Many of these nonmilitary persons knew Lieutenant Ankar well because of the comedy shows he put on and organized in the recreation centers as well as the music concerts and sporting events he established. Even with so much on his plate the lieutenant still seemed to have no problem accomplishing his normal workload that was part of his duty.
“There, finished. Are you satisfied?” Jonathan turned his chair around and looked up with a mock stern face directly at the man of average physique.
“Yes Boss, very much so, thank you,” he smiled back seeing right through the colonel and spun around on his heels to walk back towards the door before pausing, “contact with General Hadim in one hour twenty.”
Surprised by this last reminder Jonathan quickly darted his eyes downward at the chrono glowing inside his wristcom. The time shining back at him actually gave him a second of pause and confusion. No way he had slept that long, the colonel told himself, but the clock did not lie. For the first time since the assault on Frontiera had begun Jonathan had slumbered for over a single hour. In fact according to his watch it had been five times as long as previously. For the past ten days Jonathan had been kept awake mostly by the weight of responsibly pressing upon him as well as with the help of stims coursing through his body.
Thinking of the sleep brought his mind back to the recent dream he had just experienced moments ago. It had started mostly like his previous two during his catnaps, but those had been only flashes of images. This one felt much more real, not like a dream at all. It seemed to be entirely something different that Jonathan could not put his finger on.
When he looked back up Barmir was no longer in the office, having left almost immediately to carry out other duties. Jonathan took a deep breath, ran his left hand slowly through his slightly matted hair, reminding himself of a long overdue shower, and leaned back into his chair lost in a moment of reflection. The image of his son and wife dead in his hands still so fresh and shocking in his mind. He could almost feel the weight of the two lifeless bodies in his arms and tried to console himself in that it was just an awful nightmare with no more bearing than such. Deep inside, however, Jonathan knew what a full out war against the Federation could do. He had seen such horrors within Destona itself.
Finally regaining control of himself, the colonel forcibly pushed the thoughts deeper into his mind, burying them so they would not bother him further. He had more pressing matters closer at hand that demanded his undivided attention. Jonathan leaning forward once more and pushed himself away from the desk with purpose. His intelligence reports had informed him earlier with reasonable certainty that the enemy was in possession of some sort of mind control weapon. He had seen reports and even combat footage of such from the first day assault on Destona. Perhaps he had just experienced something like that, Jonathan asked himself. If that was in fact true than he resolved to not give the enemy any satisfaction. He would not let them control him or feed off his fears.
With unyielding purpose Colonel Hallsworth rose to his feet, felt the uniform readjust itself to his new posture, and strode out of the room. He walked down one of the white and light brown sterile corridor that led to the transit station. The civilians now living throughout the Bastion complex must be thinking how Spartan everything looked inside the sprawling facility. That is if they weren’t still so traumatized from having had to witness the horrors of war and being torn from everything they knew and owned. Jon could not blame them in the least. There was a reason some people chose the military as a profession and others did not. It was also only after years of training and drilling that soldiers learn to deal with what they might come across in a battle environment. Even so, the colonel thought, he had personally witnessed some of these men and women at arms break down mentally in the midst of intense combat.
As he neared one of the civilian habitat blocks that had been taken over and converted from a former soldier barracks he began to see the surroundings slowly change. Parts of the hallway were littered with luggage along the walls, while other sections had various drawings at the lower edges of the rounded wall surfaces. In the past week more people from the surrounding area had wondered into Bastion or had been rounded up and evacuated by some of his forces. Because of these new additions the bunker complex had swelled to over one hundred thousand people. This great number strained resources to the breaking point, but how could Jonathan, in good conscience, refuse their entrance. As a result people already living at Bastion were asked to contribute further and free up more space for these new arrivals. The already overflowing habitats were made even more claustrophobic, but that couldn’t be helped. Most civilians cooperated freely, remembering vividly what they had gone through, while others had been more combative. In the end those pockets of resistance were encouraged to soften their attitudes by a stern warning from the Colonel. To ease the situation what remained of Jon’s meager engineering units had started excavating further into the mountain in an attempt to construct more livable space.
Jonathan rounded a soft corner and felt his heart warm as he noticed one of the base’s newest editions sitting on the floor with a marker in his small hand. The five year old boy paused in the middle of his wall drawing and looked up at Jonathan with a big smile, waving happily at the big colonel. Jon smiled and waved back at the boy, whose name was Telis. He remembered the child well as he had been among the last group of Destona civilians evacuated a few days before by his men. The entire family had suffered great misfortune at the hands of the enemy. Reviewing their files Jonathan saw that they had three other children, all of whom served the Federation. One son had been a soldier stationed on the planet and had died in the initial phase of the invasion in defense of SP Mironia. Their daughter was part of the Destona Security Force and had perished while protecting groups of civilians as they moved towards their designated evacuation point. Their last son, the oldest of the four, had chosen a career path in the Federation Marine Corp and was currently assigned as the head of security on the Rahias Advanced Projects Facility.
