Chapter 9

One by one they disappeared. First went the Ion Frigates, to spearhead the formation, and then the Carriers jumped out. Up until then, their formation had received no attention from the Hiigaran crews, even when they had all turned to face the same direction, but with their hyperspace entry, much commotion was wrought aboard the Penetrator.

Even before the junior officer barged into his ready room, Raymar Liir Hra knew what he was going to report. Fortunately, his ship was oriented so that his room’s viewport gave him a very nice view of the retreating Raiders.

“Sir, the Turanic-“ he gasped.

“I know,” he interrupted. “Try to extrapolate possible courses, now! I don’t know what they found out about those Beast hybrids, but I’m damn sure they’re acting on it.”

He shook his head and cursed them, but he couldn’t help but feel amusement. He knew that any deal with the Turanic meant that their interests came first. They would receive no cash compensation for this mission of theirs, but they would receive a lot of glory. And fame was as good as money when it came to galactic commerce. A warrior who has proved himself to this extent would receive a lot of publicity in the Underground, and that would lead to far more money in the future. But they would receive little glory if the dregs of the galaxy knew they had achieved success with the help of a Heavy Cruiser and a full Hiigaran battle fleet.

Clever bastards, they were.

 

*****

No ships were in orbit. This looked like it would be a simple mission.

The Carrier group had arrived only hours after they’d left the research outpost. Knowing those Hiigarans would try to track them, they made a quick jump to a system thirty light-years to the right of the system to throw them off course. This would be their victory alone.

Klu’koth ordered, “Scan the surface. Are there Beast down there?”

After a short delay, one officer said, “Yes, sir. A massive amount, too, along with a much subdued Taiidani population. They may be hiding, sir.”

Klu’koth heard the announcement that they were a thousand clicks from the planet’s atmosphere. “Should we go closer, Magistrate?” asked Lieutenant Vark. “If we can bombard the planet immediately, this could go as smooth as possible.”

He shook his head. “No, we mustn’t underestimate these Beast. If I were them, I would have planned for this eventuality.” He thought it over, and decided they couldn’t risk the spread of infection.

“Lieutenant, fire off two Ion Probes at a perpendicular angle, so that they fly past both sides of the planet’s orbit. Hardwire them to detonate after eight seconds of launch.”

He saw the small probes shoot off at fantastic speeds towards the planet as he counted down to zero. After five seconds, a red beam shot out at the probe to port, coating it with the Beast plague, and three short seconds later both probes ignited into blue heat and light.

Klu’koth said, “That Infection Beam looks like it came from one of the main cities. Lieutenant, can you get a visual on the weapon they just fired?”

“Yes, sir. Visual patching in now.”

On the viewscreen, there materialized a picture of an old, gray, dilapidated city, with broken-down skyscrapers and rusting hulks of landspeeders. A veritable planetary slum. Towering over all of the aged metal and buildings was a massive building; what sort of looked like an observatory dome, but with a large cannon sticking out of it. Of course, this monument was covered in the typical Beast scars.

“They couldn’t have built something like that this quickly, could they?” he asked no one in particular.

Leader Mej’hol made himself heard over the comm., “No, Magistrate. After reviewing Amentoth’s cultural history, I have learned that they sometimes, due to the lack of influx of new technologies, the colonists sometimes had to resort to using laser-propelled chemical rockets to get into orbit. I think the Beast used this old station to forge a new, powerful Infection Beam. My sources say that its range of fire is 500 kilometers. I wouldn’t stray that close to the planet unless you’re feeling suicidal.“

“Agreed, Leader. How should we go about staging the ground invasion?”

“My tacticians are working on a battle plan now. We will relay the information to the rest of the fleet when they are done. Meanwhile, gather your soldiers in your war room. They don’t seem to have any ships, but they probably know we’re here, so we must act quickly.”

“Agreed, sir. The equipment should be ready within the week.”

 

*****

The forty platoon leaders for the Swift Death were assembled twenty minutes before the data had come in, but due to their incredibly attuned discipline the war auditorium was rather sedate. There were only slight murmurings when Klu’koth came in stage and began the briefing.

“Good morning, all. This is an important mission, so listen up.” He brought up a hologram of Amentoth. “You all have been briefed on the nature of the new Beast/Taiidan hybrid warrior. With powerful regeneration abilities, instantaneous communication and strategic updates with every other soldier in their unit, and the capability of subverting enemy soldiers to increase their numbers, this is truly a force to be reckoned with. The Beast is no longer confined to the imprisonment of a ship or mere piles of biomass. They now have a body, and they plan to use it.

“Despite their connection to the supposed Hive Mind that control the Beast, there is no indication that any other Beast in the galaxy can replicate such a warrior creature until one of them comes into direct contact with the main Beast base, which we believe is established on the Naagarok. Therefore, if we can keep this Beast strain contained on the planet, we can possibly eradicate this threat.”

