Multiverse 1

by Chris Hechtl

  “Offering terms?” Captain Zera asked, now concerned.

  “He wouldn't dare,” Waldecke growled. He scowled blackly, glaring about his damaged flag bridge. “As you were, people!” he barked, then pulled up the signal on his display.

  “You really are full of yourself aren't you, pirate?” he demanded without preamble.

  “Well, I will admit, this has been enjoyable for the most part,” Admiral Tatsumora said.

  “What was your name again?” Waldecke demanded.

  “Admiral, don't think I'm going to give you any new intel or a target for your ire,” the Asian said, shaking his head mournfully. “You've lost, admit it.”

  “I'll admit no such thing,” Waldecke growled. “I'll blow your fleet apart before you have this ship,” he growled.

  “I see,” Tatsumora said, cocking his head. “As it is, I am not interested in your ship, either of your ships. So I'll make you a deal. A truce. You can leave,” he said.

  “Just like that?” Waldecke demanded, eyes popping out. “Just walk away?” he demanded.

  “We're not the scum you think we are, Admiral,” Tatsumora sighed. “I've tried to tell you that, but since you're not willing to listen…” he shrugged.

  “No,” the Federation admiral growled. “We can't allow you to prey upon our people,” he said. “It's my job to stop you,” he said firmly. He felt his own people groan softly at that statement. Well, that was too bad, he thought darkly.

  Tatsumora nodded. “Ah, brave to the last I see. Unnecessary though. I never chose to be your enemy; that was your decision. We wanted the Exile repartition and amnesty package to go through. But I know a few in the military nixed that to keep an enemy on the front lines to go after. You needed an excuse. But you bit off more than you bargained for, didn't you?” he asked, folding his gloved hands in his lap.

  “We're still here,” Waldecke growled.

  “Yes, yes you are,” Tatsumora said. “Just think, Admiral, while you've been here playing tag with us, who's at home minding the store?” the Exile admiral teased. He cut the link.

  Zera frowned. “He's bluffing,” Waldecke growled. “He has to be. He's just trying to get into our heads, make us think twice.”

  “Well, sir, it's working. I'm now wondering about that damn intel we got.”

  “Intel can't get it all right, Captain,” Waldecke said. “Sometimes they get it wrong, but hell…”

  “And in this case, sir?” Captain Zera asked. “Given the forces we were led to believe were here?” he asked pointedly. “If they were wrong…or if was even our own intel shop. They could have spoofed it,” he warned.

  Waldecke frowned thoughtfully then nodded mentally. He could pin this on Zera or at least some of it. Say that the captain had laid the seeds of doubt in him enough to get him to retreat. Which was true but it was also true that he needed to retreat anyway, to not only get what intel they had gathered out, but also to lick his wounds. He'd be back, he vowed.

