by Korza, Jay
“And we don't know their current strength, correct?” The president directed his question to his top military advisor.
“No, sir, we don't. We can't even take an educated guess. We are attempting to use Sergeant Bloom's decryption and sifting program to go through the newest vessel we captured but so far we don't have anything. There's no reason to believe we'll find detailed information in the memory of a fighter craft.” The advisor turned and gave a slight nod to Bloom, an acknowledgement of his contribution to the mission.
“Sir,” Bloom started, “we can throw around some simple math but we still don't know what we're up against. It's been one thousand years since the purge; if they have an average life cycle of fifty years each, they have gone through twenty full life cycles in that time. If they were conservative and birthed one million warriors every fifty years, they would still have thirty million in reserve.”
“What about training time? Wouldn't they have to account for that in their cycle?” the president asked.
Bloom sighed. “No, sir. The warriors are born fully ready to go. They do gain experience and ability with every life experience, just as we do, but most of their abilities are trained via implanted genetic memories.”
“But we do know that they had a devastating war with a species known to them as the Cherta. Who knows how many warriors they lost during that conflict? We could be looking at millions of warriors or a relative handful of a few hundred thousand.”
The empress was handed a tablet from one of her aides standing outside the camera's view. Her face slackened and she interrupted. “The birthing planet's origin is probably the most heavily guarded secret in all of my empire. The warriors are genetically engineered to have an aversion to its location. They are not supposed to be able to set coordinates to or near it.”
The president looked over as she paused. “I sense a rather large 'however' coming.”
“Yes, Mister President.” The empress steadied herself. “The coordinates have always been guarded but there is a deeply embedded and highly encrypted line of programming in our surveillance systems that if any ship is detected going near the coordinates, a simple message of 'Inform the royal house of incursion' is given to the ruling member of the royal family. The message does not state the coordinates or the nature of the incursion but the message is clear to whom it was delivered.”
“And you just received that message?” The military advisor shifted his chair towards the empress.
“I just received six hundred forty-seven counts of that message.” The empress handed the tablet back to the unseen aide on her side. “It would seem as though a large portion, or maybe the entire warrior fleet, has found their way home. If they have found a way to overcome their genetic programming to stay away from the birthing planet, it's reasonable to believe that they have also found a way to access the planet or at the very least, they believe it to be possible.”
Without waiting for anyone to ask the obvious, Bloom spoke up. “That would give them access to billions of already grown warriors and presumably the ability to grow more.”
“Fuck.” And when that comes from the president of the known galaxy, you kind of want to piss yourself a little.
Chapter 50
The Warrior Interrogation Planet - The Rescue Continues
The last warrior fell and Surgeon's team suffered no worse than an injury that had to be battle-stapled before they moved on. Everyone teased Reaper because he always smiled, a little too much, when he got to staple someone after a firefight. With the twenty staples in place and a good layer of a skin adhesive tissue growing compound, they were back on the move.
They had encountered mild resistance on their way towards what seemed to be the center of the complex. Surgeon thought that Cadet's assessment was correct: the guy in charge was pulling his forces back to defend a single location. All of the warriors they encountered were obviously trying to tactically retreat to the same location. None of them were on the offensive or trying to hold their position. The tactical retreat might have worked in most situations but with Cadet's plan to treat everything as a near ambush and push through it, a standard peel-off maneuver couldn't survive an aggressively forward-moving unit of highly motivated and angry soldiers.
As they were clearing the rooms in the hallway, Joker came over the comlink. “Surgeon, Cadet, come to my location. I found what I think is a map of this structure.”
When they reached the room Joker was in, he pointed to the wall. “I think this is a security office by the look of it. This map shows the complex, checkpoints, barriers, and other stuff. Of course, we can't read any of it but the symbology looks fairly straightforward.”
“I think this shaded room represents where we are.” Seth traced his finger along the map. “And that is where we need to go.” A confident finger tapped the map.
Surgeon took in the whole map and could see in his mind's eye the battles they just fought in the different areas. His mind saw his friends' dead bodies on the map where they had left them. “I agree. Once we move through the section just ahead of us, we'll have two corridors to choose from to assault the area that looks like our target.”
“I think we should assault from both corridors at the same time.” Seth pointed to two locations on the map.
Joker shook his head. “If we split up, we risk hitting hardened locations in either or both corridors with reduced manpower at each. If they are pulling back to protect one location, it would make sense that they would put a contact team in both hallways.”
“I agree”, Seth began. “But there are also advantages. They probably won't think that we know the layout of the base. They will probably be expecting us to come through the main entry point on this side, probably with a plan to shift defense to the other location if we happened to hit that side instead. If we hit the more obvious entry point first, they will focus there and hopefully not be ready for a secondary attack from behind.”
