Knight's Move (14 page)

“Send an emergency distress signal, then trigger a core dump,” he ordered, tightly.  The platform would not stand up to the incoming fire.  There was no time to abandon the platform and hope that the enemy didn't pick off the lifepods before they could descend into the planet’s atmosphere.  “And then ...”

The missiles struck home and the world vanished in a blinding flash of light.

***

“All targets destroyed, sir,” Dana reported.

Jason
allowed himself a tight smile as
Havoc
entered planetary orbit.  He'd worried about just what sort of defences were in place above Tyson’s Rest – and about how reliable some of the newer crewmen might be – but it seemed that their intelligence had been right on the money.  The orbital weapons platform hadn't managed to get a single shot off before it had been destroyed; it hadn't even activated its point defence.  Such carelessness deserved it’s just reward.

“Good,” he said.  “Lock weapons on the designated list of targets.”

There was a long pause as Dana compared the list of targets to reality.  They’d drawn up a list of potential targets, but their intelligence on Tyson’s Rest might have been unreliable.  But it seemed that everything was as precise as he’d dared to hope.  The targeting list – the spaceport, the government installations, the food stores, the power plants, the radio stations – were ready and waiting to be hit.  There were no PDCs that might force his ships away from the planet.

“Weapons locked,” Dana said.  “Ready to fire.”

Jason reached down and placed his hand on his pistol.  Most of his crew would do anything for money, but he wasn't sure how far he could trust the newcomers.  They might balk at mass slaughter of humans, even if they would gladly scorch an alien homeworld and then piss on the ashes.  And if someone did decide to refuse his authority, they would have to be shot before they could infect others.  The last thing he needed was a mutiny on his command deck.

“Fire,” he ordered.

Havoc
had originally been built to serve in the Federation Navy prior to the actual outbreak of war.  Oddly, she’d had few ship-to-ship weapons at the time; she’d been configured to drop KEWs on planet-side targets.  Reading between the lines, Jason suspected that the design had actually been intended to stamp the Federation’s authority onto rebellious worlds; the Colonial Militia might have modified the ship to carry modern weapons, but they’d left the KEW racks in place.  What had been intended for deployment in support of the liberation of the occupied worlds would now be turned against them.

He watched, keeping one eye on his bridge crew, as the KEWs fell through the planet’s atmosphere and struck their targets.  There were no forcefields protecting the installations, no point defence to break up or deflect the projectiles before it was too late.  One by one, the targets were smashed flat, shattering any hope of ground-side resistance.  They would never be able to coordinate a response.

But we’re not here to occupy the world
, he thought, coldly.  There
had
been cases of pirates taking entire worlds and declaring themselves independent warlords, but the Federation Navy or the Colonial Militia usually made short work of them.  Once, of course, they knew that there was a problem they had to tackle. 
We’re just here to make a mess
.

“Deploy the troops,” he ordered, calmly.  No one seemed to have any objections to bombarding the planet – or, if they had, they'd kept them to themselves.  “I want those aliens
dead
.”

“Aye, sir,” Dana said.  “The shuttles are on their way.”

***

Susan felt the ground shake and stood up, puzzled.  Her communicator, linking her to the planetary communications network, let out a squeal and then fell silent.  Puzzled, she walked out of the tent and looked to the north.  A giant plume of smoke was rising up into the air.  If she recalled correctly, she realised, there was a military base in that direction.  The local government had made it clear that their soldiers would be keeping an eye on the aliens and wouldn't hesitate to intervene if the shit hit the fan.  Susan remembered thinking that the aliens were unlikely to cause trouble – and that maintaining the garrison was a cost the planetary government could ill afford.  Now ...

She looked up as she heard the screech of assault shuttles passing through the air.  Four heavy-lift shuttles passed directly overhead, releasing a swarm of armoured men who dropped down to the ground and landed directly outside the refugee camp.  Susan stared in disbelief, then horror, as the intruders lifted their weapons and opened fire.  Bolts of brilliant white light tore through the aliens, ripping their bodies to sheds.  It was a massacre.  Even if the Mice had been as violent and aggressive as humans – or Dragons – they wouldn't have been able to crack the armoured combat suits with their bare hands.  The local government might believe that everyone had the right to bear arms, but it had been made clear to her that right only extended to humans.  There were no weapons in the camp at all.

Susan threw herself to the ground as weapons fire flashed over her head, setting fire to the tent behind her.  Desperately, she started to crawl away, hoping to reach the edge of the camp and escape into the countryside.  The sound of alien throats screaming died away as the intruders completed their task; Susan glanced back and saw the armoured figures carefully making their way through the remains of the camp, blasting alien bodies just to make sure they were dead.  She felt sick and helpless as she realised just how much the intruders hated aliens, just how determined they were to make sure that they wiped out the entire camp.  The prefabricated buildings she’d had to argue for hours to obtain were forced open and searched, her handful of staff forced out into the open.  She tried to crawl faster, but it was too late.  An armoured figure came after her, picked her up effortlessly and carried her back towards the centre of the camp.

It was a scene from hell.  Alien bodies lay everywhere, leaking eerie green blood on the ground.  Some were still twitching, but she suspected that they were all dead.  The alien biology was not fully understood, yet it seemed impossible that anything could survive a direct hit from a plasma weapon.  Humans had been known to expire from a glancing blow, simply through shock. 

