THE ANDOS VECTOR

GUNS OF THE FEDERATION

BOOK 5

ANTHONY JAMES

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Urzox

Also by Anthony James

© 2022 Anthony James

All rights reserved

The right of Anthony James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser

Illustration © Tom Edwards

TomEdwardsDesign.com

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ONE

Less than seventy-two hours after the death of rogue officer Admiral Russ Danner - by means of justifiable plasma missile incineration - the Human Federation was once more under the control of the Senate. The military remained in a state of some disarray, but already the officers who were loyal to the Unity political faction were imposing a degree of order.

With Danner out of the way, the Freedom faction he’d led was rudderless and most of its adherents – who had always been loyal to the Human Federation – were attempting to distance themselves from recent events.

Captain Jed Grisham, having been instrumental in Danner’s death, was hopeful that within a few weeks, everything would be back to a state resembling normality. It would need to be. The Ax’Kol aliens were pushing the Kijol fleet to the limit, and they’d already located two frontier human worlds. Soon, the Human Federation would be facing a species with a singular purpose – that purpose being to destroy all life.

“We’ve been at Loxor for ten hours now, Captain,” said Commander Lois Deneuve. She was wearing full combat gear, like the rest of the warship’s crew, and she had one hand on the half-melted interface post that linked her to the warship Voltran’s consciousness.

“Bored, Commander?” asked Grisham.

He was linked to the warship too, though he didn’t need an interface post. The sensor feeds were fed directly into his mind and he changed his attention from one to the other. A hundred kilometres below, the Fremont military base – which had, until recently, been Danner’s seat of power – was a sprawling expanse of buildings, factories, warehouses, and research labs.

The huge landing field attached to the base was crowded with warships that had, only two days ago, been part of Danner’s breakaway faction. Those warships had been ordered to set down and their crews instructed to disembark.

So far, none had resisted, though Grisham wasn’t sure if that was because of the Voltran’s presence, or because almost fifty vessels controlled by the Unity faction had been sent to Loxor at best speed to secure the planet. The Unity warships either hovered above the surface, patrolled the skies, or watched from a half-million kilometres. The local fleet was equivalent in strength, but there’d been no confrontation. Grisham liked to think that was because the Freedom officers knew it was over.

Meanwhile, the extensive shipbuilding facilities on Fremont, consisting of seven construction trenches, were working flat out, and four additional new trenches twenty kilometres east would soon be finished.

“Not bored, Captain,” said Deneuve, turning his way. She smiled. “Well, maybe a little bit bored, but I guess this beats a mission to a planet full of corpses.”

“That it does,” said Grisham. His focus was on the shipyards. “Danner’s legacy. He might have been an asshole of the highest order, but at least he’s left us with the facilities to build our fleet rapidly.”

“There are new trenches on Kanis as well, Captain,” said Lieutenant Mac Adler. “And I checked out the construction orders – in a couple of months, we’ll have some new resource carriers ready to go. Big ones, that can supply a place like Loxor for six months with a single load.” Adler grunted. “But, like you said, Danner was an asshole, regardless of what he left us with.”

“Yeah,” said Grisham.

He felt mixed emotions. For all his many failings, Danner had only wanted the best for the Human Federation. If he’d listened to reason, or accepted that other people – who also wanted the best for the Human Federation – had different means to the same end, he’d still be alive. Right now, the military could use Danner’s undoubted skills in organization, as well as his vision. Instead, the Admiral was dead and his body reduced to carbon.

“The last of the Freedom crews have disembarked,” said Lieutenant Dan Bishop. “We don’t have the people to replace them, not unless there are plans to promote a bunch of Tibor pilots.”

“We won’t be replacing them,” said Grisham. “At least not many. This conflict has always been about different approaches to the same problem. Most of those officers will be desperate to prove their loyalty to the Human Federation.”

“I hope you’re right, Captain.”

Grisham stretched and felt the muscles in his back crackle. This had been a long shift and he was ready for sleep. While the Freedom crews had been disembarking, there’d been no hope of that, but soon, perhaps, he and his crew would have a chance for a few hours away from the bridge.

“I have Senator Maynard on the comms, Captain!” said Lieutenant Kaci Lopez. “Do you want to speak to him on an open channel?”

“Please,” said Grisham. He hadn’t talked to Maynard for many hours, and he hoped the man had some news.

“Captain Grisham,” said Maynard in greeting.

The comms link to Grisham’s mind conveyed not only the Senator’s exhaustion, but also his excitement. Maynard probably hadn’t slept for the last three days, but it sounded like he’d achieved something big.

“What can I do for you, Senator?” asked Grisham.

“I thought you deserved to be one of the first to hear this – we’ve signed a formal peace deal with the Kijol.”

“That’s great news,” said Grisham. He meant it too. “Congratulations, Senator.”

“It’s been hard,” said Maynard. “But worth it.”

“Does that peace deal include a commitment to military collaboration?” asked Grisham.

“It does. Quite extensive military collaboration as it happens.”

“What about tech sharing, Senator?”

Maynard gave a short laugh. “We have an agreement to discuss the possibility of tech sharing, but for the moment, it’s collaboration only. I don’t expect we’ll be building our own Eternus battleships anytime soon.”

Grisham wasn’t too disappointed at the lack of tech sharing, since this was early days. The big news was the agreement to collaborate – making this more of an alliance than a mere peace settlement. Even with a cessation in hostilities between the Human Federation and the Kijol, the Ax’Kol would surely still be too much of an opponent if both species were acting independently. Only an active alliance would be enough to defeat this terrible enemy.

However, after the Voltran’s encounters with the Ax’Kol death factory Inojor, and the vast warship Gholaxas, Grisham was doubtful if humanity and the Kijol stood any chance at all against the enemy. However, this wasn’t the time to think about it and he put the matter to the back of his mind.

“What happens next?” asked Grisham.

“There’s plenty of work to be done, Captain,” said Maynard. “Many details remain to be ironed out – details we’ve put to one side in the interests of getting the accord in place.”

Grisham could imagine, though he didn’t press for specifics. He’d had enough of politics to last a dozen lifetimes. “Everything appears to be settling here on Loxor,” he said. “Maybe soon the Human Federation and the Kijol will be able to turn our attention to the real threat.”

“It’ll happen,” said Maynard. “In the meantime, I have a mission for you.”

“What kind of mission, Senator?” asked Grisham. Although Loxor was seemingly under control, he didn’t think it was a good idea to leave the planet so soon. Still, he was curious.

“The Voltran is running low on missiles and gauss projectiles,” said Maynard.

“That’s right,” said Grisham.

“One of the first things I asked the Kijol after we’d signed the peace deal was if they’d salvaged any Ax’Kol ammunition. It turns out they have.”

“And they’re willing to hand it over?” asked Grisham.

“The Kijol feel they owe a debt to you and your crew,” said Maynard.

“They came right out and said that?” asked Grisham in disbelief.

“Not in so many words. But nevertheless, the actions of our new allies tell the tale. They have offered to fully resupply the Voltran.”

“How do the Kijol plan to load the ammunition, Senator?” asked Grisham. “The Voltran requires external hardware to swap out its magazines.”

“I—” Maynard hesitated. He wasn’t a military man and had evidently overlooked this basic question. “The Kijol made the offer and I accepted,” he said.

Grisham exchanged a glance with Deneuve. She offered him an exaggerated shrug.

“Send us the coordinates, Senator,” said Grisham. “Are we to depart immediately? The situation on Loxor isn’t yet resolved.”

“My advisors tell me that everything is under control,” said Maynard. “I’ll have the coordinates sent over at once. The Voltran is a unique vessel in the Human Federation fleet and we need it ready to fight.”

“I agree,” said Grisham.

“We’ve received the coordinates,” said Lieutenant Lopez, off-comms.

“Is there anything else, Captain?” asked Maynard, his voice making it clear he wanted to get on with other business.

“No, nothing else,” said Grisham.

“We’ll speak at greater length when the time is right,” said Maynard. He exited the channel.

“I hope the Senator’s advisors – whoever they are - know what they’re talking about,” said Adler.

Grisham didn’t need to guess the names of those advisors. Six officers of Admiral rank had sided with Unity and he was sure they were telling Maynard exactly what he needed to know. However, Grisham hadn’t been under the command of any of these officers, so he couldn’t form an opinion as to their competence. Most high-ranking officers in the HF military had earned their places, though there were exceptions.

“I wonder why we haven’t been placed under the command of another Admiral,” said Lieutenant Eric Kinsey.

“I think it suits Senator Maynard to keep us outside the usual command structure,” said Grisham. “After all, a military man was responsible for the split in the Human Federation. It makes sense to keep the Voltran under direct control.” He smiled thinly. “And so far, the situation has been suiting me just fine.”

“We should get out of here, sir,” said Deneuve. “I’ll feel a whole lot better once the Voltran’s magazines are full – assuming the Kijol have the know-how to do it.”

“Lieutenant Lopez, make sure that our departure will not cause any alarm,” said Grisham.

“We’re a-okay to go, Captain,” said Lopez a few seconds later.

Grisham didn’t delay. He instructed the Voltran to accelerate and the warship climbed steadily away from the planet. At the same time, Grisham watched the other vessels which were inside his warship’s sensor arcs. The Human Federation fleet might not be a match for the Kijol fleet, either numerically or technologically, but it was still a force to be reckoned with. Now that Danner was dead, those warships could return to the task for which they’d been constructed – defending humanity.

Once the Voltran had escaped the planet’s atmosphere, Grisham commanded the warship to maximum acceleration. Its propulsion howled and the vessel tore through the void. With each passing moment, the Fremont base dwindled and the parked spaceships became little more than dark grey shapes against the lighter grey of the landing field.

At a quarter of a million kilometres from the planet, Grisham brought the Voltran to a standstill.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“A planet called Dodaxa,” said Lopez. “It’s out beyond the Golor sector and isn’t in the HF star charts. The journey time will be three-and-a-half days.”

“Did the Kijol provide anything other than a location?”

“No, sir.”

“Figures,” said Grisham. He doubted there’d be anything worth knowing about the place. “Lieutenant Adler, prepare the Voltran for lightspeed. Aim for an arrival distance half a million kilometres from Dodaxa.”

“Yes, sir,” said Adler. “We’ll be on our way in a shade under three minutes.”

The background drone of the engines rose in volume and Grisham let the sound wash over him. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in the cold air, with its lingering odour of charred Ax’Kol. After everything that had happened recently – the unrelenting combat, the destruction of entire fleets, and the events within the Human Federation – Grisham knew he should probably be ready for some downtime.

Instead, he craved a return to action, though he wasn’t sure if that was because he wanted to see an end to the Ax’Kol, or because he’d developed an addiction to walking on the edge. Deep inside, Grisham knew that a man who lived only for combat was a man who’d find death far sooner than he might like.

The Voltran entered lightspeed.

TWO

The journey passed without incident. Grisham spent his active time on the bridge and his off-duty hours in the Voltran’s makeshift mess area – this being one of the warship’s many interior spaces, but with a replicator and some uncomfortable alloy beams on which to sit.

On these visits, Grisham found himself subjected to subtle interrogation from the soldiers who’d accompanied him ever since the fateful visit to planet Xaros. The soldiers weren’t especially interested in politics, but they wanted to know everything about the peace accord with the Kijol, as well as the Human Federation’s plans to defeat the Ax’Kol. Grisham didn’t have much to tell, but he told the squad what he knew.

A more difficult task was how to handle the killing – Grisham refused to think of it as murder, though a few legal types would probably disagree - of Admiral Danner. The leader of the squad, Sergeant Tyrus Maxwell, needed to know he was on the right side, whatever that was, and Grisham wasn’t sure how the man would react to the missile attack on Danner’s gravity car. Of course, Grisham could have requested a replacement squad when he was at Loxor, but ultimately, he trusted Maxwell and his squad. They’d been through a lot together.

In the end, it wasn’t an issue. Maxwell expressed an opinion that the Human Federation was better off with Danner dead, however it had happened. Grisham spoke his agreement. Maxwell nodded and that was that.

During the time at Loxor, the body of the squad medic Jack Franklin – who’d been killed by an Ax’Kol on the Voltran – had been taken to the surface, and a new medic had arrived on the returning shuttle. Private Hank Logan brought the squad back to its full strength of ten. Logan was broad and a little below average height, with grey hair, even though he was only twenty-eight years old. He already knew the other soldiers and his inclusion in the squad had been a personal request from Maxwell.

Another medic to feed into the grinder.

As the three-and-a-half-day journey approached its end, Grisham and his crew waited on the bridge for the Voltran to exit lightspeed.

“We don’t know what we’re going to find here, folks, so be ready for anything,” said Grisham. He strongly doubted there’d be any sort of Kijol double-cross, but it didn’t cost anything to be wary.

At the exact predicted moment, the warship re-entered local space. The sensor arrays came online after a couple of seconds and the feeds were of reassuring nothingness. Preferring motion over remaining at a standstill, Grisham instructed the Voltran to accelerate from its starting place.

“Commencing local area scans,” said Lieutenant Bishop.

“I’ll obtain a sensor lock on Dodaxa,” said Lopez. “The Kijol provided data on its orbital track, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find. Got it!”

“I’m accessing the feed,” said Grisham.

Dodaxa wasn’t much to look at, being a grey-red sphere approximately two-thirds the size of Earth. From half a million kilometres, the surface details weren’t clear, and if there was a Kijol installation on the planet, it would require some effort to locate.

“Area scans complete and nothing to report,” said Bishop. “I’ve also located the central star – it’s about a billion klicks from our position. Should I scan for other planets, Captain?”

“Not just yet, Lieutenant,” said Grisham. “Run a sweep for comms receptors.”

“Yes, sir, running a comms sweep.”

“Lieutenant Lopez, enhance the feed of Dodaxa.”

“Already on it, Captain.”

“The comms sweep has not detected any receptors,” said Bishop.

“Give it a minute and then run another one,” said Grisham. “And expand your sensor scan range.”

“Yes, sir.”

Grisham turned towards Deneuve. “It doesn’t seem like the Kijol have a welcome party waiting for us.”

“They might not know when we’re arriving, sir. If there are any enemy—” Deneuve gave a rueful smile and quickly corrected herself. “If there are any friendly ships in the vicinity, they’re likely to be operating under their usual comms lockdown protocols.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Commander.”

“The feed enhancement is complete, sir,” said Lopez.

Like Grisham had expected, the enhanced feed revealed little more than the unenhanced version. Dodaxa’s surface was a mixture of craters, mountains, and fissures, just like trillions of other planets in the universe.

“What the hell would the Kijol be doing out here?” Grisham wondered aloud.

“There’s got to be some strategic interest we’re not seeing,” said Deneuve. She shrugged.

Ten minutes passed, during which the Voltran’s sensor team hunted for signs of the Kijol. Grisham wasn’t in any particular hurry, but he felt a growing impatience, along with an irritation. He kept reminding himself that the Kijol didn’t know when or where the Voltran was going to arrive, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t leave a comms receptor open.

After another ten minutes, Grisham decided it was time to approach the planet. Lopez had scanned its surface and declared her certainty that no significant installation was on the visible side. Before Grisham could initiate the approach, Lieutenant Bishop announced that he’d detected a comms receptor.

“The receptor must have been opened within the last sixty seconds, Captain,” he said.

“Does the receptor give away any information? Is it a warship or an installation?”

“There’s no information,” said Bishop. “Should I request a link?”

“Do it.”

“Link requested.” Bishop drummed his fingers on top of his interface post. “Link request accepted. I have Captain Riondalix of the Eternus battleship Tuvandor on the comms. Should I make it an open channel?”

“Please,” said Grisham.

“Captain Grisham,” said Riondalix. The Voltran’s comms system added the same clicking sibilance to the alien’s voice that was common to all Kijol. “You have come.”

“Captain Riondalix,” said Grisham, suddenly wary at the alien’s choice of words. “I was told the Kijol have a way to resupply the Voltran.”

“That is correct. We must approach the planet.”

“Our surface scans revealed no installations.”

“The facility is located on the blind side, human. I will transmit positional data for the Tuvandor and you will follow my warship to Dodaxa.”

“Acknowledged,” said Grisham. He looked towards Lieutenant Lopez and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Got it,” said Lopez, off comms. “The Tuvandor is more than a hundred thousand klicks from our position.”

“Captain Riondalix, we have your location. I’ll set a course and we’ll be with you shortly.”

“Very well.”

The Kijol exited the comms channel.

“Not very talkative, was he?” said Deneuve.

“I’m sure we’ll find ourselves dealing with many like him if the peace holds,” said Grisham. “After a decade of fighting the Human Federation, I doubt the Kijol will be all smiles and handshakes. There’ll be plenty of suspicion among our own military as well.”

“I have a sensor lock on the Eternus, Captain,” said Lopez.

Grisham accessed the feed. At the current distance, it was difficult to be sure if the Tuvandor was a new gen or an old gen model. Either way, it would be a fearsome warship.

“Let’s go make friends,” said Grisham.

Soon after, the Voltran was racing towards the Kijol battleship. Grisham made sure to demonstrate that his own vessel was possessed of a higher maximum velocity than that of the Tuvandor. This was not intended as a display of petty chest beating, rather Grisham wanted Riondalix to be dissuaded from any treachery, should he be an officer who did not believe in peace.

“That’s a new gen model,” said Lopez, as the distance between the two vessels decreased.

“They all seem to be these days,” said Adler. “I wonder where the Kijol sent all the old gen models that were already adept enough at giving our fleet a hard time.”

“Another war in another place,” said Kinsey.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Grisham.

The Tuvandor was pushing four thousand metres in length and its mass was enormously higher than that of the Voltran. Huge Axar gauss turrets were mounted on the Kijol battleship’s forward and aft topside plating, and the rest of the vessel’s hull was fitted with Dasor repeaters, missile clusters and various launchers for incendiaries and countermeasures.

As Grisham stared at the Eternus’s high flanks and its scimitar blades, he felt a shiver of the awe he’d first experienced as a much younger officer when he’d first seen one of these alien battleships. Now, he was commanding a vessel that – even unhealed from its recent combat over Talior – could defeat this pinnacle of Kijol war technology.

Not that Grisham was here to fight. He guided the Voltran closer to the stationary Tuvandor, decelerating late and bringing the Ax’Kol vessel alongside at a five-thousand-metre distance.

A few seconds after the Voltran became stationary, the Eternus accelerated hard towards the planet. Grisham commanded his own vessel to follow at a matched velocity.

For more than ten minutes, Captain Riondalix held his vessel steady at six hundred kilometres per second, which Grisham knew from experience was at least a hundred kilometres per second less than a new gen Eternus could achieve. Then, as the planet neared, the Kijol decelerated and altered course onto a trajectory that would take his warship around to the far side of Dodaxa. Grisham kept the Voltran following closely.

By this time, the view of the planet – ten thousand kilometres below - was perfectly clear, though the surface had become no more interesting as a result. There was nothing about Dodaxa to draw the eye, so Grisham didn’t pay too much attention to the feeds. He’d seen enough rugged mountains and plains of stone over the course of his travels.

“What do you reckon we’re going to find?” said Bishop, directing the question at no one in particular.

“Something bigger than we’re expecting,” said Adler.

“We’d have seen more Kijol warships if there was anything significant here,” said Grisham. “So far, there’s only the Tuvandor.”

“The Eternus is slowing again, Captain,” said Lopez in warning.

“I see it,” said Grisham, reducing the Voltran to a hundred kilometres per second. The Tuvandor was about four hundred kilometres ahead and on the same heading as before. “Keep an eye out – we must be almost at our destination.”

“There’s nothing visible on the surface,” said Bishop.

“I’ve detected an object in the planet’s orbit, Captain,” said Lopez. “It’s at a similar altitude to our own, and it’s enormous.”

Grisham accessed the feed at once. Far ahead, an immense platform of dull grey alloy hovered high above the planet. The platform was side-on to the Voltran, so Grisham couldn’t see every detail. From here, he could tell that the Kijol structure was in excess of six thousand metres in length, with flat, thousand-metre flanks. At each end – on what he thought were its topsides – square buildings had been fitted, leaving the centre 4500 metres of the platform completely flat.

“That’s a deep space landing pad,” said Deneuve.

“Looks like,” said Grisham.

He altered course to obtain a better view. Deneuve’s description was an accurate one – the platform was almost three thousand metres in width, and with this improved angle, Grisham could see huge loading vehicles dotted about the landing area, while shuttles hovered above the forward and aft ends of the platform.

“I have Captain Riondalix on the comms, sir,” said Lopez.

“Put him on an open channel,” said Grisham.

“Welcome to the Andorol deep space resupply platform,” said Riondalix, with a note of unmistakeable pride in his voice. “You should feel honoured that the Kijol High Command have chosen to divert it here for your use.”

“I appreciate the gesture,” said Grisham, not sure what else to say. Certainly, the Andorol platform was an incredible piece of engineering and he suspected it was a genuine sacrifice to send it here to Dodaxa.

“You have clearance to land, Captain Grisham,” said Riondalix. “The Andorol will not stay here forever. Your warship’s magazines will be refilled and then it will leave.”

“I’ll set down at once,” said Grisham, closing out of the channel. He looked over at Lopez. “Is the platform showing any open receptors?”

“No, Captain.”

“Then I guess we’re going to do this without any comms from the Andorol,” said Grisham.

He piloted the Voltran towards the platform, which was now less than a thousand kilometres away. The Andorol had no external lights whatsoever, and with all the shuttles and vehicles motionless, it seemed to Grisham as if it might be abandoned – a forgotten hulk built by a long-dead species.

Once the Voltran was fifty kilometres directly over the platform, Grisham guided the warship towards the landing strip. From here, he could see all of the topside structures, the majority of which were storage facilities. Grisham was sure that those facilities continued into the thousand-metre depth of the platform and he was also sure that the Andorol could hold enough ammunition to keep hundreds of warships supplied.

With that thought came the realisation that the Kijol must have – at one time, or maybe even now – fought wars so far from home that they saw the need to create a structure like the Andorol to ensure their fleet could remain at the war front, rather than having to return to base once the missiles in their clusters became too few to stay in the fight.

Grisham’s head swum at the thought. In previous conversations with Admiral Danner, he’d been told that the Kijol Empire went far and wide. Here was an indication that the aliens had fought much further afield than the Human Federation military analysts had considered, and yet all their resources hadn’t been enough to counter the Ax’Kol.

Or perhaps the Kijol are fighting a dozen other species and humanity is intended to be no more than useful idiots in this one war out of many.

The thought wasn’t helpful, though Grisham couldn’t deny that it may well be true. Right now, he just wanted the Voltran’s resupply to be over, so he could return to Loxor. Whatever the truth about the Kijol, he was sure it would be revealed in time.

Grisham turned his attention once more to the Andorol, and saw that it wasn’t lacking in defences. Angular Dasor turrets in their hundreds were installed along the edges of the landing area and on the roofs of the storage structures. The platform’s flanks bristled with hundreds more.

Offensively, the Andorol was visibly weaker than it was defensively. Grisham was sure that in other situations, the platform would always be protected by members of the Kijol fleet, so it probably didn’t need to be packing the missile clusters.

“There’re signs of damage on the landing area, sir,” said Lopez. “And a couple of the forward storage structures have been repaired at some point in the past.”

“Is there any way to tell what caused the damage?” asked Grisham.

“No, sir, other than it definitely wasn’t a Human Federation vessel.”

Grisham was enormously curious about the resupply platform. He couldn’t deny that it was a technological marvel, though not so much, he reckoned, that the Human Federation couldn’t build one like it, given the necessity.

Slowly and carefully, Grisham brought the Voltran closer to the Andorol. With each passing moment it became clearer exactly how superior the Kijol structure was in size and mass. It utterly dwarfed the Ax’Kol battleship, and the landing field had space for two other vessels like it at the same time.

The Voltran wasn’t designed to set down, so Grisham matched velocity, with the lowest part of the warship’s undersides twenty metres above the Andorol. The platform was travelling at a couple of kilometres per second around Dodaxa, and Grisham left the Voltran’s mind with the task of ensuring the two vessels didn’t drift apart.

With the Voltran in position, Grisham watched expectantly to see what would happen next.

THREE

The Kijol appeared to be in no great hurry, though Grisham reflected that it was unlikely their usual reloading machinery would be compatible with Ax’Kol ammunition, so perhaps they had to bring out some special hardware from deep inside the Andorol.

Twenty minutes went by without any obvious developments. The many shuttles which served the platform remained motionless above the landing area, while the vehicles Grisham had seen on the way in, likewise stayed put. Meanwhile, the Tuvandor was five hundred kilometres away and at a matched velocity to the platform.

“Is this what’s meant to be happening?” asked Adler eventually. “If the Andorol was designed to operate on or near the battlefield, the Kijol have done a shitty job at making it efficient.”

Grisham was on the verge of requesting a channel to the Tuvandor, when a slab-like door in one of the larger forward structures began descending into a ground recess.

“Here we go,” he said.

Beyond the opening, Grisham saw what he believed to be a cross between a massive flatbed crawler and a gravity crane. A metal framework holding a dozen missiles was resting on the crawler’s load bed. Grisham hadn’t ever seen one of the Ax’Kol Death missiles in the flesh, though he’d viewed them in the Voltran’s memories.

“They’re big,” said Deneuve.

“Bigger than a Fury missile, I reckon,” said Bishop.

“I hope the Kijol know what they’re doing,” said Adler. “The Voltran has no onboard way to initiate a reload, so there must be automated mechanisms positioned around the hull.”

The crawler wasn’t fast and the storage building was a thousand metres away. Grisham watched with a rising sense of frustration. The Voltran’s magazines were hundreds of missiles below their maximum capacity and if the speed of the crawler was indicative, the resupply would take many hours. Days, perhaps.

“Looks like we’ll be here for a while,” said Deneuve. “At least the scenery is impressive – if you like alloy.”

“Have you been sending updates to Shesa-2, Lieutenant Lopez?” asked Grisham.

“Yes, sir, and I’ve just issued a transmission to say we might be stuck here on the Andorol for some time.”

The transmission would take more than a day and a half to reach its destination, but at least it was on its way. It was the best Grisham and his crew could do to keep Senator Maynard informed about the progress of the resupply.

“Nothing’s ever straightforward,” muttered Grisham. “We need the resupply, but we need to be back in Human Federation territory as well.” He cursed a couple of times and then got over it.

The flatbed crawler continued on its way and went beneath the Voltran. A short time later, the vehicle stopped almost directly beneath one of the forward underside launch clusters. The crane arm on the back of the crawler unfurled and the elaborate claw on the end of the boom picked up the missile rack.

Grisham watched in fascination as the crane lifted and oriented the frame. The boom extended further and then held the ends of the missile propulsion sections against the protective hatch covering the missile cluster. The hatch opened and the crane pushed the missiles into the four-by-three launch chutes. As if they were being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner, the missiles slid inside.

“Well I’ll be,” said Adler.

“The ammunition readout on underside cluster two just went up by twelve,” said Deneuve.

“Captain Riondalix is on the comms, sir,” said Bishop. “He wants us to confirm if that worked.”

“Let him know we’re pleased with the outcome,” said Grisham. “And maybe suggest that communication would be easier if we could talk directly with someone on the Andorol.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll let him know.”

The flatbed crawler was already heading back to the storage unit, but a second was emerging, this one also carrying an alloy frame holding twelve missiles. Grisham perked up at the sight of it.

“Maybe this will be quicker than I feared,” he said.

“I’ve asked one of the comms team on the Tuvandor if they know how many of those dedicated crawlers the Andorol has available,” said Bishop. “The Kijol I spoke to didn’t know.”

A few moments later, a comm came through that was entirely unexpected and which left Grisham reeling with shock.

“Sir, we’ve received a transmission from Senator Maynard,” said Lopez. “Apparently the Loxor satellite monitors detected the presence of an unknown warship in the Altarn-4 system, less than fifty million klicks from the planet.”

Grisham’s blood ran cold. “What else does the transmission say?”

“The monitors didn’t detect the warship’s arrival, so it isn’t clear how long it was in Altarn-4 before it was spotted. The vessel entered lightspeed a short time later.” Lopez was still listening to the transmission and she went quiet for a few moments. Her face turned pale. “Mass estimates for the warship were fifty billion tons and its length was estimated at more than 5000 metres.”

“What else?” snapped Grisham.

“We’re to complete our resupply and return to Loxor at best speed. That’s the end of the transmission, Captain.”

“Shit,” said Grisham. Saying it once didn’t seem enough, so he cursed again. “Send a return transmission requesting further details.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lopez.

Long-distance comms could be infuriating. Grisham had many questions, but – assuming a second transmission wasn’t already inbound from Maynard or someone else – he’d have to wait more than a day and a half for the Voltran’s comm to reach base and then the same again for the response. That response might not contain the answers he wanted. Maybe nobody within the Human Federation had those answers anyway and maybe the Voltran would already be on its journey to back Loxor when the return transmission arrived.

“If that vessel was thought to be Kijol, we wouldn’t have received a transmission,” said Deneuve quietly. “That means it was an Ax’Kol warship.”

A name jumped into Grisham’s head. “The Gholaxas,” he said, remembering the warship he and his crew had engaged on the dead Kijol world Leoxval.

“It’s almost certain the Ax’Kol have warships in their fleet of types we haven’t encountered before, Captain,” said Deneuve. Her eyes were narrowed as she stared at Grisham. “What makes you think it was the Gholaxas?”

“I don’t know, Commander. Just a feeling, that’s all.”

“How did the Ax’Kol find Loxor?” asked Adler. “That’s the big unknown.”

“The same way they found all those Kijol worlds,” said Grisham. “And the same way they located the Human Federation frontier planets Xaros and Sagitol. They have a method we don’t understand.”

As yet, the news hadn’t fully sunk in. If the Ax’Kol had found a populated Human Federation world, the consequences would be disastrous. Soon, the enemy would turn up with a fleet, accompanied by transports loaded with thousands upon thousands of murderous aliens. The Ax’Kol would rampage across Loxor, raising an army of corpses as they went.

In a few weeks, the planet would fall and the bodies would be loaded onto an Engarvax carrier and taken to the Inojor, or another death factory like it.

“Lieutenant Lopez, speak to the Tuvandor. We need to know how long the resupply is expected to take.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll see what I can wring out of their comms team.”

Grisham lifted his hand from the interface post and began a circuit of the bridge while maintaining his link to the warship. Only a few minutes ago, he’d been calm. Now he was more agitated than at any time he could remember. Through one of the forward sensor feeds, he watched the creeping progress of the second crawler as it headed towards the Voltran. The first crawler was on its way back but hadn’t yet entered the warehouse.

“Sir, the Kijol don’t know how long the resupply will take,” said Lopez. “Reading between the lines, the offer was made to us by someone who hadn’t spoken to the personnel on the Andorol.”

“So we’ve arrived, but the platform wasn’t ready for us,” said Grisham.

“That what it sounds like,” said Lopez.

“Did anyone on the Tuvandor even go so far as to risk a guess as to how long it’ll take for the resupply operation to be completed?” asked Grisham.

“No, sir. They refused to be drawn,” said Lopez.

“Then we’re stuck here,” said Grisham. “Unless we leave now and lose out on what might be our one and only chance to have the Voltran’s magazines reloaded.”

“This warship is far from useless without its conventional weaponry, but it’s not likely to defeat another Indredalus in a one-on-one,” said Deneuve. “The way I see it, we have no option other than to stay.” She kept her eyes on Grisham. “And it’s not only the missiles and Punisher slugs we have to worry about. The Voltran’s hull is far from healed after the engagement at Talior – it needs as much time out of combat as possible.”

Grisham couldn’t argue with the logic. The Voltran had suffered numerous missile impacts in the recent past, and had been struck by several psionic: wither attacks, though it had partially resisted them all. Although the warship was now repairing itself at a greater rate than it had before – presumably as a result of having two unchained minds instead of a single mind shackled and limited by the Ax’Kol – it wasn’t yet fully healed.

“We’ll wait for the resupply to finish,” said Grisham at last. “Within reason.”

“I think it’s the right call, Captain,” said Adler. “We don’t know when the Ax’Kol will attack Loxor, but we might end up waiting there for weeks, with our missile clusters empty.”

Grisham stopped his circuit of the bridge near his interface post. “Lieutenant Lopez, I assume Senator Maynard is aware of what the Ax’Kol discovery means, but send him another transmission recommending he speaks to the Senate about initiating the evacuation of Loxor.”

“Do you think they’ll dare pull the trigger on an order like that?” asked Bishop.

“They have to,” said Grisham. “Senator Maynard and his allies know the truth. They have to make the others believe.”

“I’m glad that’s not our problem,” said Deneuve.

“Me too,” said Grisham. “With Danner dead, I’m out of politics for good.”

“That’s not a promise you can make and it isn’t one you can keep, sir,” said Adler.

“I’ll damn well do my best,” said Grisham with real feeling.

The conversation died off, though everyone was clearly thinking about the Ax’Kol discovery of Loxor. Grisham wished he knew how the enemy were able to locate other lifeforms.

The answer came to him.

“Telepathy,” he said.

“Sir?” asked Deneuve.

“That’s how the Ax’Kol are locating us, Commander. In the same way I located Admiral Danner on the Fremont base.”

“The distances across space are vast,” said Adler. “How the hell do they manage that? You found it hard over a few million klicks, sir.”

“I’m not Ax’Kol,” said Grisham. “I’m certain the Gholaxas had a mind created from Ax’Kol fallen in battle. Imagine all of those working together to hunt for life. A warship mind doesn’t suffer pain like I do. The Gholaxas, or a vessel like it, could conceivably search without cease until it finds what it’s looking for.”

“Then there’s no escape,” said Deneuve. “Planet by planet, the enemy will find us, in the same way they found those Kijol worlds. They’ll come for us and kill us, unless we can figure out a way to stop it happening.”

It was a depressing evaluation, though Grisham was sure it contained many elements of truth. “Perhaps if we can track down and destroy the Ax’Kol capital ships, we’ll end their ability to locate other lifeforms,” he said.

“How do you propose we track down those warships, Captain?” asked Kinsey. “Your own telepathy isn’t strong enough to locate an Ax’Kol warship across one solar system, let alone across a hundred galaxies.”

It was another question to which Grisham had no answer. All of a sudden, the situation seemed many times worse than it had only a short while ago.

“Maybe if I practice, my telepathy will become stronger,” he said. “Or maybe one of you will discover you have the same ability as I do, or—” Grisham tailed off. “There’s got to be a way.”

The words sounded desperate, even to his own ears. Grisham hid a sigh and turned his attention once again to the inching progress of the two Kijol crawlers.

FOUR

Many hours passed and the resupply continued. Several times, the two crawlers came to a standstill, on one occasion for more than an hour. After pushing the crew of the Tuvandor for details, Lopez learned that the Kijol were experiencing technical difficulties, though the aliens wouldn’t be drawn on the specifics.

Given the extended time the resupply was taking, Grisham and his crew were forced to take short sleep breaks away from the bridge. While the situation wasn’t exactly threatening, it certainly wasn’t entirely safe, and Grisham didn’t like having his officers away. Unfortunately, there was little he could do about it, since the Voltran had no backup crew.

“Our forward clusters are at eighty percent of their maximum capacity,” said Deneuve, when Grisham returned from a two-hour sleep break. “The other clusters are between fifty and seventy percent of their capacity.”

“What about the Punisher magazines?” asked Grisham. Though he’d slept, two hours wasn’t enough, and he still felt tired. He should have stopped at the replicator for a coffee, but that chance was now gone.

“There hasn’t been much change in the status of those while you were away, Captain,” said Deneuve. “The overall Punisher ammunition is at seventy percent of its maximum.”

“Twenty-four hours to get this far,” said Grisham. Although the process appeared glacial – on a dedicated facility, an HF warship could be resupplied from zero to one hundred percent in less than six hours – he mentally conceded that the Kijol were doing a good job in the circumstances. “Another eight to twelve hours and our ammunition stocks should be fully replenished.”

“We received another comm from Senator Maynard while you were away, Captain,” said Lieutenant Lopez. “All HF worlds are on high alert, but there’s been no further sighting of the Ax’Kol warship.”

“Anything else?” asked Grisham.

“No, sir.”

Grisham cursed inwardly. He didn’t want to leave the Andorol until the Voltran was fully resupplied, but equally he would have appreciated some guidance from Maynard. The lack of that guidance indicated the Senator didn’t have any to offer, which in turn suggested the lack of an overall plan within the Human Federation.

“We’ll stay on the Andorol,” Grisham said.

“It’s my turn for some shuteye,” said Adler. He looked expectantly over.

“Go,” said Grisham, gesturing towards the bridge exit.

Adler left, leaving the other members of the crew to watch the two flatbed crawlers outside. One of the vehicles was on its way from the storage unit, while the other was returning.

“Sir, we’ve received a comm from the Tuvandor,” said Lieutenant Lopez. “There’s an Achirus cruiser and an Aeon destroyer about to break lightspeed within a hundred thousand klicks. They are here for a resupply.”

“I don’t expect any trouble, but should I call Lieutenant Adler back to the bridge?” asked Deneuve.

Grisham had no qualms about disturbing the other man’s rest, but at some point he knew the trust between humanity and the Kijol would have to come. “Let him sleep,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Shortly after, the two Kijol warships entered local space, the cruiser preceding the destroyer by five minutes. The vessels remained comms silent and approached the Andorol at highest velocity. Grisham watched them come and felt no alarm, though he sensed the heightened awareness among his crew.

At the same time, the Andorol geared up for the arrival of the two vessels. Loading doors in several of the landing strip warehouse structures opened and a variety of huge vehicles emerged.

Without delay, the Kijol vessels set down, one after the other. The cruiser landed parallel to the Voltran, while the destroyer set down aft and perpendicular to the other two vessels.

Inside of three hours, the cruiser and the destroyer were resupplied and on their way, leaving Grisham impressed by the efficiency. The Tuvandor stayed.

“Our missile clusters and Punisher magazines are at an average of ninety percent full, Captain,” said Deneuve, not long after the Achirus and the Aeon had departed. “We might yet get out of here with everything at one hundred percent.”

“I can’t call it a day-and-a-half wasted,” said Grisham. “But damn, I’d prefer to be back at Loxor.”

“I reckon we’ll be done in less than three hours,” said Deneuve. “The Kijol seem to have got over their technical problems.”

Despite his impatience to be away, Grisham felt a great sense of satisfaction knowing that when the Voltran left the Andorol, it would be once again battle ready. And, while the spaceship’s hull hadn’t yet fully healed – Lieutenant Adler reckoned that would require another week or longer – its condition had visibly improved.

Another hour went by and the Voltran’s average magazine capacity went past ninety-five percent, with the lowest cluster being at ninety-two percent. Grisham was itching to be away, though, having waited this long, he fully intended staying until the resupply was complete.

“We’ve received another comm from Senator Maynard, Captain,” said Lopez. “He offers no new guidance and confirms no further sightings of enemy warships.”

Like all the other comms, this one was more than a day-and-a-half old, but it nevertheless gave Grisham a small amount of reassurance. It was certain the Ax’Kol would attack Loxor, and when it happened, he wanted to be there with the Voltran.

Perhaps the Senate would get their act together and arrange an evacuation of fifty billion people before the Ax’Kol initiated their attack. It seemed unlikely.

“Four more trips from those crawlers and the resupply will be complete,” said Deneuve a hour later.

“We’ve received another comm from Senator Maynard, Captain,” said Lopez. “The Senate has agreed to evacuate Loxor. There are no further details in the comm.”

Grisham nodded at the news. “I’m glad they recognized there was no other option.”

At that moment, the Andorol began to accelerate directly away from Dodaxa, and the Voltran automatically matched velocity.

“Lieutenant Lopez, speak to the Tuvandor and find out what’s happening,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir.”

Despite its incredible mass, the Andorol station accelerated strongly, though not so much that the Voltran struggled to keep up. The Tuvandor followed, maintaining the same distance as before.

“Captain,” said Lopez. The way she spoke that one word was enough for Grisham to know he was about to hear something bad. “The Kijol have monitoring satellites around Dodaxa and they have detected the arrival of an Ax’Kol spaceship. It exited lightspeed a short distance from our own arrival place in this solar system.”

The pieces fell into place in Grisham’s mind, though he still needed confirmation. “Is it the Gholaxas?” he said.

“If it’s not the Gholaxas, it’s a vessel of similar size and mass,” said Lopez. “Captain Riondalix recommends we prepare for a lightspeed jump. Both the Tuvandor and the Andorol will exit this solar system in four minutes.”

“Where are they heading?” asked Grisham. He cursed. It didn’t matter where they were going. “Commander Deneuve, start the warmup for the psionic: focus.”

“Yes, sir. We can prepare two concurrently.”

“Do both,” said Grisham. “Lieutenant Adler, ready the Voltran for lightspeed. Pick a destination – anywhere - and take us there.”

