God's Dogs
Chapter 17

All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.

Carl von Clausewitz

Quinn’s team returned to Penglai after the successful six-week trial program. As Master Chin suspected, the Amazonians were experienced meditators but needed to learn a lot about their capabilities. The team only focused on the Nature level, because that was the students’ comfort zone.

After six weeks, the students were doing as well as fourth or fifth year Coyote candidates – at least in the areas Quinn decided to concentrate.

Satya’s crew did their jobs, which they found easy. The first insight about Amazonia wanting to go on the offensive held true. They showed no ‘shun the strangers’ attitude toward the Penglai representatives. Rather, they were welcomed like long-lost cousins.

Both governments were putting together a plan to screen and train troops on Amazonia, and ship the successful candidates to Penglai for the final stages of training. The timeline for completing the program was still a question. As Master Chin said, the Amazonian soldiers were a mixed bag of expertise and ignorance.

One idea there were testing was to add an Amazonian to an existing team for a longer period than was usual for graduates from the Coyote academy. New Coyotes rarely stayed with an existing team for more than four months before they were assigned a permanent team.

Quinn liked that idea and would request Linda when the time came. For now, they finished settling into their rooms in the monastery and were scheduled to meet with Masters Lu and Chin.

They ambled into Lu’s office after lunch, and all of them found seats in the cozy area to the side of the office before the bay window.

Master Chin began, “We are quite pleased with your team and Satya’s crew. Commendations will go into their files.”

Moss perked up. “Do we have files?”

“You don’t exist,” Lu snickered.

Chin went on, “We have two new problems to deal with. First, the emperor is working on a bio-weapon. Your Robert O’Brian let us know about it.”

Moss perked up. “See there, River, you could go into counter espionage if this Coyote gig doesn’t work out.”

“Thanks,” was her dry response.

“We are working on the first problem and will let you know what we come up with. Second, the Empire is trying to bait our ships into ambushes. If we can locate their ready force, which we assume is in deep space waiting to be called in, we can ambush them.”

“Pretty tough to do,” Quinn said, “when they have FTL communications and we don’t.”

Lu interjected, “Well, Raina gave us ours, and it’s better than the Empire version.”

“Wow,” Moss smiled. “She’s all growed up and doing great things. How is our favorite tulku, anyway?”

“She’s a tulku,” Chin sighed. “You never know with those. Although, she’s promised us better shields in the near future.”

River said, “I check in with her when we’re on the planet. She didn’t mention this development.”

Moss eyed her. “You check up on her?”

“Yeah. She’s a tulku. She can’t have many friends, and she thinks of us as her friends.”

Pax said, “We’ll have to visit one of these days.”

“I’m up for that. Having better shields is huge,” Moss gushed.

“Quite,” Chin said. “But down to business. You’re going to sneak aboard an enemy flagship, secure the flag bridge undetected, find the location of the enemy ready force, relay that information to the League’s attack fleet. Then you’ll destroy the flagship as you leave.”

“Just us?” Quinn asked.

“No. Rand’s team is going with you,” Lu answered.

Chin nodded and went on, “We’ve identified the battle cruiser you’ll assault. We have floor plans, usual crew complement, and so on. I’ll let you and Rand figure out your assault plan. There’s a twist, though.”

Moss looked at Quinn and muttered, “Here it comes.”

“Not a bad twist,” Chin chuckled. “You’ll be taking an Amazonian supernumerary with you.”

Quinn said, “We like Belinda Morrison.”

“I figured,” Chin replied. “She’s with the fifth year students, and we’ll have her outfitted when you’re ready to go.”

Pax spoke up, “I’m curious about how this new policy of recruiting Coyotes from off-world will impact us five or ten years from now.”

“As are we,” Chin said. “There are less than four hundred Coyote teams. There has never been more than that, usually many fewer. We are, after all, only twenty percent of the population, and only a fraction of that twenty percent can qualify as Coyotes. So we assume we will always be a small force, even when we accept off-world candidates.

“I have prepared the resources to double our numbers, and adjusted our training curriculum to account for what you found in Amazonia. When we bring these new teams into the war, it should finish the Empire.”

“It’s barely hanging on now,” Lu commented.

“Yes,” Chin agreed. “But then we’ll have an Empire in flames. Winning the peace, defeating warlords, puppet governments, and all of that will be a tragic mess. That’s where we’ll need you the most.”

Pax nodded gravely, “I hadn’t looked that far ahead.”

“That’s why you have us,” Lu smiled at him.