  “Disengage,” the admiral ordered in impotent rage. “Get us out of here,” he ordered. Fighters tangled behind them as his dreadnaught and carrier lumbered to flee. The enemy fleet ran after them but were content to just chase them out of the system. Waldecke noted they didn't have the firepower to take his capital ships on or they were reluctant to do so. Either way, they'd won this round. He hated to admit it, but they had.

  ~~~~~~*~~~~~~

  Philadelphia and Halsey left the system to return to Federation space only to find that he'd been doubly snookered just as the Exile admiral had said. While he had been absent, the thrice damn pirates had hit the fleet depot and docks and cleaned them all out. They'd even captured several ships in orbit and then left a mocking note behind. “Thanks for the gear; hope to do business with you again real soon,” it said.

  “All a set-up. From the beginning,” Waldecke snarled, balling his hands as he shook in rage. “All of it.”

  His red color paled when a communications rating looked up. “Admiral sir, Admiral Antovana has ordered you to return to the nearest sector capital,” he said quietly. “Encrypted orders are in your inbox,” he said.

  “Of course they are,” Waldecke said, sighing. “I'll take it in my ready room,” he said as he stiffly left the flag bridge for what may be the last time.

  “Bloody pirates,” he muttered softly.

  The End.

  Trapper

  It wasn’t really something he could clearly identify before he realized something was wrong. Not at first. Something felt wrong, a sound, or lack of it, smell, he wasn't sure.

  Slowly he slumped his six-foot, sandy-haired frame into the wet moss and waited. His instincts were screaming danger, and after a lifetime in the marines and ten years in the outback, he had learned to listen to them. Slowly he scanned his surroundings, automatically cataloging places for cover as he tried to sort out what had tripped his mental alarms.

  It was near noon and still misting, and he cradled the gun in his arms while he thought. The year 2305 was a weird year with reports of hostile aliens and rampaging pirates. His gilly net was old mil spec, just a basic harness with strips of burlap and other materials colored to look like the surrounding bush. It covered his body like a shaggy coat….Mabel had teased him once, saying he looked like a big green mop terrier. He tried to sort out his danger sense and then shrugged mentally.

  D=[]##======

  Lower life forms were abundant on the target planet. The high concentration of thermal signatures and metals in the endoskeletons of the larger ones made threat recognition protocols corrupted until a higher authority could sort it out. The hive was down; this force had been sent out to establish a secondary base when the first base had been overwhelmed by organics. A last communication to the Octobots programmed them to avoid contact and to escort the worker robots to the planned site quickly. Power consumption was down to 50 percent; batteries had been drained in the long march.

  D=[]##======

  A lifetime ago Trapper had been an up and coming recon marine, until a nasty bloodbath had turned his stomach and had gotten him out. Well that and the fact that he decked his lieutenant when he had found out the man had ordered snipers to fire on a desperate mob of starving women and children. He'd been spared a court martial since the brass hadn't wanted the entire incident in the record books. His life had been spared but at the cost of the truth. Sometimes he hated himself at night for that cowardice. At least he was alive though, to hate though, he thought.

  The wind picked up, and he picked up a familiar mechanical scent. One that shouldn't be there, not that far out in the outback. Hydraulics and the ozone of electronics, close, less than a mile distant. He felt the breeze brush his gruff leather hard face as he turned in the direction of the scent.

  Suddenly he picked up the cawing of birds as they fled in his direction. Hearing more sound in the brush he groaned as he thrust himself to his feet and rushed to the fallen log he had identified as good cover. Hearing crashing in the forest around him he leapt the log and dropped into a hole below it, just as all manner of beasts came crashing through the wild and into his clearing.

  There were hundreds of various animals, both predators and prey alike mingled into an unthinking mob of animal terror. They fled like they a fire was behind them, and he was tempted to join them. He checked the met and thermals but didn't see any hot spots to account for their stampede. Silently, he tossed off the idea of getting some easy kills as the animals spread out into the field and rushed into the bush.

  Near deer vaulted his log, making him drop deeper into the ditch for cover from their flashing hooves. Taking a peek through the gap under the log he spat dust and watched in awe as a Karnack Rex in full flight ran through the field. A pack of Quill boar followed, as did a thundering herd of Near Bison and Proto Rhino. The towering beasts were maddened with fear, eyes wide and white with fright as they slammed into each other to get room to run.

  A beast stumbled and fell, tripping its fellows and causing a ba
