ARMS For Eternity: (Book 8)

by Stephen Arseneault

  "We're already at number eight."

  Harris asked, "Time estimate?"

  "Ten minutes maybe? If all goes well."

  "Didn't think we'd be out here and exposed that long. Once we're in, how long will it take to access the information?"

  "Seconds?"

  "Sweet. Any other info we want to grab while we're in?"

  "She asked that we limit it to the data you requested as she doesn't know how long we can snoop without setting off alarms."

  Harris scowled. "If it's taking us ten to twelve minutes to get in, I would think we'd want to grab as much data as we could."

  "True. I'm just following Sharvie's instructions. Twenty-three firewalls down now."

  The time counted down, and almost to the second of the chime the Frizoid network connected. A search algorithm hunted for the data.

  Harris said, "This looks like we're in the weapons and defense portal. I'm taking charge."

  "What? No. Get out of there."

  "Downloading two sections. Then we move on. Weapons data is first."

  Twenty seconds passed. "Now defenses... crap."

  "What?"

  "Download says five minutes. That's an insane amount of data if true."

  "You're screwing up this mission. We need that layout information."

  "Hang on. I'm enabling the search for that as a secondary process."

  "What? Do you even know what you're doing?"

  "I've seen Sharvie do it before. Not that hard... crap. Estimate just went up to twelve minutes for the download."

  "If we get killed from this, I'm gonna kill you again personally."

  Harris chuckled. "How you gonna manage that?"

  "I'll find a way."

  "Wait. We have the location. Initiating the download. Crap... estimate just jumped to fourteen minutes."

  "What about the layout?"

  "Twenty-seconds."

  "Give it priority and let's get out of here."

  "You getting nervous?"

  "With the chances you're taking… yes."

  "Rome wasn't built in a day, you know."

  "What?"

  "From the Earth archives. Rome wasn't built in a day. Weren't you paying attention to any of that?"

  "I took in what I thought was relevant."

  "It just means you can't win everything at once. It takes time. We get the defense data for these ships and that's a huge score. Worth the time risk. Layout is done. Eight minutes on defense."

  "Why would it possibly take that long?"

  Harris looked at the transfer stats. "First off, the amount of data is huge. Second, the transfer rate is really slow. A factor of ten slower than our networks."

  "Maybe that's on purpose."

  "Why would you slow transfers?"

  "So you have extra time to catch hackers?"

  Harris leaned back in his chair, clasping his fingers together as he slid his hands behind his thick neck. Just relax. We get this and we're gone."

  Three additional minutes passed before the connection abruptly closed.

  Harris sat forward. "What? No! What just happened?"

  Tawn looked over the controls. "The comm we were piped into closed. Probably lucky we got what we did."

  "Connect us again."

  Tawn stared. "Uh, no. We leave now. We got what we came for, plus some. Let's take our win and go home. Besides, it would take another twenty minutes to get through those firewalls again."

  Harris sighed. "Fine. Moving away."

  As the Bangor dropped through the Midelon sky, the data was transferred to the colonel. The stealthy ship settled on the grass outside the bunker. Tawn and Harris made their way to the colonel's conference room where his team was already beginning to look at the newly gathered information.

  "Outstanding." The colonel nodded in approval.

  "We only got a partial of the defense data. Got cut off before it finished. We did get the full weapons file though."

  One of the colonel's men spoke: "Sir, the weapons data appears to be a complete workup of their hand weapons. Four types. Similar to ours with plasma rounds. They do have a plasma grenade that looks interesting."

  Harris tilted his head. "What? That's all? I thought it was the ship's weapons."

  "Sorry, sir. The file content is hand weapons only."

  "There must be more, then. Figures I'd grab the wrong one."

  "It's still valuable information," the colonel replied. "Lieutenant, send it over to Alex for evaluation against our own weapons. If improvements can be made, ask him to work up a new design. Major Denault, what do you make of the other file?"

