CHAPTER TWO
RING OF FIRE
"A war to create and maintain social order can have no end. It must involve the continuous, uninterrupted exercise of power and violence."
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2004), Multitude
Hyperion, proximal to Logistical Support Area Chenoweth
Bountiful, 36 Aegis System, Korprulu Sector
THE Hyperion's corridors were quixotic—crystalline chandeliers hung on the ceilings instead of combat lightings, and halcyon classical paintings framed by gold ingot were mounted on walls, apposed to combat viewports and fire extinguishers. Verdant plants had been planted periodically along the length of equatorial corridors that themselves were decked with maroon carpentry.
When in Mengsk's service four years ago, Hyperion had embodied Mengsk and all he represented. A tool of war, yet refined in classical style—as much as it was about utility and warfighting as it was about couture and style. It was a testament to the sophistication of bygone halcyon days, with its tiled walls and stained glass panes. Though Aurora had memorized the deck layout of a Behemoth-class battlecruiser such as Hyperion's, there was a quaint and fantastic feeling about fighting aboard the vessel, as if she was not aboard a military vessel but rather that she was conducting fire movements through an art gallery or museum.
The Dominion commandos and Raynor's Raiders aboard the vessel had little care for their surroundings, relentlessly throwing themselves at one another with reckless abandon aboard the vessel. Fragmentation grenades set oil paintings afire with liquefied shrapnel. Marble door handles disintegrated as their cognate doors were blown apart. The tempest that ensconced Aurora was absurd and ridiculous if not for its lethality—Dominion and insurgent forces in combat power armor frantically darting through marble corridors and exchanging gauss rounds through tapestries and iron reliefs.
And it was through such a maelstrom that Aurora incisively excelled. She moved with the deliberate purpose of murder—every movement exacting, each stride precise. There was an aesthetic economy of force to her feline motions as she strode through Hyperion's sumptuous halls. Four years had refined and tempested her body into an agile saber, sixty kilograms of hardened muscle and bone, decisive in intent and penetrating in motion.
Through this inchoate flurry of randomly ricocheting gauss rifle rounds and punctuating explosions, not even her environmental suit's adaptive camouflage offered any enduring security—only speed.
Sprinting through the chaotic melée, her right hand found purchase on the neck of an insurgent crewman who leapt from behind a corner to assail the half-invisible blurred phantom flitting through the halls. As he leapt towards her, her right forearm autonomously sliced across his windpipe, temporarily stunning him while her free left hand grasped the hilt of a combat knife on her utilities belt and sank it into his sternum. The Raider sank backwards as the shock overtook him—and as a gurgling black liquid began to crease his overalls where the knife had found its mark. Aurora took the moment to snap a shot from her canister rifle—at point blank range against an unarmored organic target, the 25mm high explosive shell's explosion dislodged his internal viscera and left a ragged constellation of bodily fluids on the wall as the chestless figure fell to its knees.
There was no dispatch to be tendered to the noncombatant personnel of Raynor's Raiders that were resisting the boarding Dominion special operations forces—if they chose to resist, there was nothing in the rules of engagement to prevent the Dominion soldiers from retaliating. And this crewman's valor—attempting to seize a Dominion operative in a ghost's environmental suit—had been summarily paid for with his life.
The impromptu resistance put up by various crewmen had been easily dispatched by Aurora thus far, but as she arrowed her way to the aft compartments of the vessel, the rebels were beginning to recover from the shock of the rapid boarding and were now rallying military-trained personnel in CMC-type powered armor suits.
The CMC-type armored exoskeletons had been a deciding turning point in terran warfare. Insurgency had become an afterthought—how many unarmored personnel, like disillusioned rebels, would be required to take on even a single Marine in a half-ton fully sealed armored suit? The 5.56mm and 7.62mm caliber ammunition had been reclassified to "light caliber"—an inordinate number of "standard" rounds wouldn't even put a dent in a CMC suit, whereas a single round from a Marine's "Impaler" hypersonic gauss rifle—fired with the same kinetic energy as a former .50-caliber "heavy machine gun" of olden days—could kill any man or woman that wasn't in comparable power armor.
Ghost operatives entirely subverted such rational military doctrine—in any contest between Aurora, a 15-year-old psionic in a lightly armored hostile environment suit whose only function was to provide shelter from the elements—and a CMC-protected Marine, there was no contest.
