by Charles Lamb
“Thanks, that’s great news, I will see you in the morning,” Jake replied, ending the conversation. Turning, he could see Sara in the dim light, still sound asleep next to him. Beyond her was the oversized bassinet, holding the twins, both thankfully silent.
Finally, he looked down to see Kona laying on the end of the bed, awake and watching him without raising her head. Facing the only doorway into the room, he knew she was silently on guard.
----*----
General KaLob had been notified of the recent arrival. At the moment, he had much larger issues to address. Besides, nothing the humans had to say at the moment held any interest to him. KaLob had his own communication he was preparing for the humans and it was one they could not mistake.
Routing the assembly communications through the fleet communications hub, a converted asteroid in the middle of space, he sent the go codes to all the ships awaiting his orders. In a very short time, the NeHaw would get retaliation for the damage done on G-43578.
----*----
Daniel and the three troopers with him were hiding just outside the service airlock when they received the go order from Colonel Banks. Within seconds the doors slid open, allowing them access to the airlock itself. The four hurried inside as they had been instructed that the maintenance cycle for these doors was very short.
The last trooper had just slipped inside, when the door quickly slid shut behind her. Daniel checked the indicator panel next to the airtight door that would allow them access to the inside of the facility. Unlike humans, the NeHaw did not use indicator lights for the status of the airlock.
There was a display pad next to the hatch that held a symbol. When it was safe to open the door, a large O was shown on the display. An unsafe situation, as when the outer door was open, displayed a large X, indicating no access.
With the O clearly showing on the panel, Daniel had the team spread out to either side of the airlock. Weapons at the ready, this was the moment where they would have a successful infiltration mission or a search and destroy. It had been decided from the beginning that if they couldn’t pull this off, then they were to grab what they could before blowing the place to pieces.
Triggering the hatch, Daniel held his breath as he got the all clear from the pair opposite him. Glancing down the passage in his direction, he was relieved to see there wasn’t a soul in sight. Slipping quickly inside and closing the airlock before it was noticed, the four quickly slipped deeper inside the asteroid.
Daniel had been amazed to learn that the NeHaw had the floorplans for his facility easily available in their archives. With little effort at all, the analysts on Earth had been able to map out a route that would take them through the least occupied portions of the facility.
The interior was supposed to be a NeHaw normal environment, and to Daniel that meant dark, smoky air with a tinge of red to everything they saw. He wasn’t sure what the air was made of, but he imagined it was the same thing you found in hell.
The sound of voices had Daniel pull the team into a maintenance room off the corridor they had been following. As the NeHaw didn’t actually speak, their suits had all been configured to receive the radio waves they emitted.
While he had no idea what the two were discussing as they passed, as NeHaw military, he assumed someone was complaining. In his experience in the military, someone was always complaining. A positive to the experience was it demonstrated that the radio the NeHaw emitted was detectable much sooner than an audio stream would have been. So long as the NeHaw were talking, they would hear them in plenty of time to hide.
Back on the move, the four descended two levels before reaching the area marked as restricted on the floorplans they had seen. Sure enough, there were large X’s on several passages display panels, warning those aboard the station. Daniel was relieved to see there wasn’t a guard in sight and nothing was actually locked. He had to assume no NeHaw would risk the punishment of unauthorized access.
Slipping down the passage, they reached the door indicated on the map he had been following. Pausing to see if they could hear anyone on the other side, Daniel finally took a breath and triggered the door mechanism. After a quick glance inside, the team slipped in behind him. Daniel indicated that the last one in stand by the door while he led the others deeper into the room.
He recalled he had been invited once into the rooms that held the ALICE systems in Nevada. Patti had warned him not to touch anything and then walked him through the room while pointing out what was human and what was NeHaw. The experience had left an impression on his that was unique until now.
With no sense of familiarity with what he was looking at, he quietly passed groups of equipment, looking for the systems he had been shown in the briefing. Unlike the human computer rooms that were organized in rows, the NeHaw apparently liked to group things in islands. Although he had no idea how that helped or why they did it, it was apparent that there was a method to their madness.
Soon enough, he found the cabinet he was looking for. While it wasn’t actually a cabinet in the human sense, he pressed the place where the access panel he needed opened was triggered and slipped in the tap. Placed precisely as instructed, he closed the panel and waited for confirmation.
“Tap in place,” he transmitted.
“Checking,” came the reply.
“Proceed to station two,” came the success code.
Repeating the process several more times, they placed over a dozen taps in the equipment before they had finished.
It was as they finished the last check that a sound came from the door.
“Incoming,” came the alert from the door guard as she scrambled to find cover.
With that the rest of the team dived for anything that would conceal their presence.
Chapter 24
Linda was working with the team that was tied to the SAS operation. A more accurate statement was Linda was working with Patti as she dominated the SAS operation. Considering Linda’s relationship with Jake, she was more than understanding about the young woman’s concern over her love interest’s wellbeing. While not the same intensity, Linda was always concerned when Jake put himself in harm’s way.
