Tales from the Service: Whispers of the Night

2954-09-02 – Tales from the Service: Whispers of the Night 

Langer helped Vann Rudenko crack the chemical heater on one of the silver ration-packs, and set it against a tree root while the contents warmed. Vann, after licking his cracked lips, was able to drink a little water unassisted while Langer changed the bandages on Fisher’s stump of a leg. 

Langer sat next to Vann with his own ration-pack, and they ate in silence. Though his fingers arms felt as heavy as lead, he found he was able to manage to raise the food to his lips.  

At first, the others watched Vann eat, but when it seemed he would suffer no ill effects from the meal, both Fisher and Langer dug into their own rations as quickly as their various injuries would allow. Though a ration was left out on the ground for Kaube, nobody cracked its heater. 

The shadows were already growing between the trees when Langer stood up again. He looked silently at Vann, then winced. Vann realized with shock that his compatriot had tried to send a routine mesh-network message rather than speaking. Without a working implant, of course, that message would bounce back.  

“Bah.” Langer shook his head. “Think you can help me set up some shelter, Rudenko?” 

Vann held up a hand, and Langer took it with his. With help, Vann levered himself up into a standing position, leaning on the tree behind him. The still-healing muscles in his abdomen protested, but not nearly as much as he’d expected. 

The pair unrolled an adaptive-camouflage shelter tent in almost perfect silence, broken only by grunts and hissed breaths as injuries were over strained. Vann could tell a silent conversation was going on between his two compatriots. For the first time since he’d enrolled in the Glorious Cause, he was sundered from the silent bustle of digital camraderie, the gentle whispered reminders of the Cause, and the watchful eye of the Incarnate’s will. It felt... cold. Like being left outside on a chill night, knowing that on the other side of a simple door, others were chattering gaily by a fire. 

Of course, there was little chance the traffic between the other two was pleasant, but Vann hated the feeling of knowing he was being talked past, like an extinction-bound barbarian. They could be planning to leave him while he slept, and he’d never know it. 

That was nonsense, of course. There were only three of them left now – four, assuming Kaube recovered – they'd need each other. 

When the shelter was set up, Langer lit a battery lamp inside. Vann and Langer dragged Fisher into it, then the still-motionless Kaube. They talked for a little while, but the conversation dwindled as darkness outside became total. Eventually, Langer shut off the light, and they laid down on the bare ground to sleep. 

Vann lay awake in the darkness long after the other two dropped off. The silence in his head made every noise in the woods outside seem extremely loud, as if animals were crowding around its flimsy polymer-cloth walls, crooning, croaking, and chirping. Supposedly there wasn’t an animal on Håkøya big enough to threaten even a lone, unarmed human but that was suddenly hard to believe. 

Vann had heard a few stories from other Guardians about the spook-stories the locals told, of phantoms stalking the woods at night, of snares both physical and otherwise laid for the feet of unwary walkers in untamed places. He’d laughed at this as obvious nonsense then, but now, all those stories crowded into the space where his implant’s gentle reassurances should have been. 

As Vann wondered how long he would have to deal with the vast silence in his own head, All of the nighttime noises outside the shelter suddenly went silent. He froze, even holding his breath. 

Vann strained his ears, hearing only his pulse for what seemed like an eternity. Then, at the distant edge of hearing, so faint he wondered if he imagined it, there was a sound – a whispering noise, like the sound of fine cloth rustling. It was too quiet to even be gentle footfalls on the leaf-litter. 

Vann sat up and listened some more, trying to find the direction of the sound. It seemed to come from first one direction, then another, in the pitch darkness within the shelter, but he was more sure of it now – there was something out there, something very quiet. He itched to creep out and see what it was – but didn’t dare. If he could see it, it could also see him. 

The sound grew closer. Vann thought he saw the faintest glow of gray light underneath the edge of the shelter for a moment, but then it was gone; perhaps it was only a status light on one of the various electronic devices within the enclosure, but it didn’t seem that way. Vann tried to breathe as quietly as he could, irrationally terrified that whatever it was might discover he wasn’t asleep. That was ridiculous, of course. Wouldn’t he be safer if any creature knew he was alert? 

