Anabasis
They all realized that they were not in Uzbekistan when they woke up; they'd lined up for a shot and then proceeded into a waiting area. They'd been told that they would feel 'drowsy' from the shot.
Understatement of the year. They had several hours to get their shit together and get squared away -- walls were 'bulkheads' and floors were 'the deck' and latrines were 'the head.' That meant they were on a ship of some kind, but not anything anyone had ever served on before, and within the company, there were people that'd served on all kinds. Actually, this place was quieter than a ship, more sleekly furnished, with carpeted floors, and the rooms were fitted out like nice hotel rooms, or cruise ship accommodations. That was a far cry from the dusty, drab-colored, pitted concrete familiarity of post-Soviet decay, the lazy governance of an autocrat whose only investment was in well-equipped security forces to keep the people from demanding a better quality of life. The sterile, neutral air replaced the expected smell of fuel and bad sanitation.
When a call for assembly was made, the contractors were guided into a large audience room with a brushed steel dome overhead, made seemly of curved, overlapping plates, like a large Venetian blind.
The commander of Centurion's force, Colonel Caspar Marais, a South African, who was well past his retirement age -- the man served in the Rhodesian Army and South African Defense Force, and then ran Centurion in Sierra Leone, Angola and Nigeria -- stood before them at a podium
Before the current contract, Centurion was all Africans—different colors, but from South African backgrounds, some of them serving as guerrillas against Apartheid and Colonial rule others on the other side with Police and Military units from the era. It was an aging organization that was ending its active days. Employers were not as interested as they used to be, not with younger, fresher competition coming out of the battlefields of the Middle East and Central Asia. Centurion had a hell of a reputation, and it could still fight, but these were guys in their late middle age.
Where and how Centurion suddenly acquired the resources to pay so lavishly and make offers that had people taking early retirement or just not re-enlisting in order to join Centurion was the subject of rumors. It didn’t matter because the pay was good, the training was tough, hard and overseen by a variety of nationalities. Centurion was no longer simply a South African concern. The larger changes were mystifying but the money was great.
And then, they lined up for the Jonestown koolaid shot in Guyana and wound up in some metal box somewhere.
There was a younger guy, fit and blonde, lean and tanned, on the podium.
"Good morning. All of you no doubt have questions, and this goes easier if I explain precisely where we are.”
It was a picture of the colonel in his younger days. The old guy showed up during the training in Guyana looking 60-something could generally keep up and still knew how to shoot, but he wasn’t going to hack it through the worst of combat. He was there because he was a respected military leader, a man that could win a Bush war in Africa against thousands of insurgents with a few hundred men. They knew his voice because he made the rounds during the training in Guyana.
“Hit the switch." He still had a South African accent, but it was easy to decipher, even for the multi-national bunch that were assembled before him.
All of a sudden, the ceiling started to peel back, plate by plate, revealing an utterly foreign panorama of inky black pierced by points of light, and, prominently in the foreground, a planet of brown and purple and cloudy white.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are not in Uzbekistan. We are orbiting the planet Qadah, which we are hired to defend. That is the bad news as far as most of you are concerned. But here is the good news -- when you get back to Earth, you will all be multimillionaires. That's right, this job isn't what you signed on for, but you're getting paid a lot more than what you signed on for if you decide to stay on. I regret the bait and switch, but I couldn't just call you all to assembly in Guyana and tell you this. You had to see this," he waved to the planet overhead.
He paused to let the ideas sink in, and for the audience to catch itself before carrying on, "At this point, some of you are thinking, 'hey, I didn't sign on for this bullshit.' That's true, and we can give you the same hibernation shot you got to get you up here and be put back on ice. You will be shipped back with the contract pay you agreed to and no hard feelings. The rest of us will carry on." He seemed to manage to express a vague sense of contempt, "For the rest of us, we have a job to do. Our employers are the Grathik race. They are primarily scientists. They are snobbish and elitist ivory tower types on steroids, but they are brainy. They seem to think that we are their best hope for salvation against their enemies."
He paused again, "They are paying top dollar for top talent. You have a choice -- go home with a nice little payday or stay on, make history and huge money. This is the final frontier and this is no TV show."
Danny sat in the seat next to Riddler, behind Major Collins and in proximity to his squad, which included Butch (Livia; they shortened the Portuguese to something everyone could pronounce in a way that was hilarious and totally military), K-Ton and the others were nearby -- dysfunctional at time, a squad was still a family, and this was a trying time, which was precisely why you wanted to be near the family. There was a sense of community there. You didn't always like everyone in it, but there was a sense of obligation involved. The entire place was murmuring now, apparently arguing a bit in hushed tones, but Danny took no part in the actual proceedings -- he knew how he was going to go on this one. What he had back home was two kids that could use the child support payments.
