Strat (a military science fiction novel): STRAT

By Tara Maya

In the tradition of Starship Troopers, Forever War, and Live Free or Die.

About the book

On a hell-class world where feudal lords joust with mechs and use memetic tech to imprint loyalty onto their vassals and thralls, all Charlie and his people ask is to be left alone, free to think for themselves.

Then, on his wedding day, Charlie's bride is kidnapped to be a thrall. As he fights for his life and her freedom, he discovers the war helm of an ancient and powerful lord. He needs the knowledge in the helm to bring the battle to his enemies. But if he uses it, he risks losing himself... and becoming embroiled in a war that will soon span the galaxy.

Excerpt

Thirteen helmed Lords escorted me out to the center of the caldera: twelve lords from the legation, and Lord Ivess.

I knew Domany was right. They were unlikely to keep their word; but if there was even a chance I could save Sard from obliteration, I had to try.

We passed the frozen corpse of the woman who had taken her father's helm and avenged her family during the jousts. All anyone had cared about her act of courage was that she had violated a stifling thousand-year-old code of law. Now I was to share her fate, for the same reason.

The legation offered Lord Ivess the honor of removing the faceplate and breather. My hands were chained behind my back. They forced me to kneel in the sulfur snow.

He leaned close to me, although he did not need to be close to whisper to me over the link.

"You stole my daughter from me, and that embarrassed me," he hissed. "I will enjoy your death greatly. I'm not going to take off your breather, though. A quick death would be too easy. I'm going to remove everything but your breather. I'm going to let you die slowly, and as you die, you can watch Tears-of-Gold die too." He laughed. "Did you really think we would spare Sard after you contaminated it with your thralls who think they can be lords?"

"No," I said. "I expected you to lack all honor, having fought you before."

He kicked me face forward onto the ground. My jaw smashed painfully against my breather. He grabbed the back of my kit and jerked me back up to my knees.

"Then why did you surrender yourself to us? That was stupid."

"I'm a Fredder," I said. "I guess stupid is just a bad habit."

The other lords stood in a semi-circle around us, a few meters away. They watched impassively as Ivess dismantled my kit piece by piece, until he ripped away the last underlayer, and left me naked in the bitterly frozen acid. As he'd promised, Ivess left on my helm, the cursed Helm of Brin, trailing tubes to my discarded, but functional, air pack, so I could still breath.

It felt as though I had been dipped into fire. My skin sizzled and buckled. Every inch of my body below my neck came alive with pain, raw unbearable pain. I screamed inside my mask. Through my tears, I could see a huge army of mechs, the combined cavalcades of the lords of the "peace legation," advance toward Tears-of-Gold. They weren't going to just let it die of neglect, they were going to blast it straight to hell themselves.

82,000 words, around 275 pages, plus a glossary and appendices
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Misque Press
• Release date: Jun 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781393821397

Book preview

The Raid on Tarn Croft

Year 5025

Sure, I knew about the fight atween the Cygnians and the Sagittarians over Tears-of-Gold, but we was Fredders and we figured it weren’t rightly any of our concern. Asides, I had me better things to worry about.

See, I was gettin hitched to the prettiest gal in the galaxy. Her name was Benisse. She was sweet sixteen and I was seventeen and we had been dotty for each other even afore she got back from that fancy school in Tears-of-Gold City (it had some high falutin name like Domestic Seminary for Fredder Ladies). Can’t tell you how I felt the day she returned to Tarn Croft. There I was, expectin a bigger version of the knob knee, pug nose, fiz face, ankle-tickler she’d been when we was both kids, and off the bus steps this blazin beauty I didn’t hardly recognize.

Our clan’s croft of about two hundred families was small and pretty far into the Wayout, so Benisse’s grandfather, Gramps Stan, who was the mayor of Tarn Croft, also served as the Liaison-to-Zatar, to bless our union. The meetin hall never looked so nice. The womenfolk had dolled it up good. Everyone had pitched in a bit of swap to pay for the whole room to be oxygenated. ‘Course, while still in mixed company we kept on our kits‘n’breathers.

