Setosha - the Beating Heart
Copyright© 2010 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 27
Setosha, Main Continent, Sept Knowles
Alicia Knowles saw a wisp of dust rising from behind the distant rocks--there was no breeze this afternoon, so there shouldn’t be any dust, not unless there was someone out there. She put down her textbook and listened. She could hear the faint but unmistakable clip-clop sound of hooves on stone. There was someone on the trail that led in from the wooded slopes of the Tungsten Hills. Two trails converged at her watch post, one from the Tungsten Hills, the other came from the woods southeast of Sept Knowles. Her job was to watch the trails and alert her family if any Impies showed up, like they had six days before.
Alicia marked her place in her textbook and stuffed it in her pack next to her water bottle. Settling in behind her laser rifle, she steadied her telescopic sights over the place where a traveler had to step out of the boulder field and onto hardpan. The range was just over 250 meters, right at the most effective range for this rifle. Aunt Janine, their teacher, had given every girl the task of calculating each of their most likely target ranges with trigonometry, presenting all the notations they’d made at each step of the problem. After dark, Alicia had slipped out to confirm her homework with a tape measure: 251.35 meters exactly. Aunt Janine always told them to verify their calculations with ground sense whenever they could. Alicia knew the distance to every rock in front of her.
Alicia saw more hints of movement. Whoever it was did not seem to care whether they were seen or not. That was unusual. If you were Families on Setosha, you moved very carefully these days. If you weren’t Families, you moved even more carefully. Alicia looked through her scope and considered her next move. She would have to let them ride out of the rocks and into plain view. Just in case this was another sneaky Impie trick, she would have to let the rider get far enough into the open so that when she shot him, anyone trying to rescue him would also be a clear target.
She looked for her marker rock, the small red one she’d also plotted as part of Aunt Janine’s trigonometry class. That rock was exactly 247.82 meters from the muzzle of her rifle. That was where she’d drop him if it was an Impie. With this rifle, at 247 meters, she’d burn a hole in him you could see daylight through. Then she’d burn another hole through whoever tried to come after the first one. Someday, they would learn to give up poking at Sept Knowles.
Of course, she knew that knocking down the lead Impie didn’t always work. Everybody had heard about what had happened with the Camden girls. Fifteen days back, they’d ambushed a group of Impie soldiers, but the Impie soldier bosses had just left their wounded where they dropped, lying like so much cast-off rubbish under the blazing sun. After two days, the gals who’d ambushed them couldn’t stand the moaning and cries for help any longer. Two of them had slipped out at night to bring in the wounded. The Impies had shot those poor girls dead. Apparently, they had been waiting for someone to do just that.
That whole stupid mess had only ended when the wounded Impies had finally died from the sun. Their surviving comrades, though, hadn’t had a chance to enjoy their victory. Three of the Burton gals from up north who were living with Family North Point had been visiting the Camdens to train them. They’d gone out the next night in their powered armor and ambushed the gray-clad Impies, killed every one of them, and then killed the Impies who’d come after the first lot. Alicia had heard stories about what had happened next. There were rumors about severed heads and things like that. The trouble was, the only ones who knew for sure just smiled and said nothing.
The whole incident had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth and had prompted orders from Alicia’s mother that she and her sibs must always shoot to kill, not shoot to wound. Nobody wanted another dead sib lying out in the sun.
She saw the head first--dark, shoulder-length unkempt hair, then a small, slender body--female. Alicia relaxed slightly. This couldn’t be an Impie, though it could be someone sent out as bait. Still, she couldn’t abandon her position. This might be a trap to lure someone like her out. It’d be just like the vermin to force some girl to ride ahead of them to trigger any ambushes.
Alicia swept her sights slowly over the background jumble, looking for anything in the distant brush or trees that might hint at a trap. Nothing showed. Maybe the stranger really was a refugee. Alicia and her sibs had seen a few on this trail. All sorts of people were on the move because of one Impie atrocity or another. The southern route wasn’t too likely an approach for attackers anyway. If the stranger had come over the Tungsten Hills, she had just traveled through 250 kilometers of waterless rocky desert spotted with scraggly scrub brush and a few mines nobody had cared about since the Invasion. The only things beyond that desert were the mountains at the southern end of the continent, and then the ocean.
