Talosian Chronicles 3: Talosian Alliance (21 page)

Scotty then took his turn. “We will make a full combat assault and forced landing in the starboard landing bay when you blow the command access lock. Titan will use an armor discharge to stun the people in the bay, and we will combat rush for the armory and weapons control room. We will split in the maglev tube, and proceed from there. All personnel we encounter will be stunned.”

“Good luck, Scotty,” Reaper replied.

“Bohica! You too, Titan out.”

The Adonis was indeed suspicious. The Marine assault shuttles were cloaked, but the Adonis Computer still recognized their IFF transponders. Senior Captain Tomakin narrowed his eyes when he saw the screen on the main bridge. “XO, what do you make of this?”

The Executive Officer looked at the screen and frowned. “Sir, the Prometheus did say that they had moved out to carry out some training drills. However, they did not tell us that they were going to be staging a training assault on us."

“Let the Admiral know what’s going on. I’m calling Serena and ask her what the hell’s going on,” Tomakin said. “Comms, get me the Prometheus.”

The XO turned to his own comms while the Captain awaited his call.

“Sir, I have Commander Serena on the channel for you,” the Comms officer replied.

The Captain nodded, and opened his comm. “Commander, this is Tomakin. What’s with the assault shuttles approaching my stern?”

“Oh, sorry, Tomakin. When we scheduled the combat drills for our fighters, this was supposed to be added. I take it you didn’t get the word?” Serena lied. "They won’t actually be boarding you. It’s only a deployment exercise. Later today, we’re going to be using the full Marine complement to stage a ‘mock assault’ on the station itself. I’ll have my operations officer send you the whole ops outline."

“I would really appreciate it. The Admiral won’t be happy when he finds out about this,” Tomakin replied.

“Damned right he won’t!” Belirus said as he walked onto the bridge. “What’s go on over there? Not telling someone about this shit is a good way to get someone killed, Commander!”

“Why would it get someone killed, Admiral? You knew the origin of the forces in question, I could see stunning people, but why use live weapons when you know the other side is only training,” Serena asked, innocently.

“Are you questioning my authority, Commander?” Belirus said, belligerently. “Since you haven’t been back to Talos in a while, I’ll over look your insubordination this time, but from now on remember who you’re talking to! Now, send the operations schedule before we start blowing your ships out of space!” The angry Admiral turned off the channel with the Captain’s chair controls.

“Not that she isn’t a stupid bitch, but why are you so pissed off, Belirus?” Tomakin asked. “Am I missing something here?”

Belirus sighed, but nodded. “Commander Serena is a lot of things, Tomakin, but a stupid bitch isn’t one of them. She has extensive combat experience, and can be a very cunning opponent. She also isn’t the type of leader that would overlook making sure all commands receive her training schedule.”

“I’m not trying to argue with you, Sir, but you said it yourself; she has been out for a long time. That much combat can change a person,” Tomakin suggested.

“I can appreciate that, Toma. It may very well be exactly what the case is this time as well. But, considering the political situation, and the fact that we haven’t heard a peep out of Amaraliss or his aide, I guess I’m just getting a little edgy.” He took a deep breath, and let it out, in order to calm himself.

“Let’s just play it safe. Double the guard in Engineering and make sure they are in their armor. Have we detected any other strange stuff near the ship?” Belirus asked.

Tomakin shook his head. “No Sir, other than the assault shuttles, everything else is going according to the information we have already received. Oh, uh, our drones have been temporarily disabled on the station. They are working on the control systems for the station drones.”

“When did that happen?” Belirus asked.

“Hmm,” Tomakin said and pulled up his log. “About two hours ago. Since then, they have had several starts and stops. It all looks completely routine."

The Admiral looked troubled. “I don’t like it.” He stared at the screen for a few minutes. “I don’t like this at all.” He looked at the communications officer. “Has there been any word from Minister Amaraliss?”

