Warrior Chronicles 4: Warrior's Wrath (17 page)

“How do you think Addison jumped through time, Thero? His people stumbled onto one of its secrets. If they find the way to repair it, they will learn many more of them. The very
act
of repairing it will teach them more than you can imagine.”

“How much of what we hear of the White Council is true, Siyan?”

“That would take more time than we have to tell you, my friend. Nor would I want to take away that last mystery from your youth. But I will tell you, the White Council is the group who has guarded the Core all this time. Since our kind were first banished from this world by the cursed Nill, we have worked both here and across our empire to attain our goals.”

“Here? How?” Thero asked.

Cort arrived on Nill two weeks later. He watched the shuttle crew unloading the HAWC suit, then turned to join Mike and Lex on a walk across the tarmac. “How are things?” he asked.

MIke Rage said, “We did a tachyon scan of the cave network they have retreated into. It is over one thousand klicks from where Falo made his stand. The incendiaries really turned the battle. We estimate fewer than four heavy divisions made it to the caves, and none of their armor. Two wolves followed them in. One made it out and he had clearly taken a few bites out of them.”

“The bad news is that the caves are too small for the HAWC,” Lex added. “For that matter, they are too small for most of the CONDORs. Anyone over one hundred and seventy centimeters will not be able to go in wearing more than a FALCON. It is not the height though, it is the width. The caves are narrow.”

“How many people do we have who are small enough?” Cort asked.

“Two,” Mike said, “and they are both on Solitude.”

“So the rest of this will be in FALCONs,” Cort said. “It’s gonna be messy. How many wolves are left?”

Lex said, “They were just reinforced. I have one hundred and eighty two combat ready. Seventeen more are severely wounded and returning to Solitude, and fifteen who will be able to fight again in a day or two. Frankly General, the losses they are taking are not worth it. The wolves aren’t combat capable.”

Cort said, “I disagree. We just need to deploy them more effectively. Jane got a full pack just before I left her and in the first day they had a kill ratio of over forty to one, with zero deaths and only one significant injury. On an arctic plain or light forest, the wolves are incredible. In this mess though, they just didn’t work. I take responsibility for that.”

“Are we going to take them into the caves?” Lex asked.

“No. I might want to keep them in reserve though. But before we get into that, how do you guys feel about me taking over?”

“You are the CINC, sir. What you say goes,” Mike answered.

“That’s not what I mean. I want to know what the effect of having me take over for you will be. On the two of you, and your people.”

“Are you relieving us of command, sir?”

“Technically, yes I am, Mike. But you aren’t being sent home. I’m keeping you in the fight. My inclination is to leave you in place regarding theater operations and coordinating the planet’s defense, while I take over the caves.”

“I doubt anyone will look down on us,” Lex said. “It is more likely they will think you are a jerk for stealing the glory from us. They have seen me out there some, and Mike has been ground pounding since day one.”

“Okay, good. I don’t care what they think of me.”

“We could send the shock troops in, sir.”

“No, Mike. The bugs have done enough. We gave them a job and they did it. Besides, a lot of them are too tall for the caves.”

“But they can crawl.”

“Not in a way that keeps them combat ready.” Looking at the other two, Cort asked, “How many people have you lost?”

“Sixty or seventy,” Lex said.

Turning to Rage, Cort said, “Since the first battle on Tapon, the H’uumans have probably lost that many
million
. I know to them it’s an honor, but we can’t use them to fight our wars, Mike.”

“If that’s their Valhalla, why not?”

“If you don’t get it, it’s not something I can explain. Maybe you just have to fight beside them for a while. Lex said you’ve been on the ground since day one. How much of that time has been beside the bugs?”

Mike looked at his own feet as he practically whispered, “None.”

“Why not?” Cort was shocked at Mike’s answer and his voice betrayed the anger he felt. “For that matter, how much have you trained with them?”

“I haven’t,” Rage said.

“What? Not even in sims?” Cort was furious. “These people were dying for us, and you haven’t even trained with them? Aren’t you in charge of training, Mike? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me!” Cort stopped before they got within earshot of the Marines at the edge of the tarmac. “The bugs are our allies.”

