The Hunters of Vermin

by H. Paul Honsinger

  Vllgrhmrr didn’t give Max any indication of where he was supposed to sit. Max scarcely gave the passenger seats a glance--he was a commissioned officer in the Union Space Navy and the duly appointed liaison between that navy and the Vaaach Sovereignty, so he was certainly not going to sit like an ordinary passenger back in the cheap seats. His first instinct was to sit at the presumptive Weapons Station, but he wanted to communicate to the Trainer that he understood that knowledge of the enemy is as potent a weapon as a pulse cannon or thermonuclear warheads.

  So, Max sat at the presumptive Sensors station, earning a slight grunt from the Vaaach that Max interpreted as mild approval.

  The seat immediately changed shape to conform to Max’s much-smaller-than-a-Vaaach form and presented a set of safety straps. As soon as the seat completed this process and Max strapped himself in, the Vaaach hit a large greenish-yellow soft key in the center of his console. The ship immediately leaped into the air and began accelerating rapidly. Given that there was almost certainly some kind of inertial compensation system at work, Max couldn’t guess how many g’s the ship was pulling, but the sound of air rushing past the hull and the rate at which the sound diminished as the ship moved through ever-thinner air into space told Max that the Vaaach vessel would have left even the fastest Union ship far behind.

  Perhaps at Vllgrhmrr’s bidding, one display at Max’s console changed to show a graphic of what must be the planet they had just left, as well as a long curved line beginning on one side of the planet, arcing high into space over the pole, and descending to a point almost precisely 180 degrees away in both longitude and latitude from the start. A tiny dot, moving along the curve far more rapidly than it would in a pure unpowered ballistic trajectory, showed the ship’s position, already nearly half way along the curve.

  The Vaaach reached under his seat, pulled on a lever, rotated his seat to face Max, and released the lever. Max found a similar lever on his seat, pulled straight out which unlocked the seat, turned to face the Vaaach, and released it.

  “Young Human, in a few beats of the hunter’s heart, you become your own Trainer. We land. I leave and you remain. There will be no thinking foes closer than 5 kilometers.” He opened a small compartment under his console and withdrew a Union Space Navy regulation padcomp, or at least a damn good copy of one, and handed it to Max. “When I leave, this awakens. It holds the data you will need. You are at a fork of the trail. Choose well. I will say no more of what is to come.”

  The Vaaach rotated his seat to face his console once again. Max turned his to face his console, his stomach a sour pit of churning acid. He hated not knowing things, being left in the dark, or kept in suspense.

  Not only did he hate it, he wasn’t good at it. He didn’t handle it well. It was all he could do to keep from stomping his feet in frustration. Actually, he wasn’t entirely successful in doing so, as he found himself periodically lifting one foot and then the other off the deck and them pressing them down in turn with a grinding motion, almost as though he were killing invisible cockroaches. Each time he noticed it, he stopped, only to find himself doing it again a few moments later when his attention wandered.

  After what seemed like a series of eternities strung end to end separated every now and then by breaks to let the occasional millennium or the odd eon crawl past, Max could feel the slight deceleration and tiny bumps indicating that the ship was meeting the tenuous wisps of the planet’s upper atmosphere. Less than five minutes later, the ship was on the ground and the Vaaach had opened the hatch. As Max stood to get out of the ship, the Vaaach turned to him and grasped his forearm.

  “Lieutenant Robichaux,” he said, startling Max as the Trainer had never addressed him in that fashion before, “Your skills are limited and your small, soft body is weak. But you and your kin are defiant. You refuse to be conquered. This pleases the Vaaach. Go with our good wishes. May the spirits of your ancestors watch over you and give you strength.”

  He let go of Max’s arm, then—almost as an afterthought—grasped it again and said softly, “May mine do so as well.”

  Max nodded. Speaking with difficulty around the lump in his throat, he managed to croak, “And may the spirits of your ancestors give you honor and long life. May mine help you find joy and peace.”

  Where the hell did that come from?

