Resolute Omnibus (The War for Terra)

by James Prosser

  Chang stopped in his tracks and looked at the woman. Since they had met with Chang on the Resolute the day before, Melaina had taken absolute control of the situation. She had told the warship captain about the loss of the Edison and their subsequent capture and imprisonment. Central to the story was the nature of the research facility on Karisia and the purpose for the Resolute being in the fleet.

  “Miss Petros,” replied Chang. “I sympathize with you and your colleagues. If I were in your place, I might want to plan a heroic rescue for them as well. The fact is that the Ch’Tauk have probably commandeered that facility and filled it with soldiers. They have the place surrounded with cruisers and frigates and will not allow you to just walk in there and take those scientists back.”

  “As I explained to you before, Captain,” interrupted Ortiz. “They have only a token force there because they don’t consider the prison a prime target. As far as they are concerned, the human race is all but extinct anyway.”

  “Exactly my point,” said Chang. “What makes you think they haven’t killed them all anyway? You know they don’t exactly think like us.”

  Tuxor pulled his legs up and stood. His wide head almost touched the ceiling in the captain’s office as he gained his full height and looked down at Chang. Lee had never seen the alien look as imposing.

  “I believe I can answer that, Captain,” said the Karisien. “You see, the Ch’Tauk have only two castes in their society. When humans first met the Ch’Tauk, they only saw the artists and priests of their society. The other caste began to build up their forces almost immediately. The warriors are extremely xenophobic and want only to destroy the human race.

  There is a missing caste, though. They have no engineers or scientists among their number. That part of their society was once filled by another species that has since died out. Their ships and their technology have simply been duplicated over and over. They have nothing new. That’s why they are keeping the engineers from Karisia and other worlds prisoner, to force them to design new technology.”

  The group stared at the big amphibian. Lee thought it might have been the longest monologue he had ever heard from Tuxor. Melaina stood and turned to Chang. The captain looked as though he had been ambushed and was now feeling trapped by the facts.

  “Okay, I get that,” said Chang. “But how do you expect to get past their defenses? Neither the Princess nor Resolute are easy to hide. That silver ship of yours, Commander, is hardly subtle.”

  “Captain Chang,” said Lee. “We haven’t told you the whole story of how we got Miss Petros and her friends on board.”

  “Captain, if you will take a look at this,” said Ortiz. He stood and motioned for Chang to look at the small terminal screen on his desk. “I have brought up the main hangar bay. I think you will see the reason we brought you in through the engineering bay.”

  Chang walked around the desk and looked at the monitor. His eyes widened at the sight of the captured prison ship. He looked back at Ortiz, astonished at the man.

  “Is that a Ch’Tauk ship in your hangar bay?”

  Ortiz nodded to the man. Chang looked around the room at the rest of the group. They all looked back calmly.

  “How did you capture that ship?” Chang asked. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “That was my idea, Captain,” said Melaina. “The existence of that ship should be considered top secret. We agreed to keep the information from Hathaway because of his … attitude.”

  “His attitude,” Chang said. “What do you mean?”

  “When we were at the academy together,” started Ortiz, “Omar was always a bit … intolerant … of other races. He requested transfer from his quarters twice because his roommates were not human. That’s how I met him. When we saw him again, I noticed that his attitude had gotten much worse.”

  “I understand,” replied Chang. “Since the invasion, he seemed to spiral more and more into his compulsive behavior. That’s how the Resolute got most of its crew.”

  “When we saw how aggressive he had become,” Melaina continued. “We decided not to let him know about the prison ship. We were afraid he would try to use it to attack the Ch’Tauk and we would lose the chance to free our colleagues.”

  Chang looked back at the monitor, trying to decide if he should accept the plan or have them all arrested. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, bracing himself for the rest of the story.

  “You are right,” he said. “He probably would have tried some kind of suicide mission in the name of the Confederacy.”

  The group looked to each other. Chang’s confirmation of their fears was both encouraging and terrifying. Lee looked at Ortiz, who seemed very sad.

  “So you plan to fly this straight through their front door,” Chang asked. “Have you thought about what to do then?”

  “Yes,” replied Lee. “That’s why we need the two dozen soldiers.”

  “When we were there,” Melaina explained. “We saw only about a dozen guards at any one time. They rotate through precisely every three weeks.”

  “If we have counted correctly,” Tuxor said. “This current group will be at the end of their cycle in the next thirty-six hours. They will be tired and sloppy.”

  “The perfect time for a prison break,” added Lee.

  Chang looked back at the group. They had determined expressions on their faces and he realized they would be going with or without his permission. It was the reason they had asked to meet him here this morning and not on Resolute. He took another deep breath.

  “I’ll ask for volunteers,” said Chang. “But, Commander Pearce, I am going to hold you personally responsible for them. You are still part of the chain of command.”

  Lee nodded as Melaina and Tuxor looked relieved. Captain Ortiz reached up and put a reassuring hand on the younger captain’s shoulder. They all seemed to realize that they were going to need to get moving right away to keep their timeline, but at the moment they were relieved there was a plan and they were following it.

