Firefly
Chapter 19
It is now 3 months later
Frankie had his orders that his wife had given him. He had three targets to hit then come home and that was it. To ignore everything else unless somehow he'd been spotted which this place was telling them should be impossible.
To reinforce this point on this first attack he had his wife, holding their daughter in her arms, Rick, and Kate, who had her son in her arms, right behind him.
"Exiting Landing Bay." Frankie flew it out and held his position. "Plotting first jump point. Powering up the weapons. …Shield is active as is the cloaking device. I have all greens. Setting timer for the jump. …Jumping."
Suddenly everyone saw the target right in front of them. Frankie was the only one that was used to this. He'd done this more times than he could count.
"Target on scanner. No flights within thirty plus miles. I have four Alliance military ships in orbit." Frankie looked everything over and saw his target was locked. "Hydroelectric dam is locked and…firing."
Except in computer displays about what should happen, no one, not even Frankie had ever seen the weapons firing before. Let alone see actual damage.
His first two shots from his twin weapon on the top of his fighter fired and struck the base of the dam. He was there until either the dam failed or he was somehow spotted which was possible since he was just sitting there in hover mode and firing his weapons. However, after firing three times they all saw cracks starting to show in the dam followed by water leaking out.
"Next target, babe." Liz didn't need to see the dam fail to know that it would.
"Inputting jump coordinates for second target. …I have all green. …Jumping." There was a flash of white on the screen and suddenly target number two was in sight.
"Target on scanner. Power is stable. Locking on target." He was on the same planet just in a totally different location. In this case it was a different hydroelectric dam. The previous one was very tall but not overly wide. This one was seriously long and not overly tall.
"Target is locked and…firing." Like last time they watched this orb reaching out that had a dark blue ball in the center. However, around it out to an almost invisible edge it was filled with lightning.
The first one struck the dam and blew it to pieces in that immediate area. But the plan was to fire three separate times in different locations of the long dam. So they watched as Frankie fired two more times with the same result.
"Inputting jump coordinates for third target. …I have all green. …Jumping." There was a flash of white on the screen and suddenly target number three was in sight.
Like the last hydroelectric dam, it was long and short. Just not nearly as long.
"Target on scanner. Power is stable. Locking on target." He was on the same planet just in a totally different location. "And firing." Like all the other shots it was a dark blue ball surrounded by lighting.
This dam was even thinner than the last one so it blew up spectacularly. Also just like last time the plan was to fire three shots and destroy as much of the dam as possible. So Frankie did just that.
"Target number three destroyed. Power is still stable and I have all greens. Setting new jump coordinates for home and…jumping." Just like that they saw nothing until the landing bay doors opened and he slowly slid the invisible fighter into the landing bay that was invisible from the outside. Then the door closed.
"Checking all power settings. …Powering down the weapon. Powering down the shield. Powering down the cloaking device. Allowing the engines to cool before shutting down. And that's that." Frankie raised his hands high.
"Nice work, babe." Liz leaned down to kiss the top of his head.
"It actually worked." Rick stood there almost in disbelief. It was an almost two year old dream and yet there they were with three destroyed dams.
The dams weren't used just for power generation. Like all dams they were there for river control. Generating power was simply a benefit from the dam itself.
Because of that it meant two main things. Their power grid worldwide was now down three power generators. Several in each dam to be more precise. It also meant a fresh water lake was gone. And it meant a lot of towns downstream were now flooded. Whole areas downstream were now ruined and yes, lives were lost.
But that was war and in their minds it was, make no mistake. This was the first few shots in a new war that this time they intended for the Alliance to lose.
"When's the next one?" Rick asked since he was ready to make the Alliance suffer this time since in his mind they deserved it.
"Two days. They want to do maintenance and tests to make sure none of the systems are damaged or approaching failure. It's a new ship," Frankie answered.
"Gives me two days to scan and make sure our next three targets are still at the top of the list. …You know they might think this was the result of bombs and will be looking all across the planet for who did it." Liz smiled a wide smile, knowing that they wouldn't find anything.
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They were all in the cafeteria eating a celebratory meal with a little alcohol from Rick's old ship.
"How's Caleb doing? I know the blood transfusion took place." Liz knew it had happened and that they kept having to take him back to medical every month for another scan.
Both the boy and the girl were now 7 months old. They had figured out how to crawl and were actively babbling all kinds of baby sounds.
"He's still clean. It took Liara two times to remove it all and filter his blood. She isn't expecting any long term damage." Kate was happy for that. "Aren't you, buddy?" Kate gave him something to play with and he immediately tried to stuff into his mouth.
"Good. You know you're going to have to do that again if you have another child," Liz said gently.
