The concourse was crowded with monstrous, moving shapes, and Kendric stopped and stared, despite an equally strong desire to hide his curiosity. He had seen KessRith before, of course, in training seminars and indoctrination courses at the Academy, but he had never seen one live.
They were very big—squat, four-legged centaurs with flat, spine-crested heads and plated hides. Though they might have been related to swamp creatures such asfiaclageurs and ponderoes, the KessRith gave the impression of beings possessed of magnificent strength and ruggedness. Some wore green cloaks across the semi-upright parts of their armored torsos. All wore an assortment of harness straps and belts that left them otherwise naked, but which seemed to be both ornamental and utilitarian.
The impression of strength remained despite the KessRiths' current situation. Each knelt or lay sprawl-legged in its own puddle of dark-colored, syrupy blood, and some had gruesome slashes deep in the hide behind their foreleg knees. The forearms of every one had been manacled in chains. Legionnaires stood among them, blast rifles at the ready. At the far end of the concourse, Kendric saw a Legionnaire stoop beside a KessRith standing in the midst of a number of Human soldiers, saw a powerknife flash and fall. The big creature bellowed, then collapsed to its knees like the others.
"What..."
"They're helpless if you cut the tendons behind their foreknees," the TOG officer explained. "They can't support their weight on just their hind legs, and if you manacle their arms, well.. .Not that they've been causing trouble, you understand...but it's better not to give something that big a chance to get at you!" He grinned. "In this low gravity, they could cause a lot of trouble."
Kendric felt sick. Enemies or not, could this he right?
"These...these are the KessRith soldiers you captured?"
"Soldiers? Nah. See the cloaks? Green and gold means traders. They might be the crew off a K-R merchantman...or maybe they're trading factors from an import-export company here. Who cares? Enemy aliens, and all that..."
Kendric felt a crawling nausea he could not immediately explain. His companion was so calm, so matter of fact, as he explained that
KessRith civilians were being crippled as casually as a Human prisoner might be handcuffed.
It's not right... He wanted to protest, but training and the realization that his protest would be futile stopped him. The horror of times when it had been aliens—the KessRith among them—who had held Mankind in slavery had been drilled into him relentlessly during his time at the Academy and at the Imperial school on Kathlandi. He remembered the holofilms he and his classmates had viewed, old, alien records from long before the Terrans had conquered the Galaxy. If Man was to hold his place in the order of things, a certain amount of ruthlessness was necessary. How do you immobilize a large, heavily armored, and cunning adversary who weighs perhaps two hundred kilos? On Trothas, they would weigh only one hundred and fifty ka gee but retain all the speed and muscle evolved on a world with a higher surface gravity than Terra.
But did that make it right? These individual KessRith had never enslaved anybody. Did they deserve the pain, the humiliation? Kendric' s stomach knotted again as he watched one Legionnaire swing a heavily armored boot into the side of a nearby KessRith, eliciting a deep, hollow grunt. The creature outweighed the Human more than two to one and yet was utterly helpless.
If you have no better suggestion, he told himself, keep quiet! He forced his eyes away and made himself match strides with Commander Crews. Still, he had seen the eyes of the prisoner the soldier had kicked. They were red, lacking pupils, utterly inhuman in their color and intensity, and yet Kendric could have sworn he read pain there, pain and dread and grief.
Maybe it's necessary, he thought. But it cannot be right!
We must assume that the planet Trothas V has been completely neutralized with a savagery even TOG has only rarely displayed in the past...
—Excerpt from a transmission intercepted by Commonwealth Intelligence, Cathandra, Source: Classified: Most secret
Vice Admiral Graffen had appropriated the Executive Offices for his own within the modern, high-ceilinged Aideles Palace. The wall-sized windows behind him were miraculously unbroken, but the walls of the office showed bullet holes, and the rust-brown stains on the door and the carpet could only be blood. The walls were bare for the rebels had stripped the office of TOG seals and the customary living holopor-traits of Caesar Julianus. There had not yet been time to restore them since the invasion.
