“Aye, Admiral.”
Colin felt the drive shift as Implacable glided away from the gravity point and slipped into FTL, as if the fleet was trying to make up for lost time. The armchair admirals would bitch and moan about the delays, as if their hindsight was somehow superior to Colin’s foresight. He supposed it was, but he didn’t have hindsight. Not yet. He’d settle for surviving long enough - and keeping the fleet intact - so the critics could bore him to death with their accounts of what they would have done later. They never seemed to grasp that they had the advantage of knowing far more than the man on the spot, at the time ...
He remained tense until the squadron dropped out of FTL and slid towards the planet. It was thoroughly unwelcoming, too inhospitable to serve as a penal colony. The LinkShip report had made it clear that the planet had an odd kind of biology - it wasn’t as dead as Mars or Venus - but one that was largely incompatible with most known races. Colin was surprised - and suspicious - the Tokomak had ever bothered with the world. It wasn’t as if they needed to establish a colony to stake their claim.
“The orbital defences are going live,” Karan reported. “They’re badly outdated.”
“Looks that way,” Colin agreed. “Take them out.”
His eyes narrowed as more and more icons appeared on the display. There were no battlestations, no giant orbital weapons platforms or gunships ... just a handful of automated platforms, barely capable of deterring a lone pirate or scavenger ship. The Tokomak had either never expected to be attacked or, more likely, had concluded there was nothing in the system worth taking. Or, perhaps, that mounting a hefty defence of a seemingly worthless world would be suspicious in itself. The planet - it didn’t even have a name, merely a catalogue number - might be hiding in obscurity.
But they wouldn’t put anything really sensitive out here, he mused. A weapons research lab would be better kept in their home system.
The enemy defences fired a handful of shots, all ineffective, before they were destroyed. Colin tapped commands into his console, dispatching marines to land on the various orbital and planetary installations and inspect them. The fleet broadcasted demands for surrender, promising good treatment to anyone who gave up without a fight, but there was no response. He wasn’t sure if the facilities were abandoned or if the enemy simply refused to answer. Or if they could hear him at all. The biosphere was so charged that teleporting was almost impossible. But a communications signal really should get through ...
“Admiral, Force Two is reporting that the gravity point has been secured,” Karan said. “Commodore Fairbank is requesting permission to deploy recon probes.”
Colin scowled. The problem the Tokomak had never solved, the problem that had kept them from deploying recon probes for themselves, was how to produce a miniature jump drive capable of two jumps in rapid succession. It took time to recharge, time that was normally never an issue for a jump-capable ship. But for recon probes, it gave the enemy a window of opportunity to destroy the probes before they could gather their data and return home. He would either have to expend hundreds of probes or ... or what? There were no other options.
“Tell him to hold the probes back for now,” he ordered, finally. The defences on the other side would be tougher, but ... he’d have to deal with that when the time came. “And to prepare the antimatter pods for deployment.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Karan said.
Colin could hear the doubt in her voice. He didn’t blame her. The recon probes were supposed to eliminate most of the problems with scouting gravity points, assuming they worked as their designers promised. But he didn’t want to reveal the probes too soon, not when the enemy had had ample time to prepare their defences. The next system was going to be a far tougher nut to crack. And he was going to have to take it at a run.
We want them to see us as unstoppable, he reminded himself, sternly. And we cannot afford to slow down.
He watched as the marines reported from the orbital facilities, such as they were. The locals had surrendered without a fight, something that relieved him. He took no pleasure in slaughtering enemy combatants who couldn’t do more than throw rocks at his ships, even if they refused to surrender. The facilities themselves were little more than basic production nodes, the smallest he’d seen outside primitive star systems. He wasn’t surprised. The system couldn’t support anything larger. No wonder they hadn’t been able to prepare a proper defence.
“Order all but two ships to head to the second gravity point,” he said. The planet was interesting, but he didn’t have time to waste. He certainly couldn’t attend to it personally. “I want to launch the next offensive as soon as we deploy the next assault pods.”
“Aye, sir,” Karan said. “The logistics ships are already on their way.”
Colin kept his face expressionless as Implacable altered course and glided away from the planet, drives humming as they prepared for the jump into FTL. The brief engagement hadn’t been particularly costly, although he knew they probably wouldn’t be able to repeat it. Any halfway decent tactician who looked at the pattern would deduce the attackers had been able to secure hard targeting data before mounting their assault, even if they didn’t know how. The Tokomak weren’t stupid. They might not be able to match human ingenuity, not yet, but they had to have a wish-list of technology they’d like to invent too. Would they deduce the LinkShip? Or would they assume humans had found a way to produce stealthed recon drones? They were pretty much the Holy Grail.
