Abyss Of Savagery

by Toby Neighbors

  With only twelve hours left until their computers told them they would reach the Urrglatta system, Dean did his best to snatch a few hours of sleep. With four hours left to go he got up, checked everything on his battle armor, and then checked in with Chavez. Physically, the staff sergeant was only a fraction of his old self. Standing for more than a few minutes was painful for him, and even though he exercised with Tallgrass twice a day, he had yet to complete a full circuit walking around the ring of the ship. Still, his mind was more than capable, and Dean set Chavez up in his office, where he prepared to help guide the other Recon platoons if they saw action from the Kroll.

  Dean waited as long as possible before joining Admiral Matsumoto on the bridge of the Bushido. He knew there was nothing he could do, but with a few hours of travel left he found himself walking swiftly across the broad expanse of the aviary toward the nest structure at its center. For a moment he stopped and just stared at the bridge, with its row of consoles and thick bundles of wires. He looked at the metal staircase, marveling at the ingenuity of what his fellow shipmates had accomplished. The command deck along the top of the nest structure was almost completely surrounded by vid screens and was so impressive that Dean couldn’t help but be awed at how the alien ship had been transformed from something strange and foreign to something familiar, efficient, and quite frankly, amazing.

  He hurried up the steps and saw that one of the vid screens was counting down the time until the ship reached the staging area just outside the Urgglatta system heliosphere. Dean saved the vid feeds on his TCU for the Recon platoons under his command. Each of the OICs had mounted small cameras on their shoulders so that Dean and Chavez could keep tabs on each platoon. And by not filling his TCU visual display with unnecessary vid feeds, Dean could move more quickly between them if the need arose.

  “Admiral, permission to join you on the command deck,” Dean said from the top of the stairs.

  “That is unnecessary, Commander. The Task Force is yours. The Bushido is at your command.”

  “We’ll be fulfilling this mission together,” Dean said, approaching the Japanese admiral and bowing slightly. “It’s an honor to ride into battle by your side.”

  “The honor is mine,” Matsumoto said, returning the bow.

  “Do you have a graphic of the Urgglatta system?”

  “Over here,” Matsumoto said.

  Dean followed the admiral over and began studying the display. The Urgglatta system was based around a red dwarf star. The first two sub-earth worlds were binary planets that rotated around each other on their trek around the system star. The third planet was in the Goldilocks zone and classified as a Super-Earth world. According to their information, which was taken directly from the Urgglatta ship Dean had captured, the planet was fertile, with slightly more than half of its surface covered with water and teeming with plant, animal, and aquatic life forms.

  Three gas giants and two Sub-Earth planetoids completed the system. It was almost half the size of the solar system, even though the Urgglatta home world was larger than Earth. Matsumoto swiped the screen and the view changed from linear to a bird’s eye view of the system, with planets in motion around the red dwarf star.

  “If our information is correct,” the Admiral said, “we shall approach the system here and be hidden from the Urgglatta home world by this gas giant.”

  “We won’t be able to see how many ships are in orbit,” Dean said.

  “Not at first,” Matsumoto agreed. “But we will have the element of surprise as we approach the system primary. Our task force will move in behind the gas giant and launch our attack from there. The Moses has the most effective radar array and will slip around the gas giant to give us eyes and ears on the Kroll around the Urgglatta home world. Then we can launch the appropriate number of seed ships.”

  “That makes sense,” Dean said. He had delegated the approach into the system to his admirals. His job would be selecting targets and assigning roles to the operators. “We could have placed surveillance equipment on one or two of the tug vessels. They would be even less noticeable than the Moses.”

  “It was considered, but the seed ships have very small power banks. Our concern was that they would run out of power and stop transmitting the data vital to the battle before the fighting was completed.”

  “I see,” Dean said. “What if they have ships in other parts of the system?”

  “That is an issue we will deal with as we approach,” Matsumoto said.

  Dean nodded. He knew there was only so much planning that could be done before an assault took place on a relatively unknown system. They had basic information about the planets and star, but no intelligence on the presence of the Kroll. In fact, the target was simply a best guess. Because of the Urgglatta ship Dean had captured on his first Off World Tour, they knew that the Urgglatta home planet had been overrun by the Kroll. What they didn’t know was how many Kroll ships might still be in orbit, if any.

  It made sense to Dean that the predatory Kroll might stay put as long as there were adequate resources, but he was prepared to be wrong. They could find the system deserted, or they could find it crawling with so many Kroll vessels that the mission would be a failure before it started. Hopefully, by doing some reconnaissance from outside the heliosphere, they could find out what they were up against before they were thrust into the thick of battle.

  When the ETA timer hit two hours, Dean had all his officers report in. The admirals, Recon officers, and the officers in charge of the operators all reported in. Communications were running like clockwork, and everyone began checking their system redundancies. The plan was simple enough. Show up in the system, send seed ships (thusly named because of the nukes they carried for implantation into the Kroll ships) and detonate the ordinance. If all went as planned, the Kroll ships in the system would be eliminated and the task force could begin the homeward journey. Of course, that didn’t account for the Kroll fighting back. Dean knew that was exactly why he had been put in charge. To their knowledge, the Kroll had no weapons systems on their ships. Fighting back would require a boarding action on the task force, and Dean would be in charge of coordinating their efforts.

