Chapter 15

Chapter 15

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Day 67

Aryl and I looked out at the Krekkin-Na. I had just told him about my experience in the Worship Ceremony, and he appeared understandably sullen.

"Have you been to one yet?" I asked.

He shook his head once.

"Captain, if what you're saying is true, could it be that the Kadeshi are merely pawns in their society, probably controlled by a select few?"

I shrugged. "I doubt it. We're talking about a society that's almost 3000 years old. By now, their mental conditioning must have commenced at birth. Their beliefs may be so ingrained that no end of brainwashing can bring them back." After a pause I added, "Assuming they ever didn't think this way."

The massive Arkship was a very impressive sight. The transport ship, which appeared to be a variant on the generic Fuel Pod hull type, had traveled for two hours on ion drive until they reached a small, blue planet. We arrived in its orbit, and looped around to its dark side.

Apparently, the fleet we'd been greeted by was a small frontier fleet in comparison to the main fleet.

Twenty-five Needleships.

Forty-eight Multi-Beam Frigates.

Five hundred corvettes.

Two. Thousand. Swarmers.

And, of course, the Arkship, which could easily have held every ship in this huge swarm inside it.

Aryl sighed, "Captain, are you absolutely sure about this?"

"Of course," I lied. "We have the Concealed Treasure in the hangar, they haven't dissected it to the point where it is un-flyable, and they are unaware of the hidden weapons. Once we find Mara, all we need to do is rush her to the ship, and make a quick jump out of the system."

I thought for a while. "Aryl, why did you enter the Marine Corps?"

Aryl sighed. "I am a Soban. Even if I didn't want to, my family would have forced me to take it up." He frowned, "But I guess I wanted to make a difference for Hiigara…I took a look through your squadron member list; you have two robots in your squadron?"

I smiled. "Yeah, the old 1R units are doing great. I hear they are using them to cut down on starship crews. All you need to do now is select one of the specialty droids and crank them out of a PDA."

Aryl continued, "Yeah, and until our human population is well into the millions, I don't think that will change. But the point is, there is nothing like the human touch. Especially on the battlefield. And I was fueled with hatred for those damn Taiidan after I was awakened, obviously. So, working on nothing but the heat of the moment, I signed up in the Corps only days after being defrosted. Fortunately, they didn't give me a gun and the license to kill until after the Taiidan Republican Peace Treaty. I had to cope with being friendly with some of…them. But I could handle that most of the time."

He rubbed two pale hands together. "But then, during the Turanic Civil War of 5 AHL, I was in deep torment. Those fuckin' Turanic," he said contemptuously. "You can be fighting alongside one of their sects one day, and brutally massacring another the next. I could never tell who really was my enemy.

"And now I'm fighting the Kadeshi. On this mission, they're my enemy, but I can't kill them for fear of discovery, and they're essentially Hiigaran. I can't kill one of my own kind."

I shook my head. "We have identical DNA, but we are far from the same race."

He shrugged. "And why did you become a pilot? Being a Sjet, I thought you would be a scientist."

"That's the problem. Kiith stereotypes. You know, I worked along a Somtaaw warrior during the Ion Accelerator project."

He grinned. "The Somtaaw. Think those guys will ever get a set of balls to fight, collectively?"

I shrugged. "They're miners. I have no idea. But to answer your question, I guess my reason is the same as yours. Revenge. I woke up to find that, not only was Kharak destroyed, but my parents were murdered. You know that one Cryo Tray that was nuked back at Kharak? Well, through some fluke of registration, My parents and I were split between two Trays, and mine survived. Fate, I guess. Anyway, when I woke up, I heard the news, and had to take up residence with some other Sjet family. But I always held that grudge. So I decided to join the Navy, since I was always interested in flying. My test results were through the roof, and I was only assigned to a Scout squadron for a few weeks before Fleet Command considered transferring me to the newly set-up Angel Squadron."

I laid out my hands, in a displaying motion. "And the rest is history."

He nodded, and for the first time I felt I really knew the soldier.

I continued, "So, how did you meet Nolan?"

