Tales from the Service: Atrocity on Meraud

2949-01-19 – Tales from the Service: Atrocity on Meraud 

At the chiming sound of the alarm in her earpiece, Soraya Levine groaned and levered herself upright. The moment she moved, her cocoon-like sleep-shroud split open, and the chill of the outside air slapped her in the face, and she saw that she was buried in a meter-thick drift of coiling, crawling creepvine which had out what little body heat leaked from the sleep-shroud's insulation. Through this mass, a few rays of blue-white light morning light stabbed accusingly at her eyes. 

Soraya had known before landing that Meraud was nobody’s idea of an idyllic vacation getaway, but she had long since come to regret volunteering for any mission that required exposure to the planet’s punishingly low ambient temperatures, nauseatingly mobile and flora, and unnecessarily creative varieties of crawling and slithering fauna. 

As the sleep-shroud disengaged and began folding itself into a compact package, Soraya tore through the twitching plant-life and stood. After stretching, she pushed her way toward two other mounds of heat-hungry vines and kicked into them to find the green-polymer cocoons within. 

“Get up. It’s time to move.” 

Gabriel and Seppo, both echoing Soraya’s groaning, protested weakly against the interruption to their sleep, but soon both sat up and set about extracting themselves from the unpleasant embrace of the underbrush while their own insulating enclosures begin to self-pack. 

As her compatriots scoured their meager campsite to ensure nothing was left behind in the choking, moving weeds, Soraya keyed in a command on her wrist computer. With a distressed-sounding hum, their hoversled came alive and broke free of a much thinner but quite frozen entanglement of creepvine – the few plants which had greedily sought its residual heat the previous evening but had not been able to find another refuge as it cooled. Their brittle remains would cling to the sled’s hoarfrost-covered housing until it warmed up. 

Bringing the sled in close, Soraya opened the sled’s onboard cargo vault and quickly checked each of the weapons within before handing them out. None of their electronic weapons, designed for the vaccuum of space or for the conditions of a temperate world, could be relied on in Meraud’s conditions. They’d slept with sidearms on their belts, of course – Meraud's wildlife was a threat only to one’s appetite and sanity, but the presence of an Incarnation garrison could not be overlooked – but there was no good way to bring a combat rifle into a sleep-shroud. 

Soraya passed around self-heating ration pouches, then secured the vault and set the sled to follow her. With Gabriel and Seppo falling into step behind her, she brought up the map and led the way through the frozen wilderness. If everything went to plan, they could determine the extent and purpose of the Incarnation base on Meraud and reach the rendezvous in three more local days, but in her years of work for Naval Intelligence, Soraya had never seen a plan work perfectly. She had resigned herself to at least six more harsh sunrises, and perhaps as many as ten. They had brought rations for even longer and could even be resupplied from the stealthy converted cutter waiting to extract them, but Soraya suspected an abundance of supplies wouldn't prevent her from killing and eating Seppo if the mission dragged on. At some point, such a drastic measure would be necessary to preserve her mental equilibrium from another round of his bawdy tall tales. 

“You know.” Gabriel tapped the crystalline trunk of a tree-like local growth with the barrel of his rifle as he passed it. “This place really isn’t as bad as I was expecting.” 

Seppo nearly choked on a mouthful of artificially-flavored nutrient slurry, spluttering a few valuable calories out onto the frozen ground. The warm slurry steamed briefly before the soil stole its warmth. “Really, Gabe? What in all creative hells were you expecting?” 

“A wasteland.” Gabriel turned and pointed to the hills over which the blue-white stellar primary had risen. “You ever see pictures of Antarctica on Earth? That’s not much colder than here.” 

“Shut up, boys.” Soraya gestured to them to be quiet. There was nothing for miles that could hear them, but she didn’t want to hear stories of how things could be worse any more than she wanted to hear Seppo talk about seedy Maribel nightclubs and the things the dancer-girls there would do for a hundred credits. Though not superstitious, she’d come to suspect that the more one talked about worse situations, the more one walked into them. 

“I would’ve preferred the wasteland.” Seppo seemed to be ignoring Soraya again. Even though she was technically in charge, he rarely wasted an opportunity to remind her that he had been working field intelligence for twice as long as she. “We’d be making better time if there wasn’t any undergrowth to cut through.” 