And just as unreachable, he mused. He’d seen the reports. It was hard enough compressing a jump drive into a recon drone, let alone rendering it as stealthy as a LinkShip too. Colin had no doubt the problem would be solved, in time, but probably not soon enough to be helpful, let alone decisive. And yet, if we can solve that problem, who knows what it will do?
He put the thought aside. It wouldn’t take long to deploy the next set of assault pods, then launch the assault. He’d smother the gravity point in missiles, even though his logistics chain wasn’t as firm as he would have liked. N-Gann was churning out cheap assault pods, but they weren’t as good as Solarian-designed units. He shook his head in quiet frustration. They’d have to do. The fleet was on the end of an unimaginably long supply line ...
No wonder the Tokomak invested so much blood and treasure in their fleet bases, he mused to himself. They knew how quickly they could lose control.
“The marines are on the ground, sir,” Karan reported. “They’re advancing on the main facility now.”
“Very good,” Colin said. “Keep me informed.”
Chapter Fifteen
Lieutenant Darryl Farnham kept as low as he could as the squad advanced towards the alien facility, feeling conspicuous in his armoured combat suit. The planet was a nightmare, environmental warnings blinking in his HUD every few seconds warning him not to even think of taking off his helmet. The entire planet seemed to be a sickly shade of yellow, from the yellowish clouds looming overhead to the puddles of sticky liquid he splashed through as they approached the alien base. He was all too aware that any contact with the atmosphere might prove fatal. The aliens had picked one hell of a place for a holiday home.
He scowled as the facility came into view, a cluster of domes built next to a single giant structure and a small landing pad. Perhaps it was a holiday home, or a set of biospheres ... he frowned as he inched forward, keeping a wary eye out for threats. There were no visible defences, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. He kept his sensors jacked up as high as they would go, alerts blinking up for every flash of lightning high overhead. His eyes started to hurt, a mocking reminder that the environment was getting to him. Mars had been a far more human environment.
The rest of the squad followed him, weapons at the ready, as he slipped up to the airlock. It was giant, easily large enough to take a pair of tanks. There didn’t seem to be any security precautions, although that wasn’t a surprise. Galactic-designed airlocks tended to let people operate them manually, with
or without access codes. Better to let someone into the airlock than risk having them die outside. Besides, it was unlikely they’d be able to get through the interior door. The system was designed to trap anyone who didn’t have the right codes.
He pressed the button, opening the hatch. The interior was as bland and boring as any other airlock, lacking even a row of environmental suits. He supposed that shouldn’t have been a surprise. A mere environmental suit would have melted, almost instantly, when it was exposed to the outer world. The squad followed him inside, constantly updating the orbiting fleet. Darryl was uncomfortably aware that they were expendable. It was unlikely there would be a second attempt to enter the complex, if the first one failed. The facility would merely be wiped off the planet by the orbiting starships and the purpose of the structure written off as an unsolved mystery.
The outer hatch closed behind them. Darryl couldn’t help feeling trapped, even though there was plenty of room in the airlock. He pressed his hand against the inner hatch, but it remained resolutely closed. He shrugged, then tried to hack the airlock’s control processor. It took longer than it should have for his suit to hack into the system, isolate it and then command it to run the cycle. The poisonous air was pumped out of the chamber before the inner hatch opened. Darryl kept his helmet on, even though the air was safe to breathe. Who knew what might be waiting for them?
He inched forward, his eyes flickering from side to side. The interior looked as boring as the airlock, stripped of every last hint of individuality. He glanced into a handful of rooms and saw signs the occupants had fled in a hurry, leaving behind everything from their personal possessions to a section of datachips, datapads and devices he didn’t recognise. He marked them down for later attention - Admiral Teller would have to decide if it was worth deploying a Sensitive Site Exploitation team - and then stepped through the next airlock. His suit blinked a series of alerts, warning him the air was no longer entirely safe to breathe. And that meant ...
His eyes widened as he looked around. He was in a giant room, a cross between a medical centre and a butcher’s shop. A handful of tables were placed around the room, each one surrounded by clusters of machines he didn’t recognise. And, on top of the tables, there were bodies. Human bodies. Alien bodies. They looked as if they’d been being dissected when the facility had been abandoned. Darryl was no stranger to horror, but his gorge rose helplessly. He had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up in his helmet.
“Sir ...” Corporal Patron sounded as though he wanted to be sick too. “What the fuck were they doing here?”
“I don’t know.” Darryl clenched his teeth until they hurt, trying to keep himself calm. It was hard, almost impossible. One of the bodies looked to have been a child, although it was so badly mutilated he couldn’t tell if it had once been human. Humans weren’t the only race with red blood. “There’ll be records somewhere. Find them!”
He forced himself to step back and survey the room with cold eyes. Twelve tables, each with a body ... four clearly human. Two more that might have been human. And six that were definitely not human. What the hell had they been doing? And why ... he wondered, grimly, if the whole display was a taunt, if they wanted to show off the horrors they were prepared to commit. Or, perhaps, if they’d thought they’d never be discovered. Darryl had seen terrorists who’d done just that, murdering bastards who’d turned into whimpering cowering beggars when confronted with justice. It was funny how they’d never realised they might not get away with it ...
