by Joel Babbitt
“My contacts out in the colonies haven’t reported seeing the type of weapons used in these attacks before,” Alexander countered. “I would think my contacts would have said something.”
“Doesn’t mean they aren’t there,” Ryker replied. “After all, the colonies aren’t even on the grid. Only the major colonies have a local grid, so it’s easy to hide things out there.”
Alexander thought for a moment before answering. “I think the separatists have more resources to launch a strike like this,” he said, surveying the shattered buildings about them. “However, there are some delusional warlords out there in the eastern colonies, one in particular that seems to be bent on agitating folks. I think it’s a toss-up. Both are about as likely as the other.”
“Well, then, only one way to find out,” Ryker said.
The older man looked at Ryker expectantly. “Care to elaborate?”
“We need to go to the wreckage of the ship and see for ourselves,” Ryker said. “The Venture was traveling north, right? So, if the missile, or whatever it was, hit it from the left, then the Timmok Separatists probably did it. If it hit from the right, then we start our search in the eastern colonies.”
Captain Washington
Chapter Three
Glenda had been Port Operation’s local hover ferry, the MCS Glenda to be precise, before the vehicle had melted a relay in the electric motor that powered the hover fans. It had always been a backup sort of capability, not one that Port Operations had depended on for more than finding stray buoys or running up the coast for supplies. Today, however, it was obvious that Colonel Alexander and his folks were determined to use it for much more.
Both of the hover fans were torn apart, as was the motor. Weapons Sergeant Thompson was busy overhauling the motive mechanics of the hover ferry. A stockpile of spare parts and supplies was piled around the superstructure of the Glenda, brought there by one of the two functional forklifts remaining on Taysom Island. Colonel Alexander was overseeing the storing and distribution of it all with his normal dedicated intensity while specialists were running here and there around the ferry storing supplies or helping Thompson with the overhaul. The local first responders had taken their helperbots with them.
By the natural efficiency of it all, any casual observer would think that they made their living by getting old hover ferries ready for action, but the truth was that Colonel Alexander and Sergeant Thompson were masters at their craft. After years of working together a natural division of tasks and a rhythm of actions had crept into their operations, so much so that the various specialists were extensions of their will and the hover ferry was just another obstacle to be overcome in getting the mission done. Akin to a beehive, the loading operation was the epitome of laser-focused, organized chaos.
Colonel Alexander stood and wiped the sweat from his brow. Looking around with pride in his troops, he couldn’t help but laugh under his breath at Ya-da-na, the trillo whose three bodies or aspects were bumbling about with a large four-corner case, the unsupported corner causing them no end of difficulties as first one aspect then another then the last tried to hold up two corners while the other two aspects held one corner each. Their stodgy legs and long snouts popping up here and there as they constantly adjusted reminded him of a trio of clowns running around a clown car, until Specialist Alphabet came to help them. How three bodies could share one mind had always baffled Alexander, but then there was a lot about the universe that he didn’t claim to understand.
As he stood there with a look of amused satisfaction on his weather-beaten face, the distinct whine of a skimmer engine coming from the area of the bridge broke his reverie. Turning, he was surprised to see four yazri perched atop the backseat of the skimmer. In a moment, the skimmer pulled up and stopped near the loading dock. Captain Washington hopped out and Doctor Pastore wasn’t far behind. Immediately the team of yazri grabbed kit bags, armor, supplies, and guns, and toted them toward the ferry. There was a singleness of purpose among the four tall warriors that Colonel Alexander had not seen for some time. Ancestral blades were strapped across their chests, and each had marked his bare monkey-like snout with smears of blood. Though they wore their nanomer under armor, the wings that stretched from wrist down each side and leg to their ankles were also hung with rings of precious metal; tokens of bravery and accomplishments in battle meant to awe any evil spirits who might oppose them. In short, they were dressed for war.
“Are those our two casualties and their companions?” Alexander asked as Captain Washington approached, a broad smile on her face.
