Tales from the Service: A Mercenary’s Milk-Run

2947-10-22 – Tales from the Service: A Mercenary’s Milk-Run

Two weeks ago, the delicate situation (and brazen profiteering) of mercenary commander Jacob Borisov at Adimari Valis appeared in this space (Tales from the Service: A Mercenary's Way). His story generated an uncommon amount of feedback; while most of this spacer-heavy audience sympathized with the needs of his bottom line and assumed the planetary governor could afford to pay for what he needed, I got plenty of messages (and I imagine Jacob’s public datasphere profile got more) saying that because his company was already engaged in the defense of the system, their unused groundside assets should have helped the governor with his security matter for free. 

Some of these messages made this case on moral grounds, others made it on the grounds that it was good business (a sort of loss-leader effect I suppose). Well-intentioned as I’m sure this advice is, Jacob is a veteran mercenary commander whose outfit has done just about everything from pirate patrols to treasure-hunting (as seen previously in this space with Tales from the Inbox: Jewel from a Junker) to defense contracts. 

Evidently unfazed by (and very likely enjoying) the brief spotlight this story has given his outfit, Jacob sent in a little more of the story several days ago. The planetary governor's job, evidently, was escort duty - protecting a crawler carrying several large artifacts from the Xenarch ruins dig-site to the spaceport. While the client insisted that the shipment was absolutely secret and that more than likely the fifty-hour trek through highland passes would be the most boring job possible, Jacob's groundside team discovered otherwise.

He seems to think that the difference between client expectations and field reality proved the value of his profit-seeking instincts (and later insistence on a sizable combat bonus on what the governor insisted was a milk run), whether or not it was the right thing to do. Barring any other stories better than his appearing in my inbox before then, I will pick out select bits of his account (well backed up with tactical-network datastreams and other evidence) over the next few weeks.

Jacob Borisov ducked behind a basalt boulder as a swarm of railshot buzzed over his head and crackled into ferroceramic dust against the barren rocks of the Adimarian upland. He’d begun Governor Yamaguchi’s “simple precaution” crawler escort mission outfitted in one of the suits of assault armor the company had secured after the Vinteri job, but the remains of that expensive exoskeleton now dangled from tie-downs on the side of the crawler, victim of the second attack, ten klicks and nine hours before. 

“Contact!” The belated radio-boosted bark of Cailean Vankov, one of the ten mercenaries whose assault armor was still working, accompanied the rattling hum of heavy railguns returning fire. Above Jacob’s head, several streams of white-hot railgun slugs converged on the source of the sudden attack. On his heads-up display terrain map, the mercenary took note of the ambusher’s position – a perfect blind in the side of a craggy hill, just like the last one.  

This time, the opportunistic attack had been clever – it had tricked Jacob into getting out of the crawler’s well-protected crew cabin in order to examine a wrecked civilian lighter crumpled against the rocks just off their line of advance. Sheer luck in the form of a glint of harsh sunlight on metal, along with a strong instinct for self-preservation, had saved his life, and prevented his platoon from being decapitated. 

As his mercenaries returned fire, Jacob unfolded the bolt rifle strapped to his atmosphere pack and checked the terrain map again. There were no other good places nearby to hide a crew-served railgun, but plenty of smaller crevices and hollows would make good places to hide a lone sniper with a smaller weapon. He tried to wiggle further into his meager cover, to avoid presenting a target to any of the potential hostiles in those scattered locations. “Felix, where’s that oculus?” 

“I put it up right away, boss. Someone slagged it with a laser. I can’t get a shot on him.” 

Jacob sighed. His groundside second-in-command had just proved his sniper hypothesis. The new attackers had learned from how quickly their predecessors had found themselves splattered among the rocks. Oculus aerial surveillance systems were far from cheap, but Jacob would rather lose a dozen of them than one of his crack mercenary troopers. “Flag the position. I’ll try.” 

Felix’s map-pin appeared on the heads-up display a second later. After orienting himself and trying very hard to forget that only a smart-fabric alpine suit and an insulated face-mask stood between him and incoming fire, Jacob snuck a peek over his boulder cover toward Felix’s sniper. He couldn’t see the attacker either, but his position let him at least put a shot close over the target’s head. 

Jacob ducked back down just in time to avoid the murderous hail of ferroceramic and rock splinters which filled the air above his boulder. “Get ready, Felix.” 

Felix knew exactly what Jacob was planning – the same trick that rooted out pirate gunmen holed up in their asteroid hideouts. “Ready, boss.” 

 Jacob jumped up again, leveled his bolt rifle, and fired. A tiny white-hot mote sped outward from the muzzle, zipped over the cleft in which Felix’s sniper was holed up, and buried itself in the hillside. The moment it touched rock, the bolt rifle’s heavy supercapacitors discharged half a million volts into the thin air. The discharge followed the mote’s path, appearing and vanishing in a flash and thunderous clap that left Jacob’s ear’s ringing. 

