The Short End: Broken Galaxy Book Four

by Phil Huddleston

  Sobong looked pointedly at Ziollo…

  “…we cannot defeat them. The combination of the Ashkelon and the Nidarians gives them an overwhelming advantage in manufacturing warships and providing cannon fodder to man them. They are willing to sacrifice thousands more of their people to win this war than we are. They will overwhelm us with sheer numbers in any kind of straight-up shooting war.”

  Sobong toyed with her tablet, clearly gathering her thoughts. Finally, she began speaking again.

  “Therefore, we have to cheat. We have to find some way to beat them without a long, drawn-out war of attrition that we will surely lose.”

  Winnie sat up straighter. She knew that the true underlying reason for this meeting was to convey some message to her and to Ziollo. And mostly to her, because she was the Human representative and a direct conduit to Admiral Rita Page.

  Sure enough, Sobong looked at her again.

  “725 lights Coreward of Ashkelon, there is a culture we call the Goblins. They are not biological. They are an Artificial Intelligence culture - a society of machines, so to speak. They are highly advanced, with ships and weapons comparable to our own. Or at least, they had such technology twenty-five thousand years ago, which was the last contact with them.”

  Sobong paused and stared at Winnie again, waiting for something.

  Waiting for me to ask the obvious question.

  “Can we enlist them as allies?” Winnie asked, knowing that was the question Sobong was trying to elicit.

  “That is the question, Commander. And I have to tell you, it’s highly unlikely. We have an unfortunate history with them. Twenty-five thousand years ago - before the Golden Empire was a gleam in Emperor Ranssarrian’s eye - the biologicals of that era were afraid the Goblins would take over the galaxy. The biologicals made a concerted effort to wipe them out. Over a period of a thousand years, biologicals killed billions of them. They destroyed a half-dozen of their star systems. The Goblins were driven to the brink of extinction.

  “The system they hold now was their last refuge - their Stalingrad, you might call it. The place they made their last stand. And, like your Stalingrad, they survived. At the last moment, on the verge of wiping out the Goblins completely, the coalition of biologicals fell apart. They began fighting among themselves. And shortly after that, Emperor Ranssarrian founded the Empire in fire and sword. The Goblins were largely forgotten and left to their own devices.”

  Sobong paused, her attention focused on Winnie.

  “As a result of this history, the Goblins do not permit a biological to enter their system. To them, a biological is like a snake to you Humans. Like a dangerous, poisonous snake. They have an instinctive fear that makes them recoil in horror as soon as they see one.”

  “Ah,” said Winnie. “I begin to see the problem.”

  Sobong nodded. “I thought you would. But here’s the rub. Although they hate and fear all biologicals, they have a special hatred of us Dariama. Our ancestors were the instigators of the coalition that tried to destroy them. Although it’s been twenty-five thousand years since that war, they have long and perfect memories. Any of our ships that get near their territory are shot out of the black without warning, no quarter given. If we sent an embassy to them, they would shoot on sight. There’s no message we could send or gambit we could use that would cause them to listen to us.”

  Winnie leaned back, understanding what Sobong wanted now.

  “You want us Humans to try and approach them.”

  “Yes. Mathematically, per our simulations, it’s our only chance of surviving this war with the Ashkelon. You are the only species that did not fight against them twenty-five thousand years ago. It is possible they might listen to you. Unlikely, but possible. But without the help of the Goblins, our simulations put the chances of surviving this war at only two percent.”

  “Wow,” Ziollo finally said. “And if we manage to obtain their help?”

  Sobong looked grim.

  “Twenty percent.”

  Ashkelon System - Planet Deriko

  Battlecruiser Merkkessa

  Sixteen hours later, Rita stared across the table at the two officers in front of her.

  One of them was Commander Rachel Gibson, her Assistant Flag Aide.

  The other was a fighter pilot.

  She didn’t often talk to fighter pilots - that was Jim Carter’s job.

  But Jim had already left for Deriko to go wild camping. Rita had decided not to recall him for this small matter.