Something brushed against the side of the shelter. That noise, Vann couldn’t have imagined. He turned to look in that direction, but of course he could see nothing. 

A moment later, the night-time denizens of the forest began to make their accustomed sounds again. As they did, Vann heard – or imagined he heard – another noise, melodic, weaving between the sounds of the night as it dwindled away. 

He fancied it was a voice, wordless, but filled with dreamy promise. It scared him at first, but as he dwelled on it, searching for meaning in it, it put his mind at ease better than the reminders from his implants ever had. That should have been more terrifying still, but he was at his limit of terror for one evening. 

Vann eased himself back into a comfortable position on the ground. In a few moments, the forest sounds lulled him to sleep. 

Though we published seen several convincing Gossamer sightings on this feed before Håkøya was a battlefield world, it is important to keep in mind that the existence of sapient native life on that world remains officially unconfirmed. As these creatures – whatever they are – become more well known, the likelihood of hoaxes also increases. 

Could Vann Rudenko’s sighting be some sort of elaborate psychological operation conducted to demoralize stranded enemy soldiers on that world into surrendering rather than fighting to the death? Yes, theoretically. It would be brilliant if it was, frankly, and if the technology to make it work exists, you can bet Naval Intelligence would try just that sort of thing. 

I still prefer to think of this as a legitimate sighting. The Gossamers, if they really are nonhuman sapients, don’t seem particularly hostile to humans, only wary of them, and I doubt they’d be able to tell the difference between Incarnation soldiers and Confederated civilians. Even if they could tell the difference, it’s doubtful they’d care to make it. 

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Tales from the Service: Stranded in the Galbrandt

2954-08-26 – Tales from the Service: Stranded in the Galbrandt  

As promised last week, this is one of the accounts sent to us after Datasphere connectivity to Håkøya was restored. Interestingly, it claims to be the account of a prisoner of war taken on that world by a F.V.D.A. mopping-up patrol in a low-intensity sector, recorded and passed on by his jailors at a holding facility on Leopold Bay. At his own request, or so the message claims, his name and other names in the account have been altered by the submitter. 

As those of you familiar with Håkøyan landmarks probably already know, this facility is a repurposed resort complex, and I’m already seeing complaints from service personnel still on the world that housing Incarnation POWs there is overly soft behavior. 

Given the documented poor treatment of Confederated prisoners in Incarnation hands, I can sympathize with these grumblings, but still disagree. For one, ensuring prisoners are treated humanely is the right thing to do, and erring on the side of comfort when there is any doubt or possibility of scandal is a time-honored military tradition. For another, I doubt these prisoners will be at Leopold Bay very long; Håkøya is still very much a front-line system. As soon as a facility somewhere less hospitable and farther to the rear is available, they’ll probably be moved. 

When Guardian Vann Rudenko came to, he was slumped against the bole of a gnarled, ancient-looking tree. Everything hurt, but the stiff, tingling feeling of nanobandages on his leg and side indicated that he was among his comrades. That was a relief, at least. He tried to query his status and location, but his implants responded only with an error buzz. 

The last thing Vann remembered was the explosion; most of the squad had made it out of the stricken hover-transport all right as it wobbled six feet off the only bare hilltop for thirty klicks and sprinted for cover. He’d seen Exalt Bailey hop off the craft last – well, last except for its crew – and then stumble in the stony grass. Three of the others had turned back to help, and just at that moment, the smoking, clattering engine of the transport had failed, disintegrating into an oily fireball. 

Vann must have caught shrapnel, because he didn’t even remember the transport slamming down into the hillside. No doubt, when it had, its remaining fuel cells had ruptured in a spectacular secondary explosion. It was a wonder anyone was alive, really. 

Vann turned his head to look around and hissed an agonized breath as the side of his neck and head blazed with pain. Gingerly, he raised his hand in front of his eyes – it was whole, at least – and started to touch the offended area. 

