Askarjan, p.1
Askarjan, page 1
ASKARJAN
By
Robert Clark
Also by Robert Clark
Blade of Iron
Boringville
Bricks
Devil’s Moon
El Duende
The Garlic Hunter
Gloomwood
Incubus
Lanigan’s Woods
Lycanthrope Book 1
Lycanthrope Book 2
LOLA
The Sugar Bush Vampire
DEDICATION
To Bob and all the instructors at the Lethal Weapons Training Academy.
Copyright 2008 by Robert Clark
All right reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
All characters in this book are fictitious , and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
IBSN 1-60703-278-3
Cover by creativeiro
CHAPTER 1
Captain 9421A63MB’s voice was calm and clear. “Prepare your people for insertion, Colonel. I’ll be putting you down just outside the target compound in four minutes and twenty-six seconds.”
Colonel Siskric had never, after decades of work with Askarjan units and Kobolan assault craft, been able to figure out where the voice of the sentient ship came from, but no matter where she was in the ship; it always sounded exactly the same. She grinned at her people. Six were Askarjan, genetically, surgically, and chemically altered Rakorian warriors, the most deadly fighters in the known galaxy. The other three, like her, were normal members of the Rakorian species, but even Lieutenant Colonel Miskaren, the team’s medic and the one with the least combat training or field experience, was a decorated veteran, and deadly when he had to be.
“You know the drill, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll be going in under standard rules of engagement. These pirates are not nice people. The ship will put us down just outside the compound where they keep their prisoners. The first order of business is to free those prisoners and get them back to the ship. Colonel Miskaren, that’s your job.”
Miskaren nodded.
Once the freed prisoners were in the ship, Captain 9421A63MB would be more than capable of protecting them from anything the pirates could do. The Kobolan assault craft was only the size of a large patrol ship, but had the armor of a light cruiser and the firepower of a destroyer. Aside from its combat capablities, it could use its automated medical systems to help Miskaren care for any who were injured. She grinned when she considered the fact that the assault craft’s medical systems were the equal of anything in the best hospital in the part of the galaxy occupied by members of the Council of Planets. Not that Miskaren was likely to need much help. Calling him a medic seemed strange, considering he held terminal degrees in half a dozen medical and scientific areas.
“The rest of us take out the pirates, starting with any sentries they have posted. Major, you and your team will handle that. My aides and I will provide cover if it’s needed, but, as usual, you and your people will handle most of the combat.
Major Karash gave her a feral grin. “That’s what we do, Colonel.”
She nodded. “Just remember what I said about rules of engagement. The sentries will probably have to die, and any others who resist and present a threat to our people or to any prisoners they’re holding can be killed if necessary, but those should be exceptions. These pirates are known to be vicious, but if they’re anything like the usual criminals we deal with, won’t be well organized or capable of mounting an effective defense. Even if they’re more dangerous than the kind we usually meet, we aren’t the judge or jury. Whenever possible we capture the enemy and return them to the central Council planet to stand trial.”
Major Karash’s nod seemed a little reluctant. The Colonel understood. The Askarjan possessed genetically enhanced aggressive tendencies. Simply put, they enjoyed fighting and killing. It wouldn’t be a problem. She’d run this team for years. They were all decorated veterans. In four decades they’d never committed an unjustified killing.
Their absolute reliability was attested to in the fact that Major Karash and Captain Heloran where the only two Askarjan in history to be given officer’s ranks. No other Askarjan had ever been promoted above Sergeant, because the military, at least in part because of pressure from the civilian government, considered them too violent and dangerous to be given so much power. The Colonel, and most officers who worked with the Askarjan, considered the concept absurd, but were consistently blocked when they tried to promote the highly specialized troops.
Captain 9421A63MB’s voice, as always from no detectable source, was as unemotional as always. “Insertion in one minute.”
In that minute the ten person Askarjan team, four normal Rakorians and six Askarjan warriors, checked their weapons and prepared to offload. The ship was in stealth mode. The Major doubted the pirates, or any criminals in the known galaxy, would know they were there until the portside assault door opened. Her team wasn’t using the individual stealth equipment built into their suits. The sight of Askarjan in full body armor was often enough to cause their opponents to surrender. Anything with a chance of reducing the level of violence, even if it slightly increased the risk to her team, was worth while.
Lieutenants Therokan and Abalzal, her aides, were prone by the door, their tribarrel sniper’s rifles ready to take out any pirate unfortunate enough to be in a position to see the Askarjan team disembarking. If there was heavier opposition, from gun emplacements or armored vehicles, Captain 9421A63MB would use his weapon’s arrays to deal with them. He'd also cover their flanks and rear. She grinned. The Kobolan sentient machines didn’t have anything resembling sex, but somehow she couldn’t help thinking of the Captain as a male. The port door opened the instant the assault craft touched the ground.
