Alien Salute

by Charles Ingrid

  Amber must have sensed his thoughts. Her chin pointed in the militant’s direction. “I hope Colin keeps an eye on that one.”

  “He’ll have to,” Jack answered. “I’ve done all I can. I’ve got the Thraks to worry about now.” He’d escorted a wave of humanity aboard the shuttles to the transport. The Thrakian warship orbiting Bythian space was momentarily distracted by the necessity of getting its own personnel off-planet. He had time, but only a little, and he didn’t like seeing it wasted. The column shuffled forward. He and Amber were at the rear and would be last. “Amber…” and he hesitated, because what he said next the young woman would not want to hear, and he knew it. “I don’t intend to be chilled down.”

  She pulled back. “I have to go alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You have to. Just as I have to stay up and alert.”

  Amber looked up at him. Her chin jutted defiantly, and then her jawline softened. “You don’t think the Thraks will let us go?”

  “Not if they don’t have to. This transport is a load of potential hostages. Colin, my command, almost everyone on here is of value to the League.”

  “It would be worth even more if you could have gotten that bushskimmer out alive.”

  Jack had no answer for that. He’d lost a valuable witness in the Sassinal riots, a man who could testify to the firestorming of Claron. But that was over now. At least he’d heard the testimony… words he’d never forget. He looked down at Amber. “It’s over,” he said.

  She nodded. She grabbed up his gauntleted hand and held it tightly and even though he wore battle armor, he could almost feel the chill of her grasp through it. “What if they insist on cold sleep?”

  Her question suggested that she knew instinctively what also worried him: the transport pilot was in command here now and not Jack. He shrugged. “It’ll take a lot more men than Harkness has got to hold me down.”

  Now she knew why he hadn’t removed his armor once they’d boarded.

  Amber laughed briefly. “I hope I’m awake when they try.”

  “You run a sloppy ship.”

  The pilot twisted his head to peer at the tall man… seeming even taller now that he stood in the bulkhead framing. Sandy blond hair swept back from his brow and his faded eyes reflected disapproval. The ship shuddered with the vibration of engines thrusting the vehicle nearer and nearer warp velocity. Harkness grumped and slumped lower in his chair. “And if I do, it’s my business,” he said.

  Around the chipped and battered plastic table, the navigator and engineer got up quickly and left. They did not look the intruder in the face as he moved to let them shrug past the bulkhead.

  Harkness’ voice sounded thick and lumpy as if it needed to be strained through a filter before issuing out of his mouth. He pointed at the interloper. “I’ll chart no interference from you,” he said. “Or you’ll be chilled down yet and shipped like the rest of the stiffs. This is a cold ship transport and don’t you forget it.”

  The intruder had eased a wide shoulder against the bulkhead. He smiled pleasantly. “You’ve already tried it once,” he said. “You have other worries. We slipped out of Bythian space easily enough, but you’re a sitting target coming out of decel, and there’s a good chance the Thraks will be waiting for us. There’s a war on now.”

  Harkness’ eyes narrowed. He reached for his bag of whiskey and poured a level glassful. “I took out a contract to lift a shipload of evacuees and return ‘em to Malthen. I did not take out a contract to listen to your mouth.”

  The man’s smile did not vanish, but neither did it warm his clear blue eyes. “Not yet,” he said. “But you will.” The man lifted his shoulder, shifted his weight, and removed himself gracefully from Harkness’ vision.

  The pilot scowled before lifting his drink. Too full, it washed over his fingers before he got it to his mouth. With a curse at his shaking hand, he slogged the whiskey down.

  Jack walked the cryogenic bays where his friends and fellow soldiers lay asleep yet not asleep, their pale bodies seemingly devoid of life under sterile white sheets. He stopped at the plastic shield of a privacy crèche and paused to look inside at Amber, lying there, her dark honey colored hair a-tumble about her face. The sheet covered her from ankle to neck, but it could not hide her beauty which was all the more exotic for the bizarre tattooing. She’d said she wanted it removed the minute she got to Malthen, if it could be done. Jack looked at the dialysis shunt in her ankle, preparatory to the stage when she would one day be awakened and, unable to help himself, he shuddered before looking away.

