He read through what I gave him and replied, “Well as far as leadership goes, I guess I would be an army Colonel, but as far as time in service, I have served in the Old Guard for about 120 years. While I am the third-highest ranked person in the Old Guard, but I chose to work with just a small group around the size of your platoons out of the 100 people that went with us to raid the base only the three of us survived. I really think the mission was a trap.”
After some thought and based on his experience, I had John put him in as an Admiral(O-10) and his other two guys in as Senior Chiefs (E-9). After we explained this to them, they were ok with the Navy ranks and uniforms.
Kevlar went with John to continue work on data recovery as there was still a lot we needed to know. While the data we had so far was useful, it only gave exact locations on the camp and base here in Florida the rest were generalized locations, but there was still a lot of data to go through. While they worked on that, I sat Melissa down with Jamie and let her pick his brain on their bionetwork technology maybe between the two of them they could come up with a way to jam it or shut it down. I grabbed a couple of the Johnson brothers and asked them to take Leroy to the range and get him familiar with our weapons. Finally, I grabbed Holly, and we head over to the gym for some sparing. I needed to work through some thoughts and sparing with Holly always helped me clear my head. We would all meet up again after dinner when the Skipper arrived and begin planning our assault on the main base here in Florida.
The Skipper and the rest of the team arrived in 1600. To save time, the Skipper decided to have the senior staff all have dinner at the base commanders dining hall so that we could begin planning our next actions. So, at 1700 we all gathered for a working dinner. The first thing I did was introduce Kevlar and his team to everyone and gave them all the short version of who he was and why he was with us.
“Ok Dungeon Master why don’t you start and fill everyone in on what you’ve discovered.” The Skipper said.
“Well to start, we’ve discovered the location of the base here in Florida, and we have discovered the purpose of the camps and the base. The camp is a recruitment and training facilities used to recruit local earth population the install a bionetwork into them and make them into front line soldiers for the invasion. The bases are designed to be permeant gate locations for which they can bring through their armies. Construction has only been completed on about half the bases, and it looks like it will take them another year to finish them all. The good news is that until all the gates are completed, they cannot use them for large scale movement because they are all linked and act as buffers for one another if they move large scales of troops and materials without risking the destruction of all the gate complexes. The way it works is when they are completed one or two gates are opened at a time allowing stuff to move through it the excess energy from the open gate is transferred to the other gates to provide them with the needed energy to open. With smaller gates, it is this excess energy that creates temporary tears in dimensional space. If for some reason, something was to go wrong in the process, it could create thousands of dimensional tears all at once. You can imagine the chaos this would cause. The need to have at least 7 bases up before they can even attempt to open the permeant gates. Kevlar and I believe that if they try to do it with any less than 7 gates, it will cause a meltdown and destroy all the gates connected. Each gate meltdown would be the equivalent of a plasma power plan overloading destroying everything within about 50 miles of the gate and cause random rifts for at least 200 miles. “John said.
“We discovered that Duke Abreus oversees the project.” Kevlar stated. Kevlar took over and began to brief us on the Duke. “The Duke is one sick bastard. The last mission he oversaw resulted in the deaths of over a billion people. He is ruthless and does not care about anyone on this planet. In his eyes, the only reason not to kill the entire planet’s population is that they can be used as slave labor after the planet is pacified. Whatever plan we put into effect, it must include finding the Duke and killing him and his personal guard. His guard is the worst of the worst there is not a war atrocity that they have not committed. My group have been hunting them for over 50 years and have managed to take around five thousand of them. Our last intel had them numbering at around 200, but it was rumored that the reason he hadn’t been seen in a while was that he created a secret base and was training more personal guard. I would guess that he and his guard are on the base on the moon.” He stated. Kevlar continued to speak for about an hour filling in most of the holes he had in the data we had collected during our time fighting the Epelts.
The Skipper told us that the SECNAV would be turning this into fully function Seal base after we take out the Epelts base here in Florida. The Navy would be building on-base housing for families, along with all the typical amenities.
The Skipper looked at me and said. “Seeing how you have some inside connections with the Seminole Nation; the SECNAV wants you to meet with them and see about purchasing or trading for the additional land we need. He said to tell you that there are about 10,000 acres of undeveloped land owned by the Army corps of engineers by lake O that we are willing to trade for 200 acres around the base here. Or we will buy it from them at 25% above market value.”
“I’ll set up a meeting with their chief tonight,” I replied.
The Skipper spent about another thirty minutes giving assignments to the rest of the senior staff then dismissed everyone “See you all here tomorrow at 0730 for breakfast.” He said as people began to stand up and leave.
Melissa, Holly and I loaded up in a hummer with Kevlar and his squad and headed back to the barracks. “So, we think we have come up with a to disconnect someone from the bionetwork and adding an upgrade to your headwear implant. It will basically allow you to connect to a person’s bio network and send a shutdown code as if you were one of their command and control systems.” Melissa told me.
