Peacemaker (The Revelations Cycle Book 6)

by Kevin Ikenberry

  * * * * *

  Chapter Eight

  The gentle flowing Choote made the attack easier than expected. Moderately deep, the clear, cold waters provided ample fish for the downstream Selroth colony. It also provided a direct avenue of approach the Altar could not monitor until it was too late. Six figures swam in a lazy wedge formation into the current, more than two meters below the surface. For Wahl, the team leader, the 10-kilometer warm-water swim approached paradise. Trained to fight, but constantly held back by policy and diplomacy, the chance to get into the water and conduct a clandestine operation freed him and his unit in a way few species understood. The diversion created by the GenSha antagonizing the Altar positions from the south would allow the Selroth a chance for intelligence gathering. The Altar found a way to use the latent power sources aboard the abandoned Raknar; that much the Selroth knew. What precisely the Altar were doing with that power was unknown and troublesome. There was no doubt the Raknar still carried viable ordnance that could be used against an enemy force. Whether the Altar understood the Raknar’s systems enough to employ them was of great concern to Ooren, the Selroth colony’s leader. Given an opportunity, he’d acted and sent Wahl to determine what had aggravated the GenSha to the point of all-out war.

  At the head of the wedge, with two scouts to either side and one immediately to his rear, Wahl held out a webbed hand and motioned them to slow their pace and ground themselves on the river bottom. The crystal-clear water barely muddied as they did, and Wahl studied the dark, hulking shape of the Raknar’s lower extremities a mere 30 meters ahead. Among the dark rocks near the mecha’s feet were small round shapes he recognized.

  Mines.

  Wahl tapped a display on his right wrist and keyed his communications suite. A series of communications buoys every 500 meters behind them would carry the signal to headquarters. “Ooren? They’ve mined the Raknar.”

  “You’re certain?” the Selroth governor replied.

  Of course, I am. Wahl paused. “Yes, I’m certain. I’ll get close enough to get confirmation of models and specifications.”

  “Can you get to the Raknar?”

  “Yes,” Wahl decided. The minefield was laid out in an irregular pattern obviously intended to defeat a small craft. An experienced swimmer could easily get between the mines and close enough to the Raknar to carry out the mission objectives. “It will take us longer than expected, but we can get there.”

  “Copy. Proceed at your discretion, Wahl.”

  The connection clicked back to standby in Wahl’s ears. He tapped the display again and opened a channel to his squad. “Remove all your extra gear and leave it here, under a marker. Weapons and basic gear only as we move forward. Once we’ve identified the mine, load its parameters into your slates. And don’t hurry. We’ll rendezvous on the Raknar’s lower leg armor, as planned. For no reason should you get within a meter of the surface. Any questions?”

  The squad’s silence meant consent. Wahl nodded and went through specific tasks by squad positions. “One, you’ve got point. Ensure there are no listening devices. Two and Three, you’ve got mine recon. Get a solid confirmation on model and relay it directly to Ooren. Four and Five, you’re with me through the field. Four, you’ve got the left, and Five, you’ve got the right. I’ll go up the middle and set the rendezvous point.”

  Wahl shrugged out of his pack and left his larger rifle next to it on the river bottom. From an external pocket, he retrieved a small fluorescent marker and tied it to the pack so he could find it. With the beacon set in his head-mounted positioning system, Wahl glanced up and saw the squad ready to move, and it almost made him smile.

  “Move out,” he said and they swam slowly toward the minefield. One moved out in front a dozen meters and glided effortlessly over the sandy bottom. In several places, he hovered and checked the bottom methodically.

  “Six, One. There’s nothing I can see as far as a monitoring device.”

  Wahl nodded. The Altar were more about passive defense than they were about doing anything that required effort outside of mining and raising children. “Copy, One. Proceed. Two and Three, follow and type match the nearest mine.”

  “Copy, Six.”

