Daisy, Gabby and Caroline waited at the second point. A ship came in hot ahead of the others. A four missile volley destroyed it before the others arrived. The remaining fleet was given its orders, ships’ clocks were synchronized and the ships jumped together to their final targets.
The Queen Elizabeth arrived first, was attacked first and drew blood first. From the time the Queen Elizabeth engaged the first enemy destroyer until the time Alexander, Buddy and Daisy converged on the last enemy cruiser from three directions and each put a volley of four missiles into it destroying it, the battle lasted forty-seven hours twenty-eight minutes and twelve seconds. They had almost hated the thought of killing that last ship. Combat crews that good were hard to find, but a combat crew that good on the wrong side of the law could be too dangerous to allow to escape.
The eight convoy escorts had all sustained damage. One had lost so much of its reactor cooling capacity that it shut down one reactor. It would be able to get to the shipyard on its own power, but not as quickly as it came out. None of the other convoy escorts were damaged so badly as to impair their space flight worthiness. The entire flotilla of rag tag ships that had flown out from the depot was gone. Every one of them had been killed. Of course some of them had not been on their side which complicated things somewhat but not for very long. Many of the pilots, both men and women, never properly adjusted to civilian life. Life in retirement lacked the excitement and danger they craved. They knew the risks when they joined the force and paid the ultimate price.
Valerie, along with her crew, Whitney Jones and Brad Winter, had been lost. Alexander had suffered a hull breach. Aida and Delilah survived because they had suited up and reduced cabin pressure before entering the battle. Aida had suffered a concussion when the missile that struck Alexander’s right wing had blown a hole in the cabin. Isaac awaited her return so he could evaluate her injuries. Buddy and Daisy had both suffered hull breaches, but their crews had come through better than Aida. They were bruised from the jostling around, but would not need medical attention. Half of Buddy’s vertical stabilizer was gone and large chunks had been torn out of his heat shield. Daisy’s hyper drive was destroyed. The only way she was going anywhere was by hitching a ride.
Rachel glazed over reading the reports. Peter would be here soon. In her heart, Peter had always meant safety even if in reality Elizabeth was better capable of dealing with threats. Peter was home. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes holding back the tears. For a moment she wanted to be the little girl again hiding in the tiny room on Peter’s flight deck that she did not have to share with anyone. She did not want to be responsible for the deaths. She wanted it all to go away.
Peter’s arrival meant that the ground war would start. Rachel had held him back not wanting to risk the kinds of attacks she had made against other troop ships. Peter arrived exactly on schedule and the ground war began.
COLONY SERVICE - CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SIX COMBAT-HARDENED VETERANS and half a hundred liberated slave targets conferred in the relative safety of the cave opening behind the waterfall. The emptiness in their eyes was as much a reflection of the emptiness of their spirits as it was of their stomachs. A shipment of slaves had come in the day before and there was discussion as how to approach their liberation. The raid on the weapons shed had been costly. Too many more of those and there would be no more “Liberators” to fight off the “Keepers”. “Jet” gazed off into the night sky. “Rush” sat beside him trying to figure out some way to do more than merely harass the Keepers. “Sky” sat with her back against the wall, exhausted. “Water” held one of the children that had been injured in the raid in her lap. “Rambo”, the only white man in the group, although his skin had turned such a deep bronze that he could pass for one of his black colleagues, was trying to convince the others that a raid on the fuel storage tanks at the motor pool would give them the strategic advantage they needed. The only white woman in the group, “Slide”, listened to “Rambo” with bored detachment. She had heard all this before.
Suddenly a bright white ball over the horizon turned night into day. Conversation stopped. Silently they watched, not daring to hope. Another ball of white fury appeared to their right. Another appeared to their left. Two more, close together. One directly overhead. They could see pieces glowing red as they fell into the atmosphere. The children were afraid. The adults were cautiously hopeful.
“She has come,” Jet said.
“If that’s her,” Rush replied. He wanted to hope, but it had been so long.
“No one else would dare,” Sky said.
Several bright balls opened up at the same time.
“Lotta people dyin’ up there,” Water said.
“Ours or theirs,” Rambo mused.
“Some of both, I guess,” Slide offered.
The battle raged through the night and the following day. The “Liberators” elected to say hidden in their cave. By nightfall, the battle in the sky was over. From their hideout, there was no way to know who was still standing.
In the morning, the Liberators heard the familiar whistling sound of an AARV on a low altitude run. They rushed outside in time to see it whiz by and observe its white color with the blue six pointed Star of David on the underside of its wings.
“It could be a decoy,” Rambo warned.
The AARV fired a missile and a helicopter crashed to the ground.
“Except it’s not,” Jet said.
A moment later a high flying fighter jet’s wing blew off and the jet spiraled to the ground.
“We should stay put until we know who they are,” Sky suggested.
Jet ushered everyone back into the cave ignoring the complaints that they should be out hunting because they were hungry.