“Yes, sir! Turns out they had three med droids on standby. They left the hard stuff for the human docs, and that meant the droids had plenty of time to fix up our two slightly-used yazri.”
Alexander smiled, squinting through his darkened situence glasses in the bright light of midday as he watched the four tall, lean yazri lug their gear onto the MCS Glenda. Their names projected helpfully under their faces for him to read. “They seem to be no worse for wear,” he said. “I can’t even tell which ones were wounded and which ones weren’t.”
“They’re anxious to get out there and take on whoever attacked them. They kept saying that honor demands blood.” Washington smiled and rocked back and forth on her heels.
Alexander nodded and smiled in response. “Well, time to get hunting then. Let’s see if we can’t give them something to shoot at.”
“Yes, sir!” Captain Washington said as she turned and headed toward the MCS Glenda.
* * *
Lieutenant Pete Flanagan and the resident survivalist Jack Wolf sat in the jetcar on its landing pad watching as the MCS Glenda’s hover fans roared to life and the massive metal beast began to lurch, climbing slowly the half meter or so onto a stout cushion of air. Topside on the Glenda, Colonel Alexander stood stonily looking out into the calm of the Glass Sea, his face a study in determination and focus. There was little for most of Marik’s Marauders to do on this mission, so they had left most of the specialists back on shore to continue with cleanup operations, though Sergeant Thompson had selected a few to take with him. Jim Ryker, who sat watching the junior troops, smiled as he thought about how lost Sergeant Thompson would look without a host of troops around him to boss around.
Captain Washington fought the controls for a moment or two until the hover ferry steadied out, then slowly brought her about and pointed the Glenda out to sea. With a deep breath, Washington pushed the throttle forward. The Glenda glided out onto the water with a smooth rhythm, its air cushion pushing down to create a crater in the shallows below it. Rays of water flew out in all directions as the Glenda moved, leaving a trail of clear water through the ubiquitous algae clumps that flourished in this equatorial part of the Glass Sea.
Not more than a standard hour into their journey the Glenda had already reached the edge of what the natives called the Drop Off, a cliff-like line where the water deepened precipitously from tens of meters to well over a kilometer. North of the Drop Off the water became immediately much cooler, choppy, and storms often swept north of that line. It was the official demarcation line on every map between the Glass Sea on the south and the North Sea beyond it—and was the farthest most pilots would take a hover craft.
Above the Glenda in the sky the team’s jetcar circled about, running tracks in the sky to provide over watch for the much slower ferry. The Glenda had some sensors built into the rig, but they were all navigational in purpose. The jetcar, however, had a full suite of military sensors, which gave the team a full picture of the area around them.
Since neither the ferry nor the jetcar had sensors that could give them a good look at the wreckage of the MCS Venture, the team had brought with them a pair of deep water drones; the Dewa, which looked like a primitive air-dropped bomb with extra propellers and several non-imagery sensor antennas protruding from its sides, and the Camerray, which looked like a large manta ray mounted with several optical, infrared, and hyperspectral cameras.
Jim
Ryker wasn’t a fast study on all the latest tech, relying more on dealing with people and following his instinct rather than gadgets and high-tech doodads, but as he stood on the center deck of the Glenda listening to Specialist Krrrz explain the ins and outs of what the various cameras and sensors could do for them, he was suitably impressed. “Bug” as everyone had called the ant-centaur-like kiz’zit, the only member of his race on the team, since day one in basic training, was enough of a gearhead for the both of them. It didn’t take Jim more than a few seconds to figure that out.
“So, what if the wreckage is beyond the communications range of the control systems on the ship?” Jim was asking Specialist Krrrz, though his eyes had wandered to the huddle of yazri warriors who sat on their haunches over to one side ogling the advanced tech and wondering at its uses.
“That is no problem,” Krrrz’s voice projector translated his buzzes, clicks, and hoots into Standard as he stepped toward the control station’s large display. “See on this monitor, there are options for preprogramming a mission. You can program the Camerray to go to a place that is specific, or to find a thing based on a semi-precise model, or to search for anomalies. It is a versatile drone.”
