by James Rosone
The captain then told them about the ship’s fighter and bomber complement. The Freedom had a total of ten flight bays: five on either side. Two were near the rear of the ship, one in the middle, and two near the front. A Gallentine squadron was broken down into twenty-four spacecraft, and the Freedom carried a total of twelve hundred fighters and four hundred and eighty bombers—that worked out to fifty fighter squadrons and twenty bomber squadrons. The ship also carried six hundred shuttles for the ground force it carried.
Since this ship acted as a floating station and base of operations, it also carried a large contingent of soldiers. A total of forty-five thousand could be carried on the ship. When the ship was fully crewed, it had a complement of nine thousand. This was only possible because so much of the ship had been automated. The crew still performed vital duties on the ship, but the fleet crew was primarily there to make sure the ship was operating the way it was supposed to, although they’d be sent in to take over if the automated systems went down or there was a problem. The majority of the large crew manned the flight operations for the ship, which were substantial.
Miles’s head was swimming with the information being shared. He had so many questions he wanted to ask. He had to calm his mind and remember that he didn’t need to learn everything about the ship during his first meeting with the captain and the crew.
“Captain Wiyrkomi, how soon until the ship will be ready to head to Altairius Prime?” Hunt asked.
“The crew and our required supplies are aboard and ready. The advisors will start arriving tomorrow. It’ll take about four days for all of them to make it aboard. We should be ready to go in six days,” the captain replied.
Hunt nodded his head in approval. “Excellent. When Ambassador Chapman is done with her meetings tomorrow, have her brought aboard. Since we have some time before we’ll be leaving, could you arrange for some briefings for myself and Lieutenant Hunt? I’d like to have a three-hour block of instruction in the morning, another block in the afternoon, and then a couple-hour tour after dinner of the different sections of the ship each day.”
“Certainly, Viceroy. I’ve taken the liberty of setting the ship’s time to human standards. We’ve also spent the last several weeks training the crew on how to understand it in comparison to our own. I believe the crew has a good understanding of your units of time. With that said, we can start the first briefings tomorrow at 0800 hours if you’d like?”
Hunt smiled at the initiative this captain had already shown. “That would be great, Captain. Thank you for taking care of that. It was an adjustment when I arrived on the Altairian home world. Getting used to their units of time was not easy. I suspect it hasn’t been easy for your people either.”
The captain shrugged. “We are soldiers and sailors; we make do. If I may, Viceroy, I’d like to take you on a brief tour of the bridge to meet some of the officers operating it. Then I’d like to show you to your quarters and allow you some time to get comfortable and acquainted with it. This is our first time having humans on any of our ships—we’d like to know what we can do to make your living arrangements and facilities more suitable for humans before more of your people come aboard. Because we’re still docked on the ring station, we can have the modifications made while the rest of the crew is brought aboard.”
“That is a great idea, Captain,” Hunt replied. “Let’s take that tour of the bridge. Then let’s prepare to make history.” He had a renewed sense of excitement and energy he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Recon Prep
New Eden City
Alpha Company “Ghosts” Deployment
“Whoa, wait just a second—you want me to travel back to Sumer with you?” Hadad exclaimed in a scared tone. “You do realize I am a civilian, right? People on Sumer know me. They may recognize me. I’m supposed to be in some Zodark penal colony—If they see me alive, they’ll know something is wrong. They may harm my remaining family that’s still there.”
Colonel Hackworth interceded before anyone else could. “Hadad, I get it, you’re afraid of being discovered and something happening to you again. That’s normal. We’ll do everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen. But there isn’t a better person for this mission than you. At some point, we’re going to have to know if the Sumerians are going to side with the Zodarks or look to us as liberators. You are probably the only person that’ll be able to help us make that determination. The lives of millions are going to rest on that.”
Captain Royce quickly added, “Hadad, I was part of the Special Forces team that liberated you from a Zodark camp on this very planet. I remember your stories about how the Zodarks had enslaved your planet, your people. You told us about the tributes and how you had no idea what was happening with those people or the children being taken. Well…we know what’s happening to them—they’re being used as slaves and bred to be foot soldiers for the Zodarks and the Orbots.
“You told me, you told us, you wanted to do what you could to liberate your planet, to free your people. This is your chance. I need your help. I can’t do this mission without you—will you help me liberate your people? Will you liberate your people?”
Colonel Hackworth nodded in approval. The two military soldiers returned their gaze to Hadad.
Hadad was visibly struggling with this decision. He was obviously scared about the mission now that he’d been filled in on more of its details. He’d initially agreed to join, but now, he was having second thoughts.
Governor Crawley, who was also in the room with Hadad, reached over and placed a hand on Hadad’s shoulder. “I know you’re nervous,” he said. “That’s to be expected. If you don’t want to do this mission, I’m sure they can find another way to make it work. But this is your chance to liberate your people. You have a unique opportunity, Hadad—don’t let it slip through your fingers because of fear. If that’s all that’s really holding you back, I’m sure these men have ways of helping you overcome that.”
