Harbinger

by Ken Lozito

  “When he charged me, he grabbed my hand and put the stun baton to his head. He held it there. I tried to pull it away, but they’re strong.”

  Krake blood was pooling dark gray under his head. The prisoner was dead. Sean spun and hastened to the other holding cells. The two soldiers rushed inside to restrain the others.

  Sean and Boseman helped get them strapped to the beds.

  “You don’t have to die. Stop doing this. Stop struggling,” Sean said and gritted his teeth.

  The prisoner struggled even more, trying to break free of his restraints. A few moments later, a medic arrived and sedated the Krake. Both the remaining prisoners were strapped to their beds, unconscious.

  “They’re crazy,” Boseman said. “They’re determined to kill themselves.”

  Sean looked at the unconscious Krake prisoners and shook his head. Most people had an innate drive to stay alive. It was hardwired into their DNA. Even the Ovarrow were the same. They'd fight to survive, just like most creatures of New Earth.

  “It’s like they’ve been brainwashed,” Sean said.

  Boseman’s eyes widened for a moment. “You think this is conditioning?”

  “It’s not rational, unless their entire society rigidly adheres to these types of conventions. Aurang isn’t like that, so there must be some kinds of established protocols for the salvagers to follow, which means we're not the first ones to capture a Krake ship,” Sean said.

  “They’re crazy. It might be better for them if we let them die,” Boseman said.

  Sean was tempted to agree with this friend. The Krake prisoners were a danger to themselves and to others. He couldn’t afford to set them free because of what they’d seen on the ship. “I’m not going to kill them.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  They left the area. At least they had confirmation that the Krake translator worked. Sean had strongly suspected that it would, but there was nothing like a true test. On a secure system, Sean had authorized the use of the Krake translator to interpret the data they'd taken from previous Krake places they'd been. They'd been able to cross-check the translation with the Ovarrow translator they'd used in the past. Gabriel had confirmed that the Krake translator was superior to what they were using. Sean had been concerned that there could be a subroutine hidden within the translator that would infiltrate the Vigilant’s computer systems, which was why he’d only authorized its use on secure systems that were isolated from everything else.

  “There’s something I need to ask you about,” Boseman said. “A Dr. Evans requested assistance from someone under my command. Do you know anything about this?”

  “Oriana is working on a lot of things, but I’m not sure why she’d need someone from your team.”

  “I’m not concerned about the request. I just thought it was odd. We’re ready to lend a hand whenever we can, but I was surprised by who she asked for,” Boseman said and paused. Sean’s eyebrows raised. “Benton.”

  Sean frowned. Benton had a reputation for pushing the limits of acceptable behavior aboard ship. When they’d first had civilians mixed with enlisted personnel, there had been more than a few complaints about him.

  “I don’t know. I can check with her if you want,” Sean offered.

  “Negative. I already did, and she needed Benton’s help. I even offered to send her someone else.”

  Sean shrugged a little. “You don’t need to worry about Oriana. She can take care of herself.”

  Oriana had never been shy, but she’d gotten used to living aboard ship among the CDF. After the mutiny, she’d become more serious. They all had, but Oriana and her science team had been held captive by Brody and the other mutineers. Sean had been teaching her self-defense, including how to disarm an opponent. He rarely had occasion to utilize his training and welcomed the opportunity to revitalize his skills.

  They'd had little time together after the mutiny. Each of them preferred to be as active as possible, which included downtime. Sean required very little sleep because of his military-grade implants. Oriana wanted her implants upgraded with the same capabilities, but there hadn’t been enough time.

  Others began to notice their workouts and asked to join them, which gave them a chance to practice against all kinds of opponents. Boseman was among the best hand-to-hand combat specialists on the ship and wasn’t shy about humbling Sean when they practiced together.

  They headed to the meeting room near the bridge. Dean Stonehill was already inside, along with Jane Russo, his XO. Major Shelton and Captain Martinez were on the holoscreen. Oriana should have been there, so she must have been running late for some reason.

  Sean sat down at the table. “We’re scheduled to meet with Aurang in a little while, but we needed to speak first.”

  They were in the alternate universe and had been studying their targets as best they could for the past twenty-four hours. No alarms had been raised and no Krake scout forces had been sent out, so it was safe to assume that their presence had gone unnoticed. But Sean didn’t like assumptions. If this was a trap, Aurang could’ve arranged for the Krake defenses to simply ignore their presence for the time being.

  “Gabriel, send a message to Lieutenant Pitts that I’d like him at this meeting now,” Sean said.

  “Message has been sent, sir,” Gabriel replied.

  His request drew more than a few puzzled frowns. “It’s nice to know that I can still surprise all of you.”

  A few moments later, Lieutenant Pitts appeared on an additional holoscreen.

  “Thank you for joining, Lieutenant. To bring everyone up to speed, I called this meeting with all of you because of your ability to think outside the box,” Sean said.

  Sean noticed that Pitts frowned for a moment and seemed to be glancing at the array of holoscreens from his ready room aboard the Babylon.