“Yes, sir,” said Adler. “I’ve chosen a location that is twenty-four hours from here at our highest lightspeed multiplier. The warmup time is a little under three minutes.”

“If the Gholaxas exited lightspeed at our arrival location in this solar system, it’ll be blind side of the planet to us, and it’ll require a lot more than four minutes on its sub-light drive to get here,” said Deneuve. “So why are the Kijol so concerned about putting some distance between themselves and the planet?”

“The Kijol must have had a run-in with the Gholaxas before,” Grisham said.

“Captain Avintziz at Savixor claimed he didn’t even know about the Engarvax carriers,” Deneuve reminded him.

“The Kijol weren’t our friends back then, even though we were trying to help them, Commander,” said Grisham. “We have to consider they might know plenty about the Ax’Kol which they haven’t yet been ready to divulge.”

The Andorol’s velocity touched on five hundred kilometres per second and went no higher.

“Captain, we have been asked to leave the Andorol’s landing area,” said Lopez. “At once.”

As she was speaking, the platform changed course and Grisham allowed the Voltran to diverge. “Lieutenant Lopez, keep on at the Tuvandor’s comms team,” he said. “Find out what you can – about all of this.”

Lopez nodded to indicate she was already speaking with someone on the Eternus.

While he waited to find out what the crew of the Tuvandor had to say, Grisham watched the sensors. He was sure the Gholaxas wouldn’t be able find and engage with the Voltran and the Kijol warships before they entered lightspeed, but even so, he was concerned. He’d felt the touch of the Gholaxas’s mind and had a gained a hint not only of its malevolence, but also of its potency. The enemy warship had the capacity to surprise and Grisham didn’t want to be caught out if he could avoid it.

“Captain Riondalix wishes to send us a synch code, Captain!” said Lopez. “It’ll override our existing lightspeed destination and tie in our departure with that of the Tuvandor – that means a forty-second delay.”

“Where will the synch code take us?” asked Grisham.

“To a solar system the Voltran has never visited, Captain. The Kijol didn’t provide any details.”

“The Tuvandor wants to stay with us, for whatever reason,” said Grisham. “I need to know if the synch code will take us to a populated world.”

“I’ll check,” said Lopez. She didn’t take long. “No, sir, it won’t take us to a populated world. Travel time to the proposed destination is only two hours.”

“Accept the code and transfer it to Lieutenant Adler.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Code received,” said Adler a few moments later. “Our new destination is set.”

“Watch the sensors,” said Grisham, keeping his own attention on the feeds.

The Andorol was now a few thousand kilometres away and the Tuvandor was staying with the resupply platform. Grisham held to his existing course. Dodaxa was already a long way behind and the feeds were otherwise clear.

“You’ll have to begin the deceleration to zero velocity in one minute, Captain,” said Lieutenant Kinsey.

“Acknowledged,” said Grisham. Jumping into lightspeed at high velocity would completely screw with the accuracy of the arrival.

The seconds counted down and Grisham’s agitation grew. Surely, he told himself, the enemy warship had no chance of preventing the Voltran’s entry into lightspeed. When a minute had passed, Grisham commanded the warship to maximum deceleration. The velocity gauge tumbled. Twenty thousand kilometres away, the Tuvandor was likewise slowing, while the Andorol continued on the same heading as before and didn’t decelerate.

“Ten seconds and we’re out of here,” said Adler.

With two seconds remaining on the countdown timer, a vast warship exited lightspeed hardly more than a thousand kilometres from the Voltran’s starboard flank. Grisham swore at the sight of a vessel he well remembered from the previous encounter - from the V-shape of its hull to the rounded nose and back-swept wings. It was definitely the Gholaxas.

The Ax’Kol vessel didn’t recover from its transit quickly enough to detect the Voltran and launch an attack. A single psionic: suppress would likely have interrupted the Voltran’s jump into lightspeed.

As it was, Grisham’s warship completed its transition. For a few seconds, he and his crew were silent as they reflected upon the margins of their escape.

The arrival of the Gholaxas at Dodaxa was evidence enough for Grisham that the unthinkable was true. He took a deep breath in preparation for telling his crew what they’d probably already guessed.

FIVE

“The Gholaxas has a way of locating us,” said Grisham. “Either through telepathy or by some other means we’re not aware of.”

“And now, the Ax’Kol are following us,” said Deneuve. She didn’t sound surprised by Grisham’s revelation. “We angered the crew of the Gholaxas and they want to see us defeated.”

“I have a feeling it isn’t the crew we angered,” said Grisham. “When the Gholaxas’s mind intruded on the Voltran I got a sense that it was in command. Perhaps the enemy vessel doesn’t even have a crew.”

Bishop had added two and two together. “If the Gholaxas is following us, does that mean we led the enemy to Loxor?”

“That’s a possibility we have to confront,” said Grisham, though he hadn’t yet come close to confronting it himself.

“There are more than fifty billion people on Loxor,” said Kinsey, his voice empty. “We can’t be responsible for—”

“We’re not responsible for anything,” said Grisham sharply. He felt a sudden anger, though it wasn’t directed at Kinsey. “We never asked for war with the Ax’Kol. If they attack one of our worlds, they’ll be the murderers, not us.”

“We have to do something,” said Lopez.

“I know,” said Grisham. “I wish I had a plan, but right now, I have nothing.”

“Captain, I wish I didn’t have to ask this, but is the Gholaxas following the Voltran, or is it following you?” asked Deneuve. “If it’s following you, maybe you could create another one of those telepathic shields that kept us protected when the Ax’Kol crew from the Inojor came onto our warship.”

The same question had occurred to Grisham, though he hadn’t had time to think about it. If the mind on the Gholaxas was locked onto him, rather than the Voltran, that would heap a massive burden on his shoulders. Grisham couldn’t let himself accept the blame for the possible consequences for Loxor – after all, he had no way of knowing that the Ax’Kol might be able to follow him across galaxies – but it was still hard to imagine that he might have unwittingly played a part in bringing about such a catastrophe.

In a surge, the anger returned and Grisham clamped his teeth together until the muscles in his jaw bulged.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said at last. “I can create another shield, but it might not be enough to stop the Gholaxas from locating me, if that’s what it’s doing. And maintaining a shield constantly is going to be draining. I don’t know how long I could hold it in place.”

“I guess the only thing you can do is try, sir,” said Deneuve.

“One thing’s sure – we can’t return to a Human Federation world until we know what’s happening,” said Adler. “Maybe not even Loxor, unless we want to risk bringing forward a potential attack on the planet.”

“We need some answers from the Kijol,” said Grisham. “It strikes me they’ve encountered the Gholaxas before, or perhaps a similar vessel. Maybe they’ve learned something we should hear.”

“The Kijol need to be more forthcoming if this alliance is going to work,” said Lopez. “We can’t fight a war together if we don’t share intel.”

Grisham wasn’t in the mood to cut the Kijol some slack, but he did so anyway. “It’s early days yet,” he said. “It may be that the Kijol are still figuring out how to deal with us – just like we are with them.”

“Well both sides need to finish figuring things out pretty damn fast,” said Adler.

“So how are we going to handle this situation, sir?” asked Deneuve. “If you can shield yourself from the Gholaxas, that would take the pressure right off. If you can’t shield yourself—”

“Then we either have to keep running or commit to an engagement with a vastly superior foe,” said Grisham.

“Or we set you down on a planet and abandon you there,” said Deneuve with a grin. “It’ll be just like Sagitol all over again, but even more exciting.”

“Maybe we could lay a trap for the Ax’Kol and use the Captain as bait,” Adler suggested. “All we need is for the Kijol to loan us a few Eternus battleships and we’ll be ready to go.”

“Those are both fine suggestions,” said Grisham. “But I’d prefer to explore other avenues before I commit to either. Besides,” he added, “we don’t know what it was that wiped out the Kijol 10th Sector Fleet. If it was the Gholaxas, we’ll need a different approach than simply increasing the number of warships.”

“You could try communicating with the Voltran’s mind to find out if it knows how to block the Gholaxas from detecting us,” said Deneuve.

Grisham wasn’t hopeful. “When the enemy mind intruded on the Voltran, this warship’s own consciousness didn’t know it was happening. Maybe I could instruct the souls to be watchful, but I have no idea if that’s going to work or not. I’m new to this myself, so it’s not like I can teach them.”

“You should give it a go, sir,” said Deneuve. “There’re a couple of hours left on this transit.”

“Let’s see what I can do,” said Grisham.

Entering the Voltran’s consciousness was as easy as thinking it happening. On this occasion, Grisham didn’t even notice the protective layers of grey as he entered the place of souls.

For a time, Grisham communicated directly with the spirits which formed the Voltran’s mind. Here, he could bypass all the layers of technology the Ax’Kol had installed and, peculiarly, he felt as one with the dead. They still craved what Grisham possessed – his life – but they didn’t hate him for it. Instead, their hatred, their raw fury, was directed at the Ax’Kol.

With his thoughts, Grisham told the dead that the Gholaxas was in pursuit. The souls wanted vengeance, but some of them were aware of the enemy vessel, and these ones knew fear. Grisham asked the Voltran to shield itself from detection and, though the souls understood his request, neither they nor he knew if their efforts would be successful.

When he was finished, Grisham withdrew, and he became once more fully aware of his surroundings. His crew were watching him expectantly.

“How long was I gone?” he asked.

“No more than a minute,” said Deneuve.

“Time passes strangely in there,” said Grisham. “That visit felt like it lasted an age.”

“You’re getting better at speaking to the Voltran,” said Deneuve. “In the beginning you were always away for much longer. Now it’s only seconds.”

Grisham explained what he’d communicated to the Voltran, and also his lack of certainty about whether or not the warship would be able to shield itself. “The consciousness knows what it has to do, but it doesn’t know how to achieve it.”

“We’re in a real sink or swim situation,” said Adler. “However, we’ve been here before – this is no worse than a Tibor-versus-Achirus matchup, and we’ve come through a few of those in the past.”

“We have,” said Grisham. “But not with any actual kills. This time, if we can’t escape our opponent, we have to destroy it.”

“I just trying to put a positive swing on things, Captain,” said Adler.

“I appreciate your efforts, Lieutenant,” said Grisham. At that moment, an idea came to him. “Maybe we should look to increase the Voltran’s psionic firepower,” he said. “If we could absorb another few minds from Ax’Kol wrecks, perhaps we’d stand a chance of taking down the Gholaxas.”

“The Kijol could tell us where to look,” said Deneuve. “They’ll have encountered plenty of Ax’Kol spaceships and we know the Kijol don’t always come off worst.”

“Let’s hope we can persuade Captain Riondalix to spill a few beans for us,” said Lopez.

“If the Kijol think it’s in their best interests, I’m sure they’ll give us some directions,” said Grisham.

“I hope you’re right, Captain,” said Deneuve. “But what if they start asking themselves whether they really want the Human Federation to be in control of a warship that’s vastly more capable than any vessel in the Kijol fleet?”

“That’s a good thought, Commander,” said Grisham. “I’ll think on it before I speak with Captain Riondalix.”

“That thinking time is rapidly diminishing,” said Adler.

“I know,” said Grisham, “And all this talk is distracting me.”

Adler laughed. “In that case, I’ll just keep my mouth shut.”

Grisham pondered the recent discussion. He reckoned Deneuve was right to think the Kijol would be concerned about the Voltran becoming too powerful, but if they were losing planets to the Ax’Kol, they’d surely consider it a risk worth taking. Despite Admiral Danner’s best efforts to make the Human Federation look treacherous, the Ax’Kol were clearly a far worse enemy than humanity would ever make – and that was assuming the peace accord with the Kijol failed. The success or otherwise of that accord was in the hands of the Kijol as much as it was the Human Federation. Both sides had to make it work.

And yet, the Kijol were a warlike species. While humanity had a chequered past, things had changed considerably over the last two or three centuries, particularly since the formation of the Human Federation.

Therefore, it seemed to Grisham that if the peace accord was ever broken, it would more likely be a result of Kijol behaviour than something caused by humanity. Following that logic, the Kijol might already have an eye to the future – a future in which the Human Federation became a threat.

Unless, of course, the Kijol were in far more dire straits with the Ax’Kol than they’d let on.

As the thoughts swirled around in Grisham’s head, he became progressively more frustrated at the lack of answers. In the end, he resolved to speak with Captain Riondalix on a play it by ear basis, and see what came from it.

I’m a damned warship captain, not a trained negotiator. I’ll just say what has to be said.

For some reason, the thought didn’t make Grisham feel any better. Maybe it was because he’d never been good at fooling himself. His days of being on the fringes were over – possession of the Voltran brought with it enormous responsibilities and Grisham knew that if he wasn’t capable of handling those responsibilities, the only honourable thing he could do was hand over the warship to an officer who wouldn’t pretend that duty was all about fighting and nothing else.

Eventually, Grisham found a degree of inner peace. He’d come this far, after all. He’d keep going and he’d keep doing his best. Up to now, that best had been good enough.

When Lieutenant Adler shouted his ten-minute warning for re-entry to local space, every member of the crew was on the bridge and ready. Grisham had taken the opportunity to eat and drink, and the taste of the replicator’s foul, yet strangely addictive, coffee was still heavy in his mouth.

A couple of seconds earlier than the predicted time, the Voltran exited lightspeed. The sensors came online – showing only darkness for the moment – and Grisham waited for his sensor team to run the scans.

“Local area scans complete and nothing hostile to report,” said Bishop. “The Tuvandor has entered local space about five thousand kilometres from our position.”

Almost as soon as it arrived, the Eternus began accelerating. Grisham instructed the Voltran to follow and the warship’s engines rose in volume.

“I’ve located a planet, sir,” said Lopez a few seconds later. “It’s two hundred thousand kilometres from our position. “I think the Tuvandor is heading that way.”

“Tell me about the planet,” said Grisham.

“I’m waiting on the feed enhancement, but first indications are that it’s populated.”

“Damnit, we can’t draw the Gholaxas—” Grisham began. He stopped himself. “This won’t be a populated world. It’ll be another dead planet.” He cursed. “We’ve seen enough of those. Why would Captain Riondalix bring us here?”

Even so, Grisham accessed the feed. The planet was smaller than Earth, and much of its surface was parched yellow. Some areas to the south were vibrant green, and an archipelago stretched for several thousand kilometres across one of the three visible oceans.

“The feed enhancement is complete,” said Lopez.

Straightaway, the feed quality improved significantly, and Grisham was able to identify many places that had once been cities. Most of those cities were on the planet’s northern continent – a land mass which was largely desert. Many snaking lines of dried riverbeds suggested this area of the planet had once been lush.

“Those cities don’t look much like the ones we’ve seen on other Kijol worlds,” said Bishop. “Let me see if I can obtain some additional zoom on the feed.”

Further enhancement of the feed revealed yet more details. For a time, Grisham said nothing as he looked at a city of red stone buildings. Narrow streets wended from place to place without apparent plan and two forks of a river – long since dried up – ran directly through the centre of the place.

“This isn’t Kijol,” said Grisham. “Unless it was a planet they inhabited a thousand years ago.”

“When we were at the Leoxval dark sphere, Admiral Kiolzan told us that the Ax’Kol first attacked the Kijol seventy years ago,” said Deneuve. “Either he was lying or—”

“Or this planet was once inhabited by another species,” said Grisham. “Lieutenant Lopez, get me Captain Riondalix on the comms.”

“Yes, sir.”

As he waited for the Kijol to accept the comms link, Grisham found himself wondering what other secrets the universe held that he might never know. Certainly, the more he learned, the more he found his once-romantic view of space being eroded.

The void was cold and dark, and the creatures living within it seemed more alien and terrible by the day.

SIX

Captain Riondalix, where have you brought us?” asked Grisham, once the comms link was made.

“We Kijol call this place Eivomon,” said Riondalix in his clicking, sibilant voice. “It is a word that can also mean graveyard, though there are no bodies left on the planet.”

“The Ax’Kol killed the people?”

“That is our belief,” said Riondalix.

“How long ago did it happen?” asked Grisham.

“Millennia past. Perhaps as many as half a million years.”

Grisham cast his mind back to his time on planet Ovintus. When he and his crew had been trying to escape the Kijol, they’d stumbled upon a storeroom containing an ancient statue of a creature closely resembling an Ax’Kol.

“Did the same happen on Ovintus?” Grisham.

“Yes. A different species, but the same result,” said Riondalix.

“Didn’t this give you a clue that something bad was out there?” asked Grisham.

“These extinctions happened a long time ago, Captain Grisham. We studied the planets, but assumed the past was in the past. The Kijol Empire was strong. We were not concerned.”

“What about now?” asked Grisham.

Riondalix hesitated, just long enough for it to be noticeable. “The Ax’Kol are also strong. With each planet they take, they become stronger.”

“Why did you bring us here?” asked Grisham.

“To show you, human. So you might understand the important of our alliance.”

“An alliance that was not easily created.”

“Not every Kijol agreed that it was needed, just as not every human agreed.”

“Fair point,” said Grisham. “Tell me of the Gholaxas. Was it responsible for the defeat of the 10th Sector Fleet?”

“No,” said Riondalix.

“There was another vessel within the dark sphere,” said Grisham, detecting a reluctance in the Kijol to discuss the matter. “The Inojor – a spaceship which is also known as the death factory.”

Again, Riondalix hesitated. “The vessels of our fleet did not detect their attacker,” he said.

“I don’t like this,” said Deneuve, off-comms. “It sounds as if there was another ship besides the Inojor and the Gholaxas involved.”

“I don’t get the sense that Captain Riondalix is lying,” said Grisham, also off-comms. “Evasive maybe, but that’s all.” He switched back to the comms. “Tell me of the Gholaxas,” he repeated.

“Our fleet has encountered it several times before,” said Riondalix. “Each time, the Gholaxas has emerged victorious.”

“Has the enemy vessel been responsible for locating any Kijol worlds?” asked Grisham. Eivomon was close now and the Tuvandor changed onto a heading that indicated Riondalix was aiming for the planet’s blind side.

“Yes,” said Riondalix.

“Are there any others like the Gholaxas?” asked Grisham.

“We do not know. Our military analysts believe the Ax’Kol forces have been concentrated elsewhere, but their activity is increasing within Kijol territory. I am told that the Ax’Kol have now discovered several human worlds.”

Grisham didn’t see a reason to pretend otherwise. “That’s right, though two of those worlds were effectively unpopulated,” he said. “The Gholaxas has subsequently located a major inhabited world within the Human Federation.”

“Then it is in both of our interests to see the enemy vessel defeated,” said Riondalix.

“He’s been building up to this,” said Deneuve, off comms. “It sounds like the Kijol have been having more problems with the Gholaxas than we have.”

“And it also sounds like we’re not responsible for drawing the Ax’Kol to Loxor,” said Adler. “Damn, I hope that’s the case.”

Grisham was totally ready to grasp at that straw, but none of this explained why the Gholaxas had shown up at Dodaxa. He was convinced the enemy spaceship was still in pursuit.

“Captain Riondalix, how do you propose we defeat the Gholaxas?” asked Grisham, curious to find out how much thought the Kijol had put into the matter, or how much guidance he’d received from his superior officers.

“Your warship was able to shut down the Gholaxas on Leoxval, Captain Grisham, albeit for just a short time.”

For a moment, Grisham was stumped as to how the Kijol knew this. Then, he remembered the network of sophisticated monitoring satellites the aliens had placed around the planet. One or more of those must have recorded the engagement between the Voltran and the Gholaxas. Evidently those satellites hadn’t detected the enemy vessel which wrecked the 10th Sector Fleet, perhaps because they were aimed towards the planet, rather than away from it.

“That’s right,” said Grisham. “Though the method can’t be activated on demand – it requires a psionic amplification with a five-minute warmup.”

“A skilled officer will find that no impediment,” said Riondalix.

“Easily said, but the Gholaxas can knock the Voltran offline and its attacks don’t need a warmup. There’s little margin for error.”

“Together we will defeat the enemy warship,” said Riondalix confidently. “You will disable the Gholaxas and the Tuvandor will deploy incendiaries onto the stricken craft.”

“How exactly do you propose we locate the Gholaxas?” asked Grisham.

So far, he and his crew had only speculated about how the Ax’Kol warship had followed them to the Andorol. It sounded as if Riondalix had far more information on the enemy capabilities.

“It followed the Voltran to Dodaxa, Captain Grisham,” said Riondalix, as if that explained everything. “It will follow you again. Soon, it will be here at Eivomon.”

“How long is soon?”

“I cannot tell you because I do not know,” said Riondalix.

“I need a moment to speak with my crew,” said Grisham. He switched out of the comms channel. “I get the feeling that Captain Riondalix is acting on his own here. He’s seen a chance and he’s hoping to take it.”

“I doubt a comm from the Tuvandor has had time to reach a Kijol base yet, let alone for a response to have arrived,” said Lopez. “It’s possible, of course, but unlikely.”

“The Kijol revere their successful officers,” said Grisham, remembering something he’d been told before.

“Do you think Captain Riondalix is looking for glory?” asked Adler.

“I don’t know,” said Grisham. “I suppose it’s unimportant – both humanity and the Kijol will benefit from the destruction of the Gholaxas.”

“In my opinion, we’re lacking firepower,” said Deneuve. “It’s all well and good to suggest we disable the enemy vessel with a suppression and then the Tuvandor wrecks it with incendiaries, but experience tells me it won’t be so straightforward.”

“And we don’t have much leeway,” said Bishop. “A single misjudgement and the Voltran’s mind will be shut down.”

“I agree,” said Grisham. “It’s too risky. However, maybe we can change that.” He re-entered the comms channel. “Captain Riondalix, while the Tuvandor is clearly a capable warship, I feel that it and the Voltran will not be enough. We are far from Human Federation territory, so our own fleet would be unable to assist this effort in good time, but would your superior officers commit additional resources to the task?”

“I have sent the request,” Riondalix confirmed. “Unfortunately, we are not close to a Kijol base and the comm travel time will be many hours.”

“We could enter lightspeed until you receive a comm response,” said Grisham. “I don’t see why we can’t stay ahead of the Gholaxas until additional warships arrive.”

“You are assuming the enemy vessel will remain interested, human,” said Riondalix. “What if it is called elsewhere while we attempt to lead it on an extended chase? The Gholaxas might vanish and the next time we see it may be in the skies of one of our planets.”

It was a reasonable argument and Grisham pondered it for a moment. Part of his attention was on the portside feeds. Eivomon was only ten thousand kilometres away and as the Voltran swept around the planet, a great yellow desert that occupied almost an entire continent was revealed. “I am potentially willing to undertake this joint operation. However, the Voltran requires further resources.”

“What kind of resources?” asked Riondalix. A hint of something akin to suspicion had crept into his voice. “Your vessel was resupplied on the Andorol.”

“The Voltran can draw energy from the wreckage of Ax’Kol spaceships,” said Grisham, stretching the truth with his choice of words. “That energy powers its psionic attacks.”

“What exactly are you asking for, Captain Grisham?”

“The Kijol have fought and defeated the Ax’Kol before. Is there a place we can go where there has been an engagement between your two sides in the past? Perhaps the Voltran will be able to extract the energy it requires from the wreckage we find there.”

“How much influence will this have on the final outcome?” asked Riondalix.

“It might well be the difference between success and failure,” said Grisham truthfully.

“Wait,” said Riondalix. He muted the comm channel.

“He sounds unsure,” said Deneuve.

“At least he’s asking questions,” said Adler. “He’s willing to collaborate. I reckon he’s keener on the peace deal than some of the other Kijol.”

“I agree,” said Grisham. The comms channel was still quiet.

“Are we going to fight the Gholaxas anyway, sir?” asked Deneuve.

“I don’t know,” said Grisham. “I’m hoping Captain Riondalix will have something to offer us.”

A full minute passed and then Riondalix took the channel off mute. “There may be a place,” he said. “A planet. It was once a populated world.”

Grisham couldn’t help himself from asking. “How many worlds have you lost, Captain Riondalix?”

“Fifteen,” said the Kijol after a pause. “Others are believed to be under imminent threat.”

“The Ax’Kol are a vile species,” said Grisham. He had other questions he wanted to ask about the Kijol losses, but he held onto them.

“I hope your own species never finds out how much that is true,” said Riondalix. “We will go to one of these fifteen planets. The journey time from here is less than nine hours. If fortune favours us, the enemy warship will continue its pursuit to our destination. The planet is named Eox and it was located by the Gholaxas seven years ago. It would be a fitting place to defeat the vessel.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Grisham.

“I will issue a comm to my base, requesting they send spaceships to the planet. I am not convinced we will be reinforced.”

Grisham sensed the evasiveness again, but he couldn’t be sure of the reason for it. Either Riondalix was acting beyond his orders, or the Kijol fleet was so depleted in this area of their territory that they had too few resources to risk against the Gholaxas.

A few hundred kilometres to starboard, the Tuvandor began to decelerate. At the same time, the Eternus dropped closer to Eivomon. Grisham followed suit. When the Tuvandor finally came to a halt, it was directly over the ruins of a desert city that could have been a million years old.

“So much of this reminds me of Ovintus,” said Deneuve.

“Yes,” said Grisham. He stared at the many buildings far below, each made from huge blocks of yellow stone. The sand had piled up, but not so much that the ruins of the city were completely hidden. Pangs of sadness tugged at Grisham as they always did when he was confronted by the emptiness of long-forgotten places.

“We’ve received a synch code, Captain,” said Lieutenant Bishop. “The destination is unknown to the Voltran and the travel time is nine hours, just like Captain Riondalix told us.”

“Accept the code,” said Grisham. “Lieutenant Adler, enter it into our navigation system.”

“Yes, sir. That’s done,” said Adler. “Our departure is tied with that of the Tuvandor, so we’ll be out of here in four minutes.”

“Lieutenant Lopez, I’d like you to spend those four minutes seeing what you can find out from the Tuvandor’s comms team about the known capabilities of the Gholaxas.”

“You mean I should ask if the enemy vessel is going to appear while we’re preparing for lightspeed?” asked Lopez.

“I don’t like surprises,” Grisham said. “Particularly not the nasty kind.”

“I’ll see what I can get out of them, sir.”

Although Captain Riondalix hadn’t seemed outwardly concerned that the Gholaxas might show up, he had gone to the effort of piloting his warship to the blind side of Eivomon. In addition, the Kijol had been somewhat cagey about his knowledge of the Gholaxas and he’d also been eager to agree the departure from this solar system. All-in-all, it stacked up to a steaming heap of uncertainty.

In the end, Lieutenant Lopez learned nothing of use, but the Gholaxas didn’t appear at the last moment, like it had done at Dodaxa. Both the Voltran and the Tuvandor entered lightspeed without interference. When the transition was completed, Grisham rolled his shoulders and exhaled a pent-up breath. From the tightness in his muscles, it seemed like the tension had affected him more than he’d thought.

Regardless, the Voltran was on its way. In nine hours, it would break out of lightspeed a short distance from Eox. Once there, Grisham hoped to locate the wreckage of one or more Ax’Kol vessels in which the original minds remained alive. The more of those minds he could extract, the better would be the odds against the Gholaxas.

Grisham wasn’t fooling himself. Even with another mind to add to the three already combined within the Voltran, he doubted his warship would be able to match Gholaxas – regardless of the Tuvandor’s assistance.

However, he was convinced that the destruction of the enemy warship was a priority for both the Human Federation and the Kijol. This mission was a risk worth taking.

SEVEN

Grisham spent two of the journey’s nine hours asleep on a thin mattress in a cold, dark room not far from the bridge. When he awoke, he felt like he was still four hours short of where he needed to be. His stubble was becoming prickly, but the shaving facilities on the Voltran were minimal, just like all the other facilities.

With a coffee in one hand and a steak sandwich in the other, Grisham returned to the bridge. Another three hours remained before the arrival at Eox and he set himself for a period of agitated boredom – this being a combination he detested.

The three hours passed slowly and Grisham paced around the bridge until Commander Deneuve suggested bluntly that he should either desist, or leave and come back later. Grisham chose the former option.

“Do you think the Gholaxas will follow us to Eox, Captain?” asked Adler after a time.

“I thought there was an element of guesswork in what Captain Riondalix was telling us,” said Grisham. “I’m sure the Kijol know lots more about the Gholaxas than we do, but it’s hard to learn an opponent’s exact capabilities just by observation. Especially if that opponent is blowing the crap out of your warships.”

“Even if the Gholaxas doesn’t come to Eox, we might still be able to extract some additional minds from the Ax’Kol wreckage,” said Bishop.

“I want the certainty of knowing the Gholaxas is gone,” said Deneuve. “I’d hate to think it’s stopped coming after us, only to find it appears when and where it’s most inconvenient.”

“We all want to return home, Commander,” said Grisham. “While the Gholaxas is on our tail, that’s not an option.”

“What if there’re no dormant minds at Eox and the enemy is still in pursuit?” asked Lopez.

“I don’t really want to fight the Gholaxas without the Voltran having some additional psionic strength,” said Grisham. “I told Captain Riondalix that we’d join him in this battle and we will. It might just be that I have to play for some extra time, depending on what we find at Eox.”

“I can hardly believe the Kijol lost fifteen planets already,” said Kinsey, shaking his head. “Hundreds of billions dead to the Ax’Kol.”

“Our own analysts are pretty sure the Kijol have a lot more planets than we do,” said Grisham. “Even so, they must be really suffering.”

“Every time the Ax’Kol take a planet, they gain twice from it,” said Adler. “Once by weakening their opponents and then again by strengthening their own fleet. I never thought anything could be as shitty as this.”

“And yet here we are,” said Grisham. He’d spent more hours thinking the same dark thoughts than he cared to count. “But let’s try and be positive, folks,” he said. “We’re on a mission and it’s going to be successful. We’re going to defeat a primary enemy warship and when it’s gone, the Ax’Kol won’t find it so easy to locate our planets.”

“Yeah, let’s do this,” said Adler.

“I wonder how many minds the Voltran has the capacity to absorb,” said Lopez. “I mean – what will this warship be capable of if we manage to extract another dozen minds and roll them into the ones it already has?”

“I don’t think the Voltran’s consciousness takes up any physical space,” said Grisham. “But there has to be a limitation.”

“Does there?” said Deneuve.

Grisham was suddenly less sure. “Everything has a limitation, Commander.”

“The Voltran already holds the souls of billions,” said Deneuve. “They don’t occupy space in the way we recognize it. Maybe the Voltran could hold an effectively infinite number.”

“I’d like to think you’re right, Commander,” said Grisham. “The Voltran is the only way for those souls to find peace. The more of them we can free from the Ax’Kol, the better I’ll feel about it.” He smiled. “Let’s see how we get on at Eox.”

Deneuve smiled in return. “Yes, sir.”

The remaining minutes to arrival fell and Adler shouted his ten-minute warning. Grisham’s gaze went from face to face. Everyone was ready.

“We’re arriving at Eox with only a basic plan,” he said. “While that’s nothing new to us, we’ll have to act fast. The last time we extracted a mind from an Ax’Kol warship it took almost thirty-five minutes and we have to assume the process will take just as long next time. We can’t have the Gholaxas dropping out of lightspeed on top of us while we’re sitting ducks.”

“Will you be able to detect the presence of dormant minds on the planet like you did on Leoxval, Captain?” asked Lopez.

“I’ll try,” Grisham confirmed. “However, I know from experience that I can’t search too great a volume – the pain is too much. It’s best if I know where I’m looking.”

“In that case, we’re relying on Captain Riondalix telling us where to find the Ax’Kol wreckage, sir,” said Lopez.

“That’s right,” said Grisham. “As soon as the Tuvandor exits lightspeed, you’re going to request a comms channel and get those details.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When should I warm up the psionic: focus, Captain?” asked Deneuve. “The testing we did while we were stationed at Loxor after Admiral Danner’s death indicates we can hold the amplification ready for no more than five minutes before it needs to be discharged or cancelled.”

“I don’t think there’s a right answer, Commander,” said Grisham. “I’d prefer to have both psionic amplifications available if the Gholaxas appears, but I can’t see a way to ensure that happens. It’s vital that we always have one ready to discharge.”

“Yes, sir,” said Deneuve. “I’ll warm the first amplification up and then begin warming up the second after five minutes. That way we’ll always have one available - but only one.”

Grisham nodded his agreement. Perhaps if they could locate and extract another – a fourth – mind for the Voltran, the warship would be able to ready three psionic: focus attacks at the same time, which would provide an enormous amount of extra flexibility.

However, Grisham didn’t know if the warship’s capabilities would scale so linearly, or even if they’d scale beyond their current limits. He fervently hoped he’d find out before the Gholaxas arrived at Eox.

“Two minutes!” said Adler.

“This mission has been unexpectedly thrust upon us,” said Grisham. “However, its importance is as great as any other. This is our chance to impact the Ax’Kol’s ability to locate Human Federation worlds, and while it’s too late for Loxor, it’s not too late for our other planets. If we defeat the Gholaxas, we might well have significantly altered the outlook for both humanity and the Kijol.”

Nobody replied, but their expressions were grim and focused. The warship’s crew knew that an engagement with the Gholaxas would be tough, even if the Voltran’s psionic abilities were bolstered by a fourth mind.

The risks were sky-high and the rewards for success were potentially tremendous. Grisham felt the pressure of the stakes, but not nearly so much as he had when he’d first taken control of the Voltran. Now, he was ready, and the doubts were but distant whispers at the back of his mind.

“Here we go,” said Adler.

The Voltran re-entered local space and the droning of its propulsion fell in volume. Straightaway, Grisham felt something at the extremes of his consciousness, like the high-pitched faraway buzzing of an insect. He turned his head to see if it would change his perception of the buzzing, and thought he sensed variations. Now it reminded him more of a whisper than an insect.

Grisham didn’t know what – if anything – he’d detected, and then the Voltran’s sensors came online, drawing his attention away. The sensor feeds weren’t, as yet, focused on anything of interest.

“Commencing local area scans,” said Bishop.

“Running receptor sweep,” said Lopez. “Receptor located. The Tuvandor must have got here before us.”

“Request a channel,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir.”

“The local area scans are clear,” said Bishop. “I have the location details for Eox. I am obtaining a sensor lock.”

“Channel request accepted,” said Lopez. “I’ll ask for coordinates of the wreckage.”

The planet came up on one of the starboard feeds. Eox was less than a hundred thousand kilometres away and its appearance wasn’t much different to Grisham’s imaginings. The planet’s surface was a mixture of blues, greens and yellows, with extensive cloud cover. Both poles were icy and an immense cyclone was drifting across the southern ocean.

Judging by the devastation inflicted on Eox, the Kijol and the Ax’Kol had fought a brutal and extended battle for the planet. The surface was pocked and scarred in too many places for Grisham to count, and vast areas had been scoured by incendiaries. His eyes went from city to city. Many were completely razed, while others had been extensively damaged by explosives.

“Eox has two visible moons, Captain,” said Bishop. “One has a diameter of a thousand klicks and the diameter of the other is almost two thousand klicks.”

Grisham’s initial attention had been focused inwards – towards the planet. The two moons were both farther out. The larger was orbiting Eox at two hundred thousand kilometres and the smaller was at a quarter of a million kilometres. Both satellites were far from the Voltran, and the larger moon was almost out of sight behind the planet.

“We might need to scan those, Lieutenant Bishop,” said Grisham. It was hard to be sure, but he thought he could see surface imperfections on each of the moons, which might be natural, or which might be something else. “For the moment, concentrate on Eox.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lieutenant Lopez, have you received any further information from the Tuvandor?” asked Grisham.

He didn’t want to look at the ruined cities any longer and he adjusted the sensor array so that it was aimed at a different part of the planet. Here, the mixed wreckage of Kijol and Ax’Kol warships had crashed down all across a huge, forested area.

Grisham visually scanned the darker pieces, hoping to identify possible targets. Nothing stood out, so he extended his mind cautiously, towards one of the largest sections of Ax’Kol debris, which was resting at the end of a twenty-kilometre furrow through the trees. The pain didn’t come, but nor did he locate a mind within the wreckage.

“Sir, there is no specific information to be had,” said Lopez. “We asked for wreckage and the Kijol brought us here.”

Grisham nodded. “I’ll take us closer to the planet and see if I can find anything. Ask the Tuvandor’s crew if they’re aware of any deep space wreckage as well as the pieces which came down on the planet.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lopez.

“Lieutenant Bishop, please identify the largest pieces of Ax’Kol wreckage on the surface and put them on the tactical.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”

“I’ll warm up the first psionic: focus, Captain,” said Deneuve. “I’ll keep warming them up and cancelling them as we discussed earlier, until you give me a different order.”

“Thank you, Commander,” said Grisham.

As he spoke, he instructed the Voltran to accelerate towards Eox. A hundred thousand kilometres wasn’t far and the distance to the planet tumbled. The Tuvandor followed, five hundred kilometres behind and a few kilometres off to portside. Grisham continued his visual scan for likely targets, but saw nothing that stood out. The debris which had come down on this side of the planet was mostly smaller pieces.

Meanwhile, the whispering he’d noticed earlier hadn’t gone away. It was neither more intrusive, nor less, but it was becoming harder to ignore.

“Can anyone else hear a noise?” Grisham asked. “It’s like a low, fluctuating buzzing sound. It makes me think of someone whispering in an alien language.”

“No, sir,” said Deneuve, staring closely at him.

“Nope, nothing,” said Kinsey.

Grisham shrugged. He wasn’t ready to dismiss the buzzing as something imagined – since it might potentially be indicative of a consciousness down on Eox – but he couldn’t spend time thinking about it when he had other means to locate Ax’Kol wreckage.

“The tactical is populating, sir,” said Bishop. “I’ve listed the objects in order of their estimated mass.”

“Thank you,” said Grisham.

He picked the top target from the list, which was an irregular lump jutting above the surface of a western ocean, not far from land. Which part of a warship this debris had once formed, Grisham couldn’t even begin to guess. He reached out with his telepathy and located no sign of a mind.

“I’ll take us eastwards around the planet at a five-thousand-klick altitude,” he said.

“The Tuvandor’s crew confirm there was plenty of debris in space around the planet, Captain,” said Lopez. “However, the conflict here ended seven years ago, so that debris has either drifted away or crashed into the planet’s surface. There may be some pieces left in orbit – I’ll scan for those and let you know if I find anything.”

“I can confirm there’s nothing orbiting on this side of the planet, sir,” said Bishop. “If there’s any debris orbiting out of sight, we should catch up with it if we stay on this heading.”

“Acknowledged,” said Grisham.

He held the Voltran on his chosen heading around Eox. More of the surface was revealed and the story was the same as elsewhere – debris and ruins. Grisham used his telepathy to scan the wreckage as it came into sight, but he found nothing. He didn’t know how long the Ax’Kol minds could remain alive – if that was the right word – and seven years had elapsed since the engagement at Eox. Perhaps any which had survived the fighting had simply withered and died with the passing of time.

Grisham desperately hoped this search would bear fruit. He gritted his teeth and held steady.

EIGHT

A short time later, the Voltran had completed a single circuit of the planet. With assistance from the Tuvandor, every significant piece of Ax’Kol debris had been detected, and Grisham had scanned them all for signs of dormant minds, without success. His frustration was in danger of turning into anger.

“I’d feel a damned sight better if I knew how efficient the Gholaxas is at pursuing its targets,” said Grisham.

“What worries me is the thought our enemy can track us while they’re at lightspeed,” said Adler. “Like you said before, Captain, they must be using telepathy, but we don’t have the faintest idea what set of rules their method follows.”

“If the Gholaxas’s telepathy doesn’t function at lightspeed, it presumably won’t have been able to detect us for the entire nine hours of the journey to Eox,” said Deneuve. “Then the enemy vessel will have to travel here, which we can assume will take several additional hours.”

“Or the Gholaxas’s mind can detect a spaceship travelling at lightspeed and can alter its own course to maintain pursuit,” said Grisham. “That would be bad news for us.”

“And would also mean the enemy vessel might arrive here at any moment,” said Adler.

Grisham pursed his lips. “I guess I’ve been assuming the worst-case scenario is the most likely scenario ever since the Gholaxas showed up at Dodaxa. Whatever the truth, all we can do is be ready.”

“We’ve identified every major piece of Ax’Kol wreckage on Eox, Captain,” said Lopez. “Are there any left you want to scan?”

The list of targets was long, but Grisham had checked each one, including some of the smaller pieces of debris. He suddenly realised his head wasn’t hurting at all. “I’m done with the list, Lieutenant,” he said.

“We located no significant debris in the planet’s orbit, Captain,” said Bishop. “That leaves the two moons. According to the Tuvandor, the larger moon is called Eox-Eran, and the smaller one is Eox-Ir. The former is within our sensor sight, but the other is currently obscured by the planet.”

“We’ll scan Eox-Eran first,” said Grisham.

