And that was the truth. There were no other alien species within the borders of the kingdom. Those with interstellar travel had been able to flee before the humans could kill them all. Those who were trapped on their worlds had been destroyed at the orders of the Overlords. It had all happened before the time of any of those now present, but there had been hidden records passed down that showed how the Klavarta servants had felt about it. Since they were conditioned to obedience, even the more free thinking Alphas, they had obeyed the orders. But the leaders of the Pilots had, even then, felt conflicted about their task. They had no choice, but they felt like murderers as they wiped out entire species.
The leaders had said it was necessary, due to the need to maintain complete secrecy within this space. The Monsters could not know that they were facing humans, at least until the humans were ready for them. There had been some more advanced species in the sector, ones that would surely have sided with the humans against the Ca’cadasan conquerors. Now they saw the humans, or at least the Klavarta they had made contact with, as monsters, and no ship of theirs dared enter the space of any other power without being fired upon. And they already had all they could handle fighting the Ca’cadasans.
We made ourselves monsters. Or the Overlords made monsters of us. But our ancestors cooperated in that creation.
* * *
“I did not like the way their Chairwoman was looking at me through the meeting,” rumbled Platoon Sergeant Tia’lash, his huge body shivering a moment. “If not for your presence, ma’am, I think I might not have come back from her lair.”
“I doubt if anything would have happened to you, Sergeant,” said Sung, shaking her head. “They probably see us as a way to successfully prosecute their war, since no one else in this region will have anything to do with them.” Or at least that’s our assumption. The Klavarta said there were no aliens in their Empire, and we sure haven’t seen any.
“Ma’am,” came a call over the intercom. “Exec here. We’ve been given permission to send crew down for shore leave. With very strict limitations. Humans only. It’s my recommendation that we tell them thanks, but no thanks.”
“And normally I would agree with you, Exec,” said Sung, looking at her two non-human crew members who had been with her on the away mission. “I don’t like the idea of dealing with xenophobes any more than you do, but I doubt our non-humans would really feel comfortable down there either.”
The Gryphon and the Phlistaran both gave human head shakes. Neither of those crew wanted to put their lives on the line by moving about on the surface of a world of people who hated them just because they were different.
“The fact is, we are here to gather information. We want as much information about these people as we can gather, and they want to prevent that. So yes, we will put as many of our people on the surface as we can to snoop.”
“You know they will be trying to gather information from our people as well,” said Laaksonen. “And we can’t risk any kind of transmissions between our people on the moon and the ships. They’re sure to intercept them, sure to eventually break our encryption.”
“Then all transmissions will be in the clear, with innocuous phrase words to send information. And we will make sure that all of our people remain in groups of ten or more. I know it’s still a risk, but it’s one we have to take.”
“Agreed,” said the Exec. “I would like to lead one of the teams down myself.”
Sung thought about that for a moment. Her Exec knew more about the Fleet and its tech than most of the crew, but not more than many of the engineering personnel she intended to send down. And everyone knew of the existence of the wormholes that were their most closely guarded secret.
“Before anyone goes down I want deep conditioning,” said Sung, an order she really didn’t want to give, but one that she thought necessary at this time. “I want all of them to be under compulsion to not reveal anything about our wormhole tech.”
“They’re going to find out eventually,” said Laaksonen.
“But they don’t have to know about it at the moment,” said Sung. “Instantaneous communications with base is our ace in the hole.” She looked her Exec in the eyes over the holo that had just sprung into existence over the table. “I hate to ask this, Gauroi, but if you go down there, you will have to be under compulsion as well. If you don’t want to volunteer for the procedure, you’ll just have to stay up here with the rest of us.”
And I should have had it done to myself and the others before we went down there, she thought. Hindsight. At least it didn’t bite us in the ass.
Laaksonen still hadn’t said anything in agreement, and she wouldn’t have blamed him if he had refused that condition. The Empire was a free society, and privacy of mind and body was one of the cornerstones of that freedom. Which was why she would only ask for volunteers for this kind of mission.
“I’ll do it,” said the Exec, clenching a fist. “I hate to do it, but I understand, and agree, with your reasoning, Ma’am. And I truly want to get down there to observe with my own eyes.”
* * *
This is what I have been waiting for, thought the Yugalyth known as Lt. Lila Abernathy. The compulsion program is a risk. Not that it will work on me, but there is the risk I will be discovered.
The creature thought about it a moment. If she were discovered, that would be the end of her mission. The humans would destroy her. But the only thing she could do to forward the mission would be to replicate her kind among the people of this moon. The problem was that replicating another creature to perfection took days, and that couldn’t be done aboard the ship, since anyone missing their shift would send up alarms, and a search. But if she could get someone on the moon, someone who might not be missed for several days because they were on their off time, she could start a colony of her kind among the humans and their genenged servants.
