I had been a soldier for the better part of a decade. As I said before, I had been involved in twelve planetfalls during my long career. I say long, because most soldiers don't live out their first year. By the fifth year of service, almost ninety percent of soldiers that began serving in the same year have died.
Our military machine is that inefficient, at least in terms of keeping its soldiers alive. From the perspective of successfully combating the enemy, it is extremely effective. With humans spread across the galaxy in such numbers, we can afford to throw soldiers at the enemy like cannon fodder. Even a group of people armed with nothing but solid-shot weapons, a technology unchanged for thousands of years, will be effective if there's enough of them.
So we throw ourselves at the enemy en-masse for the most part. We suffer a horrific casualty rate. It works. About sixty-three billion people across the galaxy entered the service the same year I did. That was nine years and eight months ago. Now there were probably no more than a thousand of us left. What did my "generation" sell their lives for? I used to think it was for nothing until I was given this mission.
This is all by way of saying that I may be the most experienced foot soldier within seventy solar systems of Tark. I had seen my share of battles and then some. As a direct result I had lost consciousness a number of times. The first time was in my first battle, when an enemy vessel decided it would be a good idea to fire on our ground force from orbit with a quick burst from its N-gun. Since a short burst from an N-gun only negates the very first thing it makes contact with, the atmosphere of that particular planet was eliminated, rather than us.
We were spared being erased from existence, but suddenly the air we were breathing was gone. Exposed to a sudden vacuum it took me eight agonizing seconds to lose consciousness. Of course, the air from outside the effective zone of the n-gun rushed back in after a short time. That's how I survived, but I was unconscious for a few days from the effects of vacuum exposure.
The second time was when I took a laser through the neck during a siege of an automated enemy emplacement on a large asteroid orbiting a gas giant. The emplacement had heavy weaponry that could seriously damage our fleet, and I was part of the group selected for the 'honor' of 'covertly' 'disabling' it.
To this day I'm not entirely sure how I survived being lasered in the neck through my vacuum suit. If the laser hadn't killed me you would think the vacuum would. Even though I survived, it must have been bad because I woke up weeks later in a regeneration chamber. It took me about nine more days to remember how to swallow.
Ive had dozens of similar experiences, all of them involving a loss of consciousness that lasted anywhere from a day to a month. There in the crater on Tark 5 was the first time I had passed out for less than a minute. When I awoke the first thing I saw through my groggy vision was the automaton that had attacked us. It was a ruined pile of mangled metal smoldering on the crater floor. I grinned as I deliriously thought 'that will teach you to mess with me'.
Then the logical part of my brain awoke, and I realized that Mariv was likely responsible for its destruction. I turned my head weakly to see how my companions had fared, but to my surprise they were gone. Even through my muted hearing I could detect distant high pitched weapons fire. Karen and Mariv were unarmed, so the weapons fire must belong to the enemy. They wouldn't still be firing if Mariv and Karen weren't alive; apparently they had fled.
Part of me was glad they had escaped, and part of me was upset that they had left me for dead. Looking down at my body though, I wasn't too surprised they had arrived at the wrong conclusion. My uniform was scorched and mangled, as was the flesh beneath it. I wasn't dead yet, but I would be soon. The pain was probably so great that my brain couldn't make sense of it, and thus I was spared experiencing most of it. Instead I felt this general sensation of unease, like my whole body was waiting for the pain to start.
After a few moments, one of them crested the lip of the crater and began to slide down the incline, pushing Renaldo's headless corpse aside as it went. It came fully into view as it landed on the crater floor. It was even more hideous than I had expected, sporting a head with thirty eyes pointing in every direction, several arms all holding that unique looking projectile weapon they often carried, and a single tentacle like leg it used to propel itself across the ground with surprising speed and efficiency. It came right up to me, head splitting apart in what I belatedly realized was an attempt at a sneer.
I had heard of this as well. Even as we learned about the enemy, so too did they learn about us. Those reports from early in the war also mentioned their attempts to emulate our speech and facial expressions. One chilling report I had been allowed to read mentioned a particular alien capable of assuming a form that closely resembled that of a man, at least from a distance. Nothing like that had been seen since, but the fact that it was possible for them to appear so much like us was troubling.
So the chill that went down my spine a moment later was because of that thought, not my injuries. The thing's oil black skinned head split open horizontally and I saw teeth and lips and a tongue being formed right in front of my eyes.
"This is the result of negotiating with rocks." it said.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Tark 5: Chapter 2
The climb to the surface was uneventful. Mariv’s lumbering chrome form obscured my view, but I wasn’t looking ahead anyway. The dirt this far into Tark 5 was apparently pretty loose and insubstantial, so i constantly had to check my footing or risk sliding back down the entry cave.
