I Stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still:
When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead.
And my slow heart said, 'You must kill, you must kill:
'Soldier, soldier, morning is red'.
On the shapes of the slain in their crumpled disgrace
I stared for a while through the thin cold rain...
'O lad that I loved, there is rain on your face,
'And your eyes are blurred and sick like the plain.'
I stood with the Dead ... They were dead; they were dead;
My heart and my head beat a march of dismay:
And gusts of the wind came dulled by the guns.
'Fall in!' I shouted; 'Fall in for your pay!'
Siegfried Sassoon
Fall In Company
By: Davy Jones Locker
Three scout Marauders limped back under the belly of the drifting fleets command carrier, flashing a brief homecoming signal to the prowler patrol that flew over head in salute. The pliesar portion of the Peacekeepr fleet drifted, seemingly dead in space. No nearby suns shone light across their hulls, or clouds of glowing gas swirled up in their wake. If not for the string of red lights glowing along the sides of the command carriers, and eradicators and cargo liners, it would have seemed like empty space to the naked eye. Only a few floating black shapes crossed the star view now and then. Pleisar fleet was in hiding.
Captain Miklo Braca stood bent over the main table in command, star charts spread out before him and the light from the table coming up from below gave his face a hollow look. Reaching out for a marker he made a position note on one of the charts and held it up to his eye, the open window of command showing through the clear parts of the flimsy barely registered through his hard focus on the course lines at hand.
It had been four monens since the little known disaster at Katratzi, since the Scarrens had openly declared war and swarmed across their borders, four monens since the squabbling panic of the diplomats had faded and the directive came down from high command. Retaliate at all costs. That had been their last order. With the view of his commander on considerably less than positive terms they had not been assigned to part of the main fleet heading off the Scarrans forces. Instead their sub-fleet had been hastily assembled with only the weight of his impeccable record allowing them to assign the good soldiers they needed, mostly Special Forces units, and they were sent to patrol the uncharted territories. The assumption of high command was that when war broke the lawless, criminal underbelly of the galaxy would surge up and become a chaotic and dangerous variable. Their assignment was to enforce order, and if possible snag some treaties from previously neutral colonies when they "saved" them from the outlaws and criminals that high command thought would be problematic.
It was a stupid misuse of talent, Braca mused with a sneer. But Scorpius had docile taken the assignment, later explaining in Braca's ward-room that he would choose to be no where else, and the with high command now focused on protecting their own space and their attention away from the territories they'd been trying to conquer, this became their weak spot. Scorpius was convinced that while the main part of their fleets was spread around their own space, the Scarrans would slip in behind them through The Uncharteds, and Scorpius wanted to be there when they did.
A solemn lieutenant came up beside him and handed him another flimsy, he took it with out a word and motioned her away with a jerk of his head. The newest communiqué from their fellow sub-fleets. He slammed the flimsy onto the growing wild array on the table and gritted his teeth. Bad news, what a surprise. The Uncharteds had indeed degenerated into chaos, but not the way high command had expected.
The Scarrans were better equipped than they had feared, they had more then enough Dreadnaughts to send against the main peacekeeper forces and still spare a few to terrorize the uncharted territories. To the unskilled eye, for no more reason than to spite the peace keepers of the prize territories they'd coveted for so long, but beneath the chaos of besieged worlds, he could see a subtle strategy of troop placement. Just as Scorpius had expected. He had likened to it a game called Chess, though Braca had never heard of it.
The criminals high command had expected to riot, had gone into hiding. The wanted beacons were turned off or ignored on the outposts they marched through. Space trade routes had all but shut down under the barrage of Scarran and peace-keeper cross fire, or by the pirating from either side. Entire worlds were becoming isolated as space flight became too dangerous an undertaking for the common criminal merchant. Only the most dangerous outlaws were still pirating marauders or other private ships with weak defenses. They had been sent two other sub fleets to aid them in the mounting aggressions and it still was not enough. It was war, in every sense of the word, what Peacekeepers were bred for, and yet…
"Sir?" a steady voice questioned just ahead. Braca, shifted his focus through the marks on the flimsy he held to the commander beyond it, his stern face framed by symbols. He pulled the plasti away and slapped it back down to the table.
"You have something to report commander?" he barked, still marking the down notes with his stylus.
"Yes. Sir, I think you'll want to see this." Braca looked up at the unusually vague response, eyebrows drawing together in the start of a frown. He dropped his implements on the table and straightened up, zipping his collar which had come undone from all the stressful tugging at his hem. Damn their limited resources he thought and followed the commander down onto the main floor of the bridge. He stopped outside the main view port watching the parade of ships under their prow,
Outside a squadron of prowlers escorted the long golden shape of a leviathan in under the wings of his fleet. The prowlers flew around it like a flock scwee-idge birds and beneath their ranks he could see the trailing echoes of flame and smoke drift off her hull, and the darkened patches of burnt metal that were left behind along with several hull breaches and scars tearing up her sides. Several long harpoons stuck out of her forward prow like horns and she listed dangerously to her Hammond side as the prowlers herded her forward and flew out of reach when the damaged ship over compensated, then started to list again.
"Frell," Braca whispered to himself, shocked, as if by the appearance of some monster he did not wish to startle; and his hands tightened into fists behind his back as he watched the wounded ship drag itself toward the carrier.
"Bring it aboard." He barked out, spinning on his heel and pointing at his crew. "You, and You, call up the companies Elta and Beisor, have them secure docking on level 5 and lock it in, use an immobilizer if you must. Recall the prowler squads as soon as it's secured and comm. The entire fleet to ready mobilization. I want us out of here in ten microts!"
"Ten microts? But sir, the techs haven't even pulled the calculations…"
Braca strode over to the officer and backhanded him across the mouth before he could finish. The youngster snapped to attention and stood eyes forward as Braca stated in a cold voice loud enough to carry for the entire bridge.
"We are at a random point in dead space lieutenant. For our coordinates to have gone far enough for a rogue leviathan full of outlaws to discover it, it probably reached the Scarrans several solar days ago, at least. Now if you don't want to die in your sleep, you will move this fleet! Am I clear?"
"Yes sir!" the soldier choked along with the hearty reply of the rest of the bridge, and rushed out the clam doors of command.
"Commander," Braca turned to his second in command and in a low voice ordered, "Comm Scorpius to the bridge." The two shared a look of exhausted acceptance, worry and irony, and the commander nodded with a whisper,
"Yes, sir."