The Yugalyth activated the com, putting in her volunteer request for shore leave. Minutes later it came back, with instructions to report to compulsion programming within the hour. With that done, she lay back on her bed and went into a meditative state, calming her mind and changing her brain waves so that she could simulate a human to the best of her ability. As she meditated, she had a smile on her face. Her kind lived for the mission, and now she was about to fulfill at least some of her mission parameters.
Chapter Fourteen
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
Arthur C. Clarke.
NEW MOSCOW MAY 20TH, 1002.
“Well, that wasn’t very bright of them,” said Cornelius under his breath, watching as the hyper velocity missile struck the huge airship amidships. He hadn’t actually seen the missile in flight. It traveled much too fast to pick up, much like an ultrafast bullet out of a magrail rifle. What he had seen was a flash from the ground a dozen kilometers ahead, and the explosion as the projectile hit the thin skin of the kilometer long aerial vessel.
They had been hunting this particular group of Cacas for a couple of days, and he had thought they had them on several occasions. But each time they had lost the trail. One or more of the couple score Cacas in the group knew something about woodcraft, and had found ways to throw the pursuit off. In fact, he had been just about to call off this hunt when the enemy had struck at a target that could do them no harm.
“Bloody stupid buggers,” said Staff Sergeant Mika Jefferson, watching as the airship started to fold up on itself, the crew bailing out with float harnesses. He closed his eyes for a moment, smiling, then opened them and looked over at Walborski. “Our girls and boys have located them. They followed the crack of the missile until they picked up the scent, and are currently working on encircling the Cacas.”
Walborski nodded as he watched the airship fall to the ground, picking up speed as it lost lift. It wasn’t strictly a military vessel. Instead, it was a planetary recovery platform, brought here with a hundred of its sisters to fly about, sifting through the atmosphere, vacuuming
up kilotons of dust and particulate matter on each mission before returning to base to unload. New Moscow was bound for an impact winter due to the amount of material suspended in the atmosphere. Lifeforms in the arctic and subarctic would weather it with little problem, and with some help so would the creatures in the temperate regions. Many of the animals and plants in the tropics and subtropics would not do so well, and most would probably die as snow began to fall in their habitats. There really was no way to stop this climactic progression, but with enough work they could reduce both the intensity and the duration of the winter.
“Isn’t bad enough that the damned bastards had to damage the entire planet,” said Sergeant Timothy Slater, one of Cornelius’ Rangers. “Now they have to interfere with our attempts to fix their shit.”
Cornelius nodded, not wanting to correct the NCO. The Cacas had, of course, heavily damaged the ecosystem when they invaded in the face of human resistance. Then the Imperials and the Cacas had added to the damage in the last round. It couldn’t be helped, not if the Empire had wanted to prevent the deaths of almost a billion people.
“Let’s get moving,” said Walborski, motioning the direction to the Cacas, down off the hill they were on and through the jungle. That jungle was still dangerous, but the Captain thought he was getting the hang of it, almost like he had Sestius and Azure, though not quite the level of New Detroit. I need to stop thinking like that, thought the Ranger officer as he followed his point man through the heavy brush, ears alert for any sound that might alert him to predators. As soon as we become complacent, something big and nasty is going to come out of the jungle and bite us in the ass.
“And remember,” he said quietly over the com link. “The General wants some more prisoners.”
“I wonder what the hell they need living bastards for?” asked one of the men. “I would think they would be just as happy to just have their heads.”
There was some of the snorting of barely squelched laughter. Of course they didn’t take the heads of the Cacas. Vids were enough to verify the body count.
“High command wants them for something,” said Cornelius as he dodged through the brush on the game path they were traversing. Said game had to be very large, but the jungle was fierce in its attempts to reconquer such walkways. “Now everyone hold it down. Don’t want the damned Cacas knowing that we’re on the way, so act like Rangers.”
The small column went silent, the two dozen men going into stealth mode, alert to everything them while digesting their own thoughts on the way. Cornelius didn’t know why they were supposed to get prisoners, and exceedingly difficult task when dealing with Cacas. He trusted General Baggett, but wasn’t sure if the man knew himself. Of course I don’t have a need to know that, thought the Captain, turning as he heard something rustling in the brush to his right. He turned that way, rifle at the ready, and huffed out a breath as what had to be a small herbivore ran into, then out of sight.
It took most of an hour to make it to the spot where they thought the Cacas were holed up. The superjags were still watching, using their natural abilities and their genetically engineered cammo to blend in. As far as the Cacas were concerned, if they did glimpse them, they were just some more of the exotic animal life of the planet. The cats were too smart to try and take the heavily armed group of aliens on by themselves, and were waiting patiently for the humans to come.
When Cornelius first saw the area that the Cacas were in he again had to wonder why they had given themselves away. None of the aliens were in sight, but there were the dark openings of several caves at the base of a rocky hill.
Shit, thought Walborski, zooming in on those openings with his augmented eyes. “That’s where they’ve got to be.”
“The cats say that the big aliens are definitely in those caves,” agreed Sergeant Jefferson. “They also report that most of the aliens had helmets, and that they have some stationed watching from the darkness of the caverns.”
