Alien Salute

by Charles Ingrid

  “Don’t worry,” Amber said grimly. “We won’t be spotted.” She reached for the helmet.

  Jack had never known Bogie to feel cowardice, but as he strode through the earthen caverns, he could feel the presence quaking about him. The chamois along his shoulders and the back of his neck fairly shivered, sending harmonic feelings along the tiny hairs back there. “What is it?”

  *Cold, boss. Cold and dark.*

  Jack looked over his power gauges. There was a nearly imperceptible drain. He wasn’t expending that much energy in the suit. “Bogie, what are you doing?”

  *I… don’t know.*

  “Watch my power outage, okay?”

  There was no answer, but another tremor upon his shoulders.

  Behind him, Aaron and Rawlins matched his steady walk. Jack surveyed the cavern as well as he could with the amount of illumination he wanted to use. Dirt wall, unshored… as if a gigantic mole had dug it. Under their feet was a layer of clay sediment, broken by small rocks and pebbles, all dry. Perhaps an underground flood wash, of some sort. No rocks or minerals to speak of. He could feel a deep-rooted vibration overhead.

  “What is it?” Rawlins broadcast.

  “I know what it is,” Aaron’s still high, very young voice answered.

  “Aaron?”

  “Yessir. That’s the rest of Blue Wing. There’s a rhythm, like someone jogging.”

  Dust and pebbles shivered down from the roof. “If you’re right,” Jack murmured, “watch your heads. We’re liable to have visitors.”

  The cavern narrowed to two abreast width, then made a Y. Jack paused at the fork, checking his map. The screen flashed him a direction, and he went to his right, slightly off course by a degree, but then again—no one had promised him a direct road.

  The vibration overhead paused. All three of them came to a stop.

  Jack tilted his head even though it did no good… the mikes were directional… his stance was unconscious. “Fighting,” he told the two. “Come on, we’re missing all the fun.” Bogie’s chill had transmitted to him and as he surged forward, his teeth began to chatter. His sweat covered torso had gone icy. He charged into the tunnel, certain that they were almost within striking distance of the Thrakian nest.

  Amber skidded to a stop at the tunnel mouth. Her heart pounded and her pulse sang. The Bythian tattooing—which had faded to a tenth of its original intensity so it looked like a network of fine veins marbling her fair skin—burned with her delirium as power of one kind spoke to power of another. “Oh, my god,” she murmured to herself, for she’d left Denaro in the dust. “Jack must feel like a god.” She leaned against the left seam of the suit, heedless of the circuitry and wiring poking into her.

  Denaro came panting up. His dark hair stood all on end. “Milady!” he cried, as if she were deaf inside the armor. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar.”

  His ashen face now grimaced at her retort. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’ve seen a recruit blow himself away in a suit. Perhaps you could use a little more theory, too.”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “Don’t forget, Denny, my boy—I’m the brains and you’re the brawn. Now what direction do I head this scrap heap in?”

  “The obstacle course is that way.”

  Feeling invincible, she surged out of the tunnels and on to the fields.

  Feeling invincible, Jack spotted the light curving from the end of the tunnel, alien though its illumination was, and knew he’d been right. “Use everything you’ve got, boys,” he said to Rawlins and Aaron. “Including your boots. Stomp what you can’t laser. Don’t let ‘em tear your field packs off, you’ll need your rifle.” He took his out of the cradle of his right arm and lifted it. “Let’s stir up a hornet’s nest.”

  He broke into a run for the fifty yards remaining, his momentum and the power of the suit carrying him at an incredible rate. Thus it was that the three of them broke into the underbelly of the Thrakian occupation force, kicking through wafer thin cellular walls, ignoring the cocooned nets hanging from the ceiling as they fired. Aaron let out a squawk of indignation as one bundle swung into his helmet and Jack heard an “Oh, shit! That was part of Fielding!”

  Rawlins ducked as a Thraks picked up what was left of a fellow warrior and threw the blasted torso at him, ichor spraying wildly. “How the hell can you tell?”

