“Aye, lad, that I was.” He paused to take a sip of his vodka. “That I was. Sometimes I want to forget that day, and sometimes I think it is my duty to remember every detail until the day I die. Mostly, I try to remember.” Another long pause, as he considered whether to stop there or to go on. Hell, these hatch hangers would have to hear the story sometime.
“I was a Recruit Spacer Second Class on the old Battlecruiser Repulse. The War of the Fenestrian Succession had been over for fifteen months and we were with what they used to call the Twenty-second Fleet, jumping from system to system along the Fenestra Treaty Boundary as a deterrent. We were cruising along, fat, dumb, and happy, with no idea of what was about to happen. A few freighters had reported some compression trails in deep space near the border, but we gave them no mind. We thought it was space happy sensor officers seeing star fairies from spending too many hours at their scopes. We sure as hell didn’t suspect the Krag.”
“Why not, Chief?” asked the eternally curious Will Robinson. “Why not suspect them?”
“Because no one had seen their beady little eyes for nearly a hundred years, that’s why. Hell, when we encountered them in 2183, we thought we were going to be fast friends with them. They were sure smart enough. Seemed friendly. And curious they were, too, right eager to learn everything they could about us and not afraid to tell about themselves. We traded whole libraries of history, literature, Trid Vid programming, art, music, everything. But, things went all pear shaped when the biology information started flying back and forth. Anyone could see that life on the two planets was two pages from the same chapter of the same book. The same biology. Not similar. The same. Same basic anatomy, same biochemistry, same DNA. Life from the whole Krag planet could have almost been from some remote island on Earth that split off from a land mass long ago, kind of like Australia.
“They had sent us the complete genetic information for hundreds of life forms on their world and when our DNA guys worked through it, they figured out what happened pretty quick. All the life on the Krag home world had clearly evolved from plants and animals that were alive on Earth eleven million years ago, in fact, from just a hundred and fifty or so species if you don’t include the insects and bacteria. Well, paints a pretty clear picture, doesn’t it? Somebody terraformed the Krag homeworld, visited Earth eleven million years ago, picked up some specimens, and gave them a new home. No telling why. Maybe they wanted to study Earth life in a new setting. Maybe they wanted a bloody zoo. Who the hell knows? Unless we find those aliens (and, if we do, I’ve got a helluva bone to pick with them, let me tell you), we’ll never know. What we do know is that those animals included the ancestor of our Earth rats. But, on this new world, the ugly little critters didn’t evolve into rats. They evolved over eleven million years into the Krag.
“When we shared that theory with the Krag, they went totally batshit. Now, they’re not stupid. They can read their fossils in their rocks just like we read the fossils in our rocks. So, they had the same facts, but just about the same time we were developing the Theory of Evolution, they came up with a totally different kind of theory. According to them, eleven million years ago their Creator-God found a hostile world, remade it into a hospitable paradise, and then created perfect life to place on that world with the plan that it would evolve into his holy children, the Krag, and into creatures and plants to be their servants and their food. And, what about us? Did that make us the Krag’s sacred brothers and sisters under the skin, united by bonds of kinship and chemistry? Not a bloody chance. What it did was make us unholy blasphemers for saying that life on their world was merely a transplanted offshoot of life on ours. On top of that, it made us a living, eating, breathing biological insult to their Creator-God because we were demonic spirits that had chosen to defy him by cloaking ourselves in the shape and chemistry of his true handiwork. When we wouldn’t agree to be ruled by genuine creations, meaning the Krag, they just got madder and madder until in 2184 they cut off all contact. They refused to respond to or even acknowledge our messages, turned back all diplomatic ships, stopped all trade, everything.
“Just before they cut off contact, they sent one last message. It said: ‘you and all the infesting vermin spawned by your world are an affront to the Creator-God and exist in defiance of His holy will. The stars will be cleansed of you.” And, then, nothing. Not a squeak. That is, until June 26, 2281. Suddenly, they showed up in a dozen systems with more than a thousand ships. It looked like they had spent the whole time since 2184 busting their rat asses to build a fleet just to wipe us out. Twelve systems fell in the first ten hours. Fifty-four in the first week.
