Since I started this journal of mine, I've made an attempt to keep it updated on a semi-regular basis. I can do this because I'm the captain - and, as it happens, only crew mate of - the ship containing said journal. Furthermore, I'm not usually away from the ship for long periods of time. It's my primary mode of transportation, on-world and off, and even when I'm on a station or dirtside wandering around there's always a way to get to the ship's storage and make a recording. So it's pretty easy for me to stay up to date.
Except, of course, when you're under contract to deliver mercenaries to the middle of a war zone, and said war zone is very very active whereas it was explained to you that said war zone would not, in fact, be a war zone at all. In that case, it's your job to land your ship halfway around the planet so you don't get shot down by anti-spacecraft missiles and then try to sneak your charges behind enemy lines, all the while being sought after as a fugitive.
The Anor, it seemed, had decided not to put their productivity into re-building stations that their arch-nemeses had destroyed long ago. Instead, they'd refined their FTL engines. Now, it appeared, instead of needing a direct unobstructed passage to where they wanted to go, they could just appear there instantly.
Earlier I'd mentioned that the two species had discovered a form of faster than light travel. I say "a" form because there are about twelve hundred ways to get around the whole 'speed of light is absolute' restriction. The Poln were satisfied with the one they had, while the Anor, I suppose, felt like branching out. The result was that Poln was under heavy attack when I arrived.
It bears mentioning at this point that I'd previously assumed relations between the two planets were just now souring. The briefing had said that they'd developed their methods of travel and then started fighting. This, apparently, was not the case. Relations between Poln and Anor had been bad ever since one (it was not clear who) had sent a probe to the other that the other had percieved as a threat and destroyed. They'd been sending sub-light-speed weaponry and, on rare occasions, personnel in hibernation against each other for nearly a century now. Had they not discovered FTL travel nearly simultaneously, one would have swiftly overtaken the other the moment they could. In other words, it was an old old war and I had stepped right into the middle of it.
My first clue that something was wrong was the blockade. That and the incoming fire from Anor patrol ships. My squadmates exited the lane before I did, so there was time for me to wonder at the sudden silence on the comm before all hell broke loose. The Anor had word of my contract - not specifically me, as many such contracts to supply troops to Poln had been signed and many subsequent delivery attempts stopped - and so had patrol ships near the lane exits to politely request that such contracts be carefully reconsidered. It was, of course, much faster and easier to communicate this through low-yield blaster fire than it would be to engage the translators and actually speak to people.
All three of my squadmates, of course, panicked immediately. I couldn't blame them, of course, as they had been rather unreasonably assuming that mercenary work would somehow not involve being shot at and here they were already being given warning shots by the patrols they were supposed to evade.
Initial salvo over, a recorded warning informed me that I was escorting mercenaries into a war zone in violation of the "We don't want extra soldiers fighting ours" policy and that if I were to turn my charges over to the patrol ships immediately, they could guarantee a certain amount of leniency when it came time to sentence me for said violation. This was followed by recordings of prisoners who had done as the Anor had asked and were being treated fairly and well. My computer was helpful enough to point out that these recordings had been falsified. Wonderful.
I got on the comm to my squadmates and ordered them to stand down. The reply to this was a resounding stream of translated curse words from Larry and Moe - nothing translates more amusingly than curse words - and a complete systems shutdown by Curly. The other two seeing their friend obey my order had apparently decided that being outnumbered 10,002 to two, they should likely also stand down.
"Keep your inertial cancelers on" I reminded them. This was also replied to with a stream of increasingly creatively translated slurs against my species, but was likewise obeyed. The inertial cancelers would keep the ships from drifting and thus make them easier to board. As for myself, I turned to the navigation computer.
"We thank you, mercenary squad, for obeying our order. Stay in place as we board your-"
We went hyper.
