The Defense of Provenia: A Military Sci-Fi Series (The Unity Wars Book 2)

by Peter Nealen

  Gaumarus didn’t know what to say to that. He just followed, as Kan Tur led the way down the steps to the parade ground outside.

  “The Order has been changing,” Kan Tur continued after a long pause, “and not for the better. There has been more and more of this same attitude; that the smaller details of doing the right thing are not worth our time, that it is better to ignore the smaller causes for the sake of pursuing the larger ones. We are not to ‘squander’ ourselves on anything that is not ‘worthy’ of us. Which increasingly means helping those who can offer large donations to the Order, or simply to seek glory and acclaim in far-off systems.”

  He had almost seemed to be speaking to himself, so Gaumarus didn’t comment. He just followed along, trying not to look too nervous as they strode past the guards outside the barracks. The security presence was considerable, probably because of Colonel Lamans’s presence.

  As they walked, the doubts began to set in. It couldn’t be this easy. It was a trap, a psychological trick they were playing on him. He started to look at Kan Tur, wondering if that was really the Knight he’d fought beside under that helmet. How hard would it have been to work up a costume that might fool him?

  And yet, even as he flexed his hands around the coilgun he was carrying, he looked down at it. It certainly looked real, and it looked like it was live. He wanted to function-check it, just to be sure, but he didn’t dare, not while the other guards were watching.

  “This way,” Kan Tur said, turning toward the vehicle yard. “Sergeant Verheyen is waiting for us.”

  Gaumarus stopped at that, and Kan Tur turned impatiently, glancing around them. “What is it?” he demanded.

  Gaumarus shook his head. “They took Verheyen into custody at the same time they took me and Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff,” he said. “How can he be waiting for us, and no alarm has been raised?” He didn’t point the coilgun at Kan Tur; he was still too unsure about what was happening. And he didn’t want to attract too much undue attention from the other guards within sight.

  “Listen to me, Gaumarus,” Kan Tur said. He did not step closer or reach for his weapon. “Verheyen was not as closely guarded as you. I do not know why; perhaps for some reason they thought he was less valuable as a prisoner. But he is in the vehicle yard, with another crawler, waiting for us.”

  Gaumarus thought he knew why Verheyen might have been less heavily-guarded. Verheyen was a Latecomer. He was a Pell, one of the first Families. And that made him a valuable piece on the political board for Lamans.

  In a way, Kan Tur’s professed ignorance about why reassured him. The Knight would not have known all the political machinations on Provenia, and would not have had time to familiarize himself in the day since they’d been arrested.

  “Come on, Gaumarus,” Kan Tur insisted. “Unless you’d prefer to go back to your cell?”

  “Why did you break me out?” he asked.

  “This is not the time…”

  “It’s exactly the time!” Gaumarus hissed. “How do I know this isn’t a trick? How do I know that it’s you, and not some interrogator dressed in a costume, getting my hopes up the quicker to break me?”

  Kan Tur reached up and unsealed his helmet, lifting it and tucking it under his arm. The same scarred, aquiline face looked down at him. “Satisfied?” he asked.

  Gaumarus breathed out slowly. He nodded shortly. “Let’s go.”

  Frowning, Kan Tur turned and continued on their way.

  They were a dozen paces from the vehicle yard when an alarm began to whoop. It wasn’t a prisoner alarm; this was an annex to the base, not a prison. He was sure they would have moved him soon, even if the prison was no longer intact. Perhaps to a windowless cargo container or prefab.

  Maybe it was something else. Maybe the rebels were trying something, or maybe Kan Tur had arranged another diversion. But a loudspeaker began to blare, dashing that hope.

  “Lock down the annex!” the voice crackled. “Prisoner escape!”

  “Well, there goes the element of surprise,” Kan Tur said. He’d replaced his helmet. “Run!”

  Together, they dashed through the gate into the vehicle yard. An engine roared, and then a crawler lurched to a halt just in front of them, the door swinging open. Verheyen was behind the wheel.