I’m not entirely sure what was keeping the whole cave from collapsing on us, but i knew it had something to do with the planetfall technology. Developed in the early years of the war by necessity, it had remained largely unchanged. With a smirk I realized that it could actually be considered ancient technology. The phrase applied a great deal of mystery and intrigue to something as mundane as entry tech.
It took us about ten minutes to make it to the cave entrance, which was when the swearing began. Like all ancient technology, the entry tech could do amazing things but had flaws and was unreliable at the most inconvenient times. This was one of those times. The entrance had partially caved in. We could see rays of light peeking through gaps at the top of the pile of dirt and rocks in our way, but there was no way we could squeeze through. Not even Karen, who was five foot nothing and wearing that liquid suit that could be adapted to slip through tight spaces if necessary; one of its many capabilities.
Exploding the obstruction would almost certainly collapse the cave. Even if we survived that, Minks would be buried. The personnel transport was capable of burrowing through the ground and taking off again, but it would mean we wouldn’t be able to fall back to it if things went badly. So, there was nothing to do but dig. For that hour we were very happy to have Mariv on the mission. His massive hands and tireless body did most of the work, and before long we had an opening to the surface large enough for all of us to fit.
I exited first to scout. At first glance i thought we had landed on a death planet, for all around me was scorched earth and high ridges of stone, but i quickly realized that Minks had used the entry tech to create an impact crater with defensive ejecta formations, another handy feature of the entry tech. It created a defensible position around the entry cave out of rock reformed in the heat of impact.
Renaldo came out after me, hoisting his AP cannon and running to lay against the natural walls of the crater, weapon pointing out into the land beyond. I watched him closely so I saw when his body stiffened.
"Report Renaldo."
"They’re all around us...oh god."
The words sent a chill down my spine but I was sprinting to get to Renaldo. He was too unstable - The heavy whine of his AP cannon charging rang in the thin air of Tark 5.
"Contact in sights. Permission to fire!"
"Denied! Do not-"
Day turned to night and back to day again as Renaldo let loose with the AP cannon on his unseen target. Detonations and shrieks from inhuman throats echoed back to us and I cringed in shock. What had he done?
With only the telltale whistle we had all been trained to listen for in basic as warning, Renaldo’s head was expertly bisected by a concentrated beam of energy from behind. As his head became a fountain of gore I spun around to look for the sniper. To my dismay there was a high ridge overlooking our entry crater. About eighty percent of the crater was visible from the sniper’s position.
"Back to the cave entrance!" I screamed and Karen snapped out of her horror at Renaldo's fate just in time to avoid another scything beam of concentrated flame. She slipped behind Mariv, who had taken up a defensive posture at the cave entrance. His chrome exterior now shined with shifting colors from every part of the visible spectrum. His exterior would now deflect energy based weaponry. For a time.
I was still far from the entrance but in full sprint. A third flash of energy shot out from the ridge above, boring a hole through the muscles of my thigh. The pain was shocking and I skidded into the dirt a few feet away from Mariv. He quickly extended his metal arm to grab me by the shirt and pulled me out of the line of fire as if I weighed nothing at all.
Lances of energy began to rain down on the crater floor in front of us, slowly turning the hardened rock floor back into molten slag. I could hear them impacting on the rock face that shielded us from the snipers as well. The pain in my leg was horrific, but i had taken a wound like that before. The intense heat of the weapon had cauterized the wound, so bleeding out wasn’t a problem, but walking was out of the question.
I heard a metallic snap and a short whine. I looked over at Karen, dread filling me, and with good reason. She had detached a small cylindrical device from her battle suit and was fidgeting with the knobs on it. My eyes shot wide open.
"How the fuck will that help us?" I screamed. Mariv turned to look at her as well.
"Nothing will help us. Renaldo had our only weapon. We need to take as many of them with us as possible." she replied tensely.
"You think that kind of shit actually matters? Did you just get out of basic yesterday?" Her face set stubbornly as I spoke the words, and I knew she wasn’t thinking clearly.
"Mariv." I said, and the Mason wheeled his mechanical body in one swift motion, plucking the device from her hands faster than she could react. Her mouth opened to issue an angry protest, but before she could even get a word out a series of wires and tools fanned out from Mariv’s wrists like a Swiss army knife and went to work on the cylindrical device.
"Careful." I stressed, but Mariv ignored me. The mason didn’t need a reminder. As he worked successive metal casings of the device were stripped away, and the circuitry disabled. After a moment the disassembled pieces were clinking loosely in his hand like change, and he casually threw them out into the exposed crater. Energy blasts from the snipers above hammered down on the fragments.
"That was stupid!" Karen snapped.
"Oh sure. Much more stupid than traveling to a planet on a critical diplomatic mission and turning a quarter of it into a sea of radioactive fire within a half hour of arriving. Why the fuck did you even bring that thing?"
