Sunrise over Sirius
Today Morison lost his ship.
His loyal crew burned down together with it. They fought to the last, refusing to surrender, shredded by frigate cannons in Sirius’s Prime lower orbit. He was stranded; a weapons trader without the means to procure merchandise and with a pocket full of credits that he couldn’t use.
Those damned pirate clans! He suspected that these bastards were getting plenty of help from the Taz’aran Empire and, after the destruction of his starship, Morison was sure of it! The holes-for-ears were selling supplies to the clanners and they did so, in bulk.
Moreover, the “tazzies” deployed their own troops on the planet and had secured large parts of it for themselves. Their “Imperial army” not only guarded the backs of the Clanners, but fought side by side with them!
This whole invasion was made possible thanks to their supply chain and starship patrols, who turned the job of people like him into a living nightmare. Punching through a blockade like that wasn’t something he was unaccustomed to, yet each time it became harder, till this day, when his boys and girls were lost.
Morison cared much for his crewmates; for a Terran, the line separating friends and family was virtually non-existent. As a human, he had the duty to make sure all of his race’s uplifted clients were safe and free from oppression. Disarmed people could not protect themselves or safeguard the future of their progeny. When parasites burning with want to enslave were met with blistering railgun fire, they swiftly, and rather efficiently changed their tune.
He was a merchant of Life; Morison’s job was to provide quality merchandise for a low price. Of course, as low as he could manage following his expenses. He was a trader specializing in all types of small arms, tanks, APCs, and even mobile railgun artillery units. The entire shipment of armored vehicles bound for Sirius Prime lost, he dared not imagine the colonists’ predicament, which grew ever more direr by the star-day.
With a sad sigh, Morison walked away from the improvised, marked with flares landing zone. He found the Negotiator and placed the small bag full of credit chits in her hand. Without delivering the promised merchandise he wouldn’t demand payment. He was not some filthy alien scumbag who’d prey upon the unfortunate, pilfering their hard earned credits.
“Sorry Morison... We didn’t know the Taz’arans had deployed another patrol frigate in the sector. If we did...”
“Do not bash yourself, few could anticipate things like that. Tell me, now that I am stranded here, what do you want me to do for you, Gran Klarissa?”
The frail-looking old woman was a Negotiator. One of the colonists chosen by her peers to oversee supplies and trade with people like him. She collected the money donated to the cause and haggled with traders for better deals on vital supplies or equipment needed for the peace effort.
She poked him in the gut with a mournful smile:
“Well sonny, if ya’ can, would ya please do something about this one?”
She pointed at the nearby earthworks garage, where, heavily damaged, stuck out the silhouette of a strange looking tank.
With a tired squint, Morison noticed a couple of confused kids, none older than thirteen or fourteen, who were trying to fix the war machine. From this distance the youth’s desperation was apparent. Perhaps they mastered many survival skills, yet it was apparent that vehicle repair was not one of them.
Morison shook Klarissa’s hand, rolled up his sleeves and walked over to inspect the wreck. Not entirely shot to hell, but pretty close, the tank looked like it had seen better... much better days. On first glance it was a single particle-beam cannon shot to the cupola that took it out of action, and the intrepid colonists towed it back here for repairs. However, it didn’t take long until he was looking around again, scratching his neck.
Where was the tank’s crew?
The kids stepped aside when Morison approached. The looks in their baggy eyes told him they were at a loss of what to do, moreover, he saw blood. A charred human limb stuck out of the jagged, molten hole ripped directly into the tank’s side, armored hull. It would appear that the first beam did not convince its crew to retreat and they kept fighting... till death.
Morison climbed the vehicle and inspected the carnage inside through its opened hatch. The mangled bodies of three women were splattered all over the vehicle’s cabin and he reluctantly reached down. A grisly job it was, but someone had to do it. Being an arms dealer, traveling from one battlefield to another, he’d seen plenty of death in his time. The merchants of Life were always at the front, and hauling exactly what their fellow Terrans needed.
How could the invaded defend themselves against the invader, if they lacked the capabilities to craft heavy equipment of their own?
Many hours later, Morison, helped by boys managed to fix the internal damage. Another hour later, he even patched up the tank’s armor-plating using a number of discarded megasteel scraps.
