Seeing the Elephant, Chapter Six
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 and Aeryn have been assigned to a small human mercenary cavalry unit that has sub-contracted it's services to Hammer's Slammers. Ever wonder what fast moving 30th century armored combat would be like? No, me either.
And now on Farscape...
N'Demi headed us back the way we had come. She seemed to know where the vehicle we were looking for was. Suddenly, we swung around and stopped behind another kind of vehicle. It was marked with the human numbers 45 in red.
"That's a combat car, Officer Crichton." The vehicle N'Demi pointed to was about the size of the tank we had left, except that it had no turret. Only a single tri-barrel like the jeeps carried, but with an armored shield on it, was mounted at the front of an open compartment. At the edges of the vehicle were four metal poles that held some sort of metal mesh above the compartment. I could see one soldier standing behind the powergun and another moving inside the vehicle's rear.
N'Demi turned around to talk to John and me. "We use a combat car that's enclosed for a command vehicle. Rolley's cav just takes a regular combat car and takes out the two side mounted tri-barrels and puts in commo and intel workstations. Oh, the mesh on top is a beryllium mesh. The powerguns and calliopes will keep the big shit from dropping on you, the mesh will keep fragments from messin' you up. Just keep your damned head under it. You see that line of square thingys mounted all around the perimeter of the combat car?" John and I both nodded. "Those are directional mines. Used for killing infantry that gets close or knocking down buzz bombs aimed at the car."
The sergeant tapped our helmets lightly. "You're in the database as friendlies and the IFF should keep the damned things from shooting at you, but things go wrong in battles."
"No shit." John muttered.
"Just stay in the combat car and away from those things, okay?" We both nodded to N'Demi and jumped out of the jeep. As we landed on the ground, a face leaned over the side of the combat car. "Climb up. We're moving."
John boosted me up and once on the vehicle, I pulled him up. "I'm Marbot." Said the owner of the face that had called to us. He was different from Rolley. He was short and about as broad as he was tall. I couldn't tell what color his hair was, since he had shaved his head.
Bolted to the inside bulkhead of the combat car were four workstations of some sort, each with a human seated at it, facing outward, leaving a small aisle down the middle of the car. The car lifted on its pillars of air and took off with a roar. Marbot yelled at us and pointed to his head. "I don't wear a helmet so I can concentrate on the four stations. I usually keep one rifleman in back to cover anything the tri-barrel gunner can't see. Try not to let anything back there kill me, okay?" We nodded.
"Incoming spacecraft at 186 local, angels 214, number one four." The voice was that of a computer, I was sure, coming through my helmet. "Warning for Naseby Seven. Repeat. Warning for Naseby Seven."
"Shit!" Marbot yelled. "We're Naseby Seven. We should be okay, but hold on."
I scanned the skies. I had no idea what the numbers meant. Suddenly, I saw a number of specks headed for right for us. I yelled to John. "They'll be here in microts."
From somewhere behind us there came a continuous line of bright green powergun bursts against the sky. "I think that might be a calliope." John shouted in my ear. If the human two centimeter powergun I was now carrying was more powerful than my old Peacekeeper pulse rifle, how would Prowlers or Marauders fare against a calliope? I soon had an answer. They fared poorly. I counted fourteen explosions far above us.
"Were we attacked by fourteen spacecraft?" I yelled at Marbot. He nodded. "You got them all."
Marbot checked leaned over to check one of his screens. "Yeah, we did. You've got damned good eyesight." He stopped and looked at another screen. "Damn. We missed one. It's damned near right on top of us."
I looked up just in time to see a Prowler roar over us at no more than a few dozen metras. The pilot was obviously having trouble controlling it and smoke poured from the engine. Almost simultaneously, the pilot ejected and the Prowler smashed into the planet.
Marbot yelled back to John and me. "Was that the pilot ejecting, or some kind of weapon?"
I yelled back, "The pilot. From the looks of it, he got out all right." Marbot nodded and bent over one of the workstations and talked to its operator. Then he turned back to me. "I sent the infantry back after him. I told them to hog-tie the bastard and bring him here. See if he'll talk, will you?"
John and I nodded and turned to stare behind us. In a few microns, we saw a jeep headed for us with a black-clad pilot wedged in the back seat. Marbot slowed the command car down and the jeep crew handed the prisoner up like a sack of majouls. John grabbed his torso and I had his feet. Suddenly John let go and our prisoner fell to the deck of the command car.
