Operation Wolfsbane

by Shane Lochlann Black

  “Provided they don’t see what we’re transmitting.”

  “Let just hope they aren’t paying attention,” Moo replied. “Let’s set the SRS system to encrypt our coordinates–”

  The sound of a hatch closing brought both officers to their feet, weapons in hand. Moo switched the lights off and followed Oakshotte to one of the more shadowy corners in the sub-level. Another hatch closed. Footsteps echoed on the metal stairs. Whomever or whatever was on its way to the sub-level was wearing hard boots of some kind. Standard issue for Sarn shock fighters.

  A voice shouted in the darkness. Neither Moo nor Oakshotte were equipped with translators, so they weren’t able to decipher what the aliens were saying to each other. Two of them stopped at the SRS console. Both were armed with energy rifles. They took a moment to verify it was working properly and moved on to another part of the control station.

  Once they were out of sight, Oakshotte whispered.

  “They are operating in pairs. Their commander probably discovered the evidence of our presence upstairs.”

  “Agreed.”

  Oakshotte moved ahead and slipped into position about fifteen feet beyond the SRS console behind a bank of metal shelves and spare parts. The voices of the two Sarn fighters faded, leaving behind the mechanical hum of the life support systems.

  Moo returned to the SRS console and worked quickly.

  “Zony should be here for this. I’m not an antenna and radios guy.”

  “Who is Zony?” Oakshotte asked.

  “She was at the captain’s table. Pink hair.”

  “Ah, the high-strung human. She will make a fine mother one day when she finds a quiet, steady male.”

  “If she’s as good at that as she is at radios and shooting enemy fighters out of space, I think her kids will be lucky. Alright, we’re ready to transmit. If my rusty-as-hell encryption skills are still intact, we’ve put a piggy-backed payload into the next scheduled verification ping. It should get the relay station to return its range. Once we have that we can plot exact positions for the entire network. Then all we have to do is relay it back to Oleander with the transmitter on the jump gate.”

  “Outstanding, Lookah Moo. Once we have the information, we can sabotage this station and destroy the enemy’s ability to monitor the gate. We will have the advantage once again!”

  “Then we have to figure out a way to get off this rock and get back to friendly space without the Sarn blasting us into more spare parts to go on these shelves.”

  “They will regret engaging the Bree Saww Yenn, Lootenah Kernol! Activate the mechanism!”

  Moo set the transmitter to pick up the piggy-backed payload on its next transmission cycle. All the stations receiving the ping were directed to return their normal reports, but were additionally required to return their range to the Descartes gate.

  “Seventeen minutes. We have to be gone in fifteen,” Moo said. He produced one of the satchel charges and armed it. He set the timer for 20 minutes and placed the device in the narrow opening between the console and the wall. Unless someone knew exactly where to look and what to look for, it would remain hidden until detonation.

  “Let’s move.”

  The colonel and the Lord-Captain ascended the metal stairs as quietly as possible. They were steps away from the hatch on the primary level when the pressure door opened unexpectedly. Two Sarn again. This time, one had an activated blaster aimed at the other’s head. Moo and Oakshotte both steeled themselves to keep from reacting. Ilav was the hostage. The armed Sarn officer spoke first, and apparently had some training in Alliance languages. His English was choppy and abrupt, but otherwise understandable.

  “As you can see, colonel, we are fully aware of what has been taking place on this planet.”

  The look on Ilav’s reptilian face was hard to decipher. Alien faces did not exhibit emotion the way human faces did. Moo had to make a decision, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Ilav and his separatists presence on M-Ceti Eight was unexpected. It was unusual, and it is exactly what Moo would have done if he expected an enemy landing party. Drop some undercover personnel on the planet and have them portray themselves as poor disaffected refugees until they could get a signal back to base. Then the enemy landing party could be surprised by the sudden arrival of an armed company and captured for leverage or information. Or both.

