2951-07-12 – Tales from the Service: The Meraud Ghost

2951-07-05 – Tales from the Service: The Meraud Ghost

Hadley McGuiness pushed the fresh-fallen snow to one side as she emerged from her shelter bubble and blinked half-blind in a brilliant Meraud dawn. Though the world was far from its weak stellar primary, but in the wake of the night’s storm, every surface was coated in glittering ice crystals that reflected that pale light. 

Hadley had situated her camp far enough from the nearest stand of heat-chasing crawl-vine to prevent the plant from detecting her or her equipment while she slept, but still she spent a few minutes digging out the snow around the shelter and the site of the buried generator to make sure that no tendrils had found their way under the snow. Crawl-vine moved faster during the day than it did at night, and she didn’t want to return to the camp after another twelve-hour vigil only to spend another hour cutting away a few hundred pounds of enterprising biomass before she could get inside and warm up.  

When she was satisfied, she activated the camo-canopy that would make the camp look like just another half-frozen thicket and hefted her day pack. “Log day seventeen.” 

Though the glittering hillside swallowed up her words as if no other human had ever lived on Meraud, Hadley’s mission-log cartridge beeped twice, and a red light appeared at the bottom of her helmet’s faceplate. Everything she saw, heard, and said would be recorded faithfully. The device could save nearly two T-years worth of logs, but Hadley hoped that she wouldn’t need to stick around more than another two weeks. If the reports she was investigating were true, she’d have found some indication by then; if she hadn’t, her minders would be satisfied to conclude that those horror stories had been embellishments or outright forgeries. 

Hadley personally hoped they were forgeries. She had only seen two of the many recorded prisoner debriefings Naval Intelligence had conducted, and both of them had made her skin crawl. True, neither of the liberated former inmates of the camps on Meraud had personally witnessed the things they’d testified to, but they certainly believed those things they’d heard secondhand. Perhaps the banal brutality of their guards and the prison scheme itself had made them easy prey for bunk-house charlatans telling stories of worse fates, but Intelligence was taking the tales seriously enough to send Hadley to freeze her posterior looking for more conclusive information. 

As soon as the campsite was reasonably well camouflaged, Hadley set off through the snow toward the best of her vantage points over the prison-camp in the valley. She kept close to the still-sluggish stands of crawl-vine so she didn’t have to worry about her footprints being discovered. The plants would sense her passage and send out questing tendrils to cover her tracks; by the time the first wave of monitor drones left the facility, there would be no trace she’d been there.  

The monitor drones weren’t looking for Hadley, of course. They were looking for escapees, whose tracks would originate from the facility’s perimiter and radiate out into the hills. Even if they found part of Hadley’s trail, they would dismiss it as the spoor of one of Meraud’s many small and midsized native animals, since she was moving neither directly toward nor directly away from the prison. 

The vantage point was just as Hadley had left it the previous day: a cluster of conically-trunked trees clinging to a narrow ledge of flat ground jutting from the side of an otherwise steep hill. She could approach it behind a stand of thorny shrubs, and be out of direct site of the many cameras below while having a nearly perfect view into the compound itself. 

Most of the cameras weren’t pointed up and out, of course; in all probability only a few were. Still, it paid to be careful. Hadley settled into the comfortable crook between two of the frost-rimmed boles and pulled out her meta-lens magnifier to watch another day of confusingly meaningless drudgery.  

As we have seen before in this space, Meraud is a harsh place not well suited to human habitation; its colonists were a hardy sort. That it is being used to house civilian prisoners from warmer climates, usually without the advanced cold-weather gear available to Hadley, is a sign of how little thought The Incarnation gives to the welfare of the Confederated citizens it has conquered.  

Extermination would have been simpler, more economical, and possibly kinder, and that’s assuming the stories are not true. Why they keep our people alive to hope for possible liberation, I cannot determine. 

