by Ben Winston
The insurgents were actually a private army under the control of one of the most powerful drug lords in the area. Apparently he took offense to the appropriation of several hundred acres of his prime growing land.
"Alex, please see if Colonel Williams of the Damocles has a moment to speak to me?" Ian asked.
"Whatcha need Admiral Hotstuff?" Cindy said cheerily a moment later.
"Wow, what has you in such a good mood?" Ian asked.
"Nothin' really; just in a good mood I guess. We've been helping Alan Carlson by visiting the rural shelters and emplacements and talkin' with the crews and local authorities. Mostly just Public Relations stuff, but that reminds me, I was going to pass on a request to you; Charles Jones of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children asked me if we could upload their data base to help local the missing kids. He wasn't asking us to do an active search, but more along the lines of a passive one. We cover a lot of area and our scanners automatically do sweeps of the surroundings anyway, so I told him I'd ask.
"That's a reasonable request. What would he like us to do if and when we find any?" Ian asked.
"Just notify the local civil authorities, unless they are involved in the abduction. He also mentioned that some of the kids might be international; in which case Interpol should be notified. I'll admit it could quickly turn into a political mess, but we are talking about kids here," Cindy replied.
Ian sighed and thought about it for a moment. "Have Lissa upload the database and share it with the AI network. While she's at it, she might as well grab the missing persons as well as the criminal databases. We won't be able to act on most of it, but we can give the information to the local authorities.
"I had another reason for calling you, though. We have an issue in Columbia that needs to be handled. At our defense emplacement south of Bogota, one of the local drug lords has taken exception to the appropriation of his land. Think you can head down there and give him and his posse a ride to wherever Interpol wants him dropped?"
"Sure, that shouldn't be too difficult. Does this guy have political connections?" Cindy asked.
Ian chuckled. "Do you know of a drug lord that doesn't? The Interpol database is available to you, and Shannon is still with you. You shouldn't have any problems rounding them up."
"You know, if we start this, we might as well go all the way. Taking down one Evil bastard isn't going to slow down the drug flow," Cindy replied.
"I know, but that isn't the goal here. The goal is to get him to leave our people alone. Since he's a bad guy, we might as well turn him over to civil authorities. If we start taking out the illegal drug industry, we'll have to build a facility to house them, and that means those assholes will be more protected than the people they were victimizing. That just doesn't sit well with me.
"The timer is going to run out long before these assholes will get to trial or we could finish rounding them all up anyway. We'll revisit this after we make sure the sector is safe," Ian explained. "We just don't have the time to tackle global crime yet."
"Yeah, but it is still tempting to just…" Cindy began, but was interrupted by Alex.
"Sir! You have a nova-priority transmission from the scout vessel Endangered."
Ian nodded to her. "Get me the data on her mission and location, then put them through. Put Raptor Icarus on launch alert and order Prometheus to Yellow-three status."
Cindy nodded once to Ian, and shut down the channel. She was replace a moment later by a very worried looking young man wearing the rank of captain.
"Captain Gould, what's your status?" Ian asked worriedly. Endangered was a new Condor series scout craft. It was on a patrol to 'local' star systems and was currently in the Tau Ceti system, twelve light-years away.
"Sir, we are in full stealth mode and are undetected. Five minutes ago, two Imperial light cruisers dropped out of hyper just outside the system. If they haven't located you yet, it's only a matter of time before they do. Even at this distance, we can hear the subspace noise from the sector," the man reported. "It's a good bet that the Empire knows exactly where you are."
Ian sighed. "It's too early! We're supposed to have another twenty-six days, dammit! Wait, Tau Ceti is within the detection radius of the defense network, we should have seen them coming."
"Sir, we didn't even detect them until they dropped out of hyperspace. The local primary was blocking our sensors. That course could have created a shadow in the detection grid if they're system hopping," the captain suggested.
"You're right, it could have. Besides, they are there and there isn't much to be done about it. I'm relaying your data to the Prometheus. Expect their arrival shortly," Ian said. "In the mean time, keep track of them, but stay hidden; you don't stand a chance against them."
"Yes Sir, I'll be expecting a call from Commander Serena," the Captain replied.
"Good work Captain. Thank you," Ian replied.
The man gave him a brave smile before the channel closed.
"Sir, Commander Serena is on comm three for you," Alex said.
Ian opened the channel and Serena appeared. "What's up, Sir?"
"Our scout in the Tau Ceti system just confirmed two Imperial light cruisers dropped out of hyperspace. We're sending you the data feeds. I need you to go out there and get ris of them, please," Ian said.
Sarena looked a little worried. Before replying to him, she issued the orders to get them moving. "Sir, I don't think we can stop them before they discover the sector."
Ian nodded. "I know Serena. I'm afraid it's probably already too late for that. I just need you to go out there and keep them from getting more curious. The scout ship Endangered is on station and keeping track of them. Captain Gould is waiting for your call."
Serena nodded. "Understood Sir, Prometheus is departing. We'll be jumping out in ten minutes."
