Merkiaari Wars: 04 - Operation Breakout Read online

  “Well,” he said finally. “We can update our estimates with hard and reliable numbers now.”

  Usk wasn’t fooled. He gnashed his fangs in amusement. “Yes, my lord. I think we can do that for certain. Any future planning should take them into account. Yes?”

  “Yes,” he said grumpily, but then he brightened. “Well we are here and the war is begun. What do you think of it so far?”

  “It’s boring,” Usk said sourly.

  “Boring? We can’t have a boring war, Usk! What would the Hegemon say? Let us bring the rest of the fleet to order and get started. Set course for the gas giants. I want this system cleansed and this fleet back in foldspace on schedule. I put great weight on that. I have to prove it can be done. I don’t want anyone using my tardiness as an excuse not to follow the plan.”

  “No one would dare, my lord!”

  “Maybe so, but we both know they would be thinking it even if never uttered aloud.”

  The fleet having arrived in formation—in extremely close formation if Valjoth was truthful—quickly set course for the closest of the two gas giants the system had and the torturous task of refuelling so many ships without the benefit of proper gas mines. The current formation had nothing to do with the refuelling, but it did have the effect of making the course change quick and efficient. The formation was for practice and for getting his ship handlers used to such things. His future tactics relied upon them knowing what they could do with their ships; knowing instinctively and not simply assuming they knew because doctrine said so. Doctrine, some of it at least, had lost the last war for them. It wouldn’t lose this one; it wouldn’t win it either—he would.

  * * *

  17 ~ Cleansing

  Fourth Planet, Unnamed System, Border Zone.

  Riding a gravsled again was glorious. How he had missed this! It had been far too long since he had taken the gunner’s position in combat, and he took full advantage of the opportunity now. Usk was enjoying himself at the controls, while Zeng Kylar watched for threat beside him. The arrangement was most improper; Usk was his shield bearer not her, but Valjoth didn’t care in the least! It felt so good to leave his concerns behind on Blood Drinker and just be himself for a while. Combat was in his blood; Merkiaari had literally been designed for this, and they all revelled in it. He took aim and potted another Human trying to run, and laughed as it fell.

  “Did you see that?” he yelled to Kylar in glee over the sounds of combat. “I took its leg right off with one shot!”

  “It’s still alive. Did you mean to miss?” Kylar responded taking aim with her cannon. “I’ll fix it. I won’t tell anyone, don’t worry.” She fired and turned the Human into a red smear on the road.

  He spluttered. “Miss! Did you hear that, Usk? She accused me of missing! I don’t miss!”

  “It’s true,” Usk yelled back to her. “He never misses, but he does like taunting his prey. He plays with his food too!”

  Valjoth growled indignantly. It had taken skill to hit such a small target at this range, he’d hit exactly what he aimed for, but he was having too much fun to justify himself or reprimand his companions. Besides, they were all enjoying the outing. Usk had recruited Kylar to help protect him so that he could fly the sled without fear that some Human would take his lord’s fangs as a trophy. He grinned at the very idea. The Hegemon would be very put out if they had to find a replacement First Claw for the Host. He would be too.

  He pointed to the right. “That way!”

  Usk fed more power to the sled’s anti-grav and they accelerated along the street. Valjoth opened up on the buildings with concentrated plasma in three round bursts. The buildings were shattered and debris soared high into the air. Fires roared and buildings slumped, collapsing into the street. Glorious! Usk swerved suddenly as a Human vehicle made a run for it.

  “Yes! After him, Usk!”

  Kylar took aim and fired on full auto! The huge cannon she carried boomed over and over, but she was a formidable female. She took its recoil as the cost of doing business and was unfazed. She snarled as Usk’s manoeuvres caused her to miss entirely. He had to swerve to avoid obstructions and burning vehicles.

  Valjoth laughed. “Ha! You missed, don’t tell me you meant to do that! And you accused me of missing! Oh, ha ha ha!”

  She gave him an evil look and hefted her weapon thoughtfully.

