Tempered, page 11
part #1 of Space Chef Series
“That’s a fine tub of shit you’ve brought with you there, Mr. Rudy. No money for you now, though. Hell’s too good for you now, though,” I commented, even as I yanked the hemostat off his genitals. “Enjoy what’s left of your life.”
There would be no capturing of prisoners. I didn’t work in security. Besides, it was just me and a bunch of cooks. They were safer in the hold than up here with me, the one-woman wrecking crew. A small, almost impossible, plan formed in my head. Buckley was short on the why, but he lots to say about the who and where. I knew we were in an alien system and I knew how many troops were on board. There was a slight chance we all could survive this mess. It predicated on what the third party brought to the game, though.
With hardly a ripple in space, twenty-five dark ships warped into the system. Keeping to the outer edge, all but the scout craft hid in the dark spaces of the surrounding planets. The larger ships went silent.
“Prelate, the fleet is at the transfer point,” the navigator stated. He, like the others on the bridge, wore a heavy grey cloak, hiding his features from sight.
“Understood. Instruct the scouts to go into stealth and stay there. I want every meter of this system scouted and recorded. If this is a trap, I want to know ahead of time. Once the fleet is positioned, launch the probe. Report to me in my quarters when Agent Bolton reports in,” Prelate Yakov ordered as he left the bridge.
Pulling the cowl of his cloak over his head, the Prelate of the Order of the Solar Temple walked to his quarters. Following close at his side were two heavily armored men. They, part of an entire legion of honor guards, traveled everywhere with him. Murmuring to himself as if to set the conversation into his mind, the religious leader spoke. “Are we doing the right thing? Taking a chance of this magnitude?”
Alpha one, the prelate’s lead guard, reached forward and touched the man’s elbow before they reached the doorway. “Sir? Did you say something?”
Yakov waved his hand over the door, opening it. He looked to either side and frowned at the guards. “Stay here. If I need you, I’ll call.”
“Sir, orders…” Alpha replied even as the now angry cloaked man spun around to glare at him.
“And who gave you those orders? Stay by the door or I’ll have you assigned to the pain amplifier for the rest of this mission. Am I understood?” Prelate Yakov growled.
Both Alpha troopers went down on one knee, crossing themselves for forgiveness, heads bowed.
Yakov didn’t speak to them again as he entered the room and allowed the door to shut behind him.
“Lights on,” he ordered. Soft white lights instantly illuminated the desk in the center.
Stripping off his cloak, Yakov threw it onto a waiting chair before plopping down after it. Couch, chair, and desk were all covered in leather black as night. “And so it begins. Either we win or we lose.”
“We shall win and sweep through the known galaxy as avenging angels,” a sepulchral voice announced from one of the dark corners of the room. “Earth and its colonies shall be cleansed of filth and sin, awakening the spirit of God. He that believeth in me shall forever grace the halls of the faithful!”
Turning his head, Yakov pierced the newcomer with eyes so blue they almost glowed. “Save that one for the invasion. It should stir the troops quite nicely.”
“Oration is required for my position as Elder,” Levi Smith, the Elder of Ancient Times answered. “Has everything occurred as his holiness foresaw?”
“Not quite. We’ve no contact with Bolton yet,” Yakov replied. “I’ve ordered drones out, but until we hear back I cannot trust it isn’t a trap.”
“The ship is there, though. I’ve seen it on the screens. Surely this magnificent fleet can destroy one Confederation ship if it threatens us,” Elder Smith asked. He’d never gone to war before and didn’t quite understand the logistics of it all. Not yet, anyway.
Yakov blew out a breath and frowned. “The Washington is a battleship. Not their newest, but the one with the newest toys. If the spies were telling us the truth, it has every new system they’ve come up with in the past ten years. Technology that will propel our navy a century ahead if we can decipher it. Even alone, that ship could damage us very heavily. While Bolton is one of our finest, I don’t trust him. He’s been too long among the unbelievers.”
