Tales from the Service: On Horus’s Heels

2948-05-05 – Tales from the Service: On Horus’s Heels  

When last we checked in with the Maribelan agents chasing Incarnation agents on that world several weeks ago (Tales from the Service: Ladeonist Roundup) they were breasting a stream of local counterhuman youths sympathetic to the Incarnation’s cause. In a follow-up story which was sent in only two weeks after that story appeared on this feed, we find the agents have closed in on their prey – but the terrorist they are chasing, who is to my knowledge still on the loose, has plenty of obstacles to throw into their path. 

Note that Mr. Vieth’s rather hard-hearted view of the youth Ladeonist elements on Maribel (who also exist on other worlds in the Frontier, to be sure) are his own, not those of this media company. Given what he goes through in his pursuit of this terrorist, we should give him a good deal of latitude with the dim and irredeemable picture he paints of the misguided youths providing comfort to this enemy agent. 

[N.T.B. - Counterhuman bastards, the lot of them. Agent Vieth, shoot to kill, and if any of the pathetic excuses for parents that raised those fools ever make a stink, you let me know, and I’ll make sure you get some proper muscle in your corner. This is war, and anyone who helps terrorists deserves everything they get. 

Before allowing me to insert this note into the feed item, Duncan insisted that I remind you lot that this is my opinion, not the view of Cosmic Background Media Group.] 

“What do you think he was up to in here?” Yejide Blum, toying nervously with the counter-nanotech emitter on her wrist, picked her way through the clutter inside the old warehouse, brushing away trailing streamers of cobweb-moss drooping from the corroded rafters high above. 

“Probably a dead drop, maybe a place to rest for a few hours.” Tal Vieth stopped his own forward progress to scrutinize the dilapidated structural elements around him. The warehouse was not entirely abandoned, but its poor condition and dust-cloaked contents suggested that whoever owned it had long forgotten this small storage outbuilding among the tangle of spaceport storage facilities on Maribel. Such a neglected space presented a perfect site for the local Ladeonist radicals to leave supplies for their ideological ally, without much risk to themselves – according to what they’d learned from interrogating their last batch of such worthless counterhumans, their prey had been in the warehouse only that morning. 

Tal and his team had been pursuing the Incarnation agent known as Horus for weeks, rounding up broader and broader batches of the city’s counterhuman underground in the process. Horus, a technologically defiled specimen beyond anything the local chip-heads could dream of, had damaged Maribelan infrastructure in dozens of petty ways, and was behind the deaths of at least eleven locals and three Navy officers on shore leave. On most worlds in the Reach, such minor impact for such an elite agent would be considered a success, but with the coming of the Confederated Fifth Fleet and many supply depots to support it, any Incarnation activity at Maribel warranted a disproportionate response. 

“It’s a wonder he cleans them out.” Yejide stopped to scrutinize a stack of crates rising out of the general tumbledown mess on the warehouse floor. She ran a quick scan for tagger nanites, then continued on her way. “I don’t know what’s worse, the food they give him, or the literature.” 

“Definitely the literature.” Tal, having only recently broken a trembling young dilettante’s resistance to interrogation by reading back to her the gushing fan letter she’d left in a dead drop and threatening to give it to the local HyperCast news agencies, shook his head. Other sympathizers left fiction of their own writing, of dubious quality and for no conceivable purpose. “He could steal everything he needs without any trouble. The dead drops are for them, not for him.” He knew only too well how quickly stories of the interactions between the counterhuman youths traveled across the Reach, each story-teller embellishing their role in a pathetic search for meaning and fame. It was true that the home-brewed revolutionaries gave the terrorist legitimate assistance, but they generally did so in a sacrificial way, with scores of their numbers already languishing in high-security holding cells in orbit, under Navy guard. 

The orbital confinement under Navy guard was of course a critical detail. Many of the youths had prominent and influential relatives who believed the round-ups to be illegitimate or arbitrary, and who were even at that instant fighting for their release. Even presented with the evidence, some parents refused to believe that their children had voluntarily aided the murderous agents of a foreign power. They believed their hapless spawn to be harmless, as if inability to cause any real harm absolved them of the attempt. 