Gabriel, normally respectful of the chain of command, nevertheless let himself be goaded by Seppo’s comment. “We’d also have nothing to hide in when we get to Nate’s compound. I don’t fancy crawling the last kilometer at two meters a day to beat perimeter motion sensors.” 

Soraya reached the crest of a low rise, and the moment she looked down into the lowland beyond, she saw movement. Silently, she dropped to the ground, shivering as the frozen soil’s chill seeped even through her double-insulated smartfabric attire and drank her body heat.  

Following her lead, the sled automatically eased down as well, and the two men belatedly dove for cover as well. 

“What is it, Sora?” Gabriel crawled forward, swatting away a many-legged, asymmetrical critter which ambled into his path. 

Soraya inched forward, using the bulbous bole of a large growth on the ridge for cover. Meraud’s biosphere didn’t contain anything large enough or fast enough to be visibly moving from a distance, so whatever she’d seen had to be related to the Incarnation presence. 

Peeking around the tree-like vegetable, she spied a vehicle – a single ponderous crawler of the sort popular on barren worlds like Adimari Valis, poorly suited for the choking frozen growths of Meraud. The gargantuan machine plodded along atop the ice-river at the bottom of the valley, its boxy upper structures shattering the brittle limbs of the tree-analogues which arched too far over this natural roadbed. No doubt, if it deviated from the ice-river's course, it would quickly become hopelessly stuck and then buried in warmth-seeking plants. 

Gabriel, approaching the ridge and seeing the crawler, shook his head. “The chip-heads are totally mad. Why bring that thing here?” 

Soraya flipped up her helmet’s magnification metalens and scrutinized the vehicle up close. Under a fresh layer of white paint, she could still see red and black markings, including four letters: A, X, A, and I. 

Sending a still of the markings to her wrist computer, Soraya showed it to Gabriel. “Adimari Xeno-Archaeological Institute.” 

“Stars around. Why would they want to haul crawlers halfway across the frontier?” 

“More than just crawlers.” 

Soraya looked up to see Seppo, similarly taking cover at the ridgeline, surveying the scene with his own metalens. He gestured farther along the valley, where a pall of ice-fog hung in the air. Turning her own optics that way, Soraya spotted a boxy outline in the fog that might have been another crawler. All around the cloud of frozen mist, she spied motion in the pseudo-trees. Only when one of the trees shuddered and fell to release a new plume of mist did Soraya realize what she was looking at. 

“Logging operation.” Soraya couldn’t believe there was anything in the icy tree-analogues worth harvesting. “Looks like it’s pretty primitive. There must be a thousand people down there, and no sign of a single timberjack rig.” 

“Clearing the land for some sort of agriculture?” Gabriel shook his head. “Nate does a lot of work with bioengineered crops. Maybe-” 

“This is why I hate working with optimists.” Seppo gestured again. “Have a closer look at the laborers.” 

Gabriel, finally activating his own lens, fell silent and scanned the view, trying to pick out one of the logging teams.  

Soraya, more experienced with the metalens, beat him to it. A team of five men staggered out of the icy fog and toward one of the trees on the verge dragging crude fabricator-printed hand tools. At first, they looked portly and out of shape, but she realized after watching them that this bulk was the product of each wearing multiple layers of decaying, ill-fitting smartfabric. “Creative hells...” 

Gabriel muttered something under his breath, probably creative profanity from one of the many places he’d been stationed in his short Intelligence career. “They don’t have implants.” 

Soraya, shuddering, saw that he was right – the laborers’ temples and foreheads lacked the implants that kept even the lowliest Incarnation person in contact with their domineering data networks. “They’re Confederated citizens. Their outpost here isn’t a military base... It’s a forced labor colony.” 

As Soraya watched, one of the laborers staggered and fell face-first into the trampled undergrowth. The others in his team barely glanced at their fallen comrade as they set to work pulling down yet another local tree. Within seconds, a pair of Incarnation soldiers in pristine cold-weather suits appeared out of the fog to drag the limp figure away. 

Seppo stowed his metalens and elbowed Gabriel, who was still watching the scene below in mute horror. “Still not as bad as you were expecting, Gabe?” 