One pirate, an Arcanphilian arachnid, was between them and the compound. He might have had time to think about bringing the rocket launcher he was cradling in his arms up and firing at the ship or the Askarjan charging from it. If he did, it was all he had time to do before the hypervelocity ten millimeter rounds, one from Therokan’s tribarrel and one from Aalzal’s, vaporized his head and upper torso. One of the advantages of the hypervelocity rounds was that they were almost noiseless, unlike the grenades from the twenty millimeter barrel, and stopped when they hit something, which the five millimeter laser didn't do, at least not with targets as delicate as a living creature's head or upper chest.
The pirate's six walking legs held him upright for something over a second before he crumpled to the ground. By the time the corpse was down and still, the Askarjan were in a defensive semicircle fifty meters from the ship, between it and the pirate stronghold. Siskric knew they'd been scanning for problems as they went, so when Karash waved her forward, she was as sure it was safe as it could be in a combat situation. Even so, she went out with her submachine gun ready. Therokan to her right and Aalzal to her left, as well as Miskaren behind her, had their weapons at high port. None of them were as fast or as lethal as the Askarjan, but all were efficient, seasoned veterans. Some might be injured or killed, but it wouldn't be as a result of carelessness or sloppy work.
They approached their first objective carefully. Private Novoskin, on the far right of the Askarjan crescent, raised a hand to halt the approach before moving forward on her own, silent death moving almost fast enough to be a blur. She darted out of sight around the far side of the building. Seconds later she appeared again, waving them forward. Another pirate, this one a Rakorian, was dead in front of the only door leading into the building, his head connected to his body by a few threads of scaly skin, but otherwise twisted off by Novoskin. She moved to stand to the right of the door with her back to the building. Private Retilgan took the same position to the left to watch their rear as they entered. Sergeant Betern was the first one through the door, followed instantly by Private Vaptarel. There was one pirate in the building, a seven eyed, eleven-legged Hallucigenian. Betern fired a three shot burst into the center of its ovoid body. His first shot hadn't left the barrel before Vaptarel added three of his own. All six hypervelocity rounds hit in a ten-centimeter circle in the center of the Hallucigenian body. Its head and eighteen arms and legs flew in all directions as the hypervelocity slugs vaporized themselves and their target with explosive force.
Then the team, except for the two watching their backs, was inside.
Colonel Siskric didn't vomit, but only because in forty years of military work, much of it in combat, she'd seen things as bad as what she was looking at. No, she corrected herself, things almost as bad. She'd seen the remains of thousands of sentients of at least fifty species killed in almost every manner thinking beings had come up with to kill each other, not counting accidents and people killed by non-sentients. She's seen people starved and imprisoned for years. She'd seen people who'd been tortured to death to gain information from them. She had never seen this level of pure brutality, beings maimed and mangled for the pure joy of inflicting pain. Someone behind her did vomit, but she didn't turn to see who it was. It didn't matter. No sane person could see this and not be sick.
An amphibian Saltoid had been tied just out of reach of a tub of water, and died of dehydration inches from the life giving fluid but unable to reach it. A pair of symbiotic Joinens, two distinct species who considered themselves one, and had become so dependent on each other they could not survive on their own, were in separa
Siskric hadn't done an exact count. She didn't need to. The heightened vision and sense of smell in the Askarjan, combined with in intellect capable of drawing instant and accurate conclusions from sets of data most people would find too small to be valid, would allow the specialized troops to tell her everything she needed to know. "Major?"
"Thirty two individuals, Colonel. Fourteen species. Twenty-three already dead. None of them took less than a couple days to die. With some it was over a week. The only thing we can do for the rest is take them out of their misery. As a rescue mission, this is a complete failure."
"Colonel Miskaren?"
"I’ll examine them to make sure, Colonel, although I doubt it’s needed. Major Karash has never been wrong about something like this. The rest of you deal with the pirates. I'll put their victims out of their misery." The next sound he made was one Siskric had never heard from him before, and the closest she could come to describing it was a cross between a deep growl and menacing hiss. "After I do, if any of the pirates are wounded, I'll be more than happy to take care of them. Until they die."
Siskric blinked. If there was one member of her team who could have surprised her with that comment, it was gentle Miskaren. She'd seen him treat wounded opponents with the same care he gave individuals in their unit. She didn't think he'd ever deliberately caused anyone, or anything, pain in his life. She heard a throaty growl/hiss much like Miskaren's, and it took her a moment to realize it was coming from her.
Major Karash said, "About those rules of engagement, Colonel?"
