Final Assault Page 2

  Detrelna looked exasperated. “Hanar, you can’t ask people to obey rules written with no knowledge of the nightmares we’ve faced and give their all. You know what my Regs are.”

  “Unless it’s murder, treason, mutiny or adulterating your brandy, you ignore it. Though you let everyone know that you know. Leaving me to play the hardass.”

  “And you do it so well, even though it’s so untrue. As we’re all probably going to be hauled off to the brig by Fleet Security, I think we can ignore a little love beneath the fusion cannon, don’t you?”

  “Is that where they were nuancing? If it was in their quarters, I’d have known.”

  “We tend to forget, but this huge old ship’s vastly empty,” said Detrelna. “She once carried thousands of Imperial Marines. Their quarters are still here, sealed but ready. They include some opulent senior officers’ suites. Those who go exploring back there disable the security grid but they can’t mask the power drain. Dozens of those suites have seen heavy use during our longer cruises. I do hope they’ve been seeing to the linens.”

  “Gods! You’ve been tracking this? Do you have names? Dates?”

  “I did. But with unfriendly feet about to board us, I destroyed those records—among others. You have personal cause for concern, Captain Lawrona?” he asked, straight-faced.

  “No. And you, Commodore?”

  “None.”

  “So it seems nothing ever happened.”

  “Never. Right, Commander Lakan?”

  “Sorry, Commodore. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “So, here we are. Lakan, best get down to that personnel carrier. We’ll follow.”

  The two stood for a moment after she’d left, looking at the bridge with its empty stations and thousands of memoires.

  “What a long and miserable war,” said Lawrona.

  “They’re all miserable.”

  “I only wish it were over—that we were leaving Implacable never having heard of an AI or the Fleet of the One.”

  “Or a biofab or a mindslaver or Guan-Sharick. But humanity would soon be compost if we hadn’t heard of AIs. It may yet be.” Detrelna tried to punch up a drink from his chairarm beverager—nothing. “Engineering’s shut down.”

  “They’ll try to kill us,” said Lawrona.

  “Which? The AIs, FleetOps or Combine Telan?”

  “All of them.”

  “Yes, but perhaps not today. Let’s go, Hanar.”

  They left together. For the first time in long years, Implacable’s bridge was empty.

  “Botul,” said Detrelna, holding out his hand. “Keep out of trouble.”

  “No thank you, Commodore,” smiled the big master gunner, shaking Detrelna’s hand. Botul stood at the head of the disembarking crew, there in the narrow access corridor at the bottom of the ship, gray kit bag slung over his shoulder, brown utility cap perched rakishly atop his head.

  “Remember that brawl on Itak Two?”

  “I remember you throwing that miner into the bar,” said Botul. “The one trying to gut me with a broken bottle.”

  “It was Satanian brandy, Botul. A bad end for a fine spirit—I lost my head.”

  “And broke his.” Botul handed Detrelna a slip-chit.

  “What’s this?”

  “The crew’s contact info. You need help, call. We’ve got friends on Devastator who aren’t out of this yet. And we know you and the captain are in deep shit. Anyway”—he adjusted his cap—“you need us, you call. Luck, sir,” he added, shaking Lawrona’s hand.

  “And to you, Master Gunner.”

  The others filed past, saying their farewells, following Botul into the scorching desert sun and the waiting carrier. Satil was last. “Luck, Commodore, Captain,” she smiled.

  “You should do that more often, Lieutenant,” said Detrelna.

  “Sir?”

  “Smile. It becomes you. Luck to you, Satil.”

  Shaking their hands, she went down to the carrier.

  “Did she wink at me?” asked Detrelna.

  “Unlikely,” said Lawrona. “We’ve been through so many hells together. Think we’ll ever see them again?”

  “Yes.” They watched the carrier rise, turn and accelerate toward the distant smudge of Base Central, a blur of speed quickly lost in the shimmering desert haze.

  “You forget the heat, being away for so long,” said Detrelna, wiping his sleeve across his brow.”

  “I love the Kazan.” Lawrona’s gaze took in the dunes snaking between the sere hills. “We trained here when I was a cadet. The desert touches you, soothes you.”

