Tales from the Service: A Mercenary’s Milk-Run

2947-10-22 – Tales from the Service: A Mercenary’s Milk-Run

Two weeks ago, the delicate situation (and brazen profiteering) of mercenary commander Jacob Borisov at Adimari Valis appeared in this space (Tales from the Service: A Mercenary's Way). His story generated an uncommon amount of feedback; while most of this spacer-heavy audience sympathized with the needs of his bottom line and assumed the planetary governor could afford to pay for what he needed, I got plenty of messages (and I imagine Jacob’s public datasphere profile got more) saying that because his company was already engaged in the defense of the system, their unused groundside assets should have helped the governor with his security matter for free. 

Some of these messages made this case on moral grounds, others made it on the grounds that it was good business (a sort of loss-leader effect I suppose). Well-intentioned as I’m sure this advice is, Jacob is a veteran mercenary commander whose outfit has done just about everything from pirate patrols to treasure-hunting (as seen previously in this space with Tales from the Inbox: Jewel from a Junker) to defense contracts. 

Evidently unfazed by (and very likely enjoying) the brief spotlight this story has given his outfit, Jacob sent in a little more of the story several days ago. The planetary governor's job, evidently, was escort duty - protecting a crawler carrying several large artifacts from the Xenarch ruins dig-site to the spaceport. While the client insisted that the shipment was absolutely secret and that more than likely the fifty-hour trek through highland passes would be the most boring job possible, Jacob's groundside team discovered otherwise.

He seems to think that the difference between client expectations and field reality proved the value of his profit-seeking instincts (and later insistence on a sizable combat bonus on what the governor insisted was a milk run), whether or not it was the right thing to do. Barring any other stories better than his appearing in my inbox before then, I will pick out select bits of his account (well backed up with tactical-network datastreams and other evidence) over the next few weeks.

Jacob Borisov ducked behind a basalt boulder as a swarm of railshot buzzed over his head and crackled into ferroceramic dust against the barren rocks of the Adimarian upland. He’d begun Governor Yamaguchi’s “simple precaution” crawler escort mission outfitted in one of the suits of assault armor the company had secured after the Vinteri job, but the remains of that expensive exoskeleton now dangled from tie-downs on the side of the crawler, victim of the second attack, ten klicks and nine hours before. 

“Contact!” The belated radio-boosted bark of Cailean Vankov, one of the ten mercenaries whose assault armor was still working, accompanied the rattling hum of heavy railguns returning fire. Above Jacob’s head, several streams of white-hot railgun slugs converged on the source of the sudden attack. On his heads-up display terrain map, the mercenary took note of the ambusher’s position – a perfect blind in the side of a craggy hill, just like the last one.  

This time, the opportunistic attack had been clever – it had tricked Jacob into getting out of the crawler’s well-protected crew cabin in order to examine a wrecked civilian lighter crumpled against the rocks just off their line of advance. Sheer luck in the form of a glint of harsh sunlight on metal, along with a strong instinct for self-preservation, had saved his life, and prevented his platoon from being decapitated. 

As his mercenaries returned fire, Jacob unfolded the bolt rifle strapped to his atmosphere pack and checked the terrain map again. There were no other good places nearby to hide a crew-served railgun, but plenty of smaller crevices and hollows would make good places to hide a lone sniper with a smaller weapon. He tried to wiggle further into his meager cover, to avoid presenting a target to any of the potential hostiles in those scattered locations. “Felix, where’s that oculus?” 

“I put it up right away, boss. Someone slagged it with a laser. I can’t get a shot on him.” 

Jacob sighed. His groundside second-in-command had just proved his sniper hypothesis. The new attackers had learned from how quickly their predecessors had found themselves splattered among the rocks. Oculus aerial surveillance systems were far from cheap, but Jacob would rather lose a dozen of them than one of his crack mercenary troopers. “Flag the position. I’ll try.” 

Felix’s map-pin appeared on the heads-up display a second later. After orienting himself and trying very hard to forget that only a smart-fabric alpine suit and an insulated face-mask stood between him and incoming fire, Jacob snuck a peek over his boulder cover toward Felix’s sniper. He couldn’t see the attacker either, but his position let him at least put a shot close over the target’s head. 