He accessed one of the feeds aimed at the moon and the surface markings he’d noticed earlier seemed more prominent than before. A command sent the Voltran away from Eox and the warship accelerated towards Eox-Eran. The Tuvandor followed and Grisham made no effort to outpace the Eternus. Having hated the crushing technological superiority of the Kijol battleships for most of his adult life, Grisham now found their presence strangely reassuring. If the Gholaxas appeared, he wanted the Tuvandor as near as possible when it happened.

The journey time to Eox-Eran wasn’t much more than five minutes and, at the halfway point, Eox-Ir became visible over the cusp of the planet. At the same time, light from the distant sun glinted through the Eox atmosphere, creating spears of yellow that cut through the darkness and made Grisham stare in wonder.

“There’s plenty of wreckage on Eox-Eran, sir,” said Bishop.

Grisham hauled his attention to the forward feeds. His sensor team had been busy identifying the debris which was scattered about the moon’s surface. A few pieces had a greater mass than anything which had crashed into Eox, though the modest size of their craters suggested the impacts had been at a low velocity.

A scan of the first target revealed it contained no dormant mind. Before Grisham could aim his telepathy at the next target, the distant buzzing whispers, which had been ever-present since he’d come to Eox, suddenly turned frantic. Clickings and hissings were discernible among the usual noise, along with other sounds Grisham didn’t have words to describe. The volume – or rather the distance – of it remained constant, though now he was sure that a message was contained within the sound.

Not a message. A warning, or an alarm.

“I think the Gholaxas is here,” said Grisham. “Scan for it!”

“Yes, sir,” said Lopez, without questioning why he was so sure the pursuing vessel was close by.

“I’ll let the Tuvandor know,” said Bishop.

“We have to get behind Eox-Eran,” said Grisham.

At the Voltran’s current velocity, it would be around the moon and blind side of Eox in less than two minutes. Given what Grisham had seen of the enemy spaceship, that would be too long.

“We have a psionic: focus ready to discharge, Captain,” said Deneuve. “At the first sight of the Gholaxas I’ll attempt to knock it offline with a psionic: suppress. Maybe with the first strike we can come out on top.”

“There’s no sign of the enemy, sir,” said Lopez.

“I guess the telepathic shield you instructed the Voltran to maintain didn’t work,” said Adler. “Damn.”

“There’s got to be a way to prevent our detection,” said Grisham. “We just haven’t found it yet.” Once again, he was confronted by the knowledge that he was a neophyte when it came to telepathy, while the mind on the Gholaxas was – he believed – an amalgamation of millions, perhaps billions, of Ax’Kol minds. Against such numbers, he couldn’t stand alone. The only hope was that the Voltran and the billions of vengeful souls within its consciousness, would be able to learn how to combat the threat presented by the pursuing Gholaxas.

However, Grisham remembered how easily the mind on the Ax’Kol vessel had intruded upon the Voltran, and without being detected. He needed to enter the grey, to rally the dead and to exhort them to greater efforts. They had to find a way to shield the Voltran from the enemy spaceship, else the Gholaxas would have all the advantages in the coming engagement.

On a whim, Grisham swept out with his mind, seeking the enemy spaceship. Within a couple of seconds, he felt the first signs of a headache, though mercifully it was only a hint, rather than a full-on pounding in his skull. His telepathic search didn’t find the Gholaxas, but Grisham thought that perhaps the faraway noise, which was still filled with alarm, had become louder.

He cast his mind out further, but quickly pulled back his search. The Gholaxas was the number one priority and he didn’t want to give himself an agonising headache before the seemingly inevitable confrontation.

By now, the Voltran was nearing Eox-Eran and Grisham adjusted course so that the warship would sweep around the moon.

“Captain, what are you intending?” asked Deneuve.

“I’m still hoping we’ll find a dormant mind in some of the Ax’Kol wreckage, Commander,” said Grisham. “And I’m also hoping I might figure out a way to block the Gholaxas’s detection long enough for us to extract that mind.”

Deneuve gave a thin smile in response, but didn’t say anything.

For the next few seconds, Grisham did his best to watch the sensors, pilot the Voltran, and scan the pieces of wreckage on the surface of Eox-Eran. The warship was travelling at such a high velocity that his mind was unable to cope with the demands he placed upon it. Several pieces of debris went unscanned, but Grisham didn’t dare slow until the Voltran was completely behind the moon.

When Eox was no longer visible, he commanded the warship to decelerate and the velocity gauge fell.

“This side of Eox-Eran suffered a bunch of impacts,” said Lopez. “I’m adding them to the tactical.”

Thousands of pieces of warship debris had struck the moon across a fifth of its entire visible surface. Many of the craters were vast and they overlapped each other. Fissures snaked through the rock, joining in places, to make this side of Eox-Eran look as if it were ready to break apart.

Grisham didn’t need the tactical list to identify his targets. He spotted four or five right away, these being massive sections of Ax’Kol warships. As he scanned the first, Grisham wondered how the enemy were able to grow their fleet if every victory required them to lose so many resources. Perhaps, he thought, the Ax’Kol didn’t actively seek growth. Perhaps their only desire was to endure, so that they might continue to bring death to other species.

The first target contained no dormant mind, nor did the second or the third. The fourth, however, was different. This piece of wreckage was a five-billion-ton section of an Indredalus, which had crashed down not far from a mangled, fifteen-billion-ton old-generation Eternus. Each impact had formed a crater, along with dozens of fissures which looked as if they might be many kilometres deep.

“There’s a mind in target #4,” said Grisham. “It’s dormant and it’s dying.”

“Does that mean it’s too weak to be any use to us?” asked Deneuve.

“We’ll extract it and find out,” said Grisham. “Lieutenant Lopez, advise the Tuvandor that we’re heading down to target #4. Remember that we’re proposing to draw energy from this wreckage – energy we need to power our psionic attacks.” The lie was only a slight alteration of the truth, but Grisham felt dirty repeating it. An alliance with the Kijol would go better for both sides if everyone felt able to just speak the truth.

“Yes, sir,” said Lopez. “I’ll let them know.”

Grisham didn’t wait for Lopez to pass on the message. The target debris was less than twelve hundred kilometres east and he aimed for it, reducing the Voltran from its thousand-kilometre altitude as it approached.

In the short time available, Grisham scanned several other pieces of debris. As the Voltran’s altitude decreased, some of the targets dropped out of the warship’s visibility arc, but his telepathy wasn’t impeded by the solidity of the moon. He searched for other minds, but found none.

“It’s looking as if the mind in target #4 is the only one which survived,” he said.

“Captain Riondalix would like to know how long the operation will take, sir,” said Lopez. “Should I tell him the truth?”

“Yes,” said Grisham without hesitation. “Also tell him there may be some unpredictable variation.”

“I don’t think Captain Riondalix is too happy about that, sir,” said Lopez a few moments later. “I reckon he thought we’d be done much sooner. He expects the Gholaxas to locate us quickly.”

“I expect that too,” said Grisham. The target wreckage was only a few kilometres below and, in a moment, he’d have to enter the grey to give the extraction command. “This is what we have to do, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll handle the questions,” said Lopez.

“Captain, if we’re stationary above the wreckage, and the Gholaxas attacks from low altitude, the Kijol might feel their only option is to drop incendiaries,” said Deneuve. “It’s possible we’ll be caught in the splash.”

“That’s a good point, Commander,” said Grisham. “We’ll just have to be aware.” He tapped the side of his head three times, which was the sign he’d agreed with the other crew members to indicate he was about to enter the grey. Deneuve nodded in acknowledgement.

Grisham entered the Voltran’s consciousness and the familiar vortex of souls formed around him. He gave them an instruction to extract the mind in the wreckage below and they understood.

Instead of withdrawing immediately, Grisham lingered. There had to be a way to make the Voltran undetectable to the Gholaxas, and the spirits here would be the ones to accomplish it. They understood what he wanted and they understood the need, but the means was beyond their knowing.

Grisham remembered the time when the Voltran had been trapped within the Inojor, while the death factory inserted a second mind into the warship. Back then, when he’d tried to deny the entry of an Ax’Kol crew, the Inojor had extended a fragment of itself onto the bridge of the Voltran.

On that occasion, Grisham had been able to fool the enemy mind by making it appear as though Ax’Kol were already on the bridge. The effort had stretched him to the limit, but it showed that it was possible to deceive even the most powerful opponent.

The Engarvax can make themselves invisible to other minds. Why can’t the Voltran do the same?

Grisham conveyed his thoughts to the Voltran. Within this single consciousness were the elements of the brightest – the most brilliant – scholars, thinkers, mathematicians, and scientists of their species. Although they were shorn of their individuality and subsumed into the warship’s mind, Grisham knew that the echoes of what they’d been hung heavy about the spirits, and sometimes all they needed was a reminder.

The vortex became agitated and swirled faster. Parts of the maelstrom broke away like fevered wreaths of smoke. They intertwined and flew ever faster, with both the sadness and joy of memory.

Grisham had done everything he could and he left this place. As ever, the guilt of his living was still clinging to him when his awareness returned to the bridge.

“How long was I gone?” he asked.

“No more than a minute,” said Deneuve. “The Voltran is preparing to extract the mind.”

Quickly, Grisham explained his most recent efforts within the grey, while he watched the feeds. During his short time away, the spaceship had descended until it was almost touching the wreckage of the Indredalus. The high sides of the impact crater formed their own horizon in every direction, except east, where the decayed hull of the old-generation Eternus he’d seen earlier was visible like a grey monument above the broken stone where the two craters met.

Grisham turned his attention to the underside feeds. Flexible cables emerged from the Voltran’s hull and they penetrated the exterior of the wreckage below.

“There’s no sign of anything happening on the monitoring tools, Captain,” said Adler. “Just like it was when we extracted the mind on Leoxval.”

“Let’s hope we’re not waiting thirty minutes again,” said Grisham.

“Should we contact the Tuvandor and make them aware that we’ve implemented a method that might block the Gholaxas’s ability to detect us telepathically?” asked Deneuve.

Grisham hesitated. “No,” he said. “The Voltran’s mind is only shielding this warship.”

“Then isn’t the Tuvandor a liability to us, sir?” Deneuve pressed. “If the mind on the Gholaxas can detect life, perhaps it will locate the Eternus – and the battleship is directly over our heads.”

“Damnit,” said Grisham. He took a breath. “Lieutenant Lopez, get me a channel to Captain Riondalix.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long will your extraction process take?” asked Riondalix before Grisham could speak. The Kijol was clearly running out of patience already.

“As we discussed before – the extraction might take some time,” said Grisham. He explained that the Voltran might now be immune to telepathic detection. “I believe it would be wise for the Tuvandor to journey by lightspeed to a place close by – the planet’s second moon, perhaps.”

“What if your telepathic shield fails, human?”

“Then we’re screwed,” said Grisham.

Riondalix was quiet for a few moments. “This extraction of energy. There is more to it than you are letting on – else you would not risk dividing our forces.”

“There’s a dormant mind in the wreckage,” said Grisham. “If we draw its essence into the Voltran, this warship’s capabilities will be improved.”

Again the Kijol was quiet. “The truth you provided was in its most basic form. You thought I might not bring you to the wreckage in case it made the Voltran too powerful.”

“That’s about the long and short of it,” Grisham admitted. “I want the Gholaxas defeated as much as you do, Captain Riondalix.”

“Then extract the mind. I will take the Tuvandor to the second moon, though not by lightspeed. The four-minute warmup time of the Charos drive will leave both our warships vulnerable. I will evade the Gholaxas until your process is finished. Then, we will launch our assault.”

“Yes,” said Grisham. “That’s what we’ll do.”

Already, the Tuvandor was accelerating. It climbed vertically, and then banked onto a course that would take it in a long arc to Eox-Ir.

“Some of the comms satellites for Eox remain operational,” said Riondalix. “I will give you access to route your comms through them, however, there is no coverage on this side of Eox-Eran. For a time, we will be unable to speak.”

“There’s no need,” said Grisham. “The Voltran’s comms system can link to yours, even through a planet and a moon, and we’ll be able to hear your response as well.”

“Then we are ready,” said Riondalix. He exited the channel.

In less than sixty seconds, the Tuvandor was outside the Voltran’s sensor visibility arc. For the moment, at least, both warships were on their own, and Grisham could only hope this was the right approach.

As so often seemed to be the case, a single misjudgement would be fatal.

NINE

Barely two minutes after the Tuvandor’s departure, Grisham found himself shifting from foot to foot. He didn’t much enjoy being at the mercy of luck.

“Keep watching those skies,” he said.

“My eyes are glued, Captain,” said Lopez.

“The psionic: focus is ready for activation,” said Deneuve. “If I see the Gholaxas on the feeds, I’ll shut it down with a suppression.”

Ten minutes passed and there was no visible sign of progress on the extraction. Grisham wasn’t expecting that to change until the process was done, and he had no doubt it would take another twenty minutes or more to finish.

“Captain Riondalix is at Eox-Ir, sir,” said Lopez. “He plans to circle the moon at low altitude and high velocity. The enemy vessel remains undetected.”

“They’re out there,” Grisham muttered.

He could sense the huge Ax’Kol warship, though he wasn’t sure if it was just his intuition, or if his telepathy was now able to pierce the enemy shielding. When he attempted a conscious telepathic search, the volume of space he was required to examine was so great that his headache started up. Grisham ended his search and the pain receded.

I can’t be doing it the right way.

It was a thought which prompted his mind to start turning. Searching by volume was clearly an inefficient way of using his telepathy and he couldn’t imagine that the Gholaxas – no matter how powerful its mind – could telepathically search a volume as great as even one solar system, let alone entire galaxies. Therefore, he reasoned, there had to be a different method.

Grisham hunted within himself for that inner feeling of his intuition. Perhaps it was closely related to the power of telepathy - while the Ax’Kol could sense life, most humans could sense danger. It was just that the Ax’Kol’s ability was far more focused.

After a few moments, Grisham once again felt the presence of the Gholaxas. The sense of it was vague – it was somewhere near Eox, but he was unable to pinpoint its location, nor discern its distance. Grisham focused, but the feeling of the enemy warship slipped away like he was trying to grab a handful of mist.

The harder I try, the less I can sense.

Grisham was sure he was on the brink of an understanding, but a voice in his mind started reminding him that this wasn’t a good time to experiment. Another part of him considered that this was, in fact, the best possible time, since the Gholaxas was here and he had a chance to learn how to detect it.

It was no use. His concentration was gone. Grisham tried one more time, but the enemy vessel eluded him. He cursed under his breath and returned his full attention to the bridge.

Another ten minutes went by and still the Gholaxas was nowhere to be seen. The rest of the crew were agitated like Grisham and they weren’t trying to keep it hidden. Even Commander Deneuve kept muttering to herself.

“Be steady, folks,” said Grisham. “In ten or fifteen minutes, the extraction will be finished.”

“Plus another few minutes for the new mind to be absorbed,” Adler reminded him.

“I know, but when the extraction is done at least we’ll be able to get away from this crater,” said Grisham. He hated the lack of control, but he tried to keep his voice calm.

Nearly thirty minutes after the beginning of the extraction process, Grisham began to feel that perhaps the Voltran might soon hold the power of four minds, rather than just three. He imagined the new options which would be open to him if the warship had an extra psionic amplification available for every combat.

And then, it happened.

A flash of white lit up the starboard feed, engulfing much of the wrecked Eternus which lay to the east.

“The Gholaxas!” said Grisham. “Where is it?”

“There’s no sign of it, Captain!” said Lopez.

Grisham’s first instinct was to instruct the Voltran to maximum acceleration and, for a moment, he didn’t know what made him hesitate.

Why did it attack the Eternus?

“The enemy warship can’t see us!” said Grisham, hoping it was true.

A second enormous salvo of missiles struck the Eternus. The Kijol battleship was tough, even with its outer layer of armour badly damaged, but the explosions tore a huge hole into the vessel’s midsection.

“I can’t find the Gholaxas, Captain,” said Lopez. “It must have launched those missiles from outside our visibility arc.”

“I’ve contacted the Tuvandor, sir,” said Bishop. “Captain Riondalix is readying his Charos drive for a short-range transit.”

“The extraction process is complete!” said Adler. “The connection cables are withdrawing.”

This time, Grisham didn’t delay. As soon as all the cables had disconnected from the Ax’Kol wreckage, he commanded the Voltran to maximum thrust. The warship’s propulsion howled and Grisham felt the barely suppressed accelerative forces pushing him into the bridge floor. In a moment, the Voltran had climbed above the rim of the crater.

“Locate that damned spaceship!” shouted Grisham.

As he spoke the words, he saw streaks of orange cross the starboard feeds, travelling impossibly fast. The missiles plunged into the crater beneath the Voltran and struck the wreckage lying at the bottom. The light from a hundred explosions illuminated the rocky ground for kilometres in every direction.

“Where the hell is it?” said Lopez. “The Gholaxas isn’t appearing on the sensors.”

“Look harder,” snarled Grisham.

With the Voltran out of the crater, Grisham kept the warship low and instructed it to accelerate for the horizon. His attention jumped between the feeds, but like Lopez had said, there was no sign of the Gholaxas.

“Sir, look at the moon’s surface on the forward feed!” said Deneuve.

Grisham looked and saw that the grey rock was darkening across a huge area. Holes appeared everywhere, like sand falling through a million tiny hourglasses, and then the stone sagged unevenly, forming a two-hundred-metre-deep indentation in the moon’s surface.

“A psionic attack,” said Grisham. Suddenly, he understood what was happening. “The Gholaxas knows we’re here, but not exactly enough to target its weapons. It’s guessing.”

“The Voltran’s psionic shield must be working,” said Deneuve. “But why can’t we see the enemy ship?”

“Because they’re doing the same thing to us as we are to them,” said Grisham.

“Damnit, so we’re invisible to each other,” said Deneuve. “This is going to be a shitty fight.”

“Until the Tuvandor arrives, and then it might become interesting,” said Grisham.

“I’m detecting inbound missiles, Captain!” said Lopez. “I estimate the launch position at one thousand kilometres above and behind us.”

“Hold our missiles, Commander,” said Grisham sharply. “If we launch in response, the Gholaxas will know where we are.”

The inbound missiles exploded across the moon’s surface a few kilometres to portside. Grisham sent the Voltran onto a new heading, wondering how quickly the Gholaxas would react. He didn’t wait to find out and banked again after a few seconds.

“Are we going to sit back and take this, Captain?” asked Deneuve.

“Hell no,” said Grisham. “Next time the Gholaxas fires missiles, hit it with an amplified psionic: suppress.”

“Yes, sir.”

Grisham watched the sensors and made several rapid changes of heading. Eox-Eran had an atmosphere, albeit a thin one, and that forced him to keep to a much lower velocity than he wanted. If the Voltran’s nose started heating up, maybe the Gholaxas would have an easier job of targeting. It was a risk Grisham didn’t want to take.

A second psionic attack from the enemy warship caused a section of the Eox-Eran surface to crumple and sag, and another followed a moment later. Both of the psionics struck within five kilometres of the Voltran.

“They’re getting closer,” said Grisham, commanding the Voltran once again onto a new heading.

“The enemy warship is no longer firing missiles at us, Captain,” said Lopez. “Its mind must have hoped to knock us out quickly and now that’s failed, it’s relying on psionics.”

“So that it doesn’t make a target of itself,” said Grisham angrily. It didn’t look as if this opponent was about to make any exploitable mistakes, but there was still time.

“We are unable to detect the discharge point of a psionic attack, Captain,” said Adler. “We’re effectively blind.”

“The Gholaxas is using telepathy to find us – why can’t we do the same thing?” asked Deneuve.

“That’s a good question, Commander,” said Grisham. He didn’t want to wait for the Tuvandor – which, he hoped, would be entirely unaffected by the enemy’s telepathic shield - to complete its lightspeed transit. A lot could happen in the three minutes which remained before the Kijol battleship arrived to add its own firepower to the engagement.

The first thought Grisham had was to enter the grey and instruct the souls to find a way to detect the Gholaxas. Unfortunately, he didn’t dare absent his attention from the bridge, even for a short time. Commander Deneuve could pilot the Voltran, but she had to give her full attention to the weapons, in case an opportunity arose to land a hit on the enemy.

Once again, Grisham attempted to learn if his instinct would control his telepathic powers. Perhaps, if his telepathy was part of his subconscious, he should allow that subconscious to control the power.

Sounds great in theory, Jed. Let’s find out if it works in practice.

Grisham hadn’t ever classed himself as an instinctive officer, like some in the HF military did. Although he’d never dismissed gut feel as a tool for coming out ahead in combat, he was a man who considered skill, experience, reactions, forethought and knowing the enemy to be the most reliable ways of achieving victory. Now, he was hoping to use the most ephemeral and unscientific of means to defeat the Ax’Kol.

To Grisham’s surprise, he quickly gained a sense of the Gholaxas. The vagueness from earlier remained, and he detected the enemy vessel – not the vessel, it’s mind - as the same kind of dark miasma as all the other Ax’Kol. Except, the mind on the Gholaxas exuded what Grisham could only think of as an evilness that almost made him recoil. What this alien consciousness was thinking, and what exactly had motivated it to pursue the Voltran, remained a mystery. Perhaps, Grisham thought, in time he might find a way to understand.

“The Gholaxas is within a thousand klicks,” he said. “It’s at a greater altitude and it keeps changing course. It’s trying to find the Voltran, but it’s looking through the same fog as we are.”

“I can’t land a psionic attack based on that information, Captain,” said Deneuve. “You need to narrow down the enemy’s location.”

Grisham nodded. He’d thought it might be difficult to tap into his instinct while piloting the Voltran, but it wasn’t hard at all.

Looks like I rely on those instincts more than I let myself believe.

He cast out in search of the enemy mind. The headache started again, right between his eyes, but as more of a distant throbbing than hammer blows to his forehead. Grisham ignored the pain and tried to visualise what his telepathy was sensing. The Gholaxas’s mind was like the darkest of clouds, vast, high overhead and a few hundred kilometres behind. Every time Grisham changed course, the enemy vessel did likewise, though with a couple of seconds’ delay.

For a short time, he tried to hone the method, without being exactly sure how to do so. He stayed fully aware of the Voltran and the sensor feeds. The Gholaxas discharged its psionic attacks one after the other, with no sign it was weakening. Not one of the attacks struck the Voltran, though Grisham’s earlier feeling that they were coming closer was growing stronger.

Lieutenant Adler confirmed it. “The mean distance between the Voltran and those incoming psionic attacks is falling, Captain,” he said. “A couple more minutes and there’s a real chance one of them will hit us – and that’s assuming the Gholaxas doesn’t suddenly get better at what it’s doing.”

“I hear you,” said Grisham.

He tried to ignore the increasing pressure and did his best to identify the exact position of the Gholaxas. A couple of the methods he tried didn’t work, and the pursuing Ax’Kol mind stayed hidden within the miasma.

Then, Grisham stumbled upon a better way. It seemed the trick was not to focus too hard, and to just let the telepathy work. As soon as Grisham realised that, the cloud disguising the Gholaxas faded a little. At the centre, he detected an intense sphere of roiling hatred.

“There!” Grisham shouted. His mind couldn’t generate exact positional data, but he fed the images in his head along the interface and into the Voltran. The warship put the target onto the tactical, but the uncertainty of the information meant the Gholaxas was represented by a huge, indistinct circle.

“Sir, the target area is still too large to guarantee a successful psionic attack,” said Deneuve. “We might be lucky, but we can’t afford to miss with the amplified suppression.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Grisham.

“One minute and the Tuvandor will have completed its lightspeed transit, Captain,” said Adler. “We need to land the amplified psionic: suppression before the Eternus is wrecked by psionic: decay attacks.”

If Grisham couldn’t find a way to make the Gholaxas targetable and soon, the Tuvandor would be left facing the enemy vessel effectively alone. The Eternus wouldn’t stand a chance.

Resuming his efforts to dispel the miasma around the Gholaxas, Grisham felt a sudden weight descend upon his mind. This weight sought to wrap him tight and the pressure of it was incredible. The headache which had so far been easy to handle, became an agony.

The consciousness on the Gholaxas wasn’t intending to be a passive spectator while Grisham sought it out and now it had come to snuff out his existence.

Fighting the pain of the attack, Grisham tried to defend himself at the same time as piloting the Voltran and making the enemy vessel targetable.

TEN

The mind of the Gholaxas was relentless in its assault. Grisham did what he could to protect himself by throwing up telepathic shields, but the enemy broke through them in moments. Having never been under the illusion that he was an expert telepath, Grisham was quickly coming to understand how ill-equipped he was to face the might of the Gholaxas.

As the seconds went by, his defence became rapidly more desperate. And yet, the enemy was sparing only a fraction of its efforts to destroy him. The rest of its resources were being utilised to generate a multitude of psionic attacks.

If I can’t give Commander Deneuve the data she needs, I’ll be killed and the Voltran will be knocked offline by a suppression.

Grisham realised that as the intensity of the enemy attacks increased upon him, his own efforts to pinpoint the Gholaxas were lessening. With a monumental exertion of will, he diverted more of his strength to the task of locating the Ax’Kol warship.

By now, Deneuve’s expression indicated she’d guessed what was happening. “Find the Gholaxas, Captain,” she said. “I’ll shut the bastard down.”

“Twenty seconds and the Tuvandor will exit lightspeed,” said Adler. “If it lands a few missiles on the enemy vessel, that might help us with our targeting.”

Grisham didn’t want to leave it to chance. Besides, he wasn’t sure he could hold out for another twenty seconds. Steadily, his image of the mind at the centre of the miasma became more prominent, and as it did, the protective cloud around the Gholaxas shrank. Grisham fed his thoughts along the interface and the circle on the tactical became ever smaller.

“Commander,” said Grisham. His voice sounded remote and he lacked the strength to say anything more.

Deneuve recognized that she couldn’t delay any longer. “Amplified psionic: suppress targeted at enemy vessel.”

No sooner had the words left Deneuve’s mouth than Grisham felt the crushing weight on his mind lift. The relief was incredible and Grisham almost dropped to his knees.

“There’s the Gholaxas!” yelled Lopez.

The amplified suppression attack had knocked the enemy warship’s mind into dormancy, thereby removing whatever influence it was using to make the Voltran’s own consciousness unable to see it. At an altitude of no more than twenty kilometres, the Gholaxas appeared. The vessel was at an angle to the Voltran and it was already on a downward trajectory, though Grisham was sure the enemy mind would awaken long before it impacted with the moon.

“Topside, portside and rear Death clusters one to six: targeted at enemy vessel and fired!” said Deneuve. “Psionic: wither attack discharged. Psionic: suppress targeted on Gholaxas. The psionic: focus is warming up. Time until ready: four minutes and fifty seconds. Punisher guns set to automatic track and destroy.”

The 216 missiles launched from the Voltran’s clusters accelerated across the intervening space, leaving orange propulsion trails behind them. Every single one impacted with the huge Ax’Kol warship. Explosions appeared all along its portside flank, concealing much of the vessel in plasma flames.

The light impeded Grisham’s ability to judge the extent of the damage, but he doubted it was a killing blow. The Gholaxas was too big to be knocked out of the fight in a single salvo from a warship like the Voltran.

Grisham rotated the Voltran violently about its vertical axis, to bring the warship’s loaded clusters into play.

“Psionic: wither attack discharged,” said Deneuve. “Psionic: suppress targeted on enemy vessel. Starboard Death clusters one to six: targeted and fired.”

“The Tuvandor has emerged from lightspeed,” said Bishop. “It’s four thousand klicks from our current position and heading our way.”

Grisham would have preferred to see the Eternus exit lightspeed a hundred kilometres from the Gholaxas, but he knew it was near-impossible to judge it so that a lightspeed transit with a four-minute warmup would emerge right on top of a mobile combat situation like this one.

“I’ve detected a big output spike on the Gholaxas’s hull, Captain,” said Adler. “It’s going to wake from dormancy at any moment.”

“Sir, our new mind is now aware,” said Kinsey. “If the same thing happens as last time, it’ll channel into the main consciousness.”

As Kinsey was speaking, the seventy-two missiles launched from the starboard clusters were caught in an enemy psionic: slow. A split-second later, a torrent of Punisher slugs poured out from the Gholaxas, smashing the trapped missiles into pieces.

“That’s the enemy warship back online,” said Adler.

A psionic: suppress of incredible magnitude hit the Voltran, sending its main consciousness into dormancy. The sensors went offline and the engines shut down dead.

Grisham was staggered by the potency of the attack and, for a moment, he thought it was game over. Then, the engines kicked back into life and the sensors began gathering a feed.

“It was the new mind, Captain!” yelled Adler. “It was in the process of channelling into the main consciousness. I don’t know how, but it seems that it wasn’t affected by the suppression.”

“Are we still invisible to the Gholaxas?” asked Deneuve.

“I don’t know, Commander,” said Grisham. Checking the sensors, he saw that the enemy warship’s portside flank and much of its nose section were aflame with plasma from the first missile salvo. The damage was tremendous, but it clearly wasn’t enough to put the huge vessel out of action. “We’ll soon find out.”

“The dormant areas of the Voltran’s consciousness are showing signs they might shortly recover, sir,” said Adler.

The malicious weight of the Gholaxas’s mind thundered into Grisham’s head once more. He’d been waiting for the attack and his defences were in place. The Gholaxas swept them aside with the same contemptuous ease as before.

I should’ve stayed below the parapet.

“The Gholaxas has vanished from our sensors!” yelled Lopez. “We’re not even picking up the light or heat from the plasma on its hull. I’ll see if we can detect any other energy readings.”

“Quickly!” said Grisham. He was weakened from his last duel with the Gholaxas and he wasn’t ready to draw pistols again.

“Missiles incoming,” said Bishop. “It looks like the Gholaxas is now able to target us.”

“Psionic: slow on enemy warheads.” said Deneuve in a split-second. “I’m holding from any further offensive psionics so we have something in reserve. Forward clusters one to three: targeted at enemy vessel and fired.”

Grisham could tell it wasn’t going to be enough. The Voltran had a single big hitter in its arsenal and that was the psionic amplification. With that bolt shot, and with the Gholaxas having soaked 216 warheads, the enemy now had the upper hand.

Where’s the damned Tuvandor?

“Missiles incoming,” said Bishop. “And another wave following straight after that one. I’ve placed the launch point as a marker on the tactical, along with a predicted heading for the enemy vessel.”

The pressure in Grisham’s head climbed until he thought his skull might explode. Such an outcome would have been a merciful relief, but he didn’t want to lose to the Gholaxas, so he did everything he could to resist the telepathic attack being directed at him. He wasn’t nearly strong enough.

I’m going to die.

In desperation, Grisham threw his mind into the grey. At once, the pain vanished, though he had no idea if he was capable of feeling pain when he was within the Voltran’s consciousness. Many of the souls here were dormant – only those from the newest mind were aware. Grisham sensed they had inherited the anger and the knowledge of the original mind. He wasn’t sure how - perhaps it had happened during the assimilation.

He gave the souls an instruction to hide the Voltran once more from the Gholaxas. Grisham hoped they would understand. Then, and with a feeling of dread, he withdrew and he found his attention once more on the bridge. The agony was gone, though Grisham didn’t know how long his respite would last.

“I’m back,” he said, his voice stronger than it had any right to be.

“I hadn’t noticed you were gone,” said Deneuve. She had a look of total focus and didn’t even glance across.

Judging by the feeds, Grisham thought he hadn’t been away for longer than three or four seconds. The Voltran’s starboard flank was burning furiously from missile detonations which must have happened while he was in the grey, and the warship was still on the same heading as before. Grisham immediately banked the warship to portside and the vessel raced towards an area of Eox-Eran that had suffered greatly from the impacting debris which had come down seven years ago when the planet was lost to the Ax’Kol.

“I instructed the Voltran’s new consciousness to conceal us from the Gholaxas,” said Grisham. “I don’t know if it’s going to work.”

“The enemy vessel hasn’t launched missiles at us in the last five seconds,” said Lopez.

“A psionic attack has struck Eox-Eran ten klicks off our stern,” said Bishop, a moment later.

Grisham saw the attack darken the moon’s surface and his heart jumped at the sight. Perhaps he and his crew might yet live long enough for the Tuvandor to join the fight.

A second psionic attack hit Eox-Eran and Grisham banked again, just as a third psionic turned a patch of stone into powder. Grisham changed course once more. A split-second later, the Voltran’s engines stuttered and then resumed.

“I think we got caught in the edge of a psionic: suppress, Captain,” said Adler.

The attack was too close for comfort and Grisham concentrated on piloting the Voltran as erratically as possible. He was also aware that the Tuvandor was closing in, and he didn’t want to make it hard for the Kijol to catch up. The Gholaxas wasn’t holding back any longer – if indeed it had ever been holding back – and the surface of the moon was struck time and again by psionics. Grisham was sure the enemy was discharging plenty of suppression attacks in with all the others, but so far, no more had struck the Voltran.

Although Grisham had been doing his best to hide himself from the Gholaxas’s mind, the enemy caught up with him. The hostile consciousness came crashing into his head, seeking to rip the life from him.

Grisham didn’t give it a chance. He entered the grey, where he discovered that the souls which had been sent into dormancy by the first psionic: suppress attack were now rousing themselves. They were sluggish, but their anger was driving them towards readiness. Grisham withdrew and the pain didn’t return.

Lieutenant Lopez yelled out some good news. “Here’s the Tuvandor!”

The Kijol battleship came low across the moon’s surface at an incredible velocity, and its nose section was burning a dull red from the atmospheric friction. Missiles spilled from the Tuvandor’s many clusters, while its Axar guns thumped back into their turrets with the force of recoil. Meanwhile, dozens of Dasor repeaters hurled countless slugs into what was an apparently empty area of space.

“Think you can hit that, Commander?” asked Grisham.

“Hell yes, sir,” said Deneuve.

“Then give it everything.”

The Gholaxas’s flight was as erratic as that of the Voltran, but the striking of the Tuvandor’s weaponry made the enemy craft easily targetable.

“Psionic: suppress on enemy warship,” said Deneuve. “Psionic: wither on enemy warship.”

Captain Riondalix was clearly in no mood for games and he aimed the Tuvandor directly at the burning flank of the Gholaxas. The Kijol battleship’s approach across the horizon had been at such a low altitude that the enemy mind had little time to react. The Gholaxas began accelerating diagonally away from the moon’s surface, launching missiles from its portside clusters as it did so. Grisham followed its progress by the streaks of Dasor fire, which adjusted to follow the enemy vessel’s climb through the atmosphere.

Then, the armour plating on more than half of the Eternus’s hull darkened and began to crumble. It happened in the blinking of an eye, and the disintegrating alloy began to leave a dense trail in the Tuvandor’s wake.

“The Tuvandor has been afflicted by a psionic: decay,” said Bishop.

Captain Riondalix held steady and the Eternus struck the Gholaxas, though all Grisham saw was the battleship’s velocity drop by three-quarters in an instant. The Tuvandor was the smaller of the two vessels, but it still possessed enormous mass and it was travelling fast. A moment after impact, the Gholaxas became visible again. The enemy vessel’s hull was visibly distorted and its damaged flank was crumpled inwards.

The Tuvandor hadn’t escaped unscathed. Its decay-weakened nose was compressed and flattened by the collision, and slabs of its armour burst away and were scattered all around. The Kijol vessel decelerated and a gap opened between the Eternus and the Gholaxas – which was still in motion.

“Hit the Gholaxas with another suppression!” shouted Grisham.

“Yes, sir. Psionic: suppress on enemy vessel. Topside clusters one to six: fired. Starboard clusters one to three: fired!”

“Give them another suppression!” said Grisham.

“Psionic: suppress on enemy vessel,” said Deneuve. “Starboard clusters four to six: fired.”

As she was speaking, the missiles from the Voltran’s topside salvo exploded against the Gholaxas’s ruined portside flank. Huge pieces of dark material were ripped out, to join the falling debris from the Kijol battleship.

Already, the Tuvandor was many kilometres from the enemy warship and the Eternus’s two operational Axar guns began firing once more. The Kijol battleship unleashed missiles and its Dasor guns continued their fusillade, though many of the turrets had been put out of action by the psionic: decay attack.

“Psionic: suppress on enemy vessel,” said Deneuve.

“The output from the Gholaxas’s hull dropped to zero and then recovered!” said Adler. “Its acceleration is decreasing. We’ve nearly got the bastard!”

Grisham felt the same, but he didn’t want to say it out loud. Watching the feeds, he saw the Tuvandor accelerating once more towards the Gholaxas. He knew what Captain Riondalix was planning.

“The Kijol are going to drop incendiaries,” said Grisham.

However, the enemy warship wasn’t quite done. Although the hull of the Gholaxas was in ruins, the mind within still retained enough strength to discharge another psionic: decay at the Tuvandor. This time, the darkening of the battleship’s armour extended almost as far as its rear section, and a slab of its portside armour – which must have weighed at least two billion tons – broke away with the force of the Eternus’s acceleration.

“That psionic: decay might have damaged the Tuvandor’s launch chutes,” said Lopez.

“Shit, I hope not,” said Kinsey.

“Psionic: suppress on enemy vessel,” said Deneuve.

“The Gholaxas’s hull output dropped to zero again!” said Adler.

As he listened to the updates, Grisham brought the Voltran around in a tight arc. The last suppression attack had shut down the Gholaxas’s propulsion and it was no longer climbing. Thirty thousand metres above Eox-Eran, the Ax’Kol warship began the long fall.

“Keep that vessel shut down, Commander,” said Grisham tightly.

“Yes, sir. Psionic: suppress on enemy vessel.”

The Tuvandor was clearly labouring from the effects of the two decay attacks, and Grisham remembered how the 10th Sector Fleet had been disabled by an incredible powerful Ax’Kol attack which had shut down their engines.

That attack definitely didn’t come from the Gholaxas.

It was a worrying confirmation of what Captain Riondalix had said earlier – Grisham had imagined the Gholaxas to be a primary member of the Ax’Kol fleet, and now it was clear that even two of its psionic: decay attacks weren’t enough to defeat a Kijol Eternus.

Grisham couldn’t afford to think about it right now. On the forward feed, he watched the Tuvandor fly over the top of the Gholaxas, so close that the two vessels were almost touching. Four huge grey cannisters tumbled from the underside of the Kijol battleship and landed on the enemy vessel’s topsides.

The incendiaries detonated all at once, and their flames raced around the Gholaxas with savage glee. In moments, the Ax’Kol warship was burning brighter and hotter than a star.

“Psionic: suppress on enemy vessel,” said Deneuve.

“The Gholaxas’s hull output remains at zero, Captain,” said Adler.

“Commander Deneuve, don’t let up,” said Grisham.

“No, sir.”

Though Grisham wasn’t ready to take even the slightest risk that might allow the mind on the Gholaxas to recover, he knew the battle was won.

The Ax’Kol vessel plummeted, trailing dark flames and smoke.

ELEVEN

It took a long time for the Gholaxas to come down. During the enemy vessel’s descent, Grisham kept the Voltran within ten thousand metres and matched velocity. Every few seconds, Commander Deneuve discharged a suppression attack, to keep the Ax’Kol mind locked down.

Not that it mattered – Grisham could sense that the control consciousness was now dying and he suspected that the trauma inflicted upon the Gholaxas’s hull was the cause of that happening. Nevertheless, he used his telepathy to keep checking, in case the enemy mind was able to recover. That mind continued to dwindle.

Meanwhile, continuing degradation of the Tuvandor’s propulsion had forced Captain Riondalix to set down on the moon’s surface. The Eternus sat alone on a rocky plain, its hull a patchwork of different greys, and with enormous sections of its armour missing. Grisham thought it a wonder the battleship had lasted long enough to dispense its incendiaries.

Since the Tuvandor had lost many of its sensor arrays, Lieutenant Bishop was keeping Captain Riondalix informed. The Kijol warship retained its comms capabilities and its crew had reported the defeat of the Gholaxas to their high command, and had also requested rescue.

When that rescue might come, Grisham didn’t know. If necessary, he planned to send shuttles from the Voltran to the moon’s surface, assuming the Kijol had a means to escape the stricken battleship.

Whatever the outcome, he wasn’t intending to bring the aliens onto the Voltran, even if that meant he had to leave the shuttles behind. The crew of the Tuvandor had fought well and the victory belonged equally to them, but that didn’t mean Grisham was about to invite them onto the most powerful warship in the Human Federation.

“The Gholaxas will impact in less than one minute,” said Lopez.

“It’s going to make a big mark,” said Grisham.

He extended his mind into the wreck of the Gholaxas again. The consciousness within it was gone.

“I have Captain Riondalix on the comms,” said Bishop.

“Put him on an open channel,” said Grisham, continuing to watch the enemy warship as it fell. It was still burning, though less fiercely than before, and it would crash into Eox-Eran a few hundred kilometres from the Tuvandor.

“Together, we have defeated the Gholaxas,” said Riondalix. “This is a great day – for both our species.”

Grisham was surprised at the openness. “You and your crew fought well,” he said. “Without the Tuvandor, the battle would have been lost.”

