Marathon: The Complete Series (Books 1-9) (Complete Series Box Sets), page 86
part #1 of Marathon Series
Eckhart didn’t answer. The assets skated sideways and tried to dodge around him to get into the atmosphere. He almost lacked the arm strength to move the helm enough to stay in their path.
The laser bombardment reached a brutal pitch. “Celdian at 9%!” Staton warned. “They’ll hit the hull any second now!”
Eckhart shut his eyes the rest of the way. He couldn’t do any more, but at that moment, a crash startled him into opening them again.
A Regiment Colossus plunged between the assets and the Marathon. It flew straight into the lasers’ path, and every one of the assets’ weapons struck the Colossus full force.
The blow hurled the Patriot against the Marathon’s flank and the Marathon wheeled out of the way. The Patriot pivoted and unloaded on the assets as another ten ships attacked from all sides.
They surrounded the assets, with the Marathon outside their protective ring. The assets unleashed all their lasers on their former comrades, and the tactical grid read more Regiment Banshees on their way.
All three assets still struggled and wrestled inside the corona. Eckhart could even distinguish one man from the other now.
“Find a way to disrupt that field!” he told DeWalt. “We have to get Nuñez out of there.”
“How?” DeWalt asked. “The field is impenetrable.”
“There has to be some vulnerability.”
“There is,” Clifton interjected. “You have the plant and the Thalzu skin from Vaebbe.”
Eckhart whipped around to stare at him and then sprang out of his chair. “Clifton, you’re a genius! Staton, take over! Fly the ship.”
“Hey!” Staton yelled, but Eckhart was already lunging off the bridge.
“Where is it?” he called over his shoulder to Clifton on their way downstairs. “Where did they put the Thalzu skin?”
“It’s in the Crick centrifuge. Dallas said it was the only place big enough to hold it and keep it out of everyone’s way.”
Eckhart raced for the infirmary. He kicked himself for not talking to Dallas about the skin before now. He’d just have to take precautions.
He grabbed a spare pair of Kesmite gloves, a scalpel, and the glass case holding the last remaining plants the crew had collected on Vaebbe. There were still plenty in the case—at least Eckhart hoped it would be enough to defeat these assets. He no longer cared if he spared any of those men. He had to stop them from attacking Earth.
Clifton tailed him downstairs. “What are you going to do?”
“Help me, Clifton,” Eckhart panted. “I need you to get one of the pounders out of the weapons locker and completely unload it…and make it a big one.”
Clifton vanished, and Eckhart set the glass case on the floor next to the Crick centrifuge. This was by far the stupidest and least strategic plan of his whole checkered career.
He looked into the centrifuge. An enormous blob of some leathery substance took up all the space in there. Some sticky blue-black goo dripped into the centrifuge from the Thalzu skin.
He had no idea what he would do or what he should do, but if just a little of the plant material had been enough to kill the Thalzu, this had to work. He was all out of options if it didn’t.
He pulled on the gloves, extended his arms into the centrifuge, and carved off a section of the skin. He didn’t have a clue how to do this. He was making shit up as he went.
If Odais was right, and Alice had killed the Thalzu just by taking some of this plant into its mouth, then just putting the plant in contact with the skin would cause the cellular disruption Eckhart wanted. He could only hope.
He sawed off a big, juicy piece of the skin with plenty of goo dripping from it. It slithered and slipped against his gloves. He dropped the skin into the glass container and used the skin to pick up a piece of the plant.
Clifton came hurrying back, carrying the biggest pounder from the locker. The weapon was way too big for Eckhart to use, but that didn’t matter. “Lay it on the floor right here.”
Eckhart dropped one of the biggest pounder charges down the tube and then stuffed the plant-and-skin package down after it. He stretched his arm up to the shoulder, cramming it as far and as tight as he could against the charge.
Eckhart pulled one of the atmospheric pressure suits out of the locker and started climbing into it. “This is insane,” Clifton murmured. “You know that, don’t you?”
