PREDATORY
PRACTICES
A Tech Infantry Novella
by
Edward Stasheff & Marcus Johnston
Copyright © 2011
Chapter 17: Social Engineering
By the time the super-freighter dropped into orbit around the New Israel colony, Narrah had roused the Miao Mercenaries from their slumber and was running them through some light warm-up calisthenics. Heth, however, was granted another three-hour shore pass to take care of business—after all, officially the Avarice was only here to pick up a shipment of fresh produce (very expensive, very perishable, thus very unprofitable produce, Heth hadn't forgotten). That fact that Rachel O'Reilly hitched a ride up to the K'Nes freighter aboard the cargo pod carrier was incidental—and, hopefully, went unnoticed.
When the airlock hatch rolled aside in a gust of air pressure and spicy perfume, Heth saw in an instant that Rachel was no stranger to starships or the weightlessness of zero-G space travel. She was dressed in a professional pantsuit instead of the skirt and suit jacket he was used to seeing her attired in, had her dark brownish-red hair pulled back in a tight bun (so it wouldn't drift into her eyes), and wore a pair of bulky magnetic boots.
"Welcome aboard the Miao super-freighter Avarice, M. O'Reilly," Heth greeted his business associate with a fanged grin. "I've had a guest suite assigned to you, and arranged for your luggage to be delivered there. You had a pleasant trip, I trust?"
"Yes, wonderfully uneventful, thank you." She nodded, looking around the shuttle bay. "Impressive ship you have here, M. Miao! It's easily the largest commercial freighter I've ever seen."
"Why, thank you!" Heth could help swelling a bit with pride at the compliment. "We Miao pride ourselves on efficient design."
"My dad would love this ship," Rachel commented absently as she clunked her way across the shuttle bay in her heavy magnetic boots, Heth hovering alongside her. "Be careful if you let him onboard, though," she warned him. "He'll be snooping around the ship's systems in a heartbeat if you don't keep an eye on him. He can't resist a chance to analyze new and foreign technology."
"You mean Exin… Zih… er, your father? Really?" Heth asked, surprised. On past business trips, Rachel had regaled him many times with her parent's war stories—and the Fleet profile on Captain Xinjao O'Reilly that Captain Gergenstein had given Heth confirmed that the tales weren't just exaggerated family legends. "How odd. I… thought he was an Earth Fleet naval officer. He was a decorated war hero… wasn't he?"
"Only by accident." Rachel sighed, then shook her head. "It's a long, complicated story. But trust me, he's always been first and foremost a starship engineer."
"I… see." Heth filed that away in his brain with a mental note to look into it later; after all, if he were going to extract this human for Gergenstein, he'd prefer to know just who exactly he was dealing with. "Well, let me show you to your suite, Rachel." As he pawed a pressure patch, the hatch to the ship's interior rolled aside and Heth drifted though. It took him a second to realize Rachel hadn't followed. He spun around, floated back, and found Rachel staring at the corridor, hesitating, a puzzled expression on her face.
The problem was immediately apparent: the K'Nes ship had not been designed with human height in mind. With Rachel nearly a third taller than the average K'Nes, the corridor was too low for her to walk through comfortably. For that matter, they weren't really designed to be walked through at all; the K'Nes, a floating species, glided horizontally through the tubular passageways rather than walking upright on their hind legs. "My apologies, M. O'Reilly," Heth said. "I'm afraid you'll need to… er, crawl through these corridors. Don't worry, your suite is more spacious, I assure you."
Rachel got down on her hands and knees and followed Heth's lead. Her magnetic boots quickly became more of a hindrance than a help—without a flat surface to press against, they were more likely to randomly stick to the walls and slow her progress—and she quickly grew annoyed and turned them off, pulling herself along with her arms instead. Some of the turns were uncomfortably tight, their sharp right angles not being quite wide enough for a creature her size, but overall Rachel adapted surprising quickly to the unfamiliar form of movement. Rachel was exhausted by the time they finally reached her suite, but relieved at being able to stand upright again.
"Well, forgive me for getting straight to business," Heth began, "but we're on a tight schedule, and time is money. Regarding the matter we discussed earlier… have you found a way to get us inside the Cialt Abbey?"
"No. Well… not exactly." Rachel scowled. "Believe me, I looked long and hard for any information on the Cronos Abbey—architectural plans, blueprints, schematics—but I couldn't find anything useful. And I doubt that's a coincidence—the Cialt Brotherhood has always been very… er, private, verging on secretive." She sighed. "So, basically, if there is some unknown way in or out of the Abbey, no one knows about it except the Brothers themselves—and they're all inside the Abbey."
"But…?" Heth prompted her, rolling a paw. "What did you find? I assume you have developed an alternate business plan, correct?"
Rachel peered at him, mildly surprised. "Yeah… how'd you know?"
"My dear Rachel," Heth purred, "I wasn't suckled yesterday. I've worked with you often enough to recognize when you're hiding an inside trade."
