Ep.#14 - The Weak and the Innocent (The Frontiers Saga)

by Ryk Brown

  “I prefer to stand,” the commander replied, “and I prefer to be outside.”

  “Right. Well, just try to relax.”

  “I am relaxed.”

  “Of course.” Kata signaled Karahl to turn the porta-cam back on. She waited for him to lift the camera back up onto his shoulder and for the red light to appear before continuing. “How long have you been on Earth, Commander?”

  “I arrived fourteen hours ago, at zero two thirty, Earth Mean Time.”

  “I meant how long ago did you first arrive on Earth?”

  “Three hundred and eight days, twenty hours, forty-seven minutes, to be exact.”

  “Of course.” Kata sighed. “Where are you from?”

  “The city of Primetkin, on the planet Toradon, in the Takar system, in…”

  “Yeah, the Pentaurus sector…we know,” Kata finished for him, frustration in her voice. “How about this one? What is your job here?”

  “I am the commander of all Ghatazhak forces attached to the Alliance in the Sol sector,” the commander answered.

  “And who are the Ghatazhak?”

  “An elite fighting force.”

  “And how long have you been a Ghatazhak?”

  “Seventeen Terran years.”

  “You don’t look that old,” Kata commented.

  “I am approximately thirty-one Terran years in age. I believe that is approximately thirty-six Koharan years.”

  “Then you must have joined when you were quite young.”

  “I was accepted into Ghatazhak training at the usual age.”

  “And what age was that?”

  Commander Telles looked at Kata Mun. “Is this line of questioning normal for such an interview?”

  “I’m just trying to get you to open up a little, Commander.”

  “You are wasting your time. I do not…open up.”

  “I’m getting that impression.”

  “Perhaps, if you were to inquire about my opinion of the Jung? That is the point of these interviews, is it not? To convince your people that the Jung are not who they pretend to be?”

  “All right, Commander. Share with us your thoughts about the Jung.”

  Commander Telles looked at the camera again. “The Jung are a well-trained, well-armed, and well-disciplined military force, with hundreds of ships, and millions of men. They are ruthless and clever in battle, and they are quite unforgiving of those who refuse to bow down to them. As warriors, I respect them. As a civilization, I believe they are a disease that needs to be excised before it spreads into every corner of the galaxy and becomes impossible to remove. If your people are not willing to join the Alliance and fight the Jung, then your people deserve what befalls them.”

  Kata stood there, dumbfounded.

  Commander Telles looked back at Kata Mun. “Do you have any further questions, Miss Mun?”

  “Uh…no.”

  “Very well. Good day.”

  Kata stood there speechless as she watched him walk away.

  “We’re out,” Karahl announced as he shut off the porta-cam.

  Kata sighed heavily. “They were not kidding.”

  “Kidding about what?” Karahl wondered.

  “They told me the commander would be a difficult interview.”

  “I don’t know, I think you might have gotten a minute or two of usable footage out of him.”

  Kata looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

  “Okay, maybe ten seconds.”

  * * *

  After being cleared by the guard, Deliza stepped through the door leading into the next bay of the black lab. Ever since she had started working on the Super Falcon project, she had wanted to see what was happening on the other side of the wall. After days of begging, Admiral Dumar had finally granted her access.

  The space was less than half of what her team occupied, but otherwise was identical in appearance. Polished rock walls and floor, an uneven rocky ceiling covered with arrays of lighting panels laid out in perfect rows. There were rolling tool carts and workstations everywhere, as well as several rolling cranes and powered carts. There were at least fifty men and women working in the bay, with most of the activity focused on one particular apparatus, despite the fact that there appeared to be eight more of the same lined up across the bay.

  Deliza approached the long apparatus, around which everything was centered. It was at least twenty-five meters in length, and appeared to have an oval cross-section that was about seven meters wide and five meters in height. The apparatus was separated into five sections, with each section resting on powered lifting carts. Two of the sections had thick canards coming out of all four sides, with thruster ports on all its faces. Its mid-section seemed to be nothing more than simple propellant storage, while its forward-most section, whose cross section was at least a meter larger than the rest of the vessel, appeared to be solid through and through.

  It was the aft section that caught her interest.

  “Can I help you?” a man asked as she walked toward the tail of the apparatus.

  “No, I’m just…”

  “You’re Deliza Ta’Akar, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am,” Deliza answered, her attention still focused on the tail section of the apparatus.

  “Nathan told me about you. I’m Lieutenant Tillardi. Jonathon Tillardi,” he said, holding his hand out in greeting.

  Deliza shook his hand, still without looking at him. “That’s a jump drive, isn’t it?”

  “Admiral Dumar told me you had been asking to visit our lab.”

  “Where’s the reactor?” she asked, still ignoring his attempts at conversation.

  “There isn’t one.”

  Finally, Deliza turned her head. “Where is the power from the jump coming from?” Deliza suddenly looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”

  “Jonathon Tillardi. I’m in charge of this project.”

  “Deliza Ta’Akar,” she replied. “I run the project next door.”

  “Yeah, I heard. I can’t wait to see what you’re doing to those Falcons.”

