I would like to thank Sable Cold for taking on the impressive job of being the Beta Reader for this book. As always reviews are welcome. If you find this is easier to read and fallow. Thank Sable Cold and all of his hard work
I do not own Battlestar Galactica or have any connection with them, other than I have seen the shows. And it was a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game. But I do own copies of some of the books, and I have used them for this story.
Chapter 26: Look Who's Coming To Dinner
Earth Early Feb 2019
The Australian government had not kept the naval mission to the Colonial controlled island secret, but they had not broadcasted it to the world either. Most intelligence agencies would have liked to have gotten that type of deal, but it was not to be. That was something that they were a little upset about. Then again, it was just to drop off the bartered payment for showing up at an airshow. That had not seemed like that big of a deal. They had been getting supply deliveries for months now, and nothing major had come of them.
That all changed when a pilot with a single handheld sidearm sized weapon had changed the world in just a few light pulls of a trigger. She had showed that these 'humans' could take out any infantry fighting vehicle or IFV, or any other small combat vehicle with a single shot. The cream in the coffee was that the same weapon had been able to punch through an armor plate that 40mm and 25 mm SLAP and HE rounds had only dented at very close range. Granted the dents had been deep, but they had not been able to overcome the armor plate.
That alone would have been enough for some governments to start more risky lines of investigation or intelligence gathering against these newcomers to the planet. When the Colonial Type Four craft, or as it was now known, the Viper, showed that it was not only hard to detect with space tracking radar but also the very best tactical ones, that was an issue. Although not that big of a surprise, if one thought about it for a few long seconds. They could travel the stars after all.
What was a shock was that that same space fighter could outfight the fighter most feared by others that called this planet home. On top of that, it had done it in an environment that Earth fighter had been built to operate in. Most designers had assumed that a craft built for space flight would not work that well in the thicker regions of the atmosphere near the surface of any given planet. That was what all of the best experts worldwide had sold to their bosses after the first sightings of the alien craft. They had been wrong, and the senior people in those jobs did not like it. Those senior people had told even more highly placed people those 'facts'.
The major powers and even the minor ones knew that a close ally of the United States was going to be sending a small warship to those islands. Those allies were going to be allowed landing or docking rights for their ship, and would be interacting with these alien humans at very close range. Most intelligence agencies knew about the target shooting. It had been mentioned in the contract. The contract that had to be filed as a matter of public record. So those same allies of the United States would most likely have additional first hand contact with those powerful weapons. They also might be able to find out what other kinds of weapons these alien like humans might have. That was priceless information, and a lot of people behind the scenes were wondering what was going to happen next.
Some groups were already mad about this before even adding the cherry on top of that ice cream sundae of fun. The US just had one of their prototype next generation fighters go head to head with one of the Colonial fighters. It had lost big time, but they had been able to do something that no other power on the planet had been able to do, and that was to test themselves against these new technologies of the aliens with their best.
In their eyes, the United States was getting access to the Colonials twice. So they saw it as a bias being applied against them by the aliens. It did not matter that it was a different country getting the second access. They were only viewed as clients of the more powerful nation. Some of those players were not going to let that last for long. The key players around the world did not like looking as if they were second to anyone. Much less to the United States, whom they felt was their historic enemy one way or the other. Different plans were started, and each had their own spin on how they were going to change things on the world stage.
The Russians had a strong background and a history of excellent use of what was called HUMINT. Everyone else in the world just called them spies. Other countries had their own strong suits. Skills which they had no problem using to get access to information if not real equipment that they wanted. All of those countries started the ball rolling to fill those intelligence needs within a day of the airshow ending.
What they did not know was that the United State was also activating its own plans to get better evaluations of the game changing technologies that were now on the planet and had just been exposed to the whole world. The espionage game just got a shot the size of the whole planet in the arm in less than forty-eight hours. It would take some time for plans to be put into motion for most of those countries, but some methods were quicker than others.
The operator of the West Pac Express had only the week before acquired two more Spearhead class ships same as the West Pac herself. They had been the T-EPF-1 and 2, and now they were called the M/V Spearhead and M/V Choclaw County. They were to help with the cargo transfers to the Colonial controlled islands. It was a nine hour long one way trip to drop off cargo to the island. There were half a dozen other companies offering to ship cargos to those islands. So far, the Colonials had turned them down flat.
They had been making supply runs every other day, as the ordered supplies came into Tahiti. So far, most of the orders by volume had been food, followed by the travel trailers. The third most popular type of supply item making the trip out was small lots of different types of high end steel or other structural items. The payments had been in refined metals, other hard to find ores, and finely cut gems.
Each of the two new ships only had a token CIA presence compared to the West Pac Express. That number was going to slowly grow as more and more people were trained for their cover roles. The older ship was still there, so they could and would shift some manpower to those two new boats. That was only part of The Company's plans.
It was going to take some planning and not some few high skills to pull off, but when the Bay class landing ship was scheduled to make landfall on the island, the West Pac would be in the same lagoon. Having some engine issues that would last for a few days. It was hoped that a few extra American cousins would be welcome at the cook out.
While everyone around the world were working on how to get closer to the Colonials, the Australian military collected the one sheet of very dented armor plating and the other one with a hole blasted into it. More than a few 'companies' had offered to buy the sheets, or the even part of the off world made sheets. Chairman Kobi had to turn all of them down.
Kobi rolled his eyes to look at the ceiling of his office. He was hoping that he could get to sleep in his own bed tonight. Then the phones started to ring in his office. Now his ears were hurting, and even though he hated using it, he had the speaker phone on after the fifth call. They were now on the twelfth.
"Sir! I know that you are offering my organisation a lot of money, Mr. Zhang, but I sold the two sheets to a buyer before the airshow had even started."
The voice on the other end of the line came across in clear Queen's English with just a hint of something else. "I know that the armor plates have not left the airshow grounds. It would seem to me that the sale has not been completed."
Kobi shook his head and rubbed his temples with his free hands, he had no idea how someone a few thousand miles away might know something like that. Not for the first time, he was thinking that he might be out of his depth playing some of these games. He took a few more seconds of quiet but deep breathing.
"I have not checked, so I don't know if the buyers have picked up their property for disposal. I have made a deal, and I will keep to it. We do not make a habit of breaking contracts. It is bad for business and my lawyers also don't like it."
The voice on the outer end sounded like they were also getting tired of the way this conversation was going, also. "Disposal, you say? Well if you do not want to sell it to me, how about you give me the name of who you sold it to? Then I can see if we can make an exchange of some kind that both of us can benefit from." The tone had shifted at the end to have a hint of a threat in it. It was like something out of a spy movie, and an old one at that.
Kobi's head snapped up and over to the only other person in the room. He was wearing a dress uniform of the ADF, one that fit like a glove and cost way more than what most officers could afford. The other person did not say a word. He only took a sip of lukewarm tea, and kept a steady eye on the office administrator. Kobi then looked down at the speaker phone like it was a bomb with a counter getting close to zero.
"I have advised the other dozen people who have called and asked about the same thing, the buyer asked that their company's name be kept confidential." Kobi's accent got heavier, as he grew more and more tired of this person.
When Kobi was finally able to end this call, he still had three more yellow lights of active lines waiting for him to personally address. He did not make it to his home that night, or for the next two nights after the airshow had closed. There was a senior military officer sitting in on each of the phone calls and for those days the only times he had to himself were when he went to the latrine. Also, the phone had been tapped and traced by the military intelligence service of his nation.
What Kobi and most others did not know was that the two sheets were already gone from the airfield. In their place, within the safe, were two expertly made copies of those sheets of metal, made of very normal navy aluminum with dents and discolorations in all of the right places. By the time that the first offshore front company had called Kobi, the tests were already well underway. They would go on day and night in a very well hidden facility retrofitted just for these tests and these two items. The first problem had been trying to cut the two pieces into smaller parts. That had not gone so well for the people with the cutting tools. In fact they had turned away every attempt to cut them all the way up to the use of hand held plasma torches. They had resisted the heavy weapons as well as they had the cutting tools. The thin plates had already been shown to resist hits all the way up to 40mm cannon rounds.
All of those shots had been recorded in detail and studied before they were eventually able to divide the sheets into segments that found three new homes. The resistance to everything up to 40mm rounds just meant that they could start with the big stuff. The public use of the captured RPG's and larger cannon armed wheeled vehicles had been vetoed by the senior political figures at the last minute. They had been worried about how it might play in the press. That had not stopped them from being used in those tests very far away from the press.
First the RPG-7 had blown a nice double thumb wide hole in the fresh armor plate. Next to be tested were both the sabot and HEAT rounds fired from a retired Leopard AS1. Both shots had punched nice holes in the plate at four hundred meters. After they had been put into a new set of testing rigs, they had been shot at by a newer M1A1 from the 1st Armored Regiment of the ADF. The holes had been a little bigger, but after the Leopard this was not a surprise. They did not have enough or large enough plates to test at any normal range the tanks normally were expected to fight. This did make some of the testers and their bosses sleep a little better.
The fact that the armor could be punched through using 'normal' weapons was viewed by some as good. These were people who did not understand weapons though. Those thin sheets were only defeated by using weapons that were both heavy and very expensive to have and keep in active inventory. Now the next set of tests was going to be to see how the metal did what it did.
While they were doing that, another and way larger group was going to see what the metal was made of. Making steel is a lot like baking a cake. One needed to not only know the different ingredients to make the thing, but also how much of each product to put in the recipe, and when to do it. Right now no one on this planet knew what the metal was even made of. Once they found that out, then they could work on trying to copy the recipe. There were going to be a lot of people who were not going to be getting a lot of sleep in the next months to years as they worked on the different possible recipes. Some of them even worked, but most did not.
