Chaos Tactics (The Reckless Chronicles Book 1)

by Trent Falls

  “That’s not really important, John.” Troy responded. “This is just some follow up questions on that report.”

  “Troy. That was, what, eighteen years ago I think. Before I was even a Marshall on Proxima 5.”

  “Sometimes people want to know. Clear up some questions.”

  “Bullshit! What is it really?” John demanded.

  Troy gave John a long look, silently deciding something in his mind. “Sol Tracking has lost communication with Dekker’s outpost on Kappa Cetti Three.” Troy explained. “They also scanned subspace and found two tachyon bursts located near the planet, calculated around a window about four days ago. Long-range scans also noted possible Cherenkov radiation flashes.”

  “A ship exiting and reentering warp.” John knew the telltale signs. “It would have to be a pretty big ship for you guys to detect it this far out.”

  “We think it might have been a Xen battleship or carrier. A big one!” Troy noted, taking a moment to look around to see if anyone could hear.

  The students around them went about their business on the sunny campus.

  “The Xen?” John looked at Troy blankly. “You can’t be serious?”

  “We’re not sure yet.” Troy answered.

  “That’s insane!” John pursed his lips skeptically. “That would be a serious treaty violation.”

  “We’re looking into it fully, trust me.” Troy stated. “I’d also ask that you not pass this information on to anyone else.”

  “Who am I gonna tell?” John smirked. “No one would believe me anyway. Hell, I don’t believe it! Do you have real tracking on this confirming a Xen battleship?”

  “We have an investigation team en route to the planet to check.” Troy stated. “There is something else, though. We’ve been picking up some chatter from long distance rips of Xen subspace streams. They seem to mention the name of a Captain Quan Shin and his ship, the Ao Shun, a lot. Shin is one of their top naval commanders and the Ao Shun is one of their four largest carriers. Xen forces along the border have reorganized. They’ve also sent numerous scout ships into The Breach.”

  “Scout ships? What the hell?” John wondered aloud.

  “It sounds ridiculous but EEF Intel is coming up with the same thing every time they try to sift through the data.” Troy said. “They think there’s a good possibility that Shin’s stolen his ship. Either that or he’s seriously gone off-mission enough to piss of his superiors and to launch a massive search effort.”

  “This Shin character stole a Xen carrier?” John’s skepticism was growing by leaps and bounds. “Come on! His crew would have…” John glanced around and lowered his tone of voice, “…his crew would have killed him before he could do something like that.”

  “We’re not sure of exactly what’s happening.” Troy explained. “Over the last few months, there’s been reports of Xen scout vessels buzzing through systems believed to once be inhabited by the Norn.”

  “And that would be most inhabitable systems if you ask any Norn conspiracy theorists.” John noted sharply.

  “Possible correlation of this information and Dekker’s… expedition suggests a possible connection to the Norn.” Troy said flatly. His tone was almost dismissive of his own serious attitude a minute earlier, as though he had changed his mind and decided on lighter conversation. “I’m just following up here.”

  “My honest opinion,” John began, “is that the Norn are nothing more than a bedtime story for kids. Xian Lei, Glenn Eusice, and Sheryl Gi invented warp drive. They got a bunch of millionaires to join their cult, built a few very large starships, and decided to migrate to the stars. That’s where the Xen and warp drive began. The Norn was an imaginary scapegoat, invented by men who were bitter that the fact that faster than light travel was discovered by Chinese scientists. If I were in the ESF or EEF I’d be more worried that the Xen may just be preparing to trash the treaty and that they’re planning an attack.”

  “We are looking into that possibility too.” Troy stated. “Intel we have on their status suggests that’s not happening. They don’t have a large enough ground-force army to attack our inner systems.”

  “If there’s anything that life’s taught me it’s that anything’s possible.” John took another bite of his sandwich.

  “It’s probably nothing.” Troy stated.

  Both men paused to eat a bit.

  “Hey, how’s that niece of yours?” Troy asked.

