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  ‘What we will find on the outpost I dread to think... We are about to suffer the same fate as the crews of the merchant ships and the Normovic. Something tells me it will not be a good one. This is my final log as captain of the Gallagic.

  ‘Should you find this personal log…I hope this…monster has been reduced to its component pieces! I,…tell our loved ones what happened. We tried…’

  The log finished abruptly and the screen of the tablet went blank. The distraught face of the Gallagic’s captain disappeared. The group who surrounded the small screen, floated in stunned silence on the bridge of the derelict. Their thoughts were entirely preoccupied by the message from the distant past and the incredible implications it had on them in the present.

  It was some minutes before Josh Brabazon finally broke the silence by saying, ‘I think we’re all in deep shit!’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Excalibur

  With the twin singularities warping the space-time continuum as fast as the status fields could manage, Excalibur bored her way to the Heligsion home-world in just fifteen days. Moss had hoped that they could find a way to re-open the wormhole Valvia had slipped through almost instantly. But there was no sign of the space anomaly, so they had been forced to travel through normal hyperspace.

  Fifteen days was fast, it was eleven days faster than the time it took to make the trip from Earth to Dyason. But for Moss it wasn’t fast enough. Anything could have happened in those fifteen days. The situation on Dyason could have deteriorated into anarchy, the last survivors on Heligsion could have been wiped out. Moss hated not being in control of the situation and at the moment it felt like he had control over nothing. As Excalibur slipped out of hyperspace and entered the Heligsion star system, he stood on the bridge, every muscle in his body taught with tension.

  ‘They’re perfectly capable of looking after themselves Moss,’ Jennifer said mentally, reading his body language from where she sat at her workstation.

  ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘You know very well who I’m talking about,’ came the reply. ‘Paul and Han have been looking after themselves for years. Certainly long before you knew them. You can’t feel responsible for them.’

  ‘I know that Jennifer,’ he answered, admitting his concern. ‘It’s just that I hate splitting our group up like this. The thing is, I know that the Imperialists will try something to get hold of Valvia and the technology she carries. I’ve purposely left them in a dangerous position.’

  ‘They’re just as aware of the dangers as you are Moss. You didn’t force them to stay, they agreed to remain behind. Besides, who’s to say they would be any safer here on-board Excalibur?’

  ‘Yes but…’

  ‘No buts Moss,’ the beautiful young woman admonished with a maturity beyond her years. ‘You’re going to have to get used to giving orders that will put people in danger. Orders that will probably lead directly, or indirectly, to people being killed. However, we’re fighting a war and people die in war. You’ve got to snap out of this fear and guilt syndrome Moss. If you don’t you’ll end up

  like her.’

  Moss looked over at the seer Dauphne who watched the approach of her home-world on the main bridge viewer. She looked even more gaunt and pale than usual. Moss knew that the priestess had eaten virtually nothing since they’d left Dyason, and it showed. The Heligsion woman was thinner than ever, her almost translucent skin taught over her small frame. She was literally living on her nerves. Moss didn’t need to read her mind to know she was praying that some of her people were still alive. Somewhere, somehow, she hoped there were survivors from the final battle, who they could rescue.

  ‘We’re entering the orbit of Heligsion now sir,’ Jackson the navigation officer told Black.

  ‘Okay, thank you Nav,’ Black answered. ‘Begin scanning the planet surface for humanoid life signs. Gather as much information as possible.’

  Captain Black had offered to hand control of Excalibur to Moss. After all, the relationship between the young telepath and the sentient ship’s computer was well known. However, Moss had watched Black closely since Excalibur had appeared through the wormhole near Dyason. Black had risen to the challenge and performed superbly during the assault on the Imperial battle-station. Unlike the chaos on Dominator before it disappeared, and the current situation on Valvia, the crew of Excalibur operated as a well-trained team and Black headed that team. Moss saw no reason to change that.

