Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Captivity

2946-09-11 - Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Captivity

In this second part of Jaska N.'s story, we find him in a tough spot. Previously, in Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Raiders, Jaska was part of a failed defense effort against Rattanai marauders. In today's entry, we rejoin him, taken captive aboard the raiders' ship. This is a situation from which few emerge to tell their story, and while I have some concerns that Jaska isn't telling us everything, I have no grounds on which to dismiss this story as wildly unrealistic.

A few readers responded to the previous entry, preferring that I remind the audience that the Hegemony is not blameless in its conduct, when it comes to this persistent unrest along its borders. This is true, but as far as I can tell, the activists vastly overstate the degree to which the Hegemony's two-tiered legal structure and poor treatment of its Rattanai subjects is the motivating force behind the raiders' depredations. To be sure, I do not approve of chattel slavery, regulated or otherwise, but it is easy to forget that the Rattanai Imperium was, to its final day on the interstellar stage, built on the backs of trillions of enslaved beings of all varieties, and it is to this long-vanished heyday to which these fanatics wish to return.

What's more, the settlers who pay the price for Rattanai raids almost never have anything to do with the chattel industry; their tragedies are all the more poignant for the fact that they suffer for the crimes of persons they have almost no connection to, just as the Rattanai in Hegemony servitude suffer for the crimes of their long-dead kin, whose names and roles in the barbarism of the Terran-Rattanai War were not preserved.

Jaska woke to a headache, and to someone shaking him urgently. He was lying on a textured metal surface which vibrated faintly against his stubbled cheek. This told him, even before he opened his eyes, that he was on a starship, and that the craft was under way; Jaska had spent too much of his life wandering the spacelanes to forget the peculiar, ever-present hum of a gravitic drive. 

“Jaska, wake up!” A fragile, terrified voice begged. 

Jaska recognized the voice, and groaned in dismay. Taking a tentative breath and tasting the bitter tang of cheap cleaning chemicals failing to disguise the metallic stench of blood, he concluded immediately that the panic in Karley’s tone was not completely unwarranted. He remembered the midnight raid on the colony compound and the spirited defense he and a few others had put up against the Rattanai attackers, and how all that effort and the expensive weapons Mayor Stefano had secured to protect the installation in case of an attack had been for nothing, courtesy of the carelessness of the very youth now urging him awake.

At the sound of his groaning, Karley stopped shaking Jaska and moved away, letting him roll over and sit up. He opened his eyes, but it was as if he hadn’t; there was no light of any kind in the compartment. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his limbs, noticing how the headache he’d woken up with persisted stubbornly, reminding him of a mild hangover.

“I was hoping they would just kill us.” Jaska muttered into the darkness. Rattanai raiders did not take prisoners to be merciful, obviously. Rattanai who could even describe mercy were vanishingly rare.

“What are we going to do?” Karley groaned. “What are they going to do to us?”

Jaska didn’t bother to answer either question, already crawling unsteadily across the deck and trying not to think too hard about the damp, sticky residue on the deck plating which clung to his hands. Answering wouldn’t put Karley at ease, and it might push her further into panic. He quickly found a bulkhead, then began following it around the room, feeling for the outline of a hatch or doorway.

“Jaska, are you even listening to me?” Karley whined once she realized she wasn’t going to get any answers.

“No.”

The answer seemed to be so unexpected that the settlement mayor’s daughter fell silent for some time, long enough for Jaska to find the hatch with his hands. Leaning on the wall, he stood to trace its outline as far as he could. It was clearly proportioned for Rattanai use, being far taller and wider than a doorway on a human spaceship, but it was clearly of the standard sort which would recess into the wall when opened. Evidently, the raiders hadn’t even bothered to store their prisoners in reinforced compartments; the cell was probably a storage closet or stripped-out cabin.

“Karley?” Jaska prompted.

“What?” Her voice was muffled, as if her hands were covering her face.

