by Tom Germann
The Representative continued. “One of our outposts was attacked recently. Raids are not uncommon and act as a testing ground. We do not need to treat acts of minor aggression as a prelude to war. Yet this was no raid on a mining or research station. The aggressors came in and launched multiple missiles from a launcher system that we had not considered. They then dropped several smaller asteroids on our site. We had over two hundred servants of the empire there. Only a few survived the impact of the rocks. We estimate that a handful escaped in a rover. Their bodies were found and they left messages telling us what had happened. Their suits ran down within hours of the attack. They died in agony but left us the information that we need to strike back and avenge them. The aggressors landed in shuttles and took all the ready material that had been mined for our shipment back to their home world. It was 70 percent of a full load. Then the enemy deployed small atomic weapons and irradiated the site. The ship that discovered the attack lost eight crewmen that volunteered to go down and look for survivors. They are all dead from radiation poisoning. The sensors that survived the attack showed us the ship that came in. The readings are not completely accurate, but when compared to the data we have . . . acquired . . . over the years, the energy readings and other criteria would appear to show us that the new race, the Hoomans, are responsible.”
Shiv’s ears were down to his skull and he could feel the urge to leap up and pace. He could see that Kaza had the same feelings, even though the warrior was able to push them back behind the façade he was maintaining.
The Representative stopped eyeing his paws carefully as if they would show him a reason for the Hoomans’ attack. “The emperor, the guardian of the empire, has decided that this is an act of war. It was the full destruction of an outpost on a moon that we had claimed for ourselves. The loss of life, and then to irradiate the area so that we may not go back to what was a prime site. . . . This must be set right.”
The Representative separated his paws and looked around. “Warriors would call for an immediate strike. Calmer heads would say negotiate. We have chosen the middle ground. Negotiation is almost impossible as they are aliens and we can barely understand their cowardly ways. They do not appear to have honour. So, our resources were gathered and more analysis was done. Any strike must be at the correct foe. That strike will be to show them the error of their choice and to gain more knowledge. If we will start an intergalactic war, then we will win.”
The Representative stopped talking and watched Shiv.
From his body language he could tell Kaza was angry—very angry. “The honourless Hooman filth will be made to pay. They may have attacked one of the few outposts that are close enough for their ships to reach, yet ours can reach farther into their space. We are ready to move soon.”
The Representative kept looking at Shiv. “Kaza is a member of the Imperial Guard. He will be my protector on this journey. However, we will be in combat, of that I am sure. I will need more warriors of a quality that will not disappoint. You will pull some of the warriors you have trained—senior warriors. You will pull whatever equipment from the stores that you decide they need. Then you will brief them on what we are doing and why. You will be the mission commander, Shiv, and if we are successful, great honour will be the reward of your clan. Now what clan would you pull troops from for the ground troops?”
Before Shiv could tell the Representative that he wanted troops from one of the stronger clans, the female interrupted the conversation again.
“No.” Her voice was loud enough for the guards to hear. Her tone was strong enough that Shiv knew she would brook no argument. It was an absolute.
When he looked at her, she was still in the meditating pose but her eyes were wide open and they seemed to be glowing. “Your first thought is to take warriors from one of the best clans on the home world. They have risen greatly in honour in the last two generations. So much so that it has been decided that they will be a founding clan. When the next colony world is ready, they will be granted the glory of settling it. This will expend most of their treasure and set them back in every way. If they were to be asked to send warriors, they would send their best. If casualties are high, this would be a blow to their honour and confidence. Others may doubt them. The grand plan cannot be threatened because of a retaliation strike.”
Her eyes were still glowing with an inner fire. She shook her head as if dismissing Shiv’s thoughts as unworthy. “You have not considered many other options. Yet the emperor’s view is long. Have you given any thought to taking warriors from the il Den Kes?”
Shiv almost recoiled. The il Den Kes was a small clan that had done little to honour the emperor in the past as far as he knew. Their warriors were mediocre as far as he knew, too. He had not even heard of any of them being accepted into raider training. In fact, he was not even aware of any that had applied!
He bowed his head quickly to the female. “Lady, the il Den Kes is a small clan that does not appear to have much desire to grow. Will their warriors have the abilities necessary for such a large destructive raid? If they caused the failure of the mission, then the stain on their honour would require their senior people to submit to punishment for the failure.”
Kaza answered Shiv quietly from his guard position. “The il Den Kes have submitted dozens of names for raider and advanced training over the last several years. The boards that sat have denied them positions because they are a small clan. Yet they have had great honour in the past and always work toward the betterment of the empire. You may not be aware of this, but they were a pivotal part of the Dishonour War almost two hundred years ago. They were almost wiped out in that conflict but they have never flinched. It has taken them this long to grow as big as they have. They will gladly give warriors for this cause. They have trained as well as they have been able. You, Shiv, and your warriors that you choose will bring them up to raider standard on the trip out.”