Jim nodded judiciously as he stared intently at the display, trying to ignore the distracting sounds the kiz’zit was making and focusing on the words coming out of his voice projector instead. “You mean to say that we don’t necessarily have to be anywhere close to the wreckage? So, we could stay, perhaps, several kilometers away and still see what we need to see from the wreckage?”
Specialist Krrrz hadn’t really considered that option, but he immediately nodded his head. “Yes. The range of the Camerray is approximately forty clicks, so no need to be near wreckage.”
“Clicks?” Jim asked.
“Uh… military word for kilometer,” Krrrz explained, bowing his head in a display of embarrassment at having used insider military speak with a civilian.
“Right, so we could be, say, fifteen kilometers out and that would give the Camerray the legs to get to the wreck, take a look around, and still make it back to us with a few ‘clicks’ to spare, right?” Jim asked.
“Yes,” Krrrz nodded. “But the Dewa does not have that range,” he said, pointing at the bomb-looking deep-water drone sitting on the other side of the deck. “It can go four or five clicks. Its advantage is that it has an atomizer that creates air inside it, so it does not use its propeller to come to the surface.”
Jim was nodding in his normal, high energy way. He looked at the kiz’zit specialist, couldn’t think of any further questions, so he just excused himself with a curt nod and went to see Colonel Alexander.
* * *
“Are we just about on station, Shannon?” Colonel Alexander asked Captain Washington. He was the only one in the group that would dare call the Captain by her first name.
“We’re three point eight clicks out from the standoff site, sir,” she answered precisely.
“Very well, did you let Lieutenant Flanagan know the plan?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. He knows to fly no closer than twelve clicks from the projected site of the wreckage.”
Colonel Alexander nodded and turned to Weapons Sergeant Thompson. Dark eyes set in a deep black face looked back at him.
“What are you thinking, sir?” Thompson rumbled.
“I’m thinking we probably should man the two multi-lasers we mounted on this thing,” Alexander said, a hint of standard military paranoia in his eyes.
Thompson grinned and nodded. “Just what I was thinking, too, sir!” He turned and barked an order at the group of specialists laughing and talking in the small mess area at the back of the crew area of the ship. “Alphabet! Triplets! Go man the guns!”
Specialist Chewontonpipat and Specialist Ya-da-na, the trillo that Sergeant Thompson called ‘Triplets,’ all bolted upright, yelling an ‘on the way, sergeant’ as the human and the three smaller animal-like trillo aspects all ran out of the crew area into the slight wind of the late afternoon.
Colonel Alexander stood looking at the pair as they exited. There was a place called the Trillo Protectorate he knew, and a Thailand Sector as well, but even though such places were in different arms of the galaxy, the funny-named human Chewontonpipat and the three-bodied trillo Ya-da-na both still considered themselves as one with the people from those legendary places, even though it had been many generations since any of their ancestors had lived there. Such cultural affiliation wasn’t uncommon among the transplanted populations of the Rae Liam Dominion, however, as the practice of the Solkin was to transplant enough of a population to an area so that they would not lose their basic survival skills, sociological structures, or any key economic or technology production skills they might have.
Colonel Alexander’s ancestors had come to the Rae Liam Dominion, to the planet Prexlar, complete with the large wooden ship they had been sailing to some “new world” in. By the time the small number of three-aspect trillos and Thai humans had been transplanted to nearby Jaxar, establishing a strangely tight-knit multi-racial culture between them, Alexander’s ancestors had already been on Prexlar for hundreds of years and under the direction of the Solkin had built a complex, space-faring economy. But one thing the Thai and Trillo descendants had going for them was their natural love of the ocean, which seemed to translate directly to space-faring. Jaxians, as off-worlders called the rather tight-knit Thais and Trillos of Jaxar, could be found in almost every ship throughout the dominion, usually hanging out together or working hand-in-hand. It was the same in Marik’s Marauders. Alphabet and Triplets were inseparable.