“The Council of Three and his holiness trust him. Put all doubt out of your mind and trust those that lead us to put us on the correct path,” Elder Smith replied.
“I worry, that’s all. Humans don’t fight their ships the same as aliens do. We’ve spent centuries hollowing out our stronghold in space since leaving Earth. This war might jeopardize it,” Yakov replied.
“No! Speak not of this again! There shall be no doubts, no foul thoughts brought forth by Satan or any of his dirty alien servants. We will take this ship and use it against the unbelievers in the Confederation wiping them out, along with the demonic Sylph, and any others that threaten our faith!” Smith cried out.
“And the righteous shall inherit the earth,” Yakov intoned, all thoughts of disaster gone.
Agent Michale Bolton, known in the Confederation as Sergeant Michale Bolton, prostrated himself before his altar to God. Personal faith wasn’t suppressed by the navy. Freedom of religion was one of the most defended laws in the military. It was how he’d been able to set the small shrine up inside the pantry. Faith was everything where he came from. Not like it was here. Here, inside the Confederation, everyone was a heretic or unbeliever. Spy that he might be, it was also his job to mark and record those he deemed unworthy to receive the sacrament when the cleansing came. His list was mighty.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. A small black device barely as long as a human pinkie finger vibrated suddenly from inside a false-bottomed ration pack stored on the shelf.
“At last,” the agent breathed, as he rose up to reach for the hidden device. “The time has come for all to be revealed.” Fumbling with the packaging, Bolton held the device to his lips and whispered, “The brotherhood lives.”
“Solaris est templum iter para,” a mechanical voice responded.
The Solar Temple comes, prepare the way. Six words the agent had longed to hear for so, so long. Pulling out a chip he’d kept close to his heart, he plugged it into the device. “Now they will die.”
Not My Job
“Eeny, meeny, miny, and your name is Moe,” I said to myself as I fired my silenced weapon at a false marine standing guard. He was the fifth one I’d picked off so far, not counting Rudy. By my count, they were down a full sixth of what they boarded with. Their overconfidence was a major weakness.
Not knowing what sorts of armor they each wore under their uniforms, I’d taken to shooting them in the head like I was at the range or something. Boom. Splat. A most satisfying result. Unfortunately, this time, I had to wipe the goo off the lift controls to activate them. “Yuck.” Reaching down to grab the man’s uniform shirt, I wiped off all the blood, bone, and brain matter I’d picked up from the most recent target, who now laid at my feet. Giving the body a kick, I scolded him, “You sir, are a mess.” I leaned my face down next to where his head should have been. “I need a shower. Too bad you can’t come and watch me. Try better next time.”
“Fun Casey is back and loving and I’m loving it.” I chuckled to myself. Speaking about the violent side of myself in third person always made me seem like a serial killer or something. Like my middle name was Wayne instead of Die Mutherfucker. They used to say way back in basic that if you talked to yourself by name you might be insane. That part really isn’t true. In my mind, it’s only if you have a complete two- or three-way conversation with yourself that you’re truly crazy. Muttering to myself is completely normal-ish. For me.
“You’re showing your age and your geekiness for all to see, Casey,” I muttered to myself, as if to demonstrate. The bad guys I was about to kill didn’t need to know all my secrets. Hell, I barely knew them all myself. Standard procedure after every mission was a trip to the team psychologist. Government only knows how much they shrank our heads each time, which of course added to the problems.
Capital ships like the Washington looked a bit like gigantic human femurs when viewed from a distance. Hammerheads on each end, with a tube in the middle. As a battleship class ship, this one was more heavily armed than, say, a scout or frigate. Big guns. Let’s all say to together, BIG GUNS. Ventral and dorsal turrets were the primary armaments. Small- to medium-sized guns filled the length of the ship. Broken up by cargo and hangar bays. There were some on both sides. Top of the line shield generators lay in hidden portals along the edges of the ship. During battle, they would rise up, encasing the entire ship in what some would call air or space armor. I wasn’t a physicist or any sort of scientist, other than culinary. It was all a sort of math I didn’t want to understand except for the baking part that was easy. But it was fun to discuss the basics. If you planned on fighting a ship, you needed to know stuff about how it operated and where not to go.