Because this approach to the caverns was so difficult, Alicia and her sibs were the only ones guarding it. Behind them, the boulder field got rougher, bad enough that even people on foot had trouble moving there. But behind them was also the back entrance to the cavern complex where her family had lived since their home had been bombed.
She and her sibs had orders to stay out of sight and trade off watch duty so each of them had an hour or two to do her schoolwork. Even in the middle of a war, they had to do their lessons.
Alicia tried not to think how few people were left now. Mam kept telling them to concentrate on life and the living. There would be time for the dead later. They’d have a Family Memorial in the Remembrance Garden after every Impie ship and soldier had been killed or kicked out of the Setosha System.
Some days, not remembering the dead was harder than others, especially when Alicia had an Impie in her sights. She was certain she’d killed at least three of the gray vermin. Her two sibs had killed four more for sure between them, and who knows how many more had died in that burned-up vehicle. It wasn’t enough to make up for Aunt Innis and Aunt Marla and her new babies and Great Aunt Therese and all the others who’d been caught at home. Not nearly enough, but it was a start.
“Rider on the south trail,” she reported to her sib, Della. Della was waiting farther back in the boulder field with the rocket launcher Mam had given them. So far, they’d only gotten to use it that once. Della had put a rocket into that ground vehicle with the nasty-looking gun turret on top. Something had exploded inside, and whoever was inside had burned up. Scorched pieces of that car still littered the hardpan in front of Alicia. Della had to account to Mam for every rocket she fired, but Mam had said that rocket was a round well spent.
“I’ll tell Nicole,” Della said over the shunt line. “She’ll be right there. Did you finish our class assignment?”
“A few minutes ago, I wanted to take a few minutes to check my solutions. Rider is on a horse. Poor animal, it’s just skin and bones. Young girl. I don’t recognize her. Coming in on the trail out of the Tungsten Hills, not the main trail.”
“You’d think they’d call off school what with the Invasion and everything.”
“That girl looks almost as bad off as her horse. Think again, sib. Do they ever call school off for anything?”
“Um, good point.”
“And if the Impies stay here, where do you suppose we’ll go for advanced study?”
“The only way the Impies are staying is if they’re all dead, or we are. Maybe we could go to Weon for school, or maybe even Home. That would be fun. None of us have ever been to Home.”
“Fun. Yeah, but how do we get there? Even if somebody comes up with a way past the Impie fleet, want to bet the gals at Home didn’t miss any school these last few months? They’ll all be way ahead of us.”
“They didn’t have Impie vermin infesting the place, not that the teachers will take that as an excuse. You have a nasty mind, ‘Licia. Help me with the calculus tonight?”
Nicole slipped up beside her. “Who is she?” she whispered after studying the rider carefully through her glasses. In the low sun of the late afternoon, it was more and more difficult to make out details.
“I don’t know,” Alicia said without taking her eye from her scope. “Only one way we’ll find out.” She automatically adjusted her range setting for a closer shot, just in case. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“One of these days it’ll be your turn,” Nicole said quietly. She touched her sib for luck, and then climbed silently down through the rocks to the spot where she could step right out onto the trail. Drawing her pistol, she thumbed off the safety and waited for the rider to come to her.
Of the three sibs, she was the one who had had to step out on the trail the most this last month. Della’s right leg was still in a cast, healing from a bad fall down the rocks she’d taken just before the Invasion. She got the rockets to keep Impie landers off their heads and armored cars off their doorstep. Since Alicia was a dead shot with her laser rifle, she was the best one to provide long-range cover in case of an ambush or some other attack. She had picked off three of the invaders right on the ramp of their armored carrier just before Della put a rocket into it. When the armored carrier had exploded, the gaggle of foot soldiers that had followed the car into the open had to scramble for cover. Nicole had shot two of them as they ran, hurrying the others back into the rocks.
There had been screams in the dark that night. Bone Bag, the scrawny old cougar whose den was less than a kilometer away, reported to Mam a day later that nobody needed to worry about the other vermin. He now had enough meat to last all winter. Alicia and the other girls kept their distance from Bone Bag. He was old, and the way he looked at you sent shivers up your spine. Mam had laughed at their worries and told them he was having too much fun playing with the vermin to sniff their trails.