  There was plenty of nervous chatter as the countdown continued, but by the ten-minute mark, as the first radar reports began to trickle in, the ship grew quiet. Everyone was hyper-focused on the task at hand, including Dean, who was observing everything he could from the command deck.

  “We are at sub-light speeds,” the navigation officer said.

  “Radar?” Matsumoto said.

  “The board is clear. Outer planets coming in range.”

  Dean watched the radar on one of the vid screens. The final ten minutes of their approach seemed to drag on and on. Dean did his best not to appear nervous. When they finally reached the rendezvous point, Matsumoto ordered a full sweep of the system. It took the radar signals nearly five minutes to spread through the system and bounce back to the ship. They were too far out to read individual ships, but they were able to put the planets on the plot and confirm that there were orbiting vessels around the Urgglatta home world.

  “We are ready to proceed with Operation Chameleon,” Matsumoto said.

  “This is what we’re here for, people,” Dean said over the task force open channel so that the entire crew could hear him. “The Kroll have invaded our colonies and threatened our way of life. They have enslaved and slaughtered our allies. It is time we showed them the resolve of the human race. Admiral Matsumoto, begin the invasion.”

  Chapter 39

  The task force began the journey into the Urgglatta system. They were halfway to the gas giant that would be their FOB when a bogey popped up on the radar.

  “We have a contact bearing one, eight, niner,” the radar officer called up. “Designate Omega One.”

  Dean and Matsumoto both focused on the vid screen showing the plot. The Kroll ship was moving away from the star, and it was well past the gas giant the task force ships were headed
for.

  “If that guy radios back about us, our element of surprise is gone,” Dean said.

  “And if we attack, the Kroll will know our intentions for certain,” Matsumoto said.

  “You want to fly right past him, as if we own the place?” Dean said. “Just act like another Kroll tribe coming to fill the lauder?”

  “That is precisely my thinking,” the admiral stated. “If he turns to follow us, we will do what is necessary—but a nuclear detonation in system will be impossible to hide.”

  “Alright,” Dean said, wishing they had a quieter way of taking out the lone Kroll vessel.

  Dean understood the need for secrecy and the foolishness of rushing into conflict before his team was ready. The task force needed to reach the relative safety of the gas giant and launch their attack in unison. Dean still didn’t know how many Kroll vessels were in the system, yet his gut instinct was to hit hard right from the start. Letting the lone ship drift past with no consequences made him feel sick to his stomach. He couldn’t help remembering the defenseless colonists that had been kidnapped from Cymru and herded onto the harvester ship like cattle. Dean could only imagine that the ship leaving the system was loaded down with captured Urgglatta to be slaughtered without mercy to feed the predatory Kroll.

  Turning his attention back to their goal, Dean spent the next half-hour in anticipation of an attack that never came. Dean knew they were dangerously close to a powerful enemy—one that could destroy the task force if given the chance—and yet there were no ships patrolling the system, no expectation of the attack that was coming. It reminded Dean of how the Kroll were helpless after gorging on the colonists in the New Wales system. A few of their kind had been left on the ships, but they were the elderly and infants. The rest of the Kroll had feasted until they could hardly rise to their feet. Perhaps they were just as incapacitated in the Urgglatta system.

  “We’re ready,” Matsumoto said.

  Dean nodded and then spoke into the command channel. “E.S.D.F. Moses, you are cleared for action, over.”

  “Roger that, Commander. The Moses is floating the Nile.”

  “Floating the Nile?” Matsumoto said, looking over at Dean.

  “When the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, the Pharaoh was worried that they were becoming too numerous,” Dean said, watching the Moses pull away from the task force and begin its run around the gas giant. “He ordered all the male Israelite children two years old and younger to be killed. Moses was just a baby, so his mother put him in a basket and set him in the Nile River. She sent her daughter, Moses’s sister, to watch over him. Some time later, the Pharaoh’s daughter found the basket and baby Moses inside. She believed he was a gift from the gods and adopted him. Moses’s sister conveniently showed up and asked the Pharaoh’s daughter if she needed a nurse maid, and then brought her mother back to care for the infant who grew up in the Pharaoh’s household. Later he would be used by God to free the Israelites. He remains one of their great heroes.”

  “I never knew this story,” Matsumoto said.

  “It’s a good one,” Dean said. “Plagues, war, deception, betrayal. I learned about it as a child.”

  Matsumoto raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond. They both looked at the plot and watched as the Moses drifted around the horizon of the planet. A few minutes later, the Bushido followed the smaller longship. The Dodge City was being held in reserve behind the planet. The big harvester vessel took up station just outside of the Urgglatta home world’s field of view. A scratchy radio signal came back from the Moses.

  “This is the Moses, come in Hannibal. Do you read, over?”

  “We read you,” Dean said. “What’s the count, Moses, over?”

