Gracie snapped back to the present. The colonel had handed a small PA to Dutch, who was sitting to the colonel’s right. Dutch took his time to read it, then held it up to his right eye. A moment later, he lowered it and passed it to the Marine next to him, a sergeant whose name Gracie hadn’t caught yet. No one said a word while this was happening. Gracie took the time to steal a few more glances at Captain Lysander. She had a pretty strong rep in the Corps, but Gracie didn’t know much about her other than her pedigree.
It took a while, but the PA made its way down the table to Gracie. She picked it up and read it through. It was assigning her a temporary and mission-specific TS-4 security clearance, which was sobering. As with all snipers, Gracie had a TS-1, so a T-4 was almost scary.
What the heck have I gotten myself into?
Most of the statement was generic, just that once she scanned her acceptance, she was bound by the provisions of the clearance and that breaking them had all sorts of drastic consequences. That was all legalese to her, and she had no problem with any of it. She hit the accept, then held the PA to her eye for the scan. The light turned green, signaling its acceptance, and Gracie passed it to Bomba.
It took a full 20 minutes for the PA to make it around the table, all of that time in silence. The colonel simply leaned back and at the bulkhead above Gracie’s head. That is until the PA made it back to him. He quickly snapped back to life and checked the readout, then turned to the gathered Marines.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s time to get to the meat of this. Are any of you familiar with Kepler 9813-B?” he asked. “No? It’s been mentioned in the newslines a few times lately.”
There were only about a gazillion Keplers, Gracie knew. Even before interstellar travel, the Kepler mission, which started in 2009, Old Reckoning, with the original Kepler satellite, cataloged hundreds of thousands of stars and planets. Most of the viable planets in human’s interstellar neighborhood were subsequently renamed and colonized. The unusable worlds and stars were the ones that still kept the original Kepler designation to this day. If this planet still had a Kepler number, it couldn’t have been very important to humanity, so Gracie wasn’t sure why she should know about it.
“OK, then, let me give you a little background,” the colonel went on, turning to start the holo projector in the middle of the table.
A dark blue star appeared over the table, with several planets orbiting it. The scale was off, though, Gracie thought. Either those planets were huge, or the star was too small.
“This is Kepler 9813,” he said, as the projector momentarily bathed the star in a bright emerald light. “It’s an ultra-cool dwarf.”
Ah, so that’s why it’s so small, Gracie thought as she put her elbows on the table and leaned in.
“And this is Kepler 9813-B,” he said as one of the three planets was highlighted. “The planet’s claim to fame has been its lifeforms, which look somewhat similar to fungus on Earth.”
He switched the view on the table display to an expanse of what looked like nothing more than rotting oyster mushrooms. They looked disgusting, and Gracie’s stomach churned and their very “alienness.”
“No terraforming, sir?” Bomba asked.
There had to be hundreds of planets with some type of life, although until mankind ran into the Capys and then the Klethos, noneof that life had been much beyond simple multicellular structures. There were only a handful of planets that had anything as developed as a tree analogy. So mankind did what they do, and planets were terraformed, making them into good little models of Earth.
“Not worth it, Staff Sergeant Rapa. As you can see,” the colonel said, switching back the display, “9813-B is tidally locked. Kepler 9813’s gravity is so powerful that the gravitational gradient creates synchronous rotation in the planet. That means, the same side of the planet always faces its sun.”
Ah, like Earth’s moon.
“This is not that rare of an occurrence, but usually, planets like this are blasted with too much solar radiation to allow for life. However, because Kepler 9813 is an ultra-cool dwarf, the radiation that hits the planet is in the habitable zone, but only along the rim between the day side and the night side.”
“Oh, like Ribbon World,” Shaan said.
The colonel stole a quick glance at the captain, his eyebrows twitching, and Gracie thought that this wasn’t the first time they’d heard that.
