Author's Note: Thank you GraysonPaladin and joelwilliamson for reviewing and thank you everyone else who read the story for reading. I hope that you all are having an excellent holiday season, and wish you all a very happy New Year. GraysonPaladin posed a few points about the setting. The Manticoran-Havenite Wars have been formally resolved and the Conflict between Manticore ant the Solarian League has Escalated to a war with the Manticoran Alliance, and Haven are fighting for their Lives with the Solarians. Enjoy and please review.
It is a neurotoxin, Catherine thought. It has to be a neurotoxin. Nothing else can have this effect on me. Catherine's muscles were not responding to the frantic commands that shut down her neurons, every instinct in her body was screaming at her legs to follow the mass of bodies heading for the nearest shelter, yet Catherine had not moved a millimeter. She forced herself to calm down and checked which muscles would and would not respond. When she looked around, she learned that her neck muscles still responded, as did those that governed the movement of her eyes.
What she saw was altogether worse than her own inability to move. It was gigantic, it was airborne, and it soon would be sitting on what would no longer be the Royal Manticoran Naval Academy. A moment later, a sudden falling sensation told Catherine that the neurotoxin had stopped giving her muscles the energy that they needed to keep her standing. The automatic reflexes born from years of martial arts training threw Catherine's arms between the rapidly approaching ceramacrete walkway and her vulnerable head, confirmation that the neurotoxin had worn off. It shouldn't have mattered, as, if a certain Lieutenant Commander Kevin Anderson hadn't been fixing a personnel SAM unit, he would never have launched an impeller missile from an appropriate distance to cause the falling projectile to disintegrate as the gravitic forces from an impeller wedge ripped into it. As it was, several, very small, pieces remained and slammed into the ground at nearly 1,400 meters per second.
One of these pieces landed less than five meters away from Catherine. The kinetic energy from the falling shrapnel created a shockwave that knocked her into the side of the nearest building. Even her genetically heightened reflexes were not fast enough to keep her head from slamming onto the wall. The last thing that she saw before losing consciousness was the splintered wreckage of the once proud fountain that had stood at the center of the square.
"Well?"
"The head injury is minor. However, there is some sort of toxin in her bloodstream. I'm not sure what it is, and I'm not going to even waking her until I do."
Vice Admiral Prescott Tremaine had been just as surprised as anyone by what had to have been a unprovoked bombardment of the planet. He had had been, as his current post in ONI required him to, using every resource available to him to find out what exactly the attack was. Commander Anderson had been helpful, he thought, but he knew next to nothing about the attack. It is hard to blame him though; he did just save the lives of every single student and teacher at the Academy.
The most aggravating part about the Ensign's continued state of unconsciousness was that, while he did know that she was a very important piece in this multi-dimensional puzzle, he neither knew where she fit in nor did he have a clear picture of even what her piece would tell him. Tremaine turned on his heels and started to walk towards the door. He still had about a meter to go when he heard an anxious alto voice ask, "How long was I out?"
Everyone turned to look at the young woman who was supposed to be unconscious because of the combined effects of a head injury and a heavy dose of sedative. She hadn't moved except to open her eyes, but she seemed to have perceived the entire wardroom. The nurse who, until the unexpected inquiry was voiced, was preparing a test on the toxin that had been found, replied, "You have been unconscious for nearly 96 hours, we didn't wake you because we needed to run some tests firsts."
"Would those tests happen to be about the neurotoxin in my bloodstream? Don't bother with them, it is a first century ante-diaspora muscle-inhibitor. It does not have any lasting effects." Catherine's voice was calmer than Tremaine thought his would have been in her place. But before he could formulate a thought about the actual meaning of her statement, the nurse asked, "And how would you know that little tidbit, miss?"'
Catherine, her voice suddenly devoid of all emotion, answered, "It being the reason that I was not with the rest of the people in the square heading for the nearest shelter, and as there isn't anything else that I know of that would have such an effect on me. It could only have been that neurotoxin or something so similar that it would not matter."
"OK… Can you give us the name of this toxin?" The nurse now sounded genuinely interested.
"I do not remember the name; however, I can point you to the database entry." Catherine's voice had lost its steely edge and she picked up a minicamp from the bedside table. She typed on it for a few moments and then handed it to the nurse, saying, "Here it is, I hope that it helps. By the way, am I free to go?"
"Not quite," Tremaine spoke this time, "While you are no longer required to be in medical, the Navy still needs to debrief you. I will be back in ten minutes to bring you to Admiralty House so we can get this over with." With that, he left the room.
"I'm sorry, but the whole campus will be closed until the investigation is over. Unfortunately, that includes the dorms. We will be happy to reimburse you for the expense of an apartment or hotel if you chose to stay at one, but, again, we cannot house you on campus for a few weeks, until the investigation finishes. I'm sorry for the inconvenience."
