Cimbrean
“Hot town, summer in the city,” Darragh sang, mostly to himself but also for the benefit of those nearby. He set flame to the rag and threw the bottle of propellant towards the cluster of heavily armoured robo-slugs, Allebenellin was their real name, but robo-slug was simply easier to remember. Darragh couldn’t believe they’d found their way here.
It exploded as it landed, spewing flame everywhere, including across two of the robo-slugs. They lit up and burned like the devil machines they were, slowly suffering damage and unable to extinguish themselves, but not yet slowed down in the least.
“Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty,” he continued as he and the others began pressing in with anti-tank weapons. The kinetic weapons did have some observable effect on the machines, if not as much as he would have liked, but they proved adequate distractions for the real attack.
“Been down, isn’t it a pity,” he sung with greater gusto, making sure to get their attention as the Gaoian ambush fell upon them, fusion swords driving home into the compartments that contained the slugs.
“Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city,” Darragh ended, slightly unhappy that he didn’t get to the good bit. ‘People looking half-dead’ and things being ‘hotter than a match head’ seemed like an apt set of lyrics for the current state of things.
“That’s another four of this feckers,” he said, looking over to Chir who’d led the ambush. “How many is that in total?”
“Eleven from us,” he said. “Last check in with Zripob showed another seven. Your idea of these ‘fire-bombs’ has given us the ability to create greater distractions, Darragh. Well done.”
Darragh grinned, keeping his lips unparted from long years of practice. “Congratulate me when we’re free and clear, Chir. Any idea how many we have to go?”
“None whatsoever,” Chir replied, “but these harnesses are extraordinarily expensive, I can’t imagine there can be too many more.”
“You said you couldn’t imagine there being this many,” Darragh reminded him. “We really need to get a hard figure. Has anybody found Trycrur yet?”
“Not since she was forced to flee station control,” Chir said grimly. “But she has the advantage of being able to fly, so my hope is she managed to escape.”
Unlike the rest of the staff, whose charred remains they’d discovered as they’d reached the control room in an attempt to provide support. The corpses were unrecognisable, and smelled – at least to Darragh – somewhat delicious. He kept that to himself, however.
“Seems likely that they don’t yet have control of the orbital defenses,” Chir said thoughtfully, “or they’d have withdrawn to begin bombardment by now.”
“How long do you think before they crack it?” Darragh asked, glancing skyward.
Chir frowned, and growled some untranslatable ramblings. “I’m surprised they haven’t already.”
“So we’ve got that to look forward to,” Darragh replied. “Can we stop them?”
“Not without Trycrur and a ship capable of getting into orbit,” Chir said. “Hrbrd might be able to do it, but we have no idea where he is right now.”
As far as everyone was aware, Hrbrd had been stuck inside the palace when it had been set to burn, and the robo-slugs had been thorough in sealing off the exits. He wouldn’t have been the only one to have been caught in it, either; there were countless utility workers working inside, or there had been.
Darragh felt sick at the slaughter, but the sickness paled in comparison to the ball of rage sitting in his guts. It grew, rather than shrunk, with each robo-slug they took down, and with each loss they endured in doing so. He was surprised at himself for feeling that way, normally being such a calm and reasoned, and most of all, relaxed fellow.
He was still calm and reasoned, but for now he poured every ounce of his energy into carrying out a guerilla style resistance to the robo-slug patrols. They’d yet to find the means by which they had arrived – it was likely some cloaked vessel nearby – but it had been very difficult to follow them reliably. Darragh had tried once, and the patrol had stopped to rest with the slugs taking it in turns to sleep, lending credibility to the idea that they could potentially roam free for as long as they had supplies.
“What about using our own ships to figure out where these arseholes are coming from?” Darragh suggested.
“Any ship we send up gets immediately shot down,” Chir said. “Even the cloaked ones.”
“Yes, but if you can see the shot you can tell where it came from, and we can concentrate our efforts there,” Darragh explained. “Otherwise we’re just waiting for them to crack the orbitals, and all of this effort will have been wasted.”
Chir considered this briefly, then nodded his approval. “It could work, I think we should give it a try.”
Darragh took a deep breath to steel himself for what was to come. Plans born of desperation had a habit of backfiring rather badly, but where they succeeded they became the stories that old men recount. “Alright,” he said, “now let’s just find ourselves a functional spaceship.”
+++++
Aratas, Celzi Heavy Cruiser, Far Reaches
From all observable evidence there wasn’t anything in the universe as needlessly convoluted as the human mating ritual. At least that was Askit’s estimation, and he had the long held belief that everything he decided was true almost always turned out to be true. The few times it hadn’t didn’t count.
