Earth Song: Etude to War

by Mark Wandrey

  Minu was about to order a reduction in the rate of fire when the first Rangers’ shock rifles went dry and the shooting reduced as they frantically swapped out power packs. If her real goal was had been to breach both shields, she’d have coordinated a more balanced volley firing scheme. In this case her tactic was less subtle, and more psychological.

  “Come on, you alien bastards,” she silently cursed. “The nasty monkeys are going to break down your walls.”

  The snake left in command watched for a few seconds and decided it wasn’t worth the risk. It hissed and gestured with both serpentine arms and dozens of soldiers lined up right behind the shield.

  “Come on,” Minu whispered as more soldiers slithered into the ship. There was almost no more room in the crowded companionway. She nodded, then activated the control.

  Hidden under the floor near the end of the companionway were the three heavy shield generators the Ranger squad had remaining after their battle on Planet K. Unlike the forcefield, shields didn’t repel energy, they absorbed it. At least until they reached capacity, then the downside manifested.

  Activated right next to the enemies’ forcefield generators, the shields encountered the high energy generators of the forcefield and instantly began sucking them dry. Forcefields and shields could work together to form a nearly undefeatable defense, but that required careful coordination. The T’Chillen operators, confused by the sudden power drain, punched up their remaining forcefield as high as it would go, dumping vast amounts of energy into the shield capacitors… until they could hold no more.

  “Boom,” Minu said a split second before all three shields exploded like a bomb.

  The forcefield generator contained the blast, just like it would have kept it out, and amplified the shockwave. A hundred atmospheres of pressure rebounded off the shield in the quarter second before the blast destroyed the forcefield generator, turning the companionway into a slaughterhouse.

  The Rangers all dove for cover as the forcefield died and the dissipating blast wave tore at them. The energy was largely spent though, and no-one was hurt. A cheer went up from the men and the sergeant laughed, shaking his head.

  “You are one brutally creative woman, ma’am,” he said and slapped a hand on her shoulder.

  “That might be the best compliment I’ve heard all day, Sergeant. Have the men fall back to the— ”

  She was cut off by the bone chilling sound of rushing air.

  “Shit, it breached the hull. Respirators!” she barked and slid the half mask over her mouth and nose, flicking the control at her waist to activate the air supply. “Fall back!” she ordered, he voice muffled by the plastic mask.

  As the sergeant began waving at men, and making sure they were all ready for the depressurization, the first T’Chillen stuck its head through the hatch and stared at the carnage. Minu snapped up her shock rifle and killed it with a shot through the neck. Bright red blood fountained to become gently floating spheres as the snake writhed in zero gravity. A second later, T’Chillen flooded through en masse.

  “Guess Mr. Saala doesn’t appreciate your improv,” the sergeant quipped as half the men began a merciless rain of fire to cover the rest.

  “No sense of humor,” Minu agreed, firing steadily at the advancing alien horde. How many fucking snakes did that damn ship hold? She remembered Lilith telling her that it was about a kilometer long. Probably a shitload of snakes, but so many soldiers? Her idea of marines moved up a notch in future planning.

  “Pip, I know you can hear me, we are FUBAR out here. They’re going to overrun us in seconds!”

  “Get into the cargo bay,” he replied, surprising her enough that a beamcaster almost took her head off.

  “If we retreat we’ll have nowhere left to retreat.”

  “You have to trust me.”

  “Do I, now?”

  “Fine, then this is your only chance to survive, take it or leave it.”

  Still more snakes were appearing, but now the rearmost were lightly armed and armored, perhaps ship security personnel. She thought about fighting it out for a second, maybe then leading a boarding action against the cruiser!

  “Minu, please… I can help.”

  The tone of his voice spoke of the situation, and of a need. Was it a need to save himself or to make up for his lack of will earlier? She didn’t know, the radio wasn’t conveying any of the emotions in his voice. There’d been little enough of those since his injury, anyway.

  Snap decisions were becoming a habit that she dearly loathed. Her eyes were starting to sting and her ears popped painfully as the air pressure continued to fall precipitously.

  “Retreat into the cargo module!” she yelled.

  The sergeant shot her a worried look.

  “Do it, now!”

  “Everyone back, fast!” he yelled and the Rangers retreated. The T’Chillen paused, and used the reduced fire to set up a much smaller forcefield. They knew the humans were on the run, and that Saala was preserving his surviving forces for the last attack on the cargo module. Minu had cost him dearly, but victory was still his.

  In less than a minute, that last injured Ranger was floated through the doorway, which irised close with a hiss that cut off the sound of escaping air. Emergency mechanisms in the sphere released stored oxygen and returned pressure to almost normal.

  “Okay Pip, we’re in.”

  “Good,” he said, and they were all slammed against the floor of the cargo module.

  Explosive bolts detonated and micro thrusters fired, propelling the spherical module away from the remains of the ship.

  “Pip, what the fuck are you doing?!” she yelled, pinned against the padded bulkhead by the acceleration. It only lasted a few seconds before disappearing and throwing them back into free fall.