"Those of you who wish to leave now may do so; you will be safely conducted back to Earth. But only a few did -- the overwhelming majority, who'd been screened ahead of time for their suitability to the mission, stayed. Once those few had been herded out by the MP's, the briefing continued. "Our employers, the Grathik, are not fighters, and their war has gone on for a few decades. Initially, their enemies were much as they are, fairly hapless in a fight. But that changed when their primary enemy, the Plashi, hired a race called the Salvesh to fight. The Salvesh are a lot like us, they are on two legs and they evolved from predators. The Grathik tried to put another race, the Pilavians, into the fight, but it didn't work. They tried to build robots and that didn't work. So now they're hiring us and things are ugly and desperate."
There were slides of the aforementioned races; a picture of a one-eyed tentacle monster, a picture of something that looked like a teddy ferret that had cute eyes and fur, but with sharp teeth and little claws, and then a huge monstrosity that looked like a cross between crab and snail, eyestalks, a toothless slime-secreting orifice where a mouth was supposed to be, clawed appendages and one huge shell that overlapped like that of a scorpion, albeit lacking the tail. Then there was the Salvesh, male and female, one 30% larger than human norm with a huge crest, and the other about the size of the average human male.
"Our enemies, the Salvesh, are well-regarded interstellar mercenaries. They are evolved pack hunters. Each pack is its own small army. We are not fighting a large army, we're fighting a bunch of small tribes of warriors that work together somewhat. Some of you remember the sort of loose alliances of guerrillas you've fought in the middle east, this is similar, but it's very different. Some groups will be extremely well armed and supported by their employers, who offer fire support and resupply at a cost, others will be less well-equipped. That means they are inconsistent. Enemy forces and their composition from group to group are hard to gauge. Most of us have dealt with insurgents and amorphous organizations of that nature as well. Our primary objective is defense, our secondary objective is to learn about our enemy."
As if to show just how far away from Kansas they actually were, a holographic globe sprung into being, which had some mercs whispering, “Death Star.”
”The defense of Qadah is essential, and the key to Qadah is taking Saina, its moon, intact. While the Grathik are building a viable defense of Saina, we are securing it against covert action, notably sabotage. From Saina, we intend to springboard out into other operations, mainly aimed at reclaiming territory lost by the Grathik. But right now, we have to secure this base.”
The stats came down to PDA’s, information on the atmosphere, breathable but filled with alien allergens that would mess with humanity. Hot, purple jungle. Danny heard Riddler mutter, “Sauna.”
That became the Human nickname for their next battlefield.
--
In another spacecraft in another star system, another briefing was being conducted, but the audience had tusks, snouts, three eyes, four arms, tails. The males had long ridges of hair atop their heads, a plumage that was a point of pride and competition for grooming among males, while the females were far more drab and smaller. They were seated by their packs, with space between the packs, because the rivalry among packs, group marriages that functioned as self-sufficient military units in the field, were fierce and no one wanted fighting in the War Room -- there was a huge and dazzling array of holographic maps and intelligence displayed for reading and downloading, though that was primarily the task of the females -- among them, it was the females that handled the staff work, that dealt with logistics and were responsible for deciding how to handle everything up to the fighting. The males were pointed in the right direction and let go. But the males led in the fight, and so it was a male giving a speech.
"The Grathik are desperate, and it shows. They've uplifted some backwater race and are telling us that these things are dangerous soldiers." Jaka paused to make a loud snort out of all four nostrils, "you know what that means. They've thrown in some cannon fodder savages to fight the inevitable merger. These hairless, clawless, blunt-toothed louts evolved from a class of animals that swings from trees, eats yellow plants that resemble our male sex organs and fling excrement from each other. That should tell you everything you need to know about these slaves the Grathik have brought for a last ditch defense."
"Some of you may well be concerned, this is a new species we've never seen before, but the Plashi have provided some intelligence footage, free of charge for once, captured from their planet's broadcasts." He started pointing to the briefing holos, which showed clips of Survivor, Big Brother and the Apprentice "As you can see, they compete among each other, but have no pack organization and no sense of community responsibility. They constantly backbite each other. They whine a lot. I'm not impressed by this race. In fact, I'm slightly insulted that anyone thinks these humans are anything but a pest we can sweep away. By the time we land, they'll be pulling each other's hair and gnawing at each other with those blunt teeth. Before anyone tries to claim him, the orange haired one, this Donald Trump, is regrettably not among them, though his scalp would make an amusing trophy. He was apparently replaced with someone named ‘Ahnuld.’ Neither," he added, "is Kim or Kanye."
