Hostage Rescue (Princess Rescue Inc Book 2)

by Hechtl, Chris

  She finished the birdsmouth cut and then put the branch she'd cut from the mother plant into the notch and then wrapped it with a rag. She'd prefer biodegradable tape, but that was still down the list on priorities. If the graft took, they'd have better quality mulberries soon. They would need to be fed into a jam or something; they didn't preserve worth a damn though.

  She turned to where one of her students was bringing in a load of fertilizer. “All old?”

  He nodded. She'd sacrificed one plant to show them that putting fresh manure on a plant would burn the roots. It was better to compost it.

  There were chickens and some alien equivalents in coops nearby. The chickens turned out regular amounts of eggs. The shells were useful for a lot of things. Their manure was one of the highest sources of nitrates.

  She had nodded when she'd seen farmers feeding chickens and the alien six-legged equivalents or the Pteranodon birds. They were vital to the farm. They ate bugs and mice and other pests, plus a variety of food scraps. She had noticed the quality of eggs were far superior to those back on Earth.

  Two of the other greenhouses had starter plants, one was for experiments, and the last was for the student projects. They had space for plastic sheet greenhouses and lean-to ones when the weather started to turn in their favor. The starter plants would give them a jump on the planting season.

  She had heard that one of the students had begun experimenting with grafting while another had started a hydroponics garden. She finished up and then nodded. “I'm going to go check out Greenhouse 4 and 5 and then head back in. Let me know if there are any problems,” she said.

  “Yes, Doctor. Will there be any more of that?” Blake asked, pointing to the slowly dissipating plume of smoke.

  She turned to look and then shrugged as she put her jacket and weather gear on. The paths between greenhouses were shoveled but they had no protection from the elements. “I certainly hope so, but not here,” she said.

  He nodded. “Scared me!” he admitted.

  She smiled. “Be glad you were here. You don't want to see it up close and personal,” she said with a shake of her head as she checked the heater and then left.

  ~~~^~~~

  Eugene missed a lot, but he just so happened to be on hand when the burbling baby pulled herself up on a chair and took her first hesitant step. A second made her fall on her diapered rump, but she looked so shocked he couldn't help but laugh in delight and sympathy.

  That told the little girl that it was okay, and she smiled, endearing her further to her father's heart.

  He pulled out his laptop and set the camera to record just as Deidra and the nanny came in to see what was going on.

  He held up a hand and helped the little one to her feet. She clung to his fingers but he didn't begrudge her that. Instead he watched, smiling as she took another step, then two, and then fell.

  Deidra rushed to the baby, but Hermione was giggling infectiously.

  “So soon?” Deidra asked.

  “I was an early bird too. I've seen kids walk as early as five months,” Eugene said.

  “Still …”

  “I know, it's not right to have her in a rush to grow up. But with good food, great care, encouragement, this little heart breaker is going to be a handful soon,” he said.

  “She already is,” Deidra said as she cuddled the baby and then set her down on her belly. Hermione looked at her, waving her limbs in the air before she got them under her and started to crawl.

  “Get back here you little …!”

  “And so it begins,” Eugene said as he threw his head back and laughed.

  ~~~^~~~

  Nate worked with the painters to paint the large aircraft to look like the giant bird they'd seen. He had a tablet with him as well as printouts and a big blow-up on the board marked with color references. They only had so much weight in paint allowed, so they had to make it count. The paint was sprayed on with sprayers the tech smiths had whipped up to paint vehicles.

  Unfortunately, everything they had on the bird thing had been from a distance and a little blurry. But they'd still gotten enough material to get a good facsimile going. He kept pausing to take a step back and look at it, sometimes looking through his hands to make sure it looked good.

  “See, science and exploration are good for something!" Nate said, waving to Cecily and then to the aircraft.

  She looked from one to the other and then nodded. “I never said they weren't.”

  He smiled.

  “Besides, you missed a spot,” she said over her shoulder as she left. His smile instantly fell. After a moment, he looked puzzled and checked the aircraft again.

  ~~~^~~~

  Max got the idea to plow the eastern rail line. It didn't go far, only a couple of miles, but once cleared it allowed them to send a train out until the end. It hadn't reached a nearby town or village but the stopping point was out. From there they could set up a supply point, staging the truck to the next town and then from there relay the supplies and men on to Emory.

  Eugene approved the idea, and even paid some of the locals to use their sleds and draft teams to plow the road and pull loads to the next town. They made sure most of the material was fuel though, so no one would get cute and steal anything important.

  ~~~^~~~

  General Tacticus worked with the decurion to train the assault personnel. Due to injuries in the training, they decided to go with a mix of palace guards, Flying Legion, and special teams. Eugene dubbed them the Imperium Commandos.

