The Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles #6, Insurrection

by Andrew Beery

  The Honey-Dipper was currently in orbit around an Earth-like planet orbiting an unremarkable star in the Praesepe star cluster. The Praesepe star cluster was one of the first studied by the ancient astronomer Galileo and yet, despite this, humanity had not spent much time visiting the stars in this cluster.

  What made this particular star intriguing was the fact that it boasted a single inhabitable world and one and only one jump-route. Many systems had single jump points but such points could be accessed from a number of systems. A jump-route, on the other hand, was fundamentally different. The Garden system could only be accessed from one other jump point and that jump point was in the middle of a stellar void. This one route was the only way in or out.

  If you were a crime lord, say the de facto head of the Pirate guild, you would tend to value your privacy. In such a scenario, you would either want a place that was well hidden or a place that was well defended. Ideally you would want a place that was both… Garden was exactly such a place.

  In point of fact, Garden was the private sanctuary of one of the most infamous creatures in the known universes. A human named Sharn Dragos.

  The cloaked Honey-Dipper had been orbiting Garden for several hours. Harry adjusted the passive sensors as they completed their third reconnaissance pass over the only visible structure on the planet. It was a massive villa on the edge of a shallow turquoise sea. One side of the villa faced the sea, the other side was built into a clearing carved out of a lush green jungle.

  Sherry, who was seated in the small ship’s lounge, manipulated a holographic image of Sharn Dragos’ estate on the planet surface. There was a large dome-like structure that was heavily shielded. Their reluctant informant, the captain of the scavenger ship they intercepted, had indicated Drago’s collection was on display in a large shielded facility. If Faragon’s stasis chamber was here… this is where it would be.

  “Honey, ping the stasis chamber’s locator.”

  “Pinging now, Admiral”

  On Sherry’s holographic display a small yellow light flickered into existence very near the center of the dome structure.

  “He’s here!” Sherry yelled excitedly.

  Harry, who had been reviewing the fortifications, shifted his seat to look at her. “Begging the Admiral’s pardon. I’m not sure that is a good thing. There are automated defensive systems with interlocking fields of fire surrounding the entire compound. The machine gun mounts are tied into a central AI that never sleeps and is never distracted. The parameter is rimmed with smart landmines. The walls surrounding the compound are twenty feet tall and electrified. And that is just the preliminary stuff. I cannot imagine the collection itself has been left unprotected.”

  “In other words, Drago has multiple layers of security for the sole purpose of dissuading people like us from doing what we are here to do.”

  “Exactly,” Harry agreed.

  Sherry smiled. Honey echoed the smile and punched Harry lightly on the arm. “There’s a reason we’re called ‘Melbourne’s Maniacs.”

  ***

  The Honey-Dipper followed a low-speed descending arc around the planet and settled slowly into the ever thickening tropical atmosphere near the equator. It was not a fuel-efficient way to de-orbit a spacecraft but it did minimize the atmospheric disturbance that the cloaked craft produced.

  At long last the ship settled under the protective canopy of some tropical vegetation that could easily have come from the jungles of Brazil. They were about ten kilometers from the western wall of Drago’s compound. By all accounts the Pirate King, as he liked to consider himself, was not currently in residence. That was fortunate because it meant the personnel count would be that much lower.

  Honey opened a storage panel near the side hatch of the shuttle. She pulled out three Mark 17 Pointer Assault Rifles. PARs were a duel-purpose weapons system capable of firing smart bullets as well as plasma bursts that could stun or destroy a given target. She handed a rifle to each of the others.

  Harry took his and immediately began inspecting it to make sure it was completely serviceable. Discovering a problem after they deployed was often too late. Not for the first time did he question the wisdom of a three person team to take on the challenges of this compound. The Admiral had made the final call. The three of them had a huge advantage by virtue of their Heshe enhancements.

  Aside from Cat Kimbridge, no one they were aware of within the GCP had their level of augmentation. In their current situation this meant they could use the incredibly advanced nanites coursing through their blood to heal major wounds almost as fast as they occurred. In addition, the three of them could literally change their appearance on the fly so as to blend into the background or even change their features to become a doppelgänger of someone they ran into.

  All three weapons checked out and Harry signaled for Honey to open the hatch. Sherry poked her head out the opening and scanned the jungle. The Honey-Dipper had adopted active camouflage and was effectively invisible. Even active scanning would have a hard time detecting her presence. Still one had to be careful. The ship could have inadvertently landed on top of a hunting party or the like.

  Sherry adjusted both her hearing and visual acuity to peer as deeply into the jungle as she could. She could hear the skittering of small animals and by adjusting her vision deep into the infrared she could even see some of them in the distance but nothing larger than a squirrel was in evidence.

  “It looks clear,” she said to the others and stepped out of the small ship.

  Harry took the lead initially and used a machete Honey had produced from a storage locker to hack away at the jungle. Their enhancements meant they had an unerring sense of direction. There was a ravine between their landing site and Sharn Dragos compound. They needed to head north a few degrees so they would approach the chasm at a naturally occurring narrow point.

