- CHAPTER 41 -
- Gabriel Hayes Quarters, now taken over by Jack Chambers, The Octagon -
Jack looked over the lavish appointments of the ex High Admiral's quarters. Truth be known, they were almost as expensive and luxurious as his own personal quarters. What better place for the Terran Empire's future Emperor to wait out the next phase in his carefully thought out plans. This was the truly devious part of his plan to usurp total power into his grasp, for it required genuine risk to his person. Just the same, he felt that his defenses would prove adequate. Greg Betare's on the other hand would not. A truly evil smile crept up on his face. All those years pretending to be Greg's friend were about to be repaid in blood.
Jack replayed his recent brief conversation with Greg. He was at his home on Mars, right where he was supposed to be. He had spouted the lies of how he was shocked and appalled at the recent attack on Terra. He went on to state unequivocally that those responsible would be held accountable. Greg had delivered his lines so well that a Section operative would have been proud of the performance. Jack was where he was supposed to be as well. All that remained was for the final stage of his carefully planned op to commence.
- Power Armor Morgue, The Octagon -
The squad was assembled. Section, on Jack Chamber's behalf, had gone to great lengths to recruit them from both Infantry and Marine ranks. They all bore a massive grudge against the ruling Council of the Terran Empire, and as such, were easy to influence into just where Jack Chambers wanted them. All 40 of them were running final checks on their own and their squad mate's armor. They were heavily armed, and vastly outnumbered the personal goons Jack Chambers had brought along. They would extract their revenge just like another similarly set up squad located at the Utopia Planetia military base near Greg Betare's Home on Mars. Both squads knew nothing of the others existence and neither knew that Section had set their entire operation up. But when their leaders, themselves carefully selected Section Operatives, gave the word to their fellow traitors to commence operations, they responded with barely contained zeal. What they didn't know was that Section had set up one traitor cell to fail, while the other wouldn't.
"Are we ready to move out Sargent?" The Section Operative said in a much calmer voice than he felt inside. It would be faster just to either beam in to Chamber's room itself or else beam him out, but the entire Octagon was under a transporter inhibitor field except for the two transporter rooms themselves. Thus they had to go for a breech attack.
"That's an affirmative Sir." There was a slight quaver fear in the hardened, veteran Sargent's voice. Not that the Section Operative could blame him, for word of the Furies presence and their actions had spread across the station like wildfire. And unlike the rest of the Fleet personnel stationed there, the Operative knew exactly what Furies could do. The thoughts made his stones want to crawl up into his throat, but he managed to keep his terror under control and the rest of the traitors to the Empire followed his example. The Sargent, like all the other members of the group, had a personal axe to grind with the Council, and now that it was down to two members, he would take his revenge and kill one of them.
"Then lets move out." The Operative pulled his suits helmet down and brought the suits systems fully online. With a quite whirring, the synthetic muscles under the tough alloy carapace of the power armor came to life. What had been a tough job of moving the hefty unpowered suit became as easy as if he wasn't wearing close to 400 kg's of metal, computers, sensors and weapons. The sensuous feeling of sheer power came over the Operative as it always did when he strapped on a suit of power armor. Its sensors became a more powerful and capable set of eyes as they came online. The HUD showing a 360-degree panorama before his physical eyes came fully online, with a targeting recticle, close quarters map, armor, shield and weapon status popping into existence. While it required some training time to get a new recruit familiar with the slightly distorted 360-degree view, once one was familiar with literally having eyes (well electronic sensors at any rate) in the back of your head, going around normally was a real pain.
With surprisingly little noise, the 40 man strike team flooded out of the morgue and began to advance down the corridors that lead to the High Admiral's suite.
- Jack Chambers Quarters, The Octagon -
They come. The deep rumbling baritone sounded inside Jack's head. He had initially found it disconcerting when a Fury spoke directly into his mind, but after long association he was now used to it. The Fury and his Hellhound stood side by side, staring through the door with both telepathic senses and sensor systems far in advance from the usual Power Armor sensor suite. The Fury pair could taste the sweet creeping fear and sparkling anticipation the oncoming threat radiated far more easily than they could see them through multiple bulkheads with their enhanced sensors. They must be operating under stealth, Frank thought. The Section Security squad outside Jack's quarters had still not picked them up, but they would in a bit. Then the fun would start.
