The Dark Defiance

by A. G. Claymore

  Tommy leaned forward. “Did it make you feel any better?”

  “Sure as hell didn’t make me feel any worse. Course, now I can’t go home again, seeing as I’m a ‘person of interest’. ”

  “You know,” Deirdre said as she got up from her chair. “If the Chinese kept a representative embedded with Saramach, there’s probably sense in us leaving one with Kobrak as well – or a team.” She smiled and wandered off to the kitchen.

  “Smart girl, your sister.” Kale scratched his chin. “I’m thinking of asking Harry and Liam to leave me behind. Of course, she’d have that figured out by now.” He gazed shrewdly at Tommy. “She wouldn’t have drawn you into this if you weren’t looking for options yourself.” He waved the knife in Tommy’s direction. “You’re no operator, but you’ve trained with us for a hell of a long time. You did pretty damn good both times we went down there. Hell, next to the folks down on Khola, you’re a freaking ninja.”

  “Kobrak would take us on.” Tommy felt the excitement of the idea take hold of him as he spoke. “If Harry approves, we’d stay on the Red Flag payroll and they could transfer our bonus and back pay out here.” He could feel a weight lift. Is that why she pushed me together with Elise? Did she know we’d fall apart so quickly? He was certainly free of any ties to the ship now.

  “Damn!” Kale blinked. “Never thought of staying on the payroll. If Harry goes for it, we’d be able to take weapons and ammo down with us and train Kobrak’s men.” Kale jumped out of his chair. “I’m gonna go talk to him right now. Are you in?”

  I’m sure not giving this much time, Tommy thought. What if I say no? I’ll be sitting in Guernsey, wondering what I missed, that’s what. He stood up. “I’m in.”

  “Thank God.” Kale grinned. “I’d have a hell of a time down there, trying to make myself understood in Dheema.”

  Jan and Liam stood by the lounge window, watching as the lighter dropped towards the atmosphere. She reached over and took his hand. “He’s going to be fine. They aren’t even going into the city until things calm down.”

  “That keeps them away from the angry crowds, but Kobrak’s estate is isolated.” Liam frowned. “If Saramach decides to get cute, that place is probably a good target.”

  In the reflection, he could see Harry as he came to the end of the serving counter and took a quick look around the lounge. “Where the hell is Gelna?” He scooped up a piece of the hastily-decorated cake that lay on the counter. The remnants of the icing letters spelled out two words ‘my’ and ‘ale’.

  “Haven’t seen him since the party.” Liam turned away from the window. “I assume you paged him?”

  Harry nodded as he stuffed the last bite in. He held up a finger as he finished chewing. “Also paged a couple of crew members to track him down. Like Max here.” He turned expectantly towards the engineering assistant who had just walked in with a troubled look on his face.

  “Cap’n, y’all remember how Kale took almost all our coffee with him?”

  “I damn near made him sign over his bonus for that so, yes, I do recall it.” Harry raised an eyebrow. “What does coffee have to do with Gelna?”

  “Well, sir, I checked Gelna’s cabin and he ain’t there, but all of our coffee is sitting on his bunk.”

  Harry sighed, looking out the window at the tiny speck that showed where Wally Schirra was taking the lighter down to the surface. Wally had one passenger that he wasn’t aware of. He’d better not know anything about this.

  “I believe the phrase you’re looking for rhymes with ‘clucking bell’.” Liam was having a hard time keeping the smile from his face.

  Max coughed nervously. “Cap, should I load the coffee back into storage so it doesn’t go bad?”

  “Yeah, you look to that, Max.” What do I tell Homeland Security? “Max!” He waited for the portly engineer to turn back. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Nobody knows about how my brother used to steal from our mom’s purse.” He grinned.

  “We’re hearing about it right now.” Harry nodded over to Jan and Liam.

  “Yeah, well, there’s got to be a statute of limitations on keeping secrets like that.” Max shrugged.

  “There’s no statute on what I’m about to ask you.” Harry said quietly.

  “I’m with ya, Cap.”

