The nosecone crashed lengthwise into the enemy ship, smashing through bulkheads and other structures, sliding, grinding, and screeching. The armored, crumpled nosecone came to a sliding stop aboard the alien generational vessel. There was more shaking all around the cone. That lasted for a time, and then it ceased.

  Steele hurt all over, but it seemed he might be in one piece. They would have either one hundred and thirty-four effectives or two hundred and sixty-eight, if the other launch missile had also made it.

  Even two hundred and sixty-eight might be a handful for what they had to do. That would depend on how many aliens were aboard and how hard they fought.

  There were explosions, muffled crumps, and distant clangs. That would be the nosecone sections blasting open and hitting the deck.

  In his fighting suit, Steele began clawing through the foam. The suit had helping servos, although it lacked true exoskeleton power. That meant Steele’s muscles had to supply the bulk of the motive power. He gave himself the first stim shot then. It was good that he was much stronger than he used to be due to the yellow glob he’d received what seemed like years ago.

  As Steele huffed and puffed with effort, he said over the data net, “Platoon leaders, count down and report to me. Do that as you free yourselves.”

  Marines began counting off.

  Steele burst through the foam. They had gravity, normal Earthlike gravity here. There were crushed bulkheads and upper smashed decks all around them. It was dark, with a few flickering lights. He used his chin and clicked on a special HUD feature, which showed him everything in normal light through computer enhancement.

  Other marines burst through the hardened foam.

  Soon, Steele had the numbers. Twenty marines were dead. That left one hundred and fourteen for battle.

  Steele began snapping off orders. The platoon leaders, lieutenants, took over from there. Fighting suited marines fanned out in all directions. They had to scout out the place, learn what was where, and do all this while killing anything that moved except for Earth marines.

  The marines in their BPC fighting suits began moving twisted steel sections. Detonations occurred, men using explosives to move the heavy stuff. Finally, a company captain spoke of seeing enemies down a corridor. That company had the job of scouting deeper into the penetration zone.

  “We have gravity,” Jones said.

  “I’ve noticed that,” Steele said. “It feels close to normal, too.”

  Steele and his protective marine squad, led by Jones, had climbed up through smashed decks. A linked suit multi-computer took their combined data as it built an interior map of the alien ship. Sophisticated AIs worked on the probabilities of what should be where given all this.

  Steele, Jones and the protection squad broke into a normal looking alien chamber. The HUD showed furniture and—

  “What the hell is that?” Leatherwood said. “Could it be an alien?”

  The fighting suits clanked up to a big blue-skinned creature on the floor. Blood covered…him. It looked human, exactly human but for the strange blue-tinted skin color.

  “He’s big,” Jones said, “an easy seven and a half feet. I’d figure him for three hundred pounds at least.”

  Steele stared at the alien’s features. Nose, mouth, brow, hands—they all looked human, just light blue and big. There was nothing to indicate the alien creature was…different, really, from Earth humans.

  “Is this possible?” Leatherwood said.

  “You mean that it’s human?” Jones said.

  “Yes,” Leatherwood said.

  “All right,” Steele said. “Let’s see if anything is living around here.”

  The map of the alien ship kept growing and improving as marines explored. Then they made radio contact with the other marines, one hundred and ten of them from Launch Missile Two.

  That was a fantastic morale boost. The other launch missile had made it.

  “Sir,” said a platoon lieutenant in a different part of the ship. “I’m detecting motion ahead of us.”

  “See what it is,” Steele said. He used his HUD to watch the situation from the platoon leader’s outer camera eye.

  “Holy cow,” Jones said. The First Sergeant must have been doing the same thing.

  Seven blue-skinned aliens appeared before the platoon. The aliens wore breathing masks and carried some kind of rifle. The aliens opened fire with beams.

  The beams struck BPC armor, scouring it but not putting anyone down.

  The marines returned fire with their gyroc rifles. The weapon had almost no kick. Several rocket-propelled shells flew nearly at once. The mini-rocket engines ignited in the shells as the exhausts glowed fiery. One rocket shell pierced an alien torso, smashing through to the other side. Another exploded. It was a HEX round. All seven aliens went down, shredded into bloody chunks.

  “Gather those weapons,” Steele said. “See if there is anything else worth taking.”

  “Are we winning this?” Jones said.

  “Our men are killing the enemy,” Steele said. “If we keep doing that, if we kill enough of them, we’ll own the damned ship. Maybe we can take that home to Earth.”

  Then a different platoon marched into an ambush. Blue aliens with their beam rifles fired from all directions, up, down, you name it. The BPC armor held for the initial seconds. Then marines began to cry out in agony.

  Gyroc rifles and EML launchers took down the enemy, but too many marines died in the short firefight.

  “They got sloppy,” Jones said.

  “This is a fight, marines,” Steele said over the data net. “As you spread out, the enemy is going to be able to slip in between us. Set your motion detectors wisely. Do this by the book. We can’t afford screw-ups and we can’t afford you to die too soon.”

  All the while, the linked suit computers continued mapping the ship and making conjectures as to engine areas and possible hangar bays. They needed to find a hangar bay with an alien ship so they could go home with their tech loot.

