“Thus, they know we have a crippled battlejumper.”

  “Yeah,” Rollo said in a Western drawl, as if he had a toothpick dangling in his mouth. “We’re not going to be able to bluff them.”

  “Who said anything about that?” I asked.

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, eyeing him “It’s more than that. If they know we’re crippled, maybe they really will try to capture us.”

  “There’s that too,” Rollo said. “Despite the trick the android with the flamer tried to pull, I think Claath really does want you back. Maybe he wants us all back. I helped you torture him. It makes me nervous thinking about falling into his hands. I think we have to run for it, Creed. It’s crazy for a busted battlejumper to try to take on seven beamships and however many teleportation missiles the Starkiens have.”

  “You want to run?”

  “Hard, fast and far,” Rollo said.

  “What about the three freighters on the planet?”

  “This is a hard luck story all the way around,” he said, no longer looking me in the eye. “We have to save what we can.”

  I studied the android device. I’d had plans earlier to give the freighters some weapons: old Earth nuclear missiles modified for space. A couple of MX missiles or SS-20s would give the freighters close-range punch. The missiles would be like shotguns, good for giving a hard wallop of a blast to anyone who came too close.

  The Starkiens—or the corporation—wasn’t giving us time for anything tricky, though. Claath had done the right thing from his perspective. The longer he took hunting us down, the more we could learn and the tougher we would become.

  “I don’t know about cutting and running, Rollo. That’s half a million people we’re talking about. You want to just leave them for the aliens?”

  “No. I want to survive. I want the human race to survive. We’ve already lost most of it. What’s a few more?”

  “Are you serious?”

  He looked at me and looked away again. “This is a messed up universe. Yeah, I want to save them. This is a fight to the finish. But we have to have a chance for victory if we’re going to go toe to toe with the enemy.”

  “Who said anything about that?” I asked.

  “What’s your plan then?”

  “It’s pretty simple,” I said. “We outdistance the Starkiens with our primary laser. That means we shoot them down before they can close with us to hurt the battlejumper.”

  “They have those teleportation missiles. Those might trump our laser.”

  I recalled the battle of Sigma Draconis all too well. The Jelk lasers had taken a heavy toll of the Lokhar guardian fleet. They had sent the teleportation missiles, which blinked out and appeared before the battlejumpers. The atomic explosions had taken their toll of the Jelk vessels.

  “We have to rig something up for that,” I said. “If we know what they’re going to do—” I snapped my fingers. “Maybe we can build a mine field with old nukes from Earth.”

  “How would that work?” Rollo asked.

  I was thinking on my feet, off the cuff. “It would be easy,” I said. “We put detonators on those old warheads and salt them in layers before us, up to whatever N7 figures is the Lokhar warhead blast radius. When a Lokhar T-missile materializes—boom—we blow it apart before it can ignite.”

  Rollo scratched the back of his head. “Huh. That could work.”

  “That forces the Starkiens to bore in at us,” I said. “While they do, we laser them as I first suggested. Ergo, we win the fight.”

  “Provided our weapon lasts long enough,” Rollo said.

  “We’re going to have to work overtime to get ready,” I said. “During that time, we have to get those three freighters into orbit.”

  “The techs have been over them. Nothing works on those old scows.”

  “Let’s change up the idea… Okay. Maybe we need to take grav-plates out of orbital freighters and reinstall them in the bad ones. That at least gets the freighters into space.”

  “You’re just guessing,” Rollo said. “You should talk this over this with N7, see what he says.”

  I recalled the dream of the Forerunner artifact. Claath had wanted it very badly. I wondered why he did. I also wondered why I’d dreamed about it and thought about it now. Was my subconscious trying to tell me something?

  “How much time did N7 say before the Starkiens are in range of our laser?” I asked.

  “The Starkiens aren’t killing themselves to reach us. At their present rate of acceleration: four days.”

  “That includes time for deceleration?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Rollo said.