“Wonderful. So they’re probably protected from any gas we might send in there. And we won’t stand a chance trying to storm those caves.”
“What do you want us to do, sir?” asked Fujardo.
“Get the men under cover and set up to take every one of those openings under fire if they try to come out.”
“And if there’s another way out?”
“Send a couple of your cats out looking for other openings,” he ordered Jefferson. “And get Langston over here with his micro-drones. We’ll let them sweep the area looking for CO2 emissions, or any other signs of caverns.”
“And if we don’t find any?” asked the First Sergeant.
“Then we’re in for a wait, or we need to bring in reinforcements,” said Walborski, closing his eyes and establishing a com link. Which I might as well get moving our way. I’m sorry, but when it comes to taking care of these bastards, I’m not as patient as the cats.
* * *
JEWEL.
“Our employer wants to know when she can expect you to make another try,” said the distorted voice on the message disc that Angel held in his hand. Of course the voice was distorted. The people who sent it didn’t want anyone recognizing them. He was surprised they had even used a gender specific tag like her. He had also been surprised that they had left the disc at one of the specified drops. And he had been surprised that he had even made the attempt to retrieve it, and not just because it might put him at risk in the manhunt that was going on in the capital city.
“In fact,” continued the voice, “she is really angry that you did not complete the mission while you had the chance. We have seen the footage of the incident, and everyone agrees that you had plenty of time to take the shot. So why didn’t you? Just have to say that we paid you enough in advance to do the job, and we expect the job done, or a refund.”
Like that’s going to happen, thought Angel with a scowl on his face. There was no way he was going to have any more contact with these people. As far as he was concerned, the most rational thing he could do would be to retire, and get his ass off this planet. He had made enough money to last him a lifetime. There were several frontier worlds that he was considering, where he could open an establishment, be a big man, and drop off the sensors. The risk of a frontier world at this time was that they were not given the same kind of protection as one of the more important planets, and with the Cacas at the gates, living on such a world could be courting death. Except his target worlds were in Sector I, that furthest from the Ca’cadasan Empire, and someplace they were unlikely to get to unless they ran over the Core Worlds.
The other risk was that even making himself a big man on a small world might attract too much attention. It might be better to move to another world and just lay low for two decades or so. For a normal man that would be a sound strategy. For one who had sacrificed almost five decades of life in order to become augmented, and then lived over half of his remaining life? Well, it didn’t sound quite so enticing.
Warning, came the silent mental voice of his high level implant. Signal emanating from the message disc.
Shit, thought Angel, a response the implant really couldn’t answer. He took the small disc and touched a stud on the table. An opening appeared in the top and Angel tossed the disc inside, then touched the stud again. The opening iris closed, leaving no trace of the closure. Almost instantaneously the lasers in the disposal compartment converted the disc to vapor, which was whisked away, leaving no trace of the device in the apartment.
Time to leave, thought the Assassin, sending a signal through his plant that opened a hidden door in the wall, where he kept the tools of his trade out of sight. Not all of those tools, but enough to accomplish the mission he was here for, the one that he had no intent of completing. His suit opened as he approached, and he backed in with a practiced motion, letting the physical connections click into place. He suit closed around him and sealed, and he pulled a short barreled particle beam rifle from its mount. The long barreled sniper rifle he had carried to his proposed attempt
to kill the ruler of the Empire was no more. He had disposed of it in a nano-disassembler chamber, not willing to keep such damnable evidence around.
Uh oh, he thought as his HUD came up right after the helmet closed around his head. There were the blips of powered equipment all around him. In the hallway outside the apartment. In the air outside the outer wall. He could tell from the signal that the equipment, which he took to be powered armor suits, was fully stealthed, but not well enough to escape the sensor net he had deployed throughout the building. He was sure they were not police or military suits. If they had been, he would have still tried to escape, but he would have been reluctant to kill. Both because of the trouble it would have caused him, and how it would have gone against his own moral code. He went out of his way to not kill the poor Joes who were doing their job working for the good of the people. He only killed those who he felt needed killing.
So why the hell did I take the job to kill the Emperor? he thought as he converted his suit to its ultimate stealth configuration, making it take on the appearance of normal clothing as his helmet retracted. He quickly activated the contact lenses in his eyes which gave him the full HUD display, linked to his suit. Ego, was the only thing he could think. I was still pissed off at the Imperial authority, of which the Emperor is the prime symbol. And it would have put me in the history books. That last, now that he thought about it, had to be the stupidest reason he had ever come up with.
If I had killed that young man, I wouldn’t have just committed the greatest act of evil any one person could have in time of war, but the authorities would have never let up the pressure.
Angel had figured out his strategy for escape by this time. He didn’t think going out the window was the best plan. Moments after he had exited they would not be able to find him, but he was sure he would be at the intersection of several beam weapons as soon as he made an appearance. And since he hadn’t installed another means of egress other than the main entrance, a shortfall he was now regretting, that only left the door to the hall.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 9: Second Front Page 20
