Colonel (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 7)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  For all the rush to get the task force together, the capys had delayed the actual crossover past the Blue Line and into their space. It had given the military side of the task force time to collect its breath and settle things down, but the civilian side was chomping at their bits and in a state of, if not near panic, then at least strong apprehension as they tried to figure out what the delay meant.

  “OK, but keep an eye on him. Not too close, but, well—”

  “But you don’t know him and are not sure of what he can do, sir,” Jorge interrupted.

  Which was spot on. Ryck had always made an effort to surround himself with tried and true Marines, Marines he knew. Story had been Jorge’s choice. But he had chosen Jorge, so he knew he should give the man the benefit of the doubt.

  Ryck smiled and started to say, “Well, yeah, but—”

  “No reason not to be concerned, sir, until he proves himself. I know he’s not in your posse, but even a staff puke like me can have a posse of my own,” Jorge said, a broad smile on his face. “You’ll be more than pleased with his work.”

  “OK, I’m sure I will,” Ryck said before his PA’s chime for attention cut him off again.

  Ryck had turned off the vocals, as usual, so he had to turn his PA over to see who was calling. A message was flashing that he had Brigadier General Nuncy on the meson comms in the comms shack. General Nuncy was the J1 for the follow-on Task Force, so the message would be more along the lines of admin rather than ops, but still, a colonel did not keep a flag officer waiting.

  “OK, that’s the J1. I’ve got to go take it,” he told his chief-of-staff. “I still don’t have a warm-and-fuzzy about the command circuit with all the players. Have Gunner Barnhouse give me a brief at 1600.”

  “I’ll pass that to Sandy,” Jorge told him.

  Ryck held back a rueful grimace. He’d just spent close to three years as the 2/3 commanding officer, and with them onboard the Brandenburg with him, he was still tending to reach down and touch the Marines in the battalion. But Sandy was the CO now, and Jorge had gently reminded him of that—as a good chief-of-staff should do. Even without a full staff of his own and his need to poach assistance from the battalion, Ryck still needed to follow the chain-of-command.

  “Roger that. Ask Sandy to set that up. OK, I’ve got to go take that call,” he told Jorge.

  He left his stateroom and hurried down the passage to the comms shack, which was located just past the ship’s CO’s stateroom.

  A smile crossed his face as he recalled that as a private, he’d always assumed that those Marines at the highest levels were somehow gods, answering to no one. Yet here he was, a full-bird colonel, just now politely reminded that he couldn’t just bypass the battalion command to get something done as he rushed to answer the call from a general.

  Both uphill and down, he was still just a cog in the big green machine.

  Chapter 12

  “Crossing the Blue Line and into Trinocular space,” the helmsman informed the bridge.

  “Very well. Continue to the rendezvous,” Captain Lester Linney ordered.

  After close to two weeks, the capys had requested that the task force enter their space and conduct a rendezvous with several capy ships just beyond the picket line.

  Ryck and Jorge stood in the back of the bridge, out of the crew’s way. Rear Admiral Baris and Vice Bishop Flannery had been subtly jockeying for position near the captain, but the Bradnenburg’s bridge was not set up for guests, even high-ranking guests. Linney sat in the command chair, and the guests had to make do with milling about while looking like they belonged.

  The capy picket line of several thousand ships had parted like the Red Sea, or more aptly, like a giant iris opening up, leaving a tube-like corridor through which the 15 ships of the task forces were now entering. All the ships, capy and human, were actually spread out over quite a distance, but in the ship’s display, it looked like a big mouth had opened to swallow the task force. Ryck had been in capy space before, and he thought the capys were earnest in their requests, but still, he could imagine the mouth closing in on them as a small appetizer.

  The rendezvous point was only 500,000 km past the Blue Line, but the task force proceeded slowly. So it took almost a full hour to ease into position where 22 capy ships waited for them, one ship out in front of the rest. The Brandenburg, the Mathis, and the Brotherhood Jericho left the formation and edged forward to meet the leading ship.