Jacob ducked back down just in time to avoid the murderous hail of ferroceramic and rock splinters which filled the air above his boulder. “Get ready, Felix.” 

Felix knew exactly what Jacob was planning – the same trick that rooted out pirate gunmen holed up in their asteroid hideouts. “Ready, boss.” 

 Jacob jumped up again, leveled his bolt rifle, and fired. A tiny white-hot mote sped outward from the muzzle, zipped over the cleft in which Felix’s sniper was holed up, and buried itself in the hillside. The moment it touched rock, the bolt rifle’s heavy supercapacitors discharged half a million volts into the thin air. The discharge followed the mote’s path, appearing and vanishing in a flash and thunderous clap that left Jacob’s ear’s ringing. 

Eyes dazzled and neck-hair standing on end, Jacob dove back into cover as enemy fire converged on him again. Even as he did, he heard the solitary bark of Felix’s shoulder-mounted anti-armor cannon. “Bandit is history. Who’s next?” 

Jacob grinned into the dirt as stone chips and ferroceramic dust continued to rain down on him, its momentum fortunately spent. Even a near-miss from a bolt rifle produced hair-raising electromagnetic discharge and an eardrum-perforating thunderclap. Combined with the havoc the weapon played with electronic systems, this often panicked the target into breaking cover, if even for an instant – and Felix’s marksmanship had made that instant count. 

A rushing noise filled the air above Jacob’s head as one of the other troopers with a functioning suit discharged a rocket shoulder-box into the cleft where the enemy railgun position was. The gun answered with more railshot and Jacob heard the distinctive metallic hailstone sound of slugs glancing off armor, but it was too late – two dozen high explosive rockets pulverized the hillside, and the enemy heavy gun went silent. 

“Are we clear?” Cailean asked, as enemy fire ceased. The other mercenaries, manning the crawler’s antipersonnel guns and their own suit weaponry, stopped firing as well. 

“Report.” Jacob looked up in the direction of the crawler, relieved to see no bodies or suits on the ground. 

The nervous, high-pitched voice of the governor’s representative answered first. “Crawler’s in one piece. No alarms.” 

“Armor erosion and some minor pressure leaks.” Holtman, the mercenary who had gotten close enough to Jacob’s position to loose the rockets, stepped up to his boss’s covering boulders. “I’ve got you, boss. Get behind.” 

Jacob raised his head cautiously. There was no telling how many more snipers there were. “Get in there and grab what’s left of that crew-served, then let's get that crawler moving.” 

“On it.” Holtman’s suit boots crunched Adimarian gravel, and he loped into the gulch to claim whatever prize might be available. Someone else hopped up the hillside to retrieve the laser from the splattered remnant of Felix’s kill as Jacob darted for the recessed pressure lock on the side of the slow-moving vehicle. He had no doubt there were other raiders lurking in the hills, but nobody took a shot at him – without their strongpoint in the gully, it was unlikely any of the greedy low-lives would want to be a hero. 

As soon as Jacob was inside the crawler, he tore off the insulated faceplate and tossed it into an equipment bin. Joseph, his explosives expert, was waiting with a pouch full of food-processor coffee. “Client said this would be a milk run, eh boss?”  

Jacob snatched the pouch and sipped it carefully, making a face at the ever-bitter taste. “Milk run, my frostbitten ass.” 

Details

Tales from the Service: A Mercenary’s Wrath

2947-10-29 – Tales from the Service: A Mercenary’s Wrath 

Last week in this space, we left Jacob Borisov and his groundside detachment from the mercenary carrier Taavi Bancroft (in system on contract with one of the many private interests in protecting the planet’s xenoarchaeological heritage from the Incarnation) at the end of yet another sharp engagement in what was supposed to be a milk-run contract on Adimari Valis (Tales from the Service: A Mercenary’s Milk-Run). Tasked to protect a heavy-transport crawler as it trundled through the mountain passes between the planet’s remarkable Xenarch ruins site and the spaceport capitol, he likely wished that he had price-gouged the planetary governor more than he actually had. 

