Camp Sunrise: Council of War
Posted on 24 Mar 2023 @ 7:29pm by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri & Major Porter Wallace & Olivia Winetrout
Edited on on 25 Apr 2024 @ 4:00pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Korix, Camp Sunrise
Timeline: MD09- concurrent with PF in orbit (Late Afternoon on the island)
3359 words - 6.7 OF Standard Post Measure
N’to, O’eepka, and Tiwa were their oldest friends among the Korinn and often came to visit them at Camp Sunrise. They did so again that night. Behind them, the three dragged a large green crate made from hard resin onto the beach. It left a wide trench that slowly filled as the ocean waves broke against the shore. There was nothing suspicious about this visit; they often visited Camp Sunrise. There was nothing suspicious about the crate; they often brought food harvested from the depth of the nearby shoreline where the Sunrisers could not go.
They did not open the crate, however, and they did not chatter warm greetings to Wallace and Ibis. This was unusual.
Seeing them coming and expecting a discussion about the plans for resistance, Ibis took Ikemba by the hand. She hugged him. “Listen, go with Olivia, play pick up sticks and games in the yard behind the clinic.” She pointed for them both where she meant for them to play, out of earshot, but safely nearby.
Olivia opened her mouth, a huff coming out before words formed. “What! I can’t speak? I can’t even listen?”
“I’m sorry, but no,” Wallace said quietly to her. She was still angry with him for what he said this morning; he couldn’t blame her. “Listen, kiddo a lot is going to happen in the next few hours. We’re going to try to limit your experience of it to as little as possible. That includes what we’re talking about.”
“I know you want to help,” Ibis tried more gently, intervening before Olivia could make another retort at Wallace and have another argument. “This is where we need you most right now. Ikemba needs you, to keep things calm.”
Olivia kicked sand up in the air in their direction. “Fine.” She made the single word bite. Then she lurched away. Ikemba kicked sand and twisted his body like hers before scampering after her.
Led by N’to, the three Korinn wearing their breathing masks laid down on their stomachs on the sand in front of the survivors’ makeshift abode. Wallace and Ibis sat down, eschewing their crude stools and bench. The conversation stuttered at first, an exchange about the weather— it looked like a storm on the horizon, maybe, though it was uncertain if it would blow south and miss the island or not. Tiwa’s head was on a swivel and she constantly jerked back to look at the ocean when a particularly loud wave slapped onto the beach.
Finally, N’to chuffed and said in Korinn, “There are others keeping watch, pretending to
harvest uani in the shallows. I don’t think we need to worry that any Z’ala will be spying on us from the dunes. They hate the land.”
He indicated to O’eepka who opened the crate enough to snake his long arm inside and pull out
a schematic drawn on many layers of dried kelp sandwiched together like a book, the same kind from which Wallace and Ibis’ clothing was made.
O’eepka, who spoke nearly fluent Standard, offered the book first to Wallace who indicated that it should be passed to Ibis. “We had to transcribe the directions from information Pauua brought us. It is good you’ve been tutoring me in your written language, Ibis.”
“You have always been a quick study.” Ibis said, unfolding a schematic tucked into the pages. “And I’ve learned at least as much thanks to you,” she trilled and clicked. She was happy to find they had been foresightful enough not to use ultraviolet dyes for the lines and lettering and she turned the schematic to orient it the way she was most familiar with the layout of the facilities, finding landmarks she knew best. It was obvious there was far more detail in the map of the waters, while the land was left without finer measurements and details, kind of opposite of most maps. Many of the structures demarcated extended beneath the waters to places she’d never seen, but had known diagrams of the larger installation of equipment, as it was illustrated on material she’d seen in the process lab.” She began to read the many notes and times given in the headers and margins.
Wallace craned his neck to look at the directions. The letters had almost a cuneiform look making it hard for him to read. “You’ve been planning this for a while.”
“Since the last uprising four years ago,” N’to said.
