Peter Nealen's Blog, page 16

It’s Here – SPOTREPS Is Out

Today is the day. For the first time, I’ve got other authors – including some powerhouses – playing in my sandbox. SPOTREPS – A Maelstrom Rising Anthology is live on Kindle and Paperback.

The World Order is Crumbling…

…And only a handful stand in the breach.

But should they defend the status quo, or destroy it?

The Triarii were founded to hold the line, to fill in the gaps where order was breaking down in the US, and then overseas as what looks very much like World War III breaks out.  They aren’t the only ones, though.

Many men and women can see what’s coming.  And they’re pissed.

From the Stateside unrest to peacekeeping missions abroad, to mercenary operations in Africa and South America, twelve authors bring their talents to the Maelstrom Rising series.  Twelve stories of action, combat, and intrigue set against the backdrop of a new kind of World War.

The future of war is amorphous and dirty.

Are you ready?

 

The post It’s Here – SPOTREPS Is Out appeared first on American Praetorians.

Strategic Assets Prologue

Yes, it’s getting close. With SPOTREPS coming out in days, Strategic Assets is not far behind.

Violent Divisions Grow Sharper Across the US

In the aftermath of the mass blackouts and terrorist attacks that all but paralyzed the United States in the early fall, a divide that has lain beneath the surface for years has become all the more bitter and pronounced. States have locked down their points of entry, some using the National Guard, some using a combination of law enforcement, National Guard, and private military companies. Many cities have become sharply divided by area, some neighborhoods becoming veritable fortresses controlled by local groups, which now go openly armed. The right-wing organization calling itself The Triarii has taken control of several Midwestern and Western cities, as well as major supply chains. In the meantime, considerable portions of the Northeast and West Coast appear to be all but completely under the de facto control of the left-wing People’s Revolutionary Action. PRA spokesperson Shirley Wang stated yesterday, “The fascists and racists who have exploited this tragedy are on the move. We have no choice but to act decisively, to stop them by any means necessary. The racist, xenophobic defenders of a corrupt system must be stamped out across the country.”

Food Shortages and Plunging Temperatures Threaten a Wounded United States

While certain parts of “flyover country” have stabilized quickly in the aftermath of what appears to have been the single biggest, most audacious terror attack in history, much of the country is still facing a hard winter. Supply chains have been all but destroyed, and while armed and escorted convoys are starting to push food into the worst-affected urban areas, the supply is far, far less than the demand. Power still has not been fully restored in several major metropolitan areas, in part due to continuing violence. Hunger is starting to become a serious problem in many places, far worse than the escalating instability and crime. Worse, forecasts are calling for a harsh winter in the Northeast. Reports are already coming in that elderly people are freezing to death in Upstate New York, as an early cold front moved in over the last two weeks.

An Abrupt Shift in Middle East Violence

Despite every indication that the main Iranian push into Saudi Arabia was going to come via the Iraqi border, the stalemate north of King Khalid Military City continues. Rumors point to possible Saudi chemical weapons being the deterrent that is keeping the combined Iranian/Iraqi forces at bay, though other analysts point to continuing Iraqi unrest aimed at the Iranian occupiers. In the meantime, however, Iranian forces have reportedly seized a foothold in the United Arab Emirates, and have landed tanks and missile artillery aimed directly at Riyadh. Whether Iran has managed to land enough strength to take the Saudi capitol remains to be seen…

North Korean Missile Tests Increase Tensions

North Korean missiles passed over the JS Izumo task force in the Sea of Japan last night, leading to an elevated alert for all Japanese Self Defense Force units. Reports of North Korean commando raids across the DMZ are still uncorroborated. The Japanese Joint Staff reportedly met with Prime Minister Himura in the early hours of the morning, but while it has been suggested that the Maritime Self Defense Force might shift its operations north to counter the new North Korean activity, so far no redeployments have been observed. There is speculation in some analytical circles that the North Korean move was instigated by Beijing, in an attempt to draw the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force north and away from the East China Sea. Beijing has issued no statement.

Escalation in the Philippines

Following the recent advances made by Filipino security forces against what are believed to be Chinese proxies on Palawan, and the crackdowns on armed groups on the islands of Luzon and Leyte, a renewed wave of violence hit Mindanao on Tuesday. The Moro Ikhwan, a more violent and radical offshoot of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, claimed responsibility for the bombings in Davao City, Zamboanga City, and Valencia. Our military analysts say that the attacks showed a considerable degree of sophistication. Multiple explosive devices and diversionary small arms attacks hit several schools and markets at about midday. Follow-on suicide bombings appear to have been directed at first responders. The subsequent wave of drone attacks is believed by some analysts to point to Chinese support being funneled to the Moro Ikhwan, though no direct link has yet been identified.

Cease Fire Reached Between India and China

Following weeks of negotiations, New Delhi and Beijing have reached a cease-fire agreement, temporarily ending hostilities on the Doklam Plateau. Chinese and Indian troops have been stalemated on the Plateau since the fall, when Chinese troops attacked the Indian border guards and secured a foothold almost twenty kilometers into the disputed territory. Their initial success was tempered when bad weather moved in, halting any further advance. Our own Colonel Robert May has suggested that the cease fire is almost entirely a matter of cynical opportunism on the Chinese’ part, as the weather has kept most of their forces from moving, and they have faced pressures elsewhere. “They haven’t actually moved their troops back. Oh, they’ve crossed back over the border, but they’re still sitting there. I think they’re going to let the Pakistanis handle more of the pressure for a while.”

A New Cartel Seizes Power

While information coming out of Mexico has been spotty and unreliable for some time, the rumors about the Xolotl Cartel appear to be true. The shadowy organization wiped out the current leadership of the Abarco-Cruz Cartel, a breakaway splinter from the Sinaloa Cartel, in a single night, displaying the severed heads of Miguel Abarco-Cruz and his family on the steps of their mansion. They have currently taken the port of Lazaro-Cardenas by storm, and now hold it by force of arms. In scenes eerily reminiscent of the similar cartel seizures of Culiacan, Veracruz, Jalisco, Hermosillo, and Oaxaca, armed and masked men, backed up by heavily armored and armed paramilitary vehicles, are to be seen on every street corner. The cartel’s leader, who has never shown his face and is known only as Tlamacazqui, which means “priest” in Nahuatl, has announced that the cartel will now control all commerce in Michoacán, and that any who oppose them will wish that they died as quickly as the Abarco-Cruz family. Rumors of Xolotl cells scattered throughout the country remain uncorroborated.

Continued Silence from Within Slovakia

It has now been almost four months since the government in Bratislava shut Slovakia off from the internet. Those few journalists granted permission to work and report from within the country are strictly censored by French or German European Defense Corps officers. They have been painting an almost universal picture of a wounded country being slowly rebuilt and brought back to stability. However, what few leaks have come out from local sources present a different side to the story. Photos of continued demonstrations in most major cities have emerged in recent days, though European Defense Council spokespeople have denounced the leaks as fraudulent. More photos and cell phone videos show fires and damaged buildings in the wake of bombings aimed at Loyalist and EDC security forces. Even worse are reports of targeted killings aimed at suspected Nationalists and their sympathizers. If the reports of indiscriminate violence aimed at Nationalist strongholds before the EDC’s intervention last year are accurate, reports seem to indicate that they have continued, if not accelerated.

All Quiet on the European Front

It has been over two months since the battle for Gdansk in Poland, and so far, the northern European affair seems to have stalemated. French and German forces, who abandoned Gdansk to Polish nationalist forces eight weeks ago, have maintained their positions on the German side of the border. In the meantime, Russian forces have continued to assert their presence in the Baltic Sea. There have been several close encounters between Russian Baltic Fleet units and NATO units over the past few weeks, fortunately defused by quick and measured reactions by NATO fleet commanders.

Unrest Grows in Ukraine

The new regime in Kiev was greeted with widespread approval right after the coup less than a year ago. This was largely due to the loss of life incurred by the European Defense Council-ordered operation to capture Kyrylo Stasiuk. But the heavy-handed actions taken against certain labor leaders and the regime’s lockstep collaboration with Moscow has led to renewed demonstrations in recent days. Analysts believe that a shortage of fuel oil has further contributed to Ukrainians’ discontent, as the early winter weather has been particularly harsh.

Trouble in the Aegean

Violence broke out between Greek paramilitary groups and the Turkish enclaves in Alexandropoli and Komotini yesterday. Demonstrators have been marching in both cities for weeks, calling for justice for the killing of a dozen Greek youths by Turkish “police” units in the Komotini enclave. The Greek government does not recognize the Turkish police units, but the Turks refuse to allow Greek police into the enclaves. So far, they have been backed by Turkish military demonstrations just off the coast whenever the Greeks have attempted to move into the enclaves. The current demonstrations have not deterred the paramilitaries, however. The enclaves are mostly made up of Turks, Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, and Kosovars, who have crossed the border under Turkish military protection.

