Blood Debts

Chapter 4

41)

Called 'Captain' because he was commanding a warship, Captain Phyllip Chroynos fumed impatiently, while waiting even more impatiently, for the results of the scans to tell him what he already, 'knew' was too strong a word, 'suspected' fit though, and reality lay somewhere between the two.

Young Lieutenant Phyllip Chroynos II stood quietly behind his father, the High Commander of the Guardsmen. Lieutenant Chroynos was a new lieutenant, on his first tour after his commissioning a few months before. He was on the fast track to become a Home Guard officer though and was currently attached to the Home Guard to backfill for an officer on long term disability leave for this deployment. Though not a Guardsman himself, he was a member of the 'regular infantry'; from there he would be qualified to transfer directly into the Home Guard dedicated to supporting the Elite Guardsmen formations. The Home Guard was still a top tier unit but nowhere near as religiously trained and honed as the Guardsmen.

Though currently only 'attached' everyone knew he would end up permanently assigned to the Home Guard in the near future. The Lieutenant's formation was as elite, relative to other line units, as a university team playing a high school in some sporting event. The Guardsmen however were as elite as a professional team in that same sporting event.

The father looked back at his eldest son, while his fingers impatiently drummed back and forth over the chair of his command couch console.

The rhythmic tapping was fraying the nerves of the Signals Officer seated before the High Commander at the console, who knew he had nothing but bad news to report.

As the brevet High-Commander because he was the highest ranking Guardsman in contact with the family and with the official High-Commander out of contact on the planet below, allowed his mind to wander to Persephone, the little crawler, who was rattling around in his rooms in the Citadel. Celine was thrilled that she had another little person to play with all day. Persephone had just turned one year old the week before this 'unsatisfying' expedition launched.

In the weeks that it had taken to reach this distant, 'once upon a time' gem of a world, the High-Commander had had nothing pleasant to think about but that chunky little garden w**d drooling on, smiling at, and crawling on everything, to take his mind off his worst fears.

Losing his sister, Alala and her fiancé, to a vehicle bomb not two months after Persephone was born, and less then a month before Alala's own wedding, was bad enough. But now the greasy, dirty-gray looking ball below did nothing to sooth his spirits over the fate of Katharina Chroynos, his youngest sister and her family.

His two baby sisters, dead within ten months of each other. Phyllip didn't believe in 'coincidence' and this pair of coincidence that left one sister dead and the other's fate hidden somewhere below, missing and presumed dead, set his teeth to grinding.

The frustrated sigh from the Signal Officer, cued Phyllip to look over his shoulder at his eldest son. The grim set to his oldest son's jaw line was enough to tell him what Lieutenant Phyllip Chroynos II thought. The tiny horizontal shake of his head was unnecessary but provided the death blow to the High-Commander's irrational hopes. The boy, turned young Officer knew, as well as his father did, that his aunt and her family were not going to reply.

High Commander Chroynos pinched the bridge of his nose and demanded, "Speak up signals, what's out there?"

Warsong's Signals Officer sighed in his seat. The Guardsman was a marvel with technology, his aptitude had landed him the prestigious post on the Guard's Flagship. His experience and training on the ship over the last two years, of his three year tour, made him an expert. He stood and faced the High Commander before answering flatly, "Nothing Sir. There are no power sources. No technological emanations from anything larger than a hand held, and those are few and far between. May I display on the main monitor Captain?"

The clinical side of Phyllip's brain knew the Signals Officer needed everyone to hear it so that he was not roasted over the engine housing for giving bad news. Phyllip made a note to himself to control his temper in the future. "Yes, please do. I need you to walk through what your sensors tell you happened. I want a step by step and as much information as we can get." The Signals Officer hesitated and looked at the younger Chroynos. "I clear him effective immediately," said Phyllip. Turning to his son, he said, "This is 'Guardsmen Warship Command Group Only' level classified. Absolutely no one knows about this, you are not to repeat this or so help me I will blow your a*s out an airlock myself. Your mother and uncle don't even know about this, and they never will. Is that clear Lieutenant?"

"Yes Sir! Absolutely."

At the High-Commander's nod, Signals continued, "The stealth deep space observation satellite will not receive our laser query," leaning back to his console, checking the display, before standing straight and continuing "for another eight hours and thirty-seven minutes, followed by a full twelve hours minimum to process the request for data and that data to begin streaming to us. Since we have no firm timetable for this", gesturing behind himself to the display, "we will need to download everything since the last data dump and that will take several hours to receive and decode. Since I have no idea when the last data dump was I have no idea how much take we will receive from the satellite once it starts transmitting.

"To your pressing question, Captain, 'no' I cannot tell you as yet who did this. The destruction is complete. We can't find a single living thing on the planet."

