SODIUM:5 Assault (12 page)

On the day of the launch I paced the bridge with purpose. I had clashed with my planners repeatedly when I attempted to micro-manage the missions. It was their specialty, not mine, and I needed to give them the space they required to make the missions a success. Again, the adrenaline was flowing through my veins giving the medical computer in my suit a workout. I had prohibited the calming agents that it would have normally administered.

Word soon came that the teams were ready and the Starburst was directed at the cube from the opposite side of the Por Hollis system. As it screamed towards the cube the massive machine began to glow and spin. The cube next moved rapidly towards the incoming Starburst module and for a moment we feared that the Starburst would not activate in time. Hidden in the Starburst cone were a dozen Drillers.

As the cube sped towards the Starburst our Marines were launched to begin their 26 day drift. I was soon thinking of the first times we had used the tactic when fighting the Kurtz so many years before. So much had happened since that fateful day when I had been taken captive. Billions of people had passed-on due to the ensuing wars and famine, the Earth had undergone tremendous upheavals and the Human Empire spanned five star systems with eight populated planets, although one of the planets had become uninhabitable.

With only a half second left the Starburst activated and the dozen Drillers following behind slipped inside the protection of its cone. When the orange field came in contact with the overcompensated black holes of the cone, its affect was nullified. Moments later the Drillers were loose inside the giant shield.

The great cube of Black Pearl ships continued to spin as it turned back towards the Por Hollis factories and planets. One of the Drillers had been equipped with a QE comm pair and we all watched intently on our monitors as it ripped into the first ship and began to gut it. Ten minutes later it left the ship and continued on to another. From the data we were receiving it appeared that all 12 Drillers were doing exactly what they were designed to do.

As soon as the second dozen ships were infected the massive cube countered our attack. The dozen already gutted ships along with the newly infested ones were ejected from the matrix, out into space beyond the shielding of the orange glow. When the first Driller exited its newly gutted ship and headed back towards the cube it was summarily destroyed by the brilliant orange shield.

Our attack at first appeared to have been wildly successful. But again our enemies learned fast and quickly countered any success we had. I wondered if we had wasted a first strike strategy in our attempt to occupy our enemy’s attention. Had we waited and attacked with 50,000 Starbursts and half a million Drillers would we have been able to successfully defeat the cube before the ejection strategy was brought into play? It was a question that would never have an answer.

Our Marine squads had been adrift for more than three weeks. I pulled Zack's QE comm up on my monitor and we talked to pass the time. I did not want to admit it, but the time I had spent with him ignited a bit of the old flame. He was happily married and I would do nothing to break that up, but it felt good to once again have a few stirrings of those feelings. It was something that had been sorely missing in my life.

As the days of drifting continued I spent time reviewing my command structure and handing out promotions. Two new fleets were heading our way and the repairs of our damaged ships were nearly complete. I was a bit uneasy with the upgrades we were doing to the Borten ships. I wanted them involved in the fight so they could also lay claim to being a valued member of the HE.

But the Borten were a race that I did not trust. Their leader seemed too eager to please which told me he would easily sell out to the highest bidder. I didn't want our own technologies to be used against us if the Borten once again decided to change sides. With the power of the cube it was a risk we were going to have to live with. The Por Hollis looked to have a formidable force and we would need whatever firepower we could muster. Even if some of it was only to be used as cannon fodder.

I sat in my chair contemplating the world and all the events that swirled around us. My elbow was set on the chair arm and a balled fist stuck up under my chin. My muscular face had its usual scowl on it as my staff walked hurriedly past. The waiting game was the worst.

The BGS team assaulting the space factory was the first to arrive. The 13 members of FT184 were soon on-board the massive floating factory with orders to shut it down. When word came that they had all landed without incident an entire fleet’s contingent of Marines was ordered to follow. It would be another 26 days before they arrived, but with the immense size of the structure the planners felt a full out assault was needed.

I watched on my monitor as Master Sergeant Eric Von Pelt led his team at the space factory through bulkhead after bulkhead. They were attempting to move as deeply into the factory as they could before beginning any hostilities. His thoughts while drifting inward were that it might be easier, psychologically, to fight their way out rather than fight their way in. The risk was equally as high either way.

When they drifted through the 14th bulkhead they came into a cavernous assembly area. It spanned 12 kilometers and was easily two kilometers high by 20 kilometers long. At least 18 Black Pearl ships were in various stages of construction on the line. My staff was going nuts with the volume of intel coming in on our screens. Plans on how best to shut the line down were immediately put in the works.

The Black Pearls were constructed starting with a rigid frame that resembled the lines on a basketball. Six large tubes ran from the surface to the center of the ship, supported by the framework. Thousands of human sized robots were busy welding and otherwise riveting the framework together.

At the second stage of production the innermost sections of the ship were being assembled. We reasoned that it was the power source and control works for the continuous black hole that would at some point be active in its containment field.