“That’s great when with the upgrade be ready?” I asked.
“We are hoping to have it ready for install by tomorrow evening. We believe we will able to improve on it and maybe within a week we may be able to give you the ability to link to the bionet and download data from them.” She responded.
“That would be amazing. I know sitting you down with Jamie would pay off,” I replied.
I invited Kevlar, Jamie, and Leroy to my quarters for drinks. Once we all arrived at my quarters, I broke out the bottle of 50-year-old Glenfiddich and poured glasses for all of us. We sat down and started sharing war in ways that only a bunch of spec ops people could. It’s didn’t take long before we had bonded, they were part of our team and had always been part of it. We hung out together until 2200 then Holly led Kevlar, Jamie, and Leroy to their quarters. Melissa and I took a shower and then headed off to bed.
I awoke at 0500 and started a fresh pot of coffee. It was just then that I hear a knock on my door. I opened the door to see Kevlar standing there with a cup in his hand, he looked at me, and with a questioning look on his face he said “Coffee?” I smiled at him and told him it would be done in two minutes. He glanced down and saw that I also was holding an empty coffee cup. “You know Go-go I think we are going to become good friends,” He said. I had to agree with him; this looked like the start of a lifelong friendship. We both walked over to the coffee pot and stared at it like two predators standing over a rabbit hole waiting for the rabbit to pop up so that can devoir it. Just then, a female hand slipped between us, grabbed the pot and poured a cup, and placed the pot back on the coffeemaker.
“Morning, boys,” Melissa said from behind us. We turned to see Melissa sipping her coffee, and both began to laugh as I quickly reach over and pour myself a cup before Kevlar could.
“So where are you off to this early in the morning,” Kevlar asked.
“Morning exercise you know 10-mile run, 5-mile swim followed by pushups, pullups, and sit-ups,” I replied.
“Mind if I join you?” He asked.
“Sure, if you think you
can keep up old man,” I replied.
“This should be easy; it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to run without a bunch of maniacs with gun chasing after me trying to kill me.” He said.
I laughed as we finished our coffee and headed out to the parade field, where we saw the rest of the unit starting to assemble. Holly was there with Jamie and Leroy in tow.
We went through our morning PT routine, and I noticed that Kevlar and his boys had no problem keeping up with the rest of the team, in fact, they were not even winded in the least. I had a feeling that they could have gone another hour or so and still not have been winded. We headed back to the barracks to shower, and then we were off for breakfast with the Skipper.
17. The Old Guard
The breakfast wasn’t a working breakfast; it was more of a chance for everyone to get to know Kevlar and his guys. I found out that although Leroy was an admiral, He had never been on a ship, as a matter of fact, the Old Guard had no Navy. We discovered that admiral wasn’t rank at all it was a title awarded to him and was similar to what we would call a Knight his actually rank was similar to senior chief. And Kevlar, while he went by the rank of General, was, in fact, a Prince, but he chose not to use the title as he was the 3rd son and would instead identify himself as a freedom fighter. “We are not an army we are a group of small teams, we only number a few thousand while the Epelts’ army number close to a million, but what we lack in numbers we make up in quality. Our people train for ten years before they ever see a field operation. Only about 20% of applicants make it through the first year of training and of them only about 10% of them go on to complete training. The training our people go through is the same training the Old Guard has gone through for over 2000 years. The first two years of training is all about combat training and has not changed much since the Old Guard was first created. After the first two years, the applicants are masters of hand to hand and melee combat. The next three years are advanced weapons training. In advanced weapons training, we start with man pistol, rifles, machine guns, and vehicle-mounted weapon systems. After that, we learn all types of explosives from hand grenades to IEDs. Then we finish off with aircraft, tanks, and orbital weapons systems. The final five years are spent on induvial skills training. After ten years with the guard, I was sent to 5 years of command school and promoted to LT of the guard. In the Old Guard, no one starts out as an officer, everyone enters service as a grunt and must earn their right to command. I am currently the 3rd highest-ranking person in the Old Guard” Kevlar said.
“Only because he keeps turning down the position of Guard Commander” Jamie commented. “He makes it sound like just anyone can go to command school, ha, for most people it takes at least twenty years to acquire enough combat performance awards(CPA) to even qualify to apply for command school and if you get excepted then you serve as an intern for an officer for a couple of years and if you earn his recommendation then you can take the entry test for command school. But that’s not how our General here did it. Did you, sir?” He asked Kevlar with a smile before he continued, “Kevlar here earned enough CPA’s in his first ten years to qualify and then some. Then he goes and almost gets himself killed, saving the Emperor’s daughter from an assassin. After that, the Emperor ordered him to command school after his recovery. He completed command school in just over three years, unlike the normal five. He is the most decorated Old Guard in history.” Jamie stated.
“Looks like Kevlar and Go-go have a lot in common. Go-go here has received three Medal of Honors our nation’s highest award, and he is the only person in history to do so, and we have tried to send him off to officers training, but he always refuses.” The Skipper stated.