"Let them come Frank." Jack spoke aloud. Part of his brain cursed him for sending the other Fury pair back to Section's Covert Ops HQ, but this had to be a believable attack against him.
Although the Fury could hear his thoughts as well as speak to his brain, Jack had made a habit of always speaking aloud to them. It was just a personal quirk, but he was adamant about it. It caused Frank's Hellhound, Victoria, to break in with light chuckling whenever he did it. While Victoria could kill with a speed and efficiency that easily matched that of her partner, she also had a larger sense of humor than the usually dour Frank. How the tow of them got along so well remained a mystery, but they were among the best and most powerful Fury units currently in service, which was why they were here.
I know you have this all arranged ahead of time, and I am not saying that it won't succeed, after all it depends on our abilities. There was light laughter coming from Victoria as she spoke to Jack's mind. It was answered by a grunt from Frank, which equaled a deep belly laugh from him. But even with us here, there remains an insignificant chance that you might be tagged by a stray shot.
"I know, but this has to be believable. If I wasn't in any real danger, my entire plan would most likely not work."
We understand sir. We won't fail you. Franks voice resonated inside Jack's head. He also a mental poke at Victoria that she should not pester Jack with such obvious things. She merely sent a mental raspberry back at him followed by warm laughter. Then she refocused her attention back at the approaching threat.
- Strike Team Alpha, Enroute To Jack Chamber's Quarters -
The strike team's suits ECM was online in stealth mode, masking their life signs and dampening their suits power signatures. While not as total as a full cloak, it did have the advantage of not sticking out like a sore thumb to both the Octagon's internal sensors and the anti cloak sensors Jack Chamber's guards inevitably had. All they needed was enough time to sneak up and take out the guards. It was proving surprisingly easy, made so in no small part due to the collaborator now on duty in Ops. She was masking the teams progress from the sensors, preventing loyal officers and non coms from stopping them short of their objective.
The team moved nearly silently and invisibly down the deserted hallway. Even using just their passive sensors, they were picking up the bright sensor sources of Chamber's guards armor, giving them a excellent picture of their dispositions. They were stationed at intersections surrounding his quarters with a large clump of them positioned near the room's door as a mobile reserve and final line of defense. The two small pickets stationed to the left and right of the door would be dealt with by his detached squads much like the one along his line of attack would be. A small countdown timer on his HUD reached zero, signifying that the attack was to commence.
The Section Operative reached out and tapped the crouching armored figure in front of him on the shoulder. With out a word, his suit sensors and systems came fully online, and a split second later, the under slung photon grenade launcher coughed softly. The grenade bounced off of the wall at the T intersection up ahead to ricochet down the hall towards Chamber's guards.
- Section Guard Team, Point Guard Post One -
"Did you see the look on that Admiral's face when that Fury picked him up off the ground?!" the first guard said over his secure com to his fellow stationed with him at the Point Guard Post.
"His eyes! You should have seen mine!! I nearly crapped in my suit right then and there. Despite all of the story's going around about them Furies, seeing just what they can do is positively one of the most scary moments in my life!"
"I hear that! I mean, damn, I always knew they were powerful, but if they can do things like that, no wonder Mr. Chambers brought them along. No one would dare mess with him with them along. Hell, I'm on their side and I'm terrified of them! Just imagine what any of his possible enemies are thinking right now!"
"Oh ya, I can picture them cowering in their bunks shaking in terror for their liv." The guard broke off as his sensor systems beeped for his attention, highlighting a faint sensor contact. He turned to focus his sensors on it, noticing that his buddy did so as well. "What the heck." Then his sensor went mad as the now unmistakable signatures of Power Armor blossomed on his HUD. He had just begun to activate his external com to order the still hidden figures in armor identify themselves when the photon grenade bounced off of the wall opposite of the T intersection farther down the hall from the + intersection he and his fellow guard were watching over. His scream died half formed as matter met antimatter and his power armor disappeared in the resulting boil of light. Virtually at the same instant the other two Point Guard Posts were wiped out by two other photon grenades. It was only thanks to the armor's visual protection that the sudden sun bright flash of light didn't blind the strike teams. Photon grenades held only slightly more AM than a grav gun HE bullet, and it was a good thing to else the entire building go up. Just the same, that small amount still buckled reinforced bulkheads and blast doors around the detonation area. The compression wave from the explosion resulted in further alerting the rest of the guards, but they were already springing into action thanks to their sensors wailing in their ears. Leaning into the rushing wave of air, they moved slightly down the corridor, bringing their weapons to bear on the now evident threat.
