by Brown, Ryk
“It seemed the best course of action at the time,” Jalea responded, choosing to ignore the tone of the Commander’s comment.
Nathan decided to change the subject before things got ugly. He knew that Cameron, just like Jessica, did not trust Jalea, and for good reason. Her actions in the past had been reckless and self-serving, at times even bordering on immoral. Unfortunately, her actions also seemed to produce results, which Nathan assumed was the reason Tug seemed to trust her as much as he did. “The purpose of this meeting is to discuss our situation, examine our options, and devise a plan to exercise those options.” Nathan looked around the command briefing room, scanning the faces of his senior staff as well as those of Tug and Jalea. “Our primary concern, of course, is the threat to the Darvano system.”
“Isn’t the Savoy system also under threat?” Jessica wondered.
“I do not believe so,” Tug interrupted. “The Ta’Akar obtain much of their food from Ancot. While they may choose to punish some of their citizens as a show of force, it is unlikely they will take any actions that might significantly disrupt the flow of food from Ancot.”
“Do the Ancotans realize this?” Nathan wondered. Their reaction to the Alliance’s attack on the Ta’Akar garrison on their world had been unexpected.
“While the people may not, I am sure their leaders are aware.”
“Won’t that make it more difficult for us to convince them to help us?” Cameron asked.
“Possibly,” Jalea admitted. “However, the leaders of Ancot will also recognize the long term potential of an alliance. The defeat of the Ta’Akar would not only gain them their independence, but it would also open up new markets as well as give them the freedom to charge what they like for their exports.”
“The technological gains would also be taken into consideration,” Tug added.
“Indeed,” Jalea agreed. “However, they will have to weigh long-term gains against short term risks, one of which would be the reaction of their citizens.”
“Are their leaders elected by popular vote?” Nathan asked.
“To some extent,” Tug explained. “Each local representative is elected to the council by an election within their own district. However, the leaders of the council are selected by the council itself.”
“The current leader of the planetary council of Ancot has voiced his disagreements with imperial policy in the past,” Jalea explained, “so there may be some possibility of negotiation on his part.”
“Then perhaps we should speak with him,” Nathan observed.
“That may not be possible,” Jalea warned. “Simply granting us an audience would be considered a treasonous act by the empire. I suspect he will not agree to speak with us unless he has already made up his mind to openly support the Alliance.”
“Perhaps through a back channel?” Tug suggested.
“We are attempting to arrange such communication as we speak,” Nathan told them.
“Really?” Jalea said, somewhat surprised. “I was not aware that you had any assets in place on Ancot.”
Nathan understood her insinuation. “A few hundred of them,” he jested. “Although, I wouldn’t exactly call them assets. More like, enthusiastic supporters,” he added with a smile. He wasn’t about to reveal their conversation with Dexter to Jalea. She had a nasty habit of twisting things around to work in her favor. It wasn’t anything that Nathan could prove, but as long as he’d known her, she had always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. He had no idea what her level of involvement was with the near riot on Ancot. However, he was sure that it was more than she had revealed in her debriefing. “For the time being, we must assume that assistance from Ancot will not be forthcoming. We will maintain communications with them via jump shuttle for now in the hopes that they may be willing to provide humanitarian assistance for the people of Corinair. Meanwhile, we need to figure out what our next step should be.”
“That would depend on our goals,” Major Prechitt pointed out.
“Agreed,” Nathan said. “Obviously, our primary goal is to protect our allies in the Darvano system and possibly in the Ancot system as well. The question is, how do we go about this?”
“We must attack the Takaran homeworld as soon as possible,” Tug insisted. “We must cut off the head of the dragon once and for all.”
“Again, I agree, but I’m not entirely convinced that removing Caius from power will solve the problem. You’ll still have an empire, and surely there is some form of succession in place to fill his shoes. Who is to say the next guy will be any better?”
“Actually, there is not,” Mister Dumar explained. “Caius never declared an order of succession for fear that it would invite assassination. In his mind, he is the empire. Without a leader to replace him, the empire would fracture into at least six separate realms. Each realm would have the resources to defend itself to some degree, but unless two or more of them combined their forces, no one realm would have the strength to conquer the others.”
“How does that stop them from trying to assassinate Caius?” Jessica wondered. “It sounds to me like they’d be better off without him.”
“The anti-aging serum,” Tug said. “Caius is not using it as it was intended. He is trying to live forever. I believe his abuse of the serum is the cause of his irrational behavior, his belief that he can do no wrong. In addition, to further protect himself and his hold on Takaran civilization, he has centralized the production and distribution of the serum and has compartmentalized the process so that no one man knows the entire formula. Only Caius and the scientist that developed the serum and still oversees its production know the entire formula. He and Caius are electronically linked. If Caius dies, the only man who knows the formula dies, taking it with him.”
“How do you know all of this?” Jessica wondered.
“We have been fighting the Ta’Akar for over thirty years,” Tug reminded her. “During that time, we have successfully infiltrated many levels of Takaran society, including that of the royal palace and its staff.”
