by PP Corcoran
“Thank you, Admiral. Badal clear.”
In the holo cube, the icons representing the enemy missiles closed on Third Fleet and John calmly addressed the entire Flag Bridge. “Buckle up people, this is about to get interesting.”
John tightened his seat restraints and checked his helmet, still in its rack on the right side of his seat. Images of Force Leader Taminth’s untimely death as the bridge of his Persai cruiser Vitaros catastrophically decompressed, flashed unbidden through his mind, he knew only too well the damage caused by laser impact. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, a wry smile crossed John’s face as the Shakespearean quote popped into his head.
#
“One minute. Doors opening. Gravity off.”
Alec Murray half listened as the Load Master went through his pre-drop ritual. The marine’s seats retracted into the walls of the Buffalo assault shuttle as the magnetic restraints activated and became the only thing securing Alec and his marines in place. The Wraith suit automatically straightened each of their legs and locked at the ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, neck, elbows, and wrists. It ensured each marine made a clean exit from the shuttle and didn’t become entangled on stray equipment or worse still, another marine.
A female voice came over the pilot’s circuit.
“Good luck, marines. Give them hell!”
Christ! I’ve got to match a face to that voice one of these days. Alec was briefly distracted by the warm honeyed drawl. With a slight click, the velvety voice returned.
“Thirty seconds. Reapers are mowing the road so visibility may be obscured.”
The Reapers were blasting plasma cannon, tearing through the asteroid’s surface in close proximity to the marines’ drop zone. If there were any surviving enemy hiding in ambush for the marines then they would fall victim to the withering Reaper fire. I hope. Regrettably, it also blew debris up; with no wind or gravity to disperse it quickly, it could significantly decrease visibility and make spotting the enemy even harder. Alec activated his command link. “Marines. Switch to image intensifier mode.” His suit complied and the world around him disintegrated into shades of green and black.
“Drop! Drop! Drop!”
800 marines spat from the bellies of forty Buffalos, split equally into four groups of 200 over the four breach points being held by the Thunder troopers. Alec had time to feel his suit configure for landing then… Thud! He was down and moving for the rally point. A blinking diamond in his heads-up display showed the entrance to the airlock marked by the Thunder troopers. Alec bounded toward the airlock as fast as his suit would carry him, followed on all sides by his marines who were shaking down into their fire teams as they moved.
On reaching the black, blast damaged doors, Alec halted.
“Suit. Transmit IFF code.”
The suit transmitted the encrypted Identify Friend or Foe code. Bursting in behind a group of Thunder troopers armed to the teeth and with itchy trigger fingers could really ruin your day in a hurry.
A triple tone and a solid green square in the top left of his display showed that his IFF had been received and acknowledged by the waiting Thunder troopers. Still, Alec moved through the wrecked doors cautiously. Never trust a machine.
“Good to see you, Alec, thought you were taking a nap out there.”
The light tone in Vladimir Ergonov’s voice belied his relief at seeing 200 marines arriving to back up his own ten troopers.
Alec let out a small chuckle. “The admiral insisted I finish my breakfast before I left, you know how he is, always mothering us.”
The responding laughter was cut short by a wicked blast of plasma fire that removed a large chunk of wall from just above Vladimir’s head. Vladimir brushed the rubble from his suit with one armored hand before continuing.
“As you see, the natives are restless. We’ve managed to hold here without too much trouble. For whatever reason, they haven’t managed to get their act together and have been launching sporadic piecemeal attacks rather than waiting to amass their strength and rush us.”
Alec mulled that piece of news over for a moment.
“Maybe their larger forces are trapped further inside the base somewhere and we’ll come across them as we move deeper?”
“A possibility, Alec. But there’s another strange thing. Thunder Three Zero reports that it has prisoners.”
Alec shook his head in disbelief. Prisoners? The Others didn’t surrender. They fought to the death or committed suicide if they were about to be captured. Real, live prisoners? The intelligence weenies would be falling over themselves to interrogate them. The walls shook from the impact of another plasma blast from further along the corridor, concentrating Alec’s attention on their current situation.
“Well, I’m here now, let’s get on with it. Why don’t you stay here and let the real workers show you how it should be done?”
Vladimir snorted loudly. “And let you take all the credit for Thunder’s good work? Not likely! Suit. Thunder command channel. All Thunder call signs advance when they have adequate marine support. Break. Last man in the bar buys the round, Alec.” The Thunder troopers moved off, firing down the corridor as they went.
Alec shook his head slowly, smiling, then rose to a crouch and headed off after the Thunder troopers, closely followed by his own marines.
#
FLAG BRIEFING ROOM – TDF THE IRON CHANCELLOR
The flag briefing room was filled to capacity and then some. The noise generated by the myriad of voices, human, Garundan, and Persai was deafening as the doors slid open permitting entry to John Radford. He stood on the threshold for a moment; soaking it all in before he crossed it.
In the ten days since Third Fleet successfully carried out the assault on the Others’ naval base, there had been little time for anyone to catch their breath. Although the bulk of Third Fleet remained relatively unscathed from the battle; BatFor 3.1 under Admiral Evans had taken a beating.