“Ribbon World is a figment of some Hollybolly writer’s imagination,” he said in a slightly condescending tone as if talking to a child. “The idea might make for an interesting setting, but the practicality isn’t there. Yes, the trope has been alive in scifi books and flicks for centuries, but there is a reason why no tidally locked planet has ever been terraformed.
“Oh, sorry, let me get off my soapbox. The bottom line is that the planet has not been terraformed, nor will it be. You can’t survive on the planet. There are only traces of oxygen, but don’t worry about that. Before you could suffocate, the hydrogen cyanide would kill you.”
He smiled at his little joke, one Gracie was sure he’d told before. However, what he said was, well, alarming. Humans couldn’t survive on the planet, and now it looked like they had some sort of mission there? What, to shoot rotting fungus?
“So why am I telling you all of this? Well, there has been a pretty big break-through. The Allied Biologicals lab, testing some old samples, discovered that one of the lifeforms has a biological structure that can be a huge benefit to humans, for everything from cellular atrophy to regen.”
That caught Gracie’s attention. It was standard dogma that Earth-life and all other xenolife were incompatible. If you planted an Earth tree on a planet with alien life, the tree acted as poison, clearing an area around it in which no native life would grow. And despite the similarities in body structure between humans, capys, and Klethos, that was merely parallel evolution. None of the three known intelligent lifeforms were biologically compatible. And while the capys could eat Earth crops, the reverse wasn’t true, nor could Klethos and humans exchange food without breaking it down first into its component atoms and restructuring it.
But if what the colonel said was true, then the enormous potential for maybe profit first, and human benefit second, would render the planet into prime real estate, and the galaxy was full of squatters.
“Allied Biologicals, with assistance from the Federation government, has unofficially established a research center on the planet’s surface.”
That must have cost a mint! Gracie thought.
“The UAM[27] has not been notified.”
That was not surprising. All new research that can possibly affect humankind was supposed to be reported to the UAM and a license issued. Supposedly, this type of thing was too big to be left under the control of any one government.
“However, the Brotherhood has just filed with the UAM that Sectors 334 through 338 are actually their territory. The Brotherhood has long held that 338 was historically theirs, but they’ve never pushed forward on it until now. And coincidently, Kepler 9813 is in Sector 336.
“And to further muddy the waters, we have reason to believe that at least one commercial entity has been poking around. Some equipment vital to the mission has mysteriously broken down, and the signs are pointing to sabotage.”
It was becoming clear what was happening. But Gracie wasn’t sure why they were being brought together. Just stick a battalion of FCDC around the research station and be done with it.
“So why not send in the FCDC?” he asked as if he’d read Gracie’s mind. “The problem is that if we send in the troops, we’re essentially opening up a Pandora’s Box. We’re announcing to the galaxy what we’re doing, and we need more time to develop the potential before we do that. Sending the FCDC, or a Marine battalion, will require a response in kind from the Brotherhood, and we don’t want war.”
“So you send us in unofficially to protect the research station from the unofficial Brotherhood personnel and the
unofficial corporate personnel, and no one raises a fuss, right Colonel?” Gracie asked. “There’s nothing really happening, after all.”
“You got it in one, Gunny. That’s about the long and short of it.
“And with that, I’m going to turn it over to Captain Lysander, who will be the mission commander. She’ll give you your initial brief now on what you have to do to get ready, then you’ll receive more on the ship. You embark in seven hours, so I suggest you pay attention. Captain?”
He stood, waving everyone else down as they started to rise as well, then nodded and left the room. Captain Lysander waited until the hatch shut behind him before speaking.
“As the colonel said, I’m Captain Lysander, and I’ll be commanding this mission.
“First, I’m sorry to say, all of you have failed your interview for the CEAC.”
There was a low-level of chuckling as the Marines heard that. Gracie guessed that the others had also been given the same excuse to come to Tarawa.
“But as the colonel said, we embark in seven hours, and we’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s get down to it.”
