Inherited War 1: Retribution (33 page)

Suddenly and without warning something stopped his de
scent back into normal sleep.  Cole found himself back in the same wooded area as before, only now it was night.  He scanned his surroundings, looking for his ancestor, fully believing that he was the only one who could bring him to this place.

A voice sounded from the darkness.  “So this is how he does it.” 
If the devil was a chick this is what she would sound like.  The voice was barely a whisper but it cut into Cole’s soul.  Cole had never heard anything quite like it before.  “Easier than I thought it would be.”  A shape started to take form in the darkness.  Something was walking out of the slowly gathering mists.  She was only about five feet tall at the most but she exuded danger from every pore.  Cole took a quick step back and crouched into a fighting stance.  He had no idea who this was or how she got into his mind.

“Please, I am flattered that you think I could harm you in any way here but my connection to you is far too tenuous.”  She walked further into the small clearing and Cole
finally got a good look at her.  She had pale blue almost white skin with jet black hair.  She was mostly humanoid looking with two arms and legs but her face would give Cole bad dreams for a while.  Her eyes were actually glowing.  They were deep set into her face and glowed like two pinpricks of candle flame and she had no mouth that Cole could see.  Esii.  She had to be an Esii. 

             
Cole stayed crouched in his defensive stance.  “How are you here, no one knows where we are?”

             
“You have attacked my people, ambushed us and then run when outnumbered.  We have other means of looking for you than sending more ships out to be attacked.”  She slowly started to circle Cole, looking him up and down.  “I must say I am disappointed, most of our legends tell of powerful beings that could destroy star systems at will and walked the galaxy like titans.  All I see is a fragile bag of meat waiting to be harvested by my people.”  She let out what Cole could only guess was a laugh.  It grated on his ears worse than fingers on a chalkboard. She stopped and faced him fully.  “I will enjoy it when the last of the Plague’s people are finally dead.”

             
Cole slowly straightened realizing that if she hadn’t attacked yet she probably couldn’t.  He wasn’t about to back down from someone who had invaded his own mind.  In a flash he jumped forward and grabbed the Esii by the throat lifting her up and off the ground.  “You are not welcome here and if I catch you trying to get in my mind again I will do my damndest to destroy you.  Take a message to your people, tell them the last man is coming and I won’t stop until your race is just a memory drifting in space.”  Cole reached back with his left hand and drove it forward with as much power as he could.  His hand shot through empty space.  He hadn’t been balanced properly and stumbled forward a bit before he could catch himself.  He spun in a slow circle looking everywhere for her.  She had vanished like smoke.

             
Again her voice came out of the darkness.  “There is nothing you can do to me here.  Your mind is too weak to affect another’s.  I look forward to you trying though.”  Again the laughter grated down Cole’s spine.  “I will enjoy visiting you as you sleep every night.”

53

             
Haven’t been sleeping well lately.  Hal keeps telling me it’s the stress.  I think that’s bullshit.  When I went through airborne school I fell asleep on the plane just before our first jump.  The guy sitting behind me had to hit me to wake me up.  I have always handled stress well.  It comes from the way I was raised, well, abused.  I can hide emotions and feelings like nobody’s business.  Besides every once in a while I get a flash, a momentary glimpse of me standing in a forest talking to someone.  Other times I will be in that same forest and I will be scared to death at something just out of my line of sight.  Something is screwing with my sleep and that’s one thing I hate most in life.  You can starve me, you can beat me, hell, you can even bore me, but start messing with my sleep and it’s on. 

F
or the last three nights Cole hadn’t slept well.  He had gotten at least eight hours of sleep each night but had woken up feeling like a zombie.  This morning wasn’t any different.  God damn if only he could remember what he was dreaming about every night, maybe he could do something about it.  He rubbed at his eyes vigorously in a vain attempt to wake up. 

H
e needed to be at his best today.  He had held a short meeting yesterday to disseminate the final compiled information from Nixa.  He had tasked the newly promoted Commander Fury and his subordinates with reviewing the data and Cole’s plan for carrying out the attacks.  He had only given them twenty-four hours to get familiar with the Intel.  Cole knew it was a good plan and the only way a group, such as his that was outnumbered so badly but had superior tech, could hope to accomplish their goals.

St
ill he also knew he could be off his game slightly and wanted a few other opinions.  Cole rose out of bed and put his hands over his head and stretched for a few minutes in hopes that the slow exercise would wake him up a little more.  Cole stumbled over to the shower and set it for as cold as he could stand it.  A few minutes later he shivered his way out of the shower and got himself dry and dressed.  A quick shave and some oral care later, he actually felt like a living being again.

