“Admiral on deck!”
The Oleander TAO announced Louise Stanton as she strode onto the command deck.
“As you were.”
“Ma’am, our lost puppy is back.”
“We haven’t seen him for a couple of weeks. Now he just shows up outta the void?”
“It appears so, Ma’am.”
“Where is he, Aaron?” she asked as she squinted at the tactical display. “Show me.”
When Louise Stanton ordered “show me,” that meant she wanted all of the ARI monitors on the command deck to be switched to one large, single display. The TAO complied, and the front bulkhead of the command deck morphed into a jumbo Tron.
“Target holding position as before, Ma’am. Ten thousand miles off our port quarter.”
“Have they made any aggressive action against us?”
“No Ma’am.”
“Are they broadcasting their four-word message?”
“No Ma’am.”
“This is odd.” Louise rubbed her eyes, then her entire face. “I sure don’t know what to make of it.” She stood in silence for a moment, weighting her options. “Alright, I’m no longer amused. Launch two birds. Take ‘em outta my sky.”
“Oleander Fight Control to CAG. Bogey spotted in vicinity. BGC orders you launch two TR-3Bs and intercept with extreme prejudice, over.”
There was a brief pause while Louise continued to stare at the large tactical display.
“Roger Flight. Have a section on alert five. Scrambling them now.”
It took several minutes before flight control heard from the CAG’s birds.
“Oleander Flight Control, Aurora Tactical Three and Four requesting permission to launch, over.”
“Aurora Tactical Three and Four, Flight. Hangar bay doors are open. You’re cleared for departure, over.”
“Roger, Flight. Departing now, over.”
“Happy hunting, Commander. Out.”
Stanton sat and watched as two small green blips on the tactical display appeared from the side of a larger green blip. Their transponder codes followed them as they turned to approach a stationary red blip off in the lower left corner of the jumbo Tron. The green blips moved silently towards their target, which remained stationary as they closed in.
Just as the Oleander TR-3Bs were about to overtake their target, the red dot shot towards them and became a blur around the green cat’s eyes that represented Oleander’s tactical reconnaissance fighters. To everyone’s shock, the tiny green blips flickered and went out. First one … then the other.
“What just happened?” Stanton asked as she leaned forward, her eyes narrowing as she stared at the display. She turned to her tactical officer. “TAO! Is there some kind of glitch with your display?”
“No, Ma’am. All systems functioning normally.”
“Sensors! Where are my birds?”
“Gone, Ma’am.” The sensor officer swallowed hard. “They’ve been destroyed.”
A pall descended on the command deck as everyone went silent at the sensor officer’s declaration.
“What?” Stanton was dumbfounded as she spun around to glare at the sensor officer. “Just like that?”
“I’m afraid so, Ma’am.”
“Admiral, the bandit is transmitting again,” the comm officer said.
“I don’t believe this. The same four words?”
“No Ma’am. Five this time.”
“Okay, Comm. What are they?”
“Give me a second …” He manipulated the control systems on his console. “It says, ‘Give … Me … Bird … Frightener …”
“That’s only four, Comm.” Stanton said, her voice ringing with ire at the loss of her TR-3B section.
The comm officer waved his hand to indicate the last word was coming. “… Now.” He looked up from his station. “Give me Bird Frightener now.”
Rear Admiral Reynolds sat at his desk and punched in his passcode on his tablet. The monitor was flashing, “Urgent message incoming–Battle Group Commander. Eyes only.” He finished entering his passcode, and Rear Admiral Stanton’s image flashed on the screen. It was obvious she was agitated.
“Jon, I need to borrow that hot-shot pilot of yours,” she said.
“Hello to you too, Louise–”
“Let’s dispense with the pleasantries, shall we? Remember when I told about the lost puppy that was dogging us?”
“Yeah, that was a couple of weeks ago. Is it still shadowing you?”
“In a manner of speaking.” She looked off screen for a moment while someone handed her a tablet. Annoyed at being interrupted, she glared at them while she pressed her thumb on the bottom of the tablet’s display, then turned back to peer at Reynolds. She was still on the command deck.
