by B. V. Larson
He awoke to feel Loco shaking his foot. “Up and at ’em, boss. Time to do or die.”
“Let’s hope dying comes a lot later,” Straker replied, stretching and rolling out of his bunk. By the time he’d showered and changed into the uniform of a Mutuality lieutenant, Captain Zholin was paging him to the bridge.
“We’re less than an hour out,” Zholin said when Straker arrived. “Fortress Control has accepted our codes and we’re cleared to dock.”
On the display the fortress hung in space, a repositioned asteroid now orbiting Sachsen-3. It bristled with weaponry to shame a dreadnought. Dozens of freighters and transports were docked at various locations, along with a separate, neat line of warships. The base didn’t spin—it was a military facility, after all, and combat effectiveness outweighed the energy efficiency of free gravity—so there was no need to cluster vessels at the axis’ endpoints.
All the usual spaces inside would be gravplated, which had the additional advantage of flexibility. Gravplating could be laid on any convenient surface, in any direction, and its pull could be varied and controlled.
In fact, Straker was counting on it.
“Commodore,” said Zholin after giving Straker a moment to look over the displays, “This operation will be either harder or bloodier than expected—perhaps both.”
“How so?”
“When we finalized your plan, we didn’t expect more than three or four light warships docked here.” Zholin gestured, and the sensor tech highlighted the row of vessels. “Instead we’ve got a full battlecruiser squadron, plus escorts.”
“Four battlecruisers, one light cruiser, nine destroyers, six frigates…” mused Straker.
“Yes, though the odd LC, one destroyer and two frigates aren’t part of the sixteen-ship squadron.”
Straker rubbed his jaw and felt avarice flare in his heart. “This is better than I’d hoped. We’ll seize those we can, disable the ones we can’t.”
Zholin straightened to attention as if afraid of a dressing-down. “But sir…the plan everyone’s memorized is already difficult. Trying to seize those ships, rather than destroying them, is nearly impossible.”
“I’m not going to give up this chance to acquire some real mobile firepower. It’ll be a bit harder, but the big variable isn’t the number of docked warships. The real question is, how many Sachsens are aboard the fortress? The Ritter brothers assure me all the locals will join us.”
“Sir, we have no confirmation the Ritter brothers made contact with the resistance movement—or even if such a thing exists. The fast timetable you insisted on means we’re going in blind.”
“Getting cold feet, Captain Zholin?”
Zholin drew in a deep breath. “I am sworn to your service, sir. I’m only telling you my reservations.”
“And you can keep on telling me, but I’ve made my decision. We’re going ahead as planned—with a few modifications due to this new info. We always knew we’d have to make adjustments. That’s all these are—adjustments.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Carry on, Captain. Loco, let’s go find Zaxby.”
Straker led the way to the cargo bay, where Zaxby had a small hydro-tank he could retreat into when he wanted to get out of his water suit.
The hole at the top was quite small, only about a handbreadth across. Straker would never have believed a Ruxin could fit through it if he hadn’t seen the boneless Zaxby do it. “As a Ruxin, just like the octopus of your Earth, I can squeeze through very small openings,” Zaxby had said when planning the upcoming operation. “I will be able to enter spaces within the fortress no one will expect.”
Straker knocked on the tank. “Zaxby!”
“Lieutenant Zaxby reports as ordered, Commodore,” Zaxby said from behind Loco, startling Straker with his sudden movement. The octopoid stepped forward and saluted with one tentacle. He was naked, without water suit or harness, his skin a charcoal color to match the nearby cargo containers.
“Shit! I didn’t see you there,” said Loco.
“That was my intention. I was practicing my camouflage. The chromatophores in my skin allow me to match my surroundings, making me very hard to see in the normal range of human visible spectra.”
“That’s pretty cool,” said Loco. “I knew you could change your skin color, but not turn chameleon.”
“The chameleon is a far inferior mimic to a Ruxin.” Zaxby backed up against a pallet of rations wrapped in netting, and almost instantly he changed to match the complex background.
“Damn, I can hardly see you!”
“It is simply another way my species is superior to yours. Do not be ashamed. It is not your fault you were born a primate.”
“We’ll try to live with the humiliation,” said Straker. “And since you’re so superior, I’m going to reward you with an additional task.”
“What task?”
“Nothing much. They call me ‘Liberator’? Well, Zaxby, you’re going to help me liberate a battlecruiser squadron.”
Chapter 9
Sachsen System
Commander Carla Engels chewed at an already-bitten nail until a sharp stab of pain told her she’d gone too far. She held her hand out and examined a drop of blood on her finger, and then sat on it to keep herself from unconsciously starting again.
Literally sitting on my hands, she thought. Out here, with Liberator snuggled up to an asteroid and powered down to EMCON, her stealth coatings should deflect any active scanning beams.
Her passive scanners had also been upgraded by the Ruxins, so she was easily able to keep track of what was going on from a distance. This was the curse and the blessing of commanding a warship: everything revolved around employing it effectively. Unlike in the more fantastical showvids, captains did not generally go adventuring away from their bridge chairs.