  Max descended the accommodation ladder and, finding his pack on the ground to the left, shouldered it and walked away from the ship without looking back. A silent rush of air told him that the ship had lifted off. Max turned just in time to see the ship, its color now exactly matching that of the cloudless blue sky, clear the trees and vanish from sight.

  Max knew his first order of business, as always, was to clear the datum in case the landing was somehow observed by someone. The ship had landed in a hilltop clearing, still shaded from the early morning sun by the surrounding trees. Max walked quickly to the tree line and then, making use of the skills he learned over the past few days, did his best to vanish into the forest.

  A few moments later, when the sun cleared the trees and began to shed its golden light onto the green grass of the hilltop, there were only the sounds of the occasional bird and the trees rustling in the brisk westerly wind. Save for a few impressions in the grass left by spacecraft landing pads and human feet, soon to be erased by the freshening breeze, there was no sign that the place had been visited by either Vaaach or human.

  Chapter VI-A

  04:19 Zulu Hours, 24 July 2304

  Max spent 54 minutes slipping through the forest away from the landing site, stopping periodically to listen to the sounds of the forest and check his surroundings for any danger, from a sentient being or otherwise. Estimating that he was about three klicks from his starting point, Max picked a tall, strong tree, donned his artificial claws, and climbed quickly (well, quickly for a human carrying 30 kilos on his back) to a huge horizontal branch about 25 meters from the ground. There, he arranged himself and his belongings to make himself as hard to see as possible and pulled out the padcomp Trainer had given him. He powered it up and was greeted with a screen that was totally blank, except for a white square labeled, “PLACE RIGHT INDEX FINGER HERE.”

  Max did so, and was rewarded with a screen full of text. It read:

  TO: MAXIME TINDALL ROBICHAUX, TRAINEE, THE HUNTERS OF VERMIN

  FROM: DRRMGRTMN, SUPREME PLANNER OF TRAINING HUNTS, WARRIORS OF HONOR WHO GUIDE THE HUNTERS OF VERMIN [WORD-WOVEN BY OCSABAT OF YREVA, SPEAKER TO PROLIX ALIENS]

  Greetings Young Human. Heed well these words of teaching and command.

  Since our Starspear left your ship near this world, you have believed yourself to be in what your people call the Crux-Centaurus branch of this starswarm, many, many light years from your own people. We neither encouraged nor disputed this belief.

  This belief is in error.

  Instead, the Starspear left you in the Orion-Cygnus branch where the Union and the Krag Hegemony are located. We disabled your navigation systems and slightly compromised your vision to prevent you from determining your position or seeing familiar constellations. You are now on the world your people have named Drageus-Hayakawa IV, less than ten light years from the current Forward Edge of Battle Area between the Union and the Krag Hegemony.

  You may return to your people now, if you so desire. By engaging the time logic override on your wristchron and setting it to 25:00 hours Zulu time, you will signal your ship to execute an autopilot landing in the clearing in which we left you. It is fully fueled and provisioned and, once you board, it will take you directly to Milunka Savic station, which is 76 light years from this location. Your vessel will follow a locked course and will maintain strict EMCON to prevent you from notifying Union forces of what you are now about to learn.

  The Vaaach offer you a choice. You may return to the Union now, or you may undertake a mission that will do your race a great service and make you a Hunter of Vermin.

  What the hell are the “Hunters of Vermin”?

&
nbsp; Your small but busy primate brain is at this moment wishing to know more of the Hunters of Vermin. What you need to know for present purposes follows.

  A mature Vaaach may hunt or fight only prey or foes worthy of him--large dangerous beasts or formidable hunter/warriors like himself. Creatures such as the Krag, who fight without honor, who possess inferior technology, and who attack only when they can swarm their enemy with superior numbers, are not worthy opponents. Neither are the Zakif. Neither are the Nuuuususo. Neither are Species 22, 73, 113, 115, 215, or 308. No mature Vaaach with intact honor may seek battle with these beings, absent a large scale invasion such as the battle station construction and live fire exercise that brought you to our attention.

  Yet, these loathsome beings invade our territory, raid our shipping, harass our colonies, steal our satellites, hijack our automated ore carriers, and leave other marks of their foul infestation of our space. They must be hunted and killed.

