Proxy War Read online

  He was still stumped though, it looked like instead of just one lock, there was a series of twelve deadbolts evenly spaced around the door, three on each side. Sighing, he focused on one at a time and started forcing the deadbolts back into the door frame. But when he got to the fourth one, the first one locked itself again. Peter growled in frustration.

  “Can’t get it? Do we need to abort?” Rex said.

  “No, I can get it, just give me some time,” Peter replied.

  Rex tapped his cuff to check the time, “Well you have about ten minutes before the Noldor get here and we have to go with plan B. Do your best please.”

  Focusing on the door once more, Peter realized he would have to unlock more of the deadbolts at once. He was too weak to do twelve at once, but he could probably do three at once. With great mental effort he unlocked the three on the bottom, then the right side, then the top. But before he could get to the left side, the bottom three locked themselves again.

  Peter’s head was pounding. It had been three minutes, he would probably only get one or two more tries at this. Steeling himself, he tried again. Bottom three, right three, top three, and left three. He made it just in time, only just getting the huge door open a crack before the bottom three deadbolts tried to lock themselves again. But now that the door was in motion, it slowly lowered itself to the ground on the bottom hinge.

  Once the door was open, they peered inside. The interior was dimly lit, but they could see green metal bulkheads leading deeper into the ship. Strangely fuzzy, the floor was an off white. The walls were studded with strange devices of unknown purpose. Rounded crates stacked along the sides of the room indicated that this was a cargo bay of some sort. At the back of the room there was a passageway leading along the spine of the ship, and a set of wide stairs curling up to the second floor.

  The three of them snuck in, glancing behind them to make sure they weren’t seen entering the ship. Peter tried, but was unable to get the cargo door to close back up again. Now they had to find the engine room or bridge and figure out an effective sabotage. With a realization that swayed his steps, Peter realized how haphazard this all was. They knew next to nothing about spaceship design, they didn’t even know what power source this thing ran on. The best Peter could do was reach into the walls and randomly tear wires out of their sockets. Although, that probably would work. No matter how alien, it would probably break if the components were torn apart.

  Just then, the unmistakable gravelly voice of a troll rolled out from the floor above. Peter’s galactic translation helped him understand what it was saying.

 

  A loud grunt was heard and soft thumps of footsteps started down the steps.

  Peter panicked. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone on board, twenty trolls left, the spaceship should have been empty. Should he run out and forget about the mission, or hide here and try to complete it? Glancing around, he didn’t see Rex or Lola. They must have already stealthed and hidden themselves.

  Well that answers that. He wouldn’t leave without his friends. Ducking behind a nearby crate, he activated his level two stealth and hoped it would be enough.

  It wasn’t enough.

  As soon as the troll entered the cargo bay, it knew something was wrong. Shorter than the average troll, this one must have been left behind because it was younger than the rest. The troll called out to his friend again and started sniffing the air, big gusts of air through nostrils on his snout. Although he was shorter than the ones that had just left, but was still over seven feet tall. He shuffled to the side of the room, keeping his back to the wall. Reaching out with one large pebbled hand, he hit a button on the wall.

  Instantly a white crackling force field appeared and covered both the entrance to the passageway and the doorway to the outside. They were trapped in here.

  He stared into the room and fumbled for another switch without looking. He hit the right switch and the floor came alive.

  Like a turbulent sea, the strands of soft carpet on the floor flipped up and down in three foot waves. Sensing the carpet was out to get him, Peter tried to jump out of the way, but was caught. Thousands of strands of carpet reached up to grab his legs and pull him down onto the carpet. With a strong wrench, he fell to the floor and the writhing carpet strands bound each limb and wrapped around his neck. He was dragged out from behind the crates. Waves of carpet slowly brought him to the middle of the cargo bay. A moment later Lola joined him in the middle of the floor, both of them bound and helpless as the carpet across the bay whipped around searching for more prey.

