Traitor

“Let me discuss your plan for tomorrow. I’ve talked about it with the Una, and from what we understand of your plan tomorrow, it’s a good plan in concept. However, there are some very slight changes that we would like to suggest from our long experience. I’m going to talk to you from my room so that you will be able to see me,” Winston said as Jason sat in his room thinking.

A picture began to form of a very luxurious but disorganized study with bookshelves with ancient books along the walls and Winston looking every inch the professor lecturing his student. Winston was dressed in a brown tweed suit with a vest and a silk scarf. He had a pipe in his mouth and blew smoke circles when he paused. Jason was pleased to see the person with whom he was speaking but found the image hilarious. Winston smiled and then continued:

“There’s only one significant change that I’d suggest and I’d emphasize that this won’t make a big difference.

It’s our understanding that you want to disable the ships without damaging them severely. That’s most effectively accomplished using the mines. You are also benefited by weak shields and significant attrition of their fighters.

Arm your missiles on the asteroids thirty-seconds ahead of the time that you had previously planned, arm then delay ten seconds then fire. What will happen at that stage is that they will become alert and automatically order long-range anti-missile missiles as well as prepare for the firing of long-range weapons. They will have some distance to travel as you are arming the missiles a significant distance away. The long-range weapons are consuming their power resources to develop the charge. Their computer system is at its most vulnerable for the insertion of your viruses, as there will be frantic demands on the system.

While you were incommunicado, Cherry Singh has managed to send through a single small probe to achieve this objective. They very much like your portfolio of nasties and decided that the risk was worth it using their smallest single-purpose probe.

“Short-range weapons systems can’t be concurrently armed, due to the power drain, and the shield is weak due to the power diversion to long-distance weapons. This is the ideal opportunity for your mines; bring them in close, very close. Do not fire them until the fighters leave the ship. Concurrently fire both sets of mines: the anti-ship, and the anti-fighter ones. You will have a good chance of disabling the ship with your primary mines. Bring up your next mines into the same positions. They should be in place before the enemy can get the point defenses operational and I have serious doubts that they will know what to shoot at. If necessary, you will have a second shot both at the ship and at any residual fighters.

“Their counter missiles will still be a long way from our missiles. You can then evaluate if you use the second wave of mines, or if you let the missiles proceed. Depending on the results you can decide when it’s an appropriate time for the shuttles to race around the asteroids to intercept and board the cruisers.

“I’d align some mines to target the marine staging areas on their ships as you are going to be able to take out a large amount of your opposition shortly after the first mines explode. They will be racing to put on armor and prepare themselves to repel boarding. They will be sitting ducks preparing in their staging areas when the second set of mines go off.”

Jason thought that these were brilliant suggestions and praised Winston before telling Patton, to set it up exactly as Winston had suggested. He also transferred the information to Malone and Harris, so that they could decide if this changed the boarding strategy.

Jason could easily see that targeting the Marine staging area could also facilitate entry through the part of the ship damaged by the mine, but how that occurred remained the decision of the colonels. He and Winston could simply suggest, they knew their people and resources and could best decide on their deployment.

Jason sat in his wardroom watching the evolution of the attack. He could see, on his smaller version of the hologram, the mines moving into their proposed positions. The asteroids with their missile loads were in motion being gently accelerated while progressing to their destination.

Dinner was at eight, that evening. The Empire tended to eat late and Jason had acclimated to this routine. He also knew that they had a lot of work to prepare for boarding. He could see that they all were fairly tense and thinking about their meetings and possibly having some anxieties about the next day. He suggested that they not talk business over dinner, but have a brief debrief and discussion after dinner in the conference room.

They had a smoked salmon starter with a Margaret River Chardonnay, followed by beef Stroganoff and a Shiraz Cabernet. The desert was a banana soufflé with white and dark chocolate served with cheese, biscuits, and a desert wine. The meal was greatly appreciated and everyone ate with gusto.

“Jason, both Janet and I are delighted that we are both pregnant. After we left you we contributed some sperm to the medical facility. Congratulations on being a father! We don’t know how many, but I’m sure that it’s going to be more than just the two of us,” Phoebe said as she sat there grinning broadly.

Jason was in shock.

“Well done, Phoebe and Janet,” he said enthusiastically as he adjusted to the surprise. He moved over to kiss them both and those in the canteen who saw him hooted and cheered.