  “I’ll contact my ship and get the boarding party together,” said Chang. “I’ll need to brief them on the entire plan before you leave.”

  “Of course, Captain,” said Ortiz. “Lee, you need to get the ship prepped. I need to talk to Captain Chang about the rest of the plan.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lee, turning to leave the office. “I’ll get Alice to help out.”

  “Commander,” said Ortiz. “I need to talk to you about crewman Bennett before you leave.”

  Lee looked back at the man with a quizzical expression. Ortiz had never seemed interested in other people’s relationships aboard the ship and the request seemed ill-timed.

  “Yes, sir,” said Lee, turning back to the door and exiting.

  Melaina and Tuxor turned to leave the room as well, talking excitedly about the coming mission. Chang watched them leave, wondering what he had gotten himself into.

  “So, Captain Ortiz,” Chang asked. “The rest of the mission?”

  22

  The insect-like prison ship glided through the milky blue emptiness of M-space. Its armored hull had been marked by plasma rifles to simulate battle scars and its engine signature had been fouled by the engineers on board the Terran Princess. She looked as though she had been attacked and was badly in need of aid.

  From inside the ship’s cockpit, though, the ship was in nearly perfect working order. The consoles gleamed brightly in the reddish light from ceiling-mounted lights. Melaina had needed to explain that the Ch’Tauk had green blood, thereby making green the color of danger in their culture. Their home planet contained fields of a reddish grass which signified life and health to them. The reddish light from above was normal lighting on board most Ch’Tauk ships. When they had seen green lights flashing during their rescue, it meant danger.

  Tuxor was seated at one of the four consoles that stretched across the wide bridge. He had piloted during the rescue a few weeks ago and seemed the most logical choice for piloting the ship on
its return flight. To his left sat Lee, monitoring the ship’s weapons and shields, but struggling with the Ch’Tauk text scrolling across his screens. On his right were Melaina and one of the felinoid soldiers from Resolute.

  It had surprised Chang when he had returned to his ship to find that almost half of his ship had requested the mission. Apparently, they felt that this was their first real chance to strike back at the aliens who had taken everything from them. He had chosen twenty-four of his most trusted veterans, human and otherwise, to accompany the engineers on their trip.

  The red lighting in the cockpit began to flash green, indicating their arrival at the jump point. Farthing, the soldier from Resolute, signaled to the armored men in the hold to ready their weapons. Tuxor pressed several buttons on the console and the image of the vortex blossomed in the forward view screen. The people in the cockpit watched as the fiery corona formed around the ship, bleeding off the excess energy from the transition to normal space. As the ship decelerated and shed the fire, Lee began to scan the immediate area.

  The system they had entered had only two natural satellites orbiting a swollen red star. The farthest planet was a gas giant with brilliant silver rings. Nestled within the rings were seven tiny moons that helped keep the rings aligned.

  The closest planet, however, was a barren rock orbiting too close to its sun to support any type of life. Its surface alternated between huge flows of molten mantle and hardened mountains of volcanic glass. Orbiting this planet, always in its shadow, was Harpy Station.

  The station looked like four dark spikes welded together around a narrow central stalk. One of the spikes was shorter than the other three and, according to Melaina, contained the prison office complex. The other three sections were where the prisoners were kept. Melaina pointed to the center spike of the three and explained that would be where the engineers were being kept.

  “Each floor has thirty individual rooms and one guard station,” she explained. “There are twenty floors in each tower.”

  “How many prisoners will we have to get out?” Farthing asked. “This ship cannot hold more than two hundred.”

  “We can fit in about twice that if we need to,” replied Lee. “It’ll be standing room only, but we can do that.”

  “We won’t have to,” Melaina said. “There were only about twenty of the Edison survivors left after we escaped. There may be other prisoners they have taken since then, but that is all I know about.”

  Farthing’s nose whiskers twitched in nervous spasms. His white fur was beginning to stand up along his back ridge and his uniform was becoming uncomfortably tight.

  “What if there are other humans on the station, Commander,” Farthing asked. “Are we to leave them if they are not useful?”

  Lee looked back at the man. He had thought about the problem while they were formulating the operation, but had no ready answer.

  “If there are Confederacy citizens on that station,” Lee decided, “we will take them with us.”

  The small bridge crew locked to each other for a moment, wondering at what they might find. The station was built to house some of the worst prisoners in the Confederacy. None of them could imagine that the Ch’Tauk would have left such dangerous humans alive after they took over the prison, but they could not overlook the possibility.

  A crackle of static over the radio pulled everyone’s attention back to the mission. The chirps and cracks of the Ch’Tauk language erupted over the speaker. Farthing looked at the other members of the team and shrugged.

  “I can run the translation to find out what they are saying,” said the furred officer. “But I cannot reply unless I use the translator. They will hear the machine more than me, I think.”

  The message from the station repeated, sounding more urgent as they approached the prison. Another voice, much closer, responded from inside the cockpit. All heads turned to Tuxor, who had activated the radio and was speaking into his console. After exchanging a few words with the prison, Tuxor turned to his colleagues.

  “They were inquiring about the delay in our returnand the location of our escorts,” he said, to the amazed looks of everyone. “I told them about how we were forced to kill the prisoners and return after being attacked by human pirates.”

