From the Torment of Dreams

by Iain McKinnon

  The secretary stopped taking notes for a moment and called up some information on her terminal, “Yes, Sir, Gredan Navy: Jackson and Agstaff. They've both given descriptions, and although they were injured in the attack they're expected to make full recoveries.”

  “Let's gather up some kind of task force. We need to make an example of these terrorists. Hunt them down like dogs!” the Marshal's eyes sparkled thinking about the credence his junta would gain in such an operation.

  “Make a note of that,” he said waving an expensive gold pen at the secretary then turned back to Kalim, “one of my advisers will be in touch. That's all for now.”

  Marshal Hanno arrogantly waved his hand to shoo Kalim from the room.

  Kalim left the meeting with a bitter taste in his mouth.

  “That man is an asshole!” he thought shaking his head in disbelief, “He should never have made Marshal, let alone be in command of the army. Now this man is in charge of the whole planet!”

  For reasons of planetary security a full list of the murders had never been printed.

  “If the public knew how devastating the Alliance assassins had been the streets would be full of white flags.” Kalim recalled a fact from military history, “The Alliance once boasted: within forty eight hours of war breaking out their special forces would be able to kill two thirds of the enemy's high ranking politicians and Generals.”

  He had thought it was just propaganda but in the wake of the devastation it had left the realms of fantasy and become truth.

  Kalim couldn't help but feel admiration for the enemy. It was a sound manoeuvre, if you want to pluck a chicken you first remove its head. It was, however, somewhat frightening that the Alliance had that kind of power.

  “Good to see you've healed up, Captain,” said the officer as he handed envelopes to Jackson and Lan. Jackson and Lan sat in the small day room away from the ward. The nurses had emptied it of patients to give their visitor some privacy. Their visitor wore a smart dress uniform, it was a strong meadow green colour, not as garish as the stark white Naval dress Jackson had been issued for his formal duties. Over his breast pocket was a short row of battle ribbons and above that his name badge.

  “1st Lt. J Milovic,” was engraved in white against a blue background. He stood by the door with his cap tucked under his arm. His black curly hair was mussed from sitting under his hat and the tops of his shoulders were damp from the rain.

  Jackson would normally enjoy the atrocious weather outside. Back home on Greda exposure to the weather was fatal. Being some two hundred million Kliks from Asellus the planet was inhospitable in the extreme. The odd shower of methane rained down in a hurricane of carbon dioxide.

  In the manmade colonies the environment was far more predictable and mundane. Regulated and maintained, kept constant all year round the population lived in sealed complexes. It was not an unpleasant existence but it was devoid of many simple pleasures.

  Walking in the rain, having a snowball fight or lying in the summer sun. To come to a planet with a benevolent atmosphere was a severe culture shock. In his college days Jackson had studied on Neotra among people who took their climate for granted. For his friends back home it would be a luxury to be caught by a cloudburst, a luxury Lieutenant Milovic did not appear to appreciate.

  “What are these?” asked Jackson picking up the stiff envelope addressed to him.

  Lan had opened his and already pulled out the document inside.

  “They're your transfer papers,” said the visitor.

  “What do you mean transfer papers? Transferred to where?” asked Jackson as he skimmed over the dossier's contents.

  “That's classified,” came the predictable answer.

  “These are for an infantry posting, why? We're with the Fleet.” Jackson didn't know what was going on and he didn't like it.

  “You're being seconded to the Twenty Third Parachute Regiment. You are to join a Special Task Force as forward advisers.”

  “Advising on what?” asked Lan.

  “The two of you will be part of a team to extradite an enemy soldier for war crimes.”

  “What's that got to do with us?” said Jackson, reading over the text.

  “The assassin,” said Lan as he looked across at Jackson, “they need us to ID him.”

  “What?” Jackson was shocked. He wanted to deny it but what other reason could there be?

