Tales from the Service: The Encirclement on Morioncruz

2951-08-30 – Tales from the Service: The Encirclement on Morioncruz

Though there has not been much datacast media activity regarding the place, Fifth Fleet has announced that an attempt to liberate the minor colony of Morioncruz is ongoing. Apparently the force sent to this world is considerable, mainly consisting of fast cruiser forces and some of the fastest troop transports available.

The battle line of Fifth Fleet is, it seems, not present; it remains at Maribel, ready to pounce on Håkøya should the enemy respond to the battle at Morioncruz in force. Admiral Venturi apparently does not fear that Maribel is in significant danger of the same sort of attack, but using only the fastest forces available is probably also a hedge against this eventuality.

We have gotten a few accounts, some extremely brief, from the mainly FVDA force deployed to Morioncruz. The battle on the ground has been difficult, but not, apparently, very bloody, at least not so far; the Incarnation troops there are reported to be numerous and well supplied but not well dug in, suggesting the world has been a sort of barracks depot for troops that were preparing for offensive action. This account, which will take at least two weeks to bring to this feed, is of a minor action at the fringes of the main battle area, one of probably dozens of such attacks and counter-attacks of similar scale.

Lukas Kaufmann placed his scope’s triangular reticle over the narrow doorway in the side of the landing field control tower half a kilometer away, then sent a double click on the squad comms channel to indicate that he was in position, ready to cover the advance of his compatriots. If any Incarnation personnel came out of that structure, they’d be walking into a blast of electrified plasma courtesy of his arc rifle.

A moment later, an answering chirp on the same channel announced that the advance was starting. Somewhere ahead of Lukas, down near the bottom of the ridge on which he lay, a dozen FVDA soldiers would be clambering through the underbrush at the edge of the cleared landing field to begin creeping toward the tower, its associated sensor station, and a nearby maintenance hangar.

“Be advised, Orbital reports we’ve got inbound enemy air.” Lieutenant Jansour’s thick Memoire de Paix accent filtered into Lukas’s ear through his comms earpiece. “Probably Siroccos coming back from the main event. Stay under cover until they’re on the ground.”

“How long do we have, Lieutenant?” Sergeant Calvo, leading the group tasked with taking the tower, sounded like he was whispering into his comms pickup. Though there probably was no chance of him being overheard from more than a hundred meters away, Lukas didn’t blame the sergeant for being cautions anyway; Incarnation sensor equipment was notoriously good.

“Ten minutes or less, Mr. Calvo. Abort your approach.”

“Acknowledged. Staying low.” Calvo didn’t sound happy about that, and Lukas didn’t blame his compatriot. If the Siroccos spotted any of the attackers on their landing approaches, they could sweep the area with their strafing lasers, putting a stop to the attack long enough for reinforcements to be pulled off the main battle line to thwart this behind-the-lines expedition.

Lukas, knowing that he was no longer required to cover the tower door, swept his scope across the field toward the maintenance hangar. He was just in time to see its main doors creeping open to permit a cavalcade of tracked and wheeled vehicles to spill out onto the apron, each filled with Nate technicians and their equipment. If Calvo had tried to go ahead with his attack, he and his men would have run right into this group and been outnumbered; even technicians, this close to the front line, would keep their laser rifles close at hand.

“Movement by the hangar.” Lukas reported. “Multiple vehicles. Looks like the maintenance team.”

Lieutenant Jansour was quick to respond. “Hold fire, Mr. Kaufmann.”

Lukas winced; the lieutenant should know he didn’t need to be told. Firing on the maintenance vehicles now would ruin the surprise of the attack, and that was the whole point. If possible, the objective was to take as much of the base’s equipment and garrison intact; once the sensor station was disabled, a group of transports would fly in to haul it all away. Headquarters might even be able to find pilots for a few Siroccos, if those managed to make it into FVDA hands intact. Even if the garrison managed to destroy them, waiting until the aircraft were on the ground would all but ensure they were removed from the battle for good.

