Terra Dawning

by Ben Winston

  The closest suited figure slowly shook its head. “I'm afraid not, however, we are on a tight schedule, so if you would like to have your clothes, I suggest you both start putting them on.”

  “Well, you're way too nice to be Hyclarion Rangers, and too small to be lizards. Of course, if you did work for the Duke, you would have simply shot us,” Ari said, as she scrambled into her clothes.

  Once both 'prisoners' were dressed, Gail and her team hurried them down the corridor and back into their small ship. Team Three had followed her, since Team Two had already gotten they're quarry into the ship.

  Gail and her team quickly closed and sealed the lock, and were back underway for their base within ten minutes of docking. As far as they knew, no one had noticed that they'd been in the base at all.

  “By the gods! Elrond! They're taking us deeper!” the other young man captured by Team Two said. “Who are these people?””

  “I don't know, Jaric. But, I don't think they mean to hurt us either. So just relax, and do what you're told, okay?” Elrond replied.

  Gail had been removing her helmet while the two men had been speaking. The atmosphere in the ship had been altered to accommodate the prisoners. However, it wasn't fully ideal for them. There was still enough oxygen in it for Gail and her people to breathe, although it was still pretty thin.

  Gail smiled at Elrond. “Thank you. You are correct; we do not intend to harm you. We simply want information at this point.”

  Elrond looked confused. “What kind of information could you want from us? We're simple prospectors, and everything we know is available at any terminal.”

  Gail lost her smile. “Elrond, I would really appreciate it if that would be the last time you lie to us. We know who you are, as well as what you've done. As far as the information you have being available to us... well, let's just say we're connected to a different network.”

  “So if you know who we are, why are we still breathing?” Ari asked, a little miffed.

  Gail turned to the cute redhead. “Because, like you, I follow orders from someone else.”

  Elrond looked floored. “How did... How could you possibly... Do you have any proof we can use in a tribunal?”

  The older man had asked that almost in a panic. So Gail decided to become a bit more wary about what she told them. “No, we don't. Which is why we need more information.”

  “Can I ask where you're taking us and when you'll be bringing us back?” Ari asked.

  “The name of our destination wouldn't mean anything to you. As far as going back, that depends on how cooperative you all are. I should warn you that we breathe a different atmosphere than you do. Ours is much richer in ohto and has a lower concentration of dioxin than what you are used to. So if you try to escape, there is a good chance you will suffocate,”” Gail explained.

  “What are you talking about? You're breathing this air the same as we are,” Jaric said.

  “The air in here has been modified so we can both breathe it. If I were to get up and walk around, I would quickly become light headed, and most likely faint. As you will notice, the rest of my people have chosen to remain in their suits.

  “If you exerted yourselves, you would begin to feel drunk and disoriented until you too collapsed. Once we get to where we are going, the atmosphere will be normal for us, but it will make you folks kinda sick.

  “We have these special breathers we will give to you, so you can breathe safely while we ask all of you questions. Do you each understand this?” Gail finished. She noticed that all four people nodded their heads. Jaric's lady had yet to say anything, but from the way they treated Elrond, they were subordinate to him.

  Gail was tempted to ask him if he was the leader of Rivendell, but didn't think anyone else would see the humor, so she kept quiet the rest of the trip. No one else spoke either, each of them thinking through their own decisions and questions.

  However, once the ship had sat down on the floor of the huge bay, the prisoners seemed to be more compliant. Four Marines left the craft first, while Gail guided the captives down the ramp and made sure they each had a respirator on.

  When she followed them down the ramp she saw Ben standing between two armed Marines, watching them disembark. Without preamble, Elrond, with a guard beside him, walked up to Ben and held out his hand.

  “Hello, I am Captain Elrond Coir; Captain and Master of the privateer Bittertree. I am the over-all leader of the group known as the Pirates. On behalf of my fellows, I claim sanctuary, Sir.”

