Hunters of the Deep mda-12

by Randall N Bills

  No, never forgotten: you learned from your mistakes. No, they could be put into …perspective.

  “ovKhan,” Coleen said, coming to a stop slightly behind him.

  He did not respond immediately, still drinking in the sights and aromas like a man deprived of sensation.

  Finally, forever-cool eyes swiveled to take her in, his voice a chill wind in counterpoint to the warmth of the breeze. “Any news?”

  “From the planet, ovKhan?” She had always avoided using his first name, but after Sha had learned her secret, Coleen retreated completely from him, wrapping formality around her like armor.

  If that is what she must do in order to not fail, then so be it.

  “Neg. I already reviewed all three messages from Earl Stewart, as well as one terse message from the legate. Other news.”

  “Aff, there is news.”

  He waited, but she held her peace for several long seconds. She still attempts to kick against the manacles. His eyes narrowed.

  Petty. Perhaps he would have to deal with her after all. A pity.

  Finally, she responded, “We picked up a transmission that was broadcast into the clear by a tramp freighter that jumped in-system a few hours ago. They came from the Adhafera system.”

  “The ship that precipitated our Trial of Possession?”

  “I do not know, but it is conceivable.”

  “It does not matter.” He looked away and shifted his stance, feeling the solid thud of his boots against the metal deck—the pull of a large gravity well. “The transmission.”

  “What by their description can only be an ArcShip jumped in-system at Adhafera, where a collision nearly occurred. The Delta Aimag DropShips burned toward the jump point with undue haste after our departure. They were in the process of maneuvering to jump when the ArcShip arrived.”

  “An accident.”

  “Aff. It is difficult to discern from their barbaric descriptions, but it would seem the Voidjumper managed to escape serious damage to all but one of its DropShip communities.”

  “Is that so?” They could have been discussing the price of beef, or the transfer of personnel between ships, instead of the potential death of tens of thousands of Sea Fox personnel.

  The death of ovKhan Kalasa.

  Gazing into the sky, searching to pinpoint the location where the Adhafera jump point would be visible from his position were it night, Sha could not help the sigh that escaped his lips, a small, soft decompression of resignation.

  A loss to the Khanate, but it might have been best in the end.

  He swiveled back. “And?” He could tell she held back more.

  “Shortly thereafter, a frenzy of DropShip transfers took place between the waiting JumpShips and CargoShips, then a spasm of jumping. The Voidjumper, despite her damage, jumped.” She paused a moment, swallowed.

  Afraid to say it? He knew her next words.

  “Before the tramp freighter jumped, all that remained were the ArcShip and a Scout–class JumpShip.” She finally turned toward him and several seconds passed as unasked questions fired like synapses, quick, decisive, angry.

  His turn to hold out, despite the obvious question burning her lips; she grew visibly agitated. Finally broke the silence, though to her credit she kept her tone level.

  “You know what this means, quiaff?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She tried to stare him down for such a response, but could not. She blinked, spoke. “Aff, ovKhan. Aff. You know what this means. They know. They have discovered the plan and are scrambling even now.”

  He shrugged lightly, dismissed all of Kalasa’s efforts in one brief muscular twitch. “We cannot undo what has been written. Only deal with what might be, or what is coming. I am still not convinced they have the whole plan.” For once, however, Sha did not even believe himself. Such activity rarely occurred and after their own quick departure… No, it did not bode well.

  “And if they come here?”

  “Then they come.”

  She closed her eyes momentarily, as though marshaling strength to forge ahead. Spoke again without even opening them. “They will fight us.” She did not see the look of disgust that washed his features.

  “We have fought them before,” he replied, abruptly moving down the ramp as though that ended the discussion.

  “ovKhan,” Coleen called out, her voice rising. Massive vibrations ran through the ramp, sending shocks up into his groin and standing the hair on his neck on end; for an instant he imagined them coming from the tread of Coleen. From the questions she would not give up. From Kalasa’s footsteps, thudding through the cosmos, looking for him.

