The Destroyer of Worlds
Book 2 of the War of the Ancients Trilogy
A novel
Alex Kings
Copyright © 2017 Alex Kings
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be redistributed,
photocopied or sold without the author's permission.
To keep up with new releases and have access to extras, visit the author's website at www.AlexKings.com
Contents
Chapter 1: Blanks and Molten Lead
Chapter 2: Pax Galactica
Chapter 3: Old Friends
Chapter 4: Earth
Chapter 5: Emily
Chapter 6: Mars
Chapter 7: Aliens in London Bars
Chapter 8: Her Favourite Colour Is Green
Chapter 9: The Oracle
Chapter 10: Oh Goody
Chapter 11: Never You
Chapter 12: Ghroga
Chapter 13: A Dignified Entrance
Chapter 14: Throne Room
Chapter 15: The Cold, Black Depths
Chapter 16: Volcanoes
Chapter 17: Contact
Chapter 18: Varanid Wrestling
Chapter 19: They're Pretty Pissed
Chapter 20: He Thinks We're Cool
Chapter 21: Meeting
Chapter 22: One Day
Chapter 23: If We Give him a Mystery
Chapter 24: Shadowwalker
Chapter 25: New Destination
Chapter 26: Kalbraica
Chapter 27: Sulphurous
Chapter 28: Free to Log an Appeal
Chapter 29: Employees
Chapter 30: Tribunal
Chapter 31: Standard Impenetrable Alcatraz
Chapter 32: Acceptable Security
Chapter 33: Suiting Up
Chapter 34: Guards on Duty
Chapter 35: Another Opportunity
Chapter 36: Lockdown
Chapter 37: Hello Customer
Chapter 38: Don't Think About How Silly This Looks
Chapter 39: Air
Chapter 40: Violence is not Permitted
Chapter 41: Farming Zone
Chapter 42: Bad at This
Chapter 43: Trapped
Chapter 44: Discovery
Chapter 45: Please Wait
Chapter 46: Lies
Chapter 47: Figurehead
Chapter 48: Hidden for Fifty-Five Thousand Years
Chapter 49: Empty
Chapter 50: Something We Need
Chapter 51: Counting Seconds
Chapter 52: Defenceless
Chapter 53: Awake
Chapter 54: Constellations
Chapter 55: Sickbay
Chapter 56: Opening Move
Chapter 57: The Admiral
Chapter 58: Obsessive
Chapter 59: Engage Immediately
Chapter 60: All of Them
Chapter 61: Attack
Chapter 62: Secure the Station
Chapter 63: Operations Room
Chapter 64: Crystal Spear
Chapter 65: Still on Schedule
Chapter 66: Manual
Chapter 67: Triangulate
Chapter 68: Glowing Water
Chapter 69: Engine
Chapter 70: Results
Chapter 71: The Return
Chapter 1: Blanks and Molten Lead
Avernus, Solar Alliance:
Hanson scrambled up the slope as quickly as he could. The ground was treacherous. The scree shifted beneath his feet, and each step released a little avalanche of rock and metal fragments. In the low gravity, they tumbled in surreal slow motion.
A bullet sparked silently off a fist-sized lump of iron to his left. He threw himself down.
For all his training, he'd never quite managed to get over the wrongness of gunfire in a vacuum. The Earthbound animal inside him rebelled against the idea that something so deadly and so fast could fly by silently. He waited for a moment, hearing only his own laboured breathing, the crackle of comms chatter, and the distant crunch of the scree under his suit, then scrambled forward on all fours.
A second later he passed over the lip in the landscape. Nothing dangerous on the far side. He dropped into its cover as soon as he could.
“Everyone still here?” he asked over the comms.
Agatha's laugh came through first, swimming on joyful adrenaline. “Yeah! Just about!” She sounded like someone who'd just come off a rollercoaster. The thought made him smile.
