Annals of the Keepers: War 267 (Book 1 in the Gashnee Saga) Read online

  Next, the exploding door bolts activated and sent the quarter-ton door outward making sure to clear any remaining debris missed by the cutters.

  With one smooth motion Kason was out of his pod, landing on the deck. His weapon was armed and already scanning his surroundings.

  Next to him were the other four Reavers in crouched positions, a roar of their weapons came to life one after the other.

  The escaping atmosphere of the outpost met and buffeted the Reavers in the cargo bay; the room was decompressing from the five ugly puncture marks left in the hull. Debris swirled around them before being sucked out into space between the pods themselves. Severed hoses spewed liquid about the room and droplets gathered slushing against the Reavers’ black armor, before being swept away in the turbulence.

  The Reavers stood still due to their magnetic boots as the violent air whooshed towards the openings. Kason side-stepped a piece of larger debris as it was sucked out.

  The pods behind them hissed with a white gel, the same that cushioned them from impact, secreted out of exterior openings in the pods’ sides. This gel sealed the remaining puncture marks around the gnarled hulls’ exteriors from the vacuum of space to make a tight seal.

  The chaos in the cargo bay subsided and the smaller pieces of debris soon settled to the floor.

  Kason swept the cargo bay with his helmet’s internal sensors. He confirmed nine dead Kryth. Their bodies lay strewn throughout the wreckage created by the pods insertion or by the unbreathable atmosphere.

  He brought up the outpost’s schematics, taken from a Fossari starship, and located the central data core. It was still intact and showed signs of activity.

  Four green triangles blinked in Kason’s HUD. Kason looked over each Reaver to confirm.

  All five Reavers performed a rapid exam -- a needed precaution being so close to the ion blast.

  Keelan Sern and Jens Dryden, the close-assault team, closest to Kason, raised their hands. Maddox Gower, demolition, signaled by lifting his weapon. Kieran Ramek, heavy weapons, towering over Maddox, lifted his right hand giving a salute.

  Satisfied, Kason broke the communications blackout and contacted the fleet.

  “Flashpoint. This is Reaver Lead. Arrow Point concluded. Insertion point is cold. Condition is green. Beginning Phase Two, over,” Kason said.

  He waited for a response.

  “Confirmed, Reaver Lead. Commence Phase Two,” came the immediate reply from the ship in orbit around the outpost.

  A long hallway exited the room they were in.

  Kason, using hand gestures, pointed at two of his Reavers sending them ahead into the corridor. He followed as the last two brought up the end of the formation.

  They approached a large room, close to their main objective. Each man had studied the outpost in every detail to know it better than the Kryth themselves.

  The surrounding lights were still flickering and attempting to come back on.

  Ramek entered first, followed by the others.

  Kason pulled up a schematic of the data core, seven floors below their position. His eye scanned the readouts. All were clear.

  Kason circled with his hand towards the center of the room.

  Maddox approached from the command.

  He reached and grabbed a silver disc attached to his side. The disc was about 6cm in diameter and 1cm in thickness. It was a powerful shaped charge, usually meant for breaching blast doors or opening walls. The Reavers referred to them as flat bastards.

  Depressing a button on the top of the disc, he hurled it into the center of the room. The device sprang to life upon touching the floor and flung out eleven smaller discs in a circular pattern about three meters in diameter. Each disc was connected by a small wire to the others all were connected to the original center disc.

  “Set,” Maddox signaled as the team re-entered the corridor.

  With Maddox’s command, each of the outer discs ignited with a blue-hot jet of plasma. The center disc began to spin and the smaller discs became cutters slicing through the deck plating. Whoomp!

  The floor caved in and fell, sending up billows of smoke and debris throughout the room.

  The auditory buffers in each man’s helmet helped block the tremendous roar of the falling floors as the discs continued to cut, proceeding decks below. Their battle suits protected them from the immense heat emanating from the open shaft.

  Kason signaled the team with a simple “Go” and, one after the other, they jumped down into the opening.

