Precursor Revenants (The Precursor Series Book 1)

by Cain Hopwood

  He waited until the Marbelite was about to take a swallow of Sergeant Gowlett’s finest scotch. Distilled last week, if it was the good stuff.

  “So are you Mantoy?” The colonel asked in what he hoped was an innocent tone.

  The Marbelite froze, drink suspended in mid air. Colonel Whitfield watched the glass carefully, small ripples danced on the surface of the amber fluid. Yep, it looked like he’d pissed the Marbelite off.

  “Not Mantoy? How about Candora clan?”

  If anything the ripples in the Marbelite’s drink increased. That was good, both Mantoy and Candora were northern mountain clans. Closely aligned with the group that had announced the no fly zone.

  “Are you looking for a fight human?” the Marbelite said in raspy, but clear Galingua.

  “No. I’m trying to work out whether I can trust you.”

  “You might have asked.”

  “I have. I was told you were coastal, and no sympathizer.”

  The Marbelite paused, then took a slug of its drink. “You are not a trusting race. But keep doing things like that and you won’t live long.”

  “It’s not trusting that keeps us alive.” The colonel also took a drink, wondering idly whether the body language of mirroring movements to develop trust, worked for different species.

  He signaled the sergeant. “Another round Kryspin.”

  “You are not here for conversation are you?” the Marbelite said.

  “No.”

  The colonel pulled out a sheet of flexi and spread it on the table. On it was an image taken from Moss’s last upload. It was of two Marbelites standing on a snowy balcony.

  “Do you know who these two are?”

  The Marbelite wiggled his shoulders. “Can’t tell from just an image, could be anyone. Need their voices. Do you have sound?”

  “I do. I also need to know what they were talking about. They’re speaking some kind of local dialect.”

  “Krantoch, or high Krantoch probably, if they’re highlanders.”

  “Krantoch?” The colonel said, struggling with the guttural pronunciation.

  “It’s not an official language, not any more, but many still speak it.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not well, but I can probably tell you what they’re speaking about.” The Marbelite emptied his glass. “Of course, translating makes me thirsty.”

  “Don’t worry about that, the sergeant will keep your glass full.” The colonel’s finger hovered over the glyph that would play back the recording. “Now before we start, two things. One, keep talking, as soon as you stop. I stop. I don’t want you thinking about what you’re hearing, just translate as fast as you can.”

  “And second?”

  “Second, If you’re thinking about making things up, don’t. The centarch is hatching a Marbel translator. It won’t be ready for a couple of weeks, but when it is, I’ll have it review your translation.” The colonel leaned a little closer. “What you say, had better match that translator’s report.”

  “Or what?”

  The colonel smiled. “You are a hard one. I guess you’d have to be to be working here. Let’s just say, I don’t think the admiral will be very pleased when he discovers that you’d deceived him. And, I’ll instruct Sergeant Gowlett that he is to serve you nothing but water.”

  “I don’t know which I’d prefer less,” said the Marbelite. “Start the sound. Then I can tell you who these two are.”

  The colonel tapped the play glyph, the images on the flexi sprung to life, and the Marbelite began talking.

  — 36 —

  The alien Marbelite sun had long sunk below the horizon before anything happened. It was late, and night brought a howling wind that pummeled the peak where Jon and his men were hunkered down in the snow cave. Jon had nearly given up for the night, and was just about to pass control over to Skip, when the algorithm watching for image changes on the balcony chirped.

  Jon almost dismissed it. Since the wind had sprung up, the swirling snow on the balcony had triggered several false positives, but this time it was real. The balcony door was sliding open.

  “Heads up, we’re on,” he said.

  Skip and Murdoch sprung up. They’d both been napping in anticipation of picking up the watch after Jon, but they were wide eyed and alert in seconds.

  “Interior is clear, it’s just these two,” Skip announced.

  “Compound is quiet, nothing in the air. It looks like they’re alone up there,” Murdoch replied.

