The Tactics of Revenge thc-4

by T. R. Harris

  Poul’s back shell appeared to shrink some, as he slumped in his posture. “Yes, I can see that now. My mates have been unhappy with me recently and they have been spending more time with Kiiax.”

  “I don’t think they’ll support your story about being taken hostage. They’ve got all the credits now, and the young stud. Like I said before, I think you’re expendable.”

  “That is a cruel thing to say, but I agree.”

  Adam stood up from the seat. “Good. I’m glad that’s settled. Now can you tell us if there’s a way out of here?”

  Poul was silent for a few moments. “I suppose we could go through The Baths.”

  “What are those?” Adam asked as he hustled them all toward the door.

  “They are below us, underground. We Hyben use them much of the time, even though the other non-Hyben workers tend to shun them.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know. It is quite puzzling.”

  “Can we get there from inside the building?”

  “Possibly, but I would not take the elevator or the stairways. We could get trapped in there when the authorities enter the building.”

  “Good thinking Poul. Lead the way.”

  Chapter 7

  The Hyben took them to a large double-panel opening in the side of the hallway, telling them this was an access to what he called the building’s carrier-shoot system. The system turned out to an intricate dumbwaiter setup used in place of freight elevators for the building. Within the large metal tunnels — hidden within the walls of the building — ran a continual series of large metal boxes, which conveniently were large enough for the Hyben to crawl into. Adam and Sherri squeezed into a second box, and they all began the journey through the maze to points unknown.

  From inside the metal-lined tube, the Humans could hear the sounds of running and excited calls as what seemed like a hundred beings stormed into the building and began to fill the elevators and stairwells. Luckily, no one seemed interested in checking the carrier-shoots.

  Eventually, the three of them were delivered to the lowest point of the conveyor system and Poul climbed out of his box, followed quickly by Adam and Sherri. The boxes swung around and began their rise back into the building.

  The room they were in was large, dark and dank. There was a loud motor to the left that appeared to be running the dumbwaiter system, and a long hallway leading to the left. The walls were lined with sweating brick and a thick coating of moss and algae — and the place smelled like a sewer.

  “Damn, Poul, it stinks down here,” Adam said, brushing imaginary flies from his face.

  “I differ with your opinion. The Baths are quite relaxing for us Hyben.”

  “So where are they, these baths?” Sherri asked, her face also contorted into an expression of disgust.

  “This way. I’m sure once you’ve experienced them you will have a differing opinion as well.”

  About fifty meters down the long hallway, Poul led them through a wide open doorway. At the opposite end of this new room was a large, dark hole in the floor. Poul turned to the two Humans. “This way — follow me.” And then the large Hyben plunged head first into the dark opening.

  Adam and Sherri just looked at each other. Sherri was the first to speak, “I’m not going in there. Who knows what’s at the other end.”

  Adam turned toward the exit; already he could hear the sounds of movement at the other end of the hallway. The authorities had apparently discovered their escape route and were closing in. “We can try to fight our way out — or we can follow the Hyben.”

  Sherri shook her head while letting out a long sigh. And then she turned away from Adam and disappeared into the dark opening — with the word ‘shit!’ trailing off as she fell deeper into the abyss.

  And then Adam, too, nose-dived into the dark, ominous opening….

  Adam found himself sliding in the dark, his face showered with smelly, slimy goo scrapped off of the surface of the steeply sloping tunnel. Suddenly he burst out into the open, with a bright light illuminating his path. Yet what he saw in front of him caused him to inhale sharply, taking in a clump of the foul-tasting gooey mess into his mouth. He was heading for a ramp, one that rose steeply up in front of him — and ended in mid-air!

  He rode up the ramp and off the end — like a ski jumper — until he was flying through the air, arms flailing as he flew. And then he splashed down, not in a pool of refreshing water, but rather in a lake of thick, putrid goo. The pool he’d landed in wasn’t very deep, and once he found his footing, Adam rose up, with his head and shoulders out of the liquid.

  He gagged and began spitting the foul-tasting gunk out of his mouth. To his right he heard other coughing and looked to see Sherri standing not too far from him, pulling her fingers through her hair, attempting to dislodge globs of green and black matter from her once-blonde hair. She looked over at him, her face spotted with globules of goo.

  “It’s all in my nose and my mouth!” she screamed at him. Adam just coughed some more and ran his hands over his face, attempting to keep the offensive goo out of his eyes.

  And then Poul surfaced next to him. “Isn’t it glorious?” the alien asked, as his six appendages spread the viscous fluid over the front of this body and over his face. He appeared to be almost intoxicated by the sticky, foul-smelling mess.

  “It’s disgusting!” Adam countered back. “How do we get out of here?”

  The Hyben stood silent for a moment, looking insulted, letting large droplets of the goo flow down his body. “You are just like all the other non-Hyben. You do not know a good thing when you’re swimming in it. But over here; we can get out this way.”

  Adam and Sherri slogged after the Hyben, who didn’t seem to have any trouble navigating through the thick liquid. They soon felt a series of small steps under the surface, which lifted them out of the pool and into another room. Poul motioned with his forearm. “There are water showers over there if you wish to clean off.” He made no move toward the showers himself. Instead, Adam saw the plates of his back carapace vibrate slightly, squeezing more of the goo out from between them as they did so. Adam thought he would vomit.

