COMMANDER

My HUD identified the suit in front of me and waving me toward him on the left side of the tunnel to be Star. He was crouched slightly behind a couple of good-sized boulders. I popped a window open in my HUD to view his display and see what he was seeing. His hand-held sensor showed several blips moving toward our central point position.

“They look like some kind of flyer, Wolf. Like them Hanosian helicopters, maybe.”

“Are they coming right at us, like they know we’re here?”

“No, it’s more like they’re executing a search grid. If they cross the trail we created driving here they will probably see it from the air. The AV is a heavy bitch.”

I was beside him now. I patted him on the shoulder and said, “Yeah, but we love her. Who else is on sentry?”

“Spear is in the tunnel over there to our right, Mouse and Boomer are just beyond in tunnels in the western pit, which is also deeper than this one. They all have hand sensors.”

Our hand-held sensor units were nearly as good as the suit sensors and had the advantage of not cluttering our HUDs. We could hear the atmosphere flyers now, and they did not sound like helicopters with the characteristic whirring/buzzing/chopping. This sound was more like a deep rumble combined with a high-pitched scream.

“Okay, they’re at about three hundred meters altitude and will pass at half a klick out,” Star said. “They should be passing over the AV track in about thirty seconds. There are six, and they look shielded. Doesn’t read as EM but there is a distinct distortion around them. Mmmm . . . Gravitic.”

I set for team channel. “Flyboy and Dog, spool up the AV but stay on standby until signaled. Star, Spear, Boomer, Mouse, and I will engage if necessary and try to take them out as quickly as possible. Ronin will take the rest of the team to gather on my current position for supporting fire. Anyone not suited remain in reserve for sniper fire with the 10mms. On my mark, troopers. Suited troopers, lowest power settings and no shields until my mark, then full power.”

Those of us in position waited. Star and I could feel the vibrations of Ronin’s group running in our direction. The blips began to slow down.

“On my mark, make for the cluster of rocks thirty meters at our one o’clock, Star. I will make for the big boulder on the right.”

Star voiced his affirmative. Twenty meters inside the mouth of the old mining shaft there was little we could see, and we were relying on the sensor screen. I watched as all of the blips slowed in unison, and one turned and began to circle back, dropping in altitude. As soon as the circling blip turned away from the pit mine I tapped Star on the shoulder and we were away, sprinting to the rock cluster.

As we cleared the mouth of the tunnel I could see the flyers. They had to be Torbor. They looked like floating platforms on a thick, gray lower wedge. The platforms were surrounded and covered over with some clear material, probably a polycarbonate of some kind. Perhaps these were the vehicles they used on their hunting expeditions. Star and I slid into place in crouches, hidden from the view of the Torbor.

We waited.

“Still circling . . . still circling . . . no altitude change,” Star was saying, giving us a running commentary. “They all stopped . . . they’re hovering . . . two have broken away and are descending . . . two hundred meters . . . one hundred . . . hovering . . . now they are all meeting at two hundred meters up, four hundred out . . . still two high, and three hundred out . . . they’re following the AV track, alright.”

“Alright, team, we take ’em down. Use full power lasers initially, going to plasma cannon if necessary. On my mark,” I ordered.

Star continued his commentary, “Should be in cross-fire position in twenty seconds . . . fifteen . . . ten . . .”

The noise of the flyers was growing enormous. As soon as the nose of the first one could be seen from my vantage, I stood and shouted, “Mark!” as I flicked my suit shielding and power output to maximum.

I could see all of the flyers now, in a loose V-formation with the two in the rear higher than the others by several meters, and somewhat larger. I fired both lasers from my forearms, each one at a different flyer. Star was firing, as well, both of us targeting the two flyers in the lead. Our lasers were solid, one-centimeter diameter beams of coherent light, red and green. Our beams were shooting nearly straight up, into the gray wedge supporting the clear platforms.

Other lasers from the sentries were hitting three other flyers, one in the center of the pack and both of the larger ones in the rear. There was a distortion of coruscated, refracting light in the air as the beams hit the shields of the flyers, hesitated momentarily, then cut through to slice deeply into the gray wedges. Gouts of smoke, sparks, and flares of light burst forth and within seconds five of the flyers were spinning out of control and dropping toward the ground.

The last flyer, not hit as yet, made a break for it, putting on a burst of speed with a tremendous roar of power. Six beams of laser energy tracked it quickly and then it, too, crashed down with flames bursting forth. The force of the flyers impacting was massive, and the ground shook and jumped beneath our boots. Two of the flyers exploded on contact, sending a concussion wave in all directions and further toppling the others as they hit and bounced and broke apart.

