SODIUM:5 Assault (6 page)

The Kurtz were to assemble a science team with the mission of accompanying Human scientists on their exploration attempts of uninhabited worlds. If a world was discovered that would support the Kurtz people they would be allowed to have a small exploratory colony. Further habitation from there would be discussed by the councilmen of the COG.

The first selected system was anchored by the star Adebaran. Two planets had been detected in the "Habitable" zone. The journey from Toleda would take 28 days, but the populous was again ingratiated to the HE and to the sense of pride they were developing from being a member.

I offered my friend and bodyguard Hershen the opportunity to go with the explorers knowing that it had been a dream of his since coming of age in the Kurtz world. He was not interested in leaving the side of the being that had given him so much. The things he had learned and the responsibilities he had been given had far surpassed his childhood dreams. I was relieved that he had decided to stay as I had grown fond of having him around.

The exploration ship, the Columbus, left Toleda with much fanfare. The journey would take less than a month, but the expedition would last more than two years. The Columbus was an immense vessel, nearly the size of one of our battleships. If planets in the system were anywhere near habitable the ships gravity beam could be used to push the planets until they reached an optimum orbit.

From that new orbit, millions of terraforming robots would be released and the planet would be left for a period of five years. If all went well the first colonists would be dispatched immediately after.

With our new defenses, new fleets and new colonies forming up nicely, Earth appeared to be hitting its stride. We had come so far in such a short time, from being on the brink of annihilation, to establishing an empire among the stars. But again, I was uneasy about how well everything was going. It was a nervousness that had plagued me many times before, a nervousness that came in the past with good reason. I expected the bad news to break any day.

The bad news came on an Earth Wednesday. Unusual gravity fluctuations had been detected on Toleda. At first they were nothing more than a thing of interest. A gravity bubble 50 kilometers in diameter had been detected that seemed to be circling the Kurtz globe. For a little over an hour the gravity would lessen by nearly a tenth of a G before slowly returning to normal.

After several weeks of the phenomena the Kurtz scientists had given the all clear as to its harm to life or property. They were stumped as to what the cause was. The people had quickly come to enjoy the short time period of each day where they could jump higher and throw things farther. There were daily celebrations of sorts as the gravity bubble passed through the capital city of Gurthead. But gravitational changes do not happen without a reason.

I had a team of physicists flown out from Earth to work with the Kurtz on discovering its cause. After three weeks of observation my team returned with a report. The gravity well was originating on or near the planet Eldred and it was slowly growing in intensity.

I dispatched the battleship New York to reside in the beam with the hope that it could somehow counter its affect. For two weeks the New York ran test after test with no success. Then, with a sudden burst, the gravity beam amplified.

On the ground of Toleda trees were uprooted and dirt and rock flew into the air. The beam crossed over a large body of water and the contents of a much used reservoir were sucked up into the air and out into space. Evacuations were quickly ordered for the capital city, but the word was slow to get out to the general population.

I watched in horror as the gravity bubble approached and then began to rip a wide swath through Gurthead. Buildings were ripped from their foundations and drawn up through the atmosphere and into space. On the first pass Gurthead lost nearly half its citizens with Rial Mabia being among them. Whole towns were ripped from the ground and disintegrated as they rose upwards with the other debris. The New York soon reported having to dodge a column of such debris exiting the atmosphere on its way towards Eldred.

The Frekkin had unleashed a powerful and devastating weapon on the Kurtz from an extreme distance, a weapon for which we again had no counter. Estimates were soon coming in that the planet as a whole would be uninhabitable within months as the atmosphere was slowly sucked away.

I immediately dispatched a destroyer to Eldred to gather information. I followed up the next day sending a cruiser and then the day after with the entire second fleet. The Kurtz screamed for us to do something as their world was being ripped apart. We had little to offer.

When the destroyer arrived at Eldred it immediately went silent before it could relay any useful data. It was the Shanghai and captain Dang, he and his crew had served us well in the Kurtz invasion, they had become nothing more than molecules of debris floating in space near an alien world.

The long wave sensors on the cruiser were soon put into service and the result was detection of a fluid state of movement in an area more than five million kilometers across. Whatever it was that we had detected was at too great a distance for the cruisers optical scanners to make out, but it was of extreme power.

Before any definitive data returned from the cruiser, it too went silent. Another crew had perished without us knowing why. I next ordered the second fleet to immediately halt. It came to a stop more than three light years away from Eldred.