All of this was seemingly lost on the young boy as he proceeded to draw pictures on the wall. Jonathan admired the ignorance and resilience of youth. There were actually a surprising number of such children that had taken their relocation remarkably well, thinking of it more as a vacation than anything else. The after effects of such uprooting would probably manifest themselves later in their lives, Jon thought to himself as he looked down at the child. Reaching down he playfully ruffled the boy’s hair and wished him well before continuing on his way.
In another moment he started to hear voices coming from up ahead of him. Jonathan began to fear another confrontation between the population before he realized that the sounds were not of anger or hatred, but of cheer and union. The noise grew louder until he passed the recreation room they were coming from. Looking to his left Jon noticed the entire doorway decorated with homemade streamers and signs along with other inviting decorations. There was also music playing in the background, something Colonel Hallsworth had not heard in quite some time. It actually made him pause in mid stride and take a closer look inside.
The room was rather large, designed to house over a thousand people at one time, and from what Jonathan saw it looked to be filled to capacity. There were tables and chairs set up around the room where people could sit and eat together. He could see groups of these people sitting around and talking to each other. After so much pain and suffering it was refreshing to finally see some of the civilians in a more relaxed environment. It was really his first time since the invasion that he had seen them smile, let alone laugh.
Jonathan took a long breath and let the music warm his soul for a second. Unfortunately he did not have more time to stay and slowly turned away from the party being had. Happy inside that people were finally starting to get along and perhaps getting back some small semblance of their prewar life. With that he moved along to the HTram station not letting anything else interrupt his progress.
It took only a few minutes
for the levitated train to reach its destination within the depth of the Bastion complex. This was the most secure section of the facility and it was only because of Bain and Jonathan’s Neural Cognitive Implant that he was able to clear the many checkpoints without slowing down. Bastion’s AI detected the colonel approaching thanks to the NCI and allowed him to pass into the TACCOM center without pause. It also let everyone within the command center know of the colonel’s arrival so it was no surprise that Major Prinesa Girard was already waiting him when Jonathan stepped out of the tram car.
Jonathan was not surprised to see her humorless stern face and ridged stance greeting him as he set foot into the Center. Prinesa had been assigned to his unit just before their deployment to Frontiera and was his second-in-command. Judging by her records and past reviews she had a brilliant mind, but was plagued by a less than ideal personality. She was cold and rather unfriendly to those around her, preferring to conduct herself in a strict ‘by the book’ manner. In truth Jonathan saw her as almost his exact opposite and therefore found her somewhat difficult to work with at times. He had to admit, however, that even with her troubles getting along with the other soldiers, Major Girard was a great asset. She would never be his number one on the frontline, but he trusted her completely to oversee that his orders were carried out throughout the various units now under his command. Her diligence to duty and attention to detail in the officer role was the reason for all of her past promotions.
“At ease Major,” Colonel Hallsworth said as he smirked slightly and walked by the statuesque figure, “sitrep if you please.”
“Sir, it has been a rather quiet day. No contact reported by any of the outbound teams and all perimeter sensors remain clear of enemy activity. Scouts have reported increased activity around the capital, however,” which Jonathan knew wasn’t anything special. The enemy had chosen to fortify Destona ever since the mass evacuation and the army’s intentional destruction of a good part of the city. His intelligence unit figured that the alien landing force must have suffered heavy losses during the city’s bombing and it was taking time to reinforce the units still active in order to restart operations. Jonathan agreed with the assessment as they had all seen alien ground activity decrease sharply since those first couple of days. Sure there had been scouting parties and minor assaults on the outlying areas of the capital and against Bastion itself, but those had been relatively few and far between. If Jonathan had been the commanding officer he would have dispatched larger units and secured a wider region, that is if he had had the units needed for such operations.
As he moved into the middle of the room and gazed up at the large tactical displays projected on the walls Prinesa continued with her report. “It seems like they are consolidating their forces and might be planning a bigger operation. There has been no slowdown in the reinforcement of the enemy around the city. Most of our remaining troops in the area have pulled back further to the periphery of Destona. Our resistance units are still operating throughout the city, however, and report multiple successes in disrupting enemy movements.”
The colonel nodded last statement knowing full well how many accomplishments his guerilla units inside the torn city itself had racked up over the past week. While the enemy lines had pushed deeper into the formally UPF held areas, Jonathan had ordered a tactical retreat from these contested zones. During their pull back many of these formations had left small four to six troop units in place, hidden within the rubble, creating an effective harassment force behind the invaders lines. These units were made up of mostly volunteers and a number of senior experienced noncoms, who then taught the rest about guerilla tactics. Along the way they had even found willing civilians to join them, who were put into a resistance reserve force of sorts that assisted the main army units. Losses for his side were slowly mounting as well, as the enemy had begun to adjust their tactics and operations.