  Deliza’s attention returned to the apparatus. “You’re building a kinetic kill vehicle…with a mini jump drive, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right,” the lieutenant confirmed with no small amount of pride. “Eight of them, in fact. Nine, including the prototype here,” he explained, gesturing toward the apparatus she couldn’t stop staring at. “We call them ‘Jump KKVs’, or ‘JKKVs’ for short.”

  “Did you build all these from scratch?” she asked with amazement, as she moved closer to the tail of the prototype.

  “Actually, they’re built from unused missiles,” Lieutenant Tillardi explained. “The Aurora still had a few left when her launcher was destroyed, and there’s a few hundred of them stored in an underground bunker on Earth, still waiting for warheads. The Jung never even knew about them.”

  “You still never told me where your mini jump drives are getting their power,” Deliza reminded him.

  “From energy banks, located all along the sides, from stem-to-stern. Eight of them, all together. Each energy bank feeds directly to a single emitter, instead of all of them feeding into a distributive array.”

  “But energy banks are heavy,” Deliza commented.

  “Weight is good, in a KKV,” the lieutenant reminded her. “Granted, the presence of the energy banks doesn’t really increase the destructive potential of the KKV all that much, but every little bit helps, right?”

  “So, how does it work?” she asked.

  “It’s really just a big slug of mass. A ship will get the KKV up to speed along an intercept course, say, about fifty to seventy-five percent the speed of light, and then release it. The prototype’s jump d
rive is only capable of making a single, fixed-distance jump of one light day, but the rest will be programmable with a range of as much as a light month. They just have to be fed their targeting parameters prior to launch.”

  “Why the maneuvering systems?” Deliza wondered. “They couldn’t possibly create enough delta V to alter course at that speed.”

  “Actually, those tanks are empty. We just didn’t bother removing the maneuvering systems. We probably will in the production models.”

  “I see,” Deliza replied. “And the other eight? Are they different prototype variants?”

  “No. The admiral wanted us to get a head start on getting some jump KKVs ready for use in actual attacks, since we’re down to only three of the conventional FTL KKVs, and probably won’t be getting…” The lieutenant stopped mid-sentence, realizing his blunder. “Oh…that was just…rude. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Deliza insisted. “Please, tell me more about jump systems, Lieutenant Tillardi.”

  “Please, call me Tilly.”

  * * *

  Naralena woke with a start as a hand clamped down tightly over her mouth. Her eyes popped open in terror. It was dark, but she was able to make out Gerard’s face not one hundred centimeters from hers.

  Gerard put his index finger against his mouth, indicating she should remain silent. He then slowly removed his hand from her mouth and rolled silently out of bed, picking up his sidearm from the nightstand as he stood.

  In a semi-crouch, he moved across the small cabin, heading for the nearest window.

  Naralena fought back a scream as she saw shadows moving outside the window. Gerard sidestepped immediately, putting his back against the wall as he gestured for Naralena to get out of bed and follow him.

  Naralena moved off the bed as quiet and careful as possible, and moved to the wall behind Gerard.

  The door burst open and two shadowy figures, back-lit by only moonlight, rushed into the room. Gerard fired three shots, two of the red, needle-like bolts of energy striking the man on the right, dropping him instantly. The man on the left returned fire, his energy bolt slamming into the wood wall between Gerard and Naralena.

  Gerard fired again as he crouched down and grabbed the edge of the bed frame and heaved it upward onto its side to provide some cover. Two more men rushed into the room, also firing.

  “Alive!” someone yelled from outside. “I said, alive!”

  The men stopped firing but continued rushing toward Gerard and Naralena as they crouched down behind the mattress. “The window,” he instructed calmly and in a low voice. “Go!” He rose and fired at the charging men as Naralena moved quickly to the window, picking up the chair by the table and heaving it through the glass.

  Gerard continued to fire as Naralena climbed out the window, but his shots seemed to bounce off his attackers.

  “She’s going out the window!” one of the charging men cried out.

  Gerard rose to a fighting stance, taking one of the men diving toward him, and in a smooth twisting motion, guided him past and head first into the wall behind him. The second attacker threw his entire body into Gerard’s chest, knocking him backward. As he fell, Gerard pushed the muzzle of his weapon into the attacker’s side, feeling the give of his left flank and pulled the trigger.

  The man screamed out in anguish as they both fell against the wall. Gerard, his weapon knocked from his hand, pushed the injured man off of him to his left, rolling right to retrieve his weapon. As he scrambled for his sidearm, he could hear the footfalls of others as they rushed into the room. His fingers touched the handle of his weapon, and he felt a sudden, tremendous pain in the back of his head.

  Naralena fell to the ground, rolling several times down the small incline along the backside of the cabin. She could hear men yelling in Jung, “She went out the window! Quickly!”

  She scrambled to her feet and began running down the dimly lit dirt path, not knowing where it led. She could hear men running after her…not far behind, and the voices, yelling in Jung.

  “She’s getting away!”

  “She’s headed for the pond!”

  “Two right, two left, we’ll follow up the middle! Do not let her get away!”

