The Hipno Chronicles:
Ghosts of Liandris
Chapter 9:
Omega Team
1500 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (IMPERIAL CALENDAR) \
MURIA SYSTEM, PLANET SARAE \ GRAND OCEAN,
NEAR BASIDIAN ISLES COAST
Omega Team---HIPNOS-J64,-K58, and -K43---sat on the blood tray of the Heron as it roared over the ocean, skimming a few meters over the water. The aft hatch was lowered, jammed open because a plasma shot had melted the hydraulics. Jesuit watched the jets churn the water behind them, happy to be above the water instead of under it.
In the last two weeks, Omega Team had been deployed from the temporary base camp Point Hope, on a peninsula in the tiger lands. They had been sent on numerous zero-gee ops to repel the Furian ships in orbit over the planet. They had then been dispatched to Mount Selthius in the freezing deep south, where they neutralized a Furian excavation with a HAVOK tac-nuke. They had then been deployed right off the Basidian Isles for a swim. Furian forces had been searching the seafloor for something. What precisely--a holy relic, a geological sample--no one knew, and it didn't matter. What mattered was when they got what they wanted, the Furians then historically burned the planet to remove and Keidrian/Basitin "infestation."
Omega Team had stopped both operations.
Jesuit looked over the ocean and wondered how long they could keep the Furians at bay in space. His gaze dropped to the corrugated floor of the Heron. It had lived up to it's name "blood tray"...stained with splashes of congealed dark red. Good people had died today.
On his HUD, the TACMAP showed the edge of a human island ahead. Jesuit exhaled and cleared his mind. They were close to their third target: the Black Obelisk.
There had been scattered reports that the Furians had invaded the Arcane Tower...before all contact with the Templars that resided there was lost.
Jesuit stood and stretched. Kyrie and Rael rose as well, sensing their brief downtime was over.
Kyrie opened one of the crates they had obtained from Point Hope near the tiger capital. Within was a new SRS99C sniper rifle. She disassembled it, cleaned each part, applied graphite lubricant, and reassembled the gun with mechanical precision. She then examined the ACOG Y-variant scope that had accompanied the rifle, and made microadjustments with a fine set of screwdrivers.
Rael tore into the box of ammunition and loaded magazines, sorting them by frag and AP types.
Jesuit opened an "egg carrier" box and divided up fragmentation and concussive grenades into three satchels.
He found an ONI datapad and turned it on. It had new Furian-Common translation matrices and the latest ONI intrusion and counterintrusion software. Updates courtesy of Liara. He tossed it into his bag.
In the cockpit, First Sergeant Laura "Smokes" Tanner flew, while her Crew Chief, Lance Corporal Jim Higgins, fiddled with the COM, trying to filter through the reports of the action in space and on the ground. Tanner popped a black bubble and continued to chew the contraband tobacco gum so popular with NCO fliers.
"So then," Tanner said to Higgins, "Blood Arrow goes after the damned Furian battleship as it did an in-atmosphere hyperspace jump! Flattened the Templar Metropolis. I don't know what those split-chinned freaks were after, but they sure didn't stick around after they found it--that's all I heard. CENTCOM channels are dropping offline. That can't be good."
Jesuit looked to Kyrie and Kael. Kyrie made a short lateral cut with her hand, the "stay cool" gesture.
They couldn't worry about the larger strategic picture. They had to say focused on their part. Secure the orbital elevator, and win this war one battle at a time.
Jesuit spied the human coast ahead: surf and white sands.
The Heron screamed over jungle tangle. Fifty kilometers in the distance a massive tower stretched from ground to clouds: the LEC Nuclear Fission Complex, an 'experiment' by the Director and his cronies. Or, as the locals called it: The Black Obelisk, from the rein of terror the Humans had imposed with it. The facility was designed to build and test the new fissile engines for LNC ships, inadvertantly creating dangerous side effects is that it concentrates and amplifies psionic and magic waves.
It was two hundred years old, antiquated, but it contained one of the few surviving OE's (Orbital Elevators) capable of heavy lifting. In the last two weeks, nuclear devices were shipped from Advent Dawn as a 'fail-safe' should anything go very wrong. Recent actions had made it abundantly clear that traditional arms would not help the LEGION fight a two-front war.
Sergeant Tanner continued, "So then the Furian fleet really starts to tear into the orbital defenses. It's getting ugly up there. Major skirmishes with the Second, Seventh, and Sixteenth Fleets."
