Serve and Protect

by Douglas Varnell

  While Renee and Michael were making an economic tour of the country, General Justice Hall and his staff were busy trying to organize and army in a Nation that had no more than a security force. On a planet of 10,000,000,000 residents there were only 25,000 Security Officers. These men and women were really nothing more than a police force. With one police officer for every 400,000 citizens it didn’t appear that crime was a major issue on Tramlaw. Justice inspected the armory in the capital city Security Headquarters, which was allegedly the best equipped, and found that the most advanced weapon they had in their arsenal was a 20mm Laser rifle, and it was nowhere near as powerful as the Verron 10mm. The security people usually carried a small and efficient stun-gun with an effective range of 100 yards and for lethal actions, a 5mm light-weight laser rifle that was deadly accurate for over 500 yards. There was no heavy ordinance, smoke-bombs, flash-bangs or machine guns and there wasn’t a single missile on the entire planet. Justice just realized that it would have been a complete slaughter if these people had tried to fight the Volvs, other than the 20mm Laser rifle, their weapons would have been completely useless. General Zarman tried to banish the picture in his mind of what would have happened if the Volvs had managed to infiltrate their underground domain.

  After his visit to the armory he was transported out of the city a few hundred miles and exited in a large hanger bay. He was looking at the entire Tramlaw Air Force spread out across a two mile long hanger bay. He looked up to see large doors overhead that could open to allow them to exit straight up. The commander of the flying machines was proud of his fleet of no more than 500 aircraft. They were beautiful pieces of equipment, each made of titanium and designed in a sleek and aerodynamic style. Every aircraft flew much like a hovercraft and could take off vertically and fly like a plane once in the air. He was told the fastest craft could reach speeds of Mach 5 and their largest ones, about 200 feet long, were capable of transporting up to 10 tons of cargo. None of the ships could go orbital. He was then driven to the space facility. The entire complex could have fit in the hanger bay under Mountain City. They were using a booster missile system to place observation and communication satellites in orbit and had used one of them to send out the broadcast for help that Verron had fortunately picked-up with one of its exploration drones. Unlike planets where people inhabited the surface, there was really no need to flood the orbit of Tramlaw with weather satellites or an excess of communications satellites; no signal could reach deep under the surface and the weather never changed up top. It rained four times a year and every drop of the heavy run-off of the rains flowed to the underground lakes and rivers below ground. Justice was impressed with the fact that any place with 10 billion people could live in such harmony and wondered how difficult it was going to be to organize a true fighting force in such a place.

  He had his guides and the commanders of the security forces come with him to the surface to see a demonstration of Verron Air Force and Marines. He asked the commanders to point out an area where they could demonstrate without damaging or injuring the delicate balance on Tramlaw. After selecting a target of a long stone covered ridge, Justice had a group of Marines demonstrate their weapons. Men being men, these men proved there was a Universal law that all men are driven to blow stuff up. The commanders of the forces on Tramlaw were shaking with excitement as they watched target after target disappear. At first the observers turned away as if afraid of the weapons. Justice soon had it explained that the people of Tramlaw had an extremely sensitive sense of hearing, and even the fairly quiet laser and plasma weapons was overbearing. General Hall managed to locate some ear plugs and continued his exhibition. Justice soon had one of the Class X Fighters hover overhead and fire one round from a 50mm Whitematter cannon. A section of ridge almost a half mile wide disappeared. He turned to the commander and informed him, “Even a small man can fire these weapons. Do you believe you can find a few hundred thousand men and women on Tramlaw who would like to learn how to use them?” There were smiles and nods of agreement from the excited observers. He then had his Marines show the future allies how the weapons worked. They were like kids at an amusement park as they blasted everything in range with the various weapons available. Justice and his Marines couldn’t help but notice what horrible marksman these people were.

  The future marksmen stood in awe when one of the Marines in body armor went down range and allowed them to shoot at him. Justice laughed at the big Sergeant that volunteered and told him, “Doesn’t take much courage to stand downrange with a group that shoots like this. You may even be safe without the armor.” At first they were hesitant to shoot at the man standing 50 yards away then Justice grabbed a golf-ball sized plasma grenade and threw it. The heat of the blast could be felt even at the distance they stood as the ground surrounding the Marine was turned to glass from the intense heat; the Marine however was unharmed. The confidence of the small Tramlaw commanders was growing. Their faith was firmly implanted when General Hall had one of the Light Destroyers take the men for a ride both in and out of the planet’s atmosphere. When they saw a half dozen Verron Class X Fighters and two Gljarne Class Destroyers orbiting their planet they knew beyond a doubt that with the aid of Verron they could build an army capable of defending their planet.

