Except for the three young hunters, we had encountered on the plain, the people of his tribe appeared to be women and children or old men, all poorly nourished. We talked of our search for a missing star cruiser called the CRYSTAL ONE.
I described my wife and my two daughters to the old chief. He informed us that he had seen my wife and her ship. He told me where the ship was now hidden after being towed by heavy equipment into a large cave about a week after his tribe had seen it as it crash landed not far from their camp.
He said that the lady I had described as my wife was injured. She had cuts and bruises and his medicine man rendered first aid and cared for her until she was feeling much better. He said that she was wearing a jeweled belt and that he had admired it very much. He said wait, I will show it to you.
He stood up and went inside his straw hut. A few minutes later and came out carrying her jeweled belt.
“She gave this belt to me for taking care of her because I admired it so much,” he said. “I want you to take it back to her for your kindness in bringing the provisions to help my starving people. We also met your two daughters. They were not hurt,” he informed us.
He then told me of how many soldiers carrying weapons similar to ours came and took away all the people from the crash who were able to move and killed the rest. He also told me how all his young men had been taken to the big cave to work there for the soldiers as slaves.
The three young hunters who brought us to his camp were away hunting when the soldiers came or they too would have been taken he told us.
Where is this large cave? I asked.
Oh you do not want to go there in daylight. They will kill you or take you as their prisoners. They are many and have many big ships much bigger than yours that brought you here, he went on.
That is not a space ship. It is only a shuttle to haul a few around. We have four large space ships on a plateau not far from here but first we would like to see the crash site if we could.
He instructed his young braves to show us the crash site. There we found many graves of those who had not survived the crash. We also found a few skid marks made by the CRYSTAL ONE at the crash site. Most of the evidence that a spacecraft had crashed however, had been cleaned up so no one will be able to determine where it had been taken.
The old chief then told us as returned to his camp that he would draw us a map to the big cave. He then found a stick and began to draw in the dirt. He said that he did not want his last three braves to show us because he was afraid they too would be captured. We understood his concerns. We told him that we planned not only to rescue our people but to also rescue his braves. This made him very happy and he wished us well.
We flew the shuttle back to the BONNIE ONE scheduled a meeting of the other ships commanders so we could make rescue plans.
We decided to use the cover of night to send a small recon team to locate the cave entrance and to report back the following night of what they had able to find there.
We needed to know what we were up against before completing our plan. The next night the recon team returned. They had located the entrance to the big cave. It had double 8 fences across the entrance with razor wire on top and along the ground.
Armed guards walked the perimeter in four hour shifts in the area between the fences similar to what we had experienced in the make shift prison made by the aliens on THE TOREN TWENTY before we reached Starsis.
From what the recon team could determine, the prisoners were kept in an area inside the cave away from the many space ships stored in the natural hanger of the big cave.
Most of the space ships hidden in the cave were Toren star cruisers, no doubt from the TOREN TWENTY-TWO, which had ambushed us previously.
One of the ships had the name the AMBER ONE on it. We therefore knew it was the ship of Marvin Roberts that we had let go in our first encounter.
Our problem would be to get into the compound without causing harm to the prisoners with enough fire power to overcome the forces of the Atlanteans.
I thought that it would be nice to have Marvo to help us to devise a sound plan. I knew that we couldn t just go barging in with a frontal assault. Even if we could catch them by surprise, they would have time to kill off all the prisoners and our rescue mission would have failed.
The three hunters came by our ship and we told them what we had seen. They advised us that there was a back entrance to the cave complex but that it would be slow going. They told us that the Atlanteans apparently had no knowledge of the back entrance because they didn t guard it.
They offered to guide us through the maze of cave offsets to a high shelf like area above the big cave. We took a team of six men with the hunters to map out the route and to determine if this new information would be of benefit to us. It took nearly four hours by foot through some very tight places to finally arrive on the shelf area high above the big cave complex.
There was enough room on the high shelf to position a hundred or more troops armed with small arms such as rifles, pistols, grenade launchers, laser pistols, small explosives, repelling ropes, and the like.
What we would need to pull this off was some kind of distraction. Also we felt the best time would be when most of the Atlanteans would be asleep. We needed to get someone into the group of prisoners a day or so before our attempt in order to inform the prisoners of our plans.
We sent the recon team to an area near the front again to observe the daily routines of the guards and the prisoners. We felt that we would need at least a week s data in order to learn their routines.
Meanwhile, we began preparing for the troops that would make an attack from the high shelf area gathering equipment and running them through training exercises to prepare for the mission ahead.
The recon team reported back after a week. They had discovered that many of the prisoners were taken outside the cave complex each day to work on a road from the cave to a stream where they hauled water in large for trucks the complex.