  “Now, now, none of that! I’m your lord, remember?”

  She growled, spun taking aim, and blew the fleeing vehicle completely into the air. It somersaulted and crashed back to the road skidding along on its side. She fired again, and it blew up, a fireball rising high above marking its grave.

  “Nice shot!” Usk yelled, slewing the sled to avoid hitting the wreck.

  It really was. She’d hardly paused to aim. “Find us something else to kill, Usk!”

  “Yes, my lord,” Usk said turning his attention to his scanner. He must have located something, because he spun the sled expertly around and accelerated down another street. “There’s something this way. Our troops are after it already.”

  Valjoth grunted and reloaded. Knowing his troops they would have slaughtered everything before he could get there. They wouldn’t leave any for him, even if he ordered them to. By this time they would be raging and doing what troops did to vermin. They were programmed in the vats for their role as all Merkiaari were, and then highly trained on top of that after reaching maturity. They would not wait for anything, and quite right too. He hadn’t specified which troops to send here. It was simply random chance that all the troops were of the old type. Not that it mattered; this cleansing was hardly taxing. As Usk had thought, this wasn’t a colony; it was some kind of outpost, and a small one at that. The city they were playing in was the only one on the entire planet! It was a waste of a perfectly good planet in his opinion. It could support billions of Merkiaari and the climate was perfectly pleasant. Humans would find it comfortable he was sure. Why then such a poor attempt to colonise it?

  “There, lord!” Usk yelled, pointing ahead.

  Kylar raised her weapon. “Target!” She fired, and something exploded.

  Valjoth used her shot for ranging. “Locked! Firing!” he yelled and happily blasted away.

  Bub-bub-bub! Bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub!

  It was a small craft; a lander or a shuttle. He blasted away at it, while his troops assaulted the defenders, of which there were many. Explosions and plasma bursts filled the air, and the fight had become quite significant compared with others of this cleansing. Admittedly that wasn’t saying much; opposition was poor and poorly led, but still. Any action was welcome. He had to go back to Blood Drinker before the end of the day.

  He blazed away at the shuttle as Usk brought the sled to a halt in line with another one, but he kept his spacing. No sled pilot wanted to park close to another, not after his first battle and witnessing what happened when they lost containment to enemy fire. Its gunner was taking on a Human nest, and the two were duelling with plasma and mass driver inspired slugs. Valjoth briefly considered helping out, but preferred to disable the shuttle’s engines.

  He kept his fire concentrated upon the drive section of the tiny ship, determined that it would not lift, but he didn’t seem to be making much progress. Like their vermin-spawned navy, Human shuttles were incredibly tough for their size. A Merkiaari ship of this sort would have succumbed already, but then the builders didn’t make anything like them. Biology was one reason. Merkiaari were physically much bigger than Humans and needed shuttles ten times bigger, but the most important reason was that to maintain parity with Human tech, the builders had needed to design everything bigger and bulkier. That had lead to some great things; things like the stupendous Blood Drinker, the most powerful assault class ship yet added to the Host. She was truly a power to be reckoned with, as was the entire Host of course. What rankled was that Blood Drinker and other ships weren’t built the way they were out of choice. It was necessity.

  One day, the bui
lders would match the Humans ship for ship without needing mass to make up the difference, and then the galaxy would see something! But for now he could glory in things the way they were, and he did. He couldn’t help thinking that size mattered, because in any Merkiaari’s world it did! Bigger was better, and to date, it always had been. The Humans though were a warning that things would and must change, and those changes were already starting to happen. The new troops, this new cleansing using new doctrine that he was compiling, new ships using new formations and tactics; all old ideas to Humans maybe, but new to Merkiaari minds willing to try them out and make them their own.

  The Humans would rue the day they chose not to cleanse the Merkiaari at the close of the last war, but not for long. He was going to ensure that when his replacement took command of the Host, hopefully in the far distant future, that lucky Merkiaari would not inherit the Human threat that he’d been left to deal with. He was going to cleanse them out of existence, and his name would be known forever afterwards as the one who had safeguarded the Hegemony from the greatest threat it had ever faced.

