Peacemaker (The Revelations Cycle Book 6)
Page 7
Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Really? How so?”
“The Consortium has asked the Altar to give up their colony position and move, with full logistical and financial support. This would free up the water sources for both the GenSha and the Selroth to take advantage of. They have refused and the Consortium asks that they be moved—that is our first task when we reach the planet.”
“Our first task?” Jessica squinted at him. “Seems to me that there’s a lot of anger and death that should be stopped first. Removing the Altar doesn’t solve the problem as you’ve explained it. The GenSha and the Selroth will still fight over it. The question is why the Altar cannot leave, not how fast you can get them to move.”
“You’re belittling the importance of this disagreement.” Taemin said. “Is it because you have information about your father’s disappearance? Are you racing to get home?”
Jessica felt an ice-cold bolt of electricity shoot down her spine, but she kept her calm. “What did you say?”
“You have new information about your father’s disappearance. You have many documented instances of violence and poor judgment when it comes to information regarding him.”
Nothing since high school. What the fuck is going on here?
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, Jessica knew the quizzical look made its way to her face. While not a mistake, it provoked a twinkle in the Caroon’s eyes. He was baiting her, and it was working.
Whose side are you on, Taemin?
“The last instance of violence, as you put it, was in high school and, frankly, she had it coming,” Jessica said. “That’s beside the point. How did you know about my father’s disappearance, and who told you I had new information?”
Taemin’s thin mouth smiled. “Your Peacemaker training files were provided to me as a preparatory exercise. Marc Lemieux spoke to investigators from your Guild shortly after Ch’tek’s arrest. They believe you were using the situation for personal gain and not to stop Ch’tek’s irrational attempt to plant a Canavar egg on Earth.”
That’s why the second mission.
Godsdamnit.
“I see,” Jessica said. “You think the only way I’m going to solve this crisis and earn my Peacemaker commission is to listen to the Consortium. And you believe ordering the evacuation of the Altar will lead to a rational solution between the GenSha and the Selroth?”
Taemin nodded. “I believe that is a wise and viable solution, yes. It doesn’t answer my question about your motives.”
“My motives, Mediator, are not your concern. Is that clear?”
Taemin bowed his head slightly, enough that Jessica couldn’t tell if his mouth moved in a smile or a smirk.
Prick. She took a breath and changed the subject. “What’s so important about the Altar’s position at the river?”
Taemin frowned. “There is a Raknar lying partially submerged on a sandbar just outside their colony. Both the GenSha and the Selroth are concerned the Altar are trying to find a way to activate its weapons systems.”
“It has power?” Only a fraction of the Raknar wreckage in the galaxy had evidence of a viable power source. The Dusman’s engineering skills were far above those of most civilizations. Viable power sources gave insights into the inner workings of the Raknar and its ability to defeat the Canavar.
“They believe so, but there has been nothing confirmed,” Taemin said. “If they are using power from the Raknar, there is no issue. If they are actively trying to employ it, then the Consortium’s fears are merited. It would be best if they were evacuated to another site. I have taken the liberty of finding alternate locations. There are four viable ones...”
Jessica wasn’t listening. Her gut railed against the idea of moving anyone. Kenos obviously wanted the Altar moved so he could leverage any remaining power, or weapons, on the Raknar for the gain of the Consortium. For a mediator trained to find the middle ground, Taemin was decidedly behind the Consortium’s proposal. His deflection about her father was a calculated move—a poorly played one, too. Yet it left a lingering doubt that, with time, would get worse and fester.
Hak-Chet would have said something. Unless he knew the Guild’s real motivation for sending me here.
“Peacemaker?”
The question jostled her back into the present. Taemin stared at her. The accusatory look on his face meant he’d asked the question more than once.
“Is everything okay?” he asked without a trace of interest.
“Fine,” Jessica said.
“How do you want to proceed?”
Jessica looked at him for a long moment and realized she could not trust him, or his information. “I need to see the area for myself.”
A Peacemaker’s senses told the ground truth. Observation and patience were critical to success. While there was little doubt that Taemin would continue to pressure her into a quick solution benefitting the Consortium, something about the whole mess didn’t make sense. The GenSha’s water processing shouldn’t be allowed to affect anything downstream for starters. The Selroth could move their colony more easily than the other two could simply by finding another suitable river delta. The Raknar was a wildcard to the entire situation. If it was viable, the colony who controlled it would have a serious advantage. Given that the planet barely met the climatic needs of its inhabitants already, persistent drought and unstable weather would either drive the colonies to evacuate at a significant loss to the Consortium, or they’d fight for whatever resources they could scrounge.
“What should I tell Administrator Kenos?”
Jessica stood. “I will apologize for our private conversation and cancel tomorrow’s formal session and maybe the next for research purposes. You said you had my file as a preparatory exercise? I want a copy of everything you have on this situation. I will not go into this unprepared and pressured to do something for anyone other than the colonists on that planet. Is that clear, Taemin?”
The Caroon nodded solemnly. “Of course, Peacemaker.”
