The Belt Loop_Book 3_End of an Empire

by Robert B. Jones

  “Breathtaking, Admiral Regiid,” Bale Phatie said. “I think this is the perfect weapon for our Operation Decimation — the Vanuuiad — and it should be readied at once. You were going to explain to me how this is different than an exploding star drive?”

  Regiid exhaled and stepped a meter away from Phatie, not wanting to get into Phatie’s kill zone should his explanation get too technical. He’d heard of what had happened to Admiral Koraath aboard the bridge of the Decimator. “The principal is the same, sir, but a ship’s drive is engineered to keep the elemental hydrogen matter and the magnetically sealed antimatter away from each other, in separate ‘bottles’ if you will. When a drive engine is hit and ruptured, that happens in space and there is usually enough molecular hydrogen floating free to absorb the antimatter in the resulting explosion. Since over seventy-five percent of all matter has this element in its structure, the annihilation is generally just a component part of the overall explosion.”

  “That’s why drive engines are installed in orbit, is it not?”

  “Precisely. The two components are never brought anywhere near close enough on the surface of a planet. Since ninety percent of all atoms by volume —”

  “Enough. I feel confident that you have the required science to make this weapon effective. Now, when can I expect to have an operational model available for the Decimator to deploy in battle? We must proceed with deliberate speed, Regiid, before our men lose their incentive to fight. A destroyed human settlement, or even an entire planet would go a long way to boost morale among our troops.”

  “I took the liberty of anticipating the success of this demonstration, sir, and have ordered that two of these weapons — not this crude demonstration prototype — be assembled and made ready for immediate deployment.”

  Piru Torgud Phatie thumped his chest and said, “Praise Malguur. I applaud your confidence, Admiral Regiid. You seem to have the kind of bellicose spark this campaign is sorely lacking.” He paused and snapped his fingers at his aide, Lieutenant Manciir, who was waiting near the starboard hatchway. “Manciir, have a declaration of honor attached to the file for Admiral Regiid and move his name to the top of my list. I will personally see that he is made one of my Field Uurgud Commanders.”

  Regiid thumped his chest and went down on one knee, the standard Malguurian posture of respect and supplication. It also offered his neck should the respectee deem it necessary to remove his head. “You honor me in ways that I cannot begin to merit, your eminence,” Regiid said. Bale Phatie removed his sword and tapped him on the side of his head with the flat part of the blade. The little ceremony was now complete, Regiid’s service to the Domain and the Deliverer would now forever be etched into the annals of the history of the Malguur Domain.

  “Rise, Regiid. You have done well. Get us back to Rauud Mithie and proceed with your work. I want to have the first weapon ready to deploy by the end of the cycle. I will personally deliver it to the humans and make them suffer as they made the half-billion innocents suffer on Nuurhe.”

  Regiid stood and thumped his chest again. “As you wish, sir. As soon as the weapons bay is secured we can get underway. At ‘fold’ speeds we can be back on Rauud Mithie in a matter of hours.”

  Bale Phatie looked around the bridge one more time and marched toward the hatch and his waiting contingent of aides and bodyguards. Without another word he opened the hatch and stepped through, his cloak a dark green swirl of fabric, his ceremonial chains and medals a cacophony of tinkling chimes and tones.

  Admiral Regiid returned his attention to his ship and made ready for the return trip to his home port. It had been a good day for him; his demonstration was an unqualified success and he was still alive.

  * * *

  When the last of the thirty-seven ships departed Luna-II Admiral Josep Teals breathed a sigh of relief. It had taken him fifty-seven days to complete his retrofit mission and now that his work was done, he had time to relax and contemplate other things. Affairs were on the move at a hurried pace in the wartime Colonial Navy. Even though the information from the home world of Elber Prime took weeks to get to him, he still thought the rapid changes occurring in the Second and Third Fleets were unprecedented. Major departments were undergoing rapid overhauls, many unrestricted line officers were being reassigned and promoted, some were being reassigned and demoted; all troubling in his efforts to stay informed.