The hulking metal behemoth, its armor decorated in the prominent scarlet of Raynor's Raiders—bent to one side of the marble statue of the upraised centaur to take aim at the half-blurred feminine figure running towards him at wild abandon. Aurora perceived the ponderous brute, and while the rebel adjusted his aim slightly, her canister rifle whined a singular report at the sliver of moment peaking out behind the lofty statue—the HE round make a glancing impact on what was exposed of the man—his left shoulder, and the round detonated with climatic effect, blowing off his arm and disemboweling him in a crimson display of liberated blood. The 25mm round's explosion—designated to penetrate even light vehicular armor—also shattered the ponderous marble statue that the Marine was taking cover behind. The centaur—uplifted on its equine feet and with a spear in hand—spectacularly shattered in a fiery conflagration, with massive pieces raining down on the Marine, bringing him out of the cruel circumstances of the world.
What remained in the hallway was a small pyramid of irregularly sized marble, draped over whatever was left of the Marine—a severed hand that had been blown by the explosion all the way to the other side of the hall served as a grim reminder of the consequences of opposing the murderess that now freely strode down Hyperion's halls.
The communications chatter—once a controlled, calm series of affirmations and confirmations as the Dominion special operations boarding craft breached the vessel—was now reaching an unruly tempest as the commandos engaged their rebel counterparts in an ever more confusing labyrinth of hallways, catwalks, dormitories, observation decks, and art galleries.
Gauss rifle fire pelted down one of Hyperion's central equatorial hallways—these hallways, running all the way down from the fore of the battlecruiser to its most aft compartments—offered an uninterrupted line of sight and thus were the site of some of the most lethal exchanges between the Dominion commandos and their opponents.
"One-One, Phantom One-Three. Request CASEVAC for one man down, over. BP Foxtrot is receiving effective fire from all positions—we cannot maintain the blocking position for…"
Lieutenant Commander Ives exchanged frustrated glances with his senior noncom in charge—Senior Chief Petty Officer Castle. Castle took the liberty to reply to One-Three.
"One-Three, One-One here. Keep your dick in your pants. One-One out."
Since the Raiders had pilfered the battlecruiser from the Dylarian Shipyards four years ago, they had appeared to have made numerous modifications to the vessel—hidden passageways through which they could ambush attackers, safe rooms resistant to attack—that were now frustrating the carefully planned advance. Of Castle's sixteen man Naval Special Warfare platoon, the three other fire maneuver elements had become indisposed, caught up in frantic fighting against desperate rebels that were on the cusp of losing their only home.
"McKnight!" called out Ives.
"Ka-boom, baby!"
The commando—designated as the grenadier for the fireteam—was outfitted in one of the venerable CMC-540 "Five-Four" armored assault exoskeletons that the Marines' "Marauders" wore on planetside operations.
"Suppress", ordered Ives. The officer addressed the two other operators with deft hand motions—"fire maneuver forward."
As the erratic rattle of gauss rifle rounds slowed, McKnight leaned out from the makeshift cover that Phantom One-One had erected—and hefted the "Punisher" grenade launchers that had been appended to each of his arms. As the launchers flared and brilliant flashes lit at the Raiders' makeshift barricade at the far end of the hall, the remaining operators nimbly darted forward, hugging the walls while advancing continuously.
Ives' reflex sight found themselves centered on the faceplate of a rebel trooper, his visor garishly painted with a hydralisk's leering jaws—his armored fingers caressed the trigger, and he felt his armor's forearms compensate for the rattle of the gauss rifle as it holed its target. There was surprisingly little sound or mechanical percussion to mark the accurate shots—Naval Special Warfare's gauss rifles, by practice were often outfitted with a flash/sound suppressor. Though this decreased their shock effect when attempting to suppress enemies, they prevented the enemy from identifying the shooter's position by muzzle flash or rifle report. This was especially of effect when the commandos were attempting to fire from concealed positions—such as when they were hugging the walls while McKnight drew the enemy fire with his grenade launchers. Assailed by the concussion grenades landing amongst them and the silent hail of gauss rifle fire, the enemy position crumpled.