As the ships moved down the line entire sections were moved in and integrated, again by thousands of worker robots. At the final stage of assembly the ship received the gloss black skin plating that had given it its name.

When fully assembled, the ship was moved into a chamber with a massive door. The order soon went out to investigate the chamber at the earliest possible time. If the chamber was where the ship received its continuous black hole it would be a critical point for an assault. Without the black hole the Black Pearls were nothing but another piece of space junk.

When Von Pelt and his team drifted through the next bulkhead they were in a chamber full of supplies. They used the opportunity to change directions towards the final chamber. Several minutes later they were drifting into area with the newest one kilometer Black Pearl.

With another BHD micro-burst they were soon inside the ship and powering down their active skins to their normal combat level. The outer rooms of the Black Pearls appeared to be lined with thousands of stasis chambers. Two person teams were soon put together and sent down corridors in opposite directions. The teams made their way through the ship, mapping rooms as they went.

It took nearly half an hour before the first team made it to the innermost control room. My planners became concerned that there were no other beings on-board the newly constructed vessel. And for that matter, we still had yet to see exactly what a Por Hollis looked like.

The team was busy analyzing the control panels in the room when the great ship began to vibrate and shudder. One of the displays in the room showed the exterior of the ship where a blue glow was beginning to move as little fingers across the glossy black surface. The fingers soon turned into arcs and the team was ordered to set their BGS suits back to full.

The blue arcs turned to green flames and the green flames soon after into orange bolts that were being pushed into the six magnetically shielded conduits that we had seen being installed at the first stage of the assembly line. The orange bolts continued to grow in intensity until they became a continuous field of blinding orange plasma.

The stats on our team’s suits began to show that their shield levels were rising and at the same time power was being drained from their power-packs at an alarming rate. Von Pelt ordered the team to micro-burst out before things got worse.

The orange glow continued to intensify and the ship continued to shake. Seconds later the team exited the ship into the sealed chamber surrounding it. Just as they were about to reach the wall of the chamber a bright white light shot out from it towards the ship. Their suit parameters shot to full and in an instant they were vaporized. The glow turned white hot. With one final burst the white plasma was sucked down the conduits into the black hole containment chamber. Another squad of 13 brave Marines had perished.

We had 310,000 BGS Marines adrift, heading for the factory. Again, the days of waiting were agonizing. The factory was as big in volume as a small moon, only spread out over a wide flattened area. On one end the stream of construction resources were continuously ferried in while on the other end the Black Pearl ships floated out, soon joining the ever expanding matrix.

When the Marines arrived at the factory they drifted aboard without incident. The orders were to avoid the plasma chamber and to instead seek out the power sources that kept the vast factory running. With the headcount aboard the space factory we hoped to be shutting it down within the hour. That's when plans changed.

The Marine teams had high yield explosive devices with them that could be placed, with timed detonators, in the areas needed to stop the production. Then, depending on the intel received from the planet’s surface, they would be diverted to the planet or sent floating back into space for eventual pickup. I watched the video feed on my monitor as a squad planted and armed an ED with the timer set for 16 hours.

Zack's team, in position on the planet's surface, was asked for a briefing as soon as possible. They would be arriving at the first spaceport just after nightfall. First, they would drift below the planet's surface where they would fire micro-bursts with their BHDs. They would then make their way into the nearest spaceport to begin their recon mission. If the spaceport proved a worthy target the BGS battalion would be redirected for an assault.

As the mission progressed I soon found myself pacing back and forth on the bridge, the current video feed was broadcast to the mammoth screen for the entire deck. Our squads were moving about at will, undetected by our foe. We had yet to see an alien being. Everything was being run by autonomous robots.

When Zack's team reached the spaceport my heart was racing from the excitement. Our first looks again revealed only the mechanized workers moving about. The spaceport was a mine and the robotic workers were busy loading containers of some sort of ore onto a waiting vessel. A quick analysis told us that the planet was nothing more than a giant mine with its resources being used by the space factory to build the Black Pearls.

The mission was once again changed and the Marines at the factory were given new orders. They would remove all the EDs that had been planted and store them in empty rooms near the plasma chambers. One squad would remain in the factory at each of the observed 38 assembly lines. They were given the task of planting an ED on each new Black Pearl that was produced.

The reasoning was that if we could detonate the EDs on the Black Pearls while under attack, it might give us a brief advantage, an advantage that could be used for either an attempted assault or a hasty retreat. With the new mission underway, two squads were sent back into the factory to continue recon while the remaining Marines drifted safely off towards a pickup point. Zack and his squad would remain on the planet’s surface investigating the mines.

When the first Black Pearl arrived in the plasma chamber we waited nervously for the cycle to be complete. When finished, the Marine squad would drift aboard, plant the device and then slip out again. As an added method for gathering intel the first ED was equipped with a camera and QE comm. We would be watching whatever happened on what we believed was the bridge of the vessel for signs of an alien pilot.

