Liberation_Age of Expansion_A Kurtherian Gambit Series

by Craig Martelle

  “I like your priorities, Plato,” Joseph replied.

  “Gate engines online. Prepare to drop the cloak. Dropping cloak. Gate formed. And we’re in,” Ted said, more to himself than anyone else. He didn’t smile. Establishing a gate in the middle of the enemy formation would have a catastrophic effect.

  The flash extinguished with the gate as Ramses’ Chariot went through. After that, secondary explosions erupted from the enemy warships as the energy wave swept over them. Plato collected the data until the instant the gate closed.

  Disabled but not destroyed, the AI thought. They shouldn’t have fired on us. That’s a lesson they’ll remember, whoever they are.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Keeg Station, Bad Company Recruit Training

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a slimier slimebag group of slimey slimeballs in my long life!” Christina droned.

  K’Thrall couldn’t help but look at his carapace. There was no slime. Once again, the sanity of human expressions eluded him.

  “What are you looking at, Recruit?” Christina yelled, glaring at the Yollin. She held up a finger, calling for silence before he responded. She knew that he’d make her laugh. You’re going to be my aide de camp, she thought, as long as those knuckleheads we strapped to you don’t get you killed. Then where would I be? We can’t have that, so don’t die, Yollin.

  Sergeant Fitzroy snuck up behind the platoon and banged a hammer against a pry bar. It had the intended effect. “Hoods!” he shouted.

  Auburn’s lip curled as he watched many of the recruits fumble with their suits. He knew that some of them were well acquainted with the shipsuit. He wondered how they had become all thumbs in no time.

  “Stop,” Kimber said. “Just motherfucking stop.”

  She stormed into the ranks and slapped the hands of those still trying to get their hoods up.

  “Is there nothing that you can’t turn into a dog’s breakfast?” she demanded. The aliens looked around. They knew Dokken, but not the non-sentient version of the species. K’Thrall started to raise his hand again.

  Kimber hung her head as she walked slowly to the front of the formation.

  “Dad is so much better at this.”

  “As much as I might like yelling at people, I really don’t,” Christina said cryptically. “Bring it in, people.”

  The twenty-five shuffled their feet, hesitant in their movements.

  “Here’s the deal,” Kimber started. “Back on Earth, when we trained new recruits, we did it Marine Corps style. Break them down, build them back up as one team, then train them to operate as individuals. It’s how we were all trained. Colonel Terry Henry Walton did that better than anyone. We have tried to replicate his style here, but we’re not on Earth and many of you aren’t human.”

  Even the other aliens turned to look at K’Thrall. “What?” he shot back at them.

  “As you were,” Kimber ordered, signaling for quiet. “We’re not him, and he’s not here. So this is what we’re going to do.” She turned to Christina.

  “We’re going to tell you what needs to be done and then you are going to help us to help you to get there. Yesterday’s billeting setup got us thinking. We can do it the hard way, or we can do it the way where you’ll remember it best. Here are the things you have to commit to.

  “First, the best way to implement emergency actions is through habit, which takes repetition. We will call for hoods twenty times a day until you can get them on in your sleep without waking up. Second, warriors need to be ready to fight. We will run combat drills, starting with simple hand-to-hand and work our way up. You have to know what everyone else is doing. There is no such thing as friendly fire, but there are teammates who have shot each other. That’s not what friends do. Third, we are going to undertake operations that are hard. You need to push yourselves, always. When we’re out there, if we don’t get it done, people die. I won’t have that on my conscience, so, my pretties, we’re going to train and train hard, but all of us together. We won’t be looking down at you, but shoulder to shoulder because we are all in this together.”

  K’Thrall raised his hand. Christina pointed to him.

  “For the record, I’ve seen Dokken eat breakfast. For once, I know exactly what you mean.” He turned to his fellow recruits. “It’s as pretty as you guys trying to put on your hoods.”

  “Hoods!” Auburn shouted. He pulled his hood up, as did Christina and Kimber. K’Thrall looked away. They didn’t have a shipsuit for him or some of the other alien races.

