The ten of them headed across the valley toward the ridge where the tank was broken down. Skrelton couldn’t help but fear another sniper as they were in the open. He noticed Sergeant Jonthon looking around as well.
* * *
Chapter Seven
It was evening by the time Private Alford and Crit Ahshaltic replaced the reservoir and refilled it with coolant. LakTa Lithowka went through the fusion plant start up procedures and powered it up. The tank was operable again. The pulse laser was ready to fire, and the rounds for the main gun were charging.
Crit Ashaltic explained the job of assistant gunner to Corporal Welter. Welter had been the gunner in his own tank, but he would be the assistant in this one. The Kitrail tank only had five rounds.
To his surprise, they were manually loaded like a regular tank round. They looked similar, except they had a blunt end. They were batteries—power banks to be exact. The rack they were stored in was also their charging station. It took twenty-five seconds to charge a round. The round contained the energy needed to fire the huge laser, but a single shot completely depleted it. A Kitrail tank could fire about 12 shots per minute with the system. The assistant gunner stayed busy, but it could be sustained. The five seconds loading time between rounds allowed the barrel to cool off using a separate cooling system running through it from the power plant.
As they watched the work, KahCrit answered all of Sergeant Jonthon’s questions about the tank. There had been many. In return Jonthon explained and commented on the differences between the two systems. Both of the leaders were surprised at the amount of similarities between the two race’s main battle tanks.
“Tell me, again, why you want to use one of my guys as the assistant gunner,” Jonthon said.
“I would like us to be integrated,” Skrelton answered. “It is very likely that this tank will never fire another round, but I want to be prepared for anything. It is probably the same reason your special shooter was showing my soldiers how to fire a kinetic rifle. It is so we can integrate.”
“Yeah, I thought it would be a good idea in case the Stalkers get brave enough to attack us,” Jonthon said. “Our rifles hurt them and scare them. Your rifles are kind of quiet. I don’t know that we’ll need the main gun for that, though.” His teeth were showing again.
“We’ll move out in the morning,” Skrelton said. “I think we should go by the colony area first. There may be things we can use. Rations. Whatever. Hopefully we can digest human food. Our rations are as low as our water supply.”
He and the human leader had discussed the leadership roles, earlier. Skrelton was surprised when the human told him he should be in charge because he outranked all of the soldiers there. Jonthon would be second in command. Perhaps this would work out after all.
“There is no telling what is left there. Can I ask you, why did your race attack the colony?” Jonthon asked as they sat back near the fire the soldiers built. “It was new. And humans claimed this planet first. I know you just follow orders, like me…but why?”
“I don’t know,” Skrelton admitted. “After the Bith showed up with the first gate, our race discovered there were sentient beings out here. Actual first contact was with the Bith. In the many years since, we have had little contact with other races. Our leaders have kept us away from them for the most part. There is a whole galaxy to explore, but they only want us to deal with other Kitrail.”
“When the order was given to attack any potential colony site that was occupied, it made no sense to me,” he continued. “I think the Central Government was worried that we couldn’t keep colonizing fast enough. We have to colonize to survive. There are four planets that have to have nearly all their resources shipped to them to feed and house the masses. We need more colonies. If that system fails, it would be chaos. Everyone in power would be thrown out or killed by the mobs rioting. They were afraid,” Skrelton answered. “Why did you colonize?”
“We have to. Our very existence depends on it,” Jonthon said. “Well, people from New Chicago, anyway. There are plenty of other human-occupied systems in the galaxy, but we are the last from ours. The planet was just not right, so the colony never really grew like so many others. Most have gone to other human systems. Others did what we did. We are the last actual colony from New Chicago. The rest have been destroyed or taken over.”
“By my race?” Skrelton asked, dismayed at the decisions of his race’s leadership.
“No. A few were attacked by your race,” Sergeant Jonthon said, “the rest were completely wiped out by the Trulls. We are so far away from most of the inhabited systems in the galaxy, I guess they think all of this arm belongs to them.”
At this, KahCrit Skrelton sat up straight. “What? What do you mean? There are other races out this way? Trull? They attack you? Why? What is their goal? You mean they wipe out entire star systems?” The questions came so hard and fast, the translator barely kept up.
“The Trull are orange tentacled bastards,” Jonthon said. “They have battleships that rival ours, and they send out scout ships to determine the size of a colony. Whenever they find an occupied planet, they attack within a few weeks to a month. They bring in several ships to defeat whatever may be guarding the planet, then they send their soldiers down in dropships. Some of the ships offload individual tanks. They are about half the size of ours, and they fire kinetic rounds like we do. They are not as powerful as ours, but they make up for it with numbers. They are as tall as I am and have a dozen or so creepy looking tentacles, and they stink worse than anything you have ever smelled.”
“We can’t communicate with them, either,” he continued. “They don’t talk to us, so there’s no translation program for them. The big thinkers say they must be telekinetic or something. Or it’s in a frequency we can’t hear. I don’t know. I just know, four years ago, I was a private and spent a year trying to throw them off my home planet. We finally rooted them all out, but we lost a lot of good soldiers that year.
