Rachart dismissed the commanders and began reviewing the sensor data again to ensure he had the proper lay of the land.
He saw the three beings standing at the entrance to the Temple but could not make them out.
Was it the strange being and his crew?
But that would mean they had foreknowledge of his attack, this would explain the narrowing of the canyon of course.
They had known and had time to set up a counter, but there was only three of them.
Rachart did not believe in easy fights,
not when the enemy had the knowledge it was coming, he would have to keep an eye out.
There may be other traps here.
His men lined up, the troops in front holding the electro-shields, which snapped to life, creating an energy barrier in the shape of an oval that covered the soldier from head to toe,
they tensed and prepared for the assault.
They would not see this coming Rachart smiled to himself.
CHAPTER
FORTY
FORTY
For Those About to Rock
Blake heard the transports land,
and the troops unload, he paced the area in front of the mouth of the canyon. Every so often he looked out to see if the troops were visible.
He knew they were there and that they would come soon. He checked his weapons for the 10th time, mostly from nervousness,
and as before they were loaded and ready.
He reviewed all the preparations he had made to see if he had missed anything.
Again, he had covered his bases as best he could.
It was only a waiting game now.
They had to come, and they had to come down that path to reach their objective.
It only took another 5 minutes before Blake heard the shuffling of marching boots on the hard dirt in the canyon. He tensed as the first line of 5 soldiers in full armor marched forward reaching about midway to their location and the front row knelt, placing there right arm across there body. Blake looked on in confusion. What the hell were they doing, just kneeling down waiting?
He lifted his gun and fired a round down range at the line of troops, as the shot reached the kneeling troops a bright flash spread just before the five soldiers and then,
nothing no one dropped no one screamed and no sound of metal hitting metal.
Blake was confused until Rom walked over to him. “They are using Electro Shields, they will repel kinetic and energy rounds allowing them to stay safe behind them” as Rom finished a group of another five soldiers leapt over the first group and rolled to 10 feet in front of them,
they dropped and knelt. Blake’s stomach dropped, he had not anticipated this, they had managed to null his killing field. The Commander must have seen the canyon for what it was and prepared.
How could Blake have been so stupid,
of course, the commander would,
he would have, given a similar position.
Blake sighed
“This is about to get a whole lot worse,
prepare for battle looks like we are fighting here, close combat.” Rom tapped Blake on the shoulder, give it one-minute captain, I have a bit of a surprise of my own” Rom smiled a wolfish grin as did Xera. Apparently, he didn’t get the memo and was rather annoyed by it.
“What,” he said with a little too much edge to it, but Rom didn’t notice he was watching the troop lines as they progressed,
one jumping over the previous to kneel. They would be on them in another 10 hops. As soon as they were within 8 leaps of their little group,
and as Blake was tensing for a hand to hand battle, Rom screamed for everyone to get down.
Without thinking, Blake dropped and then looked at Rom who held a device in his hand.
With another even more wolfish grin,
the sizable bull-like being let out a howl and pushed a button the device. Instantly from the rear of the soldier’s explosions were heard,
stepping forward at 10-second intervals.
Blake watched in fascination as scores of troops were either blown apart or thrown off their feet as the charges that Rom and Xera had planted and then hidden from the sensors with small stealth modules began to detonate in order.
The soldiers in the front who at first seemed smug in their armor as they advanced were suddenly looking around, for any place to run but as the canyon was narrow.
All they could do was try to move forward,
and as soon as they were out of the shield,
Blake put them down building up bodies at the mouth of the canyon on this end.
More tried to surge forward, some understanding what was going on decided to move back,
but the crowd was too strong, and they were swept forward to die on the hill of bodies piling up.
Blake laughed, damn if Rom had not anticipated this possible scenario.
“Thank you, Rom,” Blake yelled as he fired his gun into the oncoming wave of soldiers.
After the explosions died down, it took another few minutes for the troops to realize it and retreat behind the hill. The ES Modules had been destroyed so all they could do was use the bodies as cover and ensure that Blake or his team could not climb it to fire down on them.
This meant five soldiers at the top of the hill laid down cover fire. Blake, Rom, and Xera took cover behind rocks they had placed.
Every once in a while, when the shooting died down one of them would poke their head out and fire a shot at the hill,
most hit home sending Soldiers flying backward, not penetrating their suite’s but the foot-pounds of pressure from the kinetic round snapping there neck back and causing injury or death.
The only way to kill these guys were to aim in the soft spots of the armor Blake had used that knowledge to add to the wall of bodies.
Rom seemed pleased with himself
“Got em good captain, really fucked them up”
he said with a broad grin.