The bridge was on deck one, but according to the dearly departed Buckley, the emergency bridge was on three. Not marked on the map, the mini bridge was dead center on the ship. It was from there that any of the officers could duplicate all bridge functions. To save Chef Johnson and the rest of the kitchen staff, I needed to access one of the flight bays. More specifically, the armories for our snub fighters. Each of those sections contained a lift system for easy transport. When resupply ships refilled those areas, they used the same cargo hatches. The only difference was the dividing wall opened up.
To do that required the bridge, and the bridge alone. Even trying to open one of the cargo bays during flight, or apart from a loading sequence would result in the ship decompressing, crushing it like a beer can. Or at least that was what Buckley said. Like I’d trust a guy that cannibalized himself?
My plan, the one I came up with on the fly while crawling through all those tubes, was super simple. Kill the bad guys and steal a shuttle. We were in a system. There were planets. We’d take the shuttle down and join one. Surely someone would be able to communicate with the Confederation. Even the Sylph were in minor contact with them. But then again, the Sylph could very well eat us, first.
“Hey! What do you think you’re....Urk! Aaaaahh!” There was an officer on the emergency bridge, not a marine. He’d spoken to me without looking when I came through the door, probably thinking I was just another marine. It wasn’t until I’d slipped the garrote over his head that he spoke at all.
In my former business, the garrote was a silent method of eliminating an enemy. Extremely up close and personal, though. On Old Earth, in ancient times, it was an approved form of execution. For those like me, it was a tool like many others we would use. Sometimes it was a weapon of chance. You find a length of rope. Tie a knuckle-sized knot in the middle, and use it to kill someone. The knot needed to be placed in the center of the throat, cutting off the victim’s oxygen. Rope, shoelaces, industrial wire, were some favorites. Old-fashioned piano wire was a favorite of many of my troops, though. Loops or handles could be added to aid in the task. My preference was a handy dandy portable wire camp saw. Think flexible hacksaw with handles. It didn’t so much strangle the victim as remove the head. They were cheap to buy, and actually available in the civilian market. Legal to own. Crazy.
Muscle and willpower. If you didn’t have the will, you wouldn’t put forth the strength needed to do the job.
The officer was expecting someone, so I took advantage. Once the chain was around his neck, all it required was strength. Like trying to hold onto a bucking bull while strapped to it with space tape. Not an easy thing to do. The officer tried to grab the garrote himself with one hand, while he used the other to try to punch back at me. More elbow than fist. The action caused me to get in close, put my knee on his back even as we tumbled to the floor. With both hands I squeezed, pulling the ends of the tool closer together, the wire biting down into the man’s neck. So close I could hear his wheezing breaths as he gasped for breath, the blade cutting into his trachea, cutting off the airway. There was a squelch of blood, an almost meaty sound as the blade hit bone and severed the neck. Blood poured down, splashing me and the deck of the ship.
“Ugh, always with the squishy! Humans have too many juices,” I muttered to myself as I stood up. Fresh blood covered the front of my armor again. Washing it out was going to be a bitch.
Looking about the small equipment filled room, I looked for the navigation station. I needed our location and a map of our surroundings. Getting away was all well and good, unless there was nowhere to go.
“Data card? Where the fuck did I put the damn thing?” Patting my body all over, I left bloody fingerprints everywhere. “Fuck me, did I leave it…” Looking down at my feet, I found it in a pool of blood. “Bloody hell, if it doesn’t work, it’s all your fault, you know.” I sneered into the gushing face at my feet.
