Asymmetry

by A. G. Claymore

  He saw the smoke marker from the drop-site, just ahead, and had to force himself not to rush the final few meters. For one thing, the leaves were still unlikely to cooperate just because he was in a hurry to avoid them. For another, the rebels they’d come to meet were likely a skittish bunch when it came to strangers.

  They finally walked into the small clearing, stepping carefully over the debris caused by the drop-pallet’s explosive clearing-charge. “Tim,” Rick nodded at the large, ten-meter-cubed drop-pallet. “Kill the smoke.”

  There was something decidedly bizarre about running an Alliance support mission for rebels. They were, out of sheer necessity, leery of any outsiders, so landing a scout-ship at a meeting site was strictly off limits. They had no way of knowing if a team might be waiting inside to kill or capture key rebel personnel.

  But you could drop a small bomb to clear the meeting space, assuming you walk a few klicks to get there yourself.

  Rick couldn’t begrudge the rebels their desire for security but it got tiresome sometimes. The Melchior worlds had no Dactari presence but he still had to trudge through a distinctly unfriendly landscape to deliver them a pallet of weapons and micro-drives.

  “Will they find us if I kill the smoke?” Tim Fletcher asked.

  Rick grinned at the young man. Tim was the oldest son of his best friend, Barry. The one Fletcher who’d treated him like a person rather than a pariah during the final years of the Guadalcanal mutineers’ settlement.

  Rick had agreed to take Tim on so he could learn to be a warrior. The Midgaard frowned on families training their own children exclusively and he knew he should probably send his own son, Viggo, off to Barry on the Guadalcanal when he returned from this mission.

  He nodded. “This is their territory. They already know exactly where we are because they’re looking right at us.” He turned to the left, having already seen the surprise appearance of the rebel leader. “M’Hon!” he called out. “You gonna squat in that bush all day or will you come see the goodies we brought you?”

  M’Hon, the leader of the local rebel cell, stood and stepped out of concealment. “It takes a strong man to admit when he’s impressed,” the Oaxian boomed cheerfully. “Maybe you can return the gesture and tell me how you spotted me?” He gestured and more than twenty of his fighters stepped out of concealment, approaching Rick from two sides of a theoretical box.

  “Proper crossfire,” Rick observed with a slight nod. “Flemming told me you guys knew your business!”

  “Basic tactical common sense,” M’Hon waved off the compliment.

  “You’d be amazed how uncommon your common sense is,” Rick insisted. “Some folks get their hands on a weapon and think they can take on the whole damned Republic. I’ve actually seen some of them set up a circular ambush.”

  “Fine…” M’Hon sketched an elaborate bow. “…I’m a tactical genius!” He straightened and met Rick’s eye. “But that still doesn’t answer my question, does it, stranger?”

  “It’s no great skill on my part,” Rick said. “I can see what you’re going to do before you do it.” He pointed a finger at M’Hon. “What a handy skill! You could have saved me from twisting my ankle last month...”

  “Gods!” M’Hon’s eyelids were in serious danger of spraining themselves. “How…”

  “…the hells did you do that?” Rick finished for him. “Sorry for showing off, but it saves a lot of convincing down the road.”

  “You’re one of those… What do the Midgaard call them? Sieder-men?” M’Hon asked.

  “Well…” Rick grinned, “…I get called a lot of names but, yes, that is one of them.” The rebels were whispering among themselves excitedly.

  “There, N’Halo, you see?” M’Hon accosted one of his fighters. “You say the Alliance doesn’t take our fight seriously enough but they sent an eternal to help us and he’s one of their shamans as well!”

  “How old are you?” a rebel asked.

  “Thirty-eight.”

  The look on their faces was comical. “Thirty-eight?” a young woman wrinkled her nose.

  “I wasn’t born an ‘eternal’,” he explained. He didn’t need precog to know what was coming next. He’d had this discussion on dozens of support missions. “I was given the vaccine that changed me from Human to Midgaard.”

