Brink of Destruction, page 26
“Death comes.”
“Let us go and meet it,” a dozen voices chorused in the compartment, before the commanders dispersed, some to their unit sections aboard the Thunderer, the rest to the shuttles to their own ships.
CHAPTER 32
Draven no longer knew how long they’d been on this nameless world.
Their captors had so far honored the terms of the surrender, such as they were. The Zolarians had been disarmed and confined to another large bay somewhere in the base, cots laid out almost as far as the eye could see in the dim, bluish light within the dark caverns that formed most of the rooms in the aliens’ construction. They were guarded, and they received regular visits from Drass and his human entourage, but there was no pressure, no interrogation, not even any sign of the vithang and its alien cohort.
That should have given him some relief, knowing some of what had happened to prisoners during the Newlander Wars, the Thelon Wars, and any number of other conflicts between humans and humans, humans and aliens, or aliens and aliens. There were horror stories of prison camps and terrible atrocities committed within them all across the stars, dating back to the beginnings of recorded history. That they were being held without being molested was heartening, but Draven couldn’t help but wonder if they were being lulled into a false sense of security.
He sat on his own cot, next to Captain Breck’s. They were down to the underlayers of their hardsuits. The armor had been confiscated, along with all of their weapons.
There was a chime whenever the door opened—it was more like a membrane irising open rather than a door—and one of the few strictures on the prisoners was that they must stand to attention when their captors entered. It chimed now, and many rose to their feet almost immediately. Others were slower, and Draven looked around to note who was quick to comply and who still maintained some resistance, however subtle and passive. He observed from his cot, still sitting across from the captain, who hadn’t yet moved at all.
Breck’s face was blank but his eyes hard. His gaze shifted to meet Draven’s, and he nodded slightly. Only then did the two of them rise.
Drass, their visitor, looked around the cavernous bay, seeking his audience for that day.
If it was day. If such a concept even really existed in a brown dwarf system.
“I would speak with Captain Breck, Captain Violaire, First Sergeant Draven, and First Sergeant Yun.” Drass’s voice was amplified by some tech that was not immediately visible. It echoed through the chamber in a way that none of the Zolarian voices did. The strange material of the walls, ceiling, and floor seemed to drink sound almost as much as it did light.
Breck didn’t move a muscle, and Draven held his own position. There had been a time when he might have taken the captain’s own stillness as a challenge, tried to outwait him. Now, however, he simply had no desire or intention to comply with the aliens and their collaborators.
Unlike far too many other Zolarians.
Somewhere halfway across the chamber, he could see movement as Captain Violaire and her first sergeant, Ci Yun, started to move to join Drass. Captain Breck turned toward them, a flicker of contempt crossing the captain’s face.
Draven knew enough about Violaire to know that neither he nor Breck should be surprised. She was a thoroughly political animal, and had never been happy about going into the kind of combat the regiment had faced since Dur Udyaanm. She wasn’t supposed to be facing the risk of death to get her political points for the mass of voters back on Zolah. From what Draven had heard, she had barely budged out of her command crawler or blower throughout the fighting on Dur Udyaanm, and somehow she’d managed to avoid setting foot on Dina Chandra altogether.
That didn’t make her eagerness to cooperate with their captors any less contemptuous. If anything, it made it worse.
Drass nodded with satisfaction as he saw Violaire and the resigned Yun following her. His eyes swept the crowd, and even at a distance and with other Zolarian prisoners between them, Draven could see those eyes narrow.
“Captain Breck! First Sergeant Draven! Come now! Your accommodations have so far been reasonable, have they not? Do you truly wish to change that? The Emissary has been reasonable, but his patience is not infinite.”
Draven glanced at Breck, willing to follow the captain’s decision, whichever way it went. The longer this went on, the more he found he wanted to get his hands around Drass’s neck. Many of the others might have been lulled by the quiet of their confinement, but not Draven. The longer he was held prisoner, the more like a caged animal he felt himself becoming.
Captain Breck stayed motionless for a handful of heartbeats, then glanced sidelong at Draven and inclined his head ever so slightly. Draven sighed, and the two of them turned and began to work their way through the crowded chamber to where Drass waited.
The former rebel stood there waiting, looking both disappointed and patient. It struck Draven then just how masterful a politician Drass really was. A wholly owned servant of an alien power, he was nevertheless able to appear a noble, long-suffering statesman, enduring the unreasoning resistance of his conquered foes.
It didn’t actually raise the man any in Draven’s estimation. He was a puppet and a coward who had ultimately sold his soul to an alien empire. Draven didn’t care how enlightened that empire might seem.
As he looked around at many of his fellows, however, officers and non-coms alike, he saw some of them with new eyes, and realized that perhaps his perceptions were far from universal among Zolarians. The two of them were getting looks, some more blatant than others.
Many were just blank, tired, the looks of men and women who were so beaten down by their circumstances that they had withdrawn into themselves, and probably weren’t even all that aware of what else was happening at that moment. Others watched with hard eyes—and many of them Draven knew well enough to read. These were men and women who understood that there was a fine line to hold, and Captain Breck was going to walk it as well as he could. Give the enemy nothing, while still keeping their own people as safe as possible. After all, they had no weapons, and simply throwing their lives away as an empty gesture of defiance, far from where it would do any good, was unconscionable.
