All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) (30 page)

      After a few days of complaints from the not so smart commanders about unfair hogging of the simulators, Division Operations allocated simulators more equally.
 
This meant days of nothing to do because their equipment was 600 kilometers above their heads.
 
Ingrid and Brad took advantage of their mutual days off to wander the nearby government forest preserve, seeking solitude and to be away from the military for a day.
 
They hiked into the forest to hilltop overlooks or hidden streams and luxuriated in each other’s company.
 
These were idyllic days that they knew would not last.
 
They knew the terrain.
 
They were learning the enemy.
 
All they needed to know was when, and they felt that information would not be held from them much longer.

      One day, after they had gone swimming and were lying on big flat rocks like lizards sunning, Brad rolled over on top of her, holding his weight off her on his knees and elbows.
 
He looked into her eyes and said, “Ingrid, it was the happiest day for me when you said yes, but we need to decide on a date.
 
I’ve been wrestling with myself over whether to get married now or after this campaign.
 
It sort of depends on how big a ceremony you want to have.

      “I checked with the chaplain and he says it requires a local license from the county outside the gate and that usually takes a week.
 
He said any chaplain of any denomination could marry us, but we could pick any available chaplain.
 
This is the small wedding option.

      “The large wedding option would have to wait until we get back from this campaign.
 
It’s just too hard to plan anything with the balloon ready to go up any day.
 
Darling, it’s your choice.
 
Either is all right with me as long as you become my wife.”

      He rolled over onto his back, staring at the clear blue sky above the trees and waited while she pondered his question.

      She rolled over onto his side, her leg draped over his, and said, “Let’s wait and have the small ceremony after we return.
 
I know we both will be just fine.
 
There is no one I want to be there that doesn’t live within 30 kilometers of the base.
 
If I’m not your wife while I’m in combat, I won’t yearn for you as much.
 
I know it will only be by a minuscule amount, but any bit will help.”

      Brad stood and helped her up.
 
They dressed, gathered their things and walked hand in hand out of the forest.

* * * * *

      Candy stood off the ethics officer with the State Department regulation on honoraria, awards, and gifts.
 
Her office walls were lined with bookcases full of hundreds of years of common and specialty law.
 
She knew most of them by heart.
 
Behind her was a window with an expansive view overlooking the northern mountain range.

      She opened her copy and read from it.
 
“‘Awards granted by the host nation are to be considered honorary and may grant no title or boon to the recipient beyond the symbolic.
 
The awards can have no intrinsic value to the host nation.’
 
The order of the B’Notil award is most definitely of little intrinsic or any value to the K’Rang.
 
K’Rang children skip flamestones across the water larger than this one.
 
I can show you a paved drive here in the capital using flamestones as filler.”

      “But ma’am, that stone on Earth would fetch over 750,000 credits.”

      “But nothing, we are not on Earth.”

      “Ma’am, I must insist that you turn the sash with decoration over to me for safekeeping.
 
You may have it back on two days advance notice.”

      Candy stood up and glowered down at her and said, “Insist all you want.
 
There is my door.
 
Put yourself on the other side of it.”

      The ethics officer arose from her chair and sneered, “You leave me no choice.
 
I will have to take this up with the ambassador.”

      Candy walked back around her desk, opened her safe, deposited the sash, and locked the safe.
 
She looked back over her shoulder and said, “Aren’t the two pendants I turned over to you pretty enough baubles for you to play with?
 
Go right ahead take it up with the ambassador.
 
He agrees with my opinion.
 
Now get out.”

      Candy never had a good feeling about this ethics officer.
 
There was something not quite right about her.
 
She loved lording it over all the embassy staff.
 
She would charge people with the most minuscule ethics violations, even when obviously unintentional.
 
To top that off, she regularly misquoted or improperly used the regulation to get her own way.
 
She beat out a rival to a prime office by trumping up an ethics investigation that lasted only long enough for her to beat him out for the office, then the investigation was mysteriously resolved in his favor.
 
Candy was going to keep an eye on her.

* * * * *

      The captive sentient queen was becoming despondent and listless.
 
No amount of food or stimulants could help bring her back from what was almost certainly a death spiral into oblivion.
 
The doctors in charge of the research station were faced with a dilemma:
 
do they keep her until she died and gain the most physiological data possible, or do they deliver her to the T’Kab home world to teach her communications skills to the T’Kab so that there might be a common language?
 
Doctor Hammond McDunn, the human head of the facility, knew this was too big a decision to make on his own, so contacted some associates in Defense and State to determine what to do.

      As time was of the essence, a joint Defense-State human and Angaerry panel met on Earth, while the K’Rang equivalent met on G’Durin to determine the best course of action.
 
The military had no further need of her, but cautioned that she could have learned more than she let on.
 
State was on the side of carrying a message to the T’Kab leader in an attempt to negotiate a peaceful solution.
 
Dr. McDunn killed that notion by informing them that the T’Kab word for the bipedals was ‘food’.
 
No amount of reasoning with the queen changed that thought.
 
The final consensus for what to do with her was to try to keep her alive, to communicate with the T’Kab after the home world was subdued.

* * * * *

      Evan Gardner had been ordered back to Antares Station at best possible speed.
 
He ordered the Vengeful to make a high speed run to the nearest gate and then to the station above Armstrong.
 
