7. Decision time
The commander of The Lurkers frowned at his new orders. Why was he ordered to replace one of his finest pilots in the middle of a rotation and without an explanation? That bugged him, and he turned the paper over in the vain hope that the explanation was written on the backside. No such luck, it was as blank as it had been a minute ago. Orders were orders however, and he could hardly discuss it with GESTEBO anyway, nor request a why. He tossed the paper onto the table and leaned back, fingertips touching fingertips in front of his face. He was willing to bet a years pay to a single Lady's KC that it had something to do with that prisoner they had caught a fortnight ago. But why would they replace... ah, Cat was the only one that had opened communications with the UIT traitor. He must have found something enormous or betrayed the wrong people since they wanted to have Cat back. No doubt for "re-education" which was the GESTEBO synonym for a plasma bullet through the brain. Not on his watch, not one of his pilots. While he could not disobey a direct order, he could circumvent them if he really wanted to. He opened the secure sub-space communications unit, the SSCU and called a number he had kept for himself for years now. The voice in the other end responded with his name and nothing else.
"I need a favour."
"Okay. What did you do?"
"Not me, one of my pilots."
"No problem, is he any good?"
"It is a she, and she is very good."
"Consider it done. Rendezvous in Helios B-7, Aeolius Trading Prefect as fast as possible. Go to the "Arms of Kali" bar, ask for Beria. Send me her vitals and I'll transfer her effectively as of now."
"I need it done yesterday."
"You are pushing it. Yesterday it is. Consider yourself in my debt my friend."
"Yeah, whenever I see you, I'll grab you a Dark Lady myself. Out."
He smiled, always nice to work around the secret police. He summoned Cat to send her packing and started to draft an answer to the GESTEBO order. How unfortunate that she had been requested to do service in the Special Diplomacy branch a day prior and therefore could not be called back.
###
The Serco High Command met in the most secure wing of the military facility orbiting Sol II. Unlike the Itani high command, no voices were heard here with all communications running on the ultra secure implants that were required for ranks of Colonel and above. Along with those implants came a small fusion reactor usually installed instead of the spleen that had been rendered obsolete by the cybernetic and bio-mechanical implants that transformed any Serco military personnel from a normal human into a nightmare of raw power, speed, survivability and deadliness.
The Serco trooper had an extra heavily modified heart, a digestion system that was more than 90% efficient, muscle boosters, a modified nervous system to enable faster response times, thicker and almost bullet, cold and heat resistant skin, new types of eyes with thermal and infrared capability, implants that allowed the trooper to communicate with anyone on the battlefield in secure voice, sound sensors that would make an owl jealous and lungs that could extract all of the oxygen before exhaling. A trooper could survive hard vacuum for more than fifteen minutes before dying of cold, as well as shut down the blood flow to any part of his body. In other words, scarcely human anymore. Thus giving rise to the derogatory term, human norm for anyone not so modified.
The leadership of the Serco Armed Forces shared the data they had just received from GESTEBO and decided to activate plan URANUS to be initiated if the information proved to be correct. They all knew what the risks would be, but if the information they had received was correct, some crackpot in the Itani high command had just pushed the precarious balance of mutually assured destruction far over towards the side of the destruction of the Serco people.
###
Space around Tellus was very busy with a heavy assault cruiser, "Pride of Eo" flanked by a trio of frigates floating very close to the station with a screen of two squadrons of mixed IDF Valkyrie Vengeance and Centurion IBG's flying overwatch further out. Several Atlas class ships were moving equipment to the cruiser from the station. The faraday cage containing the Omega (which it was now officially named) was packed in a specially modified Atlas that would not unload inside the cruiser, but function as mobile laboratory. The last thing that was loaded was a set of thirty megaton nuclear warheads that were placed on either side of the docked Atlas inside the cruiser. No way was the Omega going to be captured by the Serco. The convoy moved out towards Deneb and the border-war.
Inside the cruiser, the Einstein crew was frantically running tests on the complicated equipment while Captain Taerow was getting strapped into his VR gear. He could barely lift his arms, but nobody else had trained for the Omega. He groaned as the mask was set over his head, not that it was activated but at that moment the implications of what he was about to do hit him.
###
The Serco patrol was making a sweep of sector B-12, a sector that the Itani used a lot for staging attacks. Nothing was in sensor range, not even for the scanner equipped Prometheus. The patrol leader called in all clear and the patrol jumped back to the wormhole sector to join the other nine craft that swirled in a defensive pattern around the rift in space. The sector was unusually quiet, and so it was decided to send a raid force to the Itani station to gain intelligence and disturb the defences.
Two Warthog Mk II and a TPG Atlas X piloted by the SCAR member set their course for Deneb O-3. They entered real space again with the sensors recording and fingers on the over-drive button ready for evasive manoeuvres. Immediately space was torn asunder by huge globs of plasma death that engulfed one of the Warthogs, dissolving the armour before killing the pilot inside. The other Warthog and the Atlas tried desperately to break away and avoid the instant killer weapons knowing that the effective range was no more that 1500 metres. A group of fighters attempted to intercept them, three ships flying towards each Serco. Keria pulled her Atlas X in a sixteen G turn and avoided the certain death of yet another plasma glob. At least they were sending fighters after them now, that meant that they were outside of the effective range of the Capitol Gauss canons. She accessed the data collected by her scanners and smiled. This looked like an invasion force, two heavy assault cruiser, four frigates and what looked to be around 50 fighters. She outran the scrambled interceptors easily and jumped back to the wormhole. The other Warthog made it as well and formed up on her wing. She checked the data with the data from the warthog and finding a 100% agreement she squirted it to the sensor buoy that provided a secure link directly to Geira Rutilus command. The effect was immediate. The Skycommand went to DEFCON 2 and scrambled everyone.