Well, here is one downside of being accepted to Saganami Island straight from my arrival, Catherine thought, you never learn where a good place to stay might be. "You would not happen to know a good place to stay until the dorm opens back up, would you?" She asked the secretary at the front desk in reply to his profuse apologies.
"Yeah, sure. There is an apartment complex in Landing City that has suite vacancies out for short-term leases. I believe that it is called 'Willowmont.'"
"I'll look into it, thanks." Catherine nodded to the secretary, turned, and walked out of the office, saluting to the guard standing just outside the door. She was looking for a shuttle to Landing City when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Catherine turned quickly—but not quite sharply—to face the man who did tap her. Who, to her surprise, was a female flag officer. Even more to her surprise, that flag officer's medal board had the crimson, blue, and white of the Parliamentary Medal of Valor. Catherine's hand was saluting in reflex almost before she realized what she was seeing. "Yes, commodore?"
Commodore Ginger Lewis had been one of the assistant instructors for ATC for past semester, and she thought that she had gotten to know Ensign Mozak quite well over that time. The one look Lewis had never expected to see on Catherine's face, that of worry, was on it now. All memory of her original purpose gone, Ginger asked, "At ease. What's wrong, Ensign?"
"Mesa was behind the attack." Catherine's reply was terse, almost dismissive.
Something is really on her mind; this could be big. Ginger finished the thought by bracing herself for the Catherine's reply to her question, "That's the opinion of ONI as well. Why is it worrying you so much?"
"It wasn't just some sort of terrorist attack, they were after me." Catherine's eyes bored into Ginger's, they were as cold as liquid helium. "What I am about to tell you," Catherine continued, "must not be relayed to anyone else. It is the reason Mesa attacked Saganami four days ago."
"If you know the reason, why shouldn't it be shared?"
"Because it involves me."
"Wait, you're saying that Mesa is risking being discovered breaking the Eridani Edict to eliminate just one person?"
"Well they would have had the added benefit of killing almost every midshipman in the Navy, along with a number of flag officer's including you, Earl White Haven, and Steadholder Harrington. But the main reason for their attack was to kill a guinea pig for an experiment that didn't quite work out the way they wanted it to."
"What experiment can be that important?"
"One which can create super-soldiers that the Ukrainians couldn't dream of creating. No, I am not one of those; I just was guinea pig for the technique. They do not want the knowledge of the technique to get out, as these soldiers have a big, gaping weakness: emotion. For the soldiers emotion is like a 'safe-word,' they usually have their emotions turned off, but if something triggers them, they become incapable of violence."
"Well," Ginger replied, "It looks like a couple of things need to happen; the first is that you need to get someplace to live. My last roommate was killed in action a month ago, so I have room at my place. Do you want to come?"
"Saves me the cost of finding a place. And the second thing?"
"The second thing is that we need to train you in some of the less elegant forms of combat. You can hack almost anyone to bits and you can blow them into oblivion from 100 million klicks away. But, for you, anything in between, you are dead meat."
"Sounds good, when do we start?"
"Well, this investigation requires us to change some of our plans," Fleet Admiral Honor Alexander-Harrington, Steadholder and Duchess Harrington, said. Her tone was almost whimsical, though the situation certainly was not. "On the one hand, we need this operation to succeed. Yet, on the other, the officer that we had thought would lead the op is currently leading the investigation of Mesa's attack on us."
Admiral Hamish Alexander-Harrington, Earl of White Haven, looked at her questioningly, "When you start a conversation like that, it usually means that you have some wacked out way to remedy the situation. So spit it out and be done with it."
"First, I realized that I know a couple officers who are due for promotions. I think that we've talked about them a bit. One of them is a talented young Ensign; the other was a petty officer at damage control when Silesia hit the fan, I think that she's a Commodore now."
"Honor, aren't three battle squadrons just a bit too much for a very junior Rear Admiral of the Red?"
"Just a bit, therefore we're only giving her a single squadron with an outsized screen."
"So, you're downsizing the attack?"
"Nope, a certain other tech-weenie-turned-Admiral will also be part of the plan, so it will actually consist of six BatRons. I believe that you may know this one, she gave us a royal pain at Bolthole, Admiral Foraker?" The last phrase wasn't quite directed towards Hamish, and the door opened to show the figure of a woman in the uniform of a Havenite Admiral who nodded to the two more senior Admirals and sat down.
"I believe Honor has one more point to make before I go into the details of the mission," Admiral Foraker said politely.
"Yes I did, I think that this situation gave us one good opportunity because of the closing of Saganami. I believe that Lieutenant Mozak should be assigned to Rear Admiral Lewis' staff as her Flag Lieutenant."