  Teals was in his mid fifties and was looking forward to the war’s end so he could put in his retirement papers. He had served a total of thirty-one years. His career started out in the Colonial Marines but quickly migrated to the Navy once the hostilities erupted with the Varson Empire. Like many others, he was drawn to the Navy because of quick advancement, better food and prettier women. He’d made the jump from an infantry lieutenant colonel in one of the 42nd’s mechanized divisions to a captain in the Colonial Navy’s Second Fleet and was put in charge of a repair facility on Wilkes. Once the war was over he decided to stay with the Second and eventually wound up in the Admiralty with a huge repair and drydock facility at his disposal on Canno. With no further ambitions gnawing at his sated administrative desires, he considered himself fortunate for having made the Navy his final rest stop on the way to the good life.

  He had married a Marine nurse eight years ago and together they had built quite a comfortable life on Canno: a horse farm on the outskirts of Yellin, money in the bank, infrequent visits from the vague side of their respective families, plenty of comfortable friends to share good wine and polite conversation with, and a few exploratory offers from the Colonial Congress to get him thinking about a run for the Senate. All in all, a future that loomed like a brass ring just outside of his reach on the colonial carousel as long as this conflict with the Varson Empire continued.

  Teals pittered around his office for a few hours, signed a few requisitions, made a couple of radio calls to his wife and prepared himself for the ninety minute ride home to Canno.

  He was putting away his daily ship logs in the office safe when his yeoman second knocked on his door. He scrambled the keypad on his safe and told the yeoman to enter.

  “Dispatch from Haines, sir,” Yeoman Nan Daniels said.

  He grumbled something and took the cube containing the sphere. “Thanks. I’ll take a quick read of this and then I’m headed home, Nan. You should get ready to shut the office down, too.”

  The yeoman acknowledged his informal orders and they exchanged a minute of chit-chat before she quietly departed his office.

  Teals cracked the privy seal on the dispatch cube and dropped the metal sphere into the reader on his desk. Once the image solidified he sat and watched.

  Jesus, he thought, as the message spooled to conclusion. I’ve got to get this message to Bayliss and Admiral Geoff.

  Chapter 6

  Her name was Holli Leaf. She was a photographer, a photo-journalist. Holli was in her quarters on deck five, a smallish compartment crammed full of her cameras and digitizing gear. This was not her first assignment as an imbedded journalist onboard a Colonial Navy warship. She had made a name for herself with both her pictures and her brazen disregard for her own personal safety.

  She was thirty-six years old with blonde hair down to the middle of her back, had a lithe figure, had never married, had turned down more men than a hotel maid had turned down bed covers. Romance and entanglements did not move her past the point of innocent flirting and an occasional mercy screw with one of her production crew mates. No, getting involved with a man was not her mission in life. Recording the events of conflict, recording the pain and sorrow of war, capturing the exhilaration of victory and the agony of defeat: those were the things that really moved her.

  However, somehow, this was different. During her cruise on the Hudson River, during her interactions with that rakish Captain Haad, a tiny spark deep within her was slowly turning into a downright furnace of emotion. Feelings that were totally new, totally unwanted.

  She had captured Haad in over four hun
dred photographs. Haad on the bridge, Haad in his ready room, Haad inspecting the weapons bay, Haad in terse conversations with his enginemen. His seemingly insouciant attitude whenever she was around troubled her. Did he just not care for the imbeds, did he not see any value in their presence on his ship or was he just so calm and indifferent toward all things not Navy? Troubling thoughts rambled through her mind as she scrolled through her Haad gallery on her portable reader. The images of the captain displayed one after another at three- or four-second intervals and she sighed as she took them in. Then one particular image captured her attention and she stopped the rotation.

