Seeing the Elephant, Chapter Seven

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 and their friends are now on their way across the plains of K'hiff, headed for Colonel Hammer's Headquarters. Of course there may be a few problems along the way. And a few when they get there.

And now on Farscape...

The next day, we headed back across the plains with N'Demi and her team and a column of supply vehicles with a couple of combat cars for an escort. By midday, we had reached a human base in the middle of the open prairie. Vehicles of all kinds maneuvered between stacks of supplies, tents, troops and equipment. N'Demi was told that there was an officer at the far side of the camp from her regiment who would tell her where she was supposed to take us. After an arn of fruitlessly driving around, nearly being run over by a self propelled artillery piece, being stuck between two supply columns that were headed in opposite directions and trapped us between stacks of artillery rounds, we finally got to our destination. We finally found a jeep marked with a rearing red Earth animal on a yellow shield, the insignia of Hammers Slammers. N'Demi held a brief and angry conversation with the corporal sitting in the jeep. The only Slammers officer had left the day before and had said nothing about N'Demi or any aliens. And no, the corporal had no idea where the Slammers Headquarters was, as the jeep and its communications having died on him yesterday.

After a quarter of an arn spent fruitlessly "massaging" the AI for further information, N'Demi decided to head for the regimental headquarters. "With any damned luck the Intel Officer will be there and anyone else interested, Commander Crichton. We're on our way. We'll finally get out from under all of these remfs." That was the exact moment that the hovertruck backed into us.

We discovered that the jeep would need major repairs. Cuchillo, the gunner, would only need minor repairs for a broken wrist. N'Demi walked over to the jeep behind us and patted the jeep commander on her shoulder. "Rennie, send a message to HQ that were going to RON at Log Five. Pull up a patch of ground and settle in for the night. As for me, I saw some of the Black Connaught a ways back. Don't bother me for anything less than Major Steuben with blood in his eyes." N'Demi walked away without looking back.

"The Black Connaught are?" John asked.

"Famous for their whiskey." Rennie replied.

N'Demi was half-carried back early the next morning by a half dozen of the Black Connaught who assured us that she was a "loverly woman, a loverly woman, indeed. Din't I remark that she was a loverly woman, Seamus?" N'Demi was poured into her seat in the newly repaired jeep and waved vaguely towards the horizon. "Head 'em up and move 'em out." She mumbled. The driver seemed to take this as a command to go.

By the early afternoon we caught up with a convoy of vehicles at least five metras long, heading the same direction we were. I recognized tanks, combat cars, self- propelled guns, all marked with a dark blue cross. N'Demi gestured to them as we passed. "Strakenz Grenadiers. Damned near as good as we are. And headed for a rendezvous with the Slammers. I'd say someone's in deep shit, or soon will be."

Just before we got to the head of the column, a jeep on the side of the dirt track we were following motioned us to pull over. "Damned chain dogs." N'Demi muttered. A human soldier walked over to us. Worn around his neck was a half moon of metal held on by a chain. Something was written on the half moon in unfamiliar human writing. The soldier leaned close to N'Demi to be heard over the roar of the engines passing us. "There's a little dry watercourse ahead. It's been bridged, but your platoon will have to wait a few minutes for a break in the column. Okay? Ja?"

N'Demi nodded. "You headed for the Slammers?"

The other soldier nodded vigorously. "Us, and three regiments of the morderhunde. They say they'll bring the Skutatoi over, too. And extra artillery. It will be interesting." The soldier turned away to yell something at a passing vehicle. Then, he gestured us to start up. There was a gap in the column for us to swing into.

Once over the bridge, our little unit soon left the heavier vehicles behind. N'Demi swung around to face John and I. "Three regiments of killer dogs, as our friends call the K'hiff and a human infantry regiment. I think we're gonna have to fight in the forest. Bad news for us. A tank's big advantage is speed and long range fire-power. It these damned forests you gotta go slow or you'll ram into one of the damned trees. Can't see anything, even with sensors, due to the trees and what you can't see, you can't shoot. And anyone can get right up on top of you before you see 'em." N'Demi stopped for a microt and looked into the distance. "A real meat grinder with infantry going in one end and meat coming out the other. You and Commander Crichton are well out of this one. Interesting! Shit!"

I nodded. She was right. I wanted no part of this.

