Theogony 3: Terra Stands Alone (35 page)

Putting the camera in his pocket, Master Chief looked down at his frequent tormentor. “Thanks,” he said, nodding to
Danger in salute of his sacrifice.

Master Chief stood up. “
Let’s go finish this,” he said to Randolph.

“
One more down,
” Rozhkov reported.

“
That should only leave the saboteur,
” Randolph commed. He got up and sprinted to where he thought the last Drakul was hiding. Coming around the corner, he saw a Drakul with its back to him stand up from whatever it was working on.

The Drakul
sensed motion behind it and turned to face Randolph. The cyborg saw that the Drakul was holding a box with a button. Seeing the Terran soldier, the Drakul made a ‘glub, glub, glub’ noise, and Randolph realized that it was laughing. The Drakul’s hand moved toward the button. Seeing that the Drakul intended to push the button, Randolph took two steps and dove for the Drakul. Randolph’s his left hand covered the Drakul’s hand on the box as it pushed the button.

Randolph clamp
ed down, pinning the Drakul’s finger and holding the button down. As he fell to the floor, Randolph extended a knife blade from his right wrist and cut off the Drakul’s hand in an explosion of blue. Retracting the knife, Randolph pushed off the ground with his empty hand, spinning around to kick the Drakul in the stomach. Without getting up, Randolph drew his remaining Desert Eagle as he turned back toward the Drakul. Gushing blue from its missing hand, the Drakul reached toward him, desperate to get the box back. Randolph triggered off five shots in quick succession, and Master Chief added several more as he came around the corner. The Drakul fell backward to lie still on the floor. A blue puddle began to grow from a number of holes in its body.

Master Chief walked over
and inspected the Drakul. “Nice grouping of your shots,” he noted.

“Thanks,” replied Staff Sergeant Randolph. “We’ve got a problem. See this big bomb?” He pointed to a pile of red bricks that appeared to be wired together. A light flashed ominously from a metal box
wired to the middle of it.

“That’s a bomb?”

“Yeah, that’s Alliance of Civilizations’ advanced plastic explosives,” Randolph replied. “I saw it once at explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) school. Once the stuff is armed, it’s extremely sensitive to movement.”

“And that little blinking light...” Master Chief asked.

“...means that that the explosive is armed,” finished Randolph. “I’ve got the detonator,” he continued, showing Master Chief the box and Drakul hand he was holding. “The button has already been pushed, which armed the bomb; if I let go, the bomb will detonate.”

“We’ve got to get
it off the ship,” Master Chief said. “We need to wrap the button with some tape or something to keep it from going off.”

“I always knew this would happen,”
Randolph said. “This is why I wanted
out
of EOD. I only had one more week when my partner blew us up.” He shook his head. “I can’t let go of this box, nor can I get any further than about 10 feet from the bomb, or it will explode. I’m pretty fucked.”

“There’s got to be something we can do,” Master Chief argued.

“There is,” agreed Randolph. “You can
very carefully
pick the bomb up for me and then cycle me through the airlock. Anything else will result in the bomb exploding and wiping out this engine and most of the aft end of the ship.”

“If we let you go out the airlock, what are your intentions?” asked Master Chief.

“I’m going to jet as far as I can away from the ship prior to letting the bomb detonate,” stated Randolph. “It’s the only thing I can do. Trust me. I’m no hero; that’s the only possible option.”

“There’s
got to be another way,” Master Chief said.

“No
,” Randolph disagreed, “there’s not. I have to do it, and I have to go
now
. I don’t know how long I can hold this box. The Drakul’s hand makes the box damn hard to hold onto, especially with a mechanical hand.” He looked at the bomb again. “You’ll need help lifting it. The bomb has to be kept level or it will detonate. You’d better hurry. There’s also probably a countdown timer in there somewhere, too. It’s what I’d do.”

“
Jones, get over here and give me a hand,
” Master Chief ordered. With a twinge, he realized that he didn’t have to differentiate between the spy and the cameraman any more. “
Everyone else, get the hell out of here and close any blast doors you can find.
”

The two men lifted the bomb and put it under Randolph’s
right arm where he could carry it. “I don’t care what you think,” said Master Chief as the cyborg walked carefully to the engine room’s airlock, “you’re a hero in my book.”

“Thanks,” said Randolph as he walked into the small enclosure. He turned around. “Do me a favor, would you?” he asked. “Go save the world?”

“We will,” replied Master Chief as the door slid shut. “We will, indeed.”

* * * * *

“There was nothing else we could do,” replied Master Chief. “We let him go out the airlock, and he jetted a couple of miles away from the ship where he blew up. We saw the flash; he’s gone.”

Calvin sighed. He had called all of the senior officers and enlisted together on the bridge of the dreadnought to take stock of their situation, prior to reporting back to the
Vella Gulf
. He turned to Night. “Who did we lose taking the replicator?” he asked, dreading the answer. He didn’t see Master Gunnery Sergeant Kinkead, who should have been in attendance. He knew they had taken casualties, too.

“We lost Master Gunnery Sergeant Kinkead to a surprise Drakul attack during the initial assault,” Night said. “We also lost Father Zuhsldorf during mop-up operations afterward. The Drakuls tried to blow up the replicator and set a trap.”

Calvin shook his head. “Damn,” he said with a sigh. “I should never have asked him to come.”

“You said it yourself,” Night said
. “We didn’t have enough people. He came willingly, wanting to do his part.”

“He had a message for you
,” Lieutenant Rrower added.

“He did?” asked Calvin.