“That snakehead chigger just greased two of my birds. Right in front of my eyes. They were good pilots, Jon. Yet this alien ace burned them down as easily as takin’ a sip from a cup o’ joe. I can’t risk sending any more birds out after him. Certainly can’t risk launching any CODs, and every time we try to target him with our onboard batteries, he flits off at FTL and is back 15 minutes later. Now I need you to send me your Top-Gun, before I lose any more people.”
Reynolds sat in silence for a moment, processing Stanton’s report. “Louise, I can’t help you right now. We just did a run from Neptune to Mars, where we dropped off two companies of Marines from Deep Space Platform Six. We’re back at Earth now, loading equipment to reinforce the Mars Base, and picking up another company of Marines from Lunar Operations Command. It’ll take two days to finish loading, then an additional three days to off-load at Mars. Our hangar bay is stuffed to the overhead, putting most of my air wing out of commission until we deliver this cargo. I’ve only got six flying defensive counter air. I can’t help you for at least a week.”
“A week? What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
“Where are you right now?”
“We’re just shy of Proxima, still laying down sensor buoys.”
“All right, here’s what we’ll do. Plot a course for Neptune. Destrier should be at Mars when we get there. I’ll get Ron Lopez to run Richardson and my CAG up to you ASAP. They should be able to rendezvous with you at Deep Space Platform Six in three days. I can’t spare any TR-3Bs. My pilots will have to use a pair of yours. I’m sorry, Louise, but that’s the best I can do.”
“Excuse me, Sir. I don’t recognize you,” the duty nurse said as an unknown officer entered the Parallax sick bay. He strode towards the passageway that led to the isolation chamber where Lieutenant Commander Gagnon and his crew were recovering.
“I just transferred from Nautilus this week,” he replied over his shoulder.
“Sir, wait–” The duty nurse rose to follow him, but he stopped and stared her down.
“It’s alright,” he said. “I have authorization.” He motioned to an ID icon on his uniform, but he made sure he was too far away for the nurse to see it clearly. Before she could step forward, he turned and continued toward the isolation chamber.
“Sir,” the nurse said as she followed him. She didn’t notice he was wearing a sidearm. As he reached the hatch to the chamber and began keying in the code to open it, the nurse approached him.
“Sir, if you don’t come with me and submit to an ID check, I’ll have to call–”
He spun around and shot her point blank, leaving a hole in her chest the size of a softball. The nurse never uttered a sound. Her eyes rolled back into her head as she dropped to the deck in a crumpled heap. The officer turned and finished keying in the code to open the hatch. As he shut down the dampening field, he pulled a small device from his pocket and activated it.
Gagnon and his crew were relaxing, unaware of what had just transpired outside the isolation chamber. The moment the dampening field was shut down, they shot up and stood at attention. Their eyes glazed over as they turned and exited the isolation chamber. They stepped over the body of the unfortunate nurse, moved down the passageway and out of sickbay. The mysterious officer who released them was nowhere to be seen.
The cheng was helping one of his snipes adjust the resonance frequency on a power transfer unit when Gagnon and his flight crew strode into the engineering section. Gagnon walked up to the control ARI for the first MFD and stood motionless while his crew took up similar positions at the other MFD panels further down the cavernous propulsion bay.
“Hey!” the cheng shouted. “What are you guys doing in here? You’re not authorized to be–”
As his crew reached the other MFDs, Gagnon began to manipulate the controls on the ARI. The massive toroid began to whine and shudder at Gagnon’s influence.
“Walker! Perez! Get him away from there!”
Two snipes rushed over to stop the pilot from his manipulations, but he brushed them off with superhuman strength.
“This is Chief Engineer Ferguson! I need an armed security team to the MFD bay immediately!” The cheng closed his comm as he picked up an oversized wrench and strode over to where several other crewmen had joined in the struggle to stop Gagnon’s sabotage. As the pilot rose after wrestling free once more, Ferguson brained him with the heavy wrench. The blow should have put him on the deck, but Gagnon only dropped to his knees. He rose on unsteady legs and turned to face the cheng.
