by John Filcher
Ronin smiled approvingly. “Smart lad. The entire crew has to remain super alert while they’re here as the refugees are not our friends or allies.”
Hours later, Ronin left the bridge and quickly arrived in the Cerberus’ main hanger where the refugees had been situated for accommodations. He was accompanied by a security detail consisting of Bravo 2, Ed Wilson from Brookings, South Dakota, and Bravo 5, Pvt. Terry Allison. Both of them were in their exosuits and kitted up for close quarters combat to discourage troublemakers, or end them if they couldn’t be discouraged.
“Captain, we’ve processed all the refugees and identified who is who. There are a few surviving naval officers, including a chief medical officer named Irina Stanislav, and a young third-class engineer by the name of Petor Gregor. Nothing much of note there. What is of interest is a person with an identity discrepancy that caused the Cerberus AI some excitement,” Wilson reported to Ronin as they walked to the hangar.
“How so?” Ronin inquired, which prompted the AI to speak directly.
“Captain, this identity appears recent in origin. The Kursk’s records included the Collective’s identification database, which was protected by heavy security encryption, but one that wasn’t difficult for me to breach. This person does not appear in that database, which suggests a manufactured identity. He was accompanied by two other persons who rarely leave his immediate vicinity, according to our observations. Those other two also have manufactured identities.”
“So why the focus on this guy instead of the other two?” Ronin asked. “What’s different?”
The AI provided the key bit of information. “The database encryption is keyed to respond solely to this person’s DNA, but not the other two, which leads us to believe he is somewhat more important.”
Just then, the hatch to the hanger opened to admit Ronin, Wilson and Allison. What they saw was organized chaos, with a medical triage area off to one corner, and a soup line in another. Immediately after the impact of taking in the scene hit Ronin, the next wave of sensory impression hit. The smell of unwashed bodies, blood, food, smoky clothing, and a somewhat sour smell floating above it all that Ronin couldn’t identify. Nor did he want to. Yikes! It’s going to be a long four days, he thought to himself as they stepped into the hanger bay.
Ronin spotted Taketa where he expected to find him. Running the impromptu medical triage area, and quickly made his way over to him. “Lieutenant, is there anything else that we can get to you down here?” he asked.
His surprised chief medical officer turned to look at Ronin. “Captain, hi! Wasn’t looking for you. I think we’ve got it under control for now that all hands are on deck. I’ll message you if something comes up.”
Ronin nodded as Taketa quickly turned to the next patient needing his care. Next Ronin walked over to Corporal Mackey. “Mackey, report.” he ordered.
“Captain, security perimeter established. We have the refugees corralled into the hanger, which will obviously impact flight ops. Sunderland said he can work around the delays so long as we don’t have a combat situation or something equally dicey that requires a faster tempo of operations. Has Bravo 2 brought you up to speed on our special guests?”
Ronin nodded without taking his eyes off the crowd in an effort to appear nonchalant. Mackey caught on immediately.
“Yes. Keep him under close scrutiny for now, but don’t tip him off. Cull him from the herd before we reach our destination, and his two friends, but do it quietly. Put them someplace secure,” replied Ronin.
Mackey nodded, also not taking his eyes off the crowd in the same way Ronin hadn’t. “Roger that, Captain. We’ll make it happen.”
The Cerberus AI also confirmed that it, too, would keep the three special guests under constant scrutiny.
As Ronin looked around, a mother with two children stopped as she was passing by.
“Why you attack us? Women and children? You are barbarians!” she wailed in heavily accented American, spitting for emphasis at Ronin’s feet as she was shooed away by another Bravo team Marine.
“I’m sorry, Captain. We’ll keep that from happening again,” Mackey said apologetically.
Ronin looked at him, unmoved. “They knew there were families aboard the Frisco when they attacked it years ago and killed my wife, Corporal Mackey. Then they lied and said it was a military ship when it was clearly a scientific vessel. I don’t have any sympathy for collateral damage to the Collective or its ruling families anymore.”