  Using his webbed hands and feet, Wahl sculled the water to remain virtually still in the current as his team fanned out to accomplish their missions. One made his way through the minefield on exactly the path Wahl himself would have chosen. The young one’s promotion to sergeant would come very soon. Two and Three stopped and examined a mine from a meter’s distance with imaging devices and a thermal scanner. With Four and Five at his side, Wahl maintained his position and waited.

  “Six, Two. The mine appears to be Besquith-manufactured but a Sidar design. It’s designed for small attack craft. We shouldn’t cause enough wave motion to set one off inadvertently.”

  “How long have they been here?”

  “Based on the mussel growth on the retaining chains, guessing five years,” Two said. “Could be longer. This model is a CA-102 and has a maximum life expectancy of 40 years.”

  Instability would not be a problem. As long as they were careful and slow, they should be fine. “Copy all. Relay to command and follow One through the field to the rendezvous point.”

  Wahl and the other two trailing Selroth closed the distance to the first three and weaved through the mines easily. Nothing moved around them as they approached the leg armor of the fallen Raknar. With his squad in position, Wahl looked over the legs and saw no evidence the Altar had connected anything to the Raknar. Fresh water barnacles covered the leg and almost obscured its design features. “I’m going up the body. Five? Follow me.”

  The young Selroth at his side, Wahl swam gently along the leg armor to the bare knee joint and paused to look inside. There was no evidence the Altar had done anything to the Raknar. Smooth, composite armor grew freshwater barnacles and sweeping tendrils of algae in both directions. Ragged holes in the upper leg suggested intense combat, but no Canavar remains were found. Near the Raknar’s waist, 20 meters away, two large black cables snaked across the river bottom.

  “Do you see that?” Wahl asked.

  “Yes,” Five responded. His name was Frool and despite being the youngest and most inexperienced of Wahl’s squad, he’d proven to be quite a soldier. “They must attach inside the hull. Going through the waist joint was smart.”

  Wahl grunted. “The Altar are smart, but they leave too much evidence.” As they got closer to the waist joint, Wahl traced the cable’s path with his eyes to where it disappeared into the Raknar via a square hatch propped open with a large rock. “Here.”

  He peered inside and could not see anything, even after turning on the helmet’s lighting system. A clear look at the hole suggested he would not be able to get inside, but the smaller Frool might. “Five, can you get inside?”

  “I can try.”

  “Do it.” Wahl swam out of the way and watched Frool knife through the open hatch easily. “Engage your cameras and sensors. We need to know where they’ve accessed the power source.”

  “Copy,” Five said and swam deeper into the Raknar.

  Thirty seconds passed and then a minute. Wahl called, “Frool? What do you see?”

  “The cables are routed into a reactor of some sort. I can’t read the writing on it, but it’s clear this is the power source.”

  Wahl keyed his helmet to see a real-time relay. A control panel rested above two connection points. The cables were stripped and lashed into the panel without a great deal of skill. The amount of power had to be ridiculously low.

  “Disengaging the cables,” Frool called.

  Wahl saw him reach out for the cable and rip one away from the panel. A bright blue arc of electricity shot from the panel. Frool spasmed and thrashed until his life signs faded. In the water, Wahl felt a buzzing noise around him.

  An alarm!

  He swam straight out from the Raknar’s waist, ducking through the mines as he accelerated toward open water.
“Go! Go!”

  WHAMM!

  Wahl spun through the water as the concussion wave thumped his chest hard. Silt flew up, clouding the water and blinding him. Bouncing off the bottom, he looked back in the Raknar’s direction and saw a square object enter the water and sink toward the bottom. Two and Three emerged from the minefield near where the object fell. They swam as fast as they could. Wahl whipped the water around him to try and help the gentle current clear the turbidity.

  “Come on!” he screamed into the radio. There was a flash and—

  WHAMM!

  Wahl tumbled through the water. A bright flash of pain exploded in his left shoulder as he ricocheted off a large rock and spun downstream.

  “Six, this is Four moving to your—”

  WHAMM!