  “I’ve got the beacon, the drone is still active.”

  Jon sighed with relief. “Establish comms and dump its cache. Leave it emplaced, we might get another run out of it. But if they look like going back in before we’ve got the whole cache I’ll detach.”

  “Copy, dumping now.” Data flooded in from the drone as it transferred a day’s worth of audio, inertial tracking data, and lots of images of a hairy white Marbelite rear end.

  “I’ll build up a map of the redoubt from the inertial data,” Jon said. But before he could even open the files for analysis, a command priority alert popped up in his HUD.

  “What!” All three of them said simultaneously. Skip and Murdoch looked at Jon with furrowed brows.

  “It has to be Gritz,” Jon said. He tapped the alert, and audio started playing.

  The voice was whispering, and hurried, but it was definitely Gritz.

  “I don’t know how I’m picking up this beacon. I just hope it’s not some sort of trap. But if these Yogis can emulate our encryption, I guess we’re fucked anyway. I’m alive, obviously. They’re holding me somewhere several levels above ground and questioning me occasionally. The questions I’m being asked are strange. Mostly who I am and where I’m from. Nothing about combat capacity and force strength, i.e., none of the usual questions you’d expect. I’m also being questioned by a Ka-Li, not a Yogi. Attaching images.”

  The recording paused while Gritz attached pictures of several Ka-Li he’d taken with his data-tacts. Then he continued.

  “Also, this place is crawling with Galactics, I guess they need someone to pilot all the ships they’ve got here. And, they’ve got a lot. The redoubt is dug deep into the bones of the ridge. I’ve taken as many images as I can.”

  Another brace of images accompanied the audio. This time it was of huge caverns packed with flyers, fighters, and space capable ships.

  “I’m guessing this is all part of an invasion, or support for a take over. Although I suppose it’s really a take back, given that this is the Marbelite’s planet after all. But that’s not the worst bit, at least not for us.”

  The sound of scuffling interrupted Gritz, and there was a long delay before he resumed. This time the whispering was barely audible.

  “Shit, they nearly caught me then. A couple of big wig Yogi’s just passed by with a Ka-Li. But that’s not important. They take me out twice daily for food and toilet, and all the guards talk about here is ‘how long until it’s here?’ They clam up when I’m around, but I don’t think they realize how good our hearing is. Or maybe they’re just arrogant.

  “They’re waiting for a delivery, it will be a really large ship. It’s carrying a large amount of highly concentrated ship fuel. I’m not exactly sure what they’re planning to do with it, but whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

  Jon’s lips pressed together; the ship that had passed over them earlier fit that bill. It was at least ten times the size of anything else that was flying into, or out of the redoubt.

  “Do you think that monster we saw this afternoon is what Gritz is talking about?” Skip said.

  Jon nodded slowly. “More than likely.”

  “So, whoever’s picking up this packet. Get word to the colonel, and get it to him fast. These insurgents are about to take delivery of tens of tons of high grade ship fuel. This is the fuel that fuels starships. Not the watered down stuff they’ve given us. Gritz out.”

  “Holy shit,” Skip said, his eyes wide.

  “I’m
guessing that’s a lot,” Murdoch said.

  “You bet it is. Even if it was just regular ship fuel, we would be talking about serious amounts of energy.”

  “Are you talking nukes?” Murdoch said with a suspicious tone in his voice.

  Skip emitted a small grunt. “I wish.”

  Murdoch frowned. “What do you mean? Nukes are crazy scary.”

  “Oh they are, but you only need about a thimble full of regular ship fuel to make a small tactical nuke.”

  “A thimble full?”

  “Yes, in terms of energy density ship fuel lies somewhere on the scale between plutonium and anti matter.”

  Both men fell silent. “There’s something you guys are missing,” Jon said. “Why do they need so much of the stuff?”

  “They want to take out the coastal base,” Skip said.

