“There is a conference room that might serve this purpose better,” Roma interrupted. “If you would follow the amber lighting…”
“Of course,” Amaratne agreed.
Ivy came alongside John and threaded her hand into his as they walked. The older man was all-admiral as he looked around the room and activated the viewscreen while the group took their seats around the table.
“Firstly,” he began, “I will need to undergo rejuvenation.”
He glanced at the nearest camera, and Roma took her cue.
“I have the relevant medical pods online,” she told him. “When you are ready, we can begin.”
He gave her a sharp nod. “Thank you, Roma.”
Turning his attention to John, Ivy, and Ted, he continued, using the remote to bring up several scenes of close-quarter combat on both Navy ships and in installations.
“If you’re not already up to these standards,” he said to the two youngsters, “you need to be. We cannot take the first step until you’re ready.”
Before the young Talent could ask why, he went on to explain. Pointing a finger at him, the older man said, “You are our figurehead. You’re the Apostle, the one everyone will look to for leadership and guidance. If you are killed in your first battle, we’ll all be scr…in trouble. We need you to be able to look after yourself and everyone around you.”
“And when we’re ready?” he asked and included Ivy in his question.
There was no way he would leave her behind, and if he needed to be able to take care of himself, she did, too. Amaratne let the assumption pass without comment.
“When we’re all ready,” he told them, “we’ll hit them hard and fast and in such a way they won’t be able to hide the truth. When we’ve completed that first attack, everyone will see it and my groups will activate.”
“You planned an attack to be your signal that Stephanie was back?” John asked.
“I planned an attack to signal that Stephanie was on her way,” the man clarified. “The people I spoke to will still have to choose how much they believe and whether they’ll act on that belief.”
“So, it will have to be something spectacular,” Ivy concluded.
“It will be,” Amaratne assured her. “Spectacular enough that the Regime cannot hide it or write it off as anything but a signal that the Witch is coming back—and that she is not who they claimed her to be.”
“And?” John pressed, wanting more detail, but the ex-admiral gave him a secretive smile.
“Give an old man some time to put a little polish on things,” he protested. “I need to check a few things to make sure everything is still in place or if I’ll need to tweak the plan here and there.”
“And will it be in Paris?” the boy asked, worried that such an attack would draw the Regime’s attention to the area where they sheltered.
The old man’s smile returned. “Oh, no, John Dunn. this attack will take place in their own land and in territory they’ve held the longest, and it will strike at the heart of their beliefs and reveal them to be the lies they truly are.”
Ted interrupted to add. “This compound, our base of operations, will be the last item on their list of places to look.”
John stared at them. “That’s it?” he demanded. “You tell me you have a plan to shake the Regime to its core and then you say you need to check the details?”
The two newcomers exchanged glances.
“That is correct,” Amaratne agreed.
“A most accurate summary, indeed,” Ted concurred, and both men rose from the table.
“If you will excuse us,” the ex-admiral told them, “I believe I have an appointment with a PodDoc.”
“And I believe,” Ted added, “that your new training regimes can only be arranged after some in-depth testing of your capabilities.”
“But I thought—” Ivy began, but Roma interrupted.
“My assessments were only to see what starting points you might require. For me to have an understanding of the in-depth training you need, there will have to be many more.”
The girl groaned, and John slid his arm around her shoulders.
“It sounds like we’re going in the pods again.”
“Indeed,” Roma agreed and sounded very much like her uncle. “You both have much to learn.”
“Well, this should be fun…” the young Talent murmured as he stood and moved to the door.
“Don’t mind us,” he snarked over his shoulder. “We’ll find our own way out.”
Amaratne waited until the door closed before he chuckled. “Well, Ted, I believe we might stand half a chance,” he told EBURT.
The AI took his leave. “I trust you can find the medical pod on your own?”
He nodded. “And I have a most excellent guide if I cannot,” he added. “Don’t I, Roma?”
“Confirmed,” she agreed.
Ted nodded to him and left to find somewhere he could plug into. His body needed to recharge and he needed to check on his counterpart on the Virtual Net. There were things he needed to know.
Amaratne followed and immediately noticed the discreet line of amber lights that twinkled to life as he stepped into the hall. At the end of them, he located the PodDoc and stripped down to step inside.
“Is there anything in particular you would like to focus on while the procedure takes place?” Roma asked and adopted her guise of doctor again.
“I need covert access to the Virtual Net,” he told her.
“Of course,” the AI told him. “Give me a moment.”
The old ex-admiral closed his eyes, settled into the pod, and slipped into the Virtual World with only one thought on his mind.
I need to find more intel without risking EBURT’s hidden location.
Chapter Five
The early warning system over Hrageth’s Run died in silence and four large ships passed the settlement undetected. They came in behind the moon and released a half-dozen smaller ships that skirted the rocky orbital and made a rapid descent into the planet’s atmosphere.