The 9mm rifle spikes deconvoluted the hydralisk's leering jaws on the rebel's faceplate, tearing through the polarized glass and prompting ejecta of blood to spurt up from the torn glass. The rebel didn't immediately fall—his CMC power armor kept his limp body locked in an upright position, until the next of McKnight's concussion grenades threw his body across the hall.
As all the visible enemies fell, the commandos rapidly advanced, treading dead bodies left in the hall from previous engagements, keen to advance upon the makeshift rebel barricade—rifle sights trained for when a dying rebel would suddenly gain the strength to lurch himself upwards from the floor to fire one last salvo. There were no such Raiders alive—the eerily accurate and surreptitious bursts of fire from the Naval Special Warfare operators had all met their mark. Ives and Castle advanced gingerly at the vanguard position, keeping close to the walls, while McKnight—in his ungainly Marauder suit—followed behind, and Shapiro lagged slightly behind, his designated marksman's rifle trained on the barricades and any enemies that might dart in.
There were none. The barricade was an abattoir—though the Raiders had the impression that they were suppressing the four diminutive Dominion commandos at the far end of the hall before the infrequency of the return fire, it had been to the contrary. The apparent lack of return fire had been the product of the commandos' suppressed rifles, and dozens of Raiders had rushed to the barricade, only to be struck down by silent rounds and then replaced by more waves of defenders who thought they'd been winning the fight. The end result was a messy tangle of armored Marines and unarmored crewmen at the barricade—their chests, heads, or limbs all marked by the characteristic bloody cavitations left by hypersonic gauss rifle rounds.
The barricade had also featured above the sandbags a mounted heavy machine gun—the Dominion troops had frequently lured the Raiders to man it, just for Shapiro to instantly strike down the hapless gunner with a prepositioned sniper round.
The mass of rebel bodies had been guarding a heavy blast door—when the equatorial corridor reached its terminus and melded into the Engineering section of the vessel; where the armories and the fusion reactor plant was.
"Shapiro—field of fire, aft. McKnight, Castle, prepare for breach."
As the sharpshooter turned to covered the corridor they'd just treaded down, McKnight and Castle stacked to apposed sides of the blast door.
"Six, One-One. Veronica—I say again—veronica, over."
Their commanding officer reciprocated their sitrep promptly.
"One-One, Six. We believe that they're trying to arm fox sierra mechanism behind those doors. Four-Five will RV with you at your location and continue the push on OBJ Black."
"Rendezvous… where?" asked Ives.
From the maintenance catwalk above the choke point corridor, Aurora gazed down upon the gangly collection of figures—some armored, some unarmored—rallying in well-defended firing positions to assail the Dominion forces about to burst through the blast door.
In the background, Aurora saw a short, torpid figure waving about—obviously the coordinator of this last-ditch stand while the Raiders armed the thermonuclear fail-safe of the battlecruiser to annihilate the few standing insurgents while destroying the several hundred special operations personnel storming the vessel. Undoubtedly, in the rebels' minds, a glorious last stand and sacrifice worth some memory and praise for successive terrorists to remember; how Raynor's Raiders had burned out and taken several hundred Dominion commandos with them.
Aurora knew the swarthy rebel officer at the center of the hallway well—with his rotund belly, one of his arms replaced with a massive pincer, and the eye goggles pushed up on his crown of hair and his ragged mustache. Through the perception afforded through psionics, his fear and desperation was like a beacon burning through the night. He was assigned as one of the high-value targets (HVTs) that the Contingency Strike Force was prioritized to eliminate, and felt a small vindictive thrill as she shouldered the canister rifle and indiscriminately aimed at Rory Swann's obese figure as he desperately waved for more crewmen to throw away their lives to give time for the thermonuclear self-destruct to be initialized.
Frantic shouting bubbled from Swann's earpiece as another officer belted at him from elsewhere in the Hyperion.
"Swann, you gotta hold 'em! How much longer 'till the reactors are rigged?"
"Say, another… ten minutes, Matt."
"We don't have ten goddamn minutes! Do it!"
There was not even any need to aim—against an unarmored "soft" target, the 25mm HE round functioned like a cluster bomb. As Swann's pulpy figure evaporated in the plume of actinic fire, Aurora did not wait to target the remaining insurgents, who were peeking out from their firing positions at the explosion behind them. Their firing positions—designed to defend against a frontal attack from the door—afforded no security against an assailant firing from above.
