Crystal Conquest (34 page)

“I’ll be in my room.” She hurried down the passageway and
entered Lenny’s quarters. As the door shut behind her, she saw his pack and
carryall sitting on the bunk. She picked them up, opened the door, dropped them
in the hall, and let the door close.

She lay down on the bunk, faced the wall, and curled into a
fetal position.

“What’s the matter, young lady?” Criss asked in her ear.

“Go away.”

Her face twisted in grief. Her eyes reddened and her body
shook. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
I’m an idiot. They’re all laughing at
me.
She hugged herself and started to weep.
I miss him.

She heard a tap at the door and, trying in vain to muffle
her sorrow, turned her face into the pillow.

Cheryl stepped inside and let the door shut behind her. She
sat on the bed next to Juice, rubbed her shoulder, and stroked her hair.

“I’m so dumb,” Juice said between sobs. “I thought I loved
him...loved it.”

Cheryl lay down next to Juice, held her, and murmured
soothing words. “It’s all right. Everything will be okay.”

Sid sprawled in one of the two chairs
behind the pilot’s seat with his eyes closed. “What’s the plan?”

Lenny slumped into the other chair. “You asking me?”

Criss spoke through the ship’s audio so they both could
hear. “All the Kardish are returning to the dreadnaught. The armada never made
it to Earth, and the first craft will arrive here within the hour. Those on the
ground have been ordered to clean up all signs of their presence before
departing. It’ll take half a day to get everyone and everything on board.”

Lenny looked over his shoulder at the console. “You aren’t
going to let them leave.”

“No, Len. I’ll be flying them into the sun.”

“Really? Hitting the sun is a lot harder than it sounds.”

Sid opened one eye and smiled. “Is it? Help Criss understand
the complexities.”

“Well,” said Lenny, sitting upright, “the sun’s
gravitational pull is huge. If you lob an object at it, the sun will pull on it
hard, making it go faster and faster. But the sun moves through space. It’s not
sudden or anything. It’s gradual, but it moves. Anyway, the thing you lobbed
gets zipping super-fast, and the next thing you know, it’s headed at something
that’s no longer there. Your object misses the sun and ends up flying on around.”

“Interesting,” said Sid. His attention drifted while Lenny
lectured.
Juice seems upset about something
.

“You know that old saying,” said Lenny. “Aim for where your
target’s gonna be, not where it is right now.”

Sid couldn’t put his finger on it.
Cheryl saw something I
missed.
He decided he needed a private chat with Criss and waited for Lenny
to take a breath.

“…that’s why Halley's Comet—a ball of dirty ice—doesn’t hit
the sun. It flies right at it, the sun moves, the comet misses, swoops around
behind, and gets flung back out into space, only to return again seventy-five
years later.”

Sid took his opportunity. “That’s great information. Thanks.
Criss, can you recheck your calculations?”

“I appreciate the guidance. I’ll indeed recheck my
calculations.”

Sid knew Criss well enough to hear his sarcasm. From Lenny’s
demeanor, the mocking tone appeared to have passed over his head.

“Hey, Len,” said Sid. “How long has it been since you
slept?”

“I don’t know. A long time.”

“From what Criss is saying, we’ve got hours to kill. I’ll
take first watch.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“Len.” Sid projected a no-nonsense attitude. “The team’s
stronger if we take advantage of opportunities to eat and sleep.” He thrust his
chin toward his room. “Go get some rest. Use my bunk. You can relieve me in a
bit.”

Lenny stifled a yawn and looked down the passageway. “Okay.
You talked me into it.”

As soon as the door shut behind Lenny, Sid put it to Criss.
“I think Crispin caused some emotional pain for Juice. Am I wrong?”

“You know I don’t discuss my private interactions with
others of the leadership.”

“I was clear about this, Criss. It’s not about your intentions.
It’s about the outcome. I’m sensing it’s not good. And I meant it when I said
I’d punish you if the romance between you and Juice went bad.”

He rubbed the stubble on his chin and looked at the synbod.
“Let’s get it out of sight. Put it in the drone room. I don’t think she’ll be going
in there.”

* * *

While Criss chatted with Sid, he deployed
his intellectual capacity to monitor activities outside the dreadnaught. The
Kardish were acting under the orders of their king—or so they believed—and he sought
to ensure their continued compliance.

Multitasking to the limit of his ability, he also worked
through a threat assessment inside the dreadnaught. He sped through the ship’s
central array and noted areas of concerns. During this effort, the scout
started to plunge.

