"I say yes to the dead man's switch and I could go either way with Mars Protectorate. I just don't think they're going to do anything in a timeframe that will affect us. Worse yet, they might attempt to prevent us from moving forward with our mission." He paused to think, then said, "I guess I'm not opposed to talking with Sterra."
"Marny, how long before we can have the Colt 816s replicated?" I asked.
"Moonie will have the ammo packs in four hours," she said. "I'll let him know we want a total of four and configure them so they use the same interface as the mechanized armor we trained on."
"I appreciate that you're not rubbing my face in the fact that I sold our suits," I said.
"Water under the bridge, Cap."
"Liam. You, Tabby and Nick need to rest," Ada said. "Your suit's a mess and you can't just keep going. You have to be running on empty."
"Not sure I can sleep, but a shower does sound good. How about six hours and we'll finish things up planet side?"
"You want to tell me why the cold shoulder?" I asked Tabby when we final got back to our quarters.
She turned away from me and slipped into bed. "I don't know what you're talking about."
I slid in next to her and laid my arm over her shoulders. She didn't shrug me off, but didn't respond otherwise. I was too tired to push and woke in the same position, five hours later. I realized I'd been an idiot. By asking Tabby to deal with Divelbiss, she'd no doubt come face-to-face with her own horrific injuries when the cruiser she'd been assigned to, Theodore Dunham, had been obliterated by the Red Houzi dreadnaught Bakunawa.
I ran my hand down her right arm as I watched her sleep. She looked so small next to me, vulnerable as she slept. "I'm sorry. It was a hard day," I whispered as she slept.
"I can't believe you went back for the electronics," she said. I hadn't realized she was awake. "Divelbiss could have died."
"I had to make a call, Tabby. I feel like it was the right one," I said.
She rolled over so that we were face to face. "I know. It makes me wonder how well I really know you. What if it were me lying on the deck of Hotspur?"
"I'd move the universe for you," I said, staring into her eyes in the dim light of our quarters. "If you want to hear me say that I weighed Divelbiss's life against the mission, I did."
"Doesn't that bother you?" she asked.
"Why do you think I came back to the ship first? I was so wrapped up in dealing with our wounded I let go of why we were even here. I had to know what those men had willingly given their lives for in the vault," I said. "I couldn't let their deaths go. We opened the vault, what if there were more Kroerak?"
She stared back at me, searching my face, then finally reached over and brushed my hair back. "You've really grown into this whole captainy thing. I guess I'm just playing catch up."
I reached my hand down to the small of her back and pulled her in as tightly as I could. I needed to be close to her. As our legs intertwined, I closed my eyes. The knot in my stomach that I hadn't even acknowledged having, released as I drifted back to sleep.
A warm kiss on my forehead brought me awake. Tabby was already dressed in her grav-suit, her copper hair neatly braided into a ponytail. "Coffee is on the stand," she said.
I sat up. Next to the coffee sat my earwig. Apparently, she'd decided I needed more sleep. I hoped we hadn't lost whatever element of surprise we might have had, but pushed the worry aside and picked the device up. I'd only been asleep for an additional two hours.
"Thanks," I said, taking a drink of coffee.
"Moonie needed extra time to finish the ammo packs," Tabby said. "Apparently, he ran into some problems. Good thing Jonathan was around to fix it."
"What kind of problem?"
"You'd have to ask Moonie or Jonathan," she said. "I figured you could use the extra sleep. About yesterday …"
I grabbed her hand and pulled her to me. "Air out the airlock," I said. "We talked it through, as long as you're still okay with things."
"I checked on Divelbiss," she said. "Good thing he's taking a round in the tank. He has serious liver damage."
"From the Kroerak?"
She grinned. "No. According to Kerwin, Divelbiss helped one of the locals grow something they called moonshine. It's an alcoholic drink. Very potent. I guess he was also one of their better customers."
I chuckled. "Seems like our medical scans should have caught that."
"They would have eventually," Tabby said. "Otherwise, he's making good progress."
"Who's going planet-side today?"