  “For which a teacup of ship fuel would be overkill. What do they plan to do with the rest?”

  Skip blinked. “They want to blow something else up?”

  “Something big.” Murdoch added. “Or something with a lot of defenses. Maybe Katona’s starship. That thing is the size of a small country.”

  “It’s also our ride home,” Skip said in a small voice.

  Jon held up a hand. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. Someone is trying to destabilize the balance of power here, and we need to get this news to the colonel. Skip, what are our options?”

  Skip consulted a display. “Not good, we’re offline, and don’t have any weather forecasting. Who knows when we will be able to get a signal through; it could be a day, or it could be a week.”

  “Let’s not leave things to chance,” Jon said. “Load Gritz’s message into the memory on every single relay, and set them up to priority transmit the moment communications are reestablished. The colonel needs to know this.”

  “Sir, the only relay that could have established communications with base was the one on the peak.”

  “I know, but I want to keep my options open. I’m thinking we might be able to attach a relay to one of their patrol ships, get the message out that way.”

  While Skip busied himself with that task, Jon turned to Murdoch. “We are going to unpack every single surveillance mote and micro drone and completely penetrate that facility. I want to know whether that last big ship was indeed carrying the ship fuel, where it is, and the full layout of the place.”

  “And Gritz?”

  “I’m sure we’ll run across him as well, but that ship with the high grade ship fuel is the priority.”

  “Gotcha,” Murdoch said, and started hunting for the drone crate.

  Before Jon could think of the next thing to do, the mapping software trilled an alert. It had finished correlating the inertial data from the Marbelites movement and it had a sketchy map of the redoubt’s interior.

  A thought occurred to Jon, and he smiled. “Hey Skip?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would you say the beacon range on a micro obs-drone is?”

  Skip’s head didn’t even lift from his work. “About ten to twenty meters.”

  Jon brought up Gritz’s message and checked the upload time stamp. Then he found the drone position at that point. He marked the location on the map.

  “I think I know where Gritz is,” he said. “Though I’m not sure what good it will do us. How are those drones coming along Murdoch?”

  “Ready to go, we have eight micros left. It’s a long way down to that balcony, but a sparrow should be able to get them there. Given it’s dark out, now’s a good time to insert them.”

  “Good, do it. I want eyes on that ship fuel.”

  Murdoch busied himself activating a sparrow drone, and loading it up with the remaining micros. Then he launched it out the entrance to the snow cave. Moments later, Jon started receiving telemetry from the sparrow.

  It zipped across the snow, flying close to the frozen surface, then dropped over the edge of the ridge, plummeting like a sky diver towards the redoubt.

  “Balcony’s clear,” Skip said.

  Murdoch just grunted as he guided the sparrow down to the edge of the balcony’s roof. It hovered for a second, then ducked under the edge, and disappeared into the shadows under the eaves. A manipulator claw found something to grab, and scant seconds later it had secured itself, hanging like a small bat.

  Murdoch turned to Jon and cocked his head. “Lieutenant, how were you planning to get the micros in. It looks like the door’s closed.”

  “I was hoping we’d catch a break, find a gap. Is it fully shut?”

  Murdoch zoomed in, then scanned the balcony, even looking up into the dark eaves with a thermal camera. “Looks like it. I guess in this climate, everyone’s been well trained by their mothers not to leave the door open and let in a draft.”

  Jon checked the time, it was the local equivalent of about midnight, long past the time a typical Marbelite retired for the night. “I don’t think they’ll be out again tonight. We’ll have to drill; is the room occupied?”

  Skip swung the camera they had on the micro in the room over its expanse. “No, looks empty.”

  “Murdoch, find a spot and drill. But go slow, I’d rather not alert them just yet if we don’t have to.”

  Murdoch dropped the sparrow from its perch and had it survey the door and wall. Most of the wall was rock, but a panel above the door itself caught his attention.