  ‘There is still no sign of any other vessel in the system,’ Syrina, the weapons officer informed them. ‘We’re on our own at present.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Moss thought to Jennifer. ‘I was half expecting a massive invasion fleet similar to what the Imperial navy sent to colonise Earth. But there’s nothing—at least not in a few light years’ range of here.’

  ‘Which means the invasion force has either moved on, landed on the planet, or there never was one,’ Jennifer added.

  Dauphne hovered near Jennifer’s workstation as she began a thorough scan of the planet surface. ‘Is there any hope?’ the seer asked desperately.

  ‘There’s always hope Dauphne,’ Jennifer responded aloud. ‘But you’ll have to wait a few minutes while I complete my scan. It will take some time to gather all the information from the probes we’ve dropped.’

  The next twenty minutes seemed to take a lifetime as the high priestess of Heligsion anxiously waited for the scans to be completed and the information from the probes collated. Moss sympathised with the poor woman as she stood close by Jennifer, desperately wringing her hands like a mother waiting for news about her lost children. It occurred to him that the seer was a mother—the mother of her race, a race that had been very nearly exterminated. It put his own problems into perspective.

  Finally, with a sigh Jennifer turned and made her findings known. ‘The news isn’t good I’m afraid,’ she began in a grave voice. Images beamed from the probes descending into Heligsion’s atmosphere were projected on the main viewer. The bridge went deathly quiet at the scenes of destruction. What were clearly once beautiful, elegant towns and cities were now nothing more than still-smoking mounds of rubble devoid of any sign of life.

  ‘As you can see,’ Jennifer continued, ‘every settlement has been destroyed, razed to the ground. Somebody or some thing, has made a big effort to ensure that nothing of any worth is left standing. Even roads, bridges and viaducts have been destroyed. It’s as if whoever did this is trying to remove any trace of humanoid civilisation.’

  ‘What about the area where the last stand took place and the Valvia launched. Are there any signs of survivors there?’ Moss asked a sad, but determined look on his face.

  Jennifer shook her head grimly and projected an aerial view of the vast battlefield on the viewer. ‘There’s nothing there at all. The trenches are still there and you can clearly see shell craters and areas of scorched earth, but there are no bodies to be seen and no signs of survivors. You can even clearly see the remains of the abbey and cavern from which Valvia was launched.’

  ‘Someone’s made a big effort to remove all the bodies,’ Black commented. ‘If Dauphne’s description of the battle is accurate, casualties on both sides must have totaled at least several hundred thousand. That battlefield and trench system goes on forever. It must have been one hell of a fight!’

  ‘You’re right,’ Moss agreed. ‘A big effort has been made to remove all the bodies. The question is who removed them and why? Do you think the devil-creatures would do this?’ he asked Dauphne.

  The seer said nothing, too shocked and upset by the pictures being projected on the viewer. Jennifer gave Moss a dirty look for being so insensitive. He shrugged apologetically.

  ‘The only area I have found any humanoid life signs, is from some sort of construction on or near, the coast of the smaller continent in the southern hemisphere,’ Jennifer continued in as professional and matter-of-fact a manner as she could muster. She could see the scenes of devastation were ripping the seer
up inside. She thought about asking Moss to remove Dauphne from the bridge, but she felt the high priestess would refuse to go.

  ‘Can you put an image on the screen?’ Moss asked.

  Jennifer tapped at her workstation and an aerial view of what was obviously a huge construction site spanning hundreds of square kilometres was displayed. The virgin forests covering that part of Heligsion had been cut down, to make room for the massive construction taking shape. It was circular and rose in a towering conical spire that was several hundred metres in height. Like spokes of a wheel, massive covered corridors, or walkways, projected out from the centre of the construction to smaller incomplete spires.

  However, what really held the audience’s attention was not the construction itself, but the thousands upon thousands of insectoid creatures teeming all over the area like ants building a nest.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Black exclaimed involuntary, ‘What the hell is that thing!’

  ‘It looks like a temple to me,’ Jennifer replied scrutinising the image carefully. ‘A temple being built by insects to worship something very nasty.’

