Colonel (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 7)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  As outwardly emotionless as always, Carl said, “Sixteen hours to the destination.”

  As usual when they discussed their destination, the smell of lavender wafted over Ryck. Ryck frankly was getting a kick out of it all, and kept asking just to get his hit of the flowery aroma. Ryck had no idea what awaited him there. Once or twice, Carl had tried to explain, but the translators couldn’t seem to handle that yet.

  Over the last three days, his Sony Lingua 3000 and Carl’s translation sphere had made amazing progress. With the Sony hooked up to the AI in his PA, the almost impossible-to-understand dialog they’d had when he first arrived had matured into an almost reasonable conversation ability. There were still gaps, but at least they were communicating. All the time human scientists had spent with the Trinocular juveniles had not produced anything like this. Of course, that was because the juveniles, as Ryck found out, couldn’t really speak and could only understand rudimentary commands.

  It wasn’t just the Sony and his AI, though. The capy translator sphere was a marvelous piece of gear. Working with some sort of liquid molecular array that Ryck knew the corporate R & D departments would give their left nuts for, it had tremendous capabilities, and with both his AI and the sphere communicating, they had formed an interface that exponentially increased the ability to translate from one language to the other.

  If the capys used only sounds to communicate, the translators would be even more accurate, Ryck knew. But the capys relied very little on sounds in the frequencies that humans could detect. They also used subsonics that were picked up through the skin and even controlled bioelectrical impulses that were picked up by the third “eye” in the middle of their foreheads, which worked something along the lines of an Earth shark’s ampullae of Lorenzini. They were also heavily dependent on aromas to understand the capy equivalent of emotions.

  Still, there were fundamental differences in how both species thought. It had taken Ryck over four hours to convey the idea that a ship could be named. Carl could not grasp that. He (with “Carl” as a name, Ryck had started to think of him as a “he”) understood that the Mathis was not a human, but he thought that the ship must be an organic construct of some kind and sentient. The concept of a machine having a name was so foreign to him that he evidently thought their translators were faulty.

  Ryck still couldn’t believe his situation. A short week ago, he was home, out of the Corps. Now he was humankind’s envoy to the Trinoculars. With his personal decorations from Greater France and the Confederation, he used to joke with Bert that all he needed was one each from the SOG and the Trinoculars, and he’d have a clean sweep of his former enemies. He didn’t know exactly what his position was with them, and he could be on his way for a ceremonial execution for all he knew, but he didn’t get that feeling. He thought good things were ahead of him.

  “Sixteen hours? Then may I have some more glop to eat?” he said, using a simple sentence construction as his AI recommended.

  “Yes, Ryck,” Carl said, only recently dropping the full “Rycklysander.” “You may every eat glop to your utmost contentment.”

  The “glop” was one of his juvenile jokes, but it was an accurate description of the white gel that the Trinoculars fed him. Carl assured him it would take care of his nutritional needs, and it didn’t taste half bad, but it looked like someone took Elmer’s and squirted a pile of it on a plate. He’d probably catch shit from the scientist types when all of this was over. “Glop” though, was not as bad as his “taking a Papadakis.”

  He hoped that one would stick.

  Chapter 6

  Two hours from their destination, wherever that was, the ship’s lights dimmed inside the huge compartment. Ryck had almost gotten use to the seemingly haphazard turmoil inside the ship, but the dimming of the lights raised his anxiety more than a bit. If it weren’t for the small wisps of lavender that reached him amongst all the other smells, he’d probably be more anxious, but Hannah had been right. Lavender did calm the nerves.

  “Ryck, we are transfer now,” Carl said as he pulled himself to the front of the little cubbyhole Ryck had constructed.

  Like the majority of human interstellar vessels, the capy ship did not enter a planet’s atmosphere, so when Carl told him they would be transferring to another ship, he was not surprised. He wondered where they were, though. His best guess was that it was the capy home world.