  “Why can’t you bring this ‘vaccine’ with you?” N’Halo demanded. “You claim to support us and yet you keep the best advantages to yourselves, don’t you?”

  Clearly N’Halo was one of M’Hon’s biggest pains in the ass. Rick wondered if there had been any temptation for the rebel leader to arrange for a ‘stray’ bullet in combat. “You’ve all heard of the plague that ravaged my world,” he said. “It was caused by Humans trying to reverse-engineer Midgaard longevity. My people were left with no choice but to use a less-than-perfect vaccination or go extinct.

  “In the end, we were completely indistinguishable from the Midgaard, so we never really avoided extinction, we just became something else. The cost was staggering. Billions of our kind died horribly, wandering the Earth for years after death…”

  He looked N’Halo straight in the eye. “No other species’ genes have ever been found to be compatible with the vaccination. Most of them are susceptible to the plague without any possibility of using the cure.”

  “It seems odd that only your species can attain the long life of the Midgaard,” N’Halo countered, determined to be the center of attention.

  “Because the vaccine was created by our own people,” Rick said, voice quiet, dark, “and we unleashed horror upon ourselves in payment for our own vanity.”

  “Nothing comes without cost,” M’Hon said. “Personally, I’d prefer my short life, thank-you.” He shrugged at Rick. “No offense to you, but it seems like expecting one goblet of wine to service an entire banquet, if you see my meaning.”

  “Not many Midgaard would agree with you,” Rick said, “but some of us who’ve recently taken the vaccine share your feelings. We expected shorter lives. Some slip into depression and lethargy.”

  He was about to draw their attention to the cargo but something was about to happen in low orbit. “Huh!” He looked up, waggling his index finger at the clear blue sky. “That could certainly be disconcerting!”

  “What could be…” M’Hon and his rebels had all followed Rick’s gaze and the question died unspoken as the answer presented itself.

  A Dactari troop ship slammed its way back into undistorted space, just outside the atmosphere. A brilliant flash seared its way across the sky as the distortion bow-wave dissipated, releasing the matter it had trapped in transit as plasma.

  “Standard Dactari operating procedure for achieving psychological effect in asymmetrical operations,” Rick quoted from memory. “When deploying ground forces against rebels who don’t possess distortion-equipped vessels, low-atmospheric drop-out from distortion can have a strong impact on morale.”

  As if to prove his point, N’Halo was already yelling. “What good is one eternal against that?” he shouted, pointing up at the drop-ship.

  The Dactari vessel was huge and it was in the lowest possible orbit. Even holding two thumbs together at arm’s length was not quite enough to hide the blue-hazed enemy ship. It made an imposing sight.

  “Well,” Rick said, still squinting up, “for one thing, we try to keep in mind just how much time we have to work with. The Dactari will be in a rush to get down here, but they’ll run scans first. No sense in committing troops until they have some idea of where to send them. That means we have more than a hundredth of a day before anyone can escape from that ship.”

  “Escape?”

  “And for another thing,” Rick carried on as if N’Halo hadn’t spoken, “we spend more time thinking about what the enemy will do – more than the enemy, really.” He tore his gaze away from the ship and smiled at M’Hon. “And we like to create contingency plans… lots of contingency plans!”

  A Shot from the Dark

&nbs
p; Maisan Asteroid Belt, Melchior system

  “Thor, you almost ready out there?” Freya’s voice was unnaturally loud in the confines of Thorstein’s helmet. “Turned out my hunch was actually a vision. We’ve got a troop-ship in low orbit and it’s coming up fast on an optimal angle.”

  “Almost,” he answered. “Just anchoring now.” He activated the command on the holding armature he’d designed for the new micro-drives.

  It had a mounting interface on one side that mimicked the same installation frame he’d been installing the scout-ships. The smaller drives left room in the old engineering spaces to store an extra two drives. They gave a measure of comfort with an unproven new technology and they also supported other possibilities.

