Chapter 16

When all was ready, both ships drove hard – Earthbound – to effect the kidnapping and rescue. They had to be especially cautious; they did not wish to engage any compromised Navy vessels – these were, after all, humans -and in order to ensure the success of the mission, stealth was imperative. And swiftness. And audacity.

Yuki and Jurgen had found some difficulty in agreeing on the best protocol for the instantaneous communication over distance. Creating a packet of data that included header information with the sender's date/time stamp was a no-brainer, but should the recipient also acknowledge with a similar date/time stamp? What would the size of the packet be? What kind of encryption? Fine tuning the protocols was delaying the implementation of the AI-based instantaneous communication, but the physisist and the engineer insisted on getting it right.

After seeing the direction the two were heading, Elizabeth put her mighty brain to work on the problem and quickly came up with the solution, tested it with Wanigan and Dragon, then reported back to Yuki and Jurgen that the issues were settled. The two needed some convincing, but in the end had to admit that Elizabeth came up with communications that were, in fact, instantaneous.

When Wanigan saw the date/time stamp compared exactly with her clock, from both Elizabeth and Dragon each millions of kilometers apart, her mind opened up to new possibilities. Not only was she now free of the blinders of pre-FTL thought, but new thoughts were open to her, and for an AI this was something special.

Elizabeth and Wanigan took different headings, Elizabeth directly toward the Earth-Moon naval station, Wanigan took a more Southerly route – the southeran orientation of the planetary alignment, a billion kilometers from the solar system. Wanigan had time to monitor activities that would affect the rescue and kidnapping. Her crew and Marines had time to run through some drills while they hid and watched.

Elizabeth slid elegantly through the inner solar system, passing through the sun's corona, screaming to a halt just inside the orbit of Venus, drifting like a bit of rock, or dead satellite, or other cast-off technology. Acquisition of alien invisibilitycircuits was fortuitous, but premature. Neither Jurgen, Yuki, nor Elizabeth was able to spend the time on connecting, testing, and documenting the inclusion into the ship's arsenal. So Elizabeth just needed to keep a low profile and rely on detritus to help them camoflage themselves.

Jeffrey had Elizabeth dispatch several small remotes to gather information on the locations of their two targets, and report the security situation.

The captive Ay-Yuyuyah, Thorn, was unusually cheerful. There was an alien hidden in his chamber, invisibility active, watching, waiting. It was one of the races that never trusted the Ay-Yuyuyah, but was more intelligent than the other races of the council, and far more aggressive. It waited for the inevitable. Thorn ignored his secret cellmate, pretending not to be aware of the intrusive assassin.

Thorn was aware of the various surveillance devices in the chamber, as the assassin surely was, but they both did what they could to further their own causes; Thorn by ignoring them, the assassin by staying invisible. Thorn thought of his first captor/rescuer, Jeffrey Sokolov. Sokolov was an honorable and trustworthy, if naive human. He would likely mount some kind of rescue, but impossible to figure out when and how. But putting his blind trust in the human, while a gamble, still seemed to be the best chance he had. The other human captors – the ones that ran this station, were now all compromised. It had been weeks since he had seen Admiral Kutuzov, his best guess was that Kutuzov was dead, or at least in a nearby cell. The guards had incrementally decreased his rations, and reduced the palatable nature of the food.No problem. He had once gone more than a year without food. And if push comes to shove, he could always consume the assassin.

Admiral Kutuzov sat in his solitary cell, unperturbed by the drugs pumped into his system. Will they never get the idea that he had been chemically desensitized to known psychoactive pharmaceuticals? And hypnotic tools? He had the feeling that there was a presence in his cell, was aware of the surveillance tools being used, but this was different. One of the tools that human interrogators would use was to confuse a prisoner's sense of time. Keep lights on all the time, vary the feeding schedule, make it impossible to keep track of time. But Kutuzov had his own defense against this particular method of disorientation; he had a meditation mantra that he could run in the background of his mind, he would picture a place from his childhood, remembering the details of the journey from home to the destination. He grew up in St. Petersberg, and had to walk to school, about a mile each way. By changing the route to school inhis mind, he was able to keep track of what hour and what minute relative to his starting place. The following day he would select a different place – a zoo, the library, and perform the same step-at-a-time mantra. By keeping track of the different start points and end points, he was able to keep himself oriented. He had many such anti-interrogation techniques.