  Chapter Two

  “Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.”

  Janis Joplin, “Me and Bobby McGee”

  Terran Marine Base Alpha

  23 Apr. 10266 CE (AD)

  Sector 34871 - Great Inland Sea

  Earth, Sol system

  Ben did have one of the translators with him, but when he heard what the man said, he had to check to see if it was working correctly. “Excuse me?”

  Elrond fought the urge to chuckle. From the way he was protected, it was obvious this was the person in charge, even though he looked really young. “I said, I claim Sanctuary, Sir. You are the leader here, aren't you?”

  Ben nodded. “Yes I am, but I'm a little confused. Are you not the group who shot down a young prospector, and later destroyed the Great Falls Aerie?”

  “Damn!” Elrond said. “I had hoped, since you are not part of the Duchy, you might not know about those, and we could get away.””

  Ben looked at the man. He wasn't being misleading, or trying to pull a fast one, he was scared; scared and desperate.

  “Why would you need to claim Sanctuary with us? No one's figured out where you are yet except for us, and as you said, we're not part of the Duchy. What are you afraid of?” Ben asked.

  Elrond waited for the translation. Who were these people? “The Rangers are here now. The Duke has put us in a position to take the fall for all the attacks he's ordered. I have over two hundred people under my command; women and children that had nothing to do with this, but who will be executed simply by association.”

  This was getting more complicated by the minute. “Follow me, let's find a place to sit. It sounds like this is going to be a very involved story.”

  Just then a disturbance by the doors to the cavernous bay got the small group's attention.

  “Let me through! I want to kill that son of a bitch! They're nothing but fucking murderers!” Ben saw a very pissed off Addson Dee fighting the marine guards to be let into the bay.

  Elrond blushed and looked at the floor. “She's right, we are murderers now.”

  Ben shut off the translator and leaned over to one of his guards. “Make sure she's not armed and let her though. It might be good if she sat in on this.” The Marine nodded and keyed his tactical mic to relay the order.

  Ben turned the translator back on. “Let’s head over to the pilot's briefing room. It's not ideal, but it'll save a trip back to the Pod.”

  “What's a Pod?” Elrond asked.

  “That's part of our long story,” Ben said, cryptically.

  They had made it to the briefing room before Addson caught up to them. However, when she did, she immediately launched herself at Elrond.

  “You fucking Animal! You murdered friends of mine! People I loved!” She screamed.

  Elrond held up his hands in defense against the slapping attack, until Ben and one of the guards could restrain her.

  “Addson! Get control of yourself! I had them let you in because I thought it might be good for you to understand what's behind all of this! Now, please! Calm Down!” Ben said in as commanding a voice as he could.

  “They need to be executed for their crimes, Ben! Not talked to!” Addson pleaded.

  “Would you just kill them out of hand, without finding out if there is more to this picture? What if this man isn't the one who planned it? Wouldn't you feel better knowing we killed the right person instead of just blasting away at everyone you think might be involved?
” Ben reasoned. Amazingly, his words were having an affect. Addson was calming down. She was clearly still pissed, but she was no longer ready to kill. “We are in the middle of a military base filled with Marines, they're not going anywhere.”

  She stared at Elrond and the others with murderous intent, but nodded to Ben and slowly took a chair.

  “Excuse me, Sir, but you called her Addson. She isn't the poor girl we had to shoot down, is she?” Elrond asked.

  Addson opened her mouth to reply, saw Ben's face and closed it.

  “As a matter of fact she is. When she crashed we detected it and dispatched a ship to recover her. She was pretty banged up, but she's doing better now,” Ben replied and turned to see the man's reaction to the news.

  He was surprised, but seemed very happy about it. The woman that had been holding on to his arm smiled excitedly and hugged him.

  “Thank the Gods! We'd hoped you might have survived, but then we heard the report. Let's just say that we are very happy to hear that report proven false,” Elrond said.

