Shelby 8 Snippet 1

 

Prologue

 

TauR14G6-15 Blue Waters and Gentle Mist

 

Admiral Lobo stared at the document and then wordlessly handed it to his ground commander counterpart. He had just been promoted and the elation of getting another star had died with the crushing responsibility of leading a naval base on the front lines.

General Sedu took the tablet, scanned it, and then sat down heavily at the table. The other officers looked at him in surprise as he hung his head. “It is over. We lost,” the general said with a resigned shake of his head.

He wasn’t supposed to be there. He had actually been slated to return to the capital to face judgment for losing his division on 77. Instead a Lieutenant Sedu had taken his place at the last minute. No one knew he was in the star system other than his closest friends.

“Over?” one of the junior officers demanded. The Taurens in the room had a mixture of expressions. There was relief, trepidation, and consternation. After a moment the fear began to grow in some eyes.

“Over,” Admiral Lobo said as he tucked his hands behind his back and stared out the window to the ships and planet beyond.

“Over,” General Sedu said heavily as he flicked one meaty finger across the tablet and sent the contents to the main screen in the room and then to each of their personal devices.

The Tauren officers and few civilians in the room stared at the report of the destruction of their fleet and word of the capitulation of their government. The old administration had fallen and the new one was moving forward to surrender.

To say that they were shocked and bewildered was putting it mildly.

“Why?” a fortress commander demanded.

“How could this have happened?” another officer demanded.

“Admiral Eru had the best ships and crew!” another officer bleated.

“How could they beat us!” another said shaking his head in denial. “It isn’t possible! It has to be a fake! It has to be a hoax, it just has to be!”

“It has happened. They had better ships, they used AI, it doesn’t matter,” Admiral Lobo said heavily. “What is done is done. What we have to concern ourselves with is where we go from here.”

The room was aghast at the idea of having lost the war. It hadn’t seemed possible until that moment. No matter what setback they’d faced it had been distant and it had only fueled their desire for revenge and to see the war through to the end.

Admiral Lobo realized that they had gone into the war with the wrong intentions and without a clear end game. The Federation had been weak but had not been crushed under their hooves. The strategy to drive them out of the sector and then sue for peace or beat down any attempts at retaliation had been shattered.

He still had trouble with the entire war. They’d had accurate intelligence in the form of their spies embedded in the Federation controlled star systems. Those spies had reported via hidden ansible platforms.

They had built a massive war machine to beat the Federation or any threat they faced. Instead fleet after fleet had been ground down and torn to shreds.

“So, that is it?” Hard Toss, governor of the star system asked.

“Not quite. It will take time. But the orders are to stand down and to not harm aliens. We are to provide them food and medical care,” General Sedu said with a grunt. “We are to preserve all records and treat them as citizens,” he said.

He didn’t look happy at that revelation.

“So, what now? We cater to them? Give them back their stuff?” Colonel Shrapnel practically spat in anger. A lifetime of hunting, rounding up, and eventually killing aliens for one reason or another was not easily overcome with a simple and yet oh so life changing paragraph.

His long face and muzzle was pockmarked by scars from an IED that had exploded and taken out a part of his unit. He had a burning desire to kill any non Taurens.

“They can’t get back what they lost. Their lives maybe. Their families? No. Their… ability to have children? Maybe. Their belongings and money? Sure. It will cost us a lot…” another officer said with a shake of his head.

“No! Just kill them and be done with it!” a junior officer said. “Just bury them and be done with it! That way we won’t have to pay reparations!”

There was a babble of voices in denial over that idea.

“It could work. We can destroy the evidence. They will have no proof that those people even existed if we do our jobs right,” Colonel Shrapnel suggested as he looked to the general for support.

Admiral Lobo also shifted his massive head to the General.

“Not going to happen,” the general said tiredly.

“Everything we’ve believed in, Tauren space for Taurens! It all just goes away?” Commander Black Tip demanded. The Commander was an outspoken officer. He had black tipped ears which had earned him his name.

“Yes.”

“Why? Because we lost a few battles?” Colonel Shrapnel asked in disgust.

“Because we got hammered in almost every battle,” Admiral Lobo replied tiredly. Admiral Eru’s loss was just the latest one. They had lost their 3 best fleets to the Federation. They’d had an overwhelming weight of metal but had been torn to shreds by the Federation carriers.

They’d had the same strength on the ground. The army had gone into battle on 77 and other worlds expecting to be greeted as heroes. Instead they’d been torn to shreds. It was hard to believe that Federation supporting units had destroyed the better part of two Tauren Divisions.

“How is that possible?”

“They… it doesn’t matter.” He flapped his ears and straightened his shoulders as he forced himself to see what others were struggling to grasp. “We lost, they won. Our best ships are broken wreckage. There is an open path to our borders.”

