Casserine (39 page)

“I will find out immediately, Commander,” Binky promised. “Shall we continue with our meeting?”

“I have brought down ambassadors to fill in for our interests, with your leaders,” Jake informed him. “A transport, and another warship are on their way here. We’ll be leaving for the Passallion home world as soon as they arrive. I am stationing another warship on this side of the Gate, Bink. The Commander of that warship will have one order. If you hinder or balk at these negotiations, or any ship moves off the surface of your planet, he is under orders to use a planet killer on your world. Do you clearly understand the situation?”

“Yes, Commander,” Binky nodded. “I would like you to meet my daughter. She will be part of what may be a new age on my world. Your ideas have been met with surprising enthusiasm by the rest of the clans. I know we have no choice, but we want to make this work.”

Jake nodded towards the young Bazantlan female, who offered her trembling hand out to Jake in what she knew to be the human manner of greeting. Jake shook her hand gently, with a smile. “I am pleased to meet you.”

“If all the Passallions are dead on the home world, what will you do to us?” the female asked.

“I don’t know that we’ll do anything at all,” Jake answered truthfully. “It will be a very sad thing if the Tattallias Queens have wiped out their people.”

The young female shuddered. “Those things are evil.”

“They are indeed,” Mercer agreed.

“Commander,” Binky said. “Remember, we have limited control at best over the Tattallias Queens. After an infestation, we must leave them alone until they wipe out everything on a planet, and then we go back after the Queens retreat into their stasis condition. Our success with controlling them after the Queen has begun her egg production is minimal, as my clan found out to their horror. Your people handled the outbreaks we caused recently better than we have ever handled our accidents.”

“With what information you’ve gathered since finding the Queens, and our own successes, we may be able to formulate an even better plan this time down on the Passallion home world. We are completely unfamiliar with their terrain.”

“Their planet is a bit hotter than you are accustomed to on your mining colonies. Theirs is a much more lush world as far as vegetation, and with far less mountainous regions.”

“Why plant Queens on their world to begin with?” Mercer asked. “Do they have any minerals, or fuel cell basics, which would interest your people at all?”

The Alien remained silent.

“Just figured there wasn’t enough room in existence for both your race and theirs, huh?” Mercer commented, with visible disgust.

“We will change, Sir,” Binky stated, putting an arm around his daughter. “We already have to a great degree.”

“I guess Earth would have been next, if we wouldn’t have found you first, after stopping the infestations,” Mercer added with a sigh. He looked over at Jake. “I don’t know about you Jake, but I’ve had about all I can take of interspecies relationships for now.”

Jake nodded. He turned and gestured for the two men he was leaving as ambassadors to come forward from amongst the Marines. Jake gestured to them when they stopped near him. “These two men are from the United States of America back on Earth. I leave them now to conduct these meetings. We’ll be back in the area when we can. They will be in constant contact with the warship I’m leaving here. Guard them as if your lives depend on it, because they will.”

Jake sat alone in his cabin, sipping a small glass of the rum drink. He still had a few bottles left him by the colonists. Someone knocked on his hatch entrance. “Come in.”

Mercer entered. “How you doin’, Jake. I haven’t seen you since we left the surface. What’s with the retreat? Responsibility weighing heavily on you? Pour me a drink, you big weenie.”

Jake laughed at the standard Mercer insultathon hello, and poured his Chief of Staff a rum drink. “I’ve been resting.”

“It’s a good thing I didn’t bring that lush Dougherty with me,” Mercer observed, as he took a sip of the rum. “He’d be breaking into your cabin on a daily basis if he knew you still had anymore of the rum.”

“You’re just mad because he drank you under the table on Bougainville,” Jake kidded him.

“He did no.” Mercer retorted angrily, and then grinned. “I was just resting my eyes.”

‘Tea, while curling up on the floor where you had passed out cold,” Jake pointed out. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, but Tim used the vid pickup on the counsel to film you resting your eyes.”

A look of horror came over the Marine Major’s face. “Jake, you didn’t let him do that. What kind of brother are you?” Mercer put his head in his hands as Jake laughed uproariously.

Mercer looked up after a moment. “God, that weasel will spring this on me at the worst possible moment. He will have to die. Find out if he has any family for me to send support to. He’ll have to have an accident in the air lock. I’ll.”

Still laughing, with tears streaming down his face, Jake lurched forward, and gripped his friend’s shoulder, shaking him gently. “Easy boy… easy .I confiscated the record before he could streak out of sight with it. I have it right here in my cabin.”

“Oh man, thanks Jake, I…hey…why didn’t you just erase it? What…okay, give it up right now.”