  The Mathis was not a major capital ship, but the capys had insisted on her presence. The humans had hemmed and hawed among themselves—the navies of each of the participating governments tended to be rather traditionally bent, and by all rights, the Brandenburg should have been the prime vessel, not some converted frigate. But the home governments had intervened, and the Mathis it was—accompanied by the Brandenburg and the Jericho. Some talk had been made that Ryck should cross-deck back to the Mathis, but Admiral Parks had nixed that. Ryck would stay on the Brandenburg, and if the capys wanted him, they would have to adjust. It was the capys, after all, who were the seeking assistance, not the other way around.

  Ryck didn’t think that the capys understood the human rules of military hierarchy, and Dr. Reslin Waterford, the new Federation chief xenobiologist for the task force agreed. But the military had a long tradition of ignoring civilian experts, and the general consensus among the brass was that the capys would have to bend to human traditions. Ryck had some long talks with Dr. Waterford about this, but despite Ryck’s central position with the capys, he was still a frocked colonel, outranked by more than a few military and civilians in the task force.

  The capy ship edged up to the Mathis. Ryck had expected that, but he didn’t offer an I-told-you-so—even if he felt it inside. It took some serious communications for the capys to understand that their party was to board the Brandenburg. Almost two hours had passed before the capy ship left the Mathis and approached the Federation flagship. The fact that the Brandenburg was to be the liaison ship had not been an easy decision in and of itself. With Admiral Parks on the Jericho, that had been the initial choice, but some slick maneuvering by the Federation politicos had convinced the Brotherhood that the risk was too great, and that with the capys’ connection with Ryck, that would mean Ryck should be on the Jericho as well—and with the rest of his Marines. Admiral Parks quickly ordered that the meeting take place on the Brandenburg.

  Ryck could see some tense faces as the two ships came together. Forty meters left no degree of a cushion between two huge ships. Captain Linney actually broke out into a sweat, the back of his shirt dark and wet.

  “Why don’t they use shuttles?” Jorge asked. “You rode one down to the planet surface before, right?”

  “Who the hell knows? Yes, I got into a shuttle, but even for that, I had to take one of their space tunnels from the ship to it,” Ryck answered.

  “It is not like it’s a particularly difficult concept,” Jorge continued.

  “Not for us. But don’t let the teddy bear appearance fool you. These are really alien creatures, and they are hard to figure out,” Ryck said.

  “I know, I know,” Jorge said. “But physics is physics, and this tunnel is not a reasonable progression from a scientific standpoint.”

  Ryck let it go. He had more experience with the capys than any human, and he’d given up trying to figure out how the capy mind worked.

  “Greeting party, to L4,” Admiral Baris said as the capy ship eased into place.

  L4 was one of the ship’s larger airlocks. Initially, the plan had been for the capy delegation to enter right into the main hangar deck, but no one was sure if the capy space tunnel would provide protection from the force field that kept space out and air inside the hangar. It probably would not be good if the capy delegation fell over dead as they entered the ship.

  Ryck and Jorge followed the admiral, the vice bishop, and several other luminaries out of the bridge. He glanced back to see Captain Linney give an obvious sigh of relief now that he had t
he bridge back to himself. Ryck fully empathized with the ship’s CO and had to chuckle out loud. Jorge looked at him, eyebrows raised in a question, but Ryck waved him off.

  The “greeting party” had to cool their heels for almost 20 minutes before the announcement was passed that three capys were on their way to the ship. The honor guard snapped back up to attention, weapons at present arms. They held that for over a minute while the lock cycled. The inner hatch opened, and three capys stepped out.

  Admiral Baris stepped forward to meet them, hand out to shake, of all things, and said, “Welcome to the FS Brandenburg. I am Rear Admiral . . . Baris . . . and, I uh . . . in the name of humanity . . . I’m the senior—”

  His prepared speech petered out as the three capys neatly sidestepped the admiral and walked directly up to Ryck. Ryck was no expert—no human was—but he was pretty sure that the lead capy was his former guide.