  Ryck straightened out his blues. He’d taken off the blouse and trou shortly after settling in. The capys did not wear clothing and did not seem to be dutifully impressed with his blues, and with his unexpected departure, he had nothing else to wear. So he’d stripped down to his skivvies to keep his uniform as clean as possible. Now, he’d make his appearance looking the best he could, even if it made no difference to his hosts. He could report to the capy high muckety-mucks stark naked, and he didn’t think they would blink.

  His rank made no difference either, not that he was going to offer to revert when he got back. The concept of rank was just one more thing Carl didn’t seem to grasp. The best that Ryck could understand was that the capys served in the position for which they were best suited or “designed,” as his translator offered. There was no higher or lower status as humans understood it, more of a “belonging” as a certain cog in the big capy machine. Ryck didn’t get the feeling that any one position was considered more important than another.

  As Ryck pulled himself out of his compartment, Carl said, “Your weapon with you is good.”

  That took Ryck by surprise, but he had no idea as to Trinocular protocol. There were plenty of human cultures where a weapon was the societal norm. On Kellerman, government officials wore swords at their waists for all official functions, for example. Perhaps this was a similar thing. Ryck bent back, pulled out his Sam Browne belt and put it on, and grabbed his Ruger and holster. Carl didn’t say anything else, so Ryck figured he didn’t need a long arm.

  Without gravity, Ryck was glad he had gone with his bravos, that is, his blues with ribbons instead of medals. He didn’t want them to float around as he navigated in Zero G. He pulled down on the base of his blouse, though, as an act of habit, as he left the cubby hole and followed Carl across the compartment. He focused on the little floating balls that acted as anchors from which he could pull himself. The balls reacted to the capys, shifting position to put them within reach of any capy who needed them, but they did not react to Ryck at all. He had to make sure his aim was on in order to grab and direct his route. On a couple of earlier occasions, he’d missed and kept floating off on a tangent until he bumped into a capy or a bulkhead and could get himself oriented in the right direction again.

  This time, he made it across to where Carl was leading him. It was a compartment like the one he’d used to enter the ship. Carl waved his hand over a small box, and the outer hatch opened to the stars. Ryck’s heart jumped—he was in his blues, after all, not a vacsuit. But Carl wasn’t in a vacsuit either, and he launched himself through the hatch. Ryck had no choice but to follow suit.

  When he’d made the crossing from the Mathis to the ship, he’d had the propulsion jets from the vacsuit. In his blues, he had nothing, and his initial jump was slightly off target. He started angling to the edge of the tunnel, and he had images of piercing it and finding himself in the vacuum of open space. He tried to twist his body, cycling his legs to straighten out, but that was more instinctual than effective. As he reached the edge of the tunnel, he put out one hand as if to ward it off. Instead of piercing the tunnel wall, however, he was softly bounced back inside, his forward momentum unabated. Within moments, he had arrived at the non-descript, round vessel at the end of the tunnel. Cables ringed the hatch, and Ryck grabbed one, pulling himself into the small craft. Carl was already inside, and if he had noticed Ryck’s gyrations out in the tunnel, he didn’t mention it.

  During the crossing, he’d caught a glimpse of a planet in the distance. He didn’t know how big the planet was, so he couldn’t estimate how far away it w
as, but he had the impression that it was farther than he would have expected for normal planetary shuttling. Once again, though, he had no idea just where they were going. His destination could be a station and not a planet.

  Four of the soldier capys were already in the small shuttle. They ignored Carl and Ryck, but Ryck had to wonder why they were the only other capys in the shuttle. He hoped they were just hitching a ride. Surreptitiously, he checked the safety on his Ruger, shifting his weight on the bench seat so he could draw the handgun quickly if necessary.

  Ryck barely felt the shuttle move as it broke away from the crossing tunnel and started to their destination. Carl didn’t say a word, and Ryck kept his attention on the four soldiers. He’d killed another soldier on GenAg 13 in hand-to-hand combat, but he was under no impression that he could take out four of them. He eyed their jai alai xistera-like weapons hanging from their utility belts, wondering if he could get the jump on all of them before they could draw.

  Probably not, he realized.