  “Sixteen, I repeat, we have one-six bogeys in orbit around Urgglatta Prime. Designating Omega two through seventeen.”

  Dean felt a tremor of fear. Seventeen enemy ships against their three. It was terrifying, and possibly exhilarating; Dean wasn’t sure exactly how he was feeling. It was odd to be safely on the bridge of a huge starship ordering the deaths of thousands of intelligent beings, but that was exactly what he was about to do.

  “Operators, we have sixteen targets,” Dean said. “Launch your seed ships and proceed with Operation Chameleon.”

  “Roger that, Commander,” Esma replied. “We are go for launch.”

  The containment field was lowered from the bridge, and the teardrop-shaped tug vessels sprang away from the huge harvester ship. The plan was in motion, which made Dean even more nervous. He studied the plot, which was getting information from the Moses. They could see the Urgglatta home world surrounded by massive harvesters. At least seven of the sixteen vessels were the massive spherical ships, with harvesters at their center and rings made to hold their living cargos. The rest were longships just like the Moses and the Dodge City, although no two Kroll ships were exactly alike. They were all cobbled together with parts of captured ships from other species, some familiar, others foreign, but Dean knew that inside they were the same. All the Kroll ships consisted of rows of holding cells and a large aviary where the Kroll lived.

  Dean could see the tiny seed ships in blue on the plot, each one numbered. The Kroll ships were shown as an orange rectangle or square with a capital O and a number. The seed ships encountered no resistance as they crossed the distance between planets, their speed racing up until they were moving faster than the speed of light, and then slowing until they too were in orbit around the planet. The radar officer called out contacts with enemy ships as quickly as he could. Once the last ship made contact, Dean gave the order.

  “Weapons free,” he called out over the command channel.

  “Take us around the planet,” Matsumoto said.

  Two seconds later, the first Kroll ship exploded. What followed reminded Dean of a row of dominos set on their end and carefully arranged so that as one fell it tipped the next one. Explosion after nuclear explosion lit up the space around the Urgglatta planet. As Dean watched, two of the Kroll vessels, one longship and one harvester, failed to explode. They were battered by the explosions around them and sent hurtling away, but Dean knew that once they regained control of their ships, they would come after the task force.

  “Operators, we’ve lost two enemy ships,” Dean said. “Omega six and fourteen did not detonate. Launch two seed ships and redeploy.”

  “Roger that, Command. Launching two more ships.”

  This time the seed ships took off from the Moses. Dean already felt a high like he had never experienced. The mission wasn’t just successful—it was wildly successful. So far, his task force had destroyed eighteen Kroll ships without a single human casualty. It was unbelievable, and as Dean watched, the last two seed ships closed on the surviving Kroll vessels.

  “Lima Two is closing on Omega Fourteen,” the radar officer said.

  “Operators are cleared—weapons free as soon as possible,” Dean said. “Don’t give the Kroll a chance to interfere with those nukes.”

  “Affirmative,” came the reply.

  “Lima Two contact with Omega Fourteen.”

  Almost as soon as the contact was announced, the Kroll ship exploded in a flash of light. All that remained was the harvester that had finally regained control.

  “Omega Six is running,” the officer below them announced. “Lima One is in pursuit.”

  “Will it reach the Kroll in time?” Matsumoto asked.

  “Calculating,” the officer called. “It should reach the enemy vessel in time to catch them, but it will be close.”

  They watched the plot as if it were the final seconds of a championship sporting event. Dean’s entire body was tight with anticipation as the little seed ship slowly closed the distance.

  “Omega Six is launching tugs,” the radar officer announced.

  “Lima One, this is command. You’ve got enemy tugs deploying,”

  “I see them, command. I can handle this.”

  “Admiral, we have a new contact, heading three, one, five
. No, wait—it’s Omega One,” the radar operator called out.

  “The ship we passed is coming back,” Matsumoto said.

  “Dodge City, this is command, over.”

  “We read you, command, over.”

  “Deploy a seed ship to take out Omega One and move to an intercept position, over.”

  The Dodge City began to move toward the Bushido, and Dean shifted his attention back to the fleeing harvester. A dozen enemy tug ships came roaring out toward the lone EsDef seed ship. It rose up, flipped over, and dove back down toward the escaping harvester and avoided most of the enemy tugs, but one ship anticipated the move and spun around, latching one of its tentacle arms onto Lima One.

  “Damn, it’s slowing me down,” the remote pilot said.

  “Use your tentacles,” Dean heard Esma order from her place with the operators on the Bushido. “Knock its hold off your ship.”

  It took the remote operator a few seconds, but it managed to break free. Dean could see that over half of its power charge was spent. The little teardrop-shaped vessel shot toward the escaping Kroll ship, but it was beginning to pull away.

  “Turn back, Lima One,” Dean ordered. “Save your ordinance.”

  “But I can catch them,” the remote pilot ordered.

  “Pilot, this is your commander giving you a direct order. Turn back and return to the Moses. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir. Turning back now, Commander.”

  “Admiral Aviv,” Dean said over the command channel, “you’re going to have company.”