  “She’s good.” John turned his eyes up slowly at Tory. “She graduates high school this year. She’ll probably go to UCF or Florida State.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear about what happened to your sister.” Troy said with genuine sincerity.

  “Yeah, me to.” John responded.

  “How’s it been for you?” Troy took a sip from his bottle of lemonade. “Parenting?”

  John chucked. “I never thought I’d be, like, someone’s dad.” John took a breath. “It’s odd. I mean, I try to make sure Jules remembers who her real parents are. And it helps that she was a little older when I returned. I try to still be the fun uncle, but I still have to remember to be the parent.”

  “Well, at least you didn’t have to deal with diapers and terrible two’s.” Troy grinned.

  “You settle down and have kids?” John asked.

  “Yeah, two of them.” Troy smiled broadly. He pulled a small hand-held holo projector out from the inside pocket of his jacket. He held up the device and activated it. The slightly transparent hologram of two preteen children hovered over his hand. They were a boy and a girl. The girl was taller with curly blonde hair. The boy had a crew cut and looked very slightly like Troy when he was in the Marines. “Janet and Edward. She’s eight. Ed is five.”

  “Nice.” John smiled back at his old friend.

  “Yeah, they keep you on your toes.” Troy deactivated the holo projector and put it back in his pocket. “Is… Julie?” Troy began, trying to remember the real name of John’s niece.

  “Yeah, it’s Julie.” John verified.

  “You said she’s going off to college?”

  John took a breath. Troy was a dear friend and had saved his ass on many an occasion, but he was a bit wary of the personal questions about his niece, particularly from an ESF agent.

  “Yeah, she’s hoping to stay in-state.” John answered. “I’d like her to, anyway.”

  “I didn’t think you would ever be a parent. She’s going to be moving out soon. What are you gonna do then?” Troy took a bit from his sandwich.

  “Wendy made good money. And she was pretty smart in saving for the future.” John replied. “I was able to buy our condo unit. This doesn’t look like much but it pays well.” John looked indirectly at the campus around them. “Between her life insurance and the small trust fund her mom set up, and her dad’s life policy from the military, Julie’s set up okay. At least for the next few years anyway.”

  “When did you get the history degree?” Troy asked.

  “I started through online study when I was on Proxima and finished up here. History was the easiest route, I figured. We read damn near enough books on down time during the war anyway. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought.” John replied. He finished his sandwich and crumpled the wrapper in his hands.

  Troy finished up as well. He capped off his lemonade and threw his trash in a nearby bin.

  “Well, it was great catching up.” Troy pulled a white business card out of his jacket. “I wish I could stay longer but I have a few other appointments in town.” Troy set his business card down, tapping on it a few times with his right index finger. “I’d like to maybe ask you a few more questions in the future, if I can.”

  “About the Norn?” John replied with a facetious grin.

  “Maybe.” Troy grinned back.

  “I could come to your house and read you a bedtime story too.” John smirked has he held up Troy’s business card to examine it.

  “Cute!” Troy chuckled.

  John stood up and faced Troy. Wh
atever Troy was up to, John tried to remember that Troy was still a close friend; a brother Marine.

  “Hey, it was great seeing you!” John noted as he hugged Troy again.

  “Likewise.” Troy grinned. He pointed to the card after they parted. “Keep in touch!”

  ESF Agent David Troy smiled back over his shoulder at his old comrade-in-arms before walking away. The man in the black suit walked out along a path leading back to the main parking garage. John kept his eyes on Troy for a moment before sitting back down on the bench.

  John ate one of his potato chips.

  He had just lied to an ESF Agent about the Norn.

  The inside of a Xen warship was fairly simplistic, yet had a sort of beauty in its user-friendly design. Corridors were wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side comfortably. Junctions had 10” x 14” console panels recessed into the walls, allowing crewmembers to access a number of functions. It was said that the Captain could even pilot the vessel in a limited fashion from any one of the consoles.

  The halls were lit by two rows of overhead fluorescent light tracks, casting the interior in a crisp white. The air, like everything else on the ship, was remarkably clean.