Lukas watched the maintenance team lining up their vehicles until the deep-throated rumble of incoming Siroccos began to echo off the hills on every side. The sound sent chills down his spine. He had been under Sirocco attack on Mereena, and again at Glen Moore, and this time, he was glad to be out of sight at the ridgeline, rather than down with the rest of the squad.

Swinging the arc rifle up and along the opposite ridge, Lukas scanned for the incoming aircraft. Three huge sweep-wing vehicles came into view before long, flying low against the hills in a line. A thin trail of gray smoke trailed behind the second of the three, and the third was flying slightly askew, likely as a result of superficial damage to one of its wings.

Valero, positioned several hundred meters down the ridge with a better shot toward the hangar, beat Lukas to reporting their arrival. “Siroccos in sight.” Valero’s drawling Frontier twang carried a note of dry humor. “Two of ‘em are damaged. Looks like they’ve been having a bad day out there.”

Lukas hoped that was true. The fate of Morioncruz had still been very much in doubt when their group had set off on its long trek around to attack the enemy rear, and they had heard very little from Orbital about the progress of the greater battle. Though the world was hardly among the Frontier’s most populous or prominent planets, it would do everyone good to take one back from Nate for a change. If the hated Siroccos couldn’t sweep the battlefield without being shot half to pieces, things were not going the way Nate wanted.

“Make sure your men are out of sight, Sergeant Calvo.” Jansour’s warning was probably once again not necessary, but like Lukas himself, Calvo had the good sense to keep quiet. Jansour was nervous; they all were.

The first of the aircraft, the undamaged one, made a low pass over the landing field while the one trailing smoke slowed and deployed its landing skids. The huge aircraft came to a shuddering halt just in front of the maintenance men, some of whom were already swarming forward toward it before it even touched down. A moment later, the other damaged Sirocco came down near the first, resting at a weird angle on a half-deployed landing skid below the damaged wing. It, too, was soon the object of the technicians’ attention.

The final aircraft, as if suspicious that its enemies lay in wait not far away, circled the field twice more before bringing itself in for a far more graceful landing close to the tower. As soon as it was down, its belly hatch disgorged a pair of men who dashed into the control tower.

“The last one’s keeping his damned engines warm.” Calvo grumbled. “If we go now, he’s going to be airborne before we get twenty meters.”

Lukas scanned the Sirocco with his rifle scope. Like most Incarnation vehicles, there were no clear viewpanels on its body; the crew could see out only with the aid of the cameras studding its fuselage and wings. A hit on most of the aircraft would leave only superficial damage. He had a decent angle on the port-side engine air intake, but there was no telling what a shot with an arc rifle would do there. It might do nothing, or it might blow up the engine, and that close to the tower, an explosion might wreck most of what they hoped to capture.

“If we wait for those two to get back, he’ll be airborne anyway, Sergeant.” Lukas gritted his teeth. They hadn’t brought much in terms of heavy weaponry, certainly nothing that could take down an airborne Sirocco before it cut them to pieces. The crew of that aircraft could easily foil the whole raid, if they reacted fast enough.

 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Cover Crop

2951-08-16 – Tales from the Inbox: The Cover Crop

Evgeny sat with his back to the reassuring bulk of a proper Reach-manufactured tilling machine and called up the farmstead’s network on his wristcuff to check what was still functional. The debris had stopped falling, but he could still hear occasional fizzling and sparking sounds from somewhere in the chaos that had been his experimental plot, along with wet squelching sounds and viscous dripping.

To his dismay, Evgeny saw that four of the six Incarnation crop-tender machines he’d acquired at great expense were not even responding on the network. The status readouts for the other two were a cascade of orange and red indicators, along with a fast-flowing stream of binary data that appeared on the display only as a block of wavy static. Though the makers of the machines spoke a variant of Anglo-Terran, he could make nothing of the labels associated with these readouts.

Muttering a resigned curse, Evgeny looked up from his wrist, only to have his attention transfixed by the beams of light filtering into the shed from dozens of jagged holes, some of them big enough to put his fist through.