  She stumbled, falling to her knees, tearing her trousers… Pain, in her knees and palms. She got back up, hardly missing a step, and continued running as fast as she could, struggling to see the trail in front of her in the darkness. The trees gave way to a beach. She was in the open.

  “There she is!”

  The dirt gave way to sand. No, no, no… The sound of a single energy weapon shot and a sudden burning sensation in her right leg. She fell, tumbling forward, her right leg no longer working. She lost her balance on her way down, spinning to her left and falling into the water.

  Foul smelling water filled her mouth as she tried to breathe. Her head broke the surface. She coughed, she gasped. She was underwater again. Hands grabbed her. Pain in her right leg. More hands reaching, pain in her upper back and head as she was struck repeatedly. Then…

  CHAPTER NINE

  “You sure this thing’s not gonna blow up on me?” Josh wondered as the technicians finished strapping him into the Super Falcon prototype’s cockpit. “This ain’t a simulator, you know.”

  “It’s not going to blow up on you,” Deliza insisted from the top of the boarding ladder next to the Super Falcon’s cockpit. “Just be gentle with her. Try to fly her like a…”

  “If you say ‘normal pilot’, so help me… I got no problem punchin’ a princess.”

  “Stop it,” Deliza replied, taking him in jest as she turned to climb down. She paused a moment, looking back at him over her shoulder. “You were joking, weren’t you?”

  Josh smiled at her, saying nothing.

  “Don’t fuck up, kid!” Marcus called from the deck a few meters away.

  Deliza climbed down the ladder as the Super Falcon’s primary reactors began to spin up, their slow whine building with each passing second. The deck hands moved the boarding ladder away.

  Josh watched his systems display as the power levels climbed. “If this thing ain’t gonna blow up on me, then how come you’re not coming with me, Loki?” he asked over his helmet comms.

  “Uh… Procedures?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He glanced at his power levels again. “Power’s up, closing her up,” he announced as he activated the canopy.

  “You’re clear on deck, sir, good to roll,” the ground crew chief announced over the comms.

  “Thanks, Chief.” Josh added another channel to his comms as his canopy came down and locked into place. “Karuzara Control, Su-per Falcon, ready for departure, bay zero,” he called as he released his parking brake and flipped the selector switch to change his control stick from flight to taxi mode.

  “Su-per Falcon,” the controller mimicked, mocking Josh’s initial callup, “Karuzara Control. Clear for direct departure, bay zero. On departure, fly one seven zero, four up relative for Earth orbit intercept. Be advised your test area is clear of all traffic.”

  “Super Falcon, cleared for departure, bay zero, one seven zero and four up, and I copy the area is clear of all traffic.” Josh pushed his control stick forward, sending power to the electric motors that drove all four pairs of wheels. The ship moved forward and turned to the right as Josh pushed the control stick to the side.

  A minute later, he brought the Super Falcon to a stop inside the transfer airlock. He activated his parking brake again and set his control stick back to flight mode, as the big door behind his ship began to close.

  Josh cycled through his screens one at a time as he powered up his engines and maneuvering systems. Without Loki in the seat behind him, he would have to keep an eye on a lot more than just his flight data displays, especially since he wa
s flying a ship that had just had all its engines and internal systems completely reorganized. Although he knew the technicians in the black lab were there because they were the best, it only took one nut that wasn’t tightened properly, or one valve not calibrated to spec… Josh had joked many times that he could easily operate the Falcon without Loki’s help, but this was one time he wished he didn’t have to, at least not this Super Falcon.

  “Telemetry looks good, Josh,” Loki’s voice called over Josh’s helmet comms. “Engines and maneuvering systems are online and at normal power.”

  Josh glanced through his canopy into the transfer airlock. The interior of the bay was bathed in red light, indicating it was depressurizing. Finally, the outer doors split down the center and began retracting into the walls. As they parted, they revealed a long, dark tunnel, lit only by four rows of dim lights, outlining the interior dimensions of the tunnel to guide the pilot during transition. Since bay zero was on the outboard side of the black lab complex, and did not open into the center spaceport cavern of the Karuzara asteroid, its exit tunnel to the outside was considerably shorter. It was also the only tunnel to the outside that was completely straight, and Josh could make out the stars at the far end.

  “Okay, nice and easy, Josh,” Deliza reminded him as the outer doors reached their fully open position.

  “Airlock gravity down to twenty-five percent,” Loki announced.

  Josh applied a tiny burst of upward thrust, lifting the Super Falcon from the deck. As the ship rose slowly, he applied a bit of forward thrust as well, imparting forward motion to get his ship out of the airlock and into the much wider transition tunnel.

  Josh looked up as the outer door threshold slid over him and aft. He looked down at his flight data display, watching as the dotted line that represented the threshold slid clear and behind him. “Here we go,” he muttered as he eased the throttle forward.

  The Super Falcon began to accelerate, slowly at first, picking up speed more rapidly as he advanced his throttle. “What the hell,” he mumbled, a smile creeping onto his face. He pushed the throttle forward to nearly twenty-five percent. The rows of lights along the interior of the tunnel quickly turned into solid streaks as he blasted down the tunnel and out the far end.