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Tales from the Service: The Meraud Snooper

2951-07-05 – Tales from the Service: The Meraud Snooper 

Operation Landsman was two years ago, but evidently this remarkable success of Confederated arms did not end the use of Meraud as a prison world by our foes. 

Most of this account from a special intelligence agent who has returned from that world in recent weeks cannot be published for security reasons, but I wanted to bring you the parts of it that I could, because I do not think the horrors of the Hellship transports or the penal facilities on Meraud should be forgotten. The prisoners freed by Landsman have long since returned to their lives such as they can, but the Incarnation has many millions of our compatriots under its control. 

I am seeing rumors that the poor conditions of the Meraud labor camps are not the worst fate a Confederated citizen can find under Incarnation control, but I do not have any direct accounts or official reports to bring you about this, only rumors. Evidently the Navy is taking them seriously enough to send special intelligence agents to investigate, but for everyone’s sake I hope that what I’ve heard is nothing more than fanciful exaggeration.  

[N.T.B. - I've been around The Sprawl a bit more than Duncan, and I’ve talked to quite a few people, human and otherwise, who’ve had personal interactions with Nate authority. I don’t think the rumors we’ve been seeing are fanciful. You’ll hear far worse from the Cutters who reside in Sagittarius Gate; evidently their home-world has been under Nate control on and off for decades, so they have plenty of experience with how brutal our enemy can be.] 

As the wind began to shriek past Hadley McGuiness’s bubble shelter, she sealed the entrance flap and shivered reflexively, though the inside of the shelter was above twenty Celsius. With night approaching fast and a storm blowing down from the Olmo Plateau, she wasn’t going to get anything else done out there until dawn. 

After setting the shelter’s sensor perimeter alarm and altering the camouflage scheme used by its smart-canvas outer shroud to match fresh-fallen snow, Hadley removed her helmet and peeled off her sealed environment suit. Meraud had a breathable atmosphere, so the suit wasn’t really sealed; there was no atmo cartridge in the socket at the small of her back, only a small filter block. The suit’s excellent insulation and electric heating elements, on the other hand, were indispensable; even without a storm, night temperatures outside her little shelter could plummet to minus forty-five, and only the sunniest days climbed above minus ten. 

Hadley didn’t mind the cold much, but she did wonder how the world had attracted a population of almost one million colonists before the war. Its elliptical orbit did permit brief, balmy summers, but ninety percent of any local year was some flavor of winter. 

That the world had seen more than its share of action during the last few years was less surprising. Meraud had been occupied by the Incarnation several years ago, and that implacable foe had constructed large, well-defended prisoner pens on its forbidding surface. No doubt the cold climate had been calculated to reduce the risk of escapes and degrade effective resistance from anyone who did escape. 

Confederated scout detachments had discovered the camps after tracking prisoner transports to the world, and a surprise raid in force had liberated the bulk of the prisoners on Meraud and whisked them away, back to friendly lines and warmer climes. That remarkable operation had been two T-years ago. With the intervening occupations of Håkøya and several other worlds, no doubt the Incarnation had re-built its prison facilities and filled those pens with a fresh draft of civilian and military prisoners.  

Given the defenses Hadley had seen in orbit, Nate certainly still had something on Meraud to protect, but none of those orbital installations had detected her tiny ship as it had crept past. They were expecting another Operation Landsman, not an unarmed single-seater with radar-absorbing paint and a tiny ion-thrust engine. After all, what could one woman do to disrupt a penal system spanning a whole world? 

Hadley hadn’t come to Meraud to cut shackles and start prisoner riots, however. She had come to investigate concerning reports made by the liberated prisoners of two years prior – reports that Meraud was more than a brutal storage point for Confederated prisoners kept busy with meaningless work. 

With a storm blowing outside, though, Hadley’s investigatory work was thoroughly on hold. Visibility in Meraud’s chill atmosphere during the day could be several kilometers, but the cameras built into the security perimeter showed her a visibility radius quickly dwindling into the tens of meters. Even if the prison facility in a nearby valley was still doing something worth observing during the storm, she’d just about have to climb over its perimeter wall to see it. 