  Finally his fire achieved something, and the shuttle erupted with flame. “Look at her burn!” he yelled. “They aren’t going anywhere in that thing!”

  Kylar took no notice, she was busy blasting away at the Humans and having a good time. Valjoth turned his weapon onto the defenders and joined her. What the Humans thought they were doing protecting a shuttle with nowhere for it to go he couldn’t imagine. Their ships in orbit were dead; there was nothing but a debris field in a slowly degrading orbit left up there now. He didn’t really care, but it was curious. They had nothing to do now but die, and he was happy to help them with that.

  Finally he ran out of targets and the troops dispersed looking for more prey. Valjoth dismounted the sled with Usk and Kylar hovering protectively nearby as if he couldn’t defend himself. Really, it was embarrassing the way they coddled him sometimes. Like vermin protecting their young.

  He wandered amongst the Human corpses noting the numbers and calculating how many of his own dead lay with them. Three or four to one in his favour he would judge. Not great but not too bad either. Troops of the old type were inferior in combat against Humans when compared with what modern batches were capable of, but four Humans in exchange for every one of his troops sent to the recycle vats was about right. If he remembered his statistics from the closing stages of the last war, and he did because everyone knew he was an absolute fiend for recalling such things, then the Humans had not improved themselves significantly. Admittedly it was hard to judge based upon a simple skirmish like this, but he was satisfied with four to one. He wouldn’t see ten to one or better without deploying his modern troopers.

  “Let us see what was so important to them, Usk!” he boomed happily. He was never quite as content as he was when wading through vermin blood. “You never know, there might be something interesting in there.”

  Usk regarded the still burning wreck doubtfully.

  “I’m not going in there,” Kylar announced backing up and eyeing the tiny hatch and dirty smoke coming from it. “I’ll keep watch from out here.”

  “You’re just worried about singeing your fur,” Usk muttered as he entered the shuttle ahead of his lord to check for danger.

  Valjoth ignored them and edged into the small craft. Kylar would never have fit, the tiny hatch barely had room for him to enter and he was much smaller than any female. Kylar was a giant among her kind. The craft was Human sized of course, and although his blasting had opened up the hull at the rear, the breach wasn’t a good entry point. It was still burning back there for one thing, and the ragged holes were sharp edged and too small even for him.

  He looked around and found the power was still on, so the place was well lit. The smoke wasn’t too bad further in. It was the ventilation effect of an open hatch that made it seem thick billowing out of there. Usk was ahead of him checking for vermin, and while he did that Valjoth poked into things.

  He didn’t expect to find anything particularly revealing. The entire system had been a bit of a disappointment for his first battle against Humans. Not that he was complaining about the lack of a proper welcome. It was imperative that his ships refuel and move on without word of their presence getting out to the Humans in general. The system was simply a convenient refuelling waypoint to his true target, but still, it would have been more memorable had there been something challenging to fight.

  He opened a compartment and rummaged around inside it, but there was nothing interesting... Human foodstuffs, and what he thought might be a medical scanning device of some kind. No weapons. He ripped the door off the compartment just because he could, and followed Usk toward the pilot’s cabin. He was just being sour because he had to go back aboard Blood Drinker soon. It had been a long trip in foldspace and he wasn’t looking forward to more of the same. That was all. He had these black moods from time to time, but luckily they rarely lasted. He always found something to occupy his thoughts to stave them off. Usk would say it was a lack of exercise, and a good fight usually did free him of dark thoughts, but then so did a tactical problem he posed himself. Idleness of thought, not of the physical, was the one thing that was guaranteed to bring the mood on.

  “Lord!” Usk called and returned with a struggling Human in his grasp.

  Valjoth beamed at his shield bearer. “Well done, Usk!” he bellowed. “That’s a nice one. Any more up there?” Usk gave the struggling vermin to him and came up with a second Human. “One each! Excellent.”