  Only Amber knew if he was a really a hero or a coward for refusing to be chilled down with the rest of them.

  He paused now and spread his hand out over the plastic shield as though he could touch her face and share her dreams with her. It had been another battle to keep psychological debriefing loops from being hooked up to her cold sleep dreams, but he’d won that one, too. The human mind should have some dignity in cold sleep, even if the body did not. He looked at his four-fingered hand, at the scar where the little finger had been sheared off. It had been amputated, a victim of frostbite from a cold sleep occupied too long. Seventeen years too long.

  Two months of real time was not too much to be added to his years, Jack thought. He’d endure it, waiting for the end of the voyage and the beginning of the war, his war, with the Thrakian League.

  Endure it, hell, he’d welcome it.

  His emperor, the traitor, was another matter.

  Jack dropped his hand from the shielding, took a deep breath, and continued his journey through the frigid hold, not pausing to look at his men who lay like fallen soldiers. He did not stop until he reached the gym where he stripped off his shirt and began to exercise, chasing his thoughts like demons from his mind.

  The gym was ill-used, but that hadn’t surprised Jack after a look at Harkness’ crew. The surprise was that the transport even carried a gym. He winced a little as he flexed. Deep, purpling bruises still covered his torso. He’d be healed by the time they pulled out of hyperdrive and began to decel though… one valid reason for not being chilled down.

  His peculiar susceptibility to cold sleep fever was another.

  The action on Bythia had not injured him badly, but it had cost him the life of his commander and friend. Jack would be long in forgetting Kavin. Besides their friendship, the two had shared the common background of being battle armor Knights, infantry soldiers who were mobile tanks, fighting ground warfare designed to annihilate the enemy and not the planet they fought upon. Virtually no one beyond the two of them was now trained in “Pure” warfare, although the art of wearing battle armor had recently been recommissioned by Emperor Pepys. Now Jack stood alone.

  He would have to find a way to carry on.

  Sweat tickled its way down his skin. He counted off his sets mercilessly, whipping his body back into shape, until he was too exhausted to move.

  Jack woke, groggily, on his back on one of the exercise mats, his face still clammy with sweat. Jack looked up, his neck stiff and cramped, and stretched. Over him stood a white suit of battle armor, opalescent Flexalinks muted by the dimmed lights of a ship in downtime. The deadly gauntlet, powerful enough to crush his skull, each finger the firing barrel of a destructive weapon, was poised, curving over him as though in benediction.

  Jack smiled, grasped the gauntlet and got to his feet.

  *Hi, boss.*

  “Hello, Bogie. Feeling better?”

  The regenerating being that now occupied his battle armor paused. *I’m cold.*

  Jack bent over to loosen the muscles in his legs preparatory to finding the refresher and cleaning up. He craned his neck to look back. “It’s standard temp in here, buddy.”

  He returned to his standing position and frowned. He knew little about the creature in his armor except that it was as fierce in fighting nature as a Milot berserker, but hadn’t, thank god, the cannibalistic, parasitic tendencies of the
giant saurians. Jack had not been sure about that at first, and had been haunted by the growing sentience of his battle armor.

  More than microscopic, regenerating out of a square of leather that ought to have been dead tissue, Bogie had been implanted in his suit on Milos during the Sand Wars, twenty-five years ago. It was hot in a suit. Jack had welcomed the adaptation by his Milot repair technician. The circuitry and gear inside occasionally poked and prodded at his back, and the weight of a field pack with a small-muzzle laser cannon could dig holes in his flesh. Many of the Knights hung a leather chamois. It had been the death of a lot of them. Their body heat and sweat could nurture a berserker into parasitic life. By the time a Knight knew what was happening, he was a consumed man, trapped inside his suit of armor like it was a meat locker.

