by Paul Phipps
“I agree with your analysis for now, my problem is that I don’t think we have enough trained Marines to catch them all at one time in one place. They are formidable enough individually or in small groups. I am wondering what they would be like if they were all joined together as a Mass-mind of six thousand strong plus the Mother’s own demonstrated abilities.”
“Wondering?! My god the thought of that many of them in one place fills me with dread.” Ansel spoke up.
“How many Marines do you have for your part of this operation, Colonel?” Admiral Webster inquired.
“Sir, at the Moment I have the 2nd Battalion and about half of the 3rd Battalion available. The First Battalions’ companies are spread over several vessels to handle their places in this operation. That means that as of today I only have four and a half to five thousand Marines to put boots on the ground. Mind you that isn’t all that bad, as we have a massive amount of mechanization and advanced robotic units that will be fighting alongside of our men.”
“Very well then, make your plans accordingly then.” The Admiral ordered.
Major Vasquez completed her brief with no further revelations. Ariadne was to be the last one to speak for the day.
“For those of you who have been wondering where Seeker has been the last week or so,” She started off, “she is deep into research on her memories from the time she was on the Gho’ L’Gamesh. She has identified two definite holes in her memories with the possibility of up to twelve more. As she told me yesterday, this is going to take a long time to figure out so I am her appointed deputy for the time being.
Now as to the status of the Fleet: All major fleet units are at a full functioning level. There are however only six that are fully crewed and another three hundred and eight that have skeleton or partial crews. All of the Command A.I.’s have been reassured that they will receive crewmembers as they become available in excess to the needs of Operation Seaweed and the Quarn invasion.”
* * *
Omaha, Nebraska U.S.A., Veterans Administration Terminal Care Hospice
Lt. Commander Fuller looked through the observation window at the elderly man lying in the Hospital bed. What he saw didn’t match up with the image he had in his mind from several years earlier. The man in the bed had lost both legs and his right arm and his son had told him that he had gone blind only a month earlier. Diabetes and Cancer had not been kind to him and yet still he fought for his life. With a visible effort he turned to the man who appeared to be in his middle 50’s.
“Once again, thank you, thank you very much for going the extra mile to find and contact me, Ed.” He said with gratitude in his voice.
Then he straightened up his back and opened the door into the room. The man in the bed smiled and said, “It’s about time you got here Admiral. A little longer and I would be dead you know.”
“Damn!, How DO you do that GeeGee?”
“I told you years ago that I didn’t know Bob, I just do. Now we need to hurry, she’ll be here soon.”
“Hurry? Her?” Fuller asked in confusion.
“Yes, hurry! Enlist me now so that I am under the Terran Space Navy’s protection. And her? She calls herself Dr. Janiya Ellerson, her real Name though is Dr. Janiya Mehdi and she has specialized for years in turning children into bombs. I’m her current assignment and she has been waiting for Mother Nature to do her job for her.”
In another part of the clinic Dr. Ellerson was entering into the centralized nursing station. “Good morning Ellen! How is everything today?”
“Good morning Dr. Ellerson. Well let see, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Childers passed away early this morning. There was a bit of excitement earlier as one of those Space Navy ships showed up, one of their officers came to see Dr. Geary in room 23.” The nurse told her professionally.
“Dr. Geary? You’re sure about that?” Dr. Ellerson said in surprise, “I thought he would have passed away over the weekend. He is very close you know.”
“I’m sure Doctor.” she then pointed to a CCTV monitor showing Dr. Geary lying in the hospice bed with his son and a tall man in a close fitting black one piece suit talking to him.
Dr. Ellerson, suddenly paled and quickly left the nursing station for the locked drug locker. A few minutes work and she had a syringe prepared. There was no way that she was going to fail this assignment. Dr. Geary would die and die now. And if she was caught… ‘Inshallah, as Allah wills it.’ With quick firm steps she headed for room 23.
“… Congratulations, GeeGee, welcome to the Terran Space Navy.” Were the words she heard once the door opened. With a smile of apology she strode over to the stand with the bag of glucose solution and prepared to inject the Potassium Cyanide into the drug port.
“And what do you think you are doing?” asked Lt. Commander Fuller.
“It’s time for Dr. Geary’s medicine sir; I’ll be out of here in just a minute.” She said smoothly as she reached for the plastic tubing.
“I don’t think so, Dr. Mehdi.”
At the sound of her real name, she started and then pushed against the man in black who was suddenly standing in front of her. ‘How did he just do that!’ was her thought as her next action was to thrust needle of the syringe at the man blocking her way. All she knew next was three impacts on her chest and then the stunning pain of the electric discharge made her lose all control of her body.