Hadley had brought a few diversions for just such an occasion, but she was in no mood for a holo-drama or an adventure novel on her slate. Something about being so close to several hundred prisoners housed in terrible conditions and forced to labor in the cold for no purpose made escapist fiction seem hollow. Instead, she stretched out on the sleep-pad that occupied half of the shelter’s floor space and listened to the wind howl outside. Would the Navy arrange another mass rescue of all those people she’d been surveiling these last few days? Could they even if they wanted to, now that Meraud was reinforced? 

The wind, of course, had no answers. 

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Tales from the Service: The Prime August Fiasco

2951-06-28 – Tales from the Service: The Prime August Fiasco

As I hinted last week, the attack on Prime August was a bit of a minor disaster, despite its success. In addition to stronger than expected defenses and a large-scale comms breakdown that was at least partially caused by innovative enemy signals equipment, the attacking force encountered sophisticated enemy deception tactics that split the Marine landing force and isolated each split component of it from the others for many hours after the landing. 

Fortunately, the defenders of Prime August were too few in number to exploit this success. The attack took far longer than planned, but it was concluded successfully, with the Incarnation listening post on the world destroyed.  

My understanding is that the trick used by the enemy at Prime August to degrade Confederated communications technology would not work again, but the precise details were not provided to me either in this account or in any official report I have access to. 

As the last Marines tromped off after their lieutenant toward the perimeter, Kanako Dunai unbuckled his restraints, grabbed the sidearm strapped below his chair, and headed aft to follow them outside. The normal diagnostic routines hadn’t been able to restore the comms system to normal operation, but that was fine; he had been a damage control tech before he’d certified as a pilot, and there was nothing on a strike-rig comms array he didn’t know how to fix. 

The cool night air wafting up through the dropship brought Kanako an eye-watering smell of burnt metal and sweet spices while he rummaged around in one of the lockers for a toolkit. Prime August was a world well suited to human life, but he could tell that whatever vegetation surrounded the landing site would be unbearable as a neighbor, at least for him. Alien pollens and other airborne biomass usually didn’t cause too much trouble for human settlers for the first few generations, but clearly this was one place where first-generation colonists would suffer from hay fever. 

Wiping away tears and slinging the tool-kit over one shoulder, Kanako finally disembarked. Not a single Marine remained in sight, though he couldn’t see very far owing to the near-complete darkness split only by the roving spotlight beams on three dropships. Overhead, a fourth dropship, its lower hull still glowing from re-entry, circled downward toward the field. 

He was halfway up the ladder on the side of his ship when the shooting started. At first, only a few Marine railguns buzzed in the darkness, but soon, almost everyone seemed to be shooting, in almost every direction. Streams of glowing slugs sprayed across the sky, and a few volleys passed dangerously close overhead. 

Cursing, Kanako hugged as close to the hull of his ship as he could. The briefing had not suggested any significant danger at the Alpha landing site. He still had no comms, no way of knowing what was going on; his earpiece was slaved to the ship’s malfunctioning system. Overhead, the circling dropship kicked its engine into overdrive and climbed back for the safety of the open sky. 

After a tense few seconds, the shooting began to tail off, and orange streams no longer stitched the darkness. Kanako wondered what they’d all been shooting at. Prime August was supposed to be a milk-run, at least as far as the landing went; now that panicky voice on his comms on the way down was sounding more and more prescient. Maybe Alpha really was a trap; maybe the Marines would come running back at any moment, a horde of Nate infantry on their tails. 

“Dunai!” 

Kanako turned and looked behind him at a tall, wiry figure waving a hand-lamp. “Sorry Commander. My comms-” 

“Yeah, mine too.” Commander Mesut pointed his lamp back toward one of the other landed dropships. “It’s not the hardware. Some sort of jamming, I think.” 