To keep himself entertained and irritate his captors, he practiced his singing. Kutuzov had a deep bass voice, with a melodious sense. But he would often sing wrong notes to irritate those listening in. He had an inspiration – he would echolocate in his cell – if there was something there, he would be able to find it. He thought “Maybe I'm going crazy, but there is definitely something else in here.” So he loudly sang long notes, slowly turning where he stood, listening for the echo for what it could tell him. And he eventually found a place in his cell where the sound echoed differently, more muted, than the rest of the angles. He tried the same exercise from different spots in the cell and was able to triangulate the exact location of whatever was in his cell with him.

To keep himself in shape, and as part of his defy-the-captors routine, he spent time doing callisthenics, exercises. He would suspend his mental mantra while doing his set routine of calisthenics, to resume again when done. For an over-fifty-year old, Kutuzov kept himself in amazing trim, an even more difficult task in the frequent weightlessness of space.

The hidden alien waited, observed, noted the exercise routine was performed at approximately the same time each day, and was concerned. What kind of timing device did this human have? His electronic monitoring device could see infrared through ultraviolet, ahd he could not discover what gave the human reference points. The alien was concerned.

Infiltrating the cell was easy, remaining hidden was easy; these humans had almost no senses at all. He was patient, awaiting the order to kill, eliminate the admiral. But for some reason the order never came. Patience was a virtue, he reasoned. Standing here for a week at a time was less than stimulating, but that was a minor concern when there was a whole planet to destroy. The assassin considered his own discomfort a worthwhile trade for the elimination of the evil human species! Meanwhile, the human continued his routine.

Jeffrey ran his plan through his mind, ticking off each element of the plan. First, of course, was the intel. The remotes they sent had yet to report back. These remotes were specially designed for the purpose of remaining undiscovered while gathering and reporting the intelligence. If they could remain undiscovered long enough to assist in the extractions, so much the better. They had been designed to reflect active detection efforts – in the old parlance, stealth. They had built-in electronic masking and special tanks for dumping heat into – to prevent infrared detection. And would periodically change their profile to make it difficult to ascertain excactly what these things were – provided they could be detected at all. They were the pinnacle of swarm technology, each able to perform its own mission, but also be a part of the group effort.

After Intel gathering, Jeffrey needed to lay out a plan and timetable to present to Commodore Yusef. And create contingencies, and contingencies for the contingencies.

The crew was primed for this action, Jeffrey was nervous, but knew the stakes were high. If hedidn't pull this off, the entire human race and quite possibly every species on Earth would be destroyed. This was a heavy responsibility to put on the shoulders of one man, but he realized he was the focus of this effort, and rather than cringe and break under the stress, he did what he always did; Plan, think strategically, think tactically, think ten moves ahead, as chess players say. And create contingencies.

The remotes began to acquire the station, landing delicately on the skin of the station. A running narrative began to flood into Elizabeth's circuits for immediate analysis. As the picture of the station was becoming clearer, some of the remotes began to cut their way into the outer skin of the station, sealing where they entered. These began to investigate the interior, count the human population, register the invisibility-circuited aliens and continue to search for Kutuzov and Thorn.

After a few hours, the two were located. The remotes still remained undetected, and noted the alien population of the station was roughly that of the humans. On their way to the station, the swarm had recorded the presence of alien ships in stealth mode. Elizabeth had now plotted their positions for rapid targeting, with contingencies, of course. Elizabeth and Wanigan shared the information they had on their new targets. So far it appeared both ships had remained undiscovered.

Elizabeth directed the remotes to line the route that Jeffrey and his assault team would take in liberating Kutuzov and Thorn. They would keep to the habit of disguising themselves as security cameras and other integral parts of a station. Now, Jeffrey and his assault team boarded the shuttle designated for the operation. It had been painted a very dark black with radar-absorbing paint, and its IFF (Identify Friend or Foe,) transponder set to emit a counterfeit, weak signal. Between the pilot, Jeffrey, Elizabeth, and Lieutenant Bianca, the primary plans, counter plans, contingencies and counter contingencies, as well as the technical subterfuges on the shuttle were written and discussed, then put into action. All was ready, the remotes reported low activity on the station – it was late in the day – so they took off.