"Well, you're almost right," Rachel conceded. "I don't know how to get you in there… but I think I've found a way to locate someone who can."
"Indeed? Who, exactly?"
"Undercover Brothers," Rachel answered. "Cialt monks outside the Abbey."
Heth narrowed his yellow eyes. "Didn't you just say there were all inside?"
Rachel shrugged. "And they might be, yeah. But… well, the Cialt Brotherhood is a monastic order, sure, but one organized with a military structure, and whose members are all Tech Infantry veterans—and, uh, they're a bit on the paranoid side, too. What's more, they knew this conflict with the Empire was coming, sooner or later."
Heth cocked his head and sniffed the air, puzzled. "No offense, Rachel, but I'm not quite sure where you're going with this...."
"Look, Heth, both my parents were career Earth Fleet officers. I know how the military thinks. An organization like the Cialt Brotherhood? On the brink of a violent confrontation? They'd almost certainly have intelligence operatives in the field gathering information—just as a precaution, if nothing else."
Heth blinked. "You mean… spies?"
"Exactly." Rachel nodded. "And when the Imperial Army finally did besiege the Abbey... well, there's a good chance one or more Cialt spies might have been stranded outside. So all we have to do is find them."
You make it sound so easy, Heth thought. "If the Brotherhood had spies," he clarified, "if they were caught outside the Abbey, if the Imperial Army hasn't caught them already, if we can find them, and if they know a way to into the Abbey."
Rachel's shoulders slumped and she looked down. "Okay, yeah, it's a long shot, I know. But it's also the only shot we've got. Hey, it was the best I could do on short notice, especially since I had to be kinda sneaky with my research."
"Well, it's certainly better than nothing, which is what we had before! Thank you, Rachel," Heth reassured her with a smile, injecting his voice with more confidence than he felt—it cost nothing to be courteous, after all. "Now, how do you propose we find these Cialt spies?"
"With a very thorough search," Rachel answered, "over as wide an area as possible. Think you could organize your men—er, K'Nes—for a hunt on that scale?"
"I… think that can be arranged." Heth nodded slowly, already forming a business plan in his head. Wherever goods and services went, K'Nes followed. Scat, there were few places he couldn't find an excuse to send a crewcat—among the civilian population, at least. "But what exactly are we looking for, Rachel? If a Cialt spy has managed to evade capture by Imperial personnel this long, how could we hope to find them?"
"The way I see it, you've got one big advantage," Rachel replied. "Look, you K'Nes have better noses that us humans, right?"
"Well, uh…" Heth searched for a diplomatic answer. "We do seem to notice scents that humans don't, yes." He neglected to mention humans were often the source of those odors.
"Well, then there's one way you might be able to identify them that the Imperial thugs can't. The Brothers… well, they stink. Of course, I'll need to explain to your crew just what to sniff for… Any chance you could arrange a staff meeting on short notice?"
"I think I can manage that, yes." Heth nodded. "I assume you already have a presentation prepared?"
Rachel smiled and whipped out her datapad. "Of course!"
"Very well, then!" Heth drifted toward the suite's hatch. "Well, forgive me for having to chat and fly, but I have a lot of arrangements to make before we reach Cronos orbit in a few hours. Besides, I'm due back at the transit bay for the Miao Mercenary mission briefing in a little over an hour."
"No need to explain, Heth—believe me, if there's one thing I understand, it's deadlines!" Rachel flicked her wrist at him. "Go! Shoo! Just let me know the when and where the staff meeting is, okay?"
Although Narrah didn't excuse Heth from training to attend the meeting, he did think it was great idea to incorporate Rachel's presentation into the Miao mercenaries' mission briefing. So it came to pass that after Narrah's analysis of the weather and terrain on Cronos, and his (somewhat terrifying) evaluation of their competitor's military forces, the old hunter opened the hatch and Rachel O'Reilly clomped into the transit bay in her thick-soled mag boots.
Behind her streamed in Rameth and dozens of crewcats who'd be joining in the manhunt. Many did a double-take when they saw the K'Nes hunters, pausing to stare. Others blinked in surprise or disbelief; some even gasped. Then the pleased purring and proud fanged gins began flashing while tails swished in delight.
That was when it finally dawned on Heth just what they'd become—what he'd become—and he blinked, dumbfounded for a moment.
He snuck a quick glance around, looking with new eyes, and for the first time realized just how different a group of K'Nes they'd become from the recruits who had lazily gathered in the transit bay nearly a month earlier. He marveled at what Narrah had accomplished in so short a time. His management style was harsh, true—but there was no denying it was effective! Oh, they were still a motley crew, to be sure, a hodgepodge of mismatched power armor of all different models and manufacturers, and all of it at least a decade old; it was the best M'Rowr could scrounge on such short notice. Only their rifles were standardized—and thank the sun for that! Overall, the whole swarm looked like the bargain bin leftovers at a military surplus liquidation sale.