  ‘A very big temple!’ Black added.

  ‘Dauphne are those the creatures that attacked your people?’ Moss mentally asked the seer as gently as he could. He could feel her almost overwhelming horror at the loss and devastation of her race and planet. It was only sheer will power that stopped her from collapsing into an abyss of grief from which she would never return.

  ‘They are,’ she just about managed to respond.

  ‘Okay, hang on in there Dauphne,’ he encouraged her. ‘We’re here to do something about this and by God that’s what we’re going to do!’ Moss got no response. The seer was mesmerized by the images on the viewer.

  ‘The humanoid lifeforms I’m reading are all sited in the third of those smaller cones,’ Jennifer told them, scanning the information from the probes carefully. The camera on the probe, hovering high up in the atmosphere zoomed in on the relevant cone. The crew on the bridge looked at the magnified image carefully, but none of them could see any sign of surviving Heligsions. All they saw was a steady stream of the crab-like instectoids leaving the base of the cone and joining in with the construction.

  ‘Can you be more specific about numbers and location Jennifer?’ Moss asked.

  ‘Negative. I’m afraid not. The readings are faint and somewhat confused anyway. All I can say for sure, is that there are some humanoids down there and they’re being kept somewhere in that cone.’

  ‘Do you know anything about this?’ Moss mentally asked Excalibur’s computer. He frowned when he got no response. The mentality that was essentially Excalibur had been behaving erratically lately. There was the incident locking Black out of the controls during the battle with the Imperial fleet, the lack of information about Excalibur’s sister ships and now this. It was a worrying trend. Moss had no doubt that Excalibur had a valid reason for behaving in such a manner, he just wished he knew what it was.

  However, there wasn’t time to worry about that now. He had to make a decision over what action to take regarding the insectoids and the Heligsion survivors. A full-blown assault on that construction, nest would probably be a more apt description, was out of the question. They didn’t have the manpower to do that. Besides, even with more advanced Firepower, there was no reason to expect that they would fare any better against the insectoids than the Heligsion.

  Nor could he just leave the survivors and blast the nest to pieces from orbit. They needed more information about these creatures. They had to know who they were, where they’d come from and why they attacked the Heligsion. At the very least, they needed to know how to defeat the little buggers.

  There was only one way they were going to get that information and that was to land as near as possible to the construction. Then they’d have to get in, release the survivors, and get away again with the minimum number of casualties, and hopefully a couple of the bug-eyed bastards as prisoners. That was one tall order!

  ‘Okay Peter,’ he turned to Black and said decisively, ‘I don’t see that we’ve got any choice but to land an expeditionary force near that thing and try to rescue the survivors. So, I want three companies of marines, one of the new stealth assault ships and an escort of Flyships. Got that?’ Black nodded in confirmation.

  ‘I want you to stay in command of Excalibur. If anything should go wrong and we don’t make it back, you blast that…thing to pieces and high-tail it back home. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly Moss,’ Black acknowledged without hesitation. ‘Who do you want to take with you, other than the marines?’

  ‘I need Jennifer to act as expedition science officer, Major Stanfield as head of the marines and Doc Patterson to deal with the survivors. That’s it.’

  ‘No it’s not! I’m coming with you,’ the seer demanded.

  ‘No you’re not!’ Moss countermanded. ‘It’s far too dangerous. The rest of your people need you alive and well. We can manage on our own.’

  ‘No you can’t!’ Dauphne objected. ‘You’ve got absolutely no experience of dealing with these creatures and none of your team except you are able to communicate with the Heligsion. I am coming with you!’

  ‘I think you’d better let her come along Moss,’ Jennifer intervened, ‘It’s her world and her people down there. She deserves to find out why they’ve been exterminated. It’s her right!’

  Moss thought about this for a moment before finally agreeing. Jennifer had a point. ‘The seer Dauphne comes along with us also,’ he told Black. ‘I want everyone in the main briefing hall in thirty minutes.’