Engels watched as the Chun Wei pulled in to port and docked, sighing with relief as it became clear the Trojan Horse ship passed muster. Her greatest fear had been that the Sachsen system had been warned of the Chun Wei’s loss. But in a bureaucracy as hidebound as the Mutuality’s, and without any such thing as a long-theorized but never-developed faster-than-light communications system, sidespace message drones took time to spread their encrypted military updates.
From the traffic she’d collected—the Chun Wei’s borrowed Mutuality crypto was enough to decode routine transmissions—the oppressors of this backwater system were far more concerned with their unruly citizenry than with the threat of enemy attack. Accounts of low-level sabotage and soft-target assassination filled the daily counterinsurgency reports, mostly occurring on the planet below.
Engels shook her head as she read them, feeling half elated, half appalled. She felt ashamed humans were murdering each other needlessly because of ideology, but it also made her proud that freedom-minded people resisted. The human spirit could not be crushed.
At least, not quickly, and not entirely. Some of the Mutuality’s central “Committee Systems,” composed of dull planets filled with gray little drone-people living their gray little lives in their gray little concrete residence blocks, were no doubt examples of perfection in the collectivist mind. She’d watched enough of the propaganda vids during her “re-education” to know.
But not here. The Ritter brothers insisted their people would revolt as soon as they saw a chance. Engels hoped this was true. If not, Liberator and Revenge would have to swoop in and try to use underspace tactics to disable or destroy the formidable battlecruiser squadron before they could get under way.
***
Straker stood in the innocuous line of uniformed crew waiting to debark onto the fortress from the personnel door. The Chun Wei’s XO, in the guise of the ship’s former political commissar, waited at the head of the queue. He carried the ship’s hard credentials, which in the Mutuality’s paranoid military had to be handed over physically for verification.
Fortunately, this was more of a rubber-stamp ritual than an actual test, and the ship’s inter
ior inspection had been scheduled for well after the crew were allowed to begin their limited shore leave. Zholin had told him the State Security people would find a few things wrong no matter what, and would demand “reparations” for the offenses—really, bribes—that would vanish into their pockets.
Straker was glad to have Zholin handle all that, for he felt eager as a dog staring into a field full of game birds, waiting to be given the release word.
From behind him, Loco spoke up. “Finally, some real R&R. I hear they have full robotic holo-cabins, any kind of virtual woman you want. It’s not Shangri-La, but better than nothing.”
“I’m surprised they don’t have concubines.”
“Officially,” Loco said with an air of authority in his voice, “prostitution is prohibited in the Mutuality. The only legal way to pay to get laid is with a holo-cabin—or with a comrade, for free. I’m sure expensive gifts will get what you want, though, with some of them.”
“Carla’s plenty for me, thanks. Anyway, I think we’ll be too busy for sex.”
“I’m never too busy for sex, boss.”
“Then clearly I’m not assigning you enough work.”
Loco shut up at last, and Straker smiled.
The line began to move. The crew filed out the door and through a tunnel that scanned for weapons and contraband. Nothing would be found; Zholin’s crew was used to the drill, and the many extra infantry wouldn’t be disembarking the usual way.
The infiltrators would inhabit, carry, push, or ride cargo modules off the ship after the initial clearance was logged. Freight got a lot less scrutiny, and if a problem arose, one of Zholin’s Mutuality natives would always be nearby to talk or bribe the problem away. If absolutely necessary, the infantry were ready to silently dispose of anyone causing trouble.
The Ritter brothers would be among the first to slip away, to change clothes and blend in with the local workers. They’d assured Straker they could find resistance members among the Sachsens employed on the orbital fortress. Those would be critical in helping the Breakers set up their liberation of the base.
Assuming Zaxby completes his missions, Straker mused as he shuffled through the scanners and out onto the reception concourse.
***
Zaxby held himself still in the bottom of the standard 1000-liter wastewater tank as the wheeled handcart rumbled across the concrete floor. Noises of loading and unloading, workers yelling back and forth and the clash of machinery came muffled through the thick plastic. Two Mutualist-uniformed humans pushing supposedly noxious cargo around the fortress’s enormous supply quarter should elicit no notice.
Naked and unequipped—except for the data crystals and small tools he held inside his mouth—yet Zaxby remained supremely confident. The danger from the Mutuality primates was largely due to the rarity of Ruxins among them, rather than any inherent cleverness on their part.
If the crew of the fortress had included octopoids, he’d have entered in uniform, and then shucked it when it was time to go covert. However, there was no guarantee of even one Ruxin here. Commodore Straker had not wanted him to take the risk of being remembered as an oddity by everyone he encountered.
Thus, this insertion method.
A few more movements and the slam of a door, and Corporal Karst hissed, “Come on out.”
Zaxby unscrewed the tank’s cap from the inside—he’d insisted on the modification that made this possible—and flowed through the hole and onto the deck. He immediately headed for the air vent Karst was unlocking, an opening the size of a human head. The other human kept watch.
“Good luck,” said the young man as Zaxby entered the air conduit.
