War-Dancer (Tales of the Commonwealth Book 4) Read online

  Tales of the Commonwealth

  War-Dancer

  By

  Tom Noel-Morgan

  2015 A.D.

  1st EDITION

  Copyright © 2014~2015 by T. Noel-Morgan

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1507659878

  ISBN-10: 1507659873

  FABULATORIUM

  About This Series

  Tales of the Commonwealth delivers on political intrigue, societal clashes, epic battles and plenty of action and adventure that will keep you itching about what awaits you at the turn of each page. This exciting sci-fi series amasses original short-stories set in the dystopian Commonwealth of Planets universe, where super-science, space exploration, alien worlds and much, much more await your imagination to take form, as we dare to dream together what the future evolution of mankind may bring us.

  Existing at a time when Humanity is still recovering from the ecological cataclysms that nearly ended life on Earth, and when mankind is but barely done colonising the Solar System, the CoP is a political institution uniting Earth and the Colonies. It’s advertised as a banner under which Humanity may rally to promote its survival. However, behind this florid image stands the brutal Tudor Regime that governs Earth, to control, to dominate and to try to dictate the future of mankind.

  *******

  Prologue

  Five-hundred years since the Mars Riots and the institution of the Commonwealth of Planets, the Sedition Wars were but painful pages in the annals of History. The Bioroid Nation was no more and the fate of mankind belonged once again to Man. In the entire known galaxy, one place alone still served as a reminder of the struggle between Man and their creation: Libertatia!

  Among the tall mooring spires of Libertatia, under the eternal crimson twilight of its artificial skies, there are horrors the likes of which no man can imagine. Evil lurks in dusk, and shadows loom in the pale wounded light of a realm created by creatures born on Earth, but completely devoid of humanity. Hungry for blood, they stalk the unwitting with greedy intent.

  There, in the labyrinth of their own creation, the infamous have instituted the black pearl of a democracy of decay. It is a place ruled by the merciless and inhabited by the spiteful, the wicked and the pragmatic. Godless and heartless, the denizens of Libertatia are the by-product of the atom and the children of genetic engineering. They are the rightful heirs to a twisted and decayed culture that they hated. They are the shadows and ghosts of the creation of an empire of hedonism bent on self destruction. They are the scions of a crumbling era of intemperance and of violence. They are the echoes of a society vanquished by virtue ages past.

  Once upon ancient times, the synthetic bioroid species were serfs and slaves created to toil for their harsh human masters. Those were the days of space exploration and the colonisation of the Solar System. They were bred and grown in laboratories and orbiting nurseries to serve mankind in the expansion of Man’s stellar empire. The robust bioroid race toiled endlessly in the name of Man. They raised cities in faraway planets and established the foundations for great terraforming plants that would render the colonies habitable over time.

  They were also misused by their masters, for mankind was inebriated by its own power. In its complacency, Man had forgotten that for every abuse there’s a price-tag. In due course, the Bioroid Nation rebelled and conquered its freedom by force of arms, only to become the very thing that they had once opposed.

  Cruelty as tangible as flesh. Rage without regret. Such were the wanton ways of the desperate, the lost and the damned that rose against the rule of Man. Yet by law of nature, no violence happens without equivalent opposition. Their subversion culminated with the creation of the Commonwealth Legion, a military treaty under which the clans of Man had agreed to protect one another against the common threat of the bioroid revolts, destroy them, and then pursue a purer path.

  This was the time of the Sedition Wars, when the children of genetics fought against their creators for supremacy, and then for the simple right to exist. Alas the bioroids that had been created to serve Man were created sterile creatures, and in their limited numbers they dwindled at each engagement, so that Man ultimately prevailed, never to allow another slave race to be mass-produced.

  Mankind had learned with its mistakes, but in their wake were the bioroids of Libertatia, who had taken upon themselves to steal the secrets of genomics and biorobotics, so that they could remake their race after their own ambitions. As other bioroid strains were subdued, reintegrated or vanquished by Man, the rebels of Libertatia reinvented themselves as pirates and marauders and endured. They had recreated their genetic code in the image of their genitors. They had given themselves the ability to breed.

  These grey-skinned creatures of rugged weathered looks, with embossed features, deep eyes and hides as thick and rough as a rhino’s were not quite as strong or tall as their cousins on Mars, Terra Nova and the other human colonies, but they were cleverer. Still, feeble as they were compared to other bioroids, those of Libertatian breed were twice as resilient and nimble as any man.

  Libertatia has always been ruled by no one and by many at the same time. Under the brotherhood of pirate lords, democracy acted alongside totalitarianism to promote survival, in an anarchy where achievement has always ruled over valour. The pirate lords were the first to reward triumph over honour, and under their yolk, Libertatia became the fruit of piracy, smuggling and slave trade, which they visited – and still do – upon the Commonwealth of Planets, so to serve their nefarious purposes.

  To the Libertatians, the Sedition Wars have never ended, and for centuries has irreducible Libertatia stood strong as the last bastion of the free Bioroid Nation. In the relative protection of its unassailable cosmic borders, the power of Man is diminished and the pirate lords can evade their just punishment. From thither, the pitiless buccaneers launch their raids into the Commonwealth, where they harvest the means to replenish their bleak artificial realm and to make the rich even richer.