Finally, we reached the assembly area of Hammer's Regiment. Our jeep wove expertly through columns of vehicles of all sorts, all seemingly headed in opposite directions. Supplies, only some of which could I recognize, were piled everywhere. And humans. Thousands and thousands of humans. N'Demi leaned back, took off her helmet and shook out her matted hair. "Damn! It is good to be home."

We looked at each other and exchanged smiles. She was home and I knew the feeling. Once home was a command carrier. Now, it was wherever a certain human happened to be. But it was always good to be back.

Our little convoy was stopped by two human soldiers. Beyond them were four large armored vehicles backed up to one another so as to leave a square space, now covered by a tarp, between them I could see what I took to be communications antenna and self important looking people walking hurriedly about. A sure sign of a headquarters.

"Howdy, N'Demi." One soldier drawled. "These our company?" He glanced down at a piece of paper in his hand and then looked us all over.

N'Demi grunted affirmatively. "You ever goin' to get out of the White Mice and be a real soldier again?"

The soldier just laughed. "Nope." The soldier gave me, Chiana and Jool a closer look. Not exactly insulting, but definitely speculative. Then he pointed to me. "This one's an alien?" He said in a slightly unbelieving tone.

"She's my wife, too." John answered for N'Demi.

The soldier nodded and pointed to Jool and Chiana. "Those are aliens." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Well, whaddya think?" N'Demi answered.

The soldier shook his head and smiled. "I seen me one whole bunch of aliens. Damn all like the K'hiff, or furrier. Ain't seen none like these." He grinned at John. "You got any room on your ship, you could sell tickets. Make a fortune."

The soldier wiped the smile off of his face and spoke to N'Demi. "Okay, sarge, time for you to head back to battalion. They're expecting you. Colonel wants to see your passengers. Everybody off, okay?"

We dismounted from the jeeps, gathered our few possessions and with a wave to our new human friends, headed for the headquarters. Waiting for us were another group of the White Mice, among them a slightly built human with the coldest human eyes I had ever seen. He had the shoulder boards on his uniform that I had learned to associate with human officers. Around his waist was an expensively tooled leather gun belt. The pistol it held was a minor work of art, I suppose, all gold inlay and jewels. "This way, please. The Colonel is waiting." He gestured to a group of people I could see sitting around in the space between the armored command vehicles.

John and I passed, but the cold-eyed human stopped Chiana. "You! Hand over your pistol."

Chiana, naturally, flirted with the human officer. She handed him her pistol, and then leaned suggestively against his chest. "Don't you think you'd better search me?"

"No!" The human said angrily and pushed Chiana away, causing her to fall on her eema. She stood up and, with her butt pushed out towards the human, began to slap the dirt from her behind while wiggling it seductively. The officer ignored her, even if his men didn't.

D'Argo was right behind Chiana. The officer turned to him. "Hand over your weapon. That sword thing on your back." The officer did not know how angry he was making D'Argo, having insulted his girlfriend, and now asking a Luxan to surrender his weapon. John and I turned back to head off any trouble.

"Whoa!" John said. "Can't we just all get along?"

"This wellnitz expects me to hand over my qualta blade. He didn't ask for your weapons." D'Argo glared at John and I. "He just wants to disarm the non-humans!"

"Hand over that sword!" The human officer yelled again. I could see his men were starting to swing their weapons to cover D'Argo. John stepped in between D'Argo and the human.

"Look, my friend just wants to know why you're disarming him and Chiana and not us. It's a reasonable question." John's smile was frozen onto his face.

"I was told that a Commander Crichton and an Officer Crichton were coming to give a briefing and that I was to give you", he gestured to John and I, "every assistance. No one said anything about anyone else. So, like anyone else we don't know about, they get disarmed. If your friend doesn't want to be disarmed…" The human drew his pistol, spun it around on his trigger finger and returned it to its holster in one fluid move. He was quite fast. For a human.

D'Argo snorted. "He'd better be faster than that to frighten a Luxan."

D'Argo's words were unintelligible to a human, but the tone and the laugh were clear. "What did he say?" The human officer demanded.

John tried to talk our way out of this, but neither the human officer nor D'Argo were cooperating. D'Argo kept up a stream of insults at the human and the human threatened D'Argo in return. Chiana decided to be no help too, and started translating D'Argo's insults into English. Trust her to know a lot of human insults.

"If the alien thinks I'm not fast enough with a gun to harm him, perhaps he'd like a demonstration?"