The rest of the team checked in: Moore, Srak, Yilva. They were all unhurt. Srak and Yilva were on the same slope as he was. For once, Srak was fully suited. Even a Varanid needed protection in this environment. Hanson's helmet's display offered a map with Moore and Agatha's locations. They were all together, or close enough.
He turned around and looked over the lip, searching for the Blank who had been pursuing him.
The landscape was an irregular mass of shallow slopes, divided by canyons and spotted with mirrorlike pools of molten lead. Volcanoes rose in the distance.
The sun was an immense blue circle that seemed to cover half the sky. It was, quite literally blindingly bright. Enough to burn out the retina of anyone without protection. Even with the suits visor darkened, the landscape was still filled with unremitting glare that swallowed all shadows.
Where the sun didn't outshine it, the black sky was bisected by a brilliant chalk-yellow ring stretching from horizon to horizon.
He caught sight of the Blank a few hundred metres away as it came out of cover and scrambled across the landscape. The loose rock and metal made its motion inelegant, but it still moved with impressive speed and efficiency.
But not enough.
Hanson fired, sweeping his carbine across the Blank's path. It stumbled, but got up again. Hanson steadied his aim.
The Blank went down before he could fire again.
“Boom,” said Srak's voice over the comms.
Hanson scanned to horizon for any more Blanks chasing them. For the time being, at least, it looked free.
“Yilva?” he asked. “Where's the artefact?”
“Close,” she said. “The signals here are stronger. South, I think.”
A trio of Blanks appeared at the lip of the nearest ridge. Hanson dropped below cover. “Let's move!” he said.
They struggled down the slope as quickly as they could, gathering together, following Yilva's directions.
As they skirted a pool of molten lead, the Blanks appeared at the ridge above. The reflection on the lake shattered as bullets streamed into its surface.
There was no cover nearby. As they scrambled across the landscape, Hanson turned and lay down suppressive fire across the ridge. As his clip neared exhaustion, he called out “Moore!” She took up the slack while he reloaded, in turn passing the baton to Agatha. One of the Blanks went down, but more popped up in its place. Hanson's armour registered damage, but nothing serious.
They moved into the cover of another ridge.
“Nearly there!” said Yilva.
“Uh, hate to be a buzzkill, but it's getting a bit toasty in here,” Moore said.
Hanson checked his helmet display. All the suits monitored their own states of affairs and shared information. Moore's radiator was damaged. In this environment, the inside temperature would hit lethal levels in just over a minute, even with insulation.
“Yilva,” he said.
“I am on it!” Yilva said. She bounded over to Moore.
“Srak, protect them. Agatha, you're with me.”
“Gotcha.”
He hated to split up, but time was of the essence. He couldn't let that artefact, whatever it was, fall into IL's hands.
Yilva was already working at the ra
diator pack on Moore's back. Delicate, sensitive engineering tools extended from her suit's fingertips. Srak steadied his pistol and took down a Blank as it rounded a corner.
Hanson and Agatha moved onwards. Up ahead, a few tens of kilometres away a volcano erupted. Its glowing column – more molten metal than lava – sprayed right up, quickly covering a distance of kilometres. In Avernus's low gravity, some of that matter would eventually join the planet's rings.
They crossed another ridge. Yilva's voice came over the comms: “We're done!”
“Good work,” said Hanson. “Get here as quickly as you can.”
This was the place. He searched the landscape, listening to the weak, quavering radio signals.
There!
A twisted helix of spines. It was hard to see amongst all the other detritus, but the matte black surface of Ancient building material stood out against the loose rock and metal.
“Let's go,” said Hanson.
He and Agatha moved downslope towards it.
A platoon of Blanks crested the opposite ridge.
“Shit!'” hissed Agatha. She scrambled to the side behind an outcrop of metal. Hanson moved that way. The ground around him sparked with silent gunfire. Then a patch of it erupted behind him, sending him sprawling. One of the Blanks had an Ancient weapon. These guys were the serious ones.