“Don’t make me …”
Gagnon ignored him as he turned to the ARI panel once more. The cheng struck him a second time with more force. He winced as he heard the pilot’s skull crack. Gagnon dropped to the deck, where he lay motionless.
Parallax and Dreadnaught raced each other back to the Sol system. Captain Reed had transported over to Parallax for a conference call between Command and Nautilus.
“Captain Nakamura was right, Admiral,” the Parallax CMO said. “As soon as we placed our people in an isolation chamber and activated the dampening field, they revived. Then–”
“How many people did you lose, Ken?” Maddox asked.
“Gagnon. And a duty nurse. She tried to stop whoever released Gagnon and his crew. She was killed for it.”
“Another spy,” Scarecrow said, his countenance dark.
“Have you done a post-mortem on Gagnon, Doctor?”
“Yes.” He pressed a key on his console, and an image flashed on everyone’s monitor. “It took a bit of digging, but we finally found this.”
“What are we looking at?” Admiral Maddox asked.
“It’s the next generation of enemy implant, Admiral. It’s extremely complex, yet minuscule. You’re looking at it at a magnification of over 1,000 times. Sir, it’s like our subcutaneous distress beacon–it’s made of human biological material.”
In a subconscious gesture, Scarecrow reached for his neck.
“It was well hidden. It was situated inside the frontal lobe.” Everyone stared at their screens, displaying a cube etched with a myriad of lines, all intersecting and weaving amongst each other.
“It looks like one of those Borg cubes from Star Trek,” Scarecrow said almost under his breath.
“It does look complex,” Reynolds added.
“Extremely so. We have our best technicians examining it right now.”
“So these men are a plant,” Maddox said.
“Yes. It’s my contention that they’re time bombs, Sir. The placement of the implant, its position in the frontal lobe, right in among a cluster of neurons that control reasoning, planning and problem solving means that when the enemy activated this little puppy … our officers became automatons. Ready to carry out whatever actions the enemy saw fit to transmit.”
“A Manchurian Candidate,” Reynolds said.
“Exactly.”
Hutch whistled. Everyone else remained silent at the severity of the doctor’s explanation.
“We removed the implants from the other two and they’re recovering now, Admiral,” Captain Nakamura said. “They’re awake and responsive. However, they have no recollection of anything after they deployed the first set of sensor buoys, so we don’t yet know the details of their capture and release.”
“You make them sound like they’re a trio of bass, Skipper,” Hutch said with a wry lilt.
“You’re not far off the mark, CAG,” the doctor replied. “These particular bass were tagged and released back into the school to act as wolves in the fold. Not to mix metaphors, of course.”
“I’d keep the two survivors isolated,” Scarecrow said, his eyes down, his tone pensive. “And post guards at the hatch.”
“Why would I do that? We’ve removed the implants–”
“There may be more implants. The enemy is devious, Doctor.” He looked back up to stare at the CMO on the monitor. “They may have a backup implant somewhere else.”
“I’ve learned to listen when Commander Richardson speaks, Doctor,” Maddox said. “He may be new to us, but his track record lends a lot of weight to his advice.”
The doctor stared back and forth between Scarecrow and the senior admiral. He started to speak, but hesitated and turned to face Maddox. “As you wish, Admiral.”
“Follow the Commander’s advice, Ken,” the admiral said. “Keep your men insolated, at least for the time being. Try to reconstruct their memories so we can find out how they were taken. It may provide some vital intel. Don, when you get back, resume your schedule. Ken, bring your men and the implants back to Earth immediately. I want our best minds at Tooele going over them and their bird. We need to find out what the enemy is up to. It may be necessary to modify our plans somewhat. Maddox out.”
The screen went black, and everyone was left to ponder their situation.
“How about that Commander Scarecrow fella?” The doctor shook his head, his tone sarcastic as the captains rose to leave. “Where does he get off ordering us to look for more implants?”
“It’s hard to argue with a guy who was instrumental in destroying the core of the enemy’s fleet, Doctor,” Captain Reed said. “If I was you, I’d follow his advice, and the admiral’s orders. Start looking for more implants.”