When the music started up, Benisse and me met up just outside the hall, in the raw rock tunnel, waitin on our cue to enter. She wore a brand new kit, shimmery white, and her eyes were big and bright behind her breather plate. We could hear a lot of speeches behind the door. Seemed like they was takin forever to get to callin us in.

My knees started to buckle.

You sure about this? I asked her. Maybe your brothers was right. You ought to stay in school in the city, get some better learnin than you could get in the Wayout. You shouldn’t be wastin your smarts on a rock-licker like me. You always told me you never planned to be no miner’s wife.

Still don’t, she said.

Ain’t like I got any other job prospects round here.

She shrugged. I wondered what her shoulders would look like without no kit on. In a few hours, I’d find out. Them knees of mine started quakin again.

Told you before, Charlie, I don’t think you’re gonna be no miner. I just got a feelin you’re meant for better things. And I ain’t never wrong.

Truth was, I wanted more too, but I didn’t have any idea what. I liked how the particulars didn’t matter none to Benisse. She had faith in me.

I’d wait for you, I blurted. If you wanted to go back to school till you get your diploma. Your brothers said…

I don’t give a damn what my older brothers said, I ain’t their thrall. She fixed me with a hard look. You wanna know the real reason I left the school?

I thought you couldn’t wait to marry me is all.

You’re great, Charlie Cooper, but you ain’t all that. I woulda made you wait another two years, like my brothers wanted, if I coulda. The seminary was run by Fredders, and they didn’t make us Fredder girls use meme tech. But, as you mighta heard, the old lord died and the new fella, Lord Domany, inherited the Helm of Sard from his pa. Seemed his pa had let a lot of folks go without gettin emotivated, but this new guy was a stickler for the rules. The school marms told me I’d have to get emotivated too. They’d’a tweaked my emotes till I was some kinda fanatic, willin to roll in sulfur snow, if it pleased some snotty lord! Ain’t no way I’d do that, Charlie. I’d be as good as dead to my family.

I was shocked. Why didn’t you tell your brothers? Might have saved them the trouble of tryin to thump me.

Yeah, sorry bout that.

Nothin I couldn’t handle. But why…?

Under her breather, her cheeks turned red. I thumped a few fellows myself tryin to get out of there the mornin they came to imprint us. I didn’t have no warnin, see, or I would have made my departure more genteel like. But them fellows tried to make me sit in a chair and put a machine on my head.

Unconsciously, she touched the back of her neck, where her brainjack was located. Like all folks, Fredders have jacks, what let us plug into our kit and operate our mine bots by remote. We only upload, though; we never download.

She continued, Didn’t listen when I said no Fredder would stand for that. I learned ‘em otherwise, I reckon.

I guess. I tried not to laugh. Should have told me or your brothers. We woulda helped with that thumpin, and glad of it.

Exactly why I didn’t say nothin. If I get in trouble for it, it will all be on me.

The door opened, and my ma popped her head in. Hey, you folks gonna stand here waggin your tongues all night, or you gonna get hitched? That ain’t a question.

We grinned at each other. We’d got so caught up in our palaver we gone and missed our cue. The entrance song started again, and we entered the hall, arm in arm.

With everyone standin acause there weren’t no room to sit, Gramps Stan read passages from the Book of Earth. Then he turned off the book screen, put his hands behind his back, and rocked back on his heels, fit to speak a spell.

Yall know why we’re here, said Gramps Stan.

’Cause Charlie won at cards! someone shouted, and everyone laughed. I guess that poker game where I settled with Benisse’s brothers was infamous now.

