All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) (21 page)

      “The 20th Armored Division will land and take up a position due north in the 100 kilometer base.
 
52nd Mechanized Division will land and assume a position due east.
 
16th Armored Division will land to the west.
 
After the 16th Armored and 52nd Mech deploy outwards to the edge of the cleared circle and open some room, the 30th Armored Division will land and orient to the southwest.
 
The 68th Mechanized Division will land and orient southeast.
 
We will put all brigades on line and advance outward with all aviation brigades’ ships leading the way.
 
All burrows will be prosecuted either by attack ships dropping plasma bombs or hand emplacing plasma bombs.

      “After we have landed all our supplies, the assault landing ships will leave for Gagarin through the ring ship, leaving their escort behind to support us.
 
They will return in a month with the 30th Mobile Corps and the 6th Marine Division to land on another continent and repeat what we did.
 
When they have landed their supplies, the Behemoths will depart once more to load the 10th Mobile Corps (Reserve) and the 8th Marine Division.
 
Once we start making progress against T’Kab, the five K’Rang corps will land on the remaining continents and start destroying burrows and queens.

      “We will perfect our techniques for clearing planets of the T’Kab here and make ourselves more efficient for clearing other worlds.
 
This will not be our only area of operation, so save your combat power when you can, but kill all the queens.

      “General Allans has experimented with demolitions of a burrow and found it dangerous and not very efficient.
 
So we are going to speed up the process, using heavy and medium attack craft.
 
The attack ships will drop precision-guided plasma bombs.
 
We will use our target designators on the burrows’ entrances to drop the bombs down the tube into the burrow.
 
The bombs are set to detonate after a two-second interval with no movement.
 
That should give us a good chance to get them as deep underground as possible before they go off, killing the queen, egg chambers and most of their soldiers and workers.

      “The K’Rang have a queen killer chemical they used 100 years back, but have not tested it yet on a current queen.
 
We are also developing a spray that should make the T’Kab think each other are dead.
 
Earth’s ants emit a scent after they die.
 
Other ants coming across a dead ant will carry a dead one away to the edge of the territory.
 
If you spray them with the scent, they will be carried off, even if they are kicking the whole way.
 
Researchers with our lead units will test their theory and gather samples to develop a chemical to use as an aerial spray against the T’Kab.

      “When all corps, Human and K’Rang, are on the ground, we will methodically kill off every burrow we find.
 
If we can kill the queens and eggs, we kill the colony.
 
Are there any questions?”

      There were none, so the room came to attention as Lieutenant General Tsien walked out, signaling for his Operations Officer, Colonel Jim Pierce, to follow him out.
 
As they left the conference room, he asked, “Jim, what are the projections for losses?”

      Colonel Pierce responded, “Sir, best case is 30 percent.
 
Worst case is 50 percent.”

      Tsien shook his head.
 
“That’s too many letters to write.
 
Let’s hope to hell they find that damn navigation console so we can call this thing off.”

Chapter Eleven

      Captain M’Taso lifted ship again, as she was in danger of being overwhelmed by T’Kab soldiers moving up from the valley floor towards her.
 
She had been lying out in the sun upwind of her ship, trying to escape the still clinging stench of rotting flesh on board.
 
She and two other crewmembers had moved to a bushy, rocky outcropping overlooking the valley floor and were lying in the sun.
 
One of the crew let out a startled snarl as a set of powerful, razor-sharp mandibles appeared above the cliff edge.

      The captain drew her side arm and sent a plasma blast through the leading T’Kab scout’s head, causing it to lose its grip and tumble down 300 feet to the valley below.
 
She looked down the cliff face to see two more T’Kab almost to the top and dozens more scaling the wall.
 
She and the two crewmembers sprinted for the ship, occasionally stopping to let loose a barrage of plasma charges at the pursuing T’Kab.
 
She made it to the ramp just in time, as the engineer was winding up the engines and about to retract the ramp.

      As she pulled the ship up and around she had her bottom turret open up on those clinging to the cliff.
 
The plasma rounds incinerated the assault force, leaving none to report back on sighting her ship.
 
She noted once again the intensified effort to find her ship.
 
The main effect they were having was keeping her reduced crew from getting proper rest.
 
She considered a number of drastic actions:
 
calling down and transferring to the Human scout and destroying her ship, setting the ship on the bottom of one of the oceans, or reaching orbit, transferring the crew to the Human scout and sending the ship into the local star.
 
None of these seemed the right course of action at this time, but she could not allow the annihilation fleet to get her ship by catching them unawares.

      She decided to continue to seek out the spectral signature of her navigation and communications consoles.
 
Surely her sensors were capable of isolating the alloys of her consoles from the background clutter.
 
She decided to quarter and re-quarter the area where she had originally landed, in hopes of detecting their spectral signature.

      She started at high altitude then corkscrewed down through the atmosphere, holding at each 3,000 meters of altitude for a complete pass over the target area.
 
Normally this would be a risky move in the face of any enemy with aerospace defense capability, but as of yet the T’Kab had not displayed such a capability.
 
When she was 6,000 meters above ground level, she broke off the survey and flew off to their next hide position.

      Captain M’Taso and her entire crew analyzed the collected data for any evidence of the missing components.
 
It was a half-asleep sensor operator that solved the puzzle.
 
The T’Kab had hidden the consoles in a cave under a cliff.
 
He only saw it when he dropped off to sleep and jerked back up in just time for their ship to have the right grazing angle to look under the granite roof of the cave and see the active sensor’s beam reflecting from the console alloy.
 
He ran the file over and over to ensure he was not dreaming and called his supervisor over to confirm.