After following Radford’s order to engage the enemy vessels on the far side of the asteroid housing the naval base, Evans led his ships to the projected location of those enemy vessels. He arrived slap-bang in the middle of a deadly mixed force of Vultures, Buzzards, and Goshawks and they were prepared, they benefited from the supporting fire of weapons platforms, which had not been subjected to any suppressive fire.
Realizing the inadequacy of his lighter ships, Evans ordered the cruisers to engage the weapons platforms at longer ranges while his heavier battleships closed and fought at short-range battle. Casualties on both sides had been high. BatFor 3.1 lost one Bismarck and three Nemesis battleships, while one other Bismarck and all the remaining Nemeses suffered significant damage. On the other hand, the enemy had not been so fortunate. With the exception of one badly damaged, but relatively intact, Buzzard, the remaining enemy ships were now an expanding wreckage field.
Evans boarded the intact Buzzard, the computer cores had been turned to piles of melted circuitry and the entire crew was dead, either by battle injury or by their own hand. He was never more aware of how remarkable it was that so many enemy soldiers had been captured on the naval base itself.
“Admiral on deck!” called the first officer to spot him.
The room descended into silence as Radford made his way to his seat at the head of the table. Reaching his chair, he sat and indicated for those around him to do the same.
“Please be seated, ladies and gentlemen.”
There was just enough seating even in this large room for the various BatFor commanders and their immediate staff, but Radford insisted that a seat be made available at his immediate right for Colonel Vladimir Egnorov, commander of the Thunder troopers.
Radford cleared his throat before beginning.
“Firstly, my apologies for dragging you away from your commands at such short notice but Commander Hoshino,” he inclined his head in the direction of a diminutive Japanese commander in her early fifties a few seats down from him, “has developed some critical inte
lligence that she wishes to make you aware of personally. Commander, if you please.”
Kaya Hoshino was all of five-feet-two inches tall and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety-eight pounds soaking wet, but Radford had quickly learned her mind was remarkable. Hoshino had the ability to process information and use the extrapolated data to make leaps of logic that made any state of the art computer seem tardy.
When Radford put his staff together, the Bureau of Personnel saddled him with a micro-managing bureaucrat of an officer, Commander Bryer Anderson, to run his intelligence shop. Said commander had obviously pulled some strings to get himself the prestigious position of Fleet Intelligence Officer. No doubt he had already been eyeing up his next promotion.
After keeping a close watch on how the commander ran or should he say, dictated, the intelligence shop, Radford had had no choice but to send the commander packing.
Radford had been left with a junior lieutenant holding the key post of FIO and, not trusting the Bureau of Personnel not to send another incompetent officer like the last, Radford had sent a request to Admiral Aleksandr Vadis, Chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence, for his recommendations. Two days later, Commander Hoshino arrived and without any undue fuss quickly and efficiently turned the intelligence shop into what could only be described as a fountain of all knowledge.
“Thank you, Admiral. As you are no doubt aware, my staff and I have pored over the vast amount of information recovered from the enemy base. That data comes from three main sources.
One. The computer cores. They were successfully recovered, in my opinion, due to the actions of Colonel Egnorov, his Thunder troopers and the timely arrival of our own marine support.” Vladimir Egnorov shifted in his seat uncomfortably, being singled out for praise during such a high-level meeting was something that didn’t happen very often for a lowly colonel.
“The disruption caused by his demolition charges to the enemy command and control system combined with the speed with which the Thunder troopers and marines secured the base, meant the enemy had no time to purge their computer cores. We’ve gleaned a wealth of information from them. The highlights of which, with the admiral’s permission, I will come back to.” John gave a confirmatory nod.
“Two. Enemy prisoners.” Hoshino paused to look around the room. “For the first time we have enemy prisoners. Our linguists are working on interpreting the Others’ language, unfortunately, many of them are sedated as they tend to either attack their interrogators or fall into what our doctors are calling a form of ‘psychotic paralysis.’ Even through this limited contact, we’ve been able to ascertain a recognizable rank structure; which to be honest is nothing less than you’d expect in a militarily, regimented organization such as a navy. One discrepancy we have found, however, is that no matter the rank of the individual, they appear to show a definite deference to any prisoner whose armored right arm is painted a distinctive red.”
She tapped a control on her PAD and a schematic of the enemy base projected into the holo cube. One area in particular, relatively close to the surface but separated from the main base by a single long corridor was highlighted.
“Now as you can see from this diagram, all the prisoners who were wearing the distinctive red paint were captured in this area. The marines took significant casualties securing it as these soldiers fought particularly ferociously. The Others were eventually captured when our marines used breaching charges to collapse the corridor roof on them and later dug them out.
“The marines moved on to the end of this corridor and here they were confronted with a battle armor bulkhead. On entering the room beyond they found it had already been breached from above. The entire room was open to space and apparently killed all inside. There was also significant damage to what our technicians believe to be an advanced Artificial Intelligence, it is far more advanced than anything we have seen up to now on enemy’s side.” Hoshino paused for breath and effect, as she wanted the room’s full attention. “In addition, this entire room was lined with thermo-baric explosives; and it contained a very powerful ultra-low-frequency transmitter. The control lines for both had been damaged by the breaching charge which, we currently believe, is the reason we have any prisoners at all.”