  Crazy alien tech. It had taken mankind in the Apollo days that long to reach the Moon. Grav-plates and powerful acceleration made a ton of difference.

  “We don’t have much time,” I said, as I ran my fingernails against my cheek. “I need to pick up extra techs from the orbital freighters and bring them down onto Earth. And we have to collect nuclear warheads. Oh, and we need to rip out some grav-plates.”

  “Are there any thermonuclear weapons left down there?” Rollo asked. “Didn’t we fire them all off the day the Earth died?”

  “We’re going to find out,” I said. “Come on. We have to hurry.”

  -6-

  I piloted our least damaged assault boat, plunging through the atmosphere, heading for Baja, California. Intense colors swirled around us, red, orange and purple. As they swirled, our boat rattled and lurched one way and then the other. There were powerful winds outside.

  It reminded me of the day the aliens first landed, when I attacked them with Rollo beside me while carrying an M-14. We’d been in Antarctica during the end of the world. Penguins had already started dying in their tens of thousands.

  I’d wanted to go out with a bang that day, and I’d wanted to hurt the world-killers. I still wanted to hurt them, but I’d changed my mind about going out with a bang. This was for human survival, not revenge.

  “You might want to slow down,” Rollo said.

  We wore our symbiotic armor as a precaution, and I took us down as if we were on a combat run.

  “Dying won’t aid us,” Rollo said, while hanging onto the straps crisscrossing his torso.

  We plunged down into a dead world. In a little over a year, the bio-terminator had killed even the tiniest spores. Mars probably had more life than Earth did now.

  I had a plan for that. We’d accomplished step one: freedom. Step two had been gaining our own space ships. Check. Most of the vessels were junkers, though, and low on fuel. Our battlejumper needed massive repairs, as it had taken heavy damage during the Sigma Draconis fight and later with our teleportation attack. We lacked funds to pay for alien dockside repairs and we lacked goods to barter for it. Step three would be getting funds or goods. I planned to do that the old-fashioned way, by stealing them. Or in our instance, through Viking raids against alien worlds.

  Problem: I only had two hundred troopers—well, a few less actually. Solution: the freighters held millions of Earthers. I could recruit more and train them. Problem: I didn’t have time for training just yet. Another problem: the leaders in the freighters controlled their people and wouldn’t want to give them up. If they did give them up, they might try to slip their own people into my little army.

  “Hang on,” I said. I banked the assault boat sharply, plunging even faster.

  “Are you crazy?” Rollo shouted.

  The vessel shook and rattled more than before. The glass covers over my gauges vibrated, making them seem to jiggle. All the motion helped me collect my thoughts, helped me to focus.

  As I said before, most of the freighters ran along tooth and claw rules. The leader was a ruthless bitch or son of a bitch, and kept a vicious pack of henchmen nearby. He or she kept order like a prison lord. That meant many people aboard the freighters likely hated the leader. It also meant the best recruits, the toughest people, already worked for the boss man or woman. I didn’t want a Trojan horse among my assault troopers. The troopers were my political strength, the reason I ran the show instead of someone else.

  Still, many of the have-nots in the freighters were likely just as tough as the henchmen. The survivors had been in the out of way places like Antarctica, the Arctic, Greenland, submarines and military outposts. Far more men than women had survived. With training and neuro-fiber implants—

  Question: could Jen and the other nurses do the surgery on any volunteers? I sighed. My laundry list of things to do seemed never-ending.

  Soon, I was too busy piloting the boat through vicious cyclones to do much thinking. The Lokhar thermonuclear devices and especially their planet wreckers had changed the weather patterns for the worse.

  Like the best plans, mine was straightforward. Ella and Dmitri commanded the majority of the assault troopers. They presently scoured the battlejumper, hunting for more hidden sleepers.

  We’d beaten the android stealth assault. Unfortunately, we’d lost too many badly needed techs and a handful of troopers. It meant we were down to one hundred and fifty-one effectives.