“Are they still active?” Nathan asked.
“We do not know,” Tug admitted. “Most of them were eventually discovered and executed. A few may still remain, but if so, they are in hiding and have not been able to make contact with us.”
“Can you make contact with them?” Jessica asked.
“We do not know their identities,” Tug explained. “This was done to protect their cover.”
“Too bad,” Jessica said. “It would open up a whole new world of possibilities if we had an asset on Takara.”
“We could send out an encrypted hail during a recon pass,” Tug suggested.
“Can that be done without being detected?” Nathan asked.
“Doubtful,” Tug admitted.
“By now, they already know that we’re here and that we have destroyed several of their warships. There’s nothing we can do about that. However, we do not want to alert them to the fact that we’re waltzing through their star system whenever we want. That will undoubtedly put them on alert.”
“Waltzing?” Mister Willard whispered to Jessica next to him.
“A type of dance,” Jessica whispered back.
“The captain wants to dance?”
“It’s an expression,” she told him, gesturing for him to pay attention.
“Captain, I too have contacts, or should I say, my cover identity has contacts within the palace on Takara. One of them in particular may be of assistance.”
“Why would your friend want to help us?”
“Many within the empire are dissatisfied with the direction Caius has taken our civilization.”
“Dissatisfied enough to commit treason?” Jessica wondered.
“Technically, I myself am committing treason.” His statement drew concern from Nathan and his staff. “I was born and raised on Takara, as were many of the Karuzari.”
“As was I,” Tug admitted.
Nathan did not react as the others in the
room. He had known for some time that many of the Karuzari were once Takaran citizens. Although he had not known for sure, he had always suspected that Tug was Takaran born and raised as well. He knew far too much about Takaran culture and politics to have been an outside observer. “Even if your contact was willing to help, communication is still a problem.”
“Indeed it is,” Dumar admitted.
“So it appears we may be forced to mount a full-on assault,” Nathan admitted. No one in the room commented, all of them knowing full well that it would not only cost many lives, but it was also a long shot at best. “I’ve reviewed your mission plans for invading the Takaran homeworld, Tug, and while they are impressive, I don’t know that we have the man power to pull them off. We really need help on the ground.”
“Captain,” Mister Willard interrupted, “it may be possible to communicate with Mister Dumar’s contacts without tipping the Ta’Akar to our presence.” Mister Willard paused for a moment as he felt all eyes in the briefing turn his way. “The comm-drones.” He scanned their eyes again, but none of them seemed to understand where he was headed. “Surely the Savoy system was launching drones according to schedule prior to the attack on their garrison. If we are lucky, we may be able to catch one on its way to Takara.”
“And do what with it?” Nathan wondered.
“Imperial command is still expecting the Yamaro to arrive within a few weeks,” Mister Willard explained. “She would be flying a course that closely parallels that of the Savoy comm-drones. It would not be unexpected for her to alter her course slightly in order to intercept a drone and add messages to its queue. Nobles often do this just before their ship arrives in Takara in order to alert family of their impending arrival.”
“So we just use the Yamaro’s transponder again,” Nathan surmised, “to get the drone to drop out of FTL so that we can add messages to its queue.”
“Correct.”
“Can you do that?”
“As a communications technician, I have done this many times. It is a normal procedure.”
“We will need to know the exact launch schedule for the Savoy drones over the last few weeks in order to calculate which drone to intercept and where to intercept it,” Tug added.
“Comm-drones for all imperial worlds follow schedules set by the empire,” Mister Dumar stated. “The schedules would be known by all warships in order to intercept the drones as needed. I am sure the information can be found in both the Yamaro and the Loranoi’s comm-systems.”
“Assuming we can make contact with Mister Dumar’s friend,” Nathan began, “and assuming that he is willing to help us, what would we be asking him to do?”
“If I may?” Tug asked. Nathan gestured for him to continue. Tug handed a data card to Cameron, who inserted it into the table’s holographic display system. “This is Answari, the capital city of Takara,” Tug began, pointing at the holographic display of an overhead view of the city. The display hovered just above the table. “The city itself is protected by a ring of energy cannons designed to automatically detect, target, and destroy any incoming vessels that have not been tagged as authorized by Takaran command.”
“There’s not that many of them,” Nathan commented.
“There are only eight of them, but make no mistake, they are formidable,” Tug warned, “and they are also designed to operate both independently and autonomously, each with their own power plant and target acquisition system.”
“So how do we get around them?” Nathan asked.
“They are designed to detect and destroy incoming weapons and ships,” Tug explained, “not individual combatants.”
“You want to drop paratroops into the city to take them out?” Jessica surmised, a bit surprised. “If those guns are so formidable, how are we going to get close enough to do that? If those guns can reach orbit, we couldn’t even get close enough to HALO jump.”
Tug looked perplexed.
“High altitude, low open,” Nathan explained. “It’s the term we use for jumping from a very high altitude and waiting until you reach the lowest safe altitude to open your chute.”
