Chapter 2
Colonel Prower did not have to do very much talking to make his way through the facility. The infantry congregated around him, and Ogilvie seemed to say enough with their rifles ready. Both officers had their sidearms out and had part of the group split off to sweep. Near the main elevator was an office with a simple placard that said 'Keiden - Department Head, Atomic Research'. Amadeus motioned for one of the infantrymen with them to open the door. The Acornian strode forward while the others stacked up in single file behind him. Then he reached out and grasped the doorknob, testing it.
"Unlocked." The soldier reported.
"Open it." A sergeant replied. The soldier nodded and turned the knob fully, pushing the door open and going in with his gun up. Then he stepped back with a raised fist, thumb up.
"Clear, one non-hostile." The soldier proclaimed. Amadeus nodded and stepped in through the doorway. To his surprise, he saw a female fox sitting down at her desk wearing a yellow labjacket over her Royal Army uniform. From what he could tell, she was a captain in the Royal Artillery.
"Captain Keiden, I presume?" Amadeus said.
"Rosemary Keiden, chief of atomic research, yes. Colonel Prower if I am not mistaken." The pale gold fox replied. "I see you received the reports I had sent to you."
"Reports?" Amadeus blinked and then slowly put his sidearm away before sitting down in front of her desk.
"You were sent classified information about the activity here at South Island. Activity that is of strategic importance to the King, but morally flawed. Obviously, you agreed so much as to invade, as I hoped." Rosemary explained with a raise of her ears. Their eyes met, and Amadeus silently nodded.
"I prepared my people for that possibility which is why you have had no armed resistance throughout the labs. However, I cannot guarantee anything of the King's Life Guards or the Army Air Force." Rosemary continued.
"I do not believe we will have to worry about the Air Force. Their bombers are wrecked, and our tanks hold the airfield." Amadeus explained.
"I would be concerned about Level Black, Colonel. Ever since the orders were made, the King himself took refuge there. He and the Life Guards will not see reason. Appeals to decency have killed some of my subordinates, at least those who had Black access. Even then, this will likely tip his hand. They have control over atomic weapons still, the next generation. Smaller versions of the bomb, for what I do not know. Even I do not have Black access." Her ears lowered. "All I know is it is underground."
"Then we will proceed down there." Amadeus rose up and Rosemary matched him.
"I would like to go with you, Colonel." She took off the labjacket and unholstered her sidearm, checking it with a pull back of the slide before returning it to its place. "I want to see this disarmament through."
"Granted." Amadeus gestured towards the open doorway and nodded to Jules. "Are there any engineers? Specifically, electrically skilled ones?"
"Senior Private Bean!" A sergeant called out and a green duck-like avian strode forward before stopping and saluting.
"Colonel Prower!" Bean said. "Reporting for your tasking."
"Specialization, Senior Private?" Amadeus asked.
"Explosive ordinance. Wiring bombs, defusing them." Bean replied.
"If you get us down to Level Black, you will earn your sergeant's chevrons." Amadeus proclaimed. He then pointed to the elevator and the duck nodded.
Bean proceeded to the elevator and pressed its call button, the doors opening before him. He unslung his pack and set it down on the floor.
"Your two-best close-shots with him, please." Amadeus said to the sergeant. The sergeant tapped another's elbow and started to stride into the elevator with Bean. Then the doors closed, and Amadeus could hear the car descend.
Inside, Bean looked around at the panel as the door refused to open. He noticed a card slot and then took out a screwdriver, starting to remove the screws from the panel. Then he pulled the mounting out, setting it down gently on the floor. Then he studied the card slot assembly, lowering himself to his knees. The duck reached down into the pocket of his uniform shirt and removed a pair of glasses, putting them on, reaching in. Feeling around, he felt something that shouldn't be there. The cardboard packaging for a demolition charge and wiring feeding to the slot. Removing a pair of wire cutters, he felt around some more, finding a backup set of wiring. Grabbing another, smaller set of cutters, he closed the teeth around the backup set, then around the primary set. Taking a deep breath, Bean closed his eyes and placed his hands on the grips to both, counting down silently from ten before squeezing.
No reaction. Bean sighed audibly and removed the cutters before ripping the charge off from its adhesive mount, dropping it to the ground. Then he cut the head off from the card reader, exposing its wires. Then he grasped the exposed wires and experimentally pressed them together in sets of two. The doors started to rumble open and he reached into his pack, pulling out a twister-nut and screwing the correct wires together. Then he remounted the panel and screwed it back in. Before he pressed the ground floor button, the sergeant pressed a hand to his shoulder.
