Invardii Box Set 2 Read online

  BOXED SET: BOOKS 4 - 6

  The INVARDII Series

  Including

  FEDIC VITS

  RISE OF THE VALKRETHI

  ANTARES CRUCIBLE

  Copyright asserted

  Warwick Gibson

  192,900 words

  Table of Contents

  FEDIC VITS

  RISE OF THE VALKRETHI

  ANTARES CRUCIBLE

  Also note Appendices covering main characters, time

  line, locations and races at back of the boxed set.

  FEDIC VITS

  Fourth Book in the INVARDII series.

  Warwick Gibson.

  © 2019 Warwick Gibson.

  All Rights Reserved.

  DISCLAIMER.

  This novel is a work of fiction. It does not draw from actual events. The characters are entirely fictitious, and do not bear any resemblance to persons living or dead.

  ALSO by WARWICK GIBSON

  THE UNSOUND PRINCE (Sword and sorcery fantasy)

  ROUGH JUSTICE (Small town Chief of Police)

  ENEMY WITHIN (SAS action with some sci-fi content)

  The INVARDII Series

  CHAOS AND RETREAT

  ANCESTRAL HOME

  MEDIEVAL PLANET

  BOXED SET: BOOKS 1 -3

  FEDIC VITS

  RISE OF THE VALKRETHI

  ANTARES CRUCIBLE

  BOXED SET: BOOKS 4 - 6

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  `

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  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28 CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30 CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 1

  ________________

  Regent Cordez was elated. EarthGov had finally cleared him to make contact with Alamos!

  He whooped and punched the air, then grabbed Sallyanne and danced her around the office. The off-world sociologist was amused at the sudden outburst from her normally self-contained boss.

  Cordez went back to the encrypted message on his desk, and read it again. There would be no public announcement of an Alliance with the planet Alamos until something more formal had been put in place, and EarthGov had decided how to release news of an Alliance with one of their galactic neighbors.

  Despite a long list of such provisos, Cordez was authorized to make the first overtures to the Mersa people. As long as his activities remained strictly undercover, he was cleared to proceed.

  Cordez was still not sure how EarthGov had managed it. They had offered their assistance quickly enough once the great trading blocks of Earth had given the Alliance a top priority, but Cordez had thought the conservative Sumerians and their sprawling colony planets would be a problem.

  Apparently not. Faced with the same threat of war with the so far unstoppable Invardii as Earth, they were prepared to be more accommodating these days. Cordez supposed he should be grateful that the Sumerians thought Earth was worth cultivating as an ally.

  Cordez knew all about the Sumerian principle of non-interference. It was the idea a civilization not yet at the technological level of star flight should be left to develop in its own ways, and keep its own customs. It was a principle he would normal have agreed with, but not with the Invardii turning every planet into a wasteland as they spread out from the galactic core.

  Earth had promised not to give the Mersa star drive capability, at least without Sumerian consent, and that may have swung the vote in Cordez’ direction. An ally who did not have star ships was fine with the Regent, he didn’t mind ferrying the Mersa about. In fact he intended to start doing exactly that very soon. It was time to put together a team to visit Alamos!

  Cordez had kept Sallyanne Montoya, the off world specialist, as his secretary when she assumed that role for the Sumerian visit to discuss the Earth-Mersa Alliance. She was the first to be told she would be part of the team.

  Cordez kept files on a number of individuals who had impressed him in the past. They were all individuals who had shown good leadership in difficult circumstances, and they were usually young. He didn’t want people – no matter how innovative in the past – who were set in their ways.

  He also didn’t want people with too many successes behind them. That preordained a certain way of thinking, and he wanted open minds.

  He read through the file on Celia Darpaggio, the leader of the research team that had escaped from Ragnaroth just before it was destroyed, and nodded to himself. She was in. Then he gave Sallyanne the details for Celia and her team. Whatever they were doing, wherever they were, he wanted them here within a week.

  Fedic Vits would be the tactical and backup force, and he would have a free hand to select his own security and piloting team. The ship would not be a standard star drive vessel, and it would need a specialist crew.

  Cordez thought about going himself, but he knew he couldn’t. Much as he wanted to be there at a turning point in Earth’s history, he needed to stay at his desk. No one knew how long it would be before Earth was attacked by one of the vast Invardii armadas, and he needed to work every waking hour to prepare for that time.

  It had been Rothii and Sumerian bases that had been destroyed so far, not Earth bases, but Earth would honor its commitment to support the Sumerians in any way it could.

  The alliance between them was also a practical matter, since the Sumerians had the only deep space navy at the moment, and they had access to Rothii technology. That was a start Cordez’ Prometheus project could build on – if they were given the time to do so!

  Celia would lead the mission. Cordez had thought of a few other leaders with more experience, and more political savvy, but that was not what was needed on Alamos. The process of government on the planet was essentially devolved, with local Mersa making most of their own decisions.

