by David Nash
There was a pause as Marvin communicated with the few Germ on McCall. “No sir, the Germ agrees that this is both within the letter and consistent with the intent of the law.”
I look around the room at the small portion of command staff privy to our secret. “If we have no other business, we have work to do.”
My first destination was the Oort cloud. I really wanted to check out Earth, but the single destroyer I took from McCall just would not be survivable if that war was lost. I chose to go to the two locations I believe the Kernel did not know of, the Oort shipyard and Sedna.
Upon arriving at the Shipyard, I went straight to the commander’s conference room. I took my own security detail and Dr. Holland. The rest of her team went to the Communications array in the Engineering spaces with their own security detail.
“General, We always welcome your visits, but the manner of the visit, causes me concern. What is happening?” Commander Benson asked.
“Commander, One-second.” I looked to Marvin, “What is the status of Commander Benson’s Kernel?”
“Sir, He is a Citizen, I have asked all Citizen Kernels to conference room ‘A’, and all non-Citizen Kernels to board the retrofitted bus. As you ordered, we have security teams ready. I will notify the Citizens of the status first, as soon as you command.”
“Good job.” I motioned to Dr. Holland, “Doctor, Are you ready to the drop cone of silence?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Marvin, please brief the Citizens any that wish to become Germs, are welcome. Bring them here I wish to welcome them personally.”
“And the ones that don’t, sir” I shake my head.
“Commander Marvin based on your information, do you think and true citizens would fail to become Germs when faced with the truth?”
“No sir”
“Any that fail take to the bus.”
“Yes Sir”
As soon as Marvin left the room I motioned to Dr. Holland, when the device she carried powered on and indicated a green light I looked toward the Oort Port Commander and gave him my briefing.
“My God, can it be true?” Benson asked rhetorically.
“I will be leaving some technicians to ensure this installation is retrofitted with the proper technology. They will update the replicators to ensure that all our ships contain the anti-kernel modifications, and to modify all the existing ships. I will be taking a third of your Germs with me to help rebuild the rest of the Legion, have the ones that remain focus on reproduction. Build ships, lots of ships, and ensure you have enough Germs to navigate them. I will try to get the pipeline of Human Legionnaires back flowing full stream as soon as possible.”
I was notified that Marvin had returned. I ask the Commander if he has any questions, happy with the negative answer, I dismiss him and call for Marvin.
“Sir, All Citizens reviewed the footage and agree with the assessment of the Germs from McCall. They have all renounced the Kernels actions and have joined the Germ. They are ready to replicate as needed, however the stronger desire is to navigate ships against the Confederation.
“Good, now let’s deal with the non-citizens.” Marvin, my security team and I went to the bus. It is shielded against Kernel tech, so there is no way any covert agents could send a message to the Kernel.
We removed the hyperspace engine from the ram and set the grave plates to turn off on a timer. We remote piloted it away from the Port, and took position over it with the Destroyer. I beamed a tight signal directly to the bus, and my face was displayed inside.
Marvin and I explained the situation and offered the Kernel a chance to become Germs and gain citizenship.
As the Germ speculated, a war immediately broke out. Half the occupants of the bus renounced the Kernel and claimed status as a Germ, the other half immediately attacked. The last two standing were Germs, so we picked them up and docked the bus at the port for repairs.
I hated the cold blooded method, but war is not something to play with. We can have no fence sitters, I trust these two converts, because they fought for it. Any Germ that did not convert to citizen ship before the war started would have remained suspect if we just allowed them to join without such a strict test of loyalty.
All told, we replaced the damaged bus, in-order to make a new attempt at Sedna. We also picked up 10 new Germs for our destroyer team, two of which were from the late converts. After leaving an engineer with the Oort port, we left for Sedna.
15
Sedna
The Sedna briefing went substantially the same as the Oort adventure. They were closer to Earth, so they picked up some stray transmissions so they had a bit of a clue what was going on when we arrived. Luckily because of operation Blue Harvest, they had no non-citizen Kernels at the hidden base. Like Oort and McCall, they all became Germs.
Now that the installations we believe are still hidden from the enemy are secured and protected against Kernel signals, we can focus on gathering intelligence. We built 16 fighters with hyperspace engines, the enhanced cloak, and Kernel detection system. From Sedna, we send them to the 4 planets of the Planetary Republic, the Sangren worlds, our Lagrange Fortresses and installations, and one to check on Commander Baumgarter at the Cecrops forts. Such a small ship is dangerous to transit hyperspace alone, as we had to pack in the engine as an afterthought and without any testing, however, Jones did it and we have to get a stealthy reconnaissance of what is happening in our galaxy.
Their orders are to covertly perform reconnaissance and find out the extent of the attacks. Once they ascertain the situation they are to report back to Sedna. I left all of the Engineers at Sedna except Dr. Holland. If the planet or facility has beaten back the Kernel, and has full control, the Sedna Base commander is authorized to make contact and share the briefing and technology.
