by C H Gideon
At that, Styles pulled the blanket off Jenkins’ bunk, revealing a pair of large four-sided cases with tinted transparent panes. One held what looked like an immaculately-preserved human skull and the other had some sort of technological component in it.
“Jem says,” Podsy continued, “that if you tell the Finjou about the tomb, they’ll not only refuse to follow Jemmin commands but that some of them might actually become Terran allies.”
“How would this ‘Jem’ be able to predict that?” Jenkins asked skeptically.
“Apparently,” Styles said heavily, “Jem has been conscious and thinking about this situation nonstop for fifteen thousand years. Its forebears were xenobiologists and students of organic sentience, and they had ample experience studying both the Finjou and humanity. I’m not saying we should trust everything Jem says because that would be stupid, considering we know next to nothing about it,” he explained. “But I thought you should know that it seemed convinced you should use the tomb as leverage.”
Jenkins considered Styles’ suggestion before nodding. “Good work, Chief.” He turned to Lieutenant Podsednik with a penetrating look. “Mind explaining what you’re doing down here, Lieutenant? This part of the operation was supposed to remain compartmentalized.”
“General Akinouye assigned me to the excavation team after the drop, Colonel,” Podsy explained.
“I have copies of the orders, Colonel,” Styles added, and a reverent silence fell over the room as the three men were reminded of Havoc’s passing.
Jenkins cocked a brow in surprise as he mentally replayed what Podsy had just said. “You rode the Zero planet-side?”
“Yes, sir,” Podsy replied with a firm nod.
Jenkins quirked a grin. “How was it?”
“Every bit as rough as they say,” Podsy replied before grumpily adding, “I missed the landing.”
Jenkins chuckled. “All right. Good work, gentlemen. Stand by while I go shake this thing’s…claw?” He found what seemed like the appropriate word.
The men laughed nervously as Jenkins opened the hatch and made his way back to the cabin.
“Finjou delegate is in the airlock,” Chaps reported. “One minute to decontamination.”
“Thank you, Chaps.” Jenkins clapped the other man on the shoulder.
“It’s good to have you back, sir,” Chaps said as Jenkins resumed his position between Xi and Trapper.
“It’s good to be back, Chaps,” Jenkins replied sincerely before turning to Captain Xi. The woman was days away from her twentieth birthday, but she had just orchestrated an engagement with a largely unknown enemy on hostile ground while preserving not just one, but two high-priority objectives.
The cherry on top of her remarkable achievement was that her overwhelming victory had brought the Finjou down to negotiate face to face. A purely predatory species, the Finjou respected nothing so much as naked force and the leverage it generated. In the end, humans weren’t all that different from the Finjou, but Jenkins thought the token efforts at pre-violence diplomacy were meaningful differences between the two species’ dominant cultures.
And Xi’s efforts had led the Finjou straight to a negotiating table.
“You know you’ll make major for this,” he muttered.
“Colonel?” she asked in confusion.
“You’re about to become the poster-child for the Metal Legion’s upcoming recruiting drive,” Jenkins explained. “And I mean that literally. I was just in the back going over pin-up layouts with Styles. Don’t worry, it will all be digital art. You won’t have to pose or anything…unless you want to?” he added, taking the opportunity to rib her while he could.
Xi’s face turned a perfect shade of red, but her honest, unguarded smile made clear she appreciated the sentiment. “Great.” She sighed, schooling her features as Roy’s airlock began its final cycle. “As if those three hundred unsolicited dildos I got in the mail after the DIN report weren’t bad enough. Now Styles is going to ‘shop my face onto everything with two legs and no clothes.”
“You underestimate him,” Jenkins muttered as the airlock’s inner hatch opened. “He won’t stop at bipeds.”
Xi half-stifled a snort as the hatch swung open, revealing a bizarre-looking creature that somehow looked nothing like Jenkins expected and yet was exactly as it should be.