“Blake shot a smile at him
“Yes, you did buddy, and good use of fuck,
now we have a little breathing room until that commander orders them to charge.”
Rom’s smile faltered as he thought about it,
Of course, the captain was correct, they could not maintain their position, and with so few options the answer was an overwhelming force to take the position and hope for only a few casualties.
But the commander didn’t know about their enhancements it would be a fight.
Rachart heard the explosions and knew instantly what had happened, he had underestimated them severely, that would not happen again.
They had planted explosives and made them
invisible to sensors now at latest count he had lost
1/3 of his force to that little stunt.
They still had the advantage of numbers,
but he was not one to spend the blood of his troops lightly. Rachart looked over the data and the positions from the sensors on the transports coming down from the ship.
He called to his com officer
“Get me in contact with the flagship”
Rachart went over the data while he waited,
if this worked, it would be tight. But this would be able to get close to the enemy with a lot of cover and very little loss of troops.
The com officer handed the communicator to Rachart he keyed it and contacted the tactical station
“This is Rachart, I need a surgical kinetic solution at the following target, pause 30 then launch the kinetic, confirm single round for surgical strike.” He let go of the talk button and listened as the tactical officer on the flagship confirmed his orders.
He switched channels and then contacted the commanders in the canyon,
requested that they pull back.
Blake watched as the troops pulled back from the entrance removing themselves from the hill,
he could guess what they were going to do and smiled. If Kree was on the ball,
this was going to b
e good. Rom slid over to Blake, still maintaining cover. “Captain, they mean to send a kinetic round probably hitting close to us, this will disrupt our cover and also give them a lot of debris in the air with which to advance.”
Blake nodded, probably something the size of a softball I would think he said looking up.
Rom began to get up, we should retreat and find shelter, even one that size will do significant damage, sir. Blake motioned Rom down,
“Wait a minute, this is going to be good, I really wish I was a fly on the wall in that ship.”
Blake said as a wicked grin spread across his face.
The tactical officer aboard the flagship began to program the round for launch, then something odd happened, his screen flickered, in fact,
all the screens on the bridge did.
He lifted his hand from the console and waited to see if it happened again.
Once he was satisfied it wasn’t his doing,
he resumed setting up the launch.
When he was about to hit the execute command the all the screens on the bridge went blank.
The whole bridge crew began checking data and settings as they looked at each other with confusion.
The captain called the engineering level to see if there had been any power fluctuations,
but as soon as he got on the line,
three strange beings appeared on the screen.
They stood there for a moment then the large bald one began to slap his head and yell
“woot woot-woot.” The frizzy-haired one turned to the one with an odd haircut and said,
“Hey Mo” The captain was at a loss,
he did not know which species this was or more so why they were filling all screens on the bridge.
The captain was dumbfounded
“Check our sensors, I need to know where this is coming from, tactical continue your bombardment, this is a distraction. The sensor officer spoke softly, but still, the captain could hear him.
“Sir, all sensors are offline, all communications are offline, in fact, everything is offline, except that,”
he said pointing at the screens.
The Captain began barking orders,
but ultimately, they were useless, the fleet was dead in space. Kree sat aboard the Revenant his eyes closed with a nanites strand attached to Blake’s cell phone.
On his orders Kree had, using one of the tachyon transmitters worked his way through the flagship’s firewall and into the systems,
once taking them over it was like a cascade, he had full access to the entire fleet network used to transmit orders and data.
Once through the internal impenetrable firewall the ships maintained to cordon off the public interface to the ship's network, he fed the video and disabled all functions within the ship.
Essentially the fleet was dead in space.
And unless they gained control back in the next 6 hours, they would fall into the planet’s atmosphere. Kree didn’t know who the Stooges were,
but the captain thought it would be funny to use “Stooges” to rattle the fleet.
Humans have such odd senses of humor Kree thought as he fed the video from the phone into his QC and out to the ships. Rom looked up and cocked his head.
“They should have dropped the bombardment by now” he looked at Blake
“what did you do?” The Captain just smiled “Stooge Power, my friend” he said chuckling.
Rom didn’t know what a Stooge was,
but apparently, it was powerful enough to stop the fleet. If Blake had access to that kind of power,
why had he not used it before this Rom wondered? He would have to ask the captain if they got out of this alive.
Rachart had tried three times to contact the ship, but nothing, no communications,
data feeds or anything coming from the fleet.
He wondered if they had left or possibly been destroyed. Either one was devastating,
and it didn’t matter which, he was on his own with no support.
