Earth Song: Etude to War (56 page)

Chapter 65

June 19
th
, 534 AE

Planet Wiggin, Gulla Territory

The respirator masks were uncomfortable, and so was the heavy pack on her back. Minu kept finding herself unslinging her shock rifle to carry it instead of on her shoulder, the soreness of which it exacerbated. Worse, her lower back was hurting and that had never happened before. Of course she’d never been pregnant and in the field before either.

“You okay dear?” Aaron asked from behind, obviously noticing her fretting over the gun.

“Just starting to feel knocked up.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Probably going to look forward to six months from now.”

“Did I ever tell you my mom was in labor for thirty hours?”

“Did I ever tell you to shut the fuck up?” she asked.

She didn’t have to look over her shoulder to know he was probably grinning ear to ear.

As soon as they set up, the sergeant sent two men to recon ahead. They were both armed with shock rifles modified with higher level optics than the standard issue. Somewhat more bulky that the other models and capable of doing pinpoint damage at extreme range. They would use their weapons and other sensors to reconnoiter the village around the Portal, just to be certain. The others were halfway there when the recon team reported in that the village was abandoned.

“No signs of recent activity,” called one of the female members of the Ranger squad assigned to recon. “We found some equipment, probably mining gear that held date records more than five years old.”

“Good to hear,” Minu said and ordered them to keep a high outlook, just in case. “Also set a Portal activity monitor as further security. We have three with us, might as well set this up as an extreme outpost.”

The miniature laser communicators would monitor the Portal for activity. It would warn them if the Portal were about to come alive with inbound traffic, and also record activity for years to come. Any time another human equipped with the correct gear came through; it would upload its records to them. It was a valuable piece of their covert intelligence equipment, and the Chosen had placed hundreds of them throughout the galaxy. They’d only been located and destroyed a handful of times.

“Acknowledged. Recon out.”

The rest of them took a slow approach, as was standard procedure to avoid detection, and arrived at the village fifteen minutes later.

Minu hesitated to really call it a village; the totality of it consisted of everal dozen Portal sized shipping contains modified to be living quarters, offices, labs, and storage. One acted as a combination headquarters/power distribution center. This was a working camp, not a village.

The team spent an hour scouring the camp for anything useful, and finding nothing. Minu did find mineral samples and placed a couple in her kit bag for Chosen scientists to review later. There were some medium sized charged EPCs but they’d left with all the power they needed, so she didn’t disturb them.

This was, after all, someone else’s territory. They weren’t on a salvage operation. Intel, on the other hand, was always on the agenda.

The Gulla were one of the rare amphibian species, looking a bit like anorexic frogs on stilts. The living quarters were all designed to be partially flooded, and even through their respirators everything had a slightly fishy smell about it.

Finally the men were gathering in the center of the camp near the Portal having found little of any real interest. More importantly to Minu, she’d not found a single clue as to the whereabouts of the cache her father supposedly left there.

“It isn’t like my father,” she was telling Aaron. “I’ve found raided caches he’d left, but never any cache at all. It isn’t like there are many places here in the first place.”

“Maybe he had to be creative because of that.” He gestured around at the little encampment. “I mean, look. It’s not like the Gulla probably don’t use every square centimeter of this place when they’re here.”

“You have a good point.” Minu stood in the center of the square in a situation she’d found herself in many times before. She’d be on a planet in an unknown situation, faced with multiple options or decisions to make, and no clue what Chriso would have done in those situations. Frustrating would not quite describe it.

Minu sat on and a piece of decaying broken equipment and thought. She realized she was just wasting time and reached for her Portal control rod.

And that was when she noticed something. One of the Rangers had an instrument out and was giving it a puzzled look. Minu got up and walked over to him.

“Is there a problem soldier?”

“Ma’am, no – I mean, I don’t think so…”

“You’re confusing me, son,” Minu said with a cockeyed grin.

He looked at the instrument with a profound look of confusion.

“Maybe you better just explain what’s going on.”

He shrugged and showed it to her. He was running an energy scan of the area. The most prominent signal was from the Portal itself. Of course, each of the soldiers and people present provided small energy signatures as well.

“Here’s the problem,” he said and pointed to the screen. A few meters away was a very small energy signature. It could easily have been mistaken for nothing more than a background noise. Of course, background noise did not fluctuate.

“What exactly do you think that is?” Minu asked.

The man stared at the screen for a minute, obviously deep in thought. “I guess if you insisted on my opinion…”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Okay. Then I would have to say it is some piece of equipment someone left lying around.”

Aaron had wandered over during the exchange and was looking over their shoulders. “It’s not an overly large signature,” he added to the conversation. “If you asked me somebody left something there.”