Yejide hopped over a tarpaulin-covered mound of junk. “For their crimes against the written language alone, we should-” 

Tal looked up from the debris he’d been scrutinizing to see that his deputy had vanished. “Yejide?” He was halfway toward where she had last stood in an instant, vaulting over a pair of trellis struts balanced against a large crate. 

He spotted his downed associate almost immediately. There was no sign of blood or a wound, but she lay spralwed on the filthy floor where she’d fallen, eyes open and unseeing. Reaching for his wrist computer, he turned on his short-range comm to alert the other half dozen officers standing outside. “Officer down. Get a medevac in here now.” 

The only response was the soft tone of the comm’s inability to connect. Tal’s sidearm was in his hand the moment he heard it. Horus had never jammed law enforcement bands before, but jammer-harassment of constabulatory personnel was a common tactic used by Ladeonists and the criminal underground. It might be several minutes before those outside noticed. 

“Hello, Agent Vieth.” The smooth voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. “Your persistence is quite remarkable.” 

“Hello, Agent Horus.” Tal turned a slow circle, staying close to his downed companion. “Didn’t think you’d still be here.” 

“And you usually spend many more hours terrorizing the children you round up. Was there something wrong with the last batch?” 

Tal suppressed the urge to retort that the youthful counterhumans he’d picked up in Horus’s trail were fully legal adults. The barb stung because he felt the same way – the would-be revolutionaries, whatever their age, were intellectual children, play-acting as freedom fighters. “They gave you up quicker than the last set. You’re running out of true believers.” 

The Incarnation agent laughed, and Tal, suppressing a shudder, thought he heard servos whirring within the sound. “Do you really think that?” 

Before Tal could reply, he spied movement on a raised catwalk at the far side of the warehouse. Three scrawny figures walked boldly into view, each pointing a bulbous pistol-like object in Tal’s direction. They were grinning, but their postures told him they were terrified and unfamiliar with their weapons. 

“It was nice talking to you, Agent Vieth.” Horus’s voice seemed to whirl around Tal in a mockery of his best attempt to place the Incarnation agent’s location. “Let’s see how willing you are to kill children for your cause.” 

All three of the youths on the catwalk leveled their weapons, and Tal thought he saw tiny lights flash along the sides of the leader’s head before three beams of yellow-white light cut through the dusty air and began sweeping toward him. He leapt back, ducking behind the stack of crates a few meters behind his sprawled deputy, as the beams bit into his cover and set the opposite side alight. 

Tal switched his pistol – a compact railgun – to a high-frequency, low-accuracy firing mode, then waited for the sizzling beams to cut out. Handheld beams, he knew, could not maintain continuous power without massive power drain. 

Sure enough, after a few seconds the beams cut out. Tal popped up from behind cover and loosed a whole magazine in the direction of the catwalk – the rattling, bucking weapon discharged a hundred twenty slugs in less than three seconds.  

With ferroceramic shattering into glowing shrapnel-dust all around them, the trio dove for cover, one of them, disoriented, dove off the catwalk completely, landing headfirst with a sickening crunch on the floor below. The other two, flattening themselves behind empty packing material that offered dubious resistance to rail-slugs, peeked out to set fire to other elements of Tal’s surroundings the moment his magazine clicked on empty. 

Tal reloaded, knowing he needed to keep their attention so Yejide, if she was still alive after whatever Horus had done to her, would not become a target of opportunity. Switching to a more accurate fire mode, he peeked out to launch individual shots at his assailants, hoping the rattle of railgun fire and the flash of beams would alert his compatriots. 

He needn’t have worried. The loading-dock door burst inward and the other half-dozen members of his team rushed in. The hapless revolutionaries fired on the newcomers, but they didn’t have a chance against rail-carbines in well-trained hands – both were fatally riddled and dripping blood through the catwalk’s grating in seconds. 

