Theogony 1: Janissaries (28 page)

Platoon Briefing Room, TSS
Vella Gulf
, Tau Ceti
System, May 25, 2019

“All right, I’ll make this quick,” said Calvin, addressing
all of the troops of the platoon. Steropes was also present to answer any
questions that the soldiers might have. Calvin smiled. “That’ll be easy because
we don’t have a lot of information to brief, and we need to take care of this
quickly before reinforcements arrive.” He pointed to a large picture of the
base that he had hung on the board. “There is a base on the moon of the fourth
planet. It appears to be a secret research base for a race of lizards that walk
on two legs.”

“Another race of lizards, dude?” asked a voice from the back
of the room in a stage whisper. It sounded like Bad Twin. “Sheesh! How about a cat
some time? I could kill some kitties!”

“Although Steropes does not expect there to be many soldiers
at the base,” Calvin continued, ignoring the interruption, “he did say that
this is a much different race than the one we met before. While those looked
like mini-dinosaurs, this race is seven feet tall and extremely aggressive. If
you see any of them, they probably will attack you on sight. We expect them to
have at least light hand weapons. Even unarmed, they have very sharp teeth and
claws, as well as a tail with a sharp spike.”

“Our primary mission is to assault the base and capture the
Class 2 replicator that is in the hangar there. Once we eliminate any
resistance, one of our shuttles will fly in, hook up to it, and take it back to
the
Gulf
. As soon as it is airborne, we destroy the facility, shuttle
back to the ship and ‘strategically withdraw’ back to Earth as quickly as we
can. Hopefully, we get out of here before anyone else comes to see which
direction we went. The replicator will give the Earth the ability to make
advanced fighters quickly and, it is hoped, give us access to some new laser
technology.”

“Lieutenant Train and Master Chief O’Leary will lead the
Space Force, which will attack from the east. This is a diversion, so I want
you to be seen and to have the lizards’ attention looking your way. Master
Sergeant Smith and I will lead the Ground Force. We will attack from the west
and come in cloaked. The goal is to take and defend the replicator and then
infiltrate the base to destroy the defensive systems. Once this is
accomplished, the shuttles fly in, the replicator flies out and we’re all done.
We come back to the ship and watch the mushroom cloud.”

Master Chief O’Leary raised his hand. “What are the
conditions on the moon?”

Calvin looked at Steropes, who answered, “The moon is nearly
as big as the Earth and has a gravity that is approximately three quarters of Earth
normal. There is an atmosphere, but it is thin, and there is not enough oxygen
in it to make it breathable. Inside the base, there will probably be
pressurization, depending on how many doors you blow off, but their atmosphere
is not breathable by humans. You’ll need your suits throughout the mission.”

“We will be coming down about 10.5 miles from the base,”
Calvin continued, “because the facility has a shield that disrupts ships’
electronics. As the gravity is a little less, we will have about a 45 minute
run/jump to get there.” He looked around. “Any other questions?” Seeing none,
he said, “OK, let’s get to it then. Before you go, I need to see Mr. Jones and
Ms. Rozhkov for a couple of minutes.”

The two specialists came over to where Steropes and Calvin
waited. “I’ve asked Steropes for some assistance,” Calvin said, “and he has
decided to break the rules slightly. As you are both no doubt aware, the
Psiclopes have not transferred a lot of their computer technology to us yet.
Steropes has authorized a download of some of it for you, because your mission is
going to be to try to hack into the lizards’ computer systems and download any
new technology you can find. He has some additional tools that he is going to
give you to help with it.” He indicated a small bag that Steropes was holding.

Mr. Jones looked at the Russian spy inquisitively and raised
an eyebrow. Calvin sighed. “In a perfect world, I wouldn’t want to have to use
her for this mission, but she is one of the two best hackers we have.
Hopefully, between the two of you, you’ll be able to break into their systems.
If this is a research base, they ought to have a lot of information that we
could use. I don’t trust her, but I trust you to watch her.” Mr. Jones
shrugged, giving his assent.

Calvin turned to Steropes. “I’ll let you take it from here.
I have to go make sure Bullseye is all set with the mining operation.”