"What is it?" I yelled. "Did he do something to you?"
John grinned. "No, Aeryn. "He" has boobs."
Before I could scream a warning, the prisoner gathered her legs under her and lashed out at John, slamming him back. He almost went over the back of the vehicle before he managed to steady himself against one of the poles holding the mesh over us. She braced her back against the bulkhead of the car and used her legs to lever herself up. I smiled to myself. The infantry had obviously tied her hands behind her and she had nothing to fight with but her feet.
She tried a kick to my throat which I blocked and then caught her ankle. I stepped forward, pushing her ankle toward the back of her head. I hoped I tore her frelling leg off for having hit John. Once I got in range, I used my other hand to slam her helmeted head repeatedly against a pole and then punched her in the stomach a few times, for good measure. While she was occupied throwing up inside her helmet, I spun her around. Instead of a rope, the infantry had used some sort of plastic manacles to secure her. "How do you get these off?" I yelled to Marbot.
Marbot reached into a box and pulled out another set of the manacles and produced a knife. As soon as he was sure John had the prisoner covered with his rifle, Marbot cut the old manacles away. Worse luck, she was tall enough for her hands to go easily over the crossbar holding the mesh above us. I would have enjoyed having her hang from the overhead frame until her arms pulled out of their sockets. I put the new set of manacles on her and stood back to enjoy my handiwork. She hung there with her arms above her head, her feet just touching the floor. I reached over and pulled her helmet of and threw it over the side. As I threw it, I could hear John's gasp. Frell! Before me was a black haired, blue-gray eyed Prowler pilot with her hair in a typical Peacekeeper braid.
"She could be a cousin, maybe even a sister, Aeryn."
She could be. I wondered if my mother or father had bred any children other than me. I'd never know, of course. "She's a frelling Peacekeeper and no family of mine."
"Frelling traitor!" She spat at me.
I briefly considered seeing how hard her head actually was, then remembered our human hosts had a liking for taking prisoners. I pulled the zipper of her flight suit down and then took a great deal of satisfaction in cutting it off of her. I pulled her boots off and used another of the manacles on her ankles. She wore a standard pair of black cloth trousers and a gray tee shirt under her flight suit. Frell! She had even dressed as I had that day so long ago.
When I was done, I wrapped her hair in my fingers and yanked her head towards John and me. "Listen, bitch, " I used the human word, but I was sure she knew what I meant, "if capture is the worst humiliation you can imagine, maybe you'll get lucky and some Peacekeeper will see you making such a fine target of yourself and fry your frelling brains. But I suspect what will happen is that the humans will kick the dren out of the Peacekeepers just like they destroyed your squadron."
"The humans did not destroy my squadron! I had technical problems and crashed. I'm sure the rest made it back into orbit."
I just laughed. "What's your name?"
She glared at me. "I don't talk to traitors."
I was about to try her head against the pole again when John spoke. "Naturally, she doesn't want anyone to know her name. She knows damned well that her whole squadron was nailed by a bunch of humans. She herself has been made a prisoner, not just by humans, but by a traitor. She doesn't want anyone to know what a monumental cluster frell she's made out of this." John laughed nastily. "We could put a paper bag over her head and call her the Unknown Prowler Pilot."
"I am Officer Aida Borzon. And I may die here, but at least I'll have the pleasure of watching these animals learn what real warriors are capable of. " Then she turned to watch the battle ahead of us.
I looked around too, to see how the battle was going. From my helmet's feed, I could tell that we were over-running small groups of Peacekeepers who had been milling around, trying to decide what to do next.
Overhead I could hear the high pitched whine of artillery and mortars. Ahead of us I could see puffs of dirty smoke that marked their landing. I tried to remember what N'Demi had told me about artillery. Most of what they would use were "firecrackers", large shells containing an explosive. When it exploded, it sent shards of metal out in all directions. The other shells were called "popcorn". Popcorn were tiny explosives about the size of the delicacy Rygel had loved on Earth that were expelled from the carrier shell a good metra or so above the enemy. Hundreds would fall, blanketing an area several hundred metras on a side. They were so small that you almost had to have a direct hit to injure anyone, but there were so many that someone would certainly be directly under one.
Ahead of us, I saw a group of a dozen or more black-clad forms sprawled on the ground. One wounded Commando levered himself up as we approached and got a burst from our tri-barrel gunner for his effort. I noticed our prisoner's eyes followed the slashed and burned bodies of the Peacekeepers as we passed.