There was the thump as the C-191's underslung grenade launcher lobbed a lockdown grenade, cascading the dozen or so rebels with an electromagnetic pulse, and her canister rifle whined as she fired down from the catwalk, obliterating their positions as small conflagrations of 25mm fire tossed away unarmored crewmen and liquefied armored soldiers on impact.
By the time that the blast door involuted from the shaped charges emplaced by Ives and Phantom One-One, the collapsing metal blew in on a macabre assembly of figures, their limbs bent at unnatural angles and charred craters in the floor. As the operators cautiously advanced forward, Ives bent down, examining the remainders of Swann's body before instinctively looking upwards and seeing the pale specter motionless up in the catwalks before she too moved on.
Logistical Support Area Chenoweth
Terran Dominion Advanced Special Operations Command
Bountiful, 36 Aegis System, Korprulu Sector
The tortuous metal ruins of Camp Chenoweth still bled with acrid smoke—its angular crenellations were still afire. The Dominion soldiers that now strode its breadth cared little for the destroyed disposition of their former military installation—LSA Chenoweth had already served its purpose and now was to be casted aside. The occasional gauss crackle of weapons fire still occasionally punctuated the silence; either insurgents or the occasional inmate that had hid in some bathroom or maintenance shaft now being systematically eradicated. What irregular forces of resistance and dissent had gathered at Chenoweth had been exterminated, now homogenized back into the lawful order desired by the Dominion and its sovereign.
The Special Forces personnel that had led the assault on the rebel-held LSA Chenoweth now stood at the center of its primary courtyard, their objectives already prosecuted—that is, the storming of the fortress and search and destruction of Raynor's Raiders and whatever inmates they'd managed to arm. Now, the Marines were doing their job—policing the fallen weapons and cataloging the surviving inmates; and even they carried out these menial tasks with the typical sluggishness and torpidness that typified the Corps.
Shattered bodies contorted in various unnatural conformations still laid freely in Chenoweth's halls and open spaces—petrified in their final moments of agony, transfixed in eternal abeyance. What few prisoners had survived the assault were now gathered on the flight pads, supplicant before their Marine guards. Yawning maws of twisted metal and pockmarked neosteel battleplate laid mute testament to the speed and decisiveness with which the Dominion's counterattack had been executed—as did the dormant prone bodies on the floor as well as slicks of tarry blood that were congealing. There were still brilliant tangerine lights that flickered on and off within the ruins of the devastated installation—Reapers gathered in "hunter killer" teams of six, using their nitro packs to skirt between buildings and rooftops in search of any survivors evading the lifescans of the Raven UAVs overhead. Meanwhile, Marine infantry sections were systematically sweeping the installation, following predictable and pre-assigned search routines—the regular approach of the Marines, combined with the erratic movements of the bloodthirsty Reapers were designed to intimidate any survivor still evading the Dominion forces.
The primary flight line was still littered with various detritus—discarded bullet casings, supply parcels, and SCV exoskeletons left behind by Raynor's Raiders as some of them had fled the firefights. That they had abandoned the very supplies they'd intended to pirate from LSA Chenoweth was testament to the desperation of their disposition as the Dominion Special Forces had closed in on them.
Lieutenant Commander Ives's Naval Special Warfare platoon was loosely aggregated by the flight line, basking in the undiluted victory of the moment or contemptuously watching their Marine counterparts tediously gather the Raiders' fallen weapons and herd together the prisoners. After the successful disarmament of Hyperion's self-destruct mechanism, Ives and his special operations forces had continued to participate in the S&D operation to clear LSA Chenoweth of remaining resistance—not a single fatality had been incurred amongst his platoon, or for that matter, any of Contingency Strike Force One's special operations personnel involved in the assault.
The ruins of the Dominion installation now became forecasted by a ponderous shadow—a massive leviathan had taken to the skies. It was not Hyperion. Ironically, after Special Forces had disarmed the failsafe, Mengsk had ordered the rearming of the failsafe and the hulling of the vessel. The thermonuclear, spectacular destruction of the most visible sign of counter-Dominion insurgency—vaporized in Bountiful's atmosphere. Logic could not be reasoned against the Dominion's sovereign—Special Operations Command and the Unified Intelligence Command had sought to investigate the vessel carefully for any intelligence regarding the Raiders and their possible allies, but in empire, there was only one sovereign and the rest were subjects. Hyperion had been vaporized to cast a pallid glow to Bountiful's sunset and to capitulate the sovereign's orgasmic pleasure at the annihilation of almost all the Raiders.
