by Shawn Jones
“They could not have,” the black insectoid said with a long hiss. “Most likely, it was an accident. We have lost ships before. Never one loaded with queens, but we have lost them before. Still, we cannot discount Addison. Where is he?”
“According to our team on Solitude, he left for the Ares homeworld. They believe he went there to meet with his military advisors. He did not appear to be in distress.”
“Has he ever been know to have been distressed?”
“Not that I am aware of, sir.”
“Thank you. Please keep me informed.”
“Of course, sir.”
Six
Government World
Not wanting to tip his hand and make the Taurus public, Cort had Speral deliver his team and Bazal in her own ship. The Taurus was in orbit, but only the new arrivals knew about her. Stepping onto the landing area, Jeff Pence and Lex Sike surveyed the area as Cort and Lap exited the ship, followed by an oversized security team.
After several minutes they passed the arena were Cort and Jeff Pence’s squad first met the rest of the Collaborative. Cort thought, We’ve come a long way in a very short time. What do you think is going to happen, Bazal?
Indeed we have, Cortland. I do not know the answer to your question. Lap is with his advisors. The four of them are discussing which flora samples to send to Mars for farming. Food crops will be sent first.
Entering the administrative complex, the group moved through the main building, drawing the attention of dozens of species. Pence realized it was the first time humans had entered the facility, much less humans that were armed and armored.
“Bazal, is there enough room for all of us in Lap’s office?”
“There will only be enough room for four of us, including myself, Jeff.”
Cort said, “Okay, Jeff and Lex and Tim with me. Bazal, I would prefer you wait outside and just listen to everyone. I don’t want anyone in that room knowing you are here. Your team will stay with you, the rest of you surround the room in pairs to the best of your ability. Keep your IR going so you can track the people in the room.”
Once everyone was in place, Cort stepped into the crowded room. Jeff and Lex immediately moved to the other two exits with their MATs at the ready. Lap looked up, saw the stars on Cort’s shoulders and said, “General, this is a surprise. What can I do for you, sir?”
“Speaker Lap, I’m sorry to disturb you but we need to talk.”
“Of course,” Lap said. Turning to the Blatterians in the room he said, “Will you excuse us please?”
Addison held up one armored hand and said, “No, the six of them need to stay.”
“Very well, General,” Lap replied. “Now, what is the matter?”
“Lap, the Blatterian contingent of your staff may have been compromised.”
Something picked at Lex’s mind, but he couldn’t figure it out. Something was definitely wrong though. He thumbed the safety on his MAT. Cort and Pence noted that Lex’s weapon was now charged and ready to fire. Pence did the same, as did the rest of the team. Cort also sent an alert to Speral as well as Captain Platt aboard the Taurus.
“What do you mean, General?”
Cort placed himself between Lap and the rest of his staff. “The Federation conducted an operation that left us in possession of several enemy bodies. They are genetically compatible to your species.”
Lap tilted his head. “Explain that phrase please, General.”
Lex looked back and forth across the Blatterians. Finally he thought, Bazal, are you getting anything from the Speaker’s staff?
All three of them are nervous but they are not deceptive, Lex.
Okay, if you say . . . Lex keyed his comm, “General, Bazal reports a total of four Blatterians in this room! He can’t sense three of them!”
Cort raised his own weapon and told Lap to step outside. “Why?” Lap responded.
“Now, Speaker! Leave!” Lap was startled by the sudden threat in Cort’s voice. Once he was out, Cort spoke again. “Three of you are enemies of the Collaboration. I’m going to find out which ones. One at a time, you will exit the door next me.”
Turning to Lex, Cort commed, “Good catch, Lex. We all should have caught it, but you were the one that did.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Cort placed a silver disk on the wall above the door. “This device will tell me what I need to know.” It was actually a coaster from Argyre, but Cort didn’t want the insects, friendly or enemy, to know that Bazal could not detect some of them.
One at a time, the insectoids stepped through the door. Two of them had to be pushed through, but in the end, Cort had the three spies separated under guard while he questioned the others to make sure they weren’t complicit in placing the spies on Lap’s staff. Bazal listened to the interrogations and cleared the three innocent staff members. Then it was time to interrogate the spies.
--
Once the prisoners were moved to a larger, more secure location, Cort began. “We need to know all we can about your people. That means two of you are going to be interrogated. If your answers differ I will kill you. If you don’t answer, I will torture you. The one that is not interrogated will die much sooner, because we need to know about you biologically too, so that one will be vivisected.”