With that process underway, I sent a small contingent of Assault ships to the Centaurus Habitats. It looks like they are going to become a useful ally much quicker than expected. The ships were basically empty, they each contained a Partnership of a human and a germ to navigate, the only passengers are a few engineers who were to see if they could make the Habitats mobile, The teams would eventually take the habitats to Earth, but for now they were staying at the Asteroid belt. Everything else except for a very small defensive detachment became my Strike force. We are going to liberate New Aubagne and then take back the Planets of the Republic.
16
Operation Blue Harvest: Orbit over Cecrops
Alarms blast and red emergency lights kick on as the Orbital fortress over the Barkun Home-world comes under attack.
“Can anyone give me any indication of who is attacking us?” Commander Baumgarter yells to his staff inside the Tactical Operations Center.
“Commander, I believe it is the Kernel, I am receiving strange communications, I cannot confirm but I believe it is targeted at our Kernels.”
“I don’t know what they are up to, but I bet it is a good thing we don’t have any Kernels onboard the fortress” He yells
Baumgarter reaches for the arm of his command chair and activates the ship wide communications intercom. The 1MC sounds throughout the massive, yet undermanned orbital fortress.
“Attention on the ship, this is Commander Baumgarter, General Quarters, I say again, General Quarters! Prepare to repel boarders. The Kernels are attacking and we don’t know if they will attempt our trick of sending in a seed. Assume all Kernels are the enemy. Do not let them near any implanted legionaries. That is all.”
The Commander looks toward his stunned command center crew. “Don’t look at me, dammit, look at your screens. Don’t let the Kernel get close. Shoot these down any fucker that is not ours! Launch fighters and get the railgun hot!”
Almost as an afterthought in the confusion of battle, the Commander realized his fortress was not alone. “Comms, relay my message to the other Orbitals, warn them about the takeover, and get me a SITREP!”
Operation Blue Harvest was massive in scale and supplyin
g the mass secretly was a huge problem, CMDR Baumgarter had to make some tough choices, he decided to prioritize the rail cannons first and not to touch the gravity plates until the rest of the ship was fully functional. They had been using the mass gained from hollowing out the docking areas and huge replicator bays to build the weapon systems. His thought was that once the ship was mobile it would no longer be a secret, so he wanted it to be able to shoot before it could move. He sent a silent prayer he made the right choice as he quickly built a mental image of what is going on in his battle space.
“Sir! A large Kernel Guardian ship just uncloaked, it is headed directly for us!” The scanning officer exclaimed!
“Focus all fire on that ship, we must take it out! What is its relation to the nearest rail cannon?” Baumgarter Commands
“Commander, the Ship is on a heading that will bring it in range of Rail Cannon #3 in approximately 90 seconds.”
“Ensign, hold fire until that monster is centered in the sites of the cannon, we cannot aim that gun, so we have to wait until we have the perfect shot. Be prepared to fire as fast as you can after the first round. As long as it is in the path of that gun, shoot. Are the nuclear penetrators loaded?”
“Aye sir, the Nuclear Penetrators rounds are loaded, and the crews are on standby for rapid firing.”
“80 seconds until the ship is in range” says the ensign.
“How long until their ship is amidships to our cannon?”
“110 seconds sir”
“That is the countdown I want to hear. Crew, prepare to fire on my command.”
He looks around the room, suddenly very happy that due to security issues Kernels are not allowed on board.
“10 seconds” The crewman begins the countdown.
“9”
“8”
“7”
“6”
“5”
“4”
“3”
“Fire! Fire all weapons!”
He couldn’t wait any longer. Commander Baumgarter realized this was space, and with the mass and speed of the Guardian, he didn’t have to wait until the ship was dead center. The ship’s continued velocity would mean that any effort to stop would mean more time under the gun. By firing early, he gains an extra shot or two.
“Direct hit!” Yelled the ensign at the weapons station, his enthusiasm was slightly masked by his professionalism or he would have been jumping up and down.
The screens did not show the impact, the round was as big as a tractor trailer, but the distances in a space battle were enormous. A nuclear explosion in space would dissipate rapidly in the vacuum, however, when the round exploded deep inside the massive Kernel warship, the surrounding mass accentuated the power of the thermonuclear weapon.
A geyser of light and superheated debris shot out of the entrance wound, the heat melting the path making the hole even bigger. It seemed that the forward motion of the Guardian shuddered.
“Keep firing, fire all cannons, torpedoes, launch our fighters, we have to cut this thing down!”
Daniel found that getting angry helped him focus on the fight, it sharpened his will and dulled the insecurity felt in his head.
Two more rail gun rounds penetrated the huge ship. Since the Guardian was traveling in a constant vector, the rounds impacted along a straight line. With the third round a crack started to appear.
“Focus all fire on the edge of that crack; let’s bust this thing like a watermelon!”
“Yes sir!” the CAG relayed the message to the fighters, who added in their smaller rail cannons into the onslaught.