  He squinted, angry at such fantasies, and continued down the ramp. He heard the servo whine of the first ’Mech unlimbering in preparation for patrol duty around the grounded DropShip fleet.

  “ovKhan,” Coleen said again, her voice urgent. She pulled abreast just as they reached the hard tarmac of the spaceport and kept pace with Sha, who was walking briskly toward the command vehicle, debarked almost as soon as the fusion drives were extinguished. “They will fight and this time will be different. This will not be a Trial of Possession or Grievance or even a Ritual of Combat. They know and they will come to annihilate. A Trial of Annihilation!” Fear coated the word with desperation.

  He stopped abruptly, rounded on her and raised his voice fractionally—the equivalent of a shout for anyone else. “Then… we… fight.” She stopped as though poleaxed by a ’Mech fist, her mouth dropping open, eyes wide, wild.

  Sha hardened his gaze until he could have carved his words into lamellar ferro-carbide armor, his voice a tornado to shred any resistance. “I have told you, what we do comes with risk. Great risk. And if they come to fight, then so be it. I have bested Petr and will do so again. In the end,” he finished, unable to refrain, “you are Clan. A battle should be relished, quiaff?”

  “But they will come with overwhelming force,” she managed to mewl. He didn’t expect a real answer, but Sha felt disappointed despite his expectations. Her fear diminished her ability to think. Dangerous in one who knew so much.

  “No, they will not. The Scout ship is for us. The rest will be hunting for the Khan, trying to stop the inevitable. No, Petr will come alone, and with a smaller force than what we wield.” He slowed his breathing, brought his emotions back under control, leashed his blue eyes and the power of his personality. Coleen sagged after the onslaught, as though an arm pinning her in place had been jerked away.

  “If you think clearly for a moment, you will remember that any merchant worth his salt has plans within plans. My cards have not yet all been revealed.” She looked up at that, and then turned as a technician rushed toward them from the command vehicle.

  Sha turned to follow her gaze, and frowned at the unseemly haste. Petr could not be here this quickly. What else could be happening? Nothing that required such a state of frenzy. Sha was on the verge of opening his mouth for a reprimand, but the man’s words robbed him of any such desire.

  “ovKhan, DropShips inbound as we speak, orbital insertion already begun.”

  “What!”

  “We have multiple contacts, verified. Cocoons already in interface, with numerous DropShips in stages of descent.”

  “I told you,” Coleen said vehemently, the note of victory in her voice warring extravagantly with her panic.

  He hardly heard, concentrating on the hard copy the breathless tech thrust into his hand.

  “How were they undetected?”

  “We do not know, ovKhan. A pirate point. Disguised as local traffic. Either might explain it. A tap on the legate’s channel confirms agitated voices; we have not yet broken their encryption, though one would assume they are as surprised as we.”

  Perhaps he had truly underestimated Petr after all.

  The words seemed to echo in Sha’s brain, reminding him too much of his flight of fancy a moment ago. Frost practically cracked his lips as he smiled cruelly, suddenly relishing the fight to come. He di
d not notice the tech blanch at the killer’s look that filled his eyes.

  Let Petr come!

  29

  The Republic

  24 September 3134

  Askein wove slowly, intricately through the stars—a net to capture the elusive prize.

  Starting at Adhafera, the first strands jumped to the Savannah system, where those ships with lithium-fusion batteries immediately jumped again to the Bordon system; a lone ship jumped to the Dieudonne system, where rumor said a lone Sea Fox JumpShip held station.

  Those that did not immediately rejump unfurled kilometer-wide sails and began to drink in the universe’s life energy. Yet they could not wait the one hundred seventy-three hours for a standard recharge. Instead, tight-lipped commands were issued. Nervous technician castemen massaged controls; sweat-slicked palms eased safety parameters. The onboard fusion reactors spiked as the energy draw siphoned off into the Kearny-Fuchida hyperdrive. Each ship sought to shave some sixty percent off the normal charge times, but the forced quick charge might be catastrophic. A drive damaged by the force-feeding of such mammoth energies might blow during jump initiation or discharge violently upon arrival; either would strand a JumpShip for long weeks, if not months (averted eyes spoke volumes of the simple disappearance into hyperspace such measures might precipitate).