  The other side of the armature consisted of three mounting points that allowed the frame to attach to almost any irregular surface. The three grapple bolts fired and, though he couldn’t hear them in the void of space, he could see the tell-tale puffs of dust from the asteroid as each bolt rammed its way in.

  The asteroid, roughly spherical and five meters in diameter, was relatively unimportant, assuming the drive itself did its job correctly. It was mostly there for insurance.

  “I see three bolts,” Thorstein announced. “Kiral, do you concur?”

  “Concur. Three impacts.” Kiral was a new recruit from Chaco Benthic. He’d been taken on after the formation of Rick and Freya’s fief. His parents were NRW’s under the old regime. Non-Registered Workers were the poorest of the poor, working all day for minimal wages and sleeping in alleys.

  When Kiral signed up, he’d been allocated quarters in the sub-oceanic city. His parents and two sisters now lived there in luxury, at least compared to their previous accommodations. In his old circle of friends, Kiral had become kind of a big deal.

  Out here, though, he was Thor’s engineering assistant.

  “Alright,” Thorstein said, “hit the jets and let’s get clear!”

  They backed off from the ungainly assembly, the thrusters transmitting a faint noise through the air in their suits. The minimum safe distance for this engine rating was two hundred meters.

  “Thor,” Freya urged, “we’re about to lose our window.”

  The best time for what they had in mind was when the target was off to the side of the planet, rather than in front of it. They could adjust the trajectory, of course, but every added variable was an extra potential point of failure.

  Thorstein looked at the distance readout on his HUD. “One hundred fifty meters,” he said. “Should be OK.”

  “But two hundred…” Kiral began.

  “Two hundred’s more of a recommendation for peacetime,” Thor countered. “Sporting events and the like…” He activated the remote initiation sequence for the micro-drive and committed the drive with a simultaneous double twitch of both eyebrows while looking at the command icon.

  He could hear a slight whine, which was somewhat disconcerting. It meant the building distortion effect was vibrating the air in his suit. Maybe two hundred is the wartime number and the peacetime one is higher?

  The whine built to a dull roar but it was diminishing with their growing distance from the micro-drive/asteroid assembly. The space around the ugly, impromptu ship seemed to bend and compress suddenly. Stars seemed to shift into a dense band around the assembly and then the whole thing convulsed and slipped out of sight.

  The effect, at this distance, was like a full-body massage and Thorstein was uncomfortably aware that it was commensurate with the amount of nerve endings in any given appendage. He bent a bit at the waist, trying to alleviate the sudden result. “Definitely felt more of that than I expected,” he said.

  “Right?” Kiral agreed rhetorically. “Won’t be long before someone finds a way to reproduce that effect under control and charge for it.”

  Thor grinned. Though Freya could hear them, she probably had no idea what the shared joke was.

  The other end of the joke was far less enjoyable.

  The little ‘ship’ dropped back out of distortion in the middle of the Dactari troop-ship. The bow wave of compressed space at the front would have been relatively benign, having picked up almost no debris between initiation and shut-down. The intervening space was clear.

  The space at the drop-out point, however, contained a massive troop-ship.

  The bow wave ate the ship, stern first, boring a forty-meter-wide hole into the kilometer-wide vessel. That in itself might have been survivable but the micro-drive shut down before reaching the center of the ship. The bow wave collapsed and all of the panels, conduits, bulkheads and crew that had been channeled into it were released as plasma.

  The intense plume of energy destroyed the front half of the vessel utterly, taking out the bridge and control structures as well as most of the landing shuttles. The asteroid, unneeded thanks to the accurate performance of the drive, tumbled away through empty space that the ship had recently occupied.

  What remained of the troop-ship, a rectangular donut, began drifting from the angled impact with no ability to correct its course. It slowly began a tumbling descent toward Melchior 5.

  It’s Not the Size…

  Rebel Meeting-Point, Melchior 5

  Rick had counted down for dramatic effect, ensuring that all the rebels were watching when the impact happened. They’d all lost sight of the ship itself in the brilliant glow of the impact.