Mackey was stunned, as he hadn’t heard how the Captain’s wife died before. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to pry open old wounds.”
Ronin half smiled with a hint of sadness, and without any humor. “Nothing to be sorry for, Mackey. It’s not a secret, but after this long, it just is a fact of life for me now. I’d better return to the bridge. We’ll be getting underway shortly.”
Chapter 24
Oasis
Cerberus appeared with a jump flare in an orbit of Triton, which itself was orbiting Neptune. “Interesting moon, Dan,” murmured Mueller as she stood next to him watching the forward view screen. It’s the only moon in Sol system with a retrograde orbit opposite to its planet’s rotation.”
Ronin half-smiled back at her and replied, “I was always kind of fascinated with Triton for that reason. No one knows why it’s in a retrograde orbit.”
LeCroy interrupted their reverie by announcing, “Receiving hostile challenge from the local defense network. Sending coded reply.” Seconds passed, then he added, “Response accepted. Receiving navigation instructions and forwarding them to Lieutenant Perez.”
Down at the helm, Perez nodded, and responded, “Course received and laid in, Captain. Taking us in.”
Ronin opened a commlink from his console node to Corporal Mackey, who was still holding post down in the hangar. “Bravo 1, we’ll be commencing the transfer operations soon. Execute Plan Takedown immediately.”
The reply was immediate. “Acknowledged, Captain. Will report back when completed.”
For today’s festivities, Mackey had all the ship’s Marines in their exosuits and kitted up for close quarters combat. He wanted no back talk from any of the refugees, preferring that they meekly obey commands given by the scary Marines carrying lots of big guns and wearing scary looking combat suits.
“Bravo 1, targets are twenty-five meters to your ten o’clock. Echo 1 is shadowing them.” said the Cerberus AI over Bravo team’s open commlink.
“Stay sharp, Bravo team. Echo 1 is dressed as a civvie for this op,” Mackey reminded the team as they swiftly closed in. Their special guests didn’t click on to what was happening until they found themselves surrounded by Bravo team.
“Why you do this? What is happening?” shouted a scared looking man who was clearly the ranking member of the three.
Bravo 7, Ty Jeffries, didn’t even bother responding. He just grabbed the diminutive man with the inexorable power of his exosuit, spun him around and pushed him face down on the deck while Bravo 6, Steve Cupper, cuffed his hands behind his back before attaching leg irons for good measure. The rest of Bravo team delivered similar treatment to the other two special guests.
As soon as the three were stood up, Mackey ordered, “Let’s go.” Bravo team stormed out of the hanger with their three prisoners. Unnoticed by the refugees, Kanagawa melted away from the scene as his shadowing skills were no longer needed. The Marines quickly passed him through their cordon so he could get his exosuit on and resume his life as Echo 1.
Chapter 25
Wayside Station
Two weeks later, Cerberus appeared alongside Cygnus at Wayside Station with a matching pair of jump flares. The commlinks on both ships immediately indicated an incoming priority message from Admiral Rodding.
Capt. Alfred Jurgenson answered first as he was already in his ready room. “Cygnus Actual, go ahead, Admiral,” he stated.
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br /> Captain Ronin echoed him moments later, as the three-way video call was established. “Cerberus Actual, go ahead.”
“Captains, we need you both to dock with Wayside, immediately, and prepare to receive extra ordinance for your rail guns and to make way under a Class One deployment,” Rodding said bluntly without preamble.
Surprise registered on the faces of both Ronin and Jurgenson. “What’s going on, Admiral?” asked Jurgenson before Ronin could ask the same thing.
“The special guests that Dan brought back from the trip to Oasis are what’s going on. Turns out the guy being protected by the other two is the Minister of State Security for the entire Collective. Vladimir has kindly defected and provided us with his access codes in exchange for becoming a new citizen of the Confederation. The Collective is collapsing rapidly and is planning on initiating an Earth-side attack to start a full-scale war before it weakens too much to stop the Confederacy. It also is intending to try to distract its population and keep it from revolting further, and hopes we will solve their overpopulation problem with a counterstrike before we disappear. In fact, they’re preparing to launch more ships to evacuate their ruling families like they did with the Kursk.”