  “Those of you who complete the training will be enhanced, using nanocyte technology from the Pod-doc. I know you all agreed to that as part of your enlistment documents. Understand that those nanos are your emergency medical treatment. We don’t have a medevac, so if you get injured, we take care of our own until you can get back in the fight. We don’t have the logistical footprint for additional bodies.”

  “Why not?” K’Thrall asked. “The War Axe has a capacity ten times greater than what’s used. We have entire decks closed off to save energy.”

  Auburn looked critically at the Yollin. “More people means more people exposed to danger. Until they’re trained and have some experience, we can’t put them in harm’s way. We just lost one of our own. I can’t describe how much that sucks. Even though he was enhanced, the damage was too great. We couldn’t get him back to the ship in time for the Pod-doc to save him.”

  “Why can’t we use cryo-drones in support of the planet-side missions?” one of the humans suggested.

  “Is there such a thing?” Christina asked.

  “No, but this is the Bad Company. You are part of the greatest commercial enterprise in the galaxy. There are cryo-storage units and there are drones. I don’t see why they can’t be built and then sold to all the systems.”

  “What’s your name?” Auburn asked.

  “Mardigan, sir, but everyone calls me Skates.”

  “Come with me. We have work to do.” Auburn took two steps before stopping. “Why is your hood down?”

  “I didn’t get it on during the last drill.”

  “Put it on,” Auburn said.

  “But we’re going inside the ship,” Skates replied.

  “I’m not going to invest two minutes in working with someone if they’re going to get themselves killed by being stupid and unprepared. We all go into combat. Me. I was never in the Bad Company, but guess what? When the shit hit the fan, I’m right there with everyone else, blasting away with the railgun. So Put. On. Your. Hood.”

  The man missed on his first attempt to pull it from his collar over his head. And then the second attempt failed, too. Thirty seconds later, the helmet was in place and filled with air. He looked proud of himself. Kimber sighed and held her face in both hands.

  “Pull it back and do it again.”

  “But I just got it on?”

  Christina grabbed the front of the man’s suit and lifted him into the air with one arm. “And this is why Terry Henry’s way was most effective in bringing people on board. Listen up, you twatwaffles. If any of you want to do anything besides practice hood drills, you are going to get this dumbass to get his hood on in eight seconds or less. We’ll wait.”

  She released Skates. He dropped to the deck and started to fall, but his fellow recruits caught him and shuffled him away. They formed a circle around him. One of the technically-minded explained how the shipsuit worked, something the others were paying close attention to.

  Skates practiced a few times on his own. The others joined him. Up, down, on, off. Repetition.

  Kimber uncrossed her arms and gave Christina two thumbs up.

  “We won’t regret doing it this way. We simply won’t tell my father.”

  “He is results-oriented. He’ll be good with the method, probably won’t even care as long as the recruits are up to speed when they hit the hangar bay of the War Axe.”

  “Time’s wasting, Skates, come on,” Auburn declared.

  Mardigan strolled bol
dly from the group of recruits.

  “Hood,” Auburn declared. Skates reached behind him and snatched the hood to pull it in front of his face, where it automatically latched and started to fill with air. His feet did not keep pace. His toe caught the deck’s non-skid surface. When it finally pulled free, it slammed into the back of his first boot, and down he went. He hit the deck, his nose slamming into the front of his bubble.

  The blood started to flow, the red smear trailed down the plastic. It flowed from his nose and over his mouth. He reached up to wipe it away, but his hand bounced off the bubble helmet. The recruits behind him shook their heads. Only a couple laughed.

  “You got your hood up in five seconds. Well done, but now it’s time to go. On your feet, Skates.” Auburn didn’t bother to help him up. He turned and walked away. Mardigan hopped up, waved to his fellow recruits, and started to run, stumbling. A single gasp came from his new friends, but Skates recovered and ran through the open hatch after Auburn.