D'Argo bellowed that he'd love to see the human try. John and my efforts were no use. It was decided that the human officer would draw and fire over D'Argo's head, while D'Argo was free to try anything against the human. I had to admit the human had self-confidence.
One of the humans was to count to three and both were to go for their weapons. D'Argo stood about two motras from the human.

"One." The human was relaxed and had a slight smile on his face.

"Two." D'Argo glared. As John would say, so what else is new?

"Three." Instead of reaching for his qualta blade on his back, D'Argo's tongue shot out and caught the human in the face. He dropped and his pistol fell to the ground.

"What is this all about? What happened to Major Steuben?" A voice cut through the murmuring of the White Mice. The soldiers straightened up and faced the officer who had come out to investigate the clamor. He as a tall, strongly built human with hair so short, I thought he might be bald, as some humans became with age. He had a long narrow face, dark eyes and a mouth set in a grim line.

"Sir…"One of the soldiers began.

"Your officer will be just fine in a few minutes, he was just knocked out. We're the ones with a problem here," John interrupted. "First you give us weapons, and then you try to disarm my friend. We're in a war zone here, so naturally he objects."

"I don't object, John." D'Argo said to my surprise.

Chiana then made a little speech to the human on behalf of D'Argo. "Captain D'Argo understands perfectly that security needs are paramount. He is quite prepared to hand over his qualta blade. He asks only that you be careful as it is not only a family heirloom, but an energy weapon as well." With that, D'Argo handed his qualta blade over to the bemused human officer. Jool gave the officer a smile and her pistol. He handed both to the soldier who was already carrying Chiana's pistol. "Make sure their property is returned to them exactly as it is now. Send a medic to see to Major Steuben and have him report to me as soon as he's able."

"Yes, sir, Colonel Hammer."

I dropped back a pace to be even with D'Argo and spoke to him in Sebacean. "Not bad for a simple Luxan warrior. You made him look foolish in front of his men, but to his commander, you're a reasonable being and the major is a trouble maker."

D'Argo grinned. "I've been around Rygel for far too long."

"I hope this doesn't come back to bite us."

After all our trouble in getting here, the briefing was an anti-climax. John and I sat on either side of Colonel Hammer with our three friends behind us. N'Demi had sent reports in on what we had said about the Peacekeepers and the humans now had their own experience fighting them. There were a few high points, though.

A mildly disheveled Major Steuben came to see Colonel Hammer during a particularly droning report on the Prowler. Hammer waved for the human intelligence officer to continue his presentation while Major Steuben knelt by the Colonel.

Hammer spoke just loud enough for John, D'Argo and I to hear. "Joachim, it appears that I was remiss in my orders. Not only are the Crichtons our guests, but their friends as well. I expect that they will all be treated as guests of the regiment have a right to be treated."

Major Steuben nodded vigorously. "You can depend on me, Colonel. I exist to serve you."

Colonel Hammer nodded. "I know you do, Joachim. That's why I fully trust only you."

Steuben stood and walked away. But I had seen the look in his eyes. He did exist to serve Colonel Hammer and for no other reason. And I thought Braca was bad.

We spent the next several arns confirming what the humans already knew. "Correct, the Peacekeepers have nothing like your tanks." "The Peacekeepers depend on Prowlers and Marauders to hit pinpoint targets on planet." "Techs aren't really trained as warriors, but they are capable of fighting." I was getting bored. Then it got interesting again.

Another human in a different uniform stood up. By the Goddess! How many different uniforms did they have?

This one was a Captain Colleoni and he had led a salvage team onto the wrecked command carrier and the cruiser. "Officer Crichton, perhaps you can correct me if I'm wrong. We've talked to a few prisoners using an AI as a translator, but that's still pretty rough. We do have our own observations, too. A command carrier is about one kilometer in length and it displaces about a million tons. Is that about right?"

I briefly converted the human figures into those I was familiar with. "About right." John nodded, too.

"We calculate that about twenty to twenty five percent of total hull volume is taken up with functions not usually found on a human warship. You carry not only the crew, but your race's children on these ships. You have space set aside for training these children as well as your soldiers and technicians. We even found five areas that seem to replicate a planet's surface. Your entire society is in those ships, is that right? "

I nodded."Their ships are the Peacekeeper's homes. They do have bases and garrisons on planets, but they are capable of putting everyone in a ship and going anywhere they choose."

John smiled at Captain Colleoni. "And just for the record, Aeryn's society is right here with me. She is not a Peacekeeper. Not anymore."

