Tic and his closest cronies where under the care of Doc Savage in the Yorktown’s expansive brig. The rest of the Donalites were locked in another of the Yorktown’s shuttle bays with posted guards and an invitation to sit tight or face some unpleasant consequences.

  “So Lieutenant, how was your time sitting in the big chair? Ready to make the move to the Navy?” Captain Jeffries asked as he returned my salute.

  I shook my head. “No disrespect sir, but you can keep your chair. A ship like the Heidman is like a fine violin. Command of a ship like her belongs with those who are trained to respect and utilize her to the fullest of her abilities. I’m a blunt instrument. My training is better suited to laying down a world of hurt on those who would hurt us. No sir, I’m a Marine and I’ll stay a Marine.”

  Captain Jeffries smiled. “Commodore Kimbridge was right about you. You were born for what you do. That said, are you feeling well enough from your ordeal to receive your new orders?”

  If I had been smart, I would have claimed a life-long disability and just walked away. How often can a man be shot at point-blank range in the heart and live to tell the story? The answer for those of you keeping track… is some combination of seldom, few and far between. Sadly, this was not one of my finer moments and I answered simply… “Sir, Yes Sir!”

  Chapter 21: Ollies …

  I stood up and stretched. I had been at my desk for the better part of four hours. Paperwork was the bane of every officer’s existence. It seemed the higher you rose in the ranks… the more of it there was and the harder it was to get away from it.

  The view out my window was refreshing. Olanda Prime was a beautiful Earth-like world. It had been my home for about thirteen months now. My permanent promotion to First Lieutenant, a few months ago, had included assuming command of four platoons of Marines.

  It was virtually unheard of for a First Lieutenant to be put in charge of what was essentially a company-sized group of men and women… but my career had never managed to follow the normal rules. In hindsight, I may well have been promoted to far… too fast. Sadly, I would not be in a position to see that until it was too late. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

  The Donalites had made a royal mess of things and my job was to try and repair the damage. Normal xeno-contact protocols had been thrown out the window. We were taking each day as it came and trying to figure out the best solutions to problems on the fly.

  The Ollies were a curious race. They were one of the few races the Galactic Coalition had run into that were not part of the Heshe database. Everything we learned about them represented truly new knowledge for the GCP.

  The muskrat/ferret-like race were a strangely bi-polar lot. If you fed them a plant-based diet, they were generally good company. The moment you started to feed them animal protein bad things began to happen… so, of course that is exactly what the Donalites had done.

  It seemed the Ollies were hardwired by nature to be passionate carnivores. They would consume, to extinction, virtually any source of meat they could get their hands on… and then go through withdraws when that meat source was exhausted. Their entire society was based on cycles of relative peace followed by cycles of absolute madness… all centered on the availability of animal protein.

  When the Donalites came and introduced domesticated chicken, a genie had been let out of a bottle that was hard to get back in. Those Ollies that created the most successful chicken farms were bigger, stronger and more aggressive than their vegetarian brethren. On the other hand, chickens needed time mature and to produce offspring in order to establish a stable population. This simple biological necessity turned out to be a serious problem.

  As a natural consequence of their genetic makeup, Ollies had some serious issues with impulse control. A chicken, running around a pen clucking, was simply too much of a temptation for the Ollie, if it moves—eat it, psychology to handle.

  Once a farmer had decimated his production facility… (And as sure as the sun rose in the east… he would), then he and his family would often raid another farmer’s facility. The result was a never-ending series of mini-wars.

  The situation was even worse inside the cities. Crime and murder rates had skyrocketed since the Donalites had disrupted the Ollie’s previously peaceful society. In point of fact, we were losing the fight to save this society. Every month the reports of violence went up.

  My first serious command was threatening to end in a failure. It was a true ‘no-win’ scenario… except, I didn’t believe in such things. There was an answer to this problem. I just needed to find it.

  My primary job on the planet was two-fold. First, our Marine presence was intended to support those peaceful members of the Ollie oligarchy that were trying to unwind the damage that the Donalites had done. Second, we were tasked with establishing order in those areas that had fallen into civil unrest.

  The paperwork I had been reviewing was a series of requisitions some of the science guys submitted up the chain. It seemed not every Ollie went nut-zo when you fed them meat. It turned out there was a recessive gene that allowed a small fraction of the Ollie population to function as omnivores much the same way humans did.

  This gene coded for an enzyme that mitigated the psychotropic effects of excessive animal protein. The boffins reasoned that if there was some way to introduce this enzyme into the Ollie food supply, then the madness that was overtaking their world could be short-circuited.

  The question was finding a vector that could reach the entire population. After many months of exhaustive research, the team thought they had an answer. A special GMO strain of an Ollie grain was created. This rice-like plant was a primary source of food for the sizable fraction of the Ollie population that was still on a vegan diet.

  What the researchers had finally accomplished was creating a variant that could be consumed by the chickens themselves. A chicken raised on such a feed would grow flesh that was rich in the very enzyme that prevented the madness.

  It seemed like an ideal solution to a massive problem. Unfortunately, the intersection of reality and potential solution is often in a place called heartache. The Ollies were bigots.