Quinn interjected, “And the first problem. The bio-weapon.”

Chin grimaced and said, “We have recon teams on the way to the R&D station. We may just blow it up, but we’re not sure if there are other black sites conducting parallel research. We may insert a team, but it’s too soon to tell.”

“Do you have a time frame?”

“No. Which is a concern. O’Brian got out as soon as the research authorization came through. We have no assets with access now.”

Quinn frowned at that, but he had to agree they needed more information.

He glanced up at his team and each nodded. He turned back to Lu and said, “When we finish this op, we’re volunteering for that one.”

“Noted,” Lu said.

Quinn and Rand met to go over the battle cruiser scenario. They came up with a tentative plan, asked the tech people to program a sim, and assembled their teams to start hashing out their tactics.

Linda showed up a couple of days later and brought with her another Amazonian for Rand’s team. They began running through the sim – again and again. After another week, they met for breakfast in the mess hall.

Rand hadn’t changed much since Moss met him years ago. A compact, muscular body, light brown skin, close-cropped steel-colored hair, dark brown eyes in a surly face.

He spoke first, “I figure we’ve got a fifteen to twenty percent chance of pulling this off without a problem.”

Moss said, “So an eighty percent chance we get killed.”

“No. I think we complete the op but not without casualties. There are 3,000 sailors and marines on that ship.”

“And we ten will show up during the night watch, enter from two separate locations, turn on our suit camo, nab the admiral, the flagbridge, and engineering. I don’t see a big problem.”

Rand eyed Moss and snorted, “You make a lousy devil’s advocate.”

Moss shrugged. “Well, if somebody hits the panic button, we’re fucked.”

River added, “Or if we can’t disable the alarms on the hatches we’re using to gain access.”

River and Rand’s hacker, Jolene, spent days with the hacker division and uploaded their latest on Empire computer tech to their implant A.I.s. The Empire didn’t use sentient A.I.s on their ships, which was good. Dumb A.I.s were much easier to get around. Still, she worried about getting in the door.

“If the entry fails, then what?” she asked.

“Can you take over their A.I.?” Rand asked back.

“I don’t know. The geeks gave us a hack that is supposed to work.”

“Okay. We’ll sim our worse case scenarios,” Rand concluded.

They did so for another four days, and Rand’s estimates proved to be accurate. This would be a dangerous mission.

The insertion was simple. One stealth shuttle from each of their cutters latched onto the battle cruiser – one amidships near the flagbridge and the admiral’s quarters; the other aft near engineering. The Satya and Rand’s ship, the Artemis, stood off far enough to be secure in their stealth.

The plan was for River and Jolene to disable the maintenance hatch alerts at their entry points and see if they could gain access to the dumb A.I. core. They dismounted from the shuttle and began.

For this op, they wore light armor, except for Moss who wore heavy armor with a heavy weapons load-out. The same was true for Rand’s team. The two heavy armor were insurance against the probability they would come under heavy fire at some point and needed cover for their escape.

River was working on her hack when she said, “It’s not so dumb.”

“Well, crap,” Moss replied.

“Hold on,” River said. “Jolene got a worm past its defenses. Now I’ve got an opening. And the hatch will be cycling in 3-2-1-open sesame.”

Their entry point was near the flagbridge. Moss remained near the exit hatch. The others switched on their camo and headed to their assigned tasks: Pax and Linda to the admiral’s quarters; River and Quinn to the flagbridge.

“There are drop-down cannons at the corridor intersections,” Pax sent over the squad channel as he worked his way to his objective.

“There are security bot compartments in the bulkheads,” Quinn said. “They are more prepared to repel boarders than we thought.”

“I wonder if it’s their own people they’re worried about,” Pax said.

River muttered, “I hope we don’t find out.”

A while later, when Quinn reached the flagbridge, he announced, “We’re ready to breach.”

“Give us thirty seconds,” Pax replied.

Thirty seconds later they hacked the doors and the attack was on.

Quinn and River stunned the few people manning the flagbridge. Then she got to work at the command console.

Pax and Linda stunned the admiral’s staff in his suite of rooms and began questioning a sleepy admiral.

River reported after a few minutes. “I still can’t get control of the A.I. I put it into a maintenance cycle, which should give us half an hour.”

“Maybe Jolene will have better luck in engineering,” Quinn replied. He was busy setting charges on the flagbridge’s consoles.

About then, Rand checked in on the command channel. “This place is fortified. We’re going with Plan B.”

