The moist, warm air of the Pollanide Tribunal Chambers provided little comfort to Rapier as he sat on his knees, bound and with a length of black cloth tied around all four of his eyes. Wrapped around his neck was a cold metal collar with two blades extending out of either side, connected wirelessly to the Chamber's computer system. At any moment, a button press could cause those blades to swing inward, freeing his head from his thorax.
Then, the blindfold was ripped off of Rapier's face and he was blinded by the lights of the Chamber. He was sitting directly in the middle of the roughly-circular space, and ten meters in front of him was a pedestal, on top of which stood three figures, a male Poslushi Arbitrator Caste, an Ovinis Chronicler Caste, and a massive, five-meter Poslushi Broodmatron Caste. Flanking Rapier were two Ovinis Toil Castes holding rifles, obviously unafraid to unload them into Rapier should he try something.
The Chronicler cleared his throat, then bleated, "The great and powerful Judge Khopesh of the Broodmatron Caste shall now preside over the case of the Soldier Caste Rapier of the Idrisat brood."
"All profess!" the Arbitrator Caste yelled. Simultaneously, everyone except Rapier and Khopesh called out, "Long live the Judge!"
Then, it was Khopesh's turn to speak. Her voice boomed far louder than any other, fitting of her post and power. "Soldier Caste Rapier, read your charges."
Rapier took a deep breath, then bellowed, "Gross military negligence, loss of public assets, allowance of intrusion, and inability to take initiative, ma'am!"
"Now state the reason for each. Loudly."
Rapier knew his chances weren't good. He had served as assistant during several of these trials, a few with Khopesh, even, and the most lenient sentence he had ever seen was forty Poslushi years mindslaved on a labor craft. Still, he held out hope. He was still a Soldier Caste, and he would fight mandible and tarsal claw to survive.
"I allowed the men under my command to walk into an ambush, I subsequently allowed enemy forces to intrude on my ship and retake what we took, and I did not attempt to retaliate, ma'am!"
"And that's not counting that a force under your command undertook a full retreat for the first time in fifty years. In fact, thank me for not charging you with cowardice as well."
"Thank you, ma'am!"
"For?" now she was just rubbing it in. This was the first part of the trial; they would humiliate and degrade his honor, in hopes that he would crack and they could say that he was defective and punish him further. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction.
"Thank you for your mercy in relenting from your charge, ma'am!"
"You are very welcome, Rapier. Now, I hope you know the extent of your crimes. Even your own Broodmatron has disowned you. Did you know that, Rapier?"
The revelation tore through him like the blade he was named for. Still, he had to stay calm if he wanted to stay alive. Supposedly, the creatures he was attacking shed saltwater from their eyes when they were experiencing extreme emotion; he would've been beheaded then and there if he was one of them.
"Thank you for enlightening me, ma'am!" his voice almost broke. It was too close of a call.
"The deaths of three thousand, two hundred and forty-four soldiers, of which one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-one were Poslushi, weigh upon your mind. Not only that, but the minor boon you won in your battle, you had lost soon after. What say you in defense of your actions?"
This was a trick as old as Poslushi law. She was going to let him try to excuse his actions, then charge him with hindering the court's ability to prosecute by doing so. However, he knew the best defense in this situation.
"I say nothing in my defense, ma'am. It was my hubris alone that is responsible for their deaths. I believed that me and my men could overcome this new threat."
"Do you mean to say that your soldiers could not?"
Kuyso. He'd made a mistake.
"I believed that I could overcome this new threat, ma'am."
"Answer my question."
Matierkuyso. He did it again.
"No, ma'am. They could, and it was my poor leadership that resulted in their deaths."
"Now, tell us exactly how they defeated you."
He had to tread especially lightly here. If he insinuated that the humans were a capable fighting force, he was a sympathizer. If he insinuated that his troops played a role in their own demise, he was a defeatist. However, if he walked the middle path just right, he could foil Khopesh's attempts to fight him verbally and possibly even secure his release, though his honor, standing, and career would be permanently shot.
