The Queen's Daemon (T'aafhal Legacy Book 2)

by Doug L. Hoffman

  “Stay in contact with them until they leave the city, just to make sure they don't try to leave some bad actors in place, but don't pursue them into the forest. Keep 'em under drone surveillance while I check with Hoenig regarding the airborne threat.”

  Shuttle One

  Frank was concentrating on the holographic display overlaying his view from the shuttle. His left hand grasped the side-stick controller and his right rested on the thruster controls. The synthetic vision display showed his intended targets closing at close to 2,000 kph.

  “I'm going to split their formation. Tam, you take the two on the left, Jay the one on the right. Get locked on and let the computer decide when to fire.”

  “Roger that,” Tamara replied from the weapons station behind the pilots. She was engrossed in the view inside her helmet, which showed the world outside of the shuttle as though she was a bird flying across the sky. Sitting next to Frank, Jay was similarly engaged.

  The bogies were in a staggered delta formation at 1,500 meters and coming on fast. The shuttle was above them at 2,000—fighter pilots liked to engaged their opponents from above. The greater altitude gave them an edge in potential energy, and a dogfight was really a mater of energy management. Displays showed them closing with the alien aircraft at high speed, glowing lines on target displays converging at an accelerating rate.

  “Looks like they've seen us,” Frank called out, though his two gunners already noticed that their targets were trying to maneuver. “On them in three, two, one...”

  The big shuttle passed through the alien formation in the blink of an eye. As it did the fire control computer triggered bursts from the shuttle's two, independently targetable rail cannon. Two of the three targets disintegrated in gouts of fire and clouds of debris.

  “I missed the third bogie!” Tamara called.

  Frank pulled the big delta shaped lifting body into a climb, exchanging speed for altitude—the primary flight display showed altitude increasing quickly as airspeed drop like a rock. Frank was planning a wingover, an energy-management maneuver used to change directions during a dogfight. Also called a box-canyon turn, it was popular with crop-dusters because the aircraft does not roll as it does in a split-s or an Immelmann. This keeps the cockpit facing the same direction throughout.

  “Got 'em, mate, he's headed east and diving for the dirt,” Jay yelled excitedly.

  Frank kicked the nose over and dove, locking on to the alien craft's tail. The jet's pilot was jinking to save his life, but Frank closed with him rapidly. Though it was big and ungainly looking, the shuttle was more maneuverable and had a better power to weight ratio than the alien attack craft.

  “Damn, I wish we had missiles,” Tamara opined.

  “Sorry, the shuttle was not designed for air-to-air combat. Get ready, who ever gets a shot take it.”

  The alien pilot was growing desperate and tried a rolling scissors maneuver. Frank was having none of it. Using thrust vectoring from the bottom repulsors he rolled inside of the alien pulling 20G and put his nose on the fleeing fighter.

  “Guns to me,” Frank commanded. Targeting information popped up in his field of view. The reticle followed his eye movements to the target and he fired a burst of 15mm shells.

  The Fakkaa pilot knew his time was up when the huge attacking craft out maneuvered him in the barrel roll. He targeted his missile on the ant queen's palace and launched. The last thing he saw before his plane came apart around him was the bright dot of the missile's exhaust as it accelerated toward its target.

  “Missile launch! He got a shot off!” cried Tamara. “It's climbing, velocity holding steady at thirty-five hundred kph.”

  “Christ, it'll hit the city in less than a minute,” said Jay.

  “Rescue Leader, you have incoming! Repeat, you have incoming!”

  The Queen's Palace

  Before Bobby had a chance to call the shuttle, they called him. Frank's frantic voice crackled in his ears. “Rescue Leader, you have incoming, repeat you have incoming!”

  Calmly Bobby called up the tactical display that combined sensor data from the recon drones with the disposition of all the Marines and the two battle bots. Though he might not look it, Bobby was a pilot from the same mold as Chuck Yeager and the Right Stuff astronauts—he did not panic under pressure, instead he became almost supernaturally calm.

