“There it is,” Ja’is announced, his voice hiding his mixed feelings. There was definitely something strange about this particular part of the job.
“All right. Layson, Deacon. Take out the sensor array. And time it for when Adaria and I blast that antenna off. Hellesis, you fly in behind us and make sure it’s down. This whole thing’ll be for nothing if they get a distress message off before we’ve disabled this thing.”
With perfect precision, the fighters split up, Layson and Deacon blasting the sensor array into fine particles, while Ja’is and Adaria tore the antenna free with well placed shots at its base. While the rest of the fighters stayed back, Hellesis flew in over the damaged section but no further shots were necessary. The communication station wasn’t going to be transmitting again anytime soon.
“Well done, Sigma squadron,” Ja’is said. “Commander Materson would be proud. Actually, he probably wouldn’t but you know what I mean.” He switched the frequency to let Alia and the others in on the conversation. “Alia. Ms. Tellashi. You’re good to go. We’ll be standing by up here. Give us a call if you need us.”
“Will do,” Alia replied.
“Thank you, Sigma squadron,” Ms. Tellashi’s more formal response came. “Over.”
“Well, they won’t be able to alert Halion now, at least,” Alia said into the communicator. “Did Lady Valinski manage to get anything through beforehand?”
There was a pause. Alia glanced at Carla but her sister merely shrugged, bracing herself for whatever this piece of unwelcome news was going to turn out to be.
“Well, the admiral’s communication tap worked out,” Ms. Tellashi replied. “And something did come through. But it wasn’t what we expected.”
“So no message telling Lord Ilian to get out then?”
“Well, sort of, but she didn’t call him directly. The message that came through was for someone called Aleida. And this system’s station was only a relay for the transmission. Anyway, Lady Valinski told her to get Lord Ilian out of there and to keep him out of sight until she could ‘sort this out’.”
“Uh huh,” Alia said. Carla gave her a puzzled look.
“She then told this Aleida woman to meet Lord Ilian at the, quote, drop-off point,” Ms. Tellashi finished. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“A little,” Alia frowned. “I have no idea what this ‘drop-off’ point could be but I have a feeling I might know who this Aleida is.”
“I thought you’ve never been here before.”
“I haven’t,” Alia replied. “But I just thought she might be someone I’ve heard about back in the Federation.”
“Who?”
“A mercenary for hire and an occasional bounty hunter. She does the odd hit job every now and then too. And she’s very good.”
“If these dissidents are contracting people from the Federation to help them out, then they’ve probably been at this for a while,” Ms. Tellashi said, not sounding any happier than Alia or Carla felt at that point. “Although, there are a lot of Aleidas. The name’s probably just coincidental.”
“I hope so,” Alia replied.
“Welcome home, Maia,” Lord Erama beamed as he embraced his adopted daughter.
“Hello, Father,” Maia said, smiling back.
“And you have brought your fine young man with you too, I see,” her father said as he saw Zak behind her and extended his hand to him. “I trust you are well, Zak?”
“All the better for seeing you, sir,” Zak replied and Lord Erama laughed pleasantly as they shook hands.
Maia couldn’t help but feel a little guilty as she watched. Father never said anything about it but it seemed pretty obvious that he preferred Zak over Asten as a suitable match for one of his daughters. Selina knew of course, and she said she didn’t care, but it still made Maia feel as if she were somehow displacing her sister in their father’s eyes.
However, right then there were more pressing things to think about.
“Well,” Lord Erama said as they entered his home, “I’ve had some time to think about that transmission you sent me. Funny that you sent that ahead when you were going to be here in an hour or so anyway. I’m getting the sense that Admiral Roth has got you all in a hurry.”
“Well, he seems to be in a hurry,” Maia explained. “I think he’s worried about forcing the hand of these dissidents, whoever they are.”
“Expediting the inevitable Levarc attacks,” her father nodded, following the line of reasoning. “And if the supreme commander of the Federation navy is wrong about this second of Kingdom of his?”
Zak shrugged. “Then no harm’s done. And the Phalamkian people will be credited with bringing an outlying system into the emerging United Frontier that could well become an important tie to the Minstrahn Empire. Contingent on the Empire not collapsing on itself of course.”
“You should be a diplomat,” Lord Erama told him with a wry tone in his voice.
Zak laughed. “No thanks. I wouldn’t give up the cockpit for anything.” He then gave Maia a little smile. “Well, almost anything.”
Lord Erama looked fondly at the two of them for a moment before ushering them into the living room. He poured some refreshments while they made themselves comfortable and sat down across from them. “Sorry, it’s just us today. Your mother is seeing some of her old friends back on Alandra.”
“That sounds nice,” Maia said. “Why aren’t you with her?”
“I was waiting to see if you two might drop in,” her father told her. “No, I was a little busy. Fortunately though, I’m now free to deal with this and if it goes ahead - and I think it should - then I can probably get a team of engineers and the necessary resources together within a week, a fortnight at the most.”
“That’s fast,” Zak told him.
“Well, that’s just the raw equipment,” he explained. “Transporting it there, assessing the best construction site and assembling the shield generator will be another task altogether.” He looked at Maia with a little concern. “How bad is it?”