After a half hour of watching "Keeping up with the Kardashians," the assembly of Salvesh were particularly eager to finish her off. There were groans of disappointment.
Yet another show was put up on the screens, a Japanese game show. The audience of assembled Salvesh warriors started roaring in laughter, but once it died down, Jaka continued the briefing, "This race are not fighters. They are entertaining buffoons. They grovel and abase themselves before audiences for scraps of cloth to adorn themselves with and try to avoid hard work. They are delusional, which you knew because they've agreed to fight us. Maybe the Grathik decided that hiring actors was cheaper than hiring warriors. On the other hand, watch out, these humans apparently are grandiose and delusional, and you can expect silly stunts out of them.”
"Nonetheless, despite the insult to our dignity that this feeble defense represents, we have work to do. Our employers want these mercenaries torn to pieces for Xhol'H news because it'll make the merger go easier, so that's what we're going to do. Also, it's good for business if we make sure to remind everyone that we are the best. This ought to raise the rate for future contracts. We will start off slowly and milk this for all it is worth so we can force the Plashi to re-negotiate rates, citing the unexpected hazard. Once we have squeezed the use out of the humans and have our new contracts, we will crush them." That brought on a bit of laughter from the Salvesh assembled, "All that aside, I am now accepting bids for the first landings."
There was a howl of packmasters bidding their forces against these pitiful humans, eager for the glory of sacking the Grathik -- to establish a base on their homeworld's moon was likely to be the final offensive of the war. Once established on Saina, they knew that the Grathik down on Qadah would have no choice to surrender or face slaughter from lunar-launched kinetic weaponry. And everyone knew that the one-eyed mad scientists had no taste for warfare. This was a victorious final battle, the end of a long campaign. The Salvesh wanted to make sure to squeeze it for all it was worth, playing the classic mercenary game of trying to get a payraise.
--
Saina, or “Sauna” , Qadah's moon, was something of a homeworld to the Pilavians working for the Grathik, and but they seemed to be hiding, battening down their hatches to survive the invasion as the spoils of war in a new Plashi empire. The Pilavians were...well, they were nice enough, but a timid people. They'd fought, but they'd largely surrendered when thrown into it, and the Plashi were smart enough to offer a good deal for not resisting too much. Now there were families out there with hostages taken by the enemy.
The planet was heavily terraformed; landmasses moved and created, water converted from ice for the effort. It was a masterpiece of Grathik ecological technology, and designed as a living space for the Pilavians, who were very similar in their genetic makeup to humans...though that meant very little -- they shared proteins, basically. The Humans, though inoculated against dangerous reactions to the atmosphere by the Grathik in a series of shots and pills that were familiar to military people back on Earth since the time when shots and pills were invented, still found that Sauna’s pollen caused uncomfortable itching and other reactions when it was breathed in. Everyone started wearing filtration masks and goggles, to keep the stuff out of sensitive places.
Along the equator, it was farms, made to produce Grathik and Pilavian food for all the different planets the Grathik used to hold, before the Salvesh took most of their planets in the name of the Plashi, and a lot of wilderness -- largely grassland, hills, long sight lines but some scrub foliage and, lots of huge fungus - huge purple, tan and gray mushrooms, hard as trees. The terrain was not familiar – it was a lush, purple, forested landscape with open areas, but lots of underbrush. The whole place was broken up with farmsteads, but a lot more of it was underground, while the surface was dotted with a few installations that the Pilavians used for commerce and farming on the surface. Much of the infrastructure was underground, however.
The surface populations were being evacuated underground as the Pilavians tried to build up defenses that would let them absorb the oncoming invasion while abandoning the surface. They’d come upon the occasional Pilavian home, built into the ground like a burrow...quickly dubbed by some geek as "Hobbitholes."
Danny knew this much -- it was a hot bitch out there, and he was sweating in it. The purple and tan-hued camouflage uniforms they’d been provided for the environment had lots of ventilation, but that was a pebble against a tidal wave. They sweated bullets and hydrated constantly.
There were some reliable Pilavians among the Grathik's support system for the Human mercenaries, but they seemed awkward and unsure in the presence of these human beings -- they kept their distance, not wanting to piss off the Salvesh when they landed, and only did as much as they were told when they were told and when they were watched. The Grathik had them followed by surveillance drones and seemed adept at doing the big brother thing, but even that could only go so far.
