Seeing the Elephant, Chapter Ten
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: This belongs to Henson and Co or to David Drake. Rating: K Time: The future.
Author's note: This is a crossover between the universes of Farscape and Hammer's Slammers. Seeing the Elephant was an American Civil War term for seeing combat.
Previously on Farscape...
John, Aeryn, D'Argo, Chiana and Jool have been shot into another reality where they learn much about others and themselves. Now all they have to do is get back home. Have they tried clicking their heels together and saying, "There's no place like home"?
And now on Farscape...
The human's war ended before it began as it turned out. A naval task force from the Greater Albegnesian Free Trade Area arrived and announced that a compromise solution had been arrived at and that most of the mercenaries would be leaving. In a few days, merchant ships began arriving to take the mercenaries and their equipment away. Chiana was able to get us a close up look at the human warships.
"Wanna go up and look at the human ships?" Chiana asked, breezing into our quarters in the K'hiff town. Luckily we were still dressed, but John quickly slid has hand out from under my vest. I would have a little chat with Chiana about privacy.
"Snurch a ship, Pip?" John grinned at her and she grinned back.
"Talked a pilot into taking us up if we can get there in a hurry." Chiana turned to face the house she shared with D'Argo and raised her voice. "A good looking human pilot. He's probably rich, too."
I heard a strange noise coming from the direction of their house. Chiana grinned and raised her voice again. "Unfortunately, I'm just a stupid Nebari trelk who can't do anything but frell a man to get by in this Universe."
There was that sound again. Definitely the sound of a Luxan going into a hyper-rage. I grabbed John's hand and pulled him towards the door. "Time to go."
Chiana turned to shout at D'Argo one more time, but I got a hand over her mouth just in time. "Chiana, we do not need to pick up after a hyper-raging Luxan, so you can just stop."
She looked like she was going to start an argument, but John weighed in on my side. "Damned straight, Pip. We have enough problems without D'Argo going all kamikaze on us."
Chiana walked a little way on, "He thinks I'm dumb. He thinks all I can do is frell and snurch. He just pisses me off."
I kept my mouth closed since I had a similar opinion of Chiana's talents. Not that they weren't useful for a group of escaping prisoners, and I had no problems with how she got through life. D'Argo did.
"Well, at least our ride's here." Chiana announced proudly as a K'hiff jeep screamed to a halt in front of her and a K'hiff leapt out and bowed low to her. "Lady Chiana. We are ready to go. I hope this is proper transportation for you?"
Chiana nodded slightly. "It's fine, Goneck. Please thank the clan elders for me."
"Our pleasure and duty, Lady Chiana." He replied.
When we got in, John pulled me close to him. "We'd better be nice to Lady Chiana, she'll probably end up owning the Universe."
Chiana giggled. "I do know a few little technological tricks that the locals found useful."
"You're not dealing with the local wiseguys, are you, Pip?" John asked her, but Chiana just told us that it was her business.
The human pilot wasn't handsome by any standards I knew of, and I was sure he wasn't rich. Pilot Bandaranaike was an overweight human who could barely fit into his pilot's seat and who seemed fixated on food. Even his descriptions of the ships we passed once we achieved orbit were about food.
"That's the Jalapa over there." He said, pointing to a teardrop shaped vessel a hundred or so metras away. "Horrible food. I couldn't possibly serve on her."
John nodded. "Inedible food and they won't give you seconds, I bet." He said sympathetically. While I ran that through my mind, trying to make sense out of it, the pilot just nodded. "Too, right."
We did manage to get some useful information out of him about the ships we were passing. Human transports were almost invariably unarmed. Now that could be useful information.
"That's the Tannenberg. " the pilot said. "The warship you're interested in."
I checked out the rather simple minded readouts that were all that the shuttle could provide. Other than some information on the size of the ship, I could tell nothing.
"Can you get in closer?" I asked.
"Yeah. We're going to dock on it."
"They let you dock on a warship?"
Bandaranaike nodded. "Can't get their mail otherwise."
"Mail?" Humans were just too confusing. "Wouldn't it make more sense to broadcast any information that was needed up and store it in a database?"
"Most stuff is." Bandaranaike jerked his thumb towards a collection of cases behind us. "But sometimes original documents have to go. Legal stuff and things like treaties."
