by Richard Fox
On his screen, the time projection on the alien vessels’ arrival to the Crucible shortened to less than a day.
“We’re being hailed by the Kesaht,” the communications officer said. “It’s coming over the first contact frequencies we tried earlier.”
“So they can speak,” Lettow said. “Guess we gave them a reason to talk. Put it through.”
He raised the arm with his screen up and locked it in place in front of his face. The screen flickered, then resolved into one of the ugliest aliens Lettow had ever seen. Its skull was a rounded cone, with a bulldog’s jaw buffered by coarse hair and jet black eyes. Data cables ran out of the back of its head and into red and gold armor on its shoulders.
The alien huffed, turning its head slightly from side to side as it examined Lettow.
“I am Primus Gor’thig, risen Sanheel of the Kesaht Hegemony,” the alien said in decent English. “We pursued one of your fleets to this system to punish them for attacking one of our worlds. The blood debt has been paid, now we demand safe and unhindered passage through the Crucible gate.”
Lettow kept his face neutral as he considered the alien’s words.
“I am unaware of any such attack,” Lettow said. Indeed, what the alien just said directly contradicted the story the Ibarran admiral gave him. “To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time the Terran Union has ever encountered your species.”
“Is the other fleet not full of your kind?” Gor’thig asked. “Your ships are of the same shape. You look like them.”
“That fleet is not of the Terran Union; they stand apart from us. But the colony on Oricon is part of the Terran Union. What happens to the innocent people down there is very much my concern and you need to end your communication jamming and explain your aggression against a colony full of builders.”
“Your kind are fractured, squabbling? This is not a weakness the Kesaht Hegemony suffers. We are many races, all working toward a common good. I do not understand how humans can operate independently of each other.”
“I’m not asking you to understand. There will be time for the Terran Union and your Hegemony to engage in diplomatic efforts later…after you tell me what’s happened to Oricon,” Lettow said.
“The not-Terran-but-Terran fleet landed soldiers on the moon,” Gor’thig said. “I sent troops to find them and bring me their skins. Your soldiers massacred a Kesaht research team. Blood must follow blood.”
“The Ibarrans are not of the Union, but if you’ve killed civilians, then—”
“We do not murder those without blood on their hands. We seek only to balance the scales. The atmosphere ionization will dissipate in two rotations of the moon. I assume denying an enemy the ability to communicate is a human tactic.”
An icon flashed on Lettow’s screen. One of the Kesaht battleships had broken off from the fleet and was on course to Oricon.
“I will remove my troops from the moon,” Gor’thig said. “We bled the Terran-not-Terran fleet while the hunt on the ground went on. The scales are balanced. Once I have them back, we will leave this system. Do not get in our way.”
The channel closed.
Lettow sat for a moment, processing. First contact scenarios were one of the toughest a commander could face. Without knowing the culture and diplomatic ways of these Kesaht, one misstep could send these new aliens into the arms of Earth’s enemies, or bring them over as new allies.
He’d been on the rescue mission that answered the distress call from the Belisarius; he knew just how bad first contact could turn out.
“Comms, we need contact with Oricon,” Lettow said. “If they slaughtered the colonists, they’ll learn how the Terran Union answers a blood debt.”
“We’re still trying, admiral,” the lieutenant said. “Whatever they did to the atmosphere is scrambling any and all communication waveforms. I’ve got the signals section on every ship working on it.”
“It’s not like we can send up a smoke signal,” Strickland said. “Or even a…wait, we’re another hour from Auburn City, coming into view as the moon rotates. Comms, do you still learn Morse code and how to use Aldis lamps at Officer’s Candidate School?”
“Yes, sir. The signal lamps are one of our backup communication channels.”
“We can see the surface just fine,” Lettow said. “If the armor’s made it to the city, they know we’re here and we’re on the way.”
“They should be looking for us,” Strickland said. “Our targeting cameras could spot a dog taking a leak on a mesquite bush outside of Phoenix from Mars.”