“When your race started to attack our colonies, I’ll be honest, I thought the end was coming. We were surrounded,” Jonthon said as he stared into the fire. “Now, I’m not so sure.”
That night, Skrelton lay staring up at the stars. He could not sleep. He looked over and saw the security he had posted standing near the fire talking. It was strange to see his soldier and the human soldier acting as if they had been in the same unit for years. Strange…but good.
His mind went back to what Jonthon had told him. Another race bent on destroying everything they came across in this corner of the galaxy. No wonder the Government had ramped up the draft and was sending units out to wipe out the humans. The idiots in charge thought that if they kept the humans at a distance, the Trull would not come. They probably learned of them from the human prisoners. That was the information being kept a secret.
Skrelton knew better. If the Trull did this to the humans, they would not stop there. There was no telling how long they had been spreading across this part of the galaxy. They must have received their first gate recently, like his race, or they would be further along. If he ever got back, he would take it up with his command. He’d go around the chain of command if he had to and spread the word. This wasn’t something to keep from the masses.
* * *
Chapter Eight
The next morning, all the soldiers not occupying a crew position inside the tank rode on the top. They were headed to the colony site first, then on to get water. The trip would take most of the day.
As they neared the colony site, they could see signs of the devastation caused by the kinetic bombardment from orbit. Skrelton was looking ahead when he saw something off to the side and high up. It was coming down at a high rate of speed and headed toward the site. He tapped Jonthon on the shoulder with a pincer and pointed.
“Dammit,” Jonthon said. “That’s a scout ship…and it’s not ours or yours. I recognize it. Trull. We are screwed.”
Skrelton heard him clearly through his helmet. He had
his driver slow down, and they stopped well away from the colony site. All the soldiers dismounted and spread out to ease up to the edge of the trees.
A small ship was sitting a quarter of a mile away on the rim of a crater. It was larger than a Kitrail shuttle and had a ramp down. There were three small tanks parked near it. Skrelton looked through the optics of the pulse laser and magnified the view. What he saw was far stranger than his first sight of the humans had been.
He saw at least ten orange aliens. They looked to be a little taller than he but moved around on tentacles. Several held some type of weapon and were spreading away from the ship in a wedge formation. From what he had learned from Jonthon, they needed to kill every one of them before the scout ship could leave and report back. He watched as one of the Trull kicked a body over, a human body, and shot it. It made no sense to him. The human was clearly dead. That confirms what Jonthon said about them, he thought.
“Alright, here is the plan, Skrelton announced. “We need to take out those tanks first, so we’ll hit them one after another. Corporal, I hope you are ready to load. The shots need to happen rapidly. Once they are taken out, we make a run for the ship. Sergeant Jonthon, take all the soldiers and get in and clear it. It may be our way off of this planet. Either way, we can’t let it lift off. If it comes down to it, we destroy it.”
“We may have the element of surprise,” he continued. “It looks like they are trying to figure out why the colony is already destroyed. They didn’t find the remains of our cruiser in orbit, because it crashed on the other side of the planet.”
“Roger that, KahCrit,” Jonthon said.
Every soldier heard the plan through their helmets. They all climbed onto the back of the tank, away from the main gun.
The tank came out of the trees moving fast. The first round hit a Trull tank and destroyed it. The second shot cut the turret off the next tank. The third tank started to pull out, aiming toward them, when the Kitrail tank’s main laser fired once more and burned straight through it, blowing it apart.
Skrelton fired the mounted pulse laser at the Trulls that were moving away from the ship; it didn’t take long to cut them all down. There was only one squad of them, and the ten Trulls died before they could fire a shot. The last two fell before he had them in his sights. Looking over, he saw Smithers lowering his rifle.
The tank rolled up to the back of the ship, and the combined squad of soldiers leapt off and ran up the ramp as it was beginning to raise. Ten minutes later, every Trull on board was dead.
KahCrit Skrelton walked onto the ship’s bridge. He had the spare human pistol Jonthon had given him out and ready. There were three dead Trulls lying in the compartment. Both tank drivers were looking at the control systems. The gunners were with them. Skrelton thought that, between the four of them, they could probably figure out how to fly the ship. Maybe.
Jekotloma placed a bandage on Ta Mikata’s thigh; he had taken a round from a Trull rifle. Private Smithers was assisting by holding the bag. The engineer had taken point and stormed the ship like an infantry soldier. One of his pincers was stained orange, and he kept insisting it was only a shell wound, and he was alright.
“Private Alford,” Skrelton called out. “There appears to be damage to some of these panels. Can you repair them?”
“Yes, KahCrit. I can repair anything,” the private answered, standing straight.
* * *
Three Weeks Later
Enroute to the System Bith Gate
“Are you sure about this? KahCrit Skrelton asked his second in command, as they approached the Bith Gate.
“I’m positive,” Sergeant Jonthon assured him. “Look, I know your race has been forbidden to use the Galaxy Net through your gates. I get it. But we have never been denied that by our leaders. I could tell by the look on your face, though I have only known you for three weeks, that you had no clue there were thousands of sentient races and coordinates posted for star systems with Bith Gates. For the record, I think it was a really bad decision by your leadership. Anyway, there’s this video floating around about a new colony called Salvage System.”
