Talosian Chronicles 3: Talosian Alliance (9 page)

“As soon as it sees or detects you it’ll detonate. Load up and find a quiet place to wait. I’m passing this upstairs,” Chloe replied.

“I don’t blame you there, Operations. We’ll be standing by,” the Marine replied.

Chloe opened a private channel to Jenny, and told her what the Marines had found.

“Damn, it looks like those fuckers weren’t bluffing,” Jenny replied. “We’re going to have to do something about that. Let me talk to Ian about it.”

“Okay, I have a squad of Marines waiting for orders down there,” Chloe said.

“Understood Chloe, let me call him, Star says they’re on their way back to the shuttle,” Jenny replied, and opened a channel to Ian, adding him into the one with Chloe.

“Star filled me in. Please connect me to Grave Digger,” Ian asked.

Star nodded to Jenny letting her know she had made the connection. “Grave Digger is online. Go ahead Guardian.”

“Grave Digger, this is Guardian. I hate to ask you this, but we need to isolate and identify the person with the implant, without being detected yourselves. If you’re not already, cloak, and head in the direction you detected it. Use passive scanners to locate the antimatter implant. Do what you need to do to remove that threat, but try not to destroy too much, and try to minimize collateral casualties. If that fucker detonates, it will take out the entire city, and Pakistan will be blamed for it,” Ian ordered.

“We kinda thought you might feel that way, Guardian. The target appears to be an aide to one of the officials. All of them are currently in the Central Secretariat Building. Computer says the entire Indian Government is also in attendance. Any way we go about this, it’s gonna get messy."

“What’s your favorite scenario?” Ian asked.

“We send the drone in cloaked, and it isolates the bad guy in a containment field. We’ll make entry as the drone turns the field dark. We’ll protect the drone while it decons the area, and I’ll try to explain our actions while it works,” Grave Digger replied. “That’s our best case, and probably the easiest to make happen. However, I can tell you that our entry will be resisted. We’re going to have a lot of stunned guards.”

“Stunned isn’t dead. I agree, that beats the hell out of blasting your way in through the roof. How long do you think it’ll take to make entry?" Ian asked.

“That’s the rub. The place is a damn maze. It’ll take us at least five minutes to get to the meeting chamber, and I can promise you that it won't be silent.” Grave Digger replied. “They’ll know we’re coming long before we get there. There is another, much faster way, but I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

“Tell me,” Ian ordered.

“We drop into a small plaza inside the walls, and make entrance through the windows on the east side. Those windows look to be one level up from the floor of the meeting chamber, so we’re gonna do some smashing making an entrance," Grave Digger explained. The part you’re not gonna like it that those windows look to be fuckin’ antiques. They’ll smash real good, but I sure as hell don’t want to pay for them!”

“You wouldn’t be Marines if something didn’t get broken. Do it. Highest priority on threat elimination, secondary priority to protecting the government officials." Ian ordered. “But make sure you don’t accidentally kill any of the officials. That’ll be harder to apologize for."

“Understood, Guardian. We’re sending in the drone now,” Grave Digger reported.

“Good hunting, Grave Digger. Guardian out,” Ian said. “How is the rest of the mission going, Chloe?”

“The Pakistanis have chemical weapons deployed in addition to their nukes. Idiots don’t seem to realize that the winds in that area will blow it right back into their faces, along with the nuclear fallout,” Chloe said.

“This kind of thing never makes sense to those not involved, Chloe. Keep up the good work, we’ll be back in a few minutes,” Ian said. "Guardian out.”

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T
he Marines of the ‘Grave Digger’ unit overheard the Lieutenant (or Ell-tee) talking to the Commander. None of them were looking forward to getting anywhere near the asshole carrying that bomb, but they knew that if they didn’t, most of the people in New Delhi would be killed when it finally detonated. The computer set up the program for the drone, and it shot out the back of the shuttle to get busy.

What surprised the Marines was that their pilot actually put down on the roof of the building very close to the edge of the plaza the team was going to use for entrance.