  “I’d know that hairy, tattooed arm anywhere! What is this?”

  Storm waded through bodies, kicking and shattering anything that twitched as a chittering wave ‘of Thraks backed away from him. “Let me give you a hint, Aaron,” he got out as he laid down a spray of fire that seared chitin and left a smell like burning hair on the air. “They don’t take souvenirs, either! This is their pantry.”

  He thought he could hear Aaron gagging and added, “Keep going, boy! Watch ‘em. Here they come at two o’clock!”

  The Thraks boiling away from them were unarmed and frightened. The Thraks flooding downward from the other end of the tunnel were armed to the masks and madder than hornets. They did almost as much damage to the unarmed Thraks as the three Knights did.

  Jack swung his field pack around, grabbed two grenades, tore the pins and chucked them as far ahead as he could. The concussion battered the suit and the mikes, waving his ears ringing. Two blurs to one side of his helmet told him either Aaron or Rawlins was following his lead.

  He got his heading. Bits of chitin filled the air even as the first of the line to get through reached him. He set his rifle in his armpit and laid down an even spray of fire. “Rawlins, Aaron. I want you to kick your way out and get up there!”

  “What?”

  “Use your power vault and grenades, dammit! Get dirtside and do it now.”

  “Yessir!” they chorused as Jack set his teeth and boots. Provided there was nothing alive at his back, he ought to be able to hold this tunnel mouth indefinitely.

  Or at least as long as he still had firepower.

  The ceiling came down behind him and for just a moment he was cloaked in a fine cloud of smoke and dust. The Thraks piling into the tunnel drew back in wonderment.

  For just a second.

  Then, with a terrible clacking of mandibles and spurting of their rifle muzzles, they plowed forward again.

  Jack smiled. It had obviously been a long, long time since any of them had faced a Dominion Knight.

  Chapter 17

  You ought to be proud of our boy,” Pepys said, swinging about in his chair. “He’s handed us a decisive victory.”

  Baadluster’s upper lip tightened as though his teeth gave him some deep and stabbing pain. He paced away for a second or two, then turned and faced his emperor. “That he has,” he said grudgingly. “And now Stralia’s fate will be decided quickly in the Appellate Courts. The sooner it is freed to be colonized, the better it will be able to defend itself. Or had you overlooked that piece of property?”

  Pepys shrugged indolently as he threw the report over one shoulder where it slumped to the ground and lay, plastic sheets akimbo. “I gain more in the long run for the Dominion to have confidence in me as a war leader and provider of troops. My claim to Stralia was poor at best and fourth or fifth in consideration. A wise man, my dear Vandover, knows when to cut his losses and take what he can get. And look what our commander’s given us! Just look! Damn near one-handedly.”

  “Then,” and Baadluster drew near. An unhealthy pallor cloaked his skin. “Perhaps you’ll consider what I have to suggest. You face a full Congressional hearing with regard to the budget and appropriations.”

  “I do,” Pepys agreed. “All it takes is enough of them to decide I have them by the monetary shorthairs and we’ll be providing no troops.”

  “Send in your hero. If we work with him, we should be able to overwhelm the Congress with emotion, sway the dissenters, and get the budget through before anyone notices that we’re going to own them completely.”

  Pepys’ indolenc
e faded rapidly as he straightened in the chair. He looked keenly at Baadluster. “You’re talking about giving him a public forum.”

  “He’s a soldier, not a politician. Feed him what you want him to say.”

  Pepys tickled the corner of one eyebrow with a fingertip. “Storm,” he replied slowly, “is his own man. But it could work.”

  “Surely he’s not naïve enough to believe all we require of him is to fight Thraks.”

  “I think perhaps he is.”

  Baadluster smiled. “Then we can’t allow him to stay that way. There are concerns he must deal with… building the troops and generating the propaganda necessary to authorize their use. I have leverage I can use if your highness finds it difficult to persuade him.”

  “Leverage, Vandover?”

  The Minister of War towered over the emperor. Pepys waited for enlightenment, but none came. He smiled tightly. “I see you’ve been busy filling Winton’s shoes.”

