Opening Moves

by James Traynor

  Tarek had wanted to head home a month ago, but there were still rich contracts to be had and his crew had convinced him to stay around. Somehow Annie Saito kept on finding the premium jobs and making them all very wealthy. It was the best damn year the ship had ever seen and none of them were ready for it to end.

  The convoy was moving gradually towards the edge of the safe transition zone when the MAIDEN's sensors began to pick up the heat bleed-off signatures commonly heralding incoming ships.

  “More transporters, I'd guess,” Rául said from the navigation chair. “Seems like traffic control actually will have to do some work for the money they cut from our ribs in tariffs.”

  “That's one biiig thermal signature,” Alexej noted quietly. “I didn't think any other convoy was due to arrive in system today?”

  Tarek was about to agree, when instinct suddenly kicked in. “Alexej, hard about, reverse the port engines and overpower starboard! Get us the hell back to the planet!”

  “Sir?” the big Eurasian blinked.

  “Just do it!” Tarek yelled. “Annie, get the laser clusters online and warm up the ECM suite. Damn it, I knew this would happen!”

  “What?” Rául asked in the confusion, a nervous edge in his voice as the freighter turned sharply and began accelerating away. “What's going on?”

  “Invasion.”

  The thermal emissions sparked as excess energies from the transition back into normspace evaporated into the vacuum. From the nothingness a squadron of four cruisers materialized, and with its scores of fighters emerged, proceeding at full burn into the system.

  Must've transported them over inside their own warp bubbles, Tarek's mind noted a lot more coolly than he felt at the moment. Clever buggers.

  They were certainly not Pact ships. The newcomers moved with purpose and aggression behind their emerging screen of parasite crafts. But for one short moment everything seemed to hang in the balance. It appeared as if neither side had been aware of an opponent right on the far side of 'their' transition zone. That was the general problem of foldspace and normspace: one couldn't look from the one into the other. Planets, moons, even large asteroids were easy enough to detect from within the fold by their mass signature. But not even the largest ships in the known galaxy had even a tenth of the mass necessary to register as even a fluke on the gravitics of a ship in foldspace. But the momentary respite didn't last. While the convoy split and panicked the intruders held course and detached their fighter screens to go and attack their confused prey.

  The four escorting frigates would have been a poor match for one cruiser, let alone a full squadron with fighter escorts. Three of them rapidly broke away and accelerated to keep up with the convoy, their guns suddenly spluttering to life against the swarming fighters.

  One frigate however did not. It held its course for the transition zone and increased power to its engines. The captain pressed his vessel forward into the maw of the enemy. It wasn't like the Érenni to perform such an attack. Perhaps the ship had a mercenary crew or perhaps, finally, the desperate situation had triggered something in the peaceful race's psyche. On the IRON MAIDEN Captain Winters didn't know what it had been, as his sensors showed the suicidal attack into a storm of plasma beams and missiles. The ship was torn apart and its wreckage floated along beneath the four attacking cruisers and away into the blackness, the tumbling metal representing the end of the uneasy peace in the galaxy and the opening of total war.

  “Those are Dominion light cruisers!” Rául shrieked. “What the hell is going on!?”

  “I told you they were going to hit the Érenni!” Tarek said emphatically. “Didn't I say 'The Dominion will attack' before we came out here? Didn't I say 'Let's go home before it happens', huh? But, oh no! We gotta do one more shipment!” he grimaced. “Well, I hope you're happy!”

  “Those fighters are hitting the convoy,” Annie warned. “They'll be after us soon.”

  The IRON MAIDEN was smaller than the commercial freighters and much faster. It had completed its turn and was beginning to accelerate away from the main group of ships when the Ashani fighters reached them. They were met by solid defensive fire but the nimble craft mostly avoided the barrage. They were too fast for the civilians' tracking systems, had their own ECM and operated under the umbrella of their cruisers' vastly more powerful electronic warfare suites. Doing zoom and boom attacks they began picking off key components of the freighters such as engines, weapons and even deliberately targeting the crew compartments. The frigate escorts were meanwhile being disposed of by the Ashani cruiser with contemptible ease. The traditional Érenni design philosophy of strong defenses over offensive capabilities kept them alive far longer than most ships their size but it was clearly a one sided battle. It did, however, keep the Ashani warships occupied enough for Captain Calendar to try and make his escape.