  Renee, Michael and General Hall remained on Tramlaw for a couple more days and had an opportunity to meet with the leaders of the 9 districts on Tramlaw. Although Nitaleg held the title of High Governor, each governor ran his district pretty much independently of the others. They mostly deferred to the High Governor on matters that actually required cooperation between districts or issues of concern for all of Tramlaw. The Volvs and how to deal with them was considered their highest priority, not a single governor refused to cooperate in the military and economic plans presented by Renee, Michael and General Hall. In fact, once the leaders of some of the more remote districts realized just what Verron had done for them, they were prepared to let Verron establish a military government in order to rule the Nation. Renee and General Hall reassured them Verron had no desire to rule them, but agreed to establish a military presence on Tramlaw until they were capable of defending themselves. One of the Governors was in tears and grabbed Justice and gave him a big hug. Justice was shocked by how strong the short little man was, he then remember that on a planet with a 2.3g gravitational pull that people would develop great strength. The Governor of the Citcen District had lost his family and the entire village where he lived to the Volvs. If he had not been away on business, he would have been taken also. Justice couldn’t grasp how devastating it would be to know that your family was not only dead, but had been eaten by their captures. He was the highest ranking official to volunteer to receive combat training on Verron. Although he was a bit older, Justice knew he would be the most motivated leader of the group and rejuvenation could take care of the age issue. Before he departed the meeting the man told him that he had 40,000 volunteers awaiting training. Each of them had some family member that lived in the one village that did not blow its tunnels in time.

  The freighter that General Zarman had Marcus convert to a troop transport ship arrived the next morning. Renee and her staff, Michael and General Hall boarded with 1000 men and women destined for Verron. These would be the future leaders and trainers of the newly formed United Tramlaw Air Force and Marines. They boarded the ship in matching desert tan pants, shirts and boots, covered with a desert camouflage designed hooded robe and dark sunglasses. Justice had no idea how they had created such perfect desert clothing in the few days they had been there and asked the designated leader of the 1000, Governor Siradem, how they had done it. He proudly informed Justice that the clothing was designed years before for hunters who pursued Tramlaw’s desert wildlife. They began producing more of them as scouts were tasked with monitoring the activities of the Volvs. Justice realized that they would be virtually invisible in the surrounding desert terrain. As the freighter lifted off, those with windows nearby were viewing their planet for the f
irst time from an altitude that made it look very small. The big brown globe soon disappeared behind them and the ships computer formed a gateway directly to Verron. There were gasps of wonder from the passengers when they realized that the planet below was covered with water, trees and grass. The Tramlaw Marines were almost wrestling for better vantage points as they approached the mountains surrounding the Marcus Verron Space Center and the landing area designated for the troop ship.

  It was a perfect 78 degrees in the valley where the facility was located; the Tramlaw soldiers couldn’t imagine that it could be this cool on the surface of a planet and that people actually built houses and cities out in the open like this. General Zarman greeted them and saw the smiles and looks of wonder, he responded, in their native tongue, that Yadvega had translated for his use, “Welcome to Verron. I’ve been here since it was founded and I still look around at it like you are now. You’ll see much, much more before you leave. Now let’s get you settled.” At that statement, a squad of Marine trainers came forward speaking Tramlaw in a very understandable manner. The 1000 new arrivals at first couldn’t believe that these men were being so harsh with them. Governor Siradem quickly reminded them, “you are now soldiers and this is how soldiers are trained.” Just as he finished, he looked across the ships staging area to see Metsis coming across the landing ramp with Chase and Daniel, his new friends. He soon found that he would be joining the others in training.