The blast had riddled his little pre-fab cabin, too, but Evgeny decided he would prefer to be sitting inside and drinking coffee while he considered his situation. After peering at the smashed plant-beds one more time, he clambered to his feet and, giving the pulped plants a wide berth, picked his way back to where he’d started his eventful morning.

Though his comms belt-pack was buzzing insistently, Evgeny collected a cup of coffee from the thankfully-undamaged food-fab unit, then brought it back out onto the balcony to look down at the center of the blast from a new angle. There was nothing left of the cabbage-like growths that had exploded. Only the stubby base of their tender machine remained, its internals dangling out of the shattered stump. Only a few centimeters of vine remained above the soil, and each severed end leaked greenish-yellow goo. The other plants had been variously mangled, diced, or pulped, and nothing looked salvageable.

After a few sips of coffee, he still didn’t see any bright spots on his outlook, except for the daylight shining through the shed opposite. He had not told anyone about where he was going or what he would be doing there, and the plot of land was kept well away from prying eyes. The food-fab still worked, but with the cabin perforated, all it would take was one good rain squall to short everything out. The tracked ground-crawler he’d hauled everything out on was parked far enough away that it was probably undamaged, but he’d never be able to haul everything back. Pieces of the Nate machines were probably scattered hundreds of yards into the trees. Eventually, someone would find one and the trail would lead right back to him. The authorities would have way too many questions, and he wasn’t interested in answering any of them, ever.

The comms unit was still buzzing as Evgeny tossed his freshly empty mug into the oozing vegetable ruin and started for the crawler. If he recalled correctly, there was a kilo or two of mining explosive in there which had been part of a previous cover story suggesting he was rambling about in the woods prospecting for minerals. The less he left of the site, the better.

Once he had found the explosives, Evgeny paused to check the comms board on the crawler, which told him he’d missed dozens of messages and comms channel requests, all from the same source, an anonymized numeric identifier. He ignored them; in his line of work, anyone who wanted to be anonymous and couldn’t be bothered to at least steal a respectable datasphere identity wasn’t worth dealing with.

He’d set explosives around the shed and the remains of the garden plots when a single-seat lighter zipped overhead at high speed, then banked into a high turn and began to circle back. Wincing, Evgeny tossed the rest of the explosives under the cabin and stood to wave at the aircraft as it passed overhead a second time, giving it the universal double-thumbs-up that indicated that he was all right. Hopefully, that would dissuade the pilot from landing.

The lighter was, however, not dissuaded. It circled to bleed velocity and altitude, and would soon be landing. Evgeny wondered how he’d explain the mess, or the obviously foreign machinery littered about as he picked his way over toward the only obvious landing site to meet it.

As it turned out, he didn’t need to explain. The pilot hopped out the moment the little aircraft came to a stop. Her reddish skin and mane of pearly white hair told Evgeny who it was; after all, there were only two or three Atro’me on the whole planet, and only one of them had any interest in his affairs.

“Constable Neeson!” Evgeny waved with enthusiasm he didn’t feel. “What brings you out to my holdings?”

Neeson folded her arms over her chest. As one of the minority of Atro’me who had elected to have her body and face modified to better match those of a human, she was not unattractive, if one could get over the fact that she wasn’t human, but those yellow eyes always made his blood run cold. “Care to tell me what insanity you’re up to this time, Evgeny?”

Evgeny shrugged. “Agriculture project.” He followed Neeson’s gaze behind himself to the shredded shed. “It’s, ah. Not going very well. Can I help you?”

“There’s been an explosion.” Neeson frown ed. “I suspect you might know something about it.”

Evgeny once again glanced behind himself. “It was, ah, a fertilizer accident?”

The constable stared at Evgeny blankly for several seconds. “Do take this seriously. Two people are dead.”

Evgeny held up a hand. “We are not talking about the same explosion, are we?”

Neeson frowned, then shrugged. “You thought I was coming about the mess over there? Bah. Blow up your own land all you like, as long as it’s all the way out here, and as long as you tell me what you know about bay Seven White.”