"I ordered my men into the enemy's camps, thinking they were deserted. Instead, they were all waiting within structures, unaware of our presence until I disturbed them."
"And then they defeated you?"
"They swarmed us like carnivorous insects, destroying us despite our putting them down by the hundreds." This was something of a stretch of imagination, considering Rapier had seen the number of human dead himself, but he could worry about strict factual accuracy when he wasn't on the verge of execution.
"I see. Now, do you understand these creatures?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And you understand what kills them?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Khopesh leaned over to whisper to the Arbitrator Caste. He quickly responded with a short quip.
"Then you are on probation."
"I'm sorry, what?" This was simultaneously much better and much worse than he expected.
"Are your audials faulty, Rapier? As of now, and for the foreseeable future, you are on probation. You will receive no promotions, no leave, no pay, and no opportunities for resignation. You will remain on probation until all one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-one Poslushi that you lost have had one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-one humans' blood shed in their name. Do you understand, Rapier?"
He did the math in his head quickly. It was a kill quota of over three and a half million. "Yes, ma'am."
"Remember to thank me."
"Thank you ma'am, for your exceeding leniency."
"You are very welcome, Rapier. Guards! Release him and have him returned to his post. He'll need to get working quickly if he is to get paid again within his lifetime. And get him a prosthetic antenna! It's not proper to go out looking like that."
Rapier stood at the bridge of his raiding fleet's flagship. It had been a week since his trial and sentencing, and no one would look him in the eye. He was unclean now, his reputation forever tarnished by this defeat, and that pestered him to no end.
His navigator had had the good sense to move the fleet away from Kormoran while Rapier was being dragged back to Pollanide in chains, so when the fleet of what the humans called Rossiya arrived in its orbit, they found nothing.
How curious, the humans. They weren't united at all, not even their homeworld. Every planet answered to a different government, all under a single alliance with ostensibly mutually-beneficial goals. Rossiya, Deutschland, America, all different governments claiming sovereignty over a different section of their species, not even pretending to speak for the whole. Perhaps they had never evolved beyond a feudal society, or they were host to a brand of nationalism that put even the Poslushi to shame.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
It didn't matter though. The overcooked primates had left their flank open when they came to attack, so he would make them regret it. If he needed enough corpses to fill a refuse dump a kilometer high, he would have to start stacking now.
---
It was a windy, warm day on Novoarkhangelsk, a mere minus-ten degrees at the equator, which was where most of the population lived. From orbit, the planet was a collage of gray, white, and rust-red, composed of high, rocky mountains, icy plains, and deserts of powdered iron oxide.
The Yeltsin River was the only natural river on the planet, fed by the highest mountains that stretched just above the planet's unusually-low ozone layer, allowing the sun's high-energy rays to melt their snowcaps and feed it. The first settlers, a division of Russian Ground Forces engineers, were the ones who built the monolithic Brezhnev Dam, which served to channel and generate power from the Yeltsin, directing it to a network of irrigation canals around the equator while leaving its rich former valley open for mining and settlement.
Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Kuznetsova was aroused from her slumber by someone shaking her shoulder. "Huh, wha?" She asked, sitting up in her bed.
"Ma'am, there's something on the radar." another officer told her. Kuznetsova rolled her eyes and got up. Ever since the Kormoran incident, the General Staff had mandated that every border colony be on alert whenever anything showed up on the skyscanners, even if they knew it was friendly. That meant that Kuznetsova had to personally address everything that showed up, and thus had gotten all of about ten hours of sleep in the last week.
The bunker wasn't exactly cozy, but it was sure as hell better than outside. Still, Kuznetsova shivered as she attended the radar with the officer, wearing barely more than her underwear.
The officer handed her the comms relay as he pointed to the dot on the radar, slowly approaching their position. Sighing, she picked it up and began to speak into it.
"This is Khrushchev early warning station calling unknown spacecraft. Please state your name and business." the contact didn't have an IFF, so it was probably just a particularly large space rock that passed too close to the scanner.
Static.
"Hello? This is Khrushchev early warning station calling unknown entity. Name and business?"
