Second Chances - An Earth & Beyond Emulator Novel, Ch.VII

[Pakkrat [N7LA]]

Second Chances - An Earth & Beyond Emulator Novel, Ch.VII
by Pakkrat

VII. Though the warlord was again dressed, armored, rearmed, and stood proud once more on the grounds of the ruined Jenquarum grounds, his demeanor was anything but rapture of victory. The Centuriata warlord stood, his long polearm glaive in a hand and upright as he struggled against the Iteration Haze. His muscles were tense and his senses were heightened even as he stared at his decade-old, decapitated body on the floor of the ruins chamber.

"You see, General Khan," offered the Sabine, Tervanus Rex, "that while your campaign ten years ago was a success, an armistice had been reached and the powers stopped short of mutually assured destruction."

Dahaka Khan, general of the assault forces of the siege of Jove City looked back at the gene-witch to whom he had answered the Call Forward. Such shoddy workmanship given, he was still reeling from the Haze. He sniffed derisively at the Sabine Reclaimer. His grip on the glaive tightened.

"The Gate War is ten years past, great Khan," consoled the Sabine.

Khan did not like being patronized or lulled into passivity. He favored action and decisive action at that. This worm of a Sabine was beginning to be an itch. He turned from the decade-old scene in his throne room and posed one question.

"Do you know who slew me, the Khan, Sabine?" asked Dahaka Khan.

Nervously as if the answer might ignite deadly ordinance, Rex answered as carefully as he could, "The records state that then-Primarch Tyr entered this building to speak you, Khan alone. I have pieced the clues together that you and he did some form of melee combat. He was then witnessed leaving the building with your blood still on his weapon. Tyr must have slain you in a gesture to the Terrans and Jenquai to end the Gate War." Rex did not want to mention that the Primarch had been disgusted with the atrocities of the occupation, not to the Khan before him.

Khan, breathed in, his heart felt betrayed by the Republic. "Damn the weakness of the Jenquai, the foolishness of the Terrans, and the betrayal of the Republic. I Khan, have never lost a battle, never caved into bureaucratic diplomats, never showed mercy. I did what I was sent here to do! I followed orders! I pacified this city. I completed my mission! And the Primarch betrayed me." His anger was boiling.

"Great, Khan," said Tervanus Rex, "the Gate War has been over for ten years and a tenuous peace has been in effect under treaty. The gates are now a shared asset to humanity."

"It's not over," declared Dahaka Khan growling absentmindedly. "It will not be over until the Jenquai are exterminated from the galaxy, the Terrans repaid for their idiocy, and the Republic attains the apex of humanity!" He saw it then. In his mind, the Progen could continue where they left off and crush the hated Jenquai mystics and their puny cities and stations. Earth could be again assaulted as it had been during the Scouring of Terra long ago by the Republic. And Khan was the general to do it. Failure was not an option. He was immortal. He was Centuriata.

"Please try, Khan to see that there are other means and avenues we could try," Rex soothed.

Khan breathed inwardly again. There. That was the weakness he hated. The softness of weaklings that he detested. With his eyes closed, Khan began the Combat Trance, further heightening his senses, reflexes, and automatic training ingrained in every Centuriata Warrior. This was added to the underlying fury of the predatory rage that he could not identify now that he had answered the Call Forward at Arx Ymir instead of the Place of Life. So be it, he thought.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw that Rex' body language was placating and submissive to the Khan. Weakness. The Progen had let themselves become lax and weak. This must not continue!

"I have my orders, Sabine," he said with grim finality as he flashed his teeth, his elongated canines threatened though the Reclaimer now disgusted him with his presence.

"What ord-?" Rex tried to say before he was cut off by being impaled by the thrust of the glaive's serrated blade through his midsection. He looked down in surprise that the newly-Called Khan could move in such a blurring speed. Blood flowed from his uniform and anointed the weapon which seemed happy to be of use once more.