That afternoon Jet heard the crunching sound of foliage being crushed under the weight of a heavy tracked machine. Motioning for the others to stay behind, he took off the remains of his jacket and handed his weapons to Sky. He wandered slowly to the clearing next to the stream and waited with his arms crossed. The Super MMARV rolled into the clearing. The machine was impressive. Solid black with a pointed plow that radiated heat Jet could feel from where he was, it displayed small blue six pointed stars on several of its flat surfaces. An impossibly tall Marine Lieutenant in combat armor called the detail to a halt. With smooth precision, the Marines repositioned to guard against an ambush. Jet smiled. It was nice to see professionals in action. He gently uncrossed his arms and held them out away from his sides. With no shirt and only tatters left of what had been his pants, Jet wanted this tall white man to see that he was no threat, except that even unarmed, Jet could be a threat if he chose to be. The approaching white man knew that, too.
The Marine Lieutenant consulted a photograph. “Soldier, state your name!”
“My friends call me ‘Jet’ to my face.”
“Have you been injured in combat?”
“Yes.”
“Where were you assigned the first time you were injured in combat?” Jet smiled, “It wasn’t the first time, but the one you’re asking about, I was assigned to the battleship we called Elizabeth. That wasn’t her real name. Her captain was Rachel Solomon Cohen.”
The white lieutenant smiled. He reached for his comm. “Tell the captain we found him.”
The lieutenant cleared a place on the ground with his foot. He knelt down and started drawing in the sand. It was a rough map of the “Keepers” compound showing the high walls that guarded it. Jet guessed that the block walls would be of little protection against the cannon the MMARV carried. When the Lieutenant was done, he looked up. “Jet, we need to take this command and control center. What do we need to know about that we can't see from the air?”
Jet liked this man. The proof of friend or foe was in the action not the words. There was nothing phony about this man. He was a soldier and he had a job to do. You had three choices. You could fight alongside him, stand aside or die.
Jet reached down and drew circles on t
he map, “Gun emplacements.” He drew a large square, “Underground fuel storage.” He drew a series of smaller squares, “Underground slave quarters.”
Sky slowly walked down the slope from the cave entrance under the watchful eye of the Marine detail carrying Jet’s jacket and his weapons. The Lieutenant shuffled through a stack of pictures until he found the one he wanted. He held it up and compared it with the woman who stood in front of him. He slowly reached in his pocket and pulled out a device doctors used to read the medical transponders. Jet smiled. This one had blue tape wrapped around it and had the name “Isaac” written in indelible marker on the tape. Issac was forever forgetting where he put his down and the blue tape made it easier to spot.
The Lieutenant reached for his comm. “Sparky, relay to the captain I have positive ID on two of her old friends.” The Lieutenant called two of his men. “Take one of the small MMARV’s and go after this gun emplacement.”
Jet held up his hand, “Wait.” He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. His troupe of warriors silently materialized out of the woods. Jet pointed to two of the older boys and called them forward. “You go with them.” He pointed to his eyes. “Eyes and ears. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go! Eyes and Ears,” Jet commanded.
Two Marines in full combat armor and two barefoot half naked bronze boys followed a coal black machine into the woods.
The Lieutenant reached for the rifle Sky had given to Jet. He inspected it. “Gunny!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Get these people real weapons!”
A sergeant pulled six rifles out of the back of the MMARV and handed them to the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant distributed them to the six adults standing before him.
Jet examined the weapon and felt its heft. It was heavier than what he was used to, but it had a third barrel. “Laser sight?”
“Laser. Don’t point it at anything you don’t want to kill. Pull this trigger half way back and that’s the laser. Pull it all the way back and that’s the rifle. It fires a 22 caliber long rifle. They are armed with exploding shells. If it hits something solid it will explode. The other trigger is a grenade launcher. If you point this at one of us, we will kill you. Understand?”
Four more sets of Marines disappeared into the forest with MMARV’s and pairs of half naked escorts. An AARV whistled by overhead and an explosion was heard in the direction the detail had come from.
“Time to go to work,” the Lieutenant said.
The Lieutenant broke his detail into squads and assigned one of the Liberator adults to each squad. The remaining children were ordered to spread out and hide in the woods so they could spot any of the Keepers that tried to escape or lead the slaves who did escape to safety.
The super MMARV’s rolled to the top of a hill overlooking the Keepers base. They raised their cannon barrels and lobbed rounds into the types of targets that would cause secondary explosions. They concentrated their fire on the munitions shed the Liberators had attempted to raid and were rewarded by a series of explosions that continued long after the MMARV’s had moved on to other targets. The artillery barrage continued into the night. With the exception of the gun emplacements which fell under the MMARV’s shells, no attempt was made to assault the complex directly.
Weakened by the barrage, the air traffic control tower fell during the night and crushed the building beneath it.
The coming of the dawn revealed an ugly surprise. The Keepers had tied naked men, women and children together in a line around the block wall that protected the compound. Lt. Rattigan ordered a cease fire. Jet asked to see his field glasses. He scanned the line for a moment. He handed the glasses back. “Lieutenant, see the short guy between the two blond girls?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a keeper,” Jet said calmly.
“I see him.”
“Look to his right. Fourth woman over is a keeper,” Jet said.
“Short dark hair?”
“Yeah.”
