6. Prelude to slaughter
Ms. Oselasis, or Yarina as she was called by her friends, entered the sickbay where Captain Taerow was held. A less controlled person would probably have gasped at seeing him as he lay in the bed. The colour of his skin was an unhealthy grey and was sagging in his face leaving an impression of somebody deceased. The eyes were on the other hand very alive and the smile that arrived at about the same time as the realisation who had come to visit, brought definite proof of life to his features. She didn't move a muscle.
"Welcome to Ghastville, main attraction me."
Yarina smiled back and walked over to the chair next to the bed.
"I am not even going to ask you how you feel Utia."
She took his left hand in hers and felt the coldness of it.
"I know that the doctors are doing everything they can, and I know that they are going to succeed somehow."
He turned his head away.
"And I know you have a long way to go before you are fit for fight again."
She let his hand back on the blankets and waited for a second before continuing.
"But I have a request that I need to ask. A request from Raewon himself."
Utia turned his head back and looked her straight in the eyes.
"We need you to come and pilot the Omega ship in real combat against the Serco aggressors."
"Are you insane? I fought under controlled conditions and still came out looking like this? No!"
"We know Utia, and we would prefer to keep you here until you are well. We think we may have a solution for the feedback problem, but we have no clue as to how all this affects the Omega. Trust me, we would rather not fly the Omega ship anytime soon, but we have been ordered to do so by the Admiral of the Fleet himself."
She extended a hand and softly let her fingers caress the cold skin of his cheek.
"Please join the team voluntarily Utia. It means a lot to us, it means a lot to me."
He looked at her almond shaped water clear blue eyes for the longest while until he closed his own and shook his head.
"I can't believe what I am about to do. Sure, when is it going to be?"
"The day after tomorrow. I'll come pick you up."
Yarina got up and walked to the door, turning and waving to the spectre of a man in the bed. She had made him volunteer, good. Then she didn't have to use the written orders she had received in case he would refuse. This made everything so much easier, and ensuring that was after all her job. Now she only had one more thing to do before meeting with the professor.
###
The two new members of Serco counter intelligence better known as the Diplomatic Corps marvelled at he immense size of the docking bay in Dau Senate, capable of working a full dozen Behemoth XC's at the same time. Likewise they studied a group of obvious Itani crew members all dressed alike in light blue uniforms and with the neural shunt behind right ear that allowed them to control their ships like they controlled their own bodies. This was the two young Serco's first glimpse of the enemy and they felt a bit disappointed that the Itani looked just like everyone else. Well, everyone not Serco that is. Both of the diplomats towered at least half a metre above everyone else and outweighed them by hundreds of pounds, even after they had the military fight implants taken out. Like all the other newly arrived passengers they shuffled forward to the station control, one long line among six. Eventually they arrived to the pudgy sour faced middle aged woman with half glasses on her nose, who regarded them with as much kindness as would normally be reserved for a piece of used chewing gum on the sole of a shoe. Her high-pitched nasal voice betrayed an Ukari accent.
"Papers. Where doo yoo’s hail from and where are yoo’s gooing?"
They handed their bright new papers over, their proof that they were Aeolus Citizens. She looked down at the papers and swiped them in the computer and proceeded to write on the holo screen.
"We come from Helios III, Aeolus Trading Prefect and we have come here to seek work ma'am."
"I see yoo’s were discharged with dishonour and subsequently loost citizenship. Whut was the charge?"
"Refusal of orders ma'am."
The woman looked up from the papers at the two young men.
"Goo oun."
"Well, we refused to execute a group of Itani prisoners ma'am. We are not savages."
She kept looking at them over her glasses until she came to a conclusion, found her stamp and approved the papers.
"Good thing too hear there are some decent Sercoo people oot there booys. Welcome to UIT. Next."
The two men grabbed their bags and moved into the station. A woman of indeterminate age approached them.
"Vaso, Arhem?"
They nodded.
"Follow me, I have a place for you to stay. I am Silia"
They looked at each other and smiled. Phase one, insertion had so far worked perfectly. Now they had to go to stage two, target acquisition.
###
The afternoon shift mustered outside Geira Rutilus Command. The twelve Serco Skycommand officers along with the single SCAR liaison officer would run the Combat Space Patrol, COSP for the six hour night shift, ensuring that the fighter coverage of the Deneb/Geira Rutillus wormhole stayed functional and thus ensuring that it was open for Serco forces. At least twelve fighters were patrolling at all times, with a further twelve in reserve on two minutes stand-by. A cruiser and a set of frigates could be called upon as well if the Itani decided to try and interdict the wormhole in force, but fortunately that was rare. Along with the regular forces were pilots from the elite SCAR unit with between one and three fighters depending on the threat level. The border conflict was going pretty good for the Serco after the had started patrolling inside Deneb as well, and the threat level for tonight was alert level three with levels two meaning an attack on the wormhole and one meaning full scale invasion.
The operations centre was manned as well, with sixteen officers and enlisted personnel with a single SCAR member as liaison to SCAR command. The Command, Controls and Communications unit was known as the C3, and together with Intelligence they were the Serco nerve centre of the border defence. The closest command nexus to where the major military action happened, it was surrounded by more than six metres of xithricite armour and buried deep inside the massive station that guarded the wormhole nexus to Deneb. Nothing short of a multi-megaton nuclear warhead would be able to affect it and the odds were in favour that the personnel inside would survive even that, even if the surrounding station had melted away. Naturally, was that ever to happen they would have failed their duties as defenders of the wormhole and thus would be condemned to be shot anyway in the following court martial.
