Ashes of the Realm - Death of an Empire (Ashes of the Realm (Book Three)) by Saxon Andrew Read Free Book Online Page A

hundred of those slugs.”
    Robby did a double take, “Why did you take those?”
    “Because I saw Dani had taken some out of the Defense Facility’s inventory. I assumed she was smarter than I was so I also loaded them.”
    Robby looked at Dani, “Do you see him.”
    “No, but that doesn’t mean he’s not there.”
    “This explains why you had to be involved. It fits.”
    Dani smiled, “Weed, where is the largest concentration of crew members?”
    Weed looked at Seed again and said, “Twenty are along the back wall manning the drive and beam controls.”
    “Carter, those are yours to handle. Are you ready?”
    Carter keyed his armor’s weapon control and made a change, “The slugs are now loaded.”
    Robby said, “Lock in your coordinates; Weed, tell us as soon as that field drops.”
    “You still haven’t told me how you’re going to remove the drive.”
    Robby smiled, “That’s the easy part. Keep your focus on that screen.”
    Weed saw the huge black ship fall slightly off its orbit, “It won’t be long. The ship is starting to drift.”

Chapter Four
    T he Ship Master was not feeling well. He felt shaky and his head was hurting with a beating pain that almost made him pass out. He looked around the bridge and saw that his crew was also looking bad. Something was happening. He reached for a pinch of orange powder and saw that half of the container was green. What’s going on? He looked at his hands and saw they were covered with splotchy green sores that itched. One of the crew members suddenly fell out of their chair and began trembling on the floor. “Open a channel to the Masters.”
    The operator of the force field reached for the control and tumbled out of his chair unconscious. The Master stood and stumbled over to his console and pushed the pad to lower the field. Suddenly a being in bright red armor appeared to his right and shot him in the chest with some kind of weapon. The Sensor Master raised his gun to fire on the intruder and was knocked ten feet back by something that hit him in the chest. The Communications Master reached for the pad to activate his console and his head blow up.
    Carter appeared at the back wall and shot fifteen of the orange colored creatures in less than two seconds. Most of them were unable to draw their weapons because of the tremors they were experiencing. Five of them were on the floor starting the severe tremors that happened just before death. Ten of the crew members that were operating consoles were able to fire at the red colored beings but their beams just splashed off their armor. Every Invader on the bridge was killed and none of them had been able to get off a shot that damaged any of the delicate machinery.
    “Kreej, we’re ready.”
    Kreej teleported on the bridge and looked around. He turned toward a console and then looked behind him. “Do you want the communications console as well?”
    “Can you take both?”
    “Yes, I can. However, there is a failsafe on the drive.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “If anything disrupts power to the console, the self destruct-circuit automatically goes off.”
    Robby looked at Dani, “Then we must abort this mission.”
    Kreej started at the console and said, “No, we’ve got to make the effort. The three of you should go now and I’ll take the console in my final sweep. I’ll teleport out as soon as I get it.”
    “There won’t be enough time, Kreej.”
    “Robby, I’m pretty certain that there will be a minimal delay from the destruct device when power is cut. They must cut power to work on this ship so the computer behind the device will have to determine that something out of the ordinary is happening. We’ve got to try.”
    Dani looked at Robby and said, “Good-luck, Kreej.” Robby, Dani, and Carter disappeared from the bridge.
    Kreej looked around the bridge and moved behind the communications console and extended his wings. He set the armor to absorption and brought them together. The drive