  The compartment was small, so the odors of the capys became more pronounced. There was the underlying wet dog and cinnamon, the two more common aromas Ryck could detect around the capys, but the waft of lavender was getting a little stronger. That relaxed Ryck a tiny bit, but he still kept up his vigil. He glanced back at Carl, who as usual, showed no signs of emotion. If something was up, Carl was hiding it well.

  Ryck sat in silence, ready for anything, but hoping that his anxiety was unwarranted. To his surprise, he almost nodded off when a tingle washed over him. With his AI, he’d concluded the tingle was when the capys were using either their subsonics or their bioelectrics to communicate. This had been a heavy jolt, so Ryck wondered if this was the capy equivalent to shouting.

  Two of the soldiers shifted their weight, and Ryck let his hand fall to cover the Ruger’s grip. Nothing else obviously happened, and it took a few minutes for him to realize that the smells were gone. It was as if someone had sprayed unscented air freshener all around him.

  What the heck does that mean? he wondered.

  That was about all the time he had to contemplate before gravity suddenly took a hold of him. Ryck sighed with relief. He hadn’t liked being in Zero G for such a long stretch of time. He could feel forces on his body as the shuttle maneuvered in the atmosphere of wherever they’d arrived. It still took some time, but finally, a gentle bump signaled that the shuttle had landed.

  Immediately, the blue glow of personal shields surrounded the soldiers as they stood up and moved to the door. Carl followed, so Ryck joined him, ready to debark. The hatch swung open, letting in too-bright sunlight, far into the upper spectrums. Ryck closed his eyes and turned his head away as cold, biting air rushed in. Belatedly, Ryck wondered if the air was safe for him. If he had a taster as on his vacsuit, his AI could analyze it, but in his blues, he just had to trust that he wasn’t inhaling poisons that were going to kill him.

  He opened his eyes to just slits and looked out, but he couldn’t see much. He wished he had some sunglasses with him, but those were not authorized for wear when in uniform, so he’d never thought to bring any on the initial contact. His vacsuit face shield would automatically darken in such intense light, but that wasn’t doing him much good here.

  He stumbled out after Carl and his eyes adjusted. It was still too bright for him, but at least he could see the four soldiers take position surrounding Carl and him.

  Am I a prisoner? he wondered as the small group stepped off.

  It was then that he noticed his surroundings. This was obviously a town of some sort, with emphasis on the “was.”

  On either side of Ryck round, igloo-shaped buildings, or what was left of them, lined the path forward. Something had happened here, something big. The obvious signs of destruction—the scorched walls, the rubble, the destroyed scrap of metal that had to have once been a vehicle, the acrid tang of ferrous metal that had been hit by energy weapons—were all Ryck needed to know that he’d stepped into a war zone. But who or what was fighting, Ryck didn’t have a clue.

  Ryck glanced at his escort. Neither Carl nor his guard seemed to show any sign of anxiety.

  After only 200 meters or so, the buildings petered out. A precious few seemed untouched. The igloo comparison was even more apparent if Ryck ignored the fact that the buildings were made of some sort of brown material and not ice. With the open compartment aboard their ship, Ryck would have guessed their buildings would be large and open, too. The igloos could only hold a handful of capys at a time, and they were nothing like the buildings he and Sams had observed being built on Hac-440.

  As the buildings opened up, more vegetation was visible. Ryck had been to the Alien Horticulture Gardens on Venus, so he knew that not all of the alien vegetation discovered by man was grass and trees. This was pretty far out there, though. Looking like big, cloud ear funguses, but in shades of magentas and reds, this was an alien world in the best Hollywood tradition. Despite the situation, Ryck had to look around in amazement. Every other planet and moon he’d been on was either sterile or had been terraformed, so this was something totally new to him. He was being led by the hand on this tour, but still, he felt akin to the Federation Navy’s Deep Space Scouts, seeing things that no human had ever seen before.

  The sound of distant firing caught Ryck’s attention as if he’d been lassoed. He dropped all thoughts of alien explorations and weird plants and focused on what he was hearing.

