Shadow Unified Force Commander M’Juna ordered the room cleared of admin staff as the five commanders reviewed the packets’ summary sheets. After fifteen minutes, he called a break and addressed his fellow commanders. “Gentlemen, I will not provide you guidance on how to proceed. I will only tell you how I will conduct myself. I do not care about Baron T’Kana’s comments of yesterday or of this morning. We have a specific list of charges. These charges have specific elements of proof. As I said yesterday, it is very easy to judge after the battle is over and you have time to think and ponder, but quite different when your warriors are dying around you or are about to. I consider myself an honorable K’Rang and will do my duty as honor prescribes. I expect you will, too. Call everyone back in and let us begin.”
* * * * *
Lieutenant Colonel Angie Shappelle and Commander Tammie Nielson were to meet in the Galactic War College cafeteria to catch up on the latest happenings. Both officers had been picked below the zone of consideration for promotion to the next higher grade – Angie to colonel and Tammy to captain. Their promotion dates were still some months away.
Many flagships in the 2nd Combined Fleet under Admiral Levi, were destroyed or took heavy senior crew losses at the battle of G’Durin. The losses incurred, especially in command positions and higher staffs, meant promotion numbers were dramatically up.
In addition, attendance at the prestigious War College on Gagarin, normally reserved for captains and colonels, was granted for the time being to promotable officers at the lieutenant colonel and commander level who had distinguished themselves in combat command. Both Angie and Tammy easily met those qualifications.
Angie was first to arrive, got coffee, and waited for Tammy amid the clamor of several hundred simultaneous conversations as student officers took their only break of the day. With the critical need for qualified senior officers, in addition to increasing the attendance levels, they had shortened the normally six-month course to four, but not the course requirements. Class was in session six days a week and nine hours per day, with only an hour break at midday for lunch.
Tammy rushed up in her normal flurry of activity and dropped her backpack on the table. Her pocket tablet and several memory disks scattered across the tabletop and onto the floor. Giving an exasperated sigh, she gathered her belongings and sat down, looking exhausted.
“Do you have Colonel Benson for ground tactics? He has us reading three historical tactical studies per night. Last night was Cannae, Thermopylae, and Operation Overlord. He thinks he’s the only professor we have. Overlord was easily 80 screens. I was up until 0200 reading. I’m exhausted.”
Angie smiled, passed Tammy two disks she’d missed, and said, “Tammy, it’s not nearly as exhausting as combat. Let’s eat!”
They made a quick dash through the buffet line and came back with salad and fresh baked bread, making short work of their lunch.
Finished, Tammy took a sip of her tea and asked Angie, “Have you heard from Kelly or Candy lately?”
Angie grinned and said, “Candy and Kelly both sent me birthday greetings last month. She’s on G’Durin and he’s in Geneva completing the attaché course. That’s gotta suck with her pregnant. When is she due?”
Tammy fiddled with a piece of romaine in her bowl, then said, “Six months, June here time. I don’t know what that translates to on G’Durin. Do you know if she is going to have the baby there or come back here for the birth?”
“I think she said she wanted it to be the first human born on G’Durin. The embassy has a well-staffed and equipped medical suite. Kelly told me they could handle most major trauma there or stabilize and transport back here through the gate, if need be.”
Angie abruptly changed subjects. “Have you heard when the assignments people are coming through? I bet they try and stick me on a flag staff. That would be okay, I guess. It would give me a chance to wind down a little after squadron command and here. What are you hoping for?”
Tammy crinkled her nose and said, “I don’t know. I was looking forward to commanding the flight detachment at Antares, but now I’m promotable and they won’t let that job go to a captain. I don’t know what I want. Maybe I’ll get a Fleet Staff job in Geneva. That would be sweet.”
Angie started. “Hey! Look at the time! I’ve got military geography with Lieutenant General Chong in fifteen and it’s clear across campus. He loves lecturing you after class if you’re late. Gotta go. Later.”
