Steven Gordon 3: The Modloch Empire (40 page)

‘
It’s called a Desert
Eagle. I borrowed it from a friend. They are referred to as
firearms.’

‘
They seem pretty
primitive. I am still half deaf.’

‘
They are very
primitive compared to the weapons you use. The psychological effect
they have, however, is priceless.’

‘
Self-guiding.’

‘
No, you have to
aim.’

Pan regarded his now unconscious
soldier but kept his mouth shut.

Time dragged by but eventually Satto
ordered his men into the centre of the room for pick up. Pan had a
parting word for Charlie. ‘I will find you and kill you for the
humiliation you have inflicted upon me today.’

‘
Blah, blah, blah.
Finding me probably won’t be all that hard. As for killing me, ask
your father about the Human that shared the shuttle ride with him
to the space docks, before you do anything stupid.’

‘
Sergeant!’ Satto
snapped.

Charlie joined him and they were beamed
on board Ico. Satto wasn’t finished with Charlie. ‘Did you have to
provoke the Grand Commander like that just before we left? He could
still cause us problems if he decides to retaliate.’

Charlie took a deep breath and bowed.
‘I apologise sir. I tend to react badly to threats against my
person.’

Satto relented a little. ‘I believe I
can understand why Sergeant. Yet you must garner that hostility. To
my eyes your reaction was positively childish. You should have kept
your mouth shut and simply bowed. That would have been enough to
let him know you understand his motives and accepted the
challenge.’

‘
I didn’t know that
sir.’

‘
Of course, why
should you? I am the one who has been studying their culture. You
did really well today. I initially doubted the wisdom of your
participation. However, after seeing the results I am most
impressed. You truly have a remarkable gift. Next time just can the
shit, OK.’

Charlie bowed again. ‘I will sir. Thank
you for your patience.’

Satto returned it and turned to the
rest of his men. ‘Dismissed. Return to your stations.’

Charlie had no station to return to so
was one of the last out. Lewis hung about. He laughed. ‘Hey
Charlie, you just got your damn butt kicked by Satto.’

Charlie laughed back. ‘Sure did
Lewis.’

‘
Wanna go for a cup
of Java?’

‘
Why the hell
not.’

CHAPTER 49

Pan Lo Tae´ ordered the withdrawal of
his ships to a safe distance. He then crossed deck to one of the
destroyers, against the wishes of his senior commanders. By the
time they reached their original position, the Humans had already
destroyed the asteroids and left.

They moved on to where the Humans had
surprised a battle fleet of the Albany. Dust and debris from the
asteroids floated amongst the wreckage. Here and there a lone life
pod flashed in the deep black of space. They quickly began to move
towards them. They came in a variety of sizes, from singles to
those that could carry a dozen or more. A quick scan told him that
very few of them were full. Thousands of Albany had perished. Pan
left a single destroyer to pick them up and moved on to the next
location.

Here and there minor explosions shot
out into space. By far the biggest Albany fleet had been deployed
there to protect the mining platform. Pan checked all the monitors
and couldn’t distinguish between the wreckage of the platform and
that of the Albany battle fleet.

His pilot weaved them in and out of the
remains. ‘I am receiving distress signals sir.’ An operator
reported to his Captain. The Captain looked to Pan who simply
nodded.

‘
Take us there.’ The
Captain ordered his pilot. Coordinates were fed in from the
communications station, and the pilot changed direction.

There was quite a collection of life
pods. As they approached, another operator raised his voice for
attention. ‘Sir we have a small number of vessels approaching at
sub light speed. They have identifiers.’ He paused for a second.
‘They are Catatarac destroyers.’

‘
Probably on the same
mission as us.’ The Captain mused.

‘
Hail them as soon as
they arrive.’ Pan ordered.

A few minutes later Pan found himself
staring at Admiral Valachean. He smiled. ‘Hello Val. Still alive
then you ugly bastard?’

Valachean laughed. ‘As are you. What
happened to my hammer?’

‘
We have always been
the hammer and the anvil, haven’t we? I’m afraid this time your
hammer had some kind of a cannon stuck behind its left ear by a
Human who seemed to know what I was thinking before I did. What
about you?’

‘
Oh, I was treated to
a rather lavish buffet and something delightful called root
beer.’

‘
You
jest!’

Valachean held up an odd-looking bag.
‘Fancy trying a granola bar and a root beer? Courtesy of Admiral
Baxter of the planet Earth.’

Pan didn’t take long to come to a
decision. ‘Come over and we will leave our subordinates to pick up
the survivors.’

The Captain’s cabin in the destroyer
was fairly spartan, though he did have a small lounge area. Pan
took a healthy swig from the bottle and let out a long loud belch.
‘Wow. That hit the spot.’ He studied the bottle and the label. He
couldn’t read the words. ‘What did you say they called this?’

‘
Root
beer.’

‘
So how come you
didn’t get a bloody great cannon stuck behind your ear?’

‘
A massive Human
fleet suddenly appeared and fired warning shots across our bows. I
got the message fast enough.’ Valachean sniffed loudly. ‘I think
Admiral Baxter is a lot smarter than he was making out to
be.’

‘
How so?’

‘
He said he didn’t
know who I was. Yet he somehow knew that I would get the warning.
He took you out, however, before his ships even
appeared.’

‘
He realised that I
would have attacked, regardless.’

‘
You wouldn’t have
attacked regardless Pan. You would have waited for an opportunity
before attacking.’

‘
Bollocks. So what
did you do to Baxter? Talk him to death?’

‘
I engaged my equal
in conversation, to try and gather useful intelligence that would
help me defeat him in the future.’

‘
I was right. You
tried to talk him to death. But I don’t understand how you were
invited over for afternoon tea?’