Eyes dazzled and neck-hair standing on end, Jacob dove back into cover as enemy fire converged on him again. Even as he did, he heard the solitary bark of Felix’s shoulder-mounted anti-armor cannon. “Bandit is history. Who’s next?” 

Jacob grinned into the dirt as stone chips and ferroceramic dust continued to rain down on him, its momentum fortunately spent. Even a near-miss from a bolt rifle produced hair-raising electromagnetic discharge and an eardrum-perforating thunderclap. Combined with the havoc the weapon played with electronic systems, this often panicked the target into breaking cover, if even for an instant – and Felix’s marksmanship had made that instant count. 

A rushing noise filled the air above Jacob’s head as one of the other troopers with a functioning suit discharged a rocket shoulder-box into the cleft where the enemy railgun position was. The gun answered with more railshot and Jacob heard the distinctive metallic hailstone sound of slugs glancing off armor, but it was too late – two dozen high explosive rockets pulverized the hillside, and the enemy heavy gun went silent. 

“Are we clear?” Cailean asked, as enemy fire ceased. The other mercenaries, manning the crawler’s antipersonnel guns and their own suit weaponry, stopped firing as well. 

“Report.” Jacob looked up in the direction of the crawler, relieved to see no bodies or suits on the ground. 

The nervous, high-pitched voice of the governor’s representative answered first. “Crawler’s in one piece. No alarms.” 

“Armor erosion and some minor pressure leaks.” Holtman, the mercenary who had gotten close enough to Jacob’s position to loose the rockets, stepped up to his boss’s covering boulders. “I’ve got you, boss. Get behind.” 

Jacob raised his head cautiously. There was no telling how many more snipers there were. “Get in there and grab what’s left of that crew-served, then let's get that crawler moving.” 

“On it.” Holtman’s suit boots crunched Adimarian gravel, and he loped into the gulch to claim whatever prize might be available. Someone else hopped up the hillside to retrieve the laser from the splattered remnant of Felix’s kill as Jacob darted for the recessed pressure lock on the side of the slow-moving vehicle. He had no doubt there were other raiders lurking in the hills, but nobody took a shot at him – without their strongpoint in the gully, it was unlikely any of the greedy low-lives would want to be a hero. 

As soon as Jacob was inside the crawler, he tore off the insulated faceplate and tossed it into an equipment bin. Joseph, his explosives expert, was waiting with a pouch full of food-processor coffee. “Client said this would be a milk run, eh boss?”  

Jacob snatched the pouch and sipped it carefully, making a face at the ever-bitter taste. “Milk run, my frostbitten ass.” 

Details

Tales from the Service: The View From Headquarters Part 2

2947-10-17 – Tales from the Service: The View From Headquarters Part 2 

Maribel never looked so good in a viewpanel. After several weeks in Berkant, the surviving ships (and a few shattered hulks pulled through Himura drive transition by fleet tugs) of the Saint-Lô squadron finally limped back to Maribel for repair and refit. 

At the recommendation of Dr. Hirsch of the Maribel Naval Intelligence laboratory, I’ve set up another conversation with him and Col. Durand of Admiral Zahariev’s staff to discuss what we know about the Incarnation so many months into the conflict. As before, the Navy thinks an informed public – especially nonmilitary spacer community – is important to winning the war at minimum cost. 

It’s interesting to note that during the last interview with these persons (Tales from the Service: The View From Headquarters), we did not know that the Incarnation was a long-isolated counterhuman faction. The Benedict Dispatch had not yet been circulated. 

The four persons involved in this interview are as follows. Unlike the prior interview, this one was arranged in haste and conducted remotely via full-capture transmission; neither participant boarded Saint-Lô to speak with us in person. 

D.L.C. - Duncan Chaudhri is a junior editor and wartime head field reporter for Cosmic Background. 

N.T.B. - Nojus Brand is a long-time explorer, datasphere personality, and wartime field reporter for Cosmic Background. 

C.S.D. - Colonel Carolina Durand is the Naval Intelligence attaché to Admiral Zahariev.  

H.G.H. - Dr. Hartwin Hirsch is a Naval Intelligence technological research analyst at Maribel Naval Laboratory. 

 

[D.L.C.] Thank you for talking with us again, Colonel. I know how busy you have been lately. And Doctor, thank you as well. 

[H.G.H.] Any time, Mr. Chaudhri. Your studio’s coverage has been most interesting to watch. In particular, Sovanna Rostami’s vidcast programming has been a hit among my lab technicians. 

[C.S.D.] I meant to set up another of these a month after the first one, actually, but what with the fallout of the Benedict Dispatch and other matters, it’s been hard to find the time. 

[N.T.B.] I can imagine. 

[D.L.C.] Let’s start there. If you can say, when did the information that became the Benedict Dispatch fall into Naval Intelligence’s hands? It seemed to be pretty comprehensive, not to mention sudden. 