  Crewmembers were uniformed in dark blue. They passed Scott Euler in infrequent intervals as he walked, moving on to whatever duty station or task they were assigned to.

  Most of the Xen bore a strong resemblance to their original Asian lineage. Certainly, there were a few genetic deviations, either by the emergence of recessed non-Asian genes or by intentional genetic manipulation. The twenty two year old female lieutenant that passed Euler had distinct Asian features with California blonde hair.

  The doorway ahead was guarded by two burly Xen soldiers in full combat armor. Each had an S-9 submachine gun strapped over their shoulders and prisoner control batons strapped to their sides. The dark blue plate armor seemed covered in a dark fabric, keeping them from clapping together with movement to reduce sound.

  The big steel doors ahead were marked in Xen text with the words “Detention Area.” Xen text seemed to be a cross of Simplified Chinese, English, and Cyrillic.

  “Euler requesting access to prisoner twelve.” Euler noted to one of the guards in the Xen language.

  “One moment.” The guard replied in the same language. He raised his right arm up, tapping on his wrist computer with his left index finger. A small screen confirmed Euler’s access level. “Very well.” The guard turned to the wall console. He entered in a long code sequence, initiating a loud clank from within the steel door. The mag locks for the thick stockade doors opened.

  Euler stepped into the small lobby beyond, where another duty officer sat inside a small office set into the wall. Once confirmed, Euler turned right down a narrow hall where six cell doors waited; three on either side of the corridor. Euler walked to the last cell on the right and entered his own personal code. The thick steel four foot wide door slid open, revealing a small stateroom.

  There was relatively little in the way of décor in the cell. The bed was a simplistic single mattress raised on a seemingly solid pedestal from the deck. A small monitor was set into the far wall, enclosed behind a two inch thick sheet of clear polycarbonate glass. Control of the monitor was through a limited voice-activated menu. The Xen, it seemed, gave at least basic creature comforts to their prisoners. The monitor in Max Dekker’s cell was off.

  Dekker was laying in bed when Euler entered. It was clear by the red marks on his aged face that he had been hit more than once. A pair of reddish purple circles marked his head at his temples.

  “Captain Dekker.” Euler greeted his former CO with an informal tone. “I see they’ve tried using the mind reader on you.”

  Dekker shook his head, still in a haze. “You mean that stupid machine that gave me a headache?” Dekker groaned.

  “They’re still working on it.” Euler noted. “It’s not very effective. I think the Xen are just interested in using you for a test subject for the machine.” Euler paused to look around the bland cell. “If you ask me, it would be more effective to hook two leads up to a fourteen volt power cell and extract the information that way.”

  “What happened to you, Euler?” Dekker asked weakly. “You used to be a good man. Principled.”

  “I still am, Captain.” Euler stated. “After the war I came to one realization. An epiphany really. The Xen and us are the same. The war. The idea that it’s ‘them or us’… it’s all bullshit! If you think about it from the perspective of an alien species, the Norn for example, you can see we were only killing our own people in the war. We were killing our own kind in the human species.”

  “Nations are made of men. Sometimes nations go to war.” Dekker replied weakly. “It just happens sometimes. We have a long way to go, I think, before we can view the human race like that Scott.”

  “I don’t believe that anymore. Change needs to be made – and change requires someone to have a different perspective.” Euler added in a chilled calm. “What we really needed to know, and Captain Shin agrees with me, is that we need to find out why. Why did the Norn give our ancestors the secret of warp drive?”

  “Why don’t you ask your new friends?” Dekker asked, sitting up in bed. “I’m sure the answer might be in one of their own archives.”

  “Remarkably, there isn’t any record of any ‘extraterrestrial’ meeting.” Euler noted. “Even the Xen high Council would agree that their own records are suspect. The ET’s made the mistake of giving their secrets to people who worked within the Chinese Government. The Chinese have known, all the way back to their first Emperor, that the control of information is a key factor in the retention of power. For the Xen to admit that they were given the keys to the universe would be to disqualify the greatest discovery of humankind, not to mention to diminish their ‘Great Union of Humanity’.”

