Precious Cargo
Master Sergeant Less Lewis didn't want to do the mission. He was going to, of course, but still.
There were a lot of issues, as there always would be.
Since winning the war against the Hiraska empire, humanity had slowly got back to it's old bad habits.
There were three factions that wanted what they were transporting to the launch site. The first were extremist members of New Solar Islam, who believed the artifacts would provided insight into the origin of human language. Galactic Reform Christianity believed roughly the same thing, and were perhaps more keen to get their fundamentalist hands on the ancient documents. Since they incorporated all of the gospels, they believed that humanity could actually reach Barbelo from the Gospel of Judas.
But Lewis had NSI and GRC members in his platoon and knew that the people of the old religions could be reasoned with if you spoke their dialect of thought. They didn't worry him.
What worried him was the Unitarian Universalist Church and their doctrine of never returning to Earth, never thinking of Earth and certainly not sending potentially ancient texts back to Earth for study.
The most they knew at this point was the UUC had paid several mercenary groups to do something to the convoy. Lewis didn't give a shit, all the guys who picked up mercenary work couldn't hack it against the Hiraska so they took to killing people. Greedy ass cowards, he would call them.
Lewis was among the last of real dog faces. He had fought in Syria before the Galactic War started, and while his subjective age was about 50, he was nearly 210 objectively. His current platoon was salty as hell, with veterans of Tau Ceti and Gliese and even the initial Martian Defense War. Some of them were almost objectively 180 years old, though not quite. However, none of them had ever fought other humans or killed other humans, or even dreaded Hiraska puppets.
"Hey MastSerrent?" said one of the buck sergeants, "We got the route brief ready."
Lewis stubbed out his cigarette and went into the briefing room. Like most grunts, they didn't take long. They were going to down the Damascus highway through the ruins of Yamamoto City. Apparently the other two highways were unsecure, having both been hit by UUC forces trying to prevent other people from reaching the launch site. One hundred and twelve were dead, all of the Muslim of various styles, on their way to the Hajj.
"That's fucked up," said Lt. Muhammed as they left the brief.
"Right, sir? That religion isn't even fifty years old and their pissing people off." said Lewis. Muhammed was a good guy. Kinda young at sub 25, but ob 150. He earned his silver bar when a Hiraska drone blew up the officers mess on a ship orbiting Liara IV and left him de-facto commander of a battalion.
"Oh, hey did you talk to Doc Rasheed?" Muhammed asked.
"Not today," Lewis said. Dr. William Rasheed, who often said "call me Bill," was a nervous sort, and after radio carbon dating the documents, he wanted to get them back to Earth for real tests as soon as possible.
"He wanted to ride with the artifact." Muhammed said.
Lewis sighed. An unarmed civilian with what would be the target vehicle if the UUC found out. Great. "Yeah, I guess that'll be fine." Lewis said.
Under armed guard, they transported the ancient diagrams of heaven across the Martian desert.
...
At Sunset on the first day they could see Yamamoto City on the horizon. At that distance, it almost didn't look ruined. They switched out lead vehicles to the guys who knew Yamamoto from the war and Muhammed declared a two hour rest period, telling the gunners to put their night vision plates on before the racked out, so when they woke their eyes would adjust quickly. Light discipline all around, people. Get some rest.
Lewis didn't sleep. Usually he didn't sleep much, instead he lit a cigarette and ate some Combat Clay. The clay was a compressed, dehydrated protein, fiber and vitamin paste that was a beige color. Didn't taste like anything, but could sustain even the biggest of guys for months on end. If you ate with cheese sauce, you also had to poop a little less, which was an advantage.
Four fighter drones circled overhead at about five thousand meters, barely audible except for a whine and the pebbles their air jets kicked around.
"Hey, Lewis." said Rasheed.
"Hey Billy, how's the convoy treating you?" Lewis always loved asking non-military that. At first civilians were a novelty, but the war was over and now they turning back into the majority.
"It's alright. Your troops asked a lot of questions."
"About the operation?" Lewis said, damned ready to stomp someone in the ass for being nosy.
"Oh, no, about the artifacts." Rasheed said.
"Oh. What are they asking?" Lewis asked.
"Same stuff everyone else is asking. Is it real? Is it a map to Heaven? That kind of thing."
"What do you think?" Lewis asked.
"I think it's fake. I think someone found some five thousand year old paper and made up a language. The diagrams are entirely too accurate to be real, if you ask me."
"Is that why you want to get it back to Harvard?"
"Just to prove that it's false, yes."