Jason was kidded during the meal about being a father to so many despite his young age.

“How many are we talking about?” Jason asked increasingly worried.

“Jason,” Phoebe started patiently, “we explained to you the rarity of fertile men in the Empire. We have shared your sperm around. The pod ensured we are pregnant. You will be a father to many, how many we don’t know as not all the sperm has been distributed, though we have some concerns about how primitive these children may be. On your planet people were not a long way away from monkeys and we are concerned whether the children would have arms that would hang down below the knees,” Phoebe said with straight face and then broke into giggles.

“Those of us who go into combat can reduce fetal risk by teleporting the fetus into a nurturing environment in the medical center. Medical does return the baby to the mother when it’s safe to do so, but it can only be returned within days or the uterus shrinks. Mostly we leave it to medical to look after the baby until it’s born. That side of things we can do very well. The medics can raise a baby to term from conception through the whole of pregnancy. In most cases like the current situation, where we have one battle after another it’s safer for all of us that the baby remains in medical. We can visit whenever we wish and watch it grow.

“It’s the same technology that we use in the production of clones. In clones, however we continue the rapid growth using artificial methods and grow a clone to adulthood within two years. As it gets close to maturity, education can begin and we can even program the clone to undertake diverse tasks,” said Janet.

“I’m really upset that you’ve discovered my true nature and as that’s the case I’ll simply no longer pretend to be part of the civilized Empire, I’m undone!” Jason answered, smiling as he got up from the table while behaving like a demented chimpanzee for a bit then beat his chest like a gorilla and make sure to hang his hands below his knees and scratch himself. This went a long way to relieving the tension of the room before they retired to the conference room.

The next morning, Jason asked Patton to create a simulation of how the sequence of action would play out, and how the cruisers would be likely to react.

Patton then showed the movement of mines and confirmed that everything would be in place and ready for action by eleven.

Jason suggested that they keep the cruiser back and hidden with the destroyer and the frigates. He was beginning to have an uneasy feeling. They had still not found the priests on the ship despite extensive searches. That meant that they could still try and attack the Ship’s AI and sabotage the ship. The priests could have found a way to communicate with the enemy.

Jason’s intuition nagged him that something was not right.

“There’s something that worries me about this operation and I don’t know what it is. There’s something at the back of my mind that’s saying all is not right. I don’t know whether it applies to tomorrow or to the next phase with the clones. I’ve always had premonitions that came to fruition. Mostly they were small issues on Earth, but I learned to trust them, but I had a premonition of the pirate attack, the night before. We must be very careful tomorrow. We’ll have an unexpected surprise is my guess, but I have at present no more detail.

“However, worrying isn’t going to change things. I’m going to keep to my routine. I’m going to go to bed and then to the gym as usual at the same time tomorrow morning. I really need to have a good workout after sleeping for so long in the medical pod. I’ll see you tomorrow, perhaps in the gym or at breakfast. Good night, all,” Jason said as he waved and made his way with his marines to his wardroom.

He ran with the dogs and then went to the Marine Gym. The gym, that morning was a hive of activity. Behind the kidding around and locker room humor Jason saw a determined group of people getting themselves ready for action.

Jason joined Lucia Pablo for her session. They began with forms and he went through them with the rest of the group. Lucia had somehow heard that he was ready to spar. With a smile, she suggested that Jason might get ready and she would assess his skills. Jason knew that he did have one significant advantage in that he had come from a bigger planet with a stronger gravity than Cassiopeia and he was stronger than Lucia might realize. He had deliberately not pushed his heaviest weights to get her to underestimate him. The less she knew the better. He guessed that the Marine AI had told her Jason was ready for action.

This was a test and he wanted to acquit himself well. He knew that it was not essential that he win, but it was essential that he produced his best effort. Jason had also deliberately gone through his forms at half speed to create the impression that he was on the slow side. Jason did love playing the game and he knew the people of the Empire enjoyed their jokes.

He told Lucia Pablo that he didn’t know the proper rules and requested a brief explanation.

