Captain Artok could see immediately that things had changed. As the group watched the road entering the capital, there was very little traffic. She could also see there were guards everywhere. She pulled a countdown timer from her satchel. The Romani had given it to her so she knew when to expect the fleet. It would be in just under 23 human hours. The group moved toward the city, running through the undergrowth adjacent to the road. Serpents are chameleons; they have the ability to alter the color of their scales at will to blend with the surroundings. Anyone looking at the jungle next to the road would see some wind gusts move the vegetation, but not the serpents behind the movement. Thanks to evolution from predator ancestors, serpent vision had a much greater range than human. They could see well in the infrared. This allowed them to track warm-blooded prey. Since their ancient prey was also able to see in the infrared, and serpents are warm blooded, they evolved the ability to cool their skin to block the infrared. This the group did when they blended in. The enemy found no reason to shield themselves. Captain Artok signaled his crew to stop. She then sampled the air with her tongue. Serpents see the world as a combination of sight and smell. They smell by sampling the air with their tongues. The scents of humans and fellow serpents appear as aura around individuals. This aura lingers and this allows serpents to reconstruct movements of the recent past by sampling the air, thus seeing where the aura came from or went. As Captain Artok reviewed the samples in her mind’s eye, she could see large numbers of serpents leaving the city and heading towards the shore, several hundred kilometers away. The auras were faint, which meant some time had passed. She assumed this was the invading force attacking the mountain containing the hatchery. This was also good news. There would be fewer fighters in the city.
Captain Artok signaled the crew to move into the city. Once they were inside the outer ring of dwellings, they split up. The plan was for each to go a different route to the missile control in the hopes that at least one would make it. Each carried what was needed to do the mission. Captain Artok set her scales to blend with the natural houses along the path leading to the city center. The capital was a blend of form and function that looked like dwellings and buildings were part of the jungle itself. The captain moved cautiously. Even with her chameleon abilities and cold skin, she could still be seen if her movements are detected. She had to move slowly, but time was not her friend. It took half her time to move through the outer ring of the city. Serpent cities were built in concentric rings with private houses making up the outer ring, public buildings the middle ring and the inner circle consisted of all the administrative buildings. Most of the population was in the outer ring of dwellings. This resulted in the slow movement through. Captain Artok reached the second ring of the city and was relieved to see only occasional serpents on the paths. Either the war was keeping people from libraries and schools or the Mountain Clan restricted the inhabitants to their homes. The inhabitants of the capital were mostly from the Hill Clan.
The captain was half way through the public area when she heard the first explosion. One of the crew must have been discovered. They had all discussed how to handle detection and all agreed that they must not fall into enemy hands so there could be no torture and discovery of the others. The explosion away from the target indicated the loss of one of her crew. She had lost crew before, most recently at the mining base on the way to Rubicon. The crew had volunteered and all knew this was a suicide mission. However, their safety was incidental when it came to the survival of the Sea Clan hatchery. Captain Artok continued her passage through the public areas, avoiding the open spaces and staying close to the structures. Camouflage was easy here, since everything was the green of jungle vegetation, which had been trained by builders to grow into structures. The captain had been to the human capital and found it interesting, but could not understand why humans cut down vegetation to make room for buildings of steel, glass and stone. Then they decorated them inside with vegetation. Why not just use the vegetation, as the serpents do. Captain Artok feared she would never have a chance to learn the answer.
She reached the administrative center of the city with three hours left to fleet arrival. The trip into the city had been excruciatingly slow, with many stops where she had to freeze to blend into a wall or vegetation. Humans would consider a serpent city to be a monotonous green with variations of green. However, humans do not see what serpents see. To Captain Artok, the city was ablaze with colorful auras emanating from the vegetation as subtle scents that humans could not recognize. To a serpent, the capital was a kaleidoscope of color and imagery that created a soothing combination in the serpent brain. Serpents loved every aspect of the world around them and Captain Artok would spend her last breath to make sure it was available to future generations. If it were the intention of the Mountain Clan to wage war against the humans, the home world and the serpents would be destroyed. This disease must be eradicated from the home world and balance with the humans reestablished. She now concentrated on the mission at hand, flicked her tongue and took a sample of the air. As she was analyzing this sample, a familiar aura came into view. It was moving towards her and she froze. She then recognized the aura as belonging to her engineer and relaxed. The engineer came up to her and exhaled, to allow Captain Artok to inhale her scent and aura. This was the way serpents clearly identified themselves when in camouflage mode. The two now continued together. As they worked their way through the administrative buildings, they heard another explosion. This one was closer to their target than they were. That was not good. Not only had Artok lost another crewmember, but also there would now be a higher alert level. One explosion could be a lone saboteur. Two explosions are evidence of a larger attack and that will make the Mountain Clan sit up and take notice. Artok knew that the missile control would be heavily guarded. She hoped that the normal guard contingent would be considered enough. Now that she had a partner along, they could prepare a better strategy.