Fuller decided that it was safe to come down from ‘Slowtime’ acceleration back into normal time. He looked at the woman spasming on the floor in front of him. Carefully he removed the syringe from her clenched hand and with a careful search found the cover of the needle and capped it.
“You were right once again GeeGee.” He murmured so softly that no one else heard. In the silence he heard his friend take a rattling breath and then sort of sighed. With a quick turn and analysis that his friend had just breathed his last he reached into the small pouch at his side and pulled out a white package about the size of pack of cigarettes and pressed it firmly on Dr. Geary’s chest. The embossed red cross blinked three times and then the first aid kit extruded a filmy white material that rapidly encased the patient’s body.
Lt. Commander Fuller/Comm Mode: “Sergeant Evans, send in two Gel Cells and three squads of Marines. I have two patient’s for you. One of whom is an enemy combatant.”
Sergent Evans/ Comm Mode: “Aye, Aye Sir! Alpha Squad is on its way now. Beta and Charlie will accompany the Gel Cells. Be advised that our police scanners have intercepted calls for units and SWAT to report to your location.
Lt. Commander Fuller/Comm Mode: “Thank you for the heads up Sergeant. As soon as your men get here, I’ll go handle the police.”
With a quick explanation of what was occurring to Dr. Geary’s son, Ed, soon found them waiting for the two Squads of Terran Space Marines to show up with the eight foot long Gel Cells the TSN used for severe medical cases. Gently the newly encased body of Dr. Geary was placed into the first Gel Cell and then the stunned Dr. Mehdi was emplaced into the second one.
The Gel Cells were being brought on board up Roland’s ramp as the Police and SWAT armored cars arrived. It was almost comical as bluish smoke suddenly appeared from the vehicles as their drivers violently braked with one SWAT MRAP armored car hitting a curb, rolling up a steep embankment and then tilted crazily to land on its side.
The Marines were lined up in their armored combat assault suits. The smallest was seven feet in height with the tallest being close to ten feet. The stood at a parade rest and made no moves as the police swarmed into the parking lot.
Lt. Commander Fuller was standing in front of the line of Marines and waited calmly for the police and SWAT to decide what to do. After a few minutes of confusion a well-dressed woman in a business suit walked up to him. She was flanked by two fully armed and armored SWAT troopers.
“I’m deputy Chief of Police Ludlow, and you are?” She asked politely.
“Lt. Commander Fuller, Terran Space Navy.”
“I see… The re
port I have is that you just shot and killed one of the Doctors here at the facility. Am I correct about that?”
“Partially Ms. Ludlow, I did indeed shoot a Dr. Mehdi who was using the alias of Ellerson here. But I used stun darts and captured her. She is now being held in my Med Center for recovery and then we will conduct a deep interrogation on her.”
There were two spots on her check indicating a blush; there was also a tone of anger in her voice as she said. “And why did you stun her?”
“Oh that…” he said off-handed, “She was trying to murder Dr. Geary who had just enlisted in the TSN. I couldn’t allow that to occur, so I stopped her. She attempted to inject him with this and then when I got in the way she tried to do the same to me.” He then pulled the syringe out of his belt pouch. “I checked with the nurse’s station and their CCTV recorders showed her loading this syringe with Potassium Cyanide.”
With a grimace and a quick look over to her right she received a nod and then bringing her attention back to Fuller said. “Very well, I’ll accept that explanation for the moment. May we go inside to look for ourselves?”
“Certainly, follow me please.” And with a sharp about face he headed for the main doors of the Hospice. His keen ears picked up the slight thuds of several of his Marines following close behind the police as both an honor guard and as an escort for their good behavior.
Minutes later they were all reviewing the footage from the Closed Circuit TV cameras. It was an open and shut case against Dr. Mehdi/Ellerson. With a thank you for his quick action in defending Dr. Geary and subduing Dr. Ellerson, they proceeded at that point to request her presence so that she could be charged and arrested for attempted murder.
“I’m afraid that will not be possible Ms. Ludlow. Dr. Mehdi will remain in our custody, while she did indeed commit acts that are criminal in your jurisdiction she has also committed acts that are far, far worse than these.”
“Worse than attempted murder?” Ms. Ludlow said in a disbelieving tone of voice.
“Oh yes, much, much worse. She is the mastermind and chief implementer of a terrorist plan that spans nearly fifteen years. We still do not know how many unsuspecting children and young adults she has turned into unwitting bombs that only await the necessary trigger signal to cause them to explode and kill or main those around them including their own loved ones.”
“You mean that don’t you?” Deputy Chief Ludlow said in shock
“Every single damn word of it! Don’t you keep up with the intelligence that is furnished to you from the Feds?”
“I certainly try to, but I don’t recall anything like that crossing my desk.” She said in confusion.