  I’d visited ten orbital freighters collecting techs and grav-plates before heading down to Earth. They were my payload, and they would go to work on Diana’s freighter in Baja. I didn’t plan to talk to her, though. I was too busy for that.

  Another assault boat had collected techs and brought them to the battlejumper. They helped with repairs. Our battered vessel’s shield was still down. By shield, I meant an electromagnetic screen. The Starkien beamships had those. We had some hull armor, some hull and lots of useless, empty ship to destroy before any blast or beam reached the engines. None of that would matter if our laser outranged theirs for the entire fight, demolishing them before they could fire.

  Let me make this sweet and short. Rollo complained about my piloting until we landed near Diana’s freighter. He went outside, escorting the shaken techs to a hatch. Fifty-five brilliant men and women entered the grounded scow, ready for some hard repair work.

  Soon, a forklift and suited driver appeared. She carried the grav-plates to an engine bay. It took five trips before the hatch shut for good. By that time, Rollo had returned to the boat. After the scrubbing and decontamination, he sat down beside me, took off his helmet and gave me a look.

  I had ignored my comm-unit the entire time he’d been in the freighter.

  “Diana wants to talk to you in person,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Why won’t you see her?” he asked. “Is it because of Jennifer?”

  I revved the engines instead of answering. A minute later, we lifted, heading for the first missile silo in what used to be near Minot, North Dakota.

  ***

  Working overtime and after the first twenty-four hours, while powered on stimulants, we hauled eleven nuclear warheads aboard our boat. It took three trips down and up to get them onto the battlejumper. There, techs attached the warheads to Jelk ejectors. We could fire them from torpedo tubes, laying down a pattern. It meant we could create an operable minefield in an hour or so, by launching the ejectors and easing the warheads into place.

  So far, the fifty-five extra techs hadn’t had any luck with the grounded freighters.

  I had a short talk via screen with the chief engineer on Diana’s scow. I was in the battlejumper control room, staring at a small monitor in my station. A crazy zigzag kept slashing through the screen, but I tried to ignore it. Reception was never good with those down on Earth. The chief tech was from India or from what had once been India. She’d been to school in Germany and knew her stuff. She also had the darkest eyes I’d ever seen. I think her name was Gupta.

  “I am surprised this freighter made it down to Earth,” Gupta told me. “The electronics are in shambles and the seals…” She shook her head. “I need a week, Commander, maybe more before this thing will fly again.”

  “You don’t have a week,” I said. “You have a day.”

  She took her time answering. “I watched American shows while I went to school,” she said, “the old space adventures. This isn’t anything like them. When I say a week, that is exactly what I mean. Don’t expect a miracle because you say we need it.”

  “But I do need it.”

  Gupta’s dark eyes flashed angrily. “With all due respect, Commander, I’m tired, my people are exhausted—”

  “We all are,” I said, cutting her off. “Now listen carefully. Get the job done now or give it someone who can.”

  Gupta wasn’t backing down. Like most of the survivors, she was made of stern stuff. “N7 could not make this ship fly any faster.”

  “Do you want me to relieve you of command?”

  With both hands, Gupta rubbed her face. I knew I pushed her. Sometimes you had to set the bar too high. That way people strove diligently to reach it. If that burned her out, we failed anyway. But by not pushing, we failed. So, one had to demand the impossible in impossible situations.

  She took her hands away from her face. “Do not relive me. I am the best at this you have. I listened to N7 when he made his explanations, not just pretended to listen. You do realize that—”

  “I realize bloodthirsty aliens are bearing down on Earth,” I said. “I don’t want to leave anyone behind. I’m counting on you. Those people in the freighters are counting on you. Take chances if you have to. Risk.”

  “Maybe you are right.”

  “You know I am,” I said. “Creed, out.”

  As Gupta’s image flickered and disappeared, I rubbed the back of my neck. It had a kink in it that wouldn’t go away.