Evgeny froze. Bay Seven White was the spaceport berth where he’d met the smugglers who’d gotten him his cache of Incarnation agricultural equipment, the place he’d taken charge of those precious crates of now-destroyed machinery. That had been many weeks ago, but still, it couldn’t be a coincidence. “Something exploded at the spaceport in bay Seven White? Let me guess, the Ursula DeKalb was berthed there.”

Neeson nodded slowly. “So you do know something. I know you met that ship the last time it was in port. Do they work for you?”

“Oh, no. Not most of the time. Not right now anyway.” Evgeny winced. “Look, it’s, a complicated business relationship, you know how it is.”

“What do they deal in that might explode?” Neeson pointed one crimson finger at Evgeny. “I’ll forget to report that you bought some of whatever it is if you help me get to the bottom of this.”

Evgeny brightened. Immunity from being looked into wouldn’t last long, but it would last long enough for him to cover most of his tracks. “Oh, that would be just fine, Constable.” He beckoned toward the farm plot. “Right this way, and I’ll show you what’s left of what I bought from them.”

I am not sure if I buy Evgeny’s story about a convenient visit from a law enforcement professional looking into a blast at the spaceport. Sure, things explode at colonial spaceports from time to time, but the timing here is too convenient. I would suspect that our contributor here has compressed events into a shorter time-line as part of the track-covering he freely admits to.

Regardless, we should pay attention to the dangers of handling Incarnation equipment; many people seem to want to get their hands on “Nate” hardware but are not aware of the risks. If you want my advice, leave enemy materiel alone; the Confederated-make equivalent is in most cases just as good and much safer.

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Tales from the Service: The Envoy’s Proposal

2951-08-09 – Tales from the Service: The Envoy’s Proposal 

While the Gilhedat are probably only coming to Confederated space in numbers of a few hundred or less, my inbox certainly over-represents these beings in terms of the stories sent in. Nearly everyone who has encountered them seems to want their story featured in this space. 

That being said, I do not think we will do many more of these stories; there are other sapient species native to the Sagitrtarius Frontier whose stories deserve to be told as well, and we expect a resumption of military operations soon which will also create further material for the Tales from the Inbox series. Though I appreciate all the other Gilhedat accounts sent in, there seems to be a very distinct pattern to these encounters which seems beyond the scope of this series or this embed team to analyze. 

Nestor Palazzo watched in amazement as the other star-captain and the golden-skinned alien left his ship’s lounge. He didn’t think that Cremonesi was in any physical danger, but the idea of negotiation with the Glitters tied his stomach in knots all the same. 

“Why do you fear us?” The female – Drase – fixed those pupil-less scarlet eyes on Nestor again, and he felt the blood drain from his face. Those eyes, he was certain, saw more than they should. “We bear no weapons.” 

Nestor looked away. Couldn’t she just see why he didn’t want them on his ship? Why he couldn’t survive a voyage of even a few days in their company? Wouldn’t any denizen of the Reach have very nearly the same reaction? 

“You have no secrets worth preserving, Captain Palazzo.” She continued, her tone lower and almost compassionate. “And even if you did, why would we gain from learning them?” 

“Secrets?” Nestor shook his head, still refusing to meet the Glitter’s penetrating eyes. “What’s inside my head is my own. Damned private. Like the ship, but that didn’t stop you.” 

“I am sorry. The initiative was mine. Your colleagues were only too glad to assist.” 

Nestor chuckled hoarsely. That was probably the closest he was going to get to an admission that Desjardins had used his official override codes to grant them access to his ship. “I’m sure they were. Nobody else wants you any more than I do, do they?” 

“I am afraid not.” Drase paused for a long moment. “Have you really been alone on board all these years?” 

“Damned right.” Nestor had gotten his start in space as an engines tech on one of the big passenger liners, but those ships had teemed with enough human life to make him glad to see the end of every voyage. After inheriting his great-uncle's modest estate, he’d been able to strike out on his own. It was a simple, monotonous life, but it was one he’d dreamed about as a child, and it was one which suited him well. Nestor had never been accused of working well with others. 

“I see.” The tone of these two words suggested that she saw too much for Nestor’s liking. “To us it seems a sad existence.” 

