The Tetra War_The Katash Enigma Read online

  I remained silent. It was more than obvious that I’d be executed if the Gurts captured me.

  The conference room went dark and a video image appeared.

  “Please observe this footage,” he said.

  A desert came into view and then a destroyed starship.

  “I’ve been on that wreckage,” I said.

  He paused the video. “Explain.”

  “I was there, in the Harea. I claimed salvage rights…”

  He laughed at my revelation. “You had salvage rights to my starship? The universe is sometimes smaller than it seems.”

  “Your starship, Major?” I asked.

  “I claimed it for the Tedesconian people.”

  “And what happened?”

  “As is often the case, politics got in the way.”

  “I sold my claim to come here,” I announced proudly.

  “To Talamz?”

  “To hunt you,” I said. “I arrived at Pugnale Ridge after pulling in some favors. Part of that process required me to unload my shares at a discount.”

  “Your lust to kill me was that intense?” he asked. “You paid for the right to drop into a Golvinish nightmare?”

  “Sir,” I answered, “the sacrifice was minor. I figured I’d never receive the money anyway. Don’t be overly flattered. I merely wanted to kill you.”

  “Emotions are a hindrance on the battlefield, Avery,” he stated flatly, and restarted the video.

  The rest of the clip played out, and Balestain paused the projector.

  “As you know firsthand,” he said, “that ship wasn’t built on Earth or Purvas.”

  I nodded. “I knew that when I first saw her.”

  “She wasn’t built here on Talamz, either,” he said. “Those soldiers are alien to all three planets.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “This next video was captured from a research station on an outer planet,” he said, and the screen blinked to life with a new scene.

  Armored soldiers similar to those who’d crashed on Purvas filled the viewer.

  “Who, or what, are they?”

  “We don’t know,” he answered.

  The lights flickered on, and he handed me a stack of images.

  I looked through the pictures, which were blown-up stills from the video I’d just watched. The aliens operated in suited armor that was designed similarly to TCI-Armor.

  The differences between a mecha and a suit could be subtle, but it was apparent to anyone who’d been on a battlefield with them that a suited soldier was faster and more nimble. The complement of weapons used also appeared similar to SDI equipment packs: grenade launchers, coil-guns, and advanced computer-assisted hardware.

  It was evident that a platoon of these soldiers would be formidable, and that only superior numbers or the assistance of larger equipment would be sufficient to defeat them.

  I finished reviewing the pictures and handed them back to the major. “So what do you want with me, Major Balestain?”

  “It’s time to make plans for war. Whatever their ultimate intentions, these creatures aren’t sending delegations to discuss interplanetary peace through mutually beneficial trade deals.”

  “Not unlike purvasts coming to Earth,” I said, my tone harsh.

  “Perhaps…” He paused for a moment. “But unlike how the Teds and Gurts treated humans, these aliens haven’t attempted contact. What they’ve done is send advance parties. Scouts. They haven’t learned Common English, like we did. They haven’t attempted to teach us about their gods, customs, and intentions, as you’d expect if they wanted peace.”

  I understood the implications. “I see.”

  Since they made no effort to communicate, it was clear they weren’t interested in peace talks.

  The warfare between the Gurts and Teds that had migrated to Earth had lasted for decades, causing billions of deaths. I wondered how much destruction would result if this new species invaded…

  And next wondered if there was any way to stop them.

  I sighed, knowing the answers to the many questions that I’d nevertheless ask. “Major, why am I here?”

  He looked at me like I was a student on my first day at school. “Do you understand the kind of person who would kill a million civilians for the greater good?”

  I flushed. He knew I knew. I barely moved my chin in a brief nod.

  “That, Avery, is why you’re here. For the coming war against the Dreki-Nakahi.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions, but by iron and blood.

  ~ Otto Eduard Leopold

  One year later

  27OCT2311 HCE

  The outer edge of Sector Elefant 18-3B, unnamed desert region.

  Home Planet of the Dreki-Nakahi

  Nicknamed: Drekiland.

  System CAT: ODY–277.4883.006

  Company comm messages flowed across my display screen. I read them to pass the time while I monitored drones. As a platoon leader, I had access to the majority of systems in the company. I found it cathartic to watch the troop movements of the other platoons, and it kept me from getting bored. Eventually, a level three target would show up on my display screen, and I’d get to earn my daily bread.

  Or die trying.

  “Charlie actual, go!”

  “I need cover. Bravo-tango-thirty-five.”

  “You’ve got RC-six for three.”

  “Roger. RC-six?”

  “Go!”

  “Mark Bravo-tango-thirty-five. Over.”

  “On the way.”

  “This is PFC Rileely. I think everyone’s dead.”

  “Then you’re it, Rile. Do something worthy before you–”

  “John?”

  “John?”

  “Keep this line free, RC-six. Over.”

  “RC-six.”

  “Mark plus one, fire for effect!”

  “On the way.”

  “RC-six. Over.”

  “Wait one.”

  “This is Green Squad actual. I’ve got…”

  “Green actual?”

  “Fire-fire-fire! You idiots, I said north.”