Tal stood slowly, gun pointed to the floor, and signalled them to help him with the downed Yejide. “Horus was here and Blum is down. Call in a medevac.” As soon as he was certain he was not about to be shot by accident, he rushed to her side, quickly verifying that his deputy was breathing, if only shallowly, and that she was not marked by bloodstains or burns. 

Two of the other agents hurried to help Tal move Yejide, while the other two hurried to check the bodies of the three Ladeonist sympathizers. He didn’t relish the duty of calling each one’s family, but there was a perverse, acrid satisfaction in the fact that nobody would be screeching for their release back onto the streets. 

Details

Tales from the Service: The Interrupted Retirement

2948-05-12 - Tales from the Service: The Interrupted Retirement

Blinking her eyes in the stinging sunlight, Elaine Ziskind stepped out onto the rear deck of her hydroskimmer as it rocked back and forth in the gentle surf. The only sound besides the crump and hiss of surf was the keening cries of rockdivers circling above the cliffs and crowding the water-sculpted outcrops among which the watercraft sat at anchor.

As her eyes adjusted to the harsh blue-white light of the local star, Elaine gawked at the stunning scenery which dusk arrival had hidden from her the previous day. The sheltered cove looked simply too vivid to be real – the green surf crashing on red-brown rocks, lemon-yellow grasses marching down narrow black sand beaches in dozens of sheer canyons. Over everything, the infinte bowl of a turquoise sky devoid of clouds offered no veil to hide the graceful crescent of the planet’s huge moon.

“It’s prettier than anywhere else we’ve gone on the job, isn’t it?” Firmino Bellini hopped down from the roof of the cabin, where he’d been lounging. Firmi, an early riser by nature no matter where he went, had probably watched sunrise over the rim of a cup of synthetic coffee.

He didn’t need to tell Elaine how beautiful and peaceful the first part of the day had been – his serenely smug expression said enough. She tossed her head and pointed at a, boxy silhouette at the top of one of the cliffs. “That’s it, then?” It was the only sign of human presence in view, except for the hydroskimmer itself. “I was expecting…”

“Bigger?” Firmi walked up beside her and handed over a maglens, which she held up to her eye. The structure on the hill, composed of local stones held together into four stout walls with off-white plaster, wasn’t much bigger than the cramped cabin of the skimmer itself.

“Comfortable.” Elaine increased magnification and saw that the gray-blue door and window-shutters were  obviously polymer objects spun by a fabricator. Perhaps the place was not as primitive as it was obviously meant to look. “Any movement?”

Firmi shook his head. “If he’s there, he knows we’re here, but nothing has moved up there since sunrise.”

“Let’s get this over with.” Elaine tossed the maglens back and headed for the bow, where a hoversled lay lashed to the deck. After so many months in space, she ached to spend a few hours enjoying the scenery and sunlight, but with a war on and the company on contract, leisure wouldn’t pay.

Firmi disappeared into the cabin to remove their heavy weapons from the crates. They had hoped their distasteful task could be accomplished without shooting, but no mercenary ever bet their life on things going to plan. If the occupant of the cabin on the clifftop proved uncooperative, Elaine wasn’t about to let politeness dig her an unmarked grave.

Elaine had finished untying the cables holding the hoversled in place and installing its microreactor when Firmi returned and dropped a heavy crate into the latch-point on the rear of the sled. She looked up from its control column only long enough to take her carbine from his hands and sling it over her shoulder, then returned to watching over the sled’s start-up diagnostics.

Once the sled’s power-up cycle completed, Elaine eased it a few inches off the hydroskimmer’s deck on manual control, then slipped to one side to get clear of the watercraft’s antenna masts and protruding cabin in case of sudden swells. Firmi waited on the fantail until Elaine brought the sled around to pick him up, his heavy bolt rifle and its powerpack hanging conspicuously from his broad shoulders, and his light-duty combat armor hidden imperfectly under his uniform.

As the sled carried the pair toward the crashing surf in one of the canyons of the shore, Elaine noticed that her partner’s eyes were on the circling rockdivers high above, their golden-brown wings outstretched to catch late-morning updrafts. She didn’t blame him for being enchanted with the scenery, but there was a job to do. “Mind the op, not the birds.”