“Very well. I’ll expect those files by the evening meal.” Jessica walked out of the conference room and hesitated in the passageway for a split second before turning to find Kenos and make her apologies. For two days, they’d briefed her on the situation and, while she’d known it was biased and incomplete, the motive was clear. They wanted to avoid a financial loss. An embarrassing failure of a paradise world would cost them billions of credits at the very least. Then there was the Raknar.
Accessing a powered Raknar was akin to a technological Holy Grail. Spread throughout the galaxy, the abandoned giants once fought off the gigantic Canavar before the Dusman vanished. Their internal systems baffled the top scientists in the Union. Finding one capable of movement was almost unheard of—only a handful of the thousand or so recovered Raknar could move any of their appendages. Finding one with its power source intact was equally rare. However, in each case, the ability to see, decipher, and replicate the intricate technologies was priceless. Kenos wanted the Altar to leave the Raknar; that was clear. What wasn’t was why the Altar would risk their colony for the partially submerged mecha.
Jessica shook off the thoughts as she moved forward to make her apologies. She’d not had her head on straight since her meeting with the Guild Master. It was time to change that with good old-fashioned research and intelligence preparation of the battlefield.
Good planning never made up for poor execution, but it would help her get through whatever the next set of challenges would be. The hours ticking past were against her.
* * * * *
Chapter Six
Hex woke five minutes before his alarm, rolled over, and put his feet down on the Victory Twelve’s cool deck. Using Jessica’s suite hadn’t been something he planned to do, but everyone on the ship looked to him as their expedient mercenary unit’s commander, and such privilege was expected. He’d moved in after the Victory Twelve had entered hyperspace. With Lucille in command, there was little he needed to do. While not an artificial in
telligence, per se, Lucille’s programming and capabilities made her more than a viable pilot and a seriously well-informed leader.
<
“Thank you, Lucille.”
<
Hex grunted and stood. After padding to the wall unit and retrieving a steaming mug of Kona coffee, freshly ground and brewed, he tore off his shirt and sleep shorts and stepped into a steaming shower. Awake and ready, Hex washed quickly and shaved under the almost scalding stream of water before turning it off and donning a fresh pair of coveralls. Without a unit patch or any type of rank, the blank coveralls said nothing about him or where he’d come from. To the untrained eye, he looked like a cadet fresh from the mercenary preparatory schools on Earth.
He laughed. Except for the last several years of missions and actual operations, he could have attended those pinnacles of mercenary education. Instead, he’d earned several degrees under fire. There were plenty of good leaders produced by the schools every year, but just as many tended to die from untrained troops and fratricide than from enemy contact.
* * *
Twenty-four hours into their 170-hour jump, Hex had gathered the team in the main hold, which spun to provide gravity, and laid out his plan to prepare them for what they might find on Araf.
“Now that you’ve been fed and had a good night’s sleep, it’s time to get down to business. My name is Hex Alison, and I’m in command. We don’t have a unit name or heraldry yet, and honestly, we don’t have time to sit around and come up with something. We have about a 155 hours until we arrive at Araf. What we know is that Earth’s first peacemaker, Jessica Francis, is headed there on a ship that will arrive just before us. She’s probably going to be dropping into a hot LZ and is going to need help. There are three colonies fighting over water rights, and two of them have employed very capable mercenary forces—we’re not sure just who they are yet. You’ll get the last round of intelligence we were able to pull after this briefing.”
Hex took a breath and pointed at Tara. “This is Tara Mason. She’s in command of our platoon of tanks. Once we hit the ground, we’ll have two squads of CASPers acting like marines out in front of us to secure a position and provide security and overwatch.” Hex looked at them and smiled. “All twelve of you are fresh out of CASPer pilot training and that’s not as bad as you might think it is. What we have to do is correct your bad habits. I have a pretty good idea how we can start that.” He nodded at Tara.
Tara stepped forward. “We didn’t have a lot of warning, so we are going in without immediate air support. We’ve requested any assistance the Peacemaker Guild can give us, but we’re likely going to hit the beach alone. Our ability to identify and kill targets in the airspace is critical. Shooting, moving, and communicating are not going to be enough. We have to fight as a unified front.”
“Especially because we don’t know where the attack might be coming from,” Hex said. “To that end, we’re going to be training a lot. We’ve networked the tanks and CASPers into an Aethernet training module, and we’re going to mount up and get to that in a few minutes. We’ve barely gotten to know each other, and none of you know Jessica. I do. She was a part of my last unit for a couple of years and is like my sister. The Peacemaker Guild obviously wants her to succeed, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. There’s going to be time for us to get to know each other. Right now, though, we have to learn to fight together. That’s where we’re going to start. The rest of it will come later. We have four tanks and a dozen CASPers. We’re outgunned and lack experience, but we have the advantage of surprise. With that, we can afford a little time to make shit up as we go.”
The group laughed, and the tension broke a little. They would need time to gel as a team, but Hex could see excitement in the young pilots’ eyes, and quiet resilience in the vets from Tara’s tanks. It would have to do, and it felt damned good to be in command.