Mam talked a lot these days with Bone Bag, the coyotes, and a pair of enhanced falcons who had adopted the Knowles’ caverns as an aerie. Mam said the old cougar mostly complained about age slowing him down. Hunting Impies was a lot more fun, and a lot easier than what he’d been living on before the Invasion. Alicia had seen Bone Bag in motion a month before the Invasion. He’d been chasing something small and furry. If that was what the old cougar called slow, she pitied whatever he had hunted as a youngster. She didn’t pity the Impies he hunted, not at all.
Nicole reached her position and took a settling breath. As much as she kidded Alicia and Della about taking their turn out here, she was the best one for the job. Alicia was scared of Bone Bag, but she liked the old cougar. She had even found time to talk with him, watching him hunt and trying to emulate him. Now she braced herself for what she was going to do.
The clatter of the horse’s hooves made her jittery. The horse and rider were almost close enough to touch. Nicole drew a deep breath. She let just her pistol and a little of her arm show.
“Good afternoon,” she said pleasantly, aiming her pistol directly at the rider’s face from three meters away. “Welcome to Family Desert Hills.”
The rider reined in, staring dazedly around, finally noticing Nicole’s gun. She was areally young girl, no more than nine or ten at most, if even that. Her face was red and peeling from sunburn, her cheeks were sunken, and her eyes seemed too large for her head. Her bony hands emerged from a dirty, patched coat to clutch the reins and saddle. As Nicole watched, recognition seeped into the girl’s vacant gaze, and whatever had been keeping her on that horse seemed to drain out of her. Her trembling fingers let go of the reins. She slumped forward, sliding from the saddle. Feet on the ground, she turned slowly, stiffly, to face Nicole and stood there sort of wavering, finally leaning against the flank of her shivering horse. The horse bent its head and began tugging at the one patch of green visible on the edge of the trail.
“Fa--Family Desert Hills?” The girl’s dusty voice cracked as if from long disuse. She coughed dryly once and tried again. “Desert Hills?”
“That’s us,” Nicole said. She glanced past the girl at the expanse of empty hardpan behind her. The longer they stood there, the more uncomfortable she felt. She felt like there was a big target painted on her back. They were too exposed out here, and she knew it.
“I-I need to see Robbie Sinclair,” the girl told her. “I-I’m Tarra DeGraff, and I need to find Robbie Sinclair.”
“DeGraff?” Nicole asked. She’d never heard of a Sept DeGraff. “What’s your family?”
“S-South Mountain,” the girl said. “I’m from Family South Mountain in Diamond Cove. Please. I’ve got to get things to Robbie Sinclair. I’ve got to see her.”
Nicole looked up into the rocks, but there was no help there. She bit her lip, wondering what Mam would make of this. Nicole knew there was a Family South Mountain—fisheries, tourism, and some mineral extraction—that’s all she remembered reading about in school, and they held some land to the south and west. She didn’t know the Septs in that Family. She decided, on the face of it, that the girl was probably telling the truth. Of course, it still might be some kind of trap. There was only one way to find out.
“All right,” she said, holding out her hand. “Come with me.”
It was a hard scramble for the horse, but Nicole led them both through the maze of sandstone boulders that defended this entrance to her Family’s home. They finally came to the small stream trickling out of a crack in the mountain. The horse immediately dug in its feet, buried its muzzle in the water, and tried to drink the stream dry. Nicole waited patiently. When a horse got it in its head that it was going to drink, her experience told her no amount of tugging on the reins was going to change the stupid creature’s mind.
When the horse paused for breath, Nicole tugged hard on the reins and started the animal moving again. Tarra DeGraff stumbled along right behind her, one hand on the saddle. Nicole led them through the narrow fissure cut by the stream. It was like stepping from day into night. The cavern was cool and echoed quietly to the sounds of the stream. A single electric light guided them to the doors.
Alerted by Alicia, Cousin Lynne was there to greet them. “Who’s she?” the older girl asked. Hand resting comfortably on her holstered rocket pistol, she stood guard in front of the small, thick metal doors that sealed the passage deeper into the mountain.