"Because of shit like this!" she yelled back, sweeping her hand out to the exposed crater floor still being hammered by weapons fire.
I opened my mouth to respond, but at that moment the weapons fire ceased and a device the size of a soccer ball rolled down the crater walls, stopping a few feet from us. My heart leapt into my throat as my eyes fixed on the automaton. Mariv was moving, but even he wouldn’t be fast enough. As we watched helplessly the mechanical device unfurled, revealing its array of anti-personnel weaponry. Shocks and blasts of light bombarded our bodies as the thing delivered its horrific payload. A wave of detonative force lifted me up and threw me against the stone cave wall. I felt an impact and heard something in my torso give. Pain flooded into my mind, and consciousness fled.
I’m not entirely sure what was keeping the whole cave from collapsing on us, but i knew it had something to do with the planetfall technology. Developed in the early years of the war by necessity, it had remained largely unchanged. With a smirk I realized that it could actually be considered ancient technology. The phrase applied a great deal of mystery and intrigue to something as mundane as entry tech.
It took us about ten minutes to make it to the cave entrance, which was when the swearing began. Like all ancient technology, the entry tech could do amazing things but had flaws and was unreliable at the most inconvenient times. This was one of those times. The entrance had partially caved in. We could see rays of light peeking through gaps at the top of the pile of dirt and rocks in our way, but there was no way we could squeeze through. Not even Karen, who was five foot nothing and wearing that liquid suit that could be adapted to slip through tight spaces if necessary; one of its many capabilities.
Exploding the obstruction would almost certainly collapse the cave. Even if we survived that, Minks would be buried. The personnel transport was capable of burrowing through the ground and taking off again, but it would mean we wouldn’t be able to fall back to it if things went badly. So, there was nothing to do but dig. For that hour we were very happy to have Mariv on the mission. His massive hands and tireless body did most of the work, and before long we had an opening to the surface large enough for all of us to fit.
I exited first to scout. At first glance i thought we had landed on a death planet, for all around me was scorched earth and high ridges of stone, but i quickly realized that Minks had used the entry tech to create an impact crater with defensive ejecta formations, another handy feature of the entry tech. It created a defensible position around the entry cave out of rock reformed in the heat of impact.
Renaldo came out after me, hoisting his AP cannon and running to lay against the natural walls of the crater, weapon pointing out into the land beyond. I watched him closely so I saw when his body stiffened.
"Report Renaldo."
"They’re all around us...oh god."
The words sent a chill down my spine but I was sprinting to get to Renaldo. He was too unstable - The heavy whine of his AP cannon charging rang in the thin air of Tark 5.
"Contact in sights. Permission to fire!"
"Denied! Do not-"
Day turned to night and back to day again as Renaldo let loose with the AP cannon on his unseen target. Detonations and shrieks from inhuman throats echoed back to us and I cringed in shock. What had he done?
With only the telltale whistle we had all been trained to listen for in basic as warning, Renaldo’s head was expertly bisected by a concentrated beam of energy from behind. As his head became a fountain of gore I spun around to look for the sniper. To my dismay there was a high ridge overlooking our entry crater. About eighty percent of the crater was visible from the sniper’s position.
"Back to the cave entrance!" I screamed and Karen snapped out of her horror at Renaldo's fate just in time to avoid another scything beam of concentrated flame. She slipped behind Mariv, who had taken up a defensive posture at the cave entrance. His chrome exterior now shined with shifting colors from every part of the visible spectrum. His exterior would now deflect energy based weaponry. For a time.
I was still far from the entrance but in full sprint. A third flash of energy shot out from the ridge above, boring a hole through the muscles of my thigh. The pain was shocking and I skidded into the dirt a few feet away from Mariv. He quickly extended his metal arm to grab me by the shirt and pulled me out of the line of fire as if I weighed nothing at all.
Lances of energy began to rain down on the crater floor in front of us, slowly turning the hardened rock floor back into molten slag. I could hear them impacting on the rock face that shielded us from the snipers as well. The pain in my leg was horrific, but i had taken a wound like that before. The intense heat of the weapon had cauterized the wound, so bleeding out wasn’t a problem, but walking was out of the question.
I heard a metallic snap and a short whine. I looked over at Karen, dread filling me, and with good reason. She had detached a small cylindrical device from her battle suit and was fidgeting with the knobs on it. My eyes shot wide open.
"How the fuck will that help us?" I screamed. Mariv turned to look at her as well.
"Nothing will help us. Renaldo had our only weapon. We need to take as many of them with us as possible." she replied tensely.
"You think that kind of shit actually matters? Did you just get out of basic yesterday?" Her face set stubbornly as I spoke the words, and I knew she wasn’t thinking clearly.