Surgeon was thoughtful for a moment. “You two are like the right and left sides of my brain.” He smiled. “I swear with you two around there is no need for me because you always think of everything I ever could. Valid points all. I don't think these guys have encountered humans fighting as aggressively as we have been and it's throwing them off their game. They kicked our asses at every colony they attacked and I'm sure the colonists had purely defensive postures. That's what they were expecting and that's not what we've been giving them. We need to keep moving with what's been working for us so far.
“We go with Cadet's plan and push from both sides. We'll move to these positions here.” Surgeon indicated points just before the final hallways to their objectives. “We'll go in a little lopsided: eighty percent of the team on the main assault and twenty percent on the secondary point. We just need the second assault team to throw the defenders into chaos and then we'll push through with the greater numbers in that moment.
“The first team will move into their final hall first while the second team holds back. If there are defenders in this hallway, then we can assume they will also be at the secondary breach point. If they are present, we don't want the second team setting off their defense and warning the main interior defenders of our plan.”
Surgeon finished the plan with Cadet and Joker and then the rest of the team. “If there are defenders at these points, hopefully our main assault will draw the defenders from the secondary hallway into the main structure here.” He pointed at the map again.
Seth jumped in. “Reaper found some of our weapons in a nearby room. It looks as though they took some from the ship to study them. The fantastic thing is they took some heavy weapons, including explosives and launchers. If team one meets resistance in their hallway, then team two will begin their assault with a heavy barrage of those explosives. With luck, we won't have to fire a single shot at the secondary breach point.”
Ammunition from the recovered weapons was being passed out along with explosives and a few launchers. From the time the map was found
and the teams were on the move again, it had been less than ten minutes. Seth was leading the secondary team with Surgeon and Joker on the primary. They were so close to their objective but none was prepared for what they were about to step into.
~
The warrior in charge walked through his brothers' positions and made minor adjustments to them as he passed by. Fields of fire that seemed to overlap from a fighter's position always looked different from another perspective and their leader adjusted them accordingly.
The prisoners were still all in their torture tubes but the torturing had been stopped when the first alarm was tripped inside the base. The leader had been notified immediately when the humans set off the alarm on the first control panel outside the base. He immediately silenced the interior alarms and allowed them to move somewhat freely through the base. He wanted his men to be able to fight for their own practice and also for his own need to learn about his enemy's abilities.
So far the leader was impressed. He had been involved in the very first raid of the humans' colonies but his involvement had been limited to the supervision of the transport torture tubes on the primary prison barge. He had witnessed some of the assault via the video link that went through every ship but that was never the same as the real thing.
The humans, and a couple of other mutt races, currently assaulting his base were obviously of much higher training than anyone who had been at any of the outposts. Even the prisoners he currently had from the scout ship they had taken were not of the same caliber as the forces now pushing towards him and his brothers.
The main chamber of the torture well was the last structure of the complex that sat at ground level. There were elevators, ladders, and a single spiral staircase that went twenty levels lower. Each level of the circular structure housed a variety of torture tubes, surgical suites, dissection tables, and other assorted atrocities.
Each station of every level could be observed from the main floor, which contained the heart and brains of the operation. The bulk of the leader's forces were on the main level, waiting for the inevitable assault. He could've fought on any of the levels below that were filled with the crew from the enemy vessel but he didn't want to risk their lives. Not because he cared about them at all, but he had found many unique subjects among the crew and he wasn't quite finished with them yet.
One warrior had suggested fighting from the lower levels and using the subjects as shields to slow down the assaulting forces. That warrior was summarily killed with a single sweep of the leader's blade that removed head from neck. If the warrior was too scared to fight with honor, then he was too scared to live at all. The leader had planned to use his prisoners during the fight but not in that way. The leader knew he could win this fight but he hoped to gain some more knowledge from his enemy before they died.
The monitors clearly showed the hallways leading to the torture well. The team was advancing much as he thought they would. The leader switched the monitors to show as many individual torture tubes as he had screens. Each monitor was focused on the face of the tube's occupant. Each also had a picture-in-picture of a wound that the tube was working on before its efforts had been halted. The faces for now were calm as the prisoners were given this brief respite from their pain. The leader was ready for the assault and he couldn't wait for his enemies to see the faces of their shipmates as the torture tubes resumed their tasks, all at the same time.
The monitors switched from the view of the hallway to the faces of the victims in the torture tubes...
~
A few more steps and Surgeon gave the signal for the team to split in to two assaulting forces. Seth took his team to the left and held at the designated point in the hallway. One of his men passed up a fiber line that would allow them to see around the corner without exposing themselves. Seth waved it off, though he appreciated the forward thinking of his men. Although the fiber camera wasn't much larger than a few strands of hair, Seth didn't want to risk being spotted even if the chance was a near infinitesimal one. The operator nodded once and put the gear back in his pack.