“Look.” Nestor turned around, squaring his shoulders. Drase’s posture and bearing had changed to something a bit more human, a bit less aloof. “With all due respect, get out of my head and see to your own affairs. Save your pity for someone who isn’t living his dreams.” 

Drase smiled, though there was something uncanny about the expression, an incomplete copy of the real thing. “I do not envy your dream. But if you would permit, I, and only I, would like to share it.” 

Before Nestor could decipher what she meant, one of the two others, face still expressionless, stepped up behind Drase and whispered something in her ear. Her monosyllabic response did not seem to satisfy the other, but he backed away all the same. 

“Hold on.” Nestor finally put her words together into an arrangement that made sense. “I won’t take all four of you to the Sprawl, so you think I’ll take only one at a time?” 

“Perhaps I should explain our purpose in traveling to human space, Captain.” Drase held up a hand, indicating her compatriots, both in the room and otherwise. “We seek to increase understanding of your kind and its nature. Our kind has seen too much of what the Incarnate has shaped for our liking, but it remains to be seen whether this shape is an aberration. That study will be a work of many of your decades. Perhaps many of your lifetimes.” 

Nestor frowned. “You think you can learn something of humanity by riding along on my ship? I go months without seeing people sometimes. All you’d have to study is...” He paused. “Oh, no. Hellfire, you must be mad.” 

Drase took a step forward, holding her arms out. With every move she made, she seemed to grow more human-like, though the uncanny sense that every movement and every gesture was a copy remained. “It is bold perhaps, but it is not madness. There is much you stand to gain, and much I stand to learn for my people.” 

Nestor stepped back. “I, uh.” He didn’t know why it was so hard to simply refuse and turn away. He wondered if the Glitter woman might be using some sort of mind-game to influence his thinking, to muddy what should have been a clear decision. 

As if reading this thought, Drase smiled. "What you feel is not of my creation. I only sensed it before you did." 

Nestor frowned, following the muddled feeling through his thoughts until it dove down into imponderable places. He was no longer so afraid of having his thoughts looked into – in fact, he was more worried that this sensation might, in time, turn into a cracked-tooth ache. 

“You do not know what it is?” 

Nestor shook his head. It was vaguely familiar, like a strain of music heard once a long time ago, but he had no word for the sensation. 

Drase held out one slim, golden hand. “Then, if you will allow me, I will help you learn.” 

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Tales from the Service: The Unwanted Envoys

2951-08-02 – Tales from the Service: The Unwanted Envoys

Nestor Palazzo let the woman lead him out of the Survey offices and onto Grigoriev’s main concourse, where a sparse crowd, mainly composed of repair techs and mining-rig workers on leave from their work-sites, meandered between the few scattered commercial frontages. He didn’t like how familiar this Cremonesi was being with him, but she was a fellow spacer, the captain of her own vessel at that, so she deserved a bit more leeway than he’d permit any other.

“I’d wager you’re right about Desjardins setting you up.” Cremonesi kept her voice low, so it was almost drowned out by the conversations of passers-by. “But he’s too smart to get caught doing it. If you want these Glitters off your ship, screaming at him isn’t going to do it, certainly not quickly.”

Nestor shook his head. “You offering to take them up to the Sprawl, then?”

“The credits would have to be real damned good.” She shrugged. “I hate passengers, but this kind would at least not make a mess or try to get too chummy. Especially if they are mind-readers. Then they’d see how little their company’s wanted, eh?”

“And lots of other things.” Nestor winced and shuddered at the thought of a gaggle of mind-reading xenos flitting about his ship, staying out of sight but reading his thoughts all the same.

Cremonesi laughed, and it was a harsh, barking sound unused to being heard by any ears but her own. “Sure, I guess. If they really can sift through our thoughts, it’s their loss to try.”

“Their loss?” Nestor looked down at the other spacer for the first time since they’d left the Survey offices.

“Can’t be anything but.” Cremonesi tapped her temple with one forefinger. “Think of all the pointless nonsense your neurons get up to when they aren’t getting seriously used, then imagine getting all of that from everyone in the room, all the time, on top of your own. Poor bastards would probably bleed out the ears if they had to sit in third class on a tramp liner.”