“Figure out a way to make a signal obvious enough for them to notice,” the admiral said to the red-faced comms officer.
“Aye aye,” he said.
“What that Gor’thig said doesn’t match the Ibarrans’ story,” Strickland said. “But if they were on the run after raiding the Kesaht, I doubt that Admiral Faben would come clean.”
“We’re all playing each other,” Lettow said. “The Ibarrans are after something and are running the clock until they find it. I have a hard time buying Gor’thig’s noble warrior routine. He didn’t contact us until we forced his hand. And I’m juggling if we should engage the Kesaht, run down the Ibarrans or go help the colony that might not need any assistance at all.
“We stay the course until we can see Auburn city with our own eyes. Then I’ll know our next move.” The admiral interlaced his fingers and watched as Oricon turned.
Chapter 10
Roland and Cha’ril flanked the gate through the hasty barricade around Tonopah as the trucks full of rescued colonists drove through. Roland looked over the wall and was certain every last person in the town was pressed around the gate.
“They left the watch towers unmanned,” Cha’ril said to Roland over closed IR.
“We’re watching for them. You think there are any more Kesaht out here?”
“It is a distinct possibility,” she said. “Haven’t heard the sound of gauss cannons from Gideon or Aignar. If they haven’t found and eliminated any stragglers, the town is under threat. The legionnaires led off a significant number of enemy foot soldiers. I doubt they killed them all.”
“If there were any survivors, they were smart enough not to engage us on the way back to town. Doubt they’d stand a better chance attacking this fortified location.” Roland grabbed the top of the metal barricade and managed to shake it back and forth with ease.
“Improved location,” he said.
“Hey!” Dinkins waved up at Roland. “Where are the children? Did you find the children?”
“No sign of them,” Roland said.
Dinkins’ shoulders drooped. He slunk down to the ground and buried his face in the crook of his arm.
“Tim! Tim!” His wife Sally came out of the gate, dragging a woman in her late early twenties by the hand.
“Maria, tell the foreman what you told me.” Sally clung to her arm. “And the armor, hurry!”
“I’m the head of child education.” She looked up at Roland with a blank expression. She, like many of the others the armor rescued, was on the verge of shock. “Everyone just calls me the school marm. But I was with the kids when the aliens took us. They separated me from the children near one of their shuttles. They didn’t take George or Vinnie Tate; they’re the oldest boys we have. Thirteen and fifteen.”
“You saw the children loaded into the shuttle?” Cha’ril asked.
Maria nodded.
“They could be anywhere,” Roland said.
“But they’re alive.” Dinkins wiped tears away and got back onto his feet.
“Not necessar—” Cha’ril stopped when Roland’s helm snapped up at her. “Of course they’re alive.”
“What can you do?” Sally asked. “Can you track them or—”
“We don’t fly,” Roland said. “But there may be a way to find them. Do you have anyone with xeno-tech or biology experience?”
“We’ve got…” Dinkins looked at his wife and frowned. She snapp
ed her fingers and ran back into the town. “We’ve got a former Path Finder. He’s still got his old rig too. Why do you ask?”
Cha’ril reached behind her back and tossed a black plastic sack onto the ground. A Sanheel head rolled out and stopped in the middle of the road. Severed data cables twitched in its skull sockets like Medusa at the end of her tail. The alien’s eyes were rolled back into its head, tongue impaled on a fang.
Maria screamed and ran back inside.
“Oops,” Cha’ril said.
Dinkins shuffled back and bumped into the back of a truck.
“How did you-you-you…” the foreman stammered.
“The Sanheels’ bodies disintegrate just like the Rakka,” Cha’ril said. “But if you rip their heads off before they die, that part tends to stick around.”
“What? What?” Johannsen the sniper pushed through the crowd, clutching a slightly larger than normal gauntlet to his chest. Sally was right behind him, pushing him along.
