Ofana

by Clay Moore

  “I’ve seen these. You got the Library to print these up. Some of my Rodders could move what could fit into two saddle bags. We can get them anywhere you want in a few hours.”

  “With your help, sir. We cannot help but win.”

  Von Ribbon smiled. He could feel her enthusiasm. There was a time when he felt these desire to do good for the common Giesling. Ofana is made of sterner stuff. She wants to help the Gieslings get their planet back. He rather doubted he could pull off what the Ofana was managing. He was getting to know the Ofana, and he liked her. He even liked her guard dog that had attached himself to her.

  “I will do as I say. We pass around these slips, not the whole page.”

  “I am bound to say it. Don’t force it on the parties. That last thing we want is violence associated with the Ofana. If they don’t take it, don’t force it on them. We are playing for more stakes than your Election to the Hall,”

  “Good now, I know where I am. Once elected, do I have to toe the party line.”

  “The Coalition is made up of a bunch of different factions or parties. It is hard to keep them all in line for the Election. We will not be able to keep them in line once the elections are over. Past the Election, some of the parties will join together. Those will require the party to fall in line with the coalition aims. That is all after the Election.”

  “You leave after the election?”

  “That is correct. Ambassador Schubert will help you. She has been briefed on what I am doing. Some of the factions have signed intent to join Eridani Alliance documents. That’s just warning Eridani and the other Alliance worlds that this might be happening after the Election and the setup of the government.”

  “Then I say we are done. There is a very nice hotel between the Oasis and us. I would take a good look at that. It is all Giesling constructed.”

  Ofana looked at Brian. He shrugged his shoulders. She got up, and the entourage followed her. She walked out of the Von Ribbon’s warehouse headquarters.

  They all boarded the blue grav-car. Brian maneuvered his way out of the grav-rod parking around him. Brian got on the high southern road, but maybe it should be called the high northern highway. Between the last two stops they had made a slight run to the right which made them go north. In a way, they were at the halfway point. Four more days until she has to make the final speech.

  Anton Hecton opened a message gram that he found in his queue. It was his little spy inside Ofana’s retinue. Her first sentence was not one he wanted to read.

  I believe I’ve been compromised. The Special Agent has been watching me, and not in the right way. I need to jump ship and get out of here. I feel that I am going to be very hot. I’ll need some help.

  Anton read the message three times. He needed her. For some reason, Eridani gave her a how-to regarding Alphacent thermonuclear weapons. That made her the expert. It was she who exploded that bomb in the desert. Then she got scooped up by the indigenous tribal. She got rescued from that by the Special Agent.

  He went to the personal safe with the radiation protector inside, and He opened the safe and ran the radiation detector. The Weapon still had an active first stage. It also weighed the same, which meant it had enough lithium fuel and also used up all of the plutonium. The leftover plutonium rained down as fall out poisoning the immediate area.

  He shut the safe. He got to thinking. He would offer Jasmine a ride off-planet to Angus, At Angus, he would make her one of his sex toys. When he was tired of her, he would shoot her. You could do that when you owned the planet.

  He dictated a reply to her request.

  “Your information is understood. Get out of there as best as you can. Get to Giesling City. Starting a day from now I will go into the restaurant. Be there. I got one last job. I offer you a ride off planet afterward. Hecton out.”

  He watched the message get counted down. Then his Slate was clear. He quit the messages app. He crossed to the partially darkened Window. From his location, he could see the Stadium, which was going to host the speeches. He turned back to his desk and flipped a highly folded paper, She was the twentieth to speak.

  She got the last word because everyone knew her name on Giesling, but not as the party girl she was on the other worlds. They knew her as the “time for a change” girl. Hecton had a lot of admiration for someone so new to diplomacy. She had to have broken the rules, but everyone let her because it was the Ofana.

  Then Hecton got the order to eliminate her. He knew that it would be a bad idea. The product of threatening her was Eridani sending a Special Agent. The agent had to arrive and find her in a few hours. Then he had to drive a grav-car to where she was under attack. He walked out of that junker of a grav-car, and end the life of the men Hecton sent to kill her.

  Anton did not understand why he would be in control and then lose power. They were not superman. Why were they so effective? He had seen the dead body of a Special Agent. The man was ripped but not bound up in the muscle. He could make gymnastic moves while trying to evade shots. It took twenty men to kill him. He had no drugs in his system. It had to be the combination of training, exercise, and time on the range. The Special Agents were professional from the beginning.

  Then his mind made an apparent leap. What if the Eridani gave a battlesuit to the Special Agent? If it were himself, he would not like it. People react differently to a human face versus a faceplate. Part of the job was to rally the people if necessary or put down a riot with force of personality.

  This was all speculation, of course. Hecton had no illusions. If a Special Agent came after him, He would probably unless Anton knew that the Special Agent was coming. Anton knew that he had the edge in being pure mean. It might be a tie in ruthlessness. As far as a combat skill, he lacked the knowledge to determine who might be the best.