  “This looks like wood,” he said, and brought the sparrow in. It scrabbled for a moment before it managed to get a hold of the material.

  A moment later it started drilling. Murdoch smiled. “Like a knife through butter, even at the slowest speed. We’ll have those micros in shortly.”

  Running the eight micro drones wouldn’t be easy with just the three of them. The tiny, house fly sized drones were about as dumb as they could be, and still be useful. Even though they needed a lot of manual control they were small, which was invaluable in just this kind of situation. But, here they’d just have to fly them in one by one. Or three by three.

  “We’re through,” announced Murdoch. “Micros are coming online now.”

  Jon grabbed control of one, guided it through the hole, and found a dark spot high above the door to park it. He repeated the process with a second micro, then used it to survey the room while Murdoch and Skip deployed the last two.

  “It looks like that corridor is the only exit,” he said. “Murdoch, park the sparrow out of sight and grab a micro. I want this place surveyed before sunup.”

  A minute later the three of them each had a micro drone under their control.

  “Can I suggest something?” asked Murdoch. “We should stay as high in the corridors as possible. These Yogis don’t look up much.”

  “Good idea,” said Jon. He lifted his own micro until it was a few inches from the ceiling. “Also, the view’s better from here.”

  The other two copied him and with a nod they started the tiny flying drones off down the corridor.

  “It looks like the corridors ending with a…”

  Jon was interrupted as the feed from his drone went dead, and his camera view snapped back to one they’d left back in the room.

  Before he could warn the others, Murdoch yelled. “Fuck! I’ve lost contact.”

  “Me too,” said Skip. “One second I had full control, and the next nothing.”

  “How far along the corridor did you get?” Asked Jon.

  “Halfway.”

  “Same, could we be out of range?”

  “Impossible, there’s a relay inside the room. I’ve been watching the signal strength, it’s been fine.”

  “So what happened to them?” asked Jon trying to keep his voice calm.

  “I don’t know, hold on.”

  Skip took a remaining micro and flew it to the edge of the room. “They’re still there, hovering. We’ve just lost comms. How is that possible, we’re only inches away?”

  All three men were silent. Then, Jon was reminded of the green wall at the end of the cham
ber they’d been staying in on the starship. The invisible wall with different gravity, and a different climate on the other side. “Do you think the Galactics have a field that blocks radio?”

  Skip pulled on an earlobe. “Why not, they have fields that control air, and gravity. Actually, given what they’re hiding, it would make sense to shield it from some kind of detection. And blocking electro magnetic radiation would be a good start.”

  “Well, if they’re blocking radio, that will make it hard for us to get those micros inside. Even if we piggy back them on a swallow, we’d lose control the moment it went through the barrier,” said Murdoch

  “Never mind that,” added Skip. “Without radio, we couldn’t get any of the imagery they’d capture out in real time anyway.”

  “What do we do now lieutenant?” Asked Murdoch.

  Jon co-opted the camera on one of the remaining micros and looked down the length of the corridor.

  “I think I have a plan,” he said, then screwed up his face. “Though, you’re not going to like it.”

  — 37 —

  It was late by the time the colonel returned to operations. At this time of night, there were just a couple of bored looking operators still on duty. He flicked the flexi to one of them. “Corporal, create a transcript of this conversation. And, summon all senior staff to the briefing room.”

  Sandy Lepok was the first to arrived, and in good time too. Unlike him, she was bright eyed. “Been up studying alien physiology?” he said.

  Sandy gave the room a sniff. “Yes, and you’ve been up drinking sergeant Gowlett’s rotgut scotch.”

  “I’ve been talking to the locals, actually. These Marbelites aren’t that different from us. It’s a wonder what a little liquid lubrication does. Thanks for the reminder though.”

  He popped the contra-narc he’d pocketed earlier in anticipation of a long drinking session. He didn’t technically need it, but it would ensure he would make decisions with a rational mind. His remaining lieutenants joined them, coming at a trot.