“Only because they would be extinct otherwise, sir.”

“You have no
fucking
idea…” Cort began.

Lex raised his hand and said, “What would Dave think of you right now, Mike? How would he feel about the bugs?”

Dave Gaines had been Lex’s cousin, and he gave his life defending Oxia Palus from an attack by Earth. He had also been Mike’s boyfriend. “That was even low for you, Lex,” Mike said.

“Answer the question. What would my dead cousin say to you right now?”

“He doesn’t have to answer it, Lex. He knows Dave would have expected better of him,” Cort said. “General Rage, I’m sending you back to Solitude. When this is over, you need to decide where your future is. Because if it’s with me, you will fight for the H’uumans with the same passion that Dave fought for Oxia. In fact, didn’t he pull you out of the shitstorm at Aeolis, too?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get your wounded back to Solitude and rethink your priorities. Dismissed.”

When Mike was out of earshot Cort turned to Lex and said, “What did he cost us?”

“Probably not much, in truth. This battle could only go one way, and there was very little we could do about it. If we were alone, without the wolves I mean, it might have been different. The undergrowth here is just too dense. CONDORs don’t have a problem in it, but for the pups it is almost like running in water. Until we got the incendiaries, it was mostly up to the H’uumans. I was going to talk to you about Mike later, for what it is worth.”

“You were in a bad spot Lex,” Cort said. “And it is probably my fault. I haven’t been running things like a regular military. I wasn’t cut out for this. My units were always small. No bigger than a company, and usually closer to platoon strength. Two sergeants side by side can figure shit out, but two generals can’t.”

“You and I do, sir.”

“But I’m not really a general, Lex. I like having you guys lead from the front because that is how it works for me. When you get to the kind of strength numbers we are dealing with though, Generals are mostly paper-pushing pussies. I’ve tried to keep it from happening here, but I failed. I think it is the nature of the beast.”

“So how do we fix it?” Lex asked.

“We don’t yet. We have to fight this war the way we started it. Once it is over, we will reassess our command structure, as well as our tables of operations and equipment.”

“In the mean time,” Lex said, “We need to clean out those fucking caves, and it is going to cost us a lot.”

“Yeah.”

Earth

“Detective Thorn is here to see you sir.”

Dar Sike looked up from his flexpad and said, “Send him in.”

Once Thorn was shown into his office, Dar put the screen down and shook the visitor’s hand. “How are you, Detective?”

“To be honest, I wish you had never asked me to work on this, Mr. Sike.”

“I wish I did not need to. But two thousand missing people need you.”

“Three thousand two hundred and ninety two sir. Another apartment building was attacked last Tuesday. And that is just what I know of so far. I am certain this has been going on for a while.”

“Where was it this time?” Dar asked.

“Helsinki. Well, a suburb.”

“What have you learned?”

“Not a damned thing, and I mean that. Not a single damned thing. I have access to every vid feed there is and I cannot find anything. I have even confiscated one feed that shows a woman in Oahu masturbating as she disappears.”

Dar raised his eyebrows questioningly and Thorn said, “She was a sex worker. Doing holocam work. I only found out about it because the guy who was paying to watch complained to the company that ran the cam. He thought she disappeared because she was a construct, so he made a complaint that he was getting ripped off. I guess getting the real thing is an actual fetish for some men.”

Dar hesitated but asked, “What did you see in the vid, I mean, other than the Hawaiian girl?”

Thorn shrugged and said, “Nothing. She was there one millisecond and gone the next. No look of surprise, no fear, no pain. She was just gone. There was a mirror in the background that showed most of the room, and there was no one else there. The vibrator she was using hit the bed and kept buzzing.”

Dar turned his chair around poured two drinks. Offering one to Detective Thorn, he said, “Well, I hope you at least got a good show out of it.”

“I never thought of you as a funny man, Superintendent. This is good,” Thorn said as he took a drink. “What is it?”