“Yeah, yeah.” His polarized lenses flashed as he turned his attention forward. “Sort of seems unfair, you know? Kirke-Moore went through all the trouble of finding a place like this, and we’re-”

“We’re doing our part.” Elaine interrupted. “Hang on.”

As she eased the hovering craft up to the loose slope of a damp rockslide, Elaine kicked in the sled’s A-grav thrusters at full power. With a distressed whine, the vehicle bounded up the slope in several elastic leaps, skidding in all directions as she wrestled with the controls to keep it level. The coast being sheer cliffs and high-walled coves for many kilometers, the sled was hardly the ideal vehicle to approach Kirke-Moore’s cabin, but it was the only way available to make the ascent short of cable and pitons. An airborne approach would have been preferred, except that the world’s tiny population had few aircraft, none of which were available for rental by heavily armed mercenary visitors. Instead, they had made the three-day journey from spaceport to the beautiful cove by the only vehicle available to them – the hydroskimmer.

When Elaine wrestled the sled onto the lip of the ravine, she caught her breath. Inland from the cliffs, rolling meadows of glittering crystalline flora marched to the far horizon, broken only by tufts of the same vivid yellow grass which dominated the cliff-edge. Shaking her head, she pulled the craft in a wide arc around the seaside cabin while Firmi watched for signs of movement. They had not come to harm Bozsi Kirke-Moore, but with all the trouble he’d taken to disappear, he would certainly not be pleased to see them.

With no sign of movement, Elaine brought the sled down in a clearing a few hundred meters away. As soon as it touched down, Firmi leapt off and vanished into the chest-high crystalline scrub, his size not hindering him in the slightest when it came to stealth and speed. Elaine stayed aboard only long enough to put it into safe idle mode, then stepped off herself, heading straight for the cabin.

“I’m in position.” Fermi’s voice, low and grim, filtered in through Elaine’s comm earpiece as she pushed her way through a stand of sturdy emerald-green bushes that seemed more mineral than vegetable. “Still no movement.”

“Copy.” She didn’t want to say more – the swaying rock-crystal garden of the local biosphere under the hard light of the local star seemed almost too peaceful for human speech, even though she was only fifty meters from Kirke-Moore’s front door.

At last, she pushed her way into the cleared area around the cliff-side cottage, where the yellow grass, regularly cut back, stood only ankle-high. The structure’s shuttered windows offered no hint that anyone waited within. Squaring her shoulders, Elaine circled the house and stood in front of the door, knowing that Firmi’s bolt-rifle was aimed precisely over her shoulder. Taking a deep breath and a single glance down at the stunning cove and the tiny-looking hydroskimmer anchored there, she knocked.

“It’s come to this, has it?”

The softly hoarse voice, barely audible over the hiss of the wind in the grass, took Elaine by surprise. She whirled to see a thin, white-haired man lying on a mat in the grass by the side of the house, head propped up on a rock. Though age had weathered the features that once most of the mercenaries and lawmen in the Reach had known well, Bozsi Kirke-Moore was still an unmistakable figure.

Though the old deep-space pirate’s only visible weapon, a chemical-propellant hunting rifle, sat idly against a nearby rock, his nonchalance and choice of sunning-spot set off alarm bells in Elaine’s head. Though visible from where she stood, and easily able to observe the hydroskimmer, he was entirely out of Firmi’s line of fire, demonstrating that he knew precisely where the big mercenary had stationed himself.

Firmi, listening in at a distance and watching Elaine in his bolt rifle’s scope, realized where their mark was as well. “Damn. I don’t have a shot, Elaine. Watch yourself.”

“Come now, mercenary. What brings you to my humble retirement home on such a fine day?” Kirke-Moore rolled his shoulders and sat more fully upright, leaning back against the rough wall of the cottage.