  Sherri ran past him and activated the powerful jets of fresh water in the first shower station she came to. Adam was only a step behind. They both feverishly scrubbed and washed their fully-clothed bodies, with Adam also rinsing off his MK and flash rifle. Luckily, the bolt launchers were more-or-less impervious to water damage, but he still wanted to get the smell off of his weapons — if possible!

  While still in the shower, Adam called over to Poul: “Where to from here?”

  “There is an exit to the outside. It comes out in a hanger next to the administration building. I still can’t understand why you don’t enjoy this.”

  With their clothing now soaked with sulfur-smelling water, Adam and Sherri followed the dejected Hyben up a long series of steps until they reached a small room at the far end of an enormous hanger. Holding their weapons at the ready, the two Humans cautiously entered the hanger, looking for any threats. The building appeared to be empty, but Adam knew the authorities were right behind them, and the trail of dripping water from their clothing wouldn’t be hard to follow. Once their route was discerned, a simple radio call would send a squad of armed Hyben into the hanger.

  “We’re just improvising here, Poul, but is there anywhere we can hide out nearby?”

  The Hyben’s head made a weird wobbling motion, causing Adam to recoil slightly. “I cannot think of a place. The Mulinni — our police force — will keep looking throughout the compound. They will expect us to go back into the town.” He was becoming very agitated.

  “What’s on the other side of the yards, away from the town?”

  “Just the jungle, but that is dangerous and impassable. Hiba vipers and other nasty creatures reside there.”

  Adam looked at Sherri and grinned. “Sounds perfect; they wouldn’t think to look for us there.”

  “But I hate sn
akes!”

  “Don’t sweat it. Cooked right, they are quite tasty.”

  Just then an old saying popped into Adam’s head, a variation on a quote from the bible, actually: Yea thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil — ’cause I’m the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley!

  Chapter 8

  “ Adam Cain, are you certain?”

  The Juirean Overlord nodded almost unperceptively at the question posed by the most supreme Juirean of them all, Council Elder Hydon Ra Elys.

  “Yes, My Lord. Several witnesses have verified the name, and the physical description we have appears to confirm it. Although reports place him at three other locations at once, this sighting appears to be the most reliable. And we have also discovered a disabled shuttle not far from the scene of the attack so there is a strong possibility that he is still on the planet.”

  Hydon thought for a moment. If this was indeed Adam Cain, the leader of the Human terrorists, then all efforts must be made to either capture or kill him. This was what Fleet Marshal Relion’s counter-insurgency group had been assembled to accomplish, yet until now they had not had any significant impact on the activities of Cain and his Raiders, as they called themselves. If Cain was indeed still on Hyben then the Juireans could drop a net over the planet and send in all necessary resources to find him.

  “Lord Relion, have your teams converge on Hyben. I don’t care if you have to excoriate the planet and kill every living thing there — I want Adam Cain either dead or captured. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly, My Lord, yet if there are substantial civilian casualties, it may not play too well politically.”

  “Let me worry about that. You just bring me the heart of Adam Cain, beating or otherwise.”

  Chapter 9

  Juirean Overlord Kackil Fe Nulon received the communication with an air of detached inevitability. Forward scouts had detected the Human fleet at the edge of the Barrier, entering Sector 17 precisely where expected. As the senior Juirean in the Fringe, he understood his role in the upcoming encounter, and he would do what was necessary. It was the only way to assure victory in the long-run.

  The Juirean fleet had assembled at the edge of the Void, near Melfora Lum, and consisted of just over two hundred first-line Class-4 and Class-5 battlecruisers, with a few Class-3’s thrown in as well. It was a formidable force, one which would have withstood any assault within the Expansion over the past thousand years. And yet it was only one-quarter the size of the fleet that had been utterly destroyed by the Humans off their homeworld of Earth. As such, Kackil had no illusions as to the outcome of the impending battle.

  The scouts had reported a force of just over one-thousand ships entering the Void and heading his way. Initially determined to be much smaller vessels than his battlecruisers, he nonetheless could not underestimate the firepower that each of the Human ships carried. In fact, he had been surprised — even shocked — to hear that the ships the invaders manned had actually been designed and built by the thought-to-be-extinct Klin, a race of beings whose memory haunted the dreams of every Juirean.

  It had been over four thousand years since the days of The Reckoning, a time when the Juireans had performed genocide on the Klin race. Since then, a sort of racial guilt had permeated the Juirean consciousness over the extermination of three billion Klin, without warning or mercy. But The Reckoning had been necessary — all Juireans knew this — as revenge for the senseless killing of millions of their own people as a result of Klin lies and deception.

  Yes, the destruction of an entire race of beings was a horrific thing. Yet the Klin had deserved what they got, and the Juireans, through the millennia, had made a tenuous peace with their conflicted emotions.