In this later part of his account, which was accompanied by microcamera footage, the mercenary commander has already completed the contract – but only after learning that a simple protection contract had become something entirely different. The final attack on the transport crawler was nothing like the opportunist ambush described here last week – it was professionals against professionals. Friends against friends. It was, as it turned out, a mercenary's worst nightmare - fratricide. 

Jacob shoved past the governor’s secretary and lone office guard and all but kicked open the office’s imitation oak door. The guard and secretary, stunned by his arrival, reached for weapons, but the three mercenaries in full battle harness squeezing into the outer chamber behind their commander persuaded them to allow this unscheduled appointment to intrude on Governor Yamaguchi’s calendar. 

Jacob stomped into the spacious governor’s office to find Yamaguchi sitting placidly behind his desk. The little man barely looked up at the intrusion. “Mr. Borisov, welcome back. Have a seat.” 

Jacob approached the desk and tossed a handful of hard-synth wafers in front of the governor. “You knew about this.” He didn’t sit down. Sitting down would be admitting defeat. 

Yamaguchi glanced up only briefly, then picked up one of the wafers, turning it over in his hand. Each was slightly curved, and bore a unit insignia on the convex side. Several were burn-scarred or stained with unmentionable things which even the deepest clean-cycle had failed to expunge. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.” 

Jacob growled. If he had to embed each of the little insignias in his employer’s head, he would make the man admit what he had contracted the Bancroft outfit to do. “Those are the Hoplites’ patches, dammit.” Cassandra’s Hoplites, a ground-force mercenary outfit which shared several investors with Jacob’s own mercenary company, had been one of the other outfits rotated through the long-term Vinteri defense job. Their commander, Lori Cassandra, was a personal friend. “They’re the damned dig-site security force. Why in all hells would the dig-site security force hit us halfway back to the city on your little escort job?” 

Yamaguchi set down the patch face-up, the shield, twin spears, and Greek omega glyph only too visible. “Perhaps you mean, why would persons equipped with dig-site security company hardware hit you? There have been thefts at the site recently. Perhaps-” 

“Liar. I’ve already spoken with Captain Cassandra.” Jacob placed his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “You know what the penalty for administrative corruption is on my home-world, governor?” 

Yamaguchi looked at the hands on his desk calmly. It was unlikely he knew about the iron brutality of Schovjsa’s penal code. “We are not on your home-world. Besides, you have already been paid, and the contract was fairly struck. I do not see-” 

“I lost one man and two are clinging to life in geltanks. The Hoplites lost seven, including two who used to be on my crew. Explain yourself immediately.” 

“Or you’ll what?” 

Jacob glanced above the governor’s head to the cityscape visible behind the desk. “Or I throw you through that window and then go have a chat with the other mercenary outfits guarding your worthless little planet, on the ground and in the sky. I think maybe half will stay, if your successor promises them double.” 

The governor stared up silently for several seconds. Both knew the threat was far from idle – Mercenary companies tended to think of themselves as all fighting on the same side, and when a client earned a reputation for pitting one company against another, most outfits would avoid them. As for a vigilante defenestration, Jacob might not be able to carry out the threat alone, but with the help of the three toughs glowering at Yanaguchi’s secretary and guard, he certainly could. 

With a sigh, the governor looked down. “Perhaps you are right. A bit of an... explanation is owed.” 

“Talk.” Jacob straightened and folded his arms. 

“The crawler and its cargo were perhaps less secret than you were led to believe. It was... meant to draw out some of the criminal element who has been causing the digs so much trouble.” 

“The treasure hunters. The first several attacks were that sort of rabble.” 

“And all attacks would have been, except that the Hoplites learned the rumor which I allowed to circulate in the underground. That the crawler was full of Xenarch treasures being smuggled off-world by a corrupt dig official. They asked CAX, but they were not aware of this effort... The Hoplites went into action.” 

“Right into our trigger-happy line of fire.” 

Yamaguchi nodded. “In retrospect, perhaps they should have been notified, but I did not wish them to spoil the ruse.” 

“Eight good merc troopers died for this idiocy, governor.” Jacob leveled a finger at the administrator, still not sure whether he was going to throw the man out the window. “And what did you get for it, thirty fewer treasure-pickers?” 

