Chain Reaction - (Deathclaws x NOP) Chapter 7

Mostly keeping to my every two week schedule so far. This chapter starts to introduce the wider cast and starts laying the groundwork for some more insight into deathclaw society as I've imagined it and the problems that is going to cause for the galaxy at large.

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Memory transcription subject: Captain Cyrus of the Terran Reclamation Committee

Date [standardized human time]: July 20, 2136

At long last we were back in our home system.  Kira had pumped Taxif for some additional information about arxur society.  Most of the literature we had received from Isriss had been grandiose and written from the prospective at the epoch of their society.  Taxif was conversely one that had been trodden upon by the society.  Two data sets was hardly enough to fully encapsulate a society that was a galactic super-power, one that had been in a centuries spanning war with literally all of its neighbors, but it was certainly better than just one data set.  Especially since we had shot at both of them, and were currently holding one of them prisoner.  Engineer Syk had mild success on their reverse engineering of the arxur weapons.  We knew roughly what level of energy the power supply was capable of putting out, but were a bit lost as to the how.    

That being said, I was glad to hand-off the details to the brass.  I was gun ho for the mission, but I had to respect when things were above my paygrade, and deciding whether or not to enter a galactic scale war certainly qualified.  

“Captain Cyrus to Jupiter station.  Requesting permission to dock.”  

“Jupiter station receiving.  Request granted.  Bay 9.  Welcome home.”  

Jupiter station was the familiar hub of activity.  It was the largest space station in the system.  Its (relative) proximity to Earth, the mineral rich deposits in the asteroid belt, and the multitude of gravity wells from its moons made it an ideal location for a shipyard.  The technological marvel had its brilliance dimmed somewhat in that it essentially was perpetually under construction, and as such was littered with scaffolds, braces and unfinished junctions all along its cylindrical core.  Not to mention all the automated and semi-automated construction robots skirting around.  Our hangar was in the top most section of the station and after a bit of maneuvering the Atom touched down in a hangar very much like the one it had left less than a month ago.  

We disembarked into the hangar proper and were greeted by applause from the gathered crowd of roughly only a few dozen.  Mostly it was station staff, but I could spot some of the brass in the crowd, not to mention more than a few securitrons.  The engineering crew started to confer with the hangar staff, bridge crew were going to be debrief individually, which left security and Dr. Kira to watch over our unexpected prisoner.  

I was ushered into one of the executive offices for my own debrief where I found General Ward waiting for me.  The office itself was near barren, with barely more than a desk, a few chairs and a computer; other than the required Enclave emblem and flag of course.  Dark green scales, against the sharp lines of his pressed black uniform, softened only by the radiation visible between his scales, General Ward was one of the few people I had to physically look up to.  I snapped to a salute, first for the flag, and then for the General.  “Sir! Captain Cyrus Lynch, reporting for debrief!  Sir!”

“At ease there son.  This here is gon’ be an informal affair.” said General Ward waving me off.  The General pulled open a drawer, pulling out a Nuka Cola and a Nuka Cherry “If’n I recall correctly, you’re a cherry man.”  

Meanwhile I was frozen mid-unsalute, trying and failing to understand what the General had just said.  “Sir, if I may?  How is this going to be an informal affair?  Sir.”  

“Sit.” said the General.  “If’n I have to make that there an order to get you to park yer caboose, I will.” He did not.  I took a seat opposite the General and opened the bottle, if for no other reason than to do something with my hands.  

“Good man.  Now as to that look upon your face, t’would appear that you heard “unimportant” when I said informal.” said the General with a sage nod and a sip from their drink.  They continued “If I was to pontificate upon what my life is going to contain here in the next fortnite, it is going to be an absolute deluge of charts and memos and ledgers; all of which been extrapolated offa one picture that was almost in focus.  So to tide myself over from all that hooey, what I need from you is a grain of the finest truth you have, in the simplest words you’ll allow to fall from your mouth in my presence.”  