  Celia’s relative political innocence, and small team management skills, would be an advantage. The Mersa also saw females in general as more responsible, and again, a female leader would be an advantage.

  Cordez thought of the Mersa as they were shown in the recordings Fedic Vits had taken. They were a small, slight people, barely coming to his shoulder. Male and female characteristics were subdued, but noticeable. He had seen the way they intently studied anything of interest to them, chattering animatedly among themselves. They had a strong sense of curiosity, and lived within a tightly bound social fabric.

  The Mersa moved more quickly, and seemed to be more physically flexible, than Humans. The hairlessness of their bodies was a little disconcerting at first, but a layer of soft down covered them all over.

  Clothing was similar to that found on Earth, but exceptionally finely woven. The colors in the clothing were subdued, and seemed to be chosen to match the color of the down that covered them, which was normally variations on a light brown.

  Depending on the size of the team Fedic Vits would need, there should be about fourteen people on the mission. The ship would need room to bring back the first scientists from Alamos, so they could see what working with Earth scientists would be like.

  For his first few missions to Alamos, when he was just gathering information, Fedic Vits had gone in with two others, who had stayed with the ship. This time Fedic would need a much larger ship, and it would be preferable that it remained undetected in orbit while a team was down on the surface. Cordez tapped the desk with his fingers. Where could he get such a craft quic
kly, and anonymously?

  As it turned out, he couldn’t get a craft like that as quickly as he would have liked, but there were a few cargo ships that operated more or less outside the law. They spent their time servicing the more disreputable mining sites further out in the solar system, and were based in the largely lawless mining colonies on the Martian surface.

  It cost him a considerable sum to outfit a team, led by Fedic, and commandeer the best of the ships that were available. The threat of an Earth peacekeeping force permanently stationed on Mars kept the miners quiet about the deal. Besides, they would have their ship back soon enough.

  Then there was provisioning, and the basic training Fedic insisted all the team members have. He couldn’t keep them alive if they didn’t understand a few field commands, and if they didn’t do what he told them to do. Eventually Fedic was satisfied with the mental and physical shape of the team that would be going to Alamos.

  A week later the ship came out of star drive and eased into orbit around the Mersa planet. There was a cloaking device, which consisted of a photon deflection field that surrounded the ship. It warped any light rays passing near them, and returned the rays to their original paths. This was a little piece of Rothii technology stolen from ancient Rothii sites and sold, illegally, to the miners.

  The first party to go down to the surface would consist of Fedic, Roberto, and Celia. They were microchipped so they could be tracked, and their commslink armbands were set to transmit everything that happened around them back to the ship.

  Andre, Jeneen and Sallyanne would be monitoring the ground team’s progress using the full sensor array of the ship. The members of the team were pumped full of an all-purpose synthetic antibody that destroyed anything not coded into its recognition files.

  The bio-samples Fedic had brought back to Earth from his earlier visits had all checked out as within limits the Human body could handle, but the team were not taking any chances. For the sake of the Mersa, as much as for themselves.

  Fedic spent a little time setting up an energy dipole between the landing shuttle and the ship, and Celia studied him as he worked.

  Cordez had told her he was a man who could live in the shadows when he needed to, and could foresee just about every eventuality before it happened. She figured he was some sort of field operative with a whole lot of experience, though that wasn’t obvious on the surface.

  He was not a big man, nor did he seem special in any way. Perhaps this was the face he turned to the world so he could blend into the background wherever he went. She saw that he moved surprisingly quickly, and lightly. But above all he seemed to be somehow dispassionate, detached from the situation he was in.

  He had been courteous to her since they met, and in fact exhibited an old-fashioned sense of chivalry. But underneath the calm exterior she thought she could see signs of a driven man. There was no doubting his steely-eyed resolve to bring them all back safely when he was in charge of security on the mission.

  Celia offered to help with some of the straightforward mechanical work. Partly she did this to build up some kind of rapport with him. On this trip he would be working for her, and she needed to know what he saw as his role in the team.

  The shuttle was an unprepossessing black sphere that was intended to carry five passengers, and possibly more if they were crammed together for the duration of the ride. It worked on the simple principle that what was lost in potential energy as it dropped toward the planet below them was stored by the ship until it was needed to bring them back up again.

  The unified field dipole that existed between the ship and the shuttle acted like a thin, stretchable rope. The energy lost to atmospheric friction had to be provided by the ship’s engines, but overall it was a very efficient way of navigating the gravity well that surrounded every planet. It was another piece of Rothii technology that unscrupulous miners at the Mars colonies had managed to get their hands on.

  A few hours later, Fedic, Roberto, and Celia plummeted weightlessly toward Alamos on the night side of the planet. The rendezvous site was just outside of a Mersa settlement called Little Worthystead, and at the moment the site was a few hours ahead of the rising sun.