"I know. That's why I asked her to tie my brand new tubes. We can decide if we want another child and not by accident later," Kate said.
"Smart girl. You've come a long ways since that first day." Liz was proud of her.
"Yeah, I was a slave then." Kate was glad to be long past that day.
"Not to me, you weren't. Not even the day I found you." Rick dismissed her ever being a slave. That earned Rick a quick kiss.
"Now we just need to find your mother, babe." Kate had talked him into looking for her, too.
"I thought trying to find your parents was hard. My mother could literally be anywhere. I wouldn't put it past her to find a company that got her a job on one of the six core planets. Even if that's horribly remote." He couldn't discount it but he would search the core worlds when he ran out of options.
"So we're sticking to the same planet next time?" Frankie wanted to be sure.
"Yes, after these first three hits, we move to three of the nuclear power plants next. They're a little old, however, their loss will plunge a lot of civilians into darkness. Not to mention forcing the Alliance to scramble to prevent any further damage. It will still mean that immediate area will be radiated for untold years to come.
"Then while they're shipping what they need from other planets we destroy three military ships in orbit. The orbit will be filled with cargo ships making it impossible for them to hide their loss." Liz was sticking to her plan.
"The more screaming privileged civilians they have the better for us. Not to worry, babe. The military will be forced to respond and weaken themselves elsewhere and that's where we'll attack next after they respond." Liz knew her husband and probably Rick would want to switch to military soon.
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Kate was a little tired of bringing her son to medical. There was nothing wrong with him.
"Perfect timing. Please place him on the medical bed for me," Liara asked her and stood up from behind her desk. Then Kate watched her run the scanner bar across him and study her handheld unit.
"You are still feeding him formula and not breastfeeding?" Liara asked.
Kate had felt hurt that her milk could lead to her son being exposed to her drug through her breast milk. So she had been using formula which had allowed Rick to help her feed him.
She was still using a breast pump to relieve the pressure on her breasts. As they started to fill up with milk they hurt until she pumped. A midnight raid to obtain a breast pump system and supplies had been laughably simple.
"Yes. All my breast milk goes down the drain. Just like you ordered," Kate said.
"Excellent. I don't dare give you a drug to dry up your milk in fear of it interacting with your drug. Your baby is clean. I do not need to see you or your baby until your next booster shots are required." Liara returned to her desk. "You can go," Liara told her since Kate hadn't moved yet.
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It is now three days later
Frankie was back in his remote pilot chair and warming up all of his fighter's systems in preparation to go out again. This time only Liz and Rick were behind him. Kate and the kids were in the park to keep them busy.
"Here we go." Frankie took the fighter out of the landing bay and programmed in his first jump location. "Jumping…now." Suddenly the screen went white followed by being directly over his target.
"I still have all green. Target is being scanned. Scans indicated the old nuclear reactor is still functional. It is presently working at 40% capacity. Locking on target and…firing." As before they watched as the fighter's weapon fired, struck the control room, and destroyed almost the entire building.
"Scanning for next target and…firing." This time he was aiming for the spent rod cooling pool that was outside of the containment building. While the old rods were no longer useful for creating power they still had a fair amount of radiation in them. Meaning they had to remain in pools of water to keep them cool. Now all those rods were either destroyed or blasted to pieces and spread far and wide. In addition the pool itself wasn't totally destroyed. However, the pool was now draining and exposing the remaining rods.
"Scanning final target and…firing." This time the target was one of the two cooling towers. Firing on the tower wasn't really necessary but Liz wanted to give the impression that they didn't know what they were destroying. With the reactor core already exposed, the water flowing out, and the spent rod pool being exposed, the primary damage was already done.
"I still have all greens and jumping…now." In a flash of light the little fighter jumped to a new location on the same planet. It was also the same planet as the last attack.
The target was another old nuclear reactor. This one, though, was built next to a river so it could access the water it needed easily. That also meant it had a built-in vulnerability.
"Scanning first target and…firing." This target was the pump house taking water from the river to fill the containment pool when additional water was necessary. It also created a new hole that the river immediately started to fill with river water.
"Scanning next target and…firing." This one was easy. It was one of the cooling towers. The idea was to get it to collapse down onto the control building and do damage instead of destroying it.
The result was that part of the tower did indeed collapse onto the building.
"Still all greens and scanning next target and…firing." This target was meant to create a path for the cooling water from the core a place to go and allow the river to work slowly at eating away at the concrete. Eventually it would collapse and all the radiation would go down the river if they couldn't prevent it.
"Still all greens and jumping…now." The screen flashed and his new target showed up right in front of him.
Since the plan was to make the rich and privileged suffer this time they were targeting the ability to create power for the civilians and military. They'd hit three hydroelectric plants and now two old nuclear power plants. While that alone was going to hurt, they feared the really rich would have back-up generators for temporary power.