The governor nodded. “Would you like to learn why such a ruse was executed, Mr. Borisov?” 

Jacob scowled. “It had damned well better be good.” 

Yamaguchi held up a slate, contract terms already visible on its surface. “Good or no, I think you will find it pays well.” 

Jacob snatched the device and skimmed its contents. The number of zeroes on the contract’s full payout would have made his eyes bug out, if he hadn’t been good at hiding his surprise. Of course, that price tag came with an ambitious plan of operations. 

“Let me know by tomorrow if you accept.” Yamaguchi gave a bored, dismissive wave, and returned to his forms. 

Jacob growled under his breath. They both knew he would accept – the payout was simply too high to do otherwise. 

Details

Tales from the Service: A Mercenary’s Trade

2947-11-05 – Tales from the Service: A Mercenary’s Trade

This will be the final section of Jacob Borisov’s account of his activities groundside at Adimari Valis. Taking another contract from the planetary governor even after the last (Tales from the Service: A Mercenary’s Milk-Run) descended into mercenary fratricide, Jacob led the groundside contingent of the Taavi Bancroft mercenaries in a joint operation with Cassandra’s Hoplites, the sister unit which had been worsted in its mistaken attack on Jacob’s convoy previously.

Governor Yamaguchi’s ruse was part of a long-running attempt to convince the outlaw treasure-hunting community on Adimari Valis that his administration was preparing to move the fruits of the Xenarch digs off-planet to keep the valuable artifacts out of Incarnation hands. With all attention focused on the few roads between the main dig-site and the spaceport, the governor’s plan was to clear and hold a remote valley which, though supposedly empty, had apparently yielded up a few genuine finds to the planet’s thriving black market for Xenarch relics.

The site proved better defended than they expected – but the governor’s generous contract had plenty of margin for Jacob to anticipate such surprises.

Jacob could not include what his team found at the site in this message due to a nine-week confidentiality clause in the contract. He promised to send more after that expired. Even without that part of the conclusion, his account is an interesting look into the unglamorous work of ground-assault troopers. He was even able to include the tactical network replay, albeit with identifiable information scrubbed; for those of you with the means and interest to view this datastream, it will be available for retrieval on the Cosmic Background datasphere hub.

“Bancroft actual, we are in position.” The deceptively soft voice of Lori Cassandra startled Jacob out of the intense concentration with which he fixed the target area below his perch. “What’s your situation?”

“In position.” Jacob switched off his magnification meta-lens and called up his helmet’s tactical display. The blue pips marking the position of Cassandra’s Hoplites clustered on the far side of the narrow fissure barely worthy of the word “valley”, while his own somewhat more mobile troopers’ green pips glowed along a wide arc of ridgeline around him.

According to every sensor and visual sweep of the nameless little valley, the valley was empty save for the overgrown tangle of local tree-analogues which covered its floor. Unlike the rocky uplands, valleys and lowlands on Adimari Valis invariably teemed with native wildlife, with the deeper basins the most fertile. Though narrow, the target area was deep enough to host an impressive garden of blue-green and florid pink flora which could swallow an entire battalion of enemy combatants.

Of course, the local outlaw cooperatives which had wrested artifacts from the valley didn’t have a battallion of troops of any caliber, and hopefully Yamaguchi’s ruse had convinced them to move most of their fighting force closer to the city in hopes of easy pickings from a lightly-defended transport crawler. If things went according to plan, they wouldn’t expect the better part of two veteran mercenary companies to descend on their secret treasure digs so far from their logistics base in the spaceport.

A ninety-second timer appeared in Jacob’s helmet, and he knew it had appeared similarly in the visors of all his mercenaries. “Prepare for operation start.” This time, Lori’s voice was broadcast to every mercenary in the area. She was a ground-pounder by preference and experience, and Jacob, given his more generalist skills, had left her in overall command, even though her force was numerically smaller than his. Even after the shameful friendly-fire shootout two weeks prior, he trusted her to sell the lives of his toughs dearly, if she had to sell them at all. “You know the op, and you know your business. Let’s get this done without any mistakes.”

Jacob smiled in the glow of his helmet tactical map. Lori’s curt pre-battle pep talk struck him as a very military formality, far out of step with how he usually handled his force. Doubtless several of his troopers were grumbling into their helmet visors, comm receivers safely switched off.

