by John Ringo
“He is damaged,” Celine hissed. “This one is untrustworthy.”
“Mistress!” Tur-uck whined. “I am not. I am a good orc! I have proven my trust!”
“Why do you say that?” Chansa said, quizzically. “I’ve found him to be very useful.”
“He is damaged,” Celine snapped. “He never should have been Changed. There is a plate in his head, repairs from before his Change. By a skilled surgeon, I would say. It interferes with control pathways. This one I cannot warrantee, I would recommend his elimination.”
“Interesting,” Chansa said, nodding. “Well, all I can say is that if this interference is what makes him what he is, I’d wish you’d put plates in all my orcs’ heads.”
“He cannot be trusted,” Celine repeated, raising her hand to strike.
“Hold!” Chansa said. “This is my soldier. You will not take action against him against my wishes.”
“He is a bad product,” Celine growled. “He should not be. It is… it’s bad production. He should never have been made. I have the code of the… blast and damn! He was made by that Conner fisking idiot! No wonder! None of my acolytes would have made him!”
“Made by Conner,” Chansa said, musingly. “Now that is interesting. He had the protocols, but I was not aware that he had used them. He is far beyond your wrath, however, Celine.”
Chansa considered the information for a moment. The New Destiny agent had participated in the abortive invasion of Norau and been killed, from intelligence reports, by Edmund Talbot’s daughter, who was not your normal killer. She was, in fact, a “skilled surgeon.” He nodded in thought for a moment.
“Tur-uck was probably one of the patients under the care of Edmund Talbot’s daughter, Rachel,” he mused. “I could see Conner tormenting her by Changing someone like that.”
“He should be eliminated,” Celine repeated. “He is a bad product. He is bad quality control.”
“I think that’s up to Reyes,” Chansa said. “What do you think, Reyes? I commend him to your service. I know of your Durgar and they are no more thoughtful than my own orc legionnaires. This one can think. You’ll need a good, thinking, leader, in that damned ship.”
“Hmmm,” Reyes said, tilting his head from side to side. “Celine recommends that he be killed, like a sword that has been misforged. Chansa says he is a smart leader. Capable?”
“Quite,” Chansa said. “He has been fighting the Gael and they are tricky opponents. I’ve promoted him twice for courage and initiative.”
“What say you, Tur-uck?” Reyes said, grinning at the orc. “Should you be killed as a bad product? Or are you a loyal and capable orc?”
“I am loyal, Master,” Tur-uck said, definitely. “I will be loyal to you beyond death!”
“Yours or mine?” Reyes mused. “Can you obey orders?”
“Always, Master,” Tur-uck said, then temporized. “I would obey any order from a Master or a Lesser Master, no matter what the order. I have twice disobeyed orders from legion superiors when I saw advantage to the Masters.”
“You see!” Celine shouted. “Untrustworthy!”
“And both times he was right,” Chansa noted. “He was the only one to survive that debacle in Norau, including Conner, and he brought word of what was happening. The other time he took charge of a sub-unit while fighting the Gael and mousetrapped a group of Chudai, which is tough as hell I’ll tell you.”
“Chudai?” Reyes said, his eyes widening. “You have Chudai in Gael? Those bastards…”
“We have Chudai,” Chansa ground out. “The Gael are bad enough, the Chudai are bastards to fight. The only time we’ve killed any number of them, it was when Tur-uck disobeyed orders.”
“If he can kill Chudai, he is good enough for me,” Reyes snorted. “Those bastards made our retreat from Alabad a nightmare. The Durgar hardly got a sniff of them until they attacked. They cut us up again and again.”
“They do the same to my legions,” Chansa sighed. “It’s one of the reasons Gael is such a tough nut, besides the Gael themselves, who are no joke. But Tur-uck has fought them and won. By thinking. Take him. You will need him.”
“And you don’t?” Reyes said, suspiciously.
“We’re… reconsolidating our forces,” Chansa said, clearing his throat.
“Retreating?” Reyes asked. “Since when?”