I'd like to take yet another moment of your time - after all, it's your job, where else are you going to go? - and say a word about the faster than light drives that my particular ship has. Your typical merchant cruiser, after all, has the Lane Drive that allows it to travel along the preconstructed FTL lanes that are typical in this part of the universe. When I said 'drives', however, I meant to use the plural sense. I've got the Lane Drive, I've got the Sleeper Drive, and I've got Hyperdrive. The first I already mentioned, the second one you don't have to sleep through but usually end up doing so because you're using it to go somewhere far away and not Laned, and the last is popular where there are no Lanes, and usually very very illegal in the areas that have them. The reason, of course, is that it doesn't have to travel along predescribed routes or even to known destinations. The Anor had discovered a very primitive version of this drive that let them appear where they wanted to. Mine had thousands more years of engineering behind it, in addition to the little tweaks I'd added. I'm no hyperspace expert, of course, but I know how to get more out of machines.
More, in this case, meant that not only I but also my squadmates were transported by the hyperdrive. Our destination was a few billion miles away on the planet surface. Sleeper drive would have taken but a few minutes to get there, but we'd have been shot to bits by the Anor patrol before we even engaged it. The Anor wouldn't even be able to trace my drive, nor would they suspect that I'd use it to bring the four of us to a spot about ten meters over the planet surface as their drive wasn't fine-tuned enough to allow such a thing and, as far as they were concerned, we had a drive just like theirs.
In other words, I'd just escaped using a better version of their own trick, and they had no idea how.
--
The Anor were furious. In the time between our interception by the patrol and the computer's completion of the proper sequence of commands to send the hyperdrive, I'd tuned the comm to listen in on their ship to ship traffic. It was pretty routine in the few minutes we'd spent out there. Even our interception didn't generate a whole lot of excitement; apparently a number of contracts had been trickling in for some time now. This relative quiet on the comm was shattered utterly when we vanished. I shook off the typical disorientation of a jump and spent a few moments listening to the sudden surge of traffic. The translator was quite capable of keeping up with everything that was being said up there, but I of course couldn't listen to it all at once. I just had the swearing translated.
The other three had no clue what was going on. I suppose they thought that this had been done by their would-be captors, and they were awaiting a proper fate. I tuned the comm to a channel I was reasonably certain neither the Poln nor Anor had the ability to detect and got ahold of my squadmates. This time I also recieved a stream of swear words, but they were of the positive variety. Along the lines of "That was a present-tense verb indicating vulgar reproductive act great escape!" and "Those Anor must be really past-tense verb indicating urination!"
I walked them through procedure for landing ships quietly in a war zone, which was very new for all of them as to date they'd only had to dock at friendly stations. I then introduced them to stealthing technology which, considering the technology level of those trying to find us, mainly consisted of turning the ships off. I downloaded all the maps I could fit onto one of the portable panels - considering how I didn't especially want to broadcast my position any more than I could help it, I'd have had to not contact the computer.
In short, that's the reason I haven't updated lately. That, and the orbital bombardment.
When I saw the plumes of fire and smoke following small specks of light in the sky, I knew instantly what they were. The Anor, either as part of a continued offensive against the planet or because they'd grown tired of their blockade, had just dropped about ten thousand sub-nuclear weapons from orbit. I hadn't been worried when I took the job, and I had only been mildly worried when we were approached by the blockade, but now I was very worried indeed. Had I known at the time that the weapons being dropped were not sub-nuclear but in fact full fusion bombs of the 'planet buster' variety, I would have relaxed somewhat, as at least then the end would be swift.
An orbital bombardment is usually a message to those defending a planet. That message tends to be along the lines of "We can drop anything we want anywhere on your planet, and there's nothing you can do about it." Because the attackers tend to want to take over the planet, they usually drop said bombardment in the middle of a wilderness somewhere. A wilderness like the one I'd landed the ships in.
I had not yet at the time fully grasped the animosity between the Poln and the Anor. The bombardment was not a demonstration, it was an actual attack designed to cause as much damage to the population of the planet as possible. Thus, rather than blowing us to kingdom come, the nukes headed toward nearby cities.
"Nearby" being a relative term. I could barely make out a blue haze on the horizon that the ship's sensors indicated was a city-sized shielding unit. The viewscreen went dark momentarily to blot out the fireball of light that, had I been looking at it with my bare eyes, would likely have burned them from their sockets.