  M’Hon’s rebels had all jumped in surprise and a few covered their eyes or looked away, blinking to clear their vision. Nobody was talking yet.

  Rick finally got the spots to go away and he looked back at the ship. It was getting larger and more distinct. As it tumbled slowly it began to reveal the damage done.

  “Gods!” one of the fighters exclaimed. “The whole front half is missing!” She turned to Rick. “What did you hit her with?”

  “Just an asteroid with a micro-drive stuck on the back,” Rick gestured at the large cargo pallet. “Same kind we brought you, but we had a more conventional use in mind when we loaded them!”

  That caused a bit of dark amusement. Laughing came hard when you were watching your enemies falling to their death.

  The remnant of the troop-ship began flaring at the corners as she hit the atmosphere.

  “Think anybody’ll get off before it’s too late?” a rebel asked nobody in particular.

  The flaring at the corners had already joined together in one huge sheet of superheated air. Chunks were tearing off a ship that was never designed for the rigors of atmospheric operations.

  “I’d say ‘too late’ is already in the aft scanner by now,” Rick said solemly. “Poor little bastards!”

  “As allies go,” N’Halo said, still watching the horror show in the sky, “you eternals are alright.”

  M’Hon grunted in surprise at the admission. “Speaking of eternals,” he said, after a few moments of silence, “any truth to the rumor that Odin himself is up to something out here?”

  If not for his precognitive advantage, Rick was sure he would have stammered in surprise. “Sorry, M’Hon,” he said neutrally. “The LRG never confirms nor denies the operational details of any members, real or assumed.”

  Sleep on It and Get Back to Me

  Casparia, Dactari territory

  Odin sliced his blade in a sideways arc, the molecular edge vibrating its way through the security officer’s pistol. The Dactari’s weapon scorched everything within a half meter radius when its energy unit was ruptured.

  It left black scoring all over Odin’s armored right arm and it gave the Dactari third degree burns on half his chest and face. He shrieked in agony until the Midgaard’s blade circled around and severed his head from his shoulders.

  “Bring that one.” Odin gestured impatiently to one of his warriors. “You will open this door,” he told the terrified Dactari being dragged over to the vault by the scruff of his neck.

  “I told you, Great Lord,” the prisoner pleaded, “once the emergency lockout is activated, my codes n
o longer work!” He darted a look down at the dead security officer, just as the tail made a final twitch, and he shuddered.

  “I would love to cooperate, Lord, but the door is sealed, utterly closed, irretrievably unpassable. It would take days to cut your way through it.”

  “What about the walls?” Odin demanded. “Are they made of the same material? People are always buying impenetrable doors but they often neglect the walls.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t…” The Dactari trailed off for a moment. “You know, that might just work…”

  Odin brushed past and drove his sword into the wall. It penetrated easily and he shoved it down to the floor. He pulled it back out and made two more cuts, roughly sketching a rectangular opening. He stepped back and aimed a kick at the center of the impromptu door and it fell inwards.

  “Right! You there!” he shouted at the guard cringing inside the vault. “Where are the rare metals stored?”

  “Four… fourteen levels down,” the guard squeaked.

  “Then lead the way and, as you hope to be saved, do not play us false!” He stepped forward, jolting the guard into motion. “Fenris, bring our friend; the rest of you wait here.”

  They followed the guard to a cargo elevator and the guard hit the button for the right level. They rode in silence for a few seconds.

  “Have you tried that border-guard program?” Odin asked.

  Fenris angled his head to the left, shrugging his left shoulder up slightly. “I confess I don’t see the value in it. A two-dimensional record of a customs point between multiple nations on the same planet? It just seems… silly.”

  “Ah, but you’re not getting the point of it,” Odin countered, not noticing the incredulous looks shared between their two prisoners. “It’s not just about enforcing customs. It’s more about the nature of the species, the urge to put one over on authority. It’s a series of little Human dramas.”

  “Human dramas Lord?”

  Odin rolled his eyes. “A figure of speech. I spent more than two thousand years among them, you know.”