  Uri Haad was in his customary utility dark blue khaki, his rank insignia radiating gold highlights set apart with lens-flare spikes at thirty-degree intervals, giving the eye of the eagle on his collar a sinister, sparkling sty. The black and gold shoulder boards in the image provided a nice contrast to his slightly tanned face, and in the soft lighting on his bridge the three scars on the left side of his face were barely visible. The photograph had captured him in deep conversation with Commander Bill Mason, his XO. Holli had snapped this frame just minutes after the last battle with the Varson warships and she was surprised that he was not breathing heavily or he was not even sweating in the least. Calm and cool under fire.

  Considering the substantial fire building in her core, she was not sure she could make the same statement about herself. She resumed the rotation and several frames later another picture caused her to stop. It was a shot of Haad near the forward blister, one she had made without him knowing it. She had been bending down to get something from her equipment bag and as she’d reached for the bag with one hand, the camera in her other hand had snapped off a half-dozen shots behind her. This image had caught Haad looking at her with a longing, wistful, begging look on his face. He had been staring at her and if she could believe her own eyes, the look was not casual.

  “Hey, you going to mope around in there all day?” a deep basso voice sounded from the hatchway, snapping her out of her reverie. She hopped up from her bunk and walked purposefully to the comm stack by her door.

  “What’s it to you, Gil?” she replied. “You can’t find anything to do by yourself? I could suggest something.”

  “Come on, Holli, open up. I’ve got something to show you.”

  Gil Palise was one of her team. He was in charge of the minicams and the video footage. They were both employed by Bayliss Communications — BayCom — and after a few months on the Hudson they expected to edit and produce a two-hour documentary on life in the Colonial Navy. With the war going on and the footage of some of the battles already in the can, the project was only a few B-rolls and a couple of interviews away from being completed.

  “Well, you’d better have your pants on, mister,” she said and levered the hatch open.

  Gil sauntered into her compartment with a portable in his hand. He was on the short side of things as far as colonists went, topping out at maybe 180 centimeters. He was in his early thirties and already losing most of his red hair. His pudgy face and warm smile made up for any shortcomings he may have had in the vertical department and he was always ready with a joke or witty saying to bemuse any and all that would listen. “Pants? I thought that was optional attire on a warship. Nobody else was wearing any, and I passed these two nurses out in the passageway and they —”

  She swatted him on his arm and turned back to her bunk. “What have you got to show me?”

  He thumbed a few commands into his portable and turned it around for her to see. “Stills of the Varson ships. I took these through one of the weapon blisters down on deck eight. High speed capture, over ten thousand frames.”

  She took the reader and started paging through the images. Gil had managed to shoot video of the initial encounter with the Varson battle group, and was in the right place at the right time to get footage of the two Varson attackers that had collided with each other at the beginning of the battle.

  “Wow, Gil, these are fucking fantistic. You get this on the mini?”

  “Hell, no. That’s what I wanted to show you. I took this shit on the big steadycam. Gigapix shots, totally zoomable and rotatable. Man, you can even read the freaking writing on the sides of those ships. If you page toward the end, you can actually see the collision in so much detail that when you zoom all the way into some of those frames, you can see those aliens, looking like little flaming q-tips, being blown right off the exposed decks. You like?”

  She was silent for a few minutes as she paged through the images. Gil had been right, this was exciting stuff, footage never before seen by ordinary eyes. This was prize-winning photo journalism. “Man, this is great. Have you showed this stuff to the guys on the bridge? The captain?”

  “I was just on my way topside, thought you’d like to see this stuff first.”

  Her mind raced. Was this a golden opportunity for a little sit-down with Captain Haad? Maybe a meeting in his ready room? A chance to get up-close and personal?

  “Not a good idea, Gil. I, uh, I think I should take it up. I have some other photographs I’d like to get his opinion on, and, knowing him, he’s not going to want two of us up on his bridge.” Her feeble misdirection sounded lame even to herself.

  He looked at the tablet reader on her bunk. “That your Haad gallery? You spend an awful lot of time looking at those pictures, ask me.”

  “That’s my job, silly boy. One of these shots is going to make Haad a household name. Mark my words.”