The Colonel Slammed his fists against the table where the last updated data was, causing data-pad consoles to jump off the table and onto the floor. “Get me the commanders,” he said in a soft but menacing tone to the nearest Jr. Officer.
It took a few minutes in all the confusion,
but again, the field commanders stood before him.
He always chose to do orders in person instead of by com, it was easy to intercept orders, or create false orders and communicate them,
so by actually giving them face to face,
they would know the validity and be able to ask any question to ensure they understood.
No commander could ever say he didn’t get the orders. Rachart’s eyes went from face to face and saw the same thing.
The commanders were rattled, they had been left on planets before while the fleet dealt with space threats, but never had they completely lost contact with them. They didn’t like it, and it showed all over their faces,
Rachart had to squash this, this kind of anxiety was contagious down the ranks and could lead to mistakes that would get soldiers killed,
and he would not have that on his watch.
These were his soldiers; his responsibility and he would get them home after a successful mission. “Alright, we still have a job to do,
I know we have lost contact with the fleet,
but we have seen no debris, and the voice of the emperor wants that data, so either there is a break in communication that will be fixed soon,
or the fleet is dealing with something else.
Either way, we are on our own.
But we will complete this mission, and when we do, we will regain contact with the fleet and get off this rock, do you understand.”
They all stiffened and acknowledged the orders with a yes sir.
“We know where the enemy is, there are no more tricks left, we have been over every inch of that ground, that means its six hundred against three.
I like those odds, what we are going to do is this….”
Blake was hunkered down wondering how long before the soldiers would try their last option,
it was the one he was hoping they wouldn’t try.
But he knew it was there last option and odds were on their side.
Blake and team were in a great position and could defend it for a while, but sooner or later the soldiers would overwhelm them.
The Captain turned to Xera and Rom
“Listen up, their next move is their last, they will try to get as many soldiers through that pass into the small open area to allow them to distract us, thus allowing them to move more soldiers and in a short time overwhelming us.
So we are going to station ourselves in that small area and use that last bomb to blast a hole we can use as a firing position,
once they start to overwhelm us,
we fall back to this position,
maintain cover fire and reevaluate.
This is our alpha fallback with the entrance to the temple as our beta fallback. Everyone understand?” Rom and Xera nodded, Rom, pulled out his last explosive, hunched over and ran to the center of the clearing, both Xera and Blake kept their guns trained at the hill of bodies in case they came back. Once the explosive was set Rom ran back and told the other two to get down.
A minute later the explosive went off, showering dirt and rock over all of them. Blake stood up and looked at the result, there was a crater the size of a half Olympic pool and roughly 5 feet deep.
“Damn Rom next time you want to use less explosive,” Blake said glancing at the big bull.
Who gave him a sheepish look in return,
“Sorry Cap, that was the smallest explosive I had” Blake shook his head, but he was smiling,
“Well I bet they heard that one” he tightened his grip on the gun and did a hunch run for the hole. The others followed and soon were set up in defensive positions and waiting for the final assault.
Captain Elvera – The Temple
THIRTYdfgegqeergwe
While they were waiting for the assault to come,
the initiates were facing the wrong way when their world suddenly went dark, they dropped to the ground, and a small black figure flitted down from a roof area and into the entrance quickly plucking the small darts from the initiates necks.
Elvera raced down the foyer using the shadows leaving the sedated guards in her wake.
So far, she was on mission. As Rachart had told her, the assault would be the distraction,
her job, however, was to ensure the capture of the data in the mainframe while the Colonel kept any defenders busy.
She scanned left, and right her enhanced vision piercing the dark shadows, catching motion back to the left, she melded into the shadows using an Empire chameleon suit to blend in turning the same color as the wall she slid along until she reached crossroads in the hall.
Standing to one side was another door guard,
with a flick of her wrist she sent a stun dart out of the launcher. The guard dropped, and she dragged him into the shadows. Elvera slunk down the hall to the next door which was not guarded.
This must have been where this last guard was going towards.
She opened the door and slid in to reveal a large well air-conditioned room full of squat black boxes along the walls, she smiled,
this was her destination.
Two guards circled the room carrying staffs and keeping a wary eye out. Using her claws,
Elvera jumped up and attached herself to the ceiling, using the suite to blend in.
In a few moments, the guards had circled the room, and both approached the door, once they reached just under her and both were within reach,
she used the dart guns on her wrist to knock them both out.
Elvera dropped to the floor and looked around,
the data was hers, now all she had to do was find it.
She pulled the wire from her wrist console and began attaching it into the ports of the servers, doing cursory searches to scan for the data.
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