  “No,” Jackson shook his head, “No, no way. I don't know who that guy was but I'm not messin' with him,”

  Jackson tossed the recruitment papers aside, “I've done my part for Neotra, I've won my medals!”

  Jackson pulled back the collar of his housecoat.

  “See that scar,” he pointed at his shoulder, “That says no way!”

  “Captain Jackson this is not up for debate. You will obey your orders,” said Milovic.

  “What can you do to me that a Terran psycho can't?” asked Jackson.

  “Do you love your wife?”

  Jackson glanced over at Lan as if looking for support before turning back to the Lieutenant, “What are you saying?”

  “If you ever want to see her again I strongly suggest you comply.”

  The visitor's voice was calm and flat as if all was going to plan.

  “Are you threatening me?” the indignation was plain in Jackson's voice.

  “No, I am giving you an option. It's this, or you can spend the next thirty years of your life doing hard labour in a military prison. Which would you prefer?”

  Section 26

  The aftermath of the battle for Greda found both the Neotran and Terran fleets shattered. Few ships on either side had survived the massacre unscathed. Fewer still were battle worthy.

  The Terran aggressors had been repulsed and for now Greda still belonged to the Neotrans.

  Lacking resources, the Neotran ships could not pursue the fleeing Alliance vessels. Instead they had to content themselves with a marginal victory and lick their wounds.

  “What's the damage?” Baxsell asked the engineer.

  The man was still taking off his space suit. He was shivering under the ill-made garment. It was cheap and this was reflected in the quality of insulation.

  “No way in hell. She's toast,” he proclaimed shaking his head, “She's been pounded with shrapnel since you abandoned her. There are more holes in her than a sieve.”

  “OK,” was Baxsell's stoic reply.

  “Is that not a bit hot?” the engineer asked looking at the steaming mug of soup in Baxsell’s deformed hand.

  Baxsell shrugged and with an awkward movement offered the drink up, “Maybe, I can’t really tell. Thought you'd need this,”

  “Thanks,” the engineer said careful to take the mug by the handle.

  “Khosla used to moan like fuck if I didn't have his soup ready for him getting back from an EVA.”

  Baxsell had lost his ship and his crewmate in the battle. And in a very real sense he had been killed himself. He sported an ugly radiation burn across his right side. From his thigh to his face his skin sagged in pink folds of flesh. The radiation had torched his hide and buried deep into his bones. It would only be a matter of weeks before he died from the dose of radiation he had been exposed to but Baxsell didn't want to spend what time he had left in a hospital bed.

  There was nothing brave about it in Baxsell's mind. He felt he'd rather occupy himself than mourn.

  To bring some relief from the constant pain of his injury the Doctors had seared many of his nerve-endings. The treatment was irreversible but that wasn't a concern in Baxsell's case.

  He walked away from the air lock with his clumsy waddle and up to the communications centre. In his late forties he felt like a toddler bumbling around unsure on his feet.

  The room was quiet but, then again, so was the whole ship. With so many wounded, and even more dead, the fleet was seriously under-manned.

  “It's all shit,” Baxsell cursed.

  The engineer shrugged still cradling the drink.r />
  “We’re out here salvaging junk,” Baxsell thumbed the desk with his good hand, “What do they expect us to find out here, an abandoned battle cruiser?”

  “We've picked up a few serviceable life pods,”

  “Great deep freeze coffins, fuckin' useful,”

  “I don't envy the poor sod who'll have to thaw those bodies out of their seats. Poor bastards,”

  “Which one?” Baxsell asked, “The dead pilot or the boy chiselling them out?”

  For hours after the battle the airwaves had been jammed with distress calls. The pleas were the same.

  “Mayday, Mayday, please respond. Emergency oxygen supply is critical can anyone assist, please respond! Please respond!”

  Some Terran pilots had been rescued but the Neotrans didn't have enough ships to retrieve them all. Gradually the cries for help faded as one by one, trapped in their life pods, they had run out of air. It had not been a malicious act on the part of the Neotran's, it was simply because they did not have the resources to save them.