She looked up at her captor as she was thrust to the ground and wondered, vaguely, just what would happen to them.  Rape?  Death?  Or would they be left alone, in the midst of the graveyard their camp had become.  Clarissa, the youngest of her staff, cried out as her clothes were pulled from her body, ripped away with armoured strength.  Susan braced herself as best as she could for the ordeal she knew was coming, but nothing happened.  Clarissa was allowed to sink to the ground and cover herself as best she could.

Puzzled, she waited.  She could do nothing else.

“This camp was an abomination,” one of the armoured figures said.  “Aliens treated well, while humans starve. 
Remember
.”

Susan stared at him, dimly aware that she was in shock.  She should be panicking, or trying to fight or flee ... instead, all she could do was wait.  He was talking nonsense, she knew; the aliens had been on the verge of starvation, no matter what was happening elsewhere on Tyson’s Rest.  But there was no point in arguing.  She closed her eyes, expecting to be killed or raped ... and then, when she opened them, she saw the armoured figures march away.  Their shuttles descended to the ground; they marched onboard and vanished, leaving the remains of the camp alone.  Susan stared as they rose upwards, clawing for sky.  They’d been left alive ...

Remember
, the figure had said.  They’d been left alive to tell the universe what had happened on Tyson’s Rest.

Susan stared down at the bodies and swore that she
would
.  The universe might not have cared about the aliens while they were alive, but now there had been a massacre she was sure they would care.  She knew enough about the media to know that blood and guts excited them more than anything else, no matter how important.  Gritting her teeth, she stepped over and wrapped her arms around the sobbing Clarissa.  There
would
be justice.

***

“Davis seems to have forgotten the mission briefing,”
Jason observed, as he viewed the live feed from the armoured troops.  The mercenaries he’d hired were the scum of the universe, quite literally.  Most of them had been kicked out of various planetary militaries and had gravitated into the shadowy universe of fighting for hire.  “You can remind him of the rules, can't you?”

Dana gave him a girlish smile that made half the bridge crew shudder.  “Of course, sir,” she assured him, brightly.  “I shall see to it personally.”

Jason smiled, coldly.  He had few moral objections to anything these days, but he’d issued specific orders; the humans in the refugee camp were to remain unharmed, if possible.  There was no way their safety could be guaranteed – only a politician could believe that Murphy didn't play a role in any sort of military deployment – yet if they survived the first attack, his orders had been clear.  The message was to be passed on ... and then they were to be abandoned, left in the camp.  There was no room in those orders for molesting one of the camp workers.

“Filthy alien lovers,” one of his crew muttered.  There was a general mummer of agreement.  “We should just have killed them all.  Or that silly bitch could have made herself useful up here ...”

“I ordered that they were to remain alive,” Jason interrupted, cutting the speaker off.  It was an understandable attitude – there were few in the Fairfax Cluster who would admit any sympathy for aliens – but he was not about to allow it to interfere with his authority.  “And we didn't have time for any fun and games.”

He checked the sensors again, then smiled to himself.  The strikes against the planet-side installations had been perfect.  A week or two would see most of the locals on the brink of starvation, assuming that they kept supplies in their homesteads.  Even if the local government somehow managed to regenerate itself, the locals would have real difficulty in feeding themselves without sparking a civil war.  Those who did have food would be unlikely to share it when their own families were at risk.

“All troops have returned to their ships,” Dana reported.  She sounded rather amused by the whole affair.  “No casualties.”

“Apart from Davis,” Jason said.  Dana wouldn't kill him, but she would make him wish he were dead.  Being hurt and humiliated by such a slight girl wouldn't make him popular among his fellows.  “General signal to all ships; pull back and open portals as soon as we reach minimum safe distance.”

His smile grew wider as the helmsman took
Havoc
out of orbit.  The orbital defences might have been smashed, but standard procedure dictated that a copy of the orbital station’s sensor readings would have been sent to the ground.  When someone picked up the emergency signal and realised that Tyson’s Folly had been attacked, they would investigate – and they would find the records and discover that a fleet of Colonial Militia starships had been responsible. 

All just as Ford wanted
, he thought, with heavy satisfaction. 
Aliens dead, the planet in chaos and the Colonial Militia taking the blame
.

He had no idea why Ford wanted to butcher aliens and have the blame laid on the Colonial Militia, but he didn't care either.  All that mattered was keeping his ships and men going, whatever it took.  And if they were slaughtering aliens ...

... For most of his crew, that would be just the icing on the cake.

There was a theory, Glen had heard, that the Great Wall had actually been created by an alien race intent on hiding from the Dragons.  They’d warded their star systems by wrapping it in an invisible hyperspace storm, making any form of FTL transit impossible.  It was, he had to admit,
theoretically
possible – there were several stars within the Great Wall that were beyond humanity’s reach – but it failed the simplest test.  A race powerful enough to manipulate hyperspace to such a degree would have no problems dealing with the Dragons. 

He couldn't help feeling more than a little trapped as
Dauntless
made her way through the Bottleneck.  The passageway was little more than a tunnel, as if they were flying through an exhaust pipe or one of the other more fanciful scenarios dreamed up for starfighter pilots in training.  It was easy to see just how the Dragons had cut off passage from the Fairfax Cluster to the Federation; the Bottleneck simply wasn't wide enough to allow a starship to escape detection.  And it was one of the few places in explored space where mines were actually a viable tactic.