Julian Dio Graffen was a lean and weathered man, as tall as Kendric and at least thirty years older. He wore a black fleet uniform, and the gold rank insignia circled the sleeves nearly to his elbow, and hung heavy in shoulder boards, aiguillettes, and Imperial decorations. Graffen had a reputation as a hard man, a terror to junior officers and the wrong choice for a man of any rank to cross. It was rumored that he had once punished a ship captain by having him shoved naked out of his flagship's airlock, with the man's death recorded for broadcast to his entire squadron as an object lesson. Kendric found himself searching the man's brown eyes for some clue as to whether there was any truth to the story. From the coldness he saw there, the tale no longer seemed so apocryphal.
"Navarchos Fraser, Gael Warrior," the Marine sentry who had admitted Kendric announced.
"Ave, Imperator, DomineV' Kendric rendered the salute, which the Admiral waved aside.
"Save it for the bureaucrats, youngster," he said. He scowled and patted his desk console's computer display screen. "I've been reviewing your report of the battle. That was either an incredibly brilliant piece of work..."
Kendric waited for the rest, unsure whether Graffen was inviting an interruption or not. He finally gave in to the temptation and said, "Yes, sir?"
"Or it was the most incredible piece of luck I've ever had the misfortune to see!"
"Mis-misfortune, Admiral? I don't understand..."
"Damn right you don't, or you wouldn't have pulled a stunt like that. Good, great hopping Caesar, boy, what did you think you were playing at out there, eh? Answer me that!"
There seemed little basis for an argument. What was it he had done wrong? "It's all there in my report, Admiral."
"Indeed." Graffen leaned back in his chair, his fingers drumming against his desktop. "You assumed a target sighting to be part of the KessRith command group and deployed your squadron to the attack. Assumed!"
"Yes, sir." And 1 was right!
"And if those targets had been a small battleship group? If your brand new battleship had come around that moon and found itself facing two or three KessRith dreadnoughts? Where would your assumption have been then?"
"Sir.. .our tactical screen showed the rebel effort was breaking up into small, isolated groups. If we had encountered more than we could handle, I would have called for help..."
"And if it had been a trap? A cheap way of picking off one of my squadrons.. .plus anybody that showed up to rescue you? Did it occur to you that they might have been purposely holding that orbit to decoy my ships into a trap? What if you hadn't damaged the planetside bases as much as you thought and been caught by rebel reinforcements coming from that direction?"
"The target was a small squadron, Admiral, and the largest targets did not read like battleships. I knew one was a carrier, but I suspected that it had already deployed its fighters. Same for the planet. If there had been more ships, the rebels would have deployed them already. I was confident my squadron could break them...or at least pin them until reinforcements could arrive."
"Indeed. So now you are making policy for the combined fleet? For my fleet?"
"No, sir, I am not. I just thought..."
"I don't really give a bloody damn what you think, youngster." The fingers drummed again against the desk. "I should tell you, Navarchos, that I don't approve of provincials captaining ships of the Terran Empire!"
Ah! That's it, then. Being able to identify the hostility behind the Admiral's brusque manner somehow made it easier for Kendric. Perhaps h
e could disarm the man with openness. "Many in the Fleet feel as you do, Admiral." He tried a smile and almost succeeded. "And I admit to being lucky."
"Hmpf," was Graffen's only response. "Tell me about Severno," he said, changing the subject so abruptly that Kendric needed a long pause to compose his thoughts.
"My damage control people finally reached the Flag Bridge just before I boarded the shuttle to come here, sir. They found all of them dead."
Kendric had seen the horror himself, transmitted by the cameras the DC team was carrying. There was no doubt about the cause of the Flag Bridge crew's deaths. A surface-to-orbit missile had slipped past the Gael Warrior's flicker screens and smashed into her tower at the 08 deck level. The Warrior had been lucky that the missile had not carried a nuclear warhead, but unlucky that the weapon was designed to penetrate its target before exploding. The high-explosive warhead broke through layers of hull armor and detonated in a head abaft of the tower officers' lounge.