The dreadnaught’s gravity is ramping up!
Pulling intellectual
capacity back into the scout, he engaged the engines in time to slow their
descent and land on the field deck with a modest bump.

“Is their crystal awake?” asked Sid, shifting forward into
the pilot’s chair and activating the ops bench.

“It’s not Goljat.” Criss turned his attention to the Kardish
inside the vessel.
Got you.

A group of Kardish techs, huddling around a panel in a major
junction center, worked frantically to find back doors into the ship’s central
array. They’d made some progress, and their activities now centered on
reestablishing links to Goljat’s life-support subsystem, which included the
crystal’s pleasure-feed flow.

Impressive work.
Criss unleashed a power surge that
knocked out every panel in the center. Working systematically throughout the
vessel, he located and disabled all worksites that provided similar routes for
Kardish mischief.

If they know the problem, this isn’t their only effort.
Making a second pass through the dreadnaught, he zapped panels, deactivated
weapons systems, and immobilized heavy equipment that soldiers could use to
stage an uprising. His confidence rose as he neared completion of the task.

Sensing activity in an area designated as a repair shop, Criss
linked with the sensor feeds inside that room. He saw a Kardish soldier step
onto a platform in the center of the shop. The soldier looked forward, and the
image of an exoskeleton—a large robot-like body—grew out of the platform and
surrounded the alien, fitting him like a monstrous suit.

The soldier moved his arms and legs, and the huge
exoskeleton duplicated his actions.
Stomp. Stomp.
When the soldier
lowered his legs, Criss heard the pounding of the image’s feet on the platform.
This is no sophisticated light show.
Somehow, a framework of real material
had sprouted around the alien.

The soldier-operator made a motion with his leg, and the oversized
automaton descended to the deck.
Stomp.
Another Kardish climbed onto the
platform, and as he positioned himself, Criss launched a power surge that fried
every link to the exoskeleton-growing unit.

Sorting through options, Criss sought a way to disable the existing
exoskeleton.
The Kardish operator is its brains. To stop the monster, I need
to stop the alien driving it.

The soldier inside the machine-suit turned to look at the
wisps of smoke rising from the platform. Cocooned inside the automaton, he
lifted his arm and made a grabbing motion with his hand. The giant exoskeleton mirrored
his movement and reached upward, its hand punching through the ceiling.

Criss watched from a dozen different angles as the huge hand
grasped an overhead conduit. Yanking his arm downward, the Kardish soldier
pulled a tangle of debris to the floor. The alien’s actions disabled all feeds
from the room, and Criss’s view went dark.

Shifting into the corridor, Criss accessed the sensor
pickups along the hallway. He focused everything on the walls and door of the repair
shop. Tweaking the visual, audio, thermal, and motion feeds, he organized data so
it might give him some sense of the activity within the room.

Before he had time to fine-tune the data, two huge hands punched
through the repair shop door, pulled back on the wreckage, and tossed the twisted
pieces out of the way.
Stomp. Stomp.

The giant machine ducked through the gaping hole into the
hallway, punched up through the ceiling, and pulled down internals that
disabled the local feeds, again blinding Criss. He shifted to the sensor
pickups at both ends of the corridor and waited.
Stomp. Stomp.
Criss
could hear the monster approaching on the end that led to Goljat’s crystal
housing.

Aiming the Kardish security armaments on the point where the
suited soldier would appear, Criss waited. The stomping grew louder as the
monster approached.
Thud. Crash.
Criss glimpsed a shower of debris, and
his feeds deactivated.
I can’t stop it this way.

Inside the scout, Criss animated Crispin. The synbod dashed
to the rear of the craft, grabbed two weapons from the munitions cabinet, and
slapped one on each wrist. Reaching to the back of the cabinet, the synbod
lifted an energy cannon off its mount and slung it across his back. Secure inside
the scout’s console, Criss directed Crispin to the bottom hatch.

“What are you doing?” asked Sid as Crispin raced below.

Projecting an image of the scene forward of the ops bench,
Criss replied, “We have a concern.”

Sid watched a replay of the lumbering monster smashing
through the repair shop door and stomping into the hallway. “Is that coming for
us?”

“It’s headed for Goljat. I’m not sure what it hopes to do when
it gets there, but I can’t wait to find out.”

Criss switched the image to show a view just outside the
scout. Moving in fantastic leaps, Crispin sprinted across the field deck. The
whine of the scout’s weapon’s battery preceded a flash. An energy bolt flew
over Crispin’s head and blasted a hole in the dividing wall. Crispin ducked as
he raced through the smoldering opening, disappearing from sight.