  With narrowed eyes the hulking brute looked around trying to see if there were any more intruders. Ducking and stretching, he looked around, but didn’t leave his spot on the carpet. When the troll found no one, Peter realized that Rex wasn’t there. He must have escaped out the door or deeper into the ship.

  The troll gave a barking laugh, He lifted up his right arm and pointed his huge troll palm at the humans bound on the floor,

  Huge green palm glowed slightly before he whipped it up into the air.

  Heart pounding, Peter realized that would be the worst possible thing. If the trolls outside were tipped off before the ambush, it could ruin everything. Live or die in this ship, Peter’s fate didn’t matter. But if the trolls survived the ambush, it would make everything much, much worse. The freedom of the human race depended on him doing something.

  Activating his time skill, he gave himself a moment to think. His hands were thoroughly bound to the floor, so a fireball was out. Even this juvenile troll was probably much too tough for that to work anyway. He couldn't think of a way shields or premonition could help either. Hadn’t Rex said that one troll could take out an entire squad by himself? How could Peter hope to do anything?

  As the time skill wore out he realized that he didn’t have to defeat the troll, he just had to prevent it from speaking. Closing his eyes, he “felt” around with his telekinesis and used his old standby, closing the monster’s mouth. With focused determination, he willed the troll mouth shut, inner lips sealed so no sound could escape.

  Clawing at his mouth, the troll tried to scream fruitlessly. His eyes wide and nostrils flaring, the troll beat at his own face in confusion. Peter took it the next step, and sealed the nostril flaps closed too. It took every ounce of his level twenty-six strength, but Peter was able to totally cut off the troll’s air. If he held this long enough, he could make the young troll pass out.

  Understanding the danger right away, the troll stared around in terror. Resting his eyes on his captives, the troll put two and two together. Oxygen starved and getting desperate, he still had the presence of mind to attack the humans right away. Dropping his hands from his face, he lifted up his right hand and pointed it at Peter and Lola.

  Rex chose that moment to reappear from stealth. He had been clinging to the wall right behind the troll and chose just that moment to push the troll over. It took all of his strength, but Rex was able to knock the distracted troll onto the writhing carpet. Turning as he fell, the troll shot out at Rex, hitting him with a glancing blow that spun him to the floor.

  Thousands of white carpet fibers whipped up and bound the huge troll frame and started carrying it to the center of the room. Desperate troll strength ripped the carpet fibers from the deck, freeing his arms. But more strands sprung to replace them and his arms were bound again.

  This whole time Peter was focused on one thing, keeping the troll quiet. Nothing else mattered, he had to focus on the mouth and nostrils and nothing else. Time stretche
d on intermittently. The troll struggled against the carpet and Peter, but Peter held fast. A headache grew behind his eyes but he ignored it and held fast.

  Surely the troll should have passed out by now, but still it struggled weakly. Peter knew that he had to hold on. Just a little bit longer, just a little bit longer, just a little bit longer. He started crying at the pain of his headache, but he held on.

  Just when he felt like he couldn’t hold on any longer, he was bowled over by a rush of enormous orbs. Letting go of his telekinesis with a gasp, he opened his eyes to see a stream of orbs entering his cuff, Lola’s cuff and some that disappeared out of his field of vision. Those must have gone to Rex.

  Laying there, Peter realized he must have killed the troll. He didn’t mean to kill him, just make him pass out. He closed his eyes again and cried softly, his headache not letting him do any more.

  Lola pulled her head up as much as it would go, and said, “Rex are you ok?” with no answer coming, she said again, “Rex? Can you hear me?”

  A low groan came from Rex, followed by the flash of a heal. Nothing happened after that, until two more heals flashed by. Slowly getting up with the help of the wall, Rex said, “I am up, I am up. Shit. That hurt.”

  “Can you set us free Rex?” Lola said.

