“That’s a bit of a long story,” Marcus said, settling himself to tell it. “I was captured on Triumph in the Argo Sector. I’ve had a long time to think about it, and I think the Merkiaari knew they had lost the war. I know obvious right?”
“By then, yes,” Vardell said and Colgan nodded. The Triumph campaign had been one of the final battles of the war. “They never surrender or give quarter, so we give them none in return, but we would have accepted if they’d offered to quit. It would have saved a lot of lives. It was obvious we’d won maybe two years earlier.”
“That was another reason I enlisted. I didn’t want to miss the fighting,” he said bitterly. “Anyway, I was captured with a lot of others and transported in one of their ships away from Alliance space. They collared us and proved why trying to remove them is a bad idea. They constrict and strangle you, and of course they’re never deactivated. You fall unconscious, but it doesn’t kill you unless the Merki holding the controller decides to make an example of you. They used them to train us like dogs. The collars work using direct nerve induction and can cause pleasure or plain depending upon how you perform your duties. Or death.
Colgan grimaced. Bloody bastards.
“What did they have you doing? Did they interrogate you?” Vardell said intently. “They must have wanted to know things about us.”
“No, nothing like that. They didn’t seem to care about secrets or our worlds. They were all about what we could do for them. Like could we work hard and for how long? They were interested in how strong we were as individuals, and made us work until we dropped doing pointless manual labour. Lifting and carrying stuff, things like that, but it was obviously make-work so they could observe. They made us do all kinds of tests.”
“What kind of tests,” Doctor Ambrai said, taking a greater interest upon hearing that. “Physical, mental... both?”
Marcus nodded. “Both. Problem solving and physical strength, mainly. Why, what does it mean?”
“Research. They knew they were losing the war, they were trying to understand why... maybe,” Ambrai said with a shrug. “We know they engineer their own people, and we know from the Shan campaign they’ve made improvements in themselves. They’re more intelligent than they were before, but just as strong. They regenerate from wounds quickly without recourse to nanotech, and their tactics are better now; more refined and less brute force, more like ours than before. It all points to a new breeding program in my opinion.”
Vardell nodded thoughtfully. “So they put you all through your paces. What then?”
“We were transferred to that ship out there. We knew it was different to the first one right away. It was crewed differently.”
“Different how?” James asked still making furious notes and not looking up.
“There were lots of aliens wearing collars, less Merkiaari troopers. There were still a lot of Merki, but they weren’t ground troops. Ship handlers yeah, but there were these others that didn’t fit in. The other Merki steered clear of them like they were special or different somehow. We never did figure them out, but I know what I think they were.”
“Oh?” James said finally looking up.
“I think they were civs like you,” Marcus said.
James blinked. “Like me? How do you mean?”
“Not military but like contractors I guess, or specialists?”
“I’m a history professor.”
“And a resistance leader,” Colgan added dryly. James had the grace to blush. Marcus looked confused. “James here was on one of the Shan worlds researching them when the Merkiaari attacked. He ended up leading the resistance.”
“Not all of it,” James mumbled, embarrassed by the sudden respect he read upon Marcus’ face. “There were a lot of cells. I just ran the one I was in.”
“Well anyway, the other Merki treated them different. I think that maybe they were their leaders or something.”
James frowned. “That doesn’t seem likely, Marcus. We don’t know how the Merki run their government, assuming they have something we would recognise in the first place, but I doubt they would send their leaders to test you. More likely you were right the first time. Civilian scientists or the Merki equivalent I suspect.”
“Or factory operators?” Ambrai put in. “That abomination out there is a people factory. Who better to test us than those responsible for designing new versions of Merkiaari?”
Everyone eyed each other uneasily at the thought, but it made sense. It made more sense than the Merki leadership out here in the middle of nowhere aboard a factory or colony ship. Perhaps they had planned to set up a hidden colony and populate it with a new edition of themselves, or maybe they planned something else; live testing of new ideas maybe. No way to know now.