  “Look I know it's a shitty job but we need every scrap we can get,” there was a pause as the engineer took a sip from his soup.

  “Shit that’s hot,” and he blew over the lip of the mug, “We need to get as much useful stuff together if were to stand a chance against Earth's latest convoy.”

  “None of this will be worth shit against this new convoy, it won't be like the Berenices. There are battleships and cruisers and fighter escorts. All this is just clutching at straws.”

  Baxsell turned to his monitor and hailed the fleet headquarters on Greda. The woman who greeted him was familiar. She jerked back with revulsion when Baxsell's face appeared on screen. The woman tried to compose herself but never really recovered. She refused to look up at his scorched features.

  This was something he'd have to live with until his impending death.

  “Patching you through now, Captain,” she chirped still averting her gaze.

  Baxsell delivered his report.

  It was all bad, “Salvaging is next to useless and repairs are taking twice as long as anticipated.

  “We've retrieved a number of Alliance escape pods intact but they don't have anything of value onboard. As expected we've not come across any more survivors.”

  Baxsell sat back upon finishing his report, “That woman who took my call was at school with me.”

  “It's true what they say, it's a small universe,” said the engineer before taking a long swig from his mug.

  “She didn't recognise me,” Baxsell's voice was laden with sadness.

  “Did you two know each other well?” the engineer asked sympathetically.

  “No, not at all. I couldn't even tell you her surname, Emma something. Anyway I refused to dance with her once at a school party. She was tall and skinny with a bad haircut and glasses.”

  “What's she like now?”

  “I only saw her from the shoulders up but she's stopped wearing glasses and she's changed her hairdresser.”

  They both laughed.

  “I remember playing Bulldogs,” said Baxsell.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “It was a game we played across the playground. Whoever was 'it' would shout someone over and they had to try and run past from one end to the other. If you were tigged you'd became a catcher with them. If they made it across all the rest of the kids would try to make it over and so on until you were all caught.”

  “Oh yeah! I've played that, we called it Walk The Plank, Join The Crew.”

  “This day it was Emma's turn to do the catching. Not being good at sports we all thought this game would go on forever. First off she calls out Jeff. Now Jeff's the sporty guy in our year, real long legs, really fast. Good at everything, you know the type. Jeff was a generous sort of person but he wasn't about to surrender.

  “He went screaming across the field swerving to avoid Emma. As he did Emma lunged at him and fell over. You could hear the crack right across the playground as she hit the ground.

  “Jeff froze, we all did, then she started crying. It was a dull sobbing to start with. One of our classmates ran off to get a teacher. Jeff felt really bad and knelt down beside her all concerned and asked 'are you all right?'

  “Emma whipped round, grabbed his leg and shouted at the top of her voice 'Tig!”

  “She caught him!” exclaimed the engineer. “But what had broken?”

  “It was the glasses case in her pocket.”

  The relief fleet out of Sol was on full alert even before entering the Asellus system. Unlike the ill-fated Coma Berenices these were no easy targets. Two heavy cruisers accompanied the transports and the Alliance flag ship the Ptolemy.

  The Ptolemy was a state-of-the-art battleship and carrier, the pride of the Terran Navy. The largest capital ship built since the Armageddon Wars. Her sleek natural curves made her look more biological than mechanical. Her weapons were integrated seamlessly into her body contrasting sharply with her companions whose guns protruded from bulky turrets. Augmenting her already formidable arsenal of weapons, the ninety fighters held in her launch bays were piloted by the cream of the Terran Flight Academy. She and her sisters protected the army sealed inside the transport skiffs. A quarter of a million souls slept an enforced sleep in those holds. The majority were draftees; taken off college campuses, dole queues and ghettos. The Alliance took Neotra's threat seriously. If one colony could break rank others might just follow suit.