“They killed ten elders who were…innocent…as a warning to us. It had the opposite...essec…efshect,” Tiwa butchered her f’s, it was a tough sound for the Korinn.
“We had heard of it. You must have kept this very quiet.” Ibis was a little softer spoken. Back during that uprising and the retaliation, she had seemed to have lost most of her friends in the process lab. They worked with her, but no longer had demonstrated signs of camaraderie. It was relieving to know that maybe she had misunderstood their silence. Maybe it was a matter of simple prudence, not to be seen as friendly with the airbreather.
“Ibis, do you mind?”
“Oh.” Ibis remembered that Wallace would only be able to make out the headers of the plan stages, and took to narrating. “Uh, it looks like the Comms tower is the first to be taken down. That’s good. If you start anywhere else, they’ll be likely to call for more Pyrryx support.” She traced a finger back around. “They’ll react to that first, so there’s a pinching ambush here, closing around the z’ala response force.”
“No, that’s wrong. One half of that group will have their backs to the land with no way to escape,” Wallace sank his finger down into the sand and began to recreate the major landmarks of the diagram with a series of o’s. “Okay. Major goals are to cripple the mining operation and escape. Comm Tower is a priority one target because we don’t know where the nearest Pyrryx reinforcements are. If there are a thousand of them hanging out on some nearby moon, we don’t want them dropping on our heads. Once you hit the comms, the Z’ala response, maybe even the Pyrryx, will be heading there. But the Z’ala are at best a secondary priority, so you’ll want to position a holding force that will keep them engaged for - ” he used his fingers to estimate the distance between the mines and the comm tower. “- thirty minutes.”
“The Z’ala are not a second priority! They are murderers!” Wallace had never heard a Korinn snarl, but he was sure O’eepka was as close as they could come.
“Revenge is great for inspiration, bad for strategic and tactical planning,” he drew an ‘x’ over the circle that represented the mines. “We want to draw as many Z’ala away from the Irix encampment and mine as possible. They’re just as untrained as you in this business, so my bet is they’ll overcommit numbers to combat the Irix who blew the tower. We have to give them time to do that. Twenty minutes. That’ll clear the way for overpowering whatever Z’ala are holding the mines and the encampment. Then boom. Blow the mine.”
“Oh.” Ibis just absorbed, looking between the sand and the plan. It was kind of brilliant. “Yeah. They’ll probably be assuming that’s all there is to react to if we don’t tip our hand... Then the net closes on them while everyone can make for the open sea.”
She held out her hand for an ink stylus from O’eepka. The pen was on a chain— they often used a chain to hold small things people elsewhere in the universe would have used a pocket for— and O’eepka detached it with a big six fingered hand, putting it in Ibis’ tiny fingers. She made the appropriate amendment to the plan, adjusting the important key times given. For nine years, without a watch to hand since their arrival, she and Wallace had a little trouble with precise times, relying mostly on sunlight to indicate the general hour. But since he’d come back down from the hilltop, he’d turned up with a storage padd he’d somehow managed to keep from the Pyrryx nine years ago, and the top screen had a small clock on it to go by.
The hours on the display made no actual sense with the daylight time on the island, but the measure was reliable and she could track the times on the diagram outline to the time on Wallace’s padd. Minutes in Federation reckoning were not exactly the same as the Korinn’s closest time equivalent, but from enough time in the lab, Ibis was fluent enough with the math in her head to convert and chart both the Federation and the Korinn timing.
“The mine support rig is anchored here.” She started again, for Wallace’s sake. “I think if the three primary girders come out, the secondaries will keep it centered so that when it gives under the weight it will collapse in on itself, not outward into the bay.”
“At the same time, we should start the escape, yes?” N’to inquired. “It would seem to be the best time when the mining rig goes.”
“Have as many Korinn outside the settlement as possible. Maybe send the pups into the Bay where the slag heaps are. They love playing there, but have some adults close by so when the shit hits the fan, they can gather them up and head out to sea.”