“They don’t think we can tell the difference do they?”
“My guess is that they think they can get away by hiding with the slaves.”
“Won’t the slaves betray them?”
“Not if they’re afraid,” Jet said sadly. “Most of them have only been here a couple of days. They may think these people are slaves who arrived before they did.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Starting with the short guy, we number them. My people can pick out the Keepers. We pick targets and fire on one command. We don’t rush forward because they will have weapons hidden nearby. We wait to see who starts shooting before we advance. We hold our positions as long as we can. The slaves will not run. They will fall to the ground. The Keepers will run. Them we kill. We advance with the MMARV’s until we breach the walls. Then it will be house to house until we root them out.”
The AARV’s ceased operation because all the defending aircraft had been destroyed. The only sound was the sound of the flames from the burning aircraft caught on the ground and the buildings that had been destroyed by the barrage. Even the native fliers hushed their calls in anticipation of the mayhem that was to come.
“Fire!” Lt. Rattigan whispered the word and dozens of rifles around the compound fired at the same time. Around the compound, bright red chasms opened up in the chests of people chained together. Snipers hidden behind the wall stood and opened fire. Laser rifles made short work of most of them, blinding them first and then killing them. The keepers had not actually been tied to the slaves. They had only appeared to be tied and when the shooting started, they went for their weapons. The Marines chose their targets carefully firing slowly and deliberately from the cover of the forest. When enough of the keepers had fallen, Lt. Rattigan ordered the MMARV’s to advance on the wall. Slaves fell to the ground screaming and crying.
Two dozen small brown bodies appeared out of the forest. Their coloration provided perfect camouflage as they slithered across the open ground to cut the slaves free. They cleared an area in the wall that opened to a street. The super MMARV’s blasted a hole in the wall and drove on through pushing the debris out of the way with their plows. The Marines followed the MMARV’s fighting house to house and building to building until after dark when they finally met no more resistance.
Liberators waited in the dark forest for Keepers they knew would try to escape. One by one, they caught them and killed them. By morning, the Marines and the Liberators had gained access to all areas of the compound. The survivors were brought to one of the hangar buildings that had been spared in the barrage. Liberator teenagers walked through the thousand people huddled in small groups around the open space. Occasionally they would pull one to his feet. A few times when they pulled a man up the woman and children seated near him would stand and plead for his life. The Liberators would motion for them to sit and move away. Sometimes they sat the person back down, but most of the time they killed the people they picked out swiftly with a single knife thrust to the body or across the throat. The carcass was dragged outside and thrown in the growing heap of bodies to be incinerated.
The oldest of the surviving teenagers, many of them having died in the battle, spoke softly to Jet. Jet turned to Lt. Rattigan. “There are no Keepers here. There are only slaves. You may bring your people down.”
The MMARV’s cleared the runway and the process began. The colonists and their equipment were all down within the first week. As soon as he was unloaded, Peter and the damaged P I ships along with their crews headed back to the depot for repairs.
COLONY SERVICE - CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE QUEEN ELIZABETH had been on station for a month when a Space Force convoy including two of the new carrier ships arrived. The Admiral in command of the fleet immediately requested permission to come aboard the Queen Elizabeth. The man who entered the air lock seemed young to be an Admiral.
“Captain Cohen, my father sends his fondest regards,” he said as he shook her hand.
“Your father?�
�� Rachel asked.
“You know him as Peanut Butter,” the Admiral said with a grin.
“He was such a nice guy! How is he?”
“He and my mother bought an ostrich farm of all things and they are quite happy living in the boondocks. I don’t visit them often because I can’t stand the smell.”
Rachel laughed. “We had such great chats while we sat on station after the battle was over. I would have liked to get to know him better.”
“He always said if I had the chance to serve on one of your ships to do it. After you left the service, he sent me in other directions. He made sure I volunteered to serve with the C O’s that mentored their people. I made rank at first opportunity and here I am.”
“What can I do for you?” Rachel asked.
“You need to leave as quickly as you can. Have you read the intelligence reports your people have been sending in?”
“Some of them,” Rachel replied.
“It seems you have opened a can of worms extending all the way back to Houston. There are angry people headed in this direction and we would rather we dealt with them than you. We’ll help you pick up your toys. I have enough of my own and don’t need yours. Besides wherever you go they will probably come in handy.”
The Queen Elizabeth’s mechanized artillery, airborne drones and personnel were carried back to the ship on the Space Force’s giant shuttles. Twenty-four hours after the convoy arrived, the Queen Elizabeth headed back to the depot adjacent to New St. Louis.
The P I ships were repaired. Aida recovered and a new P I ship and crew arrived from Eretz with the latest improvements. Two weeks after they had arrived, the Queen Elizabeth headed out again.
Pirates had established a base on the planet Faye Anne had selected for the next colony. They immediately surrendered when they heard who had arrived. They agreed to surrender in return for a guarantee of amnesty. David Shapiro and the Colony Service security people worked out an amnesty deal that forgave their prior crimes as long as they remained in that system and committed no further crimes. Recognizing that the alternative was a battle they could not win, the pirates surrendered.
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