“You guys really need to stop telling me that. I already know.”
Clifton tried to smile, but failed. Eckhart handed him the safety tether. “Strap me in.”
Clifton clipped the tether to the hold wall. His face twisted when he came back to watch Eckhart zip himself into the suit.
“Get back upstairs!” Eckhart yelled through the helmet. “Tell Staton to activate the life support pressure envelope across the hull!”
Clifton retreated, and Eckhart lost sight of him. He couldn’t think about these people anymore. He could only think of one thing: Earth.
He really must be an Earthling after all if he was going to these lengths to save this pathetic little planet. Why did he care so much?
The envelope switched on, and the pressurized air inside his suit woofed outward. It puffed up his suit, and he started to float off the floor. He picked up the pounder, and the tether started to extend.
“Can you hear me, Eckhart?” Staton asked inside his helmet. “Let me know the communications system is working.”
“I can hear you. Try to get as close to the assets as you can.”
“It’s gonna be tough. The Regiment is in the way.”
“Open the hatch.”
Eckhart tilted toward the hatch as it opened. The Marathon fired its engines, and he drifted outside.
He saw right away what Staton meant. Regiment vessels surrounded the assets. They all unloaded on the assets’ halo, trying to destroy the men inside. The assets returned fire with devastating lasers that cut the Regiment ships to pieces.
“Get closer!” Eckhart ordered. “Find me an opening.”
“If we get too close, one of the lasers could hit your suit,” DeWalt argued.
Eckhart rotated the pounder into position. It weighed nothing out here, and he could handle it easily. He just had to make sure not to lose his grip on it.
The Marathon eased closer to the battle. Every burst of the engines jerked Eckhart against his tether. He had to constantly adjust his position and his aim.
The assets hovered at the center of the Regiment assault. Colossus hulls blocked Eckhart from seeing the men inside. He raised his weapon and aimed at the back of what he thought was the Patriot.
At that moment, one of the assets’ lasers hit another ship’s starboard engine. The explosion knocked the ship out of line and left a gap between it and the Patriot.
“Now, Martin!” Eckhart roared.
Staton punched the throttle so hard Eckhart got thrown back against his tether. His body tumbled backward until he was facing away from the battle.
The Marathon sprinted into the stricken ship’s place, and lasers smashed into the Marathon’s hull. It didn’t have any Celdian left and the lasers sliced straight into the bridge section.
Eckhart clung onto his pounder with one hand while he scrambled to turn himself in the right direction. He pulled on the tether and overcorrected. He spun the other way until he finally floated to a stop facing the assets.
He raised his pounder. None of the assets even noticed him. They were too busy fighting each other.
He leveled his weapon at them and fired. The charge blasted out of the tube, carrying the skin and plant package with it. It punched through the assets’ corona, and a blinding explosion smacked Eckhart backward with unspeakable force.
He lost his hold on his weapon and slammed hard at the limit of his tether. The whiplash jerked him the other way, and then he was spinning through space with no way to stop himself. Had the tether broken?
He floundered to grab it. The clip still attached the line to his suit, and his suit was still intact, but he couldn’t tell for one panicked moment if the tether still connected him to the ship.
He rotated in a complete circle and faced the open hatch. The Marathon hung before him, shining like some kind of Heaven welcoming him home. Clifton stood inside, hauling in the tether hand over hand.
Eckhart’s stomach hurt from all the adrenaline coursing through him. He was alive. He was going back home to the Marathon. He didn’t care about anything else.
He collapsed on the floor at Clifton’s feet and the hatch slammed shut behind him. Eckhart struggled to breathe, and his hands were shaking.
Clifton attacked his suit and ripped the zipper down. He dragged Eckhart’s helmet off. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Is anything broken?”
“I’m…okay. What happened? Where are the assets?”
“I don’t know. Get out of this suit and we’ll go find out.”