wling mess of kicking legs and broken bodies. The pressure from the herd behind was relentless. Heedless of their fallen brethren the follow-on animals plowed on, stampeding over them and grounding them into hamburger.

  D=[]##======

  The stampede was inadvertent. One of the hellcats had slipped its controls and attacked a Proto Rhino mistaking it as a threat. The bawling animal had alerted and terrified others sending them into a stampede away from the robots. Predators had been attracted by the commotion but had fled as well when the alien robots tore into them as well.

  D=[]##======

  When the sounds of mayhem eased, Trapper slowly stood, SN-23 sniper rifle at the ready. He flicked it to close quarter’s fire and slowly turned, assessing the damage.

  Dozens of carcasses littered the meadow, some moving, many not. He turned to follow the stampede then paused; cursing his curiosity he turned and slowly stalked through the brush in the direction the stampede had come from. The forest was torn up; trees had fallen, bushes flattened. Bodies of animals littered the path of the stampede. Occasionally a lagger would come bounding up and he would freeze, but the animal would divert around him and keep going.

  Again he questioned his curiosity, thinking it may have been a crash or logging party. The night before he had spotted a falling star in the night sky, but he hadn’t bothered to note its course thinking it was just an incoming shuttle. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  He could hear a mechanical whirring ahead and paused. The brush and low branches had been stripped; the area was clear of cover. Ahead was a bend with close outcrops of rock forming a ridge. He stepped off the path and knelt down, letting the gillie netting fall naturally. Sighting with the scope, he carefully scanned ahead. He could hear the whirring, almost like a fan or some sort of gears.

  Flipping the scope to IR he sighted down the scope once more. The trail leapt as he played with the settings, then a bright spot was picked up. The spot was too uniform to be an organic. Cautious he crept forward to a ridge overlooking the bend and down turn. Bodies littered the path. Most were Bison or small animals, but one or two was a Rex juvenile. He slowly crept forward until the bright flicker made him slow then drop. Every instinct had told him to freeze when he first saw the flicker, but that would have immediately drawn unwanted attention to his area.

  Pulling the rifle up to his eye, he spotted through the scope while his left hand flicked on the recorder. His scope was military grade with a microfilm over the lens that would prevent telltale reflections. Flicking down the magnification, he slowly scanned the area he had seen the glitter.

  The movement caught his eye before the glitter, rustling in the ferns off to one side of the path. Turning on the IR he was confused at first at what he saw. Bright spots showed where they were, six of them. Each had a thermal image of metal, heated by the sun. Bright spots in the lower torso looked to be a power plant of some sort, batteries or perhaps microfusion reactors.

  Judging from the way they moved on all fours and the general shape, they looked to be some sort of mechanical cats. Disgust almost made him snort and stand up. Only an idiot would send chrome covered metal cats into a forest. A loud noise attracted his attention, and his eyes widened in shock to see great mechanical creatures strut down behind the mechanical cats. Two were small insect-like creatures; four were great hulking things with four tentacle arms that moved it along. The shear alien look of them made him uneasy. These creatures couldn’t have been made by man.

  Taking a slow breath, he focused in on the cats. One stepped out from under a fern, and he got a good look, giving his passive sensors a good scan. It looked like a metal skeleton of a saber tooth, something that belonged in a museum on Terra. The four video camera eyes and long head crest made it very alien however.

  Judging they were still a good distance away he turned to one of the tentacled creatures. They were huge with bodies the size of an air car. Each arm looked like a segmented pipe that terminated into three-finger mechanical claws. Antenna on the face and spikes on the sides made it look menacing. Each had six eyes with the same mechanical red glint as the cats and smaller insect things.

  D=[]##======

  Thermal images ghosted out ahead and to the flank. Some of the vegetation had some sort of thermal system as well, making it difficult to differentiate between them and organics at distances. The high concentration of metals in the soil and living tissue was also making it hard to spot threats.

  D=[]##======

  A wounded Near deer tried to get off the path, trying to lunge to its feet in abject terror. Its rear left leg was broken, so it dragged itself forward. One of the cats noticed the movement and pounced, tearing into the creature and spraying the trail with more gore.

  The other cats paused and began scanning the area, looking for more movement. One of them attacked a pile of carcasses. Rick heard the bawling of an injured animal before it was cut off with a crunch.

  Mentally he cataloged the possibility of an IR vision. The more he looked at them, the more they looked like a military op. The cats were the beaters and infantry, the giant robots, the tanks. The two insect-like robots were in the center of the formation, protected and therefore valuable for some reason.