“Boss, that’s a lot of biomass down there.” Felix’s voice found Jacob’s ears courtesy of a line-of-sight private circuit. “Bastard governor’s done us raw before. What do you think the chances are this is another double-deal?”

Jacob didn’t trust the governor either. The smug, superior Yamaguchi had more in mind than checking on the source of a few crusty Xenarch trinkets hauled in by grubby prospectors. Fortunately, so did the Bancroft mercenaries. “Do it by the numbers, Felix. Let Captain Cassandra worry about the big picture.”

“Got it, boss.”

The timer ticked down toward zero. “Five seconds.” Lori began the countdown, and Jacob tensed in his heavy suit. “Four. Three.” Jacob switched his armored combat suit out of low-power mode, and heard servos whine to life all around him. “Two. One.” Jacob stood from his low-profile crouch and disengaged the command weapons-lock on his troopers’ heavy armaments, then switched off the safety on his own suit’s weaponry. “Bancroft, go.”

Jacob jumped, the suit’s powered joints turning a very normal human motion into a titan’s thirty-meter leap. Halfway up, he switched on the suit’s gravitic thrusters to extend his arc. On the tactical map, he the whole line of green pips arc off the ridgeline almost simultaneously, each hurtling down toward a pre-selected landing point in the valley. This easy near-flight, one of the advantages of fielding comparably light trooper hardware, was something he knew the Hoplites on the opposite ridge would be watching with envy. Their heavier, better-armed suits were slower, and could barely clear treetops even with their gravitics.

Jacob passed through the treetops and landed among the Adimarian foliage with a heavy crash, the suit’s servos and gravitic thrusters turning a ground-shaking impact into a mere sharp jolt in his knees. Visibility in the forested valley was poor, but already he could see signs of human presence – a narrow but arrow-straight path had been carved through the underbrush wide enough for small vehicles to travel in complete concealment from the air. The tactical display updated to include this avenue and several other features identified by the other Bancroft troopers below the trees.

As soon as the map had collected everything it could from his location, Jacob picked a new location just out of sight along the line of the road, and jumped again, smashing up through the flabby growths which passed for leaves on Adimari Valis and arcing over the treetops. Several of his other troopers did the same in their sectors, while others decided to make progress on the ground. The skirmish line swept down the valley diagonally toward the Hoplites, hoping to either find and fix the enemy’s position or chase them right into the sights of Captain Cassandra’s heavy troopers.

“Contact.” Jahoda’s barking into the comm circuit accompanied an update on the map; Jacob noted a new arc of hashed red uncertainty in front of the trooper. “Looks like a patrol. Four, maybe five of them.”

In the distance to his left, Jacob heard the rattling buzz of automatic railgun fire, and the more sporadic bark of hunting rifles as the outlaws returned fire. He knew Jahoda wouldn’t get pinned down there; he would get the patrol fleeing in the right direction, then keep moving.

As Jacob crashed down again into the trees and found himself almost standing on the narrow road, markers appeared and disappeared all along his ragged skirmish line as his troopers encountered small knots of outlaws and sent them flying back down the valley. Perhaps they would concentrate at a strong-point, or perhaps they would keep retreating until they entered the Hoplites’ kill-zone. Things were going according to plan, and that made him suspicious.

Jacob decided to continue on the ground, following the treasure-hunters' road to see where it went. All around him, the alien forest echoed with the sounds of sporadic skirmishes between Bancroft toughs and lightly-armed patrols of scavengers.

In the heart of the valley, the road below Jacob’s feet ran into a heavy armor-alloy gate burrowed into the side of a blocky, tree-covered hummock. The gate was barely big enough for three troopers to walk through abreast, but the moment it came into view, the value of whatever lay beyond was proved by the rattle and clatter of automatic railshot from at least two hidden guns tearing through the foliage and glancing off his suit.

Jacob jumped up and used his gravitics to arc to one side. “I’ve got some sort of bunker.” The burrowed structure had already been highlighted on the map. Whatever its purpose, it was ingeniously concealed; the governor’s survey flights had seen no sign of such elaborate installations.

