“There will come a time when Earth needs to know how to think of you—and it will be your actions that will determine that.
“I am a simple soldier; one amongst billions of my people, but I can confidently tell you that we value loyalty and we would welcome you as a true ally. You won’t earn our respect by playing political games, but you will earn it by standing with us as equals. The things you hope to gain from being our protector will taste so much sweeter when you’ve earned them as our friends.
“Earth will beat the Noridian threat. I just hope that we can forge a partnership with Coridia along the way.”
I’m not much of a speechmaker and I certainly wasn’t trying to make this dramatic so I moved ahead to discuss the various details of the training schedule I had set up along with the outlines of our tactics once we reached Earth. I had briefly toyed with the idea of trying to keep some of the planning to ourselves but… I’d literally laughed out loud when I realized how impossible that would truly be. I was banking that transparency with our Coridian hosts would suit us better for the moment…
At any rate, we had a long trip ahead of us and I still hadn’t quite figured out how to tell Julie that there was no way on God’s green earth she was going to be on the raid that boarded the Noridian ship.
“I’m telling you Matt, she’s a natural.”
Major Mike ‘Iron Jaw’ Reynolds seemed to think my reluctance to let Julie play commando was based on me not believing his reports on her training.
“She’s literally got the highest marksmanship of any of the civilians - #1 on the rifle and #7 on the handgun. She throws herself into every training scenario and rarely makes the same mistake twice. Her hand-to-hand still sucks but all the civvies do. We’d already planned on pairing them with our soldiers so it’d be less of an issue.”
He wouldn’t be pressing on this issue except that we’d already determined we were going to need civilian help to take the Noridian ship. It was just too big and our need to take it out quickly, before alarms could be raised, had reduced us to planning a surprise Blitzkrieg type of operation. We’d use deception to get on board and then take out the resistance (hopefully) before they could get a message to either their colleagues planetside, or back with the dynasty.
Unfortunately, for this to succeed we needed more shooters than what we had. We were going to have to use some civilians.
But I really didn’t want Julie to be one of them.
I had a number of very good reasons for this. She had become the unspoken leader of our unofficial ‘Keep Earth Free’ movement and the Noridian ship raid could very well turn into a suicide mission. If everything went perfectly the boarding team would be fine but she had become too valuable for such risks—or so I told myself.
Besides I had another mission in mind for her…
When we took out the ship someone was going to have to declare ourselves to the Earth authorities. Someone was going to have to explain why we’d just killed the nice aliens that were promising to give us great technology and protect us from the bad aliens.
I was pretty sure that that kind of message needed to come from our civilians and not just our military.
We also had no idea how many of the Noridians would be left down on the planet.
I had just finished explaining to Iron Jaw that I wanted him to lead the boarding party and about the other mission I had in mind for Julie when he asked how we were going to keep the Noridians left on the planet from sending a message back to the Noridian Dynasty.
“Mike, we’re going to have to time this carefully,” I responded. “But taking the ship will also shut down the communications node that connects them to the rest of the galaxy.
“Silva has assured me that if he times his bioware ‘cyber-attack’ on the Noridian ship correctly we’ll be covering all those bases.”
“Can we trust him?” Iron Jaw asked.
“This part of the operation is definitely in Coridia’s best interest and he struck me as competent before he revealed himself as an alien so yeah, if he says he and his team can pull it off I think we have to go with it—besides, we don’t really have a choice.
“His attack is in two stages,” I continued. “The first part is deception. He says once we’re in range he can make direct contact with the Noridian ship; making it think we’re friendly, preventing it from creating an alarm, and allowing us on board.
“The second part he can’t hide from the local Noridian personnel. His team will literally wrest away control of the ship, including communications, navigation, and weapons. When he shuts down the ships communications network the Noridians won’t be able to talk to each other let alone anyone light-years away.”
“So we need to coordinate our boarding raid with the second stage of his attack,” Mike surmised.
“That’s the way I see it,” I agreed. “And you’re going to need to take out the ship’s personnel ASAP—the faster you do it the easier it will be for Silva to secure his control of the ship.”
The boarding operation was tremendously complicated by the fact that we had no idea where on the ship the Noridians would be. Since they controlled everything with their bioware there were no control panels or switches—in fact there wasn’t even a control room or bridge. There was an engineering room of sorts but Silva said that it typically wasn’t manned. They could literally control everything while eating breakfast in one of the common areas or sitting on the can for that matter.
Mike’s team was going to have to fan out and quietly search the entire ship—fast. When they found a Noridian there wouldn’t be orders to freeze or surrender; they would be immediately and quietly shot in the head, preferably from behind, so they couldn’t mentally raise an alarm.
In addition to marksmanship we’d had to screen the civilian scientists for the mental toughness to take out the Noridians in cold blood—it was surprising how many of them were good to go but then there was a lot at stake and they’d been through a lot.
“Before that happens though Toni has agreed to pilot Julie and me down to the surface in a stealthed shuttle. I think it’s important that we’re close to the authorities when everything goes down. I’ll be taking Captain Kamiko with us for extra security as well as the scientists that you don’t think will cut it in combat, but other than that the rest of the team is yours. I don’t see any reason to leave anyone behind on the Coridian ship.”
Chapter 36
Dr. Julie Schein
‘Finally!’ Julie thought to herself as she watched Larga grow small in the view screen. We’re finally heading back to Earth.
Being into action felt good. It made her feel empowered; strong.
After the Noridian attack she’d felt helpless and more scared than she’d ever known. She hated that feeling and she hated the Noridians for making her feel that way and she hated them for the killing and…
Now she was into action; now she was in control.
She was stronger than Jaki and Julie would make her pay. It wasn’t revenge she told herself; it was justice.
When they arrived back at Earth they’d take out the Noridian ship and then… Then what? Somehow Julie couldn’t make herself really focus on what would come after; it would all work itself out. She just had to do her part.
She could see herself boarding the Noridian ship and shooting every Noridian she found. She visualized going around a corner and then pulling the trigger; once, twice, three times.
When the time came she would be ready.