The leviathan extant in the skies was not Monarch, the Mengsk-class fleet carrier that was the flagship of the carrier battle group—the supercarrier was far too valuable an asset to keep in the atmosphere, where it would be in range of surface-to-air weapons. The metallic behemoth was the Hercules-class battlecruiser Vizier—its metal rind was studded with the protrusions of heavy mounted laser batteries, its length running with brilliant cyan lights. There was a flurry of activity at its midsections—the massive heavy cruiser let loose something from its abdomen.
As the dropship descended from the smog-obscured skies, Ives made it out clearly; it was a vessel of the make of the M99 Foray-class special operations dropships, the variant of the Marine Corps' "medivac dropship" repurposed for clandestine insertion, resupply, and extraction of surfaceborne special operations forces.
It alighted adroitly on the flight line, making a precise three-point landing while its slur of its rotors slowed—the deafening sonic scream of the dropship's engines quieted, and a single figure dexterously hopped off from the troop compartment.
"Commodore, sir."
Military regulations forbade saluting in combat zones—it instantly identified COs to enemy snipers—but the man before them had little regard for such stipulations. There was something about his movements or mannerisms—an enviable surety, some might say—that he knew he would never get hurt nor wounded in this warzone. Unlike all the other Dominion officers striding across Chenoweth, ensconced within the comfortable protective CMC battle suits—he simply wore unarmored fatigues. His uniform was in the pixilated cyan and aquamarine digital camouflage that was currently the popular favorite amongst Naval Special Warfare Command, and over his sternum, he had a distinctive singular black star. The rank insignia for Rear Admiral (Lower Half)—or, more simply, Commodore.
The crimson combat lighting of the Foray's troop compartment illuminated the man as he deftly made his way down the troop ramp. As he stepped beyond the dropship's shadow, Bountiful's sunlight defined his features more crisply—he had a head of tousled black hair framing a thoughtful asian face, inset with two curious chocolate eyes that wandered the scene before him, watching for details.
The man was the architect of the victory on Bountiful. Certainly neither the Marines or the Navy were keen nor decisive enough to engineer the rapid deployment to 36 Aegis and the consequential attack. Indeed, when Mengsk and his advisors commissioned the Dominion Armed Forces to eradicate Raynor and similar insurgents, they knew that many of the Dominion officers hardly had the intellectual tenacity nor resolve to run their prey aground. Many were like the late General Edmund Duke—trained watchdogs that were petty sycophants and well trained only at listening to orders. Another breed of men were required for counterinsurgency. Those with the perceptiveness to hear of the quiet movements of the rebel fighters, with the intellectual sophistication to devise operations and schemes to locate and cauterize them, and with the initiative and sheer decisiveness to orchestrate the entire counterinsurgency campaign.
Commodore Kawika Son was one of the rare officers in the Dominion with such qualities. Indeed, many considered him arguably the most skilled counterinsurgency and counterterrorism officer in the late Confederacy. He had many qualities one might consider peculiar—most notable of which he was "non-augmented"—he was completely bereft of any psionic perception aptitude. While many considered Ghost officers to be skilled at counterinsurgency, Commodore Son managed to eclipse their skills even without the supernatural perception afforded with psionics. He was also unusual amongst the hammerheads that dominated the military in his academic pedigree—a first honors graduate from the University of Tarsonis, he had later earned a Masters' at the Duke School of Interplanetary Relations shortly thereafter. Men in academia with such training rarely voluntarily submitted themselves to the bloody chaos and bureaucracy of the military. Son used his acumen like a rapier to cut through the bureaucracy and general stupidity that characterized the Confederacy, time and time again wielding small Special Forces units like sabers to cut the heart out of nascent insurgencies in the Outer Rim, frustrating members at the Ghost Program who were unable to accomplish feats despite the multi-billion credit investment placed in them to foster their psionic talents and to impart them with the most au courant technological augmentations.