  Harry made quick work of the overgrown jungle. The diamond edge on the machete cut though the foliage like a hot knife through butter. At one point they scared up a larger animal but even with their enhancements they could not see what they had startled.

  Insects buzzed about the two humans but as per normal they ignored Honey’s android body. She took the machete from her husband after he stopped to swat at a particularly aggressive flying cockroach with a sharp stinger on both ends of its body. Honey recognized it from her data files on this planet. The sharp proboscis in front could inject a mild venom that would numb the skin. The stinger in the rear was used to inject larvae into the host. By the time the venom wore off, the larvae would have started to feed and the animal in question was typically doomed. Honey wasn’t worried about either her husband or the Admiral as their nanites would make short work of the invaders. Still, the bugs were annoying.

  In a little less than an hour they reached the ravine. Even though this was the narrowest place for many kilometers, it was still a good five meters across.

  “What do you think Admiral? Can we jump it?” Harry said doubtfully.

  Sherry eyed the chasm and shook her head. “Even with our enhancements I don’t think we can make it.” She turned to look at Honey but the Lieutenant Commander was nowhere to be seen.

  “I’m over here,” she called from across the ravine. She held the end of a rope which she was busy tying to what passed for a tree on this planet. The other end of the rope was already knotted around a rock outcropping on their side of the divide. With one final tug Honey proclaimed their makeshift bridge complete.

  Harry looked down the side of the rift and promptly invited the Admiral to go first. Sherry shook her head. “Age before beauty.”

  He sighed and started to cross hand over hand. In point of fact his medical nanites made sure he was in excellent shape despite his three hundred plus years and thus he made short work of the distance. Sherry followed a few seconds later.

  Two hours later they neared the ground that had been cleared for the compound. They could see the sheer and impenetrable face of the compound’s exterio
r walls. Sherry signaled the others to move closer to her. It was time to put the second half of their plan into motion.

  Chapter 16: The Enemy Within…

  Corporal Brandon Charles was called BC by his friends. In truth it was probably the longest string of letters his friends could put together in a reliable fashion. Neither BC nor his friends were the sharpest tools in the shed. He and his friends had made the mistake of helping themselves to the contents of a full liquor cabinet the night before. The cabinet in question belonged to Sergeant Wachter. Wachter the Wacho as his men called him was not a person inclined to forgive and forget. As a result BC and his band of misfits found themselves on perpetual roaming border patrol. The duty was boring in the extreme… or at least it had been until today.

  As he and his squad of eight made their way around a corner they came upon a most unusual sight. Three people lay just off the trail near the edge of the jungle. As far as he could tell none of them were wearing anything beyond underwear. Normally this would not be of particular interest to BC but as two of the people were young scantily clad females the situation required an up close and personal inspection.

  “Haley, Barbi, Johnston with me. The rest of you lot, keep your eyes open and continue on ahead. Something ain’t right about this. People don’t just pop up out of nowhere.”

  As the other four continued on cautiously, BC and the three he had detailed to stay with him advanced carefully towards the three seemly unconscious people on the ground. Just before they got to the group, BC toggled his walkie and probably did the only smart thing he would do all day.

  “Ah base… this is BC. We have three civilians on the ground here. Two females and a bloke… over.”

  Sergeant Wachter was apparently in the Comm shack. His was the next voice BC heard.

  “Ok Piss Ant. What’s your status?”

  BC swore silently to himself and then toggled the walkie to reply. “I split the team. I got Henderson scouting the immediate area and I’ve got Johnston, Barbi and Haley with me. The three civvies are unconscious and wearing next to nothin. The gals are lookers… I suppose the guy is too if you’re into that sort of thing.”

  “Why are they unconscious?”

  “Hell if I know Sarge… I ain’t no doctor,” BC grunted as he attempted to answer while at the same time turning Honey over. “Geez… for such a little thing this one sure is heavy.”

  “Corporal,” Sergeant Wachter said with exacting patience, “There is no reason for civilians to be out and about. Whoever they are they are not authorized to be here. Kill them and then find out if there are any more floating around. Are we clear Piss Ant?”

  “Yeah Sarge… we’re clear. BC out.” He turned off his mike and waved Johnston forward.

  Johnston turned Sherry over. Eyes closed and unconscious she looked to be a little past her early thirties. He whistled in appreciation of her barely clothed and extremely fine form.

  “Damn shame to waste’em like that,” the younger man said. Winking at BC he added, “Barbi, why don’t you and Haley take care of the guy while BC and I have a little fun with the gals here before we put them out of their misery.”

  Before either woman could answer Harry opened his eyes and reached up to grab both of the female guards. The moment his hands touched them a silver sheen flowed from his hands into their arms where he had touched them. The nanites worked fast. First they dilated every capillary they ran into causing a sudden loss of blood pressure. As the women collapsed the nanites raced to enter their nervous system and render them unconscious.

  “What the hell,” BC began as he started to raise his weapon.