Still nothing.
Kuznetsova turned around, sighed, and put down the relay, going back to her quarters. "See? I told you not everything is--"
"Look!" the officer exclaimed.
"What now?" she asked, exasperated. He was pointing back at the screen. The contact had sped up and slightly changed course, which an asteroid obviously couldn't do. She picked up the relay again.
"Look, I don't know why your IFF's off, but this joke isn't funny. There's a potential threat stalking about, so I need to know what you're doing here. State your business, now."
Still, silence. The craft was turned towards Khrushchev now. "I'm warning you, Novoarkhangelsk is home to an integrated aerospace-defense system armed with some of the most advanced munitions the Russian military has to offer. Now, if you don't want to get shot down, you're going to answer me right..." then, her face went pale. Suddenly, there were a lot of somethings on the radar.
"...now... oh, suka." then, she pressed a button on the console. Far away, an air-raid siren began to blare. She switched the relay to the secure frequency for the planet's defense grid. "All forces mobilize! We've got confirmed bogeys coming in from the direction of the Polegate Nebula! Response code Barbarossa!"
"Orders confirmed. Fire at will?" The voice on the other end asked.
"Fire at--" suddenly, the radar screen began to flash, getting Kuznetsova's attention. It was flashing and pulsating in a peculiar pattern, one that, as Kuznetsova examined it further, she realized that she really liked. So many scintillating colors, dancing shapes...
She and the officer both stood, mesmerized. A foreign voice crackled over the relay, cold and machine-like. "Call off the alert."
Everything was okay, right? They hadn't opened fire or anything, so how did she know that they were really hostile? Suddenly put at ease, she tapped the button again and the siren stopped.
"Stand down."
"All units stand down. False alarm. Response code Kursk."
"Are you sure, ma'am? They're just starting to show up on our radars as well."
"Lie."
"It's a military exercise. Apparently, the French forgot to tell us about it."
"If you say so, ma'am." the radio clicked off.
"Open the doors and relax."
Everything would be okay. Kuznetsova quickly input a master security key into a nearby terminal and pressed a button. With a series of loud clanks, each door leading outside opened in succession. Then, Kuznetsova sat back down in her chair, kicked her feet up, and closed her eyes...
She awoke to the sound of gunshots and someone grabbing her by the collar. The next thing she knew, she was being tossed into a helicopter. She landed, hard, on a metal surface, banging her head. "Ow!" she yelled as someone stormed in behind her. Then, she looked up to find a tough-faced Spetsnaz man staring back at her.
Kuznetsova let out a rather embarrassing yelp of surprise, springing to her feet. "What the hell!?" she asked. Then, she realized that she had been handcuffed.
"I have the right to ask the same. Why did you leave the doors open for those... things?" the Spetsnaz operator wasn't the only one in the space, but he seemed to be their leader, and he also seemed angry.
"I did what, for what?" all she could remember of the immediate past was a warm, fuzzy feeling and a reassuring voice.
"The Poslushi almost raided your site because you left the whole place unlocked!"
"I did what?"
"Are you dense? Access records clearly show that you were the one who not only called off the defense, but basically surrendered yourself and your whole staff to the aliens!"
A panic struck Kuznetsova at the prospect that she would be court-martialed (and potentially executed) for something she didn't do. "What... no... I don't... remember..."
"Oh yeah, keep playing dumb, you Quisling. Back on the ground."
In the jail cell, Kuznetsova finally got news of what had happened. At 06:31 in the morning, a Poslushi air raid had been positively identified by the Russian Air Force and a squadron was scrambled, but it was too late, as the Poslushi struck several critical locations across the planet, chiefly the Brezhnev Dam, which collapsed, causing the Yeltsin River to immediately abandon its course and move down the steeper valley on its course into the planet's underground seas. Within minutes, the cities of Polorus, Novorostov, and Tvenezh were swept away with no advance warning, killing tens of thousands.
When the Yeltsin changed course, the water canals stopped flowing, and froze over within hours. Those who went to check the water stockpiles found them still smoldering, partially-immersed in new iced-over ponds. Without water, the boilers that provided heat to people's homes failed.