  In Harbour Town – Libertatia’s capital, if ever there could be one – those Commonwealth citizens who are brought as captives by the pirate fleets are sold to capricious tyrants as slaves. By local custom, slaves are perpetually free to walk the streets, but they fear to do so, for they have no rights and their lives are cheap. Those that dare wander find that, in the freedom proposed by the narrow streets of Harbour Town, terrors far greater than the torments of servitude skulk in the gloom, to prey on the lowly and the weak. In an anarchy rooted in brutality, bloodthirsty warlords are the only protection serfs and slaves can ever enjoy.

  Then there are those unfortunate slaves that fall under the yolk of the cabal of the Blood Bond, for they are made to fight in the great stadium, for the pleasure of pirate lords and free Libertatians. Ever drenched in coagulated blood, the horrid arena of Harbour Town is a place haunted by the screams of those ill-fated enough to ever set foot in it. Under the auspices of the cabal of the Blood Bond, degraded bioroid pirates and human slaves are pitched against one another in matches both cruel and brutal.

  Betting at the deadly fights is Libertatia’s most popular diversion, and the blood-sport itself is a lucrative business for the Blood Bond, making it one of the richest and most powerful of the pirate brotherhoods of Libertatia.

  Under the Blood Bond’s promise that one day they’ll be freed if they perform well in the arena, human slaves often escape their masters and volunteer for the games. They subject themselves to extensive surgical procedures, excruciatingly painful nano-implants and retroviral treatments that strengthen their bones, modify their muscles at a molecular level and ultimately change them into
what some call ‘transhumans’ and others call ‘aberrations’. By this token, transhuman slaves sacrifice their humanity to offer better entertainment for their unkind captors, and to have a chance at regaining their freedom.

  Those that survive the procedure are made to serve the Blood Bond in the arena for a certain term, and then they graduate into the pirate fleets, or so would tradition have them believe. In truth, they most often perish providing amusement in the stadium, and only a precious few champions are ever released from abject captivity. Pampered and spoiled in the corrupting ways of their captors, such rare champions are prompted to become as ruthless as their masters, and some grow in renown and in ambition.

  Once they graduate into the pirate fleets, they often serve pirate captains as pricey bodyguards and expert warriors. Their loyalty to their new employers is more often than not ensured by expensive addictions, which only the richest of pirate captains can afford. Truly, their elevation to the fleets is just another form of slavery.

  Yet, every so often, a war-dancer finds his or her way into the captaincy of a corsair ship. It’s a rare enough occasion, but it has been known to happen. When it does, one can expect the unexpected, for war-dancer captains are not known for their orthodoxy, but they are famously vengeful, most of all against Libertatian slavers.

  This is a tale about one of them:

  *******

  War-Dancer

  Somewhere nearly four-hundred kilometres off the canyons to the south of the Black Rose slavers’ bastion on Titania, the air screamed with the arrival of two air-skiffs. Dropped from low orbit into the thin atmosphere, each of the freefalling craft was packed with unsavoury war-dancers and bioroid gunmen wearing polymesh void-suits and battle gorgets. They held-on to their lives on straps bolted to the floor of the skiffs, as the open-topped skimmers plummeted down towards the frozen surface of the second-largest moon of Uranus.

  Metres before reaching the raggedy frozen terrain, the streamlined vessels finally slowed to a hover thanks to their repulsor keels, but those of the passengers that had never done a low orbit drop rushed to press the med-dispensers in their suits, so to avoid barfing their breakfast into their void-helmets and respirators. After a moment’s allowance for the passengers to recompose themselves, the pair of skiffs speeded madly toward the direction of the stronghold. In the low gravity thin air of Titania, their hotwired mag-engines hurled the skimmers at insane velocities, and the scythe-like stabiliser fins sparkled under the azure glow of Uranus like a stream of light.

  As agreed, the lead skimmer carried Thorn and his party, while Razor and his raiders followed hard upon them in their own skiff. In less than an hour, the two modified craft negotiated the distance of some four-hundred kilometres, approaching the coordinates wherein they were to put into action Thorn’s stratagem. The magnetic propulsion drives of the skiffs ran silently enough not to rouse the undesired attention of the Black Rose’s automated lookouts, their energy signatures invisible as compared to the magnetosphere of Uranus. With but a hum and a sonic boom, they flashed over the frozen landscape.

  Then, quite abruptly, the skimmers slowed enough for Thorn and Zanzibar to jump off, and then the two vehicles yawed and changed course, so to make for an inconspicuous spot in the terrain. Thorn and his companion wanted to scout the bulwarks and watchtowers of the stronghold before they committed to the raid, and the best way of doing that without detection was to proceed on foot, carefully avoiding to do so by leaps and bounds.

