Chapter 4: Special Weapons and Tactic Training Center on Trena
The training center had been set up months before. Wilson and the Queen had allowed the Black Guard to take over a small isolated town away from prying eyes, to practice in, once it had been evacuated. Everyone one knew that the SpecWars of the Empire, the Realm, and the Militia would be called on at some time to either make a hostage rescue, or to take out a barricade subject holding part of a town on an evacuation route hostage. Some soul who thought he should go before others. Various units of the Mounted Patrol, The 83rd’s Hostage Rescue Team, the Black Guard, and militia routinely practiced at the facility. At least once a month all of the units worked a combined unit operation to make sure everyone understood the other’s signals and procedures.
Specially designated special operations teams on the planet had been notified that they might be needed, and began assembling at the training center. All of the special units began assembling and all of them would play a part in the rescue of Lady Wilson. Including one that no one had expected.
“They ain’t going to let us join them!” the driver said as the truck with the twenty men and women from the Trojack security detachment approached the training center. They were company cops, both human and biopeople. All had worked together in the company Trojack security force’s emergency strike team. When the company left, Trojack’s human company cops didn’t hesitate to defect from the company given the chance. They had fought the company higher ups over some of the things they were required to. The bios who worked with them knew what they had been doing behind the scenes. That was why when the company left Trojack and they stayed behind the bios had no problem accepting them. Now they were on Trena to help the people of Trena.
They knew there might be a need for their strike team, a team specially team specializing in hostage and barricade incidents. Simply because they were from the bioengineered community didn’t mean they were peaceful. Every once in a while a clone went rouge, and the security unit had to go in. Although some people in the company would just take a kill them all attitude; others thought differently. The team on Trojack was not the premier team in the company, but they knew their business and hadn’t lost a suspect yet.
“We’ll find out,” the fifty year old team leader said, he had spent 35 years in the hostage unit. He had trained people all over the company, and worked with all types of closers, including Hozenbur who he had sworn a blood oath against. He had to clean up one of her messes. He still couldn’t believe that Hozenbur was a company officer.
“Good morning,” the Mounty greeted them, “You’ll have to turn back. This is a restricted area.”
“We know officer,” Crandle said to the officer at his side of the car. “I am going to take out my papers and present them to you.”
“Okay,” the young officer said, as his partner took up position to blow away everyone in the truck.
Crandle presented his papers, and then asked that the officer to call the ranking officer on the post. The young officer saw that it would be best to call the ranking officer. It just happened to be Princess Carroll.
When the princess saw who it was, she told the Mounty to let him past. Crandle had asked permission a couple days before to train with her black guardsmen. The princess thought it would be good for everyone. Besides they were getting to know everyone’s moves.
“Okay folks.” the princess said as she led Crandle into the skull session before the first practice extraction of the day. “This is captain Crandle formerly of Ebio Security on Trojack. He is the subject matter expert for Ebio company goons. He has worked with Hozenbur before and can help you get into Hozenbur’s head. He’s also volunteered his unit to be your opposition. Crandle?”
“Good day,” Crandall said, “first off let me assure you that my guys and girls hold no grudges against any of you. If we do hold a grudge it is against the closers who continue to harm Biopeople who just want to be free. I know you have been briefed about Hozenbur; but you haven’t had this. This is a confidential file that was given to me prior to our departure on Trojack. Roy our manager, thought he had seen something where she was on Trena and I was instructed to bring her in.”
“I didn’t know that was your assignment,” the princess said, thinking that this might not be a good idea to use these people.
“We didn’t want it to be advertised because we didn’t want it to be known we were hunting her. We thought, (and still do) at the time of the assignment that since the crown is known to be hunting the woman, that if we were inserted clandestinely, then we had a better chance of nailing her. Now with her having abducted Lady Wilson it might not make a difference. But we can give your troops some live experience with dealing with a containment cop.” Crandall said. “I will assume that you know that there is no one Captain Hozenbur hates so much as Lady Wilson. Lady Wilson foiled two of her biggest recoveries and has hated her for at least fifteen years.”
“So there’s a good chance we’ll be doing a recovery,” someone from the back of the room asked.
Princess Carroll bristled at that and snapped, “This is not a recovery! It’s the rescue of Lady Wilson. Anyone who doesn’t think that way is gone!”
“General,” the marine who had spoken responded, “Ma’am as distasteful as that thought is, we have to be prepared for that eventuality. If this woman is as psychopathic as everyone claims it’s a possibility.”
“She’ll only kill Lady Wilson as a last result.” Crandall said, “Hozenbur’s a torturer, and tormenter. She’ll be planning a way to harm Lady Wilson physically and mentally prior to killing her. She might induce labor to bring Lady Wilson’s children into the world and kill them before her eyes. She would find that immensely satisfying. She would let the children live long enough for Lady Wilson to bond with them, and then either kill them in front of Lady Wilson, or possibly take them from her and kill her letting Lady Wilson know that her children will be sold into slavery as she does the coup de grace. No we won’t be on a recovery, but we might find our hostage in sorry shape.”