The governor gave the soldiers a nod and sat back. A good minute went by with no one saying anything, just silence. Finally, Hadad spoke. “Can you maybe help alter my appearance, so it’ll be less likely I’ll be recognized?”
Royce nodded. “We can. We can also teach you how to overcome your fears. I promise you this, Hadad—you will feel a sense of liberation once your people are forever free.”
“When we land on the surface, what exactly will you want me to do? Why is it so important that I come with you?” Hadad asked.
As the mission commander, Royce explained the importance of Hadad being on the mission. They needed his knowledge of the capital city and the planet. They needed his understanding of the geography and culture as they looked to identify targets for the invaders and landing zones for the soldiers should the Sumerian people side with the Zodarks.
This mission was the first human-led, human-only mission since Earth had joined the Empire. There was a lot of pressure to make sure it went off without a hitch. The Earthers were also hell-bent on showing the Galactic Empire a well-planned and executed campaign. No one in the Republic leadership was happy with the haphazardness of the Empire’s current campaigns. A lot of people had been killed because missions weren’t properly planned or executed.
Hadad finally responded to Captain Royce, “OK, I’ll do it. When do we start training, and when do we leave?”
*******
New Eden
Fort Roughneck
Captain Royce stood in the front of the training room as he went over the mission. He paid special attention to Hadad, who was the only nonmilitary person coming with them.
“Once we approach Sumer, we’re going to look for a suitable place to set down on the surface. Ideally, we want someplace near the capital city but also away from any developed areas, where the ship could be discovered. We’re going to slip into the planet’s atmosphere with our new stealth ship, the Nighthawk.”
A hand rose before Royce could get an
y further into the mission brief. It was Hadad. Looking at the civilian, Royce motioned for him to speak.
“Sorry to interrupt, Brian.” Hadad insisted on calling him by his first name. He wanted to make sure everyone knew he was a civilian along for the ride and not a soldier. “If we set down too far outside of the city, how are we going to get to the city?”
Smiling briefly, Royce replied, “We’ll either walk or look for some sort of public transportation. Do they have any trains or busses we might be able to leverage?”
“Actually, they do have a rail line that connects some of the outer cities directly to the capital,” Hadad confirmed. “If we don’t set down too far away from some of them, the walk shouldn’t be more than ten to fifteen of your miles. I think the bigger challenge for us might be money. That’s going to be hard to come by, especially without a hand chip.”
Captain Royce furrowed his brow. “Hadad, I think this is the first I’ve heard of this. What is this hand chip you’re talking about? Is this going to be a problem for us?”
Hadad was about to say something, then paused for a second as if trying to remember something from a long time ago. “Just as I was being exiled from Sumer, our society was transitioning to a chip that would be embedded in one’s hand. This chip would essentially become your electronic wallet and digital file. It was something new the Zodarks had insisted on all Sumerians having—a way for them to tightly monitor and control our activities. Identifying subversive activities and anything that could undermine their control of us was a top priority of the Zodark leadership on the planet.”
One of Royce’s soldiers chimed in, “Sir, it’s possible that we could snatch a person or two and remove their chips and reinsert them into our teams that’ll be exploring the city. This might give them immediate currency and a free pass to walk through the capital. At least for a day or two, until it was obvious that those citizens had gone missing.”
Royce thought about that for a moment. It wasn’t a bad idea. They’d need to make sure they brought some medical equipment designed to do that. They’d also need to limit the number of times they went exploring in the city. This wasn’t something they’d be able to do often, not unless they wanted to kill the people they were taking the devices from.
Sighing, Royce looked at their lone medic for the trip. “Why don’t you pack some extra equipment needed to remove a chip like what Hadad mentioned and reinsert it into the team members that’ll be exploring the city?”
Captain Royce then continued on with the rest of the mission brief. A key piece of equipment they were bringing with them was the new surveillance drones. They had a couple of variants. Some were high-altitude drones that ran on solar power—these could stay aloft indefinitely, assuming they didn’t get detected and destroyed. That was, of course, a possibility, but they had taken a lot of precautions with them. The outer bodies of the drones had a fiberoptic skin, capable of mimicking their surroundings. They were also coated in a special radar-absorbent material, designed to make them as stealth as possible. While aloft, a drone would soak up all sorts of electronic emissions until its stored memory was full. Then it would compress the file down into tiny data packages that would be sent via a short burst transmission back to the Nighthawk.
They had other drones that would look to infiltrate the Zodark and Sumerian government buildings and any military installations they could find. All the data would be sent back to the Nighthawk, where Royce and two of the other Deltas would analyze as much of it as possible with the ship’s onboard AI. Twice daily, the information would be transmitted to the lone stealth satellite they’d be deploying prior to their landing on the surface. The satellite would beam that information to the Nighthawk’s sister ship that would be hiding in one of the many asteroid belts throughout the system. Every couple of days, they’d drop a coms drone that would zip the collected data through the stargate back to a frigate waiting in the next system. Steadily, the information would be relayed all the way back to New Eden and the Third Army’s intelligence group.