The post Strategic Assets Prologue appeared first on American Praetorians.

SPOTREPS – A Maelstrom Rising Anthology Foreword

This collection came together thanks to a couple of things. One goes way back to the beginning of my writing career. In a way, it could even be said that this entire book is Dave Reeder’s fault.

I sent Dave a copy of Task Force Desperate, in the hopes that he’d review it on Breach-Bang-Clear. He did, and the review was pretty glowing. Over the next couple of years, as the American Praetorians series advanced, his enthusiasm didn’t wane. In many ways, I’m indebted to Dave as a perpetual source of encouragement as an action thriller writer.

He also brought up the possibility of writing in one or another of my series. When the idea for the Maelstrom Rising series came to me, I initially worked up a little promotional graphic, a black and white photo of a raging fire on a street, with the following text:

 

Most of the pundits are calling it World War Three, though a friend of mine says it’s really more like Five or Six. Others are calling it the Great Global Breakdown, or the War of All Against All.

We Triarii?

We just call it work.

 

Dave immediately wanted to know what he had to do to play in that sandbox. And as the series got larger, that idea stuck around.

The final idea for this anthology came at Life, The Universe, and Everything, a writer’s conference in Provo, Utah, back in February, 2020. The series’ scope was getting bigger and bigger as I continued to map it out, and even with the POVs split between Matt Bowen and Hank Foss, there was going to be a lot going on that the main books didn’t cover.

So, starting with Jim Curtis, I asked if others who enjoyed the series, and/or were pretty good action writers themselves, wanted in. A sidebar conversation, completely separated from the panels and official meetups, had turned into a major project.

The end result is the book you hold in your hands.

The authors have brought their own perspectives and styles to events scattered all around a world going to hell in a handbasket. They’ve hopefully shed a little light on things going on well outside of Matt’s or Hank’s perspective.

 

It might take a lot for some people, particularly those who are used to a comfortable, relatively stable existence, to stand up and fight. It might take losing everything. These stories are mostly about those people. People who stand up and fight, because there’s no other choice left.

Join us as we venture back into the maelstrom of the next war.

SPOTREPS – A Maelstrom Rising Anthology is available for pre-order, going live on 7/14.

The post SPOTREPS – A Maelstrom Rising Anthology Foreword appeared first on American Praetorians.

On Domestic Unrest

I’ve written about domestic unrest before. It was a major theme of Lex Talionis. It underlies much of the situation in the Maelstrom Rising series. And here it is, raising its ugly head again.

Inciting incidents are hard to pin down. Many have been lies. In some cases, an actual death was twisted to make the dead man a martyr. In this case, it appears that a genuine act of police brutality (almost universally condemned, with the accused cop having been arrested and charged, then the charges upgraded) has been used as the inciting incident. This is not a Reichstag Fire, or a Mukden Incident. A genuine crime was committed.

However, while it might not have been as quick as the mob would have liked, it was being dealt with within the system. So, why the outrage?

Because it is useful. It has become apparent over the last few weeks that the Minneapolis Police Department desperately needs reform. It has little to do with race; a woman was murdered by a police officer from his car while she stepped out onto her front porch in her bathrobe, after she had called 911. A quick viewing of a video of Minneapolis cops in riot gear, shooting paintballs at bystanders on their porch in a quiet neighborhood, when those people didn’t immediately go inside when ordered to further reveals a police force that has some serious problems.

But that is an issue for the City of Minneapolis and the State of Minnesota. Why did cities nationwide suddenly erupt into flames?

Because it’s not about the incident. The incident is just an excuse.

Many fingers have been pointed in many directions as to who turned peaceful–if slightly misguided–demonstrations into violent riots. The media has been pointing to their favorite boogeyman, the white supremacist. The right has pointed to Antifa. The left has pointed to the Russians, the right to China.

The truth is most likely that they’re all right. But the biggest drivers here are not the white supremacists, or even the Russians or Chinese.

There will be those who will accuse me of a political bias in blaming Antifa. And as a single boogeyman, I’m not. While there’s a lot of misinformation about the group out there, it’s not just homegrown. Ask any European. They’ve experienced these groups before.

The hard Left has its own tactics, and that makes them identifiable. Felix Rex on YouTube has a pretty good breakdown:

There’s another identifier that struck me while watching this unfold. It’s a hallmark of Red terrorism that was part and parcel of the violence in the ’70s and ’80s, coming from the likes of the Red Army Faction, Action Directe, the Red Brigades, etc.

The purpose of much of the random violence was specifically to elicit a heavy-handed response from the target state, in order to force the kind of oppression that they claimed to be resisting. To force a divide between the people and their government, isolating each and allowing an overthrow, after which the terrorists would be in charge. This has sort of gotten lost in discussions of terrorism over the last twenty years, because jihadi terrorism has a somewhat different character. It’s still there, especially during the occupation of Iraq, but it gets obfuscated with the cultish bloodthirst to brutalize the kufar.

Since the riots can pretty easily be shown to have little to nothing to do with what they claim, then this becomes a similar thing. Driving a wedge through society, in an attempt at revolutionary overthrow.

We have a problem with that term: “revolution.” It’s been romanticized on Right and Left (for wildly different aims, but still romanticized) for a very long time. Some of that has to do with our national mythology about the Revolutionary War. Some of it has to do with movements that predate that war. Some of it (particularly on the Left) has everything to do with Communist subversion.

This guy usually talks about the video game industry, but he’s got some very good points in this video:

Make no mistake; this is an attempt to burn down society in order to replace it with something that will be unrecognizable. Most of the people rioting and looting aren’t even thinking about it. They are what Lenin called “Useful Idiots.” They have been primed by years and years of propaganda and manipulation, highlighting any outrage that could fuel unrest. In some cases, that might have been simply for the mercenary motivation of driving ratings or web traffic. In some cases, the unrest was always the point.

Many of those driving the attempt to tear down everything because of a single documented act of injustice are harboring a delusion that they will be able to create a utopia from the ashes, no matter how many lives have to be destroyed in the process. The others driving it, many of whom do not live in the United States, are unconcerned with the destruction, because the destruction of their strategic rival from within is the point.

Because the destruction is not going to be fixed overnight. Neighborhoods that have been ground zero for riots do not recover. Especially when local grocery stores and other infrastructure have been looted and burned. The people who live in the cities that are burning will suffer for a long time.

Which has been the goal all along.

The post On Domestic Unrest appeared first on American Praetorians.

The New Cold War is Heating Up

In the wake of the Wuhan Coronavirus, the new cold war with China isn’t getting any cooler. It seems that my predictions that China was going to step up the aggression in the aftermath were pretty on.

(Man, I hope I can get the Maelstrom Rising series done before things really go pear-shaped…)

Hong Kong

Hong Kong has been the first on the chopping block. The protests in recent months have been largely in response to the Hong Kong government’s proposal for an extradition law (that would have made Hong Kong citizens subject to extradition to the PRC for crimes under PRC law). It was taken as a sign that the HK government was increasingly subject to Beijing. The law was withdrawn after the protests, but things haven’t exactly calmed down.

The PRC’s National People’s Conference recently decided to impose a National Security Law on Hong Kong. A similar law had been proposed by the HK government in 2003, but was withdrawn after protests. Now, Beijing is directly imposing it. The US has recognized this move as effectively the death of Hong Kong’s de facto independence, as announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “After careful study of developments over the reporting period, I certified to Congress today that Hong Kong does not continue to warrant treatment under United States laws in the same manner as U.S. laws were applied to Hong Kong before July 1997,” Pompeo said.

Taiwan

Hong Kong isn’t the only place in Beijing’s sights. The PRC has stepped up its pressure on Taiwan, as well.

The PLAN has conducted several incursions into Taiwanese waters and airspace over the last few months. PLA aircraft crossed the “invisible line” in the Taiwan Strait on February 10. The PLA’s Eastern Theater Command has been conducting more drills, and now the PLAN is planning on exercises that would simulate the amphibious takeover of several small islets off the Taiwanese coast.

Beijing has proposed extending the “One Country, Two Systems” model to Taiwan, which has been roundly rejected by President Tsai, pointing to how well that’s worked out for Hong Kong (Under the 1997 treaty, Hong Kong was supposed to be de facto independent for fifty years. It’s lasted just over twenty.). It doesn’t help the situation that Beijing has recently dropped the word “peaceful” from its resolution on reunification.