  Cadets Answorth and Corgi weren't the only ones to pop by when they were training at the academy. The cadets were all keen on the mission but they knew they couldn't go. Some of the seniors played opposition forces though from time to time to change things up.

  When they weren't training on the obstacle course, the team trained in an improvised shoot house in a warehouse. Eugene had authorized the team to carry two sets of NVG, Night Vision Goggles. They had two snipers while the rest of the team was loaded with the best CQC weapons available.

  Everyone had radios and throat mikes. They were all to be dressed in black, though they would have a white windbreaker if they had to do an extract.

  Each of the shooters had a weapon with a silencer. Max and the gunsmiths had worked those out. The sniper rifles each had a better one.

  The current plan was a night raid, to get in, get the princess and anyone else they could and then get out. The general knew that their numbers would be finite and everything hinged on the element of surprise. Extract was what they considered “dicey,” something that everyone wanted to improve on before they authorized the mission.

  The team had a 3D model of the castle courtesy of Max and his student Evan. The model recreated the building from the images Zara had sent to them. Evan had even managed to create a primitive VR shoot house for them to play on the desktop game system in the RV.

  The primary objective was to get in, secure the princess and prisoners, secure the area, capture or kill the enemy leadership if possible, and then hold out until extract. The FAE component was still up in the air. Eugene had suggested it as a distraction. The general had taken that idea and suggested they use it after surprise was blown as a distraction while they extracted the principals and team.

  One of the biggest hiccups was that it was going to take three aircraft to get them all out, and they didn't have a ready place to land. Zara had scouted several, but they hadn't been graded. There was no telling what was under the snow. Also, landing on the snow would draw the attention of everyone in the area.

  Max had ruled out trying to do a balloon extract as impossible. He'd also been leery about the group parachuting in. They had the textile industry to make the parachutes, but it would be tough to train the men and it was suicide to drop the men on the steep snow-covered roofs of the castle and keep.

  Which meant they had to stick to plan A, find a way to get the force in without being detected, then assault the castle and perform the mission, then get o
ut.

  Max and the gunsmiths had ruled out breaching charges for all but the doors. There was no way they would be able to blow a hole through a stone wall easily, not with all the other gear they had to carry. They were going to need to carry a lot of ammunition, not to mention gear for anyone they rescued.

  “This is fascinating but I'm a little out of my element,” the general admitted as he watched the next exercise begin to set up.

  “I know,” a familiar voice said. He turned to the king in surprise, but Eugene waved the bow aside. “Other than the Terrans who just arrived, I'm the only one with any sort of combat experience on this level. Most of that was when I went to ROTC and a brief stint in a summer military school. This reminds me of the airborne in World War II though.”

  “Oh?”

  Eugene smiled, aware that the general might not be aware of what he was talking about. Terran military history was being taught at the academy, but that didn't mean the general had time to read and absorb it fully. Not with all his other duties.

  “During World War II, the Germans and their allies had taken Europe. The allies needed to assault key locations to cover a beachhead. They used a lot of tricks along the way, some to distract and divert the enemy's attention from the real beachhead and then ways to confuse them.”

  He smiled slightly.

  “The allies flew in groups of soldiers and dropped them in key locations. Some dropped by parachute, some by glider. The idea was for them to secure key locations and then hold until relieved.”

  The general nodded.

  “They also dropped dolls that looked like the men parachuting at other locations to distract the enemy. Those were rigged with fireworks to go off when they landed.”

  The general blinked and then nodded slowly.

  Eugene smiled. “Imagine this happening at night, as we're planning to do here. They see the figures coming down but can't see the scale. They fire on them and when the figures land they see and hear the sounds of what they think are weapons fire. So, they rush in, and also radio in where it is happening.”

  The general frowned thoughtfully.

  “The radio channels are filled with these reports so of course some of the real landings were missed in the clutter.”

  Suddenly the general caught on and he smiled ever so slightly.

  “Did they win?”

  Eugene nodded. “Most did. A couple of units were overrun. They had only a limited supply that came down with them. Some were supported by drops of supplies from the air, something we can't do yet.”

  The general grimaced and nodded.

  “Three aircraft is a problem. We currently have two, only one has been flight tested, the prototype. The third will be up in a mens . But they have to train on the birds, and it means we have no spare. There is no … slack. That bothers me. A lot.”

  “I know. They are all volunteers though,” the general said as he turned back to the exercise.