Tammie watched her friend rush off. She packed up her own gear, looked under the table to see if she missed anything, and headed off to her next class, profiles in leadership. “One more month until graduation. It can’t get here soon enough.”
* * * * *
Shadow Leader M’Taso surveyed the world beneath her and chose a mountain valley large enough to meet the required specifications and with likely mineral deposits in the surrounding mountains. She needed to further analyze the mineral content of the deposits as identified by the S’Kauf’s sensors.
She ordered the helm to make a standard orbital approach and land in the center of the valley, next to a knoll overlooking a small river. The approach and landing was the smoothest she had ever seen and she commended her helmsman for his skill. Quickly organizing her scientists and crew into survey teams, she had them turn in for the remainder of the night and get an early start in the morning.
The following morning, the crews left the ship and went about their assigned tasks. Geology teams trudged up into the mountains, looking for various ores. Xenobiology teams recorded and captured wildlife specimens. Botanist teams gathered leaves, fruit, and bark of the local vegetation. Environmental teams surveyed the air and water and tested for contaminants or dangerous compounds.
As the local star reached its zenith, the close-by teams returned to the ship for a mid-day meal. One of the xenobiology teams walked to the ship from upstream and, as it pushed up a small rise, came face to face with a worker insectoid. The large dog-sized insectoid and the team ran in opposite directions.
While the team ran back the way they came, circled around, and hiked to the ship, the worker made a straight-line dash to the burrow, leaving a pheromone trail, which alerted every other worker of danger in that direction. Workers and soldiers swarmed down the trail in search of the danger, ready to engage in combat. The workers and soldiers arrived at the end of the trail, found no danger, milled around scouting, and found the path made by the K’Rang team. Over 70 soldiers and workers now followed the trail leading towards the S’Kauf.
As the xenobiology team reached the crest of the knoll upon which the S’Kauf landed, they looked behind and saw a growing column of insectoids gaining on them. The K’Rang dropped their equipment, kept the samples they had acquired, and employed the speed of their hunter ancestors to try and escape. There were too many bugs coming at them from all angles. Other colonies’ workers came across the pheromone trail and alerted their soldiers. Soon there were hundreds of insectoids descending on the hapless K’Rang team.
Like a black moving carpet, the insectoids covered the K’Rang team and when they dispersed, nothing was left. A sentient queen arrived on the scene, saw the team’s abandoned equipment, and sent soldiers out to scout the area in the direction they were running. Within minutes, the soldiers came back, leaving a pheromone danger trail from the north. The queen held back the soldiers until she personally viewed the situation.
She crawled forward through the tall, feathery grass until she found a small rise overlooking the K’Rang scout ship. She observed the comings and goings of ship personnel for a while, and then dropped down off the knoll. She sent one soldier to alert soldiers from other colonies and give them instructions to pass on to their colony. She touched antennae with another soldier and had him alert two other nearby colonies with sentient queens. She gave a message to yet another soldier to pass to her own colony, and then found a cool shady spot to wait for dark.
* * * * *
Alistair Bennett arrived, unescorted
, unscheduled, and carrying Rojo, his white cat, in his carrier through the embassy mini-gate to assume his duties as the Chief of Station, the second most powerful position in the embassy. His duties would include managing intelligence operations throughout the K’Rang Empire. His office would be in charge of all intelligence operations conducted in K’Rang space or worlds by any agency of the Republic, military or civilian.
Alistair grew up on the planet Archimedes, known as the Lost Settlement, which gave him a distinctly different outlook on things. Thrown off course by their deranged chief astrogator, the settlement ship wound up 270 light years from the nearest human settlement and with no way to get back. The settlers did what they could with all the modern tools and conveniences until their thirtieth year, when the power cells died one by one. By then, they had converted to a sustainable nineteenth century steam powered society. It wasn’t until their discovery in 2316 that the republic knew about their fate.