  Jack looked at his own suit of battle armor.

  Bogie had a small towel draped across his left wrist. Jack took it and mopped his face, wondering briefly where the Milots had gotten the leather chamois they used for his infestation, thinking that they were implanting a berserker and giving him Bogie instead. He tossed the towel in the corner.

  Unlike a Milot berserker, Bogie had soul. In fact, his mind and soul were forming far more quickly than his physical being. The chamois hanging inside the armor showed little change from when it had originally been placed there. It was a little thicker. If Jack held it between his fingers, he could sense a pulsing life. Bogie was like an embryo and neither he nor the sentience knew what it was he had to have to finish regeneration. Berserkers ate their way through blood and flesh. Though there was no denying that Jack’s presence in the suit vitalized Bogie, neither knew how. Because of that, and Bogie’s hardwired-like psychic hookup with the suit circuitry itself, he had not removed and incubated the chamois. He feared killing the creature that way. From a liability, Bogie had become an asset. From a parasite, he had evolved into a companion. Jack didn’t like the armor’s coldness and considered the fragility of life that was Bogie’s present state. The only way he knew to warm the suit was to wear it. He looked about the massive ceiling of the gym. It had once been part of the freight hold, he decided.

  He had room. “How about we suit up and go through some basic exercises?”

  *I would like that.*

  Jack unsealed the seams and got in. He spent some time clipping leads to his bare torso before settling in and then sealing himself up.

  The holo came up, a soft-tinted rosy glow that read his muscular movement and relayed it to the suit, through a step-up transformer. A blow meant to swat a butterfly could conceivably crush a small mammal. Such was the power of a man once inside a suit.

  There was more now. Jack felt the immediate enveloping embrace of Bogie, close and intimate, like a lover.

  Only this being was born to fight, Jack knew. Just as he had been sworn to. Jack smiled tightly to himself as he finished suiting up. “Okay, Bogie. Let’s pretend we’re killing Thraks.”

  *Kick ass, boss,* the armor responded.

  He began to drill.

  Neither man nor machine saw the twilight wrapped shadow that watched from the far recesses of the hold as, with a muffled burp, Harkness reeled out of sight and lumbered back down the corridors of his command.

  The navigator frowned at his blipping screen. “I don’t like it,” he complained to his employer.

  Harness hawked and swallowed it down. “Quit whining,” he said. “What do you want me to do, pull out of hyperspace and make a fracking coordinate change? We might end up inside solid rock.”

  Alij stabbed a pointed nail at his screen. “Sir, we might anyway. Something’s happening out there, and I don’t like it.”

  The pilot straightened. He scrubbed a hand over his patchy head of grizzled hair. The slim brown navigator glared at him. That arrogant Dominion Knight son of a bitch had warned him it would come to this. The pilot shrugged. He reached for the com system and thumbed it onto page. “Captain Storm, your presence is requested on the bridge.”

  Alij sat back in his chair and hid his startled expression in the glow of his screen, but he was the first to jump in eagerness when the bridge doors schussed open minutes later to admit the soldier.

  There was not a man in Harkness’ crew who hadn’t at one time or another spied on the Dominion Knight, particularly if he could be found drilling in the gym. Most of the Knights aboard had had their equipment destroyed before retreating. The crewmen had a morbid fascination in watching the battle armor at work after having faced it themselves when they’d tried to subdue Storm. It was a killing machine, no doubt about it. Now, Alij watched warily as the man entered the bridge.

  “Problem, pilot?”

  Harkness growled in this throat again, then said, “My navigator says he’s getting feedback through his hyperspace readings. Any idea what could be going on?”

  Jack looked at the pilot. He knew the grudging expression for what it was. Capitulation, fueled by worry. He looked to the navigator. “When are we due to pull out and decel?”

  “Beginning of next watch. Say, twelve hours. We’re two weeks out of Malthen, putting on the brakes all the way.”