Maia shook her head with a sigh. “It’s indescribable. It really is.”
“I don’t understand it,” her father said. “From what your birth mother told you and from what you then told us, it sounded like the Levarc were really just using it as an outpost. Laying waste to it before they left just seems senseless.”
“Many of the things they did seemed senseless,” Maia pointed out. “However, people survived. My uncle survived.”
It was a rare sight to see Lord Erama taken by surprise.
“Your uncle?”
Maia nodded. “I met him. He’s the Chief Commander of the Felariam Defense Network.”
“That is remarkable, isn’t it?” her father replied, shaking his head. “Did your mother ever mention him?”
“She might have but I don’t really remember. However, when I mentioned my father was Minstrahn, he instantly knew who I was. And when I asked him whether he knew my mother and father, he told me that my mother was his sister.”
“I should very much like to meet him,” Lord Erama said after a few quiet moments.
“You’d like him,” Maia told him, a little quickly to stop her voice from wavering. Her visit to Felarias had stirred a lot of feelings.
“I’m sure I will,” her father replied, standing up. “In the meantime though, I’ll have to discuss this with a few more people and see if they see it the same way we do.”
“Would it help if we came along?” Maia suggested.
Her father smiled. “It might.”
For a few thrilling heartbeats, the night air rushed over the cockpit. Major Straasvërg couldn’t hear the howling from inside but he could imagine it. As he plummeted to the forested landscape beneath him, the light from over the horizon disappeared with the curvature of the planet and soon it was time to initiate the thrusters to slow his descent.
Gripping the controls, he ignited them and felt the gentle deceleration as he increased the power. To suddenly star
t the thrusters up at full capacity would flip the battleroid after such a long free fall and it had been a point that had been repeated often during the training of each operator. However, after a number of missions both simulated and real, Straasvërg could bring it down with professional ease. In fact, if he wanted to, he could probably show off and start the deceleration a little later but he never did since he could hardly tell his men off for pulling reckless stunts if he pulled them himself.
This time, he and his squad brought their battleroids down more slowly than usual because although the battleroids were not large, they were big enough to get tangled in heavy vegetation. There was also the matter of stealth. The pirates had probably seen their descent - but unless they were running scanners constantly, it’d be unlikely they’d know exactly where Straasvërg and his men set down. Straasvërg wanted to keep it that way a little longer.
Also, he had no idea if any of these Araenids were likely to be around. After reading the Minstrahn report that General Kellahav had given him, he realized they weren’t something to be flippant about. In fact, he had opted to leave the ground troops on their ships in orbit because of them.
“All right, men. Stay alert,” he said as he adjusted his scanners and looked out at the evening gloom. He activated the night-view filter and marveled as a sheen seemed to spread across the cockpit. Impenetrable gloom became the trunks of trees and the familiar shapes of other battleroids. Thrusters swiveled down, their hydraulic spring legs realigning to simulate bipedal walking and their clawed blaster arms in line with the cockpits. Through skilful manipulation of the natural light sources and a series of filters, everything appeared more or less in its natural color to allow the battleroid pilots to see their surroundings better.
Suddenly, everything included a massive creature that leapt out of the trees and tackled one of the battleroids to the ground. It was a long necked semi-bipedal brute that moved with considerable speed, balanced by a long snake-like tail. It was also much the same size and build as the battleroid it had just tackled, except it was about seven meters longer on account of that tail. It also carried itself in the same manner, leaning forward with its forearms swinging beneath it or, as they were right now, attempting to tear the battleroid to pieces.
It was succeeding too.
“Hold tight!” Straasvërg ordered as he moved in. The ‘armor’ that the Minstrahn report had referred to wasn’t some kind of exoskeleton as he had guessed before he had read it but incredibly thick skin. He fired a shot into its side that would blow a fighter out of the sky and it reeled back, screeching in pain. However, it was still very much alive and now it was angry and coming straight for him.
“The temples!” he shouted to the others as he gripped the thruster controls, launching himself backwards and some twenty feet into the air to get out of its crazed grasp.
A moment later, one of his men got the killing shot in and the creature crashed into the undergrowth. It convulsed in a couple of brief spasms, putting everyone on edge a little longer, and then it was still.
“The forest is interfering with the scanners,” one of his men complained.
“Acknowledged,” Straasvërg replied, tapping the communicator. “Shuttle?”
“Copy,” came the crisp answer. “We saw it.”
“My man’s machine has been disabled,” he told them. “Get low and keep an eye on the forest. Give me a heads up if there are any of those things nearby. A ten kilometer radius if you can.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the comm clicked off, Straasvërg addressed the rest of the men. “All right. Move out and form a defensive perimeter. Lieutenant Keis, is your canopy intact?”
“Can’t tell for sure,” Keis replied from his battered vehicle. “I can’t get a systems check running.”
“Copy that,” Straasvërg replied. They couldn’t risk carrying him back up in his battleroid, not with the possibility of a cockpit breach, so they only had one option. “Shuttle?”
“We read you.”
“Anything?”