It was still enough noise for him to use to pinpoint her location, which was the point of prompting her in the first place. Jaska moved slowly toward the voice until his outstretched hand brushed against worn smart-cloth.

At the touch, Karley yelped in surprise. “Jaska, what-”

Jaska guessed where her face was and clapped a hand over her mouth. If the Rattanai were smart, they had someone monitoring the audio hookups which were almost certainly in the cell. His only hope – and thus Karley’s – was the possibility that the marauders hadn’t bothered to rig up infrared surveillance. Karley struggled to free herself, but even ten years out of shape, Jaska found it no trouble to keep her from breaking free until she realized why he was keeping her from talking. It was a bad sign, he decided, that this realization took her almost a full minute.

Not releasing his muffling hand, Jaska helped Karley up and led her back to where he remembered the door was. He forced her to feel the recessed panel where it joined the bulkhead, then pressed her shoulders back against the wall, hoping she would understand, or at least trust that he did. Rattanai were impossible to overcome in a hand to hand struggle, but their peripheral vision was somewhat weaker than a human’s. If he and Karley could elude notice for even a second when the Rattanai came to check on them, they might have a chance to escape, however remote. After gripping her jaw tightly for a moment to indicate that she remain silent, Jaska released Karley and took up a similar position on the opposite side of the door.

He wasn’t about to tell Karley, but he considered being gunned down a form of escape. The cruel life of chattel slavery which waited for any human returned to a raid-ship's hidden base was well-known, even though few returned from it. Jaska would rather die than fall so far – and he was willing to kill Karley, to save her from the far worse treatment she could expect. Jaska knew more than he cared to about how the brigands preferred to expend the female captives they managed to collect on successful raids.

Fortunately, they didn’t have long to wait. Heavy, booted Rattanai footfalls rattled the deck plates, even in ship-standard half-gee. Jaska hoped Karley had the sense to stay put, but it was too late now to do anything if she didn’t.

The footfalls stopped on the opposite side of the door, and Jaska shut his eyes just before the portal whined open on decaying bearings. The light beyond his eyelids seemed blinding after total darkness. There was nothing to do but hold his breath and listen as the guard stomped into the room. 

Not belieivng his good fortune, Jaska heard the big alien take a second step before realizing that the prisoners weren’t cowering in the middle of the newly illuminated cell – the way was clear. Still blinded, he reached across the doorway to where he remembered instructing Karley to stand, and tugged her hurriedly into the corridor, where she fell loudly to the deck.

The noise alerted the guard to what was going on, but it was too late. Jaska had already found the door controls hurriedly grafted into the door mechanism outside. He slammed his hand on the lock button, and just as the guard turned around with a surprised snarling noise, the cell shut again. Jaska was sorry that, in his dazzled state, he hadn’t been able to see the look of surprise on the alien’s beady-eyed, wide-mouthed face.

“How-" Karley started to ask, but she was interrupted by a clang against the door panel. The guard’s iron-boned fist had enough force behind it to put a visible dent in the metal, and to flash a warning on the control panel. 

 

“Shut up and run, Karley.” Jaska told her, dragging her to her feet.  

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Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Raiders

2946-09-04: Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Raiders

We prefer to see the problem of outlaw raids, especially by Rattanai operations, as a thing of the past, but in some areas of explored space, they are still a very real threat.

The Frontier is, despite its reputation as a wild, freewheeling frontier, relatively safe in this respect; settlements are rarely raided by any belligerent force. Confederated space, thanks to the efforts of the Navy, is even safer; with the exception of the dubious events which took place at New Rheims, there has not been a serious colony security incident in main Confederated space since the Campfire War.

Where raids are still a real concern to the lives of settlers is the treaty-demilitarized zone, comprising the Silver Strand region and the coreward part of the Baiphus stellar group. Since neither the Confederated Worlds nor the Rahl Hegemony can patrol the region, small bands of Rattanai holdouts, who are by now second- and third-generation fanatics, still operate against the region's Terran-dominated settlements, both within the demilitarized area and in Hegemony systems within a few jumps of the boundary.