  After the receipt of Winnie’s urgent message from Dekanna about the Goblins, Rita needed a team she could trust. A team that could journey 725 lights to the Goblins, introduce them to Humanity, and attempt to form an alliance with them.

  Rachel was a known quantity. She had distinguished herself during the Battle of Deriko as the Dragon’s Tactical Officer, and since her move to Rita’s staff, she had been rock-solid.

  She’ll do for the mission, thought Rita. She’s got the smarts and the cool head under fire.

  But the pilot. He was an unknown quantity. Jim would normally take care of this selection process for her - but Jim was already down on Deriko. Jim’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Commander Mitchell, had said this guy was the one; the best after Winnie and Roberto, who were still in the Dekanna system working with Admiral Sobong.

  “Paco. That’s your handle?” she asked him, judging his reaction.

  “Yes, milady, Paco is my call sign.”

  Rita noticed the subtle correction.

  “Call sign, then. And you’re good?”

  “I’m the best in the Wing, milady,” Paco said coolly, as if he was telling her the time.

  “Next to Winnie and Roberto,” she said.

  “Maybe next to Winnie, milady. But not Roberto.”

  Rita studied him. He had a cockiness bordering on arrogance. But it seemed to be controlled.

  Well, he IS a fighter pilot. Aren’t they all that way?

  “According to your personnel file, you graduated in the top quarter of your class at the U.S. Naval Academy. So how the hell did you end up in a Space Force fighter wing after that?

  “Just lucky, I guess. I graduated flight school in fighters and joined a carrier group. I spent two years in the Fleet flying everything I could get my hands on. I had just upgraded to the F-44 when the whole Jade incident happened and the big battle at Dutch Harbor. After that, the space force was crying for new pilots to train for space combat. I volunteered, and they accepted me.”

  “How come you weren’t at the Battle of Saturn?”

  “I had just completing training at Boca Chica when that happened,” Paco said bitterly. “I just missed it.”

  “If you’d been there, you’d be dead now,” Rita said softly. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “Yes, milady.”

  Satisfied with Paco’s performance so far, Rita leaned back.

  “Why do you think you’re here, Lieutenant Chapula?”

  Paco smiled. “Well, I don’t normally get called into the presence of the Admiral to discuss my flight training. And I haven’t seriously screwed anything up lately. So I’m guessing you need a volunteer for something incredibly dangerous.”

  Rita couldn’t help but laugh. She glanced at Rachel. Rachel gave her a slight nod.

  “I believe you might be the right person for this job, Paco,” Rita continued. “How would you like to join Commander Gibson and be the first Humans to visit another group of aliens?”

  Paco was taken aback.

  “You mean there’s more of them?”

  Ashkelon System - Planet Deriko

  Packet Boat PB06

  Eight hours later, a small packet boat vectored away from the Merkkessa. Rachel and Paco looked back at the flagship one last time.

  “Wow!” Paco exclaimed. “She’s got patches all over her! She looks like crap!”

  Rachel glared at the Lieutenant. “So would you, if you had stood up against four battlecruisers and a half
-dozen cruisers.”

  Paco shrugged. “Guess so.” Deftly, he spun the little ship and put it on track for the distant system that was their destination.

  Rita had assigned their objective the code name “Stalingrad”. That seemed to describe it succinctly - a place where a determined species had made their last stand. Pushing up the throttles, Paco broke orbit and headed for the mass limit.

  “Stalingrad, here we come!” he voiced loudly. Rachel looked coolly at him.

  “Are you going to be like this all the way there?” she asked.

  “Probably,” Paco winked at her.

  Rachel sighed. “Then I’m going to my cabin. I don’t think I can take any more of your fighter jock patter.”

  Paco smiled at her. Rachel ignored him and left the bridge of the packet boat.

  Although the little packet boat had full tDrive capability, including an ansible for long distance communication, it carried no weapons nor any point-defense cannon. It was hardly more than a couple of cabins wrapped around an engine room. It didn’t even have a name, just a designation - PB06.

  But it would get them there, Rita had assured them. The little boat had been found in the shuttle bay of one of the Ashkelon cruisers captured during the Battle of Jupiter many months before.

