The second development for that day occurred in Surrey. B.C's brigadier general was in the middle of a meeting with his senior staff when Izzy phoned. As soon as she explained that it was an emergency, he put her on speakerphone.
"Brigadier General, we've been running training exercises in Puget Sound with your four submarines in preparation for the war with Alaska. Their aircraft carrier has no defense against a submarine attack, as you know. We've lost contact with all four subs. We weren't using live ammunition and the subs weren't operating close enough to each other to have an accidental collision. We believe that they are stuck on the bottom and can't surface. We have ample time yet to rescue our forces, but we do not have any naval resources to find them. Will is in one of the subs and our three battle commanders are also missing in action. I know you have sonar on some of your ships. Can you send everything you've got that could help? Meanwhile, we're pulling all of our other forces back to the compound for re-training and re-planning in case those subs and our battle commanders are lost."
The brigadier general's staff discussed the situation. Not to decide whether they'd help. They focused on how they could help. Eventually they decided to send every major naval vessel that they had. Most were equipped with sonar. Puget Sound was not huge. Three or four days should do it. The missing subs had ample oxygen. The brigadier general would try and calm Izzy down. She sounded rattled.
That evening, the supreme commandant of the Anchorage Territory received an urgent message. "Will is missing in a military exercise and the Wilizy are crippled. They should remain in that condition for three or four days at the least. B.C. is desperately trying to help. The remaining Wilizy are in their compound trying to prepare for an attack that they know is coming but not when. They have to re-conceptualize their entire battle plan because of their loss of four senior staff."
Golly. What a coincidence. The Alaskan sleeper in B.C. was in a meeting when a desperate call for help was aired at that meeting. What are the chances?
# # # # # # # #
The very next day, on Saturday, November 10, a sudden unexplainable surge of electricity caused lights in the IOF's secret genetics lab to flicker momentarily. In such situations, lab staff were required to check the gestational units to ensure that all were back on line. A genetics tech did that and looked inside a unit to be sure. She screamed in horror and ran frantically out of the lab to find Ingrid.
Three hours later, Ingrid was standing in front of Rick's desk.
"I can't explain it. We did tests to confirm. The babies are only in their first trimester, but the evidence is overwhelming. They're are all going to look different. Different skin colour, for sure. Different bodies, too. It could even mean the females have active ovaries. I don't understand. The last batch was fine."
"Pictures," Rick demanded. Ingrid handed them over and Rick inspected them closely, even to the point of pulling out a magnifying glass.
"Has Igor been anywhere around the computers or the building?"
"No. He has no reason to be."
"So, he couldn't have adjusted the program?"
"No. That would be impossible even for him. That code is incredibly complicated. It would take months to even make sense of it, let alone know what to change to cause the babies to be different."
"Only you know anything about that program's code?"
"Yes, of course."
"That's what I thought." Five minutes later, Ingrid was in a detention cell. Igor was as well, but on a different floor. Rick was reviewing Zzyk's file on Ingrid where he had wondered on paper why Ingrid would be happy about her son escaping. Rick underlined the part where Zzyk had assumed that Prudhoe Bay traitors could have helped her.
That evening, the Supreme Commandant of the Anchorage Territory received a private message from his sleeper in Rick's office.
"Igor and Ingrid are traitors to the Alaskan cause. The evidence is overwhelming. Ingrid is manufacturing babies that are genetically different from each other. She's the only person who has the ability to even understand her genetic computer program let alone adjust it. Igor has sabotaged the DPS army's communications network. He's falling apart from fear and will probably confess soon. Zzyk believes that you are responsible and he is planning to attack Anchorage. On the other hand, Rick believes that the Wilizy controlled the two traitors, not us. He thinks that Ingrid joined the Wilizy because they helped rescue her son. She brought Igor into the plot. There is some substance to this theory. Zzyk himself wondered about her loyalty after Ivan escaped. Apparently, Ingrid's biometrics showed unmistakable signs of relief that her son was safe. Rick is trying to calm Zzyk down but without success so far."
