GENERAL NALANI KEAH
After the debacle at the Onthos system, the damaged Kutuzov was still undergoing at least two weeks’ worth of repairs—and loading up with Dr. Krieger’s new sun bombs, which had also been shipped off to the Ildiran Solar Navy in great numbers.
But Keah didn’t want to just sit around licking her wounds. She was eager to fight something, even though she didn’t have her Juggernaut. She dreaded the alternative of sitting around and completing paperwork, attending meetings, reviewing strategy sessions. A grim future indeed.
And then, like a miracle, King Peter suggested an entirely different mission.
When Deputy Cain showed her appalling images of the biological black markets on Rakkem, her anger turned in another direction. Passing along the crackdown orders from King Peter and Queen Estarra, the Deputy had asked General Keah for a volunteer to stomp down those dangerous and unregulated facilities. Keah had an immediate answer for him.
“Hell, I’ll go! The Kutuzov is being repaired and restocked, but we have other ships. In fact, I’ll use it as a training exercise, take one of the Three H’s into an active operation.”
As she paced, she reviewed the records of Rakkem and was disgusted to see images of the failed antiaging chelation treatment that made the victims’ skin slough off. Although Keah was starting to get lines around her eyes and mouth, and a bit of loose skin on her neck, she had decided to grow old with grace. She had earned every wrinkle and gray hair, dammit!
Rakkem was also rife with black-market organ warehouses, experimental cures for sale to the highest bidder, scams, destructive drugs, designer poisons, every possible corruption. Keah found it appalling.
As she seethed about how Rakkem preyed on terminally ill patients, she recalled an important fact. She raised her eyebrows, looked at Deputy Cain. “Admiral Haroun’s wife died two years ago from detangling cancer. I believe she tried countless medical treatments—none of them successful.” She nodded to herself. “We’ll take his Juggernaut, and he’ll act as second-in-command of the mission—in fact, why think small? I’ll take fifteen Manta cruisers, too, and shut the place down.”
“The King and Queen trust your instincts,” Cain said.
So, General Keah put the mission together, gathering Haroun’s Juggernaut and the fifteen Manta cruisers. Considering how badly they had gotten trounced in every previous encounter with the Shana Rei, a victory on Rakkem would be a shot in the arm and a confidence booster for the CDF—and a good deed to boot.
Admiral Haroun was a quiet, dark-haired man with a soft voice and an analytical mind. He definitely had the intelligence and book learning to rise high in CDF officer’s school, but Keah doubted that Haroun had nerves of steel in a crisis. That would have to change.
His Juggernaut, the Okrun, was named after a twenty-second-century Earth military genius who had broken the back of a fanatical religious empire intent on plunging Earth back into the dark ages. Shortly after Okrun’s victory, humanity had built its eleven huge generation ships and launched them to seek new homes among the stars. General Keah was surprised that Admiral Haroun himself knew so little about the man for whom his ship was named. She intended to instruct him during their journey to Rakkem.
Haroun graciously gave her the Okrun’s command chair when she arrived on the bridge, while he stood back as her new first officer to watch and learn from her. It was the sort of respect that General Keah expected him to display, but she was disappointed he didn’t push back even a little about relinquishing command. He knew his place in the CDF hierarchy, which was good, but he also needed a stronger spine.
While on the journey to Rakkem, Keah rallied the CDF soldiers and gave them the pep talk they would need. She riled them up against the horrific medical experiments, the baby mills, the flesh bazaars, and all the people who had died from false hope and dangerous treatments. It wasn’t difficult to inflame them; the soldiers were glad to face an opponent they could understand, and one they could trounce. Admiral Haroun struggled to control his emotions behind a stony façade, his expression full of obvious disgust toward Rakkem.
The Okrun and the fifteen Manta cruisers arrived like a stampede at Rakkem, where they spread out in orbit and imposed a blockade. General Keah broadcast on all frequencies, announcing an interdiction and demanding the planet’s complete and immediate surrender “for a thorough inspection of suspect activities.”
Many unmarked ships in orbit fled as soon as they saw the CDF ships arrive—either black-market biotraders or nervous customers who didn’t want to be caught. Keah launched two hundred Remora fighters to enforce order, but instructed them not to pursue the escaping ships. She had bigger fish to fry.