  “Me it just makes perspire,” said Detrelna, feeling the sweat trickle down his back. “Let’s secure the bridge, do final logs.” The commodore was grateful for the rush of cool air as the airlock closed behind them. “And let’s finish the last of my best brandy when Natrol joins us. It’s not touching the lips of Fleet Security.”

  “Alert!” It was computer. “Ground assault units are approaching this vessel.”

  “Or maybe it is,” said Detrelna. “Didn’t waste any time, did they? Computer. Specify composition of ground assault units.”

  “Fifteen Class One battle tanks, twenty-seven weaponed assault carriers of mixed class. Troop strength approximately 500.”

  “Now there’s the flattering reception,” said Lawrona as they turned for the lift.

  The commlink beeped. “What’s up?” asked Natrol.

  “Our people have left and company comes, bearing blasters,” said Detrelna. “Meet us on the bridge.”

  Black squat monsters, the battle tanks hung back from Implacable, fusion cannons cranked high as the personnel carriers swept in, disgorging gray-uniformed troopers who charged up the landing ramp of airlock 59, M32 assault rifles at the ready.

  “Gray uniforms?” said Detrelna. The three officers watched their ship’s invasion on the bridge’s main screen. “Since when in the last five thousand years has any Fleet unit worn gray?”

  “Fleet Security changed to gray last year, Jaquel,” said the captain. “They call it Imperial Gray. It was in the Fleet Orders of the Day.”

  “Two lines of FODs and I’m fast asleep,” said Detrelna as the last of the troopers entered the ship. “Ready yet, Mr. Natrol?” he asked, turning to where the engineer sat, busy at the first officer’s station.

  “Can’t do it,” said Natrol, shaking his head. “Computer won’t let me.”

  Captain and commodore stepped to the first officer’s station. Reaching past Natrol, Detrelna opened the complink. “Computer. Commodore Jaquel Detrelna. Destroy all record of commtorps launched this date.”

  “Illegal command. Fleet Directive 60.35D …” Computer broke off then spoke again, its voice coming from the bulkhead speakers. “Personnel authenticated as Fleet Security officers demand entry to the bridge.”

  “Command priority,” said Detrelna. “Do not—repeat, do not—admit them. But do not treat as hostile.” He glanced at the bridge doors.

  “Computer,” said Lawrona, “authenticator Imperiad, Utria 7149, of the Commandery. Destroy all record of commtorps launched this date.”

  “Executed, my lord,” said a deep new voice.

  Natrol shook his head. “You screw with that old Imperial programming too much, Captain, you’ll have a schizophrenic computer treating us as hostile.”

  “I tread lightly.”

  The commlink chirped the bridge entry request. Leaning across the vacant console, Detrelna touched an icon. “Yes?”

  “Colonel Aynal,” said a flat hard voice, “Fleet Security. Under Fleet Articles of War, I order you to open these doors.”

  “Moment, please.” Detrelna tapped Hold. “Well?”

  “If he’s citing the Articles, he’s got arrest warrants,” said Lawrona.

  “We could make them drag a fusion torch up here,” suggested Natrol. “It would take a while. They’d work up a sweat, pull some muscles …”

  “And eventually burn through and com
e thundering in here, hugely pissed,” said Lawrona. “And the stench of burning metal! Let them in, Jaquel.”

  “Computer,” said Detrelna, “please admit the authenticated Fleet Security officers.”

  The thick doors hissed open. A rush of gray uniforms surged onto the bridge, led by a tall man with colonel’s insignia and the crooked dagger of Security on his collar. “You’re all under arrest,” he said as troopers took Detrelna’s and Natrol’s blasters.

  “He won’t give it up, sir,” said a corporal.

  Lawrona stood imperturbably, hand firmly on his weapon’s grips.

  “You will please surrender your weapon, Captain My Lord Lawrona,” said Colonel Aynal.

  “Not until I see the arrest order.” Lawrona extended his free hand.

  “Certainly.” Aynal stiffly handed the captain a commslate. Lawrona scanned it, eyes stopping at the signature block. He handed it back. “Not a lawful order. It’s signed by a Councilman. You may hold Commodore Detrelna and Commander Natrol on it—you can’t hold me.”

  “Even the aristocracy is subject to Fleet orders.”

  “It’s a civil writ, Colonel, and I’m not just any aristocrat.”

