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.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“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.”
“The Hedren are bound to send reinforcements… ” Ronnie replied.
“Understood,” Mike said. “You’ll be back. But you need to come back fueled and with sohon supports. Michelle, get all available mentats to base Delta X-Ray. And we need to go join the SS.”
“Yes, Father,” Michelle said, nodding. Then she winced. “The Imeg are up. This is not going to be good.”
“Honey, being on the wrong side of a Posleen tenaral charge ain’t good,” Mike said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “This here’s a walk in the park. Let’s roll.”
Gamalsarad, Emperor (Elect) of the Tular Po’oslenar, considered the message. It had been sent across nearly a thousand light-years, through dead star systems and the ley-lines of black-holes, following the sinuous Hidden Path.
But it was a message the Tular had awaited for a very long time.
“Prepare the Fleet,” he growled, his crest lifting as combat hormones flooded his body. “The time has come to Return.”
“Destination, Emperor?” his aide asked.
“Earth.”