  “Why would it matter to you?” Addson asked. “You've got a pretty large body count, what does one more or less matter?”

  Elrond lost his smile. “Every one of them matters. We've the deaths of those at Great Falls on our hands, yes, but the fewer deaths laid at our feet the better.”

  “What about those from the tram you robbed?” Addson asked.

  “There were ten more people on that train than we were told. We told them not to leave the tram station emergency shelter and there was supposed to be a rescue mission dispatched as soon as the tram stopped. They were not supposed to die. In fact, they shouldn't have been more than inconvenienced. We had no idea they hadn't been rescued until we heard the report of the incident and by then it was too late for us.

  “You see, most of my people are indentured servants in the house of the Duke. Since humans in that household tend to end up on the dinner table, we jumped at the chance to have our debts canceled.

  “At first, it was simple stuff. Smuggle this or that to another planet in the duchy. Stage a mock pirate raid on a freighter that was supposed to be carrying high value goods. No one ever got hurt though. We made that clear to him; we wouldn't kill except in defense.

  “Fucking Lizard is pretty smart. He's also been using us all along. By the time we realized it, we already had several murders and kidnappings laid at our feet. You see, those freighters we 'raided'? Well, after our raid, his personal house troops would go in and remove the crew before the investigators got there. Poor bastards ended up on some lizard's table and we got tagged for it.

  “We stopped the raids and refused to do anything else. He told us to come here and do a few more jobs for him and he'd honor our bargain. He promised no one else would be kidnapped.” He snorted and looked at his lady, then shook his head. ““He didn't say killed, he said kidnapped. But let us think he meant killed. He also threatened to turn us in to the Hyclarion as pirates if we didn't obey his orders.

  “With each thing he ordered us to do, we got deeper and deeper, with no way out. The Great Falls nightmare was the last thing, though. We had decided that we were going to try to make a run for it. We thought if we could at least get out of the atmosphere, we could get our asses out of the Empire, and someplace where we could be human again,”” Elrond said. “I thought you knew most of this? The soldier we talked to knew we took our orders from someone else.”

  “If the Duke is the one giving you orders, like you said, why don't you simply offer those recordings in defense of your actions?” Ben asked. “As for what we know... well, we have no proof of anything, except for the fact that your actions made no sense at all.”

  “We can't. The Duke is a lot of things, but one of things he is the best at is computers. He does something to the messages so we can't record them, or trace them back to him. We have nothing and no way to prove anything we've just told you. It's our word against his, which wouldn't even be listened to,” Elrond said, shrugging. “No one would believe us and all of us would be hung.”

  “Voice stress analysis indicates he is telling the truth, Prime. I would very much like to investigate the computer systems of the enclave,” Mother said through the speakers. “Perhaps I could find the evidence he is speaking of.”

  “Thank you, Mother. I'll take that into consideration when planning our next steps,” Ben replied.

  “But you could have refused to shoot me down, or to blow up the Aerie!” Addson replied.

  “No, we couldn't. The Duke would simply have called in the HRO and turned us over to them. Now, it looks like we're finished anyway. An HRO investigation team arrived on planet a couple of days ago,” Elrond said. “It’s only a matter of time before they find us.”

  “What's the HRO?” Ben asked.

  “What you would call the Imperial Police, Ben,” Addson answered. “They are very good at their jobs and carry the authority to do what they need to do. They are notoriously honest and fanatically loyal to the Empire.”

  “There is a human woman leading them,” Elrond added. “M'Lord Duke wants us to capture her and kill the rest of the team. I assume, he would like to kill her himself.””

  “Hold it, everyone.” Ben raised his hands to stop the conversation. “This whole thing is confusing the hell out of me. We need to have a pow-wow here. Elrond and Arivan, would you please accompany me to my home? Your friends will be well looked after, I promise you,” Ben said, indicating the other couple.