We landed on a landing stage on Tannenberg. For once the humans showed good sense and had sentries posted to keep unauthorized visitors like us out. But the pilot was able to give me a little information. The ship was a class called a Fregaten and the six escorts were Monitors. The Tannenberg was the equivalent of a Peacekeeper escort cruiser, but was slightly smaller. On the other hand, it was about twenty percent faster and was armed with long range missiles as its main weapon instead of frag cannons. John unnecessarily pointed out that in a fight the human warship could stay out of range and blast its opponent with missiles equipped with detonation lasers while the Peacekeeper ship couldn't get close enough to reply.
Back on the planet we found D'Argo had left his quarters with some humans. Worse yet, he seemed to have headed for Lo'La with his new friends. We arrived at Lo'La in the middle of a huge argument.
"No, David. Fifth dimensional trigonometry is not necessary to reset Lo'La's navigation database."
"I'm not sayin' it is, Cap'n D'Argo, but if ye'd consider the possibility?" Said a lanky, sandy-haired human standing in Lo'La's passenger compartment. A dozen humans around him nodded and mumbled and muttered among themselves.
"Lo'La is an ancient Luxan warship, David. Fifth dimensional trigonometry is necessary only for..." D'Argo stopped and waved us over. "John Crichton is a human scientist. He can explain it all to you."
With that, the dozen humans started bombarding John with questions and suggestions about getting Lo'La into space again. John lasted about three microns and then eased his way out of the crowd of humans who were by now all talking and gesticulating at once.
"Damn! And I thought wormholes were tough. I have no idea what those guys are talking about. "One more reason to get out of Dodge." I was all for that and slipped my arm around John's waist and put my head on his shoulder.
"Does anyone know why D'Argo thinks we can just waltz out of here?" John asked.
Chiana grinned at us both. "Because we can."
"Just like that?" I asked, a little suspiciously.
"Sure." Chiana replied. "It's all politics, once the humans found out that the Peacekeepers were a bunch of dream buffs in combat." John started to say something, but I silenced him with a look. Chiana went on. "First you have to understand the way politics works around here. I wish Ryg were here. He'd be better at this than me. But let's start with Earth and its colonies and allies. Then there are the Outer Powers. There are seven of them. The first is…"
"Pip, could we just cut to the chase?" John asked.
Chiana looked questioningly at John, so I helped out. "John means can you just tell us the important things now?"
"I knew that." Chiana smoothly lied.
"Yeah, honey. Pip knew what I meant." I refrained from pantac jabbing my dear husband.
Chiana took a few microts to put her thoughts in order. Or to decide how much of the truth she was going to tell. "Well, Pancahate and the Greater Albegnesian Free Trade Area are big powers locally, but this is the frontier of human explored space. They're both small tomatoes compared to the really bag boys. But, Pancahate pissed off one of the stronger factions of the Panseatic League, who provided the money for the mercenary units that deployed to this planet. The Albegnesians could have afforded maybe one of the regiments sent here, but never the ten or so that ended up here. So now Pancahate is an object lesson not to piss off the bag boys, and the mercenaries are headed back to the really important wars on really important planets and everybody is forgetting all about this insignificant border planet."
"And it's odd aliens and Anomaly?" John grinned.
"Not exactly." Chiana countered. "The human warship that was here sent some powered down drones past our friendly local ship-eating planet. Their best guess, emphasize guess, is that the planet is mostly a machine run by a quantum singularity. Naturally, they were scared drenless about being next to one."
"Anyone who isn't frightened of a tame black hole doesn't understand the situation." I remarked dryly. I remembered our experience with one.
"I hope humans are smart enough to stay scared of the damned thing." John said quietly. The three of us sat thinking about that remark.
D'Argo's human friends had Lo' La up and ready to try to fly back to our own Universe and time in another ten days. As D'Argo said, it took the humans three arns to talk about doing something and an arn to do it. I noticed the humans all paid close attention to Lo'La's stealth mode. Very close attention.
But, soon enough, we found ourselves heading towards the Anomaly with Lo'La's engines off. I left my station and moved onto John's lap.
"I love Aeryn Sun beyond hope." He whispered in my ear.
"And I love John Crichton beyond hope." I leaned into him and gave him a kiss that would last us if this was to be our last kiss. I just hoped the frelling Anomaly would cooperate. In the middle of the kiss, I saw a searing white light, even though my eyes were closed, and passed out.
"You are one hell of a kisser, lady." I heard from a distance. I just smiled and we started checking ourselves out. We seemed to be fine. Then I knew we were fine.
"Captain D'Argo, is that you? Where have you been?" A familiar voice said over the comm.
"It's us, Pilot. We're all here and all fine." D'Argo responded quietly.
"There's some one here who wants to talk to John and Aeryn." Pilot began.