The buildings in the administrative areas stood out from the rest of the city. Some things simply could not be made out of living jungle, due to the nature of their use. Strongholds had to be made of steel and stone. The most important military buildings were made of quarried stone covered over with living vines. They may have to build like humans sometimes, but there is no reason the structures cannot look living. The target of their mission was now just a few hundred meters away. Artok put up her hand to halt the engineer and sampled the air, as did her partner. The aura of five guards could be sensed. There were two at the entrance and three patrolling the grounds. There was no need to circle the building with guards, since it was backed up against the side of a low, mountain rock face. There was no way around the guards without violence. Captain Artok thought for a moment and then decided that time did not allow for much guile. The fleet was now just over two hours from system entry and that meant they were well into the slipstream. About fifteen minutes before the time was up, their mass signatures would show up on the sensors of the buoys monitoring the slipstream. It will take an hour and a half for the electronic signals to reach the planet from the monitor buoys at the slipstream entrance. However, the time had been calculated to include the communications gap, since planetary defenses would not come on until the signal arrived. Therefore, fleet mass signatures were less than an hour out from detection by the monitor buoys. Time was of the essence.
Captain Artok and her engineer moved stealthily towards the three outer guards. This was going to be tricky. The door guards had a clear field of view at the outer guards, so once the attack began, there was no hiding the intention. The outer three guards were male and armed with railguns. The door guards were females with only teeth and claws as weapons. This was a good thing, since it meant the door guards had to move in to fight. Nevertheless, three armed guards and two unarmed were still a lot to deal with for two serpents. They needed to reduce the numbers and get into the building as quickly as possible. They knew the internal layout from having spent time within, since ship command was a
lso located on the premises. The only weapons Artok and her engineer had were the explosives for taking out the terminal. This gave Artok an idea. She signaled the engineer to follow her to a secluded alley between two buildings. She needed a place to work and they would not be able to make the explosives invisible while working with them outside the satchels. Their satchels were made of a material that takes on the color of its background, so it changes color with serpent camouflage. After they made certain the area was deserted, the serpents took the bombs out and Artok took her brick of explosive and removed three quarters of it from the detonator. She then looked around the alley to see if there was anything usable. No matter how clean a city might appear, for some reason alleys throughout the galaxy were cluttered. Her eyes fell on a metal container that once held some condiments. That would do. She set the bomb for a ten-second delay but did not yet activate it. She placed the bomb and the container into her satchel, pressed the three quarters of remaining explosive onto the other bomb, and returned it to her engineer. The engineer now had enough explosive in her bomb to take out the entire building. There was a quick discussion of strategy, and then the serpents left the alley and returned to the vicinity of the building. Captain Artok looked at her timer and realized the fleet was about to enter the system. Time had run out and it was now or never.
Captain Artok gave a quick hand signal and she, along with her engineer, bolted for the front of the building. No time for camouflage now, so they were spotted immediately and the forward guards lowered their railguns and challenged them for identification. As this was happening, Artok reached into her satchel and pressed the button to start the ten-second countdown. In the same movement, she took the container with the bomb out of her satchel and hurled it with all her might at the armed guards. The guards were a bit startled at the actions of the serpents running towards the building. They had heard two explosions in the city but thought little of them, since they knew the only resistance on the planet was bottled up in a volcano on an island. Since no one bothered to contact them about the nature of the explosions, they chalked them up to some demolition related to their clan’s takeover of the capital. Now here were two serpents of the Sea Clan running towards them and one threw a can. As the guard wondered what that was all about, the can suddenly exploded and sent shrapnel in all directions. The blast sent the armed guards flying and knocked down the door guards. Artok and her engineer found shelter behind a gate column and darted out a few seconds after the explosion. They ran at top speed for the door, jumping over the bodies of the armed guards. They arrived at the door just as the door guards were jumping to their feet. The guards were a few seconds too late. Artok pulled out the throat of the guard on the left and her engineer ripped open the chest of the other guard. As this was taking place, one of the armed guards who still had some life left in him, rolled over and raised his railgun. He fired just as Artok and the engineer went through the door. The engineer went first and then Captain Artok. As Artok moved into the doorway, the guard fired and the railgun slug hit the captain in the upper leg, shattering her thigh. The engineer pulled the captain through the door but Artok then dropped to the floor and knew she was not getting up again.