This submission comes to us from Jaska N., who reminds us why vigilance is the watchword of the Hegemony's outlying settlements. Statistically speaking, Hegemony settlements are still very safe - but attacks are common enough that it pays to be prepared. We'll be seeing more from Jaska in the future; his message contained enough material for at least two Tales from the Inbox episodes.

The support gun clicked loudly and spat out its empty magazine. Jaska watched it drop into the mud, wondering how many of the three hundred ferroceramic slugs it had contained a few minutes previously had found new homes in the tough flesh of Rattanai raiders. The fanatic xenosapients had made the mistake of leaving half the population of Vlastos Outpost alive the first time they’d come to kill, steal, and destroy – now, they were paying the price. A half-dozen of their number lay unmoving on the crushed pseudo-grass of the landing field, and several others, taking cover in the drainage ditch between the field and the settlement’s close-huddled structures, were surely wounded.

“Get me a new magazine at number two.” Jaska whispered into his comm. Someone had decided that, rather than leave ammunition with the tripod-mounted guns, that the bulk of it would be stored in the central armory and run out to the muddy earthworks by hand as needed. Supposedly, Mayor Stefano had worried that the raiders might seize the rapid-fire weapons and turn them on the defenders. Grumbling at the inefficiency of the process, Jaska picked up his carbine from the mud at his feet, shook the worst of the dirt off the weapon, then aimed it over the top of the larger, emplaced gun, watching for movement.

“Karley is coming out to you, two.” A cool voice from within the compound announced. Fortunately, the gunner at number three was still firing away, and the raiders were keeping their heads down. Jaska turned around to see a door open and a slim youth tumble out, carrying an oversized satchel. Karley was barely twenty, and Jaska was glad that the most critical task she’d wheedled her way into was the role of ammunition runner. She was Mayor Stefano’s daughter, unfortunately; nobody had the heart to tell the boss that his only child was a spoiled brat who couldn’t be trusted with even the simplest tasks.

Karley got to her feet and began sprinting – toward the number three earthwork bunker. “Wrong way!” Jaska called, shouting and using his comm simultaneously. The youth skidded to a halt on the muddy ground and turned around, sachel bouncing wildly against her side. Fortunately, boxes of ferroceramic slugs were far from fragile; even Karley would be hard-pressed to damage the ammunition.

Unfortunately, when the young runner was almost to Jaska’s position, the number three gun stopped firing, likely as out of ammunition as Jaska’s. Cursing, he hurled himself flat as a pair of bright green beams cut through the air above him. Scrambling up to the rough parapet of his muddy emplacement, Jaska fired back with his carbine, trying to keep their attention on himself, so the Rattanai wouldn’t focus their attention on Karley.

It wasn’t enough. One of the Rattanai started shooting at the mayor’s daughter. The first shot boiled the mud near her feet into a scalding blast, and Jaska watched her lose her footing, skid to one side, and fall flat on her face. Cursing, he fired a few shots at the attacker who’d downed her, though it was impossible to know whether or not he’d scored any hits. “Come on, Karley.” Jaska urged quietly into his comm. “Just make it here and they can’t hit you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jaska saw the young woman rise to her knees, then fall flat again as another beam passed nearby. Scrabbling against the mud, she clawed her way toward the bunker, and Jaska did his best to force the raiders to keep their flat, wide heads down. A second ammunition runner leaped out of the compound and headed for the number three gun; Jaska saw him hit almost immediately by one of the Rattanai gunmen. He winced, wondering who it had been, but it wasn't the time to ask.

Finally, Karley rolled into the bunker, gasping. Jaska fired the last few rounds from his carbine and then turned back to lift her to her knees. “You’re not dead.” He observed, with mixed feelings. “Hand me a mag, and I’ll cover you for the run back.”