  Aynal glared at Lawrona and started to speak, but was interrupted by a voice from the first officer’s station. “Colonel, they’ve wiped the commtorps’ records!”

  The Aynal turned to his tech as Implacable’s officers exchanged satisfied looks. “Impossible.”

  The woman shrugged. “They accessed the Imperial foundation programs. It’s all gone except basic commtorps inventory.”

  Face flushing angrily, Aynal turned back to his prisoners. “Interrogation will wipe away those smug grins. Then we’ll wipe your minds. Escort the commodore and the commander to the Tower and remand them to the custody of the Commandant.”

  Detrelna shook off the hands that reached for his arms. “What did you do in the war, Colonel?”

  “The war?” repeated Aynal, glancing uneasily at Detrelna’s battle ribbons.

  “He means the ten-year war with the Scotar,” said Natrol helpfully. “The one that ended this year?”

  “My record’s none of your concern. But I’m proud of—I served in the Home Fleet.”

  “In what capacity?” asked Lawrona.

  “Information Officer.”

  “How’d you go from that to colonel in a combat arm?” asked Detrelna.

  “Unlike yours, my service was honorable. Take them away,” Aynal ordered a sergeant. The NCO took the commodore’s arm, steering him toward the doors. Natrol and his escort followed.

  “Luck, Hanar,” called Detrelna as they took him away.

  “Luck, Jaquel, Natrol,” said the captain. Alone on the bridge, he and Aynal faced each other.

  “You’re correct—I can’t arrest you,” said the Security officer. “I’d be very careful, though, my lord. Stay out of this. The war’s over. Go back to your people on Utria. They need you.” With a curt nod, he turned and left the bridge.

  “This war’s only just begun, Colonel,” said Lawrona. Alone on the big old ship, he watched the convoy disappear into the midday heat.

  Terra. A distant speck of nothingness. There on its moon Imperial renegades left a cybernetic guardian whose mission was to wait, to watch and at the right moment unleash upon us an aggressor race, to “prepare” us for the “real” enemy, those dimly-remembered AIs just a universe away. And so, long after the Empire fell, our Confederation was suddenly assailed and decimated by the Scotar biofabs. That we won was a miracle; that we’ll ever be entirely rid of the Scotar unlikely. It can only be done planet by planet, nest by nest. And it can only be done by the Watchers.

  Fleet Counterintelligence Section 7

  Report to the Confederation Council

  Archives Reference 518.392.671.AI

  Chapter 2

  “What are you trying to tell me, Sarel?” said Sutherland, interrupting the Watcher in mid-evasion.

  The Kronarin shrugged. “Very well. I’ll be blunt. My men and I have been ordered back to Kronar—we’re leaving Terra tomorrow.”

  “Leaving?” the CIA Director heard himself parroting. “But you can’t!”

  “Repulse is going home. We’re to go with her.”

  “Is she being replaced?”

  “No.”

  Sutherland slumped back in his chair. “My God, man—you’re leaving this planet defenseless against—”

  “Against nothing,” said Sarel, walking to the big picture window with its view of the Potomac Palisades. With a wiry build and pale complexion, the Watcher was dressed for the D.C. summer weather in a short-sleeve cotton shirt and khaki pants. He stared across the sullen brown river. “Against nothing,” he repeated, turning back to Sutherland. “That nest in the Mato Grosso was the last of them. There are no more traces on Terra. We’ve wiped the last of the Scotar from your world—it’s clean and we’re needed elsewhere.”

  It had been swift, deadly and flawlessly executed. Repulse had suddenly left orbit, heading outsystem at speed, protests from a dozen nations rippling in her wake as the satellite reports came in. Ambassador Zasha had only just issued a vague statement when the destroyer reappeared over Brazil, missile and fusion batteries raining death on a small village deep in the Amazon basin.

  Flashing silver in the tropical sun, five Kronarin assault boats swept in low off the river, Mark 44 turrets strafing the blasted ruins. With a whine of n-gravs, the craft settled into a clearing between village and swamp. The raiders were out before the landing struts touched down, racing for the village, M32 rifles in hand, Sarel and Sutherland in their wake.

