“Has something happened, Dr. K’ore? I thought your group had departed for the rift by now.”
“The others have, but I want to go with you and your warriors to engage the Vorn in the capital. My daughter is there.”
“I see. Well, of course you’re welcome to join us, and any information you have about their strengths or weaknesses would be appreciated.”
“The Vorn have several battleships and multiple long and short range weapons at their disposal, but the element of surprise is on our side. It would be best to spread out your transports as we come into firing range, about five to seven miles from the city, so they won’t have any large targets to fire upon,” Ranul said.
“It might be good for us to encircle the city and come from all angles to converge on their cloning facility,” Estall offered.
“You should also know that the Vorn have a large number of Sentinel robots at their command-probably in the thousands. These aren’t like the android you saw earlier, but they’re still quite deadly. By spreading your forces and coming from all directions, they’ll be forced to spread their own ground forces to protect the city. It’s likely many gaps in that defense will present themselves.”
“We’ll be able to approach the city by dusk.”
The men headed for ground level where the transports were being loaded and prepped for the attack.
It took a few moments to fully retract the mountain side hangar bay doors. Now, the ship could clear. Millo adjusted the landing thruster controls. The ship began to move forward through the opening in the mountain. Orin adjusted controls at his station, setting the weapons systems and making sure all automated systems were operating within normal parameters.
The Saberhawk class ships had operated with a crew of twenty persons, but most functions could be run by automation if necessary. The bulk of the ship held primary engine systems for long range missions and extra crew quarters with food and water storage, while the remaining quarter of the ship made up the bridge section, sub-light engine components and all primary controls for the vessel. Both men made last minute adjustments and prepared for the launch through Castai’s turbulent atmosphere.
The distance Vale had calculated for his trek around the mountainside toward the hangar quickly diminished in his microprocessor. He approached the area on his internal map-the place which should house the hangar section of the city. Up ahead, a fair distance away, he saw the nose of a large ship emerging from the mountain. Vale instantly began internal calculations comparing his own foot speed with the distance yet to cover, properties of the terrain and the rate at which the ship was emerging from the hangar port.
The android realized he would not reach the vessel in time. Their velocity would increase dramatically once the ship completely cleared the mountain. As he ran toward the vessel he withdrew a hyper-magnetic grapple from one of the clips on his belt.
The last part of the Saberhawk cleared the opening in the mountain, increasing power to thrusters steadily to move the ship away from Mt. Vaseer. Vale aimed and fired his grapple just ahead of the ship’s nose. The wire line, with its heavy cylindrical head, arced out away from the mountainside about fifty yards and caught the lower hind end of the Saberhawk.
Vale made a strong jump into the air as he felt the slack line become taut and pull him away from the ground. He depressed the winch key on the grapple and held on tight as the mechanism drew him closer to the ship.
Main thrusters fired, sending the ship upwards toward the outer atmosphere. Vale rose to within twenty yards of the ship’s hull as it moved through a violent weather system. The turbulence and high wind pummeled the ship in its climb. Inside the Saberhawk, automatic stabilizers worked to keep up with all the jarring forces playing against the hull of the ship. The Saberhawk surged skyward. In a few moments, the ship cleared the weather. The ride smoothed out considerably.
Vale approached the hull and tried to find a place to anchor himself. He noticed how near he was to one of the landing skid alcoves. The android clamored for the hull wall activating the hyper-magnetic discs located in the palms of his cybernetic hands. Hand over hand, he approached the alcove and climbed inside, grabbing hold of the retracted landing skid, wedging himself in with his powerful arms and legs. As soon as the Saberhawk cleared the turbulence of Castai’s atmosphere, he could make his move against the Barudii.
DIMENSIONS
The Saberhawk rumbled again as it broke free of Castai’s atmosphere into open space. Gravity controls quickly adjusted the internal environment for the crew. Tiet had never been in space before and he wondered at the vastness of it. There were seemingly billions of stars now visible in the distance through the view-port.
Tiet noticed a gaseous formation ahead of them. Orin brought up the tactical display which identified the phenomena as a transdimensional rift. The energy readings went off the scale. It was like the gaping mouth of some planet eating monster waiting there to suck them in.
Only Orin could remember it. He had seen it during a space battle with the Vorn which had left the Castillians without a space fleet. From that time on, the Barudii had only battled the invaders on Castillian soil.
“Readings show the rift fully open and safe for passage,” Orin reported.
Millo nodded and adjusted his flight path to carry them through the ominous black void near the center of the multicolored gaseous cloud surrounding the rift.
Dorian wondered if she would ever see her brother or her people again. And would Estall be able to defeat the remaining Vorn on the planet? Though he was vastly outnumbered, she had confidence he would-more confidence than she had in their own ability to successfully defeat the Vorn fleet waiting on the other side of the rift. Suddenly, Dorian longed for Castillian soil under her feet again.
She looked at Tiet in the chair next to her. He watched the rift on the viewer. Tiet was handsome, brave and powerful. Yet, behind his eyes she saw a child who had experienced the loss of everything dear to him. Still, somehow, he still smiled and had hope for the future. Was it gullibility or just innocence, and did it really matter?
As a child, Dorian had wondered about the little boy in the archive photos-the son of the Barudii King. The boy was so happy in the images she had seen in her studies. Dorian had often thought, were he still alive, they would have been the same age and could have played games together.
In her adolescence, the small boy in the images had become the young man who defeated the Vorn enemies in her dreams and swept her away from the harsh reality of her life. And now, here he was, very much alive and only inches from her.
It did not matter if they returned now. Dorian knew her place was beside him. She wiped an escaping tear as Tiet looked at her with the same childlike smile. Dorian returned it. Together they watched the approaching darkness of the rift.
Darkness began to fall as Estall’s formation of transports swept across the wasteland toward the capital. A violent weather system approached from the east. They hoped it would not intercept them before they could reach the city. Estall had sent nearly half of his transports ahead at full speed while his group continued on at half speed. If the other group of transports could swing wide of the city and get around undetected then they might just be able to encircle it during their final approach. Ranul hunkered down in the open cockpit of Estall’s transport as the wind whipped at them from different directions caused by the approaching storm.
Ranul had seen many violent fluctuations in Castai’s weather and had studied many historical files relating to it. He understood well the reason for Castillians building the majority of their cities underground in the centuries following the appearance of the rift.
Once Estall’s forces came within ten miles of the Vorn defenses, even these small craft would be detectable. The long-range, phase cannons could be employed at up to seven miles, but if the transports remained scattered, the Vorn would have difficulty hitting them.
The Aolene were a brave people. They had faced the adversity of Vorn attacks on their cities and had survived to now become an even stronger people through the study of the Barudii fighting arts. Though they lacked the mental powers of the Barudii, the Aolene certainly reminded Ranul of those long dead warriors in spirit. As they steadily approached the capital, Ranul hoped he would not witness the loss of another brave people today.
