The Deadliest of Intentions

by Marc Stevens

  “Klutch, there are several thousand Hunters pursuing us,” Coonts warned. “We should keep moving!”

  Tria and Coonts sent streams of high explosives into the charging ranks of Prule. Their response was to fill the atmosphere around us with energy weapons fire. Our cover was being blown to pieces. It obviously no longer mattered how much damage they inflicted on their prized warship. They were determined to take us out, and I was thinking they just might succeed. I popped out my spray nozzles and purged my entire reservoir of weaponized nanites. It would slow the Prule down, but not stop them; there were too many.

  “I would like to hear your plan. I am fresh out of ideas,” I called to Klutch in a voice as calm as I could muster.

  He pointed at the flames leaping from the ship’s hold. “They will come to their senses anytime now! We need to be ready to go when they do!”

  I was floored by his response. The Prule were already blasting the crap out of their own ship. It was highly unlikely at this point they would do something sensible. This turned out to be one of those times when I was genuinely happy, I was wrong. With a giant wrenching metallic groan, the giant access door split in the middle and started opening. The explosive decompression sucked us off the deck and out toward the void. We hit our boosters and bounced among the flying debris like pinballs. Over the top of the horrendous howl of rushing atmosphere and flying junk, Klutch yelled out over our comms to detonate the charges.

  With a thought, the charges ignited, blasting downward into the antimatter containment fields of the star drives. Everything flashed a brilliant white, and the last thing I saw was the huge bow of the ship being propelled right at us as we were sent flying out into the void. My battle suit was working overtime to keep control of my uncoordinated flight. The AI started using opposing spurts from my gravity drive to arrest my considerable velocity. As I regained my senses and looked back at the planet, I saw an incredible sight. There was a massive volcanic-like upheaval, sending chunks of rock and who knows what else thousands of feet upward into the planet’s light gravity. Looking down, I saw a beautiful sight. The front of the wrecked Prule ship was protruding out of the cavern’s mangled access doors. It had corked the opening and allowed the blast to be directed back into the complex. The resulting geyser had me convinced we just dealt the entire complex a death blow. A smile parted my lips as a childhood jingle danced through my head: “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men.”

  “Commander, I have locked on to the strike team’s locations and will collect you with the tow beam. ETA thirty-one seconds,” Justice commed us, interrupting my revelry. “I want to alert you that Sael Nalen has arrived with a taskforce of twelve warships. I gave her our location and warned her to stay clear of the area. When the taskforce entered the planet’s orbit, previously unidentified Prule defensive batteries attacked and lightly damaged two warships. The Chaalt are currently bombarding the surface from orbit and have one hundred and forty assault shuttles flying combat sorties near the poles of the planet. I also have interesting data collected from the Sig. I downloaded the intelligence report from our comms chain and will have it ready for your review.”

  I felt myself being tugged backward. I rolled around and saw the fast-approaching hangar of the Legacy as I was pulled inward. Xul was standing with Tria and Coonts with a look of anxiety on his face. Justice killed the tow beam, and I was set down on the deck. The Legacy made a hard turn and nosed back for the planet. My HUD highlighted Klutch’s position, and we were on him in a blink of an eye. The tow beam locked on and pulled him aboard. We retracted our helmets and went to the Troop Master. When he retracted his helmet, he had his usual goofy smile on his face. Coonts took exception to his mood.

  “How can you act like that after nearly letting us be overrun and destroyed?” Coonts asked, disgruntled.

  “I told you I had a plan,” Klutch said. “Even though the timing was tight, it worked out perfectly!”

  Coonts’s face went from mad to worse. “What are you talking about? If the Prule had not made the mistake of opening the access doors, we would be dead right now!”

  Emotions were running high, and Klutch’s reply didn’t help matters.

  “Hah! Apparently not all Grawl are as smart as they want everyone to believe,” Klutch retorted. “Even the Commander and Tria were able to figure it out!”

  Coonts turned to us with a questioning look of anger on his face. I didn’t want any part of where this conversation was going and was not going to be caught in the middle of another argument between the two. Xul saw what was coming as well. He made up an excuse to be somewhere else and headed for the bridge. I was admittedly a little miffed at the part where Klutch said that even I had it figured out. I wasn’t quite sure if it was a swipe at my intelligence or not. Rather than admit Tria and I were both a little puzzled by his comment, I quickly made a lame attempt to quell the silly bickering.

  “Klutch, quit messing with him and spit it out!”

  You could almost see steam rising from Coonts’s head when Klutch started nonchalantly flicking debris from his battle suit. The looks Tria and I gave the Troop Master made him stop dicking with the Grawl.

  “The Throggs had to open the access door. It was the only way they could attempt to quickly extinguish the fire I started in the cargo hold,” Klutch explained. “I knew at some point they would decide to decompress the cavern to keep their prized ship from burning up. It took a little longer than I thought it would, but it worked out as planned.”