  Baadluster gave a slight nod.

  Pepys sighed. “Well, then. I suggest you get hold of our hero. We have only a few weeks to make preparations.” He waved his hand, dismissing Baadluster. The minister lingered a few seconds longer than was in good form, as if to show Pepys that he did not have the control he wanted. Pepys watched the lanky man’s disappearing form until the closing portal hid it from sight. Then he took a deep breath. He had stayed true to his adage that it was better to have an enemy under your nose than out of sight, but he wondered if he had done a wise thing. Rumors reached him now and then. Rumors that Baadluster had belonged to a splinter faction of the Green Shirts though Pepys had not been able to unearth recent activity. Had the Green Shirts been too radical for Baadluster… or not radical enough? Pepys closed his eyes, thinking that when he had been younger, he could not rest until he had the throne. Now that he had the throne, he could not rest keeping it.

  Lassaday stalked about the locker room. “Dammit, Trav,” he muttered to Captain Travellini. “Do we tell ‘em or not?”

  “We have no proof that anyone’s been breaking in. The security systems show nothing.”

  “I know that! I’d give my left nut to know who—” he broke off as a buzzer rang in, overriding his words. “What is it?”

  “Moussared here, sir. The racks check out.”

  “Right.” He looked to Travellini. The captain stood at attention, slender, darkly handsome, a single wing of premature silver along one temple. “Nothing there. But I know what I know, even if I can’t prove it.”

  “Then you’ll have to tell the commander and let him take over, sarge.”

  Lassaday’s thick chest rose and fell in frustration. “Th’ freebooters’ll wait for no one! By the time I get enough proof, they’ll be gone, and our suits with ‘em!”

  Travellini spread his hands out. “Our only other choice is to shut down training altogether until we find out where the missing suit is, and who’s been breaking in. I don’t think we can afford to do that.”

  “Damn right. Well, th’ commander’s back tomorrow. I hear the emperor’s got a call in for him. I guess we’ll be next in line, eh, Trav?”

  As the good-looking captain nodded assent, Lassaday slammed a locker door in frustration and left, eyeing the security camera with an evil glare for its failure.

  Jack hardly had two words for Amber when he returned. He went to see Pepys first and then Lassaday cornered him, and when he came back to Amber, telling her that he would have to leave with Pepys in a few weeks, all she had with him was the night… and the night she shared with Jack’s nightmares.

  He rarely slept through. She knew that from years of association with him and the one or two times she’d nursed him through injury and illness. But she thought perhaps it had lessened, or even faded altogether, that night-startling bolt from sleep into wakefulness, his eyes wide and his breath shuddering in his chest. He did not fear death, she knew that. He feared the inability to be allowed to live… his dreams deep scars from the seventeen years he’d been locked helplessly in cold sleep. She tried to soothe him back to rest, but their lovemaking had already spent his energy and though he lay down beside her, she wasn’t asleep when he got up and left.

  She knew where he’d gone. Her slender fingers kneaded at the blankets as his warmth faded from beside her. He’d gone to the suit, to Bogie, to commune in a way he’d never reached out to her.

  Amber threw herself out of bed as if to follow, then stopped herself at the bedroom door. She couldn’t follow. She knew that. She turned her restlessness into pacing, then stopped. Bitterly, she repeated what her hated Rolf had often told her: “You can’t lose what you never had.”

  She returned to the now cold bed. She might not have him now… she might never have him … but she would not let him face his destiny alone much longer. At the back of her closet, behind a false door, hung a suit of armor that she was very close to mastering.

  Lassaday grimaced. It sent rivulets of sweat running down his bald pate. “I don’t like yer leaving so soon, sir. Not with the trouble and all.”

