But Max now had a pretty good idea what was there and what the alien ship was going to do.
Max slewed the optical sensors toward the object at L4 and cranked up the magnification. He was not surprised to see what for the Union would pass for a smallish outpost station, but what for these aliens was probably an immense installation. He was, however, surprised to see that the exterior was studded with cargo airlocks, complete with the magnetic grapplers that grasped the cargo modules and pulled them into the airlocks—there had to be roughly a hundred of them.
What the hell?
The station didn’t look like any kind of military space installation Max had ever seen. It looked more like some sort of freight terminal. Why would the Plunderers put a glorified freight terminal at the L4 of a planet they were going to invade? What kind of military planner would do something like that?
A brilliant one.
Max got it. With the Plunderers’ feeble propulsion technology it would take prohibitive amounts of fuel to move invasion transports fully loaded with all the food and weapons and ammunition and everything else needed to fight past orbital defenses and then wage war on the surface of a hostile planet. The invaders would need to refuel each transport several times in route which would require a vast fleet of tankers that would, in turn, themselves consume vast amounts of fuel. Mobilizing all of these ships at one time for the invasion, not to mention the escort vessels, hospital ships, and all the rest would be an immense undertaking.
But it doesn’t take much delta-V, and therefore, much fuel, to get from a planet’s L4 to the planet itself. If the invaders spent the years leading up to the invasion pre-positioning cargo and fuel at L4, they could bring in the transports empty of almost everything except for the troops. They would load up at the station and the swoop down on the planet. It was a great plan, except for one factor they didn’t consider.
Ensign Max Robichaux.
He took a detailed mass reading of the station and then did a thorough internal scan. Both sets of data suggested the same conclusion—the station was almost totally full. It didn’t take strategic genius to figure out what that meant. Once the Plunderers had stocked their depot with all the supplies it would hold, they would launch their invasion. And, from what little he had been able to figure out so far, the Tindallites had not brought themselves up to a high enough technological level to repel the attackers.
It didn’t take a tactical genius to figure out what to do with that knowledge. It had probably taken years for the Plunderers to accumulate the huge stockpile of supplies currently stored in the station. Accordingly, Max could give the Tindallites some breathing room, maybe even years of breathing room, by using one of his Spoonbill missiles to nuke the station out of existence. The Tindallites might never know what had been done to help them, but they didn’t have to know. They would put the time to good use.
So, what’s the big deal?
Max kicked in the main sublight drive and brought the Nightshade closer to the Plunder facility until he was at the Spoonbill’s optimum firing range—20,000 kilometers. He keyed to issue a Nuclear Weapons Firing Order, disabled the warhead safeties, enabled the missile’s drive, opened the missile tube doors, energized the launch tube, and visually checked to see that the tube was clear of obstructions. He targeted the station, checked the missile’s guidance, confirmed that he had a full bank of green lights across the fire control console, and hit the FIRE key.
Nothing.
Unlike before, now he had red lights. The missile tube firing coils were dead, both the mains and auxiliaries. The checked the other tube. Same thing. He ran diagnostics and uttered a string of sulfurous profanities condemning the Vaaach in terms he had heard only from the oldest and crustiest of chiefs. It was easy to see what was going on. Just as the Vaaach had been able to disable his systems at will when they captured him, they had disabled every conceivable means of getting power to the launch coils.
It was still possible for Max to fire the missile, but only by resequencing the launch program such that the Spoonbill’s propulsion system engaged in the launch tube rather than 0.13 seconds after clearing the launch tube in accordance with its normal programming.
Launching the missile in that way would push it out of the launch tube, accelerate it toward the space station, and blow the giant depot to flaming atoms.
One problem. Igniting the missile drive, essentially a powerful fusion rocket motor, in the launch tube would destroy the Nightshade killing Max instantly. Max ran the scenario through the computer just to check on what he thought to be true. Yep. The missile drive was sufficiently powerful to blow out the back of the launch tube, burn through the bulkhead, and fill the entire interior of the ship with huge quantities of plasma the temperature of the surface of the sun. Everything inside the ship would be vaporized, after which the hull would crack open from the inside in a ball of blinding white fire.
I would regard that as a disadvantage.