India

Border clashes in Sikkim, India, have resulted in injuries and a growing buildup of PLA and Indian Army troops in the region. Sikkim has been the site of numerous border disputes between India and China, going back to the border war in 1962. These sorts of scuffles have become fairly common, but this one seems to be escalating a bit more.

The last such clash happened in 2017, when China tried to force a road through Indian-claimed territory. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this, either. China forced the Karakorum Highway through Indian-claimed territory in Kashmir, and has claimed most of Arunachal Pradesh province as its own for decades.

China’s not pushing India just to be difficult. They have real logistical reasons for doing this, primarily to push petroleum shipment routes to Burma and Pakistan. Every move to foment instability has a purpose, most of them aimed at the New Silk Road, making “all roads lead to Beijing” in one way or another.

New Cold War

In all of this, China’s threats against the US have continued to escalate, including warnings to “abandon wishful thinking about changing China.” (Which is pretty rich coming from a country that has poured billions of dollars into information operations in the US.) While the US Navy continues to conduct Freedom of Navigation exercises in the South China Sea, Chinese authorities have continued to make threats. While China has continued to push its neighbors, claiming larger and larger swathes of the South China Sea as its territorial waters (well outside the 12 nautical miles that constitutes “territorial waters” in international law), it claims victim status by saying that “The United States has intensified the suppression and containment of our side since the [coronavirus] outbreak, and the Sino-US strategic confrontation has entered a period of high risk.” This according to Defense Minister Wei Fenghe, who added, “We must strengthen our fighting spirit, be daring to fight and be good at fighting, and use fighting to promote stability.”

Claiming to be the victim while leaning on everyone around them is a common tactic for Beijing in this new cold war. They warn about a cold war, while escalating it themselves, using the chaos of the coronavirus as a cover for more expansionist actions.

Communist China is pushing. I still believe that much of this is due to a certain degree of desperation. Their demographic crisis is worsening. We will probably never know just how many Chinese have died of the coronavirus, and the economic backlash has only just begun. If they are going to secure their dominance, they have to do it soon, before everything falls apart.

We live in interesting times.

The post The New Cold War is Heating Up appeared first on American Praetorians.

A Bit of a Shakeup

I’ve been a bit quiet lately, I know.  That’s because I’ve been a little busy.  The business side of this author thing is getting a bit of a shakeup.

I’ve recently been picking James Rosone’s brain on marketing.  He’s been doing rather better at this than I have, and he’s had some wisdom to impart.  So, I’ve been trying to put it into practice.

The Maelstrom Rising series is now something of my flagship series, and James has strongly suggested that I concentrate on it for the time being.  You might have noticed new covers in the sidebar.  That’s part of the shakeup.

It’s also why Strategic Assets has been moved to the front of the queue.  (And yes, if you click on the image, it will take you to a preorder link.)  Enemy of My Enemy is still in the works, but the Brannigan’s Blackhearts series needs some more work.

I also got Strategic Assets outlined in two days, started the first draft on Friday, and it’s already over 13k words in.  Pulp Speed is back, folks.  Hopefully I can maintain it, because this series got big.  (As in, “probably 14 books long, not counting the anthology” big.)  Trying to give the broad strokes of a global war through small unit actions means there’s a lot of ground to cover.  (The two POVs will also help to maintain the pace without potentially burning out the characters to the point where I needed to end the American Praetorians series.)

So…

New covers.

Lots more books coming.

Still going to be working on Brannigan’s Blackhearts and The Unity Wars on the side, but new releases might be a little delayed.  Not dead.  Just pushed back a little.  Let’s get the current global war fought.

The post A Bit of a Shakeup appeared first on American Praetorians.

Incident at Trakan Part 3

“Rare earth minerals, several fortunes in heavy metals, and more M’tait artifacts than anyone has ever seen, let alone had a chance to get their hands on without them turning explosive,” Troop Captain Nikoilo said.  “No wonder they tried fighting us over it.”

“It was still stupid,” Vakolo growled.  They were standing in the entry chamber that the Caractacans had cleared.  It was now the Sparatan groundside command post, with Sparatan troops on security at the various openings, some descending into the pits to explore the nether regions of the base.  Vakolo himself was in combat armor, standing next to the troop commander at their hasty command and control station where a portable holo tank had been set up, updating the base layout and troop dispositions as reports came in.  “They were vastly outnumbered and outgunned.  They should have had the wit to surrender immediately.”

“I have yet to meet a pirate who would qualify as a great thinker, Strategos,” Nikoilo said dryly.

Vakolo just looked at him, but the Troop Captain’s helmet was as faceless as his own.  He just shook his head.  He should take the man to task for the remark, but if any of his men had earned the right to make it, it was Nikoilo.  The Troop Captain had been his first Section Leader, after all.

“The Sengseighelith Vallosgiath is arriving, Strategos,” Nikoilo pointed out.  Vakolo glanced at the holo tank and saw that the Bilbissarii shuttle with the commander’s identifier code was indeed landing.  Hidden by his helmet, his lip curled.  He’d made sure that he had been on the ground with his troops.  He was a Strategos; his place was on the battlefield.  He was not on the front lines, certainly, but he had made certain that he had been in a position to observe and direct his forces.  Something that he could not have done in orbit.

“Instruct her to meet us here,” Vakolo said curtly.  He certainly was not going to leave his command post to greet the tehud.  He had more important things to do than stroke a Bilbissarii’s ego.

Even as the rounded lander set down, and the comm specialist reported that the Sengseighelith Vallosgiath was requesting a meeting, Vakolo kept his eyes on the main holo, displaying the layout of the complex.  “Have Section Fifteen move up there,” he said, pointing.  “The Caractacans have already gotten too far ahead.”

He could feel Nikoilo’s eyes on him.  “You think the Caractacan Brotherhood might be trying to beat us to some of the technology, Strategos?” he asked quietly.

“They answer only to their own Brotherhood, Troop Captain,” Vakolo said.  “They are under no obligation to share anything they find with their allies.  I would rather keep an eye on them.”  He stared at the holo, and the gold sparks that marked the Caractacan Brothers and the Order’s Cataphracts.  “One can never entirely trust someone who lives strictly by a code rather than an allegiance.”

“One would think that such a strict adherence to a code would make them more stable, more predictable,” Nikoilo said.

“Oh, yes, quite,” Vakolo replied, still studying the holo.  “But also rigid and uncompromising.  Stray too far from their code of ethics, regardless of how justified you may be in doing so, and they’ll turn on you.”  He glanced up at Nikoilo.  “Trust me, Troop Captain.  Loyalty is far more useful than a code.”

Nikoilo had no further comment, but turned his attention back to the holo map.

For a long time, both men simply watched, occasionally calling out for a report or directing a section somewhere else.  As time stretched on, Vakolo’s frown deepened, and judging by Nikoilo’s silence, the Troop Captain was mirroring the expression.

He was about to sound an all-call when a bustle of movement entering the command post interrupted him.

The Sengseighelith Vallosgiath was identifiable within her entourage of tehud by the high crest on her helmet.  The Bilbissarii tended to opt for such crests as emblems of rank rather than the painted stripes or emblems that the Sparatans or the Military Brotherhoods used.  She was also wearing full armor and carrying no weapon, while her guards were in lightly armored spacesuits with gleaming, parade-ground-spotless rifles held at port arms.

“Strategos Vakolo!” the Sengseighelith Vallosgiath called out, her voice blaring over their joint comm channel.  That she was a bit perturbed was more than obvious.  “I asked for a meeting when I landed!”

Vakolo looked up at her.  His own faceplate was armored and blank, the tint of his eyepieces hiding even his gaze.  “And you have been allowed one,” he said.  “What do you want?”

“This is a joint operation, Strategos,” she said, demonstrating a greater grasp of Sparatan rank and name structures than Vakolo had of Bilbissarii.  Not that he cared that much.  “I should not have to beg an audience to speak to my joint unit commander.”

“I have been busy directing the ground operation, Sengseighelith Vallosgiath,” Vakolo answered curtly.  “I could not abandon my command post to make you feel like an equal by meeting you outside.”

“Feel like an equal?!” she all but exploded.  Her bodyguards had stepped aside, their weapons still held carefully in parade-ground manual of arms.  The Sparatan killers surrounding the command post weren’t nearly so stiff, and their attention was clearly zeroed in on the tehud soldiers.  “As I said, this is a joint operation, Strategos.  We are equals.”

“Really?” Vakolo said, straightening from the holo tank, irritation threatening to turn to rage.  “Then why am I down here, commanding my troops on the ground, while you waited until you thought the danger was past before descending to the surface?”