Bullets bit into his armour. He pulled himself forward, and Agatha helped drag him into cover beside her. A second later, the ground erupted again.
“Hurt?” Agatha asked.
Hanson glanced at his display. There was damage, but it was minimal. “I'm fine,” he said. To the others, he added, “Be careful. We've got a whole heap of trouble. Seven Blanks, at least one armed with an Ancient weapon.”
“Bastards got here before us,” muttered Agatha. “Those others were just a distraction.”
Hanson leant out from behind the outcrop. In the background, the volcano continued to erupt. Three of the Blanks were scrabbling towards the Ancient weapon. The other four, including the one with the Ancient weapon, remained at the top of the ridge to cover them.
“Take out the delivery boys,” he told Agatha.
“Sure thing.”
They leaned out and fired together. One of the Blanks going for the weapon went down. This time Hanson heard the tinny, distant crack of the Ancient weapon – it had hit the outcrop.
He took that as his cue, and leaned out to fire again. The Ancient weapon would take a moment to recharge.
Another of the Blanks went down.
He ducked back as the weapon fired again.
The other joined the fight, taking cover some distance back, but it was an unwinnable battle. The last remaining Blank grabbed the artefact and headed back uphill. It fell, but there was another on hand to take its charge. The one with the Ancient weapon tumbled back out of sight. In the end, just three were left, running back the way they'd come over the ridge.
“Go!” ordered Hanson. He ran forward after the blanks. The loose rocks crunch and shifted under his feet His team came after him.
The terrain levelled into a plane. A ten-foot wide crevice lay in front of them. The Blanks were on the other side.
Hanson saw its width, recalled the Avernus's gravity – 0.13 gees – noted the quality of the ground, and using calculations the academy had drilled into his head, decided it was crossable.
He ran towards it and jumped at the last moment. The deep gap passed below him. The jump seemed to take forever. That was another thing his ape brain would never get used to. He felt like he was going to fall in until he reached the ground at the other side.
Agatha landed beside him. She nearly fell, but then recovered enough to raise her carbine and fire at the fleeing Blanks.
They chased the Blanks across craters, round pools of molten lead and bubbling liquid sulphur, exchanging fire.
Hanson paused to fire. One of the trio fell. That left just two. He started forward again.
The ground lurched beneath his feet and tipped to the side. A faint cracking noise echoed up through his boots. A couple of metres to his left a hole opened up.
In the low gravity, everything seemed to go in slow motion. He was on a thin sheet of quartz covering another crevice. His weight at the weakest point had broken it.
Everything tilted towards the opening crevice. There was enough time for Hanson to run. Loose bits of rocks and metal slid past. He found he could barely get a grip on the quartz beneath. The plate he was standing on came away entirely and began to fall.
He ran for the edge, leaping at the final moment. But it was clear he'd already fallen too far. The lip of the crevice, a couple of feet above his grasp, seemed to taunt him.
At the last moment a hand reached out and grabbed his. He thumped into the crevice wall and found foothold, climbing as he was pulled up.
He scrambled up over the top of the crevice back onto solid ground. Agatha squatted there, hand still caught in his. Her face wasn't visible through the shaded visor, but he could image her grin right now.
“Thanks,” he said, standing.
There was no time for more. Avoiding the crevice, they began their pursuit again.
Over the next ridge, they saw the stealth shuttle, nestled between two outcrops of iron. The Blanks had just disappeared inside.
The shuttle rose off the ground. Another second and it would be gone.
Srak raised his pistol and emptied it into the shuttle.
The shuttle turned suddenly, its nose nose pointed at the sky. Then it was gone, racing upwards too fast for the eye to follow.
And now the Dauntless's sensors wouldn't be able to pick it up. Unless …
Hanson activated his comms.
“This is Dauntless Actual,” came Lanik's voice. “What is it, sir?”
“We've got a stealth shuttle rising from our present location, left a couple of seconds ago.”