  But even then, the Juireans knew that a few of the Klin had survived. And now, after four thousand years of silence, they had reemerged as allies of the savage Human barbarians. Kackil had studied the reports provided by the Council and he knew the Klin were still few in number serving more as technical advisors to the Humans rather than as active participants in the battles to follow. Still, with the scientific wizardry of the Klin — the basis for the entire technological foundation of the Expansion — this meant that the Humans would have the most-advanced starships ever built, along with their accompanying weapon systems.

  So even small in stature, the warships of the Human/Klin fleet were not to be taken lightly.

  In face of this reality, the Juirean Council had offered the Overlord with two very distinct battle plans for the upcoming confrontation, and it would be Kackil’s responsibility, made in the heat of battle, to determine which to follow.

  Kackil had read with growing anger the report detailing the battle that had taken place off the Human’s homeworld. It was obvious that the Juirean fleet had been tricked, and not afforded the opportunity to engage the Humans in head-to-head combat. Instead, Overlord Yan’wal and his fleet had been ambushed by the Humans, waiting in orbit already in dark status. The fleet had been attacked by ships previously undetected and fired upon from point-blank range. His brother Juireans never even had a chance to fight back.

  So the question had never been answered: what would have been the outcome if the fleet had been forewarned and prepared for battle? The answer to that question was Kackil’s foremost objective in the upcoming engagement. This would be the first time the Humans — in their Klin warships — would face a Juirean fleet fully prepared for battle. The Council — indeed the entire Expansion — would be quite anxious to learn the truth.

  Nevertheless, Overlord Kackil was frustrated that this forthcoming battle was being treated more as an experiment rather than a major event in Juirean history. And instead of concentrating all his energies on actually winning, Kackil was tasked with collecting data, which would be used to plan future engagements. For his part, Kackil wanted to end the war right here and now, and not even bother prolonging the conflict. Yet the powers on Juir had already concluded that his defeat was inevitable.

  Which brought the Overlord to the Council’s second option for the battle, should a complete victory not play out.

  The Council had reasoned that with Earth located two-thirds of the way out in the Far Arm, nearly fourteen-hundred light years from the Fringe, the Human supply lines would already be stretched to the breaking point just with their arrival in the Sector. And with apparently no established stellar empire of their own from which to draw support, the Human fleet now entering the region would be all the combatants the Humans could muster against the incredible might and unlimited resources of the Expansion.

  So, the Council reasoned, if Kackil’s initial battle did not result in an immediate and overwhelming victory for the Juireans, then he was to withdraw his forces further into the Expansion. There he was to stop periodically to engage the advancing Human fleet, picking off more and more of their ships — while stretching their supply lines even further — as each battle progressed. And then, at some point to be determined by circumstance, the Juireans would have depleted the Human forces to such a degree that they could be easily destroyed by a reinforced Juirean fleet.

  The ultimate battle plan made sense, and the defeat of the Human invaders was inevitable, Kackil conceded. Yet it was Kackil’s reputation that was at risk by constantly retreating from the advancing Humans. His only salvation would come with a quick and decisive victory over the Humans, right here in the Fringe.

  Whether that outcome was a reality or not would be known to all in about seventy-two hours….

  Chapter 10

  The twenty-four men and four women in the wardroom had all shuttled over to Admiral Nate Allen’s flagship earlier that day, and consisted of two admirals, an air force general and all of his squadron commanders. The occasion was serious, and even though none of the military personnel in the room had ever been in this particular situation before, they all did their best to hide their anxiety.

  In modern warfare, it normally didn’t take four months just to travel to
the ultimate point of engagement. All this delay, from departure to battlefield, provided more than enough time for all the combatants to build up doubts and concerns regarding the outcome. This was natural; Allen didn’t want commanders without imagination. But now, on the eve of the first heads-up confrontation with the aliens, the admiral had his work cut out for him, as he attempted to temper the nerves and to steel the resolve of all in the room.

  In actuality, Nate Allen knew his task would not be that difficult. These were all military professionals, who although they respected the concept of death, they did not fear it. In fact, after such a long lead-up to the fight, they were all chomping at the bit to get at it.

  But still, this fight would be like nothing they had ever experienced before.

  “All right, let’s get this meeting started,” Allen said with good-natured charm. Immediately, the light chatter died down and a number of coffee cups were placed back down on the long, gray-metal table.

  “First off, I have to say I’m encouraged by your enthusiasm. Going into battle can test the will and resolve of even the strongest amongst us, and this upcoming conflict is unique in of itself. The field of battle, the forces we’re going up against, and even the nature of the enemy itself, is still mostly a mystery to us. Even though we do have Klin intelligence to guide us, this is all virgin territory for Humanity. As such, it has been virtually impossible to formulate detailed battle plans prior to our arrival in theater, and as the fight continues, our plans will naturally evolve. All of us need to be prepared for an ever-changing battlefield.”

  Allen smiled and lifted his coffee cup to his lips. When he continued, he looked to his right at Admiral Howie Levin. “As all of you know, I have been put in overall command of the fleet, but you also know I come out of SOCOM, which is more adept at small-unit operations, not big-ass battles like the one we’re about to start here. As such, I am more than willing to turn over the day-to-day operational battle control and planning to Admiral Levin, who has vastly more experience with large-scale operations such as this. Admiral….”