Also they had fishing nets at the stream which they used for fishing to help supply food for their consumption. They also used many of the prisoners to haul in the nets during the day.
Frequently, the guards would allow a few prisoners at a time to take a latrine break while working on a road gang. Each time, only one guard would accompany these few prisoners into the woods during their break.
We felt that we could get one or two into their ranks during one of these latrine breaks without too much trouble. I hand picked these infiltrators who would be taken back into the prison compound with the rest of the prisoners at the end of the day. These transplants would take the place of prisoners they would replace so the count would still match.
The rescued prisoners would be brought back to the BONNIE ONE to be debriefed so they could provide us with more details about what goes on inside the cave complex on a typical day.
Now our plan was about three quarters complete but we still needed the diversion to be able to pull it off. We decided that an Operations Readiness Inspection (O.R.I.) from the Atlantean High Command just might be the ticket. The inspectors which we would supply would pull this surprise inspection of their troops.
Our inspectors would be dressed as high-ranking officers of the Atlantean forces and would advise Marvin Roberts of the time of arrival. We would explain that we would come in a cloaked shuttlecraft launched from an Atlantean war ship so that he could make preparations to meet us outside of the cave complex at certain predetermined coordinates to accompany us into the compound.
Of course he was not to inform his troops because the purpose of an O.R.I. is to check security and response of the troops to a simulated emergency situation. Inspections such as these are common in the military. It is also a common courtesy to let the compound commander know ahead of time to prevent him from shooting the inspectors as spies.
&nbs
p; Keep everything out in the open as far as the Commander is concerned so he can feel that he is an important part of the O.R.I. Then the chances are that he will assist rather than to suppress the uninvited intrusion.
I would need to be the pilot of the small craft because we were going to use the one Tess designed that she had referred to as THE TOY.
We could easily modify THE TOY to make it look like an Atlantean General s fancy shuttle with decals we could create. I had to pilot it because no one else knew how. I would need a disguise to look like an Atlantean four star general. I would also need a voice modifier installed so my voice would not be recognizable. Dr. Collins could handle the disguises and voice modifiers for my assistants and me. He had done this many times in the past.
We needed the Atlantean communication codes in order to send a coded message to Marvin Roberts. Without the proper codes, he would know the message was a fake and that it was a trick. To obtain the proper codes will require an insider who could get into their communications center for the answers and relay them back to us without being discovered.
Then I thought of the jeweled belt. I had Dr. Collins design an additional earpiece like the one on the belt. This additional piece would be for me so I could listen in on any conversations between my wife and Marvo. We would hide the belt on one of the prisoners chosen to infiltrate the road gang. He would then give it to Tess once he was inside.
Tess could use it to activate Marvo who should be in the CRYSTAL ONE inside the cave complex. Marvo could access the Atlantean computers and download the current communications codes for us.
He could then pass the codes back to Tess through her earpiece and to me through my earpiece. This information was the final key needed to allow us to activate the rest of the plan.
We put the first part of the plan into motion. Two of our people were able to infiltrate the road gang in place of two of the prisoners. Our men had to stun the two they replaced temporarily to keep them quiet and motionless until so our two could take change into their clothes and take their places.
By the time the stunned prisoners began to move again, the road gang had moved on to another location and the recon team told them what had happened and brought them back to our camp.
We were able to learn much more from the two prisoners about times when guard shifts changed, where my wife and daughters were kept and other useful information. At dusk, the road gang was taken back to the cave complex in big trucks. As we suspected, they simply made a head count of the prisoners before heading back and our two blended in.
That night, they found Tess and gave her the belt and told her of our rescue plan. She contacted me on my earpiece to inform me that Marvo was still aboard the CRYSTAL ONE and that she could activate him using her jeweled belt. She said that it would be awhile before he could get the communications codes because he would need time prepare a proper disguise to take the place of one of the radio room technicians. Marvo would have to make a face mold of the technician scheduled to be in the radio room the next night.
He would have to hide out in the vicinity at shift change and catch the radio operator leaving. Marvo would then have to sequester the technician until he was scheduled to be in the radio room again. She said that this would take Marvo at least twenty-four hours to accomplish and possibly forty-eight hours if he didn t catch the technician alone the first night.
We agreed to maintain radio silence until Tess could pass on the communications code to us. Once we had it, we would send the coded message to Marvin Roberts and put our plan into action.
Meanwhile, the rest of the prisoners, including the ones from the old chief s village, were kept in the dark about the plan just in case there was a spy in their midst. They would be told at the last possible time when it would be too late for a spy to spoil our plans.