- Strike Team Alpha -
The Operative's auditory sensors transmitted signals to the suits stereo speaker system, replicating the banshee like scream of a PPHC as it opened up mated with the horrendous screech of tearing bulkheads. The darkened hall light up like daylight under the continuous stream of phaser pulses. Fortunately it was targeted on one of the other squads attacking to the left, and on his HUD he saw their beacons wink out. At the same time, the other PPHC opened up down the other hall and beacons from the third element of the strike team began to wink out. The strike team was down 30 men, but they had taken out four of the seven guards. That left only three and a Fury for his 10 remaining men to worry about. Activating his suits X-ray sensors, the Operative saw the PPHC firing guards clearly through the bulkhead blocking visual viewing. That was the great thing about this type of attack, your enemy had so little time to react that he was bound to forget little things. In this case it was his ECM. Five more coughs send five photon grenades down the hallway. They exploded as one and the PPHC fire died with them. Unfortunately they also depleted the total store of photon grenades the strike team had been able to requisition.
All ammo was stored securely and required an Identity scan to get at. This had not been able to be circumvented, so there were only so much weaponry the team could access without setting of an extreme amount of alarms both locally and throughout Terra. Getting up out of their crouch, the team charged around the corner towards the lone remaining guard. He was still picking himself up from the nearby compression wave. A flurry of grav gun AP rounds punched through his nearly dead shields to perforate his armor, turning it and the human it encased to a crude resemblance of Swiss cheese. The hallway was little better, its walls scorched and buckled with patches of white hot alloy emitting shimmering waves of heat showing through melted carpet. By now alarms were going crazy throughout the Octagon, but the operative and his team ignored them as they charged the last few meters to their target. The leading troops opened up on the door with their grav guns. The AP bullets left only faint smears of melted alloy when the hit and ricocheted off.
"Cease fire!" the Operative barked. Pulling out a breaching charge from his suits storage compartment, he smacked it on the door and activated it.
- Gabriel Hayes Quarters, now taken over by Jack Chambers, The Octagon -
Jack looked over the lavish appointments of the ex High Admiral's quarters. Truth be known, they were almost as expensive and luxurious as his own personal quarters. What better place for the Terran Empire's future Emperor to wait out the next phase in his carefully thought out plans. This was the truly devious part of his plan to usurp total power into his grasp, for it required genuine risk to his person. Just the same, he felt that his defenses would prove adequate. Greg Betare's on the other hand would not. A truly evil smile crept up on his face. All those years pretending to be Greg's friend were about to be repaid in blood.
Jack replayed his recent brief conversation with Greg. He was at his home on Mars, right where he was supposed to be. He had spouted the lies of how he was shocked and appalled at the recent attack on Terra. He went on to state unequivocally that those responsible would be held accountable. Greg had delivered his lines so well that a Section operative would have been proud of the performance. Jack was where he was supposed to be as well. All that remained was for the final stage of his carefully planned op to commence.
- Power Armor Morgue, The Octagon -
The squad was assembled. Section, on Jack Chamber's behalf, had gone to great lengths to recruit them from both Infantry and Marine ranks. They all bore a massive grudge against the ruling Council of the Terran Empire, and as such, were easy to influence into just where Jack Chambers wanted them. All 40 of them were running final checks on their own and their squad mate's armor. They were heavily armed, and vastly outnumbered the personal goons Jack Chambers had brought along. They would extract their revenge just like another similarly set up squad located at the Utopia Planetia military base near Greg Betare's Home on Mars. Both squads knew nothing of the others existence and neither knew that Section had set their entire operation up. But when their leaders, themselves carefully selected Section Operatives, gave the word to their fellow traitors to commence operations, they responded with barely contained zeal. What they didn't know was that Section had set up one traitor cell to fail, while the other wouldn't.
"Are we ready to move out Sargent?" The Section Operative said in a much calmer voice than he felt inside. It would be faster just to either beam in to Chamber's room itself or else beam him out, but the entire Octagon was under a transporter inhibitor field except for the two transporter rooms themselves. Thus they had to go for a breech attack.