Danny sort of liked the Pilavians -- it turned out that a lot of humans did. Maybe it was because they were short, cute, furry and not threatening, and their cubs were cute. But they were fast breeding, poor and desperate, so they became clients of the Grathik. If the Plashi and the Salvesh won, they'd change masters. They had no real horse in this fight, and so they were doing what they had to in order to survive.
It was, as the squad batman, little K'tikki said, "We are not a race that fights for survival. We breed in great numbers and attempt to persevere through our calamities." The attitude made Danny, as an Israeli, sad, because it came from a tan-furred little alien with dark mask markings around the eyes and snout -- four eyes but otherwise very cartoonish -- that sounded just like a ghetto Jew from Poland in the 19th century.
That hadn't been the platoon's only exposure to aliens -- the Grathik themselves were disgusting, but they'd only really been addressed by their grand high sociologist, the one that was responsible for hiring humans and seemed to be gurgling with joy at the idea of speaking to humans. He was, as far as he was aware, one of a handful of the Grathik on planet, and it was odd to speak to one, because they were not as easy to relate to as K'tikki was. The tentacle monster seemed intent on watching the proceedings first hand, though it had claimed that it watched humanity since the first radio broadcasts revealed the race to the Grathik. Colonel Marais seemed to be well-acquainted with that particular tentacle monster; the thing had come to watch their platoon do a field exercise, and even spoke words of Hebrew to him – it was jarring to hear the language of Israel coming from this thing.
"The others think you are not the equal of the Salvesh, they have watched so many of our worlds be taken by them, but I know humanity best of us all. You are my life's work, but I would have preferred to watch you evolve naturally. I have faith in your abilities. I am as proud of you as I am of my offspring..." It seemed a strange comment from a being that employed them as cannon fodder, but he was an academic -- the entire race were professor types -- and he sounded either mad, genius or both. His father was a professor, he'd met other academics that got that way over their projects, obsessions, life work.
The present, however, was an actual patrol. After a week of familiarization with Sauna, the first combat landings of Salvesh were detected and units were mounting patrols to smoke them out. A drone or surveillance satellite would detect activity and a patrol would move in to check it out. There were a couple of tense false positives but no actual contact with Salvesh infiltrators. But they knew the Salvesh were coming and the Grathik were focused on site defense of the launch facilities on Sauna, which could be converted into weapons to use against Qadah, their homeworld. Infantry patrols, like this, were providing security while the defenses built up, looking to hunt the hunters. They knew that packs fought in small numbers, so it made sense to use smaller units to make the initial contacts and pile on. It gave them less of a footprint.
It was Danny on the point of the squad column, eyes open, ears open, weapon held in hands. He'd pause occasionally and visually sweep, particularly as they came upon distinct features of the landscape that might serve as ideal cover or an ideal position of concealment -- he did not want to get sucked into an ambush. They navigated around the hills and positions where they would be silhouetted for long distances, Riddler’s squad was in the lead, with the others bringing up the rear, keeping an eye on the flanks.
It was hot work, easy to fuck off on, and the local plant life was vivid, beautiful and very distracting at first sight, but daydreaming was not his way. Instead, he counted. Steps, features of the terrain, taking note of the ground as they passed it for future reference. When he had a good position of concealment, he took a knee and took stock of the area. And it was as they were moving through those trees with that feathery leaf type, that Danny made the signal for the entire squad to freeze.
He didn't move fast, but he got into a low crouch, his weapon up before him, though his finger was off the trigger and laying against the guard, a precaution against the sort of accidental discharge that'd really fuck them hard in this situation. He had the Israeli-style camouflage (in purple) net on his helmet, the kind that broke up the shape of the head. Every military had their camouflage studies, but the IDF, for whatever reason, adopted the net thing for the helmet, and it had its advocates. He'd gotten his 416 in a flat dark earth color, which was more naturally occurring than black, and made a degree more sense. He had a high degree of confidence in his visual concealment. But it was an unknown enemy, unknown habits.
"Riddler," he murmured on the comms -- Brian got the heads up first, but the Collins was probably on the freq anyway. "I've got multiple hostile contacts. Three-wait, four enemies at eleven o'clock, range 50 meters, moving into our ten o'clock in column. More emerging, I count...uh, six more. Squad strength Salvesh, still moving in the same direction." To be absolutely sure of the communications, he gave hand signals to everyone else to pass on; hostile contact, number of enemies, location.
Danny felt the adrenaline flood, but he willed himself calm, forced himself to wait for Park's input, though he also knew the drill. He was already sliding into what looked like a good fold in the terrain, with some sort of huge mushroom for cover with his scope already tracking the enemy. He put his left fist to his left shoulder and pushed the fist out, signalling a hasty ambush to his team; find concealment and targets.