  Rex was standing in the section of deck without moving carpet that had the security controls on it. But he wasn’t listening to Lola, he was staring at his left arm. What was left of it. Everything below the elbow had been blown away by the troll blast. His heals had sealed up the wound and left a stub.

  “I lost my arm,” Rex said while staring at it dumbfounded.

  Lola’s voice broke as she said, “Oh Rex, I am so sorry.”

  “I lost my arm,” Rex said again in the exact same tone.

  Lola gave him a moment and then said, “I know Rex. That is horrifying. Do you have the controls over there, could you let us out?”

  “But, I lost my arm,” Rex said, not understanding her.

  Lola stopped. She knew he must have been deep in shock. She looked around trying to figure something else out.

  Peter roused himself and said, “Rex, you can probably grow your arm back. The cuff is practically magic, I am sure a healer on base can fix you right up.”

  This seemed to shake him out of it, and he turned to Peter and said, “You can’t heal what isn’t there, healers can’t replace limbs. Don’t be an idiot. But enough about that, we have a mission. You two need to quit lazing about.” Turning around, Rex fiddled with the buttons on the wall until the carpet released them and retracted back into the deck.

  Sitting up, Peter looked around and immediately regretted it. The dead troll was right next to him. Shying away quickly, he flipped on all fours and almost threw up. He didn’t mean to do that. He was just trying to knock the troll out, not kill it. He was a murderer now.

  Thinking about that was painful, and the headache from overusing his power made it all worse. Peter got up and walked to Rex, careful not to look at the body. He placed his hand on Rex’s right shoulder and said, “We will figure something out, we can get your arm back.”

  Rex shook his head and said, “I don’t want to talk about that. Help me figure out how to turn off these force fields so we can disable the ship.”

  Now that he was closer, Peter could see that the bumps on the wall were all labeled. There were several technical words, but none of them sounded like they would turn off the force field. Peter stopped to stare at the force field covering the passageway.

  That was kind of cool. He was on an alien spaceship and they had honest to goodness force fields. Twelve-year-old Peter would be so jealous. He smiled slightly. Then he shook himself. He had let his mind wander, and they were in the middle of an important mission. He must be in shock.

  Once he focused once more, Peter was able to quickly find the correct controls. He shut down the force field that led deeper into the ship and left the one on the front cargo door up. Lola congratulated him and dragged Rex with them deeper into the ship.

  The passageway went in a straight line the entirety of the ship, several doors along each side. Every twenty feet or so was a raised bulkhead, but luckily all of them were open at the moment. They walked about halfway down the length of the ship, looking for clues. Soft indirect lighting made the green metal walls seem natural, organic even.

  They felt small in the ship built for trolls, each door was about 11 feet high by six feet wide. A quick guess was that there were twenty doors on this level. Assuming that there was just one other floor, that left them at least forty rooms to check. That would take too long to go one by one. The ambush would start soon, if it hadn’t already.

  Peter turned around, “Rex, what are we looking for?”

  “I don’t really know. We don’t have any intel on ship design. But I can tell you that if we take out the gravitron generator, they won’t be able to get it off the ground any time soon. All the shipboard power comes from that,” Rex said.

  “But do you have a guess, like middle, front or back? Top or bottom?”

  Rex just shrugged.

  Palms pressed to temples, Peter took a few shuddering breaths. “One by one it is, I guess. We better get started.”

  Using his knowledge of galactic, he quickly found the door controls and tried to open the door closest to him. It wouldn’t open though, it just beeped at him. Locked.

  Not for long though, telekinesis was the key to every lock. This one took him longer than expected though, the door slid into the wall instead of opening into the hallway so the locking mechanism was one Peter was unfamiliar with. But he got it open, and revealed a storage room. More crates like the ones in the cargo bay, just stacked neater. Closing this one, he went on to the next.

  Lola looked back and forth along the ship passageway. “There has got to be a faster way, we just got to use our heads,” she said.