  Ramek, the largest Reaver fell down first followed by the rest. Kason was last.

  Sounds of plasma bolts echoed through the adjacent corridors as each man fired as they fell.

  The Kryth soldiers in these corridors had no chance in the smoke-filled hole. The Reavers had no such hindrances as their battle helmets saw through the smoke as if it were day.

  The Reaver team sank at a controlled rate, slowed by their anti-grav devices on their boots.

  The first to the bottom was Ramek. He cleared the room with a burst of his weapon. Screams of the fallen Kryth were drowned out by the massive roar of Ramek’s plasma cannon.

  Soon, the others landed in the room from above.

  Jens glanced around at the now motionless Kryth soldiers. “Leave some for us, big man.”

  The other Reavers went into a crouched protective posture while Kason approached Ramek.

  “Grab the data core. Let’s finish this,” Kason ordered.

  Ramek moved to the console in the room.

  He attached a small device to a large circular panel. The device squeaked out beeps and whistles while interfacing with its host. A large click sounded and Ramek moved to pull the cylinder device out from the panel. He wrapped it in a stash bag and slung it over his back.

  With their primary mission complete, the team separated to finish secondary objectives within the outpost.

  Kason, now alone, his team splitting up to cover individual assignments, moved through a corridor searching out his secondary mission, a Cuukzen scout with vital information.

  Intel showed this Cuukzen was supposed to be visiting on the outpost for a few days.

  His HUD located the room this Cuukzen was assigned to, but his scan of the room came up empty of any life forms.

  Kason continued his search but now the Kryth had shrugged off their initial lethargy. His battle helmet pointed out incoming targets bearing down on his location.

  Two Kryth were approaching from an adjacent hallway.

  Kason lifted his weapon and pulled the trigger, letting off a single blue burst of plasma bolt just as the Kryth came around the corner.

  The bodies fell with a thud.

  He raised his weapon again and saw the other silhouettes of more incoming soldiers running down the hall, his HUD allowing a clear body image through the walls.

  Each of his next bolts found their marks as they cleared the corner to Kason. The bodies fell one on top of the other.

  Kason continued to move through the corridor until coming to a flight of stairs.

  He began to descend the stairs when his targeting cursor in his helmet bleeped out nine more Kryth soldiers approaching. Six died as his targeting scope danced from one Kryth to the next. Most fell in a clatter of armor sliding down the few steps they attempted to climb.

  The last three began firing up at Kason from a platform below.

  Kason jumped over the railing to land in their midst.

  Shattering the faceplate of one Kryth soldier, he then backhanded another who attempted to grab his rifle. Kason dropped into a crouch, hooked his left fist into the side of the second Kryth’s kneecap, the armored gauntlet smashed bone through the weaker joint armor of the soldier.

  Shrieking in agony, the Kryth soldier dropped to the floor clutching his limb. The Kryth watched his two comrade’s fall wounded. The other Kryth leaped forward to engage the invader and avenge his fallen soldiers.

  Kason’s black, armored boot smashed up beneath his jaw, s
hattering it. The force of the blow snapped the Kryth’s neck, propelling the body backwards to the floor.

  Another soldier struggled to remove his helmet with the cracked faceplate and succeeded just in time to watch Kason shoot him point blank in the chest.

  The helmet bounced off the floor and rolled to a stop against the leg of the one surviving Kryth soldier, slumped against the staircase, hiding.

  Kason walked past the Kryth, who froze at the sight of him.

  Eight shots from Kason’s weapon echoed in the corridor, as he shot each of the Kryth’s comrades in the head.

  Kason’s powerful, black-armored legs stopped in front of the last Kryth soldier cowering.

  “Nokarshel protect me,” Kason’s HUD translated the language.

  He could tell the Kryth was gasping in terror as the soldier backed away from him terror-stricken, helpless, and unable to move.

  “Mercy,” the Kryth groaned around his pain. “Mercy,” he croaked louder, Kason’s HUD still translated the Krythtinian language.