Elaine swallowed, deliberately keeping her hands away from the carbine slung at her back. Even in his advanced age, the most notorious pirate of the previous century was certainly faster on the draw than she was. “I’m under orders to escort you to Maribel, sir.”

“That really is a shame. I will not be going to Maribel.”

“Our employer thought you might say that, sir.” Elaine stepped away from the door and toward Kirke-Moore. “He gave me something to give you.” She motioned to a pocket of her jumpsuit, knowing not to reach for any concealed items without his leave.

The man nodded, and Elaine slowly reached into her pocket and withdrew the token Admiral Zahariev had given her. She tossed it across the intervening three meters. Kirke-Moore’s thin, heavily-veined hand snatched it out of the air, and he held it up to the sun. The dark metal of the half-moon shape seemed to darken the day’s brilliant sunlight, as if drawing the whole of the local primary’s radiance into itself.

“Supposing I handed this back, and said that I was still not going to Maribel.” Kirke-Moore said at length, his voice soft and his words deliberately slow. “What does your contract instruct you to do?”

Elaine hesitated. “Your… Remains are to be returned to Maribel in that event, sir.”

The old pirate chuckled, as if daring her to try. “And Reneer only sent the two of you to do the job? That’s almost insulting.”

Elaine said nothing. Firmi had packed enough heavy weapons to level the cottage from a distance if he holed up inside, but she doubted that would come as a surprise, just as the presence of her partner in overwatch had not escaped his notice.

Evidently, no answer proved to be the correct one. “Very well, mercenary. I have always honored my debts.” Kirke-Moore pocketed Admiral Zahariev’s token and stood. “I have only one condition.”

Elaine could hear Firmi’s sigh of relief over the comms. Kirke-Moore was taller than she expected, standing head and shoulders over her. “And that is?”

The old pirate smiled, his notoriously uneven teeth flashing against his sun-bronzed face. “For the rest of this day, I am still retired. It’s too perfect to spoil, don’t you agree?”

Elaine couldn’t help but nod her agreement, her gaze wandering once again to the bright, sparkling water of the cove below.

For the younger members of this audience, the name of Boszi Kirke-Moore may not inspire the same dread that it does for the older members of the interstellar community. Kirke-Moore was perhaps the most effective and terrifying pirate of ever to prowl the Coreward Frontier. Almost twenty years ago, his name was nearly a curse in this region. That he retired peacefully to a garden world is a quirk of fate which has much to do with that reputation - and for the long list of Navy captains who lost their lives and ships chasing him. When he'd had his fill of piracy, Kirke-Moore simply picked a planet to retire on, parked his ship Samarkand empty in orbit, and took a shuttle down to the pleasant spot of his choosing. His violent reputation ensured few visitors, and a strict set of security protocols on all space travel facilities on the planet has discouraged him from coming out of retirement voluntarily after the Navy towed away Samarkand.

One of the many Navy captains who pursued Kirke-Moore through the last years of his career of crimes and outrages was Reneer Zahariev - the very same who now commands Fifth Fleet. Kirke-Moore's oddly amicable retirement has always been rumored to have been arranged with the Navy, and Kirke-Moore's appearance at Fifth Fleet headquarters recently has for many confirmed these decades-old suspicions.

Kirke-Moore showing up to advise the same lawmen who he once evaded or murdered has been a public relations spectacle for the fleet - and Naval Intelligence has allowed the mercenaries Admiral Zahariev sent to retrieve him to describe the situation in which they found this old pirate enjoying his retirement.

Details

Tales from the Service: The View from Headquarters Part 3

2948-05-19 – Tales from the Service: The View from Headquarters Part 3 

It has been several months since this media company has checked in with members of Admiral Zahariev’s staff in a “View from Headquarters” interview. The inclusion of Bozsi Kirke-Moore in this interview was a last minute decision on the part of the Navy, not a request by Cosmic Background. 

This interview was conducted remotely via full-capture transmission, and its participants are listed below. 

D.L.C. - Duncan Chaudhri is a junior editor and wartime head field reporter for Cosmic Background.  