[C.S.D.] We had reports early on – mainly from the squadrons on the Sagittarius Frontier – that captured enemy launch pilots were human in appearance and genetics. These personnel were far from cooperative, and it was suspected that they were captured Confederated Worlds spacers, technologically brainwashed and sent back against us. Given the number of well-trained Naval Survey Auxiliary pilots we’d lost out there early on, that seemed the most obvious conclusion. Later, when three of these prisoners became cooperative, the truth came out. That was happening around the same time we last spoke. 

[H.G.H.] The implants Incarnation personnel are fitted with render them immune to all forms of interrogation, and probably to torture as well, though I’m not aware of anyone actually torturing anyone to prove that. In late June, a clever computer systems officer aboard Arrowhawk figured out how to disable most functions of the implant without appreciably harming the prisoner, and only after that circulated did we start learning anything useful. 

[D.L.C.] Arrowhawk? Captain Bosch’s ship? 

[C.S.D.] Captain Bosch’s squadron twice skirmished with Tyrant cruisers- 

[H.G.H.] Alpha-type. 

[C.S.D.] Alpha-type cruisers – in early July, and though these battles were quite inconclusive, they managed to damage and capture three Coronach strike interceptors in the process. One of the captured pilots, Source Dalila, has gone on to become one of our best information sources, almost as good as Gabriel. Dalila was probably uncertain about the Incarnation’s goals to begin with, but with those implants, proper dissent in their ranks is all but impossible. 

[N.T.B.] Surely the information a strike pilot can offer is limited. Since no Tyrant has been- 

[H.G.H.] Alpha-type. 

[N.T.B.] Since no Tyrant has been disabled in action and boarded, none of your assets are senior officers, are they? 

[C.S.D.] Correct, though they are in a similar situation with us. Most of the missing personnel they might have taken prisoner to my knowledge are strike pilots and crews, and most of those are mercenaries. 

[N.T.B.] Hell, the idea of getting grabbed by a bunch of fanatic counterhumans... What do they do to our spacers? 

[H.G.H.] We don’t know, but we have speculated, and none of the speculation is pleasant. Forcible implantation is probable. 

[D.L.C.] Sadly, I suspect there’s little we can do for them, short of winning. And on that note, you two know about the front-row seats Nojus and I got at Berkant. What did Naval Intelligence learn from that fiasco? 

[C.S.D.] We learned a good deal, though I’m sorry to say the cost was high. Hartwin, why don’t you start with what we learned about their ships. 

[H.G.H.] At Berkant, we saw them use their Alpha-type cruisers in a way that explains most of their odd design features. The odd configuration of their screening projectors, heavy armor, and focus on energy weaponry did not make much sense to us when the Incarnation was just the alien Sagittarians and it all made even less sense when we learned that they were Terran stock. Now we know the purpose of these decisions. 

[N.T.B.] They were designed to hunt in packs. 

[H.G.H.] Precisely. In rigid formations, those projectors result in overlapping coverage for the entire group. The power drain on the screens is distributed, making the formation far more resilient than an equivalent Navy squadron. They also have devised guidance systems capable of evasive action without breaking this formation. 

[C.S.D.] We’re working on a few possible weaknesses of this tactic. Hopefully the next time they group that many ships in one place, we’ll be the ones bringing the surprise. 

[D.L.C.] Captain Liao thinks Berkant was bait. Do you agree? 

[C.S.D.] Absolutely. They wanted to test our capabilities in a proper engagement. They didn’t get away unscathed, and most estimates indicate that they don’t have enough ships to break the Fifth Fleet even if every battle goes that badly, but I doubt they have a very high opinion of Navy forces after Berkant. 

[N.T.B.] What about their connection to the Ladeonists? Has Naval Intelligence figured this out yet? 

[C.S.D.] The Ladeonists and the Incarnation have several points of ideological agreement, to the degree that we suspect the Incarnation is an offshoot of the same late Terran Sphere movement that produced Ladeonism during the period of increased cultural interactions between Terran colonies and the Rattanai Imperium. They’re natural allies, though if I were a Ladeonist I’d be worried; if they integrate with the Incarnation, this war might finally be the end of their movement. 

[H.G.H.] We’re still working on estimating their breakaway date with genetic data, but we’ll need more prisoners before we have anything final. 

[N.T.B.] Do you think the Ladeonist rising on the other peripheries of the Reach is coordinated? Last we talked Dr. Hirsh didn’t think so. 

[C.S.D.] At this point, most analysis suggests the risings are not only related, they might be supported by the Incarnation. For example, the sophistication of the bomb used in Yaxkin City not too long ago is beyond most Ladeonist undergrounds, and Planet at Centauri is among the most Ladeonist-hostile planets in the Reach. 

[D.L.C.] I haven’t heard much about that on the datasphere since the first few days. What was it about? 

[C.S.D.] I can’t say too much more about it than that the bombing seems to have failed; its probable target was not harmed. 