Hoshino’s last statement caused a stir and a few murmured words around the room as she paused to see if anyone else could connect the dots.
Radford looked around at the puzzled faces. What seemed obvious to Hoshino had escaped him when she had first put the facts in front of him; there was little point in wasting any more time. “If you would explain, Commander.”
Hoshino’s lips pursed in disappointment at the lack of appropriate response, they had all missed the obvious. She nodded, “Admiral,” before once more addressing the room.
“Please cast your mind back to the First Battle of Garunda when, following the battle, the marines boarded the Others’ last remaining ship. The crew put up a stiff resistance to the marines until the point where they reached a battle armor bulkhead. Before they could force their way past the bulkhead and enter the room there was an extremely strong ultra-low-frequency transmission, followed immediately by a thermo-baric explosion. It completely destroyed everything in the room. Every single enemy crew member dropped dead where he stood. There were no survivors. Until now, we have been at a loss to explain why.”
Every eye focused on her and she could see from their faces that the pieces were beginning to fall into place.
“I’ve been examining BatFor 3.1’s sensor logs. As Admiral Evans’ marines were about to board the ship, a powerful ultra-low-frequency transmission was detected emanating from within. When the marines searched it, they discovered a room behind a battle armor bulkhead, which had been subjected to a thermo-baric explosion.
“In the intelligence game, there is no such thing as coincidence.
“I believe that that room housed an AI which activated the ultra-low-frequency signal which in turn killed every living crew member on that ship before triggering a thermo-baric explosion to destroy all evidence of its own existence.”
A deafening silence filled the room as those gathered fathomed the implications of this statement.
“Commander.” Force Leader Tciph of the Persai contingent broke the silence. “Are you saying that the Others are controlled by sophisticated computers? That seems… well… far-fetched.” Radford cleared his throat, interrupting Hoshino before she could reply.
“I had the same thought, Force Leader, but the intelligence is stacking up to support the commander’s assumption. The destruction of the naval base’s AI prior to the start of the assault could explain their slow and uncoordinated response to our arrival. The ULF signals are a matter of record as, indeed, are the thermo-baric explosions from both my encounter with them after the First Battle of Garunda and Admiral Evans’ fight with them here. The launching of clockwork raids on Garunda, which allowed us to follow them back to this naval base. Add two and two together and the answer is four. I believe that Commander Hoshino certainly has a working hypothesis that fits these facts.”
Again the room sunk into silence as they considered Radford’s mathematics.
“Hmm, you said you had a third source of information, Commander?” asked Admiral Evans after a few moments.
“If you will bear with me, Admiral, I would like you to consider points one and three together. Sensor records from BatFor 3.1 confirm the ships they engaged here were the same ones that have been harassing Garunda for the past eighteen months.
“But take note of the size of the facilities here. They are no doubt built to service a much larger fleet, which begs the question, where are those other ships now?
“During the search of the base, we found items which caused us to re-evaluate the threat the Others may pose to the Commonwealth as a whole.” Hoshino fiddled with her PAD, the image of a vaguely familiar computer core, attached to alien machinery, appeared in the holo cube. “This is a human civilian navigational computer recovered from within t
his base. Its serial numbers allow us to trace it to the cargo ship The Happy Wanderer.
“The Happy Wanderer was on a scheduled cargo run between Garunda and Pars when she disappeared some nineteen months ago. No sign of the ship was found, despite an extensive search. She was presumed lost with all hands, it now appears that she, and her navigational computer, fell into enemy hands.”
The babble of excited talk interrupted Hoshino, she rapped her PAD on the table for attention.
“As I said, we recovered masses of information from their computers. A couple of pieces are from their navigational database.” Hoshino touched a control and the schematic of the naval base was replaced by an image of a solar system. A very familiar solar system. Earth’s solar system.
A strangled “Jeee...sus... that’s Earth!” came from somewhere in the gathered mass.
“Intelligence indicates the enemy have not only identified the location of Earth, but over the last nineteen months have accessed the Happy Wanderer’s computer. They now possess a complete layout of Commonwealth space.”
The babbling began again, almost drowning Hoshino’s words; Radford held up his hand to quiet the room and allow her to be heard.
“As I was saying, the Others possess a layout of Commonwealth space, but we now have access to their navigational database.” Hoshino tapped her PAD and the image of Earth’s solar system vanished. In its place, an unfamiliar solar system sprang into being. Its sun rotating slowly at its center while eleven planets orbited it. Another touch of the PAD and the fourth planet expanded until it filled the entire holo cube. A planet whose surface was mostly hidden from view by a brilliant white cloud. Almost like a magician reaching the pinnacle of his show Hoshino pointed at the image in the holo cube.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the home world of the Others.”
Radford could’ve heard a pin drop. He gave them a few moments to digest… to stare at the white-shrouded globe in the holo cube before he stood. John rested his hands on the table and garnered the entire room’s attention.