“Nothing in the prescribed radius or for another eight kilometers.”
Straasvërg thought about it. The creatures were fast but they wouldn’t be that fast. “Good enough,” he replied. “I want you to come down and stay above the canopy. Have you ever done a mid-air personnel transfer before?”
“Once.”
“Good. You’re going to do one now.”
The operation went smoothly, all things considered. Two battleroids lifted the damaged vehicle above the forest, then Keis popped his cockpit open and climbed across into the shuttle, which hovered with remarkable steadiness, given the fact the pilot had only done this once before. Straasvërg was impressed.
Once the transfer was made, the damaged battleroid was carried back out of the atmosphere for repairs and the shuttle ascended to resume aerial surveillance duty.
“All right,” Straasvërg said, eyeing the forest before them and checking his surroundings against the readings from his instruments. “According to the scanners, these marauders are five kilometers ahead.”
“If they’re stranded here with dwindling power supplies, how are they keeping those creatures out?” someone asked.
Straasvërg frowned. “It’s a good question. And if they’ve got security systems in place that can take care of those things, then they might be a danger to us as well. Shuttle, can you get us any more on their encampment? What defenses can you make out?”
There was a pause while the pilot risked a closer fly-over.
“Nothing,” came the puzzled reply. “The only thing I can make out in the way of defensive perimeters are lines of ordinary wood fires.”
Straasvërg shook his head. Was it possible that a creature that could tear an armored machine apart could be scared off by a simple little fire?
“Okay. Thanks, shuttle,” he replied. “All right, everyone. Let’s move in.”
As one, the battleroids realigned their leg modules to leap above the canopy of the trees. Then, swiveling the thrusters to project them forward, they ignited them and propelled themselves into the clearings where the stranded pirates were camping.
Ragged men tried to run for the woods but found their escape routes cut off by the bipedal machines.
On one of the dead hulks that had been the pirates’ ships, a large turret swiveled towards one of the battleroids. Sensing that a demonstration was in order, Straasvërg blew it away and then proceeded to blast the carcass of the ship into melted scrap as well, although it was pretty much scrap to begin with. Still though, as the force of the blasts sent pieces of debris tumbling through the air and to the other side of the encampment, the pirates stopped running. They had got the message.
“Basilisk pirates, you are under arrest,” he announced over the in-built loudspeaker. “If there is anyone who does not wish to comply, you will remain here indefinitely. And if there is anyone who wishes to resist, then you won’t remain anywhere.”
He didn’t have to wait long for the pirates to move into the center of the clearing and lay down their arms. There weren’t that many, he saw. Fewer than thirty. He wondered how many of the others had died when they were stranded here or from deprivations during their isolation, and how many had been torn apart by those Araenids.
Then he just had a burning desire to get off the planet. “All right, home,” he said, contacting the Adjudicator, “the Basilisks are under our guard. Send down the heavy shuttle.”
The prisoner glanced at the armed guard standing behind him and suppressed the instinct to attack him. His hands were manacled for one thing, and all those long months living in fear of those giant monsters had rattled away his nerves anyway. Also, he didn’t like the fact that this interrogation appeared to be in some kind of conference room. That suggested to him that head games were on the cards.
Then the door opposite opened and the opening was flanked by two more guards, sporting the latest in Federation ground troop weaponry. Just as well he hadn’t
tried anything, he decided. He hadn’t surrendered just to get himself killed. Maybe he could talk his way out of this, thank these people for rescuing him and ask them if they could drop him off somewhere in the Frontier systems on their way back to the Federation. And what was this task force doing on the far side of the Minstrahn Empire anyway? Was it possible they had wanted to find the Basilisks badly enough that they’d blazed through an entirely independent sector to do it?
Sweating, he tried to calm himself. The fact that whoever was conducting this interrogation still hadn’t shown up was getting on his nerves but it gave him time to think. Whoever had ordered them to surrender had called them the Basilisks, that was true, but they might have just been playing a hunch. Or had they? After all, there was no way a Federation task force should have been able to find them on the far side of the Minstrahn Empire in the first place.
The door opened again and a stately man in a general’s insignia entered the room.
“Ravari Areshnav,” the man said conversationally as he sat across from him, placing a pad on the table. “I’ve just been brushing up on a little recent history. Apparently, the order to shoot you on sight still stands in the Marno system. Since you were never caught until now, I suspected that would probably still be in place. However, I was surprised to learn that there are five systems that have issued warrants for your arrest. I had been under the impression there were only four.”
He switched the pad off and put it away. “Anyway, it was all very interesting.”
Areshnav opened his mouth to make some kind of defense and the man closed his eyes in an imitation of a grimace. “Kindly refrain from wasting my time by denying this, Mr. Areshnav. I know full well who you are. I cleaned up one of your messes myself.”
“Well, what a pleasure it is to meet you at last, General Kellahav,” Areshnav said.
“Glad you remember me,” Kellahav replied with a slight smile. “Let’s see if you can remember anything else. While I was in command of Blackguard Squadron, your people and the other pirate gangs had a rather blunt opinion of me. I believe one of the things you all said was that I was a psychotic. What was the other one?
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