by Shawn Jones
“You have lost less than one hundred, then?”
“Yes.”
“Were we really so blind? Did we really miscalculate so catastrophically? For thousands of years?”
“Heroc, I honestly think the entire universe miscalculated.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody planned on Cort.”
System 718
“How do they jump, JJ,” General Addison asked as they waited for the Cuplan transports to arrive.
“It’s similar to the transition system we use, but it works on the other side of c. They jump across tachyons using some sort of quantum entanglement. It goes beyond my physics knowledge, but Keith dumbs it down pretty good. The difference is, they can’t get too close to a star, or even a gas giant like Jupiter. If they do, their transition can be warped, sending them into planet, possibly distorting them on a molecular level.”
“So what’s going to happen then?”
“I have all of our stealth ships here except the squadron guarding our transition core at Speral’s planet. As each ship comes in, we will jam communications and hail the enemy. If they surrender, we will board each one with a company of Marines and small platoon of techs. Then they will be immediately jumped to 641. I have four non-stealth ships there to receive them. They will be held there until we are ready to send them to the planet.”
“What about the wet teams?” Cort asked.
“They are all in place and waiting for our transmission.”
The sensor tech said, “Captain, I’ve got a gravity bubble. I think they are here.”
“Black the ships, Ensign," James ordered.
“Done, sir. Ships are black.”
James turned to Admiral Jones and said, “We are ready, sir.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Six Cuplan warships appeared and began to disperse.
“Dammit. You were right Admiral. I owe you a beer. Magnify,” James ordered.
“Fuck. Those are not colony ships,” Cort said.
“They cannot see us, General.”
Cort remembered the stealth qualities of his ships and exhaled. “I have a hard time remembering that, Captain. Thank you.”
“I have assigned two gunships to shadow each of them,” Jones said.
“You planned on this, Admiral?” Cort asked.
“The captain and I had a bet on whether or not they would escort the queens, General. The captain lost,” JJ chuckled.
“I see.”
“Ensign Thoms, let me know when the enemy stops.”
JJ looked at Cort to gauge his response. He turned to face the sensor console and said, “Your name is Thoms?”
The ensign stood and faced the general. “Yes, sir. And yes, you killed my oldest brother and my uncle.”
“I’m going to ask you the same question I asked your uncle, Ensign. What are your intentions?” Cort flexed his fists and faced the ensign squarely.
The Ensign came to attention and saluted Cort. “I intend to serve the Ares Federation and General Cortland Addison to the best of my ability, in their efforts to defend our star system, and our allies, against all enemies.”
Cort saluted the young woman and asked, “How long have you been rehearsing that answer, Ensign?”
“It is a small world, or perhaps it is a small galaxy, General. Rand Gaines killed the man who raped me,” she said as the entire bridge crew turned to look at her.
Rand had been banished to Mars after killing a man who raped his mother, Kay. That influential man had been accused and exonerated of rape before. Cort traveled to and across the red planet to rescue Rand from being brutalized by the man’s family on Mars. An act which ultimately led to the formation of the Ares Federation.
Cort was visibly shocked by the admission. Whatever instant dislike he had for the woman disappeared as quickly as it had formed. That the ensign not only openly admitted being victim of the sexual assault, but she used the word ‘raped’, spoke volumes. When Cort first arrived at that place in the timestream, Atlantica had softened the term to ‘coerced mating’. Reinstating the more abrasive term was one of Cort’s first actions as a leader of the Ares Federation. Making death the only punishment for rape was another. He himself killed the man who had raped Kimberly by throwing him out of an airlock on Mars.
“That’s good enough for me, Ensign Thoms. I am glad to have you serve the Federation.”
“Thank you, General.” Thoms turned and sat at her console again.
Cort signalled JJ to follow him into the corridor. He told the Marine sentry to step onto the bridge and waited for the door to close behind him. “JJ, I’m going to assume you did not know about that, because you are not stupid enough to spring surprises on me.”
“General, I knew Thoms was on the ship, but did not expect. . .”
Cort raised his hand and said, “Admiral, I am going to assume you did know about my connection to Ensign Thoms, and that you are not stupid enough to spring surprises on me. Because if either of those things are not true, it means you set me up. Let me make something clear, Admiral. I can’t think of a single other answer that girl could have given me that would have kept her alive.”
“General . . .”
“Shut up, Admiral. Do not ever hide something like that from me again. And do not ever spring a surprise on me again. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cort turned and went back to the bridge. As he took his seat near the captain, Thoms said, “Captain, the Cuplan ships have stopped, and a tachyon burst has moved through the system.”