A couple of scans later he realized that this machine was not a superbly crafted vehicle of war. The boys already told him all about it; how a terminally ill engineer managed to build it all by himself before he succumbed to his sickness. This tank’s very existence was made possible by a most admirable sacrifice, and ‘twas an engineering feat most hallowed.
The colonists... they all knew what the tank’s kinks were and compensated for them in battle. Morison entered the vehicle for the last time this day and when he activated its mainframe, he heard the voice of that dead engineer.
Apparently, the tank’s VI was programmed with his vocal patterns. Tired, his brimming with unrelenting resolve to help his neighbors voice reported:
“All systems on, I am ready to fight!”
The boys loaded it with whatever meager supplies they had on hand and an hour later, Morison reported grandma Klarissa the success of his task. Turning his head but for a minute, he heard the tank’s Tesla engine rumbling behind him. No amount of shouting and screaming could stop the rumbling tracks or deter those who crewed it. The three boys had manned the vehicle and were speeding toward the front lines...
Exhausted, he grabbed a blanket, chugged down a bowl of plain vegetable soup, and lay down to get some sleep.
Sirius rose on the horizon and Morison was awoken by loud screeching.
Next to the garage he’d slept in a large eight-wheeler truck came to a halt. This equipped with a heavy crane dragged the very same tank Morison repaired the previous day. It was hit again in the turret and the thing was somehow miraculously not blown to bits. One glance inside and Morison saw the boys splattered all over; the crew was not as fortunate as the vehicle itself.
Grandma Klarissa gave him a cheerless look and nodded at the tank. With a sigh he climbed in and hands twitching, carried the body parts out from the cabin. He surrendered the fallen over to a grave detail waiting outside the improvised garage. Comprised of even younger kids, the oldest no more than eight, the somber group dragged one bloodied bag.
The colonists had a shortage of bodybags and had to re-use these over and over. Tired breathing and clank of shovels coming behind the earthworks garage pinpointed the graveyard’s location. The children weren’t strong enough to dig deep, so they hurriedly shoveled as much dirt as they could on top of the bodies. They’d placed them to rest at the bottom of a small, useless trench.
Grisly business, yet they had no other choice...
Morison saw a bloodied number 6 painted on the side of the tank’s holo-sight, as he was hosing and scrubbing the cabin clean. Hours later, when he finally repaired the tank’s VI the man understood why its crew had noted kills with their own blood. Hit by a missile, their mainframe became inoperable and yet, they kept fighting.
However, the memory of their machine had remained intact. With awe Morison noted that the crew’s tank kills were fourteen, racking a total of twenty destroyed enemy vehicles for one full day and night of fighting. He managed to successfully plasma weld the hole in the tank’s turret, and before laying down to sleep, he checked if the VI was completely operational.
A flick of the switch and it immediately reported:
“All systems on, I am ready to fight!”
Morison’s heavy feet dragged him to the closest soup tent. There, a one-handed bunny fed the tired militiamen one bowl of soup and a loaf of rye bread, each. He sat on a burned log and tried holding on to the bowl, but he was so tired that he dropped his spoon, spilling some of the precious soup. A dutiful client, the bunny came to help and picked up his spoon. Pulling another, clean spoon from her pocket, she quietly sat next to him.
“My name is Glory.”
“Morison.” – He offered his twitching hand and shook the bunny’s bandaged paw.
The client looked at him with her smiling gray eyes and filled the spoon with soup.
“Patron, you worked off your hands to the bone to fix ‘Defiance.’ The least I can do is feed you.”
“Your hand... doesn’t it hurt?”
With a smile the bunny fed him another spoonful of soup. Morison relaxed his aching arms and let himself be spoon-fed by the one-handed bunny.
Sirius’s sun rose on the horizon and Morison woke up hunched on that very log, his body lovingly covered with some hole-ridden thermal blanket. In but a minute, he heard the same, dreadful screeching and winced. It would appear that during the night somebody crewed the tank and drove it into battle.
Morison couldn’t find the funerary detail no matter how much he looked.
Teeth gritting, the weapons merchant walked over and climbed inside the tank. It was as he had suspected; the kids were all there and that eight-year-old’s lifeless eyes gazing straight into his soul. Mobilizing what was left of his sanity and strength, Morison did his newfound duty.
The day slowly dragged on.