He said, "Napalm? Well, it was during the war. My platoon was given an order to steal some Turanic weapons systems; it was rumored that they had developed a technology that could holographically change shape to blend in with enemy fleets. We were unsuccessful; some of their soldiers from sect Duran-their equivalent to the Soban-jumped us, and we had to run out of the base empty-handed. They took a few of my men down, but Napalm and his squadron came down from the skies and scorched them.

"Not a fair fight," he contemplated, "but few skirmishes in war ever are. Unfortunately, they had destroyed the central computer core, so we couldn't get any information when we reentered the base. After that, my platoon and his squadron ran tandem missions; his team would glass an enemy planet, and my boys would mop up whatever was left. Those planets were so inhospitable, though, that I doubt our orbital bombardments did much harm to them. I heard he won the Kharakian Cross?"

The memory was clear. On the same mission that he'd won the coveted award, Alia Paktu, someone he was hoping to "get to know better," was gunned down. He could barely appreciate the honor. I nodded solemnly. "Yeah, he's one of the best pilots in the group."

The pilot at the front of the ship stirred, so I continued in hushed tones. "The others are waiting for us aboard the Arkship. From there, I don't know what our battle plan will be, especially since that ship is about as huge as five major cities, but we will only speak in person; never over a comm. And even then, we probably shouldn't meet that often. Should they sneak up onto our little conclave we won't have a chance of escaping."

Aryl's face darkened even more, but he did try to make light of the situation. "But if we succeed, and we can beat this Kadeshi invasion, the Angels will be elevated to the status of the greatest squadron in the Navy."

He grinned. "And I might even be pardoned of my demotion. Perhaps even given my own battalion."

I said, "Well, just remember. This is not a full-out skirmish. This is going to be a very clandestine op. Unless we have to go to Code Red, we don't fire a shot."

He seemed disappointed, but before he could answer we were interrupted by a shudder. The pilot walked back to our small room and said, "We are docked on one of the Krekkin-Na's holding scaffolds. Head down to the hangar and fly your ship into the main bay."

Aryl saluted him, and looked at me. His gaze, his alien eyes, was blank, but I knew he was thinking, It's time. God damn it.

After landing in the massive hangar bay (it seemed so big that I though a hydrogen bomb could detonate in there without even singing the far walls,) the two of us were separated, and I was led down a series of white hallways by two men in robes and two men in battle armor (apparently the only outfits in the Kadeshi culture.)

They walked me through a largish room filled with holographic pits, each one detailing the fleet formations in enemy sectors. I noticed that the one detailing the Taiidan/Hiigaran/Corporate was a bit smaller than I remembered. I hoped that this was due to their limited knowledge, and not from their latest attacks.

Incidentally, I managed to get a glimpse of several other fleet statuses that I didn't even know existed. I recorded everything in my memory for later use; I remembered something Jacyn had once told me, "The best intel comes from the enemy's camp."

We reached the end of the room, where a door flanked by two armed soldiers greeted I and my escort. They opened into a smallish conference room-from what I'd gathered, I concluded it to be a battle planning room-and I sat down on one of the cold, hard chairs of the circular table when ordered to.

Fifteen others joined me, and the one directly in front of me smiled.

"Welcome," he said, "Brother Karesh-Nok. We hope the accommodations aboard the Kkkuuum were not offensive to your likings."

I thought before answering, pondering what my persona would say. "They paled in comparison to the bliss of the Great Mother, but in comparison to the alien craft I'd arrived on, they were bearable.

The man smiled larger, obviously pleased. "I am Judicator Merinin. We have invited you here because of your special knowledge. Of Unclean craft."

I frowned, trying to appear as natural as possible. "I am unsure of what you mean."

"Specifically," Merinin explained, "any information you have obtained prior to jettisoning from your vessel, the Muu'sha."

Another person spoke up, "We wish to know about their shield technology. Our attack on their Garden of Jhemstoane a hundred and ninety sunfalls ago proved that they had a way to deflect our ion pulse systems. Checks of your flight recorder reveal

Garden of Jhemstoane? I thought. An interesting way to call the Gemstone Nebula. I wasn't sure if the fleet that had captured the Muu'sha was either Naabal or Sjet in origin-the only two kiith we'd sold the technology to-but I was willing to play this game. I was certainly not going to mess with them; they were certainly far more advanced than us. But I wasn't about to tell them all our secrets, either.