“One of the group will act as a judge. I know you’ve observed before but I’ve not explained the rules to you. All throws are permissible except for those where you can inflict serious injury. There’s no way to stop those throws part way so you can’t use them. We do practice the throws very carefully but don’t use them in sparring. Light contact to show that you’ve struck a blow is permissible. The judge will determine if your strike would inflict an injury and score appropriately, or if it’s is likely to be a deathblow and again score appropriately. For an injury, you score two points and for a deathblow you score five points. A bout ends when you’ve scored fifteen points. A throw scores two points. Immobilizing your opponent, scores two points. Immobilizing your opponent in a position where you can kill them scores five points. I think that covers everything.

“This isn’t a formal contest, but it’s an assessment of your abilities. We won’t go to fifteen points. I’ll terminate the session when I’ve completed my assessment of your skills.

The rules were reasonable and rational. Most people in the gym stopped what they were doing and gathered around.

She asked if he was ready and when he acknowledged that he was, they both moved into position. He decided to wait for her to attack. She moved in rapidly and he watched her warily circling to his left. He thought she was feinting a kick at his head moved in and tapped above her right shoulder of her dominant arm, the supra clavicular nerve; to paralyze her arm, and when she winced, moved in, grabbed her by her now limp right arm and threw her over his shoulder and as she landed stopped his palm a half inch from her nose. He helped her up while she rubbed her arm laughing.

The next thing he knew was that he was up in the air, and then on his back breaking his fall with her on top of him. The Marines cheered and hooted. He struggled to move and then she kissed him. He was so shocked that he unconsciously relaxed and before he knew it he was in a stranglehold. He tapped the mat to concede. She helped him up.

They circled each other warily before he found himself flying again without seeing her attack and found the side of her hand, held rigidly next to his throat. He had seen her strike towards his throat, but it was so quick that his attempted block was far too slow and he missed her entirely. She kissed him again and helped him up while the Marines cheered and hooted again. He learned later that he was the first person that had ever managed to land a strike on her and throw her. She had come from an ultra-heavy gravity planet, and despite her size was inordinately strong and exceptionally quick.

They had a light breakfast in Jason’s canteen before the senior people joined Jason on the bridge.

“Jason I’ve bad news about Captain Kirsten Jones, and I can tell you that it’s more than a feeling. She has been activated as a sleeper assassin, she’s thinking about you and planning how she will kill you,” said Winston telepathically. “Her history was false. You are in potential danger from her. Her intention is to assassinate you on her return from the takeover of the cruisers. My suggestion is that you alert Colonel Janet Malone to this. Let her know what I’ve told you. Say to her that following the battle we need to prepare a little surprise for Jones. Tell Malone that Jones’ malign intentions will be obvious from her behavior on her return.”

Jason approached Janet and asked to talk to her outside the bridge after the boarding shuttles and fighters left the ship. The fighters had all returned for refueling and rearming. Most had already left for their positions but some were still waiting for the boarding shuttles to provide escort. A number of electronic countermeasure ships had also left as well as communications drones to block communications with the clones as well as to block any potential for a message to return to Papa Zora and his cohorts. The shuttles left to position themselves and Jason took Malone aside and told her what he knew. He could see he had upset her profoundly. He knew that she and Jones went back a long way.

They clustered around the hologram and could see the placement of all their ships as green with the enemy ships as red. Jason suddenly shouted to Stan. “We are going to be under attack I can sense two cruisers heading for this position. I estimate that they will be here in ten minutes. Leave multiple mines in this area; target them at the cruisers. Jump in nine minutes to this position!”

He indicated a place near the original cruisers that would be imminently under attack from the asteroids and mines. It meant two jumps to get to the position that he wanted.

“Just to confirm: there are an additional two cruisers heading for our position. They will get here in nine minutes. We’ll mine where we are now, initiate our original attack as planned, and make our way around the asteroid belt to finish off the first two cruisers. We don’t want to fight all four at the same time.

“Proceed with the current strategy. It’s going to be essential that we knockout the original two cruisers and frigates as soon as possible. Get our other ships to rendezvous with us in the new position. We’ll fire missiles at the original cruisers if they’re not rapidly disabled. Now let’s look at the situation,” said Jason urgently.

Missiles and mines were in yellow. Jason could see the mines located close to the ships and the missiles on their asteroids close enough to the enemy ships to give them minimal time to consider their defense. Patton armed the missiles and they began flashing yellow, then after a pause the first set of mines exploded. Jason could see the ships shutting down before the mines exploded, which he expected was in all likelihood due to the insertion of the viruses. The combined cyber and mine attack knocked out the ships.