"Good hunting Commander," Ian replied and closed the channel. "Alex, bring the sector to Yellow Alert. Life is about to get a lot more interesting around here."
Ian then sent a message to Admiral H'joles at Alliance Command to let him know they had most likely been found by Imperial scout ships. The Admiral replied that as unfortunate as it was, it fit into the timeline for the premonition. Sol Sector was a twenty-two day jump from the Empire's Grimaria base. Ian briefly wondered about that, since it had taken the Raptor teams almost as long to get there from Alliance Headquarters. It turns out that Grimaria was actually slightly closer to Sol Sector the Alliance HQ was. There was also a large Nebula between Aliance HQ and the Grimaria system that had to be flown around.
H'joles told Ian that he would alert the intelligence department to watch for the departure of the fleets that had been massing there. Once they left, they would have a good idea as to an arrival time.
"I thought we still had a month, according to the predictions, Admiral," The Secretary General said.
"Honestly, we might, Sir. It could take the Empire that long to form up and send their assets here. All this means is that now we know the attack is coming. At a minimum, we have twenty-two days. However, based on our knowledge of Imperial fleet positions, it could very well be a month before they arrive here."
The man nodded his understanding. "I'm sending out a message to all the leaders still visiting up here to return to the planet. Do you think you will be able to come to the UN and explain all of this to us in a couple of days?"
"Of course I will, Sir. But just so you know, I don't actually have to be there anymore. We finished installing the subspace communications systems for all the leaders about a week ago. I'll be able to address everyone, even from here," Ian explained. "Let's just pray it takes at least three weeks for the enemy to arrive, otherwise we won't have everything installed."
"I was under the impression that you wouldn't be able to get everything built anyway?" the Secretary asked.
"Not all the the shelters, no, That would take a couple of years, even with our advanced equipment. I was speaking of the active defenses and ships. As it is we won't
have time to properly train everyone that's going to need it," Ian explained.
"Do you have an idea of how many people are going to be left without shelters?" The Secretary asked.
"No, not an exact figure, but probably more than a billion. There will still be the shields though, their not as good as having a shelter, but something is better than nothing. The real issue there is most of those folks will be rural and not be protected by a shield; they won't have any advanced protections at all," Ian replied. "We'll just have to do the best we can to keep the enemy away from the planet, failing that, keep them away from the areas where the people don't have protection."
"You mentioned before that there will be two separate forces attacking us. Do you have an idea about how each will prosecute this attack?" The Secretary asked.
"Well, that Caldarians will try to invade and take slaves. They want to take over the planet and use us a slave force to rebuild their old empire. There is simply no way that plan could succeed and shows that their intelligence is far out of date for the entire galaxy. They believe to surrender is worse than death, and these Caldarians will not retreat. Although they don't know it, but they are only coming here to die.
"They will attempt to destroy our major cities and world leadership, while landing troops in suburban and rural areas to begin the round up of slaves. At the level we are at right now, if it were just the Caldarians coming, it would be a short fight and they would lose. They simply don't have enough of a military force remaining to them to defeat what we now have.
"The real worry here is the Empire. Their usual methods are slightly different; they tend to avoid ground combat. They destroy or drive off the defenders and issue an ultimatum to the planet to get it to surrender. If the planet refuses, they use orbital bombardment to convince them. In the early days of the war, four planets refused surrender. One is beginning to show signs of becoming livable again, two are still under a nuclear winter, and the fourth will never support life again.
"Since that time, they have changed tactics in that regard. If a planet refuses surrender now, they send in troops and force it. While the end result is the same for both; slavery of the planet, the Empire is more humane in their management of the population. The Empire treat their captured worlds almost like penal colonies, while the Caldarians threat other races more like herd beasts," Ian finished.
"So are we certain that the Empire is really coming here to destroy us? Perhaps they only want to capture us?" the Secretary General asked, fearfully.
Ian shook his head. "In the recent spate of terror attacks the Empire executed, they destroyed two mining colonies, and a farming world. In the case of the mining colonies, no one survived. That was a major departure from the way they have been fighting this war. Alliance command believes that they have a new commander with new orders from the Emperor on how to handle this war.
"We are too far from Imperial space for them to maintain ownership of this sector for long. I'll admit, they could only be coming here to destroy our facilities, thus crippling the Alliance war efforts, but what is to keep us from simply rebuilding after they are driven back? No, they're coming here to murder us; it's the only way to keep us from giving the Alliance the tools they need to push them back.
"Off the record Sir, it isn't the Imperial fleet that has me the most worried. When we liberated the Planet Hyperion, the Imps sent in this really strange, special unit no one had ever seen before. They brought a chemical weapon to the planet that would have sterilized the world. It's a type of molecular acid that acts like a neurotoxin. It would have destroyed and dissolved all biological matter on the planet.
"Hyperion was the first, and so far only planet we've ever liberated from the Empire. Many at Alliance Command believe they were trying to destroy the world rather than let us take it back. Other believe they were trying to cover up something they were doing there. Either way, under no circumstances can we allow even one canister of the stuff into the atmosphere; it's that lethal. At Hyperion, they sent eight troop ships; four survived to make it out of hyperspace, two made it to the planet. Of the two, only one was able to deploy it's troops.
