“Surrender or—” commanded a female voice from the enemy power-armor’s speaker system.
Knocking over the carriage with a swift kick, with its wheels facing the enemy, and flicking over the flexible armor siding that had been protecting the carriage's sides, Isis levered her plasma rifle over the armored side of the impromptu defensive position.
“Don’t let them get near the carriages!” Isis instructed, grunting with effort as she pulled out a string of plasma grenades from the carriage—which was now emitting the sound of loud shrieking, enrage and terrified baby sounds.
“Kill her!” snarled the enemy in power armor, her voice filled with hate as she jumped forward and slightly to the side. Then, before Isis could take action, the armored woman tossed another stun grenade over the carriage right into Isis’s lap.
Isis kicked wildly, intending to send the grenade flying far away but the instant her foot made contact with the grenade it detonated.
White noise filled her mind and she unconsciously released her weapon as the anti-machinist powersuit snatched up the carriage to look inside.
Meanwhile, the Corporal in command of the bodyguard quad used his vibro-blade to cut off the barrel of the anti-machinist rifle in front of him and attacked with a powerful upward stroke that left a large gash in the side of his opponent’s power armor which quickly leaked blood.
“Take him out,” gurgled the leader of the initial anti-machinist quad, and the other three members of his quad opened fire on the Lancer Corporal. Aimed shots scarred the Corporal's visor and damaged an elbow actuator before one of the three jumped forward and launched a front kick that sent the Corporal sprawling to the ground.
The bodyguard quad, with its leader on the ground, was pressed on all sides. With the pair of unarmored maids taken out of action by multiple stun grenade attacks, they grabbed their leader and moved back to defend the carriage that had been attended by Isis’s companion maid, another member of the Life Guard pressed into temporary service as a false maid.
“This carriage is empty,” cried the angry woman, holding the carriage that Isis had used as an impromptu defensive formation before casting it to the ground in one angry motion that broke it into piece, “it was just a slate running a simple program designed to sound like a baby!”
“The baby must be in the other carriage!” roared the leader of the initial quad that had tied down the attention of the bodyguards while the second squad seized the first carriage.
A storm of blaster fire focused on the quad guarding the last remaining stroller, and the Lancers started to take damage front and back. Armor joints took several hits and degraded, or locked up entirely as enemy fired poured into them.
“Time’s up, droid-lover,” sneered the anti-machinist that had stunned Isis as she leveled her blaster at the Tracto-an’s head.
“I think we’ve got everyone we’re going to with this group, Isis,” said a calm voice, speaking over her earbud as she rolled rapidly to avoid a series of blaster bolts all aimed at her head.
“Understood,” she said coldly and then cried, “Omega Four!”
Her voice code was the trigger that activated a series of well-hidden ion charges, and the world flashed white before all was blackness.
****************************************************
Half a minute later, an Intelligence Officer at the head of a full platoon of Cold Space Commandos stormed into the room.
“The ion charges activated as expected. All power armor units seem to have been disabled,” she reported.
“Take the enemy into custody and process them for questioning. And have an escort detail take our people up to Medical for treatment,” I instructed.
“Aye aye, Admiral,” said Lieutenant Kelly.
“In the meantime, we’ve started receiving a large number of low level alarms. Tripped CO2 sensors in Environmental, a blown main breaker that sent an entire deck into secondary power backups, and a heavy laser focusing array that exploded during a routine weapons test injuring two and taking the laser temporarily out of commission,” I explained. “It’s nothing large enough or widespread enough to make us think sabotage or enemy action normally but when combined with this attack and jamming field they were using when they attacked hydroponics to try and kidnap my children…” I trailed off realizing I was grinding my teeth.
Even though my kids had been nowhere near the hydroponics bay, replaced instead with a pair of squawking data slates, these people had been throwing around live ordnance and firing blaster bolts next to what they believed to be babies—my babies!
I took a deep breath, suppressing the flash of hot rage that surged through me now that the operation was over. It was no longer just a matter of calculation and guesses, and the realization of what could have happened set in. What if we hadn’t caught wind of the conspiracy in time? What if I hadn’t thrown up the idea of baiting the mutineers into a premature action or, worse, what if I had tossed out the bait but they didn’t bite and instead found an actual weakness to exploit? In fact, who was to say that they hadn’t already identified other actual weaknesses and even now had strike teams readying themselves for an operation designed to destroy or threaten anything important to me, in order to bend me to their will?
Innocent little babies, I thought furiously. Well, not so little anymore, I thought, cooling down slightly. My rage was no longer white hot and had been replaced by a cold anger.
It's one thing to have a war or a battle between men, to try and murder me in cold blood or assassinate me in my sleep, but it was another thing entirely to kidnap and fire off live ordnance that endangered the lives of my children. I’d long ago made peace with my lot in life. I was born to be hated and, doing the good work that I was doing protecting Sector 25 in particular, and every Sector of the Spine I could reach in general, didn’t help that.