~
Surgeon was on point until Joker pulled up next to him and touched his arm as though he wanted to speak with him. Surgeon paused and looked at his friend and then noticed three of his operators moving past them both and taking up leading positions on the assault team.
“You're a prick”, Surgeon subvocalized.
“Maybe, but you're the dumbass that let this prick outwit you. Again.” Joker knew his friend would probably outlive them all, even if he were on point for every mission over the course of his whole life, but he wasn't taking any chances. This mission needed Surgeon more than any of the others. Seth would take the mantle if Surgeon went down, not because he was the only officer on the team but because he was the next obvious choice, even with his lesser experience.
The team moved forward to their last point of concealment and cover. The plan was to use a fiber camera to view the hallway before making their move. If the camera was spotted, then they would make an explosive assault. If they could pick out individual targets, then they would attempt coordinated, discrete fire to neutralize their targets.
The camera rounded the corner and a makeshift barricade was on either side of the door. No warriors were in sight. Given the small size of the barriers and the large size of the warriors, Surgeon was fairly sure that plans had changed after the barriers were erected and the defenders were pulled inside the doorway.
New plan. Surgeon motioned his demolitions guys forward and pointed to the door. With a curt nod, they moved forward, knowing what he wanted. Well-placed explosives on the doorway would provide a large breach point and hopefully hurt or kill any enemies just inside the doorway.
As the three operators got about two-thirds of the way down the hall, two auto turrets rose from the small barricades and began firing. The demo guy was cut in half instantly and the other two took a lot of rounds as well. The rearmost demo operator had a remote charge already in his hand, ready to set it on the door. As he fell, he armed and threw it at one of the turrets.
In Surgeon's visor, he saw a demo charge status light go green and he quickly took control of the charge and detonated it. The charge immediately destroyed the turret it was next to and sent shrapnel at the other one. The charge also put a dent in one of the doors it was originally meant for. The damaged turret now had a restricted angle of movement and could only cover about three-quarters of the hallway.
Reaper saw the turret's limitation and jumped into the hallway and into the turret's dead zone. The turret tried to track him and fired as it did so but it came up short. Whatever AI was running the gun realized that Reaper was an unavailable target and went back to looking for more available targets.
Joker saw the turret start to track Reaper and he went to reach for the leg of the demo guy nearest him. Surgeon pulled him back immediately and held him in place. “The turret is tracking back. We'll have to wait for Reaper to disable it.”
A pair of CQB grenades detonated and the turret fire stopped. “Clear,” was all Reaper said as he held his position and waited for the rest of the team to move forward. Once the doors were covered, he moved to his fallen teammates and checked their status. Dead.
By the time Reaper had gotten back into the stick, the remaining demo charges had been packed up by other teammates. The doors were obviously open and the charges wouldn't be as effective now as anyone on the other side of the door would have most likely moved away when the assault began. Surprise was no longer on their side so violence of action and speed of attack were the only things in their favor.
The three operators on point pushed through the doors and were immediately engaged by the enemy. Unlike the projectile-throwing sentry guns, the warriors in the room used the familiar plasma rifles that the team had been encountering up to this point. But this time the team had a slight advantage.
In the room where they found their crew's weapons stashed, there was also a small firing range. F
our of their personal engineering shields were at the end of the range with plasma burns in several places but no penetration to the shields. The shields weren't designed for tactical defense; they were designed for the engineering crew so they could approach radiation leaks and other engineering hazards in order to repair them.
The shields held up perfectly against the enemy plasma fire and allowed operators to take direct hits that would otherwise have killed them instantly. Their unexpected immunity to the oncoming fire was obviously distressing to the enemy because they could hear one voice above all others giving frantic orders. They couldn't understand the orders but any infantryman worth his salt knew they had to be flanking orders to get around the shields.
Taking a page from human history, the shield operators put together as much of a Spartan phalanx formation as they could. The next row of operators moved up and instead of pushing their spears through the phalanx, they pushed their rifle muzzles forward and began picking off targets.
Surgeon was pleased that this portion of the plan was going better than expected. The sentry guns were a horrible demoralizer but he knew he had to put that out of his mind for now and focus on the battle in front of him.
As Surgeon pulled his awareness back to the here and now, he became aware of the monitors above his enemies. They were filled with the faces of crew members from their ship. Surgeon didn't know every single crew member so a lot of the faces weren't familiar but there were enough he did know to make him realize what he was seeing. Immediately, he began putting a single round through each monitor so his team wouldn't get distracted, if they weren't already. A quick jab to Joker and he knew what Surgeon was doing and joined in.
~
The warrior leader was completely taken by surprise by the use of the shields. He must not have seen the humans pick the shields up; it was a costly mistake. He also didn't expect the humans to waste time and resources on the video screens but it did work in his favor.