[D.L.C.] There have been incidents on several other Core Worlds and colonies as well. Every time there’s an accident or a catastrophe, someone associates it with the Ladeonist risings. 

[C.S.D.] Most of the time, they’re right. As of this morning, Naval Intelligence has recorded more than five thousand instances of starship or industrial sabotage, two thousand attempted terrorist incidents, of which more than a hundred were at least somewhat successful. Most of it is low-level stuff, but concerningly less than half of that is taking place in systems with notably high Ladeonist sympathies. So far, the war effort isn’t being too badly affected – those numbers are high, but they average to less than eight incidents of any kind per star system. 

[N.T.B.] Is it higher on the Frontier? 

[C.S.D.] The Ladeonists hadn’t made much progress penetrating the Meriwether or Nye Norge regions prior to the conflict. So far, the Frontier is under-represented in those numbers, but the longer this goes on, the more likely that will change. 

[H.G.H.] Your publication has released several stories of counterhuman saboteurs and agents targeting mercenary ships, but we don’t classify those as Ladeonist attacks. Given the techological sophistication obvious in such incidents, the culprits are almost certainly Incarnation agents. 

[D.L.C.] Accounts I've borrowed from Source Gabriel mention things called Immortals and Harmonizers. Do we know what those are? 

[H.G.H.] We have some idea. Elite, accomplished Incarnation personnel seem to occasionally be rewarded with more capable implant hardware; when Gabriel refers to an Immortal, it’s probably a term of respect for those who have earned the highest-quality installations. 

[C.S.D.] As for Harmonizers, we have only speculation. Our analysis suggests these are a sort of secret military police, whose agents are usually Immortals with the best hardware. He doesn’t know much about them, though; they’re widely feared but almost never seen. 

[N.T.B.] Even with all the technological chains on their minds, Nate needs a secret police to watch its military spacers? 

[H.G.H.] It does seem excessively paranoid, given what we know about their implant technology. 

[C.S.D.] I figure it’s simple; if you live all your life with those chips in your brain, you probably figure out ways to work around them in little ways if you really want to. To be fair, I suspect most of them would be true believers in their cause anyway, implants or no implants. 

[N.T.B.] They’re still mostly human, and humanity finds a way. 

[C.S.D.] Exactly that. 

[N.T.B.] What have we learned about their culture outside of military circles? 

[C.S.D.] Not much. All of our captured prisoners were brought up on agrarian colony worlds except for Source Dalila, but there’s no way they’re all farmers. Someone built their ships. I’d guess they have some sort of caste system and some castes are immune to military recruitment, but that’s my personal guess. We really don’t know. 

[H.G.H.] Source Dalila is an interesting case; apparently distantly related to important figures in their ruling class. Unfortunately, she was still aboard Arrowhawk last week when the relay chain across the Gap was cut, and Bosch’s people weren’t getting much out of her on this line of questioning before that. 

[N.T.B.] Is there any hope for the forces on that side? 

[C.S.D.] Sadly, I don’t know what will become of them. We’ll patch the Hypercomm relay chain, of course, but it will take weeks. Admiral Zahariev is continuing to send supplies, but that will stop the moment a resupply hauler fails to return. After that... 

[D.L.C.] They’re on their own. 

[C.S.D.] Exactly so. 

[H.G.H.] Sorry to cut this short, but I’m being called down to Lab 3. They say it’s an emergency. 

[D.L.C.] That’s all right, Dr. Hirsch. Thanks again for talking with us. And you too, Colonel Durand. 

[C.S.D.] Thanks for making space for us on your text feed, Mr. Chaudhri. Hopefully we’ll do this again sooner than three months from now. And Mr. Brand... 

[N.T.B.] Eh? 

[C.S.D.] Thank you for asking the hard questions. Half the other media outlets I talk to tie themselves in knots trying to set up optimistic answers. 

[N.T.B.] Oh, uh... It’s no trouble, Colonel. 

Details

Tales from the Service: A Mercenary's Way

2947-10-08 – Tales from the Service: A Mercenary's Way

With this week’s loss of contact with the fleet’s forward outposts and scouting forces on the Sagittarius Frontier, I fear that Captain Samuel Bosch and his light squadron – deployed to that area several months ago – may be beyond the Navy’s ability to help. Last we heard on this side of the Gap, a string of Tyrant squadron raids on the poorly-defended and partially constructed outpost at Sagittarius Gate had been beaten back with heavy losses, and all the Navy forces in the region were being recalled to that system.

My sources indicate that the lack of contact is not due to the destruction of the Navy’s presence at Sagittarius Gate, but instead a raid on the chain of specially-designed Hypercast relays which connect the far side of the Gap with the rest of the Reach. By the time the Navy repairs the relays, however, I fear Sagittarius Gate – far too distant to be reinforced effectively – will have fallen.