With a trio of eyes on either side of its long, toothy, razor-sharp beak, the thing looked more like a four-winged pterodactyl than anything else. Lines of blue feathers ran the length of its body, starting at the base of its meter-long skull and extending to the tip of its reptilian tail. A rebreather hood covered its neck, which was riddled with dozens of small nostril-like holes.
Its wings bore feathers, but they seemed vestigial rather than functional. And those wings, as tightly furled against its body as they were, were so large that the Finjou had to shuffle awkwardly through the narrow hatch in order to reach Roy’s main cabin.
Trapper and Xi tensed at Jenkins’ sides, prompting him to step forward until he and the Finjou delegate were so close that the thing could have almost certainly torn his throat open. The Finjou had no proper hands, but its two smaller, lower wings each featured a diminutive pair of claws with three talons.
In one of those claws, it held a slender rod not much larger than a thick cigar. Jenkins recognized it as a standard Illumination League translator, and the Finjou held it out as though asking permission to activate it.
“Leeroy,” Trapper muttered, “you are stupid as hell.”
Ignoring Trapper’s expected quip, Jenkins kept his focus on the Finjou. He nodded in approval, and the creature flicked the switch at the slightly fatter of the device’s tips. Even crouched as it was, the Finjou was two and a half meters tall, and the height disparity was every bit as unnerving as Jenkins had feared it would be. He guesstimated the thing weighed a hundred and fifty kilos, and that its wings when unfurled might be ten meters from tip to tip.
When it spoke, its natural, screeching voice added to the already tense atmosphere in Roy’s cabin.
“You are the Terran Alpha?” it asked in a translated tone which was clearly more a demand than a polite request.
“Our former Alpha sacrificed himself to take out your drones. With his death, I became the Alpha of the Terran Armor Corps on this planet,” Jenkins replied, knowing that to flinch or back down was to invite disaster.
“Be direct!” the Finjou snapped, its toothy beak clacking in an unmistakable display of irritation. “You are the Terran Alpha?”
“As far as you’re concerned,” Jenkins sneered, “I’m the god-emperor of all humanity! Every human in this star system follows my commands without fail. So yeah,” he squared his shoulders, “I am the motherfucking Terran Alpha.”
The thing recoiled in apparent surprise before cocking his six-eyed head appraisingly. “You mate with your progenitor?”
Trapper couldn’t help but snort behind Jenkins. “No,” Jenkins said irritably, feeling his face flush every bit as red as Xi’s had done when he’d ribbed her a minute earlier. “It’s an idiom. A stupid thing we sometimes say. Inbreeding makes humans weak,” he explained, saying whatever came to mind in the hope of salvaging the faux pas, “so calling one’s self a ‘motherfucker’ is a linguistic feint meant to disguise one’s strength.”
The Finjou swiveled its head back and forth like a dog rag-dolling a chew-toy, causing the translator to issue a surprising bout of synthetic laughter. “Human humor is good. We did not expect this. We also did not expect you to fight so well. Clan Blue Razorbeak is impressed. The Jemmin were wrong about your species.”
That last bit sent a chill down Jenkins’ spine. He pushed it aside, knowing that there were priorities to observe. He needed to get the colonists off-world, but in order to do that expeditiously, he needed the Finjou warships to stand off.
“We have civilian refugees who need to evacuate or they will die,” Jenkins explained.
Blue Razorbeak Alpha tensed its neck, bri
nging the tip of its beak up before seemingly forcing it back down again. “Humans violated Finjou sovereignty. They must be tried in Finjou courts.”
“I can’t allow that.” Jenkins shook his head firmly, knowing that Finjou courts were rarely more than perfunctory presages to summary executions followed by banquets featuring the executed as entrees. “I need you to stand off so I can extract these people. In exchange, I’ll provide you with the location of their subterranean colony, the passcodes needed to access it, and direct control of all remaining human military fortifications on this planet. I could blow it all right now,” he said, producing a remote trigger primed to blow one of the six remaining fortresses on the surface, “but I’m willing to give it to you instead if you stand your warships off so I can safely evacuate these people.”