  “Roger, Shuttle One. Break. Squad, take cover for possible incoming.” As he spoke he identified the incoming missile's track and designated it the priority target for the battle bots. They mounted railguns like the Marines but they also had air-defense X‑ray lasers that were effective out to more than ten kilometers.

  Outside the Marines all dove for the ground, the Gunny yelling “Suck planet! Now!”

  Behind them on the terrace, the two battle bots stood like statues. As the missile crossed the ten kilometer mark crackling sounds could be heard from the robotic weapons platforms. In the distance there was a puff of smoke, marking the missile's destruction.

  “Shuttle One, Rescue Leader. I'm showing no more incoming. Interrogative the situation on your end?”

  The crew of the shuttle started breathing again.

  “Roger, Rescue Leader. Scratch all three bogies,” came the voice of a very relieved Frank Hoenig. “They only got one off before we took them out.”

  “Copy that. Since you are out that way, see if you can identify where the aircraft came from and make sure there are no more waiting to surprise us.”

  “Roger that, we're on it. Shuttle One, out.”

  Shuttle One

  On their displays the shuttle's flight crew received a visual of the missile being shot down, the puff of white smoke that marked its demise seeming almost disappointing. Sitting in momentary silence, they realized that they had just dodged a bullet.

  “I though you said it was a nuke, Tam?” asked Jay.

  “It was, sensors are picking up radioactive debris.”

  “Then why didn't it make a big explosion? An air-burst nuke only ten klicks away could have ruined everyone's day.”

  “It doesn't work that way, Jay. It was a small warhead, probably an implosion fission device.”

  “So?”

  Tamara sighed. “It's easy to set off a nuclear explosion if you have a lot of fissile material—some of the early atom bombs were more or less cannons that shot two hunks of enriched uranium into each other. Making a smaller bomb takes a lot more finesse. A small bomb is usually a sphere of fissile material surrounded by precision high explosive that implodes it to achieve critical density. The timing of the detonation must be just right.”

  “Like I said, so?” Jay reiterated.

  “So, it's really hard to make one explode except on purpose.”

  “Really?” asked Frank.

  “Really,” Tamara replied with a grin. “Trust me, I'm a weapons tech. We know these things.”

  “Crikey, Tam,” Jay said, doing his best Crocodile Hunter accent. “That's good to know for next time some alien tries to hurl a nuke at us.”

  “Yeah, I thought we had screwed the pooch there for a minute,” Frank added. “Well, you heard the Commander, let's go see if we can find some other targets to shoot up.”

  “Right you are, mate!”

  Chapter 31

  CIC, Peggy Sue

  “Peggy Sue, can you match the alien's signal encoding so I can talk to them?” asked Billy Ray.

  “Yes, Captain. Do you wish me to hail them?”

  “Yes, do it.” He turned to the two sisters, standing by to assist in translation if necessary. “Are you two ready?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Shadi replied excitedly, while Dorri nodded in agreement. This would be the first time either of the sisters saw an actual space alien, even if only on a video display. “Please try not to use big words or figures of speech if you can avoid it.”

  “I have a response and I am decoding their video algorithm. You have voice now and picture will follow momentarily.”

  “This
is the captain of the Earth ship Peggy Sue, calling the commanding officer of the flotilla of ships in planetary orbit. Respond or I will be forced to take action against your ships.”

  Static and strange harmonic noise came from the comm channel as colored confetti painted the display screen. Slowly words emerged from the chaos.

  “...calling...fleet...is Fleet Admiral Raqqee, over.”

  Pretty grandiose title for the leader of a collection of tin cans. “Admiral Raqqee, this is Captain Vincent. Are you reading me clearly?”

  There was a slight pause, during which a picture congealed on the display, revealing a spine covered beaver with two deep set dark eyes and two large yellowed teeth. Shadi and Dorri were totally captivated.

