Ragnarok: Colonization, intrigue and betrayal.

by Andrew Claymore

  Ragnarok

  Published by A.G. Claymore

  Edited by B. MacFadyen

  Copyright 2021 A.G. Claymore

  This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places, Incidents and Brands are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of any products referenced in this work of fiction which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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  Carpe Vinum

  The Long Night

  Outpost 56038

  Kusha removed her robe and folded it carefully. She smiled sadly, setting it on the shelf behind her stasis pod. It would be dust if she ever saw it again – neatly folded dust. An old habit that would end in decay – a perfect metaphor for her people.

  It felt so surreal. A moment like this… it seemed to call for some kind of ceremony, a send-off…

  But there was nobody else left.

  She sat on the edge of the pod and tied back her hair. She did it slowly, far more slowly than she’d ever done her hair before. A tear emerged from her left eye and traced a path down her cheek.

  She left it there, turning to look at the other four pods in the room. They were silent, efficiently feeding energy to their field generators. Inside, four of her people already lay waiting.

  She was the last...

  Angry Breakfast

  Red Earth Cafe

  Gleb fumbled with the door handle. He managed to get it open and tried to scramble out the passenger side but he was trapped. Luna, still behind the steering wheel, sighed at his predicament.

  “You rammed your own ship into the enemy at Kish but you can’t handle a short drive down the 805 without losing your shit?” She reached over and pressed the release on his seat belt.

  She got out, closed her door and walked around the back of her car to shut the door he’d left open in his rush to the sidewalk. “If my brothers could see you right now,” she needled him.

  “You people are insane!” he insisted. “Going that fast in a little wheeled coffin with no inertial dampeners or shielding! Nothing but a piece of cloth to hold you in place when some idiot swerves in front of you…”

  “You damn near got us arrested,” she cut him off. “I thought that cop would pull us over for sure when he saw you waving your damn ray-gun!”

  “It’s not a ray-gun,” he grumbled, crossing his arms and looking down the street. “It fires projectiles.”

  “You might own the planet now but you still don’t know a damned thing about it.” She stalked up to him, edging him back against the front window of the diner.

  She tugged at the front of her uniform. “Because that cop saw a Naval officer behind the wheel, we got lucky and you ended up looking like a fool with a cosplay prop. If I were in civvies, he’d have seen a Latina and a gun.”

  He opened his mouth but his fianceé’s scowl warned him just in time and he pressed his lips tightly together.

  Like many Humans in the empire, he was a reader but he stayed out of his friends’ minds. It wasn’t like he needed to look inside Luna’s head to know what was on her mind anyway.

  She shook her head angrily and headed inside the diner.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he followed.

  She was already at a booth, the waitress pouring her a cup of coffee. He noticed a second mug sitting across from her, steaming its proof that Luna wasn’t completely pissed at him.

  He sat, holding in his sigh of relief. “Look, I get it,” he admitted. “It was a dumb thing to do.”

  The waitress’ eyebrow quirked up at this but she kept it professional. “You folks here for the special or d’ya want menus?”

  “I’m not sure you really get it.” Luna leaned forward. “What if the Chironans decide to send a force to wipe Earth out completely. That’s a lot harder to stop than a subjugation force. You might have to take over the broadcast frequencies to warn folks. You keep screwing shit up and the networks’ll be showing a file-photo of you holding an arrest placard.”

  “Um…” The waitress furrowed her brow but plowed gamely on. “The special is the double-egger with toast and bacon…”

  “I’ll have that, thanks,” Gleb told her, glad for any distraction.

  “I’ve got everything squared away with the Navy,” she growled. “Two more weeks and then I’m riding my annual leave to an honorable discharge. Don’t screw that up by getting me arrested. I’ll have the same, please.”

  The waitress nodded, forcing a smile, and walked away.

  A Last Look

  Sonoma County, California

  Frank sighed.

  He’d poured his heart and soul into this farm. In the end, nothing had seemed to work. He was growing a good product, had managed to extend his growing season by thirty percent through some clever climate controls…

  He chuckled. Can’t claim all the credit there. Terry, his laborer, had played a surprisingly big role in tricking the plants into believing summer would never end. For a chucklehead, the kid’s not half stupid.

  Still, the deck was always going to be stacked against him if he stayed here.

  “Long past time to change the game.” He looked up, knowing he’d never spot the blacked-out warships that patrolled the orbitals but he was reasonably sure the large, stationary light was the transport sent by Bau.

  “Never figured you for a stargazer, Boss.”

  Frank grunted to hide his startled hiss of breath. “Got it all rigged up?”

  He turned a raised eyebrow to Terry. This happened a lot. Terry would respond with a nod when Frank wasn’t looking.

  “Sorry, Boss. Yep. All the rain will run down to the cisterns. Should give the plants a better chance, at least.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want the place?” Frank asked with a note of finality. It was final, after all.