“Thank you, ensign. They should transmit an ‘all-clear’ soon. Let me know when they do.”
“Yes, sir.” A minute later she said, “We have the transmission, and uh, three responses, Captain.”
“Admiral?” James asked.
“Do not signal our gunships until after the colony ships make full transition,” Jones ordered.
A moment later, three angular cask-like ships appeared in the midst of the Ares Federation craft. Admiral Jones ordered her own ships into action. “You may begin, Captain.”
“Yes, sir. Thoms, scramble the tachyons around the colony ships. Signal the gunships to engage their targets.”
Across the system, six Cuplan warships were completely destroyed by tungsten plasma slugs fired by fractional railguns. A moment later, the communications officer signaled General Addison.
“This is Cortland Addison of the Ares Federation. We have destroyed your escort, and intend to board your ships. If you do not resist, you will all live. If even one Cuplan chooses to fight us, we will kill every queen on every ship. Please respond.”
Two minutes later, they received a response. “General Addison, I am Fleet Primary Tabak. We will not resist.”
On a separate channel, Admiral Jones signalled teams across the galactic arm to begin their missions.
Cuplan Prime
Lex Sike was General Addison’s choice for the operation on the Cuplan home planet. He and three other Ares Marines arrived on a stealth ship and monitored the planet for two days before being dropped outside the capital city. Like similar teams dropped on every planet across the Cuplan empire, the team mapped their operation, watched the removal of most queens from the planet, and waited for Admiral Jones’ signal.
It was full daylight on the planet when the coded tachyon message finally came through the transmitter. It was a device modeled after the enemy communication system, even using the same wave patterns to insure it would appear as a normal signal to anyone listening within the empire. To the humans poised to strike across the Cuplan realm, it was the beginning of death’s reign.
The stealth qualities of the Flexible Armor Light COmbat Nanotube suits made them virtually invisible in darkness. But even in full daylight, the FALCONs gave the impression of shimmering wraiths moving across the planet’s surface, like living, transparent mirages. Cuplans, an insectoid race, had thousands of lenses in each eye, and the view from each of those l
enses each overlapped by just microns.
Lex Sike had studied his enemy. He knew that the guards in front of him could only see gossamer thin sparkles of light until Lex drew his blades. The guards briefly saw the floating blades as Lex’s hands delivered death. Two Marines behind him caught the falling bodies and pulled them into the building as they stepped inside. Four minutes later, a passerby was confused when the doors to the Supreme’s quarters opened briefly, and closed again. Scintillating air was all that heralded the unknown death of the empire.
Lex and his men disappeared into the foliage, going back to their camp to request retrieval.
System 641
“I am surprised they gave up so easily,” Captain James said five hours later.
“Queens are the core of their society. They cannot jeopardize them. Their rulers cannot even be confirmed without the queens,” General Addison said.
Admiral Jones said, “The black ships are headed out to retrieve our men now. We’ve received signals from almost all the teams already.”
“Almost?” Cort asked.
“Three teams are still silent.”
“Alert the Taurus, and I need a company of drop troops.”
“Sir, we should give them a little more time,” James said.
“No. Something went wrong on those three planets. We need to complete their missions, and more importantly, we need to get our people back.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have drop troops on the ship in thirty minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” Jones repeated.
Ten
Planet 322-3
Everything that went right for the first recovery, went wrong for the second. In the first op, Cort and thirty-two of his Marine dropped from the attack shuttle and hit the ground running. Within two minutes they had found their team, and were waiting for the shuttle to land. The original team had carried out their mission and were on the way back to their rally point when it was discovered by an enemy patrol. The Marines had no choice but to dig in and wait for rescue.
The second op was hell. Immediately after transition, the Taurus navigator reported they were halfway across the system from where they were supposed to arrive. The transition drive was dead. Using the Jonah Construct Drive, they moved through the system silently for two hours before they were close enough for the shuttle to launch, only to find the Cuplan planetary defense force waiting for them. The shuttle’s skin absorbed the hit of energy weapons, but as the bays opened for troop deployment, several Marines were also hit.
Cort knew the drop was going bad. Then it went from bad to worse. He looked up to see three Marines dangling limply from launch rails on both sides of the shuttle. “Full deployment! Clear the rails!” He yelled over the comm channel, then turned to guide his own descent. The three rails holding lifeless Marines retracted into the shuttle as the other nine rails began spewing Marines more quickly.
