The Belt Loop (Book Two) - Revenge of the Varson

by Robert B. Jones

  “Once we hit Dyson speeds, sir, we insert our jump technology. We can be almost anywhere in the Domain instantaneously now.”

  Phatie sat in the command chair and waited. The Deliverer hung motionless on the convex screen like a piece of luminous fruit, too far away to see He Who Casts No Shadow, the superior Divine Mover of the Malguur Domain and all of its inhabitants. While Bale Phatie often invoked that particular diety to make a point with his weak-minded colleagues, he really had no belief in religion. The only power he truly worshipped came out of the barrel of a gun.

  Suddenly the central star on the screen began to recede at a phenomenal rate. The lighting on the bridge flashed for two solid minutes then winked out for a second. When the lights returned to normal, the scene on the “blister” was totally different. Instead of the life-giving image of the Deliverer, Phatie was now looking at the scarred and dead planet of Nahuure. The illumination was coming from the left and the pale blue phosphors of the decaying mantle of Nahuure painted the landscape behind the terminator in a sickly, diseased color.

  Phatie stood and gawked at the screen. The trip had been accomplished in less than one hour.

  He turned to Guuire and pounded his chest in respect.

  Captain Guuire repeated the salute and hit himself so hard that he almost lost the contents of his straining bladder.

  * * *

  “Does it hurt?”

  Milli Gertz looked down at Har. He was staring at her gloved hand. “Only when I look at it,” she said.

  A quizzical look crossed his face. “Let me see it, okay?”

  Gertz looked at Commander Mason. He shrugged and walked away a few steps. What the heck, she thought, maybe letting this little waif look at my arm will satisfy him enough that he’ll go find someone else to play with. “But, you have to promise to keep this a secret, you know? I’m all set to use it as a secret weapon against the aliens.”

  His face lit up. Boy, he mused, these officers all have secret plans to fight the aliens. If only that captain had some plans. He was just happy to let his mother, that lady lieutenant and this doctor lady do all of the exacting work. “Uh, okay,” Har said.

  Milli turned her back on the room and waved him around. “Remember, tell no one about this,” she whispered as she rolled the latex glove down her arm.

  Har let out a gasp. “Holy moley, commander! Can I touch it?”

  “No. It could cause you to become invisible, too.”

  He smiled and extended his hand. “That’d be alright with me! I could sneak up on the bad guys and take them out without them ever knowing what hit them!”

  “I’m saving the Fleet from that adventure, Harold,” she said as she put the glove back on. Actually, she was saving him from something, but she didn’t know what. During the last day or so, her arm had changed yet again. It was still transparent, but now, when she touched other parts of her body with it, it seemed to be able to go inside of her and feel her bones. Not all the time, but just some times when she really concentrated. As of yet, she hadn’t shared this little tidbit of information with anyone, and she certainly wasn’t going to start by sharing with Harold Hansen.

  “Multi-cool, ma’am,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper.

  She put her good index finger to her lips and smiled back.

  Satisfied, Har bounded off toward other persons of interest.

  Gertz pressed the gussets of the latex glove into place with her good hand and stared after him for a second before seeking out Commander Mason and his adult conversation.

  * * *

  Nood Teeluur said nothing as the Port Authority gatekeeper scanned his documents and stamped his exit permit. No one else in the terminal could have seen the exchange of the 1,000-credit note Teeluur’s practiced hand slipped into his documents at the last minute. He was sure he was at the right gate, the one all of the spies on Elber used when they had to make a quick exit.

  He was a man without a mission, he was out in the cold. After watching the news feeds for hours about the killings and explosions happening around Nova Haven, he’d figured the best place for him to be was off the planet. The destruction of the Decimation plan had Galuud’s signature all over it and Teeluur knew the cagey old spy from Canuure would have made his tracks away from the scene of his crimes at the first opportunity.

  As a hedge against Galuud giving up the rest of the ring and the plan, the false Davi Yorn had donned his uniform and headed for the spaceport as soon as he was certain he was relatively safe. By the time the exit documents he’d just presented wormed their way through the customs office or the NAVFLT system, he would be long gone.

  He looked down at his ticket and scanned the departure screens. Commercial ships leaving for Bayliss every two hours on the hour. If he hurried, he could make the next boat.

  Teeluur, wearing Yorn’s face and one of his uniforms, hitched up his gait and hustled toward the departure bays. He was only moments from safety.

  Once he got to Bayliss, he thought, he would carry out his part of the Vanuuiad and render useless as many Colonial Navy ships as he could. His drug-enhanced mind functioned as one of an automaton. Once programmed, its activities were almost impossible to interrupt or countermand. He was on a mission and he saw no reason to alter his plans just because his support system had let him down.

  Giving up was not the Malguurian way.

  Chapter 26

  “Now, I want to see the weapon in action, Captain Giuure. Is the target in place?”

  Giuure looked at his weapons officer and the man nodded. “Towed target aft of the port quarter, my captain. We are riding her topside.”

  Bale Phatie said, “Show it on your screen, captain. I want to see this first hand. You say this new weapon can deploy at a down angle?”

