Op File Revenge
Call Sign Warlock Series
J. Clifton Slater
May 2018
A Galactic Council Realm Novel
Books by J. Clifton Slater
Call Sign Warlock series
Op File Revenge
Galactic Council Realm series
On Station On Duty
On Guard On Point
Clay Warrior Stories series
Clay Legionary Spilled Blood
Bloody Water Reluctant Siege
Brutal Diplomacy
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The use of medical and psychiatric terms and procedures are my interruptions from research and should not be taken as coming from a medical professional.
I would like to thank my editor Hollis Jones for keeping me on track and not allowing me to meander off into the weeds.
Thank you for selecting this book for your reading pleasure.
J. Clifton Slater
[email protected]
Call Sign Warlock
Prelude
Months earlier on a damaged Constabulary Escort ship.
Heavy Rain came through the hatch firing controlled bursts. When Stone Angel joined him, the two Earth Elements decimated the four Constabulary Troops guarding the approach to the Escort’s Bridge. Team Leader Warlock stepped from the stairwell, took in the scene, and issued orders.
“Thunder Eagle. Fire Dove, mount,” she instructed as her Sky Elements followed her onto the deck. Then, Warlock advised her Strike Kill team, “We’re moving fast, people. Earth’s stay with your Sky Elements, forward.”
As the Sky Elements crawled along the top corners of passageway, more Troops appeared from the side entrances to the Bridge. But Fire Dove and Stone Angel on the right targeted the Constabulary Troops coming from the left. Thunder Eagle and Heavy Rain focused on those coming from the right. While the team caught the newly arriving Troops in a moving crossfire, Warlock concentrated on the Bridge crew.
Two fell from her rounds, two ran for the side entrances and two jumped into the tube connecting the Bridge with Combat Control. They vanished as the door slid closed and the elevator dropped out of sight.
“Stone Angel. What and where is our target?” asked Warlock. Before he answered, the Team Leader told her Sky Elements, “Dismount. It’s too hot to be up high.”
“Give me a minute to located the CPU for communications and the hard drive,” the Right-Side Earth Element replied.
“Heavy Rain. Cover our exfiltration route,” Warlock directed her other Earth Element. “Thunder Eagle. Fire Dove, cover the entrances.”
“I’ve located the hard drive,” advised Stone Angel. He dropped onto his hands and knees and began crawling across the Bridge. Incoming from both sides crossed just a half meter over his head as he reached out and began unscrewing the hard drive.
The tube from Combat Control flashed, signaling the elevator was about to rise back to Bridge level.
“Warlock. Troops coming from the stairwell,” Heavy Rain reported. “I’ve taken damage to my leg, moving behind a panel.”
Warlock squatted watching the tube and assessing the situation. With two of her Strikers engaged at the side approaches, Heavy Rain wounded and guarding their escape route, and Stone Angel working on removing the hard drive, Warlock realized she needed another fighter. The only available reinforcement was her pilot, Lieutenant Piran.
‘J-Pop, need help,’ she typed, ‘Trapped on Bridge.’
Then the car in the tube from Combat Control rose and she aimed at the door. It opened. Instead of an armed Constabulary Troop, four grenades lay scattered on the floor of the car. In the blink of an eye, all four exploded.
Warlock flew back as fragments of metal peppered her body and tore through her body armor. The focused explosions from the narrow opening launched her halfway across the Bridge.
She blinked as pain throbbed from her right leg, her got and her right shoulder. Time must have passed because her team medic suddenly began speaking to her.
“Warlock. Talk to me,” ordered Fire Dove as rushed to his team. A quick check and he realized she was out of the fight and would be lucky to live through the withdrawal. “Hold on. Let me stop the major bleeders and I’ll shoot you up.”
“Forget me. Got back in the fight,” she whispered. “I called J-Pop. Leave me and finish the mission.”
“Not a chance,” the team’s medic replied as he injected a combination of pain killers and antibodies. “You brought us in and we’ll bring you out.”
