by Dale Musser
“Tell Captain Mareoparen to issue the orders to attack,” I said.
Seconds later, laser beams started blasting the advancing fighters from the air. Other shots struck the palace, which erupted into flames where ever the lasers hit. I wondered if there would be anything left when we arrived to search for the tunnel passages. I was surprised when we landed in the palace compound moments later to find far less damage than what appeared to be the case from the air.
Our cloaked troopers managed to quickly and quietly disable the guards as we carefully worked our way deep into the palace. The designers and builders of the palace had done an outstanding job of creating a complex modeled after that of the last Emperor of China, though the buildings were all more modern and on a grander scale than those of Emperor Pu Yi. The main palace building, while patterned after the palace in China’s Forbidden City, was nearly five times its size and decorated in opulence beyond belief.
Using the Tottalax sleep weapon, we knocked out most of the remaining guards, making our progress smoother than I had anticipated – that is, until we reached the central part of the palace. There we met opposition forces that were better-trained and equipped than any we had ever faced before. It was obvious these were Ming’s elite warriors. Not only were they highly skilled; their equipment was superior to anything used by the Brotherhood outside the complex. They wore very sophisticated lightweight body armor and their helmets were fitted with the dampening devices that rendered the sleep weapon ineffective against them. They also had personal cloaking devices like our own, which probably impeded us more than anything else.
The inner rooms of the palace were equipped with automated laser weapons in the walls and ceilings. Many of my men were wounded and killed by these lasers when trying to overtake the elite guard. No matter what we did, our progress toward the tunnels had come to a standstill. Luckily for us, A’Lappe had long ago developed a silent, cloaked mini-drone that we could navigate singly or in configurations to aid an attack from behind enemy lines. It took some maneuvering; but eventually we were able to sweep the entire area and detect all of the cloaked warriors. Once the drone came in close proximity to a guard, a grenade would detonate and eliminate the threat. As the remaining guards recognized that the drones could not be disabled, they turned and fled in what we hoped was the direction Ming had taken. As we pursued the fleeing guards, we passed through an enormous chamber filled with scantily clad women cowering against the walls. Many of the women were obviously pregnant and I immediately felt ill, recalling similar scenes we encountered when we originally discovered Ming and his colonists on Earth’s moon. Back then he had been breeding women and eating the fetuses and babies so he could have meat, which had long since been lacking at the lunar colony. I prayed that he was not continuing his cannibal practices here, but I knew from his own horrid comments in the past that he had developed a taste for the flesh of human infants. The fear and despondency I saw in these women as we pressed forward in pursuit of the guards only made me want to catch and kill this mad man more.
Periodically, Ming’s warriors stopped to take up a station and fight. Each time we sent in more drones and killed the guards. Twice we had to call for more drones to be brought in from the MURDEN CLOUD, which had now relocated to the courtyard of the palace complex. With each section of the palace that we cleared, more troopers were brought in to evacuate the injured and the surviving slaves. Ultimately, the slaves would be processed at the MAXETTE and then transferred to my estate through the NEW ORLEANS, where they would be met and cared for by Jenira’s Women with Swords. Like these women, most of the Women with Swords had once been the slaves of Ming and treated in the same way.
Finding the entrance to the escape tunnel taken by Ming turned out to be easier than we anticipated, as we simply followed the retreating guards. Eventually, they led us to a large and lavishly decorated suite, where we found the entrance to the escape tunnel wide open. Apparently, in Ming's haste to escape, no one saw fit to close the hidden doors after they retreated. Not far inside the doors we could see that the tunnel sloped downward at an angle of at least forty degrees. A center rail was recessed into the ceiling for a monorail conveyance, but there were no remaining cars. Repelling lines were quickly anchored at the entrance and we used the ropes to aid our descent to where the tunnel leveled off about fifteen meters below. Three scouts descended first and proceeded cautiously through the tunnel, while the remainder of the troopers lowered themselves past the steep gradient. As we raced through the tunnels, I was relieved that my last treatment was timed well enough so that I could function near my peak strength. I could only hope Ming was heading to a site that my ground troops had located and that they had successfully barricaded the other end. I used my wrist com to contact Marranalis in the MAXETTE’s War Room for an update on the battle in orbit.