A hologram of the Infection Cannon on Amentoth replaced that of the whole planet. “This,” he said, “is your target. As long as this Infection Cannon is up and running, which is powerful enough to infect our whole fleet and still have enough charge to power another ten such subversions, our frigates cannot get within firing range of the planet to obliterate all infected life down there. Thus, you and your men are to head down there, and disarm the weapon, at least for enough time for us to nuke it from orbit.”

The hologram of the planet came up again, with a red point indicating where the Infection Cannon was situated, and another green point off to the right of the Infection Cannon. “Your landing spot is that green spot, about seven hundred clicks east of the Cannon. This is the closest safe spot to touch down outside of the Cannon’s range. You will be brought down in modified Brigand-class Corvettes, and will be equipped with land speeders, as well as our newest brand of anti-Beast weaponry.”

A holo of a bulky, dark-colored bio-suits. “This is your Beast Hazard Suit. It has enough air for seventy five hours, a veritable feat of engineering in and of itself. I expect you to be down there no more than forty-eight hours for the whole coup. It has an electrical current running through the outer layer of armor, which should fry any Beast bio matter or nano-probes that you should come into contact with, while keeping you well insulated. And as for weaponry…”

Another image came up, but this one was of a large, threatening gun. It had two pressurised tanks strapped below the trigger assembly, and the Magistrate explained, “This gun, what we have dubbed the Pacifier Field Rifle Mark One, is a doubly-loaded weapon. In its primary stage, it is a flamethrower, and shoots out napalm streams hot enough to vaporize your target. Not even the Beast can survive fire.” He smiled at that small truth, and manipulated the controls so that a new image came up of a Hazard Suit-clad soldier firing a near-white stream of fire at a Beast hybrid, and the monstrosity literally melted in front of him. There were murmurs of approval from the crowd, and he moved on to the next function.

“Those two tanks at the bottom house the carcinogenic fuel to power the flamer, so be careful not to rupture it. However, should that fuel fail, there is a secondary mode of fire, which is rather more elaborate, and took us many hours to develop.” The image changed to show the gun firing like a chaingun, and the view zoomed in to focus on one of the bullets. The hologram changed to a cross-section of the bullet, showing a minuscule transmitter in the center of a bluish fluid. “The gun also houses a clip of one thousand bullets, although these bullets are decidedly far more advanced than most. In the canter, that device produces a single burst of EMP radiation upon impact, frying any and all electrical equipment-like those nanoprobes-and that bluish substance is a very powerful, catalysed cell regenerator gene. It embeds itself within the genetic code of the cells they come into contact with, and force them to multiply into an explosive, cancerous tumor within seconds. It also seeks out the Beast-viral gene and de-activates it. The only way to deactivate that particular gene is to get the virus directly into the cell nuclei, so a widespread, airborne virus is out of the question. Oh, and I wouldn’t try touching that stuff with bare hands. And organic tissue that it touches would be affected, and that includes you.”

He sighed, and de-activated the holoprojector. “You all have your orders; now make us proud. Never forget that we Turanic are clearly the most knowledgeable of the Beast code. Not even those Somtaaw have gone up close with this powerful strain of the Beast. Victory, and ultimate profit shall be ours.” The all sat up, and filed off to the armory to suit up and prepare.

He felt a little guilty, though, since he wasn’t going with them.

 

*****

Admiral Liir Hra did not have that burden to cope with; he had a more immediate concern of actually finding the planet. So far, he was not successful.

He harrumphed, and looked out at the ringed world of P24998. “Well, that makes forty planets. We’re no closer to finding them than we were ten days ago.” He grunted as he shifted in his chair. “Have our advance Probes found anything?”

One junior officer responded, “One of them ran into a Turanic minefield; possibly placed there to mock us. But we didn’t get any information on its position beforehand.”

The admiral said, “Well, we better rethink this whole search thing. We must systematically eliminate enough planets to narrow our search. First of all, scan the area a hundred light-years radius around the Taiidan research outpost.”

There was a short pause, and the same officer reported, “One hundred and twenty eight, sir. Not counting satellites.”

He frowned. That wasn’t going to make it easy. “OK. Out of those, take out any gas giants. There is no way that even the Beast could survive down there, let alone subvert a colony.”

Another pause. “Seventy three.”

He nodded. “Now cross-reference those with our database of known Taiidan colonies, before and after the Republican Era.”

The officer complied, and came up with a new list. “Uh…the only inhabited star systems are the Amentoth system, the binary Quexal’kol system, the Nuccckh’man system, and the Mari’teth system.”

“Which planet has the largest population?”

