Sector Eight (Perimeter Defense: Book #1)

by Michael Atamanov

  "Admiral, report on the results of the battle."

  Kiro Sabuto straightened up and reported plainly:

  "My Prince, two Flamberg heavy assault cruisers have been captured. One of them is in serious need of repair; the second is absolutely undamaged but has lost all its combat drones. A Surgeon destroyer has been captured. It's so damaged it's practically scrap. Eighteen frigates have been captured. Eight Pyros and ten Tusks. Our losses: one frigate, Safa-4, and another frigate, Pyro-1. The space station is not responding to our messages. Its defense systems have been put at the ready. But all they really have is a number of high-speed turrets and one low-radius rocket system. It shouldn't be any problem for an Iseyek landing party.”

  "All captured ships are to be transferred to Tesse. Bionica, send Prince Roben royl Inoky a message in my name: I request that he repair and modernize all ships sent. I will be paying. And I need you now, as well as Space Corporal Patrick toyl Sven. We're headed to the Tria. I want to see how a praying mantis landing party works with my own eyes.”

  * * *

  "My Prince, I had to turn off the obscene vocabulary filter in order to translate some of your orders," said my android translator on our way to the hangar. "I wasn't expecting to hear such words from the mouth of a crown prince."

  "Obscene?" asked the space corporal to clarify, and Bionica explained:

  "Improper, abusive, or insulting language."

  Patrick toyl Sven whinnied like a mare:

  "That's right. But at the same time, it was all easy to figure out, even when the odd unknown term came up. Point, primary, secondary... That was the first time I'd heard those words, but I figured out what they meant."

  I kept silent, deciding not to comment. Yes, during the battle I had slightly fallen out of the noble prince role, let loose the odd curse word and used a couple of terms from a different game. I'll have to be more careful next time. Though... my behavior didn't confuse anyone. The unusual terms were fully understood, so everything’s fine.

  Lika was sitting inside the shuttle, looking absurdly huge in the heavy, armored space suit. She was bursting with anger out of the shame of having been made to miss a real space battle.

  "Well, you're gonna be one of the first humans in history to go inside a real Swarm landing ship!" I said, reassuring her.

  I was accompanied by four gloomy, serious men from my personal guard and God knows how many chameleons. I saw only Popori de Cacha, who was still not making any attempts to camouflage himself, though his partners were probably also invisibly present. The angular and dark Tria, four times larger than my yacht, was about a half a mile from Queen of Sin, so flying over took less than a minute.

  I was greeted by Admiral Kheraisss Vej, who had come to the Tria from his Legash-1 specially to show his fleet commander the Swarm landing ship. The huge, dark-colored praying mantis was walking around today without escort, and, despite how colossal the Tria was, I didn't see any crewmembers.

  "All automate. Soll-diers in suspended animation sleep. No need more mouth to feed," explained the admiral.

  The dock of the landing ship made an impression on me, and not even with its gigantic size, but with its never-ending rows of armored spindle-shaped capsules, ready to be launched. Each landing module was just ten feet in diameter, but counting the reactive drive in the tail section, its length exceeded fifty feet.

  "Small landing projectile. Control beam laser from Tria or eyes see pil-oht," explained the admiral, who had noticed my interest in his race's technology.

  We walked, bouncing at times due to the weak gravity on the insect ship, to a glowing tube of transparent plastic, inside of which was an elevator, a cylinder with a metal lattice floor and ceiling that zipped from floor to floor. When the elevator suddenly jerked downward, my legs even lifted up off the floor. The human guards were also wavering, and Lika I just barely caught when she was up by my head. The praying mantis and Popori de Cacha did not experience such difficulties, as they had been smart enough to grab the handrails on the wall (or they just read the inscription about that on the wall of the elevator, who knows?). Bionica was also more or less holding the handrail, though the android girl was having her own problems with using the elevator: the bottom of her long dress had flown up over her head, exposing a pair of long, fit legs and dark lacy underwear.