"That's an affirmative Sir." There was a slight quaver fear in the hardened, veteran Sargent's voice. Not that the Section Operative could blame him, for word of the Furies presence and their actions had spread across the station like wildfire. And unlike the rest of the Fleet personnel stationed there, the Operative knew exactly what Furies could do. The thoughts made his stones want to crawl up into his throat, but he managed to keep his terror under control and the rest of the traitors to the Empire followed his example. The Sargent, like all the other members of the group, had a personal axe to grind with the Council, and now that it was down to two members, he would take his revenge and kill one of them.
"Then lets move out." The Operative pulled his suits helmet down and brought the suits systems fully online. With a quite whirring, the synthetic muscles under the tough alloy carapace of the power armor came to life. What had been a tough job of moving the hefty unpowered suit became as easy as if he wasn't wearing close to 400 kg's of metal, computers, sensors and weapons. The sensuous feeling of sheer power came over the Operative as it always did when he strapped on a suit of power armor. Its sensors became a more powerful and capable set of eyes as they came online. The HUD showing a 360-degree panorama before his physical eyes came fully online, with a targeting recticle, close quarters map, armor, shield and weapon status popping into existence. While it required some training time to get a new recruit familiar with the slightly distorted 360-degree view, once one was familiar with literally having eyes (well electronic sensors at any rate) in the back of your head, going around normally was a real pain.
With surprisingly little noise, the 40 man strike team flooded out of the morgue and began to advance down the corridors that lead to the High Admiral's suite.
- Jack Chambers Quarters, The Octagon -
They come. The deep rumbling baritone sounded inside Jack's head. He had initially found it disconcerting when a Fury spoke directly into his mind, but after long association he was now used to it. The Fury and his Hellhound stood side by side, staring through the door with both telepathic senses and sensor systems far in advance from the usual Power Armor sensor suite. The Fury pair could taste the sweet creeping fear and sparkling anticipation the oncoming threat radiated far more easily than they could see them through multiple bulkheads with their enhanced sensors. They must be operating under stealth, Frank thought. The Section Security squad outside Jack's quarters had still not picked them up, but they would in a bit. Then the fun would start.
"Let them come Frank." Jack spoke aloud. Part of his brain cursed him for sending the other Fury pair back to Section's Covert Ops HQ, but this had to be a believable attack against him.
Although the Fury could hear his thoughts as well as speak to his brain, Jack had made a habit of always speaking aloud to them. It was just a personal quirk, but he was adamant about it. It caused Frank's Hellhound, Victoria, to break in with light chuckling whenever he did it. While Victoria could kill with a speed and efficiency that easily matched that of her partner, she also had a larger sense of humor than the usually dour Frank. How the tow of them got along so well remained a mystery, but they were among the best and most powerful Fury units currently in service, which was why they were here.
I know you have this all arranged ahead of time, and I am not saying that it won't succeed, after all it depends on our abilities. There was light laughter coming from Victoria as she spoke to Jack's mind. It was answered by a grunt from Frank, which equaled a deep belly laugh from him. But even with us here, there remains an insignificant chance that you might be tagged by a stray shot.
"I know, but this has to be believable. If I wasn't in any real danger, my entire plan would most likely not work."
We understand sir. We won't fail you. Franks voice resonated inside Jack's head. He also a mental poke at Victoria that she should not pester Jack with such obvious things. She merely sent a mental raspberry back at him followed by warm laughter. Then she refocused her attention back at the approaching threat.
- Strike Team Alpha, Enroute To Jack Chamber's Quarters -
The strike team's suits ECM was online in stealth mode, masking their life signs and dampening their suits power signatures. While not as total as a full cloak, it did have the advantage of not sticking out like a sore thumb to both the Octagon's internal sensors and the anti cloak sensors Jack Chamber's guards inevitably had. All they needed was enough time to sneak up and take out the guards. It was proving surprisingly easy, made so in no small part due to the collaborator now on duty in Ops. She was masking the teams progress from the sensors, preventing loyal officers and non coms from stopping them short of their objective.
The team moved nearly silently and invisibly down the deserted hallway. Even using just their passive sensors, they were picking up the bright sensor sources of Chamber's guards armor, giving them a excellent picture of their dispositions. They were stationed at intersections surrounding his quarters with a large clump of them positioned near the room's door as a mobile reserve and final line of defense. The two small pickets stationed to the left and right of the door would be dealt with by his detached squads much like the one along his line of attack would be. A small countdown timer on his HUD reached zero, signifying that the attack was to commence.