  It was later in the week when analysis had been mostly completed on the Volvs and their weapons. They were still working on several aspects of the Volvs Fighters they had recovered, but they now had a pretty good idea just what these creatures were and it was not good. King Verron, General Zarman, General Hall, General Zhdanov, Marcus Verron, Tlase, Yadvega, Hunter, who took a short break from training his new Earth Terrorist Elimination Unit to attend, Prince Kary, Chase, Daniel, Major Dumas and Jill Morgensson were present for the meeting. To everyone’s surprise, Elder Mahala from Xhondar I and King Hon III were also in attendance. Paul welcomed everyone and wasted no time getting things started. Kary deferred to his two grandsons for the briefing on the weapons.

  Daniel was first to speak, informing them, “The weapons the Volvs were carrying were every bit as powerful as anything we have in the same caliber of energy blaster or laser rifle. We saw no sign of Whitematter weapons and very few plasma weapons. They do however have some of the best thermal bombs and warheads we’ve seen. What really amazed us during our fight was how fast they could fire missiles at our Fighters and Landers and penetrate our forcefields. Although the missile launchers were damaged in our battle, there was enough left to do a fairly reliable analysis. We hope to copy some of it ourselves. Where we fire multiple missiles from a cartridge feed system, they fire theirs from a continuous belt on a rotating discharge unit, sort of like firing missiles from a Gatling gun. What we discovered as we took their missiles apart for study was that all their missiles were not the same. The thermal warheads were an excellent design, but alone, should not have penetrated our shields, however, every fifth missile had a unique design we now call a disrupter round. It uses a supercharged nuclear generated electrical impulse that disrupts the shields just long enough for the missile behind it to break through. If it hadn’t been for the strength of Verron Steel we would have lost every Fighter and for that matter every Marine; we also found that same disrupter round technology in every fifth round of their rifles and antiaircraft gun emplacements. Once again, any other ships or body armor would have been annihilated. If we had been wearing the older style Xhondarian body armor, every Marine would be dead now instead of roughed-up. We are now working on a retroactive upgrade for our body armor and ship forcefields that should not be affected by their disrupters.”

  Marcus was up next and began with, “We still have superior air power, but these things are the closest to us we’ve seen so far. Their shields are nowhere near as good as ours but are better than what we saw on the ships recovered on Klelta. They fired missiles and weapons with those same disrupter rounds and did have several plasma tipped missiles and even plasma cannons. They managed to knock a few of our ships out of the air, but they were able to rejoin the fight. I believe that may have accounted for our defeat of them. They assumed once down, we were out. Their Fighters are bigger, not quite Klelta sized, but with pilots who are on the average 7 feet tall they have to be, but in spite of that they were extremely maneuverable and about as fast as ours. They use an antimatter reactor, but it is a very high end design. Each Fighter had two of them to give them the power they needed. What surprised us most was the lack of computerized targeting and missile avoidance systems. These Volvs were flying their own ships and targeting us with extreme accuracy – manually. They are very efficient and skilled pilots. Before Chase and Daniel blew-up the orbiting command ships we got some pretty decent pictures of them. After studying the numerous external devices, we could tell that they had extremely good sensors for detecting life forms on the planet and approaching ships. If Chase and Daniel hadn’t exited their gateway already cloaked and running their jamming programs, they would have run into hundreds of thousands of missiles.” Marcus projected a picture of the big screen that showed missile emplacements covering the surface of the giant ships. Continuing, he added, “Our guess is they were expecting no enemies and had their shields down when you hit them. The planet buster would probably still have been effective, but we can’t be sure. What we saw on the Fighter was that their shields were weaker only because they lacked the energy source to make it stronger. On that big ship they probably had all the energy they needed to strengthen their forcefields.

  Major Dumas was a bit nervous when he was asked to speak. He wasn’t accustomed to being in meetings with the King and Generals and every major staff member on the planet. His voice actually cracked when he began, “Sirs and Mams, I’ll keep this short and sweet. In all my years of wars I have never met a scarier and more determined enemy. They wore no body armor and just refused to die. If a body part on them still functioned, it kept fighting. They were constantly on the attack and didn’t know the meaning of surrender or defeat. And now let’s talk about strong. Even in our body armor, they were five times stronger than we were. I would say they are at least as strong as our Klelta friends. I wished we had some of the Klelta sized weapons to fight them with. I believe that on a planet with an atmosphere, we would be better off using the whitematter rounds against them. We would often cut one in half with those amazing 5mm Gatling’s and then both halves would still fight. It was the craziest damn thing I’d ever seen. Sorry, Mam, I’ll watch my language, but it was way beyond freaky to have a clawed foot grab you when you walked by, when the rest of the body was three feet away.” Everyone shook their heads in wonder that the Marine and his men had managed to win against such odds.