Max got it. The Vaaach were essentially asking him to sacrifice his life for the Tindallites. It was another test, not as part of Max’s education because, of course, he wouldn’t live long enough to derive any lessons from the experience. Instead, the Vaaach wanted to know how unselfish humans were and whether they were capable of sacrificing themselves for alien beings they had never met.
Max had been willing to sacrifice his life for the Union, his ship, and his shipmates since he was eight years old. The idea of dying for a cause was part of his being, of his very definition of who he was. And, maybe, he’d also be willing to die for these aliens. Maybe. But, before he spent the only life he had on the Tindallites’ behalf, he wanted to know one thing. What the hell was the “precious treasure?”
Then, he had an idea.
The Vaaach had made more information available to him about his last adversary when he blew one of their ships to flaming atoms. Maybe they made other information available to him at the same time, and he didn’t know because he hadn’t looked for it.
It couldn’t be that simple. Could it?
QUERY: PRECIOUS TREASURE
RESPONSE: THE TERM “PRECIOUS TREASURE” IS USED BY SPECIES 2295 TO REFER TO THE EGGS LAID BY THEIR FEMALES FROM WHICH THEIR YOUNG HATCH. THE RACE KNOWN TO SPECIES 2295 AS “THE PLUNDERERS” HAS REPEATEDLY CONDUCTED EXTENDED RAID CAMPAIGNS STEALING MORE THAN A MILLION EGGS AT A TIME. AN UNUSUAL FEATURE OF THESE YOUNG IS THAT THEY IMMEDIATELY IMPRINT UPON THE FIRST LARGE ORGANISM THEY SEE AND INSTINCTIVELY LOVE AND OBEY THAT ORGANISM UNTIL THEY REACH ADOLESCENCE TWENTY-FOUR SEASONS LATER, AT WHICH POINT THEY BEGIN TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES AND WILL DISOBEY ORDERS WITH WHICH THEY DO NOT AGREE. THE PLUNDERERS USE THE YOUNG AS SLAVE LABOR IN EXTREMELY HARSH CONDITIONS UNTIL THEY REACH ADOLESCENCE, AT WHICH POINT THEY ARE KILLED. IT IS ESTIMATED THAT THE PLUNDERERS HAVE KILLED IN EXCESS OF 255,800,000 OF SPECIES 2295’S YOUNG IN THIS MANNER.
“Sweet Jesus,” Max said out loud. “Those sorry bastards.” He clinched his fists and beat them on the arms of the command chair in rage and horror. More than a quarter of a billion sentient beings enslaved and then killed was an unthinkable crime. If the Vaaach needed someone to bombard Plunderer cities from orbit or to glass entire continents of their world, Max was ready to sign up.
But, the Vaaach were not asking him to kill for the sake of the Tindallites. They were asking him to die.
The only problem was that Max did not want to die. Not even slightly. He wanted to live to command his own ship, lead spacers into battle and to victory, and someday hoist his flag as an admiral. He wanted to find a woman who would love him despite his faults, indulge his eccentricities, accept and endure his deficiencies, and comfort him in times of grief and sorrow. He looked forward to all of these things. And, perhaps even more keenly he looked forward to marrying this woman and to being able to take care of her, to put her on a pedestal, and to see her as inhabiting a higher plane above all the poor clay-fashioned creatures that crawl upon the dirt and rock of all the worlds of the galaxy. And, of course, l
ike any other sixteen year old boy thinking of marriage, he wanted to find a woman who would, night after night after night, have sex with him until he was cross-eyed.
He wanted to live to do all these things and more.
But, as he thought about it, Max found that—no matter how much he wanted to live and looked forward to the possibilities the future promised him--there was no chance that he would choose his own life over those of a million or more sentient beings. He didn’t even consider that they weren’t human or even that they looked like huge bugs.
Let’s get it over with
It took only a few minutes to reprogram the missile launch sequence. Max quickly but carefully worked through the missile firing procedure until there was only one more step—hitting the FIRE key that would actually launch the missile and end his life. He knew that he was brave enough to push the key, but he also knew that he wasn’t quite brave enough to watch as a plume of incandescent plasma burned through the bulkhead and reached into the cabin to ignite his tender, pink face.