Even though we considered Drillers to be old technology each of our battleships had a contingent of 50,000 of them aboard. Two Drillers were refitted, one with sensors and QE communications and the other as a tow. They were launched in the direction of the fluid anomaly. When they reached two light years distance the lead Driller would detach and continue towards the target, thus allowing the sensors and QE comm to drift in silently. We reasoned that with its small size and inactive BHD it might go undetected.

Back on Earth four of our fleets and all available space transports were ordered to Toleda to evacuate their population. It was a massive undertaking with more than nine billion citizens in need of rescue. The new facilities being built on Alvin would only accommodate about two billion of the refugees. Many of the rest would be offered refuge on Earth where makeshift housing was already passing the planning stage.

We moved as many of the Kurtz citizens as possible making trip after trip and coming into Earth's ports loaded with hungry and terrified citizens. The heavy gravity of Earth was also extremely uncomfortable to our guests, but we had nowhere else to hold them. The housing on Alvin could be doubled within a month, but the biggest problem was with getting the billions of refugees from Toleda to there.

Each fleet could carry 40 million Kurtz crammed into every nook and cranny. Each journey to Alvin took eight days round trip. With only five of our fleets participating, the numbers game was not looking good; it would take more than six months to fully evacuate their population. Our best estimates were that we only had three months before the remaining air on Toleda was too thin to breathe.

I paced the upper deck of the bridge of the Atlanta as I waited for the first reports from our Driller sensor to arrive. I was stunned with what we learned when it did. The fluid anomaly that was first reported had been identified as a large black hole with a containment field keeping it in check. On one side of the gravity field was a massive vessel that was making use of gravitational lenses to focus the pull of the black hole into a beam.

The beam was aimed in Toleda's direction and estimates were that it had taken nearly a month from the time it was activated before the full strength beam arrived. I ordered our science team and our Battle Planners to come up with a solution, a solution that would stop the nightmare of a weapon or at a minimum slow it down. We needed time to evacuate the planet.

Our first attempt at stopping the gravity beam was to launch 1,000 Drillers into the beam with programming for them to exit the beam at the last minute and attack the lensing structure. The Drillers were soon launched and their 18 hour journey began. Again we waited patiently for the results to come in.

When the lead Driller reached its target location it turned on its BHD and attempted to attack, but the pull of the gravity beam was too strong, keeping the Driller captive. The first Driller, followed soon after by the others, proceeded past the lensing structure and soon disappeared into the black hole beyond. The strategy had failed.

The cruiser’s captain next ordered another 100 Drillers launched. The programming would command them to stop and exit the beam starting at two light years distance and then at every 10 billion kilometers after, each one was to return to the ship when it exited the beam. We watched patiently as each Driller popped out and turned back towards the cruiser.

The experiment was repeated, drawing ever closer to its target. The last Driller exited the beam at 300 billion kilometers from the lensing structure before the next was pulled into oblivion. I turned to my planners and asked what they had to try next to which I received blank stares... they had nothing.

I pounded my fist on the arm of my captain's chair repeatedly in frustration before looking up at the silent crew looking back at me. I then waved my hand and grunted in a gesture for them to get back to work. An alternative plan soon came in.

The captain and crew of the destroyer Buffalo had volunteered to ride the beam to the 300 billion kilometer mark. They would then exit and repeatedly fire Protactinium pellets down the side of the beam towards the lensing structure. It would take the pellets another two hours to reach their target. The potential for a strike was low, but the order was given.

Soon after, the Buffalo entered the beam and raced towards its firing point. At 300 billion kilometers it exited the beam and began launching one pellet after another. But the Frekkin were ready and a second lensing structure was brought online and aimed at the destroyer. The Buffalo put all available power into its BHD system, but could not break free. I watched in horror as another of my crew soon went silent, sucked into the black oblivion in the center of the alien containment structure.

As a last hope we watched as the pellets screamed towards their destination only to be drawn into the beam by its residual gravity as they went. Another strategy had failed, only it had cost the valuable lives of a destroyer's crew.

I again pounded my fist in rage and demanded that my Planners come up with something. I followed my rant with a statement so that they knew my anger was not directed at them. I then again pressed for a solution, attempting to convey a sense of urgency instead of anger.