“You’re supposed to clear out after dropping us, Digger. What ya doing?” the Ell-tee asked.

“You might need to beat a hasty retreat, Ell-tee. This way, you know where your ride home is sitting,” the Pilot replied.

“I can’t spare a guard for ya, you do this, you’ll be on your own,” the Ell-tee replied.

The pilot chuckled. “I know which end of a pulse rifle to point at the enemy, Ell-tee. I’ll be fine, but I ain’t leaving you down here all alone; someone has to keep you lot out of trouble.”

“You are one crazy Aussie, lady. Keep your head down, and we’ll be back as soon as we can. If not, well, make sure you have a deck of cards so we can challenge the devil,” the Ell-tee ordered. “Alright kids, let’s get this done so we can buy her a steak dinner tonight. Team one, point! Go! Go! Go!”

As the first team hit the roof, digger began playing a song by her favorite group, AC/DC. The Marines of Grave Digger smashed into the meeting room windows as ‘Hells Bells’ blared from their external speakers.

Half way across the room, and slightly to the Marines’ left, stood the shocked looking target. The Marines, however, only got a glimpse of him as the drone turned the containment field opaque. The floor in the room shook as the bomb detonated. As was normal, the field projected by the drone took so much power, that it had to drop its cloak, and any other protective fields it used in order to maintain the shield containing the explosion, but it did contain the explosion, but not by much.

Alert guards saw the drone decloak moments before the Marines crashed through the windows, but instead of firing on the Marines, three of them fired at the drone. During the short fire-fight between the Marines and the guards, the drone tried to maintain the field, but one of the shots had punctured its light armor and damaged its power core. As the field weakened, lethal levels of exotic radiation began to leak out.

As soon as Digger discovered the drone failure, she sent another to contain the radiation, but enough had escaped to do considerable damage. Four Indian guards died almost instantly because they were too close to the source. Several officials received horrible burns and fell to the floor. The lucky ones were unconscious. By standard earth medical knowledge, everyone in that room, including the Marines got a lethal dose of radiation. Marine armor was very good, and protected the Marines from almost all types of radiation, and environments, but it simply couldn’t stop everything.

Regardless, the Marines had a job, and they did it. The Ell-tee ordered the teams to stun everyone and evacuate them to the shuttle for emergency transport to Star Dancer Medical.

Digger activated her last two drones and sent them to lift the wounded up to the roof and into her assault shuttle. Marines used their jump packs to get some of the people to the shuttle, but it was still slow going.

Once knowledge of the incident was known, Star Dancer sent its emergency shuttles to assist in evacuation and treatment. In light of the incident, combat drones of the type used by the Marines received an armor upgrade. The damage was done, though.

Forty-seven members of the Indian government and protective detail were evacuated from the chamber. Eleven were either already dead, or died before they could get treatment. Twelve more died of their wounds after receiving emergency treatment on site. Six died on the way to the ship, and seven more sustained permanent crippling wounds and brain damage as a result of the exotic radiation exposure. The remaining eleven members lost their hair, had severe scarring on most of the exposed areas of skin, and would have died of cancer within a year of the incident, but Main Medical repaired the genetic damage before releasing them.

The thirteen Marines of Grave Digger’s Assault team fared only slightly better. The pilot, of course, was unharmed. However, four Marines, including the Ell-tee died in transit to the ship as a result of their wounds and extended exposure to exotic radiation. Six more would spend the next month in the medical ward. The remaining two members of the team were treated for severe burns and radiation sickness. They were put on psychological leave until the rest of the team got out of medical.

One Marine told Ian that it had been like trying to rescue people inside a reactor core. He described trying to rescue one of the wounded. “Sir, as I tried to lift him up, the skin and muscle just slid off the bone! It was like they just melted!” It was later learned that the man had been trying to rescue the President of India.

Ian prepared a very in-depth after action report for the UN. He took great pains to make sure they knew that Pakistan had nothing to do with this incident, and it had everything to do with the Alien threat to the planet.

Of course, he then had to make the records of the Alien activity so far discovered available to them as well. He left out the information known about the mid-Atlantic base since that was that was still in the works.