  Kason saw the sweat from the soldier’s forehead slide into his eyes. But before the Kryth could blink his eyes again, the ninth shot rang out.

  Kason kicked the cracked helmet aside, sending it rolling away.

  With a command, Kason’s front visor rose up and a hiss of vapor escaped the surrounding seal.

  “Mercy.” The plea echoed in Kason’s head.

  He looked at the dead Kryth. The light green-tinged skin accented the sharp facial features that met black pupil-less eyes.

  Kason turned from the stairs speaking to no one but himself.

  “Towards none save my own, Kryth.”

  Data Cell 2

  A cluster of explosive bomblets rippled across the outer hull of Dalyth outpost, sweeping across the communications grid in a bubbling wave of fire. The base of a sensor array, over one hundred meters tall, rocked under a heavy concentration of fire from a warship orbiting low around the outpost.

  A second salvo from the bank of particle cannons aboard the warship sheared through the thick array supports, with grim efficiency. The array, no longer anchored to the station’s massive framework, keeled over and floated away from the hull of the outpost.

  Lintorth Sol stood with his feet out wide on the causeway, as the whole station shuddered under another barrage of energy weapons released from the unknown ships outside the outpost.

  His hulking frame was larger than the other Kryth soldiers scurrying, more like fleeing, around him on the walkway.

  He watched the faces of the Kryth, full of fear and panic.

  Lintorth Sol continued past the fleeing soldiers with a clear expression of disdain creasing his face.

  Another barrage of rounds came at the station.

  The support girders holding up the causeway strained under the pressure as a dozen or more soldiers ran in panic around him. Some, with arms flailing, were pushed over the side of the rail to their deserving deaths, some 25 meters below, by his broad sweeping arm.

  He’d had quite enough of such cowardice.

  The causeway shook a third time. He heard weapon discharges in the distance, followed by more rumbles.

  “I haven’t got time for this,” Lintorth said.

  His stride grew longer as he moved off the causeway through a high-arching doorway, as his crimson red cape rippled behind him.

  “Strange,” Lintorth pondered.

  Another explosion punctuated his thought.

  Someone was attacking the Domain. This attack was far worse than the skirmishes across the vast territories of the Kryth Mahr. Most were ill-advised attacks by sector raiders against unescorted cargo ships.

  Even these minor raids were rare because all races knew of the terrible retaliation that would fall upon any aggressor fool enough to challenge the rule of the Kryth Mahr. Even the Vrae Javril, who controlled an empire as vast as the Kryth, and their military equal, would not attack.

  Lintorth Sol contemplated the enigma that had been thrust upon him.

  He ruled out the attack as the beginning of a campaign. None of the Kryth Mahr’s enemies had the capabilities to mount a war. The Vrae realized that a stalemate existed between the two mighty powers for a good reason.

  This all had to be a diversion, but a diversion from what? From whom? Lintorth’s mind whirled, trying to calculate what was happening.

  Why hadn’t his well-placed spies warned him? Had they been compromised?

  Impossible!

  Glass crunched beneath his feet. Lintorth passed a burning maintenance console, the wires from the power conduit crackled with energy.

  Just then, a troop of Kryth soldiers rounded the corner, their boots beating rough against the deck plates. The flurry of bodies did not slow as they veered around Lintorth, jostling him in their hurry to escape.

  Lintorth roared at the fleeing troops, commanding them to stop. When none heeded his command, his arm shot out, grabbing a recruit, slammed him into the bulkhead.

  Already in a dangerous mood, the show of cowardice by his soldiers fueled his outrage.

  “From whom do you run, Tuuka?” Lintorth demanded through clenched teeth.

  Struggling, with fear making him oblivious to Lintorth Sol's rank, the young soldier begged, “Let me go! They will kill us all!”

  Small arms’ fire echoed down the corridor, punctuated by screams of the dying.

  Lintorth focused his flat, dark eyes on the youth. “Then run, coward.”

  He threw the soldier’s rag-doll body to the ground.