With the help of one another human, who had some repair skill and one-handed Glory, Morison patched up the tank again. Despite the loss of her limb she was able to help due to her swift, precise footwork. She was able to find suitable bits of salvage for Morison, who utilized them to fashion replacement parts for the tank, using the garage’s small nano-printer. Come evening and the vehicle was operational once more.
Eyes barely open and muscles sore, Morison once more checked if the mainframe was fully operation.
“All systems on, I am ready to fight!”
He collapsed next to the tank due to extreme exhaustion and woke up next morning by Sirius’s glistening rays. In the distance, he saw the eight wheeler crane dragging behind it ‘Defiance.’ Out from the blown turret hatch stuck a bandaged, burned bunny’s paw and Morison shuddered. He stumbled over, climbed up and looked inside...
Evening came painfully slow and as he turned the mainframe’s switch, Morison was again greeted by the VI’s cheerful voice:
“All systems on, I am ready to fight!”
The Sirius’s sunrise woke Morison and he saw the charred hull of ‘Defiance’ parked right next to his sleeping bag.
The engine compartment was smoldering and he stood up slowly; blistered hand leaning on the vehicle’s hull. What was once the distant clangor of battle, rumbled ever closer with each passing hour. He could glimpse the towering silhouette of alien mecha dancing on the horizon, firing with its beam cannons.
The tank was absolutely fried, its armor melted, and even the gun mantle was bent. Yet, the defiant machine managed to drive back here, and on its own power nonetheless. He took one painful look and saw three female bodies, cooked alive inside the cabin. Eye twitching, Morison cleaned the vehicle and once more poured his every bit of energy into healing system, stitching armor, and curing ailing Tesla engine.
Much later, somebody’s hands picked his collapsed from utter exhaustion body and carried him to the nearby triage station. He wasn’t around to hear the VI’s voice – grandma Klarissa did. When she turned the vehicle’s mainframe switch on, its creator reported:
“All systems on, I am ready to fight!”
Sirius sun rose again and shone upon the ravaged, corpse-ridden battlefield.
In its southernmost end, a single vehicle was still fighting. Surrounded on all sides by towering mecha, its main gun molten and inoperable, only the coaxial railgun allowed the crew to return fire. The nearest mecha was hit over and over until finally, one of its legs exploded. More, the tank’s heavy machine gun dismembered one full platoon of heavily-armed star troopers.
Defiance lived on borrowed time.
Painfully aware of their inevitable demise, the colonists who crewed it couldn’t be dissuaded from their final duty. Behind this battle line, one ragged battalion of Militia was able to retreat successfully thanks to the sacrifice of its crew. While they fought alone against one full mecha squad, their family and friends pulled back behind the last, tertiary defense line. Comprised of old, towed railguns, which the colonists had dismounted from a transport barge, and simple trenches, these defenses were to be the hill they’d die upon.
Just as the last militiaman leaped over the trench one of the enemy mecha got lucky. A direct hit made the tank’s turret fly off, shrapnel instantly killing everyone inside...
This time the sunrise didn’t wake Morison up.
He was comatose and slept like a corpse for two full days. In his tortured mind he saw people crying bloody tears, begging him to repair the tank yet, the merchant couldn’t move a single muscle. On the third morning, he was awoken by a kick in the gut. Gasping for air, a taz’aran boot on his throat, and particle beam rifle pointing at his head, Morison immediately reached for his sidearm.
It wasn’t there.
Thankfully he saw somebody’s dagger lying on the corpse-ridden ground and grabbed it. No longer did Morison care if the invader shot him dead, for in his mind he had died many times over.
He stabbed the leg denying him air and his enemy bellowed a startled cry full of pain. Stinky taz’aran blood splashed over him and Morison pulled himself up using the taz’aran trooper’s falling body. With bloodied fingers, he grabbed the enemy’s rifle and threw one last look around.
Morison was surrounded by a squad strong enemy force, at least. Lightly armored, green-skinned taz’aran soldiers, who, confident in their victory over a single, tired man, laughed at him. Eyes closed shut for a second, he pulled as much air as he could in his lungs, aimed the rifle at the nearest invader and screaming, pulled the trigger.
He was ready to die like a Terran...
***
If you liked that short story, check my books which explore the same universe in more detail: