The Belt Loop_Book Three_End of an Empire

by Robert B. Jones

  “Lieutenant Manciir, you’re with me. Let us retire to my ready room and have our meals,” Phatie snapped, then pointed to his coterie of personal bodyguards. “You men are dismissed until 0630 hours. Assemble on my quarters at that time and be prepared to accompany me on the inspection tour. And,” he said, pointing to one guard in particular, “Sergeant Poourde, if you show up in my presence again with your uniform not in pristine condition you will be buried in it. The blood splatters from your severed neck could not make your appearance any worse.”

  The sergeant looked down at his uniform. The garments were freshly laundered, neatly starched, his gig line was straight. Then he saw it. He must have brushed up against an oily surface belowdecks on his way to the Piru Torgud quarters earlier. There was a little smudge on the knee of his right trouser leg. It was less than two millimeters in width. “Understood, my eminence,” the man said with a tremble in his voice.

  “Dismissed,” Phatie said and waved his hand in disgust. He collected his aide Manciir and left the bridge.

  He was gone two seconds when Admiral Regiid ordered the blister to wipe.

  * * *

  Nood Teeluur had no other choice. He had to trust her. While he didn’t relish another trek into Colonial Navy territory, he had to admit to himself that her plan had some merit. It was bold, it was in keeping with his standing orders — his personal responsibility to do as much damage to the Navy as possible — and his training preventing him from straying too far off course.

  Coni Berger had successfully led him back to her hijacked vehicle and the effort to get it back into operation had only taken a couple of minutes. The ground car was an older model with a simple three-cylinder hydrogen motor. A loose coil wire was the culprit and soon they were on their way to her hidden farm, her safe house.

  “Watch your driving, Teeluur. We don’t want to get stopped by any local authorities. I don’t know about you, but I would not be able to produce a driver’s license. At least one that looked like me. The old biddy I stole this car from looks nothing like me.”

  He looked over at her and nodded. “How much further?”

  “About ten more kilometers. Maybe five or six minutes ahead. Look for a stone wall on your right; the driveway will be just over a small rise.”

  “And, you’re sure this place is empty? Seems to me if I were in charge of the search for you, I would look at all of your residences first. Maybe even station a squad of soldiers nearby, just in case you showed up. You know they’ll never give up on finding you.”

  “Get ready to slow down. It’s just up ahead,” she pointed. The feeble headlights on the old car carved out two diminishing cones of murky yellow light. This back road was not marked with striping or shoulder reflectors of any kind and the tunnel of illumination did little to pick out any details not in the center of the road. After a winding turn through an ess-curve Teeluur saw the stone wall to his right. He slowed the vehicle and prepared to turn. “This farm used to belong to my husband. He left me high and dry back when my daughter was born. Typical Navy scum.”

  He negotiated the turn into the long paved driveway. He saw several dim lights about two kilometers in the distance among a stand of scrub pine trees. “Still, don’t you think the Navy will have made the connection between you and this place?”

  Berger laughed. “Those incompetent fools. The deed has changed hands a dozen times since I lived here with that worthless piece of trash. I went through a straw purchaser and the place is recorded as owned by an investment firm on Elber. No way to connect the dots to me.”

  She thought like a Malguurian, Teeluur mused. More often than not, back on Canuure, many of the high-ranking officers in the MDF had hidden retreats such as this. Secrecy and subterfuge were items high on any list of personality traits where he came from. He was surprised to find the humans were pretty much the same. Slowly but surely he was beginning to empathize with the recently branded Admiral Berger.

  It was too bad as soon as he got his hands on her stash and documents he would have to kill her.

  PART FOUR: The Enemy Within

  Chapter 22

  The briefing room was crowded. Not only were the senior officers from the combined Second and Third Fleets of Elber Prime in attendance but also members of Lieutenant Mols’s Intelligence Service Department hovered near the back of the room near the coffee urn.

  At precisely 0800 hours Admiral Vincent Paine called for order. After a round of musical chairs and foot scraping the assembled throng settled into their places around the tables in the conference room. At the head table Paine silently looked over the room and waited for complete silence before he began his remarks.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We have a lot of ground to cover this morning and I want to get right into the heart of this meeting without further fanfare. You have all been recalled so that we may have a direct dialogue as to the recent events concerning the Colonial Navy of Elber Prime and the Second Varson War. Needless to say, you have no doubt heard of the passing of Admiral Standi and the escape of Admiral Berger. These events have left a void in the Admiralty that simply must be filled soonest. Our operational efficiency has been lowered to a point that it will soon affect all that we do here in the Fringes and the Belt Loop. We are spread thin and our resources are at an all-time low. Well,” he said somberly, “this situation must be rectified and the place to start is with our senior front-line officers.”

  He stood then walked to the window. As he turned to face the room again the morning sun reflected spikes of gold from his various metallic uniform adornments. Above the left breast pocket of his dark blue utility uniform were six rows of battle and unit ribbons on his medals rack, many with clusters, indicating that he had been decorated more than once for the same thing. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind in attendance today their leader was a battle-hardened commander with years and years of Fleet experience to back up his chiseled face and rough-and-ready demeanor.

  Paine clasped his hands behind his back and continued. “That ominous stack of orders on the table before you will correct the imbalance of leadership in the Admiralty and the Second and Third. Many of you here will be assigned to duties you may at first perceive as beyond your ken, beyond your training, your experience. Have no fear, your individual strengths — and weaknesses — have all been factored in. The round of promotions, effective immediately, will lead us along a new course and will steer the Colonial Navy in a different direction.” he took a few paces back to the head table and placed a steady hand on the stack of orders. “We are at a critical time in our history. Never before has the Colonial Navy shied away from our duties to those that have put their collective faith in our ability to provide safety and security to the worlds of the Colonial Alliance of Planets.” Pained looked down to the deck for a second and when his head regained its original position his eyes narrowed and his voice grew colder. “Now we have lost one of our worlds. Canno was obliterated eight days ago by Varson ships, using a new weapon of mass destruction the likes of which we have not previously encountered.”

  A mild susurration of disbelieving voices rippled through the room. Heads turned to heads, bodies leaned to whisper to other leaning bodies. Many had already heard this news, many had not.

  “From the reports reaching this office and the ship logs from several small boats that made it off Luna-II intact we have a grim picture emerging of what happened on Canno. The base at Yellin is gone. The shipyards on Luna-II are in ruins. First estimates put the number of dead at 710,000. As you may have already guessed, most of those casualties were civilian: husbands, wives, sons, daughters. Civilian contractors and support personnel. Out of that number we estimate almost 200,000 Colonial Navy personnel were killed almost instantly. Sixteen ships totally destroyed and the repair facility rendered useless. The war has been brought to our shores, ladies and gentlemen.”

  At this point several officers stood and shouted comments of outrage. Others just sat silently, staring at unseen
points above Admiral Paine’s head. Captain Uri Haad grimaced and looked down at his hands.

  “I will play for you the only surviving log recording made of the attack on Canno,” Paine said, regaining control of the meeting. “This footage was made by an outbound warship leaving Luna-II. The images jump quite a bit and the long view is somewhat distorted by the doppler waves from the boat’s various fields, but the story is there for you to see.” He signaled to one of his aides and the lights went down and the shades were lowered. The large view screen on the wall behind the head table sputtered to life.

  “Commander Volk from the Lake Michigan is responsible for getting these recordings to the Admiralty at much risk to his own personal safety; the Michigan had to be scuttled but Volk managed to save her crew, the ones still alive after the Varson attack on her,” Paine explained as the footage spooled up. Haad looked over his shoulder and saw several officers patting an injured sailor on his back. The man’s arm was in a sling and he had a couple of surgical bandages on his forehead. Commander Volk, Haad surmised.

  The room watched with rapt attention as the footage of the destruction of Canno spooled out. When the lights returned and the shades were raised, Paine said, “Ten minutes, guys and gals. Let’s take a small break. I know there are burning questions you want answered, but let’s ease our way into them with some coffee. There are also light pastries on the sideboard at the rear of the hall if you haven’t noticed. Take ten,” he repeated.

  The assembly didn’t have to be told again.

  Captain Haad milled around near his place at the table. He’d had enough coffee already. Eventually Captain Pax Curton ambled over and they struck up a hushed conversation about the events on Canno. Neither man had much else to offer the general discussion circulating around the room. When Robi Zane approached they noticed Niki Mols following him at two meters. While not really joining in their three-way, she seemed interested in the talk and on occasion Haad saw her avert her eyes when he looked her way. He could only speculate what was working its way through her Intelligence Division head. She would look down and fiddle with her broken arm every time Haad flicked a glance her way.

  “Man, that’s some shit there,” Zane said.

  “Now I see why those bastards were so intent on keeping us bottled up around Bayliss. They didn’t want us to stumble onto their raid on Canno,” Curton said.

  Captain Fuller joined the senior captains, coffee mug in hand. “Gentlemen,” he said in greeting. “The war gets too close to home, you think?” Fuller said between sips from the mug.

  “Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. With what I’ve heard about the new head honcho, the Varson are not going to stop there,” Haad said.

  “Meaning?” from Zane.

  Curton looked at him. “Meaning, if it was you on the Varson planning committee, where would you go next?”

  “I’d put my money on Wilkes,” Haad said. “Then Elber, Haines, what have you. I think he’s planning to walk his battle cruisers all the way to Ross, then Earth.”

  The three captains looked at him with sideways glances. He caught Niki Mols looking away again. Was she eavesdropping?

  “Personally, I think you give this madman too much credit, Uriel. I mean, I think he just got off a lucky shot at Canno. No way he can make the fold to Wilkes and beyond. Too much distance for those outdated ships of his. Where will he refuel? Did you think of that?” Robi Zane said.

  Haad hit him with a withering look. He was just about to jump into his shit when the lights in the room flashed twice. Time to reconvene. “And I think you don’t understand his tactics, Zane. I pray to God I’m wrong.”

  The group broke up and resumed their original positions. When everyone was seated again, Admiral Paine returned to the front of the room and stood next to the head table.

  “Okay. Settle down people. We need to push on. Lieutenant Mols and her staff have put together a briefing and her group will hand out a synopsis of what she’s been able to learn from her interviews of our Varson captive.” He waved a hand at the back of the room. Lieutenant Mols marched to the front of the room as her staff passed out a five-page written document. When Haad looked at the document, he noticed the IS logo, the Colonial Navy logo and the word SECRET stamped in red in the upper left and lower right corners of the cover sheet.

  Mols waited for a moment of silence before she started talking. She adjusted the straps on the sling carrying her left arm and the inflatable soft cast. “Thank you, Admiral Paine. Ladies and gentlemen, I won’t bore you with a litany of operational facts and figures that will probably counteract the effects of your morning coffee. In the document you have before you, I have outlined everything we have learned from Colonel Inskaap. He is now resting comfortably in the Base Hospital after being injured during yesterday’s crash at the stockade. Before you leave this briefing I would ask you to read the report in its entirety. This information is very sensitive and these reports will be returned to me upon your exit. Should you have any questions, observations, or other issues you feel were not covered in the material, feel free to contact me. My VOX number is on the last page.”

  Most of the attendees skimmed the pages and pushed the report away for a more thorough reading later in the morning. Haad did a quick read and discovered nothing new to add to his personal data base. Hopefully the others would digest this information and at least be current with the IS assessment of the Varson threat.

  Paine thanked his niece and waited a few minutes for the page-flipping noises to subside.