  “Get in!” he bellowed. “I don’t want to be here when they pull the heavy weapons out!”

  Gaumarus put his boot on the running board, only to have Kan Tur seize him by the back of the flak vest and heave him up into the cab. A moment later, the armored form of the former Knight crashed into the cab behind him. “GO!” Kan Tur boomed.

  Verheyen gunned the engine and the crawler surged forward on its massive tires. Gaumarus wasn’t set, and went sprawling into the back of the cab, knocking his head on his purloined coilgun. His helmet, not exactly well-fitted or properly fastened, was knocked askew, and he couldn’t see for a second.

  He’d just gotten it straightened when the crawler rocked again with a massive bang. “Are we hit?’ he asked.

  “No, I just rammed through the fence,” Verheyen yelled over his shoulder. The crawler was rocking and swaying violently as Gaumarus hauled himself up to look out the window.

  The annex was situated right on the top of a bluff that descended steeply about thirty meters to the river below. Verheyen was driving straight down that bluff. Only the extremely tough independent suspensions of the crawler’s wheels were keeping the vehicle even remotely level.

  “You’re a madman, Verheyen,” Gaumarus said, throwing himself into a seat and hastily strapping himself in. “You do know that these things can flip over, right?”

  “I was perfectly sane until I followed you into that mountain tribe tunnel,” Verheyen said with a laugh that sounded faintly hysterical. He had to know just what it meant, what they were doing. There was no going back now. “Since then I’ve started infiltrating M’tait Hunterships with fusion bombs, breaking declared traitors out of prison…driving straight down a cliff shouldn’t be any…whoa!” The rear end of the crawler had lost purchase, and they were suddenly swinging and sliding down toward the water. But Verheyen struggled a moment with the controls and got the vehicle back under control, gasping. “We’re fine, we’re fine.”

  “Maybe focus on driving instead of talking for a moment,” Kan Tur put in. Verheyen just gulped and nodded.

  Gaumarus found he had been gripping the armrests of his seat with whitened knuckles. He forced himself to relax. “Well, now that we’re all going to be targets,” he said quietly, or as quietly as he could while still being heard over the rumble of the engine and the wheels hammering into rocks, “what do we do? They’ll hunt us down if they can.”

  “First thing, we’re going to the indig prison camp,” Kan Tur said, levering himself into the seat next to Verheyen.

  Gaumarus looked at him, his mind still racing, his thoughts as jumbled by the shock of what had happened in the last few days as by the adrenaline rush of their escape and near-crash. The crawler was trundling down the bank of the river now, moving almost too fast to maintain control.

  “How did you find out about all of this, Kan Tur?” he asked. “If they were so intent on keeping the Knights out of it, I doubt the government would have simply told you.”

  “Of course they didn’t,” Kan Tur said, glancing back over his shoulder. “But our tech is of a rather higher order than yours.” He might have been smiling grimly behind that faceplate. “There is nothing that your government can say over comms that we cannot listen to, if we wish.”

  Gaumarus nodded. He supposed that made sense. “They put the indig in a prison camp?”

  “All of the surviving scouts they could find, including your friend, Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff,” Verheyen said. “They think the mountain tribes are going to launch an offensive, and they’re holding the scouts as hostages.”

  “Idiots,” Kan Tur muttered.

  Gaumarus could only nod again. It was actually quite likely that the mountain tri
bes were going to do just that. But at the same time, given what was believed about the scouts, it still made the government fools. Unless they had discovered that the majority of the scouts were in fact mountain tribesmen, then they still thought that holding lowlanders hostage would deter the mountain tribes. From what Gaumarus had learned, the mountain tribesmen wouldn’t even hesitate if that had been the case.

  “So, the plan is to hide among the mountain tribes, then?” he asked. “They might not be so welcoming to humans, now that the M’tait are gone.”

  But Kan Tur shook his head. “No. I have no intention of hiding among the abos for the rest of our lives.” He turned to look squarely at Gaumarus. “But we cannot very well board a ship at the one intact spaceport that is currently controlled by the government, and doesn’t have an intact starship on it anyway, can we?”