“I see,” Tug responded. “Then that terminology should serve our purpose.”
“It doesn’t matter what you call it,” Jessica argued. “We can’t do it with those guns down there.”
“Ah, but we can,” Tug disagreed. “Because their guns use their own power plants, they take several minutes to spin up to full operational status.”
“Seriously?” Jessica challenged. “That seems conveniently stupid.”
“Remember, they were not designed to defend against an enemy equipped with jump drive technology,” Tug told her.
“So you want to have the shuttles jump into the upper atmosphere and unload a bunch of HALO jumpers?” Nathan asked.
“No, that would not work either,” Tug told him. “First, the shuttles themselves can only hold about twenty men. We would need to utilize every one of them just to make the first drop. There would be insufficient time for them to return to a rendezvous point in space to reload with the first wave of ground troops. Second, that many targets suddenly appearing in the atmosphere would undoubtedly trigger an alert. If that happened, the sky would be filled with imperial fighters in minutes. For this to work, we need to deliver the entire group from a single ship, spending no more than thirty seconds in Takaran orbit.”
“Did you say, ‘in Takaran orbit’?” Nathan asked.
“Yes, Captain, I did,” Tug responded confidently. “I recommend we jump the Aurora into a low orbit over Takara, have the strike teams jump from her flight apron, and jump away again. If we are lucky, the Takaran defense command will consider the temporary contact an anomaly and will not call an alert.”
“You want them to jump from orbit?” Nathan asked in disbelief.
“Yes,” Tug responded, surprised at Nathan’s reluctance.
Major Prechitt also noticed the captain’s disbelief. “It is possible,” he added. “Our pilots wear special suits designed to withstand reentry through the atmosphere. I had to do this myself when my ship was destroyed shooting down the missiles headed for the Aurora. While it was not a pleasant ride, I did survive.”
“Now that’s a HALO jump!” Jessica declared. “Captain, I have got to be on this mission.”
Nathan gestured for Jessica to control herself. “You want them to jump from our flight apron, in orbit, re-enter the atmosphere, free fall for ten minutes, and then land on a specific target.” Nathan shrugged. “Piece of cake, right?”
“The Corinari airborne assault squads have parachute systems that can put them on a precise spot,” Major Prechitt told them. “If we can replace the final stage chute system in the pilot’s reentry rig with the one used by the airborne assault squads, it might work.”
Nathan shook his head in dismay. “Is there no other way to get the strike teams down to their targets?”
“None,” Tug admitted. “Even if it works, we will still need someone within the palace to do something to mask our final descent into the compound. Perhaps a distraction of some type.”
“Assuming we attack in the early hours just before dawn, it could be as simple as killing the lights for a few minutes,” Dumar pointed out.
“Do you think your contact would be able to pull that off?” Nathan asked.
“I can ask.”
“Why even bother with all of this?” Cameron asked. “Why not just hit the palace with a precision strike weapon? Mister Willard found plenty of them on the Loranoi.”
“The risk of collateral damage is too high. The palace itself is woven into the city,” Tug explained, pointing at the holographic display to indicate the various spines of the palace. “This makes it difficult to strike without killing thousands of innocent people.”
“Considering the number of innocent people the empire has already killed, I’m not sure I see the problem,” Nathan said.
“Captain, you have to understand Takaran society. While many of them may not
care for Caius or the actions of the empire, if attacked, they will rally in defense of their world, as will the nobles who command the empire’s warships. And you would also be destroying the anti-aging serum, which would further enrage the nobility as well as the upper and middle classes. The Ta’Akar home system is heavily populated, with twenty billion people on Takara alone. We do not want them demanding revenge. If we hope to end this quickly and avoid retaliation, we must take out Caius himself with as little collateral damage as possible if we expect the citizens of Takara to accept whomever steps up to take the throne.”
“I understand that,” Nathan told Tug, “but you still haven’t told me how we can accomplish that goal.”
“I will lead a team of Karuzari that will drop into the palace grounds, directly within their walls. We’ll probably drop into one of the many arms that stretch out into the city, and preferably into more than one of them to increase our chances of reaching the center compound.”
“Uh, that’s just a bit insane,” Jessica pointed out.
“Many of my people are native Takarans. We know their customs and mannerisms, and we speak the language. If we dress as palace guards and are able to land within the compound unnoticed, we have a very good chance of reaching our objective unchallenged.”
“And if we are unable to take out all the turrets?” Nathan challenged.
“As long as we can disable at least half of the turrets, we’ll have a chance. Our atmospheric fighters can keep them occupied in order to get our jump shuttles safely in and out. Once men are on the ground, we might be able to redouble our efforts to disable the batteries. We might even be able to use the jump interceptor to launch strikes against them.”
“Aren’t they shielded?” Nathan asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes, I believe so,” Tug admitted. “Hopefully the failed attacks would have left their shields damaged or in a weakened state.”
“Those are a lot of ‘ifs’,” Jessica commented.
“Okay, say the first teams are able to take out the defensive batteries, then what?” Nathan wondered.