  “Good.” He put a hand on Max’s shoulder. “I want you to go disable the mag lifters on one of the escape pods and then jettison the thing straight at the atmosphere. You don’t talk to anyone about this, ever again – not even to the three of us.”

  “So Gelna died trying to reach the surface in a malfunctioning pod?” Max shook his head sadly. “Too bad. I liked the little guy.” He lumbered off.

  “Jan,” Harry turned back to the couple. “Looks like you’re the only translator left, aside from your daughter. We need you on the bridge. Our ‘fleet’ leaves as soon as Wally gets back aboard.”

  The Eastern Rain-Coast

  Twenty kilometers from Khulmet

  “That’s the house all right,” Wally said as he banked the aircraft towards the beacon. Kobrak’s getaway was a study in elegant decay. Fading, lichen-encrusted beams of weeping cedar spanned between stained concrete columns and the glazing was a dark green that matched the surrounding forest.

  Tommy looked down at the screens and cursed. “Guys, they have visitors. Unfriendly ones, from the look of it.”

  Kale unbuckled from his back seat and came forward to peer over Tommy’s shoulder. “Looks like the silly little bastards got right up to the edge of the clear space and then just started firing.” He grabbed Tommy’s shoulder. “C’mon we need to get some harnesses and start making use of the high ground we brought with us.”

  They went to the back, grabbing harnesses from the locker behind the cockpit. “Wally, can you keep us at two thousand and open the back? We got some shooting to do.” Kale opened the large, military-style footlocker that lay behind the pilot’s bulkhead and grinned down at the contents as the back ramp opened. “Okay, Doc?”

  Gelna wasn’t wearing a headset and couldn’t hear over the wind that rushed by the open ramp. He satisfied himself with a rude gesture. He took the proffered harness with a quizzical look, but he put it on.

  Kale opened one of several large crates and pulled out a Commando with a large scope on it. “Spot for me.” He handed the weapon to Tommy. He reached down into the crate again and pulled out a .50 caliber Barret sniper rifle.

  Understanding Kale’s plan, Tommy went to the central track that ran along the ceiling of the cargo bay and grabbed three tie headers. Kale turned around, allowing Tommy to hook one of the headers to the D-ring on the back of his harness. He unhooked the tension remote from the header and clipped it to the front ring before taking one of the other two headers from Tommy. Once all three were securely attached to the tether system, they advanced to the end of the open ramp.

  Using their tension remotes, they took up seated positions on the end of the ramp and locked down their tethers. Tommy sat between Kale and Gelna, who was holding a SAM-R, a marksman version of the M-16 assault rifle, developed by the U.S. Marine Corps.

  “Wally, swing the nose around to port just a touch… that’s good. Hold her there.” Tommy leaned out to scan the closer ground through his large scope. “Bring the nose up about ten degrees… that’s perfect; hold us steady.” He lased a point in the middle of the hostile force. “You got that point?”

  “Got it,” Wally answered. “You want me to hold here or orbit? They’ll start shooting back pretty quick.”

  “Orbit around the point. Can you crab us? We need the tail pointing at the center.”

  “Easier than straight flight in a Blackhawk,” Wally sounded indecently cheerful. “We’re moving.”

  The motion made aiming slightly more difficult but it also made it harder for the enemy to find effective cover. What might protect them right now wouldn’t be any use at all in a few seconds. Tommy scanned the treeline around Kobrak’s sea-side estate. �
��Kale, four of them clustered behind the wall on the upper left-hand walkway, five meters beyond the rectangular pool.”

  “Seen,” Kale grunted, shifting his aim. He flipped the safety off and waited for the lighter’s rotation to bring him onto target. He held his breath and squeezed.

  Tommy watched the results through his own scope. It wasn’t pretty. One of the attackers in the middle of the group almost seemed to rupture as the half-inch round struck with enough force to move ten thousand pounds by a distance of one foot. His comrade to the right had been handing him ammunition and had the flesh partially stripped from his forearm by the energy. The other two were down and unmoving.

  “Got one moving away to the left of that group,” Tommy warned. He saw two or three impacts around the fleeing assailant and then a hit to the shoulder spun him around as he fell. “That’s got him.” He looked over at Gelna. “Good thing your people never heard of Hippocrates, Doctor.” Gelna, still not wearing a headset, grinned widely.