During his service with the late Confederacy in Naval Special Warfare, Commodore Son had apprehended or liquefied various insurgent and criminal elements for his military masters—thankfully, he had rarely been involved in counterinsurgency operations against the nascent Sons of Korhal. When Mengsk had taken power, his advisors had told him of Kawika Son. Mengsk had not risen to his station without some degree of perception, and knowing that the stability of the future empire would be conditional on a firm counterinsurgency force, he had come to Son with his customary silken tongue, brandishing all sorts of material pleasures and moral reasons, asking him to join the Dominion military.
Son was unflattered by the Emperor's advances, but nevertheless acquiesced. Mengsk, realizing the tremendous potential of the special operations commander, had given him free rein to ruthlessly crush rebel threats to the growing Dominion. Son had shamelessly taken off the dusty covers of his counterinsurgency talents that he had used for the Confederacy, and now redirected his sights on anti-Dominion threats. Some said such behavior was diagnostic of a cold amorality—he was a sniper rifle in service of whatever was the ruling power in the Korprulu Sector.
In his several years of service alongside Son, Lieutenant Commander Ives was unsure of the moral grounds of the Special Forces commander, but knew one thing for certain—Son did not report to any military chain of command and did not answer to the Joint Forces Command, the multiservice "high command" of the Dominion military. Instead, he answered directly to Mengsk and the highest tiers of Dominion government—he flitted across the Korprulu Sector, a decisive specter of his own volition, ridding threats then moving to the next challenge. Mengsk in turn had given him unlimited autonomy and even his own specialized unit—the so-called "Contingency Strike Force One" (CSF-1), otherwise known as "Task Force 830" to the un-initiated. CSF-1 was Son's own rapier, entrusted to him to pierce all Dominion foes. It enjoyed unrestricted movement and no limitations on its operational methods. Son recruited all sorts of Special Forces personnel, Ghosts, and various military and intelligence operatives into the task force—handpicked for their unique talents. It was a testament to Son's sphere of influence and decisiveness that nearly one-quarter of the Dominion's Ghost personnel—sixty Ghost operators—were subordinated to CSF-1, completing assassination and reconnaissance missions at the behest of Commodore Son, himself not even a psionic.
And Ives knew that if nothing, Son was brutally creative in his longitude and latitude of strategy and thinking. Techniques completely lost to the traditional military were employed—Son employed a diverse battery of stratagems from labeling weapons and materiel with tracking labels to inventing new forms of chemically assisted torture and interrogation to locate and destroy his foes. Both Son as well as the regular military knew that Commodore Son employed and exploited the "general purpose forces" (that is, the Marines and the Navy) ruthlessly as pawns in his chess game of counterinsurgency. Son answered to no Marine nor Navy commander and paid no heed for their welfare or requirements, using the Navy as chariots to distant fields of battle and Marines as expendable shock troops in high-risk operations. The military was well aware of the privileged status that Son enjoyed and that he could commandeer their units at will, and in turn loathed Son and the various SF units of the Contingency Strike Force.
Nevertheless, it was clear that the Marines and Navy were entirely incapable of ever possibly accomplishing any counterinsurgency on their own. It had been Son, through his listening web of informants and various other intelligence sources, that had heard of the almost negligible communications disruption to LSA Chenoweth and had immediately ordered the redeployment of the Monarch carrier battle group and CSF-1 to Bountiful immediately.
The Vice Admiral commanding the carrier battle group had taken great offense that his vessels had been hijacked by the imperious Special Forces commander (who was two pay grades beneath him) to investigate a "communications disruption" with the Chenoweth prison—and yet, now, as a consequence of this, they had finally trapped Raynor's Raiders on Bountiful … they had run their prey aground and were drawing the noose tightly.
"Commander", said Son sharply, in his characteristic terse fashion. "Bravo zulu."
It was Navy jargon for "well done"—from the mouth of the Special Forces commander, it was the highest praise.
"Thank you, sir."
The commodore now pivoted to address the cell of five Ghosts astride Ives's sixteen man platoon—Ives recognized Aurora's phantasmic visage amongst one of them.
"Artemis."
When the female Ghost spoke, her voice was a soft, almost androgynous monotone. "Two hundred and fifty three rebel casualties have been accounted for. There is no sign of Raynor nor any other high-value targets."