  It was a testament to how rattled he was that Gaumarus frowned in confusion. Only after a moment of Kan Tur watching him expectantly did he come to understand. “The smugglers.”

  Kan Tur nodded. “They are our only way off the planet at the moment. And the abos are our only way of finding them.”

  He turned forward, dragging his powergun up off the floor. “We shall be at the camp within the hour, and they will probably be on the alert after this escape. Be ready.”

  “I think they’re more afraid of the mountain tribes than they are of us,” Verheyen said.

  Gaumarus couldn’t disagree. He watched the hastily-erected camp through the magnifiers that Kan Tur had brought. There were hasty fighting positions dug in at each corner, fortified so as to be able to fire inward as well as outward. Heavy coilguns and older autocannons were mounted in the holes.

  “How are we supposed to get in there?” Gaumarus asked. He wasn’t especially expecting an answer; it was clearly impossible. They couldn’t just drive the crawler in. Those autocannons would perforate the cab and anyone in it in short order. And Kan Tur wouldn’t be able to just walk in, either; the alert had to have gone out shortly after his own escape.

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” Kan Tur said, crawling up to join the two Provenians where they crouched near the crest of a hill overlook the camp. He was dragging something long and boxy along with him. “Did you really think that I was so unprepared?”

  “What is that?” Verheyen asked, twisting around to stare at it.

  “This is an HV missile launcher, with four missiles in separate launch cells,” Kan Tur replied. “One per fighting position should be sufficient.” He raised himself up to a kneeling position and shouldered the launcher. “They really should have been better prepared.”

  Gaumarus suddenly realized that Kan Tur was about to launch the attack right then and there. “Wait,” he hissed. “At least let us get into position first.”

  “No time,” Kan Tur replied. “Just be ready to move.”

  Gaumarus wasn’t sure why it was so urgent until he glanced down and saw movement below them.

  There had to be fifty or sixty indig warriors creeping through the folds in the ground, down on all fours with repeaters strapped across their backs, approaching the camp. That certainly explained Kan Tur’s rush.

  The HV missiles howled out of the launcher and slammed down the slope. The shockwaves from their passage hammered both Gaumarus and Verheyen into the dirt. They hit within an eyeblink, and four fighting positions erupted, one after another, in bright but brief flashes, suddenly obscured by the clouds of black dirt and smoke.

  The indig warriors were already moving, taking advantage of the shock. Repeaters boomed in the night, and in a matter of minutes, there was little or no return fire coming from the camp guards.

  Kan Tur was already starting down the slope. “Come along, my friends,” he called. “I doubt this will take long, and we don’t want them to disappear before we can meet up with them.”

  It seemed as if none of the guards had been remotely ready for combat. The surviving guard force had surrendered en masse by the time the three men reached level ground, and the prisoners were flowing out, picking up Provenian weapons as they went.

  Gaumarus wasn’t sure of the wisdom of walking into that killing ground wearing Provenian uniforms and carrying weapons. The nearest fighting positions were craters, huge holes had been blown in the fence, and bodies and parts of bodies were strewn across the central yard. Indig warriors were clearing out the camp buildings, as freed indig prisoners flowed out to disappear into the pseudo-grass outside.

  Exterior guards set by the indig assault force were watching them approach, but did not lift their weapons. “Did you manage to communicate with them?” Gaumarus asked Kan Tur.

  “No,” Kan Tur replied. “Pure luck that we decided to hit the camp at the same time they did. But I think that they saw where the missiles came from, so they are currently willing to give us the benefit of the doubt.” He looked at Gaumarus. “You are the one who knows the sign language, Gaumarus.”

  Gulping, Gaumarus stepped forward. [We are friends,] he signed, hoping that one of the mountain tribesmen currently watching him with blank black eyes could understand. [I have come looking for Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff.]