  “Is that a real image?” asked Dorri. The Captain made a motion with his hand to silence the girl.

  “Yes Captain, I can hear you, and see you clearly. What do you want?”

  “You have landed troops on the planet below and they have interfered in the affairs of the natives. You will signal your forces on the surface to cease all military actions and surrender their weapons.”

  “Why would I do that? We...are acting to save our species.”

  “If you do not surrender immediately my Marines will destroy your invasion force to the last soldier and I will blast your 'fleet' into plasma.”

  “I think that garbled word is what they call themselves, Captain,” Shadi whispered as Dorri typed furiously on a keyboard. “You can call them 'Fakkaa' from here on.”

  Billy Ray nodded as he waited for the Fakkaa Admiral's reply. “Bridge, CIC, sound General Quarters and prepare to fire on the alien fleet.”

  Bridge, Fakkaa Flagship

  Admiral Raqqee stared at the alien on the forward display. The creature was mostly clothed, with dark brown fur on its head. What could be seen of its face and neck was naked pink flesh—ghastly to behold.

  “Should I order the fleet to battle stations, Admiral?” asked Capt. Tikkoo. The bridge crew were looking at Raqqee nervously.

  “No, Captain. I doubt our weapons would make any impression on that ship.” After all, it turned the Wise One's vessel into plasma in an instant. We are as primitive to them as the ants are to us. “What is happening on the surface? Has the plan been successful?”

  “No, Sir. The ground commander has been out of communication for more than a half an hour. The second in command reports that alien warriors landed at the queen's palace and attacked our commandos inflicting heavy casualties. Our forces have been forced to retreat into the forest.”

  “What about an air strike?”

  “One was mounted using all of our assets—the aliens shot them all down. Admiral, we've lost more than half our personnel, all our air assets, and the mission commander. We are...”

  “Screwed, Captain. We are screwed. Call the ground force and tell them to stand down.”

  No teeth, no claws no quills, how can creatures that look so harmless be so deadly? How will I explain this failure to the ruling counsel back home—assuming they let us go back home?

  Raqqee cleared his throat.

  “Captain, I have ordered my ground forces to stand down. What else would you have me do?”

  CIC, Peggy Sue

  “A wise decision, Admiral,” Billy Ray replied. OK, they surrendered, now what do I do with them? Tell them to go home? What's to keep them from coming back after we leave? I need to make them understand that they are fighting for the wrong side.

  “Admiral, why were you fighting for the creatures in the black ship?”

  “They came to us over a decade ago. Told us they were an ancient race dedicated to helping less advanced races. They said our sun was going to explode, killing all life on our world. According to the Wise Ones, this planet held a secret, ancient device that could save our people.”

  “But to find it you needed to suborn the natives. Force them to turnover the device if they had it or help find it if they did not.”

  “That is correct, Captain.”

  Billy Ray sighed. “I am afraid that you have been used as a cat's paw, Admiral Raqqee.”

  “A what?” the alien replied.

  “It comes from an old Earth fable, 'the monkey and the cat'. Monkeys and cats are... two other alien species. The story goes like this: Bertrand the monkey persuades Raton the cat to pull chestnuts from the embers where they are roasting. Bertrand promises him a share but as the cat scoops them from the fire one by one, the monkey gobbles them down. Raton burns his paw in the process and ends up with nothing for his pains.”

  “You are saying that the Wise One's were using us?”

  “Precisely. In truth these 'wise ones' belong to a group of species we call the Dark Lords. They inhabit rogue planets and the moons of brown dwarfs that lurk in the dark space between true stars.”

  “But we saw their ship! They had technology so advanced we could hardly imagine it. The technology they gave us to mount this expedition was almost beyond our best scientists' understanding. Why did they need us if all they were after was this mysterious device?”

  “They are a form of life that lives at temperatures which would freeze your kind or mine solid. They could no more go running around the surface of the planet below than you could take a hike across the surface of your sun. Easier to enlist some unsuspecting locals to do the dirty work.”