  Eugene nodded and turned back to watch the exercise unfold as well.

  ~~~^~~~

  Eugene watched Deidra struggling to get her old jeans on again. He shook his head and came over as she slumped on the edge of the bed.

  “Here, let me help,” he said. He knelt before she could react and then brushed her fingers aside to touch the buttons. He pulled them up, then together, then apart. Before she knew it, he leaned in to kiss her below her naval.

  She gasped at that, and her hands gripped his hair. He smirked up at her and gave her a few more butterfly kisses. She felt intensely guilty; they hadn't done much more than make love a few times since the report about Zara. Apparently, he wanted to take things in his hands, and she decided to let him. They both needed it, even though she felt guilty about her sister.

  When she laid back and groaned, he grinned, continued with the kisses lower, and blew a fart on her naval like he occasionally did with Hermione.

  Her eyes flew open and she guffawed in surprise, and then lunged for him as he fell back and got up fast. He danced out of her reach with a teasing grin and then retreated.

  She got up and stomped her foot, nearly making her unbuckled jeans drop in the process. "Get back here, Eugene!!" she yelled, one hand on her jeans.

  He turned and grinned at her and then moved faster.

  “Coward!" She shrieked.

  "I'm not a coward! I'm just marching in a different direction. The one that just so happens to be safer!" he replied, pointing in the direction he was going with a grin as he pretended to lift his knees in a proper march.

  She growled but then snorted in amusement.

  ~~~^~~~

  Eugene was a little late but he got to the hangar in time to see the doors open. He smiled and nodded to Max as the mechanic and his assistants used a cart to pull the prototype out into the sunlight. It looked like a bird creature. He was pretty sure they were on the right track; any native who saw it would think it was some sort of creature not a contraption.

  “What's this; I hear that UN general guy wants to commandeer it?” Max asked, coming over to him.

  Eugene frowned. “News to me,” he said with a Gaelic shrug. “He can't have it; we've got a mission.”

  “Agreed,” Max said as the flight crew worked with the ground crew to do the final walk-around. “Looks good,” he said.

  “So do they. You said three weeks for the third bird?”

  “More like I said four,” Max growled in reminder. Eugene snorted. “Now that we know what we're doing, four sounds about right. That should give the flight crew time to test this bird thoroughly and then test the second. That one hasn't flown yet.”

  “Ah.”

  “Do you have pilots lined up for her?”

  “Not yet. That's on the agenda. Most likely our light pilots. We'll have to check the students.”

  “Bad weather to fly in,” Max warned.

  “That's another thing,” Eugene sighed. “I've got the game system being used by the assault team to practice with so I can't have the pilots do sims on it. Not that it's really set up for that.”

  “I know. I hope you figure it out. Each bird is going to need a crack team.”

  Eugene nodded.

  “And neither one of them can be us,” Max said, breath clouding around them as he pointed back and forth between them. Eugene lifted an eyebrow. Max snorted. “The orders of our wives,” he reminded him.

  “They do make things interesting … if dull spoiling our real fun from time to time,” Eugene said in reply. Max snorted.

  Chapter 41

  The Pass Fortress

  General Periot listened as the scientists and others began a heated discussion over their mission. He looked over to the table where the people from Ryans company were sitting. They were mostly quiet, picking at their meal.

  The group had arrived at the fortress before nightfall. The road between the two fortress bases had been recently plowed as had the road through the pass. The pass fort had also anticipated their arrival.

  He hated his mission, but he was determined to see it through—all parts of it, including babysitting the group of scientists. Some were biologists, botanists, physicists and such, but there were a handful who were there to study the culture of the natives.

  And they were not happy about the contamination that Ryans and his people had already brought down on the natives. And they weren't shy about bitching about it. Fortunately, they were doing so in English or French. The natives stuck to their butchered Latin.

  “You can't study something without changing it. It's a simple thing in science. The very act of observation inherently changes the subject in some minute way,” Doctor McEntire insisted. “Also, you can't suspend empathy and study someone without trying to help.”

  "I'm a doctor, I will study a problem initially, but I'll act. I won't watch people suffer for long, and I don't fault Doctor Carter for not just standing by and watching people die. That includes the latest outbreak," Doctor Nelly Ramirez insisted.

  “And let's talk ab
out that. As I said, observation causes changes. Like Cortez, one of the unwanted things Ryans brought were pathogens from Earth,” Doctor McEntire stated.

  The general grimaced. They had been inoculated for a variety of things, but there was always the threat of an alien bug that could bite them.

  "See? Exactly our point all along! Contamination! We shouldn't even be here!" Doctor Selene D'tebensha, another sociologist insisted. “Ryans needs to be stopped. He thinks he's helping but he's not. He's doing far more harm than good,” she said, leaning in and dropping her voice as a native servant came and delivered more food to their table.