The airport manager, hearing no further commands, raised up from his bow, called his chief of security, and passed on the instructions regarding the perimeter. He returned to his ground car and called the senior military representative on the spaceport staff and had him relay the Elder’s message to Marshall T’Kana.
Within the hour, Marshal T’Kana arrived in full dress uniform. He shone in the light of K’Rol’s star. His numerous decorations gleamed brightly, catching the rays of the sun and making him look as if he were suffused with 100 points of light. He strode up to the Imperial Guards on either side of the gangplank and announced himself. Neither guard spoke, just stood aside to allow him access to the gangplank. He marched up the ramp and stopped on the quarterdeck, where the captain of the G’Joku waited. The Marshal saluted and requested permission to come aboard. The captain returned his salute and escorted him to the conference room, where two armed imperial guards stood guard.
T’Kana announced his presence as requested by the Elder J’Kol. One guard entered the conference room to announce his arrival, while the other took T’Kana’s weapons, his ceremonial dagger and the garrote concealed in his hat. The other guard motioned T’Kana into the conference room and stepped in behind him, assuming a position next to the door.
T’Kana looked at the guard and turned towards J’Kol, came to rigid attention, and saluted. J’Kol did not return his salute, so after an interval, T’Kana dropped his salute and gruffly said, “ Excellency, is this guard behind me to kill me?”
J’Kol looked down at a screen set into the table and replied, “Yes, if you move from that spot without my permission, if you advance on me, threaten me, or try to leave.”
J’Kol grew silent, reading from the screen in front of him rather than looking up at the marshal. T’Kana maintained his position of attention. Abruptly, J’Kol bolted from his chair, stepped around the desk, and advanced on T’Kana. Breathing in T’Kana’s face, he yelled, “What were you thinking? Did you somehow imagine that your judgment was superior to the Elders, the commander of the fleet, others who valiantly defended the empire with their lives? The empire is being invaded and the army we need to defend us is on a witch hunt. I will make it simple for you, Marshal. We lost because the Humans and A’Ngarii outnumbered us three to one in ships. They won because they had superior technology. They won because time and distance are absolutes and they won the race to G’Durin. They won because they were smarter than we were.”
T’Kana asked, “If I am to be chastised and dishonored, must this guard be here to witness it?”
J’Kol replied in a biting tone, “That guard took an oath to serve the empire, as did you, not a word of this will ever pass his lips. He is here because you dishonored your oath and are not to be trusted.”
J’Kol returned to his seat. “The pad in front of you contains your resignation from the post of Chief of the Imperial General Staff and Land Forces Marshall due to your failing health. It also contains your request for retirement. You will withdraw from public life and have no contact with the Army. You are not authorized to take your aides de camp with you. Live out your days in seclusion, T’Kana, and live long. Reflect on what you’ve done as the T’Kab advance on us again.”
T’Kana started at the word. “The T’Kab? Are they moving again? Where? Have they invaded any of our worlds?”
J’Kol looked down at his tablet again and said, “Your service is no longer required, T’Kana. Mark your resignation and retirement forms and leave.”
T’Kana made his paw print at the appropriate pages, came to attention and saluted. His salute was not returned. He dropped his salute and turned to leave, a broken K’Rang unable to help his empire when needed most.
The guard opened the door for him, closed it as T’Kana passed through, and asked if anything else was required.
“Yes, have the deputy chief of the imperial staff come to me. He won’t get the job, but he can recommend someone who will. Send a message to Baron G’Rof, put the task force proceeding here back on its mission to rescue Captain M’Taso and her navigation system.”
* * * * *
The 1st Annihilation Fleet arrived at the first and farthest world of the five recently colonized by the T’Kab. The first world was hot and steamy and covered by thick, triple canopy rain forest. A race of pre-sentient quadripedal marsupials lived in the higher limbs of the trees and the T’Kab were unable to either reduce their numbers or subdue them. The two species competed for resources and the 1st Fleet was there to remedy that situation.
The indigenous marsupials were peaceful for the most part, staying up above the level at which the T’Kab could not climb because the limbs would not support their weight. Many a T’Kab fell to its death attempting to reach the elusive marsupials. The sentient queens prepared a plan to rid the world of these creatures.
On the third day after the 1st Fleet’s arrival, the queens had passed instructions through colony after colony around the world to remain deep in the burrows the following day until mid-day. The next day, the annihilation fleet arrayed itself into an arrowhead formation, aligned itself onto a low sun-synchronous orbit, and as they cleared the southern polar region just before dawn at that longitude, turned on their radiation generators.
The effect was not instantaneous, for the extreme southern latitudes were tundra and very few creatures lived there, but as they started passing over the savannahs and forested regions, the marsupials began dropping from the trees, and bird-like creatures fell from the skies. Aquatic creatures in shallow water floated to the surface dead. Predator and prey living on the savannah fell over, twitching in agony, as the strong multispectral radiation cooked them from the inside out. The pattern was repeated every fifteen degrees of longitude until the entire planet was covered and only the T’Kab were left. Colonies came out the next day and dragged the corpses into the cool ground of the burrow, preserving the meat longer, and they feasted for days. The fleet’s ships capable of landing on the surface dropped out of orbit to fill their larders with fresh protein. The entire planet smelled of death for weeks after. Because the radiation didn’t reach far underground and sometimes was deflected by stone or metal deposits, several hundreds of thousands of stunned marsupials arose from cracks in the ground or caves and were quickly captured by workers to become the seed herd from which the T’Kab would obtain most of their protein requirement.