"Mariv." I said, and the Mason wheeled his mechanical body in one swift motion, plucking the device from her hands faster than she could react. Her mouth opened to issue an angry protest, but before she could even get a word out a series of wires and tools fanned out from Mariv’s wrists like a Swiss army knife and went to work on the cylindrical device.
"Careful." I stressed, but Mariv ignored me. The mason didn’t need a reminder. As he worked successive metal casings of the device were stripped away, and the circuitry disabled. After a moment the disassembled pieces were clinking loosely in his hand like change, and he casually threw them out into the exposed crater. Energy blasts from the snipers above hammered down on the fragments.
"That was stupid!" Karen snapped.
"Oh sure. Much more stupid than traveling to a planet on a critical diplomatic mission and turning a quarter of it into a sea of radioactive fire within a half hour of arriving. Why the fuck did you even bring that thing?"
"Because of shit like this!" she yelled back, sweeping her hand out to the exposed crater floor still being hammered by weapons fire.
I opened my mouth to respond, but at that moment the weapons fire ceased and a device the size of a soccer ball rolled down the crater walls, stopping a few feet from us. My heart leapt into my throat as my eyes fixed on the automaton. Mariv was moving, but even he wouldn’t be fast enough. As we watched helplessly the mechanical device unfurled, revealing its array of anti-personnel weaponry. Shocks and blasts of light bombarded our bodies as the thing delivered its horrific payload. A wave of detonative force lifted me up and threw me against the stone cave wall. I felt an impact and heard something in my torso give. Pain flooded into my mind, and consciousness fled.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Tark 5: Chapter 1
I could see Renaldo fidgeting nervously with his AP cannon as the personnel shuttle accelerated towards the blue sphere of Tark 5. I couldnt really blame him. He had probably approached worlds controlled by the enemy many times before, but that was always in combat conditions with the element of surprise or with a fleet of human battleships surrounding him. This was different. We were expected.
This time the only friendly ship nearby was the Alimony, and it was just a tiny spec glinting in the rear view screen now. All eyes were focused on the forward facing screen anyway. As Tark 5 grew larger and larger we could see the enemy vessels dotting the blue disk as their orbits crossed between us and the planet. The view suddenly snapped to tactical mode, and we found ourselves looking at a blown up image of a large enemy ship. Red lines circumscribed the image as the surface was automatically analyzed and potential tactical or structural weaknesses were pointed out by flashing triangular target symbols.
To call it a ship was a misnomer, really. Enemy vessels followed no particular configuration. Many didn't even have straight lines or curves or conform to the concept of geometry in any way. Each vessel was entirely different from the next, and the various sections that served any given function necessary to conduct deep space combat could be placed anywhere within its malformed seeming, lumpy exterior.
And yet, each of their vessels was effective in battle, defying human logic. The one we were now all staring at could not be classified, for the enemy ships are inherently unclassifiable, but judging by its size and the number of protrusions on its rumpled hull it was at least a match for the Alimony. The Alimony was a mid range capital ship. Properly equipped it could spearhead a small invasion force on an enemy solar system that was moderately fortified. Given time it was also capable of reducing an otherwise habitable planet to a smoldering ruin through orbital bombardment. In short, it was one of our larger and more capable vessels.
The rule of thumb with assessing enemy ships was size and nastiness. I know, that last one sounds ridiculous, but its proven to be a valid indicator of enemy potential in nearly every single engagement that has ever occurred between us. Enemy ships with superior combat potency looked like it. Unlike our ships that come off a line and all look the same for the most part, theirs seemed to evolve with experience somehow. Any soldier that had seen a few battles could tell the difference between a new enemy vessel and a veteran vessel with just a glance.
What we were seeing was the latter, and it was only one of about thirty vessels just as dangerous looking in orbit. As the tactical mode slowly switched from ship to ship we could see them turning to scan us. I quickly got up and walked to the pilot station.
"Tactical mode off, Minks."
Minks stared at me like I was out of my mind for a second, but then he remembered the special mission we were on and punched in the code to stop our tactical scans. I couldn't blame Minks any more than I could blame Renaldo. Both men were fighting about four thousand years of military procedure. We all were. If this were any other time or place we would be trying to beat it back to the Alimony, and if the Alimony weren't there we would be trying to figure out how to sell our lives for the maximum amount of damage to an enemy ship.
Not that we could do much in this little clunker. Any one of those vessels could crack our chassis like an egg with just one hit from a minor anti-assault turret. The capital class weapons it sported would molecularize us. Even if we weren't blasted back to our basic elements, we still wouldn't do much more than blacken the thick hull of any one of those beasts.
Every person on board with military experience was thinking those thoughts as well. From a tactical standpoint our situation was hopeless. It was a good thing this wasn't a tactical mission.