“I’m sorry, Major, I’ve had to put the video record of your disgrace under lock and key, so to speak. It will be held as part of the historical record,” Jake replied calmly.

“That’s cold, Jake, I thought we were family,” Mercer shook his head in disappointment.

“We are, buddy,” Jake assured him, as he patted him on the back. “I just thought it might be good for you to have a reminder of a treasured family moment on video, whenever you start tossing around family type endearments, like big weenie, my way.”

“I guess I had that coming,” Mercer admitted. “You get a chance to go over the info Binky sent up?”

“More importantly, we’ve relayed it back to Nick. Zaros added detailed climate and terrain information. We also have actual mapping shots Binky’s people have of the Passallion home world. They really turned the tables on the ET’s. What goes around comes around, even out here.”

“That does seem to be a universal truth,” Mercer agreed, taking another sip of his drink. “We should do this more often.”

“You mean insult each other, and muse about how close we humans have come to extinction?” Jake asked in the way of an answer.

“We’ve kicked alien ass from one quadrant to the next,” Mercer retorted. “The right people have the weapons, buddy. We’ve refrained already from erasing a questionable species from existence, and even resisted the urge to enslave them. Now, we go forth to save yet another race of poor Bug ridden miscreants, who God knows what they would have done to us if in our place. Our cup runneth over with the milk of human kindness.”

“Tea, I guess I’m just not feeling filled with the human kindness part,” Jake replied, “hence the rum.”

“I understand completely,” Mercer concurred, “but, as you have so aptly put into words, it’s business, and it works a heck of a lot better than the slave trade or destruction. We’re the good guys, and we seem to be the only race right now with the knack for turning such a fact into a profit.”

“Well put, my brother,” Jake replied, lifting his glass, and clinking it against Mercer’s. “Here’s to the milk of human kindness.”

“And to being the baddest sons of bitches in the valley,” Merceradded.

Chapter 37 

New Parameters

“I’m in position, Sir,” Colonel Stavros said. “You can count on me to do my job.”

Jake sat in front of his vid screen, contemplating his next words to the Commander of the Gallant. Stavros looked a bit anxious to Jake. “Colonel, I have complete confidence in your judgment. I just wanted to emphasize there’s no reason to overreact here. We have people on the ground, and the Aliens have shown a willingness to cooperate fully.”

“I didn’t mean to give the impression I would create a new black hole the moment you left orbit, Sir,” Stavros smiled. “I only meant there will be no more creative interpretations of my orders.”

“Thanks, Anton,” Jake laughed. “That’s all I was hoping for. Matthews out.”

Jake left his cabin, and headed down to where he had arranged a staff meeting. The meeting would include the Commanders and Executive Officers of the Intrepid and Yorktown, along with his Chief of Staff. Lieutenant Dougherty would be interpreting the data General Richardson had sent, regarding the new terrain features on the Passallion home world, and the technology Binky had gathered on the Tattallias Queens.

The passageways of the Intrepid teemed with ship’s personnel, and rescued colonists, interspersed with the several hundred Passallions. Jake had authorized limited movement for the Passallions on board ship, because of their expert knowledge of English. They were more popular than anything else on the Intrepid, with both the rescued colonists, and the ship’s crew. The historical significance of having rescued members of a race, which had visited Earth long ago, propelled the Passallions into celebrity status. They in turn were thrilled to speak directly with humans.

Jake saw Mercer hurrying towards him, as he walked across the huge hanger bay, housing the Intrepid’s Command Wing Fighters not on patrol, and the Drop Ships not in play on the Bizantlan home world. He waited for his Chief of Staff to catch up. Mercer handed him a panel with the updated technical facts Lieutenant Dougherty would be going over.

“Did you get a chance to look at them, Charlie?”

“Yep, want the bad news first, or the good news?”

“Bad first,” Jake replied grimly.

“The Passallion atmosphere has an ionic charge, Nick says will play havoc on our blocking signal to the Queens.”

“Crap,” Jake commented, shaking his head. “I don’t want to lose a bunch of Marines saving these ET’s, and I don’t care how cute and cuddly they are. Okay, gimme’ the good news.”

“Nick’s theory is the same ionic charge, which will disrupt our blocking signal, must also limit the Queen’s range to guide her drones.”

Jake began walking towards the wardroom, he had chosen for the staff meeting, pondering Mercer’s statement. Stopping, he turned to Mercer again, who was grinning. “What the hell are you grinning at? I was just going to ask you what you thought that would mean.”

“I knew what you were going to ask me,” Mercer replied. “I asked Tim the same thing, and he has the same answer: he doesn’t have a clue.”