"We were unable to make a proper scan of their power systems, but we do know that they were able to completely absorb our energy weapons; this indicates that they know what our energy polarity is. I suggest changing our laser frequency."

Merinin nodded. "Or set them to work on a rotating modulation."

I smiled and nodded to conceal my frustration. If they'd stuck to one frequency, it would be no difficulty to change the shields to compensate. After they'd fired several dozen times. But if it changed randomly, we would have no way to counter it.

I said, "That may lower efficiency, but it could work. Unfortunately, I have little other information on their shield projectors. I am shameful of my ignorance."

Merinin displayed open understanding, "You were not expected to be perfect. However, that little information, and anything else you know of the Unclean, is valuable enough for our attack to commence."

I gulped a hard lump down my throat. "Attack?"

The other man looked surprised. "Oh, they must have kept you very uninformed back there. To answer your question, yes. We are going to attack the Unclean Homeworld soon from now, in about 98 sunfalls. We cannot hide in Gardens anymore, either our own or this alien one. We also cannot concern ourselves with the petty force here. We will set course for Hiigara-our Mother's Throneworld, once we have consolidated our fleet."

That left us one week. One week to prepare Hiigara for the biggest battle in eleven years.

He went on, "We expect the bulk of our fleet to arrive on seventy sunfalls. A few of our smaller fleets will give their lives in a series of small feints on outer planets in the Throneworld system, and then we will strike at the main planet."

I tried to keep a straight face. "Um, until then, what will we do to prepare?"

"You mean, what will you be doing? I like you, Karesh-Nok," he said, "always prepared to do your part. I have decided to put you in charge of battle planning. You will command the main Multi-Beam Frigate group from this vessel. You will commence planetary siege tests shortly, but for now, you will…"

I couldn't even focus on his words anymore. I had to maintain radio silence to avoid capture, but I couldn't just lie here and wait for Armageddon to reign on Hiigara. There was maintained a permanent military presence over Hiigara, but that was strictly limited to five Heavy Cruisers, ten Destroyers, and twenty assorted Frigates, not to mention four custodial Carriers from kiiths Naabal, Paktu, Soban, and Manaan. By no means modest, especially considering that it was quite larger than the force that retook Hiigara.

But that was nothing in comparison to the Kadeshi battle fleet. Even if all of kiith Soban, Paktu, and Liir Hra sent their entire fleet to help out, it would be a very slow, painful skirmish. For us more than them.

I reminded myself that all we needed to do was find Mara, break her out, and escape. But now, it seemed that was not enough. As long as we were on this ship, we had to get as much information as possible to foil their plans and save the day, without arousing suspicion.

This was not a difficult mission, it was bitterly hopeless. But then, impossible was what the Angel Squadron was set up to accomplish. I wished Captain Kaar Naabal were here…

Day 68: 7 Days to Attack

The central core pulsed out massive amounts of power. Using a form of cold fusion, something which was easily performed, combined with a mastery of quantum atomic replication, which was barely heard of, the massive torus-shaped core produced an energy output several powers above that of Hiigaran ships.

As a pilot, engineering issues were over my head, but I had to admire this power source. Somehow, the quantum atomic replication process, or QAR, used purely theoretical quantum mathematics to essentially transfer molecules from anywhere in the universe directly into the core. By tunneling atoms from a given power source, like a distant proton star, they had found an unlimited power source. From what I'd gathered, they could use the transported energy and matter to not only power the hyperdrive, but to power the ship and load the PDA resource banks.

It was the perfect target.

Daryyn-Nok, Nolan's persona, nodded. "You sure know how to pick 'em. If anything can take out this ship, it's this core."

We had only recently been able to meet up and head to the central core. Nolan was assigned to man the engineering deck's security, so even if I hadn't been allowed in there it would have been simple to infiltrate the core room, and I wanted to raise as few eyebrows during our time here.

"How can we blow it?"

Nolan shrugged. "We did bring along high-yield explosives over here on the Treasure. They were disguised as auxiliary bulkheads and support girders." He frowned. "Unfortunately, we can't frequent the ship very often without getting people to notice, and I'll be damned if we can smuggle large things like those into the central core, even though they appear innocent.

