Free Falco Invictus: On the Forge of War by Rodney C. Johnson Page A

enough to hold the whole of
the Raptor as well as a dozen more like it.
    Kulcarin moved closer to the holo. “Can we
breach that door?”
    “It’s a crack in the shell,” Shierak
affirmed.
    Triumph flared in Kulcarin's eyes. “Prepare
to grapple and breach. We're going in.”
    The Tair'Aliran 's ventral hatches
clutched onto the alien ship’s hanger bay door and permitted for
her crew to pierce through with a diamond headed maul. A probe
concluded the atmosphere aboard the barge was breathable and within
Terran ranges. Kulcarin and a half dozen of his men entered the
alien vessel.
    Whoever built this had been large. The size
of an SUV turned on its nose to approximate by the dimensions of
the doorways. When they entered the hanger bay, the Falcanians
found it was empty of any craft, though it seemed the ships
internal systems worked as subdued reddish light came on once the
ship's internal sensors noticed the Falcanians.
    Kulcarin walked with his men through the
unadorned ship. They soon split into two teams to cover more
ground. Mostly empty rooms were found. Slate black walls did
register on scans and were not apparently made from whatever the
outer hull had been formed from. Kulcarin wandered about the empty
chambers, while he looked at his scanner. He had strayed from his
men, fascinated by the idea of where he was and gone off into some
other chambers more toward the center of the ship. Aranskrai's
communicator chirped. “This is Grath, my team found what we think
is the bridge.” There was a short pause before the voice spoke
again. “The command chair – these beings were huge!”
    Kulcarin smiled. He never heard his engineer
filled with such awe before. “Anything that can tell us what, or
who made her?”
    “I think I found a data crystal... It's
gigantic.”
    “Bring it. My mother will find it of use,”
Kulcarin commanded.
    Colonel Aranskrai came to a large square
door and pressed the oversized button on the nearby wall. The doors
slid open, creaking as if in need of lubrication. Kulcarin stepped
forward as he felt his third eye tingle. His Tahru tutor always
told him to pay attention to that tingle. It usually meant
something important lay ahead.
    A box... no, rather a sarcophagus sat in the
center of the room. Obsidian in color like the rest of the ship. It
was simple, no markings to indicate if it were barren or occupied
with remains. Across from the sarcophagus on the black wall were
the first adornments Kulcarin had seen on this strange vessel. A
mural glowed on the crystalline black bulkhead. Below it a
block-like alien script told the tale, but Aranskrai could not read
it.
    Had Kulcarin been able to understand the
hieroglyphs, three words would have been of interest to him:
Gwareen, Kri-Skar, and Kranix T’Raul, were players in the mural’s
epic. Two planets with armies between them clashed in the picture.
One with large continents that seemed to have been carved by ice,
great green oceans made it appear to be a jewel, a grand emerald.
The other world red, perhaps hilly and its gray seas seemed to be
filled with constant storm.
    Aranskrai eyed harder the image. His
thoughts interrupted by the tomb's door as it slammed shut.
Kulcarin did not move, too enthralled with the pictures on the wall
to bother with the mechanism. Instead he stepped closer to get a
better look at the two armies between the red and green worlds.
    They were large and covered with fur, ivory
colored wool to be exact. Ram horns adorned their heads as they
charged toward their much shorter opponents. Very little doubt to
conclude by proportions these horned goat-men had built this black
mausoleum ship. The other army bore a resemblance to brawny,
six-feet tall… jackrabbits. Not typical cuddly bunnies by any
means. They had extended fangs, spiky pelts and wore elaborate
braids. Their soft fur ranged in shades of black, white or other
beneath sparse armor. Probably not herbivores judged Kulcarin,
given the predatory