Torbor bodies were scattered, burning and in pieces. One of the flyers managed a semi-powered landing and thumped the rock-strewn bed of the eastern pit to bounce and scatter debris in all directions. It slid to a stop canted to one side and was instantly bathed in multiple laser beams, imparting massive amounts of heat energy. The thick gray wedge began to glow just before the unit exploded thunderously. It was all over in twenty seconds, and we moved in to mop up.

There must have been a good stench building. Fortunately, we could not smell it in the suits. With all of the burning, feather-covered bodies, the burning bits of flyers, the flames, and the smoke, it all made a pretty standard battlefield scene. We found partially burned remains of a human body near one of the larger flyers, a man in what appeared to be a security guard uniform. Then Boomer yelled out.

“Stitch, we got a live one!”

Within a few minutes the trauma bot was examining the injured Torbor while Ronin and I surveyed the battlefield from a vantage point. Suited figures picked their way through the debris below us, looking for anything interesting or potentially dangerous.

“It will still be light for several hours yet,” I said. “We need to get this debris cleared as much as possible in case others come looking.”

“We don’t know if they were monitored by the main ship or not, or even whether they managed to get a transmission of some kind out before they died,” Ronin responded. “Flyboy will have recorded everything so I’ll have Buzz check for any signs of transmission.”

I nodded to her. “Okay. Stitch on the Torbor with Dog as security, and Buzz on the recordings. Everyone else is on cleanup. See if Wheels packed any grav sleds in the AV we can use to move the larger pieces.”

By nightfall, we had nearly all of the flyer pieces deep in one of the tunnels. There were two chunks we could not move other than by rolling them, even with the help of the two grav units Wheels had tucked away. Whatever the gray metal was, it was incredibly dense and heavy. We rolled those under a steep face of solid rock within the lowest part of the western pit and Boomer drilled into the rock face, planted some charges, and blew them to collapse multiple tons of rock and debris over the pieces.

She was an artist with demo, alright. There was a low, muffled “crump” sound and the rock face sort of bulged, then just dropped straight down onto the flyer carcasses. When it was all done, she looked back at me with a wave and a bow. I bet she had a big grin, too. The area looked exactly like any of the other multiple faces of rock wall in the pit having collapsed over the years into steeply slanted fields of scree. Still in our suits, I didn’t comment but threw her a relaxed salute, instead.

In the AV Stitch was still working over the Torbor, and I got a closer look after I dismounted my suit. Most of the team was eating in various places within the tunnel using glow sticks for light. Ronin had new sentries set with herself among them. Buzz had finished his review of the recordings and sensor logs and was satisfied no transmissions had gone out, with the caveat there was no way to detect or track any subspace transmissions.

The Torbor was partially burned, its skin black and red in patches beneath the burned off feathers. The feathers themselves were quite small, almost like duck down. The smell inside the AV was awful; burnt feathers and meat, green blood, and all the rest of the odors common to hospitals and morgues. I knew Stitch would cycle the air afterward.

The Torbor had a harness of sorts as clothing and there were devices set into the straps extending up over the thin, almost non-existent shoulders. It reminded me of the outfit I saw some Earthmen wearing when I went on leave once in Switzerland, the capital of Europia on Earth. Lederhosen, they called them. The only reason I remembered was the crazy name and how funny they looked, like a pair of heavy shorts with many pockets, and straps over the shoulders to suspend and support the shorts so they wouldn’t fall down.

Then my eyes were threatening to mist, because there were no ducks with down and feathers anymore, no Europia, no lederhosen or men to wear them with big grins while chugging liters of strong beer, dancing and laughing boisterously during Oktoberfest. I gritted my teeth and turned back to my inspection.

There were no visible ears, just depressions on the sides of the head leading to holes. The eyes were large, about twice the size of mine, and jet black with no eyelashes. There was no nose but for two holes in the bill. I called it a bill because it looked much more like a duck’s bill than a bird’s beak. It looked quite flexible and the top half overshadowed the bottom half by a good bit.

The arms looked weak but the legs looked very strong and the knees worked backwards from humans, just like a bird. Each “hand” and “foot” had two long digits and two shorter ones, all ending in strong, thick claws or talons, curved and sharp. The hands had another digit similar to a thumb, but shorter and thicker, not looking much good for anything calling for dexterity. This one was about two-thirds as tall as us, but its mass was much less, more like one-third or less. Now Stitch was cursing softly. He turned to face me.

“I can’t save it, sir. The vitals just keep dropping and I don’t know enough about the physiology of the creature to reverse it.”

“Alright,” I replied. “At least we can get some good readings from a living one and then do a complete autopsy. Send the results up to Doc Annsbury and she can run it through her AI and we’ll have a comprehensive analysis of these things soon enough. Is there any chance of it regaining consciousness?”