  “Now, let us turn our attention to another pressing matter. The trade delegation and the captured Colonial Navy ship Lake Tahoe. It is the belief of the IS folks that they are probably being held at some underground facility on a planet they call Rauud Mithie. See page four of your intelligence report for details. That Varson planet is on the outskirts of their Domain and to this date has remained undiscovered by the Colonial Navy. Once the hostilities around Bayliss are brought under control, I plan to seek volunteers for a Search and Rescue mission to retrieve our ship and rescue the trade delegation. Of course, I’m forced to assume they are still alive and the ship is still intact. From our dealings with Colonel Inskaap we know the Varson like to take apart our technology and try to reverse engineer it into their ship upgrades. Most of you unrestricted front-line officers have reported the results of that tinkering. Their new fleet is faster, better armed and better captained than the Varson gunboats we ran into years ago. After the promotion ceremony Friday at the War College, Admiral Geoff and myself will stand by for volunteers. We need four captains and four ships, with their associated tenders. The basic plan is to fold right into the Rauud Mithie’s space and launch a surprise raid. If what Inskaap has told us is true, since the entire planet is conducting its business underground, they should not be aware of our presence until we make planetfall. Then the rest is up to the Colonial Marines and the SWO teams.”

  Haad pulled his report back in front of him and flipped it to page four. There was a brief statement about the planet and a half-page star map with the appropriate astrogation references in a tight column next to the graphic. He figured the distances in his head. It would have to be a huge fold, something never tried before. It would be like folding directly from Elber Prime all the way to Earth without stopping. Even at maximum Dyson efficiency approaching uncertainty speeds, it would be a months-long journey with no guarantee of results once they unfolded at this Rauud Mithie. Then how would they manage the return voyage without replenishing stores?

  “Details and operational profiles will be made available after Friday’s ceremonies and I would hope this mission would attract our finest and bravest men. Crew selection will be strictly voluntary as well, so expect to ship out with different bridge crews and different ratings belowdecks.”

  Another round of man-to-man conversation rippled across the deck. Paine did not attempt to stop it. These men had a right to discuss what he just told them. He hoped they would. He needed
four men capable of cajoling four crews to undertake a vast cruise with almost certain danger waiting for them on the other end. If he knew his captains, he could have predicted the four names that would top the volunteer list. Too bad three of them were slated to remain in the Colonial Alliance’s core systems as Fleet Admirals.

  Once the room quieted again, Paine continued his canned remarks. “And that brings us to an interesting piece of information. The message you are about to see is one hundred percent ‘Eyes Only’ and should be treated as Top Secret or higher. The message is self-explanatory and was passed up the chain from Ross to Haines, Wilkes, Canno and finally to me here on Bayliss. The message originated almost eight months ago and has not been appended, amended or altered in any manner that we can detect. In other words, it has passed the sniff test and I personally feel it is authentic. It was delivered by courier boat to Weyring and ferried to Admiral Geoff. He viewed it and summoned me. We both think this is important and request that you listen and watch very carefully.” He motioned to Lieutenant Commander Ignat and the lights dimmed. One of the yeomen in the room hastily went to each window and hit the stud to lower the shades. Paine moved out of the way and stood to the left of the big LED view screen.

  After a few seconds the image flickered into pixellated life.

  The message began with an image of the logo of the World Integration Navy.

  The Navy of all Navies.

  From Earth.

  Chapter 23

  While Coni Berger slept the morning away, Teeluur examined every inch of the farmhouse. Not only was he looking for any hidden compartments in the rough-hewn wall coverings, he was also trying to discover any recording devices or hidden video cameras. Although they had formed a shaky alliance based upon mutual need, he still didn’t completely trust her. After piling into the house last night they had talked for hours and each time Teeluur had pressed her on the whereabouts of her hidden stash of cash and forged documents, she had not revealed their location. Now, in the thin light of morning, he was sure she was playing him.