It was Chief Wemyss's opinion that it had been the Flag Bridge armor that had transformed that sealed and heavily shielded compartment into a death trap. Apparently, a small chunk of the dense metal that encapsulated the Flag Bridge had spalled off the overhead from directly beneath the blast, then ricocheted back and forth within the bridge from bulkhead to armored bulkhead until the considerable kinetic energy imposed by a velocity of many kilometers per second had expended itself. In the process, the Flag Bridge instrumentation and consoles had been reduced to tangled masses of scrap. So far as Admiral Severno and his flag officers were concerned, very little remained that was recognizably Human. The blast had depressurized everything on decks 06 through 09 except for the sealed Flag Bridge itself. Wemyss had found the bridge still intact and under pressure, but Commodore Severno and everyone with him were dead.
Others had died as well in the pass over Trothas V, and many had been wounded. The Gael Warrior's chief surgeon was still compiling his butcher's bill, a list that Kendric did not look forward to reading.
"All dead," Admiral Graffen said. "Too bad about that. Severno was a good man."
"Yes, sir."
"His log entries were not included in your report."
"No, sir. With the damage to the ship, there wasn't time before shuttle launch. My Exec is pulling that information together now, and it will be in my follow-up."
And will the fact that Severno was about to relieve me he in the log ? Kendric wondered. Probably. Almost certainly. Severno must have had his recorders going at the time.
The legal situation was an interesting one. Kendric had not officially been relieved of duty at the time of the approach toward Trothas V. He had only had the Admiral's word that he wouldbe relieved after the attack pass. Severno had not survived to keep his word. And Kendric, despite what Severno had intended, had taken command of the squadron when contact with the Commodore had been lost.
There had been no alternative. Promise or not, someone had to take command of the squadron when they could not raise Severno, and the chain of command dictated that that someone be the Commodore's Flag Captain, Kendric Fraser. Kendric had planned to inform Admiral Graffen about his confrontation with Severno here, now, but the man's abrupt manner had raised a wall of stubbornness in him. Let him read it for himself he thought. /' m not likely to keep this command long now, at any rate!
"There's no hurry on that," Graffen said. "Damn bad luck you took that hit where you did, is all. I gather you were in command of the actual attack run over the planet."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, provincial or not, you're to be congratulated."
"Thank you, Admiral."
"Hell, don't thank me. Seems you've become something of a celebrity throughout the fleet, thanks to your action at Trothas V-c. Whatever I think of it, it would look damn silly if I censured you now, after what you did."
Uncertain how to respond to such a statement, Kendric chose to keep silent. Graffen glared at him a moment, then continued. "Youngster, if you ever put me in a position like this again, that's it! I will not have my squadron commanders second-guessing me! I'll have them shot first!"
"No, sir." It took a moment for Graffen's words to sink in. Kendric realized the Admiral was watching him closely. "Uh... 'squadron commander,' sir?"
"I told you that congratulations were in order, youngster. You're too young for me to buck you to Commodore, and the Joint Staff would never approve a promotion like that anyway. Not for you. But I have to have someone in command of this Gael Squadron of yours, and it looks to me like you're the best man for the job. I am appointing you Fleet Captain. Counts the same as Commodore, but it's not as official. What matters is that you're in charge of Gael Squadron, as of now."
"Thank you, Admiral!"
"Don't thank me. You'll never be allowed to keep the appointment. Hell.. .I'm surprised they turned someone as young as you loose with a battleship, but it'll look good on your record. Might even give you a leg up to Staff Command, if you want it."
"I appreciate it just the same, sir." Privately, Kendric winced. He was a ship captain, or so he thought of himself. A job on an Admiral's staff—even on the Imperial Naval Staff—did not appeal to him. Of course, in another twenty years...
"Hmpf. What's the status of your squadron?"
"Except for the Gael Warrior, Admiral, combat ready. The Warrior was the only ship in the squadron to take heavy damage."
"And her condition?"