After Cort’s words were translated into clicking vibrations and sank in, two of the three aliens visibly shuddered. Cort looked at the third. “You are the tough one, I take it. I’m going to enjoy working on you.” Turning back to the other two he said, “The two of you will be interrogated. Your friend will be vivisected. Do you wish to watch that procedure or begin the interrogations now? What am I saying? Of course you want to watch,” Cort smiled.
Cort sent his team out of the room after securing the stoic pseudo-Blatterian. His companions were also secured, facing each other, with their leader strapped to a table between them. Without speaking to any of them, Cort went to work. In war, Cortland Addison was a practical being. First he ran every scan and medical test he or his team could think of. He drew fluids and scraped tissue and snipped pieces of carapace-like skin from the insectoid.
He looked from one to the other of the observers and said, “The three of you have been instrumental in the deaths of entire species as well as whole planets.” Cort walked to a nearby table and picked up one of the tools he had printed a few hours before. The hammer had one squared head and one rounded head. The crack of the rounded peen on the hand-like graspers at the end of one of the being’s eight legs shattered the brief silence.
Without speaking, Cort repeated the blow on the next segment of the creature’s arm. He did not speak. He simply and efficiently inflicted pain. His only communication with the beings were the looks he gave other two, in between assaults on their companion’s body. Once he had worked his way to the root of the first limb, he flipped the hammer over in his hand and worked his way back down the shattered appendage. Then he moved to another limb.
The shrill chirping and clicking noises coming from his target lessened occasionally. During these quiet moments, Cort paused and cleaned the heads of the hammer, or sipped from a glass of water. All the while he looked between the other two insects. Neither was free enough to turn its head, and with only nictitating membranes, they couldn’t even close their eyes to the horror in front of them. One was clicking softly, its body shivering as it watched. The other had lost control of its bowels. After its first three limbs were shattered, so did the tough one strapped to the table.
Over the course of two hours, Cort destroyed all eight of the spy’s limbs. The last appendages he focused on were the four antenna-like structures on the head. After another water break, he began snapping each section off, as if he were cracking crab legs with Angela on their deck in California over three centuries before. Then he removed the broken limbs from the table and wiped it clean, before he polished the blooded hammer again and set it back in place on the tray of tools. After picking up a pair of heavy scissors, he returned to hi
s prey. The horrible clicks and chirps began again when the shears started working on retracted genitals.
As Cort began removing pieces of the prothorax, Bazal interrupted him.
Cortland, do you have a moment?
Not now, Bazal.
Cortland, I can hear him.
If you don’t like it, don’t listen.
No, I mean I can sense him. I could not before.
Then it is their skin that hides them from you. Good to know. I am going back to work now.
He would answer your questions now. You do not need to kill him.
Yes, I do. Bazal, this is my realm. You yourself said that. If I do not kill him, the others will not know how serious I am.
They can see it, Cortland. I do not need my abilities to know that. Even your people are horrified.
Then they are of no use to me, and will need to be replaced.
Must it be this way, Cortland?
Bazal, this isn’t a debate. Read me. You know I am not doing this because I want to. This is simply the most efficient method to ensure the information I gather is accurate. Please excuse me now.
Four hours later, the creature finally died. Cort dropped its twitching aortic chamber into the splayed carcass and slowly wiped his gauntlets off. When they were finally clean, he looked between the corpse’s companions and said, “Which of you would like to be questioned first?”
Through the translator in his ear, Cort heard, “What would you like to know?”
Arygyre Military Headquarters
“After interrogating them, I gave them the option of a quick death or having a section of exoskeleton removed from their head. Both chose the latter. Currently they are still on Government World, but we need to move them to a permanent prison.”
“Why did you force them to accept the Formvar plates, sir?” Admiral Jones asked.
“I didn’t force them, I gave them a choice.”
Cort was thankful for the distraction when Admiral Book asked, “What about bringing them here? The scientists would love it.”
“I considered that, but until I am more certain they cannot be tracked, I don’t want them in this system. I don’t know if our location is secure, but I’m not going to tempt fate.” Cort didn’t add that, thanks to Bazal being able to listen to the insectoids after the Formvar plates were put in their heads, he was confident the enemy did not know the location of Mars or Earth. He didn’t share the fact because he knew Book would push the issue and learn Bazal’s secret.
Looking around the room at his War Council, Cort thought about the five people with him. Kimberly was there because he knew she would call him out if he was wrong. He wasn’t sure if any of the others would. Admirals Jones and Book were there are well. Lex Sike was another warrior, so Cort kept him close these days. Chief Rhodes was the last of the group. Cort had relied on Rhodes since the beginning of the Federation, and because he was not an Addison, the man offered a different perspective than the others. Lately though, Cort could feel him pulling away.
Kim said, “I could house them on Solitude.”