  “Yes. Most of our new ships added that feature. After the last battle with the humans, we realized they used tactics that allowed them to gut us from below. Now we have a counter for that.”

  The captain gave the proper instructions and the front “blister” displayed the image of a rusting hulk of a ship being moved slowly from left to right by a magnetic grappling field. The ship had been towed to this location from one of the ship boneyards that housed thousands of gutted Malguurian warships. Remnants of the war with the humans. The ones that were repairable were being repaired, the ones that were total losses were used for gunnery practice.

  Phatie was still on the bridge of the new hybrid ship. During the last hour he had insulted and intimidated practically everyone on the bridge. He found fault with every design, questioned every operational scenario, and even downplayed the importance of the new drive system. The only good thing to come of his observational cruise was that no one had been shot yet.

  “Naarid Caanise, spin up the Decimation gun,” Captain Giuure told his weapons control officer. “Fire for effect.”

  A steadily increasing electronic throb drowned out all of the other noises on the bridge. “Burning the Higgs, captain,” Caanise said. His hands worked at the controls on his console and the throbbing dropped twenty octaves in a matter of seconds leaving a rich basso vibration that shook the entire ship. “Firing weapons, sir.”

  Phatie walked a few steps closer to the screen. The towed target ship was suddenly hit with a thin vertical line of green energy that danced across its back and crawled toward its bow. The beam lasted for only five seconds. Then it was repeated and the Malguur electrical fire danced and twisted around the original beam. At first nothing changed on the target ship and Phatie was about to turn and scream at Captain Giuure. His hand was already on his weapon. Then the outer hull of the target started to glow slightly and suddenly the metal was turned to powder as the huge plates fell away in a soundless cloud, exposing the internal steel structures beneath. Then the struts and cross-members peeled away and before long the individual decks of the ship were visible. The disintegration proceeded quickly after that and finally the decomposition reached a vital core. The ship exploded into a fiery casc
ade of parts and the destruction of the central core of the ship expanded aft and within seconds the engine bottle was consumed and its remaining fuel canisters all detonated at once.

  The resulting fireball filled the screen for many seconds and when the conflagration subsided, nothing was left of the target but a few burning pieces of white-hot metal and soon those sparked out of existence and were gone. Centered on the view screen now was a nebulous patch of fine dust with pieces no bigger than a few centimeters square.

  “Excellent work, Captain Giuure, excellent work,” Phatie said, offering a rare compliment. “How many of our ships have been so equipped?”

  “Only a few, so far, my eminence. But with this weapon, we will finally have the tactical advantage we so sorely lacked in the last conflict. The humans will not expect this new ‘down-looking’ feature. One of our ships can take out a whole fleet in a matter of minutes. The surprise will leave the humans scrambling for home and by the time they return with more ships, we will have more of our vessels equipped with this new weapon and the tide will always be in our favor.”

  “You have earned your sword this day, captain.”

  Giuure pounded his chest again and went down to one knee. The Piru Torgud whipped back his cloak and removed his ceremonial sword from its scabbard. He gently tapped the captain on the side of his head with the flat blade and commended his service to the Domain in the name of the Deliverer. What he had just done was give Captain Giuure permission to wear a sword of his own so that all that see him would know that he was blessed by the Deliverer and his annointment would be forever etched into the annals of the history of the Domain.

  “You honor me in ways that I cannot begin to merit, your eminence. I will be your faithful servant forever,” Giuure gave the standard reply. He rose and thumped his chest again. Temporarily, all was well on the ship. But he also knew that should the day come that one screw was found to be out of place on this weapon of mass destruction, his sword would probably be used to gut him before Phatie shot him in the head. Such was the reality of his position, he thought, trying to erase the face of Captain Tyaadre from his mind.

  “Open a communications link shipwide, captain,” Phatie exclaimed.

  The captain nodded toward the comm console and the officer there ran his hand down the stack. “Intraship active, my captain,” the man said.

  “This is Piru Torgud Bale Phatie. What you have done here today will go down in history as the turning point in our battle to retake our Domain from the humans. From this moment forward, this ship will be known as the Decimator and all that sail her will be awarded the first battle ribbon of the new campaign. May the Deliverer always be with you. That is all.”

  Even though he was surrounded by massive amounts of steel and hardened alloys, Phatie thought he actually heard rowdy cheering from belowdecks. Captain Giuure could only look on with wondrous eyes.

  * * *

  Using insane amounts of credit notes and a loaded handgun Zuure Inskaap had no problem bullying his way through the thin defenses of the now deceased Lieutenant Colonel Yaguud’s underground network. After a quick stop at the Intelligence Directorate and another at his apartment, he’d started at Miintyy’s Place, the dive bar that Yaguud frequented, and worked his way into the core of the underground from there. He paid off the lesser functionaries, threatened the middlemen and finally reached the head of the snake.

  By invoking Bale Phatie’s name he’d been given the results he had been seeking. Now he had a way out, a way off Canuure before the other shoe dropped.