After the revelation of Incarnation prisoner-transport hellships ferrying mass numbers of people – civilian and military prisoner – off Margaux, many feared that conditions to which these unfortunates were bound would be as bad or worse. I am sorry to say that this fear has been borne out. 

Though nothing but a scientific outpost existed on frozen Meraud before this conflict, the Incarnation has built and expanded a facility there. Naval Intelligence has made recent findings on Meraud available to us here at Cosmic Background, assuring us that they ensured all agents sent to survey the horrors of Meraud have been extracted safely. While I was not permitted to interview Soraya Levine while composing this entry, full audiovisual recordings of her debriefing were provided in addition to recordings her team took at several forest-clearing sites and at the main prison outpost itself. Some of that material can be found the Cosmic Background datasphere hub. 

Unfortunately, there is no good way to rescue these people – Meraud is at the far side of the Frontier from Maribel. What the Incarnation thinks to gain from working Confederated citizens to death on a frozen world is beyond me – surely the resources they might reap from such crude efforts are not worth the effort and lives expended. 

We can only imagine the terrible conditions under which these Meraud hostages live every day, and pray for their survival until the Navy has the ability to drive that deeply into Incarnation-held space and mount a proper rescue. 

Details

Tales from the Service: The Tinker’s Tyrant

2949-01-12 – Tales from the Service: The Tinker’s Tyrant 

Mavuto Hintzen passed the time by solving geometric puzzles on his one active display. It was all he could do until Nate showed his face, but when the enemy did show up, he planned to make them regret it. 

Mavuto had been at Adimari Valis, where a gallant scratch force of mercenaries and fleet auxiliaries had held off an Incarnation fleet, albeit not for long. He’d seen the enemy’s cruisers wheeling in precise formation, stabbing at the tangled squadrons of antiquated mercenary ships which stood before them and then coyly withdrawing like a buncg of Heraklean dawngliders toying with already-maimed prey.  

He’d watched those brave mercs die by the hundreds through the viewpanels of the creaking freighter on which he’d booked passage off the doomed world, and he’d seen in their deaths something incredible – he'd seen a chink in the seemingly-impenetrable armor of the mighty Incarnation fleet. 

Since the day Mavuto and his family had arrived at Maribel, the focal point for refugees streaming in from the borders of the Coreward Frontier, he’d worked hard to get where he was now, sitting at the helm of a heavily modified light hauler at the edge of the Berkant system. Finding the resources he needed to realize his vision in the refugee-choked system hadn’t been easy, and learning enough about starship systems to implement his crude diagrams in metal and plastic had been a challenge all its own. He dared not let anyone help too much, lest they see what he was doing – not even his fifteen-year-old son Adaan, who knew the most, could quite grasp what he was helping his father build. They would know soon enough – or he would take the secret to his grave. 

That the Incarnation would come to Berkant once more was not in doubt. The residents of the green world knew it too – with several minor colonies nearby stormed by the invaders, a stream of private haulers carried Berkant settlers toward the safety of Maribel and Håkøya in anticipation of an evacuation order which had not yet come. 

Mavuto had placed himself far from this stream to avoid notice, picking the spot he thought the enemy most likely to appear and putting his ship into its most invisible state. There he’d waited for five days, with only the display and its puzzles as his companion – even the ship’s voice assistant software had been shut down to conserve power. The machinery he’d installed in the ship’s hold would give him one chance to exploit the nearly invisible weakness built into the Incarnation’s ships – one chance he could only use if he got close enough. 

As he switched from one puzzle to the next, Mavuto saw the gravitic sensor readout in the corner of the screen tremble and immediately dismissed his idle games. He’d tuned the system so that it would only register an incoming star-drive large enough to be his prey – the Incarnation’s Tyrant-type cruisers. Confederated Navy heavy cruisers would trip the sensor as well, but the Navy wasn’t about to dispatch heavy cruisers to doomed Berkant – they were still scheming ways to rescue the poisonous barrens of Margaux from the enemy, leaving the refugee stream at Berkant guarded by a few mercenary-operated carrier conversions wholly unprepared to fight even a single Tyrant. What would stop a lone Incarnation ship from sweeping up dozens of the ponderous liners and haulers plodding toward the safety of the jump limit? Once they had, what could stop that ship from leaving, carrying thousands of prisoners into captivity, or into worse? 

