The Cold Wind II: Taniwha (Ch 01 - 02)
#4 of The Cold Wind II: Taniwha
Chapter One
"Disregard the consequences and divert power from life-support, Ancestor's curse you! Restoring function to the shields takes precedence!" Stride-To-Victory roared at his chief engineer while grabbing at a blackened and smoking control console for support when his fast-attack frigate bucked from the impact of yet another volley of seeker missiles.
He winced when another section of hull-plating was compromised with the sound of the distant explosion reaching all the way to the command deck, allowing the atmosphere in that section of the ship to decompress explosively into the hard vacuum of space.
An engineer on the far side of the bridge cursed loudly and ducked when he was showered by sparks from the shorted out power-conduit he'd only just finished repairing. The surviving members of the small crew worked frantically to keep the ship's critical systems operational in the vain hope they could manage an escape from their dogged pursuers. The pack-leader stared with undisguised desperation into the video pickup located near the rear of the cockpit section.
"If we fail to survive know that we were ambushed by Arbiters! They struck with no warning in what we thought was the uninhabited system of VE19900 -"
There was another particularly violent explosion that knocked the pack-leader off his taloned feet before he could complete his sentence, accompanied by the sounds of massive hull structure failure and the shriek from atmosphere venting from multiple breaches. The screams of several terrified Vanguard were cut short when the screen mercifully cut to black.
Several long moments of a rather pregnant silence hung in the room after the lights came back up. The small group of assembled Elders stared at one another, their expressions stony under the harsh, artificial lighting.
"Arbiters... Interesting that they choose now of all times to rear their ugly heads," Autumn- Storm rumbled and was the first to turn away from the others while rubbing at her tired eyes with the heel of one of her forward hands. "Are the Empire's current difficulties so obvious to outsiders, hrrr?"
"We should have exterminated them completely when we were presented with the opportunity," Take-By-Force snarled while glaring at the now blank screen.
"It is easy to consider events in hindsight and state what action should have been taken after the event," Autumn-Storm chided, turning around again to regard the Warrior-Elder with her four unblinking, black eyes.
He returned her gaze without flinching, frustration evident in his voice and with the unconscious thrashing of his tail when he responded, "There may be wisdom in your words, however you are correct in that it fails to assist us in the here and now. This could not have occurred at a more inopportune time; our forces are stretched thin as it is."
A brief flicker of annoyance crossed her features but was swiftly quashed to be replaced by an expression of blank neutrality. First he rages about what should have been done in the past then suddenly turns around complaining it doesn't help them now? Contrary creature!
The third Vanguard who had been silent up until this point began to pace around the room restlessly, pausing occasionally to glance at the others. "Bluster and clichés aside, the choice as I observe it is simple. We need to reach a consensus of which threat is the most urgent and devote our attentions to that: Do we devote resources to quash the rebellion in our outlying colonies, risking having our entire civilization eaten alive by the Ancestor-cursed Arbiters, hrrr? Or do we retreat to the Core-worlds to rebuild our military strength and risk losing most if not all of the same colonies either to rebellion, Arbiters or both? Either way they are difficult decisions -"
"Decisions," Take-By-Force snorted and slashed his forward arms through the air in a dismissive gesture, interrupting Rocky-Hide's rambling diatribe, "that will return to bite us on the tail."
Rocky-Hide frowned at him with a mildly reproachful expression. "Is that not a foregone conclusion, hrrr? The empire is already crumbling into an extended civil war with no end in sight and the Arbiters are simply taking advantage of this weakness. As you say our forces are stretched - we simply cannot afford to fight a battle on two fronts."
"I am in agreement," Autumn-Storm snapped her jaw shut while staring at Take-By-Force, as if daring the contrary warrior-Elder to disagree. "If we withdraw our fleets back to the Core-worlds and concentrate on their defense we will be in a stronger position should the Arbiters become bolder in their attacks. Not to mention deal to any rebellion should the Ancestor cursed Arbiters leave anyone alive to rebel."
"Even I can observe the direction the Rank-beast is running," Take-By-Force let out a prolonged sigh of defeat. "Hrrr... It may come as a surprise to you both, however I am also in agreement. I do not like it - as a warrior I am unused to abandoning a battle once initiated - however I agree."