  For this reason, there are the Hunters of Vermin: young Vaaach warriors to be, Vaaach who have dishonored themselves and require an opportunity to restore honor to their names, and members of other species--both allied and others--who volunteer to serve the Vaaach in this capacity.

  In order to become a Hunter of Vermin, a Trainee must complete a Blood Mission--he must face a Vermin force in battle. Because Vermin are inferior to the Vaaach or to any being who would serve them, the trainee must face a force of Vermin who both outnumber him and have several other tactical advantages. Further, he must face them alone.

  There are as many different Blood Missions as there are Trainees. Here is yours.

  At approximately 15:00 Zulu, 27 July 2304, nineteen ships of a fast task force built around the light battleship USS Eugene F. McDonald, Jr., under the command of Commodore Louis Guillaume Hornmeyer, will jump into this system through its Charlie jump point, engage their compression drives, and cross from here into Krag space to destroy the fuel, spare parts, salvage vessels, and support ships your occasionally adequate intelligence service has determined the Krag are stockpiling in major quantities in orbit near Lichtenberg III for a major offensive to take place in approximately 45 days somewhere in your Navy’s Battle Area Orange.

  If successful, Commodore Hornmeyer’s attack will spoil the Krag plans, and will prevent the Krag vermin from engaging in new major offensive operations in this sector for at least 184 days. Despite the Vaaach’s low regard for Commodore Hornmeyer’s honor based on his ill treatment of you, we find his battle plan to be very well conceived, and even highly inventive. It has, however, one major flaw.

  Your navy conducted a reconnaissance sweep of this system six days ago. Three days ago, as Vaaach intelligence had predicted shortly before you came to be in our care, the Krag covertly infiltrated this system and installed a high resolution metaspacial interferometric scanning orbital warning network sensitive enough to detect any ship coming through any jump point in the system. If it is functioning properly at the time, the system will alert the Krag immediately when Commodore Hornmeyer’s ships jump into the system. Because the installation is highly stealthed, the Union fleet will very likely not detect it.

  Predicted outcome: unless you prevent the Krag from detecting Commodore Hornmeyer’s battle group, a vastly superior task force will ambush the Union force en route, most likely at Ferguson-Hovdal II. Even with Commodore Hornmeyer’s admitted tactical gifts, the most likely outcome is the prompt destruction of all nineteen Union ships and their crews, numbering more than twelve thousand hands.

  Twelve thousand lives. Twelve THOUSAND lives.

  The enormity of the predicted death toll hit Max right in the gut. The knowledge that the casualty roster would be full of people who were the only family he had known for half of his life made that blow harder than any punch he ever felt in any fight he ever fought. It was almost more than he could bear without breaking. For a full thirty seconds, he struggled to breathe, fighting to make his lungs move air in and out of his body. When he got control of his breathing, he lost control of his stomach.

  To put it bluntly, Lieutenant (JG) Maxime T. Robichaux, USN, puked his guts out. He heaved violently for a good five minutes, leaving him feeling like a tube of toothpaste near the end of its useful life. It was a good thing that the Krag weren’t nearby, because they would have heard the loud, painful retching. Fortunately, Max had the presence of mind to lean out over the edge of the limb on which he was perched, so that his stomach contents fell to the ground out of sight and too far away to smell.

  Much.

  Panic--pure, blind panic--threatened to overwhelm him. His harrowing experiences on various warships, as well as after being taken captive by the Vaaach, had taught him well how to deal with the terror associated with losing his own life. It had, however, done little to prepare him for the terror associated with being responsible for the life or death of more than 12,000 of his brothers in arms.

  The tiny furred primeval mammal that lived deep in the structure of his brain wanted to crawl into some deep, dark hole, curl into a tiny shivering ball, and remain quietly hidden until the huge reptiles finished lumbering past. From the way that small insectivore shivered in his dark, damp hole, that might take a long time.