Gramps Stan laughed too, but then he waved us quiet. I ain’t talkin about that. I’m talkin about history. Just for a minute, I want yall to step back and see this in the bigger picture. We’re here today to honor one man, one woman, gettin yoked, startin a new life. And that’s beautiful in itself. But that ain’t all it is. We Fredders are Freebrainers, and there ain’t many of us left. We must never forget how we got here, the sacrifices our forefathers made, so as these two fine individuals could choose each other, without no one tellin ‘em otherwise.

The room got real quiet as Gramps Stan stomped back and forth in his shiny kit. He gestured, like he was pointin to something far off.

"Most of the folks on Neraka ain’t got that choice, friends. They are vassals, who submit themselves to a lord once a year to be emotivated with fanatic devotion. Those who won’t submit are gavaged—emotivated against their will. What does that mean? No matter what that lord does, them folks accept it. They ain’t capable of thinkin or feelin for themselves about whether that lord is right or wrong. They ain’t gonna call an election and throw that sonofabitch out if he robs ‘em, or cheats ‘em, or taxes them to suffocation. And them folks is the lucky ones. The unlucky ones ain’t nothin but thralls, slaves with hardly no brains left.

"It wasn’t always like this, folks. On Lost Earth, where we came up from monkeys, the Zatars watched us evolve and when we was ready, they sent their emissaries in disguise to teach us a better way, great prophets and wise leaders who guided humanity out of savagery. A glorious civilization arose. Earth was paradise. Folks didn’t need no kits‘n’breathers to go outside, and they all had the freedom to think and love and live as they liked. ‘Course we all know what happened. The Mordrachs attacked Earth, and woulda killed us all, if the Zatars hadn’t saved us. Then humans repaid the debt by helping the Zatars drive out the Mordrachs from our galaxy.

"But some humans acquired Mordrach meme tech during the war. Mind control. After the Zatars withdrew, a handful of these traitors used the Mordrach tech to take power, declare themselves memarchs, and enslave everyone else. In our arm of the galaxy the Memarch of Cygnia made himself an emperor. He demanded that everyone submit to being emotivated with loyalty to him.

"But one man said no.

"That man was Fred. Him and all those who followed him were exiled here. Hell world, they called it. Neraka. They didn’t expect Fred or his followers to survive. But we did. The first Fredders built Tears-of-Gold. Them Cygnians saw it was good, and took that away too. Then a couple centuries later, the Sagittarians came and took it away from them, and we Fredders was pushed even deeper into the Wayout. Well, maybe we’ll just keep goin as far into the Wayout as we need to, but I reckon that ain’t nothin goin to change our mind about mind-changin tech. And these young folks here is the best proof of that."

It was time for Benisse and me to kiss. We leaned in close and Benisse’s grandpa threw a scarf over both our heads. Once we was face to face, we retracted our breathers, so our faces was both bare. The air rushed in, smellin big and fresh after the stingy sting of the weddin kit.

I’d done a lot of thinkin about kissin Benisse, but I ain’t never done it before. (‘Cept with our breathers on, which don’t work too good.) Now, for the first time in my life, I shared the same air as Benisse. As our lips met, I smelled her good smell and I felt her warm breath on my naked cheek, and it excited me as much as the soft brush of her mouth on mine.

Gramps Stan pulled that scarf up, tryin to catch us at it. We scrambled to trigger our breathers back on, and we made it, but we was both grinnin big grins and folks laughed and cheered.

Wouldn’t guess there was room in that hall for dancin but that didn’t stop nobody from tryin. They sealed the room in two, so everyone could lift their breathers, womenfolk on one side of the partition, us gents on the other.

But for me there was one more thing I had to do afore I could make Benisse mine forever. I had to go give a gift to the Sulphines.

With a bow, real formal like, Benisse’s eldest brother Adam gave me the Gift, which was a metal torch. It was just the men together now, and they all howled and teased as I took the unlit torch and waved it at them.

Since we ain’t been able to kill you yet, might as well wish you luck, said Adam, what raised Benisse since her ma and pa died in a mining accident.