“Our intelligence is that Talbot intends to bypass Breton and hit the Ropasan coast directly,” Chansa said. “I’ve moved out of the Gael hills and am moving troops back to the Ropasan continent. We took quite a few casualties in Balmoran, so I need the troops.”
“We can make more Changed,” Celine said, shaking her head.
“The farming Changed can’t produce food for shit,” Chansa said. “I need the normal humans for support, not more useless Changed! I’m bleeding troops in a dozen directions, so I’m pulling back troops from Breton. My war, my decision!”
“I’ll take him,” Reyes said, cutting off the argument. “What else do you have for me?”
“We have one Dark One left,” Celine said, angrily. “I can’t make more until somebody captures me another elf or the pods grow to maturity, which will be at least five more years. You can have him. His name is Tragack.”
“And what else?” Reyes said, interestedly.
“Oh, I have a few ideas,” Celine said, smiling happily.
As she said that a scuttling sound began to come from the forest of pillars.
Chapter Twelve
“Tell Herzer I’m sorry as hell about this, Lieutenant,” Colonel Torill said, shrugging and gesturing at the paper on his desk. “I’d give you all sorts of reports to baffle you with bullshit, but the bottom line is that we’ve got nothing in the way of intel on New Destiny’s intentions. Anything that I told you, Herzer’d already know. Chansa and Celine are going to be involved. That means monsters and probably orcs. They have to take the ship and get the fuel. After that, zippo. There’s no mass movement going on, that’s for sure, but it’s a small unit action so that doesn’t affect you guys.”
“What about observation in and around the reactors, sir?” Destrang asked desperately. “That’s where they’ll have to board. It’s early, yet, but we might at least get a feel for their forces.”
“As far as I know, we have no such observers,” Torill sighed. “Most of them are deep in New Destiny territory and they’re surrounded by troops. Then there’s the problem of real-time intelligence. We’re talking about getting the message across oceans unless there’s a communicator involved and the way we’ve been rolling up New Destiny rings is communications. I’m sorry, son, but we’re screwed for intel.”
“Yes, sir,” Destrang said, gritting his teeth. He’d expected it to be bad, but not this bad. “I’ll head back to discuss this with my superiors, sir.”
“Do that,” Torill said, grinning. “And tell Herzer I said hello.”
“Yes, sir,” Destrang said, getting to his feet and nodding as he left the office.
Torill’s office was located in the special operations section of the War Department. The department had originally been in an ancient castlelike structure that over the millennia had served various purposes, most notably as a museum. As the need for more and more bureaucracy grew, or at least appeared to grow, buildings and wings had been hastily added to the structure and they now surrounded it in a giant growth that resembled nothing so much as an out-of-control cancer.
SpecOps was set well back from the main road, out on the fringe in more ways than one. The hodgepodge of buildings was cut by dirt roads, walkways, breezeways and cul-de-sacs in a chaos that had caused more than one unlucky ensign to wander into the office of a senior officer so confused he could barely remember his name.
Destrang had navigated the maze before but he only knew certain paths and stuck to them religiously. He was just passing out of the SpecOps section and into SouthWestern Command Logistics when he heard his name called.
“Destrang, right?” a colonel said, wandering over an
d putting a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Been looking for you, lad.”
“Yes, sir?” Destrang said, frowning slightly.
“Give me a moment of your time, lad?” the colonel said, gesturing towards one of the breezeways. “Shouldn’t take long.”
“Yes, sir, of course,” Destrang said. He briefly had a paranoid thought related to his current assignment, but he was in the middle of the War Department. If New Destiny could slip an agent in here it was one thing. Bashing a lieutenant over the head and smuggling him out was another.
“So what do you think of your new assignment?” the colonel asked bluffly. “Going to space and all that? Worked out the plumbing, yet, eh? Eh?” he added with a hearty laugh.
“I’m not sure what assignment you’re referring to, sir,” Destrang replied. “You’re here at the War Department?”
“Logistics old son,” the colonel said, grinning. “Bullock trains and whatnot. Done a bit of personnel work as well, you know, a commander works from sun to sun but a staffer’s work is never done, eh? Had my eye on you when you were in Officer Basic but you got scooped up by that old scamp Edmund, what?”