"We'll hold down here, Sergeant." The Acornian said with a smile and then gave him a friendly clap on the back. "Excellent work. Go get the colonel." Then he dismounted with the rifleman before Bean pressed the ground floor button. Once the elevator rose back up, he slipped his pack back on and picked up his rifle.
"All good Colonel. She's opened for you. Cover team is down there waiting for us." Bean declared. Amadeus nodded and strode into the elevator with Jules and Rosemary in tow along with other riflemen. They packed the car with the riflemen in front of the officers. Bean reached forward and pressed the Black level button. When the elevator descended, the cover team nodded to them and started to move forward, the group following in formation.
The level itself seemed very barebones with lights strung above in protective cages. Red strobe lights flickered every so often. As they moved along, the riflemen pointed their guns at new openings that developed. The natural walls at one point stopped and something caught Rosemary's attention. There were special suits in alcoves and several were missing.
"What are these?" Amadeus asked, stopping in front of one. It was completely black, made of polymer and nylon with a bubble-like helmet attached at the neck and hoses attached at the chest and abdomen to a backpack. The Kingdom's flag was on a patch on each arm.
"I don't know exactly. Some sort of protective suit, perhaps for radiation shielding?" Rosemary conjected.
Amadeus reached in and struggled to pull one out while the sergeant from the cover team went in to assist. He pulled down the zipper and unholstered his sidearm, handing it out to Jules before the sergeant held it upright. The fox removed the helmet carefully and set it down before climbing into the suit. Jules held the gun out and Amadeus took it carefully, finding his index finger didn't quite fit but would at least engage the trigger. Then Jules helped him attach the helmet before sealing the suit up. Bean went around to his front and looked over the equipment before finding a switch. Amadeus heard a low hiss as he was pressurized.
"It will take some getting used to." Amadeus said, voice coming out from a chest mounted speaker grille. "Let's go."
Rosemary looked at a nearby wall sign. "Let's look at the launch bay."
Amadeus nodded, and the team began to proceed through. The launch bay was large and open. Looking up, he gaped at several massive rockets that were set up in corner points. There was also a sort of control center between two of them at the ceiling. Then he turned around and saw a second one between the others.
"What are these?" Amadeus asked Rosemary.
"I honestly don't know, Colonel." Her ears raised tensely while the riflemen started to fan out. Then suddenly the lights went out and flares were dropped out from above, burning a bright red as the lights came on. The team started to withdraw closer to themselves in confusion.
"Drop your weapons!" Soldiers called out.
"This is your king." A familiar voice added over loudspeakers. The team's attention raised towards an Acornian squirrel with dark auburn fur. He was wearing a suit like the one Amadeus wore, with his crown atop of his head, apparently the helmet fitted to account for it.
"Prower here, your highness. Colonel, 1st Royal Guards." Amadeus said, keeping his gaze with Frederick.
"Colonel, if you have any concern for the lives of your men, you will have them drop their weapons." Frederick growled.
"This is not happening." Jules muttered.
"Sir. We know what this facility is meant to do. Please," Amadeus kept his gun pointed to the floor and held his free out towards him. "I was sworn to defend our kingdom from all enemies. Foreign and domestic. We can beat the echidnas but not like this. I have spilled blood for you, but I cannot let this happen. I cannot give that order."
"You are covered from an elevated position, Colonel. I am not going to ask again. You have not killed any of my men. You do not have to die here either." Frederick said.
"These weapons are going to devastate our land and our honor. Honor, have you forgotten that?!" Amadeus looked at the soldiers with the king. "We've had friends that we remember, that died. But that doesn't give you the right to commit a genocide!"
"You call it what you want, you're down there and we're up here! You walked into the wrong battlefield, Colonel!" Frederick screamed.
"Stand fast!" Amadeus yelled.
"Colonel, one last time, you tell your men to drop your weapons!" Frederick yelled back.
"I cannot give that order!" Amadeus thundered.
"I will not repeat that order." Frederick screamed.
"I will not give that order!" Amadeus raised his sidearm up while his riflemen started to take aim. He centered the sights on Frederick's helmet. A blue weasel with a black beret on his head adjusted his rifle next to Frederick and fired as all hell broke loose.
With the loud crack of the weasel's rifle, Amadeus was knocked down onto the ground and Jules let out a loud snarl throughout the gunfire. He placed himself over Amadeus and grabbed his gun, firing wildly up at Frederick with both pistols. The weasel moved the rifle, centering the sight on Amadeus head and fired again. Jules instinctively covered the fox's head with his body and groaned as he felt a fiery pain in his chest. Then he heard a pained growl from Amadeus, dropping both guns and pressing a hand to his own wound before lowering down as Bean unslung two grenades and threw them up, causing Frederick to duck down and grab at the weasel's arm. Both scampered away as the glass shattered, the two explosions narrowly missing them.
