Star Force: Death Knell (SF26) Read online

  Morgan saw a number of Nestafar fliers gaining altitude in front of her, with those being the first she’d seen within the perimeter of the buildings. Most were rising up through the openings ahead of her and when she passed the next side barricade she noted that it was empty…just before she was tripped up by a tug on her legs that brought her run to a sliding halt and pitched her over forward, falling to the ground as the gravity kicked up to 2g.

  “No…” Morgan pleaded, knowing that they were in serious trouble now. She looked up as she got back to her feet, seeing the Nestafar far overhead, circling about with odd wing flaps…then she realized that they must have been above the gravity field and now in zero g. Little red plasma blasts were coming down from them, aimed back towards the mass of Calavari that had to be…

  “Morgan, heavy gravity has reached the edge and the Calavari are getting slaughtered. Please tell me you have some good news?” Ian asked.

  “Gravity here went up too. All the defensive troops left, so I should have a clear run to the generator.”

  “The infantry out here pulled up to higher altitudes and are firing blind down into the maze, but there’s so many that they’re hitting the Calavari anyway…and the walkers are still maneuvering in the extra gravity and burning them down. I wouldn’t count on any of them getting through to help you.”

  “Where are you at?” Morgan asked as she ran hard, forcing her muscles to ignore the double gravity.

  “A few steps outside the heavy gravity. The walkers are focused on the troops nearest them, so they haven’t been shooting this way…” he cut off suddenly.

  Morgan fell again, this time hard as the 10+ g zone spread out to cover the entire crater.

  “Damn…it,” she swore, pulling herself up to her feet and managing a clunky jog for a few steps that drained her limbs of energy. She walked the next few, then tried running again, getting in a few more strides before having to dial it back down.

  “Morgan…”

  “I know,” she said, tears forming in her eyes. “I’m trying…”

  The next step she stopped and tore off her helmet, then unfastened the rest of her armor as quickly as she could, chucking one piece of it after another until all that she was wearing was her standard casual uniform. She picked up her pistol, which felt heavy as a rock, and ran forward. The ranger managed 7:00 mile pace now that she didn’t have the dead weight dragging her down and came up to where the waypoint on her battlemap had been, seeing a large conical chamber that had to be the generator complex.

  She ran around the edge until she found an entrance and ran in…only to bounce back hard off a red, clear shield blocking her path partway inside. Her balance broken, the gravity yanked her down to the floor and mashed her head backwards on landing.

  She screamed inside, not just at the pain but at the futility of her mission. The Calavari were dying and her people were pinned down inside gravity that they couldn’t survive forever, even if they could stay hidden. She was their only hope and now this damn shield was blocking her way!

  Just then the gravity in the chamber kicked up to the third level, crushing and killing what Calavari remained. Morgan, already on the ground, was sucked tight, with her chest feeling like there was a mountain sitting on top of it and her eyeballs feeling like they were falling back into her head. She knew they were all dead, the entire assault force, her fellow Archons, over 10,000 people dead because she’d screwed up…and now she was about to die along with them.

  Part of her screamed no…not this way. Not after 400 years of training and hundreds of battles. It wasn’t fair to die like this, without having at least a chance of success.

  Those thoughts died with the wash of blood swirling in her head and throughout her body. A few surface veins had popped, soaking red into her white, green-striped uniform and all that her mind could focus on was the inevitable, crushing force consuming her…

  In that mind blurring death knell her most basic instinct forced its way through…that being to fight the enemy. Somehow, she found herself staring down at the floor and crawling towards the shield, then leaning her shoulder against it and dragging the pistol across the floor with her, pivoting it around to point towards the barrier. Finding the trigger she began shooting the shield with a pointblank splash of blue, spraying hot plasma everywhere, some of which burned the skin on her arm and face but that was a small pain that the crushing gravity didn’t allow to process through her distorted mind.

  She fired over and over, with no effect. The shield wouldn’t go down but she wouldn’t stop. She kept firing and tried to push into the shield with her shoulder, using her legs to prop her up a few inches and let the gravity work for her, putting extra strain on it that would add to the plasma damage. When it didn’t work she didn’t stop, she couldn’t stop…other than to lay down and die, which was something she would never do.

  Morgan finally started banging her head against the shield as her pistol continued to fire, then a tingly sensation formed along her spine and shifted towards her shoulder. She pushed it forward and suddenly she felt the shield wrap itself around her arm…which was sticking through to the other side!

  That flicker of hope redoubled her energy and as she kept firing the tingle returned and she leaned into it even more, feeling it cascade to overload, then release…after which her upper body pressed through, with the shield catching her at the waist and holding her tight.

  She pulled herself along the ground but it was no use, she was stuck as the shield regained cohesion around her body…then the tingle formed again and pressure built within her, tiny in comparison to the gravity. The trailblazer pushed the pressure into the shield and suddenly her hips slipped through, along with her wrist that was holding the pistol.