It took the slow moving Bay class landing ship took almost ten days to reach the island with its mixed cargo of items for the Colonials. She had left the port only two days after the close of the airshow. Most of the landing ship's cargo area was taken up by the twenty-five twelve meter long campers, which they were to deliver stacked in special lifts. It also carried two newly refurbished M1A2 tanks, which had only just been adopted by the first Australian army units. They had only started being shipped in after the aliens first showed up. They also had three T-90 tanks that Russians were selling to anyone and everyone that the hard currency to buy them. They were not even bothering to look like they were going to ask questions about 'end users' statements'.
The T-14 Armata, now in full rate production thanks to the increased money pouring into defense spending, was starting to replace older tanks in the Russian inventory. At least they were going into the line units of the Russian ground forces. The excess tanks they were disposing, they were demanding top dollar for from other counties that wanted updated weapons. At least the ones that could not either make their own, or make enough of them to meet their own needs. The factory and the government were charging almost twice as much for the upgraded older generation main battle tank as they had only two years ago.
These T-90s were hulks, but they still had the almost all of the Kontakt-5 ERA armor plating still bolted onto their front lower hulls. They had been told to bring targets after all. They also had no idea what these humans considered a cook out, so they brought along items to maybe help out in making it into their style of cook out. That is, besides the beer they had been asked to bring along. They did bring lots of beer, lots and lots of different kinds of beer. It was a cook out after all.
HMAS Choules crossed the forty kilometer invisible line on the open ocean, and notified the Colonials that they were there. The trip out had been completed with no big issues noted by the crew as a whole. They had left Christchurch New Zealand without any fanfare, which was out of the ordinary for a warship leaving a friendly port. The commander of the ship knew that he owed his ex-wife big time for this. And he had no doubt that she would remind him of it every chance she got in the future. Their divorce had not been a bad one, as such things were measured.
They had just happened to be two Alpha types who spent a lot of time working and who also got married. It was no big surprise to most people who knew them that it had not worked out for them within a few years of the gold rings being exchanged. They were still friends to this day but each still loved having the other one owe them a good sized favor.
When all of this had started to be worked out, at first he thought she would be the one to owe him. That had quickly changed after he had agreed to help her little plan with the airshow. Maybe when all was said and done, he would try to get her to call it even the next time they had dinner together. Then again, she might have a point about this making his career. He was still not going to let it go that she had called his ship a cargo boat.
So far the only cause for concern that was not related to them, the ship, or others in their country was the presence of the three known intelligence gathering ships not that far away from his command. They had been following them for the last eleven hundred kilometers of open ocean. Not one of them had come any closer than thirty two kilometers to the Choules, but in an ocean this size and off the normal shipping lanes, that was very close.
It seemed to him that these three ships were not trying to hide. They also had not contacted the Bay class ship. They had pointed a lot of radar energy at him and at his ship from time to time. They had been hit with so much radar energy that the spy ships should have been able to read the number of filings in each crewman's head with the energy output. It had been that high, and at that short of a range. Every time someone from his crew had tried to raise them on the radio, there was no reply. That was not considered a very friendly act by most seafarers. He had reported each incident to his higher command.
The three ships were now dropping back from his ship, but he knew there was still at least one patrol plane back there somewhere, which had joined up in following his ship. It was flying very low to the water. He would bet his bottom dollar that it was trying to use the much larger radar signature of his ship to mask its approach to the islands. He also knew that an Australian P-8A patrol plane was due into the area in the next few minutes. He was hoping that it was going to be a surprise for whatever was trying to be sneaky. Even before the little show at the shooting range, he had not wanted to put his ship between the Colonials and anyone they were shooting at.
Captain George S. Rentz was also thinking about that hard copy report locked in his office safe. It had been for his eyes only, hand carried to his person only thirty minutes before the lines were hauled aboard and they left port for the last time. The instructions were simple when dealing with the file. Do not open it until five hundred kilometers out of the Colonial controlled harbor. He was also not mention the report or what was in it to anyone for the next decade, unless they were read into a special compartment of information. When the time came, he passed command to his first officer, and went to his office to reread the file one more time, now that they were closer to the alien controlled territory.
Captain Rentz untied the wax string closing the folder and started rereading it. It was a threat assessment of this mission he had volunteered for. He had seen the first one that was written before the airshow started. Back then, the mission was considered low to maybe medium risk to his ship and crew at most. Now it was well into the 'Why are we doing this,' level of risk. It was up there at the level of being ordered to take his ship into a category five typhoon while light on fuel. And the really bad part was that it had been his idea in the first place.
The Chinese had moved their only operational Type 096 nuclear-powered ballistic missile-carrying submarine into the area. It was very likely that this submarine was very close to his ship, right about now. It was known to be escorted by a third generation Type 095 attack submarine. The Russians had the newly commissioned Krasnoyarsk, a Yasen class attack boat in the area. The big brain people were thinking that it was mostly likely escorting a modified Oscar class under the name of Belgorod. The Russians also had broken loose four of their A-50Us and had moved them into the area. The Japanese were not being left out. The anti-submarine warfare people back home had picked up what they thought was the SS-507 Jinryū sneaking around the area. India also might have sent their one Akula class ship for good measure. Just to see what everyone else was doing.
None of those countries had sent a submarine out that far from home in decades, if ever. Rentz also knew that the Americans had rushed the Jimmy Carter, a member of the Seawolf class, to keep an eye on the other submarines. It would seem that after having proof about how outclassed anything that flew was by the Colonials, some of the power players were moving in a lot of subsurface assets into the area to help with some mental compensation.
The Royal Australian Navy was not sending any of her few large vessels into the area. They just did not have that many of the things in the first place. They also did not want to risk losing some if things heated up and went badly on short notice. He was on his own, in an unarmed ship, without even an escort of any kind from his own country. That is, besides a few unarmed passenger jets converted to patrol craft and high flying UAV. So far, it did not seem to some in the upper leadership that this was worth the risk. That might change in the near future, depending on how this cook out turned out. It sucked to be told and not told that you, your ship, and its crew were expendable. The really bad part was that this was not the first time something like this had happened to him or someone he knew and it would not be the last.
The captain kept all of this to himself as they slowly closed in on their destination. He tried to keep the stress from showing on him, but he suspected that both his second in command and the senior enlisted man on the ship knew something was bothering him. When he returned to the bridge, both men shot him sidelong looks, which he dismissed with a half wave of his arm. For the rest of the trip in, he did not wander far from the command center.
When the oddly shaped ship was about to cross the line marking thirty kilometers out from the entrance to the lagoon, new things started to happen and it was directed at them. This was when they received a message from the Colonials. The message was in English, and it was not unexpected in content and timing.
The Colonials would like to inspect his vessel for weapons before allowing it to continue and complete final docking on the main island. They asked for a list of weapons that the ship might be carrying in any way, shape or form. They did make a point to specify that they did not need a list of the ammunition the ship was carrying. This was pretty standard in some ports, like Japan, so the paperwork was already done and waiting to be transmitted back to the Colonials. The captain was wondering how it would go when they saw the line about the five tanks he was carrying on the list of weapons. He already had a message ready to go back if the question was asked, telling them that the three tanks were for targets and the other two were for shooting at the targets. He had been told that this should be enough to smooth any feathers.
He was surprised that the return message was so simply put. It had said that an inspection crew of four armed and armored troopers and two pilots was on the way. They would be landing in ten minutes on his ship's flat deck, which was aft of the main forward super structure. His eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw the time expected. Then he bellowed to be heard at the back of the CIC with ease.
"Radar! Do we have anything on the scopes?" Even to his own ear, the tone of his voice sounded frantic.
The radar operator jumped up and stated flipping through settings at his station. He went from close range search to long range and back again. "Sir! Both sea and air screens are clear out to twenty kilometers. We have a single contact at the twenty five click mark moving away from us. There are more reading at the edge of the air search range, but they are all AWAC's and stuff like that."
The captain nodded, and turned to the most senior enlisted person on board the ship. "Chief, we will be having an inspection team landing in less than ten minutes. And we are not tracking them on our systems. Tag! You're it, mate."
The ship's senior petty officer just looked his commander, and then turned on his heels. He left the bridge without saying another word. Before the hatch had completely closed behind the enlisted man, the captain could hear the words coming out of the boss NCO's mouth at volume. Very few of them had more than four letters, and all of them would not be printable in any medium known to man. The captain smiled to himself. The senior NCO hated inspection crews, and they did not have to be from other nations. It was the senior enlisted man's job to make sure they didn't break anything on his ship while they were looking for contraband. If they did find anything they should not have, it would be his ass, right along with whoever had been caught with the contraband.
The Raptor landed twelve minutes later. It did not show up on any of the radar scopes of the ship until it was slightly more than a kilometer away from his ship. The Colonials only used their hand built transponder device when they were approaching a national border or in space. They did not use it in their own controlled and patrolled areas. If somebody were in their waters, they had better play by their rules. The Type One craft, or Raptor as it was now known worldwide, was flying at wave top height at a few hundred kilometers per hour.
The angle sided craft came up off the port side of the ship, and slid around so that it could land on the open deck at the back of the ship. The Bay class did not normally carry a helicopter, but a cargo carrying one could land on the large flat deck she was fitted with. Even a large fully loaded Chinook with sling loads could be handled in that area without any difficulty. It was even possible for a temporary hangar to be erected behind the massive block of a forward super structure if needed. That part of the ship was also a very good windbreak for aircraft operation. This odd design feature had helped many times in the past. It helped when they were supporting some natural disaster somewhere at the edge of nowhere and they had nonmilitary pilots or low hour pilots trying to help save lives.