  “It can’t be helped. I don’t like it either.” Jack looked out over the parade grounds. The troops looked good, but he knew after Stralia that they had a hundredth of the manpower they needed, and with the attrition rate of training… he might never have the Knights at full muster. He disliked the duty he’d agreed to perform for Pepys, but it had one advantage. The Knights would gain the publicity they needed to gather new recruits. And the Stralia incident bothered him more than he wished. He could not shake the idea that the Thrakian League had been waiting expressly for him. Did they think that the Knights were nothing more than an extension of himself, now that Kavin was gone? If so, he must do everything in his power to make sure they were not right. Lassaday, Garner, Travelling Rawlins and the others must be able to step in. He was the last true Dominion Knight… and it was in his power to correct that, to make certain that it did not remain true.

  But it would take time, time he found hard to gather. The upcoming trip would delay him even more.

  Yet he had also found evidence on Stralia that he could not ignore. The Thraks had not just been waiting there for him… from the depth and size of the catacombs, he was certain the Thraks had been based, on and off, on Stralia for some years while the Dominion Congress argued the colonization and ownership rights. He did not like the implication of the infiltration which had taken place right under the noses of the Triad Throne and the Congress.

  A buzzer sounded and Lassaday grimaced again. “Th’ bugs are ready, sir.”

  Jack looked down at the portion of the parade grounds that had been sectioned into a blind maze. Shields thinly glazed with norcite were set in place among the other walls.

  Lassaday sighed. “We’ve got a bloody fortune down there, sir.”

  “I know.” But it would be worth it if he could prove what he hoped to prove about the Thraks. If they had a blind spot he could capitalize on, the war would come to a quick and speedy halt.

  They’d brought three Thraks back and, so far, kept them alive. Now he heard the portal doors opening, loosing the warriors onto the parade grounds. Lassaday leaned over the bridge railing with him, knuckle-scarred hands tightly gripping the bar.

  “What if this doesn’t work, sir?”

  “Then we try again,” Jack said. He watched as the Thraks stumbled out into the white-hot light of Malthen’s ever-burning sun. For a moment, he thought he saw confusion on the masked faces. Then the Thraks fell on each other with a fury that saw two tear each other apart. The third turned and made a gesture to Jack and that was indisputable, despite the language difference, and tore its own throat out and toppled, splattering ichor onto the parade ground sands before anyone could stop the suicides.

  Lassaday growled deep in his throat. “Nasty beasties,” he said. “Well, that’s the last of ‘em.”

  Jack stepped back, gorge rising in his throat in spite of himself. He wondered if he would have exhibited similar courage under Thrakian captivity. He
swallowed hard. “There’ll be another time, sarge. Store those norcite shields where they can’t be vandalized. We’ll find a way to use them.”

  As he stepped down from the bridge, he tried not to let the failure bother him. He could not be wrong about what he’d observed aboard Harkness’ freighter. He could not!

  Chapter 18

  We’re on final approach now, your highness.”

  Pepys wiped off the fine sheen of nervous perspiration from his forehead. He looked askance at his cabinmates, Storm and Baadluster. Storm looked calm and composed, almost meditative. Baadluster’s attention was fixed on the viewscreen showing the descent.

  Pepys wrenched his thoughts from his nervousness and focused on the screen. The cloudy luster about the planet faded for a moment, as if a wedge had been cut into it.

  “The shields are down,” Jack said.

  Pepys looked to the windowscreen. His air sickness fled in the moment he realized that the center of the Dominion was wide open, vulnerable to their descent. He smiled wryly then, thinking of all the times in his dreams when he’d willed such a thing to happen for his attacking troops, and had never been able to force it. The shields could be brought down, that was true, but at great risk and expenditure.

  It was not surprising the Thraks struck only at outlying, ill-defended planets.

  The shimmer returned. They were through. Pepys cleared his throat, rapidly picking up composure as they returned to his element. His battlefield, by necessity, was the Congressional hall awaiting them.

  Dreams of conquest here were disguised behind his politics. He took one last look at his Dominion Knight and hoped to god he and Baadluster had not underestimated the man.

  Baadluster seemed to sense Pepys’ thoughts. He turned from the viewscreen as the capital came into sight, its visibility partially veiled by scattered clouds and a light drizzling of rain over portions of the immense city. “Rest today, Storm,” the minister said. “Tomorrow we go back to work.”