  "I'll need some time, sir. The file is partial. I'll need to pull out any complete subfiles before I can properly assess."

  "Lieutenant, when you have the weapons data transferred to Mr. Gaerten, give the major a hand."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Give me a half hour and we'll be ready to make our move. I'm forwarding this to the AI for an evaluation also. I want to see what it comes up with as opposed to our own strategy."

  Harris nodded. "We'll get out of your hair, Colonel."

  The colonel laughed. "Hair. Good one."

  Sharvie was waiting when they exited the room. "So it worked?"

  "It did," Harris replied. "We got weapons data and hopefully some good defense data also."

  "What?"

  Tawn sighed. "He had to go poking around while we were in there. I told him not to, but he did it anyway."

  "Uh oh."

  "What's wrong?"

  "You should have been in and out in seconds. I wanted to keep it short so there was less chance of a reverse contamination."

  Harris raised an eyebrow. "Reverse contamination?"

  Tawn smacked his arm. "So we didn't get reverse hacked, idiot."

  "Guess that didn't occur to me."

  Sharvie hurried toward the Bangor. "I'll have to completely scrub the ship’s systems." A comm was opened to Idiot. "We may be contaminated. Start isolating all systems and check for any new files." Sharvie turned. "How long were you connected for?"

  "Ten minutes maybe?"

  She rolled her eyes as she looked back at her comm. "We'll need a complete checkout of everything. We had a ten minute window where they had access."

  Harris held up his hands. "Sorry. Didn't realize it was an issue."

  Sharvie returned a pursed smile. "Let's hope it's not."

  "How long will you need the Bangor for?"

  "A full day."

  "What?"

  "Every system will have to first be isolated and then scrubbed to make certain it's not infected in any way. Once that's complete, we'll have to rebuild all the links to bring the systems back together."

  "We can't go any faster than that?"

  "We could, with reduced confidence."

  "How reduced?"

  "I'd say it's linear. Half the time, half the confidence."

  Tawn shook her head. "No raid happening today. Guess we should tell the colonel."

  "Didn't realize it was a threat."

  "It's always a threat. Anyway, doesn't matter now."

  The duo walked into the colonel's conference room.

  Tawn said, "Igmo here has something he wants to tell you."

  "And…?"

  Harris took a deep breath. "By keeping that data-channel open for as long as I did, I may have compromised the Bangor, and then everything here when we got back. Sharvie is taking over the networks. Prepare to be isolated and then kicked out of your systems."

  "How long are we talking?"

  "A full day."

  The display wall shut down.

  The colonel turned back to his team. "I'm giving everyone a twenty-four hour pass. Go into town. Have some fun."

  Chuckles were returned from around the table.

  "I guess we'll go see what we can do with the production lines."

  Tawn shook her head. "Everything is down, Colonel. If it all checks out, we should be back online this time tomorr
ow. Tell everyone to take the day to relax."

  The colonel looked back at the major. "Have everyone come out to the track. Time we put in a four-hour march."

  Grumbles were returned as the slugs and stumps in the room got up to prepare.

  "I've been wanting to do one of those for months. Nothing clears the mind like a long march in the middle of the day."

  Tawn smirked. "If you say so, Colonel."

  "I say so. And I think the two of you should join us. It’ll be a good team-building exercise to have the two of you out there with us."

  Tawn turned to her partner. "Remember when I said I'd kill you if you got us killed? Well, I might go ahead and do that now."

  Harris glanced around the room. "From the looks I just got, I'm guessing you'll have to stand in line behind the other Bios."

  — Chapter 8 —

  * * *

  The day passed without an infection being found. Gamma missiles were loaded on a number of Banshee fighters. Twelve hundred bots boarded the group's lone transport. The assault fleet, led by the Bangor, lifted off in unison.

  Upon arrival at Morebad, the transport pulled to a halt as two dozen Banshees followed the Bangor in toward the parked Frizoid warships. The interference emitter ran at a level that kept all ships and their signals masked. At two thousand kilometers distance, the gamma missiles were launched.