The shuttle made its way out of the shadow, at a rapid pace, but not too fast lest they be discovered and present something suspicious. As the shuttle approached their target port, it slowed gently, then oriented itself so it could lock onto the bay. The static-attract clamps held the back of the shuttle securely; the two remote-robots inside the bay unlocked the bay door, opened it without allowing the sensors on the door to report activity. As the bay door raised, the Marines and Jeffrey's crew rapidly exited the shuttle, the Marines in their combat hard-shell suits, Elizabeth's crew in her custom hard-shell suits. Like on the other stations, Elizabeth was able to monitor the presence of the various aliens who hid themselves with invisibility circuits. All the Marines, Jeffrey, and all his crew had been well prepared for the alien incursions.

The Marines advanced rapidly, but quietly down the corridors, pausing at intersections to assure they were not being observed. So far there had not been anybody – alien or human – in the corridors. Jeffrey was sure his luck would run out, and just as he had that thought two Navy techs entered their corridor accompanied by an alien with invisibility circuits active. The lead Marine leapt to the side, dragging the attention of the alien – species unkown – to his action while the second raised his projectile weapon and shot the alien multiple times in center body mass.

The alien fell, turned visible looked at its surroundings, then died. The Navy men kept walking as if nothing had happened. They avoided colliding with the ranger force but otherwise gave no indication that they recognized there were humans or the alien there. Jeffrey said quietly into his communication pickup, “Don't bother them. We'll fix them after we are through.” All the invading force cleared a path for the hypnotized humans. One of the Marines bent down to retrieve whatever devices this alien was carrying, but one of the sailors turned to him and said, “You better not do that. They will get angry again.” They turned and began walking away again. Jeffrey sent Torres after them, who knocked them out, cuffed them to each other – hands and feet. Now they wouldn't be able to report on the rangers as Jeffrey began to think of his team.

He turned to the lead Marine, indicated with a hand gesture to continue, and joined the running team to their destination. The first cell they arrived at, clearly indicated on their HUDs in their helmets, was where Kutuzov was. Torres took a scanner from Smitty's pack, held it at belly level against the wall, and began moving it past the door to the other wall. In the view, Torres could see the admiral doing calisthenics. Behind the admiral, he saw another figure and it appeared aware of being scanned. He showed the image to the team, then set the scanner down, brought up his rifle to ready position, the Marines took his meaning, and likewise brought weapons up, Jeffrey signaled to attack, one of the Lance Corporals put a small explosive shaped charge on the door, stood back a foot, brought his weapon to bear, then detonated the door.

That was signal enough for all the Marines to charge into the cell, the lead fell on top of Kutuzov, protecting him, the others firing on the alien assassin, who died being chopped into pieces by the fusilade of firepower from the Marines. Torres called 'cease fire' and the Marines immediately lowered their weapons, and quickly reloaded them. The Lance Corporal who had set the charge on the door then went to the alien, looked over his corpse, noticing the armor was much better than any they had seen from other alien species. He began gathering what devices he could, but could hear the whine of a capacitor charging up. He called “Bomb, Everyone out!” Two Marines grabbed Kutuzov by the shoulders and dragged him out, followed by the rest of the force. The Lance Corporal stayed behind, spraying a quick-setting polymer that could contain a large explosion. He was nearly done when the blast threw him against the wall. The corpse was entirely consumed by the blast except for those pieces that were blown away by the unfinished cover of the polymer.

Torres came back into the cell and saw the Lance Corporal sitting with his legs out at an angle, his back up against the wall, a slightly dazed look through his helmet, but when he saw Torres, he said, “Did anyone get the license number of that truck?” Torres just stared at him. What is a truck? A license number? Is he halucinating?

But the Lance Corporal said, “Just joking, LT. Help me up.”

Two Marines escorted Kutuzov back to the shuttle and stayed with him, alert. The other team members then gathered themselves and moved to rescue the captive Thorn. Like outside Kutuzov's cell, Thorn's was unmarked, but they trusted Elizabeth's intelligence. They were certain they had the correct place.

Torres took out the scaner again, observed the insides of the cell, including another hidden alien. As before, he shared the video with the entire team. The same Marine who had set the explosives on the door did it again on Thorn's. Torres signaled with his fingers, three – two – one, go! The door blew in, the Marines immediately riddled the alien from snout to claws with the tungsten bullets. This time, the Marine sapper completely encased the dead alien in the protective foam polymer, just prior to the explosion. The Marines looked around for a way to move the Ay-Yuyuyah back to the shuttle, found a blanket, asked Thorn to move on to it, then four Marines took a corner each, and dragged the blanket back toward the shuttle.