  Fleet Intelligence said it wasn’t an Ashkelon design; most likely a trophy captured from some other alien species, then converted to a packet boat by the Ashkelon.

  Importantly, they had verified with Admiral Sobong that the little ship wasn’t a Dariama design. In light of Sobong’s statement that the Goblins hated the Dariama with a special passion and would shoot on sight, that was a critical factor.

  And it wasn’t Nidarian, Taegu or Bagrami. That covered all the species known to humanity so far. So Rita had decided to use it to send her embassy to Stalingrad.

  “But,” Rachel had objected, “what if this boat is from another species that the Goblins hate and shoot on sight?”

  “Sobong says she’s not aware of any other species that the Goblins hate as much as the Dariama.”

  “But she could be wrong!”

  “Yes, she could be wrong, Commander Gibson. So be prepared to talk fast.”

  Now, as Rachel entered her cabin and lay down on her bunk, she ran over the mission parameters in her mind.

  Get to Stalingrad without getting killed. Establish contact with the Goblins. Lay out recent history for them, help them understand the conflict with the Ashkelon. Make sure they understand that if the Ashkelon roll over Humanity, then they’ll inevitably come for the Goblins in their unswerving push to build their empire in the Arm.

  Convince them to help us.

  725 lights to Stalingrad. Twenty-two days. Farther out into the Arm than any Human had ever gone before.

  And I’ll have to listen to that fighter jock bullshit the whole way, I bet.

  Chapter Six

  Ashkelon System - Planet Deriko

  Near Misto Marta

  The planet Deriko was a good bit larger than Mars, and much earlier in its evolution. So it still had water - rivers and lakes. The atmosphere was thin, but breathable by Humans.

  Until four months ago, it had been a slave planet of the Ashkelon Empire, with more than twenty massive factory complexes scattered around the planet - producing weapons for the Ashkelon dream of conquering the entire Orion Arm.

  That was before the Ashkelon made the mistake of bringing in eight slave ships from Earth, each containing 12,000 Human slaves.

  Because one of those Human slaves had been a woman named Tatiana Powell - Luke Powell’s daughter. That mistake had cost the Ashkelon the entire planet. Tatiana had put together a slave rebellion that swept across the land, marching from camp to camp, adding thousands more slaves to her army as she went. She had freed more than 300,000 slaves, members of four species, from a brutal existence under their Ashkelon masters.

  In the process, Tatiana had captured or destroyed every one of the slave camps. All but one of them she had given back to the Ampato, the species native to the planet, to rebuild into new cities.

  But Tatiana had retained one complex, making it into a city of refuge for freed slaves who elected to remain and continue fighting the Ashkelon. Tatiana had named the fledgling city after her best friend, killed in the last battle before the Ashkelon fled the planet.

  Misto Marta. City of Marta.

  Now it was the EDF base in the system - for as long as they could hold it.

  Admiral Rita Page had been thoroughly impressed by Tatiana’s leadership skills in booting the Ashkelon forces off the planet. Rita had quickly recruited Tatiana to the EDF, appointing her an Admiral. Supervising a force of twenty-five thousand, Tatiana was in charge of all ground-based operations for the EDF.

  Ten thousand of her best troops were Special Forces and conducted guerrilla warfare operations on the Ashkelon-occupied planets of Asdif and Ursa. The remainder worked in the city - repairing starship components, assembling weapons, and preparing food and supplies for the warships in orbit above them.

  But today was a different day. At a gravesite high in the foothills overlooking the city, two people stood.

  Tatiana Powell and her husband Mikhail gazed at the stone monument marked simply “Marta”.

  It was the resting place of their friend and fellow warrior - the woman who had died as they won their last victory, driving the Ashkelon off the planet.

  “God, I miss her,” said Tatiana, wiping away a tear. “She saved my life so many times, I lost count. It seemed like every time I looked around, she was saving my life again. And I wasn’t the only one. There were a lot of others, too.”

  Mikhail squeezed her hand. “I know, love. I know.”

  “I’ll never forget her, Mikhail. Never.”