  “And this device exists?”

  “A device exists, though whether it can save your people is not evident.”

  “Will our sun explode soon, as the aliens told us?”

  “Soon is a relative term. To them it probably is soon, for you not so much. Our calculations show you have another hundred thousand years or so before your primary star turns itself into a white dwarf. You should have plenty of time to develop the technology to leave for safer pastures.”

  “So if they were using us as tools, what was their plan for us, their endgame?”

  “For reasons known only to themselves they find creatures like us—warm life—anathema. I don't know this for a fact but I suspect that both you and the Formicidae would have ended up extinct.”

  There was a long silence while the Fakkaa Admiral conversed with those on the bridge, his sound pickup muted. Eventually, he faced the camera and restored the sound.

  “Captain, I don't know what to say—I feel like such a fool. What do you wish us to do next?”

  “Does your ground force have a way to get back to your ships?”

  “Yes, the landing craft can bring them back to orbit.”

  “Then I would suggest you get your troops back to their landing craft and off the planet, as soon as possible.”

  “As you command, Captain.”

  * * * * *

  “That was great, Captain!” Shadi enthused. “Using Le Singe et le Chat to explain how they were being used.”

  “Yes,” added Dorri, looking up from her keyboard. “There were only a few terms that couldn't be translated without rewording. I think we have a much better translation algorithm for Fakkaa now, you probably won't need us to help next time.”

  “Thank you for your assistance, ladies.” Billy Ray smiled at the two beaming teenagers, then touched his comm pip. “Bridge, this is the Captain. Secure from General Quarters.”

  As the all clear sounded the Captain called Bobby on the planet below. “Rescue Leader, Peggy Sue.”

  “Go Peggy Sue.”

  “You can tell your Marines to stop shooting things, the aliens have surrendered. I just talked to their admiral and he agreed to cease fire and have his remaining ground forces leave the planet.”

  “Copy that, Peggy Sue. I don't know how many are left to surrender, the Marines killed most of those who tried to take the palace. Interrogative an ETA for the medevac?”

  Checking a status readout, Billy Ray replied, “they are in atmo-entry comm blackout and should be on site in fifteen minutes. Over.”

  “Roger that, Peggy Sue. Rescue Leader out.”

  Queen's Palace
<
br />   Bobby looked up to see two suited figures coming toward him from the eastern doorway, one tall and one short. Since active hostilities ended a few minutes ago, he had been kneeling over Mal's inert body praying that the young Marine wouldn't die. Mizuki was still by the Queen's side as servants and functionaries appeared from everywhere to fawn over Timushi. The body of the fallen Castellan had been taken way and the cleanup of the palace had already begun.

  “Well I see that you found her,” the taller of the two newcomers said. The shorter stood legs apart, hands on hips.

  “That I did,” said a smiling Bobby, standing up. “She even saved some of the nasty spike covered beavers for us.”

  “Is that big bug the queen?” the Chief asked, scanning the scene. “Nobody here seems to care if we come or go, nobody tried to stop us coming inside or nothin'.”

  “The Chief's right,” said the First Officer, towering over the diminutive sailor. “There are insects running about everywhere; none even gave us a second look.”

  “Naw,” Bobby replied to his shipmates, “Mizuki introduced me to the Queen. She politely said hello and has ignored me since. I think it's because she sees us as warriors.”

  “What's wrong with warriors? Particularly warriors who saved her chitin covered carcass from her evil sister and a pack of demonic hedgehogs?”

  “In her world everyone is some kind of underling—servants, workers, warriors—you know, like an ant colony.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I apologized for the damage we did to her palace and all the ants we killed. All she said was the palace could be repaired and there would be more warriors if she needed them.”

  “Damn, glad I ain't an ant,” the Chief muttered.

  “She didn't care that we wiped out several hundred of her subjects?” Beth asked incredulously.

  “I think it's ant arithmetic.” Bobby replied with a grin.