All My Sins Remembered Page 13

  “Dismissed.” Hawke said over his shoulder as he made his exit. Tasha climbed to her feet, leaving the briefing room and heading towards her quarters, not really paying attention as she did. She was so exhausted she could barely think. Finally reaching her quarters, Tasha quietly closed the door behind her, and then leaned up against it. The room was small, consisting of a stand up shower, a single bunk, and a small table bolted to the wall with a workstation, and of course a chair, bolted to the deck plating. The room was silent, and finally the events of the past forty-eight hours caught up to her. Emotion welled up from deep inside of her, and came out as a choking sob. Blindly staggering towards her rack, she lay down, buried her face in her pillow, and wept.

  ***

  “That was a good speech.” Nathan complimented Hawke. Hawke gave him an annoyed look as he collapsed in his chair at the head of the table in the Commander’s briefing room. Raijan was already there, as was Gordy.

  “It was honest.” Hawke replied tiredly. “It was all I could offer them right now.” Raijan nodded, looking pleased.

  “It is good that you honor them with truth. It shows trust.” Raijan commented. Raijan’s unique perspective, a product of the Asian-influenced culture of the Rejai Empire, always gave him pause. It served as a reminder to him that the Rejai Empire was so different at times that it seemed to be completely alien.

  At times the Rejaians' sense of honor could be quite confusing. The strangest things can be considered insults on someone’s honor, or a compliment to someone’s honor, and at times the actions reflecting honor or dishonor were so subtle that Hawke didn’t have a prayer of understanding them. He just tried to do what he thought was best, or right. Granted, there were times that there were no good choices, and he was forced to choose the lesser of two or more evils.

  For the most part Raijan was tolerant of his ignorance regarding his culture and traditions, after all, he served with a crew and company that was predominantly Gadari, which had deep European and American influences, but sometimes he took actions Hawke thought extreme, such as the time Raijan asked Hawke for permission to commit some sort of ritual suicide so he would not suffer dishonor in death. After getting over the shock of his request, Hawke had found out it was his way of trying to remove the perceived stain of dishonor he had brought upon himself and his commanding officer after failing to achieve his objectives during a certain mission. It took him nearly four hours of talking to Raijan to smooth things over. In the end, the only thing that ultimately kept him from committing ritual suicide was Hawke's refusal to give him permission to do so. It seemed that, in spite of his dishonor, commanding officers had the right to deny him the chance to commit suicide. He tried to convince Raijan that he could remove whatever dishonor he had by performing better in the next mission. He was nearly killed on his next mission, but he did indeed complete all of his objectives. Since then, Raijan had never mentioned committing suicide again, much to Hawke’s relief.

  “Well, be that as it may, we need to start planning our next move.” Hawke responded. Turning his attention to Gordy he said, “Gordy, were you able to get any more information on the data we recovered from the Choyo?” Gordy nodded, and brought up the holographic display of his report.

  “Much of the logs were encrypted. About ninety percent of it was recovered. Of course, there’s the information we discovered about the production of Sarin.” Gordy said as he began his report. Nathan held up his hand, interrupting Gordy.

  “Wait, what? Sarin?” Nathan asked, looking both confused and shocked. “Did I miss something?”

  “Sorry, Nate. I forgot you were entertaining the Rejaians at the time.” Hawke answered dryly. “We believe that all of this – the Guan Yu raiding ships, and then offloading its goods to the Choyo – is just one part of an effort by the Rejai empire to produce Sarin. I can send you the details for you to read, if you want.” Nathan sat back in his chair, a look of surprise on his face.

  “I have an idea of what Sarin is, but what I want to know is why this whole pirate façade?” Nathan wondered idly. Raijan cleared his throat, waiting for a nod from Hawke before answering.