Captain Colleoni nodded and looked at a schematic of a command carrier that was projected behind him. "So a human warship the same size as a command carrier, one that had no function but a warship, would be, all other things being equal, more powerful than the command carrier?"

I nodded. Captain Colleoni hadn't said so, but it sounded like humans had warships the size of command carriers.

After that the meeting ended and all of us were assigned temporary quarters. As combat accommodations went, they were better than Peacekeepers could have expected. John and I had a tent stretched over a wooden frame with a wooden floor. A couple of cots and metal lockers completed it. D'Argo and Chiana got the same and Jool got one all to herself. John and I decided to spend as much time as possible avoiding the war going on just outside.

That was not all that easy. The largest group of Peacekeepers had taken refuge in a forest. The previous K'hiff occupants of the forest had been a decidedly low tech group that lacked the modern weaponry the K'hiffs that followed President Azzule had. The local K'hiff compensated by digging tunnels throughout their forest to hide in and fight from. When the Peacekeepers arrived the local K'hiff decided to leave. The humans had decided on a simple but effective tactic to dig the Peacekeepers out. First, select a small section of forest and subject it to nonstop artillery bombardment until the trees were all knocked down. Then send in tanks to reduce the downed trees to ashes. Once that was done, the above ground defenses could be pounded by more artillery and tank fire. When the Peacekeepers were finally driven into the underground tunnels, infantry and engineers would be sent in alongside the tanks to collapse the tunnels, or at least seal their inhabitants inside for good. All of this required the artillery around Colonel Hammer's encampment to fire day and night.

The first interruption we had was from Jool. She brought D'Argo and Chiana with her, of course. At least this time John was dressed.

"I have been trying to get some information about the human part of the Universe, in case we have to stay here, but I haven't had much luck pumping the intelligence officer I've made friends with."

"Try letting him pump you." Chiana purred before anyone could say anything.

Jool glared at Chiana and started to say something.

"Whoa!" John broke in. "We are not staying here. Aeryn and I have a family on Moya if you'll remember?"

Jool gave John a look. "John, I know how you feel, but you have no idea what that was that we came through, except that it's not a wormhole. We don't know if we can get back."

"Hey, I have some ideas about what that thing is!"

Everyone looked at John.

"Okay, I know it's not a wormhole."

D'Argo almost laughed. "John, Aeryn, I don't want to stay here either, but we don't know what will happen if we try to go through that anomaly thing. We might end up a thousand years in the past in a galaxy run by Hynerians, or we might not go anywhere. We need to know something about this new Universe we're in and quite frankly, the humans will talk to you and Aeryn and not to the non-humans."

Jool nodded. "D'Argo's right, John. I've been talking to Major de Gautier in intelligence for days and he just gives me generalities. We can't get the information from the humans we need. You and Aeryn can."

"Bullshit!" That was Chiana. "You can't get anything from human males by wiggling your brain at them, Princess. You were never on Earth, so you lack my knowledge and Earth language abilities."

Personally, I thought Chiana's English language skills pretty much ended with "Can this skirt be made shorter?" but she did have a point of sorts.

Chiana smiled at being the center of attention and reached down the front of her blouse and took out a small handful of paper. "I also have experience in getting information others want kept secret. Like this." She handed John a folded up piece of what looked like part of a newspaper.

John studied it and shrugged. "It's an ad. So?"

Chiana grinned. "It's an ad for C&B Interstellar Lines. Announcing that with the opening of the new refueling depot at Parrancelli, you can travel all the way to Amaroast on C&B, a total of 172 light years."

John stared at her. "So, you planning a trip?"

Chiana grimaced and turned to me. "How do you put up with him, Aeryn? No need to answer that, I know."

I nodded and looked at the ad, working my way through the script I hadn't used in a while. "I think that Chiana is saying that the human sphere of influence must be at least 172 light years across at one point at least."

Chaina giggled and clapped her hands. "Score one for the ladies."

John sighed and reached for one of the papers Chiana was holding. I took another. Jool and D'Argo whose human language skills were respectively, none, and, mostly obscene, watched. In a few minutes we had each read through all of the clippings that Chiana had snurched and then we compared notes. The results were certainly incomplete, but were also both reassuring and disturbing. The human sphere of influence was certainly larger than anything we had any experience with. It was larger than the Scarren's crumbling empire and larger even than the Nebari sphere. But the humans had created an endless succession of minor nations among the stars. A nation with half a dozen star systems under its control was accounted as a superpower. Most nations occupied one solar system and some planets had multiple, competing governments. On the other hand, these governments fought endless wars with each other, which led to a vast surplus of soldiers, whose very existence led to more wars. And, as we had seen, the humans had advanced beyond anyone we knew about in planet based weaponry. As luck would have it, we found almost nothing about what their warships might be like. We did find references to them, so human navies did exist.