  “Where to?” Alexej asked surprisingly calm from his position at the helm.

  “Back to the planet! The corridor's blocked and we can't outrun those fighters,” Tarek answered decisively. “We'll shelter behind those defenses until the fleet is beaten back.”

  “What fleet?” Rául snorted. He was perhaps in his mid-twenties and hadn't had the same experience Tarek Winters or Alexej had gained in their travels. “It's four ships!”

  “That would be the scouting force making sure there aren't any last minute surprises,” Tarek explained. “A reconnaissance in force. Trust me, there are a hell of a lot more on their way.”

  “He's right,” Llyr said. The Tuathaan rarely spoke despite being a translator and speaking a dozen languages. The crew all looked his way.

  Llyr's people were one of the few true enigmas of known space. Their 'home world' had a much higher gravity than most other settled and developed M-class planets, resulting in a people that were smaller but whose bodies were equipped with denser bones and more capable muscle masses. Where the average human grew to a height of somewhere between one hundred and eighty-five and two hundred and five centimeters, a Tuathaan rarely got taller than a hundred and sixty-five centimeters. But Llyr, and for that matter, most of his people, had broader shoulders than even Alexej.

  None of that would have been impressive had it not been for the fact that, biologically, Llyr and his people were human. And that had rattled the cage of the known galaxy quite substantially when the news had broken. That had been two hundred years ago, when humanity had stood at the start of its interstellar expansion. Looking human-like wasn't even the problem. On the surface the Rasenni very much looked like humans. The differences there only became apparent once you pulled their pants down and peeled their skin away. The Tuathaan, on the other hand, genetically were human. Sure, there was the usual genetic drift, enough of it to put the separation of the two lines at around ten thousand years ago. Linguists had even been able to show with some degree of certainty that the different dialects the Tuathaan clans spoke all originated from one stem of the family of Indo-European languages. Nobody knew how and why the Tuathaan had ended up hailing from a world fifteen hundred light-years away from Earth. And probably nobody ever would.

  “They have shown their true colors and fired on the defenders,” Llyr noted, the tattoos covering the left side of his face vanishing into the manifold wrinkles of his weather-beaten skin. To outsiders those marks were just fancy face paint, black lines and structures. To another Tuathaan they not only denoted Llyr's clanhold but also the translator's rank in it. Aboard the IRON MAIDEN they had earned him the nickname of 'Maori Dwarf'. “They know it's an act of war and therefore must be prepared to prosecute that war.”

  “See, even Llyr agrees, and when does he ever have an opinion?” Tarek pointed out. “We run, we hide, and then when the Ashani fall back we go to Earth. Any objections?”

  “Just from the Ashani,” Annie responded. “Fighters closing on our six.”

  “Just our luck,” Tarek grunted. “If anyone could get caught in the middle of a war zone it's us!”

  As the freighter ma
de a run for it hundreds of transition signatures emerged at the edge of the system's gravity well. From them emerged the main Dominion battle fleet. There was no doubt now what the Ashani's intentions were. War had come to the Pact.

  Orion Colony

  Van Halen's Star, North American Union.

  Samantha did not move. She stood utterly cool, utterly calm and utterly centered. The widened intersection of corridors within the enlisted and NCO quarters' section of McKenna Station was full of whooping and jeering soldiers, pilots and fleet crews mostly in the grayish Union marpat uniforms with a few civilians thrown in. They all crowded around the two soldiers in the center of the white-gray intersection. One of those soldiers was Sammy, the other a dropship pilot called Booker.

  “Come on, Booker!” a voice yelled. “Put 'er down!”

  The pilot turned with a big grin and waved his arms, calling for support and getting a loud cheer from his fellow squad and fleet mates. He turned back and stared knives at his opponent. “You're toast, lady. You are going down so hard your legs will be dangling out in space!”