But it was the third type of look that gave him pause, if not in the way that those watching him might have hoped. These were the bitter, suspicious stares of those who felt that he and the captain were putting them all at greater risk by their reticence to cooperate with their captors. Those who wished that they’d just give up, do what the vithang wanted, in the hopes that maybe they would be able to go home in some comfort, sometime in the future.
Draven hadn’t seen that look in a very long time, not even when the regiment had suffered so heavily on Dina Chandra and Dur Udyaanm. It was a shift in mindset, a combination of cowardice and despair, that he hadn’t ever imagined his people succumbing to before.
It bore watching. He was already pretty sure he knew what the captain had in mind, as soon as the opportunity presented itself, and now he had to worry about some of his own comrades fighting on the enemy’s behalf when that time arrived.
As they approached Drass and his entourage, Draven turned his eyes toward Violaire’s glare. His own flinty stare was apparently too much for her, officer or no, and she quickly looked away. It seemed that, at one level anyway, she understood that she was in the wrong for being so eager to accommodate their captors.
Drass, still playing his role as mediator and voice of reason, sighed with a faint smile. “Your stiffness of neck does you some credit, Captain, but is it not somewhat pointless now? You do little but waste time and antagonize the Emissary.”
Captain Breck stared at him with hooded eyes. “I could argue that your continued attempts to suborn us to your alien masters’ cause is every bit the waste of time, Drass, but I doubt it would do any good. So, by all means, lead the way. Let us hear the same thing again. You will hear the same answers.”
Drass only gave another indulgent smile and turned toward the membranous door. “We have more time than you might think, Captain. And the Emissary is not one to waste resources. Come. We have much to discuss.”
Captain Breck motioned for Captain Violaire to precede them, not without a faint sneer that could not have been lost on the other company commander. She stiffened and turned her back pointedly as she followed Drass through the doorway. Yun glanced at Draven as he passed, and Draven saw a tortured, angry resignation in the man’s eyes. He was beholden to his commander, yet he hated it. Draven could sympathize, but at this point he felt that Yun needed to make his own decision, regardless of the short-term consequences he might face.
There was more at stake than future career worries here. He only hoped that enough of his fellow citizen soldiers figured that out in time, as he followed Drass through the portal, still keeping his eyes open for anything that might be of use when that time finally came to turn and fight.
CHAPTER 33
“If I had to pick a system where the ghost ships would feel at home, I have to admit, I’d pick something like this.” Abbott was watching the holo display in the phalanx ready room, along with the other squad sergeants. Most of the men were sleeping or going over their gear for the fiftieth time. It had been a long, tedious flight to this nameless brown dwarf system, one that Bannon suspected did not show up on most star charts, and there were only so many drills they could conduct in the drop bays. Even now that they’d arrived in system, most were waiting until the leadership gave them the word.
Bannon might have insisted that they all seek out as much information as they could get, under different circumstances. Even with the time allowed by the tyranny of interplanetary distances, it was part and parcel of being a member of a special tasks unit to be as read in as possible. But after the weeks they’d already spent in transit, and their spot in the rest cycle, he wasn’t going to drag them all in for a brief yet. Not when it consisted primarily of the nature of the system they’d just transitioned into.
“Why?” Summ was floating free of his harness, his mag boots deactivated. The Thunderer hadn’t been under thrust for nearly two days, and as long as they were lurking near the wormhole emergence point, far out in the dark, emissions at the lowest possible level to avoid attracting attention against the hiss of cosmic background radiation, they weren’t going to start up the drives for several more. “Just because it’s dark? I know their ships are dark, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need suns to live.”
Abbott waved at the holo. “No, because nobody in their right mind would even come here. A brown dwarf with a bunch of carbonaceous asteroids and a few rocky planets? Not even worth the effort for most people.”
“They’re aliens, though,” Summ countered. “Most of the places the otuchans like to settle aren’t places I’d think were homey.”
Bannon almost chuckled at that. Most humans wouldn’t care to live like Corvanites either, so when one of the consummate warriors thought a planet was too inhospitable, it was striking.
“Some otuchans,” Abbott pointed out. “From what I’ve heard, the homeworld otuchans are even lazier than Zolarians, and they really don’t want the diaspora otuchans around.” He snorted. “Since I wouldn’t either, I’m not sure where that leaves the race as a whole.”
Bannon glanced at Hern. The senior squad sergeant was as relaxed as Summ, and he was characteristically silent, watching the holo of the system through slitted eyes. Bannon might even have thought him asleep, if he didn’t know better.
Hern wasn’t the kind of man who speculated. In some ways, he was the perfect Corvanite NCO. He wasn’t unimaginative, but he was rather uniquely focused. He had taken in the information available from the initial passive scans of the system, then settled in to wait while the Infiltrators made their deeper exploration. He couldn’t influence things by talking, so he didn’t.
