The captain, as always, arrived last. I hadbeen told he did this so the staff could talk before he arrived andhave time to make final preparations. Normally the staff would takeadvantage of this time to chat about random topics. I, of course,could do nothing more than listen, since they never included me intheir conversations; even if they did I would not know much of whatthey were speaking of, as it always related to their long servicein the Navy.
This time not much was happening in the wayof talking. The uncertainty and unusual nature of this missionseemed to have everyone on edge. The situation we were heading intodid not make sense, and no one liked that, least of all me.
The captain entered the room, and immediatelywhat little conversation there was ceased. Even amongst his innercircle the captain had an aura that spoke of the power of theEmpire. He was in charge of the Dragon Claw, the most powerful shipever to be built. The Empire had never suffered a defeat when thecaptain brought the Dragon Claw to bear. Despite the fact that hewas human, his reputation was as ruthless and deadly as anyZalionian. At unofficial functions his senior staff would have noproblem talking to him like an equal, but this was not one of thosetimes. The seriousness of the situation was made all the moreapparent by the look on his face and his gruff silence as he tookhis seat.
“Okay, men, we’ve got quite a problem on ourhands,” said the captain. “I am going to play the last transmissionwe received from Arken IV, then Zalith will bring everyone up todate with what we know.” The captain started the transmission onthe main screen with a touch of his console.
[Begin transmission] “… I don’t have muchtime; they’ll be here soon. I am Lieutenant Tom of the ImperialNavy. I was part of the preliminary task force sent here to attemptto bring peace to the colony… I can hear them coming, not much timeleft …When we arrived the place was in shambles, far worse than weexpected. We thought we could handle it, though; that was until welearned of them. They wiped out the entire class-three task forcebefore we could establish a secure base. They were unstoppable,came from every direction at once. Wait, what’s that noise?..They’re at the door … By the Emperor!” [End transmission]
This was far worse than I had originallythought. Officially the mission that Lieutenant Tom was leading wasa simple probe operation to find out why this colony broke offcommunications. That was now exposed as a cover story. I had noidea as to what could have brought down a class-three task force sofast. Such a task force was designed to penetrate a planet held bya hostile, advanced alien nation, and establish a permanentfoothold from which to launch further attacks. This mission shouldhave been a boring walk in the park for them.
When the transmission was finished Zalithstood to talk. Standing his full two-and-a-quarter meter height, hewas an impressive sight. His long, powerful tail swept aside thechair to give himself more room.
“We do not know much about the situation atthis time. Most of what we do know you just heard in thattransmission. Unfortunately, that is the only transmission wereceived from Lieutenant Tom. If the Empire were currently at war,and Lieutenant Tom a young and inexperienced officer, I would sayhe met up with overwhelming numbers and firepower shortly afterthey landed, and was simply underpowered for the mission. Theappropriate next move would be for a battle fleet like ours to movein and handle the problem with sufficient force to prevent a secondloss,” Zalith stated.
“Of course the problem is that we are not atwar …” interjected Larath. He was right; it had been ten yearssince our last major conflict. There had been a few borderskirmishes, but this colony was nowhere near them. “… and I have afeeling you are about to tell us that Lieutenant Tom was not allthat green.”
“You could not be more right. Lieutenant Tomwas a battle-hardened vet. His record is very impressive, and hehas faced death many times before. The truth is, the message wereceived is baffling.”
When the task force landed they wouldimmediately have deployed temporary shelters; this would have beenachieved very quickly. These shelters would hold up well to smallarms fire, but in very hostile situations would tend to draw fireaway from the landing ships, which would be completely hiddenbehind them. Next, more secure barriers would be deployed. Thesebarriers would give the troops a much safer position to work from.After that a more permanent and secure base would be erected.
“Tom’s message states that they were defeatedbefore creating the secure base, yet he was in a building of somekind since he mentioned the attackers being ‘at the door.’ Based onthis I would assume they had raised their temporary shelters, buthad not yet got the permanent base in place. These temporaryshelters would not hold up well against an onslaught, and in thatsituation the troops would not be in the shelters. They wouldeither be planning to move to a more secure location, or be outfront attempting to stop the attack. However, the shelters were up,and Tom was in one of them. This implies they were caughtcompletely by surprise, and by a superior force.
“The problem with this is that even if theentire population of the colony were heavily armed, there were notenough of them to accomplish this feat. Add to that the fact thatthe colony consisted mainly of families, at most with lightweapons, none of which should have been able to pierce the standardissue body armor. The task force should have been completely immuneto any attack mustered against them.
“A class-three task force was far too muchpower for this mission, and should never have been sent. The onlyconclusion that I can draw from this information is that a hostilepower has taken control of the colony. There is simply no way thepeople we had there could have accomplished this feat. High Commandmust have suspected this in order to have sent the firepower theydid.” Zalith paused here, clearly unsure if he should say what hewas thinking.
“Go on,” prompted thecaptain.
“Well, sir, there is one more problem withthis message. Lieutenant Tom sounded scared. That does not fit hispersonality. He has faced death too many times to be afraid of it,and has even survived being a prisoner of war. Yet his voice andmanners in the message are those of a person greatly afraid ofsomething. It’s odd enough that a colony well inside our borderswould be such a hotspot of hostile activity; when you add in thelieutenant’s unexplained fear, it makes me concerned this messagemay have been tampered with.”
That statement just hung there in the air fora minute. No one was really sure how to respond to it all. Thecaptain turned to me and asked, “Commander, do you have anything toadd?”
“No, sir. The amount of firepowerneeded to do what Zalith described is far more than the colonyshould have been able to muster. I have to agree with him. The onlyway this could have happened is through the addition of an outsideforce. The information I have on Lieutenant Tom agrees withZalith’s assessment. Even facing certain defeat he should have beencalm and collected. Also, none of the normal intelligence channelshave any talk of activity in this area. There are vague threats inthe Beta region, but nothing out here,” was my lame attempt at ananswer.
“Dr. Rannor, what exactly was this colonythere to do?” asked the captain.
“Well, they were researching biologicalwarfare,” began the doctor.
“Are you telling me we may have experimentalbugs to deal with on top of everything?”
“If the attackers raided the bio-labs, thenyes. If the labs were merely hit in an attack, the safety systemswould automatically destroy the live cultures, eliminating anychance of contamination. However, since we do not know much aboutthe attackers, we have to assume they could have taken control ofthe stockpile.”
“What does that mean for any troops we sendto the surface?”
“Sir, I would strongly advise against anylandings unless we know those bugs are controlled. If even only onelive sample were released, the planet would need to be sterilizedfrom orbit. Based on the official information about what the colonywas working on, I would say these bugs are far too powerful for ournormal biohazard procedures to handle. Indeed, I do not believethey can be handled with our current technology.”