“That’s impossible.” Kanako started climbing down. “The signal modulator-”  

“Should cycle between frequencies too fast to be totally jammed. I know.” Mesut sighed. “But that woman on the comms-” 

“You heard her too, Commander?” Kanako dropped the last few feet to the ground and adjusted the strap of his toolkit. “I thought-” 

“I heard her. Jensley heard her, and you heard her.” Mesut pointed upward at the fourth dropship once again cautiously spiraling downward. “I think that means he heard her, and everyone who for some damned fool reason went to Beta or Gamma heard her.” 

Kanako frowned. Had every pilot thought the comms outage was their own? That would explain the hodgepodge scattering of the formation just before they’d hit the atmosphere; everyone was either making their best guess as to what was expected of them, or following someone else in hopes that they knew what was going on. “Quite the mess, sir.” 

“Indeed. And now-” Mesut was interrupted by another short volley of railgun fire, this time mostly sprayed into a copse of tree-analogues near the landing zone. “Now the Marines are landed in at least three places, they can’t talk to us, and we can’t talk to them. Which is even worse since we’re supposed to be their long-range relay.” 

Kanako pointed skyward. “The Pumas can relay them. Their circuits are totally different than ours.” 

“Yeah, but the moment they’re clear to come down here, they’re going to be busy blasting whoever the Marines are shooting at.” Mesut waved a hand. "No, I think we’re on our own. We can’t dust off and leave the grunts here, and we can’t just let them wander off in the direction of the objective with no comms, can we?" 

Kanako shook his head. “Not sure we’ve got much of an alternative.” A handful of pilots with sidearms and no comms could hardly expect to make much of a difference in this mess, after all. Even if they dusted off and hovered over the Marines while they pushed forward dropping messages- 

Kanako held up a hand. “Commander, can Michaelis see our spotlights from orbit? 

“On a night like this? Sure. Does that help us?” Somewhere beyond Mesut’s dropship, the fourth ship finally touched down and began to disgorge its  

“Can’t jam visible light.” Kanako shrugged. “If we get all those lamps pointing skyward, I’ll bet there’s a morse-code translator program in the standard software.” 

“And Michaelis would be able to read the signal with their scopes. That only fixes things one way.” 

“Sure.” Kanako hefted his toolbag. “But it’s a clear night. Once I pull my rig’s forward ‘scope and get it aligned, Michaelis or another ship can do the same trick to talk to us. It’ll work until dawn, at least. Hopefully we'll find something better by then.” 

Mesut clapped his hands. “I like it, Dunai. Get started with the scope. Jensley and I will fill in number four over there and work on the lights.” 

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Tales from the Service: The Prime August Glitch

2951-06-21 – Tales from the Service: The Prime August Glitch 

“Damn.” Kanako Dunai kicked off a diagnostic routine and put his ship’s comms antenna on manual control. A comms breakdown during a drop wasn’t quite the worst case scenario, but it certainly wasn’t good. “Commander Mesut, do you read? Having comms trouble over here.” 

Once again, there was no reply on any channel. Staying on course was no trouble without comms since their path had been pre-planned, but soon, he’d have to make the turn to start his descent toward either Alpha or Gamma, and he’d need to know which one. 

Fortunately, Kanako was directly behind the squadron commander, and could go wherever the other dropship went. His other instruments and his tactical plot seemed to be functioning all right, and they still showed clear skies, with no enemy presence. Even as the IFF identifiers on most of the symbols on his display became stale and winked out to leave pale, uncertain radar contacts, he could still make out which one was Commander Mesut’s. 

“Attack force, Alpha is a trap.” The mysterious female voice sounded more insistent this time. “Land at Gamma.” 

Given that his comms were still apparently down, there was no reason he should be able to hear this woman and nobody else. Perhaps this was one of the pathfinders sent down to recon landing sites sending a max-power broadcast from the surface, but even then, the other members of the squadron would be easier to pick up than her signal. “Identify yourself.” Kanako sent, not really expecting to be heard. 