  "You have good taste. Great underwear!" commented Likanna on my translator's difficult situation.

  "I was almost left without a dress..." Bionica grew embarrassed and set about hurriedly fixing her clothes.

  The admiral though, clearly in order to distract us from the episode with the excessively fast elevator, decided to talk about the recent battle with the pirates.

  "My Princcce, all cap-i-tain Iseyek lose-mind happy from victory. But cap-i-tain me ask one question, but I miss these chance and no know answer. They very interest in know how to be original of Prince phrase that in Swarm language translate soundeded like thisss: 'I fertilize your whole clutch eight time, and every time do that is different, and all wrong?' And also 'you are spider without full set of appendage and without nerve bundle in head to drag you body, stupid like parasite, to home, human insect?'"

  "Bionica?" I turned to my translator.

  "Yes, my Prince," the blonde innocently batted her eyelashes, clearly not understanding what complaints I could have had.

  "For some reason, I don't even remember coming close to using such loaded language," I admitted.

  "But that is the most literal translation of some of your phrases and commands. Saying it another way would have been even more bizarre."

  "Is that so? Well, ok then," I said, not about to argue.

  The elevator took us to a long, darkened hallway. It was a strange place, reminiscent of a mountain gorge. It had endlessly high walls on both sides and a narrow space between them. From far away, a bright bluish light shone through. It was the only source of light. Gravity was barely perceptible. It seemed to me that with my magnetic soles, I would be able to walk on the vertical walls as well, but I didn't decide to check. We went forward toward the light and up an inclined path that ended in the control hall.

  "That's what I'm talking about!" Lika wasn't able to hold in her shriek of excitement.

  I was also impressed. In fact, the picture that revealed itself frightened me. Everywhere you could see, along all the walls and on the ceiling, there were endless rows of hexagonal cells. Inside each cell were metallic hemispheres arranged in perfect hexagons. A huge number of identical, carefully arranged, perfect hexagons with six hemispheric sides.

  "Six plus seven is thirteen, plus eight, that's twenty-one..." my daughter began calculating the number of hemispheres in each cell.

  In response to the child, the admiral chirped something back in his language, and Bionica helped out with the translation:

  "Ninety-one capsules inside each hexagon. Inside each capsule, there is one sleeping soldier. In each hexagon is one ready division – a commander and his ninety subordinates, trained and accustomed to one another."

  "They're all sleeping? That is, in a state of suspended animation?" I clarified.

  At first, the admiral tried to answer me in human language but lost his way, not able to find the term he needed. Seeing this, Bionica took up her role as translator:

  "Yes, Prince Georg, the four hundred thousand soldiers on the ship are in a state of suspended animation all the time; otherwise, the Tria wouldn't be able to hold enough food, water and air. Only the crew of the starship remains awake, but it is quite small, around forty creatures, primarily Gamma Iseyeks. But they aren't here. They're on the other end of the starship. Here is where the army commander, Savasss Jach, is stationed, as well as the general's servants. As a matter of fact, we're on our way to see him now.”

  I picked the general out of the group of insects right away. He had a huge, fuzzy body, a head and breast that grew up into a unified whole, rows of spidery black eyes in the front part of the torso, all kinds of whiskers and a
ntennas, articulated appendages, other protuberances, and a long tail that dragged along on the floor behind him for fifteen feet, ending in a sharpened spike. Around the general there were semicircular, glowing panels with a multitude of circular and rectangular screens and at least a thousand buttons that all looked identical. All the screens were on. They lit up, flashed rhythmically, twinkled and changed color, but I couldn't understand a thing.

  I rubbed my eyes, tired from the flashing, and the creature in front of the panel chirped out something, not turning to the recent arrivals. Bionica translated:

  "The frame rate is too high to be visible to the human eye. But just for their high-born guest, they'll turn the holographic screen down from a frame rate of forty-eight to something you'll be able to see. General Savasss Jach welcomes his boss. He apologizes for missing the very beginning of the battle, but at that time he had yet to be awoken from suspended animation. So, he asks, how many were they?"