He also issued a separate report on the fighting between Pakistan and India that he had stopped, and the reasons he had done so. He was surprised when the Secretary General sent him a letter thanking him for putting an end to the fighting, so they could concentrate on finding a diplomatic solution to the problem between the two nations.

He mentioned that he had noticed a general cooling off of potential conflict areas as a result of his actions. However, North Korea was still insisting that the Terran Defense Force was really an American Military that would be used to force his country and the rest of the world into American Dominance like they had done to their brothers to the south. As a result, the South Korean Military and its American allies remain on high alert. The Secretary General hoped that continued diplomatic negotiation would return sanity to the area.

Ian had to smile at that, after all these years, he doubted anything would cool off that area. Since the UN meeting had taken place on a Friday, Luke took a shuttle back to Atlas and joined in the General Council meeting that had been scheduled. The meeting had been delayed in order to receive Luke’s report on the meeting with the UN.

Although it was Saturday, the Diplomats and their aides were sent to New York the next day. They expected to drop right into the middle of a political firestorm, and they weren’t disappointed. Ian’s reports, while well received, had caused a great deal of fear among the delegates.

It took the Ambassador and his aides until the following Tuesday to reassure the rest of the Ambassadors that they had no desire, nor intention, of invading and taking over the world. They were only going to try to keep the world from killing itself off.

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I
an was looking forward to a few days of relative quiet before the Talosian delegation arrived. However, the fates were conspiring against him, but at least let him have the weekend. Monday morning, He was once again called to the CIC for an emergency.

“I’m very sorry to bother you, Sir, but we have a situation in the United States,” Chloe said by way of greeting. A Raptor training flight over the Great Lakes has detected a nuclear signature emanating from a foreign cargo vessel.”

Ian nodded. “Knowing you, you already have a brief prepared. What do you have on the ship?”

Chloe nodded, and looked at her screen. The ship is Libyan registered as the ‘Dawn Star’. She has been running bulk grains from Duluth Harbor to the Port of Tripoli for the last twenty years. However, the crew was replaced three months ago while in a stopover at the ship’s home port of Benghazi. The American Office of Homeland Security has issued a watch on her, but so far, no one has really taken any interest in the ship or its activities.”

“Okay, so why did the OHS put a warning on her?” Ian asked.

Chloe smirked. “The new Captain of the ship is known to be a terrorist sympathizer, and when she left port, she was carrying five extra crew. They believe the five extra men are terrorists that will jump ship and enter the country illegally. Scans performed by the Raptor team show that they have already left the ship. There are five less life signs now as there were when they left port."

“Where is the ship at on the lakes?” Ian asked.

“She’s six hours out from Duluth, on Lake Superior,” Chloe replied.

Ian activated his comm. “Mel, please get me the President of the United States, it’s vitally important.”

“At once, Sir!” Mel said.

“Have the Raptor remain on station to monitor the craft. This is an American issue, but we’ll stop her if we have to,” Ian said to Chloe as he looked at the status board. "Put Ghost squadron on stand-by, and move Centurion Challenger to high cover over that area. What Raptor team is this?”

“The Damocles Sir,” Chloe replied. “It's commanded by Raptor Commander Cindy Swift-Williams.”

“Fuck,” Ian said. “Well, she wanted this, so we’ll do our best to support her. Does Jenny know?”

“No sir, I called you first,” Chloe said.

“Sir, the President is online for you. You’re aide transferred it up here,” one of the operators said. “I’ll put it on the monitor to your left.”

“Thank you, Ensign,” Ian replied as the worried face of the President appeared beside him.

“Commander, you aide said it was urgent?” she said by way of greeting.

“I’m afraid so madam President. One of our training flights stumbled across a major problem. There is a nuclear weapon being smuggled into the United States. Currently, it is six hours out form the Port of Duluth in Minnesota on a Libyan Bulk Freighter on Lake Superior. Even if they detonate it there, it would be catastrophic, but once they get to Duluth, they could add a considerable body count to that,” Ian said, filling her in.