# # # # # # # #
On Sunday, November 11, Alaska's supreme commandant called Rick to inform him that he had changed the plans for the attack on the Wilizy. The Wilizy were in turmoil from the temporary loss of Will and other key personnel in an accident involving their entire navy. The Alaskan forces were going to mobilize on Monday, November 12 and attack on the 13th. The plan of attack was the same – just advanced to mid-November. The supreme commandant couldn't ask what was happening with Ingrid and Igor because that would blow the cover of their sleeper. Instead, he asked if Alberta would be ready on the 13th.
That lead to a strong rant from Rick about what Alaska's two traitors had done. The evidence was now conclusive. Ingrid had confessed that she was working for the Wilizy. She had switched sides after the Wilizy defused Ivan's hair bombs and after friends in Prudhoe rescued her son and her granddaughter after Ivan's helicopter was shot down.
The supreme commandant assured Rick repeatedly that Alaska had nothing to do with it. Rick said that he believed him, but Zzyk didn't. Zzyk had long-range rockets that could reach Anchorage. Plus he was going to pull all of his ground troops out of the upcoming battle.
When the supreme commandant asked if he had any influence, Rick said that Ingrid was willing to identify her accomplices in Prudhoe to avoid further interrogation. Rick offered to take Ingrid up to Prudhoe, find the traitors, and bring them back to Zzyk. If they told Zzyk that they were working for the Wilizy, he'd listen to reason. In the meantime, Rick would mobilize his ground troops as agreed, but their communications were fried so they might arrive late at the Wilizy compound.
"It's going to be a struggle because I have to keep all of this secret from Zzyk," Rick explained. "He has his finger on a very dangerous button right now. He's aiming the missiles at your shipyard, I believe." (The button part was true; but it was the button on the TV remote.) "I'll do my best."
"You should take over, Rick. Zzyk is never going to believe that we were innocent."
"Yeah, you're right. You'll support me?"
"Fully."
"I'll try and calm Zzyk with some confessions from Prudhoe first. Tell Prudhoe's base commander that I'll come up tomorrow after I've sent our forces into the A.N. I'd like him to have his people ready for parade so that Ingrid can identify the Wilizy sympathizers."
# # # # # # # #
Mac: To all Wilizy. Operation Confuse and Confound has been completed successfully. We mobilize tomorrow. Stay calm, everyone.
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Chapter 37
On Monday, November 12, Alaskan forces mobilized as they had planned. Seventy-five planes from Anchorage and Prudhoe headed east into the Yukon and established a base camp in the same general area as they had trained. The force consisted entirely of attack planes. Nobody thought about doing a security sweep of the area around the base camp because they considered this remote part of the Yukon to be their property. It wouldn't have made any difference anyway. The Wilizy were waiting for nightfall in the invisible Wilizy/Europe high above their camp.
That same day, the Alaskan aircraft carrier set out for Vancouver Island. The ship made good speed down the coast, and as night approached, the admiral stopped the ship, anchored it, and turned all the power off. The admiral wasn't expecting to have to defend his ship, but
if there were an attack, he'd have ample battery power to defeat any force. The Wilizy were waiting for nightfall in the invisible Wilizy/Asia high above the Alaskan carrier.
The same day, Rick travelled to Prudhoe Bay arriving well after the base's light planes had left. He came with four attack copters and landed all four in the middle of the airport tarmac. He and his exec left the first copter and went to meet the base commander who was expecting him. Rick told the commander that he had learned that the traitors were part of the base's ground forces, but not where they actually worked. The commander agreed to pull everyone off their posts and put them on parade.
Rick noticed that some of the base's military personnel had side arms, as well as long guns at that parade. He asked the commander if he had any worries about the traitors using their weapons to shoot their way off the base. It turns out that the commander did have such worries and he had every one under his command place their weapons on the ground and step away.