Bosch’s ships are of course only one of the formations deployed to that region to protect the few civilian interests which set themselves up in Sagittarius before hostilities began. Many lives will be lost there – such is war, to be sure, but I do hope this audience keeps the officers and crews of those ships in their prayers in the coming weeks. The Navy’s light patrol and scout squadrons have a reputation for resourcefulness and pluck, but it will take more than that to withstand what is undoubtedly descending on them now.

This week’s entry comes to us from a person who has appeared in this space before – Jacob Borisov, captain of the mercenary carrier Taavi Bancroft. His command has, as with most mercenary companies in good standing with the Confederated Navy, relocated to the Coreward Frontier, chasing the safe paycheck and generous terms of a Navy patrol contract. Like other mercenaries we’ve seen in this space, the Bancroft company has been hit by saboteurs – Ladeonist or Incarnation, he couldn’t say – but has managed to prevent their doing any major damage to ship or crew. Unlike the other companies we've seen here, the Bancroft crew has yet to secure a proper Navy wartime contract.

Jacob sent in this story form the Matusalemme system. In case you don’t know the system by name, its only major inhabited world is Adimari Valis, well known for the extensive Xenarch ruins found deep underground not far from the main spaceport. Since over a dozen university networks from the rest of the Reach have missions on Adimari Valis, the Navy has hired several mercenary crews to keep the system well-patrolled, and several wealthy patrons have funded additional mercenary companies. Though the Navy does not have a permanent garrison of the system, Matusalemme is one of the better-protected systems on the Coreward Frontier.

Our source wishes to brag that he leveraged this situation into a more efficient – and profitable – use of his mercenaries, allowing his company to be paid twice for the same tour of duty. In the process, he provided an interesting look into the disadvantages of the Navy's heavy use of mercenaries in this conflict. To be sure, Captain Borisov does not appear to have done anything wrong, but like most mercenaries he has no motivation to do anything right either, unless he's paid.

My only curiosity (which he specifically left un-satisfied in his message) is what exactly the local government paid him with, other than credits. On a world known for its Xenarch ruins, I have to guess it was some piece of valuable hardware salvaged still-functional from an archaeological site. I'll admit I didn't know if private transfers of Xenarch relics was illegal - Nojus helpfully told me it is legal, but only barely so.

Jacob paced up and down the hallway outside his temporary groundside tenement, hand cupped to his right ear to drown out all sound from that direction that didn’t come from his comm earpiece. Though it felt like two hours, the signal-response delay to Taavi Bancroft was only twenty seconds – twenty seconds of a shooting war where anything, including the total loss of his ship with all hands, might happen.

The pinch-faced little man acting as his local guide stood mutely off to one side, but Jacob knew better than to expect the Adimari local to tune out his guest’s conversation. Fully sixteen mercenary ships prowled the star system, and none of them including Jacob’s own could be bothered to inform the system authority or the planetary government whenever something happened. Mercenaries, though only too happy to swap intelligence with co-belligerent outfits, usually only reported activity to their paymasters, which the locals weren’t. Adimari Valis’s ample archaeological treasures never had translated into actual treasure with which the system could buy its own protection.

Finally, the comm circuit came to life with a reply from Lestat Pain, the newly-promoted Bancroft executive officer. “I confirm previous report, skipper. Two Tyrant cruisers on planetary intercept course.”

“Damn.” Jacob keyed the reply control. “As we discussed at the conference, Lestat. Captain Accorsi on Dervish has theater control. Keep your tac-feed open to my ship.”

Jacob doubted even a swarm of sixteen mercenary ships could pose a threat against two heavy cruisers. Most of the mercs in the system operated strike squadrons out of the converted cargo bays of lumbering hauler-carriers, and while that many carrier elements could give Nate strike squadrons heartburn, they lacked the munitions to do serious damage to the Tyrant cruisers themselves. The two antiquated frigates and one obsolescent destroyer of Accorsi’s formation theoretically could do more, but these fragile vessels would never survive a close-range slugging match with the raiders long enough to do so.

“Mr. Borisov, would you prefer to postpone your meeting? The governor will be waiting.”

Jacob whirled on the guide, fixing him with a glare capable of melting green recruits into quivering sludge, but which the dour local seemed immune to. “Postpone?” The attack had come at the worst possible time, with Jacob and a platoon of muscle ground-side in hopes of negotiating a side-contract with the planetary government. The troopers would be little use in a fleet action, even a haphazard mercenary fleet action, but Jacob hated being sidelined while most of his employees went into battle. “I’m not doing anything else. Let’s go.”

To be sure, Bancroft was probably the least likely ship to suffer serious damage, but Jacob’s squadrons would go into the fray with the rest – squadrons he couldn’t replace, since Bancroft didn’t have a sweetheart contract with the Navy like some of the other crews. On a Navy contract, operational losses would be replaced by newer and more capable tech from the fleet’s ample logistics train; Jacob’s employer was a civilian research consortium which had no such resources.