“We assumed that,” Lieutenant Anthony of the Trena fire department spoke up. His team had drawn the air ambulance assignment. They were the best next to the IRS; but the XO had decided that Lady Wilson would feel more comfortable with someone other than the IRS on this one. Lady Wilson had discovered that the lead medic on this team had the same empathic abilities as she had and had worked with the young medic that was part of the Lieutenant’s flight crew. “Tina will be ready. We’re also requesting an obstetrics team fly in with us. General Langtree’s got my bird and is turning it into a mobile PICU. We should have the bird back in a few hours.”
“Do I need to say something to the general? Tell him not to be so fussy?” the princess asked.
“I doubt if he would listen to you,” A thonian who had been part of Langtree’s unit and now assigned as the forward maintenance officer for the SpecWar facility, injected, she had great respect for General Langtree, and knew how he approached his work, “but in this case if he says a couple of hours it will be not a moment longer, and possibly a lot sooner. He’s not tuning the bird; but he will make sure every piece of equipment is installed properly, and its backups are fail safe.”
“Okay what type of house would the captain choose, to hold up in,” The Mounty SWAT team unit leader asked.
“Well first off she’s not going to be in the traditional places these people hold up.” Crandall said, “She will be in a house near or at the port; or by an air facility. Some place she can make a getaway from. It may not be isolated, it may be surrounded by other houses where she can put her over watch system or have loyal people watching the approaches for her. She would prefer that as if she has to escape in a hurry there would be more places for us to search. The bad news is because of the evacuation and the amount of abandoned cars left around she’s got plenty of cars to get away with.”
“Not Really. All of the evacuees who didn’t take their cars
with them were told to pull the power. The crown didn’t want to have the cars become a problem. They were told to park them on their lawns or if they lived in an apartment to leave them in the lot. So anything on the street is a working vehicle and should be being used by someone.”
“Well that will help some.” Crandall said, “The biggest thing you can count on is that Hozenbur will do exactly what you think she shouldn’t. She’ll hole up in the top floor of an apartment with no apparent escape path. Just when you expect to get her you’ll find she has escaped. The one thing we have in our advantage is that she won’t harm Lady Wilson until she has too.”
“We have got a holo from her. There was enough stuff on it to give us a good idea what the room Lady Wilson is being held in looks like. The techies are a finding house that looks like it. Soon as they find it we’ll try an extraction.” The facility commander said.
“We’ll be doing a different house every day until the time they find where she is being held. We can’t all be training. We need to have a reaction force that can deploy quickly. I want to put the 83rd on alert tomorrow, the Mounties will go into crew rest and the Guard will go into practice against the opfor.”
“We can be the opfor,” Crandle injected.
“Crandle,” the princess spoke up. “We have enough folks here to be a different opfor every day. Besides they would learn your moves and be able to best you if you were to be the opfor every day.”
“May we be put into the alert rotation,” Crandle asked.
Everyone was quiet while the Princess who was the Evacuation command’s special operations commander pondered the request. She had no doubt that the team was good. When she asked Kellogg about it he confirmed that they were good. But she didn’t know how much she trusted them. She was going to let them train with her people as way to keep them close. But she didn’t want to commit them to the rescue of Lady Wilson.
Sensing that the Princess didn’t quite trust them, Crandle spoke up, “Let us earn your trust. We want to be part of Lady Wilson’s rescue, and the arrest of Captain Hozenbur. That won’t happen if we don’t work as a team. If you don’t trust us then we can’t build the team.”
The princess when she spoke did so with a little relief in her voice, “Thank you for understanding Mr. Crandle. You can be of great help to us.”
“But we have to earn you trust,” Someone from Crandle’s team spoke up. “I guess we need to get about that.”
Over the next few days the special operations team from Trojack earned if not the trust of the other special operations team they did earn their respect. Although not nearly as aggressive as the Black Guard, or the Companions HRT, they did get the job done. Often with fewer simulated casualties and usually before the hostage came to grief.
The Black Guard unit leader and Crandle were sharing a meal after a day of heavy simulations, “I thought my guys were good at infiltration. But we haven’t been able to detect you in the last couple of passes. Even the cyber watchers didn’t catch on.”
“The whole key captain is over watch and cyber skullduggery,” Crandle replied. “We have a good electronics counter measure suite to begin with and we know most of the imperial, Thonian, and Trena’s surveillance devices. The company went to great pains to know what their capabilities were.”
“That makes sense,” the captain said, “We always had trouble infiltrating your guy’s places.”
“Oh that reminds me,” Crandle said looking to one of his people across the mess hall. “Lincoln!”
“Yes boss,” the older man spoke.
“You get with the cops and the guard and let them have everything we have on company electronic counter measures and such.” Crandle called, “They’ll need that to make their infiltration and rescue!”
“Already done boss,” the man said, “I sat down with them yesterday!”
Crandle smiled his people were doing everything they could to earn the other spec ops people trust. The next day the Lor’ns, the thonians who were nominally the special operations site manager came up to Crandle. They sat with him after a practice rescue and said, “Starting tomorrow, your team goes into the rescue rotation. If you are not on when the balloon goes up we want you to be part of the over watch unit.”
“Thank you,” Crandle said.
“You are welcomed,” They got up and went about their tasks.
Every Last Mother's Child Page 203