Gate #1
,
Tau Ceti System, May 25, 2019

The two shuttles orbited the gate, deploying their proximity
mines in as solid a pattern as they were able. The Terrans knew generally the
direction the missile had used to go through it, so they were able to guess in
which direction the aliens would emerge, and they mined it accordingly. The
density of the pattern wasn’t great, but any ship transiting the minefield ought
to be hit by at least a few of them. They hoped.

The proximity mines the shuttles were laying would
explode once a ship entered within a predetermined range, triggering five
kilograms of antimatter. The resulting detonation of the antimatter core as it came
into contact with the material surrounding it would result in a 215 megaton
blast. If it blew up close aboard, it should overwhelm the shields of any craft
unlucky enough to be caught by it.

The best part of the space mines was their size.
Tremendously small in the vastness of space, the asymmetric nature of the
threat made them extremely difficult to counter once they were in place. “
That’s
it,
” radioed Captain Jennifer ‘Sweet Jen’ Chapman, who was operating the
load system for one of the shuttles. The Royal Australian Air Force officer
looked at her screen with an evil grin. Just let them try to get through that.
“
All of the mines are in place,
” she continued. “
Put the shrimp on
the barbie.
We’re on our way back.
”

* * * * *

Bridge,
Wanton Killer
, Gliese 832 System, May 25,
2019

“Of course they took the honor of going first,” hissed
Captain Sssseth, the battlecruiser
Wanton Killer’s
commanding officer. “Anything
to relieve the boredom of being here.” He looked at the monitor, which showed
the planet they were currently orbiting. It was so shitty that the
Ssselipsssiss hadn’t even bothered naming it; it just had its ephemeris
designation, Gliese 832 ‘b’. The crappy planet was a gas giant about two-thirds
the size of Jupiter, orbiting around a small red dwarf sun at a distance of
about 320 million miles. It was a long way from a lousy star and a miserable
place to be.  

He would have loved to be in almost any star system in the
galaxy. All that Gliese 832 had going for it was a small picket station that the
three battlecruisers were assigned to. He alone on his crew knew that they were
guarding a secret research station on the other side of the nearby stargate.
Knowing that there was at least a reason for having the outpost there didn’t
help to relieve the boredom and misery of being on the ass-end of civilization.
Not even a little. There was no glory to be gained in battle, the news and 4D
videos were hopelessly out of date, and they hadn’t seen fresh meat in months. All
because he had sex with a stupid female...
How was he supposed to know she
was the Grand Admiral’s daughter?

Two cycles ago, a missile had come through the gate from the
research station screaming about Eldive fighters. He had to wonder what they
were testing at the research station, because something had obviously scrambled
whatever passed for brains in the scientists’ heads.

First, Eldive fighters could not be attacking because there
hadn’t
been
Eldive fighters in over 3,000 years, ever since the race’s
mass suicide against the Drakuls. He’d had to look it up when the scientists
said that they were being attacked by the Eldive; he’d never even heard of
them. Second, there was no other way into the neighboring system besides the
gate that the battlecruisers were guarding, and he was sure that nothing had
gone past his ship. All of his crew knew that he would happily cut them up and
serve them for dinner if they were delinquent in their duties. He may be bored
out of his mind, but that didn’t mean that he’d let his crew be sloppy! They
would have reported a gate activation to him as soon as it happened. Finally,
even
if
his crew had missed it, there was no way the automatic systems
onboard the outpost would have failed to notice the gate activation. The
scientists had to be delusional.

Obviously, there was a meteor shower, or something like
that, and the stupid scientists had panicked. He didn’t care
what
the
reason; it gave him a chance to do something other than sit on his tail at
Gliese 832 ‘b’. He
did
care that the senior officer of the three battlecruisers,
Rear Admiral Ssseellee, had exercised his prerogative to proceed through the
gate first. The only thing more pathetic than that worthless excuse for an
officer was the state of his ship and crew. It was now two cycles later, and
the
Emperor’s Sword
was
just
starting to move away from the
outpost. Half the crew was probably intoxicated too. Although each of the three
ships should have spent an equal amount of time docked at the outpost, the
admiral always had an excuse for why he needed additional time docked there.
The real excuse was that it was the only place to get fermented goat’s milk in
this whole system.

“Make sure you give the
Emperor’s Sword
additional
room to get by us,” he said. “They might be a bit...unsteady...in their
helmsmanship.”