They might actually find a way to provide more permanent power just for them in a short period of time which would defeat the purpose of these attacks. So this target was going to make anything they did that much more difficult.
With that in mind this target was the Radisson power substation. The entire station encompassed one hundred thirty-two acres of land. It also held a number of 220 kV/66 kV transformers. Just replacing one transformer was going to take them months plus time to transport it from there to the restored site. This substation would be down for years.
The amount of electrical energy passing through the substation is six thousand six hundred megawatts (MW).[6] Two AC 735 kV lines and one HVDC +/- 450 kV line.
A few minutes later the majority of the place was left burning. Every transformer was gone, huge power line towers were gone and the one hundred thirty-two acres was now one big mess.
"Adding power to engines to obtain a high orbit." Liz had impressed on him that she wanted to see the amount of damage so she could decide what came next.
It took him some time to reach a high orbit. "Starting scan," Frankie said.
"I'm reading six Alliance warships in orbit. Two are Ocula class, four are Trebuchet class. I'm reading a number of Foxbat class fighters in the atmosphere now," Frankie reported.
"Damage, babe?" Liz needed to know what they had done.
"Still analyzing. …Scan complete. Looks like roughly one third of the planet is now dark. It's broken up into areas and not an entire one third of the planet," Frankie told them though Liz was going to spend hours reviewing his scans to decide what came next.
"You can come home, babe." He'd done enough for now.
They watched as Frankie jumped home, landed in the landing bay, and shut down.
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It is now 2 days later
Liz didn't have clearance to enter the Command room and Rick couldn't give it to her, he'd found out. So the next best thing was to let her use his desk in their cabin.
Rick entered and saw Liz at his desk while Kate was on the floor playing with Caleb and Kateryn. It did his heart good to see her having fun. All three of them were laughing.
Rick stepped in behind Liz and leaned down. "You can work thought all this noise?" Rick didn't miss that Kate had heard him somehow and was sticking her tongue out at him. Then she went back to playing with the kids.
"What noise?" Liz replied. "She's good, Rick, she's really good. If this is the not-a-slave version of her, she should never have been made a slave. It was a waste of a life." Kate was her best friend and she was happy for her.
"How's it coming?" Rick moved on as to why she was in their cabin.
"We might have done a little more damage than I thought. However, I think we need to stick to the plan for now. We move to the next targets as planned." Liz was even more convinced.
"You're sure we're not hurting them too much?" Kate had overheard every word as both kids raced at crawling speed for the bedroom.
"Civilians died when the dams were destroyed, yes. The Alliance bombed and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians on purpose. I'm not trying to turn us into them. Mostly I'm trying to make their rich and privileged lives difficult. The more they yell the happier I'll be. They'll put pressure on for them to solve these problems. They longer they yell the worse it will get." Liz was loving it.
"When do we hit the military?" Rick asked her.
Liz had been expecting that and wished she had a solid answer. "When it serves our purpose. We want them searching for who's doing this and get the military involved. So long as we stick to civilian targets they'll be less inclined to think it is the Browns fighting back. No ships leaving or entering the core planets. Homegrown attacks so they will put pressure on the civilians and not us," she explained yet again.
"So sewage treatment plants are next on the list?" Rick wanted to confirm.
"Every city has one or more so this may take a few weeks. Once the military patrols at this planet get too big we move to the next planet and start all over again," Liz confirmed.
"EWW!" Kate knew what losing sewage treatment plants was gong to mean. Instead of thinking about that too much she crawled away in search of the kids.
"So when's the next baby, Rick?" Liz asked him now that Kate had shown just what kind of mommy she really was.
"We haven't even figured out where the one we've got is going to sleep yet. His bed's still in our room. Pretty soon it'll be out here. Let alone where his room's going to be when he's older. And you want to talk about another one?" Rick shook his head.
"No room up here to expand to?" Liz was thinking just take down some walls.
"Apparently no. I asked. This is as good as it gets. This outpost wasn't designed and built with families in mind. It's an outpost." Rick thought that explained it all.
"So take over several cabins on one of the levels below here. Do you have to be on the same level as the Command room? Ask them how to move this desk." She was betting there were a number of power and control conduits coming to this space.
Rick really didn't know. "I can ask, I suppose." He had no idea what they would say but it might solve the problem they were facing now. "You two are going to have the same problem soon." Liz and Frankie had even less space than they did.
Liz hadn't planned to complain. But he was right. Space was limited.
"If we all stay here there's one more thing for you to think about. What are the kids going to do later? School, someplace to go, friends, jobs." Liz named a few.
Rick sighed. "It's an outpost, not a city." He wasn't really sure just what they were going to do about that.