Sector 64 ambush sector.., p.36
SECTOR 64: Ambush: Sector 64 Book One, page 36
Dumbfounded, Jake wordlessly stared at the radio.
"Anyway, Captain Giard, you can get the rest of the story from her later. I'm sending the rest of my squadron back for rearming. In the meantime, you and I are going to link up and find a way into that carrier."
"Good, copy on all, Zach. Sorry to hear about Lieutenant Croft. Please pass on my thanks to Captains Giard and Allison. Nellis Actual, out."
Colonel Newcastle's voice echoed through the command center's reverent silence. "Roger, General. I'll pass it on. Vampire Six, out."
Torn by the dichotomous news, Sandy struggled with her emotions, unsure whether to smile or cry. While she'd never been close to Lieutenant Croft, she'd always liked him. Having taken Victor under his wing, Jake had seen the junior officer as a little brother.
Apparently reading her mixed emotions, General Pearson's brusque features softened, his steel-gray eyes actually looked sympathetic. "I'm sorry for your loss. I understand the young lieutenant was a friend to all of you." He turned toward the room's main display. On it, Colonel Newcastle's Vampire Space Fighter glided up to the parked Turtle. "All of you did great things today." Turning from the screen, he proffered his right hand.
Startled and speechless, Sandy took the hand in hers and shook it.
The grizzled old man's hard face softened further and his eyes sparkled with admiration. "Good job, Captain Fitzpatrick. I, hell, all of us, owe all of you a great debt of gratitude."
Sandy opened her mouth to tell him she hadn't done a thing, but he held up a hand.
"I know you think it was all them, but if you hadn't thought so quickly, we'd have lost your friends." He pointed at the alien rock. "And that ship, along with the secret of its weapon, would've crashed into the ocean, causing even more death and destruction."
"But, sir—"
The general shook his head. "I'm not finished, Captain."
Sandy nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Do you see all those?" He pointed at the drifting fleet of dark, sleek Argonian ships. Not waiting for her acknowledgement, he continued. "I need pilots to man them." He cast an apologetic look at her. "I mean staff them, or hell, whatever. You get the idea." Lowering his arm, the general gave Sandy a meaningful look. "Anyway, Captain, as much as I think we owe you and your fellow officers, I think we're going to owe you a lot more." He glared at the charred alien visage. "We may have won this battle, but I don't think the Zoxyth are done with us, and I know I'm not done with you."
Sandy's thoughts reeled with the implications of the general's plan, but her myriad questions went unasked as all that came out was another "Yes, sir."
General Pearson smiled. After a paternal pat on her shoulder, he turned and walked away.
Sandy placed a hand on her abdomen. Under her bloodied flight suit, she felt the edge of the bandages the medic had applied to her side. After a quick examination, he'd given Sandy and her unborn baby a clean bill of health. The sergeant, the same medic who had met her on the Nellis tarmac, had also informed her that, while her father had lost his leg, the doctors thought his prognosis was very good and they expected a full recovery. He'd also said the entire ICU staff had given her mother the honorary title of General Firecracker, one she had apparently taken to quite readily.
Looking at her future baby bump, she smiled. "Looks like you and I will get to have a little chat with your daddy, soon."
Jake stepped into the airlock and turned back to Richard. "Now don't forget—"
"Dude, I told you I'll talk to her and find out what happened. I'm just as curious about what Newcastle said as you are. I'll check on her and get word to you ASAP."
"Thank you," he said, then nodded toward the shrouded body in the ship's center. "Make sure Lieutenant Croft gets the recognition he deserves."
"Nothing but the best," Richard agreed.
A backward step took him deeper into the airlock. He saluted sharply. "Captain Allison, it's been an honor."
Richard returned the salute. "Same here, Captain. Be careful out there."
Lowering his arm, Jake said, "See you on the other side."
The airlock wall sealed.