Understatement of the year. They had several hours to get their shit together and get squared away -- walls were 'bulkheads' and floors were 'the deck' and latrines were 'the head.' That meant they were on a ship of some kind, but not anything anyone had ever served on before, and within the company, there were people that'd served on all kinds. Actually, this place was quieter than a ship, more sleekly furnished, with carpeted floors, and the rooms were fitted out like nice hotel rooms, or cruise ship accommodations. That was a far cry from the dusty, drab-colored, pitted concrete familiarity of post-Soviet decay, the lazy governance of an autocrat whose only investment was in well-equipped security forces to keep the people from demanding a better quality of life. The sterile, neutral air replaced the expected smell of fuel and bad sanitation.
When a call for assembly was made, the contractors were guided into a large audience room with a brushed steel dome overhead, made seemly of curved, overlapping plates, like a large Venetian blind.
The commander of Centurion's force, Colonel Caspar Marais, a South African, who was well past his retirement age -- the man served in the Rhodesian Army and South African Defense Force, and then ran Centurion in Sierra Leone, Angola and Nigeria -- stood before them at a podium
Before the current contract, Centurion was all Africans—different colors, but from South African backgrounds, some of them serving as guerrillas against Apartheid and Colonial rule others on the other side with Police and Military units from the era. It was an aging organization that was ending its active days. Employers were not as interested as they used to be, not with younger, fresher competition coming out of the battlefields of the Middle East and Central Asia. Centurion had a hell of a reputation, and it could still fight, but these were guys in their late middle age.
Where and how Centurion suddenly acquired the resources to pay so lavishly and make offers that had people taking early retirement or just not re-enlisting in order to join Centurion was the subject of rumors. It didn’t matter because the pay was good, the training was tough, hard and overseen by a variety of nationalities. Centurion was no longer simply a South African concern. The larger changes were mystifying but the money was great.
And then, they lined up for the Jonestown koolaid shot in Guyana and wound up in some metal box somewhere.
There was a younger guy, fit and blonde, lean and tanned, on the podium.
"Good morning. All of you no doubt have questions, and this goes easier if I explain precisely where we are.”
It was a picture of the colonel in his younger days. The old guy showed up during the training in Guyana looking 60-something could generally keep up and still knew how to shoot, but he wasn’t going to hack it through the worst of combat. He was there because he was a respected military leader, a man that could win a Bush war in Africa against thousands of insurgents with a few hundred men. They knew his voice because he made the rounds during the training in Guyana.
“Hit the switch." He still had a South African accent, but it was easy to decipher, even for the multi-national bunch that were assembled before him.
All of a sudden, the ceiling started to peel back, plate by plate, revealing an utterly foreign panorama of inky black pierced by points of light, and, prominently in the foreground, a planet of brown and purple and cloudy white.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are not in Uzbekistan. We are orbiting the planet Qadah, which we are hired to defend. That is the bad news as far as most of you are concerned. But here is the good news -- when you get back to Earth, you will all be multimillionaires. That's right, this job isn't what you signed on for, but you're getting paid a lot more than what you signed on for if you decide to stay on. I regret the bait and switch, but I couldn't just call you all to assembly in Guyana and tell you this. You had to see this," he waved to the planet overhead.
He paused to let the ideas sink in, and for the audience to catch itself before carrying on, "At this point, some of you are thinking, 'hey, I didn't sign on for this bullshit.' That's true, and we can give you the same hibernation shot you got to get you up here and be put back on ice. You will be shipped back with the contract pay you agreed to and no hard feelings. The rest of us will carry on." He seemed to manage to express a vague sense of contempt, "For the rest of us, we have a job to do. Our employers are the Grathik race. They are primarily scientists. They are snobbish and elitist ivory tower types on steroids, but they are brainy. They seem to think that we are their best hope for salvation against their enemies."
He paused again, "They are paying top dollar for top talent. You have a choice -- go home with a nice little payday or stay on, make history and huge money. This is the final frontier and this is no TV show."
Danny sat in the seat next to Riddler, behind Major Collins and in proximity to his squad, which included Butch (Livia; they shortened the Portuguese to something everyone could pronounce in a way that was hilarious and totally military), K-Ton and the others were nearby -- dysfunctional at time, a squad was still a family, and this was a trying time, which was precisely why you wanted to be near the family. There was a sense of community there. You didn't always like everyone in it, but there was a sense of obligation involved. The entire place was murmuring now, apparently arguing a bit in hushed tones, but Danny took no part in the actual proceedings -- he knew how he was going to go on this one. What he had back home was two kids that could use the child support payments.