  His trash talk was met by more cheers, and once more he played up to his crowd, eliciting more calls. There must have been seventy people bunched around. Lots had climbed on chairs and each other's shoulders for a view over the heads of the group crowded at the front.

  Samantha Lee, for her part, did not speak or flinch. She just stood in total silence, clenching and unclenching her fists. Booker had insulted their unit, and Lee had demanded an apology. Booker had laughed in her face and continued to mock the Ten-Twenty, something which had almost caused Lee to floor him there and then. Luckily, her squad mates had been there to restrain her and a formal confrontation had been set up away from the NCO's hawk-like gaze. Here and now honor would be served.

  “He's a big guy, Sammy,” Private 'Grunt' Kayser said quietly in his friend's ear. “You sure you're up for this?”

  Lee nodded. She was so intensely focused she did not even speak, just watching every move her new enemy made. The pilot kept on circling and clapping his hands, working his side of the crowd into a frenzy, while behind Lee the infantry shuffled a little in silence. They'd seen this kind of thing happen before, and of all the troops in Alpha company, no one was as good at these duels as Lee.

  “Are you finished already?” Private Tucker asked in a curt Long Islander accent, looking up at the large pilot. It was amazing the man could even fit in a dropship's pilot seat. “We've got to go packing in three hours!”

  “And not soon enough,” Booker answered in a Canadian drawl. “Come on then, girl,” he thumped his fists together, then opened his huge hands and cracked his knuckles. “Last man standing.”

  The crowd began to quiet in anticipation. The two combatants moved to within two meters of one another and prepared, Booker rocking back and forth with energy, grinning like a maniac, Lee holding the exact same neutral expression she had worn for the last half hour.

  Tucker stepped between them and withdrew a pocket watch. “When the music stops, begin,” he announced, then flipped the lid and the watch began playing a tinkling tune.

  Lee made eye contact with Booker, holding his gaze and not flinching. The pilot looked back and forth between Lee and the crowd, unable to hold the female soldier's eyes for long, whether through fear or pure adrenalin Lee couldn't tell. She, herself, was at a level of awareness she only found during the most intense exercises when all hell was due to break loose. Time seemed to slow and every single sense she had was peaked. Everything around her was highlighted in crystal clarity, every noise, image, and even smell was analyzed and stored in her mind in its entirety, from the catcalls of her opponent's crowd to the quietly confident smirk on Tucker's face as he glanced at Lee. She was ready.

  The watch's music slowed, and as it did the crowd fell utterly silent. Booker shifted on his feet ready to make the first move, Lee remained perfectly still, only at the very last moment did she allow a small smile which caused a moment of hesitation in the pilot. Then the music stopped, and as one the two soldiers charged forward.

  They skidded to a stop beside a folding table someone had 'borrowed' from the mess and their hands shot out, each grabbing a huge glass full of an alcoholic substance which defied category. It was a distillation created by equal parts skill and black magic with a kick, and an aftertaste that would cause a bear to keel over. Drinking a single shot of the stuff was usually enough to cause choking if not outright vomiting, and the measures given to Lee and Booker were much greater.

  Both of them managed to down the first glass in one gulp, a triple shot of the foul spirit without flinching. Sammy jumped up, her hands reaching for the solid bars that ran along the corridors. Booker followed her example a moment later. With trained ease she pulled half a dozen chin-ups in less than ten seconds. Drinking that awful stuff was one thing. Keeping it in your stomach while working out, well, that was something for the pros.

  They made a second, causing a quick exhalation from Booker as he downed it a fraction of a second behind Lee. Sammy was up on the bars again in no time, pulling her toned body up as she controlled her breathing.

  Next to her, Booker grunted. “Ey, mudslinger! Have you ever been mistaken for a man?”

  Samantha didn't deign to look at him. Her voice carried nothing of the strain so apparent in the dropship pilot's as she pulled her body up. “No. Have you?”