"Kinda like Houdini. . ." Lewis mused.
"Who?" Rasheed asked.
"He was an escape artist from a couple hundred years ago. He used to spend his spare time debunking psychics, you know, people sayin' they talked with the dead."
"That certainly feels like what I'm doing." Rasheed admitted.
"You don't sound happy about it." Lewis observed.
"Oh, I know it's not real. There's no way. But even as a scientist, I kind of want it to be real, I suppose. To imagine that anything of the old religions is true these days seems foolish, but would be oddly comforting."
"Yeah, but that ain't what faith is, Doc."
"No, I suppose it's not."
Rasheed walked back to his transport, presumably to get some sleep.
Lewis waited until the wake up and stubbed out his cigarette.
....
"We have heat signatures!" said one of the gunners over the comms.
"Copy. Putting drones in Overwatch mode. Rules of Engagement are set to 'fire at small arms fire.'"
Sure enough, some dumbass fired at the convoy and the Vulcan 50 cannons on the drones obliterated them, whoever they were.
"Sir, these heat signatures are weird." came over the comms.
"Weird how?" asked Muhammed.
"Like, puppet-weird." said the comms.
"FLOOR IT!" Muhammed shouted into the comms.
"Puppets" were what the Hiraska did to their POW's. They would scoop out the brains and implant a sort "driver" device in the skull that would execute a simple program: kill anything that moves. More advanced puppets could use firearms, and sometimes a mercenary would get his hands on the illegal tech and use it make a killing and a fortune. Charge for a whole fire team but only have one guy taking the money.
"Greedy ass cowards." Lewis growled. The transport gunners were firing all around, and there was some return fire.
"I hear rail!" came over the comm. "Rail" meant "Rail gun." It was a weapon to advanced for a puppet. That was the human pulling the strings.
"Drones to capture that rail gunner!" Lewis said into the comm. This mother fucker is going to fucking pay, Lewis thought. Operating Hiraska puppets for money? That was pretty low, ever for a merc.
A rail round screeched down fifty meters away from the speeding convoy, sending a shock wave that blasted the vehicle with the artifact in it 12 blocks west down a ruined street.
"Get to the artifact! Get there! Get there! Get there!" Muhammed said. The transports turned all at the same time and sped through the streets.
"Drones have capture! I say again, drone has capture!" the comm barked.
Good. Lewis thought with angry thoughts of ramming that goddamned rail gun right up their ass. Some amateur, probably. How do you miss with a rail run? Unless. . .
When they convoy regrouped on the artifact transport, it was covered in puppets, some of them uselessly firing weapons point blank into the armored skin and wheels.
"Second squad, you a cleared to engage riot control system at will." said Muhammed.
Lewis felt a pang of irritation. They should have just done that. There was a high pitched whine and all the puppets jerked and shuddered and then fell over, now dead again.
Lewis got out of the transport and listened. Silence. No rail charging noises, no uneven puppet footsteps, just the drone whisper
"Well, that was dumb." Lewis griped, "Third squad, you up?"
"We're up." came over the comm. "Doc's a little shaken up, but he's fine."
"You want to talk to the prisoner?" Muhammed asked over the comm.
"No, fuck him." Lewis said, "the drone net can carry him all the way to Leo City." Lewis said. Lewis secretly hoped who ever it was would die of exposure.
The convoy continued mission without incident.
...
At the space port, there was a huge vehicle line waiting to load on the ship to earth. Lots of civilian vehicles that would be ferried across the stars, but also some science and military transports.
They unloaded the huge blast-proof case that carried the millennia-old papers and Lewis decided it was time to turn the prisoner over to the police.
The rail gunner was a slight man with a patchy beard and beady eyes. He had a robotic hand that must have been a decade old judging by the wear on the paint job.
"So, what was the plan, exactly?" Lewis asked as some soldiers surrounded the descending net. "Blow up the artifacts? Blow up the convoy and take the artifact? Lay it out for me."
The man was shaking from the cold of the altitude and couldn't really stand. The net retracted and he looked around. He threw out his robot hand and there was explosion as it fired out of the circle, past Lewis.
A woman screamed. Doc Rasheed fell to his knees. One of the soldiers shot the rail gunner in the head.
Lewis ran over to Rasheed where the medic was already working to stabilize him, blood pooling beneath him.
"Billy," said Lewis as he knelt down.
"Less," he said. "Less, you have to get it there. You have to get it to lab on Earth."
The medic sedated Rasheed as the local space port medics showed up to continue. Rasheed would very likely be fine; but now Lewis had a new mission. . .