Or wish them Sulphines luck in tryin to kill you, said Haden, her second oldest brother.

Dave and Kigger, my best friends and my kin, stuck up for me.

Maybe you’ll find the lost Helm of Brin and sell it for a fortune, said Dave.

Or better yet, find a pretty Sulphine girl. At least you’d have better in-laws than those jokers, said Kigger, jerking a thumb at Adam and Haden.

That got a roar back from Benisse’s kin. The fun was just gettin started, and would probably end in a brawl, as weddin celebrations (on the men’s side) usually did. I had been in a few myself. But I wouldn’t be in this one. After I got back from the March to the Sulphines, I had sweeter preoccupations awaitin me for the rest of the night.

Them rowdy fellows parted to let me out of the meetin hall. I went up the elevator alone. In the anteroom, I added another layer to my kit: armor, oxy tank, and gun gauntlets. No Fredder ever goes outside unarmed. My kit adjusted itself for the surface. Out of habit, I checked the specs on my kit afore I keyed open the airlock. I was jacked in fine, and my corneal screen displayed the results, projected on my breather mask:

display

I went outside.

No doubt about it, Neraka ain’t the nicest planet in the universe. It’s ornery. Even those of us who love it and wouldn’t consider livin nowhere else won’t say otherwise. But Neraka got its own kind of beauty.

The air was clear and the wind was putterin about real mellow like. Accordin to my kit, the temp was a balmy –20 C, warm enough to melt the SO 2 snow into sloshy tarns, but not so warm that the glaciers had started steamin.

I took the footpath up to the top of the canyon, and then around Cutter’s Ledge to the Tarn of Hidden Castle. Ain’t no castle there that I ever seen. The tarn is just a regular mountain lake, pretty enough, sure, but nothin special. The liquid sulfur dioxide was shinnin just like it was molten gold, and the reflection of the pink gas giant, Heaven’s Rose, danced on the ripples of the lake. The krakenweed-covered rocks, half submerged in and about the lake, looked like ladies trailin their long locks into the water. Below, I could see twinklin lights from the spires and spikes of houses down in the canyon. The houses themselves were underground, so all that showed were the uplink spires, elevator shacks, and guntowers.

Sure can’t blame the Sulphines for building their castle here, if they ever did. Nobody reports havin seen them in years and years, and some folks reckon they packed up and left on account of the human traffic on the road gettin more and more. Time was, Tarn Croft was the end of the line, but that ain’t been true for close on a century now. So it seems, them Sulphines was right to be worried that we humans would outbreed them, but they couldn’t fight us no more, so they just moved on. And thinkin on that, and lookin out at the lake of gold, it made me kinda sad somehow.

I took the torch and walked as close to the edge of the lake as I dared. One end of the torch was pointy, and I dug that into the edge of the lake. The other end of the torch was wrapped in a fine wool of shredded steel and magnesium. With a tool built into the gauntlet of my kit, I ignited the steel wool. It burned fitfully in the sulfur dioxide air. Then I stepped back, acause I knew what was goin to happen and I didn’t want no sludge on my boots.

Sulphine plants use sunlight to make sulfur trioxide, and the Sulphine animals and people react the sulfur trioxide with sulfur to give sulfur dioxide again. The most common plant is krakenweed. We call it that acause it wiggles like tentacles. It ain’t much more than stringy colonies of single celled plants and single celled animals in symbiosis. The plant cells take in the light and the ciliated animal cells give it the wiggle. Krakenweed falls dormant during the local-night, but the plant cells ain’t particular about their source of light, and burning a flame can wake them up.

Sure enough, little tentacles of slime started to squirm out of the lake toward the light.

Wakin the krakenweed is supposed to bring the Sulphines out, them sulfur breathin natives of Neraka that’s people-shaped and people-smart. I waited, kinda breathless, kinda half expectin them to appear. But no one did.