“I wouldn’t.” A voice – Guardian Fisher’s, but slurred and unsteady – cautioned. “The nanobandages haven’t finished with your new skin.” 

“New skin?” Vann tried to say. His tongue felt thick and his lips cracked. “What-” 

“Flash-burns.” Fisher chuckled, though it trailed off into a cough. “You didn’t keep your head down.” After a few labored breaths, he continued. “Most didn’t. You’re lucky to be alive.” 

Vann winced, and then wished he hadn’t. “My implant isn’t working.” 

“Yeah, you’ve got nothing but red lights upstairs. We were worried your brains got scrambled with the circuits but without diagnostics there was no way to tell until you woke up. ” 

Who’s... Who’s left?” 

“Just us, Kaube, and Langer. Langer’s gone back to the hilltop to look for anything we can use.” Fisher coughed again. “Kaube hasn’t woken up. We’re not sure he will, but his implant says he’s still alive. Strong pulse. Nearly no neural activity.”  

Vann turned his head slowly this time, and found Fisher not far away, his shoulders propped up on a fallen log. His right leg was gone at the knee and wrapped in a messy tangle of rags. He was at least as draped in nanobandages as Vann himself. 

After identifying a vague lump in the shadows below another nearby tree as Kaube, Vann  closed his eyes again. What hope had four lay guardians, wounded and on foot – no Mender, no Exalt, no Speaker, no sat-nav – of getting back to friendly lines, lines that were moving away from them every day? 

Normally, this would be where the implants would detect the beginning of despair and remind him of the Cause, and of his duty to it no matter what happened. About the extinction that was coming, should he fail, and the untold trillions both living and not yet born who were counting on him. But it was silent, dead. Even the whispers of the Incarnate couldn’t reach him now. 

Langer returned a few minutes later, carrying a torn trail-pack over the shoulder which wasn’t supporting a sling for his injured arm. Other than the arm, though, he looked to have avoided serious injury. “How is he, Fisher?” He asked, upon seeing Vann’s eyes open and following him. 

“Seems okay.” Fisher shrugged weakly. “You ask him.” 

Vann stirred. “Implant’s dead, Comrade. Must have smashed it on something when I went down. But I don’t feel like I’ve been brain-fried, just regular fried.” 

Langer nodded wearily and dropped the pack. “Small mercies. And Kaube?” 

“No change.” 

“Sun’s getting low.” Langer leaned over Vann to poke at his nano-bandages. “I did find four camo-shelters and enough rations to last through tomorrow. Rudenko, if you can walk in the morning, we’ll do a last sweep at dawn, and then we need to move as soon as Kaube comes to.” 

“Move?” Vann shook his head. “What if someone comes for us?” 

Langer nodded, glancing up toward the sky visible between the trees. “Exactly my concern. I didn’t get a good look at whatever strafed us, but we’ve got to assume the skies in this region aren’t friendly.” 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Homecoming Duplicity

2954-08-19 – Tales from the Inbox: The Homecoming Duplicity 

The account we have been relaying these past weeks is of some interest, but Nojus and I are thinking that we will not publish its remaining two entries, at least not now. It is most certainly time to go to the Håkøya backlog, which continues to flow in. 

Obviously, other events on either front or interesting events from the civilian spacer world which reach our inbox will be interleaved as we decide is most entertaining. 

Margaret's message was, as usual for Lydia Fernandez's experience of her older sister, brief. It explained that Margaret was on the way back from her business trip unexpectedly early, and had received the message of regret just as the ship she was on had started its in-system run. It expressed hope – sincere or otherwise, it was impossible to say – that Lydia was still in the system and could redirect to meet at the spaceport. 

Of course, the bit about returning unexpectedly early from an interstellar business trip was bunk, Lydia knew that. The cost of moving a return-trip booking up on short notice would have far outweighed the cost of simply staying on location the few extra days, and Margaret's employer - some interstellar minerals firm or other – would almost certainly never pay a steep premium for her convenience.  