  The skein continued to grow as sister ships met in transit were immediately tasked with the great hunt. Tendrils stretching out blindly, hunting, covering every possible location, avoiding the thought of a dead system jump.

  The horrific beauty of the Castor trinary system, with its mammoth red giant and its evilly, brilliantly white twin sisters.

  Blazing-hot Zosma, with its sparse system and monthlong intrasystem travel to a habitable planet.

  The Dubhe binary: a cool orange giant and its lonely, pale yellow main sequence companion, orbiting a scant twenty-three AU.

  Each system felt the pinprick of quantum mechanics and human ingenuity shred reality for a strained heartbeat, before the materialization of a JumpShip, the infinitesimal alteration in each system’s solar winds as sails rapidly deployed.

  Each future day sluicing into today’s frothing rapids, flowing into the flatlands of the past and soon to be history saw Sea Fox JumpShips hitting additional systems.

  A web interconnecting each world in a frenzy of need.

  Birthed on Adhafera, it grew into an unfolding weave that flowed into an ever-widening cone, moving through most of Prefecture VII, into the interior of Prefecture VIII and sweeping relentlessly into Prefecture X.

  The ilKhanate had to be found, the ilArcShip located.

  The Khan saved.

  30

  Clan Sea Fox DropShip Ocean of Stars

  Near Orbit, Stewart

  Prefecture VII, The Republic

  26 September 3134

  “Why again are we holding station?” Jesup asked; the strain in his voice transmitted as a shout, yet Petr did not look up.

  Jesup stood restlessly across from Petr in the main cargo hold of the converted Overlord-C DropShip. Originally designed to carry an entire Cluster of ’Mechs (Petr shivered to contemplate such a force of BattleMechs at his disposal), it now transported mostly cargo, with only a mixed Trinary of units left—a skeleton compared to the glory of years gone by.

  Petr ignored Jesup for the moment—the echoes of focused activity as that small military force readied for action falling away as well—and continued studying the small holographic table between them.

  Tapping the controls lightly, Petr zoomed through several regions of Stewart, what they were able to tap from the satellite comms. Enough to show the wicked battle raging in at least two different areas around New Edinburgh. Petr coughed, tasted the snotty phlegm coating his tongue and grimaced.

  Am I getting a cold? The fate of Clan Sea Fox hangs in the balance and I’m getting a cold? He frowned in frustration, ignored his own vulgarity in his anger.

  Jesup’s anxiety—he practically hopped from one foot to the other like a warrior ready for his first Trial of Position: a warrior who would lose with such impatience—peeled away Petr’s concentration layer by layer. Forced him to glance up, regardless of his wish to ignore the question.

  Petr finally sighed, turned off the machine, which immediately folded back into the wall, straightened to a ripping crack of vertebrae. “You seem to be questioning all my actions of late. Demanding answers when I have already made my reasons clear.”

  Jesup leaned toward him, as though to keep the words between them. “I would not need to ask for such clarifications if your decisions made sense.”

  Petr stiffened. Felt the rage he had almost lost across the last week flare up, bringing a familiar warmth. “In case you have forgotten, Jesup, I am ovKhan. I need not explain my actions to you. You follow my orders.” He bit off the last words as though taking a mouthful of Jesup’s hide. He knew the rejoinder before the words emerged from the other man’s lips.

  “Neg, ovKhan. Your great and powerful person does need to explain itself to me. Or I, like any of those under you, may decide to call a Trial of Grievance, quiaff?” Though the words came coated with his usual sarcasm, Petr noted, to his chagrin, that nothing touched his eyes.

  Have I estranged him so much? Has our friendship gone so far afield? Petr closed his eyes for a moment, wished he knew how to undo enough of the damage to satisfy his aide until there was time to truly repair their relationship. To implement the changes he finally understood were needed. Yes, Jesup should serve the Clan and serve his ovKhan, but Petr had come to realize that by taking such for granted… he might as well be a spheroid.