“My father never ceases to amaze me,” Minu mumbled. “Good find, soldier.” The man beamed, water to someone lost in the desert. Minu knew she was known to be miserly with her praise. She believed it made that she did give out much more valuable. “Aaron, score!”

A minute later they were both examining an old dualloy footing on one of the bunkhouse containers. The container was old, the foot was much older. It was impossible what it was originally used as. It was possible to see that the Gulla re-tasked it to the current purpose.

“There must be some sort of way into it,” Aaron said to his wife.

She’d normally be the one down on her knees, crawling under the container looking for the cache, but her advancing pregnancy was making her husband less likely to allow her to exert herself. She wanted to stop him, but she was secretly enjoying the attention.

Underneath the cramped space below the module, Aaron held a small light in his teeth as he examined the dualloy metal footer. It superficially resembled a simple metal column, almost an oversized I-beam. One side of the open part seemed wrong to him; his engineering background spoke of a bad angle. “It might have a hidden compartment,” he said as he worked.

Using a free hand Aaron wiped away some of the years accumulated dust, and a thin plate fell away.

“There we go,” he called triumphantly. Inside was a standard issue Chosen field box. They were common in caches all over the galaxy. Using his belt knife, Aaron popped it free from its hiding place then replaced the cover. The cache might need to be used again someday so he would log its location into his tablet later.

Crawling back out, he handed the box to his wife who smiled and rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek. The Rangers all whooped and laughed, making him shake his head.

It was rather unlike many of the caches she’d found from her father. No code, no locking mechanism at all on this one. About forty centimeters long, twenty wide, and ten deep, it was unremarkable.

She popped the catch and looked inside. The last thing she was expecting were portal control rods. Definitely not fifteen of them, and most certainly not slightly glowing transparent ones.

“What the heck?” Aaron wondered, looking over her shoulder.

“Are those PCRs?” Selain asked.

Minu didn’t answer, but dumped one of them into her hand. It was cool to the touch and of the same proportions as the dark metallic PCRs she was used to. For comparison she took hers from the pocket on her jumpsuit leg and looked at the two next to each other. “Sure looks like it,” she said then holstered her original rod. “So let’s see if it is.”

She touched the rod on its base, the same as she’d activate a normal rod, and it instantly came to life. The surface went from transparent to translucent, and two rings of Concordian script appeared around one end. Again, identical to the other PCR. The script, however, was completely different. “Whoa,” she said and examined the script.

“Can you read it?” her husband asked.

Like many types of script that formerly meant nothing to her, these lines of floating symbols bored straight into an area of her brain she didn’t have full control of anymore. “Sort of,” she mumbled, gritting her teeth and letting the symbols rumble through her cerebellum. Incomplete connections fought with each other, none of them making sense in her conscious mind. The series of script was tantalizing and for some reason exciting.

“I don’t know what’s special about them,” she admitted, then pointed it at the nearest portal. Unlike her other PCR, it didn’t interface.

“Kind of useless isn’t it?” the sergeant snorted.

“Something with this old script is never useless,” she replied and tried a couple combinations.

Two more rings of script popped into existence, hovering in the air. Her brain read them and she sensed this would initiate something. But what?

“We need to mess with this later,” she finally decided and deactivated the PCR.

It flashed, just like a portal being deactivated, and again became a simple clear crystalline rod. It went back into the cache box, and that was when she noticed the data chip.

“Hello,” she said and snatched the chip. It was painted blue, just like the sapphire hanging around her neck.

Even though they’d already been on this planet far too long, she had to see what was on the chip. Out came her tablet and the chip went into one of the ports. Instantly a data script appeared. This was the type her brain translated without the Weaver modifications. And a line of text appeared:

“Sapphire, I couldn’t be around to give you the keys to success, so here are fifteen keys to the galaxy instead. Chriso.” 

What had he meant by the keys to the galaxy? Maybe the unusual PCRs were to unlock the ones that are locked? She removed the chip, dropped it back in the box, and into her pack. “We’ve trespassed long enough,” Minu told the men.

Her PCR activated the portal in the center of the mining camp, data transferring from the glowing arch to hover over her rod. Destinations programmed into this portal were displayed there, along with the next step after those. They were at the end of a long network of portals and many would have been lost. She memorized many hundreds of locations and could recognize hundreds more. She quickly recognized one of them in particular. She was about to program that one when she looked a destination down from one of the other choices, and it matched the new address her father left her.

She made a snap decision. Her fingers moved in the holographic interface, and the portal came to life.

“Time to go,” she said, replaced the PCR, unslung her shock rifle, and off they went.