The gunmetal colored craft came to a hover, and set down on the ship that was moving in three dimensions all at once with apparent ease. The Colonials were even able to do this without a guide on the flat deck area. The captain could have chalked it up to luck, but after thinking about it, he marked it as a possible required skill of the pilot at the controls of the odd looking craft. He had no idea that over the last few months, all of the active duty Raptor crews had been reviewing Athena and Helo's old recorded data to practice this move.
The landing craft was solid looking and the captain hoped that deck would hold the mass of the craft without deforming. They might now know the local name of the craft, but that was about all they knew of the specifics of the craft. Rentz pulled out his field glass and played them across the scene below his perch on the bridge. He knew that there was a half dozen crewmembers also watching and more importantly expected to be writing reports with their own experience as the base line about what they were seeing.
A hatch opened on one side of the craft, and four people of unknown sex exited the craft. They were in what looked like black body armor that covered them from head to toe. They exited the craft from the hatch one at a time and walked down the low wing at a measured pace. They then made a light hop and were on the deck of his ship. The captain could see two more people in the craft sitting on his deck.
One was definitely the pilot, but after what he had seen on the news about what the one pilot had been able to do with her sidearm, well, he was not going to count them as noncombatants. He had no idea what the second person was. From where he or she was sitting, he did not think it was the co-pilot. He panned the glasses lower, and he noticed that the craft did not leave a hot spot on his deck. That was odd, and he made sure to take note of that fact. No hot engine exhaust for vertical lift. No rotor blades, or a ducted fan of any kind. Still, the craft was VTOL, and while small it was obviously not light.
Captain Rentz waited for the chief petty officer to bring the inspectors to the bridge, but they did not show. One second he was checking something out on one of the other bridge stations near his chair. The next thing he knew, the Raptor was zipping by the bridge on a heading or course that would take it back to the island. The first thing he had thought was something had gone very wrong with the inspection. But then, if something like that had happened, then the senior NCO would have let him know about it before it blew up as badly as it looked to have. He was watching the back end of alien small craft disappear into the distance at near the speed of sound. He only knew that something was wrong, or at least not normal.
Captain Rentz shot around his captain's chair at the fast walk and was just reaching for the One-MC to have the senior NCO called to the bridge. His hand stopped just short of the device, because in walked the very man he was about to call for. He was almost staggering and had a gobsmacked expression on his face. That is not the look he wanted to see on a man who had almost thirty years on the sea under his belt. Rentz felt his heart fall to his shoes at seeing the look.
He handed the captain a sheaf of ten pages with clipped edges on all four corners. The Chief Petty Officer did not say anything while the commander read the offered pages. He had already read them himself before coming up to the center of command for the ship. Those sheets covered the rules of the island. It was a lot like he had seen before, but the kicker was the last page. It said that any armed person that exited the ship must be escorted by one of the island's armed people at all times, or until otherwise instructed by the local Colonial commander.
The captain looked up at the still quiet petty officer who was watching his captain with that odd look on his face. The senior enlisted was not known for not talking. If he was not moving his lips every few minutes, then it was because he was asleep or something else along those lines, like drinking his tea. The captain was really starting to worry. What was going to happen next? Was the world about to freeze over?
"Okay Chief, what happened? Did everything go smoothly?"
There was more than a little concern in his voice as he tried to work out what might have happened below deck. During every other inspection in a third world port, they always wanted to see the ship's captain first off the landing boat. Most of the time it was just to show that he and his ship was under their power and not to forget it.
The ship's senior petty officer was old sea salt, with just over thirty years in Her Majesty's Navy. He had been around the world maybe a hundred times but probably more. There was not that much he had not seen, done or seen done at close hand by someone else. It took a lot to shock him. He had been shaken today, but now he had time to get his feet back under him. He did not want to lose anymore cred with the crew, much less his captain.
"Sir! They had a deck plan of our ship and used that to walk wherever they wanted to go. They checked the armory, engine room, the cargo hold, and the well deck." He took a second, but still had a pained expression on his face.
"They did not open one side door the entire time they were here. They would just keep checking out this notepad like computer, and then keep moving at a fast walk. They had no issues with the heavy tanks or ammunition pallets. I had the boys about ready to open each of the shipping containers so they could see inside without them having to slow down by cutting the seals. They were moving fast and their heads were on pivots the entire time. They were like a bloody SAS team or something."
The chief NCO took another breath and the captain took the opening without him talking to fill the air while he could. "Did they see something they didn't like and left?"
The chief petty officer shook his head side to side and his back got ruler straight. "No Sir! Everything is fine! They waved us off of opening the shipping containers. They just walked down each side of them. When they saw the pallet of beer that we had ready to offload first thing, one of them made an offhand comment in heavily accented English, so I think they meant it to be heard by us." The NCO made a sour face and started working up what looked like a good bit of spit.
"God this is like pulling teeth," thought the landing ship's captain. "Okay Chief, what did they say?"
The senior enlisted now sounded genuinely hurt. Like someone had kicked him in the nuts, or some place equally as sensitive. "Sir, she said that we might need more beer. What if it was not a joke? If word got out to the rest of the fleet that we ran out of beer during a cook out where we were charged with bringing the drinks?"
The captain bit his lip to stop himself from saying the first thing that popped into this mind right off the bat as it were. Aussie men always tried to drink everyone else under the table with beer in various drinking contests around the world. It was just an accepted fact that if Aussies were going to show up, they had better not run out of things to drink, or it could get ugly. To have someone suggest that they, the Aussies, would come around light in that department, that was just one small step below fighting words.
The captain was glad that he had made sure to talk to command before leaving the last port. He had made sure that besides the one pallet of beer in the open, one of the twenty foot long shipping containers was filled with whatever beer was in the base's class 6, and had its own cooling unit mounted. That cooling unit had been running full bore ever since it was sealed before they left. He had kept that bit of information from this crew, and the container was listed as carrying food and cooking supplies in the manifest. This was to explain the cooling and power needed by the container. He did not want it to have an accident and pop open early on the cruise out here. It was not a lie. After all, beer was a food item. It was not possible to make a beer glaze without the beer to start it with. He thought that the deception would last at least until the inspection. He had even kept the information from everyone else on the whole ship at the private urging of the port commander.
The captain leaned closer to the older enlisted man so that his voice would not carry too far. "I have it covered, Chief. Red 4 should have enough to keep everyone happy. Even with what's left on the pallet."
He had been briefed on the number of people that normally were on the island at any one time at the last minute. This data was supplied by something that did not need air to support it, but it still was only a guess. George had taken that number and worked how much they would need if eighty percent of them were his countrymen. In the end, he had to settle just for cleaning out the base liquor store on the quiet one late afternoon.
The NCO's head rocked back a little, and then nodded up and down in little jerky movements. The senior enlisted man did not like it that his commander officer had seen an issue, one that he did not, and had already planned out a way to fix it. Then on top of those two insults, the older enlisted man had not found out about it.
"Good Show. I'll make sure it's the first one offloaded. That is, after we get the warm stuff pulled out." He wanted to say more, but he was too mad at himself. What if this got out to the other Master Chiefs? He would have to turn in his stripes. Or maybe it was time for him to get out if the skipper could get one over on him like this?
The captain had a few minutes to enjoy pulling one over on the NCO, but decided to be very careful. The NCO network could come back and bite an unwary officer if he played too cute with any one of them in the whole fleet. The smile was still hidden and the pep in his step was still there as Captain Rentz walked around the bridge. That is, until the radar contact was called out to the whole command staff.
"Radar contact! Surface contact change! Sierra 57 status update! Contact was moving at a steady fifteen knots. The speed started to steady climb, and then stopped and started to drift. It's right in the mouth of the lagoon access the small cargo ships have been using."
Before the captain could make it to the radar station, the radio started blasting on the overhead speaker. "Mayday! Mayday! This is West Pac Express on Guard. I have lost both banks of engines and we are adrift. I am requesting assistance. Any ship in the area, please respond."
The captain of the West Pac Express repeated this radio message twice more in rapid succession. This was the way it was supposed to be done so that other ships had time to find out what was going on. When they took a break in the broadcast, as they had been trained to do, and after giving the whole area an alert, the Australian ship contacted them back.
The young engineer replied before his commander could give him the orders. "West Pac, have you popped flares?" Pirates were not unknown in today's world. Military ships did not just blast out that they were around, more so very lightly armed military cargo ships. Not without knowing some more facts about who or what might be in trouble.
"Responding ship! We have popped two blue and one green flare, and we have sent a notification to the Colonials already but have not received a reply. Will you pop flares?" The voice on the other end was strong and had an air of command that could be felt over the airwaves.
One of the bridge lookouts put their eyes up to the massive spy glass mounted at a window, then nodded that she saw the three flares arcing through the air. Captain Rentz picked up the handheld mic and pushed the button to transmit. Before he spoke, he pointed his chin and one of the enlisted people pulled out a flare gun and loaded the device. Before closing the weapon up, he showed the color coded lid to his commander. The captain nodded that he saw the color band, and rekeyed the radio transmit button.
"West Pac Express, this is HMAS Choules. We will be in visual range of you any second now. We will be showing a single green flare. We will tow you back to the lagoon, but after that, it's up to the visitors."
The captain and most of the rest of the ship's crew knew about the ship called West Pac Express. The captain and one or two other special skills people on the ship had an idea of what the West Pac Express might be doing. They kept their thoughts in their own heads, but they were not buying the engine issue.
"Thanks, I do not want to put my ship on a reef. My company might not like that too much and look for a new master ticket holder." The voice came back over the speaker. He even sounded like he truly believed what he was saying.