“Well Admiral Leroy here is a bomber, one of the jobs that a bomber may be called on to do is to strap on an explosive vest and charge the enemy and blow themselves up in order to save the rest of his team or to talk out alpha targets which are targets that must be destroyed at any cost. We were sent on a rescue mission for a member of the imperial family we got to the prince and found ourselves surrounded by enemy forces. So, Leroy’s mission was to charge one of the enemy positions and take it out so that we could escape with the prince. Well, Leroy here charges the position and his vest doesn’t work I even try activating it remotely, and it doesn’t go off. The vest is designed to be tamper-proof, and before that day a vest had never failed to go off, and when his vest was checked after the mission, they could find no reason why it didn’t go off. Leroy then had to fight the enemy forces with only his hands because he had given all his weapons to me before he charged. Leroy ended up killing 50 of them, and we all escaped. Ever since then if you go into somewhere and have a 0% chance of living through it and survive it called pulling an Admiral Leroy, and now the official battle cry of all bombers is Leroy! He still wears that vest he calls it his lucky charm.” Kevlar said, and the room erupted in laughter.
“And you Jamie how did you end up with Kevlar,” Holly asked.
“Oh, that’s an easy one. My family works for his family. We grew up together, and it has always been my family’s job to guard his family. When he went to join the Old Guard, I was sent with him to serve as his personal bodyguard. I was the one who dragged him through the gate. Even though there was only three of us, he wanted to keep fighting. He didn’t want the loss of the rest of our team to be in vain.” Jamie replied. There was a moment of silence before Jamie continued. “But I knew that by going through the gate at least we might get a chance to get some vengeance for them.”
“Now you guys are part of my team, and we are going to bring the vengeance down upon then like fire from the sky.” The Skipper said.
We finished breakfast and began to split up Kevlar headed out with John, Jamie with Melissa and Leroy left with Holly to go to the gym. Holly wanted to see how good Leroy was at hand to hand combat. I jumped into my hummer with two guards in and went off to meet with Alley to see if I could get some more land for our base.
18. Sem
inole Nation
As we were headed out, I called Alley to find out where she was, and she told me that she was at the tribal headquarter. I told her that I needed to meet with her and that I was on my way. She said she would wait around there until I got there. We arrived at the tribal building 25 minutes later, and she was waiting in the lobby for me. “There’s a coffee shop in the build do you want to talk there?” Alley asked. She knew me too well.
“Yea that will work,” I replied. We got there, grabbed out coffees.
“Linda, we are going to use the conference room,” She said to the lady working behind the counter.
“So, what’s going on?” Alley asked me as we closed the door of the conference room.
“Well the Secretary of the Navy wants to make the base here the permeant base for my team to do this we need another 200 acres around the base to build on-base housing for families,” I told her.
“That shouldn’t be a problem what are you guys offering in exchange.” She asked.
“Osceola Forest. All 10,000 acres. It would go from being part of the national forest to part of the Seminole Nation.” I replied.
“Wow, you know the tribe has been fighting forever to get that land back. I don’t even need to consult the Elders to tell you that you have a deal. Have your lawyers contact our lawyers, and we will get the ball rolling.” She said.
“No need I already have a simple one-page contract signed by the president that defines the trade-in simple English and has no fine print. Read it over you will find it is iron clad and in favor of the people.” I told her.
She took the contract read it over and then signed it and stamped it with the seal of the Seminole Nation. “You know when the people find out you brokered this deal, you’re going to go down in our history books and they are going to want you as Chief again,” She said as she smiled at me.
“Well, don’t tell them I did it,” I said.
“You know I can’t do that the elders already know your back and the
y will know this was your handy work,” She then laughed at my frown.
“I don’t want your job for the same reason I don’t let then make me an officer, I need to look after my guys. So, if they try to make me Chief tell them my answer is still no,” I told her. “We followed the trail from White Tree and found some bad guy had a camp setup out there, so we took care of them. We know that they have a larger base hidden deeper in the swamp. Their base is on Seminole land, so officially we need your permission to go in and get them,” I continued.
“You have it. How bad are these people?” She asked.
“World destruction bad,” I replied.
“I told grandfather about your wedding, and he asked if you would consider having a traditional tribal wedding ceremony,” She continued.
“I will talk to Melissa about it,” I said.
“Oh, I already talked to her she said she would consider it an honor to officially become part of your tribe,” she said with a smile.
“Ok but keep in mind that we want to get married soon, but we won’t have much notice as to when we can do it one- or two days’ notice at the most,” I told her.
“Just leave it to me, and I will take care of every for you,” She said as reached across the table and hugged me. “I am so happy you finally found someone,” She said. We had another cup of coffee then said our goodbyes and I headed back to the base.
19. The
Update
On the way back to the base I received a call from Melissa “Hey Go-go when you get back to the base come straight to Hanger 3, we have the software update ready to install into your head,” She said.
Strike Force 11 Page 7