  “Plausible deniability. The Guan Yu, I suspect, is not a recognized military ship for the Rejai Empire. They could claim it was a stolen prototype. Then, using the Guan Yu, they could have hypothetically secured the Choyo. They could not officially mine or otherwise produce the raw materials needed for Sarin, as this would easily be detected, but a marauding pirate would typically be lost in the crime reports, if done on the fringe, such as it was.” Raijan offered. Hawke blinked in surprise. Riajan was right, of course. Even though they had data from the Choyo, he doubted there would be anything directly linking it to the Rejai Empire. Hawke shook his head in disbelief. As vast as the universe was, humanity still found ways to bump into one another, and fight one another instead of just leaving each other alone. He was tired of these games.

  “Okay, so we have a handle on that. Let’s continue. Gordy?” Hawke prompted. Gordy nodded, and brought up a map of the sector, consisting of about twenty planetary systems, which included Amazon and its moon, Gitmo.

  “Okay.” Gordy began, continuing his briefing. “Our next task is to find out where they are trying to produce this nerve gas, so we followed the path of the Choyo’s log over the past month.” Gordy hit a button shown on the holographic display, and a line animated, showing the path of the Choyo over the past month, and the time it spent at port.

  “As you can see, there are three other places the Choyo stopped for longer than twenty-four solar hours. We believe that one of these three places is where they are in the process of setting up a manufacturing facility, or have one already completed.”

  “The first location is a small mining colony set up on a moon orbiting a gas giant. It’s so remote it doesn’t even have a name. It is simply known as ‘Mining Colony 5130’. The second is a world named Peleus II, on the border the Gadari Republic shares with the Rejai Empire. The third is…” Gordy’s voice trailed off with a puzzled expression on his face. “Well, it’s nowhere.” Nathan blinked, mirroring Gordy’s puzzled expression.

  “Nowhere? Where’s that?” Nathan asked. Hawke chuckled at how that sounded, but Gordy shook his head, exasperated.

  “Well, it’s literally nowhere. The nearest inhabited system is several jumps away. There’s nothing there except for a nebula, a couple of gas giants, and an asteroid belt.” Gordy explained. Hawke leaned back in his chair and rested his elbows the chair's arms as he pressed his fingertips together in thought, and then had an idea.

  “Gordy, bring up the overlays for the Guan Yu’s attacks.” Hawke said. Gordy nodded thoughtfully as he brought them up. Hawke smiled faintly, and pointed at the border world and then the location in the middle of nowhere.

  “I think we can rule out the mining colony, since the Guan Yu attacked a ship in that same system, so..” Hawke was interrupted as a console built into the table near where he sat beeped. Looking at the console, the digital readout indicated that it was someone from the communications shack. Reaching out and pressing a button, Hawke sat back in his seat.

  “Yes?” Hawke said.

  “Sir, I have a message earmarked Gadari Naval Intelligence. It is a priority one communiqué.” Hawke grimaced, and looked at Nathan, who had crossed arms and shook his head. Looking around, he noticed that the reactions of his officers were a mixture of curious, bitter, and resigned. Hawke closed his eyes tiredly a moment before replaying.

  “I’ll be there shortly.” Hawke informed the officer. Then, turning to the officers in the room he said, “I have a feeling our orders are about to change. We’ll reconvene a little later. Dismissed.” The other officers nodded, stood, and made their exits.

  After the group had left, Hawke allowed himself to just relax for about ten minutes, leaning back in his chair, as was his habit. The events of the last few days were finally catching up to him, and he suddenly felt bone weary. Yet, he knew he couldn’t let himself relax f
or long. They had to get under way again. With a sigh, he leaned back upright, and left the officer’s briefing room and made his way to the communications shack where his message awaited him. As he walked in, he nodded to the officer in the room, who him over to a private terminal.

  “It’s from Commander Spears. He sent a video file he wants you to see before you talk to him. He’s waiting. It’s a live connection.” The officer reported tensely as he worked his magic. Suppressing a crude remark, Hawke waited a few moments while the man finished downloading and decrypting the message, then handed Hawke an extra pair of headsets plugged into his console.

