by DN Farrell
"Dreadnought shields down to fifty six percent, localised shielding down to forty." Fizoo said over the sound of sparks, as some electrical circuitry in the navigation console gave out.
"Navigations out." Navigator Costar stated flatly.
"Our shields are at fifty two percent captain." Fizoo said.
With that the attack formation ships released their weapons once more. Things were starting to look a little hairy, then Trellon leaned over towards the captain, who was staring intensely at the outline of the Dreadnought on the Holo Tube. "Captain, it's firing that weapon once every minute or so, while we are firing every thirty seconds or so, I think if we wait it work out alright, her shields will go before ours."
"I hope so Trell," said the captain, who shifted uneasily in his seat, as the sparking navigators console was throwing up a shower of sparks, which made it difficult for him to see the Holo Tube. By now Navigator Costar had gotten up from her console, in an effort to not get hit by sparks and the attack formation released another barrage of fire.
"Dreadnought down to twenty eight percent shield power, local shield power near weapons assembly sixteen percent, we are now one hundred thousand kilometers from the Dreadnougth and with a broken navigation system, we are in a collision course." Fizoo said and with that the magnetic weapon was once again unleashed and with a bang the entire ship rocked back and forth and the bridge crew were thrown around wildly in their seats.
Our shields are at eight percent captain!" Fizoo said.
Captain Jobi looked over at Trellon and suggested, "Will we break formation, we cannot take another hit like that."
"The other ships might get away captain, but we'll be toast as our navigation is out, I think we'll hold on until after the next round of our fire." To which the captain nodded slightly and with that the weapons discharged once again.
There was lots of sparks, bluish explosions, but this time the explosions were followed up by a reddish explosion. "Captain enemy ship main shield down to eleven percent, local shields out, we have a direct hit on the weapons assembly!" Commented Weapons Officer Fizoo and as he did so an aftershock from the explosions within the Dreadnought hit the ship and the bridge and bridge personnel all vibrated slightly.
Everyone on the bridge suddenly shouted out in a roar of appreciation, "Whooooahhh," as things were starting to look bad, but now the Dreadnoughts weapon assembly had been taken out and the attack formation started to direct laser cannon fire through the small opening in the Dreadnoughts shielding. It was an amazing thing to see on the Holo Tube, four ships with a total of eight Grade A5 laser cannons all directed at the very top of the Dreadnought. Some shielding was still in place, so the algorithm compensated by firing into the small hole in the shielding, near the magnetic weapons assembly, and then directing the beam deep into the dreadnoughts shell. Systematically the lasers continued to fire for a good thirty seconds, slicing away at the inner parts of the Dreadnought.
"Dreadnought shield power out sir." Fizoo said with a grin on his little blue haired ape face, as the ship was once again struck by another wave of aftershock vibrations, as various explosions took place within the Dreadnought, this time the aftershock being considerably greater, as vast sections of the Dreadnought were exploding inside its hull.
With that the Dreadnoughts shields came down completely and the algorithm compensated this time and once again using the lasers, the four ships lasers sliced the great big Dreadnought from bow to aft, a nice slow fifty second blast, and finally as the lasers stopped firing the Dreadnought broke into two pieces, which began to drift away from each other, spilling out into space whatever people and cargo remained inside.
"Permission to disengage algorithm sir?" Asked Trellon.
"Permission given Commander." And with that the four ships started to pull away from each other. In attack formation they had been within fifty meters of each other, now however they spread out to a few kilometers from each other. Meanwhile Navigator Costar fiddled with a small hatch under the navigators console and then exclaimed, "It's no good sir I can't do anything up here!"
"No problem Costar, Pylor put me through to engineering." Said the captain and seconds later he was talking to engineering, asking them to reverse engines and make for a stationary position in space, until they could get their navigations system back online again. This left the Bryant just a little less than a thousand kilometers away from the wreck of the Dreadnought, and from this distance it could be seen very clearly by looking through the Plexiglass window, which could be seen a couple of feet above the Holo Tube from the captain’s chair. It just sat there now, its two half’s spinning around each other, but already starting to drift off towards the planet surface.
"Captain we have to do something about the two half’s of the Dreadnought, my calculations suggest that one half of the cylinder will fall into the atmosphere within fifteen hours and the second within sixteen hours and they are planet killers sir." Said Trellon matter of factly.
"Of course Commander, such a large hull would create an enormous asteroid like effect, if either half hit the surface; we're here to save the Exugeneans and not kill them, contact the Poseidon and the Aldebaran and ask them to chase each half of the Dreadnought, before it collides with the planet, and ask for the Obdurant to stay in close proximity to our ship, until we get navigation back on line."
"Will do sir."
"How we doing up there sir?" Queried Colonel Kell over the comms unit.