Moments before the first ship launched our video device offered a clue as to who the pilots were. It was the same utility robots that moved about the factory and down in the mines of the planet. They were similar to those of the Kurtz only each had six legs and moved about like a spider. Each leg was multi-jointed and each joint had appendages that offered varying types of tools. The main body was a thin black tube.

Because of the obvious similarities we began to refer to the six legged robots as spiders. The first Black Pearl had a contingent of eight spiders operating various stations on the bridge. After what we assumed was a system’s check, a gigantic door opened into space and the ship moved out to join the others.

As we watched the Black Pearl pull away on our monitors I took note of the single green blip on-board. The squad leader reported in that a split second decision had been made to send one Marine out with the first ship. The hope was that he would be able to drift from ship to ship once inside the orange glow of the matrix. It was a recon opportunity that some on my staff had recommended and when the squad leader asked for volunteers several Marines had jumped at the chance.

Corporal Morris was soon exploring the ship with his BGS set to a level that provided gravity, but kept him from being detected. I was ever-so-happy to have a team of staffers who sometimes thought outside the box. With every new encounter my confidence in them grew.

As the staff focused on Corporal Morris I turned my attentions back to Zack and his squad. Under each spaceport were a series of tunnels. Zack and his team split into two units with one taking the leftmost tunnel and Zack's sub-squad taking the one on the right.

The tunnels themselves were nothing more than tubes that had been hollowed out from solid rock. Zack's team began their journey down a tunnel with the knowledge that the other end of it was more than two kilometers away, and almost 1,500 meters underground. I watched as the team did a micro-burst to send themselves drifting down the tube.

The rock was similar to granite with the occasional marbling of quartz. As they drifted along one of the Marines asked for the attention of the others. They were moving through a quartz vein that had a thick seam of gold in it that stretched on for nearly half a kilometer. The seam alone would have at one time been worth billions of Dollars on Earth. But those days were long behind us.

Shiny trinkets were of little value to a race that was under expansion. Gold was a luxury item and man had gone through such a transition from the years of war, that those luxuries were no longer so highly sought after. But one day the war would be over and societies and cultures would turn back towards their norms. I was sure there some Human that was monitoring the broadcast and was taking notes of locations... all of course for future reference.

Just before reaching the end of the tunnel the team performed another micro-burst, bringing them to a stop. With their BGS suits on minimum for the final hundred meters, they made their way on foot. When they reached the tunnel end it opened into a vast underground chamber. A quick scan told that the planet had huge deposits of Rubidium ore.

Chatter picked up between our science teams as the Rubidium find was dissected. Further information was needed from the space factory to determine just how it was being used. If for the creation of the black hole it was something that we desperately needed to know.

Soon after their observation had begun the team dropped into the chamber as an ore car was heading towards their tube. With the light gravity setting of their BGS suits they drifted slowly to the floor of the chamber. Once down they scrambled for a safe area as the spiders were drilling and using gravity pulses to break up the ore, followed by an ore car which swept along pulling the ore up into its hold.

As the team moved towards the safety of a distant granite area an ore car moved backwards unexpectedly. The last Marine in the squad was caught off-guard and quickly pinned to a wall. Before he could set his BGS to full his active skin was overwhelmed and his power pack compromised.

The sudden explosion that occurred sent ore flying in all directions and drew the attention of the spiders. As the remainder of Zack's team made their way to safety the spiders swarmed the area of the explosion. But there was nothing to find as the compromised power-pack incinerated the Marine and everything within close proximity.

The spiders were soon back to work mining ore. With nothing else to see the order was given and Zack and his team moved behind a rock pile before micro-bursting back towards the tunnel. Seconds later they were on their way back to the surface.

The second team reported similar results and joined back up with Zack's team on the planet's surface. From there they burst back towards the space factory to once again meet up with the other Marines. They would be sent out into the factory with the mission of determining what the Rubidium was used for.

With our recon of the Por Hollis factory well underway I turned my attention towards the politics of the day. The Borten were pushing hard for recognition as a superior species who would once again claim dominion over the Kurtz. A meeting was called and I stepped in immediately to offer my opinion as an edict.

The Humans would stand as the superior race, but only by vote in the Council of Governance. Each sentient species would receive five positions on the council with the Humans always maintaining one more seat than half. As it stood, the new council would be made up of five Borten representatives, five Kurtz, five Barhoo and 16 Humans. There were grumbles, but it was the new law of the land and as such all would abide by it.

We continued to allow most of the decisions within each member species to be made at their local level. But it was my intent to slowly introduce Human laws and Human concepts to each member with the underlying purpose being a smooth transition to an elected way of governance. The royal family hierarchies that had existed within the Kurtz and Borten peoples would slowly be pushed towards democracy.

As the meeting was coming to an end I had the sudden urge to rename our fledgling empire. The Human Empire had been a spur of the moment call while trying to impress on the Kurtz that they were a part of something bigger, something stronger than the Frekkin Empire. But the name had always bothered me in that at some point it might cause contention amongst our non-human members.