  He returned to his scope. “Five in a group. Other side of the house behind the small outbuilding.” He shivered in recognition of what he was seeing. “RPG! RPG being loaded by the small outbuilding!”

  Kale had just switched magazines, loading rounds with green and silver tips. His first shot had been chambered from the previous magazine and it struck one of the enemy riflemen. The next shot hit the closest rifleman at a low angle and the high-explosive incendiary round affected the target in much the same way as the conventional round.

  The explosive component, however, detonated on its way out of the attacker’s body, spreading out in a thirty-degree cone to take out the RPG gunner and his two remaining comrades. Flames licked at their clothing. A rocket spun crazily next to the downed combatants, its motor ignited by the incendiary composition.

  “They’re bugging out,” Tommy announced. “Large, soft-skinned vehicle thirty meters to the right of the small outbuilding.”

  This was the kind of target for which Kale’s HE incendiary rounds were made. The round detonated on its way through the roof, tearing through seats, flesh and floor plating.

  And the vehicle’s hydrogen storage unit.

  An orange fireball engulfed the vehicle and its fleeing occupants. An angry cloud of black smoke boiled out through the various openings where the windows had been. “They’re down.” Tommy felt silly for announcing the blatantly obvious, but that was his job. “We’ve got a handful scattering down towards the cliff; Kobrak’s lads can mop them up. Wally, put us down between that large pool and the house.”

  As they closed in, flying backwards so they could respond to surprises, Tommy spotted movement behind the left-hand property wall. “Kale, left-hand wall, five meters to the right of the four tall trees.”

  “Not seen.”

  Tommy flipped off his safety and pulled back the charging handle. Haven’t fired a shot during this whole thing, he thought as he took aim. He fired several times before finding the right spot on the wall. He put a grouping of eight shots on that spot. “You see that grouping?”

  “I’m on it.” Kale put a round through the six inches of concrete. A grisly hail of body pieces flew away from the other side.

  “He’s down.”

  Wally’s landings were a bit rougher than Jim’s, but he got them on the ground in one piece. “Get over here and help us unload,” Tommy shouted to the guards who emerged from the building to greet them. They raced over and helped with the footlockers and weapons crates, stacking them under the tail of the aircraft.

  Tommy ran inside with the headsets, hanging them behind the co-pilot bulkhead before going into the cockpit to shake Wally’s hand. “Get them home safe, Wally, and don’t let those bastards invade Earth.”

  “You boys look out for each other,” Wally hesitated for a second. “Tell me I didn’t see Gelna on the ramp just now.”

  “You didn’t see Gelna on the ramp just now,” Tommy answered with a grin. “Must be some other Dactari whose ancestors got left behind after the empire pulled its legions.”

  “Tommy…” Wally began with a warning tone.

  “Look, Wal, I don’t know what you’re talking about. More to the point, you don’t want to know what you’re talking about.” He shrugged. “It’s better for everyone concerned that way, OK?”

  “Fine.” Wally shook his head. “Stay safe. Now get the hell out of my lighter.”

  Tommy headed for the ramp, hitting the ‘close’ button on his way and jumping off the end. He ran around to the side to wave Wally off. As the lighter ascended, Tommy took stock.

  All of their crates had been carried inside the spacious seaside home and a small group was gathered around Kale, chattering excitedly. Their weapons were of the same, unimaginative type used by the Dactari Republic, but they were serviceable. Too bad they use rim fire ammunition. He was reasonably sure that he could interest one of the local arms producers in the concept of centerline ammunition.

  “Yes, this is the Kale that you have heard so much about,” Gelna was telling them as they moved towards the open glass door at the ground level, “and no, I don’t represent a return of the old empire to Khola. I’m simply a citizen of the Dactarii Republic.”

  They walked into the great room where dozens of extended family members were tending to wounded guards and trying to comfort children, terrified from the recent attack. The room fell silent as its occupants became aware of the three newcomers.