  “your eyes and ears only, sir.” he explained. Hawke looked annoyed, but slipped the headsets over his head while the communications officer stepped away from his console to give Hawke some privacy. Hawke pressed the ‘play’ button on the touch screen and waited a second before the message began. The first thing that Hawke saw was a small town, or settlement, of houses made from what looked like adobe, using some architecture you would expect from civilizations living in arid climates. The picture quality wasn’t that great, having suffered some degradation from it being converted to a two dimensional image, and from transport. The picture jerked and moved a little too quickly, signs that the video was a home video, most likely shot with a cheap holocorder available at most retail outlets. As the picture jerked from viewing some buildings to looking down a narrow dirt street, Hawke swallowed hard, and caught himself wanting to look away. The video displayed a marketplace full of bodies. Most dressed in a style that reminded Hawke of ancient Arabian culture back on old earth. Men, women, children were all lying where they had died with blue lips as they tried desperately to breathe. Everywhere the camera turned, the villagers were lying dead. In houses, on the road as if they were walking from one place to another, and at tables where they had gathered to eat. They were all dead. After several minutes of this, a man’s voice, presumably the cameraman, spoke.

  “My name is Dareem. I came this morning to the village to find this. I beg your help. They are all dead. I want to know who did this. My friends, my family…” Dareem’s voice broke as a sob threatened to rob him of his ability to speak, but then continued. “…my family. All dead. They must pay for what has happened here.” After a few moments more of Dareem panning all around to show all of the dead, the video file ended and the screen faded to black as the communications officer worked to connect Hawke with Commander Spears. After a few moments, the screen once again came to life showing the head and shoulders of Commander Spears wearing his Navy uniform and a grim looking expression. Hawke noted he seemed to be glancing through the progress report he had just sent before he had debriefed his Marines.

  “Colonel, the video file I just sent was received earlier this morning by Navy Intelligence. It is from a planet named Daroon.” Commander Spears began without greeting. “They are reporting that a mysterious, fast-acting plague has broken out in a small area on the planet. So far, this village and one other have been the only ones affected. There were a few villages with minor symptoms farther south, but no deaths.” Hawke considered the Commander’s words carefully before replying.

  “I am not sure why you have called me in on this, Commander. As you know, we already have a contract.” Hawke replied evenly. He glanced up from the screen in front of him and caught sight of the communications officer, who was watching him carefully, as if to gauge his expression. Locking onto his gaze for a moment, the officer suddenly looked away, as if embarrassed at having been caught staring.

  “I am invoking Protocol Seven on this, Hawke. I need you to get to Daroon and render whatever assistance you can, once you link up with The Fury. I know your battleship has undergone retrofit to be able to house a larger medical bay and more comprehensive scientific and medical equipment for research. Those capabilities will be ideal in helping the infected on Daroon.” Commander Spears stated. Hawke now looked decidedly angry.

  “Are you crazy!? No one has invoked Protocol Seven in years!” Hawke roared, throwing caution to the wind. Protocol Seven was a clause on the PMC Accord that stated that any PMC contracted to a particular empire was obligated to respond to any call for aid, if directed by its client, at the total expense of the client in question. Basically put, Commander Spears could invoke Protocol Seven to send them to a far off location to tend to someone with a scraped knee if he wanted to, at the Navy’s expense. Typically, Protocol Seven was avoided, as PMC’s had a nasty habit of charging ‘specialist’ fees for them having to utilize scientific and medical personnel, as well as a fee to ‘expedite services rendered’ for each individual the PMC had to aid. Protocol Seven missions tended to be quite expensive for the empire that invoked it, mainly because the PMC’s resented having to be used for humanitarian purposes when their sole function was planning and conducting combat missions and wars.