“The Twenty-second fleet was cut to pieces in a matter of hours. I was in Auxiliary Pulse Cannon Fire Control standing by to assist with DC in that compartment. I didn’t have anything better to do than watching the tactical repeater as ship after ship just dropped off the display. The Rhine, Formosa, New Zealand, Galapagos, Aegean, Volga, Lincoln, Bolivar, a dozen others.” He paused, experiencing with surprising strength an echo of the horror he felt watching mute as ships crewed by thousands of spacers simply winked out of existence. Clouseau hopped in Amborsky’s lap and rubbed his head against the old Chief, who absently stroked his black fur. “Still, their tactics showed that they expected to get the whole fleet with their first salvo. Didn’t happen. Our defenses had improved more than they expected during the last war, but we lost two thirds of the fleet in less than three hours. Then Commodore Fuchida on the Battleship Texas pulled what was left back four jumps, taking the jump point marker buoys with us in each system, all the way back to the Theater Strategic Reserve Force in orbit around Milvian III.
“Because the Krag had to find the jump points by following the resonance lines and then had compute from scratch the coordinates for their counterpoints, even with no defenses in place in any of those systems, it took them nearly twelve hours before they managed to pop into the Milvian system. When they came, they did that thing they do where they jump a bunch of ships at a time instead of just one which is the only way we can do it and suddenly there were four Battleships and eight heavy Battlecruisers right there.
“We was ready for them and opened up before they could recover from the jump. We got four right away, but the rest cleared the datum and inside of ten minutes there were another dozen right behind them. Everyone knew that, if they did that one more time, we would be outnumbered again, the Krag would take the system, and that would open up the jump point to Syrtis Minor leading right into the heart of the whole Washtenaw cluster: eighty-nine worlds full of farmers and fishermen and families with nothing to defend them.
“Fuchida ordered every ship but the Texas back to a defensive formation around the jump point leading to Syrtis and went to flank speed right toward the incoming jump point blazing away with every weapon he had. He must have had a good read on the flux differential because he hit the jump point just as the next wave of Krag came through. Of course, his ship and every ship coming through the jump were instantly converted into pure energy. The explosion fried most of the Krag fleet in the system and so disrupted the fabric of space-time that the jump point was unusable for 78 days. This put a real monkey wrench in the Krag plans, kept them out of the Washtenaw cluster until we could get some ships in there to defend it, and probably kept them from winning the war in that year until we could get most of our fleet out of mothballs, manned, and put to space.
“Just before he hit the jump point, Fuchida sent a last message. It said: ‘We will meet again in that place where warriors go to take their rest.’ We’ve been fighting ever since. And, though we’ve fallen back, no Union system, station, or vessel has ever, ever surrendered to the Krag. And none ever will.” He paused a moment, as if to attend briefly to some echo of the past, still petting Clouseau. “So, now, if you ever hear anyone say that a man is as brave as Commodore Fuchida, or that a ship has gone on to rendezvous with the Texas, you’ll know what they are talking about.”
“Chief?” Will Robin
son had another question. Always another question.
“What is it?”
“How many men were on the Texas?”
“On the Texas? Let’s see, Hesse Class Battleship . . . just under fourteen hundred. A drop in the bucket of those who fell that day.”
“Did they die for nothing?”
“No, son, they didn’t. You and I are going to make sure of that.”
Chapter 20
10:49Z Hours, 6 February 2315
Now that the Cumberland had paid a call at the abandoned asteroid mining station in an uninhabited system that was the first of its hidden supply caches and restocked its missile racks and fuel bunkers, Max was feeling a little better about the next phase of his mission. It was about time for him to meet the Krag prisoner taken when the Loch Linnhe was boarded. The intelligence officer had been interrogating it extensively and Max had read Smith’s report. Jones’s report. Jones? Yes, Jones. Since their names were entirely fictitious, why couldn’t they have names that were easier to remember? The last one Max had worked with was “Johnson,” the one before that “Gray,” and the one before that, who looked distinctly Germanic and had a slight Teutonic accent, was imaginatively named “Schmidt.” Why not “Beddingfield” or “Kleinknecht”— something that a brain can hang on to?