The West Pac's timing had been off by about an hour. The plan had been for them to be farther out to sea when they lost all four engines. The Aussie ship would have been tied up and powered down for the rest of its stay. That way it would not have been able to help the cargo ship with her little problem. The original plan was for the West Pac to repair one engine in time and limp back to the lagoon under her own power a few hours later. The small cargo ship would then have asked for an empty berth on the same dock they had been using while the other engines were repaired. That is, until the other engines could be repaired of the very real looking damage. Unfortunately the device they had used to damage the engines had gone off early and a little too well for that plan to work out. The plan was that they were to expect to have a few someone elses check out the damage, so it had to be believable and more importantly realistic enough at least to cause a temporary engine failure.
After rigging a stern tow line to the civilian ship, the larger military ship pulled the lightly loaded cargo ship three kilometers back into the lagoon. The Australian ship did this before the command staff on the cargo ship was able to contact the Colonials. They were asked to help dock the troubled cargo ship near the deep water pier on the Sun Sail Marina side. The now attached pair of ships were pointedly told to not try for the larger ship docking area on the other side of the main island. Captain Rentz was impressed how fast the little cargo ship was able to rig the towing lines between the two ships. This was not the first time his ship had to do something like this but this cargo ship seemed to have a both a sharp and quick crew.
It was up to the senior petty officer to keep an eye on the tow lines, and it was the captain's job to keep both ships safe while they were under tow. The trip into the lagoon was not an issue. Unlike any other port of size in this part of the world, there were no other ships or boats to have to deal with in this lagoon. Not even a sail boat to be dodged. After clearing the reef and getting within a kilometer of the expected docking area, all the captain had to do was make sure the ship's sonar and depth finder were fully manned and in working order. He used them to keep both ships off the continuously moving sand bars. The warship's old nautical charts were updated as they made their way deeper into the Colonial territory at only thee knots of speed.
Once the West Pac Express was ready, the towing lines were removed and recovered by the warship. They were just thrown over the side of the cargo ship, with an attached set of buoy floats, and pulled by hand back onboard the warship. The cargo ship was designed to work in small ports without needing the support of a tug that might not be available. The cargo ship was able to safely make the last half kilometer to safely tie up to the dock. The cargo ship was now closer to the island, and out of the normal channel it used to unload its cargo on prior missions. She was running light and needed even less water to float than normal.
Once the cargo ship had moved out of the way from blocking the small channel, the sixteen thousand ton landing ship dock could make her way to her appointed docking area. Captain Rentz did not have a pilot for his docking either. He gave the proper orders and he spun his ship within her own length, so that his stern was now pointed to the dock. With some fine tuning from both the bow side thrusters and the aft mounted twin propulsion pods, he was able to guide his ship into alignment with very little wasted effort. This was where the ugly and massive superstructure came into good use. He had a clear line of sight to where he needed to go without the normal obstructions when he looked aft. It was a simple thing to work through, and soon the Aussie ship's stern landing ramp was secured to the dock. It was exactly the same area the West Pac had just used that very morning to offload her cargo. The warship was only two hours later than had been planned for when they had left her last port of call. Even today that was as close to spot on time as could be planned for.
The offloading of the large landing ship went very quickly. Almost as fast as the much smaller West Pac was when needing to empty her much smaller cargo area. This was for two main reasons. The first one was that the crew of the landing ship had done this type of offloading hundreds of times. Meaning they had moved heavy loads in a low support area so many times they could not count with an easy or accurate idea of the exact number. It was just another port and another mail delivery needing to be made. That on this one they would be able to have beer and a promised cookout when they were done with the work was just an added bonus. It helped to keep the hands and arms moving at a rapid pace.
The other reason for the rapid offloading was that the local Colonials had months of working with the West Pac and the two other Spearhead class vessels. Those new ships that had been taking turns running supplies from Tahiti out to them. So every one of the jetty crew knew the drill, and had done it enough times to get the skill up to an almost expert level.
The first items off the landing ship's short aft ramp were not the cargo containers full of food and other items. The Colonials had their own plans on what they wanted offloaded first, and they had conveyed this to the ship's commander. So the tow trucks with 5th wheeled campers attached to each moved off the ship first. Each of the long campers would head south after being pulled off of the stone pier loading area. They first would be parked along the side of the two lane road that headed south of the pier and went around the island.
A set of twenty five large red marks had been spaced out every few hundred feet, with a number painted on the dirt to separate and identify the marked sets. When one of the two tow vehicles the Aussies brought had their loads fully on the pier, the driver was handed a number and pointed the way to go. The driver would then only have to find his number marked on the side of the road, and put his trailer camper's back bumper near the bright red traffic cone straddling the thick red line.
The Colonials had done this before, but never with this many campers in one delivery. So the only problem with their current plans was that it would need to be scaled up. The rest of the day was spent unloading the campers and the operation went into the start of the night shift. Operations shut down for the day when the last towing vehicle made it back to the ship after dropping off its last fourteen meter long camper. Plans had been passed to the ship's captain that the cookout would be held the next evening, at the old restaurant that had once been called La Voile. It was noted in the official message that this location was within easy staggering distance of the ship for those who could not hold their beer. When the message was passed to the crew it caused some issues at the seeming challenge.
The second message came in after the information about the cookout had been passed to every crewmember on the small warship. In it, they were given directions to where the range was going to be set up. It was at an open field that had been cleared for a housing development that had not come to pass due to a downturn in the world economy. It was very near the island's only airport now turned spaceport. The cleared area was almost a half a kilometer long with a very tall rocky backstop. Behind that tall backstop was nothing but jungle going uphill. It would be enough to catch any stray rounds that missed the hard backstop.
The range was a bit on the short side compared to the normal range tanks and tank sized weapons used, but they would be shooting low, and it was close enough to be visible to a crowd of bystanders. The tank commanders might be a little concerned about how safe those bystanders might be for this shooting event. This information was a bit on the surprising side for the crew of the ship when they were updated on the next day's activities.
Captain Rentz and the rest of the senior staff under his command were standing around a full color printed image of a pair of islands spread out on the large navigation plotting table. The image had been taken from a commercial satellite less than two weeks ago. It was a huge map that took up most of the table. Each pixel of the massive printout was one meter of the ground. On the printed page were marks that had been added by his country's intelligence agencies. Today it had two new marks, ones that had caused more than a few eye brows to be raised.
Captain Rentz tapped his finger on the area of the map described in the last message from the Colonials. "So does that area look like it's workable, Major?"
The head of the ground forces was not in uniform. He tilted his head to one side and then gave a smirk. "I would have thought that they would want to set this little show away from the area that they've most heavily settled. We will have easy access to the brains and operations center for the whole island. It is a rather a nice place to put on a show. There is no way we could get away with something like this. The football moms would lose their mind the first time one of my boys hit the triggers."
The captain tapped the oddly colored map with his fingertip. "Chief, we have a location. Please work with the ground commander and take care of our end of things. I will send a message back to the Colonials letting them know we are game to use this location for a spot of shooting at some hard targets."
Not long after the sun had set and darkness had covered the island, the military ship closed up and locked up all of the hatches and landing ramps to the dock for the night. Only the night guards, deck watch, and a light bridge crew were left up to keep an eye on things. The alert crews on the ship were watching what was moving around them on both land and water. They could not see anything, but a few of them could feel eyes watching them back from the island. From the wood line and a few other areas, the ship was being watched by people in heavy battle armor and weapons that this planet had never seen before. This was the largest and most heavily armed group of locals ever allowed on these islands to date. The sudden breakdown of the small support and supply ship only added to the number of strangers on the island.
Unloading on the second day started on the dot at 0700 local. The long grey metal loading ramp hit the top of the stone and oddly paved dock just when the sun was clearing the horizon. Today was different because there were more people around, and most of them were just standing around talking on the offloading dock.
Those extra people were from the West Pac Express, tied down not too far away from the larger military ship on the same dock. It took people a while to realize what was different in the interactions. It was the senior NCO who brought it up to the warship's captain. The locals were speaking with a lot more English than they had at any other reported time in the intel estimates he been privy to.
Unknown to them the Admiral had decided that it was time to lift all of the restrictions on speaking the local language. It's hard to have a team building event if one group can't talk with the other people they want to have the team building event with. Bill thought they had been on Earth reasonably long enough to have picked up some things from the locals. The change had started the day the landing ship had docked but it had been so loud with all the trucks moving all around that no one had noticed. Now that more people were talking and the noise level was too low to drown out the conversations, it was easier to pick up the difference around the dock area. That did not mean that they were speaking without very thick odd accents.
The twenty foot long containers were offloaded first by a modified forklift, one that the Australian Navy had taken aboard the ship for this very task. The forklift attachment would latch onto the top pins on the rectangular metal box. These four pins were also used to lock them to the bottom of another container while carried on container ships. That was how they were loaded on the large container ships that moved cargo around the world. Those massive carriers stacked them up a dozen or more high, and with over tens of thousands of the metal boxes on each of the largest ships on this world's oceans.
Once the pins were locked, the forklift could lift the cargo container out of the ship with ease and then carry it about a half kilometer down the road to the old restaurant. There were only two of those specialty movers, so between the runs of the forklift, a lowboy trailer with a target tank rolled off the ship and started the three kilometer plus trip to the range for the main event. There just was not enough room to pack down another one of the specialty equipment. The weather was too unpredictable to have kept one tied down as excess cargo on the exposed flat deck of the ship.
The last two items to be offloaded from the LSD were the two fully operational and American built M1A2 main battle tanks. As soon as the first tank had pushed its nose out of the landing bay and on to the short ramp, two of the strangest trucks anyone on earth had ever seen came out from behind a half remodeled building and into full view on the main land.
They looked like a cross between an ATV, a jacked up pickup truck, and a weapons technical from some hellhole in Africa. It they had been normal armed Hiluxes, the Abrams would have eaten the both of them for lunch and look for something else in a heartbeat. After the air show a few weeks ago though, no one was going to take anything that might have any connections to these Colonials at face value.