As Jake turned toward the outer wall, his helmet's limpid visor flowed into shape, protecting him from the ensuing vacuum. The exterior wall evaporated, revealing a beautiful panorama of stars. At its center hovered a Vampire Attack fighter. Through its open canopy, Colonel Newcastle raised a hand to his spacesuit's helmet.
Standing in the opening, Captain Jake Giard returned the salute.
Epilogue
"In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity."
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Epilogue
"Admiral Tekamah, all ships report battle-ready," said the Helm Warden's tactical officer.
The Galactic Defense Force's supreme commander, Admiral Ashtara Tekamah, studied the holographic rendering of his fleet and the rapidly closing system. "I hate blindly flying into a potential battle." In his EON's virtual vision, Tekamah toggled Admiral Feyhdyak's icon. "Any contact with your bio-half?"
A few hours earlier, the computer-based portion of Admiral Thoyd Feyhdyak, the commander he'd sent to intercept the Zoxyth fleet closing on Sector Sixty-Four, had informed him that something had severed his communications link with his biological. He reported they had been seconds from dropping into Earth space when the disconnect occurred.
"Nothing yet, sir." Computer-based Thoyd's voice had a panicked edge. Disconnected intelligences usually did. As a combat commander, Ashtara communed with disjointed personalities all too often. They always seemed on the verge of panic. As if the time separated from their organic id would lead to irreparable psychosis, the untethered parallel existence creating a permanent schizophrenic duality. Tekamah knew it wasn't an idle concern. It happened, and the longer the separation, the rougher the reconnect. Upon discovering their bio-half had indeed died, he'd seen relief in the virtual face of more than one computer-based personality. It was said that bonding with a fresh, tank-grown body was sometimes easier than re-merging with a divergent copy.
The practice of placing copies of combat personnel into the network began for the obvious reasons. Subsequently, they had instituted the real-time connection between network-based and organic-based ids in order to prevent that duality. Otherwise, one was merely a copy. Continuity was lost. If one died, its stream of consciousness went with it. As an Earth-based Argonian from the nineteen seventies or eighties would say, 'Is it live, or is it Memorex?'
Computer-based Thoyd's virtual eyebrows raised. "What do you think happened, Ashtara? I've consulted with my subordinates within the network. None has heard from their bios."
"Calm down, Thoyd. I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation. You were still in parallel-space, the Zox don't have anything that could touch you there."
Admiral Feyhdyak's avatar looked ready to say more, but Tekamah held up a virtual hand. "Thoyd, I have to go. We're approaching Chuvarti. I'll let you know as soon as I hear from you or any of your vessels."
He closed the connection and turned to the communications officer. "Have we received any further distress calls from the Chuvarti system?"
"No, sir, nothing since the initial call. It's fortunate we were so close to Sector Nineteen."
Tekamah nodded, but he knew fortune had nothing to do with it. The intel he'd received placed half of Thrakst's fleet in this sector while the other half had deployed to the far side of the galaxy in remote Sector Sixty-Four. He had a nagging feeling there was more to this situation than met the eye.
"Place all battlecruisers on a weapons-free status," ordered Tekamah. "All fighter squadrons are to launch as soon as we drop out of parallel-space. If we're flying into a trap, I want the Zoxyth to regret it."
He studied the fisheye lens of the squeezed star field to the formation's front. A tiny, bright blue spec at its center, the planet Chuvarti, grew into a discernible sphere as the fleet closed.
The navigation officer broke the silence. "Normal space in three, two—"
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Chapter One Intro from Retribution: Sector 64 Book Two
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Retribution: Sector 64 Book Two
"This cold is going to be the death of me," Remulkin Thramorus said as he trudged through another waist-deep snow dune. Pulling the nanobot-enhanced parka tight around his ears, he lowered his head into the frigid gale. Buffeting him, it threatened to blow Remulkin back to the empty transport hovering to his rear.