A bunker and several emplaced railguns wouldn’t be going anywhere, of course. He hurried to dress the skirmish line and proceeded forward, noting the growing number of harried scavengers driven ahead of the toughs. There were more of the enemy than intelligence had suggested, but they were fortunately lightly armed and disorganized. With any luck, they’d caught the enemy with their pants down enough that most of the force was outside their fortified hideout.

“Bancroft actual, be advised, unknown air assets inbound.”

As soon as Lori had finished her alert, Jacob began to hear the distant-thunder rumble of high velocity gravitic drives roaring through the atmosphere. “The governor failed to mention that.” Even one or two close-support attack ships could pin down the troopers with ease. Local outlaws weren’t supposed to have access to anything like that, according to Yamaguchi’s intelligence. So far from the spaceport, the two mercenary companies were at the mercy of whatever air power the treasure-hunting gangs had at their disposal.

Or rather, Jacob knew, they would be at the mercy of the local gangs, if he had stuck to the governor’s plan. The margins on the job were so ridiculously generous that he’d decided to send two of his strike squadron’s fastest interceptors down from orbit. They had been loitering into the shadow of a nearby mountain range since his troopers had started their overland march to the target area. “All Bancroft units, break contact and take cover.” Jacob switched his suit’s comm circuit to the long-range broadcast option afforded by the command operations module on his back, then opened the channel. “Quail, you are go for air sweep.”

“Copy, Bancroft Actual.” Sela “Quail” Huffman replied immediately, a touch of anticipation in her voice. “Sit tight, boss.”

Jacob watched a trio of fast-moving enemy aircraft roar over the valley. One of them plastered the locations of two of his troopers with a heavy autocannon while the other two launched salvos of impressive but less devastating rockets. The valley quaked and bits of trees and undergrowth hurtled through the air, falling back with a sound not much like that of rain. Jacob hugged the ground and grinned into his helmet, knowing that the enemy pilots would not have time for a second pass.

Sure enough, two bright-green streaks lanced across the tactical map seconds later, and the rumble of gravitic drives rose into the banshee-scream of craft pushed beyond their limits as the enemy ships tried to evade the pair of Bancroft interceptors. It was no use, of course; one of them exploded immediately, and the other two, weaving tangled patterns of contrails in the air, prolonged their lives for a few minutes longer against the pair of high-performance strike craft.

“Air assets handled.” Jacob sent on the command circuit, unable to keep the tone of triumph out of his voice.

“Aren’t you full of surprises today, Bancroft Actual.” Lori Cassandra’s grin was equally audible. “Proceed with the operation.”

Jacob stood and sent the all-clear, and his troopers moved forward once again.

Details

Tales from the Service: A Reacher's Request

2947-11-12 – Tales from the Service: A Reacher’s Request 

With the recently announced changes to Navy policy in the Coreward theater of war, there has been a lot of movement of the fleet here at Maribel lately, but unfortunately Saint-Lô is still being repaired after the fiasco at Berkant, so Duncan and I are not going anywhere at least until mid-December. I thought we should request a transfer to Razorwing before it and several other light elements from the broken Saint-Lô battle group depart on a patrol circuit next week, but Duncan flatly refused – he gets along pretty well with our quiet, academic-minded Captain Liao here, and probably isn’t too keen on risking another battle without a dreadnought’s heavy armor between him and Incarnation plasma salvos. 

Personally, I’d prefer to be out there at the tip of the spear. If there’s got to be a war – and at this point I don’t see how we can stop this one short of knuckling under and letting these chip-headed bastards run everything on our side of the Gap – I'd rather be part of the solution, rather than sitting back and letting someone else fight in my stead. 

Duncan’s no spacer, and he doesn’t get that – rather, he doesn’t yet. I have hope he will someday. If he’s supremely lucky, he’ll figure it out before the Incarnation or some other nasty business out in the dark takes something important from him. 

Today’s story is one I’ve been researching for more than two weeks while Duncan amused you all with the Jacob Borisov account. While Jacob’s story came with all the supporting evidence we could ever want, the first tip which led me to this story was vague and anonymous – Duncan wouldn’t let me run it until I had more. Any story likely to attract as much public interest as the Reachers, he said, needs some corroboration. Maybe that’s how Duncan does things, but I say, as long as Naval Intelligence doesn’t shoot us out of the sky, a good story is a good story, and we can always throw a qualifying sentence in this introduction. 