Eckhart let Clifton help him peel the suit off. He’d sat down on the floor to kick the boots off when the hatch clanged open again.
A great whoosh of fresh air rushed in from outside. Clifton and Eckhart both turned around to see the same destroyed square standing before them. Sirens went off in the distance, and bodies strewed the pavement.
Clifton helped Eckhart to his feet. They started toward the hatch when Staton, DeWalt, and Short came running downstairs.
The five men tiptoed outside. “What happened?” Eckhart asked. “What happened to the assets?”
“We aren’t sure,” Staton replied. “You hit them and they exploded. We don’t know what happened to them after that.”
“The blast threw the Regiment ships out of the way, too,” DeWalt added. “A bunch of them got damaged, but they’re out of danger now. The assets are gone.”
“Gone?” Eckhart repeated. “They aren’t gone. They’re…”
He stepped off the ramp onto the sidewalk and looked up at the sky almost as though he knew what was about to happen. He searched for the assets’ bright halo, but he spotted something small and black plummeting out of the atmosphere instead.
It dropped at terminal velocity and crashed into a vehicle parked in the middle of the street. The projectile smashed in the vehicle’s roof, and all the windows exploded before Eckhart realized the falling object was actually two men locked together in an unbreakable embrace.
The explosion startled a bunch of nearby onlookers into ducking for cover. A second later, dead silence fell over the square except for more broken glass crumbling from the vehicle’s shattered window frames.
Eckhart and his friends tiptoed closer, and Eckhart stared at Fontana prying himself out of Nuñez’s arms. Nuñez lay unconscious in the massive dent the two men had driven into the vehicle’s metal roof.
Fontana pushed himself up, stared down at Nuñez’s impassive face, and then looked around.
Eckhart approached the vehicle. “You okay, man?”
Fontana studied Eckhart and then his friends before sweeping the ruined square. “I…uh.” He looked down at Nuñez, trying to figure something out. “He…I can’t fly anymore. He did something to me.”
Eckhart extended his hand to Fontana. “Come on down. We can talk about you giving testimony to the High Court now.”
Fontana didn’t hear him. He bent over Nuñez and yelled in his friend’s face. “Tony! Tony, wake up! Tony!”
He started shaking Nuñez by the shoulders, but Nuñez didn’t wake up. “It sure would be nice to have a Yakit with us right about now,” DeWalt remarked.
Eckhart climbed up on the vehicle’s broken window and knelt down next to Nuñez. He was really starting to wish Bing was here when someone bellowed right in his ear.
“Get your hands in the air! Don’t move!” A bunch of armed men pointed their weapons in his face. “Get your hands above your head! You’re under arrest!”
15
Eckhart buried his face in his hands and groaned. “I already told you who I am. What more do you want me to say?”
An Earthling officer waved some kind of electronic device at Eckhart. “We’ve done DNA scans on you, fingerprint tracing, retinal scans, and mitochondrial DNA matching sequences. You don’t turn up in any of our databases, not even the ones for every Earthling born at fringe stations and outposts all the way to the rim of known space. You don’t exist. You’re a ghost.”
Eckhart heaved an almighty sigh. He’d been at this for hours trying to explain what he was doing on Earth, how he knew how to neutralize the assets, and every other detail of his mission and recent past.
Now this idiot was questioning Eckhart on his distant past and his origins, but no matter what Eckhart said, the guy didn’t believe him. None of these Earthlings wanted to accept that another Earthling could be born on a fringe planet without the Regiment finding out about it.
The officer leaned back in his chair and tossed the device on the table between himself and Eckhart. “All right. Let’s go over it again.”
“Do we have to?” Eckhart moaned.
“What planet were you born on?”
“Parilia. I told you.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Eckhart snorted. “Have you ever been off of Earth?”
The officer ignored the question. “And you say you never knew your parents?”
“Nope. I never laid eyes on them.”
“How do you know?” the officer asked. “How do you know they didn’t die when you were young?”