That seemed to bring her up short.  She stared at him, incredulity plain on even her alien face.  But then the expression, though only dimly visible through her faceplate, changed.

“Is that truly it?” she asked quietly.  “I think that the real reason you didn’t want to come meet me is that you are trying to gather as much of the loot from this place as you can, before my people and I have a chance at marking out our fair share.”

Vakolo simply turned his attention back to the holo.  “If you truly came here for loot, Sengseighelith Vallosgiath, then you are even less my equal than I had thought,” he said.

“I have seen the reports, Strategos!” she exclaimed.  “This installation is a treasure-house, and the M’tait are nowhere to be found!  We have struck at the perfect time!  This operation is a resounding success, and we can enrich our worlds while at the same time denying the M’tait the resources!”

Vakolo looked up at her.  “No,” he said flatly.  “My men are searching for the command center even now, with instructions to seize anything that looks like it might be a data core.  Then we are leaving and bombarding this installation from orbit until it is nothing but dust.”

“Are you insane?” the Sengseighelith Vallosgiath protested, trotting closer to the holo.  “The sheer amount of resources, not to mention the artifacts, the M’tait tech…”

“I don’t care,” Vakolo hissed.  “The mission was to locate the system the M’tait are using as a staging area and hopefully hurt them while their guard is down.  If possible, we hoped to gather intelligence.  We’ve found a supply dump.  The hub is still out there somewhere.  So, rather than waste time here, we will find any intelligence that we can take with us quickly, deny the supplies to the enemy, and then continue the mission.”

For a long moment, the Sengseighelith Vallosgiath simply stared at him.  Then she straightened up, regally.  “And I am sure that once the commanders from the Caractacan Brotherhood and the Order of Shufa join us, we will take your desired course of action under advisement, Strategos,” she said.

“What?” Vakolo asked dangerously.  But she appeared to neither notice nor care about his tone.

“As I said, this is a joint operation, Strategos,” she said blithely.  “No one commander is going to determine the entire fleet’s course of action.  We will consult and decide.  Jointly.”

Vakolo glared at her, apparently without effect.  “In the meantime,” she continued, “my people will join yours, so as to make sure that we are not shortchanged when the division of materiel and tech happens.”  She motioned to one of her entourage, who touched a key on his gauntlet and began to speak, his voice silent behind his helmet’s faceplate.

Vakolo was about to launch himself at the Sengseighelith Vallosgiath, but Nikoilo grabbed him by the arm.  The average tehud male outmassed a human by nearly a hundred kilograms, and the females by another twenty.

But the Troop Captain hadn’t seized his commander’s arm just to restrain him.  Touching helmets, Nikoilo hissed, “Look, Strategos!”

Vakolo followed his Troop Captain’s gaze to an alert blinking at the bottom of the holo.  It took him a moment to identify what it was saying.

They had located the installation by its faint but identifiable pattern of emissions, emissions that had maintained a certain bizarre pattern since detection…a pattern that had held until forty-five seconds ago.

What the transmission said—presuming it was a transmission at all—was impossible to know.  No one besides the M’tait knew anything about their language; no one had ever heard it and lived to tell about it.  Those transmissions that had been intercepted had been heavily encoded, and there was not a computer anywhere in the galaxy that had ever managed to crack a M’tait encryption.  But that it had changed was a matter for alarm to Vakolo’s mind.

Nikoilo pointed to the flashing alert.  “This is all a moot point, Sengseighelith Vallosgiath,” he said.  “We need to leave.  Now.”

“Really?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm, even speaking Trade Cant.

“The emissions the base has been putting out since before we arrived just changed,” he explained.  Vakolo bristled a little, but let his Troop Captain speak.  “Something must have been triggered, some trap or automatic distress signal.  We need to get clear as quickly as possible.”

“And what makes you so certain that this emissions change means anything?” the Sengseighelith Vallosgiath demanded.  “It could simply be a meaningless shift due to the time.”

“Nothing related to the M’tait is ever meaningless,” Vakolo said grimly.  “We can’t take the chance.  Not for this nothing of a target.  We launch, bombard the installation from orbit, and get out of the system.”

“I remind you again, Strategos,” the Sengseighelith Vallosgiath said archly, “that is not your decision to make.  And I will not have you cheat my people out of our fair share.”  She motioned abruptly, and her entourage moved.  In a heartbeat, every Sparatan soldier in the command post was being covered by a Bilbissarii rifle.  Vakolo and Nikoilo each had two weapons trained on them.  “We will stay here until I am satisfied that we are ready to leave.”

“You are a fool, Sengseighelith Vallosgiath,” Vakolo spat.  “And if we get off this rock alive, I’m going to make sure you pay for this.”

“I am sure that you will try,” she said dismissively, stepping closer to the holo to get a better look.  She started to issue orders over her comms in Bilbissarese.  At her direction, several groups of battle-armored tehud and a few ekuz trotted through the command post, heading deeper into the installation.  Several of them were controlling small, wheeled “mules” with deep cargo beds.

Vakolo, his fists clenched, watched them go, even as the alert in the holo tank blinked even more urgently.  Whatever the change in emissions meant, the new pattern was getting faster.

***

Deblesgheiensh Esiellekesh was new to commanding his own sub-impi, new enough that he was still exulting in the promotion rather than feeling the burden.  He raced ahead of the rest of his unit, leading the way through passageways that the navigational display in his helmet told him had already been cleared by the Sparatans and the Military Brotherhoods.

He wasn’t exactly comfortable in this environment; tehud were best adapted to wide open plains.  Even their ships were generally considerably larger than equivalent class human ships, because tehud needed large living and working spaces to avoid getting dangerously claustrophobic.  Running around down in what felt like close tunnels underground was not his idea of a good time.

But he had his orders, and he would carry them out.  The glory that would accrue to the tehud who managed to collect the greatest prize from a M’tait target, the first one ever taken, was going to be considerable.  Especially if that tehud was a male.  High status with the female hierarchy could only follow.

Esiellekesh—“Deblesgheiensh” was his rank—was too lost in daydreams of awards to come, made too complacent by the fact that the corridor had already been cleared, to notice the faint vibration and the scrape behind him.  When a sudden, piercing scream suddenly hammered his ears through his comm, though, he suddenly stopped and turned, staring dumbly, his weapon pointed uselessly at the ceiling.

The corridor floor just behind him had opened up, and something was climbing out, something like a nightmare conglomeration of black stone and equally black cables.  He couldn’t get a good look at it; the light enhancement display in his helmet was fuzzing and blinking out.

But he could see enough that the image of Joeislleghis getting torn to pieces was indelibly etched into his mind for the handful of seconds before something lashed out at his head and everything went dark.

***

The choked-off screams had all been on the Bilbissarii internal net, so the first warning Ncube got that something was very, very wrong was when his helmet’s heads-up display flickered.  But it was enough.

“Stay sharp,” he called out in Latin.  The two hulking Cataphracts still pacing the Caractacan squad as they explored the tallest spire on the north side might not understand the language, but he couldn’t understand the handful of words they’d spoken between themselves, either.  “Something’s up.”

The rest of his Brothers had hardly needed the warning; they’d all seen the same disruption.  The handful of Sparatan troops that had hurried to catch up with them almost an hour before, however, hadn’t seemed to notice it, or had simply dismissed it as just one more part of the weirdness that was the M’tait base.

And maybe it was.  But something was nagging at the back of Ncube’s mind.  He knew, somehow, that this wasn’t just the usual passing distortion that they’d started to get used to over the last couple of hours.  This was something else.

The Cataphracts seemed to sense it, too.  Both of them turned ponderously, levelling their heavy weapons, another tri-barrel laser and a 3cm powergun, at the lift doors in the big central column running from floor to ceiling.  That was when Ncube thought he could feel the strange vibration under his boots.  Not the odd, almost living thrum that had run through the installation since they’d first entered it.  The new vibration was different.  Like some massive creature was climbing the spire.

“Something is coming,” one of the Cataphracts rumbled over the joint net.  “Something big.”

Ncube lifted his powergun, the rest of his squad spreading out to cover the lift.  The Sparatans seemed to have just noticed that something was wrong.  “What’s going on?” their section leader asked, in halting Trade Cant.

“Get your men out of here if you can, Section Leader,” Ncube said.  “Blast a hole out through the wall if you have to; the gravity is low enough that you should survive the drop.”

“Why?” the man asked nervously.  “What is happening?”

“Just do it, Section Leader,” Ncube replied.  The Cataphracts showed no sign that they’d even heard the Sparatan.  The vibration through the spire was getting more pronounced.

“I have to report in and request instructions,” the Section Leader said.