  His hood was still in place with the blood smear prominently in front.

  The War Axe

  “Drones?”

  Ankh looked at Terry with a blank expression. He treated Terry’s question as a statement, since to him, the drone that was taking shape beside the logistics canister was self-evident.

  “How many do you have?” Terry changed his approach.

  “This is the prototype. Smedley has already been given the production parameters so these can be produced aboard the War Axe. Four combat support drones will deploy with each shuttle pod,” Ankh explained before returning to his work.

  “But what do they do?”

  Ankh stopped in the middle of what he was doing. He didn’t show emotions like humans did, but his change in demeanor was very much like Ted’s after he had been interrupted one too many times.

  “They are armed with two railguns with ten thousand micro-projectiles per gun and four missiles. They are powered by the miniaturized Etheric power supply, so they also have a self-destruct explosive on board.”

  Terry rubbed his hands together as he drooled over the drone. Ankh went back to work. Terry Henry Walton walked away. The math was instantaneously in his head. Four per drop ship. Twenty-four combat support drones. Nearly half a million railgun projectiles and ninety-six missiles.

  “How about that?” he asked, but no one was there. Kaeden and Marcie were going through stacks of manuals trying to decide what was best to use in training and equipping the Federation’s combined arms force. Char was in their quarters. Micky was getting the ship ready to depart for Onyx Station. The snow was gone and everything was on track for the next phase of the Direct Action Branch.

  Could they survive liberty? Terry wasn’t sure about taking time off and letting his people scatter to the four corners of the galaxy, but he didn’t have any choice. Each person needed to reevaluate their own reasons for being in the Bad Company.

  He wanted everyone to let their hair down, not get arrested, and return to Keeg Station refreshed and ready to deploy.

  “Ten is waiting for us, make no mistake,” he told the hangar bay. “And giving that thing time to prepare for us is chapping my ass.”

  Terry growled, deep in his throat like an animal. He closed his eyes and threw his head back. We will need to beat Ten with brains not brawn. Ten is a master at getting under the human skin. Terry let out a long, slow breath. He turned to Ankh on the far side of the hangar bay.

  “We could all learn something from you, my small friend.”

  Terry’s eyes automatically searched for the German Shepherd, but he knew that the dog wasn’t there. He also knew that his hairy companion would never be his again.

  “I wonder if Char will let me have a ferret?” he asked as he climbed. “A really big, smart one…”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Earth, Ramses’ Chariot

  The blue and green planet with the usual cloud cover filled the front screen. A blue stalk-head craned around the humans to see better.

  “Is that your home planet?”

  “Yes,” Cory replied with a smile. “It looks so different from up here.”

  “That is a lot of water,” Bundin replied. His tentacles held on to his stalk as he leaned sideways.

  “Don’t worry, Bundin. We’ll be on dry land the whole time.”

  “Unless we take a dirigible,” Ted interjected. “We’ve been gone less than six months. They know who we are. First thing to do is call Kailin, who is running the business. He’ll know where everyone else is.”

  “Why don’t we just take the frigate? It has gravitic drives and can fly within the atmosphere,” Joseph suggested.

  “Right,” Ted agreed. He chewed on his lip in contemplation. He’d relapsed to the technology he’d left behind, and it bothered him to have forgotten. Then he smiled, because of where he was now. “Plato, please disengage planetary defenses so we can transit to the planetary surface.”

  “Sending the codes now,” Plato confirmed. “The transit window will open along a set flight path. Coordinates received. Engaging now.”

  The ship slid toward the upper atmosphere. They couldn’t see the deadly interlocking and overlapping defensive layers circling the planet. A corridor opened immediately before the ship, along a one-time use path randomly assigned by the defensive satellites. It closed immediately behind Ramses’ Chariot as it passed.

  Dokken looked up at the humans. Their excitement was contagious. He didn’t know what they were going to find on the surface, but clearly, the humans were looking forward to it. His tail started to wag of its own accord, picking up speed as they watched San Francisco get closer.