“She says her name’s Tarra DeGraff, Family South Mountain.”
“I have to see Robbie Sinclair,” the girl repeated like a broken recording.
Lynne nodded. “We’ll get you and your horse taken care of,” she said as she opened the heavy doors, “but there’s no Robbie Sinclair around here. There’s no Sept Sinclair in our family or any other family I know of--knew of--nearby.”
The girl started to turn back towards the cave entrance as if she intended to head out into the desert again to find her Robbie Sinclair. Her legs buckled under her, and she collapsed. Nicole barely caught her before her head hit the ground.
“Lynne, she weighs almost nothing! She’s just skin and bones!”
Lynne rested the back of her hand on the shunt contact pad next to the doors and called someone. In two minutes, Nicole’s mother appeared. “Let’s get them both farther down in the caverns,” she ordered after checking the girl and eyeing the horse. “I don’t think she’s eaten in days. Her horse isn’t much better.”
“Surely she has food or something in her gear,” Lynne said. She checked the saddlebags and then looked up frowning, shaking her head. “Nothing in here but papers covered with equations and drawings.” She tried reading some of it, blinked, and then put the papers back into the saddlebag. She had taken her first differential equations class, but this was way beyond that. “It looks like something really complicated.”
“Pl-please,” the girl reached out, trying to push herself up from the ground. “Get those to Robbie Sinclair. It’s important. My aunt told me I have to get those to Robbie Sinclair.”
“That’s all she’s said,” Nicole told her Mam. “Over and over again, she has to see Robbie Sinclair.”
Her mother lifted the girl easily in a two-arm carry. “We’ll bunk and feed her. Then we’ll see if somebody else knows who this Robbie Sinclair is.” She rested her hand against the shunt contact pad and was quiet for several seconds. Something somebody said made her close her eyes and smile like they hadn’t seen her smile since before the Invasion.
“The Fleet’s coming in,” she whispered.
“What?” Nicole and Lynne exclaimed as one.
“The Scanner Station at Tall Peak just reported,” Mam repeated joyously, gently hugging the girl to her. Her eyes were alight. “The Fleet’s coming in! The Fleet’s finally coming in! There’s going to be a big battle in Space. The Fleet’s coming to rescue us at last!”
Both Lynne and Nicole looked eagerly up at the ceiling of the cavern. “How soon?” Lynne asked.
“We don’t know yet. But they’re coming. It’ll be hours, not days. They’re here, they’re finally here.” She wiped something wet off her cheeks and straightened up, suddenly all business. “Let’s get her down below to the aid station. We have a lot to do and not much time for it. There’s going to be a big battle on the ground, too, if we want to live to see the end of this.” She smiled tightly. “Notify all the girls in the outposts. I’ll alert the coyotes, Bone Bag, and the others. We’re going to be very busy for the next few days.”
Setosha System, Inside the Hyperjump Limit
Svetlana Federova flipped her passive sensors to where she knew she ought to see the Families Fleet. They were visible only because they occulted a star. If she’d still had a head, she would have shaken it in rueful admiration. Trust Crazy to come up with something like this. She was hiding a fleet right out in the open. Where did she get these ideas? She’d have to ask her someday.
Corey sat at the Squadron Commander’s Station on the Flag Bridge of the Phormio, watching her passive scan as the Families Fleet fell towards Setosha. We’re nearly there, she thought. In less than an hour, things should start happening. Inertia will put us right on top of them before they know we’re there. Around her, she could feel the tense, bustling activity of the crew as they completed their final preparations for combat.
The Fleet was almost invisible on her scan, just like she wanted, just as it had been 96 hours before when they’d started this approach. The ships of the fleet were grappled together into three groups, one for each of the major combat elements the fleet would use in the coming battle. There was virtually no leakage of neutrinos, neutrons, or the other telltale signs of 170 warships dropping silently toward the Imperial squadrons that blockaded the planet. Her crews worked their jobs without artificial gravity, active scan, or fire control. The Families ships were as stealthy as everyone could make them.
“When do you think they’ll spot us?” Karin Boone asked quietly from beside her.