  He grunted. “Well, if you say so. You know, I’m not the only one on the crew that has noticed your fascination with the intrepid captain. Don’t go getting all obsessed about him, Hol. He already has a woman, and he’s sitting in her lap right now as we speak.”

  Holli waved a dismissive hand at him. “Still, I have my job to do. You just step over here and download that video into my reader and I’ll get it to the captain. If I were you, I’d be belowdecks trying to get more shots of that engine compartment and those huge magnetic collars. People’ll want to see that stuff, too.”

  He hesitated for a second or two and handed over his reader. What she said made about as much sense as a telephoto lens on a pinhole camera. But he acquiesced anyway. He could afford to spend more time down in the engine cowling looking over the monster Dyson Drive containment ring. “Here you go. Now you make sure you have your pants on when you show this to the captain.”

  She chased him out of the compartment and dogged the hatch. After staring at her wardrobe cupboard for an eternity she pulled out a form-fitting knitted jumpsuit and laid it out on her bunk. The dark rust-colored fabric shimmered in the LED lighting and tiny flecks of gold thread made the outfit glow with a fetching nimbus. Holli headed for the tiny head at the rear of her compartment and slapped the controls for her seven-minute shower.

  * * *

  The lone figure in the heavy topcoat looked both ways before he crossed the street. He rubbed his chin furtively as he massaged the hair of the new beard. It took over a month to grow full, undoubtedly because of the damage he had suffered to the underlying dermis when he had his face altered back on Rauud Mithie.

  Nood Teeluur made it to the other side of the wide street and walked west toward the corner. He was in the better part of Narid, a small insignificant town on the lee side of the Colonial War College, a sleazy little burg that served only to provide enough raunchy entertainment to the men and women serving as instructors and sometimes students at the school. A loose collection of bars, pawn shops, ink parlors, fleabag hotels, souvenir stands, peepshow galleries, less-than-fresh produce vendors, and the occasional quick-meal eatery. It was to one of these places Teeluur headed with his head down and his coat bunched up around his neck.

  Even though the winters on Bayliss were only a couple of months long, they were unduly harsh, actually quite like the insufferable winters on Canuure. No matter, he thought, in a few weeks the weather pendulum would swing back the other way and blue skies and thin white clouds would once aga
in grace the skies.

  He walked so close to the dirty brick walls along the sidewalk that his shoulder occasionally brushed against the masonry and the crumbling mortar left sooty gray streaks along his sleeve. Hell, this place was worse than the slums on Brauud he mused, comparing this city to the broken and bent town he grew up in. He wondered why in all of its glory the Malguur — and the human — people could not have done a better job in providing for its citizenry. For every crystal palace shining on a hill there were hundreds of ramshackle warrens like this one. It amused him that his human counterparts had not been able to do any better. He knew the answer was apathy. No matter how much the rulers provide for the people, personal apathy destroyed most of what was accomplished; apathy made people throw trash into the streets, caused them to fail to paint and fix-up, made them neglect their lawns and eventually led to urban blight and decay.

  As he approached the doorway to the small restaurant on the corner, the one he frequented several times a week, the one with the picture of a strange-looking beastie on a swinging sign above the door — a cow — he chuckled to himself and shook off the images of his home world. Brauud no longer existed in the strictest sense of the word. The human nuclear bombardment had left 400,000 Malguurians dead or wounded ten years ago. The planet was suffering through what the humans called a nuclear winter, a thick layer of radioactive clouds that reflected the wan light from the star he knew as Beeire. Some of the scientists speculated it would take several more decades and about fifty atmospheric processors to clean it up and make it habitable again. In the meantime the survivors on Brauud, the unlucky ones, had retreated underground. The nomadic tribes of the Malguur Domain were used to living in caves and dugouts; it was their way of life before the stones had turned to metal, the metal to synthetics, the synthetics to energy. The Domain leapt forward at such a fast pace it was hard for the general population, especially the uneducated members of the race, to shuck its old ways.