“Okay,” Hex said and looked over the collected group with a satisfied grin. “Communications are set. The CASPers are the Angels, one through tweve, and the tanks are the Demons—one through four. I’m commanding the CASPers in Angel One, and my callsign is Boss. I’ll need two fire team leaders. We’ll set that up after the first series of sims. The tanks are commanded by Tara in Demon One. I’m attached to Alpha Team for movement. Everybody with me so far?”
The murmurs became smiles. Tara nodded approvingly and tapped on a slate in her hands. “Boss, I’ve got a basic sim loaded for everyone. The tanks will use it for simulated gunnery practice, but the CASPers will have a chance to shoot, move, and communicate as we go. It’s a standard firing simulation with infantry attached.”
Hex grinned. He’d been thinking the same thing. “Sounds good. Everybody take five and come back prepared to mount up for training.”
The group splintered between those looking for a fresh bulb of coffee and those hitting the latrine one last time. Tara walked over with her slate and showed it to Hex. “You’ve got a couple of promising standouts. I’ve put them in Angels Two and Seven. The rest of the CASPer pilots don’t really strike me as...competent.”
“Really?” Hex squinted at her. “What makes you say that?”
Tara shrugged. “Most of them are young and overconfident.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “Not necessarily unlike any tanker I’ve ever met.”
Tara laughed, and he realized he liked the sound of it. No sooner did the smile on his face widen, then it faltered. Tara’s smile did, too. “Yeah,” she smoothed back a stray lock of hair and focused on the slate again. “So, the sim is a movement to contact. The tanks will roll out from a berm complex and proceed south about 300 meters to their first firing point. When that happens, the CASPers will leave from their start point to the west. They’ll roll up on my flank and we’ll use them to bound forward and take out some infantry targets before the enemy armor appears. They’ll have to stop, wave us in, and keep bounding forward. We can see how they do.”
“Great,” Hex said with a nod. But, it wasn’t great. Standing close to Tara, he felt guilty for smiling at her as if he sullied Maya’s memory. Less than two weeks had passed since her death. It was too fresh and painful. She wouldn’t be mad at him for smiling at another woman, especially one he would fight alongside. Still, Maya’s loss hung over him like an awkward sheet. “Hey, uh, thanks for figuring out who should do what. I appreciate it.”
Tara shrugged. “De nada. Get ready to roll, okay?”
“Yeah,” Hex said. His eyes followed Tara across the hangar deck as she moved to the right front skirt of a Defender Mark Four tank and climbed aboard with ease. From each of the four tanks, a collection of cables snaked into a central hub. Another set of cables stretched from the hub to ports on each of the CASPers. The Mark Eight mechs could be physically networked for training, which made them invaluable. Between the two racks of fairly new CASPers was his Mark Seven. The armor was scored in a half dozen places from massive Oogar claws, and much of its paint was shredded, and the hulking beast looked ancient next to the gleaming like-new ones Hak-Chet had provided for the newbies. He hadn’t been inside it since they’d lost Maya and the rest of the Marauders. It was a matter of time, he’d thought, but the idea of getting into it gave him pause.
You have to get in there.
Hex sighed and walked to the CASPer. The cockpit was open, the clamshell hanging up at an angle from the narrow opening. Inside there was a picture of his parents tucked against one of the multi-function displays. On the other side, where he couldn’t see, would be the one of him and Maya on the shore of Kaua’i from a year ago. They’d come back to Earth after a difficult defense mission on Haight Four when she’d knocked on the door of his quarter
s aboard the Trigger Happy with a bottle of wine.
His father would have said something along the lines of never eat and shit in the same place, meaning in his particular lexicon that pursuing a romantic relationship where you work is dangerous and doomed for failure. However, he would also have understood, because the only reason Hex existed was that his parents had done the same thing. His mother retired to raise him and his siblings to alleviate that danger, but they’d come together because they each understood where the other had been. For them, it had worked. With Maya on his arm, Hex never considered the inherent danger of their lifestyle. Maya was simply too good, he believed. They were simply too good. He’d planned to take her back to Kaua’i after Marc Lemieux’s milk run mission and propose. All of it seemed so far away now.
He paused to tug himself into the Mark VII’s haptic suit and pushed the memories away. With hesitant steps, Hex climbed aboard the CASPer’s crew ladder and backed into the seat, dropping his legs into their sleeves and pushing backward against the seat. Hands moved as if on autopilot, attaching the haptic suit’s cables by feel alone. As he did, his eyes rested on the photo of him and Maya together. He reached out for it and stopped.
It’s okay. Maya’s voice was as clear in his memory as if she were standing right there. I’m here, and it’s okay.
Hex bit the inside of his lip and settled into the cockpit. Scents of old sweat and silicone wafted around him as he brought his arms into the cockpit and began the power-up sequence from memory. With a few keystrokes on the right multi-function display, he deleted the previous mission information and cleared the mecha’s memory banks. One by one, the displays powered on, and he felt the vibration as the servos and motors within the CASPer came to life.
With a flick of his wrist, Hex found and flipped the canopy close switch and brought the clamshell down. As it closed and sealed around him, the Tri-V screen came to life and began internal diagnostics. When the camera systems came online, a view of the hangar outside filled his vision. The other CASPers looked to be in various states of checkout.