by Don Koch
"That sounds like a plan, Barana, please, a set of Captains bars if you will and ask Joe Carson to join us, he will enjoy seeing this. Also see if our wives can join us."
A few seconds later, Joe Carson appeared and Hank briefed him on what was to follow. Joe had a huge grin and said he fully agreed. Hank then asked Mary Pine to join then and he explained what they were up to because she would need to be a part of it. She said she would be delighted to be part of the team. Hank then asked Wall to have SSgt Pine report to his office. A minute later, Pine reported as instructed and when he saw the two generals he came to attention. Hank said, "At ease Ben, it is good to see you again. We asked you in here to offer you a new job that I think is right up your alley. You are probably aware that we have a new unit on board that we are calling the T Raptors. We think you would do well in this unit and if you are willing we would be happy to have you aboard. Mary says that if you are willing, so is she." At that Mary stepped out from behind the curtain that covered another entrance with a big grin.
"Yes sir, I would like that very much."
Hank, handing the box with the Captains bars to Joe said, "In that case, you will be needing these. Sergeant Pine, Attention! By the authority granted me as Commanding General of the Antoran Fleet, I am hereby appointing you to the rank of Captain. General Carson, would you do the honors please. Ben, I hope you have a dollar bill on you, and if not, I will lend you one, because the tradition in our service is that a newly commissioned officer pays one dollar to the first enlisted man to salute him and Sergeant Major Wall insisted that he should have that honor and you know how insistent he can be."
Sergeant Major Wall came to attention and delivered a sharp and snappy salute to the new Captain saying, "Sir, it is my honor and privilege to deliver the first of many salutes like this."
"Barana, please set up a reception at one of the lodges for 20 to 30 persons and invite Captain Pine's friends to join us. Bill, why don't you invite your staff in and you can make the announcement before we move the celebration to the lodge. Ben and Mary, don't forget to bring Ben Junior."
Chapter 29: Operation Buster
Station 9 adjacent to the Gar Fleet –
January 19 – C Day 142
"Execution of Operation Buster to commence in 30 seconds." announced General Isaac David. The missiles nearest Earth are all warheads, rather large ones. Their sensors are set for nearest radio broadcasts. There are no symbiote missiles in the group of 100 missiles. The next group is 30 light years towards Antor. It consists of 50 missiles, ten of which are symbiote missiles and the remainder, warheads. The warheads will be destroyed and several of the payloads on the symbiote missiles will be tested the same as were those in the first encounter. The last batch is a puzzle. There are more that 800 missiles in that group and all of them are warheads targeted against the Gar Fleet. In fact five of those missiles are specifically targeted for the Gar Flag-ship. Why are they targeting their own vessels? Operation Buster in 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 – mark! Flametta, Any reaction?"
"That is a good sign. Do you still have a lock on Gambel, Hanser, Abgar and Dinan?"
"Good, awaken the three sleepers and have a T Raptor team there when you do. The presence of their own kind may have a calming effect on them. Has their absence been noted?"
"Please continue to monitor and report results so far back to command. Please transport me to the rescued Glarin." Flametta transported Isaac David to the room in which the four Glarin were temporarily housed. Hanser was attending Gambel who was still sleeping. Abgar and Dinan are a mated pair.
Abgar spoke first, "You must be the Earthians of whom Gambel spoke. I am amazed that we are here and alive. You have our sincere gratitude. I am truly surprised that you have managed to extricate Gambel and his mate."
David smiled and responded, "They do not appear to be aware that you are missing. We expect that the absence of Gambel will be the first to be noticed. We have installed a false reading in the stasis units you and your friends occupied so it may take a long time before they discover your absence. I suspect that all Glarin look alike to the Gar so that too will work to some advantage. We are hopeful that very soon we will be able to rescue all of your people. In the meantime we have some unpleasant surprises ready for the Gar. We will also have a role for you if you are interested."
"We would be honored to assist. Is the star person on board this vessel that we may pay him homage?"
"You mean General Stone. He would not appreciate you doing that. He is not a god and that sort of treatment would make him most uncomfortable."
"But he has done so much for us as have you!"
"It is not the way of our peoples. It makes us most uncomfortable. A simple thank you is all that he would appreciate. He also appreciates when a good deed is passed on to another. We call the concept, 'pay it forward.' It means that the best way to thank someone for a good deed is to do a good deed for someone else, even a total stranger. Imagine the impact of this attitude on an entire civilization. It would be a nice place to live. I think it is time to let your friend wake up and see how he is. I suspect his mate is anxious. Flametta, Can we allow him to awake now?"
With that, Gambel stirred and awoke. On seeing his mate, he smiled and said, "The Earthians were our salvation after all. I would not wish to repeat the experience with the Gar again. On seeing Isaac he continued without having been introduced or informed of the situation, "General Isaac David, my humble thank you for my delivery from Hell. I think there are some things where we can help the furtherance of the common good. Your plan to use your T Raptor teams to 'haunt' the Gar will indeed have the desired effect. I look forward to assisting you in this effort in fact with some glee."