“And likewise without the Voltran,” said Riondalix.

“How long until your military sends a rescue vessel?” asked Grisham.

“The travel time of a comm from here to the nearest Kijol facility is nearly a day,” said Riondalix. “We have backup power for basic onboard systems. My crew and I will survive until we are rescued.”

Grisham took the words at face value and didn’t offer Riondalix the use of the Voltran’s shuttles. “The Gholaxas is about to impact,” he said.

“I wish I could witness it happen,” said Riondalix. “That vessel is responsible for much death.”

“And now it’s coming down in flames,” said Grisham.

He cut the channel and watched the feeds. The Gholaxas hit the ground in the middle of an area already pocked by craters from smaller pieces of warship debris. A new crater appeared, dwarfing all the others, and shockwave rippled outwards, lifting the moon’s rocky surface in an ever-expanding ring around the impact zone. Cracks appeared in the stone and they zig-zagged away from the wreck of the Ax’Kol warship.

For a time, Grisham could only stare.

“We did it folks,” he said at last. “This is the best result we could have asked for.”

“That it is,” said Adler, sounding more relieved than anything else. “Another tough opponent bites the dust.”

“When we return home, let’s have a drink to this moment,” said Grisham, nodding.

“The chance would be a fine thing,” laughed Adler.

“Are we heading back to base now?” asked Deneuve. “If so, maybe we should send a few more missiles into what’s left of the Gholaxas first. Just to be sure.”

The question was a reminder that this one victory didn’t mean the war was over. Now that the Ax’Kol had located Loxor, there was more fighting on the horizon.

Grisham’s enjoyment of the moment evaporated.

“Sorry, Captain,” said Deneuve when she saw his expression change.

“I can’t escape reality, Commander. We’ve finished one job, but there’ll always be another. Give me a moment.”

Grisham fell quiet, in order to think. With the adrenaline subsiding and the demands of combat gone, he became once more aware of the buzzing, whispering sound he’d sensed when the Voltran had first exited lightspeed at Eox. That buzzing had given warning – perhaps not aimed directly at him – about the Gholaxas. Grisham felt a renewed curiosity.

Using his telepathic ability, he tried to pinpoint the source of the sound. This time, Grisham didn’t attempt to expand the volume of his search, rather, he left the subconscious part of his brain in control.

“Lieutenant Lopez, please speak to someone on the Tuvandor and request whatever data they hold on the other planets in this solar system,” he said. “I don’t see a reason they’d want to deny us access to it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lopez. A couple of minutes later, she announced her success. “I have the data, Captain. I’ve added it to the Voltran’s memories.”

“Thank you,” said Grisham.

He called up the 3D model of the solar system. The Kijol had named the central star Terrivos, and it was orbited by fifteen planets, of which Eox was the fifth. Grisham extended his telepathy again. The buzzing was coming from the fourth planet – Hevos - which was currently a quarter of the way around the star.

“What’s got you interested, Captain?” asked Deneuve.

“Do you remember me telling you about that whispering sound earlier?”

“The whispering that nobody else could hear?”

“That’s the one,” said Grisham. “When the Gholaxas exited lightspeed, the whispering became agitated – that’s what made me believe the enemy vessel had arrived at Eox.”

“I’d been meaning to ask you about that,” said Deneuve.

“The source of the sound is the fourth planet,” said Grisham. “I need to check out the rest of the files the Tuvandor sent us.”

The Kijol had provided comprehensive details about the Terrivos solar system and Grisham skimmed through the data.

“There used to be life on Hevos, hundreds of millions of years ago,” he said. “Kijol archaeologists studied the remains.”

“What did they learn?” asked Deneuve.

“We asked for data on the Terrivos system and that’s what we got,” said Grisham. “The files are light on details about archaeological digs and past alien civilisations.”

“Should I speak to the Tuvandor’s comms team again and obtain that information, Captain?” asked Lopez.

“Yes, please.”

“The Tuvandor has no further files on the subject in its databanks,” said Lopez a short time later.

“Maybe we should pay Hevos a visit,” said Grisham.

“What are you hoping to find, Captain?” asked Deneuve.

Grisham shook his head slowly, not quite sure of the answer. “There’s something on that planet,” he said. “It detected the Gholaxas and it sent out an alarm.”

“I’m not sure I want to think too hard about what that might mean,” said Bishop.

“Or where it’ll lead,” added Kinsey.

Deneuve looked pained. “Maybe we should head straight for home, sir.”

“Is that a recommendation, Commander?”

Deneuve was clearly torn and she chewed her lip for a moment. “If the source of this whispering knew about the Gholaxas, I guess we should find out what we can about it.”

“I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do,” Grisham admitted. “But we’ve only beaten a single Ax’Kol warship today, albeit one the enemy will rue losing. I don’t think we can afford to miss a potential opportunity to learn more about our opponents. We might be wasting our time, but I still think we should check it out.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Deneuve.

“Should I inform the Tuvandor of our intended destination and purpose?” asked Lopez.

“No,” said Grisham. He didn’t want the hassle of dealing with a Kijol objection to his plans. “Let Captain Riondalix know we are departing from Eox-Eran. Give him no further information. And when we arrive at Hevos, I want our comms receptors hidden – just in case the Kijol decide to run a sweep.”

“Yes, Captain,” said Lopez. A short time later, she raised a thumb. “The message is conveyed.”

“Lieutenant Adler, ready the Voltran for lightspeed,” said Grisham. “We’re going to Hevos – aim for a hundred thousand klicks above the planet’s surface.”

“Yes, sir,” said Adler. “The warmup has commenced. We’ll be on our way in three minutes.”

Grisham nodded his acknowledgment. His attention was back on the feeds. The fires on the Gholaxas’s hull were finally dying out, though the smoke hadn’t lessened. A greasy pall hung low to the ground and drifted slowly away from the wreckage.

Extending his telepathic power, Grisham checked again for the consciousness within the Gholaxas. He found no sign of it and he was glad it was gone. The memory of the pain he’d suffered lingered.

The Voltran entered lightspeed. On its current orbital track position, Hevos was a few hundred million kilometres from Eox, but the journey was completed in the blinking of an eye. The warship’s sensors went offline for a moment and then they started gathering a feed again.

“Commencing local area scans,” said Bishop.

Grisham acknowledged. The whispering in his brain was no more forceful than before, but he knew the source of it was much closer. He listened to it in his head. The agitation from earlier was gone, and now he was certain the whispering was not aimed at him. He was also passably sure the source wasn’t aware of him.

“I’ve obtained a lock on the planet, Captain,” said Lopez.

“Let’s see what we have,” said Grisham, accessing the feed.

Hevos was a deep, rich red in colour, with streaks of yellow and grey. Its surface was parched and the sensor readings indicated the temperatures were too high to support life. A few hundred million years ago, it was a different story, according to the Kijol’s analysis of the local star. Way back then, Terrivos was smaller and the temperatures on Hevos would have been many degrees lower. The planet would have been hot, but not so much that life could not exist.

“The data from the Tuvandor says little about the excavations the Kijol undertook on the planet,” said Lopez. “Maybe they aren’t particularly interested in archaeology.”

“Too busy designing spaceships and weapons,” grunted Adler.

“Local area scans complete, with nothing to report, Captain,” said Bishop.

“We’re at a hundred-thousand-klick distance from Hevos,” said Grisham, acknowledging the completion of the area scan with a nod in Bishop’s direction. “We should be able to spot any major surface works from here.”

“There are no significant atmospheric conditions on the planet,” said Lopez. “Hopefully it won’t take too long to scan the visible side.”

“Can you sense the source of the noise, Captain?” asked Deneuve. “Maybe you can narrow down the search area.”

Grisham felt out for the whispering. “It’s coming from this side of Hevos,” he said. He tried concentrating – without actually concentrating – and his telepathy identified an area that was in the middle of a wide belt of yellow that went across the centre of the planet. “I’ve added a marker to the tactical. Scan there.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bishop. He was quiet for less than five seconds. “Found something!”

“Show me,” said Grisham, switching feeds.

What he saw was an area in which there were a few dozen large grey shapes, with many smaller grey shapes scattered among them.

“A few seconds and the enhancement will be complete, Captain,” said Bishop.

The feed abruptly snapped into focus. The larger grey shapes were prefabs of a type that both the Kijol and the Human Federation deployed on planets everywhere. Vehicles of varying types were parked in between the prefabs, and they were all motionless.

Grisham aimed the sensor array a few hundred metres north and zoomed out a fraction. “Ruins,” he said. “A city.”

The ruins were of yellow stone and they continued north of the Kijol structures for more than two kilometres, until they came to the sheer face of a cliff which ran east to west for about two thousand metres. The cliff line was peculiarly straight, as if it had been modified to be so. Into the face, what looked like pillars had been carved, and dark entrances led into the rock.

“Is this the place, Captain?” asked Deneuve.

“I reckon,” said Grisham.

“You’re going to jump in one the Voltran’s shuttles and head down there,” said Deneuve flatly.

“That I am, Commander,” Grisham replied. “But first, we’re going to take a closer look from the Voltran.”

He instructed the warship to accelerate and it sped across the vacuum, directly towards Hevos. Grisham briefly entered the grey, to find out of any of the souls recognized this place. They did not, and neither were they agitated. In fact, they didn’t seem at all aware of the telepathic voice which was coming from the planet.

Grisham didn’t know if he should be concerned or reassured. It didn’t much matter. He had to find the source of the whispering. Maybe it was important and maybe it wasn’t, but regardless, Grisham felt an irresistible pull towards Hevos.

He had to know.

TWELVE

Grisham brought the Voltran to a halt at a ten-thousand-kilometre altitude. Lieutenant Bishop completed another area scan, while Lieutenant Lopez politely informed Sergeant Maxwell that he should get his ass to the shuttle, and take his squad with him.

The reduced distance to Hevos improved the quality of the feed, but not by much. Grisham spent a couple of minutes looking at the excavation works and at the old ruins. Nothing new materialised.

“You have the Voltran, Commander,” said Grisham. “Don’t break it. I’ll be back soon.”

He exited the bridge and sprinted for the shuttle. The Voltran hadn’t lost its scents of decay and mustiness, but Grisham hardly noticed them anymore.

It didn’t take long to reach the shuttle bay. The side door of the transport was open and the wan blue light from its interior hardly dispelled the deeper gloom of the bay.

Private Logan and Private Lyles were standing on the platform outside the entrance door.

“What took you so long, Captain?” asked Lyles. She thumbed over her shoulder into the transport’s airlock. “Everyone’s inside and we’re ready to go.”

Grisham smiled. It wasn’t so long ago that Lyles would have been uncomfortable in his presence. Now, she was joking with him.

“Thank you, Private,” he said. “I had some jobs to do first.”

Soon, Grisham was in the shuttle’s cockpit. Sergeant Maxwell was standing at the right-hand interface post and Corporal Ralf Barkley was at the left. Their gauss rifles lay at their feet, and Barkley’s comms booster pack was propped up against the portside wall.

“What’s the mission, Captain?” asked Maxwell.

“This’ll be an easy one, Sergeant.”

“I’ve heard that one before, sir,” said Barkley.

“We’re going to search some ruins,” said Grisham. “There’s no reason to think we’re going to run into hostiles.”

He didn’t need an interface post to create a link to the shuttle, but he stood at the centre one anyway. Without delay, Grisham commanded the vessel to launch, and it accelerated along the exit tunnel which led through the Voltran’s hull.

The transport was ejected into space and Grisham got his bearings. Once he had the shuttle on its way towards Hevos, he explained what he was looking for on the planet, and he also filled the soldiers in on the details of the recent combat with the Gholaxas.

“We took out a big hitter in the enemy fleet,” said Barkley. “But it still sucks about Loxor.”

Including acceleration and deceleration, the journey time to the planet’s surface was ten minutes, give or take. Once the shuttle had achieved its twenty-one-kilometres-per-second maximum velocity, Grisham let it coast, while he kept an eye on the sensor feeds.

Not for the first time, he wondered if this was the right move given the recent Ax’Kol discovery of Loxor. Grisham remained conflicted, but he’d long ago learned that sometimes there was no right answer. On those occasions it was best to commit, and to forget about the unchosen alternative. His thoughts settled, though he was determined to finish up here on Hevos as quickly as possible.

A couple of minutes after the shuttle’s launch, the Voltran went racing past at five hundred kilometres per second.

“Commander Deneuve would prefer to be closer to the planet,” said Barkley, after he’d listened to the comms. “I guess she doesn’t trust us to stay safe.”

Grisham could have piloted the warship nearer to Hevos himself, but he wasn’t too bothered about the two or three wasted minutes. He’d needed some time to think, though so far that thinking hadn’t achieved much.

“What’s our target landing area, Captain?” asked Maxwell.

“There’s an open area south of the main cliff face,” said Grisham. “We’re going to set down between the buildings there.” The proposed landing area was surrounded by ancient structures, and might have once been a plaza.

“And we’re heading into the cliffs?” asked Maxwell.

Grisham extended his mind again. The source of the whispering was somewhere underground. “Yes, that’s where we’re going, Sergeant.”

The shuttle approached the planet’s dense atmosphere of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide, and went past the Voltran, which Deneuve had parked at a one-hundred-kilometre altitude. Grisham reduced velocity. It wasn’t that the transport would burn up, but he wanted to take a measured approach, in case something unexpected happened at the last moment, though he couldn’t imagine any occurrence that the Voltran was incapable of handling.

Steadily, the transport descended towards the surface. Grisham judged it was mid-day on this side of Hevos and the sky was a beautiful, pristine blue. At this altitude the air temperature was low, but he reckoned the heat would be blistering on the ground.

“There’s more than enough room for this shuttle to land in that plaza,” Barkley confirmed. “And from there, it’s about eight hundred metres to the cliff.”

Grisham was feeling a sense of nervous excitement. This was a welcome and unexpected break from war – it was a discovery of long-dead species, and he was looking forward to feeling the age of this ancient city from ground level.

“The Kijol left plenty of their crap here,” said Maxwell. “I wonder if they abandoned Hevos before or after the Ax’Kol came for Eox.”

Grisham didn’t speculate and he guided the shuttle towards his chosen landing place. The plaza was square and a hundred metres on each side. Rubble and sand covered the ground, but it was nothing that would impede the landing.

Less than a minute later, the shuttle’s underside crunched down onto the yellow stone of the plaza.

“Time to move,” said Grisham.

He let Maxwell go first into the passenger compartment, and waited a few seconds while Corporal Barkley updated the Voltran. Then, Grisham exited the cockpit, where he found Maxwell standing at the side door, with his hand near the activation area. The soldiers were ready and waiting.

“Let’s go, Sergeant,” said Grisham.

Maxwell nodded and opened the exit door. Bright light flooded into the passenger area and the visor on Grisham’s suit helmet dimmed automatically. Searingly hot air followed the light and the readout on his HUD indicated it was 160 degrees Celsius outside. It was hard for life to exist on a world where all the water evaporated, and changes in the Terrivos star had wiped out the species on Hevos before they’d discovered the secrets of space flight. In fact, the planet’s inhabitants had seemingly been millennia from achieving that level of technological advancement.

One by one, the soldiers jumped out of the shuttle’s flank door onto the ground outside. Maxwell was already sprinting for a gap between the northernmost ruins, with Private Olivia Diaz and Private Danny Chau following.

It was a metre-and-a-half to the ground and Grisham dropped down carefully. The sand made a thicker coating than he’d imagined, and the broken pieces of stone were liberally strewn. No wind blew and the sun beat down, a distant and uncaring circle in the sky which had once enabled life and had then eradicated it.

A couple of the soldiers were hunkered down near the shuttle’s flank, their eyes watching the surroundings. There wasn’t much need for the careful approach, but Grisham knew they were doing this more because it was ingrained than because they were expecting trouble.

As he set off to the northern end of the plaza, Grisham looked around at this alien city. The walls he’d seen from above were made from metre-long blocks and they’d survived the aeons surprisingly well. Many had collapsed, but others, while badly eroded, were still standing. The highest walls were no more than four metres and Grisham didn’t feel enclosed.

However, the sheer face of the cliff was a different matter. It loomed over the city, rising to nearly a thousand metres. Even from here, Grisham could see that stoneworkers had made significant alterations to the original face.

Grisham joined Maxwell in a narrow alley – hardly more than three metres wide - that wended its way north out of sight. The walls were crooked and looked unstable, and many blocks had fallen onto the sandy ground.

Once he was content with the organisation of his squad, Maxwell set off north. He didn’t hurry, nor did he go as slowly as Grisham would have liked. The soldiers were wary.

Maybe they’re sensing something I’m not.

The thought made Grisham reconsider his own relatively relaxed feelings. These were experienced troops and if they’d got wind of something they didn’t like, then he should take notice.

Through the streets they advanced, in a line with Grisham behind Maxwell, Diaz and Chau. At every intersection, Maxwell raised a hand to bring the line to a halt. He would check carefully in both directions and then order a resumption.

Grisham badly wanted to explore, but he refrained from imposing his wishes. Once he’d discovered the source of the whispering, he hoped to have a look around, even if it was only for an hour, though with the threat hanging over Loxor, he suspected he wouldn’t be able to justify any delay.

Each time the squad passed a doorway – their doors long gone, if indeed they had ever possessed them – Grisham peered inside, hoping to gain some insight into the species which had once lived here. Many of the roofs were collapsed, but some had survived, and those buildings were in darkness.

Approximately halfway to the cliff face, the squad passed one of the larger buildings. It was single storey like most of the others and the side wall had collapsed, revealing the layout of the interior. A couple of rooms were separated by a rough stone wall and the floor was littered with pieces of other stone - this being a grey colour instead of yellow.

“Interested in all this alien crap, are you, sir?” asked Private Lyles.

Grisham turned, ready to offer a lecture on the wonders of knowledge, but he saw that Lyles was grinning. He shook his head and pressed on after Chau.

Although the twists and turns of the alley limited the ground-level view of what lay ahead, the cliff face towered above everything, yet without seeming to come any closer. Grisham saw carved pillars and other etchings on the rock.

At last, the squad emerged from the ruins. A gap of ten metres separated the buildings from the cliff face and the intervening area was covered in sand and broken blocks. A few pieces of Kijol tech – including a couple of gravity cars and a strange-looking vehicle that resembled a cross between an excavator and a crane – had been left behind. The vehicles were still operational, and they floated a metre above the sand.

Grisham turned his attention to the cliff. The pillars he’d seen earlier were unadorned – or perhaps the passage of time had seen their carvings eroded to nothing - and they went all the way to the top of the cliff, a thousand metres above. Grisham counted thirty of these pillars in total, evenly spaced along the two-thousand-metre width of the cliff face.

In the same way as the pillars, the etchings he’d noticed on the approach had degraded badly. Once, they must have been intricate and wonderful, and, like the pillars, they went all the way to the clifftop. No matter how hard Grisham squinted, he couldn’t figure out what the carvings had once represented.

“Doorways,” said Maxwell. He was staring directly at the cliff and his top lip was curled, as if he didn’t much like what he was seeing. “Three of them.”

The doorways were huge – at least thirty metres high and ten metres wide – and they had arches at the top. They showed no sign of collapse, which was either a testament to the skill of the stonemasons, or a reflection on the hardiness of the stone and the favourable weather conditions that kept erosion to a minimum.

Tunnels led from the doorways and vanished into darkness. Grisham was opposite the central opening and, even though he tried, he was unable to see anything of what lay beyond.

“This is the place, huh?” said Private Lowe, leaning against his rocket launcher like he thought it made him look cool.

“Be quiet,” said Maxwell irritably. He turned to face Grisham. “Which one of the three, Captain?”

Grisham searched once again for the source of the whispering. Now, he could feel its proximity. “It’s underground somewhere beneath that cliff, Sergeant, and it isn’t too far,” he said. “Let’s take the middle entrance.”

“Yes, sir,” said Maxwell. He gave the order to his squad, spun on his heel, and strode towards the cliff, his feet leaving deep prints in the sand.

Grisham caught up and walked alongside the other man. The footing was loose and he was hot, even though his combat suit kept him protected from the sun’s glare. He was sure there was nothing hostile on this dead world, though he was no closer to guessing what he might find beneath the cliff.

Secrets lay beyond the doorway, and Grisham’s sense of nervous excitement rose.

THIRTEEN

A connection was made to the comms unit in Grisham’s suit.

“When you’re underground, we’ll still be able to speak with you, but the Voltran won’t be able to offer any protection, sir,” said Lopez as a warning.

“I understand, Lieutenant.” Grisham looked up at the archway. From his position right in front of the entrance, the opening seemed much larger than it had from the edge of the ruins. “Leave this channel open.”

“Yes, sir. Commander Deneuve is bringing the Voltran in closer.”

“Understood.”

The tunnels beyond the doorway cut die-straight into the rock. Sand was piled up on one side of the passage, but the quantity of it lessened only a few metres inside. Otherwise, the floor was clear and smooth, as were the walls.

“I think this tunnel opens out after a couple of hundred metres,” said Maxwell, peering into the darkness, and no doubt trying out the enhancements offered by the sensor in his combat helmet.

“Let’s get inside,” said Grisham.

It suddenly struck him how quiet it was. Aside from the limited talking on the comms, there was no sound whatsoever. Grisham took one last look into the sky, imagining the Voltran somewhere up in the heavens, its sensors focused on the squad, and then he entered the passage with Sergeant Maxwell alongside.

“Helmet lights on,” said Maxwell.

Grisham activated his flashlight and the beam stabbed into the darkness ahead. Lights from the other soldiers added to his own, though they didn’t reach to the end of the passage. Memories of Ovintus jumped into Grisham’s head – of the desperate efforts to escape both the Kijol and the Ax’Kol, in the never-ending darkness.

Fifty paces in, the silence had become oppressive, rather than simply an absence of noise, and a few of the soldiers began to mutter nervous wisecracks on the squad comms. Maxwell didn’t shut them down – a sure sign he was feeling the same as they were.

Already, the temperature was much lower than its outside peak, though the air was just as dry. Grisham breathed in slowly through his nose, but he couldn’t detect any particular smell. Certainly, he could sense the age of the place, even more keenly than he had in the ruined city outside.

Two hundred metres along, the squad entered a cavernous space, supported by pillars. The far wall wasn’t visible, nor were those at the sides. Grisham was sure the other two entrances in the cliff face emerged into this same huge room, though he couldn’t see far enough to be sure.

He shone his light around and saw more abandoned Kijol tech. A console with a metre-high top-mounted hopper – doubtless used for materials analysis – was on the floor about twenty metres away, and a compact gravity car was parked next to it. Both looked old, though Grisham couldn’t accurately date them. A couple of metal boxes were on the far side of the console.

Grisham turned his flashlight upwards, and the beam slid across carvings on a high, arched ceiling. Turning, he saw that the walls were similarly decorated and he headed left to take a closer look at the nearest carvings.

Whatever mind these images had spilled from, it had inhabited a being that was probably better off dead. Creatures with evil faces – sharp teeth, narrowed eyes, spines, flared nostrils, leering expressions – were carved into the rock with such twisted genius that they appeared entirely lifelike and utterly chilling at the same time. They were everywhere, large and small, and with an infinite variety of designs. Grisham swept his light beam all around him and couldn’t see a single repetition.

“What the hell?” said Private Diaz. She was standing nearby, her rifle trained deeper into the room, and her head turned to look at the images. “This is—” She didn’t finish the sentence, and shook her head.

“Yeah,” said Grisham.

“I can’t see the other side of this room, Captain,” said Maxwell on the comms. He’d advanced thirty metres and was standing next to one of the pillars, his flashlight aimed north. “There’s some more Kijol tech – another console and maybe a stack of crates.”

Grisham turned away from the carvings and went to stand beside Maxwell. He saw the Kijol tech, but nothing else of interest. “Come on, Sergeant,” he said, setting off deeper into the room.

“Sir, we should be careful,” Maxwell warned.

“Understood,” said Grisham. He was certain there were no threats here, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. “We’re the first humans to see this, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir,” said Maxwell, waving with his free hand to indicate where he wanted the soldiers. The squad followed in a loose formation, with three metres between each.

Grisham diverted slightly towards the Kijol console which Maxwell had first spotted. The hardware looked even older from up close, and it was powered off. For no reason in particular, Grisham pushed a couple of buttons to see if he could bring it to life.

“Its power supply must be depleted,” he said, stepping across to the grey metal crates nearby.

These crates were of various sizes, from a metre cubed, to half a metre cubed, along with one which was cuboid in shape. All told, there were a dozen. They were closed and their security access panels were unlit. Grisham tugged at the lid of the nearest crate, this being one of the larger types. To his surprise, it opened, and he shone his light inside. A layer of dense foam had been placed on top of the contents, presumably to keep them safe during transit, and he lifted it away.

For a moment, Grisham stared. “Sergeant, take a look at this.”

Maxwell came to stand alongside. “Well, shit,” he said.

“My thoughts exactly,” said Grisham.

Lying in the crate, face up, was a carved statue. The creature it depicted was hunched and its head was bowed. Its shoulders were broad, its arms and legs were long. An oval face, smooth and without features, seemed to Grisham as if it were staring directly at him.

“What is it, Sergeant?” asked Corporal Arie Fine.

“It’s not quite an Ax’Kol,” said Maxwell. “It’s different, but not by much.”

He stepped aside and indicated to the soldiers that they could take a look into the crate. A few of them swore, while the others were silent.

“The Kijol told you the species that lived on Hevos died a long time ago, Captain?” said Maxwell.

“Hundreds of millions of years in the past,” said Grisham. He couldn’t take his eyes off the statue. Like Maxwell had said, it wasn’t quite Ax’Kol, but the similarities were unmistakeable. There’d been a long time for the enemy to evolve since this statue was carved.

Or perhaps it’s all a coincidence.

Except it wasn’t. The Kijol believed the Ax’Kol had wiped out the species living on planet Eivomon, and then there was the statue on Ovintus. Different species, their existences separated by hundreds of millions of years, and all killed by the Ax’Kol. Grisham’s felt momentarily light-headed, and he sucked air into his lungs.

“This is…awful,” was all he could think of to say.

“Let’s do what we came here to do, Captain,” said Maxwell. His expression indicated he no longer wanted to be here. “Then we can return to the Voltran.”

Grisham closed the lid on the crate. “One moment, Sergeant,” he said, stepping across to a second crate.

The lid on this one was locked, so he tried a third. This time, Grisham was able to open the crate, and he lifted the protective foam from the top. Inside, he found some broken pieces of stone. Maybe they’d combine into a pot or a plate or something, but he wasn’t interested and closed the crate once more.

“Are you done, sir?” asked Maxwell.

“Yes.”

Without a further word, Grisham strode north across the room. His head was filled with thoughts, most of them bad. Soon, the far wall of the room came within the extents of the light and Grisham noticed at once that the carvings continued here as well. This must have been a lifetime’s work, but at least it had lasted.

“Another passage,” said Grisham, spotting a darker area in the gloom.

His pace quickened and he came to an opening, this one being only five metres high and three wide, though with the same arch as the much larger entrances in the cliff face outside. Grisham shone his flashlight along the wall in both directions, but he couldn’t see any other passages. Given the size of the place, he was sure there’d be more, but this one was here, in front of him.

“Along this way, Captain?” asked Maxwell.

“Yes,” said Grisham. “The source isn’t far, but it’s below here – maybe two or three hundred metres below.”

“Then let’s find a way down.”

Grisham set off into the passage, having indicated that Maxwell should walk alongside. The far end wasn’t visible, and the light interfered with the night vision on Grisham’s helmet. His confidence in that technology had taken a knock after Ovintus, and more recently, his time on Sagitol, where he’d been hunted by an Ax’Kol in the total darkness of an abandoned research station.

The passage was as long as the one leading from the outside to the huge room, but soon, Grisham entered another space, this one about twenty metres by ten, with a five-metre ceiling supported by three pillars. No carvings adorned the walls, and the stone had been cut smooth. Exits led east and west, and two were visible to the north.

Grisham advanced across the room and discovered that one of the northern exits was, in fact, a stairwell. He peered down. The steps were high and steep and they were narrow so that a descent would be single file only. After about twenty metres, the steps ended at a landing, at which Grisham was sure the steps switched back and continued down.

Meanwhile, the rest of the soldiers were investigating the other exits. They led to corridors, with suggestions of distant rooms.

“This must have been a religious place,” said Private Vaughan. “Like a big church, but for aliens.”

“I wonder if they worshipped the Ax’Kol,” said Lowe.

“Why the hell would anyone want to worship the Ax’Kol?” asked Diaz.

“Beats me,” said Lowe with a shrug. “But I’ve heard of stranger things.”

Grisham wondered if the soldiers had stumbled upon a theory that might perhaps contain elements of truth. He desperately wanted to know more about the history of this place, but the planet’s inhabitants had died so long ago, and all they’d left behind was stone.

“I should go first, Captain,” said Maxwell, leaving the choice to Grisham.

“No, let me, Sergeant.”

Grisham slung his rifle so that he’d have both hands free and began his descent. It was steeper than he’d first realised and he turned partly sideways which made the steps easier. Even so, he was conscious that a single error leading to a fall would likely see him badly injured.

“Wait until we’re at the landing,” said Maxwell to the rest of the soldiers. He came after Grisham, clearly aware of the danger, but not so much that was willing to delay his own descent.

The lower landing was not spacious and a second set of steps continued down. When he glanced at the temperature readout on his HUD, Grisham was suddenly aware of how cold it was compared to outside.

As soon as Maxwell joined him on the landing, Grisham resumed his descent towards a second landing. After that was a third and then a fourth. The steps kept on going. Just when Grisham was cursing the alien species which had lived here on Hevos, the stairs ended and he joined a wide passage with a low ceiling. The floor was damp and moisture clung to the walls. West, the passage vanished into the darkness, while to the east, Grisham caught sense of another vast space, not too far away.

Maxwell exited the stairwell, looked around briefly and then turned back to the stairwell. He checked on the progress of the soldiers and then offered Grisham his full attention.

“This place might be as big as the underground areas of the Ovintus facility, Captain.”

“I reckon it’s bigger,” said Grisham. “Imagine if you were a species living on this planet and its sun started getting hotter and hotter – a process that took millions of years. Once you’d discovered that you couldn’t outrun the rising temperatures, maybe you’d start living under the ground. Think of how much effort you’d put into digging if you knew your species would become extinct if you didn’t do something about it.”

“There’s water here,” said Maxwell. “But no light.”

“There are crops that will grow in artificial light,” said Grisham. “That means food.”

“But everyone here died, Captain.”

“That they did, Sergeant. This planet must have an interesting past and I wonder if it was the Ax’Kol, not the changing sun, that brought it all to an end.”

Maxwell looked like he might like to talk longer about the subject, but he clearly wanted to be out of here more. “Which way are we going, sir?”

“The source is straight ahead of us,” said Grisham, pointing at the wall opposite. “Since there’s no passage that way, let’s head east.”

By this moment, the soldiers had finished their descent of the stairs and they waited for orders. Grisham strode east. After a couple of hundred metres, the passage ended at a vast space, with a vaulted ceiling that was high above. Dozens of pillars were visible in the light of the soldiers’ flashlight beams, but the darkness continued on, perhaps much farther.

Stone steps went north from the passage exit and they descended ten metres to a moss-covered stone walkway that ran around the room’s perimeter. Water glinted somewhere many metres below the walkway.

“A reservoir,” said Grisham.

“I can’t see any other exits,” said Maxwell, aiming his light towards a northern wall which was only dimly visible. “Maybe we should head back and try going west.”

“Let’s take a look here first,” said Grisham.

He climbed the steps carefully, since they were coated in green moss like the walkway. The treads weren’t too slippery and he made it to the bottom. Grisham took a few steps away to make room, his eyes following the north wall as he did so. He thought he spotted more steps that way.

When the soldiers had joined him on the walkway, Grisham headed north. He found this underground place fascinating, but frustration was beginning to creep in. The source of the whispering was somewhere down here, and now, he just wanted to find it and return to the surface.

FOURTEEN

The underground reservoir was massive and, when he reached the top of the northern steps, Grisham still couldn’t see the eastern wall of the place. He could scarcely comprehend the centuries of effort it must have taken for a primitive species like the one living here on Hevos to have excavated so much rock.

A passage led north and, when Grisham paused, he sensed the source of the whispering was to the north-west. He set off, with his flashlight illuminating the damp floor. The squad channel was quiet, as if the soldiers were feeling the weight not only of the stone above them, but the years as well.

Two hundred metres from the reservoir, Grisham came to a stack of three Kijol storage crates against the left-hand wall. He attempted to open the lid of the top one, but it was locked.

A short distance farther, a branching passage went west. This passage was low-ceilinged and claustrophobically narrow, and the stone was roughly-chiselled. A thin layer of water covered the floor and the lower half of the walls were damp.

“The source is along here,” Grisham said.

“It’s tight,” Maxwell grunted. “Like they dug this one out last.”

Grisham ran his fingers over the rock, but he got no feeling of anything from it. With a mental shrug, he stepped towards the passage. Then, the comms link light to the Voltran winked out on his HUD. Grisham stopped and requested a new channel to the warship. The request went unanswered.

He went stock still and listened to the background whispering. It was once again agitated, in the same way as he remembered at Eox.

“What’s wrong, Captain?” asked Maxwell.

Grisham didn’t answer the question directly. “Corporal Barkley, use your booster pack to request a link to the Voltran,” he said, trying to quell the sudden fear which gripped him.

“Yes, sir,” said Barkley. “There’s no response,” he concluded after a few seconds.

“I thought the Voltran’s comms were able to—” Chau began.

“They are,” said Grisham. He considered punching the wall. “Shit.”

“Captain, what is it?” Maxwell repeated, more urgently this time.

“I think an Ax’Kol warship has arrived somewhere near Hevos.”

“Damnit!” said Maxwell. “And if the Voltran has gone off-comms—”

“Yes,” said Grisham. “The warship might have been knocked out.”

“I could order Corporal Fine and Private Diaz to return to the surface,” said Maxwell. “Maybe there’s a different explanation – maybe a property of this rock is able to block even the Voltran’s comms.”

Grisham wanted to believe, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel even the slightest hope. He cursed again. “We’re near the source and we’re going to finish what we started,” he said. “And we’re going to stick together.”

Having made up his mind, Grisham entered the passage and hurried west, his feet splashing in the water. It wasn’t so narrow that he had to walk sideways, but it wasn’t far off. Sergeant Maxwell was a few inches broader across the shoulders and his combat suit scraped against the rock with each stride.

As he advanced, Grisham asked himself what might have happened to the Voltran. The warship wasn’t vulnerable to the smaller Ax’Kol vessels, and that meant it had encountered something of far greater power than a mere cruiser, or even another Indredalus.

Grisham didn’t much enjoy guessing games and he called a mental halt to this one. A hundred metres along the passage, his light shone into a larger space ahead. The confines made it hard for him to move faster without risking damage to his equipment, so he maintained his pace, as frustrating as that was.

Soon, Grisham entered a chamber that was ten metres along each wall and with a five-metre ceiling, supported by four narrow pillars that were a couple of metres in from the corners. A single exit led through the opposite wall, and that passage was wider than the one by which he’d arrived. Stone dust covered the floor.

Grisham looked around.

Ledges – each five metres long and about twelve inches deep – had been carved into the north and south walls of the room. Nothing stood upon these ledges. In the centre of the room were more Kijol storage crates, these being cubes measuring about fifteen inches. Grisham reckoned there were twenty or thirty crates in all, and some of them were open.

“What is this place?” asked Maxwell, his face set in a grimace, as if there was something about the room he didn’t like.

“I don’t know,” said Grisham, approaching the crates.

The source was here, he could feel it. He stopped at the nearest open crate and removed the layer of protective foam. Inside, was a statue, which he lifted out in order to see it better. This statue was primitive – nothing at all like the carvings back in the entrance – and it resembled a badly-hewn humanoid figure. It wasn’t the source, and Grisham returned it to the crate.

Inside the next container, he located another statue. Again, it was of a humanoid and it had no particular similarities to an Ax’Kol or anything else that Grisham recognised. This one too, he returned to its crate.

“The Kijol archaeologists were in the process of shipping this stuff out,” said Corporal Fine. “They didn’t finish the job.”

“I reckon this room was once sealed off,” said Corporal Barkley. “This passage we came along looks different to the others, and that tunnel opposite was made by the Kijol. Or that’s what I think, anyway.”

Grisham was only half listening, but he thought that maybe Barkley was on to something. Even if the ancient species living on Hevos had thought they’d hidden this room completely, modern sounding equipment would have located it easily enough.

He looked inside a third crate and found an artifact that looked somewhat akin to a stone tree. Although these finds were interesting enough, Grisham didn’t want to search through every container – not with the pressing matter of the comms link failure – so he reached out with his mind.

“This one,” Grisham muttered, crouching next to a crate that looked no different to any of the others.

Before he could lift the lid, he felt a sudden shaking beneath his feet. Grisham looked around in alarm and the shaking intensified, forcing him to rise from his crouch in order to keep his balance. For long moments, the quaking continued and he watched the roof anxiously, in case it might collapse. The ceiling stayed in place, but he heard a distant rumbling and the sound of crashing stone coming from elsewhere.

“That’s an impact on the planet’s surface,” said Grisham.

“What could—” said Lowe. Light dawned on his face. “Ah, shit. A warship. Or part of a warship.”

“Do we need to go back?” asked Diaz.

“And do what?” asked Lowe. “Start shooting with our rifles? We’re safer down here until whatever’s happening has happened.”

“Be quiet,” said Maxwell, with enough menace that the soldiers took instant notice.

Grisham didn’t know what was going on above Hevos, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. He opened the crate he was crouched next to and pulled out the foam. Inside, a sphere of polished yellow, a little smaller than the size of his clenched fist, nestled on a second layer of foam.

“Is this what we came for, sir?” asked Maxwell, also peering into the crate.

“Yes,” said Grisham. “It’s what we came for.”

All of a sudden, none of this seemed so important. It was likely the Voltran was in trouble and Grisham was here under the ground and not able to do a damned thing to help. He listened to the sphere in his mind and it hadn’t quietened. The Ax’Kol were still somewhere near Hevos.

Grisham put his hand into the crate and wrapped his fingers around the sphere. The moment he made contact, it was like a veil had been lifted from his mind. Without making any effort to do so, Grisham could sense the uppermost thoughts of every soldier in the room. He pushed outwards, hunting for the Voltran. Its mind was in a far deeper state of dormancy than it had been during any previous encounter with the Ax’Kol.

Reaching farther still, Grisham searched for the attacker. He caught a feeling of an Ax’Kol mind, cold, ancient, and filled with malice. The enemy mind was shielding itself from detection, and yet Grisham found it, concealed within layers of darkness. Tentatively, and without knowing the extents of what the sphere would allow him to do, Grisham probed the darkness.

And then, the enemy mind became aware of him. It erupted from the darkness with a savagery Grisham wouldn’t have thought possible. The enemy mind knew what he’d found. It wanted the sphere. Instinctively, Grisham tried to hide himself, knowing he was hopelessly outmatched. He braced himself for the inevitable.

Death did not come. Grisham sensed a pulse from the artifact and the attacking mind slipped away. He reached out as subtly as he was able, and gained no sense of where the enemy had gone.

Grisham became aware of a hand on his shoulder. The hand was shaking him.

“Captain? Captain?” asked Maxwell

“I’m here,” said Grisham. His eyes were already open and he became once more cognisant of his surroundings. “Was I away for long?”

“No, sir. I saw the look on your face and thought something was wrong.”

Grisham knew from his encounter with the Gholaxas that the Ax’Kol minds could find him, even when he wasn’t actively using his telepathy. He still had his fingers wrapped around the sphere and he knew that it had saved him from death.

“There’s an Ax’Kol warship up there, Sergeant,” said Grisham. “Its mind is far stronger than the one on the Gholaxas, and I dread to think what might have brought it to Hevos.” He exhaled. “It found me - it knows we’re here.”

“It’s going to send Ax’Kol soldiers to find us,” said Maxwell.

“Yes.”

“What does it want?”

Grisham didn’t answer at once. He lifted the sphere – which he now knew was called the Andos – and stared at it in the palm of his hand. The Andos was no heavier than normal stone and he couldn’t feel if it was any colder or warmer because of his combat gloves. One thing was certain – the artifact was important, though Grisham didn’t know how or why.

“This object – the Andos – has been here for hundreds of millions of years, Sergeant,” he said. “All that time, it’s been keeping itself shielded from detection. Now, the Ax’Kol know where it is.”

“What changed, sir?” asked Maxwell. “Why now?”

“I might have led the enemy here,” said Grisham. He shook his head. “Or maybe—” He swore. “I don’t know. The Ax’Kol warship out there may have already been on its way to Eox. We need to get out of here.”

“There’s nowhere to go, Captain.”

“We’re returning to the Voltran.”