Alistair entered the Assassin’s Guild as a recruit at five and confirmed himself as a novice at ten years to learn the way of soldiery, police, and intelligence operations. The Assassins were secular replacements for the settlement’s Templar Company that was decimated in the process of eliminating the threat of the many-teeth beasts that ravaged the settler’s livestock.
Upon Archimedes’ discovery, Fleet Intelligence started recruiting and preparing Assassin’s Guild members to work as operations officers. Some of them became field agents. Some became instructors. Alistair became a reporting officer, plying the spaceways alone in a converted freighter, finding out all he could about whatever intelligence problem he was put against.
Armed with the translated data taken during the raid on the K’Rang intelligence headquarters building, he would be able to circumvent many K’Rang security measures. That data resided on a data crystal in his coat pocket. Also on his person were the names, addresses, contact information, and key information on all agents working for the Galactic Republic within K’Rang space. He was here, however, to review the progress made by his deputy in establishing the secure rooms in the interim consulate and establishing communications and control over the in-place agent network.
Alistair was tall, blonde, and with the rugged good looks from a Scandinavian bloodline. People always questioned how he could blend so well into crowds when he was so striking and stood a head taller than most, but his assassin training let him become almost invisible in any group of three or more. Years of hard work in a coal-burning society left him lean, fit and muscled.
This was Alistair’s third visit to the K’Rang capitol. He had made a clandestine visit five years before to hand-carry a defector off the home world and to the Galactic Republic. The first transport ship failed to send a security code quickly enough upon reaching G’Durin orbit and was destroyed by an orbital patrol ship. Alistair had to survive on G’Durin for two weeks, until the back-up ship could arrive and get them out. Alistair had to make his own luck, as the defector could do nothing for him.
Alistair chuckled, wondering how thick was his dossier. There had been no enemy personnel files among the records taken during the raid. Those counterintelligence records must have been stored elsewhere. He would need to discuss with the ambassador how intrusive and aggressive he could be in his work here. He walked down the hallway of this loaned building and wondered how many spaces still had sensors and listening devices, even after the best Fleet electronic countermeasures teams had swept it.
Lost in his reverie, Alistair passed his temporary offices and had to backtrack. A normal-looking door led into a reception area with two seemingly unremarkable women, one matronly and the other comely, sitting at desks flanking either side of a secured double door leading further inward. As with everything else in espionage, all was not as it seemed. Each woman had her finger near a row of buttons, which, if pushed, would flood the space in front of the desks and the hallway outside with concentrated disrupter fire and/or incapacitating gas. In addition, each woman was as expert in martial arts as the best masters at the Fleet Intelligence Academy could teach.
The sturdy woman sitting at the desk to the right of the door rose as Alistair entered and greeted him with a warm hug. Sylvia Brown was ten years older than Alistair and had been an administrative assistant in Alistair’s initial branch, where he was assigned as an apprentice agent handler. She had helped him adjust to a technologically advanced society as the Archimedean converted from a nineteenth century assassin to a twenty-third century intelligence operative.
She looked him over and said, “Mary, this is Alistair. He was the smartest apprentice in the branch. Alistair learned quickly how valuable and helpful the admin people could be and how much we could gum up the works if he didn’t treat us right. Don’t let his boyish good looks and charm fool you. He has a mind like a steel trap. Once learned, never to be forgotten.
“Alistair, this is Mary Stevens. She replaced me in my position in that branch and has been following along behind me ever since. This will be the first time we’ve ever worked together.”
Mary rose and delicately offered her hand to Alistair. He took her hand and gave a firm, but not too strong, two-handed handshake. Mary’s cheeks turned a bright crimson as Alistair held her hand a little too long while he looked in her eyes.
Sylvia handed Rojo’s carrier to Mary, hooked her arm in Alistair’s, and said, “Come on, boss, let me show you all Tom has accomplished for you,” and she led him through the double doors.
