Planet Strike by Heppner Vaughn

Author:Heppner, Vaughn [Heppner, Vaughn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Amazon: B00HVVE9IA
Goodreads: 20563058
Published: 2014-01-15T08:00:00+00:00

-18-

I’d learned a few things about Lokhars these past weeks. As physical specimens, few could match them. Maybe the energy keeping them running cost in other areas. I’m talking about mental agility.

Now tigers, like people, had large gradations in abilities. You had smart people and dumb ones. The Lokhars were the same. The Maximum Princess Nee had struck me as more quick-witted than the rest. Those standing in shock in the strategy session chamber I saw as having their minds in neutral. The engine could be revving like crazy, but it wouldn’t move any wheels because the gears weren’t connected. I think their minds were spinning, but they couldn’t articulate whatever was going on inside their gray matter.

I’d just saved the mission from certain disaster. Now we could all jump into hyperspace and get ourselves killed at the portal planet. We might even stop the Kargs while we died. Would the Lokhars be grateful to the trigger-happy human? I didn’t give that a high probability. In fact, the old adept would likely demand my skinning. I had a gun, but there were an awful lot of tigers in here and I only had so many bullets.

It was time to act. I had the initiative, and I planned to keep it.

“Stay behind me,” I whispered to Ella. Then I began backing toward the door.

The tigers were all staring at the dead princess. Marshal Danyal must have had good peripheral vision. Her head swiveled around in a rusty manner. She gazed at me with blank eyes. Something stirred there, though. Seeing me moving must have kicked in a basic chase instinct.

With a roar, Marshal Danyal bounded at me. She literally leapt onto the table, jumped onto the floor and charged fast and hard. I hadn’t expected that.

BOOM!

Her head disintegrated as it snapped back. Lokhars were big and heavy, though. A .44 Magnum load only had so much stopping power and no more. She died, but her body kept coming, sliding across the floor at me.

I sidestepped the body, and I wondered if her aides were about to charge en masse. I wouldn’t be able to shoot fast enough to stop all of them. I had to think of something else to do.

“The Creator has spoken to me!” I shouted. I didn’t know what else to say that might stop them in their tracks.

That did it, though. An aide that lurched toward me paused, blinking with incomprehension.

I heard a tiger ask, “Can the Creator speak to a human?”

The ancient adept took the question to heart. He bowed his head as if in prayer.

In those few seconds, I reached the main door. “Get ready,” I whispered to Ella.

“Even with the zagun,” she said, “we’ll never reach our quarters.”

“You don’t think I don’t know that?” I whispered. If the tigers went crazy, one hundred troopers without symbiotic armor, or even with it, would not make it back to the Commando Army.

I opened the door.

“He’s escaping!” a different adept shouted.

“No!” I said. “I’m calling in the guard.

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