“The battle is going well so far, Admiral,” Marranalis reported. We’ve encountered far fewer ships than we anticipated and nothing with heavy armaments. Thus far, we’ve seen mostly patrol ships and fighters. We have yet to see any asteroid-ships on the sensors. There has been only one starship, which we put out of action early in the battle. We destroyed its hangar bay and disabled its GW propulsion system using slow torpedoes. It’s now sitting dead in space.”
“That’s good news but also troubling. There should be many more ships here to defend Ming, unless he’s not here at all. Have you heard back from the squads we sent out to secure the hangar sites at the far ends of these tunnels?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. So far, only one of our teams has located a site. The other two teams are still searching. Ming's hidden them well.”
“I’m in the tunnels now following his most likely escape route. If you can get a read on my location and project that out in a straight line from his palace, it might give some clue as to where the escape hangar is located.”
Just as I finished speaking, the tunnel opened up into a large cave where the track we had followed abruptly ended in a junction with four other rails that extended in different directions. Four of the rails, including the one we had been following, each contained a single parked rail car, but the fifth track had no car.
“That way,” I said, indicating the track with no car on it. “He had to have gone that way."
We’d only taken a few steps in the direction of the empty track when we abruptly came under fire from guards at the mouth of each of the four tunnels before us. I was glad to be wearing laser resistant body armor, as I took a hit to my left shoulder. Even though the armor prevented any serious injury, it still burned and I knew I would later see red or blistered skin from the heat generated by the beam.
Luckily, the monorails terminated at the tops of pillars, rather than ending at suspended brackets in the chamber ceiling. These pillars were large enough to provide cover and allow us to return fire. Once behind a pillar, I ordered half my men to cloak and creep out to neutralize the enemy. Evidently, the enemy guards had the same strategy in mind. Within moments, the entire expanse of the transfer station was engaged in cloaked hand-to-hand combat.
Friend and foe alike fought an invisible fight, creating a one of the most dangerous battle situations in the entire scope of wartime conflicts. With no clear way to identify a comrade, the team was at great risk of killing one of their own team. I had realized the potential for this scenario years earlier when Jenira fought with Sisopan. At that time, I solicited A’Lappe to invent a device to prevent us from making that mistake. He worked on the idea for months, but it was Jenira who came up with a solution. The mechanism was designed to alert troopers with an audible signal in the event of physical contact or cloaking field contact with a team member. However, even with the device activated, it was easy for accidents to happen. All troopers and security guards had been trained in cloaked close-range combat using these units and I have no doubt that this training saved many of my team during the conflict on this day.
Despite the visual restrictions, I know that I either killed or
wounded at least five Brotherhood troopers. As the fight began to wane, I signaled four of my men to move toward the entrance of the tunnel we suspected Ming had taken. Once assembled and while still cloaked, we advanced into the tunnel as the fighting still raged behind us. I took the lead – something I should have never done; but I tossed caution to the wind in my single-minded effort to get Ming, as I had too often done in the past.
