The Belt Loop (Book Two) - Revenge of the Varson Read online

  Inskaap drove away, relishing the thought of the human curse words in his mind. Somehow he thought no other words he had ever heard matched the turpitude of the Elberese curses.

  “Fuck,” Inskaap said aloud in the car. He liked that guttural word the best.

  Chapter 7

  He knew they were there even if he couldn’t see them. The human ships. Especially the ones occupying the highly elliptical orbits around Canuure’s star. The Malguurian name for the star was Voorsuune — the Deliverer — a word that had been bastardized and transliterated into “Varson” by the conquering Second Fleet of Elber Prime. The mere thought of such an outrage, such an affront to his heritage, to use an Elberese phrase, really chapped his behind. Bale Phatie turned from the window and walked purposefully to his desk. Today he had to prepare his military budgets. He had to allocate valuable treasure to ensure the continuous operation of the Malguur Defense Forces: Army, Navy, and domestic Air Corps. So many men, so little resources. In the ten years since the end of the war, Canuure struggled to make ends meet. The resurrection of the three uninhabitable worlds was moving at a snail’s pace. The atmospheric processors had been constructed and deployed but that was slow work. Some of his top scientists calculated it would take decades to restore the air to healthy and breathable conditions. More irritation to address: pouring funds into military outposts that served only to police the activities of the construction personnel, wasting valuable men and resources to keep tabs on a bunch of mindless workers, keeping them from killing each other over women and drink.

  Then there was the off-budget items to reconcile. The Advanced Weaponry Initiative and Colonel Inskaap’s little covert projects. He had to play it fast and loose with the figures to hide the trillions of credits being poured into the AWI and the Intelligence Directorate. While not really a part of the Army, the ID received its mandate directly from the Piru Torgud. There were members of the council that would strenuously object to his proposed new figures. He could imagine the pompous rhetoric from that over-the-hill Riishuud — Senator — Caampi Denaar. The man always pontificating and demanding complete accountability of every credit spent, as if the funds were coming right from his personal account. No matter. He had enough dirt on the senator to quiet any and all protests the man might have. Pictures, holographic recordings, statements from whores along the main streets of Canuure attesting to his proclivity for loving little girls with barely a bump of breast or pudendum. No, Denaar should not be a problem, he thought as he sat down and produced his reader. After all, he could just summarily execute the man.

  Phatie knew he would take some heat for the recent rash of killings. They just couldn’t have been helped. One sure way to get the military back into fighting form quickly was to make examples out of recalcitrant officers. Under the Combat Readiness Doctrine he had forced through the council during the last cycle, he had the authority — no, the mandate — to do what was necessary to get Canuure and the totality of what was left of the Malguur Domain back on a war footing.

  He had the businessmen on his side, the monied elite. Those Malguurians heavily invested in the metals trades, the manufacturing conglomerates, the consumer goods soft industries, and the lucrative spice import/export businesses. These were the men he really answered to, not the whining, complaining senators of that moribund council.

  The figures sped across the screen of his reader. He would demand a full twenty percent increase in his budget. Up from fourteen last cycle. Reasonable considering all that had to be done.

  Satisfied with his numbers, Phatie relaxed and concentrated on his speech before the council. He was going to take that opportunity to outline his newest campaign against the humans. He was going to ask the council for a Declaration of War. He knew he had enough votes to get it passed since fully three-quarters of the council members were beholding to him for one reason or another. Mostly because of his superior intelligence-gathering apparatus.

  He smiled a sinister smile and brought up his notes for tomorrow’s speech.

  * * *

  The strident tone of the speech left Inskaap in a state of utter bewilderment. While he appreciated the general direction of the supreme commander’s oratory he failed to see the underlying deceit he was certain would be there. Phatie sounded almost as if he knew the outcome of the vote before the measure was put to the full council. That was the only way to explain the soaring rhetoric and the jingoistic militarism of the diatribe. The Piru Torgud had the votes in his hip pocket. We were going to war again.

