COLOSSUS_Departure [Book 2]

by Terry Frost

  Hammer called in the sighting of the insect battle to Admiral Allen and asked if he wanted them to continue the mission. Still not getting it yet, Allen ordered Jak to continue on, which really aggravated him, but like a good soldier, this time, he didn’t argue with his admiral.

  The colonel decided to stay close to Sergeant Given’s Rovers and flew his hornet ahead of the group in the same direction as they were tracking. The surface remained flat with the occasional small stand of thin trees widely spaced and continuing for about ten miles.

  Looking forward, Hammer noticed the red dirt surface had begun to turn green, and a few miles further he saw the beginning of the forest he knew so well. Even though it was only for a short duration.

  Of all the thousands of other unknown life on Planet Ogre yet to be discovered, it was strange that the only thing on Jak’s mind was his hopes of not having to engage the Ogre’s or their compound.

  Thinking about the Ogre, he thought damn things are butt ugly, vicious aliens, but their family tree couldn’t be too far from humans with the exception of being fourteen feet taller than us. If I hadn’t seen their babies I might think differently. But damn they were cute. Make a note: Don’t tell Dubois you think they’re cute.

  Captain Teasor, commander of the Ogre 3 group was in his hornet and flying a few hundred feet above his team of twelve combat wasps. They had been flying in the standard V formation for about ten miles when Teasor spotted something dark at an altitude only slightly higher than his.

  Looking at his radar, he determined the dark object was only five miles from him and his group. Still looking at his radar, the dark object showed to be one large blip, then suddenly became many blips on his screen.

  Feeling slightly alarmed that the object became many, he radioed his group. “Captain Teasor here. Everyone form up next to my position. I’ve located something on my radar and whatever it is is coming right at us.”

  Several reported that they had seen the same thing on their radars and quickly flew up to their commander’s altitude and formed the V formation with Captain Teasor at the point.

  It wasn’t long before all of Ogre 3 could see what was flying in their direction, and anxiously awaited Teasor’s orders. The objects were cylinder-shaped and had short fixed wings. Whatever they were they were not animals and they were the same size as the combat wasps and numbered thirty in all.

  “Ogre 3 to Colonel Hammer. Colonel, you need to bust ass to my pos. I think we are about to engage some kind of alien fighters.”

  Before Hammer could respond, he heard Teasor say, “Evasive maneuvers, evade, evade.” The communication was lost. Hammer ordered the three hornets in his group to follow him to Ogre 3’s location.

  “Ogre 1 to Captain Slain, over.”

  “This is Slain, go ahead.”

  “Ogre 3 is engaging a new group of alien fighters. I’m heading to their location as we speak. Locate Captain Teasor on your sensors and come join the party. We may need support. Hammer, out.”

  Aboard the USC Striker, Commodore Jeeves had just heard the call from Colonel Hammer. He turned from his co-pilot seat and said, “New alien fighters. Well, this might be intriguing, Captain. I suggest we do as the Colonel ordered and join the party without dawdling.”

  “Hold on to your bionic butt, Commodore. There will be no dawdling.”

  When Ogre 3 began their evasive maneuvers, the alien craft broke their formation at the same time. The odds were against the pilots of Ogre 3 as each ship had two, and sometimes three alien ships attacking them.

  The alien fighters began shooting a bright yellow pulse-type weapon from the nose of their ships. Flying his wasp, Lieutenant Cargon had picked up three of the dark ships and the lead one fired his weapon. Cargon’s wasp took a hit and his wasp became statically charged for just a second. He could feel a surge pass through him but he nor his ship became disabled.

  The lieutenant pulled back as hard as he could on his joystick and climbed vertically then brought his wasp down and behind his attackers. When his weapon’s indicator locked on the nearest alien to him, he fired two quick shots from his ion cannons, hitting the alien’s ship.