Son's expression did not slacken—he followed her train of thought immediately. "From the number of dropships involved in the attack, there was likely a battalion-level force involved in the operation. This leaves nearly one third of the rebels unaccounted for."
"Sir", answered Artemis.
The commodore turned to Ives. "Concur or dispute, Commander?"
"Concur, sir."
"Tactical should be able to reconstruct the battle from the recon optics aboard our vessels, but if the Raiders are on the move, then there's no time", mused Son aloud.
"They couldn't have used airborne transports nor surfaceborne transports to flee—we would've intercepted them by air. The only possible conclusion is that they fled underground … or they're still here."
"Impossible", said Ives. "The Raven UAVs are airborne. Thermal confirms that the only contacts here are either ours, or the prisoners we've all accounted for."
"Nonsense. Technological means of surveillance are faultable and are easily deceived—say, if there is a cryogenics room here, or else…"
Artemis interrupted brusquely.
"I have Four-Seven on the line. There is an obvious avenue of escape for the rebels—a public transit monorail connects to the subbasement of the prison."
"What the fuck?" burst McCastle.
"During Chenoweth's construction, it was used to ferry construction workers from the nearby city to here", explained Artemis pedantically. "Now, it's mostly used for educational trips from the city to view the prisons."
"Tir Nanog", said Commodore Son immediately—during the brief flight to 36 Aegis, he had surveilled available maps of LSA Chenoweth's surroundings intensely. "The closest metropolis … and 400,000 inhabitants. One of the largest population centers on this side of the planet."
"All transportation must be shut down", snapped Son. "We might already be too late."
He turned to his facilitator—a Master Chief Petty Officer who emerged from the same Foray dropship. "Open the comm to the Governor's office, the local CM commander, the Monarch, and 616 Marine HQ. Secure."
"Sir."
"Have they been briefed on the contingency plan?"
"Plan November may be executed with immediate effect, sir."
Son shook his crossly. "That's stupid. Put them all on the line, immediately."
They entered the comm chanel just as Lieutenant General Murray—Commander of the 616th Marine Expeditionary Force—began his pompous creed to Governor Tomlinson; the mayor of Tir Nanog.
"Governor Tomlinson… this is General Murray, Six-One-Six Marines. Under the authority of HQ Joint Forces Command Korhal, I am relieving you of your authority. I hereby commandeer all and any civil defense assets in Tir Nanog to apprehend or neutralize known rebel threats that are within the vicinity of your…"
"Belay that order", snapped Son.
"Excuse me?"
"Governor—I am Rear Admiral Kawika Son, Contingency Strike Force. Please forgive the General for his rash words. There is no imposition of martial law going on here. You and your staff maintain full responsibility for Tir Nanog."
"As you may have heard", said Son quickly, "the 616th Marine Division and the Contingency Strike Force have landed on-planet recently to deal with a small event at Camp Chenoweth, several kilometers beyond your suburbs."
"Yes", said Tomlinson. "In fact, I was a bit surprised to hear from our spaceport radar operators that a Dominion carrier battle group had arrived in orbit. To be candid, I thought that there was to be an armed overthrow of our—"
Son once again bit off a putrid curse for Murray and the impetuous flag officers that populated the Marines and the Navy.
"No, of course not, Governor. We apologize for arriving unannounced… there was an urgent matter at Chenoweth that demanded our unscheduled entry to your system."
"Commodore!" barked Murray. "You are way out of your—"
Son's facilitator removed the 616 Division's headquarters from the comm circuit.
"There's been reports of fighting at Chenoweth", said Tomlinson leadingly.
"Yes. I'm sure that your advisors have informed you of a thermonuclear detonation in the atmosphere. It was a rebel cruiser that we were forced to engage and destroy", said Son. "Again, we very much apologize for not being able to liaise with your office and give you prior warning. The rapid tempo of military operations has caught up with us."
"I am speaking to you regarding a matter of your personal interest", said the Commodore.
"Yes, and?"
"Actionable intelligence suggests that there is a contingent of highly dangerous, well armed, and very prominent rebels that have fled our counterinsurgency operation and are taking refuge within your city."
"And who might these rebels be?"
"Is this line secure?" asked Son theatrically.
"Of course", replied Tomlinson pompously.
"James Raynor, and Raynor's Raiders."