  Inskaap looked at the dead man. He felt nothing for him, the man was a traitor that had been shot after he gave up the documents Inskaap needed to get off Canuure. Should the information prove false and the Canuure-to-Bayliss route turn out to be a scam, he would hunt down the man’s family and pass the same judgement on them he had just meted out to their scion.

  The colonel was in his vehicle and headed away from the small business district when the firebomb exploded. No traces of his time there would be found. After tonight he would disappear from Canuure and from the Piru Torgud’s radar forever. His only wish was that the receivers on Bayliss would buy his story, would accept him as the genuine article and turn him over to the proper human authorities so that he might serve them in the same capacity as he had served Bale Phatie

  Without his help, the humans would suffer mightily at the hands of that madman.

  He would do everything in his power to prevent that.

  Following a circuitous route, he drove to the location of the waiting cargo ship. It was a medium-sized carrier with a crew of about fifty men. As he approached the quay he was stopped by two armed guards. They looked at him suspiciously, casting disparaging gazes down his black leather coat and his large carryall.

  “State your business, stranger,” one of them said.

  Inskaap produced his documents and said a few rehearsed phrases. After the exchange of credits he was escorted to the bridge of the ship. A gnarly old Malguurian in a faded merchant marine uniform sat at a small desk behind the wheelhouse and was consulting his electronic shipping lane charts on a huge plotting reader. He did not look up when Inskaap was pushed in the hatch.

  “You must be Yaguud. Where are the rest?”

  Rest? What was he talking about? He had already greased plenty of skids to get this far. “I am here now, we should get this affair on the road,” he said.

  Finally the man looked up from his charts. One of his eyes was missing and he had magnificent scars on his weathered face. “The rest of your passengers. You said there would be four altogether, yet here you come alone.”

  “I had to alter the plans. My family will come later, using a different route. For safety reasons,” he lied.

  The man wrinkled his face. It was unnerving to look into the hollow depression of fused skin where his left eye had once called home. “That notwithstanding, the price is the same. You still have to pay for four.”

  “Understood, old one.” He reached in his inner pocket but before he could withdraw the envelope of cash, the man had produced a huge weapon and had the barrel pointed right between his eyes.

  Inskaap stopped moving his hand. “Careful with that thing. I’m reaching for your fee. It’s in an envelope in my inner pocket.”

  The old man waved the gun barrel at him. “If your hand comes out of that coat with anything other than an envelope I will kill you. Understood, young punk?”

  Inskaap smiled and slowly eased his hand out of his great coat. He inspected the contents of the envelope, extracted a centimeter of bills and plopped them down on the chart reader.

  “What do I call you?” he inquired as the old sailor scooped up the bills.

  “You don’t,” he said.

  The two armed guys from the dock reappeared and escorted him to a narrow stateroom on the starboard flank a few decks below the bridge. They told him to settle in and not to leave his compartment unless instructed to do so.

  He pushed the hatch closed and dogged the wheel. Not much room down here to move about, he mused. Undeterred by his cramped quarters, he began unpacking his carryall. He’d only had time to grab the barest of essentials. Under the false bottom of the bag was the thing he wanted most to get off the planet. His code book. That alone, in the right hands on Bayliss or Elber Prime, would insure his life.

  The large amounts of Malguurian credits he brought with him were expendable and he would use them to his advantage as long as he could. Beneath the stacks of bills he also had another little hidden surprise. Several flat gray wafers of plastic explosives.

  He was just shaking out the wrinkles in his clothes when he heard the throb of the engines.

  So far, so good, he told himself.

  So far.

  * * *

  “The thing that disturbs me most, Niki, is the fact we never saw any of this coming,” Admiral Paine said.

  “Don’t blame yourself, Uncle Vinny. You had no way of knowing what the Varson were up to.
Obviously, this plan has been working its way through our inattentive system for years.”

  “And here we are with a major crisis on our hands. Something I’m sure Coni Berger will be harping on with Admiral Geoff every chance she gets. This political chess game that’s played with real men’s lives is beginning to affect the operational readiness of both the Second and Third Fleets.”

  She walked around his office and paused to look at the wall displays as she spoke. “But we’ll survive this, just like we survived all the other nonsense from on high.” She was looking at a pictograph of Colonial Navy warships in a neatly framed display.

  “Not without some help, Niki. The colonies have a lot at stake out here and the Varson Empire threatens most of it. If they are not kept in check we could be facing years and years of war just to keep them from trying to expand into our systems. We know what they are all about. Conquest. Territory. Bragging Rights. Those three things should be made part of their Imperial Motto.”

  “Well, at least we know they’re up to something. Those intercepted transmissions will be fully decoded soon and then we will know how to proceed. Trust me, uncle, not much gets past me. I’ve devoted a large part of my life studying these aliens. I know how they think. This whole plot is about nothing but payback. We scorched a few of their planets and they want to return the favor. We destroyed thousands of their ships and now they want to do the same to us.”

  He watched his niece as she moved from display to display. She stopped in front of a large model of a battle cruiser resting on small blocks of clear plastic. The inscription on the brass plate said: CNS 664 - POTOMAC RIVER.