“I thought it was—” Maxwell’s face went through a dozen expressions as he tried to figure out what was going on.

“The enemy warship sent the Voltran into dormancy,” said Grisham. He raised the Andos, still on his palm, so that Maxwell could get a better look at it. “This artifact is able to bring our spaceship back online.”

“How do you—” Maxwell didn’t finish his question and instead asked another. “Can you do it now?”

“Let’s see,” said Grisham.

He didn’t hesitate and channelled his telepathic power through the artifact and into the Voltran’s consciousness. The Andos amplified what he fed into it, though Grisham struggled to control his efforts. Almost at once, his head began thumping with pain and he was forced to stop.

“What’s the matter, sir?” asked Maxwell.

“I failed,” said Grisham. He swore. “The Andos definitely has the power, but I don’t have the training. Maybe if we were closer to the Voltran.”

“How much closer?”

“I don’t know,” said Grisham. “As close as we can get.”

Maxwell clearly had plenty of questions. Instead of asking them, he got on with business. “A warship holding a mind that’s more powerful than the Gholaxas is going to be carrying plenty of Ax’Kol soldiers,” he said. “Can you shield us while we get out of here?”

“Against the usual faceless bastards, yes,” said Grisham. “If the warship catches a scent of me again, I don’t know.”

“If we’ve got what we came for, we should move,” said Maxwell.

At that moment, Private Diaz emerged from the narrow entrance tunnel. Her combat suit was covered in grey dust. Grisham hadn’t even noticed that Maxwell had sent the soldier out of the room, but he could see from her face that he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say.

“Sergeant, the ceiling collapsed in the main tunnel back there,” she said, thumbing over her shoulder. “I could’ve started shifting rubble, but it looked too risky. The passage north was clear as far as I went, but the way to the reservoir is blocked.”

“You did the right thing coming back,” said Maxwell. He cursed nevertheless. “That leaves us with two options - either west out of this room, or back the way we came and then north.”

“North takes us away from the cliff entrances, Sergeant,” said Corporal Fine. “If we go west, I reckon we’ll stand a better chance of finding a way back south.”

“I agree,” said Maxwell. He gestured with his rifle towards the other exit from the room. “We’ll go this way.” He turned towards Grisham. “Unless you have any objections, sir?”

“No objections, Sergeant. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Maxwell went first and Grisham went straight after. This second exit from the artifact room was smooth walled, and the dust covering the floor had been scattered by the passing of many feet – Kijol feet, if Corporal Barkley’s theory was correct.

As he hurried along the tunnel, Grisham’s mind spun with everything which had happened. He had the Andos in his hand, and with it, his telepathy was able to detect every other mind within a huge sphere. Grisham was sure that practice and experimentation would expand those bounds even further, and he hadn’t even begun to consider how far a concentrated telepathic search would reach.

Now, he had to think of a way to use this power to his advantage. The Voltran was offline and it had crashed onto the planet’s surface. Grisham knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he could rouse the warship’s mind from dormancy with the assistance of the Andos, if only he was close enough.

Grisham had to come up with a plan that would allow him, his warship, and everyone else on the mission, to escape from Hevos. On top of everything, he knew that the Andos was of tremendous importance to the Ax’Kol and he couldn’t allow them to get hold of it.

Nothing was ever easy.

Just as Grisham was reflecting on that thought, he sensed the minds of Ax’Kol soldiers, far away. They were clustered together, which made him think they were in the bay of a shuttle, and they numbered in the hundreds. Despite the additional strength Grisham’s telepathy gained from his possession of the Andos, he still couldn’t read the enemy thoughts. Perhaps the dark miasma was everything they were.

Amongst the usual Ax’Kol were two others, of a type Grisham hadn’t encountered before. Their minds were stronger and tendrils of their dark thoughts reached out, seeking.

Grisham didn’t need instinct to tell him that he didn’t want to meet these two Ax’Kol in the underground passages of this hidden city. Extending the bounds of his telepathic search, he detected no other enemies within many kilometres. He hoped that meant the Ax’Kol hadn’t yet tried to breach the stricken Voltran.

He explained to the soldiers about the incoming threat. The response was muted, but Maxwell increased his pace. Grisham hurried after.

FIFTEEN

The Kijol-made passage continued straight for three hundred metres and then Grisham emerged into a large space with a vaulted ceiling supported by many pillars. Cracks had formed in the stone above and in places, chunks were missing. Dust and rubble covered the floor. Whatever machinery the Kijol had used to cut through the rock was no longer in evidence. When Grisham aimed his light beam into the distance, it was swallowed up.

“We’ll look south for a way up,” said Maxwell, already striding off. “I’ve seen Kijol rock cutting vehicles before – a compact model could have made that tunnel we just came through, so it won’t necessarily have needed much space to have been brought down here.”

“The Ax’Kol are exiting their shuttle, Sergeant,” said Grisham. “I only get a sense of their location relative to mine and that makes it difficult to describe their exact positions, but they’re moving fast.”

“Like always,” said Maxwell sourly.

The room’s south wall wasn’t far, and when Grisham arrived there, having approached at a diagonal, he could also see the west wall. A couple of much larger pieces of the ceiling had come down onto the floor, and the cracks in the rock were far more pronounced. Grisham reflected wryly that this place had lasted for millions of years, and all it had taken to undo the work of aeons was the impact of a ten-billion-ton warship on the surface above.

About fifty metres west, an exit led south, and Grisham ran towards it, along with the soldiers. He stopped at the entrance to a passage that was about three metres wide and with an arched ceiling. Dust fell like a fine rain from the many cracks in the rock, though so far, no larger pieces had fallen. The passage continued beyond the light’s range, with no visible intersections.

“No sign of steps,” said Maxwell with clear irritation.

“And no other exits from this south wall,” said Corporal Fine. “We could check out the western wall.”

“Whichever way we choose, we’re just guessing,” said Maxwell. “We’ll go south.”

Grisham was keeping a telepathic watch over the enemy troops. He remembered how they’d shielded themselves from detection on the Voltran before, but this time he was able to locate them easily. Grisham thought maybe they were trying to hide themselves, but the Andos made him too strong. It was hard to be sure.

Among the less powerful Ax’Kol, the two other creatures – the biggest threats, Grisham was sure - approached with equal speed, and the tendrils he’d sensed emanating from their minds lunged outwards with steadily increasing range. So far, he’d kept himself hidden, but Grisham’s biggest worry remained the mind on the enemy warship. The Andos had managed to deflect it, but for how long, he couldn’t begin to guess. Grisham executed what he hoped was a lightning-fast telepathic sweep for the main Ax’Kol mind, but he found nothing.

“We might soon start running into the enemy, Sergeant,” he warned, following Maxwell into the passage. “It’ll depend on how quickly they find the way down.”

“How confident are you in that telepathic shield, Captain?”

“I’m not going to make any promises,” said Grisham. “However, even if it works one hundred percent, I don’t need to tell you what’ll happen to us if we’re caught in the middle of a narrow tunnel when a 600lb Ax’Kol comes running the other way at fifty klicks per hour.”

“Let’s get out of this damned tunnel,” said Maxwell. He’d been proceeding at a steady run, and he accelerated to a sprint.

“Sergeant, we know there’s a shitload of Ax’Kol coming our way, and they’re going to choke up the passages nearest the cliff exits,” said Lyles. “Would it work for us if we went the opposite way – deeper into the city - so the enemy have to spread out through all these passages? If we lead them away from the entrances, we might have a better chance of escaping – it’ll just take longer.”

“That’s a good thought, Private,” said Maxwell. “The Captain reckoned there were more than four hundred Ax’Kol on that shuttle.” He went quiet, thinking about the options.

“I don’t know how long it’ll take the warship’s mind to locate either me or the Andos again,” said Grisham. “I’m sure it’s sweeping through this city and it’s only this artifact that’s preventing us from being discovered. The enemy won’t give up, and the longer we’re down here, the greater the chance that mind will locate us.”

“In that case, we’ll stick with Plan A and look to make a quick exit,” said Maxwell.

The mission personnel emerged into another underground room, with many pillars, and walls lost in the darkness. Dust and rubble was everywhere and intricate lines of stress fractures and cracks were visible on the ceiling and on the nearby pillars. It suddenly occurred to Grisham that these empty spaces would once have been teeming with the species which had once lived on Hevos. Perhaps this here had once been a market, or a huge workshop. Now, all of it had rotted away to nothingness.

“No sign of stairs,” said Maxwell. “According to the positional hardware in my suit, we’re not far north of the main entrance to the cliff.” He fixed his gaze on Grisham. “Is the range on the shield five metres, like it was before, Captain?”

With the Andos in his hand, Grisham suspected he could extend the diameter of his shield sphere much further than five metres, and he guessed Maxwell was hoping to split his squad into two, in order to search this room faster. However, Grisham wasn’t ready to test his ability by generating a massive-diameter shield.

“Let’s call it twenty metres,” said Grisham.

Maxwell nodded his understanding. “What about our flashlights? Getting back to the surface is going to be tough if we can’t use them.”

“Keep the lights on,” said Grisham. He still didn’t know how the Ax’Kol senses worked, but like Maxwell had said, the squad wouldn’t make it out of here if they were required to travel in complete darkness. It was time to take a gamble.

Maxwell didn’t ask questions. He snapped out an order and the mission personnel headed towards the eastern wall at a run.

By now, Grisham was getting better at using his telepathic senses while he was on the move, without having to pause and concentrate. Unfortunately, the Ax’Kol were so numerous, it was difficult to be sure exactly where they were in relation to the squad. In truth, they seemed to be everywhere, and dozens were already far to the north. Grisham noticed one Ax’Kol that was heading on a straight line directly south towards this room.

“Incoming!” Grisham yelled.

Maxwell called a halt and the soldiers spun towards the room’s centre, their light beams sweeping across the floor. A dark shape, moving with tremendous speed, its arms and legs a blur of jerky movement, entered the illuminated area. It slowed at once and Grisham saw the creature’s head turn towards the squad. He touched its mind and this time he detected a change in the darkness of its thoughts. What the change represented, Grisham could only guess.

Then, the Ax’Kol accelerated south, its footsteps making no sound, but throwing up plumes of dust and grit. In moments, the creature was gone from sight, though Grisham followed its movements using his telepathy.

“It’s gone,” he said after a few seconds.

“There’re plenty of others,” said Maxwell. He spun towards the now-visible eastern wall and started jogging. “That Ax’Kol came from the same direction as we did,” he said. “Which makes me wonder if we’re going the wrong way.”

“Most of the enemy are north of our position, Sergeant,” said Grisham. “If we head back, we might end up trapped in one of these passages.”

“Damned if we do, and damned if we don’t,” said Maxwell angrily. He shone his flashlight along the length of the eastern wall. “There’s a passage,” he said, increasing his pace.

A few seconds later, Grisham arrived at the passage entrance. The light from his torch did not extend to the next intersection, though it did illuminate a waist-high chunk of yellow stone which had dropped from the ceiling. Other, smaller pieces, were further along.

The sense of another Ax’Kol made him turn once more towards the centre of the room. “Got another one incoming,” Grisham said.

This second Ax’Kol didn’t slow. It was at the extremes of the light and it raced south, before disappearing into the darkness.

“Ah shit,” said Grisham. “Got one more heading in from the east. Move away from this passage,” he urged.

The soldiers reacted quickly and they went south. As he followed, Grisham directed his light into the eastern passage. He saw an Ax’Kol standing motionless behind the large piece of fallen stone, its smooth face aimed his way.

“There’re too damned many of them to keep track of,” Grisham said, cursing that this enemy had approached so close without him knowing it before now.

“Are we detected, sir?” asked Maxwell.

“I don’t think so,” said Grisham, looking over his shoulder. The Ax’Kol hadn’t yet emerged from the passage.

Maxwell called a halt fifty metres from the passage entrance and the soldiers readied their guns. They all knew this situation wouldn’t be resolved by the application of firepower – there were far too many Ax’Kol for that. Escape would require a combination of speed, anticipation, and no doubt some luck.

After a few seconds, during which nobody moved, the Ax’Kol stepped out of the eastern passage. Like the others of its type, this one was huge at three metres tall, and even when it wasn’t in a hurry it possessed an insect-like suddenness to its movements. The creature took slow steps south, and its head turned left and right, in a way Grisham understood to mean that it was searching.

“Get out of here!” Private Logan urged it. This was the man’s first time up close and personal with the Ax’Kol and he didn’t like what he was seeing.

“Should we open fire, Captain?” asked Maxwell.

Grisham stared hard at the Ax’Kol. Despite having the Andos in his hand, the enemy creature’s thoughts remained a mystery, but still, he could sense the alien’s uncertainty.

“Hold,” said Grisham. He scanned for other aliens which might be coming this way. The movements of the creatures in the underground city hadn’t noticeably changed, so there’d been no alarm raised. “It doesn’t know we’re here.”

The Ax’Kol took another couple of paces away from the passage. Then, with a burst of movement, it ran south-west. The creature vanished briefly behind a pillar, reappeared, and then it was beyond the range of the light. Grisham tracked it with his mind.

“It went along the south passage like the other two,” he said.

Maxwell’s expression was a mixture of anger and frustration. “The outcome of this isn’t in our control,” he said. “Screw it, we’re going south too.” Having made his decision, Maxwell broke once more into a run.

“If the Ax’Kol can follow the footprints we’re leaving in this dust, we’re so dead,” said Lyles.

Grisham didn’t answer, though he suspected the enemy relied almost entirely on senses that were completely different to those of a human. Judging by the evidence he’d seen so far, the Ax’Kol as a species weren’t doing too badly with the tools they had.

The south passage was no different to the others in terms of its dimensions, but the floor was covered in a thin layer of water. A short distance along, Grisham saw a narrow crack high up and that was the source of the ingress. Although the water was coming through fast, it wasn’t under enormous pressure, so he didn’t expect this place would become flooded anytime soon.

“Anything coming our way, sir?” asked Maxwell, when the squad had travelled about a hundred metres.

Grisham had been keeping a telepathic watch on the Ax’Kol, but the aliens moved so fast, it was difficult to be sure exactly where they’d end up. Certainly, the majority of them had continued north and a few were now more than two kilometres from the cliff entrances. Grisham wondered how far the enemy would need to go before they came to the extents of the city. The farther, the better, he reckoned.

With no end to the passage in sight, Grisham became aware of two Ax’Kol almost directly south. These ones weren’t travelling fast and he didn’t know if they were the aliens who’d passed the squad earlier. Watching them, Grisham felt uneasy.

“There are a couple Ax’Kol south of us, Sergeant,” he said. “They’re no more than three hundred metres away.”

Maxwell didn’t ask questions. Instead, he ran harder. The water became deeper, rising to ankle height. Mercifully, there wasn’t too much debris hidden beneath the surface, and the larger pieces were easily avoided with the illumination provided by the helmet lights. The progress of the soldiers was loud as they splashed their way south, though the sound didn’t echo much.

“Those two Ax’Kol are now directly south of this passage,” said Grisham. They were about to head north – he could feel it in his bones – but he didn’t say it out loud.

The soldiers were already running flat out, and they couldn’t go any faster. Drag from the shallow water made each stride a little harder and Grisham passed more cracks in both the walls and the ceiling, through which more dark liquid was pouring. He wondered if there was another reservoir nearby.

“There’s a room ahead,” said Maxwell, his breathing laboured.

“Shit, here they come,” said Grisham. The Ax’Kol were moving north, though not at anything like their maximum speed. Even so, they were travelling fast.

Although the corridor was tight, it wasn’t so narrow that Grisham’s view ahead was entirely blocked by Sergeant Maxwell. He could see where the tunnel ended, and it wasn’t far. The squad comms remained silent, though Grisham could imagine what Diaz and Chau would be feeling at the back of the line.

“The Ax’Kol are less than two hundred metres away,” said Grisham, forcing his voice calm.

“Not far to the next room,” said Maxwell.

The passage ended and the soldier dashed right. Grisham was only two paces behind and he followed.

“They’re coming,” he panted. “Fast.”

Having got himself clear of the tunnel, Maxwell had turned so that he was facing south and he continued backing away slowly. He had his rifle tucked into his shoulder and the weapon’s barrel followed the movements of his light beam.

Grisham forged through the water, which was now knee-deep, though without there being an obvious step down from the passage. While holding onto the Andos, he wasn’t able to fire his gun, though he had no intention of stowing the artifact away in one of his leg pockets. Once he was past Maxwell, Grisham also turned, so that he would have a view of the room.

At thirty metres north-to-south and twenty metres east-to-west, this new room was much more compact than the previous one. One of the three support pillars had fallen over, and the ceiling looked ready to collapse.

Three other exits led from the room at the cardinal points, but Grisham couldn’t be sure from which direction the water was coming. There may have been a current, but he couldn’t feel it through his combat suit. His earlier thoughts that the flooding wouldn’t happen soon came back to haunt him. Now, it looked as if this area of the city might end up underwater.

Grisham couldn’t spend more than a moment checking the surroundings, and his eyes jumped anxiously between the north and south exits. The soldiers continued splashing their way into the room and only three were left in the passage. Corporal Fine emerged from the passage, leaving only Diaz and Chau to come.

“Shit, the Ax’Kol,” said Maxwell.

The first of the aliens emerged into sight, and it seemed completely unimpeded by the water. It splashed easily around the southernmost pillar and surged across the far side of the room from where the soldiers were gathering. The fallen pillar lay across the alien’s path, and it leapt high over the obstacle, throwing up a spray of water as it did so.

A moment after he saw the first Ax’Kol, Grisham spotted the second. This one came left around the first pillar, putting it in the same side of the room as the soldiers. Maxwell stepped back, waving urgently for his squad to move closer to the north wall. The soldiers didn’t require any encouragement.

Private Chau exited the tunnel at speed, his rifle in his hand, for all the good it would do him. The increasing depth of the water caught him unawares and he stumbled, before righting himself and then stumbling again. He fell face down into the water, three metres right of the tunnel.

Raising his head, Chau scrambled upright, aware that he wasn’t out of danger.

“This way!” yelled Maxwell. “Here!”

“Diaz, get your ass in gear!” shouted Lowe on the comms, while Chau got himself moving again.

Grisham wasn’t sure if Diaz was going to make it. The first Ax’Kol hurtled across the room, as if it had caught wind of something to the north. Before Diaz could exit the tunnel, the creature raced into the passage, its head down and its arms flailing towards the ground, as if the Ax’Kol were evolving to run faster on four limbs instead of two.

Then, the second of the aliens flashed past Grisham and the soldiers, without so much as a pause in its stride. It too disappeared into the passage and the sounds of its splashing quickly receded.

“Private Diaz, please report,” said Maxwell.

Diaz didn’t need to report. She came sprinting out of the passage, her eyes wide and her mouth uttering curses behind her visor.

“Those bastards nearly killed me,” she said.

“That’s what the Ax’Kol do, soldier,” said Maxwell, making no effort to hide his relief.

“Well screw them,” said Diaz with feeling. She raised her middle finger and aimed it at the northern exit.

Maxwell was immediately back to business. “How does it look to the south, Captain?” he asked. “If we keep heading this way without finding steps to the surface level, we’re going to end up too far south of the cliffs.”

“I estimate there are twenty or thirty Ax’Kol south of our current position, Sergeant,” said Grisham. “With another forty or so both east and west. I can’t tell you what they’re planning to do next.”

“What about those bigger alien scumbags you detected getting off the shuttle, sir?” asked Corporal Fine.

“They’re still north,” said Grisham. He swore. “One of them has just started moving south.”

“How fast?” asked Maxwell.

“Mid-pace for the Ax’Kol,” said Grisham.

“So a fast run for one of us,” said Maxwell.

“Pretty much.”

“We’ll continue south,” said Maxwell, though it was clear he was in two minds.

Grisham headed south with the others. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he thought the water was already deeper than it was when he’d first entered the room. Not only that, the second of the two Ax’Kol commanders had now decided to move south as well.

It was a bad situation and it wasn’t showing any sign of improving.

SIXTEEN

The passage south continued for fifty metres and then emerged into another room, similar to the last, though all three pillars here were upright. Once again, three exits led to nowhere predictable. The water was definitely deeper, though Grisham still couldn’t detect a current.

“If we don’t find a way up soon, we’re doubly screwed,” said Maxwell. He’d had enough of going south and he pointed at the eastern exit. “We’re going that way.”

The soldiers waded through the water towards the eastern passage. Once or twice, Grisham’s foot struck an object beneath the water. He shone his light briefly at the ceiling. Pieces of the stone had fallen, but it was difficult to predict where they’d landed. The best and only way to reduce the chance of injury was therefore to take extra care, and that meant slowing down.

“We’ve got Ax’Kol coming fast from the south,” said Grisham. “Five in total.”

“Let’s hold for a moment until they’re gone,” said Maxwell. “In case they decide to go east as well.”

The soldiers stood anxiously near the passage entrance. They were beginning to feel the pressure, and Grisham couldn’t blame them.

Two Ax’Kol came in from the south, slowed by the water now, but not by much. The aliens threw up sheets of water as they traversed the room, and their passage left wakes across the dark surface.

A few seconds later, the other three which Grisham had detected, also entered from the south. These ones weren’t moving nearly so fast. Two of them walked purposefully along the far side of the room, while the third strode directly towards the soldiers. As it came, the alien swept its long arms in and out, trailing its sickly yellow talons though the water.

“That one’s going to be trouble,” said Corporal Fine.

“Into the passage,” said Maxwell.

He waved the soldiers to move, but ordered Private Lowe and Private Vaughan to stay at the back. Grisham thought it was too confined for shoulder rockets, but he didn’t say anything.

Corporal Fine was now in the lead and she pressed on through the water. In terms of height, she wasn’t much above Grisham’s shoulder, and the water came noticeably further up her legs. It didn’t visibly affect her pace, but Grisham was sure she was feeling the drag.

“The Ax’Kol has entered the passageway after us,” said Maxwell on the comms. “Don’t slow down, Corporal Fine.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Sergeant,” said Fine.

Grisham looked over his shoulder. Private Logan was next in line, and to the man’s credit, he didn’t appear any more discomposed than the other soldiers. The rest of the squad was right behind Logan, and Grisham wasn’t able to see much past them. He thought he caught a glimpse of either Maxwell or Vaughan, but the Ax’Kol was out of sight.

As he fought his way through the water, Grisham cast out his mind again. When the squad had first entered this passage, there’d been no Ax’Kol in a straight line this way, though plenty had been in motion eastwards. Now, there was an enemy somewhere ahead and off to one side.

“There’s a room at the end of this passage,” said Fine, just as Grisham was trying to figure out exactly how far away the Ax’Kol was.

“Be wary, Corporal,” said Grisham. “There might be an enemy waiting for us.”

“And with all our big guns at the back of the pack,” said Fine.

Nevertheless, she pressed on, not that she had much choice, since there was another Ax’Kol approaching from the rear.

Grisham searched ahead with his telepathy. While he was having difficulty pinpointing the enemy, he marvelled at how much farther he could cast his mind now that he had the Andos, and how much easier it was to do so.

Despite the huge volume he was searching – at the same time as maintaining a twenty-metre telepathic shield over the soldiers – the headache hadn’t returned. Not only that, it all seemed so easy, and he suspected that once he had a chance to experiment with the artifact, he’d discover just how much it amplified his telepathic power.

First, of course, he had to escape from this city and then he had to further escape Hevos while an Ax’Kol capital ship was somewhere close by. Having gained a hint of this new mind’s potency, Grisham didn’t want to contemplate what kind of warship it inhabited. It was quickly becoming apparent that the Kijol hadn’t yet seen more than a fraction of what the Ax’Kol had in their fleet.

Another quick check told him that the two biggest Ax’Kol were still on their way south. They weren’t travelling with much urgency, but those tendrils kept stabbing out from their minds. Grisham was becoming increasingly confident that his telepathic shield was working well against the smaller aliens, but when it came to these other two, he wasn’t nearly so certain.

In the split second during which Grisham was observing these enemies, one of the mind tendrils jumped towards him. Instinctively, he deflected it, but that very act of deflection gave the alien a clue about his location. It quickened its pace and, a moment later, the second one did likewise. The behaviour of the other Ax’Kol didn’t change.

“Ten metres and the passage ends,” said Fine on the squad comms. “Are we continuing east, Sergeant?”

“I was hoping for a moment to assess,” said Maxwell. “We’re still being followed. I don’t know if it’s with purpose, or just down to bad luck.”

“Those Ax’Kol commanders might have just caught wind of me, Sergeant,” said Grisham. “They’re still heading south, but faster now. If we find a way up and then have to go north again, we might run into them.”

Maxwell took it on the chin. “If it comes to a fight, we’ll make sure to put plenty of holes in them.”

Corporal Fine exited the tunnel and her flashlight beam snapped north. “Got us another Ax’Kol in here,” she said, wading immediately south. “It’s about thirty metres north of my position.”

Having exited the passage, Grisham also went south. The Ax’Kol was exactly where Fine had said it was, a hulking figure in the water, turning its head left and right as it searched for the soldiers.

When Grisham directed his light south, he could dimly make out the wall that way. He could also hear water running - not quite in a gush, but with the kind of volume and inevitability that would eventually see this entire level of the city flooded. Now, the currents were faintly visible on the surface of the water, though they didn’t pull at him strongly.

Corporal Fine was good at making decisions when she had to. “We’ll go south around this Ax’Kol and make for the eastern exit,” she said. “Assuming there’s one to be found.”

As Fine was talking, Grisham caught the sound of urgent splashing, coming from elsewhere in the room. He searched, and discovered that a third Ax’Kol was heading in from the east.

“We’ve got another enemy on its way,” said Grisham.

“It’s like they’re triangulating on us,” said Corporal Barkley.

Grisham didn’t know if that was how the Ax’Kol hunted, but Barkley’s theory made superficial sense. However, Grisham had seen the enemy act independently enough times that he was sure the truth was more nuanced.

By the time Grisham had made it fifteen metres towards the south wall, last man Private Vaughan had entered the room. The soldier had a two-handed grip on his XR repeater and he leaned forward as he forged his way through the water.

“Here it comes,” said Maxwell grimly.

The pursuing alien exited the tunnel a few paces behind Vaughan and it stopped a short distance into the room still swinging its arms so that its talons left furrows in the water. Meanwhile, the splashing coming from the east had quietened down and Grisham couldn’t be sure if he was still able to hear it over the sounds of the ingress he’d noticed earlier.

“That’s three aliens in the room with us,” said Maxwell. “Captain, are any others incoming?”

“Only the two big Ax’Kol,” said Grisham. “For now.” He cursed inwardly. Although he could monitor the enemy movements, the information seemed next to useless here underground where the aliens were so numerous and where they could move from one place to another so quickly.

“I can see the eastern exit,” said Corporal Fine. “There’s an Ax’Kol standing near it.” She turned her flashlight north. “And the first one I saw hasn’t moved.”

“There’s a crack in the south wall near the far corner,” said Grisham. “I can feel the current – it must be where most of this water is coming from.”

Fine advanced a few more metres and then stopped, about forty metres from the eastern exit. “There are steps this way,” she said.

“How’re we planning to climb them with so many damned Ax’Kol hunting us?” asked Lowe.

“I’ll tell you how,” said Maxwell angrily. “I’m going to shove that rocket tube up your ass, pick up the clean end and use you as a battering ram.”

Lowe was instantly contrite. “Sorry, Sergeant. I was just saying it in the hope that someone might have a plan. This place sucks.”

“Don’t worry about it, Private,” said Maxwell, his anger gone in an instant. “This place does suck, and that’s why we’re getting out of here. All of us.”

“Are we making for the stairs, Sergeant?” asked Fine.

“Absolutely,” said Maxwell. “We’re going to walk straight around that Ax’Kol standing at the eastern passage.”

“Let’s not hang around,” said Grisham. “I’m sure my shield is holding, but something must have brought these Ax’Kol here.”

Corporal Fine waded on through the water and Grisham stayed with her. He glanced once over his shoulder and saw Maxwell surging to catch up with the pack.

“We’ll stay close to the south wall, then head north and enter the passage behind that alien,” said Fine.

As Grisham came closer to the cracked section of the wall, the current increased, though not so much that he was in danger of being swept away. When he was opposite the opening, Grisham shone his light inside. The gap was only a few inches across where it started near the ceiling, but it widened steadily until it was more than twelve inches where it entered the water.

The crack was also deep and Grisham couldn’t see where it went. He was sure the lack of water pressure indicated this wasn’t a breach in the walls of another reservoir – more likely it was from an underground stream or river.

Following Corporal Fine, Grisham went north, staying close to the wall. The alien was fifty metres or so ahead and it was five or six metres in front of the eastern exit. Aiming his light north-west, Grisham searched for the alien which had originally been in the room. He saw it – just – and the creature hadn’t moved.

“What about that alien that followed us here, Sergeant?” asked Corporal Fine.

“I can’t see it,” said Maxwell.

Grisham searched and found. “That Ax’Kol is heading across the middle of the room,” he said. “It’s not far from the western entrance but it’s going east in a straight line. We’ll be out of here before it reaches the eastern exit – as long as it doesn’t speed up.”

“Shit,” said Maxwell sourly.

Until now, Corporal Fine had been travelling fast, but at a pace that took underwater debris into consideration. Upon hearing about the Ax’Kol crossing the room, she pushed on, quicker than before.

“Twenty metres to the exit,” said Fine.

Grisham looked once more behind him. The soldiers didn’t want to be trapped here and they’d bunched up, so the last man – Maxwell – was only five or so metres from Corporal Fine.

Looking north again, Grisham held his flashlight beam on the Ax’Kol. Water clung to the alien’s flesh, making it glisten. The creature was facing west, and didn’t move so much as an inch. It might as well have been a statue carved from obsidian. Grisham heard splashing and he pointed his light beam west. An Ax’Kol was striding through the water, the strength of its legs sending spray everywhere.

“Incoming,” said Grisham calmly.

“I see it,” said Corporal Fine.

She advanced without slowing to the eastern exit, and her light beam jumped between the two Ax’Kol. Neither of the aliens showed any specific awareness of the soldiers, and Fine turned into the passage and out of sight. A few moments later, Grisham also exited the room. The tunnel continued east, but he saw steps leading up from an opening in the north wall a few metres ahead. He went for them.

“Watch out!” yelled Private Chau.

Grisham turned at the warning, and saw an Ax’Kol sprinting directly towards him from the room he’d just exited. The alien approached with such speed that he could only act on instinct.

In desperation, Grisham threw himself towards the nearest wall. The water dragged at him, and he was sure he was going to be too late to avoid the onrushing alien.

Tensing his muscles, Grisham readied himself for the impact.

SEVENTEEN

The anticipated impact didn’t come. Instead of trampling Grisham, or smashing him into the wall, or perhaps even skewering him with its claws, the Ax’Kol simply diverted around in a shower of displaced water, and continued east without slowing.

Grisham was stunned by his escape, but he didn’t stand gawping. Instead, he waded the short distance to the stairwell entrance, where Corporal Fine was already a few steps up. She looked quizzically at Grisham, but didn’t say anything.

“I think the stairs are clear,” he said.

Fine shrugged. “Let’s find out.”

Without further talk, she began climbing. Not wishing to hold up the escape, Grisham started his ascent. The steps were a couple of metres wide and the risers were high like they’d been on the way down. In the available light, Grisham could see a switchback landing about twenty metres up. He also noticed many fine cracks in the ceiling, though as-yet no debris had come down.

“Keep moving!” shouted Maxwell from the back. “All the way to the top.”

Grisham leaned into the climb, the Andos still gripped tightly in his left hand. He heard the other soldiers coming behind, but he didn’t turn to look. A short way up, Corporal Fine made it to the landing and she went left out of sight.

“We’ve got another landing after this one,” she said on the comms.

The original descent had been long, and Grisham fully expected to be climbing for a while. If the squad ran into an Ax’Kol coming the other way, they’d be in the shit, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.

Turning at the first landing, Grisham continued to a second and then a third. He felt the muscles in his legs complaining, but he ignored the pain. Meanwhile, he did his best to monitor the Ax’Kol movements within the city.

Maintaining the shield and scanning for the enemy no longer required much effort, freeing up his mind to think of other things. Grisham was most interested in his recent near collision with the Ax’Kol at the bottom of the stairs. The creature had definitely moved to avoid him and he had a feeling it was because his telepathic shield was so effective that the alien had perceived him as no more than an obstacle in its path – like a fallen stone that was in the way.

Soon after, Grisham had a chance to test out his theory. He sensed one of the Ax’Kol stop at what he thought was the upper entrance to the stairwell. It didn’t respond to his mental curses urging it to leave, and it began descending.

“There’s an Ax’Kol coming down,” said Grisham on the squad comms. “I don’t believe they see us as anything other than objects. When it arrives, stand aside and let it pass.”

“Do we need to remain still, Captain?” asked Maxwell.

“Judging by what happened to me at the bottom of the stairs, I’d say no, but how about we don’t move anyway? Just in case.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was difficult for Grisham to judge the speed of the creature’s descent, so he suggested the squad continue upwards, but cautiously. He’d made it to the next landing, when Corporal Fine – who was already on her way up the next flight of steps – gave the warning.

“It’s here,” she said calmly.

From where he was standing, Grisham could see Fine press herself against the side wall of the stairwell. Then, the Ax’Kol stepped into sight from the upper landing. Even though it was stooped, the creature’s head wasn’t far below the ceiling.

“It’s stopped moving,” said Fine.

The alien stood on the landing and Grisham could clearly see the smooth front of its head. He remembered the Ax’Kol he’d encountered on Ovintus, when it had opened its wide, hidden mouth in a terrible grin that revealed its wicked, sharp fangs.

This creature didn’t smile and nor did it descend. Instead, it reached out with one hand and scraped its talons lovingly across the wall. Then, it tapped those claws against the stone, once, twice, three times.

“I don’t like this,” said Fine.

“Hold steady, Corporal,” said Grisham.

Sergeant Maxwell was on the next lower flight and, though he couldn’t directly see, it didn’t take a genius to guess what was happening. “Do I need to send up Private Vaughan?” he asked.

“Negative,” said Grisham. “We need to give this Ax’Kol room to pass. I don’t want it running into anyone coming the other way.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than the Ax’Kol descended two steps in a single stride. Turning slightly sideways, it came down two more, then another two. Now, Corporal Fine was within easy reach. She didn’t move and she stared at the Ax’Kol, her jaw set.

The alien stopped again, and now Grisham could see that it had caught wind of something. Its long arm came out once more, giving him an excellent view of the sharp claws at the end of its fingers.

Corporal Fine ducked, just as the Ax’Kol touched those claws against the wall, right where her head had been only a moment before. Again, it scraped and tapped the stone.

“It’s toying with us,” said Private Chau.

Grisham was sure the creature didn’t know the soldiers were here, but its behaviour suggested otherwise. It was too late to do anything other than watch and find out what the Ax’Kol would do. Even with Private Vaughan’s repeater chewing into the alien’s flesh, any combat here on the stairs would be a bloodbath.

The Ax’Kol withdrew its hand and, in five quick, silent steps, it descended to the landing and then halted once more, within a metre of Grisham. He was already as close to the wall as possible and he couldn’t do anything other than stand there, his vision filled with this vile creature. The Ax’Kol had a scent that reminded Grisham of the Voltran, but even less wholesome. Without knowing why he was so sure, he felt that the alien was old beyond measuring. And yet somehow it endured, long after any other life form would have perished and decayed into dust.

Five seconds became ten, and then the Ax’Kol moved suddenly along the landing. It didn’t even brush against Grisham as it went by. The creature descended the next flight of steps without pausing and he held his breath, waiting for Sergeant Maxwell to report on the comms.

“It’s gone,” said Maxwell.

“Shit,” said Corporal Fine. “This is the last time I take point.”

Without delay, she resumed the climb. As Grisham ascended a few steps behind, he felt the extra strength in his limbs which came from the adrenaline coursing through his body. He sucked in air, savouring the clean, cold scent of the stone.

“Are any more coming, Captain?” asked Fine.

“There are no Ax’Kol near the top of the stairwell,” said Grisham.

For the next thirty seconds, nobody spoke. Then, Corporal Fine announced that she could see the top. Grisham arrived at the final landing and stared upwards. A passage ran east-to-west across the stairwell exit.

With his eyes fixed ahead of him, Grisham finished the ascent, and emerged into a three-metre-wide corridor with an arched ceiling, much of which had come crashing down as a result of the shockwave from the Voltran’s impact. Pieces of stone littered the floor, though not enough to make it impassable. Dust covered everything and motes of it hung suspended in the air. Footprints were visible, doubtless made by the Ax’Kol as they hunted for the soldiers.

“This ceiling doesn’t look safe,” said Corporal Fine, pointing above with the barrel of her gun. “We should be careful not to make too much noise.”

“I agree,” said Grisham, stepping further from the stairwell, so that the other soldiers could enter the passage.

He quickly checked for the location of the Ax’Kol commanders. One was heading east and the other was going west. They were approximately three hundred metres north and on a level above this one. Grisham spoke his findings on the squad comms.

“Those bastards mustn’t have a straight route to get here,” said Maxwell, climbing the last two steps and entering the corridor.

“Either that or they don’t fit through some of the passages,” said Corporal Barkley.

Grisham was agitated to be on his way, just like all the other soldiers, but he didn’t know which way to proceed. According to the positional system in his combat suit, the squad were three hundred metres south of the cliff entrance and about two hundred metres beneath the surface. That first descent had taken the soldiers deep underground and these last steps hadn’t climbed nearly so much.

“East, west, what does it matter?” growled Maxwell, turning to look both ways. “There’s less rubble east, so that’s the way we’re going. I’ll lead.”

Maxwell strode off and, once again, Grisham put himself second in line. The passage floor was difficult to navigate with all the rubble and it was clear that progress would be much slower than before. Looking east into the darkness, Grisham saw no sign of improvement and he wondered how far this tunnel would go before the soldiers once more found themselves at an intersection with no indication which way to turn.

The thought was enough to sour Grisham’s already foul mood. This underground city was more like a maze than anything, though admittedly the Ax’Kol, the flooding, and the collapsed ceilings weren’t making it any easier to navigate. Still, Grisham didn’t feel like he and the others were any closer to finding a way out.

With the benefits of 20:20 hindsight, an attempt to dig through the rubble blocking the way back to the reservoir from the Andos room may have been the best choice. It was too late now for a change of mind and Grisham didn’t dwell on the might-have-beens.

“There are steps ahead,” said Maxwell.

Having expected to traverse corridors fruitlessly, while dodging incoming Ax’Kol, the news caught Grisham off-guard. The stairwell opening in the south wall was partly obscured by a pile of broken stone which had detached from the ceiling, so he hadn’t noticed it straightaway.

“You said those badass Ax’Kol are on a level above this one, Captain?” said Maxwell.

Grisham nodded. “They’re still looking for us.”

Without saying another word, Maxwell entered the stairwell. The damage within was severe, and a crack ran all the way up the middle of this first flight. Rubble and dust covered everything, and Grisham was surprised the whole lot hadn’t collapsed. He guessed the stone here possessed a resilience to shock and maybe that was why the planet’s now-dead inhabitants had chosen this place for their city.

Three flights up, an opening in the stairwell led to another corridor, this one half-filled with debris. The steps continued and Maxwell pressed on up without looking back.

The landing at the top of the sixth flight was partly blocked by rubble, forcing Maxwell to stop. Grisham remained a couple of steps down, where he still had a good view.

“There’s room to climb over,” said Maxwell. “But it’s tight.”

Grisham had been sizing up the blockage. “Maybe we can haul some of this away and let it fall to the landing below. That’ll make room to get through.”

“We’ll have to get everyone off these steps, in case someone gets hurt,” said Maxwell, his brow furrowed in thought. He raised his voice. “I want everyone back on the flight of steps below this one. Except you, Private Vaughan. Give your repeater to Private Chau to look after, and get your ass up here.” Maxwell turned to face Grisham. “Captain, I need you to go with the others.”

Grisham nodded. He descended to the lower landing, and got himself out of the way. Vaughan and Maxwell were both stronger than he was, and besides, he needed to keep a hand on the Andos. Grisham wasn’t sure what would happen if he relinquished his hold on the artifact, and he wasn’t willing to try it out – not here.

For two or three minutes, Maxwell and Vaughan heaved pieces of rubble down the steps. The volume of stone which appeared on the landing made Grisham believe that much of the blockage had been precariously balanced and therefore easily dislodged.

As the seconds went by, he became progressively more concerned about the two approaching Ax’Kol commanders. They were both heading south, though slowly, and they weren’t more than a couple of hundred metres away.

“Sergeant, the enemy are coming closer,” said Grisham. A half-ton piece of stone crashed onto the landing. “I think they’re on the level we passed three flights below.”

“They’ve got a lot of rubble to break through,” grunted Maxwell. “Another thirty seconds and we’ll be done here.”

