The Exile: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Omega Taskforce Book 3) Read online

  “Ensign Keller, set a course for the aperture to Colony Middle Star and engage at best possible speed,” ordered Sterling, wasting no time in getting the Invictus moving again.

  “Aye, Captain,” replied Keller, snapping into action like a mousetrap. Moments later the thrum of the engines through the deck plating began to build and Sterling felt the ship accelerate hard.

  “They’ve seen us,” said Banks, who was still frantically working at her station. Sterling tapped his finger on the side of his console, waiting for Banks to announce whether any ships from the alien armada had splintered off to pursue them.

  “There are now over four hundred Sa’Nerran warships in the sector, and the surge energy readings are not diminishing,” Banks continued, still peering down at her console. “So far, there’s no indication any of the vessels have adjusted course to intercept us.”

  Sterling let out the breath he realized he’d been holding for the last few seconds and nodded to Banks. “Let’s not give them any reason to come after us,” he said, turning his attention back to the viewscreen and the growing armada of alien warships. “Hopefully, a single ship isn’t worth their time.”

  Banks' console them chimed again and Sterling felt his stomach knot.

  “We’ve just monitored a massive spike in surge energy,” said Banks, ramping up her rate of speech almost as rapidly as Sterling's pulse was climbing. “Something big is coming though…”

  Sterling fixed his eyes on the viewscreen and waited. There was a flash, so bright that it could have been a supernova. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Banks return her gaze to her console, working through the sensor data to figure out what had just arrived. However, the answer was already clear to see on the viewscreen. It was another Sa’Nerra warship. However, this vessel was unique and it was also not the first time Sterling had seen it.

  “It’s the super-weapon,” said Banks, glancing up from her console to look at the ten-kilometer-long leviathan on the viewscreen.

  “It’s actually the Sa’Nerran Battle Titan,” Sterling said, correcting his first officer. “That’s what they’ve decided to call the thing,” he added, tearing his eyes away from the screen to look at Banks.

  “How the hell are we supposed to take that down?” wondered Banks, shaking her head at the image of the warship.

  Sterling also turned back to the viewscreen and frowned at the vessel. “The bigger they come, the harder they fall, Commander,” he said, as more surge flashes popped off behind the Battle Titan. “But right now, we have other concerns.”

  “Captain, I’m picking up another vessel near the aperture to Colony Middle Star,” said Ensign Keller, spinning his chair to face the captain’s console. “It’s an old generation-one Fleet Destroyer, though it appears to be heavily modified.”

  “A Marshall?” wondered Banks, tapping her console and throwing an image of the new contact up onto the viewscreen.

  “Monitor that destroyer closely, Ensign,” said Sterling. He’d had the same thought as Banks and was taking no chances. “If it turns toward us or deviates from its course, I want to know immediately.”

  Keller uttered a brisk reply as Sterling turned his attention back to the Sa’Nerran armada. It was now approaching eight hundred vessels strong. However, despite the mass of warships that had already arrived, there was still one missing.

  “Are you picking up MAUL in the Sa’Nerran aramada?” asked Sterling, glancing over to his first officer.

  “Negative,” Banks replied. Her response had been instantaneous, suggesting she’d spotted the curious anomaly too.

  “Then where the hell is that devious bastard?” said Sterling, muttering the words under his breath.

  “The gen-one destroyer has surged Captain,” Ensign Keller called out. “From the vector of the residual surge energy, I’d say it was also heading to Colony Middle Star.”

  Sterling cursed then let out another long sigh. If it wasn’t the Sa’Nerran trying to kill him, it was his own kind. He rubbed his eyes and the back of his neck, feeling suddenly dog-tired and weary.

  “Maintain your course, Ensign,” Sterling replied to his helmsman. “We’ll worry about that old destroyer later.”

  Keller responded in his usual, snappy manner. However, despite what he’d just said, in truth the destroyer was already on Sterling’s mind. The war fleet amassing in the Void was not his immediate concern, nor was it a threat to his mission to find Colicos. However, if the old Fleet Destroyer that had just surged ahead of them was a Marshall, he knew that he was merely leaving one problem behind and flying headlong into another.