Quinn glanced to River. “I wonder if the ship’s bridge is fortified.”

River busied herself at the console and soon reported, “Yep. A squad of guards outside in the corridor, and the blast doors are down and locked. Security bots are patrolling the corridors leading to the bridge.”

She looked up. “What’s going on?”

Quinn shrugged. “I think they are afraid of a mutiny. Especially if they know they are bait for a trap.”

River nodded. “If that’s the case, the flag bridge wouldn’t be considered critical.”

Pax cut in, “We’ve got the coordinates from the admiral. We’re headed back to Moss.”

“Let’s go,” Quinn said as he finished setting his explosives.

They exited to an empty corridor and began a staggered retreat to Moss’ location. Pax radioed the Empire deep space fleet coordinates to Moss, who sent them by tight laser-com to the Satya. From there, the information headed out FTL to the waiting League fleet.

About halfway back to Moss, Quinn and River were jolted by the ship’s alarms.

Moss told them, “Coordinates are sent, but Satya says they are getting hard scans from the enemy fleet. They figure five to ten minutes before they’re detected.”

Rand broke in. “We’re trapped. We’ll try to exfil through the maintenance passageways.”

Quinn halted at the sound of security bots dismounting from the wall perches. He checked where Rand’s team was located. His HUD showed they were not far from the starboard hull but a hundred yards distant. What also showed were the responding forces. River linked the enemy IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) frequency to their HUDs when they were on the flagbridge.

His HUD populated with the red dots of the responding enemy forces. Combat bots and Empire marines were hurrying to Rand’s location.

“Up,” Quinn directed.

They jumped up and attached to the overhead. Since they were stealthed, the responding troops and bots ran along underneath them without knowing they were there.

“We’ll wait until they set up to assault Rand,” Quinn explained. “Then we’ll hit them from behind. Moss, you’ll flank them. Tell Satya to do some damage on their port-side engines.”

Switching to the command net, Quinn told Rand, “We’ll let them set up and then hit them from the rear. Moss will flank them. Satya will start blowing holes on their port side to create a diversion. What have you got in mind?”

“We’re in the life support and engine cooling section. They can’t use heavy weapons in here. There’s a way to the hull, but we’ll need time to navigate our way there.”

“We’ll get you the time.”

The activity died down as the marines and sailors finished manning their stations. Before random bot patrols began, Quinn and River hustled toward the enemy staging area. Pax and Linda joined them at the last corridor junction. They could hear the force commander give instructions for the assault on Rand.

Once they all shouted, “Oorah,” Quinn’s team broke cover, high and low at both corners of the corridor and unloaded on the massed force.

It didn’t take the enemy long to react by setting up a shield and returning fire. As the team ducked back, Moss unleashed his heavy weapons on the enemy flank. Rand’s heavy weaponeer, Benji, joined Moss, and they walked to the corridor junction, split the enemy into two forces, and then stood back to back and sprayed rail-gun fire at each force.

Both teams engaged to put the split enemy forces in crossfires. The enemy troops that could escaped through the corridors leading to the port side of the ship. Rand had his opening and scurried through the twisting and narrow maintenance passageways with his and Quinn’s team following.

Satya opened fire on the poorly shielded port side engines. Once there was an opening in the shielding big enough, she launched a torpedo into the ship.

Moss and Benji, in heavy armor, couldn’t fit through the maintenance passageways, so they followed the fleeing marines. The bots, though, were small enough to follow the teams, and Moss fell back to take care of them, as the teams’ small arms were ineffective against the bots. Once Moss wiped out the bots, he hurried after Benji, who was keeping a steady stream of rail-gun fire on the forces ahead of him.

A secondary explosion followed Satya’s missile attack that blew Moss back the way he had come, and the hull breached ahead of him. Corridors collapsed. Debris and bodies were sucked toward the breach. Moss fired a missile to widen the way ahead. He was still three decks below the hull.

With his missile creating an adequate opening, he jetted through the jagged hole in the ship’s hull.

“Benji, I got us an escape route,” he called, but the HUD showed a black dot where the other weaponeer should have been.

“He’s gone,” Rand said. “I don’t think there’s enough left of him to retrieve. We’ll pick you up at the breach.”

The Artemis, tractored Moss onboard. Satya was providing cover from the fighters the other ships launched. Once Moss was aboard, both ships cloaked and headed in opposite directions at top speed. Then they jumped to their rendezvous point in deep space.

Quinn’s crew transferred back to the Satya. Captain John reported some serious battle damage, but the jump drives were okay.

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