  “Close.” Without edging the pilot out of the way, Jack squeezed in as close as he could to the instrumentation board. He was no pilot. His skill was warfare, specifically, the infantry. But Harkness was a transport pilot, a man used to handling freight and the occasional cold ship. Jack could not read what he saw on the screen either, but he didn’t like it.

  He wondered if the Thraks could be waiting for them at the edge, having calculated their most likely reentry point from hyperspace. The Thraks knew they’d been at Bythia—hell, that was the incident that had started the war six weeks ago. It would take about that long to begin mustering forces.

  Harkness’ cold ship would be priceless to them because of its cargo locked in cold sleep. Jack frowned. He looked at Harkness and the copilot swiveled in his chair. To the copilot he said, “Bring up the subspace bulletin board.”

  “Sir, we haven’t got time to put out a call and receive an answer—”

  “I know, officer. I’m looking for bulletins, not placing a call.”

  “What?” Harkness practically gargled in his sputtering rage.

  Jack ignored him until the monitor scrolled up the info he wanted. “There!”

  The copilot froze the screen.

  Some subspace ham had spread the word the best way he knew how, and Jack’s face tightened in appreciation. He had no way of knowing yet if Thraks had attacked anywhere, but here at least were corridor coordinates of the latest warship placements. “Navigator—”

  “Alij, sir.”

  “Order up a graphics overlay. I’ll bet my armor you’ve got Thraks sitting there, waiting for us.”

  Alij moved to the computer and made his verbal requests.

  “Damn.” Harkness smacked a beefy fist on the back of his chair. The bridge quivered in response. “Any chance of collision?”

  Jack said, “I doubt it, but they’ll be firing as soon as they can track us.”

  “They’ll never catch up with us.”

  “They won’t need to. They’ll catch you turning the corner for braking, and trap us on the right angle, during the vector changeover.”

  Harkness’ expression flickered. Grudgingly, he said, “Thought you weren’t a pilot.”

  “I’m not. But I’ve fought Thraks before and I know how they can attack vessels.”

  The pilot said nothing. He looked to Alij as the computer began to show graphic overlays of corridors and windows. Alij, without knowing what he was doing, began to nod vigorously as Jack’s suspicions were confirmed. “Yes… yes… here they are… yes…”

  The pilot squeezed his bulky body upward into a firm stance. He nodded at Jack. “Thank you, captain.”

  “You’re welcome, Harkness. We’re not out of this yet. A transport vehicle like this is most vulnerable when it pulls out of hyperspace and turns that corner to begin braking… and it’s my bet the Thraks aren�
��t going to blow us out of the sky.”

  “No?” A bushy eyebrow went up.

  “No. I’m afraid what they’ll have in mind this time is taking prisoners.”

  The copilot broke the silence with a hoarse whisper. “We’d be better off dead.”

  Chapter 2

  Giving up already, Leoni?” Harkness growled.

  “No, sir.” The sallow-faced man straightened hunched shoulders. “Have you ever seen a sand planet, sir? After the Thraks have come in and taken over?”

  Jack stood quietly, listening to the exchange. He was very careful not to let emotion flicker across his face.

  Harkness shook his head.

  “Well, I have. About ten years ago. The crew I was on had to bring in a load of supplies under treaty. Not that the bugs need much on a sand planet, but trade is trade, right?” His brown eyes blinked guiltily. His employer did not respond. Leoni plunged ahead. “It’s eerie. My guess is the planets don’t survive long, with the whole ecosystem shot like that… the oceans are there, but most of the vegetation is gone. It’s been eaten down into these coarse granules, beige and rust colored. I held some in my bare hand. It felt like bugs were in it, squirming around. My skin stung for weeks. The Thraks lay their eggs in the stuff, and the larvae eat the sand, sort of. I remember looking at it and thinking, this used to be grassland, once. Or maybe a forest or someone’s farm. No more.”

  Leoni looked around the control room. “I could stand there. I could still breathe the air even though it had thinned out some. But I wouldn’t want to live there. It’s my idea of hell.”