  It might be a moot point. If the bomb is planted, then the agent would be radioactive ash and his charge as well. With that happy thought, Anton went in to play with his sex toy.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Eden on Giesling

  Jasmine was profoundly relieved to see the public message terminal in the radamite Station adjoining the Hotel. This area was a hole in the wall. In fact, that was this area’s name, Hole in the Wall.

  Brian stopped at the Radamite station. He filled up on Radamite. Then Brian bought for everyone a cold bottle of water and some assorted Foodbase snacks. He came out with his products. The team members had a healthy appetite. He looked in the backseat and noticed that everything Jasmine had was gone including the Athro assault rifle. Brian went to his seat. He picked up his weapon and carefully entered the Radamite station.

  The Station was as he remembered from before. Brian waved the owner down. This hallway leads to the restrooms; actually, they were both toilets over a septic pit. No one else had come in, and He checked the male bathroom. It was unlocked., and Brian moved over to the ladies. He tried the door. That was locked, and Brian backed up. He aimed his athro and fired a three round burst. The Athro’s rounds went through the door like tissue paper.

  He rushed up and kicked the door in with his left foot. Brian immediately regretted that choice. A pain that he thought was gone flared up. He looked in the bathroom and found the window opened. Brian left the bathroom and burst through the back door. He saw Jasmine running to a green wedge-shaped car

  Brian vehemently swore as she got into a Giesling-worn Aponte. The last he saw of her was the whine of the jets being run up to maximum. He watched her arrow out of the filling station at speed he could not match with the blue grav-car. Brian walked back through the Station. As he passed through, he noticed the Message kiosk where the public can send messages to anyone with an address, or a kiosk account.

  Brian reached for one of his “keys.” He needed this Kiosk unlocked and available. The key was a datastick. The datastick contained the software that takes control of the device it was inserted into. Two minutes later that Kiosk was all his. He checked the reception queue, and He saw Hecton’s messa
ge to Jasmine. He sent that message to his message queue on his Slate.

  Brian turned off the message Kiosk. He removed his datastick. Then he turned on the Kiosk. It reset in a minute, and it was like it had never been violated.

  Brian walked out of the Station. He got in the car. Brian really wants to slam his door, but power assist won’t let you slam your door.

  “Where’s Jasmine,” asked Luana?

  “I’m afraid that Jasmine was afraid that I was getting on to her, so she asked her control to bail her out.”

  “Get on to her?” said Ofana. “What did she do that you had to get on to her?”

  “Unless I am jumping to conclusions, she fired off that test bomb. That’s how that Warrior captured her to become a slave.”

  “Is she even Eridani,” asked Ofana?

  “Nope,” said Brian. “I think she is Alphacent. I think Jasmine is a Thermonuclear Bomb technician. She probably told them which one to get. She also knew enough to get two bombs side by side in their storage vaults. Blow one, and the other will probably blow.”

  “So how did she escape,” said Luana positively dripping with sarcasm.

  “No one is beating me up more than me. When I followed Jasmine into the Station, she was working the message Kiosk. When she finished there, she went into the bathroom. That was when all the pieces fell into place. I went back to the car and got my weapon. I went to the Station. I opened the restroom door, and she was gone, but the window was open. I went to the back of the Station. I watched her get into an Aponte and blast away.”

  “Did you even shoot at her,” asked Ofana.

  “Nope. Follow my logic. We know that they have a second thermonuclear bomb,and She is a bomb technician. She can set that second bomb up for them. We know what she looks like.”

  “Brian, trying to find her in that sea of humanity is going to be impossible.”

  Ofana always went to the nub of an argument. Brian retrieved his Slate, and He searched for the Giesling City Athletic stadium. He showed them the picture.

  “This is where the final speeches are going to be. A large space with seating. There are going to be thousands here, plus the target. They want to make sure that Jasmine is burnt up. Where do you think they will plant the bomb?”

  “In the stadiums,” said Luana.

  “If this were HDX, I would say yes. This is a nuke. The Stadium might not succumb to the blast.”

  Brian pointed to the ball-shaped rugby field. “The designer of the Stadium thought it might be worth his while to make a flexible stadium. Underneath the Stadium are a mechanism that can rotate four fields and the festival surface. Rugby today? Just have the fields rotate underground until the rugby field is underneath the opening. Then the field is lifted up and locked into place.”

  “What is the festival surface,” asked Ofana?

  “It is the surface that allows them to add more seating for all kinds of shows. The rally for the parties needs the festival surface, not any of the fields.”

  “People will be standing on it.”

  “You are to do nothing. You are to give your speech with the same passion. It will be my job to disarm the bomb before your worst fears are realized.”

  “I don’t know if I can do it, What kind of person uses a mega kill weapon to assassinate someone.”

  Brian sat down in the Blue grav-car. He rubbed her neck. “It is the same kind of person who thinks it is all right to shoot up a grav-bus of brand new immigrants to Eridani. Those people think that they are more important than everyone. I think they call it an obsession. What I hope to do is defuse the nuke and get it out of the area.”

  “What about us?”

  “To you, I am going to entrust Ofana. Once she is done, you need to move her quickly and efficiently to my ship. That’s about all the plan I can make just looking at the plans of the Stadium.