  “That tickles,” Bundin said, stepping away from the tail that was brushing back and forth beneath his shell. Cory scratched the dog’s head, oblivious to everything else going on.

  “Test, one, two, three, test, test,” Ted said. Joseph leaned around him to see who or what he was talking to.

  “I hear you loud and clear,” Felicity drawled. Her face filled the front screen. “Ah! There you are.”

  “We are descending into San Francisco. I am counting on Kailin to know where everyone is and to make sure that we have landing rights to the dirigible fields throughout the world. I’ll report back when I’ve found the kids.”

  Felicity opened her mouth to speak as Ted cut the feed.

  “You know she was still talking,” Cory said softly.

  “She what? She was?” Ted said, looking up at the screen that now showed the final approach to the landing field north of Alameda. He shrugged and disappeared into a private conversation with Plato.

  The frigate was smaller than the dirigibles plying the world’s skies. Ted sneered as he looked at the airships. To think that he and Felicity were the envy of all because they traveled in such luxury. “Terrence, Charlita, and Billy, you better come home with me or your mother will be very angry with me. No, no, no. That won’t convince them,” Ted said aloud, arguing with himself to find the right words to tell his children. “The universe needs you. And your mother. The galaxy needs you. I need you to give your mother something to do besides me. No, no…”

  Cory coughed politely as the ship settled onto the closely-cropped turf of the landing field. Bundin fought to turn around and headed for the hatch.

  “You better let us go first, Bundin. These people are not used to seeing aliens.”

  “I take offense at that word!” the Podder declared.

  “You’re alien to them, stranger than anything they’ve ever seen before, and this ship is probably giving them fits. When we left, our departure was fairly quick and is an urban myth by now. Maybe they’ll think we’re the aliens.”

  “Aren’t you?” Bundin asked.

  “Thanks to the damn Kurtherians, I think we may be. Still, let us go first.”

  One by one, they jumped past the edge of Bundin’s shell.

  Joseph was first out. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs to breathe deeply. He took small steps, letting his feet
sink into the grass as he moved. Petricia grinned by his side.

  Cory stepped onto the turf and enjoyed walking on something other than a hard deck. This part of the greater San Francisco city-state didn’t hold any memories for her. She had visited, but the airship facility wasn’t special to her. She didn’t want to go to the old naval station where they’d lived and raised their children, where she last saw Sarah limping away to catch a bus.

  We raised them to be independent, she thought. I can’t be angry that they went their own way, can I?

  A small crowd gathered some distance from Ramses’ Chariot. Passengers queuing for their airship from San Francisco, while others had recently arrived. Many stopped to look at the sleek ship parked between the dirigibles and its small but odd crew.

  Bundin squeezed into the daylight. “It is nice to see the sun again. Do you have any caves that we can explore?”

  “Terry Henry was tortured in a cave system that was rather extensive. It took us a while to dig him out.”

  Joseph stopped gawking at his old home and turned around. “Are you out of your mind?”

  Ted looked around to see who Joseph was talking to.

  “Akio and I almost died in there. Terry Henry almost died. Adams did die, and you stole a shuttle pod and were lucky not to get your ass shot down!”

  Cory leaned into the conversation, pointing to her blue glowing eyes. “And that’s where this happened. No, Bundin, we won’t go back there.” It was also near where she met Ramses.

  “This is a big planet. There has to be other caves.” Bundin’s stalk-head swayed as if in a tornado.

  “We’ll see what we can do, but not Mammoth Cave. Anywhere but there.”

  “We’re going to Chicago,” Cory whispered.

  Joseph’s breath caught. Petricia froze. Dokken started to whimper.

  Joseph forced his head back and started to laugh. “And that’s where we almost died again. Is there anywhere on this planet that something didn’t try to kill us?”

  “Jamaica?” Petricia suggested.

  “Jamaica,” Joseph replied. “At least this time, if anyone messes with us, we have a spaceship that will cause them no end of grief. We aren’t the same as when we left.”