Rumors of Honor (System States Rebellion Book 2) (30 page)

He
told the DO what he intended to do and ordered the other two to get down to the
train. When he and the DO had finished arming the device and setting up the
remote detonator that Murphy carefully put into his pocket, he told the DO to
head down to the train and take it to the shelter. When he was sure the train
had left, he activated the closing of the tunnel blast doors and then made his
way to one of the emergency exits that consisted of a tube with a metal ladder
that brought him to an alley across the street from the tower. Once he was at
street level, he looked up and saw a round object pass in front of the crescent
moon. That had to be one of the ‘rebel’ ships. He looked around. The city was
still quiet. Most people were still asleep. As soon as he had that thought, he
heard sirens begin sounding in the distance and then closer as well.

Stepping
quickly to the alley opening, he noticed a doorway in shadow and went to stand
in it. The shrill sound of the sirens was starting to get to him. He realized
that he was trembling. He was a naval officer, not an army puke. He belonged on
a ship, not here on the ground, yet here he was. The sirens died down and a new
sound was making itself heard. It came from above, and as he looked up, he saw
the entire sky blocked by the bottom of a large spherical ship. The sound was
picking up in intensity but dropping in frequency. Now he could feel the
vibrations in his body. His attention on the ship was diverted by something that
moved across his field of vision. It started as a black dot that rapidly grew
bigger and seemed to be coming straight for him. He instinctively pushed
himself back against the door. The black dot grew into a long, rectangular
shape that dropped down beside the tower until it hovered about a meter above
the street. He recognized it now. It was a contra-gravity tank, about six
meters wide, ten meters long and approximately two meters high with a vicious
looking gun protruding from the front. A hatch on the side opened and a dozen
infantry in combat armor jumped to the ground and ran towards the tower
entrance. He realized that he didn’t have the detonator in his hand. As he
moved his right arm to extract the device from his pocket, his elbow hit the
door behind him and the noise attracted the attention of one of the soldiers.
He must have been wearing night vision gear because he pointed his weapon at
Murphy and fired. Murphy heard the shot and felt the impact at the same time.
The pain in his chest was so great that he didn’t remember falling down. When
he opened his eyes, he was lying on the ground, and the soldier was standing
over him. Realizing his right hand was still in his pocket, he concentrated on
finding the detonation button. Between the soldier’s legs, Murphy saw other
soldiers entering the tower as more tanks descended from the sky. He pressed
the button.

Undaunted:

Romanov
heard someone shout and turned his attention back to the display that was
zooming in to a scene on the planet. A bright flash was expanding from the base
of the tallest building in the main city. Romanov stood mesmerized as he
watched the tower start to topple over in what seemed like slow motion. When
the tower hit the ground, he saw the concussion wave spread out like ripples in
a pond.  So much for recovering enemy data records. He would order Ericson to
have his troops search the wreckage but doubted they would find anything
useful.

“Ground
Force Commander on Tac 2, sir,” said the Com Tech.

“Put
him on the main display,” said Romanov.

The
angry face of the Colonel appeared in front of Romanov.

“Those
fucking rebel shitheads booby-trapped that tower! I’ve lost two whole platoons!
My people aren’t going to take any more chances. I’m taking the gloves off! No
restrictions! If we can’t find the fuckers who did this, then we’ll take it out
on the locals!” The image dissolved before Romanov could say anything.

“Get
him back, dammit!” ordered Romanov. After a few seconds the Com Tech shook his
head.

“The
Colonel’s not responding to our hails, sir.”

Romanov
banged his fist on his chair’s armrest. The Colonel was reacting emotionally
when he should be using his head. The collapsing tower would almost certainly
prevent recovery of the bodies of some of his people. That left open the
possibility that those bodies might eventually be found and identified as First
Fleet/Army Force troops. If the rest of the ground force went berserk and
committed who knew what kind of atrocities, then the potential backlash could
undermine Trojan’s long term plans. With the Colonel’s face gone, the display
head shifted back to the zoomed in ground image. Romanov looked closely at the
ruined tower. Clearly the rebels didn’t want their data records falling into
Federation hands, but why destroy the whole tower instead of just the computer
equipment, and what happened to the rebels themselves? Did they just commit
mass suicide, or did the explosion serve a dual purpose of hiding their escape?

He
ordered a replay of the explosion and watched it carefully. It was clear that
the center of the fission blast was below ground and not at the tower base. He
tried to put himself in the rebels’ position. The tower was more or less in the
center of the city. When your base of operation is about to be destroyed, how do
you allow dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people to escape without being seen?
The answer had to be underground as well. That implied some kind of tunnel.
Undaunted’s radar equipment was powerful enough to penetrate a few meters into
the ground. Romanov ordered a deep penetration scan of the city. If he could
find where the rebels had evacuated to, then the infantry could vent their rage
on them instead of the civilians. Within less than a minute, he had the scan
results. There was a large flat warehouse on the outskirts of the city that had
an unusual underground structure unlike that below any other building. Romanov
was willing to bet it was where the rebels were hiding. He told the Com Tech to
try calling the Colonel again. This time he succeeded.

“Colonel,
I’ve found where the rebels are hiding. They apparently escaped underground
before the tower blast went off. Your people have a few tactical nukes I
believe. Blasting the roof of their hideout down on top of them would do the
trick, wouldn’t you agree, Colonel?”

“Yes,
that would satisfy me and my people. Where’s this building?”