“The… sachel.” Karley whispered, terrified. Jaska realized too late that she didn’t have it anymore; she must have dropped it when she fell.

“You forgot the bag?” He hissed, then tossed her aside to peer over the parapet to where she’d fallen. Sure enough, a brown-grey lump sat in the mud, hopelessly exposed. “You’ve doomed us, you stupid girl.”

The Rattanai, sensing the slackening resistance, began to climb out of the drainage ditch, advancing cautiously through the persistent drizzle. Jaska wanted to shoot the mayor’s daughter right then and there, but of course he was out of ammunition. 

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Tales from the Inbox: Finn's Heist

2946-08-28: Tales from the Inbox: Finn's Heist

Euphrasie H. submitted this story, and though I can't prove it, I can't disprove it either. She read a story on this feed a few months ago about a mystery ship calling itself KR-122, spotted tailing a convoy to the Frontier before disappearing without a trace shortly after it was challenged, and proposes that it was engaged in some sort of criminal enterprise and merely following the convoy for safety and convenience. She provided her own account as well as several news articles about this phenomenon in general: while they would never attempt to steal from the Navy, certain underworld elements are engaged in regular and widespread attempts to defraud the Survey Auxiliary. What they do with the materiel acquired by such efforts is not clear, but the ships and other equipment so stolen seems to be funneled toward the Coreward Frontier for an unknown purpose.

Euphrasie's story supposedly took place a few weeks before the departure of the convoy in which Quetzalli traveled to the Frontier. KR-122 might not have been related to her story in particular, but I can't dismiss her theory that it was part of a similar enterprise out of hand. As always, the audience is encouraged to make up its own mind on this connection, and to be careful with people one meets in strange spaceport bars; even those who seem to be friends might turn out to be something you didn't expect.

The drinks came, and Euphrasie stared at hers a long time before picking it up and sipping it thoughtfully. The young man across the table, meanwhile, upended his own small glass of liqueur as soon as it was set in front of him, then slammed the empty container back down vigorously and punched an order for a second into the smart table's menu.

As he paused indecisively over the confirmation button, Euphrasie snuck a look at him. His loose, sandy hair hung in front of eyes whose red rims and rapid, haunted flicking to every source of motion the club's poor lighting couldn't quite conceal. His formerly easy smile had evolved into a perpetually strained grimace. Finn had never been a large person, but his hunched, beaten posture made him look even smaller.

Still insistently jabbing the tabletop display, Finn looked up to Euphrasie. "You know, Frazi." He said, reverting reflexively to the diminutive name he'd coined for her when they were both children. "The worst thing you ever did to me was save my life."

Euphrasie shook her head. Their meeting now was purely by chance; they had fallen out of contact ten years before, when they were both barely teenagers. Now, she was heading out to the Coreward Frontier with a Survey Auxiliary commission, and he was... Well, she preferred not to think about what Finn did for a living since he’d disappeared.

"Was I supposed to let you go to the atomizer, Finn?" She replied. "You didn't kill that man." After all these years, she didn't know what she had expected. She'd waited for him, hoping that some day, he might be able to clear his name and return, but he never sent even a cryptic text-only message that told her he was all right. She'd given up and signed up for Survey on her twenty-first birthday, the way they'd always dreamed of doing together, and now, with her freshly printed commission in hand, she was leaving Herakles space forever. It was just like Finn to literally bump into her as she was preparing to pilot her new Idril Yara through its first interstellar voyage.

"I could have fought the charge, Frazi. Cleared my name." He told her. "Instead, I was scared, and I ran. You helped me keep running, and by running I was condemned." The second drink arrived, and Finn glanced hurriedly to both sides. "Can't stay long." He said, staring long and hard at something over Euphrasie’s shoulder. She turned to look, but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary that might be keeping his attention. Perhaps, the pilot decided, her old friend was seeing ghosts. "Boss doesn't like me to hang around too long before a job."