  “Nevertheless, I am invoking it now. Get to Daroon. Investigate. Find out what is going on out there, and report.” Commander Spears ordered. Then, not waiting for Hawke to respond, added “Commander Spears out.” Then the screen went black. With a curse, he pulled off his headset and tossed them on the console. For a moment Hawke stared at the console, ignoring the nosey communications officer who was hovering nearby, and then stormed out of the communications shack. Making his way to the bridge, he tersely informed all personnel via ship wide intercom that a Protocol Seven had been invoked. Several hours later, upon the arrival of The Fury, Hawke ordered the helmsman to plot a new course to Daroon. It would take them about two days of travel, most of it in navigating at sub-light speeds, to get there. While humankind had figured out how to travel at faster than light speeds using an assembly called a gate, which basically created a warp bubble and catapulted ships across vast distances, once a ship arrived at its destination, it still had to travel at sub-light speeds to its next destination, be it a planet, moon, or another jump gate. As a result, most of the time spent in space travel was at sub light speeds.

  It was during this time that Hawke, Nathan, Raijan, and the remaining Marines on board took time to hold a brief memorial service for the Marines that had been killed in action. They gathered in the ship’s cargo bay where a small makeshift dais had been built using some weapons crates. There, standing on weapons crates, Hawke delivered the best eulogy he could for the Marines who had gone on overwatch. Briefly, he thought it was strangely appropriate he did it while standing on a stack of crates containing weapons while speaking to a group of Marines. Hoo-rah.

  Chapter 12

  Daroon looked mostly brown. At least it did from orbit. Nathan was distinctly unimpressed as he viewed the planet from the carbonsteel windows on The Black Wave’s bridge. He hated arid planets. In his experience there was no such thing as a ‘dry heat.’ He was convinced that it was just something people said to console themselves at having to endure such insane climates.

  “The Fury reports they have achieved stable orbit.” Tasha reported from her communications console. Typically, the communications officer manned their post on the bridge, though Tasha tended to vacillate between the officer’s console on the bridge and the officer’s console in the communications shack. Nathan nodded absently, and waved her off, seeming lost in thought as he stared at the planet below. After a moment, he looked at Tasha and nodded again, this time much more decisively.

  “Let the Captain know we’ve arrived.” Nathan ordered. Hawke had retired some time ago. After checking on the repairs to the power armor, and visiting injured Marines in the med bay, he had made the time to catch up on some much needed sleep. With a nod of acknowledgement, Tasha connected to the Captain’s quarters and spoke briefly into her headset.

  “Captain will be here shortly.” Tasha reported, then paused as she looked curiously at something on her console.

  “Sir, a message from the surface. The Prime Minister of Daroon.” Tasha reported. Nathan raised an eyebrow in mild surprise.

  “Huh…Interesting. I was expecting the customs office or somethin
g. Not the Prime Minister of Daroon. Put it up on screen.” Nathan ordered. After a few moments, the screen mounted in the wall above the bridge windows flared to life, revealing a moderately aging, bald man seated on a simple wooden chair. Behind him and on either side stood two well-built men who wore their military bearing like they would a comfortable shirt or pair of shoes, undoubtedly this man’s bodyguards.

  “As-salaam, Prime Minister. I am Commander Nathan Schultz. To what do we owe this pleasure?” Nathan offered. The Prime minister looked a little surprised at first, then smiled warmly.

  “As-salaam, Commander. I see you know a little of our ways.” The Prime Minister replied. Nathan smiled and shrugged.

  “Respect for someone’s culture also shows respect for the individual to who belongs to it.” Nathan remarked. “Is there something I can help you with Prime Minister...?”

  “Sahir.” The Prime Minister supplied. “I have been expecting you, actually. I have been informed to provide whatever assistance I can to aid you, however I must inform you that there has been no further reports of exposure to this strange outbreak. I do not believe your assistance will be needed.” Nathan stared at Prime Minister Sahir a moment or two as he considered his words.

  “Be that as it may, sir, I must inform you that we are under contract to the Gadari Republic, and the Gadari Navy has invoked Protocol Seven. Whether or not we render humanitarian aid, we must, at the very least, investigate the incident and attempt to render what aid we can in fulfillment of our contractual obligations.” Nathan informed him. The Prime Minister’s face seemed to change a little, a shadow of emotion at the edge of tranquility, soon gone.