      Cheers rang out on the bridge when the word was passed to Captain M’Taso.
 
Now she knew where the console was.
 
How was she to retrieve it?
 
The answer would come from Connie Cortez.

* * * * *

      Mary Chen and her operations officer stepped onto the lower deck of the Orion and asked permission to come aboard.
 
Connie reached forward to shake Mary’s hand and that of her operations officer and told her to come with her.
 
They followed Connie to her cabin and stepped inside to see three K’Rang Shadow Warriors.
 
Mary hesitated for only a second, but the K’Rang noticed.

      “Please excuse my hesitation, but I am slowly getting used to our alliance.
 
It will not affect my carrying out my duty.”

      The female officer said, “Do not worry, Lieutenant Colonel Chen, we have the same difficulties at times, but we are getting used to it, and often wonder why we were so hostile before.”

      Connie introduced Mary to Captain M’Taso, Connie’s K’Rang liaison officer Shadow Leader J’Nol, and his translator Shadow Technician N’Tan.
 
Mary introduced her operations officer, Major Wright.

      “Captain M’Taso, would you brief us on your search and discovery?”

      The K’Rang captain rose from her seat and moved to the main screen.

      “We have conducted numerous searches to try and locate our navigation and communication consoles taken from my ship by the T’Kab. On our last sensor run we turned at just the right place and our sensor was able to receive a reflection off of the specific alloys comprising the casing to our consoles.
 
It seems the T’Kab have stored the consoles under a rock outcropping over a large cave scoured under the outcropping by the adjacent river in flood stage.
 
There is a large flat open area next to the outcropping and we think the T’Kab plan to land a courier ship on the flat, load the consoles, and return with the consoles to their home world.
 
That would be disastrous for all our people.”

      Mary stood, walked to the large screen display, and studied the image.

      “Have you seen any indications of guards or fortifications?”

      “No, and that has us worried.
 
We don’t think the T’Kab have dismantled the consoles.
 
Unhooking it and removing it was easy, but dismantling it requires special tools they don’t have access to.
 
The console also has a self-destruct mechanism that blanks the memory if worked on without special tools only available at Shadow Fleet depots.”

      Mary stepped away from the image.
 
“There may be guards or other measures to keep us from flying in there and snatching it back.
 
How do we find those out before they blow up in our faces?”

      Captain M’Taso said, “I can find out.
 
It may take me a few days, but I can find out.
 
I crept and crawled around the T’Kab for days before I got my ship back.
 
Across the riverbed is a continuation of the rock that the outcropping is made from.
 
I will hide in and among the rocks and watch it for a couple of days, sneak out, and tell you.”

      “An admirable offer captain, but we can’t afford to lose you.
 
I have recon specialists that can do it just as well.
 
They can set up cameras to beam the signal up here.
 
It will be virtually as if you were there.
 
We have micro-drones we can send in and search for tripwires and booby traps, including inside the consoles.
 
I see three days to sneak in and observe, put all our special sensors in place, and return.
 
We’ll have continuous monitoring as we plan our raid and execute it.
 
Have you plotted out the nearest burrows?”

      Captain M’Taso waved her paw before the display and the view switched to map mode, “The nearest burrows are here, here, and here.”
 
She pointed to one burrow about 50 meters off, and two about 80 kilometers off to the south and southwest.

      “How fast are these T’Kab?
 
If we hit this burrow here close by, how long will it take for them to reinforce?” asked Mary.

      Captain M’Taso replied, “They can move about ten to twenty kilometers per hour.
 
So it would be four to eight hours before they could arrive, but unless you hit them at night, the T’Kab that are out foraging will hit you within minutes.
 
There could be hundreds or thousands out looking for food.”

      The wheels turned in Mary’s head as she figured how to retrieve the consoles without taking heavy losses.

* * * * *

      The Civilization’s fast courier ship cautiously boosted into the fifth world’s system.
 
Nothing appeared on her sensor sweep of the system, but evidence of life on the designated planet was abundant and clouded her sensors.
 
Sensors swept forward, looking for anything out of the ordinary and found nothing.
 
The courier ship oriented for a sun synchronous orbit and started calling to the surface for a landing site.

      In a few minutes a transmission came back authorizing a landing and the coordinates for the landing.
 
The courier ship pitched 180 degrees so that the rear of the ship was facing forward and fired thrusters to slow the ship and drop lower in the atmosphere.
 
After a couple of thruster firings, the ship pitched so as to face forward again and made a controlled spiral glide down until a few thousand meters above ground level.
 
As it leveled off at 10,000 meters altitude and 20 kilometers distance, prepared to line up and land at the designated spot, the S’Kauf appeared behind it, shot it out of the sky, and climbed up and away.

      The senior sentient queen knew nothing of this and waited along with twenty workers and the consoles for the ship to arrive.
 
From her position under the outcropping she had no view of the sky, so thought nothing as she heard the whining of engines coming in for a landing.
 
The thrusters of the settling ship blew up a dust cloud that completely obscured the landing site and the area under the outcropping.
 
As the ship settled on its landing struts, the engines continued to blow up dust.
 
When the dust finally settled, the queen found herself facing, not representatives from the civilization, but the S’Kauf and fifty bipedal creatures bristling with weapons.
 
Their weapons made no sound and she saw the workers with her drop dead where they stood.
 
She was not killed, but stunned with a ray and lost consciousness instantly.
 
Gravity sleds slid under the two consoles and the queen, and were hurriedly loaded into the S’Kauf.
 
The ship waited for the two Marines from across the water feature, loaded the fifty Marine raiding party, and blasted up into a high orbit, rendezvousing with the Orion.