The Price of Conquest

Kressa had always liked Taas. Something about the harsh, no-nonsense planet and its people appealed to her, and she'd always looked forward to her trading forays there, to the hours of haggling and bartering in the huge domed city of Raasch, Taas' main trading post, and to the challenge of piloting the Conquest through the capricious, sometimes dangerous, weather systems.

That's nothing compared to the challenge you're facing now, she told herself and returned her full attention to the wildly twitching control stick in her hands.

Her fighter entered a pocket of calm air. The stick swung loose, and her ship dropped sharply. She pulled up, leveled out at her former altitude, and then checked the readouts for her heading and the relative position of the distress signal she was tracking.

After launching from Stingray One, she and Ensign Jaris, a young th'Maran pilot, had flown their fighters in different directions. She headed north, off Stingray One's port side, while Jaris climbed ahead of the big ship. Working together, the computers of the two fighters, along with Stingray One's, should be able to triangulate on the weak signal. Either that, or one of them would fly close enough to the source to locate it.

Kressa eased her fighter closer to the rugged mountains and peered at the landscape below. The peaks were stark, devoid of any vegetation or animal life, and the strange, howling winds had scrubbed the mountains clean of even loose rock and snow.

She tried to keep her mind off what might have happened to Taas, to the friends who lived here, to the good times she'd had trading or simply visiting. The sights outside her ship both helped and hindered her efforts. What she saw held little resemblance to the world she remembered, but she knew it really was Taas and had a hard time imagining how anyone could have survived the devastation around her.

A low tone recalled her attention to her fighter's control board. A set of coordinates flashed from the navigation panel.

"Did you get that, Kressa?" Jaris's lightly accented voice sounded in her helmet.

His tone was casual compared to the precise, even formal, speech of many th'Maran. Kressa smiled at the sound of it, reminded of how quickly and completely some of the younger th'Maran were adapting to and becoming part of life in the Confederacy.

The changes weren't necessarily limited to the young; most th'Maran who spent time around humans reacted in some way to their emotions and behavior, but younger th'Maran such as Jaris and Lieutenant Schienna, another one of Stingray One's pilots, threw themselves eagerly into their new life among humans.

Of course, from a biological standpoint, th'Maran were human. They had been bred by the Om-Mar from human forebears, but Kressa found most of them somehow better—wiser, gentler, more forgiving—than other humans. She recalled her surprise the first time she heard a th'Maran express an interest in joining the Guard to help fight against the United Galaxy. She'd found it difficult to imagine any th'Maran fighting, for whatever reason. Later, when more of them volunteered to join the Confederate forces, she'd had to admit that th'Maran were as much warriors as any of the other human races, perhaps even better than some.

"I see it, Jaris," she said in response to her fellow pilot. She punched the coordinates into her flight computer. "I'll rendezvous with you in about three minutes." She hit the thrusters and her ship curved away on the new heading.

The steep, winding valley where the signal originated looked as desolate and inhospitable as the other terrain over which Kressa had flown, but as she eased her ship deeper into the narrow defile, she noticed a pattern of lines etched into the smooth stone floor of the valley. The lines were too straight to be natural; people had been here.

A glint of bright lights drew her attention away from the ground as Jaris's fighter drew even with hers, and then slowed. She did the same, keeping her ship even with his and watching as the signal-strength meter that was monitoring the distress call flickered ever higher.

"There it is," Jaris said an instant before Kressa's instruments signaled maximum proximity to the target. He slowed to a stop and set his ship to hover in place several meters above the ground. "Can you see any place to set down?"

Kressa halted her fighter beside his and peered around.

They were about five kilometers north of the signs of habitation she had seen. The valley floor was rough and boulder-strewn, the high walls ruggedly steep, but at least they would shield the fighters from the worst of the wind.

"Over by the east wall," she said, indicating a relatively smooth stretch of ground ahead, sheltered by a rocky overhang.

Technically, the fighters could land on nearly any terrain or remain hovering if there was no surface capable of supporting them, but Kressa preferred to have her ship on solid ground and out of the direct line of the debris-laden wind.

Jaris eased his fighter close to the rocky wall and set it down on the valley floor.

Kressa settled her ship behind his, and then called Stingray One.

"Captain, we've touched down near the source of the distress signal. We'll leave the ships here—" She shot a rueful glance at their wind-scoured surroundings; she was not looking forward to trying to walk out there. "—and try to locate the exact source. We'll keep you informed of our progress."

"Affirmative, Ensign," Jonathan said. "I'm going to bring Stingray One in as close as we can get. Keep a tether to your ships, I don't want either of you getting lost out there. And before you go, check the radiation level. Your suits can't provide anywhere near the protection your ships can."