The conversation skipped a beat as Ives exchanged glances to Castle as to how the civilian administrator might react. Whether Tomlinson was taking some money from the rebels on the side, and needed to be—
The lull became curiously long, though Ives perceived it was not maliceful; rather now, hopeful. He could almost imagine the civilian licking his lips.
"Raynor… in my city?"
"Yes", said Son tersely. "He's escaped our forces and is taking refuge in your city."
"He… must be stopped", said Tomlinson, as if thinking to himself aloud. "If Raynor were to be captured, in Tir Nanog, this would mean…"
"The eternal patronage of Tir Nanog by the Terran Dominion. I'm sure that the Emperor would be forever indebted to you", and almost as an afterthought, "your staff for helping capture Public Enemy Number One in Dominion space. Raynor has long eluded us, but with your help…"
"We could get him", said Tomlinson. "He's in our city—we know this place like the back of our hands. We could get him!"
Ives had no question that Tomlinson was envisioning his promotion to planetary governor or even sector governor under Mengsk's purview. Power was the strongest aphrodisiac to these unstructured, weak minded sycophants that ended up in the middle rungs of civil service. Desperate not to get demoted to the lower rungs, and filled with almost a sexual need to be recognized for their efforts and then to ascend to government positions undeserving of them.
Tomlinson said, "We have to cut all transport right away—air traffic, land traffic, public transport. Lock him down… before he escapes Tir Nanog".
And my grasp and area of responsibility.
Ives knew then that Son had already seduced Tomlinson to eat from his own hand. Now that the governor realized that the capture of Raynor was his free ticket to Korhal and promotion to prelate, he knew with a sure certainty that Tomlinson would be just as desperate as the Special Forces to apprehend Raynor.
"Very good", said Son.
"That's not enough", said Tomlinson, of his own accord. "Admiral, we need your troops to circle Tir Nanog. Shoot down anyone that tries to run. Then send in some of your elite soldiers to search him out. We have 400,000 citizens here. You'll need to deploy your finest technological assets to sniff him out. Tell you what—our constabulary and militia are well respected here on Bountiful. If you send your Marines and they do some searches alongside our own civil defense personnel, it'll get the citizens here accustomed to seeing Dominion troops. Won't cause any problems."
"Thank you", said Son graciously. "We can count on your cooperation, then, Governor?"
"Certainly", said Governor Tomlinson—Ives could almost imagine him as a mangy canine enthusiastically bobbing his head. "Just let us know what you need. We'll use this channel to talk… and now, let me call my head of transportation. Need to kill all inbound and outbound traffic."
The line went dead, and all gazes went to Son.
"Excellent compromise, sir" remarked the Master Chief.
Son shook his head. "Compromise, no. We got everything we wanted. I got him to do everything I would want to—except he's saying it out of his own mouth, not me. We have played to his ego and ambitions. Tomlinson's now in our camp. If General Murray and the Marines had marched into the city to oust him and install martial law, Raynor would've almost certainly gotten away."
"Raynor's ours now."
In the dank of the motel room, a lone feminine figure whispered in the shadows, her voice barely perceptible over the tremor of her own pulse. She nervously pealed back the curtains to admit a tangerine vein of sunlight into the room—only to see the all-too-familiar outline of a Dominion dropship soar in the skies.
"Ariadne here. The asset is here, but Dominion forces are surrounding the city and are here en masse, over."
"Separate Raynor away from his men—keep out of sight from both the Raiders and the Dominion. Once you have him, we will extract your team. Contact us on the modulating bandwidth once the asset has been secured. Golf whiskey."
"It will be done. I authenticate quebec november sierra. Ariadne out."
"Harbinger out."
Notes Added in Proof: This chapter has not been proofread yet, but I will finalize it shortly (I finished its rough draft while on a long plane flight). The relationship with Governor Tomlinson and associated dialogue needs some revision.
Kawika Son's rank of "commodore" may be unfamiliar. The rank of "commodore" has had a variegated usage by the U.S. Navy, but I use it here to replace the rank Rear Admiral (Lower Half). (Doesn't it seem more stylish to call someone "Commodore" rather than "Rear Admiral"?)
The final exchange of words between "Ariadne" and "Harbinger" is a modification on standard U.S. Army calls for fire and fire mission requests; specifically, the final authentication for a fire mission authorization.