Now everything depended upon Marvo. My wife activated him and brought him up to date on his mission. Tess was right when she said it would be about twenty-four hours before Marvo obtained the communications code. He came through for us though the following night.
It was too late to put the plan into effect the day we received the information so we set it up for 03:00 hours the morning of the second day. I would take the toy up with the rest of the inspectors tonight while it was still dark. I would also cloak it to avoid any detection from the enemy. I would send the coded message to Marvin Roberts and await his acknowledgement before notifying the ground forces to proceed to the shelf area above the cave.
Getting Marvin Roberts and his Executive out of their compound while the ground forces did their thing was necessary to keep him from discovering what was going on.
Most of the encampment is dark at night except for night lights here and there to give minimal illumination needed for safety purposes.
On cue, we notified Marvin Roberts of the O.R.I. and the coordinates where we would set down our shuttle so he and his Executive Officer could meet us.
Our message advised him that we would explain all our inspection procedures once we arrived. Marvin Roberts acknowledged our message and replied that he would meet us at the coordinates we picked at the designated time.
Our next message was to notify our ground forces to proceed into the back entrance of the cave at 10:00 hours. This would allow them five hours to arrive at the shelf area which gave them a one hour cushion to get their equipment in, set up, and be ready to descend into the cave by 03:00 hours. They would then have one hour to quietly take out any guards they encountered, set their explosive charges and return to the shelf area. During that same time, another small team would also take out the prison guards. They would then lead the prisoners to the rear of the cave where they would be helped by the ones still on the shelf with ropes and pulleys to climb to the top of the shelf. Once there, they would be led through the back cave to the waiting star cruisers.
The plan was to have all our people and the old chief s people out of the big cave compound about two hours before the next change of shifts. Once everyone was out then the ground forces could set off the charges remotely from a safe distance and catch the next shift still asleep. At 02:30 hours, we returned to the surface in the newly decaled toy so as to be at the coordinates to meet Marvin Roberts, and his Executive Officer at 03:00 hours.
CHAPTER 11-SHEGEKO’S COMPLAINT
Dr. Collins felt that my beard which had been trimmed neatly, went a long way in disguising who I was and gave me a certain air of authority and defiance in the position of Inspector General. He managed to change the eyes, the hair color and to general change my looks. With this make over, I don’t believe even Tess would recognize me. He also attached a hidden device on my voice box to disguise my voice.
We arrived at the coordinates at the designated time. Marvin Roberts and his Executive were there waiting for us. We had them join us aboard. It was precisely 03:00 hours. We were far enough away from the large cave compound to go unnoticed by the guards there.
We spent an hour with Marvin Roberts and his Executive Officer explaining and detailing what we wanted to see. We also told him that such inspections are conducted to help high command determine any weaknesses that might exist in our security.
We also told Marvin Roberts how proud the empire was of him for how he had been able to take not one but two mother ships from the Torens. We expressed regret that in his first encounter that he had not received his reinforcements in time to hold that mother ship.
“I bet it felt good when you blasted that mother ship while their shields were down!” I said.
“It made up for the embarrassment they caused me earlier,” he bragged.
“I hear that you have several hundred prisoners from that mother ship and that you also destroyed many of their star cruisers in this last attack,” I said.
“Your intelligence is very good,” he said. “We have over three hundred prisoners. We plan to kill them be
fore we leave for our next mission but we haven’t done so yet because it is so nice to have the bastards as our slaves doing the mundane chores around the place. We won’t kill them if you want to take the back to Arkus to work in the mines.”
“No, we don’t have time to fool with them right now with so many inspections and reports to do.” I said.
“When do you want to begin your inspection at the camp?” he asked.
“You have everything under control there don’t you?” I asked.
“Certainly General,” he said.
“We don’t really have to make an inspection. Let’s don’t and say we did, if you get my meaning.”
You trust me is what you are telling me, he said.
We trust you unless you give us reason not to. I suggest that we spend another couple of hours here on this shuttle and fill out some paper work giving you high marks on the inspection and then let you go on back to your camp.
Is that satisfactory? I asked.
It is with me and I can assure you Captain Picks here will agree. Isn t that right Captain Picks?
Aye sir! he answered.
Now before we get into all that paperwork, is anyone hungry? I asked. Cookie has made us some chow in the galley. Let s go in there and see if he s ready for us.
We went into the galley to have breakfast. It was now a little after 04:30. We needed to stall them about another hour before letting them return to camp. We fooled around with eating and drinking coffee and the paperwork simulating an inspection of their encampment until 05:30. Then we told then how very well the inspection had gone and told them to return to their base and that we would return to our orbiting space craft.
We gave them time to arrive back at their camp before lifting off. It was now 05:45 hours. By now all our people should be safely out of the large cave area.
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