  Chapter 4

  Intense dreams

  Sterling aimed his plasma pistol at the head of Commander Ariel Gunn, but kept his eyes fixed onto the Sa’Nerran warrior. The alien merely hissed back at him and tightened its grip around Gunn’s throat. The creature’s long, leathery fingers were slowly choking the life out of his friend’s terrified eyes. The indicators on the neural control weapon attached to Gunn’s head were blinking furiously as it worked to pervert her mind and turn her into a weapon of the Sa’Nerra. Sterling could already see the spidery trail of corruption leaking out from Gunn’s neural implant. He knew it wouldn’t be long before her mind was turned.

  She’s already gone… Sterling told himself. She’s not Ariel any longer. She’s just another puppet with the Sa’Nerra pulling the strings.

  Sterling tightened his grip on his plasma pistol and retuned his gaze to the yellow eyes of the alien warrior. The Sa’Nerran had already killed or turned other members of the Fleet Dreadnaught Hammer’s crew and now it was trying to turn Ariel Gunn too. Anger surged through his veins and he gritted his teeth, ready to squeeze the trigger and put an end to the threat. Gunn was just a casualty of war, he told himself. She’d made her choices, and she’d made bad ones. She alone bore the blame for her death. Sterling was merely doing what he had to – what was necessary.

  “You’ve killed her before, you can do it again,” said the Sa’Nerran in a waspish perversion of the English language. Sterling froze and relaxed his grip on the trigger. The shock of hearing the alien speak to him had caught him off guard. “Go on, kill your so-called friend,” the alien continued, goading Sterling while fixing him with its egg-shaped yellow eyes.

  “Her blood is on your hands, not mine!” Sterling yelled back at the alien. “If you think I won’t do it then you’re sorely mistaken.”

  Sterling then straightened his arm and fired, blasting the head of Commander Ariel Gunn clean off her shoulders. The smell of charred and burned human flesh assaulted his senses, but he held firm and returned his focus to the alien.

  “You can test me all you like, alien, but you’ll never win,” Sterling spat at the warrior. “I will do whatever it takes to bring you down.”

  The Sa’Nerran’s yellow eyes grew even wider and the perverted smile on its hard, plasticky face grew wider, making the thing look like a grotesque caricature of itself.

  “You could kill her easily, because you’ve done it before,” the alien hissed. “But will you be so ready to kill this one?” A freakish smile curled its thin, slug-like lips.

  Sterling frowned and looked at Gunn, but instead of a headless body he was now staring into the eyes of Mercedes Banks. Sterling felt his stomach churn and his throat tighten. Then as the alien wrapped its leathery digits around his first officer’s throat, Sterling’s sick feeling was replaced with burning anger.

  “Let her go, you bastard!” he yelled, trying to aim his pistol at the warrior, but the alien had expertly slipped behind Banks to use her as a shield. Suddenly, a neural control weapon appeared on the side of Banks’ head, as if it had materialized out of thin air. However, this was not the original, cruder device, but the modified weapon that had been responsible for the creation of the Sa’Nerran Emissaries, Clinton Crow and Lana McQueen.

  “You only have a few seconds left, Captain,” the warrior hissed, peeking around the back of Banks’ head. “Soon, s
he will be mine, just like all the others.” A long, snake-like tongue slipped between the warrior’s lips and lashed the side of Banks’ head. The tongue slowly drew itself down across Banks’ long neck, leaving a slimy trail in its wake.

  “Get off her!” Sterling yelled at the alien, his entire body now trembling with rage. “I’ll rip you apart with my bare hands, you alien piece of shit!”

  Sterling adjusted his position to get a better angle, but it was as if the alien could read his mind. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get a clean shot at the warrior. Sterling and the alien continued this abhorrent dance for several seconds, and all the while the warrior continued to lick Bank’s face. Sterling couldn’t stand it any longer and tightened his grip around the trigger. Then, finally, the alien retracted its tongue back into its mouth and curled its slug-like lips into another grotesque smile.