"Temporary repairs to her ventral turret power grid. She'll need major repairs before she can use her belly weapons in combat again. The Flag Bridge is wrecked, of course, and we've had to seal off everything in the Tower above the 05 deck to hold pressure. Everything else is minor. She'll make T-space, and there's no problem maneuvering her. She can fight... but I wouldn't want to trust the jury-rigging on her ventral batteries in a stand-up fight." He took a breath, then plunged ahead. "We lost fifteen fighters covering our flank in the attack sweep across Trothas, including our Group Leader. I'll need to put in for replacements."
Graffen nodded. "Very well, Captain. To tell you the truth, this appointment is against my better judgement, but I'm stuck... at least until Overlord Gracchi gets here."
Kendric raised his eyebrow at that. Gracchi...that was the TOG Overlord who had arrived at the Gael Cluster shortly before the squadron's departure. What was he doing here?
"Overlord Gracchi is coming here?"
"We've just had word from your world.. .from Alba. He'll be here in two days. Meanwhile, we have to finish up here. You will rejoin your squadron, Fleet Captain, and await my orders."
"Yes, sir."
"I will assign the ship tender Fraso to your orbit. They will have orders to provide you with what assistance you need to make the Gael Warrior combat ready. Oh, and I think I can scrape up another half-flight of Interceptors to help make up your losses. Spiculums, off the carrier Rex Regius. I'll leave crew assignments to you."
"Thank you, sir."
"A final word." Graffen's mouth twisted unpleasantly. "I imagine you're in for a decoration or two, out of all this."
"That's not..."
"Quiet, youngster. I don't like the idea, but...as I said, you've become something of a hero, especially with the rank and file. I am forced to recognize that fact officially. As I can't promote you, it'll be a decoration." He sighed. "Fact of the matter is, your orbital attack did more to break the rebels than attacking their command ship did. We're still interrogating the KessRith we captured, to find out what their fleet was doing here at all."
Mention of the KessRith interrogations reminded Kendric of the captives he had seen outside the palace. "I saw KessRith prisoners outside, sir. Their guards had crippled them. That wasn't necessary, surely..."
"The center of the rebellion was here," Graffen went on, as though deaf to Kendric's interruption. "Your bombardment of that city south of here completely shattered their resolve. Some of their leaders wanted to keep fighting, but many more wanted to give up right then."
/> "Excuse me, Admiral...what city? We hit a planetary defense complex..."
"Of course. Same thing. Our intelligence people tell me that there were ten thousand troops and technicians stationed at that fortress, and of course they had their families with them. Estimates are that as many as twenty-five thousand were killed in your attack, Captain."
Horror seized Kendric. Twenty-five thousand!
For all his Imperial training, Kendric Fraser was still the product of his own culture, that of the isolated star group known as the Gael Cluster. It had not been all that many years since his people had been engaged in blood feuds, raids, and counter-raids among the hills and valleys of Alba. In such a culture, women and children held a special, cherished place. It was unthinkable for them to serve aboard a warship, for example. Kendric had seen enough of Imperial culture to realize that not every world shared the Gael's horror at exposing women and children to possible danger. He had seen those other societies and managed to understand them without passing judgement. Different people, different ways, after all. But to be told that he had just murdered twenty-five thousand people, including women and children...
As the full realization swept over him, a cold sickness threatened to engulf him completely. In ten years of service to the Empire, he had never been called upon to attack targets that might contain other than military personnel. The horror of the act he'd committed was overwhelming. Kendric struggled against the thought. The citizens of this planet were, after all, in rebellion against the TOG empire. They were enemies, and as such, subject to the consequences of their actions...
Women and children. How many thousands had there been in that city? Had any survived, in vaults far underground? Or had they been on the surface, in those half-glimpsed towers of white stone, metal, and glass that had run like water in the instant of the blast?
They'd had to destroy the complex. Rebel fighters had been launched from there, had no doubt been directed against the TOG fleet from there. Wouldn't allowing women or children to live in the area have been a criminally irresponsible act? How could the rebels have allowed their families to remain at what was all too likely to become a front-line defense post?
William Keith Renegades Honor Page 12