He tightly closed his eyes and hit the FIRE key.
And was not incinerated.
Instead, he felt the THUD of a normal, launch coil initiated missile launch followed by the SCRAPE-THUMP of the launch tube door closing automatically.
He pulled up a visual feed that showed the bright spot of the missile’s fusion drive accelerating toward the station. A few seconds later, the missile disappeared in a brilliant flash of blue-white light that rapidly expanded into an enormous sphere that continued to grow larger as it slowly dimmed and faded. The station had ceased to exist, along with the Plunderer ship carrying supplies to it.
Max was beside himself with an irreconcilable combination of relief and fury. Relief, of course, that he was alive, and fury at the Vaaach for manipulating him that way.
“You low down manipulative fuck assholes!” he shouted. “God damn you for playing with me that way. Who the hell do you think you are? God?”
He wanted to break something, but he only shook his head. The Vaaach had wanted to see whether he was willing to sacrifice his life without actually killing him, so they had rigged Max’s systems to indicate a malfunction that didn’t exist.
He turned to the overhead, as though the Vaaach were lurking on the other side. “Would I give my life to save the Tindallites’ babies? Well fuck you. I would. So, what next, assholes?”
The comm panel chimed. Max looked down from the overhead to the screen.
YOUR ANGER IS BOTH UNEXPECTED AND REGARDED FAVORABLY BY THE VAAACH. WE EXPECTED MORE DOCILITY FROM A FRUIT EATER. IN THE EXECUTION OF YOUR TASK YOU HAVE DISPLAYED COURAGE, TACTICAL CUNNING, AND WILLINGNESS TO SACRIFICE FOR OTHERS, ALBEIT UNDER HIGHLY RUDIMENTARY CHALLENGES.
YOU HAVE NOT ENTIRELY DISGRACED YOURSELF AND YOUR SPECIES.
BE AWARE THAT OUR INTELLIGENCE EXPERTS ESTIMATE THAT THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR FACILITY WILL CAUSE THE PLUNDERERS TO RECONSIDER WHETHER THEY WISH TO CONTINUE OPERATIONS IN THAT SYSTEM. IT IS EXPECTED THAT THEY WILL WAIT AT LEAST FIVE OF YOUR YEARS BEFORE BEGINNING TO BUILD ANOTHER LOGISTICS FACILITY IN THAT LOCATION. ANOTHER SEVEN YEARS WILL BE REQUIRED TO ACCUMULATE ENOUGH FUEL AND PROVISIONS FOR ANOTHER INVASION. BY THAT TIME THE TINDALLITES SHOULD HAVE REACHED A LEVEL OF TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT SUFFICIENT TO REPEL THE PLUNDERERS, AND THEY WILL BELIEVE THEY HAVE DONE SO WITHOUT ANY OUTSIDE ASSISTANCE, THEREBY INCREASING THEIR CONFIDENCE AS A SPECIES.
WE WILL ARRIVE AT YOUR LOCATION IN 38 MINUTES TO CONVEY YOU TO THE HUNTERS OF VERMIN TO CONTINUE YOUR TRAINING. WHAT YOU FACE THERE WILL BE CONSIDERABLY MORE DIFFICULT THAN WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE.
PREPARE YOURSELF.
Hunters of Vermin? Prepare myself? Training? Considerably more difficult? What the hell? Clearly, those Vaaach bastards aren’t done with me yet. I just barely escaped this “test” of theirs with my life. If the next one is “considerably more difficult,” then I’ in deep shit.
Very deep shit.
Watch for future novella and novel length adventures of the young Max Robichaux during the missions and conflicts that sharpened the abilities and forged his character, laying the foundation for his rise to skipper of the USS Cumberland. And, of course, look for the concluding volume of the “Man of War” Trilogy, Brothers in Valor, to be published by 47North on July 7, 2015. In addition, don’t miss the continuing adventures of Max Robichaux and Ibrahim Sahin in the Union Space Navy in the “Brothers of the Dark Sky” Trilogy. The first volume, To Stations My Lads, is expected in early 2016. News about future publications is available at http://hpaulhonsinger.com].
Paul loves to hear from (sane, polite) readers. Email him at [email protected].
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