  "They? Ah, probably he means enemy ships. Tell him there were ninety-seven, four of which heavy. Our side had sixty-nine, five heavy."

  The general listened carefully to the android translator and whistled out an answer. Bionica translated.

  "General Savasss Jach expresses his admiration of the Orange House Prince's talented command and says that he wants to tell you something very important.”

  The utterly enormous insect continued his speech. I noticed Popori de Cacha tighten up and even place his palm on his weapon. The soldiers in the heavy orange armor followed his example. It was quite strange. I saw no threat in the awkward, sluggish general and, besides that, the five or six small servant creatures standing at a slight distance were unarmed. The android listened to the long message attentively and translated:

  "General Savasss Jach would like to confess something to you, Prince. It is he who has spent more than one hundred and twenty years as the 'elusive head of the Gamma Iseyek fanatics, unwilling to recognize the end of war with the Empire.' The general remembers the clutches burnt with napalm in the Hive on Sivala-II. He watched with his own numerous eyes as those thirty-six million eggs burned up in flames from the heavens. It was at that moment that he swore to his personal soldiers to destroy the Orange House, which had caused that slaughter, monstrous in its senseless severity. Even when the war between the Empire and the Swarm officially ended, the general's agents rooted out and assassinated members of the Orange House through embedded agents. There are fourteen deaths of your relatives on the general's account. But today General Savasss Jach, who has outlived many enemies and friends over the last one hundred seventy years, has been put in a difficult situation. It wouldn't be hard for him to wake up any of the Iseyek divisions, who were put into suspended animation during the war with the Empire, and then the soldiers wouldn't even have to be told – just seeing a person would be enough reason to kill them. But such an action would threaten the weakened Swarm, practically totally deprived of a star fleet, with a new war. The general does not have the right to forgive an ancient enemy and break an oath; however, he confesses that the conflict is untimely at the moment. So, the general suggests signing a temporary cease-fire between the Gamma Iseyeks and the Orange House for eighty-three years, one month and two weeks."

  "Why that amount of time specifically?" I asked, surprised.

  "Dad, what are you talking about? Even I know that!" Likanna became surprised. "That's how long it takes for their home planet to rotate around their sun!"

  "Huh, I guess I forgot," I admitted candidly. "But what the heck? I, as a representative of the Orange House, accept the cease-fire offer."

  Standing change. Iseyek race opinion of you has improved.

  Alpha Iseyek race opinion of you: +7 (warm)

  Beta Iseyek race opinion of you: +3 (indifferent)

  Gamma Iseyek race opinion of you: +4 (indifferent)

  I actually had no idea if I had the right to make such a serious agreement; however, I didn't see any other way out. The tops of the capsules had already started opening in the nearest hexagon, and ninety, strange-looking praying mantises and change began forming even rows on the platform five steps from me. It became clear immediately how the normal Alpha Iseyeks, like Triasss Zess or Admiral Kheraisss Vej, were different from these specially-bred soldiers. The soldiers were a bit taller and twice as wide. Their vulnerable eyes were sunken into their skulls and covered in chitin nodes. And they had wide and thick-spined shields on their upper appendages that were reminiscent of mattresses. An assault soldier could simply cover itself from fire behind these impenetrable shields.

  "Good division, new genetic line VI-896-A. Assault soldiers in the sixth generation. All necessary genes have been added and enhanced. Raised relatively recently, twenty years ago," Bionica said, translating the general's words. "Reinforced front appendages, highly durable, extremely fast reaction time, genetic modification for intellect, and trainability included. They are expert marksmen with any firearm, are skilled in explosives and electronics, and are capable of detecting power cables inside a two-foot-thick wall. Able to live and work in a vacuum for one minute, twenty-six seconds."

  "Impressive," I agreed. "But it can't be that just one division is enough to capture a space station, right?"

  "Princcce," answered the admiral, "no one is quessstioning your ability as flee-eet commander. If general Savasss Jach wake up just one little egg of soldiersss, that meansss it's all we'll need."