  Morgan clawed her way inside before the shield could reset. It caught her right foot, but she managed to slip out of her shoe and get clear. Forcing her head up and her blurry eyes to partially focus as they were being squished out of alignment, she saw a wall in front of her with hallways leading off to other side. She randomly chose to go left, crawling inch by inch as the gravity tried to suck the last bit of life out of her. Her hand clenched the pistol, dragging it with her until a few meters down the wall disappeared and a large chamber of machinery was exposed.

  Morgan couldn’t see what it was, she couldn’t see hardly anything, but she pulled the pistol around to the front and pointed it along the ground and started firing blindly. She pumped the trigger more times than she could count, not knowing how much ammunition she had left, and adjusting the angle by pivoting the barrel that gravity had locked down against the ground.

  The next thing she knew the grip on her body was gone and she found herself bouncing off a wall. Her entire body screamed in pain and as she forced her eyes open she saw a blurry rotation, then a mass of red that was her body, sprinkled with pieces of white uniform. It felt like grinding sandpaper to blink her eyes but she did, over and over until some part of her vision returned.

  She was alive…and as soon as that thought made its way to the forefront of her mind the relief and adrenaline started to wake her up out of the pain-filled haze she was drifting in. Morgan didn’t know what had happened or what she had shot, but she was alive and all that mattered now was making the most of the opportunity.

  Looking around she was able to confirm that she was floating in zero g…which must have meant she had knocked out the gravity generation completely. Was it for the whole ship or just this area she didn’t know, but she got her red-soaked sock against the wall and pushed off, sending her over to a bank of computer-like consoles.

  She grabbed hold of one and let her body spin around, causing a surge in her head that blacked out her vision temporarily. When it settled she took a moment to try and get more of her broken body back under her control, then saw the remains of an exploded something or other further into the center of the room. It had knocked over several banks of equipment and pieces of debris were floating around, most of which Morgan
couldn’t see unless they were right in front of her.

  The next thing that poked its way forward in her mind was the enemy…where they around? She was a sitting duck, had lost her weapon, and had no armor.

  She was alive though, and part of her still couldn’t believe it. As her mind started to wrap itself around that fact she started crying and couldn’t stop…then the tremors started and she did her best to hang onto the console so they didn’t send her flying off through the room. She realized she was in shock, but other than acknowledging that fact there was nothing she could do but wait it out.

  Then she coughed…and spat out a spray of blood, reminding her that she probably had internal organ damage. She had to get out of here, but to where? Back outside would be a death sentence. The Nestafar could fly through zero g using their wings while she would be helpless without handholds to work off of.

  Suddenly her mind flashed back to her basic training in Atlantis, with the 6s and the initial zero g training mission they’d gone on. There had been a large empty room they had to learn how to move through, which seemed impossible at first…no, no she reminded herself. Even if she could get across the giant chamber the Nestafar would shoot her. She had to focus and find a way to move in cover.

  Just then she remembered the shield covering the door and wondered if it was still up. Was she stuck in here?

  Bending arms and legs that just wanted to be left alone to die, Morgan pushed off towards the nearest hallway opening and made her way out into the perimeter walkway, bouncing off of walls until she got to one of the multiple doorways that led out into the miniature city-scape. Using the corner as a handhold she gently stretched out her shoed foot until the toes hit shield and stopped firm.

  Part of her wanted to panic again, but another part argued that the shield would also keep the infantry out…while most of the rest of her was still freaked out by just being alive. She should have been dead, her mind knew that, but since she wasn’t she might as well do what she could to stay alive a little longer.

  Morgan pushed off and headed back inside. A quick look around with her blurry eyes confirmed there was nothing more to the building than the perimeter hallway and the large central chamber with all the equipment, most of which was clustered in the middle and reaching up to the pointy roof. The bottom portion of it was where the explosive damage had occurred, though Morgan had no idea how her pistol shot could have reached it with all the banks of equipment in between.

  As she floated from point to point she examined the blast crater, seeing a lower deck partially exposed. Bouncing off a couple of points to get there, she finally grabbed hold of one of the still warm, warped casings and pulled her face down to the breach point, seeing a narrow tube underneath about twice the width of her arm length. When she reached a hand inside to touch it she got shocked, but nothing more than what static electricity could have accounted for.

  She pulled her bloody sleeve up over her cracked hand and touched it again, feeling just a nip. The Archon tapped it twice more, then released her sleeve before touching her fingers to the side wall again. Apparently the charge had bled off.

  She didn’t know where the tube led, or if there was another exit somewhere, but it was her best option so she crawled in, cutting her hip in the process on a jagged edge, then began hand propelling herself down the slightly bioluminescent passageway.

  9

  Her eyes were still blurry, but Morgan couldn’t be sure if there was anything around her to see or not. The tube she was floating down had no shape, symbols, or markings of any kind, it just kept going and going until the still bleeding Archon bumped into the base of a Y-branch.