John and I exchanged grins, wondering how the children had managed without us.
"Crichton? Sun? I am never going to babysit children again. Rygel hasn't been seen since you left and Scorpius has locked himself into his cell. And what's more..." We didn't hear the rest of Sikozu's tirade due to all the laughter.
Late in Moya's night, John found me sitting on our bed, cleaning my human powergun. The armor and helmet were neatly hung on a rack I'd had the DRDs make for me.
"The kids are asleep, Honey." I nodded to John.
"Glad to be home?" I nodded again.
"Gonna tell me what I did wrong?"
I put the rifle down and turned to face John. "You have done nothing wrong."
I got a grin from him. "So, how come you haven't said three words to me all day?"
I reached over and grabbed his belt and pulled him down onto the bed. Before could say anything, I gave him a long, slow kiss. When the kiss ended we stared into each other's eyes. "I love how you try to change the subject, Honey."
I suppressed a laugh and lay my head on his chest. "Humans are just so frelling confusing. Just when you think you have them figured out, they surprise you."
"The ones you just met are from a thousand years or so from now. They're not like humans we saw when I took you back to Earth."
I snuggled up against John. "I think they are. Confronted with tens of thousands of Peacekeepers that would not surrender, they simply annihilated them. Humans are more warlike, more violent, more ruthless, more capable of organizing and controlling violence than I had thought possible."
John thought about that for a while. "I told you about humans. The world wars. The Holocaust. The killing fields. Vietnam, the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa, South America. The whole nine yards."
"I know, John. But I somehow always thought of humans in terms of you. When you first came here, you wouldn't even carry a weapon. You always wanted to try to talk your way out of things. As if you could talk sense to a Sheyang or a Luxan! Over the years you've changed. You haven't totally lost that desire to solve problems peacefully, but you can be very efficiently brutal if you think you have to."
"I'll agree I have changed, but why does that confuse you? You know the Uncharted Territories. If I hadn't changed we'd probably all be long dead by now."
"I thought we'd changed you." I stopped and waited for a microt and then continued. "I thought I had corrupted you. I thought I had changed a peaceful human into a killer. I felt guilty."
John gave me a hug and silently stroked my hair. "And now you know better. Human beings can be made into killers very easily. No lovely lady ex-Peacekeepers needed. We humans can do it all by ourselves."
I nodded.
"And you're confused."
I nodded again.
"I think what you need is someone to spend the rest of his life teaching you about humans."
I smiled. "No offense, human, but what could I possibly need from you?
"How to make love, not war?"
EPILOGUE
Edmund Burke O'Donnell stood by the floor to ceiling window and looked out on the city below him. A one hundred story office tower was nothing to brag about on most worlds, but this was K'hiff, and it was not most worlds.
O'Donnell let his gaze stray to the area across the river to the open prairie beyond the city. Not many days ago his troops with all of their fearsome weapons; tanks, artillery, assault guns, calliopes, missiles and powerguns; all of their supplies; all of their flags and banners, all of their bands, songs, poems, and their bawdy stories; yes, and their women, and men and even children, had all been camped there. Now only a few roads slashed through the prairie, and scraps of blowing trash marked their camp.
K'hiff had changed in the twenty years since he'd last been here. Thursday's Landing had been a cluster of wooden native huts and handful of prefabricated off-world buildings sited at a convenient inlet in the Ocean of the Gods. Now it boasted, on a much smaller scale, the same amenities that existed throughout the galaxy. Whether that was for good or ill, O'Donnell hadn't decided.
President Azzule had prospered in the last twenty years. An agreement with the best mercenary regiment among the stars had provided him with more than the taxes paid for each soldier enlisted in Hammer's Light Infantry and more than the funds remitted by soldiers serving off world to their clans back on K'hiff. President Azzule had acquired an off-world protector that few would wish to antagonize. When Colonel Alois Hammer became President Alois Hammer, no one wished to dispute with the old throat biter.
The Light Infantry had provided a steady stream of demobilized soldiers coming home to apply their hard won skill as soldiers, and other trades, to better their world. A few humans had joined the K'hiff as well. Not all who had returned had wished to put their skills at President Azzule's disposal, but enough had done so to make Azzule the power on this planet. Those parts of the planet not directly controlled by Azzule were ruled by K'hiff who knew that they kept their positions and heads by the grace of Azzule's veteran divisions.
Azzule had played off the traders who came to his world against each other. In the end, K'hiff became an Associate Member of the Greater Albegnesian Free Trade Area. If this was little better than planetary sized sweat-shop, it was vastly better than being a Trusted Ally or Loyal Friend of the Albegnesians.