He wasn’t even sure whether they had actually mated yet, but they were certainly spending a great deal of time pressed firmly against each other exchanging oral fluids – which he assumed must serve some very important purpose for them to be doing so much of it – and whispering complete nonsense to each other and giggling like it was some wonderful joke.
They did all this and yet somehow it seemed like they were building to a crescendo; there had been no lessening of tension and pheromones, but quite the opposite. Askit considered inquiring about it but the last questions he’d had about human reproductive processes had been met with extreme discomfort and avoidance of looking directly at anyone.
Then there were the interrogations, if you could call it that. Together the humans had spun such a line of total shit that even Askit, who knew the truth of everything, was having a hard time unraveling it. As far as he could tell the enemy now thought they were trying to conceal the fact that they were secretly agents in the intelligence service and had personal ties to the Celzi leadership.
Even Askit was forgetting which side he was actually on and had decided to let the humans do the actual talking. They had, after all, managed to get considerable improvements to their previously spartan accommodation – if you could call it that – more than ample food and replacement clothing. They’d even gotten Adrian some time with the ship doctor who had been put under orders to forget everything he saw.
The humans worked so well in tandem that Askit even began to suspect them of some close proximity telepathy or technological equivalent. The Hunters had such things after all, so why not humans?
They’d just laughed at his questions about this, however, and claimed it was just a result of them having ‘clicked” – although Askit never heard them making such noises no matter how he tried – and Jen said her part of it probably came from having five troublemakers for brothers who’d always been pulling her into their idiot schemes. Adrian claimed his ability stemmed from ‘being a total ratbag’ as a child. Near as Askit could interpret that had made him some sort of bag for trouble making rodents, which had to be yet another human euphemism.
He had established that they had a lot of those, and suspected that this human art of never just saying what you mean was what contributed to their innate talent at deception. He had also established that he was personally unable to tell if they were lying unless they wanted him to know, which managed to be the sort of troubling realization that provided him with no advantage whatsoever.
There was too much attention being paid to their physical abilities, he had decided. It was distracting from the real danger the species posed. Only the Corti had the kind of intelligence necessary to keep pace, and Askit was slowly forming the opinion that they wouldn’t be up to the job. They’d spent so long slowly working towards superiority over the crawling intellects of every other galactic race that they may well have forgotten how run.
If indeed they had ever possessed the ability.
And then the Directorate had backed sealing them away in an enormous barrier, one that – from what Askit was learning – both sides of the war were increasingly willing to help them bypass. The galaxy would change – and it would change soon – and no matter which side Earth chose to join the Directorate was going to find itself on another one, along with anyone else Earth had reason not to like.
He had expressed his concerns to them over dinner one night, hoping to at least get some kind of reassurance that his fears were unlikely to manifest.
Instead they’d shared a glance as they’d contemplated his worries.
“Sorry, mate,” Adrian said, “but I reckon you’ve hit the nail on the head.”
Askit was not entirely sure what construction processes had to do with racial supremacy, and his confusion must have been obvious because Jen came to his assistance.
“He means you’re probably right about everything,” Jen said, “but I think there’s more to it than that. For example, you’re afraid of Earth making a decision, like it’s some sort of single government, when what we actually have is several dozen making their own.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Adrian said. “That is going to turn into quite the cluster- problem.”
“You’re saying that Earth may join both sides?” Askit asked, not even beginning to comprehend how that would play out. “Wouldn’t that lead to a terrible war on your own planet?”
Adrian shook his head. “Both sides, one side or no sides, I can’t imagine them starting World War Three at home. It’d probably be done in the usual way, supplying troops and materiel to augment your existing forces.”
“World War Three?!” Askit exclaimed. “As in there was a World War Two? What could possibly possibly precipitate a whole planet warring against itself?”
“As I recall it the first one was started with a Prince being assassinated?” Jen said with a frown. “I forget why that was important.”
“The second one was started by a nasty little man with a bad moustache,” Adrian added. “There was more to it than just the moustache but that was the really important bit.”
Jen failed to avoid showing her amusement, and Askit realised that Adrian was having fun with him. “Please,” he said, “I’m not foolish enough to fall for that.”
After all, no one person could be bad enough to spin a whole world into strife; reasonable people – even humans – would stop such a thing from ever happening.
“But,” he said, “I think you’re right. Earth may provide assistance to both sides but the presence of both Celzi and Dominion stations within the shield must surely mean that they will be forced to coexist if either wish for aid. A Deathworld will become the safest world in the galaxy.”