  The soldier scrambled to his feet and continued his escape down the hallway.

  Lintorth glared down through the low lit corridor from where the screams came. The shadows on the walls contorted and changed as the overhead lighting flickered on and off from the waning power.

  He entered an intersection of walkways leading deeper into the interior of the outpost. His nostrils were assaulted by the bitter smell of burnt plasma passing through the air. He could make out the smell of burnt flesh, as the bodies of dead Kryth soldiers around him attested to.

  Picking up his pace, Lintorth moved through the debris, past exposed hanging wire conduits as they crackled and popped.

  Just as Lintorth entered a corridor to a larger room, he heard weapons’ fire and more screams.

  He lowered into a crouch.

  Lintorth could discern the sound of Kryth weapons’ fire.

  He paused and listened.

  A second sound caught his keen hearing. This sound was not of Kryth make, nor was it any weapon sound he was familiar with. This weapon had a piercing roar to it.

  The screams of fallen Kryth punctuated the corridors once again after the unknown weapon ceased firing.

  Lintorth proceeded to the opening of another corridor adjacent to the room he was in.

  Another, closer blast issued from this weapon.

  Lintorth rolled on his side, debris crunched beneath him. He got into a better firing position. He reached for his side-arm.

  Damn! In his haste, he had left it in his room.

  He looked around the floor among the dead and spotted a K-6 pistol. In one fluid motion, he scooped it up and armed the plasma chamber.

  The Kryth bodies that were laid out in front of him were at impossible angles, mangled and not distinguishable as Kryth soldiers. The body armor was thrashed and torn, as if chaffs of grain were struck asunder by a horrible serrated blade.

  With his weapon in his left hand, Lintorth reached out with his right to inspect the damaged body armor of the fallen Kryth nearest him. Plasma bolts he noted- four to be precise--had pierced this class-four body armor. The charges pulled the armor to the inside of the wound to Lintorth’s dismay. He reached in farther to coat his finger on the edge of the cauterized wound.

  He brought his finger to his nostril and sniffed, looking for clues. The residue from the compound was plasma but one he could not place.

  Many races across the Domain used plasma weapons, such as the Baentar, Vrae
, and Mrektalon to name a few, he thought.

  What caught Lintorth’s sight next was most displeasing.

  A Kryth soldier had five bolts grouped on the chest no larger than his out-spread palm. He knew that plasma discharge placed great stress on weapons even those of superior Kryth Mahr technology.

  This was most disturbing to Lintorth.

  He could not believe how a small raiding party managed to get onboard and wreak such havoc. This group had knocked-out the shields surrounding the outpost, along with the defense systems, and got a small contingent of soldiers onboard undetected.

  If it weren’t for his anger, Lintorth would be well-pleased if his own commandos dared such a raid.

  Their weapons were equal to Domain technology and their warriors even more so, as the mangled bodies of Kryth soldiers once again attested to.

  Lintorth heard sounds farther down the corridor. He moved with renewed caution, and respect, for this new unseen enemy.

  As he approached the entrance to a medical lab, he saw two Kryth soldiers run from around the corner and in to the room.

  Before he could issue any order, the whine of the foreign weapon pierced the shadows, sending one of the soldiers flying back through the door he had entered.

  A horrible scream replaced weapons’ fire, and then a loud thud issued from the lab. The second Kryth soldier, no doubt.

  Lintorth found a small, dark corner to kneel in.

  There was one swaying light fixed above the door to the medical lab.

  He aimed his plasma pistol at the doorway. How he wished for a heavier assault weapon now.

  “No matter,” he thought, as he had been in worse situations before with less.

  He knew he had to make the plasma round count if he was to not end up like the other twisted bodies. He would hold the chamber open to full capacity and make one large shot. He would then proceed to count on his trusty keslar blade strapped to his side to finish the work.

  With his free hand, Lintorth began to remove his cape for better movement. He was in the process of disengaging a metal clasp when he saw the being step into the doorway of the medical lab.