  Usk grinned. “Kylar will have to find her own.”

  Valjoth laughed and examined his vermin. Male he thought it was. Humans didn’t vary in size as much as his people did, but he recalled fur on the face like this one had, was one important way of telling the difference. The cunning beasts sometimes shaved though, so Usk’s prey might be either gender. It did have bumps on the front that could be mammary glands for feeding its young. Many vermin females had two of them instead of six proper teats, but they performed the same function. He frowned at Usk’s Human; the Parcae didn’t have them. Those bug-eyed little nuisances all looked alike to him no matter their gender. He examined his Human more closely. Yes, he believed his was indeed male. A male and female hiding together... a breeding pair perhaps? Hmmm...

  “Is there anywhere for young to hide up there?”

  Usk nodded and handed his Human to Valjoth to check the cockpit.

  Both Humans were screaming and struggling. He quite liked the noises they made, but he didn’t want them to injure themselves. He lifted the female by her neck with one hand and roared full in her face. It... she fainted quite nicely and the male started crying. Water leaking like that was common among vermin. Merkiaari eyes had proper inner eyelids to hold moisture in. They rarely cried. Gas or other toxins could bring it on, and tears served to flush them out, but not much else could cause it; fear produced rage not tears.

  Usk came back empty handed. “Just those two, my lord.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” Valjoth said feeling amusement at Usk’s suddenly downcast demeanour. “I’ll give the male to Kylar. It’s bigger.”

  Usk nodded grimly. Giving her the lesser of the two might be insulting, not that Kylar was that touchy really. For a female, she was the pinnacle of calm thoughtfulness, but better not to take chances.

  They made their way back outside to Kylar who brightened the moment she saw the vermin. He gave her the male, and watched as she ripped it in half. Very satisfying it looked too. He glanced at the female in his grasp and sighed before giving it to his oldest companion.

  “You’re too generous, my lord,” Usk said in delight.

  Valjoth gnashed fangs. “Yes I know, but if I can’t make my shield bearer happy, I wouldn’t be much of a companion would I?”

  Usk woke his Human and popped her head off with one squeeze of her neck! Oh, that was excellent of him. A very economical kill to be sure. Tidy too. Kylar was covered in vermin blood still steaming in the
cool air, but Usk was free of gore. That wouldn’t normally be a concern but they had to spend time together in the sled yet.

  Thinking of the sled, they headed back and climbed aboard.

  “Find us something to do, Usk.”

  Usk nodded but said, “We have to leave soon.”

  “Even more reason to hurry then!”

  Usk spun the sled expertly, allowing it to skid sideways until he had it aimed at the street he wanted, and then went to maximum power. He didn’t feed the power in gently; he slammed the throttles to the stops and roared along the street. Kylar shouted in glee, and Valjoth gnashed his fangs in laughter at her antics. She was blasting holes into the buildings as they sped along for no reason and having a fine time doing it.

  Valjoth turned his attention to Usk’s scanner and thought he knew where they were going. His shield bearer had obviously decided there wasn’t time to hunt their own prey, but there might be time to join a hunt already underway. The scanner revealed a pack hard at work, its force of grav sleds spread out and herding the vermin—if vermin there were—toward destruction. It was pack doctrine in action, and it usually worked well within urban environments like this. Somewhere ahead of the stampede, his troops would be ready and waiting to cleanse the Humans from this bad excuse for a colony. It would be done, and done quickly. There weren’t enough of the vermin left to require even one more day on this world.

  Usk raced through the city determined to reach the final battle before it was over, and he did, but it was a close run thing. Most of the Humans were already dead when he powered down the sled and dismounted to shadow his lord.

  Valjoth wasn’t disappointed, well not too disappointed. There were still a few stragglers to take care of, and Kylar even caught one for him without needing to be asked when it made a break for it! That was remarkably decent of her considering where they were. The blood and screams were having a predictable effect upon her; she was agitated and close to raging.