  “Pip!” Suddenly panicked, she activated her virtual battlefield and found it still displayed the ship in details, including showing her own cargo module arcing away. It even rendered an estimation of the T’Chillen cruiser docked with the engineering section.

  They were jarred a little, this way and that as attitude jets fired, controlling its trajectory. This was a planned course, she realized. He hadn’t just ejected them.

  “I had to do it, Minu.”

  “Why, I don’t understand?”

  “Lilith won’t be here in time. If you’d fought hard enough, the T’Chillen would have just quit, undocked and killed you all. They’d already targeted the ship with weapons.”

  “Aren’t they just going to blow us up now?”

  “They can’t; the remains of the Ibeen are blocking their fire. They’ll want to get in here first to get the ship’s secrets. Then they’ll come after you.”

  “You’re not going to let them get in there, are you?” It wasn’t really a question, and she feared she knew the answer.

  “No.”

  In the engineering bay, Pip ended the transmission and turned to the controls. He’d carefully re-crafted the program he’d written while only half aware of his panicked flight from the CIC. He’d also written a subroutine to the engineering program. But he wasn’t quite ready to initiate that yet.

  “Lilith,” he called on their shared quantum channel.

  “Yes Pip, I’ve been listening, and seen what you have done with the computer here.”

  “Then you know what I’m going to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “You aren’t going to argue with me?” he asked.

  “No,” she said quietly.

  “In some ways, you aren’t your mother’s daughter.”

  “I believe I love my mother, but she tends to be overly emotional.” Pip smiled.

  “Tell Leonard I love him.”

  “If you wish.”

  Pip nodded and cut the connection. He could hear the sounds of charges being placed against the engineering bay door, only a meter away. There was no soft wall to cushion the blast like in the companionway; it would smash into where he floated.

  He took a deep
breath, leaned back, and pressed the initiator icon.

  Minu was about to yell into her mike once more when the virtual battlefield in her left eye distorted. She glanced down at the computer tablet in confusion until the device figured out how to interpret the new data. The remains of the Ibeen and the docked T’Chillen ship became an expanding ball of debris propelled outward by the detonation of the cargo transport’s FTL drives.

  “Oh Pip,” she whispered as tears began to form over her eyes.

  Chapter 55

  May 14th, 534 AE

  Unidentified Star System, Contested Territory, Galactic Frontier

  The Rangers largely left Minu to herself as their improvised lifeboat silently slid away from the place where one of her oldest friends had died. None of them had directly witnessed the event, but when the shockwave slammed into the cargo module a few seconds later, bringing ringing impacts of debris and a small push from the energy wave, everyone knew. The sergeant had glanced at Minu and looked away, knowing. They all knew.

  Someone, probably the sergeant, went around the labyrinth of storage areas against the bulkhead and fixed a few leaks from impacts of debris as well. Some part of her mind filed that away to note in their records. Even wracked with guilt with how she’d treated Pip and remorse that she’d been unable to stop the boarding and counter attack, she was still doing her job.

  Minu had communicated briefly with her daughter after the explosion. “Mother, I registered a high order detonation, are you alive?”

  “We’re here, Lilith.” There was a pause while the girl waited for more information. “Pip ejected our cargo module and then self-destructed the engines to destroy the T’Chillen cruiser.”

  “I see. How is your situation?”

  That was the sum of her daughter’s reaction to Pip’s death. Minu looked around the center of the cargo module, noting the Rangers working and tending their wounded without any sense of panic or concern.

  “We are stable for now.” She checked her tablet. “Atmosphere is sufficient with our re-breathers for a couple days. Finish assisting the rescue efforts there before coming for us. Do you have our location?”

  “The explosion was sufficient to lock your details. I can be there within forty-eight hours. Lilith out.”

  With that done, she’d found a quiet corner of the module and fell into herself. The problem was she couldn’t grieve. It was always her problem. Her brain compartmentalized any situation and prioritized needs. Fighting and surviving got top billing followed by the needs of any under her command, eating and sleeping, and only then, finally, emotional concerns. With the Rangers still in danger, grief over the loss of Pip didn’t rate high enough on the radar.

  After an unknown number of hours she gave up and set to work with her tablet. She went over the data on the Rangers losses (as much as she knew) taking care to note what worked and what didn’t, and then began writing the after action report.

  She split it in two; one for internal command and control dissemination, the other would go to the Chosen council. It was there she was able to finally feel some emotion: a white hot rage that burned like the exploding star of Planet K.

  If she was back on Bellatrix and the Chosen leader Jacob within her grasp, she would have ripped his head off with her bare hands. Three thousand men and women left to die a horrible lonely death halfway across the galaxy when there were soldiers available she’d specifically trained in relief missions of just this kind. She steamed with the need to hurt him, or break something.

  Across the room, the sergeant and two corporals watched the woman who’d trained them write her reports, correctly reading the fury of her body language. They were relatively certain none of it was directed against them. Though she was a stern, unforgiving taskmaster of a trainer, often too miserly in doling out approval or compliments, she likewise never failed to say what she meant. Many knew it was one of her few faults, that she couldn’t keep her mouth shut and the Chosen Council hated her for it. That, of course, was one of the things that endeared her to the troops.