Yet each hunter hovered at attention in a perfect three-dimensional formation, three clouds of six K'Nes each, a swarm of hunters in sleek black power armor with bladed rifles held at the ready. To the crew of the Avarice, the Miao Mercantile Mercenary Company was a welcome sight most K'Nes hadn't seen since the days of the old K'Nes Tor, a sight some of the youngest K'Nes had never seen, a sight banned during the long years of the Human Occupation: a K'Nes security division ready and able to defend their property rights and labor force against a hostile takeover—with violence, if necessary.
More than a few crewcats of both genders gazed at the hunters with expressions ranging from lascivious appraisal to naked hunger. Clearly, any hunter, male or female, who hadn't yet negotiated a successful reproductive merger for the mating season would have no trouble now finding investors among Rameth's crew.
…assuming they survived Cronos, that is.
"Thank you for coming," Rachel addressed the assembled K'Nes floating around her, signaling that the meeting had begun. "Our goal during the next few hours is to find any Cialt monks who might have been stranded outside the monastery when the siege began." She went on to explain her reasons for believing undercover Brothers might indeed be hiding amongst the civilian population, and that such spies might know how to get the K'Nes hunters inside the Abbey without having to fight their way past the Imperial siege lines. That got the hunter's undivided attention, at least.
"Obviously, any Cialt spy who's managed to avoid capture by the Empire this long will not be easy find. But you K'Nes have one advantage over the Imperial Army: your superior sense of the smell, and the Cialt Brotherhood's rather stinky habit." She opened a sealed bag full of dark green herbs and began passing the dried buds out to her audience. "You see, the Cialt Brotherhood smokes this plant on a regular basis as part of their meditation and prayer services, supposedly to help them commune with God." She smiled. "As I'm sure you'll notice, it has a rather distinctive smell."
Around the transit bay, crewcats sniffed the dried leaves curiously, then recoiled, whiskers and noses twitching, and passed the bud on to the K'Nes next to them. Even all the way across the room, Heth could already smell it faintly: a sharp, slightly acrid scent.
"The smoke smells a little different, though," Rachel continued, pulling out a half-dozen hand-rolled cigarettes from the bag. "Since that's what you'll be sniffing for, I'll give you example." She pulled out a lighter, puffed the cigarette a few times to get it lit, breathed out a cloud of smoke, passed the burning joint to the nearest crewcat, and continued walking around the crowd. "Now, of course," Rachel continued, "any Cialt spy knows smelling like this is a dead giveaway, so after praying they'll probably bathe and change into clean clothes to get rid of the odor." She paused to light another cigarette and hand it out to another audience member. "Luckily, the stink is nearly impossible to get out of your hair. It'll be a very faint scent, though; other humans probably won't notice it. Even you K'Nes might not detect it outdoors, given that Cronos is such a windy planet. You'll have better luck inside buildings or vehicles." She lit up yet another cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and passed it out to the gathered group. "At any rate," she continued, "do your best to memorize this smell. If you pick up a trace of it in the air, try to track it down to its source."
By now, the smoky stench was beginning to grow overpowering, despite the cavernous size of the transit bay; Heth hoped it wouldn't accidentally trigger the fire-suppression systems. Many crewcats merely sniffed at the smoldering cigarettes, wrinkled their noses, and passed them on. A few of the more curious K'Nes puffed on them experimentally, then either made a face or began coughing and spitting. Most just seem puzzled as to why any ape would smoke such a foul thing, especially since it didn't seem to have any noticeable effect on K'Nes biochemistry. Rachel was right about one thing, though: the heavy, pungent, sickly-sweet odor was strong and unmistakable.
"Keep in mind," Rachel continued, "not everyone who smells like this is a monk in disguise; lots of ordinary people smoke this herb as well. You can weed out the civilians and by eliminating anyone who doesn't match the Cialt profile." She began ticking off items on her fingers. "First, ignore any women; all Cialt Brothers are men. There is a Cialt Sisterhood, but they don't have any convents on Cronos. Second, if the suspect seems overweight or out of shape, you can probably discount them as well. Cialt monks believe in maintaining a pure mind, spirit, and body through—among other things—constant physical training, so any Cialt spy will be relatively thin and muscular. Finally, if you find someone with the right smell, right gender, and right body type, survey them with an etheral scanner. If it identifies their aura as an unawakened human, ignore them. All members of the Cialt Brotherhood are Tech Infantry veterans, meaning they're either a mage or werecreature." Rachel hesitated a moment, thinking. "Well, or possibly a ghoul, I suppose, but those are pretty rare these days. I mean, they haven't served in the Tech Infantry since the Battle of Wilke's Star, so any Cialt ghoul would have to be, like, eighty years old or something by now. Of course, they're ghouls, so they wouldn't look eighty… and I suppose ghouls can live for—"
"As for ethereal scanners," Manger Rameth interrupted, cutting off Rachel's rambling, "I know some of you have them and some of you don't, so we'll have to double or triple up when we assign search teams, one scanner per team. I also managed to scrounge up another dozen or so, so hopefully we'll have enough to go around. Got that?"