  “Hell no!” Terry rubbed at the back of his neck. “Sorry, Boss, but how the hell am I supposed to make a go of it if you couldn’t?”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” Frank told him. “You’re a hell of a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for.”

  Terry hawked and spat on the ground. “I’m smart enough when it comes to setting up stuff like this.” He waved at the greenhouses. “Pretty much everything else is a foggy mess, though.”

  “Well, you’re probably right… about this being a lost cause, I mean.” Not far off with the second part either, the poor kid. Frank wasn’t sure his laborer would manage on his own but that wasn’t going to stop him joining the colony.

  “Anyway, thanks for coming out tonight and setting everything up to run on its own till the bank takes over. You could have come tomorrow, you know.”

  Terry scuffed a boot in the dust. “Well, I would have missed you if I’d waited till then. You said you were leaving tonight, right? I owe you…” He shrugged, embarrassed to be making such a long speech. “Hell, I owe you a lot. You showed me something I’m actually good at.”

  His hand was on the back of his neck again. “Tonight might be the only chance I have for the next few months…”

  Frank shook his head ever so slightly and looked back up at the speck of light. “Got another court date?”

  Some more scuffing in the dirt. “Public urination…”

  Frank closed his eyes. I just know I’m gonna regret this.

  The last time Terry ended up in the county lockup, he’d come out with a lot of gangster nonsense
in that fuzzy noggin of his. He was a good kid but, with Frank no longer on Earth, he stood no chance.

  There was nobody else.

  “You want to come with me?”

  “To Asia?” Terry said. “But my court date…”

  “Already told you, I’m not planning to come back,” Frank cut in. “You really care what the folks down at the courthouse think of you?”

  “Never been to Asia,” Terry said quietly.

  “That’s not likely to change if you come with me,” Frank told him. “This is gonna sound more than a little crazy…”

  Post Ambush

  The Mouse. The Modanii Trade Lanes

  “Uncharted mass-event ahead!” the tactical officer announced. He highlighted the coordinates on the fleet’s holographic path-display.

  “Helm, drop us out, engagement distance,” Eth ordered. “Set full combat alert throughout the squadron.

  “Corvettes, break umbilicals and stand by for combat dispersal,” he commanded as his helmet snapped shut.

  It had been unnerving the first time they’d tested rigging for combat while still in path. He still wasn’t terribly fond of the idea but it was better than stumbling into an uncertain situation in a pressurized ship.

  A sharp rumble came up through the air in his suit as the three corvettes attached to the Mouse’s hull began cutting their mechanical connections.

  Exercises conducted outside Babilim had shown the folly of traveling as a traditional fleet. Coordination was impossible in path. In a situation like this, when an unscheduled drop from path-travel was required, a group of ships would invariably get strung out for hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

  Eth had been on the verge of having the Mouse broken up to build several more corvettes but large ships had finally found their place in the Human forces, thanks largely to Gleb’s fiancée.

  She’d started them thinking about fighters and the carriers that supported them. The corvettes weren’t fighters in the traditional Irth-sense but they were still small enough, just barely, to travel attached to the hull of a heavy cruiser.

  Noa had declared her a visionary, starting to work on the concept within hours of hearing it. In less than two weeks, they’d figured out a smaller fighter concept, giving a modified cruiser a complement of roughly thirty craft but that was still being rolled out to the Human fleet. The Kuphar would be the first to modify herself to carry three squadrons.

  She’d be posted to the first colony where the firepower would be a welcome addition to the small fleet. For now, the ability to quickly deploy three stealthy corvettes on drop-out would do for Eth’s needs.

  “Normalizing,” the navigator announced, “in five, four, three, two, one… Normal geometry restored.”

  “No hostiles evident at this time. It’s a trade packet,” Tactical announced. “Loose, spherical defensive formation. Two medium freighters look to be drifting in the center.”

  A chime sounded.

  “All three ’vettes are away,” Tactical added, “and a full brace of missiles have been ejected on standby mode.”

  It was unlikely any ships in the area would have noticed the three stealthy attack-ships deploying. The blast of energy released on drop-out would have temporarily blinded any sensors with an overload.

  “By now, they’re getting a return off our hull,” Tactical advised, “and our transponder code is broadcasting in the clear so…”

  “Mouse, this is Balthazar, commodore of this trade packet. We request assistance. Two of our ships were damaged in an illegal attack...” A holographic image of the commodore shimmered into view in front of Eth and, when the Quailu realized who he was talking to, he stuttered to a halt.

  He was wearing the uniform of a Meleke Corporation fleet officer.

  The company that had sold Humans to Mishak’s family on the pretext that they were extinct.

  Irony is a dish best served often, Eth thought. “Commodore, this is Eth of Irth, commander of the republic’s military forces. We’re dispatching damage-control parties to both ships immediately.” He raised an eyebrow toward his engineering officer as he said this and he took the cue.

  “What happened here, Commodore?”