Jules pulled his hand away from the wound and looked down upon the blood that streaked into his fur. He winced and looked at Amadeus, seeing the entry of the round that went through him. Blood was pouring from Amadeus' left eye socket and there were fragments of the bullet as well as the helmet's glass embedded.
"Colonel-" Jules coughed. He clumsily undid the helmet and lifted it off from the fox's head. Amadeus' good eye fixed upon him as he lifted his right hand up, pressing it to the hedgehog's wound, the pain in his head making him speechless.
Rosemary knelt beside them, undoing her necktie and pressing it against Amadeus' ruined eye. Amadeus' soldiers started to rush towards the staircases, diverting the defenders' attention. Frederick had doubled back to the other control center, picking up a red handled firing key. He inserted it into the master control system and turned it, then made his way towards the fourth rocket.
"Firing procedure initiated." Frederick's recorded voice could be heard. "Launch in 5 minutes."
"Is there a medic?" Rosemary screamed. Jules groaned and reached down for his hand radio, holding it out to her before dropping it. She grabbed it and keyed the mic.
"This is Captain Keiden, I need two medics down on Level Black." The fox was answered with static. She dropped the radio and pulled off her jacket, packing it in against Jules' wound. Then she could hear machinery whirring and grinding, gasses hissing from hose ports. A low rumbling could be heard while light could be seen towards the top of the silos from the outside. The rockets themselves started to slowly rise on wall-tracks. Then there was an intense heat as fire erupted from the thrusters at the bottom as barriers lowered down. The facility seemed to shake and rumble as the rockets rose up out from the silos.
Crystal Peak NORAD Substation
Space Station ARK - Earth Orbit
"Ma'am, ABM Satellite 25-17 reports a ballistic launch from Kepler-22B." Captain Richard Starinsky said. Lieutenant Colonel Sherrell Starinsky set her coffee down suddenly at her desk and raised her eyebrows. "Call it up on the Big Board."
The massive flat panel display switched out from its regular operations display to a live satellite feed from ABM 25-17 as the original four missiles, along with others started to shoot upwards. The 33-year-old woman stared and then looked back at her husband. "Can you confirm they are nuclear?"
Richard brought up the scanner feed from the satellites' sensor array. "All except for one." He knit his eyebrows in confusion. "One appears to have no warhead but organic lifeforms."
"Probably a decoy. It seems our quiet friends have decided to go nuclear. Trajectory?" Sherell asked.
"Various points throughout their main landmass to the west. Possibly populated." Richard replied.
Sherell picked up the red phone at her desk. "Crystal Peak for Brass Hat."
"You are go for Brass Hat. General Ray here." A male voice answered.
"Dani, we have multiple launches from 22-B. Nuclear with one possible decoy. They present an extreme danger to the population. I'm requesting permission to shoot." Sherell said urgently.
"We're getting the same thing from Space Command. You are cleared hot, Starinsky." General Ray replied. Sherell lowered the phone down. "Cleared hot, burn them out!"
"ABMs switching to target and lase." Richard said as multiple targeting windows from every satellite occupied the Big Board. The mirror arrays on the satellites started to adjust for their targets before the protective caps covering the muzzle of the focusing lenses rolled back.
"Energy charges good!" Several operators called out. "We are green!"
"Shoot!" Sherrell said, standing up and approaching the Big Board. Bright yellow-white flashes temporarily overwhelmed the feeds before they could see the focused solar beams striking down at the incoming missiles.
"Splashed track one." Richard reported. "Track two, splashed. Stand by." He analyzed the incoming reports. "All tracks except for the decoy are splashed. The decoy is not re-entering. I repeat, it is not re-entering."
"Leave it be. We might capture it for study, but we have more pressing concerns. Where did those launches come from?"
"Reverse-trajectory plot shows likely silo positions." Richard answered. "Rocks are on standby."
"Rock em." Sherrell commanded.
"Yes ma'am." Richard keyed his loudspeaker mic. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your DJ, Captain Richard Starinsky here with BGGR-6 FM. To those of you down here listening from your silos, we'd like to present you with America's Greatest Hits."
The ABMs started to reposition now, special tungsten rods exposing themselves while their target trajectories were programmed. Once completed, the rods started to drop away from the satellites, small thrusters burning to position them on target. Gravity would do the rest for the Ballistic Gravity Guided Rod (or Rock as they were affectionately known) Sixes. Streaking down, they would strike and bury deep down into the open silos, causing them to collapse in on themselves.
The red phone vibrated in Sherrell's hand and she brought it up to her ear.