Nestor considered this perspective. Perhaps Cremonesi was right; perhaps simply buying a group of Gilhedat transit tickets would never have done. Even if she was wrong, someone aboard would see what they were and recall their supposed mind-reading powers, and the poor crew of the liner would have a riot on their hands.

Cremonesi slipped away into a shop for a moment, then reappeared with a sack and handed it to Nestor. He frowned at her, feeling the familiar weight and shape of a bottle of Ruby Mash, Grigoriev Station’s notoriously potent locally-produced liquor. The stuff was more of an industrial solvent than a sipping drink, but with the military overseeing the transit route, few ships coming across the Gap carried anything better that could compete with it.

“Just in case we need it.” Cremonesi arched an eyebrow. “If they really are mind-readers, I mean.”

Nestor shrugged and led the way toward the dock containing his Macie Kurtz and its unwelcome would-be passengers. He felt like he should attempt to make small talk as they walked, but every time he snuck a look over at his erstwhile companion, she seemed hardly to be paying attention to him anymore.

Despite the ship having been his home for more than two T-years, Nestor braced himself as the hatch at the top of the boarding ramp unsealed. “With any luck they’ve left already. If they got in, they can get out.”

Cremonesi shook her head. “Friend, you are not that lucky.” She gestured forward. “Lead on.”

Nestor sighed and headed into the ship, climbing the steep, textured ramp up from Macie Kurtz’s belly to the habitation deck above the cavernous cargo hold that made up most of the ship’s internal volume. Cremonesi was right; the passengers’ cluster of cargo crates was still sitting at the landing where it had been left by whoever let them in. He sidled past them, once again eyeing the strange magenta and white insignia emblazoned on each one.

Though he’d been gone more than a standard hour, Nestor doubted that any of the four Gilhedat had moved a muscle since he’d departed to see Desjardins. Three of them were standing precisely where they had been, and the fourth sat in a chair facing the viewpanel. Only those standing turned their golden faces and ruby-red eyes toward him, and just as before, he felt those eyes peeling back his thoughts, layer by layer.

Captain Cremonesi shouldered past Nestor and into the lounge before he could compose himself. “Captain Palazzo is not able to get you where you want to go. Who told you he could?”

The three figures standing in the middle of the room looked at each other, then at Cremonesi. Nestor saw her flinch, but she squared her shoulders and stood her ground, looking between them for an answer.

After several seconds, one of them spoke. “We were informed that this ship was soon to transit to the central habitat at Sagittarius Gate.” It was a female – though these creatures bore none of the standard human body-shape markers for femininity, its voice and bearing made its sex entirely clear.

“This is a cargo runner, not a passenger craft.” Cremonesi gestured behind herself toward Nestor. “This man is not equipped to be your host. You need to find another ship.”

“Lack of comfort in transit is of no concern.” The female xeno stepped forward, her skin seeming to glitter. “Our errand is of importance.”

Another of the creatures placed his hand – by bearing, it must have been a male – on the female’s shoulder. “Allow me this moment, Drase. I believe I comprehend their purpose.”

The female turned and looked at her companion, then stepped back, her face going as blank and expressionless as it had been when Nestor had entered the lounge.

“I see that you are as much a star captain as our unwilling host.” The male extended a hand toward Cremonesi. “So I was, once, but no longer. Come, let us talk of solutions that do not trouble good Captain Palazzo.”

Though I too have heard the rumor of so-called telepathic aliens, I think the more likely explanation is the one given to one of our regular contributors by passengers of this kind some months ago. True interspecies telepathy is likely impossible, however, these Gilhedat seem to be hyper-observant and capable of easily picking up on and interpreting the mannerisms of almost any sapient creature.

This is little comfort to those who are trying to keep secrets from them, of course.

[N.T.B. – Or for those who are trying to negotiate with them. Supposedly, the Glitters sent to interact with humans are mainly envoys and ambassadors; whoever is set to be their opposite number really has drawn the worst lot a diplomat can draw.]

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