Gracie leaned forward to listen in. She’d never fought in the vacuum of space, much less on a planet hostile to human life, and she wanted as much info as possible. But even if the environment was different, she was a sniper, and she’d do what snipers do.
FS PORTOLUMA BAY
Chapter 36
62
The Porto fell out of bubble space some 900,000,000 kilometers from Kepler 9813-B. The ship was running silent in full stealth mode, drifting silently and trying to pierce the shielding of any other ship that might be in the system.
The Porto was a schooner, a new class of small, stealthy ships with more surveillance and stealth capabilities than arms. With her Kylefelter meson cannon and Clovis launchers, she packed a punch, but she didn’t have much ship-to-surface capability, and her ability to transport troops was limited. She didn’t have room for a Stork, just two small shuttles and a duck egg launcher. She was an excxellent platform for snooping and pooping among the stars, and she was a good recon or SEAL insertion vehicle, but she was outclassed as a ship-of-the-line. If there was a Brotherhood man-o-war in-system, the captain wanted to know about her before she knew about the Porto.
Gracie looked over at the captain, a young Lieutenant Commander, slumped so casually in his captain’s chair. He had to be wired, but he exuded confidence and calm.
Gracie was one of two Marines on the bridge. Captain Lysander, as the mission commander, sat in a small fold-down seat to the side of the bridge. Gracie was the senior enlisted Marine on board, but she was on the bridge because Senior Chief Watkins, the Porto’s COB, the Chief of the Boat, had adopted Gracie and invited her to watch with him as they entered the system.
The senior chief was from the Kumeyaay Band outside San Diego in the US, and as a fellow American and fellow First Peoples, he considered Gracie as a long lost cousin. The Kumeyaays had one of the largest gambling empires on Earth, and they didn’t follow too many of the old traditions, but blood was blood, and he’d taken Gracie under his wing. Gracie wasn’t even too sure why the master chief had joined the Navy. The Kumeyaays didn’t have a warrior ethos, and no one from the extended Watkins clan wanted for money, but he’d done well in the service. He and Gracie were the same age, and he was already a rank ahead of her and the COB of a ship-of-the-line.
“Ears, got anything?” the captain asked.
Gracie thought all the nicknames in the Navy were kind of funny. “Ears” was an earnest lieutenant (jg) who monitored the surveillance. “Boats” was the CWO2 d’Alto, the bosun. “George” was the junior ensign aboard the ship (and in this crew, the only ensign, so she was also the “Bull Ensign,” the senior ensign on board). Gracie still wasn’t sure how that worked out. “Cheng” was the chief engineer, and “Skipper” was the ship’s captain (she’d already known that one).
“Negative, sir. All quiet.”
“Guns, stand down the cannon, but keep the missile tubes ready,” the skipper ordered before turning to Captain Lysander and saying, “We’ll just sit quiet for an hour or so to see if our arrival was noticed. If there’s nothing, we’ll start moving in until the POC; then it’s your call.”
Captain Lysander was the mission commander, but the Marines, the FCDC platoon, and the replacement lab personnel were all onboard the Porto, and as such, under Lieutenant Commander Chacon’s control during the passage. Once the ship reached the Passage of Command, an assigned distance from the planet, command would shift to Captain Lysander, and the skipper, even if junior to the Marine, would fall back to a subordinate position.
Chief Watkins pointed at Gracie’s coffee cup and raised a questioning eyebrow. Gracie handed it over, and the chief refilled it from his thermos. Gracie thought most sailors would take their coffee intravenously if they could. Still, it was a good brew.
Gracie leaned back against the bulkhead, blowing on the now full cup to cool it down from scalding to merely blistering. Things were pretty Spartan at the research lab, according to the briefs, and she knew she wouldn’t be getting real coffee there, so Gracie was determined to enjoy it while she could.
“Sir! We’ve got comms going out. Putting it on the speakers now,” “Comms,” a first class petty officer said.