Truthfully, I was more than a little thankful that the viewscreen had blanked itself out. I wouldn't have to look at the outdoors and know I'd be going there soon. I, like most pilots, have a touch of agoraphobia; large open spaces are not our friends. This seems counterintuitive, given that we work in the largest, most open space that exists, but it makes sense when you consider that for the most part we're comparatively tightly enclosed by our ships and, on occasion, stations.
More than anything else, I wanted to fire up the ship's engines and fly to one of those cities, drop off my squadmates, collect my money, and get the hell out of this system before it killed me. There were many subtle flaws in this plan, however. If the Anor didn't detect my ship flying around and destroy it from above, the Poln would assume that it was an attacking ship and attempt to destroy it from below. The best bet was to take the cadets and walk to the nearest city which, judging from the amount of time between the blast of light and the ear-rupturing cacaphony that followed, was quite some distance away.
Fortunately, a few things had gone in our favor. For one, the city was still there - or at least, the shield maintaining it was holding. Another excellent turn of luck was the the atmosphere was breathable by every one of us, with the caveat that I personally would have to take a breath from a de-toxifying canister every ten minutes or various poisons in the atmosphere would build up in my body and kill me painfully. I have many such canisters, as my particular blend of atmosphere is fairly rare. Gravity was somewhat higher than me and Larry were used to, and somewhat lower than Curly was used to, but since the options were to quickly become used to it or die, we would become used to it.
I sent one last message to the other members of the squad telling them to download anything they'd want onto a panel and then shut their ships down. We had a walk to make.
--
Each of our ships had various emergency supplies. Larry and his buddies had to bring their own food, as none of us could stomach either the native food or the supplies that the others had brought with them. Camping equipment, the portable panels, and the large number of maps were all supplied by me, however. The rookies had brought very little with them, apparently having presumed that nothing bad would happen in their mercenary career until they actually got started fighting.
Or, the more cynical side of me insisted, they knew that they weren't coming back.
That probably wasn't the case, especially not for Larry or Moe. Larry was constantly talking to me about how reproductive actingly cool our escape was, and Moe was asking me questions about the various life-forms he saw around him. We'd landed in a temperate zone, and it was my hope that the thick canopy would shield us from at least visual spotting by the Anor ships, but the downside to this was that Moe practically demanded everything be identified. The only information about local life-forms I'd downloaded to the panel was which ones were safe to eat, so I had no clue. Still, it's boring walking constantly toward some city that never seems to get any closer, so I happily made up names and stories for each and every of the plants we passed. I pointed out the Luminous Restel, whose glowing phosphorescence at night lures bugs to it, whereupon they are eaten by the zznorm - my name for the tiny insectivore creatures which tend to burrow under the Restel. The zznorm then proceed to fertilize the plant via its natural waste products, and the great cycle of life continues. This was, of course, entirely made up. Xenobiology is about as far as you can get from my area of expertise. I knew tech stuff, I knew piloting, and I don't have a whole lot of spare time given the first two. It's hard to attend courses to learn how to pick up an additional hobby when my cargo has to be several light years from here very soon, after all.
At least this time, my 'cargo' could walk on its own. If I'd had to choose between dragging crates to the city or risking detection by firing up a cart, I'd have had a very serious dilemma on my hand.
Curly was being even more taciturn than usual. He didn't look very well either, but as I'm still to this day not very familiar with his species there wasn't any real basis for this judgement. He might always look slightly yellow.
I discovered later that night that Curly was, in fact, not very well at all. Unfamiliar though I am with their species, I'm guessing that they are ordinarily able to walk without suddenly losing all balance. Curly seemed to be an exception. We slept in shifts that night, and when he got up for his, he made enough noise tripping over himself and the rest of the camp that it rapidly became clear that someone was going to have to do an extra shift or nobody would sleep from that point onward. I volunteered - the day/night cycle of this planet was a little shorter than I was used to, so I was not entirely tired yet. I also tried to have a little conversation with Curly, but all I managed to get out of him was a murmured apology for the racket, and that only via his translator. I just figured he was unnerved in some way by either the blockade escape earlier or our current situation. It wasn't nearly as dire as it seemed, and I would have explained that to him had he been willing to listen, but all he wanted to do was get back to his tent.