More rocks joined the growing pile on the landing and then Maxwell ordered the soldiers to move up. Grisham was first and he clambered over the newly displaced rubble. When he reached the landing above, he saw that Maxwell and Vaughan had shifted enough of the stone that passage would be much easier than before. In fact, Vaughan had already made his way through.

“It’s clear all the way up the next flight, Sergeant,” the soldier said on the comms. “I’ll keep going to see what it’s like further up.”

“We’re coming through anyway,” said Maxwell, climbing onto the pile of rocks. “We don’t have much choice.” He and Vaughan had widened a gap on the left-hand side, and there was enough room to get through when he stooped low.

Grisham didn’t wait for an invitation and he followed straight after. It was still tight and the stone shifted fractionally beneath his feet. A glance at the ceiling suggested that another rockfall was a distinct possibility, and Grisham was relieved when he made it through.

Already, Maxwell was out of sight up the next flight of steps and around the switchback. Climbing as rapidly as he dared – the footing was treacherous with loose stone and grit - Grisham went after, hoping for some positive news.

He ascended another three flights, without seeing Maxwell or Vaughan, though both men were active on the comms, as were those soldiers who were coming behind. By now, the positional system in Grisham’s combat suit estimated he was only a short distance from the surface. Unfortunately, the cliff entrances were a long way north and with no obvious way to reach them.

The good news Grisham had been irrationally hoping for was delivered by Private Vaughan.

“I think there’s a way out to the surface up here,” the soldier said.

Not daring to believe it might be true, Grisham pressed on.

EIGHTEEN

The steps ended at a room, ten metres by ten. Four exits had once led from the cardinal points of this room, two of which were choked with rubble. One of the other exits was a four-metre-wide flight of steps which led up through the south wall. A mixture of sand and rock debris covered the steps, but not enough to completely block the way.

Sergeant Maxwell and Private Vaughan were standing at the bottom of the steps, diverting their time between looking upwards, and watching the single exit which wasn’t filled with rubble.

Joining them, Grisham stared up the steps. Those steps ascended twenty metres or so, and at the top, wan daylight spilled through a rough hole that was maybe a couple of metres across. Sand was spilling through the hole and piling up on the topmost steps.

The how of it wasn’t important, but Grisham took a guess anyway. “This entrance to the city was hidden by sand a few million years ago. The impact of the Voltran partially cleared the blockage.”

Maxwell didn’t look overkeen to speculate. “That’s our way out,” he said. “It’s going to take us into the city, not far from our shuttle.” He fixed Grisham with a stare. “Once we’re out in the open, that Ax’Kol warship will incinerate all of us with its missiles. Is it time to bring the Voltran out of dormancy, Captain?”

Grisham had been aware that an escape from the underground city would eventually lead to this moment – where the mission personnel would be forced onto the surface, thereby becoming exposed to the sensors of the enemy warship - and he’d been giving the matter some thought.

“I believe I can hide us from the enemy warship’s sensors,” he said. “For how long, I don’t know.” Grisham smiled thinly. “Or even if it’ll work.”

“Human Federation sensor hardware doesn’t detect the Ax’Kol,” said Maxwell. “Do you think that’s because the enemy use a telepathic shield to make themselves invisible?”

“There’s no property about the Ax’Kol’s physical forms that would stop our sensors detecting them,” said Grisham. “So it’s got to be something else, and the only thing that could be is a telepathic shield.”

“You don’t sound too sure, Captain,” said Corporal Fine, who’d now entered the room along with the other soldiers.

As it happened, Grisham was convinced the Ax’Kol method of concealing themselves from sensors involved telepathy. What he wasn’t so sure about was if they used the same method of shielding as he was currently employing to hide the soldiers. The enemy had practice and knowledge. Grisham had neither, though he did have the Andos.

“I think I can make it work,” said Grisham. “But I’m going to try awakening the Voltran first.”

He replicated the method he’d first used in the room where he’d found the Andos. Channelling his telepathic power through the artifact, he attempted to bring the Voltran’s mind out of dormancy. The same as last time, the Andos amplified his efforts and directed them into the warship’s consciousness.

A link of sorts formed between Grisham and the Voltran, with the Andos in the centre. He could sense the grey surrounding the warship’s mind somewhere close by, but he couldn’t find it. The headache returned and, though Grisham persisted for another few seconds, he stopped when the pain became too great.

The link to the Voltran broke and his headache began to subside. Grisham didn’t know how hard he could push and he didn’t want to leave himself debilitated.

“It didn’t work,” he said. “We’re still not close enough.”

“How far is the warship?” asked Maxwell.

Grisham had a sense of the vessel and he pointed south-south-west. “It’s eight or ten klicks that way,” he said.

“That’s a long way to travel with eyes in the sky looking down on us,” said Maxwell. He laughed, though without much humour. “I guess we’ll either be turned into carbon within a hundred metres of exiting that hole up there, or we’ll stand a chance.”

“I’ll go first to see if the telepathic shield works,” said Grisham. “If you see a plasma explosion through the hole, you’d probably best think of an alternative plan.”

Maxwell looked like he was about to object to the idea, but he kept his mouth shut. While Grisham’s death would doom these soldiers as well, there was no point in exposing everyone to a missile strike just for the hell of it.

“Good luck, Captain,” said Maxwell.

Grisham nodded and climbed the steps towards the exit hole. He stopped on the highest step and looked at the darkening skies above. Although the planet’s day was heading towards evening, the air was still warm. For a moment, Grisham longed to feel the heat on his skin.

He couldn’t afford to think of anything but the now and he cleared his thoughts. The exit hole was about two metres above the top step and it went at a diagonal through a further two metres of broken blocks – the blocks from which the surface city had been constructed. Beneath the hole were some more pieces of rubble, and these offered a step up towards the exit.

Grisham looked at the hole, then at the rubble, and then at the artifact in his hand. Holding onto the Andos – already a pain in the ass - was about to make his exit far harder than it needed to be. Still, he didn’t dare stow it in his pocket, in case the mind on the Ax’Kol vessel, or indeed the many other aliens on the planet, located him.

“I’ll give you a boost, Captain,” said Maxwell, climbing the steps.

“That would be appreciated.”

With Maxwell’s assistance, Grisham scrambled into the hole and crawled forward over the uneven blocks. He emerged into a five-metre room within a building. Three-metre-high walls surrounded him, except for where they’d collapsed either as a result of time, or because of the recent warship impact.

There had once been a roof on this structure, but that had mostly fallen in, leaving only a couple of half-standing pillars. However, the exit hole to the surface was in a corner and it was partly sheltered by a slab overhead, which offered some protection against the sensors on the Ax’Kol warship, should that vessel be scanning this area of the city.

The floor of the room had sagged beneath the weight of sand and rubble and Grisham was sure that was what had revealed this way to the underground area of the city. Multiple exits were available through the broken walls, and he could see other buildings outside. Grisham looked again at the sky. There was an encroaching gloominess and soon the temperature would begin to fall.

He stared for a time, but couldn’t see any sign of a warship. Either it was out of his viewing arc, or at too great an altitude for him to see it.

“What’s up there, Captain?” asked Maxwell.

“I’m in the topside area of the city,” said Grisham. “In a building.”

“The shuttle we came in on isn’t much more than five hundred metres from the emergence point, sir,” said Maxwell. “If we boarded it, would the enemy warship be able to detect us as we flew to the Voltran?”

“I don’t know, Sergeant,” said Grisham. “Gut feel says we’d be detected the moment we lifted off.”

“We’re going on foot, then.”

Grisham took a breath. “I’m about to exit this building to see if my telepathic shield works. Maybe you should stay away from the opening.”

“Yes, sir, I’m on my way back down the steps.”

This wasn’t a situation that would benefit from careful contemplation. Grisham chose his exit from the building and climbed towards it over the fallen blocks and rubble. The sand was slippery on the angled slopes of stone and since he had one hand on the Andos, progress was trickier than it should have been.

Grisham made it out of the building into what had once been a street. Many of the walls had collapsed and not much of the sandy ground was visible beneath the rubble. Escaping the city would be slow going if it was like this all the way.

“I’m heading south,” Grisham said on the comms. “Everything’s choked with rubble. On the plus side, I haven’t been incinerated yet.”

The sky was open above and, unless the enemy vessel was low to the horizon, where its view would be impeded by the city’s walls, it would have an easy job of detecting him. Grisham picked his way south, clambering over blocks and walking around them where possible.

It turned out that progress wasn’t quite so slow as he’d imagined it would be and soon, he was a hundred metres from the opening. Grisham halted on the edge of an area that had been completely razed. The buildings here must have once been far apart, because there was plenty of open space between the piles of rubble.

Standing where he was, Grisham had a view across several hundred metres of the city, helped by a gradual downward slope of the land here. He stared south-south-west, towards the place where the Voltran had crashed. There were gaps between the upright walls, but he couldn’t see the warship.

Grisham looked once more at the open ground. “Screw it,” he muttered, striding south. After a few paces, he was sure the enemy warship would be able to detect him, even if it was way off on the horizon. Just to be sure, he climbed onto a stone block, to give himself some extra elevation. No missile raced down from above.

Then came the thought.

The enemy want the Andos. They aren’t going to fire a missile at me while I’m holding it.

Grisham jumped back down to the ground and jogged quickly north, where he hunkered low behind the remains of a wall. He reached out with his mind and located the many Ax’Kol ground troops who were still searching underground. Their behaviour hadn’t perceptibly changed. If the warship had detected Grisham, its mind would have directed those troops into this area. So far, there was no sign they were on their way.

“Captain, what’s your progress?” asked Maxwell on the comms. He was beginning to sound anxious.

“Come up topside, Sergeant,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir, we’re on our way.”

Grisham headed back along the street leading north. When he arrived at the emergence point, three of the soldiers were already on the surface, with the rest on their way. Soon, all ten were clear of the exit hole.

“I didn’t go far,” said Grisham. “But there’s an open area south of here, and I stood in clear view.”

“And no warship came,” said Maxwell, his neck bent as he looked at the sky. “What about the enemy troops underground?”

“They’re still searching,” said Grisham. “In the wrong place.”

He checked again, just to be sure. The enemy were all north, bar a handful which were south, though still underground. Both of the badass aliens were roaming again, without any indication they knew where Grisham or the soldiers had gone to. He didn’t send his mind too close, in case they detected him once more.

“I should lead, sir,” said Maxwell.

“Go ahead,” said Grisham.

He let the soldier go by and then followed. The other members of the squad hurried after. Soon, the mission personnel came to the open area which marked the bounds of Grisham’s earlier exploration.

“The Voltran is that way,” said Grisham as a reminder, using his arm to indicate the direction.

Maxwell nodded and set off in that direction. “It’s going to be hard to maintain a direct-line course through the city,” he said. “And let’s hope we don’t run into any dead-ends.”

“As long as the telepathic shield holds, we should be fine,” said Grisham. “Once we reach the outskirts, I’ll try rousing the Voltran again.”

“I reckon the city perimeter is approximately fifteen hundred metres from our position,” said Maxwell. “After that, it’s desert and stone all the way.”

“An easy run if we’re not being pursued by Ax’Kol,” said Corporal Fine.

Maxwell led the way across the open area of ground. He was clearly wary and kept looking up, as well as towards the collapsed alleys which led off in every direction. For his part, Grisham kept as close a watch on the Ax’Kol troops as he dared. The enemy could move fast, and he didn’t want to be caught unawares.

The comparatively clear ground came to an end, and Maxwell was forced to choose between two streets, both of which went more or less south-west. He picked the one which was less cluttered with rubble and set off that way. The shadows were long here and they filled the alley.

“Night’s coming fast,” said Corporal Fine. “Just like it did on Xaros.”

Nobody wanted to be out in the open when darkness came. The night vision enhancement in a combat helmet couldn’t detect Ax’Kol, and that would make winning an engagement next to impossible. Reaching the Voltran before the enemy noticed was the only hope.

The soldiers hadn’t gone far along this new street when a dark speck appeared high in the heavens. This speck grew rapidly larger and Grisham’s heart fell at the sight of it. Down it came, the Ax’Kol warship descending at high velocity.

“Shit,” said Maxwell.

The enemy warship decelerated late and then it came to a halt, directly over the city. Grisham could only stare at the vast construction, hardly more than two thousand metres above his head. The Ax’Kol vessel was incomprehensibly vast – larger even than the Inojor on Leoxval.

“I guess my telepathic shield didn’t work after all,” said Grisham.

Further north, the Ax’Kol ground troops were already moving and they flooded south at speed. As he observed them, Grisham waited for a renewed assault on his mind.

Death was close and he didn’t know if it was avoidable. His brain desperately searched for a plan – for anything that might allow the mission personnel to escape what fate seemingly had in store for them.

There was only one hope. Grisham raised the Andos and stared at it. He gritted his teeth, ordered his combat suit to give him a painkilling shot and then readied himself for another attempt to bring the Voltran online.

NINETEEN

Previous attempts to rouse the Voltran from dormancy had failed and Grisham remained sure the issue was the distance between himself and the warship. This time, he was closer than before, and he was also angry.

Grisham directed his telepathic power at the Andos and the artifact amplified what he fed into it. He felt his control wavering and the Andos amplified that too. By that realisation, Grisham’s understanding of the device increased. In the hands of a master, the artifact would have incredible power. It was a shame he was hardly even a beginner.

Still, Grisham was determined. With an exertion of willpower, he brought his channelling under control and the Andos responded by amplifying its output to an even greater level than before. The headache which plagued Grisham at moments like these came thundering into his skull. He clenched his jaw tight and refused to lessen his efforts.

With an expulsion of telepathic power, which almost caused Grisham to black out, he commanded the Voltran to awaken. He didn’t know if the warship responded, and his link to the Andos ended abruptly.

“Sir, what’s wrong?” asked Maxwell. He was using his spare hand to keep Grisham on his feet. “We can’t stay here. Maybe we can find another way underground.”

Grisham’s head was pounding, but his anger was a match for the pain. “The shuttle, Sergeant. We have to go for the shuttle.” He quickly explained his hopes that he’d awakened the Voltran.

“You’re hoping the enemy warship won’t target us with its weapons, in case it destroys the Andos,” said Maxwell.

“It’s the only chance we’ve got,” said Grisham. “The Ax’Kol ground troops are coming our way – I can shield us from them, but the enemy warship is going to tell them where to find us.”

“Can you run, Captain?” asked Maxwell. He hadn’t yet relinquished his hold on Grisham’s arm.

“Damn right I can,” said Grisham.

“The shuttle is five hundred metres that way,” said Corporal Fine, pointing more south than east.

“Let’s go,” said Maxwell. “There’s an intersection just ahead.”

As the group broke into a run, Grisham requested a channel to the Voltran, hoping against hope that the warship’s mind would be out of dormancy.

“Captain?” said Lieutenant Lopez. “We just came online. I don’t know how – we thought the Voltran was dead.”

“I don’t have time to give you the details, Lieutenant,” said Grisham. “Tell Commander Deneuve to prepare every available psionic: focus. I want them ready to amplify chained suppression attacks against that Ax’Kol warship when the time is right.”

“When will that time come, sir?”

“I don’t know,” said Grisham. “I’m with Sergeant Maxwell and his squad – we’re making a run for the shuttle. We’re carrying an artifact the Ax’Kol want and I’m hoping that means the enemy won’t blow the transport to pieces.”

As he spoke, Grisham ran with the others, though it was hard going. Sand had piled against both sides the alley and there was plenty of rubble. With only one free hand, Grisham was struggling to keep up with the pack.

“Commander Deneuve acknowledges the order, Captain,” said Lopez after a few moments. “She’s not hopeful we can take out the enemy vessel, but maybe we can shut it down for a few seconds. We can’t offer you any assistance yet – not unless there’s no alternative.”

“Understood – don’t draw attention to yourselves,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir.”

Grisham exited the channel and switched to the squad comms. “The Voltran is back online.” He didn’t want to deal with any questions and he was glad that the soldiers asked none.

He leapt over a broken stone block and ran across thick layers of sand, his feet sliding back into the yielding surface. Most of the walls here were higher than the top of his head, though some had fallen inwards or across the alley. These walls offered no protection against the warship, which was parked directly overhead.

“Four hundred metres to the shuttle,” said Corporal Fine.

“The Ax’Kol are coming our way,” said Grisham. His telepathy was strong enough that he could sense their locations, but it was almost impossible to put them into a positional context while he was giving so much of his attention to his immediate surroundings. “I’d guess the first of them will soon be emerging from the cliff exits.”

“Damnit,” said Maxwell. “We’re not going to make it to the shuttle before the first of those faceless bastards show up.”

Giving up wasn’t in Maxwell’s nature and he didn’t slow. He came to an intersection and turned east. When he tried to make the turn himself, Grisham’s feet slid on the sand-covered rock. Despite his best efforts to stay upright, he went over on his side and landed heavily. The Andos slipped from his hand and he immediately felt the probing mind of the Ax’Kol warship.

Rolling over, Grisham took hold of the artifact again and the soles of his combat boots slithered as he got to his feet. As soon as the device was in his hand, the enemy mind slipped away, leaving Grisham certain the Andos was actively doing something to ward off his opponent.

The unwanted tumble was enough to make Grisham lose ground on the others. Already twenty or thirty metres ahead, Sergeant Maxwell had slowed. He didn’t speak but the message was there on his face.

You’re going to have to move your ass, sir.

“Go!” shouted Grisham, urging Maxwell to continue his dash for the shuttle.

It was clear the soldiers weren’t about to leave Grisham behind, and he didn’t want to be responsible for their deaths. He took a gamble and shoved the Andos into one of his combat suit’s leg pockets. After all, the artifact worked through the material of his gauntlet, so surely it would function while it was in his pocket.

To Grisham’s immense relief, the warship’s mind didn’t return. He ran after the others. The Andos bulged in his pocket, but he could handle that. With both hands free, he was able to cover the ground much faster and soon he’d closed the gap on the soldiers.

“I reckon a couple of dozen Ax’Kol have come out of those cliffs now,” said Grisham on the comms. “Most of the others are still underground.”

“What about those big bastards?” asked Maxwell.

“They’ve just about reached the surface, Sergeant.”

“Let’s hope these walls and this rubble slow them down,” Maxwell replied, though it didn’t sound like he believed it would happen.

Grisham didn’t believe it either and gave every effort to making progress along the streets of this ancient city. The enemy warship was so massive it had increased the gloominess here at ground level and, in combination with the shadows cast by the day’s dying sun, made it easy to miss details. Having already fallen once, Grisham didn’t intend giving another demonstration of clumsiness.

“Three hundred metres to the shuttle,” said Fine.

Another alley heading south-west joined the one along which the soldiers were running, and they turned into it. A short distance farther, they entered an area which was largely clear of debris, and this time, Grisham thought he could see the upper section of the Voltran far to the south. He didn’t slow down to stare and continued south-west.

Despite the sand on the ground, the mission personnel were able to travel much faster through this area of the city. The lead soldier – Corporal Fine – headed for another alley, still going south-west. Not long after entering this alley, she announced the distance to the shuttle was now two hundred metres.

“This is going to be tight,” said Private Lowe.

Grisham made another check on the progress of the Ax’Kol. The enemy were now flooding into the city, but those who were newly emerged from the cliffs had a long way to go. It was the Ax’Kol which had first exited the subterranean levels which had Grisham worried. The nearest of these was three hundred metres north of the soldiers and coming fast. Every time Grisham passed a collapsed section of wall, he glanced that way, but he saw no sign of the approaching enemy. He imagined the creatures dashing through the rubble, and leaping high over every obstacle.

“I’m turning south at the next intersection,” said Fine on the comms, twenty metres ahead of Grisham. She made the turn and vanished from sight. “There’s another small plaza here,” she said. “I reckon if we get a chance to cut west from here, it’ll link to the place we parked the shuttle.”

Grisham came to the turning and he grabbed the corner wall to assist him round. His feet found purchase and he hared it after the others, his heart thumping both from the effort and a renewed burst of adrenaline. He entered the plaza, hot on the heels of everyone else. Straightaway, he saw the exit alley which Fine was aiming for.

Looking west for the shuttle, all Grisham saw were walls. Then, he twisted to get a view north. That was when he spotted the Ax’Kol jumping over something unseen, its arms flailing grotesquely as it sprang into the air. The creature came down and was momentarily out of view. It reappeared a couple of seconds later and this time its leap took it to the top of a wall. Scrabbling briefly for balance, the Ax’Kol found its footing and on it came, its arms moving up and down in the way Grisham had seen before, as if it wanted to drop onto all fours.

“Incoming,” said Grisham. “Straight north. There are others not far behind.”

As he said the words, the first Ax’Kol came to the end of the wall and it executed another high leap that would see it land in the plaza, less than sixty metres from the squad. That was when Private Lowe pulled off the most jaw-dropping feat of skill and anticipation that Grisham had ever seen.

“Take this you asshole,” said Lowe. In one fluid movement, the soldier brought his shoulder launcher into a firing position, made provision for the brief warmup required by its gauss coils, aimed and fired. “Rocket out.”

The missile raced through the fading light, the orange of its propulsion leaving a streak across the plaza. In a flash of expanding plasma, the rocket detonated at the feet of the Ax’Kol at the precise moment it landed. Grisham averted his eyes quickly enough to avoid his vision being affected by the light, but he knew what a killing shot looked like, and that was one right there.

One Ax’Kol was down, but a few hundred more remained on Hevos. Grisham’s feet thudded into the ground as he sprinted south-west. He was grateful he didn’t have to make too many diversions around the piles of rubble and the exit alley wasn’t far ahead. While he was still last man, he was right with the others.

“Heading west just ahead,” said Fine, now only ten metres in front of Grisham.

As Grisham approached the alley, he glanced north, and saw two Ax’Kol hurtling along one of the walls that way. His telepathy told him that they weren’t alone – ten or twelve of the enemy would soon be upon the soldiers.

“One hundred metres to the shuttle,” said Fine, turning into the alley. “Ah, shit. Dead end.”

Grisham brought himself to a slithering halt, as did the other soldiers. They looked around for other ways to exit the plaza.

“None of these ways heads west,” said Maxwell angrily.

Numerous exits led from this area of open ground, but most of them went north or east. Grisham had noticed an alley that went south, but it was fifty metres east of where the squad had been brought to a sudden halt.

“Over there. East,” said Grisham, pointing towards the alley.

“Go!” urged Maxwell.

The soldiers sprinted towards the south exit, though Grisham already knew it was hopeless. With the shuttle being directly west, any alternative route would take too long. The Ax’Kol were coming fast and it wouldn’t take more than a handful of the alien bastards to overrun the squad.

When the soldiers were only halfway to the south-leading alley, an Ax’Kol sprang over one of the walls to the north. The alien landed next to the smoking remains of the one which Lowe’s rocket had taken out, and sprinted south without hesitation.

“There’s another,” said Lyles. “Damn, I hate these assholes.”

“Rocket out,” said Lowe.

His missile struck the ground just in front of the onrushing alien, and the creature was destroyed in the plasma explosion.

“Move!” yelled Maxwell. “Don’t stop!”

Private Chau was now in the lead and he was first to the southern alley. As soon as he came to the opening, the soldier drew to a halt. That was the moment Grisham knew the squad’s luck – not that they’d had much of the positive kind – had finally run out.

“Another dead end,” said Chau, his despair evident in the words.

The rest of the squad slowed and stopped. As one, they turned north. Three Ax’Kol were now in the plaza. Lowe’s rocket launcher wasn’t yet ready for another shot, but regardless, the weapon wouldn’t be nearly enough to hold back the incoming tide.

Grisham raised his rifle and fired a couple of shots, hitting one of the Ax’Kol with no discernible effect. The situation was hopeless, he knew, and yet a part of his mind was telling him there might be a way out, if only he could think what it might be.

He took another few shots at the same Ax’Kol, while the rest of the squad fired their rifles as fast as they’d discharge their projectiles. At that moment, he saw a dark figure north, beyond the walls of the plaza. This Ax’Kol was far larger than the others – larger than any Grisham had seen before.

One of the commanders of the enemy forces was close, and Grisham absolutely did not want to face it armed only with a gauss rifle. He was on the verge of asking the Voltran for assistance, but the warship’s psionic amplifiers wouldn’t yet be ready. A psionic suppress attack on this area of the city would stagger the Ax’Kol ground troops, but it would also draw the attention of the enemy warship.

And then, Grisham realised what he’d been missing all this time since he and the soldiers had escaped from the underground area of the city.

The shuttle.

TWENTY

“Damnit!” said Grisham, furious at his own stupidity. “I can remotely link with the shuttle.”

“Do it quickly, Captain,” Maxwell urged. “We’re not going to hold these Ax’Kol any longer than a few seconds.”

It seemed like a lifetime ago that Grisham had discovered he could interface with the Voltran using his telepathy. The shuttle was part of the Voltran, albeit without its own consciousness, and that meant he would also be able to interface with the transport over a distance.

Grisham sent out his mind and located the shuttle. In a moment, he was linked to its command systems. He had to act fast, before the Ax’Kol warship realised what was happening and destroyed the transport. Under Grisham’s control, the shuttle rose diagonally from the ground and, in a moment, it was visible over the tops of the walls. The vessel seemed like it was only a couple of buildings away – a reminder of how close the soldiers had been to success, only to have it snatched away by a pile of rubble blocking the western alley.

With its engines rumbling, the shuttle accelerated across the low walls. As it came, Grisham was only dimly aware of the Ax’Kol troops sprinting across the plaza towards the soldiers. Dozens of bullets struck the aliens, but without slowing them down.

As the shuttle sped closer, Grisham accessed its weapons systems. The transport was fitted with twin flank gauss repeaters and he connected to the targeting system. Rather than setting the hardware to automatic and risk it selecting an Ax’Kol that wasn’t yet in the plaza, Grisham took manual control.

The result was that he could see what was happening in front of him with his eyes, while his mind was connected directly to the shuttle’s sensors. Grisham’s practice on the Voltran, combined with his years of experience prevented him from being overwhelmed.

“Take this, you piece of shit,” he said, fixing his eyes and the shuttle’s gauss repeaters on an Ax’Kol that was less than ten metres from the squad. The creature had slowed and it was making violent swipes with its talons, suggesting that Grisham’s telepathic shield was holding and the enemy was relying on guidance from the warship overhead.

The shuttle’s guns droned and the Ax’Kol exploded into chunks of dry flesh. Grisham retargeted and another burst from the repeaters tore a second alien into shreds.

By now, the transport was directly above the soldiers – little more than two metres over their heads – and Grisham hoped the enemy warship would not interfere with the shuttle in case the Andos was damaged. Getting into his stride, Grisham fired at a third alien, then a fourth and a fifth. Each time, the outcome was a gratifying fountain of bloodless pieces as the Ax’Kol were destroyed by a torrent of projectiles.

“We need to get onboard,” said Grisham, as a half-dozen more Ax’Kol leapt across the wall to the north. With his telepathy, he could detect many more following. The shuttle could cut them down, but not forever, and the enemy continued pouring into the city from the cliffs to the north. “I’ll bring the shuttle down next to us. Stay as close to it as you can.”

Grisham directed another burst of projectiles at the approaching Ax’Kol and then brought the transport to a one-metre hover, with its open flank door near to the soldiers. Unfortunately, the reduced altitude meant that the shuttle no longer had a firing angle on the aliens beyond the plaza, and even on this comparatively open ground, the piles of rubble limited the effectiveness of the guns. The Ax’Kol recognized this at once, and they began darting from cover to cover.

There were few greater motivations than the threat of dying to a bunch of murderous aliens, and the soldiers hurled themselves into the shuttle. Grisham stayed outside as long as he dared, since he didn’t want to break his concentration.

“Sir, it’s your turn,” said Private Vaughan from just inside the shuttle door. He had a hand stretched out, ready to haul Grisham inside.

Without hesitation, Grisham turned his eyes from the plaza and took two rapid steps towards the transport. He sprang for the opening, with his hand out. Vaughan grabbed hold of him and helped him inside.

Straightaway, Grisham set the weapon targeting to automatic and then ran for the cockpit. He found Maxwell and Barkley already at the interface posts. They turned to face him, both evidently unsure where to go from here.

“I have no control over the propulsion, sir,” said Maxwell.

Grisham was still linked to the engines and the transport’s safety systems were designed to prevent conflicting calls on the propulsion. “I’ll take us out of here, Sergeant,” he said.

Out of habit, Grisham thumped his hand down onto the interface post. Then, he instructed the vessel to climb. He’d been watching the sensors as he entered the cockpit, and the Ax’Kol hadn’t slowed their approach. The aliens were sprinting between the piles of rubble, which had offered them some cover when the shuttle was just above the ground, but which now protected them little as the transport climbed higher.

Gauss projectiles tore into the enemy, and stone shards were flung all around where the bullets smashed into the ground and the loose rubble. These shards inflicted even more damage to the Ax’Kol, and Grisham smiled thinly at the sight.

“Sergeant Maxwell, I’ve relinquished my control over the weapons systems,” he said. “The guns are yours.”

“The automatic targeting seems to be doing a good enough job, Captain.”

“I can see the first of those Ax’Kol commanders,” said Corporal Barkley. “It’s about two hundred metres north, and it isn’t moving.” He raised his middle finger in the creature’s direction. “You were too slow, you dumb alien shithead. Now watch us fly off into the sunset.”

Grisham thought Barkley’s certainty about the escape were premature, but he didn’t say anything. The shuttle was now a couple of hundred metres above the ruined city and he looked at the feed which was aimed at the enemy commander.

The creature was huge – as much as five metres tall, though it was hard to tell exactly because of the way it was stooped – and it loomed above the three-metre walls of the building behind which it was standing. In appearance, the alien looked very much like the other Ax’Kol, but spindlier, and its arms were longer in proportion. At the ends of those arms were broad hands, and the alien’s talons were curving yellow blades. As if it knew it was being watched, the enemy commander’s mouth opened in a wide grin, and its teeth were clearly visible.

“Give it something to think about, Sergeant,” said Grisham.

“With pleasure,” said Maxwell.

Shots thundered out from the flank guns and the Ax’Kol commander reacted with incredible speed. It dropped out of sight behind the wall, though not before it had taken a good few shots to its head and upper body. Maxwell kept the repeaters firing, and the impact force of the projectiles smashed the heavy stone blocks to smithereens. When the soldier held fire, there was no sign of the creature.

“Gone,” said Maxwell.

“It’s not dead,” said Grisham.

He searched with his mind and found the creature. It was already more than a hundred metres from place it was last sighted. How it had travelled so far and so fast, Grisham wasn’t sure, but he didn’t like it. He searched for the second commander – which wasn’t visible on the sensors – and located it about five hundred metres north. It wasn’t moving, and Grisham felt an even greater unease about these two aliens.

“What now, Captain?” asked Maxwell.

“Now, I need to speak to the Voltran,” said Grisham. He wanted to be away from the city, but first he had to confirm the timings on his intended plan.

“I’m requesting a channel, Captain,” said Corporal Barkley. “Channel request accepted – I’ve got Lieutenant Lopez. I’ll bring you in.”

“Lieutenant Lopez,” said Grisham. “Is the psionic: focus ready?”

“Yes, Captain,” said Lopez. “We have two ready to activate and there’s a third warming up – Commander Deneuve thought it best to have some overlap. We can’t hold the focus for much longer before we’ll have to release or discharge.”

“I reckon we’re going to need all three ready at the same time,” said Grisham. “Will the overlap allow for that?”

“Yes, Captain. In four minutes, we’ll have a ten-second window when all three amplifiers will be available.”

“That’s what we’ll aim for,” said Grisham, banking the transport south and requesting maximum acceleration from the propulsion. “I’m going to bring the shuttle your way and I’m relying on the Ax’Kol wanting the Andos more than they want to kill us.”

“Captain, two shuttles have launched from the enemy warship,” said Corporal Barkley.

Grisham spared the newly emerged vessels only a moment of his attention. As far as transports went, these ones were huge, at almost two hundred metres in length.

“Do you want me to open fire, Captain?” asked Maxwell.

“Negative, Sergeant. I’d rather not give the enemy any reason to fire back. We’re relying on the Voltran to get us out of this.”

“They’re going to have to bring us down somehow, sir,” said Maxwell. “I can’t believe the enemy will let us fly around the planet indefinitely while they follow. And they’re certainly not going to let us take off into lightspeed.”

Grisham nodded. “The Ax’Kol won’t give us any more than ten minutes,” he said. “Any longer and they risk us escaping into lightspeed like you said.”

“We’ve already had three of those minutes, sir,” said Barkley.

The shuttle’s acceleration was such that it was now speeding across the ruined city. Nine thousand metres ahead, the Voltran was lying at a south-west to north-east angle, with its nose being closest. The warship’s impact with Hevos hadn’t been at high velocity and it hadn’t even formed a crater, though it had caused major damage to the underground city.

“There’s that Ax’Kol commander again,” said Barkley. “It’s running after us.”

Grisham immediately checked the rear feed. There was something about these particular Ax’Kol that he really didn’t like. The sight of the alien hurtling across the city in apparent pursuit of the shuttle didn’t improve his feelings towards them. With a mixture of incredible ability and brute force, the Ax’Kol commander was charging through the ruins at a speed which Grisham wouldn’t have thought possible. The enemy leapt high over walls, or simply smashed right through them.

“Sergeant Maxwell, shoot that bastard,” said Grisham angrily. The persistence of the normal-sized aliens was irritating enough, but this badass commander looked like it would never give up.

“Yes, sir,” said Maxwell.

Before the soldier could aim the repeaters, the alien seemed to bunch up just after it had executed a leap over a high wall. Grisham was still watching with his telepathic senses and he detected a surge coming from the creature’s mind, of a type he’d never encountered before. Then, the Ax’Kol disappeared. A split-second later, gauss slugs punched into the space it had just vacated.

“What the hell?” said Maxwell.

Grisham saw at once where the alien had gone and he could hardly believe it. The creature was no longer on the ground – now it was clinging to the shuttle’s topsides, with the talons of one hand driven deep into the vessel’s biological exterior. Signs of the earlier shots it had taken from the transport’s gauss repeaters were evident – half of the alien’s head was missing and big chunks of flesh had been ripped out of its torso.

The injuries – if indeed the alien perceived them as such – didn’t have any apparent effect on its mobility. Raising its free hand, the alien stabbed those claws into the shuttle as well. Then, it pulled the first hand clear and stabbed its talons back in, this time closer to the flank entrance.

“It’s going to try coming in through that side door,” said Barkley. “How the hell did it manage to get onto our hull?”

“A telepathic jump. A projection.” Grisham shook his head, unsure of the correct words.

“What if it jumps straight into the shuttle?” asked Barkley.

“I reckon it could if it wanted to,” said Grisham. He realised why the enemy might not have done that. “But if it misjudged and reappeared with part of its body inside another object – like a bulkhead – then maybe it would either die or become trapped.”

“If it manages to get that flank door open, it’ll be able to see right inside,” said Maxwell. “Maybe it’ll even be able to communicate that information to the other commander.”

As the three of them talked, hoping to figure things out, the Ax’Kol continued its progress across the hull. It would stab in one clawed hand to secure itself and then use the other hand to drag itself closer to the flank entrance. The shuttle was travelling fast, but the alien was strong and it didn’t look as if it would become dislodged – not without some assistance.

By this moment, the Voltran wasn’t far, but Grisham had no intention of docking – not with things the way they were. In fact, he held onto a course that would see the shuttle pass a couple of thousand metres east of his downed battleship - he didn’t want to go any nearer, in case the mind on the enemy vessel started to think that something was up and decided to take a closer look at the Voltran.

“We’ll need to be rid of that enemy commander before I dock,” said Grisham.

He believed he’d be able to crush the alien between the docking tunnel walls and the shuttle’s hull, but ideally, he wanted it gone so that he could dock at maximum velocity, without having to worry about additional manoeuvres that would slow him down.

“The third psionic: focus will be ready in just under two minutes, Captain,” said Lieutenant Lopez, who’d kept an open channel to the shuttle.

“Another three shuttles have launched from the Ax’Kol warship, Captain,” said Barkley.

Grisham turned his attention that way. The undersides of the immense vessel went on and on, and the warship’s nose or stern – he couldn’t be sure which – was directly over the Voltran. All five of the enemy shuttles were accelerating in pursuit, and, when Grisham executed a fast and – he hoped – subtle mind scan, he discovered that other Ax’Kol commanders were onboard.

On one of the shuttles, another creature entirely was doing its best to hide behind a telepathic shield. Grisham knew it was there, but he didn’t know what it was. He mentally classified the creature as a high threat.

Among all the other high threats out there.

Under Grisham’s control, the shuttle flew alongside the Voltran. He couldn’t begin to guess how this one was going to end up.

TWENTY-ONE

The alien commander hauled its way ever closer to the shuttle’s side door. Two heaving lurches saw it emerge over the flank edge. The creature’s legs should have swung downwards, but they did not, and Grisham saw that it was using the much smaller claws on its toes to help it cling on.

Private Vaughan was waiting in the now-open doorway. With the help of the other soldiers, the man was able to lean out with his XR repeater. Grisham was watching the feed and he saw Vaughan give the alien a mock friendly wave, before returning his hand to the gun and opening fire.

Bullets thudded into the Ax’Kol’s head and upper body, and yet more of its flesh was torn away. The alien tried desperately to claw its way to the doorway, but the punishment – added to that which it had suffered from the shuttle’s flank guns – was too great. After soaking the torrent of Vaughan’s gauss slugs for a few seconds, the creature simply stopped moving.

“It’s still clinging on,” said Maxwell in disgust.

Although the enemy creature was dead, its talons remained lodged in the shuttle’s hull and the passage of air wasn’t enough to drag it free. Vaughan continued firing, this time aiming at the alien’s shoulder. After a few seconds, the method was successful and enemy commander fell away from the shuttle. The creature’s arm stayed behind and it flapped irritatingly against the hull.

“The third psionic: focus will be ready in thirty seconds, Captain,” said Lieutenant Lopez.

“Acknowledged,” said Grisham.

The shuttle’s course would soon take it farther south of the Voltran than Grisham would have liked. Already, the entrance to the docking tunnel was more than three thousand metres away. When the Voltran unleashed its chain of amplified suppression attacks, he wanted to dock as quickly as possible, but it was imperative that the Ax’Kol warship didn’t realise what he intended.

Grisham’s attention went to the five pursuing shuttles. They’d closed to within a thousand metres, though they made no effort to come any nearer. Another three shuttles emerged from the far flank of the Ax’Kol warship and Grisham cursed at the sight of them.

“Twenty seconds, sir,” said Lopez.

A second enemy commander suddenly appeared on the shuttle’s topsides. For a moment, it looked as if the creature would slip free, but then it stabbed its claws deep into the hull and it hung on. Straightaway, it swung its second arm and plunged those talons into the transport.

“Shit,” said Grisham.

His anger was compounded when another of the aliens appeared right on the shuttle’s nose, with its claws already sunk into the hull. Then came a third and a fourth. Grisham cursed again.

“It looks like this is the enemy push to take over our shuttle,” said Barkley.

As the man was speaking, the squad comms erupted with different voices and Grisham heard the whine of gauss coils coming from the passenger bay.

Corporal Fine reported. “Sergeant, one of those aliens just appeared at the far end of the passenger bay,” she said. “It screwed up its jump and it’s trapped in the wall, but it’s not dead. Not yet,” she finished grimly.

The situation was going from bad to worse and soon, Grisham suspected, the shuttle’s hull would be bristling with five-metre Ax’Kol. He extended his mind and, to his telepathic sense, it seemed as though the transport was enveloped in darkness. The tendrils of the enemy’s own telepathy lunged towards him, but each time, they were deflected.

Grisham knew now that the Andos was protecting him from these creatures, as well as the mind on the enemy warship. He was equally sure that if the artifact went out of his possession, the outlook for his life would not be good. Not that the outlook was exactly brimming with certainty, even while Grisham was in control of the Andos.

“Captain, our ten-second window begins now,” said Lopez.

“Hit the enemy vessel with three amplified suppressions,” said Grisham at once.

“Yes, sir,” said Lopez. “Attacks executed,” she confirmed a few moments later.

Despite the distance between the shuttle and the enemy warship, Grisham felt the weight of the amplified psionics. However, he felt no pain and he wondered briefly if the Andos was also protecting him against the Voltran’s suppression attacks, the same as it was keeping him safe from the Ax’Kol.

The enemy commanders clinging to the shuttle had no such protection. Two of them lost their grip and fell towards the ground several hundred metres below. Two others – the one on the nose and another on the portside flank – managed to retain their grip, though they visibly tensed up as if the attack had inflicted great pain, and the creature on the nose shook its head violently from side to side. The sight made Grisham hate it even more.

Meanwhile, the sound of gunfire came nonstop from the shuttle’s passenger bay, as the soldiers fought to destroy the alien which had appeared within the transport. Vaughan’s repeater droned loud, and Grisham hoped the soldiers would be able to finish the creature off with their guns, since the bay wasn’t large enough for them to use explosives.