It had been a scramble to get the SAS team the materials they needed for this mission, particularly the taps they wanted to use on the NeHaw equipment in their computer room. Fortunately, there had been a Kortisht vessel inbound that stopped at the space station for a handoff. Not only did they have the taps Earth needed, but they also had the results of the analysis on the cube Jake had sent to them.
The good news was, it did cause the FTL failures experienced by Jake and the others before him. The bad news was it couldn’t be blocked. The only way to prevent it from disrupting the field required for FTL was to turn it off. She remembers Jake’s reply that destroying the offender’s ship was one way of turning it off.
“Ma’am, we are getting strong feeds from all sources,” one of the analysts announced.
Linda noted it was Private Grace Middleton, a lost child returned to the fold. Jake had pulled Linda aside at one point and indicated to her that he would like Grace to be kept challenged in her work. She didn’t take the comment negatively, rather like someone assessing a gifted student.
Slipping up next to the young woman, Linda could see the massive amounts of information coming in. Concerned about the NeHaw detecting the leakage, ALICE explained that taps they were using were the same devices the NeHaw military used.
The taps linked to the same network as everyone used, they just rode a different frequency, so to speak. The traffic generated by these taps would be nothing more than a trickle when compared to the massive data flow this station was managing. The reason the Kortisht had extras was because they manufactured them for the NeHaw.
“Oh dear, someone please find Jake,” ALICE urgently announced.
“What’s wrong ALICE?” Linda asked, concerned at the statement.
“The NeHaw are coming,” she replied.
----*--
--
GeSec had his cruiser in FTL, destined once more to lead the charge against the humans. Earlier, he had been scheduled to meet with General KaLob and demonstrate the new weapons system they had been fitted with. That meeting, however had been canceled due to the assault on G-43578.
Now his was one of three ships equipped with the new weapon, and all three were to converge on the target from different directions. Unlike missions he had been assigned in the past, there was to be no mustering of forces this time. This order was transmitted as a timed event, where ships from all across the Empire were transmitted the go order in independent transmissions.
It was GeSec’s understanding that all warships would arrive on target simultaneously, due to the time they got their orders and the travel time calculated by the operations division of the High Command.
Considering this target, he only hoped they got it right, or his time on target would be very short indeed.
----*----
Daniel and the other three troopers were cautiously moving about in crouched positions, constantly trying to keep one of the islands of hardware between themselves and the NeHaw wandering through the room. Several times he caught a glimpse of the tech, as he or she paused in front of one or another display, checking the readings and making notes on a pad it carried. Unsure if it was male or female, Daniel questioned if that really mattered as he considered his options, were they to be discovered.
Killing the NeHaw would be no problem, as more than once one of the troopers had almost been forced to do that exact thing to avoid detection. It wouldn’t even be hard to dispose of the body as they could space it on their way out. The challenge was how to do so in a way that wouldn’t raise suspicion with the rest of the station crew.
His dilemma was set aside as he suddenly caught the NeHaw staring across the room. Following its gaze, he could see someone’s shoulder extending no more than half an inch past the equipment they were hiding behind.
“We are discovered,” Daniel announced as he stepped up behind the NeHaw. As it turned to run from the trooper it saw across the room, it hit him squarely in the chest and bounced off. It started to rise, but stopped as it received a solid blow to the forehead from another trooper’s rifle butt.
The NeHaw dropped to the floor, apparently out cold. Without delay, they bound its arms and legs to keep it from escaping while Daniel searched the body for anything resembling a communicator.
“Colonel, we have an issue,” Daniel transmitted as he considered the unconscious form at his feet.
----*----
The war room in Nevada was packed, as everyone gathered to hear the urgent news. Jake was standing off to one side going through the brief that they were about to present, while mentally debating their options. He was delighted to learn that the taps the SAS had placed were already proving worth the effort.
Having read the presentation earlier, he wanted to hear what others thought of the information before making a decision.
“Everyone here?” Patti asked as the various remote locations checked in.
Satisfied she had all the relevant parties, she looked to Jake, who gave her a nod.
“We have recently received information that a NeHaw force is headed this way. While we haven’t established the exact size or makeup of ship types, it was an Empire wide call to arms. We are expecting a significant number of military vessels from all sectors within a few hours travel.”
At this point Patti had a visual projected in a 3D holograph for all to see. In the holograph, a vast star map was displayed first, followed by a 3 dimensional grid that outlined the sectors the NeHaw used as reference locations. Highlighting a small group of boxes, representing the sectors in question, the image zoomed in.
“This is us,” Patti commented as a lone box off to one side started blinking to emphasize its location.
From the display you could see how the box only touched the rest of the grid on one corner, leaving everything else bounded by uncharted space. In this view, it became quite obvious why the NeHaw considered Earth a backwater planet, so far off the beaten path as to be almost irrelevant.
