She typed a message. Acknowledged.
For the briefest of moments, she paused at the controls. Why would Kenos ask her not to target the Raknar? Had he or the Peacemaker discovered something useful?
Qamm hesitated with a claw hanging in space above the transmit button. Does it matter?
Decision made, she jabbed the button. “Forward elements, move out. All units standby for consolidation. Targeting orders to follow.”
With a swipe and a series of furious taps, she sent the information to her units telling them to avoid directly targeting the Raknar. One entire section of her forces undoubtedly sighed and whined to themselves as soldiers always did when things changed at the last minute. Most of them wanted to set the Raknar aflame simply so they could brag about it for the rest of their careers, no matter how long or short. The icons on her command ring formed up into their movement groups. Her first units, the reconnaissance team, moved out in a group of four-wheeled vehicles creeping forward slowly with all the sensor packages in full collection mode.
She’d let them get a kilometer or two ahead of the next unit before adjusting the movement plan based on what they found. The first 500 meters, there was nothing. Exactly as she expected, but there was nothing complacent about the approach her mercenaries took. At 1,000 meters out, there was a faint gathering of electrical component noise. Fifteen hundred meters out, there was a probability warning exceeding 60 percent for some type of enemy equipment on the battlefield. Weapons charged and ready, the reconnaissance team accelerated.
Two human CASPers jumped quickly in the direction of the Altar colony, loosing a spread of folding-fin aerial rockets to cover their escape.
“Let them go,” Qamm transmitted. “Slow down to Gear Three. Forward strike teams, forward. Recon team take up the screen to the west and protect the riverbed. We’ll draw their attention away from our friends.”
She turned to her artillery officer, a young Sidar with leathery yellowish scales. “Hob? Set our first missions on preplanned points one through four. Standby for targets six and eight.”
Less than five seconds passed. “Cannons are ready and targeted, commander. We’re prepared to fire at any point along the attack corridor.”
Qamm smiled. The temptation to start unleashing hell itself on the Altar and their human saviors almost prodded her to action, but she waited. The Wandering Death needed to get their attack together. Once they were in position, she’d certainly rain fire down on the colony and reduce the Altar infantry to pieces. The humans in their CASPers and tanks would be another story, but they were Leeto’s problem. He wanted to get close enough to kill Kenos while wiping out the Altar completely.
He could deal with them while she did exactly what her contract stipulated. The icons for the forward strike teams, all four of them, moved out from the colony in a line abreast, separated by a few hundred meters. As they progressed north, the four groups of six vehicles would space themselves out further to confuse the Altar’s visual sensors. Each of the sections possessed at least one vehicle capable of generating smoke on the battlefield that would spread and conceal the actual number of vehicles in the ruse. Had she not wasted her flyers at the urging of Leeto and Kenos, she would have positioned them in between each of the sections to broadcast false signatures of more than 100 vehicles each in the hopes of triggering a massive fusillade of defensive gunfire at very small targets. Whatever the enemy spent now, they could not spend later.
Qamm watched her reconnaissance team pass more than 2,000 meters out from her main unit with the forward strike teams close behind. It was time. She powered up her vehicle and its turrets and gestured to the driver to move out. As she did, she pressed her transmit button.
“Full complement forward! Attack!”
* * *
Taemin heard the commotion outside his temporary quarters a full two hours before sunrise. He rose and spent a half hour in silent meditation on the floor of the unit before he dressed and took his time with a sparse breakfast. As the level of noise rose to include the occasional stomp of CASPer units, he looked outside for a few moments and observed the activities in a clinical, detached manner.
Jessica Francis obviously thought her enemies would strike at first light—a popular human notion reinforced by countless poor holo-videos and Tri-V shows that had been around since the beginning of time. Administrator Kenos would arrive early, that was certain, but she knew nothing beyond what she might have felt in her gut during the planning process with her own deputies and the Altar colony leadership. They were awake and preparing for war, that was certain. Whether it would come, they did not know, but they did not wish to be surprised.