Elizabeth notified Jeffrey that there was mass movement toward his location. He had the Marines high tail it to the shuttle, then he, Torres, and Mbacka provided a rear-guard action. They first saw aliens with active 'invisibility circuits' boldly rushing around a corner. Perhaps they hadn't gotten the message that there were ways to detect them while invisible. The team riddled the aliens, perforating them with a variety of heavy bullets and flachettes, leaving a large heap of bloody mess in the corridor. Seeming unperturbed by that, human station personnel began approaching from several corridors simultaneously, looking almost like hypnotized zombies. The team tossed stun grenades in all directions, rendering many of them unconscious, disorienting others. But eventually they were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of human enemies. They had agreed they would not kill any humans if they could avoid it, so ended up giving up their weapons, and were marched back to the station command and control.

One of the human ship's captains, Lee Majori, sat in the commanders seat, looking both frightened and arrogant, which was quite a feat. “Captain Sokolov,” he began. “They want to know...I want to know where you took the admiral and the alien.” He looked around the C&C to assure that all the humans there agreed. Then continued, “And they want to know where your ship is, and the other one – Wanigan.”

Majori again looked around, but this time not stopping to see the crew at their stations, but for something else. Jeffrey stepped up to Majori, and said clearly, “Captain Majori, you arent't needed here, now, why don't you rest and relax. I'll take over.” Majori looked relieved, got up, began walking out of the C&C, but paused at the door, which would not open.

Jeffrey had not removed his helmet, only opened the outer faceplate; the inner one, without shading, was both easier to comminucate with and contained the HUD which allowed him to see what Elizabeth wanted him to see. He turned around and saw four hidden aliens in the C&C, one of them obviously in charge. Jeffrey turned to that alien, walked up to it, and said, “I think we can let Captain Majori return to his ship. We can do this between us.”

The alien turned off its invisibility circuit, and said, “He is of little use to us.”

Jeffrey replied, “He was a fine officer before you hypnotized him. He can be restored, but that takes time and therapy.”

The alien said, “He may have a more nutritional value than as a mental slave. Your kind don't do well as mental slaves.”

Jeffrey responded, “Well, now, there you go, talking all sorts of stupid.” He paused, looked the alien in the eye, noticing that the nicitating membrane was twitching – maybe alergic to something here? - and asked, “Aren't you aware that it is against the law to eat humans? We are very defensive about that. Also, there are much better things to eat than people.”

“We will take everything away from here. We will destroy your people, your planet. You.”

“Well, I'd rather that didn't happen,” Jeffrey replied. “And for my own knowledge, what species are you? I don't remember seeing your kind before.” Jeffrey watched the alien for a few seconds, knowing Elizabeth was seeing everything he, Smitty, and Torres were seeing. The alien appeared to be insect-like, multi-faceted eyes, hard carapace, four legs and two arms – Jeffrey noticed that two of the legs were very much shaped like the arms. Three fingers/toes on each limb. It's mouth was surrounded by four beak-like jaws lined with sharp serrated edges. As it moved around the Command and Control, its skin color changed to help it merge with the background.

“That is not for you to know, only to serve and die.” The alien clapped its jaws together in what Jeffrey assumed was supposed to be a threatening gesture.

“You might want to clear the room,” said Jeffrey. “I have some disturbing things to tell you, and I don't think you would want your underlings to hear.”

“They may hear what a dead man says. Say your words.”

“Well, okay then.” Jeffrey sat on one of the vacant chairs. “First, I wanted to know your species' name, because we always write the history of our conflicts, our wars.” Jeffrey paused, continuing to stare at the face of the alien.

“History is determined by the victor.” stated the alien.

“Jeffrey replied, “Just so. We have a long written history, about wars and conflict, about politics and technology, about learning how to learn. We have practiced war for a long time.”

“This cannot be true, we have watched you for ten thousand years, you have no victories, no fight.”

“Well, that's not quite accurate,” said Jeffrey, sounding more professorial. “We have learned from each other, have developed technologies and techniques to destroy our enemies.” Jeffrey shifted in his seat. “And win him over to our side. This is one of the things we have been doing with the aliens in the outer areas of our solar system. They are backing us up against your council of aliens.”

“What council of aliens?” The alien appeared more nervous. “We know of no su...” But Jeffrey cut him off.

“Oh come on, you know, the ones that wanted to throw rocks at Earth, to send a planet through the Sun. Those guys.” On the HUD on Jeffrey's suit, Elizabeth displayed a name 'Anzn'. Jeffrey then said it aloud. “Anzn.”

“Anzn want to do what?” the alien bellowed. “They said they would not do anything like that until we were done with you!”