“The Ax’Kol warship is falling, Captain!” said Lieutenant Lopez, delivering some supercharged good news.

“Yes!” shouted Barkley.

Grisham was excited by the outcome as well, but he didn’t say anything. As soon as he heard the confirmation of success – however long it might last – he banked the shuttle towards the Voltran and fixed his gaze on the location of the docking bay entrance. The transport’s propulsion rose in volume and the velocity gauge climbed.

Suddenly and without apparent strain, the Voltran lifted off. Commander Deneuve brought the warship to a halt almost at once, with its undersides a couple of hundred metres from the ground and Grisham’s destination bay entrance no further away than it had been.

Events moved quickly.

“The enemy warship’s stern is going to hit the Voltran,” said Corporal Barkley. “Shouldn’t Commander Deneuve get it out of the way?”

“I thought you’d be familiar with rapid exits from bad situations, Corporal,” said Grisham. “That enemy warship is unlikely to stay offline for long. Doing what we’re doing is going to save us a few seconds that we might later be grateful for.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lieutenant Lopez,” said Grisham. “I’d appreciate it if you’d do something about those enemy transports.”

No sooner had Lopez given her acknowledgement, than two of the Ax’Kol vessels started firing their repeaters. High-calibre slugs punched into the rear and topside armour of Grisham’s shuttle.

“Let’s try this,” he said, rotating the transport about its vertical axis.

The rapid re-orientation made the inbound fire rake along the shuttle’s portside. With great satisfaction, Grisham watched as the enemy commander holding onto that flank was pulverised by shots from its own side.

“That leaves just the one on the nose,” he said, adjusting the shuttle’s orientation again so he could fly it straight into the docking bay tunnel.

Meanwhile, missiles poured from every single one of the Voltran’s available clusters, and the warship’s Punisher guns opened up. All eight of the pursuing shuttles were pummelled by massive gauss slugs and then completely eradicated by the detonation of high-yield plasma warheads.

The majority of the Voltran’s missiles struck the underside of the falling enemy warship, though their explosions appeared tiny against its colossal size.

“Collision imminent,” said Barkley. “I hope you judged this right, Captain.”

“I did,” said Grisham tightly.

The docking bay entrance was coming up fast and the Voltran’s flank was a dark wall on the forward feed. Above everything, the immense Ax’Kol spaceship was coming down fast.

It’s going to be close.

The collision between the enemy vessel and the Voltran looked almost serene. Contact happened and the Voltran seemed to sag beneath the incredible mass which had landed upon it. Grisham imagined the howl of the battleship’s propulsion as it fought to hold the warship in the air. Commander Deneuve kept things under control and the Voltran held its position.

Grisham kept his eyes fixed on the bay entrance. The opening wasn’t much larger than the shuttle, and he needed to hit it just right.

“Come on,” muttered Barkley.

“I’m going to crush that enemy commander hanging onto our nose, Sergeant,” said Grisham. “But if it doesn’t die, you’ll have to deal with it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Maxwell. He started giving orders on the squad comms.

Grisham kept his attention on the feeds. Although the stern of the Ax’Kol warship was being supported by the Voltran, the rest of the enemy vessel was not, and it continued falling. Grisham tried not to let the darkness of it distract him, though it took every ounce of his focus.

A last moment alteration on the shuttle’s heading saw it enter the docking bay entrance tunnel, still travelling at high velocity. Grisham applied the brakes and the transport decelerated. The exit platform wasn’t far ahead, though he didn’t intend coming to a tidy stop adjacent to it.

Instead, Grisham allowed the shuttle to crash into the far bulkhead of the docking bay. The shuttle’s life support cushioned those within the vessel from the force of the impact, but it offered no protection to the alien clinging to the nose outside. With a satisfying thud, the Ax’Kol was crushed between the bay wall and the transport.

Incredibly, the creature wasn’t killed outright and it managed to hang on. Undeterred, Grisham backed the shuttle rapidly along the bay and then accelerated once more into the wall. The Ax’Kol made a weak attempt to drag its claws free in order to spring onto the platform, but it wasn’t quick enough and it was once more smashed against the Voltran’s interior. This time, the creature hung limp, the claws of one hand still embedded within the shuttle’s hull.

“Time to get out of here,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir,” said Maxwell.

The soldier was first out of the cockpit and Barkley went next. Grisham suddenly realised that the sound of gunfire had ended and he hoped that indicated a negative outcome for the alien commander in the transport’s passenger bay.

Already the shuttle’s flank door was open and the soldiers were heading outside at speed. The Ax’Kol which had enacted a psionic jump into the transport’s interior had been reduced to an unrecognizable mess.

From what Grisham could see, most of the creature’s torso, both of its legs and one arm were trapped within the bulkhead which separated the shuttle’s passenger bay from the cargo bay at the rear. Although it had been able to use one of its arms, the alien’s reach hadn’t been enough to kill the soldiers, though Grisham was sure luck played a part in that.

The visible part of the enemy commander had been torn to pieces by hundreds, if not thousands, of gauss slugs and now it hung limp, with most of its head and upper body in fragments on the bay floor.

Grisham didn’t linger. While the docking bay wasn’t yet pressurized, so he couldn’t hear the discharges, he knew from the talk on the comms that the soldiers were unloading yet more gauss shots into the Ax’Kol which was pinned between the shuttle and the Voltran’s internal bulkhead.

Leaping across the narrow gap between the transport and the platform outside, Grisham saw Maxwell and his squad firing into the Ax’Kol. The creature had partially recovered from the two crushing impacts and, although it flapped ineffectually with one arm, it was clearly on the verge of destruction. Another few seconds of incoming fire was enough to finish the job and the creature fell still.

As he hurried towards the bay exit, Grisham caught sight of Maxwell staring at the dead alien, his lip curled and his hatred writ large on his face. The soldier turned and nodded once at Grisham.

“I’ll escort you to the bridge, Captain.”

“Lead on,” said Grisham.

Maxwell pressed his hand into the indented area that activated the door and he hurried through, with Grisham following a couple of paces behind. The pressurization of the shuttle bay was continuing and, by now, the Voltran’s propulsion was detectable both as sound in the air and by the vibrations through the floor and the walls. The warship was under maximum acceleration.

Grisham was desperate to learn about the ongoing situation. “As quick as you can, Sergeant,” he said.

Maxwell understood the urgency and he increased his pace to a flat-out run. The stale scents of musty decay, which had been a feature of the Voltran since the day Grisham had first entered the warship when it was buried beneath the glass surface of Ovintus, were strong in his nostrils. He sprinted after the soldier, feeling like he’d returned home.

“Shit,” said Maxwell, a couple of turnings away from the shuttle docking bay. He came to a rapid halt, and cursed again.

Grisham almost collided with the soldier, but he managed to stop himself in time. He saw what had got Maxwell so agitated. The head of an Ax’Kol commander protruded into the corridor a few metres ahead, while the rest of it was buried in the wall. Somehow, the creature had survived – Grisham could sense its mind – and it turned its blank face towards the soldiers. Opening its wide mouth, the alien seemed to grin knowingly.

More than anything, Grisham wanted to unload his rifle into the Ax’Kol’s head, but he couldn’t spare the time. There was plenty of room to pass the alien and it had nothing with which it could make a physical attack. Grisham took the lead before Maxwell could object, and walked straight by the alien. The creature’s head followed his movement and the grin didn’t leave its face. It was tempting to punch the Ax’Kol, just for the hell of it, but Grisham suspected it would be like hitting a fallen log, and no more effective.

Once he was past the embedded alien, he hurried on, but now he was wary that he might run into others. Grisham hadn’t travelled far, when he heard Vaughan’s repeater in the corridor behind.

“You’ll have to run a sweep for others, Sergeant,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir. Just as soon as you’re safely at the bridge.”

The bridge wasn’t far and Grisham entered the circular space, where he found his crew fully occupied with whatever was happening external to the Voltran. He stood between Commander Deneuve and Lieutenant Lopez, and established a mental link to the warship.

TWENTY-TWO

Commander Deneuve was piloting the Voltran fast and low across the surface of Hevos. A plain of sand-dusted stone raced by only a few kilometres below, and a range of mountains was visible on the fast-approaching horizon. Grisham noticed wisps of smoke coming from the Voltran’s hull, indicating that its nose was heating up.

“Glad you could join us, Captain,” said Deneuve. “We’re just about to leave this shithole planet behind.” She instructed the warship to an abrupt change in course and the vessel climbed away from the surface. “The enemy warship was shut down, but we didn’t think it wise to try extracting its mind while it was dormant, so we headed around the planet until the Voltran was out of sight.”

“I’ll take over now, Commander,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir,” said Deneuve.

“Did you have a plan for what you were going to do next?” asked Grisham.

“No, Captain. Given everything that happened, escaping seemed like the best we could hope for.”

“That enemy warship shut us down with a single suppression,” said Adler. “If we face it again, the same thing will happen.”

“Aside from the one-hit knockout, what’s our status?” said Grisham.

“The Voltran’s hull suffered no significant damage from its impact with Hevos,” said Adler. “Only the warship’s minds were affected by the attack.”

“The cooldown on the psionic amplification has just this moment finished,” said Deneuve. “I’ll commence an overlapping warmup for the psionic: focus. The first two will be ready in five minutes.”

“Would two amplified suppressions have been enough against the Ax’Kol warship?” asked Grisham.

“It’s hard to tell, Captain,” said Adler. “I’d say we’d have seen a far less comprehensive shutdown of the target vessel if we’d hit it with only two boosted suppressions. Three bought us the time we needed to get out of there, and I reckon it was tight.”

The Voltran tore through the Hevos atmosphere and out into space. Grisham watched the sensors anxiously for signs of the enemy warship. It would be in pursuit – that wasn’t in doubt – but so far, it wasn’t visible on the feeds. That wasn’t, however, much of a reassurance, given how the more powerful Ax’Kol ships could make themselves invisible when the need arose. Grisham had few doubts that this current opponent had the same capability.

Unable to stop himself, he reached out with his telepathy in search of the enemy mind. He located it – or more likely, the Andos allowed him to locate it – on the blind side of Hevos. The Ax’Kol consciousness had fully recovered from dormancy and it was raging.

Despite Grisham’s attempt at subtlety, his search was detected at once and the enemy mind tried to pinpoint his location. He withdrew, hoping he hadn’t screwed up. The Ax’Kol consciousness didn’t find him and enter his head, but Grisham wasn’t sure if it had determined his position during that briefest of contacts. He sent the Voltran onto a new heading.

“Lieutenant Adler, ready us for lightspeed,” said Grisham. “I don’t care where we go, as long as it isn’t here.”

“Yes, sir,” said Adler. “I have chosen a destination one hour’s travel time from this location. We’ll depart in three minutes.”

The lightspeed countdown started and Grisham watched the sensors. As he did so, he filled his crew in on the details about the Andos artifact. Not that he knew much. When he was done talking, Commander Deneuve told Grisham the few details he hadn’t already guessed about the Voltran’s fate. Again, the telling didn’t take long - the Ax’Kol spaceship had emerged over the planet’s cusp and shut the Voltran down before the crew had time to react.

Deneuve was ashamed to have been caught out so easily, but there wasn’t much she could have done. It wasn’t as if the arrival of such a powerful Ax’Kol warship had been in any way predictable.

“One minute and we’ll be out of here,” said Adler.

The enemy warship was nowhere to be seen, though Grisham wasn’t ready to believe that this final step of the escape would be so easy. He clenched his jaw tightly and watched the feeds. The thought of his opponent closing in, shrouded by the mind inhabiting its hull, was too much for Grisham to bear. For a second time, he extended his telepathy.

Gone.

Grisham swore under his breath. He couldn’t locate the enemy mind, though he was sure it remained within this solar system. Locating the Ax’Kol ship was worth taking a risk for, and Grisham did what he could to intensify his search.

Not for the first time, he ran into the brick wall that was his own lack of knowledge. The Andos was boosting his telepathic strength, but he didn’t know how to make full use of what the artifact was doing for him. Right now, he was flailing around with the mental equivalent of a stick with a nail hammered through the end, when what he needed was greater finesse.

Grisham tried his earlier method of leaving his unconscious mind in charge. It took him a few moments to free himself from the intrusions of his thoughts, which he was sure interfered with his telepathy, but then he felt the Andos amplifying his powers like it had done before.

Almost at once, Grisham located his opponent. The Ax’Kol mind was still on the far side of Hevos, a dark cloud of seething hatred and malice. It sensed Grisham and he realised that each time his mind located the enemy, a link was made between the two of them, regardless of the protection offered by the Andos. Perhaps it was something he could prevent, but he didn’t know how.

The enemy surged towards him and its telepathic attack was blocked by the Andos. Deep inside his subconscious, Grisham felt a primal anger and, with no rational thought to rein it in, that anger generated a psionic attack against the Ax’Kol mind. The enemy didn’t so much as flinch – most likely Grisham’s psionics were too weak to affect the might of this opponent – and he withdrew immediately behind the protective barrier created by the Andos.

As brief as it was, Grisham’s encounter with the enemy had revealed something of it. The Ax’Kol warship was called Exetran and it was known as The Third. Grisham had sensed other things too – depravities and endless murder beyond his comprehension, the details clouded within the darkness of the other mind.

Aside from the Ax’Kol, he detected a thread running away from the Andos. This thread disappeared into the infinite depths, far beyond his knowing. Grisham had no idea where the thread would lead and it wasn’t the time to find out if he had the telepathic strength to follow it. The enemy vessel was a far more pressing concern.

“We’re facing a vessel known as the Exetran,” he said. “It’s currently on the blind side of Hevos. I think I just gave away our position.”

“They might be able to target us with psionics from that range, Captain,” said Deneuve.

“That’s my worry,” said Grisham, banking the Voltran onto another new heading.

“Twenty seconds and we enter lightspeed,” said Adler.

“Maybe that artifact will protect the Voltran from psionic attacks in the same way it’s protecting you, Captain,” said Kinsey.

No sooner were the words spoken than a psionic: suppress hit the Voltran. Through the interface, Grisham felt the warship’s mind shudder with the strength of the attack, though it wasn’t forced into a dormant state. In no more than a couple of seconds, the Voltran’s mind was recovered from the attack.

“For want of a better term, that wasn’t a direct hit,” said Adler. “Since the Exetran is on the blind side of Hevos, it mustn’t be able to target us accurately. Five seconds and we’ll enter lightspeed.”

The Voltran didn’t suffer any further attacks – at least none that were noticeable - and the warship entered lightspeed. Given that it had been travelling at maximum velocity when it transitioned, it would certainly miss Adler’s chosen destination by a wide margin, but that wasn’t important. Getting away from the Exetran was the only thing that mattered.

“We did it,” said Deneuve.

Something in her face drove home to Grisham exactly how hopeless the situation must have felt for his crew after their effective defeat to the Exetran. While he and the soldiers hadn’t been given an easy time on Hevos, at least they’d had some influence over their own fates. Not so for Deneuve and the others.

“We’ve got the Andos and we escaped,” said Grisham. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to smile. “It’s a good result.”

“You don’t look happy, sir,” said Lopez.

“I’m happy that we made it away from Hevos,” Grisham said truthfully. “But I find it hard to celebrate knowing that the enemy possess a warship that is magnitudes more powerful than anything in the Human Federation and Kijol fleets. In mass terms alone, the Exetran makes the Gholaxas look like a toy.”

“And you said it was known as The Third,” said Deneuve. “Does that mean there’s a First and a Second? What about a Fourth and Fifth?”

“I wish I knew one way or another, Commander,” said Grisham. “Maybe the Exetran is the Ax’Kol’s biggest and best. Maybe there were others in the past and now they’re gone.”

“But you don’t believe that,” said Bishop.

“I don’t think we’ll be that lucky,” said Grisham.

“It’s beginning to look as if the Ax’Kol weren’t even trying against the Kijol,” said Lopez.

Grisham felt suddenly exhausted. Only now was it beginning to sink in exactly what a mountain the Human Federation and the Kijol were facing. It wasn’t just the Exetran – though that warship alone was likely a challenge beyond the entire current Human Federation fleet – rather it was a combination of everything. The evidence suggesting that the Ax’Kol had endured for perhaps hundreds of millions of years was humbling.

Even the Andos, the discovery of which was clearly a boon, hinted at past conflicts involving the Ax’Kol – conflicts in which the enemy had clearly prevailed. Grisham looked at his crew members in turn. By their expressions, they also understood the breadth of humanity’s problems. Defeating the Ax’Kol no longer seemed like a matter of allying with the Kijol and blowing the crap out of the enemy fleet. Now, the task appeared vastly harder. Perhaps a mountain too high.

Grisham had long ago learned that it was best not to dwell on a future which hadn’t yet come. Whatever happened down the line was something he’d deal with. Now, he had to consider the next steps for this mission. Before that, he had other business to attend.

Sending out his mind, Grisham searched for Ax’Kol commanders on the Voltran. The creature he’d encountered on the way to the bridge was no longer detectable and he found no others. For certainty, Grisham intensified the strength of his search, in case the enemy were shielding themselves. The search again came up blank. He opened a comms channel.

“Sergeant Maxwell, I’ve searched for Ax’Kol commanders and I haven’t located any.”

“That’s good to hear, Captain. My squad and I destroyed the one we ran into in the passage.”

“Don’t let your guard down,” said Grisham.

“I’ve organised a full sweep of the interior, sir.”

“Thank you. Keep me informed.” Grisham cut the channel and spoke to his crew. “The mind on that spaceship knows about the Andos,” he said. “It’s going to hunt us down.”

“I thought you said the artifact could keep itself hidden, Captain,” said Lieutenant Bishop.

Grisham nodded and pulled the Andos from his leg pocket. “This has to be millions of years old and it hasn’t been found until now.”

“You were able to detect it, sir,” said Deneuve. “Did the Andos want you to hear it, or was it just not hiding itself from species that aren’t Ax’Kol?”

“If I had to bet on one of those two reasons, I’d put my money on the second one,” said Grisham. He pursed his lips in thought. “In less than an hour, we’re going to exit lightspeed, and before that happens, I have to decide what we’re going to do.”

“Is that decision complicated, sir?” asked Lopez. “Shouldn’t we send a comm to base and get our asses home as soon as possible?”

“I’m worried,” Grisham admitted. He looked at the Andos again. “We defeated the Gholaxas, but then the Exetran showed up at Hevos. I don’t believe those events were coincidental.”

“Which means you think the Exetran was following us, just like the Gholaxas was following us,” said Deneuve.

“Maybe,” said Grisham.

“You made a link to the Exetran’s mind,” said Deneuve. “And then it knew where to find us.”

“But there was no mind link between me and the enemy warship prior to the Exetran turning up at Hevos,” said Grisham. “We don’t know how the Ax’Kol managed to locate us.”

Having the answer to this was clearly important, but Grisham had nothing beyond guesswork to help him figure it out. Perhaps once the Ax’Kol had caught scent of him, they would be able to pursue him wherever he went and however far he travelled. He told his crew of his thoughts.

“If you’re right, that means we can’t return home,” said Deneuve. “Not until we’re one hundred percent certain the Ax’Kol can’t follow us.”

“What if it’s the Voltran’s mind the enemy can detect?” asked Kinsey. “Maybe it’s not you at all, Captain.”

“Shit, why didn’t I think of that?” said Grisham. “The Ax’Kol made the Voltran, so maybe they have a way to pinpoint its location.”

“We might have led them to Loxor,” said Deneuve. “Like we talked about before.”

Grisham had never tried to deny the possibility, though at the same time he hoped there was an alternative explanation. Now it was becoming progressively harder to believe anything other than he and his crew had drawn the Ax’Kol to an inhabited human world.

If it were true, Grisham didn’t know if he could handle the burden. Despair rose within him.

TWENTY-THREE

Grisham had his demons, but he’d always coped by trying his damnedest to be better than everyone else. He had little time for hopelessness and he clenched his jaw at the surge of anger which came as a near-automatic response.

“I won’t beat myself up over something we had no way of knowing and no way to avoid,” Grisham said. “And that’s not me saying I’m ready to believe we brought the Ax’Kol to Loxor.”

“We still can’t go home, Captain,” said Deneuve. “Not until we find out if the Exetran is able to follow us through lightspeed.”

“And there’s no way in hell we’re going to take that bastard down,” said Adler.

“While the Exetran is in pursuit of the Andos it isn’t attacking other planets,” said Grisham. “That’s a massive resource to have tied up chasing the Voltran around the galaxy.”

“What if any Ax’Kol warship can follow us?” said Bishop. “The enemy might just send twenty of their vessels to run us down. We might defeat a few, but eventually we’ll lose.”

“That’s something we’ll have to find out,” said Grisham.

“So the plan is to keep running until we’re sure one way or another if we’re being pursued?” said Lopez.

Grisham didn’t answer at once. He was thinking about the thread linking the Andos to another place.

Or another artifact.

The thought startled him. Perhaps the artifact was not unique. Perhaps it was one of many. He stared again at the Andos in the palm of his hand. Grisham used his telepathic powers to link to the device. Incredibly, the thread remained visible to his mind, even though the Voltran was travelling at lightspeed.

Not a thread. A vector. Direction and magnitude.

He withdrew and found his crew looking at him with varying degrees of puzzlement and curiosity.

“The Andos points the way to another place,” Grisham said.

“What other place?” asked Deneuve.

“That’s what I’d like to find out, Commander. The Andos contains vector data and once we exit lightspeed, I might be able to feed those details into the Voltran’s navigational system.”

“I’m intrigued,” said Lieutenant Adler.

“Me too,” said Grisham. “We’re being given a glimpse into history here, folks. A history that goes way back before the first humans ever walked on Earth.”

“I’m all for learning, Captain,” said Adler. “But humanity will soon find itself at war with the Ax’Kol. I’d rather we found weapons tech at the end of this vector, instead of statues, ruins and spheres carved from stone.”

Grisham smiled thinly. “Even if I was convinced the Ax’Kol were unable to pursue the Voltran, I’d still want to find out what’s at the endpoint of this vector.”

“Me too,” said Adler. “But it would be nice if we found more than flint spearheads.”

“You don’t sound hopeful.”

“I’m not.”

“This war against the Ax’Kol is going to be a new type of conflict, Lieutenant,” said Grisham. “Missiles and gauss slugs are all well and good, but they won’t be much use against an opponent that can disintegrate the armour of a hundred Kijol warships.”

Adler’s expression twisted painfully. “We’ve only got you and the Voltran that’s capable of fighting the enemy on their own level, Captain, and with all respect, you’re lacking in training. It’s not going to be enough.”

“At one time, we didn’t have the Voltran,” said Grisham. “If we keep pushing – keep searching – maybe we’ll find a second warship like the Voltran. Maybe we’ll find nothing. Maybe this is all a case of too little too late.”

Adler nodded. “But we won’t know if we don’t try.”

“That’s right, Lieutenant.” Grisham’s tiredness had evaporated and he felt a renewed purpose. He also felt hungry and thirsty. “We’ve got another forty minutes at lightspeed,” he said. “I’m going for something to eat.”

Grisham headed for the replicator, with the Andos in his grip. Twice on the way, he stopped and extended his senses in a search for more of the Ax’Kol commanders. He located the soldiers easily enough – they were in two squads and sweeping through the warship’s lower midsection – but there were no aliens.

The mess area was empty and he spent a few minutes in quiet contemplation, while he ate some forgettable replicated food and drank a cup of orange juice.

Grisham had always felt a wonder at the expanse of the universe and at the secrets it held. His journey had uncovered a few of those secrets, and hinted at many others, waiting to be found. Unfortunately, there was little joy to be had, since everything came back to war, death, and extinction.

With a heavy heart, Grisham returned to the bridge. Soon, the Voltran would exit lightspeed and, though he longed to give the instruction to follow the Andos vector, he couldn’t do so yet. Not with the Exetran perhaps still in pursuit.

The remainder of the journey was carried out in comparative quiet, with only the background humming of the engines to remind the crew that the Voltran was in motion. Lieutenant Adler called out a ten-minute warning and another at two minutes.

“When we arrive at wherever the hell we end up, we’re going to head away from the arrival point at maximum velocity,” said Grisham. “Once we’ve travelled far enough, we’ll keep a watch for the Ax’Kol. We can’t lead the enemy into Human Federation territory, and neither can we have them follow us to the place this artifact is pointing. If no enemies show up, we’ll re-enter lightspeed.”

“Ten seconds!” Adler yelled.

The journey timer fell to zero and the Voltran exited lightspeed. Grisham waited the couple of seconds necessary for the sensors to come online and, once he was assured the warship wasn’t near any solid objects, he requested maximum thrust from the propulsion.

“Readying the psionic: focus,” said Deneuve. “Five minutes and we’ll have the first two ready for discharge.”

“Nothing on the sensors, Captain,” said Lopez. “We aren’t near anything of note.”

“The Voltran’s positional systems should be recalibrated in a few seconds,” said Bishop. “Once that’s done, the warship will be ready to accept new destination data.”

“Acknowledged,” said Grisham, his attention jumping between the different feeds. All they showed was darkness.

Twenty minutes later, the Voltran was more than a million kilometres from its arrival place and Grisham brought the vessel to a halt. “Keep a sensor watch on our lightspeed exit point.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lopez. “It’s possible the Ax’Kol will arrive off-target.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Grisham. “Wherever they appear, you’re going to spot them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you provide me with the vector data from the Andos, Captain?” asked Adler. “If the Ax’Kol don’t show up, I assume we’ll commence the search for whatever it is we’re looking for.”

“That’s the plan,” Grisham confirmed. He channelled his mind into the Andos and found the thread he’d seen before. For a time, he struggled to understand the magnitude and direction of it. Grisham thought those concepts would be universal, and yet there was an alienness about the artifact which ensured nothing about it was easy to grasp.

Eventually, he was able to extract the vector data, by allowing his mind to absorb the information into his subconscious. At least that’s what Grisham thought he’d done. His vocabulary was distinctly lacking ways to describe the many new experiences which came with his telepathic powers.

The most important thing was the result and Grisham was able to successfully feed the information from the Andos device along the link between himself and the Voltran. The warship’s consciousness accepted the data readily enough and entered it into the navigational system.

“I don’t know what you did, Captain, but our destination is set,” said Adler. “The estimated journey time is three days. On your order, I’ll begin the lightspeed warmup.”

“We’re going to hold here for a while longer,” said Grisham. “If you want me to pull a figure out of my ass for how long, let’s call it twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes it is,” laughed Adler.

Those twenty minutes went by, and the sensors detected no sign of the enemy. Grisham was torn between his impatience to get on with things and his desire to confirm with absolute certainty that the Ax’Kol weren’t pursuing the Voltran.

“Screw it,” he said. “We’ll wait another ten minutes.”

“And another ten after that?” asked Deneuve.

“Maybe.”

Two minutes later, the Exetran emerged from lightspeed no more than ten thousand kilometres from the Voltran’s earlier arrival place. Grisham’s attention happened to be on the feed which was aimed that way and he cursed when he saw the immense Ax’Kol spaceship appear.

Although the distance was great, this was the first time he’d seen the vessel in its entirety. The Exetran was high-flanked and with hardly any taper, though the other details were lost in the distance. To Grisham, the spaceship looked more like a battering ram than a sleek vessel of war.

“Pick a different lightspeed destination for us, Lieutenant Adler,” said Grisham, instructing the Voltran to accelerate on a heading that would take it farther from the enemy warship. “A place that’ll take us longer than an hour to reach.”

“Yes, sir,” said Adler. “Destination chosen. The Voltran is preparing to enter lightspeed. Less than three minutes and we’ll be out of here.”

Grisham watched the feeds and made no attempt to run a telepathic scan of the Exetran. The enemy vessel had found the Voltran and it had done so quickly, and with incredible accuracy.

Since he had no knowledge of the method, Grisham was in the dark about how long it would take the Exetran to pinpoint his warship now that the enemy craft was out of lightspeed. The distance of a million kilometres would make it hard for the Ax’Kol if they were using their sensors, but it was beginning to look as if the Exetran’s mind was relying more on telepathic detection than cold, hard, technology.

“Two minutes and we’ll enter lightspeed,” said Adler.

Grisham didn’t respond. The Voltran had achieved its maximum velocity and the distance between it and the Exetran was increasing, although he doubted it was going to make much difference.

He linked to the Andos. The device was certainly aware of the Exetran, and its whispering had the same quality of alarm that he remembered from back in the Eox system. However, Grisham didn’t know if the artifact was doing anything to actively block the enemy vessel’s search. His mind wasn’t being assailed, so that was something.

“One minute,” said Adler.

“We have two psionic: focus amplifiers available,” said Deneuve.

“I’d rather we got out of here without having to use them,” said Grisham.

“Twenty seconds,” Adler called, his voice edged with the stress of the situation.

“We’re going to make it,” said Grisham.

“Ten seconds.”

The Exetran hadn’t moved since its arrival, and it remained motionless right where it had first appeared. Grisham stared, as if he could pin the enemy craft in place with the strength of his hatred.

“Three, two, one.”

The Voltran entered lightspeed. Grisham checked the lightspeed timer and discovered that Lieutenant Adler had set a destination that was two days’ travel from the starting point.

“Will a two-day journey increase the time it takes the Exetran to find us?” Grisham wondered aloud.

“If it doesn’t, then we can try a ten-day transit straight after,” said Adler. “Or a fifty-day transit. Maybe we could try a whole year at lightspeed. Whatever you order, Captain.”

Grisham wasn’t yet ready to decide. “That was a close-run thing back there. What I’d like to know is what kind of overhead the Exetran has on its pursuit. It was a little over forty minutes behind us that time. Is that a constant value, or does it scale up depending on the distance or duration of our own lightspeed travel?”

“We’re going to need some more datapoints in order to draw any conclusions, sir,” said Adler.

“How many more datapoints?”

“One more would be a good start. If you’re hoping for an accurate model, we’ll need to observe the Exetran’s behaviour many more times.”

“We’re not going to survive those many more times,” said Grisham.

“That would be my opinion as well, sir.”

Grisham closed his eyes for a moment. He hadn’t been allowed even a moment to enjoy his escape from Hevos, before being thrown headfirst into this reeking mound of hot crap.

Some tough decisions were waiting in his immediate future and if Grisham picked badly, the consequences might well end up fatal for a whole bunch of people.

TWENTY-FOUR

“We’ll continue at lightspeed for two days,” said Grisham. “When we re-enter local space, we’ll wait somewhere far off our arrival place and watch for the Ax’Kol. Then you’ll have your second datapoint, Lieutenant Adler.”

“What if the Exetran is only forty minutes behind us again?” asked Deneuve. “I’m sure we’re all thinking that if we’d entered lightspeed a few seconds later at our last entry point, the enemy would have detected us and shut us down with a suppression attack.”

“If the enemy is right on our tail, we’ll—” Grisham hesitated, unsure if he wanted to predict what he’d do. “We’ll enter lightspeed for a couple of weeks. Or a month.”

“If the enemy want the Andos as much as you think, Captain, they aren’t going to give up the chase anytime soon,” said Bishop.

“We can’t run forever,” said Grisham angrily.

“Yes, sir, we can,” said Deneuve quietly. “If we have to. We need to face the fact that we might never be able to return home.”

“Hell no, that’s not happening!” said Grisham. “If we have to lay in wait for the Exetran and play hit and run for months, then that’s what we’ll do.”

“Maybe we should destroy the Andos, Captain,” said Deneuve. “It’s the reason the Exetran is pursuing us.”

“Yes, but—” Grisham stopped himself. Deneuve had just suggested the most logical way to extricate themselves from what was a bad situation. And yet, it didn’t seem right. “I want to find out what’s at the end of this rainbow.”

“Are you expecting to find a pot of gold, Captain?” said Adler. “What if it’s a crock of shit instead?”

“What if we find a dozen artifacts like the Andos?” Grisham shot back. “What if we learn how to use them against the Ax’Kol?”

“You’re suggesting we take a big gamble, sir,” said Deneuve.

“At some point we’re going to have to roll the dice, Commander. If we destroy the Andos, maybe the Exetran will lose interest in us, but – if we’re right – the Ax’Kol might still be able to track the Voltran when and if they choose to do so. We’ll be able to play a part in the coming war – as long as we never go near a populated world again – but we’ll never be entirely sure if this warship is a liability or not.”

“Given time, we’d know if the Ax’Kol can track the Voltran,” said Adler. “Maybe you could find the answers in the warship’s consciousness.”

“Maybe,” said Grisham noncommittally.

The souls in the grey knew how to detect Ax’Kol intrusions and they knew how to fool enemy minds, albeit not always successfully. None of it had been enough to stop first the Gholaxas and then the Exetran from tracking the Voltran.

“If we’re screwed anyway, we might as well go looking for the Captain’s pot of gold,” said Lopez. “That’s my opinion.”

“I think it’s my opinion too,” said Adler. “Regardless of all this grumbling I’ve been doing.”

“We can’t go home and none of us wants to run forever,” said Deneuve. “We all want to do what we can to help defeat the Ax’Kol, or at least do something to hurt them. If that means we have to go on a tour of a few ancient civilizations, then so be it.”

“We definitely need that extra datapoint, Captain,” said Adler. “It might give us an idea of how long we’ll have available for our operations at the endpoint of the artifact’s vector.”

“You’ll have your datapoint, Lieutenant,” said Grisham. “In two days from now.” He smiled. “If we can predict the lag in the pursuit, we’ll be better placed to guess how long we’ll have at each of our subsequent destinations.”

“I realise we don’t have the luxury of choice here, Captain,” said Lopez. “Are you definitely sure you want to risk leading the Ax’Kol to something we’d probably rather they didn’t find?”

“It’s the best pick of a bad bunch,” said Grisham.

He waited to see if his crew would offer any arguments or other suggestions, but they weren’t forthcoming. From their expressions, they needed time to think and Grisham felt likewise.

With two days before the Voltran broke out of lightspeed, the crew had an opportunity for downtime. Grisham gave Deneuve, Kinsey, and Lopez six hours, and they left the bridge quickly.

“It’s going to be a long six hours,” laughed Adler.

Grisham only now noticed how tired the other man appeared. Lieutenant Bishop didn’t look much better.

“I bet it was tough when the Exetran knocked the Voltran offline,” said Grisham.

“Damn tough,” said Adler. “We expected the Ax’Kol to storm the bridge at any moment.”

“They made a mistake by not doing so,” said Grisham. He had a sudden realisation. “The mind on the Exetran is overconfident. It believed the Voltran wasn’t coming out of dormancy, but it was wrong.”

“And then we shut it down in return,” said Bishop. “I bet that stung.”

The conversation died off and Grisham began checking the clock. He was tempted by the thought of experimenting with the Andos, but he was tired. Learning was best kept for a fresh brain, he told himself.

Six hours later, Deneuve, Kinsey and Lopez returned, looking slightly improved for having a few hours’ sleep. Grisham sent Adler and Bishop on their way, and then spent a minute or so taking to Deneuve. With nothing to report, the handover was brief and soon Grisham was off to find a mattress.

He passed through the mess room on his way. The soldiers had finished their sweep of the warship and now they were here. Grisham felt obliged to let Maxwell know what was happening, and he stopped to do so.

Once he was finished talking, Grisham found himself a place to rest not far from the mess area. Less than a minute after he closed his eyes, sleep came. He dreamed of the grey and the souls within it. The knowledge of what those souls had once been should have made his sleep restless, but it did not. Grisham had made his promise to them and that was the best he could offer. He slept well.

The remainder of the two days passed without incident. As the end time neared, the Voltran’s crew were rested and ready for whatever would come – or as ready as it was possible to be.

“Ten minutes,” shouted Adler, his voice jarring against the soothing drone of the propulsion.

“We all know the plan,” said Grisham. “Once we exit lightspeed, Lieutenant Adler will ready an immediate second jump that will take us two million klicks from our start position – that distance would require forty minutes at our maximum sub-light velocity and that might be cutting it fine if the Exetran is hot on our heels.” He grimaced. “I don’t think distance has any effect on the enemy’s search speed, but I’d rather have those two million kilometres between us than not.”

“I’ll keep the psionic: focuses rolling,” said Deneuve. “We can always have two amplifiers ready to discharge, but given the five-minute warmup, three isn’t possible without introducing gaps elsewhere.”

“We’re only going to need long enough to escape into lightspeed,” said Grisham. “If we can send the Exetran offline for even a few seconds, that might be the difference between success and failure.”

Grisham and his crew knew what they were doing and they didn’t need to go over the details time and again. As the minutes counted down, Grisham shifted from foot to foot. It wasn’t that he was fearful of the coming encounter – and surely, his brain told him, there would be an encounter – rather he was desperate to move beyond this risky yet vital observation of the enemy warship. He wanted to be on his way to the artifact vector’s endpoint and there, he believed, he would find enlightenment, whatever that meant.

“Ten seconds!” shouted Adler.

Grisham exchanged a glance with Deneuve and she gave him a tight smile.

“Let’s get this done,” she said.

The Voltran re-entered local space and once again Grisham waited the brief time required for the sensors to come online. Reassuring darkness surrounded the warship.

“Finish those scans,” said Grisham. “If there’s anything we can use to our advantage, I’d like to know about it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lopez.

Grisham didn’t want to stay at the Voltran’s arrival point any longer than necessary and he watched his sensor team as they went through the process of sweeping the surrounding space for anything of interest. Generally, a star was easy enough to find, and from there, a skilled sensor officer could usually locate any orbiting bodies in only a short time. It was the lone enemy warships out in the void that were hard to spot.

“Area scans complete,” said Lopez. “There’s nothing here of any note.”

That came as no surprise. “Lieutenant Adler, ready us for lightspeed again,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir. Target destination selected. Three minutes.”

The warmup finished and the Voltran launched into lightspeed for a split-second. Grisham held the warship stationary after its arrival and kept his focus on the sensor feeds.

“I’m readying the psionic amplifiers, Captain,” said Deneuve. “Same routine as last time – so we’ll always have two ready.”

“There are no Ax’Kol in the place we just left, sir,” said Lopez. “I’ll keep one of our arrays fixed on that location.”

“Acknowledged,” said Grisham. “Lieutenant Adler, choose our next escape destination, and cross your fingers that we don’t have to use it.”

“It’s done, Captain – I’ve chosen a place that’s six days away at our highest lightspeed multiplier,” said Adler. “Now let’s wait and see if the Exetran shows up.”

Every member of the crew kept watch on the feeds and those feeds remained blank. Ten minutes passed since the Voltran’s most recent lightspeed exit, and then fifteen. As the elapsed time rose towards forty minutes, Grisham’s agitation increased. If the Exetran was able to pursue the Voltran with no additional overhead for longer transits, then it would be far harder to justify a journey to the endpoint of the artifact vector – not without accepting an increased risk that the Ax’Kol would ruin any attempt at recovery of a potential second device.

Forty minutes became forty-five, and then fifty. Grisham felt a flickering of hope that perhaps the enemy had simply given up the chase, or would be far enough behind that an even longer lightspeed transit might shake off the pursuing Exetran.

“Fifty minutes,” said Bishop. “This is a positive sign.”

“And I’m happy to wait here for much longer,” said Grisham. “Even if that means we stay right on this spot for a few days.”

“At what point will you be satisfied the enemy have given up, sir?” asked Deneuve.

“A week, maybe,” said Grisham. In truth, he suspected his impatience would get the better of him long before that, and Deneuve knew him well enough that she likely guessed as much.

At fifty-five minutes, the Exetran emerged from lightspeed, a few thousand kilometres from the Voltran’s initial arrival place in this area of space.

“Damnit!” said Grisham. “Lieutenant Adler, send us into lightspeed.”

“Yes, sir. Three minutes and we’ll be out of here.”

The Voltran’s engines readied for lightspeed and, after nearly three tense minutes, launched the warship away.

“Fifty-five minutes,” said Grisham. “There’s your datapoint, Lieutenant Adler.”

Adler only nodded. “A split-second before our departure, our instrumentation registered a faint power surge, Captain. I believe we were caught on the fringes of a psionic: suppress attack.”

“The enemy mind knew our approximate location,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir. Maybe if we’d entered lightspeed any later than we did—”

“I understand,” said Grisham. “We keep cutting it fine.”

“Anyway, we increased the enemy arrival time from forty-two minutes, all the way to fifty-five minutes,” said Adler. “However, the journey time increased from one hour to two full days. The increase in the arrival interval is clearly not linear with the extended journey time.”

Grisham had a sudden idea why that might be the case. “The Exetran is able to detect the direction of our travel, but not the duration. In order to maintain the pursuit, the Ax’Kol mind is cancelling its lightspeed transit at whatever intervals it believes are suitable. Then, it checks for the direction of our travel and re-enters lightspeed.”

“You might be on to something, Captain,” said Adler. “However, the enemy must have a way of detecting the Voltran’s lightspeed endpoint as well, in order to journey to the exact place we emerge into local space.”