There were a lot of issues, as there always would be.
Since winning the war against the Hiraska empire, humanity had slowly got back to it's old bad habits.
There were three factions that wanted what they were transporting to the launch site. The first were extremist members of New Solar Islam, who believed the artifacts would provided insight into the origin of human language. Galactic Reform Christianity believed roughly the same thing, and were perhaps more keen to get their fundamentalist hands on the ancient documents. Since they incorporated all of the gospels, they believed that humanity could actually reach Barbelo from the Gospel of Judas.
But Lewis had NSI and GRC members in his platoon and knew that the people of the old religions could be reasoned with if you spoke their dialect of thought. They didn't worry him.
What worried him was the Unitarian Universalist Church and their doctrine of never returning to Earth, never thinking of Earth and certainly not sending potentially ancient texts back to Earth for study.
The most they knew at this point was the UUC had paid several mercenary groups to do something to the convoy. Lewis didn't give a shit, all the guys who picked up mercenary work couldn't hack it against the Hiraska so they took to killing people. Greedy ass cowards, he would call them.
Lewis was among the last of real dog faces. He had fought in Syria before the Galactic War started, and while his subjective age was about 50, he was nearly 210 objectively. His current platoon was salty as hell, with veterans of Tau Ceti and Gliese and even the initial Martian Defense War. Some of them were almost objectively 180 years old, though not quite. However, none of them had ever fought other humans or killed other humans, or even dreaded Hiraska puppets.
"Hey MastSerrent?" said one of the buck sergeants, "We got the route brief ready."
Lewis stubbed out his cigarette and went into the briefing room. Like most grunts, they didn't take long. They were going to down the Damascus highway through the ruins of Yamamoto City. Apparently the other two highways were unsecure, having both been hit by UUC forces trying to prevent other people from reaching the launch site. One hundred and twelve were dead, all of the Muslim of various styles, on their way to the Hajj.
"That's fucked up," said Lt. Muhammed as they left the brief.
"Right, sir? That religion isn't even fifty years old and their pissing people off." said Lewis. Muhammed was a good guy. Kinda young at sub 25, but ob 150. He earned his silver bar when a Hiraska drone blew up the officers mess on a ship orbiting Liara IV and left him de-facto commander of a battalion.
"Oh, hey did you talk to Doc Rasheed?" Muhammed asked.
"Not today," Lewis said. Dr. William Rasheed, who often said "call me Bill," was a nervous sort, and after radio carbon dating the documents, he wanted to get them back to Earth for real tests as soon as possible.
"He wanted to ride with the artifact." Muhammed said.
Lewis sighed. An unarmed civilian with what would be the target vehicle if the UUC found out. Great. "Yeah, I guess that'll be fine." Lewis said.
Under armed guard, they transported the ancient diagrams of heaven across the Martian desert.
...
At Sunset on the first day they could see Yamamoto City on the horizon. At that distance, it almost didn't look ruined. They switched out lead vehicles to the guys who knew Yamamoto from the war and Muhammed declared a two hour rest period, telling the gunners to put their night vision plates on before the racked out, so when they woke their eyes would adjust quickly. Light discipline all around, people. Get some rest.
Lewis didn't sleep. Usually he didn't sleep much, instead he lit a cigarette and ate some Combat Clay. The clay was a compressed, dehydrated protein, fiber and vitamin paste that was a beige color. Didn't taste like anything, but could sustain even the biggest of guys for months on end. If you ate with cheese sauce, you also had to poop a little less, which was an advantage.
Four fighter drones circled overhead at about five thousand meters, barely audible except for a whine and the pebbles their air jets kicked around.
"Hey, Lewis." said Rasheed.
"Hey Billy, how's the convoy treating you?" Lewis always loved asking non-military that. At first civilians were a novelty, but the war was over and now they turning back into the majority.
"It's alright. Your troops asked a lot of questions."
"About the operation?" Lewis said, damned ready to stomp someone in the ass for being nosy.
"Oh, no, about the artifacts." Rasheed said.
"Oh. What are they asking?" Lewis asked.
"Same stuff everyone else is asking. Is it real? Is it a map to Heaven? That kind of thing."
"What do you think?" Lewis asked.
"I think it's fake. I think someone found some five thousand year old paper and made up a language. The diagrams are entirely too accurate to be real, if you ask me."
"Is that why you want to get it back to Harvard?"
"Just to prove that it's false, yes."
"Kinda like Houdini. . ." Lewis mused.
