Our first task has been completed and Commander Ishida is now reviewing our report on our probing of this planet’s defenses. All active and passive arrays listed in their Planetary Defense Summary submitted to the Concordiat last year have been detected and seem to be operating satisfactorily. The maintenance logs on their orbital arrays report timely repairs completed without incident, and no system failures within the last five standard years. My subtronic probe of the arrays and planetary sensor grid triggered the appropriate alarms, and an appropriate challenge from Delas’ planetary defense complex at Blackstone Ridge. I thus concluded that the present planetary defenses are well maintained and operated.
But they are woefully inadequate.
A secure defense network is an admittedly difficult task on a planetary surface that is nearly ninety-percent ocean and widely unpopulated. Delas has only two large landmasses, Oradin and Deladin, with only the latter being significantly colonized. Nearly all five million of Delas’ population is concentrated in about twenty city-states on this continent, stretching from 62 degrees north, to 55 degrees south of the equator. Delas’ only operating Hellbore defense battery is located in northern Deladin, protecting the majority of the cities that are there. Work on the Cape Storm ground battery in southern Deladin seems to be stalled for unknown reasons. This leaves vast tracts of open skies available for orbital insertions of ground troops. Most of the planetary defense budget has instead been spent on local militias, equipping their soldiers with weapons of varied quality. It would have been far wiser to spend this money applying firepower on the approaches to this planet, rather than equipping their soldiers for combat after an invader has landed.
Unit DBQ and myself have detailed these concerns with our Commander in the report he is now reading, though we are certain that he has been as troubled by these inadequacies as we have been. Our arrival at the much smaller equatorial starport of Starveil, instead of the northern planetary capital of Argus, gives the 39th the best range of fire over all of Deladin’s skies, north and south. The Beischal Savannah to the south of Starveil provides a wide expanse of open field, rare on Delas, where we can maneuver freely to evade orbital bombardment. Colonel Ishida deploys us well, and we will do our best to make do with the advantages he has given us.
* * *
The dark shape cruised slowly under the rain-swept wavetops, its meter high black dorsal fin barely making a wake. Distant lights on the rocky shoreline illuminated a small complex of buildings surrounded by an electrified security fence. Lightning flashed occasionally in the stormy sky, making visible a concrete viaduct that led from the sea into one of these buildings.
It was there that the seven-meter long shape was heading.
The entrance to the viaduct was barricaded by thick titanium bars, but these slid back into the concrete walls as the shape approached. Then, as the massive form passed by, the bars emerged once again to secure the channel. No one noticed the immense fin as it sailed up to the building and into the large pool underneath it, not even a dark haired woman who was busily cataloging a pile of seashells by the poolside. She was lying back in a full-length reclining chair, the wet shells held in her lap, drying on her long skirt of white cotton almost as sheer as a spiderweb. The blue shirt and shorts that she wore displayed the wave logo of the Telville Oceanographic Institute where she worked. Her smooth, rounded Asian face was contorted in fierce concentration as she sketched an image of a brightly colored shell into her notepad, capturing all its contours and creases, oblivious to all other things around her. The woman’s dark brown eyes studied the shell’s smallest details and relayed them to her sketch with precision that their simple photographic equipment had trouble capturing.
Only when the beast exhaled a blast of air did the woman jump out of her seat, sending her notebook crashing to the floor, and shells scattering across the tiles.
“Hello, Serina,” said an amused female voice from the pool speakers.
Serina Ishida’s heart was beating at an astounding pace, and her eyes were wide with fright, but after a couple of shallow breaths she began to laugh. It struggled at first, but her laugh grew quickly as her lungs relaxed once again. Only then could it be seen how strikingly beautiful the woman was as she smiled broadly.
On the table next to her was a small black transmitter the size of her palm. After taking a big breath, she reached for it and spoke into it.
“Kuro, please . . .” Serina struggled for another breath, “please do not ever do that again. I thought you were a daeger.”
The orca rose up from the water and nodded its head in delight, sending small waves to lap up against the smooth tiled walls of the pool.
“Daeger would never come here,” said the voice from the speakers. “You are foolish.”
Serina’s laugh quieted to deep breaths as she retrieved her notebook, and sat back down again. Tears had formed in her eyes and she wiped them away. As much as she disliked being called foolish, Kuro was right. Daeger were territorial creatures and wouldn’t be wandering the shoreline like this. And as large as daeger were, they couldn’t break through the titanium bars protecting the viaduct.
“You only left last night,” Serina spoke into her transmitter, “what are you doing back?”
“I found a reef full of those colorful eels that you wanted.”
“Really! That’s wonderful! Can you locate it on the computer map?”
“I already have. Will you want to go there tomorrow?”
Serina sighed heavily and shook her head. The creatures were called “painted eels,” and the local fishermen had often complained that they would sometimes congregate in a pack and shred their nets to get at their haul. This kind of behavior had never been documented before from these normally solitary creatures. She imagined that the sight of these bright red, yellow, and lavender eels swarming would be incredible.
“No, sorry. I’ll be very busy. You and Peter will have to go alone.”
Her colleague Peter Sallison never especially liked photo assignments, but he’d use any excuse to take the institute’s thirty-meter jetboat out for a cruise.
“Sad,” said the voice from the speakers, though Serina didn’t believe it for a minute. She suspected that Kuro had a crush on Peter. “Why will you be busy?”
“My father is visiting. I have to prepare a few things.”
“The colonel is on Delas?”
Serina was surprised that Kuro had remembered her mentioning him, but then scolded herself for being so anthropomorphic. The psychotronic enhancements that Kuro had surgically implanted in her not only gave her a near-human intelligence, but also a super-human memory.
“Yes, my father Colonel Ishida is on Delas. He’ll be visiting me, and I need to make sure that Kaethan comes also so we’re all together for a while.”
“Is this a female duty?” Kuro asked. It was a common question of hers as she tried to make sense of human society.
“It is in my family,” Serina responded despondently. “Kaethan and my father don’t get along very well, but I think I can fix things.”
“Families should remain together,” Kuro said simply.
“Yes, they should,” Serina responded just as simply, not wanting to explain any further. “I’d like you stay in the area for the next couple days so I can introduce you to my father when he visits with Kaethan. I’ve told him so much about you in my messages.”
“Will they swim?”
“Kaethan might this time, but you’d have to be gentle with him if he wants to play. He’s not as good as Peter is.”
Kuro loved playing in the water with Serina and Peter. The orca was gentle with her, but with Peter their play had lately gotten quite acrobatic.
“I’ll be careful, Serina. Did you want to play now?”
“Oh . . .” Serina moaned. “I have to finish cataloging these seashells from Oradin for Professor Kilby. Then I have to call Kaethan’s commander and tell him to give my brother the next couple days off.”
“He’ll do what you say?” Kuro didn’t hide her confusion.
“Well, he said that he would when I danced with him at Kaethan’s promotion celebration last year.”
Kaethan hadn’t even told his father that he was given command of his heavy armor battalion. His commander, Colonel Neils, was surprised that Colonel Ishida wasn’t there. Serina was just plain angry.
“Then you’ll play?”
Serina had been planning to leave early today to go shopping. She also wanted to make dinner reservations for the next couple nights, though she knew it would be difficult on such short notice. As much as she’d like a nice swim about now, she really didn’t have the time. It was so difficult to say “no” to Kuro, though.