  “Carl, what’s going on?” he asked after closing the distance with his guide.

  “To see, to see for you soon,” Carl said hurriedly, a departure from his normal plodding rhythm.

  A whiff of lavender seemed to escape from him, and almost immediately, Ryck felt the tingle of subsonics again like a slap in the face. It was like a door being shut, and the lavender was cut off.

  “You will wait five, after you will see,” Carl said, back to his normal slow rhythm.

  A thought surfaced, and Ryck looked back at Carl as the capy turned away from him.

  Could the lavender mean something else? he wondered.

  Ryck knew the capys were not actually emitting lavender, but that was the closest his brain could classify the smell. He wasn’t sure it was even that close to the Earth flower, but it was his new baseline. He’d assumed the aroma indicated calmness or happiness, given how lavender affected people.

  What if in capy-smell, it’s different? What if it means anxiety or fear? And what if the soldier-boys don’t like that and are telling Carl to man up?

  Ryck was no scientist, and his AI was no help, but he was pretty sure he was onto something. If he was, though, then what was making Carl so concerned?

  He’d find out in five, he guessed. But he didn’t know five what? Human minutes? Capy days? Dinner times?

  It was minutes. The front two soldiers simply halted. Carl kept moving forward, with Ryck following, until the two were even with the two soldiers. Five klicks or so ahead of Ryck, down a gentle slope covered with purples and magentas, a battle was raging. There were no aircraft buzzing the battlefield, no huge explosions, but Ryck’s combat instincts kicked in, his nerves abuzz. He couldn’t quite make out what was happening with his naked eyes. It looked like there might be capys in the shit with larger combat-suited beings of some sort.

  Ryck didn’t have binos. Once again, why bring binos to a meet and greet aboard a capy ship?

  He took out his PA’s iris and clipped it to his collar. He then tried to record what was happening down below him, intending to blow it up so he could better make sense of things. Of course, as in the capy ship, the PA was shielded. All his readouts remained green, but nothing was being recorded.

  Without a word, Ryck angled off to the left, leaving the capys behind. They didn’t follow him. From his fights on both Livingston and G.K.A. Nutrition Six, Ryck knew he had to get about 200 meters away to get out from under the Trinocular cloak so his PA could work again. He trudged through the fungus-like vegetation, briefly wondering what animal
life might be scurrying around his ankles, ready and able to defend its territory from him.

  He paced off 126 steps, which for him, was 200 meters. He glanced back at Carl and the four soldiers, but it looked like they hadn’t moved. He faced the battle and turned on his PA’s recorder. The green light came on, and to Ryck’s relief, the stupid thing was working.

  Ryck turned on the screen and zoomed in on the battle which seemed to be petering out. Hundreds of capys littered the ground. While he watched, a last few were cut down, and Ryck could see no more. With his recorder on manual, he controlled what was in the PA iris’ field of view. He turned his body slightly, and his iris picked up the combat suited-opponents.

  Except they were not in combat suits, the best Ryck could tell. They were birds, huge birds, each easily three times the size of a capy.

  Ryck knew they were not really birds, but as with the lavender, his brain adjusted to what he was comprehending. Possibly five meters tall, they were bipedal, but with four upper limbs. The upper two were small, the bottom two were heavily muscled and carried weapons. Ryck zoomed in on the weapons. One was something Ryck didn’t recognize, but the other was a sword.

  A freaking sword? Really? Going into battle like an old-timey pirate?

  The more he looked at the creature, the less bird-like it looked. It did have a beak of sorts, and it had what looked like feathers fanned up around its neck like a strutting turkey and hanging from the smaller upper arms. The fan was a bright yellow and red, as were the ones on the arms, but as Ryck watched, the fan seemed to fold and collapse against the thing’s back. Ryck panned out, and he could see about four of the things, and in front of them had to be a hundred dead capys.

  Whatever these things were, they were deadly.

  And suddenly Ryck knew why he was here. The Trinoculars were in a war and they needed allies.