  He paused to get his bearings and a plan of retreat when one of the mechanical creatures looked his way. It growled a mechanical growl and his blood froze. His camo was also out of date mil spec, but he didn’t have the thermal protection; it wasn’t needed when hunting. He watched as the other cats looked up and also growled.

  Subvocalizing a swear he watched as the first of what he termed hellcats began a slow stalk toward his position. He snuggled down a bit in the hollow, ignoring the wet earth under him, seeping into his clothes as the creature stalked toward him. It weaved slightly, making him wonder why until he realized it was trying to triangulate his position.

  D=[]##======

  Hellcat 4231A picked up a threat and flashed a radio report to the lead Octobot. The radio silence protocol was strict in this situation; however, the robot had detected the explosives with its olfactory sensors. The microsecond squirt of data alerted the others to possible danger.

  D=[]##======

  The hair on the nape of his neck began to stand up, and he felt the thrill of fear. There was nothing a sniper feared more than being seen; it was anathema to them. Stealth and camouflage were life to them. He flicked his safety off and silently ticked off his targets just as the first creature began to charge. With an exhaled breath and slow squeeze the rifle fired, and the metal cat bowled over in a backward somersault, flipping down the trail before crashing into a bush.

  Still swearing he switched to his second target and tried to lead it as it sped up to his position. He fired and missed, raining dirt clods beside and behind the creature. Giving it more lead he fired two quick shots, hitting a shoulder and the power pack. It staggered and fell, so he switched to the third target. The others were halfway to his position when they stopped; all of them seemed to pause and look and apparently communicate for a moment. The like robots then turned to enter the bush, most likely to flank him.

  Not believing his luck, Rick backed himself down off the ridge and then crept to a nearby tree. The tree was at the top of a small hill with roots exposed a meter above the ground. Rainwater had eroded the ground into a slide to a pool on the other side of the hill. Backing into the hide, he pulled off his pack and dug out a radio and grenades. The pencil grenades were concussion bombs, personally modified for more bang for his buck.

  He pulled out the launcher and snapped it to the underside of the rifle, then began thumbing in the grenades. Finished, he turned to the radio. Like most of his gear it was milspec, only a decade out of date. He flicked on the receiver and hoped a satellite was overhead and made a whispery call, then dumped the scope data to the radio's transceiver.

  D=[]##======

  Damage assessments flashed over the mech net. The damage was moderate for hellcat 4231A; the round had torn into its chest cavity and s
everely damaged its secondary batteries. Power consumption was down 42.3 percent. Hellcat 54B1 had damage to its right shoulder, reducing mobility by 24 percent. The damage to its power systems was minor; the round had not penetrated its power core. However, it had ricocheted off to sever several power cables. Backup power systems rerouted the power buss to compensate. Unlike others of its kind this solitary organic was formidable. It must be terminated before it radioed in the position of the patrol. 4231A and 72C98 were detailed with Octobot O3465 to terminate it.

  D=[]##======

  No one received his message for a few minutes. Rick Trapper repeated the call a few times and then paused. Listening, he picked up the mechanical sounds coming from in front and off to his left. He flicked the radio to receive and record then hit the mute.

  Sighting with the scope he felt a shiver as he saw the creature in front. It was the first one he had hit about one hundred meters away and closing slowly. Its chest was stove in where the round had hit, and yet it still functioned. He heard the noise to his side again and carefully scanned the area. A second creature, one of the undamaged ones was slowly stalking him.

  They had him in a classic situation, focus on the one in front while its partner ambushed from the unguarded flank. Grimacing he scanned carefully and then put a round through one of the eyes of the one on the left. It dropped, thrashing the underbrush into frenzy.

  The one in front paused, and then continued its slow stalk. He switched to that one and scanned it for weaknesses as the thrashing ended. The crest protected the neck from his angle of fire, so he aimed further down past the shoulders to the mid spine. The thing had to have a weakness, and since it was modeled after a living animal, most likely the spine.

  Exhaling slowly he squeezed the trigger and watched as the round tore into the creature's spine. Sparks and fluid erupted out, and then it thrashed to the ground, its rear end now not functioning. Slowly it continued its creep toward him, pulling itself forward with the long claws of its forelegs as it dragged it's now dead rear end. Aiming again he put a round through its eye, and then scrunched back at a sound to his left.