"We destroyed the drop containers of neurotoxin before they could reach the atmosphere, but the troops did make it down. They are the ones that managed to destroy the city of Starlight and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. At the point they arrived, the fighting was all but over, the planet was ours. Those troops had to have known it was a one way trip even before they reached orbit. It is now believed that those troops are not Imperial military, but rather a type of temple guard, or religious soldier. They fought like they were insane and it took the focused efforts of almost all our assets to stop them.
"My main worry is will those troops be involved in this fight, and if so, how many of them?" Ian said worriedly. "Even without that bio-weapon, they are bad news. At first we thought we were fight some kind of giant robot, or piloted mecha. When we analyzed the wreckage we discovered that we had been right on both counts. There had been a living being grafted into the machine; it was… just wrong."
"Don't we have something similar? I seem to remember seeing that you had deployed big robots as weapons too," the Secretary asked.
"Sort of; what we developed is a type of combat drone. It's 'driven' by a human, but the soldier is a remote operator and the interface is a combination of holographic projection, bio-mechanical and neuro-synaptic control systems. The operator can leave the machine and nothing has been done to alter them in anyway. With a little training, you or I could climb into one of them and be able to use it.
"One of the areas where Alliance and Imperial technology differ is control systems. The Empire doesn't use, or even have, computers in the sense that we know them. While they do have advanced computing methods, they are not… artificial like ours are. They use living beings installed with cybernetic implants specific to their purpose; it's really gruesome. It has to be worse than hell for those poor souls chosen for that," Ian replied.
"Perhaps they use convicted felons?" The Secretary suggested.
"Maybe, but would you let a felon have control of the engines, environmental or defensive systems of a starship? From what they've been able to discover about the navigational computers, the beings used for that don't even have personalities; forensic medical analysis shows that those poor bastards were implanted from birth, and their life functions are maintained by the machines." Ian shook his head. "I'm sorry, I know it may be simply the way things are for them, but you can't tell me an Empire that can do that to it's own people is anything but evil."
Chapter Eight
Raptor Damocles
Chipaque, Colombia
Earth, Sol System
Sol Sector
"Thank the gods for armor! Damn it's hot out here!" Sam said after driving the hover-rail out of the Raptor.
"If it's too hot for ya, Sam, I can always request we have a rotation out at Chevron; I hear the summer heat is a balmy minus seventy there!" Cindy said as she followed him out of the Raptor.
"Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?" Sam asked, grinning.
"Who cares? No matter what scale you use, if you put a minus in front of the number, it's too damn cold!" Shannon replied. "I'll choose heat whenever I can!"
"Company boss," Sasha said over the comm. "It's Lieutenant Marco from the emplacement."
"Lissa, stay here with Sasha and coordinate our operations with the Marines. Has Interpol let you know where we're dropping this assholes?" Cindy asked.
"Still working on that Ma'am, Colonel Carlson has offered the terrorist detainment facility for our use until they can figure it out. We can drop them at the Neptune Platform in the Atlantic," Lissa replied.
"Excellent, make sure the Marine pilot knows that since they will be doing most of the hauling for us." Cindy then smiled at the approaching officer. "Lieutenant, I heard you have a pest problem?"
"Sorry I got you guys out here in this weather, Colonel. Honestly, I didn't think command
would even bother to send anyone. After all; it's not like they can actually do anything to us," the young officer replied. "Although it is a pain in the ass when we go try to work out the civil stuff with the locals. This jerk has everyone so scared they won't even talk to us. Most folks run when they see us."
"Well, we probably wouldn't have come except that the Admiral wants to use these animals as an example. Our orders are to round up the whole bunch and hand them over to Interpol. We should probably have the drones destroy the crops too," Cindy explained.
"Uh, about that. There are a couple of coffee plantations in the area, but shutting this guy down is going to have a serious impact on the local economy. Is Command aware of that?" the Lieutenant asked.
Cindy nodded. "Yeah they are. If you've the time, call… uh, Lissa? Who is that person we were supposed to call about this?"
"Mrs. Julia Rosewater. She lives on Atlas, but the council asked her to look into methods to counter the issues generated by the removal of the Drug Cartels and other industry altering actions," Lissa replied.
"Thank you Colonel, Officer Lissa, I'll give her a call as soon as time permits," The Lieutenant replied.
Cindy grinned at him. "What can you tell us about the asshole we're about to go visit?"
"His name is Jesus Santiago and he is a very bad man. He has a standing militia of around three-hundred, controls this entire province and produces tons of cocaine and marijuana every year.
"His younger brother is the provincial superintendent, but Jesus is the one in charge; which means Jesus has access to the federal troops in this province as well. His private force has all military equipment 'stolen' from the local federal troops. Of course, they also have 'friends' at the federal level as well. However, the federal level conspirators are sort of 'shared' by all the Drug Lords in Colombia. Although only inferred; El Presidente must also be involved as he is the one who hires and fires senior officials in Bogota," the Lieutenant explained.