  “You can end it now,” the warrior said, slipping out of sight behind Banks’ head. “Just shoot and it will all be over. Do what is necessary, Captain. Prove she means nothing to you.”

  Suddenly the indicators on the neural control weapon stopped blinking and the rageful expression on the face of his first officer became blank. There was no longer any anger or revulsion at what the alien had done. It was like a switch had been flipped in her brain.

  “Look, she has turned,” the warrior said. “You’re already too late.”

  Sterling roared and thrust the plasma pistol at Mercedes Banks, forcing himself to meet her soulless, dead eyes. He added pressure to the trigger, but then Banks opened her mouth and spoke.

  “Join me, Lucas,” said Banks, stretching out a hand to Sterling. “We can be emissaries together, you and I. You want us to be together, don’t you?”

  Sterling gritted his teeth and shook his head. “You won’t win,” he spat. “You won’t beat me. I’ve been tested before. I’ll beat the test again.”

  Banks simply smiled back at him, as if Sterling’s words had washed over her unheard. “You can be with me, Lucas,” she said, with a sudden softness and tenderness. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to kill me,” she continued, still holding her hand outstretched. “The rest of the fleet doesn’t deserve your sacrifice. Humanity doesn’t deserve your loyalty. They fear and despise you Lucas, the same as they fear and despise me. We’re outsiders. Freaks. We belong together.”

  The alien’s long fingers then released their hold on Banks’ neck and she stepped off the command platform. Sterling jerked away and took a hurried pace back, still aiming the weapon at his first officer.

  “Join me, Lucas,” Banks continued, her words so soft and her eyes so adoring that Sterling could not help but be swayed. “They don’t deserve you. They don’t want you. But I do, Lucas. I want you. We deserve each other.”

  Sterling shook his head again and added pressure to the trigger, but he couldn’t pull it, not while he still held Banks’ eyes.

  “Join me, Lucas,” he heard Banks say again. “Love me, as I love you.”

  However, Sterling had already looked away and closed his ears to his first officer’s pleas. A flash of plasma lit up the bridge like a bolt of lightning illuminating the night sky. It was followed a moment later by the thump of Mercedes Banks' headless body hitting the deck. Sterling lowered the pistol and raised his eyes to the Sa’Nerran warrior, avoiding looking at the corpse.

  “You won’t beat me,” Sterling said as the alien continued to smile back at him, hissing slowly as it breathed in the cool air of the Hammer’s bridge. “I’ll do whatever it takes to beat you.”

  “We shall see…” the alien replied.

  Sterling squeezed the trigger again and blasted the alien in the face, splattering its leathery skin and brains across the viewscreen behind it. He then drew in a deep breath, tasting the burned flesh of both Sa’Nerran and human, and tossed the weapon to the deck.

  “Lucas…”

  Sterling froze. No, it’s not possible…

  “Lucas!” the voice said again. A familiar voice. Then Sterling felt a neural link begin to form. He fought it, but the connection was too powerful.

  “Lucas!” the voice of Mercedes Banks cried out in his mind, so loud and clear that it caused a shooting pain to race through his temples.

  Sterling spun around to see Banks standing behind him. Her entire face was melted away. Sterling screamed, but his cries were strangled as Banks' hands closed around his throat and applied pressure. He fought back, but there was nothing Sterling could do against the super-human strength of his first officer.

  “Lucas!”

  Sterling shot up in bed and saw Mercedes Banks in front of him. She was squeezing his shoulders with her vice-like grip and staring into his eyes, with an expression of concern, confusion and sheer bewilderment.

  “What the hell is going on with you?” Banks asked, as Sterling shuffled away from her, his heart beating so hard in his chest that he could hear it pounding in his ears. His t-shirt was soaked through and his skin was hot and clammy.

  “It’s nothing, it was just a dream,” said Sterling, fighting hard to regain his composure. He then threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Dizziness almost overcame him and he was forced to press his hand to the wall to keep from falling over.