“So they transferred you to the Leviathan. How did you end up on Hell?” Colgan finally asked. It was the one question everyone had looked forward to hearing the answer to.
“I know the answer to this one,” Lorak said before Marcus could speak.
Marcus nodded encouragement. “It’s more his people’s doing than ours, though we never expected to land on Hell. I’ll let him explain.”
“Please do,” Vardell said.
“My people have a long history of rebelling against the Merkiaari. My forebears have done it many times in the past, sometimes even successfully in the short term, but the Merki always come back to kill us and we have to start over.
“There were many of my people aboard the ship you call Leviathan. With us were the Shintarn, the Lamarians, and the Carnotaurians, but the lizard folk as Marcus calls them are not bright. They are a friendly but dull people; they will fight but usually for stupid reasons and they never organise like my people do. The Lamarians are pacifist and never fight for anything, not even survival. They’re thinkers, not doers. The Merkiaari use them a lot and trust them the most of all, because they have ruled them the longest—more than a thousand years.”
“And the Shintarn?” James asked.
“They fought with us on the ship and died to free Marcus and his people. My people’s plan was to free the Humans and take the ship to one of your worlds, but things didn’t go to plan.”
Marcus snorted.
“Why free our people?” Colgan asked. “Why not just take the ship yourselves and go home?”
“Two reasons. One, we had no home to go to. The Merkiaari rule our homeworld; they do it as they always do by colonisation. There must be nearly as many Merki as Parcae living there. And two, my people knew that most of the Humans on board were soldiers. Not all, but most had been captured during the fighting. My... you would say grandfather; my grandfather witnessed the tests and knew your people would make good allies. Besides, Humans were winning the war. All knew it. My people wanted to go to a Human world for aid. What better introduction than presenting them with freed captives?”
“Well reasoned,” Janice said with approval.
Lorak nodded. “My people rebelled and freed most of the Humans. They organised with us and the Shintarn to arm themselves with Merkiaari weapons and take the ship. The Lamarians refused to help us of course, but they didn’t try to stop us. They sat it out and died. The Carnotaurians tried their best, but most died in the fighting. My people helped kill many Merkiaari.”
Marcus nodded. “The fight was brutal. The ship isn’t a warship even though it has weapons, but its internals are different to real warships. You’ve seen how open some areas are?”
“It’s hollow like an egg,” Stone said. “There are huge compartments full of hibernation chambers, and the factory in the centre with its growth chambers and vats take up a lot of space. They don’t use nanotech like we do, everything is huge and inefficient.”
Marcus nodded again. “There’s no real compartmentalisation to speak of, and that made it hard for the Merkiaari to contain us. We were able to navigate the ship pretty easily. At first,” he finished grimly.
“Yes, at first,” Lorak said sadly. “Marcus and his people killed ma
ny and proved why Humans were winning the war, but then the Merkiaari got smart. They started pumping out the ship’s air and they had the only spacesuits. Many Shintarn perished then, trapped in airless sections. My people realised that if they could not take control of engineering they would all die.”
“Many did,” Marcus added.
“Yes. They were desperate by then. Together with the remaining Shintarn and Humans, my people successfully took control of engineering, but by then they were too few to win the ship. They decided upon the honourable course. They sacrificed themselves to destroy the ship and the Merki it contained.”
“We took a vote,” Marcus said. “It was unanimous.”
Lorak nodded. “We sabotaged the drive. No one expected what happened next. The ship just dropped out of foldspace when the field collapsed. No one could believe it, they had never heard of anything happening like it before, but the ship just popped right out and into n-space.”
Colgan winced. The ship should have been torn apart due to the unbalanced stresses of translation. “I assume most of the Merkiaari died due to foldspace radiation?”