“What did Nick think would happen then?” Jake persisted.

“He thought anything from Bugs wandering out of range, and not answering the Queen’s homing call, to the Queen coming up with some elaborate messenger network to extend her control. This could be a real interesting mission,” Mercer concluded, still smiling. “You were getting bored anyway, weren’t you?”

“Oh yeah, Charlie,” Jake retorted. “We didn’t have enough in our bowl without adding numerous logistic problems to the mix of acting as peacemaker policeman of the universe, not to mention Bug exterminator.”

“Look at it this way, Jake,” Mercer reasoned. “We ain’t politicians or ambassadors. We have a pretty narrow view of what we’ll do for a bunch of rag tag aliens. We are less than adequate, sitting around in space, acting as Lord High Oracles of Wisdom. What we do best is break things, and kill anything that gets in our way. We just need to go out and do what we do best.”

Jake laughed, and put his arm around Mercer’s shoulders. “Leave it to you, partner, to come up with the Marine take on all things of a confusing nature. You are, of course, absolutely right.”

“Hey Jake, I know you’re worried about casualties, but we have boot camps who want to give their right arm to go down with us and kick some ass. On top of that, we have trained Marines, who have probably thousands of Bug kills to their credit. No matter whether there are any ET’s left alive on planet or not, we need to go down there and fry some Bugs.”

“Tea,” Jake agreed, walking again towards their destination. “It would be just our luck some other goofy race would Gate in there and collect samples to redistribute.”

“Don’t forget having that lunatic, Dougherty, running around with nothing left to blow up,” Mercer reminded him, only half kidding. “You can’t ever send that red haired rube back to the country after all the action he’s seen the last few months.”

“At least he wasn’t in the brig between missions,” Jake reminded

“True,” Mercer relented. “Getting back with you was the best thing that’s happened to me since I put your ass on that hospital transport out of Rigel. Then Deke went hero on me back at Bougainville, and got himself ate, which is another reason all Bugs must die.”

“Amen to that,” Jake nodded solemnly, while entering the wardroom past the Marine guards, who snapped to attention.

“At ease, you goldbricks,” Mercer snapped, provoking smiles from the two young Marines, who had been with him since the first Bougainville landing.

“Aye, aye, Sir,” they replied in unison.

The scheduled participants, who were due to be at the meeting, were already sitting at the table, with Lieutenant Dougherty outlining what General Richardson had come up with. The faces Jake saw were strained to say the least. He thought they looked much like he felt. Dougherty snapped to attention, as did the others, when they saw Jake.

“At ease,” Jake said. He sat down at the head of the table, where they had left him a seat, with another one open to his right, which Mercer sat down in. “I take it by the looks on your faces, Tim here’s been telling you the good news.”

“Sir, I’m Major Paul Stovronski, XO of the Yorktown. Is this mission really necessary? I mean, we could just write it off, and give the Passallions permission to settle where they will.”

Jake shook hands with the Executive Officer of the Yorktown, and introduced Mercer. “We’ve considered it Major, but my Chief of Staff here and I are reluctant to leave any Bugs living anywhere. My decision, goofy or not, is to go and exterminate these things. If we can save the Passallion home world, all the better. Let’s put the go or not go behind us, and concentrate on how to get it done.”

“If the Queen’s control range has shrunk along with our ability to isolate her,” Colonel Peters offered, “we would be able to set up operations very near each infestation without worrying about the other Queens sending help. Without the rocky terrain of the other worlds, we’ve fought the Bugs on, there won’t be any safe places to walk around.”

“That’s it,” Dougherty exclaimed. “We couldn’t burrow in on the mining colonies because of the fuel cell elements, but.”

“We don’t have to walk down into hell,” Mercer inserted. “We canride.”

“Exactly,” Dougherty went on. “With a small hovercraft, we can tunnel our way into the nest, and fire the shield solution directly from the deck gun on the hovercraft.”

“You can bet she’s way down though,” Jake mused. “We can’t just go straight for her with those things pounding on the hovercraft with literally tens of thousands of the things swarming it. They could probably jam us in the middle of a hole, two miles down.”

“We could use the same kind of reinforced piping they use on the mining colonies,” Dougherty replied.

“If we get an LZ outside the Bug control area,” Colonel Doug Wilcox reasoned, “we can pipe our way right down to pay dirt.”

“They’ll still be swarming out of the ground all over the opening,” Major Corey reminded them. “It may be slow going.”

“I’ll rotate Nest Marines in there to keep the opening clear, while the digging and piping go on,” Mercer stated. “It could work.”