“Brother Varash, if you please,” Ncube said with a sigh, as the entire spire suddenly shook as if under a massive hammer blow.

The Sparatans could not have picked Brother Varash out from the rest, except for the extra-large pack on his back.  He suddenly knelt, sweeping the pack off his back, and pulled the largest cutting charge he had out, hastily slapping it against the wall and priming it.  “I suggest you seek cover,” he said calmly over the joint net.  “The shrapnel blowback can be severe.”  Without waiting more than a handful of seconds, he triggered the charge.

Even as the cutting charge detonated, blasting a far smaller hole than hoped in the wall while sending a flailing cloud of razor-sharp fragments whickering around the nearly airless room, the lift doors suddenly flew apart in a similar shower of debris, and something came whirling out of it.

Ncube immediately opened fire, even as his brain reeled, trying to encompass the shape of the writhing, threshing monstrosity that came boiling out of the lift shaft.  It was huge, easily four times the size of one of the Cataphracts, and was moving its many limbs so fast that it almost seemed to blur in the dimness, unalloyed by the Caractacans’ helmet sensors.

Blinding light flickered as the Caractacan Brothers and the Cataphracts opened fire on the thing, even as it sprang out of the lift, killing Brother Uetan with a single blow, ripping him in half even in his armor.  There was some strange, flickering corposant around its limbs, but beyond that, it was moving too fast to see, and the flare of the powergun bolts still failed to reveal much more of it than sudden impressions of stony-appearing M’tait tech.

The powerguns were blowing glowing pits in the thing, pits that seemed to disappear as soon as they were punched into its hide, though that might have simply been because of its constant, multi-layered movement, the same movement that made it hard to focus on.  It was still dashing around the chamber like a dervish, and suddenly pounced on Brother Varash, even as the Caractacan launched the last frozen Sparatan trooper out through the hole he’d blasted in the wall.  Varash vanished beneath the thing, and when it sprang away, only a mangled, crushed shell of blood-spattered armor, pulped flesh, and shattered bone remained where a man had been.

The Brothers continued pouring ineffective fire into it, even as it carved the first Cataphract up like opening a meal tin.  It might have been slowing down as it absorbed bolt after bolt of powergun fire, but the Brothers were all going to be dead by the time they stopped it.

But if they could hold it here… “To anyone in the task fleet who can hear me, this is Squad Sergeant Jules Ncube of the Caractacan Brotherhood,” Ncube called over the joint net.  “The installation is guarded, and the M’tait security system has already killed half a dozen of my men.  Get clear and destroy this place from orbit.  We will attempt to hold as long as possible.”

He lifted his BR-18 and poured a flickering hail of powergun fire into the thing as it leapt away from the jagged remains of the Cataphract, swiping Brother Andar’s head off with a single, leisurely blow.  One of the bolts seemed to find a gap in the whirling storm of metallic limbs, and the thing suddenly shuddered, pausing for the first time as it clung to the wall only a few meters away.  For the first time, he could almost get a good look at it.

A long, flat, segmented body seemed to be made of the same stony stuff as the installation walls.  Far too many limbs had been grafted onto it, equipped with metallic claws and other, nastier weapons.  So far, the thing seemed to be content to use its claws.

What might have been eyes seemed to focus on him, though they ran all the way down the thing’s ridged spine.  He could feel it looking at him more than see it.

His magazine was empty, the action locked open.  He dropped the drum and reached for another, just as the thing suddenly moved again, turning once more into a threshing tangle of deadly limbs as it leapt straight for him.

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Maelstrom Rising and the Wuhan Coronavirus

So, the question has come up, whither the Maelstrom Rising series in the aftermath of the Wuhan Coronavirus?  It was originally floated as question about whether people would really want to read more about the world unraveling while it appears to be doing just that in real life.  It’s since turned into a different question:

Since the original backstory was written before the coronavirus outbreak, how would it effect the overall storyline?  After all, there’s no mention of a global pandemic in the backstory.  And how would the current crisis play out in such a way that the backstory remains mostly intact?

I think it’s actually somewhat simpler than I might have thought.

The economic fallout from all of this is going to be far worse than the death toll from the disease itself.  The global economy is taking a huge hit, that will only get worse as quarantine measures continue.  At the same time, global interdependence has also taken a blow that it might not recover from.  (There were op-eds published several weeks ago, bemoaning the fact that the coronavirus has dealt a blow to globalization that it might never recover from.)

The rapid spread of the coronavirus, both due to open international traffic and the Chinese Communist Party’s malfeasance, has bolstered the case for nationalist movements across the globe.  (There’s a whole other analysis there, that I might get to on this blog later.)  The movement toward preserving national sovereignty and economic independence is only going to get stronger, if only as a self-defense measure against a repeat of the current crisis.

That said, there are very wealthy, very powerful people who are hard at work to not only reverse that trend, but actually tighten global controls.  Voices are already calling for greater global authority to monitor and control activity, in order to counter the spread of the virus.  Some aren’t even disguising the opportunism involved.  They see this as a chance to “accelerate historical processes.”  (Any real student of history knows that there really is no such thing.)

So, the conflict between those who wish to preserve their national cultures and economies as independent entities and those who are still hoping for transnational or even global states isn’t going away.

China is the big question mark.  Evidence is mounting that the CCP has vastly understated their own case counts and death tolls.  How many Chinese will eventually die from this crisis has yet to be determined, but they will not emerge unscathed.

As with the rest of the world, the economic impact will be greater still.  The decoupling process has already begun, with the Japanese government offering to fund businesses moving their operations out of China.  Some of President Trump’s advisers are urging the same.   This will have long-term effects on China, including on their global economic hegemony, part of a program they’ve been working on for several decades.  The New Silk Road isn’t going away anytime soon, but China is going to find itself at a severe economic disadvantage in the next few years.

What will this drive the CCP to do?  What will desperation drive an authoritarian regime that has already made its own citizens disappear to keep things quiet do?  If their goal is really to be the superpower of the future, and if they have been economically wounded to the extent that is possible over the next few years, would the solution perhaps be to burn down their strategic and economic rivals, to “level the playing field?”

As for the United States, if the plans to encourage decoupling from China go forward, there is the potential for an industrial boom in the years to come that this country hasn’t seen since the 1940s.  However, it should be noted that, even as virus numbers have risen (with accusations flying of data manipulation all the while) and unemployment numbers have risen even more quickly, the political divides have not gone away.  The hatreds within the political class have only become more entrenched, to the point of what can only be compared to “fiddling while Rome burns.”  If there was any hope that the current crisis might reduce the polarization and divide in the US, reality seems to be dashing those hopes quickly.

What does all this mean for the Maelstrom Rising series?  Most likely, this is only one more stressor on a system that is already on the verge of flying apart.  It will probably not greatly affect the end results, meaning the series is still on the possibility list for the future.

Now, my main question was, “Does anyone still want to read this stuff?”  But the series is still my top seller at the moment.  So, I will continue.  And the anthology, SPOTREPS, is still on the schedule.  (Though some release dates might end up getting pushed due to economic concerns.)

 

The post Maelstrom Rising and the Wuhan Coronavirus appeared first on American Praetorians.

Incident at Trakan Part 2

Squad Sergeant Jules Ncube crossed himself as the dropship began its final braking maneuver, gee forces pressing his armored form deeper into his acceleration couch.  He had not yet faced the M’tait in combat, and while the initial scans of the planetoid below had led Centurion Waylander to believe that there were no actual M’tait present, he had seen enough combat to know that the initial orbital reconnaissance was rarely to be relied upon entirely.  There were always things below that the radar, lidar, and thermal and optic telescopes couldn’t quite see.

The dropship began to shudder a little, and in the visual feed on the flatscreen in front of his face, Ncube could see the faintest trace of an orange nimbus start to flicker around the truncated, conical hull.  It was nowhere near some of the fiery displays he’d seen on hot drops; the nameless planetoid known only as Trakan Target One had only barely enough of a trace atmosphere to warm the hull a little.  Almost as soon as it had formed, the nimbus was gone, as the dropship’s drive accomplished more to slow its descent than any aerobraking could hope to.

The horizon was a golden line ahead, hazed by the faint atmosphere, though plenty of stars were still visible.  They were just over the terminator; the sun would be setting within the next fifty hours.  The planetoid didn’t have much of a rotation.

The sky was full of dropships.  The silvery, truncated cones of the Caractacan dropships were vastly outnumbered by the larger, faintly boxy Sparatan shuttles and the three-quarter globe Bilbissarii landers.