Following the guide to his small aircar, Jacob listened to the occasional status report from Bancroft on the brief flight to the planet’s modest administrative complex. The city below him, though extensive, was a ragtag and mismatched affair which still reminded him of the dusty colonial outposts on newly-settled worlds. Adimari Valis was a treasure-hunter’s wet dream; a whole poorly-explored planet of unclaimed terrain, on which at least one massive Xenarch ruin had been unearthed. The possibilities lurking below its pebbly soil and beyond thickets of spine-throwing pincushion trees had drawn in many of the Frontier’s most reckless fortune-seekers even before the war, though few had yet made more than a modest fortune prospecting for unclaimed Xenarch artifacts.

After landing on the administrative center’s roof, Jacob allowed the guide to lead him below, into the air-conditioned bustle at whose heart lurked Governor Yamaguchi. The brooding, overworked and under-paid administrator had reached out to Jacob almost as soon as his ship had nosed up to the orbital refueling docks, and it was only too consistent with Jacob’s luck that his careful nursing of this connection over five weeks in-system would be jeopardized by a Nate attack.

The guide stopped in front of a door and ushered Jacob inside, and he stomped in without delay. The governor’s office was smaller than he expected, but clean and well-appointed. Yamaguchi stood and offered a quick bow and handshake, sealed the door, and pointed Jacob to a seat.

“Good to finally meet you, Governor.” Jacob said, turning the gain on his earpiece down as far as he dared while he settled into the offered chair.

Yamaguchi, in no mood to talk around matters, leaned forward in his oversized chair. “Is it true? The foe attacks us now?”

Jacob shrugged. He was in no mood to give away intelligence for free, even as agitated as he was. “I heard some rumors on the way over.”

The governor scowled, resistant to the idea of paying for information a Navy garrison might have given him for free. “If the Incarnation has come to Matusalemma at last, I may need to act quickly to save lives.”

“That’s true.” A corner of Jacob’s mind processed a status report from his executive officer, twenty seconds delayed, and knew that the opposing forces above had not yet clashed. He had plenty of time to spar with this new potential client. “As it turns out, my company has experience with groundside disaster relief and-”

“Mr. Borisov.” Yamaguchi’s interruption, though quiet, was iron-firm. “Even with lives at stake, you play the salesman?”

Jacob did his best to look hurt. He knew how valuable the face-saving game of shaming mercenaries for needing to be paid shortly before negotiating the terms of employment was to the social orders which got themselves into enough trouble to need mercenaries in the first place. “Governor, I sympathize with your plight, but you know I have investors and creditors. We run tight margins, as I’m sure you know. If I took a pro-bono contract and it went bad, Taavi Bancroft would be bankrupt.”

Jacob wished this last was farther from true than it was. For several months his outfit had shambled along on small, dull contracts while he tried to arrange a big score with the Navy like so many other companies, and the bottom line showed it.

“I see.” Yamaguchi nodded slowly. “I can hardly ask you to risk bankruptcy.”

The acid tone in which these words lashed out across the governor’s desk might have demoralized a less experienced mercenary, but Jacob knew he had the governor hooked. The other outfits in orbit didn’t have sizable ground teams aboard their ships, and Jacob, after a little bit of digging, had guessed what Yamaguchi wanted, other than intelligence. He was the only company commander in the system with the ability to solve the governor’s groundside problem. He could nearly name his price, and the local administration would pay it. “My company’s standard operation pricing is easily available on the datasphere. Since this is an emergency, I’m sure your government has an emergency fund capable of absorbing our expenses.”

Yamaguchi nodded vaguely. “Do you consider… non-monetary payment?”

On a one-trick economy world like Adimari Valis, Jacob had expected this tactic, too. “You’ll have to be more specific, but usually no.”

The governor slid a data-slate across his desk. “Is this sufficiently specific?”

Jacob reached for the device, and his eyebrows went up as he read it and zoomed in on the rotating full-capture imagery. He had expected offers of the planet’s only valuable export, but nothing like what was being dangled in front of him. “I think…” It was a risk, to be sure, but as long as he took at least half the fee in hard credits… “I think we can work something out, Governor.”

For the first time, the man smiled. He thought he was in control of the negotiations – and Jacob would let him think that right up until a strategic walk-away would increase his company’s share of the local treasury. “Are you prepared to discuss terms with the… rumored trouble in the sky yet unresolved?”

Negotiating anything with the situation in orbit unresolved was a risk, but he was a mercenary – he always played the risks. “I don’t see why not.” He replied with a disinterested shrug.

At that instant, Jacob heard Pain announce the launch of his company’s entire operational strike wing against the raiders, simultaneous with launches from every other mercenary outfit in the ragged flotilla above.