  For a long moment, as more indig slipped away into the dark, the warriors just stared at him. Then one of them stood and beckoned. Twisting his head around to look behind him, he chirped and hissed into the dark.

  Gaumarus stepped closer and stopped when the indig lifted a hand to signal him to wait there. He wondered what was going to happen.

  He found that he didn’t actually care that much. The adrenaline had drained away again, and even though there was some hope for life, he had no idea what he was going to do with it. His home was gone, his own people had turned against him, and his family was dead. What was left?

  You know what is left. He could almost have sworn that the thought came in Waldenius’s voice.

  Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff appeared out of the dark. [You are alive, Friend of Hunters,] he signed. [I am glad. I thank you for helping free us.]

  [You are my friend, Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff,] Gaumarus replied. [We could not leave you a prisoner. And now, I have a favor to ask you…]

  [You could come with us,] Gaumarus signed to Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff.

  They were standing at the base of the landing pad within the camouflaged silo where the smuggler’s ship, the Velvet Sierryl squatted on her landing jacks. Verheyen had already boarded, and the ship’s mate, formerly the cargomaster before the captain had been killed during that last battle with the M’tait, was standing impatiently on the ramp, tapping her foot. She was a wiry, bitter-looking woman, with her head shaved bald, probably for ease of cleanliness and neatness in zero-gee.

  But Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed a negative. [I cannot. Fights with Great Beasts was my father, and now that he is gone, I must take his place.] He put a clawed hand on Gaumarus’s shoulder, in a curiously human gesture. [I still have a place here. You could have one, too. Someday, we might need a go-between with the human leaders. You could stay with us until that day.]

  Gaumarus shook his head. [They would make sure that I was seen as the worst traitor in history before then,] he said. [I cannot stay.]

  [Then farewell, Friend of Hunters,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed. [Watch always for the predator that slinks in the night.] It was an old indig proverb, one that he’d become familiar with in the years since he’d come to know Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff.

  He looked down at the alien face, flat and covered in bristles, with its strange, three-sided mouth and four featureless black eyes. It did not seem like the sort of face a human could call “friend,” but he knew that, aside from the two men who had already boarded the Velvet Sierryl, it belonged to the best friend he’d ever had.

  [Farewell, my friend,] he signed. He turned and started up the ramp toward the hatch, halfway up the ship’s hull. He would miss Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff.

  He would miss a lot about Provenia. But he had no choice. He
stepped through the hatch, setting foot on the deck of a starship for the first time in his life, and looked around.

  “I think we’re ready to go,” he said.

  Epilogue

  Gaumarus floated in the small, cramped lounge, looking out the viewport at the planet below. Zero-gravity had definitely taken some getting used to; he’d spent much of the first day in freefall clinging to every handhold he could find, trying not to be violently ill. But he had eventually gotten his “space-legs,” and could now navigate the Velvet Sierryl’s narrow passageways with relative ease.

  Kan Tur drifted to the viewport next to him, dressed in the simple coverall that he wore beneath his armor. The former Knight had come with nothing but the armor and weapons he had had on his person when they’d fled Provenia.

  The lift had been easy; Provenia had no groundside defenses left capable of stopping a starship, especially one launching from half a continent away from any intact PDF base. There had been nothing but scrap left in orbit. Dawn Station had been a gutted shell, drifting in a cloud of debris, both metal, composite and organic. There wouldn’t be a ship capable of stopping the Velvet Sierryl in system until long after she was gone.

  “Bader-Van,” Kan Tur said. Neither spoke the other’s native language yet, though they were working on it, so he still had his translator headset on. “Nothing particularly special, except that it’s a hub for trade routes connecting the Ietran Bubble with the Miter Stars.”

  Gaumarus nodded. “So, we should be able to find a ship here.”

  “Of course,” Kan Tur replied. “What we’re going to do with it is the question that remains to be seen.”

  “I’m not asking you to come with me, Kan Tur,” Gaumarus said. “I know it sounds insane; find one captive girl in all this vast galaxy, and somehow rescue her from the M’tait.”