“Yes, Captain Sssseth!” answered the helmsman. The CO didn’t
have to tell him why the Admiral’s ship needed extra space; the state of discipline,
or lack thereof, onboard the
Sword
was common knowledge.

Space Force,
Shuttle 1
, Tau Ceti ‘d1’, May 25,
2019

The shuttle screamed into a combat landing, hitting hard on
its struts in spite of the lower than normal gravity. The inertial compensators
absorbed most, but not all, of the impact.

“Ouch. That hurt,” said Master Chief Ryan O’Leary. “Who’s
driving this bus?”

“Not sure,” said First Lieutenant Paul ‘Night’ Train. “I
think it’s that German guy, Oberleutnant Hohen-something. I can never remember
how to pronounce it.” He thought about it a second and then said wryly, “I’m
sure the landing looked
really
impressive to the lizards.”

“Refresh my memory,” said O’Leary as the boarding ramp
started coming down, “why didn’t we just land on top of them? Why’d we have to
go through this whole charade?”

“I’m impressed,” said Night with a grin. “Who knew you had
words like ‘charade’ running around in your vocabulary?” Master Chief frowned,
and Night continued, “The reason we’re doing it is that the disrupter field
around the base will mess up the electronics in the shuttle’s engines. Me, I
don’t want to be next to an antimatter reaction that goes out of control. Do
you?”

“Not particularly sir, no,” replied O’Leary. Standing up, he
yelled over the implant frequency, “
What the hell are you waiting for? An
engraved invitation? Let’s GO!
” The Space Force jumped up and stormed out
the back of the shuttle.

Ground Force, Tau Ceti ‘d1’, May 25, 2019

The Ground Force was much quieter as their shuttle came down
to the west of the lizard base. The shuttle had used the terrain to block the
lizard’s radar, and the soldiers immediately went invisible to most sensors as
they cloaked coming out the shuttle. Although unseen by the lizards, the
members of the squad were able to ‘see’ the locations of the other members of
the squad on their displays through a laser uplink to the
Vella Gulf
and
downlink back to the suits. By using the laser link, they were able to maintain
radio silence, yet still communicate with each other. Having received a green
flag from all of the troops, Master Sergeant Aaron ‘Top’ Smith gave the signal
to advance, and they all bounded off.

Between the light loads they were carrying and the lower
gravity of the moon, the troops were able to use the suits to ‘bounce,’ where
each step covered about 15 feet. Once the troops were up to speed, they covered
the ground at just over 15 miles per hour in an easy lope that used no more
energy than an easy jog in shorts and a t-shirt back home. They had practiced
this many times on the Earth’s moon and had no problems staying in formation as
they rapidly covered the distance to the base.

Crossing the disrupter shield, Calvin felt a slight
electrical current like static electricity, which caused the hair on his arms
to rise slightly. The electronics of his suit were hardened against the effect
and survived the crossing without any problems. Full of energy, they
unconsciously sped up, covering the next nine miles in just under 30 minutes.
The base was located in the middle of a two mile wide crater, and they reached
the edge of the crater ten minutes ahead of schedule.

Calvin watched on his tactical screen as the Space Force
made it to the opposite rim of the crater. With his augmented vision, he could
look across the crater and see them easily. As they came into sight of the
base, its defenses sprang to life. Pop-up laser turrets deployed from hidden
sites, fired a volley of shots at the troops and then closed again before the
troops could target them. Anti-personnel rockets launched from a number of
sites near the base, only to be shot down by the lasers of the
Vella Gulf
,
in orbit over the moon. Anti-ship radars and lasers tried to target the
Vella
Gulf
, only to be slagged by the ship’s counter-missile lasers as soon as
they became operational. Two additional missiles launched at the ship but were
shot down by the ship’s defenses within seconds.

As the Space Force began taking laser fire, they hunkered
down on the ridge of the crater, happy to stay under cover and shoot down into
the valley with their lasers and tridents. Although under cover, they quickly
found that they were not invulnerable as Sergeant Ed ‘Shadow’ Pesik took a
glancing laser shot, which burned a two inch hole through the arm of his suit.
As the suit started to deflate, he deftly pulled out a patch from one of his
leg pockets and slapped it into place, something the squad had practiced hundreds
of times. The adhesive on the patch melted to the suit, closing the hole and
sealing the majority of the pressurization loss. He commanded the suit’s
nanobots to finish the repair and was back in the fight, firing a line of
antimatter grenades from his trident across the laser site that shot him.