  These were the last words either he or Johnston said as Admiral Melbourne and Lieutenant Commander Arris both reached up with lightning speed to grab each of the men. A similar metallic sheen left each of their hands and the result was the same. Both men fell unconscious immediately.

  “Quick! Drag them into the trees before the other group comes back,” Sherry ordered.

  As soon as they got them out of sight they stripped the uniforms off of the two women and the Corporal. Sherry leaned over the older of the two unconscious women and touched her face. Immediately her face began to shimmer and within moments Sherry could have been the other woman’s twin. In point of fact, even a detailed medical scan would have difficulty telling them apart as tiny bio-signature transmitters embedded within Sherry’s tissues began to transmit a simulation of the other woman.

  Both Harry and his wife performed the same procedure with the other two. Next they moved the four guards to a position deeper into the jungle and instructed the nanites they had inserted into each of them to cease functioning in twelve hours. In the meantime they were to continue to render their victims unconscious and to camouflage them from predators. They were still at considerable risk but it was better than what the four had planned for the party from the Brown Recluse.

  After scrubbing the dirt and brush to hide any sign of their activities the three moved back to the opening where they had originally played possum. It was time to put the next part of their plan into motion.

  Harry keyed the Corporal’s mic open and began to scream in a loud voice that his Heshe tech modified to sound like the sample they had heard just a few minutes before. “Good Lord! What the hell is that… SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT!”

  Immediately the three began to shoot the firearms they had recovered into the air.

  Harry keyed the mic again. “It’s got Johnston… Kill it. Oh crap… RUN!”

  He smiled at the two ladies who no longer looked like his friends. “Possum time again.”

  ***

  Private Henderson was not an imaginative sort of person. His was a simple life. He rarely thought beyond the next meal and the next chance to get lucky with one of the ladies. The unexpected did not surprise him because, for him, most things were unexpected. That said, he was surprised by what he saw as he and his companions raced back to where they had parted ways with the Corporal. The three civvies were gone as was Johnston. In their place where the unconscious bodies of Barbi, Haley and BC… weapons still in hand. There was no blood and no sign of injury but none of the three were waking up. Henderson even took the opportunity to cop an extended feel of Barbi’s very fine upper anatomy… an action that had earned him a knee in the groin more than once – nothin’. They were well and truly out.

  He grabbed his walkie and keyed it open. “Ah base… we got an issue here.”

  ***

  Cat was tired but it was a good tired. They had accomplished a lot in the last several days. Fortunately, because of Melbourne’s maniacs they had a good idea how much time they had to accomplish their goals. The computer worm they had implanted in the BCI computer systems fed the Yorktown with an endless supply of data pertaining to the current operations of the Bureau of Commerce Investigation. These operations included the Grand Senate authorized assault of the Mardarian home world. A fleet of BCI starships as big as or bigger than the GCP Levy were in route to the system. They would be here in the next two hours.

  Ben walked into the conference room on the engineering deck of the Yorktown. Cat had taken the room over and was using it to coordinate with the Mardarian insurgents. They had hoped to modify up to sixteen small ships to transmit cloaking fields that would effectively mirror other ships within the attacking fleet. However, once the local engineers figured out what Cat wanted they were able to cobble together over thirty small ships. Some of them were barely flight-worthy but they would suffice just fine for their intended purpose. Most would be flown remotely so even functioning life support was not critical. The added number of ships meant Cat’s plan had that much better a chance of working.

  In essence, when the sixteen BCI ships arrived they would find a number of ships in system that looked like their invasion fleet. They would appear to have the same power signatures and they would be transmitting the same ident codes.

  Thanks to the Heshe-enabled fabrication systems on the Yorktown, each of t
he smaller vessels the Mardarians deployed was outfitted with the most advanced hyper-field emitters known to Galactic Coalition science. Most appeared order of magnitudes larger than they actually were. They had no weapon systems to speak of but the emitter nodes provided a limited amount of shielding against anything but a direct hit.

  “So would the Admiral care to take a break from the rigors of command for a few minutes and join a lowly D’rlalu cyborg in a cup of hot chocolate?”

  Cat was tempted to say no but the smell of the hot coco was intoxicating and she could use the break. Rather than answering out loud she absently held out her hand to accept the offered cup. She took a careful sip while continuing to inspect some proposed engineering changes the Yorktown’s Chief Engineer, Thais had provided.

  “Oooh… Marshmallows,” Cat remarked as she tasted the burnt sugar sweetness.

  “Can it truly be called ‘Hot Chocolate’ without them?” Ben asked.

  Cat smiled. “I want to thank you for the work you put in adapting the various power systems. I know it’s not part of your normal duties as a First Officer but in all honesty I can’t think of anyone we have that could have done a better job and in the time frame we had to work with.”

  Ben snorted. “I live but to serve Admiral… you know this.”

  He looked at the schematics Thais had supplied. It was a great plan she had but there was no time to implement it. It would provide each of the decoy ships with a limited weapons capability… a single shot each as they overloaded their power cores. The problem was they would only have time to retrofit the changes into one or two of the small craft.