Details

Tales from the Service: Gabriel's Dutchman

2947-10-01 – Tales from the Service: Gabriel’s Dutchman

The war is getting really interesting, and Duncan has agreed to let me directly publish more stories to this feed (though he still insists on mangling my text in the service of his too-dry editorial standards). He told me not to spend much time discussing the events elsewhere on the Coreward and Sagittarius Frontiers since Saint-Lô left Maribel, but the two attacks at Margaux and the loss of contact with remote Kistler Junction do not seem to be raids, just as the attack at Berkant was not a proper raid.

The Incarnation thinks it has the advantage – I personally don’t think so, but it’s possible – and Captain Liao thinks they’re hoping to make the Fifth Fleet look like a bunch of fools until some political nincompoop up and gives them what they want.

Trouble is, hell if anyone knows what they want – the prisoners taken by the Navy think they’re fighting to save humanity from extinction, the damned fools. Hardly a position that can be distilled into actionable demands – far as they see it, we’re either with them and surrender without any more fighting, or against them and due for destruction to preserve the species.

This week’s entry is another anecdote told by Source Gabriel, (as before, identified in this piece only as such) a captured Incarnation strike pilot who has been at least partly cooperative with Naval Intelligence interrogators. Evidently, the chip-brains in Nate command had at one point the utterly mad idea of snatching as worthless and boring a place as Deana’s Rock – the very hind end of the Frontier – and it’s apparently all it took was an apparent Dutchman sighting to scare them away from the misfortune of holding it.

We haven't seen Dutchmen in the Reach (credibly, anyway) in nearly 200 years - maybe they're more common in Sagittarius?

[Editor’s Note: Deana’s Rock is a touchy subject for Nojus – I tried to get him to tone down his scorn, but he wouldn’t budge, and we all know nobody on this ship can budge him if he digs his heels in. I’ll try to tease the story out of him later. Also keep in mind that this occurred at least a few weeks before Source Gabriel’s final mission (Tales from the Service: Source Gabriel) -D.L.C.]

The order to change course fed directly into Gabriel’s brain through his implants, and the sleek Coronach moved to follow the new heading even before he had registered the change, staying in pristine but rapidly-flowing formation behind the flight leader. Precision formation flying in tiny, nimble ships with nearly identical drive signatures was the Coronach’s best defense; like a school of fish, a squadron of the little interceptors made it difficult for attackers to identify single targets.

Of course, a course change not on the flight plan indicated trouble, and Gabriel immediately began to parse the flow of network traffic through which any pilot’s mind tumbled. The squadron leader had received an encrypted update from the mothership’s flight control system, and though Gabriel himself couldn’t decode it, he knew how to query its contents.

“Lead, what is the nature of our new orders?” Gabriel sent over the radio, though his mouth never moved inside his helmet.

In his augmented vision, the lead Coronach blinked to indicate successful reception. A moment later, Flight Leader Yasin’s reply arrived, read out for Gabriel’s auditory nerves. “Strange mass detected on our new heading. We’re checking it out.” Yasin, unlike many squadron commanders, did not lord his position over his subordinates. His squadron was the best – Immortal-only units excepted, if such things were more than rumor – and he knew any of his pilots were qualified to be flight leader of any lesser squadron.

The other pilots on the circuit blinked their silent acknowledgement in the augmented vision of Coronach flying, and shortly a spherical search area appeared ahead. The stars usually didn’t show from the cockpit, but inside the circular area ahead, the system let them show, in case the target object occluded any stars. Gabriel didn’t see anything, and as far as his light ship’s sensors and external cameras knew, the search area was just another patch of hard vaccuum.

As the squadron’s three sections separated to fly their parts of the helical search pattern prescribed by the computer, Tashi’s Coronach blinked to Gabriel’s left. “What do you think about the news from the home sector this morning?”

Gabriel could almost hear Yasin roll his eyes. Tashi had, as usual, waited until the section was alone on the short-range chatter circuit before bringing up uncomfortable topics. “It’s a rumor, Tashi. Nothing more.”

“Nobody would dare lie about matters the Inner Presence. What if there’s something to it? What if His visage really did react to news of our successes?” She trusted Yasin, Gabriel, and Azurra – trusted them more than Gabriel thought was healthy. He’d heard hushed rumors of people, co-opted by security systems, unwillingly turning in their own lovers, siblings, and children.

“If it’s true, it is proof we are the destined agents of humanity, and these weaklings must fall.” Azurra, always the most orthodox pilot in the section, might have been quoting out of the old, tattered texts preserved through the Schism.

“Of course they’ll fall. Half their systems are defended only by pathetic mercenaries. What I mean is-”

“Heads up!” Yasin put an end to the chatter. “On my datastream.”

Gabriel saw it instantly as the flight leader’s data gushed into his systems on a tight-beam transmission. The instruments usually used to track drive-wakes in the void had picked up a tiny ripple in the cosmic fabric – weak, but wide and constant, like ripples emanating outward from a tiny waterfall.

Gabriel, whose implants had somewhat better technical analysis algorithms, drank in the data, and let his implants digest it. “Not a drive-wake. Central source, low system-relative velocity, no visual. I have no ID, lead, but it’s small.”