“Who is your planetary leader?” she transmitted from the Okrun’s bridge. She had taken time to put on her full dress uniform, and she assumed an attitude that would remind the Rakkem people of a Valkyrie.
Overlapping communications burst across the comm, none of them directed at her. Haroun’s comm officer shook his head. “They’re trying to rally defenses down there, General, but there seems to be no unified planetary security. I don’t even know if they’ve got a real spokesman.”
“On to Phase Two, then. I want Remoras in the skies and troop transports on the ground, boots marching through those streets.”
By ordering this action, the King and Queen might have stuck their hands into a hornets’ nest, offending independent planets that were not part of the Confederation. Keah decided to get enough images of the despicable Rakkem operations to dispel any sympathy or moral outrage.
“General,” Admiral Haroun suggested, “with all those dangerous biologicals, it would be wise for our troops to wear decontamination gear. Just in case someone is desperate enough to release a plague out of spite.”
“Damn right, Admiral—good suggestion.” She could just imagine some unscrupulous black-market warlord infecting the troops and then trying to make a bargain by offering the vaccine in exchange for safe passage from Rakkem. Keah did not intend to let that happen.
After more than fifteen minutes of repeated transmissions and confusing delays, a round-faced man with short blond hair and spectacles (surely, an affectation) appeared on the screen. “I am Aldo Cerf, one of the business leaders on Rakkem. This world is not part of the Confederation, and you have no authority here. This is an act of war.”
“This is an act of necessity,” Keah said. “You have harmed or killed countless Confederation citizens, and King Peter and Queen Estarra have issued orders for this interdiction. Your work is dangerous and unregulated. You will not be allowed to prey upon helpless Confederation citizens.”
Cerf scowled. “We offer them hope when they are dying.”
Haroun growled, interrupting General Keah, which surprised her. “You offer them false hope! You prey on people who are too weak to see through your scams.” She hadn’t asked him for details, but Haroun was clearly incensed by what he had seen in the Rakkem records. Perhaps his wife had also gone there.…
The General glanced at her status screens, saw that troop transports had been dispatched for the surface; Remoras already filled the skies of Rakkem. She turned back to Aldo Cerf. “Your treatments are risky, unproven, sometimes useless, sometimes deadly. We will impound all records, seize assets, and make reparations to anyone you have harmed—provided we can track them down.”
“Provided any are still alive,” Haroun added.
Cerf’s objections of “You have no jurisdiction here!” and “We are independent from the Confederation!” began to sound repetitious.
General Keah responded by transmitting the stomach-turning archival records of the flayed victims wailing in pain as they oozed their lives out onto a surgical table. “We have plenty of testimonials from your customers, Mr. Cerf. Victims—duped, tortured, betrayed. It’s our mission to be sure this doesn’t happen again.”
After the troops landed and Remoras continued to block any ships from escaping, the CDF soldiers impounded the cure warehouses, the organ-replacement banks filled with arrays of lungs, livers, hearts, and sheets of fresh skin taken from “volunteers.” They found archives of deadly diseases, some of them weaponized, a biological arsenal that could destroy entire populations—everything for sale. Perhaps worst of all were the gestation warehouses filled with factory wombs: pregnant women hooked up to euphoric drugs, artificially inseminated so they produced baby after baby.
The General had intended to go down to the surface herself, so that she and Admiral Haroun could take a victory lap. She wanted to stand by the CDF soldiers and look at the unconscionable black-market cesspit they had put out of business. But when she saw the images piped up from the ground troops, heard their appalled outcries, and stared at things that made even the worst records in Deputy Cain’s report pale to insignificance, she doubted she could stomach it, even after everything she had seen in her career.
She thought of the people who had given up their financial resources, who had come here desperate for any kind of treatment, only to be left destitute and dying just as fast, or faster. “We did a good thing here,” she said. “It had to be done.”
A tear trickled out of Admiral Haroun’s eye. “We did.”
There was very little resistance in the face of the military crackdown. Many biomerchants were caught destroying records and incinerating samples. She thought of the continuing threat of the Shana Rei, but said, “This one little victory is still important—I’ll take it.”