N.T.B. - Nojus Brand is a long-time explorer, datasphere personality, and wartime field reporter for Cosmic Background.  

C.S.D. - Colonel Carolina Durand is the Naval Intelligence attaché to Admiral Zahariev.   

B.K.M. - Captain Bozsi Kirke-Moore is a former pirate who has experience with asymmetric warfare in the Coreward Frontier, serving as an adviser to Admiral Zahariev. His rank is provisional, as he has never held it in Navy service prior to his recent appearance on the Fifth Fleet staff. 

[D.L.C.] Once again, thank you for taking time to talk to us, Colonel Durand. 

[C.S.D.] Mr. Chaudhri, It really is no trouble. Your company has been a very positive player in the media front of this conflict; Admiral Zahariev and the rest of the fleet staff appreciate what you are doing to put human faces and voices on the cost of this war, and how you do it in a positive way. Too many outfits either make light of the losses we face, or use these losses to advocate defeatism.  

[N.T.B.] There are a lot of dirt-huggers in media, and they don’t have anything like the right perspective to cover the Frontier. That includes Duncan here, sometimes. But Colonel, we aren’t going to pretend things out here are all starshine and haloes just to get interviews. 

[C.S.D.] Don’t get the wrong idea, Mr. Brand. The Navy is not in doubt about the final outcome of this conflict, but we share the concerns about the short term outlook you expressed in a vidcast episode last week. Speak your mind, whatever it is, and I’ll still sit down to chat once in a while – we only take issue with people exaggerating our challenges to push crisis narratives. 

[D.L.C.] And Captain Kirke-Moore. You haven’t spoken with us before, because until a few weeks ago you were lounging in the sun of a tropical coastline. I know this isn’t the first interview you’ve done since coming out of retirement, but hopefully this will be something different. 

[B.K.M.] I suspect it will be, Mr. Chaudhri. I am told your text feed piece on my coming out of retirement focused entirely on the experience of the mercenaries sent to retrieve me. 

[D.L.C.] It did, yes. 

[B.K.M.] Good. If excessive publicity was good for a pirate’s health, I wouldn’t have retired. 

[N.T.B.] I’ve seen five different interviews where you were asked how Admiral Zahariev was able to bring you out of retirement. The drama-hounds never stopped to ask why Fifth Fleet wants your advice in the first place. 

[D.L.C.] Nojus... 

[B.K.M.] It is a fair question. Reneer knows I spent almost twenty-five years fighting the Navy here on the Frontier, back when these stars were wild. Now, these Incarnation chip-heads have the same sort of stretched supply lines the Fleet did in those anti-pirate expeditions. He thinks I can help him exploit that, and if I didn’t agree, I would be back in my retirement bungalow by now. 

[D.L.C.] So you’re on as a sort of asymmetric-warfare expert. 

[B.K.M.] That is a bit of an antiquated term, but if you like. 

[C.S.D.] Mr. Kirke-Moore managed to elude and even defeat large Navy squadrons for decades with a single old cruiser and a bunch of up-gunned civilian hulls. Mainly, we need an effective outsider to challenge the standard Navy approach on the tactical level. 

[N.T.B.] After Bodrogi, you’ve got that right. But why him, specifically? Surely there are a few young, adaptable Navy captains who have proved they know how to beat Nate in a stand-up fight. 

[B.K.M.] Ah, so you want to know why Reneer pulled this old brigand out of retirement? 

[N.T.B.] Damned right. You were the monster in a lot of bedtime stories. 

[B.K.M.] Perhaps including your own, Mr. Brand? 

[N.T.B.] Er... yes, that's correct. 

[B.K.M.] While I have not been told directly, I think the answer is two-fold: convenience, and morale. Convenience, in that I was already in Reneer’s theatre of operations and incapable of political ambitions, and morale, in that the troops will be encouraged by the appearance of a tamed monster doing the bidding of their commander. 

[D.L.C.] Tamed monster, Captain Kirke-Moore? Is that how you would really describe your role? 