"Yes, sir."

"And Kressa," Jonathan's voice softened, "don't take any stupid chances."

"Not me, Cap'n! Bryant out. Jaris, you ready?"

"After you, Kressa."

The radiation level outside the ship was high, but nothing the Teneian flight suits couldn't filter out. The air, on the other hand, was bad, barely recognizable as a gas mixture once capable of supporting human life. Fortunately, the suits' helmets could process breathable air out of nearly anything, their tiny chemical plants providing any necessary elements not available in the outside air.

Kressa checked the seals on her suit and helmet, braced herself, and popped her fighter's canopy. Even under the relative shelter of the rock overhang, the force of the wind threatened to slam her against the inside of the cockpit as it howled between the steep canyon walls, almost deafening despite the insulation of her helmet.

Holstered in the seat by her safety harness and with one hand holding tight to the edge of the canopy, she reached outside the ship and pulled up the hooked end of the self-feeding safety tether. She clipped it to her suit, released her harness, then climbed cautiously out of the cockpit and lowered herself to the ground beside her fighter.

"All right, Jaris, your turn."

Less than a minute later, the th'Maran's slender form stood beside her, his suited body angled into the wind.

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"You got a fix on that signal?" Kressa asked.

He made adjustments to the controls on his helmet, his head cocked to one side as he listened. Behind the faceplate, she could see the look of concentration on his pale features as he strove to tune in the signal.

"I have it," he said after another few moments. "It's close, somewhere behind the ships."

"That's what mine says, too. Let's go."

They hugged the side of the cliff, keeping out of the worst of the blowing dirt and debris. Fifteen meters beyond the rear of Kressa's fighter, a cave mouth opened through the rock wall. The signal came from somewhere within the cavern.

Grateful for the chance to be out of the wind, Kressa unclipped a handlight from her belt and stepped through the wide opening. She led Jaris several meters into the cave before deciding the tethers to their ships were going to prove more of a hindrance than a help. She unclipped her springy tether line and secured it under a heavy rock on the cavern floor. Jaris did the same with his.

The cave narrowed as they made their way deeper inside, the howl of the wind lessening to a dull roaring whistle in Kressa's helmet. After another thirty meters, the passageway pinched down to a corridor no more than a meter wide, its side smoothed by clearly manmade tools. It ended in a metal door several meters farther on.

A dim yellow light blinked wanly from a small control panel to the left of the barrier. Kressa bent to examine it and noted the sooty black remains of fried circuitry.

"This must be some kind of emergency shelter," she said, "but it seems to be operating on minimal back-up power." She toyed with the controls for several moments, watching the telltales flash dimly. Finally, she straightened and shook her head. "I can't tell if there's anyone alive in there or not, and I'm afraid of what opening this door might do. I think we'd better call the ship and see what the captain thinks."

Jaris nodded agreement, obviously as unwilling as she was to make a decision regarding the fate of any possible survivors.

Kressa switched on her comm. "Stingray One, this is Bryant. Captain, we're inside a cave. We've found a sealed metal door. I think it leads into an emergency shelter, but it's running on very low power. Can you get any readings?"

There was a short pause, and then Jonathan's voice came on, "We've got it, Kressa. They seem to be using back-up systems. Probably whatever hit Taas had enough of an EMP to toast the mains. There are vague life signs, so run a check on your surroundings. I don't want you charging in to rescue a bunch of people, only to kill them all with a lethal dose of radiation or poisoned air."

"Aye, sir. The radiation shouldn't be a problem. It was almost clean outside, so here in the cave should be safe. The air, however…" She called up an atmosphere test on her helmet's heads-up display. "Well, it wouldn't kill anyone instantly, but I wouldn't want to breathe it for very long. It probably won't hurt to mix some of it with what they've got inside."

"Affirmative, Bryant. Get the door open and shut as quickly as possible. I'll send a shuttle down with some medics. Try to keep whoever's in there alive until we can get to you."

"Yes, sir. Bryant out." She looked at Jaris. "You'd better be ready to sprint when I open this door."

His helmet bobbed once. "I'm ready."

She pressed the open button.

Nothing happened.

She cursed under her breath. "There must not be enough power."

"Should we try to force it?" Jaris asked.

She shook her head. "That could let in too much of the outside air. Let's leave it as a last resort."

"What, then?"

She trained her handlight on the singed plasteel control panel, removed the cover plate, and studied the burnt circuitry, tracing the remains of the wires from where they emerged through the wall to their various blackened connectors. She pulled a utility knife from a thigh pocket of her flight suit and cut three of the wires, and then used the knife to pry open the body of her handlight.