"We do not like it either. It is, however, the strategy with the greatest chance of long-term success," Rocky-Hide snapped his jaw shut in agreement.
She reached out with two of her arms and squeezed the warrior-Elder's shoulder briefly before lumbering over to the hatch. Autumn-Storm joined her and the two elders departed, leaving Take-By-Force alone in the room.
Activating a control on his datapad, Take-By-Force replayed the short transmission aired not minutes before, but not before muting the sound on it. He watched numbly while the panicked frigate commander gesticulated silently at him on the small screen amidst the destruction of his vessel. He thought about the decreasing number outlying colonies that were still loyal to the empire; there were going to be serious repercussions when those colonies realized they were being abandoned by the fleet. The weakened fleet was only going to be enough to protect the dozen or so Core-worlds including Original Home - the Vanguard home-world - until they were able to rebuild sufficiently.
By his reckoning, it had been approximately ten years ago that his predecessor had foolishly dispatched almost a third of the entire military fleet in order to conquer a rogue colony with the designation of New Home. Only a small handful of the thousands of vessels sent on that mission had returned, bringing with them the shocking news of a complete and utter rout.
Against insurmountable odds the rogue colony had defeated the attacking fleet using a mixture of cunning and what had been described as strangely primitive weaponry; they had gone in expecting a small fleet of decrepit antique spacecraft and a small ground defense force that would be quickly defeated by their superior firepower and numbers. They had found the rag-tag fleet of veritable antique attack vessels as expected, however the guerrilla tactics employed both in-system and on the ground had quite literally blown them away. It had been speculated by some that the rogue colony had been supported by some unknown alien race and technology, however there had been no hard evidence to support the theory.
Take-By-Force had been one of a small number of fleet-leaders at the time who had voiced his opposition to the idea of taking so many ships on what was to his mind such a foolish venture. An isolated colony with no strategic or otherwise importance so far from the empire certainly didn't warrant such an overwhelming response. However he and the other dissenting voices had been over-ruled and, with the eventual loss of so much of the fleet, it had left the empire's military forces severely weakened.
It wasn't long after news of the successful New Home rebellion that some of the other remote colonies had also began to develop an itch for independence. Now several years later fully half of the outlying 2nd generation colonies had seceded from the Empire. The resulting conflicts generated had left the fleet spread dangerously thin. It had been a little complicated by the fact that much of the military consisted of warriors from these same colonies. In a move that surprised nobody but a few warrior-Elders of advanced age who still adhered to the old ways, these new conscripts refused to fight against their own clans.
Tired of watching the tragic recording over and again, he shut down his datapad and turned his thoughts to their enemy of many generations, the Arbiters. During the few thousand years that the Vanguard had been capable of space-travel, they had discovered only a small number of other intelligent alien species in their sector of the galaxy. While most of them were technologically primitive in comparison, there had been a couple that had proved to be at least equal to the Vanguard. One of these were the Arbiters.
While the more primitive species were easily conquered or destroyed, the Arbiters had successfully fought the Vanguard to an expensive stalemate. Ever since the last major clash in which neither side was able to triumph there had been an unofficial - and uneasy - cease-fire between the two species.
Very little was known about the Arbiters other than that they resembled large, armored insects with a hive-mind intelligence and a serious thirst for obliterating anything that wasn't another Arbiter. The vicious little bastards didn't merely conquer worlds; they utterly annihilated them - killing everything living and pillaging whatever resources they found useful before leaving the planets scarred and barren. If the planetary resources were not sufficiently worthwhile to harvest then the planet was usually rendered completely sterile by a massive bombardment of asteroids and comets from nearby space; the Arbiters operated a ruthlessly efficient scorched earth policy.
The tentative peace between the Vanguard and Arbiters had lasted almost 1000 years and only recently had the hostilities begun to flare up again. The voracious alien hive-mind had seized on the perceived weakness of their ancient enemies and followed up with a campaign of destruction the likes of which had not been witnessed for generations.
Aside from the Arbiters, the only other major space-faring species the Vanguard had discovered during their exploration were considerably more advanced. Unlike the Arbiters these somewhat reticent aliens appeared content to keep to themselves and the small handful of worlds they called home. These aliens gave themselves the designation Observers and, unlike the other Carbon-based species discovered so far, they were a Silicon-based life-form that had more in common with machines than anything organic.