  No, the sergeant knew she wasn’t mad or disappointed at her beloved Rangers. He also knew it wouldn’t be her friend Pip who’d just sacrificed himself. He might have cost many lives and put himself in that situation in a moment of cowardice, but the warrior’s creed provided infinite opportunities for redemption.

  And in that final act, he had redeemed himself honorably. The only thing a soldier could really hope for in a no-win situation was to at least be allowed to have their death count for something, anything.

  The sergeant decided it must be someone else who’d drawn Chosen Groves’ infamous fury, and that had to be the First among the Chosen. They’d been stuck fighting on Planet K, unsupported and against superior forces for days.

  As an NCO, he was fully aware of the special cross training certain companies of Rangers received in penetrating hot Portals either as relief or breaching for assault and he’d waited day after day for that to come, only to be disappointed.

  As their commander, Chosen Larson, become more and more desperate to break out near the end, the other leaders of the Rangers also came to realize that no-one was coming. They’d assumed it was because it wasn’t possible.

  But when Chosen Groves showed up with the starship (a surprise to almost all of them, few shared that secret) and began laying into the Mok-Tok, the cheers also brought curses. They’d been abandoned by the Chosen.

  It wasn’t sitting well with them as they were evacuated. He was more relieved than he knew how to express that she was just as mad as they were. He also wondered exactly why this woman of singular ability and heart was not in charge instead of the sniveling political coward that was.

  As they went about the business of life, the sergeant began talking with the more senior of the men present about the situation. Both what he’d seen, and what he thought should be done about it.

  * * *

  When Lilith’s sensors finally picked up the telltale signature of the Ibeen cargo module she actually sighed with relief. She’d been floating in the debris field of the ship for many hours, her sensors turned up to maximum and sweeping in all directions for any signs of life.

  Several large sections of the shattered T’Chillen cruiser, each on different courses, first drew her attention because of their power signatures. They held atmosphere and life. If she hadn’t been critically low on consumables, each piece would have gotten a ship-killer; she was finding a special place in her being to hate the T’Chillen.

  Despite her lack of apparent reaction from Minu’s perspective, when she’d found out Pip was dead a surprising thing had happened: she’d begun to cry. She’d wiped at the tears in confusion. Where had they come from?

  Pip was as disagreeable a human as she’d ever encountered with the possible exception of Jacob Bentley. She should have no more noticed his passing than she would eject into space an unsalvageable used component of her Kaatan. A regrettable loss, but of no real meaning to her. Instead she was saddened and found herself crying for no reason.

  “You are being foolish,” she berated herself. “He was a jerk, as mother would say.”

  But still the feelings persisted. He had indeed been a friend, perhaps the only one even close to her technical prowess. Even the ethereal Weavers only talked to him, a problem that would no doubt haunt them now.

  Instead of trying to make the feelings go away, she let herself feel them. It was a radical tactic for the young space-born girl. For a few minutes she let the ship work on automatic as she curled into a ball in zero gravity.

  Her brain was flooded with only good images of Pip, the fun they had on occasion enjoyed while playing games or making light of something. He had an enjoyable smile and when he was not trying to be moronic on purpose, was very engaging to converse with.

  And he had felt for her as well. The pain grew until it engulfed her and her tiny body shook with sobs. She cried out loud, a visceral scream against the universe for its injustice against her.<
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  After a time, the crying lessened. The hurt place in her heart was still there, like an emptiness that could not be filled. But she sensed, in time, the pain would continue to diminish. She wiped her eyes and nose with a forcefield, heaved a coughing sigh, and returned to work.

  “Pip died as he had wished to live, on his own terms,” she spoke into the darkness of the CIC.

  Lilith Groves, in a small way, had taken an important step to being human.

  The ship located the cargo module and she swept in to examine it. The dualloy sphere was badly damaged and surprisingly intact at the same time. The People had made things to last, and this was no exception. It only took a minute to match course and dock with the main coupling point that had once been hooked to the rest of the ship.

  As the ragtag platoon of Rangers moved onto the Kaatan, Lilith floated out to meet them, a rare act for her. She easily manipulated the artificial gravity fields within the ship when she wanted to so she merely swam down the halls to greet them at the docking bay.

  “I am sorry I was not there,” she said, her eyes still red from tears over Pip as the first of them, a battered sergeant, floated from zero gravity to land in the hallway.

  He looked at her in surprise for a minute, the tiny girl in the black as space Chosen uniform, five golden pips on her sleeve, only a meter and a half tall and so thin as to be almost skeletal.

  She floated in the hallway next to where he stood in full gravity and looked both vulnerable and powerful at the same time. There was no doubt this was her ship, and that she was in charge. Then he saw those angular cheekbones, and bright red hair held in a short pony tail. So like her mother.

  “Chosen,” he said and nodded, “nothing went well in this fight. I speak for my entire platoon when I say thank you for what you did.”