Zaxby would have replied that luck had little to do with it where a superior being was involved, except that the careful vocal control necessary to speak Earthan was difficult in his stretched-out locomotive state, especially with items in his mouth. He settled for an approximation of a thumbs-up, formed with his sub-tentacles at the end of one limb.
Zaxby pushed through the ductwork as quickly as he could, for dehydration was a very real danger, exacerbated by the air flowing through the system. Getting lost was another serious issue; he knew the general layout of Mutuality fortresses, but it was impossible to predict an exact diagram of this particular structure. Instead, he always moved upstream against the flow of air in order to find a handling and pumping station.
When he did, he used his tools to carefully disable the booster mechanism, move through it, and then re-enable it. This kept him from being chopped up by turbines and fans. It took over two hours, but he finally found what he knew he must: a regional ventilation control room.
In any air handling system, there had to be control nexuses where major flows could be managed by technicians, and where large machines could be easily accessed by those not as flexible as Ruxins. Unfortunately, the room was not deserted, but the sole attendant had apparently locked the door from the inside and was sleeping in his chair.
This gave Zaxby the chance he needed. He oozed out of a comfortably large vent, down a wall and onto the floor. Once suitably reformed into his accustomed shape, he locomoted quietly to a position behind the sleeping man and struck him on the back of the head with force precisely calculated to render a typical human unconscious for at least an hour. Straker’s orders were to kill only if he must, which was logical, as there was no way to tell for sure which personnel might be inclined to defect, or which would stay loyal to the Mutuality.
Had he been sure this human were an enemy, Zaxby would have killed him without compunction, orders or no orders. What the humans did not know wouldn’t hurt their delicate monkey feelings.
Access assured, Zaxby familiarized himself with the control board, of a standard type he’d seen many times in his long life of working with electronic systems. He traced the diagrams of airflow on the display, memorizing the pathways and correlating them to the central control core of the mainframe that managed the routine nonmilitary functions of the fortress: air, water, sewage, power, gravplating, lighting and so on.
Though designated nonmilitary, these items could be manipulated to support the operation that should allow a few hundred Breakers—plus any Sachsens who joined them—to take over a fortress manned by tens of thousands. Such a conquest also depended on the poor quality of most of its crew. Rear area personnel should be neither as loyal nor as competent as those on the front lines.
Of greatest concern was the expected contingent of Hok commanded by an Inquisitor. According to Zholin, every star system had at least one such political watchdog who used the fanatical warriors to ensure the loyalty of all others.
Zaxby memorized as much as he could absorb, and downloaded pertinent files onto a data crystal. Unfortunately he dared not upload his malware from this console. He had to reach the mainframe itself. For security reasons, it was the only location enabled to make major changes to the system.
He searched the room and found some human food and a half-filled bottle of a sweetened drink, which he consumed before returning to the ventilation ductwork. The unappetizing nutrients and moisture gave him a minor boost, but he still eyed each vent as he passed by. Eventually he found a small toilet facility where he managed to get in, drink his fill of water from a sink, and out again before being spotted.
Another two hours brought him to the control core. Despite his rehydration stop, deep fatigue was beginning to set in. He had not been young for over a century, and he felt his advancing age at times like these. Yet, Straker had not trusted any other Ruxin with such a delicate mission, and that gratified him.
Three attendants worked in the main control chamber, which was filled with a constant rumbling from huge nearby air and water processors. Analog gauges on the wall supplemented the holographic and digital displays, showing all the functions to control. Manual backup mechanisms, already suffering from lack of care despite their newness, lined one side of the large room.
Zaxby opened the air vent farthest from the attendant
s and flowed slowly down the wall, taking care to match his appearance to the surface behind him. One woman glanced his way, and he froze. She stared straight at him for a moment from a distance of ten meters, and then looked back to her monitors, clearly bored.
Moving at a glacial pace while within the workers’ visual fields, he managed to reach a location out of sight of all three. From there, he exhausted every software access possibility he could think of before concluding he would have to use one of the active control consoles to insert his data crystal.
He moved around the perimeter of the room, maintaining his camouflage at all times, until he found a place he could observe all three from behind. There were camera bubbles on the ceiling, so there was no telling who was watching. In the best case, they would only be recording for review, rather than actively monitored by live security personnel.
The three humans passed status reports and tapped on their hard keyboards, robust military models probably little changed over the last millennium. Two of them, a man and a woman, chatted amiably about absent co-workers, passing rumors of negative behaviors both professional and social.
Such petty creatures, these humans, Zaxby thought once again. It amazed him they’d managed to spread to over a thousand systems. If not for a fluke of timing and development—if Ruxins had achieved interstellar travel before, rather than after, the humans—this arm of the galaxy would be a much more sensible place, ruled by a proper monarchy and dominated by his superior species.
There was no point in pining for the unreal. “If wishes were fishes, we’d all have nets,” was one of humanity’s more admirable aquatic aphorisms. As always, Zaxby would deal with the world as it was, not as he wished it to be.
Almost an hour passed before the worker nearest him stood and stretched. “I’m on break,” she said, ambling toward the door as she pulled a vapostick from her coverall pocket.
“Take your time,” said the man over the hum of the machinery.