Each tank had a front escort and a rear escort taking positions as soon as they left the dock and reached the main asphalt road supporting the island. The front escorts were smaller two man ATV's that still looked to be armed with some kind of light machine gun. The rear facing gunners made sure to not point the odd-looking weapon backwards at the Aussie crewed main battle tank. The strange wheeled vehicle that had dropped in behind each of the tanks though, had at least one of their weapons pointed right at the back of the seventy ton tanks.
When the group of ground vehicles got to the general area of the range, the lead tank's driver was able to see two metal poles freshly driven into the red colored dirt off to one side of the road. When the tank had progressed about sixty meters past first marker, the lead ATV stopped and its driver pointed to the other stick. That was the entry gate or controlled point of access to the heavy weapons range.
It looked very old tech. The marking poles were rusted and pitted from the local salt air and age.
The driver of each of the tanks followed the hardball road until it changed into softer dirt. It was a short trip to a pre-built U-shaped dirt berm that would obviously serve as the firing point. With their steeds in a nice resting place, the two crews exited their machines and locked their hatches behind them. They all thought that they would have to walk back to the ship, or maybe catch a ride on the back of those four strange and huge ATVs. The Colonials had a different idea all together.
The eight tankers were looking around the rain forest. The young captain was about to tell everyone to tighten their boots up and get ready to enjoy a little walk, when they heard a car horn beep twice on the hardball road, off to the side from their location. The eight of them shot a few quick glances at each other before they doubletimed it back up to the main road.
When the tankers cleared the last tree, they could see who it was still beeping the horn. It was a tall but very young man standing in the street. He was waving them towards a box shaped open topped thing that was sitting on the road. It looked like a sled, only without rails or wheels. When the eight troopers were close enough, they could tell that it had seats, just like a lot of the late 1970's Cadillac convertible sedans from back home. It did not take long for the eight tankers to get onboard. The stranger made sure that everyone had a safety belt on, then took his own seat in the open topped thing.
Kell gave the small group of military men an evil smile over his right shoulder before he started up the vehicle. They had no idea what they were about to experience and it showed on their faces. He gave them a big toothy grin and spoke to them in clear if oddly sounding English.
"Hang on." Before the tank crews could do anything beyond get over that he had said something in English, Kell activated the high tech safety harness with a flip of a switch.
Kell did not have many chances to drive one of the few hover cars known to exist, so he made the most of it every time he could get behind the wheel. He hit two or three more switches and the car rose a meter off the ground, a slight hum coming from its underside. The tankers on the either side of the metal box tried to look down to see what was going on as the metal sled rose.
Soon then they had more to worry about, because Kell hit the gas. In the space of a few seconds, they were up to ninety-six kilometers an hour in an open top car from hell. Kell took the scenic route, while the troopers in the back thought he was trying to kill them all. It did not take that long travelling at that speed to drive all around the whole island. The men in the back thought it was a lot longer than that until they made one last turn on the road.
Finally they could see the ugly form of their home away from home docked at the end of the pier. The ship they called home was not a pretty ship, and most thought of it as the ugliest ship in the whole fleet. Now that the tank crews could see it again, it was the prettiest ship in the world. They had also been so focused on surviving the ride that they had not been able to take one image along the long way around the island. They even would not be able to remember very many of the landmarks they had passed on the trip.
All work stopped, when the sound of the hover car made it to the ears of the people working the area of the loading jetty. It was not that loud of a sound, but it did not take long for people's eyes to be drawn to the movement. More than a few of them had been still talking about the two-different sized ATV's that had escorted the MBT's to the shooting range. Those had been the first land vehicles that anyone had seen on this island with any detail.
Then word quickly spread via handheld radios carried by the whole crew on what magic they were seeing coming down the road. More than a few personnel took out cameras and took quick snaps of what was coming towards them at speed.
On the bridge of the West Pac Express, a deck officer pulled out his very powerful wildlife camera. He burned through a massive solid-state storage chip as he took image after image of the floating apparition. He went through every filter the special camera had been outfitted with six months before. The removable data drive would be replaced and locked away with a similar one on which was stored images he had taken of the strange four wheeled armed escorts earlier in the day. Now it would seem that planning for this engine trouble had already started paying for itself. Things seemed to have finally started to move more rapidly.
Work on the pier came to a complete halt when the hover car made a sharp turn and drove towards the loading ramp of the ship at the end of the jetty. More than one hand went to empty holsters on hips, and then moved out of the way of the speeding object. A hundred sets of eyes watched as the floating box spun its axis. It then slowed down, coming to rest only about twenty feet from the ship's aft landing ramp.
When the death machine came to something of a stop, the eight tankers started coming out of the open top machine as fast as they could. They did not exit as fast as they should, it was as fast as they could. They were not worried about little things like landing on their feet or even dignity, as they did a Chinese fire drill out of the hovercar. They just wanted out! They did not care at the time that they just became the first persons born on this planet to ride on a real hovercar. Luckily there were images to prove what they had done. There were also a few images of them going about killing themselves getting out of the open topped transport.
When all of the eight tankers were out of the back of the sedan, the driver waved at the pile of uniformed bodies with a toothy grin. Then the blue hover car, which had not touched the ground, shot away from the group. It was hitting around ninety kilometers per hour from a dead stop in seconds. Only one of the eight tankers was able to get to his feet quickly enough to get a glimpse of the hover car before it made a turn and was lost from sight.
He was a 19-year-old tank driver. He had been the top street racer of his small town a few years ago. At least before he wrapped his Holden HK Monaro GTS around a tree. That had not gone over well with too many people in his hometown. He had joined the military to get out of there before he ended up in jail again for street racing. He still had bit of a wild streak and was not considered sane by most of the people in his unit, but he could drive. That was never in doubt by anyone who had seen him in action. He had even been able to remove all of the power governors on his tank engine without anyone noticing it before this trip came up.
Well, that was what he thought. A few people in his chain of command did know about the modifications. That was why he was on this mission, because of his out of the box thinking. He was making notes about everything a smart street racer might know about mass, wind resistance, horse power and a dozen other tech details the craft had just proven it could do.
The eight would be world renowned for their bravery in going on the world's first hovercar ride, until the images of them unassing the transport to fall on the stone pier made it to a few social media pages. They still got a lot of free drinks out of the ordeal no matter how they exited the off world made device. By the end of the year, those eight men were well known to two dozen different intelligence agencies. That was not a good thing for people of so low rank.
The day's work ended early and when it was done only a skeleton crew was left aboard the military landing ship. The number was about half the number of people standing watch when the ship was in a hostile port. The locals had been slow cooking a dozen large pigs taken from the two islands all day. The smell of the cooking meat was drifting all the way down to the two tied off ships for the last few hours. A few of the West Pac crew had already started drifting that way.
The smallest of the wild animals was over a hundred and fifty pounds of dressed weight, before it had started to be slow cooked. Local fruits had been collected and added to the rest of the food brought in by the West Pac and her sisters. When the cargo container holding the beer was opened, a cheer went up that should have been heard by all of the aircraft that were flying around the islands, put there by the local powers.
It was a rocking party with lots of hot food, music, and social lubricant passing around. There were some issues with the intercommunication at first, but nothing that could not be worked out. Charles was making his rounds around the cookout when his Colonial made secure communication device beeped in his pocket. It would seem that he was not going to be able to fully enjoy the first large scale meeting between these two branches of humanity after all.
It was a simple worded message sent from the small but growing operations center they had set up in the main airport building. They had picked up a contact that was crossing the forty kilometer mark at around fifty-nine thousand feet. This was the first overflight by a spy plane, or what the locals called a UAV in some time. The Colonials could not do anything to either of the overflying satellites, or the ones that were in higher orbit and stayed exactly in the same spot over the planet. The locals had a well-established procedure about them.
They could however, do something about this air breathing unmanned spy system that had intruded into their airspace. The people of this planet had rules saying they could not do anything about the satellites overhead. Overflying drones or other types of manned spy planes on the other hand, that was a completely different problem set to have to deal with. His people had already backtracked the flight path and had a good idea of who owned the device that had just violated the Colonial claimed airspace. Charles only sent a three letter code back to the operations center, and went back to walking around the mostly outdoor party he was trying his best to enjoy.
The Colonials had been having low to mid-level issues with cyber-attacks for some time now. They were not considered that big of an issue, and they had not done anything about them yet. That is, besides stopping those attacks cold before they could get anywhere. The strongest and most frequent of those attacks had been coming from the Chinese.
The lack of success had not gone over very well with the Chinese leadership. They were not used to these types of attacks not showing at least some result for their efforts. The higher Chinese leadership had been briefed that it would take weeks to maybe as long as nine months for them to penetrate these aliens' computer systems, especially after the first set had been blocked. The leadership decided that they could not wait for that length of time to pass. They quickly had to resort to a more direct approach to get some direct intelligence on these island and aliens, while their primary method built up a good head of steam to hopefully get even more data.
The Soaring Dragon UAV was China's answer to the American made RQ-4 Global Hawk, Triton or RQ-3 Dark Star. Except they had not been able to get the complete data on those American projects through their normal data mining operations. To get a working prototype, they had had to mix and match technologies from different companies and countries to get something that was at least close to what the American craft could do in the reports they had access to. It had taken a lot work, money, and time. And it still was not as good as the Global Hawk. However, it was better than anything else the Chinese had right now in the HALE or High Altitude Long Endurance unmanned vehicle category.
That alone was not enough to complete the mission which was demanded of it. A huge number of bribes had to be spread around that part of the world. All before the large craft was taken apart, packed down, and moved to a private landing strip that was close enough to the targets. From this forward and concealed location, it was deemed safe to operate, and they launched the drone. If all went to plan they should be able to recover it after a twelve hour mission. The data to be downloaded from the craft while in flight was to be bounced off two satellites back to the ground station on the mainland. All of this had taken a huge amount of money to accomplish in such a short amount of time.