To our left front, a dozen Peacekeepers boiled up out of a trench and ran toward a combat car to our right, firing as they ran. The combat car had a tri-barrel mounted in front, as our command car did, but in place of the workstations the combat car had a tri-barrel mounted on each side of the vehicle. I could see pulse weapon fire striking the armor of the car and then the tri-barrels opened up. The Peacekeepers were torn apart. All that was left after a few microts were some carbonized pieces of flesh and some weapon's parts.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw brighter flashes of green. In a microt Lieutenant Marbot confirmed my guess.
"Officer Crichton? The tanks found something to use their main gun on. Take a look at it on the left. We'll be on it in a couple of seconds."
"It" turned out to be a ten-wheeled cargo transport. Facing human combat vehicles for the first time, someone in the Peacekeepers had desperately tried to improvise. Welded to the sides of the boxy transport were armor panels from a Prowler. It also mounted a dozen or so heavy assault rifles on pintles along its sides. The armor hadn't stopped the 10 cm powergun blasts and it didn't look like the assault rifles had done much damage. I couldn't see anything that looked like it might have been the remains of the crew.
I turned back to Marbot who was looking at me expectantly. "That was a transport vehicle with armor and weapons added. The Peacekeepers don't have anything remotely like your vehicles." Marbot smiled wolfishly and leaned over one of the workstations, giving the operator some instructions.
The cavalry troop continued to grind its way across the open prairie, blasting any opposition into nothingness. I glanced at our prisoner. She was sagging against the manacle holding her up. I lifted her head up with a jerk. "The real warriors don't seem to be teaching the humans very much today. Perhaps you should be considering your future." Where the frell that last sentence came from I'll never know. What did I care what the bitch's future was? As Officer Borzon looked away, I could see tears forming in her eyes.
A computer voice brought me to full alertness. "Incoming spacecraft at 170 local, angels 239, number seven eight. Alert for Naseby Seven." As the computer repeated its message, I tapped John on the shoulder. "That's for us, right? We're Naseby Seven?" John nodded. "And number seven eight means there are seventy eight spacecraft headed this way?"
John nodded again. "We're in deep dren!" John nodded.
I moved back to the other side of the command car. For a change our prisoner was smiling. I scanned the sky ahead of us. There! By the goddess! Where did they find that many Marauders? Then I realized what I was seeing.
"John! Only the lead spacecraft are Marauders! The rest are transports!" John yelled that to Marbot who nodded back while leaning over one of his operators.
Behind us I could see the calliope start to fire. Even with the heavy fire, some of the ships appeared to be certain to get through. When the tri-barrels and tank main guns added their weight to the defense, the ships still weren't being destroyed fast enough.
To our right I saw a badly damaged Marauder lurching through the sky, barely under control. Then I dropped like a rock. I thought it must have been hit, but I was wrong. The Marauder slammed into a tank and both exploded as their fusion bottles overloaded. The blast almost tipped our command car over and tossed John, Marbot and I around. The soldiers at their workstations didn't suffer as badly, being belted in, and our prisoner rode out the blast as well.
"Shit!" John screamed and pointed straight ahead of us. Headed right at us was a transport, leaking cesium fuel and leaning drunkenly to one side. Whether the pilot was planning to ram us too, or was just crashing I couldn't tell, but it made little difference. The driver of our command car went into reverse, the fans beneath us screaming as we shot backwards. The transport was still headed for us and getting closer. Our tri-barrel gunner fired into the cockpit of the transport. That did not good. The transport was still headed right for us. Then it hit the ground and bounced, losing speed. It bounced again and then finally slammed into the earth and slid toward us. As the transport slowed down, we shot away from it, still in reverse. We finally stopped a good two hundred motras from the smoking transport.
"Officer Crichton!" Marbot screamed. "How many troops does that thing carry? Any weapons? Is the damned thing gonna blow?"
I tried to get my wits about me and remember what I knew about the transports. Except for one time, I had been a Prowler pilot, paying no attention to lowly transport pilots. "They normally carry thirty-six Commandos. How many they can squeeze in for s suicide mission is anyone's guess. They have no weapons, usually. They don't try to land until any opposition has been beaten down from space. It could blow. The cesium fuel tanks are in the bottom of the hull and they look like they're leaking badly."