Ten thousand people died in their sleep in the areas of the planet that were still dark.
All in all, the death toll was staggering, and expected to rise as more people froze or burned their homes down trying to heat them. All, apparently, because of her actions, or lack thereof.
Kuznetsova sat down on her little bed, put her head in her hands, and started to cry.
---
The various delegates sat clamoring in their seats as they filtered in for an emergency meeting of the United Nations. Of course, everyone knew what had happened on Novoarkhangelsk, if not the specifics. There had been a dam collapse, and the lynchpin of infrastructure on the planet was gone. Of course, there were a few rumors about the involvement of the bugs that the US had sent a task force to deal with, but no one took them seriously.
As the last few filtered in, the Secretary-General invited Interim President Leonov of the Russian Commission to give his speech. Nodding, he went up the steps onto the stage and stood behind a lectern, where a copy of his speech was kept.
He tapped the mic twice. It worked. A news camera focused on his face, and a small crowd of reporters was waiting outside.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great sadness that I inform you that yesterday, the Leonid Brezhnev Dam on the planet Novoarkhangelsk, our foremost outerworld, was suddenly and deliberately attacked by forces of the entity which calls itself the Poslush Combine. The dam collapsed shortly thereafter, causing a chain reaction of disasters which claimed the lives of an estimated 50,000 Russian citizens last night."
The delegates whispered to one another at this new development.
"It is believed that they have done so in retaliation for their failed attack on the German outerworld of Kormoran, and the subsequent raid on their facilities by special-forces units of the United States of America.
"I have spent the last twelve hours in close contact with the leaders of other Coalition of Aligned Solar Territories members, and we have weighed our tactical options regarding this threat. We have thus determined that we will not allow this aggressive invader to harm us or any human nation further.
"For that reason, the Russian Commission is officially invoking Article Five of the Coalition Treaty, calling all CAST member nations to our defense and the repulsion of this new enemy. As of right now, all CAST member nations have twenty-four hours to respond, or else face punitive sanctions up to and including removal from the Coalition."
The entire room was in stunned silence. This hadn't happened in years, not since CAST still went by the name of NATO. To Leonov, this was a triumphant moment, the part in the movie where everyone rallies their forces and goes toe-to-toe with the Grays, tanks and riflemen against lasers and giant robots.
Instead, Li Zheng, delegate for the People's Republic of China, stood up.
"President Leonov, your call is understandable in your position, but it is no less rash. You are forsaking a chance for peaceful conference and diplomacy, and moving to a war footing over a minor incident. The People's Republic of China refuses to fight a war for the West. Thus, we tender our resignation from the Coalition, and dearly implore our partners to rethink their own membership." Then, he turned on his heel and walked out of the building. They can afford to lose that many people, thought Leonov.
Then, the delegate of the Non-Aligned Movement stood. "If you are to drag the world into a fourth great war like you did seventy years ago, than we would be mad to assist you. All treaties of military assistance with NAM members are null and void. Good-bye."
Then, India pulled out. Then Vietnam. Slowly, surely, it spiraled out of control until only a little more than half of the Coalition's members remained. Leonov and the remainder were left shell-shocked as CAST lost half its population and GDP.
Leonov was stunned, utterly. What humanity needed in this moment was a show of unity, and what they got was a live feed of the near-collapse of its best chance at survival.
"Well... shit." he uttered, far beyond caring about the cameras.
---
Far away, aboard the Bactria, Colonel Suzuki sat watching the conference on her laptop. Slowly, but surely, her heart sank, and was only buoyed slightly by the fact that Japan's delegate was still giving reassuring glances at Leonov when the feed cut.
The Bactria jolted slightly as it started moving. A minute later, the news got to her. They were pulling back to New Vancouver to offload the now-independent crewmen, a little more than half of the staff. The news on her computer cut to a harried-looking anchor talking about the near-immediate plunge of stock prices for companies all over human territory.
She shut the laptop and went to find the ship's bar while Suli was still there to man it. She needed a drink, badly.