"...Just as long as the plasma doesn't start dropping," Higgins replied.
Tanner stopped chewing her gum. "Multiple silhouettes ahead. Siren fliers. Whoa---" She craned her head, looking up.
Jesuit moved to the cockpit, following her gaze. Up near the top of the Obelisk, past a whisper haze of clouds, a pair of dots--each a kilometer-and-a-half long Furian ship--orbited.
"What the hell are they doing up there?" Tanner whispered.
Furian orbital support complicated this mission. Ground forces might have aerial support, heavy armor, or artillery.
But Furian didn't need the Obelisk to transport an invasion force. They'd just land their ships or use grav beams. Why were they here? Omega Team would have to move in closer before he could discern their motives.
Jesuit studied the radar images. "There's a hole in the Siren patrol pattern." He tapped the far edge of the screen. "Put us down here. We'll go in by foot."
"Your call," Tanner said dubiously. She pushed the throttle and the Heron accelerated, dropping so it now decapitated palm trees.
"Make ready for hot drop, Hipnos." She spun the Heron aound and sank into the jungle. "Call if you need a lift, Omega. Good hunting."
Jesuit, Kyrie, and Kael grabbed their gear and jumped out the back, eighteen feet to the sandy ground. The Heron roared away.
Jesuit pointed northeast and they moved silently through the tropical brush, and entered the shadow of the Black Obelisk.
A half kilometer from the fission complex, the jungle had been cleared and replaced by concrete, asphalt, and warehouses. Towering freight container cranes stood instead of coconut trees.
Jesuit heard the dull pounding steps of a Furian Behemoth attack platform. He spotted the lumbering machine as it crashed through a warehouse, tearing steel walls like tissue paper.
"Trouble," he muttered over TEAMCOM.
"Opportunity," Kael countered.
Kyrie kept her comments to herself and methidically wrapped the barrel of her new sniper rifle with brown and green rags. She lay in the scrub, powered on her ACOG scope, and sighted down its length.
"LMC personnel down," she reported. "Thermals cold. All dead. Making out six--no, a dozen Furian moving in groups of four...carrying cargo pods. Not Therons. Enforcers."
Jesuit paused, remembering the simian creatures from their op on Everlasting Vengance. A single Enforcer had wrestled Kikoji in his Advent state...and almost won. Not as bad as facing Furian Seekers, but Seekers only came two at a time.
"Where are they going?" Jesuit asked.
She shifted her sight. "Elevator. They've got an ascent car half full."
"Switch to neutron detector," Jesuit suggested.
Kyrie twisted a dial on the ACOG scope. "Cargo pods are hot," she confirmed.
"Nukes?" Kael said. "Furians don't use nukes. They have an edict about using 'heretic' weapons."
He was right. Jesuit had seen Therons, their weapons depleted of ammunition, die rather than touch fully loaded LMC combat rifles at their feet.
But Enforcers weren't Therons.
"Estimate ten minutes before that ascent car is loaded to capacity," Kyrie said.
Jesuit had to think fast, or failing that, just act. No, he resisted that impulse. Better to figure this out, at least tactically, before he had his team rush in.
"We could take a dozen Enforcers," Kael said. "Kyrie could snipe them. We could move in and engage one at a time."
"Too slow," Jesuit told him. "And they'd send for reinforcements. The ascent car could be on its way up the Obelisk before we could get to it."
Kyrie moved her aim from side to side. "Got a parking lot. Crunchers, trucks, APCs...a gasoline tanker truck."
Jesuit and Kael exchanged glances.
"It's an old-school rebel," Jesuit murmured, "but I like it. Kyrie, make a hole. Kael, you introduce that tanker to the Behemoth. I'll secure the ascent car. You two meet me after the bang." He took a deep breath, recalling how tough these monsters were. "They use energy-launchers," he told them, "and they're too strong and tough to engage in close quarters. Try for the head shot--at range."
"Roger that," Kael said.
Kyrie's green status light winked on in reply. She was entering her sniper icy-cold state of Zen no-thought.
Jesuit nodded to Kael and they ran in opposite directions along the edge of the brush. Jesuit stopped when he was a kilometer from Kyrie's position, and then he sent his green status signal.
A moment later, Kael's status burned green.
Jesuit rechecked his rifle, his extra magazines, and then tensed, preparing to run.
A patrol of three Enforcers moved along the edge of the facility. They were smart, keeping to the shadows, glancing back and forth, sniffing.