There was a rustle of nods and mummers of agreement. By now, a smoky haze had filled the transit bay, the burning stench so strong some K'Nes were beginning to gag. Heth suspected most of the crew just wanted the meeting to be over. Curiously, it didn't seem to affect Rachel—or rather, the smell didn't seem to bother her. Her behavior, however, had grown a bit… odd. She was squinting and blinking a lot, and Heth noticed her eyes were reddening. That's strange, he thought, she doesn't seem sad…
"Alright, good. We'll be dividing up search teams after the meeting." Rameth nodded at Rachel. "Back to you, M. O'Reilly."
"Huh?" Rachel jumped, startled out of her silent meditation on ghouls and timetables. "Um… what?"
"Er… your presentation, M. O'Reilly?"
"Oh! Right, right…" Rachel cleared her throat and continued. "Okay—and this is real important, guys, so listen up—if you do find someone matching the profile of a Cialt spy, DO NOT approach them! We don't want to spook them. That, and, uh… well, if they think you're about to blow their cover or something, they might… you know, kill you and stuff. So anyway, just report the suspect to your supervisor instead. They'll pass it on to Senior Director Heth, Manager Rameth, or Captain Narrah, and they'll tell me. I need to be the one who initiates contact—it's probably best if a fellow human and Cronos Resistance member approaches them first, not an alien from a species notorious for selling their loyalties to the highest bidder." Rachel looked around, sighed, then wrapped up her presentation. "Okay, we've got a lot of territory to cover, and not a lot of time to do it in. Senior Director Heth's gonna explain how the search'll be organized."
That was Heth's cue. "SIRE!"
"Recruit Heth?" Narrah growled.
"SIRE! The recruit requests permission to leave formation, SIRE!"
Narrah gave Heth a stiff nod. "Granted."
Heth glided over next to Rachel. "As I'm sure you all know," he began, "officially, we're here to deliver provisions and supplies for the troopers besieging the Cialt Abbey. Now, normally we'd just offload the shipment at an orbital transfer station and let the client haul the freight to its different destinations—but in this case, I've offered the Imperial Army a substantial discount on a full distribution package for cargo delivery. For a small additional fee, we'll distribute the merchandise to the different locations for them, saving them time, personnel, and a lot of work. Well, of course the Empire jumped at the deal!" Heth saw some furry faces in the crowd begin to smile and nod; they knew where this was going. "This, incidentally, also gives us a perfect excuse to discretely scout the planet for a Cialt spy." Heth bared his fangs in a wicked grin. "In other words, not only do we get a free pass for a thorough search of Cronos, the Empire is actually paying us to do it!"
The transit bay burst into hissing chuckles and roaring laughter; even Narrah had a hard time keeping his ever-present scowl in place. Heth noticed more than one female staring at him like he was a cross between a sound investment, a pretty trinket, and a tasty meal. Heth shivered. He imagined he'd be having a lot of awkward conversations the near future… and should probably wear his armor too, just in case.
Heth raised his paws for quiet, and the laughter died down (except for Rachel, who was now giggling uncontrollably and showing no signs of stopping anytime soon). "The Miao Mercantile Mercenary Company, in civilian dress, will transport and unload any cargo heading for military installations, while the Avarice's dockworkers will make any deliveries to civilian areas. The rest of the crew—as many as we can spare—will be sent on shore leave to different marketplaces so we can simultaneously cover as much territory as possible. When the dockworkers finish unloading their cargo, join the others on shore leave. Go ahead and do your usual trading, but keep your eyes, ears, and nose open for Cialt monks in disguise." Heth paused a moment, looking over the crew, trying to drive home the seriousness of what he was about to say. "When and if the Mercenaries begin actively working the extraction contract, everyone needs to get back to the ship immediately and stay here! I don't care how close you are to closing the deal of the century—the Avarice will have to leave Cronos in a hurry, and we don't want to leave anyone behind… but we will if we have to. Understand?" When only silence greeted him, Heth nodded. "Very well, then. See Manager Rameth for your work assignments." With that, Heth flew back to his place in the hunter formation before Narrah could shout at him again.
It took Rachel almost an hour to stop giggling.
Cronos.
It was a cold dry rock in space orbiting a dying red star. Yet the old Federation had considered it a "core" planet, colonized centuries ago when humans were first expanding into space and willing to bear the hardships of terraforming any halfway-habitable rock they found. Personally, Heth couldn't think of a more worthless place to bother colonizing, let alone fight so fiercely over. Still, to the small population of just under a quarter million humans, it was their home. Some families had been there almost two hundred years.
