Another loss came when five enemy battleships concentrated their fire. Again, they aimed for the ship closest to the jump. Poor Hekate, a highly industrialized planet that wasn’t even a member of the United Society, suffered the loss of the Sapphire as it was penned by hundreds of beams. Nothing could protect from that much concentrated power. She managed to dodge out of the core of the light, but to no avail. Lasers that would have missed her now added the last bit of coherent light that tipped the armor past its limit.
The Sapphire exploded like a sun.
Five seconds later, the first division of battlecruisers had fully charged its forward batteries and was ready to fire for the third time in fifty seconds. They targeted three of those four battleships that had killed two of their own. Moments later, the second division opened fire. They also targeted the four. Three battlecruisers hit the one that the first division had skipped. Before the squadron had shot itself dry, four battleships blew themselves to bits.
Now all that was left was the cleanup. Sixty of the eighty-eight enemy battleships had been consigned to their own plasma. The remaining twenty-eight fired few and ragged salvos as their crews struggled with damage control and fire parties.
One managed to put a few hits on the Admiral Miyoshi’s flagship, Haruna, but she seemed to shrug them off. Over the next fifteen seconds, while keeping their fully armored bows pointed at the struggling alien battleships, the humans eliminated what was left of this force that had seemed so imposing only ten minutes ago.
Miyoshi finished his report with his conclusions.
“I respectfully commend the use of the felines’ atomic weapons. Placed on our high acceleration missiles, they proved to be a threat that the aliens responded to with terror. We might want to have one missile intentionally explode early in such a missile attack. It is clear the alien fire control does not respond as quickly as ours. If I can find a ship that’s not too badly damaged, I’ll send a crew aboard to recover one or two of their systems, assuming we can identify it. Their slowness to respond to the missile attack may also be a function of their lowered alertness during what appeared to be their after midnight watch.”
He paused for a moment to construct his conclusion. “I would not recommend that we use our success in this battle to assume that the aliens are not a competent enemy. They are learning. So are we. We better learn faster and better than them or we could be on the wrong end of the next battle.
“I did not observe any ships leaving the system, so I do not think the aliens will learn anything from this battle. I intercepted Professor Laduke’s report to you. It looks like our work here may be done. I will await your orders.
“Respectfully,
“Admiral Miyoshi sends.”
Sandy saw nothing to add to that report and sent back a WELL DONE 2nd FLEET.
43
The Victory made orbit just as the last of the scientists were lifting off the planet.
Sandy collected Jacques, Amanda and any boffins who wanted to accompany her down to the pyramid for one last look. The boffin who had led the examination of the alien trophy room of horror, accompanied her.
“We’ve removed everything from the place. There’s not so much as a scrap of DNA anywhere in there. We did find quite a bit of stray skin cells that we suspect flaked off of crew from the different ships that visited here. We now have DNA from a good two dozen lines. Likely twenty-four mother ships,” he spat.
“One set of DNA closely matches that we got off of one body recovered from the first mother ship Kris Longknife blew away. The one that first saved Alwa. I strongly suspect at least one of the folks that dumped sentient beings here like trash is not going to do that again.”
“Good,” Sandy said.
She eyed the two large open passageways on each side of the cramped and booby-trapped tunnel that again was blocked with rocks.
Methodically, she paced off the distance, through the comfortable breeze way. Air seemed to flow into and out of the place, as if it might cleanse it of the evil it had been put to.
Inside, the engineers had installed lights high up on the overhead that shown everywhere. There was no dark to hide in now.
The senior Marine engineer beamed proudly. “We installed solar cells high up on the pyramid. They won’t be easy to spot. Then we drilled holes through the damn rock right to the lights. My best guess is that those light will burn for a good fifty years. I suspect they’ll be shot out way sooner, but whoever gets here first is going to see a really different show from what they expect.”
“Yes,” Sandy said. She looked around at the brightly lit tomb for so many races, and her blood boiled. She was old enough, mature enough, to know what she was about to do was childish, still she did it anyway.
“Fuck you,” she screamed at the top of her lungs. In a moment, the vast cavern was filled with more of the same. Some were voiced by those around her, others, no doubt echoed off the stone walls.
Satisfied, Sandy spun on her heels and walked out of that place.
As she strode along, ideas began to come to her.
“Major,” she said to the engineer. “I want to leave a message. Kris has blown away eight alien mother ships, right? That’s the banners I see in the Canopus Station O club?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said proudly.
“This has been their trophy room. Let’s make it ours,” she said stopping to look at the wall above the again filled tunnel.
“I don’t care how you do it,” Sandy said. “Maybe use the anti-aircraft lasers, but I’d like you to carve eight nice round representations of mother ships. Carve them deep so they won’t come out. Then carve big X’s through them. Let them know we keep trophies too.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the engineer said. Grinning like a mad fiend, he came to attention, saluted and repeated. “Damn yes, ma’am.”
Then he paused in thought. “Admiral, could we add a bit to that?”