There was a pause. Lanik would know what to look for. “We have it,” said Lanik.
“Shoot it down.”
Barely visible against the sun's glare, a tiny green star appeared in the black sky, then blinked out again.
“Done,” said Lanik.
Hanson smiled. “Thank you, XO,” he said. Turning to Srak, he added, “Good job.”
Srak nodded. His large-caliber rounds had damaged the shuttle's stealth systems. Just enough for the Dauntless to pick up an anomalous reading and target it.
“We have a trajectory for the debris,” said Lanik. “It's going into low orbit. I assume we need to pick it up?”
“Yes,” said Hanson. “The artefact's there. What about the ride they came in on?”
“We have nothing so far,” said Lanik.
Avernus's thick, metal-rich rings gave ample opportunity for a ship to hide. Lanik had been looking for it since Hanson ran into the Blanks on the surface.
“Here,” said Lanik. “We have something. A reactor's activated. Moving to engage now …”
Hanson waited, looking at the sky even though he could see no hint of the chase going on. A captured IL ship would be a big prize. The rogue organisation was still out there, and a ship might hold the key finding it and dealing with it once and for all.
“Sorry, sir,” said Lanik. “We lost it. The ship jumped away before we could fire.”
Hanson sighed. “We still have the artefact, at least.”
“Moving to pick it up now,” said Lanik.
Hanson looked around at his team. “Alright, time to go,” he said. They began their trudge back towards the shuttle.
Chapter 2: Pax Galactica
Back aboard the Dauntless, Hanson checked in at the CIC. Avernus was still visible on the displays as a bright crescent of mottled yellow and grey, brilliantly lit by the blue sun and pocked with craters and volcanoes.
“We've got a jump in,” said Lieutenant Lachlan Dunn.
“Standard alert,” said Hanson. “Give me visual.” He was expecting a jump-in, but it always paid to be cautious.
On the display above the command console, the stars rippled and twisted. They pulled back to reveal a wormhole mouth, through which a six-mile-long ovoid of rich-crystalline blue emerged. A Tethyan battleship.
“They're hailing us,” said Lieutenant Iris Miller.
“Put it through,” said Hanson.
A Tethyan appeared on the adjacent display, floating against a glowing ocean background. The jointed exoskeleton covering its squid-shaped body was a pattern of rich browns and ochres.
“We lost the ship,” Hanson reported. “But we've managed to recover the artefact. We still have no clue what it does, other than give off radio signals.”
“An unfortunate outcome,” the Tethyan said in a calm, level synthesised voice.
“I was thinking the same thing,” said Hanson.
Two weeks ago they'd set out, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, a full map of known Ancient technology sites in hand, ready to try and find IL.
This was the last. And every one of those sites had been a bust. Either IL had got there first and taken the Ancient technology, or they'd stayed away and left it in place. Once or twice, a ship had been seen nosing around, like today, but they always escaped before they could be tracked.
The Tethyan continued: “We will return this artefact to the Solar System for study.”
“Thank you,” said Hanson.
The Pax Galactica, the agreement between the Tethyans and all the other civilised races to keep the peace, had always been the standard interstellar agreement. But now there was something new: A bilateral agreement between the Tethyans and the Solar Alliance. As part of the agreement, half of the technology would go to humans, half to the Tethyans. Each would study it in their own way, to try and find some hint about what to do next.
“We will, of course, keep ships posted at this system,” said the Tethyan. “But now there are no further leads, we will have to look to other means.”
Hanson nodded. “Thank you again. I'll see what I can do.”
When the Tethyan had gone, Hanson glanced at Lanik. “At least the authorities are on our side this time instead of trying to kill us.”
“It's the little things that make life worth living,” observed Lanik with the barest hint of a smile.
“That they do, XO” said Hanson. He looked at the command console once more. Everything else from this point would be a formality: Scan the Ancient artefact, watch the Tethyans collect it, then accompany them back to to Tethya.