  Lee closed his gaping mouth and looked to Melaina. She was still calm, despite the revelation that her friend could speak fluent Ch’Tauk. She continued to tap commands into her flight console as Lee turned back to his own system to get ready. There was a feeling of anticipation growing among the bridge crew for the coming mission.

  Tuxor exchanged more conversation with the prison controllers as they approached. It seemed to Lee that the big amphibian was speaking the language of the enemy with an easy, casual cadence.

  “Commander Pearce,” said Tuxor. “They have requested we power down our shield and weapon systems. Apparently it is standard procedure.”

  Lee tapped the code into the console to drop the system to low power and turn off the weapons. He felt totally exposed now, as if naked in front of a firing squad, and he didn’t like it. He glanced over to Melaina to see that she had pulled up a diagram of the station on her screen.

  “We will need to pull the ship into that central spire to dock this ship,” she said. “They will be following us with the stations’ cannons the whole way.”

  “This just keeps getting better,” Lee responded. “Whatever you do, don’t sneeze. They might shoot.”

  The transport slowed and aligned itself with the station landing bay. Lee watched as they slipped between the towers as rotating cannons following their course. He knew that the system was probably automatic, but he still had the eerie sense of gleaming compound eyes following his every move. In front of them, a bright maw opened in the side of the station. The landing bay was smaller than the Princess’ and built on a rounded platform inside the axis. The walls were bare steel and the only other ship inside was an aging Terran shuttle that looked as if the Ch’Tauk had been using it for target practice.

  Tuxor slowed the ship and brought it to a hover over a painted circle on the floor. The ship touched down softly and the crew unbuckled their restraints. Lee strode over to Tuxor and waited while the big alien shut down the ship and stood.

  “When were you planning on telling us you spoke Ch’Tauk?” Lee asked. “That might have been a good thing to know before we left.”

  “You didn’t ask before we left,” replied Tuxor. “And I wasn’t sure it was relevant.”

  “Tuxor has always had a way with languages, Lee,” Melaina said, stepping between the pilot and the alien. “And I don’t think now is the right time to discuss this.”

  Lee looked to the woman as she stared him down. She had a fiery, determined look in her eye that begged him not to pursue the matter. He stepped away and started through the doors to the passenger area.

  The soldiers had outfitted themselves with black combat armor and plasma rifles from the Resolute. They were standing at the top of the ramp that would lead them to the landing bay. The lead soldier, a short, muscular alien with a rounded snout and a spiky ridge running from his forehead to his lower back, looked to Lee for instructions.

  “Remember,” Lee began. “The Ch’Tauk have two arms and two legs, just like us, but have a tough exoskeleton that resists plasma bolts. You need to fire at the neck or joints to disable or kill them. They see better than we do in the dark and have a greater mass than most humans, so try not to go hand-to-hand.

  We don’t think there are more than ten or so on board this station, so we need to clear them out and get to the prisoners as soon as we can. Does anybody have any questions?”

  When none of the soldiers raised a hand, Lee turned back to the cockpit door to await the other members of the crew. Melaina stepped into the doorway and motioned for Lee to join her back in the bridge. He waved to the lead soldier, who began to check the gear on his men, and reentered the bridge.

  The viewer had been angled to show the door to the hanga
r bay. Standing just inside the door were two lines of Ch’Tauk soldiers, each carrying the black and gold rifle of their race. They were holding their rifles to their shoulders and aiming it in the direction of the transport. There was a taller Ch’Tauk standing to one side that Lee assumed was in command.

  “I think we’re in trouble, Lee,” said Melaina, looking at the assembled aliens. “Tuxor must not have been as convincing as he thought.”

  “My apologies,” said Tuxor. “I think it was my accent. I am a little out of practice.”

  Lee nodded back at the two engineers. Since the beginning of the war, he had never been this close to a group of Ch’Tauk like this. All of his experience had been with the aliens in space. He had never needed to look them in the eye during his battles and the sight of the insect-like aliens unnerved him.

  While humanoid in bearing, Ch’Tauk warriors were covered in thick, black plates that were able to resist plasma and projectile weapons fire. They tended to not wear much clothing as their armored skeletons kept them safe in most environments. Their long arms ended in a four-fingered hand that had sharp ridges along the side, capable of cutting flesh when fighting. Their skulls were wide and swept back from a noseless face to a rounded point in the back. They had two sets of compound eyes set on the sides of their heads.

  “I think we need to rethink this plan,” said Lee. “There must be more than ten on this station if they can pull this many soldiers together.”

  Lee walked back into the passenger compartment and explained the situation to the soldiers. He discussed their options with the leader and both agreed that the best strategy was surprise. The soldiers stepped back from the ramp as Lee reached out for the controls.

  As he pressed the button for the ramp, Lee was tossed a rifle of his own. He had decided to wear the same combat armor as the rest of the soldiers, but only on his upper body. He wanted to retain speed if the mission was compromised. The ramp descended to the floor below and stopped with a clunk. Lee stepped aside to hide behind a bulkhead on the side of the ramp.