The Soaring Dragon was not a small craft by any means such a craft could be measured by. The wingspan on this craft was longer than what was built into the latest generation of Boeing 737 jet liners. It did not have the same radar cross section as the average civilian jet liner though. This was due to what the drone was made of, and some other adjustments that had been made to the craft before it rolled out of the hangar. Still, it was by no means a stealth class system. With its flying height above the water, and its high-tech systems, it was simply a very high tech surveillance and reconnaissance system
It already had the islands in its sights when it reached the desired altitude. It had already started sending the data back to its masters. The data feed was sent up through the canoe like bulge that ran along the top of the craft to a civilian, but state-owned, satellite in geosynchronous orbit, and then over to a low earth orbit 'weather satellite'. From there it was sent down to a ground control station sitting in an airfield somewhere in southern China. The drone was to be on station and stay there all day before returning to its airfield. The mission it was flying was expected to be at least a dozen hours long. That was the plan, and most of the officers even thought that they could get that time and at least half a dozen more missions out of it. It should take that long before complaints accumulated to a point that they could no longer be ignored.
The drone operator was working his system just as he had been trained to do on a lower flying craft. He had no idea what was about to happen. The code Charles had sent to his command center had started a set of actions that had been pre-planned for some time. One of these was a message sent to a Raptor that was sitting in orbit high overhead under full stealth.
It did not take but a few seconds for the craft's DRADIS systems to find, and then lock on the drone with its weapons. One minute and thirty seconds after Charles had cleared the mission to proceed, two old Colonial built missiles launched from their pylons under the Colonial Raptor's wings. The Lighting-Javelins' seeker heads had no problem tracking the slower flying drone below the high flying craft.
The sudden appearance of the very hot plumes of the pair of missiles' exhaust was picked up by the higher orbiting satellites of many different countries. Those high orbiting satellites were able to track the twin hot tails as well as the heat from their impact on the slow and non-maneuvering target in the thin high atmosphere. These events were not only followed by military systems in orbit, but more than a few commercial satellites that happened to be looking the right way, at the right time, with the right types of sensors.
One second the ground base controllers were working the systems that made up the expensive high flying drone. The next second, all they had on their flat view screens was static. It would take the Chinese government and its military a few days to work out or be told what had happened to their two hundred and fifty million dollar drone. The one that had been flying so many thousands of kilometers away from any of their known bases. For the time being, the Colonials would not be saying anything about what they had done to the overflying unmanned spy plane that had violated their airspace.
The Chinese leadership was not happy with the information, or more importantly, the lack of information from their other spy planes. The data that was found did force the other world leaders to pull any efforts to do the same type of thing in a clandestine way. They were learning from the very expensive lesson that the Chinese had been given. The idea of flying drones over the islands had been put forward before by many intelligence agencies, and until then, they had been vetoed for one reason or the other. Reasons as varied as the countries that had thought about doing something similar.
Now that it had been proven that the Colonials would remove high flying craft from their airspace with almost contemptuous ease, it was looking to be a good way to lose a few hundred million dollars of aircraft very quickly. There were very few countries on this world that could afford to have that done too many times. It was not just the cost of replacing those assets, but the political cost of losing a capital asset.
The only people on the island who knew what had just happened were the ones not at tonight's big party. The brief flash of light of the Colonial weapons striking their target was too far away and too high for the party goers to see from the ground even if they had been looking up. It would not be until almost dawn that word would reach one or two officers on the West Pac. The news did come as a shock, almost as much of a shock as when word was sent back that no one on the island had known about the action happening around them while the barbecue was underway. The duty case officer would report back to the mainland that none of the Colonial craft had taken off from the nearby air or space base. Unlike what had happened with the two small boat attacks, the Colonials would not say a word or put out a press release about the shooting down of the spy plane.
The party went on for hours and everyone had a good time without having many problems that had not been expected or controlled. The Aussies and the Americans were surprised at how much the Colonials could put away between bites of food. They had no way of knowing that the only alcohol that the Colonials had to drink most years was a type of moonshine.
After years of that, beer was almost like water to most of them. It was with too much fanfare that the last case of beer was pulled from the shipping container just after they had started cutting up the meat. At least by this time the pallet full of beer had been judged the proper temperature to be drinkable by a civilized person. When the last of the revelers left the cook out, there was still half a pallet's worth of beer waiting to be opened. The Aussie tradition was safe after one very close call. Now it was time for the after party.
Most crews, from both ships, were allowed to sleep in the next morning. That is except for the small number of people that had to be on duty. Sometimes getting the short straw can be a very bad thing. The Colonials had learned their lessons from the past and very few of the on duty personnel were even a little hung over from the night before. Well, less than one in twenty, but that number was a lot better than most other militaries'. Like say the US. They could not claim that low a rate on most post holidays work calls. That was also something that many armies on this planet could boast even with units deployed in war zones. The morning started just like any other day for the Colonials living on this planet.
The range was open by the time the sun was directly overhead, and a good-sized crowd had formed up in the area. There were some Colonials, but mostly it was the people visiting the island who were walking around the soon to be range. Most seemed to be making last minute adjustments to the targets or the shooters. They had the three old Russian made MBT's, but those were not the only targets being set up on the dirt of the range.
They also had some metal targets set up as towed or mobile targets from the main tank training ranges in Australia. These were more for accuracy testing, as opposed to being just for testing if they were hard to kill or not. There were some large green tree trunks, anywhere from two feet around to almost seven feet around. The Colonials had also brought out some more armor plates, sisters to the ones they had showed off at the airshow not so long ago. The Colonials even had been able to buy and have shipped out an old stripped down American M113A2. It was surprising what can be found for sale on the grey market with enough money. It was only a metal hulk to be shot at, or maybe made into an artificial reef somewhere. All in all it was a heavy weapon shooting range with an amazing set of targets, and it would have done any firepower demonstration in the world proud.
Not everything going on behind the scenes for setting the range targets had been on the up and up, though. More to the point, things were not as the people from Earth were assuming. Charles, via orders straight from the older Adama, had not used any real Colonial armor plate. The targets at the airshow and at this range were from a bad batch of plates. One which had failed to meet the standards for use on Colonial military equipment.
They had been sat aside in case they might be useful for something else, maybe on one of the civilian ships. Now the Colonials had found a use for them. One which was a lot more productive than had been first thought of two years ago. When this planet had been found, and the tech level verified, Adama had had an idea of what they might be good for and how they could be useful for his people. Even if they had weak points randomly scattered around their surface.
The weapons laid out for everyone to use today were only a collection of Colonial made and supplied weapons. None of the weapons had any technology or connection to the Rifts Earth crews or any knowledge they might have. Adama and Laura did not want to give away every secret about the weapons and armor capabilities the Colonials and their friends could field to defend themselves with. Bill knew that things could still go sideways in any different number of ways.
The shooting event went on for hours, and it was all recorded in high definition by both the locals and the Colonials. The first part of the show was to let the visitors try out different weapons that had not been made on this planet. They would shoot once at each target, and then any of the interested group would walk down, as a group, and check out the damage done to a given target. Even the small and sleek looking Colonial CP M45 pistol had put a hole in the side hull of a T-90. One that a man's thumb could almost fit through. The explosive round that they fired from a little bigger CP M57 had hit a Kontakt-5 Explosive Reactive Armor block that had been sitting dead center on the turret glacis.
The turret glacis was the thickest and hardest to penetrate area on a modern tank, and the ERA only added to this capability. The HE filled round still had blown the multi ton turret clean off the tank's hull top from that one hit. That was not an uncommon event for Russian tanks, but only when they were carrying a combat load of fuel and ammunition. These hulks did not have anything explosive, like say fuel, ammunition or other volatiles. That is, other than the few dozen blocks of ERA on the outside of the tank.
The two tanks that were functional were allowed to shoot just before the Colonial weapons had blown all of the targets to scrap. Each of the M1's had fired two rounds at selected targets. One each of the newest version of HEAT round, and another for the newest telescoping depleted Uranium and Tungsten alloy APFSDS-T round. The ADF wanted to compare the damage profile between the different weapons compared to what the Colonials could do. It was an eye-opening experience for the tank crews and spectators.
The planet-based main battle tank weapons were barely able to match the damage caused by the handheld weapons of the Colonials. When the main battle tanks' 120mm cannons were turned on the off world made armor plate, they were able to make it through the double layer of 3mm plates just barely with both types of rounds. When they fired at three of the plates standing only seventy matters away, they did not make it through. Images of all the results were taken in complete view of everyone else at the range. A lot of people had a good time, and more than a few had their egos crushed at the event. A few drinks were passed around to the non-shooters as a good way to ease the sting some at the embarrassment.
When the sun started to set behind the shooters, and it was time to conclude the event, the tank crews took their tanks back to the ship. The three older Russian tanks were going to be dragged back up on the lowboy style trailers that had brought them out to be blown apart in the first place.
The Colonial Outpost or Trading Post was still very much a work in progress. There were still very few people living on the main island. This meant little need for little things like street lights. Or for that matter any lights outside of the visibly repaired homes slowly expanding from the central area that was the old airport. No one that was not a Colonial was invited into any of the buildings except the old restaurant that had been supporting the cookout. So, the range had to be closed and cleaned out by the time it was full dark.
The cleanup had all been part of the overall plan put together by the ADF leadership and intelligence agencies. The leadership wanted to get the target tanks back into the labs so that the people in the white coats could get a lot closer look at the damage done to them by the off world made weapons. It was hoped that this would help in efforts to replicate the weapons or their effects. The only thing was that no one back at the base had ever thought that the tanks would be this badly shot up.