  Wahl grasped for a rock and held fast to it. The concussion wave raced past him, but with his body streamlined it did not rip him away from his purchase. Wahl looked up into the river and saw nothing except the faintest outline of the Raknar’s legs. The slate on his wrist showed life signs only for One and himself.

  “One, where are you?”

  A second later, One’s voice came back as a scared whisper. “By the Raknar’s foot. They’re dropping depth charges, Six. If I move from here, they’re going to target me.”

  Wahl kicked his feet and swam forward into the current fifteen meters and stopped. There was too much debris hovering in the water to see where One had managed to hide. “Stay where you’re at. I’ll try to get to you.”

  “Copy.”

  Wahl held his position for two minutes as the current swept much of the cloudy water away and left him a clearer picture of One’s position and the Altar response from the surface. He scanned the area and paused. Halfway between his position and One’s hiding place, a large black object lay half buried in the river bottom. The dark surface was completely smooth and did not reflect the light from Araf’s sun, Zehra, in the bright afternoon.

  “One, can you see the object between us?”

  “Affirmative, Six.”

  “Are there any visible markings on your side?”

  One hesitated. “Nothing I can see, Six.”

  Wahl started to swim forward and stopped to initiate a connection to the colony 10 kilometers to the north. “Command? Are you seeing this?”

  There was no response. He and One were alone with a host of Altar above them waiting for any movement to drop another depth charge. One would be okay based on his position, but Wahl realized he could not move. The last blast blew him too close to the Altar controlled bank. In the water were a thousand tiny vibrations from the shore. The bastards swarmed above him searching desperately for any remaining infiltrators.

  Wahl took a long, slow draft of the fresh water and studied the terrain. There was a chance they could get away after all. Most of the minefield around the Raknar was gone—detonated in the secondary blasts from the depth charges. One could move toward the main channel and potentially provide enough distraction to let him slip down the bank away from the gathered Altar. Try as he might, he could see no other viable alternatives. Making a young soldier bait did not sit well in his stomach. Unless he did it, though, the Altar would eventually find them and kill them.

  “One? Can you swim to the west away from the feet?”

  “Not without breaking the surface, Six,” One replied. “There’s a wall of rock and debris here where this thing fell. I’ll have to cross it to get away.”

  It would have to do. “When I count down to null, I want you to break west as fast as you can. Get over that wall and get into the main channel. Head north. If we get separated, relay every bit of intelligence we’ve gathered. Do you understand?”

  “Copy, Six. Ready to move on your mark.”

  Wahl bared his teeth in a feral grin. “Get ready. Ten seconds.” Wahl closed his eyes and tried to visualize the escape. Giving One a five second head start, Wahl moved down the bank and out toward the channel. “Five, four, three, two, one...go.”

  Wahl tried but could not see One move out. A flurry of bolts tore through the water between them. Two depth charges impacted near the Raknar. Wahl pushed off from the rocks and swam hard toward the center of the channel. Past a line of rocks, he could see a deeper section of river. If he could get there...

  WHAMM!

  A depth charge fell at the Raknar’s feet and Wahl hesitated. One’s life signs flashed and disappeared. A burst of static filled his helmet as the radio reconnected to the command frequency.

  “Wahl? It’s Ooren? You have traffic for us?”

  Wahl didn’t answer. He looked back over the Raknar and the large object in the river bottom. A depth charge appeared, floating down through the water. Wahl braced himself for the depth charge’s detonation. There was no sound, vibration, or concussion wave. The depth charge exploded and in a split second, the object turned white hot and—

  * * *

  “Detonation!”

  Ooren turned to the watch officer. “What class?”

  “Unknown, sir. Thermal readings do not suggest nuclear, and there’s no evidence of radiation. Likely a high explosive, concussive device.”

  “Life signs?” Six of his best underwater operators were likely dead. The Altar had illegally mined the river and killed his men.

  “None, sir.”

  Ooren took a breath from the re-breather around his chin. The action gave him time to think through a plan. “I want intelligence to go over the site immediately. I want reconnaissance assets in place and I expect our combat forces ready in one hour.”