Leaning into the wind, the scientist looked through his eyebrows. Ahead, a jagged rock protruded a few stories above the ice plain. Buried under the polar ice cap, a huge mountain, hundreds of times taller than the visible portion, spread out beneath the camp.
Only a month earlier, a construction crew had finished boring a science station into the mountain's exposed triangular peak. The camp's sole entrance lay ahead of Remulkin. Behind and to the sides of the lone scientist, the white plain stretched to the horizon, disappearing into the pole's perpetual night. Interrupted only by the snow dunes that always seemed to occupy the space between him and his destination, the surface was otherwise perfectly flat.
Anchored at the pole of the newly settled planet, this part of the ice field sat motionlessly. Sub-zero temperatures and a thick, stable ice sheet that insulated the site from the planet's iron-rich surface made it the perfect region for Remulkin's experiment.
One snow dune later, the scientist trudged up to the smooth outer skin of the camp's entrance. With the sound of tearing paper, a rectangular opening appeared in its seamless surface. A force field-entrained bubble of heated atmosphere ballooned out and wrapped him in its warm embrace.
The scientist stepped through the hatch-shaped opening, an action that breathed life into ancient memories of his brief military stint. A lifetime ago, a much younger Petty Officer Thramorus had haunted the vast halls of an Argonian-manned battlecruiser.
Dusting the frost from his ample belly, he frowned. In the years since his three-year, all-expenses-paid tour with the Galactic Defense Forces, his forehead had become a five-head, and his six-pack looked more like a twelve-pack.
Remulkin stepped through the inner door into the compound's main room. In mercurial rivulets, billions of nanobots streamed from his bib and parka. No longer needed for insulation, the omnifunctional microscopic robots flowed into the mottled gray floor, rejoining the facility's matrix. The parka and bib morphed to their normal volume and function as a day shirt and pants.
Excited to share the bounty of data garnered at the pole, Remulkin forgot about the day's isolation.
He dusted the last of the frost from his shirt and looked around.
His smile faltered.
Why was it so quiet? Why was the common room empty? At this hour, it should be bustling with activity.
Thramorus shook his head. "I'm back," he said, yelling toward the back rooms. "Is everyone on break?"
Silence.
Raising his voice, he said, "I go away for one day, and you all take a holiday?"
Nothing.
"Hello?"
Anger—and the first hint of concern—chased away his good cheer.
"Guys, this isn't funny."
All he heard was his voice's fading echo floating in the still air.
Determined to find someone, he walked and then jogged through the subterranean compound.
"Hello?"
Still no answer.
Now panting, he ran from room to room.
They were all empty.
He even checked the ladies restroom.
As Remulkin turned to exit, he saw movement. After a confused moment, he realized the scared, middle-aged, portly man was him.
Blinking and wheezing, Remulkin studied his reflection in the vanity mirror. His normally pale, freckled skin was ruddy, glowing above and below his ring of red and gray hair. His mother had once told him that you never really see yourself until you think you're looking at someone else.
He shook his head and turned from the unsettling image.
Finally catching his breath in the camp's elevation-thinned atmosphere, Remulkin exited the restroom and walked to the last door, his quarters.
Shaking his head after a final confused glimpse back toward the entrance, he stepped into the room … and jumped right the hell back out.
A body had popped into existence in front of his face.
In the middle of his private room!
"Damn holograms!" he screamed, once his pounding heart and hitching breath permitted speech.
"Sorry about that, Mr. Thramorus," said an uncharacteristically dour-looking Falinch Meklem. His assistant—usually jovial to the point of annoyance—stared grimly from the pre-recorded hologram.
Annoyed at the intrusion into his quarters, holographic or not, Remulkin searched for the deactivation key.
"I know how much you hate these things, but I don't have time for anything else."
There it is, he thought as he found the virtual shutoff key floating on the front right corner of the hologram. Remulkin reached for it.
As if reacting to the scientist's movement, his assistant held up a hand. "This is important, sir. You'll want to hear it."