The general sat down their drink and placed their hands on the table “Claws on the table Captain.  What did we get ourselves into here?”

I knew my answer long before the General asked, because it was the answer I had come to in the days I had sitting in my ready room on the way back from the Arxur ambush, where I had very little to do besides stew in my thoughts.  “I think we’ve found ourselves a galaxy ripe for conquest.” 

The General motioned for me to continue.  

“Nothing makes sense.” I said, shaking my head.  “The Arxur and the Federation have been at war for as long as anyone can remember.  Venlil Prime is right on the border.  It should have been a fortress.  Our scans showed rudimentary defenses, and even if they had been operational, any decently sized force should have been able to defeat them.  There wasn’t even a standing fleet.”  I took a sip of cola, and the words started coming faster.  

“Their stellar infrastructure was laughable.  We went straight for Venlil Prime because there wasn’t anything else of note in the system.  No noteworthy mining, or other installations on any of the other stellar bodies, or even free standing stations - none that weren’t in orbit anyway.  Jupiter station would dwarf anything they had built.  And then we talked to their Governor.  The unquestioned executive power of a planet - that had been elected in war time - was reduced to tears after talking with us for a few minutes.  She should have been used to talking to lizards by now!”  I punctuated my last sentence with a swipe of my hand.

I got up from the chair without realizing and began pacing the room “And speaking of, the Arxur are just as bad.  Maybe even worse.  If the charts from Isriss are to be believed, they have dozens of systems under their control - they should have infrastructure built up.  But when we accidentally trod into that minefield, there was only a single ship laying in wait.  To defend an entire solar system right on the border.  It should have also been a fortress.  And when they boarded us, they just ran at us, guns blazing; they had us outnumbered at least five to one.  Had they used proper tactics from the start, or just equipped them better - not a lick of armor on any of them, the Atom would have been captured and the crew killed.  And that even setting aside the travesty of their food supply!  I’m not even talking morally!  It’s a logistical quagmire!”  

My arms slumped as I turned to look back at the General.  “It’s a galaxy spanning war, with dozens of species across hundreds of systems, and not one of them knows how to fight.”
“Welp, bet that feels better out than in.” said the General with a wry smile.  

“Sorry sir.  I got carried away.  Sir.” I said as I retook my seat opposite the General.  

Again the General waved me off “I was fixing to poke the yao guai, I was expecting a bit a hollerin.”  he took another sip of his cola, and I mine.  We sat in silence for a moment.  We both contemplated what I said.  Or at least that's what I was doing.  For all I knew the general just really loved his cola.  It could go either way with that man.  But for me, I had taken one of the first steps my species had even taken outside of our own solar system, only to find a galaxy spanning war.  And my recommendation was not only to join the war, but that the other participants were woefully inferior to us.  I felt my heart drum in my chest.  Was it nervousness or anticipation? 

“So.” said the General as he broke the silence. “To war then.  How would you go about it?”  

I pondered for a moment.  “Slowly.” was my answer.  “We have the same problem with the war as we did with the Atom, only scaled up.  They outnumber us too heavily.  If we escalate too quickly, game over.”  

The general nodded.  “That’s going to be a might tricky.  For that to work, we’re going to have to play nice with the Federation, as they’re the ones most likely to get a bee in their bonnet about the whole affair.”  

“But we can’t play so nice so that the Axrur think we’re being cowardly.” I chimed in.  

“The Venlil might oblige us some hospitality.” suggested the general.  

“They were scared stiff, sir.  I don’t think they would oblige us anything.”

“Not if we dress it all up in our Sunday best.”  countered the general.  “They’re spooked.  Rightfully so. But they ain’t the spooked that went and fired from the hip.  We ought to use that.  We ought to show ‘em a better way.  The American Way.” 

We paused to toast the flag.  