But his words of encouragement were lost on the unconscious woman.
***
Master Sergeant Alberich knew she was hurt and immobile. By concentrating, she managed to fight off the effects of the pain killer and judge the rate of firing before her mind floated away again.
“Warlock, you look awful,” J-Pop said as he scooted up beside her.
Her eyes were glassy and unfocused. She managed a painfully slow turn of her head.
“J-Pop, welcome,” Warlock mumbled, “to the party.”
“I think we’ve over stayed our welcome,” he answered as the pilot grabbed the shoulders of her armor. “Sorry if this hurts.”
“Fire Dove has been generous with the joy juice,” she replied.
Then blackness closed in and Warlock’s fate was in the hands of her team and the Navy pilot.
Op File Revenge
Chapter – 1 Factory Specifications
“Anesthesia, ready?”
“Ventilator, oxygen analyzer, and scavenger system are calibrated for a thirty-two-year-old female. Excellent health. Let me rephrase that, she’s super fit. Ready when you are, Guga.”
“Environmental, ready?”
“Exterior set, interior on your order, Doctor Melamina.”
“Molecular, ready?”
“My Petri dishes are warmed up and ready to go. And, the parts are on the shelf.”
“Cardiopulmonary bypass station?”
“Readings are optimal on the Heart–lung machine, Doctor Melamina.”
“Orthopedics, ready?”
“This would be much easier if we simply replaced. Some solid titanium would out live the patient.”
“That’s not an option. The Navy wants her rebuilt to factory specifications. And that means no metal in her body.”
“In truth, living bone is more flexible than any alloy and the body is able to heal minor injuries. Orthopedics is ready, Guga.”
“All stations report at optimum levels. One final thing. Music, play,” General Surgeon Guga Melamina stated into her headset. Over the speakers a bass guitar popped six rapid riffs and a drum snapped a punctuation on the run of notes. After three rounds, a lead guitar mimicked the bass giving the beats a richer feel. Then, a gravelly voice came over the top of the instruments. Every station on the surgical ring picked up on the singer’s energy. When the bass guitarist walked his fingers up the scales and the crooner hit a ragged high note, Doctor Melamina ordered, “Environmental. Clear the room and open the pressure chamber. Let’s get our Sailor fixed up.”
“I believe she’s a Marine, Guga,” the Orthopedic Surgeon pointed out.
“Right now, she’s a broken piece of meat. We’re going to fix that,” Doctor Melamina commented. “Anesthesia, I am lowering the surgical module.”
“Opening and equalizing the pressure chamber with the room,” Environmental announced. “Thirty-Seven Celsius, thirty-one, twenty-nine, stabilizing at twenty-five.”
***
In the sealed room at the center of the surgical ring, the condensation from the different temperatures cleared. The doctors and technicians watched through the glass or obser
ved on their monitors as a section of the ceiling separated and lowered over the patient.
A tube and two tentacles emerged from the module and the three appendages twirled in tight circles. As the section came down, the tube entered the patient’s mouth and the tentacles snaked down her nose.
“I have her. Vitals are good. Putting her under now,” the Anesthesiologist reported.
“Lowering the saw. As we game planned, we’ll repair her right leg and right shoulder, before we crack her chest,” Doctor Melamina spoke as she manipulated a set of controls. “Preference thoracic?”
“Leg first. It’ll go quickly,” the Orthopedic Surgeon stated. “Remember when we used lasers for surgery?”
As the ultra-fine saw blades spun up to ten thousand revolutions per minute, the articulating arm unfolded and the sharp edge hovered over the patient’s right thigh.
“That was before my time,” Guga said. “I can’t imagine the problems with trying to reattach cauterized tissue.”
“The laser cut down on bleeding. Although, we needed to scrape off the sealed ends and sew them together before closing,” the Orthopedic Surgeon reminisced. “I see four foreign objects imbedded in the shattered femur.”