His finger hovered over the virtual button. Then Thramorus pulled it back as if he'd touched a hot surface.
What the hell was he thinking? His disgust with the invasion of his privacy had banished all other concerns. Remulkin's wife would have loved that one. She was always saying he was too stuffy, too worried about privacy and personal space. She had begged him to let them connect their Electro-Organic Networks to the colony's matrix. Then they could use the neurally implanted EONs to stay in constant contact.
Oh, joy! Remulkin thought.
In the hologram, a running man bumped into Falinch. The assistant lunged forward. Remulkin heard a shouted apology. Regaining his feet, the man pushed his tousled blond hair out of his eyes and appeared to stare at Remulkin.
The uncharacteristic seriousness in the young man's eyes had Remulkin's short hairs standing on end.
Meklem pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "The sensor network detected a Zoxyth fleet entering our galactic sector."
"My Gods," Remulkin whispered.
The assistant continued. "We're all leaving to be with our families. Everything should be fine. The Galactic Defense Forces can't be far behind."
Another person ran through the image. "Sorry."
Falinch waved at the person and then continued. "We tried to call you in, but couldn't detect your terminal."
"Shit!" Remulkin shouted. A sinking feeling struck his gut as he recalled disabling his hand terminal's external link during the experiment.
Falinch continued speaking as Remulkin worked to activate his terminal.
"Sorry for the short message, we have to get on the transport. As soon as it drops me off, I'll set its autopilot to return for you."
"Anyway, I'm sure this is an overreaction. The GDF has those green-blooded, ancestor-worshipping lizards on their heels … Don't they?"
As holographic Falinch began to dematerialize, Remulkin saw a look of trepidation leak through the man's brave facade.
"No, no, no," Remulkin said, growling in frustration. Hunched over the hand terminal, he tapped furiously. "Come on!"
The scientist shared his assistant's apprehension. They were at war with the Zoxyth. The fanatical leader of the reptilian race had declared a holy war against all Argonians. He had sworn to right an ancient wrong, to avenge a supposed Argonian attempt to wreak genocide upon their sacrosanct Forebearers. The visceral Lord Thrakst had vowed to eradicate every last Argonian from the galaxy.
A chill ran down Remulkin's spine.
Finally, his terminal finished its digital handshake and connected to the station's network.
A multi-pitched storm of audio alerts announced a flood of messages and warnings. Red, strobing icons streamed across his screen.
"Oh Gods." This was bad, real bad.
Remulkin scrolled through the news updates and government alerts in sequence. Most had timestamps more recent than the assistant's message. They painted a picture of a rapidly deteriorating situation.
City after city in this newly settled world had fallen silent.
The arrival of an enemy ship preceded each event.
Reports of a brilliant light.
Then nothing, all contact with the area lost.
On the final newsclip, Remulkin watched as the godsdamned aliens closed in on the last settlement.
His new home town.
In this new colony, everyone lived in or near a town.
Whatever the bastards were doing, they had done it to every settlement, every man, every woman, every child.
Save his.
Now Remulkin's home was in their sights.
The last item on his terminal, a recorded video message, opened.
"Baby, I'm scared," his wife said. "Why won't you pick up?" Farene's eyes pleaded. "I need you, baby!"
In the background, daylight streamed through the windows of their home. Suddenly they darkened as if a black cloud had passed overhead.
"Oh my Gods! They're here now!" she said, her voice cracking with fear.
Remulkin touched the image of her face. "Farene!"
His pounding heart threatened to burst from his chest.
To either side, his son and daughter clutched at their mother. At nine years old, their son, Wilby, stood taller than his younger sister, Freena.
His wife stared into the camera he'd mounted over the kitchen door. She'd asked him to put it there. That way the scientist could watch his wife's experiments with cooking—just one of the many things they'd both had to learn as colonists on a new settlement.
"Remulkin?" she said, her eyes pleading. "Why aren't you answering?"
