Zaul was not displeased with the rebel gunners’ results at the end of this session, though he offered no praise to Miko or Fenli. Miko suspected it was Zaul’s way of making his men strong, to make them work harder. A risky tactic. If the stakes were so high, and the future of the Jakru and human race depended on their sabotaging the locust and Zikri alliance, then instigating an inter-stellar war between their enemies might not go so smoothly.
The Colonel was eager to push on. The next training session would be 23.5 hours later at Vexus 9, a hundred light years away. From there, on to Kraetoria.
* * *
“Code blue,” hissed Jinquar. “Zikri activity on decrypt-channel 9.”
“So, they’ve posted scouts,” mused Zaul. He gazed at the viewscreen that displayed the lurking Zikri orb, a spiked behemoth, much too close to their training ground.
“Cloaking stable at .8,” murmured Deral.
“Lucky for us... Small probability they registered anything unusual. No chance they could have guessed our purpose. Lucky I had those close-circuit cloaking devices installed on our Doraxu before fighting. Chrysalis, be damned! Shit, I was having a bad feeling about that last training site.”
“Nothing you could have done, sir—Fenli and Miko are still out there with Vembrod and Laren.”
Zaul held up his hand. “Rein them in. Make sure they stay cloaked. Take the Kestrel out.” The massive destroyer, true to her name, leaped to action to face her down. She was a veritable bird of prey, one of the fastest and most versatile of Zaul’s ships. No wonder it was named after the falcon whose fast-beating wings propelled it so ruthlessly to snatch prey off the ground.
The orb, sensing she was outnumbered, retreated on an escape vector at a leisurely, if not arrogant, impulse course in the direction of Kraetoria.
* * *
Nothing had come of the Zikri reconnaissance. The Jakru dropped out of light drive on standard disrupt cloak. From a safe distance, Miko and the others all gathered on the bridge with Zaul’s team staring at a viewscreen filled with huge warships of every imaginable configuration—locust rings, Zikri ovals, toruses and figure eights.
The mesmerizing Starfish Nebula lurked light years behind, in full multicolour, its spiralled mass lit in pale blues, oranges, whites and yellows.
Two giant locust crafts, ring-shaped and ominously predatorial, docked against each other. Hosts of smaller lightfighters of Doraxu design, aphid-shaped and lethally-equipped, berthed on the rings’ central pod bays. Not far away drifted the half ruined Mentera station, the one from which Miko had escaped, a broken, crippled pod-complex with myriad smaller craft hovering around it like gnats. Miko gazed, spellbound. These ships busied themselves repairing the mass’s superstructure with disturbing speed, the gaping mess of wreckage and wirings at its extremity where it had been ravaged by the Jakru cannon not so long ago. How had the locusts transported this hulking ark-like complex these vast light years from its former position in its crippled state?
Hundreds of Zikri war orbs loomed opposite the locust station, a wall of spiked and twisted metal, arrayed in hostile ranks. At the edge of the phalanx loomed a massive box-like shape, an ugly monstrosity, glowing a dim purple in the eerie blackness.
Jinquar gasped. “I never thought there would be so many, Colonel.”
Zaul gave a low whistle. “Nor I. Visual, Jinquar. Zoom. Magnify. Engage the auxiliary cloaking.”
“Aye, aye.” He reached to obey.
“It’s the biggest congregation since the migration of Zikri-Mentera from their home planet,” Laren hissed.
“All to colonize, what?”
“Their ancient battlegrounds.”
“Remind me again, what is the planetoid they orbit?” Bruus asked.
“Kraetoria,” responded Deral. “A mysterious dead world, one whose Zikri and Mentera origin turns up time and time again in the earliest space records.”
“It has a high gravitational field,” observed Jinquar, “for such a small world.”
“The core is dense—of some unknown compound.”
“Scanners,” ordered Zaul.
Jinquar wore a puzzled frown. “I’m detecting minimal life readings, sir—Little flora, many craters and ancient mountains. Some primitive, domed metal structures show up, product of an ancient culture. For all purposes, Kraetoria is dead.”
Miko and the others gazed in speculative wonder. A constant stream of ships sped from the Zikri ranks ferrying cargo to the Mentera ring station then to the planetoid below.
“Re-terraforming it?” suggested Lexia.
“It’s evident the Zikri and locusts plan to form a bilateral alliance and set up bases on this gloomy world. A hideous place for such business. A central headquarters.”
“And there’s that ugly station,” pointed out Miko.
“Zaul, you should have blasted that monstrosity out of the sky when you had the chance—instead of gallivanting around the galaxy after me.”
Zaul retorted, “We would not be here, if that were the case, Empress.”
“Here, here!” murmured Deral. A buzz of appreciation rang amongst the crew.
“Little is known about this sector,” Zaul mused. “A thousand years of hate has forged this.”
“A thousand years of hate is not going to end soon, Zaul. Are your men ready?”
“As ready as this reckless plan will have it.”
Miko shook his head, gazing at the massed forces. “We’re going to need more ships.”
Fenil grimaced in agreement. “It’ll never work...”
“It has to work!” boomed Zaul. “Don’t forget these decoys were your hare-brained idea—against my better judgement.” He slammed a fist in his palm. “We will defeat them with sly tactics of our own.”
“But look at them,” said Miko. “Are you forgetting they will be parked out there waiting? They will see through our ruse the moment our ships uncloak. How are they not going to recognize unauthorized ships?”
“Deral here has cracked their codes,” explained Zaul. “She’ll send in signals of authorized craft. We need only a diversion. Consider a Jakru vessel stripped of identifying marks going in, threatening attack. One of the decoys comes out of light speed, pursues and
