Carinae Sector: 02 - Admiral's Fury - Part 1 - Purple Blood (9 page)

Gindane selected two of her most discrete officers and they accompanied her along the space dockyard passageway to the designated berth that led to her original research ship. She looked at the airlock settings and noted that the destroyer was still unpowered and in the partial vacuum that the Barus used to store decommissioned ships. Quietly the three Barus opened nearby storage lockers and suited up, with one of the lieutenants picking up a pair of portable power supplies. After two hours the three of them reached the officers deck and Gindane left the lieutenants outside while she re-entered her old quarters to fetch ‘some forgotten research notes’.

After ten minutes she had the safe opened and unloaded the Trader tablet and other contents into a shoulder bag she had brought with her. Gindane was about to leave when she spied the ornate puzzle gift from Omerio on her old bedside table and that was carefully placed in the shoulder bag as well. The three Barus had retraced their steps and unhurriedly left the destroyer. They pointedly were ignoring an older dockyard worker who noted their presence and left to discretely use his video phone several minutes later.

Gindane had sent the lieutenants off on other errands to get their minds off her earlier request. She then finished her watch early to prepare for the much anticipated dinner with Omerio. He had arrived for dinner this time in his Commander’s uniform and had the presence of mind to salute and give her a formal bow as he took in her Captain’s rank.

Gindane had given him her soft smile that she reserved for him as she indicated she was off duty by removing her cap and greeting him with a returned bow.

‘So Omerio it has been roughly another five years, and this seems to be a habit old friend. Now I understand you are here for a reason yet that can wait until after dinner.’

After a relaxed dinner together Omerio had joined Gindane in her quarters on the research cruiser as a visiting fellow officer, with strict navy regulations guarding their integrity. Omerio knew that he would not stay long and he looked around her captain’s cabin, pausing to take in the room for a moment and the ornate puzzle he had given her so long ago, before he acknowledged the presence of the puzzle.

‘You look well set up here Gindane. By the way I still have your puzzle you gave me and that goes with me everywhere.’

Gindane looked crestfallen for few moments and Omerio was in the process of wanting to kick himself. However she looked him in the eye and gave him that soft smile again as she replied.

‘Well Omerio the Vorinne second envoy’s statute still remains and has not been lifted. I am not permitted to breed until an envoys grace permits me to do so. I think I will have to perform some rare service to the galaxy to allow this to happen.’

Omerio looked across at the Trader tablet Gindane was now holding and offered a careful reply.

‘Well with regards to the Dradfer colonies and also Earth, I think that is not entirely impossible to occur.’

Gindane handed him the Trader tablet and was given in return a standard fleet issue tablet that she carefully placed in her new safe. She then listened with a sense of purpose as Omerio sketched out a set of likely possibilities before he handed the Trader tablet back to her. Once Omerio was gone, Gindane accessed the information on the Trader data tablet and sat back in quiet contemplation for an extended period.

On the dockyard passageway outside the entrance to Gindane’s ship, a dockyard worker attempted to follow Omerio. However he had only been able to tail the officer for five minutes before two Barus fleet security officers had arrested him and taken away. The dockyard worker was released unharmed next morning with planted information he supplied to his controller. The worker later refused all further covert work and left the well paying job on the dockyard for an unknown location within a fortnight.

In the commerce area of the Barus dockyard, stood another Deltas Vass utilities shop, identical to so many other Deltas Vass shops across the sector. The drone shopkeeper quietly encoded the information he had been supplied before the ritual mid-morning prayer from the wandering Jerecab acolyte. He then ensured that the information was ultimately transferred to a Deltas Vass clearing house several dozen light years away. Within days the information was decoded and supplied to the Deltas Vass matriarch in her secluded but verdant clearing. Unusually the matriarch ordered the reporting drone to repeat himself three times before she went silent for an extended period.

                                                                     ***

The Cephrit assault leader hunkered down behind cover after sprinting at high speed over the open ground in the lead of two of her assault teams. She methodically checked the status of the nasty looking assault rifle cradled across her fore limbs and ordered her teams to get several minutes rest as the other teams moved into position. The former marine then reviewed the status of her mini sensor drones well hidden near the Tilmud repair facility.

Cephrit intelligence had followed a damaged Tilmud frigate to this sector and the hidden base that they then discovered was evaluated as being very significant to the Tilmud war effort. As the assault leader waited for the assault sequence to commence, she reflected for several moments on the turn of events that saw her in command of her elite forces.

Her mate of record, now the fleet master, had been good to his word and she now commanded a total of six teams of special operations troops, with each team consisting of six battle hardened marines like her. Interestingly all of them were mothers, though none had enjoyed the breeding privileges she had received. The assault leader knew that twelve of her eggs had been selected and all had hatched, usually only a right accorded to senior merchant families or lesser nobility.

The female Cephrit had spent many years on furlough raising her twelve young before they were assigned to schools and she fondly remembered all their little quirks. The other Cephrit females, despite being also transferred to special operations were each only allowed six eggs and for many not all of them had hatched.

The female had then resumed her military career, now with an assault leader commission, after which she had selected her first section leaders and then other soldiers from a willing pool of marine candidates. Further extensive training had then occurred as she sought to build what would later become a highly regarded special operations force.

The assault leader come back to the present moment as her headset gave the two short chirrs that indicated her section leaders and their teams were each in their allocated positions at the other two entrances. She now turned to another section leader on her left side and gave a short series of soft clicks from her inside mandibles, before she calmly looked around at the two teams on either side of her.

The section leader raised a long and thin directional wand, checked the bearing and distance to the horizon behind her and then shone a short series of laser pulses at the horizon. She then stowed the wand in a pocket in her pack and recovered her own assault rifle.