As I meandered back to my seat I grinned and shook my head. Diplomacy. The first diplomatic mission into enemy held territory...ever. It was going to be a challenge. Even after four millennium of nonstop war we barely knew anything about them. Oh we knew what they looked like. Another misnomer, we knew what to expect when we looked at one of them. Just like their ships, no two of them were exactly alike. Many of them varied wildly from one another. Early reports from back when the war was only a few centuries old indicated that some would have a single appendage which they used for everything, while others would have twenty appendages. Others would have none but grow them on the spot for whatever task presented itself and after the task was completed the limb would be reabsorbed or fall away and rot. Heads, arms, legs, eyes. They all seemed to be optional or transient for these creatures.
None had been seen actually alive in generations. Their tactics had changed about three centuries ago. Instead of invading a world they would now destroy it from orbit every time. That sort of genocidal approach to warfare had shaken us briefly, but humans adjust to horrible things pretty well. Their new tactic gained them nothing. For the most part we split the galaxy with the enemy, and the combat lines were right down the middle all the way through the eye of the milky way, except for a sliver of the galaxy in quadrant 4 that belonged to the Bvari. We knew nothing about them. Even their name was something we made up on our own. Their space was impenetrable, and no ship that we had sent in had ever returned.
"Tactical lock!" Minks yelled suddenly and everyone's heart leapt into their throats. One of the behemoths orbiting Tark 5 had locked weapon scanners on us.
"Maintain course!" i snapped and this time Minks showed me the whites of his eyes. Once again, I couldn't blame him. He wasn't an officer so he wouldn't know that enemy vessels only had one kind of scanning that served all purposes. I was betting that they weren't going to blow us out of the sky after going through so much trouble inviting us here. We were highly trained and valuable personnel, but the human race now numbered in the quintillions. We would be easily replaced.
A moment later my gamble paid off as minks confirmed they had ceased their scanning.
"Tark 5 Exosphere contact in three minutes." Minks announced. As we watched, several enemy craft fired their massive engines to alter their orbit, opening a path for our shuttle to pass through. I quickly punched in a remote command and patched it up to Minks. I guess Minks was done being startled for now because he altered course without reaction.
The course I had laid out brought us to within 50 spacial units of one of the enemy vessels. I had always wanted to see one up close like this. As we drew alongside it, i could see deep flaws and irregularities in the hull, and it almost seemed as if weapon systems had smashed through the ship's carapace from within rather than being attached outside during construction. It was fascinating to look upon. How could such a seemingly flawed ship be more than a match for our top of the line battle cruisers? I stared and pondered, until the answer came to me when we passed in front of the ship.
Every enemy vessel carried a large scale weapon relative to its size and it often protruded out the front, or at least the direction the ship usually had facing forward while moving. The weapon was a technology we had not yet been able to replicate, and it was devastating. Fleet soldiers had taken to calling it the negative cannon, or N-gun for short. When fired, the n-gun would create an energy emission in stream form, like a laser. Anything that stream enveloped would cease to exist. It wasn't vaporized or pounded into miniature black holes or any other type of matter conversion. It simply wasn't there anymore. It violated the law of conservation of mass, and drove scientists up the wall. The mouth of this ship's n-gun was about 45 times wider than the length of our entire shuttle. The sight was intimidating to say the least.
"They trying to intimidate us or something?" asked Karen with a snort.
"If they are it fucking worked!" Renaldo replied shakily.
Karen looked like she was about to say something derisive back, but at that moment we felt a faint rumble and the craft shook a bit. I looked back to the window and saw that we had passed the enemy ship entirely.
"Exosphere contact." announced Minks. My heart started pounding, an automatic reaction to that phrase. I had been in twelve separate planetfalls, and every time the words "exosphere contact" meant we were scant minutes from battle. I sat down and strapped myself into my seat, then grabbed my wrist to measure my pulse. Taking my own pulse always helped me calm down. I guess it was an easy way to prove to myself that I was still alive.
I looked around the small shuttle cabin at my colleagues. Karen had just broken the tab on her armor pellet and the liquid was spreading across her chest. Soon, it would envelop her completely and form a tough, functional combat suit. She leaned her head back, black mane hanging over the headrest and eyes focused on the ceiling, waiting.
Renaldo was checking the interlocks on his AP cannon for about the twentieth time since Tark 5 entered visual range fifteen minutes ago. I found myself wondering why he had been assigned to this mission. He was obviously distressed by our proximity to the enemy, and if this mission was going to succeed we would be getting a lot closer. If he cracked and the mission failed, humanity would be blamed. All future diplomacy would be useless. Perhaps that was the idea...
