John Ringo: Eye of the Storm

“On it,” Ugly said as Bubbles trotted down the corridor. “What the hell was that, Snake?”

“Bad stuff,” Mosovich replied.

Bubbles extended his hand around the turn and fired two suicide bars down the corridor.

“Go!” he shouted as the explosions rent the air.

Chicklet and GE rounded the corner and laid down fire into the smoke of the explosion. There probably wasn’t anything there, but it never hurt to be sure.

They trotted to the holes left by the suicide bars and maneuvered past them then down to the third door.

“This the room?” GE asked.

“Supposed to be,” Chicklet said then gasped, grabbing at his head.

GE turned his head to the side just to late to avoid having blood and brains splash all over him. He circled in place, looking for a threat. Then his head began to throb.

“What the fuck is happening ?”

Concentrate on the Imeg , Kang thought. Place all your power on the Imeg .

We are , Sissy replied. It is all we can do to keep it from destroying your team .

Get the Indowy to protect us , Kang replied. Keep the ship from communicating and attack the Imeg. That is your sole job now.

“Dust Devil?” Hooter said, looking at the door. Two charges had gone out so far.

“Busy,” the adept gasped, grabbing at his head. “Very busy.”

“Got it,” Pawle said. “Redman, get me up to the door.”

Redman maneuvered the adept up to the blast door and set him in front of it. Like the other two, Pawle had his eyes closed. But he seemed to be seeing anyway.

The adept laid his hand on the door and leaned forward.

“The bonds of this material are a poor reality,” Pawle muttered. “A bare semblance of reality… ”

“Stack up and cover Skank,” Jake said. “Entry team, get ready.”

“You. Are. Not. Real ,” Pawle gasped as the door disintegrated into dust.

And Redman blew back in a welter of crimson.

“Oh, holy fuck ,” Dumbo muttered.

They’d found the Imeg.

“What the hell are those?” Hannibal screamed. He was pumping railgun rounds into the compartment and all he was getting was bouncers. The rounds wouldn’t scratch the nightmares in the room.

“Imeg,” Wind shouted then blasted backwards to thump into the far bulkhead.

The two creatures in the room were nightmare, a mass of rippling black tentacles and armored bodies. The tentacles were coated in blades but that was not what was killing the team. It was the half dozen weapons each of them wielded. Expertly.

Suicide bars wouldn’t detonate. Railgun rounds bounced off a hard-held shield. And still they continued to fire and slice, destroying anything that came near them.

“Back up,” Kang said. “Get out of the doorway. Skank, Devil, on me. Mule, behind us. Target the one on the left.”

“On it,” Mueller said, managing to get a firing angle over the smaller adepts.

The three adepts managed to establish a shield that stopped the fire from the Imeg. Then they pushed back.

Keep them from reinforcing each other , Kang thought.

Trying , Dust Devil replied.

Sissy, support here.

We… have them separated, Sissy replied.

Drive down the shield of the lesser, Kang thought. It is not reality.

Mueller could see the effect of the battle between the two groups. The air in the compartment was heating up as irresistable force met immovable object. He could even see the shields of the Imeg, now, glowing white-hot under the power of the dozen human adepts.

And he could see when the one on the left finally collapsed.

Railgun rounds, though, bounced off the armor of the body. He searched for weaknesses and finally found one at the juncture of the tentacles and the body. The nuckle there was tough, but it finally surrendered and the Imeg was blasted back in a green spray of ichor.

Suddenly, the railgun was ripped from his hands, turned, and slammed forward, barrel-first, into his brain.

As the redoubtable NCO dropped, Pawle shuddered and mentally stepped back.

Skank, what are you doing ? Kang thought.

Wait, Master.

You can’t hold up a stress card, Dust Devil thought.

WAIT.

Pawle, in fact, did not know what he was doing. But what they had been doing so far wasn’t working. So he reached.

He reached, in fact, into the nearby engine room. Found the fusion bottles of the ship. Found the plasma power runs. Felt for the connections, felt for the power . And he reached .

The Imeg’s shield began to glow white-hot and then went down and down and down and down…

“Mother fucker !” Mosovich shouted, sliding past the adepts holding the door. “I’m going to motherfucking kill your ass!”

A tentacle lashed across the room, its bladed edge flashing towards his throat.

Mosovich merely whipped out the Posleen monomolecular boma blade he’d held for nigh on sixty years, a boma blade he’d picked up on Barwhon seemingly ages ago, and held it up.

The armored tentacle hit the monomolecule edge and separated in half, the severed end clanging against a bulkhead as the remaining tentacle began to spray green ichor across the compartment.

Nearly a hundred years of combat experience, and nine adepts worth of protection, took Mosovich across the compartment. He didn’t need protection from the tentacles of the nightmare in the room, he had all he needed in the razor-edged blade of his former foes. That and lots of experience.

He waded straight into the Imeg, which quickly realized that going tentacle to blade was a losing proposition. Its shield reduced by the combined force of the adepts it retreated until it was backed into the bulkhead. It tried to open a hole in the bulkhead but the Indowy adepts prevented that change in reality.

Jake knew the objective was capturing the creature that had destroyed his friend. So he didn’t, in fact, kill it. He just kept chopping and chopping, severing tentacle after tentacle, shortening them and shortening them, until the thing lay in a puddle of ichor, its tentacles mere pumping stumps.

He knew it was still deadly but he got down in that green blood on one knee and looked into one of its multifaceted black eyes.

“We’re going to take you apart like a jig-saw puzzle,” he whispered. “And we’re not going to bother putting you back together. Kang, put this thing out.”

“Hey, Commodore,” Mike said as he and Michelle apparated in the CIC of the Lex .

“General O’Neal?” Ronnie said, looking around. “Where… ?”

“Long story,” Mike replied. “Just be here a moment.”

He looked over at Michelle who was looking very pale.

“You okay, Shelly?”

“You haven’t called me that since I was a kid,” Michelle answered. “And, no, the answer is, I’m not okay. We’re not okay. Kang has the Imeg back on the Des Moines .”

“Good news,” Mike said.

“No, bad news,” Michelle said, rubbing her forehead. “DAG was nearly wiped out doing it. Many of them by the Imeg. They’re much stronger than we thought. Stronger than we could have believed. He’s transferring the information across the mentats. But the force we have here… If we can keep them from destroying the ships, the SS, we’ll be lucky.”

“Commodore, discontinue support missions and get your ships out of the system,” Mike said, instantly. “Contact Admiral Chun and add that order for his ships. Use remaining antimatter, all of it, to make max jumps towards the warp entry point then get the hell out.”