Fortunately for me, this was the Navy, and most equipment was built to be very resistant to all things. They were to be used by real marines, after all. Using crayons and ate raw meat, that sort of thing. Monsters in disguise, if you read the FAQs the media put out.
Turning so I could keep one eye on the door, I tapped a few buttons, bringing the system to life. It was a simple matter to bring up our location and information on planetary bodies within shuttle distance. Flying a shuttle was one of my talents. Flying a bigger ship, not so much. Some would say they were related skills, but not really. Way more buttons and math were needed. Switching over to the main console, I took a chance and had the computer download the logs, bridge tapes, and any orders given by Captain Vaslov. If I survived this mess and managed to get home, this info would be valuable. I hoped.
Knowing the jig would be up as soon as they found the body, I rigged it. I wasn’t supposed to be going all Rambo on the ship. The equipment I had was for emergency situations only, not trying to retake a ship or something. I had a minimum of explosives with me. Just two grenades and some shape charges. Pulling the activation pin on one of them, I placed it under the officer’s body. If anyone moved him, there’d be a nice big room-shattering boom.
Info in hand, I now had to get back down to one of the hangar decks, and then cargo. Authorizations on the emergency bridge stated the captain ordered a mutiny lockdown level one on decks eight through three. That included the kitchen, hangar decks, and cargo. Engineering was on a separate life support system and not affected. Captain Vaslov ordered the false marines to take it all over. Too many troops for me to deal with alone. It was time to touch base with the cooks.
“What do you mean we’ve lost half a dozen of your men? To whom? There’s only a couple of hundred star sailors on this ship as it is, and more than a third are locked the hell up! Your men are supposed to be the only ones with weapons!” Captain Vaslov shouted. Sergeant Draven, splattered with blood, stood in front of him. “And what the fuck is all over your uniform?”
“Blood, brain matter, bits of shit. Someone put a bomb underneath a dead body for us to find. Didn’t you hear the explosion? Or were you and Watson here having too good a time while our people were dying?” Draven shouted back. He was beyond angry at the captain. This was supposed to be an easy score for him and his men. Take a ship away from the Navy with the help of the officers and captain. Get paid. Go home. Simple. Now he had more than half a dozen of his men dead or missing. The officer that blew up had taken two more with him, as well. Storming into the office, he’d found the man he worked for partying it up with two female officers. Music was so loud he’d had to use his security clearance to get in. None of the officers could hear the door chimes.
“Bomb? What bomb? What the hell are you talking about?” Vaslov asked in shock.
Draven let out a breath and started to explain. “Standard patrol. I was accompanying our third deck group when we discovered a dead body on the emergency bridge. Securing the room, we checked for life signs. As we turned the man over, a fragmentation plasma grenade rolled out. If not for the quick reactions of one of my men, I’d have been killed as well. He dropped the body over the bomb and threw himself down on top.”
Both Vaslov and Watson winced. Plasma grenades were designed for use in closed environments. Basically, lots of multi-directional force, added to a carbon sand mixture. There’d be a big flash as the grit tore your body apart. Space forces called them gritters for that reason alone.
“Have your men seen any of the killers, this unknown commando team? It has to be someone in the crew. Engineering maybe, those guys get lots of extra training?” Watson asked, a puzzled look on his face. The idea that a bunch of geeks could take down trained marines had him spooked.
“Nothing, nobody. It’s like a ghost is doing this. My security teams have increased their sweep, and everyone is supposed to check in by the numbers. What about security station on the bridge? Has your officer on duty there reported anything unusual?” Draven asked the officers.
Watson cut his eyes left to stare at the men Draven had with him. Both of them were heavily armed and really big. Getting past them would be impossible. He’d sort of forgotten to replace that officers’ station. There was just so much going on. Covering all the stations was hard without extra crew. Everyone on the payroll was already on the bridge or in a vital station. Technically, he was supposed to take up the slack. But drinking and partying it up was way more fun than actually working.
“Well? What aren’t you telling me?” Draven demanded.