"Another idea, I suppose, would be to set it to overload. But there is no remote transceiver on this girl, so we'd have to do it manually. And I would definitely not want to be around when she goes off."

My face fell. "Options?"

He shrugged again. "Unknown. However, since we're assigned to remain onboard for the duration of their campaign, we'll have all the time between now and when we blast off to Hiigara."

"Mm," I grunted. "A week, huh?"

"Hey, some planetary sieges have been performed in less than a day."

"Yeah, but some small installation raids have taken months to prepare," I countered.

"We have a week," he maintained. "And when I worked with Aryl during the Turanic war, you learn to work with what you have."

I conceded. "I suppose." Then I was silent.

One week to perform the impossible. First, though, we had to find Mara.

Day 70: 6 Days to Attack

That took some time.

Apparently, these Kadeshi had acquired a very generous amount of prisoners of war, in a war that had never been declared. There were a few Taiidan, some Turanic (in their thorough reports, I wasn't surprised to note that many of their Turanic captives were soon executed; they really did not like those pirates,) and many Frrern. Unfortunately, simply deciphering Kadeshi language (which, in essence, was not unlike ancient Kushan, with some dialectal aberrations) took me a good while in and of itself. Unfortunately, they also used codenames for each of the different species. This was not surprising either, since their absence from the rest of the galaxy would obviously get them to formulate their own names, nor was it unexpected to learn that Hiigarans and Taiidani were not referred to, scientifically, as the Unclean and the Great Evil respectively. These revelations did not make the task any more rewarding, unfortunately.

And, to top it all off, it turned out that Mara was the only Hiigaran prisoner, which meant that I couldn't run a single-species search after finding another Hiigaran POW. Thus, it all boiled down to me visually referencing every single prisoner on the ship, which numbered something in the hundreds.

But I found her.

She was categorized as prisoner 648-57820374, race Hiigara-n'go (damnit! I knew I should have run a search for "Hiigara"!), and was apparently undergoing biological tests. The holding cell where she was being contained was only five levels up from my designated quarters.

Then I saw something that made my heart sink.

She was scheduled for execution. No, cross that. They weren't just going to kill her. They were going to use her in a sacrificial ceremony, which was to take place today, on time index 4128-87239-332. I fed this data into a program on my datapad which I had written to convert it into Hiigaran time.

We had…six hours.

God, I thought. We have to do something. I wasn't sure what; this changed our battle plan completely. Either we save Mara, somehow, and if we survive to escape (and that in itself was a big "if") we would be powerless to stop the Kadeshi invasion. Even if we warned all of our frontier fleets, that may not be enough to overcome the onslaught. Besides, when the Kadeshi find out that they've been duped, they would surely accelerate any invasion plans accordingly. That was the whole reason why we came in the first place-a search and rescue mission.

Or…we turn the other cheek, and watch her die. And maybe, just maybe, we could sabotage their plans from the inside, continuing the charade. And save countless thousands from dying. In the whole two months of this campaign, this was truly the most difficult decision I'd had to make.

One life, or hundreds of thousands of lives?

I knew that I would have to make difficult decisions like this for the rest of my career, but that did not calm me one bit. Even if I chose in favor of the greater number of people, I would be vindicated by my squadron members even more; they'd never forgive me for it.

I alone could not make this decision. I had to consult the others. I turned off the computer (taking heed to wipe its memory to prevent any idle observations from finding something incriminating,) and stood up. I walked over to my door, opened it, and…

…was, very literally, frozen in place.

Brandishing their grav-beam weapons, the Kadeshi commander, Merinin, flanked by several guards and that…that doctor from the Kkk'uuuum! He stared at me maliciously.

Merinin glared. "Karesh-Nok? You seem very able-bodied for a dead soldier."

I grinned nervously. "I don't suppose you'll believe anything I say now, huh?"

Merinin said, Ï don't know who you are, but it's over. Your friends are waiting for you in the brig."

As they used their grav-beams to pull me down the hallways, I heard the doctor mutter, "No one deceives the Great Mother."