  Hiding behind a stubby terraforming reclamation plant that stood about ten kilometres away from the tattered bastion, Razor was restless with anticipation. His prodigal blood burned with hate within envious veins. As a pure-blood bioroid, he felt he deserved to be directing the assault instead of following another, most of all a freed transhuman slave. He actively rejected the way Fu’Ryah had demoded him – which he regarded as a humiliation – and he would prove her wrong by his deeds on the coming raid. Truth be told, Razor was a capable filibuster, and if the sum of his spite could be made into some type of airborne toxin, every Black Rose thug in the region would have perished that morning.

  Nearer the Black Rose compound, the first-mate and the quartermaster made their way up a cliff overlooking the gorge wherein the stronghold was lodged. They modulated the hypermatrix visors on their helmets to magnify the view, so to spot the guards and the watchmen about the compound. Sure enough, a squadron of N-3 robots was about and restlessly pursing their job.

  The AI software running the robust Newton-3 chassis carried out the patrol with both precision and proficiency, and the individual units acted in cohesion to patrol the grounds. As they did their rounds, the robots knuckle-marched on their twin clawed arms and pivoted on their one clawed foot to change direction, scanning the grounds about the bastion with mathematical precision.

  Besides the robots there were flesh-and-blood watchmen at the perimeter watchtowers, manning pintle-mounted Martian heavy-lasers two-by-two. Thorn thought that they looked lazy and distracted – a notion with which Zanzibar agreed – but the laser-guns could pose a threat to the skimmers nonetheless…

  The two sly bioroids stayed a while to verify whether there was any out of the ordinary activity going on, but they could detect none. Nor could they see any cargo being readied for a delivery, meaning the Black Rose didn’t expect any customers on that day. Satisfied with their assessment, they started on their way back to where the rest of the raiding party was hiding.

  Across the distance from Thorn and Zanzibar, time went by monotonously. As daybreak beckoned behind the mountain range to the east, the eager midshipman and his pack of raiders stirred restlessly. The first rays of sunlight glittered on the ice crystal formations all about them, and the shadow of the terraforming plant began to point towards the Black Rose stronghold.

  Sensing the time was near, the pirates under Razor used their void-suits’ inbuilt medication dispensers to release a cocktail of psychotropic elixirs into their bloodstream, letting the mixture spread through their bodies. This was a custom among some of the buccaneers of the Blood Bond, and they called the mix ‘liquid courage’. The preparation made by the Scimitar’s medic had a veiled side effect which made the freebooters shake uncontrollably for a minute, but once the tremor subsided they were frenzied with the desire for carnage and infused by irreducible boldness.

  All the same, Razor himself did not need the drug, for he was already intoxicated with hate and resentment that he directed to the freed-slaves that dared take command of their pirate ship. Anxious to prove himself and supported by his most immediate mutinous circle, Razor jumped the clock and piloted his skiff toward the watchtower, followed closely by Thorn’s skimmer. Heralding their attack with nothing but a sonic boom, they negotiated ten kilometres in what seemed like ten seconds.

  The approach of the wing of air-skiffs was of such swiftness as to make it improbable that anyone could detect their arrival before they were upon their target. The instant they reached the fort, gunners Wrath and Rager disgorged the destructive power of their fusion-cannons, whilst gunmen delivered a slapdash salvo of laser-fire. As the plasma bursts exploded against the stronghold’s defences, the hotwired fusion pistols and looted carbines of the buccaneers stung indiscriminately at odd marks on the bulwarks, and a few automatons fell from positions about the compound.

  From a distance, Thorn and Zanzibar cursed as they observed the Black Rose sentinels responding with flickering laser-beams from their heavy-lasers and rifles, but the fast skimmers were not easy targets. They zoomed by the stronghold at such high speed that the defenders could not train their sights on them.

  The skimmers were by no means military vessels, though they were fairly sturdy. Nevertheless, they had been modified by the crew of the Scimitar to afford ludicrous speeds, and to deliver a fair amount of ruin. For one thing, the antique fusion guns that had been fitted at the prow of the skiffs were light and effective even against armoured transports, let alone makeshift fortifications.
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  Razor laughed madly at their absolute superiority and apparent invulnerability. He felt that the Black Rose was ill equipped to deal with their attack craft. The midshipman was decided to perform his mission of terror with artistic flair, so to gain the respect of everyone in the Scimitar’s crew. However, he had to first quench his craving for destruction and butchery.

  Unexpectedly, as Razor manoeuvred for a new fly-by attack, one of his pirates suddenly dropped from the skimmer as if shot dead. Crazed by the effects of the elixir that burned within their veins, the other raiders gave no importance to the fact. Razor, on the other hand, free from the numbing effects of Leech’s preparation, promptly concluded there was something out of place. Under complaints from his crew, he intuitively zigzagged with the skiff in evasive manoeuvres, as if looking for a chance to evaluate the scenario again.

  Seeing that the two skiffs had begun the ruse without them, Zanzibar and Thorn cursed and rushed by low-gravity leaps and bounds to join the fray. They made for one of the watchtowers, so to disable the Martian multi-lasers before they managed to train their torrential salvos on one of the air-skiffs. A handful of N-3 automatons detected their approach and fired upon them, but the two pirates elected to ignore them, randomly skipping and dodging from one side to the other, so to confound the AIs’ targeting parameters.