Shiv just stared at Kaza. This would not be possible. “Forgive me, warrior. There is no space on an assault raider to train thirty warriors on the way. It would be hard to fully train more than three given how small the ships are.”
The Representative brought his paws together again and spoke quietly. “The decision has been made. The raiding party will take a Dss freighter, the Broken Tooth. She will be large enough for you to break the seventy-five warriors down into groups and train them. There will also be two scout ships in attendance. You will not lack for resources. There will be two assault shuttles and one lander. The freighter will also have a prefabricated base so that the rest of the mission can be accomplished after you capture the Hooman site.”
Shiv was shocked. This was no raiding force. This was an invasion force. If he could equip them as he wanted, then they could take and hold any outpost the Hoomans had, except for their home world.
He wondered what he had not been told yet.
The Representative looked at Shiv with a small smile. “So, honourable Shiv, will you and your clan undertake this mission for the emperor and the Kah-Choo Empire? If you do, you will be the military leader and take charge in all things while I will be there as the emperor’s eyes.”
Shiv bowed low until his face was touching the ground. He held the position and then recovered. “My honour and life for the empire; my clan’s honour and life for the empire. I will lead this raid and we will destroy the honourless Hoomans in vengeance for the wrong done.”
After Shiv had left, escorted out by one of the courtesans that had been waiting, the Representative and two others were still in the same spot in the garden.
The Representative looked at the other two with him. “After we depart and the training is underway we will tell Shiv the rest of the plan. I do not believe that will change the focus at all. It will just . . . extend his view.”
The female snorted and glared at both of the men. She was still in the meditating position. “The male of the species always seems to thi
nk itself into a twisted mess like the Aaael bush.”
Kaza frowned from his position. “The Aaael bush stinks, little one.”
Her grin showed small, sharp, gleaming teeth. “So do you two males. Remember, the female of our species does not think with reproductive organs, unlike you two. We plan calmly.”
The Representative smiled, having taken no offence at the biting words. “I understand what you mean as you say this, Lady, yet it is the plan agreed to by our lord and master. Shiv will be told the rest when we are on the way. He will have over a month to work the warriors of the strike up. Everything will be fine; you will see.”
Her smile was more of a grimace, like she had smelled something putrid. “I would go back through the histories and pull out all the stories of leaders who have felt that way. But there are none. They are all dead.”
Kaza laughed, and it sounded like boulders grinding together. The nearest pair of guards shifted. “Lady, as long as you are around to keep us in the warrior stance then we cannot lose focus. You honour us by doubting.” Then he bowed his head.
The Representative carefully stood up, followed immediately by the female. “Come then, let us go for refreshments and begin planning. There is not much time before we leave and we must have everything ready for this great endeavour.”
He turned and, followed by the other two, left the garden.
Preparation
After that last operation we had spent days on post-drills, cleaning up the armour and weapons, running diagnostics, reloading magazines, and running tests to make sure that all the equipment was back up to operational condition. We worked on that for days, checking first our gear, and then we rotated and checked someone else’s to make sure nothing was missed.
After we spent so much time a day on that, we would go in for a full evaluation on both the body and the mind.
The scars on our bodies were obvious. So far, it was just bruises and pulled muscles from exerting ourselves in strange ways that we never realized we had during the operation. We trained constantly, but when you expect to be in constant combat, you’d push yourself past that limit without ever thinking about it. Not as a conscious choice but as a survival mechanism.
With careful workout routines and the nannites in our bodies rebuilding the injured areas, everyone was back to fit and ready within days.
The other part, though, was the hardest part of all. Going in for full evaluation by an AI-driven shrink.
Steven was good at his job, but it still felt like we were all constantly on edge.
What questions do you ask at a meeting like that? Are there reassurances that he can provide? That vague sense of wrong that just won’t go away always stuck with me.
Whenever I brought it up, all he ever seemed to say was that this was normal anxiety caused by fear of the unknown.
Visiting Steven did help doing the post-operation debrief. At least, we were all told that this purging of the data would help us evaluate and then release the angst, fear, and shock that we accumulate as a result of operations. No matter how well anyone has ever been trained, the reality is that the system has been shocked when it goes through something like we have. As time goes on, that shock to the system builds up until it finally breaks the person.
It’s been called shell shock, battle fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder, battle fatigue again, and now currently it’s considered mental illness from extremely stressful actions. No matter what they call it or how they treat it, the illness is real.
It was a mandatory subject in school for everyone to take when I was growing up. The mistakes made by some of the governments post-invasion—of drugging their extremely damaged military personnel—led to several incidents, including the Grand Parade in Africa, where over five hundred veterans put on their parade uniforms and engaged anyone they could find. It took days to stop the last of them and they did a huge amount of damage.