  “There’s something fucking up my GPS. Is up north on this planet?”

  “Pretend. Move in the other direction.”

  “I’ve got a platoon of Drekis moving into sector ten.”

  “Third has ten.”

  “Third lost ten. Retreated to eight.”

  “Whois?”

  “Victor Foxtrot actual, sir. We’ve got a situation.”

  “Maintain protocol.”

  “Sorry, siii…I got a problem. Shit.”

  “RC-six? Over.”

  “I think they got smoked.”

  “Can we at least attempt to maintain discipline?”

  “Fucking green louies.”

  “Whois?”

  “What?”

  “Who is this?”

  “RC-four, are you online?”

  “Roger.”

  “I need a mark.”

  “Roger, go!”

  And so the chatter went.

  I kept watch over the battlefield and maintained comm silence. Mallsin was two hundred meters to my left and approximately fifty meters below me, and Abrel was another fifty meters below her. Callie had a spot slightly above me, about seventy-five meters to my right. The sandstone we’d perched on was grayish red and excellent for concealment. Unfortunately, it was too soft to stop armor-piercing rounds.

  Our mission was twofold: intelligence gathering and eliminating at least one high-value target.

  Situational rules were in effect.

  The situational part meant we were continuously faced with no-win choices. If we fired and revealed our positions, we’d spend the rest of the day evading the inevitable response. If we remained undetected, we’d have to explain to a pissed-off superior officer why we’d failed to take out a particularly valuable enemy.

  The Dreki-Nakah
i were ruthless fighters.

  We still had no means to communicate with them. After many attempts to make peaceful contact, it became apparent that negotiation was impossible. There was no surrendering to them, and no taking prisoners. Every engagement became a no-quarters fight. The Drekis didn’t hesitate to make suicidal runs ending in self-destruction if they felt they were losing ground.

  Which didn’t mean they weren’t known to retreat.

  We quickly learned that most of their retreats were bait used to pull our forces into an ambush.

  The four of us – Abrel, Mallsin, Callie, and I – could message each other on the IR-comm with little chance of detection, but we’d been working for eight days straight, so no one was chatty.

  “Avery, check out sector Juliet. About thirteen dash two. There’s a Dreki with evidence,” Abrel said.

  “Hold one,” I responded. I opened a pop-up. A long-range telescope mounted ten meters to my left fed me an image. A Silver Wire hard-connected the device to my suit, and I’d driven three spikes into the soft stone to stabilize it. Even the slightest vibration throws your reticule off target when you’re focusing on something several clicks downrange.

  “Evidence” was our shortcode for anything indicating a high-value target: an officer, pilot, or a particularly dangerous noncom. We had very little information on how the Drekis organized their troops, what ranks they used, or how they prioritized their attacks. Unlike in the Tetra War, or in the many police actions that took place afterward, it was impossible to gain intel from the enemy by infiltrating their ranks. A purvast could be a spy among purvasts, but no humanoid could ever sneak into the Dreki ranks and pretend to be one of them.

  We hadn’t determined exactly what they were, but it was clear they weren’t anything like us. They weren’t humanoid in the sense that members of the tri-planets were. We from the tri-planets, it seemed, were cousins.

  Humans, purvasts, and talarrstans could interbreed.

  It wasn’t long after the discovery of Talamz that Rhanskads and Gurt-Mexicanos found they had a fondness for each other.

  They migrated in both directions and intermarried in significant numbers. The fusion of their cultures sparked interplanetary rages, although this “mixing of the bloods” was nothing new. The New and Old Worlds on Earth had adopted the habit soon after humans invented wooden sailing ships.

  There was an ongoing debate about how humanoids from three planets had ended up with similar DNA. Evolutionary biologists claimed we would likely never know the whole truth. Religious leaders often claimed they already knew the answers and no further discussion was required.

  There were rumors that a single Dreki-Nakahi had been taken alive after it failed to self-destruct. The stories that circulated included the “fact” that it was being studied by scientists on Purvas, as well as the “fact” that it had escaped and was raping tribal women in the jungle. There were lots of conflicting “facts,” and I put most of them into the category of unreasonable fantasy.

  Gossip and lies were as common in the armed forces as rain in the Biragon, so I considered the more probable story – that a Dreki had been captured – as possible, but unlikely. I’d seen the Drekis in action, and I suspected their leadership had the ability to remotely self-destruct their troops. This was a feature that had been floated as being of strategic value among the Joint Forces Unified Army leadership.

  Among the humanoids, however, it wasn’t politically defensible. Imagine a JFUA general instructing Tedesconian captains to use Guritain or Mecko soldiers as remotely controlled bombs; the alliance would shatter before its first anniversary.

  “Avery, you got anything?” Abrel asked.

  “Okay, I see him…or her…or it…” I watched the armored Dreki move its tail in a distinct manner. Whether this meant it was a leader or had an odd personal tic, it was impossible to know. The Dreki army didn’t display insignia on their suits.

  “Callie, are you watching this?” I asked. She had a sixth sense when it came to body language, a fact that occasionally got me into trouble.