The comm officer just shook his head. “No Sir, but that is not unusual for this time of day. He normally doesn’t contact us until just before the changeover; around eighteen hundred.” The man paused. “Would you like me to try to contact his aide, Sir?”

Belirus knew that if all was going according to plan, Amaraliss’ aide, should be trying to take control of the Star Dancer AI, and would be unavailable. He shook his head. “No, we'll wait until tonight. If we still don’t hear from either one by then, we’ll know something’s wrong. Did we receive a confirmation from the rest of the fleet?”

“Yes Sir,” the man replied. “I sent the notification to your aide.”

“Very good, carry on,” Belirus said. He stood beside his Flag Commander for a few more minutes before turning to go back to his office. He had just about made it to the door, when all hell broke loose on the bridge.

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R
aptor Officer Paul Ost made sure the Marines behind him were ready, then entered his override code into the engineering access lock. This was the hard part. The lock would have to cycle to allow the entrance of the Marines. The lock itself wasn’t large enough to let them all in at once, so it would have to go through two full cycles before the whole team would be inside.

Paul knew that his override code would not trip the access notification in the main computer system, but he wasn’t pleased with the amount of time it would take to get the whole team inside. If they were seen cycling through the lock, they would be in trouble, as an alarm would be raised. He also knew that his teammate, Jean was doing the same thing on the other side of the ship.

Once the first group of the Marines were through the lock, four of them would run forward and cover the two access points into the area. The heavy door slowly opened, and Paul stepped in, leading the first group of Marines into the lock. They were packed in back to front as the slow system closed the outer hatch and refilled the small cabin with oxygen. When the inner hatch cycled open, Paul had a moment’s panic as two technicians were standing there looking at the Marines like they were aliens.

One of Paul’s Marines held his hand up to his helmet in the universal ‘Shh’ motion. The two techs grinned and nodded. The Marine quietly moved up to the two and cracked his helmet open. He spoke in Talosian to the two smiling men.

“Please don’t say anything. We are doing an assault exercise. You are both to be considered ‘casualties’. Please sit down and relax. We’ll let you know when you can resume your duties.”

“We’re sorry, Marine, we didn’t know you were coming. Sit right here?” one of them asked, pointing to the floor.

“Yes please. Casualties don’t move around very much, they also don’t answer comms,” the Marine replied, and the two techs laughed and sat down at the edge of the corridor. They said they understood and would remain silent until told otherwise. The Marine gave them two ration packs and a bottle of water. “We don’t want you to miss lunch if it takes that long," he explained.

Paul shook his head and grinned. The Marine joined the other three guarding the access points.

“Major, something isn’t right. There are extra guards down here, and they are armored,” one of the Marines said.

“Do they appear to be extra alert, or normal?” Paul asked.

“Normal. If they were on alert, the extra guards would be patrolling the corridor, these aren’t.”

“We were told they were suspicious, but not on alert. So this actually fits. No change, we have to take the objective,” Paul replied.

“Sir, we can’t stun them in armor unless the armor has been set to training mode. The only way we can do this is to kill them.”

“Damn, Jean, this is Paul. The Guards are armored. Stun isn’t a possibility, any suggestions?”

“I was just thinking about that. We can’t even gas them. The suits will seal up the second they detect the gas. I’m afraid we're going to have to do this the hard way.” Jean replied, she didn’t sound any happier about it than Paul felt.

“Okay guys, listen up. There is no way to knock these guys out, so we’re going to have to put them down for real. Someone will need to knock the two techs out, once they hear the pulse rifles, they’ll know this isn’t an exercise.” Paul explained. “As soon as the shooting starts, the hatches to the rest of the ship will need to be sealed as quickly as possible. They're going to know we’re here anyway, so from now on, it’s gonna be a race. Are we clear?”

Paul received a chorus of affirmatives from his group. Everyone had hoped to do this cleanly with no casualties, but that was now no longer an option. Be sure to reset your weapons to lethal, and let’s get ready.”