"I shall win this war, by Jericho and Vita Theodora, by Romulus and Remus, and by the might of Centuriata superiority!" growled Khan.

Rex managed to look up from his impaling wound, hearing the words of the warlord-general. "The cannons...." was all he could say before losing consciousness.

Dahaka Khan, the Tormentor, warlord of Jove City mercilessly withdrew the weapon from the weak and collapsing Reclaimer. Then he turned with finality from the scene, plans forming in his primal mind. He left the Sabine to die there where he had found and reclaimed the fallen general.

The Khan was long gone when Rex managed to regain a moment of consciousness. Weakly, he spoke to his forearm PDA as the last of his blood ebbed out his wound. ".....by hook or by crook," he finished before dying among the death-wail lament heard in the Ruins of Jove City.

* * *

Over the rings of Saturn sector, in NET-7 SOL, Dr. Pakkratius the Sabine Sentinel fumbled about the wires and connections of the communications systems. He was performing surgery on the receiver that was aimed at the gate to Akeron's Gate sector. This dish was tasked to catch any masercom beams out of the system he had agreed to squelch for his clone brother, the Privateer Pakkrateus.

He had just about exhausted all other avenues until now. He had clandestinely authorized data dumps as the feeds arrived, citing that the radiation storms had garbled the news from Aragoth and were unintelligible. His lies only lasted so long before he tried other means. The news of a planet-side battle out of Progen space was just Endriago-hot enough to turn heads from Aragoth system. That news had panned itself out in time.

Pakkratius had tried to order a maintenance detail upon the receivers of the Aragoth system news. That lasted all of five minutes as the Net-7 crew foreman produced a log of last week's calibrations of the antenna. What with the galaxy's most connected News source centralized location, the Doctor found it very hard to keep a good newscorp in downtime. The show must go on, it seemed.

He was still pulling plugs and disconnecting conduits to the dish, when a female voice piped up in inquisition from behind Pakkratius.

"What the hell are you doing, Doctor?" demanded Zona Mason, anchorwoman and his rival in Net-7 News.

He bumped his head on the low clearance of the system he was trying to sabotage. Surprise and embarrassment was on his face when he extracted himself from the receiver.

A master interviewer, and proficient interrogator media-wise, Zona Mason put the pieces together fast. It as her gift to sniff out intrigue. And catching the Progen Reporter red-handed reeked of something fishy.

He tried to lie, "I'm trying to get this damned thing working again."

Mason hated bullshit and was not buying it, given the recent silence of Aragoth system. She tried again with her arms crossed and standing in an accusatory pose. The two were alone in this lofty part of the space station. "Out with it, Progen," she said, "this time with feeling and integrity."

Now fully-exposed, the Sentinel was forced to come clean before the galaxy's worst and incurable gossip.

"Okay, okay," Pakkratius conceded defeat and hoping to hold onto what cards he had left. "I'll tell you if you agree to let me keep this scoop as its main Reporter. You can lead in for me but it's my story."

"I'm listening, rat," she answered.

* * *

They were leaving Jove's Fury station after having consulted Master Sevti, the historian of the Gate War in Jupiter sector, when the news feeds leaked their adventure in Aragoth system. Pakkrateus walked faster with Siobhan behind him back to the hangar where the Maze Runner was docked and being repaired. The bill from Jove's Fury was going to take its toll on the Privateer's credit account. Now that the feeds were active and declaring the murder investigation, a fugitive Progen, a planet-side battle on Endriago and a space battle before Arx Ymir in Jotunheim, Pakkrateus' goose was cooked and ready to eat. His accounts would be frozen and he now had only what was in his cargo hold.

The Sev Tushnim had already deduced their findings in the histories for he had read them many times in disgust at the glossed memorial treatment that spoke of the Jove City he remembered, because he was there. He was waiting for the Privateer and the Sabura near the abandoned black-and-red Sentinel ship, the Apotheosis. It was dark and still docked. The Centuriata escort that had delivered Khan to the place of his death were long gone.