Both Jurgenson and Ronin were stunned. “The Treaty of Midway has forbidden all forms of combat on Earth for centuries,” countered Ronin. “How are they planning on attacking?”
“Vladimir claims it’s a biological attack using a wide area dispersal mechanism. As far as the Admiralty is concerned, it’s The Fall all over again. Ronin, we need to jump one of your Bullfrogs down to the planet surface with an advance insertion team before Cygnus, Ceres, and Cerberus are called in for other duties. Orders and intel have been cut and will be sent to your desk forthwith.”
Ronin nodded and replied, “Yes, sir. We’ll get on it immediately.”
Rodding looked right at Ronin for a moment. “This is Class One Mission here, Dan. Make it happen.”
After the call ended, Ronin opened the order packet that had arrived. After scanning it for a few minutes, he opened a link to the 1s in charge of the three Marine teams on Cerberus.
“Corporals, meet me in my ready room, immediately. Whatever you’re doing, drop it. We’ve received an order for immediate execution.”
Minutes later, Marine team leaders Brett Mackey, Brett Blackwater and Toshi Kanagawa and the other 1s were gathered in Ronin’s ready room. “First thing, gentlemen: Fleet finally approved your promotions to Gunnery Sergeants. Congratulations, when you leave here, upgrade your chevrons to reflect your new ranks. Your 2s are advanced in ranks to Corporal, so tell them to upgrade their respective chevrons as well. Thanks to the special guest we captured before the delivery to Oasis, we have a Class One mission.”
The newly made gunnery sergeants glanced at each other at hearing of a Class One mission. None of them had ever imagined actually participating in a mission with a priority so high – it superseded all other orders and missions. Ronin thought of the classification as a “hair on fire” type of classification. When your hair is on fire, literally nothing takes a higher priority for you right then.
Ronin took a sip of his coffee before speaking again. “This is a specialized insertion op to jump via Bulldog deep behind enemy lines, right into the heart of the Collective. The insertion team will deliver a specially designed viral payload, upload it into the Collective’s defense grid, and exfil. This ad hoc team, which I’ll call Force Omega, needs to go heavy on both stealth and electronic warfare specialties.”
Kanagawa nodded, thinking out loud, “Heavy firepower won’t be terribly useful if the team is trapped in the middle of enemy territory, but Echo 6 might be a key element for inclusion in Force Omega. He’s a trained assassin and camouflage specialist,” Kanagawa said.
Ronin smiled. “My thoughts exactly. Force Omega by necessity must be small, and possessing key skills for the situation. Review the intel provided by our new citizen and devise a mission fitting the key parameter of stealth. We don’t want to telegraph that we were ever there.”
Sergeant Blackwater decided to ask a question, as he was bothered by the thought of executing a potentially lethal mission in the middle of hostile territory. “Captain? Isn’t a mission like this prohibited by the Treaty of Midway? It’s a potential hostile action on Earth,” Blackwater asked.
Ronin and the others looked at Blackwater. “Sergeant, Fleet Intelligence has learned the Collective is planning to launch a biological first strike against the Confederacy on Earth in the near future, before its economic collapse leaves it too weakened to carry on against us. Even contemplating such an attack is a major breach of the treaty, and the Collective has already been moving its assets into place in preparation to launch the attack. We don’t have much time to prevent another Fall so we can save our civilization and families.”
Blackwater nodded. That was all he needed to know. “Yes, sir,” Blackwater said. “We’ll begin our mission planning as best we can in the available time before we jump off. Will he have a redundancy just in case the expert can’t complete the mission?”
Ronin shook his head. “No. Not enough time, so all we can do is hope this goes off well. None of us likes a rushed mission and we have to execute 24 hours from now.”
Kanagawa and the other 1s nodded, with Kanagawa speaking for them all, “Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.” They all knew this ancient adage by heart.