“Keep processing. We’re going in close.”

The four Coronachs turned in unison as Flight Leader Yasin set a new course to fly closely past the ripple’s source. The other two flights, only labeled pinpricks in the distance, continued their search patterns; a tiny object didn’t match what the strike-director system had reported.

When the view ahead changed, filling with a red-shaded bulk, it did so in an instant. Gabriel’s head was filled with the screeching of a collision alarm designed specifically to trigger a response even in an unconscious pilot. Reflexively, he took manual control, flicked the Coronach end-over-end, and kicked the drive to maximum. If Azurra’s formation-holding was off by even two meters, this maneuver would cause his ship and hers to collide head-on, but he knew his section’s formation-holding was impeccable, even if they were forced to do it without the implant-driven automatic.

The automatic interlock kicked back in and Gabriel returned to a position beside Yasin, who’d picked a new course skimming along the length of the object which had appeared. Azurra and Tashi soon returned to formation as well.

Azurra broke the section’s silence first. “Son of Sapience, look at that.”

On the augmented-reality seen through his ship’s sensors, the object he’d nearly run into was a titanic unknown – bigger than a cruiser by half, obviously artificial but equally obviously not the work of the pathetic Confederated Navy. It lacked a spatial drive signature or emissions indicative of any large powerplant, but up close, what had seemed to be a ripple in the cosmic fabric now showed its true nature – not a mere ripple, the ship was entirely wrapped in a twist of space-time, so only the tiniest ripple showed outside. The tight flyby course set by Yasin had apparently found the tiny aperture of the spatial fold.

“Still no identification.” Gabriel started calculating the power requirements of that system, but even a conservative estimate put it far beyond the powerplant output of an entire squadron of Incarnation cruisers. That the object – the ship – had no measurable heat or particle emissions was more sinister than a ship lit from stem to stern, all viewports blazing – the fold in which the ship was tucked was proof it had power, and probably a crew which didn’t appreciate being spied on.

“Lost our mothership transponder signal.” Tashi observed, apparently not understanding what she was seeing. “Did they leave us behind?”

“Negative.” Gabriel sent her a copy of his in-progress mathematics, hoping she had enough software to interpret it. In case she didn’t, he struggled to come up with an analogy for the situation. “They’re sewing a pocket in space-time.”

Yasin highlighted a feature on the hull ahead, and though Gabriel couldn’t be sure, it looked a lot like a weapon emplacement. It was far bigger than the prow-mounted bombardment laser on their own mothership. As he looked, he began to pick out other features indicative that he was looking at a warship.

Yasin, evidently, had seen enough. He charted a new course for a broad sweep out from the hull and back on the vector which they had come in on.

“Wait.” Tashi called out, highlighting something on the hull ahead. “Visual-spectrum light source.”

Just as she pointed out the spot, a network of blazing blue-white lines burst forth from it, spidering across the whole hull of the hidden ship. The sensors automatically prevented any of the pilots from being blinded, and the light let the Coronachs’ telescopes see better the shadowy hull they’d been overflying. Stepped structures protruded at odd angles from the hull like grown crystals, some of them pocked and scarred by decades – maybe centuries – of superficial impacts. A pair of jutting, jawlike structures at the bow could only be weapons – weapons big enough, Gabriel thought distractedly, to vaporize entire capital ships. Nothing about the ship’s design could have been devised by human minds, but to the human sense of aesthetics, it was a beautiful ship, an apex predator lurking in ambush.

Gabriel watched the datastreams in awe. “Power to the fold pocket is falling. They’re coming out!”

“We’re getting out.” Yasin engaged the new course, and the four-ship formation flipped end-over-end in unison and scurried away from the hull toward their point of entry just as the pocket collapsed. Space seemed to wheel around the confused Coronach’s sensors, and Gabriel knew that if he had been able to see the stars, they would have spun madly as they reverted to their proper places.

“What is that light?” Azurra, little else to do but hope the four strike-ships were beneath notice, turned her attention back toward the great ship.

Gabriel spun his view backwards as well, drinking in the datastreams from all four Coronachs. “They’re folding the fabric again.”

Yasin made a few adjustments to the course, and sent out orders to the other two sections, which had reasonably panicked when the towering ship appeared. “Is it going to vanish again?”

“I think it’s a drive, but it’s-“

Gabriel never finished the thought, even though his thoughts were being transmitted directly. The spiderwebbed network of light along the ship’s vast hull pulsed once, then it went out from bow to stern – and where it went out, the ship vanished along with it.

“Weak reading from earlier is gone.” Yasin confirmed.

When the recall order arrived from the strike coordinator a moment later, it surprised none of the pilots. The cruiser’s command crew had seen the ship, and they knew any territory such behemoths lurked in was no place for the Incarnation to tread – not yet.

Details
  • You are here:  
  • Home