“Not really. At least, not as far as I know or can guess based on my short study of them. I’ll move it into the tunnel and prep for autopsy.”

“Thanks. Carry on.”

I turned around and looked for Tamaria. She was eating, sitting with Mouse and CanMan. I approached them.

“Tamaria, come with me, please,” I invited her.

I led her to the pilot compartment, empty at the moment. She hesitated at the hatch, wrinkling her nose and muttering.

“Yeah, I know,” I said to her. “We’ll cycle and filter the air as soon as we can.”

“Auugh! I don’t think I could ever get used to such a stench!”

“Tam, we need to talk,” I continued, as I motioned her to take a seat.

“Am . . . am I in trouble . . . or, something?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I answered and smiled at her. “We need your help. You seem troubled. Is there something wrong?”

Her eyes glanced at me repeatedly and then back to where her hands gripped her knees as she sat stiffly in the co-pilot chair.

“Actually, Commander Rawlings . . . I am, um . . . quite frightened by you. No, not by you, maybe, but certainly by the violence you embody. When I joined the RCF, I was fascinated by the intrigue, the spy game, the danger, the . . . well, all the schoolgirl fantasies about such things, I guess. I agree passionately with the stance of the RCF and I wanted to do something about it, not just sit aside and exist in resentful subjugation like my parents.

“But since I joined and started actually working at it, the reality of everything began to be revealed. People, my people, are being enslaved . . . quietly, slowly, and carefully, but also completely. People are dying. People are being killed, executed in the night or kidnapped to disappear forever. Then came the day when your people actually appeared, and all the history suddenly, instantly came to life before my very eyes. And then you fought your way out of the ministry . . . and I was shot by my own people and nearly died.

“Commander, I have never been exposed to violence . . . to sudden, messy, gory violence . . . to death. Before, it was all just . . . palace intrigue, I suppose. Now . . . well, now it is all much too real. It has been a struggle for me to come to grips with this reality but I think I finally have. Commander Rawlings, would it be possible for me to join the Space Marines?”

Her question took me completely by surprise. And “Space Marines” was a term from science fiction novels written a millennia ago!

“Ah, I suppose I would have to think it over a little, Tamaria. Give me some time to consider. In the meantime, let me say how much I appreciate your talking to me about this. As it happens, there are things you can do to help us now.”

“Like what?” she asked me, both eagerness and fear in her eyes and voice.

“Since we have struck at them, the Torbor are likely to strike back somehow. There is no way they can miss the fact that six of their airships and twenty of their people have gone suddenly missing. And there was a human ministry representative with them, which means we and the RCF are now in the same boat.

“What we need to do is to work together to take out the Torbor ship somehow without destroying it before they can call in the Shaquaree as reinforcements. We need to examine the ship and learn what we can from it, to try to get our own technical capability upgraded. We have eight centuries to make up for. We also need to verify that whatever signals the government sent out by the alien technology went only to the Torbor. Or, if it did go to any other race, which ones.

“In short, Tam, we need to coordinate a joint strike with the RCF. On the planet, we will take out the corrupt government cooperating with the LCP, and in space we will take the Torbor ship. Both things must be done swiftly and simultaneously, and hopefully before any calls for help can be transmitted.”

Her eyes were really big, now. Alarm swept over her visibly in a shiver. I could almost hear her wondering if my insanity might be communicable.

“That means someone would have to take over the government,” she mused in realization.

“Yes,” I said. “In the Marines, we have a saying. ‘Shut up and do your job, Marine.’ It means you do the job handed to you, no matter what it is, to the very best of your ability. You don’t complain, you don’t back away. You step up and take responsibility even if it is a menial task which should be assigned to a robot, or even if you don’t feel ready or trained or the job seems much too big. This is what the RCF must do. Regardless of whether they feel ready or trained or anything else, circumstances have thrust this decision upon all of us, here and now.”

“The RCF,” Tam reiterated, staring at me. “You’re saying the Fleet or Marines have no intention of taking over Hanos?”

“What? NO!” I nearly shouted. “No way. This is your planet! We’ll help you with overthrowing corruption but your people need to keep your own governance. We want no part of that!”

Tam was quiet for a long moment. I watched her face and body language. It was fascinating to watch, to see the changes her mind went through as thought, realization, and decision occurred. Her eyes narrowed and she looked straight into my eyes with no flinch and no fear. This was no longer the little girl who had been playing the spy.

“To put it in trooper terms, Commander . . . What the fuck? I’m not going to live forever, and what life I have I want to be free. I will not allow myself or my people to be made into slaves without even trying to resist.”