We had progressed about a half kilometer before I suddenly realized that it was too quite behind me. I no longer heard the stomping of eight feet behind me; rather, the sound of only one pair of footsteps bounded toward me – and they didn’t sound like they were coming from standard Federation boots. I barely had time to react, dropping and rolling to the right just as I heard a swish over my head. I reacted quickly with a defensive sweep of my leg across the ground before me, tripping the invisible attacker that stood over me. I heard a grunt and a thud as a body hit the floor and the familiar sound of metal sliding across the hard tunnel surface. I glanced in the direction of the sound and saw a sword sliding to a stop against the rock wall. I quickly looked back in the direction of the thud to see the flickering image of a large man dressed in the uniform of Ming’s guards appear. He cursed as he tried to fix the cloaking unit on his belt. Within a few seconds the cloaking device failed and he became fully visible. I was still cloaked and I reached for my laser pistol and discovered it was missing. I must have lost it earlier in the hand-to-hand combat. Quickly, I raced for the sword just as my opponent did the same. The result was that we collided in mid-air and once more grappled with each other. I had a slight advantage, in that I could see him, but that advantage was short-lived when he body-slammed me into the rock wall behind us. The jolt was enough to damage my own cloaking unit and now the both of us were visible, facing off about three meters from the sword that laid ahead of us.
My opponent was huge – even larger and more muscular than Marranalis – but I knew that size really didn’t mean that much against a skilled martial arts expert.
“You! It’s you!” growled my opponent with a grin as he shook his head and cracked his knuckles. He began to advance slowly and deliberately toward me. “Ming’s gonna give me a huge reward for killing you.”
I noted the relaxed stance he was taking and I realized that this man had some degree of martial arts training. For a moment, I felt a tinge of fear that it might be some form of combat unfamiliar to me. I was right about that part, but I didn’t have long to think about it. His attack was strong and rapid, almost invisibly fast as his arms and legs became a series of blurs. I could block most of his moves, but I took a few hits that luckily weren’t serious enough to do more than jar me a little. I managed to get in a few shots of my own, but they seemed to have no effect on the brute that confronted me. My shoulder was starting to feel sore and I realized that the flesh under my body armor where the laser struck me earlier was damaged and raw. I forced myself to ignore the pain. The brute grabbed me in a body hug and began squeezing the air out of me. Thinking fast, I gave him a head butt so hard that I nearly blacked out, but it rattled him enough that he staggered and dropped me. At this point, our fighting had brought us close enough to the sword that it was only an arm's length from either of us. Before I could do anything to prevent it, my opponent reached out and snatched it by the pommel. I was laying on my back on the floor in front of him. I drew both legs back and kicked him with all my might in the middle of his stomach. He let out a loud “oof” and stumbled, turning away as he did so. Again, the sword dropped from his hand as his body twisted and began to fall. I heard the pummel hit the floor as I watched the giant fall in what seemed like slow motion, his body and legs still twisting away from me. Then the bloody tip of the sword blade began to protrude from his trunk as he dropped, forcing the full length of the blade to pass through his body.
“Admiral, are you alright?!” I heard from behind me. I looked to see five of my troopers running toward me.
“Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit winded,” I said.
“We became worried when we started finding bodies of our men farther back in the tunnel. Then we heard the struggle going on ahead of us and ran as fast as we could. We just got close enough to see him drop you before you kicked him. That was some battle, Admiral! That man isn’t human is he? Man, he’s big!”
“What’s happening back there?” I asked. “Is the fighting still going on?” I looked past him to see Padaran running with five more troopers behind him.
“Tibby, there you are! You gave us quite a scare,” he said. Then he quickly added, “Ming got away. Marranalis called and said that a cloaked ship took off just moments ago. They tracked it leaving the solar system at speeds three times the standard GW speed. The androids tried to follow, but the ship was way to…”
He was cut off by a loud explosion as the ground shook and segments of the tunnel began to collapse behind us. There was a strong gust of air followed by a thick cloud of dust. At the same time, the tunnel lights went out, after which everything fell silent.
“What just happened?” asked Padaran.
“I suspect Ming booby-trapped the palace to blow up. It’s a strategy he’s used in the past with his warships. If he can’t have it, no one can. That’s his credo,” I said as I switched on the light mounted in the front of my body armor. “Let’s just hope that he hasn’t blocked the other end of this tunnel. Send some teams back to retrieve any survivors. I need to get back to the MAXETTE.”