  Harris piloted the Bangor in behind them, stopping at half the distance as the missiles continued. At five hundred kilometers the twenty-four missiles detonated, targeting the dozen rows of Frizoid ships. Other than the initial flashes from the explosions, there were no further indications of activity. Several minutes of waiting followed before the interference field was turned off and a bioscan conducted. Only scattered signs of life remained.

  Harris opened a comm. "All Banshees proceed as planned. Bring in the freighter. Let's grab those ships."

  A dozen Frizoid shuttles were caught as they attempted to lift off from the massive structure on the surface of the planet. Immediate annihilation was their reward. Two thousand Banshees then descended on the construction. A seemingly endless spray of hypervelocity tungsten pellets obliterated everything on the ground. Manufactured structures on the surface were destroyed as underground excavations were crushed or dug up by the railgun pellet impacts.

  When ten minutes since the beginning of the raid had passed, the last of the bots boarded the captured Frizoid ships. A comm connection had a console up and running on each vessel, allowing the bots to completely control every system.

  Tawn nodded. "Couple minutes and we'll be out of here. That Banshee team has demolished that structure in its entirety. Bioscan is not showing any Frizoid or anything else alive down there. They're gonna be pissed."

  "Not like we can let them get that established." Harris nodded. "Ships are moving."

  "Can't believe we pulled this off."

  A thousand wormholes opened at once, streams of Frizoid warships coming through. The peaceful raid at Morebad quickly turned into a fierce battle.

  "Get us out of here!" Tawn yelled.

  "Re-enabling the interference field. Drives to full. We're in too close for a jump."

  "Banshees are engaging. We're taking losses. Remaining gamma missiles have been launched. Too many Frizoid coming this way... wait. Something's happening. They're expelling fighters. Thousands of them. Please get us out of here."

  "Going as fast as we can. Three minutes to free space. From there we can jump."

  "Incoming plasma rounds! Evade!"

  Harris jerked the controls hard right as an intense plasma round slipped past the Bangor. "You see the energy on that? Five times anything we've got."

  "Half the Banshees are down. Hold on... the captured ships are coming out for a fight. And... wow. A third gone just like that. More incoming!"

  "I see 'em." A hard left was followed by a hard right.

  Tawn shook her head. "We're losing this in a really bad way."

  "Two minutes."

  "I show six warships coming toward us. Incoming!"

  Harris turned the Bangor hard, jinking up and down. One of the dozens of plasma rounds fired at them again slipped just past the outer hull, reverberating as it went by.

  "I can't keep this up. Start throwing a few laser pulses at them or something. One minute."

  "I have been. Ineffective as far as I can tell. We're down to about two hundred Banshees… eighty of the captured Frizoid ships."

  Thousands of wormholes opened in front of them. Harris held his breath, expecting the worst. Four thousand additional Banshees shot through. A dozen gamma missiles detonated just after passing the Bangor. Moments later the weapons of the pursuing ships fell silent. The lead ship of the Human resistance reached free space just as the last stolen ship was eliminated.

  "All ships jump away," Harris ordered. "Mission is hereby aborted."

  At once the mass of small fighters turned for a quick exit. As the Bangor slipped through a wormhole to safety, so did thirty-eight hundred Banshees. The fight at Morebad was over.

  Harris set the ship down in her usual spot. A short jog had him and Tawn standing in the colonel's conference room.

  "Everything looked so good and then wham... three thousand of those beasts came through. Three minutes and we'd have all been gone."

  A lieutenant entered the room. "Colonel, the annihilation of the ground structure was complete. That portion of the mission was a total success."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant. Gruberg, Freely, looks like we got greedy and it cost us. Forty-three hundred Banshees is a big loss. From our initial counts, we took out the three hundred ships we grabbed, plus another hundred forty-four. That's a ten to one advantage for them. Not something we can sustain."