  “Don’t fret,” Chelak waved off the attentions of a young woman who was trying to bandage his shoulder. “They are not the Midgaard. These are ‘Humans’ from a planet called Earth.” He walked over to the three newcomers. “Welcome, Tommy and Kale. Kobrak is in Khulmet looking after family interests there. He asked me to keep an eye on his family.” He regarded Gelna with keen interest.

  A current of surprise ran through the room. Tommy suppressed an urge to roll his eyes as he heard Kale’s name being whispered excitedly by the small crowd. He did risk his life to save that guard; he deserves his moment in the sun – whatever they call the sun here.

  “I never thought to meet a real Dactari.” Chelak ignored the whispering. “Is it true that your people fought the Midgaard thousands of years ago at Cera?”

  “If we did, then we must have lost,” Gelna replied. “No surviving imperial records mention the encounter.”

  Tommy gave Gelna a light punch on the arm. “Does that mean the Dactari Republic has no record of your attempt to invade my home world?”

  “Hah! Maybe they’re waiting until they get it right.”

  Gelna laughed at his own wit, but Tommy merely frowned.

  “We gonna stand here jawin’ all day,” Kale demanded, “or are we gonna go hunt down the two guys that were heading for the cliff?”

  The Völund

  In Orbit around Khola

  “You’re not Lothbrok,” Deirdre declared as the Midgaard shuttle’s loading platform came to rest on the deck of the lighter bay. She seemed even smaller, flanked by two heavily-armed guards.

  “You are right, little one.” Caul liked this girl immediately. Her manner was direct and yet, somehow, subtle as well. “I have left Lothbrok aboard the Ormen in my stead. As far as the fleet knows, I am there and he is here as my liaison.”

  “You wish to learn more about your father, and about the planet he has lived on for so long.” She smiled. “If your fleet knew you were aboard the Völund, some would seek to attack us again, hoping to be rewarded by the new leader?” She raised an eyebrow at him, displaying the barest hint of a smile.

  Caul laughed. “It would be a temptation, yes. Even with your ship’s destructive power, a determined attack would likely manage to destroy us.” He spread out his hands. “The Norns will spin the end of our threads in their own good time. No need to taunt them with rank stupidity, which is why I came in secret. Our journey to the next transfer station will give me time to learn and to plan my search.”

  “You are welcome aboard the Völund, Caul Hrada.”
She touched her wrist pad. “Captain, our guest is aboard.” She looked back up at the tall Midgaard. “I will help you, of course, in your quest for knowledge. My mother will be busy much of the time as our ship’s new communication officer.” She grinned. “Let’s go surprise the captain!”

  The Eastern Rain-Coast

  Twenty kilometers from Khulmet

  Tommy scanned the cavernous forest through his 3.4x sight. Nothing. He looked over at Chelak, nodding with satisfaction as the driver scanned the forest. Three Bolsharii from Kobrak’s crew, including Chelak, were shadowing Tommy, Kale and Gelna as they hunted down the two remaining assailants. No time like the present to start training their new allies.

  They were all carrying Colt Commandos. Heavier sniper weapons weren’t terribly useful in the short sightlines of the ancient forest. The hanging tendrils of the weeping cedars were confined to the canopy, more than a hundred feet above, so there was little to interfere with the flight of the smaller-caliber rounds fired by the Colts.

  “Right, you keep scanning while I move up.” Tommy waited until Chelak looked over. He grinned. “Try not to shoot me by mistake, yeah?”

  Chelak’s witty retort was never delivered as both heard the deep report of a weapon, followed a few seconds later by a couple of three-round bursts from a higher-pitched assault rifle. In the dense forest, it sounded like a roll of bubble wrap being stepped on.

  “Come on!” Tommy and Chelak set off at a fast walk towards the direction of the sound. Kale and his shadow had been on their left and Tommy and Chelak moved as quickly as they could, scanning for any sign of the enemy as they hurried through the cool mist. Tommy activated the wider net for his headset. “Kale, are you alright? We’re moving towards your position.”

  “I’m hit in the shoulder,” Kale’s voice grunted. “Little bastard went to ground about twenty meters in front of us but I’m in no mood to go dig him out. I’d rather shoot the moron that’s sitting here with me.”