  Inskaap removed the wafer from his playback machine and carefully bent it in half, separated the halves, bent the rectangles into halves again and again. Once he had sixteen small square bits he raked the parts into a small metal bowl and burned the wafer with a hand-held torch.

  This situation left him with only two choices: one, he could try to destroy the man today or tonight; or two, he could just go along with the program and wait for another opportunity. If he played his hand too early, it could mean his life. If he waited too long it could mean the destruction of billions.

  He stood. His office in the Intelligence Directorate was not very large, not very opulent. As a matter of fact, it was a dump. His walls were crammed with monitoring equipment, audio/visual displays, filing cabinets with oversized combination locks on each drawer in addition to heavy metal locking bars that terminated in the stone floor. Considering the spacious offices of the torgud elite, he was essentially working out of a closet. Nevertheless, he made do with what he had.

  He poured the contents of the metal bowl into a nearby burn bag and replaced the bowl and the torch on a high shelf overflowing with folders and reports. His actions almost started an avalanche of materials and papers and only his quick reactions saved a stack of reports from falling to the cramped floor. He unlocked one of his file cabinet drawers and removed the overarching locking bar from its clasp on the floor. He extracted a large folder and checked the date/time stamp before proceeding. This report was hot off the presses, whatever that Elberese expression meant. He assumed it described something that had just been printed, but failed to connect the reference to heating elements. Just as well, he thought, the expression was succinct enough to describe this report. He fumbled out the back-up sheets and returned to his desk. The raw data was contained on four pieces of paper. Each sheet was in the same format and each contained seven columns of four-digit numbers stretching fifty-five rows deep.

  The message was from one of his implants on Elber, one of his operatives disguised as a human. The man had been in place, doing routine maintenance chores around the Navy Yards there, for almost three Elber years. He was not tasked to conducting any real covert spying, just to report the news. From any source. Electronic, written, broadcast, word-of-mouth, back-fence gossip, everything. His reports were coded and transmitted to a relay station in a polar orbit around Elber’s star. One thing about the humans he liked was their consistency. They always concentrated their forces and monitors near the plane of the ecliptic, often ignoring things not directly seen or detected that fell outside of those limited constraints. That was how Inskaap had succeeded in making regular courier runs between Canuure, Bayliss, and Elber. A small ship that was eighty percent engine could whisk between the stars at an enormous speed. He could get his reports from Elber in weeks instead of many months. The stolen “fold” technology secured from the doomed Mobile Bay human ship helped them integrate the human technology with their “jump” propulsion systems used during the war.

  Now he was able to get messages in and out of the human systems in a timely manner. Something he hoped the humans would never discover. Inskaap read the decoded message and compared the number sequences in the raw data with the authentication grid on the inside of the folder’s cover. All was confirmed, the message was legitimate. Next he looked at the Elberese translation of the coded Malguurian text:

  START. Confirmation of message ref: 33-045-777: CNS-141 Corpus Christi CCV-552 arriving Elber Navy Docking S
tation approx three three six ES hours STOP. Subject Haad, subject Yorn confirmed STOP. Confirm six seven dead or injured confrontation with unknown ship near ref: RA one nine point two seven DEC plus zero seven degree five three min STOP. Distance from Canuure approx two one seven three ES ly STOP. Look for perhaps half of the Varson picket to depart Fringes for destination cited above in response to new threat STOP. Scuttlebutt this location has Third Fleet thin and augment from Second Fleet needed STOP. Estimate five zero ships to be departing Varson space within two four zero ES hours STOP. No confirm at this station STOP. Eight eight STOP STOP. 33-047-889 END.

  Inskaap rearranged his desktop and placed his portable astrometry reader on the right of the report folder. He carefully punched in the right ascension and declination information contained in the message. Three seconds later a pair of curved lines intersected on the screen and a small blinking square pulsed around the intersection. Empty space. But what he was more interested in was the distance the message referenced.