To the colonists, they looked like shards of light descending, and their entry was announced by several loud booms that made everyone race to shelter.
“Pirates!” they cried as the light shards became vapor trails and each targeted a different communications array.
An order went out for the distress call to be sent, but the communications satellites above Hrageth’s Run exploded at the same time and the sky blazed with their demise.
The dropships came in hard and fast and their sides split open as they landed. Soldiers spilled out in the grayish-green of commandos, their Navy insignia clear.
They hit the ground running and the vessels elevated and moved to land a safe distance from the targets. The Navy was nothing if not careful of its ability to get its people away again.
Besides, they had other targets.
The soldiers reached the gates in the walls surrounding each complex and flattened themselves against the plascrete as rocket crews destroyed the wall defenses.
Orders to open the gates were denied and the engineers went to work. Once again, a series of explosions shook the world and the soldiers poured through the gaps. Inside, they looked for resistance and found nothing but the walls of a complex locked down by its technicians.
They immediately fell prone and let the engineers do their work. The fields designed to protect the installations from extra-planetary bombardment had prevented their destruction.
Those same fields were not designed to repel physical intrusion, and the commandos and their engineers made short work of them. They poured through the breaches to silence the men and women inside. Cries of alarm turned to relief and then confusion and outrage.
Those who resisted bought a little time for those who fled but not enough. The teams cleared every living being from the complex and then went hunting for any who had survived.
The engineers set the charges needed to level each section, and the comms ops called the dropshi
ps back. Their doors had barely closed before they turned their attention to the outpost.
“Destroy the shields and we’ll eliminate the wall defenses,” the flagship ordered.
If any of the troopers had anything to say about needing to get past the wall defenses in order to obey that command, none of them voiced it. They wanted to survive past their return to the ship.
Instead, coming into range, the dropships slowed, lifted their hatches, and let the commandos drop to the ground. As soon as their feet touched the hard soil, the vessels increased speed and their gunners entered the coordinates for the walls.
The commandos followed, jogged over the rugged terrain, and used every dip and fold for cover. The vessels overhead obscured their advance and gave the wall defenses something more important to aim at.
Five minutes after they’d been dropped, the troops reached the walls. They didn’t bother to ask for permission to enter. The engineers laid their charges along the walls before they trotted quietly to where one of the technicians hacked the gate controls.
This close in, he was able to access the network.
The defenders raced to the holes and the commandos slipped quietly through the gates to approach from behind them and mowed them down. They located the generators that powered the fields and disabled them, only to discover the redundancy systems.
“They don’t make it easy, do they?” one of the men quipped and grinned as he focused on another of the Dreth who’d survived the initial assault.
The warrior’s eyes widened as the Regime-uniformed soldier shot him in the chest and then the head. As soon as he was sure he was dead, the man turned to the stairs leading to the turrets.
The crew had barred the door, but that did nothing to stop the high-explosive rounds from blowing it apart. Nor did it save them from the commandos who followed.
“Send in the Talents,” the commander ordered once the gates were secure and the closest guns silenced. “We’ll need to dig them out of here.”
“Roger that. Any progress on the shield?”
“We’re looking for the back-ups as we speak.”
They trotted through the streets and moved cautiously from building to building and ruthlessly exterminated any resistance they encountered. They showed neither regard nor mercy as they advanced through the outpost.
A face at a window screamed as the glass in front of it shattered and the victim forgot to duck. It was followed by a Dreth sniper who fired once before her muzzle flash became the focus of a rocket round.
Toward the center of town, they encountered a male Dreth who froze when they caught him crossing a street shepherding a smaller Dreth. The younger one cried out in horror and flung himself over his companion, and the commandos shot him too.
They also killed the female Dreth who raced from the next building with a shriek of anguish, but they didn’t stop to clear the buildings. That task was left for the teams that followed from the newly returned dropships.
The first groups searched for the generators or the outpost’s control center and looked for the township’s leaders.
“Have you picked up any transmissions?” the commander asked, and his communications officer shook her head.
“No, sir. All clear.”
For her sake, he hoped it remained that way. He trotted forward. “Have you found me an energy concentration yet?”
“Yessir.”
“Which way?”
“You’re on track, sir,” she assured him and he wondered if she would have told him if he wasn’t.
It was curiosity rather than concern. He signaled her forward, trotted beside her, and glanced at the device she held as she showed him the way. Nothing hindered them until they reached the building at the outpost’s center.
The minute they rounded the corner, a barrage of gunfire made them all fall prone with the immediate reflexes of trained soldiers. The technician whimpered in pain, but she said nothing else and the commander lifted his head long enough to see who else might have been wounded.
He’d give them this—the Dreth had caught them by surprise and they shouldn’t have. Several of his men had fallen and wouldn’t get up again. A few more would need time in the infirmary before they were fit to fight.