My family had a lot to answer for back home and, much though I might not be willing to admit it, my own actions out here in the darkness of cold space and around the stars of our neighboring worlds, necessary though they may be, had impacted more than one world and inflamed entire groups of people. Still, what I deserved and what my far-too-numerous offspring had to put up with were two entirely different things.
“And if they aren’t just yet, they blasted well will be,” I growled.
“Sir?” asked Lieutenant Kelly.
“Disregard that, Lieutenant, and carry out your assignment. Report back once you have something,” I instructed.
“Will do, Sir,” Brigit Kelly said crisply.
I snorted and cut the com-channel.
Chapter 48: Operation: Decapitation
“You’re sure he said the name 'Sagittarius'?” I asked two hours later, after all the proverbial small fires had been quenched throughout the ship and my staff Intelligence Officer was done with her interrogation.
There had been several aborted attempts to cause trouble on the gun-deck and the in environmental, no doubt to imperil the ship’s air supply. But the war games I’d ordered between the fleet’s Lancers and Marines had made a nice cover for having groups of men in power-armor positioned nearby key systems throughout the ship.
“That’s right: Malcolm Sagittarius. Apparently he’s a crew chief on this Flagship,” Lieutenant Brigit Kelly reported.
“Then he should be easy enough to find,” I said with relish then frowned, “you’re sure he’s the leader of the rebellion?”
The Intelligence Officer suddenly had a long face. “Mutiny...and yes, sir! Unfortunately there are two problems with that plan,” she said reluctantly.
I turned a suddenly sharp gaze on her. “The first is that there is no crew chief by the name of Malcolm Sagittarius in our electronic records, nor anyone else throughout the entire fleet. Apparently there used to be a crew chief by that name but he died during the third battle for Easy Haven,” she said stiffly. “We’re still running down the records of that deceased crew chief. However, according to the electronic records, he di
ed months ago so reconstructing everything will be difficult as even the image file for the dead crew chief has been corrupted.”
“What’s the second?” I asked, my lips tightening with disappointment.
“Apparently,” she stressed the word, “while they acknowledged that the crew chief was the quote unquote leader of the mutineers, these two quads of mutineers don’t actually take their orders from this Sagittarius but instead a mysterious controller of some kind that works with, or for, Sagittarius. Frankly we’re still running that angle down now but it sounds like pretty standard cell compartmentalization you have to deal with when encountering any half-way successful fifth column organization. There’s a charismatic leader at the top and a large number of cutouts in between him and the rest of the main action wing of the organization.”
“The fact that we have an ‘organization’ within the fleet opposed to me its nominal leader and that doesn’t appear on any table of organization is unacceptable to me, Lieutenant,” I said coldly.
“You’re not the only one, Admiral,” she assured me.
“Find them, Officer. No excuses,” I commanded.
Then she smiled. “When we captured their power armor we also acquired several of their com-links. The ion blasts that knocked out their suits also fried some of the hardware, but because of the suddenness of our attack they didn’t have time to wipe anything, Sir,” she triumphantly held up a portable computer unit. “We’ve already penetrated part of their com-system; in time we’ll hack the rest of it.”
“That’s excellent, Lieutenant,” I said with real appreciation but then I had to say, “although what’s to stop them from changing their com-channels and wiping their data trail by the time we’ve decrypted everything?”
“Well, although they’ll still leave behind some traces, nothing,” she pursed her lips, drawing the scar on her face up toward her eye as she brightened. “However, we already have actionable intelligence, Admiral. Some of the files have already been decrypted.”
“Meaning we can take action now?” I asked leaning forward like a predator sensing its chosen prey.
“Exactly,” she said. “All you need to do is give the order.”
“Then consider it given, Lieutenant,” I instructed, “roll up any part of their network you can find, discover, or flush out.”
****************************************************
All across the Flagship, Cold Space Commandos started taking action. Men in battlesuits stormed into quarters, hauling men and in some cases women out of their bunks in nothing but their privy clothes or nothing at all. Room were tossed in the search for weapons and actionable intelligence while in other parts of the Royal Rage officers were notified to hold members of the crew for questioning, leading in one case to said officer being stabbed.
The Commandos, led by Lieutenant Kelly, were swift, professional and effective. She only wished that they had decrypted more of the information so she could have done even more.
****************************************************
“Chief!” Ernie said, charging into Malcolm Sagittarius’s room in a panic.
“What is it, spacer?” he asked calmly. Or as calmly as he could since he was still waiting for word from the strike team with the biological agent to report back on the success or failure of their mission.
“They arrested Bee Bee!” he exclaimed with panic.
“What?!” the crew chief said, bolting to his feet with concern.
“They snatched him up on suspicion of mutiny! He was in a card game and when the storm troopers picked up Gustavo they said how he was a traitor, and then Bee Bee called them a bunch of machine lovers. One thing led to another and he tried to fight them off with his vibro-knife!” Ernie said, wringing his hands. “Now they’ve got him in lock-up and I don’t know what to do.”
Malcolm Sagittarius silently cursed. That overbearing idiot had managed to get himself swept up by security and as of now there was nothing he could do about it. His eyes turned to Ernest and he stared at the younger man calculating his life.