  “Hi Carl,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

  “Greetings, Ryck Lysander. Agree, this is a good meeting between us. Here is our destination,” Carl said, holding out a small black box. “Your systems should be able to decipher it. So we should go now. Where should we locate ourselves?”

  Damn! Right to the point, Ryck thought, looking over Carl’s shoulder at Admiral Baris.

  The man’s mouth gaped open as he tried to process what had happened.

  Ryck held back a smile. Admiral Baris was a pretty good guy, all told. But no one, not even Ryck, could foresee how the capys would react. Still, Ryck had been sure the capys would not comprehend military honors, and he had been right. Capys and humans were simply on different wavelengths. Ryck was amazed that they could even communicate, much less be culturally attuned to each other.

  Ryck took the black box and handed it to Commander Dodson, the ship’s XO.

  “We have a stateroom for you and your, um . . .” he started indicating the other two capys. When Carl said nothing, Ryck went on, “and we can take you there now. We’d also like to know just where we are heading. Your communications have not been to clear on that.”

  “Please take us to this place,” Carl said.

  Ryck was confused. Was “this place” the stateroom or the task force’s destination? He looked up at Dr. Waterford who shrugged his shoulders.

  Great help that, Ryck thought without rancor.

  “Please follow me,” Ryck said, deciding that the stateroom was the best choice.

  The stateroom had been the Flag Stateroom B, the second largest stateroom on the ship, and one that had been wired with enough surveillance to spy on a planet. It was not exactly a jail for the capys, but the intent was to keep them isolated there as much as possible.

  Both the admiral and the vice bishop seemed to have recovered from the unintended (at least Ryck thought it was unintended) slight and were stepping up to follow Ryck and the three capys. With two Navy gunners mates leading, the party made its way up three decks and over to the stateroom.

  “Ask them again where is our destination,” Admiral Baris whispered into Ryck’s ear.

  Ryck nodded, then asked, “Carl, can you tell me where we are going?”

  “To our destination. I gave that to you previously,” Carl said through his translator, his voice flat and toneless.

  “But what is there?” Ryck asked.

  “Our destination,” Carl answered.

  A faint whiff of something like linseed oil reached Ryck. He wasn’t sure what emotion that signified, but he was sure it had to do with what they would find when they arrived.

  Ryck looked back at the admiral and shrugged. He hoped Carl had been correct and they would be able to read the coordinates of their destination. Even if they could, though, he’d really like to know now just what awaited them there.

  Celestial Coordinates 153, 712, -109

  Chapter 13

  Captain Lawrence Yun snorted with frustration before turning to look to Ryck. “Ask them again about the Klethos’ ships. I want to know why we can’t just interdict them in space before they land.”

  Ryck stared at the task force J3 for a moment, contemplating telling the captain that he was not there as the capy translator. Carl could understand any of them just as well as he could understand Ryck. Somehow, though, the other people seem to assume that Ryck had some sort of special bond with the capys, that his Standard could somehow be understood better than theirs. But Yun was Federation, and Ryck knew the admiral would not appreciate showing any disunity in the ranks to the various liaisons and reps from the other forces.

  He looked over the captain’s shoulder for a moment, where he caught Titus Pohlmeyer’s eyes. The Confederation major winked at Ryck, but whether from the crazy notion that Ryck’s Standard was better understood or from some other tangent, Ryck didn’t know.

  Ryck turned back to Carl, who stood with the other two capys. Trinoculars did not sit, so the three of them stood silently at one end of the conference table. No one had quite figured out yet just what the three represented. Carl had done all the communicating since their arrival, but Ryck was pretty sure he was not the big dog of the group. The other two might be silent and express no discernible emotion, but most of the humans thought they were a sort of ambassadorial triumvirate. Just how much power they had in representing the Trinoculars as a whole was something that had the task force command (and their governments back home) arguing back and forth. What was known was that at least as far as the task force could detect, the three were not in communications with the 22 capy ships that had accompanied them to the system.