It was a rather complicated mission, and they had taken significant precautions not to be detected by the Zodarks. However, if they wanted real-time intelligence about what was going on down on the surface of a Zodark-controlled planet, this was really the only way to make it happen. Once General McGinnis’s command felt they had enough information, they’d order the nearly five hundred thousand soldiers assigned to Third Army to load up in the transports, and the fleet would begin the journey to the planet Sumer to liberate humans from the insidious enslavers, the Zodarks.
*******
Zodark-Controlled Space
Two weeks—that was how long they’d been cooped up in this damn ship. It was one thing to be cooped up in an orbital assault ship. Those ships were big—big enough you could go for a run or stretch your legs out. On an orbital assault ship, there were plenty of other people to talk to. But this thing…the Nighthawk…was cramped—and that was putting it kindly.
With the flight crew of four and the six of them, it was a tight fit, with virtually no room to spread out. The only saving grace they had was the four simulation pods. Aside from the standard military training they had to carry out each day, Captain Royce had allowed each person a certain amount of personal time in the sim pods.
Everyone needed to relax and unwind. For one person, maybe that involved a sim of sitting on a beach in the Maldives—for another, it could be sitting in the stands at the Super Bowl, watching their favorite team play. Whatever it was, it was their time to spend how they saw fit.
Corporal Wells looked at Hadad. The two of them had been speaking almost nonstop in the Sumerian tongue since they’d met. She was doing her best to learn the language but also to understand what it was like on his home world. What were the people like? What did the place look like? Was it an advanced society like their own, or more so? But now they had moved on to the strategy of the mission.
Hadad explained that they would need to find one female and two male Sumerians to temporarily detain so they could commandeer their ID chips and blend in with society. There were some potential problems: one of the Sumerians could have a movement restriction listed on their biometric chip, or they could have insufficient funds on their chip to purchase a train ticket or pay for food or other items they might need to purchase.
Captain Royce had overheard their conversation and joined them. “Hadad, before we decide who to detain, is there a way for us to check their biometric chip in advance to know what their credit balance is or if they do have a movement restriction?”
Hadad thought about that for a moment. “I think there probably would be. The larger issue we’re going to have to contend with if we go that route is the security protocols the Zodarks may have placed on the biometric chip.”
“Great, a new wrinkle in the plan,” Corporal Wells muttered. She hadn’t spoken very loudly—however, everyone heard.
“Hadad, before you left Sumer, were you aware of any resistance groups?” asked Lieutenant Hosni. “Any kind of subversives operating against the Zodarks?”
Damn, why didn’t I think of that? Royce asked himself.
Hadad leaned back. “If there was, that group would have been under heavy surveillance by the government, not to mention the Zodarks themselves. While they don’t have a standing army on the planet, they still maintain a security garrison in the major cities or industrial centers. It’s more than large enough to control the planet if they sought to. You have to keep in mind, when the Zodarks took away our ability to leave our star system, they also dismantled our military. They allowed us to maintain an internal security force, but their weapons were strictly monitored. They couldn’t develop weapons that would one day tip the balance of power away from the Zodarks. That’s why one of my colleagues turned me in—they believed what I was working on could have, as you humans put it, a dual use.”
Corporal Wells chimed in, “I still can’t believe they would just send you to a penal colony for something
like that. You seem like too smart of a person to just throw away like that.”
Hadad shrugged before replying, “When I was on Earth, I spent a lot of time studying your history. I wanted to try and understand you as a people. When I got to your twentieth century, I read about your World War II and then the subsequent Cold War. I see a lot of parallels to what your people did during that period between your history and what was happening on my own planet. I read that in 1930s Germany, the government there would strip incredibly smart and business-savvy individuals of their rights because they were Jewish.
“Then I read about this other country called the Soviet Union. They used to abduct all kinds of people who spoke out against the government and send them to gulags or penal camps, much like what the Zodarks did to us on New Eden. You see, even though our societies have developed on different planets, it would appear our histories are not as far apart as they may appear. The Zodarks are like your Nazis and Soviet Union put together. They have built a government on Sumer over the last hundred years to resemble what those countries must have looked like during those time periods. So if there was a resistance, as you put it, then the likelihood of our finding them is going to be incredibly low. Worse, if we did find them, chances are they would be under so much surveillance, we would likely be discovered if we met them.”
“Well, you guys may not like my approach,” Private Chandler said, “but I say we abduct one of these Sumerians so we can see firsthand how these biometric chips act. For all we know, there could be some sort of security feature that sends an alert if it’s removed from where it’s embedded. If that’s the case, then we’re going to have a host of other problems to deal with.”