“Paul, hold up a sec. One of the Marines over here thinks he can pull this off without killing anyone,” Jean replied. She relayed the Marine’s idea to him and he agreed, but stressed that they needed to hurry. They were already forty seconds behind the objective curve.

The four Marines guarding the entrance closest to Paul were standing guard, and chatting. One of them spotted the four new Marines as they came around the corner from the corridor to the local maglev access.

“Hey, what are you guys doing down here? We’re not due to be relieved for another five hours,” one of the guards asked.

The front Marine held up her hands in question. “How the hell should I know? I just follow orders same as you, ya know? We were told to come down here and relieve you four, so here we are.”

“No one told us anything, we’re gonna have to call it in,” the Marine said and raised his gauntlet to switch comm channels.

“I don’t think so,” the new Marine said and shot him in the face with her stunner. The other three Marines had no time to react before they too joined their comrade in slumber.

Paul and the rest of the Marines started boiling around the corner before the last man hit the floor. “I didn’t think that would work. Damn glad it did. Good work, Marines!” Paul said and clapped a hand on one of the shoulders of the female Marine.

He turned to the rest of his group. “Okay, that should be it for the guards. Is everyone clear on rest of this?”

The team was grinning and happy with the ploy that had saved the lives of their brethren. Paul got a successful report from Jean as well, and relayed it to his team. For the breach into Main Engineering, the two sides coordinated, and opened the doors at the same time. As if on cue, alarms began going off all over the ship. Paul and Jean knew that the assault on the rest of the ship had begun.

Startled yells and surprised exclamations punctuated by the sounds of pulse rifles on a stun setting fought with the loud whining of the myriad machinery and the alarm klaxon in main engineering. Paul and three of his team had run straight for the control room, and had very little resistance in taking it over. With only a few last pulses of static discharge, Main engineering was theirs. Elapsed mission time; six minutes, fifty five seconds. One minute fifty-five seconds longer than projected.

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T
he Raptor’s forced entry into the landing bay set off alarms all over the ship. Landing bay personnel were scrambling to get out of the way of the landing ship, and as soon as a large enough area was clear, the Raptor’s AI used an electro-magnetic pulse emitted by the armor to stun the entire bay. Unfortunately, one of the closest people was killed when the armor discharged and fried most of the unshielded electronics in the bay.

Before the Raptor had even came to rest on the deck, the rear ramp opened, and the team jumped clear, and ran for the hyper-missile access ramp which led to the maglev tube. Up in the flight control area, a panicked crew tried everything they could to keep the invaders in the bay. On board the Raptor, the electronic warfare officer smiled at the pilot. "Flight Control is ours. I have control of both bays. Opening the access to the maglev tube on the starboard side.”

“Great work, Tanni!” Scotty called over the comm. “Can you see if you can lock out the maglev on this side?”

“I’m telling the main system there is a malfunction in this section of the maglev. That should keep the cars out of there,” the EWC officer, replied.

“Great, we’re splitting up and heading for our objectives. Team one, let’s head for the armory! Team two, go for weapons control!"

Team two turned and ran the short way to the ladder up to deck four and the access hatch there. Scotty and his two helpers ran forward to the big doors leading directly into the armory. As they approached the doors, Tanni, ported the readings from the ships sensors to his visor so he could see where everyone was at in the large room. As they set up to enter through the large doors, Scotty could see that there seemed to be a large number of people entering the outer office of the armory.

“Tanni, it looks like the Marines have made it to the outer area of the armory. Can you get to the doors yet?” Scotty asked as he input the override code to open the big doors. In the area he was entering, there were six people that read as armed. From their position in the room, they also had cover.

“Yes and no, Major. They can’t get to the weapons, but I couldn’t get the outer door locked before they jammed it open. Basically, they're stuck in the lobby,” Tanni reported.

“Thirty seconds with a laser cutter, and they’ll correct that,” Scotty said. “Okay, nothing for it but to do it.”