Artok ordered her crewmember to finish the mission. The telemetry monitor buoy’s signal will reach the planet in less than a half hour now. The serpent engineer ran down the hall to the control room as Captain Artok rolled over and looked in the direction of the guards. The one who had fired his weapon finally died and the others were not going to move again. There was a crowd forming around the front of the building and the shrill sound serpents use in place of a siren could be heard in the distance. The captain knew they would kill her on sight if the mission failed. She regretted she was not able to complete her mission.
The engineer ran down the hall, pushing civilian serpents out of the way. She knew the way to the control room and time prevented any attempt at stealth. If she was going to give the Romani a chance to save the hatchery, she had to get to the control room fast. Finally, she found herself in front of the double doors to the control room. No time to think, she burst into the room and ran to the center consoles. The technicians in the room were startled, but the guards were not. They lowered their railguns and fired. One slug tore into the engineer’s shoulder and the other hit her square in the chest and threw her against the control consoles. Before the light went out of her eyes, she reached into her satchel, pushed the button on her bomb and her light went out. Captain Artok felt the explosion before she heard it and she smiled as the building came apart around her. The walls collapsed as the pressure of the explosion pushed outward and removed their weight bearing members. The roof came down and what was once a building was now rubble. Ten minutes later the first signal from the monitor buoys reached their destination, but there was no receiver left to acknowledge them. The signal passed into oblivion and the planetary defenses never came on.
On the bridge of the dreadnought NR Longinus, Captain Lorenzo sat in the command chair with Legatus Edmonton at his side. A similar scene played out on the bridge of every ship in the fleet. On each ship, the Klaxon called the crew to general quarters, as they were 15 minutes out from system insertion. Normally general quarters would not be issued on Romani ships exiting a slipstream. However, this was now a war zone and they needed to be ready. They had entered the slipstream in combat order, with the four destroyers first in, followed by the two dreadnoughts, the Longinus and the Invicta, with the two cruisers forming the rear guard. At the point of system insertion, the navigator aboard the Longinus depolarized the slipstream sails and they dropped out of light speed. As the wall of white light resolved into the home system of the serpents, sensors came on line. The sensor techs immediately put up a threat board that showed the destroyers moving into the system ahead of the dreadnoughts. In a few minutes, the cruisers came out of the slipstream and the fleet was assembled. As more sensor data filled in the threat board, Lorenzo could see the nearby monitor buoy and the planets in the system. He then turned to the serpent assigned to the Longinus, “Ben, are there any invisible ships in the system?”
“Sss. There are none nearby, but if they are near the Home world, the signals will not arrive for close to one human hour.”
“Let me know if you pick up any.” He now turned to the communications tech, “Sparks, send a tight beam message to Captain Rand and have him take the destroyers to the planet at flank speed. Tell him to have his serpents pinpoint any invisible ships and engage them. Tell him to shoot to incapacitate and not destroy the ships if possible.”
The message went out and in a few seconds the communications tech turned to Captain Lorenzo, “Captain Rand acknowledges the message and wishes us safe passage.”
Lorenzo turned to the Legatus Victoria Edmonton, “I don’t want to kill more serpents than necessary. They are our allies and I am still hopeful we can resolve this without a full-scale war. Transit to the planet is eleven hours. I will call a meeting two hours before arrival.” He then turned to communications, “Sparks, signal the Invicta and the cruisers that I want to meet with their captains and with the primary centurion of the eighth cohort in nine hours.” All ships acknowledged. Captain Lorenzo and Legatus Edmonton then left the bridge and went into the conference room to relax and discuss tactics. During the long transit, Tavia and Lorenzo had drawn maps, with the help of Captain Artok and Hatch, to show the humans the layout of the island and the volcano containing the hatchery. They also drew maps of the capital city if it became necessary to invade it. It was made clear from the start, that the primary mission was the rescue of the hatchery and the security of the island. The serpents would have to settle their own civil war. It was also the hope of the Romani to limit the number of serpent deaths inflicted by them.
Aboard the destroyer Primo Cohortem Alpha, Captain Oskar Rand stood on the bridge. He is the commander of all destroyers assigned to the tenth legion. He only had four destroyers with him, but the entire legion was not available for the
rescue. His current mission was to assess any resistance in space and deal with it. As soon as the fleet entered the system, Captain Lorenzo had ordered him to move ahead of the fleet to the planet. As he sat in the captain’s chair, he contemplated the space around. He could see the serpent home world as a small green sphere in the distance. They were now five hours from the planet, with the fleet an hour behind. They had maintained a threat board running since entry. It showed the orbiting bodies in the system along with the position of the destroyers and the following capital ships. As Rand was studying the threat board, he heard a sudden hiss coming from the serpent on the bridge. The serpent on Captain Rand’s destroyer was called Lot by the crew, due to an odd swallowing sound she made when performing her duties. If serpents can have neurotic traits, this seemed to be one of them.
Serpents and Vipers Page 17