The sensor indicator trembled again, and this time the tremble built into a wavering cascade of data before settling back down. Though he was without the aid of a visual plot, Mavuto had no trouble reading the data stream when he played the disturbance back at one-quarter speed. His prey had arrived – and it had arrived close enough that he was almost on top of it. 

Flipping the switches haphazardly installed into his pilot’s station back at Maribel, Mavuto started warming up the apparatus, then cautiously woke the hauler’s bow camera cluster and instructed it to scan nearby space. The sinister, wedge-shaped void where the Tyrant’s hull occluded the stars appeared right away. Gingerly touching the controls for the custom-built ion thrusters he’d installed, Mavuto nudged his little hauler forward. The Tyrant would probably sit still for a few hours, watching the flow of traffic and optimizing the course it would follow through the system. If it charged in right away, he was out of luck. 

Fortunately, Incarnation captains lacked the individual flexibility to be so rash, even if that rashness was the correct move to make. The Tyrant’s gravitic drive remained silent in the minutes after its star-drive jump as its sensors drank in everything they could about the system’s vulnerabilities. Even if any of these implements had been turned outward, they likely would not have seen Mavuto’s hand-altered hauler moving in – he too occluded stars, but far fewer. 

The great shadow of the cruiser loomed larger, and still there was no sign he’d been seen. Easing off the ion thrusters, Mavuto checked the indicator lights on his armrest and flipped a few more switches. He was almost close enough – it was time to see the gap in the Incarnation’s armor once more, and this time, to bury a blade in it. 

Mavuto Hintzen sent in some rather sensational claims about his ability to disable an entire Tyrant cruiser with a weapon that could fit in the hold of a small, short-range hauler. The interesting thing about these claims is not that he sent them – tall tales are quite standard fare for the inbox which supplies material for this text feed, and much time is spent sifting through obvious falsehoods to get to plausible accounts. 

The interesting thing about Mr. Hintzen’s account is that it was censored in my inbox by Naval Intelligence before I could even read it. Suspecting this too was a trick, I contacted a few people in the Maribel Naval Intelligence unit, and discovered that the sections redacted were in fact legitimately redacted by intelligence agents. They would not speak about the supposed weapon (whose details were among those things hidden from even me) described in the account, nor of whether it was as successful as the account claimed. 

All I can say is that Mr. Hintzen is not dead, so his account of testing the weapon against an enemy vessel near Berkant can be one of three things: a fabrication (in which case, why the censorship?) an account of failure (in which case, how did he escape?) or an account of success. 

[N.T.B. - My bet's on that this is a fabrication, but the account comes too close to describing an actual weapon that's in the works that N.I. doesn't want Nate knowing about. Possibly the man did see something strange in the contested space over Adimari Valis - but we'll probably only know what caused N.I. to clamp down on this story after whatever's being cooked up in Naval research installations sees the light of day.]

Details

Tales from the Service: The Martyrdom of Father Thomas

2948-12-29 – Tales from the Service: The Martyrdom of Father Thomas 

Kev Trujillo watched Father Thomas step forward to face the inquisitor. Unlike the men who had gone before him, both now lying in pools of their own dark blood and reeking viscera at the sable-uniformed officer’s feet, the chaplain showed no sign of hesitation or fear.  

The Incarnation infantry officer who had brought the prisoners forward smiled broadly, and took a step forward as if willing to play a part, but the inquisitor waved this over-eager subordinate backward before tucking a wayward lock of his golden-blond hair behind his ear. 

“Thomas Nyilvas of Chateau Diamante on the world of Nova Paris in the system of the same name. Do I have that correct?” 

Thomas Nyilvas didn’t even glance at the inquisitor in his finery; he knelt down to the whimpering form of Wasi Winton, face already pale in the harsh sunlight from blood loss. Whatever the Padre said to the mortally wounded private, Kev couldn’t hear it over the wind whistling through the rocks and distant roar of battle. He guessed it was a shortened form of the usual Spacers’ Chapel last rites. 