  Divine One, you have heard my prayers! Inskaap punched in a few more numbers and suddenly stood. He pranced around his small office and in his exuberance knocked over a pile of reports from the corner of his cluttered desk. The humans were engaged in some kind of conflict out past a star they called Alnitak. Over 2,100 of their light-years away from the Malguurian home star Voorsuune! And they were going to pull over fifty ships off the blockade to go to the aid of the distressed Third Fleet. Could Bale Phatie have picked a more perfect opportunity to strike back at the humans? Could he be correct, could he be prescient in a way that Inskaap knew nothing about? Did he have his own sources of information coming out of Elber Prime?

  That last question caused Inskaap to stop his little dance. Something he had not considered before. The spy could be spied upon. He quickly locked up his materials and cleared his desk. It was time for a security screen, a file audit, a purge of his staff. Could that Lieutenant Colonel Yaguud have gone off the deep end one day while sitting in that dive bar drinking or drugging his lips into a loose state?

  Every question spawned two more, and that pair split into four. Before long his mind was reeling. Tomorrow would either be the greatest day of his career or the last day of his life.

  He didn’t know in which direction to lean.

  Chapter 8

  At the appointed hour Piru Torgud Bale Phatie entered the massive Council of Malguur auditorium. The semi-circular chamber was elegant in its appointments: fine flowing fabrics and large crystal chandeliers equipped with tiny LED bulbs bounced full-spectrum sparkles around the room. The back wall was covered with a huge display screen that showed pastoral scenes of the Canuure countryside, images taken before the big war. The raised dais was made of Hyfuur marble and had all of the complicated microphones and broadcast equipment neatly tucked out of sight. Only two thin transmitting buttons graced the sides of the podium.

  The lights dimmed and the visuals on the far wall changed abruptly. Instead of sandy beaches, waving fields of tall grain, moving images of lucrative spice harvesting, happy children swinging on schoolyard playground equipment, bright and shiny urban centers with lighted spires reaching for the heavens, instead of those comforting scenes, on the wall behind the lectern was a split screen holo-vid of Malguurian ships being ripped by energy weapons from an invading fleet of human battle cruisers. The retreating Malguur Fleet seemed to jump off the screen when the ships ran right toward the audience in their silent retreat. On the other screen was a ground-level view of the planet Brauude, focused on one of its major cities, twinkling buildings and high-speed transportation tubes lit like so much neon.

  The chamber quieted as the rumble from the left screen rose in intensity. When Phatie was centered at the podium the whole screen seemed to explode in a searing blue-white blast of light and noise. After the initial flare subsided, the screen was filled with an angry orange and green mushroom cloud, black smoke around its edges, sparks of lightning crackling beneath the human-made storm of death and destruction. The rumbling explosion notched toward the painful as the rolling thunder blasted out of hidden speakers around the room. Finally, as the concussion wave hit the location of the camera and the picture dissolved in a tremendous boom Bale Phatie spoke for the first time.

  “That,” he shouted, pointing back over his shoulder, “used to be Brauude! Used to be home to over a billion citizens of the Malguur Domain. Now it is a ball of radioactive ash and pain. The city of Iheeruuie ceased to exist. In the blink of an eye the humans destroyed almost 300,000 souls, some killed by just the brightness of the light from their weapons. Another 100,000 citizens died within the next few hours from the firestorms unleashed by that explosion. Do you think that was enough? Do you think they had any compassion at all?

  “Hell, NO!” he yelled, jabbing his finger back toward the screen. Images of Hyfuur and Nuurhe filled the screen in a similar fashion. Angry red-orange fireballs lighting up a night sky; high-angled images of an atomic weapon being unleashed on a bustling city, the concussion waves rippling out, destroying or burning everything in their path.

  Colonel Inskaap had seen enough. He quietly exited the auditorium through one of the rear doors, leaving over four hundred senators gasping for breath. They hated to be reminded of the total failure of their brief war with the humans. He knew that Phatie’s only purpose here today was to remind them of nothing else. As he reached the outer doors he could hear another explosion coming from the A/V system behind him. He had seen enough to let him know that Phatie was following the script Inskaap had secretly seen beforehand.