* * * * *
Lieutenant Colonel Mary Chen sat in the back of an X-55 infiltration hover transport, using her night vision goggles to observe one of her teams conducting a raid on a simulated T’Kab burrow. The team was equipped with a plasma bomb that, once lowered into the burrow, would fuse the burrow shut and heat the ground enough to kill the queen. At least that was what the scientists said. She watched the team stealthily approach the burrow and prepare the plasma bomb for arming. They followed the arming procedure and attached long ropes to the plasma bomb. Mary watched the seismic meters so that the T’Kab below ground would not hear or sense the tams activities. The T’Kab weren’t usually active after dark, but there was no use in giving them an excuse to come up and check some strange noises.
The team moved to either side of the burrow opening, dropped the armed plasma bomb silently down the hole, and exfiltrated the area just as quietly as they went in. One of the seismic sensors readouts chirped and Mary adjusted her magnification, and saw the team corpsman struggling under the weight of carrying a team member fireman style. She was not sure whether this was a real casualty or an event thrown in by the team leader.
She looked at the time readout on the plasma’s timer, saw the distance to the team’s hover transport, and realized they would never make it out of the danger radius if they didn’t get moving. She called the team leader and told him to run or they would get caught in the blast. Two team members helped the corpsman and they all broke into a run. They piled into the hover transport, helped the injured man in, and departed at max speed directly away from the hole as the blast went of
f.
A light as bright as the sun glared out of the hole, and then the hole became a crater as the plasma field collapsed and the plasma converted to pure force and light. The shock wave spread out, attenuated somewhat by the depth of the explosion, and passed over Mary’s position, where she had ducked down behind a massive granite outcropping. The pressure wave popped her ears, but did no damage other than kicking up a fog of dust. She crawled back in the transport and was driven down to the crater to check the damage and debrief the team.
The crater was 300 meters across and 200 meters deep. That should be more than enough to kill the queen and open the nursery to the open air, plus kill off most of the workers and soldiers living in the upper chambers of the burrow. Most of them lived in the top 100 meters of the burrow. Best of all, the blast fused the crater such that escape from the lower chambers would be a slow process, if at all possible.
Major General Allans, 3rd Assault Landing Division commander, drove up as Mary continued inspecting and photographing the crater.
“So, what do you think? Is it a viable way of clearing out burrows?”
“It is, but only for really high value targets or those not able to be taken out by other means. If we used every special operations capable battalion in the Corps, the bugs could build two times the number of burrows we destroy. Too many burrows and too slow to sneak up, lower a plasma bomb, and get away without alerting the burrow’s tenants. We may have to resort to brute force on this one. I recommend we use the target designators from high ground hide positions and let the heavy and medium attack ships take them out. It will be lots quicker, sir.”
Her commander kicked the dirt, setting off a brief dust devil as the wind swirled through. “Yeah, I see your point. If we picked the right high ground, we might be able to get several at one sitting. I sure would like some terrain maps of this planet and where the burrows are to start working up target folders.
* * * * *
Connie Cortez was working just that problem as the general spoke.
“Sparks, do you have that file ready to send?”
Her communications chief finished what he was doing and looked up. “Aye aye, Captain, just finished it. We had a glitch in our mapping program that wouldn’t let us compile the file. I reworked the code and found an endless loop. I cut that code out, wrote a bridge over it, and it works just fine now. I have a crystal here with all the data. It and another copy of each of the three bug planets we’ve found so far are ready to go through the gate.”
“Good, I’ve been taking a bit of heat from the Marines over how long it’s taking. Let’s get it back to Gagarin and get them off my butt.”
Chief Communications Specialist Sparks was one of Connie’s favorite chiefs. He was gawky to the point of tripping over his own feet, but could examine, debug, and rewrite code better than anyone she’d ever seen. Give him a need for new code and he would work night and day to make it a reality. He once admitted to her he dreamt in code at times.
Now that the mapping data was on its way to Gagarin and Earth, she put her ship back on the search for any other bug-infested systems. The first three had almost been on a straight line and easy to locate. The next would be found as a result of the fact that radiation, like light, travels very fast through space.
Chapter Ten
Connie had the Orion on a high speed run through the quadrant where she had found the T’Kab infested worlds, jumping from system to system to survey and classify worlds. She didn’t have to look for the insectoids, just for systems capable of sustaining T’Kab. The idea was suggested by her K’Rang liaison officer’s translator and instantly adopted. The quartermaster team started plotting out appropriate stars providing an environment capable of sustaining life. If a rocky planet with a molten iron core and water was found in the “Goldilocks” zone where it was not too hot, not too cold, but just right, they added it to the suspect list.