The Section Operative reached out and tapped the crouching armored figure in front of him on the shoulder. With out a word, his suit sensors and systems came fully online, and a split second later, the under slung photon grenade launcher coughed softly. The grenade bounced off of the wall at the T intersection up ahead to ricochet down the hall towards Chamber's guards.
- Section Guard Team, Point Guard Post One -
"Did you see the look on that Admiral's face when that Fury picked him up off the ground?!" the first guard said over his secure com to his fellow stationed with him at the Point Guard Post.
"His eyes! You should have seen mine!! I nearly crapped in my suit right then and there. Despite all of the story's going around about them Furies, seeing just what they can do is positively one of the most scary moments in my life!"
"I hear that! I mean, damn, I always knew they were powerful, but if they can do things like that, no wonder Mr. Chambers brought them along. No one would dare mess with him with them along. Hell, I'm on their side and I'm terrified of them! Just imagine what any of his possible enemies are thinking right now!"
"Oh ya, I can picture them cowering in their bunks shaking in terror for their liv." The guard broke off as his sensor systems beeped for his attention, highlighting a faint sensor contact. He turned to focus his sensors on it, noticing that his buddy did so as well. "What the heck." Then his sensor went mad as the now unmistakable signatures of Power Armor blossomed on his HUD. He had just begun to activate his external com to order the still hidden figures in armor identify themselves when the photon grenade bounced off of the wall opposite of the T intersection farther down the hall from the + intersection he and his fellow guard were watching over. His scream died half formed as matter met antimatter and his power armor disappeared in the resulting boil of light. Virtually at the same instant the other two Point Guard Posts were wiped out by two other photon grenades. It was only thanks to the armor's visual protection that the sudden sun bright flash of light didn't blind the strike teams. Photon grenades held only slightly more AM than a grav gun HE bullet, and it was a good thing to else the entire building go up. Just the same, that small amount still buckled reinforced bulkheads and blast doors around the detonation area. The compression wave from the explosion resulted in further alerting the rest of the guards, but they were already springing into action thanks to their sensors wailing in their ears. Leaning into the rushing wave of air, they moved slightly down the corridor, bringing their weapons to bear on the now evident threat.
- Strike Team Alpha -
The Operative's auditory sensors transmitted signals to the suits stereo speaker system, replicating the banshee like scream of a PPHC as it opened up mated with the horrendous screech of tearing bulkheads. The darkened hall light up like daylight under the continuous stream of phaser pulses. Fortunately it was targeted on one of the other squads attacking to the left, and on his HUD he saw their beacons wink out. At the same time, the other PPHC opened up down the other hall and beacons from the third element of the strike team began to wink out. The strike team was down 30 men, but they had taken out four of the seven guards. That left only three and a Fury for his 10 remaining men to worry about. Activating his suits X-ray sensors, the Operative saw the PPHC firing guards clearly through the bulkhead blocking visual viewing. That was the great thing about this type of attack, your enemy had so little time to react that he was bound to forget little things. In this case it was his ECM. Five more coughs send five photon grenades down the hallway. They exploded as one and the PPHC fire died with them. Unfortunately they also depleted the total store of photon grenades the strike team had been able to requisition.
All ammo was stored securely and required an Identity scan to get at. This had not been able to be circumvented, so there were only so much weaponry the team could access without setting of an extreme amount of alarms both locally and throughout Terra. Getting up out of their crouch, the team charged around the corner towards the lone remaining guard. He was still picking himself up from the nearby compression wave. A flurry of grav gun AP rounds punched through his nearly dead shields to perforate his armor, turning it and the human it encased to a crude resemblance of Swiss cheese. The hallway was little better, its walls scorched and buckled with patches of white hot alloy emitting shimmering waves of heat showing through melted carpet. By now alarms were going crazy throughout the Octagon, but the operative and his team ignored them as they charged the last few meters to their target. The leading troops opened up on the door with their grav guns. The AP bullets left only faint smears of melted alloy when the hit and ricocheted off.
"Cease fire!" the Operative barked. Pulling out a breaching charge from his suits storage compartment, he smacked it on the door and activated it.