"Who?" Rasheed asked.
"He was an escape artist from a couple hundred years ago. He used to spend his spare time debunking psychics, you know, people sayin' they talked with the dead."
"That certainly feels like what I'm doing." Rasheed admitted.
"You don't sound happy about it." Lewis observed.
"Oh, I know it's not real. There's no way. But even as a scientist, I kind of want it to be real, I suppose. To imagine that anything of the old religions is true these days seems foolish, but would be oddly comforting."
"Yeah, but that ain't what faith is, Doc."
"No, I suppose it's not."
Rasheed walked back to his transport, presumably to get some sleep.
Lewis waited until the wake up and stubbed out his cigarette.
....
"We have heat signatures!" said one of the gunners over the comms.
"Copy. Putting drones in Overwatch mode. Rules of Engagement are set to 'fire at small arms fire.'"
Sure enough, some dumbass fired at the convoy and the Vulcan 50 cannons on the drones obliterated them, whoever they were.
"Sir, these heat signatures are weird." came over the comms.
"Weird how?" asked Muhammed.
"Like, puppet-weird." said the comms.
"FLOOR IT!" Muhammed shouted into the comms.
"Puppets" were what the Hiraska did to their POW's. They would scoop out the brains and implant a sort "driver" device in the skull that would execute a simple program: kill anything that moves. More advanced puppets could use firearms, and sometimes a mercenary would get his hands on the illegal tech and use it make a killing and a fortune. Charge for a whole fire team but only have one guy taking the money.
"Greedy ass cowards." Lewis growled. The transport gunners were firing all around, and there was some return fire.
"I hear rail!" came over the comm. "Rail" meant "Rail gun." It was a weapon to advanced for a puppet. That was the human pulling the strings.
"Drones to capture that rail gunner!" Lewis said into the comm. This mother fucker is going to fucking pay, Lewis thought. Operating Hiraska puppets for money? That was pretty low, ever for a merc.
A rail round screeched down fifty meters away from the speeding convoy, sending a shock wave that blasted the vehicle with the artifact in it 12 blocks west down a ruined street.
"Get to the artifact! Get there! Get there! Get there!" Muhammed said. The transports turned all at the same time and sped through the streets.
"Drones have capture! I say again, drone has capture!" the comm barked.
Good. Lewis thought with angry thoughts of ramming that goddamned rail gun right up their ass. Some amateur, probably. How do you miss with a rail run? Unless. . .
When they convoy regrouped on the artifact transport, it was covered in puppets, some of them uselessly firing weapons point blank into the armored skin and wheels.
"Second squad, you a cleared to engage riot control system at will." said Muhammed.
Lewis felt a pang of irritation. They should have just done that. There was a high pitched whine and all the puppets jerked and shuddered and then fell over, now dead again.
Lewis got out of the transport and listened. Silence. No rail charging noises, no uneven puppet footsteps, just the drone whisper
"Well, that was dumb." Lewis griped, "Third squad, you up?"
"We're up." came over the comm. "Doc's a little shaken up, but he's fine."
"You want to talk to the prisoner?" Muhammed asked over the comm.
"No, fuck him." Lewis said, "the drone net can carry him all the way to Leo City." Lewis said. Lewis secretly hoped who ever it was would die of exposure.
The convoy continued mission without incident.
...
At the space port, there was a huge vehicle line waiting to load on the ship to earth. Lots of civilian vehicles that would be ferried across the stars, but also some science and military transports.
They unloaded the huge blast-proof case that carried the millennia-old papers and Lewis decided it was time to turn the prisoner over to the police.
The rail gunner was a slight man with a patchy beard and beady eyes. He had a robotic hand that must have been a decade old judging by the wear on the paint job.
"So, what was the plan, exactly?" Lewis asked as some soldiers surrounded the descending net. "Blow up the artifacts? Blow up the convoy and take the artifact? Lay it out for me."
The man was shaking from the cold of the altitude and couldn't really stand. The net retracted and he looked around. He threw out his robot hand and there was explosion as it fired out of the circle, past Lewis.
A woman screamed. Doc Rasheed fell to his knees. One of the soldiers shot the rail gunner in the head.
Lewis ran over to Rasheed where the medic was already working to stabilize him, blood pooling beneath him.
"Billy," said Lewis as he knelt down.
"Less," he said. "Less, you have to get it there. You have to get it to lab on Earth."
The medic sedated Rasheed as the local space port medics showed up to continue. Rasheed would very likely be fine; but now Lewis had a new mission. . .
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