“Chief?” Ernie said looking very uneasy.
The man known as Malcolm Sagittarius gave himself a shake. Ernest was a weak reed for what was to come, but the mold was already broken. There was no benefit to taking things any further. So the leader of the anti-machine movement simply shook his head and smiled.
“A sad day for the cause, but we must persevere,” he said.
“Persevere?” asked Ernie in a rising voice. “Bee Bee’s been taken to the brig; we gotta do something, chief!”
“Just what would you have me do?” Chief Malcolm Sagittarius asked absently.
“Who knows what they’ll do to him in there?!” Ernie said irately.
“At most he’ll face the lash for attacking a Marine and be expelled from the fleet. If this were a battle or time of war that would be different, but the Patrol Fleet has been quiet for more than six months now,” said Sagittarius.
“What if they find out he’s part of your anti-machine league?” demanded Ernie hotly. “Then they’ll kill him for sure! Out the airlock he’ll go and—”
The crew chief slammed the younger smaller man up against the wall, his arm across Ernie’s throat. “My league. Mine?” he asked harshly.
“Crew Chief, I was wrong! I know my crime,” Ernie gaped and then pleaded, “it’s our league—it’s our league!”.
“Best to remember it,” Malcolm Sagittarius said with a grunt, “meanwhile, send a message to Deck Chief Remandic and tell him the time has come for Gunnery to stand tall.”
“Yes, Chief!” Ernie agreed loudly and then hurried away, looking over his shoulder twice before ducking out of sight.
As soon as the young man was gone, Malcolm Sagittarius pulled out another communicator.
“Yes?” asked the terse voice on the other side of the line.
“A member of my work crew has been snatched up. It's only a matter of time until I’m burned,” he reported.
“What are your plans?” asked the Controller.
“The plan can still be salvaged but I’m increasingly worried by the lack of word from the snatch and grab team, so I’ve decided to proceed with the mission by myself. I’ve activated the Deck Chief and a distraction in Gunnery will be forthcoming. I would like for you to use your tech team to scramble the ship’s Distributed Intelligence and coordinate their actions with the league protest on the gun deck,” said Sagittarius.
“After we do this, we’ll have to extract,” said the Controller. “Are you sure this is the optimal course of action?”
“If we can get to Montagne, all of our sacrifices over the past year will have been worth it. But even if we can’t, as long as we can broadcast the anti-machine mutiny and hype it through the fleet it will significantly weaken the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet with internal strife,” the Crew Chief said. “It’s not ideal, but now that the Empire has been sent reeling there is no longer a risk to the home world from our actions. With Jason Montagne out of the way and no longer hanging over all of Capria like the Sword of Damocles, or with his fleet at least crippled, King James can be disposed of and Parliament finally come out of the bunker and resume its rightful place in home world politics.”
“You have permission to proceed. However, after this contact this line of communication will be burned. If you survive you will have to use backup protocols to contact us again,” said the Controller.
“Understood,” acknowledged Malcolm Sagittarius.
“Then go with the gods, Agent Sagittarius,” said the Controller.
Grim-faced, the former crew chief retrieved his go-bag and began to gear up. After that, he headed to the nearest lift and inserted the Dreadnaught class builder codes he’d been given by Parliamentary Intelligence before being sent on this mission.
****************************************************
“Admiral, we’re receiving reports of a demonstration taking place on the gun deck!” Lisa Steiner reported a
nxiously, her image appearing on the screen of my ready room work desk.
“Let me see it,” I instructed.
“Our internal sensors are down in the gun deck, Sir. I can’t seem to pull them up,” Lisa reported, rapidly inputting one code after another, “all I can get you is the data-feed that’s being transmitted fleet wide from our own systems!”
I jolted out of my chair as the sound and images of sign-wielding protesters—members of this ship’s crew—waved flags, signs and shouting slogans appeared.
“This is going fleet-wide?” I demanded and then continued without waiting for an answer. “Shut them down. Close that transmission right now!”
“I’m locked out, Sir,” she reported tensely.
“Do what you can; I’m on my way to the bridge,” I said, pulling out my com-link and dialing a number as I swept out of the ready room and onto the bridge.
“This is General Wainwright. Go,” the Marine on the other end of the line said tersely.
“Our communications have been hacked,” I said tensely, “we can’t shut them down from here. We also have a protest on the gun deck. I need Marines on the deck now and that transmitter on the hull disconnected two minutes ago!”
Wainwright nodded, “Dispatching teams now.”
I continued moving until I reached my throne on the flag deck—what used to be the Royal Rage’s auxiliary command deck.
“What have we got, Coms?” I asked as I sat down.
“We’ve been hacked. Someone got into our system and they froze us out. Well, not froze us out, there’s too much redundancy built into the system in case of droids or battle damage so we can use the system’s too. But we can’t shut them out. We’re currently working on it,” my Chief of Staff said tensely.
I interlaced my fingers, paused, and then started rubbing my thumbs together as I thought.
Admiral's Nemesis (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 11) Page 38