“I suppose,” Marcus said with a shrug. “Most of us did as well, so I guess so. Some of us guessed the sun’s gravity well had dragged us out, it being supermassive and all. It’s as good a guess as any. The only habitable planet in the system is Hell. We coaxed the ship into orbit and went down. I sometimes think we would have been better off staying aboard the ship and dying there. It would have been kinder to some of us. The lizards didn’t do well in the cold and wet. They died first pretty quickly. The Shintarn did better. They’re hardy people being heavy worlders, but one by one they perished to attacks by the native predators. Parcae faired the best. They’re adapted to the cold and the rain never seems to bother them, but predators thinned their numbers too.”
“And the Humans?” James asked.
Lorak patted Marcus’ shoulder soothingly. “There were less to begin with than my people. Some perished in our defence against the wildlife, others died of age or other things. Marcus is the last and has been alone for more than twenty years.”
“I was never alone,” Marcus said stoically. “The Parcae are my people now. Two hundred years living with them beats the previous fifteen or so wouldn’t you say?” He grinned, trying to make light of it.
There were some chuckles but they sounded forced.
Marcus’ grin melted away. “But I would like to go home to Faragut. My family has a plot where we’re all buried. I want to be there with them come the time. I don’t want burial in space.” He was looking hard at Colgan as he said it, and he nodded. “You swear it?”
“I so swear,” Colgan made it sound as formal as he knew how. He would see it done too.
“Thank you,” Marcus said, sounding relieved of a burden, but then he brightened and clapped his hands together. “Now, what’s for dinner? I haven’t eaten a pizza in ages!”
This time the laughter was universal and heartfelt, not forced in the least.
* * *
31 ~ Incursion
Aboard ASN Audacious, deep space, Border Zone
Commodore Walder glanced up at the mission clock again, but barely a minute had gone by since the last time she’d checked it. Something was wrong; she felt it! There was nothing to back up her anxiety, but with her ships hanging silently in the deep dark of interstellar space there was no data to be had. All she had to go on was her gut, and it was telling her that she needed to act. She chewed her lip and glared at the empty holotank in the centre of CIC. This was ridiculous!
Fury and Trojan had jumped into the pirate system days ago now; they must have had time to scout the situation by this time. Even assuming the very worst case she could imagine, they should have reported back before this. If she had been in direct command of those ships and had found something so interesting or dangerous that it needed further investigation, she would have sent one ship back to report while the other kept scouting. No word had come.
She checked the mission clock again. Fifty-one hours elapsed. She would have expected no more than thirty-six before receiving at least a preliminary report. She glanced at the tank again, but of course it showed empty battlespace except for her own four heavy cruisers. They were safe here. Nothing could track the scouts through foldspace, so the only visitors would be those same scouts returning to report. The repeater displays and other gear around CIC showed ship’s operations. It was all routine stuff. The comm and data nets between ships were active, but that was entirely normal. Using TBC to share sensor data between ships was standard procedure and very important. In battle, a ship’s point defence used the net to link with other ships to provide better coverage for all.
Something is wrong, I know it; I feel it!
Surely a ragged bunch of raider scum couldn’t have gotten the drop on a pair of well-handled navy destroyers. It just beggared belief that something like that had happened, but what else could keep them from reporting back? Nothing she could think of. That meant they were in trouble out there and needed help; she had to provide it, had to, and if she found that her people had come to grief? She would make those responsible pay! She would wipe them out! She would erase them. In a year’s time no one would remember they had ever existed when she was done with their nothing system!
She chose a control and opened a channel. “All ships, standby for new orders.” She selected another channel and a display lit to show her flag captain on his bridge. “Captain Narraway, we’ll be going in, but I want us in formation upon emergence.”
“We only have four ships, Commodore. I hardly think any formation we try will be that effective. What are you expecting to find?”
“Something. I don’t know what, but something has delayed the scouts and prevented them from reporting back. I don’t know what that might be, but I want us at battle stations and prepared to defend ourselves the moment we arrive.”