There were three distant coughs--three splashes of blood--and three Enforcers, each missing their right eye and a fair portion of their ugly face, crumpled.
There was no warning light from Kyrie, so she had no additional targets in sight. She'd soon reposition higher to get a better view. This was Jesuit's opening.
He sprinted to the base, and ducked around the corner of a warehouse--nearly bumping into an Enforcer running toward his position.
It towered over him, covered in thick slabs of muscle and dull blue rhino-like hide.
Jesuit fired without thinking, a full-auto burst, dead center of body mass.
The Enforcer rushed him, unfazed.
Jesuit stepped into the beast's charge, striking at it's thick neck with the butt of his rifle. It connected. The Enforcer reeled back and roared.
Jesuit unloaded the remaining rounds in his clip into the Enforcer's open mouth.
The Enforcer snarled a mouthful of shattered, smoldering teeth and took two steps toward Jesuit...and fell.
Jesuit reflexively reloaded his PA6K, and slowed his breathing. He grabbed the Enforcers blade-tipped handshotgun.
His ears should have picked the Enforcer up. Maybe his recent saltwater dunking and ice-encrustation had caused a problem with his hearing.
Jesuit stuck a finger in his ear, twisted, and brought it back out. His hearing went out for a moment, then came back, registering dozens of bootfalls. This could get more complicated.
He heard the roar of a diesel engine, turned, and say the blur of an eighteen-wheel tanker crashing through the gate and guardhouse.
Kael was about to make things very hot.
Jesuit ran, hugging the walls of the warehouse. He turned that next corner and watched a fireball envelop the fifty-five-meter tall Behemoth walker--the tanker truck crushed under one 'foot.'
The Behemoth ignited, its board reactor breached, spewing white-blue plasma down the streets, turning asphalt into flame, and melting steel-clad temporary structures.
Kael's status light winked green.
Jesuit moved toward the elevator dead ahead.
Nestled in the spine support of the Obelisk, nanowire cables stretched to anchor points from a hundred meters to kilometers distant, and lines of elevator cars waited in queue.
The cars were usually loaded by crane and rail with fiberglass cargo pods. Today, however, three Enforcers wrestled crates into the car, secured them with ropes, and protected them with Styrofoam wedges (Huh...).
Jesuit shook his head--as if those nukes would go off if jostled. You could set a bomb off in there and their hardened cases would barely be scratched. Without the detonator codes, those older nukes were no more dangerous than paperweights.
The Enforcers entered the car, and started to force the wide doors shut.
Jesuit flashed his green status light to Kael and Kyrie. He couldn't wait. He had to stop those Enforcers now, before they rolled up the stalk--out of reach.
He slung the handshotgun and his rifle and primed two grenades, which he threw into the elevator. He then redrew the Gnasher and sprinted for the car and its closing doors.
Detonations flashed inside.
Jesuit jumped--twisted sideways, scraping through the slight space between the doors.
He landed, rolled to his feet, and saw the open-mawed expressions of three stunned Enforcers. He leveled the Gnasher and blew one's head off.
He turned as the other blinked and charged him. He blasted it point blank between the eyes.
The Enforcer bowled him over, and it's fists came down in twin hammer blows that stunned Jesuit and drained his tac-armor's structural integrity to the near breaking point.
Blood gushed from its injured face...and then it finally registered that most of it's head was gone. It toppled upon Jesuit, inert.
The last Enforcer pulled the body off, and pointed a grenade launcher at Jesuit's head.
The Gnasher was missing. He tried to shake off the disorientation from the double knockout blow. His head felt like it was filled with biofoam.
The Enforcer seemed to grin.
Two soft puffs sounded.
The Enforcer stiffened and collapsed to the deck, a pair of holes spraying blood at the base of its head. Shadows crossed the opening between the doors.
Kael and Kyrie slipped inside. Kael moved straight to the car's manual override panel. Kyrie's sniper rifle still smoldered.
"Company's coming fast," she said, and shot each Enforcer once more. "I hope this car can move."
Jesuit regained his senses.
The inside of the car was a mess. The grenades had busted every crate and punched rents into the walls. A dozen conical warheads lay scattered, but intact, on the deck.
Jesuit took up position by the door and looked out.
Three StarWrath tanks crushed a path through the complex, heading their way. In the sky, Siren fliers circled.
"Here..." Jesuit dug into his satchel and handed Kael the ONI datapad.