“Absolutely not, Kimberly. I will not turn your refuge into a penal colony.”
“Okay,” JJ said. “Let’s table their housing for now. They are secure on Government World, and Jeff Pence already has a heavy company of our Marines there to keep them that way. I think we need to move on to what you found out, General.”
“Agreed. First, their history. Lap’s people sent out colonies several thousand years ago. Several of the colonies were presumed lost for various reasons. One particular group was thought to have succumbed to radiation poisoning. Apparently a few lived by building crystalline structures that filtered out enough of the radiation to allow them to adapt over time. They realized they could manipulate crystal propagation using some sort of tachyon tech that our prisoners do not fully understand.”
Cort sipped water and continued, “They have had enough practice that they are now able to use tachyons quite effectively. So much so that they can use the Sagittarius-A black hole to relay signals throughout the galaxy. They send a signal through the black hole and it is relayed to a target planet. I don’t believe they have attempted the process in other galactic arms. Once a planet is converted, they wait a while, then add nanites to the planet to convert it according to their needs. They dump bodies and waste there to restart the ecosystem, then they move in. Currently they have colonized over four thousand planets in this manner.”
“It’s time to give them a dose of their own medicine.” Turning to the admirals, Cort said, “Are all three Remington-class ships ready?”
Book answered, “Yes, sir. The Ithaca just finished trials and the Winchester has been waiting for a job.”
“How quickly can they cycle weapons and transition?”
“Both?” Book asked.
“Yes. Think jump, fire, jump, fire, etc. How quickly can they cycle?”
“The Remington can do so every eighteen seconds. The two newer ships can do so every fifteen seconds.”
“Okay, that doesn’t leave much room for error, but it will work. Their home system is the one that seemed to divert the crystal. We are going there. Captain Platt will use the Taurus to plant anchor particles at predetermined firing locations, then he will jump the ship back and transmit the particle fingerprints to the heavy ships. The big guns will then jump through the system as rapidly as possible firing both cannons every cycle. We are going to completely destroy their homeworld. Any questions?”
Everyone was dumbstruck. Only Kimberly spoke. “How much time do we have to fire each cycle? Speral indicated that they destroyed her people’s ships immediately.”
“When first contact was attempted, the response time decreased with each deeper penetration of the system. Based on that data and the distance we will be firing from, our ships will have twenty-one seconds to transition, fire, and jump to the next point.”
Admiral Book said, “If you give me three weeks to refit the Remington, I can get her down to a fifteen second cycle as well.”
Cort leaned back and closed his eyes for moment before saying, “If I give you a month, what can you give me, Admiral Book? And please consider mission prep and training time in your reply.”
“The first week I do not even need the Remington in dock. It will take that long to fabricate the new capacitors. Another week to install them, and one to test them, then I can give her back to Admiral Jones. There will also be two peacekeepers available for trials in that window.”
“Peacekeepers?” Cort asked.
Jones said, “For all intents and purposes, it is a larger version of the Taurus-class ships, General. More heavily armed and capable of carrying more cargo. I had intended to give the first in the class to you, sir, but you needed something sooner.”
“Okay. I want them on standby for search-and-rescue during the mission, but they will not participate in the attack.” Cort turned to Rhodes and said, “Chief, you’ve been quiet. What’s on your mind?”
“We are calmly discussing the destruction of an entire planet and the species living there.”
“No. We are talking about justice. They have been doing this to thousands of species for thousands of years. Not just noble species, but plants and animals and species that have now lost their opportunity to evolve and grow to the stars, so I have absolutely no qualms about giving them a taste of what they have done to the galaxy.”
“Yes, I know that, Cort. And I agree with you, but it is still difficult to swallow.”
Lex asked, “Chief, would it be so difficult to swallow if they had crystallized Earth?”
“Touché.”
“What are you going to do after you destroy the first one?” Kim asked.
“I’m going to keep destroying their planets until they surrender. After they surrender, I am going to give them one heavily guarded system that they will not be allowed to leave. If they leave that system, I will make them extinct. I may only let them have one planet.”
JJ said, “That seems reasonable, sir. I support the plan.”
“Is anyone against my plan?” When no one responded, Cort said, “Good. Then begin training around Mercury. It’s the closest thing we have to a comparable target. Obviously, I don’t want you to blow it up, but you can fire dummy rounds into it.”
“Sir, if this works, what will we do with the vacated planets?” Lex Sike asked.
“As I said, a lot of the affected systems have been returned to their original states. That means many of the planets can probably be repopulated with their original species. Only one planet in each system was permanently altered. In cases where those can be returned to native species, they will as well. The remaining planets, mostly ones where the native species are now extinct, will become military bases for our federation.”