“That’s exactly what he’s going to do,” Captain Nakamura replied as he glanced at his CMO. “As the admiral said, we can’t afford to miss anything. Too much is at stake.” He smiled and patted the doctor on the back. “You’ve done an excellent job so far, Brian. Just keep up the good work.”
“What do you two think?” Reynolds asked his pilots as the ethereal display went dark.
“I don’t like it, Sir,” Scarecrow said. “I hate all of this skulking around in the shadows, shell-game, ‘what have I got up my sleeve?’ nonsense. Come at me from the front, in the air at 30,000 feet, guns blazing, missiles locked on. I much prefer a full frontal assault to all this cloak and dagger stuff. Give me a knife fight in a phone booth any day of the week.”
“I agree with you. But unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned before, we have to play the hand we’ve been dealt,” the rear admiral replied. “What do you think they’re up to?”
“The fact that they picked a lone TR-3B so far out,” Hutch said, “makes me think it’s a test. And Admiral, I think we should call Maddox back and suggest to him that the techies at Tooele look for the equivalent of those bio-implants on Gagnon’s bird. I’m almost positive the snakeheads may have spiked it as well. And make sure it’s isolated. It would make an excellent bomb.”
“Good advice, CAG. I’ll make that call as soon as we’re finished here.”
“They’re definitely trying to infiltrate us,” Scarecrow said. “But they’ve got to know we’ll be suspicious.”
“So then what’s their play?”
“It’s the zig-zag strategy, Sir. They’re getting us to watch them do something over here, while they’re doing something else over there.”
“Sleight of hand?”
“Exactly.”
“What do you think they’re trying to misdirect us from seeing?”
“If I knew that, then all of our jobs would be much, much easier.”
“I don’t think we should be sending out any more lone birds,” Hutch said. “Send out divisions. Or at least sections. Give them a wingman.”
“I concur,” Scarecrow added. “They’ve just proven that our initial strategy is too vulnerable.”
“Command only agreed to that tactic because of the urgency we placed on our situation. Pairing up our TR-3Bs would double the time it would take to complete our task.”
“It’ll be worth it to keep our people safe.”
“Do you think the enemy still has assets in the Luhman system?”
“No, Sir,” Scarecrow said. “Parallax and Dreadnaught didn’t pick up any power signatures that would indicate there were cloaked ships still in the area.”
“Yeah, Skipper, the sensor buoys have all been deployed and they’re actively pinging, sending back telemetry. I think it’s safe to assume they’ve moved on. But we shouldn’t assume that they won’t return at some p–”
“Wait a minute, Hutch,” Scarecrow said. “I just had a thought …”
“Let’s hear it Commander,” Reynolds said.
“Our sensors won’t work in a gas giant’s goo. I out-maneuvered four saucers on my return trip from Neptune a while back using Uranus’s atmosphere as cover. Is there anything we have that will allow our sensors to cut through that heavy atmosphere?”
“In the upper atmosphere, yes. But the deeper you go, the harder it is to read anything. I don’t think we possess any tech that will, and I’m pretty sure the enemy doesn’t, either. Why?”
“Well, I’m thinking …” He stood pensive for a moment. “… Maybe we should take a page from some of those old World War II submarine movies.”
“Explain.”
“Let’s try dropping some depth charges.”
“Depth charges?” Hutch said, surprised at the unorthodox suggestion.
“Yeah.” Scarecrow cast an impish smile at his colleagues. He looked back and forth at the two Solar Warden officers, surprised at their response to his suggestion. Then he too flashed a look of confusion. “Why is it I’m the only one that comes up with all these wacky ideas? Why don’t you two ever offer a ‘think outside the box’ solution?”
“Because you didn’t go through the training at Monterey like we did, Steve,” Reynolds said. “When we were learning about all of our systems, we were instructed on their function and use, and we accepted that there was really no other way for them to be utilized. You didn’t have that training, so you’re free to question the orthodoxy of their implementation. And quite frankly, I’m glad you didn’t go to Monterey and be brainwashed like the rest of us. Your ‘wacky ideas’ as you call them, have been more successful than any of our conventional methods could ever hope to be.”