She gestured for Jaris to shine his light on what she was doing and removed the power cell from her own. She deftly stripped the ends of two of the wires she'd cut from the panel and reconnected the third to a new location.

She looked up at Jaris. "I'm not sure what the remains of this circuit are going to think of a burst of Teneian-caliber energy. If it's not completely fried already, it will be when I'm through, so try to catch the door if it opens."

At Jaris's nod, she touched the bare wires to the power cell.

There was a bright blue-white flash, and Kressa found herself flat on her back a good meter back from the door, the fingertips of her gloves blackened by the sudden release of energy.

She looked up.

Jaris stood wedged in the doorway, his body blocking most of the opening. He gestured urgently for her to join him.

She scrambled to her feet and sprinted to the door. Jaris sidestepped into the room as she reached him, and then turned to stop her headlong rush. The door thunked closed behind them. Hands on each other's arms, they steadied one another and then looked around.

The emergency shelter consisted of a single rough-hewn room, its walls sprayed with a thick, white coating. The chamber was approximately twenty meters on a side, ineffectively lit by a handful of dim emergency lights. Cots and various survival supplies littered the floor. A trio of curtained cubicles against the back wall presumably served as privies. In the opposite corner, a portable food-processing unit rested on a low table near an assortment of neatly stacked dishes and eating utensils.

Given a large enough supply of food and the survival instincts of the Taasians, Kressa estimated the shelter could support up to forty people for a month or more. There were about a third of that number there now, all of them young and most of them female. Their limp forms lay scattered about on the cots and floor.

Kressa stepped to the nearest occupied cot. A skinny, long-limbed girl of about twelve sprawled on the thin mattress. Her skin was ashen against the mass of pale gold hair that wreathed her head, and her shallow breathing barely disturbed the fine strands that fell across her face. Kressa scooped a blanket from beside the cot and tucked it around the girl.

"This one's alive," she said.

Jaris glanced up from his examination of one of the cots. "Most of them are, if not all of them, but the air in here is bad."

"Our fault?" she asked, standing to check the next occupied cot.

"No, it was bad before we got here. I doubt what little we let in made much difference."

A sudden movement to her right caught Kressa's attention. A young redheaded boy of perhaps eight or nine years of age stood in the shadows across the room, directly in front of a shelf filled with oxygen canisters. He was weaving on his feet, but he managed to keep the point of the large pulse gun he held trained in Kressa's general direction. Bright green eyes met hers defiantly, and his mouth moved as if shouting weak orders.

"Turn on your external comm," Jaris said quietly. Apparently the boy had not noticed him yet.

Kressa raised one hand slowly toward the controls on her suit's belt, watching the boy carefully.

His face was pale, making his green eyes stand out demonically, the spattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose a dark splotch against his pale skin. He struggled to remain on his feet, and the big gun he held wavered precariously.

Kressa's hand reached the comm control and she flicked it on.

"…are you?" the boy shouted weakly. "Who are you and what do you want? I—" He staggered forward, almost losing his grip on the gun.

Kressa stepped out of his line of fire, and Jaris dashed in from the side. He slid one arm around the boy's waist and used his free hand to take the gun away from him.

"Easy, child," Jaris soothed, easily holding the boy's feebly struggling form. "We won't hurt you." His voice sounded through Kressa's internal and external comm pickups in an odd duet. "My name's Jaris. What's yours?"

"Nico," the boy said, his breathing labored as he tried to gasp in enough oxygen from the stale air of the room. He glared up at Jaris. "Where're you from?"

"We're friends, Nico," Jaris assured him. He took a seat on a nearby cot, still holding the boy around the waist. "We're with the Confederacy."

Kressa moved to the oxygen bottles behind Jaris and the boy. A quick examination of the gauges told her what she feared: all but one of them was empty, and what remained in that one barely registered. She took the bottle and a mask to where Jaris sat with Nico slumped across his lap.

"How is he?" she asked, noting the boy's limply rolling head and glassy gaze.

"He could use some of that." Jaris nodded to the bottle she carried.

She moved the mask toward the boy, her other hand on the bottle's control valve, but as the mask approached his face, Nico twitched to life and batted it away.

"No!" he gasped, his expression growing stern. "No. That's for the women. I can't…" He paused to gulp in a lungful of air. "I have to take care of the women…"

Kressa pressed the mask to his face and activated the valve, ignoring the boy's half-hearted attempts to remove it.

When his prying hands became strong and his desperate gulps for air leveled out to deep, steady breaths, she turned off the flow of oxygen and let him push the mask away.

"Better?" she asked.

He answered her with an angry glare.

She smiled and tousled his mop of curly red hair. "Now, I'll see to the women, Nico. You just lie there and rest. Jaris, call the ship and let them know what we found."