Rick waved at his second and third attack copters and six heavily armed DPS sergeants escorted Ingrid to the front of the parade where she stood passively. The base commander, Rick, and his executive assistant were positioned a few paces behind her. Rick whispered to the commander that Ingrid had agreed to nod slightly when the DPS sergeant inspecting the troops was in front of a Wilizy sympathizer. The commander's face blanched when he saw how often Ingrid was nodding.
Rick saw the large number too. When Ingrid had finished, he had her escorted back to a copter. "Good thing I brought more men that I thought I'd need," he told the commander. He waved at the fourth copter and eight more men descended. They formed themselves in a loose circle around the parade formation.
"We're going to have to take these traitors into custody," he said to the commander. "Do you want to do the honours?"
The commander had watched in horror as Ingrid had nodded at almost his entire security detail. "You should. My force has been corrupted."
"I'm worried about all the weapons on the ground. I'll put all of your forces under guard first and then remove the non-traitors." Rick nodded at his master sergeant to take a position in front of the parade.
"With permission from your commander," he said, and saluted the Prudhoe commander, who returned the salute. Then, the master sergeant brought them all to attention, marched them away from their weapons, and instructed them to sit on the ground. The DPS formed a tight guard, arms at the ready.
"You can join them, Commander," Rick said and two burly sergeants marched him to the new formation. When the sergeants returned, Rick said, "You too, Exec" and with that the base became Alberta property without a shot being fired. Two troop transports arrived shortly afterwards. The Prudhoe prisoners went into the transports, the Albertan soldiers in the transports took up defensive positions around their new oil port. As the first task in securing the base, Rick ordered the Alaskan communications net to be turned off. The DPS installed their own temporary system. They'd hook the Prudhoe port up to the full DPS system later.
Ingrid watched in confusion as all of this happened. She had come to Prudhoe as instructed so that she could clear her name. Rick had told her that he had doubts that she was an Alaskan. He'd let her prove that she was. She should nod her head at any Alaskan in the parade formation that knew her and could vouch for her citizenship. Since Ingrid had spent lots of time at the base over many years, and since personnel at Prudhoe were rarely transferred, she was certain that she had passed the test. Yet she was still taken back to Edmonton and returned to her cell.
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Chapter 38
Tuesday, November 13, 1 a.m. Izzy's group would have plenty of time to complete their tasks, so she waited until after midnight before sending her teams down to the ground at the Yukon staging area. The Alaskans had made a rough camp about one hundred meters away from where their seventy-five planes were parked in a roughly square formation. They were sleeping on the ground with no benefit of tents. The night was reasonably warm, although as was always the case in the Yukon, the insects were rabid. The pilots had pulled the hoods of their sleeping bags over their heads and burrowed into them.
The short-range drone handlers – Lucas, Reese and TG – were about fifty meters from the nearest light plane. That put them about one hundred and fifty meters away from the nearest soldiers. Their slings were inactive, so Izzy had hidden the trio in some scrub brush that gave them reasonable cover. Each handler controlled one short-range drone. These looked like Will's old spider drones, but they could carry a payload. In flight, they had the size of a dragonfly, if you ignored the payload and if by some fluke of nature, you could see them in their invisible form. Will had built in a double energy pack to handle both the invisibility and movement functions as well as the payload power. The payload was a lead tray carrying eight Chicago pellets.
As head drone handler, TG had practiced the attack with Theo and Reese many times at the compound – always at night. Each of them had a designated section of the airport to cover. The airport being the spongy ground on which the light planes were parked. TG's drones had the longest distance to cover, Theo's were next, and Reese was responsible for the planes closest to their hiding position. Each drone handler would be operating independently, not waiting for the others to be ready to send another drone. However they all did start at the same time.