The Order of Shufa hadn’t deployed dropships, not the same way the others had.  They had fired what had looked initially like missiles at the surface.  It had taken Ncube a moment to realize that those “missiles” were in fact drop pods, little more than retro-rockets and ablative shielding wrapped around an individual Cataphract’s power armor.

“Thirty seconds,” Brother Aganami, the dropship’s pilot, announced.  Aganami was ensconced in the small, cramped cockpit in the dropship’s nose, directly above the troop compartment.

Touchdown was surprisingly light.  The absence of surface fire meant that the dropships could descend at a somewhat more leisurely pace, shedding enough velocity for a soft landing, instead of the brutally hard controlled crash that often characterized a combat drop.

The sides folded out, forming ramps all the way around the dropship.  Ncube had already hit the harness release as soon as they’d touched down, and he surged off his acceleration couch, snatching his BR-18 powergun out of its cradle as he bounded down the ramp.

He had to move carefully; the planetoid’s gravity was low, and a single bound carried him several meters.  He settled to the flat, rocky ground in what felt like slow motion, carefully taking a knee and scanning his surroundings while he fought to bring his equilibrium in line with the gravity and keep his balance.

The landing zone was on a plain, dotted in several places by craters, bordered by a towering mountain range on one side and a deep chasm on the other.  The entire plateau was now dotted with dropships, shuttles, and rounded landers.  Several of the lagging Bilbissarii landers were still descending on bright yellow drive plumes.

There was an eerie beauty to the scene, the plain lit with golden sunlight while the stars still burned in a deep indigo sky overhead.  There was even something to be said for the equally eerie profile of the base ahead, perched on the shoulder of the tallest peak of the mountain range.

Even from that distance—which was deceptively short on such a tiny dwarf world—it was clearly of M’tait design.  The spires rising above the sheered-off mountainside had the same strangely irregular, rough-hewn look about them as Hunterships, and were a non-reflective slate gray, unlike the lighter-colored rock that made up most of the visible parts of the planetoid’s surface.

Whether it was as truly abandoned as the fleet’s commanders thought it was had yet to be seen.

Ncube looked around at the rest of his twenty-man squad.  They were all on the ground and ready to fight, even though no resistance had materialized since the pirate starship had surrendered.  The plain was utterly still, aside from the activity around the landers.

In the distance, he could see the Sparatans debarking in good order and forming up around their shuttles.  The Bilbissarii were rather more disorganized; they hadn’t landed in much of any formation that he could identify, and the troops getting off the landers were milling about, some visibly struggling with the low gravity, while their leaders tried to get them sorted out.

He glanced ahead.  The lumbering, ape-like hulks of the Order of Shufa’s power armored Cataphracts were already formed up and moving toward the installation, apparently not bothering to wait for the rest.  They moved in longer bounds than an unaugmented human could manage; there were some serious pistons in the power armor’s legs.  Ncube had never encountered any of the Order of Shufa before, but the blithe disregard for what anyone else was doing seemed in line with their reputation.

Centurion Ignatev loped toward him, identifiable by the stripes on his shoulder pauldrons, his powergun held muzzle-high as he bounded through the thin air.  The atmosphere was so tenuous that Ncube couldn’t even hear the Centurion’s footfalls.

“Is Second Squad ready, Ncube?” Ignatev asked.

“Yes, Centurion,” Ncube replied.  “We were ready as soon as we hit dirt.”

He could sense, if not see, Ignatev’s wry smile behind his visor.  Ignatev liked his Squad Sergeants to be eager and aggressive.  “Well, given the party that the Bilbissarii seem to be throwing, let’s go ahead and move out,” the Centurion said.  “I think the Sparatans will be close behind us, but I’d rather not get too entangled in that mess.”

Ncube wasn’t sure exactly which mess his Centurion was talking about, but he knew that Ignatev and Captain Redding had been privy to some of the tensions between their allies, and he wasn’t going to argue.

“Just tell me where you want us, sir,” was all he said.

“First will take point,” Ignatev said.  “Echelon right, on the Cataphracts’ flank.  And Squad Sergeant?”

“Yes, Centurion?” Ncube asked, as he carefully rose to his feet, trying not to bounce himself several meters in the air by pushing too hard.

“Keep some distance from the Cataphracts,” Ignatev said quietly.  “Not that I don’t trust them, but…the Order of Shufa isn’t always entirely predictable.”

“Understood, Centurion,” Ncube replied.  He’d heard the stories, too.  He switched to the broad channel with a tap on his gauntlet.  “Second Squad!  On your feet, echelon right, combat dispersion!  We are on First’s flank, so let’s get formed up before they do!”

Ignatev clapped him on the shoulder pauldron, almost bowling him over.  He was still adjusting to the low gravity.  Then the Centurion was past him, resuming his easy lope over the yellowish ground.

Brother Uetan was on his feet and moving forward, taking his customary position at the point of the squad formation.  The plus side to the low gravity was that, as long as they kept control, the Brothers could maneuver much more quickly.  Ncube wryly remembered one of their last operations, on Pvaash, a world with an average surface gravity of 2.1 gees.  That had been difficult.

In minutes, they were formed up and moving across the plain, the squad leapfrogging forward, staying alert and maintaining security despite the utter, dead stillness of the planetoid’s surface.

***

The first surprise came halfway to the first M’tait spire.

The drone exploded out of the ground in a billowing cloud of yellowish dust.  Four-legged, with a blocky central body that housed a single machinegun, it spun around and opened fire on the closest of the Cataphracts from a bare thirty meters.

It could hardly miss at that range, and bullets hammered at the thick power armor, gouging pits in the hardened titanium-iridium sandwich with bright flashes.  The Cataphract was knocked off his feet by the impacts, and his first answering burst of flechette fire went wild, the projectiles soaring off into space, moving at well over the planetoid’s escape velocity.  The machinegun tracked his strange, slow-motion fall, and he shuddered as a round found a joint.  A second burst cracked into his chest plastron, the relentless assault penetrating even the Cataphract’s heavy armor.  A brief spasm nearly bounced the Cataphract off the ground, and for a moment, it looked like he was going to get to his feet.  But it was only a feedback loop in the power armor’s control system, reacting to his death throes.

It had all taken less than three seconds.  Another second later, a dozen powergun bolts, flashing brilliant blue- and green-tinged white lines between muzzles and target, transfixed the drone, blowing it into a cloud of slowly tumbling scrap.

A strangely flat, sepulchral voice echoed across the joint tactical net.  “Old model.  Brezhdan TK-88.  Be on the lookout for more.”  It took Ncube a moment to realize the voice came from one of the Cataphracts.  He’d never heard one of them speak before.

He turned to scan the plain around them again.  The Sparatans and Bilbissarii were advancing now, already half a kilometer behind the two Military Brotherhoods’ troops.  The Sparatans were moving quickly, too, as if they thought it was a race to beat the Bilbissarii to the installation.

Maybe it is.  These joint operations are always messy that way.

Even as he watched, two more puffs of dust announced the appearance of two more of the TK-88 drones, this time on the Bilbissarii’s flanks.  The Bilbissarii didn’t fare nearly as well, losing over a dozen tehud infantry and a crawler before they managed to disable the antique drones.

He turned forward, focusing on their own immediate surroundings.  The Bilbissarii would have to take care of their own security.  It bothered him a little, as well it might.  The Code mandated that a Brother always act to protect the weak and defenseless.  The Bilbissarii were by no means defenseless, but they were clearly less organized, and less capable than his own Brothers.

But sometimes even a Caractacan Brother had to pick his battles.

They were getting closer to the first of the spires.  It was even more obviously out of place the closer they got; the black, rocky material looked even weirder in contrast to the yellow, orange, and red minerals that made up the ridgeline.  The ridge itself was considerably smaller than it had initially appeared, but again, distances were deceptive on such a small body.

He could already see where the pirates had made entry; there was an open door or gate at the base of the spire.  Crawler tracks led straight for it, and a number of empty equipment cases were strewn around outside.  From their size, they might have been the transport crates for the TK-88 drones.  If that was the case, Ncube decided, counting the cases, they’d already accounted for all but one.  And if there was still one left, and they were already that close to the entrance…

He already had his powergun up and pointed at the low mound ahead of First Squad when the drone bounded up out of the dust.  Squad Sergeant Orakus was no fool; he’d been ready for it, too.  First and Second Squads opened fire at almost the same moment, before the drone had even settled back on the ground.  A blizzard of powergun bolts scorched through the flying dust, causing brilliant secondary explosions as the dust was fused into molten shrapnel by the passage of the sun-hot bolts of ionized copper.  The drone never even got a shot off before it was scattered in glowing shards across fifty meters of ground.