Max was admitted to the brig, which held seven wedge-shaped cells arranged like slices of pie with their ends cut off, all opening into a circular central guard area. The prisoners could be isolated from being able to see and hear one another by extending wall panels that telescoped out from the bulkhead between each cell to a clear partition that surrounded the guard. The human spy having just been shot, the Krag was the only prisoner. Well, except for Spacer Green, who was in the Training Room for an exercise period as he did not need to be included in this little conversation. The outer wall of the cell was a polymer barrier two centimeters thick with a door in it. The wall could be rendered transparent or opaque by polarization. At the moment, it was opaque—a flat black.
“OK, Futrell, let me see Squeaky here.” Marine Lance Corporal Futrell turned a dial and the wall went from black to transparent, revealing the Krag curled up on the cot. Literally curled, the way a mouse curls up when it sleeps. The cell brightened from the wall being made transparent, alerting the Krag that it was being observed. It sprang to its feet, looking all the worlds like a man with hunched shoulders, spindly legs, short but powerful arms, a tail, and a rat’s head. Except that there was a wary intelligence in its eyes and the top of its head was dome-shaped to enclose a brain capable of inventing star drives and formulating plans for the eradication of humans from the galaxy. Just looking at one made Max want to pull out his boarding cutlass and start hacking. “Activate the Translator.” No one actually spoke the Krag language, as human vocal apparatus could not duplicate many of the squeaks and chitters that made up about half of the sounds it used. And, no human could understand Krag because many of the squeaks were above the range of human hearing and many of the chitters were so fast and so similar to one another that most human ears could not distinguish them. Supposedly Krag had similar difficulties understanding Human speech.
At Max’s command, the upper left hand corner of the wall went from transparent back to opaque and displayed text in large amber letters: “Standard (Spoken) to Krag (Written) and Krag (Spoken) to Standard (Written) translation matrices activated. Begin when ready.”
The Krag made some chittering and squeaking noises interspersed with a few sounds that vaguely resembled human speech. The translation matrix considered the Krag’s statement for a few moments, and displayed: “When I get back home I must inform the zookeeper that he has left the monkey cage unlocked again. If you are looking for a banana, I’m afraid I have none with me.” The Krag home world had both monkeys and bananas. Only, unfortunately, it was the rodents that developed big brains, domesticated fire, and harnessed nuclear fusion, not the primates.
What is it about so many alien races that compels them to make fun of how humans are descended from primates? Every sentient species evolved from some wild creature. The Krag developed from scurrying rodents, the Vaaach from some sort of carnivorous tree sloth, the Pfelung from bottom-feeding, pond-dwelling lungfish. What made having apes as ancestors so worthy of ridicule? No one started off interrogating a Pfelung by asking if he knew his grandmother would taste good fried in cornmeal with hush puppies on the side.
“Make all the monkey jokes you want, Mickey, but I’m the zookeeper and you’re the one in the cage. And don’t you forget that I can do whatever I want with you. You give me information I can use, I might just keep you around and turn you over to the Prisoner of War Authority. They can put you in reasonably comfortable confinement until we kick your skinny little rat tails back to where you came from, and then send you back to your rat buddies to live out the rest of your miserable little rat life. And, if you don’t, I’ll just put you in an airlock, vent it slowly, and watch as your eyeballs pop while you roll around on the floor twitching, bleeding from your ears and rectum, and vomiting your entrails all over the deck.” Which, incidentally, was exactly what happened when you subjected a Krag to a vacuum. It wasn’t pretty. But it was, to Max at any rate, intensely gratifying. “Then we shove your carcass out into space and you get to spend eternity dancing with the stars.”