He looked at himself in the mirror one more time and decided he wasn’t going to get any more alert looking so it was time to go get some chow and get the meeting started.  He was going to have
to see Sky later and ask her for some kind of sleep aid.  Quietly of course, the men didn’t need to know about his sudden lack of quality z’s.  Cole stepped out of his cabin and found Thalo waiting for him just outside the door.

“One might wonder why someone with a nice stateroom on the base would be sleeping alone in his cramped cabin aboard
ship?  Not me though, because I wouldn’t be so intrusive.”  Thalo turned and started walking with Cole to the docking tube.

“Good, because if someone were to make more of it than me just liking my cabin aboard the
Retribution
better, one might get a little hurt.  Just a little though because one may be too valuable to be sidelined for the coming attack.”  Cole sped up their pace.  “Have you looked over my OPORDER?”

“Yes, yes I would have done it the same way
myself, which goes to show you that great minds think alike.  Apart from one suggestion, which I will keep to myself for the time being, just to see if anyone else brings it up.  I give it two thumbs up.”  He did just that raising his twin digits.  “It will be tight pulling that squadron off the
Reckoning
but you are right we are going to need the coverage.”

“I hope Fury doesn’t take it to
o hard, but he has loads more firepower than we do and can live without White Squadron for the first few attacks.  Now shut up about my sleeping arrangements and maybe, just maybe, I will have something special for you to do in all of this.” 

They had been steadily approaching the chow hall while they discussed Cole’s plan.  Cole always took chow with everyone else though he often lost his appetite when he saw what some of the crew called food.  Today was going to be a bad one because the smell coming out of the chow hall already had Cole’s stomach trying to relieve itself of last night’s dinner.

“Gah, on second thought, I am going to go get some food in the briefing room and eat alone.”  Cole said as his stomach roiled again.

“Mmmm, are you sure, it smells like someone ordered fr
ied tosha for breakfast.  Nothing smells quite so delectable anywhere in the galaxy.”  Thalo held his head up and took a deep breath through his nose.  “Perfectly cooked by its smell.”

“It’s all yours buddy
, just make sure whoever eats it brushes their teeth before the briefing or they get booted.”  Cole turned and started up the hallway heading to the briefing room before Thalo could respond.  The short walk through the empty hallway went a long way to calming his stomach down.  By the time he got to the room his appetite was on its way back.  Cole ordered a light breakfast and settled into his chair to eat and wait.  He had a little over an hour before the appointed time for the briefing, so he ate slowly and thought over his plan.

He had picked apart every piece of his plan for a whole day, knowing that if
he didn’t decide on something fast he may never get it out of the planning stages.  Still, he thought it was a good plan and stood the best chance of getting them the Intel they needed to attack the Esii super ship.  “Hey Hal, you there?”  Cole asked the empty room.

“You want to see it again don’t you?” 
Came Hal’s response as his holo avatar appeared above the display in the middle of the table.

“Yeah
, very much so.”  Cole almost whispered.

“
Cole, you only hurt yourself when you do this you know.”  Hals voice seemed unusually serious.

“Just
do it please, after today it might be the last time I get the chance, ever.”  Cole shoved his plate away and leaned back in his chair.  Hal’s image disappeared and was replaced by a beautiful blue, green, brown and white planet.  Earth, as it was shortly before the Esii destroyed it.  By God it was beautiful and it was gone.  Cole had Hal show him this image a few times over the last few days.  Hal thought Cole was pining away for what was lost but Cole was too smart to get caught up in melancholia over a lost home.  He was using the image to focus his mind.  As the Earth rotated slowly in front of him Cole slowly got angry.

The Esii, the focus of his upcoming attacks
, were about to pay for what they had done to his home and his people.  Finally he told Hal to let the footage run and watched for the thousandth time as the Esii used their vile ship to destroy Cole’s home.  He watched as the neatly quartered sections of his world split apart and began to float away from each other.  He watched as the molten center of the Earth rapidly cooled in the frozen void of space.  He watched nearly seven billion people die.  All because some fucking space gangster wanted his hands on some new toys.

Cole slammed his hands onto the table.  “Turn it off please Hal.”  Cole got his anger under control and focused his mind on the upcoming attack.  The now destroyed Earth disappeared and Hal’s avatar reappeared.  Cole paid him no mind and focused his crystal clear thoughts one last time on the OPORDER he had prepared yesterday.  He went over every aspect of it and found it made as much sense today as it had yesterday.  He relaxed and let go of his concentration.  He took a few deep calming breaths before returning his attention to Hal.