“Sir,” Captain Washington’s voice cut through Alexander’s thoughts, “we’re on station and ready to deploy the Camerray at your command.”
“Go ahead,” Alexander said, his steely eyes turning intently to the horizon.
“Launch the Camerray!” Washington’s voice boomed out over the deck from the loud speaker. Immediately, Specialist Krrrz and the four yazri all got behind the large, manta ray-looking drone and pushed it slowly along the deck to the edge. With one final heave the Camerray went off the back deck of the Glenda and dove nose-first into the choppy waters around the hover ferry.
Back in the pilot house of the crew area Captain Washington was watching a small blinking red dot moving slowly away from the large green dot at the center of a display mounted next to the controls.
“Sir, the drone seems to be following the pre-set course,” she reported.
Colonel Alexander turned and walked toward the door out that led onto the deck. “Alright, then. I think I’ll step out for some fresh air. Let me know when it comes back within range so we can see something.”
Jim Ryker followed the colonel out into the brisk air of the North Sea.
* * *
Sergeant Thompson rotated the display with two massive fingers. The three-dimensional imagery the Camerray had gathered by coupling its millimeter-wave sensor to the thermal imaging view brought the gaping hole in the side of the MCS Venture’s wreckage into clear focus.
“Well, I’d say it’s obvious that the strike came from the east,” Jim Ryker said, voicing what everyone who stood watching the display was thinking. “Looks like the colonies on the eastern continent are to blame then.”
After a few moments, Colonel Alexander broke the silence again as Thompson further rotated the perspective. “What do you suppose made a hole like that?” he asked, pointing at the massive, gaping oval-shaped hole just above what had been the waterline on the wreckage of the class five sea freighter.
Sergeant Thompson looked at Ryker, who shook his head.
A voice broke through the group’s focus from Captain Washington’s linker. “Sir, this is Lieutenant Flanagan.”
“Go ahead, Pete,” Alexander said, not taking his eyes from the strangely shaped hole.
“Sir, I’ve worked some with explosives back in B School,” Flanagan’s voice echoed in the berth of the ferry. “I’m pretty certain that ho
le was made by a Sea Skimmer Attack Drone.”
“Thompson,” Alexander started.
“Already on it,” the muscular sergeant said as he brought up an encyclopedia. In a few moments a picture of a long, angular drone that looked like an oversized dart or perhaps a small skimmer was rotating around on the screen.
“Bring up the explosive profile, please, sergeant.”
In a few moments, a video played of the drone flying in slow motion into the side of a target in the middle of a large body of water. Fire blanked out the camera for a split second, but as it subsided a clearly oval shape was left, ringed in the melted plasteel of the freshly breached hull.
“You win the prize, Lieutenant Flanagan,” Alexander said. “Good eye.”
“Thank you, sir,” Flanagan’s disembodied voice answered.
“So who makes the Sea Skimmer?” Alexander asked no one in particular.
“Says here it’s a Stellar Corp standard design. That means it’s not an exclusive product, so it could have been manufactured by anyone,” Captain Washington answered.
“Anyone with a control matrix, explosives, and all the other parts to make it,” Alexander said.
“Yes, sir. Chances are it was made by Stellar Corp, since it says here that they still manufacture them for various defense organizations,” Washington replied. “But why would Stellar Corp fire one of their drones at our ship from the eastern shore? I didn’t think they had any assets on the eastern continent.”
Colonel Alexander stood chewing his lip for a few moments before answering. “I don’t think we can pin this on Stellar Corp with only this evidence. Specialist Krrrz, did you see anything else on that video?”
Kim was standing off to one side still running through the parts of the various camera streams that the Camerray had snipped out for him. Suddenly his antennae started dancing about. “Yes, Colonel. There is evidence that they sent two Sea Skimmers after our ship.”