"The crew agrees." John yelled, motioning to the transport. The rear cargo door had opened and a dozen or so of the crew staggered out. One or two saw us and fired a few pulse blasts our way. I could easily see that they wore the green coveralls of techs, not the black armor of Commandos.
"Marie, will you suppress those bastards and then light up their damned ride?" I heard Marbot in my helmet.
The gunner nodded and fired a few bursts into the techs. Then she concentrated her fire on the belly of the transport. It took hardly any time at all to turn the transport and anyone left inside into a mass of flames.
Marbot yelled at the driver to accelerate, as we'd fallen behind the rest of the unit in the dash away from the transport. We continued on. We passed a Prowler wing without a scratch on it, looking as if a group of techs had just put it down and walked off. The rest of the Prowler was nowhere to be seen. We passed at least three burned out transports, surrounded by the remains of their crews. A Peacekeeper pilot strode past us as if we weren't there, repeatedly squeezing the firing stud of his pistol. The chakon oil cartridge must have been empty. Marbot called in the infantry behind us to try to take him prisoner. From the blank look in the pilot's eyes, I had the feeling it wouldn't make much difference to him if they killed him or not.
I noticed that the mercenary's vehicles had stopped and were assuming a defensive formation. Marbot pulled the command car up behind a tank. It was marked with the numbers Zero Five. Frell! Rolley hadn't been the one incinerated by the Marauder. Well, there was still hope.
Marbot hopped up on the deck of the tank and talked briefly with Rolley and then jumped back and began working with the workstation operators. This time he put a helmet on. Finally, he opened the visor of the helmet and walked back to talk to John and I. Before he could say anything, Officer Borzon decided to have her say. "Today the Peacekeepers died like true warriors. They showed no fear and did all in their power to destroy their enemies. To my dying day, I will be proud of them." She twisted around and glared at Marbot and John and I.
"So what was that all about?" Marbot grunted. I explained that Officer Borzon considered that the Peacekeepers had shown the inferior humans a thing of two about how warriors die.
Marbot laughed. "She can understand me, right?" I nodded. Marbot took a small bottle out of a container handed one to John and one to me. I tried it and found it was not alcohol as I had assumed. It was sweet and I liked it, whatever it was. Marbot took one for himself and pointedly ignored Borzon. "The Peacekeepers lost seventy plus spaceships and damned near all of their crews. We got a couple of dozen prisoners. Add to that five to six hundred people already on the planet that we raked over today. We lost five dead and seventeen wounded. We also lost one tank blown to hell and two combat cars, one of which will probably be repaired and one will be cannibalized. All for one attack on a cavalry troop numbering maybe two hundred, counting everyone on the damned planet that wears our coat."
Marbot took a long swig of the drink. "Consider that we're working for a regiment of armor that is ten times the size of this troop and has fifty times the combat power. That regiment is one of ten on this planet. This planet is just a backwoods hell-hole in the middle of no place." Marbot pushed his face into Borzon's face and glared at her. "You think this was a moral victory of some kind? You think people are going to talk about how well you died here? Fine for you then. But my business is providing victories to my employers. And I'll take a victory like this any day of the week. You'll run out of soldiers long before we run out of powergun ammo. Then who'll tell stories about what happened here?"
Borzon looked like she was going to cry. No wonder. She wasn't stupid enough to believe this had been anything but a massacre for the Peacekeepers. Marbot took another bottle out and twisted the cap off. Borzon looked at it and opened her mouth slightly. Marbot put it to her lips and she took a drink. She took a few sips and then turned away.
"Captain Rolley wants us to rearm and refuel in place and pull maintenance as well. We'll send out patrols, but the nearest Peacekeeper force worth worrying about is another fifty or more clicks from here. The troop's trains will be up in a bit and it'll get a little busy."
Marbot gestured to Borzon. "The White Mice have set up a POW camp and they want our prisoners sent over. Is she, or anyone else, going to be a problem? I'd as soon not have to tie too many people down escorting prisoners."
"What the frell are White Mice?" John broke in.
Marbot grinned. "You are from a long way in the past not to know about the White Mice. They're Colonel Alois Hammer's personnel bodyguards and the military police, jailers and executioners for Hammer. A Major Joachim Steuben runs the White Mice and he's quite a piece of work. Most sociopaths are offended by being called sadistic murderers. They like to at least pretend that they're normal. Not Steuben. The more nasty things you say about that boy, the happier he is."