  “Well, my friends, there is your answer. People are still dying from that war, suffering from horrible radiation burns and cancers caused by those blasts. The Malguurians killed instantly were the lucky ones. The ones vaporized on the spot, over one billion souls, are now with the One Who Casts No Shadow. For those of us left behind, we owe it to our brave citizens to avenge this act of barbarism perpetrated on the Domain by the humans. It’s been ten years since these films were made. It’s been ten years since the majority of Malguurians have been able to walk the streets of our cities without looking up at every passing bird or loose kid’s balloon. Most of our citizens refuse to fly in commercial aircraft since the war. Many have refused to pay their allotted taxes. They’ve ‘dropped out’ and now represent a repressed sector of our populace, a sector I propose to resurrect. The only thing that will restore our dignity as a people is a strike at our oppressors.

  “You have my budget figures on your screens. The only way we will be able to sustain our Armies and Navies is with your cooperation. Your votes on this budget. How do we manage the increases? By returning the disaffected Malguurians to productive members of our society. I want to recruit them for a variety of jobs, gentlemen. The healthy ones will be conscripted into one of the armed forces. The infirm will be nursed back to health and given administrative jobs in your local governments. The increased manpower helps us two ways: first, it will give me the necessary manpower to strike back at the humans. Secondly, it will give you a horde of cheap labor and a chance to rebuild cities and industries compromised during the war. All civilian enterprises would benefit from the increased tax revenues generated by the extra workers. Your districts would benefit in the form of increased farm production or increased factory output. More income for less payroll. A win-win situation.

  “I know there are some here that decry this thrust of mine. I can understand that some of you are dissatisfied with the latest rounds of purges. All necessary. We have been quiescent too long, we have allowed our society to become complacent. The time for fear is past, my fellow Malguurians. The time to stop looking at the past and start looking to our future is at hand.” Phatie paused and surveyed the audience. He spotted one senator that had fallen asleep during his oratory. He looked off stage and motioned to two of his junior officers. They approached the dais and he motioned to the chamber and whispered instructions. The men left the stage and proceeded to the floor. Phatie resumed h
is dithyrambic. “Just as some of us are asleep at the switch, letting the moment pass us by, there are some that would argue that we have slept TOO LONG!”

  The two soldiers dragged the sleeping senator to his feet and out of the chamber.

  “Just as Riishuud Denaar elected to sleep through my presentation, I submit that there are those among you who have been sleeping for the last ten years!”

  Two muffled shots rang out from one of the side chambers. Several of the councilmen rose from their padded seats and looked around. Phatie had all of their rapt attention now.

  “You have given me this enormous responsibility and I take my duties seriously. I will tolerate no more passivity from this body. You sleep at your own peril. You hazard our civilization at your own peril. You vote against this Budget Measure and my Declaration of War at your own peril. The people are behind me, the businesses are behind me, the military is behind me. Now it is your turn to do the right thing. Now it is your turn to fight the tide of apathy that has slowly been eroding our moral shores. Do something to help me restore the pride of the race, the pride of the Domain. Give me what I have asked you for and I will deliver us all. I make that solemn pledge to you today, in front of my brethren, and my Deliverer, while stripped of my personal pride yet ashamed of nothing. I do this for Malguur. I do this for you.”

  He walked a few paces to either side of the dais. He was wearing his best formal uniform, complete with his ceremonial sword. His full sash of medals and decorations and chains tinkled lightly with each footfall. When he returned to the center of the podium he said, “The time to strike is now. I have it on good authority that the humans will be reducing the number of ships they have in our space. That is a significant fact, gentlemen. There will never come another opportunity as ripe as this low-hanging fruit. We pick it now, we can eat it later when the fruit is at the height of its delicious appeal. If we do not pick it now, it will rot on the vine.”