Romanov
smiled. “Not so fast, Colonel. That information comes with a price. You’re not
going to have time to recover all your dead from under the collapsed tower
rubble. That means there’s a risk that the civilians will find them and realize
who they really are, and that means that atrocities have to be kept to an
absolute minimum to avoid a backlash against General Trojan. I’ll tell you
where the rebels are if you give me your word that you’ll rein in your people
and that your forces withdraw as soon as possible. Your demolition team can
come up last.”

There
was a long pause. So long, in fact, that Romanov was beginning to worry that
the Colonel would reject the deal.

“Okay,
Commodore. I’ll order my people to head back to the ship, except for the
demolition team. Now about that target?”

Romanov
gave him the location of the warehouse and then added, “I suggest you finish
this off quickly, Colonel. If I think you’re stalling, I guarantee you’ll
regret it.” The Colonel nodded and the image faded.

The
Colonel did act quickly. Ten minutes later, all the infantry were back on the
transports or on their way up. Romanov watched as the suspect warehouse
exploded in an atomic detonation. Before the Task Force accelerated out of
orbit, Romanov saw the depth of the crater left behind by the blast and was
confident that they had picked the right spot.

Chapter Eighteen:

Day
008/2549

Palmgren
was standing beside Drake’s Command Station when the Task Force emerged from
its final micro-jump. Drake looked over at his Com Tech and nodded. That was
the signal to try to establish long range contact with the Durendal base on
Midgard’s moon. Two-way communication would be slow because his ships were
still almost 10 light seconds away, but at least they could let the base know
they were here. When a full minute had gone by, Drake said, “What’s the
problem, Pierre?”

The
Com Tech turned to look at his CO. “I’m not getting any response to my hail. In
fact, I’m not receiving any transmissions from the moon base at all, sir, not
even construction shuttle traffic. No radar signals either.”

“Okay,
send a message to Midgard Ops letting them know we’re here, and ask them why
the moon base is silent.”

Without
waiting for the Com Tech to acknowledge Drake’s orders, Palmgren  said, “I
don’t like the silence, Roland. I need to get down there asap and find out
what’s going on.”

Drake
understood that Palmgren was hinting that Drake should order the Task Force or
at least this ship to head for moon orbit quickly. Drake didn’t like the
silence either, but he wasn’t in any hurry to get close. If the Durendal
complex had indeed been attacked, there might still be enemy forces in the
vicinity. So far Palmgren hadn’t made his request an order. Whether he had the
authority to do so was a good question. Their orders for this mission were just
vague enough to leave some doubt. Palmgren would definitely be in command of
the training portion of the mission, but anything other than that was not so
clear cut.

“Let’s
see what the Tower says first,” said Drake. Palmgren, to his credit, said
nothing.

The
results of that attempt were the same. There was no contact and no
transmissions of any kind coming from the Midgard Industries Tower. THAT was
really ominous.

“We
can’t leave this system without finding out what happened,” said Palmgren in a
low voice. “Let me take one of the boats for a quick pass of the moon base and
then a low enough orbit of Midgard to make a visual inspection of the city. You
keep the ships up beyond the zone boundary. Okay?”

It
was a reasonable idea. The missile boat could get to the moon and the planet a
lot quicker and had some armor just in case it ran into trouble. “Take Zero
Zero One. She’ll be ready to launch by the time you get to her,” said Drake. As
Palmgren rushed to leave the Bridge, Drake made the arrangements.

It
was almost three hours later when Drake got the text message from Palmgren’s
boat.

Moon
complex completely destroyed. They must have used atomics. Large pieces of
wreckage are orbiting where battlecruisers should be. Long range detection gear
shows much higher than normal radiation coming from center and edge of Midgard
city. I expect to have visual data within 15 minutes. Palmgren.

The
news shocked Drake and by the looks of it, his Bridge crew as well. The FEDs
must have somehow discovered that the complex on the moon was an SSU facility
and attacked it and the orbiting uncompleted battlecruisers. Drake had no idea
how they had found out, although he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that
Majestic had deduced the real facts behind the operation from some obscure
piece of data. His mission now was crystal clear. They had to get word of this
disaster back to Sparta as quickly as possible. Without those battlecruisers,
the whole war was now in doubt. Twenty minutes later he received Palmgren’s
second message.

Tower
has fallen over apparently due to self-destruct device. Emergency shelter
appears to have been destroyed too. No sign of FED ships or ground forces
except for one tank under tower rubble. 001 is heading to rendezvous point now.
Palmgren.

Drake
felt as if he’d been hit in the stomach. Site X and the Durendal complex were
both gone, and the SSU’s chances of winning this war had now dropped to
virtually zero. There was no way that they could rebuild the shipyard complex
on Midgard’s moon now that the FEDs were aware of its potential, and finding a
suitable substitute somewhere else would just take too long. He could see only
two options now. Either the SSU mounted a very risky and desperate raid on
Makassar to even the playing field again or they beefed up Sparta’s defenses
waiting for the inevitable attack, hoping they could inflict crippling damage
on the attacking forces. He gave the order for the Task Force to head for the
rendezvous point. The 77 day trip back to Sparta was going to be a depressing
one.

Day
084/2549

Romanov
was surprised and a little pissed that Trojan hadn’t met him either at the
Majestic Complex entrance or at the bottom of the descending escalator.
Considering that his Task Force had engineered a major setback for the rebels,
he considered that a personal greeting was not only the polite thing to do but
was also earned. When he got to the inner section where Trojan’s office was, he
learned that his Boss was up in Ops getting the latest Commandments from his
Majestic God. At first Romanov thought the Lieutenant who had expressed that
sentiment was joking, but there was nothing to indicate humor in the junior
officer’s expression. As luck would have it, Trojan was just coming out of the
Ops Center when Romanov got there.