  The small subset of the population that was immune to the carnivore madness were looked upon with great distain by the rest of the population. The enzyme in question had a secondary effect of darkening the Ollie’s fur much more than was normal for an adult. Any solution that involved making an adult’s blond fur a darker shade was met with fanatical resistance.

  I heard a knock at my door. I quickly checked my AI. It was Duffy and Sergeant Brimmore.

  “Enter,” I said crisply. I welcomed the distraction. I was getting close to doing something that I had not wanted to do… impose our GMO solution.

  “Morn’n fearless leader,” Duffy said.

  “Is it?” I suddenly realized that he was right. I had been working reports all through the night. No wonder I was in a foul mood.

  I brought up my AI’s internal calendar. I was scheduled to visit the field site where the boffins where growing some of their test grain. I knew then that Duffy and the Sergeant were planning of joining me on the brief shuttle flight over to the small island that we had set up for the experiment.

  I took a quick look around my office. Spotting my hat, I grabbed it and made for the door. On the way out I nodded to Nesser, the old Ollie that served as my administrative aid. He and I had formed a tight bond over the several months we had been working together.

  “Hold the fort down Nesser. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “You’re not going anywhere. Not until you’ve had something for breakfast Sir.”

  I grabbed an apple from a basket on his desk. “What are you my mother now too?”

  “Someone needs to be. You could solve the whole problem by simply selecting a proper mate. Then I won’t have to worry about such things as it will be her responsibility to insure you are fed.”

  “Seriously,” I said with a grin. “Are we back on that topic again? I thought I made it clear after you scheduled me for a performance review with every female under my command that humans don’t operate that way.”

  “I was simply trying to offer you the widest selection of potential mates. And if your selection process for a mate was so great then why have you not selected one yet?”

  “Because I know no one that could replace you my friend. Go home and cuddle with the delightful wife of yours and tickle your kits for me.”

  That seemed to mollify Nesser. The nearly blond Ollie gave me a thumbs up sign which was his favorite human gesture. I didn’t know it at the time but it would be the last time I saw my friend alive… it stunk and made me angry for weeks to come but such were the fortunes of war.

  ***

  Duffy sat next to me on the bridge of the Kara. It had been several months since I had been on our old shuttle. It had been modified back into a standard GCP Combat shuttle configuration although Hedy had been allowed to keep some of the weapons enhancements in place. If the choice had been mine alone, we would have left her just as she was but Captain Mueller had insisted that she be restored to a condition that at lease resembled a standard configuration. I understood his reasoning. If everything was standardized then any engineer familiar with the standard configuration could work on the ship. When it had be reconfigured for our covert operation, Hedy was about the only one who could work on her without taking a whole lot of extra time to figure out what wires went where.

  “Spooling up the primaries,” Duffy said as he brought the fusion generators online.

  For our short trip we would not be using the hyper-field engines. We would be hopping up to about eighty kilometers and then coasting back down through Olanda Prime’s thick atmosphere to land on an island we had named Terra Verde.

  The hum of the engines was a strangely comforting sound. For at least a few minutes I could put the various logistics reports and progress summaries behind me and just enjoy the freedom of flight. The sky was a perfect reddish rose that was a hallmark of mornings on this world.

  On Earth there was a saying among mariners… Red at night; sailors delight. Red in the morning; sailors take warning. The saying didn’t seem to apply to Olanda Prime. The sky was a reddish hue in both the early morning and in the evening.

  As we climbed above the wispy cloud layer, the sky began to turn an ever deepening blue and finally the velvet black of space. Just as we were about to turn around and reenter the atmosphere the cabin was filled with the sound of alarm klaxons blaring.

  “Report!” I barked.

  “Somebody… actually multiple somebodies… have a hard lock on us with weapons systems,” Duffy yelled as he began series of maneuverers designed to shake loose the weapons locks or my breakfast… I really wasn’t sure which.

  “Brimmore, get up here. I need you to take weapons control and point defenses.”

  “Multiple missile launches confirmed,” Duffy yelled above the klaxon. “Several are coming from Floating Yard Two and several are coming from the Ollie land base near Arna City on the main continent.”

  I was having a hard time hearing him so I cut the alarms… we pretty much had gotten the idea that somebody was taking pot shots at us by this point.

  “Marine base, this is Marine One. We are taking fire. Put all units on full alert. Prepare to repel hostiles. Stone Out.”

  “Launching counter measures,” the sergeant announced. “Decoys away.”

  I looked at Duffy as he continued to spiral the ship down into the thicker atmosphere. “What the heck are they thinking? There is not a chance in hell of those missiles touching us. Even if they could our shielding would be more than adequate for dealing with it. The Ollies don’t have anything that could hurt us and the Donalites certainly didn’t… even if they managed to squirrel something away before I confiscated it all. It makes no sense.”

  “That may be so AG… but it’s not stopping them from trying and if you don’t mind, I’m going to try my damnedest to NOT put our shields to the test,” Duffy grunted.

  “Marine One, this is Ensign Atmore. Sir we see the missile launches against your position. Do you want us to take action against the perpetrators?”