Kael booted the intrusion software and cut through the elevator's control software. "Hang on," he said. "Maximum acceleration."
The climbing motors engaged and high-frequency screams rattled the car.
"Ah--the clutch," Kael noted, and pressed a button.
A jolt of upward acceleration hit. Jesuit, Kyrie, and Kael were driven to all fours, and the car groaned and pinged.
Jesuit rolled over and looked out the open doors. The ground dropped away; the StarWrath tanks looked like toys. Would they fire on the stalk? Or would they gather forces and follow thme with another car?
"Kael..."
"I'm on it." Kael returned to the override panel. "Interfacing with Stalk Control. Jamming the sequencing tracks. That should slow them down."
Kyrie eased next to Jesuit by the open doors. She set a tiny satellite dish down and it opened like a rose bud. "Getting a LMC network handshake," she reported.
"Raise CENTCOM," Jesuit told her. "Tell them we need an extreme-low orbit extraction. We'll need a fast ship to get in before those Furian ships at the top can---"
"Stand by," Kyrie said. "FLEETCOM contacting us." She turned to Jesuit. "It's Lord Itachi on Leviathan."
Itachi's unshakably confident voice came over the COM: "Give me a status report, Omega."
"Sir," Jesuit anwered. "Furian forces at the Black Obelisk were after the mothballed nukes being shuttled up to the fleet. We've recovered twelve HAVEN warheads. We are en route to low orbit on the stalk. There's an entire company of Enforcers on the ground with StarWrath tanks and Siren reinforcements."
Jesuit craned his head skyward.
Along the arc of Sarae, distant sparks and lines of fire traced traced patterns of destruction. Long smoking trails plummeted to the ground, ending in thermal blooms of impacted ships and plasma bombardment. The broken hulls of LEGION ships made a boneyard of the thermosphere. There were Furian ships in orbit as well...many more than Jesuit remembered...dozens.
He squinted, and his cybronic right eye magnified.
"There are two Furian destroyers at the Obelisk's terminus near Station Wayward Rest."
"I'll send a prowler for an ELO extraction," Lord Itachi said. "Get your team ready." There was and uncharacteristic hesitation, and then he said in a lowered voice, "One more thing has come up: a message from Dr. Liara Mantadurru--" Jesuit felt Kyrie stiffen as her mother's name was mentioned. "--and a new mission."
They all exchanged a glance.
"Dr. Mantadurru's message," Lord Itachi explained, "was piggybacked on a carrier signal sent by Serina through hyperspace. The message was subsequently detected by LEGION Hyperspace Monitoring Station Democritus. It will make more sense if you heard and read the material. Set to encryption scheme thirty-seven."
Jesuit called up his encryption codes. Thirty-seven corresponded to code word SHEEPINWOLFSCLOTHING.
He input the code. "Ready to recieve."
The message played.
The Hipnos listened to her automated distress on the new Oblivion threat and the Blight. Enigma had been with her. There were no further details other than the single mention of him on the Ancestor ship. Lord Itachi had to be sending them as backup.
But then Dr. Mantadurru's text message appeared, explaining the discovery of new Ancestor technologies, and the possibility of capturing and using them to neutralize both Furian and Blight threats.
Jesuit reread the message; there was no mention of Jen. His eyes lingered on the last line: "SEND HIPNOS."
He now understood why Dr. Mantadurru had left them, although not her reckless disregard of mission protocol. She had then followed some clues found in the ruins of Tau Cetia IV, or perhaps within the alien blue crystal. It was a high-risk venture that had luckily paid off. If she had discovered a cache of technology, it could turn the tide of the war.
Jesuit held up his hands, palms up, and gave a slight shrug to his teammates, soliciting their opinions.
Kyrie nodded. Kael gave the thumbs-up sign.
"We understand, sir," Jesuit replied, "and we're ready for dedeployment. This Liandris system, though--" He rechecked the stellar coordinate embedded in the message. "It's weeks away with the fastest LMC corvette."
"We'll just have to do our best," Lord Itachi said. "The Wolf stands ready and waiting for your team. They'll jump the instant you board. I'll send reinforcements if we can spare them."
Jesuit leaned out the elevator doors. Outside blue skies had turned to black and untwinkling stars now surrounded them. He squinted again. In medium orbit were sleek Furian destroyers...so much faster then any human ship.
"Sir," he said. "I think I've found us a better way there. But I'm going to the the detonation codes for these HAVEN warheads."