  But if that was the Sarn plan, why take your informant hostage? Something wasn’t right. Moo decided to trust his instincts.

  “You’re outmatched. You don’t have the numbers or the weapons. And in less time than you think, a whole bunch of firepower is going to come through that gate and send you home in a very small box.”

  If Sarn faces were similar to human as far as emotions were concerned, Moo would have guessed Ilav was more than a little distressed by the colonel’s tone. Moo was also keenly aware of the ticking clock behind the sub-level console.

  “I’ll make sure the separatists blame the humans,” the officer snarled. “You’ll have yet another enemy to contend with.”

  “You don’t have the world’s strongest position here, my friend,” Moo said. “Drop the weapon or I’m going to turn this Proximan asylum patient loose with that sword and have him show you the true meaning of the French word for ‘meat with no bones.’”

  The percussive sound of weapons fire echoed from the secondary level above the primary control facility. There was a pause followed by what sounded like a metal cabinet full of loud objects being thrown through a plate glass window. The Sarn officer glanced away for an instant and Moo struck. The marine officer grabbed the creature’s muscular arm with both hands, hoping to deflect the first shot away from himself and the hostage at least. Both Sarn stumbled. Oakshotte lunged and caught the officer’s other arm a moment before it reached Moo’s neck. The blaster fired. The beam left a four-inch crater in the metal ceiling. Finally Moo slammed the Sarn officer’s wrist against the metal stairs hard enough to dislodge the weapon. It fell a good 20 feet to the sub-level floor. The officer tried to regain his feet only to be knocked cold by Oakshotte’s prodigious paw.

  Ilav hung from the staircase railing by one arm, trying to catch his breath.

  Moo stood. “My friend, if you are a refugee, my condolences. I would recommend getting as far from this location as you can. This sub-level is set to detonate in 12 minutes. You’re welcome to come with us, but our next stop is Alliance space.”

  The weakened reptilian leader looked back at the two officers. “You have done all you can, colonel. I bear you no ill will and neither do my comrades. We all wish to avoid war. But if the unthinkable happens, and this place becomes the battlefield we all tried to avoid, remember us.”

  Moo tried to think of something to say, but what was left? Nobody wants war. Those words were interpreted by some as a platitude. For others it was an idealistic and naive way of expressing either cowardice or weakness. For a marine lieutenant colonel, it had a far more profound meaning. Lucas Moody knew well the consequences of war. He knew what mankind’s centuries-long quest for the ultimate weapon had begotten upon the hundreds of planets where his species had set foot.

  For all their advancements, war seemed to follow humans like mud followed rain. It was the kind of thing that made Skywatch marine officers believe in curses. Nobody ever set out to wage war, but then again human beings had been avoiding responsibility since Cain. Some wouldn’t have expected such insight from a soldier, but like many officers, Lucas Moody was both a student of history and a student of human nature. He would have considered himself a less-than-capable officer if he hadn’t taken the time to learn the true limits of men: himself included.

  Having no answers, Moo settled for “farewell, my friend.” He and Oakshotte hurried into the primary deck manufacturing control station. The general alarm began sounding throughout the facility.

  “Lord-Captain, I think that’s our signal to do what one shepherd said to the other shepherd.”

  “What is that, Lootenah Kernol?�
��

  “Let’s get the flock out of here.”

  Ten

  Rebecca Islington was on DSS Saratoga’s observation deck when her exec arrived.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Winchester said. “I found your commlink in the officers’ mess.”

  “I enjoy the quiet from time to time.” Islington’s hair was loose. It hung almost to her waist. She stood with her arms folded, watching one of the automated maintenance drones as it maneuvered around a bent circuit panel off the missile cruiser’s port-side pressure tank. She was still in uniform even though she had been off-duty for hours.

  “The Core Council just declared war on the Sarn Star Empire.” That was enough to get a glance from the captain. Lieutenant Winchester handed her the coffee she had left behind. “Apparently Manassas picked up a flash disaster transmission from Task Force 92 at Prairie Grove. Wiped out to the last ship.”