The final member of the descent group stood next to me, locked into the wall. Mariv was ten feet tall and massively bulky. His visual scanner made slow arcs across the opening in his head as he waited for us to touch down. Mariv was both our insurance on this mission and a representative of the Masons, an artificial race we had created countless years ago. They had been staunch allies in the war against the enemy, and it was only right that they be part of the negotiations. Metallic parts quietly clicked and whirred within his massive chest structure and his metallic limbs occasionally flexed and twitched with automatic self diagnostics. Since he had trudged aboard and introduced himself to the team he hadn't moved or spoken.
Long ago our ancestors might have found this stone-like reticence disturbing, but our two races now understood each other very well. I had never been a tech-head - someone who made it a big part of their lives to understand and love the masons - but I was perceptive enough with the machine beings to know that in reality, he was just shy. Long years of discipline allowed me to quash any physical reactions that might be triggered by that realization. He might be able to detect it and the last thing we needed was an angry or embarrassed mason on this mission.
An alarm sounded in the cabin, and everyone reflexively put their backs straight to their seats as a cage of metal restraining bars lowered down on each of us. Small foamy bags expanded from nodules in the bars as they inflated automatically. This was the most annoying part about planetfall. The foamy bags absorbed something like 99.5% of all impact force, making death upon initial impact very unlikely, but being encased in such a manner was amazingly uncomfortable. Anyone with claustrophobia would never be able to stand it.
The heat in the cabin began to rise, a telltale sign that we were now a blazing meteorite in the skies of Tark 5. Any enemy creatures that had bothered to spawn eyes would see us coming from miles away.
"Thirty seconds to surface impact" said Minks over the internal comm channel. I was perspiring freely now from the heat, and my heart was crashing nervously in my chest. I wondered how the others were handling the unfamiliar conditions of this planetfall, but the foam bags had expanded to block my field of vision.
"Fifteen seconds, inboar retros engaged. Grav plating off. Celestial navigation mainframe disengaged. Planetoid orientation guadance system on. Ten seconds."
When the retros fired we were all smashed down into our seats. When the nav mainframe was turned off the shuttle began to spin like a top for a half as second until being jolted back into alignment by the orientation system. This part of planetfall was my least favorite aside from disembarking. The entire act of planetfall was becoming my least favorite thing to do. The only positive side about this particular planetfall was that there was an even chance we wouldn't be shot at when we landed.
Minks' garbled contact warning was cut off by a massive jolt and a deafening grinding sound as the shuttle smashed into the rocky surface of Tark 5 and kept going. If we were lucky our entry angle would leave a solid cave behind the shuttle at a gentle incline to the surface. If we weren't lucky there was always the climbing gear.
Without warning the shuttle ground to a halt and the foam bags retracted as the metal cages lifted off us. A quick glance at all faces showed that they had all enjoyed the planetfall as much as I had. Karen was rubbing her neck furiously and Renaldo's eyes were darting every which way, even though there was nothing to see yet. Mariv remained as he had since we left the alimony, except that the light from the optical visor on his head had switched from green to red. It didn't seem like much, but if Mariv had been human he would be even more fidgety than Renaldo.
"Pop the top Minks" I said, and he pressed a series of buttons on a control pad to his left. With a groan the entire back of the shuttle slid open, revealing the entry cave we had created. Thankfully climbing gear would not be required, but the angle was a bit steep. I frowned at our moderately bad luck before ordering everyone to start ascending. As Mariv stomped past me I turned and ordered Minks to seal up the pod behind us and not to open it for anyone except me. He gave me his "no shit" look before closing the door in my face.
This time the only friendly ship nearby was the Alimony, and it was just a tiny spec glinting in the rear view screen now. All eyes were focused on the forward facing screen anyway. As Tark 5 grew larger and larger we could see the enemy vessels dotting the blue disk as their orbits crossed between us and the planet. The view suddenly snapped to tactical mode, and we found ourselves looking at a blown up image of a large enemy ship. Red lines circumscribed the image as the surface was automatically analyzed and potential tactical or structural weaknesses were pointed out by flashing triangular target symbols.
To call it a ship was a misnomer, really. Enemy vessels followed no particular configuration. Many didn't even have straight lines or curves or conform to the concept of geometry in any way. Each vessel was entirely different from the next, and the various sections that served any given function necessary to conduct deep space combat could be placed anywhere within its malformed seeming, lumpy exterior.
And yet, each of their vessels was effective in battle, defying human logic. The one we were now all staring at could not be classified, for the enemy ships are inherently unclassifiable, but judging by its size and the number of protrusions on its rumpled hull it was at least a match for the Alimony. The Alimony was a mid range capital ship. Properly equipped it could spearhead a small invasion force on an enemy solar system that was moderately fortified. Given time it was also capable of reducing an otherwise habitable planet to a smoldering ruin through orbital bombardment. In short, it was one of our larger and more capable vessels.