She then brought the view in closer, so only our sector, Nu Tao Beta, was centered in the room. Located at the far end of the sector point closest to the rest of the Empire, the Earth’s solar system was even remote in their own sector.
“As you can see, from where these ships will be traveling from, their approach vectors converge here,” Patti said as, first, representative lines indicating the travel vectors from NeHaw space into Nu Tau Beta appeared. Next, the display zoomed once more leaving only Earth’s solar system.
At the point of convergence, sat a small, stationary object as the rest of the planets rotated around the sun.
“This is our new space station,” Patti explained.
The demonstration was more to place relevance on the station’s location in space, not related to Earth, but rather its relevance to anyone entering the sector Earth’s solar system occupied. By maintaining its place in the sector of space, it insured any ship approaching Earth from outside the sector would need to pass under its guns in the solar systems orbital plane.
“Any ship attacking Earth will have to drop out of FTL here,” Patti said, indicating the convergence point.
“What if they just bypass the station and try to come in from the far side?” someone asked, pointing out the open spaces on the top, bottom, and the far side of the system.
“Faster than Light travel is linear. To make that move they would have to drop out of FTL, and then jump again. We would detect that as we have placed monitoring systems in all the probable locations. The station is FTL capable and could jump in time to intercept,” referring to sensor packages Jake had asked the ALICEs to place a year before. He called it locking the back door.
“Here is the point of all this,” Patti said as she focused on the image.
“Currently, Kola and ALICE-3 are both out of the solar system. Almost all our destroyers and cruisers are as well, working convoy duties or protecting treaty planets. Between Earth and that space station, all we can muster is 2 destroyers, 6 combat patrol ships and 2 fighter squadrons.”
“We have ordered the 4 Lanai transports on the planet to be fitted with guns, but that will take some time. With the 4 day trip from the edge of the system, we hope they will be ready in time. That’s all we have people.”
Jake noted that the room was decidedly quiet as everyone did the math. Should the NeHaw show up with another armada, the small force would be overwhelmed quickly. He was doing his own calculations on pulling a weapon from ALICE-9 and getting in place.
“This is an all hands on deck event. If anyone has an idea about how to better prepare or fight, don’t be shy,” Patti added, making it very clear that everyone should be thinking about this fight. Jake could see several nods, but no one spoke up.
“Ok everyone, let’s get back to work and stay focused,” Jake announced as he headed to his office.
----*----
Patti had no sooner returned to Patti’s Pit when she was awash in analysts. Everyone here had continued to work while the briefing was being conducted for the larger audience. With the SAS team the immediate priority, they needed to insure their safe extraction while others worked on the battle plans.
“Patti, you need to see this,” Sam said as she led the other woman aside.
Promoted to Lance Corporal, Samantha Watts had moved back into the analyst’s role due to the current crisis. As an experienced Marine and trained analyst, she was a valuable addition to the team.
Taking her to her station, Patti began reading the transcript from the Phantom.
“Oh crap, what else can go wrong,” she mumbled.
----*----
With Sara still recovering from giving birth and Patti managing the SAS mission still in progress, Jake and Linda were alone in his office as they discussed the situation.
“We have a recall order out for all ships within a four hour or
so return window. Beyond that they would just be here to watch,” Linda said glumly.
“It’s not as bad as you think. Not to say we aren’t in trouble, but we still have a few cards to play,” he replied without expanding on the statement.
“You know, I really hate that shit you do with hidden plans and secret weapons,” Linda snapped, clearly frustrated at his comment.
“Yeah, me too. Trust me, however, you don’t want to know the shit I know,” he replied as he hoisted the coffee cup he was sipping from in a toasting fashion.
“So do you have some magic left in your hat?” Linda asked hopefully.
“Only the things of nightmares. But yes, I will soon be busy making sure Earth will live to fight another day.
----*----
Daniel and his team cautiously moved through the corridors of the NeHaw asteroid, making their way back to the Phantom. Two of the troopers were hauling the unconscious NeHaw between them. As they moved from place to place, Daniel worked through their list of options for the captive.
Without a NeHaw space suit, taking the tech with them was not an option. Even if they could get it on the Phantom, they didn’t have an environment to place it in to survive the trip to Earth. As it was, in this condition it wouldn’t survive the trip from the airlock to the ship.
That brought up the option of just spacing the captive. Dead anyway if they attempted to keep it, they could just kill it and let the body float away in space, covering up their deed. Daniel was concerned, though, about what the disappearance might mean to the others on the station. A detailed search might reveal the taps they had gone to so much trouble to place and keep hidden.
The third and most complicated option was to make the death appear as some kind of accident. If they could stage the death to appear natural, like crushed under a stack of crates or cut in half in an airlock door, it might be passed off as uninteresting.