  “Uhhh, snap!” Tucker hooted from behind her and the infantry broke into laughter.

  Booker's cheeks turned red.

  There were three glasses left. The first to finish would be the victor and Sammy was easing ahead. To make up for his prior verbal humiliation Booker grabbed two glasses, one in each hand and swigged them one after the other in an effort to catch up. It probably seemed a good idea in that moment, but as he poured down that second glass without stopping for breath he lost it, the vile liqueur catching in his throat and causing him to retch, doubling over and coughing loudly to the groans of his colleagues.

  Lee leisurely finished her last glass with a grin, calmly did her chin-ups and then raised her hands. The troops burst into cheers and applause for Lee. Most disputes between units were solved in a similar manner, using alcohol instead of simply pounding each other into submission. In those competitions Sammy's ability to absorb the foul drinks was legendary.

  “Come on, guys,” she said, smiling. “Carry me out on your shoulders.”

  “Yeah, lift her up!” Grunt shouted with a laugh, and the nearest troops raised Lee on their shoulders and carried her from the mess hall where Booker was still sprawled on the floor in his own puke, getting looks of pity.

  “Don't get delusions up there!” Tucker shouted up. “You ain't that good.”

  “It's not that,” Lee admitted. “If I'd have tried to walk out of there I'd have fallen on my face!” she laughed. “Whatever that stuff was, it was evil!”

  Tucker laughed. At least Lee had upheld the unit's honor and maintained its unbroken record of wins. “Have a lie down,” he advised. “We want you sober for the briefing in three hours.”

  “I'll just sit at the back,” she groaned, the effects starting to hit her. “Someone take notes and wake me when we gotta load up.” She was glad she didn't have to do this on a low gravity ship. Alcohol was banned on deployments and for good reason. Holding a drink down while floating in zero G was something she had tried once as a dare in basic training, with disastrous consequences. The memory still sent shivers down her spine. Never again. She was carried to her quarters, dumped on the bed to more cheers, then left alone in the dark to recover.

  Three hours later Lee was one of the last to file into the mess hall, now arranged to accommodate a briefing. She had missed evening chow but didn't feel even remotely hungry after the earlier contest. Sammy had taken some painkillers and boosters, but her head still felt like World War IV was being replayed inside it. Her squad mates had squirreled away some morsels of normal food for her later so she could have at least someth
ing before going back to subsistence on standard army MREs – which ultimately was a safer bet than hoping for a good cook on whatever tin can they would end up on. She got a few rounds of applause as she walked in and sat down, with a disapproving glance from Sergeant Masters and an amused look from Lieutenant Jones.

  “Over here,” Grunt waved. “We saved you a seat.”

  Sammy dropped in with her squad, collapsing on the chair and stretching her legs forward.

  “How you doing?” Grunt asked quietly.

  “Like I'm ready to die,” Lee answered flatly. “Or maybe I already did.”

  Her group chuckled. “Take it easy, Champ,” Tucker added. “You should see the other guy.”

  “He had to have his stomach pumped,” Grunt said. “Apparently not pretty.”

  It might have been meant to make Lee feel better, but instead her own stomach began to rumble like a bad tempered Volcano. At that moment the briefing began and she had to concentrate on willing her sudden nausea away. Sammy believed strongly on mind over matter and was putting it into practice as the officers arrived.

  “Company!” Sergeant Major Erment shouted at the room, the diminutive woman housing a voice as loud and piercing as any male sergeant. “Company, stand to!”

  Alpha Company stood rapidly and came to attention as Colonel Mukaba and Captain Madison arrived and stood at the front of the hall.

  “At ease,” the Colonel said. He could have easily had his voice boosted to come from all four corners of the mess hall, but long years in the service had gifted him with lungs easily capable of being heard wherever he wanted to be heard. “Sit yourselves down, ladies and gentlemen.”

  For a few seconds the screech of metal chairs on metal floors filled the room, deafening in Lee's delicate head, before silence once again returned.

  “As you all know we are to be split up and deployed for fleet security duties,” Mukaba began with a southern drawl in his voice.