So the answer now in most of the world is to vent this shock. The venting releases some of the stress and ensure that the body and mind do not hold on to it, allowing the soldiers to survive with less mental scarring.
In the worst-case scenarios, where someone is actually dying because of the stress, memories have been wiped and then the person is re-educated into being human again.
Some militaries even drug their troops before sending them into certain types of combat. That never works well and the body count there is always much higher on both sides. I did say that most of the world vented. Not all of them, though.
During my training I never thought about it back on Earth. I was already broken and just did not think about what would happen after going on missions. It wasn’t real for me then.
Now? I’d gone through my first real operation with the rest of the section. The pressure was intense to carry my end. It was worse because the rest of the section was always watching and evaluating. Any mistake I made could cause the operation to fail and others to die.
I would gladly use every tool that the Corporation provided to make sure that I didn’t have to carry all that stress after an operation was over.
I didn’t want to think about what a single Marine could do with a full combat load and no restrictions on their activities. Completely insane with no rules. It would be bad.
So I went to the after-action review. I went over every inch of the recorded footage and wrote up my actions and why I had done what I did. I sat down with the rest of the section and we talked about what had happened and why. There were lots of points to improve on. Most of them seemed to be mine—on everything from entering a room to crossing a corridor.
There hadn’t even been any combat action that time.
I was seriously considering whether I really belonged here. I couldn’t be sure that on an operation involving combat I would be good enough.
What if there was heavy combat? It was rare, but it did happen. That first training mission that I had been on was not even that heavy. A full smash-and-grab or sabotage mission on a planet could have us facing an army.
I didn’t know, and I could feel the doubt like a shadow following me around.
The way the rest of the section was treating me didn’t help either. They had slowly been getting used to me and were being a bit nicer, but now everyone was snapping at one another and it was worse for me than when I first arrived.
For now, all I could do was carry on with my training and try to improve.
I showed up for the last debrief and there was something different in the air. I moved in and sat down in our small briefing room in my spot.
The conference room was located outside of our specific spaces and in the crew area. It was a briefing room, and I understood it was also used by the crew as an entertainment room if they were watching shows, playing sim games, or studying.
It worked for us, even if it was a bit cramped with ten of us at a table. Our implants and the nannites that made everything possible allowed us to use virtual keyboards and systems to enter the data as we went through our briefings. All the technology was state-of-the-art and in excellent shape.
The only nice thing about the whole event was that there were always a few small containers of fruit juice. The real stuff, too. Thick and heavy, with parts of the fruit mixed in as well. Really, it was more like a smoothie. We also had a sealed container of water for those who wanted it.
I poured myself a large glass of the orange juice and took a small sip. It tasted great and I savoured that taste as I put the mug down, mag-locking it to the table with a thought while looking around.
Every time I entered there was a feeling that everyone, while not bored, was not enjoying being here. This time it felt different. I felt it when I entered the room, but I had no idea what was going on. I knew no one would say anything, either, until we began. So I just sat there and waited.
Svetnara, or Five, was the last to arrive. She was
probably in a sim swimming as she loves the water. It made it hard for her on a spaceship.
Two stood up and moved to the small pull-out computer console in the corner of the room. She unfolded it and then quickly started manipulating the controls, powering up several systems in the room that I wasn’t familiar with. While the screen behind her powered up and several machines in the ceiling also activated, she started talking. “We will not be using implant or wireless technology for this briefing. I realize that we should be having the last debrief from our quick op that just happened, but that was minor and we are moving on as this is a much higher priority.”
She stopped manipulating the controls for a second and looked at us. I was new but this was so far out of the ordinary from what I expected. I could feel that everyone else was taking it much worse than I was. Maybe Earth had been attacked?
Two stood in front of us and started talking calmly. It was like she could feel the tension in the room. “The last courier ship that we met up with two days ago dropped off some supplies and the latest information from home. I have been going through reviewing everything and I read a special set of orders that had been included.”
She stopped here and poured herself a mug of water, then took a sip.
Everyone was almost leaning forward in anticipation and I was desperate to hear what had happened.
She put the mug down and looked at us. “This information that you are receiving now will not be shared wirelessly or outside of this shielded room. There will be no sim training or evaluations or even discussion outside of this room or the one alpha-rated security room in our area. Do you all understand?”
Everyone was looking at each other around the table and then we were nodding and calling out, “Understood.” “Affirmative.” “Roger.” “Clear. . . .”
Two took a deep breath and then tapped the console button several times. The overhead projector came on and projected a mostly transparent image in three dimensions on the tabletop. It was a poor-quality picture of an alien standing looking to the side. It was so blurry it could have been anything.