The laser site saw his movement, and it popped back up to fire
at him again. It had just reached its firing position when it was bracketed by
two grenades that were set at triple the strength of a normal hand grenade. It
was destroyed in the resulting double explosion.

Seeing the Space Force was heavily engaged, Top gave the
signal, and the Ground Force sprang into action, jumping off the edge of the
20’ high crater wall. With a running start, they could have traveled a long
distance in the reduced gravity; even from a standing start they still covered
over 50 feet in their initial leap. As they touched down in the crater floor,
they immediately bounced back up again. Each succeeding bounce had a lower
trajectory, and the squad began picking up speed. By the time they covered the
first quarter mile, they had their heads down and were into a full-on sprint.

Calvin was happy he had taken the time to do some running
over the last six months. As the squad charged ahead, he was able to keep up
with the advance, even if he did trail the other members slightly. His pride kept
him going as the squad’s speed topped 30 miles an hour. His suit continued to
scan in front of him. So far, the defenses on this side of the facility hadn’t
seen them; either they were fooled by the suit’s camouflage, or they were being
operated manually.

That changed as they got within a quarter of a mile of the
base, where some of the defenses were seismically activated and
radar-controlled. As the members of the squad stepped on pressure plates, the
pop-up lasers began deploying and firing at them, guided by a radar attached to
the weapon. Simultaneously, mines began launching into the air, where they
exploded at an altitude of about six feet. Calvin saw that it would only take
the squad 30 seconds to cover the final bit of no-man’s land, but that last
piece had a lot of defenses.

Bad Twin was the first to get hit. Whether slower than the
rest of the squad, or just unlucky, one of the lasers shot through his left leg
at the top of a bounce. As he came back down on it, the leg refused to bear his
weight, and he crashed forward to tumble to a stop. He lay motionless, although
Calvin could see on his display that he still had strong vital signs.

Seeing Bad Twin go down, the platoon’s medic, Sergeant
‘Hacksaw’ Liu, tried to go back to the wounded soldier. As he stopped his
forward motion, he was a sitting target, and the laser that brought down Bad
Twin reoriented on Hacksaw. It fired one long bolt that went through Hacksaw’s
heart. He slowly toppled over, dead before he hit the ground.

Bad Twin began to struggle to get back up, and the laser
turret started to reorient itself on the fallen soldier. Before it could do so,
his brother landed next to the turret and slashed at the wires running down the
side of it with his combat knife. Deprived of power, the turret turned off and dropped
back beneath the surface of the moon with Good Twin still on it. The cover
plate closed above him before he could get back out of the hole.

The next turret in line had chosen Havildar (Sergeant) Rajesh
Patel as its target. The radar had locked on him and he saw the turret turning
toward him. Before it could fire, he gathered himself and bounced as high as he
could. The radar continued to track him on the way up, and the laser began
firing. Although the first laser bolts missed him, each succeeding bolt got
closer and closer to him as he ascended. A bolt singed the bottom of his boots,
and then the turret hit its gimbal stops and couldn’t aim any higher. Patel did
a somersault with a twist over the top of his jump and came down behind the
turret. Drawing his knife with a flourish, he severed the cords running to the
laser, rendering it inoperable. As he stuck his knife back in his belt, the
turret dropped with him on it, and the lid closed over his head.

As Calvin was trailing the rest of the group slightly, he
was able to alter his next bounce and came down in a perfect landing next to
where Bad Twin lay. Gathering him up, he pushed off with both feet, bouncing
past the last row of lasers. Although the squad was momentarily safe, they had one
soldier dead and another injured, and they were now split up.

Calvin thought that the assault couldn’t have been going
much worse...until he heard the call about the stargate’s activation.

Bridge, TSS
Vella Gulf
, Tau Ceti System, May 25, 2019

“Gate activation,” said Steropes calmly. “The first ship is
a battlecruiser. Multiple activations...I have a second battlecruiser...now a
third battlecruiser. That appears to be it. Three battlecruisers entering the
minefield...I don’t show any shield emanations from the first! The second one’s
shields are down too!

* * * * *