  The division chosen by the general flew suddenly from their places and darted off into the distance along the inclined wall. Savasss Jach himself was conjuring something up on his console, pressing buttons and moving sliders with his numerous appendages. And suddenly, in the air before me, a rectangular screen began to flicker on. Some parts of a picture began forming – some details and plans. The details became more numerous. They spun and overlapped between themselves, forming something whole, though it was not yet clear what it was. Bionica translated the general's crackling:

  "Reconnaissance drones from the Tria are orbiting the space station, scanning it and sending back a picture in pieces. The computer is making a model of the station, noting the installed weaponry and blind spots. Eight thousand inhabitants, but almost all self-identify as peaceful civilians. There are no more than two hundred defenders. Easier than expected. The enemy is preparing to defend the residential areas and not the section of the station with the warp beacon. We could pass from the direction of this station module. It covers the range of the automatic turrets. Further is the airlock, the shuttle dock, and down this hallway one group is holding the warp beacon, and the others are cutting the hallway off in the direction of the hub so as not to let attackers enter. It’s always bad when something looks too good…”

  "Why bad?" I asked through the interpreter.

  The answer shocked me:

  "Some loss percentage is simply necessary. The soldiers need to eat."

  "The assault soldiers… What!? Eat their own dead???" I exclaimed in surprise.

  "Not only their own. Any dead. But enemies aren't always edible, and killing them isn't always part of the mission. Now, Prince, you've set the mission to not kill the inhabitants of the station, get to the station module and turn on the warp beacon. So there won't be any needless bloodshed, only armed defenders, but there won't be much food. So we'll need to sacrifice some of our own. This is a very ancient Swarm soldier tradition: the survivors eat their fallen and also wounded. It's easier to raise a new soldier from an egg than it is to heal one that has been so badly wounded. This is how a soldier becomes equal to his group-mates. Every soldier knows about it and is happy that he can bring benefit to his comrades, even if he dies or is wounded. By the way, the model of the station is done."

  Walls, hallways, and a whole labyrinth of rooms were depicted in a maze of green lines on the hologram. The orange dots marked defense systems and places where defenders were concentrated. A bright blue spot inside a long spire was the warp beacon, which was still off.

  "I'm still a
bit uncomfortable with us needing to lose our own," I confessed. "General, what if I just decide to provide your soldiers with enough food after the assault? And now we can cover the attack groups from the turrets and rockets, to protect landing troops with one of the fleet's frigates."

  "Have it your way, Prince Georg," translated Bionica. "The assault divisions are already in the projectiles and ready to start the operation. As soon as your ship covers the turrets, my soldiers will begin the assault."

  I asked for a microphone set to the fleet frequency, and the general's servant instantly handed me a metallic tube, while another was handed to Bionica.

  "Check, check. Fleet commander speaking. I need two or three frigates, a couple destroyers, preferably Warhawks and Vassars. Come in a straight line between the Tria and the station, as close to the station as possible. Cover the turrets to make a path for the attack groups."

  Answers came in immediately:

  "Warhawk-1 has accepted. Warhawk-4 has accepted. Vassar-9 has accepted. Warhawk-2 has accepted. Vassar-11 has accepted."

  "The ships are in position. The assault has begun."

  The green dots on the screen moved toward the station, getting faster and faster. Then the landing modules made a maneuver, using the drifting ships as cover and leaving the firing zone. And now they're at a safe distance. Or are they? A bright dot on the screen meant that one of ten landing capsules had gone down.

  "A cloaked enemy frigate!" several voices spoke at once on the channel about the change in the situation. The enemy frigate uncloaked and attacked the landing capsules! A Ghost frigate, exiting the station.

  "Get that son of a bitch!" It immediately became clear how the enemy fleet had been able to strike the Pyro-1 so cleanly in the recent battle. I began to thirst for revenge.

  "Warhawk-4, take point on the enemy! Put a web on him! He won't get away now!"