The inquisitor, not used to being ignored, stared blankly at the kneeling form before him for several seconds. “Thomas Nyilvas, do I have your identity correct?” 

“No.” Father Thomas removed his hand from the faltering grip of Private Winton and stood. “That is my name, but my home is not Nova Paris.” 

The inquisitor laughed. “Ah, yes. Nova Paris was destroyed, wasn’t it? Such a pathetic failure of a faltering regime to protect its own. Yet you serve the dithering fools who let your home fall to ruin.” 

Just as Kev hadn’t known that dead Private Du had been Hyadean, the allegation that Father Thomas was one of the few living children of Nova Paris was a surprise. The Padre being older than almost every F.D.A. trooper, it was quite possible he had been old enough to be offworld at the time of the massacre. 

“I do not serve the Confederated Worlds.” Thomas Nyilvas shrugged. “That should have been obvious. Really, sir, I must question the quality of the records you’ve stolen.” 

The inquisitor blinked, perhaps legitimately believing that the Padre was some other Thomas Nyilvas. Why this clear identification was important, Kev couldn’t fathom; perhaps even in a mocking show-trial the chip-headed zealot wanted to make sure he had the correct victims. “If that is so, then please state your allegiance and your place of origin, so you may be processed correctly.” 

The Padre turned away from the inquisitor, locking eyes with Kev across the open bottom of the dry, rocky valley. Kev saw something in the set of the chaplain’s jaw and the way his eyes almost seemed to flash and glow in the harsh light of Margaux’s sun that he hadn’t expected – the Padre was up to something. 

“I can state neither to your satisfaction, sir.” 

The officer guarding the prisoners scoffed loudly, and most of the onlooking Incarnation soldiers seemed either amused or confused. 

The inquisitor glared at his audience to silence them, then circled Father Thomas warily. “You are so confused that you do not know? Perhaps then your coming here was fortunate.” 

The Padre shook his head. “You misunderstand. I know my allegiance and home beyond doubt. It is you who will not be satisfied by my answers.” 

“I am the judge of that. Speak.” 

“I serve your King.” The Padre shrugged. “And I will continue to do so long after your Incarnation fails to stave off extinction.” 

The inquisitor’s blade reappeared, singing brightly through the air until its tip rested lightly on Father Thomas’s throat. “Speak in facts, charlatan, not in riddles and paradoxes.” 

Kev smiled. Father Thomas was smarter than he let on – or perhaps he had some prior experience locking horns with Ladeonist ideologues before the War. How winding up the sable-clad young officer would help, he couldn’t say, but seeing the smug inquisitor frustrated was a victory all its own. 

“Your cause, sir, is to delay extinction – the death of the collective humanity. A noble cause, but one doomed to fail.” Father Thomas held out a hand below the blade. “My cause is to bring humanity across that dark sea of extinction, one at a time. It is to that far shore I claim allegiance.” 

The inquisitor scoffed. “Your mysticism will save no-one.” 

The Padre’s hand remained extended. “It is no mysticism. Let me show you. Do you not want to learn how to cheat death?” 

Kev suddenly noticed that the weapons of the Incarnation onlookers were raised, aimed squarely at Father Thomas. Even with their implant-assisted aim, the soldiers couldn’t burn the chaplain with their laser carbines without also incinerating the inquisitor. Perhaps they too knew this – or more accurately, whatever force had directed them all to move in unison – knew this. Most had the glassy-eyed look of machines which Kev had come to associate with direct control of Incarnation troops through their implants by a superior. 

“You cannot cheat extinction.” The inquisitor’s blade pushed Father Thomas back a step, but it was clear he was curious. “It is the fate of all species. The order of things is decay and loss.” 

“Cheat extinction? Why cheat extinction when you can cheat death itself?” Father Thomas stepped back until his shoulders rested against the side of the inquisitor’s towering vehicle. 

The soldiers in the ravine all reached forward to flick the safeties on their laser carbines at once, and the eerie sound of a hundred latches clicking into the fire position echoed across the rocks. The inquisitor, hearing this sound, turned away from the Padre to see the peril he’d brought on himself by entertaining Father Thomas. 