“We’ll find out who you were,” he promised the dead bodies, although he knew he might not be able to keep the promise. “And there will be justice.”
***
“This is unbelievable,” Colin said. The report was sickening. “They were trying to engineer control structures into human brains?”
“Yes, sir.” Doctor Faith Roster sounded as stunned as Colin felt. “Basically, they took the precepts signed into law by the First Senate and threw them out the airlock. They were trying to make their victims naturally submissive to their commands, then devise a way to splice it into our genetic structure. They might even have come frighteningly close to success.”
Colin frowned. “I suppose that explains why they were doing it here,” he mused. “How close did they come?”
“I’m not sure,” Faith admitted. “The concept of engineering control structures, effectively robbing someone of their free will, was banned years ago. It was decided by the Mariko Commission that such research would eventually be perverted, whatever we did. If I’d come across traces of this sort of research back home, I’d be obliged to report it. Here, of course ...”
She shrugged, heavily. “I think they did come close to crafting proper control structures,” she added, slowly. “But they didn’t have any way of actually grafting them into us - or the other races - without massive surgical intervention. This is an order of magnitude more complex than basic gene-editing, Admiral. I think they saw it as a long-term project.”
Colin raised his eyebrows. “You think?”
“They took the main datacore with them,” Faith said. “We don’t know for sure what they were doing. It’s possible the research was entirely benevolent. And if you believe that, I have a lovely white house in Washington to sell you. A couple of careful owners ... shame about the others.”
“Quite,” Colin said. “If they did deploy it ... would it get us?”
“I don’t think so,” Faith said. “They’d never get it through the bioscanners. And if they did, somehow, our immune systems would handle it. But, given time, I imagine they could find ways to solve that problem.”
“Given time,” Colin mused. “Fuck. What were they thinking?”
Faith looked uncomfortable. “I imagine they wanted a bunch of slave races so enslaved they couldn’t even think for themselves,” she said. “That’s where their research seemed to be going.”
“Madness,” Colin said.
“Yes, sir,” Faith said. “If they’re actually designing viruses that can cross species lines ...”
Colin shuddered. “Madness,” he repeated. “Draw up a complete report, then ... we can decide what to do about the facility. It might have to be destroyed.”
“Yes, sir,” Faith said. “It might be ... politically awkward if this got out.”
“Quite.” Colin snorted. “Let me worry about that, please.”
Faith nodded, then left the office. Colin sat back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. Admiral Stuart would have handled it better, he was sure. No doubt there would be people complaining that he could have trapped the alien doctors if he’d acted faster, if he’d launched the offensive sooner ... he shook his head in irritation. He hadn’t known what lurked on the world, nor had he realised how much rested on his success. And ... it was clear, at least to him, that the aliens hadn’t come that close to a breakthrough. They hadn’t created something that could instantly turn an entire race into willing slaves.
Sick, he thought. What were they thinking?
He keyed his console. “Karan, inform the fleet that we will begin the assault on schedule,” he said. It was unusually fast, for him, but he wanted - needed - to try to trap the alien doctors in the next system. If he could get answers out of them ... he wondered, sourly, what the government would say when they heard about the alien research. Would they order a genocidal response? “And I want to alter the later stages of the plan. We’ll go with Theta-Three instead of Two.”
“Aye, sir,” Karan said. If she was surprised, it didn’t show in her voice. “I’ll see to it at once.”
“And order the antimatter pods to be deployed as soon as the LinkShip is in place,” Colin added. It would alert the enemy, but the enemy had to know the humans were coming soon anyway. “I want recon data as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
***
Hameeda hadn’t been told precisely what the marines had found on the planet, but she had monitored the fleet’s communications network
and she was perfectly capable of putting two and two together. The hasty deployment of a full SSE team, including a number of doctors and xenospecialists, suggested all sorts of possibilities ... none of them good. Her simulators churned the data and tossed out a handful of the most likely, starting with a POW camp. She hoped that was the truth. The other options were worse.
She steered towards the gravity point, watching as the lead wave of antimatter pods crossed the event horizon and jumped to Mercado. The enemy would notice, of course - it was hard to miss an antimatter explosion - but hopefully it would clear the gravity point and create a window where she could sneak through without being detected. She tensed as the second wave vanished, keeping a wary eye on the timer. If she jumped too soon, or too late, the entire exercise would be worse than useless.
But they have to have found something really bad back there, she mused as the last seconds ticked down to zero. She’d known she’d be going to Mercado, once the last system was secured, but not so quickly. Admiral Teller wouldn’t have bumped up the schedule if he hadn’t thought it was urgent.
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