Chapter 66

June 20
th
, 534 AE

Undesignated Planet, Contested Territory

They took the movement through the two portals with extreme slowness and the maximum amount of caution. Especially at the first jump while leaving Wiggin, as it was a higher order species territory.

The first world was unnamed. A small settlement that looked like it had last been used before mankind discovered fire. Strangely enough, the town square which once served a modest population held three portals in a triangular formation, all facing each other. Minu stood in the center of the formation and looked in confusion at the arrangement.

“This isn’t very normal,” Aaron noted right away. Serving for years as a Scout had given him more field experience than she sported.

The Rangers all stood around examining the square, shock rifles clipped to their chest harnesses and one hand on them to be ready. They used the multi spectrum scanners in their helmets to watch the perimeter as their sergeant stood at attention near Minu.

“No, unusual,” Minu agreed after a few minutes. “You men picking up anything?”

She sometimes regretted using the term men, since two in the squad were women. It was a normal military convention though, so she stuck with it.

Selain surveyed his Rangers before turning to her and shaking his head. The settlement was blank of all unusual sensor readings.

“Very well then,” she said and took out her PCR. Sets of script appeared for each portal, showing destinations. The one they’d come through was the one she’d known about from Wiggin, its destination already available to her and where she’d planned to go (considering the address noted in her father’s coded diary entry). The others were more interesting. One showed no addresses programmed, and the other only one.

Over the years of exploring the galaxy she’d come across a few orphaned portals (as her father called them). Just like these they often made no sense by a disproportionally small settlement would have multiple portals, and then some of them not programmed at all, just like one of these. Why here? Why unused?

She knew portals were horribly expensive to have installed. In fact, she realized she’d never seen a portal purchased and installed. She’d seen several on Bellatrix relocated to the fortresses. It involved a special PCR and a code unique to each portal. The Tog had to provide those codes, of course. She wondered for a moment if the superscript codes provided by her Weaver modified brain that would allow her to do that without the codes. Well, that was for another time.

She accessed the portal with only one destination and examined the script that marched across her PCR. Like the rest of the situation, it was unusual. Part of the script made her special knowledge access awaken, but only part. What the heck was this all about?

“I can read some of that,” Aaron said, “but not the other part. Is your brain handling it?”

“Yes,” she said and tried to concentrate. Like all the Weaver-supplied abilities, the harder she tried to think about it, the less it worked. Rather like looking at something out of the corner of your eye, if you tried to focus on it, it would suddenly disappear. She sighed and just let her brain work with a meditative trance, and it came to her. This portal had been reprogrammed by someone. And that person knew some of the special script.

“Someone has been at this portal,” she said and gestured with the PCR, “and they had some of the same knowledge I have.”

“Maybe the Squeen?”

“That’s possible, they seem to know as much or more as I do.”

She looked at the script again, her fingers operating on automatic.

“But they did some of this in a very circuitous manner. Kind of like climbing in through a second story window, going downstairs and unlocking the door, then climbing back out the window to go down and come in through the door.”

“Sounds like an idiot,” Selain scowled. “Only an idiot or someone setting a trap.”

“Or just making do with what they had,” she mumbled. It piqued her curiosity, regardless.

Making another of those snap decisions, she flipped the PCR up and activated the portal. On the other side of the portal was a brightly lit town square in better shape than where she stood, the light there tinted to a greenish tinge. An avenue led away from the portal, showing an arboreal forest with huge trees and ferns. The doorways of the visible buildings were quite wide and the windows artfully flecked with speckles and flecks of color.

Minu double checked the programming of the portal on the other side, having been trapped before by a dead end, before deciding. “I want to have a look over there,” she told the men.

Aaron looked dubious but she held up a hand.

“I think this is worth investigating,” she insisted. “Besides, I’m in charge.”

Aaron chuckled. “I’ve known that for years, dear.”

A minute later they were organized and, as was her tradition, Minu stepped through first. Her helmet visor was down, oxygen mask in place so she was only breathing filtered air, and armor energized. Many years of experience told her caution was always the best policy, especially when things seemed the safest.

The heads up display of her helmet told Minu that the atmosphere was safe almost instantly after arriving on the unnamed world. The Rangers came through right behind her and quickly spread out around the square in a defensive perimeter. Aaron worked with the Ranger specialist and deployed instruments to examine the area.

“Really clean,” he pronounced in a minute. “Looks like no-one has been here in a very long time.”

“With that strange programming I’m not surprised,” said Minu as she flipped up her visor and removed the breather mask. “How long?”

Aaron consulted the Rangers’ readout again. “More than a hundred years. It’s hard to be more specific.”

“Everyone spread out,” she informed them, “perimeter search. Anything out of the ordinary, fifteen minutes.”