  “Sir, detected a group of signals ahead of the convoy,” the Helmsman called.

  “Another wave of Neotran fighters?” the Ptolemy's Commander asked.

  “Yes. They must be off course. They're some way ahead of us,” offered the Flight Officer.

  “Understandable, I doubt any of the ships in the last raid made it back to report our position.”

  “Sir the contacts are breaking up,” the helmsman reported, “They appear to be setting up in waves.”

  “Attempting to engage our front line defences and work their way behind us to the freighters,” the Commander mused aloud.

  “That would be my guess Sir,” the Flight Officer concurred, “if we go after them they'll split and run. We won't be able to take more than a handful.”

  The commander left the comfort of his chair and with his hands behind his back he walked the few paces to the Flight Officer’s station, “I'm not satisfied with either option,” the Commander said as he bent forward to look at the Flight Officers monitor.

  “Sir?” the Flight Officer asked.

  Straightening back up the ship’s Commander announced his decision to the eager bridge crew, “Prepare to launch all fighters. We'll break from the convoy and take them in a pincer manoeuvre.”

  “Sir,” the Flight Officer offered, nervous not to second guess his commander, “it could be bait to lure us away from the convoy.”

  “No. Our long-range sensors would pick up any activity and they don't have stealth capabilities. If we don't deal with these ships in our path they'll harass us all the way to Veruct and we can't afford the delay. Helmsman set course.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir!”

  The Ptolemy prepped her fighters and sped up. She let out a close quarter sensor sweep that revealed a rag-tag bunch of under-armed shuttles and fighters. The obstructing ships would be no match for the Ptolemy.

  “Jager's engagement at Greda must have been crushing in the extreme,” the Ptolemy's Commander exclaimed.

  He stood on the bridge, hands clasped behind his back, chest puffed out with confidence in his ship and his crew's ability.

  “Launch all fighter squadrons,” he proudly ordered.

  The flight officer's head set buzzed, “The targeted ships are retreating to an asteroid cloud.”

  “We'll corral them in the asteroid field. Let the fighters follow them in. Search and destroy.”

  The Flight Officer looked at his commander with concern, “Sir, those asteroids are an ideal spot for an ambush.”

  “Quite righ
t but we have superior fire power,” the commander turned to his Flight Officer, “Even if there are a hundred more Neotran ships in there they will be no match for our fighters in concert with our point defences.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir, standard point defence overlay,” the Helmsman acknowledged, “Bringing the Ptolemy to the edge of the debris field. Optimum position for fighter support.”

  The Flight Officer called out nervously, “Admiral. It's The Ironclad back with the convoy.”

  Annoyed at the intrusion to his impending victory the commander demanded, “What's she wanting?”

  “There's a large signal moving on the rear of the convoy,” fraught, the Flight Officer chewed his bottom lip, “The ships ahead are a distraction.”

  “And the Ptolemy has been pulled out of position!” the Commander's haughtiness drained from him as he realised he had been duped.

  “You were looking at the wrong ambush,” he said, berating himself for the error. “About turn, best speed to the convoy,”

  “But, Sir, our fighters!” the Flight Officer exclaimed.

  “Are more than a match for the decoys and a delay here is just what the Neotrans are counting on!”

  The Ptolemy turned to rejoin the convoy leaving her fighters to deal with the lesser threat.

  The Ptolemy soared in to protect the convoy. She pulled up along side the Ironclad and gave weight to her fire.

  Their guns raged against an oncoming Neotran cruiser.

  “How did they sneak up on us!” cursed the Commander.

  The N.S.V. Dominion charged towards the convoy. But her guns lay silent.

  Shots from the Terran guns were detonating straight into her, ripping into her body and gouging out huge wounds.

  “They tried this one at Greda, I'll wager there's an assault fleet in her wake,” the Ptolemy's Commander said to the Flight Officer, “Recall the fighters, we may need them after all.”