"I can't stay long either." Euphrasie confirmed, as she returned her attention to Finn. "My departure window is in three hours, and preflight takes almost an hour." That was it, then. She was leaving, the agent of the Naval Survey Auxiliary, and he was staying, the pawn of the system's most unsavory syndicate, who would keep him around only as long as he made himself useful.

"It's still good to see you again, though." He told her. "One last time, I suppose."

Euphrasie shook her head sadly before draining her glass. "Come with me, Finn." She urged him. "By the time they know you're gone, we'll be halfway to the Frontier." Survey ships were small, but there was enough room on Yara for a crew of up to three – and Euphrasie was slated to pilot it alone. She could pick up another carton of nutrient paste before she boarded, and Finn’s presence would cause no trouble.

"I can't." He told her. "You don't understand. Boss has too many friends. They'll find me."

"Hell with them." Euphrasie slapped her palm on the table, feeling oddly buzzed after the single drink. "The Frontier is a big place."

Finn shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry." He said. "For not going with you, and for everything else."

"Everything else? Finn, you were always kind..." She shook her head, feeling somewhat unsteady. A foggy realization bubbled up from somewhere below her conscious thought. One drink shouldn't have made her feel like that. She’d turned around so breifly, but it might have been enough time for Finn; he’d always been quick. "You didn't."

"Boss needs your ship." Finn shrugged. "Survey will get you a new one, don't worry. They have spares of everything."

Euphrasie tried to stand, but her legs were wholly nonresponsive. She steadied herself against the table, but it was a losing battle. "Finn..." She tried to snarl, but it was barely a whisper. Losing a ship before she even left port? Her new Naval Survey Auxiliary commission would be torn up on the spot.

Finn winced, then shook his head and stood. As he leaned down over her shoulder to rifle through her pockets for the activation token that would lead him to the survey ship, he put his lips close to her ear. Even over the pounding music of the club, she could hear him whisper. "Goodby, Frazi."

As he left, she tried to follow him, but succeeded only in slumping down on the table, watching with unfocused eyes as Finn walked out the door. 

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Tales from the Inbox: Sojourn on Seyria

2946-08-21 - Tales from the Inbox: Sojourn on Seyria

After the favorable response both Nojus Brand and I got for posting his last submission some time ago, Nojus has been inundated with requests to send me what he can about several other adventures which did not result in usable footage, and I've been bombarded with requests to put them at the front of the queue. I was not aware that every second expedition (on average) that Mr. Brand embarks on produces insufficient footage to produce a program he's satisfied with. He must be all but buried in stories he couldn't tell in the format of his well-known program.

While Nojus's program and Cosmic Background are not affiliated, we've reached an arrangement that will hopefully make everyone happy. We'll review his tales as they come, on a case by case basis. As Mr. Brand is not a very articulate person in long-form written world, he has agreed to send a recording of himself telling the story and any corroborating evidence he has, and I have agreed to condense these tales down into something appropriate to this text feed. In addition to this, he requested (and received from Ashton) a semi-regular guest spot on our vidcast program. His first appearance should be some time early next month.

I make no attempt to establish the veracity of Nojus Brand's stories; I will however only publish those that are both interesting to this audience, and that seem reasonably likely to be true. We all know that the source of these stories is given to embellishment; even so, many of his most well-known exploits are indisputable, as there is plenty of evidence in the form of drone and camera-pod footage.

In the tale he sent in for this installment of Tales from the Inbox, Mr. Brand explains what actually happened on Seyria, one of the most toxic (to humans) worlds to still sustain macroscopic life yet discovered. It comes to life because, while he returned with plenty of footage, it was not usable to form a clear sequence of events for a vidcast episode that he could be satisfied with.