“What is the damn hurry—Holy shit!” Johannsen almost stumbled over the alien’s head. He jumped over it like the ground was electrified. “A little warning? Huh?” He glared at Sally.
“You were a Path Finder?” Roland asked.
“That’s right. Eight years.” Johannsen removed his jacket and slipped his hand into his gauntlet. “Did bio surveys on twenty-three different worlds.” He kicked the side of the alien’s head.
“I’m used to looking at these through a scope. Christ, they’re ugly.” He went to one knee and passed the lit fingertips of his gauntlet over the head.
“Aesthetics aside,” Cha’ril said, “what can you tell us about it? The implants are highly unusual for any encountered species.”
Johannsen drew a small wand from his gauntlet and stuck it into the Sanheel’s cheek. He dabbed a bit of flesh into a tiny receptacle, then forced the tip into the flesh around a data cable and pushed it deeper until it touched the skull.
“Before these Kesaht showed up, I would have told you there wasn’t a single cyborg species in the galaxy. Might be some that need prosthetic replacements, but to see such extensive work done on a soldier…never,” Johansson said.
“Why’s that?” Roland asked.
“The Xaros. They’d hack anything with a CPU. One drone gets near this big pile of shit and he’d be shut down or turn on his buddies at the drone’s order. The Qa’Resh never, ever recruited a species that couldn’t survive without augmentation. Waste of time, no way they could fight the Xaros. Path Finders might find the occasional species that might develop intelligence on an old Xaros-occupied world, or we’d bump into another Alliance species that was scoping out the same planets we were.” His gauntlet beeped.
“What have we here?” Johannsen squinted at his screen. “Carbon based…normal male female profile in the DNA…not a match for anything in the database. And—that’s funny. There’s another species’ DNA in here.” He tapped the data wire touching his probe wand.
“Inside his head?” Cha’ril asked.
“No, inside the wires. Looks like another alien built the cables that’re in his brain box,” Johannsen said, tapping his gauntlet, then looking up at the armor. “You guys have some of the same thing, right?” He touched the base of his skull.
“Our plugs make us armor,” Cha’ril said. “Our implants form a biological computer joined to the armor’s systems. That’s why the Xaros could never affect armor during the war. These Sanheel augmentations seem drastically different.”
“Brain structure is largely similar for mammalian species, especially ones that developed upright, two legs or not. The implants this one has are mostly in the speech and hearing centers. What I’m assuming are the speech and hearing parts. There’s a lot of hardware in there.”
“The Rakka do not seem sophisticated enough to perform this level of augmentation,” Cha’ril said. “Perhaps there is a higher order of the Rakka.”
“Now that is unusual.” Johannsen rubbed an eye. “There’s a 3% match between the two species. It would have to come from interbreeding—which my entire understanding of xeno biology says is impossible—or a common ancestor. A very distant ancestor.”
“They’re from the same planet?” Roland asked. “Earth had several kinds of hominids at one time.”
“We’re a lot closer to Cro-Magnon man than this guy is to whoever wired him,” Johansson said. “If only the Rakka didn’t melt after we killed them.”
“How much of a sample do you need?” Roland offered his forearm to Johannsen, where black blood stained the armor up to the elbow.
Johannsen balked for a moment, then rubbed another wand along the dried viscera.
“I’m really…glad you guys are on our side,” he said. “Never thought I’d get back in the swing of biology again.”
“Why’d you leave the Path Finders?” Roland asked.
“Dodging mega fauna and carnivorous plants for years on end gets a bit old,” he said. “My term was up, had the chance to settle a garden world like this one and watch my kids grow up…” He looked aside for a moment, his eyes unfocused. He shook his head quickly and went back to his gauntlet.
“You have a missing child?” Cha’ril asked.
“Jessica. I need to focus,” Johannsen said.
“You’re helping us to find her,” Roland said. “Until we know more about these Kesaht, we’re in the dark trying to tell what an elephant looks like just by touching a leg.”
“What is an elephant?” Cha’ril asked.