"We're doing okay kell, we just took out a Dreadnought, it was hard work. Our navigation console is out, but we'll be back online in one hour, at which stage, we will provide a barrage of fire on strategic locations, which we picked up from deep space analysis of images coming from the planet, after this you can make your attack kell."
"Got it captain and whose ship will be were captain?"
"Presently The Aldebaran and the Poseidon are hunting down the hull of the Dreadnought, once finished the Poseidon will take an orbital position along with us, in the same position which the Trigerius took, while the Aldebaran and Obdurant shall take up the same position as the Virgil."
"Got it captain, we'll be ready to roll when you are." Responded Kell and with that the captain looked around the busy bridge, which now had five bridge crew members, one security guard and three engineers crammed into the small space. The air stank of the smell of burnt electrical wiring, the comms units hummed with the sounds of various personnel fixing various minor technical glitches, throughout the ship and on the Holo Tube, the captain could clearly see both the Poseidon and the Aldebaran take up positions behind the two half's of the Dreadnought hull, each holo image parallel to each other on the screen. First the Poseidon took out its hull and then seconds later the Aldebaran fired with plasma cannons, at close range, vaporising the other hull. It would be raining tiny bits of Dreadnought for a while, but little or no damage would ensue in the planet below.
Chapter One – Exugenes Here We Come!
Landing Craft/Landing Zone Aplha/ Planet Exugenes
An hour and a half later Colonel Kell would find himself one more time in a landing craft. The Bryant had five landing craft magnetically attached to its hull, along with ten space fighters and one MECH (a giant mechanized man machine about fifty feet in height). Just like last time, however, this time the space fighters were receiving no resistance and the same was the case for the landing craft. While tensions ran high and marines were nervous, known that only a few days ago Alpha and Delta Battalions had gotten decimated, there was no fire fights in space at all and even as they broke through into the atmosphere, there was no ground based blaster fire shooting at them.
Captain Jobi and the other captains had seen to this, by examining images which had been picked up from deep space, from the fire fight earlier in the week. Images from a planet travel into space at the speed of light, which is why when one looks through a telescope, you can see what happened on that planet perhaps years ago or even millions of years ago. By the same
token some Federation intelligence officers, had taken images of the planet the previous week, from a distance, and from this they could track down most locations of secret silos, and hidden weapons systems.
All it took was for the four Federation ships, the Byrant, the Poseidon, the Obdurant and the Aldebran, to position themselves strategically around the planet and within fifteen minutes of a heavy barrage of laser cannons and plasma cannons, the various strategic locations had all been neutralized, all that was left for the marines, was to clean up the mess down below.
Upon arriving back at landing zone Alpha, Kell found everything to be peaceful, except for the disturbing array of dead rotten marine corpses, strewn around the landing zone. But this time there was no ground fire, none at all. Kell only had one MECH, but he had over twenty space fighters for air coverage and a total of eight hundred marines on the ground, each group taking up positions around the city of Kal. The previous week the idea had been to put two thousand marines around the capital city of Kal, but this time without most of the heavy opposition, eight hundred appeared to be more than enough.
The first few hours saw zero resistance. Kell had split his men into one Battalion and three Companies; his Alpha Battalion had three hundred and fifty men and a MECH while the other three had only one hundred and fifty men a piece. With this in mind he made sure that his Battalion came in the front door of the city, while the others came around the back, as it were.
Finally as they came within five kilometers of the centre of the city, they came across some light resistance. Kell could hear the sudden crackle of a blaster cannon and as he looked to his right hand side, one of his men took a direct hit, as the hidden blaster cannon ripped off thirty three shots per second, ripping his biomechanical armored suit to shreds and killing him instantly. Kell shouted “Get down!”, resulting in marines jumping either side of the road and as they did so the MECH, which towered fifty feet above them, let of a stream of invisible laser fire, a quick "Arggh" shriek was heard and then all was quiet. As Kell got up he could see smoke bellowing out of the hidden blaster cannon array and the hand of one of the unfortunate dead operators strewn over the machine blaster.
Kell and Batallion Alpha would walk on another three kilometers, as the sun began to set, before coming across some more serious opposition. According to their read out tabs they were near the civil buildings, which lay at the centre of Kal and upon nearing them a rebel shouted out across to them, from over three hundred feet away. "Stop there you dogs or the chief minister and all his people will die!"
Kell could just about here the voice carrying across the wind, and he had to play back the sentence which he just heard on his helmet comms system, telling the inbuilt helmet computer to "enhance and rebroadcast the last sentence please." This time he could hear quite clearly, the threat made by the rebel. Kell indicated to Captain Furrow, who was his next in command in this Battalion and the two men had a little huddle at the side of the road.