As before, it had all happened in eerie quiet, only the faintest suggestion of the powergun bolts’ thunderous reports making it through the trace atmosphere.  Ncube’s own breath was louder in his ears than the plasma discharges, or the explosion as they blew the machine apart.

“Cataphract Commander,” Ignatev called over the joint circuit.  “Let us take point going inside.  My Brothers’ combat armor might fit in spaces yours cannot.”

“Acknowledged,” was the only reply.  The Cataphracts spread out and took up covering positions around the gate, their own flechette launchers and shoulder-mounted heavy powerguns pointed into the dimness inside.

Ignatev did not need to give his own Century more than the most cursory direction.  The Brothers had all completed their novitiates, the flow of combat maneuvers ingrained into their very bones.  They worked like a well-oiled machine, each man finding a place in the formation with practiced ease.  First Squad flowed through the gate, powerguns up and tracking toward any danger area they encountered as they disappeared into the opening chamber, with Second Squad right behind them.

The chamber was huge; it looked like it took up the entire base of the spire.  A central column appeared to be a lift or stair leading up to the ceiling, which looked like a cluster of columnar rock, various blocky stalactites hanging down into the vast space below.  The floor was pocked with pits, placed irregularly around the chamber.  As he passed one, Ncube pointed his powergun down it, just in case, and saw what looked like a platform hanging a few meters down.  It might have been a lift, itself.

Cables were scattered around the floor, and a portable generator was set up in the middle of the chamber, near the central column.  Several cables ran down into one of the pits; the others snaked through another irregular-shaped gateway on the far side.  If Ncube remembered what he’d seen from space on the way down right, that would lead to one of the faintly twisted connecting ridges between the spires.  The whole complex was laid out in an asymmetrical pattern, almost as if the spires had been blasted into the planetoid’s surface with a shotgun.  The M’tait had always seemed to eschew symmetry.  As with everything else about them, no one knew why.

First Squad was moving on the first pit, so Ncube pointed to the far gateway.  With Second Squad maintaining a tight formation, powerguns tracking toward every opening in sight, they started to move across the chamber.

Like the rest of the chamber, the opening was bigger than it looked, though the entryway was shortened by the jagged turn it took, off to the right.  With half a dozen BR-18 muzzles pointed at it, Ncube and Uetan stepped through the gate.

The passage was dark, but their helmets’ light enhancement took over automatically.  The view was simply a paler version of what it would have been in open light, and it prevented the necessity of showing lights themselves, presenting an enemy with a potential target.  Slowly, stepping carefully to avoid bouncing into the ceiling, they moved down the passage, the entry chamber quickly disappearing around the turn behind them.

The passageway seemed to twist strangely, never quite moving in the direction anticipated.  It was disorienting, not to mention viscerally disturbing.  There was something that most races found deeply wrong about M’tait tech.  It could have something to do with the apparent, uncompromisingly predatory nature of the aliens themselves, but no one could spend much time around their constructs without getting a bad feeling.

Ncube didn’t know why.  He didn’t believe that any living creature was irredeemably evil, let alone an entire race of them.  But there was something eldritch and frightening about the M’tait and everything they touched.

Uetan held up a gauntleted hand, and Ncube halted.  He’d seen the same thing.  There was a light up ahead.  It was still around the corner, visible only as a faint glow against the wall, but it was definitely there.  They might have just discovered where the cables led.

He hesitated.  They were in a single passageway, with no cover.  Whatever was ahead, they would have to go through a chokepoint to get to it.  And there was no way that the pirates—it had to be them; the generators and cables clearly were not M’tait tech—were unaware that they were there.  Even if the ships in orbit hadn’t alerted them, the destruction of the drones outside should have.

Uetan started to move, slowly easing his way farther down the passage, trying to get a view of what they were up against.  He was almost to the glow when he suddenly froze.

Ncube stepped up next to him, leaning in to touch helmets.  “What is it?”

Uetan just pointed.  Ncube followed his gauntleted finger, spotting the dim glow of a laser tripwire.  It wasn’t a visible laser, but his helmet easily highlighted the infrared beam.  He scanned the rest of the wall, and quickly spotted the directional charge that had been taped in place and covered with hasty camouflage.  It wasn’t the same consistency as the walls’ material, but it might have blended in just enough in the dark.

So, the pirates were expecting company.  The drones had only been their first line of defense.

Gripping Uetan by the arm, he slowly backed away, moving until they were around the bend from the booby trap.

It would take time to find another way to get at the pirates.  But he had other options, as well.  He pulled a grenade from its pouch on his utility belt.

He might have wondered just why they were bothering.  After all, the complex was clearly the target, and if the entire objective of this operation was to destroy a M’tait logistical hub, then they could presumably have accomplished that by bombarding the complex from orbit.  The pirates had already demonstrated their hostility by firing on the starships.  Their deaths in the subsequent bombardment of the alien installation would be no great loss, and with considerably less risk than had already been taken on.

But while his orders said otherwise, and that should have been enough, Ncube knew why they were down there in the bowels of a M’tait structure, caught up in close-quarters combat with pirates and scavengers.  Even the possibility that they could gather useful intelligence on the mysterious race that had made itself an implacable enemy of all others for centuries, if not millennia, was worth the risk.

Provided that it didn’t all turn out to be a M’tait trap.

Setting the grenade’s detonator, he skillfully lobbed it down the passageway, bouncing it off the wall.  It rolled out of sight, then detonated.

He felt the vibration through his boots more than he heard the crump of the explosion.  Even inside, the air was still almost nonexistent.  But he hadn’t been counting on a shockwave.  He’d been counting on the debris that the explosion would throw out.

The secondary explosion a half a heartbeat later told him his gamble had paid off.  If nothing else, the grenade had damaged either the laser emitter or the receiver, and the break in the contact had set off the booby trap.

Uetan was already moving, leaning into his weapon as he forged toward the turn, athletically pushing off the corner between the floor and the wall, effectively bounding from wall to wall.  It was a good way to maneuver in low gravity in a confined space; it kept him from inadvertently nailing his helmet into the ceiling.

He suddenly reared back, pushing off in the reverse direction, as a storm of bullets chewed into the wall just ahead of him.

Ncube caught him before he could fall, bracing himself to keep both of them upright, even as a bullet fragment glanced off his helmet with a painful bang.  That he’d heard clearly enough.

They were stuck.  The pirates clearly had a machinegun or heavy coilgun pointed at the passageway, and without any flanking passages, they could hold that choke point for a long time.  They were going to have to backtrack and find another way around.  Given the size of the complex, that could take a while.

“Step aside, Brothers,” a deep, flat voice rumbled.  A Cataphract was lumbering forward, his bulk filling the entire passage.  This one had a heavy laser mounted to one arm.  Judging by the bulk of the powerplant on the Cataphract’s back, that laser could probably scorch through hull plating.  “I will lead the way.”

There was little space in the passageway, but Uetan and Ncube flattened themselves against the wall, around the curve from where the stream of high-velocity projectiles was still smashing into the opposite side of the passage.  Fragments and grit spat from the impacts, rattling against armor and weapons, but so far nothing had been big enough or moving quite fast enough to present a problem to the Caractacan Brothers’ combat armor.  The Cataphract wouldn’t even notice it.

Once he stepped into that stream of fire, though, that might be another matter.

The Cataphract, his armor a dull, burnt bronze color in Ncube’s light-enhanced vision, stumped forward, his weight sufficient to keep him from bouncing much even in the light gravity, the vibrations of his footfalls shaking the ground under Ncube’s feet.  Just before he rounded the corner, he lifted his left hand, the one that didn’t have a laser strapped to it.  Something shot out of the tube under his armored fist and bounced out into the passageway and around the curve.

A moment later, a fine mist started to fill the passage, and the display in Ncube’s visor started to fizzle a little.  An electrostatic screening grenade, then.  It pumped out a thick, obscuring mist while blasting out infrared, UV, and electrostatic noise to disrupt scanners and targeting systems.  The electromagnetic interference wouldn’t do anything to simple manual sights, but it did present enough obscurant that it would conceal any targets from direct visual observation.

Unfortunately, the pirates didn’t really need to aim; they just had to point the gun down the passageway and hold down the trigger.

Bullets were starting to impact the Cataphract’s front plate as he lumbered around the corner, hitting with tiny sparks, but failing to penetrate.  Then he was out of view.  A moment later, a strobing, bright red flash filled the corridor ahead, and the machinegun fire suddenly ceased.

The Caractacan Brothers were already moving.  Uetan charged through the mist, his powergun up, going through the opening and bounding hard to one side, risking a high bound to get himself out of the line of fire.  Ncube did the same in the other direction, even as the rest of the squad flooded into the chamber.