"Marny is pissed. She really wants to, but realizes she can't leave Intrepid behind. There's no one who can man the gunnery stations without her in command. It'll be same as last time, except we're taking Kerwin instead of Divelbiss. Crew is already loaded in Hotspur," she said, handing me a fresh vac-suit liner. I enjoyed the sensation of being able to easily slide my replacement foot into the material. It was nearly impossible to distinguish from my original and I wiggled my toes, enjoying the moment.
"Do you need to be alone?" Tabby asked, giving my foot a sardonic grin.
Ignoring her jibe, I pulled my grav-suit on and we headed out of our quarters, aft to Hotspur and our awaiting crew.
"Welcome aboard, Mr. Kerwin. Clark, I hope you got some rest," I said, as Tabby and I stepped onto the lift that would take us to the bridge-deck. Jenny Hill Clark and Kerwin were seated in the galley wearing armored vac-suits.
"Think we'll see any bugs?" Kerwin asked. "I'd sure like to get a shot at 'em."
Jenny shook her head almost imperceptibly. They differed by at least fifteen stans and their responses showed.
"Let's hope not. Two of them nearly wiped us out last time," I said.
"I just want a shot at 'em," he said, fidgeting with his blaster rifle. I didn't have a chance to reply as his enthusiasm was cut off by our arrival on the bridge-deck.
"Why the blaster rifles?" I asked.
"Not enough of the new 816s," Tabby said. "Marny equipped the blaster rifles with three shot, under-barrel grenade launchers."
"Were we ever that young?" I asked as we detached and pulled free from Intrepid.
"Maybe you were," Tabby answered.
"Have we had any other movement on the pucks since we left?" I asked.
"None," Nick said.
"How do you want to do this today, Liam?" Xie asked. She'd been quietly sitting on the bridge couch waiting for us to get settled.
"Focus on the vault room first while the construction bot is working on a mass grave. I'd like to recover DNA from as many of the victims as possible since their suits were wiped. I'd like to be able to let someone know who we found," I said.
"I volunteer to take Kerwin up to the vault if you desire to start on the main building," Xie said.
I had to tamp down a surge of distrust. On the face, it was a good distribution of work.
"How would you get Kerwin up there?" Nick asked.
"We must all learn to fly with AGBs at some point," she said. "It would appear his day has come. The lower gravity is a perfect learning environment."
"Take a grav-cart with you," I said. "Worse case is you load him on it and bring him back."
"As you wish, Liam," she said smoothly.
"And just when I think we're making progress," a message from Tabby showed on my HUD.
"You'll need to equip one of the 816s," I said. I'd originally thought we'd only bring two into the field, but with us splitting up, I didn't want her to be at any disadvantage.
I landed in roughly the same spot we had the day before. From what I could tell, nothing had changed that couldn't be explained by wind. "Three hours max, Nick," I said as Xie, Tabby and I descended to the berth deck where Kerwin and Clark stood, waiting for us.
"Kerwin, you're with Xie. Clark you're with Tabby and me." I led us into Hotspur's hold.
The Colt 816s had been neatly arranged on grav-carts. The ammo packs were big enough that I was concerned their mass would be unwiel
dly. It wasn't that they would be difficult to lift in .2g, but extra mass will throw you around at the wrong time. I wasn't interested in that experience while fighting for my life. I shrugged myself into a pack and my HUD displayed a familiar status display. I nudged the weapon into safe mode and switched my ammo manufacturing to armor piercing, explosive rounds and sent a recommendation to Xie and Tabby.
"Remember. If you make contact with Kroerak, I want you to make all possible haste to the ship. Do not engage if you can avoid it," I said.
"Frak," Kerwin cussed quietly.
"Are we going to have a problem?" I stepped in front of him.
"No, sir, Captain," he said dejectedly.
"Don't worry Kerwin, you'll get your turn. My job is to keep you alive so you can," I said. "You don't want anything to do with these Kroerak in the open field. Believe me."
"We'll be back before you know it," Xie said.
"Jenny, have you ever run a construction bot before?" I asked.