Taemin understood that reasoning. He spent a few minutes watching the humans moving around, and occasionally glanced at the Peacemaker’s quarters. Her interior light wasn’t on, and it appeared that no one wanted to wake her. He grinned. Another poor human trait was the notion that leaders needed their rest while those expected to follow them were exhausted by the lunch hour. Their guilt at waking their precious leader made him smile in pity. He watched her quarters for a full 15 minutes expecting her to emerge, but she did not.
He considered walking over and waking her, himself, just to see the exasperation on her face. She’d banned him from the Raknar, and whatever she was trying to do there, but the reality was that her mission was over the moment Kenos arrived and verified the presence of a brood exceeding contracted stipulations. She knew that, too, but she didn’t trust the overall situation. He could write that off as paranoia in his final opinion, and it wouldn’t change his recommendation. Should Jessica Francis survive the day, she would not be recommended for a Peacemaker’s commission. Nor would any human, if Taemin had his way.
A shadowed figure walked between his quarters and hers, and in a split second of recognition, he knew it was the Peacemaker. Surprised, he checked the clock imprinted on his retina via neural connections. She’d been up for some time and was already moving quickly toward the Raknar to continue her work. She wouldn’t find anything usable, of that Taemin was certain, as he had conducted his own investigations when others weren’t looking the day before. None of that mattered. Kenos, if he kept to his schedule, was on his way to put an end to this charade of a mission. And yet, Taemin had to smile.
Kenos would certainly disrupt the Peacemaker’s plan to save the Altar. But even on his best day of planning, and after his years of carefully executed manipulations, Kenos wouldn’t expect to see anything like what he would find upon his arrival. Humans and Altar working together to protect a colony with a deep, expensive secret, facing annihilation from two very well-trained and experienced mercenary forces and their complicit colonial leaders was not in his thoughts.
It was all by Kenos’ design, but the Administrator lacked the vision for truly enjoying the spoils of war. Manipulation was a key, but unspoken, tool of a mediator. Combined with vision and understanding, it would be easy to let the Administrator feel his plan was successful until the mercenaries converged upon him. The trap had been easy to set. The Peacemaker and her forces would be no match for the combined strength of the Wandering Death and the Darkness. Add in a few thousand Selroth and the herd mentality of the GenSha, and the battlefield would become a teeming storm of chaos and destruction that would both resolve the tense situation along the Choote River and make him a very rich mediator. He’d laid it out perfectly, and with Kenos on final approach to the Altar colony, there would be no stopping it.
All Taemin needed to do was find a place to watch the fireworks from and maybe force the Peacemaker to join him. He slipped a pistol under his robes and left his comfortable quarters for the Raknar’s cockpit.
What better place to tie up all the loose ends?
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jessica reached the Raknar’s crumpled form as the sun broke over Araf’s eastern horizon. The craggy hills exploded in a shower of gold that slowed her steps and caught her attention for a moment
. In the hills, deep oranges and reds showed from the exposed faces of the rocks in layers of varying thickness. Bright against the still dark skies, the mountains glowed like a stunning beacon; something she’d never seen the likes of on Earth. Above them, a bright white dot appeared and seemed to slow. There was no doubt who it could be, and it spurred Jessica’s legs to action again.
One of the now crewless CASPers replaced Hex’s as the holder of the cockpit door. The brand-new Mark VIII was a sleek machine. Realizing the need for munitions, Hex had stripped the heavier cannons and missile systems from the chassis before using it as a makeshift door stopper. A rocket launcher and two smaller machine guns remained on the vehicle’s arms. She climbed up the built-in combat ladder on the vehicle’s left leg and stepped into the open cockpit, placing a foot on the rail. From there, transferring further into the Raknar’s cockpit section was a simple step. Jessica dug in her pocket and brought out two flashlights. One she positioned to shine up into the open system console and the second she put in her mouth. The climb was easier now. After several successful iterations, she knew where to put her feet and where to grab with her hands. She reached the control console in barely a minute, as the screeching sound of the Tchrt One’s engines spooled down after landing.