He’d returned his attention to keeping on Mesut’s tail by the time the voice responded. “Are you with the attack force? Listen, there’s a trap down there. You’ve got to-” 

Kanako muted the channel. After checking that the comms system was still not responding properly, he once again tried to triangulate the source of this sender, and once again got no useful response. He’d been a damage control tech, and knew he could fix a bad antenna, but that would have to wait until he was on the ground, and the landing area was secure; until then, he was on his own. 

Being on his own, he wasn’t sure what to do about the voice. She sounded earnestly concerned, but that could mean anything. A functioning system would filter out signals from hostile sources automatically, but he already knew his comms hardware was not working properly; this could be a Nate provocation, attempting to lead the invading dropships astray. 

It could just as easily be a civilian on a commercial comms device, whose signals would never get through the filters on military antennas. Furthermore, Nate knew all too well that most Confederated pilots and troops couldn’t hear transmissions sent to mislead them, and they probably wouldn’t spend much time on something they didn’t think would work. 

As Kanako considered the situation, he noticed a change in the display in his console. Where all the blips around him had been traveling roughly in parallel before, now they were beginning to fan out onto at least three distinct headings. The outer wisps of Prime August’s atmosphere were already beginning to interfere with the radar-only picture, but he thought one group looked to be on course toward the Gamma landing site. 

The signature of Commander Mesut’s dropship was still on a descent course toward the Alpha site, so Kanako stayed with it, though he had his misgivings; those with their comms working normally would be able to confirm plan changes with the launch coordinator back on Michaelis. Surely, they were changing course because they were ordered to, but nothing in the pre-op briefings had indicated that the landing force would be splitting up. 

The view ahead began to glow orange as the dropship plummeted into thicker layers of atmosphere, its speed igniting the air. Automatically, the ship retracted its antennas and closed the heavy shutters over the cockpit, protecting sensitive equipment and crew alike from the fires of atmospheric entry, and the tactical plot went dark. 

With little to do as the ship careened downward on autopilot, Kanako considered the situation. What would cause command to split the force? It seemed in defiance of every contingency in the battle plan, and yet, it was clearly what was happening. 

By the time the ship slowed and the armored shutters slid back open, he still hadn’t found an answer. Kanako could see nothing but blackness ahead, but soon the radar system painted a map of the sky and terrain ahead, and once again the signature of at least one dropship – probably still Commander Mesut’s - appeared directly ahead. A single Puma escort overhead was only remnant of the escort force. 

Kanako was over Landing Site Alpha barely a minute later, circling downward to land as Mesut’s dropship disgorged its company of suited Marines onto a meadow of stiff, shimmering grass-analogue. A third dropship had appeared from somewhere and, not having comms to coordinate, Kanako let it land first before coming down himself.  

The landing was routine, with no sign of enemy forces or enemy fire. Kanako already knew the atmosphere of Prime August was perfectly breathable, but he ran the filters and sensors anyway on final approach. “Lieutenant, I'm seeing nothing out there but more Marines.” 

“Understood.” The gruff Marine officer sounded disappointed. “Shouldn’t we be in command net range? My comms are still out.” 

“I’m having some tech problems on the dropship, sir.” Kanako winced; he didn’t like telling an officer about technician-level problems, and most officers didn’t like to hear about them. “I'll get on it as soon as we’re down.” 

Even as he said this, Kanako twisted the yoke to spin the ship around direct its ramp toward the other two landed dropships, then set the landing skids down on the grass. “Welcome to Prime August.” He lowered the ramp, eager to get the troops off so he could figure out what was wrong with his ship. 

The attack on Prime August succeeded with few casualties on May 26, but the problems encountered in this first proper attack on an Incarnation held world in the Sagittarius Frontier was not without its problems, as next week’s continuation will explain. 

Problems with communications equipment are not the only thing which hampered the mainly Marine attack force; Prime August’s small but well emplaced Incarnation garrison took nearly twice as long as originally planned to exterminate. Most likely, the issues encountered are now being worked into Seventh Fleet's plans for future operations.

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