Tiwa’s looked from Ibis to Wallace and back, “What is ‘shit?’ And what is a ‘fan?’ I don’t know these words.”
Ibis gave Wallace a side eye and a smile in spite of herself. She hadn’t taught them to swear. “It’s just an expression. It means… when the worst is shaken out. Or the dredge goes through the propeller.”
“Right. What Ibis said. They’ll hear the mine rig go, so that’ll be the signal for everyone who isn’t fighting to escape. What’s next?”
Ibis turned the map and tapped the next item in their order. “The advance on the lagoons…” Her look darkened. It was one thing to fight and escape. But this plan included some ambitious offensives. “And the temple… “ Did they know they would probably have many losses? Worse still, her heart ached thinking of the Z’ala’s pups, but she resisted speaking, trying to remind herself this wasn’t her war. The Z’ala never spared Irix pups from slavery, sickness, starvation. Of course they would be mad. She thought maybe she could dissuade them by simple math instead. “Do you even have enough Irix committed to do this?”
The three Korinn spoke at once and with the same level of venom, each reminding Ibis and Wallace of the degradations and murders they’d suffered at the hands of the Z’ala. They wanted blood and Wallace, for one, understood the sentiment.
“Okay. Okay.” Wallace stood up and worked through the logistics in his head, mumbling ever so often about force concentration, rapid dominance, and hammers and anvils. He sat back down. “This is how it plays out. You want to hit them, kill them and their pups in their homes. I can show you how to do that.”
Ibis’ gasped, her insides felt cold, and she recognized someone she used to know. But even as viscous as Wallace had once been, he’d never, ever suggested killing unarmed civilians, or children. “Porter!” She rebuked.
He held up his hand to calm Ibis, “Or. Or. You can do something else. Nothing good ever comes from hitting non-combatants like you want to. All it does is feed hatred. Even if you win, it’s very possible that centuries from now you’ll still be fighting this war. It’ll be called something else, but it will be this one. The only way to stop that cycle is by not starting it. Believe me. My planet was plagued by wars like this until it nearly eradicated us. Nearly four hundred years after the last war, you can still see the scars on Earth of that one and the centuries of them that came before.”
The Korinns silently regarded Wallace. He wasn’t sure they really understood, so he fell back on pragmatism. “Listen. Another reason not to do it is this. With all the Irix gone, who do you think the Pyrryx will have digging the wreckage out of the mines while they try to find enough Irix for their slave camps? It’ll be the Z’ala working and dying. Give them a taste of what you suffered and you may just win some sympathizers. That’s how Pauua came to you, isn’t? Someone she was close to died in those mines.”
“We will…consider it,” O’eepka said after another long pause. “What of the smelting plant?”
“If you show me what you’re using for explosives, I can teach you how to set a timer. Maybe for the next day. That’ll blow the thing just as the Z’ala are starting to relax. Plus, you might catch some in the blast.”
Ibis felt she couldn’t stomach it, no matter what the Z’ala had done. But she tried to tell herself Wallace was speaking to the Irix desire for retaliation to try to manage their plans as best he could. This was war. This was what it looked like. At least they wouldn’t even be here for the worst of it.
With a finger, Ibis traced a path leading to a part of the structures she’d never been to before. It was generally where the Z’ala guards were gathered. “Is this the launch pad for the orbital hopper that Pauua wants us to take? At the guard station?”
N’to made a long whistle, a Korinn ‘nod.’
Ibis flipped over the rest of the material she’d been handed and found a thing she took to be a flight manual. It was in Korinn and, just to make it extra fun, involved pyrryx instrumentation. And she had a couple of hours to learn the basics. “Whoa,” Ibis exhaled. “I can do this. I’m Starfleet,” she promised herself as she flipped through it. As she glanced over the manual, Ibis thought about the trail to the launch pad and the various parties that would be in play. “We would have to be there just after the first reaction to the comms tower, but before the mine shaft blast?”