  “Uh, sure,” Elrond said turning to look at Arivan who nodded agreement. The other couple however, looked slightly uneasy about being separated from Elrond.

  “Just go with them, Jaric. If they had meant us harm, we would be in a cell or already dead and not in a briefing room,” Elrond told them.

  Ben spoke to the ceiling. “Mother, could you ask Deirdre and Jorga if they have some free time. Also, I would like to have Councilor Carlyle there via telepresence.”

  “Yes Prime. Marcy would like to know how many other people will be there so she can make sure that there are plenty of refreshments as well as seating,” Mother replied. “Captain Elrond, I need to inquire if you or Ms. Jythee have any food allergies.”

  “Like most humans, we are allergic to Spican seafood, but other than that, we should be okay,” Arivan replied. “Thank you for asking.””

  “You are welcome, Ms. Jythee. Prime Council, Minister Bedouin and Vice Councilor Jorga have acknowledged your request. Councilor Carlyle has replied that she will be ready,” Mother replied.

  “Thank you. General Greenwold; I would like you to accompany us and bring along any security and intelligence folks you might have. We need to figure out what the big lizard is up to before we're all made extinct!” Ben said, leading the way out of the room. ““I would like you to be there as well, Addson.”

  ER/SAR Command and Control ship Tiderius

  Sector 3421 (1 1/2 miles south of the Great Falls crater.)

  Terral III, Duchy of Cassius (Earth)

  Hyclarion Imperial Consortium

  “This is the same location I conducted my search for survivors, Commander. At the time, it was as close as we could get to the site of the explosion.” Warmake said, addressing the smaller human beside him.

  He had no real opinion about humans being in the HRO, except for a slight feeling of pride for the race. It was about time the humans were allowed to integrate. He knew his Lord hated humans except for lunch, but in his experience, they worked just as hard, if not harder than their non-human counterparts, just to overcome the bias that they had been faced with.

  To see a human not only in the HRO, but commanding a team was an accomplishment that should have been a source of pride for the race. Unfortunately, he knew that most of the race would never know of her achievements unless they met her in her professional capacity.

  “I've read your report, Task Commander. It was very thorough. I especially appreciated the high-res, false color images you had taken of the area.
Did you notice what looked like a path leading off to the south, toward the Inland Sea?” Jance asked.

  “Well, I wasn't exactly sure that's what it was, but I had the boys and girls try to follow it. Unfortunately, they lost it thirty-one units north of the coast. As a follow up, I had a brace of skippers fly the coastline for eighty units in both directions from where we thought they might have come out. They didn't find anything but sand, and couldn't re-establish the trail from that end either.””

  Jance nodded. “What about the Satellites?”

  Warmake shook his head. “This whole area was under a thick cloud cover because of the Aerie being in operation at the time, thermal was pretty useless as well. Then, once the explosion happened, the whole sector was too hot.”

  She nodded. The man did know his business. He also did more than required of him, just in case. The people of this planet were lucky to have a man like this watching out for them. Too bad they'll probably never know. Maybe the other commanders will adopt some of his work ethic.

  “We know this attack was staged from the ground, as were the train robberies. Where was this Addson Dee when she was shot down, and what was she doing there?”

  Turning to his pilot, Warmake said, “Take us to Sector three-four-seven-one and do a slow circle of all four quads.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the Pilot replied.

  Replying to the HRO officer, Warmake explained. “Upon the initial report, we believed her to be on a routine prospecting mission. However, we later discovered that she had just been transferred from Great Falls Aerie to Argassi's Anti-Piracy Command. She was sent out on a recon of the sector. She was alone and in an unarmed skimmer. She hadn't even sat down at Argassi before she was sent out here.”

  “On the surface, that sounds incredibly too coincidental. Why was she sent out like that?” Jance asked.

  “It was thought that since she was known as a prospector from Great Falls and her skipper was set up for deep-water scanning, she would be mistaken for exactly what she was; a simple prospector,” Warmake explained.