“What do you have in mind, Major?”
“Notches. One notch for every damn door knocker, battleship and cruiser that our records show we’ve nailed.”
“Computer, get me Mimzy.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“I got an engineer beside me. We’re down in the alien’s trophy room. We want to make it our trophy room. Can you tally up all the alien ships, by type, that we’ve blown away.”
“Yes, ma’am, I just did.”
“Please pass that information along to our chief Marine engineer when he asks for it, okay?”
“It is a very large number, Admiral.”
“No doubt, Mimzy. No doubt. Major, you may need more people to do this.”
“I doubt if I’ll have trouble finding volunteers. And, oh, if you don’t mind, I’ll repeat the trophy show on the outside of the pyramid. Make it even larger. I aim to really piss them off. Next time we come by, there may be nothing here but a hole in the ground.”
“That wouldn’t bother me. Not at all,” Sandy turned to fulfill a second thought. “Jacques.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I want to leave a message to those bastards. A clear statement. Something like ‘We have filled this hell hole with your skulls. We will fill it many times over. Talk to us or die.’ Can you carve that over the mouth of these two passages? Maybe above or below our own trophy count?”
“Not exactly, ma’am, but I can get pretty close.”
“Good, between those words and all the X’ed out mother ships and other ships, that ought to let them know not to mess with us. Maybe even come and talk to us.”
“We’ve been trying that ever since Kris Longknife first met one into them.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know I’m dreaming, but a girl has the right to dream.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Jacques said, a bit of a grin on his face.
44
Three days later, as the alien home planet disappeared in the rear-view mirror, the chief Marine engineer brought Sandy a series of pictures as she sat in her command chair on her flag brid
ge, surrounded by her key staff.
The Marine AA gunners had done what she asked for. They’d also written in huge letters what Jacques had given them.
Then, both inside and out, a long, long, long, long line of miniature representations of alien ships stretched. The closest showed the rather well-padded door knockers. The next represented large, egg-shaped battleships. Way down the line, the small, thin cruisers started and went around the corners, both right and left.
Inside the same was repeated. The line of warships filled most of three walls.
Inside, the Marines had also added some of their own thoughts. Sandy’s own remark was drilled into the stone large and often. The Marines then added comments of their own about the aliens possible lineage, habits and dietary customs.
There were a few remarks in a strange alphabet. “Jacques?”
“Some of the aliens had left remarks on the walls behind other wolf pack’s trophies. A few of the mother ships were in competitions to collect the most heads. I just borrowed their own snide remarks, juggled the words, and turned them back on them. Something like ‘You are the vermin. You losers can’t find a head if we rolled it at you.’ Those kinds of thoughts.”
“I think you’re right, Major. After the next mother ship drops by here, they are going to go crazy. Jacques, do we have that pyramid fully documented?”
“Fully documented and every scrap of data about the species they murdered is now in our keeping. We will treat them reverently as we study them. Trust me.”
“Have you got any report on the DNA off the bodies you pulled out of that well?” Sandy asked. She’d waited patiently for a report. She’d had enough of waiting.
“We don’t have any results back,” Jacques said.
“Pardon me, Monsieur. But I bring you good news,” came in a French accent from the torque around Jacques’s neck.
“Spit it out, Marie, and drop the accent. Sometimes I can’t understand what you’re telling me when you do that.
“Oui, Monsieur,” the computer said, unrepentantly. “Do you want to hear what I have to say and not?” was straight up Standard.
“Please tell us what you have to report,” Sandy said, with maybe a bit of pleading in her voice. She really wanted to know whatever this computer’s ‘tude was holding back.
“Since the lovely madame asked so nicely, I will tell you. They have the initial report back on the DNA off of your two aliens. You were right, the present alien’s DNA is not what their species started with. Our first effort to sequence the DNA failed. The DNA in the portion of bone we chose for study was too degraded. However, they found usable DNA in the teeth of both subjects. It has only four nucleonic acids like the rest of the plants and animals on this planet. There will be more tests, more efforts to extract usable material so we can fully sequence these two people’s DNA and match it up with the DNA of the aliens we’ve found in present day Bug-eyed Monsters.”
“Good God,” Sandy said, almost a prayer. “Someone did mess with these people. Changed them right down to their very DNA.”
Jacques nodded. “The other aliens, the ones in plastic, the ones we think are from the planet next over, had eight nucleonic acids. I wonder if we found some animals from that planet that we’d find they have less than eight nucleonic acids in their DNA?”
“Someone certainly changed the DNA for these people some hundred and ten thousand years ago,” Sandy thought out loud, “Someone got to play God and didn’t quite get it right.”
“For ten thousand years, the new DNA turned these people into docile slaves,” Penny said, slowly. “Then a mutation occurred, something went off the rails and now we have what we have.”
“I wonder if we’ll ever know what really happened,” Sandy said.
“Madame,” Jacques’s computer put in, “we may have more answers to your questions. While the Marines were lazing our trophies into the pyramid’s walls, they knocked opened a small hole in the wall.”