“I haven’t looked that deep,” admitted Guga as she made an adjustment. The blade sank through the skin and muscles. Blood and tissue spurted from the deep cut. “Molecular? You getting that?”
Conical shaped pans dropped down from the surgical module and the splatter was sucked away.
“Did I mention she is super fit. I haven’t seen this amount of muscle cells since we worked on that professional wind-kiter,” the Molecular Surgeon stated. “Good filter and separation.”
“Let’s see what we’re dealing with,” Guga suggested as she spun a dial. The variation of ground penetrating sonar tracked along the thigh. With the blood and soft tissue filtered out, she observed the metal fragments. “How they missed a major artery, I’ll never know. But they did. Extracting foreign matter.”
Tongs lowered between the splayed flesh and plucked out a jagged thumb sized piece of metal. After three more excursions into the cut, Guga stated, “The leg is clear.”
The Orthopedic Surgeon gripped levers and lowered a smaller saw, clamps and a suction hose into the gash. Moments later, a clamp and the hose deposited sections of shattered bone onto a tray. The tray vanished into the wall.
“Molecular. That’s all the fragments,” the Surgeon announced. “Sending the length to you now.”
A few minutes passed as the singer hit a low note and held it. Through the windows, the surgical team watched across the sealed room as the Molecular Surgeon bent to his work.
“Good adhesion to the collagen scaffold. Cellular mush is responsive,” he mumbled from the cell growth station. “We have a live femur bone and tendons. Cutting to measurements. Sending the segment.”
“I have the section,” the Orthopedic Surgeon reported as he guided a scoop under a length of something long, round and smeared with an oatmeal like substance. “Wrapping and sealing the scaffolding around the ends. Measurements are good, tendon insertions are stable. Doctor Melamina, you are cleared to close.”
“Paste, please,” Guga ordered and another tray from Molecular slid out. A claw dropped to the tray and picked up a large syringe. After liberally squeezing a layer of the paste composed of the patient’s cells and selected stem cells on both sides of the incision, Doctor Melamina brought down a stapler and a flat edged clamp. Along the thigh, the clamp pressed the sides of the patient’s thigh together and the surgical stapler clicked sealing the wound. “Now to the shoulder.”
“Our patient, Diosa Alberich, is a Master Sergeant of Marines,” announced the technician at the heart–lung machine. “Diosa means Goddess and Alberich means Elf King. I guess that fits.”
“What are you talking about?” inquired Guga as the spinning blades approached her patient’s shoulder.
“It fits her military handle, Doctor Melamina. She must be a wizard in combat to earn the nickname,” the tech explained. “Her call sign is Warlock.”
***
Almost thirty-six thousand kilometers below the Orbital station where the surgical team repaired Master Sergeant Alberich, a motor strained as it pulled a stump from the soil of planet Dos.
“Hey boss,” called a man from the cab of the stump extractor. “We got to do this in just a couple of days?”
“If you want the bonus, then yes,” Wesley Abel shouted up to the operator. “I’ve got a dozer and a drill rig waiting on you. You may not care about a bonus, but those guys do.”
“I read you, boss,” the operator acknowledged. He closed the cab door, put the machine in gear and drove off to deposit the tree stump on the edge of the cleared area.
Wesley laughed, shook his head and, after lifting his right leg into the off-road vehicle, he climbed in. When you spend your life on construction sites, something was bound to get dinged up. For Superintendent Abel, it was his knee.
***
The knee prevented him from doing the work and luckily, the owner of the construction company moved Wesley to management. Although he still got dirty and spent weeks away from home, at least he was employed. Gratitude, wanting to bury his head in the sand, and a little greed made him take this rush job. Out in the mountains of the great forest, one hundred and sixty kilometers from the nearest town or major road, the isolation was enhanced when the Marine sentries, on the logging road, collected all the PIDs.