“With those watchships gone, probably not for another couple of hours,” Corey said. “I bet Leah Bridges a Red River salmon dinner at Backgammon Bay on Home that the Impies wouldn’t see us until we powered up. I think we’re both looking forward to her losing that bet. Keep an eye on their battleships. That’ll be the key. Right now, they’re still scattered. They don’t know we’re here, or they’d be concentrating. When they finally see us, we’ll know it because they’ll slam on the Gs to get together as fast as they can. That’s when things should get interesting.”
Karin nodded. Her grin was almost feral. She had understood the plan even faster than Corey expected when Admiral Bridges presented the cleaned-up version at the last conference. It felt right. They would be all over the Impies before any of the murdering vermin knew what was happening.
“I make it about two more hours,” Karin murmured quietly. “The pilots are eating right now. Their fighters are loaded and ready.”
“Reminds me of when I was a pilot.” Corey smiled fondly, remembering that warm, close feeling between pilots in the Ready Room just before a big fight. Everyone was extra nice to each other. Each friend was suddenly precious. You knew some of the people around you wouldn’t make it back, and you wanted to remember them.
“
“How many will I lose today?” she asked herself. This must be worth the losses.
“We’ll start getting them out on the rail in about 30 minutes,” Corey said. She looked at her Scan again, judging time. “Colleen, do you have a final count on the Imperial ships in-system?”
Colleen Mathies glanced at the list on her console. The glance was for reassurance only; she had the list memorized. Someday, I’ll recite that list to my grandchildren,” she thought. Maybe it won’t seem so terrifying then.
“The count before we boosted in-system four days ago, ma’am: 30 battleships, six battlecruisers, eight carriers, 52 cruisers--40 of those are what the book lists as heavy cruisers and 12 are light--106 destroyers, 70 Fast Attacks, 22 Watchships, six ships we think are repair vessels, 17 other ships we’ve identified as transports or liners, four research ships, and 15 merchants of various sizes. The total is 264 fighting ships and 36 non-combatant ships.
“From the signals intelligence we’ve been gathering, their commander is in the purple-tagged battleship on your Scan, currently 10 light minutes from Setosha.”
Corey sighed. “Families’ strength,” she recited from memory. “11 carriers, 62 cruisers, 105 escorts, 9 Children, five scouts, two couriers, and 990 fighters.” She shook her head again. “Is that enough? It sure seems like an awfully small force to throw at the Imperial Navy.”
“There are no more reserves to draw from,” Karin said. “This is everything we can scrape up. You know that better than any of us, Corey. The fighters can do it. Today will be fighter heaven.”
Corey looked at her Scan for the symbols marking the Imperial battleships’ positions. “This is crazy, even for me. Am I off the deep end this time, Karin?” She ran her fingers over the cold steel of her hook. “When I look at these odds, I can’t help but think they’re a bit on the long side. What if we fail? What if I make a mistake in this fight? So much depends on winning this one, and winning it big.”
“You need to get yourself outside of a meal,” Karin told her. “You’ll feel better. You and Admiral Bridges have done everything you can. Now it’s up to the rest of us to make the best of the chance you two have given us.” She touched Corey’s shoulder gently. “I’m serious, Corey. Come eat.”
“Too nervous,” Corey said, still watching the symbols of the Imperial battleships. Those were her targets. With them gone, the Imperial position at Setosha was hopeless. Without them, the whole Imperial Navy was finished. It would just take some time for that message to travel from the tip of the tail all the way to the tiny little dinosaur brain, but it would.
“You have to set a good example,” Karin insisted. She took Corey by the arm. “Come on, we have at least one more hour before anything could happen. There are hundreds of pairs of eyes watching those Impie battleships right now. Yours ought to be pointed at a plate of food.”
Reluctantly, Corey slipped her feet into her magsole boots and allowed Karin to drag her off the Flag Bridge. Oddly, Karin didn’t stop at the entrance to the wardroom where they normally ate. Instead, she continued farther down the corridor. “Where are we going?” Corey asked finally.
“You’ll see,” Karin said. “With all the other preparations and the planning, there wasn’t time for this until now.”