  “So far, the Krake haven’t detected our presence here. I’ve been able to confirm that the Krake translator does, in fact, work. Boseman and I,” Sean said and twitched his head toward Boseman, “successfully communicated with our prisoners. We did get a response, but there isn’t much to share on that front. Behavioral analysis indicates that these particular Krake might’ve been brainwashed.”

  “Colonel Quinn,” Pitts said, and Sean gestured for him to speak. “Behavioral analysis applies to humans. While the response you received from the Krake could be conditioned, it might be premature to assign a prognosis based on limited testing.”

  “It’s a theory, and it's supported by our senior medical doctor on board,” Sean said. “We haven’t detected any Krake ships at the NEC. The planet has a single moon, but there is a sizable asteroid belt relatively close to the planet. Analysis indicates that it was a dwarf-sized planet. The Krake could have an attack force hidden there.”

  “The lack of Krake ships in the area,” Major Shelton said, “confirms what Aurang told us about how the Krake conduct operations across multiple universes.”

  Sean nodded. “It makes sense if you think about it. They have a ready force to deal with alerts that come in. This saves a considerable amount of resources with maintaining a fleet across multiple universes, but I don’t want to get blindsided.”

  The door to the conference room opened and Oriana hastened to an open seat.

  “There's an operational lunar base," Sean continued, "as well as an orbital defense platform. In order for this mission to work, we'll need to disable the space gate, but the timing must be in tandem with the ground force that will infiltrate a Krake military research and development complex on the surface. We'll need to hit all of these targets almost at the same time in order to prevent the Krake from mustering a response. But the attack must occur after the regular status check-in from the Krake complex. After that, disabling the space gate is key to preventing Krake warships from responding if they're able to raise an alert.”

  “It’s the ground force operation that I am most concerned about, sir,” Major Shelton said. “We’re supposed to trust that Aurang will be a
ble to infiltrate the R&D systems right before the Krake send their scheduled update to their version of COMCENT, which will then have updated orders so the fifth column will be freed or at least taken off the watch list. And in return for our help, he plans to give us operational data, particularly around the multiverses they have a presence in.”

  “I don’t trust them either,” Sean said. “That’s why I’m going to equip Captain Boseman and his team with another tool for exfiltrating data from Krake systems. We refined it based on the new Krake translator interface combined with proven techniques used to remove data from Ovarrow computer systems found on New Earth.”

  Sean gave them a few moments to consider. “This is where I need you to raise questions if you have them.”

  “Ovarrow computer systems,” Lieutenant Pitts said, “are a rudimentary version of Krake computer systems. How do we know that when Captain Boseman attempts to steal the data, he won’t trip any of the alarms?”

  “We won’t know,” Sean said pointedly. “There’s no way around this. This mission carries a significant risk factor.”

  “Colonel Quinn, if I may,” Boseman said, and Sean nodded. “My team is going to be thrown into the fire, but this is what we do. We'll learn something worthwhile about the Krake and their systems. There are redundancies in place that will get whatever it is that we learn out of there even if my team doesn't make it.”

  “Worst-case scenario, but we'll have combat shuttles on standby to extract the Spec Ops team,” Sean said.

  “Sir,” Lieutenant Pitts said, “it just seems that you expect Aurang to betray us. So why go through with this?”

  “You want to know if the risk is worth the reward. We don’t have the luxury of making decisions in hindsight. We’ve learned a lot about the Krake these many months we’ve been away from home, but it’s not enough. We’ve gathered some credible intel, but we need more if we're to begin an offensive against them. That's the purpose of our mission. Aurang could be misinformed, and we’ll have to be able to adapt to that. So far, everything he's provided has been proven accurate.”

  “Understood, sir,” Pitts replied.

  “This is the first system that has a significant Krake presence, and this is what we came to find. It'll be the most complex mission we’ve executed to date. Let’s go over the particulars of the mission,” Sean said.

  They discussed the plan that Sean and Vanessa had put together, even though most of the people who were at the meeting had contributed to it. Sean had decided to bring Lieutenant Pitts along because he'd been the most vocal about the state of morale after the mutiny. He asked good questions during their review of the mission, which reaffirmed Sean’s decision to bring him into the meeting.

  “Colonel Quinn, I have one more question,” Lieutenant Pitts said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “According to Aurang, the next window to begin this mission is in twelve hours.”

  “That’s when Aurang wanted us to go, but we’re not going to comply with that request. You see, there’s a delicate balance here. If we go in twelve hours and there's an ambush waiting for us, they'll be expecting us. If we delay several cycles, they won’t know when or if our mission will begin,” Sean replied.

  Lieutenant Pitts's eyes widened and he actually smiled. “Understood, sir, and thank you,” he said.

  Something in that moment changed in Lieutenant Pitts. Sean spotted it, and he supposed Vanessa had seen it too. She wouldn’t be his XO for the Trident Battle Group if she couldn’t identify that moment when a soldier became a believer in the mission. There was the chain of command, but there was also trust to be built.

  “Aurang will be here in a few minutes. Major Shelton, I want you to brief the commanding officers of the battle group,” Sean said.

  The holoscreens flickered off as the comlinks to the other ships were severed.

  “Colonel, I’m sorry I was running a bit late,” Oriana said.