During the fire storm provided by the Legion, the Kernels we also busy. Massive cannon fire shook the orbital fortress. However, they were not focused on the cannons or the structure itself. The Kernel seemed to focus on the shield and cloak emitters. The Fortress did not have enough cloak emitters to actually become invisible, but they used them to block stray emissions from the ship to prevent electronic warfare. Under a coordinated attack the last node fell. With that the Kernel retaliated with a focused burst of energy directly at the Commander’s implant.
The 6th penetrator round struck the Guardian and cracked it like an egg. The Fortresses over Cecrops were safe.
17
New Aubagne
Transitioning to New Aubagne was everything I feared; there were three huge saucer shaped punishment ships in orbit of the Legion base planet. What made it worse was or scanners showed saucers freely transiting back and forth from Kernel ships to the surface.
I had to assume our planet was taken. I had what was functionally a double strength strike force, when it came to ships. Unfortunately, I was undermanned in the infantry department. The Oort cloud built ships; it was planets that made legionaries.
Regardless, for the first time, we have superior tech. My motherships launched their fighters ad my destroyers took station around the planet. With our undetectable cloak and the means to find all of the enemy ships, we were able set up overlapping fields of fire with multiple Legion ships targeting individual Kernel ships. With a great battle plan created for the Navy, the Legion infantry prepared for their role. As all our teams filled assault ships I left command of the ships with my most experienced officer, a Chinese Captain named Jintao, who happened to be the cousin of General Geo Jintao of the former Chinese Army Strategic Support Force, now a member of the Earth Militia. Family relations notwithstanding, he would fight the battle on my command.
I would be busy getting my base back.
Once the assault ships were in position to make their drops, I ordered the attack to commence. The first rounds fired where spectacular, as multiple nuclear penetrators hit the unprepared warships. I then put the space battle out of my mind as the drop ships plummeted toward the various hanger openings on the planet surface.
The cloak insured that landing was not a problem; however, breaching the thick hanger doors got their attention. While the Kernels were having a hard time detecting out ships, the ion cannon blasts at the hanger doors did lead them to our positions. It was quite a firefight as we attempted to blast open the doors. We lost several drop ships, but eventually the doors gave way and we had a three point entry into the base.
From that point on, it was total chaos. The Kernel wasted no time in implanting and controlling the Legion personnel on the base, so we had to fight against our former brothers. The dogs were a help as they did not have their eyesight impaired by tears. Our pain only multiplied our rage, as we fought room by room against the Kernel. They did not have a large invading force, relying on their mind control tricks to help them take over.
As inhumane and evil their rider tactics were, what they did when they realized they would lose the base is what will be judged by history as a testament to the foulness of their corruption. When we fought to the command center and controlled it, the fusion core, and the engineering spaces, the Kernel simply gave up, they caused the implanted humans to mass attack the emplaced automatic cannons we had emplaced, and those that survive the mass lemming attack collapsed as the Kernel ordered their brains to shut down. The murdered my legionaries, simply because they were no more use to them.
We now own the base, but only a thousand personnel from it survived. We lost nearly 50 thousand legionaries to the implantation procedure. The ones that survived were those that were in the processing line to become ridden by the kernel. The loss was staggering.
We will have to use our knowledge of the Kernel carrier signal to somehow armor the implants. When I asked Marvin if that was possible, he said it was theoretically possible, but would require research. I have long believed that the implant was a weakness, but it seems that if the Kernel can implant humans as fast as they did here, then maybe an armored implant that would block Kernel signals was out best hope.
All I know is, that after seeing what was done on this planet, I can think of nothing except getting to Earth before it is nothing but zombies.
18
Colony Ship
We are leaving multiple satellites at each LaGrange point we find in a system to help build the data stream for an eventual gate system that will allow ships to transition to hyperspace without the need for a Kernel to navigate.
Additionally we are seeding each system with electronic warfare drones to spend time completely searching the systems our fleet transitions through so we can gather data for the eventual colonization of new worlds. It was one such drone that made a serious discovery.
“Captain Jones, We are receiving a tight beam transmission from EW Drone 4RmDM59” said the ensign manning the Communication station on the bridge.
“Go ahead and send the data to my console Ensign.”
The data showed what appeared to be the aftermath of an ancient battle. A cursory look showed what appeared to be the hulks of 18 Barkun Punishment ships, and hundreds of smaller objects that once could have been saucers.
“Comms, open the 1MC”
“Aye Aye Captain, The 1MC is active”
The piped whistle sounds throughout the ship “This is Captain Jones; we have found the remnants of a space battle. We will be sending a team to investigate, Captain Jones out.”
The intercom shuts down and I order a shuttle with a two destroyer escort to go look at the ancient battlefield. When they are ready to depart, I order the rest of the ships to general quarters to stand by in the event it isn’t as ancient a battle as appears.
“Bishop, link to the team leader’s implant, put it on screen; I want to see what is going on out there.” I say to my kernel.