"No, sir," she replied.
"It's not hard, palm the interface panel and set up a link, your AI will do all of the work," I said. "We need a grave that's two meters deep, three meters wide and eight meters long. Tell it to find a nice soft spot within line of sight of the ship and get to digging."
"Can do."
"Once you're done, stay on the ship until we come back for you. I don't want anyone running around by themselves."
"I’ve interfaced, sir," she said.
"Oh. Nice job, then."
"Like you said. It's not very complex."
"Nick, we're headed out," I said. "Clark, chain those grav-carts together and bring 'em along. I want Tabby and me to keep our hands free, just in case." I'd always had trouble telling people to do work I could just as easily do and Clark was no exception. I appreciated that she took the direction easily and just set about the task.
Tabby and I entered the first level and quickly cleared it. The scene was just as gruesome as when we first arrived. When we entered the second level, it quickly became obvious that we'd made a huge mistake by not clearing it the day before. The Kroerak had set up a nest on this level. The office furniture was gone and the floor covered in a dark, muddy material I was sure I didn't want to smell. In the center of the mud were two pods, torn open, looking like broken eggs. The insides looked perfectly suited for the Kroerak to rest within.
"You getting this, Jonathan?" I asked.
"We are. We have never seen anything like it. Most likely, you're looking at a hibernation chamber," he said. "The material on the floor and walls appears to be a combination of dirt from the surrounding mountain and organic material from the outpost victims."
Tabby and I sidestepped around the center pods, sweeping our gun barrels and bright lights around the room, looking for any other features worth noting for Jonathan. We found nothing.
"It looks like there were just two. You agree with that?" I asked.
"That is a reasonable assessment. We believe they were using the humans as a food source. Very efficient," he observed. "Oh. Our apologies, Captain. That was insensitive."
"Appreciate the information," I said.
We continued to sweep the floor, but found nothing else. Apparently, the Kroerak didn't like the idea of walls and had knocked down everything, making our job easy. The third floor was just as we'd left it and I leaned down to check out the remains of the Kroerak Divelbiss had taken out. The grenade had removed the top third of the bug, but most of its lower body remained.
"Over here, Clark," I said and pulled the Kroerak onto a grav-cart. "We'll take that with us."
She looked at me skeptically.
"Wouldn't you like to know what will penetrate that carapace?" I asked, to which she nodded agreement.
The rest of the morning wasn't anywhere near as much fun as we loaded corpses onto grav-sleds and laid them to rest in the grave dug by the construction bot.
"What's the point?" Kerwin finally asked as I leaned over to recover DNA from the Kroerak's final victim. We'd had good luck in locating records for the deceased. A woman's portrait showed on my HUD. Dark hair, shoulder length and an easy smile. I didn't know if I was causing myself more pain by seeing the pictures of the Kroerak's victims or not. Her name – Thren Blively.
I gently removed a silver necklace from around her neck and placed it in a bag next to the other jewelry I'd found.
"Of getting DNA?"
"This whole thing. Why bury them?" he asked. "These guys are the enemy." He nodded at the bag where I'd placed the jewelry. "Is the crew getting a cut of that?"
"No cut, Kerwin. It won't be sold and I don't see these people as enemies. Do you think Thren Blively chose to be left behind on K-A0223B's moon so she could be eaten by Kroerak?" I gestured to the woman's corpse that lay on the grav-cart in front of me "She's as much a victim of Belirand as anyone at Yishuv. We bury her because she's a person and we should give her the dignity that was denied her for two centuries."
DONE PLAYING
"Do we have a name for the system where the slave planet is?" I asked, slumping in the captain's chair on the bridge. We'd pulled away from planet K-A0223B's moon after loading a full hold of fuel. Nearly twice as much had been left behind, but it was useless to us.
"K-A0292X. Not much information otherwise," Ada said. "We're only forty light years away, though."
"Seriously with the names?" I asked. "I'm never going to be able to tell these things apart."
"What do you want to call them?" Ada asked.