‘
I was trying to
provoke him, and it worked.’

‘
Find out anything
useful?’

‘
Too much. In fact,
if we don’t get out of this pact and the Albany succeed in
destroying Earth, we are all going to be in deep shit.’

‘
I think you had
better explain Val.’

It took a while but Valachean explained
everything he had seen. He also added his own conclusions. Pan was
silent for a long time as he digested the new information.

‘
Do think they will
carry out their threat to destroy our planets?’

‘
I have absolutely no
doubt. After all, they will have nothing to lose. Their assets are
all off world. We can’t touch them. Their home fleet is twice the
size of the one that defeated the Albany. It isn’t beyond reason
that they could wipe out our main planets and then invade our minor
ones.’

‘
You mean steal them
from us? They wouldn’t get away with it.’

‘
I think they would.
The Humans have a lot of races behind them now. Their bid is well
supported. They have enough assets off world to reseed their planet
or any they take.’

‘
Yes, but their bid
has not been accepted yet.’

‘
Maybe not, but we
know it will be. What we are doing may not be illegal, but it is
unusual. It is a loop hole that many have tried to plug in the
past. If the fleet they have with the Modlochs is joined by their
home fleet, it would take a galactic force to stop
them.’

Pan took a sip of root beer. ‘That’s
not all you are thinking.’

‘
I think they have
the resources to wipe out every opposing race this side of the
barrier.’

‘
More to the point,
you think they would.’

‘
Yes, and we would be
first my friend.’

‘
Not good. They can
also retreat behind the great barrier and sally forth any time they
wish. Did you see the speech their President made?’

‘
I heard it.
You?’

‘
Same. This is pretty
much exactly what he threatened to do, isn’t it?’

Val nodded thoughtfully. ‘What are we
going to do?’

‘
Deliver the rescued.
Get as far away from the Albany as we can. I’m going to have to
boot my father’s arse.’

‘
That’s the most
sensible thing I have ever heard you say Pan. Unfortunately Vison
doesn’t take kindly to having his arse booted.’

‘
Then take a long
holiday in another sector with your whole damn family.’

‘
Did the Humans
destroy the freighters?’

‘
No, they stole
them.’

Val nodded knowingly, ‘So they can
backward engineer them using Builder technology very easily.’

Pan agreed, ‘It isn’t looking
good.’

‘
No it
isn’t.’

‘
Still, they stole
all the engines and destroyed all the asteroids. That should put
the Albany back a bit.’

Val shook his head, ‘No they didn’t.
Remember, there are still four engines to be delivered and we
picked up a communication from two tugs. It seems that the Humans
missed a couple of asteroids in transit.’

The two passed a look. ‘Time for a
little asteroid bashing.’ Pan suggested.

‘
Sounds good to
me.’

Before they could act on it a
communication came through. Val put it on speaker. ‘Sir, a large
Albany battle group is on its way. They will be here in a few
minutes.’

‘
Thank you
Captain.’

‘
Shit!’ Pan growled.
‘Where the hell did they come from?’

‘
They must have been
intending on beefing up security for the final phase.’

‘
In case we got cold
feet.’

‘
Most
likely.’

Pan shook his head. ‘This is not good.’
He stood. ‘I’m getting back to my fleet and then getting the hell
out of here. As far as I am concerned they are on their bloody own,
and I am going to tell them that too.’

‘
Wait. Let’s join
forces, and then tell them to go fuck themselves.’

‘
That’s an even
better idea. We can return their survivors to them at the same
time.’

CHAPTER 50

Steven checked the figures for the
third time before calling Komoru. She checked the data as well.

‘
This isn’t very
promising.’

‘
No it isn’t. We need
to get a hold of Baxter.’

They went up onto the bridge and
managed to get through to him very quickly. He appeared on the
screen. ‘I have been meaning to call and congratulate you both on a
job well done.’

‘
Congratulations may
be premature sir.’ Steven told him. ‘We have been through the
mining company’s records and the combat records of the fleet. We
seem to be missing two asteroids.’

Baxter seemed to mull it over for a
moment. ‘Is that such a big deal... am I missing something?’

‘
We were also a
freighter of engines short as well. That’s four
engines.’

‘
You mean enough to
send two asteroids towards Earth.’

‘
Yes sir, and we have
nothing to stop them.’

‘
Not if they are
traveling faster than the speed of light.’

‘
Correct
sir.’

‘
OK, both of you get
back across the great barrier and see if you can find them.
Consider yourselves on a seek and destroy mission.’

‘
Yes sir.’

A few weeks later Steven and Komoru
returned across the barrier and reported to Baxter. They couldn’t
find the asteroids or the freighter with the engines. Steven
explained that the whole system was swarming with Albany warships.
All he could report was that they had the engines, and were still
going to go through with the attack.

Baxter called a meeting of the senior
commanders. His eyes scanned the crowd of faces. When he first took
command he had spoken to every man and woman he had appointed. All
of these people, however, were now across the barrier with the
Modloch fleet. Those in front of him were, for the most part,
strangers.

‘
Ladies and
gentlemen, we are in deep shit.’ That brought a few murmurs.
‘Despite our successful assault on the enemy nearly a month ago,
Earth is still in great peril. We did not manage to seize or
destroy all of the enemy assets. As most of you know, we were one
freighter and four engines short. We couldn’t help that. We knew
the enemy had moved their plans forward and hoped to launch the
asteroids at us in batches of twenty. We couldn’t take a chance on
them waiting for the last freighter. We did count on destroying all
of the asteroids though. In this, we failed. We missed two that
were in transit between launch sites. Let me say at this time that
it is no one’s fault. We trawled the routes taken by the tugs from
the platform to their launch sites. We did not foresee that they
would be moving them directly from one launch site to the
other.