The rule of thumb with assessing enemy ships was size and nastiness. I know, that last one sounds ridiculous, but its proven to be a valid indicator of enemy potential in nearly every single engagement that has ever occurred between us. Enemy ships with superior combat potency looked like it. Unlike our ships that come off a line and all look the same for the most part, theirs seemed to evolve with experience somehow. Any soldier that had seen a few battles could tell the difference between a new enemy vessel and a veteran vessel with just a glance.
What we were seeing was the latter, and it was only one of about thirty vessels just as dangerous looking in orbit. As the tactical mode slowly switched from ship to ship we could see them turning to scan us. I quickly got up and walked to the pilot station.
"Tactical mode off, Minks."
Minks stared at me like I was out of my mind for a second, but then he remembered the special mission we were on and punched in the code to stop our tactical scans. I couldn't blame Minks any more than I could blame Renaldo. Both men were fighting about four thousand years of military procedure. We all were. If this were any other time or place we would be trying to beat it back to the Alimony, and if the Alimony weren't there we would be trying to figure out how to sell our lives for the maximum amount of damage to an enemy ship.
Not that we could do much in this little clunker. Any one of those vessels could crack our chassis like an egg with just one hit from a minor anti-assault turret. The capital class weapons it sported would molecularize us. Even if we weren't blasted back to our basic elements, we still wouldn't do much more than blacken the thick hull of any one of those beasts.
Every person on board with military experience was thinking those thoughts as well. From a tactical standpoint our situation was hopeless. It was a good thing this wasn't a tactical mission.
As I meandered back to my seat I grinned and shook my head. Diplomacy. The first diplomatic mission into enemy held territory...ever. It was going to be a challenge. Even after four millennium of nonstop war we barely knew anything about them. Oh we knew what they looked like. Another misnomer, we knew what to expect when we looked at one of them. Just like their ships, no two of them were exactly alike. Many of them varied wildly from one another. Early reports from back when the war was only a few centuries old indicated that some would have a single appendage which they used for everything, while others would have twenty appendages. Others would have none but grow them on the spot for whatever task presented itself and after the task was completed the limb would be reabsorbed or fall away and rot. Heads, arms, legs, eyes. They all seemed to be optional or transient for these creatures.
None had been seen actually alive in generations. Their tactics had changed about three centuries ago. Instead of invading a world they would now destroy it from orbit every time. That sort of genocidal approach to warfare had shaken us briefly, but humans adjust to horrible things pretty well. Their new tactic gained them nothing. For the most part we split the galaxy with the enemy, and the combat lines were right down the middle all the way through the eye of the milky way, except for a sliver of the galaxy in quadrant 4 that belonged to the Bvari. We knew nothing about them. Even their name was something we made up on our own. Their space was impenetrable, and no ship that we had sent in had ever returned.
"Tactical lock!" Minks yelled suddenly and everyone's heart leapt into their throats. One of the behemoths orbiting Tark 5 had locked weapon scanners on us.
"Maintain course!" i snapped and this time Minks showed me the whites of his eyes. Once again, I couldn't blame him. He wasn't an officer so he wouldn't know that enemy vessels only had one kind of scanning that served all purposes. I was betting that they weren't going to blow us out of the sky after going through so much trouble inviting us here. We were highly trained and valuable personnel, but the human race now numbered in the quintillions. We would be easily replaced.
A moment later my gamble paid off as minks confirmed they had ceased their scanning.
"Tark 5 Exosphere contact in three minutes." Minks announced. As we watched, several enemy craft fired their massive engines to alter their orbit, opening a path for our shuttle to pass through. I quickly punched in a remote command and patched it up to Minks. I guess Minks was done being startled for now because he altered course without reaction.
The course I had laid out brought us to within 50 spacial units of one of the enemy vessels. I had always wanted to see one up close like this. As we drew alongside it, i could see deep flaws and irregularities in the hull, and it almost seemed as if weapon systems had smashed through the ship's carapace from within rather than being attached outside during construction. It was fascinating to look upon. How could such a seemingly flawed ship be more than a match for our top of the line battle cruisers? I stared and pondered, until the answer came to me when we passed in front of the ship.
Every enemy vessel carried a large scale weapon relative to its size and it often protruded out the front, or at least the direction the ship usually had facing forward while moving. The weapon was a technology we had not yet been able to replicate, and it was devastating. Fleet soldiers had taken to calling it the negative cannon, or N-gun for short. When fired, the n-gun would create an energy emission in stream form, like a laser. Anything that stream enveloped would cease to exist. It wasn't vaporized or pounded into miniature black holes or any other type of matter conversion. It simply wasn't there anymore. It violated the law of conservation of mass, and drove scientists up the wall. The mouth of this ship's n-gun was about 45 times wider than the length of our entire shuttle. The sight was intimidating to say the least.
"They trying to intimidate us or something?" asked Karen with a snort.
"If they are it fucking worked!" Renaldo replied shakily.