The mining boom towns had long since come and gone, their veins of ore played out, and cold dusty winds blew through abandoned settlements across the planet. The only people who remained on Cronos—so near to the bright lights of the Federation capitol Avalon—were the die-hards who would never leave come hell or high water. The Cronosites had somehow managed to fertilize and farm the dry desert soil, planting winter crops imported from old Earth during the few months when it was warm enough for water to flow in a liquid state—well, at the equator, at least. The rest of the planet was rock, sand, and dirt. Far above the surface, Heth watched from a porthole in a cargo shuttle as the clouds of dust wash endlessly over the landscape in billowing waves carried on the wind.
As the K'Nes cargo shuttle prepared to land at the spaceport outside Fort Olympus, the Imperial Army's planetary headquarters on Cronos, Heth noticed the lack of snow and ice on the ground—but knew that was deceptive; according to all reports, Cronos was a cold desert. Well, the Miao clan were a long-haired breed originally from the dark side of Purrfang, and who spent the last few generations on the frozen planet of Nhur; the Cronos cold was nothing they couldn't handle.
The wind caught him off guard, though; he'd underestimated its strength. Heth realized his error the moment he floated off the shuttle and a gust of cold dusty air sent him flying off on the wind. In the time it took him to deflate, crash, and roll though the sandy red dirt to a stop, he'd been blown over ten meters away. He regained his paws and walked into the breeze back toward the cargo shuttle, but… Sky Father above, it felt like he was moving through a sandblaster! He had to squint his eyes to the narrowest of slits just to keep the fine dust from blowing into his eyes and blinding him. Clearly, on this planet, K'Nes would need to stay land-bound (or in jet-powered armor) if they hoped to get any work done. A pair of protective goggles might be a wise investment, too.
Some alarmed Imperial sentries approached the alien shuttle the moment it landed, but Heth diffused the situation quickly and easily. The soldiers appeared somewhat confused by the K'Nes deliverymen, but… well, all of Heth's paperwork was in order, and the Quartermaster confirmed it over their comlink. So they just shrugged and treated it like any other cargo delivery, figuring one could never go wrong by following orders.
Meanwhile, his shuttle's crew, having learned from Heth's mistake (albeit with a fair amount of muffled snickering), had promptly deflated, landed on their paws, and began unloading the cargo pallets. It wasn't the most efficient job; these weren't the Avarice's crew, but some of the Miao Mercenaries disguised as dockworkers. They'd been well-trained in warfare—but not, apparently, in operating a forklift.
Still, their camouflage seemed to be working; none of their Imperial customers seemed to realize they were being surveyed. Humans generally didn't consider K'Nes either threatening or dangerous—and this time, that worked to Heth's advantage. No one suspected that the alien stevedores unloading the cargo shuttle were all trained killers. All over Cronos, K'Nes crewcats were conducting the same undercover surveillance; Heth could only wait and hope someone's nose found something.
Leaving his masquerading mercenaries to puzzle out how exactly to use a pallet jack, Heth set off to find the Quartermaster for the Cronos Imperial Army to sign off on the confirmation of delivery. When he finally found her, he suspected things might not go smoothly. Partly because the woman was obviously cold, tired, stressed, and not expecting a K'Nes to walk into her office… but mainly because she jumped to her feet, yelled for security, aimed a plasma revolver at Heth's head, and demanded to know what an alien was doing in the middle of an Imperial encampment.
Heth replied that he was merely here to deliver supplies for the Cronos Imperial Army as per their contract, at which point he realized that the Quartermaster, despite having signed off on the full distribution package, had somehow missed the fact that the civilian contractors were K'Nes—and she was not happy about it. Her eyes widened, her jaw clenched, her face turned a curious shade of red, and then she started shouting. What followed was a long and furious tirade full of enough colorful language to create a rainbow dictionary, the general gist of which was:
1) The Quartermaster was somewhat displeased,
2) Alien contractors running military supply convoys was totally unacceptable,
3) The bureaucrat who authorized it should be fired, preferably out of a cannon, and
4) Heth's pelt would make a nice rug for her office floor.
Heth stood perfectly still, a fake smile plastered on his face, and let the rage wash over him until the storm passed. Then he apologized for the inconvenience, promised it would never happen again, gently reminded the Quartermaster that the K'Nes Llan had a neutrality policy towards the human's civil war, and finally asked if she would like them to finish delivering the cargo, or wait on their freighter for the Imperial Army to shuttle the cargo down. After a sullen pause and much angry muttering, she seemed to realize the second option would be more work and take longer… not to mention that she'd already paid for the full distribution service. Reluctantly, she snarled at Heth to finish the delivery—but this was the last and only time, dammit!
When Heth handed her the datapad to sign for the confirmation of delivery, she insisted on scrolling through the manifest to make sure everything she'd ordered was there, that the K'Nes weren't trying to swindle or short-change the Imperial Army. Suddenly she froze, staring at the datapad, and even through her wind goggles Heth could still see her eyes grow wide as moons.
"Fresh fruit?" she said in disbelief.