She removed the flashlight from her mouth and slipped it into the system console, where it shone on Hex’s combat slate and the panel with the missing chip. Jessica swiped the slate’s screen. “Lucille? I’m replacing the chip now.”
<
Figures. Jessica grimaced and looked up at the components. “Is there another panel I should try to engage?”
<
“All right.” Jessica reached over to the board filled with circular and semi-circular chipsets and carefully removed one. “Will that work?”
<> Lucille responded. <>
“Disconnecting you now.” Jessica removed the clips connecting Hex’s combat slate to the missing chip’s position. She brought the clips to the new panel and attached them the same way. A flashing icon on the combat slate showed that a connection attempt was in progress.
Killing time, she looked into the console again and tried to discern the numerical system the Dusman used for identification. It should have been simple, but without the time to solve it and reverse engineer the Raknar’s instrumentation there was nothing she could do but let Lucille evaluate the internal controls and try to find something, anything, they could use to their advantage.
“Peacemaker!”
Jessica whirled at Kenos’ voice. It sounded as though he was climbing the CASPer from the proximity and volume of the call. She glanced at the slate and saw no change in the status. The realization that she should get down shot through her like a bolt of electricity. She reached into her pocket, found the missing rectangular chip and reached up to slip it into place with one hand while she tucked the combat slate out of view with the other. Satisfied, she grabbed the flashlight from the panel and climbed down the control console again. A clawed hand appeared on the cockpit door railing as she rose to her full height and placed her hands on her hips. Kenos wasn’t tall enough to make the step from the last ladder rung to the CASPer’s cockpit and over. That bought her just enough time to pick up the second flashlight, crouch below the control console and point her flashlight at the weapons console.
“What are you doing?” Kenos screeched as he crossed into the cockpit and stood on the curving wall above and behind her.
“Looking for an advantage,” she said over her shoulder, without meeting his eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Ending this charade of an investigation,” Kenos huffed. “Your Mediator communicated to me that the Altar queen has been hiding a brood far exceeding the limits of the contractual agreement. I’ve come to verify his findings and remove the colony from Araf once and for all, by force if I have to.”
Jessica looked over her shoulder again and turned just enough to see his face. “And did he also tell you that I’m not leaving? That you’re not forcing anyone off a planet they colonized under your own false promises?”
Kenos sputtered, “You can’t do that! The Peacemaker Guild cannot usurp the authority of a commercial venture.”
“All decisions by a Peacemaker must be followed until vetted by the Guild, even those under duress. If you’d like to have my conduct vetted, I recommend you leave now and register a complaint with the Guild in the nearest system.”
“How dare you!” Kenos screeched. “You are undermining the wishes of the Dream World Consortium! The Trading Guild will most certainly know that you have precluded their lawful pursuit of resources from this planet.”
Jessica stood and turned. Kenos clasped his short arms across his chest. There was no weapon she could see. Standing higher on the wall, he had the advantage in a hand-to-hand fight. She had a laser rifle over her shoulder and a pistol on her hip. She might not get it out of the holster before he moved, but she could deflect him. Simple combat tactics were the best. Jessica slowly crossed her arms across her abdomen. “Just what resources are we talking about, Kenos? You’re under contract for precious metals and other unexpected discoveries according to your contracts. They found something they are unwilling to extract, and you decided you want it. So, what is it? What do you hope to grab by setting three colonies to war?”
Kenos smiled and almost nodded. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here, Peacemaker. My efforts to get into the mine, including the use of your mediator as an unbiased observer, have failed. With his discovery of their brood, I have the legal right to see what’s in that mine. Once it’s identified, the Consortium will declare first right of extraction under the auspices of the original contract. The Altar forfeit all claims to territory and equipment. They must leave and you have no grounds to protect them.”