“Yes,” Lieutenant Rrower said. “I was with him at the end. His last words were, ‘Tell Calvin to go to confession.’”

“That sounds like him,” Calvin said, feeling
a little better. He turned to Steropes. “I heard that you fought a Drakul in hand-to-hand combat,” he said. “Feeling better?”

“I am ashamed to say I thought it would
help,” Steropes replied; “however, it did not. I remember Francis Bacon saying that, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; in passing it over, he is superior. I am better than the Drakuls, so I have decided to let go of my feelings of revenge. I need to be the person I was before the Drakuls came into my life. I need to be me. It will be better that way.”

“It always is,” agreed Calvin.

“I am sorry for your losses,” interrupted Smetlurge, “but we need to figure out what we are going to do. We, the remnants of the Hooolong society, along with various other allies, would like to take this ship as our new capital. We have no home world; we have no other members of our civilization that we are aware of. We do have over 350 Hooolongs onboard this ship, along with another 175 members of the Depsips civilization, the Xanth society, the Clrank Confederation and the Quugeert nation. If you will allow us to, we will fight this ship in the upcoming battle.”

“How are you going to do that?” asked Night. “This thing must take a crew of 3,000 or so.”

“3,500, actually,” Smetlurge corrected. “We do, however, have some outstanding computer programmers among the Depsips. They are already modifying the computer to allow more functions to operate autonomously. The Psiclops may have put aside his feelings of revenge; we have not. When the Archons attack, it is our intention to aid them. We have a plan.”

“You have a plan?” Calvin
asked.

“Indeed,” Smetlurge said. “I used to design weapons systems before I became president, remember? I have a plan. We just need you to let us have this ship.
You need to hurry, too. There are a large number of Drakul ships coming.”

“
What?” Calvin asked. “Why?”

“Apparently you Terrans do understand revenge,” Smetlurge said, nodding his agreement.

“What do you mean?” asked Calvin.

“You unleashed a black hole on
the Psiclopes’ home world,” Smetlurge replied, “despite saying that you would not. Olympos is no more. The ships are coming to find out where it went. The Drakuls are not happy.”

“So, all we need to do
is let the Hooolongs have the ship, and they’ll use it to fight the Drakuls?” asked Captain Sheppard.

“Yes sir,” replied Calvin. “They also have a plan to deal with all of the ships that are headed this way after you guys wiped out Olympos.”

“I don’t know why they did that,” said Captain Sheppard. “I specifically ordered them
not
to use the black hole generator on Olympos. Please pass on my sympathies to Steropes.”

“Steropes is fine with
it,” Calvin informed him. “In fact, I think that was his preferred option all along. The Hooolongs are also impressed with our resolve. Azrael said that his people will think more highly of us because we ‘did what we had to do.’ The Xanth and Depsips are scared of us and think we’re too warlike. That doesn’t change much, since they were already scared of us and thought we were too warlike. Only Lieutenant Rrower is unhappy. He says that there may be problems with the Mrowry.”

“Well, we’re not going to have problems with anyone unless we get aid back to Earth,” replied Captain Sheppard, “and the only way we’re going to do that is by helping the Archons. We don’t have enough manpower to operate both the
Vella Gulf
and the dreadnought, and we don’t know how to run it in any event. Tell Smetlurge the ship is theirs and to please kill a lot of Drakuls with it.”

“Will do, sir,” Calvin said. “I don’t think they’ll have a problem with that.”

Calvin watched the conversation between the Drakul captain and the Drakul admiral on a
side monitor.

“Yes, admiral,” answered Captain Vlad. “When I saw the planet eaten by the black hole, I knew there were enemies in the system,
probably with some sort of stealth ship, so I took charge of the new dreadnought and launched it. I did not want it to be destroyed or to fall into the hands of the enemy to be used against us.”

“That was good thinking,” replied Admiral Kralg. “How
is your manning? Should we send you additional crew?”

“That will not be necessary,” replied the captain. “Just before the planet was destroyed, we received two shuttle loads of crewmembers. We have enough crew to operate it until
we can get the rest of the crew from Drakon.”

“Good,” the admiral said. “Bring the ship to the stargate for integration with the fleet. I cannot believe that the destruction of Olympos
is anything other than a precursor for an Archon invasion. We need to be ready. The fleet is at its highest alert status. We could use your firepower at the stargate, especially since we had to send the battle group to assist in the pacification of the new food source.”

“We are on our way,” noted the captain.

Calvin smiled as the conversation terminated, and Smetlurge ceased being a Drakul captain; the Drakuls had fallen for it. As Smetlurge had said, the Depsips had proven to be excellent programmers, and the hologram program they had designed for him had worked to perfection.

Now they just needed to get close enough to give the
Drakuls a little surprise.

“How much longer until we’re within weapons range?” Captain Sheppard asked.

The OSO consulted his display. “About two more hours at this speed.”

Captain Sheppard nodded. “And how long until the attack commences?”

“Four hours,” said Ensign Sara Sommers, “according to the schedule that the Archons...wait!
I’ve got stargate emergence!
”

“Talk to me, Sara. What have you got?”

“The ships are small,” she replied, “and there are quite a few of them that just entered.” The Drakuls began firing on them, confirming her guess. “They’re the mine clearance vessels,” she said. “They’ve started the attack.”

“I thought that they weren’t supposed to attack for four more hours,” said Captain Sheppard.

“They weren’t,” agreed Sara. “They’re early.”

“Well, we’re not going to let them start the party without us,” Captain Sheppard said. “F
lank speed!”