"And vegetables, yes." The K'Nes nodded. "Purchased from New Israel not twenty-four hours ago." Judging by her reaction, Heth had apparently underestimated the value of fresh produce to soldiers after weeks of field rations.
The Quartermaster narrowed her eyes, suspicious. "What, you planning to charge us extra for this or something?"
"Oh no, of course not." Heth shook his head. "The contract stipulated a set fee, and we always follow contracts to the letter. A deal is a deal."
"So… what's the catch, then?" she demanded, still wary. "You cats are always up to something…"
Heth ignored the insult (even if it was true this time) and shrugged. "The catch is simply that this food will spoil long before I can sell it anywhere else."
"Oh yeah? Then why'd you buy it?"
Heth thought fast—he couldn't tell her the real reason, that it was just an excuse to pick up Rachel without drawing attention. "I'm afraid Zivat Ram Agricultural was somewhat less than forthcoming about the exact expiration date for this merchandise," he growled with a scowl. "My own fault, I'm afraid—I should have read the contract more carefully."
"Oh yeah, you gotta watch out for those Jews," she told Heth with a knowing nod. "They're as bad as you cats!" She proceeded to say quite a few colorful things about the New Israelis that Heth was fairly sure Rachel O'Reilly would find either quite faltering or deeply offensive.
"At any rate," Heth said, trying to drag the conversation back to the original topic, "I substituted this produce for some of the non-perishable foodstuffs in your shipment. I can sell those later, at least, and still make some of my money back. Oh, I'll take a partial loss on the deal, true, but that's still better than a total loss. So you see," he concluded, "you're the accidental beneficiary of simple economics… and poor planning on my part, I suppose."
Thankfully, the Quartermaster seemed to grudgingly accept his explanation. She still maintained a healthy skepticism, evidently, given that she insisted on inspecting the cargo herself to make sure the K'Nes weren't trying to cheat her somehow. Her ill-temper gradually eased once when she saw the fresh fruits and vegetables for herself, and it improved even more after sampling some of it (just to make sure that it wasn't rotten, of course). By the time Heth finally got her blood signature on the delivery confirmation and gave her a receipt, the Quartermaster had calmed down considerably; ripe tomatoes can have that effect on people.
That's when Heth signaled M'Rowr to haul out a pallet of New Israeli kosher wine, and politely asked the Quartermaster if the Imperial Army would like to purchase some (off the books, of course). Her eyes just about popped out of her head, and she mumbled a prayer of thanks to her God-Emperor. Heth gave her the first bottle for free (and insisted she sample it immediately) as an apology for the confusion over the species of his civilian contractors. This put her in an increasingly better mood as they continued discussing the cargo distribution details, and by the time she left (with her face flushed for an entirely different reason), she even accepted the business card Heth had pressed on her.
For the next several hours, Heth organized and coordinated the deliveries from his cargo shuttle at Fort Olympus, all the while keeping a sharp eye out for any reports from Rameth's crew of possible Cialt spies. There was the occasional promising suspect, but eventually an inconspicuous sweep with an ethereal scanner revealed them all to be false leads.
Meanwhile, word of the K'Nes wares spread like wildfire through Fort Olympus. Sky Father above, Heth felt like Emperor Horrath the Great bringing double-digit dividends to his loyal subsidiaries after the Consolidation Wars! In no time at all, a steady stream of soldiers and officers wandered by to (discreetly) purchase bottles of wine. Heth instantly recognized this as a prime opportunity for price-gouging… but instead allowed the intoxicant to be sold for only a modest profit. Right now, goodwill with the Imperial Army was more important than a fat balance sheet—and Heth's social investment paid dividends almost immediately. Through subtle questions worked into the idle chitchat with his customers, Heth gradually pieced together a basic picture of what had happened in the siege of the Cialt Abbey so far.
The campaign, nearly everyone admitted, had been a disaster from the start. With all the experienced Imperial troopers fighting in systems like St. Michael's Star that bordered the Federation, the only soldiers left for internal operations—like putting down the Cronos Resistance—were green recruits fresh out of training. Worse, the Imperial Army had underestimated how well armed, trained, and disciplined the Cialt Brotherhood was. The monks, all Tech Infantry veterans of many, many wars, easily repulsed the initial Imperial assault—and inflicted severe casualties on their attackers.
After that, the Imperial Army withdrew, surrounded the Abbey, cut off their water supply, and tried to starve them out… but the Abbey must have been well-stocked with provisions, because weeks of siege had no apparent effect. That was partly why the supplies the K'Nes delivered were so welcome, Heth discovered; no one had expected the campaign to take this long—and there was no telling how much longer it might last.
But now they were running out of time; Emperor Vin Dane was growing increasingly impatient and frustrated at how long the battle was taking—for a supposed God-Emperor, the inability to kill enough monks to capture one old lady was not just embarrassing, it was dangerously subversive. Field Marshal Palencia had recently ordered the Cronos Imperial Army to abandon the siege in favor of renewed assaults on the Cialt Abbey, and it was working… sort of. They were slowly chipping away at the Abbey's defenses, but it was taking way too long and costing far too many lives. Although Heth was relieved to hear that the Abbey had not yet been taken, it worried him to learn that it might fall any day now to the Imperial onslaught. His window of opportunity to complete the Smythe contract was rapidly closing.