While they ran at top speed through empty space, he took time to see if he could find that movie that he thought the rasping screeching electronic noise they heard above the T’Kab home world was in.
 
He just had a few more movies to go when he came across one about early hackers that wormed their way onto classified networks in the early days of computers.

      He watched a few minutes, fast-forwarded, watched a few more minutes and repeated.
 
He was on his fifth repetition when he heard it.
 
It was the same electronic screech, but what was it?
 
He ran the video backwards and started again.
 
This time the main character, a young man, explained to his girlfriend about hacking.
 
He used a primitive modem over an analog telephone line to send a signal containing an alphanumeric code.
 
Evan keyed his communicator and asked Petty Officer Jensen and her chief to join him in his cabin.

      Within minutes, Jensen and Chief Starling knocked on his cabin door, He told them to come in and had his main screen showing the movie.

      “Come in, you two.
 
I want you to hear something.”

      They sat down and watched the scene start with the young man and girl rushing into his bedroom.
 
Chief Starling looked at the Captain and asked if this was one of those kinds of movies, which got him a dirty look.

      “Just watch the movie, Chief.”

      They sat at a desk and the boy typed a lot.
 
Then they heard it.
 
It was the same electronic screeching noise heard from the T’Kab home world.
 
Jensen heard it, but didn’t know what it meant until the boy explained to his girlfriend it was a modem communicating over an analog landline.
 
What they were hearing was a digital signal translated to communicate over an analog line.

      Chief Starling understood right away.
 
All they needed to do was figure out what modem speed it was, determine the protocol being used, and they could read all the data the T’Kab were sending.
 
Even if their data was encrypted, it had to be so primitive they could probably break it easily.

      Evan tasked Chief Starling with sending messages to the Virulent, which replaced them in the T’Kab home world surveillance mission, and to Antares Base on their discovery.
 
He had Jensen review their data to determine if there were any signals of interest or if it was just T’Kab civilians sharing bipedal recipes.

* * * * *

      Vice Admiral Conover and Lieutenant General Tsien were back from their briefing at the Fleet Operations Directorate, where they had laid out their plan for the invasion of the T’Kab home world.
 
It was similar to their invasion of M’Taso’s world, but more linear in its execution.
 
Because the home world T’Kab weren’t burrow dwellers, they would not have to worry about all-around defense so much that it made the mission impossible to execute.

      Admiral Conover called in all the operations chiefs from the subordinate units and briefed them on the approved plan.
 
When the operations officers were all finally present, physically or virtually, he began.

      “The 5th Battle Fleet, reinforced by the K’Rang 10th Task Force and the Angaerry 2nd Flotilla, will enter the T’Kab home world system and prepare the battlespace.
 
Target folders on all military and military-related targets are being prepared and prioritized for bombardment and attack. We will destroy or neutralize as much as we can.

      “The 1st Space Landing Task Force, consisting of five Behemoth-class Assault Transport ships, will bring in the 5th Mobile Corps.
 
The 1st Assault Landing Group will carry the 3rd Assault Landing Division.
 
Their bombardment capable ships will join in the initial bombardment of the planet.
 
The Behemoths, with their ten bombardment mounts, will play a large part in this effort.

       
“The K’Rang and Angaerry ships will protect from any forces coming to the home world’s aid from the so-called guard worlds.
 
They will destroy any forces within their capability and provide early warning of any large forces moving in.

      “The 1st Assault Landing Group will land Major General Allans’ special operations battalion to seize the major spaceport on the outskirts of the capital city, fortify it and hold for the 3rd Assault Landing Division to follow.
 
The 3rd will come in and widen the bridgehead so that the 1st Space Landing Task Force can land Lieutenant General Tsien’s five divisions.
 
They will push out with the 20th Armored Division, 52nd Mechanized Division, and the 16th Armored Division to capture the capital city and lock it down.
 
The remaining 16th Armored Division and the 30th Mechanized Division will push out north and west of the city, respectively, to hold off potential T’Kab reinforcements and seize two other spaceports in the outskirts.

      “On day three, a K’Rang Unified Force with five combined commands will land at the spaceport to the north, organize, and attack in that direction to assault a series of major military facilities, to include airfields, military barracks, and supply depots.
 
The new commanders should be on the ground and up in space by then, commanding the 6th Fleet and the 6th Army, with the 6th Fleet commander in overall command.
 
The 7th Light Corps’ three divisions will land and garrison the capital, relieving the 5th Mobile Corps, who will move west to join up with the 68th Mechanized Division.
 
The 20th will rejoin the corps from the north.
 
They will attack west from the city, seizing several key military facilities along the way, destroying any major forces encountered, with the ultimate objective of seizing the T’Kab second largest city 500 kilometers distant and opening a new bridgehead.

      “On day ten, the 28th Maneuver Support Command will land and assume responsibility for the initial bridgehead at the first spaceport.
 
That will release the Marines back to their assault-landing group and back into space.
 
All Marine divisions will form the operational reserve and conduct bridgehead seizures for new corps and operational forces landing or for existing units hopscotching ahead.
 
They also will be on order to be reassigned once the 8th Marine Expeditionary Force arrives by day 17, with its three divisions.
 
The 3rd Assault Landing Division and any other Marine divisions will chop to the 8th Marine Expeditionary Force at that time.