"Good hits, Colonel. The UN's greenlit a strike response team. They're detaching from the ARK to make gate transit." General Ray said. Sherrell nodded and sighed before hanging up.
South Island Air Station
Minutes after the launch, Rosemary and the remaining team members struggled to get Amadeus and Jules to the elevator. Once it reached the first floor, the larger of the riflemen picked the two wounded up and slung them over their shoulders and started to beat it out from the facility towards the airfield. One of them pointed upwards.
"What's that?" Bean asked as Rosemary watched the tungsten rod come down.
"That's not one of the rockets-" She said in confusion. "Go! Go!"
The rod burrowed down and struck at the center point between the four silo pods, causing the island to shudder and shake as if it were experiencing an earthquake.
Once they were at the vehicles, Rosemary ran between them, then she finally spotted a medic, grabbing him.
"Horatio Quack, regimental surgeon." The medic grimaced as she strong-armed him. "I would think there would be decorum even with this mutiny."
"Not much time, doctor." Rosemary led him to the two wounded Acornians. Quack knelt and looked at Amadeus shaking his head. "He'll need an operating theater for those injuries." Then he unslung his pack and started to work on Jules to stabilize him.
Rosemary looked up at the sky again, waiting intently when Amadeus grasped her leg. She knelt back down beside the other fox and took his hand.
"We failed, didn't we?" Amadeus asked weakly.
"I don't know." Rosemary looked over at the ruined facility and then back at him. "There hasn't been any sign of detonations. But something destroyed the facility and it wasn't one of the missiles. We would be dead."
Quack was clamping down the broken blood vessels in Jules' chest and grimaced. "Just barely missed the heart but there's still significant damage." He unpacked a blood bag and plunged the needle into the hedgehog's arm, holding it high and squeezing on the bag.
There was a loud roar of rocket engines as a shadow started to cast over them. Rosemary looked up and saw a strange craft starting to enter the atmosphere towards them. It seemed to level off and lower down towards the airfield. The craft was a battleship grey and, on each side, was a strange blue insignia of an olive branch above a profile of a planet. It seemed to hover directly over a gap in the ruined bombers before finally lowering down. A ramp started to open from the back.
Rosemary, Bean and Quack gaped as strange aliens wearing flecktarn camouflage uniforms and blue helmets exited. They had no fur and the average height was around 5'8", their skin white amongst them, some a darker complexion or even black-brown. They had rifles that looked more advanced than what the Acornians had and started to fan out. A group started to approach them, the senior of them pointing at the wounded. Two with white armbands and a red cross broke away, along with a shorter man with balding blonde-gray hair with no uniform, but a labjacket and a turtleneck approached. He had a large case with the same red cross on the side.
"Sie sehen aus wie Tiere." One of the uniformed medics said.
"Ja, das tun sie, nicht wahr?" The other said.
"Lass uns zur Arbeit gehen." The third man said.
"Ja Doktor Robotnik!" Both said in unison.
"What are they saying?" Bean asked.
"I don't know, Sergeant." Rosemary replied and the doctor looked at them in surprise.
"You speak English?" The doctor asked.
"English? No, Acornian." Rosemary said.
"We'll get to that curiosity later then." The man knelt beside Amadeus and pressed his hands to his face. "Ah. A rifle wound to the eye and glass. But-" He opened his case and pressed a small device to the fox's eye. "This will sting but it will stop the bleeding." There was a burning sensation in Amadeus' eye socket as the device activated a cautery system. Then he did the same to Amadeus' abdominal wound, pressing it in deep. A pained growl came up from the fox's throat. Then the man started to bring his attention to Jules as the medics with him started to attach their own IV lines and push medication.
"Standard human-sized doses, please." The doctor said. Then he looked at Rosemary. "Doctor Geralt Robotnik, United Nations Science Council consultant for xenobiology."
"Captain Rosemary Keiden of the Royal Army Artillery Corps, or what was left of it." Rosemary said as introduction. "Colonel Amadeus Prower of the 1st Royal Armored Guards and his executive officer, I think."
"Major Jules Ogilvie." The hedgehog said weakly.
"What exactly was going on here? This looks like a battle had taken place before we got here." Geralt said.
"The colonel was trying to stop our king from using his atomic weapons against the echidnas. But it seemed we failed, the king had these rockets and they launched." Rosemary said dejectedly.
"They didn't make it to their targets." Geralt said. "We detected the launches and shot them down."
"You shot them down? How? Why?" Rosemary asked.
"We have been watching your planet for some time, Captain. We are not here to invade or to take over. My people represent the United Nations of Earth." The scientist smiled at her and took her hands, squeezing them. "And I am happy to possibly be the first man to say this on this alien ground; we come in peace."