“That seems likely,” Jen agreed, although Askit doubted she could fully grasp the irony. “And nobody would want to start a fight there for fear of losing any prospect of support.”
“Meanwhile we’re stuck on the slow boat to China,” Adrian said unhappily, and Askit wondered what that meant.
+++++
Cimbrean
The Hunter vessel exploded as it rose vertically into the sky, blasted to pieces by a hail of coilgun fire that punched through the stripped down hull. Moments later another rose, only to join it in its fiery fate.
But the air was marked by the passage of coil bolts, and with a pair the defenders could triangulate the position of the enemy ship. It had made landing some distance away, but its position was certain.
It wasn’t long before another pair of Hunter ships rose together and began to return fire, leaving enough holes in the enemy hull to make its cloaking system useless.
When it rose to escape the barrage the defenders were ready. A brief inspection of the vessels the robo-slugs had attended revealed that their FTL drives had been destroyed and their kinetic drives stripped out.
Darragh had seen this as a sign that the slugs wanted control of them once the purge was completed. That also explained the lack of an orbital bombardment.
The slugs had not seen the point of further damaging their future property and had left the other systems enabled. That still left the guns intact, and as far as Darragh was concerned that just made them artillery. All guns moved to track the enemy ship as it climbed into the sky, and then fired as one with a resounding boom that seemed to come from all directions.
It fell to ruined pieces under the combined firepower of two dozen ships, and twisted metal rained upon a distant meadow as the remains of the ship continued to move under momentum towards the sea.
Darragh hadn’t expected it to be that easy, however. Not after days of losing people and to desperate battles, not after hardly sleeping and barely eating.
Not after they’d found Trycrur, or what was left of her, crumpled in a burned out tree with her chest torn wide open. Chir and Zripob hadn’t taken that discovery well – it was safe to say that they were angrier than he’d ever seen an alien get – and they had been eager to take whatever steps were necessary to achieve vengeance.
Taking down the enemy ship had just been stage one of the plan. Each was aboard one of the Hunter vessels that had initially targeted the enemy ship, and now they took to the skies to begin the lengthy fight to take back the orbital defenses. Darragh wished them luck, and had led his own team to sweep what remained of the palace. He had been hoping to find some sign of Councillor Hrbrd, but the robo-slugs had built a camp within the ruin and it had proven impossible to breach.
Now, however, they were stranded here with the rest of them, and that knowledge could do strange things to a man. They were well defended, using the structure itself to provide protection, but they were few in number and now lacked any additional supplies. Darragh couldn’t get in, but he knew that they’d need to come out sooner or later.
So Darragh had started to build traps.
With the resources of the stockpiles of stolen goods at his disposal he set to work, learning as he went but remembering what he could from his schooling. It didn’t need to be too clever – the robo-slugs could barely lift their legs – so tripwires were fine; first those that triggered when they were pulled, and then those that were triggered by releasing the wire.
Those two varieties should be enough to at least cripple the few robo-slugs still present, and if they weren’t he could always begin laying false wires to force them into certain routes where fighters would be waiting.
He was laying the first of the wires when the word came down that the orbital defenses were secure – at least the part that had survived the reclaiming.
“But there’s more bad news,” Chir told him between pained wheezes. He had apparently survived a glancing shot from a kinetic pulse, but was healing slowly.
Darragh looked around the burned out ruin that had been the most ornate palace he had ever seen and contemplated explaining what had happened to it when Jen inevitably returned. “Surely we’re all stocked up on that sort?” he joked sourly.
“The guys out here were expecting reinforcements,” Chir continued. “They were delayed by a Celzi fleet that had started sweeping the local stellar neighborhood for us.”
“Great,” Darragh complained bitterly, it seemed that the universe really enjoyed kicking a man when he was down. “More guests! Maybe they could all bring a plate?”
“I’m considering an evacuation,” Chir said. “But I’m not going to force anyone into it.”
“So the alternative to running away is just to stay here and get killed by an army?” Darragh asked. “I think I’ll be running just as fast as I can go, if you don’t mind.”
“Understood,” Chir said. “I will begin preparations.”
“I do have one last request, is all,” Darragh ventured. “I want these fellows in the palace dead. Can you arrange that as well?”
“As long as you are out of there and they can’t easily escape,” Chir told him. “I can arrange it.”
“Perfect,” Darragh replied, assessing the traps he had stockpiled for deployment with new eyes. “I have just the thing.”