“We need that building,” he told them. “Now, tell me how we can get it.”
One of the troopers wriggled forward, using the low lip of the curb as cover.
“Well, sir,” he began, but a soft plinking sound caught their attention and a grenade bounced over the cobbles. The technician’s response seemed somewhat redundant.
“Grenade!” she shouted and rose to her feet to run. All around him, his troops scattered, only to be caught in a hail of fire.
“Stay down!” a new voice thundered over the battlefield.
It’s easy for you to say, the commander thought and scowled at the grenade as it seemed to leap toward him.
“Stay down,” the voice repeated, and a ball of blue light coiled around the grenade to hurl it back at the defenders.
Seconds later, the light vanished and the grenade exploded. The commander smiled with satisfaction as the Dreth defenders fell, some in silence and some screaming.
He did not wait for the voice to tell him it was clear but scrambled to his feet and sprinted across the empty space between him and the stairs of the building where the target was housed.
“The shields are still up, Commander.”
In response, he curled his mouth in a snarl. There were days when he could cheerfully murder the main ship’s dispatcher.
Instead, he said, “Understood.”
“The captain wants a time for bombardment.”
“Three minutes,” the commander snapped and hoped it was true.
He also hoped the captain wanted a time to assault the walls because there was no way he wanted to be in the outpost when the real bombardment began.
As he reached the doors, the first of his men caught up with him. When he looked, however, he realized it wasn’t one of them but a Talent, and while she wasn’t the last thing he wanted to see, he hadn’t expected her.
“You’re not wearing body armor,” he told her.
“We had no time. The captain pulled us out of the Reserve and sent us here.”
The commander had no response to that so he merely nodded and led the way in. After a few strides, he was glad she’d come along.
“Two to your left behind the door,” she told him and he fired through the barrier. Screams signaled that she’d told him the truth.
He started toward the door but changed direction when she spoke again.
“Neither can harm you.”
“Are they alive?” he asked, and she gave him a chilling smile.
Screams erupted from behind the door and the smell of burning flesh reached his nostrils.
“Not anymore.”
The commander smiled. “Keep talking,” he said.
She did and warned him of another ambush waiting in the elevator. He pressed the button, lobbed a grenade in, and took the stairs after he’d thrown a grenade onto the landing above and waited for the bang.
When he emerged from the stairwell, he shot both the Dreth he found in varying states of injury on the stairs and continued his descent. Two of the engineers had joined him. They fell in almost on the Talent’s heels, but neither tried to overtake her.
“The control center is at the end of the corridor to your right,” she said and immediately placed a hand urgently on his shoulder. “Wait!”
If he hadn’t already seen her in action, he might have punished her for the touch, but he had, and her next words confirmed the wisdom of his choice.
“There are five on the other side of the door. I can create another exit for you.”
He nodded. “Do so.”
She moved forward and around him and positioned herself at the wall running parallel to the stairs. Talent rolled over her palms, reflected by an outline on the wall. The concrete inside the outline began to
glow before it evaporated with a hiss and vanished in a cloud of dust.
The Talent stumbled back, coughing.
The commander didn’t wait. He stepped forward into the basement beyond and although he was aware she was trying to speak, he made no effort to stop and only came to an abrupt halt when he saw the civilians crowded into the space beyond.
There were at least a hundred of them…perhaps two. He couldn’t be sure. Their startled faces were like a sea before him, and he thumbed the fire controls on his blaster for a more effective type of round.
A sheet of flame erupted from its muzzle and the closest faces vanished, their mouths open in unvoiced screams. The two men who’d caught up with him followed his example.
None of them expected the Talent to come in after them or for her to be joined by two more. They said nothing, but blue lightning surged from their fingers and danced over the heads of those in the room to make their bodies convulse and smoke.
“The rest?” the first Talent demanded, and another shrugged.
“With the medics. We saved who we could.”
She nodded and walked forward with the commander as he led his soldiers through the charred corpses. Some of the survivors tried to bolt to the door and one of the men changed ammunition to eliminate them with a sharp volley.
“How many do you think were in here?” he asked.
“Most of the settlement,” the commander answered and looked at the Talent. “Are there any more rooms like this?”
She nodded and pointed to one of the survivors, who now backed away from them with his hands partly raised. “That one hopes you do not find the other two. He thinks the humans are lucky because you will spare them.”
He laughed. “Tell me where they are,” he ordered, and the Dreth shook his head, his eyes showing as white as his tusks.
The commander shot him in the gut.
“Tell me,” he demanded, and his target shook his head and wheezed as he clutched his belly. “No?” he asked and stopped a few feet away, and the Dreth shook his head more vigorously.
“Let’s see if this changes your mind,” he said and attacked with the flame thrower. He started at the feet and worked his way up the massive legs.
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