The Krag moved its head to its left and slightly down, a tiny, almost imperceptible shift of which it was almost certainly not aware. The interrogation reports Max had read said that this was an unconscious sign of submission or resignation. More rodent noises. “I have answered all your questions. I have told you everything that I know.”
“Bullshit. If you told us everything that you know, you must be the dumbest rodent since Algernon before the operation.” The Krag wouldn’t understand the Daniel Keyes reference, but the general point would likely get across. “You were on board a freighter bound for Krag space carrying tons of gold, but you say you don’t know about any other shipments, the recognition protocols, rendezvous points, payment arrangements, and who else you are dealing with. You insult my intelligence.”
It made little barking noises, the Krag equivalent of laughter. “Any accurate reference to your mental capacity would be an insult to your intelligence, I am afraid. Perhaps with your chattering primate sociability your species is in the habit of spreading important tactical information beyond those who have a need to know it, but that is not our practice. With us, information of this kind is rigidly compartmentalized. I was given only the information strictly necessary to complete my mission. I have given that to you, as I could not help doing with the interrogation drug you gave me. Kill me, if that is what you prefer to do. Or not. I no longer care. I have told you all that I know. I can tell you no more. If I am to die, that is my lot as a member of the Warrior Swarm. If I am to live, that is my lot as well, and I will carry on with the shame of failure, of giving information to monkey-blasphemer-deceivers, and not striking back at you for cloaking your evil souls in misshapen, crude mimicry of the Creator-God’s True Handiwork.”
“Don’t push your luck, Jerry. I could have you in that airlock in two minutes.”
“Gloat in your power over me while you can. The Creator-God will erase you and your kind from his holy creation. The galaxy shall be cleansed.”
“Maybe so. But not today. Rat.” He turned to Futrell. “Lance Corporal, opacify. I don’t want to see that thing any more.” The wall went black and the Marine deactivated the translator. Max took a few steps toward the exit, then stopped.
“Lance Corporal?”
“Yes, skipper.”
“I’ve heard that some Marines on some ships can ‘forget’ to provide food and water to Krag prisoners. Make sure the detachment understands that I won’t tolerate any memory lapses like that on my ship. Whiskers gets as much water as it wants and the standard Krag ration at the prescribed times. Understood?”
“Understood, sir. I’ll take care of it. No memory problems on this ship, sir.
”
“Thank you. Carry on.”
***
Leaving the Brig, Max was not in the best of moods. He hated every time he had to come face to face with a Krag. Seeing their beady little eyes, watching the twitchy way they moved their arms and their noses, hearing their squeaking and chittering speech, all triggered too many truly horrific memories for him to be able to experience such an encounter with equanimity. He was lost in his own thoughts, trying to bury even more deeply the sights and sounds that kept on trying to surface in his mind, and was not paying attention to his surroundings. So, it was not with perfect amiability that he responded to an Ordinary Spacer 3rd who, when Max was passing in front of the Ship’s Store on the way back to his quarters, bawled a little too loudly, “Hey, Skipper. You gotta see this.”
Every warship has a Ship’s Store. This is where personnel obtain items such as stationery, toiletries other than the basics issued to them, gum, candy bars, sundries, book and periodical download codes, and Trid Vid cubes. But, most of the business in most Ship’s Stores was in ship’s souvenirs: T-shirts, caps, jackets, coffee mugs, and patches that said “Navy,” or that displayed the name of the ship or the ship’s emblem. The men bought these items, not just for themselves, but to give to family members and sweethearts. Most ships did a particularly brisk business in children’s items such as child sized T-shirts and baby pajamas, all with the ship’s emblem so that everyone could see where their fathers or grandfathers or uncles served and that they were “children of the ship.” The Cumberland’s store had done very little of that sort of business, as there was little demand for the Navy items and no one had ever taken the trouble to design an emblem for the vessel.
To Honor You Call Us Page 32