  She turned to her husband and placed her hand on her pregnant abdomen. “When little Marta gets here, I want to tell her about her namesake. Don’t let me forget. Make sure I remember to tell her.”

  “We’ll remember, Tat. Don’t worry. We’ll tell her.”

  With one last sad look at the grave, Tatiana turned and headed back to the command shuttle parked nearby. She was now several months pregnant, and no longer willing to hike the fifteen klicks from the city to this remote location.

  And there was the problem of security. The Ashkelon were not happy about losing an entire planet to this woman, a former slave - and what was worse, a Human. A species the Ashkelon viewed as barely better than animals, weak and stupid.

  There was scuttlebutt the Ashkelon had put a price on her head equivalent to the cost of a starship. No attempts had yet been made on her life. But everyone knew the threat was out there - a sword hanging over her.

  Entering the shuttle, she smiled first at her bodyguards, sitting up front in the crew area, then at Commander Jim Carter, waiting for them in the rear.

  Having paid his respects at Marta’s grave, Jim had quickly returned to the shuttle to allow Tatiana and Mikhail personal time at the gravesite.

  Jim had never met Marta in life; but he knew how important she had been to the rebellion. Without her, it was said, it was unlikely they would have succeeded in clearing Deriko of the Ashkelon and freeing the slaves. So he paid his respects, and in some sense wished he had known her.

  “Are you still dead-set on wild camping?” asked Mikhail as they buckled in.

  “Yes, if you don’t mind dropping me off,” Jim replied.

  “No problem,” Mikhail spoke as the shuttle pilot lifted off. They headed northwest, deeper into the mountains.

  Forty thousand feet above them, an escort flight of four fighters could barely be seen, keeping overwatch on the shuttle. Tatiana’s troops were dedicated to her, almost reverential, guarding her person day and night. She was never out of sight of her bodyguard and escort, except in her own room at night with Mikhail.

  Within a half-hour, they arrived at a remote wilderness area, far to the north. The shuttle put down on a gravel bar beside a mountain river. Jim climbed o
ut, dragging his backpack and rifle.

  “See you in three weeks!” he called as he waved goodbye. “Thanks for the lift!”

  Tatiana and Mikhail waved farewell. “Stay safe! Call if you need us!”

  Jim acknowledged as the shuttle lifted off, lifting his emergency radio at them.

  He had no intention of using it. Jim was a die-hard wild camper. He had spent entire months on hiking trips in the Yukon, in Alaska, in Canada - with nothing but his rifle and what he could carry on his back.

  He had only accepted the emergency radio because Tatiana insisted - and threatened to call Rita if he didn’t take it.

  No way I want Rita on my case about it, he had thought grudgingly. So I’ll take the damn thing. But I won’t use it.

  Now, as the sound of the shuttle died away, Jim looked around. It was hard to believe he was on another planet, 550 light years from Earth. Had he not known better, he would have thought he was on the North Slope of Alaska, or maybe the Canadian Northwest Territory.

  Beside him, the river ran swift and sure over the rocks. The mountains surrounding him were tall, granite and gneiss interlaced with sedimentary layers. The area reminded him of the bowl surrounding Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies.

  Jim directed a thought to his embedded AI.

  Angel - turn yourself off. I don’t want to hear your voice for two bloody weeks!

 

  He started walking southeast, following the river, looking for a good campsite. Soon he found one, a small pad clear of rocks and brush. He set up his tent, made a fire pit, and got his fire built. The sun was headed down and would soon be behind the mountains. It was getting cold; he knew it could get down to -10C in these mountains at this time of year; but he was prepared for it.

  To Jim, that was half the fun of it; preparing for the worst the elements could throw at him and being able to survive the challenge.

  Leaning back against a large rock, Jim stoked up his pipe and smoked, one of the few unhealthy vices he allowed himself. It was good to break it out and smoke. It had been a while - he wasn’t allowed to use it onboard the Merkkessa.

  Far off, some animal wailed. Tatiana had told Jim there were bear-equivalents, mountain lion-equivalents, and wolf-equivalents in the menagerie of animals on the planet. But she had added, they were usually afraid of Humans - Humans had an alien smell to them.