It's Hell To Choose (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 9) (28 page)

“Perfect” Jeo muttered. “What about the team?”

“So far, there are no concerns placed by Bandile Annane and the fourteen members of his team. They have passed both classes for safety and know how to use the equipment. They will leave the training facilities within twenty-four hours enroute to Location Mining Facility 01.”

“Samantha, please modify name Mining Facility Zero One to ‘MF01’.”

“Understood, Jeo.”

Jeo looked up at the second clock he now had on the wall. It was a timer counting down to when it would be his turn to leave.

He had less than twenty-four hours to go, himself.

Outside TQB Base - Colorado

“This isn’t going well, Sir.” Captain Julien Karet spoke on the phone. “They aren’t nearly as weak as we expected, and they apparently did not get the police involved in the children’s hijacking.”

Presently, Julien Karat was in a SNAFU. What should have been a simple operation had grown exponentially worse, and now he had no idea how to extract his men. That there weren’t a lot of police and media involved was surprising him. It worked in his favor, as he didn’t have to worry about someone locating his team here, but he didn’t like what it suggested to him, either.
 
The other side didn’t want any police involved fighting his group.

It was just them against his group.

Julien continued speaking on the phone, “No, the package is not yet inside the base. Yes, some of the drone communication sniffing technology has been dropped off close enough to move forward on their own. We are …”

Captain Karat’s teeth ground together, “Sir, that would be unlikely to make enough confusion inside the base to help hide the data extractors, but it will kill all of my people nearby. The affected area is still hundreds of yards in the open air.”

“Yes…Sir…” he ground out. “We are continuing to review the location of the package and will manually detonate should that be deemed necessary, Zàijiàn.” He hung up the satellite phone.

Julien commented to his second, “Damned commercialists, worse than communists. They sell ‘piece of cake’ to our leaders who then use us to implement this debacle.”

“I hate to say it, sir, but there are too many bodies on the base.
 
We aren’t going to be sterilized enough” his second, Kathen, responded.

Julien shrugged, “There isn’t enough data to point back to us. Too many mercs in the mix. So, if they happen to get any information from those on Op 1, it won’t provide a target, just the tools.”

He walked over and looked out the small valley they were using to run the forward operations. It was shielded enough that the detonation wouldn’t hit them. Now, if his men could just get the damned thing into the base, grab those that were still alive, and fall back at least half a mile, they could blow the thing and get the hell out of here. With the need for the bomb to be inside the mountain, this was as far away as they could get and still be entirely sure they could manually send a detonation signal.

He would hate to be the team that was carrying that son-of-a-bitch.

Turkey

“My Queen,” Akio walked over to Bethany Anne, who was making sure that every head had been cut off, “what would you have us do with the weapons?”

She looked up and contemplated his question. She considered and dropped the idea of trying to put them into a car and lifting the car far enough to drop them into a large lake or something. She could only imagine the news people talking about a ‘magic car’, or whatever social media might say about it.

“Put them on the bodies, ADAM will contact the local authorities that can be trusted. We will have to hope they get here first. Maybe with the guns on the bodies, it will cause even more problems for the terrorists.”

>>Bethany Anne, we are getting reports from the Polarus that a large attack ship is approaching rapidly followed by three support and what looks like a command ship staying way back. Captain Thomas is positioning the Ad Aeternitatem and Polarus to block access to the Consanesco. He suspects enemy action.<<

“Gott Verdammt!” she spit out. “Akio, make it quick, we need to get back to the Ad Aeternitatem.”

>>News from your Father. He says Darryl and Scott are with the children. None of them has a scratch. One team member is confirmed dead, the other wounded was a Wechselbalg, so she may be alive but was left for dead where the bus was hijacked. There is a team enroute to retrieve and provide assistance if possible.<<

“Thank you, Michael.” Bethany Anne murmured. She whistled to Ashur, who ran over. The area around his jaws was bloody. “Got your own bites in, I see.” Her Black Eagle came down, and she grabbed Ashur and dropped him in the back, “Hey!” He looked at her.
 
“Keep the blood off the seats, or you're cleaning it up!” He chuffed at her.

“I don’t care that you don’t have opposable thumbs, don’t make a mess!” She groused back.

John rolled his eyes at the casual display of understanding between the two. He looked one more time around the area and then waited for Bethany Anne to get in her Pod and then followed her actions.

Soon, ten Pods cleared out, leaving more clues than she cared to leave behind, but time was more important than confusion, at the moment.

—

Down in the engine room of the Polarus, the speaker squawked, “Rodriquez, this is Captain Thomas.”

Chief Engineer John E. Rodriquez hit the speaker button, “Rodriquez here, Cap. What do you want?”

“Please make sure our second set of engines are prepared and converse with navigation and high-topside to take us outside of existing air travel lanes if and when we go,” Captain Thomas requested.

“Will do, Captain. Will discuss and confirm with navigation and topside to make it so.” Rodriquez replied.

“Do you believe we are going to do it?” John’s second, Barry, asked him from the desk beside him.

The Engineering room on the Polarus had been more commercial than Rodriquez was accustomed to on Navy ships. He had made it a point to provide additional protections and make sure everything was in a place that could be tied down in the case of substantial movement. He had confirmed the Chief Engineer on the Ad Aeternitatem had done the same upgrades, and his input had been requested for the Consanesco during the ship's outfitting.