[B.K.M.] I only describe how many will see it. The HyperCast media networks have largely settled on that interpretation already. As for what Reneer will have me do beyond question assumptions, I do not know - he probably knows my capabilities and limitations better than anyone else I never got around to killing. 

[C.S.D.] Admiral Zahariev is keeping his plans to himself, but he seems confident that Captain Kirke-Moore is a key part in upcoming operations. 

[B.K.M.] He hasn’t yet told me what he has planning either, but I know the man well enough. He’s got a plan, and he thinks it’s a good one. 

[D.L.C.] Given that there are at least a hundred thousand Confederated citizens on Adimari Valis and at least that number between a few smaller outposts Nate has captured, the audience will be heartened to hear that the Navy intends to take the initiative. 

[N.T.B.] What’s in it for you? 

[B.K.M.] Now that is a question the drama-hounds have definitely asked me before, many times. The Admiralty has granted me clemency on all my past crimes, and it is a fitting way to give back to the institution that gave me so much. 

[N.T.B.] That’s sure as all hells not it. You were wanted for the past forty years, with one of the biggest bounties in the Reach on your head, and it wasn’t exactly a secret where you were. 

[D.L.C.] Nojus, please. We agreed- 

[B.K.M.] Mr. Brand, supposing you were right, what else is there for me to want? I have more wealth than I could spend in ten lifetimes, and probably only another decade or so to spend it. Fame and the thrill of the hunt grew dull for me when you were a small child. You are no young man yourself. Perhaps you already feel it? Perhaps by the end of this war you will see what I mean. 

[N.T.B.] Perhaps I won’t. 

[D.L.C.] Unfortunately, it looks like we don’t have much time left before Nojus and I are called away to record a spot for Ashton’s program.  

[C.S.D.] Out of time already? 

[N.T.B.] We are? 

[D.L.C.] Sadly, yes. Let’s do this another time after you’ve settled into your new role, and you can tell us some things about how you’re shaking up Admiral Zahariev’s tactical doctrine. 

[B.K.M.] That does sound like a good idea, Mr. Chaudhri. I’ll contact you after the first time my ideas are tried in combat, and we can discuss how well they worked or didn’t. 

[D.L.C.] I think the audience would like that very much. 

Details

Tales from the Service: The Gossamer Patron

2948-05-26 – Tales from the Service: The Gossamer Patron

It has been some time since the story Tales from the Inbox: A Gossamer Guardian appeared on Tales from the Inbox. That story’s strange encounter with a xenosapient on Håkøya was drawn from a single first-hand account and no official records, and I was inclined to be skeptical.

This week, I was surprised to find a very similar creature (probably not the same one, given that this one was encountered three thousand kilometers away from the first encounter) referred to in official dispatches. This “Gossamer Håkøyan” is described by witnesses in the same manner as the first, and it was encountered by a FDA garrison at Hamlinson bay, far from the well-settled areas of the planet. This time also, there is more than eyewitness testimony; low-resolution imagery of the specimen and an official censure of the garrison personnel involved were included in the commander’s report.

After seeing the report, I reached out to the civilian investigator whose name was referenced in the report. She was happy to provide a recording of her interview with the base commander - evidently, none of this information is deemed militarily sensitive. This may still be an elaborate hoax - stories of this kind have circulated among Håkøyan colonists for decades, and it's doubtlessly set the local datasphere on fire - but if so, I can't find any obvious faults with it.

Amber Holiday reported to the garrison C.O.’s office and stood at attention outside the soundproof door until it opened to emit a pair of chastened lieutenants wearing expressions usually only seen on the faces of puppies. Whatever their crime, Amber knew it was less serious than Colonel Bennington had let on; after all, the smart-cloth rank insignias on their shoulders remained intact.

Seeing Amber in the waiting-room, the colonel waved her inside as soon as the lieutenants had gone. “I hope you have good news for me, Holiday.”