Kev glanced to the soldiers nearest him and saw that they were ignoring him and the other prisoners – even the officer who had hurled so much scorn earlier seemed to be possessed by whatever force was bent on the destruction of the chaplain and the curious inquisitor whose show-trial now lay in shambles. Nudging the men next to him, Kev gestured toward a steep cross-cutting defile only twenty meters away which might offer some cover to any who could reach it. One by one, his remaining men began backing away from their distracted captors and creeping toward this escape route. 

The inquisitor held up his free hand. Whatever network linked the Incarnation troops’ implants, his sudden uncertainty and fear suggested he’d been cut off. For a man who lived always with the information gathered from the senses of hundreds of others, suddenly falling back on one’s own senses alone must have been a horror beyond imagining. “What is the meaning of this?” 

“Your orthodoxy is brittle indeed, if my pathetic mysticism threatens it.” Father Thomas, blade still at his throat, smiled, though he surely knew his death was imminent. 

Kev, seeing that he was the last of his men still in place, turned and made a sudden dash toward the rocks at the same instant the soldiers fired. The tearing, sizzling sound of laser-beams ionizing the air and incinerating flesh followed him into the defile as the possessed troops incinerated the tainted inquisitor and his chaplain prisoner in a convergence of hundreds of beams. 

Satisfied that the threat to its ideology was destroyed, whatever power controlled the Incarnation troops turned their attention to the fleeing prisoners, most of whom had already reached the defile. 

“Scatter! Go!” Kev shouted to the others, most of whom were already scrambling up the rocks to the relative safety of the Causey surface above. Behind him, Incarnation boots thundered into an eerily synchronized pursuit. 

Most interpretations of Kev Trujillo’s story suggest that Thomas Nyilvas triggered some sort of automated defense mechanism within the Incarnation datasphere, locking down all nearby Incarnation personnel in an automaton state to prevent them from processing what he was saying. How he knew to do this is anyone’s guess, and surely the Incarnation will revise their algorithms to prevent this from being exploited in the future. It is doubtful that even if he had been given a freely-listening audience that any minds or hearts would have been swayed. 

Trujillo and two others survived their pursuers to return to the Ishkawa Line alive. Interestingly, though Nyilvas’s death was a certainty, I have seen some analysis of the story suggesting that the young inquisitor might have survived – inquisitors are after all universally equipped with the implants and nanotechnological augmentations of Immortals, giving him the speed and reflexes to stand a chance of escaping the crossfire. Perhaps he too will turn up at the Ishkawa Line in weeks to come, but I doubt it. Even if his faith in the Incarnation’s cause was shaken, inquisitors, as a sort of secret police within the Incarnation armed forces, seem to be selected for their loyalty. 

Details

Tales from the Service: The Show Trials before Father Thomas

2948-12-22 – Tales from the Service: The Show Trials before Father Thomas 

The Fifth Fleet received a batch of reinforcements yesterday at Maribel - a convoy of warships and logistics vehicles put in from the Core Worlds. While I cannot for security reasons describe the full list of vessels that arrived, the replacements were led by the recently-refitted heavy cruiser Holt Danaev, and among the various lesser warships were the first batch of the new Hoel-class fleet destroyers, the tender Saina Kavi with its squadron of six stealth assault cutters, and a number of frigates and corvettes. The new ships are, oddly, a mix of the newest and oldest types in Navy service – Danaev was commissioned only ten years after the Terran-Rattanai War, and Hoel, the lead ship of its class, entered fleet service only nineteen months ago. 

Also arriving at Maribel in the last few days, though apparently not assigned to Fifth Fleet, is a detachment of old fast carriers recently pulled out of mothballs, along with an escort screen of equally venerable frigates and destroyers. These vessels – Alacrity, Endurance, Enterprise, and Vigilance, long since withdrawn from front-line duties, are of Terran-Rattanai War vintage, and they have been assigned to the new Seventh Fleet, whose formation was announced by the Admiralty a few weeks ago. This formation, mostly older vessels being brought out of mothballs and crewed with new recruits, is still being filled out – its battle line has not been designated, but will probably focus around the ancient battleships Tranquility and Penglai, both of which were being prepared for careers as traveling museum ships before the opening of hostilities on the Frontier. 