Johansson shook his head at the screen. “This can’t be right. DNA has zero percent match with the other two strands. I’d say this came from a completely different star system.”
“There’s an alien race we haven’t encountered yet,” Cha’ril said.
“And they’re the ones wiring up the Sanheel and the Rakka,” Roland said.
Dinkins walked out of the gate and gave the Sanheel head a wide berth. He held a ruggedized data slate in one hand, antennae as long as his forearm stuck from the top.
“We’re picking up some weak transmissions from space,” the foreman said. “Your fleet, I take it. If the scrambling’s fading away, then the tracker unit might start working. But…” He slapped the side.
“The colonists have trackers? Now you tell us?” Cha’ril asked.
“Doesn’t matter when they’re not working. Things have been crazy the last few days. Give me a break, okay?” Dinkins said. “I thought your armor might have a signal booster. The units are offline until they get a ping. Privacy laws still apply out here. They’re meant to find people after avalanches, cave-ins, little kids lost in the woods…”
Roland scanned through his open frequencies. There was a faint signal that washed in and out, like trying to eavesdrop on a conversation during a windy day.
“The interference is still too strong,” he said. “But keep trying.”
A faint echo of gauss cannons rumbled down the valley.
Cha’ril raised her forearm weapon and chambered rounds from her ammo line.
“Gideon and Aignar,” she said.
“Get your militia on the walls,” Roland said. “We’re going to help them.”
“Can’t you stay here and help us?” Dinkins asked.
“We let them get within range and you’ll take casualties,” Roland said. “We are armor. We attack.” He pointed a finger at the sniper that nearly killed him earlier.
“I said I was sorry. Get over it.” Johannsson shrugged. “And it won’t happen again. Path Finder’s honor.”
Treads unfolded from the armors’ legs and they rolled out.
****
Gideon banged a fist against the side of his forearm cannons. A Rakka bullet had hit the feeder line where it joined the weapon and the shells weren’t loading properly. He stood up from behind a boulder and let off a quick burst from his rotary gun into a copse of trees at the base of the mountainside where he took cover.
The bullets felled trees and the return fire that sprang
off the boulder assured him that the Kesaht were still hot on his heels.
“Aignar?” Gideon sent over IR.
“I’ve got one,” Aignar said. “Working the base with my anchor now.”
Gideon dashed to another tall rock. Bullets from the Rakka sprang off his legs and bit into the dirt around him. He kept running past the next chance for cover. The boulder exploded as a Sanheel spike tore through.
He thrust his cannon arm towards the enemy and got off two shots before the line jammed again. He slid down an embankment as enemy fire spat through the dirt over his head. The bullets careened off stones in a creek bed.
“You have your exfil set?” Gideon asked.
“You know how close they are to you, sir? Pushing in five…”
Gideon hurried up the steep slope and offered a decent target to the Rakka and Sanheel charging at him into a draw buffeted by two mountain slopes. One of the three Sanheel spotted him and charged forward, trampling more than one Rakka that was too slow to get out of the way. As the other Sanheel galloped after the leader, they raised long rifles over their heads and bellowed a war cry.
“Rook rook! Rook rook!” echoed off the mountainsides.
The Sanheel broke ahead of the Rakka, closing on Gideon, where he had his back against a wall.
There was a crack of thunder. A boulder broke loose from the steep cliffs against the forest where the aliens were. The Mule-sized rock crashed against the slope and knocked loose another rock, and another. A landslide barreled down, shaking the ground hard enough that Gideon felt the vibration through his womb.
On the mountainside, where the initial rock had been, Aignar hurried away from the gaping wound.
The Rakka saw their doom coming right for them. They panicked, pushing against each other and trying to run in every direction.
The three Sanheel, however, galloped faster, straight toward Gideon.
The rock slide hit the forest and obliterated it, crushing the Rakka into paste. The Sanheel outpaced the destruction, keeping just ahead like they were running from an incoming tide at the beach.