A burst of coilgun fire stitched the wall right where Ncube had been a moment before, and he tracked in on the faint coronal discharge, amplified by his helmet’s display, and fired.  The blue-white bolt blew the coilgun in half, along with the shooter’s arm and a good portion of his ribs.  He fell in slow motion, smoke drifting up from the side of his pressure suit.  The pirates clearly weren’t wearing armor.

Then a panicked voice started yelling in an unfamiliar dialect over a clear channel.  A pair of gloved hands appeared around the edge of the big cargo crawler that dominated the middle of the chamber.  They were empty.

“Do you wish to surrender?” he asked over the same channel in Trade Cant.

“Yes!” the voice replied, with a vaguely stilted accent.  Apparently, the pirates didn’t speak Trade Cant all that often.  “Yes, we surrender!”  The man didn’t sound any less panicked.

Ncube kept his powergun trained on the extended hands.  “Come out slowly, with your hands up,” he commanded.  “Any sudden moves can and will be considered an attack.”

“We surrender!” the pirate repeated.  He came out from behind the crawler.

The pirate was a velk, identifiable even in his pressure suit by the length of his torso, the shortness of his arms and legs, and his wide, flat head.  A human and another velk followed him.

Ncube had taken the inside of the chamber in at a glance as he’d cleared the slowly-dispersing screening mist, but he’d been focused on identifying threats.  The surrendering pirates had been busily loading a big, clamshell-hulled cargo crawler, while the machinegun nest had been set up at the crawler’s flank, pointing toward the passage.  The machinegun had been reduced to little more than twisted, glowing metal, the gunner a scorched, barely identifiable lump heaped behind it.  The Cataphract’s laser did horrifying damage to anything it vented its fury on.

The sides of the chamber were heaped with strangely-shaped ingots, equally odd-looking containers, and what could only be various mechanisms of M’tait design and unknown purpose.  The pirates had clearly been frantically piling as much of it into the crawler as possible, presumably hoping to drive it out of the big open gateway in front of the crawler’s nose.  Ncube’s best guess was that they’d been hoping to hide it out in the hinterlands somewhere until they could return to retrieve it.  They’d simply run out of time.

The fact that they’d tried very hard to kill him and his men to buy time made Ncube quite unsympathetic.  With the Cataphract watching, his big tri-barrel pointed at the pirates, the Caractacan Brothers set out to secure the chamber.  There weren’t any more cables leading out; the ones they had followed led to actinic work lights set up around the crawler.  But that didn’t mean that the pirates hadn’t spread out throughout the complex.  There was still a lot of ground to cover and secure.

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The LOTR Movies Aren’t Really Tolkien

Yesterday, a friend posted on Facebook that the Lord of the Rings movies did the character of Boromir dirty.  I countered that those movies did every character dirty, with the possible exception of Sam and Gollum.  The best parts of the movies are the visuals and the soundtrack.

This is because Peter Jackson, Phillipa Boyens, and Fran Walsh don’t actually understand Tolkien’s work.  They certainly lack his subtlety.  (Yes, I’m going to go into some detail on what they got wrong.  Some.  Those who don’t like people trashing movies for screwing with the source material might want to stop reading now.  Because I’m not going to stop, because it’s my blog.)  And every character change they made watered down the character.

First of all, Aragorn didn’t need an arc, where he agonizes and broods, worried that he shouldn’t be king because wanting power is bad.  Because The Lord of the Rings isn’t the entirety of his story.  It’s the culminating chapter of a long life of hardship, toil, and duty, that has led him to this point, where it is time to take up the mantle left to him.  He’s got the experience, he’s got the hard-won wisdom, and he knows that no one else can do it for him.  He’s not hiding in the books.  He is doing his duty as best he can, both to the North and the South.  And he’s old enough and wise enough that he knows what that duty is, without a lot of immature whinging and worrying about it.  He’s past procrastinating and wrestling with the right thing to do.  Which is why he deliberately takes the palantir from Pippin and uses it, wresting it from Sauron’s control and letting Sauron know just who is really on the field.

He also doesn’t have an arc because he’s not the main character.  The hobbits are.

But no, let’s set him up with lots of angst, because that makes him “relatable.”  I wonder if the screenwriters ever met someone who lived through the Depression and the Second World War.  Or, if they did, I wonder if they listened to them.

The hobbits in the books were plain folk, earthy and somewhat provincial.  They lived on good food, good beer, good pipes, and common sense.  What put the four of them out of their comfort zone was that the wonder of the wider world was so far out of the every day experience in the Shire.  They were English yeomen, turned into The Little People and thrown into an epic.  (There is a theory that Merry, Pippin, and Sam were somewhat inspired by some of Tolkien’s friends who were killed in WWI.)

Yet the versions of the hobbits (with, as aforesaid, the possible exception of Sam) given in the movies are mostly juvenile troublemakers and borderline buffoons.  “Fool of a Took” becomes an accurate descriptor, rather than an exasperated exclamation partly let out from worry.  The young hobbits are no longer clever, upstanding lads doing their best to be brave.  There are flashes of it, of course, in the parts that are directly taken from the books.  But the adjustments generally make them into comic relief.

As for Frodo, while his character wasn’t nearly as assassinated as many of the others, they really should have cast someone older and earthier in the role.  Frodo was in his 50s in the books, though he looked younger.  Elijah Wood looks like a teenager.

What they did with Arwen and Elrond, while somewhat more subtle in its wrongness, is even worse than the hobbits.  Replacing Glorfindel with Arwen is roughly like replacing St. George with the Virgin Mary.  Arwen’s place wasn’t riding alone through the woods with a sword.  She was too important for that.  And even Glorfindel didn’t try to fight off the Ringwraiths at the ford; he’d put Frodo on his horse alone and sent him on ahead.  As for Elrond Half-Elven objecting to his daughter marrying a mortal man…that’s just sloppy.  Elrond was a descendant of just such a union.  And given that they reference the story of Beren and Luthien in the movies, the screenwriters didn’t even have the excuse of ignorance.

Casting-wise, for Elrond they needed someone who didn’t immediately fill the audiences’ ears with, “Mr. Anderson.”

They continued making each character a weaker shadow of themselves in the books.  Gimli, stout and rugged as the very rocks of the hills, untiring, a fierce enemy and a fast friend, becomes a clown, a bumbling bit of comic relief.  Legolas, who has to learn to let go of some of his immortal people’s long grudge against the dwarves (going back to the First Age and the fall of Nargothrond), becomes a smug comic book character who doesn’t really need the rest of the Fellowship.  Theoden, worn down by age and cares, convinced by clever words that all is lost, is instead possessed by Saruman.  And then, after a ludicrous pseudo-exorcism, he regains some of his strength, except that it’s still fatalistic and defeatist, almost as bad as he was at his lowest in the books.  Helm’s Deep becomes a retreat, rather than the front line of defense, which it was in the books.

Faramir went from being a man of such honor that without even knowing what the weapon of the Enemy was, “I would not take it, were it lying by the roadside,” to a child so desperate for his father’s approval, regardless of the means needed to get it, that he would try to take the Ring by force.

Even Saruman is watered down.  The greatest of the wise, who looked a bit too deeply at the darkness, attempting to defeat it, is slowly consumed by it, until he seeks to set himself up in Sauron’s place.  Except in the movie, suddenly he’s a willing pawn, rather than an enemy slowly twisted to Sauron’s purposes, while thinking himself using Sauron’s means to his own ends.

The high points, the general strokes of the story, are still there.  But Jackson and his friends missed most of the soul of Tolkien’s story.

One of the themes that is threaded through The Lord of the Rings is the insidious nature of evil.  It doesn’t always come at you the same way.  The Ring is the temptation to power, domination.  It is the embodiment of the principle that inherent evil cannot bring about good, no matter how inviting the shortcut might be.  But the Ring and the hordes of cannibalistic orcs are not the only evil shown.  The greatest is despair.  And against the evil of despair, Tolkien contrasts hope.

That is why there isn’t a lot of “comic relief” in the books.  He wrote moments of relief from the darkness and the battles and the hardship.  But they are not jokes and pratfalls.  They are moments of beauty in the midst of darkness, moments of peace, quiet, and hope in the midst of darkness and evil.  The most emblematic are when Frodo sees the fallen head of the statue of the king in Ithilien, crowned with flowers, or when he and Sam look up through the murk of Mordor and see a single star glimmering in the darkness.

Compared to that, Gimli having a drinking contest seems…juvenile.  And I think that is the greatest flaw in the movies.  The writers lacked Tolkien’s maturity.  And as such, they missed the true heart and soul of the story.

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