For the falling troops, their attention was devoted to the drop. Once the air density was high enough, green lights began flashing on HUDs. Gyros on the suits took over temporarily to slow the Marines down for their wing chutes to deploy. Then the men and women could once again guide themselves, following the general’s signal to the ground. Just before landing, the wings began catching air so the troops could detach at a full run.
“Form up!” Captain Tyler Sorano ordered. “Bravo take point. Formation Echo!”
“General, I have a signal!” A corporal from the Asianic Alliance said over the command channel.
“Give me a heading, Wong!” Cort said as the group moved across the landscape like a herd of wild animals.
“Three-four-two degrees relative, sir! Distance three kilometers. Two signals are active. Two show as deceased.”
“Captain, I need a headcount,” Cort said as he overlaid a map of the area on the signals that Wong had picked up.
“Sixty-one plus you, General. Five were stuck on the shuttle with the reserve squad. Two killed in the drop.”
Cort searched his map for a suitable rally point. “Signal the shuttle that we have arrived and to fall back to the ship. Have it ping the target area on the way out. I want a complete picture of the compound,” he ordered.
--
“My name is Aksby, human. It is time for us to talk. Hopefully our discussion will last longer than the ones I had with your two companions.”
“It probably will. You have to be tired by now.”
“Is that humor? What is your name, human?”
“Your queen is a whore.”
Aksby clicked a sigh. “Must you all be so stubborn?”
Sergeant Arnold Green looked at the bugs in the room. His team had been captured just minutes after they began moving to kill the planet’s primary and queen. In the lightweight FALCONs, they just weren’t tough enough to resist the heavy weapons used by the enemy. Green had seen the writing on the wall and ordered his team to surrender. He now knew that he wasn’t going to get out of this alive, so he decided to make the best of his circumstance. “I will talk to your Planet Supreme, or I will talk to your queen. I’m not saying shit to you.”
“You will talk to me, human. What is your name?”
“You don’t know how we got here. You don’t know why you can’t see our ships. You don’t know where our home system is. I can die like my friends did, Aksby, or I can bargain with you. Your choice.”
“What is your name?” Aksby asked again.
Green began to whistle The Marines’ Hymn.
--
Bravo platoon spread out and began firing at the enemy sentries. By the time Cort and the Charlie platoon arrived at the gates of the base, there were no perimeter guards, but the sounds of battle had roused more defenders. When Delta followed Charlie into the perimeter, the entire base was crawling with bugs. Heavy guns began firing at the CONDORs, which took the blows over and over, gaining tens of meters for every thousand rounds of ammunition used against them. Every strike was converted by the suits to power the handheld railguns that had become the Marines’ weapon of choice.
Those rounds found target after target, until the bodies of thousands of Cuplans were piled in front of the building entrances. Two armored vehicles appeared and rolled toward the attacking humans, spewing plasma fire as they rolled. Cort heard a scream and looked to his left where Charlie-two was ignited by the spout of flame that bored a hole through his suit.
“Concentrate on the armor!” Sorano yelled. Three Marines fell before the first armored vehicle was destroyed, and eight more were gone when the second was finally stopped by Delta platoon.
--
Green had one arm left. Both of his feet were missing, and were it not for the synthetics, he would have long since passed out.
“What is your name?” Aksby asked again.
Green raised his left arm, as if to stop Aksby from approaching.
--
“Sir, we have to fall back. There are too many of them,” Sorano said over the battle channel.
“I need five Bravos, Captain. Pull everyone else back.” Cort knelt beside a pile of bodies, both Marine and Cuplan, and said to Sorano, “I’m going to overload the CONDORs that are down. Pull everyone back, and when the suits go, swarm in behind the explosions.”
“Yes, sir. Where will you go?”
“We probably won’t go anywhere, Captain. You have your orders,” Cort said as he grabbed a dead Marine’s suit and began running with it. On his way around the perimeter, with five Bravos following him with their own burdens, he sent a message to Kimberly using a Cuplan transmitter.
--
Green gasped for breath as Aksby said, “Are you ready to speak, human?”
The sergeant sighed and said, “My name is Santa Claus.”
“Very good, Santa Claus.” Aksby poured a container of water and placed it in front of Green. “Why are you here?”
“I’ve brought you something for being good,” Green said as he raised the glass to his lips.
“What do you
mean?”
Green dropped the glass and reached for the back of his neck, where he pressed three buttons on the collar of his FALCON. “I’ve brought you death.”
--
As Sorano got the last of his men and women out of the gates, Cort’s team of Marines began the process of turning their fallen friends into bombs. The ground began to rumble and Cort looked up at the center of the base, just in time to see a building collapse in a cloud of dust. The ground heaved and then settled to form a shallow crater.