  “Understood. What did you think of the way they wanted us to disable the space gate?” Sean asked.

  “It should work, and we know that if there's a misalignment with the space gate cubes, you can’t establish a stable gateway. I also wanted to run something else by you,” Oriana began to say but stopped when the door to the conference room opened.

  Captain Russo walked in with Aurang and the soldiers who were escorting him.

  The chairs in the conference room couldn’t accommodate Krake physiology. Their long limbs made using the chair too awkward, so Sean and the others stood up.

  “Colonel,” Aurang said, “you've had adequate time to consider my request for aid, and you’ve done your reconnaissance. What is your answer?”

  “I've conferred with my senior staff and we agree this mission is possible. So far, everything aligns with the information you’ve given us,” Sean said.

  “Excellent. So, we can begin in the next cycle,” Aurang said.

  “That won't be possible,” Sean said and began to hold up his hand so he could further explain but then realized the gesture would be lost on the Krake, who didn’t understand human mannerisms. “Our teams need to train for the mission. We’ll need at least twenty-four hours before they'll be ready to go.”

  It was a lie and everyone but Aurang knew it. Sean had no intention of telling the Krake when they would begin the mission.

  “I’m very disappointed. Tell me, if I requested to leave your ship, would you let me?”

  “You wouldn’t make that kind of request,” Sean said.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Aurang replied.

  Sean regarded the Krake for a few moments. “If you were to make that request, I'd assume that everything else you told us was a lie. You came to us because you have nowhere else to go. That’s what you told us. The overseers are about to annihilate your entire network of operations. You want to protect your people, and so do I. That means not rushing into anything. Do we understand each other?”

  It was difficult trying to gauge the Krake’s response. There seemed to be an exactness in how they responded to anything that was almost devoid of emotion.

  “Colonel, I have teams in place that require what I have on my ship.”

  “And if we don’t show up during this next cycle, what will they do?”

  Aurang regarded Sean for a few moments. “They will wait, but time is running out for them. We have continuity plans in the event that we cannot—” Aurang stopped speaking.

  “We need to go over the plan so everyone knows what’s expected of them,” Sean said.

  Aurang glanced at the others in the room for a moment. “I will answer your questions.”

  17

  “I just heard the news,” Samson said.

  Connor had left the main administration building at the CDF base in Sanctuary only moments earlier. “Good. Have the 7th assemble so we can be underway ASAP.”

  “Oh, we’ll be ready, but I have a couple of concerns,” Samson said, matching his pace with Connor’s.

  Connor checked the status of the message he’d sent to Dash, and it had been received. One less thing to worry about. He looked at Samson. “We were bound to succeed, sooner or later.”

  Since they hadn’t gotten any help from the Ovarrow, Connor was determined to get the intel he needed from the Krake by finding one of their worlds. They needed to find out more about them, but more importantly, they needed to find out what the enemy knew about the colonists. Connor had converted a CDF storage facility located over a hundred kilometers from Sanctuary into a working compound for the purpose of utilizing an archway to find a Krake world. The concept was simple. They were using the data they’d gotten from the Krake forward operating base, starting with the coordinates taken from that facility. However, the task had proven to be a lot more complicated than that.

  “Since we’re only bringing one platoon for the scouting mission, we shouldn’t bring the Ovarrow with us,” Samson said.

  “Why is that?” Connor asked. He didn’t want to mak
e any assumptions.

  “They’re an unknown quantity. They’ve had some combat training, but it’ll be dangerous for them. We're already bringing one civilian with us, and honestly, it’s one too many,” Samson said.

  “Dash has a skill set that we don’t have in the CDF. He’s a specialist, and that’s why he’s coming with us. Having some of the Ovarrow will help speed the process along,” Connor replied.

  “Yeah, but do we need to bring all six of them? Why can’t we just bring Cerot?” Samson said.

  “Because Cerot is the warlord’s First. He’s second-in-command of their military. He’ll insist that he bring some kind of protection, and he would be right to do so.”

  “I understand that, but this is our operation. He doesn’t have to come.”

  “It’s essential that he comes with us. We need somebody who can speak the language. And right now, Cerot and the others have agreed to help us,” Connor said, silencing Samson with a gesture. “Now hold on a minute. I agree we don’t need to bring all six of them. We’ll probably bring only three—Cerot and whoever he chooses to bring with him. They’re professional soldiers, albeit they’re not us. They did fine when we went to the city.”

  Samson tried to think of an argument but couldn’t. Things could rapidly spiral out of control, and they'd be cut off from New Earth. They’d spent the last few days strategizing on how to deal with that, which included a bunch of secondary protocols in the event that unforeseen circumstances occurred. Samson was aware of it. He was minimizing the potential impact of things outside his control, which included the Ovarrow. He was doing his job, and Connor couldn’t be frustrated with that.

  “To be honest, I didn’t expect they'd find anything so soon,” Connor said.

  They made their way to the airfield where the troop carrier transports waited for them. Connor had sent the preliminary alert to Nathan to make him aware of the situation. Connor was going on-site to do a more thorough analysis and determination of whether sending a scout force to the world they’d found was required. He was due to return to the CDF compound anyway.