The Rangers broke up and quickly spread out in pairs. An entire fire-team led by Selain stayed to guard Minu and Aaron. Minu was slowly coming to accept her shadows and their leader’s over the top protective nature. She still had plans to get even with Gregg when they got back home for saddling her with more than a dozen nannies.

The atmosphere had a rather nice flavor, the nearby forest scenting it with pine and a nearby stream. Years of searching on the frontier and following breadcrumbs left by her father should have prepared her for almost anything. It almost did.

“Commander,” her radio chirped.

“Go ahead,” Minu replied instantly.

“Ten meters to planetary north east, down an alley. We’ve found a body.”             

“Species?”

“Human.”

Minu blinked once in surprise then headed that way. The squad left to guard her started to move to follow her but she stopped them. “Hold the portal, Sarge.”

“Ma’am,” he started to complain.

“The team that called is there, I’ll be fine.” He narrowed his eyes and Aaron shouldered his shock rifle, holding it at low port, before following her and left the Sarge watched with trepidation.

Around a quick corner and behind one of the buildings fronting the square, she found the Ranger team. They were both standing over a half rotted storage crate, weapons slung over their shoulders and imaging equipment held loosely.

As she came up, she was filled with a feeling of dread. Was she about to see the body of her father? What she found was as far from what she was expecting as was possible.

“What do we have?” she asked as she approached, Aaron trotting up behind her. They just shook their heads and one pointed with his instrument, so she leaned over and looked. It was a human corpse, all right. But it was what it wore and carried that was more interesting than a human body thousands of light-years from their normal area of operation.

The body was thoroughly decayed with only thin parchment like skin stretched over the head. The lips were peeled back in a rictus of death and its eyes were empty staring sockets. The uniform was peeled and partly decayed, and in a camo pattern not completely foreign to what the Chosen scouts wore. The resemblance ended there.

The person (soldier?) wore a sort of battle harness of decayed strapping that held various pouches around his (her?) waist. The boots were similar, but different as well.

But it was the helmet and rifle that brought Minu up short. She’d first seen their like years ago, during her Scout training as a Chosen. Examples of old equipment in a museum on Tranquility, she’d since gotten to be moved to her War College on permanent loan.

It was a United States Kevlar helmet and M-4 carbine, circa early 21
st
century on old Earth.

“Is that…” Aaron asked.

“Sure looks like it,” Minu answered without needing to hear the entire question. “Is the body clean?”

“Bio scan is clear,” one of the Rangers announced.

“What’s the details on the body?”

“Human for sure, male, about thirty standard years old.”

Minu leaned down to start inspecting the equipment. “Cause of death?”

“Self-inflicted firearms wound to the head.” There was a small hole under his chin and the back of his uniform was stained a rust color. She nodded her head and took the weapon. She had to break two of the man’s fingers to get it to release.

Minu popped the magazine release. Standard 5.56 millimeter stamped NATO on the head stamp. Twenty-nine rounds in the magazine. The weapon was marked Colt Firearms on the side and was an identical match to several in the museums on Bellatrix.

Dozens had been brought over by the soldiers who established the beachhead on their new homeworld and saw service for more than a century until they either could no longer reload the bullets, or the weapon succumbed to internal malfunction.

On his belt was a service issue Glock 19 as well. This weapon also a perfect match for one in the War College museum.

“Check the corpse over,” she instructed, “I need to see everything.”

She needed to know when this man had arrived here, and from where. The only tribes who could have fielded this soldier were Plateau and New Jerusalem. The latter was unlikely, because the Israelis who formed that tribe wore different camouflage uniforms and carried the Tavor battle rifle (a bullpup design firing the same cartridge though) and though some carried Glock pistols, they seemed to favor FN and Desert Eagle’s more often.

In a minute, all he had on him was presented on a small tarp he’d carried in his pack. No food, there was a pile of emptied ration packs nearby that matched what she’d seen in the museum as well (MREs from the USA again). A camp stove with a few fuel pellets left. A combat knife/bayonet (USA issue), ten magazines for the M-4, three for the Glock, and cleaning kits for both weapons. Compass, a GPS device (USA issue, batteries long dead), a computer tablet (common design, also dead), and a wallet.

Minu picked up the last item. She’d seen them before but such items were not in vogue on Bellatrix in her lifetime. It was a little brittle and cracked when she opened it. Inside were several plastic cards with numbers and names embossed on them, and an identification card that read ‘US Army – Dexter Ambrose, ID Number 559-66-1011. Special Forces, Staff Sergeant’.

She looked at the rest of the data then back at the body before taking out her tablet and accessing one of the files. It contained a complete list of every man, woman, and child that came over from Earth to Bellatrix during the exodus. There was no Dexter Ambrose listed.