Fortunately, the spooks were only too happy to approve this story to a point, and even got me in touch with Lieutenant Commander Mus’ad Balos, the destroyer skipper involved in its events. I do appreciate how helpful they can be, when they’re not trying to shut a story down. 

[No, I don’t understand wanting to be in the line of fire when all we could do was get killed or get in the way. We’ve already been through one battle with this ship and crew; I don’t see why a couple of datacast embedded journalists should seek out more action than the brave compliment of Saint-Lô. --D.L.C.] 

The Reacher ship appeared as they always did – without warning, farther inside the gravitic shadow of the local star than any proper star drive should have been able to carry it. This time, it appeared nearly within the formation of a patrol group of Confederated Navy ships en route to Botterhill planetary orbit. 

Alarms aboard the lead ship Penelope Ott wailed, and the helmsman punched in emergency acceleration before the computer worked out the ship’s identity. Mus’ad Balos couldn’t decide whether the stomach-churning maneuver or the icepick-to-the-ear screech of the alarm woke him – surely either on its own would have done the trick.  

Snatching his comm earpiece off its magnetic charging port above the bunk, Mus’ad called up to the bridge just as the panicked shriek of the combat alarm faded into the concerned buzz of the readiness alarm.  “Report.” 

“Came out of nowhere, skipper.” The young third-shift duty officer, Lieutenant Burke, seemed almost too shaken to speak. “Twenty-five hundred klicks ahead. Damn, I thought it was Nate at first.” 

“Who came out of nowhere?” 

“Reacher ship, sir. They’re not hailing. You’re going to want to look at this.” 

Mus’ad pulled on his uniform tunic and hurried up to the little ship’s bridge. He didn’t have far to go; the skipper’s cabin was two decks below the bridge, with both a lift and an access ladder connecting the two decks. This time, he used the ladder; in shipboard half-gee, it would be marginally faster. He could have called up the video feeds from his cabin console, but a Reacher ship appearing in remote Botterdowns certainly meant his sleep-shift had ended early. 

As soon as he entered the bridge compartment and laid eyes on the smart-glass magnified view forward, he understood his subordinate’s shaken state. The Reacher ship, vaguely disk-shaped with the slightest suggesting of tapering aft, clearly outweighed most Confederated Navy dreadnoughts. The fluted, inward-curling spines which projected out from its bow ensured that it was longer than those warships as well – it was probably the largest Reacher vessel anyone had ever seen. The iridescent shell-like hull gleamed in the red-orange light of the Botterdowns primary, almost too ornamental to be a real starship. 

It took Mus’ad several seconds to notice the glittering trail of crystallized atmosphere trailing the Reacher ship, and the tattered black wounds gaping in its hull. The ship was hurt – he found it impossible to think of such a vessel in machine terms – perhaps mortally so. 

“Hail them and offer assistance.” Mus’ad was the senior commander in the flotilla, and the other three destroyers and one frigate would defer to his judgement rather than hailing the ship without his permission. 

The officer at the comms station bent to his task while Mus’ad took control of the smart-glass controls and zoomed in on the damaged area. “What did they tangle with?” He knew that Reachers, easy-going with other species despite their secretive society, had never been seen to instigate a fight. They could – and did – defend themselves, but they apparently preferred to avoid situations likely to lead to conflict. 

The sensor tech had evidently anticipated this request. “Some sort of energy weapon. Without knowing the properties of their hull material, it’s impossible to say more. I’m not seeing any sign of railshot or shrapnel damage."  

Mus’ad nodded silently, more to the display than the sensor tech. The Confederated Navy went out of its way not to antagonize Reacher ships passing through the colonial reach, of course, but a lack of railshot scarring suggested that no warship built in the Reach, Navy or no, had been involved. He didn’t want to be the skipper who had to explain to a furious Reacher the difference between foolhardy human pirates and the Navy. 

“I’ve got a channel, skipper. Audio only.” 