  The alien’s ship glowed blue for two or three seconds then started a downward spiral and didn’t pull out of its dive, then ten seconds later exploded on the ground. The remaining two alien ships began to make a long turn to Cargon’s left and he stayed on their tails as they turned.

  To his right he saw a wasp turn a bright yellow, then a few seconds later turn yellow again, then the wasp exploded. When he looked back, the lead ship he was chasing, exploded in front of him when he heard, “You're welcome, Lieutenant.”

  Recognizing his voice, Teasor said, “Thank you, Colonel. Glad you’re here, sir.”

  Less than a minute later the other three hornets attached to Hammer showed up and began engaging the aliens. They began making a large number of kills as their hornets had twice the firepower than did the combat wasps.

  Ogre 3 had lost a total of three wasps before the additional hornets became engaged but now that the aliens were taking big losses they did something no one was expecting. The remaining alien fighters gathered up and pointed their ships toward the stratosphere and within seconds they were gone.

  “Captains Slain and Sokolov, this is Hammer. The alien fighters have disappeared into the stratosphere and I need your Battlecruisers to pursue and report back if you find them.”

  “This is Captain Sokolov. Colonel, I saw them when they left and headed up to see if they were heading to a mother ship, or what their purpose was in leaving the battle. I was only thirty seconds behind them and when I left the planet they were not on any of my sensors. I can’t see those small fighters having jump capabilities but they must have, because they are gone, Colonel.”

  Hammer thought those ships couldn’t be jump capable. If they do have the technology to jump they must be further advanced than any aliens we’ve seen so far. I’ll definitely be having a discussion with Allen about this.

  “This is Ogre 1. Colonel Hammer to General Dubois.”

  “Go ahead, Colonel.”

  “General, the fighters have disengaged and left the planet. Captain Sokolov went to find them once they left Planet Ogre’s atmosphere and reports they seemingly disappeared. Did Colossus have, or get a fix on them as they left the planet?”

  “We did see them for just a moment, then our sensors showed an anomaly at their location. Admiral Allen wants you to leave Captain Sokolov in charge of the Ogre mission and return yourself to Colossus immediately, Dubois, out.”

  What the hell is that all about? Leave the mission and report back to the Colossus. I’m guessing the anomaly they saw has them fairly nervous and want to talk about it.

  Hammer contacted Sokolov and told him he was in charge until he returned. When Mikal asked why he was going to Colossus, Hammer said he couldn’t say but would fill him in when he gets back.

  Chapter 4

  Standing in Room Forward was Admiral Allen, Vice Admiral Petrov, and General Dubois as Colonel Hammer entered the room. When Allen saw Jak come in he said, “Now that Colonel Hammer is here, everyone please be seated.”

  When they took their seats, Allen hit a button on a remote and down came the large screen from the ceiling. Before pushing the second button Allen said, “What you are about to see Colonel, is the anomaly General Dubois told you about.”

  On screen was the remaining group of alien fighters heading for a distortion in an area only a mile away. The aliens flew into the anomaly then everything disappeared. No fighters and no more anomaly.

  “Admiral, would you run that back to just before the fighters entered the anomaly?” Jak asked.

  Allen ran the movie loop back and froze the screen. Jak walked over to the screen and took the pointer attached to the left side of the screen and pointed it at the anomaly.

  “Sirs, I may be wrong about this but I’m fairly certain we’ve just seen our first stealth capable alien ship. And if I’m r
ight about them having stealth capabilities, why would they just turn tail and run?”

  “Well, first, let me say we all agree with your assessment of the anomaly being a stealth ship. It is plausible that if it was a ship it might have only been a transport ship and didn’t have any weapons,” Dubois said.

  “I’m not sure I concur with you on that point, General. An advanced race with stealth capabilities wouldn’t send a hauler out to recover fighters without any way of defending themselves during recovery of their fighters,” Petrov suggested.