  But the time was not now; later, (had been saying that too much of late) he would fix it later.

  He opened his eyes, and his shoulders slumped slightly at the admission. “Aff, Jesup. Aff. We stay in orbit because we do not have sufficient forces to defeat what we will face on-planet. We hold station until the forces on-planet have been weakened enough that we can make a difference.”

  Jesup cocked his head to the side, confirmation and disgust warring for dominance on his face. “You hide,” he said.

  Petr jerked as though slapped. Words of denial flooded his mouth, but he choked them off by refusing to open his lips. He refused to add lies to a situation that already sickened him. Already forced him to question everything he believed about being Clan.

  Clan Sea Fox knew the trials, rituals and traditions of the Clans were flexible—guidelines to be bent and twisted when needed in order to further their goals. But this went beyond twisting, or bending, or winding… this stank of shattering.

  “We have no choice,” Petr finally responded.

  “There is always a choice, quiaff? Have you not told me that again and again?” His strident tone changed to that of a pupil reciting rote text. “A Sea Fox merchant makes choices every day. And none are trivial or insignificant. Each has a consequence that will unfold for the benefit or detriment of the Clan. It is you who must decide.”

  Petr sniffed, felt the savashri phlegm at the back of his throat, focused on not gagging for a moment (subconsciously knew the gagging reflex stemmed from his current decisions as much as his cold), nodded his head. “Aff, Jesup. But there are times when both choices lead to detriment, and only by measuring the degrees can you know which is the lesser of two evils.”

  “You sound like a spheroid.” A momentary lull in the general noise of the cargo hold allowed the words to be heard by innocent ears; stunned faces turned to watch the scene unfolding in the far corner.

  Petr’s rage burned hot and bright, filling his eyes with a fire he directed first at Jesup and then swept the large cargo hold, sending personnel scurrying about their business. His ire, though directed at Jesup for allowing their heated discussion to spill to the lower castes and the rest of the warriors, found equal target in himself; Jesup’s words mirrored Petr’s own thoughts too closely for comfort.

  He took two steps toward Jesup, his heavy magnetic boots d
ragging at him like the load of current events strapped around his neck. “Then what would you do, Jesup?”

  “Attack. Now. That is the Clan way.”

  “And if Sha defeats us? Or if we are caught between them and the Marik forces? We would be crushed.”

  “Then so be it. Such is the way of the Clan. This hiding”—he swallowed, licked his lips as his eyes darted, trying to find a target—“I cannot abide it.”

  “Then Sha escapes.”

  “Others will hunt him. He may hide, but others will find him, will hunt the deep currents and run him to ground.”

  Petr had to get through to him. Must make him see. The time for justice was now, not later. “What happened when the Bears made such a decision? When Clan Ghost Bear let those most deserving of Clan justice escape?”

  Jesup reared back, his jaw falling open at such a comparison. At the memory of the Not-Named Clan and the total annihilation they escaped… the havoc they wrought.

  “Would you let such happen again? Look at what he has done right under our noses. Imagine what he might accomplish hidden from view. Imagine what he might unleash against our Clan. Mark my words, Jesup,” Petr said, trying to infuse each word with the hellish energy of a particle cannon, tried to ram it past the other man’s doubts and fears. “He will not be satisfied until he sees the Clan shattered for destroying his dreams of rebellion.” Me shattered.

  Jesup looked like a cornered animal. “He would not do that,” he finally said.

  Petr’s eyes went wide. “You defend him? After all that he has done!”

  “You consider it misguided, but he has done what he felt best for the Clan. What every Sea Fox Clansman has done for centuries. He has made decisions.”

  “Yet you’re the one saying each leader must answer to his superiors.”

  “Do not throw such vulgarity at me,” Jesup said, straightening, regaining some of the spine Petr thought knocked out of him.

  Stravag. “Each leader must answer. Now I am coming to give him his Trial of Grievance over the decisions he has made.”