What the first batch of Seventh Fleet units is doing at Maribel isn’t yet clear. Perhaps the idea is to take over the defense of Maribel from Fifth Fleet units, or perhaps there is another mission these vessels have been assigned. Most press releases surrounding the activation of the new fleet indicate that this formation is being prepared to take over duties from either Second Fleet or Fourth Fleet on the Silver Strand border, freeing these veteran formations to join the fight against the Incarnation. 

This week, we continue our story of the death of Father Thomas Nyilvas (Tales from the Service: Captive with Father Thomas), whose Emmanuel Feast sermon was a popular feature on our datacast hub at this time last year. 

The Incarnation officer stared hard at Father Thomas for several long seconds, and in the silence, the distant roar of strike-craft tearing through the planet’s atmosphere echoed into the grotto.  

Kev Trujillo, noticing that a fist-sized rock had appeared in Private Winton’s hands, got the young man’s attention and dissuaded him with the slightest shake of the head. There would be time for suicidal escape attempts later. 

The silence broke with a sharp, braying laugh from the officer. “A priest is always a fool.” Snatching a long knife from its sheath on one of his soldiers’ belts, the thin-faced man flipped the knife into the air, then tossed it down at Father Thomas’s feet. “Choose your executioner, and I will show you your error before he cuts your throat.” 

Father Thomas bent down and picked up the knife, turning it over in his hands. Kev, certain the priest would choose him, felt an icicle of dread stabbing down his spine – he had killed Incarnations soldiers many times, but he could not kill Father Thomas, not even to save the lives of his own men. 

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. The Padre flipped the knife over and held its handle out toward the officer. “Do what you will to me, sir, but do not pretend that the fault lies with anyone but yourself.” 

The officer snarled and raised his hand, as if to issue a command to shoot Father Thomas and the other prisoners. Kev didn’t want to die, but he knew being sliced and burned by Incarnation beam carbines would be a quicker death than he would find on a torture-table or in the hold of a hellship, so this development seemed a welcome one. 

After hesitating, the officer lowered his hand slowly, visibly furious that his game was being denied. Striding forward, he snatched the knife from the Padre. “Bring them.” 

The six soldiers tromped forward and muscled the eight Confederated captives into a double line, then marched them out of the grotto into the blinding sunlight beyond. Even before his eyes adjusted, Kev heard scattered, formulaic jeering from idle Incarnation soldiers who the formation of prisoners passed. The chipheads on the front-line weren’t exactly specimens of remarkable creativity; Kev had heard all the insults now thrown at him at least a dozen times before, shouted across the shifting front-line by day or booming from vehicle-mounted loudspeakers at night. 

When Kev was able to look beyond the sun-hardened soil below his feet, he saw a boxy ground vehicle sitting on six huge wheels parked in the center of the camp. Three light point defense lasers had been mounted on its roof seemingly at random, probably to repel marauding Pumas and Yerens, but the canyon was so narrow that only the most precisely aimed bomb or missile could thread its way down to the camp at the bottom.  

Atop the big vehicle, a cheery-faced young man in an ostentatious gold and sable uniform sat, his legs dangling over the side. Kev’s heart plunged into his soles; he had heard horrible tales about the Incarnation’s shadowy inquisitors.  

The youth smiled kindly at the prisoners, and perhaps those who did not recognize the uniform might be fooled into thinking that this Incarnation officer might be more accommodating than most. “Private Wasi Winton, please step forward.” 

Kev winced. Winton hesitated, but two of the soldiers pulled the private out of the line and dragged him up to the side of the vehicle. The youthful soldier struggled feebly, but with dozens of armed Incarnation soldiers watching the inquisitor and his prey warily, there was nowhere to go even if he broke free. 

The inquisitor stared at Winton for a few seconds, then spoke again. “You are the Wasi Winton of the town of Colburg Pass, planet Tranquility, Three Two Ori system, correct?” 

Visibly shocked, Winton nodded mutely. He didn’t seem to know the significance of the young officer’s uniform, or what this intimate knowledge of his history likely meant was coming. 

“Tranquility, the planet of rebels and scoundrels, the planet of thieves who profit off the decay of their species. Your ancestors sought only to amass wealth when they gave the star-drive's fire to the incautious, ignorant masses.” The young man shook his fist in the air. “This mere boy is steeped from birth in the evil which set the clock ticking on humanity’s extinction – he has, throughout his life, even engaged in celebrating it.” 