  “Sir,” a lieutenant radioed, sounding urgent.

  “What did you find?” Steele said.

  “Alien women, sir,” the lieutenant said. “They’re damn hot even if they’re tall. Captain Moore was right. We can have an orgy if we can take over.”

  “Don’t take any prisoners yet,” Steele said.

  “Shoot the women?” the lieutenant said, sounding horrified by the idea.

  “They’re not women,” Steele said. “They’re aliens.”

  “The hell they’re not women, sir,” the lieutenant said.

  “They’re hostile aliens in control of the ship,” Steele said. “Do you comprehend?”

  “Sir,” the lieutenant said. “My marines aren’t going to listen to me about killing these hot babes. It’s all I can do to have the men keep their suits on.”

  Once he’d seen the dead alien, Steele had been afraid about this. “Secure the alien women then. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said, sounding far too eager.

  Steele frowned. Was that fact going to lose them the battle? Besides, this wasn’t making sense. How could the aliens be compatible to humans? They were blue-skinned and bigger, but otherwise human. Here was a mystery indeed.

  Steele shook his head inside the roomy helmet. He couldn’t worry about that now. Instead, they had to find a spaceship on the greater vessel, or none of this would matter.

  -66-

  Explosions took place in the mighty Interstellar Voyager. Some explosions occurred due to horrific impacts on the vessel. Others happened due to power overloads and reactor failures in certain areas of the Akkad.

  Everyone on the bridge was dead. Thousands of Valiants died due to the vacuum of space. Far too many emergency hatches failed to close, and bulkheads and decks ripped open, exposing those within. Air escaped into space. Bodies floated outside, even as the giant cylinder of the ship continued to rotate on its lengthwise axis.

  Many surviving Valiants armed themselves and charged at the suited invaders. Death reigned aboard the Akkad, and as insane as it seemed, the Earthlings were fantastically armored, armed and bloodthirsty to an amazing degree.

  The Earthlings were killing everything before them and gathering women as they went.

  Ningal listened as an officer reported this to her. She could hardly comprehend how this could be happening. The Earth ships were destroyed, but not before they had eliminated the smaller Corsair-class ships near Neptune. Who would have thought that would be the Earthlings’ tactic?

  “Should we try to make peace with the Earthlings?” the Valiant officer asked.

  Ningal stared at him in shock. “You think that is the answer?”

  “Thousands are dead, Old Queen. Most of the survivors are women and children. That means—”

  “No,” Ningal said, interrupting the officer. “The old gods are giving us this solar system.”

  “Could you have misheard the old gods?” the officer asked.

  The question left Ningal speechless. The humans’ boarding torpedoes had opened up much of the Akkad like a can opener. The torpedoes not detonating was a genius strategy. The Earth soldiers were the warheads. Could these Earthlings be master ground fighters? They fought with such savagery, and they wore those deadly armored spacesuits. That was a brilliant idea. She needed a counter to that.

  “Are any shuttles or spaceships left?” Ningal asked.

  “In the hangar bays,” the officer said.

  “How close are the Earthlings to the hangar bay?”

  “Their torpedoes burst through after them, blocking us from them. I don’t know how close the Earthlings are to the hangar bays.”

  “Are there no Valiants left in that part of the ship?” Ningal asked.

  “If there are, I haven’t been able to contact any.”

  Ningal frowned. “Maybe the old gods have confused the Earthlings. They’re sweeping through the Akkad in the wrong direction. We must take that opportunity and use it.”

  “So far that could be so,” the officer said. “That could change at any time. There is one consideration.”

  “What is that?” Ningal asked.

  “What if the Earthlings take our last spaceship and leave for their planet.”

  “That would be a good thing,” Ningal said, “provided any of us lived.”

  “Think again, my Queen,” the officer said. “They would take our technology with them.”

  Ningal’s eyes widened. At last, she understood. That was the point of the Earthling assault. That had to be it. They wanted the superior Valiant technology.

  Ningal stared at the officer. “We cannot allow that.”

  “I agree,” he said.

  “We must destroy the Akkad instead of letting the Earthlings use any of it,” Ningal said.

  The officer nodded grimly.

  “You must gather everyone left that can bear arms,” Ningal said with heat. “That includes the women, acolytes, and older children. Shouldn’t we fight to the last man, woman and child for our heritage?”

  “It will take some time to gather everyone,” the officer said.

  “Then do it,” Ningal said. “Fighting to the end is better than destroying everything. That is too much like the hated Vims. I will radio Titan and tell them the bitter news. Go, collect the others, and distribute weapons. Use any kind of weaponry you can, including detached warheads.”

  “As you command, Old Queen,” he said.

  -67-

  Battle raged aboard the alien supership. Alien men, women and children carried grenades, rifles and sometimes missile explosives. They died in droves for the chance to blow up a fighting suited marine. The aliens set cunning ambushes or dropped an entire deck on one advancing platoon. It was like ancient tunnel warfare on Earth during WWI. There was nowhere to run, making this a fight to the death for both sides.

  Steele and his squad retreated to a launch missile. They gathered extra air tanks and ammo reserves to take to others.