"Those of you who wish to leave now may do so; you will be safely conducted back to Earth. But only a few did -- the overwhelming majority, who'd been screened ahead of time for their suitability to the mission, stayed. Once those few had been herded out by the MP's, the briefing continued. "Our employers, the Grathik, are not fighters, and their war has gone on for a few decades. Initially, their enemies were much as they are, fairly hapless in a fight. But that changed when their primary enemy, the Plashi, hired a race called the Salvesh to fight. The Salvesh are a lot like us, they are on two legs and they evolved from predators. The Grathik tried to put another race, the Pilavians, into the fight, but it didn't work. They tried to build robots and that didn't work. So now they're hiring us and things are ugly and desperate."
There were slides of the aforementioned races; a picture of a one-eyed tentacle monster, a picture of something that looked like a teddy ferret that had cute eyes and fur, but with sharp teeth and little claws, and then a huge monstrosity that looked like a cross between crab and snail, eyestalks, a toothless slime-secreting orifice where a mouth was supposed to be, clawed appendages and one huge shell that overlapped like that of a scorpion, albeit lacking the tail. Then there was the Salvesh, male and female, one 30% larger than human norm with a huge crest, and the other about the size of the average human male.
"Our enemies, the Salvesh, are well-regarded interstellar mercenaries. They are evolved pack hunters. Each pack is its own small army. We are not fighting a large army, we're fighting a bunch of small tribes of warriors that work together somewhat. Some of you remember the sort of loose alliances of guerrillas you've fought in the middle east, this is similar, but it's very different. Some groups will be extremely well armed and supported by their employers, who offer fire support and resupply at a cost, others will be less well-equipped. That means they are inconsistent. Enemy forces and their composition from group to group are hard to gauge. Most of us have dealt with insurgents and amorphous organizations of that nature as well. Our primary objective is defense, our secondary objective is to learn about our enemy."
As if to show just how far away from Kansas they actually were, a holographic globe sprung into being, which had some mercs whispering, “Death Star.”
”The defense of Qadah is essential, and the key to Qadah is taking Saina, its moon, intact. While the Grathik are building a viable defense of Saina, we are securing it against covert action, notably sabotage. From Saina, we intend to springboard out into other operations, mainly aimed at reclaiming territory lost by the Grathik. But right now, we have to secure this base.”
The stats came down to PDA’s, information on the atmosphere, breathable but filled with alien allergens that would mess with humanity. Hot, purple jungle. Danny heard Riddler mutter, “Sauna.”
That became the Human nickname for their next battlefield.
--
In another spacecraft in another star system, another briefing was being conducted, but the audience had tusks, snouts, three eyes, four arms, tails. The males had long ridges of hair atop their heads, a plumage that was a point of pride and competition for grooming among males, while the females were far more drab and smaller. They were seated by their packs, with space between the packs, because the rivalry among packs, group marriages that functioned as self-sufficient military units in the field, were fierce and no one wanted fighting in the War Room -- there was a huge and dazzling array of holographic maps and intelligence displayed for reading and downloading, though that was primarily the task of the females -- among them, it was the females that handled the staff work, that dealt with logistics and were responsible for deciding how to handle everything up to the fighting. The males were pointed in the right direction and let go. But the males led in the fight, and so it was a male giving a speech.
"The Grathik are desperate, and it shows. They've uplifted some backwater race and are telling us that these things are dangerous soldiers." Jaka paused to make a loud snort out of all four nostrils, "you know what that means. They've thrown in some cannon fodder savages to fight the inevitable merger. These hairless, clawless, blunt-toothed louts evolved from a class of animals that swings from trees, eats yellow plants that resemble our male sex organs and fling excrement from each other. That should tell you everything you need to know about these slaves the Grathik have brought for a last ditch defense."
"Some of you may well be concerned, this is a new species we've never seen before, but the Plashi have provided some intelligence footage, free of charge for once, captured from their planet's broadcasts." He started pointing to the briefing holos, which showed clips of Survivor, Big Brother and the Apprentice "As you can see, they compete among each other, but have no pack organization and no sense of community responsibility. They constantly backbite each other. They whine a lot. I'm not impressed by this race. In fact, I'm slightly insulted that anyone thinks these humans are anything but a pest we can sweep away. By the time we land, they'll be pulling each other's hair and gnawing at each other with those blunt teeth. Before anyone tries to claim him, the orange haired one, this Donald Trump, is regrettably not among them, though his scalp would make an amusing trophy. He was apparently replaced with someone named ‘Ahnuld.’ Neither," he added, "is Kim or Kanye."