Most of the time it was only parts and hunks of hull that could be put back on the heavy hauler trailers. The cargo deck crews on the LHD were going to have a major headache just trying to figure out how to keep the wreckage from shifting around the deck. That would have to be done before they left the safety of the lagoon. It had to be done because they would hit weather on the way back home and shifting cargo was known to sink ships, even with today's technologies.
Most of the crew from the two ships were back at the restaurant by the time it was full dark. Most were disappointed when they found out that they had run out of beer before it was full night. Blame was put on the HMAS Choules for not bringing enough beer for a few days. The chief NCO was not happy about being in port without at least a couple of pints to drink after dinner. And he did feel like it was his fault.
If the captain had not had the foresight to pack a full container van full of beer and hard liquor, it would have been very bad for the pride of his navy. The chief was already making plans for the next time they made this port call. He would bring enough beer for everyone to swim in their own private pool with. It never occurred to him that they might not be coming back to this outpost ever again. Without realizing it, he had found that this short stay had bumped this place into the top five port calls of all time.
After dinner and leftovers from the barbecue had been cleaned away, the locals brought out some of their home brew. A little had gone a long way, because these people did not cut their proof or temper it before pouring it into their bodies. It showed that they had no problem drinking 100 proof liquor in one-ounce shots. The chief petty officer thought that it could be used effectively as a jet fuel additive. At least now, he could understand why they could put the beer down in such large amounts and keep walking. It did not take his people long to show the Colonials how to cut the liquid fire with different fruit juices and odds and ends that were left in the cargo containers. It was that or burn out their throats.
He knew that he was going to have a hard time getting the rest of the chiefs' network to believe what he was going to be telling them when he got back to his home port. He was going to have to pass along to them that for any Aussie ship that stopped by, the chiefs were going to have to keep a sharp eye on how much their crews were drinking. What he would also be passing along, that is besides the stories about the weapons testing, was that everything else he had seen was also a bit primitive tech wise.
It was the little things, like latrines and kitchens. He had noticed that they were bare of anything close to modern devices. Much less ones that might have been built off world or alien. The Chief was looking deep into his now orange colored drink, getting his thoughts in line. Then he looked up when an opening door caught his attention.
Charles Bellamy entered the restaurant through a side entrance and quickly found the person he was looking for. The captain of the landing ship was his target tonight. Charles threaded his way through the crowd and came up behind his target without being noticed. He was used to moving through a ship that as a rule was more crowded than this room was.
"Captain George S. Rentz?"
Captain Rentz nearly jumped out of his skins when a person with one of the strangest English accents he had ever heard called out his name from right behind him. When he turned around to find out who the sneaky bugger was, he found himself face to face with the person everyone thought to be running this outpost. It was also assumed that he was a major player in the aliens' government.
Captain Rentz had to fight, but he put his work face back on. He nodded his head up and down as he made a note about how odd it was to hear his full name used. That was outside of a court of law, or promotion, or a Captain's Mass.
"Yes?"
"Charles Bellamy. I'm in charge of this trading mission and outpost," the thin man in a strange uniform stuck out his hand and was speaking oddly. "I wanted to thank you for bring our payment out to us. What do you think of the cookout and shooting range? Do you think your people enjoyed themselves?"
Charles was trying to get a better read on this ship commander. For some reason he could not bring himself to call or label this man Captain.
George had learned a bit about this person, and he had even typed up a report about him to give to his superiors. He knew that the Colonials liked it when you spoke straight to them and maintained eye contact. They also were a bit blunt, and did not mind it if you were also. They were a lot like the American military in a lot of ways, but also not like them in more than a few key ways.
"No problem, mate. Besides it gave us a chance to see some of your tech first hand. I can tell you that I bet I'll have a hundred requests to make a return trip out from my crew. That is, if you let us."
George let a broad smile come to his face, and his tone was light. He did not want to offend these people. Then again, he had been asked a pointed question, so why should he not return the favor.
"If you don't mind? I do have a question that's been bugging me since I read the first news reports about you having cargo shipped in."
Charles shook the outstretched hand one more time before letting the hand go. "I'm glad. We would like to have more people stop by, but we are very concerned with our safety, as I'm sure you're aware of."
Charles gave the ship master a smirk after letting go of the arm. "I would like you to come back. Mainly because we still need the other part of our payment for supporting the airshow. Having you bring it out saves us the cost of shipping them. After this, we will be taking things slowly for now, but you never know about later. Now, what's your question, Captain? You know if it covers something sensitive, I might not answer it." At little twinkle was his eyes.
Charles let a slight smile come on to his face. For some reason, he was starting to like this man. He had to put up a mental roadblock. He still had no idea if working with his country was a good idea or not. So far, they had been playing by the rules which had been set up. Besides, the beer had been frakking good. People who could make a good beer could not be all that bad.
George wanted to start slowly, but what he was about to ask had been killing him for months now. "I'm a navy man, both by nature and training. And I have worked a lot of support missions in my time. I noticed something about those campers. They have solar panels and batteries built into them, but not any type of natural gas hook ups or appliances. When I looked closer, the icebox and the cooking stoves are all rigged up for electricity to run them. Except the panels can't really supply enough power to support them that well. My other question is, why don't you use the pier over at Uturoa? You could move a lot more cargo at one time and it would be cheaper, in both shipping cost and time that is, if you used the bigger pier on the other side of the island."
Charles was still smiling. He thought to himself that this one was sharp. Maybe it was time to let some of their plans out to a limited audience. He did not say any of these thoughts aloud, not one word of it.
"That was very astute of you to notice that about the campers. We have a growing power infrastructure on the two planets we are primarily settling, but we do not have a compatible fuel for those items to operate off of, and we do not want to import it from this planet. Those twenty-five campers you brought, even as they are, will give twenty-five more families some homes to live in. Even if they are temporary homes that they have to stay in. It would have taken months to build that number of homes, and that is a hundred people that now are not living in tiny ships' cabins in orbit or in log cabins. As for why we don't use the other pier on this island, it's simple. It's for control. To not put too fine of a point on it, Captain, small ships mean small crews, and a lower threat that they might bring something hidden in their holds and that we might miss."
Charles gave the other naval commander another smile, and then got a slightly lost look in his eyes. He did not say anything for a few seconds, but when he was ready he made eye contact. "I will let you in on something which I know you will pass along to your superiors. If things work out, maybe in a year or two, then maybe we will open up that pier for more traffic. But right now, it's too much of a risk, at least with the way things are right now. My people have learned to be careful with anything that could be used against us."
George nodded his head, which said he understood what the other man was saying. He now was having to change his hats. Now, he was not a small ship's captain in a foreign land. Now he was a representative of his government, to a leader of another powerful government. Oh and it just happened to be a powerful government that was on another planet.
"That makes sense, to a point. I know my government would be happy to help in any way we can. And if it helps to open up trade with your government faster, well that would also make for some very happy people in my government." He did not say that it also would make a lot of their allies very happy.
George stopped talking and then tilted his head to one side, and gave the other man a strange look. "I must admit. Your command of English is surprisingly good for someone so new to its meaning and use."
Charles smiled, and he mentally referred to notes he had been given by one of the Admiral's staff members. "Thank you. We ran into a group that spoke it some time ago. They were stranded by what we call a Dimensional Rift on a cold wet planet which we found by accident. We did not even know about them. At least, not until they found us and made contact of their own free will. It was a bit of a shock for my people, since we had never met anyone, or at least any group, who did not know about the Colonies of Kobol where we came from."
George had not expected this conversation but he had been given a few cards by an ASIS individual just in case the opportunity presented itself. That was the main reason he was not being caught flatfooted by what he had just been given on a silver platter. He reached into his coat pocket, but he had something on his mind.
"Why did you show us those weapons and armor? It came across as a bit pre-planned to me. You did not just put this together. You seemed to have been waiting for the right time to pull this on someone." George had his own knowing smile on and his head did a slight shake.
Charles let the smile fall from his face some. "It was. We wanted to make a point on a few different things. We think that the Cylons will find this world. My President and our senior military leader both think it will be sooner rather than later. And you're a bit behind technology wise to be able to mount a defense against them. Also have you been watching the sale price of gold and other like metals on your world?"
George had his question cards out, but he had not looked at them yet. He had a questioning look on his face. "Yes, I have. I had investments for my retirement, so I keep an eye on things like that pretty closely. Since your people have come, the price of all investment metals has gone down between thirty to fourth percent from the historic prices listed on the week before you let us see you in orbit around the moon. Are you hinting that your people and your government are willing to sell weapons and armor plates to people or governments of this planet? How are you going to supply the world these things? And what's in it for you?" His tone was level, and it did not hold an ounce of threat. He was just asking a pointed question.
Charles gave a throaty laugh, which caused more than one set of eyes to turn their way. "Captain! We are working on populating two habitable planets. All while we are developing another whole solar system for mining and raw material support. We have less than a hundred thousand people to do all the required jobs. This world is the only world we can get any kind of support from. That is, beside what we escaped with. We could keep dumping gold on this world until it was worthless, but we need stuff. We are not going to supply this planet with all the weapons it needs or replace all that are floating around currently with our types of weapons.
Charles put both of his hands on his hips. "We will supply some weapons and ammunition, maybe many of them in the end, but for right now we are not going to be selling them. We are going to be offering them up for barter. Whoever comes up with the best deal on what my people need? They will win whatever it was that we are offering at the time. We do not think it right for us to set a price on something right now."