That was a little bit of hyperbole and they all knew it. He still had the orbital fortresses and a small task force to defend the star system. Admiral White Face had a similar force nearby, and other flag officers controlled similar forces around the Confederation.

But after what happened to Admiral Eru and the raid by that damn Federation cruiser, there was a great deal of doubt about how effective fixed defenses could be against an invading fleet.

“So? We’ve got defenses right?”

“And they have weapons that can destroy star systems,” Admiral Lobo said flatly.

The other Taurens flinched. More than one junior officer shivered in dread.

“It wouldn’t come to that. How could they have nova weapons?” the colonel asked quietly.

“We have forgotten so much. Rewritten history to suit our own twisted purposes,” General Sedu said as he leaned back into his chair. “Their President, this Irons is the Irons. Fleet Admiral John Henry Irons, the creator of the gate and the nova bomb. So, of course they have it.”

Admiral Irons had threatened to use the nova bombs if the war continued to escalate to genocidal proportions. Intelligence had reported persistent rumors that he had used a bomb on Horath.

“Rumor has it they did it to the pirate home world. Horath,” a major said quietly. The flag officers glanced his way and then away.

“So? They still have to… have to come to us right? We’ll fight right?” the commander asked desperately. “They don’t have many ships...”

“Yes they do for it is worse than you know. The reason for the big push? We received intelligence that they were building a Stargate on the other side of their sector capital,” he explained. The other bulls stared at him. Some had known that, others had been too busy with their day to day jobs to have heard the scuttlebutt apparently. “Well, the Federation has an open gate now. They are sending fleets through from Rho sector. Those fleets smashed Admiral Eru’s fleet. We can’t stop them,” Admiral Lobo said heavily as he shook his head in resignation.

“So, that’s it? We give up?”

“Look at the facts. Fact, they can send in as many ships as they want. Fact, they disrupted our communications. We’re still getting a handle on it. We still do not have an ansible in every star system. The ones they do are supposed to be protected but apparently the Federation tapped into it again. They can therefore take it all down again if they wish. Fact, they have taken our best ships and commanders and blown them into tiny bits, or forced them to surrender after grievous losses.”

He paused to stare out the window glumly. “Fact, our leadership has fallen and resigned. Fact, our morale is in the crapper. No one wants this war anymore,” he said heavily.

“So… that’s it,” the general said dully. “We’re done. Centuries of self-determination is about to go away. We’ll be satraps to the Federation… or worse.”

“And what of the dream?”

“What dream?” someone asked.

“Kai’s dream! A united Tauren Confederation!”

“It would have been united had our ancestors left things alone. If we hadn’t killed so many of our own people,” Governor Hard Toss said. “Now we are paying for that hubris,” he said with a shake of his head.

“No, that comes later,” the general said with a resigned shake of his massive head.

“What do you mean?” the governor asked.

“I mean the Federation knows about the round ups, sterilizations, and extermination program. Genocide they are calling it. War crimes and so on.” The general looked bleak. “We are screwed. They are beyond angry and want heads. That is why we have orders to preserve records.”

The admiral turned to him. “They intend to hold you responsible?”

The group of Taurens looked at each other in alarm. Almost all of them had some hand in the handling of non Taurens or knew someone who did.

“Someone has to catch it in the neck,” the general said sourly. He shrugged helplessly. “They need a scapegoat.”

“We were just following orders! They set the policy! If we didn’t do it, they’d punish us and someone else would do it,” the commander bleated.

“Do you think that matters?” the general snarled. “The politicians will fall over themselves to keep their necks. The Federation needs the Confederation government to continue to exist to maintain order as they move in and take over. So, they’ll cut golden parachutes for them. They’ll get off.” He shook his head and took a sip from his mug and then set it down heavily.

“And?” the commander prompted.

“And what? They still need a scapegoat. The people need someone to blame. So, we’re the ones who did the deed and therefore…”

“Therefore we will be punished,” Colonel Shrapnel said. “They’ll make examples of us,” he said. “I studied Terran history. They did this many times. Nuremburg is one such incident. After their second world war the victors put the losers on trial. War crimes.”

“Well, they did run extermination camps like we did,” Major Blood Eye admitted. The major had one blood red eye and scars on that side of his face courtesy of an angry cat that he had impaled and then butchered as a lieutenant on his first assignment. He had been fooled into thinking the cat had been impassive to being rounded up and he’d even been sympathetic to the pathetic aliens.

That sympathy had died with a part of the vision in his left eye.

“But they were following orders,” the commander said.

Admiral Lobo listened carefully. As a member of the navy he was mostly insulated from the war crimes, or so he thought.

“They should have known better. Should have said no. That is what was argued by the defense. Most were held accountable and punished by death or life imprisonment.”