  Tria, Coonts, and I promptly turned and headed for the ready room. I was done with that conversation and had other things on my mind, namely what the Sig uncovered in the star system close to El Dorado. We stepped out of our abused armor and put on uniforms. Klutch hung back, muttering unkind things about the Grawl under his breath. I knew he was a little pissy because he was not getting the attention, he thought he was due.

  “It was a brilliant plan, don’t you think?” Klutch called after us as we walked out of the ready room.

  Tria looked at me out of the corner of her eye. I made sure Coonts wasn’t looking at me and gave her a shrug. Klutch wouldn’t leave it alone.

  “It was the only course of action that made tactical sense, don’t you agree?” he called again.

  I didn’t turn around but held a thumb up, hoping to end any more discussion on the supposed plan. When I looked down at Coonts, he decided a thumb was not the appropriate digit and gave him the middle one instead. For some reason, Tria gave me a frown and an elbow. There were a few Earth gestures she did not care for because she took most everything literally. She also knew that it could be learned from only one source. You would think by now that I would remember I was under constant observation. A great many things my crew have observed me doing rubbed off on them. Some were good, but a lot of it could be considered questionable. It made me wonder how much longer it was going to take Justice to figure out a way to manifest the taboo gesticulation. When you think of the devil, he tends to speak to you.

  “Commander, I have several IST messages on hold for you from the Principal Investigator,” Justice said. “I informed her you were on a mission and you would contact her when you returned. The catastrophic explosion of the Prule base was observed by Chaalt forces. You now have additional message traffic.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to have a conversation with Sael. She most assuredly would want a full rundown on my activities. There was no doubt in my mind she would find fault in the way we handled the discovery of the Prule base.

  “Are they still honoring our exclusion zone?”

  “Yes, they appear to be fully involved with sanitizing the planet of Prule defensive weapons.”

  “Okay, I want you to take an azimuth from our insertion point to where we exited the Prule base. I want you to strike the halfway point between those locations with our primary weapon. Then I want you to do the same to the alien ship you discovered in the crater. The Prule were salvaging it from below the surface to av
oid detection. I want to make sure that is no longer possible.”

  “Affirmative, Commander. Those locations are already on my targeting list. I will move the Legacy in preparation to make the strikes.”

  “What is the condition of the Hivemind?”

  “It has not received additional nutrients or liquids since you departed for your mission. I do not believe it will perish in the next twelve hours, but its condition is precarious. To ensure its biomass has minimal sustainability, it will require assistance from us within that time period.”

  “Collate our mission data and download it to the Overseer. At the proper time, I want him to present it to the Hivemind,” I said. “I have a gut feeling it did not believe we would survive and return from the base. We would like it to know with no uncertainty that we are back and in good health. While running around and causing havoc, we managed to get about twenty minutes of run time on the data collection devices you gave us. I would like a detailed briefing on what they recorded, if anything.”

  “I am already working on the decryption, Commander. If known Prule algorithms produce the expected results, I should have workable keys to unlock the data within the next few hours. The targets you chose for elimination are now void of Prule activity. It was necessary to make follow-up strikes on the underground base to ensure no Prule assets survived in the area.”

  “Okay, Justice, stay cloaked and move us out from the planet so we can keep an eye on the Chaalt. Let me know if it looks like they discovered anything we might have overlooked.”

  Tria and I stopped at the galley for a quick meal but Coonts kept going. He was still fuming about our uncomfortably close call with oblivion. It seemed like it was common practice for him and Klutch to play this game. I wrote it off as their stress relief routine. I had witnessed it enough, I really didn’t care, as long as it no longer involved me. I figured we had maybe thirty minutes tops before Klutch cooled off and forgot all about being mad. As soon as that happened, he would decide he was hungry. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the galley when that happened. We ate lightly in case my predicted time line was faulty. When we got up to leave, I suggested a hot shower and a nap before we started going over the data. The look of mischief in Tria’s eyes, suggested she was good with the shower but not with the nap.

  26

  As it turns out, I got to enjoy another one of those rare times I was wrong about something and it didn’t nearly cost me my life. Tria and I actually did get a small nap in before Justice woke us. That didn’t mean I wasn’t a little crabby from lack of sleep, and it showed when I responded to the AI’s wake-up call.

  “Yes, Justice, what is it now?” I snapped.

  Biting off the AI’s virtual head for waking us would probably net me an undesirable response at some point in the future. The machine knew how to use the human emotions it had learned from me to make payback a bitch in some cases. I didn’t have a legitimate reason to be irritable. Tria had made certain of that. I guess deep down it had something to do with the AI carefully documenting my sexual proclivities. I felt that such things should be on a need-to-know basis, and Justice didn’t need to know. The time it took for him to reply meant I would indeed be subject to an equivalent amount of future crabbiness. It was too late to apologize, and I would suffer whatever was coming to me, regardless of my effort. So, I didn’t even try.