  Fedic had alerted a Mersa family he had visited previously, and they were prepared to act as hosts to the small party. Some of the Mersa had been shown how to use linguist earpieces on his earlier visit, and he would take a number of sets with him this time as well.

  The monosheet coating on the surface of the shuttle absorbed any radiation, including light, and stored the heat generated by its passage through the atmosphere. It fell undetected toward the surface of the planet, until their speed stabilized against air pressure, and the sensation of weight returned.

  Then they began to be buffeted by turbulence in the more dense atmosphere of the lower altitudes. Fedic bled off their speed through the dipole link with the ship, and after a period of moderate deceleration they landed with a soft thump.

  Celia looked at Roberto and took a deep breath. She thought momentarily, ‘here we go again’.

  Roberto raised an eyebrow and made a ‘why me’ face. Celia smiled, and then Fedic did something with a panel set into one side of the shuttle, and there was a hiss as the air pressure inside the shuttle adjusted to the atmospheric pressure on Alamos.

  CHAPTER 2

  ________________

  A round hatch slid inside the wall of the shuttle, and Celia was looking out into a small glade set in dense forest. It was night. Light spilled out of the opening and across a floor of leaves and sparse grasses.

  This looks all right, thought Celia. It could almost be Earth.

  It was quiet outside the shuttle, quiet with the stillness of the forest just before dawn. Fedic clicked the straps of a backpack into place, and slid easily out of the hatch.

  Celia followed more awkwardly, getting a firm hold on the edge of the hatch before negotiating the waist-high drop to the ground. The shuttle was definitely built for practical necessity, she thought, and not for the comfort of its passengers.

  A light clicked on at the other side of the glade, and two small, slim figures made their way forward. Fedic had vanished into the shadows the moment he hit the ground, and Celia found herself facing the newcomers on her own.

  Roberto popped through the hatch a moment later and stood beside her. The two Mersa hesitated. Celia remembered from her training that there was little size difference between males and females among the Mersa, but Roberto stood a head taller than her. He was also very much taller than the Mersa.

  Celia smiled. It was easy to forget this was all new to the Mersa as well as to the Humans. Apart from Fedic of course. The Mersa moved closer, until she could see them clearly in the light from the shuttle hatch.

  One of the Mersa was male, and the other female. This was reasonably clear from their body shape, though both were the same height. The greatest difference, however, was in the clothing.

  They wore the same type of short-sleeved top, and they both had mid-calf pants under a belt that held numerous articles. But the female had a noticeably brighter appearance. Her clothes were loose-fitting, and her small ears carried strands of woven gold that fell about her neck like a combined necklace and earring set.

  There was some difference in the light down that covered their heads, calves, and the backs of their hands, the only parts of their bodies exposed. The clothing contained golds and tans that matched the color of the down that covered them – hers running to a brighter yellow while his had a light red in it

  Celia heard a few hesitant notes, like an orchestra tuning up, and realized the Mersa were speaking to her. Dammit, the linguist earpiece wasn’t working! What a time for the programming to fail.

  She turned to her armband and tapped in a ‘delete and download’ sequence from the ship. A few seconds later the re-programming was complete, and she heard the words of the Mersa again, as recorded by the ship.

  “Welcome to Alamos, Celia-leader. Fedic-friend informs us you
represent the planet Earth-home.”

  Sallyanne was listening intently as she sat at her monitor on the ship. The off-world sociologist was delighted to be gathering new material for her studies. She overrode the language programming and set it up to automatically delete the second informative of the double nouns. She told Celia what she had done over the commslink, speaking directly into her earpiece.

  “Thank you for being here to welcome us, at this very early time in the morning,” replied Celia. “It is very kind of you to be our hosts. All of us are looking forward to knowing more about the Mersa people, and about your home, Alamos.”

  This seemed to be all the introductory remarks the Mersa needed. They headed back the way they had come, beckoning the shuttle team to join them. A path led away from the other side of the glade, and the Mersa walked briskly along it. Fedic stepped out of the shadows, and noiselessly followed the other two as they left the glade.

  A little further along the path widened, and to one side stood a line of short, slight figures with lights. The female Mersa who had welcomed them to the forest glade motioned toward the group with one slender arm. “These people will take care of your flying craft. They are trusted members of our family.”

  Celia was not sure how accurate the linguist programming was. These people must be members of their hosts’ extended family, or they might be members of another Alliance of some sort.

  The female Mersa, who seemed to be acting as the leader, asked the team to move as quietly as possible, and refrain from speaking. The male took up a position behind them, next to Fedic.

  Within a few minutes the little party emerged into a well-ordered village. There were no street lights, and they followed the bobbing lights of their hosts into a wide gravel driveway beside a large, rambling house.

  They followed the driveway round the back, and were ushered inside through an ornate archway. Some sort of ionization screen flickered on behind them, and turned opaque to shut out the night.