  “Sir? Communications buoys are sending a contamination warning. The water has been polluted by an unknown source.”

  Damn the Altar! Ooren seethed. “They would contaminate our home and mine our waters!”

  The watch officer called. “Incoming transmission from Commander Leeto. He reports the Darkness forces are deployed and ready for combat operations.”

  Mercenaries. Ooren sucked on his tongue and quelled his own distaste. He’d believed mercenaries were necessary months before, and he’d stationed a battalion of them in the main holds of his underwater city, out of sight of the Dream World Consortium, in the event the GenSha and Altar went to war. While a war would open up opportunities for his colony, the disruption of clean water and the contamination of the ample supply of fish in the lower Choote were something he could not abide.

  Ooren reached for the radio handset. “Commander Leeto?”

  The Sidar mercenary replied. “Honored Ooren. What are your orders?”

  A new voice shattered the connection. “This is Peacemaker Jessica Francis calling the Selroth colony. Put Honored Ooren on this channel immediately.”

  Ooren flinched. A Peacemaker. Interesting.

  “Peacemaker Francis, this is Ooren of the Selroth.”

  “All stations will cease fire and return to your colonies immediately. Failure to comply with this message will result in fines against mercenary forces and diplomatic sanctions against colony leadership under the Articles of War.” Jessica paused. “I will hold negotiations in an official setting within 96 hours, as codified by the Articles, at a place of my choosing. Both mercenary forces and contracting officials will respond to this message accordingly. Acknowledge.”

  “The Altar have killed a fishing party in neutral waters! I cannot—”

  “Honored Ooren. Acknowledge my message or prepare to face the consequences.”

  Ooren almost laughed, but the pause gave him clarity. “Of course, Peacemaker. The Selroth are standing down immediately. We await your orders for negotiations with great enthusiasm.”

  “My orders stand for all mercenary forces. I will have words with the commanders in the next 24 hours. Is that clear?”

  Ooren bit his lip. “Understood, Peacemaker Francis. May I ask where you’ll be setting up your negotiation headquarters? We are prepared to send a diplomatic team to D’nart at your discretion.”

  “I’ve declared the Raknar’s remains neutral
ground. The Altar ceded it to my control under the Articles of War. All future negotiations will be done there. I’ll be in touch, Honored Ooren. Peacemaker Francis, out.”

  Ooren stared at the commset for a long second. This is unexpected. The Consortium maintained a policy against involving the Union or the Peacemaker Guild in their Dream World dealings. The policy was nothing that could be found in their copious contracts and addenda, but an understanding the humans called a “gentleman’s agreement.” Internal arbitration gave the Consortium a way to handle larger disputes, even those that involved mercenary forces. A Dream World was not supposed to entertain conflict, but the rule of law was that mercenary forces could be used to handle any matter of dispute. All out warfare was discouraged on a Dream World, so internal arbitration had its advantages. When the Consortium could solve a problem on its own, it saved them millions of credits in litigation which the bastards didn’t mind sharing with their allies, often under the proverbial table. The Altar stood to lose everything from their colony position; that was clear. The choice to go straight to the Peacemaker Guild was theirs and theirs alone.

  Ooren grinned. The Consortium would be at that table, too. They wanted the Altar gone and the river open for the GenSha to dam and farm. Without the Altar, the Selroth could engage purification systems to cleanse the water and avoid the loss of food sources to the colony. The perfect place lay near the Raknar’s remains. The power source in the Raknar would be enough to run the purification systems indefinitely, if they played their cards right.

  Ooren stabbed a button on the commset. “Commander Leeto? Are you still there?”

  “Standing by for your orders, Ooren.”

  The Selroth leader set his jaw. “My orders have not changed, Leeto. We will attack the Altar mines and gain entry to the Raknar if not by the river, then through their tunnels.”

  “Their mines aren’t very profitable, Honored Ooren,” Leeto said. “At least, not based on what they’re reporting to the Consortium.”