Nojus hated that Seyria’s atmosphere was toxic. He much preferred to post footage of himself wearing nothing but perfectly mundane clothing, braving the dangerous wildernesses of explored space armed with nothing but his trusty Reed-Soares Portable Survival Utility. Still, hundreds of his fans had requested a trip to Seyria, all of them knowing he’d need to use an environment suit; they wouldn’t mind the change of equipment much. The suit Nojus had chosen to bring was intentionally as minimalistic as possible; that would get him as close as he could be to an unprotected adventure under the canopy of the poison planet’s equatorial jungle.

Seyria had already claimed all four of the drones he’d brought with him. All he had left was a microcamera pod, a hardy little device the size of his thumb which had been recording since he arrived, albeit often from most inconvenient angles. When he didn’t need it for other things, which was rarely, Nojus tried to use his survival utility as a camera monopod, providing the occasional drone-like view of his situation, but such shots were few and far between. Editing his new adventure, Nojus knew, would be a serious chore for his team of underpaid but reasonably competent video technicians.

The viewers had demanded Seyria because, though toxic to humans, it was teeming with life to which the acrid chemicals in the atmosphere were no obstacle. If one could forget such things, Seyria was a verdant, lush place, its warm, humid air containing twice Earth’s percentage of oxygen and ten times its carbon dioxide. As a result, the world was a hothouse, almost permanently clouded and insulated from the cold of space. Seyria was well-known in the Core Worlds as a planet of poisonous air and hideous creatures, and it was to face such monsters Nojus had come.

Despite this goal, so far, the explorer had found little worth the effort. The critters which had made off with his drones had been smaller than himself, and though they’d been brightly colored and covered in an exotic, horned carapace, he’d gotten no usable footage from either the drones or the microcamera. He had spied a few larger beasts in the distance, but they were in each case gone before he could get close enough for a good camera angle. In general, the trip had been, though far from dull, somewhat disappointing.

Nojus reached the lee side of a large rock outcropping, dropping his hard-sided pack of tools and supplies on the only surface he’d seen in hours that wasn’t covered in soft, engulfing moss or hip-deep in muddy water. His suit readouts still showed green, and he had days of nutrient slush left, but he resolved never to agree to suit-only planets ever again. There was something impersonal about taking on the elements of Seyria from the inside of even the flimsiest armor. He was used to doing things the old-fashioned way, the way it was meant to be done.

Changing his survival utility from hiking pole configuration to serve once again as a camera mount, Nojus clipped the microcamera into its tip and set it up on the outcropping. It was always recording, so he adjusted its angle to focus on the lush, riotous jungle behind him. “Day three on Seyria.” He said, without using the radio. The muffled sound of his voice would need to be touched up, but that wasn’t his problem. “Nothing too bad since the drones. Really, this place is not living up to its reputation, and if it weren’t for this suit, I’d feel right at home.” He chuckled, for the benefit of the audience. “Hopefully, those of you ingesting the feed will not be quite as bored as I have been today, after my team has fixed up the footage. Sure, this planet is...”

Nojus trailed off, noticing motion behind the camera, in the shadows cast by the outcrop of rock. He held up one gloved hand to the camera, excited. The movement had looked like something big. “Wait just a minute!” He exclaimed, for the benefit of the audience.

At the sound, the thing in the shadows moved again. A long, chitinous limb reached out to find purchase on the rock, not far from his pack of supplies, and a pair of long, trembling antennae unrolled and hung over his head. This, clearly, was one of the monsters Seyria was known for. Nojus hurried forward to grab the camera and survival tool, holding up one hand toward the beast as its triangular, many-eyed head cautiously peeked out of its hole. “I’ll be right with you!” He said, quickly detaching the camera from the multitool and configuring it into a barbed gaff. 

Hefting his newly configured weapon in one hand and pointing the camera with the other, Nojus stepped toward the giant creature, just as it unlimbered its multitude of clicking mouthparts. It was, he could see, undoubtedly predatory, and though it didn’t seem especially hungry, Nojus was right in front of its lair, and not running away; it could almost certainly be goaded into conflict. “Hello there, lovely.” Nojus shouted up at it, as its head rose above him. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you!” 

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