  Somehow, Max managed to stay on the branch. When his stomach was truly empty and the heaving stopped, Max concentrated on his breathing, releasing his fear into the air to be scattered by the winds, and drawing in calm from the peaceful woods and harmony of the living things that surrounded him. Slowly, over ten minutes or so, the technique worked. Max could feel his pulse slowing down, his racing mind slowing to a more sustainable pace, and the sick, dizzy feeling that threatened to overwhelm him receding into the background. This breathing exercise had saved him from abject panic more than once. Max even smiled, knowing that most people who practice that kind of exercise learned it in a yoga class or from a similar source.

  Max, however, learned it from one of the most efficient killers ever sired by the human race: Admiral Charles Lake Middleton. Not for the first time, Max thanked God that the young Cajun and the now past middle-aged New Stratfordian lived in the same galaxy at the same time. And, more important, he thanked God that Middleton had taken the time to put much of what he knew into a series of books.

  The most famous of these was the borderline-legendary Advice to a New Warship Commander, written when Middleton was a Commodore. Less famous, but more useful to Max at the current stage of his career was Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way: Paths to Success for Junior Naval Officers. The title of each chapter was a principle that junior officers should follow, followed by an in-depth explanation of what to do and how to do it. Max had learned how to use his breathing to calm himself in Chapter Three, entitled “Master Your Fears, Or They Will Master You.” It was, at least so far for Max, the most useful chapter.

  His favorite, though, was Chapter One, “An Officer’s Wartime Priorities: Directly or Indirectly 1. Bring the War to the Enemy; 2. Kill Him; 3. Come home alive; 4. There is no Four.”

  Well, now that we’ve worked on Chapter Three, it’s time to get back to Chapter One.

  Max quickly rinsed his mouth out with water from his canteen, ate a “snack” ration bar in three bites to settle his now empty stomach, and popped a few of the mints he always carried to help with “combat mouth,” the foul-tasting dry mouth he always got when he was in harm’s way.

  Thus fortified, he read on.

  The warning system’s FTL transmitter and its power supply are large and radiate much heat and magnetic flux. Even primitive human sensor technology would detect them easily if they were placed in space. For this reason, the Krag placed them on the surface of this planet. You were landed 7.24 kilometers from the relay station. It is guarded by four Krag garrison/security spacers.

  Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to prevent the Krag from being warned of Commodore Hornmeyer’s passage through the Drageus-Hayakawa system.

  This padcomp contains the complete plans and tech
nical specifications of the relay station, as well as other information you may find useful. You have also been provided with equipment specifically selected to be useful in this situation. Be aware that you should not “take hints” from what is and is not included in your pack as there is equipment provided that we do not anticipate you will need, to prevent you from deducing the best tactical solution to your problem by analyzing your equipment list.

  If you are successful, your ship will come to you automatically with control of all of its systems restored to you. At that point, you will have yet another choice to make.

  It is our hope that you survive to make it.

  We do not, however, think this to be likely.

  END OF DOCUMENT

  Holy. Fucking. Shit.

  Although he knew it to be perfectly stationary, Max felt the tree in which he was perched sway sickeningly. He sank his artificial claws into the branch on which he sat to keep his balance. Simple breathing stopped being an automatic function handled by the brainstem and became a consciously directed, voluntary movement controlled by Max’s cerebral cortex. Max had to return to his breathing exercises to chase from his vision the dark particles that suddenly swarmed through his vision. As he focused on his breathing and on not falling out of the tree, which at this height would probably kill him, he felt something else that he had never felt before or, at least, had never felt so strongly.

  Responsibility.

  Of course, as a commissioned officer in the Union Space Navy, Max had exercised responsibility before. He had even wielded significant responsibility over enlisted personnel and midshipmen in which his and their lives had hung in the balance. But, Max had done so as part of a command structure in which he benefitted from the support of other officers, even if that support was only advice or the availability of advice spoken over a comm system. Now, responsibility for survival of an entire task force had been laid in his lap and he had no senior officers to whom he could turn. Here he was, a sixteen year old Lieutenant (JG), and an entire naval attack force would live or die based on what he did. That’s the kind of responsibility that belonged in the capable and experienced hands of people like Commodore Hornmeyer or Admiral Middleton, not held in the fumbling teenage grasp of Maxime Tindall Robichaux.