What Margaret was hiding, though, wasn't Lydia's problem. Perhaps she involved in some sort of corporate skullduggery, or covering for an affair. Lydia had always considered herself the more honest of the Fernandez women, since Margaret took after their mother in almost everything. It made no difference, at least to Lydia, that she was a solo operator in the gray markets, and her sister was married and held a legitimate salaried middle-management job with a stable corporation. 

Margaret having uncomfortable secrets of her own might be some help, at least this time. The only times Lydia could remember ever keeping secrets from her sister had been when Margaret was more interested in her own schemes. 

With a grin borne of knowing she was about give both her employer's agent and her pursuers fits, Lydia changed course, then sent a message requesting docking permission at the Terre Weigand spaceport. She didn't give any reason for the request, but then, as a small-time spacer, she rarely needed to, except at ports where docking slips were at a premium. 

With that done, she pulled up the list of all the other spacecraft in-system once more. It didn't take too long to narrow Margaret's ship down to two candidates: an old, creaky passenger mover running the line from Terre Weigand to Tours, and a small hauler operating a mixed passenger and freight service to Cardona's Landing, the mercantile hub of the coreward side of the Silver Strand. Lydia had a hunch her sister was on the latter, but they were set to arrive at the port within ten hours of each other so it didn't matter much if she was right. 

Knowing approximately when her sister would arrive at the station, Lydia quickly booked a suite on the station for three days, making sure to include her sister's name on the booking as well as her own, and forwarding the details to her sister's inbox. With that done, she went aft for a cup of coffee, then returned to send a message herself. If she did this right, her sister would have half an hour or so to stew over the meaning of the booking and to worry whether Lydia was onto her own schemes, and would interpret everything in that light. 

As soon as the recording started, Lydia beamed into the camera. "I was so afraid I'd missed you, Margaret!" She gestured around herself. "One of the perks of flying my own ship is that I set my own course. I was just on my way out of the system to pick up my next job when I got your message. And I would love the opportunity to catch up, Sis. It's been a long time, and I've heard so much about all you've been doing from Cousin Trent." 

After a pause to take a long and loaded sip of her coffee, Lydia continued. "I'll be there at the gangway on Weigand's Roost to welcome you home. And don't worry about the booking. I figure, if your trip ended early, you've got a few days to kick your heels up like old times. My treat." 

With an exaggerated blown kiss, Lydia stopped recording, shuddered, and drained the rest of her coffee before confirming and transmitting. With a deep sigh, she got up once more to figure out whether she had a valise aboard that was the right shape and size to carry her cargo aboard the station, where she could keep an eye on it. No doubt the authorities – at least, those who wanted to covertly reclaim that cargo – would be searching the Minotaur while she was trading jabs with Margaret. She had about a half-day to make sure this took them a long time – but she still didn't want them to find anything. 

 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Homecoming Deception

2954-08-05 – Tales from the Inbox: The Homecoming Deception 

It was some hours before Lydia Fernandez got any hints of trouble, but since any hints were unexpected, it put her on alert right away.  

Most of the time, a system traffic control station request to re-verify flight plan and destination was an irritation only, the product of a desire to clear space ahead of some particularly important or high-security vessel such as a prison transport. Lydia, however, had been working the grey areas of the Reach's spacelanes too long to believe anything inoccuous about it. She hurried up to the cockpit and, after replying politely, set about looking for the ship that was going to make the intercept. 

Fortunately, Terre Weigand space was fairly quiet; there were only a few dozen drive signatures on the plot, and most of them were local runabouts and merchant haulers on supply runs in and out of the spaceport. The system's two-destroyer, five-frigate defense flotilla, mostly sitting idle in parking orbits, was also not the threat. She'd grown up on that world, and had never seen those gerietric ships sortie, except for parading around the spaceport to entertain prominent visitors. It was doubtful if any of them could make more than four or five gees of thrust without a total drive overhaul. 

That left three independent hulls and a quartet of customs cutters, and only one of the independents and two of the customs ships were in position to affect any kind of intercept. None of them were on an intercept course, not yet. Whoever her pursuers were, they would want to make their intentions clear only when Lydia couldn't do anything to avoid them. 