Another pause. “…Quexal’kol 14 has 150 million inhabitants, as of 8.76 AHL.”

Liir Hra grinned. “The hybrids were probably attracted by the larger amount of biomass. Set course for the Quexal’kol system.”

“Yes, sir!”

The aging admiral grinned. Sometimes he couldn’t help but amaze himself.

 

*****

Klu’koth sat, sagging in his chair. He prayed to whatever gods there were that they would win this battle. Unfortunately, he did not feel much drive to go along with them. He was getting a bit old, and even the greatest warriors had to retire sometime. He had his occasional surge of youthful energy when he went out flying in the Penetrator, or even when he was on the bridge of the Swift Death, imposing Turanic wrath on another starship.

Yet, he did not feel up to this one. Perhaps he was afraid. Yes…that made more sense. He was afraid. But could anyone blame him? Here he was, a Turanic Magistrate, yes, but a commander of a measly five starships against a potential Beast army of millions. Sure, he had his compatriot Turanic Carrier groups to draw on, but without the brute force of the Protector’s star fleet-he did not doubt Mej’hol’s decision, but he worried whether they could succeed without them-they were a very small force to attack one of the most powerful enemies in the history of the galaxy.

“We’ve launched fifteen Dropships, sir,” said Lieutenant Vark.

True to his word, several modified Brigand-class Corvettes hovered in front of the bridge. Each held twenty men, which meant that three hundred troops from his ship alone were prepped for combat. They’d had to tap into their resource tanks from the platinum deposits to build the new starships and combat suits, so some of the ships gleamed light off of Amentoth’s sun, creating a mesmerising mirror-like effect which almost gave the impression that the ships were cloaked.

He checked their flight plan for what must have been the seventeenth time-if one burst from that groundside Infection Cannon hit one of the ships in their formation, the infection would spread to every other ship in the formation. In fact, that was why they were launching the ships in waves of five each. Klu’koth wasn’t as afraid of losing his precious ships as he was of something far more sinister.

What if, with their current knowledge of successfully hybridising host bodies, the Beast could spontaneously create their own Turanic-Beast hybrid? That was an image that he desperately did not want to linger in his head.

Fortunately (and perhaps unfortunately, for him), he did not have a chance to think about it much, because Leader Mej’hol barged into the bridge, in full battle gear. He was followed closely by those snivelling Dath’mir and Agam’nar. Those two brown-nosers truly disgusted Klu’koth, even though he could understand their fear of Mej’hol. Anyone who openly killed someone just to consolidate their power was someone to be reckoned with.

Lieutenant Vark snapped to attention, and announced, “Leader Mej’hol on deck!” Everyone else obediently rose and saluted. Klu’koth followed them, only more sedate in his motion. He said, “Leader, why do you honor me with your presence?”

Mej’hol scowled, “I’m surprised that you didn’t honor me with your preparedness. Where is your Hazard Suit?”

Everythign seemed to go in slow motion, as his stomach made sickening flip-flops. “Hazard Suit?”

Mej’hol nodded, his patchwork armor (he noticed that he had grafted various other battle-scarred armor plates over the Hazard Suit; perhaps out of nostalgia for his past victories,) clanging dully against itself. “My Corvette is docked and ready to fly. Aren’t you coming?”

“Where?”

“The surface.”

“The…surface?”

“Yes! Now, quit stalling and suit up. We have to be down there as soon as possible.”

“You mean…”

Mej’hol had never looked more bellicose. “Yes. We will all go down, and it will be a glorious victory. Finally, a mission worthy of the only survivor of the Kadeshi taskforce. Victory shall be ours, and at the end of the day, triumph is the greatest profit of all.”

Klu’koth smiled uneasily. He knew that this was coming. And did he sure wish it hadn’t.

 

*****

“Quexal’kol 14?”

“Yep, sir. Picking up massive energy spikes on the far end of the planet.”

“The Beast?” Liir Hra inquired, looking at the dark blue planet.

“Either that, or a fleet of Unbound ships.”

He nodded. “Good. Open a channel.” When it was so, he announced, “Enemy vessels, this is Admiral Liir Hra of the Hiigaran Naval Strike Force Protector. Surrender now, and we may be lenient with you.”

Yeah, right. Even if they could reason with the Beast, there was no way he would spare them. But he just felt more justified by saying it first. He felt quite relieved.

Right up until he saw the large ships move in front of the planet. He trembled as the deeply resonating voice came over the intercom. “You dare insult the Tiamat? You weak, Bound fools. You will pay for your insolence.”

The Megaship drew closer, and powered weapons. Admiral Liir Hra’s eyes widened, and he felt weak from his horrible decision.

“Oh, sonofa-!”£$!&*%$%^!” he swore.