  Yun’s question was actually valid. The task force had dropped out of bubble space (thank God that the capys used the same science to navigate between the stars, one of the few things that seemed to be the same between them and humanity) at the outreaches of an unnamed solar system some 240 parsecs from Earth. Carl had finally conveyed the information that the planet, for which the capys evidently had no name, was a Trinocular colony planet currently under attack by the Klethos. Forward-reaching surveillance had clear indications of combat on the planet’s surface, but there were no signs of naval vessels other than a few dead capy hulks floating in orbit.

  If the Klethos fighters had invaded the planet, how had they arrived? Were they just debarked and left to their own devices? That would make a huge difference in tactics should there be a clash.

  Ryck sighed, then turned to Carl. “How did the Klethos attack force land on the planet?”

  Carl looked at Ryck with his unblinking gaze for several moments before saying, “By their ships.”

  “Where are the ships now?” Ryck asked.

  “The ships are there,” Carl intoned.

  “Bullshit,” someone said from behind Ryck. Unless the ships have some amazing cloaking capability, they just weren’t there.”

  The Trinocular ships had their own cloaking capabilities that had stymied human acquisition technology when they first clashed, so Ryck wouldn’t be too sure that the Klethos couldn’t have something even better. But his gut told him that wasn’t the issue. It was communication. The translators, human and capy, ran smoothly now and with barely any hesitation. The words were understandable, both alone and in context. But Ryck thought there was still a miss somewhere. What Carl was saying was true, Ryck was sure. It was just that no one could quite grasp his exact meaning. As Conner Therault pointed out at almost every staff meeting, the translators worked well with spoken words, but the capys used more than sounds to communicate, and so a good portion of what the capys were “saying,” so-to-speak, was simply lost.

  Anthropomorphizing was a natural tendency, and familiarity made that worse. But Ryck had to remind himself that for all the capys looked like three-eyed, six-foot-tall toy capybaras, they were alien creatures, totally different than humans. Assuming anything about them could prove dangerous if push came to shove and fighting broke out.

  Chapter 14

  Ryck watched the recording one more time. It had been taken by the CS Petra, a small aviso that e
vidently had far more intelligence-gathering capabilities than any normal ship of that class. The Federation did not have avisos but often used the slightly larger (and faster) corvettes for the same purpose, although Ryck had to admit that, based on the quality of the recording, the Confederation ship might put the corvettes to shame.

  Ryck pushed that thought aside. While he didn’t like to think that the Federation Navy had any equals, much less superiors, in any area of combat, the important thing for now, at least to him, was the recording itself. While the governments clashed on whether to grant the capys’ request to land combat troops, Ryck had to be ready if and when the call came, and the recordings and analytics were his best look to date at how the Klethos operated.

  The scene on his display was the snow-swept planet’s surface and an array of 513 capys, all of them warrior class. The capys were in a buffalo horn formation, essentially in line with the ends curved forward. Facing them were 51 Klethos, each about 20 meters or so apart.

  To Ryck, two klicks was a pretty broad frontage for only 51 soldiers, especially as there was no sign of anything other than the soldiers, capy and Kletho alike. That fact alone was another factor that was under intense human debate. Both species were spacefaring, and the capys, at least, had some technologies that were superior to that of human kind. Yet for all intents and purposes, this particular battle on the planet’s surface seemed to be mano y mano, or capy y kletho. There was no sign of air, armor, arty, or any other means of combat. This was infantry at its base level. It just didn’t make sense.

  When put to the question, Carl had simply said that this was “total combat.” But it wasn’t that, at least to the human point of view. It was limited combat.

  As the capy formation ponderously moved forward to contact, a lone Klethos stepped forward and went into gyrations, almost a dance, that lasted several minutes before stepping back into their loose line. It was as if it was challenging the advancing Trinoculars.