“Your people agree to what we discussed?”  Cole asked
, not bothering to explain what he meant since Hal knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Was there any doubt?  Of course they agreed.  In fact there were so many volunteers we had to hold a lottery to decide who got to do it.”  Cole knew Hal had to be a little disappointed not to be included but he was stuck on the
Retribution
for a while.

“Good, remember keep it secret and let no one know.  Now about my plan
, have you gone over it?”  Cole rapidly changed the subject.

“Again
, as I tried to explain to you, I know very little about military strategy and tactics.”  He paused for a moment.

“But you’re going to tell me what you think anyway
,” Cole supplied for him.

“A
s far as I can see, it’s a sound plan.  If you’re looking for an endorsement then I officially endorse your plan of attack Cole.”  Hal said officiously.

“Good
, let’s hope everyone else does too.”

Over the next hour Cole’s chain of command filed into the briefing room.  When the appointed time came and everyone was there, Cole started the briefing.  They spent the next eight hours pouring over his plan, making suggestions and providing any insight that was deemed valuable.  In the end his plan was relatively unchanged.  Cole had been steadfast in overruling any changes that he deemed unnecessary or he thought may compromise the mission.

“Well
, I think we have it as good as it’s going to get.”  Cole said as he stood up to stretch.  “Lights please.”  Hal, obediently and without comment, dimmed the lights.  “Bring up the map Hal.”  The holo display in the center of the table began to glow a split second before the galaxy appeared.  Cole was always astounded when he saw a holo display but he really loved it when it showed the Milky Way.

“In two days we leave from here.”  He indicated a small red dot that marked the location of Home.  “We separate and follow these two flight plans.”  A
s he spoke two trails appeared in the stars.  One red, one green.  “The
Retribution
will follow the red path and the
Reckoning
will follow the green.  We will each have ten objectives to attack.”  As the glowing trail crossed over the objectives it flashed momentarily then added a round green or red ball to mark the spot in space where a ship would attack.

“We will leap frog through the objectives so both ships will not be in combat at the same time.  The objectives and times were selected so as to give the least amount of distance between our ships.  The ships should never be more than a twenty minute jump apart and since we have just installed P to P (point to point) comm systems in the ships we can talk in real time.  The code word for a failed attack and need assistance will be Broken Arrow.  Either ship will stop what it is currently doing and instantly jump to the other ship
’s aid.”  After the trails had been laid out and all ten targets marked in either red or green a new set of marks started to pop into existence.  They were colored blue. 

“The blue dots indicate w
here the drone supply ships will be on station.  I am sending enough out to handle total refit of ammunition and drone fighters.  Also food and water.”  After the supply points were marked the two trails converged into one.  “At this point the remaining targets become too fortified for us to be separated any longer.  The
Retribution
will shift its priority from attack to control.  I will bring her in before the attack to mark targets and determine strength.”  The single trail continued on its meandering course throughout the galaxy highlighting five more objectives before disappearing.

“At this point if we haven’t achieved our primary goal of locating the Esii super ship, we will switch to plan B.”  Cole smiled.  “Which is to be determined.”  Cole placed his hands on the table and leaned forward to grab everyone’s attention.

“Look if we don’t get
what we need then we fall back here and come up with something new.  If we do get what we need, we continue to follow the plan and eliminate as many of their ships as we can, so when we do attack the super ship we have better odds of destroying it.”  Cole stood up and looked around the room.  He looked each of them in the eye, one by one.  “Now take the plan and brief your people, we leave in forty eight hours and the
Reckoning
has the honor of first attack.  So get your crews briefed and ready to fight.  I have faith that we can complete these objectives with minimal to zero loss of life.  I have faith in all of you to execute your pieces of the plan effectively and with your full effort.  Over the last weeks I have come to know most, if not all of you and your men who have volunteered to join me on this crusade.  It has been an honor and a privilege.  Now get to work.”

With that
, the first phase of the war was set and in motion.  Everyone stood up and slowly filed out of the room, automatically congregating in groups that had oversight on the mission.  Cole felt a sense of excitement and anticipation charging the air, it was infectious and made him forget about being bone weary tired from lack of good sleep.

“As much as you want everyone to live through this mission
Cole, the odds are likely that some will pay the ultimate price.”  Hal started to speak seconds before his avatar appeared on the table.  “I don’t want to be a downer but I don’t want you to go into this with certain expectations.”

“You don’t think I don’t know that Hal?  I was supposed to be going to Afghanistan on a peace keeping mission that was low risk and look what happened to me.  I know not everyone will be coming back from this mission but
a part of leading, I am finding out, is instilling self confidence in others and confidence in their leadership.”  Cole thought for a moment before continuing.  “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”  Cole paused again.  “A great American general said that and I believe it whole heartedly.”