  Kary asked, “What finally gave you the advantage?” Major Dumas smiled, and answered, “Those damn, sorry, those little 5000rpm Gatling guns and then the Fighters showing up using the bigger 10mm version. If it hadn’t been for them we’d have been in real trouble. I got hit by one who had a damaged gun and started swinging one of their big long swords. I must have been knocked at least ten feet as I tumbled through the air and he was right behind me still swinging away when one of the corporals tore him apart with one of those little plasma grenades; by the way, the little grenades will kill them but that skin of theirs don’t, I mean, doesn’t burn like us humans, it’s like they are flame retardant. I guess that’s it for my briefing.” Looking at King Verron, he added, “All my men are ready to go after some more of them bas…, them Volvs, whenever you’re ready sir. We know how to fight them now.” Paul smiled and replied, “I believe you may have had it right the first time Colonel. I can’t think of too many good names to call a creature like the Volvs. Thank You for your information and your service” Dumas reached for his seat and hesitated a moment and corrected the King that didn’t even know what rank he was, saying, “That’s Major, sir.” Paul smiled an
d informed him, “Not anymore, Colonel.” General Zarman was smiling his approval of the promotion just given to one of the bravest and most dedicated men on Verron.

  Tlase was the next one to speak. She was head of the team that had the task of doing biopsies and analysis on the Volvs. It had been a group effort using staff from Medical, Pharmaceutical Research and Biological Engineering. She only spoke a few words about dozens of people who had been instrumental in the analytical work done and then handed the floor over to Dr. Jill Morgensson. Chase and Daniel gave her a warm smile knowing this was a nerve racking experience for someone who would much rather spend her day in the woods studying a new species of plant or animal or in a lab analyzing data, than in a meeting describing a biopsied alien life-form. Being a bit self-conscious of her Swedish accent, but speaking excellent English, she looked around at the most powerful people on Verron and said, “Before I describe what we found out, I want to personally thank all of you for what you do for Verron, and others, that few people are aware of. My trip to Tramlaw helped me realize just what perils we face and that you protect us from. It is a scary thought to know that there are creatures like these Volvs out there somewhere just looking for their next meal. What I found out is that they are in fact biologically engineered and then cloned. Every single one of the Volvs we tested, and we have thus far tested over 1000, has had the same DNA. You were essentially fighting thousands of identical warriors specifically designed and built to fight. Each was precisely the same height, weight and color; 7-foot tall, 475 pounds, with half-inch thick black leather like self-sealing skin designed so that small puncture wounds would close-up in seconds. Even a severed limb would immediately have the blood-flow cut off from the remaining limb to prevent excessive loss of blood. They have two hearts, one behind a thick breastplate of dense bone about where ours is and another just above their left hip, also protected by a protrusion of the hip bone. Their orange blood has numerous medicinal abilities. It will automatically resist and fight off radioactivity, poisons in the air or in the blood stream and will clot immediately when exposed to air and it also appears to contain high levels of adrenaline. The skin is, as the Colonel implied, fired-retardant. It is equal to a typical asbestos fire-fighters suit. It will burn, but only at extremely high temperatures. Their muscles and bones are 20 times denser than a human. Here is another amazing and scary thing we found but are not certain just yet how it works; they have a split brain. If they took a bullet to the head, they could still function on the other half. They are much higher in intelligence than a human and are capable of cutting off all pain censors and nerve endings to their brain. They can essentially compartmentalize their pain or just shut it off. We checked their hearing and eyesight as well. We believe that they can see in the dark and if they can’t they can definitely smell and hear like nothing we’ve ever seen. The damn, sorry, darn, things would survive on a gas planet, oxygen free environment or for a good long while underwater. We’ve not completed our study of their lungs and blood purification systems, but it is extremely adaptive. They were without a doubt carefully designed to be the most deadly warriors ever imagined. Myself and our team will do all we can to help you prepare yourself for any future encounters.”