The Finjou ruffled its wings, filling Roy’s cabin with the sound of leather scraping against leather. “Human technology is inferior to Finjou. Inferior to Jemmin. It has little value to us.”
“Fine.” Jenkins shrugged, pressing the plunger and causing a warning alarm to chime instantly at a nearby console.
“Facility destroyed,” Chaps reported, and for a moment Jenkins was unable to tell if the Finjou would react.
That moment stretched before the Finjou grudgingly said, “We will permit you to withdraw your civilians.”
“And our military hardware,” Jenkins said, emphatically holding up the detonator.
“Yes, yes,” the dinosaur-looking thing agreed. “We will permit you to withdraw your active hardware.”
Jenkins nodded in agreement, having already secured the most sensitive equipment that was unsalvageable while hauling the rest back to the drop-zone. Chief among that equipment were the damaged Razorbacks bearing Vorr technology, which could not be allowed to fall into anyone’s hands but Captain Guan’s after they withdrew.
“Good.” Jenkins nodded.
“You fight well,” the Finjou said grudgingly. “You negotiate better.”
“I’m not done yet,” Jenkins said pointedly, knowing he needed to be extremely careful with his next words. “In the spirit of friendship and in the hope of fostering cooperation between our nations, I’ve prepared a gift.”
“What is this gift?” the Finjou asked dubiously, and Jenkins knew this was yet another one of those moments in his life which might come back to haunt him.
But Styles was his most trusted advisor and closest confidant. Without his help, Jenkins could not have possibly gotten his armor experiment off the ground, nor could he have hoped to survive Admiral Corbyn’s grilling after Durgan’s Folly.
And Styles was telling him to give the Finjou access to the Jem’un tomb. One of the first things Lee Jenkins learned about command was that if you gave someone a position of trust, you had to validate that trust for as long as that person demonstrated they were worthy of it.
“We’ve cut a tunnel,” Jenkins explained, “into the rockface below. It leads to a facility that the Finjou will find…most interesting.” He emphasized the last two words, hoping the translator would convey the desired subtext. “Bringing what you find there back to your people might elevate Clan Blue Razorbeak’s standing higher than it’s ever been.”
The Finjou’s head cocked slightly before sliding sideways, much as a cat or owl does while range-finding a target. Jenkins took it to be a gesture of skepticism, and his guess was validated when the auto-translated voice replied, “Blue Razorbeak is a proud, storied clan.”
“I’m sure it is, but Blue Razorbeak suffered a defeat here against a technologically inferior foe,” Jenkins pressed. “What I’m offering you will not only erase the stain of that defeat but will ensure your clan’s place in Finjou history. Forever.”
“Too many bloody words,” the Finjou said with open suspicion, and it took Jenkins a moment to realize that the phrase was probably the equivalent of the English “enough of your honeyed words.”
“Send a team to investigate while I extract my people,” Jenkins urged. “I’ll stay here until you’ve investigated, and if you find I was lying, you can come to take vengeance. But I’m telling the truth, and what you discover down there will increase Blue Razorbeak’s power and prestige, just say ‘thank you’ for the gift, and we’ll be on our way.”
The Finjou ruffled its feathers again, but its translated voice was surprisingly calm. “We will investigate. These negotiations are concluded.”
The creature left through the airlock and the cabin’s occupants breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“Leeroy,” Trapper repeated, this time in relief rather than taut disdain, “you are stupid as hell.”
“Yep,” Jenkins deadpanned, shaking his suddenly trembling arms loose as the post-negotiation adrenaline dump hit him like a ton of bricks, “but apparently I’m their kind of stupid.”
Twelve hours later the last of the civilians had been evacuated to the Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which was in considerably worse shape than Jenkins had previously thought. Li’s people had managed to prepare sufficient emergency berths for all seven thousand colonists, but it was going to be ten kinds of uncomfortable with so many people crammed aboard a ship designed to hold no more than two thousand under a full load.