Because no Vanguard had ever actually seen one in its natural form, what they actually looked like was unknown. Despite repeated attempts at initiating some sort of contact or trade the Vanguard had been politely but completely rebuffed. A military response was out of the question as Observer technology was advanced far beyond anything the Vanguard had been able to acquire or invent themselves. While arrogant and ambitious, the Vanguard weren't completely stupid as to take on a foe who was so overwhelmingly powerful in comparison.
Although having endured and expanded throughout the galactic sector they called home for thousands of years, it appeared the Vanguard Empire was now on the precipice of failure. Beset by barbarian hordes on the outside and rotting from internal dissent, there was no easy way to repair the broken thing it had become.
The proud, senior Warrior-Elder Take-By-Force stared blindly at the quiescent datapad clutched in one of his forward hands, his talons pressed hard into the casing leaving slight impressions in the metal. The emotions he experienced were new, strange and unpleasant; was this how if felt to be lost and alone?
Chapter Two
"Welcoming aboard, comrade!"
Lieutenant Antonio Franco felt a warm hand grasp his forearm and pull him gently while he struggled through the narrow hatch into the main docking module of the Russian Federation vessel Valentina Tereshkova. His legs braced against a structural girder a stocky, dark-haired young cosmonaut smiled warmly at him while guiding the marine's left hand to a padded hand-hold before releasing him.
"Others wait in command module. When you ready we go," the cosmonaut informed him in his thickly accented English while indicating another narrow hatch at the far end of the module with a free hand.
"Thanks, Lieutenant... uh?"
"Huh, where are manners! I Vasya Kolzak. You are Commander Antonio Franco, da?" Extending his hand for a formal hand-shake, Vasya looked him up and down and nodded thoughtfully. "You are big, big man. Maybe too big for our small, small ship, nyet? Ah, does not matter, comrade. We make you comfortable anyway, indeed!"
Taking the proffered hand, Antonio nearly lost his handhold when the cosmonaut gave him a rather enthusiastic handshake. Smiling apologetically he managed to retrieve his hand and immediately grabbed back onto the hand-hold with it. "That's Lieutenant, not Commander. Sorry, I didn't quite catch your first name? Vush..?"
"Vasya."
"Vasha?"
"Ah, it close enough, you will learn, da? Come, come! We join your comrades. Your Commander Hardy is impatient man. After you," Vasya indicated for him to lead on.
Bending down, Vasya dogged the docking hatch closed and then turned to watch the American marine bounce his way from hand-hold to hand-hold toward the hatch leading to the command module.
It had only taken a bribe of a couple of bottles of Rusky Standard for Vasya to persuade his commanding officer to rearrange things so that his schedule coincided with that of Lieutenant Franco. He had combed through the dossiers of the three American marines that were joining them and was pleasantly surprised to see that one of them was rather attractive.
His commanding officer, Colonel Irenei Putin, had merely shrugged it off but not without a certain amount of ill-concealed amusement. He was well aware of his junior officer's proclivities but it didn't concern him in the slightest; he knew that Vasya was a good soldier who would never let personal matters interfere with their mission.
Although given what he knew of the American military, Irenei thought Vasya was being more than a little naïve in thinking he would be able to bed one of their marines. However it would still be amusing to watch him attempt the impossible - the extensive dossiers he'd read through mentioned that the American Commander had little if no sense of humor. But if nothing else a bit of harmless mischief would help take their minds off the more serious aspects of the mission and hopefully allow them to do some bonding as a group.
Back in the docking module, Vasya observed that the flight-suits assigned to the marines were somewhat more form-fitting than the baggy Russian versions. They hugged Antonio's body in some interesting ways while he struggled through the small hatch at the far end of the module, much to his delight.
'The picture hasn't done him any justice at all,' he thought to himself with glee.
Following Antonio through the hatchway before closing it behind him, he pushed off and caught Irenei's outstretched arm and swiveled gracefully around to secure himself against a convenient hand-hold. Antonio awkwardly joined the two other Americans who were watching them warily, floating weightless beside an adjacent bulkhead.
Commander George Hardy was the first to break the awkward silence. "Right. Now that we're all here we should go over the mission-plan again and make sure everyone knows what's expected of him. I'm Commander Hardy and these two are Lieutenants Antonio 'Oh-Man' Franco and Terry 'The Fish' Christian. I've been told you've got the lead on this mission, Colonel?" he asked, nodding stiffly at Irenei.