John and I exchanged glances. What the frell had we gotten into? Marbot continued. "I heard a story about where the name, White Mice, comes from once, but I forgot most of it. Some kind of reverse psychology, though. Who's gonna worry about a bunch called the White Mice?"
I moved around Marbot and stood behind Borzon. "Do you want to be one of the honored dead, Borzon? You're a Peacekeeper whose entire unit has been defeated by an inferior race. You are a prisoner of that race and I assure you that you are irreversibly contaminated. The best you could hope for is a quick execution if you ever return to the Peacekeepers, but you know quite well what they'll do to any survivors of this monumental cluster frell, don't you. They'll publicly torture you and then they'll send you into the living death. They'll do just enough damage to your brain so you can still tell how miserable and in pain you are. Then they'll chain you up in a public place in a Command Carrier so everyone can witness your shame. They did that to the survivors of the Kanaos, you know. They still had the chains welded to the walls on my first Command Carrier for all to see back when I was a cadet." I ground the barrel of my new powergun into her back. "You can die, of course. Nothing to it. Or you can live. Forget all the dren you've been taught and try to be something other than an emotionally crippled killer. But you'll have to work to stay alive. And learn. Learn more than you ever thought there was to learn. And even then, there are no guarantees. But if you live, you learn and if you learn, you live."
I knelt quickly behind her and cut away the manacles around her ankles and then those around her wrists. She stood there and didn't move a fraction of a dench. I saw her flexing her muscles and saw her inhale and hold her breath. I put the slightest bit of pressure on the trigger. Then she exhaled and her shoulders slumped. She stood there for a few microts breathing rapidly. "I will live." She whispered.
I stood back from her and backed to where John and Marbot were standing at the back of the command car. "I don't think she'll be a problem, but I've been wrong before."
The supplies came up in another type of the combat car. This version had everything behind the driver's station cut away, leaving only a flat space for the cargo, enclosed by some metal poles and mesh. When these were empty, the prisoners were loaded into the vehicles and left. Most were techs and it appeared that Officer Borzon was the senior surviving Peacekeeper. Well; good luck to her. She'd need it.
Marbot advised us that we were invited to join him for dinner in the Officers Mess, which sounded quite grand. It turned out to be nothing but a stretch of ground next to Rolley's tank where the officers gathered to eat. The food was better than the rations that N'Demi had given us and I was pleased that Rolley ignored me throughout the meal. As we were leaving. Marbot announced that he had prepared a basha for John and I. I looked at John and silently mouthed "basha?" He shrugged.
A basha turned out to be no more than a piece of tarp hung from the side of a combat cat, leaving us a nice enclosed place to sleep. "Your friend suggested you might appreciate this." Marbot remarked as he walked away.
Not surprisingly, I heard a familiar giggle from inside the basha. Chiana poked her head out. "Hey, it's just great in here. You two are going to just love this." She giggled again. "If you can just keep Crichton quiet."
Chiana walked out of the basha followed by an unfamiliar soldier and they both walked off into the night.
John and I stuck out heads inside to look around. We found a groundsheet and two sleeping bags inside as well as a small light. We soon found that the sleeping bags had been zipped together to make one large bag. In microts we had undressed and were inside the bag.
"Do you think you can remain quiet and not wake the whole unit?"
John sighed and relaxed his hold on me. "Not a chance, Aeryn. I guess it's a no go."
I grabbed him and pulled him towards me. "I'll find something to shut your mouth with." And I did.
After a half an arn, John and I lay in each other's arms. John was gently stroking my loose hair and I was getting ready to fall asleep. "Why did you put so much time in with Officer Borzon?"
The question took me completely by surprise. "I don't think that I put in so much time with her."
I could feel John shrug. "I expected you to boot her ass off of the command car and that would be that. But I've noticed that the best way to get a terminally stubborn Peacekeeper to do something is to suggest that it's too hard for her. Like stay alive and learn to live with humans."
"Do you know very many terminally stubborn Peacekeepers?"
"A few." John pulled me a little closer. "Luckily I only fall in love with the ones who are the very soul of reasonability."
"The ones?" I tried to keep from laughing and failed. I lay there thinking, though. Finally I answered John's question. "The Peacekeepers were a force for good once. That changed, but I never saw it until I met you. I am different because I stopped being a Peacekeeper. And, I'm better. I suppose I'm hoping that she can change. That they all can change."
"Do you think they will change? Enough to make any difference?"
"I made a difference." I waited for just a microt. "At least the humans I've fallen in love with think I made a difference."