The general continued.  “If’n we can swing it, we can get the Arxur to agree giving us first shot at the Venlil.  An accord between predators.  Let the Arxur give up this quarry so they can find greener pastures elsewhere.” the general smiled.  “An ironic turn of phrase given their diet.  But these two sides are evenly matched - Federation has got to meet the arxur where they go stalking.  We show the Venlil that so long as they stay cordial, ain’t no arxur coming this way, and we got food aplenty for ourselves.  Federation needs to hold its borders, and so turns its attention elsewhere, leaving the Venlil like a lost little lamb, all by its lonesome.  Then we bring the Venlil into the fold.  We get ourselves a nice little beach head, and some solid intel.  Maybe convince the rest of the Federation we ain’t quite as ornery as the arxur.”   

I mulled it over a bit.  “What’s the long term solution for the Arxur?  Even if we started exporting, we don’t have the infrastructure to feed that many mouths.  In the meantime, the war continues.”  

“Another quagmire.” admitted General Ward. “This whole religious fervor about eating people.  And I mean people in specific.  That’s the nut to crack.”  the general frowned at his computer screen.  He clacked away on the keyboard for a moment, sharp claws chiming against the metal of the keyboard.  “Report from Dr. Kira, hot off the press.  And unless the good doctor has lost her marbles, ain’t no arxur living long term off of our food.”   

I cocked my head at that.  “Taxif seemed to be perfectly fine eating our rations.”

The general shook his head “According to this here, that’s only because the good doctor was a good doctor and flushed the radiation from his system on the regular.”  

“And we can’t count on Arxur medicine to be the solution either.” I said “If they starve their healthy soldiers, I can’t imagine they treat their injured ones well.  I observed no medics in our brief skirmish either.”  

We returned to silence again.  We had the broad strokes of a plan forming, but it was a far cry from anything actionable.  Not only did we not know all of the players involved, we couldn’t even be sure of their species.  We speculated that the Federation was a loose confederation of independent systems, but we didn’t know where one’s authority ended and the other’s began.  We assumed that the Arxur government was also somehow their religion, but again the specifics weren’t laid out particularly well.  Too many unknowns.  Which reminded me.  

I handed over the computer Isriss had given us.  If it could indeed handle interstellar communications, the arxur vastly exceeded us in this technological realm.  We had an entire floor on Jupiter station acting as a relay station to stay in contact with our vessels, plus the infrastructure on Earth itself.  And that was setting aside any of the device’s other features.  We may have had the edge in medicine and tactics, but if their ships were as advanced as this computer, open warfare was a non-starter.  The Atom couldn’t detect their mines until it was too late, and the Atom was a survey ship, having a robust sensor suite was their main purpose.  

I debriefed the general on the functions of the computer as Isriss had shown us.  I was thankful that I was still wearing my HEV suit when we were shown the device; the onboard camera was invaluable.  I was smart, but I could barely understand some of the functions that were described.  I mean, what the hell is an internet? I muddled through answering the general’s questions, but as neither of us were scientists, we didn’t get particularly far.  

“Off the record.” I started.  “There’s something else.” I pulled an item out of my pocket.  It was a small black rectangle that tapered slightly at the end, and had various grooves along one end.  “One of Isriss’ crew handed us this, clandestinely.  Wanted no one to know we had it, so I kept it out of the official reports.”

The General leaned in to examine it “What is it?”

“It’s not a bomb.” I supplied “We found no buttons, nor switches, nor even a power supply.”

“An enigma then.  I’ll wrassle up a task force to investigate.  But in the meantime, we’ll have to meet the rest of the neighbors.  Full committee wants a piece of this.  We’ll circle the wagons, and see if Isriss got us a horn up the chain.  Meantime, you need some shut eye Captain.  Dismissed.”

I snapped off a salute, and then my shoulders sagged immediately as a weight I had not known I was carrying was lifted. “Thank you sir.” I staggered out of the general’s office in a haze.  I meandered through the halls figuratively, and possibly literally, bouncing off the walls before I found the room prepared for me, and promptly fell in. 

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