I was halfway back around Cutter’s Edge when my kit started wailin at me that it had detected somethin. For a wild minute, my heart started in thumpin, and I thought maybe them Sulphines was goin to show themselves after all. Didn’t take me no more than a wink to realize what a fool notion that was. We ain’t never found a good way for our sensors to pick up sulfur-based life at any distance, acause their heat and composition signatures blend too well with their environment. Only somethin metal, somethin silicon, or somethin human, would trigger my kit’s alarm like that. My sonar and thermal was both blinkin at me like mad.

I powered up my armor to full amp. No longer a dead weight of near a hundred kilos, now it would amplify my movements if I needed to move real fast or real strong.

Tarn Croft got a bunch of outlyin sensor mines in the canyon, plus the two big watchtowers. I radioed them all, patchin my kit in to eyeball their pickup in my visual field. My corneal screen flipped from one pickup to another, but none of them showed anything, not on sonar, not on thermal, not on lindar. A chill took a crawl right down my spine. That meant whatever was creepin towards Tarn Croft was doin it real sneaky like, and it knew just how to avoid all our towers and sensor mines.

Slow, though. At least, there was that. And, whatever it was—whoever it was— hadn’t reckoned on me bein out here. That was a bit of luck for our side.

The sheriff and his boys was all at my weddin, but he always keeps an eye on the view from the lighthouses through his kit. He must have sensed it when I patched into them, and he buzzed me now.

Charlie? he asked, audio only. You okay, boy?

I think there’s somethin out here, sir, I buzzed back. Somethin big, somethin smart. Can’t be a passenger car so far from the road, but there’s enough heat that there’s gotta be at least one man in one vehicle, maybe more.

Shit. The sheriff was silent a minute, maybe shocked, or maybe talking to somebody else on another link. After a minute: Charlie?

Yessir.

I’m goin to round up a posse. Meanwhile, you’re the closest. I hate to ask you on your weddin night, but…

You can count on me, sheriff, I said quickly.

Now, boy, I don’t want you gettin into no trouble, he lectured me. Ain’t worth the pain I’ll get from your ma if I let you kill your fool self.

I’ll just get close enough to get a visual on it for your boys, sheriff, I promise. You reckon it’s oxy rustlers?

I don’t reckon nothin just yet. We better maintain radio silence from here on out, but if you get into cold sulfur, you better holler, you hear?

Yessir. Charlie out.

My sonar couldn’t give me a fixed size on my quarry. I could only judge by the thermal signature. But I knew where it was: about half a klick, a little to the west, below me. More important, it didn’t know I was there, acause I was in the vehicle’s sonar shadow, and the glacier around the lake was hidin my heat signature. As I moved down towards it, I took care to always keep a good hunk of rock atween it and me.

But I guess the enemy didn’t think he had nothin to hide, acause he came on the squawker, loud and clear to whosever cared to pick up his broadcast. He addressed us in the creole used in the Wayout, though his accent was canted and old-fashioned.

"Attention. Your village is surrounded by a full armored cavalcade. I am a Sagittarian lord, in need of assistance. If you do not render it up to me voluntarily, I shall wrest it from you by main force."

Cheeky as you like, he went on to list all his demands: this much oxy, this much water, this many lithium batteries. And meanwhile, he broadcast video over the jacklink, showin that he had him a whole mess of cavalry mechs ready to shoot us to the Mordrach homeworld if we didn’t do like he said. It made me right boilin mad, but I kept creepin toward him.

I had sight of him now.

His land cruiser, I reckoned, was bout as big as three cars, but he had buried it under a mound of sulfur snow to mask his signature. It would have worked too, if I hadn’t been right up the mountain from him.

My gauntlets had guns built into each of the arm struts, but I saw at once that I wouldn’t be able to shoot through that behemoth. And I didn’t dare buzz the sheriff when I was so close to the enemy.

I was wonderin what to do when I noticed that his cruiser was actually pretty bad beat up.