  Islington held her coffee and stared out the viewport. “I knew about half my job was going to be deep space defense. I always knew there was a possibility we’d be ordered to war. Doesn’t prepare you for the day it becomes official, though.”

  “I’ve had that sinking feeling since we were ordered to investigate the station,” Winchester said. “Oleander was always meant to be the canary in the coal mine. Pretty much anything unusual happening there means trouble, and not the kind we can solve with a damage control party or a phone call.”

  “We’re not ready, Josiah,” Islington said ominously. “Admiral Tucker is right. We don’t have the numbers. We don’t have the ground forces. Any battle that comes down to tonnage is going to leave us three touchdowns behind before we even get our hands on the ball.”

  “Well, there’s one thing our captains do better,” Winchester said before sipping his own coffee. “We have better sports metaphors.”

  “I don’t know what Powers or Tucker are thinking.” Islington finally tried her own coffee again. It was going to take a lot to get her attention away from the dilemma.

  “They think captains like yourself and Jayce Hunter can turn the tide.”

  “There isn’t enough luck in all of space to get those kinds of results. Then there’s the shadow ships. Have you seen Fury’s readings on the recovery of the Curacao?”

  “I’ve been trying to get a handle on the admiral’s schedule for the arrival of D Corps. We’ve never seen a Skywatch spacelift of this magnitude before. It’s a full-time job just keeping all the unit designations straight.”

  “Commander Huggins’ log was one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to hear. They knew the Curacao’s crew was inside that ship, and Fury couldn’t maneuver close enough even to get a tractor beam on them. Every time they tried, their drive field started to distort and nearly ripped their armor off. The distortion field caused their hull to reach temperatures of almost 3000 degrees!”

  “Sustained?”

  Rebecca nodded. “No starship battle screen is designed to resist that kind of energy release over time. There was no way to get to the survivors. The whole ship disappeared into some kind of warped space. There wasn’t even any wreckage. Only a trail of ionized radiation with a disruption field of some kind around it. How are we supposed to defeat weapons like that with simple energy batteries and missiles?”

  Try as he might, the lieutenant didn’t have a ready answer. He stared out the window with his captain and contemplated the notion of a war with no victors.

  “I suppose I should be grateful we all got our upgrades taken care of ahead of time. Fury’s new weapons systems have been shaken out. Our cloak is in pretty good shape and has all new components, fortunately. Rhode Island is banged up but mostly intact. Captain Vice and the cruiser squadron seem to be in pretty good shape. I suppose that would normally make me optimistic about our chances.”

  “But?”

  “Josiah, everything we know about the Sarn says the very last thing they want is a war. You weren’t assigned to Minstrel yet, but we tangled with a Sarn Invector squadron over Bayone Three. We did a little song and dance and managed to drive them off. It was a lot easier than normal precisely because the Star Empire lost more than two-thirds of its hulls in First Praetorian. I studied the strategic theater of that war at the Academy. They’re following the exact same playbook this time.”

  “Except this time they have backup.”

  “And a second enemy, apparently.” Rebecca stared out the window at the drones as they wrapped up their repairs to Saratoga’s hull. “I can’t help but wonder about Raleo.”

  “I’ve had the same thoughts,” Winchester replied. “That system is nestled right between Proxima and Bayone. It’s the one place we haven’t conducted long-range scans. It’s got the one planet nobody can land on without ending up in some kind of alien alternate universe. If I were going to set up a base of operations for a nightmare attack fleet, Raleo might make my top five preferred locations. Hell, it might make my top three.”

  “How much hardware can you hide in a single star system?” Islington asked rhetorically.

  “A hell of a lot,” Josiah replied. “Thing is, they would have had to plan ahead. They would have had to know the details of Argent’s mission and they would need some way of protecting themselves against whatever might climb out of the ground out there.”