“I’ve met the duke, sir,” Destrang admitted. It was certainly open source.
“What do you think of working for Herrick, eh?” the colonel asked. They had passed through SouthWest Logistics and were now in Army logistics where the breezeway was somewhat more crowded.
Destrang considered that question and then nodded.
“Major Herrick is a good officer,” he allowed. “Do you know the major, sir?”
“Never met him,” the colonel replied, turning into a small building. He nodded at a heavy-set triari sergeant, then opened up an inner door. “He’s tighter than a gnat’s ass,” he added to the man behind the desk. “I’m not sure he’d have admitted his name if it wasn’t sewn on his uniform.” The colonel’s accent had drifted away and his manner had become brusque to the point of rudeness. If the person in civilian clothes behind the unadorned desk took offense it wasn’t apparent.
“Good,” the man said. “Sit, Lieutenant.”
Destrang looked at the colonel, who nodded.
“He outranks me, Lieutenant,” the colonel noted. “Sit.”
“And are you a real colonel?” Destrang asked coldly.
“Very,” the colonel replied, gesturing him inside and closing the door.
Destrang sat carefully in the room’s single unoccupied chair and looked around. The room was entirely unadorned and all there was in it was the desk, the chair for the occupant and the chair he occupied. The room also had no windows and was lit by a lamp. It was stiflingly hot.
“My name is T,” the man said. He was tall and spare with a shock of black hair. “You’re wondering if I’m going to pump you about your mission. I am not. I know everything I need to know about it and if there’s anything I don’t know I’ll get it from Edmund. I’m here to give you information. Some of it, frankly, is well above your level. So you’re just going to have to be moved to a different level, Lieutenant. If you had said so much as one word to Colonel Clifton, we wouldn’t be having this conversation and you’d be out of Herzer’s command before you returned. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Destrang said uneasily.
“Colonel Torill told you there was no information available about your opponents. There is, in fact, very little. I am going to tell you what there is available. Then I’m going to tell you what we suspect. Then I’m going to tell you why there is so little available, which means we’re going to have to get into means and methods. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, sir,” Destrang said, swallowing. Means and methods meant that he would be told how information was gathered. Very rarely was such information passed to those who would use it, for the very simple reason that they might be captured and reveal sources.
“T” sat back in his chair and sighed. “Frankly, getting into means and methods in this case is not that big of a deal. Especially since it’s a litany of failures. But we will. Listen carefully because none of this gets put in writing. There was a meeting three days ago between Celine, Chansa and Reyes. A physical meeting which is believed to have taken place somewhere in Celine’s domain. The agenda is not available but Reyes returned to his domains accompanied by a new orc, a Ropasa version orc, and one of their Changed elves for which we now have their name: Dark Ones. Very dramatic, very Celine and all that. Given that Chansa is tightly involved in the war against us and Celine never leaves her domains in person, it is believed that Reyes is, therefore, the designated Key-holder to be sent on the mission to recapture the fueling shuttle, Miss Travante’s opposite, in other words.”
“Yes, sir,” Destrang said, nodding.
“Celine’s involvement means there will be some of her monsters, but that was obvious. What they will be we have no idea. One of my analysts who specializes in trying to read her insane mind believes that they will be some sort of arthropod mod, similar to the scorpions that attacked Megan Travante. This is based upon her habit of… patterning in development. She tends to work in one particular kingdom or genus and then move to another. She initially centered around mammals, humans and elves along with a few others, there are some creatures we haven’t seen here in Norau that were used in the Sind wars, then moved on to upsizing reptiles and now seems to be working with arthropods, apparently having overcome the structural and metabolic issues with them.
“But he’s been wrong before. There will assuredly be orcs, but Reyes’ involvement means that they will probably be Mod Two form orcs, you know the difference?”
“No, sir,” Destrang admitted.