  “Like hell it was ‘just’ a dream,” Banks hit back, pushing herself off the bed and facing Sterling. “I hit the door call button ten times before the computer let me in,” Banks continued. She sounded angry at him, which only made Sterling react more defensively.

  “Remind me to re-program that damned thing,” said Sterling, glancing up at the ceiling. However, the cheerful voice of the ship’s AI remained conspicuously absent.

  “You were really zoned out there, Lucas,” Banks said, refusing to let the matter drop, “and when I formed the neural link, it felt like you were dying.”

  Sterling sucked in a deep lungful of the ship’s recycled air and let it out slowly. His heart-rate was returning to normal and he was already feeling more in control. These were techniques Sterling had honed over the last year in command of the Invictus in order to combat his frequent nightmares. He was again master of his own consciousness. The raw, primal emotions of his sleeping mind had been relegated to the depths of his psyche.

  “I get intense dreams sometimes, there’s nothing more to it than that, Mercedes,” Sterling said, turning to meet his first officer’s eyes. “Now can we drop it?”

  Banks’ frown deepened, but whatever questions or concerns were racing around her mind, she left them unspoken.

  “Consider it dropped, Captain,” Banks replied, straightening her back. She then raised her hands and waved them at Sterling. “Mind if I use your head, though?” she added, nodding in the direction of Sterling’s compact shower room. “I still have your sweat on my hands.”

  Sterling raised an eyebrow at his first officer then extended a hand to his rest room. “Be my guest,” he said, stepping over to his wardrobe and pulling out a clean uniform. “But be quick, I’m going to need a shower.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Banks called out from the shower room. A plume of steam from the hot water tap was wisping out of the door.

  “Unless you mean how I forgot to actually invite you in, I don’t think so,” Sterling replied, tossing a pair of pants and a tunic onto the foot of the bed.

  Banks emerged from the rest-room, a thin smile curling her lips. “I mean your ritual fifty push-ups,” she said, pointing to the floor. “I can sit on your back again, if you like? Unless that was too difficult for you?”

  Sterling folded his arms and glared at his first officer. “I managed it just fine the first time, didn’t I?” he said. A challenge had been made and he wasn’t about to let it go unanswered.

  “Drop and give me sixty then, sir,” said Banks, inviting Sterling to assume the requisite position on the deck.

  Sterling’s scowl deepened. “I thought it was fifty?” he said, dropping to his knees in the middle of his compact captain’s
quarters.

  “Well, seeing as you managed fifty ‘just fine’, I thought we could push it a little,” Banks replied, standing behind Sterling. “Unless it’s too tough for you, that is?”

  Sterling laughed then sprang into a plank position. “Just plant your ass down on my back and count,” he said.

  Sterling was counting on the adrenalin that was still surging through his veins to spur him on. And he was also hoping that some hard exercise would help to shake the tension from his body and mind. Banks obliged then straddled Sterling and lowered herself into position. Sterling winced, forgetting that his first officer’s incredible muscle density meant that she was significantly heavier than her athletic frame suggested.

  “Lieutenant Razor has managed to narrow down our next destination from the data Admiral Griffin provided,” Banks said, as Sterling began his set. “Based on her analysis of the shuttle’s trajectory as it departed Far Deep Nine, she extrapolated that the vessel would have travelled through Thrace Colony.”

  Sterling pushed out a rep and sucked in another lungful of air before answering. “That’s where James Colicos gathered some of his test subject from, right?” he said before continuing the push-ups.

  “That’s right,” replied Banks, as Sterling continued to bob up and down, quickly reaching then surpassing the half-way mark. “He took them from the wreckage of a battle between Fleet and the Sa’Nerra, some years ago.”

  Sterling considered this for a moment, though his focus was distracted by the burning pain in his chest and shoulders and the tightness of his breath. “But if that was years ago then surely the chances of that shuttle still being at Thrace Colony are practically nil?” Sterling eventually said, though getting his words out was becoming a struggle.

  “Most likely, but it’s our only lead,” said Banks. “Maybe someone at Thrace came into contact with them, or the Shuttle was forced to refuel and there’s a record of it. Who knows?”