  “There is one good thing. If Jasmine is a nuke technician, she may be the only one on the planet. She may be the technician used. What have we done with her?”

  “We know her,” said Luana.

  “With 6 pairs of eyes, we have a good chance of seeing her. She will become shoot on sight.”

  Brian reached into a ditty bag, and He took out a plastic bag full of earbuds. He took one out. “Anyone object to wearing an earbug? I’m glad I didn’t do this earlier.”

  “What does it do?” asked Joe Little.

  “It is a communication device. My Computer Assistant will monitor the coms. When you issue commands to her, she executes it. Ready?”

  They all nodded their heads. Brian handed them all an earbug. He demonstrated how to put it in and take it out. They all remarked on how well the device fits into their ear.

  Then Brian turned to Ofana. He held out an earbug to her. “C’mon, Amelia, I need coms with everyone. That includes you.”

  She took the earbug. She put it in her left ear. After a few minutes, it was very comfortable in her ear.

  “There are some more settling-in settings she needs to do. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, Amarantha.”

  The settling-in sequence was fun, or at least Amarantha made it enjoyable. He saw each person turn toward him, smiling. “I am murmuring. You are hearing me clearly. The range on the earbugs is half a mile. Range to the Amarantha is unlimited because of the Satellites I put into orbit. I moved the Amarantha to Giesling City Starport. We are coming up on end game. You made it this far. Four days left.”

  While he was in the message kiosk, he found a message for him from Felicity. Essentially she said she could not live with a man who leaves and puts his life in danger for a living. She broke up with him again. Well, he was over with her, then. Twice was enough. He looked at Ofana, and He knew that was impossible. He could dally with her here. That would make it hard to break off when they returned home. He closed the door on the blue grav-car. He fired up his engines and drove off, driving much slower than an Aponte, but fast enough.

  Brian noticed that they were getting closer to civilization. There was more signage at the side of the road. There was a sign that said Oasis of Dinmar. That was the Oasis they were warned about. They wanted Ofana to stop there. They would be there in a couple of hours.

  “Tell me about this First Sergeant,” said Ofana.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The first Sergeant who showed you the ropes during boot camp.”

  “Okay, my Dad said one too many disparaging things to me. I was eighteen and graduated high school. I walked out of the house and enlisted in the Marines. I arrived at Henderson Island, still wearing my civilian clothes. We got introduced to the first Sergeant that day. We had the first lesson on how to lose body consciousness.”

  “That’s when you had to take off your clothes…”

  “…and put on an undersuit.”

  “What does an undersuit feel like when it’s on.”

  “In a few minutes of wearing it becomes cold and slimy. The generic Undersuit is really part of the sanitation system of a Battlesuit. Our bathrooms for the first month were the plumbing system made for us to walk into. That was how they trained us on how to use the bathroom in the Battlesuit.”

  “What about the first Sergeant?”

  There was no banter among the Team. The Team was listening to this story.

  “She also took off her uniform and put on the Undersuit. She was beautiful naked. There were scars, but they were honorably gained. If anything, the Undersuit made her more alluring. I could see her, but not everything.”

  “How did you get the weekend pass,” asked Luana.

  “Well after 4 weeks we were left with a core of recruits that wanted to be a Marine, so they trusted us with a weekend pass. There is a small city on the Island that has a civilian population. Your weekend pass limited you to the Island. You could rent camping gear and go out into the undeveloped part of the Island. Two days of roughing it in the wilderness seemed like heaven compared to boot camp. We were not yet released to go on those valuable passes.”
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  “Were you wearing uniforms, then?”

  “Yes, Joe, we were wearing our uniforms. However, at least once a day, we shucked off our clothes and got into the undersuits and finally into our Battlesuits. I was giving my suit a good going over with lubricant and a polishing cloth. She came up to me and said: ‘Would you like to spend your pass with me?’”

  “Did that scare you,” said Joe Little?

  “Not really. The first Sergeant was tough and demanded the best out of you. I had some trepidations as to what she wanted. I packed underwear and my one civilian set of clothes, and I met her going out of the gate. I got in an open-topped grav-rover. She drove us over to a house she rented from the Marines. It was secluded, not far from the beach, and had the western current dumping warm water on this shore.

  “She wanted to swim in the ocean. She said her bathing suit was the one she was born in. She stripped down and started running for the shore. I noticed that she was wearing an undersuit booties. I brought a pair with me. I stripped down and put on the booties, and I chased after her. I caught up to her at the beach, It was warm and sunny. She turned around and smiled. ‘The next part is optional, Private. I want to have sex with you. Would that be okay?’ This is an eighteen year old’s wet dream, and I said it was okay. She wanted a swim first, and I followed her. We got out of the water. She said something about showering together. By now, I was no longer in control of my body. We showered together, and I gave her my virginity.”

  “Did she put the polish on you,” asked Ofana.

  “Actually, no, it was a series of Marine Women who understood themselves. In turn, I got to find out about myself with them. Each encounter gave me more knowledge and confidence. I came out of the Marines fairly polished. Special Agent training put the rest of my polish on.”

  Ofana looked into the backseat. “That’s how he got to where he is on the romance scale.”