  “A sufficiently inquisitive agent could have learned a lot about the conditions at Raleo Two from the data collected over Hallows Moon. They could have gathered intelligence from our surveys of Lethe Deeps.”

  “But how could someone get all that information unless they were–”

  Islington locked gazes with her XO. “We were up against Skywatch or at least former Skywatch at Station 19. We were up against them again at the first battle of Lethe Deeps. Are we up against them again?”

  “The same guy? The same guys? It can’t be just one person. There has to be a group of them. They would need access to classified information from a half-dozen different departments. There’s only a few people at headquarters with that kind of access and I’m not buying a four-star flag officer going rogue.”

  “Lieutenant if we can come up with a plausible theory on who or what is behind this drip-drip-drip of aid and comfort to our enemies, we might be able to deal at least one of our new adversaries a body blow before the first bell.”

  “I’d like it to be those shadow ships,” Winchester replied. “I’m no scientist. I don’t know how you survive weapons like that. Only thing I can think of is not getting hit in the first place.”

  “We need Finn and we need access to Saratoga’s war deck.” Islington set her coffee down again and walked quickly towards the deck three lifts. Winchester hurried to keep up and kept his mouth shut about the coffee.

  Eleven

  “I can’t ask my crew to do something I wouldn’t do myself, XO.”

  Commander O’Malley was trying to keep up with Captain Hunter. The two officers were only 30 seconds from Reactor Six, where the portal device was waiting to transport a landing party to the Achaen Station.

  “Sir, this thing’s been tested once, and that was with a machine as the subject. We have no way to know what’s going to happen. And that’s leaving aside what might be waiting inside the station!”

  “If I end up as a big protoplasm blob, your orders are to carry out our mission just as I would.”

  “Yes, but with all due respect, sir, there’s no reason for you to risk becoming a blob!”

  “The station has power. Life support has been restored. If Yili’s device can transport people from place to place we’re going to have a mind-boggling tactical advantage in the event war breaks out. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to remind you she also invented a way to get from star system to star system in a matter of days without jump gates.”

  “We have no way of knowing what’s going to happen, sir.”

  “Of course we do. If Yili says it will work, that’s all I need to hear.” Hunter and O’Malley strode into Reactor Six. “Where’s my la
nding party?”

  Five crew members looked up at once. They were all equipped with handhelds, sidearms and commlinks. They were also wearing light tac suits with anti-magnetic field emitters. Not quite environmental suits but sufficient to prevent contamination from biological or particulate sources.

  “Alright, engineer. Where do I go?”

  “You’re– you’re going first, sir?” Yili asked.

  “Of course. And don’t give me the ‘indispensable captain’ speech again. Cochrane already did a fine performance on the way down here. I’m your test subject, so don’t screw it up. Transport me to the same place the angel ended up. Just don’t put me in the floor or something.”

  “Okay,” Yili let out a huge sigh. “Stand on the platform. You won’t experience anything unusual except suddenly being somewhere else. The conduction through the wormhole doesn’t involve the passage of time in our universe.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Hunter replied as he stepped up on the platform. “Make it work, engineer.” The captain stood at an appreciable version of attention. Yili worked at her console. The assembled crew and landing party watched with alternately excited and concerned expressions. Commander O’Malley looked as if he had eaten a plate of bad chicken.

  “Power to full,” Yili said. The platform started to glow. “Transporting now.”

  Captain Hunter was surrounded by the now familiar bluish cylinder of light. There were a few flashes of energy. It wasn’t a concentrated glimmer like before. All at once the cylinder of light vanished. Hunter was gone.

  Zony tapped her commlink. “Argent to Hunter.”

  A moment passed. The commlink beeped.

  “Hunter here. I’m aboard the Achaen station.”

  Another cheer with a side of sigh of relief went up from the assembled crew. The reactor technicians were all high-fiving each other. Zony hugged Yili. Commander O’Malley dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief.

  Captain Hunter’s next transmission dissolved in a sudden wave of static.