Traveling along the remainder of the tunnel was easy. About fifteen minutes later we arrived at an underground hangar where the escape ship had been stored. From there it was only a matter of signaling a patrol ship to respond to our location and fly us to the MURDEN CLOUD. From there I went immediately to the Cantolla Gate and passed back into the MAXETTE. I had barely stepped through the gate before my com beeped.
“Tibby here,” I answered.
“Admiral, there’s a call for you from Admiral Windangar. He says it's urgent. He sounded panicked,” said Marranalis.
“I’ll be there in a second,” I responded as I ran down the corridor.
As soon as I entered the War Room, Marranalis immediately brought Admiral Windangar up on the vid screen. I had no time to acknowledge him before he blurted out in complete panic, “Thank the stars, Admiral. We need help! Admirals Regeny and Kophious are both gone. Their ship is totally destroyed. We’ve lost a large portion of the fleet and the enemy is now between us and the stellar gates. We’re trapped! If something doesn’t happen soon to turn this around, we’re doomed. Even worse, Admiral, the stellar gates are still open and the enemy is sending ships through them into other sectors. We’re getting word of heavy casualties from our bases on the opposite sides of the gates.”
“Who is in command of the fleet now?” I asked.
“No one, sir. You’re next in command and no one here feels competent to get us out of this mess. Sir, we need your help! Right now!”
“Alright. Your carrier is the FAZTA’MINA, correct?”
“Affirmative.”
“I’ll be there as quickly as I can. I’ll transfer to the FAZTA’MINA and use it as my flagship. Since the stellar gates are compromised, I can’t bring you any more warships, Admiral.”
I disconnected with Admiral Windangar and began to issue commands as fast as my mind could sort them out. “Marranalis, issue orders in my name that all stellar gates Federation-wide are to be closed immediately. Afterward, you and I will be using personnel gates to transfer to the FAZTA’MINA.
“Captain Mareoparen, as much as it plagues me, we’re going to need to abandon our attack here and you’ll need to get the MAXETTE back to Federation space. Send the word out to the androids and Ruwallie Rasson to move into formation around the MAXETTE as you retreat. Once I get to the FAZTA’MINA, I’m going to open their hangar tube gates. I want you to configure the MAXETTE’s gates to match them. By the time your formation passes through the stellar gate, the FAZTA’MINA’s hangar tube gates should be
active. At that time, you’ll be advised to direct the androids through the hangar tubes. Once they’re clear, the Ruwallie Rasson fighters are to do the same, followed by half of the MAXETTE’s remaining fighters. If the androids object to participating in another fight, they’ll have to dock here. You’ll have to defend yourself until you can get back to Sector 1. Fortunately, those gates aren’t part of the standard gate system so they should still be open. As soon as you get back into Federation space, shut down the gates and head for the Capitol. Understood?”
“Yes, sir. Do you want me to get the MAXETTE to Glomar Rosa once we’re through?”
“No. It’s too dangerous, now that the Brotherhood has seized control of the stellar gates there. Besides, the MAXETTE is needed at the Capitol Station. It may already be too late, if the Brotherhood has managed to pass into Sector 1. Hopefully that’s not the case, but the MAXETTE has to defend the Capitol regardless.
“Marranalis, you’re with me,” I said as I headed for the door.
Fortunately, we had long ago created a network of Cantolla Gates connecting all the flagships. The transfer was quick; and it was immediately apparent when we passed into the FAZTA’MINA that the situation was dire. Troopers were rushing about chaotically. The smell of ozone told me that the ship had taken a hit at some point in the battle. I rushed to the War Room where a pale and sweating Admiral Windangar breathed a sigh of relief at my arrival.
“Thank the stars!” he said.
I ignored Windangar, marching right past him to the holographic display. “Marranalis, you're in command of the War Room now,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” he said as he quickly replaced the officer standing at the console.
“I want to see the extent of the battle scene and I need to know where we are in relation to all the stellar gates. Show me the entire scope of enemy and Federation ships,” I commanded.