The commander stared at him. “That’s sick. For following orders? We went where the herd told us to go! Where others went before us!”

“It is what will happen. Mark my words,” the colonel said dully. “We are dead bulls. It just hasn’t happened yet. They will write new text books and make us hated demons. People will spit on our graves. Our herds will dishonor us.”

“No! We can’t let it happen!” There was intense vengeance but also a note of desperation in that statement. Some of it was self-serving, but there was an undertone of pleading in it that hit the flag officers hard.

Loyalty as they had been taught should go both ways. But they knew it was a lie. They all knew it was a lie, but no one was willing to admit it.

Until now.

“Can’t we?”

“We hold the guns! The ships! We have the power! They can pass any law that they like. But we can stop them!”

“We swore an oath to follow orders!”

“To a faithless government with no loyalty or honor! One that will throw us to the Federation to save their own worthless necks! Honor, loyalty, duty, sacrifice, it is expected of us, but we expect to be covered in return!” The commander paced, pounding a meaty fist into his open hand. “It goes both ways!” In his anger he made motions and gyrations. “To… too...”

The admiral felt a spark within him reignite. The commander was right. Besides, he didn’t like the idea of being written out of history. He had spent too long in uniform doing what he’d thought was right. Serving and protecting his people.

People like the commander and others who would be destroyed right along with him. They would suffer for doing as they were told. That wasn’t right.

“If enough of us band together, they can’t kill us. I’d rather go down fighting than walk tamely into the court room and then be sent to prison or killed,” Colonel Shrapnel said with a growl. “To be paraded before the cameras? Pointed at, told that we are the evil? Reviled for doing what we were supposed to do? The rot? To just let them get away with it?”

“If they want to hold us accountable we will hold them accountable,” the commander said with a nod.

“Enough. You speak of treason,” the general said. “I want no part of that,” he growled, his brown eyes flaring in anger.

“Why? Why is it treason if they are the first to betray us?” the commander demanded. “This… it is self-defense!” he shot a look of raw appeal to the admiral.

The admiral grunted. “I won’t hold to killing our fellow Taurens. To kill our own people in uniform,” he said slowly.

The commander’s shoulders slumped.

“But…” He left that word hanging as he considered his options.

“But?” the colonel asked as he exchanged looks with the other officers. Ears perked up.

“But I will not accept responsibility for following orders. I will not walk tamely into a kangaroo court and be their scapegoat,” the admiral said as he squared his shoulders.

“I will not have my family, my herd, suffer for them. Not now, not ever,” the admiral vowed.

General Sedu stared at him. After a moment he grunted. He had several grand children and didn’t like the idea of their being cast out by society for something he did either.

“So, what do we do?” the commander asked.

“We have a choice,” the admiral said as he turned to face them. “We can break away, reforge the Confederation here, or leave.”

“Leave? Leave? Where would we go?”

“Anywhere but here. If we try to reforge a new government, foment a civil war the Federation will eventually come down on us too,” the general said slowly. “But if we run… they’ll say we are guilty. It will be evidence of our guilt,” he warned.

“We all know that we’ve been tried and convicted already. They just haven’t dressed it up in pretty language. They are already feeding the media images of us killing civilian aliens,” the colonel spat.

“Scum,” the major growled.

“If we run we’ll just die tired,” the commander said with a shake of his head. “They’ll eventually run us down. We will not know where to go, will not have any support.”

“Space is vast. There are a lot of star systems out there,” Admiral Lobo said quietly. “I don’t intend to turn pirate but it is an option. Or, we can take everything. Anyone who wants to come and just leave. A mass exodus. Friends, family, anyone and everyone who share our views and desire to be free. And then go.”

“Where?” the general demanded. “There is no place to go!”

“We go north. Through Upsilon, or into deep space. We look into the old navigational charts and find where they won’t look. We send out our own scouts and when we find a home, we make it our own.”

“And then? When they come for us? You know they won’t just let us run.”

“Let them try,” the admiral growled. “I may not like killing our own, but I will kill to protect our people and our way of life. And I don’t mind destroying Federation ships.”

The other officers nodded grimly.

The admiral looked to General Sedu. The general squared his shoulders. “What the hell do I have to lose? I’m already going to lose my name and reputation. Why not?”

The admiral smiled crookedly and then looked at each officer. Those that looked troubled he pinned with a stern gaze. “Any who do not want to go we will leave behind.” There was a look of relief in a few officers. He was a little disappointed but wouldn’t hold it against them. After all, they still had time to change their minds.

“Find out who else will join us. I’ll need a list of every ship, everything we can take. Passengers on the planet too…”

“What about other planets?”

“We’ll send out word and pick them up as we go. We might generate a mass exodus. If it is big enough they won’t dare try to stop us,” the admiral growled. The others nodded in agreement.

“Let’s get to work.”