Jeffrey leaned back in his chair. “This is my point. Your allies want to stab you in the back, collect not only the mineral wealth, but also the human and animal populations of my planet. But they also get to kill you off too. Perhaps you thought they would live up to their deal?” Jeffrey had thought this bluff at the last minute, so was trying to be careful in the delivery.

The alien was now visibly agitated. He turned to his subordinates, and ordered in his own language, “Get out! Wait in readiness!” Elizabeth ran subtitles across Jeffrey's HUD. She probably had one or more Ay-Yuyuyah translating for her. After all the aliens had exited the C&C, along with their zombie-like humans, the alien turned to Jeffrey. “Why do you need to know our species?”

“Well, as I said, it is an honor to fight such a worthy opponent, but would be a shame if the only thing we could write in our history was 'We fought a good war, but thoroughly defeated them, wiped them out, and we don't know who they are.' It would be better if we could say we thoroughly destroyed your race by name.”

The alien was shaken, but persisted, “How can you defeat us? You know nothing about us!”

“Ah,” said Jeffrey, “you need a demonstration. Which of the sixteen ships you have surrounding this station do you want to see destroyed? Pick one, I will destroy it within a few minutes.”

The alien was further angered by the challenge, so he said, “You pick. I will not tell you where they are.”

A few seconds later a massive explosion twenty kilometers from the station, the brilliant light illuminating the C&C in a whiteness thoroughly unexpected, made the victory of that attack obvious. Jeffrey said, “Shall we try again? Do you have a preference? Perhaps one of your rivals? No? Well, here goes...” Elizabeth, taking her cue from Jeffrey's words, again had Wanigan attack in a FTL manner.

Another invisibility-circuited ship exploded.

“Stop doing that! We are the Fengen. We request an alliance.”

“The Fengen.” Jeffrey repeated. “You wish to form an alliance with us, now that you know we can not only defeat your ships, your soldiers, your people, your planet. We may come up with a deal.” Jeffrey stood and continued. “First, we have laws that you must abide by. Use of Invisibility circuits is prohibited. Contact your ships now and tell them to drop their invisibility or they will all be destroyed. I'll wait.”

After a few seconds the ships began appearing. Elizabeth displayed a map of the station, showing the Fengen throughout the station using invisibility circuits. Jeffrey then said, “and all your individuals in Human space are also prohibited from using invisibility circuits. I'll give you a few seconds before I kill them off.”

The Fengen leader notified everybody on board of the restriction on invisibility circuits. When nothing happened, Jeffrey said, (prompting Elizabeth's remotes,) “Sorry, I tried to warn you.” Elizabeth selected three aliens to target, split them lengthwise with the remote-robots' lasers.

Reports came in to C&C on the leader's remote communicator. He asked Jeffrey to stop. Then Jeffrey saw, through Elizabeth's display on his HUD that there were now no more invisibility-circuited aliens on the station.

Jeffrey then said, “Eating sentient beings in our solar system is prohibited. There is free distribution of food, and the knowledge to grow it yourselves. All aliens need to register at a Navy or Marine outpost. Is that understood?” The alien nodded his head, in what appears to be a universal agreement. “Good. Now every human who is held captive, who is being prepared for consumption, who has been hypnoptized, will be made known to me, to Commodore Yusef, or to Admiral Kutuzov.”

“I thought the Admiral was killed.”

“No, we killed the assassin and contained his self-destruct explosion. We did the same for the Ay-yuyuyah in your custody.”

“You are indeed superior fighters. It is a good thing we sued for an alliance.”

“We are indeed,” said Jeffrey, relief evident in his voice. “Now, before the council of aliens is able to do more evil, what do you know?”

“They are not to be trusted!” The Fengen blurted, “They have no honor!”

Jeffrey sat back, and asked the Fengen, “And what is your name?”

“I,” said the Fengen leader, “am Astorophix.”

“Astorophix, I have news for you. First, any alien, whether Fengen, Ay-yuyuyah, or other race, if found with invisibility-circuits active will be immediately destroyed. Any alien waging war on Humans, attacking Humans, including with the virus, will be destroyed. Any alien not registered within an Earth day will be destroyed. All aliens will follow Earth law.”

“This can be done.”

“Good, something else,” continued Jeffrey. “If you know something about attacks on humans and fail to report them in a timely manner, you will be destroyed.

“So what do you know about the location or other specifics about the council?”

“I have much to tell.”