"I can see why General Stone wanted you extricated if it were possible. I suspect things are about to get interesting. Well shall we see what we can do to make the Gar uncomfortable? I must say, I hope all Glarin that are under Gar symbiote control are as resilient as you appear to be. Flametta, would you ask T Raptor teams D and J to join us here please." Shortly the two teams requested appeared. Isaac explained what he wanted done and told them to proceed when ready. Team D's assignment commanded by Captain Hanson, was to wander about the Flag ship bridge and learn what they could. Their manipulative capabilities were still somewhat limited but they could turn things on and off. They could also be heard when they wanted to. Captain Hanson reported back,
The T Raptor Team's Captain Hanson elected to use a nebulous appearance. Finally he stood in front of the commander of the vessel and allowed his form to have what appeared to be more solidity and spoke clearly, "Commander, why are your leaders sending these to destroy you." He then pointed at a monitor to show an image of the missiles that another Division had destroyed a short while ago. The image went to a cross section of the payload to show its contents. The visitor then said, "There are over 800 of them and fiv
e of them target this ship. Have you done something to arouse the ire of your leaders. I will leave this image with you so you can ponder what is going on." The leader drew a blade and took a swipe at the visitor that, of course had no effect on the visitor. Captain Hanson walked up to the commander, took the blade from his grasp and threw it with considerable force against a steel bulkhead where the blade was embedded to its hilt. The visitor then said, "Really Commander, that is not a game you want to play with me." With that he pointed at the Commander who was hurled back into his command chair where the restraints all engaged. The visitor then said, "My people are so looking forward to your coming to play with us. We will see you again, soon." With that, he disappeared.
Meanwhile, Team J had located all data on the symbiotes and transferred that back to Station 9. It had also placed a block on the Flagship's communication capability and inserted a programmable destruction trigger for all of the Gar Fleets symbiotes. Flametta installed shields on every stasis bay throughout the fleet so that no Gar or infected Glarin could enter the bay. Team J also found a considerable library on the Gar, their history, their culture and technology.
Similar incursions were made on all ships in the Gar fleet. All Gar long-range communications were impaired.
Later that day, Isaac reported the exercise to Hank. He noted that the actions taken were somewhat beyond what they had discussed and sent full copies of the recordings made of the T Raptor teams.
As Hank was reviewing the recordings, his grin grew. Sam suggested that he looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. "I am ordering the 5th, 15th, and 17th to join you with the Gar fleet. Fully brief them about what has occurred. Do not let them know you are there yet. I will be joining you with the ten remaining available Divisions. That is distinctly overkill but they deserve to be in on the finish, or at least this phase of it. Operation Sweep will commence shortly after my arrival. We will all be on location in seven days. In the meantime, continue to harass them with the T Raptor incursions. Don't let them overdo things. Tired minds make mistakes. The rest of the cavalry is on the way. Now as I understand it the Gar ships cannot communicate with one another. Since that is the case, remove and decontaminate every Glarin not in stasis. Make sure they get appropriate medical attention. Let your AI's assure that decontamination is complete before any of them come on board. There is going to be a bunch of them, close to 12,000 in all. When they are all removed, trigger the self-destruct codes for all the symbiotes and clean their computers of all references to the symbiotes. I suspect that will give you a pretty busy week. Oh, and General, well done, Mazel Tov. See you in a week."
Chapter 30: Operation Sweep
Station 1 Adjacent to the Gar Fleet –
January 26 – C Day 149
General David met Hank aboard Station 1 in the Command center. "Isaac, you have put us way ahead of schedule, definitely well done. How are we doing with the extraction of the awake Glarin."
Isaac responded, "We completed the extraction on all ships two days ago. Most of the extracted are fine, about a hundred of them were pretty severely traumatized but will recover. All in all, better than I would have expected. The Glarin are a pretty resilient people. I genuinely like them."
"And how is the intimidation program working."
"That has been amazing. The invaders are definitely spooked. I think they are ripe for the final push. By the way, all self destruct units have been deactivated."
"Well in that case, let us not disappoint them. Barana, please transfer the Glarin stasis units to the Glarin ship in our core and replace those units with Gar configured stasis units."
"Good. Now please bump all of those ships to normal space and deactivate their weapons."
"Warships you each have your assigned vessel. There should be no incoming fire but if there is any, ignore it because they cannot penetrate your shields. Launch ships now. When all ships are in position, we will go to uncloaked mode, on my command."
Shortly thereafter,
Hank said, "All warships, go to uncloaked mode, now. Troops, set your weapons to stun. Barana please activate incoming communications for all Gar Ships."
"Attention all Gar vessels. This is General Stone of the Antoran fleet, you have been surrounded and are now defenseless. Lay down your arms and surrender. You will be permitted to retain your Taju blade but it must be in its sheath and locked so it can not be drawn" Hank cut communication to the Gar ships and said, "All troops, prepare to board on my command. Sam, Boton, Fonta, en rapport now. I am going to image on the Flagship and appear solid but very bright and hard to look at. All troops, board now."
Hank appeared before the Gar Commander and said, "Commander we have come to play with you, are you ready to surrender?"