“Data on Reyes Cho, what we have, and on his Mod Two orcs will be forwarded to you and Herzer by courier. They’re referred to as Durgar for reasons that are too complicated to bother explaining at this time. Basically, they’re physically lighter than Ropasan orcs, darker of skin and use different weaponry. They have some elven mods, but they don’t have elven speed, strength or gaslan. They are a tad faster fighters and highly mobile on foot, not that that should be an issue on the ship. We have an unconfirmed report that some of them are being fitted with space armor. I’m working on getting more confirmation and, hopefully, a schematic of the armor, before you leave.
“On the subject of Reyes, he’s almost as much a mystery as everything else,” T admitted. “He was recommended by Paul Bowman to replace Tetzacola Duenas who was killed in the initial council fight. But he was not an associate of Paul’s prior to the Fall so someone else must have recommended him. He was one of the generals in the battles against Ishtar in Taurania, specializing in hit and run raids.
“Physically, he is described as good looking and is generally a blond. He has brutal tastes in women and maintains a harem, as Paul did, but no one comes out of it alive. His orcs are, if anything, more cruel than the Ropasan version. Letting any members of the team be captured, alive, would be unwise.”
“Yes, sir,” Destrang said, gulping.
“Now to what we don’t know and why we don’t know it,” T said. “Celine has taken the domain along the Nira River, and it is now referred to in internal documents as ‘Stygia’ which is simply an ancient word meaning—”
“Dark or darkness, sir,” Destrang interjected. “One of the rivers of Hades, if I recall correctly.”
“You do,” T said. “The river is flanked to the east and west by desert. To the north is the Toran Sea and the south is Frika, which is Chansa’s domain. Crossing deserts is no problem; there is an animal called the camel that can cross them quite easily. So, to find out what was happening in ‘Stygia’ I sent a team on camels to reconnoiter, infiltrate and, hopefully, develop intelligence on her monsters before they hit us. The team did not return. Comments?”
“Various reasons, sir,” Destrang said, shrugging. “They could have been intercepted on entry, rolled up inside, etcetera.”
“So I thought,” T admitted. “So I sent another team, telling them to be more careful o
n entry, the previous team had masqueraded as traders, be cautious in developing information and what have you. They never reported back. Comments?”
“Ouch?” Destrang said.
“Ouch, indeed,” T said, his jaw flexing. “So I sent a third team. This one wasn’t supposed to penetrate at all. It was just supposed to find out what was stopping the other teams. Since it wasn’t there for intelligence gathering, I could choose virtually anyone. So I assembled a team of rogues, mercenaries, cutthroats, most of them convicted criminals. They were given the promise of freedom, and gold, if they just made it back with any information. One did. One. And he frankly admitted that what he did when they got hit was run like hell. So, what does Celine produce?”
“Monsters,” Destrang answered, shaking his head. “Sir.”
“Monsters,” T replied. “What they got hit by was a pack of very large, poisonous snakes. The agent reported that they were larger than anaconda, partially armored, and their fangs appeared to be metal since they went right through the unit’s armor. They attacked from within the sands, apparently lying in ambush having determined the team’s direction of approach.
“Why the monsters do not wipe out the inhabitants is the question. And there are inhabitants. The Nira River is a trade route to inner Frika. Various materials flow down it, somehow, and it produces a surplus of food which is sent to the various New Destiny regions. It even trades with Ishtar’s Tauranian domains. Caravans cross the desert. The caravans are guarded by very large… probably not Changed. They look to be uplifted gorillas or baboons, heavily modified to survive desert conditions. Extremely vicious and incredibly strong. Anyone or anything approaching the caravan other than through permitted lanes is killed without warning.”
“Uplift is proscribed, sir,” Destrang noted.
“A proscription that the New Destiny Council has apparently overridden,” T replied with a shake of his head. “None of the caravan drivers interact with anyone outside the caravan. The only contact is the caravan master and his assistants who are acolytes of Celine. I tried to penetrate the delta at the head of the Nira River using delphino and selkie. They survived, but only because the delphinos turned tail when they saw that the region was populated by very large sharks and something that they said looked very much like an extinct pleyosaurus. I haven’t tried through Frika, yet. I’m almost afraid to think what she has there. That, of course, is where the Stanel reactor resides. I can imagine what she guards that with.”