  A few droplets of blood oozed out from her nose as it smashed against the divider, then Morgan was able to determine by feel that the tunnel split in two. She followed the right branch for no particular reason other than knowing that she needed to keep moving. She’d been near death before and not much of her strength was returning. If she had to fight, hand to hand in zero gravity, she wasn’t going to be able to do much. As it was she could barely keep herself moving without passing out, though the elation of still being alive and the fear of what lay hopefully behind her kept her focus ahead as she paddled her way down the tube.

  A long time afterwards she hit a dead end as the tube rounded off, sending a sinking feeling through Morgan’s already damaged gut. The hope of escape was all that was keeping her moving, and now it appeared that she was going to have to go back. The stress of it all sent hot, burning tears out of her eyes, and in a brief moment of clarity she saw something on the wall of the tube to her left. She turned her head to look but nothing was there…until she reached out a hand and felt for the wall.

  It took a moment of almost blind touch/feeling the area before her hand landed on a handle that her eyes couldn’t see. She pulled and twisted it at different angles before something finally clicked and a hatch opened up, giving her an exit that she could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago.

  A moment of reflection passed and she realized she was probably in some sort of a maintenance shaft and there was a good probability that she had passed several other hatches along the way, but with her eyesight being what it was had missed them all.

  That also told Morgan her body was worse off than she was giving it credit for. Banishing all ideas of combat she set her mind into slinker mode and set off through the hatch and into a pentagonal hallway whose edges blurred together so much it appeared almost as a curved line. Not knowing where to go she tried to keep a compass heading back towards where the hangar bay had been and moved through the hallways, zigzagging where necessary, and hoping to stay ahead of the Nestafar that had apparently cleared out of these areas for the heavy gravity zones to push through.

  Were they coming out now or waiting for more Alliance troops to board? She didn’t know, nor was the analytical part of her mind functioning well at the moment. Most of her focus was on maneuvering her weightless body down corridors that hadn’t been built for the task, forcing her to bounced from one wall to the next as she came up on one of the Nestafar’s ‘elevator’ shafts.

  Remembering that the hangar bay they’d used had been halfway up the side of the internal ravine she floated her way up the shaft, hoping dearly that they couldn’t turn the gravity back on until they repaired whatever device it was she’d blown up. After climbing up what felt like high enough she got off the column and bounced her way into a side deck, still heading back towards the way they’d come…or so she hoped. Disoriented as she was there was a possibility she was headed in the wrong direction, so she tried to keep her mind awake as much as possible to navigate accurately.

  Morgan had no way of measuring time, given that she didn’t wear a watch under her armor and the chronometer in her helmet was long gone, but the minutes that passed by seemed to stretch into hours with a nervous panic hanging at the back of her mind telling her that she was about to be discovered at any moment. The compression damage done to her body made her tight and awkward, her ears were ringing, and her eyes blurry, all of which only enhanced her panic. Archon that she was, she pushed it to the back of her mind and kept a small place of focus to drive herself on from.

  Seemingly at random, after what felt like hours of moving through rooms and passageways, she poked her head out onto a platform that looked out over the huge ravine. In a moment of crisis she found herself floating towards the opposite wall on the small landing and made sure her feet hit first while twisting her down so she didn’t careen off into the chasm.

  The downwards momentum placed her on the floor for a second, but before she could rebound up and away Morgan clawed laterally with her hands and transformed the direction of the bounce into a low ‘V’ that sent her back towards the entrance where she was able to loop her hand down around the ceiling arch and null out her momentum…while clunking her head on the wall in the process.

  Gripping the 90 degree angle where ceiling met wall of the arch with her left hand she wiggled aroun
d and pulled herself back down to the floor using very small motions. From there she held on with both hands and scooted back out onto the platform about half a meter and looked to the other side…seeing little more than a blur. She had no idea where the hangar was, or even if it was left or right of her position. The jumpship had dozens of hangars and storage facilities in the ‘wings’ and the Calavari had chosen only one of them to breach through. How she was going to find it she didn’t have a clue if she couldn’t see.

  “Oth…” she started to whisper, but she suddenly discovered her throat was raw. She started coughing, holding onto the wall as tightly as she could so it wouldn’t jar her loose, sending another spray of blood off through the air in tiny red projectiles.

  Other side then, she mentally finished her original thought.

  Clenching the wall tightly she eyeballed the spot on the opposing wall that she was aiming for and backed up a bit…then pushed off with one foot to get her moving before picking her feet up and letting her arms propel and aim her momentum before she released, with her feet slowly swinging up in front of her.

  Morgan timed it approximately right, with her shoed left foot landing on the wall, from which she pushed sideways at an angle, pinballing her to the right and against the back wall of the platform where her right socked foot landed gently. She bent her leg to absorb the impact as she brought her other foot up alongside, then before the pressure completely dissipated and sent her careening off uncontrolled she unfurled her legs and kicked off the wall as hard as she could.

  She didn’t end up with a straight trajectory but it was close. Her body zipped out of the platform and into the free air, suspended over the ravine in the zero g as her ample momentum slowly carried her across, twisting as she went. With her eyes blurry and her head hurting it was difficult for her to get much situational awareness, but fortunately she rotated around face first a few meters before impact and was able to reach out and grab an edge.