  The survivors huddled at the other end of the clearing, a wretched gaggle of ragged terrified children clutching frightened mothers; a few old men, watching the American Rangers and the Kronarin commandos through eyes that had seen much, and one very fat man, shirtless beneath his big straw hat. Behind them, the smoke drifted lazily from their ruined homes out over the Amazon’s slow reach. The fat man walked over to them, hands spread imploringly. “Por quê?”

  Blaster leveled, Sarel pulled the trigger. The weapon shrilled, red fusion beam punching through the great gut—a gut that resolved into a slender green thorax as the Scotar died.

  The tall insectoid was still falling when the firefight broke out—the illusion of huddled refugees dissolving into a tight formation of bulbous-eyed bugs firing with trained precision, indigo blaster bolts slamming into the human line, a withering fire that would have killed but for the thin silver miracle of warsuits gentling the fusion fire into multicolored lightning, quickly gone.

  No warsuits for the Scotar—most died, survivors scuttling for the swamps as the humans charged, their ability to teleport dying with their leader.

  “Crap,” said Sutherland, the target between his sights suddenly shrouded in black—the wind had shifted inland, bringing the smoke from the village.

  “They won’t get far,” said Sarel, kicking the firefight’s first casualty. “Not with their transmute dead.” The corpse was thinner, taller than the rest, a six-legged horror lying face-down in the mud, tentacles still clutching a blastrifle. Like its warriors, it had mandibles, though not serrated weapons, but sheathes hiding probes that slid into its prey’s brains, taking their memories, their personas, drawing what it needed to become them. Soul takers, the Kronarins called them.

  Telepathic, telekinetic, and blessedly dead, thought Sutherland, looking down at the Scotar.

  “Bill, take your Rangers through the village, then circle into the swamp from the east,” said Sarel as the air cleared. “I’ll take my group in from here. We’ll trap any survivors between us.”

  As Sutherland went looking for the Ranger commander, Sarel spoke into his communicator. A moment later the shuttles rose, moving slowly at treetop level into the swamp.

  Three hours and they’d killed another three Scotar—and almost lost Sarel. “What was that reptile again?” asked Sarel, turning from the window.

  “An
anaconda,” said Sutherland. “Largest snake on the planet.”

  Hearing splashing and a muted cry for help, Sutherland had hurried through the brackish waist-deep water, blastrifle above his head. The sounds of the struggle briefly stopped, resuming louder than before as he penetrated the thick mangrove swamp, emerging into a shallower area where trees were fewer.

  The Kronarin was waist-deep in the muddy water, his free hand just keeping the tree-thick, olive-colored coils of the great snake from making the final turn around his neck.

  Cursing, Sutherland twisted the M32’s muzzle to minimum aperture, set the selector switch to continual fire and moved toward the struggle, water, mud and tangled roots slowing his pace to a maddening dreamlike crawl. “Hang on!” he shouted to Sarel, whose pain-contorted face was inches from the anaconda’s great fangs.

  Placing the rifle’s muzzle next to the glistening mottled-brown skin, Sutherland pulled the trigger, sending a thin red beam knifing through the snake. A shudder rippled down the long yards of flesh as its neatly decapitated head splashed into the river. The air smelled of roasted flesh, fecund jungle and fear.

  Dropping the rifle, Sutherland dragged Sarel free and helped him to the shore, where he sat gasping for air.

  “You may not have gotten all the Scotar,” said Sutherland, looking up at the Watcher. “You’re leaving because it’s politically expedient—declaring a victory and going on to your next triumph.”

  Sighing, Sarel sank into one of the Director’s red leather armchairs. “Here’s how it looks from FleetOps, Bill. We fought the Scotar for ten years, lost millions of people, hundreds of planets. We were about to lose it all when Detrelna and Implacable stumbled onto your planet and found—”

  “And found the Scotar were organic manufactures—biofabs, created beneath our moon by a demented machine set there by your Empire.”

  “But don’t forget why. To toughen us as a people, prepare us to face an invasion from another reality—an invasion of artificial life forms—AIs—that happened once before, a million years ago, and was repulsed by the Trel.”

  “Even though defeated,” said Sutherland, pointing a finger at the Watcher, “those machines exterminated the Trel. And they’ve killed or enslaved humans throughout their huge empire. They’d have swept into our own universe again and wiped us out as they did the Trel if Implacable hadn’t stopped them at Terra Two.”