“And that is where you think we should go?” Skrelton asked again.
“You can’t go to your race’s home world or any of its colonies. You said yourself, you and all of your soldiers would be arrested on the spot and executed as traitors for working with us,” Jonthon said. “Me and my troops have nowhere to go, except to another human colony or somewhere they don’t mind a few humans, anyway.”
“Really, there are lots of places we could all go,” admitted Sergeant Jonthon, “but if we go to Salvage System, we could remain a small unit of combined forces. Use it as a base of operations, maybe take on a few mercenary jobs or something. Earn some credit…you know, the galaxy-wide monetary system I told you about?”
He paused a moment until Skrelton nodded. “Anyway, I don’t know if any other race or system, for that matter, is interested in stopping the Trull’s advancement, or if they even care as long as it doesn’t affect them, but from what I can tell, this Salvage System is only a couple of gates away from this system. Maybe three. That’s close if you think about it. Who knows? The Trull may get brave enough to hit a big system one day. I doubt it, but it wouldn’t hurt to tell this Harmon Tomeral guy about them.”
* * * * *
Kevin Steverson Bio
Kevin Steverson is a retired veteran of the U.S. Army. He is a published songwriter as well as an author. He lives in the northeast Georgia foothills where he continues to refuse to shave ever again. Trim…maybe. Shave…never! When he is not on the road as a Tour Manager he can be found at home writing in one fashion or another.
# # # # #
When No One Else Will by Chris Kennedy
We never found out how long the aliens had been in orbit, watching us. It had to have been at least five years, though, because that’s how long our satellites had been disappearing. I remember watching a rocket launch that had carried 60 satellites to orbit. After releasing them, three failed immediately.
“New technology,” the experts said. “A 95% success rate is better than what we’d hoped for.”
But when the next rocket launched…and then the next…and the next…and satellites continued to fail—always in the same section of the sky—the “smart people” couldn’t explain it.
“Something magnetic in the atmosphere,” they said.
Our theory—not that anyone cared what two 16-year-olds thought—was that it was aliens.
It therefore came as no surprise, to us anyway, when the alien ship de-cloaked, or de-stealthed, or stopped doing whatever it’d been doing to defeat our sensors. It wasn’t that people hadn’t believed in aliens—we had a gate in our system, and knew it was theoretically possible for aliens to appear, but after centuries of not having any aliens show up, you kind of forget that it’s possible, y’know? Our civilization had been a spacefaring society in its heyday, but it had become more insular a couple thousand years ago, withdrawing from the rest of the issues of the galaxy. At the time, a few groups—there are always predators in a galaxy as big as ours—tested us to see if we retained the capability to defend ourselves. They learned to their chagrin that our withdrawal didn’t mean that we lacked the capability or intestinal fortitude to defend ourselves, and they were destroyed. After a while, though, I guess the Bith moved our gate into the “Inactive” section of their database, or something, for people stopped coming. Maybe people just forgot about us. After a while, though, we let our planetary defenses go as an unnecessary expense.
The first thing the alien ship did once it appeared was to jam our communications with the gate so we couldn’t call for help. I don’t know if anyone would have come or what they would have wanted in payment if they had—in fact, I didn’t know if we even had the ability to call for help anymore—but we didn’t have to worry about it. The jamming prevented it.
The aliens began broadcasting their message soon after their ship became
visible. We would either give them all of our gold and heavy metals, or they would bomb us from space. The Tuskers, our enemies from the other side of the planet, decided to shoot down the aliens, and they sent a mass launch of nuclear missiles at the spaceship. This was somewhat of a surprise to us, as the Accords of ‘35 had supposedly gotten rid of both sides’ nuclear missiles. We had certainly gotten rid of ours.
The alien ship shot down all of the Tuskers’ missiles. In a fit of pique—or maybe they thought we were behind the alien spaceship—the Tuskers also shot a number of missiles at us. The alien ship shot down those, too, with equal facility, and demanded additional payments from both the Tuskers and our side. The Tuskers, because the aliens had to use additional resources, and from our side as payment for defending us, even though we hadn’t asked them to do so. As someone who lived in one of the cities the Tuskers had targeted, though, I was pretty happy for their intervention. I didn’t have any gold or heavy metals, but if I had, I would have been happy to send them.
After this, the Tuskers told the aliens to pound sand; they weren’t going to pay the aliens’ extortion. They lost three cities, seemingly chosen at random, to large rods that separated from the aliens’ ship and fell from space and landed on them. This finally seemed to get the Tuskers’ attention that maybe—just maybe—they might be a little outclassed by the aliens, and the Tuskers acquiesced to the aliens’ demands. Our nation had agreed to the aliens’ demands on the second day, once our Senate had time to meet.
All of this didn’t affect my friend, Cinti, or me that much. We continued to play video games as much as possible, and we played outside when our parents kicked us out of the tree. That all changed the day we watched the video of a smaller alien craft—some sort of shuttle or dropship—picking up the first load of “tribute” from the Tuskers. The ship came down, landed, and a ramp extended from its cargo compartment. The Tuskers drove pallet after pallet of gold into its hold.
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