He could see the landing ship's captain wanting to jump in, but Charles was not ready to stop talking. He wanted to be as clear as he could. "Now, Captain, we are not talking about cases of thousands of weapons and millions of kilos of ammunition all hitting the market in one wave on Friday. We are talking about one or two weapons, because we want you to work out how to make them for yourselves. We're not worried about what you call copyrights on what we are offering for trade. If we put something up for trade, that means that we want you to start making your own some time in the future." Charles was not connecting all the dots. That was not his job. He was just giving an outline of what might happen in the future.
George had picked up on the 'what we are offering for trade' part of what the alien had said. He also caught that they were not worried about copyrights on some things, but he needed to pull the discussion to the list of items he had been asked to find out about. He would report what had just been said, but he only hoped that they were important. Someone with a lot higher pay grade had said those cards were important.
"I was given some questions to ask if I ran into any member of the Colonial leadership. I was told to make sure that I let that person know that we wanted to make sure that it was not going to cause any blow back. Do you mind me asking some of those to you?" The clip that held the cards also held a blue ink pen. George was already making a few notes, on the back of one of the cards. Mostly he was just checking a few blocks and marking the time and date, for now.
Charles had a fleeting urge to say no, but he did have a few minutes. "I have a few minutes, but I can only answer some items. I have a military superior and an elected leadership whom I must report to. Just like you have to. I believe your press is used to hearing a certain two word phrase."
George could tell the other man was painting an exit door when he saw it. He did not want to push but he had no idea if he would get a chance like this again. Besides, if he did well, maybe he would be the captain of the next ADF ship to come by. It just might jump start his career out of the rut. The one that it had been in for so many years.
"If you could at least pass along to your leadership the questions you are not comfortable with addressing, would that be acceptable?" When the other man nodded his head in agreement, the landing ship captain was ready.
"Thank you. The first item is that some of the academics would like to study your people more closely. Is there any way you could let them come out and set up shop on your island. Or maybe even let them go to your other solar systems?" George had a good feeling who in his government had come up with that question.
Charles smiled, this was a very tame question to be asked. "That is expected, and we have put some thought into this subject already. In a few months, we will let some people come out to the islands and that is far as they are going for now. There are some conditions that will have to be met first. One is that they will have to pay for their own way out here. They also have to bring everything out that they feel they will need. We will not support them in any way or function. That is in the works right now, but we have not released all of the details yet. They will have to apply on the web page when we are ready. We are setting up only one building for public use, no matter who they are. The applicants will have to tell us what they are studying, and how long they are going to stay on our islands. They are going to have to obey our laws or face the music as we see fit." Charles raised one eye brow to emphasize his last statement.
George looked at the next item on his list. "Okay? I will pass that along. Next on the list of twenty questions is about space. You seem to have cheap access to all regions of space. Would you be willing to help us access space as you do? The American and Russian Space agencies would love to check out some of your craft out a bit more closely. New Zealand and my country have been trying to set up space programs, but they are bloody expensive. So far we have only been able to launch a seventeen meter tall rocket with half ton payloads."
Charles did not know how to answer that one. "That is out of my area, Captain. I will say that right now, if there is an emergency in the local space, we might be able to help but that is not a blanket promise. As far as the ships used by my people are concerned, I will have to see but right now we need the ones we have on hand for our own defense. You never know when someone not invited might decide to do what you call a party crash."
The Colonial was quiet for a second. "We might be able to do something for schools, but not for any government or military organization. At least, not yet. I will have to also push this one higher up my food chain. They might decide I'm being too generous, or they might have other ideas."
George was only able to get a few more questions in before he could tell Charles was getting tired of it. The Australian Navy Captain thanked him for his time, and the two of them separated on good terms after the mini interrogation. Captain Rentz could not stay much longer, and both men had a lot of work to do before they could get any sleep that night.
Very early the next morning, before the sun even thought about rising above the water and the night was just about to turn from black to deep purple, the West Pac Express left the lagoon on her delayed return trip back to Tahiti. No one person on the military landing ship beyond a select few had any clue that it had been a spy ship, and it was leaving the harbor with almost as much information as the Aussie ship had. It was a good bet that they might have a little more information, but no one would know for years to come if that was true or not.
Captain Rentz finished typing up his first report before coming out to do his bridge shift. As soon as the sun was full up over the horizon, he would be taking his ship out and she would be starting her much longer journey home. It was going to be a longer trip than the one the West Pac Express was going to have to make. He was not allowed, by his written orders, to transmit any digital reports. That is, until he was at least a hundred kilometers from the Colonial claimed area. Moving at about twenty kilometers an hour, it was going to take some few hours. All of the reports that had been done over the last few days would have to sit in their digital outboxes for a bit longer. It was for security reasons. The naval leadership did not want to risk others on the planet finding out about what might be inside the hull of the underarmed landing ship.
It was after the captain had sent his messages and the ship's entertainment dish had been reactivated that the news hit the internet. Coming from a French news station, it rocked the world. That was when they first received word that a Chinese HALE or high altitude long endurance class drone had been shot down by the Colonials. The reason suggested by the news service for this action was that the high flying spy drone had entered the restricted airspace claimed by the Colonials without authorization.
The information was tagged on the internet, but it was an unidentified source that had given it out to the rest of the world. And no one was talking, or otherwise claiming to know about the source of the scoop. This started a reporter on the blood trail to find out if it was true or not. It had taken almost a full work day before someone from the US military had confirmed the core data. That core data said that a high flying long endurance drone had been shot down near the Colonial owned islands. The unnamed sources had suggested that interested parties might want to check the data downloads from some of the weather satellite companies. They might have caught something hot and bright.
China was silent, which did not help them one bit in the world-wide news cycle or the next few. The original information leak could have been from any of a dozen aircraft or ships that released the confirmation of the shooting down of the drone. What had happened was not uncommon in the world of tit for tat. This time, it was the Indian Navy who released the first recorded images and the hard data of the Colonial missiles hitting the Soaring Dragon at eighteen kilometers.
No one, not even most of the intelligence agencies, really knew why the Indian government released the news and data to the outside world. A few of the more astute military correspondents tended to put it down to India not liking the recent weapons and social deals between China and Pakistan. China had agreed to sell more high-end military equipment to that member of the 'Stan brotherhood on 'credit'.
Now the Chinese were going to ship updated and highly upgraded PL-12 Thunderbolts, otherwise known as Sino-AMRAAMs. These weapons would fit on most of the Pakistani Air Force's best aviation units with only a few modifications. No one would know for sure for a decade. It would only be when a senior military officer from that country published a book on the subject that the last major part of the story was confirmed. At least, in the eyes of most people who still remembered and cared about why this had happened.
Things were heating up quickly around the world, and some were wondering if a war might break out soon. One bit of good news that came out just as the Choules was tying up to a dock in her home port. NASA did a press released saying that they had contacted the Colonials. They were working a deal so that if the ISS had issues the Colonials could pull the crews off the station and bring them back planetside safely. The drop off point would be the at the Honolulu International airport on the Hawaiian Islands.
This seemingly simple single change in emergency procedure would let the station be manned with up to six people at all times. That is, instead of the three people that had been the norm for so many years. At least, after the American Space Shuttles had been semi-retired. It would start in about four months, when the next set of crews were scheduled to launch on a Russian made launcher to that lonely outpost. The crew would slowly grow to six astronauts on the station. This was going to increase the workload that the station would be able to accomplish. That bit of news rocked the scientific world, both in a good way and in a few bad ways. As it always did, it came down to who would be allowed to go into space and who would have to pay for it.
The landing ship came into port just as the sun was setting. It had been at sea for twenty long and stress filled days without break aside from the barbecue and drinking party on the one island. Almost a full month in total, and the world had changed a lot in that time. Many of the crew and passengers were looking forward to having some free time away from this metal hulled beast. Doing anything or nothing. As long as it was away from the ship, they did not care.
The original plan had been for the ship to make dock at sunrise. That way they would have better light to work with while they unloaded the ship. All that had changed after the Captain's report was read and then verified through pictures. That was about four days after leaving Colonial controlled waters. A half dozen different levels within the military and government had seen those reports. By then the list of questions had grown too long, and some intelligence analysts had had to do some hard thinking to address some issues. They now thought dark would be a better time to handle the project. In daylight everyone would be able to see what was going on.
The Captain had had to do some math, and only slowed the ship down by a single knot of speed to make the dock at the requested adjusted time. Rentz did not know until well into his debriefing that his little unarmed ship had been followed by at least four different submarines that had been confirmed. And none of those submarines flew the same flag as the little landing ship dock did.
The crew of the ship had not liked that they were not allowed to go home after their tasks were done. That was normal after a few months at sea or deployment. At first, the higher civilian command authority had wanted to bar the crews from letting their families know when they would be making port in the first place. It had taken the chief of the whole Australian Navy to veto that bit of jackassery. They would be released to see their families, but only after all port and post sea tasks had been done and the sun had risen the next morning. He stated that he did not want to lose a bunch of highly trained sailors just because they had car wrecks. All because they had fallen asleep at the wheels of their cars. That was the posted reason for the delay of releasing the crews.
It was a delay, but it was a lot more reasonable than the 'after all questions had been addressed by higher command' they had been told five days out of homeport. The low boy trailers were offloaded and given a heavy escort of MPs for each trailer as they left the port under cover of night. Everything else that needed to come off the ship, like the ADF Main Battle Tanks and empty container vans, went straight into a 'motor pool' during the rest of the night in a slow, but steady stream.
This 'motor pool' in the very busy ocean port was now under guard by a full mechanized infantry battalion at all times. Rumor had it that a second one was on the way, and would be there by dawn the next day. It was just another sign that things had changed while the LSD had been away from this port. For one of the few times in the history of this planet, the rumors had come up short. There were actually two more battalions on the way. A full brigade was tasked to protect the motor pool until the items had been dispersed to other undisclosed locations.