  “Roger,” she answered. “I vote we call it.”

  “Mallsin?” I asked. If we all four agreed, it was as good a sign as any.

  “Evidence-wise, it’s weak. But it’s the best we’ve had all day,” Mallsin allowed. She tended toward noncommittal answers, but I still valued her opinion. Her skepticism kept us in check, saving more than a few lives, including mine.

  “Let’s work a solution. Callie, you have the lead.” If she was available, I always gave the programming jobs to Callie. Record-keeping protocols required me to provide the order.

  A backup was required per the book, in case the primary was killed. In practice, Mallsin automatically worked up solutions, but I still issued the command. “Mallsin, work up a redundant.”

  “On it,” she replied.

  Drekiland’s gravity was Earth one-point-zero-four-nine. With our suits, the difference wasn’t noticeable, but it did affect firing solutions. We had four planets listed in our systems and two mysterious files labeled “future” that had us all wondering what Command knew that we didn’t.

  I transferred control of my Erru-designed, Mecko-manufactured long-range coil-gun sniper rifle to Callie.

  A pop-up asked me to confirm an intel transfer to the Kuznetsov in orbit above us at the moment we fired. Our location became known to the enemy as soon as we took a shot, so protocol was to send up all the intel you’d collected since your last sat-comm upload.

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  I clicked Y and the window closed. I watched Callie put the finishing touches on our assault plan. She often surprised me with the elegance of her programming, but the sequence she’d worked up for this action was straightforward blunt force. Command, in response to complaints from soldiers in units being commanded by former enemies, required a ranking officer or noncom to officially approve the solutions, plans, and objectives worked up by a junior.

  Callie and I had been promoted to second lieutenants, but I was still the lead.

  Ultimately, there were never two soldiers with precisely the same rank.

  If two equally matched troops tied on every qualifier of the twenty on the list, a coin was flipped. The list included the exact times of birth, so a tie seemed exceedingly unlikely. If no coin was available, the soldier with the most recent kill was declared ranking.

  You’d think this could never be an issue, but in a military with half a billion troops…math is a strange thing.

  “Go,” I said.

  Mallsin’s coil-gun fired first.

  The newest armor-piercing projectile was an alloy the Rhans had developed. The material was a nano-composite dart with a point so sharp it was rumored to be only a single molecule. The reality was a state secret, so who knew but the experts?

  What I did know was that the round called an APA pierced with such kinetic energy that it literally burned a hole through TCI-Armor, provided it struck within a range of angles.

  With even a tiny deviation outside the effective range, the ammo would ricochet.

  Which was why we fired in tandem at a single target.

  One successful shot out of twenty was considered good.

  Callie’s record was excellent – which was a mixed blessing because it often landed us impossible missions.

  The APA from Mallsin’s weapon was fired to purposely miss, only not by much. In spite of their velocity, the Drekis had radar capable of picking up the flight path of the dart. The seemingly misfired shot was to the target’s right, forcing him to move left. The second round, from my weapon, was placed high.

  The enemy dropped to the ground and rolled left.

  Abrel’s coil-gun was aimed at the spot the soldier ended up, forcing a desperate attempt by the enemy to use his momentum to continue his rolling evasion. This was where the kill shot, from Callie’s SCG-16X, was aimed. Being the programmer, she hogged kill shots. Nobody complained.

  Well, not too much, anyway.
/>   The APA entered the top of the creature’s left shoulder.

  During training sessions, we were shown slow-speed video of kinetic armor-piercing ammunition puncturing TCI plates. The energy created was so high the round melted through the shielding and drew boiling metal into the body of the victim. From the exterior, the only visible damage was a tiny hole, but inside, the droplets of splayed molten alloy solidified as they dropped in temperature, and the victim’s flesh was shredded.

  The Drekis also used a pressurized gel inside their armor. It was apparently a convergent solution, such as the evolution of the eyeball. What was visible to us through our highly magnified scopes after our kill shot was a stream that looked like whitish foam spraying from the entrance wound.

  It confirmed the death of our target.

  A few seconds later we were on the run.

  My display screen lit up with various warnings.

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  Our systems couldn’t track mortar rounds that were lobbed high and at various speeds, at least not until on the downward path. There were too many variables, and the Drekis had high-explosive rounds that used secondary propulsion systems. An HE-munition that could be fired from a cannon and then slightly alter course while en route added an extra level of danger in our choice of escape routes. Although similar to a guided missile, just not as complex, we were still forced to hesitate at intervals to ensure we weren’t running through a spot that was about to become a crater.

  I fired four rounds of glitter-chaff, a multi-alloy burst that could trick guidance systems. The screen could also destroy a missile if it couldn’t avoid flying through it.

  Next, I fired six flare rounds using different temperature settings for each. Any parameter that successfully confused the enemy’s guidance technology was saved. I also launched an experimental defensive weapon: the EDAP-12-v5. This package landed on the sandstone and projected various holograms, sent outbursts of nonsensical radio chatter, fired flashing lights and lasers, and also superheated before melting.

  While all this was going on, I was running full speed.