  Tawn frowned. "We should have deployed a boson just to give us more time. Would have given us close to an hour."

  "You made it out, Freely. And the primary target was destroyed. We can still count it as a win."

  Sharvie came over the comm. "Sorry to interrupt, but we managed to grab the remains of the defense file you tried to download. It's not for the defenses of that ship, it's the defenses of the Frizoid Communion. The whole empire. All the planets and outposts. We have fleet strengths and troop counts."

  Harris asked, "Any kind of totals? Do we know what were up against now?"

  "It's huge—the Communion I mean. Four hundred and twenty colonies, eighty-six outposts, close to a hundred major fleets, three hundred fifty-five minor ones, and troops... more than two billion. Of those, 99 percent are other species. The Frizoid appear to be the brass of their military."

  "That isn't what we've seen here. We've been fighting nothing but bugs."

  "Just reporting the data I've seen. In all, they're showing about thirty-seven thousand ships here in our space, with an equal size fleet about a month away. The listings of ground defenses go on and on. I'm pushing the data to your display now."

  Tawn nodded. "Thanks for your help, Sharvie. We appreciate all you do for us."

  The colonel perused the data. "This is good in that it breaks down the fleet into ship types, crews, and troops. Would like to see a further breakdown of their capabilities, but this is indeed valuable. We now know if we war with the fleet we have here, we only have thirty days to rebuild from any losses before another sizable fleet might arrive."

  "Doesn't give us much time."

  "It does tell us we need to have a larger force to begin with."

  Harris said, "That raid-gone-bad today tells me we're severely outgunned."

  "Possibly." The colonel pulled up data from the current inventory. "Unless something changes, we'll need six months to have the force size we need."

  "Maybe we need to change strategies. What if we hit them with a hundred thousand gamma missiles and then take their ships?"

  "That may be our only option."

  Discussions continued for the remainder of the afternoon. The size of the Frizoid Communion was daunting. The resources already at their
disposal far outstretched anything the team had available. The gamma missiles appeared to be the only advantage the Humans had. Efforts were redoubled on the manufacturing of those.

  One month turned into two months before the Frizoid had a Human fleet at the ready. New discussions had focused on how to slow or prevent their use. Any ideas that had come to light for doing such were tossed due to an inability to execute the strategy in a way that wouldn't jeopardize the troops themselves. The time had come for their deployment to Burrell space.

  Tawn said, "We can't just let them go. We're the warriors. We should be first into the fight."

  "Not our fight," Harris replied. "Humans shouldn't be involved."

  "What if we show up with a few thousand Banshees loaded with missiles?"

  Harris frowned. "We aren't prepared to make that journey. Each of those ships would need the mast system to recover the wormhole energy. We have it. That troop transport has it. And a few dozen modified Banshees have it. Not really enough of a force to take into a fight with anyone. And those Banshee prototypes that have been outfitted with the mast are unreliable. Alex is still trying to work out the kinks."

  Tawn crossed her arms as she leaned against a wall in the supply hut. "Maybe we need to pay a visit to the Burrell."

  "What?"

  "You think they'd be willing to cut a deal?"

  "What do we have to offer?"

  "The Frizoid battle plans of using us as a distraction? I should think that info alone might be worth trading. We alert them to the scheme and the coming Frizoid-Human fleet and they wipe out the Frizoid and return our people to us."

  Harris chuckled. "And just what are we supposed to do with them? We don't have the means to support a few million regulars, or however many they plan to take with them. What would you suggest we do with them if we do get them back?"

  Tawn shrugged. "Don't know. That's what we have the colonel and his teams for."

  Harris paced around the room for several seconds in thought.

  The colonel came through the door. "We expect the Human fleet to be on the move within the hour."

  Harris said, "Tawn thinks we should be negotiating with the Burrell. We tell them of the Frizoid's intentions and they capture and turn our people back over to us."