"Nights fallen captain and we need to get some reconnaissance on those civil buildings over there, get out some drones and get back to me in a couple of hours with some good news." The captain simply nodded and then went off with one of his subordinates to arrange for some drones. The drones which they had were really small, no bigger than a moth each and totally silent. Within half an hour, twenty seven drones had been sent to survey the civil buildings at the heart of Kal city. Since evening insects were out anyway the rebels mistook the drones for harmless insects, which would end up bringing about their downfall.
"Jericho, Eulusk and Copello come in please?" kell called down his officer comms unit and quickly received a reply from the two captains and one lieutenant, who were leading the other Companies.
"Updates please?" Kell went on to say and Captain Jeremiah Jericho was the first to reply, "No resistance sir, we're about seven clicks from your location colonel, in the South East part of the city, absolutely no resistance from our side."
Then Captain Eulusk gave her report saying that, “Fairly heavy resistance Colonel, we're in the north west part of the city in the financial district, we are about five clicks from your location and could do with back up if anyone is free."
"Got it Eulusk, Copelleo anything?" Kell asked and Lieutenant Copello quickly answered, "No very light resistance, we're in the north east part of the city, about six clicks from your location sir.
"Great, look Copello and Jericho make your way over to Eulusk’s Company, it looks like she needs some help. We're in the government buildings area of the city and from what we can see the rebels have some hostages. I think once these two areas, the financial district and the government buildings are cleared, we will have the city under our control again. Do what you can to tackle the rebels in the financial district and we will neutralize the contingent here in the government buildings, out."
"Okay Captain Furrow your drones got me anything?" Kell said after switching from his Battalion comms to his unit comms, where only Captain Furrow, the other officers, warrant officers and sergeants of Alpha Batallion could hear what Kell was saying.
"Sure sir, we've got eight buildings, one hundred and fifty seven hostages and eighteen rebels."
"That's it, well that's not so bad. Any high level officials there?"
"Yes sir in that building over there..." Furrow replied while pointing in the now dark night sky, towards a conical shaped building, which was about half a kilometer away from them. "They have the chief minister of this planet, he's the guy in charge of Exugenes, he is our major target."
"Got it." Replied kell, we will use the element of surprise and the cover of darkness to help us, so here's what I want you to do...
The Chief Ministers Office, Civic Buildings, City of kal
"Well well chief minister the marines are here to rescue you I believe." Heshal, the chief rebel said as he held a communications device to one ear and at the same time he held a chicken leg in his right hand.
The chief minister, Chief Minister Habok Haute had been forced to stand at the end of his own black wooden office table, with one rebel holding him by his right shoulder and the other with a rifle pressing itself into his back, from behind him.
Meanwhile the chief rebel, a mister Heshal sat in the chief ministers red leather upholstered chair, with his two feet resting upon the large black table. "Take a seat chief minister." Heshal said, while pointing with his right hand, the hand which held the chicken leg, to the seat directly opposite from Heshal, a good ten feet down the length of the large back wooden table.
"They're where, okay tell them we have the chief minister and they will have to negotiate if they want him alive, yes, got it, thank you." Heshal said and then taking his comms unit out of his ear and leaving it hanging around his neck, he addressed the chief minister once more. "Hey chief," he said while taking his feet of the table and then sitting forward and pointing his chicken leg at the chief he said, "we gotta lot of marines at the end of the street, but we told them we have hostages, so you can expect a lot of heat over the next day or two." With that he took a big bite of chicken and started chewing, then looking over at the chief minister, he remembered his manners and then grabbed the basket, which contained the deep fat fried chicken, and pushed the basket down towards the end of the table and he said, "forgive me chief dig in."
After some more chewing Heshal, a young man with dark black hair, hazel eyes and a light beard, dressed in a quasi-military uniform, stood up and walked over towards the chief minister's display cabinet. Looking at the chief minister's many achievements and various trophies, he turned back around towards the chief minister and asked him, "Hey chief these are all yours yeah?" The chief just nodded back. The chief was a small fat man with a dark beard who wore a midnight blue coloured robe and a large white turban and who had an expression which suggested that he was about to be physically sick.
For a minute Heshal was immersed in the chiefs life of success and while appreciative externally, internally he pondered on why he had no
achievements to show the galaxy, but this would all change soon. Then looking over at the chief minister, who had still not eaten any chicken, Heshal said, "Don't like chicken eh, don't worry boss we'll have some French fries coming through any minute now." And with that the senior rebel walked over and grabbed a deep fried chicken breast, and dug in while walking over to a bin near the door and dropping the leg bones into them. Then wandering over to the chief minister’s window, he had a good look outside at the civic buildings. And they were civic in deed very civic, not as big and brash as the buildings found in the financial district, but slick and more refined looking.