* * * * *
Corporal Ingrid Solbrig, best gunner in the 1st Battalion, 85th Armored Regiment, stood with her 170 centimeters at crisp attention in front of her unit’s formation beside her tank commander, Staff Sergeant O’Neil, driver Private First Class Jones, and Charger Private Malagasy, while her citation for shooting a perfect score on the final and toughest tank range was read aloud. She was also the youngest and lowest ranking gunner in the battalion, which gave her twice the ego boost as the battalion commander pinned her award on her. He pinned it to a pocket of her duty coveralls, dusty still with range dirt, having just road marched into garrison from the ranges.
Ingrid Solbrig was the only daughter of Erwin and Hilda Solbrig. Ingrid and her three older brothers were inseparable. They grew up in the Texas hill country, in a small ranching community outside the city of Fredericksburg. There was nothing her brothers could do that she couldn’t do just as well. A gangly tomboy as a young teenager, she grew into a body that got in the way of her being one of the boys. As she referred to them, “These damn boobs and butt threw me all off balance and got me nothing but merciless teasing.”
A growth spurt at sixteen left her even more awkward and gangly then before. During the two years between her sixteenth and eighteenth birthday she filled out and gained a certain grace, but never lost her ability to do job as well or better than her brothers.
On the eve of her eighteenth birthday, when she was at a sleepover at a friend’s house, her family was taken from her. A faulty sensor and an accidentally dislodged flue pipe filled their house with deadly carbon monoxide. She lost everyone that mattered to her. She buried her family and sold the ranch, for ranching held no favor in her eyes anymore. She put all the money from the sale into an investment trust and joined the ground forces the next day.
Next stop for her now would be promotion to sergeant, as this award would put her over the top for promotion points. She could hardly wait to be promoted to be a “real” non-commissioned officer.
Technically, a corporal was a non-commissioned officer, but the lowest ranking one and sometimes not thought about when the benefits of being a non-commissioned officer were being enjoyed. All that would be behind when they pinned those three stripes on her. Who knew, maybe in two to three years she could get promoted to staff sergeant and get her own tank. She had already held the positions of charger and driver. Now that she had proven herself as gunner, only the tank commander position was left to learn and assume.
She shook hands with her battalio
n commander and sergeant major, saluted, did an about face along with her crew, company commander, and company guidon bearer, then marched back to her position in the rear of the formation. The battalion commander, LTC Hrata, called the formation to attention and released the companies to their commanders. Her company commander, Captain Stanislav Kopinsky, saluted, did an about face, and announced, “Corporal Solbrig is released for the day after she cleans her personal weapon. Everybody else to the wash rack and get the vehicles cleaned up. Platoon leaders, take charge.”
Ingrid could hardly believe her good fortune. Twenty minutes to retrieve her gear from the tank, twenty more for cleaning her weapon, and she was free for the weekend. Now if she only had somewhere to go. She always hung out with her tank crew when she was off duty, but none of them had any plans. At least she could get a long shower and a nap in before they showed up from cleaning the tank.
She was back in her barracks room, in thirty minutes instead of forty, and quickly stripped out of her uniform and dashed her no longer tomboyish body into the shower so she could get a long leisurely shower before the rest of the battalion arrived and all the hot water vanished. A shovel full of dirt seemed to wash out of her light brown hair as the water cascaded over her body and down the drain. Rivulets of silt found their way down the drain as she scrubbed two weeks of living in the choking dust churned up by the suspensor fields of their M-25 hover tanks. She scrubbed and scrubbed until she could find no more dirt, rinsed, dried off, hit the rack, and was snoring in less than five minutes. Her weekend plans would wait until after she was rested.
Chapter Three
The sentient queen had waited long enough. The sun was going down and soon it would be dark, time to strike. She had workers lined up to act as runners to take the simple commands to the waiting groups of soldiers. Arrayed in a semicircle on the ship’s starboard side opposite the boarding ramp and quarterdeck hatch were over 300 shiny, silent soldiers in groups of ten to twenty, waiting in the tall grass for the signal to move against the ship. Her entire assault force was ready to go.
All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) Page 3