Amber shook her head sadly. Colonel Bennington’s office was spacious and spartan, its main ornament being the wide window behind his desk which looked out over Hamlinson Bay’s sparkling waves, as if to remind all visitors what Bennington was tasked with protecting. Though half a world away from Håkøya’s main population centers, the bay and the rocky island at its mouth were one of the strongest natural defensive positions on the planet. With no nearby location for large orbital vessels to land, any invading force would have to stretch its logistics train across the entire planet to threaten Hamlinson Bay’s self-sufficient garrison.

“Holiday, last week you said you were close. If you can’t do the job-”

“Colonel, it’s not like that. I nailed your little cabal’s meeting last night. Positive IDs on more than half of the members.” Amber held up a slate computer holding a copy of her results. She preferred not to acknowledge the colonel’s implication that she was incapable of getting results; he had paid her well to come all the way to Hamlinson under a false name because she was, at least on short notice, the best available. He would have to hire someone all the way from Maribel or the Inner Reach if he wanted better.

“How in all hells is that not good news? Give me the list and I’ll have them out of here tomorrow morning.”

Amber didn’t relinquish the slate. “I’ll give you the list after I tell you the bad news.”

Colonel Bennington stood, his palms flat on the top of his desk. “If that list isn’t on my desk in twenty seconds-”

“You have a bigger problem than a dozen skulkers in your command, Colonel.”

The FDA officer glared for a few seconds in silence, then sat back down. He didn’t like a civilian investigator telling him what was or wasn’t a problem with his garrison, but he was too aware of his duties and the consequences for failing in them to ignore a warning like that. “Make it quick.”

“At first, I thought this cabal was just a case of some idiots finding an outlet for their bad morale.” Amber gestured out the window. “Benefits of the scenery aside, this damned outpost seems to be where the FDA sends its most motivated officers and its most worthless waste-of-air enlisted men. Odds are that’s what you thought, too.”

Bennington nodded cautiously. “If it’s not that, what is it? Ladeonists?”

Amber shook her head. She had jumped to that worst-case too, but what she had seen the previous night had ruled it out. “Close to the mark, but not quite. They’re definitely wrapped up in cultic ideation, but it isn’t Ladeonist in nature. It’s not anything off the Sunfire Assembly idea chain, either.”

“Cultic practices, but not Sunfire or Ladeonists.” The colonel shook his head. “Someone must have brought a folk cult from their home settlement. That’s bad, but I can-”

Amber tossed a portable holo-player onto the officer’s desk. When it landed, it automatically righted itself. Above its lens cluster, the air glowed and a silent image of a small circle of hooded figures appeared around a stunted, twisted local tree-analogue barely seven feet tall. The miniature figures swayed in tandem to music not captured in the recording, but stamped into Amber Holiday’s memory. “This isn’t the usual sort of homespun Frontier voodoo, Colonel.”

“How do you know?”

“Just watch.”

Intrigued, Bennington stared at the image as the figures’ ritualistic movements became more and more cohesive, and more and more elaborate. Some of them also began to move jerkily, as if being rapidly shouted directions to a dance they didn’t know – but Amber knew too well that no such instructions had been shouted. Other than the haunting, thrumming music played by an unseen performer or device, the cabal’s gathering had been silent; none of them had spoken.

As the dancers reached a crescendo of elaborate limb-flailing, the image wavered and blurred, then vanished altogether. The devices recording the gathering had been momentarily blinded by a bizarre mix of electromagnetic emissions lasting a few seconds. Amber, watching with her own eyes, had seen the flash, but it had done little to dazzle her eyes – she had seen what the cameras had not; the way the gnarled old tree had bent over upon itself, its limbs curling inward and twisting inward around something that had not been there a moment before.

The image in the recorder returned, but not in time to capture the alien tree righting itself. The figure standing beside its bole, however, showed up clearly. Pale, feminine, and dressed only in a tangle of gossamer veils, the humanoid figure held out its hands, and the cabal’s hooded dancers fell utterly still, then dropped to their knees a moment later.

As the gossamer figure – humanoid, but quite obviously not human – went around the circle laying a hand on each hooded figure’s head, Bennington looked up. “What is it?”

Amber shrugged. “I would say you are looking at the bigger problem, Colonel.”

 

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