Flipping to Kardish vid feeds, Criss tracked Crispin as he directed
the synbod through the vessel. They watched Crispin sprint across decks, up
ladders, through hatches, and down ramps.

“What’s going on?” Cheryl walked up behind Sid and rested a
hand on his shoulder.

Sid pointed to the display. Crispin had stopped at the
corner of intersecting corridors.
Stomp. Stomp.

“The sensor feeds in the passageway ahead are disabled,”
said Criss. He flipped the projected image so Sid and Cheryl saw the same view
he would be using—Crispin’s eyes.

Crispin stepped around the corner. His hands came into view
as he raised his arms and primed his wrist weapons. Cheryl gasped at the sight
of a three-dimensional monster seemingly marching toward her.
Stomp. Stomp.

Advancing on the automaton, Crispin took quick steps and then
dove down the hall. The suited soldier was slow to react, giving Crispin time
to grab the monster’s shoulder and rotate onto its back.

Crispin held on with one hand and reached back for the
energy cannon with the other. Swinging it in front, he pressed the muzzle of the
weapon against the monster’s neck. The Kardish soldier grasped and clawed up
over his head, and Crispin ducked and weaved to avoid the huge hands swiping
all around him.

Hanging on with his knees and one hand, Crispin tilted the
cannon downward so it pointed at the soldier. He leaned his shoulder against
the stock of the weapon and fired.

The monster glowed for a moment, the Kardish soldier threw
his arms forward as if he were walking in a trance, and then an energy blowback
washed over Crispin.

Criss stabilized the synbod, restored control, and had
Crispin fire two more times in rapid succession. The exoskeleton blazed, the
soldier convulsed, and an energy rebound drove Crispin off the monster’s back
and onto the deck. Crispin lifted his head in time for Sid and Cheryl to see
the monster drop to its knees and fall face first onto the ground.

“Whoa,” said Juice as she stepped from the passageway onto
the bridge. “I’d worked all this noise into a nightmare, but it’s actually
happening.”

The projected image display showed the feet of the fallen
monster. As Criss moved Crispin into a sitting position, the angle shifted
enough to see the prone body. The Kardish soldier lay still inside the suit.

“What is that thing?” Juice asked. “And where’s the vid coming
from?”

The view swooped as Crispin turned to look down the corridor
behind him. A dozen Kardish filled the passageway, arms raised and weapons
aimed forward. Their hands twitched in unison as they fired their weapons. A
brilliant flash filled the scene, and the projected image went dark.

“Crispin!” Cheryl brought her fingers to her lips.

Juice looked at Cheryl. “What? I’m so confused.”

Cheryl put an arm around her, pulled her close, and guided
her back to her bunk.

* * *

Sid felt a slight pressure as the scout
moved up through the dreadnaught’s hangar door and into open space. Moments
later, Criss positioned the craft so it shadowed the Kardish vessel in its
orbit around Earth.

Sid tapped the ops bench and raised his eyebrows as he digested
the panoramic display. He’d been inside the dreadnaught during the troopship deployment
and remembered the exodus from that perspective.
Amazing
. The sight
reminded him of the story of Noah’s ark.

Kardish craft of different shapes and sizes lined up side by
side, waiting for their turn to enter the dreadnaught. The line stretched out
as far as he could see, and more craft were joining the procession from all
directions.

“You can get all that inside in twelve hours?” he asked
Criss.

“I won’t be concerned about landing them in neat rows. Once
inside the hangar door, I’ll shunt them aside and pile them on top of the box
city. “It won’t be pretty, but I’ll get them all in.”

“Why not burn them up in a free fall through Earth’s
atmosphere?”

Criss recounted his discovery of how the particle cloud from
the explosion of the prince’s craft led the king back to Earth. “I seek to avoid
creating more trace evidence.”

Sid watched the procession for a while longer. “I wasn’t
paying attention during Lenny’s lecture. Is hitting the sun with the
dreadnaught as hard as he made it sound?”

“His examples were for objects that don’t have engines. The
dreadnaught’s powerful drives will slow the vessel during its approach, and
this makes the task straightforward. Instead of rocketing past the sun, the
tremendous gravity will pull the ship to its inevitable fate.”

* * *

The scout backed away, and Criss started
the dreadnaught on its last journey. Sid, asleep in the pilot’s chair, remained
undisturbed in his slumber when Criss accelerated the Kardish vessel on a
trajectory into the sun.