Karen looked like she was about to say something derisive back, but at that moment we felt a faint rumble and the craft shook a bit. I looked back to the window and saw that we had passed the enemy ship entirely.
"Exosphere contact." announced Minks. My heart started pounding, an automatic reaction to that phrase. I had been in twelve separate planetfalls, and every time the words "exosphere contact" meant we were scant minutes from battle. I sat down and strapped myself into my seat, then grabbed my wrist to measure my pulse. Taking my own pulse always helped me calm down. I guess it was an easy way to prove to myself that I was still alive.
I looked around the small shuttle cabin at my colleagues. Karen had just broken the tab on her armor pellet and the liquid was spreading across her chest. Soon, it would envelop her completely and form a tough, functional combat suit. She leaned her head back, black mane hanging over the headrest and eyes focused on the ceiling, waiting.
Renaldo was checking the interlocks on his AP cannon for about the twentieth time since Tark 5 entered visual range fifteen minutes ago. I found myself wondering why he had been assigned to this mission. He was obviously distressed by our proximity to the enemy, and if this mission was going to succeed we would be getting a lot closer. If he cracked and the mission failed, humanity would be blamed. All future diplomacy would be useless. Perhaps that was the idea...
The final member of the descent group stood next to me, locked into the wall. Mariv was ten feet tall and massively bulky. His visual scanner made slow arcs across the opening in his head as he waited for us to touch down. Mariv was both our insurance on this mission and a representative of the Masons, an artificial race we had created countless years ago. They had been staunch allies in the war against the enemy, and it was only right that they be part of the negotiations. Metallic parts quietly clicked and whirred within his massive chest structure and his metallic limbs occasionally flexed and twitched with automatic self diagnostics. Since he had trudged aboard and introduced himself to the team he hadn't moved or spoken.
Long ago our ancestors might have found this stone-like reticence disturbing, but our two races now understood each other very well. I had never been a tech-head - someone who made it a big part of their lives to understand and love the masons - but I was perceptive enough with the machine beings to know that in reality, he was just shy. Long years of discipline allowed me to quash any physical reactions that might be triggered by that realization. He might be able to detect it and the last thing we needed was an angry or embarrassed mason on this mission.
An alarm sounded in the cabin, and everyone reflexively put their backs straight to their seats as a cage of metal restraining bars lowered down on each of us. Small foamy bags expanded from nodules in the bars as they inflated automatically. This was the most annoying part about planetfall. The foamy bags absorbed something like 99.5% of all impact force, making death upon initial impact very unlikely, but being encased in such a manner was amazingly uncomfortable. Anyone with claustrophobia would never be able to stand it.
The heat in the cabin began to rise, a telltale sign that we were now a blazing meteorite in the skies of Tark 5. Any enemy creatures that had bothered to spawn eyes would see us coming from miles away.
"Thirty seconds to surface impact" said Minks over the internal comm channel. I was perspiring freely now from the heat, and my heart was crashing nervously in my chest. I wondered how the others were handling the unfamiliar conditions of this planetfall, but the foam bags had expanded to block my field of vision.
"Fifteen seconds, inboar retros engaged. Grav plating off. Celestial navigation mainframe disengaged. Planetoid orientation guadance system on. Ten seconds."
When the retros fired we were all smashed down into our seats. When the nav mainframe was turned off the shuttle began to spin like a top for a half as second until being jolted back into alignment by the orientation system. This part of planetfall was my least favorite aside from disembarking. The entire act of planetfall was becoming my least favorite thing to do. The only positive side about this particular planetfall was that there was an even chance we wouldn't be shot at when we landed.
Minks' garbled contact warning was cut off by a massive jolt and a deafening grinding sound as the shuttle smashed into the rocky surface of Tark 5 and kept going. If we were lucky our entry angle would leave a solid cave behind the shuttle at a gentle incline to the surface. If we weren't lucky there was always the climbing gear.
Without warning the shuttle ground to a halt and the foam bags retracted as the metal cages lifted off us. A quick glance at all faces showed that they had all enjoyed the planetfall as much as I had. Karen was rubbing her neck furiously and Renaldo's eyes were darting every which way, even though there was nothing to see yet. Mariv remained as he had since we left the alimony, except that the light from the optical visor on his head had switched from green to red. It didn't seem like much, but if Mariv had been human he would be even more fidgety than Renaldo.
"Pop the top Minks" I said, and he pressed a series of buttons on a control pad to his left. With a groan the entire back of the shuttle slid open, revealing the entry cave we had created. Thankfully climbing gear would not be required, but the angle was a bit steep. I frowned at our moderately bad luck before ordering everyone to start ascending. As Mariv stomped past me I turned and ordered Minks to seal up the pod behind us and not to open it for anyone except me. He gave me his "no shit" look before closing the door in my face.
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