Wallace again used his fingers to measure the distance between the comms tower and the pad, completing silent calculations. “We’ll need to time our arrival to a few minutes after the comms tower goes. I’m going to need a knife. One of those long boning ones you use should suffice.” He held out his hands to indicate the foot-long variety. “And maybe some grenades…uh…bombs you throw?”
“These things we have brought you,” N’to clicked and whistled, pointing at the crate. “We made the throwing bombs from the plasma we used in the mines. We also have what you called once a ‘plasma torch,’ but we modified it so that the flame is several feet long. Will these things work?”
“Yeah. Can you get me one of those pickaxes you use in the mines, too? The small ones - or tiny ones to you - that I can hold in one hand. They might leave some of the guards there. I’d prefer to be quiet if I have to get into it with them,” Wallace said as if he was talking about a walk in the park and not hand-to-hand combat.
Hugging her unsettled feeling across her belly with one arm, Ibis’ other hand went to her brooch and she clutched it, biting her tongue. How would he even carry all of the things he was asking for? Let alone wield a pick? Wallace talked like he wasn’t emaciated, half blind, and half lame. Like meeting and killing was just about the same thing. But at the same time, she chided herself— had she thought Pauua was going to just point to an on ramp and they’d be on their way? Of course it wouldn’t be so simple as that. She could picture herself dying for Wallace or the kids to get to safety, but she couldn’t imagine herself killing. Wallace didn’t have to imagine it, just remember it.
Ibis quieted, no longer contributing to the war plan. At first she made herself busy studying the flight manual, until it sort of lay limply in her hand and she seemed to be staring through everyone and their talk of explosives, arms, troop counts— her eyes went blank and distant.
They spoke for nearly an hour. Wallace got more specific about the size and placement of the holding force. How to use the dunes when moving and how to dig in along the crests. How to fall back and take up secondary positions if necessary. And basic movements to funnel the Z’ala where they wanted them to go.
O’eepka showed them one of the grenades. It was the shape of a chicken egg, although about three times the size. There were several wires coming out the top and the Korinn explained to Wallace how to arm the explosive by pulling out a blue wire. Not exactly the safest weapon for the user, but hopefully workable. He could see a number of ways it could all go wrong, but they had no time for a redesign.
He told them how to set timers on explosives, illustrating the directions in the sand and using one of the homemade grenades as an example. Make it bigger, he told them, make sure the Irix leave the smelters at full bore. An exploding blast furnace, Wallace assured them, would level most of the plant. Two or three, and the entire side of the island might disappear into the bay.
During a short lull, Wallace held out the other PADD to O’eekpa. “Marine Corps manual for later down the line. It has chapters in there on hit-and-run and other guerilla tactics. It’s made for land, but it’s a starting point.”
“A whole book on war?” O’eekpa whistled, stunned. “Do your people fight that often?”
Wallace sighed. Yeah, he guessed they did. “There’s also a chapter in there about dress codes and another on making your bed…”
As the conversation began to ebb he realized Ibis had been silent and had barely uttered a word. She sat staring at him with more than concern in her eyes. There was sadness and a deep disquiet. That evening, he would think it was because she just didn’t like war and he couldn’t blame her for that; only later would he realize that she’d never really seen him do his job. Marines, in many ways, were the antipathy of Starfleet. Their primary duty wasn’t to explore new worlds or seek out new life. They were there to protect the Federation, its people, and, if necessary, kill other beings.
Wallace slid his hand into hers, squeezing it once to give her comfort, offering her a smile. She smiled back, but it was slightly crooked and the emotion remained imprinted in her eyes.
“I just want to go home,” she whispered, squeezing his hand in return. “Take us back home, Porter.”
“Home is just a scary night away,” he said, wrapping her up in his arms. “Don’t worry, though. Scary nights are my speciality.”