The re-verification request was of course part of that. If they'd gotten an automatic reply from the nav computer or no reply at all, they would have taken that to mean Lydia was asleep and her ship on autopilot, and moved in quicky. A manual reply meant she was at the controls, of course, and could react instantly. 

Lydia debated simply playing dumb and letting them board her. Theoretically, there was no contraband on board her ship. The cargo she'd picked up from the dead drop was, technically, entirely legal, and well within the limits of legal personal acquisitions not requiring tariffs and declaration. 

The technicalities wouldn't matter, of course, if her pursuers knew what they were looking for, and who it was who hadn't intended that cargo to ever leave Terre Weigand. If some system had just flagged her as suspicious and sent a customs crew out to give her a hard time, on the other hand, there was nothing wrong with being searched. And running guaranteed there would be problems, technically legal cargo or otherwise. 

Lydia pushed her chair back and cracked her knuckles, thinking. She needed more data to make a decision. Fortunately, she needn't decide right away, and the longer she gave indications of being awake, attentive, and at the controls, the longer she could make her adversaries wait to commit. 

With that in mind, Lydia went aft to the food-fab to prepare a meal and a cup of coffee. If something had gone wrong, it had to have just done so – she'd gotten the all-clear from her contact less than ninety minutes before. Whoever was selected to intercept her would be whoever just so happened to be close enough to her egress route. 

Idly, she wondered if there was a way to divert those ships away on other errands. Probably not; she could try to tip them off to fictitious activity of interest, but if one of those hulls was already instructed to prepare to intercept her, its skipper would disregard that. She'd need a third party to set up some apparent disaster or crime-in-progress of higher priority than she was, and she had nothing of that sort set up beforehand. 

Briefly, she debated trying a tagged cargo dump. Theoretically, if she made it look like a routine garbage jettison, long before they had any idea she was on alert, nobody would think twice about that. That would, of course, create the additional problem of recovering the cargo after the fact, which would require a course change the system authorities could see. If she had backup for this job, someone else who could pick up the cargo without drawing attention, that would probably have been the best approach, but again, she didn't have that. 

Perhaps, even if she was boarded by people who knew what they were looking for and what significance it held, she could still brass it out by making enough noise about legal technicalities and her rights. That did work sometimes. Higher-ups might be willing to sacrifice the reputations of a few lower level goons on the scene to get their way, but those goons didn't always go to the slaughter willingly. System security and customs enforcers often had families who relied on their income. Still, it was a gamble that would require the right sort of boarding party to work. 

Fighting her way out, of course, was no option. The Minotaur was more than she looked like, both in its offense and defense, but it was still a big old strike gunship which the massed railguns of even a decrepit customs cutter would cut to pieces without much trouble. 

That left running. On principle, Lydia didn't like running; it usually put the initiative in the hands of her pursuers and proved to all and sundry that she had something to hide.  

As she finished off her meal, Lydia heard the bright ping of an incoming personal message on the intercom. Shoving the tray into the food-fab's return slot, she returned to the controls. The moment her eyes fell on the comms display and read the name of the recipient, her eyes widened. "Margaret." 

Apparently her cousin had been incorrect about her sister's whereabouts. If she'd really been out of system on a business trip, there was no way Lydia should be getting a message already. 

Already, the beginnings of an idea were forming in the back of Lydia's mind. She settled down into the chair and brought up Margaret's message - a flat-capture video recording - on the main display. 

Though I reported poor connectivity to the Håkøya system last week, I am happy to report this is apparently corrected in part. Some dozens of accounts have reached this embed team in the last two days from service personnel and civilians in that system, telling of events to which they claim to be eyewitnesses. It seems that a datasphere backlog some weeks long is being worked through by limited hardware in-system, and I have no doubt there will be more to come. 

I do not expect we will publish all these accounts, though I have seen several so far that, had we gotten them closer to the events described, would likely have been published immediately. We will however select two or three which we find interesting, and get them into this feed in coming months. 

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