  Meanwhile the exploratory squad climbed out of the torn bulkheads and onto the supership’s outer hull. Using special thruster-packs, they roamed outside the great vessel, trying to understand and map everything precisely. The AIs absorbed the new data of seeing the ship from this vantage.

  All the while, the great cylinder ship continued to rotate, although it was slowing down. The side jets that had propelled it no longer operated.

  The map was growing. The linked suit AIs understood how the decks and turbo shafts connected and worked. It gave several possibilities as to the location of hangar bays. Several of those possibilities were behind the initial breach.

  At that point, a major alien counterattack began. It had been twenty-three minutes since the last furious assault.

  Steele coordinated the marines through the data net. The battalion couldn’t afford any more losses. The marines used superior tactics, pulling back or using over-watch fire to ambush bloodthirsty aliens. They slaughtered the onrushing aliens.

  Then an alien team broke through to the captured alien females, two hundred of them. The team brought extra weapons. The females had learned things watching the Earthlings. With the new information, the team and the women spread out, creating deadly havoc.

  Reluctant fighting suit marines cut a few of the alien babes down. Alien women attacked marines in their suits. After that, the marines quit giving quarter or holding back. It became a bloodbath.

  Five hours after the initial breach, the Third Battalion was down to eighty-five effectives. Most had taken extra air from surplus tanks, but a few suits only had an hour of air left.

  “Sir,” a sergeant reported. “I’ve found a hangar bay and an alien ship.”

  “Give me the coordinates,” Steele said.

  The sergeant did.

  Steele gave himself another stim. He’d taken three already. They all had taken stims to keep alert and fast.

  “Come with me,” Steele told his squad.

  As they maneuvered through the broken ship to the hangar bay, Steele coordinated a general fall back. The battle had been savage, and he had lost too many men. They had to leave with what they had and get back to Earth. Could they fly the alien spaceship?

  A moment’s thought gave him the answer.

  “Lieutenant Smith, how many alien women do you have in your possession?” Steele radioed.

  “Thirty-one left,” Lieutenant Smith said. “Some of them are belligerent, though.”

  Steele thought fast. “Listen to me, Lieutenant. Bring all the alien women to the hangar bay. I’m sending you the coordinates.”

  “Sir?” asked Lieutenant Smith.

  “We don’t know alien words or technology, not well enough to fly a spaceship. I think at least one of those alien women does.”

  “Yes, sir,” Smith said. “I get it. I’m on my way, sir.”

  The ship-wide battle continued.

  Marines dropped back into predetermined zones. They ambushed more, yet still the aliens keep throwing themselves into battle.

  “How many aliens does this ship hold?” Steele asked Jones.

  They had just reached the large hangar bay. A teardrop-shaped spaceship was here in a huge cradle. Perhaps as interesting, Captain Torres had trundled a container with a human-sized alien with blue skin inside. The male, either frozen or in stasis, indicated the container was a stasis unit. This technology could be crucial to bring back to Earth.

  Urgent requests to fall back came through. The alien attacks were intensifying. Had the aliens caught on that the marines were attempting to flee the supership?

  Each marine that died made it harder to hold a large perimeter. Without the advanced fighting suits, none of this would have been possible.

  “Count off,” Steele said.

  Soon, he learned the battalion had a bare forty-three effectives left. The last alien attacks had been extraordinarily vicious and effective.

  The exploratory team entered the hangar bay. They were included in the forty-three. They had destroyed the ship’s main particle beam cannon. They had also sabotaged many missile ports.

  “Can we leave in the alien spaceship?” Steele said, voicing the uncertainty that hung heavy in the air.

  The main exploratory lieutenant went into the vessel. It looked well stocked with alien food and water. There was barely enough room for the survivors and thirty alien females. One had tried to sabotage everything and Lieutenants Smith had shot her.

  “I don’t know that we can pull everyone in and expect to leave in one piece,” Steele said.

  “We could pull straws for those to stay,” the lieutenant said.

  “No,” Steele said, rethinking that. “We’re all going. I have an idea. I should have already thought of it. We’ll set good old-fashioned booby traps for the aliens.”

  For the next hour, the last marines of the great expeditionary force set cunning booby traps in the shrinking circular area they held.

  During that time, five more died to yet more savage alien assaults.

  It did seem like the aliens were finally running out of warm bodies, though.

  Steele gave the evacuation order.

  The thin front line of marines retreated. As they did, Jones and Leatherwood unhooked the stasis unit from its power supply. They carried the heavy monstrosity aboard the alien teardrop spaceship and hooked it into a new power source in a cargo hold.

  Meanwhile, the exploratory lieutenant had been studying the obvious flight controls.

  Now, Lieutenant Smith and three of his marines, minus their suits, prodded six alien females onto the bridge.

  Steele stepped up.

  “I chose what looked like the smartest of them,” Smith said.

  Steele had also shed his fighting suit. He had an alien weapon, a beamer. The females were big, taller than any of the marines. They had wonderful shapes and well-endowed features. Their faces…

  It was strange, but Steele felt his heart beating with desire. This was crazy. He had to put that aside for the moment.