Further mines were aligning themselves into position and would soon be able to deliver another knockout blow if necessary. The computers had independent backup power but that was also targeted by his viruses. He knew the enemy would be frantically attempting to reboot their computers and restore from backup but this still took time even on the most sophisticated of ships. He watched the shuttles approaching and prior to their arrival a second set of mines detonated along the hull adjacent the Marine areas. He saw partial power come on in one cruiser but fail very soon after but by that time two boarding shuttles were already busy on each cruiser and on two of the more intact frigates boring their way inwards. The battle was over in minutes. Many of the Marines on both ships had been killed by the surgical mine strikes and the remainder of the Navy personnel gave up quickly. Unfortunately, there was few bridge staff left to interrogate. They managed to find a few senior Priests hidden on one cruiser as the ship’s crew handed them over with clearly apparent pleasure.

Then Stan jumped the Battleship and in short order jumped again and seconds later their cruiser, destroyer, and four frigates joined them.

A few minutes later the second set of cruisers arrived close to their previous position as Jason had predicted. He knew that they would be scanning the area and would assume that their associates would be on the other side of the planet. The cruisers then switched off their shields to scan more deeply. They were where he predicted they would arrive. As a result, they were already in an area surrounded by mines which then moved slowly towards the ships. He knew that they would be attempting to communicate with the other cruiser and its escorts without success.

“Patton, can we target their ships with our missiles from where we are?” Jason asked. They both rapidly fired up their engines to attempt to move and jump.

“Yes, we can, Jason, missiles are armed and ready!”

“Fire and immediately reload in case they have enough time to jump here. Then estimate time to impact.”

Before Patton could respond both cruisers jumped. The scanners briefly went blank and then he found them doing the same maneuver and following the same path that Jason had used to get to his position. They jumped a second time before the scanners picked them up close to the captured cruiser.

“Fire and reload and fleet fire all weapons at the cruiser that I designate one. Continue firing on cruiser one. Mines will be prolific around cruiser two”.

“Jason, I launched the first missiles but I stopped them. They are retargeted as was originally specified. The second set of missiles are away and long-range cannon is targeting ship one. Both have launched missiles towards us. We don’t have time to jump. Anti-missile systems are active.”

Jason could see twenty missiles heading their way. He could also see mines moving towards both ships. Their slow pace was agonizing

“Malone, do you think our boarding shuttles could attempt to board the cruisers? Harris, launch all fighters with anti-ship load and prepare for incoming fighters.”

As predicted the cruisers launched ten fighters each. The second cruiser lost six of its fighters immediately. Explosions began along its hull.

Jason could see the incoming missiles reducing in numbers but not quickly enough. They were slowly beginning to transition trans dimensionally and were moving enormously quickly.

Ship called out, “Impending strike two missiles.”

Jason saw one of the two missiles taken out at the last instant but felt the impact of the second missile.

Jason could also see their missiles strike the first cruiser. He could hear alarms blaring on his implant, warning of bulkhead doors shutting.

Jason could see on the hologram, both enemy cruisers were out of commission.

“Cease fire on both cruisers.”

“Jason I’ll now redirect boarding shuttles to the cruisers,” said Malone.

Jason could see an active dogfight going on between their fighters and the enemy fighters. The odds were overwhelmingly in their favor. The enemy fighters were aware that their ships were out of commission and they had nowhere to go and very soon surrendered.

“Jason our cyber group picked up a local broadcast attempt within the ship and that enabled us to track a priest group. Our marine intelligence people found an obscuring hologram hidden door in a bulkhead that led to a hidden area of the ship. We found several IT specialists, crew poisoners, and a few intelligence operatives, amongst whom were saboteurs. They were twenty-five in number and were dispersed over thirty rooms with their own supplies and were well sequestrated from the rest of the crew and the ship.

“The internal security system does not identify them and they appeared entirely opaque to the ship. We believe that there’s at least one other similar area hidden on the ship. The interrogation of the group is proceeding rapidly. Three of the most senior of the group have killed themselves. Our Intelligence considers that there’s a reasonable probability they will find the other areas quite quickly as they had found a way of targeting the electronics on the priests’ identification implants that allows them to be identified and located,” said Janet.