Karin stopped outside the Marine wardroom. The Marine standing guard there straightened to attention, saluted, and then reached over to open the hatch. “Go right in, ma’am,” she told Corey.
Puzzled, Corey looked at Karin, who smiled mysteriously and pushed her gently through the hatch.
The lights in the wardroom had been dimmed, but now they brightened. There was a shuffle of many magsole booted feet, and the entire Marine complement of Phormio, plus the complements of the other ships currently docked with the Strike Carrier, rose to their feet.
“Attention on Deck!” Marine Second Officer Minzie Tomlinson called, and every Marine came to attention. “Phormio Flag arriving!” As one, their hands snapped up in textbook-perfect salutes.
Marine Second Officer Tomlinson, the commander of the Marine detachment on Phormio, stepped forward with as much dignity as she could in magsole boots and no gravity. The Marines behind her completed their salute with a snap. “From all of the Marines in the Fleet, ma’am,” she said, “thank you.”
Corey blinked in surprise at the women in green uniforms. She glanced briefly back at Karin, who was grinning from ear to ear. Suddenly, she realized what this was all about. In their own way, the Marines were thanking her for what she’d done during the raid on the planetoid base. “But what else could I have done?” she said. “I couldn’t just leave them there.”
“Ma’am, we are all aware that the proper tactical decision was to leave the Marines on that rock and get your ships away,” Second Officer Tomlinson said. “But you came back. With a force twice your size running down on you, you took the time to pick up every Marine.” She glanced to one side. “We decided that deserved a ‘Thank you!’ from all the Marines in the Fleet. It seemed the right thing to do.”
Corey was speechless. She looked from Second Officer Tomlinson to all the other Marines in the room, her mouth open and no words coming out.
A Marine Senior stepped forward with a folder. She opened it and presented it. “Ma’am,” she announced loudly for all to hear, “this is both the least and the most we could do.” As Corey accepted the folder, the Senior snapped a salute. “Welcome to the Marines, ma’am.”
Inside the folder was a certificate informing everyone that Corey Jolene Andersen, 58303005, was henceforth an Honorary Marine, with all the respect due to the bearer of that honor.
Something caught in her throat. Not knowing what else to do, Corey returned the Senior’s salute. “I ... I...” She bit her lip. “Thank you. This is so ... so...” She didn’t trust herself to speak any more, but she didn’t have to. The Marines broke ranks and crowded around her.
Corey gazed happily through teary eyes at all the smiling faces surrounding her. The ones in front murmured their thanks and then made room for others. Some shook her hand or hugged her briefly. Several just stood and smiled, and then made room for others. One Marine, she recognized as Fourth Officer Chloe Stanton, stopped in front of her, shaking her head in wonder.
“When Talia told me you were coming back for us, I couldn’t believe it, ma’am.” The Marine officer’s left arm was bandaged. “I still didn’t believe it even as we boosted on our packs. All we had was a vector and a hope. My sib’s a Tech on Blakeslee. She told me they call you Crazy Corey because you come up with the craziest ideas, and then you make them work. I’m sure glad you came up with that one, ma’am.”
“But I couldn’t leave you,” Corey said yet again. “You’re family!”
Fourth Officer Stanton tapped the folder with one finger. “Aye, ma’am, and now you’re part of our Family. Thank you.” She saluted and stepped back into the crowd, making room for someone else.
Corey smiled at the other Marines as they slowly filed past her, some smiling back, some touching her for luck, others pausing to salute. When the last ones had left the wardroom on their way to prepare for their parts in the coming battle, Corey turned to look at Karin Boone.
“That was ... that was...”
“Unbelievable?” Karin laughed quietly. “I’ve never known the Marines to do anything like that. That was special.”
“It was overwhelming,” Corey said, her throat still tight with emotion. “But they don’t understand. I couldn’t leave those Marines behind. I just couldn’t. It was unthinkable. I had to come up with some way to go back for them, and when I saw the opportunity, I had to take it.”
“Oh, they understand, all right,” Karin said softly. “The after-action analysis of that fight is the hottest reading in Fleet right now. I don’t know of anyone else who would have dared pull that one off.” She looped her arm through Corey’s. “Now, let’s go get that food into you. You’ll feel better after a meal.”
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