Jake nodded. “It does sound like it’ll work. We just have to hope Nick’s right about the Queen’s control range being affected. Anyone have an ETA on the Tennyson to pick up the colonists?”

“They were at Genoa when they received our call, Jake,” Peters explained. “It will be at least another three days before they get here. You could have Anton move from the Gate, and transport the colonists.”

“No,” Jake replied. “I won’t leave the back door open for anything. It may work out for the best anyway. Sara, call Colonel Stedman, and have her pick up the piping material from Omaha before she comes through the Gate, and bring a few more hovercraft. Tell her to make sure they reinforce the piping. Anybody here familiar with what we’ll need to dig with?”

“The hovercraft come fitted for it, General,” Dougherty explained. “They come equipped with nose inserts for digging and propelling the excavated material backwards. Another craft usually vacuums up the debris, and takes it out. Two more can be fitted to force the pipe into place.”

“It sounds like you have some expertise in this area, Lieutenant,” Jake observed.

“Oh, now wait a minute, Jake, I.”

“That would be General Matthews to you, you disrespectful boob,” Mercer cut in.

“We need you to cut a hole, Tim,” Jake shrugged. “I don’t want miners here who’ve never been in battle with these things. They’d panic, and run over my Marines. You’ll still have the nose gun to work if you get bored.”

“I forgot all about that,” Dougherty said excitedly. “I’ve got work to do Sir, on my hovercraft. May I be dismissed?”

“Sure, Tim,” Jake replied. “Don’t forget we’ll need some solvent charges to cut through to the Queen ready.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” Dougherty saluted. When Jake returned it, Dougherty hurried out of the wardroom.

“God only knows what that hovercraft will look like in three days,” Mercer sighed.

“I’m sure it will be deadly for the Bugs, and highly entertaining for us,” Jake agreed. He looked around the table. “Anything else?”

After a moment of silence, Jake went on. “Training will begin tomorrow. I want only veteran Bug War Drop Ship pilots in the hovercraft. We’ll need five going all the time, as Tim outlined. We’ll use two for removing debris, so there’s no hold up. We’ll let him handle the digging for the time being, until we see how this works. He can pick a co-pilot to train and spell him on it.”

“I’m surprised you don’t insist on doing it yourself, cement head,” Mercer mumbled.

“I heard that,” Jake retorted, as the others laughed.

Jake and Mercer were helping, observing, and belittling Dougherty as he worked on the third of the hovercrafts scheduled for use. The three of them had been together on the project since shortly after Jake had assigned it to Dougherty. Dougherty had engineered a dual gun setup, mounted in a one hundred and eighty degree add on turret. It fired both pulse and particle beam charges. Dougherty could control it totally from a firing handle mechanism now mounted next to the pilot’s seat. Vid cams inside the makeshift turret relayed a live feed to the added monitor on the pilot’s console. He had changed over the regular nose gun to fire the Queen’s shield solution.

Dougherty stepped back from his work, wiping sweat off his forehead. He turned to his two observers. “How’s it look, guys?”

“Just like the other two, dufus,” Mercer replied.

“It looks great, Tim,” Jake assured him. “Don’t pay any attention to Mercer Mouth.”

“We’ll need to test all the craft out,” Dougherty pointed out. “Want to go down on Binky’s planet and work some population control exercises.”

“Now see, that’s exactly how us humans get a bad name with our Alien friends,” Mercer laughed. “Using our little friends for live firing exercises is strictly prohibited, right Jake?”

“Actually,” Jake rubbed his chin as if in deep introspection. “I thought the little ET’s might make more challenging targets. They would probably explode when we get a direct hit. We.”

“That’s disgusting, General,” Major Corey snapped from just behind Jake, causing all three of the men to jump. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Damn it, Sara,” Mercer complained. “What the hell you sneaking up on us for? You’re lucky I didn’t shoot your ass. It could have been one of those vicious little ET’s with assassination in mind.”

“Oh,” Corey exclaimed in amazement. “You guys are joking around about using Aliens for target practice, and I’m to blame for quietly coming up on you?”

“Charlie’s right, Major,” Jake said sternly. “Don’t make me have to tie a bell around your neck.”

All of them laughed at Jake’s warning, and Corey handed him a panel. “The Tennyson will be here the day after tomorrow. Colonel Stedman sent a list of everything she had been able to round up before heading here. Governor Risling has the list of the rescued colonists. He assigned an army of people to look for their relatives, according to Jan.”

Jake looked over the panel, and then handed it to Dougherty, who began examining it in detail. After a few moments, he looked up and nodded. “This will do it, Jake.”