If Azzule's luck held, K'hiff would one day be an independent world in fact as well as in theory.
Not only Azzule had grown richer and more powerful, O'Donnell thought. He himself had come to K'hiff as a mercenary soldier and had left as the commander of his own mercenary company, if a force of less than one hundred could be dignified with such a name. His first job had been a learning experience, as he always said.
His second had been a disaster that had ended in defeat and betrayal and almost left them all dead. Dumb luck, a force never to be discounted, had led him and his surviving troops to a crashed transport loaded with tanks fresh from the factories of Earth.
A tank company, especially one equipped with the best tanks in the Universe, was a power to be reckoned with on the Frontier. Few planets on the Frontier could afford more than a poorly equipped part time militia. When they needed soldiers, and they usually did, they hired mercenaries. The mercenaries were usually only moderately better armed than local forces, but they had the advantage of being professionals, with all the advantages of better training and leadership that that implied. But still, most Frontier mercenaries were light infantry units, short on artillery and anti-armor assets. Hiring O'Donnell's Tanks practically assured victory.
As he had grown stronger and richer, O'Donnell had moved inwards from the Frontier to fight for wealthier planets. The Fezzan Civil War and the sack of Al Qua'rho had seen his company expand to an all arms battalion.
Unknown to O'Donnell, and to the rest of the Universe, what would come to be called the Consolidation Wars had already begun. Colonel O'Donnell led his battalion into those wars. The peace that had been finally established only a year before had seen him rise to the command of Marshall O'Donnell's Corps, one of the most powerful mercenary units in the Universe.
If O'Donnell had prospered, so had others. When he had begun his career, a nation that encompassed a dozen or so worlds was consider a hyper power. But the logic of politics and war was for ever larger nations. Planets that held separate independent nations warred until one was supreme. That planetary government then faced neighboring stellar nations composed of many planets. As always, the larger and richer dominated and absorbed the smaller and poorer.
Now, a handful of men and women ruled over a small number of huge, powerful, but war weary interstellar nations. They badly needed peace. What they didn't need was the huge oversupply of soldiers that had grown ever larger over the years. Mercenaries with no homes to return to now that peace had broken out. Mercenaries with no skills other than war to sell to a prospective employer. Mercenaries who had no desire for any other way of life. Mercenaries like Edmund Burke O'Donnell.
As powerful a unit as O'Donnell's Corps was, it paled in comparison to the armies that nations encompassing hundreds of planets could field. So, when the great powers had decided that private armies had to either disband willingly or be disbanded by force, O'Donnell realized he had few options. Leading his unit into a suicidal battle was no option, but neither was sending the men and women who had followed him off to beg on street corners around the galaxy. For that matter, who would hire a former mercenary leader? There was, as a man he had met years ago said, always another option.
"Sir, the transport is ready. All the troops are in the transports in orbit and the warships of the escort are ready." Came a voice from the doorway of his suite.
O'Donnell smiled as he turned to his chief of staff. Everyone talked of O'Donnell's daring and brilliant armored operations. Few realized the debt he owed to his chief of staff, who handled training, logistics and all of the myriad tasks that allowed O'Donnell to focus on defeating the enemy before him without worrying about everything that was happening behind him.
He walked over and gently squeezed his chief of staff's bottom.
"You should not do that, sir. Someone will see." Her voice was stern, but there was the usual mischief in her gray-blue eyes.
"You always manage to see to it that no one does see, Aida." O'Donnell teased. "I'm beginning to think you like it."
Aida Borzon O'Donnell gave her husband a quick kiss. "For a brilliant field commander, you miss some of the most obvious things. I've loved it. And I've loved it for years." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "As I have loved you."
O'Donnell stroked his wife's long, black hair. "You are as beautiful as the day I first saw you."
"And if you want me to stay alive, let alone beautiful, we need to leave here before our enemies arrive."
O'Donnell gave Aida another quick kiss. Then he returned to being all business. "The scout that came in from Hessaline said their fleet was still in orbit, with no signs of leaving. They're in no hurry. They want us to disappear through that Anomaly and become someone else's problem."
Aida took Eddie's arm and led him to the door. "According to the latest intel reports from the other side, we should be a problem to what's left over there."
"I wonder what they are doing over there?" Marshall O'Donnell mused.
Lieutenant General Aida Borzon O'Donnell made no reply. But as they approached the Marshall's personal staff drawn up outside his suite, she did pinch his bottom.
THE END