Hours later, they regrouped in the main conference room of Cerberus along with the 2s and electronic warfare specialists from the Marine teams.
Gunny Mackey was ready to begin the briefing over the mission plan. “All right, settle down. Time to talk through the tentative mission plan and hope we don’t get killed from inadequate planning and poor preparation.
“Force Omega will jump in a Bulldog from its max range to this forested area outside the city of Nizhny Novgorod. The air defense grid around Nizhny Novgorod is a dense web of detection, radar, and missile launchers. Certain death for anything unfortunate enough to fly into. The forest is unguarded, and represents the area closest to the city where a Bulldog can safely jump to without tripping a nightmare of alarms and hostility. Rebel partisans have a cell there standing by to provide transport and assistance.”
“Code words for the rebels?” asked Gunny Blackwater.
“Code phrase is, ‘the night is dark and I am far from home.’ According to our intel packet, say anything else and the rebels will end you without further ado, so you will be drilled in how to say it in Old Russian, which is the prevailing language there. The Force Omega team will be led by the Pirate, Echo 2. It will be composed of the three electronic warfare specialists from all Cerberus Marine teams, plus two from the Cygnus Marine teams, and Echo 6,” responded Mackey, with a nod to the five electronic warfare specialists seated together at the briefing.
Mackey advanced the screens to show a picture from Nizhny Novgorod. “These are from defense satellite imagery we had in our records. The Collective’s defense ministry is located here, which is called the Kremlin. As you can see, it is a hilltop fortress with over a mile of ancient walls dating back to the 1500s from centuries before The Fall. While a Kremlin in Old Russian means a citadel within a Russian town, the name of this Kremlin is meant to call to mind an ancient, secret police structure by the same name from before The Fall. It was located in Moscow, in the old Soviet Union, before it was nuked.”
Ronin watched closely as Mackey continued on with the briefing for the next two hours. The plan to infiltrate was close to crazy, and high risk. Mackey and the other 1s were very experienced Marines, and always followed the Simple is Better rule for mission planning. The simpler it is, the higher the chances of success because there were fewer things to go wrong. When the briefing finished, Force Omega left with the 1s to walk through the plan until they got the movements down.
Chapter 26
The Kremlin
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As they boarded Bulldog 7, Jason Priest and Dale Dannon, the two borrowed electronic warfare specialists from the Cygnus Marine teams, noted the number of the spacecraft — seven. In a ship’s compliment of six Bulldogs.
“The tradition for Bulldogs is the replacement crew for one killed in action is they take the next higher number as counted from the top crew number, right?” whispered Priest to Dannon, who were respectively designated Omega Five and Six for this mission.
“Yes, Bulldog 7 replaced 4, who were KIA at the Battle of the Dark Side,” answered the Pirate, who overheard Jason’s whisper.
“Now settle in,” ordered Corporal Longman.
On the bridge of the Cerberus, Ronin looked over at LeCroy, who was monitoring readiness at his Tactical station.
“Bulldog crews report ready, Captain,” LeCroy said after a few moments.
Ronin then nodded towards the helmsman. “Jump the ship, Perez.”
Cerberus jumped from its staging area position to the dark side of an asteroid in the belt above and behind the Earth.
“Jump complete, Captain,” reported Perez from the helm.
Commander Mueller was now standing next to LeCroy, waiting for a look from Ronin. She got it. “Launch Bulldog 7, LeCroy.” Mueller said.
Down in the launch bay, Pilot Officer Greg Lowridge had been waiting for the go order.
“Bulldog 7, cleared for launch,” said the CAG, Sunderland, over the commlink. Lowridge punched the engines, and the Bulldog shot out of Cerberus into the dark space behind the asteroid. Cerberus disappeared again in a jump flare that seemed brighter than normal in the extra dark of the sunless side of a piece of rock far from Sol.
“We’re on our own, holding position confirmed, about two billion miles from Earth. Ready for jump,” reported Paul Drayson from the rear-seater position over the commlink that was open between Drayson, Lowridge and the Pirate, Cpl. Adrian Longman.