The next plan involved more personnel. I was hesitant until I learned that volunteers for the mission far outnumbered our needs. The mission called for a squad of BGS Marines and a transport.

The transport would run down the beam and exit at the last possible moment. It would then ride a safe distance outward from the beam before turning back towards the structure. At that point the squad of BGS Marines would be dropped as drifters and the transport would move off in an attempt to be a decoy. If all worked as planned the Marines would drift towards the structure over a 36 hour period with their active skins on maximum.

I gave the go-ahead and within half an hour the Marines were on their way. Soon after, they were adrift. The transport lowered its shields and repeatedly turned and broadcast every signal it could. I wondered if the aliens would see it as a blatant attempt at a decoy. I wondered if we would next see a sweeping gravity beam that would annihilate our BGS squad.

As the hours passed the squad commander continued to broadcast his sensor data over his QE comm. We soon had a good optical image of the lensing structure as well as the containment structure for the black hole. Data revealed that the event horizon of the black hole itself was only meters in diameter, but the pull it exerted was immense.

Soon after it went on its look-at-me rampage, the transport was snuffed from existence. I was troubled by the fact that the structure was able to focus two gravity wells. It would make it a difficult business to get any of our ships in close. We were heavily reliant on our BGS Marine strategy to bring the destruction of the gravity beam to an end.

As the team drifted ever closer we began to get reports in, there were riots on Toleda. A low level politician had enlisted the help of his fellow citizens and quickly overpowered the crew of one of the destroyers that was loading the Kurtz aboard. The politician had been screaming for the Kurtz to take control as all of it was being brought down upon them for so easily abandoning the Frekkin Empire.

It was the first time I had seen a Kurtz go outside of their normal hierarchical followings. I supposed that even with the thousands of years of rebellious activities having been suppressed, they were still somewhere inside every sentient being. I could see his argument carried weight with his people given the current circumstances and for whatever reason I felt empathy.

After several hours of negotiations he was talked down and the transporting of refugees continued. On Earth as well as on Alvin animosity towards the Humans was growing as families, friends and neighbors were ripped from their homes and placed into an environment that did not appear to have the means to support their population. The whole operation was quickly turning into a struggle to maintain order.

All eyes were soon turned back to the squad of BGS Marines as they drifted silently towards the alien structure. The hours seemed to pass slowly as the anticipation built. Twelve of the 13 squad members were aligned with the structure, but the thirteenth would have to fire their BHD glove at the last moment or risk drifting past the target.

Marine Gunnery Sergeant Valerie Hiers held her position until the rest of her squad had drifted aboard. In an instant she powered up the glove and aimed towards the nearest structure wall. Seconds later she was converted to space dust with a sweep from the structure's local defenses.

The remaining dozen Marines were aboard and were soon pairing off in an attempt to cover more ground. Each pair was given instruction to find and destroy anything that appeared to be a power or control system. I focused on the squad commander Captain Geofrey Rollins and his teammate Lance Corporal Tina Withers. I had met Geof at a military event a year earlier, so I took a personal interest in his team.

Inside the structure were vast air corridors lined with platforms and elevators. I soon got my first live view of a Waffen as it soared from one platform across the corridor expanse to another. It was a beautiful being with brown and white fur covering most of its body. It made a graceful landing on its target platform and began work immediately on several electronic components that lined the platform's inner wall.

I watched on the video feed from Captain Rollins' helmet as he settled on the platform behind it and blasted it with his gravity pulse gun. The Waffen slammed into the wall and slumped to the ground. I felt a sudden urge to want to join in and start blasting, but I was watching from 221 light years away.

The Marine teams settled on different platforms throughout the air corridor and then quickly made their way to the inner hallways behind. Rollins and Withers were soon engaged in firefights. In my time fighting in a BGS I had elected to generally keep my shields at maximum allowing me to drift and fire, but the Marines preferred the old fashioned way of boots-on-the-ground.

Several more Waffen met their end in succession as the Marines made their way down a hall. The Waffen soon emerged in numbers, flooding the hall with fire from their energy bolt weapons. Another Marine team then laid down suppressing fire giving Rollins and Withers time to duck into the nearest room. It was soon evident that they were pinned down at their current location. The active skins were enabled and they drifted through a wall to the next room as the Waffen defenders tossed several energy grenades into their prior location. As they popped back out of warped space, the grenades detonated, heavily denting the wall behind them.