And how do we use them?” she said.

  The view accelerated once more, moving outside the ship, flying across the disjointed hull. It paused beside a cannon. The tube broke away from the hull, bringing with it a significant portion of the compartment it had been joined to. The fragment flew away from the scavenger, and the mixed human and alien fleet came into view ahead. The cannon halted beside a Raakarr dart ship.

  “The Raakarr can use these weapons,” Bridgette said. “Thank you.”

  She released her hold on the humanoid.

  The void fell away.

  She opened her eyes. Breathing hard, she found herself back in the tent. Marin lay on the table in front of her. He was just as winded, judging from his panting. As he gazed at her, a single tear trickled down his cheek.