  “I tend to agree with Anatoly, but the bigger question is from all of our research on the possibility of developing stealth technology, every engineer the USC had working on the stealth project all agree that any cloaked vessel would have to shut down stealth mode so they could use their weapons, or allow their fighters to disembark or return and land on the ship. Stealth is supposed to be under the same restrictions as our shield technology.”

  “I’m all for trying to capture one of their ships so we can gain the knowledge to have stealth capabilities of our own. I know you are thinking how in the hell are we going to do that and my answer is at the moment I don’t know. But it is something we need to put on our bucket list,” Hammer said, with a smirk.

  “I am wondering what they were doing on Planet Ogre. Maybe we will find out the further we get into the Ogre mission.”

  “Maybe so, General,” Jak said.

  Jak spent the next hour briefing his commanders on what they had encountered so far on the planet. When he was finished, Dubois ordered him to go back and take command of the mission again. Jak would do as ordered but he had a lot of thoughts on his mind and his way of thinking didn’t coincide with his superiors.

  I understand the need to survey the planet for reasons of future colonization, but I would think Planet Ogre would be our last choice. We will be ants against giant lifeforms on the planet and would have to spend the first several years eliminating species after species before our people could make a go of living there. Hell, look how long we’ve been on Earth and have never ridden ourselves of cockroaches, rats, mice, and not counting the millions of other insects that are tucked away somewhere on Ogre. Not only that, but now we have mysterious aliens wanting the planet for their needs. Who in the hell were those guys?

  ****

  Back on Colossus, a serious problem had come forth and in the Bio-Dome was Kuda Black, the only agronomist on Colossus, talking to Chief Engineer Gavin McManus.

  “Chief, I’m telling you something has gotten into our water supply and whatever it is is making my plants sick.”

  “Miss Black, I’ve checked all the filtration systems as you requested and found no contaminants. I do need to check the three 20,000 gallon water storage tanks to make sure the problem isn’t coming from there. Give me until noon and I will meet you back here around that time and give you the results of my investigation.”

  As Gavin started walking away, Kuda said, “If you do find my tanks are contaminated, you do know what that means don’t you?”

  “Yes, we would need to find fresh water out here in the damn cosmos or we will all starve to death. Does that sound about right?”

  “Right as right can be, Chief. I’ll be praying you don’t find that to be the source of my plant's illnesses.”

  ****

  Colonel Hammer had just re-entered Planet Ogre’s atmosphere when he was immediately contacted by Major Hoser, Commander of Ogre 2.

  “Colonel I see you’ve made it back. I have you at ten miles from my pos. You have got to see this.”

  “It better be something amazing, Major. I need to get back to Ogre 1 to talk to my men for a sitrep.”

  “I wouldn’t have called you if it was anything but, Colonel.”

  “Alright, vectoring to your pos right now.”

  As Hammer came upon Major Hoser, he saw one combat wasp circling the area along with the major. He looked down at the area they were circling and that’s when he saw it. A 1200 foot long rectangular shaped hole in the surface. The width of the hole was nearly 600 feet.

  The location of the hole was a considerable distance from the rest of the other Ogre teams and to the north of the massive landmass.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Wait until you look down into the hole, Colonel,” Hoser said.

  Hammer positioned his hornet over the middle of the hole at an altitude of 500 feet above the hole. When he looked down into the hole, he estimated it to be 1500 feet deep, and the first thing he noticed besides the depth of the hole, was elevators, and there were many of them positioned at various levels. The next thing Hammer saw made him swallow hard, for it was what looked like a central command structure for an alien race. The structure resembled a monstrous King Crab, only this crab’s legs were tubular and attached from the command structure to perfectly cut holes in the side of the earth.

  “I’m sure I don’t have to ask if you’ve been recording this so, what is your opinion of what you found, Major?”

  “Oh it’s definitely alien and I’m gonna take an educated guess and say two more things, Colonel. It’s a military command center, and I think it belongs to those alien fighters we just engaged a couple hours ago.”