  “They used a grapple-pair,” the commodore said, finally recovering his ability to speak. The twinned perturbations of a grapple-pair encountering the bow-wave of a pathing ship would tumble it back into normal space and it would affect any other paths in the vicinity.

  “They tripped us out and boarded every single ship,” he growled.

  Eth frowned. “To what purpose, Commodore? Did they steal your cargoes?”

  “Didn’t take a damn thing. They just searched us.”

  “For what?”

  “For you.”

  “They were looking for me?”

  “Well, not you specifically. They were looking for your people.”

  “Commodore, do you mean citizens of the republic or Humans specifically?” Eth didn’t need to be in the same room with Balthazar to know he was uncomfortable having to deal with Humans.

  “Humans,” Balthazar clarified.

  “And did they find any Humans aboard the ships of this trade-packet?”

  “Of course not!” Balthazar insisted a little too indignantly.

  Eth looked at the holographic Quailu quietly, drawing out the awkward silence that ensued. He used ocular tracking to open a tasking menu and dispatch a team to Balthazar’s ship, ordering them to transpose directly into the data center, rather than bothering with shuttles.

  “Ships belonging to the Meleke fleet,” the commodore began haltingly, “they’re crewed entirely by Quailu.” He was probably unaware of the way his hand waved out to the side, disassociating himself from his words. “You would never find… natives on our ships.”

  “Come now, Commodore,” Eth chided. “We both know that’s not true, don’t we?”

  Balthazar’s right foot shifted back, his left hand covering his throat.

  It was pretty well established, by now, that Humans had been captured ‘in the wild’ and shipped from Irth for centuries as genetic stock. Eth hadn’t quite said that, though. He was just trying to needle the bastard a little.

  “I have damage-control parties on two of your ships right now, don’t I?”

  Balthazar’s posture returned to normal. “Ah, yes. I see your point. They certainly got there very quickly…” He stopped suddenly, realizing he was seeing evidence of something his own species wasn’t capable of.

  “While they work,” Eth said, “I’m going to need copies of your sensor records transmitted to my ship. I need to know everything you saw when you were attacked – what kind of ships, how many, any electromagnetic signatures that might identify specific vessels…”

  “You’ll have to file a request with corporate,” Balthazar cut him off. “Now, if you have no other requests…”

  “Just the one I’ve already made,” Eth cut back in. He knew the likelihood of Meleke’s corporate office ever giving up data, especially to a species at the center of their biggest scandal in forty thousand years.

  An orange icon pulsed in his peripheral vision. He twitched his eyes to acknowledge.

  “If you have pressing matters, Commodore, please feel free to attend to them. I wasn’t presenting you with a request, I’m simply telling you what I need.”

  “But I can’t grant your reque… need on my own authority,” Balthazar told him. “It’s out of my hands.”

  “And it’s in my hands,” Eth replied as one of his people appeared behind the commodore. He hadn’t ordered that but the young engineer had a flair for the dramatic.

  “I’ve received the data, Carom. Well done. Return to the Mouse.”

  “Aye, sir,” the young man said, startling the commodore into spinning around. He cracked off a sarcastic salute to the Meleke officer before ceasing to be there.

  “You boarded my ship,” Balthazar spluttered, “without my permission? You took data from my systems? By the gods, I will
see you brought before a tribunal!”

  “Interesting offer,” Eth replied calmly. “The Meleke Corporation inviting a Human to offer testimony. You know, Irth has only the one moon?”

  “What? I don't…”

  “My lord, Gleb of Irth, found a secret facility there, built by Quailu, if you can believe it. The security was abysmal. It didn’t take long for him to gain access to the records.”

  “I don’t see what that has to…”

  “If a major corporation was interested in an exciting new criminal opportunity,” Eth mused, “hypothetically, you understand, they should probably pick more reliable allies than the Chironans.”

  Balthazar started to turn to the left but caught his flight response and stood fast, scowling at the impudent Human.

  “As soon as my damage control parties have finished their work, we’ll be on our way, Commodore.” Eth took a quick step toward the holographic Quailu. “I don’t expect to hear from you about anything else.”

  He cut the connection.

  “Damn, Boss,” the tactical officer said quietly, “that was satisfying to watch.”

  “Yeah,” Eth agreed, “but the feeling wears thin pretty damned fast.” He nodded at the empty space where Balthazar’s projection had stood.

  “His ships were forced out of path and searched for Humans. Nothing about that sounds random.” He turned to the tactical station, the team looking back at him.

  “What are they looking for?”

  A Farewell to Alms

  The Kuphar, Earth Orbit

  Frank reached out, laying a hand on the side of the soil adjuster as if he were greeting a new horse. “Soil adjuster,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “Marketing is not a strong-suit for the Quailu. A symptom of being top dog for millennia, I suppose.”

  He found the mounting-step, mildly uneasy at having implanted knowledge lurking in his noggin, and climbed up into the control cab. He ran through the menus, looking for anything that might show a hole in the training module provided with the equipment.