“The enemy mind has telepathic abilities far beyond mine,” said Grisham. “Clearly it has a working method, even if we don’t know the nuts and bolts of it.”

“If you’re right about what the Exetran is doing, then it’s likely that increasing our journey time won’t have any significant effect on the pursuit time,” said Adler.

“And that would amount to a heap of crap for us,” said Grisham. “Fifty-five minutes – give or take – isn’t much. If the Andos vector leads us to another planet, we don’t have a hope in hell of accomplishing anything significant in such a short time.”

“We’ll either have to keep running, or we’ll have to take that risk, Captain,” said Deneuve.

That was the truth, though Grisham didn’t much like it. “We’ll have to keep running,” he said.

“What if we try for another datapoint, Captain?” said Adler. He furrowed his brow. “Maybe if we cancel this current lightspeed transit after a few hours, the enemy will overshoot, and have no way to detect where we re-entered local space.”

Grisham wasn’t convinced. In fact, he was extremely far from being convinced. The Exetran was using telepathy to pursue the Voltran, and that, in Grisham’s mind, meant it didn’t matter one bit if the Ax’Kol vessel overshot. Once it exited lightspeed, it would be able to locate the Voltran again and the pursuit would resume.

“We aren’t going to look for another datapoint, Lieutenant,” said Grisham.

Having hoped for many things other than this, he was left with only his least-favoured option – running away, potentially for weeks, months or years.

Anything else risked leading the Exetran to places the Ax’Kol would find valuable. Cursing that he’d been forced down this road, Grisham did his best to prepare himself for a long and mentally draining time at lightspeed.

TWENTY-FIVE

For three weeks, Grisham commanded the Voltran into lightspeed transits of varying length. At the end of each journey – some as short as an hour, the longest being four days – he ordered a ten-minute halt in local space, before commanding the warship once more into lightspeed. Not once during these brief stops did the Exetran appear.

While the periods in local space were stressful, the time spent at lightspeed was hardly more tolerable. Discipline remained good, but tempers were clearly beginning to fray. Grisham couldn’t stop wondering what was happening within the Human Federation, and, though he ordered many comms sent to base, the Voltran was unable to receive the return comms since it was moving from place to place so frequently. Therefore, Grisham, his crew, and the soldiers onboard were left in the dark about events back home.

At the end of the third week, Grisham and his crew discussed their escape tactics, as they had done many times in the days prior to this.

“Our current transit ends in two hours, Captain,” said Adler. “Maybe this time we should go for that third datapoint. I also reckon that three weeks is long enough for the Ax’Kol to lose interest. I’m not saying the Andos isn’t important to them, but much of that importance is based on our own assumption. A warship like the Exetran might have bigger fish to fry elsewhere.”

“Even if the enemy call a halt to their pursuit, they might resume at a later time,” said Grisham. “That’s what has me worried – the fact that we’ll never know until it happens.”

“A break in the pursuit will allow us to journey to the endpoint of the artifact vector,” said Deneuve.

“That would be another gamble, since we won’t know how much time we’ll have at that endpoint,” said Grisham.

“We can’t expect precision here, Captain,” said Deneuve. She narrowed her eyes. “However, I can see you’re already convinced and you’re only going through the motions of arguing.”

For the first time in days, Grisham laughed. “I’m that obvious?”

“Hell yeah, you’re that obvious,” said Deneuve. She grinned. “I’m surprised you lasted three weeks before deciding you’d had enough of running.”

“I’m not completely gung-ho, Commander,” said Grisham. “But you’re right – I think it’s time we stopped and waited to find out if the enemy is still in pursuit. If the Exetran doesn’t show up, we should follow the artifact vector, but after that, I’m going to need a lot more convincing that it’s safe to go home.”

“I think we’re all resigned to having an extended time out here,” said Adler. “Admiral Danner – bless his soul – provided us with eight tons of paste for the replicator. However, we’re down to about four tons now, so we can’t stay away forever.”

“At some point we’ll have to arrange a rendezvous with a supply vessel,” said Grisham. “But we have enough leeway that we don’t have to worry about it just yet.”

“So one more stop before we go hunting for clay pots and pans on a long-dead world somewhere,” said Adler.

Grisham nodded. “There’s no point in waiting any longer. Bring us out of lightspeed, Lieutenant Adler.”

“Yes, sir. We are now entering local space.”

The feeds came online and Grisham stared into the darkness.

“Local area scans underway,” said Lopez. “I’m not expecting to find anything.”

“Nor am I,” said Grisham.

The scans were soon finished and Lopez declared there was a lack of notable features anywhere within the warship’s detection range.

“Lieutenant Adler,” said Grisham. “We’re going two million kilometres—” He pointed in a direction chosen at random. “—that way.”

“Yes, sir, that way it is,” Adler confirmed.

Less than three minutes later, the Voltran executed an in-out lightspeed transit and Lopez aimed one of the sensor arrays directly at the place the warship had just vacated.

“Empty space,” she said.

“I’m readying the psionic amplifiers, Captain,” said Deneuve.

“And I’ve entered a new destination in the navigational system,” said Adler. “The moment I see the Exetran, I’ll commence the warmup.”

Grisham nodded in acknowledgement, but most of his attention was on the feeds, even if there was nothing to see. This was it – the potential end of a long and dreary pursuit. He watched, breathing in cold air through his nostrils.

“This might be a long wait, Captain,” said Adler.

“The longer the better,” said Grisham, though in reality he wasn’t looking forward to the coming mix of boredom and agitation. It was possible the Exetran’s mind had cancelled the pursuit, but until he was sure, nobody would be permitted to leave the bridge.

Ten minutes went by, then twenty, thirty and forty. Grisham stared at the feeds, as if his anger could keep the enemy away. Fifty minutes became an hour, and one hour become two.

“I don’t want to jinx anything,” said Adler. “But this is going better than I expected.”

“Yeah,” said Grisham, wondering if this was the moment the Exetran would choose to exit lightspeed. It did not.

The minutes went by with an agonising lack of urgency. Grisham hadn’t started with an exact duration in mind, and he was aware that soon he’d have to decide when enough was enough. However, there was more to being a warship commanding officer than deep space combat, and Grisham kept reminding himself how vital it was for him to learn if the Exetran had given up on the Voltran. He was doubtful the Ax’Kol mind would ever abandon its chase and he’d made this clear to his crew, but he didn’t keep repeating it.

After four hours of waiting, Grisham’s reluctant hope from earlier had started to burgeon into something resembling real hope. The crew were feeling it too, and though they were clearly bored by this period of inactivity, their spirits were noticeably higher. It was good to see, after the tense last three weeks.

It was time to put a limit on the waiting.

“We’ll hold here until six hours total have passed,” said Grisham. “If there’s no sign of the Exetran, we’ll head to the Andos vector endpoint and see what we find.”

With the decision made, Grisham gave his full attention to the feeds. He was rested, but the early signs of fatigue were creeping in, solely as a result of having to maintain a high level of focus for so long.

“I’m taking a break from the feeds,” he said. “Commander Deneuve, I’d like you to do the same.”

“Yes, sir.”

Grisham stayed on the bridge and tried not to watch the clock.

“Three days to the vector endpoint,” said Adler. “Maybe I’ll be able to enjoy the journey if the Exetran isn’t sniffing along our trail.”

Grisham had taken care during the pursuit to ensure that the Voltran never strayed much farther from the vector endpoint than three days. If they ever managed to shake off the Exetran, he didn’t want to spend weeks at lightspeed, nor did he want to venture too close to the endpoint – just in case the enemy mind could somehow telepathically locate the intended destination. He knew he was probably being too careful, but it wasn’t costing him anything.

“If the Exetran isn’t here at the six-hour mark, we’ll follow that vector,” said Grisham.

“I’ll override the existing escape destination on your command, sir,” said Adler. “With the data I have, I can choose an approximate arrival distance from the endpoint. How far out should I aim?”

“Let’s go for a hundred million klicks,” said Grisham. “Just in case the Andos vector is pointing into the centre of a star.” He was struck by a sudden doubt. “Make it a billion klicks, just in case it’s a really massive star.”

“But T-Evinol 3 has a diameter of two-point-five billion klicks, sir,” said Bishop. “And there are many other stars which—"

“I know,” Grisham interrupted. “But those are few and far between. We’re aiming for a billion klicks.”

“Yes, sir, I was just pointing out that—”

“One billion klicks it is, Captain,” said Adler, taking his own turn at cutting Bishop off.

As the time approached five hours, Grisham resumed his watch over the sensors, and ordered Adler and Bishop to take a break for a time. Forty minutes later, he offered Lopez and Kinsey a chance to do something other than watch the feeds.

“Coming up to six hours,” said Lopez. “Stay away from here, you alien shitheads.”

“Amen to that,” said Adler.

Grisham was determined to wait the full time he’d decided upon, plus the extra three minutes for the Voltran’s lightspeed warmup. When the timer hit six hours, he gave the order.

“Lieutenant Adler, cancel the old destination and enter the new one. We’re going to find out what this artifact is giving us directions to.”

“Yes, sir,” said Adler. “The new destination is entered and the lightspeed warmup has commenced.”

The logical part of Grisham’s brain told him there was no increased probability of the Exetran arriving in the last three minutes, compared to the preceding three-hundred-and-sixty minutes.

A different part of his brain was convinced that if something bad was going to happen, it would happen in these last three minutes. His agitation levels went sky-high and he suddenly understood how much pressure he’d been under these last three weeks. The Exetran was a terrible, seemingly unbeatable opponent, and for all that time, the Voltran had been its sole focus.

More than anything, Grisham wanted the enemy spaceship off his back, and now that moment was almost upon him, it was hard not to think that fate might deal him something from the bottom of the pack.

Screw it, he thought, forcing a smile. This isn’t me. I’ve never worried about fate and luck before and I’m not about to start now.

“Ten seconds,” said Adler without inflection.

To Grisham’s enormous relief, the timer descended to zero and the Voltran entered lightspeed. Where the warship would end up, he had no idea. What he would find there, he was no better placed to guess.

TWENTY-SIX

The last shift had been a long one and the first priority on the three-day journey to the endpoint was to catch up on sleep and to make sure that everyone on the Voltran would be ready for action when the warship next broke out of lightspeed.

Although Lieutenant Adler had suggested that he might enjoy the transit, Grisham did not. He spent his off-duty hours either sleeping or trying to learn how to control the Andos. The device remained a mystery. Grisham felt it possessed something akin to an intelligence, though not in a way that he, as a human, recognised it.

His certainty that the Andos was incredibly potent had not receded. It was a telepathic amplifier, and Grisham had already seen how it defended him from the mind on the Exetran, as well as rousing the Voltran from dormancy, but other than that, he didn’t know what it was capable of, and his efforts to figure out those capabilities were not successful.

It was glaringly obvious to Grisham that he didn’t have a damned clue what he was doing. He was a beginner when it came to telepathy, and it struck him that a device as clearly powerful as the Andos was designed to be used by a being with far greater skills and power than his own.

Grisham had no difficulty accepting his limitations, though he longed to find a way to use the artifact against the Ax’Kol. Of course, the species which had created the Andos was no more, and he was sure that species had been made extinct on Hevos – more likely at the hands of the Ax’Kol than by the intensity of their planet’s sun. Somehow, those aliens – primitive as they were - had made the Andos and created it in such a way that it was able to remain hidden all this time.

And then, the device had been located during the mission to Hevos.

Every time Grisham thought about these guessed-at events of the past, his head spun with the weight of the lost ages. Now, in the present, he was determined that humanity – and the Kijol too if he could make it happen without creating additional risk for his own people – wouldn’t succumb to the same fate as these long-gone species.

As the end of the third day at lightspeed drew near, Grisham and his crew readied themselves on the bridge. Everyone was fresh and prepared for what might potentially be a long shift on duty, and equally they were eager to discover what lay in store at this unknown destination.

“Ten minutes!” yelled Adler.

“Lieutenant Lopez, send the order to Sergeant Maxwell,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir. I’ll tell him and his squad to get their asses to the shuttle,” Lopez confirmed.

There was nothing left to do but wait for the Voltran to re-enter local space. Grisham was storing the Andos in his leg pocket and he withdrew the device one more time, to see if he could sense anything new from it, now that the endpoint of its vector was close. He channelled his thoughts into the artifact, but felt nothing different – it was completely and utterly alien, just like it had always been.

“Two minutes!” called Adler.

The crew knew what was expected of them and Grisham didn’t waste his breath repeating what they’d already discussed over the course of the journey. He plunged briefly into the grey. The souls were strangely calm, and he sensed no agitation. The Voltran had never visited the coming destination, and its consciousness knew nothing of the place. That would soon change.

Lieutenant Adler shouted his ten-second warning and, shortly after, the Voltran re-entered local space. The sensors came online and Grisham saw nothing of immediate note. Already he could sense a change in the Andos. Its whispering – which had always been there at the extremes of his senses – had changed, becoming more like a susurration.

“Readying the psionic amplifiers,” said Deneuve. “Let’s hope we don’t need them.”

“Commencing local area scans,” said Bishop. He made an ahem sound. “We have not emerged within a star.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Grisham.

“I’ll search for any features of interest,” said Lopez. “We targeted a billion klicks from the endpoint, and that’s where I’ll focus my search.”

Thinking he might learn something of use while his sensor team got on with business, Grisham channelled into the Andos, where he felt the susurration more keenly in his mind. He couldn’t quite understand the meaning of the telepathic sound – he didn’t think it was a note of alarm, but he didn’t know how to describe it.

Then, a word appeared unbidden in his head.

Urzox.

Grisham didn’t know if Urzox was a place or an object, and the Andos wasn’t forthcoming.

“We’re either looking for a place called Urzox, or for something with that name,” he said.

“I’ve detected a star, Captain,” said Lopez.

“Is it at the vector endpoint?” asked Grisham.

“No, sir. The vector endpoint is in an area of empty space.”

“Are you sure?” asked Grisham. “Maybe there’s an object that’s too small for us to detect from this distance.”

“That’s a distinct possibility,” Lopez admitted. “Give me a moment to check out the gravity distortion around the star.” She went quiet for a few seconds. “I’ve located a planet – it’s about seventy million klicks from the vector endpoint. I’ll add it to the tactical.”

Grisham was puzzled. “That planet would seem like a logical endpoint.”

“Yes, sir.”

Deneuve came up with a logical explanation for the discrepancy. “The vector data you extracted is more than three weeks old, Captain. If the endpoint is a planet, we could be searching millions of klicks from where the planet was at that time.”

“Let me check,” said Grisham.

He took a fresh extraction of the vector data, fed it into the warship’s navigational system and then created an additional overlay on the tactical. The new vector ended almost exactly at the planet.

“Looks like you hit the nail on the head, Commander,” said Grisham. “The Andos is updating the vector according the planet’s position on its orbital track.”

“The Voltran’s sensors aren’t going to tell us much from here, Captain,” said Lopez.

“We’ll execute a lightspeed jump,” said Grisham. “Lieutenant Adler, target a place one million kilometres from that planet.” He hesitated. “On second thoughts, let’s go straight in at a half-million klicks. I’m not expecting trouble.”

Grisham felt Deneuve’s gaze upon him, but she didn’t offer a dissenting view.

“Half a million klicks it is, sir,” said Adler.

Three minutes later, the Voltran entered lightspeed, and then returned to local space after a split-second. Grisham checked the feeds eagerly. None of the arrays were yet aimed at the planet, but Lieutenant Lopez soon had that corrected.

“There it is, Captain,” she said. “Urzox, or whatever it’s called.”

At first glance, Grisham was disappointed. The planet was approximately Earth-sized, but it was cold, rocky, and barren, and with an atmosphere incapable of supporting life. The usual features of craters, fissures and other surface irregularities were present.

“Looks just like one of a trillion other planets,” said Grisham.

“I’m starting the surface scans, sir,” said Lopez. “Maybe we’ll find something once we take a closer look.”

“You should extract the vector data from the Andos again, Captain,” said Deneuve. “What if it isn’t pointing at the planet’s core, but something on the surface? Perhaps something that’s on the blind side of our position.”

“That’s a good idea, Commander,” said Grisham.

He formed a connection with the Andos and he pulled out the vector data again. Once more, it had changed to reflect the motion of the planet. Grisham added the new overlay onto the tactical.

“You were right, Commander. The vector endpoint is on the far side of the planet – out of our sensor arc.”

“The first surface sweep hasn’t revealed anything of note, Captain,” said Lopez.

“We’re going to circle the planet,” said Grisham. “Keep scanning, but I don’t think you’re going to find anything yet.”

He instructed the Voltran to accelerate and the warship surged towards its maximum velocity. Then, Grisham allowed it to coast and the propulsion sound fell away.

“We should start having additional visibility in a little over eleven minutes, sir,” said Bishop.

Grisham nodded. “This heading will bring us to a hundred thousand klicks and I’ll maintain that altitude throughout the circuit.”

During the approach, Grisham studied the planet. Its bleak surface betrayed no clues as to why the Andos artifact might be pointing here.

“It’s possible this planet was once capable of hosting life, Captain,” said Lopez after a few minutes. “I can’t say that for definite – I’m basing my statement on various factors that are common with other planets in Human Federation territory that we believe might once have been suitable for the development of living organisms.”

“There’s definitely no sign of life on this planet now,” said Bishop. “But if it died out long ago, it’s possible a cursory surface scan wouldn’t detect any evidence.”

The circumstances required for life to grow on a planet happened only rarely, but given the expanse of the universe, it was supposed within the Human Federation that potentially millions – or more – species existed within the near-endless depths. Grisham reflected that his travels were perhaps beginning to scratch the surface of what the universe held, or had once held.

He suddenly realised how tense he was, and how anxious to find out what secrets existed on this planet. Likely it was another artifact similar to the Andos, but perhaps it was something different. As long as it wasn’t nothing. Grisham felt a chill of nervous excitement.

The distance between the Voltran and the planet fell, and he stabilised the vessel a hundred thousand kilometres above the rocky surface.

“What’re we going to find?” said Deneuve quietly. By the tone of her voice she wasn’t expecting a response, and nobody offered one.

By now, the Voltran’s sensors were detecting new areas of the planet, which hadn’t been visible from the warship’s previous lightspeed emergence point. Grisham’s attention was almost entirely on the feeds, but he saw nothing to draw his eye. There again, the vector ended on an area of the planet that still wasn’t within the Voltran’s sensor arc.

“Not long,” he muttered.

And then, he saw a spaceship on the planet’s surface, right on the planet’s cusp. Grisham saw at once that the vessel was not operational, and he reduced the Voltran’s velocity to zero in order that he could get a better look.

The alien craft was only a few hundred metres in length, with a likely mass of not much more than a hundred million tons. With its angular shape and squared-off nose, it was difficult to tell if the spaceship had been constructed as a fighter, a troop carrier, or something else entirely.

“That thing is ancient,” said Lopez.

Grisham didn’t need a sensor scan to tell him that. The hull of the spaceship was crumbling and it was heavily pitted. A few pieces of alloy had broken from its stern and landed on the ground.

“Any idea how old?” he asked.

“The sensors can’t accurately date metals, Captain,” said Lopez. “We’d need extensive details on the planet’s weather patterns and its changing atmospheric conditions, in order to create a predictive model of erosion.”

“What non-accurate dates are the sensors providing, Lieutenant?”

“That spaceship is older than a million years, sir. It could potentially be much, much older.”

“And it wasn’t shot down,” said Deneuve.

“No, Commander, all the evidence indicates its landing was a controlled one,” said Lopez.

The alien vessel was the first real indication that the Andos vector was pointing towards something which had likely once been of enormous significance. Whether that something was significant to this day remained to be seen.

“Let’s continue,” said Grisham, looking towards the planet’s horizon.

He increased velocity again and the warship accelerated. In moments, another spaceship was revealed by the Voltran’s progress – this one no more than twenty kilometres from the first. Grisham reduced velocity, but not before three more alien spaceships became visible on the sensors.

“They’re all different shapes and sizes,” said Bishop. “I’m running scans – maybe I’ll be able to give you an idea of when they came here.”

These additional spaceships were low in size and mass compared to most vessels in the Human Federation fleet, and again, they looked old beyond time. As Bishop had said, they were different – one was elongated with decaying cubes at each end, while the second resembled an arrowhead, though one from which pieces had fallen to the ground. The third spaceship was crumbling badly and Grisham couldn’t tell much about its original shape. Now, it just looked like a grey heap.

As he stared at these dead ships, Grisham felt a peculiar sadness at their sight. Whatever had brought them here had been – at the time – momentous. Of that he felt sure.

Instructing the Voltran to accelerate once more, he sent the warship into a descent that would bring it closer to the planet, while continuing the circuit. The Andos vector endpoint was still hundreds of kilometres out of sensor sight.

What lay there, Grisham didn’t dare guess.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The Voltran’s progress revealed more and more spaceships – dozens turned into hundreds and the numbers kept on climbing. Each one of these vessels was decaying, but even looking beyond that, they still appeared ancient, as if the hands which had built them hadn’t long mastered spaceflight.

In addition, it was becoming increasingly clear that these were the constructs of more than one species, though Grisham couldn’t begin to guess at how many.

“This is like a damned graveyard for spaceships,” said Adler. “I hate it.”

“Let’s find what’s at the endpoint,” said Grisham.

He commanded the Voltran to resume its passage across the planet, now at a thousand-kilometre altitude. The alien spaceships were everywhere beneath, landed wherever the ground was flat enough, and with no apparent pattern or organization.

“The endpoint is coming up, Captain,” said Bishop. “Some of the spaceships which are just coming into sight look more like transports. They’re a hell of a lot bigger than most of the others.”

Grisham’s feeling of sadness intensified at the sight of the transports. With their high sides and a design which indicated they were constructed to maximise the internal volume, they couldn’t be anything else.

These carried a living cargo, not supplies or weapons.

Something new came up on the feeds. Grisham saw domes with a height of three hundred metres and made of a much darker alloy. These domes surrounded another warship, but this was different to all the others. Its hull measured almost nine thousand metres and it was sleek, with flank wings. The spaceship’s stern was low but flat, and its nose section was shaped like a wedge. To Grisham’s eye, it was clearly a vessel of war.

He stared for long moments at this discovery. Much of the warship’s hull was dark – a near-black like the Voltran – but in other places the grey of alloy showed through. The only visible weapons were two massive, angular turrets, one on its midsection, and one closer to the stern. From each turret protruded two barrels. When he saw the guns, Grisham was reminded of an old sea-going battleship from humanity’s dim and distant past.

Elsewhere, closer to the nose where yet more metal was exposed, an opening in the armour led down into the warship’s interior, though Grisham couldn’t see much from his current viewing angle.

“That warship looks incomplete,” he said.

“And it’s not showing any sign of decay,” said Bishop. “All the exposed alloy looks newly-forged.”

“I don’t for a moment believe this vessel just arrived,” said Grisham.

“Nor do I, Captain. I’m sure it’s been here as long as all the others.”

“The dark hull matter isn’t exactly the same composition as that of the Voltran, but it isn’t much different,” said Lopez.

Grisham brought the Voltran to a halt so that he could properly survey the scene. The vector endpoint was aimed directly at this vessel – a vessel which wasn’t finished and which had surely never lifted off.

Everywhere around, decaying spaceships were the corpses of a dozen fleets, their essences sucked out, while the monument in the centre continued to stand in defiance of time.

“Oh hell,” said Grisham, as he realised what he was looking at. He took a moment to consider what his mind was telling him. The truth was there before him. “The people on these spaceships,” he said. “They came here to make this one vessel.”

“You mean the passengers on all these spaceships sacrificed themselves for—” Deneuve stopped talking, like she couldn’t bring herself to continue.

“These definitely aren’t Ax’Kol spaceships,” said Adler. “Unless this is how they built them a hundred million years ago.”

“They aren’t Ax’Kol,” said Grisham, shaking his head. “These are the species which were fighting them. And they were losing – this was their last throw of the dice.”

Grisham had absolute conviction that he was right, and he wondered if the Andos was subtly implanting the information in his mind, so that he might understand what had happened here.

“It was all in vain,” said Lopez. “The Ax’Kol endured and these people here died for nothing.”

“So many spaceships, and there weren’t enough passengers to create even this one vessel,” said Deneuve. “And the Ax’Kol have a fleet of—” She cursed. “We don’t have the faintest idea how big the enemy fleet is, but surely they can’t require a hundred billion deaths for each vessel.”

“The biological matter that forms the Voltran might be created from more than just dead bodies, Commander,” said Grisham. “Maybe the corpses are only—” Now it was his turn to curse. “This is screwed up. Everything about it is screwed up.”

“It has been from the beginning, sir,” said Deneuve. “From the moment we found that Ax’Kol on Xaros.”

“We’ve discovered what lies at the vector endpoint,” said Adler. “What do we do now?”

“We should take a recording of everything,” said Deneuve. “We still have those drones in the cargo bay of our shuttle.”

Grisham didn’t speak for a time. He’d been gripped with the sudden and unshakeable feeling that the Andos had brought him here – that the artifact had been influencing him ever since he’d first heard it whispering before the engagement with the Gholaxas. If he was correct, that indicated a purpose – a purpose the artifact believed he could fulfil.

“We’re missing something, but I don’t know what it is,” said Grisham. “We’re going to take a closer look at the unfinished warship – that’s what the Urzox is, not the planet.”

“Urzox,” Deneuve repeated, as if she’d just discovered new meaning within the name.

“There are no visible armaments on the alien spaceship, Captain,” said Bishop. “Maybe they’re all hidden beneath the biological outer material, but if they are, I can’t imagine they’ll be anything modern.”

Grisham didn’t want to speculate. He piloted the Voltran closer to the alien vessel, and reduced altitude further, down as low as ten kilometres. On a whim, he reached out with his mind, but found nothing anywhere close. Undeterred, he channelled into the Andos, and used it to amplify his efforts. Although Grisham was lacking finesse, the boost provided by the artifact was enough for him to make a discovery.

“There’s a mind within the Urzox,” he said. “It’s not dormant, but it’s operating at a low level, and it’s keeping itself hidden.”

“From the Ax’Kol,” said Deneuve.

“It’s got to be,” said Grisham. “The consciousness on the Urzox must also be doing something to prevent the warship from decaying, else it would have rotted by now, like all these others.”

He brought the Voltran to a halt directly over the top of the Urzox and the sensors had a view through the topside opening in the alien vessel. Grisham looked and saw what might have been a space deep within.

“What are all those domes for?” asked Lopez. “I count twenty in total.”

“Maybe they were required for the construction process,” said Grisham doubtfully. “The alloy sections of the Urzox must have been built first, and then clad in the biological outer coating.”

Grisham continued staring at the feeds, considering what to do next. While he was pondering, he became aware of a low bass note in the background. He turned his head, to gauge its direction, but it was coming from all around.

“What’s making that noise?” he asked.

“I’m checking the status readouts,” said Adler. “There’s nothing showing.”

“There might be nothing showing, but something is happening,” said Grisham.

“We should get out of here, Captain,” said Deneuve.

Grisham agreed and he sent an instruction to the Voltran, for it to accelerate diagonally away from the planet. The warship didn’t respond.

“What the hell?” he said, with a rising sense of alarm. “We need to find out what’s going on!”

The bass sound was rising steadily in volume, and it possessed a presence that made Grisham feel as if his bones were vibrating in tune. He didn’t like the sensation at all.

“There’s no visible reason why the Voltran isn’t responding, Captain,” said Adler. “I’ve started some further checks, but I’m running out of possibilities.”

“Commander Deneuve, hit the Urzox with an amplified suppression,” said Grisham.

“Yes, sir,” said Deneuve at once. She swore. “Damnit, the psionic: suppress has not discharged.”

Grisham had a feeling he was standing on a precipice, and that he was on the verge of losing everything. Acting fast, he cast himself through the grey, to the place of souls. Straightaway, he sensed a change. The spirits of the dead knew him still, but they formed no vortex. Instead, they drifted away.

With his thoughts, he asked the souls where they were going, but they didn’t know. And yet, they were as calm as Grisham could ever remember. Understanding came, and he withdrew from the grey.

“The Voltran’s mind is being extracted,” Grisham said.

“There’s something happening to our hull as well, Captain,” said Adler. “Our instrumentation is giving the same readings it does as when the Voltran is healing itself.”

Grisham was rapidly adding things up. He accessed the sensor feeds and zoomed one of the arrays onto a section of the Urzox’s topside, where the alloys were exposed. The biological material there was writhing in a way that wasn’t quite pleasant to watch.

“It’s not just the Voltran’s mind we’re losing,” said Grisham. “Our hull is being used to complete the Urzox.”

“Those domes,” said Adler. “They must have drawn the life out of the people on all these other spaceships, and used the energy to create the Urzox’s mind and its hull.”

“Then why aren’t we dead?” asked Kinsey.

Grisham channelled into the Andos. Whatever resided within – the alien intelligence – was more open to him now, as if it had all this long pretended to be other than what it was. The artifact was protecting everyone on the Voltran from the extraction fields being created by the domes.

The Andos revealed something else and it caught Grisham entirely by surprise.

“We’re to go to the Urzox,” he said. “It needs a crew.”

If there was one thing Grisham could rely on, it was a quick response from his crew when it was needed. Nobody asked questions, stupid or otherwise, and they followed him from the bridge.

Already, the resonance was borderline painful and Grisham hoped the Andos would prevent it from becoming any worse. He opened a comms channel to Sergeant Maxwell.

“My crew and I are heading your way, Sergeant,” he said. “We’re abandoning ship.”

“Yes, sir,” said Maxwell.

The soldier saved what was doubtless a mountain of questions for later, and Grisham closed out of the channel.

It wasn’t far to the shuttle, but Grisham ran it as fast as he was able, without letting any of his crew fall behind. Only once did he pause, and that was to place his hand on the passage wall. The Voltran seemed to be trembling.

Not long after leaving the bridge, Grisham entered the shuttle bay. He was not surprised to see the warship’s replicator – which was equipped with its own gravity drive – being remote-piloted through the shuttle’s flank cargo bay door.

Private Vaughan and Private Lyles were standing a few metres away, outside the main passenger entrance. Lyles was grinning, as if this was the greatest adventure ever, while Vaughan’s expression was impassive.

Grisham wasn’t convinced this was going to be much of an adventure, but he grinned in return as he dashed past. Not long after, he was in the shuttle’s cockpit, where he ordered Sergeant Maxwell and Corporal Barkley to make room for Commander Deneuve and Lieutenant Lopez.

“Everyone’s onboard, Captain,” said Maxwell.

Grisham nodded. “We’re leaving at once.”

He interfaced with the shuttle and gave it the command to launch. As the transport accelerated along the docking bay tunnel, Grisham attempted a remote link to the Voltran. Its mind was almost gone, and he wasn’t sure if it retained any control.

The shuttle emerged into the planet’s sky and Grisham felt a momentary increase in the vibration. It was enough to make him clench his jaw at the pain, and then it faded in a reassuring demonstration that the Andos was protecting the shuttle against the ongoing extraction of the Voltran.

This side of the planet was in darkness, though the transport’s sensors didn’t have much of a problem gathering a high-quality feed of the surface. Directly below, the gaps in the Urzox’s hull were closing up, and when Grisham watched the dark biological material spreading across the alloy, he was put in mind of oily water lapping against a quiet shore.

Elsewhere, and in every direction, the hundreds of decaying spaceships, seemed to watch silently on. Grisham hoped the billions who’d died might finally know that their terrible gift of life had not been wasted.

Although he didn’t wish to look, Grisham turned his attention to the Voltran. Already, huge sections of its underlying technological components – including its Punisher turrets and missile clusters - were protruding through the biological hull. Whatever process the domes were running, it was happening at incredible speed.

“Soon, there’s going to be nothing left but the metal,” said Lopez.

Grisham couldn’t deny his emotional attachment to the Voltran and, though he suspected this was happening for the best, he looked away.

“Where are we going to dock, Captain?” asked Deneuve.

“I don’t know,” Grisham admitted. “I’m sure the Andos – or maybe even the mind on the Urzox – is guiding me, but it’s not as if I’m being provided with a set of written instructions.”

“I think that topside hole leads into a bay, Captain,” said Lopez. “The angle isn’t good, but there’s definitely an open space down there.”

Grisham channelled briefly into the Andos, to see if the artifact would provide him with some useful information, but it did not.

“We’ll take a quick look for a docking bay entrance, then we’ll go for the opening,” he said, sending the shuttle into a steep descent.

Ten kilometres wasn’t far and the ground came up fast. During the short journey down, he studied the Urzox. The vessel’s design certainly spoke well of its intent and Grisham couldn’t recall seeing a warship that looked quite so purposeful. An Eternus came close, but not in the same way. Perhaps, he thought, the Urzox was a reflection of the pressure under which it was created.

“There’re no openings in the Urzox’s flanks, Captain,” said Lopez. “It’s almost completely encased now – that topside hole is the only way in.”

“Then that’s where we’ll go,” said Grisham.

He guided the shuttle that way. The opening was square shaped, and biological matter surrounded it, but didn’t encroach, like an invisible wall was preventing this last part of the hull from being completed until the personnel from the Voltran were inside.

Before Grisham could pilot the transport into the Urzox, he caught a sudden and unwanted sight of the Exetran on the topside feed. The colossal Ax’Kol warship had appeared out of lightspeed hardly more than a thousand kilometres from the Urzox. High up in the planet’s atmosphere, the terrible warship hung motionless.

At the controls of the shuttle, Grisham felt a hatred like he’d never known rise up inside him. He’d been fooled by the Ax’Kol. The enemy vessel hadn’t stopped its pursuit – instead, it had patiently watched as the Voltran made a succession of ten-minute breaks over the course of its three-week flight. Then, when the Voltran exited lightspeed for two longer periods, the enemy had decided to investigate those locations.

Grisham had led the Ax’Kol straight to that which they had sought for perhaps millions of years - the Urzox.

URZOX

Grisham was convinced the game was at an end. He braced himself for a series of brutal psionic and missile attacks that would destroy the Urzox on this, the moment at which the alien warship might finally be completed.

The mind on the Urzox was not created to be so easily defeated. Grisham felt the thumping expulsion of psionic energy – attacks which were directed at the Exetran, before the Ax’Kol warship had fully recovered from its lightspeed transit.

The vast warship began an uncontrolled descent towards the planet’s surface.

“Get us out of here, Captain,” said Deneuve.

“That’s just what I intend to do, Commander.”

Grisham requested maximum acceleration from the transport’s engines and threw its nose hard down towards the opening in the Urzox’s hull. Still gathering velocity, the shuttle sped into the alien warship’s interior.

Straightaway, Grisham ordered full deceleration and he felt the forces of it pulling him forwards. The shuttle entered a cube-shaped bay through the ceiling and came to a halt. The bay was two hundred metres along each side and three shuttles of an elaborate alien design were parked against the vertical walls. Grisham thought he saw sealed launch doors leading out through the port and starboard sides.

“The Urzox has taken off, Captain,” said Lopez.

Having been distracted by the immediate demands of bringing the shuttle safely into the bay, Grisham hadn’t been watching the topside feeds. When he turned his attention to them, he saw by the movement of the stars through the opening that the Urzox was accelerating. That final opening in the vessel’s hull was closing rapidly as the biological matter extracted from the Voltran sealed it up.

Grisham doubted that the Exetran had been defeated – more likely it had been caught by surprise for a second time, and its mind thrust into temporary dormancy. The consciousness on the Urzox had seemingly taken the opportunity to escape. Grisham didn’t know if that was the right move or not, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

“I’ll park us up against this forward platform,” he said.

“What then?” asked Deneuve.

“We’ll wait on this shuttle for a while, and then we’ll find the bridge.”

Grisham guided the shuttle to the docking platform and brought it to a standstill. He wanted to disembark and explore the Urzox, but giving the order to leave the transport would be reckless. If the alien warship engaged with the Exetran and lost, this shuttle was the safest place to be, though safe wasn’t an entirely accurate description.

Ten minutes went by, during which Grisham brought Sergeant Maxwell up to speed with recent events. The soldiers had long ago learned how to roll with the blows and besides a few shrugs and a couple of half-hearted curses, they adapted without difficulty to the change in circumstances.

Grisham waited another five minutes and then gave the order to exit the shuttle. He went first, and without fear of running into anything hostile. After all, the mission personnel had been more or less invited here by the Urzox’s consciousness.

The shuttle bay was cold and dark like the grave, and it was in a vacuum. A single door led away from the four-metre-deep platform and Grisham stopped for a moment to place his hand on the biological walls. There was no sound in the bay, but he felt the thrumming of the spaceship’s engines through the material.

“The Urzox isn’t in combat,” he said. “It’s cruising. It might even be at lightspeed.”

Grisham shone the beam from his helmet flashlight towards the door. In the wall adjacent, he spotted three shallow holes, each two inches in diameter and arranged in a triangular pattern. Reaching out his hand, Grisham put the tips of his middle three fingers into the holes. The door opened.

Beyond, was a six-metre airlock. Grisham entered the space and the soldiers followed. There was no light to indicate the status of the airlock, so Grisham poked his fingers into the holes next to the exit. Once more, the door opened.

Outside, were intersecting corridors, running port to starboard and forward towards the nose. The walls of this passage were biological, and the interior – which was slowly pressurising – had the scents of age. Doubtless when the pressurisation was complete, the odour would be much more intense than it was now.

“The bridge is that way,” said Grisham, pointing forward.

“You sound confident, sir,” said Deneuve.

“I am.” Again, Grisham wasn’t sure if he was being guided by either the Andos or the Urzox’s mind.

He set off and the others followed. The passage was claustrophobic, and not wide enough for two to walk abreast, though the ceiling was high enough. With the gradual restoration of the atmosphere, Grisham could hear the propulsion, which sounded dull and lifeless in the comparative lack of air.

As he pushed on through the warship, Grisham’s pace increased. His heart was beating hard from many emotions, the most intense of which stemmed from his knowledge of what had gone into the making of the Urzox. This was a privilege beyond measure.

Soon, having passed along corridors and through rooms which bore an uncanny resemblance to those on the Voltran, Grisham came to a three-metre door in the forward wall. Having come so far, he didn’t hesitate and pushed his fingers into the activation holes. Like the other doors before it, this one opened. Beyond, was the warship’s bridge.

Unlike the bridge on the Voltran, the one on the Urzox was trapezoidal, about seven metres along its rear wall and tapering to five at the front. A faint blue light, cold as the spaceship, illuminated the space. It brightened as Grisham stepped onto the bridge.

The Urzox had been fitted with seats – fifteen in total – and the life support had stopped their blue leatherlike coverings from decaying into dust. In front of each seat was a metre-wide console with a sloping front face and a single, curving screen which overlapped the edges.

“We’ve got power,” said Grisham, staring at the lights on the consoles.

“This stuff looks like Human Federation hardware from centuries ago,” said Bishop.

“It does,” said Grisham, approaching the seats at the front of the bridge.

He took the middle one of the three consoles. Buttons and keypads occupied much of the space on the console panel. A pair of control bars jutted out at a diagonal and Grisham wrapped his fingers around the ice-cold metal.

Immediately, a link formed to the warship. He became aware of its many systems and capabilities. At the centre of everything was the warship’s mind. It had been close to death at the time of the Voltran’s arrival, but now it was fully aware. Not only that, it had been bolstered by the extraction of the four minds. Those minds, which had recently been within the Voltran, had been separated into their original four and were now arranged like satellites around the Urzox’s main consciousness.

The Urzox was currently at lightspeed, having chosen to escape its encounter with the Exetran. Despite the power with which it had been imbued, the vessel knew little of war.

Grisham bade his crew to sit. Then, he set about the task of learning about this alien spaceship. The Urzox might not know about war, but Grisham did.

Together, he hoped, they would bring destruction to the Ax’Kol.

* * *

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Void Blade

Monolith

Mission: Destructor

Fire and Rust (Seven Books) – Available in eBook, Paperback and Audio.

Iron Dogs

Alien Firestorm

Havoc Squad

Death Skies

Refuge 9

Nullifier

Scum of the Universe

Anomalies (Two Books) – Available in eBook and Paperback.

Planet Wreckers

Assault Amplified

Savage Stars (Seven Books) – Available in eBook and Paperback

War from a Distant Sun

Fractured Horizons

Galactar

Fulcrum Gun

Laws of Ancidium

Empires in Ruin

Recker’s Chance

Forged Alliance (Eight Books – set after the events in Savage Stars) – Available in eBook and Paperback

Dark of the Void

The God’s Titan

Vilekron

Ascendant of Berongar

The God’s Reckoning

Shadows of Kilvus

Endurus

Flint’s Justice

Guns of the Federation (Series ongoing) – Available in eBook and Paperback.

Xaros – Jungle Planet

War Vessel of the Ax’Kol

Voltran Unchained

Darkness on Sagitol