  Just then, Rex got a call on his cuff, and he answered it right away. They could only hear his half of the conversation. He said, “Yeah, we got in.... One threat, neutralized.... Have they started yet? .... No, we are floundering around here, do you know where it would be? .... Well you are just going to have to blow the field.... What? Well that’s a dirty blue dick.... Thor, I love you like a brother, it has been nice knowing you.”

  Rex hung up and turned to Peter and Lola and said, “The ambush has started, but the trolls must have been tipped off. They are fighting in formation, and heading back here. Command already tried to blow the field, but the trolls must have detected and neutralized the explosives somehow. We need to blow the ship right now.” Taking a large explosive from his dimensional pocket, he said to them, “I gotta set this off right now. I will be staying to make sure it goes off, you have thirty seconds.”

  With a beep, the countdown started.

  “Rex! Come with us!” Lola shouted.

  Rex sat down near the bomb, and said, “Nope, I gotta make sure it goes off.”

  The three of them stood staring at each other, the beeping of the bomb the only sound. Growling in frustration, Lola grabbed Peter's hand and turned to run.

  “We will miss you, Rex,” she said as she dragged Peter off.

  They ran along the spine of the ship, jumping over the thresholds as they ran. Once they got to the cargo bay, Peter peeled off to unlock the force field over the cargo door. Lola stopped him before he shut it down.

  “Look,” she said, and pointed out the clear force field.

  The battle had reached the landing pad. Trolls and Noldor fought a pitched battle just outside the ship. Blasts tore up the landscape, pockets of fighting with three or four trolls back to back. Noldor were more gruesome than Rex had described. They looked like tall skeletons with dark gray skin stretched over their frame. Noldor screeched as they clawed at the trolls and narrowly avoided blasts. Every so often, a Noldor would turn intangible and float in close to an injured troll. Like a ghostly vampire, the Noldor would suck the orbs right out of the troll.

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nbsp; Directly in front of the force field stood the eleven foot tall Troll, standing on the open cargo door. He shot out into the battle every so often. Noldor stood around the hulking troll, trying to distract it without getting too close. The troll was trying to work the controls on the side of the doorframe, obviously trying to shut down the force field.

  Peter dropped his hand. He couldn’t open the force field now, it would let the troll in. They had to just wait there and let the ship blow up with them on it.

  Reaching out to Lola, he pulled her into a tight hug. No words were exchanged while they waited to die.

  And waited. And waited. Lola pulled back. “Shouldn’t we be dead by now?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go see if Rex needs help,” Lola said. It was weird, offering to help blow themselves up, but the trolls couldn’t be allowed to escape into the ship.

  Jogging back, they saw Rex sitting on the floor, fiddling with the bomb. Looking up, he said, “I think they disabled it. This ship must have passive defenses against bombs.”

  “We have to do something, the trolls are here, and they are trying to break in,” Lola urged.

  “I can go back to searching room by room, but I don’t think we have time for that,” Peter said.

  Lola clenched her hands in frustration, “There has to be a better way.”

  “I can’t see any better way,” Peter said.

  “No wait. See! Use your sense skill, Peter!” Lola exclaimed.

  Peter swore and said, “Why haven’t I been doing that already?” Activating his skill, he could see into the room he was standing near, and a little into the floor above. After looking around for eight seconds, he said, “Nope, not this one.”

  “Follow the power conduits, Peter. All the power on the spaceship comes from the one gravitron generator. It all has to lead to the generator,” Lola said.

  “Good thinking, Lola,” Peter said.

  A few more pulses of sense, and Peter had a direction. The wiring was all leading up to the second floor. Racing up the stairs in the middle of the ship, Peter paused again to get his bearings. One more pulse of sense and Peter turned to the left and found it. The gravitron generator was just behind this door. Thirty seconds later, and they were in. A rounded seamless engine sat in the middle of the room. Shaped like an egg with several bulbous tumors sticking out. Sticking his hand out to focus, he felt into the engine with his telekinesis.