  “Affirmative but use a minimal collateral damage response only. Floating Yard Two has a large civilian population and Arna City is right next to that Ollie Army base.”

  “Understood sir, light spanking only. Atmore out.”

  “Duffy, rig for a microjump. Take us to the far side of the planet. I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.”

  “Bringing the hyper-field emitters online now. Thirty seconds until we can generate a stable field.”

  “Jump when you are able. I’m going to signal the Admiralty board. If my suspicions are correct, things are about to get a whole lot worse on this planet”

  Chapter 22: Out of the Pan… into the fire…

  I hate it when I’m right. My worst fears were in the process of being realized. The Ollies had decided that it was better to die then to allow aliens to taint their honor. It didn’t matter that we were trying to fix a problem that was never their fault. It didn’t matter that the color of one’s fur didn’t affect the value of their soul or their ability to love and be loved. All that mattered was their hate. In the end, that’s all the Donalites meant to these people.

  “Terra Verde… is gone,” Sergeant Brimmore gasped.

  I watched as a series of massive tsunamis washed over the now barren island. The orbiting space stations had attached thrusters to several of the larger metallic asteroids that, over the years, had been towed to LaGrange points near the shipyards. Those thrusters pushed the asteroids into rapidly degrading orbits that caused them to crash in the waters off of Terra Verde. The asteroids became large kinetic energy weapons or KEWs. They were almost impossible to stop once they were launched and their destructive potential was off the charts.

  The intent was clear. The madness the Donalites had visited on this world would not be stopped anytime soon. The human and hupenstanii scientists that worked so hard to find an answer to the Ollie problem were now dead… and with them the most promising future for these people. One of those people who had died was an engineer by the name of Chief Warrant Officer Hedy Lamarr.

  “I’m seeing additional KEWs entering the atmosphere from each of the orbital shipyards. Several of them are targeting our facilities on the surface,” Duffy announced.

  I shook my head. There would be time for mourning later. Right now I had a job to do. I toggled my comms.

  “This is AG to any and all stations. We are evac condition one. Scramble Scramble Scramble. I repeat, we are evac condition one. Scramble, Scramble, Scramble. All teams are to form up in sector 1-4-2, one hundred kilometers off of orbital Shipyard one. Do not approach the shipyard… they are confirmed hostile. AG out.”

  “Take us to 1-4-2 Mister McGinnis. It’s time we put a stop to this.”

  ***

  Ten combat shuttles and a single Marine freight carrier hung in orbit around Olanda Prime. Several missiles had been fired at our formation but our point defense systems easily dispatched them before they could become a serious threat.

  What was more alarming… were the numbers of KEWs being aimed at the planet below by three of the orbital stations. We were powerless to stop them after they were launched. We could hit the KEWs with our own railguns or even plasma weapons but all we could do was deflect their aim. We could not keep them from impacting with the planet’s surface.

  For this reason I made the decision to invade the shipyards that were actively targeting the surface. I sent three combat shuttles each to the stations. Our marines were equipped with state-of-art Stark suits which functioned as battle armor. The Ollies on the orbiting stations would never have seen them and I was hoping that a little ‘shock and awe’ might shake their resolve to commit racial suicide. It was a foolish hope and it ultimately bore no fruit.

  “Take us right up to that observation window,” I said. “I want the buggers to see us coming.”

  Duffy carefully guided the Kara up to the observation deck of the biggest and oldest of the orbital shipyards. As space stations went, it was among the biggest structures build by the hand of a sentient I had ever seen – aside from the WhimPy platforms built by the Heshe.

  Duffy set the controls of our shuttle to station-keeping and opened the pod-bay doors. Ten Marines, all dressed in Stark suits jetted out from the belly of our ship. I took point even though as the commander I should have stayed back. Friends had died today and I was in no mood to stand by and watch more of them die.

  I flew over to the window and looked inside. What I saw disgusted me. It was obvious that there had been a major battle inside the shipyard. There were bodies everywhere.

  I signaled Duffy to approach the airlock. I had eyes on it from my vantage point near the observation window. It seemed clear for the moment. Within a few minutes my marines had entered the station and secured the airlock.

  I knew that the KEWs where being launched from the stockyard which was a centrally located portion of the station open to space. It was centrally located so that the iron-rich asteroids which were parked there could be harvested for raw material for ship-building. Whoever was launching the KEWS was using the mass-manipulators in that section of the station to carry out their campaign of carnage.

  We met no resistance. In point of fact, we saw no one alive. Everywhere we looked we saw dead bodies. I remembered one of the first conversations I had had with an Ollie. It had been with a bartender. A juvenile had tried to steal a coin from our table. The words that had been said came back with crystal clarity:

  “Young one want eat meat.”

  “And that is worth nearly killing him?”

  “Not yet… but will be. Bad is coming. You wait. You see.”

  Bad had certainly come. What we were seeing was beyond the scope of bad. Whoever had done this had parted ways with sanity. This was mayhem… pure and simple. The dead included adults and children. It was indiscriminate and absolute. It had to stop.

 

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