The Gar Commander rose and said "No" and Hank pushed him back in his command chair. The shocked commander said "but how can this be, you are only human, humans are weak."
"That is partially true, but perhaps you have underestimated what it means to be human." Hank then stunned the commander and asked Barana to put him in stasis. The same was done for the rest of the crew. Hank returned to Station 1 and requested an update. About 50 ships were attempting to resist but the crews were outnumbered and the resistance was ineffective. There were no injuries to Hanks troops by operations end.
The next step was to clear all of the ships of Gar. Every Gar on a Glarin ship was transported to the flagship and put in stasis. Each captured ship was then moved to the core area of Station 20. The stasis units were checked to assure that each was in working order for the trip to Janice. The ship transponders were also removed and destroyed. A random destruction pattern was selected to make it appear as though the ships had been destroyed in battle. The flagship transponder was left in place but deactivated and shielded. It took about a week to process all ships.
Hank then had a meeting of Division Commanders so that they all knew what the next step would be. He told his Commanders that the immediate pending threat had been met and interestingly there was no loss of life for the Antoran fleet. Five Gar had died all from 'friendly' fire. Hank then outlined the next steps. The first step was to assist the Glarin to waken its people and let them know what had happened and to discuss their options.
The next decision was made a bit easier by an announcement from Barana to the effect that some minor revisions to their drive would allow the stations to achieve a top speed of 250,000xSL. That rate of speed would allow them to reach the Gar home world in less than a week. Modifications to all of the Stations would be completed by the following week or sooner. Fuel consumption for the new drive was about 10% higher at maximum speed than the current drive.
Hank noted that the fleet would be returning the captured Gar to their home world and that the Gar leadership would be confronted. He said, "The idea is to see if they are willing to back off and whether that agreement is reliable. If it becomes clear that they do not intend to change their ways, then the Gar space travel capability will be destroyed as thoroughly as possible. The Gar ability to create symbiotes would be destroyed absolutely. We will damage their infrastructure to limit their ability to get anything off the planet. We will backtrack wherever else they have been and return them to their planet and then quarantine them. Lock them on their own planet. As to the places making the symbiotes, I am inclined to destroy without warning. That is the most horrific form of slavery I have yet to encounter. The rest, we spare life where we can but that will be up to them. We have to be sure that the Gar don't destroy the returning ship out of hand so we should probably shield it until we see how they intend to react."
"Before we leave this sector of space, I want all Divisions to spread out in a three light year long line, perpendicular to the Gar home-world. Then I want a scan of everything 45 degrees around Gar. Lets see what else Gar is sending this way if anything. Since space is now cleared of this Gar fleet, we want
to assure there are no sleepers out there."
A day later the Division reports started coming in. There was another fleet of 1,000 ships at about 1,200 light years distant and coming in from about 10 degree above Gar. These appeared to be of a somewhat different design. They were also moving faster than the Glarin ships were known to travel. They were moving at 15xSL and heading in the direction of Earth. Barana noted that the ships were crewed by Gar but because of the distance could not say definitively that there were other races on board or not. Additional intelligence would be needed to determine the capabilities of those vessels but for the time being they were labeled as hostile and would need early attention.
Hank decided it was time for he and Sam to meet with Gambel and his mate Hanser. He asked Barana to see if the couple were available and if so transport them to Hank and Sam's quarters. Sam started by welcoming the couple to Station 1. He also thanked him for the previous warnings and told him of the outcome of those warnings and messages. Gambel on the other hand thanked Hank for his freedom and that of his peoples. Hank said, "Unfortunately, it appears that we are not yet done with the Gar. They have an even larger fleet on its way here. From what we know, their home world is 3,280 light years from our planet. That means that the Gar on the ships from which we rescued your people were going to be in transit for 546 years just to pick a fight with our people. They have not even met us or know us. I understand that the average life span of the Gar is about 1,200 to 1,400 years. What would possess them to pick a fight when, as I understand it, they will be in their old age when they arrive. That kind of persistence over such a long time and over such a great distance is astonishing. Do you have any idea what is driving them to this course of action?"
Barana interjected,
Gambel replied, "I too had wondered about that but I was able to listen in on their thoughts for many years to discover the reason. They are not an active telepathic race though I did sense some latent talent and they do not shield their thoughts at all. It seems that about a five hundred years ago, they had human visitors who attempted to trade with the Gar but one of the humans made a comment that was taken to be extremely insulting to the Gar. I am convinced from looking at many minds that it was an offense that the humans could not have known would cause such a volatile reaction. In response to the perceived offense, the Gar attacked the humans on Gar and killed them all. The ship in orbit did not know of the cause of the attack but retaliated by destroying the port city and quite a number of Gar ships in orbit and left in the general direction of Earth. The Gar vowed to destroy all of the humans and all of their descendants, took headings on the departing human ship and focused their energies on pursuit and destruction. That has resulted in the destruction of Linan, Cler, Fullus and Glarin though thanks to your people, the Glarin people now survive. Nevertheless, the Gar reaction to the slight is so far out of proportion as to suggest to me that the Gar is an insane race. Further, it does not fit what is known of their honor code. It is inconsistent and it is very sad."