Irenei raised an eyebrow at the tone in the Commander's voice - the man was obviously not happy at being forced to take orders from him. The dossier had mentioned that he was a highly decorated soldier who was well respected by those under his command. He decided to cut the man some slack; he wouldn't like it much either if their situations were reversed. Plus it probably hurt the American's pride a little that they were forced to use a Russian vessel for this mission.
Neither NASA nor the US military had anything even remotely capable of carrying passengers out of the Earth's orbit since abandoning their Moon-landing efforts in the early 1970's. Even the plans to create a permanent (American) manned presence on the Moon in the early 2020's had been a miserable failure due to political infighting by successive regimes.
To be fair the Russian's hadn't gotten very far in their own attempts at a Moon-base, either. Money originally destined for the space-program had long been diverted to private fossil fuel interests by equally as corrupt successive Russian government regimes, however there had been incremental but steady development in manned space-habitats in low Earth orbits. It hadn't taken much in the way of resources to convert one of the smaller orbiting military installations into a vessel capable of breaking orbit and traveling to the Moon and back. Given enough supplies, the Valentina Tereshkova was theoretically capable of taking them all the way to Mars.
"Welcome aboard the Valentina Tereshkova, gentlemen. As you know, I am Colonel Irenei Putin. I think you've already met my second-in-charge, Praporshchik Vasya Kolzak. While I'm nominally in charge while we are underway, Commander Hardy will be leading you once we reach the target. It will be my responsibility to get you there and back in one piece."
Various hands were awkwardly offered and shook in the cramped space of the command module.
Not taking his eyes off Antonio, Vasya cocked his head slightly to one side with a confused expression on his face. "' __Oh-Man'? 'The Fish'? I not understanding such words?"
"Those are our nicknames. They call me The Fish 'cuz I can swim like one and they call him Oh-Man," Terry nodded in Antonio's direction, "because of the noises he makes when he - OW!"
Blushing furiously, Antonio interrupted Terry by punching him hard in the arm. "They call me Oh-Man because both my first and last names end with 'O'," he said while wondering why the cosmonaut was staring at him so intently. Did he have something on his face or spilled on his flight-suit...?
Irenei had also noticed his junior officer's heightened interest and cast a warning glance in his direction before clearing his throat. "On to business. We have a few days to prepare for departure and for you to properly familiarize yourselves with this vessel. The last member of our new crew, Petter Nilsen, is scheduled to arrive on a Progress resupply vessel at 0700 tomorrow morning our time. With your approval Commander Hardy, your Lieutenant Franco will share a shift with Praporshchick Kolzak, Lieutenant Christian with Nilsen and you can share with me." He smiled slightly when Commander Hardy began to protest and held up his hand to forestall the man's objection. "This isn't one of your spacious American shuttles, as I am sure you can appreciate. The crew module can only sleep two at one time, so we will all need to sleep in shifts over the next several days."
With a grimace of disapproval on his face, Commander Hardy gave him a stiff nod. "Very well. Oh-Man, Fish, get the gear stowed. I'm sure the Lieutenant will show you where it needs to go. I have a package to check." He nodded a curt dismissal to them and pushed off back into the docking module, closing the hatch behind him.
The 'package' was actually a small backpack nuke that the US Department of Defense had insisted accompany them as part of the agreement for the mission. While the Russians were understandably a little concerned at having a weapon of mass destruction on board the Valentina Tereshkova, they also realized that it was wise to have some sort of backup in case the mission went sour. Both sides were painfully aware that the unidentified non-human vessel that had been destroyed in low orbit several years earlier had a high likelihood of being from the same species that now had a much larger and more threatening ship parked in an orbit just beyond the moon. It was hoped that they were unaware of what had befallen the previous vessel, a hope buoyed by the fact they hadn't attacked as soon as they had arrived.
"It has been a long day, comrades. Lieutenant Christian, if you will follow me I will show you to the crew module where you can stow your gear. Praporshchik Kolzak, I shall leave Lieutenant Franco in your capable hands." Nodding at Vasya, Irenei indicated that Terry should move toward a small hatch at the far end of the command module.