The assault leader trailed her two teams as they followed their own section leaders to their designated target at the nearly underground Tilmud base. Part of the standard military practice they now followed, as she reflected on the numerous previous attacks she had led against the Tilmud. A sardonic thought came to her as her team reached the outer edges of the shield boundary.

‘Typical of the smelly beasts to array shields and suppressor fields around the three entrances, but not mount any suitable foot patrols, and I have seen this so many times. They are so predictable and this is their weakness.’

Within seconds her helmet display showed the updating tactical situation as a flight of Cephrit attack ships raced in from the horizon. Several more seconds elapsed and the three massive entrances lowered shields before each disgorging a stream of interceptors that must have been sitting ready to launch. Well before the interceptors had cleared the entrances, her six teams were through the defences and racing to disable the automated lasers. Personal shields on each of her soldiers flickered as weapons fire struck the shields and was absorbed or deflected. The Cephrit assault leader gave a loud chirring call of primal fury laced with instructions as her teams tore into the surprised and smaller Tilmud males defending the entrances.

‘Kill them all for the sake of our races future; they are beasts that would foul the galaxy with death. Ensure the entrance controls are disabled or destroyed and the entrances themselves are jammed.’

The Tilmud grunts fought valiantly and the assault leader watched in horror, as four of her team were silently cut down by combined weapons fire overloading their personal shields, even as scores of unshielded Tilmud dropped from rapid fire blasts from the Cephrit assault rifles. Several of the Cephrit dropped their assault rifles as they came to close quarters with the Tilmud.

The Cephrit were quickly amongst the Tilmud and close combat now erupted as the battleground rang out with screams and howls of anguish from the defenders. The Cephrit Special Forces members were several metres from one another, and the now erect fighting blades tipped in sharpened ceramic on the rear legs of the Cephrit females whirred with deadly effect into the Tilmud. Everywhere a dancing Cephrit blade intersected with a Tilmud grunt they were either mortally injured or died as the force of the scything strokes took their limbs or their heads off their bodies. The blades of the surviving Cephrit were slick with the purple blood of the Tilmud as her team continued their violent assault on the defenders.

The assault leader sprinted closer and veered to one side, were she could see two of her team under a counter attack from several senior Tilmud, who must have raced out from a command station just inside their underground base. She dropped four of the nine Tilmud with accurate weapons fire as she again moved forward. The assault leader was then amongst the remaining defenders at the very lip of the entrance with her own deadly blades now deployed.

A series of soft chirrs came into her headset that the other two entrances had been secured and disabled by several loud explosions she could now hear, even as she saw from a side eye that a section leader was laying explosive charges ten metres away. Due to her training, the section leader kept about her assigned task as the assault leader sliced and diced the five surviving Tilmud officers. The ground around her was soon covered in more purple blood as the Tilmud quickly died under her blades. The remaining Tilmud grunts now tried to protect the other officers. Two of the Tilmud lieutenants had each lost an arm and their flimsy assault rifles, and both now went for their side arms.

The assault leader killed the other three Tilmud, and had turned to finish the injured two officers when her personal shield finally flickered and died after a nearby grunt fired a full laser blast into it. The assault leader swore as the section leader chirred the urgent withdraw and they both raced from the entrance. The two surviving Tilmud officers wasted several seconds shooting at the now retreating Cephrit assault team with their laser pistols.

The section leader and two other Cephrit placed their own bodies behind the assault leader as they raced across the slope for the nearby tree line. The assault leader gave two chirps of pain and alarm as small weapons fire struck two of her now unshielded legs, before a series of loud explosions demolished the last of the entrances and the remaining Tilmud on the surface.

Flashes of pain erupted in the assault leader’s brain as pieces of her legs smoked and fell away from her body. Overhead crackles and flashes of lighting erupted in the sky as Cephrit assault shuttles arriving with regular marines onboard fought the Tilmud fighters.

The next few hours passed in a blur of pain for the assault leader, as she was helped by the section leader back to their landed shuttles over the horizon from the now raging battle. She was now aware that a fleet support shuttle was present and smaller male medics swarmed around her and several others of her team that were wounded. From the scattered messages she was still getting through her headset she was aware that she had lost twelve of her combined command as she was helped aboard a landing shuttle and onto a lifting sled.

The assault leader had no doubt that her teams’ efforts had saved scores of Cephrit lives. She listened closely over her radio link as the regular marines now stormed and captured the Tilmud facility and battled the remaining shell shocked grunts. She noted that the beasts had fought with typical savagery and none were captured alive as she reported back to operations headquarters via a secured communications channel.

A young male Cephrit medic now came over and gave a start as he became aware of her rank chevrons on her lower front legs. He then began to rub her injured legs with lashings of anaesthetic gel from an applicator, and she quipped to him as she started to feel very sleepy.

‘Now I am not in season and I am in no condition to mate; besides I am spoken for by ….’

The medic paused for a moment to secure them both with landing straps as the shuttle pilot received launch permission and the shuttle clawed for space at high speed. He looked over the now unconscious assault leader with both concern and pride as he set about stabilising the loss of fluids from her partially severed legs. He spoke only for her as he noted that the surgeon leader would have to amputate two of her six legs.

‘Sleep and rest well brave Assault Leader. You will be sent to your sponsor for an extended period to recover and regrow new legs.’

After several more minutes, the shuttle reached the massive assault carrier guarded by several cruisers and was immediately granted docking permission; as yet other shuttles took down teams of engineers to search the captured Tilmud facility.

                                                                     ***

Admiral Mary Neilson was not having a good morning watch as she sat in her command chair on the lead Earth destroyer, the Exeter. The fleet exercise had been delayed as the newest two ships were still chasing spare parts and had to remain docked to fix other engineering problems.