  “Commander, the Operative is insisting to speak with you directly,” Justice finally said. “She has ordered a Chaalt battle fleet to transition to our location. She is not so politely asking for permission to proceed.”

  “Open a comms channel to her highness.”

  Justice put Sael right through, and she didn’t waste any time taking select bites out of my ass.

  “Commander Myers, I find your habit of delaying, or possibly blocking, our communications during a major combat operation, irresponsible and disrespectful to me and the personnel under my command.”

  Crap! She was going to get all official on me. That meant she must have a number of her senior officers listening in on our discussion. I wondered why she would do that. In the past, she didn’t want anybody to know that I usually talked to her any way I wanted and didn’t give a damn if it pissed her off or not. Tria rolled over and mouthed, “Show her a little respect.” I bugged my eyes at her in a show that stated it wasn’t likely. She started doing other things to make me rethink my bullheadedness. I suddenly found it difficult to be irritable at the Operative. I changed gears and came up with noteworthy excuses instead.

  “Principal Investigator, my strike team and I spent close to four hours in direct combat with thousands of Prule combatants,” I said. “We escaped by the narrowest of margins and are lucky to have survived. While I know that you and your troops would not need to recuperate after such a campaign, my crew and I do. I will be sending a copy of our mission data over to you shortly.”

  I was going to say more, but Tria was relentless. I promptly ended the IST transmission.

  “Justice, send a copy of the combat video you were preparing for the Hivemind over to Sael. Please do it quickly!” I pleadingly called out.

  I couldn’t imagine what the Operative and her underlings were thinking right about now. Sael knew me fairly well. If she even remotely surmised the nature of my abrupt termination of our comms, she was going to have an epic meltdown. My interactions with Tria did manage to assuage Justice’s feelings. He no longer seemed interested in displaying any spite for my earlier tactlessness.

  “Data files sent, Commander. I will instruct Xul to take the Operative’s calls if she has questions concerning your combat mission. I have already prepared a list of predetermined answers based on my observations of the engagement.”

  I was struggling to stay focused but did manage to say, “You can do that?”

  “Of course, Commander. There are only so many logical questions the Operative could ask. I believe I have sufficiently covered the most important ones. The less cogent can wait until you are ready to answer them personally.”

  I was wondering if he would let me get away clean. That last little stab indicated he would not. A little tit for tat might be in order. Perhaps I would do my fornicating somewhere other than the Legacy and see what the AI thought of those apples. I cringed, thinking I just might have let the cat out of the bag. Justice could get a pretty good read on my intentions by interacting with my implants. Maybe I could absolve myself by giving Tria my undivided attention. It could turn out to be a win-win situation.

  Sleep ended up being just a fleeting thought, at least for me anyway. Tria was out cold, and I had no plans of waking her anytime soon. The thought of laying around until the Operative called to annoy me made me shower again and go to the bridge. I wanted my briefings over with before deciding our next move.

  “Justice, what info did you download from the Sig?”

  “Commander, the Sig report they have captured eighty-seven pirates and have uncovered a huge cache of stolen artifacts and cargo. Interrogation of the pirates reveals the ships that were attacked and looted were intentionally sent to the star system for that purpose. The pirates assumed our freighter was one of the targets.”

  “Did the Sig find out who was sending the ships into harm’s way?”

  “Negative, Commander. The Sig did report they found the crews of the captured ships in a crater near the base. The mass grave contained tens of thousands of bodies, indicating the pirate operation has been ongoing for a considerable period of time.”

  I knew the Sig were very much an eye-for-an-eye society and probably didn’t need to ask, but I did anyway.

  “What is the current status of the base?”

  “All but a select few of the prisoners joined their victims in the crater and the base is now a Sig military outpost. This will be advantageous to our mining operation because we will now have a secure storage and distribution hub well separated from El Dorado.”

  “Is that all of the report?”

  “No, Commander. The Sig
request a personal visit from you at your earliest convenience. They have additional subject matter that they will only discuss directly with you.”

  That last part had me scratching my head a little. Our comms array was widely dispersed across the void, and the chances of someone finding one of the buoys and figuring out how to decrypt the transmissions were slim to none. The Sig must have stumbled onto to something big or they wouldn’t be asking for a face to face. Tria had already taken the steps to ensure our stake in this star system. Maybe it was time to turn it over to the Operative and her people so we could move on to other matters, the meeting with the Sig being the first.

  Thinking of the Operative had me wondering why that particular burr under my saddle wasn’t burning up my IST with her usual lighthearted banter. It was strange that now that our lines of communication were open, she had yet to call back.

  “Justice, give me a secure IST to Sael.”

  “Secure channel open, Commander.”

  “Principal Investigator, I am ready to discuss the mission if you have the time.”