Life required water to nurture early life and sustain later forms of life, a molten iron-rich core to protect it from solar and cosmic radiation, and the right temperature range to encourage early stages of life. Too little heat and life can’t grow and evolve. Too much heat keeps the amino acids from forming that lead to the growth of life from the primordial soup. Too much heat and it kills off the early single-cell creatures that form the building blocks of life.
So the Orion was crossing and re-crossing the quadrant, looking for the conditions that would favor the T’Kab, which was similar enough to Humans and K’Rang to use the automated survey mode. The quartermasters kept them on course from system to system and the Orion’s computer and sensors did the rest. After a day they had found six worlds capable of sustaining human life. They were approaching the third world when the radiation sensors went off the scale.
* * * * *
The commander of the 1st Annihilation Fleet was conducting her second planet clearing operation in as many weeks and was quite pleased with her work so far. The planet below was populated by a species of flying creature large enough to carry off T’Kab soldiers, strong enough crush them with their claws, and feed on their ichor. They were numerous enough that a large flock feeding frenzy could decimate thousands of the Civilization per hour. They were making serious inroads into the Civilization’s colonization efforts, being especially good at picking off swarming queens and their entourage – so much so that areas with high indigenous avian population were insectoid free.
The radiation generators were taking their toll on them and soon their numbers would be reduced to zero or so few as to be meaningless to impeding colonization. She sometimes wondered why the Civilization didn’t just send her in first to these primitive planets. It would make colonization quicker.
* * * * *
Orion’s sensor section picked up the radiation surge the minute it neared the system. It followed the radiation until it was one planet away from the world where genocide was being conducted in the name of progress. Orion recorded the annihilation tactics being used against the indigenous inhabitants and passed the data tapes back to the embassy to be sanitized and passed on to the K’Rang and Angaerry.
The methodical killing of an entire world’s indigenous life was more than many could face. Some refused to admit it had happened. Others seethed with thoughts of revenge for the death of creatures they had never met and now, never would.
Connie even sent the sanitized record to Captain M’Taso for her awareness and to push her to decide to lift off the planet or set the self-destruct and evacuate to the Orion. She reminded M’Taso that there was still technology on her ship the T’Kab could use. The engines alone would jump the T’Kab three generations of technology. Connie noted that the T’Kab were using plasma fusion engines for sub-light travel while the K’Rang scout was only two generations behind the Orion.
Connie re-read her orders and looked for any loopholes allowing her to intervene, but she was locked up and allowed to only transport the remaining crew, the captain, and nothing else. What were they afraid of and why not tell me? Well, she needed to get M’Taso off the dime before this killer fleet arrived on her world.
* * * * *
Baron G’Rof put the six-ship flotilla, under the command of Flotilla Leader S’Tera, back on course for M’Taso’s planet and instructed him to make best possible speed and, if at all possible, arrive before the annihilation fleet. He wished the Humans would post one of their ring ships near M’Taso’s world. This three-week transit from G’Durin was interminable when time was so precious.
* * * * *
Captain Zeke Harkness, Fleet Chief Plans Officer, worked late into the night with three of his best planners, two ground force planners, a K’Rang ground force planner, and an Angaerry fleet planner.
“Alright, guys, how do we crack this egg? We need to do something never attempted before. We have to assault and take an entire planet away from the T’Kab and keep them from making off with the navigation system and complete map of all three of our systems.
“Le
t’s do the easy part first – define the battlespace. If we can break the ground into manageable chunks instead of trying to take it all at once, we might be able to see our way through to a manageable plan. Lieutenant Commander O’Malley, have you completed your review of the data from the Orion and the S’Kauf?”
“I have, sir. The planet is similar to Earth in some respects. It’s approximately fifty percent ocean. It has six continents with a constantly frozen floating southern pole. The T’Kab can’t tolerate the temperatures at the poles, so we need only concern ourselves with the five remaining continents above and below the 20th parallels. That still leaves a lot of land, roughly equivalent to Europe, Asia, and North America. The rest is ocean with some small islands. The continents have not been named yet, so I will refer to them by numbers.
“I divided the planet in half, with a western hemisphere and an eastern hemisphere. Continents 1, 2, and 3 are in the western hemisphere. Continents 4 and 5 are in the eastern hemisphere. Number one is the smallest continent, almost small enough to be classified as an island. It’s about half again the size of Greenland and sits on the equator. It is mostly flat coastal plain with savannah-like climate and terrain. The T’Kab have 159 colonies here.
“Continent two is about the size of South America. It has a relatively young central mountain range splitting it down the middle. The T’Kab appear to be unable to burrow down in this area and have established no burrows we can detect. This leaves two 6,000-kilometer long strips of land on either coast. The mountain range will restrict the ability of forces on either side from supporting the other. The strips are mostly coastal plain and foothills oriented north and south and vary from 300 to 700 kilometers in width. T’Kab colonies number 1346. It has a varied climate, with the east coast being drier than the west. Only two major rivers drain this continent, one east and one west, and both paralleling the central ridge emptying into the south.
All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) Page 12