That delighted Jason but he was still very concerned about the imminent return of Jones. They adjourned to the conference room for some snacks and drinks. Jason excused himself for a few minutes, and then returned after Jones’ ship docked. Ship tracked Jones moving through the ship, confirmed that she had retained her armor, and was moving towards the bridge. The sentries recognized her, confirmed her armor electronic signature, and permitted her passage. She triumphantly entered the bridge. She began unbuckling her holster on her hip and as she took out her weapon Malone shot her through the head at the same time as Jason shot her in her temple from the door at the other end of the bridge.

Marines immediately stepped in and removed the body. Malone looked as calm as a cucumber but Jason felt more shocked then he expected.

“This is undoubtedly not the safe and secure, happy Empire Stan led me to believe was ahead for me. This experience isn’t dissimilar to the danger level of living in a drug infested slum.” Jason said.

“Janet, you seem so calm shooting someone that you’ve known for so long. Despite only knowing her for a short time and having fought in a brutal jungle war, where your ally would turn into an enemy and betray you, I still liked her and found it difficult to believe that she would try an assassination.”

“This isn’t the first assassin that I’ve killed who has been close to me. The Empire knows them well. They are telepathically trained. Many of them have been planted a long time ago for purposes that we never find out and they’re activated without the person being able to control their actions. When they have been captured, telepaths find big gaps in their memories and those gaps encompass times when they were trained for their roles. Many were ordinary people who were captured, trained, and then returned to their lives to be activated when circumstances are appropriate. I doubt that she consciously or willingly would have done what she did. It’s not something that can be undone or fixed. We also can’t predict ahead of time how they would behave.

“I’m thankful that Winston alerted us to this event. She would have killed at least two of us before our guards would have reacted. I think of her as an unfortunate person who lost her life without the opportunity of choice. I was very fond of her and I now have the onerous responsibility of communicating with her family. I’ve met them on a number of occasions they’re fine people. I’ll simply say that she died in the line of duty. She would have never voluntarily served the Patriarch.” Janet said emphatically.

Shuttles began to return with prisoners to take them onboard for interrogation. The IT and communications people removed the viruses from the first ships and began work on the computers.

The first set of ships was not badly damaged. A shipyard could quickly repair the ships or the Engineers and ship could do it more slowly using shipboard resources. The engines were not damaged and a considerable amount of the electronics remained intact in the secondary bridge area. Both cruisers had sufficient material and manufacturing capacity to do their own repairs. They could fly both ships without doing much repair before taking them to appropriate shipyards for more extensive repair. The other two cruisers were much more extensively damaged. They would both benefit from extensive work in shipyards. They had shipboard repair capabilities but engineers said that they would probably benefit from the use of a shipyard if at all possible. They were investigating the local asteroids for resources.

Harris, Ship, and the Engineers decided to go ahead with repairs, concentrating on the first two cruisers, while the proposed Operation Clone was underway. They moved the frigates into the battleship to speed up repairs. They delegated the work on both sets of ships to skeleton Engineering crews. They constructed and placed replicators and repair bots on all the ships under the control of AIs. Mining drones began to assess the local asteroids. They moved their ship close to the cruisers, recovered their missiles on route, then disarmed and returned the unexploded mines to storage. They moved to their original position at the time the engagement began and recovered further mines. Malone’s and Harris’ elation was tempered by the death of the traitor Jones and casualty reports. Jason silently thanked Winston.

Their own ship sustained damage to the hull and a hanger thought to be a storage area containing asteroids harvested near Earth. They were lucky. The arriving missile was damaged and diverted by a near miss antimissile strike. Missiles usually aimed for critical ship areas. It impacted on the hull, penetrating it, and struck a moderate sized asteroid. There was a large gaping hole in the hull and some damage to the storage area. The missile impact shattered the asteroid into smaller rocks. A large fragment of metal killed a farming assistant in the adjacent farming area separated from the hanger by a bulkhead. They were very lucky that the missile didn’t explode. The damage was from the mass of the high-speed impact.

The big surprise was that they found the missing missiles towards the rear of the hangar and storage area. This was where the saboteurs had hidden the missiles. The missile strike could have been catastrophic. They began to wonder if the missile targeting had been intentional.

They did lose four fighters but recovered six enemy fighters. Two pilots were severely injured and one died. The enemy severely injured twenty-six marines during boarding and killed four. It was a fierce battle.

Now they faced a major task, one that was almost impossible to achieve.