Finally, at long last, a possible Cialt spy was found. Ironically, it was M'Rowr who finally sniffed out the monk in disguise—perhaps he'd smoked so much nepeta that he had a natural instinct for fellow stoners. Unfortunately, the undercover Brother was found in a frightening location—behind the Imperial Army's siege lines surrounding the Cialt Abbey, uncomfortably close to the fighting. Luckily, Miao Mercantile had one more delivery of rations and medical supplies for that location, and Heth—despite his better judgment and survival instincts—made sure he was on that final cargo shuttle.
Stopping off briefly at the Avarice to collect their Cronos Resistance contact, Rachel O'Reilly, Heth took the precaution of changing into his power armor (disguised as a human business suit, of course) before heading into an active war zone. It was a risk, certainly—if the Imperial Army caught him wearing it, there'd be awkward questions at best and prison time at worst—but compared to getting burned alive by a stray plasma bolt, it seemed an acceptable risk. Besides, Miu had specifically designed his armor's stealth suite to fool casual detection systems… and he always has Zechariah McNeilly's power armor contract to fall back on if things got desperate..
Although Heth struggled to act calm, his fur kept bristling as their cargo shuttle headed down through the atmosphere. Once they received permission to fly into the restricted airspace around the siege, Heth finally got his first glimpse of the Cialt Abbey from the air. It was carved into the rocky side of a mountain, constructed from either stone quarried locally, or cremecrete designed to look like stone. It looked tiny compared to the mountain behind it—but that was just an illusion. As Heth drew closer, he could tell it was a massive, imposing structure. Tall walls reached high up into the sky, lined with extremely narrow cross-shaped windows—with the stained glass blown out. Much like the arrow slits in castles of old Earth, these windows made excellent sniper positions. Heth guessed the Brothers designed them with that exact scenario in mind. The Imperial Army had apparently guessed this, too, as several of the window embankments had been blow out by explosives—probably from light missiles or artillery. A tall bell tower rose up from the center of the compound. It, too, must have made an excellent sniper's nest, given the fact that the top had been blown off. The Imperial Army was massed far from the Abbey—modern weapons had an incredible range—but they had it completely surrounded. Another assault on the Abbey must have just ended; the sandy stretches between the Abbey and the siege line was littered with scorched craters, shrapnel, bodies and blood.
Their shuttle was granted permission to land well behind the siege lines to deliver the last batch of rations and medical equipment to the Imperial Army—or rather, to the independent contractors supporting the Army—and the mercenaries-turned-deckhands began unloading the cargo. Rachel had clearly been to Cronos before; she came prepared, dressed in a heavy insulated jumpsuit, tight-fitting wraparound sunglasses, and a thin scarf that she pulled up over her nose and mouth as she stepped out into the dusty wind, her breath steaming in the chilly air. Heth stayed alert, his eyes, ears, and nose wide open, but tried desperately to act casual, by all appearances just another K'Nes merchant in a black human business suit. Thankfully, no one detected his suit was disguised power armor—perhaps they hadn't even bothered to check.
M'Rowr led Heth and Rachel in the direction where he had picked up the scent of a possible Cialt spy earlier—one of the volunteer civilian field hospitals that had popped up well behind the siege lines. As they approached, Heth pretended not to notice as strode past a line of corpses laid out in a row and struggled to keep his tail from bristling. Judging by the number of wounded carried about on stretchers, the recent assault on the Abbey had not gone well for the Imperial troopers. If they wanted to take the Cialt Abbey by force and capture its defenders, it was clearly going to be costly. Heth was just beginning to wonder how the Brothers had wrought so much havoc with only small arms when he overheard the explanation.
"How did this happen?" asked a stunned medic. "All the monks were supposed to have was rifles and pistols! Maybe some explosives! A platoon in power armor should have been able to take the Abbey!"
"I guess it depends on your definition of 'small arms,'" answered his partner as they worked the triage lines through the blowing sand. "Rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired missile launchers... judging by the plasma burns at that range, they might even have some lance cannons in there."
"I can't believe old Chairman Clarke allowed that!"
"He didn't," his partner returned. "He also didn't do audits, apparently. Besides, maybe the Cronos Resistance got access to Light Infantry hardware and brought it with them when they holed up inside... hell, I don't know."
The conversation drifted out of earshot as Heth, M'Rowr, and Rachel kept moving. So far, Heth hadn't picked up the scent of the disguised Cialt Brother that M'Rowr had found—possibly due to all the other powerful smells drowning it out: the chemical stench of plasma fires, the occasional acrid whiff of gunpowder, the tangy, metallic stink of human blood and gore... and more than a few unwashed human bodies. The pair of cats walked around delivering supplies, discretely sniffing the air, until Heth finally picked up the scent on the dusty breeze—burnt cannabinoids and carbonized tetrahydrocannabinol.