“Is that relevant? If I don’t remember them, what difference does it make when they died? None of this is relevant to what happened at the Intergalactic High Court building.”
“Humor me.” The guy picked up his device and consulted it like he really didn’t know already what was on it. “It’s interesting, because the Regiment database doesn’t even list a planet by that name in the sector you mentioned.”
“That’s because the Regiment doesn’t have a presence on Parilia. There are planets in the galaxy that the Regiment doesn’t control, you know.”
The guy shrugged. “Maybe, but if you’re right, that makes your history an even bigger mystery, doesn’t it? If the Regiment doesn’t have a presence there and it’s so far out on the fringes that we’ve never even heard of it, how did you get there? What were your parents doing that far out that they’d actually give birth to a child out there, let alone abandon you on a planet crawling with aliens?”
Eckhart stared at the man. The officer stared back at him, waiting for him to answer.
“Well?” the guy asked. “How do you explain this?”
“I don’t,” Eckhart replied. “I don’t think about it. I have much more pressing matters to deal with. Trust me.”
“So you never once considered how strange it is that you were born on such a planet?”
“I might have wondered about it once or twice, but not much. That didn’t seem all that relevant to the project of staying alive…kind of like it isn’t relevant to what happened at the High Court building.”
“Oh, but you see, it is relevant. See, here’s a man who’s obviously an Earthling. Your DNA clearly indicates that you are one.”
“I know I am. I’ve been telling you for four hours that I’m an Earthling.”
“You’re an Earthing with no identity.”
“I have an identity.” Eckhart burst out laughing. “I know who I am. A lot of people know who I am. The mystery is why you don’t know who I am.”
“That’s exactly why you’re here, pal. We can’t believe a word you say until we know who you are. Your story is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard in my career, which means you’re our biggest suspect for the crimes committed outside the High Court building.”
Eckhart couldn’t stop laughing. This whole thing was turning into a farce. How could he be the biggest warlord on the fringes and these Earthlings not even know who he was? He couldn’t even walk into a bar on the fringes without every man and his dog knowing his name.
He’d taken over Aistenz Trotaer’s empire. He had sparked a galactic rebellion that attracted millions of fighters from every species. Eckhart had become practically a dignitary, accepting offers of surrender from the Regiment itself, and he was still totally unknown to his own people.
These weren’t his people. These Earthlings were something truly alien. They were beyond backward.
All these centuries, the people of Earth had sent out the Regiment to grind the fringes under its heel. They did all that on the pretext that Earth was somehow more enlightened and advanced and superior to the lawless alien fringes.
Maybe that was why Eckhart had been so curious to see Earth for himself. He wanted to see what the hell was so special about this place and its people.
Now Eckhart saw firsthand that the whole mythology was reversed. The people of Earth were nothing special. They were degenerate and primitive—much more so than the fringe aliens.
He wanted nothing more to do with these people. Eckhart had done what he had to do to stop the Regiment’s assets. Now he could leave…as soon as he got out of this shithole and stopped answering these moronic questions.
“Tell me again why you came to Earth in the first place,” the officer prompted.
Eckhart took another deep, steadying breath. “I came to stop the aliens from destroying the Regiment.”
“You said earlier that you started the rebellion.”
“I did.”
“Then you’re responsible for the aliens slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Earthlings while the Regiment was trying to evacuate them.”
“I’m not responsible for that. The aliens who carried out those attacks weren’t under my control.”
“You just said you started the rebellion. The aliens wouldn’t have gone out of control if you didn’t instigate them to do it.”
“The Regiment was planning to wipe out the whole fringe population. I had no choice but to start the rebellion to stop them.”
“We have nothing but your word that the Regiment developed these doomsday weapons to wipe out the fringe population. There’s no proof.”
Eckhart sighed again. “I already told you a dozen times. I came to Earth to bring the proof. I brought people who could testify about what the Regiment was doing.”