The money and bonus were worth the lack of civilized comforts but being far from home didn’t relieve Wesley’s heartache. After years as a single man, he’d met Amya Harleen when she and her two children rented the house next door. It started with a stuck door, then a leaky faucet, and became shared backyard barbeques. He bought a ring and, after getting permission from Natalie and Pierre, confirmed bachelor Wesley Abel, prepared to ask Amya Harleen for her hand in marriage.
On the eve of Amya’s seven-year-old son’s birthday, Amya didn’t come home. Frantic calls with Natalie and Pierre ended when a squad car pulled up in front of the house. Amya had left her job and stopped off at several stores. She lost track of time and the afternoon winds of Dos hit a few minutes early. It wasn’t clear who swerved into whose lane, because the delivery truck and Amya’s car both ended up in a ravine. The driver of the truck was still in intensive care and Amya’s funeral was scheduled for the day after Wesley left for the project.
Natalie and Pierre hugged Wesley and made him promise to come and see them at their Aunt and Uncles when he returned. They explained their mother would understand his absence from the grave site.
***
Wesley pulled the four-wheeler up next to the bulldozer.
“Level me a road to the marked area so the rig can reach it,” he ordered pointing to a spot in the center of the treeless area. “I want that hole partially drilled before the winds come up.”
“You got it boss,” the heavy equipment operator replied as he cranked the motor.
Once the blade cut into the soil leaving a flat surface, Westley waved the drill rig forward.
They had about four hours before the one hundred and twelve kilometers per hour afternoon winds came roaring across the job site. It would blow strong for three hours before gradually trailing off after three more. That would kill another day as the company hadn’t sent out spotlights for nighttime work yet.
The auger bit moved three meters of dirt before the top of the rig swayed and Wesley signaled for it to lower the boom and secure it for the day. The crew climbed into the four-wheeler and they retired to their anchored trailers. Outside, the wind howled as the crew ate dinner.
***
“Wesley. What are we building?” asked an ironworker. “A circus tent out in the middle of nowhere?”
Glancing up at the tall center pole and the five shorter poles, Wesley answered truthfully, “I have no idea. But if it is a circus tent, it’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”
Ar
ound the perimeter, men with wrenches bolted together a curved exterior wall. But that wasn’t the big show. The excitement came in the form of a helicopter flying in a section of roof with windows. Once the section was balanced on the perimeter wall and bolted in place, ironworkers scrambled up the curved surface. Another section arrived and they joined the segments together.
By the time the winds swept in, the domed roof rested half complete. Per Wesley’s instructions, the completed segment faced the west. He stood by the trailer’s window until the sun went down, praying the roof stayed in place.
The next day, as they bolted in the last section of the roof, a Navy shuttle touched down on the landing strip.
“I’m Kaisa Tuulia,” the Marine Corps General said introducing herself. “Are we on schedule?”
“Yes ma’am. We’re bringing in the prefab housing units tomorrow,” Wesley explained. “And my fencing contractor will be putting up the fencing and the biggest playground gym set I’ve ever seen.”
Tuulia laughed and commented, “Everything does seem a bit oversized.” But she didn’t explain why.
***
The compound featured the six towering poles. Most of the area under the windowed dome was open except for the buildings with three and a half meter ceilings and double doors. All the grass and topsoil had been stripped away and an odd, reddish colored moss was planted over black sand. Once the moss was planted, the crews were instructed to wear oxygen masks. A fence two meters from the perimeter wall rose to join the roof where it curved downward. In an odd way, thought Westley, the compound resembled an aviary for large birds.
A covered walkway ran from a guard shed to a building outside the dome. Double fencing enclosed the area. Wesley squeezed his vehicle through a side maintenance gate and drove into the dome. He stopped on the perimeter road between the fences. Because of the environment, he shut the door in the dome wall before continuing the drive as he looked for final issues. There was a lot of money in bonuses if the job was completed on time. One more check to verify the specifications were met and he’d get in his truck and head home.
Op File Revenge Page 1