"They haven't changed, Major. The enemy are to be killed only if it is impossible to take them alive without undue threat to our team." She glanced back at the Entamthien on the floor, and then locked eyes with Karash. "It's clear that these pirates are dangerous people. I would consider them much more dangerous, better organized, and more difficult to subdue than normal. I would be surprised if any of them gave up without representing an extreme threat. The rules of engagement still apply. Don't use excessive violence.” She heard the growl in her own voice, and didn’t attempt to disguise it. “Otherwise, you and your people are to use your best judgment. I'm sure you'll make the right choices."
Karash's grin went beyond feral and well into cruel. He nodded in understanding of her unspoken message before he spoke to the other Askarjan. "You heard the Colonel. Let's do the right thing. Move out."
The Askarjan flowed out of the building, a tsunami of four instantly reinforced by the two outside the door. Colonel Siskric and her two aides followed them. She didn't think the three of them would have much to do. She knew her career in the military was probably over, but at the moment she couldn't think of many things she cared less about.
CHAPTER 2
First Councilor Helgearth, an Entamthien, clicked her mandibles in annoyance as she looked around the council chamber. Her annoyance was mainly with herself. She'd been Queen of her hive, which was bad enough. How had her planet’s Empress talked her into being her species' representative at the Interstellar Council, the ruling body of the Council of Planets? Why had the other Councilor’s elected her First Councilor? What had she done to any of them?
Now, on top of everything else, the debate about the Askarjan had surfaced again, not for the first time during her tenure as First Councilor. A large part of her annoyance was because she didn't have any strong feelings about the solution to the Askarjan "problem". She wasn't sure there was a problem. If there was, all but two of the potential solutions, different as they were, seemed equally good and bad to her. Two possibilities she considered unworthy of consideration. Imprisonment without cause for the genetically altered Rakorians who had done so much to protect the known galaxy was not acceptable. As for the idiocy Councilor Zglergas was spouting now, she was sure most of the other council members would be as offended by it as she was. How could an otherwise intelligent Councilor of the Prethsapeates, a species evolved from a race of vicious omnivorous baboons, claim to be distressed by the actions of a group of highly evolved predatory dinosaurs? Still, he had a right to speak, and part of her job was to listen. She forced herself to pay attention to what he was saying.
"So I say again, fellow Councilors, as much as I respect and admire the Rakorian people, the Askarjan are an abomination. While they exist the known galaxy is not safe. I am the first to admit that no charges brought against them have been upheld, but look at the potential they have to cause destruction. One Askarjan is more than a match for any twenty normal troops from any of the one hundred twenty-two species represented here."
He looked at Councilor 249CX23M5 and shrugged. "Except, perhaps, for the Kobolans, but only a tiny percentage of the Kobolans are built as combat units. I think even they could be overwhelmed by an attack from enough Askarjan." Councilor 249CX23M5, who had been constructed to resemble a generalized organic biped, organic bipeds being the organisms making up the majority of the Council, gave a nod of agreement.
Councilor Zglergas continued, doubtless glad the sentient machine hadn't disagreed with him on his last statement, although he must have known the Kobolans, who often worked closely with the Askarjan, would oppose him in what he was suggesting. "At this point almost all the Askarjan are on our military bases, or in space aboard Kobolan ships. Now is the time to eliminate the problem, and to do away with the threat from those genetic monsters once and for all."
Almost half the Councilors had the "wish to speak" lights on in front of them, and on the board in front of the First Councilor, but until Zglergas, even more in love with his own voice than most of his species, yielded the floor, First Councilor Helgearth could not recognize any of them. Two, however, had their "question" lights on, and questions were permitted at any time during anyone's speech. Councilor Nithohalis's "question" light was the first to come on, which pleased her. She considered the Cephalopod Octlogarine one of the most intelligent and rational members of the Council. Also, because his species was more literally minded than any but the Kobolans, and even less comfortable with abstractions than the sentient robots, his words and questions tended to strip away subterfuge and disguise with laser sharp efficiency.
The other "question" light was in front of Councilor Patilis's seat, and while she respected the lithe, quick-minded feline representative of the Pathfieleans, Patilis possessed the quick temper of his species. Helgearth knew he had strong feelings about this issue, and his usual confrontational style was sure to lead to harsh words between his faction and the small, but vocal, handful of supporters Zglergas could muster.
"Excuse me, Councilor Zglergas, but Councilor Mitholhalis and Councilor Patilis have questions. Councilor Mitholhalis made the first request. The Chair requests that you yield the floor long enough for those Councilors, Councilor Mitholhalis first, to ask what they wish."
According to the rules of the Council, Zglergas had no choice. He managed what could have passed for a weak smile, which turned into a snarl as his eyes met those of Patilis. He managed to control himself well enough to be almost smiling when he looked at Helgearth and nodded. "Of course, First Councilor."