  “You push them too hard,” N7 said.

  As we stood at our stations, various engineers crawled here and there: fixing panels and adding various pieces of new instrumentation.

  I’d had enough resistance today, and just like Gupta, I was tired. “What would you know about being pushed?” I asked. “You’re an android, not a man.”

  N7 raised his eyebrows. “You are upset at my words? That is an indication you are exhausted. I suggest you rest.”

  “Yeah? Is that what you suggest? And how do I manage such a trick? I’m too wound up to sleep.”

  “All the more reason for you to relax,” N7 said.

  It was my turn to rub my eyes. Being in charge was different. Before, Claath had kept his thumb on us and particularly on me. I knew how to react to that. It was my natural heritage, I suppose. I’d been to prison as a youngster and disliked authority. The only thumb pressing down on me now was the pressure of the Starkien flotilla. They had passed Jupiter’s orbital path, still building up velocity as they came toward Earth.

  “There’s an incoming message for you, Commander,” Ella said.

  I don’t remember if I’ve told you about Ella. She used to be a Russian scientist. Now she was an assault trooper. Despite the steroid-68, Ella was still thin, with a pretty face, dark hair hanging to her cheeks and a mind like a razor. She liked things you could cut and weigh—using the scientific approach. I didn’t know much about her previous life. I knew I could count on her when the chips were down. Right now, that’s all I needed to know.

  “Put it on the main screen,” I said.

  Ella did, and I found myself staring at the Starkien commander, Naga Gobo. As N7 had once told me, Naga was his name and Gobo was his rank. It meant lord of ships.

  A regular Starkien was the size of a baboon and looked as furry and as ugly. Naga sported two long canines at the end of his wrinkled muzzle. He must have weighed sixty or seventy pounds and had a mane like a lion. His had white streaks in it. I don’t know what that meant about his actual age, just that he was old for a Starkien.

  Naga Gobo sat on a dais with raised controls around him. Others moved behind the dais. I knew the place stank because Starkiens did. When I’d met them in person before on a beamship, the chamber had smelled like a filthy zoo cage. Naga Gobo seemed to be what he looked like, the dominant male of a high-tech baboon pack. Instead of clothes, he wore a harness around his body, with various tools or weapons hanging from it. Instead of a handkerchief in a breast pocket, he had a silver tube with a black ball on the end dangling there.

  “I wish to speak to Creed-beast,” Naga said on the screen.

  He fit perfectly into Jelk Corporation thinking, having a low opinion about humans. I let the insult pass for now. The time would come to teach him differently.

  “I’m Commander Creed,” I said, stepping off the control deck onto the lower plates.

  “Is this subterfuge?” he asked.

  “Explain yourself,” I said.

  He stiffened at my tone, saying, “You all look alike to me. How do I know it is really Creed-beast I address?”

  “I do not understand,” Ella whispered behind my back. “How can we be communicating instantaneously with him? He’s near Jupiter. His radio waves should take an hour to get here and our reply an hour to return.”

  “That is an intelligent question for an animal,” Naga said from the screen. “You should put her in charge.”

  “Just a minute,” I said. I motioned for N7 to mute sound. Once he did, I asked, “What’s the answer to Ella’s question?”

  “It would appear he is using Lokhar teleportation communications,” N7 said. “I have heard of the technique, and am surprised to realize it is factual, not fiction.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “It is complicated in theory,” N7 said. “Do you wish me to explain the details?”

  “No. I think I understand. They teleport the radio waves at us and somehow teleport our replies back to their ship.”

  “That is crudely stated,” N7 said, “and it is not altogether accurate. Still, I suppose it is close enough to the truth for an operating understanding.”

  “Wonderful,” I muttered, before scowling at Naga Gobo. He kept calling us animals and beasts. I’d never liked that while I’d been a corporation slave and I sure didn’t like it now that I was free. “I’m getting tired of their arrogance,” I said. “It’s going to be a pleasure killing them.”