The holo was being constantly updated as the telescopes and other passive sensors continued to gather what they could. It was dark; the brown dwarf that formed the locus hadn’t quite ignited, and glowed only a dull, smoldering red under scrutiny. Not enough to cast any real light on the planets and debris that orbited it, and that made optical scanning much more difficult.
There were neutrino signatures in the system, but even they were hard to pinpoint, especially when trying very hard to blend into the starfield.
However, some sullen red icons had appeared on the plot, indicating that their targets were indeed here. Where precisely they all were was something Commander Fox and the other senior officers were still trying to determine before launching the attack.
That, and they were still waiting for the rest of the fleet that had been sent for.
War was raging on a dozen worlds as the Zolarians closed the pincer on the Mytunese, and from what the commander had gleaned from messages, the Council was ever more split on how to approach the growing conflict. That the Mytunese and Zolarians were at each other’s throats because of the long-standing cold war between Zolah and Corvan Prime no one doubted. And while many on the Council were still determined that no upstart client world would dictate what wars the sons of Corvan would fight, that war was on their doorstep nevertheless. That the diaspora otuchans had rallied after the slaughter on Epsilon Sarrazin III and were now cutting a bloody swath through every human world they could reach within a hundred light years of that planet only made matters worse.
Even so, the data gathered from the ancient Garkhut base on Eredin IV had been enough to persuade the Council to assign more forces to attack the ghost ship operational hub. The fragmented plans to raise a fanatical sect of chyotsu to assault the spinward flank of both Zolah and Corvan Prime, coupled with the encounters on Zhogalgan and half a dozen other worlds over the last two years, had raised hackles across a dozen worlds, and ships were still converging on Yasoke III, twelve light years away, preparing for the full-scale assault on this hidden brown dwarf system.
“What do you think, sir?” Abbott asked, jerking Bannon out of his contemplation.
“I think the intel led us here, and once we get the word, we will assault the ghost ship positions. Anything beyond that is the fortunes of war.” It felt strange to say that, as if he were simply parroting what an officer was supposed to say in this situation. The truth was, he simply didn’t have anything else to say at the moment. The ghost ships were still alien, their motives every bit as alien, and while he could guess at more, it would only be that—a guess. The important thing was, after all this time, they were now facing at least some advance base of theirs. It felt like a culmination of sorts.
Of course, if what Ransjunan had said was true, Bannon didn’t doubt that this wouldn’t end things. If the ghost ship aliens had been at this that long, they would be back. But it might bring this chapter to an end.
Commander Fox’s voice came over the comm, and the holo shifted, zooming in on the brown dwarf and revealing a space station in orbit above it, its bulbous center module surrounded by spidery arms that spread out like the rays of a malignant star. “Sons of Corvan, attention. The Infiltrators report they have pinpointed what appears to be the central base, with multiple ghost ships docked there. There is more activity on one of the inner, rocky planets, but that will be for the 77th and 115th Regiments.”
Alerts in the holo announced the wormhole opening somewhere aft of the ship, and more starships appeared in the brown dwarf system by the dozens. The fleet was arriving.
“We will assault the space station. We were the first Corvanites to make contact with these aliens. We will therefore have the honor of coming to grips with their operational command center.
“Death comes, brothers.”
Bannon and his three squad sergeants spoke the old words, and Bannon imagined he could hear them reverberate throughout the Thunderer’s hull as every man awake and on station returned the chorus. “Let us go and meet it.”
Bannon activated his mag boots and planted his feet on the deck. The Thunderer was still in freefall, but that would change soon. “You heard the man. Get your squads up and start prep for a boarding action. On the assault shuttles as soon as we get word. We can sleep aboard if we need to.”
He knew he wasn’t going to be getting much more rest; there was planning to do. Fortunately, while the alert had just come down, it would take days to move into the system, days in which they would be able to gather more reconnaissance data and refine their plans and preparations.
Days in which they would be under thrust, their presence plain to the ghost ships, and probably under threat the entire way in.
That was a problem for the spacers to worry about. For Bannon’s part, he would have his hands full, even if they did come under attack in transit. He would concentrate on his tasks, and leave the space battle to the starship’s crew.
Death comes, oftentimes whether a man is in a position to fight back or not.
He bent his attention to his data plate, and the initial reporting from the Infiltrators via tight beam, putting thoughts of ghost ships appearing out of the ether out of his mind.
CHAPTER 34
Captain Tomas watched the flares of Cherenkov radiation, brilliant in the darkness out here far from any real stars, and wondered just how long it would be before the ghost ships appeared right on top of them. He’d seen the way they could rip a wormhole through spacetime anywhere in or out of a gravity well, and it made him nervous, Corvanite pride notwithstanding.
A glance at the ship in one of his optical scanner windows should have calmed his fears somewhat. The Colossus had been built for this kind of fight. A segmented wedge nearly two thousand feet long, she was armored like no other ship Tomas knew of, with triple-redundant power plants and three spine-mounted particle beam cannons. Even the newest and biggest of the third-generation ships like the Pulverizer still only mounted one of those impressive weapons, and it didn’t have two entire reactors devoted just to keeping it charged.