Entering the Ruins, albeit illegally (Reacher, true to Jenquai tradition would not step foot inside), the Privateer and the Sabura Warrior used their gleaned map copies of the city to track down the Reclaimer, Tervanus Rex. It would be morning in a few hours. The two had to move quickly to avoid the Ruins squatters and transients.

They found the Jenquarum Council Chamber and immediately spotted the lake of blood surrounding the body of the Sabine Reclaimer Tervanus "Wrecks" Rex. Siobhan noted how he died, by an impaling strike to the abdomen by the remembered warlord's signature glaive. Secretly, she hoped that the deathblow was painful and that he suffered as he bled out.

The Pakkrateus knelt down and found the Sabine's gene-map cryo-cartridge in the body armor of the corpse. He ejected it and handed it up to Siobhan. She took it reluctantly as if it were some armed and live chemical grenade. Then the Privateer tapped the blinking button on the forearm guard PDA of the dead Reclaimer.

A deathwatch recording played. It was time-stamped just hours before Siobhan and the Pakkrateus had pulled up to the Ruins. The prone image of Rex resolved and spoke in a coughing and stuttering voice.

"I....believe I've erred. The Khan wouldn't listen to reason....he wants to win the war for the Republic." More coughing came as he spat up blood and wheezed, "How can he fire the Romulus and Remus cannons? Only the generals and the Primarch had the codes?"

The image was about to play his death, but he spoke one last time, "I beg forgiveness of my people, my Order and my Republic." Then the image died, the recording de-resolving and cutting off.

Siobhan looked at the gene-map of the man who had committed such heresy upon her. Now he was the restrained one. Now he was at her mercy. Now she would see justice. Then a quirk of the Sabura matrix spoke within Siobhan. Rather than pure vengeance, as the Centuriata might desire, she had considered justice. She would need advice as to the How of dealing with this gene-map. It was then that the Sabura woman decided she needed to consult Vinda, the creator of the Sabura Project. What did she know about the warrior genome that was giving her these second thoughts?

The Pakkrateus was the one pulling her along this time. "C'mon," he said. "We have no time to ride the line."

"You heard what he said," she told the Pakkrateus. "How can he fire the cannons without the codes? Unless..."

"He was one of those generals," answered the Privateer as he guided her from the Jenquarum Council building. "Tyr retired as Primarch to live out the rest of his life. He had to give the codes to his successor, but he had no cause to change them at the end of the Gate War. Then his successor, the new Primarch suffered an 'accident' at one of the huge cannons and was utterly destroyed. Did he get a chance to pass any new codes onto General -and later Primarch- Anjuren Khan, Dahaka Khan's brother? I doubt it, Siobhan. No, the Khans are the only ones that I know of who have the codes to power up, acquire a target, and fire the Romulus and Remus cannons! Anjuren Khan is still too far out in 61Cygni to help us to change the codes. We have to put down the dog ourselves."

Siobhan asked as they reached the Maze Runner, "The cannons can't destroy a planet, Pakkrateus. They're not that powerful."

"Dahaka Khan need not destroy planets to re-kindle the Gate War. He only needs targets that can be destroyed and that will spark conflict anew."

The Sabura warrior went down a list of potential targets. The cannons could at most fire once each. Two targets then, she decided. What two hubs of the Jenquai and the Terrans would infuriate and ignite the Gate War? She had the answers immediately.

"Jove's Fury and Earth Station," she said with fatalistic revelation.

The Pakkrateus relayed their discoveries and their conclusions to Reacher who was cloaked nearby in his Defender.

"To Mars sector then," Reacher said with his own fatalistic calm riding his voice. Over the com-link could be heard the Jenquai changing his device modules in his Sev Tushnim vessel.

The Privateer and the Defender ships shot for the sector gate to Saturn in a final dash to intercept and hopefully interdict an Armageddon.

[Lirethion]

really pakrat only one today lol