  Black nodded and started snapping orders at the other crew on the bridge. Moss locked eyes with Jennifer and mentally whispered. ‘So it begins!’

  The Flyship sped to meet the inbound Imperial shuttle carrying the military junta’s negotiating team, or at least it was supposed to be ferrying the Imperial negotiating team. Jenson was still highly suspicious of the motives of Chelekov and his cronies.

  In the few days since Excalibur had left for Heligsion the situation on Dyason had deteriorated rapidly. The Democratic Front, under the charismatic leadership of the ex gutter cop Hillmead, was rapidly gaining momentum. Several battalions of crack Imperial troops and several wings of the Imperial airforce had decided to climb off the fence and come down on the side of the DF. These forces were sited in the outlying regions of the Empire where there was a strong resurgence of nationalism and came as no great surprise to anyone. But, it was still a vicious blow to the Imperialists. The power base of the military council was slowly being eroded and their situation was becoming desperate.

  If there were many more desertions, the military junta wouldn’t have enough men or Firepower to stop, let alone defeat, the advancing army of rebellion. Unless they did something drastic, even the fall of Caranak to the democrats was only a matter of time. Which was why Jenson and Sandpiper were escorting the shuttle to Valvia. They at least, were expecting trouble—which was more than the Heligsion crew were.

  Deceit and treachery were concepts alien to the Heligsion people. Jenson had done his best to convince Daal, their leader in the absence of the seer, that the Dyason weren’t to be trusted. He’d tried to explain as simply as possible the political situation on the planet below them, but to no avail. Daal simply could not get his shaved head around the concept of the military council wanting to hijack Valvia. The Heligsion were even adamant that none of the Terran marines should be present when the Imperial delegation-boarded.

  It was massively frustrating, but what could he do? Jenson couldn’t force the Heligsion to accept his security measures. After all, it was their ship and the Imperial delegation had requested specifically to talk with the Heligsion, not the Terrans. All of which gave Jenson a bad feeling.

  ‘Imperial shuttle-craft, this is Group Captain Jenson in Flyship Alpha. We are here to escort you to the Valvia,’ Jenson hailed the Dyason ship. ‘Please acknowledge.’

  ‘Flyship Alph
a, this is shuttle-craft Xyion,’ came the aggressive response, ‘we are an unarmed vessel carrying a peace delegation from Caranak. We must object in the strongest possible terms to being intercepted by hostile fighters.’

  ‘They can protest as much as they want, it ain’t gonna make any difference,’ Sandpiper called to Jenson as he moved into position on the opposite side of the shuttle. Jenson eased back the throttle on his Flyship and took up station on the shuttle’s starboard beam.

  ‘Your protest is duly noted,’ he hailed back to the shuttle pilot. ‘Remain on this course and heading until you are given further instructions.’

  Jenson began scanning the shuttle with his sensors but found his signals were being jammed. ‘Han, are your sensors being jammed as well?’ he called his friend.

  ‘Yep, they sure are,’ came the reply. ‘That’s very naughty of them!’

  ‘Shuttle Xyion why are you jamming our signals?’ Jenson demanded of the Imperial craft flicking off the weapon system’s safety catch.

  ‘Why are you trying to scan our ship?’ came the response. ‘Your actions can only be interpreted as hostile and do not bode well for the forthcoming negotiations.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Sandpiper exclaimed to his friend on their private frequency.

  ‘Why are you blocking our signals if you have nothing to hide Xyion?’ Jenson demanded his suspicions almost confirmed. He ordered the Flyship computer to work out an optimum firing angle on the shuttle as a precautionary measure. He wasn’t about to play stupid games with the Imperialists. ‘Cease jamming our signals Xyion and allow us to scan your vessel. If you do not comply I shall be forced to open fire!’

  ‘Enough Group Captain Jenson!’ came the mental demand from the Valvia’s captain Daal. ‘You will not open fire on that ship under any circumstances! Close down your weapons system and cease scanning the shuttle!’