“We have the results now?” Jacques said, almost in awe.
“We have opened the golden tablets and translated them,” Marie said.
“Opened what? Translated what?” Sandy demanded.
Jacques turned to Sandy. “The Marines knocked a stone out of the wall and there was a small alcove. At first, we thought there was just a block of something. Then we figured out it was gold. Then we discovered it was a stack of gold tablets. Something that someone wanted to last a long time.”
“And?” Sandy urged Jacques along when he paused for a breathe.
“When had to separate the tablets very carefully. When we did there was a picture engraved on the top sheet, turned face inward. The other three sheets had words inscribed on them, along with what looks like a couple of signatures.
“What’s the picture look like?” Sandy demanded.
“Marie,” Jacques ordered.
A heliograph of a golden plate appeared. “This is ten times the size of the original,” Marie pointed out.
Jacques, Sandy and Penny stepped closer to examine the 2D picture. It showed several men. On one side, they appeared to be in uniforms. On the other side, they were in breechcloths and leggings. From the fringe, they looked to be leather like. Most stood bare chested, although two wore blankets of large animal skins.
On a table between them were what looked like the three tablets. Both of the men closest to the tablets held a stylus or something to sign it with.
Sandy turned to Jacques. “You’re the sociologist. What are we looking at?”
“It sure looks like a signing ceremony for some kind of treaty,” he said.
“It is the consensus of the sociologists, anthropologists and archeologists on board,” Marie said, “that this is the signing of the agreement contained in the three gold tablets.”
“What do the tablets say?” Sandy demanded, her patience running thin.”
“We were able to translate some of it, based on what words we’d found in the library of the little base ship we discovered in the cat system. We also have built up quite a vocabulary from listening in on the locals as well as that fun election debate that was raging among the cruiser captains before you shot them up. Even with that, we are getting only every other word.”
“And it says?” Sandy growled.
“They are signing an agreement, a pledge. The star walkers will go to the stars and destroy something, unclear about that. The others will remain here and live a simple life. At least we think it means simple. It may be primitive.”
“I’ll take your word for that,” Sandy said.
“Can you stand one more bit of information?” Penny asked Sandy.
“I’m not sure. Can you spit it out and will I know what you’ve told me when you finish?”
“We tracked the conversations of the dozen small groups closest to the pyramid. Several of them still wore parts of or scraps of ships’ uniforms. We think they are groups recently marooned by the ships as some kind of punishment, no doubt, to instruct the others.”
“And?” Sandy said, her curiosity up.
“Most of their languages are very similar. The word they use for ship and home are the same. The thing is that four of the twelve really hate home, the ship, or the Enlightened One. The group Jacques talk to last time were all sure they deserved to be dumped here. Of the thirteen we’ve observed this trip, nine think they have done wrong and deserved to be left here. Four think the Enlightened One, himself, is a shit eating vermin.”
Penny raised her eyebrows to Sandy, leaving the final word to her.
“Interesting,” she said. “We have one cruiser force that mutinied against a cowardly Enlightened One. We have another cruiser where the Enlightened Ones are getting to screw the prettiest gals and impregnate them, and a dozen exiles, four of which hate the boss. Am I the only one that thinks the submissive gene is starting to run thin out there?”
Sandy’s team looked at each other, all sorts of thoughts going on behind their eyes.
The trip back
is going to be a fun one, she thought.
When I get back, I’m really going to need a vacation. I wonder if I could buy into a fishing boat. I do love to fish.
45
They jumped into the Alwa system to find a message waiting for Sandy on the jump buoy.
“Sorry to do this to you, Admiral,” Admiral Kitano began.
Grand Admiral Santiago allowed herself a groan.
“Alex Longknife somehow found out we’d shipped his management team off to Chance and a new team arrived on a large liner with quite a few armed people I’d call thugs if they didn’t have official looking security guard badges.
“Anyway, they are demanding access to their property. Our response that the locals nationalized it did not go over well. They must have expected it. They have lawyers and even brought out their own tame judge, claiming that they had a right to a court of their peers and that Alwa, not being a sovereign planet, cannot establish a court. They are suing us, which I guess means everybody, for compensation or return of their property, and those Nuu Enterprises thugs are swaggering around the station looking like they want to start a fight.
“As if that wasn’t enough, Granny Rita has done it again. She pulled one hell of an ace out of her sleeve.
“She points out that she ain’t dead and Nuu Enterprises belongs to her. Her daddy left it to her and she owns the whole shebang, lock, stock and barrel.
“In the meantime, production continues, thought we lost much of a shift while the workers rolled on the floor, laughing their asses off.
“I don’t know if this is good news or bad news, Admiral, but it is the news. Looking forward to sharing a beer or three at the O club when you get down here.
“Admiral Kitano sends.”
Sandy found herself struggling not to fall out of her chair and roll around the floor, laughing.
Kris Longknife's Relief: Grand Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station Page 23