  “Exactamundo, Major. My thoughts exactly. Give me five minutes to talk to Dubois and then send the video directly to him. You copy?”

  “Yes, sir, I copy.”

  Major Hoser sent the video of the complex to General Dubois. Dubois immediately called Admiral Allen and asked him to meet him in Room Forward. After reviewing the video, Allen ordered all Ogre teams off the planet and to return to Colossus immediately.

  As usual Colonel Hammer didn’t agree with the admiral’s orders. He felt they should investigate the command center if for nothing else but to investigate their technologies. But Allen had a feeling that if they didn’t leave the orbit of Planet Ogre they might very well have to face a large alien attack force, and they had already proved they were not friendly.

  By the time the Ogre teams were assembled and picked up by the two USC Battlecruisers it was almost dark. Twenty minutes later all Ogre teams were in the hangar bay of Colossus. The USC Striker and Perseus were in their jump formation, along both sides of their command ship.

  The Human’s next jump point was far away to another huge star named Alpha Xeno. The Battlecruiser Perseus came out of jump, immediately followed by the Striker, then Colossus.

  All three ships went immediately to RED ALERT! It was terribly unfortunate for the Humans as they stumbled into what was possibly the Hive homeworld. Their jump put them 125 kilometers from a super planet. The planet was bigger than Neptune back in the Sol system where Earth is located. Never have Human’s eyes seen a rocky planet the size of the one they were looking at on their screens and there were at least fifty Hive nests in close proximity to the three USC ships.

  Ten of the rotating Hive nest ships were docked to an enormous round structure. The structure could easily handle a hundred or more nests at the same time. All three Human ships began to take fire from as many as two-hundred Hive fighters. The ships had their screens up and were safe from the firing fighters but the shields were quickly being depleted of their energy.

  “All ships. Set your ships to jump to these coordinates and jump on my command,” Admiral Allen ordered.

  Allen knew they would have to drop their shields during the jump stage, and figured with a couple of seconds before their jump, he would use the Annihilator Beam on the giant circle shaped docking structure.

  Vice Admiral Petrov made a quick announcement ship-wide and instructed everyone to go to their pre-designated safe locations. Everyone was practically running over each other to get to where they needed to be.

  “Fleet, on my mark. Jump!” Allen commanded.

  The two Battlecruisers jumped first, while Colossus hung on for another second or two. “Masto, fire the beam on my mark. “Hit em in the breadbasket, now.”

  With their shields lowered for o
nly a second or two, the beam fired. The lower left quarter of the Hive’s space dock turned into a large fireball. The Colossus was taking a lot of damage from the alien fighters before the massive ship jumped.

  The jump coordinate was to a location several light years from what they thought was the Hive homeworld and when the USC Battlecruisers were waiting for their command ship, they grew anxious as to why it hadn’t appeared right behind them.

  Colossus suddenly appeared and it had several areas that were outgassing and leaving a long trail of materials behind it. On board, all hands responsible for such an event were quickly working on plugging holes and extinguishing fires.

  “Admiral, this is Commander Stavens. My infirmary is filling up with injured citizens and I’ve been told we have eleven dead. I need some assistance with setting up a critical care area outside my office.”

  “Acknowledged, Doctor. I’ll get a team headed to your clinic. If you require anything else just let me know.”

  “Admiral, Chief McManus. I need for you to keep Colossus moving at a crawl, sir. We have over two dozen projectiles continuing to drill into our outer shell and the less friction against them the better, Admiral.”

  “Do you need any extra hands, Chief?”

  “No, sir. I’ve got me plenty of help. Hope to get the projectiles ejected back into space and repair the holes within a couple of days.”

  “Keep me informed, Chief.”

  “Aye, Aye, Admiral.”

  Since neither of the Battlecruisers had maintenance personnel on hand, they both needed to head to Colossus’s hangar bay for their repairs. They hadn’t taken nearly as many hits from the Hive fighters but still had enough that needed attention, and quickly.