“It’s a single malt whiskey from Solitude. Kimberly Addison sends it back with me every time I am there. Do you smoke cigars, Thorn?”

“No sir, but my wife does.”

Dar opened the humidor behind him and pulled out a wooden box. Pushing it across the desk he said, “Give her these. They are also from Solitude.”

“You live well, sir. Thank you. She has been wanting a Solitude cigar for some time. I was going to buy her
one
for our next anniversary.”

“Are they that expensive still? I had no idea. Since the family owns the planet, I never see a bill.”

“Can I ask you something, sir?”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you really that rich? I mean, I hear stories, but you know how that goes with the press. What is the real story?” Thorn asked.

“Technically, Cort Addison is that rich. He honestly owns it all. But in practice, the Addisons are very wealthy. With the interests we have across the galactic arm now, we possess more than the sum wealth of the rest of humanity combined.”

“Did it really all start with one person?”

“Yes. Cort had a brief affair with the security guard assigned to him before he transitioned to our time. He did not have much in the way of family at the time, so he left everything to her. Even then, it was a lot of money. He was a multimillionaire by his standards or ours. She became pregnant and decided to start the family trust, so he would be sure to have something waiting for him when he arrived. I doubt she had any idea how far it would go, though.”

“My wife has a cousin who married an Addison. Bastard pisses me off. He is one of the ones who flaunts the money quite a bit.”

“Well, we do have those. Even in the blood descendents, unfortunately. My son-in-law was one for that matter. He died in a flight accident shortly after Rand graduated college. He was showing off a new flight and lost control in a storm. He was good to my daughter, though.”

“I apologize. I did not mean to bring up bad memories, sir.”

“It is okay, Thorn. He was an ass,” Dar said. “Probably much like your wife’s cousin. The trust tries to weed them out, but it is not always successful. Actual blood members of the family have a heavy burden to bear if they want to fully realize the benefits of the trust. They must acquire doctorates, they must work summers in one of our charities, things like that. Not everyone makes it. In fact, some do not even try. I have a brother who turned his back on the trust the moment he came of age. Lex’s father is the smartest of all my siblings, but he is a drunk. The last I heard of him, he was a beach bum in the Caribbean. He no longer even gets his stipend because Cort changed the rules and forbade anyone who is convicted of a violent crime from benefitting from the trust.”

“He was a criminal?”

“Yes. He was drunk and crashed a two wheeler into a crowd of children.”

Thorn looked at his glass and said, “Some people should not drink. Not even synthetics can fix stupidity.”

“Agreed,” Dar said. “But we have gotten off topic. What is your next step?”

“You gave me an idea. Is there any vid of a jump? Or a transition like General Addison made?”

Dar saw where Thorn was going and said, “If there is, I will find it and make it available to you. Detective, at this point I have not told Cort about the disappearances. He has enough going on with the Tapon war. But it is my understanding that it is winding down. Once I have brought him into the loop, I suspect he will want to meet you.”

“I look forward to that, sir.”

Nill

“Here is the multi-spectrum map of the tunnels,” Lex said. “The Nill didn’t even know about them. Revised numbers show there are at least five thousand Tapons inside, and we cannot see beyond this point, though I am sure the tunnels continue. They are just shielded somehow.”

“What about a tachyon scan?” Cort asked.

“I do not have anything planetside that can throw one, and Captain Sars on the
Sorano
says enemy jump drives are interfering with scanners, so getting one from a ship is out of the question too.”

“Well, let’s clear out what we can see then. Then we will worry about the hidden tunnels.”

“Yes, sir. I have an Alpha recon company for you, heavy. They go by Badger Company, and are all in the FALCON 4s. That
should
help with the Tapon energy weapons.”

The latest iteration of the Flexible Armor Light COmbat Nanosuit had an outer layer that was literally thousands of layers of graphene sandwiched between thousands of layers of copper. It allowed them to absorb nearly eight times the energy that the previous FALCONs could. They also had heavier capacitive power packs, to store that additional energy. If the wearer was using an energy weapon instead of a projectile weapon, it could also channel the power into an attached weapon system.