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.