He crossed his arms over his chest and slowly looked over the heads of all the working servicemen and women in the command room, studying the information shown on the various display windows. Each one showed different data. The majority of the images being displayed at the moment were those of a night shrouded Destona and the areas surrounding it. He could also see that most of these images were only hours old and some were even live feeds. These last ones had been the hardest to get. It had taken his specialized reconnaissance units days to move into those sectors without being detected and exterminated by the enemy. All that work and waiting had paid off, however, as Jonathan looked at the images of an almost completely destroyed spaceport and another staging area on the opposite side of the city. In both places there was a lot of activity with the enemy forces still constructing alien looking structures that were possibly barracks and hanger facilities. Unlike the rest of the darkened city, these areas were lit up by floodlights.
There were also buildings around a set of landing zones that appeared to be storage warehouses. As Colonel Hallsworth watched on a bulbous transport lifted off from one of these landing pads and accelerated into the air. The other thing he saw was that there seemed to be more weapons emplacements now around both these bases than there had previously been.
While looking over the displays Jonathan noticed a view he hadn’t seen before. Major Girard, as always, anticipated the colonel’s question. “We just detected this camp yesterday. It appears that the enemy is now rounding up civilians and placing them into these detention facilities. We have counted three such camps around Destona, but don’t have any more information on the matter. I tasked a team from intel to look into the camps further, I hope that’s alright.”
“That’s perfect Major, we need to know what’s happening inside those centers. We should also find out why two of them are heavily guarded, but this one,” he pointed at one of the smaller camps, “only has a few soldiers manning it.”
“I didn’t even notice that, sir,” Prinesa said slowly with a hint of disappointment at herself in her voice.
“Sometimes it just takes a new perspective, Major.” Jonathan said sincerely without looking away.
“Now that you mention it, Colonel, Camp Two seemed to be the exact opposite. They built it right next to OB Beta and appears to be heavily defended. Perhaps they have something or more likely someone of high importance in there?”
That actually perked Jonathan’s ears and he scanned over the images to find the one she was talking about. His mind raced with questions. They had to get at least one unit close to the area to try and find out what’s going on in that case. There would be a reason for this choice in location and the increased number of troops in comparison to the other locations. Before he could think of anything else a large countdown timer flashed on the tactical display.
“Two minutes until contact with General Hadim,” informed Specialist Ceasaris, who had been helping to run the TACCOM since they had all arrived at Bastion.
“Run diagnostics once more. Make sure everything is ready. This has to go off without a hitch, understood?” Colonel Hallsworth ordered as he kept standing in the middle of TACCOM while looking at the displays.
One of them changed to show the entire planet with a number of red triangle icons orbiting around it. He remembered there being more of them the last time he checked and actually allowed himself a sign of relief. Each symbol represented a single enemy capital ship in orbit. They were revolving around Frontiera’s latitude to pass over both the Telfor and Westora close to the equatorial plane. He watched as they both slowly floated over Bastion and Destona in kind. At the same time the alien transport craft that had taken off moments before was shown rising through the atmosphere before disappearing into the edge of Frontiera’s atmosphere. Both capital ships slid right past the bunker complex just as the timer ticked past forty seconds.
“Everything is ready to go, Colonel. All tests in the green. Ready to commence in thirty,” the specialist reported after Bain finished running the diagnostic program on all communications and weapons systems.
“Very well, initiate contact with the General as scheduled,” Jonathan responded, looking over another display that depicted the dispersed resistance units throughout the devastated city that Destona had become within the last ten days. The surrounding areas were shown on neighboring windows allowing him to see the two main enemy spaceports and military bases, which were actually combined together for increased protection. Each of these bases were represented into great detail through the advanced night vision of his units with multiple red ‘targeted’ reticles scatted throughout at specific sites. There was also a trio of Jayhawks now gliding high over the areas as spotters and comm relays.
Finally the countdown reached zero and the RAI Bain initiated the plan already put in place. These same actions had happened two previous times before over the past four days, making the methods employed tried and tested. From one of the missile launch tubes cut into the mountains a single modified missile body ejected and quickly accelerated up towards the predawn sky. At a preset altitude the nose cone burst open and instead of a warhead revealed an autonomous aerial vehicle which then separated and rocketed out further to a position over the Velio Ocean. It took up station in this middle ground between the two planetary continents before instantly establishing laser data link contact with both Bastion and Fort Vostovas, the central command center for General Hadim and TACCOM of the entire Federation military force on Westera.
Con-Red: Recourse Page 53