The heavy lifters descended from the Bonhoeffer and Red Hare, suspended by carbon nanotube cables attached to giant spools anchored within the carriers’ hulls. The lifters were specifically designed to clamp onto any of the eight different drop-can types, which they would lift back up to the carriers. Like temporary space elevators or “beanstalks,” as many in the Terran Republic referred to them, these lifting platforms were the only viable system for retrieving the heavy vehicles of the Metal Legion.
During peace-time drops, or in non-combat zones, the lifters served double-duty by also deploying the Legion’s mechs. But the cables were too valuable and fragile to risk damage from enemy fire, so the braking-thruster-equipped drop-cans had been developed as the lone deployment system for combat insertions.
It would take another day of shuttling cans loaded with mechs before the Terran Armor Corps would be wheels-up from the Brick, but Jenkins received two words from the Finjou long before then.
Those two words were “Thank you.”
With the Finjou’s gratitude in mind, he helped coordinate the withdrawal of his battered Metalheads.
When it came to the last of the vehicles, Xi’s Elvira and Jenkins’ Roy, Jenkins did the right thing and let Xi’s mech be the last to go wheels-up.
Even considering his late-hour assist, the Brick had been her command from start to finish. Like every other military tradition, it was important for the commander to be first-in, last-out. And judging by the sentiment throughout the beleaguered brigade, which was one of enthusiastic support for Jenkins’ deferential gesture to the talented young woman, he knew he had made the right call.
She had earned her fellow Metalheads’ respect the only way that counted: in combat.
The hard way.
21
The Poisoned Carrot
Jenkins hated this part. He truly, madly, deeply hated it, but there was no getting around the bureaucracy.
It was time for the inevitable after-action debriefing, which he assumed would feature another panel of Fleet officers. He very much doubted that this one would feature anyone as friendly as Colonel Jonathan Villa.
It had taken the Bonhoeffer twelve days to limp home from the Brick. The proud warship had sustained critical damage to nearly every system during the firefight with the Finjou, and after Jenkins had been debriefed on the naval battle by Colonel Li, he was amazed the aged warship had survived.
The Finjou had punctured the Bonhoeffer’s hull eighteen times in the firefight. A full third of the Bonhoeffer’s crew had been lost to explosive decompressions, and another third had sustained serious wounds due to missile strikes impacting directly on the warship’s keel.
As hairy as things had been planet-side, things had been much, much worse in orbit.
Coup
led with General Akinouye’s death, the so-called “Battle of the Brick” had been far costlier than anyone could have envisioned.
And Jenkins had received ominous word that the casualty list was not yet complete.
As he waited outside the Terran Armor Corps’ central planning theater, Jenkins had serious doubts as to whether he could weather the storm he was about to walk into. When those oak and gold-leaf doors opened and he was summoned to provide his formal testimony, he would, for the first time since joining the Metal Legion, be totally isolated.
Somewhat mercifully, his ruminations were cut short when the doors parted. A woman wearing smartly-fitting dress browns with silver lieutenant’s bars beckoned from the open door. “The general will see you now, sir.”
Jenkins tucked his beret under his arm, fighting down the anxiety he felt as he followed the lieutenant into the theater. It was the same room where Generals Akinouye, Pushkin, and Kavanaugh had briefed him on the Shiva’s Wrath op. It seemed like that meeting had taken place mere days ago, but as Jenkins emerged into the theater’s lower platform with the iconic Armor Corps emblem proudly emblazoned upon the floor, one look at the far end of the room was all it took to confirm just how much had happened since that day.
A trio of throne-like chairs sat upon the raised command dais on the far end of the room. General Akinouye had previously occupied the central seat, flanked by General Pushkin and Major General Kavanaugh, but now only one of those seats was occupied.
He steeled his resolve as he made his way to the bar set five meters before the command dais. Once he arrived, he braced to attention and snapped a salute. “Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins reporting as ordered, General.”