Jessica shook her head. “I have 7,000 reasons to protect them. Loss of life, especially of a species attempting a mass breeding effort to preserve colonization, is inherently protected by the Union.”
Kenos waved her comment away with a laugh. “Not in our contracts, Peacemaker. Legally, our rights preclude their need for procreation. Besides, they are a barely sentient species. When they send a colony off, they have guidelines for return. The only reason Klatk and her citizens attempted this was to avoid disgrace.”
“They did it to better meet their contract, Kenos. You knew that, and that’s why you stopped purchasing what they extracted at the proper rates. You sold them everything from the company store and kept them from flourishing because they wouldn’t do your dirty work. The minute you started manipulating their deliveries, they knew. Having more workers to produce would mean your supply would exceed your ability to sell it. That would lower the Consortium’s ability to charge for whatever they found. You’ve been after them for a long time, Kenos. Now that they have something they will never willingly surrender, you’re forced to enact a poorly worded contract and have mercenaries fight your war by proxy. It’s fairly pathetic.”
Kenos shook his head. “All I have to do is say the word and—”
The smile on his face faltered. His mouth worked soundless and he staggered forward. A trickle of blood, violet in the low light of the cockpit, spilled from the corner of his mouth, and he turned to the cockpit door and crumpled to the floor. Taemin rested an arm with a laser pistol on the railing and looked over it at her. Smoldering Cochkala fur filled the cockpit with a noxious odor that made Jessica want to retch, but she held her ground and her stomach.
“Make no sudden move, Peacemaker,” Taemin said. “If you’ll be so kind, remove your laser rifle from your bac
k and throw it to me.”
Jessica felt for the strap without breaking eye contact with him. “It wasn’t Kenos at all, was it?”
“Oh, he served a purpose, but he exceeded his usefulness.” As Taemin finished there was a crumpling sound from outside, the familiar sound of artillery cannons. Detonations vibrated the Raknar’s hull. “My friends have arrived with impeccable timing.”
Jessica held out the rifle. “You sonuvabitch.”
“Throw it out of the cockpit, Peacemaker.” Taemin smiled as she did what he ordered. “I figured you deserved a good seat to watch the end of the Altar colony. All I forgot was your awful popped corn and syrupy drinks.” He chuckled.
She slowly unbuttoned her holster and wondered, for a split second, if she could draw fast enough to get off a shot.
“I know what you’re thinking. I cannot recommend that course of action.” Taemin chuckled. “Of course, it would make my task easier and faster. Either way, you’ll have your name inscribed in the Guild’s halls around the galaxy—the human peacemaker who almost was.”
Jessica removed the pistol and hung it from the trigger assembly on her index finger. Taemin motioned with his head to throw it through the open cockpit, and she did. “Now what, Taemin?”
Another large explosion, this one much closer, rocked the Raknar. Taemin smiled over the pistol in his hands. “The Selroth are about to make things interesting. We’re just in time to watch the festivities.”
* * *
Leeto checked the readings relayed from the Selroth underwater team. “Honored Ooren, were you successful?”
“Negative on the first charge. We’re deploying the remainder now. Will need cover for three minutes.”
He pressed the radio transmission button on the control console for his skiff and said, “Darkness—attack by formations!”
Immediately, the different vehicles and complements of his combat teams accelerated from cover in the mountain valley. He led them from the front, using the large ballooned tires on his vehicle to bounce effortlessly over the rugged ground as he accelerated into the open Choote valley. To the south, immense dust columns rose as the Wandering Death and the GenSha infantry charged across open ground toward the Altar colony. Leeto smiled as he primed and tested his forward cannons. Action was everything and all too often under-appreciated. His 3,000 strong force roared forward into the quiet Altar flank.
Peacemaker (The Revelations Cycle Book 6) Page 25