They tracked it to its source: an old white-haired surgeon in a blood-stained lab coat, apparently on a rare break as he sucked down a cigarette and dictated his patient's medical notes into a digital recorder. The scent was very faint, but it still clung to his hair and military-style moustache. The odor may have been too weak for humans to pick up on it... but not for K'Nes.
Rachel said nothing, just raised her eyebrows in question. Heth discretely pointed out the doctor with a casual wave of his tail. She nodded, and they approached. As they drew closer, Heth discreetly survey the man with his datapad's built-in ethereal scanner, then glanced at the analysis of the doctor's aura. There was no doubt; the man was definitely a mage—and a powerful one.
Rachel introduced herself and her K'Nes business associate to the surgeon, using the pretense of needing a doctor to sign off on some paperwork acknowledging that the medical supplies had been received in full. The man was amicable enough, if clearly stressed and exhausted.
"Thank you," Rachel said with a smile, then casually dropped the passcode that would identify her as a member of the Cronos Resistance. "So, you follow sports? Fedball? I bet the Ashdown Werecats will beat the New Tokyo Managers this season ten to seven."
The doctor looked up and met her eye, hesitating only a moment before replying, "Only if the Rios Cyborgs beat the Purrfang Cats in extra time."
Why do humans always disregard the Purrfang Cats? Heth wondered, annoyed. If they'd just change the Fedball rules to accommodate airborne species, we'd carry the field every time! It's simple species discrimination, that's—
Oh. Right. They weren't really talking about sports, were they?
The doctor narrowed his eyes as pulled out a new cigarette and struggled to light it in the never-ending Cronos wind. "What did you say your name was again?" he finally asked.
"Rachel. Rachel O'Reilly." Heth couldn't tell if the doctor recognized the clan name or not, but he nodded just the same. "By the way," Rachel continued, "I was wondering if I could get your advice on cutting through some medical red tape. You see, Uncle Joe wants to get Grandma Edwina out of the hospital and into a nursing home."
"Mmmm," the doctor nodded slowly and took a drag off his smoke. "Security around the hospital is pretty tight. Grandma's pretty much trapped inside. Getting her out won't be easy."
"Once inside the hospital," Heth spoke up, "I guarantee we'll get Grandma out. And her Brothers. And friends."
The undercover monk cast a glance at Heth and said nothing.
"Oh, don't worry," Rachel assured him. "He's a friend of the family."
"If you say so," the doctor replied. Suddenly, Heth felt an uncomfortable cloud come over his mind, as if he wasn't completely alone inside his own head. Heth's flesh crawled at the knowledge that the mage was scanning him for truth and lies, and Heth had to fight hard to keep his fur from bristling in revulsion. It was a complete violation of Heth's intellectual property rights... but now probably wasn't the best time to bring that up. Besides, given the stakes, he could understand the Brother's need for caution.
Thankfully, the mage seemed satisfied with whatever he found. He turned to Rachel. "So you hired the cat to get Grandma out of the hospital?"
"Uncle Joe hired me, actually," Heth clarified, "and paid well. We Miao have a motto: A deal is a deal."
The doctor grunted and nodded, then took a long pull off his cigarette, thinking. "Well," he said at last, "there is a back door to the hospital—a small one—but your little floating friend here might be able to squeeze through it. Security's lighter there, too. Here, give me your datapad—I'll point it out on a map."
"Of course," Rachel said, handing it over. "Oh, by the way... we will need a doctor's note to convince the hospital staff that we're there to move Grandma. Think you could write us one?"
The doctor grunted and nodded again, scribbling on the pad with a stylus. "There you go. Should check out with the staff," he said, handing it back. "Be careful with that. Not everyone understands... my handwriting. Got it?"
"You have my personal guarantee," Heth said, nodding. "Oh, and... you will call ahead to let Grandma know that my family and I coming to see her, right?"
The doctor took another puff. "How many relatives?"
"Eighteen, including myself."
The doctor let out a low whistle. "Big family."
"Grandma is very loved."
"Well," the doctor sighed, "I'll try to call ahead... but the comlinks have been patchy since the siege began." He flicked his cigarette butt away, where it was instantly caught but the wind and swept off. "Good luck." He headed back into the surgery tent.
Heth and his shuttle crew finished unloading and distributing their cargo—they didn't want to draw any suspicion, after all. Just as they were finishing up, Heth's keen K'Nes ears overheard another crucial piece of information.
"Gather the troopers, Sergeant. We just got word that we're launching the final assault at nightfall."
"Another? So soon? But... why?"
" 'Cause the brass wants the high-value target now. Look, this order came from the top. Understand? The very top."
Heth heard a gasp, then the click of boot heels coming to attention. "Praise be upon Him who saves us from the Caal!"