After a half hour of watching "Keeping up with the Kardashians," the assembly of Salvesh were particularly eager to finish her off. There were groans of disappointment.
Yet another show was put up on the screens, a Japanese game show. The audience of assembled Salvesh warriors started roaring in laughter, but once it died down, Jaka continued the briefing, "This race are not fighters. They are entertaining buffoons. They grovel and abase themselves before audiences for scraps of cloth to adorn themselves with and try to avoid hard work. They are delusional, which you knew because they've agreed to fight us. Maybe the Grathik decided that hiring actors was cheaper than hiring warriors. On the other hand, watch out, these humans apparently are grandiose and delusional, and you can expect silly stunts out of them.”
"Nonetheless, despite the insult to our dignity that this feeble defense represents, we have work to do. Our employers want these mercenaries torn to pieces for Xhol'H news because it'll make the merger go easier, so that's what we're going to do. Also, it's good for business if we make sure to remind everyone that we are the best. This ought to raise the rate for future contracts. We will start off slowly and milk this for all it is worth so we can force the Plashi to re-negotiate rates, citing the unexpected hazard. Once we have squeezed the use out of the humans and have our new contracts, we will crush them." That brought on a bit of laughter from the Salvesh assembled, "All that aside, I am now accepting bids for the first landings."
There was a howl of packmasters bidding their forces against these pitiful humans, eager for the glory of sacking the Grathik -- to establish a base on their homeworld's moon was likely to be the final offensive of the war. Once established on Saina, they knew that the Grathik down on Qadah would have no choice to surrender or face slaughter from lunar-launched kinetic weaponry. And everyone knew that the one-eyed mad scientists had no taste for warfare. This was a victorious final battle, the end of a long campaign. The Salvesh wanted to make sure to squeeze it for all it was worth, playing the classic mercenary game of trying to get a payraise.
--
Saina, or “Sauna” , Qadah's moon, was something of a homeworld to the Pilavians working for the Grathik, and but they seemed to be hiding, battening down their hatches to survive the invasion as the spoils of war in a new Plashi empire. The Pilavians were...well, they were nice enough, but a timid people. They'd fought, but they'd largely surrendered when thrown into it, and the Plashi were smart enough to offer a good deal for not resisting too much. Now there were families out there with hostages taken by the enemy.
The planet was heavily terraformed; landmasses moved and created, water converted from ice for the effort. It was a masterpiece of Grathik ecological technology, and designed as a living space for the Pilavians, who were very similar in their genetic makeup to humans...though that meant very little -- they shared proteins, basically. The Humans, though inoculated against dangerous reactions to the atmosphere by the Grathik in a series of shots and pills that were familiar to military people back on Earth since the time when shots and pills were invented, still found that Sauna’s pollen caused uncomfortable itching and other reactions when it was breathed in. Everyone started wearing filtration masks and goggles, to keep the stuff out of sensitive places.
Along the equator, it was farms, made to produce Grathik and Pilavian food for all the different planets the Grathik used to hold, before the Salvesh took most of their planets in the name of the Plashi, and a lot of wilderness -- largely grassland, hills, long sight lines but some scrub foliage and, lots of huge fungus - huge purple, tan and gray mushrooms, hard as trees. The terrain was not familiar – it was a lush, purple, forested landscape with open areas, but lots of underbrush. The whole place was broken up with farmsteads, but a lot more of it was underground, while the surface was dotted with a few installations that the Pilavians used for commerce and farming on the surface. Much of the infrastructure was underground, however.
The surface populations were being evacuated underground as the Pilavians tried to build up defenses that would let them absorb the oncoming invasion while abandoning the surface. They’d come upon the occasional Pilavian home, built into the ground like a burrow...quickly dubbed by some geek as "Hobbitholes."
Danny knew this much -- it was a hot bitch out there, and he was sweating in it. The purple and tan-hued camouflage uniforms they’d been provided for the environment had lots of ventilation, but that was a pebble against a tidal wave. They sweated bullets and hydrated constantly.
There were some reliable Pilavians among the Grathik's support system for the Human mercenaries, but they seemed awkward and unsure in the presence of these human beings -- they kept their distance, not wanting to piss off the Salvesh when they landed, and only did as much as they were told when they were told and when they were watched. The Grathik had them followed by surveillance drones and seemed adept at doing the big brother thing, but even that could only go so far.