“Possibly” John admitted. “If this is a legit attack or boarding effort, then I believe we will be testing them significantly more.”

“Well, if we do, we are going to have a lot of the super-rich wanting our upgrades!” Barry chuckled.

—

The Consanesco was close enough to the Polarus and Ad Aeternitatem that Mark Billingsly and Sia could see people running around on the deck in the early light and hear the ‘aaahwooga - aaahwooga’ sound come rolling over the water towards them.

“Sia, are you shooting this?” Mark asked, not taking his eyes off of the two super-yachts. He felt a hand tap him on his left shoulder so he turned to see Sia with her camera on her shoulder. “What do you see?” he said.

“They are taking covers off of some of those taller structures…” she commented.
 
“Mark, those are guns!” she exclaimed.

“What?” Mark stepped around behind Sia, who pulled out the little four-inch video screen that would show Mark what she could see.

“Damned, that is Navy precision,” Mark supplied. He looked up, “We have something coming at us from the Southwest.

“How can you tell?” Sia asked, not moving the camera from what she was filming on the Polarus.

“Because I see the Ad Aeternitatem has turned hard and is setting itself between us and something from that direction. The Polarus has moved some, but not much. I’m betting they know something bad is coming from that direction.” He supplied, pointing. “Plus, I see a couple of the sailing vessels that hang with those ships are getting out of the way and coming near us, now.”

“Wow, fair weather friends they are,” Sia grumped.

—

Peter Silvers finished suiting up. He was wearing full ballistic protection when Todd clapped him on the shoulder and told him “Remember, no going furry today. Too many witnesses.”

“Why aren’t we just dropping them?” Peter asked Todd, “Seems easier.”

“Too little proof” Todd answered. “We are in International waters, but that doesn’t get us a free ride on shooting anyone down until they prove, on tape, to be asshats.”

Peter drew the two much bigger rail pistols he and the other Wechselbalg on the team carried. They had enough power to throw .50 caliber penetration-specific bullets out of their pistols at over two-thousand joules. That was around one-thousand five hundred ft-lbf (foot pound force), better than a .44 Magnum and equivalent to a .50 American Eagle. It wasn’t the most powerful, that would be the .50 S&W Magnum which had a two-thousand six hundred ft-lbf.
 
Smith & Wesson wanted the 'most powerful handgun in the world' label and were fighting hard to keep it.

Their rail-pistols did, however, have a twenty-five round capacity because it did not need the cartridge to fire the rounds. That provided eighteen more shots than the .50 AE.

“Just remember” Todd told Peter, “not to shoot the ship with that cannon.”

“The decks have been reinforced” Peter replied, “I spoke to Jean Dukes about it myself.”

“Yeah, but I still don’t want to run around hoping that the steel plates stop one of the bullets from one of those beasts.”

—

“Boss, we have cameras on us” Jean Dukes heard as she looked through her binoculars.

“That’s ok, Captain’s orders. We are to look impressive, to see if they will back down. Cat’s out of the bag anyway. We have been attacked in the U.S., and they used the railguns to cut down the efforts pretty damned substantially. So showing them something from these two isn't going to surprise anyone, now.”

“It’s just going to make them want our rides even more” he grumped.

Jean pulled the binoculars off of her face and turned to her man sporting a vicious smile, “You know when they can have these boats? When they pry them out of my cold, dead, rail-gun holding hands.”

He returned her smile as she went back to looking through her binoculars.

—

“Captain, Comms say Bethany Anne is screaming back this way, but that she won’t be here for the first dance. Unless we leave these other boats behind, we have to stay and fight.”

“While I doubt our visitors are pirates” Captain Thomas remarked, “I don’t want to leave the civilian craft behind. Prepare to repel boarders. Let the first verifiable aggression happen on their side and then we will drop their boats as necessary into the deep dark. Please confirm Captain Wagner is issuing the same commands.”

“And their main ship, sir?”

“Just keep the door closed to attempted landings on any of our ships. If someone tries to attack the Consanesco, then Puck them. Bethany Anne will deal with the main ship.”

“Yes sir!” the specialist turned back around to relay the commands.

Captain Thomas spoke into the intercom, “Defense, release the quarter pound Puck Defense Shield if you would.”

“Aye aye, Skipper.”
 
Dukes voice came back to him.

Space-Station-One

“Jeo, I have reviewed the requirements provided by Dan and Jeffrey.” Samantha’s voice filled Jeo’s suite as he packed.

“Ok, what do they need?”

“We need to build up capabilities for manufacturing and defense. The problem is with the timeframe.”

“Let me guess; they want everything yesterday?” Jeo asked, amused. His ability to get the process moving with the mining platforms was congratulated soundly. But then, he found out that his amazing results were now considered the 'new normal’.

“No, but within seventy-two days” Samantha answered.

“Hmm, what are they up to?” Jeo asked as he placed socks in his bag. “Samantha, throw our present manufacturing schedule on wall three and the proposed requirements next to it.” The two scheduling Gantt charts were up side-by-side, and Jeo walked over to view them.

“So, I have to take away from …wait a minute.” Jeo studied the proposed project, “Samantha, what are ‘Puck Destroyers’?”

“They are modified twenty-foot shipping containers housing strong defensive and offensive weapons using Pucks ranging from one kilogram to four kilograms. They are unmanned units.”