The handler would use the camera in the drone's nose to guide his drone to the section of the airport that was his responsibility. TG had instructed his handlers to go through their designated section of the airport in a systematic fashion. The front plane in a line first, the plane behind next, and so on. It was important that all planes were visited. Yolanda had a schematic drawing of each plane in the formation and she'd record each drone's visit. This was primarily to help Reese, but she did it for all three handlers in case they were interrupted at some point during the early morning.
The drone handler had a specific routine to follow at each plane. The handler would hover the drone at the front of the plane, put it into a spin so that the Chicago pellets were distributed widely into the sponge of the Yukon ground, and then return the drone to the Wilizy position to be resupplied. The handler would repeat the dispersal action three more times – to the left of the plane, behind the plane, and to the right of the plane. Then he'd go on to the next plane. The drones themselves weren't affected by the pellets because their power source was inside a lead clump.
Behind them, Izzy, Hank, and Winnie were loading up additional drones with pellets and passing them forward to the handlers. As each drone came back empty, it would be re-armed. Patella was serving as scout and security. If any of the soldiers decided to go for a walk, she'd glide back to Winnie and nudge her. Doc remained on board the Wilizy/Europe to monitor the pilots and the surrounding area.
Izzy's forces finished well before dawn – time enough for a nap to rest for the daytime operation. That one would have more danger to it.
# # # # # # # #
Over in the Pacific, Mac's team in the Wilizy/Asia was also using short-range drones. However they faced a more difficult task and so had started earlier.
The Pacific Ocean, as with all the world's oceans, had mats of debris scattered across its surface. Scattered is not an accurate picture. Clogged would be a better descriptor. The ancients hadn't cared what they did to the oceans. Or to the planet, if you wanted to be accurate. In some places, ocean debris could be three meters thick and could cover a kilometer of ocean surface. The aircraft carrier plowed through these fields as though they didn't exist. Nobody looks closely at a mass of vegetation and plastic. Certainly a man on watch wouldn't look too closely. If such a watch had been posted, which it hadn't.
Mac's team would be using a pre-built, floating vegetation pallet made mostly of jute and burlap from the Wilizy Cloth and Dye Company. Using their slings as underwater swimming gear, the team had pushed the disguised pallet up against the bow of the carrier. At that point, their slings had be
en active and each of them had an oxygen tank within it. Will had worried about this part of the plan, because a sonar sweep might have found those tanks as the Wilizy were swimming into position. Confident in their mastery of the seas, the Alaskan used no sonar. Even if a sonar pulse had found the tanks, the ping would probably have been attributed to something metal being lost at sea and embedded in the mass of garbage that the ship was plowing through.
Once the debris mat was in place, Wizard brought two wooden crates to the surface and placed them on their table. One crate carried the short-range drones; the other crate carried a lead box containing Chicago pellets. As soon as that box was opened, everyone's sling became inactive. The drones however remained alive for the reasons mentioned earlier.
Mac's team was charged with placing those pellets into the body of the ship. They didn't care about the twenty-five light planes on the deck. They knew that they had no hope of positioning those pellets securely on what would become a moving deck. The Wilizy could do nothing to stop those planes from attacking the home compound the next day.
However the ship's interior was full of nooks and crannies where the pellets could remain unnoticed. Since this was a big ship, and since the Wilizy would have to navigate through several vertical levels of the carrier, as well as from bow to stern, distributing their pellets was going to be time consuming. All but one of the members of this team would be working the drones. Only Granny was dry at this point in the operation as she was on the Wilizy/Asia watching the carrier and surrounding area. So that they wouldn't miss any important part of the ship, all of the handlers (Mac, Lucas, Mathias, Will, and Wolf) would let the drone captain (Wizard) lead the way. They'd arrive at the same spot in the ship, distribute their pellets over a wide area, and return to the mat for refills. Wizard had taken several tours through some B.C. ships to familiarize himself in advance with a ship's design. The Wilizy didn't care about the personnel quarters or the food preparation centers. They did care about the ship's propulsion units, power sources, and everything associated with the command center, especially the communication gear.
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