Danny sort of liked the Pilavians -- it turned out that a lot of humans did. Maybe it was because they were short, cute, furry and not threatening, and their cubs were cute. But they were fast breeding, poor and desperate, so they became clients of the Grathik. If the Plashi and the Salvesh won, they'd change masters. They had no real horse in this fight, and so they were doing what they had to in order to survive.
It was, as the squad batman, little K'tikki said, "We are not a race that fights for survival. We breed in great numbers and attempt to persevere through our calamities." The attitude made Danny, as an Israeli, sad, because it came from a tan-furred little alien with dark mask markings around the eyes and snout -- four eyes but otherwise very cartoonish -- that sounded just like a ghetto Jew from Poland in the 19th century.
That hadn't been the platoon's only exposure to aliens -- the Grathik themselves were disgusting, but they'd only really been addressed by their grand high sociologist, the one that was responsible for hiring humans and seemed to be gurgling with joy at the idea of speaking to humans. He was, as far as he was aware, one of a handful of the Grathik on planet, and it was odd to speak to one, because they were not as easy to relate to as K'tikki was. The tentacle monster seemed intent on watching the proceedings first hand, though it had claimed that it watched humanity since the first radio broadcasts revealed the race to the Grathik. Colonel Marais seemed to be well-acquainted with that particular tentacle monster; the thing had come to watch their platoon do a field exercise, and even spoke words of Hebrew to him – it was jarring to hear the language of Israel coming from this thing.
"The others think you are not the equal of the Salvesh, they have watched so many of our worlds be taken by them, but I know humanity best of us all. You are my life's work, but I would have preferred to watch you evolve naturally. I have faith in your abilities. I am as proud of you as I am of my offspring..." It seemed a strange comment from a being that employed them as cannon fodder, but he was an academic -- the entire race were professor types -- and he sounded either mad, genius or both. His father was a professor, he'd met other academics that got that way over their projects, obsessions, life work.
The present, however, was an actual patrol. After a week of familiarization with Sauna, the first combat landings of Salvesh were detected and units were mounting patrols to smoke them out. A drone or surveillance satellite would detect activity and a patrol would move in to check it out. There were a couple of tense false positives but no actual contact with Salvesh infiltrators. But they knew the Salvesh were coming and the Grathik were focused on site defense of the launch facilities on Sauna, which could be converted into weapons to use against Qadah, their homeworld. Infantry patrols, like this, were providing security while the defenses built up, looking to hunt the hunters. They knew that packs fought in small numbers, so it made sense to use smaller units to make the initial contacts and pile on. It gave them less of a footprint.
It was Danny on the point of the squad column, eyes open, ears open, weapon held in hands. He'd pause occasionally and visually sweep, particularly as they came upon distinct features of the landscape that might serve as ideal cover or an ideal position of concealment -- he did not want to get sucked into an ambush. They navigated around the hills and positions where they would be silhouetted for long distances, Riddler’s squad was in the lead, with the others bringing up the rear, keeping an eye on the flanks.
It was hot work, easy to fuck off on, and the local plant life was vivid, beautiful and very distracting at first sight, but daydreaming was not his way. Instead, he counted. Steps, features of the terrain, taking note of the ground as they passed it for future reference. When he had a good position of concealment, he took a knee and took stock of the area. And it was as they were moving through those trees with that feathery leaf type, that Danny made the signal for the entire squad to freeze.
He didn't move fast, but he got into a low crouch, his weapon up before him, though his finger was off the trigger and laying against the guard, a precaution against the sort of accidental discharge that'd really fuck them hard in this situation. He had the Israeli-style camouflage (in purple) net on his helmet, the kind that broke up the shape of the head. Every military had their camouflage studies, but the IDF, for whatever reason, adopted the net thing for the helmet, and it had its advocates. He'd gotten his 416 in a flat dark earth color, which was more naturally occurring than black, and made a degree more sense. He had a high degree of confidence in his visual concealment. But it was an unknown enemy, unknown habits.
"Riddler," he murmured on the comms -- Brian got the heads up first, but the Collins was probably on the freq anyway. "I've got multiple hostile contacts. Three-wait, four enemies at eleven o'clock, range 50 meters, moving into our ten o'clock in column. More emerging, I count...uh, six more. Squad strength Salvesh, still moving in the same direction." To be absolutely sure of the communications, he gave hand signals to everyone else to pass on; hostile contact, number of enemies, location.
Danny felt the adrenaline flood, but he willed himself calm, forced himself to wait for Park's input, though he also knew the drill. He was already sliding into what looked like a good fold in the terrain, with some sort of huge mushroom for cover with his scope already tracking the enemy. He put his left fist to his left shoulder and pushed the fist out, signalling a hasty ambush to his team; find concealment and targets.
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