Our mayor, Gramps Stan, got on the squawker, bless his heart, probably tryin to buy time for the women and children to get down into the bunkers. Nothin else the sheriff’s posse could do now.

Yeah, we seen what you done, and how you got a lot of mechs with a lot of guns, said Gramps Stan. But we ain’t goin to give in to a lot of bullyin.

Are you mad? the self-proclaimed lord exclaimed. If our fix hadn’t been so serious, it would have been funny to hear the shock in his snooty voice. You are mere yeomen without a lord to protect you. There will be no stain on your honor to surrender to a helmed lord.

We ain’t Cygnians and we ain’t Sagittarians, and we don’t give a damn about no lords. We’re Fredders. And you better not try to take nothin from us lessin you want a big fight on your hands.

I was right on top of his vehicle now. It was bristlin just like a porcupine with guns and cannon, all pokin through the snow, but not a one swiveled to intercept me.

Don’t you realize that if you fight me, it shall cost you far more, in the final accounting, than if you simply accede to my moderate demands? he was arguin with our mayor.

Maybe, Gramps Stan said stubbornly. But it will cost you far more too, I reckon.

Regardless, I shall still win and you shall still lose.

That’s as may be.

The thermal outline of the cruiser was colored in bright blues, greens and yellows on my thermal vid screen. No wonder he was hunkered away, hidin. He was busted up even worse than I thought. The airlock on his door had been jerry-rigged shut, and I realized it wouldn’t take no more than one shot to fry the lock.

I extended and loaded the rifle in my right arm strut and took careful aim. I would only get one shot. If I missed, his guns would finish me off afore I could pop a second.

Then your defiance serves your people no benefit.

That’s where you’re wrong, see, said Gramps Stan. If all Fredders took to that kind of thinkin, and put savin their own skins over all else, then pretty soon every ruffian on Neraka would say us Fredders was weak and alls you had to do to push over a Fredder clan was talk ugly. And then we’d all end up as mind-blind thralls to lords like you. And that’s why I swear to you we’ll all die fightin you afore we’ll give you one damn thing.

A pity, sneered the lord, I had no interest in depriving you of either your freedom or your lives. But I assure you that now I shall make you pay in both.

I fired.

The snow boiled away in a scream of white gas. The outer door to the airlock fell in, with the slurpy sound of changing pressure. His guns replied, but too late. I dived inside the airlock. My gun hammered away at the weaker lock panel of the inner door until that one gave way as well. I used the end of my rifle to crowbar open the door.

I dropped into the tiny space below, shovin the business end of my rifle at the temple of the sole occupant. He noticed me only now. His expression, through his breather, was ludicrous.

I think you better be reconsiderin your plans, I said to him, over the jacklink. To the sheriff and the others, I transferred my camera’s view. I heard a ragged cheer from the Fredders in the background. Stand down your mechs.

I am dying. They will do anything to protect me.

He looked me full in the face and I saw that he was in as bad shape as his cruiser. His eyes was pure white: corneal burns. He had lesions on his skin, and blood trickled from his nose and gums. He still had his kit on, but it must have sprung a leak, or else he had got it on too late. He was sufferin from overexposure to sulfur dioxide.

Stand down your mechs, I repeated, suddenly fearin what would happen if a lord died and his bots thought we was responsible. Stand them down and I promise we’ll help you.

How can I trust you?

What have you got to lose?

Whether I am dead or alive, I must prevent my helm from falling into the hands of my enemies. His raspy voice strengthened. That gun to my head has changed nothing. I still have the lives of all your villagers in my hands. Give me what I have demanded, and all of us will live. Refuse and we will all die together.

I hoped that ma and Benisse and the others was deep in the bunkers by now. Maybe they would survive.

Look, fella, I said. "Ain’t no sense in you killin us and me killin you and everybody dyin. I can see you’re in a bad way, and if you had just asked real nice in the first place, we would