“. . .on’t know how much longer we can hold out.”
“Who is that, and why are we just now hearing it?” the skipper shouted.
“That’s Alpha-Three, sir, the research station. I just now got through the protocol for booting in-system comms.”
“Any identification on who is attacking,” another voice asked.
“That’s Goby Station,” Comms said without being asked.
Goby Station was the nearest naval facility, but that didn’t mean it was close.
“Fuck! I think they just broke through!” a panicked voice said. “You’ve got to help us!”
“Ears, what’s going on?”
“I’m picking up the same broadcast, but not much else. I don’t know whose attacking them.”
“Captain, how long to get my team down to their position?” Captain Lysander asked.
The skipper looked at Boats who shrugged and said, “As fast as we could? Maybe eight hours. That’s using the shuttle, not the duck eggs. Add another ten hours using them.”
“We need help now! You’ve got to get here! I can hear them outside the door!”
“Wait one,” Goby Station passed.
“I can’t wait!”
“We can’t make it,” Captain Lysander said. “They’re lost. But maybe there’s something we can do.”
“I’m all ears,” the skipper said.
“First, if we initiate comms with them, can anyone trace us?”
“Depends on what kind, ma’am,” Comms said. On a direct beam, not likely, but possibly.”
“I don’t mean that. On the hadron comms.”
The Porto had five hadron communicators, each tied to a different command. They did not act as standard comms. What was sent on one system was recreated on any of the other linked systems without actually transmitting anything. Other than message torps which entered bubble space, this was the only current method of galaxy-wide instantaneous communications. On populated worlds, there were enough official and commercial nodes so that a message was sent from one node in a system to another node in the target system, then normal comms forwarded the message from the node to the end user.
On a world like 9813B, there were no systems, so the first ship in left a satellite which was linked to another back in more frequented space. The Porto could send a direct message to the research station, but that almost certainly be picked up by any ship in the system. What they were hearing now was the rebroadcast from the system node as the poor saps on the service cried out for help.
“Well, we could use the hadrons back to PEM302, then have it re-routed here and sent out under standard comms.”
“And whoever is out there w
on’t be able to pick us up?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Captain, send a message to them to hold on, and we’ll be there in two days.”
“But we can get you there sooner than that.”
“Yes, sir. But we can’t get there in time. Those unfortunate souls are lost,” she said, tilting her head to the speakers from which the cries for help were still pouring. “We can’t save them, but maybe we can flush out who’re the attackers.”
“Ah, I get it. Pass that, and then sit here and see who bites.”
“Yes, sir.”
The skipper seemed to think about it for only a moment, then he grabbed a stylus and started scribbling on his PA.
He hit the send with a flourish and said, “Pass that over the hadrons via NF3, Greg, and make sure it comes back over the node in the open.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Gracie heard the sound of an explosion over the speakers. It was muffled, but it made the situation on the planet clear. She could see Comms, or Greg, as the skipper had called him, speaking, but she couldn’t hear him.
A few moments later, the speakers broke with “K9813B Alpha Three, this is the FS Admiral Miguel Posov. We are on our way, ETA 40.32 hours. Hold on the best you can.”
“I can’t hold on that long!”
“Understand your situation. Get into your panic room and wait. Do not attempt to resist or secure property. God be with you.”
“Do they even have a panic room?” Gracie asked Chief Watkins, who shook his head no.
Even without a real panic room, Gracie realized that by passing the message like that, the skipper might be giving an excuse to the attackers to simply take the research and not seek out and murder the staff.
“The Posov, sir?” Captain Lysander asked.
“Might as well make it something with a little more punch than we have. And I know she’s out cruising right now. We sent that out through Third Fleet, and they’ll tell the Posov to keep low for the next 40 hours.”
With the message sent, it was time to wait to see if anyone took the bait and reacted. It didn’t take long.
Sniper (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 2) Page 19