Narraway nodded. “We can’t do much with only four ships in the net, but we can at least do that. I’ll arrange it. Anything further?”
Walder hesitated. Taking council of her fears was not in her nature, but she felt something was wrong. “We may find things are fine, but I have a feeling... listen Luke, I think we might find Fury and Trojan already engaged.”
“You may be right. It would explain what we know, or rather what we don’t.”
“Exactly. They should have been back long ago. If they need our help I want us locked and loaded ready to supply it.”
“I’ll get together with the others and come up with something for your approval.”
“That’s fine, but we need to move fast. I want to jump out in two hours, no later.”
“We can do that. I’ll dust off some old contingencies.”
She nodded and cut the circuit.
They had all kinds of plans and contingencies squirrelled away in the computers, many based upon successful attacks or defences by ships in action all over the Alliance. From raider attacks to Merki battles, the navy never threw data away; dusting some of those off and plugging in new parameters would give them something to build upon without starting from scratch. A two hour deadline made that approach the most sensible one.
In the end it didn’t take two hours or even one. Forty-five minutes after her original contact with her captains, Luke Narraway reported back with a recommendation. Walder spent the remainder of that hour going over it, but it was pretty simple. The four heavy cruisers would go in at battle stations, tubes loaded and weapons hot. The instant they arrived in the pirate system, they would establish their point defence and targeting net before diving down still in formation to avoid any lurking ships. Spotters lurking in the zone were unlikely, but not impossible considering they had two destroyers already in the system unaccounted for. She was happy to sign off on that part of the plan.
Heading down as if making a run out of the ecliptic was an arbitrary direction to take. They could go up, go port or starboard, or they could choose any direction in bet
ween; it didn’t matter. The aim was simply to move at pace, not hang about where their jump signature would be announcing their arrival in the system. Assuming they weren’t immediately engaged by hostiles, a safe bet, they would go into stealth and manoeuvre until they had an accurate picture of what was happening in the system. She was betting they would find Fury and Trojan already engaged; it was the only thing that made sense given what they knew right now. So assuming the destroyers were going toe to toe with the enemy, Luke had proposed that they manoeuvre still in formation and stealth to engage the raider ships while the enemy concentrated on the threat they could see—the destroyers. It sounded harsh, using the scouts to draw fire that way, but it didn’t actually increase their peril. They were already fighting and at risk. This plan, though simple at first glance, would rely upon not being detected so they could reach effective weapon’s range without alerting the enemy.
She signed off on the mission plan, and gave the order to implement it. They would go at the top of the hour... she checked the mission clock. At fifty-three hours elapsed, the clock would be reset and they would jump. After that, she would see what she would see. She vowed they wouldn’t be leaving the pirate system until they had reduced the raider ships to scrap and the entire system’s defences to nothing. There would be nothing left there to attract lawless persons from then on. Let them migrate to another sector and stay the hell out of hers!
With a minute to go, she closed her helmet’s visor and tugged on her harness straps. Fighting wasn’t likely upon emergence, but suddenly losing her seat would be embarrassing and dangerous. Besides, she had to set an example. If she flouted regs, it wouldn’t be long before her aides did the same. Her team were a good bunch, but they based their attitudes upon hers as all command teams tended to do.
“Ten seconds... three... one... exe—”
ASN Audacious jumped, and her sisters jumped with her.
Foldspace was a strange place... her mind wandered down paths she would rather not examine while in translation, but control was one thing no one had in the jump. She saw her last day aboard Warrior again, and cried out silently against it. She didn’t want to see the hurt she had put on Steve’s face again when she told him her decision to pursue her career rather than retire at the end of the year as they had agreed. She broke her word to him that day, and his heart. He hadn’t needed to say the words. He was a proud man just as she was a proud woman, but she’d seen what he didn’t say in his eyes and the prolonged silence.
Merkiaari Wars: 04 - Operation Breakout Page 39