Signals tapped his console and a haze of topography covered the dead mass of the planet. Once the topography was attached to the dead planet Phyllip could see the world as it had once been in his mind's eye. Shining, verdant green, pristine crystal seas, a planet devoid of tectonic activity, or terraforming instabilities or defects, the world had been perfect. The days were slightly shorter, the gravity modestly lighter than 'Earth normal' and the temperatures a pleasant range that maintained a very nice climate year round. The perfect vacation world, even the aging and elderly could enjoy the feeling of 'youth' in their steps again.

His sister, Katharina and her husband maintained a hillside vacation villa, a short hop from the equatorial sea. Having approached often enough on his own visits, Phyllip could not recognize a single feature, without Warsong projecting an outline of 'what was' over the mess it became.

"No ... No," waving his finger in the direction of the display, while looking directly into the Signal Officer's soul. "The High-Commander was with them. He would see to it that they all survived and made it to the bunker together. I know we installed early warning systems on the villa and Katharina would be in the bunker within minutes of an attack warning. I know the planetary satellites are blasted but they would have had several hours warning to get to shelter. I know at least she is alive."

Signals visibly sagged, as his breath collapsed and his eyes closed. He turned to his console, flicked a premade and readily displayed icon once and dragged it with his finger across the display where it overlaid the planet as the magnification dropped precipitously, towards the surface. "I know Sir. That is why I spent so long without reporting. The bunker was hit."

"No ... Bullshit! The bunker was over a straight line kilometer away from the house, along a twisting tunnel full of switchbacks, behind hermetically sealing doors ever two hundred meters along the route. It was secret. Only family and the Guard knew about it. Contractors were highly paid, brought in from off planet, and their minds were wiped of the job details on the way back to their home world, as part of their contract. The bunker's transmitter antenna were over three kilometers away, in a different direction from the start of the tunnel so there is no way someone could have hit the bunker while shooting at the signal tower, even if the bunker's occupants were fool enough to broadcast during a strike. And there was nothing of interest or importance in or around the area where the bunker was buried."

As the overlay focused and settled it was clearly a wireframe schematic of the villa and the surrounding support structures. The Signals Officer approached the main view screen and walked through the obvious orienting points from the villa, to transmitter positions and finally to the bunker location, as displayed on the wireframe schematic.

He walked back to his console, and circled a portion of the displayed map, which drew a circle over an area of the main display. "Sir, do you see the discolored circle in the middle of the one I drew?"

The drawn circle was centered over the wireframe of the bunker, dreading the next news, "Yes," droned Phyllip.

"Sir, that is magma. Someone put a capital ship round directly through the bunker. Then they did it again and again, until they cracked the crust of the planet, releasing magma from the deep core of the world. Sir, they put so many rounds into it that the hill the bunker was in, is now under a lake of magma. The bunker itself was targeted specifically, and repeatedly."

The Signals Officer continued, "By the time they were done, they had opened every old tectonic plate on the planet and sent so many shock waves through the soft core of the world that the world suffered earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in so many places at once that the world died in a matter of minutes.

"When they were done they took the time to circle the planet and destroy ever piece of orbiting tech they could find to cover up their tracks, probably while sending high caliber rounds into ever major population center that could contain a computer capable of telling investigators who did this.

"I'm sorry Sir. This was a very thorough job. Once they started and realized what they had done they went ahead and covered their tracks as best as possible, so no one could catch them."

"You are positive, Signals?"

"Yes Sir. Everything that should have been able to stay above the level of the magma has distinct bombardment impact patterns around where it should be standing. Sir ... my guess is they hit the bunker until they were sure they got it, and did it again and set off the reaction in the planet by accident. Once they realized they were screwed for g******e they decided to leave no witnesses, living or electronic. They were already under the g*n, so someone decided they should make it total and they would try and get away with it. This is a remote world and there are never many ships here, and more than enough debris in orbit to account for every single ship that would normally be here."

Standing slowly, ship's Captain Phyllip Chroynos, newly permanent High-Commander of Guardsmen, looked from his Signals Officer, to his son, and back again, the rest of the bridge crew doing their best to be invisible. "Notify me when we receive the feed from the observation platform. I want to know who did this." His hands closed to fists, "I want to know who did this, and I want to track them down. I will eradicate the ships involved and we will crush whatever Corporate or Imperial Dynasty that ordered this to the last man. I don't want any interruptions until that has arrived."

Turning to his son, "Lieutenant, tell your platoon to stand down. They will not be dropping to the surface. There are no survivors in that man-made hell." Raising his hand to cut off protests, "The atmosphere is poisoned and superheated, the storms and cloud cover are from the seas as they boiled away further polluting the atmosphere with superheated steam. The sulfuric acid rain, mixed with the change in atmospheric pressures, and the superheated wastes, not to mention the lava and earthquakes, if that wasn't enough the dirt filled clouds blotting out the sun dropped the surface temperatures to subzero, the only warmth down there now is from the magma boiling up from the core of the planet. They killed everyone and everything weeks ago."