  “Maybe your ideas about the Norn are a bunch of bullshit!” Dekker replied. “Maybe the Xen DID discover warp drive. Maybe they DID take their ‘like-minded people’ into the great void of space.”

  “Maybe.” Euler conceded. “It’s possible. We need to know.”

  “Why doesn’t the crew kill you?”

  “I’m sorry?” Euler was confused.

  “The Xen surely can’t be sanctioning this mission.” Dekker noted. “Whatever the Captain of this vessel thinks, or even his senior staff, he can’t have free reign on this vessel. If the crew were to find out…”

  “The crew already knows what’s going on.” Euler stated. “And to some extent, this mission is approved by the Xen High Council, though not officially. The crew has an unwavering level of obedience. It’s burned into them in their training. The crew of this vessel will follow their commanders to the very gates of hell.”

  “And the rest of the Xen Navy? Are they allowing a full-fledged carrier, with an entire fighter wing, go anywhere at the Captain’s discretion?”

  “The Xen Navy is unaware of what we’re doing. Even if they did, they wouldn’t stop us.” Euler explained. “For whatever reason, there are those in the High Council that want us to reestablish contact with the Norn… or establish it… or whatever. If they did help the original Xen, one thing’s clear; the Norn haven’t talked to anyone since.”

  “This is a ridiculous waste of time.” Dekker grunted, getting weak again. “Not to mention the lives of the people you’ve killed!”

  “We fought a war with the Xen for seven years for no apparent reason, Captain. A good number of my friends died in that war, as did scores of civilians - innocent women and children too. What’s a few more dead compared to that?” Euler replied sharply. “We’re all the same species.” Euler took a step towards the door. “It’s time we’ve found out the truth. To take our proper place in the universe. What we might learn from the Norn and gain from their technology vastly outweighs ANY loss of life! Humanity wouldn’t want for land, or resources, or food any longer.”

  Dekker relaxed back in his bed. His head, propped up, looked lazily back at E
uler.

  “Rest up, Mister Dekker.” Euler noted, opening the door remotely. “The intelligence officer has another meeting scheduled with you in a few hours.”

  Euler left the cell, allowing the thick steel door to slide shut behind him. A cluster of three metal clanks noted the reactivation of the mag locks. Euler walked back down the narrow corridor and left the detention area.

  Chapter 4

  It was pouring in Boynton Beach. The sky was a faint gray, with heavy storm clouds covering much of Palm Beach county to block out the afternoon sun. Thunder clapped loudly, rumbling in a hellacious manner through the roof and walls of the Chinese restaurant. Summer had all but arrived, bringing with it the typical afternoon thunderstorm common to South Florida.

  Julie Stevens poked at her chicken lo mein. She sat across a white linen covered table from her uncle, who was eating cashew chicken and drinking a tall glass of Kirin Ichiban beer.

  “Where’s graduation again?” John asked Julie indirectly.

  “It’s at the Wellington Civic Center.” Julie answered.

  “Oh yeah.” John smirked. “Sorry. Guess I’m getting old and forgetting things. You told me that last week.”

  “It’s okay.” Julie replied. “I know you’re busy this time of year.”

  “Yeah.” John exhaled. “I already got my first batch of papers to go through.”

  “Are you finished?” Julie asked.

  “Just about. I think I can get them all into the system tonight.”

  Silence passed between them as they both ate a few bites of food.

  “Did you ever think you’d end up a history professor?” Julie asked.

  John finished the bite of food he was chewing on before answering. “No. Not at all.”

  “Did you always want to be a soldier?”

  “Yeah. I guess so. I thought so anyway. It’s hard to explain. It turned out to be a lot like I expected in some ways and completely different in others.” John thought. It was an interesting question. He remembered being gung ho about joining the Marines when he was in high school. Looking back on it from the perspective of an adult was far different. “I figured it would be my only shot to see the galaxy.”