"How about we call K-AO223B – Thren's Rest and the moon can be called Divelbiss' Right Hand?" I said.
"Who's Thren?" Nick asked.
I flicked the portrait I had of the last woman I'd buried onto the forward vid-screen.
"Was she one of the deceased?" Marny asked. "Cap, you're in dangerous territory here."
"No. I'm good. I just don't like that they’ve been forgotten."
"Thren's Rest then," Ada agreed. "I'll put an application into Mars to have both of them renamed if we ever get back to civilization."
I smiled. "Forty light-years. Kroerak have FTL travel?" I asked.
"They do," Nick said. "But just barely. If I have Jonathan's calculations right, forty light-years will take them two stans."
"Ugh," I said. "Hate to think of these guys having FTL."
"Yeah, that's better than anything we’ve developed back home," Nick said.
"Wait," I said, sitting straight up. "Could they reach Sol? This is a big deal."
"Jonathan and I already talked about that," he replied. "It's not practical. Norigan drives aren’t efficient enough for a trip that long. The fuel required would be five orders of magnitude greater than the payload."
I wasn't particularly surprised that Nick had done the math. I was, however, confused on one point. "The Norigans gave these drives to the Kroerak? Why would they do that?"
"I don't think it was a willing partnership," Nick said with a sour grimace.
I shook my head. We had other issues to deal with. "Ada, what's the jump to get to the slave planet's system?" I asked. I'd already forgotten its real name. "I'd like to drop near the planet, but no closer than eight hours on hard-burn. Anyone care to add to this?" I asked.
"Aye, Cap, that should give us sufficient reaction time," Marny said. "If we were to sit at that distance for an hour, our scans would give us quite a lot of information about the planet and the system."
"Nick?"
"Yup, we're in agreement," he said.
"Three … Two … " Ada counted us down. I forced my eyes to remain open and embrace fold-space. Nausea threatened to have its way with me, but fortunately the actual effects of transition only lasted a few seconds.
"We'll arrive above the planet's ecliptic," Ada explained. In a normal system where there was a lot of ship activity, just about everything happened within the ecliptic plane.
"Copy that, Ada," I said.
"That's our cue then," Tabby said, standing up from her stat
ion.
I turned to her. "Who are you taking as a gunner's mate?"
"Sending Baker this time," Marny said. "I've also asked Xie to help out in the gunner's nest. With Divelbiss down, we're short-handed."
An uneasy silence filled the bridge as we continued through fold-space. I probably should have had something reassuring to say, but that's just not where my head was. I wasn't at all sure what we were getting into and I appreciated the few hours I’d have to process everything we’d faced. Marny was right, seeing the faces of the corpses wasn't necessarily the best idea. At the same time, it was better than just remembering their desiccated and dismembered forms.
"Transition in thirty seconds." Ada's warning broke me from my thoughts.
Anticlimactic was by far the best description of our transition into the system we knew as K-A0292X. The star was a yellow sun, very close in size and color to Sol's sun. We already knew planet K-A0292X-2 was in the second orbital position and our AIs worked quickly to fill in the displays as sensors gathered information.
Five planets orbited a single star, the second and third both in the goldilocks zone where life was possible. The third, however, was a large gas planet and unlikely to support human life on the surface. Two smaller moons orbited the second planet and both appeared to be big uninteresting balls of rock. I knew from secondary education that moons were essential for planetary life as they often took asteroid and comet hits destined for the planet. Similarly, a big gas planet provided a celestial shield.
The second planet was now of primary interest. Fortunately, we were closest to it, so details filled in quickly. The most important information, so far, was that there appeared to be zero modern communication structures. My heart sank as I considered the implications, including the possibility that the planet wasn't inhabited at all and our trail had run cold.
A familiar whistle broke my train of thought and I looked over to Marny, who was the current officer on deck.
"Cap, Jonathan is requesting entry to the bridge," Marny answered my unasked question.
"Roger that," I said.
"Quite a significant system," Jonathan said as he entered.
"It appears abandoned," I said.
Give No Quarter (Privateer Tales Book 10) Page 19