At more than two thousand klicks, the delay on direct comms traffic would be barely noticeable. “Warm greetings, this vessel, Terran commander, assistance offer, appreciation and thanks.” The monotonous synthetic voice of a Reacher translator device sent a shiver down Mus’ad’s spine. “Assist, this vessel, Terran command, one item only.” 

Mus’ad wrapped his head around the message only with difficulty. Reachers could translate their words into human speech, but the structure of their thoughts was still very far from human. “Reacher ship, you say you need only one thing? I’ll do what I can.” 

There was no response for several seconds as the Reacher commander passed Mus’ad’s words through a translator, then composed his own reply in the same manner. “Requires, this vessel, ferrous material from local stockpile, sixteen million Terran metric tons, massing.” 

“Local stockpile?” Mus’ad turned to the navigation station. “I didn’t think Botterhill had that much orbital industry.” 

“I think they mean the system’s inner asteroid belt, sir. There are dozens in there at least that big.” 

“Call up Botterhill control on another line and tell them what the Reachers need.” Mus’ad didn’t see why such a small colony would refuse to part with a single modest-sized mining-grade asteroid. “Reacher vessel, we’ll get you your asteroid, but it might take a few hours. If you don’t mind me asking, what happened?” 

“Extends, this vessel, sincere thanks, Terran assistance. Explain, this vessel, condition of, events surrounding, cannot. Belligerent party, provide only, satisfactory?” 

“By all means. Who attacked you?” The more he conversed with the Reacher, the more quickly Mus’ad parsed their oddly structured messages. 

“Was, this vessel, war-vessels of the Grand Journey, attacked by.” The reacher seemed to understand that this answer was not satisfactory. “Were, Grand Journey war-vessels, Terran sapients, crewed by. Destoyed, this vessel, hostile vessels, all. fatality, vessel damage, negative.” 

“I don’t understand. What is the Grand Journey?” 

“Contains, the Grand Journey, Terran sapients, none. Fear, this vessel, the Grand Journey, Terrans, destroyed by.” 

Mus’ad shuddered. What would the Reachers do to his squadron if their friends really were attacked by humans? “I can assure you, Reacher vessel, the Confederated Navy has not had any war with non-Terran powers in over a hundred years. We haven’t destroyed your Grand Journey.” 

“Carry, other Terrans, responsibility, theoretical.” 

Mus’ad didn’t understand the meaning of this at first; the third-shift duty officer, still loitering in the wings, parsed it quicker. “Damned Nate got to their friends.” 

Mus’ad didn’t know why the Incarnation would engage in such a ruse to ambush a Reacher ship. No matter how much of the history of the colonial reach they’d missed, they had to know the Reachers were experts at armed neutrality – armed well enough as to make attacking them suicidal. Evidently, someone in Nate high command had just learned this age-old state of affairs the hard way. 

“We’ll ask the Incarnation’s leaders about your Grand Journey after we’ve beaten them, Reacher Vessel. For the moment, we can escort you as far as the belt, but my orders are to proceed to planetary orbit.” 

“Applaud, this vessel, Terran commander, bravado, his.” The translator voice remained monotonous, but Mus’ad imagined the alien chuckling at his response, as an uncle might chuckle at the antics of his nephew. “Finds, this vessel, escorting arrangement, reasonability, high.” 

The line went dead, and the comms tech looked up. “They’ve cut the channel, skipper.” 

“Send that recording to the rest of the squadron and forward it to planetary control.” Mus’ad stared hard at the wounded behemoth coasting in-system a mere few thousand klicks ahead. The easy cordiality of the Reachers had concealed the historical rarity of the encounter – and he wondered why the sapients, despite their reclusive nature, had chosen to limp into a Confederated system to find material for their repairs, when asteroids in a hundred nearby empty systems might have served just as well. 

Sighing, Mus’ad stepped out of the center of the bridge and waved duty-officer Burke back into place to finish his shift. “They’ve got something up their sleeves.” He muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. 

“Or they’ve got something big they’re setting up to sell us, sir.” 

Mus’ad looked up at the lieutenant, realizing how right the young officer probably was. Reachers always came to the Reach to barter – he doubted this time was any different. 

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