"Like Greece, but with no Alexander." John said under his breath.

"Grease?" I asked.

"Sorry, Honey, Greece is a country on Earth. Some three thousand years ago they had a series of big wars. That left a lot of unemployed soldiers around. A lot went off to sell their skills to Greece's neighbors, a lot like the people here do. Eventually, a king named Alexander conquered Greece and gathered up all the soldiers and set off to conquer the world."

"Did he conquer Earth?" D'Argo asked.

"His soldiers eventually rebelled. They wanted to go home. But he conquered a whole helluva lot." John was quiet for a few microts. "I'm with his soldiers. I want to go home." I slid my hand into John's and gave him a smile.

All that did was establish that we wanted to go home. How we'd manage it was another matter.

A week into the battle for the forest, a young human officer came to our tent. We were not in a position to receive company and in no mood for any, either. As bloodcurdling death threats from John didn't send the officer away, we had to get up. John complained that my giggling had kept his threats from being effective.

The officer took us to see Jool's friend, Major de Gautier. De Gautier waved us into the back of an armored command vehicle parked some little way from the main headquarters of Colonel Hammer's regiment. "The Peacekeepers have been broadcasting this for a good hour or so. We have a partial translation courtesy of the AI, but the name caught our attention first thing. Ah, here it comes again." De Gautier made an adjustment to something on the panel in front of him and a voice speaking Sebacean came in clearly over the comm.

We listened to it and then John took my arm and started pulling me out of the vehicle. "Thanks for the free radio show, de Gautier. It's got a good beat, but it's too hard to dance to. We don't need to hear any more. Adios."

He had me almost to the main hatch of the vehicle when I managed to pull away. "John! This is important."

"You're damned right it's important, Aeryn. That's why we are having nothing to do with it." John took my arm again, but this time I braced myself and he couldn't move me without hurting my arm.

"Excuse us, Major. I need to have a little talk with the missus outside."

John let go of my arm, hopped down from the vehicle and walked over to the nearest tree and stopped. I followed him. He stood there looking very worried, angry and defiant. "Aeryn, you are not going."

I took a deep breath. This was not going to be easy. "John, I have to go. One hundred and sixteen Peacekeeper techs want to surrender, but they're frightened. They know what Peacekeepers do to their prisoners. They know what the Scarrens do. They know what most races do to Peacekeepers that they capture. Frell, they know what the Peacekeepers will do to them if they ever get retaken by other Peacekeepers. They want assurances from someone who knows humans that they won't be tortured or enslaved. That's why they asked for me."

"Fine! Go back inside, get on the damned radio and yell "ally, ally oxen free" and tell the damned Peacekeepers to come on out."

"I can't do that. They asked for me to come to them to assure them that they'll be safe. They won't trust a voice on a comm."

John put his arms around me and pulled me close. "And suppose it's a trap? Suppose some Peacekeeper figures, "Well, I'm gonna get my ass shot off, but maybe I can take Aeryn Sun with me? What about that?"

I leaned my head on John's shoulder as I had so many times before. I still felt him relax just a tiny bit as he always did. "I spent most of my life killing whoever the Peacekeepers told me to kill, with absolutely no mercy or remorse. Since I left the Peacekeepers I've killed more beings. Now I feel the weight of every single one of the beings I killed. I have to try to save these people. I have to. They deserve the chance at a real life that I got. I deserve to be something more than just a killer."

I felt John's hand go to my hair and start to stroke it. "You're going to be stubborn about this, right?" I didn't quite trust myself to speak, so I just nodded against his shoulder. "You are a lot more than just a killer, Aeryn Sun. I told you a long time ago that you could be more, and you are." John kissed me lightly on the forehead. "So, when do we go, Mahatma?"

"We? They asked for me. No telling how they'll react to a human."

"They'll be thrilled that a genuine, one hundred percent, dyed in the wool human dropped by to lead them into the promised land. Hallelujah! Trust me on this, Aeryn."

"You're going to be stubborn about this, aren't you, John."

John nodded. I put my arms around him and gave him a nice, long kiss. He gave me one back.