With a frown, Fuller contacted Johan who did a quick data base search and found that the notice had been sent out by the Center for Disease Control instead of the Homeland Security department. It wasn’t until he explained that she probably had not read the report and that it was issued by the CDC instead of DHS, that she settled down a bit.
Nearly two hours had passed from the time the police arrived to the time that he and his Marines could leave. With a check on Dr. Geary and his prisoner completed it was time to send in a report to Admiral Webster and the others.
* * *
New York City, FOX/CNN Headquarters
“Ms. Roberts, there’s a Commodore Webster on line four for you. He is asking for an appointment to come and talk to you today.” Her Executive secretary told her.
“Really?” She replied drolly, “How interesting… When is my next opening in my schedule?”
“You have thirty minutes free in one hour and ninety minutes free at 12:30.”
“Offer him both and let me know which one he takes. I bet it’s the longer one.”
The other woman smiled and said, “You’re on! I bet he takes the early one.”
“Done! Loser buys lunch?”
“Agreed.” Less than two minutes later her Executive secretary buzzed her on the intercom. “He took the early appointment; I’ll let you choose where we eat today.”
With a quick “Damn it.”, Mary Roberts leaned back in her ultra-fancy office chair and wondered what new barrel of crap was about to be unleashed.
“Good morning Commodore and what do I owe the pleasure of meeting you again too? Oh yes, congratulations on your new rank.” Mary Roberts told Ansel graciously.
“Good morning to you also Mary, thank you for the congrats. The work hasn’t changed just the title.” Ansel told her with a broad smile.
“Now then, what is it, this time?” She asked waspishly.
“We have evidence that children are being sent to Indonesia to feed ‘her’.” Ansel said after a quick glance around the room. “Because of that, I am directing Captain Llewellyn and the Huntress to engage in ‘anti-piracy’ patrols. The goal here is to rescue these kids and stop the flow of ‘food’ to ‘her’.”
Mary Roberts eyes got bigger and bigger at what he said. “My God! She’s eating more children. When the hell are you going to stop her for good!” She finally snapped out.
“Soon I hope Mary, you must realize that she has been working on her plan for over eighty years now. We on the other hand have only been in existence as an organization for a little over four month’s now. We’re moving as fast as we can, and that’s a good thing, the bad thing is that speed means we are probably over-looking something extremely necessary for success”
“When you put it like that, I can see your point. Very well then, what are you asking Fox/CNN to do?”
“We are asking your network to consider placing a news crew on board the Huntress to independently verify and report on what we find and what we do about what we find, that’s all. Straight reporting, no Bullshit, no political spin, just who, what, where, when, why and how.”
“Interesting… and what if some of our competitors ask for the same sort of access?”
“We will take those requests on a case by case analysis.” Ansel replied.
“When are you starting this anti-piracy patrol?” Mary asked.
“We started forty-five minutes ago. Currently the Huntress and her crew are in the intelligence gathering phase of operations. If they find something then they will analyze the situation and take appropriate action as necessary.”
“You know what? I am going to start running out of qualified news crews at this rate.”
“You have affiliates all over the Earth, grab some from them. I would suggest Brazil and South America first. We have spotted some kids from there already.”
“What have you done about them?”
Ansel sighed softly and said, “There’s nothing that can be done for them Mary.” He looked into the distance at a scene that only he could see. She in turn waited for him to return his attention back to the room and her. Finally he said, ”Let me show you why, Mary.” And with her nod of agreement he brought out the Jammer and the Holo-projector from his briefcase and showed her some of the recordings of the children being fed upon and then crumbling into dust.
She in turn was fascinated and then disgusted and finally nauseous at what she had been shown. “
“Ok, I’ll do what I can to get you a permanent news crew Commodore. I may need you to talk to the board though. I’ve already been told that I’m getting to be too chummy with you and the TSN.” She told him in a frank tone of voice.
“Certainly, I’ll be glad to do that. I may have some other news for you by then.” Ansel told her. After some casual chit-chat about family he was shown out and she was thinking furiously on how she was going to accomplish this one.
* * *
Virtual Reality Briefing of the TSN Civilian Advisory Council
“Good morning Mr. President, Your Majesty, Mr. Prime Minister thank you very much for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice. There are some things I need to brief you on that will probably affect you and your countries that you represent.” Commodore Ansel Webster said as he began his briefing.
He covered all of the new knowledg
e about the Quarn Mother and her current location at Weh Island, the incident with the SF-003 and the recordings of the children who were being used as food for the Quarn Mother.
“I have detailed the Huntress and her crew to engage in Anti-Pirate patrols. Specifically we are looking for vessels that are transporting children to the Quarn-Mothers base of operations on Weh Island in the nation of Indonesia. If we do find such vessels we are going to board them for examination of their contents and if there are children in captivity on board we will seize the vessel in question and take the children into our custody.