This time, the invective thrown into the fray by the lookers-on was no more creative, but it carried a terrifying amount of emotional energy. Kev glanced around and saw murder in the eyes of the Incarnation troops. 

Winton squirmed against the arms of the men holding him in place. “I didn’t do any of that! The Ori Revolution was hundreds-” 

The sable-clad young officer jumped down, landing lightly despite a fall of almost four meters. Kev decided the inquisitor probably possessed the extensive body modifications of an Incarnation Immortal. “Private Winton, can you honestly say that, steeped in the culture of your degenerate home, you would do any different?” 

Winton stared down the officer for several seconds, and Kev was proud of the relatively timid young man’s bravery. When he did at last speak, the young private’s voice rose loud and clear, without cracking. “I think I would, you chip-headed bastard.” 

The young man’s friendly expression vanished, and he looked over to the officer who’d fetched the prisoners from their cave. “Let the record show this man chooses his ancestors’ sins.” 

Winton’s head whipped around to face the inquisitor at the same time as the inquisitor’s arm flashed out, inhumanly fast. There was a wet tearing sound, and a spray of crimson droplets glinted in the air, and Winton crumpled to the ground, shrieking and trying in vain to hold in the viscera spilling from his belly. The blade in the inquisitor’s hand – it hadn’t been there a moment before – had moved so fast it hadn’t even had time to wet itself in the man’s blood. 

The Padre tried to run forward to Winton’s side, but the officer and two soldiers brought him up short. “You stay here. His sins against mankind do not entitle him to a quick death.” The hollow-faced officer grinned. “You will hear them all admit sins graver than the petty misdeeds they confessed to you, and then you will watch them die.” 

“Private Yeong-Hwan Du.” The inquisitor flourished his blade, then stowed it – in his sleeve, Kev thought – with a gesture too fast for the eye to follow. “Please step forward.” 

Private Du didn’t force the soldiers to drag him. The big private stepped out on his own, knowing that he was going to his death. Most probably, he had wagered that death by being eviscerated was far less creative than what his captors would do to him otherwise, and Kev suspected this was only too correct. 

The inquisitor once again made a show of examining the man set before him, even as Winton whimpered and moaned in the dirt nearby. “You are the Yeong-Hwan Du of the settlement of Jiahao on planet Xianping, Hyades system, correct?” 

Kev hadn’t realized that Private Du was Hyadean, and knew immediately that the choice of these two for a mockery of a hearing back-to-back could be no accident. 

Du raised his chin. “I make neither defense nor apology for the actions of my ancestors, Inquisitor.” Evidently, he had recognized the uniform, where Winton had not. 

The fresh-faced inquisitor waved a hand. “I must know if I am identifying you correctly, Private.” 

Du scowled, then nodded. “You are correct.” 

“Hyades, the proud and powerful cluster which wants only to be left alone, even when extinction stares us all in the face equally.” The inquisitor raised a finger. “Your ancestors saw the perils of the Ori Revolution, it is true, and they might be commended for that, if they had acted out of altruism to stop it. Instead, humanity fought itself for a hundred precious years, when already doom could be seen coming.” 

Du squared his broad shoulders. “Get to the part where you swing your blade, Inquisitor. Your chattering is torture enough.” 

The inquisitor’s pleasant façade faltered, if only for an instant, and the malice which flickered forth in that split second seemed to Kev the most perfect impression a living human had ever made of a demon. He turned away, as if to continue his harangue, but Yeong-Hwan Du leapt to tackle the smaller man in sable. 

With Immortal speed, the inquisitor spun, and his blade flashed once more, this time in reflexive self-defense. The Hyadean private fell to the ground, a river of blood fountaining from his cleanly sliced neck. Kev Unlike Winton, Private Du had earned a quick death. 

The inquisitor and the officer standing in front of Father Thomas shared a meaningful look as the former cleaned his now-dirtied blade on the dead man’s uniform. 

“Father Thomas Nyilvas.” The inquisitor once again flourished the blade and stowed it, too quick to follow. “Please step forward.” 

Details
  • You are here:  
  • Home
  • Tales from the Inbox